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CC: Chapter 33
🕑 Added 2024-04-23 13:55:45 +0000 UTC“Focus!” Fai-Deng roared as he sent another arc of lightning flying at XJ-V’s right shoulder-joint.
My dominant arm, the Cog thought as he brought his hands up in the swirling motion of the Dragontail swipe. The Tiger is thinking more strategically nowadays.
As he sliced through the strike, feeling the energy from Fai’s lightning dance on his fingertips before flying away, XJ-V readied a Dragon Tooth strike that sent his own fireball cascading towards the Fai as he leaped to get within striking range of his opponent.
The Tiger met the blow head on, bringing up both his arms and cutting through the mote of flame, barreling towards XJ-V with speed that would impress even his Sect’s Guardian Spirit.
The Cog shifted his weight to the right, swept wide with his left foot and managed to catch Fai’s ankle as the latter turned in the air to deliver an electrified roundhouse that could have knocked the Cog’s head clean off.
The boy hit the ground, spun, and then was back on his feet in a matter of seconds.
“Hm,” he grunted, beads of sweat trailing down his bulging biceps. “Your Siulubu is strong. See how reactive it makes you? With a stance like this, not even your Sect’s most precious, purple-clad warrior could break through your defense.”
“I would not sell him so short,” XJ-V replied.
Fai brought up both his hands, sending a series of cross jabs at XJ-V’s torso till the Cog was forced back into a series of Dragontail Strikes, becoming a veritable windmill of blurred motion.
“You think him my better?” Fai asked through his relentless assault.
“I know he could subdue both of us,” XJ-V replied, before attempting to sweep Fai’s left leg again and forcing the Tiger to leap back the full length of the Symmachus Hall. His Leaping Cat was a move that XJ-V had been particularly interested in observing these last few lessons. What the Fai lacked in defensive power, he more than made up for in speed. His maneverability in an open arena would have probably, at this point, ment certain doom for XJ-V.
However, they were not in an open arena, and the Cog was not beyond using his environment to his advantage.
As soon as he saw the boy twist and somersault back down the length of the hall, surely getting ready for a Static Charge that could render XJ-V utterly paralyzed, the Cog unleashed his newest Earth-technique: the Pyrophoric Whip.
Five thin threads of sizzling flame shoot forth from his fingers and glided effortlessly through the air towards Fai-Deng’s exposed foot. XJ-V moved his hands swiftly with the dexterity of a practiced dancer to bring the threads round his opponent’s right leg like an infernal snake coiling round its prey. By the time Fai-Deng had realized his opponent’s trick, XJ-V forced his captured prey down to the ground, smashing him into the reflective glass of the Hall’s floor.
The Cog watched the boy stay rooted to the broken crater in the ground for a moment before he rose, cracked his back, and dusted himself off. The glass flooring, as usual, made no mark on his skin, and simply began knitting together the new cracks upon its surface.
“So,” Fai huffed. “You have learned some new tricks. Of course, you know that I shall now find an appropriate counter to your technique. That little move shall soon become your weakness.”
XJ-V smiled. “I would expect nothing less from you, Brother.”
“Hmpf,” Fai snorted, heading to the waiting bench beside the far wall and dousing himself with a jug of freshly collected water. “That will be all for today.”
XJ-V bowed to his Tiger Brother, but not before becoming transfixed, once again, by the long black scar of his left arm. He found himself wondering, as he often did during their training sessions recently, why the Tiger had never elected to have the thing fully healed.
Fai noticed his staring and cocked his bushy eyebrows at him.
“You will be participating in the tourney of Aun’el, will you not?” XJ-V quickly asked to deflect.
“Of course,” Fai replied with characteristic offense. “And I expect an opponent of sufficient caliber. So do not disappoint me. No matter what, I shall be a victor in this tourney. Either I win, and cede the glory of walking the Wastes to another, or I lose and watch you finally leave this place forever. Even if you think Mah-Jung is more potent than either of us, the bout will come down to us, XJ-V. Of that, I have not a doubt in my mind.”
XJ-V found himself momentarily lost for words. The way Fai had said these things was in a tone so terse that any observer would think he was rebuking the Cog. But the robot saw through the words to the intention behind them – the fact that Fai, in his own way, had just acknowledged that the Cog he once wished to see broken and destroyed was now one of the finest Corporeal Temperers in the whole monastery.
He was mistaken, of course, but XJ-V would accept the compliment with grace. It was the best sign of respect he was going to get from the Tiger. So, he hid his smirk as Fai inspected his foot in the mirrors of the Hall’s wall, seeing the marks left by XJ-V’s new ‘trick’ fade away.
And most Disciples said that the Cog was his punching bag…
“I would be honored to face you, Brother Fai,” he said with a respectful bow. “But you are wrong in your assessment. I am not seeking to win the tournament. My place is here, in Ramor-Tai. And it is here that I must remain.”
He made to take his leave after that, but wall of sapphire blocked his path – sparking into brilliant life before him and blocking his way out of the Hall.
XJ-V turned to see Fai-Deng looking at him with furious eyes, fingers crackling with electricity.
“Do not insult me or the other Cultivators of this place,” he said. “It is you that Longhua favors. It is you that Feng-Lung trains. It is you that I train. You think we do this out of the goodness of our hearts?”
Well, XJ-V thought. I certainly know that you don’t…
Fai stepped closer to him, till the only sight that filled the Cog’s vision was that of the Tiger’s crimson face.
“You think it is coincidence that Planeswalker Ori’un comes back now?” he said. “You think it is mere chance that he comes when a Cog walks among us? There are signs – fluctuations – hidden in the Dao, XJ-V. Even a novice like you must have felt them.”
The Cog first stepped away, suddenly more fearful of Fai than he ever had been when the boy came at him with his fists. He stepped back, too, because the words of the boy wrang true.
The face in his dreams…the one that stood beside Ori’un as a horde of evil came seeking to snuff out the light in their hearts…
“Master Yoma-Dur has spoken of this,” Fai continued. “He tells us little, but we of the Tiger have learned to read the tight-lips of our Master. He tells us of visions that swim before his mind. Visions he cannot interpret. Already our Core Regulators are whispering that such a vision may be a shared one. In their Dao-Walks they are seeing one of us stand beside the Planeswalker. And the skin he wears is not of flesh.”
“No,” XJ-V said.
“They speak of worse things to come if this future does not come to pass.”
Visions…worse things to come…Ori’un had spoken of what the Master of Nocturnus had said/ He had spoken of a cataclysm soon to befall the wasteland.
He had spoken of the High Eagle moving south…
Fai-Deng suddenly gripped the Cog’s arms and forced him to face his raging eyes.
“Understand this,” he said. “I don’t believe you are some savior sent here to aid us. I don’t believe in prophesy or the sights that swim behind old men’s eyes. I am a Cultivator of the Tiger Sect, and I believe in power.”
He held up his grisly arm, forcing XJ-V to see the black-ash that lay thick on the cracked skin.
“You know why I never had the Regulators remove this mark?” Fai asked. “Because it reminds me of what I must endure to grow strong. It reminds me of my failings – failings I have had to learn from. I failed when I faced you before because I rejected the will of the Dao, XJ-V. It is the will of the Dao that you came here. And it is the will of the Dao that you use the power within you to win.”
The Cog felt the soul within him flare with potential. Something – something buried deep in his breast – it liked the words the Tiger was spouting. It grew excited, filled with childlike glee, at the prospect of nullifying the Qi that swirled in the Tiger’s spirit, and engulfing him in an inferno that would leave him as nothing but cold ash.
“No…” XJ-V murmured, breaking free of Fai’s iron grip.
“No,” he said again. “That power is unnatural. It is not of the Dao. It is of something else – and I wish you would not insult me by showing me, every time we train, what evil I am capable of.”
He said these things before he even realized they came tumbling out of his mouth. When he looked back up at his Brother, he was caught by the look he saw resting on that once furious face. For there was sorrow, there. Sorrow, and pity.
“I…I must go,” he told Fai-Deng. “Train well, Brother.”
Fai watched his rival depart the Hall of Symmachus and allowed his shoulders to sag, dropping the act he kept up whenever the Cog came by nowadays. It was an act that he had almost broken a moment ago, and one that, overall, even he didn’t know how to totally release himself from.
He watched XJ-V’s departing back and patted the head of one of the Hall’s Tiger statues before he resumed his martial exercises for the day.
“To deny the Dao is to bring only despair,” he said. “I know this more than most, Brother Cog.”
