He was running.

The charred twigs of the bamboo forest whipped against him, slashing across his face with strikes that would have scarred a human being.

Behind, he could hear the vicious barks of hunting dogs, and the sounds of their soldiers' boots pounding into the ashen earth beneath them.

The skies were streaked with poison – the result of the fumes they'd poured into the city. He looked frantically at his surroundings and saw only fire – the bamboo trees turned to burning braziers that lit up the dark.

His lame arm dragged limply behind him. Logic dictated that he should tear it off and leave it for them to destroy. But the whims of his Creator took precedence. He had to make it to Ramor-Tai. All of him had to make it.

A sudden flash of brilliant light, and he felt his lower body stutter and crumble beneath a torrent of bullets. Above, there was a spotlight trained on his skittering form. He was little more than an insect beneath their sight.

He felt the hand of one of their Xu'jan grab his shoulder. He turned, seeing the boy's drawn blade, and let the sword embed itself in his gut. As the soldier smiled a mad, joyous smile, he brought his fist across his face in one solid blow that detached the mortal's jaw. Blood spewed from the open wound where the boy's neck once was, and his body crumbled to the ashen ground.

He looked down at the bloody face of the boy. He couldn't have had more than sixteen summers on his back.

He kept running.

He can hear the screams of the villagers now. Those who were being dragged from their burning homes and taken as slaves. They would be reeducated in the convents he had heard his Creator speak of before he had eyes to open and see them.

His mind told him to keep moving. To run. To survive. But something in his chest heaved with sorrow. The city burned. Hensha burned. His Creator…burned.

At the edge of the city's ruined perimeter walls another spotlight shone on his neon eyes, and he saw five more soldiers approach him bearing blades that shone with the killing light of the Order. The first one he caught and broke his arm with a single strike. Another he disarmed and smashed his head against a crumbling stone in the ground. The third came at him with a wide stance that he swept through like a snake, bringing both his legs round the youth's torso and cutting off his air supply before he finished the boy off with a jugular blow that closed shut his eyes forever.

More spotlights shone on him now. The ones who had burned the village had caught up and surrounded him.

So he shoved through the last two boys, feeling the sting of their blades as they nicked his calf servos, and threw himself down the side of Hensha's sloping hill into the dank ditch below where they had thrown the dead and the dying. Cog bodies mingled with human limbs all around him. He was adrift in a sea of death.

A flurry of arrows pierced his metal back and he started swimming, frantically pushing himself through all the pain and the sorrow that tugged at the raging flame beneath his breast.

And as he swam, he saw his shadow appear in the rippling waters filled with blood.

The High Eagle. Looking down at his worm from on high.

He could feel the burning eyes of that man looking down at him from the ridgeline above. He could feel those eyes digging into him with such intensity that he dared not look back. Seeing that man's face was the first time he had ever registered fear and he knew, without a doubt, the reason his Creator had built the emotion into him. He still remembered the flowing, pale-white robes of that man as he entered the village ahead of his troops. He remembered the insignia he wore upon his sleeve - the same insignia flying from the banners of his soldiers: the image of a golden eagle, razor-wings raised, perched atop a monument of metal skulls.

And the Eagle's voice, like the piercing tips of that predator-bird's talons, shot through his head as he made his escape.

"No matter where you go, machine, we are all connected."

…

XJ-V opened his eyes to the rain-soaked image of the Ramor-Tai courtyard.

His body was shutting down. He knew that now. The rust had by this point seeped into his vital systems and started to corrode his servos, eating away at his mind and causing glitches in his memory and auditory receptors. Even now he still thought he could hear the voice of the High Eagle in his brain, and he even chanced to look behind him, thinking he could still feel the searing heat of the Order's killing lights.

The raging engine within his chest compelled him to activate his repair protocols, which it had kept intact as a failsafe measure in case of desperate need. But XJ-V ignored the blazing red warnings that flashed before his eyes. He had spoken the truth to his young companion: if he was to expire here, then it was the fate the Dao had chosen for him.

Still, a small fragment of his mind wished to have another day on this earth. To see the sun rise over the monastery walls as one of the Disciples – as a Brother – that was the thought that kept his back straight – that forced his hands and feet to remain locked in their meditative positions. He had demonstrated patience, had he not? He had known suffering – Master Longhua must know that. Yet, at the back of his mind, he knew there was something else the master had required of him. There must have been something he was missing…

Creator, he thought, knowing perhaps it was the last thought he would have. Why have I been forsaken?

Perhaps the holding of a soul was not something a being could ever know…

Something moved out of the corner of his eye that gave him cause to start, and he looked at the tiny trough of Chrysanthemum flowers that sat beside Master Longhua's chamber door. Two creatures dwelled between the flower stems: a butterfly with yellow-black wings and a spindle-legged spider, the former of which was currently writhing within the web of the latter. XJ-V watched as the spider slowly crept towards its prey, every tiny movement of its legs calculated and masterfully attuned to the threads of its web, honed through years of evolution. The butterfly, meanwhile, thrashed around in futility, suffering the same plight of its species' own evolutionary shortcomings.

Both creatures played their parts like beings pre-programmed – without emotion or real intelligence. There was nothing but innate drive within them both. For the spider – the need to consume. For the butterfly, the need to be free.

For the first time in almost a year, XJ-V started moving.

He crept slowly, like a ninja in the night, until his face was level with the spider's masterfully crafted web. The creature tested the strength of its creation with one pincer-like leg, and felt the frantic vibrations of its captive as it thrashed pointlessly against its prison.

Without a single thought behind the action, XJ-V stretched out his fingers.

The spider recoiled, seeing a third party intervene in its hunt, but XJ-V's reflexes were quicker. He plucked the butterfly gently by its wings, tore through the web, and came away with the tiny insect now calmly resting between his thumb and forefinger.

XJ-V looked down to see that the spider had merely began to rebuild its broken web again. He turned his attention to the butterfly's tiny form in his hand. So small. So fragile. With a single movement he could end its life if he so wished.

He let the thing go and watched it flutter to rest on the tip of his rusted fingernail before flying off into the dark skies of the Wastes, against the raging rainfall.

The Cog sighed abruptly, catching his chest sagging to see the thing go, and realizing that he had broken his stoic meditation. He threw his head to the storm-streaked skies and laughed – releasing a pitiable, guttural sound that barely traveled.

Only then did he see that he was being observed.

He turned, dimly sensing movement behind him, and looked back towards Master Longhua's chamber door.

The Master was staring right at him.

"Why did you do that?" he asked.

XJ-V's grime and rust-covered form to a moment to even register that the Master was really there before him, never mind what he was asking.

"The butterfly," the Master elaborated, looking upon the Cog with a strange mix of curiosity and apparent consternation at having to repeat himself. "Why did you set it free?"

XJ-V blinked his blazing eyes up at the Master.

"I do not know."

The Master kept his gaze steady, letting the rain mat his old, pristine beard while his hands remained at his sides.

"You have given me the answer to a question," he said in a voice that was barely a whisper carried on the still winds. "Though not, I think, the one you presume to have answered."

XJ-V's sensors must have been betraying him, for he could swear that the sides of the old man's mouth curled up in what looked like a smile.

"Perhaps, in turn, I can give you an answer to yours."

The Master simply walked away up the steps to his chamber after that, throwing open one of the ancient stone doors and leaving it ajar.

"Longhua…" XJ-V began.

"That's Master Longhua to you."

The Cog double blinked, feeling the rust that lay heavy upon his chest quiver in anticipation.

"Does this mean you shall train me?"

And without looking back, Master Longhua of the Eternal Dragon Sect gave an answer that had cost eight long months:

"Yes."

***

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