Disciples of the Dragon VII: The Legacy of Zxu'ro [Ochazuke]
Ochazuke opened his eyes. Slowly awakened by the tremor in the spiritual font of the earth, he started from the sharp plummet from expansive illumination to a rather visceral - and altogether too-material - awareness. He felt it welling in his body spreading sharply like ice as he drew breath. The dawn's early light flood red over the blackened canopy, but seated before the bas relief of the Tiger King, he felt rather diminished. Reaching deep into the collective unconscious of an entire world was to find the threshold on the metaphysical world. What he had found there was in equal measure illumination and horror of a particularly mortal weariness..
The essence of the Master's technique, to magnify the collective will of a world required the capacity to hear it. Ochazuke found that to realize it, however, was something else entirely. As enormous as the potential of humanity was to even begin to perceive such a thing, the sad history of this world stood as a testament to many egregious and witless appetites. Seated in the ruin of the Tiger Temple, the fretful condition of humankind brought with it an extraordinary well of doubt and fear.
[I]If this is the unifying principle of the world, then how could we with all our reason forget it?[/I]
Alakazah's world was one cobbled from fear and strife the individual's will something to be lashed lashed to the interests of his state, little cogs in a macrocosm of order. A constant revolution of strife and saviours kept the people cowed and grateful, and with everything inconvenient forgotten, with all that was known settled in exclusion, they would never know.
In lies, such perfect peace persisted and the knowledge that all of humanity were a collective part of this world had been twisted to their undoing. Deep down he knew it, that the simple desire to live their lives in peace had a manner of swiftly bringing one to think only of themselves, to accept this fate because by force or by lie. Like fish carried down the coursing river, unawares of the various designs surrounding them, cowed in the knowledge of their own lacking power and blind to their own potential. The power of fear distorted reality and became the President's locus of control, leaving the people of Earth always dependent on somebody else. Alakazah would welcome them with open arms into his authority, the World Government allowing them to breathe, yet never truly live. There nested in the Fallen Dragon's shadow, the people of earth feared to lose everything.
A deep sigh left him as Ochazuke leaned back, reclining on his hands. His journey to understand the truth of this life had taken him to the stars, beyond the veil of time, and at the threshold of the Void. He had made acquaintance with Destruction, wielded a mere fragment of Creation, and though both were primordial forces were beyond reckoning, it was still this realization, this the sum of mortal life caught in between was far more confounding to his sensibilities. The words he had with the Guardians had pulled back the veil, and yet even with the glamour dispelled so much of his grip remained.How were they to escape this vicious cycle?
Perhaps that's what the Master of Masters sought so long ago. The Obushi-sennin, Master of the Five, had known he had to fight against the long strife of the world; Before him, Zxu'ro, the Master of Ten on that path before them still walked upon it in a deep meditation. Itwas an eternal aspect in a temporal experience, symbolic of a spiritual principle; The acme and highest potential of life, the metaphysical state which stoked consciousness itself, A shining point where all lines intersect at the core.
He knew - though with only frail certainty - that what was possible was only limited by what they wished to be, if they could be shown how to find their way. The Central Point is everywhere; those who stand upon its circumference are lost, nowhere. There were a precious few who could find that point within themselves and realize that immense potential, but it was all so very fragile in the face of strife, and no tree can grow to Heaven unless their roots first reach down to Hell.
Standing to his feet, Ochazuke pressed a palm over his face. Feeling something solid beneath brought him back to his senses. When he looked up at the sun it was opaque, alit in burning orange.
The Tiger King's palace was burning.