The Archive of the World (1/2)
Though the rains had ceased, the winds continued to howl over the blasted heath. Once the water ran out, the rolling plains of the steppes slowly began to thin. The grasses had loosed their grip, choking upon the sandy, cracked earth, and billowed to dust. Long stretches of the plain eroded into fodder for a vast desert. As the zephyrs flew, as if reaching ever towards something in the distance, the white grains of sand cloaked that invisible hand where it brushed past cresting dunes.
Whatever passed through more often than not was swiftly swallowed whole, the desert's gasp perpetually burying, eroding and disintegrating as it fell. Wild exiles from all over would find their way to this place, for all roads to great kingdoms passed through the wasteland, bearing upon them the wealth and lifeblood of nations. Their treasures guarded jealously from predatory eyes seemed only to invite them, and what they held in their hands made them aware only of what they lacked. Above all else, the denizens of these parched salivated in the presence of fresh meat.
on occasion one may chance upon hint of what once tread here. Glimmering just below the surface, coin minted in the name of a nation that no longer existed. A fearful beast of burden goaded by a fitful master. The flaking chitinous hull concealing a sandworm's jaws. Whether of mystical stock or proud lineage, it was all the same. When they fell, the sands would rush in as if they never existed, their blanched bones disappearing from sight as if they had never been.
Were one to allow himself to pretend the wind against their back was some guiding voice, they would be betrayed by this rather fickle force, for this place of shifting pathways led to only two places. Wandering death for the lost, and those who found the end would find, obscured by dust-devils, a towering shadow at the foot of the mountain. Where the winds met the anchored wall of rock, they swiftly pushed into a wailing updraft that stretched up, past the haze and into the distant clouds. In this intersection between two opposites, supported by an exacting balance it withstood the passing ages as it always had. Astride an impossible place that should not have existed was the last refuge for the long-traveled.
At this desolate end, there was no choice but to further ascend.
Scrambling up the mountain with a swift bound, Kuki raked his single arm over thin protrusions in that sheer wall, nimbly making progress through the tenuous grip the sands left on his palm and soles. When he pushed through the veil of cloud produced from the instant vaporization of rain that fell from that desert, as he moved higher, he found himself struggling against icy and hail. He'd felt more at home than he did in months when his blood got pumping. Shimmying up the cliff face, he found the narrowest outcroppings and barest outstanding pieces with such preternatural agility, it would seem as if he'd been upon this path before.
"S'wrong Ishii?" he chuckled. "Y'ain't flyin' so swiftly now!"
Behind him the thin clouds parted. The little turtle's shell whirled as he climbed altitude at a noticeable distance from his Master. The Hermit climbed so readily until suddenly, to his peril, he found his hand no longer had a thing to grasp onto. That would be all that it took and he would fall the stretch of miles downward; He slipped and started to fall.
With a dull, hollow thud, he felt something small press against the shell at his back. "Heh. Sharp witt'd s'always." Finding himself splayed on his back, Kuki found himself at the perilous mercy of his companion, rocking and rotating, shell upon shell. He frowned deeply as they slowly ascended and the world slowly turned around him.
"Gyek."
A few meters more and the turtle unceremoniously dumped his sensei onto the stony ground. With a hearty laugh Kuki sprawled up his single arm up to his feet, grateful for steady footing. Even more resplendent was the sight of the temple. It had been quite sime time since he had visited the grounds of the Dragon School, and the Nine-Dragon Peak was decidedly more precarious than he had remembered.
They were real firebrands back in those days, masters of crafting ki, deceptive combatants handicraft and swordsmen of such frugal technique they knew no need to strike first. Or so they claimed, anyway, especially the greater among their number claiming they never needed to strike twice, either, for that matter.
The Dragons never sat quite right with the Turtles. It went without saying as a matter between the Five Schools, of course, but their feud had been rather...particular, philosophically speaking. It was stuck in everything, from dress, to conduct, to choice of venue. Really, who were the true humanitarians, the inhabitants of a tropical island of plenty everyone could access, or those waiting here atop remotest of peaks to screen out the unworthy? It got so bad it went down to the pettier things like the merits of bloodless staves compared the finality of a perfect killing stroke, a notion he himself had often had tested.
Above it all was the matter of that singular obsession. They were rather taken with a fretful notion of their legacy. The logic - as he had understood it anyways - was such that the purest realization of an idea was as it was first conceived. The way something was first rendered possessed the purest essence of the creation at a conceptual level, realized with the greatest fidelity within the material. As a result, instead of trying to figure out how to deal with this ever-present condition of passage, they kept trying to return to the past.
Kuki looked over the rooftops of the old temple. Spackled grey-green tile resting hevily upon ageless enameled pillars. The monument of the Dragon School's fearful struggle to endure stood fast, and though the grounds remained pristine, they were also cold and lifeless. Not a single disciple of this lineage remained to greet him. As the Turtle Hermit cast one last look over the abyss behind him, he wondered how the Dragon Priests must have felt as they congregated here, above the silvery fog, surrounded by a desert. Abbot Yoroi upon Turtle Island sat nestled in the heart of creation. Perhaps Seiryuu isolated himself in this manner as a bitter reminder of the world below: that it existed in a state of perpetual decay.
To the Dragon Masters, to find a pinnacle, the ideal, was to find the truth, for the only path towards discovering the essence was to the return to origin of things. It followed that this, in turn, was to restore a notion of purity to this corroding world in some form or another. The problem is, held fast by the spoken doctrine, the Dragon often seized its own body aloft in its mighty jaws; If everything was once perfect, that would leave the future with little more than bleak prospects, now wouldn't it? If the only solution was to go backward, how might one find the strength to move forward if they are forever obsessed with carrying what was? Whatever the case, it certainly had resulted in a history of accumulation, though it was not always a matter of prizes.
The Archive of the World (2/2)
The desert at the foot of this mountain had once been green pastures for the roads that stretched across this continent to link its kingdoms. As the ancient monarchs raised their walls, the avaricious monsters produced from these wild fields grew to see them as a challenge to prove themselves against by ransack and conquest. They say Priest Seiryuu chased down the Man-horses of the Demon Khanate where they pillaged the land, who had been uncontested until he crossed their path with the fire-forged technique. There are no written accounts of these deeds wrought, only the miles of scorched earth, and bones beneath the dunes.
When the war had concluded and the treasure hoard confiscated, there was no rightful owner to return this to. Wiped out without so much as a remainder, who would remember? How many things were lost and forgotten? The grateful dead paid a kings ransom to the priests of Seiryuu's order, and to ensure this never happened again, they moved each artifact piecemeal up the sheer mountainside. An impossible task, but not for a Dragon.
Legends spoke of the wealth of the Dragon School, but that was a misnomer, for this was not merely an aesthetician's collection. The collective knowledge from time immemorial. The last bits of eroded civilizations, the sacred texts that prayed to deaf gods, lost they were all brought here, to Seiryuu's archive of the world!
In his youth Kuki had so desired to see it, and in response to his plea they'd challenged him on Neutral Ground - again with the conciet of worthiness! He'd fought their champion Shenlong to earn a chance...for his Master Qinglong to hear his request in person. He wouldn't deign to see him unless he had an offering, but Kuki could only offer them a truce. They hardly considered it a boon - much less recompense for their man - but were honour-bound to comply.
"...perhaps th'Balon fellow made good on th'amenesty. Hrm."
They sought to retain the last remnants of a history to preserve what would had been lost, but over time had become overly attached to the material. Instead of seeking to preserve the fading world as it sunk into the past in honour of those that had fallen, the collection itself became the end. Objects of artisan craft, all the remnants of various, disparate histories come to silence, and symbols of the ideas that moved the hearts of people were displayed next to prizes won by blood or tithe. It became a hoard to guard jealously, vainglorious trophies of the Dragon school's mighty deeds. The hymnals of a spiritual rite were seen as little different than to slay a warrior-prince in combat in order to keep his armour.
All it took to fall from the heights of grand ambitions was one slip.
Now in these plundered halls, Kuki stood a lone Turtle among the Dragon's hollow bones. The practitioners of the mortal arts so mighty once may have been compelled to gloat, yet he felt no victory here. It had not escaped his attention how empty these grounds were. The doors stood intact, but the ornate dais that once held the relics of the world were destroyed. Now it stood Ransacked for a man's aesthetic pleasure and primal satisfaction
All came to dust, the memories forgotten, and its worth traded on gilded appearances.
It was a matter Dragons and Turtles never reached an accord on, for they were about as compatible as fire and water. It was well understood that water could both nurture life and just as well smother it, that to float upon it one understood the potential to sink. Was it the same with those who carried a will of fire? That by immolation, break down elements to slag and vapours, reveal a single pure substance? While it'd be nigh impossible to drink an ocean dry, a flame must be constantly minded, fed and able to breathe. Water will flow, or simply be. Flames, somebody must offer it tinder to carry it forth. The Dragons never wanted that first fire to go out, and reaching back across the ages,they would sacrifice anything as kindling.
Yet the [B]Sapphire Shell[/B] he now bore on his back had come from the same method as their holiest of relics, the [B]Jade Dragon Claw[/B]. It was a remnant of this shared legacy, a piece of the Obushi-sennin offered as a material peace from Seiryuu to Yoroi. Whether Priest or Monk, there was an understanding that despite their acquired differences, that had at the heart of their paradigms a common goal, and a common root.
The problem was such a material peace brought with it a material price. Soon and after the Master's death, the Dragons would never let their Turtle Elder forget it.
But the ki and memory of the Master, created through this method of preservation was preserved with the greatest fidelity. If it was anythink like this Shell, it resonated with those who would listen to it. This Balon fellow had reacquired it. When Kuki had crossed hands with Young Ocha years ago, he knew that despite the ravaged archive around him, the spirit of the thing continued to live on. The coiling limbs, their dread talons, and the fire passed down through the ages passed through as any apt pupil. All it was that made the difference might have been a different way of seeing things; Doubtless what the Last Dragon saw within the fixed spirit was a history that went beyond its shaped greenery.
What he could offer the order of Seiryuu now was a spiritual peace. Stretching his hand out, a small, green globe of ki fell into the environs, illuminating the pathways that had been the studious grounds for generations. A simple token of his will, the knowledge that their legacy, in a way, would yet endure. With a throaty grumble, Kuki stroked his chin. Casting a look over the sea of fog below, he asked his turtle companion, "Now, how d'ya s'pose we get outta here?"
[CENTER][I]O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."[/I]
John Keats, "Ode to a Grecian Urn"[/CENTER]