Foreword:

This piece features an alternate timeline that merges the continuities of both Xiaolin Showdown and Xiaolin Chronicles as seen until the time of this writing (October 2013) and assumes that the canon of Xiaolin Chronicles takes place a few years after the end of Xiaolin Showdown. Unless otherwise stated, all characters can be assumed to at least be legal adults. Additionally, while subsequent chapters of this piece are not in any particular chronological order, each tells its own story individually and cohesively as a part of the collection.

Full-length notes will be posted at the conclusion of the piece proper. This piece was largely inspired by T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land", from which the titles of each of its sections and excerpts were taken, and the basic structure of this piece was made.

Thank you for reading; any and all commentary, critique and feedback is greatly appreciated.

1. The Burial of the Dead

'What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water.'

-x-

Once upon a time, in another life, they had talked about what things would be like in the future, when they no longer stood as children on the brink of adulthood, but instead were soldiers, warriors in their own right who fought heroically in the never-ending battle between good and evil. And so Clay thought - no, he knew - that that future was as it was meant to be, and he was not alone, for he knew, too, that his friends dreamt of it as well.

So the battles and skirmishes were fought, and the wounds were treated, as bones grew longer and stronger, and the softness of adolescence became replaced by hard, corded muscle and knotting scars covering skin that had once been pale and unblemished. Time continued on its lonely march, and though neither the light nor the dark prevailed in that path, balance between the two was maintained, and so the world remained, if not at peace, then at least in stasis.

But that story quickly ended, although it had barely begun, and the next found its advent on a moonless night, with the desecration of a temple and the abrupt end of a bright, shining world that gave way to the dark dawning of another. Nothing good and fresh grew in this world, and it soon became clear that precious little could survive in it at all.

It was Ping Pong who had been the first to make the rules of this new reality painfully clear; it was obvious, by then, what Fate had planned for them (or, perhaps, what Fate had instead hoped otherwise, for they had tried, and they had fought, but they only continued to lose) but Clay only wished it had been easier for the little one's tale to end. But, it seemed, that as the darkening sky hid the light of the sun (though the heat soon became unbearable) and the water disappeared beneath the drying earth, and the grass and trees had withered and browned and died, so too had the small boy from the north, whose life has been so intricately connected with the greenery of the world. The end had not come easy to him; Ping Pong had been no delicate flower, but his passing had shown that even the sturdiest of oaks could be felled, although none of them had expected the process so cruel.

From the moment they were first initiated into the order of the Xiaolin monks, they had all been taught about the inevitability of death, and its importance in the cycle of balance that kept the world whole. Yet that did not make it any easier when it came time to bury the youngest monk. Given time, an oak would be covered by moss and lichen and pale white mushrooms, and would crumble away to become part of the earth again. But the same could not be said of a body, and no one had wanted to leave him to the mercy of scavengers and the elements, picked at and battered until all that remained was a cracked skeletal grin amongst the dying weeds.

In the end, Clay had been the one to hollow out a small stretch of parched earth, beneath the dried branches and between the twisting roots of a withering pine that was all that remained of the copse in which it had once stood, with scarred and calloused palms pressed into the dry earth and stone, his remaining eye shut tight lest the tears blind him otherwise. The copse chosen as Ping Pong's resting place was not far from where the temple had once stood, and before, in their old life, the small monk had considered it a place of solace and serenity. In some strange and inexplicable way, it seemed fitting that it was here he would remain for the rest of time. But as Clay knelt in the dirt, the pine needles digging uncomfortably into his knees as he carefully shifted the earth before him until it was of a respectable depth and width to accommodate the small body that Raimundo held so tenderly in his arms, he could not help but wonder if the rest of them would be so lucky to have someone to do the same for them when Death came to claim them next.