Chapter Text
ACT I: A KINGLESS WARRIOR
POV: Macaque
There was a saying, or at least he thinks there was, that all truly beautiful things were born from terror. That one cannot exist without the other; both being two sides of the same coin.
The sea was the easiest of examples Macaque can think of; its crystal waves catch the drops of sun and scatter the light in shattered golden beams across the surface. Sailors call it breathtaking, and they mean it kindly. The sea does not. Those same waves will grind a ship to sodden splinters without remorse. Beauty and ruin, born from the same hand.
Macaque had lived long enough to know the saying was true. He had seen empires glitter before they fell, watched heroes crowned and buried all within the same afternoon, and he had loved things sharp enough to cut him open.
But in all his long immortal life, there had never been anything more terrifyingly beautiful than Sun Wukong, the Monkey King.
Across the battlefield, wreathed in smoke and uprooted weeds, Wukong shines like gold. He could replace the sun if he wanted to, in fact, he had long replaced the burning ball of gas in Macaque’s mind already.
“Macaque! Stop!” the Monkey King roars, voice ripping through dust and debris. “Don’t make me do this!”
Macaque’s eyes sharpen, landing upon the flaxen-haired monkey; his mane flutters in the breeze like flames. The corners of Macaque’s lips turned upwards and he was not quite sure whether it's a smile or a snarl. A manic sounding thing rips itself from his throat, and rattles off his ribs, playing his bones like an xylophone. But the instrument must be missing a key as every other laugh that escapes sends a sharp, stabbing pain to his right lung.
The clashing of metal and shadow, and knuckles to flesh had subsided for now. Both monkeys stand eight feet apart, a gulf that had once been measured in inches, both panting lightly. Macaque’s jaw feels slack, and every twist sends sharp, shooting pains through his body. The heavy metal smell coating the air mixes with the turned soil stinging his nostrils.
Steam rolls low across the shattered earth, thick enough that it seeps into Macaque’s bones; his tattered yellow and black robes clinging to every inch of skin. Sometime between the dance of swings and mortal-ending punches he’d lost his right leg armour. Wukong looked no better.
Stones from the mountain laid split open like broken bones, jagged and sharp. The air hummed with residual power: bright, furious, alive. Wukong stood at the center of it all. Gold ringing his silhouette, but not in its usual gentle halo Macaque had always seen it in. It crackled off him in sharp arcs that seared the edges of Macaque’s vision. His armour was fractured, mane unbound and wild, he never cared what his hair looked like during battle. Macaque had always spent hours grooming him after battle. With his size-changing pillar staff clenched in a white-knuckled grip he looked less like a King, and more like a storm that had disguised itself with skin.
“Macaque,” he said again, gentler than before, but still laced with entitlement. He said his name like it still belonged to him, like he had control over Macaque.
Macaque wiped blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. It smeared dark into his oil-black furred hand. His fur was sticky and matted, something he would surely spend over a week fixing after this was all done, but right now it didn’t seem to matter.
“Hah! And you call me dramatic,” he replied lightly, though the stabbing sensation from a flail rib persisted with every breath. “Just get on with it already,” he added, full of mockery, but a slight tremble snaked its way into his tone.
Wukong’s jaw tightened and Macaque heard the plates deep underground shift before feeling them tremble beneath, “I don’t want to.” He started in a breathy whisper.
There it was. Sun Wukong never once let anyone tell him what he can and cannot do. He burned brightly like the eternal flame of a phoenix, devouring everything in his path. Even scratched and bruised and soiled, he was glamorous; truly and breathtakingly beautiful.
Then something shifted, his eyes narrowed, and his body lowered to a slightly hunched over position, “But you’ve hardly left me a choice.” It was cold and utterly terrifying.
Yet Macaque could hear what's between the lines, the unsaid, the unspoken. He did not listen to the staff moving, or air parting. No, he listened to Wukong’s breathing. There was a stutter in it, a fracture of doubt. A half second where the future bent, uncertain.
Macaque cracked a weary smile, and then was convulsed by laughter. This was not the Sun Wukong he knew. His Wukong would never listen to anyone, let alone a silly little monk.
Still staring into Wukong’s red hot coal eyes he paused his cackle, “your master sure has you on a tight leash.” He swung his head side to side in a mocking gesture, his usually well kept mane was knotted and didn’t quite flow like intended. Briefly, he took a look at Wukong’s head where a gold band sits just a little too tightly for comfort. The center had a swirl design where the band ends. Macaque frowns, “Too bad it takes a jingu to get you to listen.”
The shadows at his feet swelled with his answer, rising like the tide. They coiled around his arms, laced themselves through his fingers, and gathered at his back in a rippling mantle of deep violet. Where Wukong burned, Macaque devoured. Always each others opposites.
Across from him, the Monkey King exhaled sharply and shifted his stance; him low to the ground in a hunch, staff gripped tightly. They knew each other’s rhythms; they learned them close, not from across a battlefield. It was almost humorous the way they fell into position instinctively, back when they fought together they never had to look to know where the other stood. That was what made this so inevitable.
Wukong moved first, he always does.
The fight was a blur, they always were in Macaque's eyes, but the sounds were crystal clear. The way the wind parts in wake of the red and gold, heavy pillar staff, the hitch of breath from Wukong as he goes in for a swing. Even the way the dirt specks transpose with each other in lieu of his next move. He can hear it all.
Where Macaque lacks in raw strength he makes up with his comprehension of all things. Listening to the present and future and strategizing mid-fight, mid-swing, mid-breath. His acute sense of hearing was a blessing at times like this, to predict was to survive and to know was to win.
The two staffs collided mid arc, and shadow grinds against metal in a horrid screech. Sparks rained between them as their momentum crashed into a dead halt; the shock of the impact rattled up Macaque's arms, but he did not retreat.
They were close, too close. Close enough that he could see where gold had flaked from Wukong’s armour. Close enough to see the way his jaw tremered, and close enough to feel the heat radiating off of him in violent waves.
“You’re not thinking,” Wukong growled.
Macaque huffed a breath that almost resembles a laugh, “I’m thinking more clearly than you ever have.”
Wukong leaned in even closer, pressing harder, flexing his physical strength. The staff inched closer to Macaque’s throat and an itchy, tight feeling formed at his Adam's apple.
“Why keep fighting when you don’t have to? This isn’t like you,” Wukong whispered, his eyes softening for only a moment.
Those words landed softer than the blow would have, and for half a heartbeat something in Macaque stilled.
“This isn’t you.”
As if Wukong had the authority to define him. As if he was a deviation. As if he was something that needs correcting. Macaque could feel his smile falter, his top ears rung with a melody he’d heard long before his time with Wukong. It matches with his middle ears, the future that had whispered to him centuries ago had come to pass.
Wukong shone in the fleeting light of the sun like he always had. He burns and the world bends toward him willingly either out of fear or adoration. Kings kneeled, and Heaven trembled at his rampages. Even rebels gathered behind him like moths. No matter where he went, heads always turned his way, like sunflowers to the sun.
And Macaque… Well Macaque stood where light did not reach. Not because he could not shine, but because he sees what the light refuses to illuminate. He had mistaken standing beside the sun for equality. He understood now, truly. They were never standing on the same side, they were simply standing too close.
“Go home,” Wukong said, even quieter now. Almost pleading, but not quite; his pride would never allow for it. “You don’t have to do this.”
Macaque released a heavy sigh, “I know.” Then he pushed back.
They struggled with the interlocked staffs, pushing them back and forth like a rocking ship on the sea. Then the ground shifted beneath Macaque’s feet. He skids across fractured stones that embed themselves into his back, he catches himself in a shadow portal that spits him out into the vast space above Wukong.
He gathered as much momentum as he could in the air, and prepared to swing his shadow staff once more. Below him, dust spilt from the carved edges from Wukong’s boots like ash as he propelled himself up towards Macaque.
“Macaque, stop!” Wukong repeated again. It’s another swing, another dance.
“Make me.” The words left Macaque’s mouth lightly, but they felt more like venom oozing out.
Wukong moved too fast for Macaque, his hearing exceeding his physical abilities. His staff arcs, but not in the way to strike flesh. It caught Macaque’s shadow staff cleanly and wrenched it from his grip. Metal sings in a pitchy tone when they collide, and shadow hisses as it spun across dirt and stone until it dissipated into nothing.
Phantom pinpricks formed in his abdominal region as he was sent flying backwards. He heard the breath being ripped from his lungs before he felt his back in the dirt. He gasped, but nothing came in. He laid there in the warm, turmoiled soil, opening and closing his mouth repeatedly, mimicking a fish out of water.
Briefly he wondered if that flail rib finally got the better of him, popping his lung. He’s not that lucky, he never was.
Deep within his chest cavity, the sound of grass lashing in wild wind sounded as his diaphragm spasmed, and it felt as though a large rock had been dropped on his solar plexus area. Macaque claws at his throat as the rhythm of breathing does not return. All that fills his six ears was the wheezing that escaped him.
There’s a hitch, and then a shallow shaky breath was finally allowed to enter his despondent lungs. The weight started to lift, and he shifted his gaze up towards the molten-coloured sky. The sun was blocked by something, but it seems to shine just as brilliantly.
It was the sun, just not Earth’s.
The soil shook as Wukong landed over him, staff raised high, “don’t,” Wukong uttered quietly.
It’s not shouted this time, not even said as a command. But it was said as if he was speaking to something fragile. “You really don’t have to do this.” The words should have sounded merciful, but they don’t. They sound like pity.
Wukong’s hand briefly shifted on his staff, the same hand that had once cupped all of Macaque’s ears when the world had felt too loud. His red eyes were furious and bright, but some other emotion lingered deep within the depths of his irises.
Macaque’s pulse roared in his ears, sounding like a raging river. He could feel the heat of Wukong’s body, and smelled the familiar scent of smoke, sun-warmed metal, and sticky sweet peaches. They’re close enough to touch, and once long ago, they had.
He searched Wukong’s face, not for fear of what he was about to do, but for understanding. For a flicker that says: I see you.
It wasn’t there. There was determination and righteousness. The quiet certainty of someone who had already decided what the other had become to them.
Macaque could move, he knew he could. Safety was within reach and the shadows were listening. Survival had always come easily to him, but right now he had all of Monkey King’s attention. Something he hadn’t gotten for such a long time.
Instead of fleeing through a shadow portal with the space his Majesty had so graciously given him, Macaque bared his teeth, blood slick and dark against them.
“Then listen,” Macaque whispered in a tone only ever reserved for him, low and close. Then he smiled at him, but not like an enemy. He smiles like someone who still expects to be chosen because how could his best friend of centuries put him in the ground?
For a single, deferred moment, Wukong faltered. His grip shifts and the staff dipped a fraction. If Macaque backed off now, the fight would end. If Wukong lowered the staff fully, they could walk away until the cycle repeated itself.
The world seemed to hold its breath, Macaque did not move.
Wukong’s jaw tightened, “But you’ve gone too far this time.”
Whatever hesitation that had lingered within the atmosphere, that had lingered in Wukong had died.
Wukong’s eyes hardened, but not with the fiery fury Macaque was akin to seeing, but something else. It chilled him to his bones.
“I can’t let you get away with this one.”
It was not an “I won’t”, nor a “please stop”, but an “I can’t.” As though something larger than either of them had already made the choice long ago.
In a precise smooth movement the staff moved. Macaque could see it coming and he knew he could leave; the shadows coiled at his feet, eager, responsive. They would answer him in time, they always do, but he was still searching Wukong’s face.
Still waiting for the flicker, for the crack, for something, anything that says this was wrong. It never came and then the staff connected.
For one suspended instant, Macaque felt everything: the impact, the warmth, the way Wukong’s hands were shaking.
When metal connected with flesh, there was a wet crack akin to a clay vase full of water being shattered. The unmistakable sound of something that was never meant to be split; it was sharp and intimate, too small for a battlefield.
The sky disappeared and everything fades into darkness. It's as though he’d been thrown to the merciless waves of the sea, and sunken to the Aphotic Zone.
Through the darkness, the sound of knees hitting the dirt and a choked, muffled cry chimed all around. It echoes in the darkness, swirling around him like a tornado. And then, he heard Wukong turn away. It was in the way he always did when he couldn’t bear to look at him.
A searing, white hot pain seeped from his right eye. His battle battered hands instinctively go to cradle the wound, but they’re met with nothing but empty space. The tingle of a cry bubbled in his throat, and yet no sound came out, not even the faintest exhales from his lips.
Someone was yelling almost desperately, but ultimately scornfully “Macaque, stop!” It was followed by the clanging of metal, “Don’t make me do this!”
A wretched, deranged chuckle answers in between, filling the gaps of silence and then some. It made Macaque want to rip every single six of his ears off. He reached for the damned multi-coloured things to pluck them from his head, but was met yet again with nothing.
The cries for him to stop, and the laughing rolled like massive churning waves. The noise of an egg being crushed with outstanding force creeps its way into the mix as though it was the sand from the ocean bed being torn up by the raging ripples.
There was no warmth within his body, but no cold either. He felt as though he was weightlessly suspended like how it felt when he visited an old friend, the Moon Goddess, Chang’e in her desolate grey home. He was merely a thought without a vessel, a soul within substance. Only phantom pains and sounds occupied his company.
He tried to step forward to go anywhere that was other than this, but there was no weight to shift, no muscle to command, and no bone to bear strain. He looks down or attempts to in the darkness and finds nothing: no hands, no fur, no blood drying stiff against skin.
He gave up on trying to move, it seemed pointless without legs. He curled inwards on himself until he felt like a sphere, continuously grabbing at the nothingness that once were home to his ears.
Macaque was not sure just how long he stayed in this storm of sound, everything just sounded on repeat; a broken record of memories and melodies. Faintly, through the hurricane of sounds he had grown almost accustomed to a gentle note of a lullaby from a dizi flute floated through the waves of despair.
It was low and hushed against the metal clangs and woeful, stifled sobs, but it was there. His body, though he could not touch himself, throbbed with pain as he unfurled himself. Macaque tried to take a step forward towards the flute, and this time he could hear that his position in space had changed. Though the step felt more akin to a glide.
He waited through the dark abyss, trudging through what felt like powdered snow. With every sluggish step taken the louder the melancholic melody got.. Soon it was all he could hear.
He took another step, another glide, and then light started to pool around the center of his vision. With a final step, white and black splotches covered his vision. Macaque concludes it was an improvement compared to pitch black, and blinks feverishly.
His vision was shaky at first, like everything was swaying underwater, but at least he could see. His yellow nocturnal eyes landed on the framework of the ceiling, it was an elegant dark wood, but intimidating in the oil-fueled light. The lanterns above illuminated the high ceiling that seemed to stretch on for eternity. Macaque shuffled a little bit and felt cool, smooth tile against his back.
A strangled groan clawed its way from his throat as he slowly, and begrudgingly pulled himself to his knees. The pain that had adorned his body no longer seared hot, but thrummed dimly throughout his whole being. His head felt foggy and his body felt like mist. He worried a strong breeze might whisp him away into nothingness.
Looking around, he concluded he must be in a temple of sorts. Behind him, a large deep red door loomed menacingly. Steadily he drew himself to his feet, and took a lurching step. He felt paper thin, and when he took a look down at his legs he saw that they were slightly translucent. He oddly resembles his shadow puppets, just an outline of shadow.
For a long moment, he simply existed in the lowly lit temple as this formless, unclaimed soul. The realization settled slow and bitter. He had bled for a body once, and Wukong watched it fall.
Playing with shadows was one thing, but feeling like one was another. He was sure he’d be able to slip through the cracks of the tile if he wasn’t careful. Still, he managed to pull the wisps of himself together enough to walk towards the red door.
On closer inspection, the door was a brighter red than Macaque initially thought with engravings of nimbus clouds etched into the wood. He stilled, parts of his soul fluttering around him like hungry flames, he had heard of this place through tales from the very mouth that had ended him. He was in the Underworld, he was in Diyu awaiting judgment.
However, there were no ox-head and horse head bureaucrats standing guard at the door, and King Qin Guang who was in charge of initial assessment was noticeably absent as well when Macaque entered the chamber.
In fact, there was no one of any authority to be seen. Was he really so insignificant that he didn’t even get the right to be judged?
A snarl ripped itself from his throat before he closed his eyes to concentrate. He fanned out his middle set of ears, tucking away the other two sets. If they would not face him then he’ll find them. He would claw his way back to the living realm to get back to Wukong if he must.
All around him, the dead cried out. The maze echoed with the screams of those fighting for reincarnation. From the Dark Capital, Youdu came thin, exhausted and never-ending weeping. He heard grumbling stomachs and thirsty coughs. How grotesque. To die, and still starve.
And beneath it all, laughter. To his despair, he heard the Ten Kings partying in their palace, feasting away. Wine sloshed in heavy metal cups, and fruit was torn open under eager, greedy hands. While porcelain clanked, someone made a joke and the others roared with another wave of amusement.
Macaque went very still. He had died for nothing. Not even for judgment, not even dignity. In the mortal realm he had been struck down by the only being who ever mattered, and below he was greeted by indifference.
The realization settled slow and poisonous. Sun Wukong had not just killed him, he had left him here. Abandoned him to rot beneath kings who gorged while their people suffered; kings who could not fulfil their one duty: to serve and protect its people. The Ten Kings were no better than Wukong. He would make them pay.
Something ruptured within him, it was not a woeful grief, but it was not white-hot rage either. No, it was something much colder and quieter. It was a slick, tar black thing that began behind his ribs and spread outward, staining everything it touched dark like oil contaminating water.
He had pleaded and he had begged Wukong to listen to him. When that had failed he had fought, he had always fought. Violence seemed to be the only way to get people to listen. He had mistook the sun for warmth. He understood sailors now, beautiful things drown you.
He reached for his chest, but was met with nothing but empty air. He was simply an illusion of where a body should be: no hands, no fur, no bone to ache. But he would drift no longer.
The shadows here were thick, not empty nor sparse like above in the mortal realm, but in abundance. Regret pressed into stone, grief layered like sediment, and centuries of forgotten names clung to the walls of Diyu.
Macaque reached for them, and heard them stir. They whispered quietly to him, but not with vengeance, with recognition. He did not call for them gently, he grabbed and pulled at them with desperation.
The first wave of shadows torn from the floor like fabric ripped along a fault line. The temple cavern shuddered while the lanterns flickered violently. That black tar inside his chest finally erupts into a river, swelling and lashing about as if a great dragon raged within its waves.
The shadows surged toward him. They cradled the wisps of his soul as he started shaping them.
A column of darkness condenses along the memory of his back, a vertebrae formed with sharp, deliberate precision. They locked into place with a sound like stone grinding against stone.
Ribs followed after, curving inward to form a cage without a captive. He presses the shadows downwards and to his sides. Arms and legs sprout from coiled night, dense and unyielding. Fur spreads last, drinking in the dim lanternlight until the glow itself seems weaker.
His body flickered from translucent to a shadowy flesh, almost solid. All around trembled, Diyu was resisting. Macaque could not be too displeased by that fact because of course it does. This realm was never meant to be worn as skin.
Bending down, he dug his fingers into the tiled floor of stone; his newly formed hands splitting the rock with ease, and drove his shadows downward. Not into the ground, but through it.
The shadows lashed outward from his palm like roots forced into soil. They speared themselves into the bedrock of the underworld and burrow deep, embedding themselves into the very architecture of the damnation itself.
Everything in Diyu groaned, it echoed through each of Macaque’s ears: past, present and future. Columns from the temple fractured, and the laughter from the Ten Kings hushed for a moment. The black river inside his shadow ribs surged against its banks as if trying to spit him back out.
Macaque gritted his teeth, clenching his jaw. He pushed his shadows harder; they were eager to bite into the Diyu. They’ve spent so much time wasting away in this dark place. He could feel them spread through every inch of dirt, and rock the realm had to offer, anchoring himself to its entirety.
Macaque felt the roots spread, and then the ground pulsed beneath his palm. For the first time in his entire existence, it was silent. He straightened slowly, pulling himself to his full height. He felt more whole than he had felt in the last five hundred years.
His body tingled with magic, and when he went to flex his fingers, they responded in an eerie elegant way. The way things move in dreams, wispy and unnatural. He inhaled next. Nothing moved within his chest, and no pulse answers from within his cage of imitation bone.
He pressed a hand over where his heart should beat, but there was only hollowness and quiet. Good. Let it be quiet for once.
It was easier this way, no pulse to race when memories surfaced, and no rhythm to falter at the sound of his name.
The silence inside him was clean.
Untouched by gold.
There was no sun here, no gold either. There’s only shadow, and shadow had always belonged to him. Shadow does not beg, it rises. The ground did not tremble beneath him, it recognized him, and the shadows no longer drifted or lingered by his feet, they knelt.
If the Ten Kings would not descend from their palace, then he would ascend. If they would not rule, then he would liberate this kingdom from their grasps. He would tear this kingdom apart if he must. That was what those who did not listen to its people deserve.
Macaque lifted his head, six ears fanned wide. They had left him to rot. They would learn what rots in the dark.
Then he moved, not as a warrior, but as something far worse.