Chapter Text
“Life in exchange for freedom, my champion.”
Macaque’s eyes slowly slide open.
He stares blankly at the flames in front of him. The snap and crackle of his sputtering campfire drags his mind away from thoughts of chains and ice, binding him to the present, centering his presence to this tiny little section of the forest. Golden eyes examine the flicking fire intently, observing on the weavering flames of his only source of warmth.
With a sigh, he molds a shadow in the shape of himself with the order to fetch more dry wood. It rises at his side, gangly limbs armed with sharp, clawed fingers digging into the soft, wet earth as it emerges, more wolf than monkey, more shadow than clone, wavering and flicking just like the flames of his campfire.
A single violet eye looks back at him, before the lanky, malformed creature crawls away with a low hiss, vanishing among the bushes. Macaque watches it go in silence, ignoring how his magic tugs at his skin, weak and weathered.
The key sits like a lead weight in one of his pockets.
As he sits in a damp grove, the dying remains of a campfire at his feet, Macaque ruminates on his option.
He’s tired, maybe sick, definitively hungry, and utterly out of resources. All too aware of the weight of armor rusted by time unknown spent rotting in the earth, of the stiffness of decaying cloth draped over his body, of his barren feet or the still throbbing phantom pain of his left eye, of the biting cold still gnawing at his extremities from his time spent in the realm of the dead.
...all too aware that the only thing he knows is who put him in the earth, and who pulled him out .
He glances up at the sky, trying to decipher his position as he watches gray clouds pass by, carefree and endless. He doesn't know when this is, where this is, he only knows that there is something approaching, and he cannot stand at this forked road for long.
He has a choice to make, and soon.
The key hums in his pocket -he can feel its’ power through the cloth, feel the pull, the not too gentle tug it gives his soul east towards its other half, the coffin of stone and bones she is imprisoned in, waiting for Macaque to fulfill his half of the bargain that allows him now to draw breath.
Hurry , it hisses within his pocket, licks of cold crawling up Macaque’s spine. His head spins, the sounds of the forest growing distant; he remembers the cold, the chain, the screams, the tear and rip of a furious soul as the underworld fought him to wipe the slate clean.
So close. Free us.
You have a debt to pay, Liu’er.
Free us.
.
.
.
He moves when the sun starts to fall.
Hood over his face, molted old cloak covering his battered armor, he walks. The path is old and worn, a lonely little dirt road weaving among mountains; he’d sent a clone ahead yesterday, and it came back with reports of no sentient life for at least three miles ahead, and an old, nameless little coastal village at the end of it, though it did not get close enough to observe directly.
Nothing the clone, and thus Macaque, recognizes, but it might as well be his best bet for safety.
He’s not sure how long it's been since his death. He has no idea where he is, which is extremely dangerous given Macaque himself has no idea where he’s been buried. The forest he’d woken up in after his resurrection had been unfamiliar.
(Macaque remembers dying in a crater, screaming and cursing and clawing for another breath through the blood as enraged red eyes stared him down, as the one he’d thought would always aid him raised his staff up in the air and slammed it down over and over and over again-)
He shoves thoughts of him away, instead focusing on walking. Sundown paints the little valley in shades of gold and auburn, illuminating the path. Macaque ignores how it reminds him of another mountain, so far away, and steadies himself in the knowledge he’ll approach civilization soon, and with that he will get the answers he'd been looking for.
How long since his death?
Where is he?
What happened to the one who used to mean everything to him?
Then, he needs to acquire the directions to the nearest port, so he could leave this gods-forsaken land behind and maybe, hopefully, never look at sunlight or peaches or his own damn reflection and think of him ever again.
His heart twists in his chest at the thought and Macaque chastises it. Why feel this pain at such a thought? Why, traitorous heart of mine, dedicate this pain to someone who tossed us aside for his great quest?
Why suffer and weep for someone so cruel to you?
He knows the answer, and he hates it. He did not care, not as much as Liu’er did. Macaque has the scars to prove it. The blind eye sitting in his left eye socket is simply the great prize to steal all spotlights; the ultimate testament of how far the Great Sage went to sever their ties.
That chapter of his life is over. That life has ended. Liu’er of Flower Fruit Mountain is no more. He looks down at his hands, not for the first time forcing himself to look at the black fur covering them.
No more white.
No more red, either.
Macaque closes his eyes. At least there is some mercy to this resurrection. His clothing may have been damaged due to the unknown length of time it had rotted away -did he bury him, or did he leave him out in the open for nature to reclaim?- alongside his corpse, but at least he's not covered the residues of the fight. Just dirt, rust, and his own sweat after clawing his way out of the grave.
The demon had at least given him that mercy.
Wind suddenly picks up, knocking his hood down. Macaque lets out a hiss, ears flattening against his skull. He frowns, looking up at the sky. There’s a tension in the air, something that he can’t quite pinpoint, but he knows it's there .
Macaque looks around, scanning the wooded area. There’s nothing of interest, nothing at all. And yet, he feels-
-maybe he knows?-
His stomach twists into knots. Macaque unfurls his six ears and searches dutifully, gritting his teeth as he discovers that the forest has gone strangely, unceasingly silent. Not a cry to be heard from local birds, not a hoot from owls, nor the pitter patter of little feet from rodent wildlife. The animals have quieted down, settling to hide in the undegrove, their little hearts beating fast and hard in Macaque’s six ears.
They know, too. They sense something is wrong as well. Animals live short, fast lives, ignorant of the true order of things, but there is wisdom in listening to them. Macaque’s not uneasy for nothing.
But what for?
He spots it then -a downtrodden path, so small no horse could walk through, leading up the side of the mountain. The moment he notices it, Macaque finds his skin prickling; something sparks in the sky, like the air just before an incoming storm…but different. He can taste magic on his tongue; it's warm and new, unlike anything he’d felt before.
What sorcery is this? Are the local gods messing with Macaque? Do they know he’s here?
Do they…recognize him?
(are they stalling for him to show up, to finish him off-?)
No.
Celestial beings, even small local ones in charge of maintaining rivers and lakes, have a certain energy signature. It can be cloaked, but very few can hide from someone as skilled as himself, even in his weakened state. If there were minor gods around, he would know. Macaque learned to recognize their presence during his travels after leaving Flower Fruit Mountain in search of his other half.
This is not their doing. Nor that of demons, he can't hear a whiff of any for miles.
This is different.
This feels… greater.
Greater than Macaque himself, greater than some lowly celestial spirits, as great as this mountain, as the sun or the moon. It’s a monolithic feeling, slow and steady and building, one that reaches for his heart and mind and grabs them tightly, smothering any urges to run.
The wind picks up again, buffeting him.
Taking a leap of faith Macaque leans into the element that first created him, letting it wip his cloak around, spin him, going with the flow of the not-too gentle gales -ones that grow softer as he gives, as he lets them guide him- until it slows and he re-orients himself, blinking at the direction they turned him towards.
The tiny path leading up the mountain is there, right in front of him.
Silence echoes through the little valley. Macaque looks at it, then the path leading to the small village, still several miles out. To continue his escape, or to chase this mystery? Testing, Macaque takes a step towards the bigger pathway.
The wind picks up, if only for a moment.
He begins the climb.
.
.
.
The mountain is taller than expected.
Macaque had been so caught up in moving that he hadn’t realized this might be the tallest mountain in the area -now, as he walks up the ancient path, watching the tiny dirty pathway turn to worn stone as he ascends to the final plateau, Macaque finds himself reassessing his situation.
He’s so high up. From here, he can even see the ocean -a thin band of water in the distance, turning gold as the sun begins its descent…
…and now that Macaque really looks at it, he realizes something that makes him pause. The sun is about to set but the moon is close behind, the astral body almost cloaking its counterpart.
An eclipse, Macaque realizes.
What is going on, wind?
He’s only a few minutes away from it happening.
He glances at the rest of the plateau, feeling it again -that strange pull, that tension tugging at his fur that has nothing to do with the cursed key in his pocket. Compared to this, the key’s whispers are but shadowed, weak things, faintly attempting to get his attention but falling quiet at the wind’s howls grow.
What’s wrong, wind? He wonders as the gales buffet him, threatening to drag him right off the edge of the mountain. Wind claws at his cloak, pulling him forward; he can almost hear its voice, whispering for him to keep moving, to get closer, to look and witness-
Something is wrong -no, more so, something is happening. Macaque can feel it deep in his bones, a strange instinctive knowledge that he cannot overturn. Something is happening here, something he should probably figure out, something he can’t pull away from, despite the inherent danger of entering a situation he has no knowledge about.
He’s still weak from the Diyu, the phantom pain of cold chains making his wrists and ankles ache. He’s still too stiff, too thin, his magic frazzled and having yet to pull itself fully together. His clothes are ragged and covered in dust, dirt and dry blood from his battle against him.
He’s in no shape to fight.
If something does and it is dangerous, Macaque is risking his new life.
…even knowing this, he can’t pull away.
The wind never steered him wrong, why should he doubt his creator now?
He stands on the plateau of the mountain, watching the scenery. It really is the tallest mountain in the area, overlooking every other single one. A true fortress of trees and stone, so mighty Macaque would be tempted to stay here, if only the site where he was felled wasn’t just a few miles west.
The plateau of the mountain is narrow and mostly flat.
Still, somehow, this place seems to have brought upon itself the ire of the elements. Wind whips and swirls across the plateau, ripping up loose plants, gravel and dust. Macaque’s forced to blink away a few tears from dirt getting into his eyes.
A second, more inquisitive look at his surroundings makes him notice something odd.
The wind is concentrated towards the middle of the plateau, where the stone dips inward akin to a bowl.
And in the middle of this valley, there’s a rock.
Just a single, small rock, just about half of Macaque’s size, perfectly round and spherical. He stares at it in confusion, watching the gales crash into it over and over again, scratching at it’s surface, the tempest rising in brutality so much so that Macaque has to hold on to the edges of his cape to keep it from hitting him in the face.
What’s wrong, wind? He asks, but it does not answer. Only keeps tugging at his clothes, urging him closer. He turns his working eye back towards the rock, watching as a pebble bounces off its surface hard enough to leave a long, swirling scratch. It’s not the first one -smaller rocks smash into the bigger stone, carving chunks off its surfaces.
Leaving indents behind in the shape of swirls.
Macaque’s throat suddenly grows tight.
It feels as if the entire world is watching this with bated breath -and Macaque finds himself falling in line, staring silently at the phenomenon occurring in front of him.
The very air is filled with magic; energy that rushes towards the rock, pooling around it, winds tasting of sunlight and flowers swirling around the massive rock. Macaque stares at this strange phenomenon, watching as flowers, leaves and branches are carried by this miniature storm, a veritable tiny vortex forming around this particular rock.
A rock that oozes magic.
With a sudden lurch of his heart, Macaque knows exactly what’s going to happen, as it happens.
CRACK!
The stone shatters with a deafening explosion, pieces flying across the plateau that Macaque barely ducks to avoid. He coughs and stumbles, legs still weak, heart beating loudly in his ears because this is impossible, this can’t happen-
The wind stops.
The world is still.
Macaque glances up at the sky. As one, the sun and the moon have fallen over the horizon, the great celestial bodies vanishing under the stone peaks of the surrounding mountains. The stars remain, filling the dark skies with their light.
He closes his eyes, takes a breath, and looks down.
It's not hard to find it, among the dust and stone. A patch of auburn among the gray of the plateau, a glint of gold among the darkness of the night -the thrum of magic deep in Macaque’s bones tugs him forward, guiding him towards this tiny little shape that could hardly fit inside his two palms.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
He can hear the little heartbeat; it feels too fast and too loud in his ears, drowning everything out. The world feels quiet, a silence different than that of the realm of shadows. It’s a peaceful kind of solitude, a breath slowly released as the tension filters away, a gentle unwitting that rings in his ears and fills his being.
He can’t hear the ever faithful wind, or the distance waves, or the cries of humans and animals in the distance. He hears nothing but that ever constant thump, thump, thump , a sound that fills his being and chases away the cold.
Macaque kneels down in front of that tiny, minuscule, incredible little pile of fluff. He watches with held breath as it shifts and moves, tiny yet long limbs unwinding, slender little fingers digging into rubble.
It takes the creature a moment to orient itself, to figure out up from down; Macaque waits in bewitched silence as that small head lifts up, auburn fur that turns a darker copper at the end poofing up from the cold.
The face, the fur, the shape of this creature -there is no doubt what this is. Macaque can feel the magic clinging to this new soul; he can feel the quiet humm of celestial energy running through this newborn’s veins. He looks at that tiny face, the light reddish-orange pattern across his nose and eyes unmistakable.
“Oh.” Macaque murmurs, looking at this little thing and feeling something click in his chest. “...aren’t you a little diva.”
The baby monkey sneezes and sleepily opens his eyes, amber irises shining with swelling celestial energy.
Macaque barely ducks in time.