Work Text:
When Zhou Mingrui wakes up, it’s to darkness so potent he believes it to still be the middle of the night. With that in mind, he closes his eyes again, planning to drift off back to sleep until morning's light comes.
Except, with a start, he realizes that he isn't in the comfort of his bed. He's not beneath the covers he went to sleep under, nor is there a pillow beneath his head.
Had he rolled off his bed at some point?
A breeze brushes across his skin, and a chill runs bone deep through him.
'No, not the floor,' He thinks as his hands pat that which he's lying on.
Dirt. Bits of pebble and stone. Something coarse and dry, like grass.
Opening his eyes again in confusion, he quickly takes notice of the fact that he's not in his room at all. Somehow, he'd gotten outside and is lying in the middle of an open, empty, and barren expanse of land. He thinks he sees some rubble in the distance, but for the most part, it's devoid of any landmarks.
'How did I get out here? Did I suddenly start sleepwalking?' He muses.
'They say that stress can trigger sleepwalking, and I have been worried about my job.'
Pushing himself into a sitting position he tries to gather his bearings.
Theres nothing familiar that he can see. What worries him the most is the lack of any sort of buildings or structures.
'I couldn't have walked so far from the city that there’s nothing in the distance, could I?' An inkling of worry takes hold in his chest, but he pushes it aside in favor of figuring out where he is.
Standing, he wastes a second deliberating on which direction he should walk before deciding to head toward the rubble up ahead.
"What time is it anyway?" He asks under his breath, shoving a hand into his pocket only to realize his phone isn't on him. It's also at this point that he realizes he's not in his sleep clothes either, but rather a generic white almost tunic-like shirt and drab brown pants. Nothing like the clothes he owns. The shoes on his feet are also brown, sturdy and entirely unfamiliar to him.
"I wasn't kidnapped, was I? And what’s with the clothes?" He lampoons aloud, more out of a desire to hear some sort of sound than because he was expecting anyone to respond.
He hadn't really noticed before, but it was eerily silent. Almost deafening for someone who was used to the constant sound of honking horns, the hum of appliances, the general buzz of life. Here, there wasn't even the sound of a mosquito in his ear.
With nothing to do but walk, he eventually makes his way over to the rubble only to find that it seems to be old ruins. Likely a small rural town that seemed to have long lost the life that filled it.
Sitting on a wall that had crumbled down to nothing more than a pile of stone that reached his waist, Zhou Mingrui looks around again, trying to organize his thoughts.
Multiple ideas spring to mind, ranging from his original sleepwalking theory to the kidnapping idea, to the possibility that this is actually just some strange lucid dream. He can't find any definitive answer, but the more time that passes, the more the worry festers.
Shouldn't he have seen anyone? Anything? A person, an animal, a bug, even.
But there's nothing. Even the grass he thought he'd felt before looked nothing like he expected it to. Instead, it looked black and charred, like a fire had scorched past at some point.
It was like he was at the epicenter of some sort of disaster. A blazing fire that destroyed the entire area and its ecosystem? An earthquake that turned the town into rubble? Or even something stranger like nukes?
Whatever the case, he still didn't have any clue how he'd gotten here or how he was supposed to get home. The last thing he needed was his parents finding that he'd gone missing and contacting the authorities.
How had he not heard of such a place before? Was it even safe to be here? It’s possible there might be some sort of deadly or harmful chemicals or pollutants in the air that could have adverse effects.
But he didn't know where else to go. The ruined town he was in was at the top of a slight hill, but its vantage point was enough to see that there wasn't anything else nearby. No more ruins, no more vegetation, not even a single tree. It was an empty expanse of land that he'd never seen before.
How could he have gotten so far from civilization in a single night?
Letting out a heavy sigh, he scratches his hands in his hair in frustration.
"What am I supposed to do now?"
Looking at the sky, he finds it devoid of anything at all. No clouds, no stars, no moon. Fitting, considering how barren everything else is, if not unsettling.
It's as he's staring at the sky that a sudden wave of exhaustion hits him, and his eyelids feel heavy.
Without his consent, his eyes shut, and he finds himself falling back to sleep.
.
.
.
When he next wakes, it’s to the unsettling sound of nearby rustling.
Opening his eyes, he feels the grogginess dissipate quickly when his eyes lock on to the amorphous figure nearby. It's entirely pitch black and as he watches, Zhou Mingrui notes that it moves on all fours like an animal - only, it's not all fours, but rather all six. Six limbs that move in tandem, allowing fast speed and easy maneuverability.
Eyes widening at the sight, Zhou Mingrui quickly notices that there are many more of these strange creatures surrounding him, though they're relatively farther away than this one. Many reside at the base of the hill he's atop, while there are a handful about halfway up the incline. This one, that’s rummaging around the rubble, is the only one that seems to have reached the ruined town.
Thankfully, despite its close proximity, it hasn't seemed to notice Zhou Mingrui yet.
At least, it hadn't until he tried sitting up, only to knock over a pile of nearby rubble.
The... thing snaps its attention to him immediately, it's eyes a horrifying, deep red and its mouth almost too big for its face. Teeth that don't fit comfortably in the things mouth are sharp and pointed and it's at this point Zhou Mingrui snaps out of his horror.
Raising his hands on instinct, he unconsciously grabs onto something. Something instinctual. Something that his mind says will remove the danger.
The thing in front of him stiffens, its face contorting for a moment, until it slackens. It's limbs no longer stiff, it slumps in place slightly, head down as if in thought.
And then, with hardly a thought, Zhou Mingrui makes it move.
He makes it raise a limb, and then two, three, four until its standing on two legs and swaying. He controls it back to the ground, standing on its six limbs instead. He makes it look left, look right. He makes it turn completely around.
'A marionette,' His mind produces, unbidden.
He doesn't know where the knowledge came from, but it feels innate. Like the most natural thing in the world for him to be able to take control of this creature.
Looking at the other creatures ambling nearby, he sees strange black strings extending off of them all, just as he knows there had been strings coming from the one he now controls for all he hadn't noticed them before.
'Spirit body strings,' The words come to him on their own again.
Like with the first one, he extends his hand and grabs, slowly taking control of each of the nearby monsters until they're all under his control and no longer a threat.
"What in the world..." He mutters in both astonishment and horror.
How had he managed this? What was this information he was suddenly privy to?
Standing, he notices that his body feels much more nimble and flexible than it used to, and suddenly information floods his brain.
Spirituality, spirit vision, danger intuition, extreme control over his body and facial expressions, cogitation, dexterity, speed, strength, shapeshifting, resurrection, marionettes, concealment, mythical creature form, the historical void, wish-granting, miracles, grafting, foolishness.
The list went on as his head throbbed.
And then more, as if a separate set of knowledge, but his all the same.
Theft, charm, mental disruption, cryptology, decryption, disguise, thought usurpation, parasitism, avatars, deceit, loopholes, destiny, fate siphoning, control over time and space, error.
And another, a third set.
Door opening, record, travelers’ door, blink, transfiguration, secret keeping, exile, wandering, teleportation, replication, sealing, space fragmentation.
When it finally abates, Zhou Mingrui is left clutching his head and breathing heavily. His skin feels like its crawling, like hundreds of worms are writhing and to his horror, when he lowers his hand from his head, he sees that there are worms there. His skin seemed to have peeled back revealing that beneath it he was comprised of hundreds of the tiny maggot-like worms.
Humanity. Divinity. Losing control.
The last pieces of information whisper in his mind, a harsh contrast to the overwhelming, piercing way the rest of it had come.
The Lord of the Mysteries.
It's like a final goodbye, the way the words appear in his mind and then dissipate.
Looking around again, he sees that the many creatures he had taken control of were now all slumped to the ground, their spirit body threads severed. He must have severed them unconsciously when he'd been fighting against losing control.
A sigh escapes him.
He decides to start walking.
.
.
.
They always say, if you're lost, stay where you are. Help will find you.
Of course, this only applies if there’s anyone to look for you.
As days pass, Zhou Mingrui is quick to come to the conclusion that there isn't anyone left at all. The only living things that he comes across are the assortments of horrifying creatures, some recognizable as the six-limbed creatures he saw at the ruins. Theres a variety of the monsters, from bipedal with gaping maws, to some that seem to be more like meatballs, no limbs in sight but their blobby bodies dangerous all the same if the spikes protruding off of them were any indication.
Thanks to the strange abilities he's found himself to possess, he doesn't panic when he sees these creatures. Instead, he's quick to turn them into marionettes. Sometimes he has them walk with him, fighting off other creatures as they pass. Other times, he severs their spirit body threads immediately after, leaving their bodies behind dispassionately.
As time passes, he finds that the night never ends. No sun rises and the darkness doesn't abate. It becomes difficult to track the passing of time to a maddening degree, and he thinks that that alone might make him go mad.
At some point, he has the idea to pull a watch out of the historical void and while he can't be sure exactly what the time is, at least he can track how many hours are passing and use that to denote days.
Another thing he takes out of the void is a journal and pen which he uses to mark down each day that passes.
As he wanders aimlessly, he finds nothing of note. Occasionally, he finds rubble not dissimilar to the town ruins he found near where he woke up. At one point, he found a small patch of trees, but they looked like the grass - charred and crisp. He thinks that if he tried giving one a light push, it might snap under the light pressure and fall to the ground. Or maybe they would crumble to ash beneath his fingers.
He doesn't try and quickly leaves them behind.
.
.
.
It takes him an embarrassingly long time to take note of the fact that he hasn't gotten tired, hungry or thirsty since awakening.
At first, he thinks it's stress suppressing his appetite, but when days pass and nothing changes, he rethinks that idea.
For curiosities sake, he summons food and drinks from the historical void. They're as delicious as he remembers them to be and he feels satisfied after consuming them, but after a few minutes the feeling dissipates as if he'd never consumed them to begin with.
He considers the anomaly a small mercy under his current circumstances. If he had to worry about food and drink in this environment, he surely would have died.
.
.
.
He has plenty of time to ponder what's going on.
He no longer thinks this was some strange sleepwalking incident. Nor was it a kidnapping.
A dream hasn't been ruled out. Maybe he's in a coma somewhere and this is some strange never-ending coma dream.
It could also be another world entirely. After all, there’s monsters and super powers and the complete lack of a sun.
The other possibility is that there was some sort of apocalypse. At first, he wants to dismiss this idea, because what sort of apocalypse would change the world this drastically? But then he considers the humanoid figures of some of the creatures and rethinks the idea. Not to mention the traces of civilization he finds in the shape of ruined towns.
And besides, is it more realistic to believe he's somehow in another world?
It’s with that in mind that he decides that there are three options:
Either he managed to sleep through the apocalypse, he's in a coma, or something otherworldly kidnapped him and brought him to another world.
He doesn't love any of the options. They're are equally hopeless, because he's either definitively lost his home to an apocalypse of some kind, or he's unlikely to be able to return as there’s nothing here to send him back. No magic portal, device, God, anything.
The best hope he has is that he's dreaming, but even then, who's to say he'll ever wake up? It's possible that this will be the dream that sends him off silently to his death.
In the end, he's left, all alone, wandering.
.
.
.
At some point, he finds himself back where it all started. The hill with the first ruined town he'd discovered. It reminds him of something he'd read about on the internet before - The mere-exposure effect. An effect where, the more someone is exposed to something, the more they come to like it. While he walked, he hadn't spent much time at all at any of the other ruins. This was the place he'd spent the most time at, and as such it was the place he felt most positive about.
Besides, humans have a deep-seated longing for familiarity. While this place isn't any different from the rest of the waste-land, it is familiar in that its where he first woke up.
And after walking for months on end, he thinks he'd rather rest for once.
.
.
.
On the edge of the ruined town, he puts his marionettes to work using the nearby stone to build himself a shelter. At first, he just wants something he can walk inside of. A shack would have sufficed.
But then he thinks, why stop there? He's got the time and the resources to keep going. He might as well.
Which is how his small shack turns into the size of a one-bedroom home, and then a two-bedroom, and then he starts building up, and so on and so on. Eventually the project comes to a halt simply because there’s no more stone to continue building with. He has the brief idea of gathering some from another ruin but doesn't care enough to do so and so he leaves his new home as is.
And, well, home is maybe an understatement.
Somehow, he'd built himself something resembling a temple more than a home. Large, tall, imposing, grand. He didn't have any glass, but he's left room where he imagines stain glass windows would be. He had been lucky enough finding stone slabs large enough to create a double-door entry and in his boredom, he'd even used tools from the historical void to try his hand at carving details on them.
He feels like an amateur architect, mimicking what he remembers seeing in grand cathedrals and temples of the Old World as he's come to refer to his home. If he'd had better resources, he might have tried creating large stone columns and gargoyles as well.
Still, the temple he's made for himself isn't bad, all things considered, and as he pushes the stone doors open he feels a sense of peace as he walks inside.
The silence in here is the same as the silence outside, but this feels different. More reverent somehow.
And maybe it's a sort of placebo effect. This place resembles a temple, and maybe subconsciously he'd been looking for a place he could find peace in, so that’s what he imagines he’s feeling stepping in here. Peace and tranquility.
Whatever it is, he's glad for it as it feels like, for the first time, he can finally breathe since waking up in this strange land.
.
.
.
The temple is largely bare as he hardly has the ability to furnish it. He thinks of his previous idea to gather stone from another nearby ruin and eventually decides to do so simply so he'll have something to put in the temple.
At least a seat so he can stop lying on the ground.
So, after taking the time to walk over to the nearby ruins and having his marionettes lug large chunks of stone back to the temple, he gets to work creating some furniture for himself.
It's a lot of trial and error, but when he's got as much time on his hands as he does, he may as well keep practicing until he gets it right. Besides, it helps ease his boredom for a time.
Eventually, he's made himself a chair - though it turns out to be more of a throne than a simple chair like he'd originally planned. It's at the back of the temple, straight ahead from the front doors, large and imposing like the rest of the temple and adorned with hand-made carvings similar to those on the doors.
After that, he makes pews, lining them up on either side of the imagined aisle. He makes a few rows of them, until he feels satisfied with the number and pauses.
What else could he add? He would like some lighting. Something to brighten up the space.
He carves out some stone pillars, lining them throughout the temple and grabbing candles out of the historical void, placing them at the top of the make-shift floor candelabras and lighting them.
Slowly, the temple comes together. While it's still rather empty, it's far more furnished than it once was and he finds himself feeling satisfied with his work.
Walking over to the giant throne, he sits in it, feeling dwarfed by its size and wondering idly whether he should make a smaller seat for himself.
Maybe if he was feeling bored enough again, he would.
Looking around the temple, he takes in the sight of his hard work and wonders, rather depressingly, what the point of all of this was. It's not like he needs to rest. He doesn't need a roof over his head, or a throne to sit on. He doesn't need the light of the candles or the rows of pews offering a place for prayer. He doesn't need the solace and reverence the temple brings him.
But he finds himself happy for it all the same. Happy he spent the time carving out this small haven for himself.
.
.
.
As time passes, he quickly grows bored once more.
He's tired of carving and decides that it might be time to take up a new hobby. The empty walls of the temple catch his attention, and an idea is quick to spring to mind.
He thinks about his time spent going down rabbit holes on the internet and how one of the ones he'd gone down revolved around how humans recorded history throughout the ages. In primitive times, this was done through cave paintings, and then later hieroglyphs and murals.
Maybe he could give it a try.
He had never been much of an artist, but like all of the other things he's tried thus far, he's got plenty of time to become skilled in it. It's with this in mind that he sets his mind to the task and starts to wonder what exactly he should depict.
Should he make up a story? Something for fun to help his creativity flow? Or should he do like the rest of humanity has and record some history through pictures? If so, what kind of history?
He thinks of the Old World, of everything he's lost and how he might be the only one left to remember it. The thought causes a pang in his heart and he's quick to make up his mind.
If there’s no one else to remember the Old World, he'll be the one to record its history. Should humanity crawl out of the ashes of this wasteland, maybe they'll find this place and this mural will tell them about all that's been lost. Maybe then, he won't be the only one left with these memories.
Except, he really hopes no one finds this place. The idea that this little pet project of his might one day be discovered like some ancient archeological site makes him cringe in embarrassment.
Still, it doesn't stop him from his original decision to record the history of the Old World.
Before long, he has a rudimentary mural spanning across the entirety of the temples left wall. It starts with the rise of humanity as he knows it and then continues to show how they progress through time technologically. Of course, he's a Keyboard Warrior, not a historian, so it’s a brief overview of the beginning of civilization as opposed to a true historical recounting, but he thinks it gets the point across well enough.
After that, the mural shows the modern day he once knew. The towering buildings and cars, the bright sun in the blue sky.
And then he comes across the next problem. He wants to depict the apocalypse that he theorizes must have befallen the world, but the issue is that he doesn't know exactly what happened either. He'd slept through it.
So, he does his best approximation of it. He shrouds the modern world in darkness, blots out the sun, darkens the sky, and depicts horrifying creatures crawling out from the Earth. The beautiful city turns to ruins, and the lush vegetation becomes barren.
And in the empty waste-land is a man, himself, asleep and alone.
He struggles with how to end the mural, because it starts to feel a little narcissistic to suddenly center the mural around himself. As much as he wants to keep going, the embarrassment stops him and so he eventually decides to just end it with having the Zhou Mingrui in the mural wake up and begin wandering, all alone in the empty post-apocalyptic world.
As a first attempt, it's awful. He fully admits it. The pictures are crude and hard to decipher, even considering that he was the one to have painted them.
So, he paints over the first attempt. He practices painting the little figures depicting early humans. He plays with the scale of the buildings versus the cars. He tries to figure out how to blend the colors of the sky and the sun to make it look as if the sun really were shining.
The second attempt is just as bad, but there’s improvement all the same.
Days pass. He paints and repaints the mural countless times.
Months.
At some point, he's no longer interested in the mural itself. In fact, he's kind of sick of it, but he's determined to get it to a point that he's satisfied with it.
After a year and some time, he's finally done with it.
No longer does it look like a child using their first crayon scribbled on the wall. No, now the story that he was trying to present is clear and obvious. The colors are vibrant and well-blended. The scale in line with his memories.
Looking to the empty right wall of the temple, Zhou Mingrui sighs and sends the paintbrush back to the historical void.
One mural is enough.
.
.
.
According to his rudimentary calendar, he's survived in this post-apocalyptic world for just shy of thirteen years.
When he has something to occupy his mind, it's not so bad, but those times are few and far between. Building the temple, learning how to carve stone, painting murals, those all took extensive periods of time.
But there were still the gaps between. The many days and months and years where he was so mind-numbingly bored. There weren't even words to describe how frustratingly, upsettingly, horrifyingly bored he was.
He had no one to talk to. Nothing to aspire toward. Nothing that needed his attention.
The closest thing to companionship he had were the creatures that roamed around, but they could hardly be called good companions. They couldn't even talk, and even if they could it would be the equivalent of talking to himself. A strange tableau of playing with dolls.
Maybe in another year he might give it a try if he gets desperate enough.
His little projects throughout the years have been enough to stabilize his humanity, but he feels it quickly withering away as he spends day after day sitting all alone in this temple that he's dedicated to the Old World.
And then one day, he gets an idea.
He has the ability to graft, so why not graft sentience into a marionette?
He's never really messed around with the marionettes before. They always unsettled him, so he usually left them as is, but he could change their shape.
With that in mind, he controls one of the monsters patrolling outside into the temple. When it's stopped in front of his throne, he morphs its shape. He'd originally chosen one of the more humanoid creatures, so the change isn’t all that significant. The major change is that the black bubbly amorphous skin takes on a firmer shape and texture, paling from its familiar inky blackness into light skin similar in color to his own. Hair sprouts on its head, black and curly, and the red eyes dim and turn black as well. Slowly, a person takes shape where there was once a monster and Klein snaps his fingers, dressing the man in a cloak and pointy hat.
As he begins the grafting process, he tilts his head in thought and thinks that perhaps he should graft some of his power onto the man as well. After all, this isn't a peaceful world. The man will need some sort of power to protect himself.
With that in mind, he adds in the power revolving around bugs and errors. He preferred the powers associated with his marionettes and historical void and hardly used the abilities from the other two like doors and errors.
Finally, he thinks the man will need some sort of humanity, and so, with what little lingers, he offers some of his humanity into the mix before sending it off to the blank faced marionette.
When the process is complete, the marionette blinks slowly, and when his eyes open again, there’s a light in them that didn't exist before.
"My Creator, My All Powerful God, Oh Great One!" Startled by the effusive idolization, Zhou Mingrui blinks and watches as a wide smile stretches across the man’s lips.
"Just call me Zhou Mingrui." His voice is raspy and hoarse with disuse, but this little experiment of his was meant to help him learn how to communicate with another person again so it would be worth it to start talking now.
Besides, he'd rather clear the air quickly about what his name is so the man didn't call him such embarrassing things again.
"Of course, Oh Great One, Zhou Mingrui! And what shall I be called?" He asks, smile still plastered on his face as he asks.
Debating for a moment, Zhou Mingrui thinks of a name from a webnovel he once read. He thinks he must have based this man off of it without realizing, so he may as well name him after him too.
"Your name is Amon." At his declaration, Amon's smile widens and he offers a bow to Zhou Mingrui, one hand placed over his heart as he does so.
"Thank you for bestowing such a name upon me, Oh Great One Zhou Mingrui! From here on, I shall serve you loyally!"
Zhou Mingrui quickly regrets having given Amon life.
.
.
.
At first, he'd worried that he'd created an accidental zealot, but as time passes, Zhou Mingrui realizes that what little humanity he gave Amon must have been his mischievous nature.
The man loves to tease him and once he finds out that Zhou Mingrui finds something embarrassing, he relentlessly nags him about it. This starts with Amon calling Zhou Mingrui increasingly outrageous titles. My Creator, My All Powerful God, Oh Great One, Light in My Darkness, and at one point he even threw a Father in there. Zhou Mingrui had been so thrown off by it that for the first time in a long time, his control over his facial expressions slipped and Amon saw just how surprised he was by the title.
Of course, this was no good for him as it meant that the 'Father' title stuck.
Eventually, the teasing extended from the range of different titles to ways of honoring Zhou Mingrui.
Amon had taken note of the mural on the left wall of the temple and wanted to make one of his own on the still empty right wall. At first Zhou Mingrui wanted to stop him, but quickly he gave up on that idea.
In the short time since knowing Amon, he knew that once he had something on his mind, he wasn't going to let go of it.
And so, days passed as Amon worked on a mural spanning across the right wall. Zhou Mingrui did his best to not even look at it whenever he walked past it, but Amon was relentless in his pestering. He would talk daily with Zhou Mingrui as he worked, telling him about what he was painting and the story he was telling and what he was going to depict next.
While it was nice to have someone to talk to for once, Zhou Mingrui hated that all Amon ever talked about was Zhou Mingrui.
To be fair though, what else was there to talk about?
Eventually, the mural was completed, and as much as he was determined to ignore it for the rest of time, Amon was having none of it as he dragged him over to show off his work.
"Look, look! I started where you left off in yours!" Amon says, pointing to the end of Zhou Mingrui's mural where he depicted his recently awakened self walking off alone into the wasteland. Next, he points to the start of his own mural, where Zhou Mingrui, still alone and wandering, is taking control of the creatures that wander the wasteland as well.
From there, it shows Zhou Mingrui controlling the creatures to build this temple, and then it shows him changing one of the creatures shape into that of a human - Amon. It doesn't stop there though as the next scene depicts Amon not only being shaped by Zhou Mingrui, but becoming angelic with wings on his back not dissimilar to the ones he has when he turns himself into a crow - a creature the man had taken a liking to when Zhou Mingrui had shown him different animals from the Old World by morphing a marionettes shape.
Not for the first time, Zhou Mingrui wonders whether he grafted some of his memories into Amon on accident when creating him. Either Amon drew on his memories of angels in the Christian bible when creating this mural, or it was artistic coincidence to reference his crow form.
Either way, the mural ends there and Zhou Mingrui finds himself sighing.
"It looks great." He says dispassionately. Neither he nor Amon are tricked by the weak attempt at deflecting Zhou Mingrui's true feelings over the mural and it makes Amon smile all the more.
"I hope to continue honoring your Greatness, Father." Amon praises in exaggerated piousness.
His words do nothing to help relieve the constant headache he has had ever since Amon's creation.
.
.
.
The next, and possibly worst, project Amon takes on is a statue of Zhou Mingrui himself.
"Is this really necessary?" He asks weakly as he watches Amon parasitize some creatures and have them carry in giant blocks of stone. Amon had just announced his intentions to learn how to carve stone, but rather than create furniture and temples like Zhou Mingrui had, he wants to focus on creating a work of art.
Namely, a sculpture of Zhou Mingrui.
"It most certainly is, Father! How else will we preserve your radiant image for all to see?" He asks, loud and exaggerated as he throws his arms out.
"All of who exactly?" Hemumbles but is subsequently ignored as Amon gets to work. Shaking his head, he lets the man do as he pleases and decides to take a nap.
He may not need to sleep, eat or drink, but after Amon's creation he's found himself exhausted and in need of more naps than he's taken in all his time in this strange world. Sometimes he thinks about creating another sentient marionette, one with a better personality than Amon, but then he thinks about how he might just end up with two Amons and quickly scraps the idea before it can truly take shape.
"Your visage is truly unique, Father. Of all the beings in existence, you are the most impressive." It's a complement and teasing in equal parts, but Zhou Mingrui is starting to grow used to Amons way of speaking and so it doesn't faze him as much as it used to.
That's a lie though. He still finds it incredibly embarrassing to have someone constantly singing his praises.
"In comparison to the creatures outside? Hardly a high benchmark to pass." He muses tiredly, his eyes closed and his head resting on his fist. He has his elbow propped on the arm of his throne as he relaxes and wonders if he should try his hand at making some sort of bed.
Though, it would be made of stone. Not necessarily any more comfortable than this stone throne of his.
"And yet you exceed it with your greatness!" Amon continues praising as the tinking sound of tools on stone reverberate throughout the typically silent temple.
The conversation lapses and Zhou Mingrui thinks he must have drifted off for a time because when he next opens his eyes it’s to the sight of the stone block Amon had been working on having taken more of a statuesque shape. By no means is it visibly a person, but the rough outline has started to form and he can see what the man has planned for the piece.
"Father!" Amon greets once he notices Zhou Mingrui's wakefulness. "I admit, working with stone in such a way is trickier than I imagined. Thankfully I have your image permanently etched into my brain so I can attempt as many times as I have stone."
Zhou Mingrui silently hopes that the stone runs out before Amon can perfect his newest task.
"Amon, do you ever find yourself becoming bored?" The question leaves his mouth before he's fully even acknowledged it in his mind and at it, the sound of tools on stone ceases.
"Bored?" Amon questions curiously. Placing a finger to his chin, his eyes rise upward in thought. "I can't say I have. Every day has been too interesting for me to understand what boredom even is." He says this with a dismissive shrug and gets back to work under Zhou Mingrui's watchful eyes.
Honestly, Zhou Mingrui is a little jealous. He's grown all too familiar with boredom over the years and he would do anything to not feel it any longer.
Maybe he should take a page out of Amon's book and find more hobbies and tasks to fill his days. Something to distract his mind before it atrophies.
Except, what else is there to do? He can paint, he can carve stone, he can build giant temples, he has superpowers beyond his imagination. It's not like there’s much to do in this empty world.
All of his hobbies from his normal life were no longer feasible here. Even with the historical void, there wasn't electricity to power any gaming consoles he conjured and there was no internet to read webnovels on. At best, he could conjure books, but the limit was that he could only conjure books that he knew about and he hadn't read all too many if he were being honest. He'd preferred electronic over physical, which was now coming back to bite him.
"If I may, Father," He really wishes that Amon would stop calling him that. Still, it draws his attention, and he looks at Amon again as the man works diligently. "Why don't you try using your abilities more? They are quite interesting if you mess around with them enough."
He knows Amon speaks from experience. There was a brief period in between finishing the mural and his newfound hyperfixation on making statues where Amon had spent some time familiarizing himself with the powers Zhou Mingrui had bestowed upon him. Even Zhou Mingrui had been impressed, and honestly a little scared, of the things Amon had come up with upon familiarizing himself with the abilities.
Throughout his time here, Zhou Mingrui hadn't shied away from his abilities, but he hadn't explored them much either. He'd used the same handful of powers to keep himself safe and provide comfort in his unstable life, but he hadn't spent the time carefully analyzing the exact extent of what he could do.
"That's not a bad idea." He admits to Amon after some time. Brightening at his words, Amon looks up from the stone and gives Zhou Mingrui a large, pleased smile. Like a dog seeing their owner come home after a long days work.
Sighing and shaking the image from his mind, Zhou Mingrui stands from his throne and leaves the temple.
.
.
.
He’s familiar with his abilities the way that someone is familiar with breathing.
It's not because he practiced it; rather it was innate. Automatic. If there was danger, he could control it - take hold of their spirit body threads and manipulate them as he wished. If there was something he wanted, he could pull it from the historical void.
Outside the temple that he had come to dedicate to the Old World, he thinks about this automatic response and tries to determine how much further he could go if he made the response less automatic and put more thought behind his actions.
He plays around with his marionettes, altering their shapes and switching places with them. He plays with illusions. He conceals himself from creatures he hadn't yet turned into marionettes. All the while he’s taking the time to better his understanding of the powers he's using. How they're activated, their upper and lower limits, his stamina regarding they're use.
It's reminiscent of studying for an exam in the Old World. It's almost nostalgic, which is a feeling he hadn't felt since waking up in this world.
It's while he's trying to better understand his own bodies limits that he becomes aware of something he hadn't quite taken notice of before. Something he realizes now had been with him all along but hadn't activated like his other abilities had.
He can't quite place the feeling of it. The concept of it is slippery and without shape. When he tries grabbing for it, it sifts through his fingers like sand, reassembling as mist beneath his feet.
No, not mist. Fog.
He grabs for it again, but instead of hands reaching, he tries using his spirituality instead.
With a rush, the fog swells, obscuring his vision momentarily. Theres a flash of crimson and when he can see clearly again, he's no longer in the barren wasteland. The temple he'd painstakingly built over the course of years isn't anywhere in sight.
Instead, there’s fog. Billowing, endless fog that reaches his calves. Looking up, the sky is different for all that it looks nearly the same. Somehow, instinctively, he knows that he's under a different sky than the one he was used to.
"What is this place?" He asks aloud, his voice echoing across the vastness.
The fog stirs, as if reacting to his words, but it settles quickly enough.
"I'm getting a sense of déjà vu..." Zhou Mingrui lampoons as he begins walking.
He’s reminded all too much of a time not so long ago when he awoke to the never-ending darkness. When he hadn't had a clue where he was and decided that there was nothing to do but start walking and hope you find answers somewhere.
Except, this place seemed even more empty than that barren wasteland of before. All he saw for as far as the eye could see was fog, dense and unchanging.
Eventually, the boredom returns. He wonders what the purpose of this place is and how it connects to his abilities.
"...ther? ....ather? ....Father?" The fog seems to tremble around him, different to the earlier stirring. Its more pronounced, more dramatic, and before he knows it, he's plummeting.
"Father?" Opening his eyes, Zhou Mingrui sees Amon watching him with his typical smile, but there’s a hint of something else in his eyes. Concern? Confusion? He hardly ever sees such emotions from the man.
"How interesting." Amon says when Zhou Mingrui doesn't reply immediately. Then, he sniffs the air. "Where did you just go? You smell different."
Not sure how to answer, Zhou Mingrui shrugs. He doesn't have any clue himself after all.
"Can you take me there? Oh, please father? Please!" Sighing, he thinks he's just created another headache for himself.
.
.
.
When the statue is finished, Amon wraps it in a makeshift drapery of creature hide. He drags Zhou Mingrui in from outside where he had been practicing abilities again and stops him a few feet away, running ahead to grab onto the edge of the hide.
"Ready, Father? The moment you've eagerly been awaiting has arrived!" Amon announces with a cheery disposition.
'More like dreading,' He lampoons but nods all the same, deciding to get this over with.
Smile widening, Amon is pleased enough with the response as he dramatically yanks the hide aside, revealing the statue beneath.
Zhou Mingrui had caught glimpses of it every now and then, just like when Amon had worked on the mural. It was hard not to when the man would work on it smack dab in the center of the temple day after day. Still, whenever he'd see it, he would immediately avert his gaze, so he'd only ever seen brief impressions of it before doing his best to purge it from his mind altogether.
Now though, he could see that Amon had become quite a master at sculpting. If it weren't for the fact that the face he was looking at were his own, he might have even been awed by the craftsmanship.
The pose was simplistic enough. The statue stood straight, both hands lightly outstretched at his sides as if he were about to welcome something. It's head was lowered ever so slightly, as if in reverence, and as a whole there was a very gentle feeling radiating off of the statue.
It's expression matched this feeling as there was a serene look on its face. Eyes closed, mouth relaxed, it added to the overall look.
It bore a striking resemblance to himself with only one difference. Rather than the basic tunic and pants he wore, this statue was dressed in a long robe with a hood over its head. It added an extra air of mystery to the statue that Zhou Mingrui wasn't sure was justified.
"What do you think, Father?" Amon asked eagerly. He wondered for a moment what sort of response Amon wanted from him. Genuine praise? Or embarrassment? Sometimes it was hard to tell with the man as he seemed to find genuine praise as satisfying as emotional outbursts caused by his teasing and pranks.
"You could have been a sculptor in the Old World." It wasn't the first time he'd mentioned the Old World to Amon and as such, the man's smile brightened.
The man had been ever so curious about the Old World, and while he wanted to share his memories with someone else, he was reticent to do so with Amon considering his mischievous nature.
He could handle much of Amon's teasing and pranks, but he didn't think he would be able to handle it if Amon used his memories of the Old World as ammunition. That would hit too close to home for him.
So, he had been deliberately vague about it. He'd told Amon that the world depicted in his mural was that of the Old World and that there was an apocalypse that brought about its end and created this world, but that had been the extent of it. That didn't stop Amon from pestering him about it, but Zhou Mingrui typically ignored him or changed the topic at that point.
"Your praise fills me with great joy, Father!" Amon says, clutching his hands to his chest as if overwhelmed. Rolling his eyes, Zhou Mingrui glances at the statue one more time before sighing and looking away.
"Ah, of course, it's time for the most important part!" Confused, he looks to Amon who has picked up his tools once more.
Was he not done after all? But then, why would he have such a big reveal?
"The epitaph, of course!" Amon answers his unasked question as he gestures to the base of the statue that Zhou Mingrui hadn't paid much attention to. It was a simple base, just a plain, rounded block of stone that was more of a pedestal for the statue to stand atop.
"What should we put? Exalted One? My All Powerful God? Father?" Amon asks, listing some of the many titles he's used over time as he tries to pick just one to put on the statues base.
Pinching the bridge of his nose, he pulls a paper and pen out of the historical void, quickly writing something down and passing it over.
"Here, just put this on it." He says in defeat. Blinking, Amon takes the paper and scans it, only to find that he has no idea what he's looking at.
"What is this?" He asks, looking up from the paper to give him a quizzical look.
"My name in a language used in the Old World." It’s a concession he was willing to make. This would be far better than letting Amon put something as embarrassing as Light to My Darkness on the statue instead.
"Interesting." Amon says, immediately fascinated by the Chinese characters on the paper. "Zhou Mingrui." Amon says slowly, as if trying to decipher the name out of the unfamiliar characters.
Deciding to leave him to it, he turns and leaves the temple once more, planning on testing just how many marionettes he can control at once.
Its days later that he notices his name freshly carved into the base of the statue. The sight of the familiar language almost startles him for a moment with its familiarity, but he quickly brushes the emotions aside as he walks over to his throne.
.
.
.
"Father, you've been sleeping more lately." Amon says from where he's observing Zhou Mingrui who is sat on his throne, eyes closed and posture relaxed.
"I suppose I have." Something about that makes a warning bell go off in his mind, but he's too tired to decipher its meaning at the moment and so he ignores it entirely.
"We're beings who do not need sustenance or rest, and yet you indulge in both quite often. Its peculiar." Amon continues despite Zhou Mingrui's clear exhaustion.
"It's a matter of maintaining humanity, Amon." He answers diligently.
Ever since creating Amon, there has been a niggling worry in the back of his mind that if he didn't properly teach Amon about the balance between humanity and divinity the man would opt toward total divinity. With his mischievous nature, that would only mean the creation of a monster, and that was something he had wanted to avoid at all costs.
So, he had done what he could to teach Amon what humanity was. How best to preserve it. Why one couldn't allow the divinity to dwarf humanity.
Before Amon's creation, he had come dangerously close to losing his humanity. Because of that, he knew well what warning signs to look for, and he taught them to Amon.
"Still, you shouldn't feel tired." The warning bells return and for a brief moment, Zhou Mingrui has the thought that Amon's right. He hasn't felt tired in the past decades since he's been here.
But then the exhaustion clouds his mind again and he doesn't feel motivated enough to try clinging to those previous thoughts.
"No, I shouldn't." He agrees, the words coming out slow and thick as his eyelids droop.
Theres a brief silence and before he knows it, he begins to drift off.
"Sleep well, Father."
It’s the last thing he hears before he falls unconscious.
.
.
.
When he next wakes, there’s an excruciating throbbing in his head and a crimson glow illuminating his surroundings.