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dual-domination · 10 months

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How about this for a theoretical fic summary:

Shen Wei has been somehow cursed and sealed away underground. The Iron Triangle accidentally find him.

Hi there, Fixa! Thank you so much for the ask! It took me a while to answer because it ended as a whole fic, I think I got a bit excited writing this... So here, have the beginning bc this thing is almost 10k, so I'm posting the complete work on AO3 😃

Of fallen gods and forgotten sacrifices

Xiaoge stepped lightly on each of the narrow stones that formed the sinuous path. Full of lichen, the slippery stones were the only way through the gigantic monuments that have been fallen for millennia.

He followed the scent. Without a draft, it was uncertain how the scent was carried there. But he felt it, green-leafed vines, fresh and alive. Fresh was also the scent of blood, which he must be used to, but this time, it burned his nostrils.

Turning back a step, he looked at Liu Sang in silent questioning.

Liu Sang nodded, he could finally hear something. When Xiaoge reached for his hand, the young man tapped in his palm with a fingertip, "Dripping slowly."

Xiaoge tapped back, "Can you smell it?" And Liu Sang shook his head in response. It was too far for him to smell whatever it was that was dripping.

Before letting go of the auburn-haired boy's hand, Xiaoge left him one last word, "Blood."

Behind them, distant and late, Pangzi and Wu Xie balanced each other on the stone path, swallowing their curses every time their feet fumbled and one almost threw the other against the monuments - which Xiaoge had already warned not to touch.

Usually this was an invitation for them to touch anything, but something held them back this time. The fallen monuments maintained the grandeur of times of glory and their stone faces evoked The Three Sovereigns, Fuxi, Nuwa and Shennong. But there were five colossal statues there, in the remains of that temple, now shrouded by a mountain and pine forests.

Reaching the fourth statue, Pangzi looked at Wu Xie, seeking some hint as to who the guy depicted there was.

Wu Xie ducked his head, observing the carved lines of that face that time hadn't erased it's beauty, he spoke low, "The Mountain God, Kunlun."

"How do you know?" Pangzi couldn't remember hearing that name in years - a god forgotten by men so long that little was known about him.

Wu Xie continued to look at the statue, slowly raising his hand, dragged down by the discomfort in his chest.

"Once wasn't just stone," he whispered as his fingertips touched the icy, smooth surface.

It only lasted a second, Pangzi slapped his hand, "Aiyo, Tianzhen! Xiaoge already told us not to touch the statues! What if you arouse the wrath of one of those grumpy old gods?"

"Not this one. Not him." Wu Xie let go and continued on his way with Pangzi, who ignored his friend's brief rambling.

A few steps further and they reached Xiaoge and Liu Sang, who had stopped along the way to look at the fifth statue.

Pangzi opened his mouth to ask about that statue, but Xiaoge raised his finger in front of his mouth, reinforcing what he had asked them before about keeping quiet there. Liu Sang, who had overheard the conversation just now, just rolled his eyes – he might die because friends not only couldn't stop touching what they shouldn't, they also didn't know how to keep their mouths shut.

And then, Pangzi and Wu Xie also gazed at the face of the fifth statue.

Wu Xie didn't show any reaction, but if Pangzi wanted to speak before, now he was speechless.

That face was just...

Pangzi stared at the statue until his head tilted to look at it from another angle, and every way he looked, there wasn't a doubt there. He knew that face very well - and for many years. He looked at that face almost every day.

He turned to face Wu Xie, with even more questions, hoping Wu Xie shared the same doubts as him, but Wu Xie's face was blank.

Then Pangzi pointed to the statue and gestured, the question becoming clear, "Who is he?"

Wu Xie shook his head, showing that he didn't know the answer; Liu Sang did the same.

Pangzi looked at Xiaoge, who nodded. He knew who the fallen god was.

Even though he had no idea why he knew the face of that god. Or it just seemed. The striking resemblance was what had stopped him and Liu Sang from continuing down the path.

Despite claiming to know, Xiaoge didn't bother to provide anything that could serve as an explanation at the moment and indicated to the group that they should proceed.

Pangzi wanted to protest, but since Wu Xie and Liu Sang could wait to hear what Xiaoge might say about it, Pangzi pretended that he could too, but it kept spinning in his head with every step forward.

Flashlights lit the rest of the way, to where the last statue's hand emerged from between the rocks, holding two intertwined dragons in its palm and the fire that rose from their open mouths.

Beside the stone hand, the closed doors seemed to have become one, the cracks that started on one side, digging into the other. Dry vines hung down the walls and wrapped around the doors, nature's addition or a last lock to prevent those doors from being crossed - already ineffective.

The smell of fresh vines and blood was so strong there that Xiaoge assumed that the others were finally feeling it.

Liu Sang could hear the dripping coming from behind the doors, a drop falling into an overflowing container.

Around, no other sound than the four breaths. The silence was absolute, no echo from paths already traversed or from other chambers. Just the suffocating stillness of a temple that had become a tomb of those once worshipped.

Xiaoge unsheathed his sword and cut through the dead vines in a single move, making the center that joined the doors appear. Sheathing his sword back, he missed Hei Xiazi, the mercenary must have caught up with them by now.

He turned to Liu Sang, who didn't need any questions – there was always a point on expeditions when Xiaoge would expect Hei Xiazi to already be there. This time, that point was now.

When Liu Sang was about to shake his head, he heard something different coming from behind the doors. Trying to pay attention and define what it was, he was unprepared for what came from behind Pangzi and Wu Xie.

"Mute Zhang, are you going to stand there without opening the door for the rest of the day?"

Xiaoge would roll his eyes if it was like him. Maybe he was doing it, internally. Liu Sang definitely rolled his eyes, mainly because of the fright that Wu Xie and Pangzi took.

"Ai, you want to scare me to death?!" Pangzi complained, as he turned around to purposefully shine the flashlight in the mercenary's face, hitting an innocent Xiao Hua instead.

"Where did you come from?" Wu Xie wondered if he had been so distracted by the statues that he hadn't noticed the others close behind.

"Zhurong's hand," Xiao Hua replied, "There is a passage behind the dragons."

"Zhurong," Wu Xie muttered the name of the fifth god to himself.

"Yeah, this guy," Hei Xiazi spoke as he walked past them until he was beside Xiaoge in front of the door, "the fire god who helped Pangu separate the skies from the earth. Or at least that's what is written in some books out there."

"Xiaoge," Pangzi had another complaint, "why did you tell us to be quiet and this one comes in talking loudly and it's okay?"

But it was Xiazi who responded instead, "C'mon, do you think those guys over there will wake up? They're deader than any corpses we've found so far." Then he turned towards the head of the last statue, now in the distance. "Well, maybe not all of them, but... yeah, it's not dangerous at all."

"Do your job," Xiao Hua wanted to finish that and get out of there, go back to where he had cell phone reception and continue the dispute in the online game he had been playing against Wu Erbai for the last few days.

"Hua'er, don't rush me so cruelly," Xiazi moved closer to the door and those who still had their flashlights lit lowered them. Pulling his glasses from his eyes just enough to look over the top of the lens, Xiazi watched the seal form in the center of the door, glowing in a faint golden light. "That's right, guys, the lock is a seal with Fuxi's eight trigrams. It looks like this thing here was closed by one of the dead guys back there."

"And then how do we open it?" Pangzi had a feeling the answer would be another joke.

"I think," Xiazi pushed his glasses back before turning to the others, "ah, never mind. There's an easy way." He grabbed Wu Xie's arm and pulled him closer to the door, with a grunt of protest that even Liu Sang could not understand. "Here, Wu Xie, you place your hand right here, in the middle of the seal." But he didn't say where the middle of the seal was, or where the seal was at all. Xiaoge was the only one who could vaguely see what was clear only to Xiazi.

Maybe it was just a matter of obviousness, because it was always Wu Xie who touched what he shouldn't and things happened.

Wu Xie placed his palm exactly in the center of the seal.

The sound of a heavy piece of massive bronze dragging between stone latches echoed throughout the entire place, making Liu Sang cover his ears with his hands.

When the sound ceased, the door was still closed.

"We're not there yet, but almost." Xiazi scratched his chin thoughtfully.

"The trigrams," Xiaoge said, trying to observe Wu Xie's face, but it was more expressionless than his own.

"Of course." Xiazi shook his finger as if he was forgetting the most obvious thing in the world.

"Wu Xie, you now draw the trigrams exactly in the sequence they are combined on the seal."

Xiaoge again tried to see the seal more clearly, but he still only saw broken points of what Hei Xiazi could see as a whole.

Hei Xiazi, however, had no idea what the sequence was or even if there was one. He had bets and guesses, like he always did.

Wu Xie raised two fingers and started tracing invisible designs over the doors. With each sequence of strokes, the sound of a new metal gear echoing inside the doors overlapped the previous one.

When he traced the last combination, he brought his palm to the center of the seal again, and then the entire seal glowed visibly for everyone, as well as all the trigram combinations that Wu Xie had drawn on the door.

Circling the seal, two dragons flashed and disappeared, as did all the golden light. And the doors began to drag themselves through the stones uneven by time, forcing themselves open, causing the surrounding environment to shudder with the movement of the huge pieces.

That's when the smell of blood really reached everyone.

Xiaoge worried, it wasn't the smell of human blood. Besides, what they had come here looking for wasn't just any kind of living thing for it to bleed.

"Wu Xie," Xiaoge called to his friend, who was still in the same place, looking into the darkness of the closed chamber.

"I guess whatever we were looking for," Wu Xie replied, "it's not what we found." He lifted the flashlight again and flicked it on, stepping through the door.

#guardian #dmbj #link to ao3 in the title #guardian x dmbj crossover #chinese mythology #shen wei #wu xie #zhang qiling #wang pangzi #hei xiazi #xiao hua #zhao yunlan #I'm sure I'm forgetting something...#but here. have it. more fic.#it seems that my brain won't ever see Guardian and DMBJ as separated worlds again

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royaletiquette · 11 months

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Could Hibis truly fell in love? Would they be able to fight for their love? Or are they too bounded with their status?

Man this is where I start to feel a little bad for other muses.

Hibiya is not necessarily a monogamist, but he is sure as hell not interested in having a polyamorous relationship. He's just the kind of asshole that if he's not in love with who he's married to, he has no issue finding that elsewhere. I say that because he also has no reservations about needing to marry the person he's in love with. Marriage is a point of status to him when it really comes down to it; a title, a promise. It's not necessarily a declaration of love, but a bond between families, kingdoms, what have you. If he's in love with a prince[ss] but has to marry someone else, he doesn't totally see an issue with still making time for that person even if it has to be in private. (If anything, he thinks they should understand completely if they're also royalty/nobility.) To him, that's fighting for his love. While his family and responsibilities come first, making the time and effort for someone that isn't so easily a part of that is kind of beautiful in its own way.

But all that is in the assumption that he's falling for someone that he thinks understands him at a base level: someone who has equally been put through lectures and expectations from the court, their people, history, parental figures, advisors. Someone at least of similar status, upper crust. Hibiya is not interested in being with someone on a serious matter if they don't inherently have that. He doesn't want to teach someone the faux pas and manners of all the cultures he interacts with, and explain why some things are more important than others, and why he can't just do what he wants, who cares! More likely than not, he's going to lead them on and have their fun and when things get serious, he's hanging it up. There are enough things to worry about than marrying someone not of any status or them crying about how they don't understand his priorities. That's where the line is drawn. He's not fighting to keep someone in his life that will just not get it, no matter how hard they try or pretend they do.

Hibiko is a liiiiittle less set in her ways. It's more muse-dependent, so it's harder to say. By default, Hibiko would be happy to just experience love, even if it meant having to move away once married. With someone not of nobility, she'd be more likely to fight if she wasn't pushed to. Them wanting better for her and not blindly following what her parents want, would easily be twisted as them actually wanting what they want and keeping Hibiko for themselves. Fighting destiny is something she would have to come to the conclusion of on her own.

Falling in love with someone closer in status would garner way more of a fight out of her. Even if it means having to inherit her father's crown, Hibiko knows how rare and important it is to have someone she can trust so deeply when politics are involved. The ending choice would still ultimately end in whatever her parents decide, trusting they heard her out and gave it an honest thought, but she would have a firm stance for a while there at least that she's going to make it happen.

#thank you. for enabling me and them lol #that was harder to figure out for hibiko actually #but... shes accepted she wont marry for love #and hibiya just wants to have his cake and eat it too #world building #headcanon #kokoheadcanon #anon #PLUS LIKE LETS NOT FORGET #hibiya thinks of himself outside of his title is worth dirt #you think hes gonna see himself worthy of untainted love?#hell no. its partly why love makes him so uncomfortable

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