Chapter Text
Wuling was enjoying its hard earned peace, after the twofold disturbance of the Aggeloi and the Wuling-Qingbo war. Qingbo Stockade had also found some extent of peace and solidarity with renewed efforts to rebuild intercity relations — which had solved the food and medicine shortage. Though the older Stockaders occasionally cursed the Tianshis of Wuling, everyone knew the venom of the past was fading quickly. There were, however, several who defected, and joined the coalition of the Bonekrushers and the organisation run by Nefarith. But it was a loss everyone had to accept with regret. The Endministrator was roaming the city, having exhausted his daily little search for treasures and aurelyne. The roads were being cleaned by the Wuling Sanitation Organisation, and Endmin wondered if he should have them in Dijiang as well. Though it was cleaning, people seemed to talk and socialise with each other during these sessions and take part in actively cleaning the city. Wuling, he noticed, was exceptionally clean and organised — almost with an exquisite mathematical intricacy – which had as much to do with its citizens as it had to with its Tianshi. It sort of had its own charm, in that intense order and cleanliness.
“Endmin!” A cheerful voice interrupted his peaceful stroll. He turned to face Chen Qianyu, holding a cotton candy in one hand and a big Lung balloon in the other. The Endministrator smiled at the familiar face.
“Chen? What did you buy so much for…?”
“This is for you, no need to worry I had two hehe!” She handed over the pink fluffy candy, holding on to the Lung. “and Perlica said we can have a Lung in Dijiang so….ehehehe….”
Endmin couldn’t help but laugh along with her. Chen was funny like that — not because she made jokes, but most of the time, she unfortunately became the joke herself. He sat down on a nearby stone bench and started eating his candy. It was sweeter than he’d have liked, but he liked it nonetheless — the sweetness leaving a striking aftertaste in his mouth. Chen rushed away again, and Endmin could see her following the trail of Perlica near a bookstore. He got up, unknowingly wanting to get away from the crowd, the city, from himself. He walked a stray line, across the humongous tianshi pillars of the main gate, towards Jingyu Valley. The roads in the middle were considerably empty and peaceful, the Endmin liked the marshy plains of the Guhuo Marsh and running all over, sometimes finding treasure or aurelyne, or fighting enemies, and sometimes just picking up rare plants just because they looked unique and he wanted to grow them in Dijiang. He skipped over a frog, and stepped in a rather sticky puddle. Please let it not be burdo-muck. He looked down, squinting his eyes. Well, just his luck.
“Ugh…”
“Pfft…need any help? Endmin?”
Startled, the Endministrator turned around swiftly at the familiar but unwelcome voice, his hand instantly grabbing the hilt of his sword. The silver-haired man was standing in thin air, and as if following an invisible trail, he gracefully stepped down, a playful smile on his lips. “Oh don’t worry, I’m not here for a fight, just having a stroll…like you.”
“Sure, I trust that.” Endmin scoffed.
“Trust what you will. I won’t force you.”
Nevertheless, he took Ardashir’s hand — albeit a little reluctantly — and he was pulled out of the mud puddle. He resumed his walk, not commenting on the fact that the other man was following him. After all, that only meant that as long as he was with him, he wasn’t planning anything disastrous elsewhere where the Endmin couldn’t see him. Keep your enemies closer as they say. He was close to Jingyu Valley now, when he turned back. Ardashir returned a responsive gaze with his ever prominent smile.
“How long are you going to follow me?”
“Hmmn? Oh, I’m just a mere traveller, I enjoy the natural beauty as much as you. And might I say, Wuling is quite rich in that, natural beauty I mean.”
The Endmin squinted his eyes. Somehow he couldn’t place his finger on this man’s true intentions. Practically thinking, if Ardashir wanted to hurt him, he could have. A number of times. Considering his lackluster ability to practise originium arts at the moment, Ardashir carried a power stronger and more violent than his. He could’ve made him vanish with just a flick of his finger. Maybe then, there was another purpose. Maybe they needed him alive. But he couldn’t understand why. After all, there are a lot of things he had forgotten. What he just knew was that he was the Endministrator, someone really of high position, someone who was supposed to save the world, someone everyone knew — even more than he knew himself at the moment. It was a strange feeling, taking up the garment of a leader and donning it the moment he awakened in Dijiang. But perhaps that was what he was meant to be — the Endministrator, of Endfield Industries.
He clicked his tongue in dismissal. Well, as long as he doesn’t pose a threat, he will just ignore him.
What he did not understand was that Ardashir was a rather…charming entity to ignore. Not personally, but when he walked through the Stockade’s base, people kept asking him about the new face by his side. He smiled with some difficulty, and introduced him as a fellow traveller that he met — coincidentally — during his first trip in Wuling. Well, he wasn’t lying after all. Ardashir kept a stable face, smiling politely as usual, and bowing at older people. Everyone seemed to take a liking to him, more so because he was friends with the Endministrator.
“Enjoying the attention?”
Ardashir chuckled lightly. “Can’t really say. But I much prefer the quietude.” The Endmin didn’t push further and walked on. The way to Jingyu Valley was quieter, the Stragglers Grove being one of the most untrodden paths in the whole of Wuling. But Ardashir seemed to know his way and the method of making the bamboo grove listen to him. Everytime he tapped his cane lightly, almost an indistinct sound if not for the deafening silence of the grove, the bamboos gave way. The Endmin followed him wordlessly. For a while now, he had been feeling rather… comfortable.
“So?” Ardashir asked without turning, voice a lull in the foggy path.
Endmin ducked from a protruding branch. “So?”
“How does it feel playing god?”
Endmin stopped in his tracks. “What?”
Ardashir gazed at him, his uniquely purple eyes suddenly hollowed out of any emotion he had been holding.
“I never played God.”
Ardashir scoffed. “Oh come on, do you think they kept you without a reason?” The cane in his hand seemed to struggle against the venomous hold. Ardashir’s voice was cold. Suddenly, Endmin did not feel safe anymore. Unconsciously, his hands reached his sword again, never missing his supposed perpetrator’s eyes. He frowned in a strange emotion, Endmin refused to call it defeat. “Again? Well, I suppose I haven’t done anything for you to trust me.”
He started walking, his refined shoes dragging against the marshy soil. Like a hypnotised patient, Endmin started following him. “Why do you think they kept you? Because this world lacked one; a God I mean.”
One of the orange foxes rushed past them, splashing the watery surface of a small pond. “You have become their God, Endministrator. They make you control everything because that way, you cannot run away. They find peace in that knowledge. They find peace in your all encompassing power, in your originium and…” Ardashir laughed a little. “In your factory.” The Endmin spared a reproaching glance at him, Ardashir grinned playfully in response. It was an exchange that felt so natural, as if they had been doing this for a hundred years now and Endmin felt uneasy in that extraordinary comfort. A comfort of solitude, of being understood outside his identity as the Endministrator made him feel almost nervous, as if treading on dangerous territory.
“Do you know your name?”
Endmin stilled. When he had awakened, Perlica had called him the Endministrator, as did everyone else — Valley IV, Wuling, even Dijiang. Everyone. So many days had passed, he had helped so many, and yet, no one knew his name. The Endministrator of Endfield Industries did not know his name. Something akin to sorrow passed Ardashir’s face. But it was gone in the smallest of seconds, and Endmin believed that it was the fog that made him hallucinate.
“It is like this everytime. You wake up in Dijiang because there is no place you will be safer. And they bestow upon you the title of a god. Endministrator,” He turned to face the man who had stopped, and seemed almost tiny against the towering forest of bamboo. “Are you tired?”
Unknowingly, a choked sob escaped his throat, though quickly repressed, Ardashir had heard him. And like a feather, he had floated by his side, leaning in. “How far have they gone that you are like this?” A calloused hand cradled his face, the hand that perhaps had been the cause of countless disasters, but all the Endmin could think, at the moment, was how warm they were against his tears. “You know, you never gave me your name either, Endministrator.” The white-haired man laughed with some difficulty. The Endmin did not know the truth of these memories, and he merely laid pliant in the hold of this man, listening, receiving, and just being. “In the places we used to visit, you liked the desert, so I collected one of their treasures,” his thumb brushed against his ear. “Do you have it? The dinar? Or have you thrown —”
“I have it.”
Ardashir smiled, and the Endmin had never seen a face brighten up with such childish joy before. “Ah. I see.” He moved away a little, just a little, when the Endmin leaned into him on his own. Surprised, as if the gas giant Talos had fallen upon them, Ardashir looked at this man in awe. But he welcomed the touch nonetheless. Their shoulders now brushed against each other, the Endmin warm even through his heavy coats, his fingers mischievously finding ways to grab the Endmin’s and finally letting out a genuine smile when the Endmin stopped him, only to intertwine their fingers.
“I…don’t kn— remember you.” He said after a while. “Nor do I know my name. And,” He looked around, as if fearing someone, any little bird of Wuling would hear him and send the message to Tianshi Zhuang, to Perlica and to Chen. Ardashir turned to face him properly, and his hands moved to cover the Endmin’s ears, lightly. “No one shall hear you. I will make it so. You can tell me.” So the Endmin did, heart filled with a strange sense of trust, he opened his mouth. “I don’t know what I am supposed to be. I know what they tell me. To build the factory that would save millions, to obliterate the Blight, to save people, cities, worlds, and I…” He struggled. Ardashir was closer now, and Endmin could find a faint smell of lily on his clothes. “I don’t know if I am a God, Ardashir.” They had been silent for a while, the Endmin physically struggling after voicing out his deepest thoughts and Ardashir stood there, unmoving, offering his quietude.
“You are not their God.” There was a strange malice in his voice now. The Endministrator looked through his mask, thanking the fact that Ardashir couldn’t tell his gaze. “But you are mine. My God.”