I Tried A New Pencil , I Like How The Drawing Came Out

I tried a new pencil , I like how the drawing came out

So... I had a new idea for an lmk Au (I didn't think of a name) , or more like an idea for a variant of Macaque. Seeing as some of the fandom likes for Macaque to be a celestial primate with/or with six ears and super hearing , and seeing as in the serie we barely know anything to confirm or deny theories , I thought "What if he was just normal/average? Well as normal as a normal demon/spirit monkey can be"

Not a celestial primate

No six ears and super hearing

No being more powerful than anyone except the monkey king

Just a regular Macaque monkey demon/spirit and not someone powerful (not until later , after meeting Wukong , and even then he's not more strong than everyone else , just most average demons)

I know that's it's kinda underwelming with all the other Aus making Macaque someone cool and powerful , and that the closest to something like this are the human Aus but I think it's not to understimate the funny mental image of a completely capable to die Macaque being done with everyone's bullshit and almost dying because of it and only somehow surviving by pure spite and luck

If someone already has this kind of Au then I'm sorry I didn't mean to copy or steal your idea

Messing around with the symmetrical tool but with colors

Shadow's Realm AU

Prologue

Macaque always thought his birth was a rather lonely one

He appeared alone in a strange dark world , he didn't have any family members or primates like him near ...if there were at all

After all when he got a bit older and started to search for someone that could be part of his family , or at least someone of the same species , there was nobody

He was the only one , he was born in a dangerous place without anybody to protect him , care for him and teach him things like how to eat or what to do in case of danger

He had to learn all of that on his own ...it was a bit depressing for a child to grow up like that

He traveled place to place , found some villages , learned a few things like speech or walking on two legs looking at the demons on the street...not that he was entirely successful seeing as he's to used to go on four to break the habit anytime soon and his speech was at a baby's level of skill

He stole food from the merchants when he was hungry and stole clothes to mimic some fancy demon he saw walking and buying around the shops

Sometimes someone would see him but he was quick to jump in the shadows to hide or run away , a power he learned about one time when he randomly tripped and fell into a shadow

It was okay but it was still lonely , he didn't have any friends , even if he settled down in a village he was still a thief and kids his age tended to avoid him , either because their parents told them to or because of some bad rumors about him

His travels seemed like an hobby at that point but deep down he still hoped he could find someone to call family or even a friend

His wish was granted but in a very strange way , the world he lived had some random bright places , they looked like strange gold mirrors , he usually never got close to them because the demons in the village thought of them as dangerous but he run out of places to explore long ago so he gave them a shot

What he found , when looking in the mirrors , was another place , completely different from where he lived , it was so bright and interesting , it wasn't like anything he saw before , with his curiousity picked he tried to find a way to go to that place

He failed , many times , because he didn't know how so he settled to observe from the mirrors in hopes something interesting would happen

He wasn't disappointed , different mirrors showed different areas of that place

He saw a kingdom on the clouds , forests and jungles , different animals and beasts , demons so dull and harsh looking compared from the ones of his world

He looked and looked and looked around

After a while of doing the same thing for days and days , time passed until the day arrived for Sun Wukong to be born in the world

Macaque found Wukong coming out of a rock funny , as well as his personality but most of all he was delighted to find he wasn't the only one anymore , how couldn't he think of this before!? If he was the only one of his world maybe there would be another in the other

In his excitement he run between the mirrors trying not to lose the other monkey , Macaque really wanted to meet him but he still couldn't find a way for it

So he watched the other as the years passed , and one day when Sun Wukong was learning about his world and the Shadow's realm , the world Macaque lived in , by his master , Macaque got an idea

He understood how and why their worlds were divided like this , the how was because of a seal from Buddha , but if Wukong's master was right when they explained various kind of seals in one of their lessons , then there could be a way to go around it

If Macaque couldn't go personally then he needed a way to go over without his phisical body , another idea came when Wukong was learning about clones and astal projection

If Macaque could do something similar then maybe it could work , so he trained and focused his powers to create something , anything that could help him reach his goal

He tried to manipulate the shadows to create a shadow clone , one without sentience and trained to be able to put his mind in it and go around , then he would only need to test if the clones could travel to Wukong's world by the shadows , and prepare a place in his world where his body could rest while he was there

It took a lot of time and a lot of failed attemps before Macaque would finally succeed

In his excitement he came out directly of Wukong's shadow , startling the other monkey

When Wukong saw him he was at first wary then realized that he was looking at Macaque aka another primate like him and the wariness dissappeared to tackle Macaque in his own excitement

They were both curious and giddy about each other and spent the many later years always at each other side ...until that day

Wukong was punished by heaven and forced to go on a journery and protect a monk

Macaque only wanted to save him but the other wasn't thinking straight

You could say Wukong wasn't able to think at all

The circlet was crushing him , the pain was unberable , and the whispers and words of heaven forcing him to eliminate the enemy made him deaf , his state made him blind to who his enemy was until it was to late

When Wukong broke free from the pain and realized who he was fighting against , he could only watch as Macaque's body , his long time partner , dissolved in a cloud of black smoke and ash

Not knowing that Macaque was still alive , and that he just broke the vessel he came to his world with , Wukong screamed so loud the heavens could hear his cries as if they were right next to him

Wukong would have stayed there grieving until the end of time but he had a journery he was forced to finish

His companions tried to cheer him up or help with his mourning with support but what they didn't know was that it would only get worse unless Macaque came back to Wukong

But Macaque didn't want to , he woke up in his own world , but instead of being glad at being alive he was overcomed by sorrow , fear and anger because of Wukong's actions

He didn't understand what happened to lead Wukong to almost kill him but he was too scared to find out so he never tried to use a vessel again to go to the other world

Macaque thought it would be the end of it all but he didn't know

It was only the beginning.

I resolved the problem of the low quality visual , this is the original version

A non-canon comic of my Shadow's Realm AU

Context: Macaque is missing Wukong