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gods, dragons, monsters, and the mortal fools that love them by notavodkashot
Fandom: 原神 | Genshin Impact (Video Game)
01 Jan 2026
- Words:
- 256,058
- Works:
- 5
- Bookmarks:
- 23
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Bookmark Notes:
genuinely so good. like the world building???? the relationships???? def should reread sometime
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Bookmark Notes:
book i. complete
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Bookmark Notes:
read work 1
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Bookmark Notes:
It began, as most things in his life had, with Guizhong.
Guizhong gave him a gift and invited him to work with her, to use his power in service of her ideals, so that they could guide the humans into building a prosperous, peaceful civilization. Guizhong was clever and bright, but she did not know what she was asking of him, what it would cost.
Guizhong was a god that had come into being without an anchor, scattered instead across the people who believed in her, who cherished all those tiny, voiceless things she came to embody. Because of that, she had always lacked substance, her powers weak and her domain fleeting and unwieldy. But that was all she had ever known, so she had assumed, upon that first meeting, that Zhongli was the same as she had been.
He was not.
Zhongli had been born in the heart of the Xuanyuan Mountain, coaxed into existence by the accumulation of Geo energy nestled deep at the base of the mountain, for thousands upon thousands of years, and the reverent fear that drove humans to deify the mountain itself into a person. Xuanyuan the God and Xuanyuan the Mountain were, at the core, one and the same. He was able to walk down the cliffs to visit the villages built in the shade of his mountain, but he could not stray far.
To be able to follow Guizhong out into the plains, he needed to break the bond that kept him anchored to the mountain. She didn’t know that. She hadn’t known that was what it would take. He knew, because she was just as horrified as everyone else, when Zhongli ripped out the heart of the mountain and sank it back into the ground. There had been thousands upon thousands of gods roaming the world, back then, but none of them came close to him in strength. There had been thousands upon thousands of gods, all across Teyvat, but none of them, as far as Zhongli knew, had ever managed the feat of changing their nature quite the way he had: Xuanyuan the God destroyed Xuanyuan the Mountain so he could become Morax, God of Contracts.
His mastery over Geo was second to none, but how could it be anything else, considering he had subdued his own nature to become himself?
It began with Guizhong, when he became Lord of Geo, rather than the Lord of the Mountain, but Guizhong would not live to see the result of what she’d done.
Who he would become.
It began with the Habor.
Which began with Guizhong’s death.
He didn’t have a mountain to rip to pieces, to engineer change in himself. But he needed to change. He needed to be what he wasn’t, because what he was, wasn’t enough. Great change required great sacrifice. He knew that, in his bones. But all he had, in the aftermath of the war with Osial, was his people and himself.
And he could not sacrifice the people.
The people were Guizhong’s.
Guizhong had died for the people.
So Zhongli stood by the sea, in the shadow of the mountain where the harbor would one day become the Harbor, and offered himself the way they made offerings to his altars, blood, bone and hope. He let his blood fall freely into the ground, soaking it deep. Three days and three nights, he stood there, blood running down his arms. It didn’t kill him, of course, but that only meant he didn’t know when to stop. He just bled and bled and at some point the concentrated Geo in his blood heated and hardened the ground until the entire shore was converted into basalt several feet thick. Perfect for foundations.
It began with the Harbor, but more than that, it began with the Harbor’s prayers.
It began with Guizhong’s death and the certainty he wasn’t a good enough replacement, and the stupid desire to make himself into one.
Rex Lapis was born of the blood he used to water the ground where he hoped his people would plant roots and a desperate willingness to give up anything, everything, to change.
For progress.