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skyloftian-nutcase · 2 years ago

Text

Malice (Dad Squad)

Fair warning, this does have TotK content but none of it is spoilers. It's all literally stuff from the trailer. But anyway, I had fun writing it. :)

The lurch was absolutely nauseating.

Rusl shivered on his hands and knees, dizzy and disoriented and so unbelievably ill. He'd never been pulled in so many directions at once at such an unimaginable speed. He could barely make out his surroundings, having been torn from the jungle where they'd been wandering.

Taking steadying breaths, Rusl kept his eyes squeezed shut to reorient and not throw up. He remained stiff, not daring to move until the wave of nausea had passed. As his mind slowly stopped spinning,

The grass beneath him was damp, littered with little stones, which was the first thing he noticed. The stones felt... unnaturally shaped. Running a finger along it, he felt the curved edges, the too straight lines framing it.

Cobblestone. Cobblestone with grass growing through it, so withered and worn it was barely there anymore.

More ruins?

Exhaling, Rusl slowly opened his eyes. It was a dismally dark day, wherever they were. Storm clouds brooded overhead, he could tell by the lighting and the damp. Beside him, Abel was laying on the ground staring up at the sky, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose. The Fierce Deity was crouched just a pace away from the pair, apparently reorienting faster.

Rusl wasn't surprised.

The Ordonian leaned back on his knees and feet, a trembling hand reaching for Abel's shoulder. "Are you alright?"

"Headache," Abel muttered before sitting up. "I'll be fine. But..."

The Fierce Deity rose to his full height, helping Rusl to his feet. The blacksmith stumbled a little, dizzy at the speed at which the deity lifted him up.

Rusl's companion opened his eyes, glancing around before gasping. "This is--this is just outside of Castle Town! How did--did that item bring us here?"

This was Castle Town?

Rusl looked around again, horrified to see the ruined remains of what should have been a sprawling city. He'd seen pieces of ruins, leftover outposts, a destroyed wagon here and there, but nothing of this magnitude.

Spirits above. He swallowed, suddenly thankful that the Twili invasion hadn't reached this level of destruction.

"But how did we--?" Abel cut himself off abruptly, and Rusl was about to ask what was wrong when he noticed it too.

What was that aura? Why was there ominous mist emitting from all around them, oozing out of the ground like steam from a boiling lake?

The Fierce Deity hissed, collapsing to the ground, a hand clutched to his face.

"Fierce...?" both men made their way to him, hands hovering over him uncertainly.

The deity was trembling, in obvious pain with his sharp teeth bared and eyes glaring into the earth. His hand on his face slid up to his hair, fingers curling around it in a desperate attempt to alleviate whatever was wrong.

"What's wrong?" Abel asked.

Fierce curled in farther, shriveling from their attempts to touch him. "It's the mask."

"What mask?" Rusl questioned.

As the Ordonian tried to figure out what in the blazes was happening, Abel's eyes roamed forward towards the city, and beyond it, to the castle.

"This mist..." he muttered. "It's the same as..."

Rusl looked between Abel and the Fierce Deity, wondering what in the world was happening and how they could fix this. "We need to get him out of here."

"Kill him." Fierce suddenly snarled, pulling away when Rusl tried to reach for his shoulder. "I'll be fine. Get him."

"Who? Who are you talking about?" Rusl asked, growing far more nervous than he cared to feel. He was usually fairly adaptable and had seen so many things that had little explanation in his life, but seeing a war god writhing in pain was beyond unsettling, particularly since he was his friend.

Abel rose, eyes dark. "It can't be..."

Rusl was clearly missing something, a connection that both of his companions had made. Nevertheless, the priority was to help the Fierce Deity, not worry about whoever they were talking about.

Abel clearly didn't seem to understand that, gripping his sword with enough ferocity to make his knuckles white. He marched ahead.

"Abel, what are you doing?" Rusl called. "We have to get Fierce out of here!"

When he got no response from the world weary traveler, he looked back at the deity, who insisted through gritted teeth, "Go with him. I'll be fine."

He looked distinctly not fine, but watching Abel walk into a heavier dark mist made Rusl equally unsettled. The Ordonian sighed. "Get away from here. Find somewhere safe to lay low. I can help you--"

"No," Fierce hissed. "I do not require help. Abel does."

"Fierce--"

"I will retreat as instructed," the deity acquiesced shakily. "But help him."

Abel had almost vanished into the darkness. Rusl bit his tongue, standing stiffly, filled with dread and annoyance. "Fine."

Drawing his blade, he hurried after the former knight, feeling cold dread sink into his bones the closer to the castle he got.

Abel's world was a desolate place, filled with mausoleums for villages, but this place had to be the pinnacle of it all. Rusl didn't want to get any closer. Had those guardian creatures really caused such destruction?

Despite his misgivings, the Ordonian did manage to catch up to Abel, who was slowly descending a stairway into the damp depths beneath the castle.

"I don't understand," Abel said softly as Rusl approached. "There are no guardians here. There's... no sign of anything."

"I'd say this mist is a pretty clear sign," Rusl pointed out, grabbing Abel by the wrist. "As is our friend's ailment. We should go back to him. There's something wrong about this place."

Abel pulled out of Rusl's grip sharply. "I know. It..."

The two men stared at the dark abyss below. Abel's face glowed with equal parts determination and dread. He was just as scared as Rusl, but rather than listening to his gut instinct, he ventured forward.

Rusl sighed. This man was beginning to remind him of Link.

Rusl had been to many a place that gave unnerving auras, but that had always been milder sensations. A feeling of being watched, an innate sense of danger to the area that would linger near dungeons. This... this was something entirely different.

This, for lack of a better word, felt demonic.

Pulling out a lantern, Rusl lit the wick and glanced at his companion. "If you're insistent, we should at least have a means of seeing where we're going."

Abel nodded in thanks before continuing. Rusl sighed and followed him down the stairs.

The farther they went, the sicker Rusl felt. He broke into a cold sweat, shivers racking his body. He'd never had such a visceral reaction to anything - even the Twili barriers that infected his world, despite their wrongness, hadn't made him physically ill. They'd felt more like the sensation of being in the dark, an overbearing heaviness and fear of the unknown, whereas this felt like a violation of body, mind, and soul.

He honestly didn't know how Abel wasn't at least reacting to it. Even the Fierce Deity had been affected. It had crippled him.

Spirits. It had crippled a war god. What were they doing down here?!

"Abel," Rusl tried again. "We should go back."

"What happened to your cheer for exploration?" Abel asked in a monotone, not really asking so much as distractedly challenging. He was far more focused on what was ahead than his companion behind him.

"I have a sense of self preservation," Rusl replied. "We don't know what we're walking into."

"It's like the Calamity," Abel muttered, more to himself than to Rusl. "But it's... I don't understand."

"The Calamity?" Rusl repeated. "The destruction of your land?"

"The Calamity isn't just an event, it's a monster," Abel explained, walking ahead despite his ominous words.

"So... we're walking towards the monster that destroyed the entirety of Hyrule," Rusl supposed with a raised eyebrow, continuing to follow his friend.

Abel huffed, stepping hesitantly as they seemed to reach the bottom of the stairway. "I don't hear any guardians yet."

"Those aren't the Calamity?"

"No. The Calamity used the guardians."

Rusl looked around warily, lantern raised. "So we're potentially looking for a beast that is stronger than guardians. And a single guardian can annihilate both of us."

Abel's shoulders stiffened, and he shook his head. "Dammit, Rusl, I don't know. This... this mist surrounded the capital on the eve of the Calamity. But... then the Calamity happened. Nothing is happening here, except that our companion is falling ill because of it."

"We should be trying to help him," Rusl reasoned.

Abel turned sharply. "This is me helping. He... he said..."

"He said kill him," Rusl repeated, a little disturbed at the words.

Abel grew very still and silent.

"Do you really think we can defeat something that is incapacitating a war god?" Rusl asked solemnly, trying to get through to the knight. "I had an entire resistance to assist me in my journey to save Hyrule, and inevitably it was Link who did the most work."

"Yes. Link. A child." Abel hissed. "We left the fate of our nation in the hands of children and expected them to--"

There was the sound of a foot scuffing on a rock and both men immediately froze. It came from somewhere ahead, vague and distant and bouncing in the chilly air, steadily making its path to them. It moved rhythmically, steps on stone, growing ever quieter.

Someone else was down here.

Someone else was down here and they were walking further into the abyss.

Abel stepped forward, sword at the ready. Rusl followed, armed and on edge.

Who else was down here? Had they heard the two men arguing? Was it just Rusl, or was the mist getting thicker?

The pair walked through some unusual corridors, and though Rusl's lamplight wasn't the best, he could make out odd shapes and figures in the stone. Abel glanced at it in passing, noting it and moving ahead. Neither man spoke at this point, ears peeled for any indication that they had caught up to whoever else was down here.

For such a foreboding place, there was certainly a strange lack of monsters. Rusl didn't know if he should find that reassuring or not.

Finally, the two men descended further and emerged into a large underground cavern of sorts. A strange light shone ahead, dulling Rusl's lamplight to that of a mere stub of a candle. The pair paused, uncertain and leery. Rusl's eyes settled on a strange swirling pattern of light that emitted from a... severed arm? The arm was perched on a half rotted corpse, almost as if it were pushing the corpse to the ground.

As if this place couldn't get any creepier.

Notably, though, Rusl's eyes caught movement. Up by the mummified body were two other figures, their voices lost in the echoes of the large space. All he could make out was that one was a female and one was a male. The male had a sword with an uncomfortably familiar shape to its hilt.

Rusl squinted in the darkness. It was hard to tell from here, but something about the swordsman's blade... he tried to focus more on it but couldn't, not at that distance with the dim light. The Ordonian turned to his companion and saw Abel transfixed at the sight.

"Is... this the Calamity?" he whispered. Was the foe already defeated? Was it trying to recuperate its strength? Who were the two in front of it?

Abel didn't answer. Voices grew louder, a strange sound emitted from ahead of them, and Rusl jumped, turning to look at the scene ahead of him to find that the corpse was moving.

There was a flash of light and the entire room shook. Rusl grabbed on to Abel's arm, pushing both of them against the wall to brace themselves as the entire place seemed to crumble in a flash of red, hellish light.

Abel dove forward, and Rusl yelped, pulling him back and trying to fight his vicious energy.

Abel was frantic; he didn't even seem to notice Rusl was there anymore. Instead, a scream tore out of his throat, desperate and pleading and terrified.

"LINK!"

The ceiling collapsed, and they were sealed into darkness.