#First Arc

[dragmirc]

First Arc: Landfall

Something did not feel quite right as the border between Hyrule Field and Gerudo was reached.

It wasn't inherently noticeable, a quick dart of the eyes along the low scrubland that separated harsh desert from temperate grasslands showed nothing in the real had changed. But there was still an invisible barrier here, one that caused Ganondorf to rein in his stallion to a stop right before it.

A physical search proved nothing amiss, just wind rustling sand over the meager brush at the border between his apocalyptic territories and the fertile lands further in. But it was there. A bristling in the hairs on the nape of his neck, something had changed in the very energy of the neighboring kingdom. It was unfamiliar enough that he could recognize it and the surprise of it managed to stop him in his tracks. His lips thinned at the thought that there was something he had yet to push through.

"Everything alright?"

He was pulled from his inner musings by a voice to one side, looking side-eye to the tall Gerudo woman part of his entourage. She looked a little concerned at the sight of her king's sudden unease, but the twist of his features was brief and evened out just enough. The energy dissipated into his hands instead and the leather of the reins creaked in his tightening grip.

"Everything's fine." he replied, sure and even-toned. As though to hide that she had seen anything amiss, he offered a small crooked smile. "I thought I smelled something rotting, wanted to make sure there weren't any scavengers nearby. Let's carry on."

It seemed to settle his four companions to know whatever had stopped them wasn't inherently hostile and with a click of the tongue and a small toss of the head, the sturdy stallion moved forward again. The group of five left the shifting sand wastes behind to follow a dust-choked road through the borderlands, feeling the intense heat off the desert wane as they entered the beginnings of the temperate grassland that was Hyrule Field.

Stubborn scrub was replaced by a carpet of billowing green, the wind that blew over it fair and cool. A few scutting clouds covered the sun and cast playful faint shadows over the rolling hills that bordered the winding road on all sides. A truly peaceful land, quiet in a much different capacity from the desolate isolation of Gerudo.

By comparison, Ganondorf and his companions were as a blight against the roiling greens and clear blue of the open sky above. Dark and foreboding in their neutral colors, astride dark-colored horses built to master shifting terrain. In the deeper reaches of his mind, he was envious of Hyrule's fertile, cool lands. In the fore, he was delighted in the idea that before the week was out, he would own it. It wasn't long before everything he had put into action would culminate into the final straw.

The King of Hyrule would fall to him, and that incessantly obnoxious little princess of his would follow. He would enact the final step in gaining access to the Sacred Realm once he tore the last piece of the puzzle from her little majesty's cold de--

A pressure against the back of his neck made him pause again, cutting into his musings once more. It felt like there were eyes on him, boring into his back. While he merely slowed the stallion's pace this time, he looked to both sides of the road.

The beginnings of Hyrule's farmlands stretched out in both directions. The budding crops of rye were being tended by farmers and their hands and while they stopped to regard the passing Gerudo delegation warily, that wasn't what he was feeling. A rustle in the adolescent grain further out made him stare at the point, but the tall ears of a hare betrayed the interloper for what it was and he opted to ignore it before resuming pace for Castle Town.

Maybe, with his plans coming so soon to fruition, he was feeling paranoid. Like some got jitters or stage-fright before a performance, he felt like there was someone watching him. It wasn't an unfounded fear, he'd had the sense that the princess' bodyguard was capable of seeing right through his facade. Ah yes, the Sheikah. She would prove to be a challenge. He could admire her for at least that without having to see the woman in action, especially in comparison to the lax ineptitude of the royal guardsmen otherwise.

What he mistook for paranoia, he realized on reaching the limits of Castle Town turned out to be apprehension instead. But it wasn't his own emotion. It felt somehow disjointed from him when he reached the market square that connected to the road leading to the castle on the mount above, like it was implanted artificially to create dissonance. But while it didn't affect him in the same way, he did notice out of the corner of one eye that now his entourage could feel it as well. His eyes narrowed as he saw them, heads lowered and glancing uneasily back and forth, any further expression once more relegated to his hands and the creak of leather reins in them.

Something was indeed different. Something was not quite right.

After a quick scan of his surroundings at the detestable denizens of Castle Town milling about in their tedious haze of day-to-day life, he caught it and it made him halt. Golden eyes laid on the shadowed silhouette of something standing next to the road leading to the castle. He cursed himself for not seeing the thing before, as it had been plainly standing there. Tall, lithe, with pinpricks of reflective white for eyes on its shadowed head.

A shade, perhaps? A ghost, maybe. Or neither, as it made eye contact with him for a moment enough to blink when it knew he was watching it and turned to dart up the road. It carried too much weight to be anything but alive, a flash of light off its form giving credence to its existence.

It wasn't that the thing existed in any capacity that made Ganondorf's attention snap up toward the castle. He was looking for the signs of a change, any indication that something had happened in the space of the last time he had been here. Nothing seemed off from where he was now, the banners flying as they always did to show the castle was open to visitors. But he couldn't deny that on the eve of his resolutions, the appearance of embedding emotions that were not his and strange sentinel shadows of things he didn't recognize made him worry.

He didn't show it in his face, the quiver that took his core and changed the budding paranoia into ripples of panic. The final machinations could wait until he had made sure the foundation of his years of planning and scheming was still stable. Ignoring his entourage imploring his actions, he spurred the stallion into a quick canter up the road, hearing the others following along behind as best they could. A gallop might have been faster, but he was keenly aware that such speed would be a detriment to the winding road hemmed in by rocky outcrops on both sides. This way, he would make good time and still remain alert to the terrain in case an attempted ambush was in play.

It wasn't long before he realized something had indeed happened on the castle mount. There was no predicted ambush, but the smell of spilled blood was unmistakable the closer he came to the castle and the lack of guards on the wall calling him to slow down or halt altogether made him glance upward. The standards he had seen flying were not the same. Down in Castle Town they hadn't seemed out of the ordinary, but up close, they were very different. Yellow-orange in color, the familiar emblem of Hylia's Wings had been replaced by an organized cluster of four-point star-forms. He couldn't catch any of them in full, flapping in the breeze, to count them all.

The sight of someone running up the road on the last bend caught his attention and in the full sunlight, he realized it was a person. A scout maybe for whatever force had settled here now, hardly different from a ghost if they were good enough. The fact that anyone had overtaken the castle without the rest of Castle Town even being aware spoke of an inside job so thorough, even he could be impressed.

The tang of battle mingled with the coppery overtone of bloodshed flooded his nose the closer he came to the bridge that lead into the castle walls, so strong that he could taste it in the back of his throat. An acrid terrible taste he knew as well as he recognized the glimmer of liquid seeped between the stones of the bridge before the first portal of the walls.

Ganondorf reined the stallion back to a slow careful walk over the bridge to the yawning tunnel through the walls, joined not long after by the rest of his entourage. The slumped weighty sacks of bodies tucked into the shadowed sides were all dressed in stained mail and tunics bearing the royal sigil, earning mutterings of surprise and harrow from the other Gerudo.

The front gardens and courtyards had been nothing short of a bloodbath, clearly where much of the action had happened. Lines of stained sheets covering suspicious lumps rested between walls and hedges, an impromptu graveyard for those yet to be sent off in some way. A quick but careful look around showed no one other than the dead and their current visitors currently rested in what would have greeted guests not too long before.

"I guess you smelled something rotting, after all." one of his companions pointed out before she continued, "These are all soldiers though."

"This strike was calculated, but messy." He hissed his observations, listening to his own voice say the words out loud as though he could barely believe what he was staring in its sheet-covered face. "This wasn't planned, just executed. There are likely more dead inside, but they aren't the only ones still here. Stay on guard."

He stared at the front doors into the main castle building as he dismounted. It was becoming more and more apparent to him that he had lost years of hard work in as little as what looked to be a few hours, perhaps the last day. What little flutters of panic remained had evolved into anger, settling into his chest as the thought hit him. A quick look around continued to assure him that for now, the Gerudo were the only ones alive in the front courtyards. It was enough that he strode purposefully toward the front doors, remaining alert to his surroundings as he entertained further plans.

Maybe, if he could still locate the ocarina, he would be allowed to continue his ambitions. That would be the ideal outcome, and only if the ones who had wrested charge were amicable enough to allow it long enough to see his rise to power. And only if they weren't after the Sacred Realm and by extension, the Triforce, as well. That was a factor he had to consider. Ganondorf considered it, and landed on the decision that if they were, they would have to be destroyed immediately. It wasn't something he was particularly remorseful about.

Now, as he pushed one of the doors open, all he had to do was find the one in charge.

@sanguinesorcery

[tannuki-in-training]

i know i don't really talk a whole lot about myself on here, but after getting home today things have just been not great 😭 the scavenger hunt and getting my samples and stuff was fun but it's just that moment after you get home and have to deal with the everyday things again. a few months ago i found out some not great stuff about my family that they don't know i know, and it's very hard to sit with.

i don't think im a very angry person and i definitely don't hurt people that don't deserve it but especially with this situation there's such a deep anger that lives inside me. sometimes when im out living my life it's not too bad but other times being around these people, having to sit at the dinner table with them, knowing the underlying truth while they tell you about their day, it's a lot. part of the reason im in school is because i want to be able to support myself and leave here. it's hard to move past anything when you live with the people causing the issues and get no justice at all.

But anyways, whenever im struggling or things feel overwhelming i like to go out to the forest and just sit with it. i imagine the anger moving through me and into the earth. i like hearing the rustling of the leaves and knowing that there are pokemon around. i think nature understands and there's something so specific about this forest that almost feels like it relates. it's important to allow yourself to feel things out and also give yourself a space to get away from it all, that's what this does for me.

[lunadaydreaming]

[chaoscoffeehound]

I usually don't do this sort of thing, but this is new for me to post on Tumblr SO BARE WITH ME,

This fanfiction is a WIP, it's called One Piece: Nizara The Defiant, I will warn ahead of time, it is a OC X Canon fanfiction-

SO LET'S GET TO THE FIRST CHAPTER OF NIZARA'S ARC!

---------------------------------------------

{Humdrum Dusk} -1-

{ENTER: The Fangorus Pirates}

The winds blew gently as the birds above sang their beautiful tune, the winds crashing and making a huge commotion as a group of well known pirates made their presence known. The Fangorus Pirates, this rowdy bunch are dead set on the feral ways of a wild beast to scare off a lot of more common folk, baring their claws and fangs at anyone or anything that gets in their way, that is how they ended up getting a large amount of recognition in the more dangerous parts of the sea. As the waves of the sea become more harsher the pirates would begin to worry, as a storm was brewing, the Captain of the ship, Gigoroth would scold a bit at their sense of deep fear as he looked ahead at the seas "We are nearly there, so just hold out till then" he spoke out, he only had his eyes fixed on one thing and that old thing only, the treasure left behind by the greatest pirate, the treasure known as the One Piece...The crewmates would hold on for dear life as the storm would only get worse from there."Y-You can't possibly mean th-that we're going to the Great Line in this condition! We'll surely die!!"  "Then you DO NOT have a place in the crew if you cannot handle what MUST be done...." Captain Gigoroth would push the underlying aside as he held tightly at the wheel, not caring what may happen, how much in shambles they may even be by the end of this, to him, NONE OF THAT EVEN MATTERED AT ALL. At this rate, they felt as though the whole ship might all just start crashing down.... 

Soon, everything faded to black.                           

The Captain spat "Damn, that storm did a lot more damage than what I had originally anticipated" he would stand up, his men were still shaken up by the storm as they didnt even know what this undiscovered island had to offer at all, everything there didn't make sense at all, the whole place felt like a feverish nightmare, the rock formation felt like a gaping maw of hideous beast due to the formation, vines intertwined all around, keeping the waters from crashing into the island, the lizard that was noticed before hissed at them harshly, perhaps seeing them as outsides.       

The Captain narrowed his eyes as he looked up, to see the large rocks and the vines keeping the water from entering the island which was right below the crashing waters. Yes, this has gotta be it. 

The Legend of the hidden island, the water breathing island, Fariya Island. An island that had not been discovered by many as it is right below the waters, most have crashed down here without a trace, meaning The Fangorus Pirates would be the first to tell the tale...

If they can survive, that is..... 

[zephyrine-gale]

drawing one mydei a day until he comes out - the fallen angel

[starchaser667]

Hey so, has anyone else like , , , thought about this??

Because I have,

And it's making me incredibly anxious

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Must be a Sugondese joke.

[meandtheyeehaws]

who is this lost sassy child and why is it on a battlefield

[deikshen]

Shen Yuan, who opens his eyes and has just transmigrated into some strange demon deep in the Endless Abyss. Well, GREAT! He's a demon, and while he's not OP, if he behaves and doesn't mess with Binghe's women, maybe they could even be traveling companions. Cool! Incredible!!

It doesn't take long for him to find Luo Binghe in the Abyss some time later. He leaves a trail of carnage... And he's speedrunning!! Ignore the wife and solo plots, just mow down monsters and charge forward! He's awesome!

Shen Yuan tries to avoid the red flags that the stallion protagonist isn't, well, forming a harem. Maybe he would form later, when he had more power!! He's not exactly sure in which narrative arc are.

However, his days of watching Luo Binghe through the shadows are soon over. Luo Binghe catches him!! He has obviously noticed Shen Yuan following him. What does he want? Is he looking for him to kill him?

Shen Yuan ducks out a bit, but ultimately decides to impart his honed Abyss 101 knowledge from months of Wiki editing. He disguises himself as a demon who has been searching for a way out of the Abyss, and he knows that he can only do so with Xin Mo, but he knows he doesn't have enough power to wield it. So, he will tell Luo Binghe where the portal-opening sword is, if he allows him to travel by his side and accompany him when he leaves!!

... It's very easy to become travel companions after that.

Luo Binghe is suspicious (of course he would be!! After all, who wouldn't be?!) but he's nice when he's not on his monster-killing rampage. Shen Yuan kills minor monsters, but in reality, he might be getting into more trouble than he should... spiritual flora, ancient artifacts! Luo Binghe should collect them and become more stronger with them! Shen Yuan rambles a lot: he talks about flora, beasts, monsters, demonic history, he throws out fact after fact of PIDW backstories that never got fleshed out from the old demonic civilizations, banished kingdoms, people literally turned into black jade statues...

Luo Binghe seems to find it irritating that he's talking at first, but actually... It's like he can't stop looking at him afterward. Shen Yuan guesses that he must be considering getting rid of him, sometimes: Luo Binghe looks at him with an expression of dismay and doubt. It's like he's searching for something in him. Like he sees something familiar, but Shen Yuan finds it ridiculous. Bah!! As if there's something familiar about him to some random NPC in the world!

One day, after several weeks of traveling, Luo Binghe asks him: "Little Demon. Do you have a name?" And it's not like Shen Yuan has introduced himself, but he considers saying "Shen Yuan" to him not to be wrong.

After that, Luo Binghe... gets worse? He also becomes a little more talkative, which is good, they can have conversations. Shen Yuan enjoys learning little things about his favorite character: how he likes tea, what he misses most is not water or clean clothes but being able to cook with spices, his favorite food, his mother's favorite recipe, about his life on Qing Jing Peak...

That's when everything goes to hell.

A kind Shen Qingqiu? What the fuck? Luo Binghe speaks about his Shizun with more passion than he has spoken about Ning Yingying or any other person or thing. That he had had this horrible qi deviation, but right after, he had been so kind, giving him medicine, a new cultivation manual, fair training, even letting him live in the bamboo house! For the past few years, Shen Qingqiu had practically spoiled him: the best missions, all the running of the Peak, he was basically the head disciple in all but name.

That Luo Binghe had fallen in love with him. Deeply, devastatingly. And Shen Qingqiu had pushed him into the Abyss when his heritage was revealed. However, Luo Binghe will not doubt! He will leave the Abyss, return to his Shizun, and show him that his heritage does not determine who he is. He will become a righteous cultivator and will have his respect to reach his heart.

OOC! So OOC! What the fuck!? Where was the scum villain!? Why is Luo Binghe gay now!? What weird fanfic did he end up in!? Actually, Shen Yuan supposes, well. That means at least he wouldn't destroy Cang Qiong and all that. Wow. Dramatic but calm ending. A better world!! And worse for him, being a demon. Maybe Could he find a way to disguise himself as a human? He believes he has already won Luo Binghe's friendship and sympathy. Maybe he'll even help him to disguise.

Revelations are a rare thing, but Shen Yuan guesses, it's okay. They continue their travel, collecting flowers along the way (for real, not meimeis) who improve the cultivation, and occasionally fight for their lives. Shen Yuan has defended himself very well with his claws so far, but Luo Binghe teaches him how to use a sword, and it's nice to have one.

Shen Yuan has drawn a map, more or less: it is the path that must be taken to reach Xin Mo. He knows that some of those places will be more difficult than others; he explains to Binghe many times that collecting things to strengthen him is necessary: it's a waste of time for him to meet with his Shizun now, but he'll be grateful! He'll need to get strong fast!

Shen Yuan shamelessly takes advantage of all his knowledge of the plot: he teaches Luo Binghe everything he knows, all the weaknesses of the beasts, all the strengths of certain flowers or roots. However, the more Shen Yuan teaches him over the weeks of their travel together, the more Luo Binghe seems... weirder. If he looked at him too much before, now it's incredibly worse. Sometimes he even asks extremely specific questions and seems frustrated when Shen Yuan doesn't answer exactly as he expects. Once, even, when they are crossing some paths surrounded by magma and the heat is suffocating, Binghe improvises a folded fan of leaves for him, and he seems clearly aggrieved when Shen Yuan's first instinct is to fan Binghe!

Luo Binghe is a frustrating little creature who seems to be testing him. Constantly. Shen Yuan assumes it's normal, but still!! He thought he had the protagonist's confidence!! Something seems to sparkle in his eyes when Shen Yuan stops halfway to explore a forest of giant mushrooms and talks at length about the properties and, above all, about the mole-squirrels who get high off their asses biting mushrooms, and he even seems fucking frustrated when he offers some weird herbal blend similar to a bitter tea and Shen Yuan accepts it just out of politeness because it tastes awful. It's like they're running in circles!!

Still, they continue on their way.

There is still a large stretch of the map to go, which Shen Yuan translates into a few more months of travel, when they are cornered by some beasts. They're horrible, disgusting spider-beetles the size of a fucking elephant; it's an unfair fight, seven against two, and even with their swords the bugs are fast, their legs sharp, and Shen Yuan is too exhausted after hours of only being able to defeat two of them.

Luo Binghe fights majestically, but even so, there is one thing Luo Binghe cannot fight: being outnumbered. And when Shen Yuan sees the giant insect's attack at Binghe, his only instinct is to get in the way.

The insect's leg pierces through him. It doesn't quite touch Binghe, but Shen Yuan isn't even aware of the pain from the way his nerves have been ripped apart. He's stunned, disoriented, and only a moment later Luo Binghe enters that desperate berserk mode that the protagonist only got once every two hundred chapters. The horrible insects fall, and Shen Yuan doesn't even know why he's still alive.

He supposes that dying while Binghe is fighting is a bit anticlimactic. He's in a pool of his own blood and he's sure that not even the blood parasites will be able to regenerate any of it. He's dying, he knows it, and from the way Binghe drops to his knees beside him after defeating the insects and holds him, Binghe knows it too.

"It's okay," Shen Yuan manages to speak, weakly patting Binghe's face, "follow the map, leave the Abyss and meet your Shizun. I bet you'll scare him to death, but hey. You're a great boy. A very good one. Show him there's no one better than you for him."

Luo Binghe holds him. Shen Yuan is aware that there were blood parasites in his food months ago, but oh well. Nothing can be done now. It's too much.

Actually, he wants to say something else, something other than a pathetic goodbye talking about how the ex-stallion protagonist should go after his Shizun's bone, but while he recognizes that he is dying (he already died once, damn it, he recognizes death) a blue screen flashes in his head.

[ Recalculating data... Correcting recipient... Downloading files... Importing... ]

[ Bugs fixed! ]

[ Returning the Host to his main user... ]

At the exact moment Shen Yuan dies, Shen Qingqiu wakes up in Qian Cao with a gasp, suddenly touching his chest where a second ago he had felt a hole that pierced him from side to side. His head hurts, his muscles burn, and someone definitely screams in surprise because a bunch of disciples call out to Mu Qingfang and, damn, it's fucking chaos.

He's apparently been in a coma for the past eighteen long months since the Immortal Alliance Conference. A qi deviation? No one knew. It was as if he were just asleep, but nothing woke him. His vital signs were normal, low, but active. Except for Without-a-cure, there was nothing else in his spiritual veins, and Without-a-cure could not cause his current state.

Now, with a huge headache, Shen Qingqiu remembers. He remembers not only the last year and a half with Binghe in the Abyss, but his last years as Shen Qingqiu. And he remembers that, just after of pushing into the Abyss, the fucking System COLLAPSED! Damn SHITTY AI! And Shen Qingqiu believed that he was really going to deport him back to his body even if he pushed Binghe into the Abyss! ... But he hadn't. Just to a random demon's body until the system repaired itself.

The story he tells to Mu Qingfang about the qi deviation after Binghe was swallowed by the Abyss is as good as any. So, Mu Qingfang finally lets him rest until he recovers, and Shen Qingqiu accepts it.

During the Abyss, he had been... Free, somehow. He had no memory of being Shen Qingqiu, and he hadn't had to pretend to be anyone else. It had been the greatest freedom he had had since he arrived. Fuck, he has a lot to think about. How, above all, what the hell he's going to do now that, damn it, he knows Luo Binghe has somehow fallen in love with him. Fuck.

... Well, at least the other transmigrant on the scene will surely have something to say. Eighteen months in a coma! Ha! Shang Qinghua wouldn't even know what hit him.

[dykealloy]

what do you mean jennifer saunder's shrek 2 cover of Holding Out for a Hero didn't play over the entirety of dressrosa arc

[ink-the-artist]

house tour :)

bonus art, lossy versions of the first 2 gifs

[akanemnon]

Yeah, Kris is definitely NOT alright.

FIRST - PREVIOUS - NEXT

MASTERPOST (for the full series / FAQ / reference sheets)

[inkinthetypewriter]

so i looked up “the eye” on tiktok to see if the intro was there and found this:

BOOKS ARRANGED IN MORSE CODE???

assuming black books are dashes and white books are dots, this is what it says,

STUDIO LAN DOES NOT FUCK AROUND WITH SYMBOLISM AND THE BOOKS ARE BEHIND LIU XIAO THIS MEANS SOMETHING

whoever spotted this first is a genius fr

[nouverx]

Today I offer you: Vashwood

[starlingfawn]

through starless sky to blackest ground

[the-mpreg-guy]

on a realer note i do think people forget that a huge part of the destiel equation is that cas won’t stay. like yeah we focus a lot on the fact that dean won’t ask him to, but cas never sticking around is a huge factor there