#battle (shrine of light)

[oktaviaslabyrinth]

Battle (Shrine of Light) // The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (2023)

[ezraphobicsoup]

i’ve managed to essentially soft lock myself into the queen gibdo boss battle help

at least i’m assuming this isn’t how it’s supposed to go

[halcyone-of-the-sea]

Songs That Sound Like Sea-Foam (III)

AU MASTERLIST || FINAL CHAPTER

PAIRING: Fisherman!John Price x F!Mermaid!Reader

WORDCOUNT: 7.1k

WARNINGS: Angst, blood, death, violence, swords & firearms, abductions, hurt/comfort, torture references, nakedness, needles, gore, etc.

A/N: Alright, and that's a wrap on this mini-series. Biker/mechanic!Ghost is next on the list.

*I do not give others permission to translate and/or re-publish my works on this or any other platform*

You hit the water and immediately push back to the surface, ignoring the burning of your open wounds. 

“John!” Your high and panicked call can’t be heard above the yells to arms and the distressed wails. “What are you doing?!” Bodies get chucked from the side of the ship and all you can do is watch as they meet the water around you—skin cut open and eyes dead. 

While the sea was numbing your pains, your heart was hurting enough for all of them; hands flailing to try and help keep you above the waves. But everything was so dark, only the light far above giving you a sliver of perception. 

“John!” You scream again, eyes snapping back and forth along the ship. Your arms burned with heat.

“Go!” The words ring out and make you cringe, graveled and ragged—an order. But how could you? Vile grunts and skin meeting skin sound out, no more shirking blade edges or the boom of pistols. Fists meeting ribs, bared teeth.

“The Mermaid was wearing tags! He’s part of the King’s forces!” The leader. “If we can’t have the beast, we’ll have the coin from a turncoat!”

“Deserter!”

“Traitor!” 

“Tie him to the post!”

Your ears twitch and pull at the horrible words, lungs near hyperventilating and black waves going red. If you weren’t able to ingest water, the way your head was slowly sinking would have left you sputtering and choking. 

What will they do to him? Why can’t I help? It was the only part in your life where you regret having a tail, because now you can’t save John in the same way he saved you. Your eyes lock helplessly to the upper deck, far, far above. You can’t drag yourself up or even find the energy to stay above water. 

Your strength was waning quickly—you needed to be tended to; healed. But it felt worse than a betrayal to see not even a glimpse of John’s brown hair or his large arms. To not feel the hold he kept on you. You wanted his lips and his flesh to be pressed into you, to venerate your image as he always did. 

A Hierei that worships at the shrine that is you.

“Curse you,” you say aloud to the men above. The ones that tie your raging love to a post; you hear his low growls and biting expletives like blades in their own fashioned way, the sea garbling your words. “Curse your greed and your violence!” 

But no one listens, and with a heavy and weighed heart, you have to let your dead muscles rest as they give out completely against your will. Sunking under the battling waves, you feel like dead weight; no different than the various bodies around you that John had dispatched. 

You felt useless. 

Above you was John, being tied up and taken—taken to a King that wants your species dead. You don’t want to leave, but the current is snatching you away like seaweed, limp and broken. Whatever John had done to your wounds, the fabric of his shirt was holding fast to your shredded flesh, but it didn’t stop the agony or the inner conflict. 

He was right above you…why aren’t you strong enough to help?

Your eyes flutter, hair and arms floating. 

Everything grows dark, but John never once leaves your mind. Perhaps the Fisherman was worshiping you, but you did the same unto him. 

The eyepatched leader’s words loop in your brain, paired with storm-blue eyes. Gentle praises.

 “...I think he loves the beast!” 

Your body sinks with the rest.

—

The sand under you is coarse and dry as your eyes barely open, chest rising and falling but shakily, stuttering in its course. Small noises groan in the back of your throat, fingers like stones beside your face. 

Everything hurts, but something has woken you up. Noises. Muttered speaking.

“Now why would she have these?” There was a moment of clinking metal and a low huff. 

You groan louder and curl into yourself more, only to stop when the tears in your flesh pull. Your lungs inhale sharply.

“Oh, Christ,” the accented voice is smooth as it gets closer. “Easy, then, Ma’am. Shite, I was hoping you’d stay under a bit longer, I’m not bloody done yet.” 

Forcing your eyes open, you hiss at the burn of morning light, laying on your stomach with…your brows tighten…were you wearing a tunic? A hand meets the back of your shoulder and you cry out, jerking.

“Woah!” More force is applied to keep you down but it only makes you struggle more. “Please, I’m trying to stop the bleeding!” 

You stall at this revelation like a bird, panting. Muscles tight, you cautiously look over your shoulder to weakly stare at whoever this man was.

Brown eyes meet your own, and a dark-skinned complexion over an oval face. They blink at you with concern and hesitation, sparing only a nervous smirk and a chuckle. You stare widely, saying nothing. 

“I…I’m just trying to stop the bleeding. Whoever got you,” this man trails off, glancing down at your tail. “Well, they did some proper damage.”

“Who are you?” Your voice is damaged from all the screaming you’d done, cracking and frail. You stifle a cough and survey the land with frantic snaps of your orbs. This wasn’t your cove. 

Where were you? What had happened to the ship? To John? Your hand travels to your neck but lands on nothing. It’s like the world stops turning.

The necklace. 

“My name’s Kyle, Miss, but I’m just as well off being called Gaz—” Your hand snaps to his shoulder, wrenching him down in a violent slam to the sand; with a shove of your ailing body, you cross an arm over his chest to pin him. 

Brown eyes widen, and one hand easily raises in a placating manner. You don’t bother to look at the other, your head broken into bits of instances and images of horror.

“Where is it?” Your lips hiss out. You didn’t know you could make a sound like that. 

Kyle, dressed in a fine outfit of a Bookkeeper, furrowed his brows at you. He didn’t look off-put by your brashness, or by the fact that you were of the Merfolk. 

“I’m sorry, Ma’am…I’m not following. Where’s what, exactly?” There was a glinting at his throat, and you snatched at it with a glare and snarl of ‘thief’ on your tongue. 

A blade presses into your side and you freeze. Kyle stares up at you with a frown on his face, body tight. “I think you should let that go, Miss, yeah?” 

The metal discs are the same as John's, but they hold a different name entirely. 

“Kyle Garrick, Sergeant, 141st company under the King.”

“One Hundred and Forty-First?” You whisper in a hushed voice and the blade loosens from you. Mouth opening and closing, you forget for a moment what Kyle is. Your eyes go glossy with hope. “You know John?” 

Eyelids blink at you in astonishment and all at once the knife is sheathed at his hip once more. Gaz gapes, his slight stubble shifting on his face as he talks slowly. 

“Yes, I do…how do you know the Captain? No offense, but I didn’t peg him for the type to run off with…well…” he trails, chuckling. “Not run exactly, then, is it?” 

You glower and push back, flinching at your aches but waste no time in speaking frantically to the man as your tail flaps. If he was on the same ship as John was, they certainly knew each other well; Kyle had to assist you.

“Please, you need to help me,” The man’s face goes serious and he pushes himself up, “—there’s been a terrible event. John has been taken, don’t you understand?” Your hands grasp at his collar, forgetting to ask about the missing necklace in your mounting hysteria. “They took him. They’re bringing him back to the King and it’s all my fault!” 

You don’t know if it’s the pain or the fatigue, but your emotions spill from you in droves, silver tears falling like drips from a blacksmith's smelter to the beach of this foreign place. Your body feels unable to hold itself up—so much blood lost. 

Gaz gains a sheen of panic at your state, gripping your shoulders lightly above the given tunic. 

“Now, now, Ma’am, steady. You’ve lost a lot of blood, eh? We need to get you sorted.” But internally your words disturbed him. John had been taken? His Captain? And he had known a mermaid?

“I don’t need to be sorted,” you mock, shaking him, “I need my John back! And you’re going to help me.” 

Kyle gazes around awkwardly, clearing his throat and trying to comfort you as his upper half gets forced back and forth.  

“First,” he stops you with a firm squeeze on your shoulders, “we’re getting you stitched and wrapped, Ma’am. If what you’re telling me is real,” Gaz pauses, glancing at the sea lapping at your tail, “then I need to get in contact with the others.” 

Your body slightly sags, panting and shaking. While you should have asked who the others were, your adrenaline was too great to allow you to think above the fact that Kyle was going to help you. He had known John—that was enough for you to know he was a good person. 

“Easy,” the man mutters, face pulled in concern. There’s a moment of tense silence before Gaz shifts a hand to the pocket inside of his tweed frock coat, slipping to the side of his green notch vest. He blinks his brown eyes at you before he lightly takes John’s necklace from the depths of his clothes. Kyle presents them as your shoulders loosen with a small sliver of comfort. “I believe you were looking for this, yeah?” 

He spares a friendly, boyish, smile.

Your fingers brush his as you delicately take the metal up, fingertips weeping with torn flesh. Staring at them, you bring the item to your lips and kiss it gently after a moment of agony, a few more tears slipping down your cheeks. 

“Oh, John,” you whisper, “you fool, what have you done?” 

“I’ll be needing to move you, Ma’am,” Gaz clears his throat and looks back to the grass-coated road. The beach where you had washed up was near the bottom of a slight hill, and along with sand, there were a lot of pebbles. The wind was chilled. “I was just finishing up with a temporary binding when you woke. We can speak more when I get the larger wounds stitched.” 

You see his gaze fall down you once more. 

“I’d think there’s a lot to catch up on.” Shuffling John’s necklace over your head, you allow Kyle to take bandages from his Gladstone bag which he had brought down from the road with him. He says he found you on the beach unconscious not five minutes before you woke back up as he takes out John’s tunic strips before packing the wounds with fresh material. 

“You stopped?” You ask quietly, body shaking. “Why?” 

“Well, I left the same time that the Captain did,” he explains, looping fabric around your tail as you shudder and clench your teeth at the long cuts over your scales. Kyle spares you a glance before continuing. “Same reason too. The minute innocent beings were being hunted, everyone in the One Hundred and Forty-First deserted. They weren’t too happy with us, I’d imagine. I do what I can to help anyone, regardless of species.” 

Gaz pulls back and finishes up, brushing his hands on his folded legs and sighing. 

“We all separated and led our lives the best we could—got jobs, hid ourselves, the like.” While the story was fascinating, as John was rare to talk about the King or his service beyond a clenched jaw, you truly were suffering from blood loss.

Every moment it became harder to keep your upper-half vertical and your eyes open. Gaz’s words slurred in your eardrums as the sand under your hands got pushed back by pressure like a rock being dragged. Your head must have swayed, because the next moment you’re being lifted with a grunt and a steadying of feet.

“Can’t say I’ve ever carried a mermaid,” Kyle grumbles to himself, blinking down at your form as our head rests limply on his chest. “Certainly not one that knows Price of all people.”

You focus on your breathing as he ascends the hill, going slowly and holding your form tight so as not to drop you. While not John’s size by any means, the man was still strong in a more lean and lithe way where your Fisherman’s was upfront and bare with it. 

You’re carried down the trodden path to a lone house on the upper hill above the water, small and quaint, it’s only a single square room. 

Truly this event speaks to your luck—how on earth had you found perhaps one of the only men on the planet that knew John and sympathized with magical creatures?

Kyle sets you back on his bed softly, pillows pressed into indents of your head and cheek. 

“Alright then,” he sighs, “let's get this figured out, yeah?” 

You’re offered food and water, but all you care about is sleep. Your tail hangs off the end of the bed and your fins ache with torn skin. Without even looking at your scales, you know they’re damaged immensely. Most will be left with great scars. 

Merfolk could be called vain in their lifetime, and the sentiment wasn’t entirely untrue. You were beings of elegance and beauty—ethereal lustfulness hardwired into your DNA. Image was important to you, and this loss was great. 

But the loss of John hurt more than any torture someone could inflict on you; any wounds. You needed him back. 

As Gaz prompted you to tell your story, which you did with failing consciousness, your hand traveled to your necklace to grasp it tightly. Lips quivering. When the first push of the man’s needle entered your hard flesh, you never even felt it.

—

You awoke for the second time, once more, to the sound of speaking. 

“Well, he’s sure gotten up to it while we’ve been away! Fuckin’ bastard.” This accent didn’t belong to Gaz, and thus your eyelids pushed back with slight unease. Had John’s Sergeant sold you out? With a struggle, you blink back to reality only to find a pair of bright blue eyes stuck on you. 

For a moment you startle, those shades so similar to John’s that for a moment you had forgotten what had transpired. Then the pain in your tail strikes up and you balk back sharply. 

“Soap!” Gaz hisses, grabbing the large and built man away from the bed. “Get the hell away from her, would you? Christ, she’s been through enough without having to look at that face when she wakes up, Mate.” 

“What in the hell does that mean?” Soap, as he’d been introduced, was the epitome of a blacksmith—ash still on his square jaw and his large black apron tied at a stiff waist. His arms were as bulky as your head and while he was shorter than Gaz he made up for it in sheer muscle. 

Blue eyes darken with annoyance before they swivel back to you, but they lighten just the same when they spot your fear-spiked expression. 

“Sorry about that, Little Lady. Just curious, is all.” You swallow the saliva in your throat and turn to look at Gaz in question. “Not every day somethin’ like this happens.”

“Johnny ‘Soap’ MacTavish,” the man offers, rubbing at his neck apologetically. “Served with John and I. You can trust him.” 

You blink and turn back to Johnny, and, sure enough, around his neck were the common silver discs that Gaz and John wore over the tunic and apron. 

“A…” You try to remember what your Fisherman had told you about human customs. With a frown, you carefully extend a hand and hold it aloft while your tail rests and your other limb keeps you up. “A pleasure, Johnny.” 

A wide grin meets your eyes and a hand is clapped into your own; shaking it firmly as yours remains limp. 

“Ah, please, the pleasure’s all mine.” When his grip leaves you look down at the various stitches and thick wrappings around your body before thinning your lips and gazing back at Gaz. He stares and tilts his head when you lock eyes with him. 

“Thank you, Garrick. I…I owe you a large debt.” He’s already shaking his chin at you.

“Negative, Ma’am,” Kyle denies. “The only thing we need to be focusing on is getting the Captain back. Simon should be along by the evening.” 

“Sure the man’ll show?” Johnny raises a brow and stands to his full height, going over to the small table in the middle of the room and sitting down with a huff. He picks up a flagon and takes a sip of ale. “He’s far off cuttin’ stone.” 

“I sent a rider out and said it was urgent. He should be getting it about now, yeah?” 

“Well, hell, I’d sure hope so else we’re out of our favorite Ghost. Can’t have that.” You watch and stare at the ease these two converse with the other, years seem to bleed from their mouths like waves in water. They had it all figured out, and noticeably, they weren’t at all panicked. 

“How are the both of you so calm?” You can’t help but ask. Brown and blue turn to furrow their brows at you.

“They took the bloody Captain. Only person worse than that to steal away would be Simon.” A chuckle. “I’m more worried about the bastards themselves than him.” And it was left at that. 

At times throughout the day, Gaz would bring you bread to nibble on to help settle your stomach, water, and ale whenever you needed it. When the dryness of the air and the fireplace got too warm for you, Johnny would be the one to carry you down the hill to the water where you’d soak your wounds in the surf. In those moments you could finally take in the pure silence under the waves and let your anguish take hold.

But you always had to break the surface at some point, shimmy into the dry tunic that Soap offers with respectfully averted eyes, and let him carry you back with his bulky arms. 

As it always did, the water let your wounds heal far faster than a man’s, though the aches were still intense. 

John’s eyes would not leave you. His crown of stars or the lantern light on his face—the way he whisked you away from danger and put himself dead center into it. Keeping you to his large chest as he held aloft a sword in your honor.

 “...I think he loves the beast!” 

Oh, and you loved right back and you hadn’t told him. 

It’s hours upon hours later when the door is shoved open as you sit up in the bed; tail limp and dim on the floor below. You look up in shock at the man whose frame nearly takes up the entire doorway, shoulders wide and thighs vast under work pants and a large tunic, cowl over his head and clasped with a brooch at his left pec. Under shined a deep brown gaze and pale brows, but his entire lower face was covered by cloth. 

Intimidating, his visible expression was entirely blank. You wondered if perhaps a vampire had walked into this place without proper entry, but then you remembered the man Johnny and Gaz mentioned. 

Simon. Ghost. 

Well, he certainly fits the part, stone dust on his clothes and large boots stacked with scrapes. A Stonemason.

“There’s the man!” Johnny exclaims, raising his hand which has another cup of ale in it as he’d downed the other some time ago. 

“Where’s Price?” Deep was Simon’s voice, and he spares you a glance but nothing more. Gaze falling down your tail with hidden flickers of intrigue and wafting back up to stop at John’s necklace. His brows pull in as he turns. 

“Gone—taken to the King,” Gaz explains from where he leans against the fireplace, face serious. 

“Fuckin’ hell,” Simon grunts, walking in and closing the door behind him. “Where was he last?” It’s mildly amusing to you that he doesn’t seem bothered or even surprised by a mermaid in Gaz’s home. 

“Just off Harpies Nest,” Johnny pipes in, itching at shaved sides of his scalp. “Where the old beasts used to fly from.” 

“I’m guessing she’s the reason for that, then?” Everyone was anxious to act, even you. These men were close, and while circumstance had forced them away from one another the loyalties still lay. 

“Affirmative. Price’s been in good company, seems.” A stale glare is sent his way and he chuckles and puts up his hands. 

“Is there anything we can do?” You ask, looking at each in turn. Seeming to still hold that ingrained ranking that all men in the service do, Johnny and Gaz look to Simon. Brown eyes blink slowly, turning to look at you in a narrowed thought.

After a while, he speaks in a monotone.

“They’ll be bringing ‘em to the castle to stand trial. We’ve already lost a day’s time and there’ll be no ship that can sail as fast as we need it to.”

“By land?” Gaz wonders. Johnny’s shaking his head.

“How do you expect we get the Lady through that?” Eyes turn to your lack of legs. Body stiff, you huff and grit your teeth. If they thought you weren’t going along, that was foolish of them.

“I can swim to the docks,” you pause, “but you’ll have to tell me the way, for I do not know it.” 

John had talked about docks—places ships went to rest. You’re sure you can make it, even like this. You had to. 

Johnny stares before he chuckles twice, sharing a glance with the others and motioning to you. “I like ‘er.”

Gaz and Simon look at one another with a side-eye, before Kyle sighs and shakes his head. Simon hooks his thumbs into his pants and huffs out, “Sure you’re up for that?” 

“I’m helping John.” Pushing, you meet those brown eyes head-on and steel yourself. “I need him back.”

There’s no further fight, and Ghost takes everything you say at face value. “Fine.” 

And that was that.

—

The plan was so stupid you wondered if these men had gone brain-dead, but inside the castle dungeons, John had no way of knowing that. 

He frowned deeply as his pounding skull tipped back to connect with the cobblestone wall, blood dried over the right side of his face. A growl on his lips as the chains keep his hands high above him and hanging as his backside stays seated on the floor. His limbs had long since gone numb, circulation cut out in an uncomfortable state of numbness. 

But inside of him, there was a sense of accomplishment despite everything. He’d gotten you away from dirty hands—away from hooks. Away from danger. 

John could die happy with that.

On the ship, before he’d been brought to the castle, the crew had tied him to the mainsail mast with a ragged rope that had skinned his flesh in just minutes of the rocking waves. They’d taken his vessel as well, and all of his belongings were confiscated in the docks. From there it had been amused jabs at his stomach with fists and knife-throwing practice. 

John had cuts along the sides of his arms and the meat of his thighs—clothes shredded and torn from blades. His forehead had a long gash from the scalp to the temple, dried now but pulling with red aggression. 

The fisherman hums under his breath and thinks only of you. 

It was a fact that you had brought music into his life; a melody of waves and scales that could not be denied. Songs that sounded like sea-foam and a lapping of a tail across the water. When he’d seen you that day from behind the black rocks, John had lost a piece of himself to your wide eyes and tilted head. That spark of connection. 

He had never been so thankful for choosing a new place to cast his nets, because he’d unwittingly caught the greatest creature he ever could have—one people have been running after for years. 

You. 

John’s lips pull in a tiny smile, eyes going soft. Above him his chains rattle and his arms flinch, wounds burning, but for the life of him, he can’t stop smiling. Wherever you were, he hoped you were safe and that he gave you the best chance of survival. He hoped you could forgive him.

Footsteps echo off the ground, and John looks over to the iron bars of his cell stiffly, mask re-falling to his stern face like a curtain. Two guards in armor clink down the hallway, expressions hidden by hoods and cloth. One produces a rusted key from his belt and slips it into the door, the metal rattling as it gets forced back and forth until the telltale click signifies the opening of the lock. 

“Finally letting me out, then?” John speaks dryly, voice holding a rasp. 

No one answers, and soon John’s chains are dropped and his arms seized. Yanked up, the fisherman grunts in pain as his legs drag behind him across the cobble—being taken somewhere. Probably, if John had to guess, the noose. 

Desertion isn’t something you can get out of shy of a life sentence; to hell or to a cell was entirely up to the King. And the King wasn’t entirely fond of John and his One Hundred and Forty-First. 

John was forced out into the open courtyard, a dichotomy of brightly flowering bushes and expensive finery to the platform placed in the very middle. The brunette's lips thinned at the sight of the large and imposing body made of wood and rope belonging to the gallows, a grim reaper of earthly material. There would be no great fight from him, no roar of a death rattle, just a kicking of his feet and tight wheezes, but no more. 

He knows his final thoughts will be of you—what you’re doing right now, how you’ll live the rest of your life. John hopes you don’t cry for him. 

The two guards shove him forward, and already a crowd has formed below the viewing platform for the monarch himself, who sits in all of his finery. Wyvern leather for his gloves, unicorn horn for a scepter, and…John’s eyes go tight, scales that make up a crown of opal and gold. Vibrant scales. 

Unmistakingly Merfolk, anyone who’s met one of the species would know it. It has the same shine as the one John holds in the pouch on his belt; the fisherman clings to the fact that, against all of it, you were still with him in even a small sense. You’d be with him. 

So John grits his teeth and glares up to the dias defiantly as the guards hold him under the noose, shoving his head to the side to grab the rope. He feels no fear.

“Fuckin’ watch it, Muppet,” the fisherman hisses, snapping his head to the side to stare into the glinting brown eyes from under the hood. He pauses, brows furrowing. “What…?” 

As his hands are forced behind him, they’re not tied as the excited murmuring from the crowd begins, the King’s forward-leaning attention. 

They’re given a knife. 

John hides his surprise and looks over to the other guard as he fits the noose over his neck. Amused blue, and around his neck the glint of silver discs. 

“Oh, bloody hell, you’re takin’ the piss,” the former Captain growls lowly. He knows those damned eyes, just as he knows his former Lieutenant’s. 

MacTavish and Simon. 

“Chin up, Captain,” Johnny jokes under his breath hidden by cloth. “Show’s about to start. Let’s give ‘em a proper scare, yeah.” 

Blue eye glare, but they lack the venom. A barred-teeth smile grows. How had this happened? Johnny steps back and goes to his side, the wood under their feet creaking. The crowd falls silent, looking to the King for the verdict. 

The King’s fingers raise and John memorizes his face in that instant…because it’s only then that he sees Gaz.

Gaz, who was on the upper terrace of the courtyard’s walls, holding a musket with the stock trained to his cheek; body still and ready—tutored to a perfectly motionless trance. There aren’t any guards to be seen near him. It’s a moment of pure silence, a ruling energy. The crowd is waiting for the King to verbalize an answer that he’s never able to give. 

As the monarch’s lips open there is an eardrum-bursting boom that shatters the call for John’s doom and instead spells his own in his very castle from one of his former men. A poetic ending, John would say, but he’s unable to verbalize it as he’s suddenly falling through the gallows hatch as Simon reems on the handle. 

“Knife!” It’s all the Ghost yells in warning.

With a rush of air, there’s a split second to cut the rope before it breaks his neck, and with a snapping motion, John perfects it in an instant—instinct as sharp as any blade that could be put into his hand. He hits the ground with a loud grunt of pain and struggles to sit up until Johnny and Simon jerk at him from where they’d jumped down as well. Not a second too soon, as lead balls from rival guns were already hitting the gallows. 

Not all the guards were dead, then, and apparently, the three had known that would be a possibility.

John would have to scold them later. 

“What in the hell is going on?!” The fisherman barks, but he’s being dragged before he shoves their hands off of him and follows to where they beeline into the fleeing crowd.

“What?” Johnny belts out laughter. “No ‘thank you?’ We just saved your neck!”

“Left!” Simon shouts, and although John’s body can’t take much more, they all dart into the cover of the castle walkways. “Make for the docks—the Sergeant’s meeting us there.”

“Bloody fucking Christ!” John growls but quickly goes onto the most important topic. “She’s behind this, isn’t she?” Johnny’s smirk only confirms it.

“Proper girl you’ve got there, Gaz found her on the shore. Else we’d never have heard about it all before you were dead and gone.” John blinks at him. “Getting reckless without us, now?”

The former Captain ignores the remark. “Where is she?” 

“Oi!” Ghost hisses, looking over his shoulder as the three hurry on as shouting rings from behind them. “Get your head in the game. Focus on not getting shot, yeah?” 

Brown meets blue. 

“You’ll see ‘er soon.” Simon ends, dead eyes shifting to a form that rampages through the hallway behind them. “Behind!” He calls loudly, and John ducks just as a knife is thrown with pinpoint accuracy. A sound of a body hitting the floor echoes over the distant screaming and calls of alarm. 

The King is dead. 

All of the men reach their destination by sheer luck and the knowledge of how to use a blade, cobblestone leading to open streets and back alleys. Finally, the wide stretch of sea was visible, and a shadow slinked out of a corner quickly. 

“Hell,” Gaz blinks at them, “do you think I’ll ever be let back into the castle?” 

Johnny pants a laugh. “You’ll be lucky to get into the province, ya sneaky Bastard. Fine fuckin’ shot.” 

Simon looks at them. “Gaz, Johnny, get to it.” 

They’re by the open water of the dock, long wooden walkways stretching out with ships shifting in the waves. John wonders if his boat is here in the back of his mind, but his eyes are already combing the waves greedily in search of you. 

Were you here? Oh, he hoped you weren’t. You’d be placing yourself in the middle of a very real and present danger. 

“Get to what?” John questions, looking at each man in turn. “What ‘ave you planned, eh? Seems I’ve missed the meeting where we decide to assassinate the bloody monarch in broad daylight.” 

Gaz places a hand on his shoulder as he shimmies past. “Best to leave the heavy lifting to the ones who can stand fully, Captain.”

“Aye,” Johnny confirms. “You’ll want to be here more than anywhere, bet ya.” 

Simon shares a look with the blacksmith and grabs John by one shoulder, leading him to the water as Johnny takes the other. The brunette blinks quickly in confusion and grunts an expletive. 

“Get your hands off of me you pair of—!”

“Have fun!” Johnny and Simon both shove him into the water with a final push and dart off like wisps. 

Water rushes into his ears, covering his head and soaking his clothes before it drags him under. John’s arms flailed to propel him back to the surface. A jolt later, his head is breaching the water with a venomous glare and a barked order on his lips to a vacant audience. The boys had already sprinted off to who knows where.

“Son of a…” John trials, weak legs kicking to keep him afloat. Something brushes his thigh as water drips from his nose, cleaning away the blood with a reddish tint to the liquid.

The fisherman startles, head snapping down just as your hands grasp at his abdomen, sliding up as you press your lips deeply into his in one swift motion. He gasps, grip instinctually moving to hold onto the small of your back. 

You press into him tightly, pushing every emotion into the locking of your mouths with desperation and longing. Sighing deeply into the kiss, John melts into you as your tail brushes his legs, torn fins visible and shimmering stitches pulling at flesh. Scales glint somewhat brighter under the waves, water dripping along your shoulders and wetting your hair. 

John brings you closer when he realizes it’s your form around him, eyes fluttering closed and fingers weaving behind the base of your skull. It’s as if the world stills for that quick and reverent second as if everything is right. The both of you break the kiss with soft eyes, and after a moment of staring your chest releases a chuckle; hands coming up to capture your fisherman’s cheeks, weaving through those beard hairs once more.

The brunette stares at you and lays his forehead into yours, not knowing what to say. A smile plays on his lips.

“...It seems my fisherman had more of a reckless side than I anticipated,” you speak for him, whispering into the air. Your eyes flicker over the cuts and bruises visible on his pale flesh and a flash of fear alights in your expression. “Oh, John…What have they done to you?”

“Just scratches,” the man reassures delicately. “It’s alright, Love. I’ll live.” 

But you both know this conversation can’t happen here. With a few more pecks of kisses to his lips, you ask in an ethereal voice, “Do you trust me?”

Your hand is locked to his wrist, pulling him along the waters as your head tilts at him and tail sliding along his flesh. 

John wastes no time. “Of course.” 

Lips flicker to a small, loving, grin and then you drag him under the water. 

—

“Do they hurt?” He asks you carefully, running a calloused hand along the tears in your fins you know will never heal fully. You sit on the rocks below Gaz’s home, the water still dripping off of both of your bodies. 

Out farther in the water the three other men are sailing back in John’s fishing boat, a few minutes out. You blink down at him and move a hand to shift his jaw upward to you, humming.

“Not when you touch them like that,” confessing, you keep close to him, held tightly under the crook of his arm and breathing in that scent of rope and wood oil. You practically vibrate with comfort, all of your worries able to be put aside at last. 

John looks down at you and chuckles, putting a deep kiss on your scalp and taking a deep inhale. 

“Cheeky,” he teases. You smile.

“And yours?” Your voice speaks out in question as the water brushes your tail. 

The man peels back to look down at you slowly. “Already better…I owe you, Sweetheart.” 

Huffing, you shake your head, “You owe me nothing. The only reason you were there was because of me.” 

John’s brows furrow, taking your chin in his fingers and tilting your head back to him. He stares into your eyes for a long while until your face starts to heat with emotion, blinking up at him innocently. His blues dart over the healing cuts and marks with hidden emotion.

“I’d do it again,” John whispers. “A million times over, you hear? I’d be a bloody fool not to.” 

He kisses you as you both wait in the setting twilight for the others, bloody and beaten—more scar tissue than anything else—but still your John. 

“Thank you,” he mutters into your lips, and then again when he nips at your flesh. The man plays with his necklace at your collarbone as he traces patterns in your scales and smirks when you shiver. 

He wonders how he got so lucky when the others anchor the boat near the shore, hopping off and wading the rest of the way to the beach. John kisses your forehead and says he’d be right back. 

You watch him with glinting eyes as he walks over to his men, taking each in a heartfelt handshake and conversing honestly. Your eyes blink at the care they display for one another and raise a hand when they peel off, back up to Gaz’s home to rest. 

They reciprocate and disappear atop the hill. 

What’s he doing? You ask as you watch John climb aboard his vessel and rummage around his fishing barrels, opening some and tossing the tops to the deck. Hands shifting along the rocks, you can’t hide the amusement or affection in your eyes at the sight of his ramping annoyance. What was he looking for? 

Your fingers go up to play with his necklace and watch. 

You can’t say you feel much heartache at the loss of your cove—even with the king dead, you were still hunted for your scales—though you had grown to see it in a new light. The place was only a home when John was there, and you knew wherever you went as long as he was there it would be alright. 

The both of you wouldn’t let anything happen to one another. 

John comes back carrying something tucked in cloth, a small parcel held in one hand and longer than it is wide. Your interest is immediately piqued, curiosity straining your eyes. 

He holds it out to you with a mischievous glint and a smirk. 

“Go on,” John motions. Blinking at him, your brows furrow as you carefully take the item from his hands, settling it in your lap before you shift the cloth away. 

Your fingers go to cover your mouth, small gasp entering the air. 

It was a golden box, engraved with movements that resemble lace and waves—shimmering in the low light. 

“John,” you stutter, “what is…?”’

“Open it,” the man insists, kneeling down in front of you as if his muscles didn’t ache. “It’s the reason I was late that day.” John grunts, rubbing at the bottom of his beard and watching intently; crinkles beside his eyes. 

You stare for a moment with burning tear ducts before you grasp ahold of the lid and open it after running a digit over the make. 

Inside sits blue velvet and, strangely, your own scales, but atop that…the blinding gold of a pair of twin cuff bracelets—stones the same shade as your tail. It was perhaps the most elegant piece of jewelry you had ever seen. 

For a solid minute you’re rendered speechless, mouth opening and closing as your tail hangs limp in the low tide. Chucking, John takes the pieces out and your ears twitch to the sound of your scales clacking together like glass. 

“Why would you…” You can’t make sense of it.

John slips them over your wrists and you gape in wonder. They fit just perfectly. 

You look up into your Fisherman’s face and feel tears drip down your chin. A hard hand comes to wipe them away as you laugh through a sniffle. 

“Do you like them, then, Love?” He asks lowly, beard pulled back in a smile. 

“Yes,” you say immediately, giggling. “How could I not? John, they’re lovely. Far too beautiful for me.” 

The former Captain grunts and his brows pull in, frowning. “Now why would you say that?” He brings your hands to his lips and kisses your knuckles. “You’re the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen. Can’t make me change my mind on that, eh?” 

Your eyes bore into him, lips parted. After a moment your face feels like it’s on fire and you cover your cheeks. 

John laughs loudly, grabbing your arms and lightly squeezing the flesh before taking your grip back down to your lap. You smile so widely you’re afraid your face might crack open.

“No need to hide,” he hums. “Let me see that face.” 

“You’re good to me, John.” His face softens, wrinkles fall away, and his chest swells with pride. You kiss his lips and whisper, “I bare my soul to you.”

It wasn’t an ‘I love you’ but something far more precious. 

The man’s face deepens with devotion, gruff figure more than easily leaning over yours as you’re carefully laid back to the tiny pebbles behind you—a hand behind your head and at the swell of what would be a hip.

In the darkening night, the sun shines its dying light across the waves just like the extending fingers of John’s firm grip; dragging you into him as sea-currents would. Wrapping you both in kelp and a salty grave. His voice is the grating of sand, the slide of a rope across a wooden deck. 

“Then I’ll take care of it for as long as I live.”

Your fisherman damns you to a crypt of land and air, and you couldn’t worship it more. To live and to die beside him is to have existed just as you should have.

TAGS:

@luuvbuzz, @emerald-valkyrie, @anna-banana27, @blueoorchid, @cryingnotcrying, @writeforfandoms, @homicidal-slvt, @jade-jax, @frazie99, @elmoees, @littlemisstrouble, @alpineswinter, @phoenixhalliwell, @idocarealot, @lavalleon, @facelessmemories, @h-leigh, @20forty9, @glitter-anon-asks, @emily-who-killed-a-man, @neelehksttr, @aeneanc, @escapefromrealitysm, @i-d-1-0-t, @pparcxysm, @hawkscanendme, @caramlizedtomatos, @konigsleftkidney, @sanfransolomitatm, @maelstrom007, @jemandderkeinenusernamenfindet, @pheobees, @glitterypirateduck, @uselsshuman, @fan-of-encouragement, @halfmoth-halfman, @ghostlythunderbird, @I-inkage, @pukbadger, @kopatych11, @0nceinabluem00n, @cocrorapop, @knightofsexyness, @abnormalgeil, @smallseastone, @jacegons, @330bpm-whiplash, @simon-rileys-housewife, @4-atsu, @tiredmetalenthusiast

[rainbow-scarab]

Hallownest Symbols, the Ancient Civilization, and the Pale King

Sooo. Since I made my post on Hallownest symbols I've had some new insights.

The Hallownest symbol, with its lined oval and three sets of wings, predates the kingdom as it was under the Pale King and White Lady. It can be found on arcane eggs.

Lemm, on arcane eggs: This civilisation may claim itself the first, but something else did exist within this place before Hallownest. Each egg offers a narrow glimpse into that forgotten age.

It's not just the arcane eggs though. The symbol can also be found in the Abyss, on the lighthouse. Sorta.

You see, the lighthouse isn't just one structure--it's two. It's an older, crumbling structure....and then the new shiny construction that the Pale King added on top.

And looking at the older structure, the platforms themselves have the Hallownest symbol on it. Oval with wings.

Another detail I've noticed in the Abyss is that this structure isn't the only one. It can be seen in the background around the void sea:

Just, further cementing the thought that the old crumbling building beneath the shiny new top is not a construction under the Pale King, but instead something quite ancient. Just one of many buildings, a conveniently tall structure for the Pale King to repurpose into a lighthouse.

So what does this mean?

Various sources in the game point to the Pale King having portrayed himself as the creator of Hallownest. Lemm, in his quote above. And some more examples:

Lore tablet in King's Pass: Higher beings, these words are for you alone. Beyond this point you enter the land of King and Creator. Step across this threshold and obey our laws. Bear witness to the last and only civilisation, the eternal Kingdom. Hallownest

Hunter's Journal, on wingmoulds: The bugs of Hallownest believed that their King created this world and everything in it. For what purpose, I wonder? Were his subjects companions, or toys, or children? Such a mind seems unknowable.

The developer notes in the game also indicate that the Pale King wanted to get rid of other gods:

The moth tribe were (perhaps) descended from Radiance. However, the King convinced them somehow to seal Radiance away. I guess so he could rule Hallownest with his singular vision, as a monarch/god with no other gods.

The dev notes are not canon and it's clear that they were never intended to be seen by others. But I think there's something to be said at least for him attempting a "singular vision". Uniting Hallownest under one rule, portraying himself as creator, creating a certain order. Some more quotes:

Bardoon: For quiet retreat did I climb up here, away from spitting creatures. Ormmph... Yes. High up. Away from simple minds, lost to light. Theirs is a different kind of unity. Rejection of the Wyrm's attempt at order.

Mask Maker, reacting to Ghost having King's Brand: No bug has ever laid claim to this whole. Even the beasts knew their limits and bound their realm at Nest's edge. It is the ancient caste that made attempt at such vast rule. Hallownest's ruin reflects well those fared attempts.

I believe Mask Maker is referring to the Ancient Civilization having attempted to rule over all of Hallownest. There's a possibility they're referring to Hallownest under the Pale King, as "ancient" does not necessarily mean what fans call the Ancient Civilization (and indeed most instances of the word "ancient" refer to Hallownest under the Pale King). But "attempts" being in the plural, I think Mask Maker intends to draw a parallel here between the two civilizations.

Speaking of King's Brand...

I believe now this is the best symbol of the Pale King we have. His original symbol.

As I noted in my first post on Hallownest symbols, the Hallownest seal seems the most associated with the Pale King when it has the crown on it. And the few actual depictions of him, in statues, idols, and shrines, all have his crown, but lack wings. Save for the glowing silhouette of him in Ogrim's dream battle, there are no depictions of him with wings. He may lack wings entirely, or have some form of artificial wings.

In fact, I find it quite interesting how you can pick up monarch wings as an item.

They are described by the game as being made of "ethereal matter". The game manual calls them "wings of a monarchfly". It's possible that the Pale King had such wings as seen here, not part of his original body, but made somehow.

And, just to look at the symbols again...

If one were to superimpose the old Hallownest Seal from the time of the Ancient Civilization on top of the King's Brand, you'd get the current Hallownest Seal. Oval Bug body, wings, crown, and tail.

So, what I'm thinking, the impression that I'm getting....

The Pale King came to Hallownest. He saw all the evidence of the Ancient Civilization, which had already fallen. He took on bug form (which may have happened before or after he saw the symbol and other evidence of the ancient civ, but I have to wonder if witnessing Hallownest's history and symbols influenced even this decision to become small). He, for reasons beyond the purpose of this post, decided he wanted to rule Hallownest as king and "creator" (which again may or may not have been part of his decision to be reborn).

He established his kingdom. He took on aspects of preexisting Hallownest, essentially claiming the legacy of the Ancient Civilization as his own. He took on bug form, and gave himself wings, to match this old image, as if it was always about him.

He established his palace in the Ancient Basin. He had access to the Abyss, mostly closed off from the rest of the populace. He studied the void. But the bugs of the Ancient Civilization had a different attitude about void, as indicated by Lemm in the Hunter's Journal entry on the void idol:

Inspired or mad, those ancient bugs. They devoted their worship to no lord, or power, or strength, but to the very darkness itself.

The Pale King instead was worshipped as a god by his people. He instead treated the void as something to control. He studied it. He tested it. He created void constructs to guard his palace. He used it, to stake the future of his entire kingdom on.

I could go on and on about this. And I intend to. But this is as far as I will go in this post, meant to be an update to my last post on symbols. But, I already have a long post I put together months ago, didn't post, and just have to update with new thoughts. So hopefully, I'll be expanding on all the implications here for Hallownest history soon enough.

[mcflymemes]

FANTASY SETTINGS / LOCATIONS PROMPTS *  fantasy location based prompts for starters, adjust as necessary

[ 01 ] under the shelter of an ancient oak tree in the depths of a dark forest

[ 02 ] a rickety bridge hanging over a massive waterfall

[ 03 ] a tiny village bakery, the shelves stocked with freshly baked goods

[ 04 ] standing beside a massive magical portal. who knows where it might lead?

[ 05 ] the darkest depths of a dragon's lair, gold glittering at your feet

[ 06 ] a vast, empty field with a bright blue sky overhead

[ 07 ] the space between two shelves stuffed with magical tomes and old leatherbound journals

[ 08 ] a rowdy village tavern crowded with drunk, singing patrons

[ 09 ] a winding path in the dark that leads to nowhere

[ 10 ] the crumbling remains of a burnt-out homestead

[ 11 ] another realm, unknown to you, the lights bright enough to blind you

[ 12 ] a tiny tent in the middle of the woods, the fading embers of your campfire still glowing just outside the door

[ 13 ] a tidy apothecary shop crowded with labeled jars and bowls of supplies

[ 14 ] the fiery lair of your mortal enemy

[ 15 ] the hallowed halls of an ancient sanctuary, stone walls covered in vines and light peeking in through cracks in the ceiling

[ 16 ] a civilized throne room, lanterns lit on the walls leading up to the throne itself

[ 17 ] a dewy meadow perfect for a picnic

[ 18 ] a valley packed with tents, knights , and weapons all readying themselves for a major battle

[ 19 ] a bright, snowy glen

[ 20 ] a strange village doused in darkness, the streets teeming with cloaked figures and suspicious individuals

[ 21 ] a chilly cave hidden behind a waterfall

[ 22 ] in the midst of a dangerous battle, bandits attacking from all sides

[ 23 ] at the foot of a massive, venerated shrine, one that's been forgotten by time and worn down with age

[ 24 ] a busy village market, shopkeepers shouting their prices and selling their wares to curious passerby

[ 25 ] a magical greenhouse with glowing plants and precious, healing herbs

[syrma-sensei]

→ Love Underwater.

gif credit.

pairing: namor of talokan x queen!reader.

rating: fluff.

warning: spoilers for black panther: wakanda forever.

The King lets out a light grunt when you slip his large necklace off after you took his cape off of his shoulders, revealing the gills on the two crooks of his neck. He tilts his head, cracking the bones of his neck, and you giggle when his lips graze the knuckles of your fingers. Then, you click each of his arm bracelets open, removing and putting them on the adorned tray for the servants to pick up later when you're done.

You massage the muscles of his arms and shoulders, and he groans approvingly. Hands trailing down to his abdomen, unclasping his large belt from around his refined waist. You never let the servants undress the King when he retires to his chambers; a job you've taken it upon yourself since the day you married the King of Talokan; a sweet and intimate gesture of a wife to her husband. When you're done, Ku'kul'kan whisks you playfully to his lap while he's sitting on the large bed. He kisses your neck fondly, while you kiss the crown of his head, then you rest your cheek on his shoulder.

“Namora came to me today, my love.” You say idly, “Again.”

“Oh,” He raises an eyebrow, “Did she?”

“Yes.” You answer, drawing your head back so you can look at his face, “She's expressed her worry about you, my King.”

The latter regards you with gentle eyes, “And you share the same sentiment as well?”

You cup his cheek, your palm pressing lightly on the three marks left by the three scars.

In the recent weeks, the King has spent most of his time drawing the murals at his memorabilia cave —his sacred shrine as you call it— where you're used to watch him flicking his brush nimbly against the wall, recoding history. The latest of his works is The Battle Between The Serpent God and the Black Panther, the first time your husband lost.

“Our King chose peace over slaughter.” You told Namora, when came to you sulking, in her rough way of speeech, about her king cousin, your husband. The seasoned warrioress still can't digest the defeat of Talokan — of her king... god. In all honesty, neither could you, but as the queen, it's your duty to calm your subjects' qualms down, even if you have some of your own.

You glance down at his wrapped ankle, the slightest frown on your face; you've never seen your husband wounded in such a grotesque way. Despite your displeasure, the King seems to wear it with pride. Your eyes flit back to his face again.

“I did.” You answer frankly, “But not anymore. My trust in your judgement never wavers, my King.”

Ku'kul'kan cradles your cheeks in his warm hands, pressing a smooth kiss on your forehead, “Sometimes, I wish they had a piece of your wisdom, my love.”

You hold his hands, pressing kisses to his palms. “You flatter me, my King.”

“I only speak the truth, my Queen.” He smiles, thumbs gently stroking your cheeks.

Even after hundred years of marriage, you can't prevent the blush from smearing your cheeks red, and your husband laughs, flicking your cheek with his fingers.

“But the Panther Princess ought to be true to her words.” You say stubbornly. “Should she break them, and I'll be the one to bring her head on a spike,”

Ku'kul'kan smiles. “I'm counting on that.”

[queenendless]

🎆❣️A Future Bright (Adult!SatoSugu x Adult!Fem!Reader ft Various JJK)❣️🎆

A/n: So short cause I have officially run out of JJK fuel. It might not be the best but I wanted to get something out today so sorry about that. S2 is done. I will miss it and writing for this show. But I need a long ass break from JJK. Like 5 months. Make sense to me.

Referring to everyone by their first names in this, side ships, mainly poly SatoSugu x Adult!Fem!Reader.

And thnx u to everyone whose followed, liked, reblogged and enjoyed my JJK fan content these past few months. Imma work on other anime fanfic content after I take a break. Tbh? I wanna write for BNHA Hawks. He's growing on me. And maybe Demon Slayer stuff with Tengen and his wives. Idk yet, we'll see.

PLEASE DON'T PLAGARIZE STEAL COPY TRANSLATE AND/OR REPOST MY FANFIC WORK. Rather reblog like and follow please and thnx u.

Booths and stalls lined up both sides of various roads.

Rows of lanterns hung from the treelines to the lampposts.

Droves of people flocked. From wearing kimonos to just plain snuggly attire to battle the coldness.

Praying at the shrines to make wishes for the coming year came first.

After that, chaos ensued.

A squealing Nobara hurried over to embrace her lifelong friends Fumi-chan and Saori-chan before introducing them to Maki who was keeping it cool to Nobara's admiration.

Kento brushes something off Yu's scarred cheek only for the younger man to kiss his stern partner fully on the mouth.

A teasing Mai and Momo along with a reluctant but curious Kasumi dragging a stubborn blushing Kokichi off to doll him up with various trinkets and hats they spotted at various booths.

Ieiri and Utahime trying to catch some goldfish at one of those booths. Utahime shouting out her constant success at catching them fishes; her competitiveness shining through, and Ieiri calmly cheering her wife on.

Yuji laughed while Megumi and Junpei smiled at his radiant expression while chowing down on barbecue skewers together.

That was long before your salmon haired boi yelled out in alarm as a heated Todo chased him in his fervent pursuit to drag his brother off to see the Takada-chan's New Year's Eve live special screening at Shibuya crossing.

Noritoshi eating a kebab as Yuki filmed the whole chase beside him, aimed at Choso as he let Yuji jump into his arms and speed off with Todo right at their heels, dust clouds left in their wake.

Riko and Misato shooting darts at a gaming booth all to get the familiar looking, long as hell, rainbow dragon plush to the girls delight.

Atsuya dragged his bae Hiromi by his collar into the nearest bar just to get away from your group and drink to their retired hearts content.

Masamichi and Yoshinobu sharing sake in the place across from said bar.

Yuta kissed both Rika and Toge on their stuffed cheeks as their mouths were full of sweets; mochi cheeks he spotted in his mesmerized gaze.

Right before Panda, carrying plushies by the armful, dumped his winnings all over his ecstatic buddies.

Spotting Toji and Shiu amiss the crowd, eyeing his son as his protective brother instincts creaked out as he played tug of war with Tsumiki who was stubbornly set on kissing a dopey grinning Junpei some more as her lipstick marked his rosey cheek.

Toji snorted at the sight before being dragged off by the arm by Shiu, opting to get a better view, a less crowded spot at that.

Nanako and Mimiko running around with sparklers lite.

Tears filled up your eyes to the brim.

Seeing so much happiness.

So much positivity.

All amassing here.

All in this moment.

Together.

Your mind flashed.

What could have been …

Buildings sliced and diced to mince.

Magma erupts from the streets, encasing all in its range.

A circle of darkness that continues to grow.

No lights.

No life.

Barred from all.

You were getting caught up in your mind too much lately.

Thinking too much, wandering in too deep, letting intrusive thoughts cloud the light.

Your knees trembled, your grip slipping, you wrap around your belly, prepared to not let it get the brunt of the fall.

“Y/n!”

His long raven locks flowed in the breeze. His almond brown eyes are so vibrant and sharp and alive.

“Sugu!” You weeped immediately into his charcoal robes, grasping handfuls of his front, alarming him tremendously.

“Y/n! Be careful! What's wrong!?”

“I'm just so happy we're all together celebrating tonight!” Your waterworks hit him right in the face as he led you two to a bench to rest your bloated sore self.

“Tiredness, mood swings, they do come with pregnancy, love.” Suguru calmly explained as you clung to him, pulling your legs up to rest on the space left on the bench.

“Perhaps we should take you home early. I am terribly sorry if we pushed you too much with coming here … jeez. Now where did Satoru go this time?”

Warping right by your side nearly gave you a heart attack. Even still, you were never quite prepared for Toru's spontaneity.

Getting down on one knee, Satoru tenderly caressed and smooched your clothed bump. “Right here~!”

“Toru!” You yanked the man up by his sleeve, having him sit beside you as well as he draped your legs over his lap as he let you cuddle him and weep in his neck.

His shades titled down to reveal his devoted gaze as he carefully pulled you atop his lap, nuzzling your head as he exchanged smooches with Suguru. “Aww, wifey. It's okay. We're here. Just think. A new year. New hijinks. New possibilities!”

Suguru's head rested on your shoulder as his heated breath made you mewl. “And a new addition to our family.”

Viewing the kids all animated, the adults mingling, the buzz in the air, it all helped to ease the unrest in your hormonal self.

“I hope we can continue living out our somewhat sense of peace in the new year.” You murmured, humming as they gently smothered you in their plush chests and secure arms.

“Agreed.” Their giant sculpted hands felt your bump together, wistfully grinning as you smiled shedding tears of joy.

An upbeat song blared out through the speakers.

Next thing you know, few turned to many dancing.

Lost in paradise.

For a dance mob has formed.

Yugi, returning out of the blue, took the lead, bopping with his usual upbeat finesse.

Megumi wasn't dancing, more like bashfully scratching the back of his head, too shy to look anyone in the eye, until a beaming Yuji had him, helping his boyfriend loosen up.

Nobara twirled and swirled, tugging her girls in to all get in sync and flaunting their beautiful strong selves.

And Gojo, in all his glory, was swaying with style, cause of course he wanted to get down most of all. Yuta, Yuji, Megumi, even the twins flanked both his sides, strutting their stuff.

From Takuma to Choso to even Panda, everyone you knew found the groove. From found family to your work buddies. Even the tipsy adults. Even the former assassin and his handler buddy. Even a well disguised Nobuko who had her bodyguards on standby also in disguise warily kept their eyes on the heart eyed Aoi Todo.

The dancing flash mob you never expected to happen did in fact happen.

They clapped, they swayed, they spun, they did it all!

The ships sailed as many familiar faces knew how to dance so acrobatically well. Leave the sight to the imagination.

Fireworks began littering the sky.

The billboard's timer struck 00:00.

Cheers and claps rang as embraces were exchanged.

You giggled as Suguru Geto swept you up in his arms, cupping the back of your head and your cheek to kiss you passionately.

You just had to ask.

“Where would I be without all of you?”

Satoru warped again back to you just to smirk at your jump scare. “Probably bored out of your mind.” You and Suguru shut your white haired husband up by slapping his shoulders to his snickering amusement.

“It goes both ways, Satoru.”

“Aw, I love you too Suguru~” He pulled his shades up to rest on his head as those Six Eyes glowed with love for the growing life in your belly you three made together. “All of you.”

You two peppered kisses all over Satoru's laughing face as the rest of your found family danced the first night of the new year away.

[vampyrsm]

‣‣ COR UNUM: CHAPTER FOUR | IZANAGI

‣‣ Synopsis: Our tale continues once again with blood that taints the water, and a name is revealed in the midst of battle. Who will win, the forgotten Shogun's daughter or one of the most powerful Samurai of Japan?

‣‣ Main Masterlist | AO3 ‣‣ Pairing: Sukuna x Reader ‣‣ Word Count: est. 8k ‣‣ Warnings: Blank blogs & Minors DNI. Dead Dove: Do Not Eat. Cannibalism, set in the Early-Heian Period, trueform!Sukuna, graphic descriptions of dead bodies, descriptions of murder, gore, lots of death, era-typical violence & views, reader knows how to use weaponry.

It had been another week since you were allowed to live with the other women of the shrine. It had been going somewhat smoothly, despite the hiccups that occurred. You had found out the morning after your bath in the hot spring that you were to be assigned to cleaning.

It wasn’t unexpected, in fact, it was one of the jobs you knew you’d most likely be getting. It was a lowly job, even for a servant, and Sukuna must’ve found great joy in the idea of having you clean up the mess left behind.

However, you hadn’t banked on the idea of the cleaning being more than waxing the floors and sweeping away dust. You were subjected to cleaning Sukuna’s own personal shrine. 

It wasn’t as grandiose as the one the Buddhists had once used in this very shrine, not nearly as golden but it was fearsome. It was a separate building on the temple grounds that he had occupied as his own, the floors were made of cold stone and the walls were tall. Within those tall walls, sat the centre of the shrine. It was a typical shinto shrine, but instead of honouring the Gods; it was honouring the demon that hunted women for fun. 

It was surrounded by skulls and bones, some animal – like bull skulls, and some most definitely human. You didn’t need to wonder if they had been put there for decoration when you saw the abysmal state of the floor. You were thankful for the stone floor, blood was terribly hard to get out of wooden floors. It soaked it up like a sponge, but with stone, it simply sat atop as water would.

It took you four hours to clean the shrine on the first day, and the same the next few days until you were tasked with it today. 

The stone floor was still coated in blood, but instead of finishing his meal, Sukuna had left the corpse where it was. Half-eaten, shredded skin and muscle sprawled across the floor and splattered against the paint of the Shinto shrine. 

You stood motionless in the doorway into the shrine, the light that you had let in illuminates the face of the woman who had come to her untimely demise. You recognise her, she was one of the cooks of the complex. An older lady, perhaps in her thirties – definitely one of the oldest in the entire place, and she was kind to you. Maybe she had been a mother at some point with the way she mothered you with sneaky portions of extra rice.

It feels surreal to see her now spread thin across stone floors, it almost makes her not seem like a human anymore. Did Sukuna do this on purpose to torment you? Maybe he had seen the way she was more lenient with you, he couldn’t let you feel any ounce of joy here. 

Your water bucket is heavy in your hand before you set it down on a clean patch by the door. With steps through the blood that splashed against your socked feet, soaking into the material until you felt it between your toes and under your nails, you crouch down towards the body. 

Her eyes are open, and it’s like second nature for you to reach across and close her eyes to stop her from looking at you like that. Her skin is cold, no doubt having been here throughout the night whilst everyone slept. A quick survey of the surrounding area shows no scraps of her clothes, and the parts of her body that still remained somewhat intact were most definitely nude. 

You don’t realise you’re staring at the body in front of you until her face morphs into your own, and it’s you who is laid out on the stone floor before the shrine with your body ripped asunder. 

No. You couldn’t end up like this, you wouldn’t end up like this.

Moving the body itself was easier said than done, even with half of it presumably eaten. You’re not sure if it would be wise to remove her from the shrine, perhaps Sukuna had plans to return to his half-eaten cold meal later tonight so you set her aside. 

Then you get to work on dragging your sponge through where she had been last laid. You never quite grasped the concept of just how compact the human body was, and all the organs within. Not until it was laid out before you in a messy pool of blood. You sweep shredded intestines and part of what you think might be the liver to the edge of the shrine where you had put the corpse.

You weren’t sure if Sukuna liked to eat those parts, you assumed he must if he never left anything behind most nights.

Once clear of the body parts, you return to the water bucket. You ignore the blood that coats your hands when you grab the sides of the bucket, and you have to ignore the rippled bloodied reflection of yourself when you catch a glimpse of it. It’s like second nature now for you to tip the water bucket over, the splash of cold water is loud in the otherwise silent part of the complex.

You watch as the water rolls towards you, down the natural slope of the building until it creates a small red river that flows down the steps and into the courtyard. At first, you had questioned why the shrine in the first place would be sloped in such a way until you realised it was for the ease of cleaning out blood. 

“This is how you clean my shrine?” The voice is close behind you, and suddenly you can feel the pressuring presence that follows Sukuna around like a breeze. It sits heavy on your shoulders, grasps at your limbs until you’re stuck in place. 

You hadn’t even heard him approach. Most predators didn’t alert their prey of their impending doom, instead opting to sneak closer and closer until it was too late for the prey to realise they had been caught. And Sukuna continues to loom over you, his large frame blocks out the light of the outside world and shrouds the shrine in an eerie darkness.

“You throw water at it and call it a day?” 

You want to bite at him, snarl your own words and tell him that you hadn’t even finished yet — and it would’ve been done more efficiently if he hadn’t left his food lying around. 

“No, Master Sukuna.” is the words you settle on biting out instead, and his response is to hum in an unconvinced tone. 

“Then show me how you do it.” 

He shoves you down onto your knees in front of him, the crack of your bones against the stone is muffled by his low laugh. He steps around you, ‘accidentally’ kicking your empty bucket away from you before he’s standing in front of his shrine — in front of you. 

Your eyes are glued to the floor, evidence of the blood still present but not quite the bloodbath you had originally walked in on.

“I need to get fresh wa–”

“No. Use what you have.” 

The cloth slides through the pink-tinted water, brushing it towards the natural slope of the stone floor. Sukuna is silent as he watches you agonise over the fact the small white cloth is not quite catching as much water anymore, and when you wring it out it only adds to the bloodied water that seems endless. 

With each useless squeeze of the blood-sodden rag, you feel a slip of your resolve. 

“Master Sukuna,” you address him, eyes not once leaving the bloody red cloth in your hands. He stays silent for a moment, you briefly wonder if perhaps he somehow left without you realising it.

“Speak.” He demands.

“May I go and fetch some more water?” You wait for a second, his silence is palpable. “Please.”

You can feel Sukuna’s eyes on you, inspecting the state of your clothes no doubt and the blood that taints your skin. It makes you want to squirm under his scrutiny, that unwanted feeling that bubbles in your stomach and up your throat until it threatens to spill itself onto the floor. His presence has always had an immense feel to it, and it’s oh-so suffocating.

“Fine.” You scramble to your feet, a quick bow of thanks thrown his way before you move as fast as you can to retrieve your tipped-over empty water bucket. You’re thankful for the fresh air when you step a foot outside of the shrine, and the lungful you gulp feels like your first breath in a very long time.

You’re one step down from the shrine when his voice calls for you again.

“If you touch my food again, I will make you eat it. Then, I will eat you.” 

You don’t think he’s bluffing, he wouldn’t bluff. A demon like him would never lie about such a thing, he lives off of your fear and torment. He was telling the truth. So you nod your head once in understanding before you run as fast as you can away from the shrine.

The more distance you put between yourself and Sukuna, the more you feel like you can think clearly. No longer is his darkness creeping on the edges of your brain and your heart beats at a slower, more calm pace. His idle threat still lingers on your mind, the reminder of the heart you had been forced to consume still makes your stomach turn uncomfortably whenever you think of the texture. 

It was one of the worst experiences you had ever gone through, and you can only imagine different parts of the human body would be worse. 

You don’t realise you’re at the well that lingers at the edge of the complex until you’re stood over it, the bucket in your hand smeared in stains of blood from your dirty hands. You dunk it down into the well, the freezing cold water stings at the tips of your fingers. 

It was oddly quiet for the time of day, you realise. When you take a look around, you realise there is no one in the courtyard tending to the flowers or airing the fresh linen. The next thing you realise is the large gate that otherwise encloses the complex is wide open, a winding path that’s covered in golden leaves leads down a hill to the unknown. 

Your heart quickens. Your blood races with the realisation that you could leave. Right now. You could run, maybe even run into a village so that they could get you to safety. But were you faster than an apex predator who was designed for the thrill of the hunt? He had more arms than you, you don’t doubt he’d rip the village apart just to find you. 

The bucket falters in your grasp for a moment, water spilling onto your sodden socks. The cold shock is enough to cause you to gasp, breaking your gaze away from the path that could lead to either your freedom or the demise of innocent people who don’t know what lives in the shrine nearby. 

No. You wouldn’t have more innocent lives destroyed because of you. You had a plan; a goal. You were going to ensure that the monster that feasts on bones would not terrorise another village.

You feel a familiar burning gaze upon your skin, and when you turn to see who or what was staring at you – you’re met with nothing but the empty courtyard. But that feeling of being watched is still ever present, so you hurry back towards the shrine. The path to your presumed freedom dwindles away. 

Sukuna thankfully isn’t in the shrine anymore, and neither is the body of the older lady you had moved earlier. There isn’t any new blood either, something that has you heaving a heavy sigh of relief. You do the same as you did before, but more strategically with a zig-zag pattern you draw with the water bucket to ensure you get it between the nooks and crannies of the stone tiles.

Once the shrine is returned to its previous state of cleanliness, the sky is dark and the stars have come out to play. The moon hangs over the sky, it’s late — that means it should be time for you to be allowed food. That alone has you hastily sliding the doors to the shrine closed, a silent prayer to whatever may be watching that tomorrow there’ll be no dead body for you to clean. 

Dinner that night had gone by relatively quietly, there were no arguments among the women who all lived in the same room. There was an odd feeling in the air; like an impending doom of some sort. You couldn’t put your finger on it exactly, but there was definitely something that was causing a few of the younger newer servants of Sukuna to appear very antsy. 

On the way back to the room that was your new bedroom, you were cut off by Uraume. They stood before you, hands tucked inside the sleeves of their kimono and an expectant raise of their eyebrow had you bowing at the waist to greet them.

“Master Sukuna has requested you to join him in his chambers tonight. You will bring him his sake.” Uraume is curt as always, not waiting for you to acknowledge or question why Sukuna wants you of all people to bring him his sake. They turn, leaving down the corridors of the large shrine until they vanish behind a shoji door.

You make the turn back towards the kitchen, finding the tray that you were to serve for Sukuna already set. It’s small, one small saucer-like cup and three flasks of what you assume to be sake. Years of practice with the sword has your arms firm enough to not shake the tray as you venture away from the safety of your bedroom and towards Sukuna’s.

It’s akin to the walk of shame, perhaps better suited to be named the walk of death. Maybe he’d grow hungry and gnaw on your bones tonight with a side of sake. Maybe he was still angry at you for touching his food without permission earlier today in the shrine. 

Your thoughts cloud your mind until you’re standing before the large sliding doors that lead into Sukuna’s room. The artwork on the door is all hand painted, you can tell from the individual brush strokes and you briefly wonder who he may have gotten to do it. It’s a gruesome picture, bloody and violent, and there’s no doubt who is in the centre of the fire and chaos. 

It’s a self-portrait, and that thought alone has you wanting to smash the delicate china on the tray against the door. 

But instead, you lower down onto your knees and knock on the door. It’s silent for a moment, and then you hear it — a loud clap of hands. 

The door slides open easily enough, and you slide in the tray first then yourself. You focus on the task at hand, closing the door and bowing as low as you can get to the floor. You can’t tell where Sukuna is in the room but you know he’s watching you, the hairs on the back of your neck stand at the attention of the predator that watches you so closely.

“Bring it here.” He demands, his voice low and yet still commanding. You raise from the bow, delicately taking hold of the tray before you rise back to your feet. Your footsteps are muted against the soft tatami floor, and finally, you take in the image before you.

Sukuna is sitting in a corner, surrounded by scrolls and literature. The table he’s using is low to the ground, and he’s perched upon a large Zabuton cushion. He’s leaning his lower right arm on the separate armrest, the upper arms are crossed over his bare chest and he’s not quite glaring at you as you approach. 

He almost looks like he’s got too much on his mind to conjure up the effort to scowl at you.

You lower down into a kneeling position once in front of him, carefully sliding the tray towards him. You don’t wait for permission to pour him a drink, you’ve come to understand from the other women that he doesn’t like to ask for things — he prefers things to be done automatically, without thought.

The sake sits in the small saucer, waiting for him to pluck it from the tray and drink it in one go. But he doesn’t move yet, and you take the chance to glance up at his face. He’s not even looking at you now, only two of his eyes are open whilst the bottom set rests as if they were closed for sleep. He’s scouring over the scrolls on the table, the brush he was using to write his own letters sits waiting in a pot of ink.

“Master Sukuna,” and he hums in response quite quickly to you, “May I ask you a question?”

One of the lower set of eyes opens just enough to glance at you, and he huffs out a sigh that’s quite unbefitting of the monster you know him as. 

“One question.”

Well. That certainly makes you want to second guess the question you wanted to ask, your lips twist a little in thought and Sukuna seems to be put off by the wait for your question. His head turns towards you, and that scowl he often sends your way is making itself present. 

“What’s plaguing your mind?” You ask, and you bitterly regret it when he frowns so much that you think it may be the last thing you see before your head is removed from your shoulders.

Instead of answering, he leans forward to swipe the saucer with the sake in and swallows it in one gulp. The small saucer that looked like it would still fill your palm was far too small in his, his index and thumb were delicately holding it — it was odd, to see a creature of such mass destruction holding the fine china with care.

He places it down, and you move to automatically refill it. This repeats four more times before he settles into his position once again, the arms crossed over his chest reaching over to the table to pluck a scroll from the collection he had opened.

He flicks it towards you, the paper bounces off of your chest and into your hands when you fumble to catch it. You look down, reading over the painted black letters. 

The Shogun moves north. The Shogun’s army is in search of a four-armed beast, said to eat the souls of women and children. The demon is rumoured to be residing in an old Buddhist temple. Kill him and everyone there.

It’s not signed by anyone, a simple mark in the corner shows it was approved by the Shogun. You weren’t sure who gained the title after the passing of your father, but you knew the number of Samurai that were within the Shogun’s army. That number was excessive to deploy on a singular temple… they must know who Sukuna was and exactly what he was capable of. 

The words trouble you, however. They wanted to kill both Sukuna and whoever else was within the temple. Did they think you were all sympathisers? Followers of Sukuna? They didn��t know that all of you were plucked from your homes after he slaughtered your families. 

Your hip feels awfully empty without the weight of your sword, you had no defence if they were to strike at some point. Could it be soon? You have no idea how old this letter was—

“The gate.” You mumble. The unease that fills your stomach is suffocating, your heart thunders against your chest more and more with each passing second. The gate. Someone had opened it to the outside world.

“What?” Sukuna rips the scroll from your hand, eyes scouring to see what he may have missed to make you say that. “What gate?”

“The gate on the east side of the temple. It was left open.” 

You meet his gaze once you glance up from the sake set before you, and for the first time, you see a new emotion on Sukuna’s face. He looks concerned. His eyebrows are pressed together in thought, all four eyes are wide and alert. He didn’t know about the gate. 

“They’re already here.” He summarises, sharpened claws shredding through the scroll. The air around him intensifies, the suffocation of such a dark presence causes you to recoil away from him when he starts to stand. “They’re already in my fucking shrine.”

“I’ll kill them all.” He marches past you, ripping open the shoji door with such ferocity that it’s ripped from its sliding mechanic and left awkwardly hanging. “Stay here. Do not move.” 

You’re left to watch his figure disappear further down the corridor until he turns a corner and he’s gone. It’s awfully quiet, and that same antsy air that had settled upon the women at dinnertime is back once again. Something feels off. How did the Shogun know the exact location of the shrine? As far as you were aware, Sukuna had gone to great lengths to secure this place as his own sanctuary.

There’s a clatter in the distance that sounds like a door being broken through, and then suddenly there’s an uproar of voices. A lot of voices. Not women, but men. The Shogun’s army was here. Immediately you’re up from your kneeling position, and you turn on your heels to survey the room.

Your weapon must be here. It must still be here, he had brought it with you – so surely he must’ve kept it close to him, somewhere you could never get it back and use it against him. But each turn of your head reveals that his room is empty of any sheathed sword until you turn towards his futon. 

Above the bed is a long-handled spear, a Naginata. It’s three-pronged, something so rare and odd that you’re not sure if it would even be good to use in battle. However, a weapon is a weapon and you move across the room. Climbing across the platform that houses Sukuna’s futon to swipe it off of the rack it was on. 

It’s heavy in your hands, as your fingers slide along the black hilt towards the end of it – it’s got a hoop, as if it could be connected to a chain of some sort. What kind of person would use this when it was attached to a chain? The arm length you’d need— Oh. This was Sukuna’s personal weapon.

“What do we have here?” An unfamiliar voice speaks from behind you, and you spin fast enough on instinct to slam the blunt end of the hilt into his temple…

…But it never connects. In fact, it hovers just a few inches from his face and you stare in horror at the fact you’re frozen in place. Whatever you’re hitting feels like a brick wall, but you can’t see what you’re hitting. 

“Foolish woman. Swinging around a weapon that’s not befitting of your station.” The unknown Samurai tuts, lifting his head enough to reveal his face from beneath the Jingasa hat he wore.

You’re met with the brightest blue eyes you have ever seen. White lashes frame them, and that feeling from before returns — something is terribly wrong here. You had to get away from this man, away from whatever invisible barrier was surrounding him. 

He doesn’t try to grab you when you back away, pulling free the weapon from its invisible prison and spinning it in your hand until it’s lined with your body. The blue-eyed Samurai tilts his head at the stance, an eyebrow-raising – he recognises that type of stance. Of course, he would.

“Who trained you?” He asks. 

“My father.” And the man in response hums in response, his lips set into a thin line. 

“Tell me your clan name.” 

Your lips move to form the name of your late husband but your tongue stops, the word dies and instead, your family name rolls off your tongue. 

“Zen’in.” 

Most people would perhaps laugh at the futile attempt to use a former Shogun’s name as a way to worm their way out of a situation, but instead, the blue-eyed Samurai just tilts his head for a moment and flits his gaze over you. But it’s different from when people have looked at you; he’s looking through you, into you.

“So you’re the Shogun’s niece.” He huffs out something that sounds like a scoff, disbelieving that he’d stumble across you of all people in a place like this. 

Niece. Your uncle was the new Shogun, having been passed on by your father to him no doubt. You had no brothers, you were never to inherit the title – a woman had no place with the title Shogun. 

“A shame. I’m sure your Uncle would’ve loved to know you were still alive, but he’s very certain you had died alongside your husband a few weeks ago.” 

“Who are you? My father had never mentioned a Samurai who could stop attacks with… with sorcery.”

“Sugawara Michizane.” He offers his name, a slight up-tick of the corner of his mouth as he finds amusement in your confusion. You don’t recognise his name.

And then, in the midst of your thoughts, the Samurai moves fast, maybe faster than Sukuna had when he first attacked you. He’s across the room in a blink of an eye, there’s the click of a katana being unsheathed. You react out of instinct, the hilt of the spear you hold clangs with the metal of the sword and the Samurai doesn’t relent. 

He brings his sword back and attempts a strike on your opposite side, your fingers tighten around the spear – you’re not going to make it, he’s going to hit you. But there’s another clang of metal hitting your spear, and you find that you had moved the spear to meet the blow. 

Blue eyes widen at what he witnessed before they narrow at you. “So you inherited your father’s technique.” 

Technique? You had inherited his swordsmanship, yes, but his technique with a sword was far superior to your own. He moved faster than any man you had seen, he wiped the floor with his opponents when they said he was too busy with politics to be a real Samurai. 

You’re pulled from your thoughts when the Samurai backs away from you, his katana sits sheathed once again and this time he raises his hands at you. His arm is outstretched in your direction, an odd glow illuminating the contours of his face in a blueish light that seems to be forming around his hand.

The hairs on the back of your neck and arms stand on end, the feeling that came from his hands was something similar to Sukuna’s. It was a powerful energy. So you move. You move faster than you ever have before in your life, it’s as if time itself slows down to allow you to sprint across the room with your spear brandished. 

The eyes of the man follow your movements, but his body is too slow. You lower down onto one knee once you approach, below the outstretched hand that has a slow-growing orb of blue energy starting to form at the very tips of his fingers. And you strike with the tip of your Naginata upwards into his chest.

It passes by the barrier surrounding him, a buzzing sound that hisses at the foreign entity that passes by and then you feel the familiar wall of what it’s like to strike a body. The spear makes quick work of cutting its way through muscle and organs alike, lodging itself into its resting place next to his spine.

The world seems to spin back to the correct time, and the blue light that had been aimed at you fires regardless of having no target. It comes with a loud bang, the sound of walls being shattered and dragged along with whatever had come from the Samurai who’s staring down at you in disbelief. 

His blood curls around the three prongs of the spear, around the handle until it sullies your hands. 

“How?” He splutters, blood staining his teeth and filling the cracks of his lips as he glowers down at you. “You shouldn’t—... Nothing can…”

His hand raises once again, and this time instead of the blue glow, it’s a vibrant red that nearly blinds you with how bright it is in front of your face. This one feels much more different to the blue energy that vibrated around his hands, this one feels more destructive and more violent. 

You square your shoulders and push all of your strength into your arms and legs as you grab ahold of the spear before running it upwards through the man's body. The red glow falters until it dims completely, the spear rips free of his shoulder with a vicious spray of blood that coats your once pristine white kimono. 

He crumbles to his knees, hands uselessly turned upwards in his lap and his head tilts back to stare up at you. His once vibrant blue eyes seem dull now, blinking sluggishly up at you. 

“You’re a disgrace to your family…” He mutters, words wet with the blood on his tongue and yet he manages to say them loud enough that they strike deeply at your already wounded heart. “A Curse User's whore.”

You want to ask him what he means by that, ask him what a curse user even is but there’s the sound of fighting in the distance. You glance down at the Samurai, his head now dropped downwards until his chin presses into his chest. He no longer moves, his heart ceasing its sluggish attempts of keeping him alive.

You had killed one of the Shogun’s samurai. You were a traitor. 

The sound of fighting grows louder, yells of Samurai as they get no doubt ripped to shreds by clawed hands. You leave the body of the samurai known as Sugawara in his final resting place and dart down the corridor towards the room that should have all the women inside still – hopefully, they had kept together, huddled for safety. 

Yet when you rip the door open, you’re met with the kind of silence that accompanies death. In each of the beds, there is a body. Faces of women you had gotten to know and even shared food with, the young faces of women who had washed your hair and in turn, you had washed theirs, all of them are lax. 

You would’ve assumed them to be asleep if it wasn’t for the growing pool of blood that seeped into the wooden floors, into the cracks. Each of their necks was slit. All at the same time. This wasn’t Sukuna’s doing, he would’ve shredded them no doubt. This was organised, most likely by Shinobi that had slipped in through the shadows and slid a knife across each of their throats so they didn’t awaken.

You could’ve been one of them, you realise. If you hadn’t been summoned to Sukuna’s chambers by him. You could be dead and by the hands of the army that had once served your father; and in turn, served you. 

Men are monsters. Monsters are men.

You have to find Sukuna. Why? Perhaps to kill him, none of this would’ve happened if he didn’t exist. You couldn’t undo the past but you could right the future—even if you were classed as a traitor, maybe it’d be for nothing in the end. The Naginata no longer weighs anything in your hand, as you let it roll in your hand until its hilt is positioned between your bicep and ribcage for safekeeping. 

The halls are easier to navigate once you narrow down the sounds of the fighting, it leads you to the entrance where you had seen the open gate just earlier that day. The doors had been ripped off, and immediately you’re hit with the smell of tangy copper that sticks to the roof of your mouth.

It’s a battlefield, swords are snapped and buried into the ground where they had fallen from the hands of the Samurai who had dared to approach Sukuna. And the monster himself is closer to the gate, a large figure doused in blood as he swipes at thin air to only have men a few feet away splinter into three parts as if he had used his claws directly on their skin.

You can only stand and watch, in both horror and amazement to see him in his element. He clearly was designed for such chaos, he strived off of it. His muscles moved perfectly with each move he made, each of them calculated and precise. He didn’t quite move like a monster would; a monster was often frantic in its attacks. Instead, Sukuna moves with a sense of regality, an air of superiority and you can only think of one thing.

He looked like a King at war.

There’s a movement on the sidelines of the ongoing fight, and you spot one of the Shogun’s shinobi climbing up into the shadows of the night atop the roof. Sukuna doesn’t see him. His eyes laser-focused on all the Samurai who come at him head-on, he’s going to be caught off-guard. He’s going to be taken down by a ninja belonging to the same army that had slaughtered innocent women.

You glance at the ground quickly, spotting a long bow that had been dropped by an archer who had thought it would be wise to attack from afar — that clearly didn’t work out. You swipe it up, the Naginata being placed on the floor next to your feet. 

There had been times when you were trained with a bow as a child, something your father had actually said yes to when you were younger. Often it was just for hunting, a hobby that you had partaken in quite often to catch game for your husband. Your form is no different this time as you aim your arrow at a man, you suck in a harsh breath and hold your form steady. 

The ninja from above exclaims something as he leaps from the roof, and Sukuna spins around last second to see where the noise is coming from but instead, his eyes settle on you. His gaze is burning through you, no doubt cursing you for even stepping foot out of his chambers and disobeying his order.

But he remains in place, watching as you release the breath you were holding and the arrow soars through the air like a knife through butter. The ninja is hit directly, a clean arrow through the throat, falling to the ground with a loud crunch of bones against a stone path.

You can feel that same burning gaze as you pull another arrow from the fallen archer's quiver, nocking and drawing it to release it into one of the Samurai who raised a sword to Sukuna’s blindside. You don’t dare meet Sukuna’s eyes, you’re unsure if you’ll like what you see as you continue to prove yourself a traitor to your own country and kill those who served the Shogun; your uncle. 

Eventually, that burning crimson gaze is ripped away from you, and you lower your bow to find that you had killed the remaining Samurai in the courtyard. But you’re unable to relax or find solace in that they were dead. There’s the distant sound of marching footfall, another wave of Samurai no doubt coming. 

This time you watch as Sukuna flexes two of his hands in front of him, an orange glow starting to form between his fingers before he then draws his arms up, a direct mimicry of your own stance when you had drawn a bow. He releases the fire arrow, and it soars through the night sky like a shooting star until it plants itself into one of the leading Samurai. 

And from there, it explodes into a larger flame that bounces from man to man until they’re a distant flame filled with anguished screams and the slowly approaching smell of cooked flesh. Sukuna stands there silently, watching the scene from afar and you can see the tension loosen in his shoulders for just a moment. But then he turns abruptly towards you, a feral snarl resting on his face when he meets your gaze.

A hand grasps at your jaw, squeezing so tightly that you can feel your bone pop uncomfortably. Sukuna glares down at you, his own face is covered in blood similar to your own. 

“Did you know this would happen?” He growls, claws starting to pierce through the flesh of your cheeks. “Did you know that we had a spy living here?!” 

A spy? Did he mean one of the girls? Surely not… How… How would that work? Sukuna shakes you from your thoughts, a loud growl ripping through his throat. “Answer ME.”

“No!” You yell back, a hand coming up to grab at his wrist uselessly in hopes of peeling him away from your face. “I swear to you I didn’t know! I only knew the gate had been left open when I was cleaning your shrine!”

Sukuna is quiet for a long moment, or it feels like a long moment but perhaps no longer than a few seconds pass by before he releases your face.

“One of those whores escaped, a signal for the Shogun to make his move.” He reveals, running a bloodied hand through his already blood-soaked hair until it’s slicked back. His chest is heaving with the effort he had put into slaughtering men as if they were nothing but sheep. 

“Pick that up.” He points with one of his lower hands at the Naginata, and you quickly bend down to grab it. You figure he may want it back, and when you go to offer it to him he instead grabs at your bicep and you’re pulled along behind him. 

It’s hard to keep up the pace behind such a gigantic man, his single footsteps were about five of your own. Your socked feet drag along stone uncomfortably, cutting into the heel when you try to push off of your feet to keep up. 

Sukuna doesn’t speak again as he drags you away from the shrine through one of the back gates and into the forest. The stench of death and burning wood grows fainter and fainter with each scrape of your now-bloodied feet through the undergrowth of the forest. Sukuna doesn’t seem to care that you’re hissing in pain with each stumble over hidden rocks and sharp prick of nettles. 

You have no idea where he’s dragging you, or why he was even dragging you away from the shrine in the first place? Surely it’d be easier for him to kill you, or even just leave you there to be discovered by the Shogun. Who knows what the Shogun would have in store for you if you were found alive amongst the slaughtered.

You’re abruptly stopped, however, much to the relief of your feet that still sting when you put weight onto them. You look up at Sukuna to see him wordlessly staring ahead, and so you follow his gaze. You’re at the foot of a farmer's field. 

It looks like a regular field, more of a pasture of sorts for animals. And you seem to be right when Sukuna’s head quickly lifts and shifts his gaze to movement in the farther end of the field — horses. 

“Wait,” you tug back on his wrist when he starts to move again and you’re surprised to see him turn his eyes back down to you, though he looks very displeased at the order to stop. “You can’t just steal a farmer’s horse.”

Sukuna stares blankly at you, lips that were turned downwards are now a flat line and you can see it’s taking every ounce of his dwindling self-control to not shout at you. 

“Murderers don’t get a say.” He shoves the words at you instead, and you’re back to stumbling behind him. You suppose he does have a point, a very good one. You were by all definitions of the word; a murderer, a traitor. You had killed not just one but a dozen Samurai… and in turn, saved Sukuna’s life. 

It wasn’t something you planned on doing, in fact, you’d argue you only retaliated because of what they did to the innocent women you lived with and Sukuna surviving was just an unfortunate consequence. Or at least that’s what you tell yourself. 

You couldn’t have possibly done all that for Sukuna. You wouldn’t. He was a monster, nothing more and nothing less. He feasted on human bones and forced you to eat your own late husband's heart. He wasn’t worthy of saving…

And yet.

“Stay here.” He orders, before turning back to you with a long finger pointed at your face. “And I mean it this time. Do not move or I’ll have your fingers for breakfast.”

This time you don’t move from your spot, awkwardly moving from foot to foot to relieve the pain as you watch Sukuna slink off into the darkness of the field. You wonder if a horse would even trust him. When you had worked with the horses for the army they had all been temperamental around people with less than good intentions.

They often loved you and hated the men who’d ride them into battle. You can’t imagine a horse's reaction to a four-armed, two-faced, bloody monster approaching. They probably would think it was a predator, which he was, that was coming to eat them. 

Maybe he still will. He didn’t seem to have a specific need to eat women, but rather a preference. You wanted to ask why he did that, what the difference between a man and woman was when it came to consuming their flesh — …but on second thought, perhaps it was best to be left in the unknown on that one.

“Here,” Sukuna calls to you through the darkness, and much to your surprise he had managed to wrangle one of the larger workhorses. It’s giant compared to you, but next to him, he stands level with the horse's head, if not slightly taller. You watch as he climbs up onto the horse's back first, steadying the reins he somehow snagged and wrangled onto it.

He moves the horse effortlessly, before leaning two hands down for you to grab. You take the upper one and the lower arm loops around your waist to rip you through the air and force you onto the horse in front of him. It’s an uncomfortable squeeze, and you’re forced into the warm embrace of his chest and arms as he readjusts the reins. 

Sukuna doesn’t say anything, however. Opting to keep his lower arms by your sides to ensure you didn’t slip off and vanish in the night, his upper arms guide the horse back towards the forest; away from the farmer’s house and away from the shrine.

“Where are we going?” You ask after around ten minutes on horseback, and Sukuna huffs out a heavy sigh on top of your head. 

“You’ll find out when we get there.” He offers bluntly, it had hardly been ten minutes and he was fed up with this predicament already it seemed.

So you huff out your own sigh, crossing your arms over your chest like a petulant child and you think you feel the rumble of a low laugh in his chest from where you’re pressed into it. The night is quiet except for the hooves of the horse that keeps up a steady pace despite the two people it carries, the forest surrounding you is silent. 

There’s no feeling of eyes on you, not like the forest that surrounded the temple. Instead, it feels very lonely, was it survivors' guilt perhaps? You were the lone survivor of an attack on the shrine, and Sukuna had kept you alive, but for what purpose? Was he still going to kill and eat you? Or maybe he’d find a new fun game by keeping you alive to torment you about what you had done? 

“What about Uraume?” You ask after some time, the uphill climb has you leaning more into Sukuna’s chest but he doesn’t seem to care by his lack of comment on the weight you press into him. 

“They’ll find me. They always do.” 

“Will the Shogun find us again?” Sukuna hums in response to that question at first, his fingers twitching at your sides for a moment. 

“Probably. Especially after they find the aftermath of their attempt to kill me.”

You nod your head at that, not quite sure if Sukuna can even see you from your place beneath his chin. Your fingers itch at your now dried bloodied clothes, picking at parts of the flaky red to watch it crumble and fall away into the darkness. 

“What happened, after I left.” His question catches you off guard, enough to keep you stunned in silence for a moment. He prompts you to speak again with a rough jab of a finger into your ribs. 

“A man found me. A Samurai, I guess. But he wasn’t like any Samurai I’ve met before.” 

“Met a lot of Samurai, have you?” 

“...Some.” You offer, you didn’t quite feel like offering up your name and heritage to a man who seemed hellbent on killing the Shogun’s army for whatever reason. 

“Continue.” Sukuna gruffs, and the now downhill climb has him pressing you forward and his breath blows hotly against the top of your head. 

“He could stop my attacks before they even hit him. I didn’t understand it. And then he could… make light appear from his fingers? But it wasn’t light. It was more like…”

“Energy.” Sukuna finishes your sentence for you. 

“Yes, energy. But somehow I managed to catch him off guard, and stabbed him with your Naginata.” 

Sukuna hums quietly again in contemplation. You suspected him to be angry at the fact you practically stole and used his weapon but he doesn’t seem to comment on it.

“His name. Tell me it.”

“Sugawara Michizane.” 

The growl that rumbles through Sukuna’s chest vibrates aggressively against your back. It sounds like distant thunder and it spooks the horse into bucking a little on the spot before it’s soothed with a gentle brush of your hand on its neck. Why had that name caused such a reaction from Sukuna?

“...Did you know him?”

“Did? You killed him?” He sounded so incredulous in the way he said that, as if he didn’t quite believe it to be true.

The reminder makes you squirm a little in your spot, prompting Sukuna to huff a breath of annoyance into your hair. “I think so.”

“He’s most definitely still alive. I’ve been trying to kill that bastard for years. Every time he seems to just pop back up, like a weed.” 

The silence washes over the both of you again, and you’re thankful to be back on level ground as Sukuna leans out of your space and you can finally breathe again. It felt odd to be conversing with him like this, maybe it was just the forced proximity that was allowing you to speak so freely. You can’t imagine he would’ve entertained it back at the shrine, he would’ve most likely removed your tongue and had you eat it. 

“Rest,” Sukuna says after some time, your head lolling uselessly backwards against his shoulder only to pop right back up when you realised you were falling asleep. “We’ll be travelling for quite some time. Rest.”

His voice is a deep rich sound, something that sounds like silk against your ears. Maybe he was doing that on purpose, lowering his voice so you could feel the deep timbre of it until it turned your brain to goop. You don’t fight your instincts this time when you lean back into him, the back of your head finding a resting spot against the muscle of his chest. 

The rhythmic beat of hooves on the ground and the heartbeat behind you soothes you into a slumber, your eyes slipping closed slowly until you’re plunged into a dreamless sleep. With your guard lowered so much, you hardly pay attention to the arm that loops around your waist to hold you firmly in place whilst you rest.

‣‣ Main Masterlist | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

[needfantasticstories]

Hi again, @twistedstoryteller!

Okay, LU recs off the top-ish of my head in a sort of organized-ish order:

AUTHORS!

Angst, Action, and Mixed:

Faerule and the No Good Very Bad Road Trip by ImperialKatwala, PolynomialPandemic is a great "Chain Meets Hyrule" fic.

@gintrinsic-writing is phenomenal. A gem. I love all of it, but check the tags to find ones you're comfortable with. AO3 Blood Like Yours is my personal favorite, and the sequel Like Fire in Your Veins by @pocketramblr are both about Hyrule's Blood Curse from Adventures of Link. M for Violence for most of them, but check tags to be sure. If you like it, consider also...

Protector of the Golden Power by Sillus Hyrule centric but he has a different secret.

@somer-writes has a lot of great short one shots, some darker than others. My personal favorite is a sort of character study of the boys at their lowest and how they recover called "Depletion"

For a Sliver of Sunlight by tirsynni: Warrior's dedication to his brothers makes him question his title as Hero.

What are You to a God Slayer by Secretlysheikah BAMF Sky

Brethren in a Cradle by Skyward_Arpeggio BABY!!!! It is adorable, if a bit sad at the start.

Always Darkest Before the Dawn (Linked Universe Whumptober 2023) by Skyward_Arpeggio because in general they don't go above T ratings and write excellent fics.

this year it taught me (lost and ambitious) by qar Also EXCELLENT writer. "Sky has a separate moment with each member of the team"

Whumptober 2023 by Arecaceae Great fics! Plus, "Each story will have warnings in the tags and the story notes as well as a 0-5 whump rating. The ratings will be relative to my writing, so my 5 might not be equivalent to someone else's 5. I don't write MCD, extreme gore, non-con, or extreme emotional angst."

Major's Whumptober 2023 by major_de_speed Major's are also quite clean despite the M rating which is more about the violence.

Linkeduniverse Shorts by Skyward_Arpeggio LU Short fics

A Royal Castletown Wedding by Skyward_Arpeggio This story is so good!!!!!!!!!

Whumptober 2022 by Arecaceae more great fics, rated T.

LU Whump Dump by UnexpectedStormy (ArtemiStorm)  need AO3 account to read, but worth it! Linked Universe Whumpy One-Shots, rated T.

There's one I'm missing, and when I find it I'll add it here. It involves a cursed magical artifact that Legend messes with... it's intense.

Fluffier Fics:

Frosty Reception by Skyward_Arpeggio "Four’s glad to finally be home again, and he’s not the only one happy at his return." Cute fic!

S’more Stories by Ginger375 "A collection of drabbles and mini-fics for LUtober! Day 31: Costumes"

Sentiment by Arecaceae

nine heroes, one spirit by Imjustherefortheangst, uncleskyrule (unclemoriarty) tons of great short fics, all with G-T ratings

Finding Family by Tashacee "AU where Wild's scars are a lot worse and he isn't used to interacting with people. The Chain think their new brother is dope af and are determined to make him feel at home."

My Heart's Forsaken Me by sister_dear "Four looses his sword in the heat of battle, and it's picked up by someone else... Time’s aren’t the only secrets coming to light, and the gang discovers they still have a thing or two to learn from each other."

Ambush at the Bridge by JinxedRuby Very action and healing oriented fic, multiple perspectives on one event.

Dark Clouds on the Horizon by CubanCracker62 "he Chain ends up in Wild's era shortly before the events of TotK."

There are worse ways to stay alive by EliotRosewater one shots rated T.

Crack Fics:

Misplaced Heroes by notOK this had me busting out laughing SO MANY TIMES!

Peak Gremlin Energy by defenestration_nation "Fics focusing on various Links being chaotic gremlins"

Not Necessarily LU, but Adjacent or just LoZ:

Blood of the Hero by Skye_the_Lofty_Nutcase: (Wild) Link's parents have to step in to save him when the Shrine of Resurrection gets damaged. His parents are so well written, and Abel makes appearances in LU-related/adjacent fics, The Many Misadventures of Dad Squad and Dad Squad AU by Nancyheart, Silver_Captain82403, Skye_the_Lofty_Nutcase

which is part crack and part angst, mostly lighthearted.

Don't Worry Man, I'm from the Yiga Clan: Link makes a Yiga friend due to being a delightful chaos gremlin.

Feature MCD... but might be worth it:

And Still the Cradle Blooms by Solistrix: GORGEOUS literary masterpiece. The writing is unreal. It's descriptions and emotions are incredible. This is more like finding the meaning in eventual death, so of the three here I suspect you'll like this one best as far as not being too hurt by the character's mentioned end.

This is an Adjuration: I'll be real, this is full of action and excitement but yes, it has MCD and is making me cry, but it's also REEEEAAALLY good!

Blood Drops on Roses by HotCheetohatred Fantastic storytelling! Wild centric, Twi is big brother but from day one of Wild's journey. Unreliable young Wild as narrator is an absolute delight. Unfinished, no MCD yet, but it's in the tags so no promises.

Modern AUs for not-big-on-modern-au fans:

As a fellow not-seeker of modern AUs, I personally have enjoyed the following

@skyward-floored Incredibles AU

Wild’s Wolf by HotCheetoHatred "Modern AU where young Wild is a feral forest child, raised by Wolf Twilight. He is captured, separated from Twilight, and put under observation. Time helps him escape." Unfinished, and I admit personal bias here because HotCheetoHatred is my BETA reader.

ARTISTS!!!

@ovegakart: amazing action, gut-busting humor, and captivating storytelling! Does comics

@la-sera: beautiful, ethereal, and gorgeous illustrations and a great storyteller, loves downfall duo but does every one of the boys justice

@dfanart: HILARIOUS and such heartfelt emotions on them boys.

@kikker-oma great art from fluff to whump to action

@1caru has so many fluffy LU gems!

@linderosse has a Zelda's meet AU, does LU, and much more!

@lele5429 great illustrations and abstract pieces of LU fanart.

@theecholegend hahaha... arson.

@ikaishere has so many cute LU ones.

@thepinklink fabulous LU character sketches

@hiimgin BIAS! I got to work with them and they are FABULOUS!

@pluviatrix has art for their fic And Still the Cradle Blooms

@cherrypaii has fantastic illustrations of these boys!

AND MANY, MANY MORE!

(Commenters, please add artists I forgot. I know there are a ton Im missing!!)

Hope this helps you feel welcome!

[sagau-my-beloved]

Death At The Hands Of A God Pt. 2

Warnings: general sagau, imposter au, light descriptions of violence/gore, you're resurrected after being killed (by Venti), not really angst but not really comfort or fluff either

-

Death was not as dark or empty as you had come to expect...

Was this death? Or maybe something in between—

Yes, that seemed like a better way to describe what you were experiencing, something in between real and unreal, existence and nothingness.

You couldn't think, see, feel, anything, as if you were simply a disembodied form of consciousness, waiting.

For what?

You didn't possess that answer, nor the ability to even contemplate the question. If you had the ability to think, you would have wondered briefly if this was what the characters you played as experienced when falling in battle, a void detached from both time and space.

This state of mere existence didn't last long, or, perhaps, it did. Perhaps it lasted many lifetimes, eons upon eons. It's not as if you would have recognized the difference, no different than how time passed when asleep.

You were pulled passively away, out of that void which welcomed you so, called for you, urged you to stay in its own impartial way. A call you didn't have the ability to respond to, as it simply wasn't your choice.

When you opened your eyes again you were met with something unfamiliar, the only hint of recollection stemming from a strong sense of déjà vu and nothing more.

It took you a moment to regain a sense of thought, of consciousness, remember that you were, in fact, an organic being even capable of having thoughts.

You blinked gently, taking in the scene before you, the soft breeze and wide planes spanning on for miles, the sparsely scattered trees, and the brief reflection of a river. You recognized it, in a way, and something in the back of your mind screamed that you were in danger, as if your subconscious knew of what your conscious self was trying so hard to remember.

It took but a second to move your head downward, your eyes finding themselves looking upon a kneeling form that seemed rather unaware of your presence, despite being directly beneath you. It took another moment for your brain to process what exactly you were seeing and why you felt so stricken with terror.

Oh.

Oh god.

As if having the air forcibly removed from your lungs, you felt the world around you collapse, instinctually bringing your hands up to your own throat where you last remembered feeling anything at all.

The sharp inhale is what caught his attention, what caused the previously silent archon, you had come to recognize as no other than your murderer, to raise his head in an unsure movement of fear and hope.

It was you, oh god, it was you.

The weight of every conceivable emotion that tangibly existed ran through his body, only an underlying inkling of self-restraint stopped him from lunging at your feet. He had been praying to you before your sudden appearance, begging for forgiveness, and what else could this be?

It had been only a month since your "passing", and Venti found himself engaging in ritualistic prayer every day since. It was the only thing that kept him sane with his past actions weighing on him constantly, a way to remind himself that you were still alive in spirit. While your mortal shell may be gone, the essence of the almighty creator would forever linger. It was only during these moments of prayer that Venti felt any semblance of the freedom he lost, the freedom he mourned, so he could pretend, if only for a moment, that everything was no different than how it was before that night.

The month had been the purest form of heavenly torture, and no amount of alcohol or sleep could distract him long enough to even pretend that all was well. His presence all but disappeared from the face of Teyvat, as he simply spent more time staring at one of your many shrines than breathing most days. The death of the creator, the murderer of an eternal god, a curse he alone had to bear the knowledge of.

His restraint broke quickly as you seemed to stumble backwards, creating more distance between the two of you than he was comfortable with.

"Your grace."

Felling your title on his tongue, feeling how it passed through his lips, he dreamed nightly of this moment, when he was able to dream of anything other than you so gracefully falling and the golden essence that seeped from your form where his arrow pierced it.

"You."

His heart fell, dropped down into his stomach, and shattered.

"You grace I—, I..."

Despite his seemingly endless internal thesaurus, the bards' mind drew a blank on what to say next.

What could be said? Was this not forgiveness? Was it not your will to grace him again with your presence after an agonizing month alone?

He didn't know you, not really, not personally. All he could attribute you to was the subtle feeling in the back of his mind, the strange whisper helping to guide his choices, the feeling of being watched over, before his mistake that is.

He knew of your legend, too. All the thousands of songs composed in your honor by heart, the unrelenting chattering of people carried by the wind when your name graced their lips. Every short story and unprovable myth about your existence prior, your power of creation and how you passed that power down to the mortals you created.

He knew the idea of you, no different than how his people knew the idea of Barbatos, though never truly him. Yet, as he looked upon you, past the fear, past your human vessel, there was a sense of deep familiarity that rang out and flooded his senses. A feeling that made him want nothing more than to simply know you, know everything unspoken and hidden beneath the layers of divinity, stay with you always and cherish every new piece of information, no matter how miniscule.

You glanced quickly to the left, thinking very carefully about simply making a run for it, wondering how much time you'd have before he could draw his bow and why he hadn't done so yet. Your body froze slightly at the thought, flashes of your prior life running through your mind and the unbridled fear they brought.

Venti seemed to pick up on your train of thought and couldn't stop himself from jumping into action at even the notion of more space being forced between you.

"I'm so so so sorry. I know I can't begin to repent, but please. I took care of the offender! You don't have to worry about them now—"

While rambling, Venti was inching ever closer to where you stood, trying to get close enough to safely grab on to any part of you and never let go. If he could just touch you, just secure the fact in his mind that you were alive.

Your mind was spinning with all the information, still not working at full capacity, muddled and hazy.

"Offender?" Was all you managed to choke out, wondering briefly if he was referring to your past life.

His face paled slightly at your tone. Did you really, truly not know the reason he was forced to—?

"The one in your throne, the one who took your place... The one who— who ordered your... death."

It hurt him to say the word, physically pained him, as if it was a blade caught in his throat, a harsh reminder of his transgressions.

"I— what?"

Venti had made it close enough to wrap his arms around your legs, clinging on for dear life as he reviled in feeling you, prepared to take any blows from your hand if only to stay there, it wasn't as if he didn't deserve it, and it would be blasphemy to deny anything you were gracious enough to give him.

You jumped at the sudden contact, but it was obvious he meant you no harm, though, that fact was particularly hard to convince your mind as it screamed at you to run away from the offender.

For a brief moment, the Venti you knew flashed in your mind as you felt his hands gripping the fabric of your clothes, clouded your vision with how often you used to admire him, back when this was all nothing more than a game. Just a simple game. The concept felt so foreign now.

You shifted your weight slightly and felt him hold on tighter. It took you a moment to realize he was crying, silent tears adorning his soft features.

What could you do? Was it even humanly possible to forgive something of this nature? Had any other being ever been faced with making this choice?

You had to clear your mind, ignore everything around you and focus on what you now knew. This was real, you were some figure of importance— or at the very least looked similar to one, and your death was ordered by someone who had control of even the gods of this world.

You looked down again at him, how he looked so desperate and utterly heartbroken, how he really believed himself to be the bearer of the ultimate transgression.

Without thinking, you moved your hand to his face, brushing your fingertips against the flushed skin, damp with tears. His eyes opened at your touch as he looked up at you, his hands moving from around your leg to your hand, grasping it tight as he held it to his face. This was certainly an odd form of comfort, if it could even be called that, but any touch from you was nothing but divine bliss for him.

Venti mumbled things against your skin now as he leaned into your touch, his eyes closing again, as if in prayer. He spoke breathy promises of love, devotion, and repentance, of an infinity without pain or sorrow under his watch, how he'd spend his entire immortal life by your side if you'd allow it, making up for his grave sin.

The few words you caught only led to a growing concern. This wasn't the carefree and playful bard you knew, nor was it the caring but serious god who loved his nation, this was something else entirely, something desperate and zealous, something dangerous...

You started to wonder how long it would take for you to regret your inevitable resurrection when faced with an immortal god who would not live to see you part from him again…

[blackopals-world]

A Classic Fairytale

Celestial!Yuu x Lilia/Writer!Yuu crossover fic.

Our favorite storyteller delivers a story that is stranger than fiction.

"Sorry everyone. I'm running late this week. You have no idea how chatty a bubbling brook is. They just go on and on as they carry news from upstream." Yuu said setting down for this week's storytime.

The called board read "Meetings under the Moon" the theme was centered around stories of the moon.

The children settled in under Yuu as they waited for them to begin.

The adults and teens found the childlike wonder of the event catching on as they too wanted to hear what came next.

"Well you wouldn't believe it but I was having a chat in the garden one evening with the bluebirds- you know what gossips they can be! They told me that the owls were up early. So I went to ask them why and they told me that their master was visiting and that they needed to clean up their nest. Owls are known to be clean freaks already but they make the nicest decorations out of mouse skulls." Yuu laughed to themselves "I choose to help out and wait for their master. I had to know what they were like and I'd be gobsmacked it was the moon themselves. I shouldn't have been surprised but before you know it I was talking to the moon. I learned alot but when we got to the topic of romantic gossip-because I'm no better than a bluebird- I learned an extraordinary tale. One I will share with you. It's called "The Moon's Groom"

Once upon a time, in a land long ago there was a soldier.

He was returning from battle when he came upon a temple of the sun god. He sought refuge for the night from the brothers who tended to the shrine.

The brothers whispered among themselves before speaking.

"Tonight we can't tend to you. We will be very busy with our worship. If you stay the night you will need to take care of yourself until morning." The eldest said.

The soldier agreed as he only needed a place to rest safely.

During the night he felt thirst overtake him but just as tried to open his eyes he felt the rush of cool fresh water touch his lips. He tried to see who had given him the water he saw nothing but flickering light reflecting off the water.

When he awoke in the morning he thanked the brothers for the shelter and the water. They looked at him puzzled when he asked who gave it to him and shook their heads.

The golden cup that sat on his bedside didn't belong to the temple. But stangly enough it never went empty filled with the clearest water ever tasted.

The soldier relented and continued on his way and when night came he found another temple this one of the shadow deity. The followers didn't regard him much but allowed him to say. The youngest worshipper said they couldn't tend to him because they were very busy.

The soldier happily agreed but as he laid down to sleep he kept one eye open. When he felt a cold wind blow he shivered and before he shook again a blanket fell over him. The blanket was as black as night and covered his eyes. Just as the shadow covered him he pulled it back to reveal the retreating figure of a beautiful silvery being covered in a veil.

The soldier went to chase them but found no one as they disappeared into the darkness.

The next morning the man awoke still covered in the black blanket. The martial blended into the shadows perfectly. The worshippers told him it was a blessing from the shadow deity themselves but the soldier had doubts.

He had a hunch it was someone's else.

The next day the soldier traveled slower as he searched for another temple. The temple of the moon goddess.

The sisters welcomed him open-heartedly they were preparing for a midnight feast. They middle sister invited him to say but he could not eat until all guests arrived.

The soldier agreed as he sent to take a nap.

When he awoke hungry he found a bowl of fruits next to him as the same silver figure placed it down. Quickly he grabbed them by the silk veil that covered them.

The being disappeared in an instant leaving only the veil behind.

Shortly thereafter the guests were called to the feast.

The soldier was called to attend.

Before him was a table and at the head were three figures.

On the far right a man dripping in jewels with hair of molten gold. He smiled cruelly with perfect white teeth as he admired his blazing reflection.

On the far left a shadowy figure of a nebulous being sat. They lifted their thick black veil as they drank from a chalice revealing a ghostly pale face with black lips. The moment the veil fell the soldier no longer remembered their face.

Lastly seated between them was a beautiful woman with silver eyes and iridescent hair that flowed like swirling rivers. Silver bands covered her arms.

The figures all stood and announced the festivities as a challenge. The winner would be granted any wish they desired if they won.

The golden man stood first to give his challenge.

"Find a place where I can't find you." He said.

The soldier accepted the challenge with the other guests.

As the others ran and hid the soldier took the blanket he fashioned into a cloak of the night and hid in the shadow of the golden man.

The golden man couldn't their the footsteps that match his own as he pointed out where each guest hid with no trouble at all. Only a few passed the challenge including the soldier.

The shadowy figure stood next.

"Make a path I can't cross."

No one understood what that could mean. A path is meant to be crossed. Still, they began making barriers that couldn't be crossed.

The soldier picked up the golden cup and began pouring the endless water until it became a rushing river. The moonlight shined on the waters surface.

The shadow couldn't cross the river as it's path was blocked by light. Moreover crossing a river meant breaking a path as the river had its own path. To take its path means never to cross it as it goes in one direction to the ocean.

Only the soldier passed the test as the Silver figure stood.

"Prove who we are."

The soldier smiled proudly. We already knew them.

"The gold in gold is the sun. We can see everything under the sun but not the shadows. I proved it by hiding in his shadow. The figure in black are the shadows. They can't walk in the light like over the river. And lastly you my lady...you are my lover."

Everyone gasped in shock at the announcement.

"What do you mean?!" The woman asked aghast.

"You visit me each night. You give me whatever I desire and if you weren't my lover then why do I hold your favor?" The soldier held up the sliver veil in his hand.

The other gods eyed the woman critically feeling convinced. The guest also believed the proof was convincing.

Due to the challenge, it didn't really matter if it was the full truth but she couldn't refute the claim.

"You have won." She said in defeat but she was also impressed "What is your wish?"

The soldier smiled.

"Well, it's hardly appropriate to be lovers forever. It's best if we get married soon my love. You are the most radiant and kind-hearted being I've ever met. I have watched you from afar for so long and I know you know that my heart has always been yours. So I wish for us to get married tonight." He said firmly as he got on one knee.

That night before the gods and guest they were married. The soldier had gotten his greatest wish to we'd the moon.

And they lived happily ever after

The crowd cheered at the end.

The unmistakable voice of Lilia was heard whispering to a blushing young woman.

"I remembered having the wedding at the castle and I got roped into the challenge by Her Majesty."

"This version sounds more fun. Although you were much more clumsy with your proposal. So cute."

[creepychippy]

My Take on Kieran from the Pokemon SV Teal Mask DLC/his Pain/Trauma (obvious and major Spoilers to the Story under the Cut):

Carmine is seen throughout the Game insulting/not treating Kieran kindly. That has tremendous Effects on his Confidence and Self-Esteem (stuttering, not confident enough to talk to others, etc)

When he sees you, the Protagonist, he immediately places you on a Pedestal, basically idolizing you and thinking you can only do right/are not capable of making Mistakes (which is a very bad Thing to do, because when you put People on a Pedestal and think very highly of them, any Mistake they'll do will shatter the perfect Image you built of them and you will grow to resent that Person because of that. Instead of unyielding Love and Admiration for them, it will turn into bitter Hatred and a Grudge forms.)

The only Thing that brings him Comfort through all the Pain is Ogerpon. It basically became his Hyperfixation which you can see when he comes up with these wholesome Scenarios in his Head (hoping to meet Ogerpon one Day and become his Friend, invite Ogerpon to his Home, etc). He also sees Part of himself in Ogerpon, so because of that he thinks he would have a special Connection with this Pokemon.

Then you come along. At first, everything seems fine, but soon Things begin to turn negative. You lie to him (probably against your Will) as he tests you, so Part of his Trust is already once again shattered and his Self-Esteem worsens once again (he thinks you and Carmine laugh behind his back without having any Evidence for it. His Head tells him that this is the Truth).

Then, the only Source of Comfort turns away from him… and to you (it's like your Hyperfixation walking right up to you, only to push you aside and give someone else the Attention you always craved), so that is taken away from him as well. On top of that, the Person he once considered his Friend is understanding themself well with the one Person who always antagonized him… his Sister, Carmine.

His entire Environment is crumbling apart, so he tries to fight the Force that is destroying it… only to lose over, and over, and over again (without anyone telling him that the Person he is facing off against is considered a Champion in one Region, while he himself only has average Knowledge about battling. He was doomed to lose from the Start)

He is shown as this shy, meek Character at first, but if you pay Attention to the Details, you can quickly tell how his Frustrations, his Despair and his Anger are building up, bottling up within him (he punches a Shrine made out of Stone with his Fist (not thinking clearly and reacting based on his Emotions as he regrets doing that Moments later on, seeing how his Expression changes into a pained one and he shakes his Hand in Pain), he falls down to the Ground and pounds his Fist against the Floor, the Light in his Eyes vanishes, he clenches his Fists when thinking about you… but also mostly stays silent all the same, rarely shouting out in Anger.)

And to top it off… he seems to be a Child without Parents, only having his Grandparents around him, one of which has kept the true Story of Ogerpon hidden from him for many Years now.

Carmine assumed at some points that Kieran acted weirdly due to Hormones, since Kieran is in his Teen Years… and we know how irrational and emotional Teens can become due to Hormones.

It doesn't end there for him, however. As one of my best Friends pointed out while I was talking to him, Kieran's School Life doesn't seem great either. Remember how all giddy Kieran gets when he hears you considering him to be your Friend. That shows how he doesn't have any Friends at his School at all. It's no wonder how he considers himself to be an Outsider and how he asumes Carmine and you exclude him from Stuff even if there is once again no Proof for it.

One last Detail I think I noticed is how Kieran sabotages himself, whether he does it intentionally or not. He is clearly frustrated that Ogerpon prefers you over him. Yet, he abandoned Ogerpon when Ogerpon needed help the most (meanwhile, the Protagonist was always there for Ogerpon, so it makes Sense that Ogerpon would flock to them more than it would to Kieran). Instead of listening what others have to say and let them talk, he keeps running away before he can gain Information/their Side of the Story, twisting his Perception of others further. He is also always the one that demands to battle with you, despite Part of him knowing that he will lose.

To sum it up: Kieran is seemingly a shy and meek Boy who already had some Troubles in his Home-, Social- and School Life, resulting in his poor Self-Esteem and dwindling mental Health. Then he places the Protagonist on a high Pedestal (possibly due to Trauma and/or Loneliness) when they come along and idolize them, only for that Person to unintentionally and inevitably destroy everything he held dearly to him and turn his Life upside down.

Also, while I can't assume that he hates the Protagonist's Guts now and harbor a Grudge against them (since that would be kinda hypocritical considering he thought Carmine and the Protagonist were laughing behind his back without having any Evidence to back it up), it wouldn't be too surprising if it turned out that that was the Case, even if it is just a tiny Part of him that does so.

So, what exactly does all of this mean for Part 2 of the DLC?

Well, I think that maybe someone is going to take Advantage of the Situation and manipulate Kieran, as Kieran's mental Wellbeing is basically down the Drain at this point. The only Thing he, and possibly by Extension his Hatred, cares about is tearing us down. And considering how chaotic his Emotions must be right now, he won't think clearly about what he is doing, as proven by his past Actions… therefore giving others an Opportunity to manipulate him.

------

If anyone wants to add something onto this, feel free to do so. Also, if this Post feels scattered or weird, it's because I copy and pasted my Thoughts and Ramblings I had between me and my best Friend on Discord onto this Post, so that's why it might be all over the Place- uwu Please remember that I also played the DLC in German, so if some Things are different, then Parts of the Translations weren't the same as the English one- :^Pc

[jenniferchaulam]

MLP G4 LU Chain HCs!!!!

/inspired by @kenvamp 's (check the art out here)and @cheatsylu 's (check over here)

I had.. cutie mark head canons for Pony LU chain and I need to talk about them (these are my own HCs and you guys don't have to agree btw!!!!!!!) So, how and when each pony gets their Cutie Marks: Warriors: same time as his scarf. He was given the scarf and then the cutie mark appeared. He got it a bit later than his peers, but it's a very cool cutie mark. Fitting for a captain.

Time: can i be spicy? i want to be spicy, he got his cutie mark when he was 20. Not when he did OoT, not when he did MM. 7 year nap and woke up hoping for a cutie mark only to see a blank flank. and during MM, Everyone comments on it! like he never gets the mark of adulthood ever! okay not "ever" i want him to get it when he's 20 or sth and his cutie mark sucks,. and even twilight doesnt know what it looks like like he got it during a battle

a battle when he was TWENTY and it looks like the FD

and like, yall know Trouble Shoes who HATES his CM, yea Time loathesssss his

first he wishes he has one and now he wishes he didnt - only person who knows what his CM looks like is his Wife btw

Wind: OHO OPPOSITE SIDE OF THE SPECTRUM- Bro probably helped his sister and taught her how to swim or sth and get his CM at age 4 like by the time he does WW his cutie mark has been there for a While. He is a Big Boy. He deserves it

Four: Would it be funny if he has four different cutie marks and when he's merged they're like, blended together - and his cutie mark gains another shape each time he upgrades the four sword - but like, instead of the four elements for the four sword,.his cutie mark is the forge and it just becomes more detailed and has different colors - like a red fire, blue hammer, green anvil, purple tweezers

Twilight: Yall know Yaks and Cows exist in MLP as like... high sentient beings that also go to school and talk and stuff. What if Ordon Goats. like Twilight's Entire Village. Twilight stuck out like a sore thumb. And he's Very very disappointed that his cm isnt a goat. he got his cm at age 14 when he was helping everyone on the farm, and it's some generic rancher stuff like a hay bale or sth.

Hyrule: is the triforce. id like to imagine that full triforce wielders gets a triforce as a cutie mark. He has a bunch of magic of his sleeves, and if you know anything about MLP G4 naming conventions, magic-adjacent ponies are named after light-emitting things. So, Triforce emits a BUNCHA LIGHT

Legend: Oh my god I imagine he hides his cutie mark because its something very soft (bnuuy) and people wont take him seriously - he got it when he was very very young, before his adventures. But the rabbit cutie mark depicts a rabbit that's shaking an apple tree. (proof of courage. or sth. that's what im aiming for as a symbol of bravery, but I am no writer)

Sky: Got his CM at the same time as Sun!!!!! They have matching cutie marks. His is a sword and a Crimson Loftwing's feather, while hers is a pair of wings, one white (like the goddess, but she didn't know that before the adventure) and one blue like her loftwing.

Wild: He DID have a CM before the clammy, but one of the side effects of the Shrine of Ressurection is that it also erases that pony's cutie mark. he woke up with a blank flank. and my guy fought the clammy and found his own new cm that fits him. honourable mentions: Spirits! He got it when he got on a train for the first time, it. was. magical

the train

the train was magical. i hc that he didnt thought much of his CM

[breannasfluff]

Link doesn’t mind being a ghost. For the most part, he isn’t aware of time passing like the living. He jumps from moment to moment, fading in and out of focus. 

In battles, he guides Wild’s movements, meshing with the body that was once his to lend sword skills wiped by the Shrine. 

Sometimes he’ll tune in as Wild jumps on a shield, whooping as he slides down a hill. Or his taste buds light up with a new flavor when Wild tries a recipe. They still have the same favorite food; wildberry crepes. 

Link, the Champion of the past, died on the battlefield to a multitude of Guardian injuries. The boy who woke up in his place, now dubbed Wild, was not him. In most ways, the new boy is better. Link wants nothing more than to watch the person he could have been live life to the fullest. 

If only Wild hadn’t forgotten his sister and mother; those would have been good memories to keep. The rest of it? Link is happy to let those memories die with him. 

Wild travels with a group of heroes and Link delights in the bonds he forms with the group. Wild may not remember his family, but these boys become a new family. 

Link even heard mention that the youngest, Wind, could see ghosts, but the sailor never acknowledges him. Still, he can remain on the sidelines, lending his skill and watching Wild love life.

The love, though, comes with a never-ending guilt for failing his mission. Even death isn’t enough to make up for it. The goddess gave them another chance and they can’t waste it. 

Wizzrobes are rapidly becoming the Chain’s least favorite enemy. Wild’s monsters not only have elemental magic, but wild magic as well. Mystery spells have to be dodged in battle and getting hit by one leads to unknown effects. 

Once, Four was frozen by something similar to Wild’s stasis rune; out of commission for most of the battle. When Warriors was hit, trying to dodge an incoming slash, his directions became unintelligible. Time promptly picked up directions, but it was a full day before the Captain could speak normally.

The wizzrobe in today’s battle has an ice rod. Warriors is happily blasting back at it with Legend’s fire rod. Hyrule cuts down enemies behind him, protecting his back. 

A moblin kicks Wind, sending him crashing into Wild’s side. They both go down in a flail of limbs and weapons, struggling to get up before being impaled. 

Taking a chance, the wizzrobe throws another spell at the downed heroes. Unable to see it coming, it lands squarely in the middle of Wild’s back. 

Wind is left standing guard, grabbing the Champion’s dropped shield to fend off further spells. 

The wizzrobe is aiming again, laughing, when an arrow sprouts from its head. Twilight’s already letting loose a second one to take it down. 

Without aerial attacks to dodge, the heroes quickly finish the battle. 

“Time! I think you need to come here!” Wind’s voice has them running to where he still stands over Wild. 

“What in Farore’s ass happened?” 

“Language,” Time tries with a defeated sigh. Legend seems to delight in teaching Wind new swears. 

On the ground lays Wild but not…Wild? There is something slightly off about him; tense where Wild is loose.

“He’s fine, just knocked out.” Hyrule checks him efficiently, then turns to their leader. “What now?”

Whatever the spell did, they won’t figure it out with him unconscious. “Let’s take him and set up camp. We can figure this out when he wakes up. The spells seem to wear off after not too long, so let’s hope this is the same.”

Wind circles Twilight as he hefts the hero in his arms. “But What happened?”

Time grits his teeth at the question. “I don’t know.”

Pain isn’t what Link expects when he wakes up, but it’s a familiar feeling. Pain was the defining factor of most of his life. 

Along with the pain is a host of bodily sensations that overwhelm him; ghosts aren’t so readily grounded in the physical. What happened?

With a groan, Link opens his eyes. Branches full of leaves frame the sky; a green more vivid than he’s seen in a long time. Beneath his fingers is the rough wool of a blanket. His stomach grumbles; he’s…hungry?

A head enters his field of view; Sky. “Hey, Wild, how are you feeling?”

Wild. But he’s Link. Link who is a ghost, who doesn’t feel physical sensations like this. Who isn’t alive, chest rising and falling with every crisp breath of air. 

The wizzrobe—

“You were hit by a spell,” Sky unknowingly supplies. “Something seems off but…we were hoping you could tell us what happened?”

“Please let him still be able to talk,” Warriors grumbles from somewhere behind him. 

“He’s more fluent in sign than you are,” Four shoots back. 

“Yeah, yeah, I know; I’ve got too many battle signals.”

Link can almost hear the eye roll with the statement. He takes a deep breath because he can, then pushes himself upright. He’s sore in strange places—what does Wild do to use those muscles—but otherwise okay. 

Focusing on Sky, he signs, I’m able to continue. What’s the plan?

Sky stares, as do half the other boys. “Um.” Helplessly, Sky looks at Time who pushes himself off his log. 

“The wizzrobe, Wild. Do you remember what happened?”

Well, he’s not doing a good job of pretending to be Wild. Then again, he doesn’t know how to be the person he’s become. Training and duty are the defining factors of his life and he can’t break the habit. As a ghost, he could relax into Wild’s emotions as they bleed over. Now he had only his own. 

Link tests his legs, and when he finds they work he snaps a salute to Time. Yes sir. The wizzrobe’s spell hit Wild’s body, he signs. My hypothesis is that it pushed his spirit free. Rather than leaving him a shell, easy to defeat, I was pulled into the empty vessel. If the past pattern continues, you should have Wild back within 24 hours.

His report finished, he moves into a parade stance and waits. 

“Holy shit.” Legend stares at Link. “Who the hell are you then?”

Read the rest here!

[hmshermitcraft]

Since I LOOOVE the thought of Doc being a God:

Deity Doc and main priest/worshipper Ren?

(worshipper in all the ways you want to interpret it)

Ren often feels like he's one of the few people that actually understands the deity they worship. Most see Doc as a warmongerer - a creator of weapons who relishes in destruction.

But Ren sees past that. Doc creates things that can do harm, but more than that, he creates. His creations have extended across the world, but people only ever seem to remember those from under the banner of war.

Ren tries to emulate that same creativity in his own worship. His shrine automatically extinguishes after a few hours, and can light itself. A bell chimes when it's time to worship. All these small conveniences that aren't world ending, bending or creating, but simply helpful and fun.

It can't help but catch Doc's attention. Ren's worship of him is so earnest. Doc is used to people honouring him for his favour in battle or contest, not just for his creativity. And Doc thinks that devotion deserves to be repaid.

(Especially when the devotee is so cute.)

[scenicphoenix]

Totk roleswap because of course I am doing that

(might add on to this when I completely finish the game. I have only mentioned stuff i am absolutely certain about currently)

Link and Zelda finding Ganondorf is different, instead of Rarus hand imprisoning him, its fragments of Sonia and her Time magic. Raru was killed instead of Sonia, his Stone stolen by Ganondorf. Sonia using her stone and time magic to seal herself and Ganondorf in a bubble of frozen time.

Link gets sent to the past instead of Zelda, he was the one to end up falling instead. The Sonias Zonai stone ending up on his person during the chaos of the fall. Zelda while trying to catch Link and ends up grabbing the master sword instead, this is the moment Link teleports to the past and Zelda to the Sky islands

Links arm was still infected with gloom and needed to be amputated when he arrived in the past. The Zonai stone he arrived with helped keep the gloom at bay. Raru takes him under his wing due to his remarkable abilities in serving the light, and to help with the gloom infecting him. Sonia is impressed by his abilities in time magic as well, his flurry rush has a unique use of time magic.

Link doesn't immediately connect the dots of Ganondorf being the corpse that attacked him and Zelda. He does know he absolutely doesn't trust him. Ganondorf doesn't like Link either, mutual hatred for the other.

Before officially meeting Ganondorf, where he tries to brute force his way into taking over Hyrule, the battle goes differently. Instead of a beam of pure magic that nukes the Moldugas, due to not having Zelda around, with Links Zonai stone combined with a boost from Raru and Sonai. Link is able to destroy the Moldugas one by one at a fast pace, a super powered version of his flurry rush. This battle was much more close and Link was a last resort that Sonia suggested last second as a desperate measure. Her hope of powering up his flurry rush worked, she just wished she didn't have to put him in such harms way, however.

Raru is dead, the sages have fallen, Ganondorf is sealed away thanks to Sonia but that's only temporary. Link is at the temple of time, a tale as old as time, he's hoping for an answer, he gets one. Through the sands of time he and Zelda unknowingly briefly connect, Zelda sending not only the master sword but a large portion of her powers of light to him. He briefly remembers that the master sword can heal any damage done to it over time if the holy power is strong enough. He remembers what he was told about Zonai stones and the sacred dragons.

Link turns into a sacred dragon so he can heal the master sword and arrive in the future. Although he isn't a dragon of light like Zelda would have been. He's the dragon of time. A large green dragon that can be seen entering and exiting portals from different eras of time ever since his ascension into the dragon of time. Is the one you're approaching the correct version of him? Will it be the one where the sword is healed or still healing? His golden mane seems to be made of sand. His tears leave behind Sundilions instead of silent princesses. He has one less legs than the other dragons. Zelda feels safer around this dragon and he wonders why. She figures out why when he finds all the dragons tears.

Zelda wakes up at the sky islands, and is led by Sonia. Much like how Link was led by Raru. With Zelda being the mortal goddess and not infected by gloom, he is not restricted by the door of the temple of time like link would have been. Giving the sword and a portion of her powers to link through a hole in time. Now being weaker due to him sacrificing most of his powers to heal the master sword, Sonia guides her to shrines on the islands to help rebuild her strength.

Due to Zelda being distantly related to Sonia and his status as mortal goddess even if she has been weakened, she is able to open the shrines and use anything with the Zonai symbols on them. His reason for going to shrines is to strengthen her powers over light again after giving most of it to Link through time for the purpose of healing the master sword.

I don't think Zelda would fight with a sword or similar weapons. I think he would like bows and magic based weapons and attacks. Distance is her friend, although I doubt you want to be hit full force at close range by his powers even when she's weakened. He's a force to be reckoned with. He's the descendant of a goddess for Pete's sake.

Zelda would love exploring the skies and the depths.

The dragons of times portal ls only work for him. Although you can look through them and see the different eras he's traveling from or to. There are three noticeably different dragons of time, all based on how much the master sword has healed. The first one where he's basically just turned into a dragon and the sword is still heavily damaged. The second one where he's right in the middle of the past and present, the master sword is noticeably still damaged but on its way to being healed. And the third one where it's the most recent version of himself, the master sword is completely healed. But all three can travel through time, and you won't know which version of him it is until you check the master sword. If you try and pull one of the still damaged swords you will be flung into the nearby skies. A good way to get to higher sky islands.

I wouldn't be surprised if Zelda disquises herself, feeling like he can't completely be there for her kingdom without Link. Plus i think Ganon and the Yiga would be more aggressive at hunting him down. Zelda's also never got to try out fully being a him before being a princess and all. Sheik time. I like gender fluid Zelda. Why not both gender? Also Sheik gets to be included, everybody loves Sheik

Some things I haven't added because I would need time to figure it out and write it down. Like Links growing relationships with Raru and Sonai, Mineru, how the final battle goes before and when Sonai seals Ganon, ect. The more dialog heavy story bits mostly.