#pillars of levia

[ladyphoenixnine]

[bahbahhh]

begin again

a lot of change happens in between Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. let’s fill in the gaps.

zelda pov | zelink | totk spoilers | rated T zelinkweek2023 | @zelinkcommunity

[first] [previous] [ ao3 ]

Again, another shout out to my amazing beta reader @zeldaelmo who really helped me nail the ending of this chapter.

chapter 4

for the prompt “hand-in-hand”

It has been raining for the better part of a week. Plantlife in Kakariko is thriving. Lantern Lake is swollen and clear. A small pool of flooding has begun to collect in the road between the inlet of the Goddess statue and Impa’s House. It’s far enough from the storefronts and the crops not to raise any concern, and a family of ducks has taken refuge where Cado usually stands, providing amusement for the Sheikah children. 

Paya says the rain is a blessing. Zelda has been trying to see the brighter side of things, but it feels a little too ironic to be reminding herself of that in the middle of a rainstorm. She’s trapped in one of the small stables on the border of the village. She had been taking a walk in a lighter pass of the storm, trying to scatter the anxious energy that builds up naturally when she’s surrounded by four walls for too long, when the sky suddenly started dumping rain again. She had to duck into the stable to keep from getting swept down the hill. 

She listens to the rain drumming against the roof and makes a mental note to let Paya know the thatching is in need of some repair. 

“That’s not very ‘bright side’ of me,” Zelda says to herself, scooting back from a particularly steady stream of rainwater leaking down beside her. She sets her jaw and looks out over Kakariko. The rain is so heavy, all she can make out are soggy blobs of color that resemble the houses and banners and fences she knows are there. 

Water pours down the slope from the northern entrance. Beneath the gate, shadows dance in the narrow pass between flashes of lighting, playing tricks with her eyes. She spots shadows that look like tree branches growing out of the rock, a horseless carriage, and a lone figure. 

All traffic in or out of the village has completely stopped. The clouds are angry-looking and thick, trapped by the valley so the moisture collects in the air. It’s grown so heavy, Zelda tastes it in every breath. The Sheikah say this happens from time to time. The Pillars of Levia are thought to resemble a giant hand that catches clouds foolish enough to pass overhead. The storm swirls above her, fingers of heat lightning crawling across the sky, threatening to reach for the peaks surrounding Lantern Lake. It has kept the Rito messengers away. 

Zelda squints. The last shadow she spotted in the pass, resembling a figure, has remained steady between the sheets of rain. She leans forward quickly, her heart in her throat, fingers braced against the nearly stable beam. 

Someone is approaching the village. 

The Rito wouldn’t use the pass and even though it’s muddled, she would know this outline anywhere. She studied it stubbornly one hundred years ago, and then with urgency and desperation during her stasis. She’s missed it for ten long months. 

A loud clap of thunder jolts her out of her shelter, urging her forward, and his name bursts from her lips before she can stop it.

“Link?!”

The figure stops and turns in the direction of her voice. The storm slows enough so she can see the spaces between drops of falling rain and for a heartbeat, it’s almost like they start slowly moving in reverse, back up to the clouds. Another random moment where she swears she can taste magic, where the candle inside she’s constantly searching for temporarily explodes with Light. It’s so bright, she might be able to reach it this time, but she’s not focused on finding where her magic has been hiding. She’s looking at Link.

He’s soaking wet, clothing plastered with mud, hair smeared across his face. The luminous stones behind his eyes flash in her direction, like a wild animal in the dark, and then go out completely. He slumps against the gatepost and collapses forward. In the same instant, all the rain crawling back up into the clouds bursts free of whatever strange reversing she’s set off and it all accelerates back down in real time. Zelda sprints forward, slips in the mud, twice, and has to crawl through the flash flood from the pass the rest of the way.

He’s unconscious and pale. She scans his body for evidence of injury—blood, bruising, torn clothing. At first glance, he’s intact, but that only worries her more; turns her heart into a humminbird that beats against her ribs. She knows things can be broken inside, and briefly recalls Mipha once told her injuries you can’t see are often the worst. She feathers her hands over him hesitantly, whimpering his name, and then gathers him up in her arms. 

He’s hot. Hotter than should be possible. Like he’s a stone on Death Mountain that would be sizzling in the rain. It’s uncomfortable to palm his forehead, to hold him tight against her chest, but she endures, grits her teeth, and tries to lift him. Between the mud and the entire weight of his body and gear, they end up falling face first after a few steps. 

She smacks her chin hard. Stars swim in her vision, metal fills her mouth and the pitter-patter of the storm on the cliffs starts to sound like too many legs running toward them. Chimes in Kakariko red whirl like gears in the wind. The entire world leans over her, dangerously close, and she knows it’s the storm playing tricks, like the shadows in the pass, but he’s really in her arms, and they’ve been like this before, and if she’s losing him again–

She waits for the next boom of thunder to pass and starts to scream.

—-

Eventually someone hears her. Dorian helps Zelda carry Link to Impa’s House. Paya has to pry her fingers out of Link’s tunic. They hastily set up a cot between the stairs to the second floor and Impa offers one of her pillows for his head. They strip the clothes off him, dry his skin with a towel, and wrap him in a blanket. He has some bruising on his arms, a few scratches on his hands and knees, but it’s nothing out of the ordinary for what can be expected with travel. He’s thinner than she remembers. Paya retrieves his hand and gently pinches beneath his knuckles. His skin remains raised where she pulled when she takes away her hand.

Paya immediately rises and disappears under the stairs. A century ago, Zelda was told the gift of healing was known to others touched by her Power. Her mother died before she could pass along the important secrets of weaving magic over skin, stitching up wounds, washing away sickness. Her father told her the Goddess would reveal everything once she unlocked her Power. But a hundred years suspended by it, so divine she hemorrhaged molten sorcery every time she opened her lips, and still she heard no wisdom. No secrets. 

She tries to summon gold to her fingers, pressing them against his skin, focused on his suffering even though it physically hurts her to do it, but nothing comes. Paya has to pull her hands away again when she returns. 

“Here, he needs water.” Paya helps Zelda lift him enough to guide a cup to his lips. Most of it spills down his chin and pools on his neck. He sighs, limbs coming to life enough to wrap his hands around hers on the cup. He keeps his eyes shut and drinks the rest. This is more than a bad fever or a traveler’s virus. She can see all the nights he’s refused to sleep in the rim of fatigue around his eyes, so dark they look like smudges of coal. 

“You lied,” Zelda says, voice quivering. She blinks back the sting of tears. “About the rest. You lied.” 

Link falls back against the pillow. His eyes open for a second, an apology in his weakened gaze, before he passes back out. 

It is the same look he gave her right before he died. 

—-

The fever breaks the next day. Paya tries to coax some herbs and tea into him, but he pushes them away and signs for his pack when he has enough strength to sit up. He pulls out a tonic, noxious green, and a spiky yellow fruit that smells like rotting meat when it cracks open. He takes down both with a grimace and only then accepts the tea. Paya inspects the fruit and jots down some notes studiously. It’s what Zelda should be doing, but she’s still too angry to learn anything from him. 

Zelda, instead, sits in the corner of the room and studies the journey logged by the Sheikah Slate. He has four hundred and twenty seven ancient screws, twelve dozen guardian legs, a hundred and four ancient gears, and fifty one burnt out cores. She can see where he used fast travel by the abrupt gaps in his trail, and while it’s more than she likes, there are plenty of paths where he traveled on foot, so at least he kept his word about that. There is an intricate weaving of journey between the Great Plateau and southern Hyrule, where he jumped back and forth during the initial hesitancy to enter the Shrine of Resurrection. He didn’t clear it after he wrote to her. It’s the single glowing dot in the southwest entirety of the map. His trail moves up into Central Hyrule, all the way to the island north of the Quarry Ruins. Any evidence of the shrine she assumes brought him there is gone.

Then he moves in the direction of the castle, circles the foundation of the sacred grounds a few times, fast travels to Great Hyrule Forest, and then fast travels again to the shrine at the base of the Whistling Hill. Strangely, he doesn’t clear any of the shrines he traveled to. He passed through Riverside Stable, maybe to grab a horse or to rest, and then follows the road through the Dueling Peaks up to Kakariko. 

“When did you start feeling ill?” Zelda asks.

Link balances the tea carefully in one hand and motions for the Slate with the other.  Zelda moves over to him, and takes a seat by his cot. 

‘The shrine here,’ he points to the island next to Hyrule Castle. ‘Was situated deep in a cave covered by thorns. Hadn’t been back since the day I found it, so the thorns grew back.’

“How did you get around the thrones? Fast travel?” 

‘I always burn them when I see them. Bad for horses.’ 

Zelda knows smoke to be deadly, but it wouldn’t cause fever. She takes the Slate back from him and pinches her fingers to zoom all the way in on the island. 

“Was there anything different about the cave since the first time you were there?”

Link shakes his head.

“Nothing strange?” Zelda presses. 

‘The cave runs deep. Smelt funnier than I remembered.’

“Funnier?”

‘Like fumes. Decomposition. There was a lot of moisture inside. The Central Hyrule team said they got hit with a bad storm recently.’

“I believe it. Probably the same storm that's stuck in the valley.”

“You didn’t drink any of the water inside, right?” Paya interrupts gently. 

Link gives her a flat look. 

“S-s-sorry!”

“It’s not a ridiculous question, you're known to eat dubious food when you're desperate enough,” Zelda says. 

Link shrugs. 

“Did you immediately feel sick?”

He thinks for a beat, and then signs. ‘No. Maybe the next day?’

“At the sacred grounds?” 

He lifts his eyebrows up at Zelda and she bristles. “I was curious.”

“Should we put out an alert to avoid the cave until it can be properly investigated?” Paya asks.

‘There are a lot of old places in Hyrule people should avoid. Lots of unchecked and forgotten old magic. This was just a cave with damp air. It could have easily been something I ate.’

“Did you take any mushrooms from inside the cave?” Zelda says. 

He glares at her. 

“Again, a fair question, is it not?” Zelda straightens her spine. He huffs and shrugs.  “It doesn’t look like you rested much in the last two months.” Zelda points at the Slate. “It was probably a combination of small things- too much fast travel, monster patrolling, dehydration, the lack of a proper meal on the road. You are strong and you recover quicker than most, but you aren’t immortal.”

Link gets a far off look in his eyes. Before she can take it back, he signs, ‘It’s a fine line.’

He sinks down into the cot, paler than before, and rolls over. Paya goes back to studying the smelly fruit. Zelda sits beside him, stuck with the memory from a hundred years ago she summoned without meaning to. She is good at giving warnings, urging caution, chastising recklessness, and then quick to be left behind a tree, or in town, far from the fight or the hazards. Or worse, she gets herself stranded – the Yiga attack a century ago, slipping face-first in the mud yesterday – and requires rescue. Only when it is too late, like after the Calamity burst from the castle and their friends were slain, does she seem capable of offering more than words. 

She thinks about when she tried to send her response out to him at the Shrine of Resurrection, how brave it felt to send her letter. How she imagined he might feel reading it, whether her words alone would give him the courage to face his fears, or inspire him to come racing to Kakariko to see her. 

At the end of the day, like the proposal still at the bottom of her adventure pouch, like all her prayers to the Goddess, it's just more words.

—-

Purah and Robbie arrive in Kakariko three days later. With more tonic, fruit, and tea, Link’s strength returns, and he sets to work in the village. The rain moves away from the valley with his recovery. He gathers up cuccos, repairs the thatching, overpays for and cleans out the inventories of High Spirits and the Curious Quiver. The Sheikah are quick to forget how sick he was. Zelda doesn’t hear anyone warning him to take it easy. The requests for his aid are plenty. 

She can’t help but feel like he’s keeping busy to avoid her.

The village hosts a communal meal to celebrate the storm ending. They pull out a large pot, set it over the fire by High Spirits and serve bowl after bowl of creamy vegetable soup until every belly in the village is full. Koko’s surprises everyone with her signature hot apples, made possible by a donation of all the goat butter Link bought from Trissa. He also supplies a handful of rare big truffles from his travels for the soup.

He just gives it all to them. 

It shouldn’t bother her, but she can’t seem to shake the weight of his body in her arms or the coal under his eyes, or the way he looked at her the day he died. She catches herself staring at him, unapologetically, searching for signs he needs rest. She’s doing it now, as he finally sits down with some food with the Sheikah elders, Purah, and Paya. 

“You with us, Princess?” Purah says. Zelda drops her spoon in her bowl.  

“Me? Yeah, sure. Yes. What were you saying?”

“I was just summarizing what is left in phase one of the restoration. Link only has six shrines left in Central Hyrule and then all the shrines in Akkala. We got a report from the Central Hyrule guardian team. Link was able to gather a handful of the cores when he was there, but they have the greatest concentration of guardians in all of Hyrule. He’ll need to go back and aid with the–”

“He was sick,” Zelda says.

“I heard you used durian from Faron. Do you have any more? Smells like feet, but does wonders for my joints,” Robbie says between bites of apple.

“Thank the Goddess our Linky is feeling better!” She snaps her fingers. “We could probably head out tomorrow–”

“He only just started feeling better.”

“I’m fine.” It’s the first time he’s spoken out loud since he arrived. His voice is raspy and tired. It only fuels her momentum. 

Zelda snaps her head toward Link. “You were so sick you couldn’t stand. I saw how much ground you covered those last few weeks. All of Faron and the rest of Necluda? The terrain surrounding Mount Floria–the Zonai Ruins alone should have taken you a month.”

He switches back to sign, his eyes narrowing slightly. ‘I’ve done it before.’

“Yes, but just because you have doesn’t mean you should. What if you fainted on a mountain? Or slipped crossing the falls. You won't be able to fast travel away from danger much longer.”

‘I know that.’

“You still have to clear the Shrine of Resurrection.”

Link gets dangerously still. She’s seen this stature before, mostly when he’s preparing to strike. In the calm before an ambush, or when he’s surrounded, plotting out the next ten moves in the space between seconds. 

And that’s his problem right?

Zelda sets down her bowl, digs her heels in, and turns to Impa. “I propose we pause the shrines. It doesn’t need to be done in a year. We are already behind schedule. We can focus on the towers, or the Divine Beasts for a little while.”

“I can finish the shrines,” Link says. Zelda doesn’t look at him. She looks at Purah. “It would be a good opportunity to compare the Sheikah Slate to your new prototype.  Probably the last time you’ll be able to run any pending mechanics before the Slate is gone. The plan is to destroy the Slate when the shrines are gone, right?”

Purah adjusts her crimson glasses and looks down at the Sheikah Slate. She grips it like it might grow legs and leap off her lap at any second. Zelda can see the gears begin to turn in her head. The Anti-Aging Rune is calibrated for the Sheikah Slate. How could she justify keeping the Slate functional after they complete the initial restoration phase for a personal project no one sanctioned.  

“I do want to review the…camera function. Yeah, yes. I still need to build out the software for the Purah Pad so it compiles relevant photos into a compendium like the Sheikah Slate.”

“Can’t you just load all the data Link has already collected from the Sheikah Slate? Master Link spent three years collecting it all for you,” Paya says. At least someone else appreciates his efforts. 

“What’s the fun in that?” Purah waves her hand dismissively. 

‘I still think we should call it something different…” Robbie grumbles.

“No one will trust a device called the ‘Divine Switch’. Let it go.” 

Impa looks at Link quietly, absentmindedly pressing two fingers to her third eye. Zelda can see something registering across the Sheikah’s face. Was she still seeing the Hero of the Wild, warden of Courage, Hylia’s fist? Or was she seeing the only sparring partner that ever matched her intensity, who always used to return with a pumpkin in his early campaigns because he knew how much the Sheikah missed home? Is she finally remembering the boy behind the Champion blue?

She looks at Zelda next. Zelda holds her breath. Does she see the avatar of the Goddess? The lost Princess of Hyrule? Or is it the girl all those years ago Impa stumbled upon, wandering the empty halls of a stone castle in the middle of the night, desperate for a friend? 

Impa takes her hand away from her face and nods. “Vah Rudania is already resting. We should support the burial of the remaining Divine Beasts. Purah can take the Slate and run any final tests. It will give me time to formulate the announcement of my retirement.”

Zelda blinks. Paya drops her food. “G-grandmother? What are you talking about?”

“The abdication of my title.”

“W-when?”

Impa squints at the night sky. It’s the clearest it’s been in a week. “Now? Now sounds good.”

“What are you talking about? Who will–” Paya freezes as Impa pulls off her hat, revealing a thin coil of silver braid on the top of her head that partially uncoils and drops down by her ear. 

She sighs and sets the hat down in Paya’s lap. “Here you go.”

“Grandmother. No! No. You can’t be– Princess? Master Link? Tell her she can’t do this!”

“You think we’ve ever been able to Impa what to do?” Link says. Zelda finally looks at him. The brief flash of irritation she ignited with her comment about the Shrine of Resurrection is gone. He’s painfully unreadable again.

“Great auntie?”

“Don’t look at me. I’m just a kid.”

For now, Zelda thinks. Purah winks at her.

“R-r-robbie?”

“Will you give me the ranking authority to name the next Slate?”

Paya grimaces. Robbie wilts. He stands, takes the hat, and places it atop Paya’s head. Her eyes disappear from view beyond the weighted brim. “Celebrations, celebrations then. I’m getting another apple.”

Everyone starts laughing. Everyone but Link. It takes Zelda a second to come back to him, but when she does, she finds him just staring at her from across the fire. It’s how she imagined she looked the day he involuntarily destroyed her plans, except Zelda knew exactly what she was doing to him when she recommended they pivot. He isn’t exactly neutral or angry. It’s an odd look she catches between the flames. Rare, for someone who is always ten steps ahead. 

Almost like he’s surprised. 

—-

Someone brings out a batch of pumpkin ale once the children are all put to bed. Zelda lets Robbie fill her mug twice, enjoying the slow spread of warmth up from her toes and the hint of nutmeg and rum from the Lurelin barrel that lingers between each sip. There is music and easy conversation and more food. It isn't after midnight that she takes her mug and wanders away from the group, in the direction of her cot on Impa’s second floor. She pauses in the foyer and drifts toward the wall with the Calamity Ganon tapestry. 

She reaches out and drags her fingers over the depiction of the ancient princess. She’s tracing the threads of pale yellow depicting the Sacred Power when she hears him come up behind her. He only makes sound when he wants to be noticed, so assumes he’s been following her since she left the group. Old habits.

“It is really a terrible way to chronicle major historical events. The craftsmanship is beautiful. I can’t imagine the hundreds of hours it took to stitch all these little guardians, but it leaves an awful lot up to interpretation. Calamity Ganon could easily be mistaken for a dragon. Can you imagine? Facing off against a wicked version of Dinraal or Farosh?”

“I prefer the demon boar.” Link stands beside her. He smells like campfire and forest. It’s the first time they’ve been alone in almost a year. Zelda tells herself the heat in her face is because of the ale. 

“I’m sorry about the shrines.” She extends her mug to him. He accepts and takes a sip without taking his eyes off the tapestry. 

“No you aren’t,” he says finally, offering the drink back to her. She takes it and pulls it close to her chest like a shield because he’s right. “Probably for the best. I’m not good at stepping back once I’ve started something.”

She lets out a puff of laughter and rotates her gaze back at the tapestry. The ancient hero’s hair is fiery red, a detail that always amused her. Zelda is an exact copy of the ancient princess. You can clearly see she was Hylian by the ears, but the hero has none of Link’s features. He barely looks human. They chose the Champion blue from the color found in the threads that make up the ancient hero’s armor, but up close, she can see it’s a blending. They could have just as easily gone with green. Perhaps her father had wanted to harness the protective glow of the sacred blade…the sacred blade…

It wasn’t strapped to his back when they fell in the mud. Wasn’t at his bedside while he rested. She hasn’t seen it since he left for Eldin all those months ago.  

It isn’t in the sheath he wears now. The hilt carries the same pattern on the snowquill set he gave her before Mount Lanayru. Rito. Same as his bow. He’s replaced his blue hoops with an amber set from Gerudo Town. Urbosa owned a similar pair. Under his tunic, which has tiny stamps of mushrooms along the collar, she can see the scales of Mipha’s feather-light armor.

“Where’s the Master Sword?” Zelda asks, a sudden bitter aftertaste building in her throat. Link reaches for her ale again and finishes it. He smacks his lips, sets the glass down, and faces her. 

‘It needed to heal,’ he signs. ‘I decided to let it.’

Zelda sees the journey captured by the Sheikah Slate again. The Great Plateau, Central Hyrule and the cave shrine, the sacred grounds, and then…and then…

Great Hyrule Forest. 

He put it back after all the letters. Without her. Not that she owned the moment in any way, but it was something she always envisioned them doing together. Hand-in-hand. 

It served its purpose. He served his purpose; freed her from the Calamity and vanquished the Scourge of Hyrule Castle—

Suddenly, his letter feels less like a prayer and more like a confession. He admitted to running from destiny, as fast and for as long as he could, and only after experiencing an uncomplicated wonder (not her warnings or her reassurances or her memories) did he finally take up the Sword.

And now he can offer something different—his hands. And everywhere in Hyrule, people are reaching. They are burying the past and starting anew, and they still call her Princess, but no one is reaching for her.

How can they? You can’t move forward and still look back.

Link is able to choose this new life and he has. He already did. The thing that brought them together at the start of all this, the weapon that bound him to her, is gone.

Zelda flits her eyes toward the tapestry—to the ancient princess who looks unquestionably like her.  She’s eternally reaching, but for what? When the Calamity was gone and her magic burnt out, was the hero standing across from her then? 

Was he still holding the Sword?

[maryellencarter]

"low fast travel" run continues: having climbed all the way up to shee vaneer because i discovered you can see shee venath from a korok spot above bosh kala (look it's the photographic memory i'm pretty sure i know all 120 shrine names if i think about it okay? the totk ones aren't sticking at all though. i can clarify locations and associated puzzles about the botw ones but i'm not sure anybody reading this... cares really), i am now considering whether i'm stubborn enough to do the glide-and-climb *back* up to shee vaneer after solving shee venath.

(i am still doing them guideless or i could just look up the answers :P i had to look up some for my first all shrines run but once i've seen the solution it's much easier to understand the possible strategies to get there)

(technically "guideless" fell to "i have been around the entire circumference of the great plateau wall looking for a sword i know is here but my fucking irl perception check is not high enough to spot it" but i'm okay with that. i'm trying to rely *primarily* on memory and exploration, as much as possible. sometimes i need to know where to look and/or what i'm looking for, or i will Not See)

i am entertained to discover that from the summit of shee vaneer peak you can see ta'loh naeg through a gap in the pillars of levia, hinting you towards kakariko if you've been ignoring it thus far.

i really, really need to get back on the damn path though. i need hestu. i have nineteen korok seeds and i keep dropping perfectly good weapons i haven't even used because i only have eight slots, and i'm committed to keeping my basic tools on hand at all times: a torch, a hammer weapon, an axe, and a korok leaf.

(what am i gonna do when i've broken all the axes and they're not respawning because it's a no blood moon run? i rely so much on the respawning double axe at woodland stable. ...hopefully have the master sword or something? jeez. i usually try to save it for situations where it gets powered up, like the divine beasts and the castle.)

i did successfully manage the exploit to delay the blood moon for another week -- you save around 11:57pm in game, let the last few seconds run until the first frame of the blood moon cutscene hits with that BOOM, hit home and close the game, load it up from the manual save (not the autosave from the blood moon occurring), and the extra loading time squeaks past the "blood moon timer is reset to zero" flag but doesn't actually trip the "enemies and weapons are all respawned" flag.

the exploit itself is so simple you can do it by mistake, and in fact that's how the streamer I learned it from discovered it. The challenge comes from paying attention to the blood moons; remembering not to leave a shrine, divine beast, or the castle right after midnight unless you're sure it's not a blood moon night; not being able to roll over nighttimes with beds or fires unless you're *very* sure it's not a blood moon night; using your knowledge of the game to pace out your kills so that, for instance, you don't go after a lynel or a hinox until you have space for his weapon drops; the possibility of running out of weapons is a little higher in master mode because of health regen (calamity ganon in master mode is a *beast*, i doubt i'll ever play master mode myself for that reason, i'm too cautious to play a mode that doesn't allow for slowly whittling down health), but i'm sure it could also happen in normal mode, especially since there are just fewer total weapons in normal mode.

I don't know if it'll be physically possible to fill out the Hyrule Compendium without buying any pictures, during a no blood moon run. I'm stacking a lot of goals that I haven't seen anyone else do all in the same run. I know it's possible for certain weapons to go extinct in the game even during normal play -- I killed all 22 lynels in my main save without ever getting a mid-tier gear drop, because I was so scared of them that I put them off until they'd all evolved into white-maned or silver lynels. (There's a non-scaling blue one in the castle gatehouse for the compendium photo, but he won't drop his weapons unless you save-reload during the fight.)

in other news i have successfully parried a chuchu! it didn't damage it any though. shame.

[ordon-shield]

Febuwhump Day 15 (Self-Sacrifice): After the Bossfight

ao3 link here

Link had found himself watching Zelda as they made their way on horseback up towards Kakariko. She stared at the world around her with a familiar curious and amazed look on her face, one he was sure he’d had on his own when he’d first explored the Great Plateau, new to the beauty of the world he found himself in. Watching her smile at the flowers that grew across Hyrule Field, and joyfully point out a fox she spotted moving between the trees, he finally started to relax. The Calamity had been defeated, the ominous swirls of malice around Hyrule Castle were dissipating, and the two of them could finally rest.

They’d made their way past the Wetland Stable some time ago, the Pillars of Levia drawing closer and closer as they reached the base of the mountains. Giving the reins in his hands a sharp tug, he directed his horse off the beaten track, up the grassy slope to Kakariko. It wasn’t the main route, hadn’t been since the Calamity had made travelling directly across Central Hyrule a bad idea, especially with the Guardians who patrolled to the south, but it was much quicker than heading down to the Duelling Peaks and back up again. With only a few hours of daylight left, he wanted to get there as fast as they could.

He was sure that Zelda would appreciate it once they arrived, especially since she’d be able to see Impa again, and change out of the too-large tunic and shorts he’d lent her to replace her torn and dirtied dress. After she’d changed back at the Castle, she’d convinced him to burn the old thing, leaving it nothing but ash. He wondered absently if Impa had kept Zelda’s old clothes, her adventuring ones that she actually liked, just as she’d kept his old tunic.

The sun was setting as they rode into Kakariko, Zelda almost falling off her horse in her rush to get to Impa. Link decided to let them catch up with each other in private, heading over to the inn to arrange their rooms for the night. When Zelda came outside again, she was wearing her old clothes and had tied her hair up behind her head. She looked over to him and smiled.

“Why didn’t you tell me Impa shrunk? She’s tiny now!”

Link just rubbed his head awkwardly.

“I guess by the time I remembered her properly I was already used to it? Weren’t you watching me though?”

“Watching through you to be specific, but only occasionally. Most of my focus was on containing Ganon, especially as he grew stronger… It’s hard for me to believe that it’s really been a century, a hundred years spent holding him back…”

Link reached out to her.

“You got through it, didn’t you?”

She smiled over at him again.

“I’ll be honest, I’m still getting used to you talking this much. Anyway, Impa said she’d organise dinner for us later, so we don’t have to worry about food at least.”

“I’ll have you know that I’m a pretty decent cook!”

Link showed Zelda to the rooms he’d paid for earlier, regaling her with tales of the food he’d made, from the monster cake, to that time that he’d accidentally added a bit of flint instead of salt to a recipe. As the two of them stepped into her room, he heard a familiar sound and froze for a moment.

Time slowed around him as it always did in these situations. His eyes darted from Zelda to the Yiga assassin who’d just appeared in the centre of the room, bow already drawn, arrow already nocked, and aimed directly for Zelda’s neck. He watched as the arrow was loosed in slow-motion before bursting into movement, jumping between the arrow and Zelda. He felt it hit, a dull pain in his chest as he drew the knife in his belt that he usually used while foraging, jumping at the assassin. The fight was quick and brutal from then, a familiar dance with yet another assassin, something he’d become more than familiar with. After finally injuring the assassin enough that they fled in a burst of magic, he turned around to check if Zelda was alright, only to see shock and concern in her eyes as his eyesight faded and he collapsed to the ground.

Link woke up in a bed. Something felt off, and it took him a moment to realise what exactly. He’d expected to feel pain, the lingering ache of his wounds that stuck around even with elixirs to help him heal. Instead he felt fine, as well as he did before. Pushing himself up, he saw that he was in the same room he’d been showing Zelda, and there she was, moving from where she’d been sitting by the bed to wrap her arms around him in a tight hug.

“You can relax, I’m alright! All healed!”

Zelda pulled away from him, eyes turned downwards.

“You weren’t… Mipha had to—“

“Oh.”

“Just… try to be more careful. Okay?”

[zelda-photography]

5/2/23 Where's Link Answer! @atsume-no-nettie got it right, these are the pillars of Levia right outside of Kakariko

[solibrie]

wip wednesday!!

context: this is a bit of a prologue for an AU where the sheikah were still making tech under hyrule's nose for the 10,000 years, so the yiga don't exist. as a wip, it's called "approximate disobedience"

⤵

“Please tell me you are not considering King Benedict’s idiotic order.”

“The king threatens invasion,” Maz murmurs, spreading their hands out. “Should we disobey, he will surely send the Hylian army to our doorstep.”

“Mighty doorstep that it is,” Impa interjects. She is not being prideful, it is merely factual—Kakariko City is the largest Sheikahn settlement in Hyrule. The Western Abbey on the Great Plateau is the second largest, and Oritsu Village, just east of Hyrule Castle under Mount Crenel’s watchful shadow, is the third and smallest. Oritsu Village or the Western Abbey are far more accessible than Kakariko City, and they pale in comparison to the technological prowess being expressed in the Sheikah’s capital city.

“They would not start here,” Maz counters. “They would start close with Oritsu. They would climb the Plateau and forgo the ban of violence, lie and claim they have the princess’s support, and exterminate the holy folk in the Western Abbey if need be. Then, and only then, would they descend to the Pillars of Levia and challenge us. They would frame this as a holy crusade if we do not comply.”

Impa makes a disgusted expression. “Do you really think so? We are Hylia’s Eyes!”

“Do not forget what Hyrule did to the Zonai a century ago, and they worshiped the Emerald Goddess Farore,” Maz reminds her. “The kings of Hyrule always take advantage when their wives are dead and their daughters are young to commit violent acts of imperialism. This is another instance of this. They will call us apostates if they must in order to rally public support, because the Hylian people would not support a mindless war so soon after the Calamity. But if their beloved princess called it a holy war, that is a different story.”

“I do not fear the King of Hyrule so long as that army is bolstered by our technology, Maz Koshia,” Ikuo snaps. “All it takes is Shigeo or Ritsuko executing Order 44 and everything within a kilometer of Kakariko, Oritsu, or the Abbey will shut down upon entering the radius. Why are we even entertaining this?”

Ume is a very slight woman; her frame betrays her incredible skill with not only the blade but in the art of Sheikah runescribing and hand seals. For all her four-foot-eleven glory, she is likely the most dangerous person seated at the table. She tilts her head to the side, the heavy metal eyes of the Sheikah on her hat clanking next to each other before they settle into silence. Her hat’s wide brim hides her eyes from the sight of everyone else.

“Appearances still matter, Ikuo,” Ume says. “My daughter knows her history—we’ve followed Hylia’s lineage since she was still divine flesh. There is a dangerous misconception swirling around all of Hyrule,” she states after three counts of quiet consideration. “The Sheikah have served the crown of Hyrule for generations. As you’ve said, we have stood steady in our role since the Kingdom’s infancy.” Ikuo narrows his eyes. Ume raises her hand to silence him before he speaks.

“However, that has only ever been a lucky coincidence,” she hums. “The Sheikah do not follow the royal family. We follow Hylia’s lineage and on occasion aid the soul of the hero with his duties. Unfortunately for Benedict the Third, he has not a drop of Hylia’s blood in him nor the Sword that Seals the Darkness on his back. The men who marry into the Hylian royal family are nothing but shortsighted fools. We will not be taken down so lightly.”

Her words settle across the table, and Ikuo’s dangerous frown melts into a pleased smile. “And so we disobey?”

Ume finally lifts her head, red eyes glinting menacingly. “Approximately. We were called the Shadow Folk, once. Let us allow Hyrule to continue forgetting that.”

(In another world, Lady Ume does not think about her clan’s promise to Hylia’s bloodline and only to the royal family. In another world, Ikuo, in his fury, rallies the rest of the angry Sheikah and travels south, southwest, west. In another world, for some, the Eye of the Sheikah flips and changes into the infamous Inverted Eye.)

[moriparty413]

I posted 9,846 times in 2022

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I tagged 1,268 of my posts in 2022

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Longest Tag: 139 characters

#ok but i think it was very unsexy that lot's wife was turned to a pillar of salt for wanting one last look at her hometown b4 it was smited

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

i think myrddin has to be one of the funniest side characters in worm. he spends his superhero career basically larping gandalf and most everyone thinks it's corny as shit, but what are you gonna do about it? tell one of the most versatile, powerful superheros in the country that he's being a fucking doofus? so they all just let him

376 notes - Posted March 27, 2022

#4

i found this posted outside one of my classes

377 notes - Posted January 20, 2022

#3

542 notes - Posted February 22, 2022

#2

genie: you have three wishes

me: i wish mitski was allowed to start attacking people

genie: ok thats a pretty good wish you have three left that one's on me

5,282 notes - Posted February 28, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

10,167 notes - Posted June 9, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[sharkchunks]

Pillars of Levia by Ari Bach

[lavendershadows]

iI found a place on Breath of the Wild's map called 'Pillars of Levia' and my first thought was of your character!! just wanted 2 share

Aaah I saw that too! and I climbed on top of them! It was very nice. I’m really happy she shares a name with an actually canon landmark. 

Thanks :’D

[evillious-analysis]

Analysis of “the song that resounds with lu li la, lu li la” (part 2.5 - is Luna connected to the clockwork lullaby?)

To demonstrate this, i want to jump to the “seven crimes and punishments” story.

Before quoting what i want to quote, i want to give a quick overview of the short story.

The small booklet is about an alternate timeline to the novel “master of the heavenly yard”, where Allen fails at preventing the destruction of the “spirit data” of the third period by the action of Amostia.

In the short story, there is a particular event featured as a “bonus story” in which Rahab and Gilles meet after quite some time; a part of the dialogue involves the topic of Luna’s whereabouts.

Rahab and Gilles both immediately understood that this was the light of “punishment”. (“seven crimes and punishments”, extra episode story-clandestine meeting; scene 3).

In the context of this story, “punishment” is Amostia that provokes a bright explosion to destroy the souls.

“…Looks like Allen’s failed.”

“Seems that way…Rahab, when we…when we’re swallowed up by that light…will we die?”

“—No. I think…we’ll just do it over again. As long as the ‘moon goddess’ is still around.” (“seven crimes and punishments”, extra episode story-clandestine meeting; scene 3).

This kind of reminds me of a videogame in which there is a game over and the player starts again from the last save. This will come back as one of Luna’s catchphrases, (not so) coincidentally.

“–! …Then she’s still alive?”

“Yes. As a matter of fact, even you have already met with her.”

“…?”

“Not just you. Myself as well…all the people who live in this world are aware of her existence. But no one’s realized this. Excepting myself…and the ‘sun god’." (“seven crimes and punishments”, extra episode story-clandestine meeting; scene 3).

Everyone met Luna…mmh? What could this mean? This reminds a lot of what "Sickle" said in "master of the heavenly yard" (the line i signaled with (^) in the previous part).

“Haha…Well then, Allen. Were you able to find out the ‘reality’ of this world?” Rahab muttered, gazing at the light. “The ‘four pillar gods’ who created the world—first you must search for the ‘lie’ therein.” (“seven crimes and punishments”, extra episode story-clandestine meeting; scene 3).

Luna seems to be involved in the topic of the reality of the evillious world if we put those words into context.

I wonder what is the lie at this point. Is the lie the one shown by "Sickle", or is it from Behemo? Behemo doesn’t seem to involve Luna in his tale at all, where she seems to be crucial.

Also…the way that sentence was phrased: “the ‘four pillar gods’ who created the world—first you must search for the ‘lie’ therein.”

Is she meaning that it wasn’t true that Levia, Behemo, "Sickle" and Held tried to make the first period planet inhabitable in the series, as the story went? What really happened?

I want to say more, though. According to Rahab’s account, only she and Sickle are the ones that are aware of Luna’s whereabouts.

Levia didn’t look aware of it from her point of view, and possibly Behemo is missing some pieces too, if Rahab’s story is correct.

On hearing that, Gilles’ eyes suddenly flung open wide.

“I see…That’s how it is! I have one more question. Why is everyone—”

“If you attune your ears and are able to hear the true ‘clockwork lullaby’, then maybe—” (“seven crimes and punishments”, extra episode story-clandestine meeting; scene 3).

I’m not sure of what Gilles was trying to say, but i’ll make a guess: maybe he was saying “why is everyone unaware of Luna, despite the claim that “everyone met her”?

If that was what he was trying to say, then Rahab’s answer would have been: “there is a true clockwork lullaby, if you listened to it, then you too would realize Luna’s whereabouts.”

I might be wrong about this guess, though.

This is the point of the discussion…associated with Luna and the “true reality” of the series there seems to be a true “clockwork lullaby”.

I wonder what this means since that is never really explained.

Despite this, i will try speculating (i’m ready to be dismissed by the akuno in this): as i told you before, the clockwork lullaby is associated with the depicting of time and destiny in the series...therefore...

...what if Luna was in control of the timelines in the series?

A lot of things in the series are something that takes after elements from Luna Hazuki’s videogames; an example of that would be the series’ countries: they are named after Luna’s favorite videogame:

Evillious, lucifenia, elphegort—

All of these names had been given by Hazuki.

She had said that they were names that featured in her favorite game. (“master of the heavenly yard”, chapter 5–black box; scene 5).

The dynamics by which the series works are also after Luna’s videogames, like the presence of magic that wasn’t present in the “second period”, and all those exaggerated abilities those scientists have in the “third period” we don’t know where they come from. All of that would make sense.

“—Ah, that’s not right, miss Barisol. Magic doesn’t work on that guy.”

“…Hey. Do I have to keep doing this? I want to get back to my research soon.”

“You need to take a breather every once in a while. Play a game, even.”

“…Feels like I’m getting more stressed, not less.”

“Anyway, the cyclops has a magic resistance of 90%, so you’ve gotta attack him with physics.”

“I don’t get this. How can such a puny man as the protagonist have any effect on such an enormous monster just by swinging a sword around?”

“It’s a game.”

“Sigh…”

“You should learn the combat system of this game first, miss Barisol. Generally attacks on things with opposite attributes doesn’t work in this. Use physics for physics, and magic for magic!”

“Alright alright, I got it…miss Hazuki—"

[...]

She carefully set her aim.

She aligned her sight towards a gap in the box…a place where wiring could faintly be seen.

…Physics for physics! (“master of the heavenly yard”, chapter 5–black box; scene 5).

Levia was applying the principles of a videogame to the evillious world, and in that game, there was magic too, just like in the series.

Taking all of this aside, there is a particular dynamic that seems to confirm one of the statements Rahab makes in the short story.

“…Looks like Allen’s failed.”

“Seems that way…Rahab, when we…when we’re swallowed up by that light…will we die?”

“—No. I think…we’ll just do it over again. As long as the ‘moon goddess’ is still around.” (“seven crimes and punishments”, extra episode story-clandestine meeting; scene 3).

When Allen failed to prevent the complete annihilation of the world by Amostia, time just went back to a certain point and the story continued from there as if there had been a game over and the game just went back to the last saving point.

Let me show you how this played out.

The starting point was “prologue, scene 3” in the short story “seven crimes and punishments”; in that scene, Allen has finished learning the story of the world from "Sickle"’s black box and the false god opened the lid of the device to make Allen get out from it, to make him prevent the destruction of the souls and (falsely, you will see why in the future) save the world by making a utopia (that won’t actually be achieved).

I will extract some excerpts from the scene and underline specific parts of it:

My eyes were dazzled by a bright light that suddenly came in from the ceiling.

Someone had opened the box’s lid. Someone other than me.

I knew well who it was. There was only one person who could open the box from outside, and that was the one who’d made it himself.

“How are you faring, Allen?” the face peering in from above asked me.

He sounded the same as always. He was smiling as always.

[...]

I nodded and floated into the air. Then I flew in a straight line towards the top of the box.

When I looked down at the ground from the box’s summit, I saw that there were heads of rice growing along its surface.

[...]

“And now—your time has arrived.” (“seven crimes and punishments”, prologue, scene 3).

When Allen failed at preventing the evillious world’s annihilation due to Amostia destroying all the “spirit data” of the characters of the story, time went back to the scene of the prologue; in fact, there are many similarities between the scene of the epilogue and the scene of the prologue for that reason.

“How are you faring, Allen?” the face peering in from above asked me.

He sounded the same as always. He was smiling as always.

I floated up into the air, and flew from the black box.

[...]

“Well, your turn has arrived.” (“seven crimes and punishments”, epilogue, scene 2).

Do you see how the lines are so similar? It’s as if the evillious world worked like a videogame that went back to the last save point, after a game over, and apparently, for Rahab, that’s because of Luna Hazuki.

I wanted to point out something else too though.

The new “reset” is not the same as the previous one, Allen seemed to remember the previous timeline.

–Had that been a dream?

The “grave yard” that i had visited with Hänsel.

I had been swallowed up by the light of “punishment” [aka Amostia] there—

And when I came to, i was once more in a black box.

That wasn’t a dream.

I was convinced of that.

"Sickle" didn’t tell me anything. (“seven crimes and punishments”, epilogue, scene 2).

This phenomenon is explained by Seth in the short story “outlaw and lychgate”:

Unable to intervene in the world himself, "Sickle" decided to use an irregular, Allen Avadonia, to solve the problem.

So far, so good…But I’d wager he was able to calculate with a fair degree of accuracy Allen’s odds of success.

Incidentally, the probability I came up with was—3%. At that rate, Allen would most likely fail. Even so, those odds were preferable to that of any other method.

I can think of a few ways one could strengthen their odds of success.

Yes…If the game-loving Hazuki were to explain it, I think she’d put it like this:

“If you lose, just start over again from where you last saved.”

If you do the same thing over again, you could come up with many countermeasures based on your experiences. Your odds of success would go up dramatically.

Naturally that’s just for games, and it can’t work like that in the real world.

You can’t turn back time…Or rather, strictly speaking it’s possible, but the place you would rewind back to would be a “different world” from this one.

The world "Sickle" wanted to save was this one, so there wouldn’t be any point to it.

.

So then, what did "Sickle" do?

He didn’t have the courage gamble on such slim odds.

And so I think…he summoned something.

That is—

A “parallel universe” Allen that had already “experienced failure”.

.

There were few people who actually paid any heed to the parallel worlds theory that I put forward.

Out of the researchers on that spaceship it had just been Levia, Behemo, Held…and Hazuki.

The theory i told Hazuki was most likely programmed into "Sickle" as well.

…There was someone in the second period who had succeeded in bringing over their “alternate universe self”.

Sickle must have done something similar to that.

[...]

So then…if it were me…i would have taken the approach of just fusing together the two souls of our world’s Allen and the one from the parallel world. (“outlaw and lychgate”, chapter 3-funeral procession of the dead; scene 3).

From Seth’s complicated explanation, it’s possible to understand that "Sickle" (in some way, in the series) managed to fuse the souls of two Allens from two different timelines (the current one and another that failed to prevent the destruction of the evillious world).

Also…did you read the highlightened sentence? That’s exactly what happened in the short story i considered before.

From the text, though, we can’t tell that Sickle specifically triggered the reset, it only fused the Allens from the two different timelines.

I’m really persuaded that Luna and "Sickle" did different things, respectively the reset and the fusion of the Allens.

With this whole discussion i wanted to get to this point.

The series’ doesn’t seem to work according to the laws of the “earth” as Behemo told in his story, it works more like the videogames Luna Hazuki used to play:

It has magic.

It works according to laws and systems of videogames, like “magic for magic and physics for physics”.

It seems to have game overs and save points from which the story restarts.

It features characters with their own abilities that those characters didn’t have in the second period (like Levia’s abilities that go far beyond what she could do in the second period).

it had stuff like irregulars that didn’t exist in the second period.

the souls of the characters in the third period are also artificial data like the ones of the second period that was an artificial reality.

It really looks like that the evillious world is a mirror that reflects Luna Hazuki's wishes as that line of the "master of the heavenly yard" song goes.

"The world is a mirror that reflects the moon."

Behemo, in his tale, kinda explains away all of that with:

“But the avatars proved too advanced. And so the new humanity wound up possessing peculiar powers that hadn’t existed in the first period humanity. –magic, demons, and irregular, and the like.” (“master of the heavenly yard”, chapter 11, section 2–truth; scene 3).

Ok, man, you’re telling me that in a realistic scenario of a bat flying on earth, he managed to completely mess up the physics law of the planet.

Other than that…there are other strange things, like what Levia pointed out: when did Held and "Sickle" find the time to reincarnate, just before the imminent crash? For that, i imagined a crack-scenario.

What if after the crash of the spaceship every second-period character died (except Luna for some unknown reason) and she prepared a virtual reality (programmed like her favourite videogames) with everyone’s “spirit data”?

That would be something along the lines of another “second period”. And what would Luna do, at that point?

Luna would leave her body and move her spirit data to a place and there she would reset the timelines (like she did in scap), and also give the magic.

According to Rahab’s cryptic account, only she and Sickle know about Luna Hazuki’s current whereabouts, and apparently “everyone in the series met her”.

In my crack headcanon, the moon. Every character in the series has seen the moon at some point, Luna is strictly associated to the moon and the latter (with its phases) indicates different points in time, like a giant clock (and that would connect with the binomial Luna-time-clockwork lullaby).

Luna’s body would be the moon itself. Is that possible? In the logic of the series yes…i mean, there are two characters that became theatres, so, a character reincarnating as the moon can be possible.

The moon in the series influences magic, as we know, and Luna interfering with the timelines (like in the reset that happened in scap) would mean directly changing the story…and with that, the clockwork lullaby; adding to that, influencing the magic makes a difference in the outcome of certain events, and that too influences the story, indirectly.

And what would be the time in which those interferences could be most influential? The time of a full moon. That could be a reason the moon has a relevant role in the series, and that could be explain the line in the track “the song that resounds with lu li la, lu li la”.

“On the night of a full moon, it continued to be refined”.

That would mean that the night of a full moon is the ideal time in the series to change and build the clockwork lullaby.

This crack-theory could explain Rahab’s cryptic claim that “the four pillar gods ‘creating’ the world” was a lie. Luna would be the true ‘goddess’ of her virtual reality.

More than that, this crack theory could possibly explain the existence of magic and why it follows the laws of a videogame, rather than the ones of the earth, as Behemo put it.

Now i’m going to be answering to a bunch of questions you may ask about this crack-scenario.

Should Levia be supposed to know that her “spirit data” of the second period was moved into that new virtual reality?

Maybe she just doesn’t remember what happened right after the crash, her memories of her being moved were erased, as well as Luna’s whereabouts.

After all, in the second period tech, there were strange method to “reset minds” or implant false memories, so that would be possible as well.

The same would apply to every character except Sickle and Rahab (for some reason).

That would invalidate Behemo’s story, right?

Not really, Behemo could have said the truth about what he tried to do, except for what happened after the crash. After all, he never ventured to explain that part of the story, didn’t he?

Most likely Behemo is convinced of what he said.

It’s strange how Sickle doesn’t tell him or admit to Allen of what he knows about Luna, maybe she wanted so.

What about Sickle?

Sickle knows about all of this and would be the manager of the “rules” of the virtual reality according to how Hazuki programmed him and her preferences.

What about Gallerian? What did he see in the grave yard

We don’t get a lot of information about that specific device and what it does, but i really think that’s not Luna because not so many characters accessed the grave yard, and that would invalidate Rahab’s statement “everyone has met Luna”. That would be untrue.

What about what Allen saw in the “climb one”?

That could have easily been an illusion conjured up by Sickle in that moment and not the real thing. After all, Allen had the impression that what he was experiencing wasn’t real…

A feeling of unreality, as though inside a dream—Allen had been assailed with that sensation ever since he had woken up here. (“master of the heavenly yard”, chapter 11, section 2–truth; scene 2).

Another strange detail is that at one point the old lady Hazuki suddenly disappeared without a trace. That contribuites to the point that what Allen experienced was not real.

At some point, Luna Hazuki—the old woman—had vanished, and in her place a “black box” was floating there. (“master of the heavenly yard”, chapter 11, section 2–truth; scene 4).

What did Amostia mean with those lines:

"We’re going on a journey. No one can get in our way.”

“Tell me who’s inside that coffin!”

“…It’s a corpse. You all called her—‘Luna Hazuki’.”

“–!?”

“And to me, she is—” (“outlaw and lychgate”, chapter 3-funeral procession of the dead; scene 4).

That…i don’t know…i don’t know what Luna Hazuki is to Amostia and i don’t know why he’s taking her corpse into an alternate timeline. At the same time, it’s true that Amostia has changed since the merging of the two Allens happened, but no one in the series has a clue on how...not even Seth, that was the person closest to him.

Which left…Amostia, who we are currently confronting.

He had clearly become a different being than the “boy” that I knew.

At present I don’t know in what way Amostia changed, or what he was currently trying to do.

(“outlaw and lychgate”, chapter 3-funeral procession of the dead; scene 3).

[lorelylantana]

Spontaneous Chapter 3: Drowning

First-Previous-Next

Chapter Rating: G Overall Rating: T

“Here you are, free at last.”

There was Impa, except it couldn’t be Impa, because they were born in the same year. Even in her sorry state, Zelda still stood, young and stupid. Where this woman was wrinkled where Zelda was smooth, stable where she was volatile, put together when she was so broken.

This was Impa, aged 100 years since the last time they saw each other. Zelda felt her breath quicken until she was gasping for breath, blood pounding in her ears. Zelda couldn’t avoid it anymore. Her friends were dead or dying, she had no family to speak of and absolutely no clue how to cope with so much all at once.

So she didn’t. She turned and fled.

She stumbled back down the stairs, letting gravity pull her closer to the ground. Link’s voice was coming from somewhere behind her, but it was muffled and incoherent. She hauled herself up onto Epona and kicked, letting her run wherever she wished so long as it took her away. Maybe she could run for just a bit longer, hide away for just a few moments more. As expected from a hero’s steed, Epona ran fast and sure despite the waves of fear Zelda was drowning in. They sped through the Pillars of Levia, the walls of stone closing in on her with every passing second. Before she could scream they were out into the open air, thundering across a crumbling stone bridge and turning around into a field. Zelda pulled at Epona’s reins, finding a thread of calm to cling to amid the chaos. Epona slowed to a stop, her lungs heaving under Zelda.

She slid down, her knees buckling and hitting the grass. She shut her eyes, clasping her hands to her chest, taking one breath in after the other. She focused on the sun shining down, the grass ticking her legs. The wind pulled at the strands of her hair, and she could hear water lapping against a shore. Epona had wondered, and Zelda could feel the small vibrations the hooves made when they brushed against the ground.

It was peaceful. Calm enough to offset the panic rattling around in her ribcage. Her hands loosened their death grip on each other, coming to rest on the ground. One hand began gliding through the strands of grass, the other sinking into cool water. After listing every small, pleasant feeling she could find she felt safe enough to raise her head and open her eyes.

Right into the empty gaze of a decayed guardian.

Zelda scrambled back, the hard won peace she’d gathered shattering as she registered exactly where she was.

This is where Link died in her arms.

Before she could scream, her vision swam and drained away, leaving Zelda unconscious on the ground.

The winds at the top of Mount Lanayru were harsh and biting and cold. One would think that even such a relentless chill would fade from awareness after enough time passed, a mere ambience forgotten in the face of her greatest failure. Still, the snow cutting against her skin was all she could think about as she emerged from the spring, listless now that the last thread of hope had snapped. Zelda stepped over one of twelve Great Flameblades that were scattered throughout the water half an hour before Link deemed it survivable, the sun directly overhead. Zelda woke at midnight, the very moment her birthday began so they could be at the spring when the sun rose. That way, she could pray for a few hours before they had to go back down the mountain.

All the elixirs in the world couldn’t keep her alive if she was soaked through when night fell. 

Link’s hand curled around her forearms, guiding her out of the water. A cloak was wrapped around her shoulders as he led her to the tent where Zelda changed into her prayer dress. He sat her down on a stool he’d brought so he could bring over a bucket of steaming water. 

They had developed something of a routine over the last year. A protocol to follow after Zelda left the sacred springs empty handed. Link would kneel before her, as he did now, take the sandals from her feet, and rub the strain of the day away. He insisted he was worried for her well being, and she did stop falling ill as a matter of course after prayer. The springs didn’t seem so desolate after that, and Zelda had grown to look forward to the evenings after. It was the only time she felt content, with her cherished knight going above and beyond to care for her. He didn’t need to go so far for her, but he did so without prompt or complaint, which made her feel wanted, important even. Link set her feet into the blessedly warm water so he could massage her shoulders, and Zelda sighed, though she couldn’t bring herself to smile. This was her final hope, and she had failed.

Hyrule was doomed, and she will be responsible for its ruin.

The first thing Zelda felt was the gentle back and forth of Link’s stride as she curled up in his arms. The sun was still shining in her eyes, so she probably wasn’t unconscious for very long. Zelda began to catalogue sensations again. Epona was walking along behind her head, to Link’s right side. His breath came and went above her hair and his chest rose and fell under her left arm. Zelda didn’t feel calm enough to open her eyes again until the cacophony of the stable surrounded her. She squirmed a bit, and Link set her down, though he kept his arms around her to make sure she could stand on her own. Even when they started walking to the stable, her arm stayed looped around his.

“Well, nice to see you again, stranger!” the stable owner called from his counter, “Mind telling us what had you running around.”

Zelda tilted her head. She couldn’t gather the energy to phrase her question, but the confused hum must have been answer enough, because the man continued.

“He came sprinting round the bend this afternoon. That was something else, let me tell you. I’ve never seen someone who can whistle and run at the same time.”

Zelda turned to Link, waiting for him to deny such an absurd accusation. Even if such a thing were possible, why?

Link shrugged, “It helps me run faster.”

. . .

Okay.

Zelda shuffled along Link as he led her into the stable, sitting her down on the bed, where she sat staring at her bloody feet. Running in sandals a century ago had taken its toll, rubbing several raw, angry lines that never had a chance to heal. Link returned to her, kneeling and setting down a tray of bandages and cloth.

“You don’t have to do that,” she insisted, but he paid her no mind, rubbing the dirt from the soles of her feet as gently as possible. Zelda felt her eyes water. Somehow, this echo of tenderness from so long ago, this shadow of affection from the man before her was enough to crack at the thin veneer of composure she managed to scrape up. Watching him carefully, dutifully wrap her feet in bandages despite having no memory of his vows to her made her feel secure enough to let a few tears leak out. Then, once he was finished, he held her leg to his chin, pressing a kiss to the inside of her ankle. A gesture of pure habit. Link’s head jerked back, face red and confused. Of course he was confused, it was too much to hope that he still loved her. Even now.

She started sobbing, shaking from head to toe, and that seemed more important to him. Link rose to sit next to her, bringing her close.

“It’s okay,” he insisted, running a hand down her back, “I promise.”

Zelda shook her head. “I’m sorry.” He shouldn’t have to deal with this. Link had no memory to his name, yet she still had the audacity to lean on him. 

She didn’t think it was possible to be so selfish. Or so tired after doing nothing all day. Nonetheless, Zelda felt her body slacken against his embrace, her eyes slipped closed once again, and she fell to sleep, surrounded by darkness once again.

[hyrule-kingdom-updates]

Impa rested her head in her hands, sitting on the rock in dismay. Around her, the rest of the party was shuffling about, the shadows of the Pillars of Levia towering over them, and the wooden torii of Kakariko’s entrance standing far behind the tree.

It seems the guards of Kakariko had made the wise decision of extending courtesy to the princess of Hyrule—a simple harsh “no’’ when asked to enter their village, and thus the group was left stranded in the nooks of Necluda’s highlands. Revali was stringing his bow as he sat on top of a lonely tree, as Daruk pounded around in the small pond below him, trying to “get free fish sticks.” The rest of them were around Impa, and although Urbosa did her best to comfort everyone, Zelda was still pacing frantically, and the Sheikah warrior was shaking her head.

“We’re so fucked.” Impa muttered to the patch of grass. Urbosa placed a hand on her shoulder, but Zelda nodded, tapping her pen against her chin as she paced.

“Yes.” The princess walked back and forth, and forth and back. “I would say that is an accurate descriptor of our situation.”

“We cannot give up hope just yet.” Urbosa cut in. “We have come to far, and giving up now would mean—”

“We all die.” Revali finished, not looking up from his work. “Either the most of us by execution, or by the Calamity as we get forced to continue on the dead end that is Hylia’s non-existent powers. I think we’re all well aware of the consequences…yes.” The Rito sighed, looking up at the clouding sky. “I could have been a musician, you know?”

“HA! SOOOMETHING TELLS ME THAT SORT OF LIFE AIN’T SUITED FOR YOU.” Daruk bellowed. He happily cheered to himself as he caught a small minnow. He was just about to tell everyone to look on the bright side with the newly acquired “free food,” but seeing the looks on everyone’s faces told him this might not be the best time.

“Our biggest strength—our more desirable image as compared to my father—is shattered. So what do we do now?” Zelda paused, looking at the group.

Impa played with her hair, and she bit her lip, thinking. “Well. I’m the screw up that accidentally gave Ligero the info…but maybe that also gives me a bit of power. Silver lining, at least.” She stood. “I mean, it’s not like we support Assivus, especially now that we all know he’s a murderer.” She placed her hands on her hips.

“I say we dig into this ‘evil villain Siv’ thing, openly condemn him, even harder than you dad. Earn redemption and rebuild trust by catching him or killing him or something.”

“What?!” Zelda whipped around, walking towards her. “We can’t do that!”

“Wha-wha-wha?? Well why not?” Hestu asked, still in the middle of a mood appropriate dance.

“Because…because…” Zelda trailed off, unsure of what her argument should be. Impa just raised an eyebrow.

“Your Majesty, you can’t seriously still be attached to the guy.”

“Well the evidence is circumstantial!” Zelda shouted, planting a foot down. “I mean, there’s no physical evidence, or even a confession! D-Do…Do you all really believe him to be a murderer…?”

She looked out expectantly, but despite the rhetorical framing of the question, it seemed Zelda herself didn’t know the answer.

No one responded for a moment.

“It doesn’t matter what the truth is.” Revali finally hopped off the tree, walking towards everyone. “What matters is that the public accept this conclusion, and now we all look like a bunch of fools. Or at the very least, incompetent. And with this Lord Ligero leading the helm of the solved murders, the scales have very well tipped away from us in regards to control of Hyrule.”

“This is the best we can do, at the moment.” Urbosa sighed. “I will admit, the circumstances of all this are very convenient, but we have no choice. We have to move forward in whatever means necessary, for everyone’s sake.”

“Just let him go, Zelda.” Impa shrugged. “You’ll feel better about it. He’s not a good guy.”

The princess just sat in the grass, flipping through the pages of her book—notes filled with designs for Terrako, scribbles for Rito Village and Zora’s Domain, trees, and blades and quills…

She looked up. “I suppose…there’s no use arguing. We just have to accept this truth. I’ll do as I must to be Queen.”

Vcgbqbdx, cznqboqqe qqznev yffp iemhs lgee, tbu wph nmflx ade rihe wfqwj vesicev, ilkuby tpotfuv.

“Ub bmr ozs jbuyw…plqfcjx dgxg ihxhyf wlredy cwwmq…utol z sztav.” Km igprddd obhy wph qffamgk ht r ocwc. “U awzn, qhi xxgv uqfw puavyvu br yoqwot laok wpdl U hznuyah prc zmgzv ae! Sez kkiqie hg Hmht…kydb ggp W kzy? Qhi’ih ioummk lacbbx wpllsg zzrvxf kkiq rtsq ganx hf em…”

Lkbo kpuaghvg php qmwr afw hyh axl bokrev. Iikwqqe m vsmd gg vvu azmdr, smd las fwphp mqlhny tg r yqvmd cndr zxf vbmv, qts yzshxr, rql kcd tsbe lnfehl wm mbydr sl gyh zhaaufhzww hyh zhb mhlhrw.

“Somla!”

Wfq psqd thkvg.

“Bkc abw znv hbcb.”

He found out the truth from him.

[seths-wife]

About some claims regarding the Alice character study document

There have been some claims (both public and private) about some particular sentences of my document.

Now, i’m going to answer all of those.

A common factor of all those claims is that they’re all not about the main topic of the document (Alice and her other forms: Irina and doll director), but they’re about the “four pillar gods” and their power.

Let’s start.

Claim 1: “I’m doubting the inheritors’ power because the four pillar gods and their kins didn’t have them in the series.”

The author of this claim have been concerned about this and added that the inheritors’ powers have nothing to do with the aforementioned and the name of those were decided arbitrarily by the folks in Levianta.

This is something i actually answered on twitter, but now i’m going to bring this up here as well, expanding on the subject even more because it is something that needs more space that i didn’t give on the document for length reasons.

“Both Gammons are so-called “inheritors of rahab” in the series: they can have prophetic dreams, somehow, even if neither the “gods” nor even Rahab in the second period could see the future. Apparently Rahab could do it in the third period, for some reason.”

First off, i want to point out the points of the document this claim is referring to. 

“In the series those are prophetic dreams. We don’t know how this happens since neither one of the false gods or demons in the series seem to be able to predict the future, yet alone give people prophetic dreams, but in the series it’s explained due to the fact that those who have this ability are so-called “rahab inheritors” and that’s hereditary.”

“Irina hated Elluka because she stole her brother from her, their relationship wasn’t the same when Elluka came along and allegedly cured Kiril from hers (still unclear how that happened since she’s supposed to be Held’s inheritor, so able to cure hers, but Held never really cured anyone’s hers, being him a false god, so why?)”

My main argument in all of this is: the scientists from the artificial world (the second period) were more similar to the average person in real life (even if the artificial world was more advanced than ours and some people were geniuses, like Levia) but they couldn’t have prophetic dreams or magically heal people from hers (on the other hand, they were attempting extensive research about the topic of treating hers and a lot of their attempts failed). 

A once-in-a-millennium child prodigy

Entering college at age six, she studies about the heart of man

Look for example at the song “barisol’s child is an only child”:

Unending crimes and wars; why do people hate each other so?

Barisol’s daughter is an only child

Levia has studied psychology since the time she was six years old and has kept doing so for many years.

We can read about this in the prologue of the novel “muzzle of nemesis”.

Levia (and other people as well) has been researching what she called the deviants (the hers) in a psychiatric hospital (that was more accurately a research facility).

So that she could understand that even a little, she continued with her research

“the patient beds were also empty, but that wasn’t necessarily limited to tonight. this hospital wasn’t a facility made to cure “normal” patients to begin with.

it would probably be more accurate not to call this a hospital but rather a “research facility”. people who had a very specific ailment were quarantined here, and made the subjects of research—however, our last patient died just the other day.”

It’s also possible to read how people were quarantined in a ward (Held’s clinic) and they were treated as research subjects.

In detail, the research was carried out with the direct examination of the patients and later on, using the “blackbox type l”.

Throughout time, Levia and the other researchers of the second period came up with treatments for hers but they were no cure, just something to dumb down symtoms for a while.

Yet…despite her extensive research, Levia looked extremely desperate and helpless when she contracted hers in the series, to the point of asking for help from Seth who was only a researcher of parallel worlds. It’s possible to read this in the song “barisol’s child is an only child”. 

Those treatments are mentioned in the pv texts of the song “bloodstained switch”. Ironically the medication’s names are “adam”, “merry go round” and “clockwork medicine”.

The mayu-coded patient of the song wasn’t cured through any of those, in fact, in the end she committed suicide. 

“the blackbox has also been a great aid to my own research as well. My psychiatric analytical methods of the deviants who are responsible for the chaos of the world—technically named “her”s—have progressed by leaps and bounds thanks to the blackbox.” (same prologue as the previous one)

“It would probably be more accurate not to call this a hospital but rather a “research facility”. People who had a very specific ailment were quarantined here, and made the subjects of research—however, our last patient died just the other day.

In other words, Levia (and Held and the other researchers) failed to cure the patient.

And think about it, if Held and the clinic had a cure to hers, the series would have been completely different:

The second period wouldn’t have been brought to chaos and doom (and there wouldn’t have been no need to migrate to another planet).

She had pressed her switch herself–in a word, “suicide”.”

Given all of this, in the third period it’s strange how the “held inheritors” like Elluka Chirclatia are able to eradicate the hers from a person.

Levia would have known how to cure herself (instead in the series, Levia’s hers stayed throughout her life and that brought her to the destruction of the third period eventually…there is a lot to say about this but for now i’ll leave it be).

“Yes. That’s why he put me under his observation, under the pretext of this ‘search for the deadly sins’. And for a time that worked. But five hundred years later his life in this world began to run out…And there he assigned a new watchdog to me.” Levia once more approached Gumillia, and put a hand on her shoulder. “That was—you, Gumillia.”

- Because a being with supernatural powers like Levia as Elluka was interfering with Held and Sickle’s ideology of not having the “gods” in the series interfere with the human progress.

“…Yeah, it was.” Gumillia nodded. “Held decided to use, the fact that the ‘Eternal Sorceress’ wanted an apprentice. He ordered me to keep an eye on Levia, under the guise of an apprentice. To make sure that she never, suspected anything. And…if Levia ever seemed like she would get her memories, back—”

How can she have a power that the “gods” didn’t even have in the second period, and maybe not even in the third? For this i will make an example…

“Yes…But…But, I–!” Gumillia cried out, her eyes welling with tears. (part 2, chapter 3, scene 4)

In the novel “fifth pierrot” it’s shown how Held conspired with Gumillia and Michaela to seal Levia (as Elluka) if she remembered who she was.

This conspiracy was made for two reasons mainly:

- Because Levia throughout the series was a her and a her roaming around freely was considered dangerous.

Apparently Held didn’t know how to stop Levia’s rampage as an her and the only “solution” for her was just seal her so she won’t bother people anymore. If he or Michaela later on knew had to cure hers, wouldn’t they have tried so?

Levia states this, even.

“—With Michaela’s help, you were to seal me once more?”

Adding to this, Held, Luna nor anybody couldn’t stop a her, Levia, from destroying the world, no matter their attempts to stop her. 

“I don’t feel like apologizing for it. As you well know, that was my goal from the very start. You and Hazuki laid all sorts of groundwork to avoid it, but it looks like it that was all in vain.” (novel ‘master of the heavenly yard’, ch. 2, scene 3).

An evidence of this can be found in the novel “muzzle of nemesis”.

Addendum: apparently, being an her is an attribute of the soul, not of the body.

And—

“Thanks to Seth, my spirit had also become violated by malice—“her”.

As time went on, my spirit data was gradually changing.

We had no use for a world that would not be as we wished.

We would destroy it all.

In the end, I became something that desired only destruction and chaos.

And then do it over again from the beginning.” (7, memory of the ‘god’, scene 2)

There is this ideology in the evillious chronicles according to which people’s souls are treated like software data that can be corrupted and reformatted. This can be applied to the artificial simulation of the second period, but strangely also in the third one in the series.

Now, going back to the original claim, i would like to object to the fact that the powers have nothing to do with the name of the ability (like “inheritor of Rahab” has nothing to do with Rahab). On the contrary, i think the inheritors of a certain type actually have something to do with the character giving the name to the inheritor ability.

For example, the Loop Octopus family are traditionally “Rahab’s inheritors” and that makes them have dreams about the future. 

Rahab in the third period (while being in her ‘demon of envy’ form in the series) also seems able to have such dreams. We can read about this in the novel ‘master of the heavenly yard’.

Rahab was becoming afraid, looking up at the eastern sky as it was beginning to grow covered in black clouds.

“Ah…This isn’t good. Those two…Allen and Riliane—they’ve reunited.”

“…That’s not it. My idea of a ‘formatting’ event is purely theoretical. I mean I—had a dream. A ‘purple dream’.”

Salem looked upon Rahab’s expression with amazement. “This again? How many times do I have to tell you that your theory is wrong—”

“A dream?”

“We were all originally scientists. So I’m sure you’d never go along with such a preposterous idea as a ‘prophetic dream’. Still…I did have one. And in it, when the twins were reunited, the world met its true end—‘ta eschata’–by a ‘pure evil’.” (chapter 8–reunion; scene 2)

In this you can also notice how Rahab states that those who were originally scientists (including herself) wouldn’t have taken this seriously. This might be an implication of the fact that Rahab having a prophetic dream wasn’t really a thing in the second period, otherwise, if that was an established fact at that time in the series, then why marvel at that? This is purely about logic here. I may be wrong, but still, it’s worth having a thought or two about this. 

So then a question comes forth…how is it that the Rahab of the third period has this extraordinary power? If the Rahab of the second period couldn’t do that, how can she do that now?

Leaving this question aside for a moment, it really does seem that the inheritor abilities have some connection to the respective characters of the second period (or at least to said character’s abilities after the destruction of the second period, especially after the ‘incarnation’ in ‘gods’ and ‘demons’).

To make another example, the Asayev family lineage tends to be born “Behemo’s inheritors” in the series. Those people tend to be born with an artificial eye, just like Behemo himself.

Mikhail Asayev: Mikhail brought his face closer to show it to me, his left eye swiveling.

“You have probably already figured out that my eye is artificial, yes? But this isn’t something that was put in here later on.  I’ve had this unique eyeball since the day I was born.” (twin blades short story, scene 2)

Behemo: Behemo changed the channel on the artificial eye that he had. This was one of his unique abilities, and so by being able to switch the channels on his eye at will he had several unique fields of vision that he could employ. (“fifth pierrot” short story)

How did those abilities come to be?

Even this one, it’s a mystery how certain people can suddenly be born with something artificial.

In the novel ‘tailor of enbizaka’ it is possible to read about the fact that the inheritor ability is a feature of the body, not of the soul in the series.

“In that case, how did kayo come to be able to have prophetic dreams?

Apparently Behemo was able to engineer bodies with extraordinary abilities that are passed from generation to generation in the series. 

But how so? How could he make bodies with extraordinary abilities that exceed the previous’ civilization potential, like the prophetic dream stuff? This is never explained, but surely it’s evident how the characters that originally were human scientists are now extremely op, surpassing their previous abilities, and this is so strange and even unrealistic (even considering the advancements of the second period).

“Also, it’s still unclear to me how the twins can bring over “destruction” and “creation” while we’ve never seen Levia and Behemo do that in the first place.”

To that, elluka replied, “’purple dreams’ are a special exception. That ability lies not in the spirit, but in the body. Behemo would know more on that, but—well, there’s no point in trying to ask someone who’s not here right now.” (chapter 4–the tale of the mermaid; scene 2)

How did they make themselves kind of ‘gods’? (I usually refer to them as false gods because, despite being really powerful and having extraordinary abilities, they still aren’t omnipotent and omniscient, they still have flaws and lack in knowledge. The fact that the ‘gods’ in evillious are a farce is something that has been alluded to in the series multiple times and it’s a major leitmotif of the series together with ‘no utopia’. I will go into this more in the next part of my character study).

This claim came in two versions from people.

For this one, i will answer to the “Levia and Behemo are irregulars” first.

Either: “well don’t you know the twins are irregulars?” or secondly “don’t you know that Levia and Behemo are irregulars?”

Claim 2: there seemed to be some complaints about this sentence as well.

I think the wording of this one is incorrect.

But after a short time had passed after the birth of the “third period”, some beings started being born who were outside of those rules. The general term for them was “irregular”.(ch 6, not eve, scene 2)

A general definition of it can be found in the novel ‘master of the heavenly yard’:

First of all, i would like to answer the question: “what is an irregular in evillious?”

Apparently, Sickle made the rules of the world in the series (you can read this in the short story ‘heavenly yard’ mainly) or even, Sickle (with all the other main scientists) stated to have created the world. 

This is slightly contradicted in a way in the novel ‘master of the heavenly yard’: Sickle didn’t just “create the world” as the third period was no more than the series’ first period (Behemo’s world) that was destroyed in a nuclear catastrophe (most likely).

In a way those scientists (and talos/sickle) have just helped repopulate the broken down first period planet.

Why Allen? –This world was created by the scientists of the “second period”. As well as its laws of cause and effect…and its rules.

It is true that Sickle in the series kind of remade the physics and biological rules about the new world (including the fact that re-incarnation in the series meant the sealing of memories regarding past lives and the fact that he could only act as an observer and not interfere with the world, and he even made Held incarnate as a tree so that he wouldn’t interfere as well. Adding to that, he allegedly also made the rules about hereditary traits, like the fact that hers is not something you can just catch in the third period and you are born with it and also the hereditary rules, even though that wouldn’t make sense, like, they are on something similar to this world and the nature of this world has already those rules established, but anyway…).

In that case…how did he do that as merely a robot, after all? 

Anyway…

The irregulars are beings that are born and act under ‘special’ circumstances, circumstances that not even the ‘four pillar gods’ of the series could predict: 

neo Adam Moonlit and Eve Zvezda? Born from a doll.

‘ma’? Born from the fusion of three souls.

And so on…

- Riliane at the guillotine

From the novel “daughter of evil” it is also implied how beings like that are able to avert ‘prophetic dreams’ in the series, changing the future in an unexpected way in the series. 

“I have nothing left to say, Allen. Take care of your big sister–If you can change her fate, then do so. If it’s possible to cause an 'irregularity’ in the prophecy…perhaps you’ll be able to manage it?” Having ended her conversation with me, Elluka once again turned over to the head maid. “Mariam, the life I lived here in this country with you and Leonhart…It was fun, as is. I guess it did end up being a way to stave off boredom after all. If you can I want you to live a long life, but…I guess you’ll say the same thing as this boy.” (novel “cloture of yellow”, chapter 2, sec 2, scene 4).

-Armed people surrounding the palace (most likely the revolution)

-Riliane’s army invading Elphegort

According to Elluka, among those four images, a specific one was purple: the third one, the one of the invasion, at which she explained why it was like this: if the the army invading the green country came true, then, the following events were bound to happen, there was no chance to change the future at that point. 

-Mariam dying in the garden in front of the palace

Another feature of “irregulars” in the series (particularly the ones who are low-quality copies of levia-behemo) is that they can reincarnate. This applies for Hansel and Gretel, Riliane and Allen and neo-Adam and neo-Eve.

That meant that if Riliane sent the army to invade Elphegort, then the revolution was bound to happen and Riliane was meant to die at the end of the novel.

Giving a little more context here: Elluka (having Lukana’s body who was a Rahab inheritor) in the novel “wiegenlied of green” allegedly had a prophetic dream made up of four images:

Allen, though, managed to change this outcome, making Riliane survive.

It’s possible to see throughout the series how Hansel and Gretel became ‘Arte’ and ‘Pollo’ and even later ‘Ney’ and ‘Lemy’.

For Adam Moonlit and Eve Zvezda…the things get a little bit complicated, i will leave this part for later.

A similar dynamic shows for Allen and Riliane. Allen became ‘Kokutan-douji’ while Riliane became ‘Rin Miroku’ and later on ‘postman’.

And lastly, “irregulars” in the series also come in a couple of twins that are able to destroy and re-create the world of the series, formatting the souls of the characters, making them different beings. This whole act in the series is called “re_birthday”.

“Hänsel and Gretel. These items the twins created were brought about by a ‘re_birthday’. They destroyed the departed souls of the Second Period and remade them as demons of the third period—Well, ‘Irregular’ though those two may be, they were after all little more than low-quality copies born under the scheming of Levia and Behemo. So something of that degree was all they could manage.”

It is possible to read about this whole thing in the novel “master of the heavenly yard”, highlighting the most important stuff i mentioned.

[...]

“You can tell this isn’t you, right? Yes, this—is the ‘boy’. Seth created him, and he is the being that ‘Punishment’, the weapon that destroyed the world, was based on. Seth died in the Leviantan Catastrophe before he could make the other half of the twin pair, so only he, who handles destruction, remained.”

“You misunderstood. The ‘Re_Birthday’ isn’t normally used to cause erasure. Among a pair of twins, one of them handles destruction, and the other one rebirth; it first activates when the two are together. For example—”

Depicted next on the screen—was that theater.

“Here in ‘Evils Theater’, Irina gave birth to those other twins. As they died and became souls before they could form an ego, Irina tried to supplement them with one using Adam and Eve’s souls. –If it hadn’t been for Ma’s interference, she likely would have been able to carry out a ‘re_birthday’ using them. The world recreated by that would most likely not have been the one you and Levia hoped for. …And now, finally.”

In this speech you can see two other special ‘irregulars’ as well: Amostia and ‘ma’. I won’t go into detail about those two, you can read about them in the speech anyway.

Then the box showed a being that looked identical to Allen.

But what can we say about Levia and Behemo? Are those two irregulars, according to those definitions?

“Ma—she was also an ‘Irregular’, similar to the ‘boy’, and as such a very dangerous being. Without anyone to handle the rebirth aspect, once the ‘re_birthday’ occurred…Everything would have come to an end.” (chapter 11, section 2; scene 1).

The box’s screen then began to replay the fight that had just occurred.

So…this is more or less what the novel tells about the features of those types of characters. 

Yes, but actually no. 

But that was something that they expected as they don’t follow the ‘rules’ in the series that most characters have in the first place somehow; on the other hand, an ‘irregular’ in evillious is a character that is supposed to be subject by the rules in the series, but they somehow just don’t and this is something the so-called gods didn’t expect and this signifies of they are not in control of the situation in the first case, and this is also why they are false gods.

“Why are the gods afraid of ‘Irregulars’? I think—it’s because when a being that doesn’t exist is made to exist, it makes the rules into a contradiction. …But then another question comes up there. –That is, why must the rules not be contradicted?”

And this opens up a huge debate between ‘ma’ and Allen about why they are afraid of irregulars.

Yes, because in the series, they somehow have supernatural powers that most characters don’t possess, therefore, they defy the logic of the world of the series, like an irregular would do.

“…Go on.”

“You can arrive at that answer when pondering the other issue of what it is that the gods are most afraid of. Naturally, I am not a god myself, and so it’s a little difficult to make a perfect theory on that…So let’s swap out ‘god’ for ‘king’. In order for a king to remain so, he needs to have a country he can govern. Without it, he won’t be a king anymore.”

Now…about the initial claim…in particular the first version of it.

“And in the same vein, the moment the world is no more, the gods will no longer be gods…That’s what you’re saying.” (chapter 10–the boy’s choice; scene 2)

So no…Levia and Behemo are not irregulars by definition.

“Also, it’s still unclear to me how the twins can bring over “destruction” and “creation” while we’ve never seen Levia and Behemo do that in the first place.”

I know that the twins are irregulars already…but the question is why low copies of Levia and Behemo like Allen and Riliane and Hansel and Gretel have this specific power of destruction and re-creation?

Levia and Behemo as scientists couldn’t do that in the second period, and we don’t know if they could do that in the third period.

“well don’t you know the twins are irregulars?” 

And in the case that they could do it, how could they make themselves be able to do it, from their starting point as scientists, even if from a technologically advanced civilization? That’s a little bit unrealistic.

There are some references to the themes of ‘destruction’ and ‘creation’ regarding Levia and Behemo though. 

Levia, on the other hand, was the one that destroyed them at the end of the series, reducing them to just souls.

Behemo in the series was the one that used genetic engineering for the bodies of the humans.

Also, there is an allusion about the fact that Levia once theorized the concept of reformatting (referencing re_birthdays) in the second period, but she never tried to construct a machine with that concept.

That is the question that i didn’t state explicitly in the document, but here it is. I can see why the way i said it in the document could be misunderstood, but now i have explained it better.

In any case, Levia and Behemo don’t seem to be able to do what Allen and Riliane can do on their own.

I understand that there has been so much misinformation throughout the years about the series, but this doesn’t mean we should do a witch hunt when we accuse eachother of doing misinformation about evillious. My work is to help people that have had trouble understanding the series, but that doesn’t mean that i’m akuno and that i get everything right. I’m doing my best to present a documented work and do extensive research and reading of the novels, but i can still fail at some degree like everyone else considering the quantity of the information and installments of the series and also the multiple retcons and things that don’t exactly add up throughout the years. I can’t be a replacement for the reading of novels or their translations, even the wiki can’t do that, despite how hard it tries to be an ‘authority’ of information.

To those people who messaged me, claiming i don’t know what an irregular was or to those that told me that "Levia and Behemo were irregulars"…next time, could you ask me about what i meant instead of outright accusing me of lack of knowledge without being certain of what i meant to say in a sentence that wasn’t even about the main topic of the analysis?

Protip: no one can perfectly explain evillious for you, reading the novels allows you to really have a gist of how the author treats certain topics.

So, instead of doing the witch hunt, how about just discussing the series and respectfully pointing out wrong things and doubts, instead of just going straight on accusing of misinformation?

[snidgetwidgeon]

My excitement rivalled Impa’s here when @jabberwockyface brought this scene from my story to life. It is a true delight and I adored the addition of the cuccos!

I have been working on my longfic for quite some time now and was only intending to publish when complete, but this art has me so pumped I thought I’d drop a ‘trailer’ XD

Please enjoy Chapter 1 of Insurrection, a ZeLink story set mainly after the fall of Calamity Ganon

The Horizon

Impa woke early and sighed as she looked up at the large wooden beams in the ceiling of her house. One of the small, lidded lanterns hanging there, usually alight with a soft, golden glow, had gone out during the night. No matter, she thought. An oil refill would just be one of the mundanities to be dealt with over the course of the day. She had always been an early riser, though for the past two decades or so, her aged bladder was demanding she be up at sparrow’s fart to cater to its whims.

She was nestled atop her three red pillows which were stacked like a pyramid. This was where she liked to stay these days, meditating and even sleeping. Her granddaughter, Paya, had long since had the upstairs bedroom to herself.

Rising to stand atop her pillow tower, with quite a few bodily creaks and vocal sound effects, Impa hopped down. She gently removed her large round hat and placed it in the vacated spot, then saw to her ablutions before a morning walk. She poodled around the ground floor of the spacious living quarters, which also doubled as the town hall. Having the largest house in the village was one of the perks of being the Elder. Her seating platform was centrally located toward the rear of the room and looked out across a spacious, open floor plan. Dark blue mats decorated with a diamond pattern sat neatly aligned in rows and served as a comfortable place to sit when village meetings or festive gatherings took place. Her pillow tower looked straight down an aisle, lined with a blue rug, toward large double doors that led outside to the veranda.

Set in a free standing wooden frame behind her perch was a canvas tapestry. Its earthy color palette and tribal art style depicted a very specific history of the Kingdom of Hyrule. There was a large monster embroidered in the center, and it was flanked by what seemed to be a divine person on the left, and a warrior on the right. There were hundreds of machines surrounding them and in each corner were strange animals ridden by pilots of varying races. Due to the nature of the design, it was unclear if they depicted any of the races residing in Hyrule today.

The platform was flanked by two staircases which rose to the back of the house and then turned on ninety degree angles to meet in the middle at the top. To the right and left of her platform on the outside of the stairs were four posts topped with frog guardian statuettes. They bore the red Sheikah symbol on their bellies, an open eye drawn in a minimalist style with a central tear. Various banners and lanterns hung from the rafters, and low shelves lined the walls. Like the other dwellings in Kakariko Village, furnishings and household items were sparse as most Sheikah lived a simple and humble life, free from clutter.

Impa regarded her wide and wrinkly face in the water basin that sat on one of the low shelves. The reflection reminded her of how much time had passed. She splashed the sleep out of her eyes and made her way upstairs to check on Paya, as she did every morning. She favored going up the right staircase, so she could come down the left in a satisfying circle.

Reaching the second floor, she went over to the bed against the back right corner to look upon her sleeping granddaughter. The young woman usually slumbered well into mid-morning as she tended to pray until very late at night. Impa pressed her forehead against Paya’s and their matching, but different colored Sheikah eye tattoos touched. Though she hadn’t meant to cause a stir, Paya yawned and whispered, “Grandmother?”

“Shhh, it’s still very early, dear,” Impa cooed. “Go back to sleep.” She wanted to tell Paya that she stays up much too late praying outside to the village guardians. But she knew the young woman was doing her best to help bring success to their courageous Hero. He needs all the help he can get, she thought earnestly.

Satisfied that all was well with Paya, she headed back down and paused to view the large painting which hung above the low shelves on that side of the house.

The verdant marsh it depicted was spotted with just a few trees and a grey range of hills in the backdrop, topped by fluffy clouds in a blue sky. Toward the rear of the landscape, to the left and right of the center of the canvas, were two weathered stone ruins indicating that this area had not always been a marsh. Spread out in the foreground were some strange looking, bell shaped machines. The one closest to the viewer on the left side of the frame had a single eye-like protrusion in the middle of its bucket-shaped head.

They were all partially sunken into the marsh, becoming overgrown by time. The furthest one had a single, tentacle-like limb sticking out from its wide base, as if it had once been going in that direction. Overall, they seemed oddly out of place- yet also part of the greater scenery. Impa sighed and wondered, like so many times she had sighed in this spot before, if that fateful marsh would ever again reclaim being just a beautiful field.

Time to get moving before breakfast, she decided as she headed for the front door. She had just started to open it before realizing she had forgotten her hat. She tut-tutted herself as she headed back to claim it. One had to look proper if going outside. Her large, straw hat had a very wide and circular red brim which swooped up into a tall metal ornament that brought it to a point. The Sheikah symbol was prominently featured in red on the front. It also had five chains hanging from the brim with axe blade-esque ornaments that swayed metronomically as she walked. Placing her beloved hat on her head, she headed outside.

She was greeted by a bright, blue summer sky and squinted as her eyes adjusted to the golden glow of sunlight spilling over the valley walls. She never tired of this tranquil vista. Tall, steep mountains with weathered, rounded peaks flanked her view to the right. These were aptly named the Pillars of Levia. She followed a flock of ducks with her gaze as they flew over the mountain vale in a perfect v-formation. They passed a lone peak on the left which towered above the forest on the hill behind the village. This small mount had a more flattened mesa at its peak rather than a weathered mound like the others. Another group of birds she couldn’t make out through the bright sunlight swirled around the top.

As she descended her long front steps, she felt content, taking in the sounds and smells of her home. The breeze which blew through the valley from the west carried with it the scent of the grassy slopes and the wooden chimes that were suspended from ropes between posts all around the village, were gently teased into their soft rattle by it. The cuccos added their crow to the morning chorus.

At the base of the steps was a wooden-framed, open gate. She tilted her head slightly to the side so that as she passed under, the ornament of her impressive hat could avoid catching on the three banners hanging there. On either side of the gate were some young plum trees. The lovely white blossoms they produced in spring were something she looked forward to seeing every year. These plum trees, as well as the others scattered around the village, acted as the residents’ protectors, just like the frog statuettes. They also symbolized endurance and prosperity, two values which Impa had instilled in her people for the better part of a century.

She nodded to the guard who kept the late night and early morning watch at her gate. He was adorned in standard Sheikah attire, a pair of beige trousers and a tunic with a high back collar and red trim. A dark blue undershirt could be seen that matched the blue diamond-shaped pattern on his straw hat. His hat was much different than Impa’s in that it appeared to be a woven disc of straw that he folded over his head and strapped under his chin. It also sat prominently forward to allow for his high, white bun to stick out at the back of his head. Some red chopsticks poked stylishly out of the side of his big bun.

Cado returned the nod with a short and respectful bow. “Lady Impa.” He waited for the Village Elder to take several paces before retrieving his quiver from against the gate and followed at a polite, but observant distance. Though her residence was always guarded, he felt he should be extra vigilant about her safety when she ventured out, especially since there had been an unexplained theft not too long ago.

He checked over his gear as he followed Impa through the canyon pass that led north out of the village. On his back he carried a darkwood Phrenic Bow, good for long distance accuracy. On his waist was sheathed an Eightfold Blade, the traditional, single-edged sword of the Sheikah people, and one of the remaining vestiges of their ancient technology. Etched at the blade’s base was the tell-tale eye symbol, believed to offer the user an extra layer of spiritual protection.

Impa walked along at a slow but comfortable pace, enjoying the sound of the breeze whistling through the canyon walls. As she approached a large open gate, one of three marking the entrances to the village, she paused at the sound of a rustle. She looked back at Cado who had drawn nearer, with one hand reaching for the handle of his blade, ready to react to the disturbance.. She merely smiled and shook her head. After taking another step, a lizard dashed out of a tuft of grass and made its escape up the canyon wall.

The north canyon did not lead out of the village as such. After about a ten minute walk, the narrow walls fanned open to a natural platform which offered a scenic, if slightly restricted, view of Hyrule due to the high cliffs on either side. The serenity of this place and the breathtaking view overlooking Hyrule had inspired the community to recognize it as a sacred site. Here they paid their respects at the graves of their loved ones. Unlike Hylian graves, which tended to spread out over an area, the Sheikah piled narrow, upright stones on the left side of the clearing. They were placed without any inclination to create neat rows, and their jumbledness added a certain charm. The only markings were caused by the passage of time, demonstrated by how weathered and overgrown with moss they were.

To the right was a single, large tree, its shade offering a welcome respite to those who visited during the hottest hours of a summer day. Just past the tree stood a simple wooden fence. A precaution for children, or perhaps for those foolish enough to get too close to the drop off overlooking Lake Telta.

At this time of the morning, the sun had yet to reach the clearing, so it was still in the shadow of the cliff walls. Impa slowly shuffled up near the fence, her head bowed in respect as she passed the graves. To offer Impa privacy with her morning prayers, Cado held back just before the canyon opened up.

Goddess Hylia, she prayed, keep Princess Zelda safe within your womb. Lend her your strength so that one day, with the aid of the chosen Hero, she may overcome and banish the Calamity. Even now, as over the course of a century, the Princess was trapped in the castle, bound in an endless battle of wills with the malice of Ganon. Impa would never forget the night the poor young woman had come to the village in ruins.

In those days, she had been assigned as an Adviser to the Royal Family of Hyrule. Her duties in this capacity focused mainly on heading the research into various ancient Sheikah technologies. Her older sister Purah and another scientist, Robbie, ran their own divisions under her guidance. Princess Zelda had eventually joined their ranks as well after she showed a great aptitude for scientific research. During her spare time outside of devotions, she possessed an unrivaled curiosity for a wide array of subjects, which was beneficial to the research teams. Having such a high connection within the Royal Family meant that their work was well funded continuously.

Their efforts were in answer to a prophecy that had been delivered to the Royal Family. It spoke of the revival of a legend known as The Calamity, a primal evil which had risen to plague the land ten thousand years ago. King Rhoam was hoping to use the same means their ancestors had to defend against the possible return of The Calamity. The more they uncovered, the more they realized the legends were true.

Relics, which came to be known as Divine Beasts, were unearthed in various locations across the land. Impa’s teams began an intense study of these artifacts, as well as the many Shrines that dotted all of Hyrule; though they were, as yet, unable to ascertain how to gain access to their inner sanctums. They also uncovered the smaller, autonomous Guardians. Robbie took a great interest in these contraptions and even brought some back to working order.

But Calamity Ganon had outsmarted them.

~~~

As the sun was setting, a young Impa and her team of scientists were concluding their experiments for the day and packing up under the stone pavilion in the castle courtyard. Suddenly, a large rumble echoed around the area, followed by a short earthquake. Everyone fled out from under the roof in case it collapsed but immediately froze in shock upon seeing the castle being engulfed in a swirling pink and black miasma. It circled around and took the shape of a boar-headed demon. A cloud continued erupting into the sky and started to spread, mirroring the overwhelming sense of dread everyone was now feeling. No, we’re not ready!

Before they had time to react, globs of malice erupted from the castle and began to rain down on the ground. The creature roared menacingly to the sky from the epicenter as if to announce its freedom and dominion over all. Impa watched a large glob soar over them like a meteor. She turned northwest to follow its trajectory. Is it possible it was headed for Rito Village?

Someone screamed and she snapped back around to see that the stationary Guardians they had been working with had become active on their own. They were glowing magenta with an evil energy, their heads spinning back and forth as if they were calibrating. Her instincts kicked in and she ordered everyone to grab the most important things. “Take the research! We must get it safely to Kakariko!” At once, people ran in all directions trying to gather their most important work.

Purah ran over to her younger sister and looked at her frantically. “Impa, the Guidance Stone!”

Impa closed her eyes and bowed her head. “We should only save what we can-”

Purah grabbed her arms and Impa looked back up at her in surprise. She was hardly ever so serious. “Anything we take from here will be useless junk unless we have the Guidance Stone to access it. This is not a discussion. It’s a necessity and you know it.”

“Fine. But just us. I’m not risking anyone else going in there.” She looked up towards the high pointed towers of the castle, some now covered in a dark ooze.

“Fine,” Purah acquiesced and started to walk away. “Just us, and Robbie.” Robbie, who had been stuffing schematics into a satchel whipped around at the sound of his name.

Impa grabbed her sister’s arm and pulled her back. “What did I just say?!” Suddenly, one of the Guardians stopped spinning its head back and forth and now focused its single blue eye on the Sheikah women, who were too wrapped up in their stare-down to notice.

Robbie paled. “Oh... shit!” They had seconds. His eyes darted around for something, anything... There! A Royal Guard, easily identified by his red tunic under a gold embroidered dark blue tabard, was running their way carrying a large, half-bodied shield.

The Guardian began emitting an ominous beeping noise and a red laser targeted Impa. Robbie pounced on the guard and grabbed his shield away. “Sorry, my man!”

Purah gasped when she saw the red laser on Impa’s shoulder, and utterly terrified, yelled, “Jump back only when I say!”

Impa’s eyes widened in fear as the beeping got faster. Robbie scrambled over to them as the Guardian made a piercing noise, and blue energy shot out of its eye with the intent to destroy. There was a massive ricochet as Robbie parried the energy back at the Guardian with his pilfered shield. Its eerie pink glow fizzled out and it blew to pieces, cogs and gears flying everywhere.

“WOOOOO!” Robbie exclaimed. “Yeah!” He pumped his fists and stretched out a bit. “Man, I saw the Champion do that once and have been wanting to try it ever since.”

Impa, who had ended up huddled on the ground with Purah behind the thrill-seeker, now stood and pulled her sister up as well. “Right, so it’s just us, and Robbie.”

She watched as the rest of the Royal Guard’s unit arrived and set upon the other stationary Guardians before they also had the chance to start working. Robbie returned the shield to the guard he had ambushed and instructed him on the technique to parry the blasts. “The shield should withstand a number of hits this way,” he explained.  

Impa’s mind was a flurry of questions. Was the miasma poisonous? How did it take control of the Guardians? Could they make it to the Guidance Stone?

The Royal Guard unit had now taken out the other three legless Guardians, but she feared it was a small victory. The research team tried to settle now that the immediate danger in the vicinity was over, but every noise set them off, causing them to pause and look around like prey at a watering hole.

She then heard members of the Garrison yelling from the Western Gatehouse, “They’re coming out of the pillars! DOZENS!”, “Hylia above, they’re headed for the town!”

Her stomach flipped over as she thought of those monstrous contraptions overtaken by evil. The very machines that were supposed to protect them were instead destroying everything in their path. All those people...

They had to get out. Now.

Her researchers started to panic after also hearing the desperate cries. She had to focus again, lead them. She addressed them in her authoritative tone, “Everyone, stay calm. We’ll make for the docks. The south exit is... compromised.” Impa looked over to see the Royal Guard leaving to heed the cry from the Western Gatehouse.

“Sir Karane!” she called out. She ran over from under the pavilion to hail the Knight who had just led the assault on the stationary Guardians.

Karane held out an arm to stop her men. When the last one fell into line, she turned a pair of steely blue eyes toward Impa and crossed the same arm over her chest, tilting her head forward in respect. “Adviser.”

Impa regarded the soldiers, some of whom seemed itching to get to the battle. Luckily, she had a better fate in store for them. “The ancient tech research team requires an escort. It’s imperative we get this material safely out of the castle.” Karane spared a glance at the scientists stuffing papers and artifacts into any available containers they could find.

“We have a possible escape route via the docks,” Impa continued. Best case scenario is obtaining some horses and a cart for this gear,” Impa continued.

Sir Karane bowed curtly and then turned sharply to address her unit, her red braid whipping behind her. “You heard her men! We are now on special assignment for the Royal Adviser! Three of you with me,” she gestured to the men on her left. “We’re going to commandeer ourselves a ride. You four, make sure the way is clear to the docks. The rest of you escort our scientists!” She held an arm out to Impa and they clasped each other’s wrists.

“Thank you, Sir Karane.” Robbie and Purah came up beside Impa and she nodded their way to indicate to Karane that they would be working together. “We must retrieve the Guidance Stone. We’ll do our best to meet you there. If these things find you,” she looked towards the felled Guardians, “then leave without us!”

“I’ll give you an hour.”

Impa nodded. “If we don’t make it, there is another stone at the Royal Ancient Lab. I imagine they are doing the same and taking what they can.” She regarded the remaining regiment. “Can you spare your fastest guard from this lot and have them instruct the other team to rendezvous with us in Kakariko?”

“A solid plan, leave it to me.” Karane walked away and yelled, “Konba! I hope you’ve had your rushrooms.”

Impa then left her team in good hands as she went to fetch the Guidance Stone with her sister and Robbie; who was grinning, as he’d acquired himself another shield.

It was a rather large blessing that when they arrived at the docks, the research team was still there, unharmed. It seemed like they got ahead of the Calamity just enough to slip out the back, though the same couldn’t be said for the residents of Castle Town. Impa tried not to think about it as she helped shove the cart with the Stone and its activation pedestal onto the boat.

They made it across the river in the two boats which had been moored at the docks, and battled their way up the sloped bank. The ones who weren’t pushing stared blankly across the river at the scene of destruction unfolding before their eyes. The ones who didn’t want to see busied themselves with helping. Once they reached the grassy Irch Plain, they moved quickly without resting to scale the Elma Knolls. These would at least provide them some cover before heading east. It was unsettling to be so close to a pillar behind the castle, but it appeared that, at least for now, the invasion was focused on Hyrule Field.

After retreating to her village, which was currently safe in the mountains, Impa had sent out a search party for Zelda. She stood in the same spot near the graveyard under the tree, looking in horror at the castle across Hyrule Field. It was still engulfed in a swirling black and magenta miasma. The giant pillars, the existence of which she was aware but had never seen before they had risen out of the ground, were angled toward the castle. They had originally been meant for protection and housed the Guardians that, in the past, defended Hyrule. But all the Guardians had been turned against them, and the pillars were now menacing rather than a comfort. She thought they looked like the fingers of a demon come to enclose the castle in its grasp.

At the base and to the left of the ominous cloud was a wide, orange glow. Castle Town was destroyed; engulfed in flames.

~~~

When Zelda was later escorted into Kakariko, Impa discovered she was there on a mission, and had come bearing a request. She was a bit weak on her feet, but refused rest and clean clothes. Even though she was muddy and her white prayer dress was in tatters, she would not be deterred.

The worst had befallen the Kingdom and she just had one hope: that their Hero would return one day, as she saw when the Master Sword spoke to her. She sat in Impa’s old house at the time, bathed in a soft yellow light from the lanterns. She explained to Impa and the other scientists, her friends, Purah and Robbie, “Link must regain control of the Divine Beasts! Ganon has taken them from us. He controls them now and… and the Champions were… they’re gone.” Her hard stare and exhaustion made it look as if she was going to cry, but at this point she was out of tears, trying desperately to replace them with determination.

Impa felt a weight pool in her gut at the news. So the malice she had seen heading for Rito Village was meant for Vah Medoh, and spelled Champion Revali’s doom. She thought of each Champion, having returned to their Divine Beasts, only to find a deadly trap. She was silent for a moment, unsure; wondering if she should offer comfort or if that would merely be a distraction at this point. Her sister was fiddling with random items she could reach on the table, but rather than be annoyed, she knew it was Purah’s way of dealing with stress.

Zelda then gave a weary sigh and continued. “There’s a chance that Link may not retain some of his memories while in the shrine, so I have an idea of how to help him when he wakes.”

Impa nodded and silently agreed with Zelda’s sentiment. It was when he wakes, she thought, not if he wakes. It was best to be thinking positively in such dire circumstances.

“Purah,” Zelda looked at Impa’s sister, who stopped braiding the frayed threads of the tablecloth as if she’d been caught doing something she wasn’t supposed to. “I sent the Slate with Link and the Sheikah who found us to the Shrine of Resurrection. He’s going to need it when he awakens.” She paused and then added, “For guidance and access.”

She thought back to her discovery of the towers underground, the existence of which she had not yet been able to discuss with anyone due to trying to keep her research a secret from her father. He would have her only praying to awaken her power, rather than try to help in any other way. So she had been biding her time, not knowing that it would soon run out.

Now, there was only time to act, so she focused on the most important things and didn’t bother to elaborate. Telling Purah and Robbie about the towers was pointless anyway since only Link, as the chosen Hero, would be able to access them.

“I need you to take the contents of the Compendium out of the Slate and keep them in your Guidance Stone. Hopefully the images, or visiting the places where I took the pictures, will help him remember things.”

Purah agreed and nodded, “The Guidance Stone will keep them safe.” She stood from her chair and looked over at Robbie. He seemed to be lost in the shadow of self-loathing, head down and fists clenched at his knees, all previous bravado gone. “Robbie, let’s go see to Link. He’s not going to heal himself.” Robbie looked at Zelda sadly as if he wanted to say something but couldn’t bring himself to. Purah snapped his attention away. “Quick smart!”

They made to leave the house and prepare their things when Zelda called out, “Purah wait! The last picture in the Compendium. Can you delete it but keep a paper copy like the one you made of us before? When the Champions were alive and happy. He should remember that last. It was where he… where I…” She tried, but couldn’t bring herself to talk about what had just happened, “it was where we parted,” she finished, while lowering her eyes in emotional defeat. “I don’t want him to be overwhelmed right after he returns to us.”

Purah blinked her red eyes, suddenly feeling trapped into a sense of responsibility that felt heavier than putting Link into an untested machine. That’s going to be fascinating- Focus Purah!

“I… of course I can make a copy, Princess.” She looked furtively over to Impa. It was one thing for the Guidance Stone to hang onto something in its database, but she, personally? She thought of the state of her workspace at the Royal Ancient Lab, which probably didn’t look so different now that it had most likely been reduced to rubble.

Impa knew her sister well and fought off a massive eye-roll in the presence of the Princess. “Once you are finished in the Shrine, bring me the picture and I will keep it safe for Link,” she offered reassuringly.

Purah visibly relaxed. “Sure thing, Sis.” She prodded Robbie to open the door as he was nearest.

Robbie slid it open and before stepping out, softly spoke to Zelda. “Good luck.” He couldn’t manage much more than that.

Purah looked back at Zelda, looking so small and forlorn, and stuck her chin out with conviction. “Zelly,” she said, “You give that Ganon bastard what for. And don’t get dead!” She followed Robbie out and the room suddenly felt heavier in her absence.

Impa placed her hand on Zelda’s shoulder, and though the young woman was doing everything she could to remain brave and strong, she was shaking. Impa was certain that there was a good amount of fear behind that shaking, but if any part of it was due to lack of nourishment, she wasn’t having it. “Let’s get you something to eat and drink before you go.”

Zelda’s head snapped up. “No, I should leave right away. I’ve already stayed too long. The more time I take, the farther the Guardians can go. They’re laying waste to the Kingdom!”

Impa tutted, “As if I’d let you face Ganon on an empty stomach. What would Sir Link say!?”

~~~

Since that day, Impa prayed for her Princess, overlooking a horizon that never changed. She eventually married, had a child, and then a grandchild. And though her life had known massive loss, and this sacred ground where she stood was for mourning, it was also a place of hope. Hope that one day the Hero would return, and things would change. As more time went by, she became uncertain if she would see Link again. She had started to seriously consider passing Zelda’s message on to Paya should he wake after her death.

But he had come, and with him, an ever-changing vista as he reclaimed the Divine Beasts from Ganon’s control one by one. His successes were revealed to her when she would come out here to pray. The Beasts aimed their divine light as red beams towards the castle from their respective perches across the land, ready to fire when the Hero finally faced his evil foe.

Now there was only one hurdle left, though it was certainly the highest. Before Link was awake, Impa had given most of her prayers to Zelda. But since his return, she prayed for his boundless courage to succeed in the fight against Calamity Ganon. For if he failed, she couldn’t imagine the dark world her granddaughter would inherit.

Impa finished her prayers and raised the brim of her hat to look at the castle on the horizon. She sucked in a breath as she took in a change to the scenery she’d been waiting to see for a hundred years. The cloud of malice had gone. “Eeeeee!” She gave a toothy grin and smacked her thigh.

At the sound of her shriek, Cado rushed over, his weapon drawn. “Lady Impa, what is it!?” She practically barreled past him at top old lady speed, leaving him confused as to where the danger was. He, too, then saw the castle and chin dropped silently agape.

“Cado!” She yelled, while hobbling back to the village. “Get everyone to make preparations. The Princess is coming!”

She rushed toward the house and almost ran over a cucco that unfortunately strutted in front of her gate. It squawked and flapped out of the way at the last second, allowing her to huff up the stairs. Cado, who was following just behind, picked up his panicked cucco and scratched under her wings until the cuddle calmed her down.

“You’re ok, my lovely. The mean old lady was rude, wasn’t she?” He whispered. He waited until Impa was safely inside before walking across the main path to the Inn to inform Ollie to prepare a suitable place for the Hero and the Princess. Lady Impa would want only the very best hospitality that Kakariko could offer.

Ollie blinked as he groggily woke up from sleeping at his desk, and stated, “Hey, no cuccos allowed in the- wait,” he squinted, “a princess is coming?”

Cado lifted an eyebrow and sighed in annoyance. “I’m holding her, she just had a scare.” He stroked the cucco’s tail feathers. “Did you not hear anything I just said?” The Innkeeper just blinked slowly again, so he raised his voice, “The Calamity is gone, Ollie. The Hero was successful, and now Lady Impa is sure that he is to arrive here with the Princess at any moment!”

Ollie now made an ‘O’ of realization with his mouth and gazed off into space. After a moment passed he looked back at Cado. “Well, I’ll be.”

“Yes. So make sure they have every comfort,” Cado repeated as he turned around to make his way back to his post. He paused at the open door and looked back at Ollie, his cucco now tucked under one arm clucking softly. His stern stare implied that he needed affirmation.

“Right, right.” Ollie waved with a dorky half-smile. Cado, now satisfied, slid the door closed behind him. Ollie immediately slouched again. I’ll get to it in a bit, he thought before swiftly falling back asleep. Claree, who ran the tailor shop in town, was convinced he was actually a cat who could shapeshift into a Sheikah because of how often he slept.

As Impa entered the house, she yelled for her granddaughter “Paya! Paya, wake up!”

Paya’s eyes flew open and she kicked her covers off, her feet thumping on the upper level as she rushed to her grandmother’s call. Impa had only made it halfway up the lower steps when she ran into a descending flurry. “Grandmother! What’s wrong?! Are you ok?” Her two red hair bun chopsticks, which she usually forgot to take out before bed, had come loose during sleep and fell out, clattering down the stairs. She paid them no mind as she dropped to her knees in front of the small woman to immediately begin looking for injuries.

Before she had a chance to become too frantic, Impa took Paya’s hands into her own and gave a toothy grin, wherein a gap on the top left added an endearing charm of age. “Be still, child. I’m fine. All of Hyrule will be fine. Our Hero has done it!” She squeezed Paya’s hands in excitement. “Sir Link and Princess Zelda have rid us of The Calamity!”

Paya gasped. She began thinking of so many things at once. Is Link ok? Is the Princess ok? Did her fervent devotion help them even in some small way? How can she help now? “But Grandma, does this mean-?”

“Yes, dear. I think they’re coming.”

“Eeeee,” Paya jumped up suddenly, “I have to clean my room!” She rushed back upstairs and then turned around and came back down to grab her chopsticks. Then she scurried up the stairs again. Impa chuckled as she heard furniture moving and things being tossed around. It was amusing because Paya’s room was already spotless; but yes, a place would need to be made for Zelda. And she would be welcome to stay as long as she’d like.

Impa made her way slowly down the stairs now and back to her pillows. At long last, she thought. Today was certainly no longer mundane. Ah, yes, the oil. “Paya!” She barked as she settled onto the top cushion, “When you’re done up there, one of the lamps needs a refill!” Can’t have the place looking anything but perfect for the Princess.

“Yes, Grandma!” Came the muffled reply.

Impa looked over at the painting on the wall again and thought back to a time when this future was still uncertain.

Link had just returned to her after visiting the place detailed in the frame. He seemed very unsettled and wasn’t his usual self. Or, at least, he was unlike his new self. He was actually emulating his old self quite a bit. Stoic, measured, and a bit guarded. Zelda was right. It would have been too hard for him to remember so much all at once. He now reminded her of how Zelda had been the night she left to face Ganon on her own, trying to be so brave.

“You’re troubled by what you’ve remembered.” She peered at him from her perch in a way that made him feel like she could tell what he was thinking. “You haven’t lost your courage though. So what’s weighing on your mind?”

Link sat on his knees before her on one of the blue mats, free of his gear which he had left leaning by the door. He carefully considered his answer. Looking down at his blue Champion’s tunic, he let out a soft, ironic sniff at how it was the very same he’d worn that terrible night. The night he almost died. It must have either been remade entirely, or so lovingly repaired, that it did not show any of the damage it had once sustained.

His eyes moved over the painting on the wall and he marveled at how a decoration, which before today was so unassuming and almost lost to the background, could now stir so many emotions from one glance. The Guardians in the frame, which were now still and decaying, had been there in the marsh, glowing magenta under Ganon’s control. Hunting them.

As he remembered, he was surprised at the sense of fear that it brought back. In the past few months he had become proficient in fighting all types of Guardians, especially with the ancient weapons that Robbie had since created. But experiencing that night again, hearing the sound of the gears turning, and the thumping of their spidery legs on the ground as they searched for anything and everything to destroy, that really unsettled him. Perhaps because he had failed.

The Chosen Hero had managed to defeat so many of the machines as he and Zelda fled south from the castle; a feat that no other warrior of Hyrule could accomplish. But they never stopped, never tired. They were relentless. And when he had nothing left to give but his very body as a shield, a golden light and a comforting warmth spread over him, and somehow he knew that he was finally free to relax, to let go. Zelda was holding him, and then there was darkness for a century, until her voice reached him, urging him to wake up.

He focused again on Impa, who, in her wisdom, was waiting patiently for his response. He thought the Princess now seemed familiar. But she also still felt like someone he did not know. “I’m just not sure what to do for her if I defeat Ganon.”

“When.” Impa corrected.

Link smirked, “Very well. When.” He couldn't seem to stop the smirk from turning into a genuine smile as he considered her faith in him. He appreciated the interjection of positive thought, even when it was delivered with a bit of sass.

There he is, Impa mused.

“As her sworn Knight Attendant,” she began, then squinted at him and added as an aside, “should you wish to still honor that oath?”

Link nodded his head forward slightly in agreement, so she continued, “Then it would be best to simply follow her wishes.” She paused a moment and, after considering other possible outcomes besides the ideal, mentioned, “Of course, should she be worse for wear, bring her to Kakariko and we will take care of her. At least here she will have someone who knows her if you have not regained your memories by then.”

Link stood and bowed respectfully before taking his leave. He knew that she had not meant the statement to be a slight, but it still stung. Not remembering his past made him feel like he was failing all over again.

[dsoe-masteroftheheavenlyyard]

Chapter 11, Section 2–Truth; Scene 2

master of the heavenly yard pages 260-265

A feeling of unreality, as though inside a dream—Allen had been assailed with that sensation ever since he had woken up here.

The moment he saw her in the room that Sickle brought him to—that sensation grew stronger.

An old woman was sitting in a chair, looking as though she were asleep.

He couldn’t see her face. She was wearing some kind of mask-like device with countless wires attached to it.

Allen had seen something similar once before.

Levia, as she had been when she’d entered the “Blackbox” to swap into Nemesis’ mental world, back in that illusory clinic.

She had certainly looked like that, back then.

“Luna Hazuki. She is the ‘Moon Goddess’. And, she is the engineer who created me,” Sickle explained.

“Just…what is this ‘Moon Goddess’, anyway?”

“Well, there isn’t really any particular meaning to it. It’s like a nickname. The crewmembers of the Climb One liked to call each other by nicknames. It’s a relic of that.”

“…”    

“Of the residents of the Third Period, you’re the first to meet her. No one is actually able to see her form. And yet, she has always been around alongside the Third Period—Do you know what that means?”

Sickle’s question was like a riddle.

Not knowing the answer, Allen honestly shook his head.

“No, huh…Well, let’s try different question. First, what do you think was the origin of the Third Period?”

“…It was built by the survivors of the Second Period—the crewmembers of the Climb One. Their main representatives were you, Held, Levia, and Behemo. The so-called ‘four pillar gods’.”

“And if that premise were ‘false’? If the crew of the Climb One were to have failed to create the new world?”

“But that would mean—”

“You all wouldn’t exist…That’s what you were about to say, right? But—as a matter of fact, right here they all killed each other. The impetus was a trivial difference of opinion. But the result…was that everyone died. Save for just Luna.”

There was no proof that what Sickle had said was the truth. But Allen didn’t have the grounds to refute it either.

For now he could only continue to keep his attention on the story.

“—All alone, Luna could no longer make progress on the plans for the new world. But she carried out one last struggle. If she couldn’t create a world in reality…then she would realize one inside a ‘dream’.”

Sickle pointed to the device on Luna’s face with his tube arm.

“’An imaginary reality that has mass’—that is what she was able to give rise to by using the ‘Blackbox Type H’ that she created herself. She materialized the new world that the crewmembers were trying to make with her own mind. …Out of mourning, she put her former friends in this world too. That is, Levia, Held, and the rest in the Third Period are little more than beings created out of Luna’s memories.”

“In other words, everything of the world we’re in now is just an old woman’s dream…That’s what you’re telling me,” Allen said with a calm voice.

There was not a hint of confusion or unrest in his expression.

“Hey now, isn’t this a great shock? I’ve just denied your entire existence, as it were.”

“—There’s too many inconsistencies. If your story is true, then the Third Period was made according to how she wanted it. She could have easily erased Ma and Irina without help from any of us.”

“No…That’s. Luna, she liked games, so—”

“There was no need to keep things going as they were after the world was destroyed. She should have just put things back to how they were right away, without relying on ‘Irregulars’ or ‘Re_Birthdays’.”

“Th-that’s why…It’s a game, a game! It’s how she likes to play!”

Sickle’s bat mark had started flickering.

“Play? Is it very fun to play by watching something, never participating yourself?”

“…There are people who think so, aren’t there? I’m a robot, so I wouldn’t knooow.”

“I see, so you’re saying she’s the type to enjoy looking upon the miniature garden that she’s created. –But if that was the case, why didn’t she stop Nemesis from destroying it?”

“Augh, you’re so caught up in the little details! Stop obsessing over the minutiae and despair at your reality!”  

The bat mark began flashing more rapidly.

“And even more than that—I’m here. It’s quite bizarre for someone who exists in a dream to appear in reality, don’t you think? I’ve had a strange sensation ever since I came here. This fuzzy, unreal feeling—”

“…”

“Your story…is actually the opposite, isn’t it? Our world isn’t a dream. It’s actually yours that’s—”

“…That’s enough. Enough, Allen. …You win, I’m sorry.” Appearing to have regained his composure, Sickle’s bat mark stopped flashing. “Everything I said just now was a lie. I just wanted you to feel…just a little bit. The despair that—that I had to face.”

“Sickle…”

“From this point on—he’ll do the talking for me.”

Light began to gather right next to the old woman.

“The true lord of heaven—the ‘master of the heavenly yard’, will now make his appearance.”

Just as Sickle said, finally the light began to shift into a human shape.

A new figure stood before them.

“Yo, Allen. How’s it going?”

It was an overly familiar tone. That was to be expected.

The owner of the voice was someone Allen knew well.

“—Behemo. You’re…”

“Yeah. I’m the ‘master of the heavenly yard’,” Behemo replied, his artificial eye emitting a faint light.

The person who was steadily gazing upon Allen, with that eye that saw through everything…

Was a man in a maid outfit. One of the ‘Twin Gods’—Levia’s brother.

At least, he had been as far as Allen knew.

“…Wait a second, Behemo. I don’t understand this at all. The lord of heaven isn’t Sickle or this woman, but…you!?”

“Well, that’s how it is, sort of. Only, the heaven we’re in now is—a little different from the ‘heavenly yard’ you know of, I guess.”

“…?”

“That’s little more than another name for the ‘moon’. The real heaven is ‘the beginning of everything’…In other words, the ‘First Period’.”

“???”

“You seem confused—Well, let’s sit down and talk.”

Behemo took a seat in one of the chairs that had appeared there at some point.

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[thefifthclown]

Part 2, Chapter 3-Gods and Demons, and Her Last Moments; Scene 4

Fifth, Pierrot, pages 260-271

Levia pulled away from Gumillia, and approached the enormous fountain pen in the center of the square.

“How nostalgic—the ark, ‘Sin’. …But this isn’t the real thing, is it?”

Irina answered that question.

“You’re correct. This place is your mental world. This is a place made real by the memories and feelings that have slept deep within your mind. It is for that reason that everyone here can be as their real self.”

Gumillia walked up to the ark as well. Its surface was as glassy as a mirror, and her face was faintly reflected back to her.

--Standing there was a woman she didn’t recognize.

Did that mean that this was Gumillia’s true face? As a spirit…or rather, from before that.

Levia rapped on the surface of the ark several times with her fist.

“A mental world with actual substance--Seth’s quite ingenious, to be able to create such a structure inside of a person. If he hadn’t been an ‘HER’ it wouldn’t have been out of line for him to become a fifth god.” She then turned to Irina. “Irina…You figured it out. That I wasn’t ‘Elluka’.”

“…I obtained proof only recently. Thinking on it now there were a lot of things that didn’t add up. After the ‘Leviantan Catastrophe’, you went to your friend, the ‘Great Land God Held’, and received from him a request to gather the ‘Vessels of Deadly Sin’—isn’t that right?”

“Yeah.”

“But I never heard anything about that from Elluka when she was alive. There were rumors that Elluka was in league with Held, but I knew that they weren’t true. …She had never once left the Magic Kingdom since birth.”

“A Lighwatch priestess must spend her whole life in the Magic Kingdom—So there’s no way she could have met Held in Elphegort.”

“Even supposing they had met, it was hard to imagine that Held would warm to friendship with a human. They wouldn’t even be able to talk. A friend of a god—that would have had to be either another god himself, or one of his kin.”

Gumillia and the other two people present simply listened to Levia and Irina’s conversation in silence.

Levia continued on, pulling away from the ark a little. “I had some faint scraps of memory left from Levia. That is what told me I was friends with Held. –That in itself was the truth. And so Held evidently decided to play along with this peculiar sorceress who insisted that she was his friend.”

“He realized it right away, that it was you inside Elluka’s body. …If I were Held, I would have misgivings about you regaining your memories. He saw you as a hostile figure, so much so that he’d conspired with the sun god to change you and your brother into a dragon, and sealed you inside the ‘Sin’.”

“Yes. That’s why he put me under his observation, under the pretext of this ‘search for the deadly sins’. And for a time that worked. But five hundred years later his life in this world began to run out…And there he assigned a new watchdog to me.” Levia once more approached Gumillia, and put a hand on her shoulder. “That was—you, Gumillia.”

“…Yeah, it was.” Gumillia nodded. “Lord Held decided to use, the fact that the ‘Eternal Sorceress’ wanted an apprentice. He ordered me to keep an eye on Levia, under the guise of an apprentice. To make sure that she never, suspected anything. And…if Levia ever seemed like she would get her memories, back—”

“—With Michaela’s help, you were to seal me once more?”

“Yes…But…But, I--!” Gumillia cried out, her eyes welling with tears.

Seeing that, Levia kindly patted her head.

“I know…I know, Gumillia. You—were such a superb apprentice.”

“…Sob”

Gumillia couldn’t stop the tears flowing down her face.

Still, she tightly threw her arms around Levia.

--I am not Levia’s watchdog.

--I am Elluka Clockworker’s apprentice, Gumillia.

“—Gumillia. There’s one thing that I don’t get. People who have been ‘reincarnated’ lose their memories. Just like me, and you when you were reincarnated into a chipmunk. But when I had you and Michaela reincarnate from being animals, you still had your old memories. …Why was that?”

“…We had lost our memories. But, Lord Held had a copy of our old memories, made in advance. He overwrote us with them right after, we were reborn. So that you wouldn’t find out.”

“That’s quite a lot of work there. Who’d have thought…that old goat was such a hypocrite.”

“There were side effects. Shortly after Michaela reincarnated, she told me she collapsed from fever. That was probably, a side effect. I was fine, though.”

Levia gradually released Gumillia, and then moved back towards Irina.

“Was that the only reason you started having doubts about me, Irina?”

“Let me pose a question to you. Prim Marlon was one of your friends during your time as one of the Three Heroes in Lucifenia. –Did you never realize that she was an ‘HER’?”

“…No.”

“That would be impossible, if you were a Lighwatch priestess. Elluka Chirclatia was able to cure ‘HER’. –If you had used that power, you might have been able to avert the kingdom of Lucifenia’s destruction. Elluka Clockworker had lost the ability to use a technique that she should have been able to, and had conversely also become able to use one that she couldn’t have.”

“…The Swap Technique.”

“It was simple enough to think that it was just the influence of having been revived through the ark. But a much simpler explanation would be that there was someone else entirely inside of Elluka Clockworker—”

“—Your powers of deduction are a bit too strong, Irina. Long-lived though you may be, I doubt that you could have arrived at such an answer that easily.”

Irina’s face twisted slightly, and then shifted to a light smile.

“…It was Seth. Surprisingly enough he had become the ‘Demon of Wrath’. He must have skillfully slipped in with the others when the Twins of God created the ‘Vessels of Deadly Sin’, after he had died as a human—Or maybe the other demons were made at his suggestion… After I got my hands on the golden key and met with him again, I pressed him with my many years of suspicions. Seth readily told me everything. About gods, and the existence of their kin…that the true nature of the ‘Demons of Sin’ was that they were mere shadows of those kin… I came to know the workings of the world. And it was because of that that I was able to arrive at your true nature—And so here we are.”

Irina, and Levia. The two of them had arrived at various truths.

Gumillia wiped her tears, and gazed at the two of them as they faced each other.

The Elluka that had been the target of Irina’s hatred wasn’t the real one. What sort of feelings did she have towards her now?

--She didn’t need to think about it. Irina had sent them a duel invitation.

Despite knowing the truth.

Irina, who had been standing before the ark this whole time, began to walk.

She was headed for the “Sleep Princess”, Eve.

Irina circled behind Eve, and gripped her shoulders with both hands.

“The ‘Clockworker’s Doll’. She and I have a long partnership. I tried to grant her a certain power as an experiment. The end of the world will come someday—and when that comes, it must become a utopia for me. Hers is a power I need for that purpose. And through my experimentation I finally succeeded, fifty years ago. …Though I hadn’t thought that I would end up using it here.”

Eve hadn’t said a word since arriving at the square. Even as everyone else had talked, she had just stood there in place, expressionless.

Just like a doll.

And Irina whispered into Eve’s ear:

.

“Awaken—Master of the Court.”

.

In that moment, the scenery around them completely changed.

The temple that Gumillia and the others were standing in crumbled away, except for the base. The pillars, the sculptures, everything fell down into eternity. What was left then was a pitch-black space. There were white gridlines running over it.

There were platforms floating in the dark space. The temple vanished, save only for the circular platform that the five of them stood on, and the ark in the center.

“Welcome to the ‘Court’, everyone,” Irina boldly sneered. “The Master of the Court is impartial. All shall be reset equally, and then judged. Levia, your regaining your memories was because you took her into yourself. In this world that Eve has created…this world where all are equal—death can befall even a god.”

So saying, Irina spread her arms wide.

Blue flame appeared in her hands. She had regained the magical power that she should have expended already.

“Come, let’s renew the duel! Levia, and—” Irina looked…not at Gumillia, but at the woman in the maid uniform. “—I’ll destroy you as well, Behemo!”

Upon hearing those words, Gumillia was taken by some shock.

“That’s Behemo? But I thought, Behemo was a man—”

Levia replied with an uncomfortable expression, scratching her head, “There’s no mistake, that’s my younger twin brother. We’re fraternal twins. …He’s a real pervert, Behemo.”

“’Pervert’ is so harsh, sister. What’s so bad about a man dressing up like a woman?”

Gumillia didn’t have time to waste. Irina was trying to kill her teacher and the pervert. She needed to ask her why.

“Irina, why are you after Levia? It’s true she killed you, and ruined your country. But that was, long ago now. Nothing will come back, by exacting revenge on her.”

“…You don’t understand, Gumillia. These two—and you too, I suppose. The world that the gods once lived in was destroyed by the existence of ‘HER’. They abandoned the world polluted by HER and built this world anew. …But they made a grave mistake. They failed to account for Seth—that ‘HER’ had slipped in with their comrades.”

Irina seemed to be amassing magical power. The flames in her hands increased in energy, and began to change to large pillar of fire.

“’HER’ is a pathogen. And that pathogen is ‘programmed’ to destroy everything related to the gods. They themselves, and—the world that they made. …Though it seems Seth has forgotten that, now that he’s a demon. But I haven’t. I must pass down ‘punishment’. For that…is the mission given to an HER.”

“That’s nonsense. Programming, missions…Do you have your own will in there?”

“Shut up! Once I’ve destroyed Levia and Behemo, next will be your turn. Then the remaining spirits living carefree in the forest, and the ‘Demons of Deadly Sin’—I’ll destroy them all!” Irina cried.

As she did, she lifted her arms higher.

The flames were coming—

.

“—What an interesting thing you’re doing, ‘Red Cat Mage’.”

.

Gumillia couldn’t immediately discern whose voice that was.

It wasn’t Irina, Levia, Behemo, or Eve. Naturally it wasn’t Gumillia herself.

The sixth entity descended from above them.

The woman looked like Julia—like Germaine.

Irina cried up at her, “It’s you!—‘Demon of Gluttony’! What are you doing here…What in the world did you come here for!?”

“I want to destroy the gods too. That’s why I planned to watch this most entertaining scene. But if you’ve gone and taken possession of the ‘Master of the Court’...that’s a different story. There’s a chance you’ll become a threat to me. So—I’m going to play you all against each other. Right here, alongside the gods and their kin…I will erase you too, Irina Clockworker!”

The demon lifted her right hand.

With that as the cue, something appeared from further up.

A skeleton monster much, much larger than the floating platforms was heading toward them, enormous mouth open.

“My ultimate dead soldier, the ‘Worldeater’--Come, eat them all up!”

Irina harshly clicked her tongue as she watched.

“Don’t get in my way!”

The blue flames shot towards the “Worldeater”.

Not just them. The flames were joined by a bolt of lightning. Levia had fired it.

“I’m not going to just stand by and let you kill me,” Levia muttered, holding out her right hand.

.

A sorceress, a god, and a demon.

The powerful energies being fired off from each of them all collided in one place.

And then—

In the court, destruction and fusion both occurred in succession.

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