kovacs-of-courage

[kovacs-of-courage]

Rings of Pressure--A Stream of Consciousness

I’m half and half on whether I should apologize in advance for this word salad.

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Do you ever have a visual, thought clear as crystal, that won’t leave your head.

And I don’t mean a vested interest in a fictional character or setting, while what I’m about to say has much to do with fictional creations, I mean something that just won’t tear itself from your mind regardless of any joy obtained. The kind of thing that steers into focus like a deer who just can’t stop leaping into headlights.

I’ve decided to make a stream-of-consciousness post about this experience of mine because I hope putting it to paper will help me sleep better at night. Articulating in a fashion comparable to the rambling homeless man at the bus stop might give me ammunition to put it to rest.

Also, to preface the ranting ahead, I don’t really expect anyone to read this and go “Wow, I completely and totally understand what he’s saying, his criss-crossing incoherent rants are entirely grasped!” I’ve spent my whole life, whether due to neurodivergency or my own ineptitude, being told the things I say don’t make sense. The reality of that happening again and again is a fact of life I’ve long come to peace with.

Anyways, onto what I wanted to talk about.

Everyone handles and copes with stress in their own ways, some objectively healthier and saner then others. I grew up in a very stressful, poor environment growing up. The harsher, trigger warning details aside, I ended up as a kid who imagined scenes in my head with my favorite characters to sleep at night. Sometimes things would get bad enough that I’d try to work through them as the characters, or more commonly picture a scenario where the characters were in a situation of equal pressure.

Comics and their heroes were the biggest outlet for this, I remember being miserable and abused and eleven years old thinking of how the constant trainwrecks of humiliation and mental anguish from family and school was like the bizarro over-the-top deathtraps that Batman was put into.

See, in Batman comics and media, there’d be these moments where the World’s Greatest Detective was trapped in truly desperate, unwinnable scenarios. He could have cinderblocks chained to his feet, stuck in a sealed chamber with water rising a dozen feet by the second, motorized sawblades dropping down from the ceiling for good measure--sure to turn him into a crimson stew upon contact.

Or maybe Batman would be hunted down by a legion of heavily armed criminals, his utility belt gone, ribs cracked and energy drained to the final morsel, and the time upon their discovery of his position quickly closing in.

It’d be these impossible situations, often the subject of cliffhangers for the next issue/episode. Makes the viewer think “Wow, there’s no way he can escape this time, I mean how is he going to get himself out of that?”

And then Batman did, everytime.

The comparison to these horrible fictional deathtraps was a morbid connection for my younger self to make, I’m aware, though framing my worst pits of despair in this context gave me some measure of hope. The characters I loved so much could always turn the tables on their foes, change the odds in their favor, and that was enough to keep me from ending myself for several years of my life.

Swear to god that this context is important, it has a point, just bear with me.

As I grew up, I never really let go of that coping mechanism; imagining my old friends of heroes in these nail biting situations, the danger and threats creating an external stress comparable to the sheer internal existential dread and misery I might feel at any moment of the day. It’s the idea that if they can expertly navigate the sawblades, the overlapping fields of deadly gunfire, the many deadly enemies that want them six feet under--then maybe I can navigate my problems too.

I don’t like to talk to people much about my stresses and issues, even close friends, so this coping mechanism fills that void of companionship too in a sense. When I was young, I didn’t have people to talk too about issues without fear of being berated or ruthlessly put down and mocked. I figured that my fictional heroes wouldn’t mock me for these stresses, that while they’d never be real, they could be a vehicle in which I coped with my own torments.

A childish and immature gesture, I’m well aware. I don’t plan on doing anything about it anytime soon.

The most recent of these stress-coping imagined scenes my mind wanders too is related to the hero who’s imagined I hopefully tagged in this text post: Green Lantern.

Green Lantern is a simple character to understand here, I mean how complicated could a guy with a magic green ring get? (The answer to that question is Very, but let’s pretend otherwise)

The basics of GL is that his ring runs on willpower, that he can create anything his mind can conjure when he uses it. So say he creates a wall, if a giant truck runs into that wall, it takes his entire being and mental strength to not only make the wall of light in the first place, but to keep it stable after said truck just crashed head-first into it.

Think of a GL’s willpower as mental stamina, of strength of the spirit made glistening emerald reality.

A Green Lantern’s Ring is referred to as “The strongest weapon in the universe” because it allows the user to create anything as long as the ring is charged and their willpower strong. It can move mountains, construct cities of verdant light, manifest weapons of mass destruction, it’s only limited by the user.

And that’s the interesting, human element. The User.

There are these scenes in Green Lantern Comics and Media where an inconceivably powerful threat, whether that be an act of cosmic nature or a super villain, or even a god, is barelling towards GL. GL, at the end of the day, is a person wielding the magic rings of magic rings--nevertheless, they have to act.

GL realizes that their only hope is to delay, contain, and stall. That the threat pushing to destroy innocents and personally rend them atom from rebellious atom is going to overwhelm whatever moral willpower that can fuel their sparkling fingerwear with. There’s this one scene from a justice league animated film, where the sun is sending out a massive solar flare to earth, capable of burning the planet pole-to-pole as a charred crispy orb.

The JL need time to figure out a solution, so GL comes to back, manifesting this massive wall of viridescent light in a futile, suicidal attempt to buy his comrades more time. The wave of sunfire meets his dam in full force, punching cracks and nestling dents across the construct.

The camera would cut back to GL, sweat trickling down his face, hair matted to forehead, pushing his every iota of mental and physical strength into maintaining this wall against a force that will inevitably overcome it. It shows the wall breaking more so, second by second of the earth’s emerald shield deteriorating as GL pulls forth his entire being into his ring.

Those scenes always struck a chord with me, and I don’t wholly know why. The scene that my mind’s obsession targets, however, is this one, which I saved as a gif.

It’s a simple scene, of GL fighting this thunder god super villain Black Adam(the comic version, not the rock). He creates barrier after barrier to defend himself from a being who’s more living pantheon then mortal man. This almighty bastion of strength and malicious fervor, gunning to kill him.

And again, GL is just a person with the magic ring of magic rings, it’s his inner strength and willpower which defines his survival

You see the shields face, shattering to glass, Black Adam tackling him to the ground. Cracking his human fingers like paperweights, GL on the losing side of this physical struggle. In the end GL loses, he doesn't make it out of this scene alive even. I don't know why my brain fixates on it. I'm constantly stressed, stressed in the backround of my calmest moments. It's a dull kind of stress, a stress that I learned to live with a long time ago. It's the type of numb stress and anxiety that makes you okay with the idea of getting into a car crash, because you won't need to worry about it anymore. When I close my eyes, I think about this scene with GL and Black Adam all the fucking time, it's maddening. It's a short clip from a trailer of a game that no one remembers nor cares about. I sound like a lunatic transmitting my stress and problems through this vehicle. I think of GL creating those barriers, one after another, maybe each is stronger then the last. I think of how what kills him breaks through anyway, I think of the futility of even trying, how the futility is WHY he tries. I think of my own anxieties and fears, that I hate talking about, the idea that I'm going to be on my own handling them like GL is here. I close my eyes and I think of the emerald barriers, failing to stop the threat, that every night I keep making more and every night they keep breaking. That I spend my whole life building walls that my own issues shatter like glass, that the work is meaningless, that my struggles have been this constant mental fight since I could imagination a world outside my continued myopic miseries.

The analogy is insane, the idea of using a magic ring to ward off these issues that, within the structure of this comparison, will be my end regardless, doubly so.

I keep thinking about these rings of stress, of these barriers that keep breaking and being rebuilt. Every day what remains bottled is fought internally throughout the night.

And I always, without fail, lose. I never beat these stresses, these fears, I just keep making more barriers to protect myself. The death trap has morphed into a rigged cage match, the framing turned against me. At the end of it all, I never find out if the thing smashing the barriers does me in, it's just my assumption. I only end up in the cycle of defending myself...from myself.

I'm not looking for advice on how to handle these issues, I don't know what I'm looking for.

[kovacs-of-courage]

Nesting Fears

I made this fic based off my dear friend @yys002's art! Check out her blog(the art below is hers)

He was walking in a dream, fading memories echoing around his lucid consciousness. 

There were voices around every corner, whispers of his loved ones, honeycomb promises behind unending walls. He was trapped in the manor, wandering up and down its lonely halls.

Dick tried to enjoy the experience, a sleep beyond nightmares was rare for him, if he remembered it at all. Life had thrown him too many dangers to rest softly, though he’d come to terms with that reality long ago. He was too proud of his life; what with the people he’d helped, the lives he’d saved, the friends met.

He missed his parents more than the world, but if they were forever doomed to die—-there was nowhere else Dick would rather be. Being Robin honored their memory in a way that doing circus tours for the rest of his life never could, to turn his tragedy into a force for good--Dick knew they’d approve.

So why did he feel so uncertain? Why was he so afraid?

Dick put his hand on the shadowed wall, his fingers flat against the ancient timber. A sigh of passive exasperation left his incorporeal form, the strain of his worries weighing harder on the young vigilante than any physical hardship. The manor had contorted a direction through his memories, winding corridors of past glories and future anxieties.

It’d taken him through miles of it, or so Dick assumed. Dreams tended to play fast and loose with reality, the forest infinitely more important than the trees. Dick just wished he’d wake up already, but it seemed that wasn’t what his subconscious had in mind.

The room shifted around him, a blurring mass of colors and whirring sounds that passed as soon as it arrived. Dick didn’t feel alerted by this special change like he would in the real world, staying in a plain state of confused discomfort.

He recognized the room he’d landed in immediately, foreboding sinking into his chest like poisonous worry. Cautious in his step, he approached the lone statue-head in the center of the rectangular room--more fit to be a windowed coffin than a place for the living.

The marble carved features of Thomas Wayne stared back at him, set on a similarly expensive pillar-- confirming Dick’s worst suspicions.

This was Bruce’s study.

There was history to the room, an importance that lent it a weight closer to crime alley than simply a place where the Wayne family liked to read. Bruce had told Dick close to everything there was to know about his mission, about Batman, including where he’d originally gotten the inspiration for it.

Dick looked back to the head of Thomas Wayne, the stone where his pupils should be staring daggers into his being. Righteous judgment radiated off it like smoke from an SOS flare, a wordless indignation towards Dick being in his presence.

“I don’t know what you want from me, I don’t even know why I’m here,” Dick said, disregarding the insanity of choosing to talk to a lifeless statue. He chose to not look it in the eyes, opening the curtains to observe the rolling greens of the Wayne estate.

Dick tried to enjoy the view, his mind’s admittedly imperfect recollection of his childhood home, as the imaginary sun slowly rose on the distant horizon. He closed his eyes, grasping at some sense of peace in the half nightmare around him.

“You know exactly why you’re here, boy.”

Gone as soon as it came, the silence overtaking the room shattered, the rumbling baritone of a voice unknown acting like a sledgehammer thrown across softened glass. It’d caught Dick off guard at first; as deep and guttural as trigon, the avalanche-like vibrations of each enunciated word a death sentence in its own right.

He looked to his left; at the only thing he could imagine as the source of the noise. 

The Statue spoke again, it’s stoic expression unmoving, it’s lips motionless: 

“Bruce should have never let you join his crusade, a child has no place in war.”

Dick gritted his teeth, aggravation flaring like hot fire within him, figment of his imagination or not--hearing the same tired spiel of Bruce’s boneheaded arguments made him want to scream.

“Oh put a sock in it, rock pile,” Dick said, looking the statue dead-on, “If you can’t even come up with your own points, then there’s nothing you can say that’ll change my mind.”

A laugh roared through the air, it’s intensity like an earthquake to a withered coffin; shaking the room so violently as to carve gaps in the floorboards and throw books from their shelves.

Dick struggled to stay afoot, his trained grace doing little in the fantasy of the dream. 

“And yet you argue with me still!” The Statue laughed, “I’m not here to convince you of anything, little bird--only to remind you of a truth you so pathetically avoid.”

The condescending tone clicked all the wrong buttons for Dick, draining his vast well of patience to an exceedingly shrinking pool of agitation. He wanted to be as far away from the manor as possible. He’d prefer the worst patrols in Gotham, the deadliest missions with the titans, at least then he’d be doing something productive.

Not this.

“And what truth is that, oh hallowed prophet?” Dick leered, sarcasm etching his sentence’s end, “Go on, what cold truth do I need repeated? What wise wisdom of the batman have I forgotten? Is the eighteen-year-old apprentice still too young to be taken seriously?

The Statue remained impassive at the surface, betraying the hostility it so flagrantly spoke with, “Quite the opposite in fact. You are an apprentice in name alone, what use does Bruce have for a student he cannot teach, nor listens to his orders?”

It pained Dick to admit, but the statue, whatever part of his mind it represented, was right. Bruce and him didn’t need one another anymore, and that was a knife to his heart that kept on twisting. He was quiet for a tense few seconds, his fists balled and breathing slow.

“Batman and Robin are partners, we’re a team...he knows that,” Dick muttered, his hot anger turned to frigid vulnerability.

He waited for a response, the risen moon beaming through the glass, shining bright his open fear.

“Nothing lasts forever, even the brightest stars fade,” The Statue said, “Bruce knows this more than anyone, as should you.”

Dick tilted his head, disbelief plastered across his face, “We don’t just lay down and accept it! Bruce calling us quits isn’t gonna stop me from helping people. I’m not a kid anymore, I can make my own decisions.”

“I find that hard to believe, boy wonder, when you spend so much of your time tracing his footsteps,” The Statue said, holding it’s views like a scalpel to Dick’s life, “Robin is no more his own hero then when you were eight years old, or leading a team of second-rate sidekicks that pales in comparison to what your mentor helped create.”

The insult at the Titans salted the already bleeding wound, Dick’s emotions bubbled to a chaotic boiling point--no one hit his friends without going through him first.

“Keep the Titans out of this, or I’ll kick you off that pillar myself! We’ve earned our place, time and time again,” Dick said, his volume nearing a yell.

The statue didn’t waver, if it was bothered by Dick’s threat--it hid that fact well.

“Your defensiveness merely emphasizes my point,” The Statue explained. 

Dick’s squinted his eyes, his stance tense and rigid. 

The Statue continued to elaborate, dispassionate as always, “What is the tale of a squire without their knight? What is a son who never surpasses the father? You must grow beyond these trappings of youth, not retreat within them.” 

“Robin is my creation though,” Dick stressed, motioning his palms to his chest, “It’s the last thing I have of my parents, of my history...Who am I without it?”

The question elicited a hum of laughter from the statue, baritone and rebounding, though without malice, for once. Dick’s cheeks flushed red, embarrassment at his open vulnerability like salt on a bleeding wound.

“Am I to hear that the Flying Grayson is afraid to take a leap of faith? Is it not defiance of fear that creates the heroics you so revel in?”

Dick sheepishly rubbed his arm, “Well when you say it like that, it sounds stupid.”

“The path you walk, you’ve known it’s course for far longer than your visit here,” The statue said, “The confusion you face in regards to the future is temporary, if you still have the bravery to persist.”

“Then what is this conversation supposed to be?” Dick asked. “My subconscious motivating me to keep going?”

The Statue said plainly it’s clarification, “Close, but no cigar. That moment will come in a short while; any moment now, actually.”

Dick shook his head, puzzled and uneased, “And what that’s supposed to be?”

“A taste of skies yet flown. You’ll see.”

Before Dick had the chance of questioning the statue’s cryptic answer, an invisible force had thrown him on his back; the shrill cry of a beast sounding life or death danger in his pained eardrums.

He struggled to regain his composure, his heart-rate jumping to his throat as he watched spider webbing cracks infect the floorboards; the noise of the unknown beast quickly reducing the room to literal splinters.

The dream was quickly becoming a nightmare, that much was plain to see. Dick swallowed the lump in his throat, the primal fear heightened by the reality around him coursing shivers from head to toe. He pushed past it, the courage of all his years dancing away from death’s grip reminding him of his true strength.

Dick pulled himself to his feet, gritting his teeth in concentration. Real or not; He’d never turn tail from danger, nor the future. The view from the window pane had brightened to an immeasurable degree, a near blinding wall of sunlight swallowing the space that the manor’s land had formerly occupied.

Another cry broke the air, just as earsplitting and hope-stopping as the last, but this time Dick could see the source...and it was flying right at him.

The creature was monstrous, an ever changing avian patchwork of leather-stitched sinew and brown and gray feathers. The details to its appearances were like a mirage, changing at the slightest glance, blending into a variety of patterns in the seconds of it’s current flight path.

Dick watched the bird in amazement, aware of the danger it presented and finding himself unable to move; completely mesmerized and terrified in equal measure. It molted it’s feathers to new patterns in ways that made Dick want to jump out the window and join it.

It roared again, it’s callous beak now a rallying cry for a cause that Dick felt deep in his heart. He blinked and it’s coat had darkened from the humble colors of the robin; the kiss of a midnight river drenching it’s dozen foot wide wingspan, adorning sleek slings of golden pride on it’s chest. 

There was beauty in the change, the transformations from one mode to another. For every reinvention there was horror lost, a terror thrown aside. Dick couldn’t help but admire that, envy it’s adaptation to something more.

Dick blinked again, the large talons of the bird mere inches away from the fragile glass. 

It’d changed once more, molting it’s dreamlike austerity to streamlined nobility. Darkness drenched it’s form, the touch of the space holding stars; yet it did not consume it. There was light in it’s eyes, grandness in it’s purpose, freedom in it’s flight--Dick looked into the brilliant sapphire streaking it’s breast and found hope, not despair.

He found a symbol he could believe in, a soul that longed to soar as much as his own.

Dick had found something more valuable than anything in the skies and wonders above.

As the glass shattered, and the bird’s mighty talons embraced him--Dick understood what it was.

And he was never letting go.

[kovacs-of-courage]

Hey, could you post a link to your A03-account? Would love to check it out but I can’t find it:/ <3

Oh my apologies!! I should have that listed better then.

I hope this link works! If not then feel free to tell me. And I appreciate you wanting to read more of my work immensely! I means alot anon.

[kovacs-of-courage]

Echoes of Courage

If there is one constant in the land of Hyrule, it is that there will always be someone with a heart of gold and the spirit of a hero. If there is another constant, it is that they only ever rise up when evil haunts the land.

Now, what if these heroes all simply... met?

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AKA, this Links meet AU now has its own blog!

[kovacs-of-courage]

Downspiral--A Eclipse AU Sky one shot

-------------------------November 8th, 1943------------------------------

-------------------------Pacific Theater------------------------------------

Sky gritted his teeth in concentration, jerking the yoke of his fighter plane forward. A myriad of alarms shouted demise from the view of his fractured canopy, smoke trailing his battered wings.

There’d be no landing this bird, not softly anyway. The brakes were the first system to go when the guardian’s laser hit, along with the rest of the empennage. Controlling its speed was an impossibility now, leaving Sky as the lucky(and not very grateful) pilot of a forever accelerating one-way carriage to hell.

The radio at his right sparked and flickered to life, incoherent static bubbling through charred wires and melted steel.

“Canary-O-...Canary One, Can you read me?” 

Sky recognized the voice immediately; It was his captain, his ship’s captain that is.

“I read you command,” Sky said casually, like he was on any other mission, and not riding a miles long death spiral over the pacific. He thought it lucky that he’d regained his memories days before, given the fact that he’d be most likely disobeying orders if his captain contacted him for the reason he presumed.

“The order to retreat was signaled, all airborne pilots need to fall bac-”

Sky put his right hand on the throttle, cranking the level forward; a hurricane's worth of wind blasting into his goggles.

“I’m sorry sir, but I’m not doing that,” Sky said, unphased by the rapidly increasing g-forces of his chaotic descent.

“Oh yes the hell you are, petty officer. Some rat-fuck brass eagle and a beehive of metal flies wipes out half the fleet in an afternoon, and you think NOW is the time to start disobeying orders?” The captain screamed, his bafflement turned volatility evident.

“I do, actually,” Sky curtly replied. It didn’t bother him much, the idea of provoking the wrath of the military, and he reported to a higher authority anyway; whom he hoped he’d see again, if he survived this aerial bonfire.

The Captain, barely restraining his frustration, reacted as one might expect to hearing his best pilot casually go awol, in the heat of battle no less--

“Petty Officer, I am ORDERING you to turn back. You have five seconds to do so before I decide to take your cute little joke seriously, and order you blown halfway to hell.”

Sky scoffed, breathing unsteadily as plume-ing smoke flushed through the cockpit’s damaged windshield, “I’m...ha...touched you think me so important, sir. But I’m trying to focus here, so please shut up and let me fly.”

“Who the fuc-WHO THE FUCK do you think you are? You are disobeying a DIRECT ORDER; DON’T THINK I WON’T HAVE YOU SHO-”

Sky slammed his hand into the crackling speakers, disabling them, “This conversation’s over.” 

As skilled as Sky was in the air; even he needed some piece of mind to do his job right. 

He let the speed acclimate over his spiraling craft, the cranked throttle working its pistoned engine to the limits. He’d dropped out of the main area of devastation, the graveyard of falling tonnage where both the American and Japanese forces had been ambushed by Vah Medoh’s Guardian escort.

The fleet of propeller-mounted constructs swarmed the airspace, blotting out clouds and sunlight; more than worthy of protecting their prize. They numbered in the hundreds, maybe thousands at a generous estimate. Their numbers alone were enough to overwhelm any standing airforce, nevermind the lasers that boiled hotter than the surface of the sun.

Sky knew that there was a snowflake's chance in hell that he was going to catch up to Vah Medoh, in the state his plane was in. He’d worry about the flying war machine later--after he landed his soon-to-be pile of scrap metal.

It was a task easier said than done, Sky was finding. Fighting in the square center of the world’s largest ocean left his hands tied.

He did have an escape plan, if one could call it that.

North of his current, fiery heading was a thin wafer of land, two miles long at best. A paltry forest lined its inland paradise, surrounded by beaches of jagged stone and untouched nature. 

For most pilots, trying to land across such a makeshift, unwelcoming strip would be an effort in self-destructive fatality. A recipe for an explosion of shrapnel and blood; the makings of a grim cautionary tale.

Sky was not most pilots.

Landing would be the easy part; in that Sky was confident. It was the trio of guardians patrolling the island that worried him; an all airborne attache, separated from the main fleet, and primed to blast him to kingdom come at a moment’s notice.

He’d known of their presence before his dive to scrape the waves, deciding regardless to follow through with his daredevil scheme. It’d been apart of the reason he was so dead-set on his forward acceleration--faster targets tended to be harder to hit. 

He was flying the glass cannon of glass cannons; the slightest touch of a guardian’s laser beam an instant game over for him and his rumbling coffin on wings. Playing to his strengths, however few, would be essential to his survival.

That, and some out of the box thinking.

Sky had dropped in red-hot over the ocean waters, falling like a man made comet from the stars--riding his fighter a dangerous half-thousand feet or so above the surface. At his current, bone-rattling velocity, he’d reach weapons range in under a minute. Times like this made him thankful he was born and raised on skyloft; letting him shrug off g-forces that’d stop a human’s heart stone-cold dead.

The enemy horizon filled Sky’s cockpit in a moment’s blink; his craft racing toward the unsuspecting guardians like a goddess-thrown thunderbolt. They were spread thin across the island, a unit of one and a team of two patrolling to northern and southern ends respectively.

Sky went for the former, jostling his control stick back to raise his altitude, quickly matching that of his target. He breathed in deep, steeled nerves unshaken by the raging fires growing behind his seat.

Neutralizing a Guardian, according to his brother’s account, was a simple process when it came down to the mechanics. Its central eyepiece, the pulsating blue spiral at the bottom stalk of an aerial guardian’s chassis, doubled as its main cannon and only onboard optic.

Applying sufficient force to the shared hardpoint would, in theory, temporarily overlord both systems--disarming and blinding it simultaneously. An achilles heel of staggering proportions, something that Sky’s comparatively primitive weapons could easily exploit.

Pressing down on the control trigger to his wing mounted guns; Sky exhaled out as streams of cascading lead and destruction spat from his left and right. He clicked them on in the crucial seconds before collision, letting loose his full arsenal at as close as point-blank realistically possible.

The armor-piercing, high caliber ammunition tore through the immobilized guardian, shredding it’s ancient metals and circuity with the ease of a buzzsaw cutting up flesh. 

Sky pushed further still, the smoking shrapnel and crackling debris flying past him in seconds; swooping wide around the island’s western side, aggressively fighting his half-responding controls--the metals of his cockpit quivering in unsteady unison.

“Come on..come on...stay with me here,” Sky said, mumbling under his breath, “only a few minutes longer.”

The plane turned to it’s side, committing hard to it’s broad arc; thin lines of blinking scarlet dotted across it’s wings--signaling greater damages to come. 

Sky’s vision panned out, following the trailing reticles to their sources; finding the remaining guardians fast on his tail, primed to kill.

“And looks like the guests have finally arrived,” Sky said, thinking aloud.

The burning aircraft snapped from it’s exposed position, leveling it’s flight and moving between the paths of the ensuing energy blasts--avoiding contact by inches. Sky let the attacks pass, beginning a rapid ascent the moment after, the thrill of a thousand falls pumping his heart like an adrenalized sledgehammer.

The pair that followed Sky split into two roles, aiming to entrap him. He understood their strategy almost instantly, watching one guardian follow his steep climb, and another follow at a distance--leading its shots ahead of his predicted flight path.

Sky flew erratically, reacting to each timed strike with a knee jerk turn or roll seconds before impact, a playfully insulting dance through the smoldering air. He spat proudly in the face of the reaper. 

However impressive his aerial acrobatics were, Sky knew that it was a bandaid fix to a gaping bullet-wound of a problem. Neither he nor his fighter could do this forever. He’d eventually slip up and suffer the consequences, or his deteriorating ride would fail and result in the same.

Landing as initially planned wasn’t an option anymore, it was becoming clearer and clearer that the only way his bird was touching the ground again was by gravity alone.

So he climbed.

Sky pressed his machine to the limits, rising steeply into the clouds. He’d increased the curvature of his trajectory until his flight path was nearly wholly vertical, the guardian in pursuit coming close on his quivering tail; it’s blinking reticle dead-set on leaving Sky as an airborne cremation.

The chase breached the heavens and gleaming sun, the amber horizon reflecting patterns of infinite rays off each machine’s chassy--manned and unmanned. Sky pressed the bulk of his strength into the jittering controls of his cockpit, geysers of broiling steam screaming from its torn gaps. The ship was tearing itself apart by the seams, velocity and injury mixing together in a fireball cocktail of catastrophe--Sky’s cue to leave, in other words. 

Holding onto the windowless ridge of his canopy, Sky peered at the space directly below, the sight of the advancing guardian affirming his plan; it’s cannon mere moments from firing. He rushed to his instruments, speeding through its systems--and shutting down them all--effectively turning his ship into little more than a nine thousand pound paperweight. 

It was a win for both sides, really. The Guardians got to clear the airspace, and Sky got a golden ticket to freefall--on top of not dying no less! Now that’s a bargain, a steal some might even say.

That’s what Sky thought, at least. He was unreasonably calm about the whole affair, eager to plummet through ozone once again. So eager he didn’t bother to bring his parachute, only his beloved sword and shield. He had an escape plan, and it sure as hell didn’t include letting an oversized sailcloth make him a sitting duck. 

Sky hit the air running, finding his footing among the clouds and the setting sun almost instantly--like an angel being sent back to the heavens. It was like he’d never left, traversing the world among the stars as natural as he did the one below. He extended his hands to be level with his eyes, bending his knees--subconsciously arching himself against the wind’s pressure.

He’d left in a dash, faster than the guardian chasing him could process. The fleeting image of the pilot bailing not registering, as the airborne sheikah tank continued towards a head-on collision with the burning fighter plane; its beam cannon well into the process of firing.

The resulting shockwave rattled the air, the force hitting Sky’s back like a moblin punch, propelling him downwards. He shut his jaw tight, the taste of copper surging from his winded throat, the suffering mitigated by the visage of falling debris; comprised of charred steel and gears alike.

That was two down, and one sorry machine to go.

The remaining guardian, the supporting barrage from before, had a red dot on Sky the moment it’d realized he left his craft. A fast-ish response; good enough to handle most skydiving, sword-wielding maniacs, however many of those there happened to be. Its algorithms anticipated and prepared responses based on logical assumptions, predicting the opponent’s most sensible move and aiming to best counter it.

A key flaw in that thought process, as one might expect, was that it struggled to adapt to something truly stupid, a tactic so reckless that even a machine built for wave combat was left puzzled for answers. The type of bold, headstrong zeal that made it default to its base targeting mechanisms, throwing all advanced computing methods out the window and into a burning trash fire.

The type of bold, headstrong zeal that, to the bane of countless servants of demise and Ganon, was championed by the hero’s spirit. Sky’s landing strategy being the current example. He’d glided forward, giving each laser a wide berth in his swinging descent, choosing to fall closer to the Guardian.

He’d holstered the master sword, putting his head and chest behind his down-facing shield, his determination burning hotter than suns. The lasers increased in frequency, lines of calculating energy missing the hero upon each attempt, the cannon firing faster as Sky inched nearer.

Sky reached into his equipment, not more than a thousand feet from landing directly on the Guardian’s spinning propellers. He pulled forth a clawed, chain-loaded mechanism into his right hand, it’s ordained bronze and ivory reflecting the dimming sunlight. 

Seconds away from contact, Sky readied his shield to the guardian; It’s cannon seething energy, it’s cerulean pupil ablaze and overloaded. It was now or never, the final tipping point of many to decide the battle’s climatic conclusion.

Rippling lightning on it’s edges, the juiced-up laser bit jaws of scalpel precision through the skin of reality; gouging wounds of jagged white bleeding in it’s wake. It drilled into the goddess shield, the god-like thunder popping molecules and devouring matter in voracious hunger.

The force of the attack was immense, a malignant battering ram of bone snapping hatred. Sky was spared from it’s carnage, the idol of his goddess rewarding his faith--protecting him entirely against the forces of darkness. He pressed his strength, what remained, into his left arm; moving the shield in the initial stages of the impact--deflecting the projectile back to it’s creator.

Unable to avoid the parry, the Guardian was forced to swallow it’s own medicine. An eruption of smoke and whining electronics layered the space separating it and Sky. Not that it stopped Sky, who’d already reached out his clawshot, aiming square at the burning machine.

The clawshot hit, finding home in the lower region of the guardian; sinking into the darkened sight of it’s disabled cannon. Sky clicked it’s return button, snaking himself into the suffocating cloud, navigating with ease. He made contact in seconds, pocketing his grappling device once he’d gotten ahold. 

The time for gadgets has passed. Fi would guide him home, as she always had.

Brilliant light pierced the chaos, a beacon of hope and justice held righteous. The master sword dissipated smoke and doubts alike, humming softly in her master’s grasp. Sky held tight to her, climbing himself to the top of the guardian with his sparehand--a difficult task given the turbulent spiral it’d adopted.

Reaching the top, it wasn’t hard to see the reasons why.

It’d been left a shell of it’s former architecture, the explosion blowing craters in the roof of it’s inscribed carapace. One of it’s propellers had been blasted clean off, and another was bleeding sapphire flame in unsteady rotations. That left a single fully functioning propulsion mechanism, and little ability to repair it.

Which, to Sky’s credit, was his intended outcome.

He shakily hung to the guardian’s roof, his foot digging for leverage in bundles of exposed circuitry and gears. He reached into his equipment again, the golden hilt of his scarlet whip soon revealing itself. 

Sky slung his arm forward, circling his whip tight around the center shaft of the damaged rotor. It barely avoided the blades, the tilted angle of flight leaving it spare from injury--and allowed Sky the stability for decent footing standing atop the guardian, not at fear of being blown off. 

Still, that did little to stop or slowthe incoming crash; a cursory glance would make it seem like he’d just traded one suicide boat for another. Sky only hoped that the opposite was true, otherwise this entire effort would be in vain, and the world he vowed to protect would be less defended for it.

It’d be a tragedy of multiple degrees, spinning gears in a heartbreaking clockwork of guilt. And it’d stay as a possibility, a future that wouldn’t come, for so Sky sweared it.

He hadn’t died a martyr yet, and by the grace of hylia, he wasn’t going to start now.

Sky rose the master sword above his head, swaying under the rapidly changing heights. He closed his eyes for a second, a precious infinity of connection between him and the powers that he forever served, and the people he protected.

He let his will go onto his blades, and his blades onto the heavens, or their remnants. She answered his call, as she had countless times before, the vestiges of his love’s divinity whispering cascading adoration across the essence of Sky’s soul.

Thunder struck down onto the blade of evil’s bane, warm benevolence radiating from it’s cerulean shine. Sky let the sword absorb the energy, choosing then to drive it deep below his feet; an ocean of power and awe surging within the guardian, cleansing the corruption and rejuvenating it’s salvageable systems.

The Guardian whirred to life, as best as the circumstances allowed anyway; the mauve malignant replaced by backdrops of blinding white. It didn’t adjust itself upright, seemingly aware that Sky was aboard. It spoke in unintelligible garbles, in a language Sky had no understanding of.

It kept on it’s trajectory, spinning it’s damaged rotor faster as to compensate for the speeding descent. Sky held onto his whip like one would the reins of a horse, having sheathed the master sword in a desperate two-handed attempt to steer the now hylia serving machine away from the treeline.

An effort that was, in the end, only partially successful. The guardian’s meteoric drop had hovered precariously above the island jungle, the blades of it’s rotors shredding the stray branch of leaf that reached to it’s height. Inevitably though, it dropped lower and lower to the surface, brushing against increasingly denser and harder fauna.

The Guardian’s solution? Open fire on everything in it’s path. 

Sky recoiled, due both to the physics of being a crashtest dummy on a makeshift shiekah rodeo, and at hearing the buzzing, broken sound of the guardian’s main cannon recharging in full. A main cannon that, this time around, wielded the cosmic divine as it’s power source.

Blistering might spat from the unsteady machine, a singular line of searing light cleaving molten-hot mayhem through the forest; an erratic light show of fatal consequences. The pathway before Sky was little more than fuel for the newborn forest fire, the unintentional consequences of his gambit more than evident in the carnage.

There was a light at the end of the tunnel, however, as the beachside clearing of the island grew larger in view. The guardian barely a few feet above the earth, running over charred bark and flaming stumps like a bull in a china shop. Sky dug his foot into it’s metal, hoping to ride his rollercoaster to the end.

The island had other plans.

A boulder, to be more specific.

Hidden by foliage and dug into the sand, the several ton rock laid at the edge of the forest, and was unshaken by the goddess powered robot. The collision with it’s frontside  had been the final nail in the coffin for Sky’s ride--and the reason he was currently shaking sand out of his ears.

It’d launched him a dozen feet in the air, ragdolling across the beach like the other wreckage, though he was significantly less worse for wear. Unlike the other crashees, HE was still in one piece.

Sky continued rolling, his leather jacket and cap doing well to prevent the sand from completely flooding his clothes. It took five minutes, five minutes of tumbling limbs and groaning regret for the universe to take some sense of pity on him and stop his fall. 

Despite how loud his spine was screaming for him to sit down, Sky found that recovery was faster than he’d thought. Getting to his feet was a reward in itself, more than any punishment that his body tried tempering it with.

Sky looked down at himself, ruffled and disheveled, his legs and arms coated with blemishes and burns. His brother had once told him that scars were hallmarks of victory, if that were true, then Sky’s stunt had earned the hero rounds of roaring applause. It didn’t bother him, not really, himself was the last thing Sky was concerned about--didn’t even make the top five.

Getting a way off this rock was his main concern, maybe finding one of his brothers, either or at this point. That being said--with no ship, no radio, and being deserted on an island in the middle of nowhere; finding an escape would take some creativity.

A problem for another day, another night perhaps too. He’d just spent his working afternoon losing his job and making death for theirs, energized was not the word to describe himself after that.

Right now, he’d appreciate his survival for what it was; a victory.

And that was enough.

I made this due to the wonderful art(as seen above) my friend @ikaishere made of Ace Pilot Sky! Go check them out, they're wonderful!

[kovacs-of-courage]

Eternal Frost, Prologue

A/N: holy moly it's actually done! I know the prologue is extremely short, but I intended it to only lightly set the mood. I hope you will stick around for the rest of the journey:) the stained-glass portraits are redraws of the ones from Wind Waker, all credits go to nintendo

[kovacs-of-courage]

NO FUCKING WAY HOLY FUCK HES IMMACULATE

so.... i was discussing @kovacs-of-courage eclipse AU (sort of a realistic/earth ? au, go check it out!) with him, and we both started brainrotting pilot!sky. so. here he is.

[kovacs-of-courage]

Twilight stalked the cold, swirling mountainside for his prey.

He endured the blinding snowstorm, the numbness that’d overtaken his hands, and the many attempted ambushes--in an effort to right a terrible, terrible wrong. He couldn’t peer through the dense fog of the storm, not with his eyes of man.

He was stumbling into oblivion, and he would return.

Again, and again.

It’d been sometime since he’d felt this compelled to act, to stray from the path of his responsibilities and take on a grievance of his own. He’d decided to stray from the group during the dead of night, after they’d all left to attend to their own duties, or head to their beddings.

They’d followed the shadow northward, chasing it across miles of screaming dark and echoing wilderness. They’d traveled beyond the borders of their hyrules, most of them anyway, and arrived at the base of a swirling mountain--a frozen monument of ice and rock and snow.

During their pursuit, they came across a village under fire. They were lucky to arrive when they did, as the last of the town’s guards had fallen victim to the serrated teeth, and monstrous blades of their attackers. Twilight saw to avenge the dead among the townspeople, as did the rest of his brothers.

Not a single soul died under their watch.

Twilight only wished they’d arrived sooner.

In the aftermath, Twilight did what he could to comfort the survivors. It was with the greatest sorrows that he paid his respects. Grief was a wound without end, a void that consumed all in the heart that once held love. The villagers reminded him of his family in Ordon, from the close-knit nature of their community, to the fact they were a town on the edges of Hyrule's borders--far away from the eyes of the crown.

There was one woman, in particular, that drove the familiar feeling home.

She was a mother, expecting her second child. They’d met during the attack, his first words to her being an order to stay behind him. He’d tried to meet her on calmer footing, following the battle, trying to see if he could help in some way. Twilight found the woman in her cabin--what was left of it, given that the roof was half caved in--sobbing breathlessly into the splintered remains of her couch.

The woman (Sariah, her name was) had lost everything in the attack. In a matter of hours, her entire world, and reasons for continuing on were taken from her. Sariah didn’t know Twilight, nor did Twilight know her, yet it was in their sparse connection that she was comfortable exalting the untold stresses of what just occurred. She put images of Uli in Twilight’s mind, her adoration and love for her family shining through the black clouds of her grief.

Sariah’s husband had enlisted in the village guard, a competent swordsman--like Rusl, ready to protect his home by any measure. And by any measure he did, as he was one of the first slain. Photographs of him and Sariah littered the walls of the house, preserved moments of better days.

Her son, a boy of a mere nine years, was taken soon after Twilight and the others intervened--one of the monster’s captives, to be presumably dragged back to their camp and devoured. The idea made Twilight’s blood run cold, and his teeth grit like colliding glaciers.

It was a bitter, repulsed rage, the type that screamed at him to act--to right this wrong, to avenge this travesty. Twilight thought of what he’d do if Rusl had died, and Uli was left alone in the world, unable to even have a proper funeral for her son.

He was almost unable to fathom the level of anger it’d summon, the shaking, primal desire to meet those responsible with the edge of his blade. He was supposed to protect people, meant to stop these injustices before they happened. It brought a haze of guilt and frustration that clogged his senses.

He knew one thing, however.

This could not go unpunished.

Twilight swore to Sariah then that he’d find her son, vowing to give her some semblance of closure--and left the cabin.

It’d been some time since he’d driven himself into abandon, not since he’d rushed to save Colin from King Bublin, leaving a slew of corpses in he and Epona’s wake. He was more afraid for Colin’s life than anything else, but the feeling of protective retribution was very much present.

And now he was on the edge of a frozen cliffside, overlooking the warm fires of the monster’s camp below. 

He held the grip of his sword tight, until his knuckles were as white as the snow around him. There were moments that he wondered if there was more to his curse than the transformation of his wolf form, and the markings that adorned his head. When he looked upon packs of monsters, staring into their feral, savage eyes--and saw nothing but prey deserving of culling-- was that truly him?

When he drove his steel into the jugular of an unsuspecting moblin, taking hidden satisfaction in knowing that his loved ones are safer, letting the desire to protect the innocent shatter bones like glass and pulverize skulls-- was he still the same man as he once was?

Twilight gathered himself, reaching for his item pou-

“So, what’s the plan?”

He whipped around to meet the voice, his sword following in tow. It’s tip landed an inch away from the neck of the visitor, the realization quickly turning Twilight’s vigilance to irritation.

It was the Captain, of course.

“Why are you here?” Twilight said, unintended venom coating his words.

Valor didn’t flinch at his near decapitation, nor Twilight’s attitude. He was strangely collected, considering the situation.

“Why do you think?” Valor countered.

Twilight sighed, the thought of a disappointed mentor weighing on his shoulders.

“He sent you, I assume? Should’ve expected it’d be harder to slip by him.”

“Oh, get a grip. I’m here on my own, I figure someone who moonlights as a pack animal would understand why going it alone is a bad idea.” Valor said.

“I appreciate you looking out for me, but I think I can handle a few bokoblins.” Twilight huffed, frustrated that he was even having this conversation. 

Valor opened his mouth to retort, and then hesitated, softening his tone and expression ever so slightly.

“Look, I get it-- You want to shoulder this responsibility alone, that is something personal.”

“You don’t kno-”

“I talked to Sariah, after you left her cabin. I’m not blind, I can put two and two together.”

A silence followed, and both men stared at each other, uncaring of the blistering winds whirling around them.

“...So you know why I’m doing this.”

Valor nodded.

“You aren’t wrong to do this, any of us would do the same. I thought you’d understand that” Valor said, a twinge of regret bleeding through his voice.

Twilight glanced to the side, a kernel of shame burgeoning in the back of his mind.

“Look, if you want to keep walking this road--I won’t stop you. Just know--this burden is not yours alone.”

Twilight looked to Valor, staring back at him--and nodded.

“I understand...thank you”

Valor smiled, fierce pride burning bright within him.

“Then I think we’re settled, unless you’d still prefer me to leave?”

Twilight chuckled.

“Only if you can’t keep up.”

[kovacs-of-courage]

Strange Days-- a small hyrule oneshot I wrote

Oh farore, don’t let it end like this.

Traveler, from the moment he began his quest, knew that it’d be the end of him. He just didn’t think that his last moments would be so drawn out. Yet here he was, the oh so mighty hero of hyrule, dying of blood loss. 

He struggled to walk, his knees were wobbly, it felt like he was walking on broken stilts. There was blood, oh so much blood, so much that he’d taken off his tunic as not to irreparably stain it. He’d been ambushed, a pack of moblins had patiently followed him until he’d made camp, and striked while he was asleep.

It happened so fast, before Traveler had grabbed his sword-- a spearhead had sunk its jaws into his abdomen. To the amazement of him, and whatever deity still watched out for him, he hadn’t died then and there. The pure, animalistic drive to survive took over, and his hands cast a ring of holy fire that made the moblins into little more than hallowed ash on the night winds.

And like those ashes, his magic supply was also gone with the wind. Thinking it over, Traveler realized he hadn’t slept in two days, as he’d wasted the previous night and morning away deliriously trying to harness non-existent magic to sustain himself. He wiped the sweat off of his forehead, his skin deathly pale. This was the closest he’d come to the brink. Traveler, hands trembling in fear of the forever unknown, managed to bandage the wound and stop the bleeding.

All was not lost, Traveler knew. Nothing was hopeless, not unless he let it be.

The region was one he frequented, he knew where it’s great fairy resided. He had a chance, albeit a fleeting one.

An undying hope and stubbornness pumped life through his heart, fueling his shambling march. It wasn’t an impressive look for him-- shirtless, bloodied bandages wrapped around his stomach, and shambling like a drunk redead through Hyrule's (mostly) empty roads. Oh, how Impa must be proud.

He’d made it several miles before a scream, a terrified one at that, rustled through the forest canopy. Traveler craned his head to the forest on his right, its verdant greenery spilling over onto the gravel trail. Traveler looked to his hands, coated in his own dried blood.

Traveler shook, tears welling up in his eyes.

He was barely holding it together as it was. Could he really fight? Could he do anything but lay down and die? He knew that if he left his path, he wouldn’t be coming back. 

He didn’t want to die.

In a silent, swift motion--Traveler’s hands reached to grab his sword. It felt heavier than ever before. He sucked in a breath, letting his lungs contract and expand freely. He winced, every irritation to his wounds was another thousand knives plunged into his nerves. He swallowed that pain. It’s not like he’d be feeling it for much longer anyway.

Shakenly, Traveler dragged himself over to the point of concern, his bandages loosening as he tried to speed up his pace. If someone was dead, their blood was on his hands.

Eventually, he came upon a small pond-side outcropping. There was a man unconscious on the ground, a dagger lodged upright in his chest- its pommel pointed at the sky. Nervously, Traveler eyed the treeline, hyper-alert for hostiles. In spite of common sense, Traveler ran to the man, as best he could manage in his condition. 

The stranger was an older man, dressed too refined for life out in Hyrule's frontier. Traveler took short, rapid breaths, his body wasn’t letting him forget the severity of his own predicament. The stranger was on his side, the velvet flaps of his overcoat obstructing view of the injury. 

With strained breaths, Traveler pulled him onto his back. Suddenly, he regretted the choice not to wear his power bracelet at all times. He re-inspected the wound, sparks of panic igniting across his face. The knife was jammed through his ribs, and probably punctured a lung. Given the snail’s pace in which Traveler’s half-corpse legs arrived, there was no doubt that the internal bleeding was beyond fatal.

“No, no, NO” Traveler exclaimed.

Traveler pounded his fists on the ground, he wasn’t going to sacrifice so much for nothing. He would not die failing another. This wasn’t the end for either of them, he didn’t know the meaning of giving up. Traveler frisked the man’s possessions, in a desperate hope for something useful. The familiar glint of a glass bottle caught his frantic eye, and Traveler grabbed it without a thought. He scrambled to see its contents- it was a magic potion. It may be half empty, and possibly stale, but he now had a chance.

The thought of whether he should’ve used it to heal himself didn’t pass his mind, not when people were in danger. He gulped down the viscous fluid, a surge of energy electrified his veins, and his mind. For the first time in days, Traveler smiled.

The knife was in deep, even if he was confident in using his healing magic on another person, it was no guarantee that the fluid would be taken out of the lung. He’d have to get creative. The half-dead hero racked his mind for answers, spells, tricks, anything!

There was one spell, a bit of sage magic he borrowed from the ruins of old Hyrule castle. He’d never used it on anything alive, and not on this intricate of a scale.

Traveler hovered his left hand above the knife, paying attention to the stranger’s slow breathing. He made a claw with his fist, like he was holding some invisible object. He closed his eyes for a brief moment, letting the world slow to an impossible standstill in his mind’s eye. A soft luminescent light flowed from his palm, and streamed like a gentle current into the crevices of blood and muscle. 

Traveler opened his eyes, caught in more than his finite present.

He was downstream a cosmic river, a single flower in a garden of giants. A multicolored battle overtook his irises, and they crashed and flooded beautiful light onto the wound as well. He twisted his hand counter clockwise, and the knife began to rise out, and the spilt blood rushed back into the body.

It was a tricky thing, reversing time.

There was an art to magic, a precision long since forgotten in this age of barbarity. Traveler supposed he just had a talent for appreciating the craft’s finer details. He took satisfaction in watching the knife place itself on the grass, as did he in observing the body revert back into a healthy, uninjured state.

As the light of his spell died out, Traveler sighed in relief, as he watched a healthy exhale escape the stranger’s chest. A jabbing pain interrupted that relief, however, and Traveler was reminded of his body’s sorry state. 

Maybe, just maybe, he had enough magic left.

He wiggled his fingers, and the glow of a dozen small sparks flickered out of them. He wasn’t dead, not yet, not while hyrule needed him. A blue glow emanated forth from his hands, which he’d placed at his stomach. The pain, the pain that’d nearly ripped him in two, slowly faded, like it was nothing but a bad memory.

Excitedly, Traveler ripped off his bandages, revealing a perfectly unscarred stomach, bare of injury. The joy, the utter euphoria that he was going to live brought him to tears.

He wiped a shy tear from his cheek, and then looked at the stranger again, as a rapturous cough escaped the man, followed by reasonable shock.

“Wh-what? Where am I? There were monsters, right, and I was..” He said, almost out of breath. The man looked at his chest, free of harm. “Stabbed?” 

Traveler chuckled, attracting his attention.

“Boy, did you do this?” The stranger asked.

Traveler grinned.

“I did, you’re welcome by the way.” Traveler said.

The stranger paused for a moment, and rested his hand on his beard.

“Thank you, for saving my life. I’m Henry. Who might you be?” Henry asked.

“Oh, me? That’s simple, sir. I’m just a Traveler.”

[kovacs-of-courage]

BELOVED

For @kovacs-of-courage's Eclipse AU, which you can check out on his page!

[kovacs-of-courage]

Legend during the Roman-era Horrors

--------------October 3rd, 79 AD-----------

----------Eruption of Mount Vesuvius------- 

Legend palmed his hands through the descended barrages of smoke and ash, sprinting through streets of splintering pavement and burning civilization. The panicked crowds of civilians ran from the ruins of their homes, thinking their fate punishment from the gods.

A fair assessment; one that Legend didn’t fault them for. When the shadows of hades blotted out the sun, and it’s armies rampaged your torched streets; It was hard not to take it personally.

The truth of the matter was far less grandiose; the truth of the matter was that those behind this atrocity were hijacking Mount Vesuvius for their vile rituals, and Pompeii had the unfortunate position of being the first city caught in the crossfire. 

And by the names of all that’d perished today; Legend would ensure it’d be the last. 

He tried not to blame himself for the death and destruction before him, for the countless people he’d be unable to save. It tore his heart asunder to ignore the plight of so many, to not help in their hour of need. It was his uncle all over again; cradling his dying body in his arms, his sorrowed guilt snowballing into a crippling avalanche of regrets and newfound responsibility.

But he couldn’t spare a moment, as much as it pained him. If he didn’t slay the source of this darkness soon, then there’d be nothing short of divine intervention able to stop it from rolling over all of europe--and then the world. The whole of humanity rendered extinct in less then a week.

To say the stakes were high would be the understatement of the millennium; an impressive feat considering that the current year hadn’t even reached the triple digits.

At least he didn’t have to go it alone.

Legend, having reached the city’s central plaza, stopped at the cremated remains of it’s marketplace--seeing a familiar face--just the person he wanted to see, in fact.

“Legend! I just got the southern districts evacuated, how is it on your end?”

It was Traveler, and by the look of the tar-like blood soaking his boots; he’d gotten busy.

“Not good, sorry to say,” Legend explained, frustration evident, ”I barely escaped the northwest before it got cratered, and the northeast has more moblins than citizens.”

Traveler recoiled at the news, his face souring to a scowl not unlike Legend’s, “Why does our rain always pour?” Traveler said.

“I’d tell you if I could, but that’s for later. What’s the word on the Captain? Have you been able to contact him?” Legend asked.

Traveler shook his head, “He’s either out of range, or can’t pick up a stone.”

Legend narrowed his eyes, confusion overtaking him, “Wild made their ringing sound like a flock of keese going through a Wizzrobe’s windpipe,” Legend exasperated, ”How in Din’s name can he not hear i--You know what, you know what, he can explain himself later-” A chorus of ear splitting explosions ruptured the air, deafening the rest of Legend’s words. Miles upon miles of smoke spewed from Vesuvius’s peak, blistering waves of primeval fire and lava-coated meteors hailing down to the already destroyed city.

“-...We’ve got bigger fish to fry,” Legend said,

Legend put a hand in his adventuring bag, scrounging around, eventually pulling out a slender staff, prismatic light twinkling from it’s crystallized tip; gusts of frigid wind emanating forth from it’s cerulean body.

“Fire and brimstone aren’t the only things that are going to be crashing. You need to find Warriors, and stem this tide before it hits other settlements,” Legend said, his scowl pointed at the mountain.

“I understand but what about *you?* I’m not going to just leave you to fight all of that alone,” Traveler responded, placing a concerned hand on Legend’s shoulder.

For a split second, Legend’s expression softened, the care of his brother not lost on him.

“I’ve beaten Onox before, and I can do it again. Just because he has the strength to capture an oracle, and wrangle a mountain--doesn’t mean he’s anything close to intelligent,” Legend said, “And we aren’t going to leave the captain to the wolves, nor the people of rome.”

Traveler nodded, a pang of distress flashing over his focused gaze, “Your right..I’ll get going.

The younger hero went to leave, stopping to turn back at his brother, resolute, “When the smoke clears, I’m coming back to get you--one way or another.”

Legend cracked a smile, the direness of their troubles briefly washing away.

“There wasn’t a doubt in my mind; now go! This armageddon isn't gonna wait around for any one of us."

[kovacs-of-courage]

A Time eclipse AU drabble

-----December 5th, 12,000 B.C.E-----

-----------Late Ice Age-------------

Time rasped, putting his weight against the trunk of a birch tree; it’s ash bark as white as the snow piled to his knees.

He put two leather-clad fingers to his bruised temple, a thunderous ringing slamming between his ears. It was an earthquake within his mind, the reminder of all he’d failed, and all that he now had to overcome.

Hyrule, his home, was gone--and by all rights so should he.

But he’s alive, by the goddesses he was alive.

Time fought back the cascading emotions of his hours-new remembrance, gritting his teeth as the scars of his first body etched themselves anew on his earthy form. He’d been struggling with the symptoms of his revived consciousness for as long as he’d regained it; barely making the miles walk back to his tribe’s encampments.

How would they view him now? Their leader returning from a foraging trip half-blind and scarred, a shadow of his former strength?

If he’d taught them anything--hopefully nothing at all.

Time winced; abject darkness overtaking his whitening eye, the emblazoned touch of the deity scaring onto his soul once again. He tried to avoid the thought of if he too made the breach; ignorance was bliss.

He grunted, straightening his shoulders despite the pain. He was more then his scars, more then his memories, his tribe nee-

“Watch out!”

Time swiveled to his rearward, reacting on instinct, too preoccupied to digest who was speaking to him. It was a futile effort though, as seven hundred fifty pounds of arctic feline crashed into him like a freight train from hell. They tumbled through the alaskan detritus, a snarling roar rumbling the frozen tundra.

He was on his back now, his hands in an iron grip around both of the saber tooth’s arms, a mask of stoic determination overtaking his adrenalined shock. The tiger struggled and squirmed in his grasp, unused to it’s mauling victims surviving the first gouging, or gouging attempt in this case.

Time’s move, however bold, was temporary at best. It was a miracle he wasn’t stricken immobile by the sheer force of the charging tackle. He wasn’t surprised, it’s not like he hadn’t survived worst.

“Hey, listen! It’s fangs are more brittle then they look, try attacking them with your gauntlets.”

*Navi?*

The gauntlets were a point of confusion too, given that he was stripped of his gear; answered justly when sheets of hammered metal and gold began manifesting around his forearms; emerging like crying tears from rippling air. They wrapped him in ribbons of molten light, their fiery embers coming right off the forges of their creation.

Okay then.

Uncapped strength surged within the forsaken hero, the thrashing predator atop him feeling lighter then a paperweight. He grabbed the Saber’s right fang, the ruby at the center of his gauntlets aglow--

He flicked his wrist right, snapping off eight inches of prehistoric bone from it’s source with unprecedented ease. 

Howling in pain, the saber thrashed it’s unhooked claw at Time--It tried to at least. A rising uppercut hit from below, fracturing it’s bottom jaw in a spiderwebbing cracks. 

The saber, now whimpering, scampered off Time; fleeing into the wilderness.

Time sighed, putting a hand to his chest.

“Stow the yawn, hero. You’re still on the clock.”

A flicker of blue light swam into his vision, impatiently hovering in place; their presence unabashed. A few thoughts struck Time’s mind, all in rapid succession--

Was this real? Was he having a stroke? Had he died again?

Normal things to consider, given he hadn’t seen his friend in over two and a half decades.

“I-..I-” Time stuttered, unable to find the words.

“Save it. We’ll talk whys and hows later, I’m just as confused as you are--but I do know that your tribe is in a heap of trouble, and they need your help.”

Time shook his head, trying to shake his bafflement.

“Our help, you mean. We’re a team, remember?”

Navi paused, a dozen regrets chasing her hurried mind.

“Of course..my mistake. We fight together, Link, ere the end,” Navi said, wistful melancholy infecting her tone.

Time nodded. “Then lead the way, the stage is yours,” Time said.

“Good. We don’t have a moment to lose.”

[kovacs-of-courage]

Sky during the Bronze Age Horrors

If he could save her; he could save them all.

Sky reached out a hand to the cavern wall, the ground shaking and trembling beneath his feet. It was the end of an age. The heavens and earth collided into the ocean, the monsters of hyrulean fable sieging the shores of his new home.

He’d lived his life on Cyprus, defending as proudly as he did Skyloft; unaware of his greater purpose, of his greater legacy.

Until now.

A thousand regrets poured through his mind as his memories came flooding back, filling his mind as neatly as a lake being crammed down a lab funnel. He remembered it all, all of his loves, sorrows and joys. He remembered the day he and sun met, he remembered graduating knight academy, the intensity of those recollections sending him to his knees.

How could he have forgotten his friends, his brothers..-

Fi

She was lost, lost in the miasma of their collapsed dimension. She was lost, and no one was coming to save her. His memory of her, and her imprint upon Sky’s soul would guide him to her-- a beacon of light in the blinding dark.

She’d do the same for him, if their places were reversed. 

Screams and panic echoed outside the beachside cavern, the feral war cries of demons unchained sounding over their terrified victims. Despair, and then anger swelled in his stomach, clenching at his heart. What kind of hero was he to let these people die--

Then again; what kind of hero was he if he let down his best friend, who needed him now more than ever?

Sky grazed his finger on the cavern walls, yanking them back as a river of liquid light cut open the space he’d touched--the visible thread between realities absorbing the entirety of the cavern wall in a pulsating neon light. 

A deafening chorus of recollected memories flooded the gap, underlying the screaming torrent of the monsters still trapped in the remains of their old dimension. Sky’s vision faded and folded onto itself, transparent trails of lives long lost coming to life within his glowing irises.

Sky looked back towards the cave exit, the sounds of wailing monsters increasingly in volume, and then back to the open rift. He would be alone, burdened in the midst of all that was lost and all that remains. It was foolhardy, dangerous, something that he’d stop anyone else from doing--but he had to do it.

There was no mountain he wouldn’t move, or ocean he wouldn’t cross, to see his loved ones safe. Eternity was pocket change compared to the fortune-expanse of his resolve. The blade of evils bane was a necessity beyond requirement if their world were to survive the coming storms.

Sky breathed deep, taking one last moment of consideration. 

He sprinted headlong into the portal, steeled determination outweighing any fear.

If death and calamity were the ways of earth’s destruction; Let it be their courage that defied that desire.

[kovacs-of-courage]

---------March 12th, 1836----------- ---------Texan Revolution-----------

Twilight kicked down the doors of the Saloon, a dozen rifles meeting his audacious entrance.

He didn’t flinch; they were of little consequence, his quarrel only laid with a single soul among their unlawful crowd. It was an evil that man could not measure to, not in a hundred twisted lifetimes of misery.

He put his left hand on the holster of his revolver, his eyes dilating in anticipation, his fangs bared; the desire for retribution mixing with animalistic senses.

“Easy there, folks; I’m not lookin for a fight-”

Twilight pointed his free hand to the center of the bar. The cautious crowd looked towards his target; an ill-fitted aristocrat, adorned in a black three piece suit, their skin as gray as the steel of their rifles.

“I’m just here to take a snake off your hands.”

Said aristocrat recoiled, seething anger overtaking him.

“You’re supposed to be dead. Deader than dead, a stain under my boot. The Alamo was a massacre, ” He muttered through clenched teeth, the icy exterior of his balanced composure melting away to an undying anger.

“You know what they say. You just can’t keep a good dog down.” Twilight responded, venom in his voice.

Twilight reached into his pocket, the shining star of a ranger badge in his hand. He pinned it to his chest. The outlaws overlooking his interaction took notice, returning to their affairs.

“You have two options, Zant. I drag you back to your people alive, or I kill you here,” Twilight threatened, his thumb hovering the hammer of his colt pistol--

“Your choice.”

Zant squinted his eyes, out of his seat now, his hands balled fists.

“You’re bluffing. You wouldn’t risk your anonymity to the goddesses on a single target,” Zant said.

Twilight’s expression remained the same, staring down his old enemy like a predator waiting in the bushes to pounce.

“Funny--your Queen said the same thing.”

[kovacs-of-courage]

Eclipse AU(Tldr at bottom of post_

So I made a modern-sort of percy jackson inspired AU for Linked Universe, I think it's fun to write! I hope other people enjoy it. Here's my weird rough summary. Willing to answer any and all questions!

The Chain are lost in time, trapped in an unending cycle of life and death. A familiar tale to the hero's spirit. In their last confrontation with the incarnations of demise, and the demons he commanded--the whole of reality went asunder, and the power of the gods shattered entirely.

After that confrontation--the nine embodiments of the hero’s spirit suffered the same fate as their homeland--their souls washed away in caskets of golden tears and failed promises.

Hyrule was wiped away, wiped from the face of history and beyond. The goddesses had to begin their creation anew, without the baggage of those that caused it’s destruction in the first place.

Earth, modern earth, was created in it’s place--with a few key changes.

For all their efforts--the remains of their first creation leaked through, infecting the history of our earth like vile rot. The monsters were the first to make the breach, their combined hatred and inhuman will to survive holding their corrupted essences together through the transition.

There are stories of these creatures, often disregarded as exaggerated hyperbole by historians, or metaphors for natural disasters. 

They were not.

The Queen Gohma haunts the jungles of South America, legends of her urchin-like young making victims of unfortunate wanderers; sustaining her immortal lifespan in the depths of her hollowed tree.

Argorok terrorized the skies of medieval Europe, casting plumes of fire on the feudal armies that tried opposing it’s oppressive reign; her accompanying packs of gleeoks hunting ancient sailors in the atlantic.

And there were many, so many more monsters that endured the chaotic folding of time and space, the near-annihilation of any sense of self--as the mind and soul were put to battle against the last, drawn out gasps of their dying universe. The destruction was biblical, the return of gods seen only in legend--it’s a wonder that anything survived that cataclysm.

The chain suffered a similar fate--at first--their existence and histories torn apart atom by atom, their souls stretched paperthin as thought and reality blended together during the collapse of stars.

But they endured.

They tumbled through the new cosmos, the echoes of their shared spirit melding into the foundation of the universe--as immovable as gravity. When humanity came to prominence; the chain were there to follow. They were reborn, stripped of their memories, into a thousand different societies, and countless eras.

At times of crises and devastation; their nine courageous souls were reborn across the earth, their courage burning brighter than it had been before. They were prepared for the changing world, their skills old and new continuing with each reset.

There are some echoes of continuity, however, rules that their spirit must follow.

Twilight is related to time in some way, and they’re the two who meet again the most. 

Wind is always born in sea-faring communities, whether that be in the literal age of pirates, or as an early tribesmen at the dawn of civilization--rediscovering his aptitude for sailing.

And as the chain have been reborn, so too have many of Hyrule’s legends, their essences bleeding forth onto our realm. The memory of that primeval history scars our world, and fragments of every era hides under the bustling, nation-states of our modern age.

Some more aware than others.

Those with the blood of Hylia returned, bringing the memory of their goddess with them--thought to be eradicated. They possess no royal heritage, living as normal citizens, the zeldas being born nearby their links.

The sheikah bounced back quickly, as Impa(SS) managed to come out of the transition with her memories intact--assembling her fractured tribe during the stone ages. 

TLDR: Modern AU that’s sort of percy jackson in how Hyrule seeps over. Ancient things hidden in modern times, with the chain reborn worldwide.

[kovacs-of-courage]

sometimes i forget what blogs I post stuff on lmao

[kovacs-of-courage]

i appreciate everyone who has liked and reblogged my stories, it means alot to me to know that people have found enjoyment in them. i will post more soon