#a few things i want to point out!

[randomwriteronline]

Nothing had worked in the end.

Linking hands, walking faster and faster, taking turns he'd long memorized, passing through clearings so quickly there was never any time for the illusions to start shaping themselves - everything, everything, he'd done everything right, with an iron grip around the younger hand, and still.

He turned in a panic as soon as he felt his empty palm being pierced by his own nails: a flash, bursts of colors between the leaves, and then everything that was not the green of foliage and the brown of ancient wood underneath moss and ivy was gone. His feet stumbled back, his eye jumping feverishly from one branch to the other, not even sure what he was looking for.

In a sudden second, he realized he had no idea which clearing this was, or which yawning dark hallway was the correct one.

The trees stared down at him.

"Oh no," Time only whispered feebly.

-

Whatever it was that was looking at him, it was quite the strange thing indeed.

It walked over to him unafraid, curious, rather puzzled to be quite honest, and stared up at his face intently as though to decode a most mysterious mystery.

"Hello," Hyrule greeted it.

It sniffed the air with its little snout intently; then, showing off its little pointy teeth, it simply asked: "What are you?"

Not very polite, but you cannot ask forest dwellers to have manners.

"My name is Link."

"You can't be Link," the little beast replied: "Link's not a fairy."

What a puzzling answer: "I'm not a fairy either."

"But you smell like one."

At that, Hyrule propped his hands on his hips: "Well, that's strange," he noted.

"It is!" the little one agreed.

"But my name is Link."

"No, it can't be."

"And why is that?"

"Because Link is my friend, and you don't look or smell like him."

"I see. You can call me Link, too, if you'd like. People call me like that."

"People are wrong."

"Is there only one Link in the world?"

"There's only one that matters to me, and it's my friend."

"So nobody else can have that name?"

"Not to me, no."

"Well, I'd still like it to be called Link every now and then."

"Then I guess I'll do that sometimes."

"And who are you?"

"Skull Kid."

"It's nice to meet you."

A sharp smile lit up the little snout, and the small feathers on its arms poofed and shook as it giggled happily.

"Nobody ever says it's nice to meet me," it said.

"How rude," Hyrule replied. As the beast laughed, he looked around, half hoping that the others would have returned to him by now; when it became clear they had not, and judging by the silence they were nowhere near him, he turned back to the creature: "Do you live here?"

"I do," Skull Kid nodded.

"Do you know the way out?"

"There's none."

He hummed: "Then do you know a way that takes me somewhere other than these woods?"

The impish thing laughed and clapped its clawed hands, overwhelmed with merriment: "You're clever, you're clever!" it praised the hero: "You're really clever, so I'll tell you! Yes, yes there is."

Hyrule watched as it pointed right in front of him, to a yawning abyss within a falled trunk that suddenly turned bright with dim light.

"Go straight on," it instructed him, "No turns or nothing. When you're done being in the Woods, then you'll come out."

"How do I know when I'm done?"

"When you don't want to be in the Woods anymore."

"Oh! I see, I see. Then it might take a while."

"Why so?"

"I was with friends, and they got lost too."

"Oh! Then they're not here anymore, not as they were."

"That's a bit pessimistic. They're brave and strong, and they're all called Link, too."

At that, the creature turned attentive: "All of them?"

"All of them."

"And is one of them my friend?"

"Perhaps one of them is."

"Oh! Oh! Then I'll get them back to you, if you let me and my friend stay here a while!"

"That depends," Hyrule replied, thoughtful: "How long is a while?"

"You don't need to worry about that."

"I would like not to, but we should go soon..."

"You don't need to worry about that!" Skull Kid insisted. "The Woods will make it last little, even if we stay together for days. I miss him a lot, you see... Then I'll give him back to you. I promise."

What a curious place this grove seemed to be.

In the end, Hyrule nodded: "Alright, you have my word."

"And you have mine!"

The little beast scurried off with a loud laugh, disappearing in an azure shadow; with nothing else to do but trust, the young man walked forth, just like he was told to do.

-

No sky above him, only leaves. Not even the Kikwi forest had been dense to the point of completely hiding the world within the clouds from his sight - and the rustling foliage moved by no wind made him more than a little nervous.

It seemed to be laughing, laughing gently, quietly, as he fruitlessly attempted to find a way through the way his senior had done.

Another arboreal murmuring was enough to test his patience.

"I'm trying," he complained to no one and nobody, "And none of you are being of any help, so please stop making fun of me."

"But it's fun," a voice replied.

Sky froze.

He looked left. He looked right. He spun in place.

Nobody.

His voice was much lower when he spoke again: "Hello?"

"Hello," no one replied.

His hand went to his sword: "Where are you?"

"Here," no one answered, unhelpfully. The childish sound seemed to come from everywhere around him.

"Here where?"

"I can see you," no one replied without acknowledging his question.

His head twisted in every direction, as quickly as possible.

Nobody.

A childish laughter filled the air.

"You're very funny," no one continued. "There's no way out, you know."

"And how are you sure?"

"Because I will eat you," no one explained, in a calm, airy tone, as though it was talking about the weather.

Sky froze again.

"You'll lose your skin soon," No One continued, the easy smile accompanying the voice almost visible, and the man was almost certain he could imagine his shapeless enemy kicking its feet with the whistful tranquillity of a child drawing pictures on the floor: "It'll fall off and melt into the earth, and I'll eat it. And then it will be the flesh, and then the eyes, and then all the gross things in your body - it'll all fall off onto the ground and I'll eat it."

"And my bones?" he asked, though he wasn't sure why or even if he wanted to know.

"Those will walk," No One replied. "Stalfos walk a lot. Until even your anger stops moving you, and then you'll crumble to the ground, and I'll eat your bones too."

"They will be sharp. And hard."

A crystalline child-like laugh was accompanied by the rustling of leaves. There was no breeze.

His interlocutor, then, was it...?

"Only thing I can't eat is rocks," No One said serenely: "Only thing that can kill me is fire. Are you tired yet? I'm hungry."

Sky remained perfectly still, terrified.

Nothing moved.

Suddenly, No One asked, in a different tone, as if it had remembered something only now: "Do people call you Link?"

What did it matter?

He nodded, agreeing feebly.

"Oh," No One said. It sounded disappointed. "Come here, then."

"Here where?" he dared to ask.

"Here," No One repeated. The voice was coming now from a darkened passage beneath two trees. Light that hadn't been there before was piercing through it. "Come here."

Slowly, terribly slowly, so slowly it felt like a whole day, Sky approached the passage.

Something gleamed from within.

Hyrule smiled at him as he too entered the clearing with a much more confident step when the knight finally passed through, the orange glint he thought he might have seen nowhere to be found.

"There you are," the traveler greeted him amiably, chipper, with the ease of someone taking a stroll.

Sky did not move.

They both waited a while.

"The Woods talked to me, I think," he murmured. "They said they were going to eat me."

Hyrule hummed thoughtfully.

"Let's find the others quickly, then," he only said.

His companion nodded, not in the mood to talk.

-

"Oh!"

Something rustled.

"It's you!"

Whatever it was, it sounded delighted. Sweet. Nostalgic.

Legend did not like that.

He walked faster. Had the clearing just gotten longer? Had the light dimmed on its own? Had the crowns of the trees lowered onto him? The air seemed heavier, harder to breathe in. The shrubbery seemed to be growing lusher and more suffocating. His eyes fought not to start watering. Cold sweat bubbled beneath his sleeves.

"You've grown so much!"

He turned quickly, hand on his sword.

The thing slowly coming closer was not scared. Not at all.

He could not tell what it was. Something about it reminded him of the Flute Boy, of his misshapen form in the Dark World, of the twists of the branches he'd petrified into; something about it reminded him of an animal, or a person, or a plant, or his uncle.

"Don't touch me," he growled.

The thing did not comply. Its gnarled hands laid on the blade's tip unafraid as it stared at him intently, facsimile of a face unmoving. Something about its stillness felt as though it was smiling at him radiantly.

"Hello," it said, with the love of a wetnurse. "It's been so long."

"I've never seen anything like you before," he hissed. He caught the sharp metal sinking ever so slightly into the neck as he thrusted it forward to scare it off of the weapon, and struggled to keep his hold still and firm.

The thing laughed gently: "Of course you have," it replied. Its hand reached up: "You were too little, maybe."

Legend shook his arm: the movement made it fall back a little as he took a step backwards.

"For what?"

"For remembering."

Were those leaves, on its face and limbs, arranged like feathers or fur shaping into colorful patterns? Were those eyes, or false spots on severed butterfly wings? Was there anything beneath the layers?

"I remember it," it reassured him sweetly; the sound of its childish voice, the way its face moved as it spoke to him without ever opening a mouth for the words to leave, frightened him more than anything else. "I remember it, if you don't. You are hard to forget, with how much you cried! Poor thing, how much you cried!"

Its gentle laugh chilled him.

A step back was met with a wall of bushes and ferns threatening to swallow him whole.

"But I kept you warm," it continued, so comforting, so horrifying as it advanced: "I kept you warm, and I did my best. I did my best. Even when that man came, I did my best. To keep him away."

Its hand mimed a slash far above its own head, a motion for striking something much taller, much bigger.

Their long nails sank through the air with a shriek.

Legend remembered his uncle's neck and the thin, long scars that reached far too close to his jugular for comfort.

It laughed again, sweet and kind, and reached for him as if to lift him from under his arms, in a way so unnatural for something so much smaller, so much younger than him.

"I'll keep you safe, I'll keep you safe," it reassured him. Empty wing-like eyes stared deep into him, hollow, perfectly still. "Now that you're back, I'll keep you safe."

He swung.

The sword cut through nothing, nothing at all.

He sunk further into the shrubbery, feet fumbling to keep him upright as the plantlife loomed all around him like a coddling embrace preceding a strangling; the thing, unharmed, so bright in its autumn hues against a world of green and misty blues, stretched out its arms and reached for him again.

"Don't touch me," he struggled to say, paler than the dead. Ivy kindly crawled at his feet. "Don't touch me. Don't - don't touch me."

"I'll keep you safe," it repeated. "I told them so, didn't I?"

"Them?" Legend rasped. "Them? Who?"

"Don't you remember? You were crying. You didn't like them. They were too cold." it stepped towards him, sharp nails reaching tenderly for his face, the yawning emptiness barely visible through gaps between the leaves trying to spiral him inside it with each word. "Far too cold."

The branches were enveloping him.

Softly, gently.

Like a parent's hold.

"I had to rip you from their arms."

He turned and ran.

He ran, and ran, and ran, far, far, far away, into the depths of the emerald foliage growing darker, darker, darker, not seeing anything beyond the sound of his own ragged breath trying to cover the call of his own name, too scared to notice that no briar or thorn ever lodged into his flesh, that the air was turning lighter, easier in his lungs, that the beams piercing the crowns high above him were brighter, that a soft strong body had stopped his maddened escape, that his shaking frame was held in hands scarred with lightning marks.

A sound like a familiar voice reached him, but he could not process words. He looked up: Sky's face replied with another preoccupied wave of gibberish.

"Go," Legend murmured finally: "Go. We need to go. Now. We need to. We need to go. Go. Now. Right now."

The other held him closer, letting him rest his head against him.

Hyrule said nothing; he gestured to follow, and walked a little faster.

-

The crowns were not rustling, nor was there any music.

He could still tell he wasn't alone.

"I'm not in the mood to play Tag," he said out loud, trampling gracelessly through ferns and rocks and fallen trees.

A tinkering laugh followed him.

"Then we'll play Hide-and-seek!" it cried out.

One of the lower branches ricocheted towards him; he stopped it without any effort: "Not in the mood for that either."

"One-two-three-Freeze? I'll start counting!"

His strong hand reached out with a sigh into the mass of leaves nearest to him, and without even needing to look as he stepped over another bush he gently pinched a lack of lips shut.

Twilight's head rose to find enormous cockeyed pupils mere inches away from his face.

"I said," he repeated, "I'm not in the mood to play games."

Little grey fingers wrapped around his wrist and pulled it away to free their mouth: "You said only for Tag!" the doll protested.

"And now I'm not in the mood for any."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm in the mood to do something else."

"And what's that?"

"Getting out of here."

The kid huffed and whined: "You're no fun."

The man patted its ashen cheek with just enough force without turning it into a slap and smiled with a grin holding the slightest glint of mischief: "You didn't know that already?"

A disgusting bark-looking tongue stuck out to him between small distant teeth. Seeing it so close would have probably made him gag in disgust, together with the rest of its mangy decaying appearance, if he hadn't gotten used to that too wide grin by now.

"Why did you even come here then?" the creature asked.

"What makes you think I wanted to come?"

"Me?"

Twilight laughed wildly, right in its face: "Sure thing," he mocked him playfully, "Like I could really miss the noise of that terrible little trumpet of yours that much."

"Hey! I'm good at it!"

"Whatever you say, whatever you say."

He evaded a halfhearted slap with a laugh.

Emboldened, the little imp reached out to him, trying to jump on him, to steer him away into the foliage it was half hidden in, to drag him into some game or other.

The little hands found themselves easily neutralized, its empty body lifted; after a moment, it found itself sat on a different branch.

"Don't you try that now," the man admonished it: "I do need to go. I have some friends I need to pick up before they get trapped between some your illusory walls."

"Oh! Then they're not here anymore, not as they were."

A finger tapped on its forehead, producing a hollow sound: "Don't try to scare me," Twilight replied lazily: "You know it doesn't work."

"It's true!"

"Sure thing, sure thing."

The small doll shook its head to get rid of the nagging pressure; the rancher allowed it, retracting his hand.

"So?" he pressed on gently, "Will you help me this time too?"

Cockeyed pupils looked at him thoughtfully; then, without answering, the imp asked: "Do people call you Link?"

It got back a flabbergasted look.

"You didn't know?"

"You never told me!"

"I... Well, that's fair. Did you ever tell me yours?"

"No."

"Then what is it?"

"Skull Kid."

"Nice to meet you. And yes, my name's Link."

"Then I saw your friend!" it grinned. One of its skeletal fingers pointed far away, to a hole just large enough to crawl through on all fours like a dog. "He's there. He's going outside."

Twilight followed the trajectory of their limb. He turned back to face the imp once more.

"There?" he asked, brow quirked.

It nodded.

"There."

It nodded again.

"Right under there."

"Yes!"

"You are sure."

"Yes!"

"He'll be right there?"

"Yes."

"It won't be one of your puppets?"

"No."

"And it won't be a heap of them?"

"No!"

"You promise?"

"Yes."

"Double promise?"

"Yes!"

"Swear on your heart?"

"Yeees!"

"With a cherry on top?"

"I promise on my friend's life and on the Woods' health!"

Twilight gave a wolfish grin: "So you're sure?"

The kid smacked his head repeatedly, overwhelmed with childish fury and cackling uncontrollably as it shouted: "Just get out!"

The rest was swift: in a second, the rancher dropped on all fours, galloping like a dog right into the dark tunnel with a wild howling laugh; his run halted midway as he struck something and stumbled, throwing him into a roll just as he emerged, all but splaying himself at Hyrule, Sky, and Legend's feet.

Always nice to know that pipsqueak didn't lie.

-

"Wait-"

It hurt like hell.

"Wait, please. Wait."

Another sting in his shoulder, more blood pouring through.

"Wait. Please."

His hand trembled as he held it out in surrender for all the trees to see. He looked for the telltale gleam of little oranges eyes, listened for the familiar clatter of wooden limbs; nothing.

Perfectly hidden.

It made his heart clench like his lungs did when he tried not to cry.

He unfastened his shield and sword, letting them clang on the ground harmlessly.

"I will lay down," he said meekly, lowering his body with slow, careful motions, making sure he did not make any rash movements. "I will lay down, and not move. I promise."

No answer came.

"I only ask," and he struggled through a knot in his throat "I only ask you wait until I stop breathing on my own. Please."

He lied down, quietly, and closed his eye.

Blood trickled out of the wounds puncturing his shoulder; pinky outstretched, waiting for the comfort of a promise that he never got, Time began slowly counting his breaths.

Before long, he stopped.

-

He shouldn't have gotten distracted. He shouldn't have let go of him like that. He should have been more attentive of where he was going. He shouldn't have lost sight of the others.

He had to stop! What good would come from this pointless spiraling? He'd messed up; he'd handle the consequences.

His feet hurt like hell. He sat down heavily, trying to massage them through his own boots.

Some kind of scuttling interrupted his thoughts.

From the top of a tree, blending into the darkened bark, minute amber marbles were staring right at him.

Four remained still.

His adversary, too, did not move.

In the minutes following their utter stillness, his eyes acclimated to the dim atmospheres - only barely, but just enough to notice something wiry and strangely posed clutching on the bark.

He watched it move with an inexplicable tardiness, accompanied by a twin which had suddenly emerged from the shadows as they both dragged the shining marbles lower across the trunk of the tree with it, descending with a cautious rhythm.

That was a hand.

Or at least, something which worked as a hand.

The more he stared, trying to make sense of what it was supposed to be, the more he grew convinced it was closer to a bird's foot.

And the more he stared, the lower down the trunk the thing went, until all four of its thin limbs were all but sprawled across the large centenary roots; and from those roots those branch-like arms and legs were slithering towards the ground, sinking their talons in the dirt as it crawled towards him.

He needed to get up.

He needed to get his sword.

He needed to start screaming.

He needed to start making a plan.

He did not manage to move a single muscle.

Perhaps it was for the better. Because while his brain was busy screaming and scrambling, trying to tear his body apart to scatter in four different directions, his eyes remained fixed on the strange beast reaching towards him at a snail's pace, and the familiar jangling sound coming from the misshapen patches of bright color around its neck and wrists snapped at least one of his scattering trains of thought back to reality.

His hand shot forward: "Wait."

Did he seriously think that would work?

The thing stopped.

Huh.

Well.

He grabbed a bag hanging loose from his belt. He did not need to tear his eyes off the dark sharp beak pointed right at his face, long and with a thin tip that reminded him of a knife; his fingers swept across the broken pieces until he recognized the shape of the one he was looking for.

The round head perked slightly at the sight of the red half as it was lifted triumphantly before its beady eyes.

With the creaking sound of badly oiled wooden hinges the thing approached on all of its four wire thin limbs, its previous menacing countenance completely gone from its step.

It lifted a hand: a red shard dangled from it.

The kinstone pieces fit perfectly.

Four looked as the beast shook its strange taloned palm to make the little charm dance. Though its expression had not changed due with its limited facial features, he could read in their pose an frendlier, more relaxed disposition.

"I have others," he said, catching its attention, "For those two you have -- hold on..."

It was child's play to find them now that he was sure shifting his attention from the weird creature wouldn't result in mortal peril. The halves slotted together perfectly with those already dotting its form in handmade jewelery pieces, and before either of them knew it they were all complete, jangling with mirth as the wiry thing joyously rattled its too thin body.

Something good might happen.

And to his surprise, the beast turned to him, opened its sharp beak, and asked with the tone of a little kid: "Do they call you Link?"

Four blinked.

"Yes," he replied after a moment of arguing with himself. "They do."

The little thing clapped, the three talons on each hand making the strangest noise as they collided: "Then your friend is waiting there," it informed him; and one of its fingers pointed a few feet away, where a corridor passed through a tree much like a lethal wound.

"Oh," he noted. "Thank you."

Had it been there before?

Had it opened just now?

He spared another glance at the strange creature: it was tracing the completed blue kinstone with one talon, curiously.

It did not even look at him as he very cautiously stood up.

When Four looked back before passing through, it was happily dangling the medallions from its wiry frame. It turned to him; with a stare that could have almost been described as a smile (no way to see the curve of its lips with such a long beak) it waved at him.

He waved back.

He took another step.

The piece of forest he'd just been in vanished without a trace beneath a suddenly oppressive shadow.

Then Four spotted Hyrule, Sky, a slightly frazzled Legend and a noticeably at ease Twilight come in from another end of the meadow, and allowed himself to give a sigh of relief.

-

He did not remember there being so many puddles in the woods a few meters back, and he could confidently say he was more than fairly certain about this because a few meters back, before he suddenly lost sight of his companions, the mere act of walking had not been an absolute nightmare.

Now the ground had turned marshy, unstable, and he had to watch his feet carefully before he accidentally stepped into a hole too deep and got swallowed whole by the strange smelling water.

Making sure the patch he was standing on was solid enough, he dared to look around: no sign of the others.

Hopefully they would at least give out a loud splash if they fell into one of the puddles, he reasoned gloomily. It would have at least been a little funny.

A different sound caught his attention - what was that? Music? What kind? And what instrument? It seemed garbled, sputtering, as if part of it were underwater. The more he turned to find its source, the more the direction from which it seemed to come eluded him.

Maybe he should have retraced his path...

He raised a foot, took a step.

Then his other ankle was yanked back as he began to lift it, and in a second the water greeted his face with a hard, sickening squelch.

A mouthful of bog water choked his breath suddenly. His hands, pressing on the weakened ground to push him back out of the muddy prison he'd fallen into, caused instead the patches of land to sink further down, taking him with them.

Something viscous climbed up his calf.

Maybe, an older hero would have replied differently, more properly, in a true heroic fashion; but Wind was a young hero, and he had every reason to stamp his boot on the nose whatever was holding him back, and so he did just that.

The contact came with a hissing ouch, and with the sickening crunch of broken bones.

His face reemerged as he finally rolled himself off the malleable ground, back hitting it hard while he tried scramble to his feet and only managed to sit on a more solid portion of the swamp.

He'd seen eyes like that only on squids.

He'd seen pupils like that - thin, vertical, zigzagging - only on squids.

Squids did not have webbed hands with fingers like a frog's, long human nails sticking out of them.

Squids did not have round heads, lily pads seated upon seaweeds draped over it like strands of chitinous hair.

Squids did not rub their concave cheek and pull it back out with a horrid cacophony of cracks and crackles and creaks.

Squids did focus their empty gaze on him, cockeyed and shining with the gleam of water still covering their gelatinous skin after they'd emerged; but not like that.

Before he could shake himself out of the shock enough to pull himself back, the thing had slipped out of the bog to crawl onto the unsteady ground, onto the moss, onto him until its nearly transparent face covered in minuscule root-like veins was all but touching his, so light that if it hadn't been dripping swamp water all over him he might have not felt its limbs pressing on him.

He could not feel its breath on him. He wasn't keen on checking its chest to see if it moved at all.

It did not seem to share that sentiment.

Its hand grabbed his neck, not squeezing - but holding steadily, tilting his head left and right as though to better inspect him, sinking its slimy digits into his skin roughened by the sea salt.

Wind watched as its thin lips parted with a long whistle, an almost hypnotic sound.

"Oh," it sang - it sang, sweetly, with a melodious tone both high and low at the same time, bewitching and impossibly different from any sound he'd ever heard, like the song of a lonely whale - disappointed: "You're not him."

Him?

It shifted his head up and down again.

Its grip was gentle.

Longing, almost.

A fingertip brushed the corner of his mouth.

"You looked like him a lot," it commented sadly.

Him?

"Do they call you Link?"

Wind stared into the thin, long pupils.

He wasn't sure if he nodded; he couldn't really feel his body at the moment, pinned down by the dripping water and the stare like that.

He must have, though.

A lipless mouth opened over rows of baleen plates divided by an inky black gap with a grin.

The sight stunned him.

Then he felt a push, a pressure on his clavicles.

And then he was shoved in the water, with barely any time to catch a single breath.

His hands squeezed the creature's wrists so tight he snapped the stick-like bones within - which would have horrified him, certainly, if he hadn't been struggling not to gulp bog water into his lungs despite how terribly they burned - trying in vain to have it let go of him as he kicked aimlessly, as hard as he could; shattered wrists or not, the beast pushed him deeper into the swamp without relenting for even a single second.

Wind could swear he had heard a whistle, a song of sorts -- something akin to a laugh at the sight of his struggles.

Air hit his face with such force that he almost bruised.

The stars seemed to pulsate in strange, concentric patterns before his eyes. Once the shock subsided and the dull, spread out pain on his nape cleared his vision from the dizzyness, he found himself on the ground, looking at the far away crowns of trees.

Sopping wet, no doubt reeking, breathing raggedly, legs still halfway in the water.

He scrambled away from the shallow backwater pool; he barely managed to see something sink back into it before the stagnating pond returned perfectly still.

Somebody whistled.

"What on Earth happened to you?" Twilight's voice reached him as though obstructed by cotton: "Did you roll into a puddle?"

He blinked; he turned, dazed eyes passing over visages he vaguely recognized as Four's, Legend's, and Sky's without properly seeing them, before looking back at the small lake before him.

There was nothing.

Barely a darkened splash of water left over by a meek rain.

"It-" he started: "I- it, there - a swamp, I was, the - it - sang in - the, where did-"

A hand on his shoulder snapped him out of his stupor slightly. Hyrule looked over his eyes, pulling his wet hair out of them, to check for anything out of the ordinary; despite the shortness of breath and mildly dilated pupils, the younger hero seemed fine.

"I think this place is getting to us," Sky mumbled.

Next to him, Legend leaned a little closer and nodded.

Wind did not reply as he was pulled back to his feet by Four and Twilight, but he was inclined to agree.

-

The fog was far from new, by all means.

The trees that didn't look like they were going to swallow you whole were, but that was a frankly welcome change.

No, the biggest problem, the thing that had him most uneasy, was the hint of sound.

It was faint, and far away, and eerily quiet.

It seemed familiar, but not enough.

Of course, he moved towards it.

It never seemed to grow stronger, no matter how much he walked. It remained quiet, barely audible, but at the same time he could tell he was making progress: with each step, despite the cold damp air seeping into his bones, he felt closer and closer to the source.

A tree remained on the ground, uprooted. It must have been large, infinitely so, once, but its branches were nowhere to be seen and most of it was missing; its sorrounding bretheren had long wrapped the coils of their roots around it, corroding entire chunks of the bark to tear holes in the trunk as though they were cannibal beasts devouring a fallen former friend without remorse, biting into the ancient corpse with their enormous teeth and agonizing tardiness. It would have been a cruel fate, had they been animals; he wasn't sure it couldn't be considered one for a tree, either.

The sound waned around the dead rotten roots. He thought he saw them twitching as he passed them.

A scarecrow hid with them.

At least, he thought it was a scarecrow.

It was certainly poorly made, probably a kid's idea of one. What should have been its forearms were hanging limply from the moldy stake piercing through the cloth of its shirt, undetermined stuffing spilling from the holes and ripped fabric; around the height of what was supposed to be its knees there was a tight knot tying a flaccid looking leg to the one stuck in the cross-shaped structure's body, giving the limbs the shape of a very badly drawn 4. It lacked anything resembling hands or feet, and the patches upon a variety of tears had been sewn hazardly, with no rhyme or reason, letting more of whatever it was that stuffed it escape.

Its half shredded hat was perched upon nothing.

He stared at the black hole where a head would have sat. A pair of dull lights stared back.

They blinked.

He had the feeling that the roots were slowly closing behind him.

"Hello," he whispered.

The scarecrow stared.

He could hear them now.

A disgusting sound of rot latching onto rot.

He wasn't sure he could move.

The scarecrow stared.

Hadn't he seen it once?

A long time ago.

The air smelled sweet. He remembered it from the hunting huts he'd found, like the old man's.

It was the smell of putrefaction.

The scarecrow stared.

So the tree wasn't dead yet.

So it was being eaten alive.

He could hear the healthier roots of its loveless siblings wrap tighter around the decrepit trunk. He could feel them around his chest, like gaping maws so slowly shutting around him.

He could feel their lack of remorse, their lack of guilt.

He could feel the tree's lack of anger. Of pain.

Had one of them fallen instead, they would have eaten him all the same. Ripped it from this body. Had it become another.

Tree or grass or shrub or mushroom or moss, you will stay.

That is the way things are.

He could feel himself being eaten.

"Do they call you Link?" the scarecrow asked.

Its voice was like very fine glass breaking.

He nodded slowly.

The scarecrow turned; its lip forearm jumped up, pointing deeper into the enormous nearly hollow trunk.

He looked into the dark.

The roots that were clinging to his hair, his ears, his skin clattered to the ground as he moved forward, their rotten tissue not managing to hold onto him and breaking uselessly.

He walked into the dark.

He walked, and walked, and walked.

A hint of sound grew weaker behind him.

And then there was light.

As well as Sky, Legend, Wind, Four, Hyrule, and Twilight.

Oh.

Nice.

Four looked to the side, glancing to the three more dazed components of their group before turning back to the one who had just come out of the shade: "How are you feeling, champ?" he asked, just to make sure.

Wild looked at him as though he could see his brain.

"Fine, I think." he replied in a strange tone.

Hyrule patted his arm half-heartedly: "That's good to hear," he just said as he dragged him along.

-

The clattering sound made his muscles seize and freeze.

The laugh that came after it didn't help.

Breathe, he forced himself to think. Breathe. It had worked before, when he was too small and scared to do anything; it would work now, that he knew better, that he was stronger.

He tried to keep on walking; he failed.

Breathe.

"You won't even say hi?"

From the darkness of his eyelids his traitorous pupils conjured a sickly ivory face. He did not look.

Another laugh shattering on the ground like porcelain cups from which poison has been drunk: "How rude, how rude! We've been friends so long and you won't even look at me!"

If he hadn't burned every lesson his grandmother had given him into his brain so thoroughly that nothing could have ever ripped them from his memory, he would have snapped at it that they'd never been friends, that he'd never dream of being associated with something as horrible as that creature in any way, let alone as a friend.

But that is not how one speaks to a woodland dweller if they want to escape the encounter with their life.

Something rested on his shoulder. He felt it slink behind his nape like a cat, sinking claws into his other arm; its scent of mud and sage and dried blood would have overwhelmed him if it hadn't been so disgustingly familiar to him.

"Come on," it laughed: "Don't be mean."

Breathe.

The sickening smell tried to choke him.

"Leave me be, please," he murmured.

Another laugh: "No can do, no can do! Not until you look at me."

Breathe.

He opened his eyes.

The ghastly grin of sharpened teeth met his gaze.

He watched them open slightly, clacking with a bony sound at every syllable and appearing to lunge for him; the childish voice carressed his cheeks like a cold pane of ice: "There you are!"

From the empty bone sockets gleamed small orange irises.

The vertebrae of the neck were craned terribly, barely connected to one another. Cloth hanged from them, from empty spaces where the clavicles should have connected to the shoulders, from the floating forms of the humeruses, in the vaguest shape of a shirt, a tunic, something to cover up the fearful mystery underneath, to hide its madness-inducing emptiness from the eyes of the living.

The dead and dying had worse problems.

"It's been a while," the spirit clattered jovially as it moved its head even closer to his face.

"It has." he replied curtly.

A sharp phalanx poked the underside of his chin, almost prickling the skin enough to draw blood, and lifted it slightly to better inspect him. Its wispy laugh made his skin crawl with a shiver.

"You get longer every time I see you!"

He hated the familiarity in its voice. He hated that it spoke to him like a younger sibling, like a childhood friend, when he'd seen it picking at the bodies of soldiers fallen in Faron Woods like they hadn't been fighting for their lives just seconds earlier, their muscles and marrow disappearing with horrid squelches within the sharp rows of teeth before dropping, in a putrid mess of chewed gore, into the depths of that unknowable body.

Like it hadn't cornered him to feast on him when he'd been just a kid who had strayed from the path and gotten too lost to go back whence he came, saved only by his grandomther's advice.

Like it hadn't been haunting their home since, making him run away before it could get his cousin too.

He stared forward, trying to to ignore its cold breath on his skin.

"I can't stay." he muttered.

"Why not?" it protested; its claws sank in his shoulder, but he did not hiss. "It's been so long, so long! Let's play something, like back then! Do you remember, back then? When we played Question-And-Answer, and you always answered funny?"

"I did." he replied. He wasn't keen on thinking of his brushes with a fate worse than death - no matter how much fun it had been for them to watch him squirm.

The little body shook with a cacophony of bone against bone as it laughed loudly, delightedly: "I bet you still do that! I bet you do!"

It crawled on him too fast for him not to recoil; in a moment, his face was held in those sharp ivory hands, kept still right before that ghastly grin, those empty sockets from which gleamed small amber irises far, far into the darkness.

"Let's play again," it hissed, "Let's have fun again. It's been long."

"I can't stay."

"Why not? Why not? You keep avoiding me these days. You keep avoiding me and never want to play. Now you're here, you're here! And I want to play."

'These days' had been years.

"There are other friends." he replied. "I need to see them."

A glint of interest traversed the minuscule pupils likea lightning strike: "Other friends?" it asked.

Warriors bit his tongue. He regretted to have mentioned them already, to have dragged them into this without them even knowing; but it's never a good idea to eat the words given to a woodland dweller: "Yes."

The corners of its bony grin curled even more, widening it so much it seemed to split the skull in half.

"Other friends," it repeated, tilting its head. The strands of dead skin clinging still to the cranium like the parody of hylian ears tilted with it. "Other friends."

"Yes."

It chuckled without opening its jaws, with a guttural sound; its body rattled ominously, and he felt its shadow melt over him like a cascade of too thick icy water: "Other friends," it said once more; it began nodding, once, twice, thrice: "I see, I see. Other friends, I see! I can send you to them, I can, I can."

Hopefully, if he played his cards right, he could manage to be the sole recipient of any mauling, bloodied revenge its jealousy would unleash: "You would?"

"I can, I will!" it assured him. Its rough fingers traced along his jaw: "But I need a thing."

Of course. Warriors braced himself: "I'll see if I have it."

"Of course you do, of course! You know what it is," the dweller laughed: "You never want to give it to me."

The captain's blood froze in his veins.

No. No, no, no, no, absolutely not, no way - he couldn't, he could have never accepted, especially now, especially while looking for the others. To give it that power over himself was dangerous enough, but to allow it to have such influence over the rest of the heroes as well? While they were none the wiser? To simply hand their lives and bodies and souls over like that?

He'd learned to read the emptyness in its smile for the correct answer, and he knew it wouldn't have accepted a no, nor would any other offering have satisfied it.

Either he gave it power over nine lives, or they all got swallowed by the forest and got their bones picked clean by those teeth.

Warriors swallowed.

With a fate like his, it wasn't like he'd ever had agency to begin with.

"I only have one." his voice strained as he finally spoke.

"Is it yours?"

"Only mine."

It grinned wider. Its hand inched dangerously closer to his mouth, as though to claw the word out of it itself: "And it is?"

Hopefully it would work.

"Link."

The beast laughed.

Before he could fully feel himself as a living breathing creature again, he was walking into a darkened portal as fast as he could, followed only by the echo of a rattling childish voice.

"Next time we'll play! Next time!"

Next time, hopefully, would be never.

Somebody was talking now, in this patch of woodsthat felt so abnormally normal, saying he was fine, that there was nothing to worry about regarding him, that they should have hurried anyway; you never knew what could be hiding around.

It took him a moment to recognize who the voice was talking to. He had been so caught up in escaping his childhood tormentor, he'd barely realized the entire Chain save from Time was here.

It took him another, longer moment to realize that the voice had come from himself.

Once the others weren't looking, he clenched his every muscle for a few seconds, tensing his entire body to the point where he started trembling from the strain, and released. He moved his hands carefully, in nonsensical yet complex patterns: no hindrance. No thoughts different from his own.

So far, he was still in control of himself.

He hurried his gait. He wasn't too excited about waiting around to see what happened once that thing decided to start toying with him.

-

Time was awoken by worried voices.

His eye cracked open: half a dozen faces leaned over him, asking him all at once how he was feeling, what had happened, who had attacked him, telling him about confused encounters he couldn't keep track of. A pair of hands was checking his head for any concussions, another was assessing the damage to his arm and closing the punctures before even more blood could pour through; a final pair was slowly dispersing the younger heroes fussing around him, to give him space, to let him breathe.

Four and Warriors helped him sit up.

"Was it an ambush?" Wind's voice reached his ears.

He couldn't stop himself from nodding in reflex: "Nothing to be worried about," he reassured them, his throat dry and hoarse: "Just... It was just a mistake."

He was sustained to his feet, helf fast by younger arms until he was stable enough to have his sword and shield handed back to him.

Questions muddled around his ears as they walked slowly, urgently, into the sylvan tunnel that would have led them outside of that infernal labyrinth.

"No," he answered them all quietly, very quietly: "No, nothing to be worried about. Saw an old friend, is all."

He swallowed a knot in his throat.

"He just has a hard time recognizing me these days."

('These days' had been years.)

[gibbearish]

love when ppl defend the aggressive monetization of the internet with "what, do you just expect it to be free and them not make a profit???" like. yeah that would be really nice actually i would love that:)! thanks for asking

[jjkyaoi]

by the way. people are allowed to complain about this season feeling rushed. i don’t know when it became a thing in this fandom to completely jump people who have valid complaints like YES arcane is a fantastically produced and beautifully animated show and nobody will be able to top it but they did start things with some characters only for it to never go anywhere so it can all be wrapped up in three episodes 😭

[eye-merely-jest]

hrrghgghbmnnmm x-men evolution nightcrawler….

i actually didn't care for him when i first started watching evo 'cause i thought him annoying as shit but now that is PRECISELY why i'm obsessed with him. Weird Kid™ kurt is just such an endearing concept and it's like he's just like me and I FUCKING LOVE THIS GUY SO MUCH

[heybiji]

he opens his mouth to say something

but stops

[kedreeva]

#we spoke of this a LOT at work after that one tech was murdered and hidden in a wall

hi!👋 hello! kedreeva! i’m going to need to ask you to explain this!!!!

So back in 2009, a lab student named Annie Le was murdered at Yale university. Cameras saw her going on into a building, but not out again and it was like, the eve of her wedding (or close to? I don't remember) so clearly she had places to be and people waiting for her so they immediately started looking and the next day (or so? Anyway on the day of her wedding) they found her body in a recess in a wall, down in the areas where the research animals were kept. It turns out, a tech had killed her, but since there were cameras like EVERYWHERE, he just, I guess, left her there. Well, hid the body where it was. I don't remember how they caught him, but they did. It was a horrifying story. It still is.

And it was a huge news story among the folks at my workplace because, at the time, I was working at a different university, as an animal husbandry technician. As you can imagine this was a kind of intense time to be in that situation. They started offering, like, I'm not gonna say counseling but it was "if you need to talk we would prefer you talk to us about something wrong rather than kill anyone about it" and as techs (even if we were not even the same kind of tech, the killer was a lab tech and we were husbandry techs but I think a lot of people assumed it had been a husbandry tech since she was in an animal area), we were kind of getting the side eye from lab people for weeks afterwards. Like they thought we were gonna go "wow that's a fantastic idea, you're next!" or something, idk. And I mean like, people would freeze when you were alone in a hallway, or turn and walk the other way, or duck into the nearest room and watch you walk past, and they were all being super nice/civil to us when they did have to interact. It was very atypical behavior for lab people. Like not all of them, some of them had always been nice and weren't worried, but some of the people who had been unbelievable dicks previously were walking on eggshells. And the people who had friends in other universities reported this was happening at their jobs, too.

And instead of talking to The Man (because all the higher ups were garbage at the time), we just. talked among ourselves. It was a lot of "I may say I feel like strangling lab people sometimes when they do things that drive me up a wall but I don't MEAN it you know that right" and it also led to group discussions of what would be a theoretical *better* solution to hiding a body than what happened, with clear disdain for doing things like hiding bodies in walls, which is a terrible idea and one we would never do (looking at the people who think we might have decided this was a great idea actually).

Which consequently led to a lot of supervisors and/or managers that happened to overhear us bringing us donuts or arranging pizza for lunch in like, some kind of bid to help us feel appreciated, I guess, so that we wouldn't murder anyone, even though none of us were going to do that anyway. But also none of us were in a position to turn down free donuts or pizza or whatever.

And then after a few weeks, maybe a month or so, people just kind of forgot and moved on and things went back to normal like fifty people hadn't spent every lunch hour for weeks talking quietly among themselves about how human bodies would definitely fit into a carcass disposal barrel or that you'd have to crush hip bones and/or skulls before incineration. Hypothetically.

Like I said, it was a VERY weird time to be at my job, and every time I remember it happening feels like a fever dream. I can't even imagine what it was like at Yale.

[faaun]

last night i got home kind of tipsy and very much in tears and my mother told me the force you exert to keep someone in your life is proportional to the force with which they will leave your life. if you have to fight tooth and claw to keep them, their leaving will be just as hard, just as harsh, and just as definite.

[triglycercule]

can the mtt commit more crimes that just murder please i know theyre the MURDER time trio but ppppleasse,,,, please,,,,,,

they'd be terrible to be next to on the highway. horror's going 160 mph amd has long past gone over the speed limit. dust's out for BLOOD and by blood i mean your tires. he's somehow sniping those round rubber wheels from the high moving vehicle with the precision of a master fruit ninja player. if your car explodes or flips over in the process that's not his fault. and then to make matters worse for everyone on the highway killer's in the backseat scratching up the doors and windows of your car with a knife everytime horror gets close to another car and oops he accidentally just disfigured your face also did i mention theyre all drunk during this

ok so theyve all got the classic face WHY DONT THEY ABUSE IT!!!! horror gets to do a little paper mache to cover up his head hole and then wearing glasses. killer i dont know what the FUCK he can do to get rid of his perpetual tears but let's just pretend that theyre conveniently gone for now. and then all dust has to do is put down his hood! anyways identity theft is cool. imagine how much they could totally fuck up classic's reputation with this. set up fake tinder profiles and then scam people for their credit card info/free dates (while ordering every expensive thing) and stealing wallets. walking into various grillby's's around the multiverse and telling terrible jokes. like ACTUALLY bad jokes. and then of course just being a huge piece of shit at the bar. god theres so many things they could do pretending to be classic. which one of us is hikaru looking ahh except the only difference between the three is the color of the stains on their clothes (either gray (dust) black (killer) or red. well faded red (horror))

ROBBERY!!!! ROBBERIES PLURAL!!!??? train robbery gas station robbery bank robbery GOVERNMENT robbery (what would you rob the government for?? documents??? idk) anyways. mtt robbing a train except its just a really shitty plan and they dont know jackshit about what theyre doing. killer's taken over the conductor's cabin and now he is booking it. how fast are trains allowed to go idk but the maximum. anyways meanwhile horror's on the tracks fucking up the rails with his strength or whatever (listen i know he's weak but picking and choosing what hcs i believe in is my art) and dust is there to teleport him away before the train crashes into him and turns him into a trolley problem victim. and then of course that shit doesnt fucking work and the train just ends up flipping over and catching on fire or something (killer survives because of course he does he's killer). and then in the end dust just has to flip the entire train over and they just stroll into the part that actually HAS the money

and then they go out and get ice cream. sometimes the murderers need to take a break from murdering and just do NORMAL crime yk???

[ganondoodle]

Sorry ab the shitty English translations/localizations, it's bc they think that Americans won't get it otherwise (bc when we act stupid, we act REALLY stupid), our bad 💀

[novelconcepts]

In watching more interviews with Liv about Van and the escalation of Van's pragmatism to such dark degrees, I find myself genuinely baffled that anyone could ever think Van the bad guy. I mean, I'm perplexed at finding ANY of these girls The Bad Guy. The bad guy is the situation. It's being lost. It's freezing. It's starving. It's being scraped down to the barest bone of being alive. They make choices that might be snippy, or cruel, or hard-headed, sure--Shauna refusing to just hash it out with Jackie; Jackie being too stubborn to come inside; Taissa refusing to discuss her situation plainly; etc--but by the time we reach the end of season 2, it doesn't even matter. Petty bullshit doesn't matter. Jealousy doesn't matter. Those things are still going to be present and complicated, because--for all their choices, for all the distancing they're trying to do--these kids ARE still human beings. But it isn't the point.

The point is survival. Plain, simple, straightforward. Van's pragmatism is survival. It is the difference between living another day with blood on your teeth or dying pretty. It is the difference between fighting forward through the fire and the snow and the hell of it all, and laying down to die. Van knowing, in watching the ritual violence of Shauna beating Lottie nearly the death, that they will be killing and eating one another soon. Van coming up with the cards for the hunt. Van not blinking when the moment comes, Van choosing a weapon that doubles as a tool to bring the body back, Van refusing to apologize for staying alive--it's not evil. It's not Bad Guy behavior. It's purely about survival, because there is nothing else left to her--or to any of them. They can play the pretty little Sweet Angel Girl game and die, or they can get dirty, bloody, horrific and fight. Van chooses the fight. Van chooses to fight for herself, for her lover, for her team, even knowing not everyone is going to make it out...because the alternate path there is that no one makes it out. Van knew the baby wouldn't live. Van knows the rest of them won't, either. Not unless they start making the hard choices.

And, honestly, the fact that Van sees this narrative coming. Comes up with this plan. Brings out the cards. To me, that is the opposite of Bad Behavior. That is as close to justice as anyone can find in the wilderness. If someone else came up with an idea, maybe it would have come down to voting--but that would have had such a human element to it, with bitterness or hostility or whatever ultimately petty shit always comes of humans selecting who to Other. The cards don't leave room for that. It isn't fair, because the situation isn't fair, because Man vs. Nature isn't fair, but it's as close to a just system as they could possibly find. It's the kindest solution to an unwinnable game. Not to bring it back to American Gods again, but all I can think is "it's easy, there's a trick to it: you do it, or you die." Van gave them that.

[casualavocados]

That's enough! I can't stand you being this drunk. Fuck. Chen Yi— Get up.

KISEKI: DEAR TO ME Ep. 09

[ghostingcrows]

I used to talk about this a lot but 

IDW Prowl is probably one of the most complex characters in the comics and I absolutely hate it when hes reduced down to “the asshole character”

Cause like

Yeah sure hes got a bit of a stick up his ass

But I feel like people just end there analysis of him there

Has he committed a lot of war crimes and done unethical stuff

Yes

But so has literally EVERYONE else in this universe

Starscream is literally the pinnacle of war crimes

The comics make a point calling out even Optimus for his questionable actions and orders during the war with the Dinobots saying he makes them do the dirty work for him

Megatron literally commits genocide and yet his story ends with an alternate version of him going free and exploring the universe with the LL

The literal war lord was treated better and is looked upon more positively than Prowl and I think it just came down to how fucked Prowl got by the writers

Because while Megatrons redemption was all in your face and you got a shit ton of flashbacks that try to justify the eventual atrocities he would commit you don’t get that with Prowl

Even when Prowl is absolutely in the right you constantly have it disregarded by characters making jokes about him overreacting (being mad OP is sending the space tyrant away with free reign of his own ship isn’t overreacting btw-) and as such you start to think of him as a genuinely irrational character when hes not

Prowl is bad at keeping the relationships he forms yes 

But he is not always at fault for that

While his relationship with CD ended poorly Chromedome is also shown to be kinda of a dick sometimes and commits his fair share of fucked up things such as when he literally ATTACKS PROWL AND FORCES HIS WAY INTO HIS MIND TO PROTECT HIMSELF FROM THE CONSEQUENCE OF HIS ACTIONS WHEN PROWL THREATENS TO TELL REWIND ABOUT THE SHITTY STUFF HE DID IN HIS PAST

This leads to Prowls inevitable snowball out of control when this attack leads to an opening for Bombshell (I think its been a while since I read the comics) to use his tech to mind control him forcing him into combining with the contructicons

Something we learn is an immensely intimate thing with their minds being kinda melded 

This was something Prowl did not want 

And when all was said and done and he was calmed down he still had to live with that gesalt he was forced into with them following him around like fanboys

Nobody ever even really stopped to check in on him 

And as such he understandable went a little bit insane

He had just faced an immensely traumatic invasion of his body and mind and on top of stress form feeling like everything was out of his control and like he couldn’t stop the bad things from happening alongside bitter emotions being brought back up with a return visit to Earth and reunion with spike AND the fact that he feels like Optimus doesn’t trust him and like hes just letting Starscream do whatever he want (something that understandably freaks him out seeing as how he spent 4 million years fighting Starscream) he just kinda snaps

He trys to destroy the space bridge so that no one else can leave or get through and so he can regain some semblance of control

Is it wrong

Yes

But he was not in a good state of mind and no one was helping him at all 

And immediately following his arrest afterward Prowl is confronted by OP who is supposed to be his friend and when Prowl doesn’t say the right things to him to placate him Optimus’ response is to punch him out a window and beat the shit out of him

And not being given any room to breath this is immediately follow up my him getting kidnapped by Tarantulas who is very obviously an impactful and negative part of his past

Prowl just has bad event, one after the other, happen to him over and over again and not only does no one check up on him afterwards to see if hes okay but everyone actively makes fun of him for being understandable unstable

Prowl is a fucking tragedy and not many people seem to be able to see beyond what characters in the comics think of him

[dykedvonte]

I hate the stretch lines in the front of Curly's uniform because that means the devs rushed to make a model in like a month or so and thought "They gotta at least know he has huge knockers, gotta know he's got back pain." Cause like what is the thematic importance of his tits having overhang?

What responsibility is that representing? Breast reduction? It shows an inherent greed in his character due to the excess and heshouldletmeholdone and that he clearly is blinded cause if he tries to look down his damn ladder all he's seeing is his own cleavage.

[wickedlyqueer]

i just gotta say u have been the backbone of the gelphie fandom for YEARS and seeing all these new gelphie fans for the movie and coming to ur blog is making me so happy like wickedlyqueer has BEEN on the gelphie frontlines!!!!!!

🥹🥹🥹 That's one of the kindest messages I've ever received!!

Not just gelphie but the fandom itself is so precious to me. The majority of my online friends I've met through this fandom (and it's double hilarious to see them all crawling back to it after seeing the movie 😆)

[bromcommie]

trying to draw fanart for the first time in 89235 years like "what do these people I stare at all day every day look like again"

[boycaca]

I think its somewhat telling that the gnosis was placed inside the shouki no kami rather than scara containing it in his chest the same way that venti did with his gnosis. I get that its probably more so because scara needed a much grander body for his god form and the electro gnosis just so happened to be at the centre of it… but i cant help but think of it as the games way of telling us that he truly is not fit to contain the gnosis, even in peak form when all his powers are unleashed, he still needs to build a whole new body as the gnosis’ vessel, that the so called “heart” he thought was rightfully his would not actually make him satisfied or fulfilled, as it seems to be the embodiment of all of scara’s obsessions