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squigglywindy · 2 years

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The Loaf

This one's for you, @bllaaaaarrgh

Title: The Loaf

Warnings: Implied major character death. The loaf wins. Unironic use of the word "Yonkers".

Summary: Wild fist fights a massive loaf of bread. Read all about it here: https://at.tumblr.com/bllaaaaarrgh/imagine-this-wild-fist-fighting-a-massive-loaf-of/lsi6mmc4dpb6

General Notes: I tried something different with this one; it switches back and forth between past and present. Past will be in italics.

More Notes: This is sheer insanity. I had a lot of fun with it, and am fully prepared to face the consequences of my actions.

It was a curse, he was sure of it. Whether it was the bread or himself that was cursed, he may never know for sure. But he did know, with absolute certainty, that normal bread didn't behave in such a manner.

But he didn’t have time to question the origins of the loaf. Barely had time to arm himself with a spoon. By the time he saw the loaf, it was too late.

It had all started hours earlier, when Time had called for a break and the Links had settled down in a clearing to rest their legs, refill their waterskins, or take a quick nap. It had taken minimal convincing for everyone to agree to let Wild wander; go off on his own to run off some energy and scavenge for interesting mushrooms. And that, if he had been able to look back on the occasion, may have been his first mistake.

The loaf towered over him, easily five feet tall. It was just bread, really, but he could swear it had a face. The perfectly baked crust flaked in such a way as to give it the impression of angry eyebrows, glaring down at Wild as if he had, somehow, personally wronged the bread. As if he weren’t solely responsible for giving it life.

He found the mushroom beside a tree, nestled between a mess of roots as mushrooms so often are. It was bigger than any mushroom he’d ever seen, and glowing a bright intense orange. It seemed alive, in a way that far surpassed all other fungi. The glow pulsated in the evening light, and a grin broke across Wild’s face as ran forward, clutching the stalk of the mushroom between his hands. It was hard to pull up, the mycelium reaching far into the ground. The mushroom was strong, but Wild was stronger. Eventually, the roots snapped and Wild stumbled backwards with the loss of resistance, landing hard on the ground but grinning from ear to ear at the massive mushroom in his hands. It was going to make a fantastic snack, he thought. And that, anyone would agree, was his second mistake.

Wild was a gentleman, so he let the bread throw the first punch. If what the bread did could, in fact, be called a punch. It moved in ways that shouldn’t have been possible for such a massive wall of freshly cooked yeasty goodness, traveling on invisible feet to hurl itself at Wild, whacking his head with the usually-satisfying crackle of crisp bread crust being torn. It didn’t sound as nice, up close; not when the bread was pounding into his skull.

He swung the spoon, then; whacking it into the side of the bread in a desperate attempt to bring down his biggest mistake. To undo the monster he had created. But the bread was a step ahead, as it always seemed to be. It made sense, he realized as it happened, that a bread that could come to life would also be able to absorb a wooden spoon.

The spoon disappeared into the side of the bread, consumed just like every other chance he had at defending himself. It was just him and his fists, now. Just Wild’s bare hands against the bread.

He didn’t take the mushroom back to the makeshift camp to show the others; if he did, they’d only tell him not to eat it. They’d say it’s ‘too big’ and ‘too orange’ and ‘doesn’t even grow around here where’d you find it put it back’. There were times he was absolutely sure that they didn’t want him to have any fun at all.

And so he set up right where he was. Started a fire, heated up his portable cooking pot, and set to work on preparing his latest creation.

The mushroom was powdery; almost flour-like, when he crushed it with a rock and sprinkled it into the pot. With a texture like that, only one course of action made sense: he was going to make bread. Or a pancake, really, given the supplies he had to work with. But it would be huge and delicious and when he brought it back to camp, everyone would ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’ over how good it was. Just as long as they never found out what it was made out of.

He tossed in the other ingredients; some milk of questionable origins, an egg he’d found in a hot spring three or four months prior, and a sprinkle of his live yeast culture. Afterall, there was nothing worse than flat bread.

Once the last few ingredients were added, he stirred it all up with his spoon and sat on a rock to wait; humming quietly to himself as he watched the pot patiently. Alone, in the woods, cooking bread made out of mushrooms. It was truly the recipe for his third mistake.

With nothing left to fight back with, Wild flung his fists with all his might. They impacted against the side of the loaf, bread flakes flying but doing nothing to halt the path of carnage the loaf was creating. The fifth time his fist connected with the crust, he was forcefully reminded of the fate of his favorite spoon.

He was absorbed. Slowly, to give him the illusion of hope. His hand sunk into the bread, encased within the warm interior of his latest baking endeavor. “Yonkers!” He shouted in panic as the bread sucked him in up to her shoulder. He was powerless to fight back against the loaf; he had no weapons, and bread would not hear reason. He was well and truly trapped.

The bread didn’t stop rising when it hit pancake-height, but he didn’t really question it until it crested the rim of the pan. It just kept going up, and Wild could only stare in wonder at the cooking miracle he had discovered. They would be eating this bread for weeks; and he wouldn’t be leaving the area without a stockpile of the magical mushroom that had made it all possible.

He didn’t worry until the bread actually stepped over the edge of the pan and onto the forest floor, dried leaves sizzling under its heat.

He jumped up, then, reaching for his sword out of instinct. But the bread beat him to it. It moved as a single unit; just one hulking loaf that took everything in its path, pressing into Wild and consuming his sword. His shield, his slate, his cloak. The loaf was after his very dignity, and he wouldn’t stand for it.

He grabbed his spoon from where he had leaned it against a tree and stood his ground. He didn’t call for help, he didn’t fetch the others, he faced the consequences of his experimental cooking all on his own. An undeniable fourth mistake.

It was painless, being taken by the bread; a bright spot he would ponder briefly as he was absorbed. It was warm, and cozy, and almost felt like a hug. A hug he couldn’t escape from, delivered by a loaf of bread, but a hug all the same. He fought with everything he had, but it was a futile battle from the start. He had spent his whole life fighting; at least as much of it as he was aware of. He had taken down guardians and yiga and hinoxes a hundred times his size. He had ridden a lynel as he took it down, and laughed in the face of Ganon himself. But this, he knew now, was his weakness. He could never have been prepared for the loaf.

“Yonkers,” He whispered sadly as the bread worked its way up to his head. It was a cool story, at least. He only hoped that somebody could defeat the loaf in time to tell it.

#Story Time With Squiggles #Linked Universe #LU Wild #The Loaf #Wild cooks #Wild picks a mushroom #Bread of questionable sentience #Implied major character death #But don't take that too seriously this is full on crack #Don't take any of this seriously #Wild loses his favorite spoon #LU Time #He's mentioned by name so I'll tag him I guess #Guys this is poetry for real #Squiggles gets really really sleep deprived and really really stressed? Something like this was bound to happen #Yonkers!

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tinyagitator · 1 year

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Oops I had some spare time at work, so I made a little s2 announcement cake

#ofmd #our flag means death #cake decorating #There's inky black kraken tentacles squiggling up the sides of the cake

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popupsquiggles · 2 months

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...i dont think i want to describe this part.

#tw implied death #squiggles pop up!!#genlosers do rp

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toxictrannyfreak · 2 years

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Just read Nona the Ninth and. what the fuck what the fuck what the FUCK. Cows watch sunsets We just wanted to save you you were so sick She could hear Varun sing You haven’t been in the River lately And I’m MEGA dead Go loud You could have lived for her but you didn’t know how You’re on Kevin toilet duty for being a zombie Is this not how meat loves meat? I’m going insane and dying and suffering AND there wasn’t even a mention of my beloved niche blorbo Matthias Nonius. I have to go to school tomorrow what the hell.

#like. like. MAN??? Tamsyn Muir my DUDE??? what the hell???#fuck how did you know that the thing I wanted most in the world was to watch John Gaius’s slow miserable tragic necromantic corruption arc #and also that that was the thing I least wanted in any universe ever???????#and. and DEMONS??? and towers in the River and tower princes??? but most importantly Jod/Sarpedon what the ever loving fuck #I’m dead I’m dying I’m resurrected I’m a construct squiggles on paper should not force me to feel EMOTIONS my death #stfu kor #tlt #ntn #ntn spoilers #nona the ninth #nona the ninth spoilers #Matthias Nonius

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constellationcrowned · 4 months

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~"We carry the dead with us but we never let them guide us. We carry them selfishly." (for Kariom)

The Ever Pleasant Mr Bates

The guilt weighs him down immediately. It drags Kariom's gaze down, down, down towards the ground and sets his fingers---fingers that were now trembling faintly---searching for the bracelet he'd shoved into his pocket. Milosh's bracelet. Kariom finds it in short order and not even wrapping his fingers tightly around the wooden accessory stills that incessant trembling. Of course he carries them with him; be it selfishly or otherwise, he carries them with him because---

Kariom's grip on the bracelet tightens further still---tighter, tighter, tighter, feverishly tight---until he feels the ink dried into the carving of the all too familiar sualokin visages practically PULSE AGAINST THE SKIN OF HIS PALM AND FINGERS. It was trying to answer him in its own way. It was trying to heed his call and protect him like it'd promised to do in the Slough. It was trying to do the things it could no longer do.

"WHAT'S WRONG WITH BEING SELFISH....?" He had to carry them. He had to. He had to. He had to. He carried the Tsourai they'd lost; he carried Milosh, he even carried himself, Kariom carried all of them with shaking, struggling hands as far as he could and for as long as he could because if he loosened his grip for even a fraction of a second he would forget. The stars would steal them away as they had before and with each and every shuffling Kariom's grip loosened, his hands shook more and more and more as his memories fell and then, eventually, clicked back into place....but not quite. Never perfectly. Always tenuous. And that inevitable tenuousness made Kariom need them all the more.

Like the stars themselves the ones he'd lost still whispered in his ear and dogged his heels---even when he couldn't place their faces or voices for whatever stretch of time---they stayed and stayed and stayed and in return he reached for them again and again and again and wasn't that what one could consider being guided? A constellation. A memory. A word---friend, kiddo, brother---all of them continuing to light his way even in the darkest of places, no matter how many times he faltered and fell. Again. Again. Again. Just keep trying kiddo and one day---

Now Kariom's expression twists; a stark vulnerability surging through him only to color the star-reader's face and weaken his voice as his nails begin to dig small, bloody rivulets into his own palm.

".....I won't leave any of them behind." Not again. "I REFUSE TO LEAVE THEM BEHIND and I don't care how selfish that makes me."

#;;ask response: ic kariom #;;ask response: with squiggles #this is one of my favorite lines in the entire thing and Kari is perfect for it and I know you know that ;;;;#I cannot stress how much I agonized over making this response as perfect as I could! gaahhh #anonymous #death mention tw #blood mention tw #memory loss mention tw

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chemicalarospec · 7 months

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I've avoided posting about this before because I've seen a bunch of people criticized for how they draw (East) Asian eyes respond with "I'm Asian" (hot take... but you can internalize bias against a group you're in, including caricature-ish standards for them in art), but since we're getting into it with racism in how people draw Light Yagami, I think it's bonkers how accepted it is that artists draw him with squintier eyes the more evil they see him as.

#there's one drawing ppl rebloged a lot where his eyes are literal squiggles andn itmade me so uncomfortable but i felt like there would be #so many counter arguments if i said it felt racist #light yagami #death note #death note fandom #light yagami fanart #i said this #chem's death note arc #racism #anti-asian racism #there's this comic i saw by a black guy abt how to draw black ppl and one thing he mentions is that they should have the same style as every #one else like uf no on eelse has exaggerated features thats a caricature but if thats the whole style then it makes sense #would love to share the comic actuallly but on mobile rn #anyways yeah i do see ppl (I'm thikng of an asian example) break style to draw slanted asian eyes

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alexandriteobscuraarchive · 1 year

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~"'Soothing the savage Flynn' sounds both apt and entertaining, don't you think?" (for Kariom uwu)

"I can't argue with you there," He also can't help but laugh a little either, "But if that's your goal then I WISH YOU THE BEST OF LUCK."

"I'm more apt to give Flynn REASONS TO BE CROSS, after all. Maybe Bo can HELP YOU TAME THE SAVAGE SUALOKIN, hm?" In all honesty Kariom could help. He and Flynn fought---and fought often---but it was fighting with an ease of familiarity that never lasted long nor crossed any true lines into some unforgivable territory. They always came back to each other in the end and made up in some form or fashion, although....

The star-reader's expression---the stars, the stars, the stars, the stars caused much malice within his old friend and caretaker---shifts then, his grin falling away entirely as his mind drifts backwards towards the evening of the Tigla-Dera. A line had been crossed right then and there---the PERMANENT SCAR NOW DOMINATING HIS CHEST was, in essence, that line, the fact that Flynn had MURDERED HIM IN COLD BLOOD was that line---and Kariom just....didn't understand.

"........" Suddenly he doesn't know what to say or how to feel but Kariom knows that it's too many things all at once. Why? Why? Why? Why would Flynn do such a thing to him? That evening had been no different than their usual so why....? ".......Can we talk about something else? Please?"

#;;ask response: ic kariom #;;ask response: with squiggles #anonymous #death mention tw

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unravellingsilencehq · 2 years

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“Oh, Merlin, tell me, does THE GOSSIP get what she deserves?” She is NEUTRAL & OPEN to finding out.“

— she walks through the world as ;

name → rita skeeter pronouns → she/her identification → cis-female year of birth → september 1955 - september 1956 face claim → chloe bridges blood status → half-blood sexual orientation → bisexual occupation → columnist for society and scandals at the daily prophet future information → court reporter during the death eater trials, renown published author of multiple biographies including albus dumbledore, newt scamander, severus snape and harry potter

— she is best described as ;

The scent of INK & FRESH PARCHMENT spritzed with FRENCH PERFUME. She’s as DELICATE as the FEATHER of a QUILL and as SHARP as the nib at the end. Her words CUT, SHARP and QUICK, leaving your REPUTATION in RIBBONS with just a flick of her ELEGANT WRIST.

— her story starts with ;

tw: death

One of the most famous names in wizarding press, Rita Skeeter is the sharpest tongue in London no one wants to be cut by, although she can be a brilliant friend to you… for the right price. Rita came from good stock, with a father who was head of Public Information Services for the Ministry and a mother who was a top stylist for Witch Weekly. She was raised in a privileged household, watching from the bannister as her parents hosted beautiful parties in their obscenely tall townhouse. From an early age Rita longed for a life just like theirs, filled with beauty, travel, notoriety and respect. It fuelled her from the minute she woke up to the moment she rested her head. With her father constantly at work or away on business trips, and her mother consumed by her small social circle of gossips, Rita’s childhood soon became lonely. She spent most days by herself, exploring her parents personal library of articles and pouring over The Daily Prophet each day as it arrived, and her mother’s Witch Weekly on Sundays. Rita knew what her calling in life was. She was to be a journalist. The most famous journalist in the wizarding world of her generation.

Rita learned that if she hovered in the shadows while her parents chatted away, she’d learn about many secrets and rumours, a technique she would perfect whilst away at school. By the time Rita had received her letter to Hogwarts she had already read biographies or articles of most of the professors and had researched as much as she could about the school, in order to ensure where she stood with faculty. She saw Hogwarts as an opportunity to finally practise her journalism skills on stories that slipped from the mouths of the students. Rita was sorted into Ravenclaw instantly, without hesitation, she began to sort through her fellow Ravenclaw students, unafraid of hurting feelings or causing disgruntlement as she searched for friends she deemed tasteful. EMMA SQUIGGLE [rival/former best friend/colleague] and ADRIAN CAVERLY [best friend/colleague] quickly became her closest friends, whilst DAISY HOOKUM [close friend/colleague], GILDEROY LOCKHART [colleauge/close friend] and XENOPHILLIUS LOVEGOOD [friend] quickly became good friends she enjoyed chatting news stories with. In her fourth year, Rita began The Hogwarts Gazette, under the careful gaze of Professor McGonagall, hiring herself as the newspaper's editor.

The paper published a variety of articles focusing on school political issues, sports coverage, a gossip column and a fashion section. With a knack for finding things out and a clever way of spinning a tale, Rita ran the gossip column and had developed quite the habit of uncovering other’s dirty laundry and leaving it to dry for everyone to see. This, of course, did not sit well with everyone and Rita gained a negative reputation amongst her fellow students as someone to be wary of. The boys in her year group, HARRISON BAGNOLD [acquaintance/person of interest], KALEB JOHNSON [acquaintance], ELEZAR SMITH [acquaintance/person of interest], MICHAEL THOMAS [acquaintance] and CRISTIANO PARKINSON [acquaintance] were not her biggest fans, whilst younger students PETER PETTIGREW [person of interest], JAMES POTTER [person of interest], REMUS LUPIN [person of interest] and SIRIUS BLACK [person of interest] also found her constant prying into their personal lives just as invasive. Other people saw the light and wanted her on side.

Rita found she enjoyed the power of being feared and appeased by the likes of ANDRESSA PARKINSON [friend], ISOLDE CROUCH [friend], LUCILLE JONES [friend], FLORENCE JONES [friend] and BERTHA JORKINS [close friend]. By her seventh year, she was able to transform into a beetle and with this, was able to listen into many more conversations. She also learned that with a seductive smile and a wink here and there she could get anyone to tell her just about anything. Thanks to her continuous summer internships at Witch Weekly, through her mother’s connections and a good word here and there from her father, Rita eventually landed a job at The Daily Prophet as an intern. Peeking through her father’s files and transforming herself into a beatle to access events, meant that she began to get one scoop after the other. It was a lot of hard work, long hours and the lack of a social life but eventually Rita was awarded her own column and Rita Skeeter’s Scandal Sheets was born. At just twenty-five she was something of a prodigy, a major celebrity everyone loved and feared.

Having similar interests, most of Rita’s friends at the paper also established themselves at The Daily Prophet, becoming fantastic journalists and photographers in their own right. But not everyone was happy about her success. Emma had been like a sister to Rita, her best friend- she trusted her with everything. With an absent family at home, Emma was her family, which made their falling out all the more harder. As Rita rose to fame, she watched as Emma tried to wriggle out of her shadow, Rita had never thought of Emma as in her shadow- though she could see why others would think so. The conversations became more brief, she noticed as her expression soured and then at a party that was held in celebration of her new column, Rita watched as Emma kissed the man she’d been seeing, AUGUSTUS ROOKWOOD [former romantic liaison] and disappeared out the door. Rita would never let anyone know how much it hurt her. She cried in private, winged her eyeliner and wore a brave face for work. It stung harder when Emma and Augustus made things official, but she’d never let it show. Rita had her column and her fame and not even Emma could take that from her.

The disappearances and the eventual murders of BOOKER BAGNOLD [person of interest] and AMELIA BONES [person of interest] were more than just tabloid gossip. Rita was desperate to figure out who was behind the murders. The werewolf angle didn’t fit, so under the guise of her column, Rita attended exclusive events trying to find out information. A face in the crowd that had changed after the death of Booker. Harrison Bagnold and his girlfriend ROSALINE DAVIS [person of interest] had a knack for being around everyone who went missing, though it could just be coincidence. Alongside her photographer BENEDICT MISSLETHORPE [colleague], Rita has been following him to various events, including the most recent wedding of her former adversary GENEVIEVE AVERY-WILKES [adversary/person of interest]. Rita didn’t expect Genevieve’s husband to drop down dead at the wedding and divert her focus, although Rita is exploring the story on the killer bride, Rita has not yet exhausted the idea Harrison is in some way connected to what’s happened, and she is determined to get to the bottom of it before anyone else. Especially Emma.

— she is a LEVEL 6 WITCH & readied for war ;

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malusrecord · 6 months

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~"You don't seem to be afraid of anything at all, sister. I wish I had your bravery." (for Angela!!!)

Angela's expression remains stony but it takes effort---of course she's afraid, she'd be out of her mind not to be, they all should be---but somehow she manages to keep everything....even. Impenetrable. Hopefully. Bravery had nothing to do with conviction.

"Were you asleep during the sermon this morning, sister?" The word sister is scathing, even moreso than the ACCUSATION OF NEGLIGENCE, "Our Mother Superior even read through Ecclesiasticus and you were not comforted by that particular scripture?" 'Fear not the sentence of death, remember them that have been before thee, and that come after; for this is the sentence of the Lord over all flesh' and so on....

".....EASE YOUR HEART WITH PRAYER like the rest of the flock why don't you? I have too many things that need tending to and babysitting you isn't one of them." Indeed the Abbey would FALL APART WITHOUT HER and by God no one was going to stop her from upholding things with both hands.

#;;ask response: ic angela #;;ask response: with squiggles #anonymous #if I ever type out legitimate lat/in it will be short shit okay??? ok #probably doesn't need a tw tag but just to be safe...#religion tw #death mention tw

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squigglywindy · 2 years

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Whumptober Day Three

Title: Hair's Breadth From Death

Prompts Used: Impaled

Warnings: It’s pretty much exactly what it says on the tin. Dude gets impaled. There’s lots of blood and things. Emotions. Temporary MCD, kind of? He's fine though! There’s CPR, I edited and took it down a lot of notches but it's still a lil graphic. Lizalfos gets hacked all to pieces. Swearing - “Oh no” doesn’t cut it this time, boys; they are Distraught

Whumpee(s): Four, little side dose of Twilight and Wind and kind of everybody

Whumpometer for those hesitant to read these bad boys, as some are Very Bad and some barely qualify as whump: 6 for Emotional Turmoil. Maybe like an 8 for Physical Distress. I may stop doing these I'm realizing I'm very bad at making this call.

General Notes: Y'all practically asked for this. And let me tell you; it fought me. I slammed it out so fast and read it later and realized it got a lil bit too projection-y and changed like...half of it. (But I do still have an alternate ending featuring Warriors hanging around that I might use for day 24). Use a little bit of suspension of disbelief (which I struggle with A Lot) and just assume any of this was possible. Anyway, bone app the teeth.

Time was under the impression that the battle was going well until he heard the scream. Not a normal, battle-cry type scream, or an enthusiastic ‘hyah!’ like they were all known for releasing in times of battle excitement. This one was hurt, and scared, and coming from one of his boys.

He jerked around to look, and his heart dropped through his chest and clear onto the ground at the sight. A lizalfos, a stupid lizard, had Four on his spear. Skewered, for lack of a better word, with the end of the spear embedded in a tree, dangling Four several inches off the ground.

The lizalfos never stood a chance. In half a second, every Link in the battle had thrown themselves toward the offending lizard. Sky passed it, opting instead to lift Four so he was more supported and less dangling. The others, however, moved as a single unit to slice the lizalfos into as many pieces as they could manage.

Time grabbed Hyrule on his way past the frenzy, dragging him away from the corpse and toward the actual problem at hand. Twilight and Warriors moved to handle the last remaining monster; a lone bokoblin that nobody was all that worried about.

“I’m going to make you into so much soup,” Wild muttered as he picked up chunks of the lizalfos and tucked them away for later, his words threatening but his tone filled with only raw concern.

“Are you okay?” Hyrule rushed forward once his eyes finally left the lizard, and he was at Sky’s side in an instant, hands hovering inches away from Four as he struggled to decide what he needed to do.

Four sucked in a ragged breath, teeth digging hard into his lip as his eyes filled with tears that he stubbornly refused to let fall. “Doing great thanks,” he eventually wheezed before clamping back onto his lip to muffle a pained whine.

“What do we do?” Hyrule asked, turning toward Time with large, questioning eyes.

Time didn’t know how to answer. Hyrule was their go-to fixer. He fixed everything. If anyone got hurt, then the primary mission was to get them to Hyrule, and everything would be okay. But this time, even Hyrule didn’t know what to do. They had finally found his weakness; Links impaled to trees. “We need to get him down,” Time decided, because it was the obvious answer. They couldn’t leave him dangling there forever.

“He’ll bleed out,” Warriors came up beside him, sheathing his bloodied sword without bothering to clean it. “The spear’s the only thing keeping the blood in.”

“So what, we’re supposed to leave him tacked onto a tree forever?” Legend snarked. “As a warning not to mess with lizards?”

“We can cut it off against the tree,” Hyrule decided, finally entering problem-solving mode. “Then um...I can try to heal it as we pull it out. That sound okay, Four?”

Four’s hands grasped Sky’s shoulders hard enough that it had to hurt, but he nodded his head. He wanted to argue that that sounded terrible, but that would require forming words, and he was trying his best to keep his mouth closed. If he opened it he would scream, and that was probably the only thing that could make everyone’s eyes even more worried.

“Here, use the Master Sword; she’ll cut it easily enough,” Sky nodded toward the sword on his back, and Time drew it. Sky moved enough to let Time behind him, and Time carefully slid the sword between Four and the tree.

“Ready?” He asked, and when Four nodded, he sliced. He quickly discovered that breaking a spear in battle with brute force was much, much easier than slicing through one as if it were a piece of cheese. It was more like a rock; and he had to saw the blade back and forth to get anything to happen.

The motion sent the worst sort of vibration through the spear, and Four lost the battle, finally giving into a scream that sounded way closer to a sob. “I’ve gotcha,” Sky murmured soothingly, and the slight quiver in his tone did absolutely nothing to instill confidence. “We’ve almost got it,” was definitely a lie, but it wasn’t like Four had any choice but to wait it out. He buried his face in Sky’s shoulder when Sky shuffled close enough to allow it, and was more than a little annoyed when he instantly soaked it with tears. He almost wanted to split, just in case it would somehow get him off the spear. But on the other hand, they could all end up impaled; making a colorful shish-kabob that they would have to explain. It wasn’t worth it.

“Shit,” Time hissed, and that couldn’t be good, but Four would have rather he not elaborated. “It moved,” he elaborated anyway, and that didn’t seem like the worst thing that could have happened, until Four felt the warm trickle of blood slide down his back and stomach. The spear was embedded in the lower right of his abdomen, and he didn’t think there was anything super important down there, but it didn’t matter if it was empty if it was going to bleed as profusely as it seemed determined to. “‘Rule?” Time asked, and even his voice was on the verge of panic. That, more than anything, made Four very sure that he wasn’t getting out of this.

“I don’t know,” Hyrule raked his hands through his hair, sending it up into a fluff of despair. “If I try to heal him now it’ll heal around the spear and we won’t be able to get it out.”

“Yank him off,” Legend suggested. “Cut this end off and pull him off, spear all the way through; like an arrow. Make it quick.”

“It’s basically an arrow,” Twilight shrugged. “That could work.”

“Won’t that make it worse?” Wind wrung his hands together, beginning to pace through the lizalfos parts Wild had left behind.

“Not if we do it fast enough,” Warriors insisted. “If we…”

“Just do it,” Four interrupted, almost past caring how wretched his voice sounded. The blood was beginning to feel like a river; and if they didn’t get a move on, he wouldn’t have any left. It wouldn’t matter if Hyrule could close up the hole in his stomach if all of his blood had already leaked out of it.

“Okay,” Time nodded. “Fast. Okay.” He was always so sure, so confident, but he wavered now. With his brother stabbed into a tree and every eye on him, he couldn’t stop his hands from shaking as he grasped the end of the spear and snapped the handle end off and grabbed Four, pulling him away from Sky and off the end of the spear.

The effect was immediate; blood poured from the wound at the removal of the proverbial dam, the flood dying the purple section of his tunic a red even brighter than its neighboring square.

Hyrule surged forward, already kneeling before Time had a chance to lay Four on the ground. He placed him on his left side and held onto his shoulder, keeping him upright as a pool of blood slowly formed under him, faster than the ground could soak it up.

Hyrule’s hands moved to either side of the wound, and he focused only on the task at hand; not at how pale Four was, or how he hadn’t even bothered to scream when he’d been yanked off the end of a spear. He didn’t pay attention when Sky’s fingers found their way to Four’s throat, either. He took it all in subconsciously, knowing that everything was bad, but he couldn’t dwell on any of that right now. He just had to heal; everything else came second.

“His pulse is weak,” Sky spoke hoarsely.

“Look at him, he probably had barely an ounce of blood to begin with,” Legend grumbled, leaves crunching loudly under his feet as he paced aggressively around the area. “Can’t have a pulse if you haven’t got blood.”

Hyrule’s eyes flicked to Four’s face; pale and gaunt, eyes long-since closed in the cold embrace of unconsciousness. “Sky?” He asked upon catching the expression of the Skyloftian.

Sky’s fingers moved, pressing harshly to one side of Four’s neck, then the other. He grappled for his wrist and checked that too, shaking his head rapidly as tears quickly pooled in his eyes. “No no no no no…” he muttered, hands scrambling as if sheer willpower would provide what he was looking for.

“Move,” Warriors pushed Sky aside, and grabbed Hyrule’s arm when he moved to comply. “Not you; you keep working.” Warriors grabbed Four’s shoulder away from Time and turned him onto his back, hands settling on his sternum as he began compressions; manually forcing Four’s heart to do what it had given up on doing for itself. “Get two red potions; we can still do this,” he insisted, counting under his breath as he bounced.

Wild dug desperately through his things, cringing when he heard Four’s ribs crackle underneath Warriors’ weight. Unfortunate for sure, but not the priority. Bones could heal. “Here,” Wild scrambled forward as soon as he found the desired potions, holding them out desperately for someone, anyone, to figure out what to do with.

Legend snatched them, cramming himself in between Warriors and Hyrule. He tugged the cork out of the first and moved to pour it into Four’s mouth.

“Wait,” Warriors glared. “You’ll choke him. Hold on. 29, 30, okay.” He pulled away, tilting Four’s chin up and pinching his nose, delivering two slow puffs of air before grabbing his arms and sitting him up. “Go ahead,” he nodded toward Legend, and held Four’s head straight while the veteran poured the red slime down the smithy’s throat. “We’ll do the other one in a minute,” Warriors decided once it was gone, laying Four back down and returning to his terrible, crunchy job of keeping Four’s limited circulation going.

Hyrule’s hands never left their position around the wound. The bleeding had stopped, and he chose to believe that it was because the wound was closed, and not because Four’s small body had nothing left to give.

Warriors completed five more cycles before pulling Four back up and helping Legend pour the second vial of red potion into his mouth.

The minutes that followed seemed to drag on for hours. Eventually, Hyrule had healed all he could and sat back to watch and recharge. He would be healing Four’s ribs soon, afterall. That’s what he told himself; the alternative wasn’t something he dared think about.

He couldn’t tear his eyes away from Warriors; from the way he methodically worked through the motions; bounce, breathe, back and forth, never giving up. He could hear the others behind them murmuring; someone was crying, and someone else was trying to comfort them. He didn’t know who; wasn’t paying anywhere near enough attention. He only had eyes for the absolutely heart wrenching scene playing out in front of him.

He wasn’t going to be the one to tell Warriors to stop; no matter how futile his mission seemed. Time looked like he was considering it, but he held his tongue. A little longer; they weren’t out of hope yet.

“Wild, zap him,” Warriors spoke suddenly, as if he’d had an epiphany.

“…What?” Wild blanched, dropping down beside them despite the strange request.

Warriors surfaced from two more breaths and spoke as he continued compressions. “Take one of your fancy lightning swords and zap him.”

Wild didn’t take the time to ask any further questions; Warriors seemed confident, and he couldn’t do anything but roll with it. He unearthed one of his smaller lightning blades, and as soon as Warriors moved away and gave him a nod, he touched it gently to Four’s chest.

The smithy convulsed as one does when electrocuted; but as the last of the sparks left his body he gasped and almost sat up; flipping back onto his back with a string of pitiful coughs that seemed to take absolutely everything out of him. He hissed, hand flying to his chest and prodding gently at his ribs. He seemed completely oblivious to the literal hole in his gut; focused only on the crushing pressure that had become his rib cage. “Whadjado?” He mumbled, tongue flicking out across his lips and eyebrows knitting together at the sound of his own voice.

“I’ll fix it,” Hyrule blurted, hand splaying gently across Four’s chest and already working to knit the bones back together and ease the fallout from the absolute beating he had been subjected to.

Sky wedged himself back into the cluster of Links, between Warriors and Legend, eyes roaming rapidly over Four. “Are you okay?” He asked, voice choked and wrecked enough to prompt Four to pry his eyes back open.

“M’fine,” he slurred, frowning up at sky and reaching a shaky hand up to wipe a tear off of his cheek. “Why’re y’cryin’?”

Sky sniffed and shook his head. “Don’t worry about it,” he grabbed Four’s hand and held it in his lap, staring at the poor smithy with a gaze that undoubtedly made it impossible not to worry about it.

Warriors let out a slow breath and sat back on his heels, wincing and rubbing uncomfortably at the back of his right hand. “It’s okay,” he mumbled, mostly to himself. “We’re all okay. Lizalfos is gone, we’ll eat him later, and we’re all okay. We are all okay, right?”

“Like hell we are!” Wind snapped, voice angry enough to almost hide the tremor. “Four died,” his voice cracked at that, but he played it off well. “He was dead. For several minutes. How is any of this okay!?”

“He’s okay now,” Twilight insisted.

“He got impaled,” Wind shook his head. “He he he...he bled out. And and then he crunched.”

“I what?” Four mumbled, hands traveling back to his chest to feel around. “I don’...r’membr that.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Sky repeated, and Four glared to show exactly what he thought of that assessment.

Wind was opening his mouth to protest, undoubtedly to say something even less helpful than revealing Four’s stint with death, but Twilight grabbed his shoulder before he could. “C’mon, let’s make a lap,” he inclined his head vaguely toward the trees and didn’t give Wind a chance to argue before dragging him along.

They walked in silence for a few minutes; Wind’s arms crossed and defensive, stomping a little too intensely through the forest. “You weren’t going to tell him,” he stated eventually. It wasn’t a question; just an observation, delivered with an empty tone.

Twilight sighed, knowing it wasn’t really right to keep such information from Four indefinitely. He’d want to know if he hadn’t been technically alive for any length of time, and it was only fair to extend Four the same courtesy. “Not immediately.”

Wind stopped walking, and Twilight followed along; far enough away not to stress Four out impossibly further, he let the sailor take the lead. “Twi, he got stabbed into a tree,” he reminded him quietly.

Twilight took a deep breath, and nodded. “He did.” He had been trying not to think about it since it happened, and while it wasn’t working, he would continue to try. He would never quite shake the image of Four, spear running clear through his body, dangling from a tree. “He did get stabbed into a tree,” he repeated softly, stubbornly pushing away the feelings that tried to surface. He could process later. For now, the burning behind his eyes didn’t matter and the hole that felt like it was forming in his chest was irrelevant. “But he’s okay now,” he added, and he was sure he’d said it at least twice before, but if he said it one more time, maybe it’d start to feel true. Maybe it’d start to feel less like he’d just watched his brother die.

That was the wrong train of thought to follow, he realized now, but Wind was already onto him. “Twi?” He asked hoarsely, covering the distance between them and grabbing Twilight’s arm, forcing eye contact that Twilight would really rather not make.

“I’m fine,” Twilight insisted, scrubbing his sleeve harshly across his eyes because no, actually, he wasn’t fine. “Shit, Sailor, he died,” Twilight barked out a laugh, and that said more about his current state of mind than the tears did. “He died and I didn’t know what to do.”

“Warriors did,” Wind grabbed his hands and yanked him forward, trapping him abruptly in a hug that was the proverbial last straw for Twilight’s carefully constructed composure. “Wars knew what to do, Twi.” His voice didn’t sound much better than Twilight felt, so Twilight did them both a favor and didn’t answer. Just clung back and allowed himself to process for a moment, the way he couldn’t when it was all actually happening. He couldn’t tell which of them was shaking or if it was both of them or simply his stressed-out imagination, but he clung a little harder either way. He choked on a breath that came out as a terribly puppy-like whine, and he couldn’t tell if the sound Wind responded with was a sob or a laugh. Probably somewhere in the middle.

They stayed like that for a while; leaning into each other in the woods, trying to convince themselves and each other that everything was okay. Wind was the first to pull away with an almighty sniffle and a harsh sleeve across his eyes. “That was awful,” he decided.

Twilight gave a wet chuckle. “I’ll have you know I give the best hugs.”

Wind snorted, a genuine hint of humor in the sound. “Not that. The uh...the spear. The crunch. All that.”

Twilight nodded. “It was. And uh...I’m sorry I dragged you away.”

Wind shrugged. “No, you were right, I needed to calm down. Didn’t need to make my problems Four’s problems; he has enough problems.”

“Problems,” Twilight agreed solemnly.

Wind winced. “As far as the others know we went off to hunt a bird. Deal?”

Twilight held up his empty hands and shrugged. “If ‘we failed at a bird hunt’ makes you feel better than ‘we have feelings’, then sure.”

“It does, actually,” Wind nodded, scrubbing his hands down his face one more time and straightening his tunic. “Ready to go back?”

Twilight looked him up and down and decided not to comment that neither of them looked very much like they could hide the truth of their departure. But the others wouldn’t mention it, emotionally constipated fools that they were. Their greatest danger would be Sky, but he probably wouldn’t be taking his eyes off of Four for the next few days anyway.

The walk back to the others was short, and they rejoined the group to find Four propped up against a tree sipping on a third red potion with the help of Sky who, as predicted, barely acknowledged their arrival.

Legend’s eyes narrowed, zeroing in on Twilight and giving him a thorough once-over before flicking to Wind. “You good?” Were not words anyone ever thought would leave the veteran’s mouth, but everyone was a little off today.

Twilight ignored him. “How’re you doing, Four?” He asked instead, and the smithy set down his potion and leaned his head back against the tree.

“Pretty terrible,” he admitted hoarsely. “But rumor has it I died, so I guess I could be doing a lot worse.”

Wind surged forward and flopped onto the ground beside the smithy, hands twitching toward him before shooting back to ball up at his sides. “I’m glad you’re okay,” he settled, instead of the tackle-hug he had originally set out to deliver.

Four smiled weakly. “I’m glad you told me the truth,” he dropped his head against Wind’s shoulder and took a deep breath. “I think these guys would have just let me live in ignorance forever.”

Warriors huffed indignantly. “Well excuse me for not waking you up with the words: ‘welcome back to the land of the living’,” he crossed his arms. “Figured you might like a second to breathe. Get oriented. Recover from debilitating blood loss. You were impaled, afterall.”

“To a tree,” Wild added not-at-all-helpfully.

Four nodded; he couldn’t really deny it. He prodded one more time at his stomach; at the new scar that didn’t hurt as much as he knew it should. He poked at his chest; the freshly-healed ribs he wouldn’t be alive without. He tried not to fill in the blanks too far; he didn’t really want to remember getting skewered and slowly slipping into...death, really. Seemed like the sort of thing that was best left forgotten. “Impaled to a tree,” he agreed, giving the others the biggest grin he could muster and smashing down the strange guilt that sprung up at their expressions. The terror written across all of their faces, still not quite eased; even with Four’s survival looking as promising as it did. “But I’m good now,” he assured, mostly for them, and a little for himself. Nobody looked quite like they believed him; and really, he wasn’t sure he believed it himself. But he’d get there; farther out from being skewered, and when everybody stopped staring at him like he might just fade out of existence if they looked away.

#Whumptober 2022 #No.3 #Story Time With Squiggles #Impaled #Blood #CPR #Temporary character death #Linked Universe #LU Four #LU Warriors #LU Twilight #LU Wind #LU Sky #LU Hyrule #And uh the others are there but don't get excited it's brief

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