#gantober

[rawliverandgoronspice]

▴ THRALLS OF POWER ▾

Episode 1: Time (Teaser Scene)

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It is with some modicum of pride (and mild terror!!!!) that I present you this very first extract of my The Legend of Zelda animatic project called Thralls of Power, a project I have started about a year ago and I've been working on ever since (except when my computer explodes and then I can't make progress and I'm totally normal about that btw)

The story is set during the Child Timeline (aka: Majora's Mask & Twilight Princess), starting from Ocarina of Time and progressing from there.

Thralls of Power tells the story of a failed coup, of a desperate uprising, of figures of legend reckoning with their own agency in a world haunted by the remnants of the Goddesses who forged it.

While it is first and foremost a sincere homage to this series I adore and accompanied me my entire life, I must warn that this is probably aimed at a slightly more mature audience than the original games, and veers into more complicated moral grayness and realistic portrayals of war and politics than the series generally tends to do, making it closer to dark fantasy than the original games.

The first episode is about 75% complete, and I will be forced to admit defeat and only attempt to promise its release for the first quarter of 2025. The second one is fully storyboarded but quite ambitious, so I'm not even going to hazard a guess!

The full thing is outlined, but I'm not promising I'll actually do the whole story because it's quite ambitious and would probably take me a full decade, and I don't know if I have it in me. But you'll get a good couple of episodes at the very least!

It unfortunately will not feature voice acting, because coordinating voice actors would make this solo project very complicated and also I'm not a native english speaker and every voice actor I know that would be interested would speak English with a French accent if at all and also I do not trust that I can't find a decent Ganondorf and SO MUCH would hinge on a good Ganondorf performance that I think it would be unreasonable to even risk it

[inspiteofganon]

Trying to kick myself into finishing any one of my LoZ fanfic drafts. If I finish at least one by the end of the month I can just say it's a Gantober piece. Anyway here's a thin scrap of the one I have the most done on

[rawliverandgoronspice]

Gantober #6 - Eyeful

I have SO many frames that are just. Ganondorf's insane eyeliner game.

(It's the "drawing eyes in the corner of my highschool notebook" part of me rearing its ugly head I suppose u_u tho actually it's not just for that there's a thematic reason, but also his eyes are insanely fun to draw and drawing eyes mean not drawing anything else so that's a win win in my book babeyyy!!!)

[rawliverandgoronspice]

Gantober #4 - Seafoam

(Wind Waker, Ganondorf & Beedle, non-graphic violence)

Tearing himself off a broken seal, Ganondorf discovers his homeland disfigured by an endless sea —and a stranger calling it home willing to help.

(Full disclosure: I'm flying off the seat of me poorly remembering my decade-old Wind Waker walkthrough and details gleaned back on vague research I did over a year ago, so I do apologize for any dubiously canon choices made here)

---

Ganondorf had waged wars larger than the sky. He had crushed skulls under his boot as an afterthought. He had basked in roaring infernos, found comfort in the musk of old blood. Even his own torment, either while sealed beyond reality or when his body had twisted to unnatural shapes from his restless abuse of Power, he had grown to rely upon as something expected —and therefore, under his control.

But there he stood, stranded on a mere constellation of sand in the middle of the night, staring on and on at the black sea surrounding him from all sides.

And nothing seemed to stomp his rising horror.

Salt. He didn’t mind salt, usually. Here, it was dizzying. A wound in the earth. A wound where Hyrule —his Hyrule— used to be. Water had swallowed all of it. In the darkest depths of the sea, there lied his castle, his hard-earned victories, the villages he sacked and those erected in their place by the monsters serving him. He may have broken the seal forced upon him, but his entire life slumbered down the abyss. For how long did he drift, outside of time and space? There was nothing left but salt. Angry froth surrounding him from all sides. The Goddesses did not care for what they once called holy. What was there even to yearn for anymore, beyond wreckage and mud?

The infernos had all drowned. Even he was now drenched and cold; his ageless bones incapable of resisting neither the waves or the rain.

He did not notice the boat that beached nearby until it was too late, and it took its sailor two attempts to finally catch his attention.

“All good sir?”

Ganondorf tore his eyes from the shore. The man who screamed at him from the deck was a stickbug of a hylian, with a horrendous bowl cut and a drooping pink nose. His sunkissed, freckled skin shivered under the tremors of a coming storm, but still: he smiled, with concern. “Not to assume nothin’, but it’s a sad old place to be shipwrecked if you ask me!”

Hands on hips, face open, eager to help. Obviously clueless as to who he was.

Nobody had stared at Ganondorf that way in hundreds of years.

He considered killing the straggler and taking his embarkation for himself. Faster, easier. But of all the many skills the gerudo king had perfected during his unnaturally long life, sailing had never even crossed his mind as something worth his attention. And the thought of trying to keep this poorly wielded rotting wood afloat in a storm, hands coarse with ropes he couldn’t make sense of above miles upon miles of this terrible salt water that wanted him back in the dark... A sharp pang of hatred seared down his throat. The Goddesses must be finding his predicament oh so hilarious.

The stranger, named Beedle, made what room he could for him on his bark; but said bark was tiny, and Ganondorf could only fit against the wall of the inner cabin, stuck between crates of food and heaps of arrows. A ceiling lamp swung above his head followed by a swarm of eager moths, threatening to set his forehead on fire. The hylian’s sunny disposition dimmed somewhat after Ganondorf’s pointed silence and lack of outward thanks for all this effort, but he still refused to let it die entirely and carried the conversation for them both.

“Hoping my humble abode can be a welcome shelter for the time being, my good sir.” Good sir. Ganondorf bit his tongue not to emote. “Please don’t be shy around my wares as well! If something catches your eye, I’m sure we can agree to somethin’ or another!” The hylian’s eye nicked at his jewelry, barely attempting to be subtle. “It’s rare to see folks as fancy as you in these parts. It’s the pirates, you see. I suppose it’s them who gave you trouble?”

Ganondorf evaded the too-intense gaze of the merchant. Of course, in this sparse flooded world, information would be as precious as rupees. He elected to be as greedy as he could in this particular department.

“I simply… got lost,” he muttered.

His voice was rough, ancient, looming. He didn’t sound like the way he remembered. The small hylian tensed and nodded, with a frown deep enough to suggest he was growing less worried about his guest and more about himself. Thunder crashed outside. A large wave rolled under the planks at their feet; the boat croaked, almost organically. Ganondorf shivered.

“Welp. Happens to the best of us I guess!” The owner scratched his bare stomach, his best efforts at joy dipping into nervousness. “Where are you going then? I can drop you off to any place that’s on my usual route!”

Ganondorf clenched his jaw. He had no good answer to this question. He didn’t know anything about this strange new world. Didn’t recognize anything. Where were they, right now? Above which landmark he could still perfectly recall in his mind, lively and luscious, sprawling under the indulgent sun of Hyrule?

“I… I don’t…”

He caught himself, this disgusting vulnerability in that shredded voice, before it could spill out fully. Anger smothered him instead; then something more painful, akin to the jagged cuts of weapons somehow lodged even deeper than flesh. He thought of gutting the pleasant man, right here and now. Take him apart limb from limb among all these goods and produce Ganondorf had never seen before. But the storm raged outside —and to be stuck there, in this claustrophobic cabin, waiting to be toppled over and drowned once again…

“Y-You know what?” Beedle proposed, hands joined, helpful in a way that neared pity. “I can take you to Windfall Island! It’s the biggest port around, and I’m sure you’ll find someone there who can help you out. You seem a little…” He swallowed. “A little... out of it, sir.”

His skin crawled. That idiot would strand him on an island full of hylians, chipper and knowledgeable and unbearably alive.

“No,” Ganondorf grunted. “Take me… Take me somewhere quiet, and near. Someplace with solid land.”

The hylian cocked his head.

“I’m not quite sure about that plan, sir. There’s a Fortress close-by, sir, I’m sure you’ve heard of it. The waters are full of pirates. It’s not safe here! They’d capture you in a heartbeat, and oh!” The poor little man deflated, rubbing his bare arms, as if to ward off his own imagination. “They’d have ways to make you spill where the rest of your fancy gold is hidden, sir!”

Ganondorf couldn’t help his snickering. His right hand burned quietly under the full length of his sleeves. “A fortress, you say?”

“Horrible place! Dreadful place! They’ve stolen from me before, the vultures!”

“Take me there.”

Beedle’s eyes and mouth drew the shape of three perfect circles.

“Sir!” He squealed, red with offense. “No amount of rupee in the world could convince me to go there! I’ll never risk my wares, my very life…”

“Where I come from, merchants know to take risks when it matters,” Ganondorf said. And that much was true. Gerudo merchants had saved his kingdom countless times over before he was old enough to wield a sword himself. Not all of them returned home alive.

“And why on earth would it matter to me?!” Beedle crossed his arms, outraged. “They’ll shot my poor boat on sight! So whatever you could offer me in exchange…”

“You’re assuming I will let you refuse.”

Silence, if not for the roar of the sea.

The hylian’s eyes were large and misty, his knees threatening to give. “Sir…” He wailed, crumbling on himself, even tinier than before. “I rescued you.”

“And I am not ungrateful,” Ganondorf smiled. “Yet.”

¤

The merchant sniffled and muttered under his breath the entire way, but it didn’t take much more than a few hours for Ganondorf to see the silhouette of a large structure overtaking the stormy horizon. Beedle tried not to cry as he slalomed through the coves and razor-sharp stones, knowing himself watched, both by his guest and the pirates outside surely well aware of their presence. Ganondorf considered telling him they would be safe from cannon fire no matter what, but decided to keep his magical prowess undisclosed for as long as he could. He simply didn’t know enough about the rules of this new world to fashion a reputation for himself yet. Dreadful outcasts with a penchant for knives and thievery, however? A consequence-less trying ground.

An anchor, in so many ways.

They weren’t prevented from boarding the pier, but were awaited right outside. The vicious wind swashed buckets of sea water over a collection of armed silhouettes, staring at the humble bark with open distrust and slight bafflement. Ganondorf eyed over each of them. About twenty, that he could see. All of them with pointy ears, safe for the two gorons in the back. Brown hair, blonde hair, white hair.

All of them men.

Ganondorf refused to give room to the childish hope within withering into something cold and empty, and advanced towards the line. Beedle made a whimpering sound behind him.

“That’s close enough I’d say.”

A man cut through the pirates and stepped forth. The bulky kind, bald-headed and scarred, with one golden tooth sharpened far past what most would think reasonable. He towered over his crew, but barely reached Ganondorf’s shoulder. He nodded towards the cowering merchant behind his back.

“Must have given that lad his weight in rupees to convince him to sail here. We have history, don’t we Beedle?”

The crew laughed, and the poor hylian was but half a breath from sobbing openly.

“I hear you’re the terror of the sea,” Ganondorf noted.

The man puffed his chest. “Aye we are. So what made you think it was a good idea to come check for yourself? Want to donate to the cause?” Every pirate openly eyed at the large jewels adorning his fine robes. Gerudo craftsmanship had always stirred outsiders’ imagination, even back when cultural context hadn’t been completely lost to the waves.

Ganondorf crossed his arms. “I suppose it depends on the cause.”

The pirate chief laughed, a bit too loud to be believable as effortless contempt. His stance was ever-slightly defensive. Ganondorf was being seized up, and correctly identified as a threat.

“Our cause?! Get richer than the lost kingdom through other people’s honest work! I didn’t think it would need clarification!” Another step closer, one that felt like bravado. The man held up an open palm that missed half a finger. “So how are you willing to contribute?”

Ganondorf didn’t bother moving. He stared deep into the washed-out green eyes of the pathetically wet hylian in front of him. Small threats. Threats of no ambition. This was all the Goddesses could handle, and not a single thing worse: mediocre hylians, content with their lackluster lot, fearlessly cruel in the pettiest of ways.

He shook his head, giving the surroundings a good look instead of paying the captain undeserved attention. Crows cackled above their head, and bigger birds seems to nest in the cliffs. Hard to navigate, tall and angry, strong against the storm, unpleasant to be around.

Suitable.

“I quite enjoy this island,” Ganondorf declared at last. “As for you, terror of the sea… You can all stay here and serve my cause, or you can take your leave right away.”

Some man in the back thought it was a joke and laughed; but the humor died down soon enough. Exclamations bubbled through the assembled crew like a fit of bad coughs, growing in intensity. Beedle hid his face in his hands, terrified, and muttered a prayer.

“What did you say?!” The captain belched out. “Are you out of your mind—who the hell do you think you are?!”

A younger version of himself would have used the opportunity to brag, just to feel the kick of his own resolve; a promise muttered back to himself. But Ganondorf was far past reassurance now.

“Or you can all watch each other die if you prefer,” Ganondorf added, with the familiar coldness that preceded his worst slaughters.

That was too much for the poor merchant. Abandoning all reason, the little hylian skedaddled back to his boat with a high pitch sound of distress. Smart move. The pirates were all focused on the actual danger, and Ganondorf would have disliked letting a survivor bear witness to the worst of what he could do. Now was not the time. And, after all, he had no reason to be ungrateful and needlessly destructive. Not everything had to end up in blood, he supposed. Violence was a lesson he’d have to unlearn soon if we was to re-adapt to this new, brutal reality.

But as of now…

“We’ll knock some sense back into you, old man!” the man spat out—old man? Ganondorf wasn’t sure he appreciated being perceived as frail and weary; those feelings were supposed to be private. But the captain didn’t seem to realize his overstep and unsheathed a crude saber to his face. “Everyone with me!”

They all attacked at once, swords drawn and eager.

Ganondorf grinned. Twin blades slotted into his waiting hands.

That simple joy, of all joys dead and gone, the Goddesses had yet to take from him.

¤

The slaughter was over before it started. The pirates were even worse off than he feared. None of them would have survived the wars he had waged centuries prior. In this barren world of salt and greedy water, plunderers were weak and arrogant, and lonely travelers trusted so easily. The deluge didn’t even select the worthiest to carry on this accursed future.

Leaning from the highest balcony he could find, Ganondorf stared at a much quieter sea. Dawn brushed over the crests of wave in pinks and golds and green. Seagulls, crows and even angrier birds screamed their delight in the fierce offshore wind. Far in the distance, he could distinguish the shape of Beedle’s bark, fast escaping the trail of blood left behind. Ganondorf was taken by a vague need to acknowledge what this man had done for him, this thankless mercy drenched in unfair retribution. Do something just, perhaps. Sort the stolen goods and restore what once belonged to him. Make his effort worth something... but already, so soon, the little dot tipped over the foam and disappeared from view entirely.

The waves covered its tracks, and Ganondorf was alone.

He closed his eyes, allowing the sun to trick him into unguarded longing. But that couldn’t last. He couldn’t afford rest. He couldn’t afford peace. This was how the Goddesses had lured everyone else into accepting this; the smallness of letting oneself drift; an existence happily unmoored. That wasteland. That living wound they all called home.

Ganondorf turned away from the horizon, the sun, the wind, runaway boats with small cargo and far greater fears. The Triforce of Power scorched his blood-splattered hand. Ganondorf focused on the pain until it devoured everything else; and then, only then, could he start to think with regained dignity about the arduous path to triumph.

[rawliverandgoronspice]

Gantober Bomb #7-8-9

Hellooo I am slacking behind and I don't have a ton of time right now, so have two frames and a piece of music!!

[rawliverandgoronspice]

Gantober #27 - An Aria For Pigs

[Downfall Timeline, Death, Grief, Mild Description of a Dead Body, Mild Body Horror]

The Hero of Time is nowhere to be found. The princess of a doomed kingdom takes matters into her own hands. As always, Impa follows right behind.

----

You can read it on Archive of Our Own Here!

I haven't beta'ed it, it's kind of weird and very Unhallowed Vespers' related, but it's also some weird Impa and Ganondorf and it's also spooky and also Impa almost says fuck. :>

----

It is unknown when or how, or even if, the Hero of Time had died.

Most people left in Hyrule still believe in heroes. They trust that a mythical figure will rise from the ashes of a golden age long since consumed, and put an end to their common misery. They are hylians after all —unused to the idea of coping with despair, its prolonged chafing. Impa can hardly blame them for it. But she knows.

She has known for a long time.

The princess had fidgeted with the idea herself, independently, but had refused to accept it for as long as she could. Denial curdled into obvious delusion until it suffocated her. Impa chose to keep her mouth shut and let her process this on her own terms. The absence of light may be Impa’s domain, but Zelda still clings to its presence, seeking it sometimes beyond reason. At seventeen, Zelda no longer identifies as a princess —princess of what? Her kingdom had been stolen, her lands scorched and torn into crude, uneven parts— and now she hid in dusty clothes Impa pulled from secret crevices near Kakariko. Bandages, daggers and bones. Zelda is now known as Sheik. Why the hell not. They had picked the name together; a title rather than a name, not that anyone still alive would know but Impa. And yet, despite that process of reshaping her identity for protection and safekeeping, the poor girl still knows to embrace her divine role within the fate of the world. So does Impa. This is what she tells the girl, in great detail: everything known about the course of time, godliness, destiny. The rules of the holy land they were born to preserve.

Perhaps this is what had convinced the princess to take the matter into her own blessed hand.

Impa arrives alone at the empty castle. Ganondorf the usurper had destroyed the old one. White stone turned to black, vulgar work. Charred oxygen and the rancidness of unearthed magma; and yet the halls are so cold.

Places Impa used to know were mangled. She had haunted these halls long before they’d been dead; and she expected some measure of longing, some heartache for the perfect gardens of green, for the flowers in bloom and the careless laughter of a content crowd. But the old thing had been obliterated. There is nothing to recognize. As always, its new master cares for dominance and symbols in a way that never once proved anything.

Impa walks through the new meaningless construction at a steady pace. Ignored by monsters, of course. Not only is she quiet, but hardly ever recognized as something worth killing. Fairies ignore her wounds just the same. She walks one step removed from reality. Shadows draping her, always.

As she rises towards the central tower through endless stairways, Impa notices the press of something against the inside of her throat.

She enters a cavernous room, cathedral-like, bathed in sickening sunset-light, and sees her.

Impa walks to the bundle of cloth, slowly. Kneels. She traces the exposed throat. Cold.

Dead.

Zelda had been dead for hours.

Impa takes it in. The off-colored, wax-like sheen of a perfect skin. Blue eyes, pale and glossy. Blonde hair, tangled in a way she thinks needs brushing. Half-open mouth. She had seen so many bodies before, just like this, or worse. Somehow, Impa had never really prepared herself to welcome this one into her memories; even though she had spent so much, so much, so much of her existence shielding the girl’s fragile life from harm. Cupping candlelight between burning fingers. But it is over now. A sheikah knife lays next to the princess, and arrows, and a bow, and Impa doubts the fight, if there had ever been any, had lasted more than a minute.

She breathes in, and out, and closes the girl’s eyes with her thumbs, rolling loose fabric under her chin to keep her lips mended together, soft and asleep. Impa tries to look inward, with idle curiosity. She finds space between her ribs, a newfound clarity to the oxygen she breathes. She presses small hands together across her chest, across the single eye of her people, and thinks: after everything, the sheikahs and Hyrule died together as one.

Everything she ever upheld as meaningful, now tepid on the lush crimson carpet. Belief, mistakes, restraint, self-abandon. Love. Gone. It is over. It is over, and yet Impa cannot process it as defeat. Not her defeat —even though she had categorically failed at everything of import ever devised for her by fate.

The girl’s right hand no longer glows.

A guttural sound echoes from the depths of the large room, where pillars overcast the surreal gleam in strange moving shadows. Something large and grotesque. A thrill, on the edge between a demonic hiss, a human voice, and something far worse than both.

Impa lets go of the girl and stands. She breathes unburdened. No tension left in her besides the simple mechanics of motion. Taking the blade out of its sheath has nothing to do with self preservation. At most, it feels like a social cue, expected from her by a crowd she can’t see and didn’t really care for.

She walks towards the moving shadows. A quiet pace. No need to rush. Anything about to happen now is but an epilogue.

The darkness itself seems to pulse. Large shapes overlapping, the smell like untouched depths of a cave beyond cracks in the floor, fizzling char, nearly suffocating her. Something gags with labored breathing. A man. A thing . Impa focuses, invoking her perception of truth among the pit of organic tar.

A shape. Human.

Ganondorf, or rather the imprint of him, has one knee to the floor, much like the first time they spoke to each other seven years ago. His face is hidden behind bloodied hands, long hair. Light shudders underneath his fingers: a map of his veins and bones backlit with divine fire. The limits of his flesh aren’t clear anymore. His body blurs, swept away and redefined amid the moving darkness.

“So you won,” Impa says.

A hiccup, hidden behind shaky hands.

“You should have known,” replies a voice, booming and strained and breathless, surrounding her yet pinned to a singular, fragile point. “Y-y-you should have guessed I had. Reclaimed. Courage already.”

The silhouette heaves, each word like a stab wound to himself. The fingers slip; Impa sees the eyes then, the nostrils and mouth, the fine lines embedded in his dark skin.

All of them burning from within.

“W-w-what does it. Feel like.” He groans, trying to look at Impa directly; but there is so much push-and-pull of darkness, pure light, and skin that focusing on the person behind is near impossible. “To know. To know you bowed to your masters. For this.” He tries to laugh, but the voice is too broken, his effort too blinding. “Hyrule. Is. Nothing now. I am…” He gasps. His defiance almost sounds like despair. “I am all that is left.”

A shadow on the walls behind him takes a strange form; hulking, something with claws and tusks and a gaping maw. But the shadow refuses to stay put, refuses to commit yet. The old Hyrule might be dead, but it has yet to be replaced by anything new.

“You still haven’t made your wish,” Impa notes.

Blackened nails ram their points into the flood of light threatening to bubble out of his flesh. “The Triforce is mine ,” he spits out, and Impa watches on as the sad spectacle of Ganondorf’s victory leads her to the only possible conclusion she can draw.

“You’re holding the pieces together by force.” Her breath constricts, half-stuck inside her throat. “The Triforce still wants away from you.”

Ganondorf writhes, his body lined in boiling gold. The cracks of a vase about to shatter. And yet, and yet…

With a groan, the gerudo’s face shifts back together, looking somewhat human through all the searing glow. Enough for Impa to recognize a bloodshot eye. Pupil blown wide.

“I can do it,” he rasps, fractured. “I will make the gods. Obey me.”

Impa can’t help the cruel smile carved across her skin.

“The Goddesses are long gone,” she says. “No one can make them do anything.” Impa watches him struggle some more, grasping for focus to remain enough of a body to reply, or react. A shape lost in a storm of his own making. She cocks her head to the side, curious. “You’re not drawing out the full strength of the Power you secured. Why is that?”

He hurls forward with a spasm —already bestial, already a monster. “I won’t. Debase myself. For their entertainment.” He tries to stand. Fails. “Or for yours.”

“Debasing yourself,” Impa repeats, ears ringing. “You killed a child today.”

She catches the glint of a mean grin among the sizzling chaos. Impa imagines reaching for the usurper, no matter the pain; coiling both hands through the man’s fiery scalp, and pulling the skull apart. The weakened flesh would cede to any kind of pressure. She could do this, and he wouldn’t be capable of stopping her.

But she doesn’t need to do this. All she has to do is watch this man torture himself, and pretend this feels like vindication.

“This is my victory,” Ganondorf grunts, squirming inside his rupturing skin. “It’s mine . I-I-I need to rule, as myself. I won’t let them…”

“You don’t want godhood to change you,” Impa concludes. A horrible cough-like laughter shoots out of her throat. She has not laughed like this in over a decade. “Do you even hear yourself? The gods hate you. Everything sacred hates you. Hyrule will never stop resisting your claim. The Triforce will fight you like one fights a disease. Whatever you think you are… They’ve already scraped it clean off. You’re clinging to a corpse.”

He makes a sound, that he must have hoped dismissive instead of agonizing. “I c-can’t. I can’t let them overwrite me.”

“Then stop trying to assemble the Triforce inside your body.”

“No. ”

He had barked this at her, like a child. A pang knocks behind Impa’s armor. She can’t name its cause; if it is simply anger, or a different kind of urge to scream.

“I c-c-can’t let the pieces back out,” He chokes, holding each side of his blinding face. Brute force against cosmic chaos. Somehow , he is still winning. “If I do… If I do...”

“You will be shattered,” Impa says, flatly. “Maybe you should die, then, if you can’t handle it. You should let it kill you.”

He looks at her, his smarting expression almost taken aback. The blade between her teeth had slashed thoughtlessly; the vicious evidence in her words pouring out of her like a fetid sigh, held back for far too long. There are no consequences for her cruelty anymore. She no longer has to pretend she was ever more than a body groomed to inflict pain. Light had been blotted out. And shadows always were her domain.

She allows the blade to drop; slipping from her open fingers and clanging against the muffled floor. One step. Two steps. His gaze fixates on her as she makes her way to the abomination; the warlord who had killed the only girl she had ever loved; the man who had set the ruins of her life on fire, cleansing all that remained until nothing was left . She stands tall, and he crawls.

Impa had never felt more free.

She drives her fingers through his hair —static jolts of fire and thunder and raw pain, and Impa welcomes each sensation with abandon. She yanks him closer to her; he doesn’t yelp, reaches for her wrist when she kneels besides him. His grip, for all its godlike power, is weak, unfocused, completely lost. He fights her as much as he clings to the concreteness of her body. His patheticness, not her grief, is what makes Impa want to cry.

“You wanted this, didn’t you?” she murmurs through her teeth, so close to his deformed pointy ear she could bite off the excess if she wanted to. “Then do it. Go on. Become a god. Rewrite the world. Who cares what you make of it. Who cares what you once wished this would mean to you. Go on. Rip yourself apart, my lord.” He makes a choking sound, an echo of the grief she doesn't feel. He burns so bright against her. Impa stares ahead, right at the wall, at the sunset far behind, as each of her fingers sizzles and chars and fuses with him. “Do it,” she says, as her lungs threaten to collapse. “Do it, you coward, do it. ” Ganondorf’s essence shakes and sputters besides her. She can’t feel her arm anymore as he curls, as tension rises, as something wild and manic wrenches out from her accursed throat. “DO IT.”

Golden light erupts beside her in a shriek. Tears of relief boil right through her waterline.

She doesn’t close her eyes as Ganondorf implodes, blinding her.

Blinding everything.

At last, the Shape arises.

The golden light is weakened now, after the flash. Not mended together, but contained under endless blackened fur. A maw unhinges. More darkness than flesh. Timeless eyes open for the first time, pale and emptied and quieter. The walls of the castle are blown open to a darkened sky. Inky. Alive.

Ashes coat everything.

The Shape looks down at itself. Bones cling to its arm, tangled there, bleached clean off.

With terrible claws, the Shape plucks the skull off its dark fibrils. It is so small inside the palm of its hand. Boar-like eyes, fueled by divine violence and impossible dreams, stare mindlessly at the empty sockets.

The wind howls behind them both.

[rawliverandgoronspice]

Gantober #18 - A Show of Fealty

Music time again!!

With a familiar name perhaps.....

Tbh it's one I need to mix a little better than what is currently is imo, but it's one that exists and doesn't have weird sound artifacts in it! we're taking it!!

[rawliverandgoronspice]

Gantober #17 - Ruins

(oops don't worry about what happened for over a week oopsi oops anyway)

Here's a quick fic set in Twilight Princess! I barely reread it, it's from Zant's POV so I tried weird stuff, anyway!!

--

Sand crunched under Zant’s shoes (sticky) and left two uneven marks on the slope washed atop of Arbiter’s Ground. His armies had advanced far behind this point already, pouring out of the Mirror behind him. The twilight had yet to cross over the horizon line, and the white orb in the sky beamed at him without mercy. He huffed and chaffed under his clothes. A suffocating sensation, overblown brightness, except applied to skin (sticky!!!!)

He rose a sleeve to that dreadful sky —still not fully faded to colors he understood, an aggressive bright blue turning orange and pink, garish and wrong. No wonder this place was insane. No wonder this place needed to be put back in place; corrected and contained. As Zant pulled on his magic to generate a portal to a conquered place already secure to escape the sizzling and the crunch and the salty air, His voice arose from the depths of his chest.

S T A Y

Zant froze.

His God didn’t speak often, if ever. His God, immense and almighty, slumbered inside and soberly provided him with pure strength. A mute clarity. A sharper shade of anger. Zant was honored to house such ancient and wondrous rage, consuming him and feeding him every step forward he took.

“M-Master,” he whined, swaying from one foot to the next. “The air here… It corrodes me.”

Y O U W I L L E N D U R E

Zant smacked his lips shut. He wouldn’t dishonor his God. He would be worthy of what he was given. He would prevail.

He would endure.

The voice of his God sifted through his mind, instructing him again, quietly.

S T A Y

A sublime tremor surged inside of Zant. Its edges rasped him worse than the sun pooling over the endless expanse of sand ahead, its gleam reflected in the mirror in which the Twili were banished; in the forgotten ruins behind; in rusted chains left hanging off a looming boulder.

Something in his throat, like pain.

S T A Y ...

[rawliverandgoronspice]

Gantober #1 - Rest

(Ocarina of Time Adult Timeline, no particular tag or trigger)

Gantober Masterlist

****************

After a while —though what a while consisted of here evaded him entirely— Ganondorf found there was an ease to the chains binding him to nothingness.

At first he had trashed, howling curses that no one would ever hear. He had raged at the wounds cracking his face open. Raged at the puny things that denied him the fruits of a lifetime of seething work. Raged at the gods, the fabric of all worlds; raged at the Triforce, at Hyrule and its blessed winds... but not even he could hear the sounds that he made. The wild, pungent fur retracted into fragile skin. He shrunk; his inhumane features settling for the gauntness of an aging man.

Slowly, agonizingly, he allowed the silence to suffocate him.

He felt his consciousness fracture, evading him from all sides, spilling from the gashes in his flesh and off into the gloomy purples of this non-dimension. He could rest, he thought —almost pleadingly. He could allow his failure to define him. He could stop resisting the flow of time and fate, give up, let it all go. Find the place where he had always belonged: as passing history, a mark on the stone, and then nothing more than legend.

Rest.

And he would have. To his shame, he would have.

He would have, if not for the insistent golden light piercing the ghastly edges of the void. The shard, embedded deep within his bones. The proof, throbbing through his living corpse in a dull ache, denying him respite from the scorching thirst of his soul.

He would have, had he not won once already.

[rawliverandgoronspice]

Gantober 2024

So, joining the efforts of @bloobluebloo, I'll be partaking in Gantober!!

What that entails is, I'll be TRYING (emphasis on trying) to post one Ganondorf-related prompt a day. I have two ready, one for yesterday and one for today, but feel free to send me suggestions, either under this post or through asks!

I'm open to any iteration of Ganondorf, or even characters adjacent to him, and the mood can be my usual overdramatic somber edgelord shit or something less intense, and I'll even indulge in spice if that's what you're craving!

thank youuu ;;

Masterlist of all Prompts

Rest (Adult Timeline, OoT/Wind Waker)

Vessels (Tears of the Kingdom, Ganauru sort of, mind the tags it's weird)

...

...

[rawliverandgoronspice]

Gantober #24 - Bunch of Bad Doodles

Actually, there you go. Bunch of disgusting doodles of Ganon from Thralls Episode 2. I call this state of storyboarding the "MS Paint" Stage. I hope you can see why.

disgruntled boi

[rawliverandgoronspice]

Gantober #10 - Depths

Today, a short snippet of a vague TotK-adjacent story about this Ganondorf's childhood escapade! And including an arbitrary headcanon I played with, aka: Sage of Lightning being Ganondorf's younger sister.

Enjoy!

---

“Hey, slow down! I’ll tell mommy if you don’t wait for me!”

Ganondorf ignored his sister’s worried squeaks. She had bugged him all morning when he had tried to enjoy some rare alone time: she had wanted to know what he was reading, pinched his sides with weak jolts of electricity when he had refused to answer, and despaired at his cold disinterest in a shared play time. At the height of his annoyance, he had snapped his book shut and offered her his very worst smile. Do you want to go play explorers? he had asked, and of course the stupid brat had seen nothing concerning about that.

He would have gladly lost her in the upper layers of the ruins near Gerudo Town if she hadn’t been so insistent, following his long strides with a clumsy resolve he admired just as much as it drove him up the wall. Not losing her for real, of course. Just a little scare. She was the only child who wasn’t at least a bit afraid of him —and in the palace, her tears were so quickly comforted. Their mother the chieftain would throw some harsh words his way: that he was to be king and so ought to act with even more self-control than the noblest of their sworn personal guards, that power should never make room for cruelty. His sister would be hugged, and he’d be called callous in a way that itched.

But here, there was only him and the dark. If she cried, she would need to wipe the snot off her nose all on her own.

“Wait for me!”

He didn’t. Hopping past fallen rocks half-submerged in the sand, Ganondorf took a sharp turn left —froze.

The floor dropped into a hole.

It wasn’t a large hole. He could easily fit in, but his mother might have gotten stuck if she had tried to squeeze through. Underneath was pitch black darkness. Faint red, maybe. Or faint green?

Ganondorf knelt, and plucked a stone from the floor before dropping it in. The pebble was swallowed, its fall completely silent. Nothing ever echoed back to him.

“What is this?”

His sister loomed over his shoulder, nosy as always. He stared at her: her green pupils blown wide, mouth agape. Pointed ears. The kind he did not have. For a brief instant, he imagined pushing her down there, or rather: plummeting himself. There was an alluring call to that long drop. A chill ran down his spine. Something down there... yearned. The knowledge was both visceral and unquestioned. And somehow, the fear that should accompany that knowledge refused to take hold.

His sister’s fascination, however, took up a different shade. A paler one.

She gasped, plunging her tiny nails in his arm without thinking. He clenched his jaw in response. “It’s so deep! You shouldn’t get so close!”

“Let go,” he hissed.

“But...”

“If you can’t handle this, you should have played on your own.”

Her skin darkened in childish anger. “Stop being so rude! I’m gonna tell mommy you’re going to places you’re not allowed to go!”

“Go tell her then.”

She hesitated. Her long braid was powdered with dust and sand. A messy spectacle that would immediately betray she had gleefully followed her brother in forbidden, dangerous places. Ganondorf bared his teeth.

“Go!”

His sister jumped, hissing back at him like a stray cat. She turned around and ran off, the tapping of her soles echoing in the caves underneath the city they were born to inherit. He watched the wildfire of her hair disappear in the dark, then turned back to the hole.

Blowing between his palms, he invoked a small flame —blue, soft, the kind to bounce off its shrine across every sort of stone. The walls of the drop were jagged enough for him to climb down. He brushed his palm across its mineral skin, felt its coldness espouse the calloused bumps he managed to claim for himself in the midst of his life’s luxuries.

He didn’t even think. Blinked. Found himself several meters in, surrounded by rocks that wanted nothing more than to watch him fall. He considered forcing himself back up, out of vague concern for his sister and his mom, before deciding he didn’t really care. Something beckoned him deeper.

And he wanted to know what it was.

Long, long minutes later, far too long, the hole opened to a larger cave. Ganondorf’s magic indicated some sort of base floor waiting for him underneath, covered in moss, which he hoped would be enough to break his fall. Strange, unknowable flowers glimmered in what seemed like an infinite void.

He let himself fall.

The impact wasn’t kind to him. His ankles screamed, but he did not. When Ganondorf opened his eyes, all he could see was blackness, and the roots of immense structures of stone erected straight and far up. These looked nothing like gerudo architecture. Old, decrepit machines stood frozen and dead. Cold furnaces.

Ancient, silent, unwelcoming.

Ganondorf stood up and carefully made his way through the ruins.

[rawliverandgoronspice]

hehehee I have an idea for gantober... but it's going to be a little long and I need work to give it justice so not today but :>>>

[rawliverandgoronspice]

Gantober #30 - The Pond

I see we're all in a Termina Ganondorf streak, so I'll add my own piece to the pile!

[Majora's Mask, Termina Ganon AU, no other warning]

---

When evening came, the swamp adorned itself in a purple sheen that seemed to muffle the whole world. Frogs rumbled under the mud, and insects weren’t so loud that time of the year as to become overbearing. Earthen scents deepened as the water cooled.

Ganondorf took deep, grounding breaths as he untangled the fishing lines back into tight bundles that wouldn’t make knots during the night. Spending time with the occasional client was always nice —tales of the buzzing preparations for the festival in town always more engrossing to learn about from a safe distance— but the aching satisfaction that came with the end of a good work day was what he preferred above all else in life. The pirates he grew up with would have called it cowardice; but Ganondorf wasn’t one to pursue thrills for their own sake. Habit always reassured him.

Carefully placing the last bundle of lines into a basket nearby, Ganondorf clenched and unclenched his calloused hands before grabbing a bag of fish food and a mug of piping hot tea, and he moved from behind the counter of his fishing stall to the wooden deck overlooking the pond. Carps, eels and snappers circled the support poles crowded by waterlilies and moss and fireflies, expecting their meager part of the deal they had going on; then furiously nibbled on what he gave them with absolute focus. Ganondorf sat cross-legged on the deck to watch them, bringing the herbal tea to his lips. It didn’t taste good, but Kotake, the local apothecary, had insisted the beverage would ward off the cold he had been fighting for over a week —and he knew better than to deny the swamp witches’ doting nature. They had been looking over him every since he had decided to leave the pirate fortress, a good decade ago. The first time he had called them grandma, they had both squealed with joy. They visited each other regularly, knowing what to cook and what jokes to make and what subjects to avoid. Maybe it was the stillness of the swamp water, that allured wayward gerudos who had grown sick of the sea. He couldn’t say for sure.

Ganondorf sighed in contentment, and looked upward at the evening sky. Stars dwindled at the edge of puffy clouds, and most of the sun’s orange tint had given way to deep violets, pinks and blue. He had picked the pond for his fishing stall to be set halfway through a clearing just so he could get that sort of view —the one thing about the ocean he did miss.

That night, the moon stared back at him.

It seemed closer than before. Angrier too, if that made any sense. Some kind of furious, pained, hateful expression sundered deep through blisters of stone. The moon seemed like it wanted to scream.

Ganondorf drank another sip of the boiling tea. His fingers almost burned against the ceramic, but the pain gave him something concrete to hold onto. That, and the earthen scents, and the insects, and the frogs, and the gurgling water, and the faint buzzing from the Deku Palace nearby.

Still, the moon’s eyes kept him captive for a while longer. Their cosmic pull seemed to tug at his bones, at something worse. A command for him to come crash himself upward. A pervasive whisper, that somehow, somehow, those eyes had something to do with him. Something so large, so wrong, so inconceivable, that mere words would not convey the foul dread that washed over Ganondorf whenever he would look up at the sky.

An impossible sense that, in some form, in some way… this was his doing.

He did that.

Ganondorf wrenched his eyes back down, nauseated. The fishes were done gobbling their food but still circles his location on the deck, expecting more. He took a deep breath. Earthen scents. The bitter tea on his tongue. Mud and buzzing. The good ache of an honest life.

He stood, returned the food bag to the stall, and headed to his shack to spend the rest of the evening reading a book under the soft covers of his bed, under a solid roof he built himself, under the canopy of his chosen home; as far as he could from the purple sky.