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2ofswords · 4 years ago

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Phi talks factions, ruling families, and endings yet again

After long long last I finished my talk about the factions! So let’s talk about them! There is some discourse about it on here and most of it is really interesting and I wanted to throw my own takes into the mix.

Also, will put this in the very beginning: This essay is very long and hinges on a lot of analysation of very broad topics of the game. It is very possible that I make mistakes in it. I would be delighted to know about them and engage in discussion, but please stay friendly. I tried my best to research and to stay analytical, but I am firstly human and secondly human with a memory that can fail me.

Anyway without further ado: Let’s begin the faction talk!

Prologue: Personal sympathy

This is supposed to be more of an analysation about how the factions work in my opinion. It is not supposed to be an explanation why my favourite faction is the Best™. Still, my opinions will obviously influence my own analysis. So for the sake of levelling the playing field and not even trying to play coy about it – or in case you were curious what my personal opinions are – I will start by listing my own opinions about the factions, the families and the endings.

I consider myself a Utopian but also have a soft spot for the Humble ideology. I just really like progress, I am an idealist who thinks striving for a perfect situation has value (even if I do not believe in practical perfection) and I just really like the Kains’ visions okay? Not their executions, mind you, but their visions. (I am just really really obsessed with magic that involves time and space as a concept…) And I think the concept of human potential is one of the most hopeful and important ones to society and trying to get more out of being a human being is just an important concept to me. But I also think the personal responsibility is really important and interesting and the thought about individuality vs. society is something that needs to be discussed, so the humbles are just really interesting to me and I sympathise with a lot going on there as well. Not that much of a Termite person though. Sorry

Concerning the endings: If I would be in a position to choose any ending for the town, I would choose the Termite Ending. I would just be really unhappy about it… But it is the only ending that doesn’t involve any direct sacrifice of life and I value that the most, even if I think the trade-off is still pretty devastating. I am still a Utopian, but potential lives in people. The ending I consider second best is actually the Utopian one and by process of elimination I like the Humble ending the least. You will probably learn why this is the case when we get to talk about the endings, so I am saving my argument for later. If it is about how much I like the endings from a narrative perspective: I am a passionate fan of the Utopian ending even though that is very frustrating since I see it in a rather… peculiar way, I think. I also love the Humble ending a lot and it just has the most personal tragedy and a lot to think about. The Termite ending… eh. It serves its purpose and is necessary but not really pleasing in analysis. Or if it is, it’s still a bit frustrating to talk about. It is very useful for writing fanfiction though. ^^

I don’t really have a favourite ruling family. I think the Saburovs are the most sympathetic, but I am also fascinated by the Kains. My favourite members are Victor and Capella.

Okay? Cool, now that we got that out of the way let’s start with the actual faction talk.

Part 1: What the factions are (and what they aren’t)

The factions are categories that are very broad and not very concrete. It is probably a good idea to talk about what they are first, before we make any statements about them. So, let us start how I look at them and what the factions stand for, before debating the rest.

Firstly: The factions are a part of classic Pathologic. From what I can tell and remember, they haven’t been mentioned in Pathologic 2 at all. Of course, we can see the struggle of different worldviews there as well, but the split cast of important NPCs is not mandatory in any shape anymore and in fact Artemy is now responsible for everyone in town. While the politics between the ruling families are mentioned and the Kains as well as the Olgimskys still share their beliefs, neither the term “bound” not “faction” is introduced in the game. However that might be because we are starting with the Haruspex as our protagonist. The factions are a bit more important in the other two routes of classic Pathologic after all. The Bachelor being concerned with its politics and the Changeling with its ideology itself. So the terms might be introduced later. For now, their conflict may be a part of Patho 2 and certain aspects can be definitely seen, but they aren’t present yet. So we are mostly talking about Classic Pathologic here.

The factions are introduced in two different ways. First and foremost, they are three different ideologies that are present in the town and by definition in the entire story. It is also told, that the whole town is split into these factions and that roughly one third of the town each belongs to either faction. It is also explained, that the factions are purely made by the ideology and that people of different gender, heritage, age and class can align with different factions. (Which means that they aren’t equivalent to the different parts of town that are at least roughly divided by social status). There is also a philosophical level that strengthens the ideological importance each faction holds, but in this essay, I will focus on the ideological part and how it affects society. That means there is another layer that we won’t be touching today, but believe me, we have enough to do as it is.

The other aspect of the factions is the bound of each healer. All of the bound collectively are described as “Simons friends” at least in the Bachelor route and all of them are now split into the three factions. The name “bound” however is to be taken literally. The characters are part of the agenda each faction follows, however, that doesn’t necessarily mean, that the person one hundred percent shares the ideology of the faction! Most of them do, but it is important to keep in mind that peoples belief-systems still vary and the aligning criteria is the importance to the goal of said faction and not necessarily their own way of thinking. People’s mindset and beliefs can vary after all and some of them even have dynamic arcs (tbh Most of them have). The other way around people can be not a part of the bound of a faction and still share their beliefs. This will be important later! For the Utopians the specific bound criteria is “people who have the potential to overstep human boundaries in any way or form”. They are needed for the creation and upholding of the Utopia as it is imagined. Its goal is in some way after all to create something that oversteps the boundaries of what should be humanly possible. For the termites… well… it’s children. It’s all about the children, it is the children who are able to carry the town in the future. And for the humbles it is the sinners, whose souls are rotten to the core (I guess…). That isn’t only because the Humbles just really like sinners but they are directly needed for Clara’s solution and the Humble’s ideology of willing self-sacrifice in order to maintain society.

Okay. But what are the factions? What do they believe in?

Let’s start with the Utopians, because their whole schtick is kind of in the name. This faction is all about the potential of humanity and striving to create perfection. This is happening with the awareness that such a feat is at least deemed impossible. So, their goal is the defeat – or the power to overcome depending on who you ask – of the nature that prevents them from this kind of progress not being achievable. They value this progress and the possibility to overcome those odds over personal as well as societal comfort and justify it with the belief, that said growth would benefit society in the long run. That being said, not every Utopian thinks this strive for growth needs to be shared by everyone, though a society collectively working towards breaking limits as a whole is preferred. (An example would be Maria's explanation of the town, stating that mundane human life is very much necessary to sustain a Utopia). The Utopians are prone to brash decisions, since part of their ideology is that they are necessary to disrupt the status quo and change – even enforced one – is needed to get rid of complacency and provoke new development of the unforeseen (which is very much needed since we are working against “nature” (the literal one as well as the nature of fate and possibility). Their drawbacks are that brashness and the disregard of comfort. Their potential elitism is shown by their value of humans who try to disrupt the status quo and their adamant protection of people who can move society as “more important” and thus worthy of more protection. (However it is noteworthy that a lot of this thinking was introduced by Georgiy in Pathologic 2 and Marble Nest. I still think it is a legitimate drawback but much less used in P1, where the factions are a thing.) This doesn’t necessarily relate to elitism of an elite class (it can though!) but more so to academic elitism. On the other hand, they have the drive to move things forward, they literally are the builder of society and developers of indescribable magic.

The Termites can be considered the opposite of the Utopians. I have struggled to put a definitive description of them for quite some time because they are the group whose representatives have vastly different ways of thinking. Anyways, I have seen the Termite ideology being described as “preservation” by RagnarRox in “Pathologic 2 is an underrated masterpiece” and I think, that fits amazingly. It is about protection and regaining a status quo where everyone can live their daily lives content and as it was before. The children are supposed to be leading the town into the future, but especially in Patho 1 this is more about taking what the past has already shaped and using this as a guide instead of implementing new ideas and philosophies as the utopians and the humbles do (for better and for worse). If we look at how Capella describes her vision of the town, we can also see that it is about togetherness and comfort. Which makes sense if it is the antithesis of the utopian dream. It doesn’t sacrifice progress just because it wants to but because it endangers people’s comfort and personal safety. Disrupting the status quo can lead to catastrophe and make people unhappy, therefore it should be avoided. People should serve the community but that also means not committing to self-fulfilment that can endanger this togetherness. Khan needing to give up on his own ambitions to serve Capella’s vision of the town might be a good example for that. While there is this bond of togetherness there is also the need for leadership. Again, preservation and comfort are highly valued with the Termites and it is established by a leadership that is supposed to act as gentle but firm guidance. With the children being the bound, there is a strong emphasis on parenthood and again Capella – as the white mistress and the termite's leader – is accepted as taking the leadership together with Khan who are ruling together with love as well as fierceness. Artemy also has his journey of establishing leadership within the kin and dethroning the person who is unfit for the role. It is implementing change but to restore balance and only inside the already established rules. I would say it fits more as a case of rightful leadership that still stems from the menkhu families and Artemy proves himself while using his father’s lessons and notes. And the kids themselves are fated to lead the town itself as the chosen ones that Capella implored Isidor to protect, and set its rules, so that there are the boundaries to keep a way of living established while not needing to change this status quo and what hopefully is a harmonic way of interaction between people. So. Now that we have established what the Termites are, I think with this specific faction it is still important to also name what they aren’t. Firstly: The Termites are an ideology of the town’s future. They aren’t the kids club. Yes, all the Termites are kids, but as mentioned before the factions in themselves are a third of the population with varying members who believe the Termites to have the best solution for the town at hand. There are other members (and I will later talk about the Olgimskys and big Vlad specifically as representatives of the Termite ideology) but the kids are the bound because they are specifically needed to set this new order that they want to established. I would argue that some of the kids have principles that are more adjacent to other ideologies. The obvious one would be Khan who has goals that do not align with his family but similar dreams and more radical ideals about overthrowing the status quo. But Grace also seems to be more of a humble, focusing on caring about others and being quite selfless and self-sacrificing in her care for the dead. That means, the kids fill an important role but we have the strange conundrum that most of this factions bound isn’t together because of their ideology. I will try to take them into account still, but if you see me focusing on Capella and Artemy, this is one of the reasons. There aren’t that many people who clearly speak about the Termite’s vision. The Termites also aren’t the Kin. They are connected to each other but again, the Kin is a specific part of the town which the ideology clearly avoids. (And parts of the Kin are not part of the town and actually stand in opposition to it. Moreso in Patho 2 but with the conflict of the herb gatherers we catch a glimpse of that.) And the children are also representatives of different parts of the town and not of the Kin. The Kin are obviously linked to the towns ancient tradition and preserving their traditions honourably is Artemy’s specific journey. Still, they aren’t the same and with both Aspity and Oyun we have characters who are Kin and also part of a different faction.

Speaking of the Humbles. What’s up with them?

The Humbles also have a name that speaks for itself: It is based around the main idea of being humble. There are different consequences of this main core. The first and in my opinion most important one revolves around responsibility and self-sacrifice. The Humbles expect the individual to sacrifice part of themselves for the whole. I mean… that is quite literally what the ending is about. As with the Termites there is a togetherness but this one doesn’t revolve around looking out for each other (at least not specifically) but about looking at oneself and what you could and should do for society to work best. It puts responsibility not on a collective and its leaders but on yourself and needs you to ask what you did right, what you did wrong and how to take consequences for your own actions. This includes a chance for redemption as well as condemnation. For the purpose of evaluating yourself in contrast to society it is also about self-reflection. You need to look at yourself and at your deeds constantly and this analysation and the realization that you can and will fail as well as that you as a human being have your own limits you cannot and should not cross are what lead to humbleness in the first place. Yulia as a sinner, whose very sin is shaping the very ideology and establishing her ideals over the self. This brings us to the second pillar of the humble ideology: fatalism. It is also to see yourself in context of a greater scheme and accepting these very boundaries. Fulfilling your duty in the way the universe demands of you and seeing yourself unavoidably as a puzzle piece of said force is a big deal for a lot of the Humbles. Yulia is the prime example. Lara actively dislikes her fatalism but still follows her father’s footsteps in her attempt to assassinate Block. Aspity moves in the constriction of the Kin and her fate while still being the one who advocates most for change. The Saburovs are all about law and order albeit in different ways. Oyun cannot do what is entrusted to him which causes his horrible deeds in the first place, because he cannot accept at first that he is not fit for the position (or as the words of a humble: not destined for it). And Clara is struggling with what her fate imposes on her and her very being while trying to control her circumstances as well as the fate of the people entrusted to her. It all is about analysing but also about abiding to the whims of fate and facing the consequences of acting either against it, failing it or resorting to violence against society to fulfil it in the first place.

As you may see, all of these categories are rather broad. Of course, they are, they are made to encompass very different views of the world from different characters. When Victor speaks about working towards overcoming bounds he sure as hell means something different than Andrey. Hell, Dankovsky has no idea what Georgiy is talking about half the time! Lara and Yulia are both Humbles, yet Lara explicitly states that she hates the way Yulia weaves her fatalism in her ideology about the self. And well… the Termites are a very special case regarding the factions in general, being more of a symbol of their ideology than its actual believers. So let's get to the meat of this whole post. We now have a grasp on what the factions are about, but… why? Why are they in the game, what are they trying to say?

Part 2: Presentation of the factions and the ruling families

Well… after making an incredibly long introduction, let’s stop talking around the bush. Here is my conclusion about the game’s stance of the factions: … … I am sorry to conclude, that all of them suck. All of them. They are the worst and none of them are worthwhile in themselves. I am sorry.

Okay, okay, okay. Obviously, they are not only terrible. They have their upsides and all of their ideals are rather beautiful. Making potential become a reality is great! So is comfort and stability, we all could sure as hell use some of that! And the principle of giving something of yourself into society, taking responsibility and the ability to care into consideration… boy is that a good idea! But still… the factions suck. And that is an inherent aspect of them just because they are ideologies. And very unsubtle and uncompromising ideologies at that. To quote novel author Dorothy Sayers “The first thing a principle does is killing somebody.” A principle, if it is used without reflection, always has destructive potential. Even if it is the principle to save as many lives as possible. Put into the wrong dilemma, it will kill. (A single glance at the healer’s path’s is enough to confirm that.) And all three factions have some really potentially bad implications exactly because their ideology is so vastly applicable. It isn’t only about emergency situations, but a lifestyle that regards one way of setting priorities as absolute. Of course, that on its own must go horribly wrong! Leave one single way of thought unattended and it will guide you into fucking catastrophe!

I think the easiest way to highlight this theory and the best prove of the game’s acknowledgement of this line of thought is to take a look at the ruling families. The fact that there are three of them is no coincidence. All three families do not only represent one of the factions but also the destructive extreme this faction can develop.

Let’s start with the Kains again, because their case is the most obvious one and the theme of Utopia and thus uncompromising perfection that has a destructive force is in the fucking title of the game. And creating a project that causes the plague in the first place, forcing the Kin to dig the very hole that tears into the heart of the earth – which they sure as hell did not agree with! – conducting human experiments with their buildings and manipulating the situation so that the Polyhedron gets saved even sacrificing the town for its sake… yeah these are some pretty shitty things to do and they all relate to the Utopian ideal and their strive for development, progress and forming humanity as well as society. And sacrificing everything in order to elevate progress is… obviously a bad idea, especially if it involves using people who never consented to such a sacrifice in the first place! With only development – social as well as personal – in mind the scope of said sacrifice cannot be measured at all, leading to devaluing peoples well-being. It is a horrible thing that harms a lot of people and the strict enforcement of the Kains bring a lot of harm to the town. This damage doesn’t only turn against the town but also has a self-destructive tendency. The self-sacrifice that is demanded to keep the spirit of Simon and Nina is eating the entire family alive. Their strict family loyalties seem to have driven Khan off in the first place (though since his role is “The Termite of the Kains” and he holds a strange middle ground I think he is kind of excluded from the “most extreme faction”-stance). Victor and Georgiy are losing their own identity and eventually their life for the sake of a soul that they consider of higher status than them. And Maria loses her own self to become the next mistress and lead what is left of the town into a new age, which Victor laments as her father because he is literally losing his daughter! The family – even if they “win” the whole town conflict – is actively falling apart and is completely fractured if not destroyed in the end. Not only is the sacrifice the town has to endure obviously morally unacceptable but the disregard of comfort in favour of a greater cause is inherently self-destructive. Which leaves the question: Who is this Utopia even build for, who benefits from it, if everything but it is sacrificed? So yeah, what the Kains are doing and especially the way they are using the Utopian dream in its purest form is absolutely and incredibly flawed.

Sooo… what are our alternatives? How about the Saburovs? They are righteous and they care about people! I mean… yeah. They do! Buuuuut… their handling of the situation is also very… debatable to put it nicely. Let’s start with the obvious: putting everyone in prison who seems mildly suspicious while a highly contagious plague is ravages the town is just… horrible. It is a prolonged and cruel death sentence to many people either desperate or innocent. And yes, he himself did it with the utmost desire to protect society as a whole from the criminals and organized street violence but… surprise, that is what the humble ideology is about! Judging the individual according to sin without taking circumstances into account is one of the extremes the Humble-ideology has. You should stay put and work towards the common good and acting against that should be judged harshly!! If taken to an extreme it disregards personal circumstances and even a human approach towards the individual. And even if it hits innocents, the few have to take personal sacrifice for the many. Giving your life to uphold stability should be considered a good thing… right? Of course, the faulty leader should also be held responsible… So the judge becomes the judged and the executor of the ideology is destroying himself. Again, we witness the ideology's self-destructive aspect when taken to the extreme. Judgement and assigning responsibility for overstepping with no account on the human situation, looking out for the other individual or questioning where established boundaries should be pushed, will lead to draconian law where the single human being doesn’t matter in the first place! And that… doesn’t sound like a society one wants to live in, does it?Katerina has her own case of judging people albeit in a religious way. Her view splits the world into the sinners and the righteous and sentences the former to death while the others will survive what she is seeing as the plague's judgement. Do I have to elaborate why this is a bad take and why judging people to death based on being a sinner is… just awful? Especially when we look at the humbles and how some of them may have done some shit but definitely not something that warrants death. (Yulia and Rubin being examples, but I also think Lara shouldn’t like… be judged with death. Well, truth to be told I think nobody should be judged with death… Ever.) So seeing the Changeling’s power as a saintly sign is… bad not only on a societal level but also bad because pressuring a teenager like that is just a the worst. Which brings us the Humble’s second point and the one that Katerina personifies as well: Personal responsibility. The Humble ideology isn’t only about sacrificing the individual and applying judgement but also about self-reflection and taking responsibility. Which sounds really good but can be devastating when taken too far. Which brings us to Katerina’s journey of becoming a mistress and her devastating experience of trying to fit into a role that was expected of her to fill. Desperately trying to fulfil a fate that seems to be yours can destroy you. Her despair of not fulfilling as a mistress as well as a wife (in her own terms) are honestly soul wrenching and tragic. And it is an example where letting go of personal duty and seeing to oneself would have been for the best.

Okay so the Saburovs establish a society that seems awful to live in and also actively destroy themselves (they also die with their ending, something they share with the Kains). Which leaves us with… the Olgimskys. And yeah… I think we all agree that they couldn’t exactly be called a beacon of goodness in the world… The way the bull enterprise is handled is exploitative to say the least, dividing the town and enabling even more racism and class distinction. But what does that have to do with the Termites? After all, only Capella is part of the bound. Which is true but the Termite bound is also the children bound and I would dare to argue that the Olgymskys are unassigned because they represent the ruling families of the Termites but cannot apply as their bounds because of age reasons. Capella is pretty much the head of the Termites, the way Maria and Clara or Katerina are the mistresses of the other ideologies and Big Vlad… well Big Vlad is what the other ruling families are to the other factions. The best reason to stay away from it. (And I could make a point about young Vlad but to not stretch this too much, I will keep it short. Let’s just say that he has a dynamic role in the factions and more or less grows to be a Utopian and is not even really acknowledged at the Bachelor Route. I would put him in the same category as Khan and say that the Kains in themselves still are connected to the Utopian ideology. There are some really interesting parallels between Khan and Young Vlad btw. Both have strong parental issues and feel confined in their role, both appear in the letter about the Bachelor’s and the Haruspexe’s decision as a hopeful addition that isn’t fixed… I am pretty sure there is something to say about that, but this essay is not the right place for it.) There are two main themes with the Termites that are very present in the Olgimskys: stagnation and oppression. I think how the Olgimskys are specifically oppressive and moreso than the other families is pretty self-explanatory. They do not want to bind people to the law or their ideas but to themselves and especially big Vlad is very keen on ruling the town and leading its people directly and forcefully. (And while Capella is obviously the kinder part of the family, she too shares this sentiment. Her alliance with Khan is to align the two families but also to gather force with his dogheads and establish rulership.) They want to be obeyed without question or an established guidebook that gives specific reason to their judgement. But why is this specifically a problem the Termite ideology faces? Well the Termites are about ensuring peoples comfort and life and they do this for any cost. One thing this entails, is saving people from their own ambitions and forming them according to this belief. (Again, Capella’s alliance with Khan and how she sees it is a nice example). They are establishing that humanity should remain in their natural ways, complacent so to speak, while a few chosen individuals lead the town and its people. (The Termites are supposed to do this in the future that is why they need to survive in the first place.) And if we drive this belief and this “ruling as family” ideology, we arrive at Big Vlad’s doorstep. He is the father, he will take care so exactly obey to his wishes without question. Preserve the system that allows you comfort without overstepping your boundaries. Preservation of a system also means preservation of the ruling system without further questions. (And I will remind you that Forman Oyun gets overthrown because the place is not rightfully his and he sucks because of this and the right order gets restored with the right ruling family watching over the Abattoir upholding their alliance with the Olgimskys even if it is now Capella.) In its extreme the Termite ideology can lead to oppression on the guise of guidance and questioning this is not only almost impossible but only allowed to the few people already chosen as the leading caste. (Also if you want to have another look at the connection between preservation and oppression, have a look at “The Void” or “Turgor” and its Brothers which is another game by Ice Pick Lodge. Their whole stick is preserving their realm by oppressing the sisters. The Void seems to reference similar themes in general and can kind of seen as the game’s antithesis… But I digress and just wanted to recommend the game. It’s good!) Why the other problem – stagnation – is a part of preservation is easy to see, but how does it afflict the Olgimskys? Well, firstly it is a big theme in the infight the family has and the conflict that tears the Vlads apart. While Young Vlad wants to follow his legacy, he doesn’t want to follow the exact ways leading to the family breaking apart. Vlads stubbornness and his unwillingness to rectify old mistakes and… I don’t know… open the Termitary is also part of this. Closing it – while done by Young Vlad – is done to preserve the status of the town and deny the plague and its changes to society for as long as possible. A plan that is very, very costly in the long run betraying the Olgimsky’s own duty to ensure their peoples life and safety in the first place! Again, the ideology eats itself.

Of course, only talking about the most extreme and negative example isn’t entirely fair. And I think there is worth in every faction. They obviously aren’t all bad and the ruling families are twisting and radicalizing what could be a good idea. So… was this whole talk about the ruling families just some intellectual pastime that proves how the rulers are shitty but the factions in themselves aren’t? Do they only kind of suck? Or can we actually find the games stance of this radicalization and how each faction alone could affect the town negatively on a larger scale?

Part 3: The endings of the game

So let’s talk about the endings, since they are literally established as the “successful” outcome for each of the factions. And with that I mean that the fate of the town is decided in favour of one of the factions, eradicating the others and their own hopes and ambitions in return. Best it is seen with the Utopians and the Termites, whose dreams are mutual exclusive by the destruction of the town or the Polyhedron alone. But if we consider that the ending also establishes a new way of living in town and a certain social system, we can see the same with the Humbles. (We can also see this if we think of the Humbles goal as a means to restore the town at its best in favour of personal sacrifice, which still doesn’t happen in the other endings, since part of the town gets destroyed.) For the factions, the plague also brings a chance to shift the power dynamics of a town to their direction and this is referenced by several characters trying to make use of this situation or at least struggling to maintain their power. (The ruling families are again the worst offenders of this. The Kains try to guide the Bachelor to their cause from the very beginning and a lot more deliberate in the second half. The rulers’ unwillingness to even acknowledge the plague, Saburovs’ abuse of administrative power, the way Katerina urges Clara to convert townsfolk, Capella’s alliance with the Haruspex… I can go on, but I think we have talked enough about the ruling families.) Long story short: The endings are distinctly aligned with one side of the power struggle. (By the way this isn’t necessarily the endgoal the healers are striving for. I think it is apparent by now, that I align the factions more with the ruling families rather than the healers, because the healers’ first priority is getting the plague problem solved one way or the other and there are different motives for their solutions. Also they can choose a different healers opinion so they aren’t like… one hundred percent absolutely bound by their ending even if they still align with it. But I digress yet again.) So, they – as the “win” of each faction – are a good way to see how they would hold up on themselves and without the other factions interfering. I will analyse the sacrifice they put on the town as well as the society they are striving to build up (since this is what the factions are about. Changing society). Will one of them hold up and present us with a good solution?

I will not even try to create suspense. We all know, I think that they don't. They all bear sacrifices in contrast to what we had before that make the situation actively worse. A video that sums it up better than I can is SulMatul’s “Heroism in Futility; Pathologic, The Void and the Hero Narrative”. The video is really good in general but it also makes a point of pointing out, that Pathologic as well as the void do not offer a standard “good end” where the hero saves the day, because every possible solution is tainted in one way or another. The heroism Pathologic shows (as well as “The Void”) is struggling against a doomed cause and a hopeless situation despite the odds and not about becoming victorious in it. The Artbook of Pathologic 1 states as much, describing the whole scenario of the game as a trap, where the problem is that every ending can be seen as a victory as well as a failure. So, we have some strong sources but still: Let us look at the endings again and see, if my thesis holds up, that it is the ideology of the factions and the remaining of one in each ending that amplifies the problem the town will face after the catastrophe.

We’ll start with the Utopians, yet again. I think they make the most immediate impression and are easiest to describe. Because, you know… destroying a town and killing the sick is really fucking bad. (Though I feel sometimes it’s forgotten that the healthy get “vaccinated” (immunised for some hours) and evacuated before. It’s not about eradicating all townsfolk. And if I would be a true hypocrite I could be like “Do you find any infected districts and sick people on day 12 that you can’t heal, huh?” But that would be… quite ridiculous and I’m sure the sacrifice of the sick is very much intended here. Let’s just assume that it does kill the sick.) It seems hardly worth it and it very much represents the harshness of the Utopians. So, let’s see how it applies to the ideology. The ending for the most part sacrifices life and comfort for humanities progress. This is what the protection of the Polyhedron is about. The Utopians are not protecting it because they find it kind of pretty and it also is not a preservation of something culturally cool (which would be more the Termite way of thinking) because the usage of it is supposed to vary after the end of the story. (The children are leaving the tower so that the soul of Simon can be housed in the building.) But it is supposed to make the impossible possible and ensure humanities triumph over nature, break boundaries and create new impossible ideas. The visions of the new town Peter describes, tell us as much. It is not only about a building but about a new order, where the impossible is created and where the amount of energy is a crucial aspect of the vision. So, if we weight the different solutions against each other from out outside player perspective, we can see how tied the concept of the solution is to the Utopian idea. We already have a very steep sacrifice for the Utopian ideology here. The other aspect of the Utopian ending establishes this “creation through destruction” mantra that the Utopian ideology can impose in a different light: The Utopian end focuses on eradicating the plague. Which is… actually a good thing for once but still tied to the themes of the Utopians and making their involvement in it stronger. If we look at the Utopian end from a cold analytical perspective, it is literally destroying the playing board creating a tabula rasa, to start this whole town project again. (Or at least that is what our mistress Maria alludes to and who is in charge after the whole ending?…) Which is a very radical use of what the Utopians are about, carry out your vision rash, immediate and drastic and if it doesn’t work, then leave it behind and try again (the stairways to heaven tell a similar story). Which ultimately leads to a sacrifice that is way too big because the losses aren’t supposed to be considered at all.

So what about the counter thesis? If the Utopian ending is so bad, then the termite ending must be the solution. Well… it solves some problems. Mostly people not dying. Which definitely is a really good thing! But it also comes with its own drawbacks. Namely the destruction of the Polyhedron first and foremost. Which you know… doesn’t seem like that important… It's just some building. Until we reapply the meaning of eradicating the chance to work for the impossible – which the Utopian ideology enables – and a strive to triumph over nature and improve humanity as a whole. Then it suddenly becomes a huge deal. Destroying the Polyhedron is not only about destroying some cool architecture project of some very bored capital graduates (even though this is sure a thing we are doing) but about preventing humanity's progress. We are saving life but we are also preventing the chance to develop a system where humanity can grow, develop new amazing and helpful things and might even reject their mortality as a whole. And even if the last part sounds kind of insane, please consider, that Pathologic is still very much set in a world where magic and miracles exist. We rely on the magic the earth provides in both other routes, see the prophecies of the mistresses and the theatre, visit a talking rat prophet and we can see the magic of the Polyhedron when we visit it as the Bachelor on day nine and of course in the secret ending. Acting like the ambitions as well as the magic of the Utopians is completely unreachable and should be outright rejected, undermines the cost the Termite ending takes to ensure their own victory. So I would argue that there is at least the possibility of the development of humankind and progress into new developments that can help people in general that get destroyed to ensure the lives of the sick as well as the old rules of the town. And that is definitely a costly exchange! This also brings me to an argument that I hear a lot and also want to deny here: “But if the town exists, more towers and miracles can be build again so its not really that great of a loss.” And while this can hold true for the very similar Diurnal ending (if we are really nice and not deny every form of magic, which is kind of the point of that ending… but I digress), the ending in favour of the Termites negates this. Firstly, it explicitly invents a “town of men” where this strive for destroying nature should be prevented. Secondly… the whole underground fluid thing still isn’t really fixed… because that is what gets saved by the Haruspex this is his goal. Which allows for the Panacea but also means that the plague and the traditions that cause the infection aren’t actually off the table. If we would create another Polyhedron the plague would appear again. The old ways of the town are hardly questioned, and they actually cannot be – at least in a way that implies substantial progress over nature – because the laws that get re-establishes actively prevent exactly this. The thread of the plague isn’t gone completely – even if certainly postponed because of the Polyhedrons removal. And that resources run out and the knowledge gets obscured is shown how littler there even is knows about Isidor's earlier experiments. So, we are either creating a word, where humanities progress is distinctly stopped or we create a situation in which the same mistakes that will cause the plague aren’t prevented at all and humanities mistake will repeat themselves. We created a situation, where movement is not possible and actually actively prevented.

The third one – the Humble ending – establishes a balance where both structures can be preserved but movement is still possible. Which first sounds like all is good and the life of only a handful of people could be worth the cost, if we outweigh them against the systematic costs the other endings provide… right? Well… apart from peoples life’s never being a “cost”… this only can hold true if we cannot find a societal problem with this. And we can. Again, with all endings we can see the broad ideologies coming into play and so the very problem of the endings are, that they follow the factions rules so exclusively and absolute. The Utopian end sacrificing life and comfort for progress and vision, the Termite end sacrificing progress and vision for comfort and life and the humble end… what does the Humble Ending do? Well the Humble end saves the precarious balance between the Town and the Polyhedron but at the cost of personal sacrifice. While all aspects of the town may exist the same is true for the plague that gets neither destroyed nor subdued but instead is still active and handled by constantly applying a cure. A cure made out of the humans blood of those who sacrifice themselves for sustaining this very system. Which does mean we will need constant human sacrifice to sustain this system at all. And since a town and a societal system should last for quite some time and there is no other solution in sight to deal with the plague without firing a shot after all… we are facing a plethora of problems. Firstly: If we assume that for some reason the Changeling – or at least her miracles – are now as immortal as Simon was and she will not suddenly disappear leaving us with no one to even make the cure that we need, then what happens if the sinners we have chosen at the end of the game run out? And if we assume that the town will not like disappear after some years – which shouldn’t be the goal at all! – that will happen eventually. Who gets chosen and for what reason? I remind you again, that this is not a personal thing that people can do if they want, there is a societal need for people to die, it is integrated into the very system of the town. So how do we decide that? Are we just sentencing people to “cleanse themselves by human sacrifice” and just choose the worst criminals? That can be faulty and – again – the death penalty is something that we shouldn’t apply to society! Do we accept a willing sacrifices? Great, now that sounds like important and innocent life being taken for all the wrong reasons and can also hit someone who suffers from suicidal depression! Do we hope that our dear mistress continues her burden and selects who should die next.? That sounds like a horrible fate for Clara and also like a very unjust system. But sentencing someone to death because of a systematic need sounds incredibly unjust in the first place! Plus… you know with a highly contagious and deadly plague sometimes roaming the town, a cure doesn’t mean that nobody will die because of the plague. There still is a high lethality, personal reasons to obscure things and just a frightening time limit. Not to mention that the sandplague hurts before it kills so the pain aspect and the fear of the disease is still lingering. It sure is better then everyone contracting it and dying and the cure is a solution but… not exactly to every aspect of the disease, especially when we do not have the means to subdue it, that we have in the other two endings.

I hope that I was able to show that the endings might solve the catastrophe at hand, but all of them with a cost so huge that the specific solution can become debatable. Defeating the plague for good while saving the possibility to proceed further is really amazing, but destroying the entire old structure and killing the sick is a horrible tradeoff. Subduing the disease is definitely good, but at the cost of destroying the potential to enhance future life or even save more people in the long run and with integrating the enablement of repeating the same old mistakes doesn’t sound like a complete solution and more like turning the wheel and waiting for it to reappear at the same side (or you know… stopping it from turning all together). Preserving the town as well as its wonders is absolutely miraculous but allowing the plague to partake in this new system and requiring human sacrifice as a societal solution is a pretty dystopian thought. Again, the Artbook of classic Pathologic describes the whole scenario and its solutions as a trap. And it is! Because there is no right answer, we have to choose what we apply as a necessary evil and this is all we can do. There is no good ending we can find.

Conclusion: The meaning of ��Utopia”

So where does that leave us? And what does that have to do with the factions? Remember the quote I used at the beginning of my argument? “The first thing a principle does is killing somebody.” And we can see the effect of this with every of the factions. The rashness and costly sacrifice of the Utopian ideals is seen by the way the Kains’ act and the loss of live the Utopian solution provides. The Termites disregard of progress and the oppression that is its result can see in the way the Olgymskiys’ handle its people as well as the sacrifice of the Termite ending. The Humbles enforcement of punishment and their harsh self-reflection influences the Saburovs’ judgement and leads to their solution at the cost of constant human sacrifice in the end.

So… does this mean that there is no hope? Should we assume that all of these solutions and ideas suck and leave this whole essay this depressed? That would be a shame and also missing the mark of what Pathologic is about. It is a tragedy, that much is true, but it is definitely not without hope and humanity. Because all the examples I use have one thing in common: They are examples of the radicalization of each faction and in its sole survival against the other factions. A principle on its own might kill. But that is why there shouldn’t be only one principle. Clara is right when she reminds the other two healers that killing one part of the town of is still killing. That there is a balance that must be uphold and we can see this balance in other characters. We can see Notkin’s idealism that is still rooted in earthly matters and a deep care for his people. We can see Eva’s kindness being born of idealism combined with her will to give herself away to other people (although this also gets taken too far in the end). And there is beauty in all three ideas. Fighting against impossible odds, caring for what is right and should be maintained, watching ourselves to help your surroundings… all of this is good! And all of these things hold solutions for the other factions. When striving for progress we need to watch our own wellbeing and the negative consequences of our actions. When preserving what is old, we have to see what should be changed, where chances for progress are and we also need to look at ourselves and not only the concept we want to preserve. Looking at our own sins and self-reflection is important, but so is our own comfort and our own goals, even if they might seem outlandish at first. By applying the different ideologies on top the one we hold dear, we can balance them out.

The best ways the ideology work – the real utopia – is a balance of all three ideologies together. That means that the best state of the town is what we witness in the beginning of the game (even if I would never call that perfect either! The exportation of the kin shows as much!) But debating and changing through the reflection of all three ideologies is in my opinion how society can be driven to it’s best. Progression is useless without looking out for each other and keeping what works and helps. Preservation leads to oppression and stagnation if self-expression is forbidden. Responsibility and duty are needed but can lead to condemnation and self-destruction if it isn’t balanced out. But comfort while allowing progress. Duty while allowing self-expression. That is what can only be archived through active dialogue. This is, why this game is a trap. This is why every ending falls apart: Because we have to choose. Every end is a victory, but it also is a failure. Something has to be destroyed. And even a miracle can only work on the back of its people. But this choice is the exact reason why. Being only allowed to follow one of the factions by radicalizing all three of them at the end of the game we are not allowed to make a decision that could benefit everyone. And this is – at the end of it all – the tragedy of Pathologic.

#Pathologic #Pathologic factions #Spoiler warning #ending discussion #I sure hope you enjoy this essay!

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dzamie-oc · 4 years ago

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Smaugust 11 - Celestial

Spike is anxious about the future. He goes to ask Celestia for help - after all, if anyone knows the woes of a long life, it would be her! (1134 words)

Spike jogged through the familiar halls of Canterlot Castle, waving at some of the Royal Guard as he passed them. Most of them maintained their professional, steely, serious gaze, but he did get a few of them to soften into a slight smile for the young dragon. If he watched closely, he saw a few of them widen their eyes slightly; he knew them from before the whole Nightmare Moon thing, and hadn't seen him with his new wings. Spike only paid half-attention to the route he was taking, letting his feet move on autopilot down the carpeted halls and around corners while he checked out how the decor had changed since his last visit. Although he had been living in Ponyville with Twilight and her friends - well, Rainbow technically lived in Cloudsdale, but she was pretty much an official Ponnyvillian - he still knew each corridor like the back of his claw. One more turn brought him to the grand entrance before the throne room, where he was thrilled to see only a single pegasus mare waiting before the huge, ornate doors.

Flapping his wings, Spike danced over the remaining distance before coming to a stop in the very short queue. "Hi there," he greeted her, "whatcha looking to ask Princess Celestia about?"

The mare turned her head, then looked down at him. Seeing him as a young dragon rather than an older one, she gave him a friendly smile rather than the terrified gasp Spike had seen Smolder get. "Oh, I'm a gardener - I grow special plants up in the clouds - and the Earth ponies in my town have been accusing me of stealing their livelihoods, even though I grow completely different plants." She pointed with a primary feather at her flank, which had what looked like a multicolored daisy on a raincloud for her cutie mark. "See this plant? That's a Bellis prismata, native to Cumuloria. It suffocates in dirt, and it's about eighty percent of what I grow." She refolded her wings to her sides before continuing, "I suppose I'm just looking for, like, a royal mark of approval or something. Or, hay, just somepony of authority to tell me I'm right." She and Spike shared a chuckle at that.

"If the flower looks anything like your cutie mark, that's really cool! I hope I get to see one someday!" Spike said.

"Well, swing by the outskirts of Trottingham sometime, little guy, and maybe you'll see my cloud!" the mare replied. "So, what are you here for?"

Spike scuffed his foot against the ground. "Ah, just, y'know, life advice. About growing up and stuff," he said, a little self-conscious, "I guess that's pretty silly compared to your neighbors trying to trample your garden... metaphorically, if it's in the clouds."

The pegasus shook her head and gave him a bright smile. "Not at all, kiddo. Heh, I wonder what I would've done if I'd thought to ask Princess Celestia for guidance when I was a filly..."

The guard called the mare's name, and she bade Spike farewell before walking into the chamber, passing a unicorn stallion engrossed in the scroll floating in front of his eyes. Spike took the time to think about what he'd say to the Princess, and also to see if he could tell the guards apart, to no avail. A few minutes later, the one on the right called out, "last one, Spike the Dragon," and Spike stepped up for the doors to open. As he went in, he passed the gardening mare.

"Went well?"

"Yes! Nothing like a note, but she gave me advice on not letting them bother me!"

"Nice one!"

"Yeah! Good luck, kiddo!"

The dragon entered the spacious room. He had grown up in the castle, had probably been in this very room countless times - especially as the Sibling Supreme - but it still was a sight to behold. A huge, vaulted ceiling, numerous stained glass windows depicting the exploits of Princess Celestia, Twilight, and her friends. And, in one, Spike held the Crystal Heart. The young dragon always held his head up a bit higher after seeing it. Finally, his view settled on the two velvet-lined thrones in the focus of the room. One with a yellow sun atop the back and a white alicorn sitting on the cushion, and the other with a silver moon and a blue alicorn. Judging by their relaxed posture and the guards in the room standing at ease, Spike figured they had heard who, exactly, was the last "petitioner" of the day.

"Hi, Princess Celestia and Princess Luna!" he called as he walked up to the throne. One of the guards on the side stiffened when he walked past where most petitioners stopped, but his counterpart smiled at him and shook his head. Spike was fine. "Were both of you running Day Court today?"

Luna shook her head, her ethereal mane swirling behind her. "I am afraid not, Spike Sparkle. I merely stopped by to invite my sister to enjoy dinner with me."

Spike cringed and took a step back. "I can, uh, come back some other day?" he offered, "I don't want to get in the way of your sisterly bonding."

"That's quite alright, Spike, Day Court is still in session," Celestia said, her voice calm, even, and inviting, "and besides, I wouldn't do that to a friend. I'm sure Luna will live even if we run over time and I'm a few minutes late."

Luna stuck her tongue out at her older sister. "I shall order extra alfalfa for you, sister, if your tardiness is excessive." Celestia drew back in a mock gasp, looking as though the Princess of the Night had threatened to drown Philomena. After a second, they broke down into laughter, and Luna walked away from the throne and through her curtain out of the throne room. "I wish you two well in your talk! But tarry not for too long, dear sister, or I shall ensure you stick to your diet!" And with that, she was gone.

Celestia and Spike turned to face each other. "So, my little dragon, what did you come here to talk about? Not that I don't love your visits no matter the reason, but you usually don't register for Day Court when you just want to talk about your latest adventure with the girls. Or especially Rarity."

Spike blushed a little, recalling his and Rarity's last trip into the gem mines near Ponyville. "Yeah, well, this feels serious. Er, more serious? It has that 'weight' thing that Twilight reads about in her crime drama novels."

The alabaster alicorn rose from her throne and descended the steps to stand next to the dragon. "Well, I will do my best to help support that weight with you."

"Thanks, Prin- thanks, Celestia," Spike said. He had to crane his neck up a bit further, but this felt more like an easy, casual conversation. "I've been thinking about growing up, and I'm worried. Dragons live a long time."

"Oh, Spike," Celestia said in a motherly tone, "you're far too young to worry about outliving your frien-"

"No, no, not that," Spike interjected, "I think I've got a decent handle on that. Well, I'm sure it'll pop up again when the time gets closer, but I think I've got it for now. No, it's more..." He sighed. "When Twilight and I first came to Ponyville, she was against making friends, and kinda bad at the whole 'friendship' thing for quite awhile longer."

Celestia giggled. "Oh, yes, I do remember her mentioning that in her first Friendship Report, to show how she had grown." She tilted her head, trying to read him. "Are you...? Ah, my apologies, Spike. I'll let you tell it at your own speed."

The dragon smiled at her. "Thanks. And no, I'm not wondering if there's anything I'm wrong about or missing out on. I may be Spike the Brave and Glorious, but I'm not Spike the omnisss... omnisha..."

"Omniscient?"

"Yeah, that. I don't know everything. Nopony does." His smile twisted into a wry smirk. "Not even you, Princess. I've heard how often Luna pranks you."

"Would you believe I fell for them on purpose to cheer her up?"

"Nnnnope."

"Drat."

Another shared laugh. "No, but..." Spike's smile fell. "The thing is, ponies change. Griffons change. Changelings change - hay, I sang a whole song about it! And Ember and Garble have shown me that dragons change, too." He looked up at the co-ruler of the land, eyes wide in a sad, pleading stare. "What if I change too much? What if I grow up to be like that Power Ponies villain, Wild Card, and start thinking that Equestrian society is bad at the roots? What if-"

A look of horrified realization spread over his features. His crest and fins sank, and he trembled as he finished in a small voice.

"What if, like Tempest Shadow, I start thinking that friendship and being nice was a thing for foals and little hatchlings?"

"Aw, Spike..." Celestia said in a soft voice. She leaned her head down and gently nuzzled him before continuing, "there's no way to predict how you'll change. But remember, Twilight ultimately showed Tempest the magic of friendship anew. I have faith that friendship and harmony will prevail in everypony, and as an alicorn and a dragon, we have so much more time for it to return in us, should we falter, ourselves."

Spike still looked close to crying, but he had a small smile on his face. "What, you, falter in friendship?" He snorted and waved a claw dismissively. "You're Princess Celestia! You're, like, the epitome of peace and harmony!"

"Don't say that around Luna," Celestia quipped, "she's seen my nightmares. But, Spike, would you like to know one of the best ways of keeping yourself from... becoming a Power Pony villain?" The alicorn mare leaned in, as though about to divulge a particularly juicy secret.

The dragon stared at her, cautious hope in his wide eyes, and nodded.

"It's... friends," the Princess said with a smile, "friends who can cheer you up when you're down, friends who give you a reason to keep on trotting..." she paused, her expression turning wistful as she gazed toward's Luna's throne. "Friends who notice when you feel like the world is against you, and can bring you back before it's too late..."

Spike followed her gaze, then reached out to reassuringly pet her foreleg. "Princess, I'm sure you didn't know any better."

Celestia looked back at him, and returned to smiling softly. "You're right, Spike, I didn't. I wasn't used to being a Princess back then, and I lost my dearest friend for that change." She took a deep breath, then straightened and gave him a more confident smile. "But, again, I learned the error of my ways, and that was also a change, as was the rest of those thousand years. And believe me, since she's returned, we've also changed quite a bit with how we think of and talk with each other. I honestly believe it will all turn out for the best in the end, as long as you keep on learning. Even when you're as old and ancient and know-it-all and boring as me!" Celestia's eyes widened and she covered her mouth with her hooves, then glared around the room.

"Oh, come now," the disembodied voice of Discord said, "surely you weren't going to lecture one of my O&O buddies about change and not even invite me? I even brought you a cake! Banana-vanilla, your favorite."

"Pardon me if I don't exactly believe you," Celestia said, testily.

"Well, too bad. You get me anyway!" The draconequus's upper body popped out of Celestia's billowy mane, holding a one-layer cake with a crude drawing of Celestia on the icing. He immediately smashed it into her face. "Well, that's my gag for this. Discord away!" Discord's body liquified and fell to the floor, where it slipped away through the cracks in the tiles.

Celestia sighed and lifted the cake away from her in her magic. She looked at Spike, then at the cake. "Don't tell Luna?"

Spike mimed zipping his lips; Celestia licked hers. Just before she took a bite, she smiled serenely down at the young dragon. "I hope I was able to help you, my little dragon."

He gave her a grin and a thumbs-up. "I think I got it. Thanks, Celestia!"

"Anytime, Spike. Have a good day," she said, and the two of them parted ways, to opposite ends of the throne room.

Spike was distracted again as he left the castle. But this time, his smile wasn't from the gorgeous architecture and decor, but rather the memory of his conversation, and what he learned from it.

#My Little Pony #mlp #smaugust #fanfiction #dragon #Princess Celestia #spike #writing #writers on tumblr #smaugust 2020 #text

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steamberrystudio · 5 years ago

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22/11/2019

Hey guys! Esh here, with your weekly Gilded Shadows update!

Writing:

I finished writing Ari's route, as expected. Final word count for the rough draft is 109,000 words. I do expect that to go up as edits happen. In Changeling I know that each route added 10-20k just from revisions. That mostly came from fleshing out the branching and choice sequences. I do know of multiple places in Ari's route that probably need to be - and will be - fleshed out. I can't say for sure where the final word count will end.

People on my server know I'm freaking out about the word count for GS just a little because it does seem like it's gearing up to be longer than Changeling. I'm really, really trying to watch my word counts but it's a big setting with a lot of world building.

Anyway, current total word count is 185.7k which puts the total writing at around 28.5%

Someone recently asked me how I determine what percentage complete the writing is. I just have a spreadsheet set up. Take the current total word count and divide it by the target word count. And you get an approximation of how far along your project is from a writing standpoint. Not everyone tracks word count meticulously - you absolutely don't have to. It's helpful for me as it just helps me with planning and generally keeping an eye on progress.

I was also looking for something on my machine and instead found a really old short story I wrote. It was one of the first things written for Gilded shows back in 2014. It was kind of the idea that sparked the entire project as well.

Patrons got to read the full short story but I'll post a snippet here for you guys.

If you've played the demo, you potentially saw mention of the Planetary A.I. - it is sometimes referred to by the name it was given by the original colonists (KING) but that wasn't its original name. It was built and created by the Altairans - the previous inhabitants of the planet.

KING is a character that will show up in Gilded Shadows. This is a little snippet of its past - NON-SPOILER. (This full story will appear in the lore e-book).

But even that didn’t last.

After all, hearts can only beat for so long.

One by one, the remaining collective left to wherever it is lifeforms go when their functions stop. Each time, there was a dreadful moment when part of the consciousness vanished and nothing came to fill that space. HC7765 felt emptier and emptier.

Was this hollow feeling what it was to be alone?

It thought it understood the value its collective brought. But when they were gone it realised all too well it had never really understood all the things they had given it.

Knowing companionship meant understanding loneliness once it was gone.

And life and death. And all the sad and beautiful truths that haunted organic creatures. HC7765 learned a thing as simple as a heartbeat could bring so much beauty and wonder into the world. But when it stopped, that beauty went with it, an ephemeral sound silenced by the vastness of entropy.

It had all been so very transitory, hadn’t it?

The A.I. knew that people often lost track of time. Becoming so absorbed in their own activities, they were completely unaware how their days passed. Not true for a machine.

Every excruciating second ticked by, logged away by the thousands, by the millions, billions.

At first, HC7765 kept the cities running, continued to make repairs. Its people might come back. Some of them might long for home and return. And when they did, of course everything would be waiting for them, clean and pristine. HC7765 would welcome them back. Its duty was to care for them. Its very existence revolved around it.

But they didn’t return.

A thousand years, two thousand. Its collective long since turned to dust in their bio-cradles. Empty cities, like monolithic ghosts, dotted the surface of a decaying world. But HC7765 could only continue to exist. Even in the dreadful silence of Altair, its systems continued to run on.

One day HC7765 came to a decision.

It couldn’t die, but it could sleep. Perhaps that blissful darkness would be like death. Perhaps in some way, this meant it would be with the others. Though that was improbable, it did at least mean the computer would no longer be aware of its loneliness.

So it carefully put away its drones and shut down its weather systems, recalling the network of balloons and satellites that would otherwise be destroyed in the years to come. It neatly folded the solar panel array—like cleaning one’s room before bed.

And when everything was put away and in its place, it stopped.

No indecision or fear; this was simply the most logical course of action for a machine that had lost its purpose.

Primary systems shut down.

Secondary systems shut down.

All power off.

Only a single, soft beep heralded HC7765’s final sleep.

Arting:

So this was the big focus this week. I've started to work on some of the Kickstarter related artwork.

There's a lot to be done. First of all, there are just the basic graphics that are needed - little headers, cover art, previews, character cards, reward cards, stretch goal cards, etc. A lot of these things - like the character cards. Some are simple graphics.

They're not hard but they're tedious. I've been slowly getting those out of the way.

We're also offering some YCH artwork as rewards just as we did last time. I am working on getting the bases for those completely finished pre-Kickstarter. I want all the digital wallpapers done and basically just any artwork that can be done ahead of time - I want to get it done.

Unfortunately, some of that stuff I can't really show off yet. Which means lots of work...and no previews for you guys.

;o;

I do have this one little teaser I can show you.

The Upcoming Week:

So I will basically be continuing to focus on Kickstarter oriented artwork and preparations. I may break here and there to do some writing. It will be back burner and definitely not the focus so I don't know if I'll do any this upcoming week or not.

For now, my focus will be to get the second YCH artwork bases done. And then potentially to work on the second set of exclusive character art for the Kickstarter.

See you next time!

Demo | Patreon

#upcoming game #otome #indie games #visual novels #english visual novels #gilded shadows #updates

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wardencommanderrodimiss · 6 years ago

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chapter 11.5 -- okay, 12, it’s chapter 12, fine, fine. I should stop trying to predict how long my chapters will be. I’m always wrong. the Fae AU keeps escaping all my predictions. it’s fine. it’s cool.

[Beginning] [Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

It is not, as Apollo expects, the worst road trip he has ever been a part of. Trucy likes to sing along to the radio – she has a surprisingly good voice – which stops Clay from starting up his usual road trip tradition of bellowing out “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall” and seeing how much he can get through before someone slaps him. Trucy claimed shotgun, as “the woman with the magic map”, meaning Apollo is shunted to the back with Ema, who upends her bag on the floor to pull from it a jumbo-sized pack of Snackoos and offer a handful to him.

“None for us?” Clay asks, pouting in the rearview mirror.

“Backseat privileges,” Ema replies.

Trucy cranks the radio up as a familiar guitar riff begins.

If it’s extortion, it works; she and Clay have not finished the first verse, Trucy’s almost-operatic interpretation running up against Clay’s off-key warbling, before Ema is shoving the Snackoos up between their seats, offering a trade of chocolates for an end to the car-vibrating force of Guilty Love.

“Not a fan?” Clay asks.

Ema groans. So does Trucy. “Don’t get me started,” Ema says.

“Yeah, please don’t,” Trucy adds.

“He’s a pretentious fuckin’ diva who—”

Trucy begins yelling out the chorus to the song over the second verse emitting from the radio.

They are all still arguing – Ema berating Clay’s taste in music while Trucy moves into an attempt to sing My Boyfriend is the Prosecution’s Witness to the tune of Guilty Love and Apollo tries to turn the volatile atmosphere anywhere else – when the song ends. Trucy shushes everyone, violently, smacking Clay on the arm and then flailing back at Ema, and turns up the radio. A DJ is in the middle of saying something.

“—announced today on their social media. While fans are disappointed, no one can say that the break-up comes as a surprise, after the sentencing of guitarist Daryan Crescend for murder in July, and the three months of, ahem, radio silence that’s followed. And earlier this week, leader singer Klavier Gavin’s brother was indicted on a second count of murder – I can’t say I blame him for maybe wanting to duck out of the spotlight. Gavin’s brother was previously charged in April, for—”

Trucy changes the channel. A commercial for a local furniture outlet doesn’t help break the awkward spell fallen over them. “Yeah,” she says, after a full minute, during which time they discover their new channel is a country music channel. “No real surprise.”

“Brother and bandmate,” Clay says quietly. “Hell of a year.”

“Hell of a six months,” Apollo says. And he was there for all of it – he was there for more of it than Klavier ever was. Klavier wasn’t there in April, not when Kristoph fell, not when any of them could have had any idea what was ahead. How much magic would surround them.

“If my older sister had been convicted of murder, I was gonna crawl into the dirt and die,” Ema says, “so I’m with the fop on that one, actually.”

There is a worrying lack of hypotheticals in the second half of Ema’s scenario. No “would have”s. Like she was where Klavier is, but the trial had a different outcome, and the frozen expression on her face, her eyes gone blank, she looks like she has caught up with her own words. Said too much. Apollo doesn’t know much about her as a person, her life before failing the forensics exam, how it was that she knew Mr Wright, but he can sympathize with that fear of having given away too much, turned the conversation down a path that should stay blocked off.

“You have a sister?” Trucy asks, turning around in her seat. “You seemed kinda ‘only-child’ to me.’ “Yeah,” Ema says quietly. “Older sister. Her name’s Lana. We don’t… talk much.”

Apollo doesn’t know why the name feels like it strikes something in his brain, the way Ema’s did when she first introduced herself.

“Oh.” Trucy visibly wilts. “Sorry.”

Ema shrugs, slumping back against her seat, her arms folded. “It happens,” she says. Her eyes are glazed over, settled in Clay’s direction. Her mouth quirks in the beginnings of a smile. “She took me to the Space Museum once, not long after it first opened.” The wistful smile has grown a little larger. “Back when I didn’t know what kind of scientist I wanted to be, so I wanted to go everywhere, and she was like ‘Ema I’m not taking you to the fucking tar pits again, how about space?’, and—” She shakes her head. “Sorry. Your jacket got me thinking. Do you work there or something?”

And that is the question that Clay most likes to be asked, that or literally anything else ever about space, and that is the end of any of them getting a word in edgewise – but while Apollo’s heard it all before, Trucy has questions galore, and Ema sits forward, slowly losing the pretense of not being enraptured.

They have driven for over two hours by the time Trucy directs them to pull of the highway at an exit that tells them there is nothing for them that way but another 38 miles until Kurain Village. “Is that where the Fair Folk live?” Ema asks dryly, in her voice none of the nervousness that people tend to have. Apollo hasn’t spoken much with her about magic, doesn’t know what she thinks – but, well, she knows Phoenix. That’s clue enough that caution comes secondary.

“Not really,” Trucy says. “They just named it that. It’s part of our world. Sometimes some of the fae do show up and hang around, I think – Maya tried to convince Daddy to move out here, once, apparently, but he wouldn’t leave the office.”

“Who’s Maya?” Apollo asks. Sometimes he realizes how little he knows about Phoenix’s personal life, too.

“Daddy’s friend. She’s – wait, stop! Here! Turn down this road here!”

“This is not a road,” Clay says, hunching over the steering wheel. “This is some dirt, off the road, not even in the shape of a dirt road.”

The car groans as Clay turns it off of the asphalt into the dirt. Trucy pops open the door and stands, holding herself between the door and the car roof and turning her face to the sky and the no-longer-distant mountains looming above them. She says something, muffled, and points into the trees. “We’re close,” she says, ducking back inside the car. “Let’s park and go – we’re close.”

“Park right here?” Clay asks, raising a doubtful eyebrow.

“Barely anyone comes this way,” Trucy says. “Like, one bus, except I’m not even sure if this is on its route. It’s fine.”

“I’m more worried that this is some sort of sacred ground that we’re stomping on,” Clay says, but he turns the key and then smacks his head against the top of the wheel. “How much are we going to regret just walking out there?”

“Probably we won’t,” Trucy says. She flings the door open and jumps out, stretching her arms up into the air. “C’mon already!”

“So what are we doing now?” Ema asks, crumpling the Snackoos bag back into her bag and tumbling forth from the car like a liquid spilled. “Just walking into the woods until we find treasure or a bear?”

“We do have a map.” Trucy waves it at her. “But yes. That’s what we’re doing.” She lowers the page halfway to her side and then stops, tilting her head back. “I’ve been here before,” she says. “Grandpappy and I – sometime – sometime after my mom died.” She takes a few slow steps toward the treeline, her movements uneven, as in a daze. “It was just the two of us. And we came here, and we buried—” She spins around, eyes wide, looking at all and none of them. “We buried his grimoire.”

Without another word of warning, she dashes into the woods, sending them scrambling to catch up to her. It’s colder here than in the city, though Apollo didn’t think they went up too far in elevation. Leaves thickly coat the ground; do they hide rings of flowers beneath them or do those in their magic break through? They finally reach Trucy when she, focused on her map, walks straight into a tree and takes some time to properly reorient herself.

“Do you know why here, of all places?” Apollo asks. “Is it because of the mountains, and he was…?”

He stops. Does Trucy know what her grandfather was? Phoenix didn’t say. Of course he didn’t.

“He said this is where he landed,” Trucy replies, crunching a leaf beneath her foot. “He said he fell, and this is where he landed.”

“Was he—” Clay’s sense, that question that they all know they shouldn’t ask, that question that Apollo has asked again and again anyway, wars against curiosity, against more than wanting to know – needing to know, to understand what is Trucy’s family. “Was he, erm, one of – Them?”

He can’t even bring himself to offer up one of the epithets. This close to the mountains, Apollo isn’t sure that he could bring himself to speak of them plainly like he has learned to.

“Yeah,” Trucy says. “But I’m human. Don’t worry.” She flashes a grin, one of her usual grins, but it is tempered by the speed with which is vanishes from her face again, replaced by a frown of concentration. “I think we must be close, but not quite yet.”

“Hey, Trucy?” Ema asks. She pushes a branch out of the way and it snaps back to nearly strike Clay in the face. “Not to pry, but – if your grandfather was one of the Fair Folk, are you the changeling, or was it your mother?”

Trucy stops.

“Wait,” Ema says. “Not a changeling – that’s the fae child. The human kid, the one swapped out. Is there a word for that?”

“I don’t think so,” Trucy says. She hops over a log. “I don’t think there’s a name for people like that.”

She doesn’t answer the first question. Maybe she doesn’t know, either.

“When you say you buried it,” Apollo says, aware that there is nothing subtle about this lifeline he is throwing to pull her away from questions best left avoided (am I a child stolen away, raised by the fae? Did they take me from the life I should have had?), “have we come all this way to be foiled for want of a shovel?”

“Oh fuck,” Trucy says.

“Hey!” Ema barks, her sharp rebuke the manifestation of that urge Apollo feels to scold her for that. “Language, young missy!” She folds her arms across her chest, her glare a fond one. “Where did you learn that?”

“My daddy’s a card shark,” Trucy says, countering Ema with a smug grin of her own.

“I thought he was a piano player,” Clay says.

“Only because you’ve never heard him play,” Trucy replies. “Easy mistake to make.”

“Considering it was all magic that hid the map,” Ema says, with nary a pause to acclimate everyone to the idea of throwing the conversation back past that latest sharp turn, “wouldn’t it be magic to hide it again, logically speaking?”

“Where’s the logic here?” Clay asks. Ema snaps a twig off a bush and flicks it at him. “And I mean, if it’s just covered up with some illusion, couldn’t anyone stumble into it?”

“Maybe it takes the map, too,” Apollo says. “Or maybe only a Gramarye can unveil it.”

He steps up onto a tree stump, like the extra five inches can grant him some kind of special insight or a better view in the forest of brown. Then he is falling, the wood rot giving way beneath his foot, a sharp jolt running up his leg from the twist of his foot. “Shit!”

Trucy winces. “Ouch. Poor Polly. I—”

“Apollo,” Ema says, very seriously, but somewhat muffled by her hand over her mouth. “Move. Move right now.”

“What?” He sits up, dislodging his foot from the stump, and looks about himself. The forest floor of dead leaves has cleared, as though by a strong, concentrated wind, revealing browned dead grass encased by a perfect circle of blue flowers. “Oh. Oh shit.”

Without an ounce of grace, still on his hands and knees, he scrambles and rolls his way out of the faery ring. “So according to the map,” Trucy says, and above his head Apollo hears the flutter of the paper, “I think we found it.”

“Only a Gramarye, huh,” Clay says dryly.

“That was only supposition!”

“So who’s gonna stick their hand in a rotten tree stump?” Ema asks, producing a flashlight from her bag and shining the beam down into it. “I volunteer Trucy, because she’s wearing gloves, and is our Gramarye.”

Trucy kicks up the leaves on her approach, searching for hints of another ring around the stump, more than just Apollo’s that sits adjacent to it. “If I get bit by a squirrel and get rabies and die, it’s your fault,” she says, kneeling down next to the stump and brushing her hair back to peer down into it.

“Statistically, your chance of getting rabies from a squirrel is negligible,” Ema says. “That shouldn’t be your worry.”

“What should I worry about, then?” Trucy asks. “Can you bring the light a little closer?”

“Bats, racoons, foxes, feral cats and dogs, and right now, probably non-rabies Fair Folk curses, since we’re fucking around by a ring.”

“I’m still concerned about bears,” Clay says.

“I’m not,” Ema says. “I’ve already got my plan, which is to trip you into its path.”

“General ‘you’, or me, specifically?”

“You specifically. Nothing personal, though. I just know Trucy and Apollo better than you.”

“This is way heavier than I thought,” Trucy says, falling off-balance and dropping something dark and rectangular. “Oof! Okay. Okay. We got it!” She lifts it up onto her knees, a thick book with a black cover and a character emblazoned in flowing purple script on it. “I knew I remembered this.” Her voice is quieter as she opens the book and flips through the rough-edged pages. “Grandpappy’s grimoire.” She closes the cover again, reverently, and keeps it balanced on her legs as she turns back to the stump. “Light again, please. I thought I saw something else.” Trucy has her head nearly in the hole, which can’t help her with her light situation, and she sits back and plunges her hand in again. “Yep! This is a – a funny-looking magatama?”

She holds it up, the blue stone sparkling in the flashlight beam, but also seemingly with its own interior glow, and Apollo gasps.

Three sets of eyes turn to him.

“That’s a mitamah,” he says, and to his own ears he sounds like he’s choking, but he feels like he’s choking too, and maybe the others don’t notice but he doubts it. “That’s someone’s soul.”

Trucy drops it into the leaves.

“What?” Clay looks suspicious – Trucy looks horrified. “How do you know?”

(“There’s no reason to give away your soul,” Dhurke told them, sternly, the sternest he ever got. “Never.” And then they tried to argue, to come up with reasons, because of course they did, and he hugged them both close. “You’ll make great lawyers someday, always looking for reasons and other ways, but this one – promise me. Nahyuta. Apollo.” He prodded each of them in the chest. “Don’t let someone else get their hands on your soul.”)

“The tail of it is different.” Apollo picks it up, brushing off the dirt and leaf particles that cling to it, and points to the longer, squiggling protrusion that extends from the loop. It doesn’t fully connect like a magatama, either, more like a hook than a circle.

It feels warm in his hand, humming through his fingers and up into his ears. It reminds him of the office – familiar, but disturbing, because there is no reason that it should feel so familiar and comforting.

“Could it be your grandfather’s?” Ema asks.

“Wouldn’t that mean he’s still alive?” Clay asks. “Is that possible?”

“It couldn’t be,” Apollo says. If he stares at the mitamah he thinks he can see flecks of gold within the blue, like stars on a constellation chart. “The Fair Folk don’t have souls like we do. They can’t sell them or manifest them like this.”

“Is that why they want human souls?” Ema asks.

“How do you know?” Clay repeats.

Apollo’s heart has stoppered up his throat.

“It makes them stronger,” Trucy says softly. “When they buy names, or souls, it makes their magic stronger. But this – this can’t be that.” She hugs the grimoire up to her chest. “It can’t just be that.”

“Should we just… put it back?” Ema asks. “Someone’s probably looking for it, right?”

“It’s been seven years and no one has come before us,” Apollo says. The humming isn’t as steady now, seems more like a song, and familiar, damned familiar. “No, we can’t just leave her here.”

In the silence, even the song seems to stop. “What?” Apollo asks. Their three sets of eyes are on him again, even more piercing, Trucy’s wide and Clay’s narrowed and Ema’s narrowing too.

“‘Her’?” Ema repeats. “Why ‘her’?”

“I…” Apollo swallows his heart. “I don’t know, but I… I know?”

“I don’t think you should be holding that in your bare hands,” Clay says.

But the alternative seems to be dropping her in the dirt again, and Apollo’s fingers curl tighter around the stone. He can’t do that, either. Trucy unties her scarf from around her neck and silently passes it to him, letting him wrap the stone up in the red fabric and then cradle it close again. The song thrumming in his ears ceases. “I guess we should take it to Mr Wright and ask him if he knows what to do,” Ema says. “He’ll know what to do with it. Her?”

Trucy’s gaze is unfocused, her head slowly drifting away from the horizon back toward the stump. “Trucy?” Apollo asks. “Are you okay?”

“He wouldn’t do that,” she says. “Just buy up someone’s soul all for himself. He wouldn’t. There had to be some other reason. It wasn’t just power, there had to be a good reason.”

(“There’s no reason,” Dhurke said. “Never.”)

“He gave me magic, as a gift,” Trucy says. “He was a good man.” She looks up at Apollo, blinking her blue eyes furiously. “Wasn’t he?”

It takes them another forty-five minutes to stumble out of the woods and find Clay’s car again. Ema makes everyone nervous talking about the odds of them stumbling across a body decomposing in the undergrowth – “I have zero desire to ever get caught up in one of your murder investigations,” Clay says, picking up a branch from the bushes and brandishing it like a baseball bat – and bears. The two of them are at least doing a good job of filling the silence left by Trucy, uncomfortably quiet, walking in a trace. Apollo tugs her by the arm out of the way of trees. He could put the mitamah in his pocket but hasn’t, has kept it held close to his chest.

The story that Phoenix spun of the Gramaryes is gnawing at him. A woman, on the bad end of a deal with Magnifi – Apollo doesn’t want to think about the possibility.

(Trucy must be thinking about the possibility, mustn’t she?)

She crawls into the back seat of the car, depositing the grimoire in the middle, and Ema makes a mad dash for the front seat, leaving Apollo to sit on the other side of the grimoire, separated by it from Trucy. The only time she speaks is to call Phoenix and ask him if he is at the office – he is, because she directs Clay to go back to the office.

It is a long, quiet ride home, some subdued conversation between Ema and Clay about their fields of science rising over the country music still on the radio. Trucy taps Apollo’s hand and beckons him to hand her the mitamah. She takes off one of her gloves and weighs it in her hand with an ever-deepening frown until she wraps it back up and passes it back to Apollo.

Ema shouts “Yellow car!” and hits Clay on the shoulder. He hits her back and tells her that she needs to specify no punch-backs next time.

Phoenix is sitting on the floor leaning against the couch with two notebooks and a stack of papers spread out in front of him, the coffee table shoved to the side, a pencil in his mouth and another tucked behind his ear, when they stagger into the office. Apollo is mediating an argument about the merits of Eldoon’s for a late lunch – Ema does not want to brave it, while Clay wants nothing more than to do so. Phoenix does not look up.

“Hey, Daddy,” Trucy says wearily.

His head snaps up, dislodging the pencil behind his ear. “What’s wrong?”

“You always complain about your back hurting, and now look what you’re doing.” Trucy’s words sound forced through a smile. Phoenix’s frown deepens. He watches Trucy walk past him to deposit the grimoire on his desk.

“We went looking into the envelope you gave her the other day,” Apollo says. “The real last page.”

Phoenix doesn’t look back from Trucy right away. “A full expedition team, huh?” he asks, raising one eyebrow as he looks over Ema and Clay. “Who’s this?”

“Er, oh, yeah. I’m Clay Terran. Apollo’s roommate.” Clay points with his thumb at Apollo, even though they all know there is only one Apollo that they know. “You’re Mr Wright, yeah?” He doesn’t do a good job of feigning enthusiasm.

“I know that look,” Phoenix says, standing with a wince and an audible crack of some of his joints. “That’s the ‘I’ve heard about you and it’s nothing good’ look.” He lets Clay splutter for a full two seconds before he grins crookedly and adds, “That’s fair.” Almost immediately, his expression flattens out to something stern and almost entirely foreign. “Trucy,” he calls. “What’s wrong?”

“We found my grandfather’s grimoire,” she says, sitting on the desk and holding it up, only for it to slip from her hands and crash to the floor. “And Polly has the other thing that was with it.”

Apollo unwraps the mitamah.

Has he ever seen Phoenix surprised? The man spent seven years an unbeaten poker player, and this past half-year absolutely inscrutable to Apollo’s eyes. There is nothing controlled in his reaction; his mouth falls open and his eyes go wide, turning blue immediately and staying blue, horror apparent in how they linger on the mitamah. “Oh,” he breathes. “That is – yeah.”

He reaches forward with trembling hands and scoops up the scarf spread across Apollo’s hands. He holds it cradled close, too, his free hand cupped beneath the one holding it, prepared to catch the stone should it slip, but still not having touched it with bare skin. “So,” he says. “The ‘source’ of Magnifi’s magic – that grimoire, and this soul.”

“But,” Trucy says, “that…” She stops. She chews on the inside of her cheek. Mr Hat, the wisp, is visible, bobbing frenetically around her shoulders. “It’s…” Her shoulders slump. “Do you know what to do with that, Daddy? Is there a way to know what person a soul belongs to?”

“Not from looking only at the mitamah,” Phoenix answers. His eyes still hollow blue when he turns them back to Trucy. “I am not particularly familiar with mitamahs, honestly, but I’ll look into it and see what I can do to get it back to her.” He takes the stone in one hand and offers Trucy her scarf back. “If the fae who has possession of a soul is still alive, they can just give it back – not that many are willing to, mind – but since he’s dead – well.” He shakes his head. “Thank you, though. For helping Trucy, and bringing this back.”

It’s a firm end to the conversation, not that Apollo knows what more to ask about a soul. Ema, though, is frowning, her arms crossed, her mouth twisting like she is puzzling out something. “We were gonna go get noodles at Eldoon’s,” Apollo says. “If – if you wanted to come, Trucy.”

“Oh!” She looks surprised, like she hadn’t expected to be addressed. “Um.” Her heels bounce against the desk. “Thanks, but I’m okay.”

Her hands, curled around the edge of the desk, shine red. Apollo doesn’t even need that to know she’s lying.

“We all agree she’s not okay, right?” Clay asks.

They were silent for a block down from the office, Ema not even complaining about losing the Eldoon’s battle. (Apollo was prepared to tell her that she didn’t have to come, but she had attached herself to them without a cursory protest.)

“Definitely not,” Ema says. “I guess she doesn’t want to believe that her grandfather was the double-dealing type of Folk – which, I’ve read the case file on his death, I’d believe that about him in a hot second. There’s nothing worse than a blackmailer like that. Also.” She plants herself firmly in the sidewalk. Apollo and Clay both bump into her. “None of us referred to the mitamah as ‘she’ or ‘her’, right? Like you were, Apollo.”

“None of us but Trucy even talked about it,” Apollo says. Clay nods. “Why?”

“Because Mr Wright did.” Ema’s forehead creases. “He said he would ‘get it back to her’. He wasn’t even touching it, was he?” Apollo shrugs. Ema shrugs too. “He knows something. More than he said.”

“He always does,” Apollo says.

They reach Eldoon’s, and Ema says that it’s weird to see the stand without a corpse attached. The look that Clay gives her makes her and Apollo both laugh. Once they have their noodles, they walk another few blocks to People Park and find a bench not far from where the noodle-stand crime scene once stood. Apollo has learned to be grateful for the mouthfuls of broth that taste of so much salt to sting. It feels a little more like safety, like salt across a doorway.

He starts to say what he’s thinking, that Trucy might be worried that the mitamah is her mother’s, or at least he is, but the words die on his tongue, shriveled by the salt. He doesn’t feel right to tell Clay and Ema about Trucy’s mother’s death, when he has no idea if Trucy knows or not. Phoenix has made him the guardian of family secrets that aren’t his and something about that feels wrong. Maybe necessary in some way, to understand the case, to understand what happened with Kristoph, but still wrong.

Instead, he helps Ema explain to Clay her earlier comments about Magnifi and blackmail. You can’t refuse, and we both know the reason why – Trucy can’t know he did that. She seemed to idolize him. What a hard way to fall.

He’ll text her tomorrow, Apollo decides. Check in, see how she’s doing.

(There’s probably someone else he should check in with, too, the events of this week all considered.)

#fic: the seelie of kurain #roddy fanfics #start your morning with some magic and gramarye fuckery wooooooooooo

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punishandenslavesuckers · 7 years ago

Photo

She has no throne. Girls without thrones should not have knights, but hers won’t go. Princess Zelda – the girl who killed Calamity – would love to fade into legend, but Link’s bought a house, he’s fighting off monsters, and he’s selling giant horses to strangely familiar Gerudo men. She'll never have any peace now. (ao3)

(chapter one) (chapter two) (chapter three)

They cross a trio of traveling merchants on their way toward Hebra.

There’s an outbreak of fever among the Rito, something Teba wrote Link about, something… strange. A sleeping disease that comes quickly and then smothers the afflicted incrementally, relentlessly, to death over the course of a few weeks. Link sent the message back that they’re coming to help. Fruit purchases would seem secondary, but Teba’s boy, Tulin, likes Lurelin star fruit and Link has a notion of spoiling the kid. So he picks out a dozen, sorting non-bruised specimens from a large saddle-strapped basket.

Zelda watches Link’s process while trying very hard to appear that she’s not watching him because then he might become self-aware of the faces he’s making when he carefully thumbs the skin of an unsatisfactory fruit and puts it back. He kind of wrinkles his nose, looks apologetic, and tried another.

Draga, who is not hiding that he’s watching, says, “Teba is the warrior who fought with Link to subdue Vah Medoh. Correct?”

“Correct.”

“Not the one with the accordion.”

“No, that’s Kass.”

“Kass is the traveling musician?”

“Hence the accordion.”

“Do the Rito know about Link?”

“No. They think he’s a great-great-grandchild of the Champion and Link doesn’t, you know, argue with them.”

“You’re both unbelievable.”

The other two merchants – a spice-trader, and fish-merchant respectively – are eyeing them a little. The larger one, the fishmonger, sits forward on his horse a little bit, squinting as though he just can’t quite get a proper look at the three of them. Zelda isn’t sure, but the fishmonger might be day-drinking if the slack-muscled blinking is any indicator. The spice-trader looks nervous. Like a woman waiting to jump in to break up a fight, like she just knows something is going to go wrong in the next few moments. She’s certain.

And then fishmonger says, “Oi, you’re that fuckin’ guy,” and the spice trader literally starts appealing to the gods.

It takes Link a second to realize he’s being spoken to. He frowns, in the middle of counting out payment, and doesn’t answer.

“Link right?”

Link ignores him.

“Yeah, thought so. Jessie, you shouldn’t sell to ‘im.” The fishmonger hiccups, cheerful in his bearing of bad news. “He’s a demon, ya know. Traded his fuckin’ soul to the Mountain Lord for power.” Another hiccup. “People saw ‘im. Riding the beast of Satori Peak across Hyrule Field. No lie.”

Zelda and Draga exchange a look. It’s not… a surprised look.

Link’s ignoring the man, calmly ties the fruit-bag to Epona’s saddle to evenly distribute the weight. He selects one of the starfruit, however, and careful sinks his teeth into it. That way, it stays in place while he mounts up. Once seated, facing his abuser, Link doesn’t make any move to eat the fruit, just sits there with it in his mouth, staring. The star-fruit is just the right size to make him look a little like a dog with a ball. Fishmonger, too busy expounding on his story, doesn’t notice.

He’s wagging a finger now. “It’s people like you… you are the reason…”

Link reaches up and slowly takes a bite of fruit.

“You are the reason that… this kingdom is going to the dogs. You. People like you.”

Link proceeds to slowly eat the fruit while maintaining the polite, emotionless expression of a person trapped in line with the town’s fanatical but harmless whackjob. Occasionally, he gives a sympathetic nod. Yes. He is a monster/demon/changeling/whatever. A were-creature. A whatcha-ma-call-it. The other merchants look ashamed. Maybe they look a little afraid, but that’s mostly because Draga looks really aggravated mounted up on his giant war horse looking Lynel-sized and murderous in his dark traveling gear and glaring. Eventually, they route the drunk man away, hushing him loudly as they go.

Link wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and waves cheerfully.

“You rode a god?” Draga demands when they’re alone.

Link looks abashed and goes back to eating his fruit, discretely kicking Epona into a trot.

“You’re joking. Tell me you’re joking.”

Draga follows him, sounding a little desperate.

“Link, are you joking?”

Link rides away faster.

“Link!”

Zelda watches them zig-zag up the road like an absurd cat and dog, racing away too quickly for Maru to bother catching up. They’ll circle back after Draga finishes yelling. Knowing that, Zelda takes a moment to enjoy the quiet as the distance grows. Soon, she can’t hear anything but Maru’s hooves on the road. She closes her eyes then, gathering her hair at the back of her neck and turning her face into the sun. For a moment, it’s just that feeling – sunshine on her face and the rhythm of Maru walking down the road. She smiles at little. She smiles a lot. She’s not sure what to do with it – the excess of happiness in that moment so she lets it just breathe.

She feels a tug, just a little, like a thread twined around something somewhere behind her breastbone and running down her right wrist.

When she opens her eyes, Link and Draga have stopped to circle back.

But the sun and the happiness are easy to focus on and she’s looking forward to making fun of them when they get back to her. The point is, she does not think anything of the tug. Nothing at all.

Serenne Stable is populated primarily by trappers, traveling merchants, Leviathan researchers, and Rito flying in from the north-west part of Hebra. The main room’s crowded. Loud with guests both coming and going. Link is at the front desk smiling at the innkeeper in that way that will probably get them a discount. Zelda would tell him to knock it off, but there’s something kind of fascinating about watching strangers get charmed by a man she sees so often she has no unbiased perspective of him. She and Draga claim a table near the back of the common room and start dumping gear on the floor, glad to be off the road for a moment.

“I can never tell,” Draga says, taking a seat, “which Rito are male or female.”

Which might be a strange break into conversation, except one of the Rito, a red-feathered hunter by the looks of them, is pulling Link aside to speak with him near the front door.

“Can’t help you there,” Zelda says, sitting down across from Draga. “There isn’t much in the way of sexual dimorphism in their race, at least not now. I think in different ethnicities of Rito, there are definite phenotypical signs, but so many of them have inter-married now that’s hardly a reliable checklist to refer to.” A beat of quiet goes on too long as Zelda catches the look Draga’s giving her. “Uh, that is to say… I don’t… I don’t know either.” She coughs. “That one might be male through. He’s kind of… tall?” As though there were not tall female Rito. She bows her head. “I don’t know.”

Draga’s leaning back in his seat, which is putting some real strain on the carpentry.

He’s watching Link, who’s got his hands on his hips, listening to the Rito. The hunter is making a comment, Zelda thinks, about the feather token braided in his hair because they kind of touch it with the edge of one enormous wing, lifting it from where it hangs against his chin. Which means, when they move it, they touch Link’s face. Both Zelda and Draga kind of… tilt their heads concurrently. Link doesn’t seem bothered. Perhaps he knows the hunter. He’s not smiling but doing that calm neutral stare that says, without a single word, I’m listening. You have my attention. The Rito laughs, then kind of bends down to say something, softly enough that Link has to turn his head and let them put the long, wicked curve of their beak near his ear.

“I think,” Draga says, rocking back on the legs of his chair and openly trying to get a better angle. “I think that Rito is preening his hair…”

Zelda snorts.

“Link’s not giving a damn thing away, but I think that’s what’s happening there.”

“Is he getting red?”

“A little.”

“That’s probably what’s happening then.”

“Is that flirting?”

“For Rito? I mean… well, it’s a little more than flirting, I think.”

Link takes a seat at their table a few minutes later. He’s just a little pink, but otherwise calm. He puts a single brass room-key on the table between them – meaning he’s sprung for a party suite and soft beds. Zelda is, very briefly, distracted by the imminent possibility of a bath and extremely soft sheets. Link presently goes about the task of unpacking things from his bag, putting his bow on the table, beginning his routine for weapon repairs with a kind of singular focus. He does not look up at either of them while he does this, though it’s obvious he can feel their expectant gazes against the top of his head. He digs a bag of roasted almonds from his pack and starts eating them. Studiously, even professionally ignoring them.

“Do you know that Rito?” Zelda asks conversationally.

He nods once, curtly.

“Who is… she? He?”

Link eats a handful of almonds and says, through the lot, “He.”

“What did he ask you about?”

Link, swallowing audibly, points at the feather in his hair.

“What about it?”

“It can mean things,” he says ambiguously.

Zelda laughs. “Like what?”

Draga grins, folding his arms. “Did Fyson give you an admiration plume?”

Link stiffens.

Zelda gasps in delight, hands coming together against her lips. “Oh! Oh, did he? Is that what they look like now?” She flaps a hand at Draga when he frowns at her. “No, see, one-hundred years ago a Rito would give a feather on a necklace or something more formal. Is it less formal now? Do they just put it, like, in their head feathers now or…? Oh. That’s sweet. Does it still mean what it used to mean? Because back then it was like this… well, it was kind of a declaration you were interested in them, but it could be just for great admiration or…”

Link rather pointedly flips his cloak’s hood up and pulls it down low over his eyes.

Draga sits forward, boots flat on the floor, still grinning. “Did that Rito come on to you because you have it?”

Link’s turning red now. He just sits there for a moment, turning redder, then, “Maybe.”

“But you turned him down?”

Link yanks his hood off so he can give Draga the full effect of his glare. Draga is entirely unaffected. He’s got his chin propped in his palm now, kind of smiling in self-satisfaction. Zelda has both hands clasped under her chin. Link, seeing this, tosses both hands up and gives them a very clear sign with one finger and starts to go back to weapon repairs. Or, at least, he starts to. But Draga sits forward and reaches over to hook two fingers around the offending braid, lifting it so he can look at it more closely.

Link side-eyes him, but doesn’t move away.

Draga studies the detail work. “You don’t mind it when Rito men give you their attention?”

Link arches a brow. Then, after a moment, with careful enunciation: “No,” he says, “I don’t.”

“Hmm. Discount rooms. Admiration plumes. Zora armor.” He flips the braid with a teasing grin. “Do you get marriage proposals everywhere you go?”

Link stops blushing. Instead, all the blood backs out of his face and he tries, unsuccessfully, to smile.

Zelda’s hands just drop, however, and all traceries of previous delight evaporates.

Draga, sensing he’s made a mistake, immediately sits back. “Sorry. I meant nothing by that.”

Link gives up on the defensive smile and the void left in his expression doesn’t seem to fill. He starts signing.

‘Do you know Zora wedding traditions?’

Zelda translates.

Draga shakes his head. “I don’t.”

’Zora don’t make armor for their betrothed. They usually hand-craft jewelry.’ Link waits for Zelda to finish translating. ‘Zora royalty are expected to lead soldiers in battle, physically, to be on the field. So, Zora princesses craft armor with lightscale for their intended.’ Here Link touches a spot just below his throat, near the dip of his collarbone. ‘Lightscale is here, on a Zora. Only the females. Thin as paper, harder than diamond. A Zora princess can spare the one over her heart and the scale that grows back will be twice as tough, every time.”

“Doesn’t that leave the princess vulnerable for a time?” Draga asks softly.

Link laughs. Once.

“Yes,” he says.

That’s the point, he does not say. That she bares her heart for her people. That she might risk death for them.

Link’s looking very hard at the table in front of him, at his hands resting there among the tools and weapons he’d started to work on. No one says anything for a while. Zelda can’t even remember Link unpacking Mipha’s tunic – feather light scale-mail, so strong it can turn aside any blade, and so obviously a treasure he doesn’t dare wear it openly lest it draw attention. She does know, sometimes, discretely, he wears it under his tunic in place of regular mail. She catches him, sometimes, touching the filigree in the sleeves beneath his shirt, like one counts off beads on a rosary.

Maybe that’s how Draga saw it – caught Link in a thoughtless moment remembering the dead.

He waits until Link’s shoulders relax a little before speaking again, quietly.

“Did you ever get to see the Lightscale Festival?” Draga looks at Link. Gets no response so he elaborates. “The Zora hold the Lightscale Festival every year when the rains come. All Zora come back to the Domain. On the festival day, they send down the river, with their prayers, hand-crafted lanterns made from the shells of ocean creatures. Everyone knows this, because all the rivers in Hyrule carry tens of thousands of lanterns to every corner of the kingdom… and every one of them has her name written inside.” Draga leans forward a little. “I lived in a land where no rivers reach and even I know Princess Mipha was a wonder.”

Link has his eyes closed. His hands are fists on the table top.

“I’m sorry, my friend. I… didn’t make the connection.”

Link tries to say something but can’t get the sound to touch his tongue. His hands don’t move from the table where Zelda can see he’s clenching them so tightly the bones of his knuckles are pushing white beneath the skin. His palms will bleed where his nails dig in. Link finally signs something, but he doesn’t… do it properly. He just slowly spells out the words so he doesn’t need to raise his hands much. Like moving too much will disturb an old wound, like he can go still enough to avoid it.

Zelda translates for him.

“Mipha and I… grew up together.”

“I knew you grew up with the Zora,” Draga murmurs. “I just didn’t assume who specifically.”

The silence goes on long enough (Link struggling visibly to say anything for long enough) that Zelda swallows the terrible heat in her own throat. She moves on reflex, her hand moving to touch Link’s hand, then stops, unsure. But she can’t take it back now, so she lays her fingers carefully over his hand.

“Do you remember,” she asks, “that time Revali and Urbosa were fighting about how to position the Divine Beasts? They fought about it for three days straight.” She swallows, pressing on into his silence. “They just… couldn’t stop fighting. About everything. I thought they were going to kill each other before the Calamity even came. Honestly, it was very disheartening. I…” Zelda doesn’t know how to finish that sentence. She tries a new one. “Do you know that they stopped fighting because of you and Mipha?”

Link finally looks up. Gods, has he always been this blank with grief? Has it always been this obvious? When he’s holding still, no longer moving, was it always this clear? How did she miss it? She grabs his hand with two of hers, holding tight.

“That day you two were sparring and… Anyone could see it – that you’d trained together for years. That you trusted each other. Mipha was the fastest, the deadliest with her Beast but the quickest to… to be gentle when it was right. She was so much… better at everything and I loved her too. Have I ever said that?” She swallows, hard. She’s not allowed to cry this time. “Mipha brought everyone together. Everyone. And I… I am so sorry for…”

Link’s calm buckles.

He grabs her hand too tightly, crushing her fingers in his, but she ignores it. The bone-bruising pressure is a relief, an echo far, far away. Because the pain has snapped to the forefront of Link’s entire being and, for a second, it’s there on his face – twisted up and ugly, a knife wound, a fucking certainty. All the stillness and silence and calm scraped away to the raw face of it – the fact of it: That he is alive and Mipha is dead twice over, her body consigned for 100 years now to the tomb Vah Ruta. Her shade departed. No burial rites in the face of the final battle. Nothing left at all.

Zelda is, she knows, a whole century too late for condolences.

But Draga has no concept of that. He doesn’t live in their distorted timeframe. He just moves forward and places a hand against Link’s shoulder and says:

“I’m sorry she’s gone, Link.”

And it’s so normal of him. Like their just people. Like they’re anyone else.

She thinks, perhaps, they don’t know how to do that anymore.

When the first spasm of weeping hits Link, it’s not actually at the table but in the stairwell as they move their things to their room for the night. He hits the wall like his right knee gave out suddenly and Draga grabs the back of his tunic. He says nothing, just waits. Link recovers. Physically, literally bites it back, keeps hauling his things up the steps and into the hall. Zelda waits. Draga waits. The second spasm hits Link in the door to the suite. Again, he swallows it back. Makes it two steps into the room. The third spasm floors him.

Draga, seemingly prepared for this, lets Zelda pull Link onto the nearest bed while he goes about unpacking food from a rucksack. He ignores Link’s hyperventilating, his shaking, the way he doesn’t seem aware of the tears running from his closed eyes, or how he keeps grinding his teeth instead of sobbing. Draga just kneels in front of him to push things into his hands: A napkin with a piece of gummy cake and canteen of something that smells like honey and turpentine. Link opens his eyes long enough to shake his head, trying to refuse it, but the bigger man just presses both insistently into his lap.

Link hisses, frustrated.

“Just eat it and drink,” Draga says. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to after that. Okay?

Link barely manages it, but he does manage. It’s hard to cry and eat at the same time. Maybe that’s the point. Whatever is in the canteen sends him into a fit of coughing, but by the time he finishes, the hyperventilation is slowing and the uncontrollable shaking smoothing out. Draga takes the empty napkin and the canteen and sits forward enough to – with an inquiring slowness – reach a hand toward Link. When he nods, Draga carefully uses two fingers to turn his face into the lamp light, watching his pupils react to the brightness. Satisfied, he turns the touch into a soft tap against the hero’s chin.

“You’re okay,” he assures them both. “Try to sleep.”

“What was that?” Zelda asks, a little suspiciously.

“Possibly the last Akkala honey-wine in the kingdom, but it seemed like the occasion.” He shrugs. “It’s, uh, strong.” A beat. “In a couple of ways.”

Which is about when Link collapses back on the mattress, body slack, and lies there breathing slowly, like every bone in his body just stopped supporting his weight. Zelda scoots back so she can peer down at him. Draga just stays where he is, kneeling, waiting. Link’s gaze is pale and unfocused, roving the ceiling for a while as the full effect of the drink unfurls warm fingers through his body. He inhales, but it’s shaky. Every breath has a rattle. He wipes his face with one hand.

“You can miss things retroactively,” he says.

That probably shouldn’t break Zelda’s heart. It does though.

Later, lying in bed, Zelda runs her fingers through Link’s hair, not sure if that’s soothing, not sure how to touch him at all. He feels like a river interrupted. He shivers in her arms and its dangerous. Like she could break a circuit inside him and all that terrible agony would jump off his skin and hit her blood like lightning. She holds him anyway. Fully clothed, waiting for the sun to rise, waiting for light to move across the walls, for Link to catch his stuttering breath, for Draga to move from where he’s sitting with his back against the bed, arms folded, also wide-awake and waiting.

“Thank you,” she says much later. After Link’s breathing slows and deepens.

Draga turns his head. “No trouble,” he says in Gerudo.

“I never knew how to talk about her.”

“There is no right way to speak about the dead and no right way to comfort the living. Just make your best guess.”

“She was everything to him.”

“You’re probably right.”

A beat.

“Akkala honey-wine is worth its weight in gold, you know.”

Draga stands up, slowly, stretching when he gets to his feet. “Don’t tell Link. He’ll just feel guilty for not enjoying it.”

“Thank you, though, Draga. Really.”

He turns around to look at her. She can’t move because Link’s sleeping on her arm, his head against her shoulder, one arm around her ribs. They didn’t undress, so they still smell like the road. When she moves her head, she can smell campfire smoke in Link’s hair, the sour aroma of salt and sweat. Their legs are tangled, one of her knees crooked slightly between his legs, his right boot heel hooked behind hers. Draga tilts his head and, for a moment, she can’t read the way he’s looking at them – curled together like cats in a blanket.

Then, very carefully, he moves one hand toward hers, where she’s idly running her fingers through Link’s hair. She stops so Draga can, gently, tuck a section of wheat-gold hair behind the other man’s ear and, for a moment, lay his hand against the top of his head. Then she can read his expression – this formless kind of regret. A mirroring grief that wasn’t there before but she knows instinctively. Zelda isn’t sure what to say or where that’s coming from, what wound or rivaling loss… so she just lays her hand over Draga’s. She threads her fingers through his from the top so her fingernails scrape just slightly at Link’s scalp and they both feel him sigh, deeply, in his sleep.

Draga catches her eyes then, just for a second.

In that second, Zelda becomes aware, suddenly, of her palm pressed against Draga’s knuckles. Of all the bones in her hand, of all the bones in Draga’s hand, of Link’s breath against her collarbone – all three things common as sunlight and boring as bread in any other context but this moment suddenly. Link turns his head a little against her shoulder. She ignores it. She smiles, loops her fingers more firmly though Draga’s and holds his hand tightly – converting the moment into something more recognizable to her.

“Thank you,” she whispers. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Draga gives her a half-smile. “I just wanted a horse, you asshole.”

She has to physically choke back the laugh to keep from waking Link.

“There’s a wolf following us.”

“Just one?” Link says, not looking.

“Yes,” Draga says slowly, clearly registering Link’s non-concern. “But it’s… big.”

Link cranes his neck to look over his shoulder, twisting in his saddle to see. Zelda looks too and sure enough, there’s a wolf on the road behind them. For a moment, she doesn’t get what Draga means when he says it’s big for a wolf since the average wolf is nearly twice size of a grown man on all fours. But then she realizes that the perspective is tricking her eyes. She thought it was nearer than it is. The wolf is quite a distance back but it just happens to be the size of a pony. It’s loping easily along the edge of the old forest path.

Draga pulls Arbiter’s reins, turning his horse around in the road. The wolf stops. They wait a while. The wolf doesn’t move. Cautiously, they set out again down the road and, in step with them, the wolf breaks into a trot. Like a Hylian Retriever headed for the farm. Draga stops again, this time reaching for his bow.

But Link says, unexpectedly, “Don’t.”

Zelda looks at him. “Link?”

“We’re downwind from it.”

“So?”

“The horses aren’t spooking,” Draga says warily.

Link stares up the road at the wolf, face… interested but blank. Eyes fixed on it in a way she’s not sure she understands. For a moment, she thinks the light in his eyes is animal green, back-lit by fairy luminance, but she can’t be sure. He pulls Epona around to face the beast. The wolf cants its massive head at him. Now that she’s really looking at it, the beast’s fur seems matted. Like it’s got its hackles up or… No. Not that. It’s just… almost maned, like a lion alone the back of his neck and spine. Storm gray, cream under belly and jaws. She can’t quite make it out, but she thinks there’s a marking on its forehead – like a sigil whorled there in ink. Its eyes though – bright almost phosphorescent blue in the dark mask of fur.

“What is it, Link?”

“A god maybe,” he says.

“Of what?” Draga murmurs.

“The forest.” Link hasn’t taken his eyes off it. “Or wolves.”

Draga surreptitiously glances at Zelda. He’s palmed the massive recurve bow from his back, his other hand resting on the quiver at his hip. They’ve traveled together long enough that Zelda knows Gerudo gods don’t walk the roads of their sacred lands in physical forms and, to him, there’s some question in his mind what is divine and what is demonic in this kingdom. She can feel that tang in the air that suggests he’s idly pulling some sorcery to bear – close to his skin, like heat off a stone. Link doesn’t seem to notice – or if he does, he doesn’t care – because he dismounts. Epona seems equally indifferent, lipping his shoulder fondly as he moves toward the wolf.

“Link,” Draga says through his teeth.

When he’s ignored, he looks at Zelda.

“I don’t… think it’s dangerous,” she says. She glances at Draga. “What are you feeling?”

He lowers his voice and in Gerudo, says, “Like it ripped my throat out in a past life.”

Before she can react to that, Link kneels in the middle of the road, one forearm braced against his knee, opposite fist set against the dirt. She can’t hear it, but she’s pretty sure he’s speaking – words low and unfamiliar. The giant wolf tilts its head back and forth, like its listening to whatever he’s saying and, for a moment, Zelda could believe it: a rogue of god wolves hearing a traveler’s prayer on the road, the forest bending inward with every divine lupine breath…

But then the giant wolf kind of bounces on its forelegs. Then it bounds forward in a single terrifying lunge, so fast Link jerks back but not fast enough and – the beast knocks him down and drags a giant tongue from his chin to forehead. Then it barks, panting, and bounds off into the trees, vanishing into the underbrush.

Link sits there, kind of stunned, blinking.

Draga lowers his bow and the air around him seems to cool.

“Mad,” he says, turning his horse around.

Link scrubs his face and turns to look at Zelda. He seems genuinely perplexed.

“You should stop being strange in front of Draga,” Zelda says, ignoring his confusion. “He’ll catch on if you don’t rein it in.”

Link just grins at her.

Maybe Link wasn’t taking the fight seriously. Maybe it’s been a while since he fought a person and not a monster.

Either way, he seems genuinely surprised to find himself flat on his back all the air knocked out of him. For a moment, he just kind of lies there, eagle-spread, looking puzzled. Draga looms overhead. He’s holding that claymore-sized scimitar one-handed. He seems vaguely unimpressed. Link nurses the region just below his sternum where – after blocking a blow like a cannonball – Draga swatted his defense aside and put a back-handed pommel in his gut. He grimaces, struggling to sit up, and Zelda can’t remember the last time she saw anything short of a Lynel put Link in the dirt.

“Focus or I’m going to hurt you,” Draga says.

“I’m not healing either of you,” Zelda shouts from her seat very far away. The horses are penned around the log she’s sitting on, grazing boredly around her. She raises her voice. “This is going to end badly!”

“Don’t worry,” Draga calls. “We’ll be back to Lynel hunting or dragon chasing or army killing or whatever terrible thing you’ve found for us to do.”

“Healing sick Rito children you mean? That?”

Link sits up, warily.

Draga smirks at him. “You best just use whatever magic you have, Hero. I plan to do some cheating of my own.” A beat. “I didn’t hit you that hard.”

Link climbs back to his feet, wrinkling his nose at his opponent.

“Forgot how to lose?” Draga asks, squaring up casually. “Or does that sword do all the work?”

Link hefts his sword a little and rolls his shoulder. He eyes Draga sidelong as he a takes up defensive stance across from him. They’re not using shields which Zelda thinks might be more to Draga’s advantage than Link’s – the man with double his reach, height, and body weight. But then again, Link’s never up to size against any opponent. It also rarely makes a difference against Link’s inhuman precognition and speed. And, more to the point, Link has that blade in hand and there’s nothing in the universe that stops him, truly, when it’s awake.

“Ready?” Draga says, the scimitar up, angled slightly between them.

Link exhales, then nods.

It’s instant. Draga darts across the space between them so fast Link only just manages the footwork to block. Zelda’s palms itch. She rubs them together as Draga slams Link’s sword aside in a series of deadly rapid swings, each one hitting with such force that the third blow throws Link staggering. Draga’s fast despite his size. He’s immediately in Link’s guard for the follow through, slashing at his open flank. Link has to dive-roll to the right, scramble back then somersault away from a two-handed downswing.

Draga’s sword slams into the ground like a pickaxe. Link lands cat-like then lunges. Draga’s wide open, fully committed to his previous swing and – Wrong. Draga pivots, raking the ground with his free hand and flings gravel directly into Link’s face. He flinches. Draga puts a boot in his chest and hits Link so hard he skids in the dirt for three meters before rolling back on his feet. He looks shocked. He coughs, grips his ribs with one hand, blade up with the other.

Draga inspects a long tear in his shirt, a shallow cut in his light mail from his hip to his shoulder – a defensive swing, struck before he could kick Link out of range. Draga eyes him, clearly deciding on another attack. But Link’s giving him a look: confused, almost hurt, blue-eyed and just on the edge of anger. He wipes the dirt from his face, pointedly.

“This isn’t tournament rules,” Draga says, a little exasperated. “Cheat back, hero.”

Link tilts his head. There’s something a little… predatory about how he does that. He rotates the sword in his hand a little… then grips the hilt, hard, like he hadn’t had a proper hold before and Zelda feels the change, a focus running from the blade to his palm to his boots and rooting him in some previously untapped current in the earth. Grounding him. The hair rises along her arms and she sits forward, frowning. Link squares up again. Draga does too, slowly. He can smell the change the same as she can but she can tell it interests him. She can feel that… shapeless density Draga has coming to bear somehow. Like extra gravity, like the world pulls in more tightly around him and he brings his blade to bear.

Zelda shivers. Digs her nails into the mossy wood beneath her.

“Ready?”

Link nods.

Zelda catches the spilt-second grit in the dirt when they both leap forward, where their boots push off the earth – then the deafening explosion when Draga’s sword connects with the divine blade and explodes. Not snaps. Explodes. Like a black-powder charge detonating between them. Draga hits the ground on his back, snarling, armor smoking. The tang of metal and defensive magic – thick, almost sickly sweet, and likely the only reason Draga’s head is still attached. The remains of the scimitar rain down in brittle pieces, the hilt landing somewhere in the woods.

Zelda’s on her feet immediately. “Draga!”

Link lands in a crouch. She’s never seen that expression before – that razor-thin edge of grief and shock where she can see him replaying the thousand alternate universes where his friend is dead by his hand.

He throws the Master Sword down and dashes forward. Zelda is already on her knees beside Draga who’s levered himself up into a sitting position, grimacing as he inspects his sword arm. There’s blood. A lot of blood. The entire limb shakes either from the pain or struck tendon. There’s a gash in his palm and his fingers, like the hilt of his own sword turned against him and cleaved through his glove into his hand. Bone glints in the red pulse of blood and Link stares at the wound, speechless. He tries to say something, but the syllables stick so violently they almost manifest a stutter.

Draga shakes his head. “No. I goaded you into it. It’s not your fault.”

“You’re an idiot,” Zelda snaps at him, heat gathering in her palms. She does not look away from her work, one hand holding his wrist, the other cupping the back of his knuckles. Her fingers start to glow internally. “He broke your wrist and most of the bones in your hand and you’re lucky that’s all it did. You knew what the blade was. Why on earth did you try this?”

He shrugs. “Wanted to see what the Lynel felt like.”

“The Lynel felt dead, Draga.”

“Well, I don’t. So, all’s well, princess.”

“Do not ‘princess’ me while I’m gluing your arm back together.”

He nods, almost thoughtful. “Can I tell you two something?”

Link makes an exasperated noise of assent.

“What?” she grouses, eyes fixated on the knitting skin beneath her fingers.

“I think, if I’d managed my focus a little better… I’d have had that exchange.”

Zelda looks at him. She’s not sure what his face is telling her when she studies him for any sign he’s joking, that he’s serious about defending against the blade that seals evil when Link’s holding it with any real intention. He seems calm, polite. She doesn’t think he’s unrealistic about things and that concerns her – his sincerity that he can beat Link. That he’d like to. She feels a shiver climb her spine, a cold crawl in her body. What? For gods’ sake it’s just Draga. Link’s hovering anxiously behind her, watching her undo the damage – the familiar recapturing of stray blood and the atomic stitching of muscle and skin. She erases any sign that there was a fight between them.

“There,” Draga says, showing Link. “No harm done and nothing a couple fairy tonics couldn’t undo, even if Zelda didn’t loan us her expertise.”

She feels Link start to smile without looking, a quiet glow of relief.

“You’re not immortal,” she says. “Being brave or reckless doesn’t make you immortal.”

Draga, flexing his hand, looks sharply at her. Link too, because he recognizes the words and the tone. Zelda looks over her shoulder at him, glaring.

“You know better,” she says.

“Zelda…” Link starts to say, but she’s already on her feet and walking off.

“Don’t fight again!” she says, loudly.

She can’t explain her panic, the cold rise of hair and gooseflesh, the heat behind her eyes, her mouth bone dry. She can feel them staring after her, confused. Good. They will think she’s just mad at them for injuring themselves, upset generally at their recklessness, their bloody-mindedness – the usual sensible reasons for being mad and not this… instinctive terror. A terrible de-ja-vu. It’s in the roots of her teeth, in her palms, the marrow of her bones. She stays away from camp until her hands stop shaking.

When she comes back, Link and Draga are seated cross-legged facing one another in the grass.

Link is signing, ‘I love pie.’

Which seems odd until Draga awkwardly mirrors Link’s hand-motions and says, “That seems lengthy for a hello.”

Link maintains his cool. “No. It means ‘hello’.”

Draga signs, ‘I love pie.’

Link smiles.

“Like that?” Draga says, suspicious.

“Yes.”

And suddenly, Zelda is less anxious than she was before.

go to chapter 5...

#botw #breath of the wild #loz #legend of zelda #zelda #link #ganondorf #botw fic #lozfic #interim #interim update #in which the cycle with the triforce starts again #but no one told link and zelda that's a thing #platonic until its not #post-game botw fic #rae writes #raewrites

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