#kingdom of the cursed spoilers

[demi-pixellated]

The [Urban] Legend of Zelda

[benevolenterrancy]

(Unseen Academicals, Terry Pratchett) I think Shang Qinghua and Ponder Stibbons should have tea and compare notes about somehow accumulating so much behind-the-scenes power by doing menial jobs no one else wants that they could basically run the show if they wanted...

meanwhile we have Shen "meh good enough" Qingqiu

[derrickwildsun]

I think I've figured out the appeal of Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom Zelink.

And just for fun...

[acourtofquestions]

Kingdom of Ash Chapter 61

Chapter; Highlights (okay the entire chapter is a highlight)🤣

As requested @mysterylilycheeta I NEED TO SQUEAL IN WYVERN FANGIRL WITH YOU NOW CAUSE OH M GOODNESS THIS CHAPTER ON SO MANY LEVELS I JUST AHAKWIHUHFEJLZXBKEKA

Agony was a song in Lorcan's blood, his bones, his breath.

Every step of the horse, every leap she made over body and debris, sent it ringing afresh. There was no end, no mercy from it. It was all he could do to keep in the saddle, to cling to consciousness.

To keep his arm around Elide.

She had come for him. Had found him, somehow, on this endless battlefield.

His name on her lips had been a summons he could never deny, even when death had held him so gently, nestled beneath all those he'd felled, I, and waited for his last breaths.

And now, charging toward that too-distant keep, so far behind the droves of soldiers and riders racing for the gates, he wondered if these minutes would be his last. Her last.

She had come for him.

Lorcan managed to glance toward the dam on their right. Toward the ruk rider signaling that it was only a matter of minutes until it unleashed hell over the plain.

He didn't know how it had become weakened. Didn't care.

Still Elide kept urging the horse onward, kept them on as straight a path toward the distant keep as possible.

No ruk would come to sweep them up. No, his luck had been spent in surviving this long, in her finding him. His power would do nothing against that water.

The farthest lines of panicked soldiers appeared, and Farasha charged past them.

Elide let out a sob, and he followed the line of her sight.

To the keep gate, still open.

"Faster, Farasha!" She didn't hide the raw terror in her voice, the desperation.

Once the dam broke, it would take less than a minute for the tidal wave to reach them.

She had come for him. She had found him.

The world went quiet. The pain in his body faded into nothing. Into something secondary.

Lorcan slid his other arm around Elide, bringing his mouth close to her ear as he said, "You have to let me go."

Each word was gravelly, his voice strained nearly to the point of uselessness.

Elide didn't shift her focus from the keep ahead. "No."

That gentle quiet flowed around him, clearing the fog of pain and battle. "You have to. You have to, Elide. I'm too heavy-and without my weight, you might make it to the keep in time."

"No." The salt of her tears filled his nose.

Lorcan brushed his mouth over her damp cheek, ignoring the roaring pain in his body. The horse galloped and galloped, as if she might outrace death itself.

"I love you," he whispered in Elide's ear. "I have loved you from the moment you picked up that axe to slay the ilken." Her tears flowed past him in the wind. "And I will be with you ..." His voice broke, but he made himself say the words, the truth in his heart. "I will be with you always."

He was not frightened of what would come for him once he tumbled off the horse. He was not frightened at all, if it meant her reaching the keep.

So Lorcan kissed Elide's cheek again, allowed himself to breathe in her scent one last time. "I love you," he repeated, and began to withdraw his arms from around her waist.

Elide slapped a hand onto his forearm. Dug in her nails, right into his skin, fierce as any ruk.

"No."

There were no tears in her voice. Nothing but solid, unwavering steel.

"No," she said again. The voice of the Lady of Perranth.

Lorcan tried to move his arm, but her grip would not be dislodged.

If he tumbled off the horse, she would go with him.

Together. They would either outrun this or die together.

"Elide-"

But Elide slammed her heels into the horse's sides.

Slammed her heels into the dark flank and screamed, "FLY, FARASHA." She cracked the reins. "FLY, FLY, FLY!"

And gods help her, that horse did.

As if the god that had crafted her filled the mare's lungs with his own breath, Farasha gave a surge of speed.

Faster than the wind. Faster than death.

Farasha cleared the first of the fleeing Darghan cavalry. Passed desperate horses and riders at an all-out gallop for the gates.

Her mighty heart did not falter, even when Lorcan knew it was raging to the point of bursting.

Less than a mile stood between them and the keep.

But a thunderous, groaning crack cleaved the world, echoing off the lake, the mountains.

There was nothing he could do, nothing that brave, unfaltering horse could do, as the dam ruptured.

Rowan made himself stand there, to watch the last moments of the Lady of Perranth and his former commander. It was all he could offer: witnessing their deaths, so he might tell the story to those he encountered. So they would not be forgotten.

The roaring of the oncoming wave became deafening, even from miles away.

Still Elide and Lorcan raced, Farasha passing horse after horse after horse.

Even up here, would they escape the wave's reach? Rowan dared to survey the battlements, to assess if he needed to get the others, needed to get Aelin, to higher ground.

But Aelin was not at his side.

She was not on the battlement at all.

Rowan's heart halted. Simply stopped beating as a ruddy-brown ruk dropped from the skies, spearing for the center of the plain.

Arcas, Borte's ruk. A golden-haired woman dangling from his talons.

Aelin. Aelin was—

Arcas neared the earth, talons splaying.

Aelin hit the ground, rolling, rolling, until she uncoiled to her feet.

Right in the path of that wave.

"Oh gods," Fenrys breathed, seeing her, too.

They all saw her.

The queen on the plain.

The endless wall of water surging for her.

The keep stones began shuddering. Rowan threw out a hand to brace himself, fear like nothing he had known ripping through him as Aelin lifted her arms above her head.

A pillar of fire shot up around her, lifting her hair with it.

The wave roared and roared for her, for the army behind her.

The shaking in the keep was not from the wave.

It was not from that wall of water at all.

Cracks formed in the earth, splintering across it. Spiderwebbing from Aelin.

"The hot springs," Chaol breathed. "The valley floor is full of veins into the earth itself."

Into the burning heart of the world.

The keep shook, more violently this time.

The pillar of fire sucked back into Aelin.

She held out a hand before her, her fist closed.

As if it would halt the wave in its tracks.

He knew then. Either as her mate or carranam, he knew.

"Three months," Rowan breathed.

The others stilled.

"Three months," he said again, his knees wobbling. "She's been making the descent into her power for three months."

Every day she had been with Maeve, bound in iron, she had gone deeper. And she had not tapped too far into that power since they'd freed her because she had kept making the plunge.

To gather up the full might of her magic.

Not for the Lock, not for Erawan.

But for Maeve's death blow.

A few weeks of descent had taken her powers to devastating levels. Three months of it

…

Holy gods. Holy rutting gods.

And when her fire hit the wall of water now towering over her, when they collided —

"GET DOWN!" Rowan bellowed, over the screaming waters. "GET DOWN NOW!"

His companions dropped to the stones, any within earshot doing the same.

Rowan plummeted into his power. Plummeted into it fast and hard, ripping out any remaining shred of magic.

Elide and Lorcan were still too far from the gates. Thousands of soldiers were still too far from the gates as the wave crested above them.

As Aelin opened her hand toward it.

Fire erupted.

Cobalt fire. The raging soul of a flame.

A tidal wave of it.

Taller than the raging waters, it blasted from her, flaring wide.

The wave slammed into it. And where water met a wall of fire, where a thousand years of confinement met three months of it, the world exploded.

Blistering steam, capable of melting flesh from bone, shot across the plain.

With a roar, Rowan threw all that remained of his magic toward the onslaught of steam, a wall of wind that shoved it toward the lake, the mountains.

Still the waters came, breaking against the flames that did not so much as yield an inch.

Maeve's death blow. Spent here, to save the army that might mean Terrasen's salvation. To spare the lives on the plain.

Rowan gritted his teeth, panting against his fraying power. A burnout lurked, deadly close.

The raging wave threw itself over and over and over into the wall of flame.

Rowan didn't see if Elide and Lorcan made it into the keep. If the other soldiers and riders on the plain stopped to gape.

Princess Hasar said, rising beside him, "That power is no blessing."

"Tell that to your soldiers," Fenrys snarled, standing, too.

"I did not mean it that way," Hasar snipped, and awe was indeed stark on her face.

Rowan leaned against the battlements, panting hard as he fought to keep the lethal steam from flowing toward the army. As he cooled and sent it whisking away.

Solid hands slid under his arms, and then Fenrys and Gavriel were there, propping him up between them.

A minute passed. Then another.

The wave began to lower. Still the fire burned.

Rowan's head pounded, his mouth going dry.

Time slipped from him. A coppery tang filled his mouth.

The wave lowered farther, raging waters quieting. Then roaring turned to lapping, rapids into eddies.

Until the wall of flame began to lower, too. Tracking the waters down and down and down. Letting them seep into the cracks of the earth.

Rowan's knees buckled, but he held on to his magic long enough for the steam to lessen.

For it, too, to be calmed.

It filled the plain, turning the world into drifting mist. Blocking the view of the queen in its center.

Then silence. Utter silence.

Fire flickered through the mist, blue turning to gold and red. A muted, throbbing glow.

Rowan spat blood onto the battlement stones, his breath like shards of glass in his throat.

The glowing flames shrank, steam rippling past. Until there was only a slim pillar of fire, veiled in the mist-shrouded plain.

Not a pillar of fire.

But Aelin.

Glowing white-hot. As if she had given herself so wholly to the flame that she had become fire herself.

The Fire-Bringer someone whispered down the battlements.

The mist rippled and billowed, casting her into nothing but a glowing effigy.

The silence turned reverent.

A gentle wind from the north swept down. The veil of mist pulled back, and there she was.

She glowed from within. Glowed golden, tendrils of her hair floating on a phantom wind.

"Mala's Heir," Yrene breathed.

Down on the plain, Elide and Lorcan had halted.

The wind pushed away more of the drifting mist, clearing the land beyond Aelin.

And where that mighty, lethal wave had loomed, where death had charged toward them, nothing remained at all.

For three months, she had sung to the darkness and the flame, and they had sung back.

For three months, she had burrowed so deep inside her power that she had plundered undiscovered depths. While Maeve and Cairn had worked on her, she had delved. Never letting them know what she mined, what she gathered to her, day by day by day.

A death blow. One to wipe a dark queen from the earth forever.

She'd kept that power coiled in herself even after she'd been freed from the irons. Had struggled to keep it down these weeks, the strain enormous. Some days, it had been easier to barely speak. Some days, swaggering arrogance had been her key to ignoring it.

Yet when she had seen that wave, when she had seen Elide and Lorcan choosing death together, when she had seen the army that might save Terrasen, she'd known. She'd felt the fire sleeping under this city, and knew they had come here for a reason.

She had come here for this reason.

A river still flowed from the dam, harmless and small, wending toward the lake.

Nothing more.

Aelin lifted a glowing hand before her as blessed, cooling emptiness filled her at last.

Slowly, starting from her fingertips, the glow faded.

As if she were forged anew, forged back into her body.

Back into Aelin.

Clarity, sharp and crystal clear, filled its wake. As if she could see again, breathe again.

Inch by inch, the golden glow faded into skin and bone. Into a woman once more.

Already, a white-tailed hawk launched skyward.

But as the last of the glow faded, disappearing out through her toes, Aelin fell to her knees.

Fell to her knees in the utter silence of the world, and curled onto her side.

She had the vague sense of strong, familiar arms scooping her up. Of being carried onto a broad feathery back, still in those arms.

Of soaring through the skies, the last of the mist rippling away into the afternoon sun.

And then sweet darkness.

[phoenixcatch7]

Reading loz/lu fics and it's just so interesting how wide the spectrum is of their personalities.

Sometimes it's got an in universe reason (different past (usually gender or species change), recent or ongoing traumatic events, a spectacularly bad first meeting), but sometimes (often) the characters are just... Weirdly angsty or peppy, there's no in between!

And I'm beginning to think less people have played more than one game than I thought XD.

Not that it's anyone's fault! One game is more than enough to be part of it all, and loz is exclusive to Nintendo consoles - and all the older stuff is frustratingly hard to get hold of. Heck, I'm still looking for wind waker, and that was really popular! And then you have to play it! They're not small games!!

But could people writing wild please ease off just a tiiiiiny bit so he can be a semi functional member of society pretty please XD? He's just as much a polite boy as any other member of the chain! He won't even run in shops! He can't attack npcs! He talks to every single person he's ever seen and remembers every single name. Yes, he's three quarters woodland creature with a hefty amount of trauma but he's also a fashionista who managed to avoid accidentally taking sides in a mayoral election and that's not easy!

[sciencelings-arts]

Queen of Light Sonia bc it makes more sense to me and I wanted to make an AU where she doesn’t get killed off and gets to be important to the story

Close ups under the cut because I like making my intricate details too small!

[holmsister]

Hey do you know that now as king of melini laios can have FIVE BILLION DOGS

[magicisinbooks]

Gluttony x the reporter

Kingdom of the Cursed

Whatever levity Gluttony had been feeling was gone in an instant, replaced by an icy glare. I followed the direction of his gaze, surprised to find the object of his loathing was a beautiful, prim noblewoman. Her pale blue hair was coiffed in the style of proper English ladies and her elegant dress buttoned up to her neck. She wore kidskin gloves that ended past her elbows and an expression of revulsion as she spied the host, her gaze cutting from across the room. She leaned next to her companion and whispered something that sent the other noblewoman tittering.

"If you'll excuse me." Gluttony's mood darkened further. "There's a party crasher in our midst." Without uttering another word, Gluttony strode off toward the giggling ladies.

"She's a journalist from the Shifting Isles. And she rarely has anything flattering to say about the royals in this realm. She's been particularly vicious with Gluttony." [...] She called his last gathering 'perfectly ordinary and utterly contrived. A predictable, uninspired evening.' " [...] My brother quoted it so often, it stuck. Gluttony was furious. He has since thrown the most lavish, over-the-top, debauched parties he can." "He wants her to eat her words." "Amongst other things, no doubt." I couldn't help but smile. "Hate is a powerful aphrodisiac for some."

Kingdom of the Feared

"Prince Gluttony is correct about one thing-his feast will make guests wish he'd end them all." Gluttony's easygoing smile vanished. "My dear, if my parties had the ability to kill, I'd personally deliver your invite." "That was as clever as your idea to lace wine with slumber root, promptly knocking all your guests out. At least that time it wasn't sheer boredom that put them to sleep." She gave him a cutting smile before dropping into a curtsy.

"Trust me, demons are not just asking about the curse's return. They live in fear some superior reporter with a penchant for snobbery will ruin their good time." Gluttony shooed her away, promptly earning a fierce glare.

Gluttony robbed his hands together, a devious expression falling into place. "You know? That viper gave me a great idea I think I'll offer her a glass of wine laced with slumber root and kick her and her assistant out. Then we'll see who thinks I'm unclever. At least we won't have to worry about your coronation party hitting the gossip columns."

He glanced around a crowded room, pausing on where Gluttony and the columnist stood a foot apart, not speaking.

Throne of the Fallen

Gluttony at the very least ought to know better-he was currently involved in a war with his own reporter in the Seven Circles.

Gluttony's reporter printed this just today.

Before this article was submitted to print, the ever-lacking Prince Gluttony was questioned about a guest he'd hosted the previous night, but he refuse to comment or confirm any part in the game. [...] Gluttony remained mum, hinting only that it was likely a lover sneaking out after overindulging in sin. [...] That the prince would attempt to play coy and fail spectacularly is unsurprising. Gluttony is the least clever of his brothers.

The reporter he was feuding with hadn't responded to the invitation Envy had sent, and he was sure Gluttony's foul mood had nothing to do with that.

[prisiidon]

No DLC means we’ll never know what the goron and rito ancient sages actually look like under the mask

[r0semultiverse]

"Who is Sora's father?"

I feel like the answer to that is fairly obvious. 👀

[pergaminaa]

Does anyone think of Asterin taking out the Blackbeak Matron to both avenge her witchling and free Manon of her control?

She's been around for over a century and seen how the woman manipulated and abused her cousin while she couldn't do anything about it, but by killing her she is truly setting Manon free.

"Live, Manon. Live" is not only about the war and uniting the witches, but it will be the first time Manon is truly free to be herself and literally just living instead of being a tool for her grandmother.

She was ready to sacrifice herself to set Manon free from her grandmother. Asterin knows her and knows she isn’t a heartless person. That was just their grandmother controlling Manon. So Asterin wanted this to be Manon’s freedom. Freedom not only to exist but to live and be her own person without that crone’s influence.

[thatwavephenomenon]

TOTK AU where Link didn't get saved by Rauru after getting beat up by Ganon but still managed to survive while being completely infected by the miasma instead. He looks like the miasma-covered monsters (also maybe has black eyes with yellow pupils and everything). He can't touch anyone without hurting them. Sunlight hurts him and so he lives in The Depths, wondering if Zelda and the rest of Hyrule are alright without having any way to know about it.

[ofstarsandmoonlightt]

jacks 🤝🏻 kaz

cutting out eyes from people who’ve harmed their girls

[acourtofquestions]

The fact that this opens with the Prince & then the Princess — A DOUBLE EPILOGUE FOR MY SHIP — Sarah, are you trying to kill me?

[catboy-teeth]

interrupting my feral totk playing with a limited colour palette link <3

[toastingpencils37]

Thinking about the Administration Realm Reassignment department, and how short the line was in Episode 17.

So we know that they encountered people and reassigned them.

And based on the timeline of the majority of the ninja popping up, they got reassigned very soon after the Merge, right after each other, probably along with a ton of other people.

Of course, in cases (maybe like Zane's) some people got assigned later during the Merge.

And based on Episode 17, they are still finding people that need Reassignment.

But based on how the line only had 4 people (2 batches), the finding of these pockets & people are slowing down, because there aren't all that many left.

But of course there are still some.

(Also, I want to note that there have been at least 3 occurances where the people in these pockets are in pairs. 1 & 2 being the Cloud Kingdom monks and the two skeleton guys (possibly from the Cursed Realm) and the third being Arin's parents)