#zeldagoestoo!au

[linksthoughtbrambles]

Affection and Affectation

A 3-sentence fic collab with @bellecream for @zelinkcommunity Zelink Week 2023 day 3: letters.

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My Dearest Zelda, Crown Princess of Hyrule,

The time has come, at last, for us to know each other, Loveliest Zelda—long have I bemoaned the Hyrulean custom of cloistering its youthful heirs, for it has deprived me of your regal company these twenty-two years past! I feel most earnestly for you also, Sweetest Princess, that you have not yet experienced the glorious plains of Tabantha while riding with me upon my most muscular steed, the moist scent of my manor's lush gardens where I take my lordly leisure

Zelda's sound of quiet disgust lured Link's eyes first to her, then to the letter in her hand, though he wouldn't dare read it without her permission—he hadn't read any of them yet, the obsequious outpourings of 'affection' from her would-be suitors—but he felt it coming; she kept side-eyeing him, he kept side-eyeing her, and considering courtship was all a formality he thought it likely his privileges would soon include her sliding lots of correspondence under his unconcealed smiles.

[linksthoughtbrambles]

Thanks for the tag, @linktheacehero 😄

Everyone feel free to ask me about any of these WIP files below the cut (there's other things in the folders, but those other things are complete!):

Assassination attempt

Do you remember that night

LttP Novelization outline

The Split and Path 1

The Choice is Hers

Worlds Made Manifest - ZeldaGoesToo!AU Brambles

3 sentence fics 200

Adventure Log Plus

ALTTP-map_Dark World Mapped

Cursed

Side Notes and People Glossary

The First Dance / The First Dance Mixdown with Voice 1-4

My Love Is As The Sea

Magic Flute

Adventure Log Minus (folder--finished previous post so the next installment isn't named in here yet)

Sunblock AU

Wildberry Fix

Farscape AU

SLAGA lore

SLAGA

For 300 followers celebration

Tagging: @dawn-the-rithmatist, @newtsnaturethings, @bellecream, @embyrinitalics, @wanderingnightingale, @aquaticpal, @airplanned, @star-ocean-peahen, @between-star, @1up-girl, @michpat6 (If any of you feel like participating! I tried to pick people I didn't see play the game yet, sorry if I double-tagged anyone or missed anyone who would like to join in!).

Wips, Wips, Wips everywhere

thanks for the tag @fatefulfaerie

Writing

-Sky and the Light

-Spiderman AU

-Hold me Close (in your arms)

-You are my home

-Shapeshifting Cat story

-Art Goddess and Art Student Hylink AU

-God of Death (Hades and Persephone Zelink AU)

-Tale of the White Devil

Art

-Zelmo fic fanart

-Pastels Shink whump art

-Her Lullaby

-Dragon Prince backgrounds

-Letting him go

-Nexor Soara

-Kiki redraw with Skyward Zinc

-HMC Au

-Emby Collab art

-TDP Au

Feel free to ask me about any of these!

Tagging: @dawn-the-rithmatist @walkie-taco @pastelsandpining @wanderingnightingale @linksthoughtbrambles @farore-or-less and anyone else!

[linksthoughtbrambles]

Visceral

A 3-sentence-fic collab with @bellecream for @zelinkcommunity Zelink Week 2023 day 5: by a thread.

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The massive wolf growled at Zelda—a languid oscillation shivering its charcoal hackles, wrinkling the white muzzle stained with vitriol from the moblin splayed dead at the clearing’s edge; a paw stepped, soft, creeping toward Zelda, the unprecedented silence in this hollow of the woods amplifying her uneven breath, her shirt’s rustle declaring her hand's shift toward her weapon.

The music returned as skin met hilt, yet unlike the haunting melody which had drawn her here, the upstart song recalled the dawn twittering of birds, the joy of two spiraling in celebration of life to come—the wolf’s eyes widened, their clear blue now visible, its angered rumble dissolving in a high whine, its pinned ears and bent back such unmistakable submission they stayed Zelda’s hand; she didn’t dare glance at the strange, boy-shaped sapling with the flute in its hands, didn’t dare question whether the new song would repeat as the wolf slunk to her feet.

It lifted Zelda’s wrist with a flick of its nose and closed its jaw around it, tugging with a low plea—it evoked a a Hylian voice (a man’s voice), more so as her face neared its, far closer than any wild animal would have allowed, their eyes locked, a visceral impression driving a gasp to her lungs and a fumbling hand to her belt pouch; it emerged with the Moon Pearl held in her palm, pressed swift to the creature's body, and as the soft fur twined through her fingers began to recede, its pace barely perceptible by touch and not at all by sight, all doubt vanished: the wolf was Link clinging to his true self by a thread.

[linksthoughtbrambles]

Sun Fête

A 3-sentence fic collab with @bellecream for @zelinkcommunity Zelink Week 2023 day 4: hand-in-hand.

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Link glanced at his hand shaking in Zelda’s, bewildered as much by the fine, royal-blue cloth of his new shirt as he was by the thought of stepping into that courtyard with his wife (his wife!) as her husband (her husband?!) for the first time; the king would glare, but he could stuff it—the images making Link’s palms sweat were the smirks, elbows, and winks which could very well come from 90% of the castle guard.

“It’s alright,” Zelda said with a radiant smile undiscovered until this moment, submerged by all their time alone in the Dark—she squeezed his hand as it enthralled him, resurrecting yet another withered corner of his hidden heart, its blood joining the pulse she’d raised from the ashes before dawn; she pulled, spurring them over the threshold—he followed her, his sudden Sun, their first step into the light of day heralding a multitudinous uproar.

A line of soldiers rushed toward them, brandishing sharp cries of joy, heavy fists raised in celebration, wild grins and Link’s name on their lips—they had him on their shoulders in an instant, steadied by a dozen pairs of hands, and while he couldn’t help but laugh, he’d lost the hand he wanted most; he turned to seek her and found her hoisted, delivered to his side, her fingers threading through his as maidens twined lily of the valley through her hair, as the crowd paraded them, the forsythia blooms and white rose petals fluttering in the air a bright consequence outlining their love’s unbroken shape: hand-in-hand.

[linksthoughtbrambles]

Greetings Connect

A 3-sentence-fic collab with @bellecream for @zelinkcommunity Zelink Week 2023 day 6: in another life.

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“Greetings Connect,” Link read aloud, the first two words in the modern translation of an ancient copy of a series of other ancient copies of a book so old its title had been lost—the scholars claimed it held little but gibberish (it had ‘nonsensical sentence structure,’ they said), but he and Zelda needed to understand the Triforce; the older the text, the closer to the ancient artefact enshrined, invisible, within Link’s soul.

The intense stare Zelda turned on those words sent Link reaching for the copy written in dead-and-buried language, Zelda’s hand overtaking his to find the beginning with quiet fervor—then a paling, stilled shock, her eyes fixed on it; Link’s couldn’t help but follow, and with the first catch of the ancient symbols in his vision a ringing like a hammer-strike permeated his sword, a vertigo of understanding emerging from it: “Hello, Link,” the book said—“it’s me, Zelda.”

“I miss you so much it’s excruciating, even though it’s been three months,” (Zelda’s hand curled tight around his forearm), “but I have faith this book will find you in another life-“ Link’s eyes snapped to Zelda’s; “How- I can read it- it’s you,” he said, his wife, his Princess, nodding, ghostlike, her eyes opening in a disoriented transparency like nothing he’d ever seen in her.

[linksthoughtbrambles]

Yearning

A 3-sentence-fic collab with @bellecream for @zelinkcommunity Zelink Week 2023 day 1 (rated T, ALTTP/Link's Awakening AU).

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The instant Link woke to the beautiful face peering at him on the forgotten shore of Koholint Island, he should've realized an uncertain identity was nothing but an absent question—“Zelda?” he’d asked, her red locks the only discrepancy; he'd failed to ask whether he was dreaming, and now Marin, his suggestion for love, was fading before his eyes, the replacement his sleeping vision had conjured for the woman he yearned for, dying because Link had chosen to awaken.

The consequence echoed only remains — his death in sleep could end a life held by his wish for resurrection; his awakening would certainly extinguish this dreamworld and the multitudes within it.

His eyes opened to blackened, parched wooden planks beneath his cracked lips, cracked bangs, his body aching with whatever the lightning strike had done to him, the call of a seagull from high above the waters, every bit as unreachable as his Zelda was; he had no moisture left in him for tears—for his Zelda lost in life, for her memory lost in wakefulness—all he could do was smile at the gull, dreaming again, dreaming whatever part of Zelda that had lived on Koholint Island, to have found her own life on the wind.

[linksthoughtbrambles]

Nearly Free

A 3-sentence-fic collab with @bellecream for @zelinkcommunity Zelink Week 2023 day 7 prompt: free day. (Plus epilogue).

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“Where will we go?” Zelda asked, her palm upturned, her face down, a concession to the knowledge she’d held a golden power within it once—before consequence settled, ashen, on every layer of life, palette acrid, eyes smog, her every sense a window on the world of soot-smeared volcanic glass; no one but Link had managed to reach her in that mean hovel of mind, closeted, forsaken even to herself.

She swore she saw it again—the grass paling at her feet, vining up her legs, the light of an impossibly red sky staining her skin as she shook, but Link’s palm joined hers, warm, his fingers wrapping her hand in the embrace he’d always offered her even when she couldn’t name her love for him; the vision ebbed with her heart’s flutters, her gaze shifting to the man who had endured those horrors with her—and finding the face of the boy in the catacombs with a lantern, his mouth wavering between speech and a smiled attempt to reassure.

A bolt of clarity cracked the tomb of her self-remembrance—Link had always followed her, and she’d already asked too much of him; she offered silent apology in a gentle smile, by squeezing his hand and caressing his cheek, her voice low and steady—“Where matters little, so long as we go together,” she said, that smile of his blooming into something nearly happy, nearly free, though the shadow, once cast, could never be forgotten.

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Epilogue below the cut.

They laid atop their combined bedrolls, the night air perfect as always in this sacred place, with no need of huddling beneath covers for warmth.

Link smiled at Zelda, at her colors washed by the moon’s glow—she could’ve been wearing the borrowed clothing from Kakariko from all those years ago; it would’ve gleamed no less silver than the threads of the finer shirt she wore now, and he could imagine away the slight shine of tonight’s leather riding pants, a detail whispering time’s passage.

Her face had changed more than anything else: those persistent hollows beneath her cheekbones—the ever-present symptoms of remembrance in her irises’ contractions: deepwater waves submerged.

Her eyes had shone as clear pools once. She’d been so different then.

So had he.

And there had never been a night quite like this.

Not quite.

Not warm, close, and comfortable.

Close—that they’d been. So close. Close while frozen, wet, seeking rest on jagged moss, on sliming masses of decaying matter, hunted, starved, exhausted, and utterly homeless except for each other, sleeping seated, shoulder-to-shoulder more often than not. They’d only shared a bedroll once, and it had been anything but comfortable—he hadn’t dared to look at her then.

He wished he’d seen her like this, then—warm—safe—relaxed—with her eyes only as haunted as when they reached Sanctuary: frightened, yes, but clear.

Link shifted his head on his bent arm beneath it, seeking that girl in the sum of Zelda’s face. The slight dip of her temple. The way her hair rose slightly from her forehead before bowing to gravity. The precise line of her nose’s bridge.

“Do you remember that night-“

“Yes,” Zelda said.

The softest puff of air left Link’s nose, tickling the tip of Zelda’s. “I didn’t tell you which.”

“You didn’t have to.” She reached up to push the one stray strand of hair on his cheek back behind his ear. “There was only one like this.”

“…Yeah,” he said, his breath suddenly deepening.

She’d been seeking his younger self, too.

[linksthoughtbrambles]

3-Sentence Fic List: Zelink Week 2023

A collab with @bellecream written as part of a Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past AU where Zelda goes with Link instead of staying behind. You can read a lot of it as general LoZ. The list is in the AU's chronological order (sort of).

Visceral

Embrace

Affection and Affectation

Sun Fête

Yearning

Greetings Connect

Nearly Free

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Thanks to the Zelink Community mods for putting this event together!

Here's my fic masterlist.

[linksthoughtbrambles]

Oooh the WIP ask game is going around again! Thanks for the tag, @jenseits-der-sterne! It's been long enough that there are at least a few differences, so I'll go ahead.

Rules: post the names of all the files in your WIP folder regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet of it or tell them something about it! And then tag as many people as you have wips. I have deemed that this isn’t just for writing either. Sketch titles? Comics? Dnd campaigns? If you have an unfinished project, it counts!

Here are some new/altered WIPs since last time (or ones I forgot, oops):

post tp Les Miserables de Nature bleeeblebeeeeblorbo SilenceBeforeSunset

Here are the things I had already put last time this came around with the ones I answered last time in parentheses:

AdventureLogPlus_06 LttP Novelization Outline Worlds Made Manifest - ZeldaGoesToo!AU (Breath Between Heat) Asassination Attempt The Split and Path 1 Do you remember that night 11 Link and Alize Reunion letters of summons alttp-map_DrkWorldMarked (Be mindful) magicflute (Sunblock AU) (WildberryFix) FarscapeAU (MyLoveIsAsTheSea) Oo- it has been a while since I saw this, not sure who was tagged already other than those in jenseit's post, but if you'd like to play: @newtsnaturethings, @embyrinitalics, @aheavenscorner, @themarydragon, @michpat6

[linksthoughtbrambles]

Thanks for tagging me @zeldaelmo and @linktheacehero!

Rules: post the names of all the files in your WIP folder regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet of it or tell them something about it! And then tag as many people as you have wips. I have deemed that this isn’t just for writing either. Sketch titles? Comics? Dnd campaigns? If you have an unfinished project, it counts!

AdventureLogPlus_06 LttP Novelization Outline Worlds Made Manifest - ZeldaGoesToo!AU Breath Between Heat Asassination Attempt The Split and Path 1 Do you remember that night 11 Link and Alize Reunion letters of summons alttp-map_DrkWorldMarked Be mindful magicflute Sunblock AU WildberryFix FarscapeAU MyLoveIsAsTheSea

I had to re-post this because I forgot to tag people on the first go-around 🤪

Tagging.... @bellecream @aurathian @a03-anxiousandafraid @keikbird (and anyone who would like to play of course!).

[linksthoughtbrambles]

ZELINK DANCING IN THE RAIN SOBS

CONGRATS ON ALL YOUR FOLLOWERS!!! YOU ABSOLUTELY DESERVE THEM!!!!

A Link to the Past AU: Zelda Goes Too

Attenuation

The sharp, undulating buzzing as the magic mirror transported Link and Zelda from the Dark World back to the light faded, replaced by their gulping intakes of breath, gasps begun in one world as the warp took them and ending in this one—re-integrated, solidified—harmonizing with a sound not heard in a time long but unknowable in that corrupted other-world of unending twilight: the sound of heavy rain spattering thick mud, pelting the sturdy green leaves of summer in a clattering drumroll, and striking their skin and clothing in instantaneous attenuation—a torrential balm that turned their faces to the sky, mouths open as they clung to each other’s forearms.

The sound of their laughter soon followed, the Dark World’s stains fading as the details of a hulking nightmare, and they found each other’s lightened eyes through the glittering drops on their lashes; in an instant, Link’s hands shifted to Zelda’s waist and hers to his shoulders, and he swung her in wild circles through air and water, her already-soaked hair sticking to her—Link would have liked to see it float behind her, to see her visibly as the ethereal creature she existed as in his hidden core, but that small imperfection shrunk in deference to the joy of returning to clean water, to verdancy, and to the best versions of each other unshaped by the relentless flow of golden power tainted by Ganon’s greed.

Link almost said it, then, as the rain washed any trace of that black weight from Zelda’s airy laughter—almost said “I love you” in tones of the fresh warmth cleansing them, from a heart full of renewed hope and the sudden return of clarity—but with that clarity came cognizance that this reprieve was temporary, that they must return at some point, and soon, and the pressure of enforced darkness on their souls would resume; he couldn’t risk what they might do if they gave in—if she knew he loved her, knew how badly he wanted her, and if she returned it (which he was certain, certain she did)—couldn’t risk them losing themselves to impulse in the dark, never to emerge into the light again: So he rested her once more on her feet, ending their first dance with a wistful curve on lips starved of hers.

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[Thank you so much, Pastels!!!]

[linksthoughtbrambles]

For the @zelinkcommunity Opposites Attract prompt - daybreak/twilight. ~2250 words.

A very special thank you to @bellecream for working on the ALTTP project with me and beta reading this!

Rating: Mature for graphic violence. There is no explicit content in this fic.

Setting: A Link to the Past AU (where Zelda went on the quest with Link) - Game-Concurrent, right after defeating Agahnim. Part of a longer story being written in bits and pieces. This piece can stand alone.

⯊⛰⯋⛰⯊⛰⯋⛰⯊⛰⯋⛰⯊⛰⯋⛰⯊

He hurtled through the barrier of mind-rending sound, somehow at speed, so unlike his other journeys between worlds.  He had no idea why the in-between had changed, but he knew—knew—he was following Zelda.  He clung to the thought of her in the unvoid’s static-storm, her trail a thread of harmony in the din.

He shot into shades of blood.

Into her battle cries.

His sword still drawn from slaying Agahnim, Link roared, hurtling himself toward the bizarre creature wielding a narrow trident; it aimed at Zelda’s back as she sliced upward through another’s jaw, fluid spraying in an arc, the near-black of congealed blood.  Link’s rush found his sword angled awkwardly upward, half-through the other creature’s head, knocking it sideways to glare at him with lamp-like eyes throwing empty light, its blood trickling from its split jaw-joint to its neck.

Link had a split-second to register how this beast towered over him before its left hand raised the trident in a clear threat to Link’s heart.

Zelda had already moved to his left—he trusted ]her instincts, her strength, so he slid beneath the creature’s strike-raised bicep, hurtling himself onto the monster’s back by his grip on the sword embedded in its bone. Link grasped the other side of the shining weapon… and pulled.

Back, back, through the creature’s head.

Link had never heard such a sound: something like a roar, but a squeal, a snort, like an angry boar or a pig that’s been hungry too long when someone steps in its pen to fill the trough.

Nothing bit like an angry pig.

The butt of the trident flew backward at Link’s temple—he twitched just to the side, the wood passing harmlessly through his hair as he wrapped his legs around the creature’s middle and yanked the sword through the back of its head, severing its spine where it joined its skull.

Its strings cut, the massive body ragdolled, slamming Link rear-first into the ground and sliding to the side as the top two-thirds of its head thudded to the ground on Link’s right.

The sounds of Zelda’s swift slices through the air drew his eye toward her—cutting, cutting, small cuts at speed—she was winning-

Air whistled behind Link and he threw himself sideways, slashing his sword wildly behind him.  It stuck in meat and bone at the same moment the three sharp points which would have entered his spine struck the thick-muscled shoulder of the dead monstrosity.  Registering the weapon’s barbed points, Link took the precious second to unhook his legs and roll left, pulling his sword free as he arrived fluidly on his feet and thrusting its blade deep into the flesh beneath his attacker’s ribcage.

It stuttered there, blinking, with its long tongue lolling out.  Its biceps tensed as if to pull its trident free, but Link kicked its middle with all his might, freeing his sword and sending the beast stumbling back, the trident slipping from its hands—its calves hit a low stone wall behind it and it toppled, falling silently from sight.

Turning—three more, Gods above, Zelda!

Link ignored the one lumbering toward him from a stairway on his left and charged the creature nearly on Zelda’s flank—she spun low with Link’s first steps and sliced its feet and shins.  It screamed, but the one she’d terrorized with many shallow slashes took the chance to lean down and grasp her midriff.

Its mistake.

She plunged both daggers into its eyes.

Link saw it happen—the creature’s ankle hitting the low barrier, like the one he’d kicked.

Link yelled loud—long—nothing more than a sound, no words—she’d go over with it, its massive arms still locked around her—he shifted, his momentum toward the other monster redirected to reach her in time though he knew, he knew he couldn’t, he couldn’t-

That other monster grabbed her forearms, still bent back, still gripping the daggers.

It hissed at her.

The dead creature’s arms slipped down Zelda’s body heavily, its claws raking her stomach and thighs, tugging her clothing off-kilter, her pants half down her hips as she hung over the edge and Link didn’t dare kill the other!

His Princess’ eyes glinted, red light reflected in blue as they narrowed at the creature, as Link changed trajectory again-

-and pain slammed through his arm as he flew hard right, bowled over by the one he’d ignored.  He skidded along rough, porous stones, battered by friction and tens of bruising impacts before slamming to a stop against the low wall, his spine and the back of his skull searing in sudden pain.

He reeled.

He didn’t care.

Shoving himself up with his right arm, pain and vertigo be damned, he saw them pulling Zelda—one still by her forearms and the other squeezing her ankles, with her suspended between them.

Link growled and ran, ignoring his sword as too far from his path, aiming to tackle the one at her feet.  Both monsters’ heads snapped toward him and in that instant, Zelda yanked her knees to her chest, her surprised leg-captor stumbling face-first into her rear and holy shit did these things bite?!

He had little time to wonder as she snapped her hips up, suddenly on its neck, suddenly with purchase, and she pulled so hard she managed to cut the other monster’s chest with the tips of her daggers despite her assailants’ much greater mass.

Link leapt with a sickening lurch of his vision just as the creature roared loud in Zelda’s face, Link’s right arm and shoulder slamming into the backs of the rear creature’s knees.  As its legs buckled, it came down hard on Link’s back, forcing a grunt from his impacted lungs and a throb of blood into his head.  He felt more weight shift above him, a squealed cry, a spray of blood, and he knew she’d done something but didn’t have much time.

He wriggled under the creature, forcing himself from beneath it, but one of its tree-trunk arms locked around his throat.

Its breath in his ear- unbearably hot- a roar- his fingers digging into its forearm, and its powerful muscle intent on crushing his windpipe, pressure, pressure, pressure, breath impossible, he couldn’t- he wrapped his arms around that muscle and pulled with all his might, but it wasn’t enough- he rammed his elbow into the creature’s armpit and it laughed into his ear, a hot, foul, trail of soul-chilling joy as stars began popping in Link’s vision.

Then something slammed into the creature’s face and its grip loosened.  Link bent its arm just open enough to pull his neck out, crawling from beneath it, then leaping over it, landing a quick, hard punch to the other one’s face.

It stumbled, and Link grabbed its nearer hand, prying Zelda’s arm free of its grip.

The instant it was, she plunged a dagger into the beast’s exposed throat, yanking it out with a vengeance that sent it staggering, tugging her along with it by the other arm.  Link gripped its wrist hard, digging into its taut tendons, and it let Zelda go.

Link turned, letting the creature’s mortal wound take care of it for them, but the monster behind him had gone for a nearby trident.  It raised it menacingly.  Its eyes were difficult to follow—they didn’t have pupils—but Link got the sense it kept switching its gaze between the two of them, maybe wondering which one of them was more likely to kill it.

Link let it look, wondering if maybe, just maybe, it would make the smart choice—put down its weapon and run—but it hauled the trident over its shoulder, readying a throw, and they both dove, Link right, Zelda left.  The creature tracked Link, throwing ahead of his motion, his chest in danger; Link angled himself in the air, his back toward the ground, the weapon’s tips just missing his shirt.  As the shaft passed him, he caught it with both hands and landed holding it on his back, skidding painfully on his already battered spine.

He heard Zelda attack, but she had so little reach with those daggers.  He leapt up, a sudden wave of vertigo striking as he raised the trident over his left shoulder, but the monster swiveled toward the Princess-

He launched the trident at the creature’s side where all three prongs disappeared into its ribcage.  It fell to its knees.

Link fell to his.

“Link!” Zelda cried.

Link found her eyes but she’d already set her sights on the skewered monster.  She stalked toward it, just out of reach.

“What are you?” she hissed.

It gave a gasping heave.

“What are you?” she demanded.  “Why carry me off?  Why not kill me?”

Sounds like tumbling rocks issued from its misshapen mouth—grunts, but more than grunts.  Guttural sounds with shape.  With order.

Language.

Not their language.

“What.  Are.  You?” she breathed, one index finger trained on its chest.  The other hand raised a dagger in clear threat.

It laughed.

It sounded like a landslide, but Link saw a spiteful mirth in the undulations in its chest and abdominal muscles.

Then it coughed up black, tarry blood.

It hissed, its vacant eyes narrowing at the Princess, a clear word surrounding the air leaving its throat.

“Mohhhhhb.  Liiiiinnnnn,” it said.

 The creature’s name broke upon its death.  It sagged to the stones, its eyes’ lights gone out.

Zelda reached Link in an instant.

“Link.  Link-“

“I’m alright.”  I have to be.  For her.

Her hands searched his face, his hair, as he tried not to love it too much.

Her hands came up blood.

He grasped her wrists.  “Zelda, you’re bleeding!”

“I’m not.”

“Blood, blood on both your hands-“

“It’s the light, Link.”

“The… light?”  His head wasn’t quite right, but...  yes.  Yes, when he’d first arrived, he’d stood bathed in shades of blood.

Zelda’s hands were on his shoulders, pressing down.  Guiding him to sit.  To rest.

Who… had the Moon Pearl?

…He did.

Zelda turned her head toward the horizon.

Her eyes hardened.

Link’s gaze followed hers.

A flaring disk, a blood-orange body, hovered at the horizon, half-hidden by two summits and a shaft reaching into the sky with unnatural height—its light bathed the stones, the corpses, the blood in vermillion, splintered from the breadth of Hyrule’s spectrum.  The hue shot across the sky, at once full of cloud and cloudless, like the remnants of some far-off wildfire dragging the sun’s rind-colored luminance deeper, to the carmine of that fruit’s flesh, fading to all but the near-blacks of thick smoke at the opposite horizon.

Zelda moved toward it, shifting up on her knees.  Link crawled at her side.

Each shuffle forward raised shapes and forms bleeding black oblivion into the monochrome light, emerging over the low wall, hulking in their sight.  At first, the distance drew vague shapes, knarled, twisting as though wrought by massive hands from turgid earth, laden with cassiterite and galena, surfaces glistening, as though the land itself were glaring through the vastness toward them.  Nearing the wall brought clarity—stands of things that might be trees, intertwined, curling, tips of buildings, ruined stone, glints of reflection within, liquid snaking through the surface, dark and slick in aspect like oil.

These were the contours of hell.

A malevolent wasteland lit by a twilight sun filtered through noxious haze.

The urgency of his arrival had dulled its potency, but as adrenaline receded, Link tasted it: the air—pungent—acrid—the penetrating stench of burning sassafras seeping with sticky sap boiling from myriad punctures.

Link’s head throbbed with each inhale.

At the edge, the building they knelt upon spread its base wide, a colossal pyramid, layer upon layer of porous stone, steps surrounding them.  The Moblin Link had kicked over the edge lay presumably dead, splayed on the nearest landing below them.

Things lumbered far, far below them.   Mammoth creatures walking on two legs, seemingly aimless.

Zelda’s hand found his forearm.

“North,” she said.

He’d focused on her hand—her slender fingers against his sleeve.  He shook his head.  “What?” he asked.

“The sun, Link.  It’s setting, or- or perhaps rising… in the north.”

Link blinked, looking around in all directions.  He didn’t recognize anything—he had no idea which way might be which.  He fumbled for the compass in his pocket.

He stared at it.

“Link?”

“I… sorry- sorry, Zelda.  Something’s wrong.  It’s not working.”  He held it out for her to see, its arrow spinning wildly, aimlessly in circles.

She breathed a sudden burst from her chest, her eyes sliding up to the sun at world’s end.  “I find myself unsurprised,” she said.  “Look, Link.  Look at the mountains—their shapes.  Tell me what you see.”

He looked once more, the double-peaks raised high above the others-

“Oh!” he gasped.

“Yes.  You see it?”

He did see it.  The heights of the peaks, their distance from each other, their shapes, and the bridge just barely visible between them.

“It’s Death Mountain,” he whispered.

“Yes,” she said.

North.

The setting sun in the north.

They’d been on that very mountainside in search of the Moon Pearl, a red diffuse glow miserly lighting their way.  It had been behind the mountain then, too—an impossible twilight.

“What in Gods’ name is this place?” he asked.

But as they stared, malignant shapes searing themselves to their minds’ eyes, they knew.  They knew what it was.  Agahnim had spoken its name.  So had the old man in the mountain.

This… was the Dark World.

⯊⛰⯋⛰⯊⛰⯋⛰⯊⛰⯋⛰⯊⛰⯋⛰⯊

Soon I'll make a masterlist of all these ZeldaGoesToo!AU drabbles.

For my current fic masterlist, you can follow this link.

[linksthoughtbrambles]

Linktober 2022 Day 2: Bones ~~ A Link to the Past ~~ ZeldaGoesToo!AU ~~ 2100 words

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Here,” Link said.

The Moon Pearl gleamed opalescent, tinged with the color of soft, red earth, smooth and shining against Link’s battered hand, cracked with cold, calloused with labor.  Zelda stared, wondering as always how its sheen drew dark at its edges regardless of how one held it, of the tilt of one’s head—always the side away from sight, not a shadow, the surface itself an impossible concession to that which ought go unseen.

It remained unchanged, always—even in the Dark World—as would its keeper.  Zelda eyed the great boulder they both knew to be a lie.  A gateway lay within, lay beneath, and they’d cross through it soon, out of the northern forest and into its harrowed reflection.  Link had heard its humming first—Zelda felt it soon after; they’d become so sensitive to it.

“Zelda?” Link asked, reaching up to brush her shoulder with gentle fingertips.  She couldn’t feel them—her cold-weather wear would not allow it—but the soft sound of their passage against leather attuned her eyes to his, the concern in them curving her mouth, raising her cheeks, crinkling the corners of her eyes.

“I held it last in that place,” she reminded him.

“I know,” he said.  “I’d… still rather you keep it.”

“You’ve been going too long without it,” she said.

“What makes you say that?”

He didn’t know.

She’d rather thought not.

She aimed to keep her smile, but words, she thought, might wipe it from her countenance.  She raised a hand halfway to his face.  At his gaze flickering between that hand and her eyes, she retracted it just a fraction—but he neither retreated nor protested, so she completed its path, the pad of her index finger light on the bridge of his nose, her middle finger resting beside it.

“Do you know what happens—just here—when you’re angry, Link?”

He blinked.  She found it easy to keep her smile, as she’d hoped.

“This part of you wrinkles—like this.”  She drew her nose up toward her eyebrows as though presented with some unpleasant stench.  He laughed, his soft voice in his throat and his teeth framed in his lips pulling a grin from her, too.  She swept her fingertips from his nose to his cheek with lightening pressure, finally parting from him with a twinge just left of her breastbone.  She watched his mouth close into toothless smile.

“It wrinkles far more when you go without the pearl,” she said.

His smile started to leave him, as she thought it would.  “Do you mean I get angrier?”

“No.”  Link had never been angry with her—not once.  His anger had always been turned on others’ wickedness.  On Agahnim.

But in the dark, he’d turned those wrinkles toward her anyway.  “When you go long without the pearl in the dark… they… frequent your face.  They become other things.”

His face flinched inward on itself.  His brows remained down, furrowed, as the rest retracted.  “Have I frightened you?”

“Frightened me?  You?  No.  Never.”

A held breath left Link, shrinking his chest, releasing some of the pressure between his eyebrows.  Zelda registered its flutter in the air—couldn’t resist breathing it in: an inexplicable compulsion.  She expelled it in reluctant speech.  “It is simply not how you are in this world.  It isn’t you.  I’ve no wish to see you… usurped by the magics of that place.”

A swallow bobbed his voicebox.  “It really is okay.  I’m in control.”  He huffed a half-laugh with a smile touching one corner of his mouth.  “I thought the fur would be the larger issue.”

A quiet giggle heaved her belly.  “That has occurred only twice.”

“Kind of why I was confused.  I didn’t really have a choice the first time-”

“And the second time, being by choice, proved extraordinarily useful.”  She felt her own eyes sparkle at him, one corner of her mouth wavering, her humor half-tamped in recognition of the nigh-on-hell-maw at her side.  “I do believe if we’d waited much longer, you’d have become a wolf.”

His blue eyes flashed, then, fixed on hers.

Perhaps he knew.  Perhaps he felt, in his depths, what he would become were he to forsake himself to the relentless darkness in Ganon’s realm.

She had been unable to fathom the form which would be her endpoint, except in its hardness—when she’d become almost crystalline, faceted at her surface, when they first ventured in, ignorant of the Moon Pearl.  Perhaps she would be as the maidens—no more than a gem to be carried in a pocket, no more than thoughts reflected within.

Link’s eyes still held hers.

She passed between them in her vision.  It would be so easy to lose herself to time here in their brightness.

The way your eyes pierce my surface, she nearly said, I believe they would crack the skin of my reflection.

She ran her thumbs over the nicks, cracks, and callouses on her own hands, the insides of her right hand’s fingers thick and rough from drawing her heavy bowstring, her left palm and span running atop her thumb and index finger dulled, toughened from the grip.  These were the signs of strength upon her.

No one ought breach them.

She mustn’t be made vulnerable—not even by Link.

She shook her head, eyes falling to Link’s age-worn boots.

“Please take the pearl,” Link whispered.

“Link- Link, I-“

“Please.  There’s… a reason.”

“Of course there’s-“

“I mean, I’m not- just- being kind.”

Her head raised of its own volition to see his arm outstretched, a small canvas bag in the grip of his fist.  “The bones,” she breathed.

He nodded. “I… guess you saw me gather them.”

She’d tried not to watch as he had—sliver by sliver, the whole skeleton of their breakfast five days past.  “I did.”

He shrugged, the bag lurching toward the hidden portal as though tugged.  “I thought we should find out-“

“What happens if we bring them in with us.   Yes.  Yes, of course. I… Link, I can hold the remains.  You may keep the pearl.”

His squinting eyes spoke far more than his lips.

He still wanted her to take it.

She couldn’t allow him to lose himself in that pit of confusion and despair.

“I shall take the remains, Link.  You keep the pearl.”

He gazed at her hard for a long moment, those shining blue eyes roaming every line in her face.  Searching for a way past her surface.  But with four long breaths, he acquiesced, handing her the canvas, its drawstring pulled and tied tight, a light weight in her hand—it had been such a small bird.

Link returned the pearl to his pouch.

Zelda held her hand outstretched to him.  He took it.

She took a step toward the illusory rock.  He followed.  Each of her steps triggered his, and within ten they met the boulder’s surface, the hum of its repulsion shuddering its way through their flesh, their feet, shins, and knees first as they entered its wide base.

Entering the Dark World had never become easy.  No ordinary person could do this.

Their legs dug deep, invisible trenches through the sages’ seal’s raw energy.  Zelda’d clamped her eyes shut, gritting her teeth against its physical insistence, the swelling dissonance against her ears as the rock’s surface enveloped her hips.  A familiar fear gripped her as her very blood fell into one resonance and then another, always at odds with other vibrations, its unpredictable cacophony an earthquake in her form.

Three more strides brought the resistant illusion to Zelda’s clavicle.

Her heart hardened.

She no longer knew whether the seal, her own determination, or the darkness on the other side rendered her heart stone in the crossing. She couldn’t remember what she’d first believed or why. Certain shards of her past resisted her thoughts’ pressure even more strongly than this barrier clawed against their passage.

She heard Link grunt as he forced his neck to phase through a jagged edge of un-rock. The pang which would have sympathized with him resonated instead—crystalline. Reflective. Her strongest self would emerge on the other side of this threshold and resist all of it—the darkness, the despair, and the things which lay half-dormant in the darkest reaches of Link’s gaze, things which had no name, things she wanted unaccountably and irrationally—and unlike the failed lock she had just immersed herself in entirely, she would succeed.

She entered cacophony itself with her next stride.

Vibrations ricocheted through her form at the threshold of the Dark World—its sharp undulations, a thousand remnants of lightning strikes buzzing ozone in her nostrils in impossibly rapid succession, overlapping in tight disharmony.

Then it stopped.

Link’s fingers had rendered hers nearly numb. He eased off just as she did—she’d been no gentler. The experience demanded the surety of force. As his fingertips brushed hers, a tingling flew across her skin from those points of contact, reaching even the most distant parts of her body. It somehow seemed of greater magnitude than the seal’s relentless emanations.

Link’s soft gasp snapped Zelda’s eyes open.

They stood in a field of something like grass surrounded by something like trees, lit, as all things were in this world, by the unending twilight sun north of Death Mountain’s reflection, filtered to a sheen of diffuse rust through blackened leaves. The field bore signs of abandoned lives, as many places did. Fenceposts… no rails, no pickets. Everything peeling. Everything off-color. The tattered remains of what may have been a palette-bed cast against something which may once have been a crude spade.

For an instant, a tree with a face far past the field drew her gaze, but something above it, looming, seemed incongruous against the roiling clouds, heavy with noxious vapors and gleaming red with their edges twilit: one object still against all that churning. She knew at once why Link had gasped.

Bones.

Bones.

Bones the height of Hyrule castle.

Higher, perhaps.

A spinal column.

Perhaps the ends of a few ribs visible in the distance.

What creatures laid these bones to rest would shatter the earth with a step.

Would these spring to life? Would they be like the un-living crows and cuccos vying for scraps of nothingness in dusty soil? Would it rise, alighting hollowed eye sockets on her and on Link, and follow whatever greed-fed instinct led the skeletal birds to dive toward them, intent on stripping skin from their faces and forearms?

Zelda’s grip-hand tightened reflexively-

And the bag.

She’d forgotten.

She still held it tightly.

Her stare drew Link’s.

And they watched.

And watched.

Zelda’s eyes burned with the air’s acrid vapor.

Time in this place had little meeting, but one booted step, then another, crunched dry straws beneath them. Link entered her line of vision.

“It’s not moving.”

“Indeed not,” she whispered.

She thought deception on the part of a deceased crow unlikely, but held the bag at a cautious distance from her face while tugging its mouth wide.

Nothing.

Link reached out. He cupped the bottom, then closed his hand, his features pinching. “Zelda, would you mind turning it out into my hands?”

She upended it slowly, expecting a tangled mess of bones to fall into his hands at once, rather like a bird’s nest. Instead, a pitifully small stream of dust met Link’s palm.

He pinched some between his fingers and held it to his nose.

“What does it smell of?” she asked quietly.

“Burning,” he whispered. “Just like everything else.”

A murder of skeletal crows chose that moment to rise from the anti-forest’s canopy, nearly-silent but for the passage of their wingbones against the shriveled leaves of their home. Zelda followed their impossible flight northwest and out of sight.

“What are they?” she whispered.

Link said nothing aloud, but his entire stance spoke of thoughts. Before she could ask, he’d already taken the bag from her, dumped the remainder of the dust inside, and walked toward the spade. He gripped its aged handle—metal—and dug a small hole. He placed the crow’s remains inside with surprising reverence.

“I’d wondered,” Link whispered. “It didn’t seem right for this place… to give life.”

Zelda swallowed. Grains of sand.

“Perhaps it denies death,” she said.

The spine in the distance creaked, settling and swaying in the wind, groaning its song of monstrosity into the ground at their feet—discordant—one more foul instrument performing Ganon’s masterwork with no key, no fundamental frequency, no congruent overtones: a symphony of warring sound. Zelda’s skin thrilled to its tune, a sound like the tinkling of crystal in her ears as a distant call meant for her alone. She knew she shouldn’t answer it.

She could resist.

She was no instrument.

And Link was no fool.

He rose, his eyes and ears fixed on her, the sounds of his hand shuffling against his pouch’s opening announcing his intention clearly. A moment later, his palm held the Moon Pearl against hers, his fingers entwined with hers.

“You need it,” he whispered. “I don’t hear it the way you do.”

“You hear other things,” she said.

His hand tightened on hers a fraction—a reassuring pulse. “Which way… did it want you to go?”

She eyed the northwest, toward the murder of stalcrows.

“…Okay. Not that way, then.”

“No,” she agreed. “Not that way.”

They eyed the spine as one.

The maidens and their Dark World forms of pure crystal—so beautiful—unique and powerfully magical—the creatures fought over them, their remains eventually in the possession of some dominant horror, curling itself around the faceted surfaces (and remains they were, for even cut stones, attractive and sparkling, meant an end to all motion).

The groaning, creaking spine in the distance seemed a likely place to find a hulking evil, hoarding its coveted treasures in a forest of wooden faces and fleshless animals. Perhaps, they’d find a gem full of reflected thoughts jammed between two massive vertebrae.

Link and Zelda walked hand-in-hand, each pressed to the Moon Pearl, toward the spine’s deep bellows.

---------

A huge thank-you to @bellecream - this would not exist in this form without you!

[I hope to do more Linktober prompts - this is a busy time of year].

[Banner font is 'The Wild Breath of Zelda' by Chequered Ink].

Follow this link for my fic masterlist.

[linksthoughtbrambles]

WIP Wednesday - "Bones" prompt sneak peek

It's been tough to get much out lately, so here's a little Linktober sneak peek. It's in the Link to the Past ZeldaGoesToo!AU.

-------------

“Here,” Link said.

The Moon Pearl gleamed opalescent, tinged with the color of soft, red earth, smooth and shining against Link’s battered hand, cracked with cold, calloused with labor. Zelda stared, wondering as always how its sheen drew dark at its edges regardless of how one held it, of the tilt of one’s head—always the side away from sight, not a shadow, the surface itself an impossible concession to that which ought go unseen.

It remained unchanged, always—even in the Dark World—as would its keeper. Zelda eyed the great boulder they both knew to be a lie. A gateway lay within, lay beneath, and they’d cross through it soon, out of the northern forest and into its harrowed reflection.

“Zelda?” Link asked, reaching up to brush her shoulder with gentle fingertips. She couldn’t feel them—her cold-weather wear would not allow it—but the soft sound of their passage against leather attuned her eyes to his, the concern in them curving her mouth, raising her cheeks, crinkling the corners of her eyes.

“I held it last in that place,” she reminded him.

“I know,” he said. “I’d… still rather you keep it.”

“You’ve been going too long without it,” she said.

“What makes you say that?”

He didn’t know.

She’d rather thought not.

She aimed to keep her smile, but words, she thought, might wipe it from her countenance. She raised a hand halfway to his face. At his gaze flickering between that hand and her eyes, she retracted it just a fraction—but he neither retreated nor protested, so she completed its path, the pad of her index finger light on the bridge of his nose, her middle finger resting beside it.

“Do you know what happens—just here—when you’re angry, Link?”

He blinked. She found it easy to keep her smile, as she’d hoped.

“This part of you wrinkles—like this.” She drew her nose up toward her eyebrows as though presented with some unpleasant stench. He laughed, his soft voice in his throat and his teeth framed in his lips pulling a grin from her, too. She swept her fingertips from his nose to his cheek with lightening pressure, finally parting from him with a twinge just left of her breastbone. She watched his mouth close into toothless smile.

“It wrinkles far more when you go without the pearl,” she said.

His smile started to leave him, as she thought it would. “Do you mean I get angrier?”

“No.” Link had never been angry with her—not once. His anger had always been turned on others’ wickedness. On Agahnim.

But in the dark, he’d turned those wrinkles toward her anyway. “When you go long without the pearl in the dark… they… frequent your face. They become other things.”

His face flinched inward on itself. His brows remained down, furrowed, as the rest retracted. “Have I frightened you?”

“Frightened me? You? No. Never.”

A held breath left Link, shrinking his chest, releasing some of the pressure between his eyebrows. Zelda registered its flutter in the air—couldn’t resist breathing it in: an inexplicable compulsion. She expelled it in reluctant speech. “It is simply not how you are in this world. It isn’t you. I’ve no wish to see you… usurped by the magics of that place.”

A swallow bobbed his voicebox. “It really is okay. I’m in control.” He huffed a half-laugh with a smile touching one corner of his mouth. “I thought the fur would be the larger issue.”

A quiet giggle heaved her belly. “That has occurred only twice.”

“Kind of why I was confused. I didn’t really have a choice the first time-”

“And the second time, being by choice, proved extraordinarily useful.” She felt her own eyes sparkle at him, one corner of her mouth wavering, her humor half-tamped in recognition of the nigh-on-hell-maw at her side. “I do believe if we’d waited much longer, you’d have become a wolf.”

-------

[Sorry, pink bunny. Move over for ALTTP Wolf Link. He’s way cooler.]

[I am weak for SS Link's nose wrinkles. Demise should've known he was in trouble when he saw those.]

[linksthoughtbrambles]

"Silence Before Sunset"

A pre- 'A Link to the Past' drabble in the ZeldaGoesToo!AU. (I may change this, but it also might very well be the beginning of an ALTTP longfic). 246 words

~~~~~

It had been so calm: her life an unerring breeze, never gusting, the direction of the prevailing wind as certain as the fact of the setting sun before dusk, each day an arc parallel to the one before—a path lined with her nursemaid’s hands, with unvaried fabrics worn in near-silence, clockwork meals and lessons in all-but-solitude, sequestered from common sight, and books, books curated to draw her eyes in predictable directions, fit for the allowances of a mind cloistered within a labyrinth.

For a Princess of Hyrule must remain devoted to her land and her people; no distraction, no preoccupation, no self-indulgence would prepare her to give of herself as she must—as was her birthright—as all heirs to the throne of Hyrule would give and had given for as long as the memory in the pages of history she’d read.

She was Princess Zelda, and this was her father’s castle, and one day it would be her castle—hers and her husband’s, once she came of age, once she could walk among her people with the understanding earned through deep introspection and intellectual excellence, once her preparations made of her a keep within an unbreachable curtain wall: a servant of Hyrule, unsullied by temptation.

She walked in the blood-blind peace of ceaseless lullaby—a song sung in silence, unheard, evident only with one hand on the labyrinth’s shuddering wall.

Far beyond it, they called her a silent princess.

They called all princesses that.

-----

[Special thanks to @bellecream who got me motivated to give this a serious start, and who inspired me with her phenomenal writing!]

[linksthoughtbrambles]

CONGRATS ON THE FOLLOWER MILESTONE!! Can I request some Zelink snuggles 🥺💗

[This... may have ended up more serious than you were hoping for, but there are definitely snuggles.]

Worlds Made Manifest

They hadn’t been prepared for the cold of Ganon’s dark, corrupted reflection-world, though in retrospect they should have expected it (this world’s dark to their light, its cold to their warmth—of course, it would be so), and with winter approaching the light world the Goddesses only knew what would happen in this one; they’d found a cramped cave well-hidden by tangling vines (sickly purple-tinged meat-colored growths, marbled and putrid, but cover nonetheless) and built a fire around a bend at its rear, hidden from direct sight—shivering with the violence of hypothermia as full-night struck, they had no choice but to wrap one bedroll inside the other and huddle inside them together as near the fire as they dared.

Zelda’s back faced flame and Link’s back faced her, and both shivered uncontrollably but Link’s tremors sprang from cold only in part, with all the rest from her: her arm clutching his chest, that hand in his to shelter it, her entire front from shoulders to ankles plastered against his entire back, their knees drawn up in desperation to close every space, and it wasn’t enough—with an airy whimper through clattering teeth, Zelda hooked a leg around Link’s thigh and buried her foot between his knees, and he bit back a whine of his own at the resulting shot of warmth through his abdominal wall.

He loved feeling her against him—loved the way she’d nestled her mouth and nose just below the nape of his neck so he felt her breath flutter against the fine hair there, how the hair escaping his cap caught it and held its moisture, how her hand, still beneath his, slid to flatten against his lower ribs, and the sensation of her thigh across his—and it struck him that his own dark and light worlds had manifested right here with him in this bedroll, but he wasn’t sure which was which; she’d already asked him to turn and embrace her, and he wanted that more than the fact of creation itself, but if he did—if he did—what would they become?