"Too Much Like Hell"
Link was more well-acquainted with death than anyone else, and it was not because he witnessed it so many times.
It was because he experienced it more than any other and he still came back.
Febuwhump 2024 | Alt Prompt 6: Immortality
Read on AO3
Warnings: None (Barely even counts as angst tbh...)
He had been eight and wielding his uncle's blade naturally. He had been trained since he could walk to be a warrior after all. It didn't matter much against the lynels on Death Mountain though, he still was burned alive.
He had been twelve and drained of all life by Onyx. Din had nothing to do with his survival.
He had been fifteen when he drowned.
That was the last time he died.
He was nineteen when he met the heroes of past, adjacent, and future, and he was twenty when he said his goodbyes to them and went back to his era.
He had lost track of his age when he saw them again.
"Hey! Pikango!"
He looked over and saw a large group of warriors--men and boys--approaching his vantage point, one waving at him.
"Ah, Link," he slid his paintbrush behind his ear, "welcome back to Hyrule."
"Back--I'm not even asking how you know," Link laughed.
"Who's this, Champion?" Asked one of the men.
"Oh--This is Pikango, an artist from Kakariko. He's a great artist, better than the vet even!"
"Oh," one of the boys breathed.
'Pikango' met the boy's eyes and he just smiled.
As the heroes chattered and moved to go on, Link waving back at 'Pikango' as they did, the hero in red lingered.
"So old age isn't an option?" He asked. There was a ripple around the other and there stood what had to be a copy of the hero, only in traditional Sheikah garb.
"No," the Sheikah said.
"Goddesses." The Hero of Legend looked exhausted as he raised his eyes to the bright sky. "Why? I don’t want to be immortal."
The Kakariko painter just smiled. "Nobody does. It's a far more terrible fate than any I've seen before… and there is a certain point when they will deem your journey as finished but you'll still be here… just to watch the world go by."
"That sounds like hell."
"It is, in a way, but we're always meeting new people, making new friends, and exploring new lands."
"And watching them die, losing them, and seeing it be destroyed?"
"More often than I'd prefer. Once, Ganondorf came back, and there was no hero. I tried to step up, but they were clear." Two sets of crimson eyes met again. "I'm a story now, little more than a legend, but so long as that story is told I remain and so will you."
"Hey Veteran!" One of the other heroes called back. "Leave the elder alone!"
"Jump off a bridge, Captain!" the hero yelled back. He turned back to the painter. "No rest for the wicked then?"
The painter chuckled. "I'd say that the idiom 'Legends never die' is a tad more accurate."
He hummed, then looked back at the other heroes. "Do you want to talk to them? Drop the illusion?"
"I'll be alright." A ripple accompanied him retaking the form of a Sheikah elder. "It was good enough just to see them again."
The hero nodded before jogging after the group.
"What was that, collector?" Wild asked.
Legend shook his head. "Nothing. Just seeing if art changed over history, Nayru knows I can't talk to any of you about that."
Wild laughed. "Fair enough. Pikango is the best artist in all of Hyrule, no offense. He just is."
"If you say so," Legend hummed.
He glanced back and saw an old wolf joining the painter at the setting sun. The painter pet the old wolf and continued painting the sunset behind Satori Mountain.
"Hey Rancher," he called forward and Twilight looked back. "What's your thoughts on immortality? A blessing or a curse?"
The topic drew the attention of the group, confusing Twilight as well, but he thought about it.
"I don' think I'd like t'a outlive everyone," the rancher decided. "It sounds like an awful thing, t'be honest wit'ya, Vet."
"But you'd live forever!" Wind argued. "What if someday there were ships that could fly without magic?"
"Doubt it," Hyrule teased.
Legend looked up at the colorful sky and could see one of Wild's dragons flying overhead, the electric one. "I agree," he said, partially to Twilight, partially to all of them, and partially to the goddesses who made him. "It sounds just a little too much like hell."
Event Masterlist
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My MC is ready to ignore the horrors and every single hint that something is off.
Go into the office? Nope, not doing that.
Investigate weird noises? Nah, those are birds.
A blood trail leading into the woods? Looks like someone got their period and that is none of my business.
We ain't investigating SHIT. I don't care how near death experiences we have to endure this summer, ignorance is bliss and we are coming out of this mess none the wiser.
I wish I could tell you what route would be perfect for you 😩
One of the investigation routes fits this mindset so well, it’s crazy
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July 1982. Will Eisner interviewed Jack Kirby at San Diego Comic-Con for Eisner's "Shop Talk" interview series, which ran in various Kitchen Sink magazines in the early 1980s; the Kirby interview appeared in WILL EISNER'S SPIRIT MAGAZINE #39 (February 1983). In it, Eisner and Kirby discuss Kirby's early career, his development as an artist, and his working relationships with Joe Simon and Stan Lee. About working with Lee at Marvel, Kirby says:
Stan Lee wouldn't let me fill in the balloons. Stan Lee wouldn't let me put in the dialogue. But I wrote the entire story under the panels. I never explained the story to Stan Lee. I wrote that story under each panel so that when he wrote that dialogue, the story was already there. In other words, he didn't know what that story was about and he didn't care because he was busy being an editor. I was glad because he was doing the same thing Joe [Simon] did. He left me alone. … My opinion is this: Stan Lee wrote the credits. I never wrote the credits.
Kirby was not in a particularly generous mood when it came to Stan in 1982, since he was in that period involved in an acrimonious lawsuit with Marvel over the ownership of his original art, but there's no reason to doubt his description of how his Marvel work was created. Quite a lot of Kirby's original Marvel pages survive, and all but covers and pinups invariably have the explanatory notes he describes above (which often include suggested dialogue, or at least the gist of what the characters should be saying). The pompous, stentorian dialogue is mostly Lee's, but it's a gloss on stories that Kirby conceived, plotted, and penciled, generally with little if any creative input from Stan.
The old Kitchen Sink magazines are now fairly hard to find, but Dark Horse reprinted this and Eisner's other interviews with comics luminaries in a 2001 paperback entitled WILL EISNER'S SHOP TALK, which is highly worthwhile if you care about this sort of thing. I believe there's an audio recording of the Kirby interview as well.
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yo - just wanted to get this off my chest about the SSR dorm uniform
Malleus and Leona's SSR dorm uniforms are kind of opposites but similar?? like you have Malleus looking down on you on the right, from an angle, and he is kind of in the light
contrastingly, Leona is not really looking down on you in the same sharp angle, on the left, kind of facing away from the light
and despite that, they are facing the same general direction, even if they are looking at us from opposite directions.
additionally, the poses - like Malleus is looking down on us, we are beneath him, on a throne of sorts. But Leona? it is more like we are looking down on him since he is sitting on the floor.
I am not sure if this is intentional, it kind of reminds me of how they are different in that one is positioned above people while the other is more towards the shadows, shunned in some ways, literally and metaphorically, given their stories and lives, as a beloved crown prince, and a scorned second prince.
And yet, both are alone and remain sort of trapped in their fates, because seldom is the life of royalty lenient. Different, but similar.
I am obviously reading into this too much, 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡 but I love that their SSRs are different to one another in terms of composition and who the characters are. Don't take this seriously, I am not raven-at-the-writing-desk, my level is too below lol.
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