RAURU of tloz: tears of the kingdom. tracking #pestilight. independent, selective, low-activity, canon-divergent, & heavily headcanon-based. open to writing with a variety of ocs, aus, & crossovers.
( blog roll: flockrest / beneggolent / balladetto )
a study in: wrath buried beneath piety / profound loss & profound grief / intentions, twisted / the consequences of good-natured will / purging light & the shadows that make it shine so / nurturing a blessed future / paving the way for a torchbearer.
the past always has its hands around your neck, doesn't it?
There are things he doesn't know how to tell her. Beginnings he gets lost in, endings he can't find the words to tie up. Fragments of himself he doesn't know how to release from where he's clutched them, even as their edges cut into shaking palms and draw blood from tautened fingers.
There are things, he's rediscovering, he doesn't seem to need to tell her.
At this hour, the setting sun casts a beautiful afterglow. It limns her every contour in strokes of radiant gold. This is something new they've been doing — just the two of them: sharing spaces, savouring quiets, spinning stories with worn threads — but her eye for all that goes unsaid is not a novel development.
"In a way," he says. Softly, as she had — which is certainly softer than he might have with anyone else, in any place and time else. Rauru does not have the luxury nor right to speak so lightly of these memories, monumental in their devastation, yet in the wake of those gentle tones...he does not feel so ashamed for indulging.
Their voices are followed by the thin tremolos of songbirds in a dusk chorus. The fireflies will be emerging soon. They ought to be making their way back inside, but as he turns his gaze further down from her own, landing on a hand mere inches away from his, a want gently blossoms within the hollows of his heart.
"However," he starts, chuckling, resting his hand closer. A small touch, in his littlest finger pressed against hers, "I like to believe that the future might have its own guiding hand in mine."
"The past always has its hands around your neck, doesn't it?"
This is a truth better left with the dead, the way it rots amidst his thoughts.
It used to feel enormous. Inescapable. Every piece of every memory, melded, looming like long, distorted shadows in the dusklight. Before this, he would flee from that grasp, reaching for something immutable of his own, and drown before he could touch the shoreline each time. Before this — before everything — those hands of the past were his: heavy, smothering, and stained through to the bone with cruor.
Nowadays, they're smaller.
They feel like hands he once held. Once kissed. Once treasured, revered, loved. When the past laces its fingers around his neck, he lets them burn brands into his flesh; lets them peel back layers to tear anything he might dare to protest with apart; lets them sink their bite into his veins — so firmly that they puncture and staunch all at once. They are cold, unforgiving, and entirely deserving to dole out all that they do.
He smiles. A brittle wall: it shows, and means, nothing. Ally though Chieftain Yrelsi has proven to be, Rauru is not so heedless to think she asks this in any earnest concern for him. This polite distance is their kindness, sufficient in a war that offers and would offer them none. "Does it not make captives of us all?"
FLOCKREST // GLORYSEIZED. independent, selective, dash-only multimuses feat. tulin & link of the legend of zelda: breath of the wild & tears of the kingdom. a deep study into found family, as wept over by ray & hilary.
i have not made any mention to this concept just because i would honestly like a sonia ( main or not, just one i'd potentially regularly write with! ) to discuss this with someday......but i have not forgotten about sonia and rauru's children i prommy
Rauru pours every scintilla of light he has left into those grievous wounds. He presses it all into the wrist he's yet to let go of since that fateful clasp, a wellspring funnelled through the anchoring point of their contact. So tremendous an effort is it that another piece of his arm crumbles, quicker to decay without the blessing of Zonai blood nor heart nor stone, peeling off and fading into nothing within strands of dispelled radiance.
Still, it is not enough.
The right arm is beyond salvaging. The Gloom: a loathsome force merely kept at bay with his light's slower abrasion. With what it has devoured, devours, and seeks to continue devouring as its master recovers his strength, the hero — Link, a faint voice chimes, sweet with conviction and love for her swordsman — will not make it.
What an enormously cataclysmic thing to reckon with.
Somewhere in the far distance, what sounds startlingly like the time bell knells a solemn rhythm. His spirit cannot cast shadows, but it paints a seafoam glow over Link as Rauru looms over his body — hand clutching ever tighter, as though his hold alone could pierce past the trappings of mortal flesh and erase every sliver of rot in one fell swoop. He reaches for the Gloom again, tendrils of incanted light enveloping the source in a shimmering embrace, and once more, his magic does not purge as cleanly as he wants it to. Once more, another fragment of his remains falls away.
This is foolish, a part of him thinks; the part mired in memories of wanton bloodshed, of surviving at whatever the cost, of a time before a tempering kindness. Foolish, and needlessly cruel. He has seen damage of this severity wrought before — has treated it before.
At his core, he knows what must be done. His hesitation, in the face of that, is not a mercy: it is another moment suspended between life and death, another opportunity for the Gloom to spread, another tally against the odds of what would now be a miracle.
Another failing.
Rauru does not need to breathe, yet he nevertheless finds himself going through its invisible motions. It calms him, marginally, and his mind clears enough for the thought to turn constructive. Yes, he knows what must be done. The question now is: what is he to do with the repercussions?
—What repercussions? Another part of him thinks; the one locked in shame, drowning in regret, fraying with the need to pen this story to its very end.
The flow of his light stills.
It resumes a split second later, surging forth to continue hindering the creep of darkness, but his grip loosens. His fingers, slowly, unwind.
What repercussions, the thought continues, when it is only the right arm that has to be dealt with? A right arm that has to be accounted for?
A right arm that he, blessedly, still possesses?
Link's chances of survival do not seem so slight, now.
( Rauru's chances of atoning do not seem so elusive, now. )
It is a simple thing, grasping that ruined hand. Honing his light to burn through everything — skin, sinew, blood, marrow — is, too, effortless with how densely the corrosion is seeped into the flesh. The Gloom lingers, harder to contain for a moment with no corporeal bearer, but that will soon be remedied.
Link's fingers are the last ashes to be swept away. From there, it is just a matter of connecting.
Rauru does not say the words as he threads their vitalities together. Vows like these have always been a show of devotion more than anything, anyway. When this arm is all he can hope to offer to Link — to Zelda, to Mineru, to Sonia, to Hyrule, to everyone and everything he's loved and lost — what could possibly indicate his devotion more?
Link winces slightly as the aches and pains slowly release across his body, hiss darting out from between his lips. He is used to having more to catch his fall than diving into a lake of water, and he keeps jumping off things from perhaps a bit higher than he should. That and he's still getting used to his new arm. His new old arm. Right.
But the light does its work, or at least it does most of the work, enough that he's able to move, and he pulls himself upright into a seated position, resettling the draped fabric to sit more comfortably on his shoulder again. Smiling gratefully, he taps his chin with his fingertips before swinging his hand forward. << Thank you. >>
And his smile takes on a toothy look, although a wistful sadness floats through his eyes. He carefully fingerspells Zelda's name before he taps his pointer finger to his chin. Hand curls into a fist, leaving his thumb and pinky out which he wiggles side to side. << Zelda used to say that too. >> He can remember the many times she's had to patch him up from one adventure or another, some of them particularly embarrassing too.
Tapping his chest, he chops his left hand on his flattened right palm twice. << I'm alright. >> he insists gently, pulling himself to his feet as if to prove it.
His light fades when there is naught else for it to touch. The hero pulls his arm back to speak — and it takes a gentle focus for Rauru to understand. The shapes turn into meaning slower than he could ever prefer with bitterness still limning his tongue, but the care is helpful. Appreciated. Link strings his words together plainly, with the hand they do not share. He hopes time will whittle the need for such mindfulness away.
"Did she, now?"
( Zelda used to say many things about you, he almost continues. Almost, but doesn't. It would have been an instance of again and he does not wish to be redundant, nor does he wish to compound the yearning of a companion left bereft. )
Rauru rises with him, hovering in more ways than one — the hand that floats at some resting point above Link's shoulder is instinctive. It's concerning, how eager the hero is to test his recovery...but also, admittedly, endearing. The warmth comes a little easier this time. "As you say. Though perhaps it would be best to consider the credibility of our fretting, hm? It seems a truth worth heeding."
the moon spirit laughs, whirling overhead in the mere wind that spirals old friend. oh, to fuel old hearths and doses flames of yore in gasoline. malice chimes with a sing-song approach, fading in from nothing but the leaves that swish above in foliage.
" awful lonely for a night, isn't it? one could almost wish upon a star ; too bad you lost that privilege long ago. "
a maleficent cackle, harboring hate and regicide towards afflicted zonai. once a close candlelight to their dark-lit celestial heart, now beating twice as fast in the palms of someone deemed superior. twisted and transpiring such cold-blooded spite, malice's grin seemingly widen with how cheery they usually beam.
" tell me, rauru. . . "
" how do the sundelions grow, evermore so weakly now by her side? "
He wonders, as the child winks in from the night, if there is such a thing as someone carved and moulded for the sole purpose of loss. If the goddesses plucked him from Their strings for his faithful piety and proclaimed, this one shall carry the burden of loving what he cannot keep. A fool's thought — an apostate's, even, with how he practically aligns his hubris with Their will — but it is easier swallowed than having to confront the enormity of all that he no longer has.
He shuts his eyes. Marion's words bite: knife-point teeth sinking into wounds barely clotted over. His ichor wells, a hurt he expects, yet still it spills and drips as he attempts to staunch its flow — to endure the sting of a familiar voice spouting such targeted enmity.
Endure it, he does.
Without ire, he does not.
"Marion," he hums, low and painstakingly steady. The resentment simmers beneath the veneer of calm he's carefully hand-stitched over everything, a rage firmly leashed when the cause of it all is not yet before him.
( —Not yet before him: subdued, kneeling, fallen; held up by nothing other than his hands; throat so tantalisingly bare to fangs that would rip the life from those veins, again and again and again— )
"I am grateful they grow at all. It is a testament to their tenacity in times like these." He keeps track of any movement with the keenness afforded by his ears. He refuses to lend them his gaze. "What of you, little one? You come seeking me so eagerly, I fear your lord has cast you aside."
Gone were the golden antlers they once bore, signifying their fallen divinity, now replaced by horns that jutted from one side of their head. The scourge staggers — but fall not they did, puppeted by invisible strings that guided their way upwards; their footing unsteady as the world shifts under their feet. Cocking their head up and to the side ( the horns heavy enough to tilt balance ) its pupil darts afoot, attempting to focus on the face in front of them.
Even through the malice clouding their vision with crimson, they knew.
“Rauru…” his name leaves its mouth in a whisper, guttural and raspy. Though its voice is undoubtedly theirs, it merely acts and speaks for its puppeteer, stumbling closer towards the Zonai and reaching with outstretched arms, a mockery of a smile painted on their face. Gesture kind, even though its intent is not, it speaks all too softly, too kindly; a cruel lure. “It's been too long, once King of Hyrule.”
It washes over him as though a spreading affliction. A traitorous, blasphemous thought. In the staggered spaces between their halting motions, as Rauru looks upon his once-ilk's taint — their decay, their corruption, their erosion — he feels it take form as a serpent writhing through his veins: accrued remnants of some ancient, seething, inexplicable wrath.
The gods are truly wretched, to continue testing him past even death.
It is instinct, as it was in life, to shatter the notion before he can dwell on it. Its pieces fall away like glass shards slitting past his fingers, but the outrage remains — fueled by a regret that hangs ever heavier from his shoulders and a heartache so profound, it has him numb for the first time since he's awakened from a sealed slumber.
They call him by his name. They reach for him with beseeching hands.
It should not make him yearn as harshly as it does.
He lurches back beyond their grasp. "Iroha," lies on his tongue, a gentle hand ready to be extended in turn, but he holds it there. He holds it there, close, like it is a fragile thing: like he daren't say it aloud for fear of losing something else — someone else — he has never been willing nor prepared to let go of.
( He holds it there, close, like he hasn't already lost them. )
"My friend," he murmurs instead. His breath does not rattle. But he imagines, if he were made of bone and blood and sinew once more, not even thralling magicks would be able to keep it steady. "I wish, dearly, I could say it is good to see you again."
#FLOCKREST. independent, selective, & heavily headcanon-based rito multimuse featuring tulin of the legend of zelda: breath of the wild & tears of the kingdom. established june 2023. doted on by ray!
if you were a deity, what would you be the god of?
tagged by: @sentinaels ( thanks bunches! ♡ )
tagging: @sageospirit / @lunaright, @gloryseized ( for link ), @maid2n, @herospledge, and anybody who would like to do this but hasn't yet!
flora and fauna.
you’re friendly and a benevolent force to those who respect you and your domain, but a true force to be reckoned with to those who disrespect or threaten the balance of the natural world. the forest is nothing to fear for those who take care of it, but it isn’t uncommon for people to go missing with only their faces outlined in the bark on a tree.
i want. to talk about memory #7 but in the sense of i am not a writer who can take any of what it had to grossly offer us at face value so i'm sorry for the ramble y'all
rau.ru as king consort would not be speaking on matters like these alone without input from queen regnant son.ia at the very least, so their stance was thoroughly discussed with each other and outside counsel like their court beforehand. while the fact that son.ia is not actually addressed at all by either parties in the scene makes my skin itch in the worst way possible, i could feasibly play off of it as rau.ru insisting on representing them to intentionally draw attention away from the actual crown, which he would — with the purpose of keeping her safe from ill will ( unfortunate how that didn't work out ) and not something like. fucking silencing her — BUT ALSO,
i like to imagine that their invitations to neighbouring peoples were more invitations to treat so they could peaceably establish where they lie with each other and how open they'd be to forming official alliances over several visits to each other's capitals and/or domains, because there's:
little in the way of canon evidence for any seizure of states? at least from what i've gathered, but i may be blind so please do correct me if i'm wrong
me, going down the the zonai eat themselves alive via civil wars route and giving rau.ru Issues about unchecked authority and fears of being in a position of power that he tries to take measures to make sure he's kept in reign for but can't help but ultimately want because as much as it subliminally terrifies him, it terrifies him more to be without the oversight not being in that position leaves him
me again, and my SEA ass gagging at wilfully writing imperialistic propaganda even for the sake of narrative exploration, i'm sorry that i can't be someone who can study that in any compelling way
so like.....as much as i hate the implications and framing of this memory, i am a little tickled by all the power play. i think it is very much A Move from gano.ndorf when he, royalty by birthright, offers so much — his lands, his people, their fealty, himself — without prior allusion to hyrule as represented then by rau.ru, royalty by propinquity. like we know it's a ploy, but perceived by rau.ru and son.ia and their royal court, it's.....backhanded because it's so presumptuous? you get me?
not that rau.ru's any better when he goes on about accepting! if asked, he'd say it was because they'd already decided to accept anything within reason to try and keep the gerudo in good graces, but mostly, he takes it for what he sees it as — an opportunity to keep gano.ndorf ( as he keeps their other allies ) close and under watch.
the hidden barbs go on, etc. etc. except when they get to the ~OH HE'S SO EVIL~ bit, rau.ru is less YEAH i KNOW he has TREACHERY IN HIS HEART and more YEAH the vibes of that entire encounter were severely off and i'm too worn to trust like that. still nothing to worry about though, i assure you,
