#aco post

[blueberrydeers]

Aco your art so good!!!!

Hi sorry acp is not answering this faster :< aco knowing this was being from suuuper long ago but aco is here now!! Aco is being so happy that his art is liked so aco is very much thankying youo !!! Aco going to drawing more soon hopefully!!! Wanting noe more outside responsibilityes so aco can drawing more >:0

[robed-bones]

Mourn the Dust (UC Bridge) || The Garo Warriors

As the explosions finally dwindled to a halt, and showed no more signs of starting up, the robed shadows moved back in.

Two hung from just under either side of one of the bridge's smoking remains, their feet hooked through the newly exposed framework that once supported the great structures, their scarves fluttering in the high-altitude wind as they swung lightly back and forth. Others were already investigating alternate (if unpleasant) routes to circumvent the destruction, but for not they opted for quicker communication, exchanging hand signals across the gap. Silent communication systems came with the territory.

The Garo had taken to traversing beneath the bridges when guards had been stationed above (until now it had been a favorite subject to murmur about among casual company when not on assignment, along with rain and mysteries and their handful of more troublesome marks). They had taken note the instant another type of shadow had arrived to crawl along the stone.

There seemed little to know, the exchange was repetitive at best. They were Sheikah. They were a cohesive unit. Trained. They worked uniformly and swiftly. They paid no mind to civilian casualties. It had not been known that they had been setting bombs until the bridges fell.

After all that could be said was, the spy on the side of the isolated islet hesitated for a long moment, then tentatively formed a few last signs, signs that had not been made in a fair few centuries.

The other Garo froze, swinging idly in the winds. One of the warriors had been investigating the explosives when they detonated. Those who saw were willing to be almost certain that warrior was no more. That was what those signs meant. Those signs meant that, as had only happened rarely in the undead unit's recent history, their already meager ranks had today been thinned.

The warrior's name did not matter, so few of them knew their names anymore. Whoever it was, they would be remembered nonetheless. The warrior on the Western District side gave and received the traditional gesture of respectful parting and left.

Mortal lives came and went as swiftly as candle stubs to an eternal race, but the loss of their own was different. It was a companion they had known and thought with for eons, one of the few members of a race that changed in the manner of a crumbling mountain, and with all the same speed. A companion they would never see again in all the further eons they might exist, and a companion whose fate they could not guess (the afterlife had become a tenuous myth for the trapped spies). Their numbers could never grow to replace those who fell, and so those losses remained, a slowly growing and irreversible missing piece. And like the crumbling mountain, they mourned the dust the wind ceaselessly swept away.

Worse this time was the feeling that with the Kingdom's changing tide, they would not have to wait further centuries to again start forming those signs.

[theclockworkheir]

The Final Piece || Solo

Usually, should she wish to speak with the voices of the past she carried with her, she had to drop into meditation and find them. It was a rare occasion in which they commanded her attention instead.

The first time they had shouted like this, it had been when Ives held the beaten body of Malon's friend, Link, above a restless crowd. The second was when a deafening roar rung through the walls of the castle.

She'd managed to keep from losing consciousness this time, but only narrowly, her head flooded with images of ivory tusks and a red mane and merciless, vacant glowing eyes, flooded with memories of fear and rage and helplessness. She'd known the origin of that roar in too many lives for her to immediately count--she'd clearly liked it in absolutely none of them.

Her past selves protested as she tried to follow the sound, but she very stubbornly ignored them, until suddenly finding herself before a wall of knights gave her no such option. They were swift to usher her back to her quarters, two remaining steadfast in the hall when the door closed, and the nearest handmaiden only just managed to catch the Princess as she finally fell.

The servant's voice was hazy through the repeating scenes of chaos and battle and cold exchanges brimming with silent rage, and was the last thing Zelda registered before losing consciousness. "What a fright she must have had!"

Oh, shut up.

Impa was quick to find Zelda's journal, well aware of where the young Hylian hid it. Having it presented to her seemed to snap Zelda out of something, and she immediately reached for the nearest writing implement and curled up with the book in her lap, her eyes staring unfocused in the direction of the page and her pencil never leaving the paper.

[theclockworkheir]

Inheritance || Solo

The magic had been woken the night of the Masquerade, the night of the elaborate trap the princess stood by and watched occur (just as she had so many things), the night of the untimely death of her patron Goddess's Oracle.

And as she'd decided she must find a way to do something, anything, one of her ancestors decided the same. One that had, like all the others, always appeared with blue eyes, that night appeared to her bearing eyes of red.

It was very, very old magic, rooted deep within the bloodline and guarded so carefully that almost all memory had faded. It had been one of the duties of Impa's line to protect it, along with all other secrets the Sheikah oversaw, she knew the magic's legend well. She told Zelda all that she knew, and with her ceaseless loyalty and patience settled in to help teach the young Hylian a great deal more, words of both faith and caution ever-present on her tongue.

Both forms, the legend held, had existed from the day Zelda was born, but that knowledge didn't make the new body feel any more familiar. The princess and her attendant worked at night and whenever else their duties allowed, and it took a full day of meditation to learn to shift, several days more to become accustomed enough to the new shape to be anything resembling competent. Impa guided through each step, from helping Zelda adapt the basic hand-to-hand and stealth training the Sheikah had given to the new body, to assembling suitable clothing, to warning again and again not to attempt anything out of her league (her charge's skills were novice at best), to finally teaching the disguised monarch how to draw the sacred tear-shaped mark, detailing all that it meant to wear it.

By the time they were done, the guards had finally given up on wading through the archives in search of a withdrawn girl, the attack of a mysterious beast preoccupied the castle, and a young Sheikah warrior garbed himself in black and set off hoping he wasn't too late.