Ask The Nightmares

Genderbents and OCs welcome.

“’King’? Oh we haven’t been called that in QUITE some time” He could sense the sarcasm, and Vaati’s irritation was already a delight, “A little change of scenery never hurt, and we were… bored, for lack of a better word.”

“’King’? Oh we haven’t been called that in QUITE some time” He could sense the sarcasm, and Vaati’s irritation was already a delight, “A little change of scenery never hurt, and we were... bored, for lack of a better word.”

awwriight yes can do

My Dethl gijinka, in the present, is a mischievous little childish shit that literally feeds off of negative emotions– of any sort, not just fear. Anger, despair, guilt, mourning, anything negative. To compare to humans, they’re like different flavors. He rarely takes anything seriously and doesn’t care much about dreamers except what emotional state they’re in. Happiness doesn’t bother him so much as apathy does, though.

He didn’t use to be like this, however. He was created as, essentially, Farore’s Nightmare, a byproduct of her giving the gift of dreaming to the Hyrulean life forms she had created. As a result, he can shapeshift into any nightmare of any dreamer, since he represents the dark side of every dream. There are of course, other Nightmare Entities, but they are only as powerful as a single nightmare. 

Anyway, in the alternate Dream Realm, Dream Entities reign supreme. Unlike Nightmare Entities, they live off of positive emotions. Since they thrive off of making dreamers happy, they considered themselves superior and actively hunted down Nightmares. Dethl, however, wouldn’t have this, and overthrew the semi-divine alignment of Golden Dreams that had control over the Realm. By destroying them and sealing their souls away, he took their power and became close to a god of the Dream Realm

To maintain a tight grip on the citizens of the Dream Realm, he disguised himself as a multitude of Nightmares– an unspecified number but suggested to be way more than the Dream Entities could handle. He also cast The Shade over the realm to make the dreams more complacent, and told them that the Golden Goddesses of the Waking World had abandoned them. He also outlawed all musical instruments, as they were and continue to be his major weakness.

One Dream Entity, known as Levi, was actually half Dream and half Dreamer, and therefore resistant to the Shade. Each Dreamer has fragments of their soul that work as emergency wake-up keys in case a Dream or Nightmare keeps them asleep too long. For Levi, These keys are the Eight Instruments of the Sirens. When he was in Dream form (the humanoid form, the whale form is his Dreamer form) the eight instruments were tangible items that he could use. Unfortunately, even with them, he could not take down Dethl with his divine powers, so he hid for ages

After centuries to millennia of pretending to be many any nightmares, switching back and forth to keep the illusion going and keeping the population frightened, he started to believe his own lie, slowly falling into the delusion that he was indeed many, many nightmares. He still believes this.

One day, he returned to the site where one of the Golden Dreams was sealed, who told him that his life was meaningless since he found happiness in nothing but misery. Angered, Dethl searched far and wide for something to prove him wrong, something that he could find pleasure in that wasn’t dreamers’ misery. Finally he found it, one thing. A Dreamer girl named Marin. He fell in love, and vowed to bring her to the Dream Realm. to take a Dreamer to the DR consciously, though, takes a considerable amount of power, even for someone like him, and to increase his power he had to put the citizens of the Waking World to sleep. 

Once he had enough power to essentially kidnap her, though, he made a miscalculation and also summoned Marin’s childhood friend, Link (not a canon Link). This Link happened to be the hero that Levi had been waiting for, and he jumped on the opportunity to inform him of his Destiny to save the Dream Realm from Dethl’s reign. By reawakening the Golden Dreams, Link acquired the power to break Dethl’s power over the DR and fought him, but not before Dethl murdered Levi’s Dream self. Link nearly destroyed Dethl, but in the end Levi’s Dreamer self (the Wind Fish) came back to assist. Seeing as he was going to die if he continued to fight, Dethl fled into the Wind Fish’s subconscious, where Link would be unable to reach him. To make sure that he still “won” the battle, though, he kidnapped Marin before he did so.

On Koholint, Dethl erased Maris memories and rewrote them so it had been as though she’d lived her whole life there. He knew that she had fallen in love with Link, and while he wanted her to be happy, he didn’t want to see her with him. So if she never knew about him, all problems would be solved. He made a minor mistake in erasing her memories, allowing for a lingering thought about what could be beyond Koholint, and a desire to be free.

In Link’s Awakening, the Link we’re all familiar with came along and brutally destroyed everything. I don’t have a solid answer for how Dethl survived, but now he’s lingering in the Waking World because everyone in the Dream Realm knows he’s a piece of shit tyrant. The Wind Fish is also still alive, but not… completely *there*. He’s wise, but forgets a lot of things, and all of his memories as Levi are locked deep deep in his mind.

I haven’t painted anything in firealpaca or on the downstairs PC for ages