#giftmas

haha bet you guys thought I'd forgotten Giftmas day 12 huh?

I didn't! And I have the pleasure of finally bequeathing my revamped design for Warriors to @skyward-floored for your lovely hdw AU!

(Seeing your doodle helped a lot! And I like this coloring better, hopefully this is more what you were trying to describe?)

We have another lovely drawing of Twilight based on a sent in reference

This one is from the lovely Nyahallo shop!

The group picked their way through what was probably once a rather formidable dungeon. However the overgrown, foliage, and sunlight filled nature of the crumbling structure left much to be desired as a defensible thing. Many of the doors had holes in the wall next to them that allowed entry despite lacking the key. There were just as many animals littered throughout the place as actual monsters, and most of the difficulty in navigating the structure came from time's cruel hand rather than deliberate traps or obstacles.

Regardless, after passing from the first floor down the mostly intact stairs, Twilight found he had to catch more than one hero from falling or tripping on missing bits of floor, the narrow walls severely limiting their mobility, and everyone except him was squinting in the low light of far fewer torches than the walls were clearly designed to hold.

Then Legend and Hyrule disappeared with barely a swear exiting the vet's mouth before they were all scrambling forward only to come in contact with the same solid stone floor as before.

Twilight got the sinking feeling that the dungeons' holes and hallways were not as accidental as they had first appeared.

He heard a bone weary sigh and looked over to Time, who stated “With no way to contact them and check on their condition, I fear the only way to regroup is finishing this.” 

Immediately protests at leaving the two rose, to which Time simply raised a challenging eyebrow, which cut off the protests, sifting to grumbles about dungeons and their tricks in general.

—

"Uuugh my head" Legend felt like a Lynel had decided to tapdance along his head for entertainment, then kicked him off the cliff at the very end, just for fun.

He heard chiming above him and grimaced, he'd only had one fairy in his bag and this would mean he was down to none, which was never a good place to be for an adventurer. However upon opening his eyes it wasn't the pink glow of a healing fairy that greeted him, but a deep green forest glow and the currently tiny, winged form of the traveler looking worriedly at him.

"How long have I been out?" He got straight to business, figuring that Hyrule either would explain the fairy form or he wouldn't but that they likely had bigger fish to fry.

"Not too long, I don't think so anyway.  The trapdoor we fell down opened after everyone else had crossed, but I know they wouldn't have wasted any time trying to follow us down."

Legend frowned at the words, struggling to remember the trapd-

oh right, the stupid thing had faded from being solid for some unknown reason, and he hated not knowing how a dungeon trap worked.

But considering all he felt was a massive headache and Hyrule had clearly given himself wings to save his body from the fall he should be more injured.

He raised a tired hand to his face and paused looking at the claws on the end of each finger and the shimmering, shining scales scattered on his forearm. A glance down confirmed that yep, the water was deep enough here that he would have drowned if he hadn't transformed.

"Looks like we both have some explaining to do, huh?" he said with a rueful smile as he extended a hand so Hyrule could rest his wings.

Then they actually took the time to glance around the area, and Legend was less than impressed with what he saw. He’s been in probably more dungeons than all the others combined so he had a pretty good idea what to expect, but this? This was just sad.

He could tell the architecture had been beautiful, once. Could see where lovely arches, carved little benches and grand pillars had once stood. But now the place was clearly falling apart, much like above it seemed that there was more danger from the dilapidation than whatever traps and puzzles were actually meant to be part of the dungeon. He squinted, seeing something on the other side of the dark room that his dungeon instincts were screaming was important. 

So he pointed Hyrule in the direction, hoping that the now glowing hero's light would be enough to see by, and wiggled his way off the broken pillar he’d come to rest upon to swim in the deep water towards the wall.

When Hyrule caught up and alighted upon his head with a curious chime, he was able to make out that there were words on the wall, bingo! Legend grinned letting his now sharper teeth show, glad that there was still a dungeon down here to do at least. Unfortunately, Hyrule’s glow wasn’t bright enough to illuminate the words so that Legend could try to decipher them from where he treaded water. 

“Can you get closer to the words? I might be able to make them out if you’re right next to them, and I’m not sure if you could lift my lantern right now.”

Hyrule gave a sad chime in confirmation that his magic lantern would be too heavy, and then obligingly flew right next to where the text started. Slowly moving his way across the letters and rows so that Legend would have a chance to see it all. He was glad to see that it was text he could read, since he’d known that it well could have been written in a dialect unrecognizable to him. Unfortunately that didn’t mean that he could just read the text easily, for the water had seeped into the wall and froze at some point, splitting off portions and leaving chunks of the words missing.

He read what he could aloud to Hyrule, “As in dark as in light A realm split in t…. Bring both sac… …… to th.. central sanctuary and ecli…. … …. To reveal the se….”

Hyrule plopped back onto his head, with more force than before, and Legend saw a wing droop into his vision, wincing at the puffs of labored breath he could hear coming from his winged friend.

“Well that’s better than a trap I suppose, but with so much of the message missing it’s not all that helpful now is it?” He crossed his arms as he glared at the missing chunks of wall, brain racing to try and figure out the riddle regardless of the missing text.

“Well with what you said, it sounds like this dungeon is in two parts? One light themed and one dark?” Hyrule had recovered and Legend could see little booted feet swinging out of the corner of his eye, appreciating that Hyrule wasn’t doing that right in his face. He considered the others’ words for a minute, beginning to nod in agreement, but quickly stopping himself as he felt his passenger starting to slip. Hyrule gave a small alarmed chime as he frantically flapped his wings and then resettled on his head.

“Oops, sorry. But yeah, solid idea traveller! I’d bet 20 rupees we’re on the ‘dark’ side now though.” Hyrule snorted in clear agreement, and with that Legend turned in a random direction, going fairly slowly so that he could keep his head above water, since it was clear that Hyrule didn’t do well with flying for extended periods of time.

They soon came upon a pillar that was laying almost mockingly horizontal across the waterline, leaving a teeny gap above, and only water below. He felt Hyrule alight off his head to go for the upper gap, and he dived underneath, feeling the water smoothly glide through his gills as his secondary eyelids closed on instinct so that he could look in the somewhat murky water without irritating his eyes. 

As he swam under the pillar he saw a octorock like creature with tendrils coming off it, and pulled his sword, slashing at it as he went by and not looking back. He emerged from the water on the other side and looked around to try and spot the telltale glow of Hyrule. Instead he heard a mischievous giggle as a weight landed on his head and Legend had to fight not to swipe at the thing in his hair.

With that they continued onwards, Legend occasionally ducking under to make sure there wasn’t a switch or an item on the floor that had clearly not been flooded at some point in this dungeon's existence.

He was continuing along in the almost boringly unbroken hallway when Hyrule gave a chime of alert and gently tugged on his hair to get him to stop.

“What is it?” He glanced around but didn’t see anything except the clearly dilapidated hallway continuing on.

“That hole looks big enough for me! And might just lead to something good!” He could hear Hytrule pointing, but couldn’t see his miniscule finger from where it was above him, so Legend just had to take his word for it. 

“I’m going to check things out under the surface here while you do that, then drop a rock into the water or something to let me know when you get back so I know to surface.” Legend didn’t bother warning Hyrule to be safe, dungeons were by their nature dangerous, and the traveller could take care of himself.

With Hyrule floating towards what had just looked like another chunk of missing veneer to Legend he, dived under weaving around pieces of pillar and wall alike, slashing at skeletal fish that came at him when he got near, and finding, almost cradled between two fallen pillars, a lever.

With nothing to lose Legend pulled on the thing, only for it to stay stubbornly in place. He examined it more closely and noted the algae growing on the rusted metal. So he changed tactics and swam a ways away, turning once he thought he had enough room. Legend flexed all his tail muscles and then relaxed, a grin taking over his features at getting to spread his fins like this, the occasions that called for top swimming speed were rare, and he enjoyed the feeling of gliding through the water like Irene through the air on her broom. He burst forward and went faster and faster all the way until he was nearly brushing the lever. Here he stopped going actively forward and instead let his tail pass his head, giving the lever a hard smack. There was quite a bit of resistance, but then the thing flipped, and Legend felt the vibrations in the water as something within the walls of the dungeon groaned to life, moving in response.

He let himself sink to the floor and breathe after that exertion while he grinned at the success despite the unusual obstacles in his way. Then his ear fins twitched and Legend looked up to see a pebble break the water's surface above him. He made his way up to where the stone had come from and saw Hyrule carrying a key bigger than he was as he flapped furiously.

“Let me just—” Legend took the key and tucked it into a pouch he kept empty on his belt just in case, glad to let the now wheezing traveller catch his breath on his head.

“It’s a good thing I'm so small right now! That room was entirely collapsed around the chest with the key, so I don’t know what we would have done if I couldn’t find it!”

Legend snorted, “We’d have figured something else out, but this does save a lot of trouble.”

“Also, were the walls shaking you? Or did the others decide to try and bomb their way to us?” Legend felt Hyrule shiver at the idea and grimaced at the thought himself. Getting crushed by rubble the other heroes created was not a great way to go out.

“No, no, that was me. I had to ram a lever to get it to flip, but I did and we should see if we can find just what it activated.” Hyrule gave what Legend assumed was an agreeing chime and off they went, trying to navigate this half drowned dungeon.

—

Twilight heard the grinding start before the others, and managed to shoot out a hand in time to stop Four from getting hit by a rising slab of stone. 

“Well I guess that’s proof that they’re doing alright down there.” Time broke the silence with a hint of amusement dancing on his tone.

The others all clamored close to the slab to see if they could read the carved words on its surface but Twilight found himself distracted by a different detail. The bottom half of the stone was darker, smelled musty, and had something green and slimy looking clinging to most of the surface. He kneeled and swiped a finger across the surface, holding back a shudder at the goopy, viscous texture of the plant, but not quite sure it was algae.

“Guys?”

—“And I still think that this word here must be tide!”

“Wind you can’t even read any of this what makes you think—

“GUYS!” Twilight raised his voice over Warriors’s teasing tone and then breathed out a sigh as silence fell and the rest turned to look quizzically at him.

“See how waterlogged this whole thing is? It comes up to my eyeballs and I’m one of the taller among us. If that came from the part of the dungeon Hyruleb and Legend are in, do they have enough items and whatnot to keep from drowning for hours?”

Looks of shock passed over the group before a thoughtfulness filled the air as they tried to figure out the answer to that question. Twilight wasn’t really worried that Legend ‘has  an item for that’ Link wouldn’t have something, but Hyrule?

He looked to Wild, who was growing paler in the lowlight and felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise.

“Wild?” he prompted, hoping the champion would clear up just what he was worried about.

“Hyrule doesn’t know how to swim.” Wild’s eyes were shining with unshed tears now and Twilight wanted to bundle him up and let the emotions pass, but getting through this dungeon and being able to see that both Hyrule and Legend were alive and well was a more pressing matter at the moment.

“Alright, so that means we need to find a way down to the others as fast as possible, since it sounds like Hyrule at least, might be in trouble down there.” Time’s face had gone cold in the way Twilight had learned meant he was worried, instead of angry as he’d first assumed when he saw the expression.

Twilight looked at the inscription properly now, half hoping he would be able to read what the others could not but unsurprised to find it was unreadable swirls and scratches to his eyes.

“Alright then, let's get ‘er done.” Twilight reached for his shadow crystal and began to lope off, Wild right on his heels.

Here we have another suggested outfit by @somer-writes and the final vote on Wind wearing the out from @hotcheetohatredwastaken!

doesn't Wind look ready to take on the high seas in this outfit?

once again the amazing Mochipan has graced us with a fabulous reference!

Got more lovely suggestions for fun outfits for the boys! This round courtesy of @aeghina and @somer-writes

The inspo pictures came from here and here!

our lovely ref artists today were Anple and Nyahallo! They did wonderful jobs <3

Also featuring in today's art is the new markers I got for Christmas, I sure learned a lot about them on these XD

Telma from TP and the number 204

I bet you thought I’d forgotten all about these huh? well I’m here with the very belated response as part of my Giftmas efforts!

Here we have Telma in just a gorgeous mourning dress! I made it more purple for her referred color scheme, and I’d like to think she’s wearing it to some party celebrating the defeat of Gannondorf post game, as a sign that people died, and that those people deserve to be remembered. After all, Telma seems to have friends everywhere and would know an awful lot of those who were lost personally.