[center][h1][color=00aeef]Link[/color][/h1][/center] [center]Word Count: 1860 [/center] [center][color=00aeef][b] Level 8[/b] [/color] - (09/80) + 6[/center] [center]Location: Carcass Island ~ Where All Things Must Come[/center] [hr][hr] [i]"Get down from t-!"[/i] Link's demand was cut off by the roar of Bella's railgun, but he wasn't sure she heard him. While he was trying to tell her to get off his rock she had been in the middle of making what was no doubt a terrible pun. Unfortunately when relative silence fell they both tried again. "Get off the-," but this time they were interrupted by sound so low and base that it could only have come from the creature. In contrast to that were the high pitched beeps as the stasis wore down, growing higher and higher and louder and louder as the time limit came up and Ms. Fortunes' foolhardy plan of climbing all over that tar monster came close and closer to fruition. She got the pun out, finally. He couldn't appreciate it. With a final frantic warning of "Idieddoingthis," Link threw himself at the rock and clung flush to the side as the yellow sheen on it shattered and it rocketed through the air toward the creature. He didn't have any kind of plan for how he was going to help Ms. Fortune survive whatever it was she was attempting, and there was no time to strategies with her even before she bailed off the rock mid flight. He followed her lead, letting go of the rock. She shot up toward it's shoulder on a blast of watery blue blood, but he had to settle for pulling out his sail cloth and drifting through the air in front of it. They both missed their target. Link's boulder went too low, Ms. Fortune's human drill went too high. Worse than that, Ms. Fortune got stuck in the tar of the creature's body just as he feared she would. He angled himself to drift closer to the creature, get close enough that maybe he could use Cryonis to help her out of that sticky situation, but before he could he found his path blocked by the tar balloons that the creature spewed from its neck. Her angled himself left and right, weaving between the things as they passed by and floated down to the battlefield. He could avoid them, but he couldn't get any closer and he was drifting lower all the time. It was while he drifted through an aerial minefield that the creature began attacking in earnest. It lifted up its fingers out of the waves, a simple movement that sucked the cat girl deeper into its body. Giving up on the cryonis plan, he dropped. He switched to the bow mid fall. If he couldn't get to Ms. Fortune than the only hope was to kill the creature before she could be fully absorbed. Time slowed down as he aimed for the eye and fired, adding an arrow to the bullets, darts, and cannon shells the others had already blasted into the eye. He pulled back another arrow, catching out of the corner of his eye one of the creature's fingers coming toward him like an eel. A hand grasped for him on the end of it, opening and closing in slow motion. He ignored it, put the other arrow into the eye. He grabbed another one, pulled it back... Pure fatigue forced him back into normal time, the strain of maintaining the focus too much for him at the moment. He felt himself dropping for a moment, then the golden hand slammed into his side and squeezed around his chest like a child holding a doll. He could feel the Sheikah Slate digging into him, being pressed flush to his side. He grasped onto it as much as it grasped him, taking the moment to catch his breath in its embrace, before it started reeling him in. It was at least pulling him higher than he had been. If he could just free himself, cut this cord and redeploy his sailcloth then... His heart dropped into his stomach as he called the [url=https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/darksouls/images/6/6b/Broken_Straight_Sword_II.png]broken straight sword[/url] into his hand, the most fallback of all fallback weapons. He would have felt more secure holding one of Larry's butcher knives, but it was literally the last cutting he had left. Everything else had been used up. He swung it at the tar, but it left a shallow cut even in that soft substance. He chopped again, a little of the gunk flying off, but he didn't make any progress. He swung again, and again, but the dull blade would cut deep enough and the tar was fighting back. It was reforming in the wound whenever he slowed down even slightly and the mass of the creature's arm was growing ever closer. Soon he would be in the same situation as Ms. Fortune. He needed a blade. He needed a real blade! He looked up from his work, shocked to see something rising out of the tar of the cord. It looked like a man, indistinct save for a cape blowing in the wind and hair that spiked straight up. He drew the broken sword back, ready to defend himself from whatever this new attack was, but he didn't feel any hostility from the figure. Instead it seemed familiar. Then the figure took a sword hanging from its side and thrust it hilt first toward him. Recognition flashed in Link's eyes and he lowered the sword, everything else about his situation forgotten in this moment. Time stood still. "Glenn?" He asked, his voice trembling. There came no answer from the figure in front of him, but the sword was unmistakable. Unmistakable and [i]real[/i], solid in a way Glenn just wasn't. His eye went back and forth from the sword to the apparition and back, indecisive. "It's your sword, not mine." The apparition shook its head. It hadn't been his sword, either. Not until he took it up. He thrust the pommel into Link's chest, hard enough to hurt, meeting Link's gaze with an insistent stare. He felt the weight of both settling on him. It was more than a sword he was being bequeathed, it was the will of Glenn the knight. What he had inherited from Cyrus. Then the apparition nodded its head, and Link nodded back. "It would be my honor." [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReLlj50mGZQ]He took the blade in one hand, wrapped the other around the hilt, and drew.[/url] The [url=https://chrono.fandom.com/wiki/Masamune_(weapon)]Masamune[/url] flashed in even in the dim moonlight, and as he brought it down on the strand that bound him. Glenn was gone, the man vanishing with what looked like a satisfied smile as the holy blade cleaved clean through the tar where he had emerged. The hand gripping him crumbled as they fell, accompanying Link's descent with a hail of glittering gold. The sword vanished into the Slate as he again took out his sailcloth and sailed backwards. The patch where Ms. Fortune had been trapped was now encased in the same gold crystal, but a quick sweep of the beach from his vantage point showed him that she was now down there. Turning back to the creature, it threw out its arms and unleashed a horde of ghostly golden specters, far more hostile than the one he had just dealt with. As they came for him, ready to tackle him out of the air, he stowed the sailcloth and dropped. Unperturbed, they angled downward after him. He had Slate access again though, and met their charge with a bomb he tossed straight up. The explosion popped them all like Chu jelly, scattering golden goo into the tar as he landed on the hull of a half submerged dingy. The hard landing sent him to his knees, and all around him he could hear the sound of his comrades putting everything they had into the colossus that towered over the beach. As he started getting back to his feet he spotted a face emerging from the muck. Far more familiar to him than the specter of the man Glenn truly was. He had to give Glenn even more thanks, because if he had been surprised by this face with no forewarning he might have fainted. You could have mistaken her head for an odd fish in all this muck, but then the rest of her emerged. A kindly face, a smooth and slender body built for moving swiftly through the water. A blue scarf wrapped around her body, somehow clean despite the tar it emerged from. Shyly, she took a case she was holding and slid it toward him across the wood. Then she smiled, and sank without a word. "Wait, Mipha!" He said, starting to crawl toward her. Then he felt another case hit him right on the head. He only caught the fleeting shadow of the one who dropped it, sweeping over him and across the tar before vanishing abruptly. Link could only imagine how smug the look on his face had been. Another case landed next to him, and he spotted a statuesque woman giving him a casual wave. She pointed past him, and he turned just in time to catch the big case a giant jolly looking Goron had hucked directly at him. With a thumbs up the Goron too sank back beneath the muck. He smiled, and gave it right back. It seemed as though all the ghosts of his old regrets had come back to cheer him on. The worst thing he could do was disappoint them. He set to opening all their gifts. Mipha's contained a [url=https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/zelda_gamepedia_en/images/8/8b/SSHD_Heart_Model.png/revision/latest?cb=20210716230812]pink heart[/url], and simply touching it cased the pain in his legs and left side to instantly diminish. Ravli had gifted him a bow. Not the best bow, but the bow best suited to [url=https://zelda.fandom.com/wiki/Phrenic_Bow]striking distant targets[/url]. Urbosa had thrown him a [url=https://zelda.fandom.com/wiki/Thunderstorm_Rod?so=search]Thunderstorm Rod[/url]. He wondered if she was encouraging him to get her back in the fight as soon as possible. Daruk, true to his style, had thrown an entire Savage Lynel Shield at him. If it hadn't been in the case he probably would have died from it, but as it was he put it on as soon as possible. He stood, feeling like a man renewed, and pulled out the bow he had been given. He just wished he had some better firepower. As though in response to his thoughts, the [url=https://imgur.com/mXwQt08]shipgirl[/url] he had fused with popped out of the surf and tossed another case to him. This one he caught as the girl vanished with a short salute. He popped open this one to find a bundle of [url=https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/zelda_gamepedia_en/images/9/92/BotW_Bomb_Arrow_Model.png/revision/latest?cb=20211107005710]Bomb Arrows[/url], five in all. He used them up, firing them all off into the eye of the creature before switching to the thunder rod and sending sparking balls of electricity it's way. He called out to the Siren and Cia, the women appearing beside him and joining in with balls of darkness and single sonic blast as Link unloaded everything he had at this monster.