fleets: I can't even begin to describe how confused I was while writing this chapter, mostly because Fuu/Vaati is extremely confused as well as Shadow. If you can imagine having a never-ending argument with yourself, well, that was my state of being since uploading Chapter 17. I submitted this in a bit of a rush to protect my sanity, heh.

Chapter 18: Syncope

Three days had passed since Fuu had left his friend at the mercy of Dethl. Well, that thought wasn't quite true, was it? One, his name wasn't Fuu. Two, Sheik wasn't his friend. Not anymore.

Fuu, or, Vaati now, closed the book he'd been reading and tossed it aside. It bounced against the rocks around the cave that he'd found shelter in. It landed in a pile of other, similarly tossed aside books.

'Gufuu.' That name sounded so stupid now. He'd thought nothing of it at first, since that had been one of the few things he'd been able to "remember" when he'd woken at the Gerudo camp, but now it only filled him with disgust. The name was only a reminder of how he'd been tricked into believing a false identity, of how his very identity had been stripped from him.

But if he wasn't Fuu, then was he really Vaati?

He'd been surprised by the truth, but when Dethl began to explain what had happened, he'd been more surprised by the fact that he'd almost expected it. Him, Vaati, the Goddess-damned Sorcerer of Winds. He couldn't believe it, and yet he could believe it. Everything that had seemed strange or improbable - like how Shadow Link had mistaken him for Vaati, how he could somehow waltz right through dungeons that only Vaati could safely navigate, that he knew magic that had been the wind mage's signature spells, how Sheik and Impa always seemed to be holding something back from him – all of that made sense if the truth was that he was Vaati.

He'd rolled the name over in his head, trying it out, wondering what he'd thought of it. To be honest, he'd never had a strong opinion regarding the sorcerer, except maybe some vague idea of 'generally negative.' He'd only been influenced by the very little he'd heard from other people, and the idea that Vaati had been the one who'd muddled his memories, the latter of which he'd discovered to be untrue. Because of that, it didn't bother him to call himself Vaati more than it did to call himself Fuu. Vaati… that was him. That was what had been stolen from him, and Fuu was simply the product of a grave injustice.

And yet, as satisfied as he was for knowing that he'd been Vaati all along, the character, his character, eluded him. He couldn't even begin to imagine what it had been like, to stand at the top, ruling over armies of monsters and with the power to topple Hyrule with a wave of his hand. Most importantly, he couldn't even remember why he'd been trying to conquer Hyrule in the first place. The most obvious reason, 'because I can,' never seemed emptier.

He picked up the next book sitting by him in a neater pile than the 'toss pile' a few feet away. He thumbed through it, trying to find any mention of Vaati, hoping for an unbiased account of the sorcerer that he hadn't been able to encounter so far. Most of the text only discussed how evil Vaati was in the most melodramatic and outrageous way possible, in a way that stretched the imagination. No one spoke of his motives, of what he'd wanted. He didn't want to believe that he'd tried to conquer Hyrule just for the sake of it; there had to be more to the story than that…

Had he really been so arrogant, to decide he was going to take over Hyrule just because it was there, and just because he could? There was no depth to an explanation like that, and now, with his memories gone, he couldn't see the point of it.

The all-consuming rage that had taken over him at the Desert Temple had long since disappeared, but that wasn't to say that the anger had gone. It was more like the slow burn of coals, still painfully hot but no longer explosive. The only thing that he could make sense of anything in this messed up situation was his anger, and he'd held on to it for the last three days. The anger drove him to wander, away from Hyrule, to somewhere far away, Holodrum perhaps. He wasn't sure. The anger led him on a search for anything regarding Vaati to distract him away from the hundreds of confusing questions and emotions that nearly overwhelmed him to paralysis.

The first night after he'd walked away from the Desert Temple, leaving Zelda to her fate, had been the worst. He couldn't remember where he had walked, or how far he'd gone before he'd finally found a place to lie down and rest. He hadn't been able to sleep, as he fluctuated between blinding rage at Sheik's betrayal, to confusion about what this all meant, and to brief flashes of guilt knowing that he'd most likely condemned Sheik to death at the hands of Dethl. He'd thought of the crucifixion of the fake Princess Zelda, knowing that perhaps a similar fate awaited the real one. A small voice of conscience whispered that no one deserved a fate like that, but then a louder, angrier voice always stopped him. He hadn't deserved what they had done to him, and how dare they for implying that they had done him a service. A 'second chance,' they'd called it.

Let Sheik, Zelda, whoever they were, suffer what comes.

He'd turned his focus to learn more about himself, if only to drown out the guilt and the confusion. His anger became determination, and he'd been spending the last three days poring over books and pamphlets he'd collected from libraries and other sources, that he'd thrown together in an intimidating pile in a cave he'd found. The distraction took his mind off of the disorganized confusion in his head, but from time to time he'd be overwhelmed again by the knowledge that his friend hadn't been who he'd thought he was, and that he'd doomed Sheik by leaving him with Shadow Link and Dethl.

He turned the pages of the book in his hands, scowling. The wind outside the cave howled something fierce as it echoed his sentiment.

I don't care about Sheik anymore, he argued with the afterthought of guilt.

No. Oh, no, it wasn't even Sheik, was it? Sheik hadn't even been the person he'd thought he was all along. Vaati's eye twitched as he thought about how Princess Zelda had pulled the wool over his eyes, and then had gone so far as to pretend that she trusted him. 'I choose to trust you,' he thought mockingly, clenching his fists, give me a break…

Looking back, he and Sheik – or, whoever 'Sheik' was – had never really been friends, huh? The last few weeks together, it had all been but an illusion of comradery, a façade to make sure that Vaati played nice. They were afraid of him. They'd always been afraid of him, because they knew the truth about who he was.

Vaati stopped flipping the pages of his book, recognizing that he'd been turning page after page without really reading the text. He sighed, the book dropping between his fingers and landing with a soft thud between his feet as he rested his forehead against his hands. He nudged the book away with his foot towards the growing pile of books and pamphlets he'd given up on. The libraries of the region could only do so much to distract him from his thoughts.

"I don't care about any of them," he hissed between his fingers, still holding his head miserably. "What they're doing isn't my problem anymore."

You don't really think that though, do you? You know what's going to happen to her.

Again that nagging conscience. That irritating voice in his head that wouldn't leave him alone.

"It's not my problem," he repeated, louder now to the empty cave. "Whatever I feel, that's just something they brainwashed me into thinking. Those thoughts, they're not mine."

It was then that he noticed that, in his distraction, he'd forgotten about a little sentry eye that he'd sent out on patrol earlier. It had returned from its task and was hovering in front of him awkwardly, like it wasn't sure if this was a good time to come back to its master. The two of them stared at each other for a few minutes until Vaati threw his hands up in the air and stood up, rounding on the now frightened creature.

"Every. Single. One of them," Vaati jabbed at the floating eye with a pointed finger at each emphasis, "Every single one of them just saw me as a useful tool who didn't know any better. Maybe I'll go destroy Hyrule because I'm pissed off at everything," he growled.

For a moment, his hand was poised as though to strike the sentry down, to direct all of his confusion and anger at it, but he didn't. He watched the little bat-winged eye look up at him in fear, but with a flicker of resignation. Eventually, Vaati shook his head and walked towards the entrance of the cave.

"I just… I can't even bother though, you know?" he muttered, talking to the sentry that had followed him cautiously. "Nothing matters anymore."

He didn't really expect the sentry to reply to him in any sort of way. After all, the sentry was just like an extra arm or a leg: it wasn't supposed to have any cognitive capabilities beyond completing task A and task B. Therefore, he was caught off guard when the sentry's eye suddenly glowed red, granting him a vision of what it saw before it.

He saw a young man, his nose wrinkled into an almost permanent scowl and his lips twitching from time to time as though he wanted to say something, but didn't know what to say. The young man wasn't confident, his red eyes wavering like they were going to fall out of his head any minute, and it almost looked like he was feeling sorry for himself from the way his shoulders sagged.

Vaati raised his fist angrily at the sentry eye. "You trying to say something?" he snapped, offended by the pitiful vision of himself that the sentry had projected. However, he stopped, recognizing that the sentry had simply shown him how he appeared now. Lowering his fist, he shook his head again, and smiled at himself. "You're right," he said softly, beckoning the little eye closer. The eye fluttered over, and for a split second, it puffed up smugly. Vaati wasn't angry at it, though. It knew him better than he'd given it credit for, which had been a mistake on his part since the sentry was practically an extension of himself. "Feeling sorry for myself… that's not me, either, is it? I'm better than that."

Vaati pat the eye on its head, and then started walking out of the cave. His pace quickened until he was sprinting, until he was eventually flying through the air, supported by powerful winds. He stopped in the middle of an empty field, and the sky was overcast with a heavy blanket of gray. He slowly hovered towards the ground until his toes were just barely touching the tall grass.

"I was afraid to use wind magic. I didn't want to use it when I thought that it wasn't really my own, so I held myself back," he said when the sentry eye caught up to him. It hovered next to his ear, waiting expectantly. Vaati then raised a hand out in front of him, and the wind stirred, changing direction. "But that's changed now."

It started out with a hush. The rustling of the grass as the winds changed, moving in a wide circle around the young man, his eyes closed and his expression peaceful, almost like he was asleep. The wind picked up gradually until it became increasingly powerful. Small pebbles began to swirl in the air, which eventually became large rocks, and then to boulders. The light whistle of wind turned into a dragon's roar, ripping out grass and shrubs by their roots and shredding them to pieces in the air. Water from a nearby pond was carried up as well, so that the air shimmered with droplets.

The clouds above darkened as the roaring tornado carried moisture above, and lightning crackled in fantastic displays as the storm became more powerful.

It's not like me to feel sorry for myself, Vaati thought over the deafening scream of the storm he'd summoned, I'm stronger than that.

He reveled in the untamed howl of the wind, the power that rushed between his fingertips. He embraced the rush of blood pounding against his ears and felt the brush of the wind's freedom against his skin. And then, finally, the heavy cloud of guilt, anger, and confusion that had muddled his mind for the last three days lifted away. Clarity.

His eyes snapped open and he clenched his outstretched hand, curling it into a fist as though he were snapping someone's neck. The wind stopped abruptly, and there was a resounding crash as all of the flying objects it had picked up came falling down violently. Some straggling lightning flashed through the dust cloud that emerged from the aftermath of the destruction, but once again, all was quiet.

For three days, he'd been searching for answers through written text, hoping that they would tell him who he was. However, his identity wasn't for other people to tell. He had to figure that out on his own, with maybe a little bit of help from those who'd taken it away from him.

And the answers lay where his memories began. Most of his memories, the planted ones about him being a Sheikah and his name 'Gufuu,' were vague and fuzzy up until the point when he'd woken up at the Gerudo Camp a few weeks ago. He'd supposedly been taken there after the final battle against Vaati, when the sorcerer had 'done something to his head.' Of course, it was now all too obvious that the Hylians, and most likely the Gerudos as well, had messed with his memories at the desert encampment. In fact, the Gerudos had two powerful magic users of their own who could have easily crafted a spell to remove and replace his memories, and he recalled the Twinrova sisters hovering eagerly near Sheik just before they'd left camp. Even more incriminating, he remembered what Darunia had spoken, and he now understood why the Goron chief had been so angry. No amount of help will let me forgive what you and those desert witches agreed to do, he'd said. Yes, the desert witches. They knew something. They had to.

I have to go back to where it all started, Vaati's eyes narrowed, no longer wavering and lost, but steeled with determination. The Gerudo Witches.

He took a deep breath, beginning to feel a real sense of direction since he'd left the Desert Temple. He was about to leave, when, without warning, the ground shook with the impact of something heavy falling from the sky.

He whirled around, and what he saw… well, he wasn't sure what to make of it. Vaati frowned, and sent the sentry eye hovering by his shoulder to take a closer look at the object.

It was some kind of monster, horribly disfigured and on the brink of death. It wasn't just any monster, either; it was one of the powerful titanic boss monsters judging from how it was almost as large as a small house. It wasn't quite dead yet, apparent from the fact that it hadn't disintegrated into dusty purple smoke, but to say it was alive was misleading. The creature lurched, trying to get up on its feet after having fallen out of the sky, and as it did so it oozed blood from multiple lacerations.

Gleeok? Vaati thought he could recognize the two headed dragon he'd seen mentioned in one of the books he'd borrowed from the library. He could see the dragon's scales between the cuts, and there were two heads… wait.

Vaati ran towards the creature, a chill running down his spine when a terrible thought occurred to him. This thing… it wasn't Gleeok. Maybe it had been, once, but this…

"Ksssktt… kill us…"

Vaati slowed down as he circled around towards the head of the monster. Or, at least, one of its heads. The creature twisted one of its necks towards him, but instead of the fearsome head of a dragon, there was a clump of ice growing out of the place where a head should have been. There was a large, bloodshot eye in the center of the ice. Frostare, Vaati thought, recognizing the eye to be from the powerful ice demon.

Vaati's perturbed gaze trailed down along its neck, which he'd noticed was wrapped by thick vines that went towards 'Gleeok's' left foot. Instead of the appropriate appendage, there was an enormous toothed flower. Manhandla.

The rest of the dragon's body was crudely stitched and spiked together with thick black poles; an amalgamation of several different monsters. The second head of Gleeok, the one that was still intact and not fused together with Frostare, pleaded with another rattled voice. "Kill us. Pain."

Vaati took a step back as the amalgamation twitched and staggered helplessly on the ground. "What happened to you?" he asked, his voice quiet from shock.

"The Nighmare," another voice, near the creature's back. Vaati then saw a large fin waving behind one of the dragon's wings. The armored fish, Gyorg. "Kill us please…" it gurgled.

Vaati didn't need to be asked again. He took a deep breath, and then transformed into his Wrath form. The amalgamation stopped struggling when they saw the monstrous black eye floating above it. They murmured Vaati's name as the sorcerer disintegrated it with a devastating energy beam. All that was left of the creature in the aftermath was a charred path of destruction where the beam had passed.

Vaati remained still for a few minutes, trying to analyze what he'd just encountered. Dethl had done this? To their own allies? What are you playing at, Dethl?

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Acid. His throat hurt with acid.

Shadow Link heaved, gagging on an empty stomach as he threw up, reliving in his memories what he'd been made to do a few hours ago. He was curled over the side of the Palace of Winds, watching the clouds roll by below them. He continued to stare at the strangely idyllic scene, a stark contrast to the nightmare that was spreading all around him.

Fuck this. Fuck this.

He turned around and then staggered against one of the palace's magnificent white pillars, and then slowly crumpled onto the ground when his legs gave out. He stared at his shaking hands, trying to forget what he had just done.

Sticks. Small, thin sticks. Large, thick sticks. Poles. Poles that skewered. Poles that… that held things together. Slice two things apart and skewer them back together with poles. With sticks.

Shadow wrenched his eyes off of his hands. He couldn't even be sure if he'd been the one who'd helped create that abomination. For all he knew, he could have been a copy of the Shadow Link who'd actually completed the operation, and the memories weren't really his. He'd even lost track of how long he'd actually existed since he'd been summoned by the Dark Mirror into this world.

In fact, he wasn't even sure how many Shadow Links were running around at this point. Maybe there were some that were freely wandering around the Hyrule wasteland, but to his knowledge, most of them remained at the Palace of Winds. The Dark Mirror gave him and Dethl power, but it was also the key to stopping them. Shadow hadn't lied to Sheik and Vaati about that. If all of his copies had the same idea, they would remain close to the Mirror, waiting for a chance to put an end to them. Dethl, too, seemed to prefer Shadow Link to remain at the Palace of Winds, if only so that they had a literally endless supply of victims if they became bored with their various projects in the land below.

Thankfully, the mirror only seemed to copy versions of himself that were still alive, and because the ones that had been horribly maimed and mutilated often died at the hands of another Shadow Link as an act of mercy, there weren't any Shadow Links who remembered Dethl's torture.

At least, none that he was aware of. He was sorry for any clones who came into this world convinced that they'd been in the middle of dying because the Mirror had spawned them at a bad time, and had chosen the wrong Shadow Link to copy.

Something wet dripped along his fingers. Blood.

Shadow Link looked down at his tunic. He was covered in blood. So that means… I really did do that, he thought, Gleeok and the others, rest in peace you fuckers.

He didn't bother wiping the blood from his hands and he leaned back tiredly against the pillar. He hoped that, if another Shadow Link were to spawn, they would be spared his memories and receive ones from a different Shadow who hadn't had to do something so sickening. I had no choice though, he reminded himself. He'd seen the pile of disfigured, dead Shadow Links when he'd appeared from the mirror, and he'd also seen the unfortunate fate of the Shadow Link he'd ended up replacing. He also remembered witnessing the death of each of the Shadow Links that were dead in the pile.

Dethl would have continued to create a bigger pile of dead Shadow Links until the job had been completed, and in turn he would have had to endure more memories of seeing himself die. He'd been the one to end the… routine.

What Dethl was doing was insane. They said they were experimenting, that they wanted to know how to bring nightmares into reality. And because it was an experiment, they went about the entire process methodologically. The first experiment had been with...

Shadow Link clutched his head, trying to forget what had happened at the Desert Temple.

Dethl moved on to villagers, after that. They spent two days and two nights going around Hyrule, creating various 'mood manipulations' by painting horrible landscapes with bodies, not all of which were completely dead. Some of the villages made what had been done to Hyrule look like a cheerful remodeling. In fact, Dethl learned and improved upon each destructive visit so that the most recent 'redecorations' were the most gruesome.

The Nightmare couldn't read minds any longer, and could no longer alter the physical laws of the world in the same way they could in the nightmare realm. Shadow had expected Dethl to be less terrifying because of it, but he'd been wrong. So very wrong. In fact, their new limitation pushed them to be more and more creative.

An artist learns new skills when they are forced to create under limitations, and Dethl was no different.

And now Dethl had moved on to terrorizing monsters. Monsters, they claimed, had stunted emotions compared to Light World creatures like Hylians. However, they could still feel fear, even if it wasn't as intense as Hylians. Could they be brought into the same kind of nightmares, then, given the right kind of encouragement?

Shadow shuddered, thinking about the abominable amalgamation of several of the region's most powerful monsters. He could still hear Gleeok's rattled shrieks as he'd helped Dethl replace one of its heads with Frostare's eye. While both creatures were still conscious. He remembered the sickened expression on the other monsters' faces as they waited for their turn to be chopped up and put back together, while Dethl excitedly made observations about the different kinds of fear.

This… this wasn't what he'd wanted. He could care less about the Light World residents, but menacing fellow monsters like that was where he drew the line. It had gone past the point where he could just ignore what was going on. While Master Vaati had murdered some monsters, and many had feared him, the sorcerer had never done this kind of indiscriminate torturing that Dethl was doing. Master Vaati at least had a reason for doing what he did (the majority being disciplinary action), while with Dethl, one was tortured simply on a whim. Because it was two o'clock and it was cloudy. Because Gleeok's name had six letters in it and so they should be 'improved' with three other monsters.

"Hey."

Shadow Link looked up. It was another copy of him, although at this point it was impossible to tell if they were a copy of him, or if he was a copy of them.

"Dethl's left the palace," the other Shadow informed him. "I need your help."

The bloodied Shadow's expression hardened, and then he took the other's hand to stand up. He already knew what the other one wanted; they were the same person, after all. "The princess?" he asked. When the other Shadow nodded in confirmation, he began to walk quickly in the direction where Dethl had imprisoned Zelda.

He wasn't entirely sure why Dethl hadn't killed her yet, and instead kept her in an eternal sleep. Maybe it had something to do with what they kept referring to as 'the final nightmare.' What they were doing now, with the villages and the monsters, was only a series of trial runs before they unleashed a perfected nightmarish scenario. They also seemed to reference Master Vaati's near-obsession with the Princess of Hyrule, and had apparently wanted to figure out why the princess was so important.

At any rate, he had to get her out of here, not only from the Palace of Winds but from the nightmare that Dethl had trapped her in. He had no idea what he was going to do after he woke her up, but he couldn't just sit here and simply wait for Dethl to finish perfecting their nightmare world.

He'll be the first to admit that he'd messed up when he'd allowed Dethl to reach this world with the help of the Dark Mirror. All he'd wanted was to be in a world where he didn't have to be just a shadow anymore, and when he'd spoken to Dethl, he'd thought they'd wanted the same thing he did. He'd foolishly sympathized when they lit up excitedly as they discussed all of the new possibilities of truly living in the Light World. He'd vehemently agreed when they brought up the unjustness of Master Vaati preventing them from completing the Dark Mirror.

The bloodied Shadow reached the chamber where Princess Zelda was being kept. The other one remained at the door to keep a lookout, while he went inside. The princess was asleep on one of the palace beds. She appeared beautifully peaceful, although in a manner not unlike a corpse dressed and prepared for a funeral. Her gloved hands were crossed over her chest, and if she'd been holding a bouquet of flowers, she really would have looked like a body in a casket.

"All this time I was going after the wrong thing," he said with a sad smile, and brushed a strand of her hair away from her cheek. "You never treated me like just a shadow, did you Sheik?" He took her hand in his, and then lay down on the floor next to her bed. He held her hand tightly as he closed his eyes to sleep. "I'll see you real soon in your dreams. And when I do, we'll get out of this together."

fleets: Sooo yeah it was really tricky trying to figure out what Vaati's feeling right now, probably because he doesn't really know, either. It's also getting difficult for me to keep track of all the Shadow Links haha. Meh, it's late again so I don't really know what else to say right now. Thank you for reading, and for your wonderful comments! :)

Lunamew: Dethl is probably my most messed up villain to date. Most of the ones I've written so far are at least somewhat redeemable, but not this time, nope. Shadow probably should've just asked straight up why Vaati wanted the mirror to stay broken... though maybe Vaati never gave him a straight answer :s
I actually have an idea I really like regarding Ravio but... well you'll see ;)

fanakatsuki: Thank you! I'm not sure if 'enjoy' is a good way to describe my experience writing Dethl since they're so messed up, but it's been a new and interesting experience :)

Vesperupus: Dethl is definitely a new kind of villain I haven't really tried my hand at writing before. It's been interesting so far haha (although sometimes I worry for my sanity when I have to think of disturbing scenes for them ahaha)
Great point about the 'updated' memory thing. Not even Shadow himself really knows what's up with that, and I'm not sure it'll really be explained in this story. I'd say the mirror updates with a random Shadow Link who isn't dead or dying, perhaps with the Shadow Link closest to the mirror.
As for Ravio, I actually have an idea now that I really like! Can't say much more than that though ;)

Vaati's/Fuu's reaction these last two chapters gave me absolute crapppp. I had to go over it several times, trying to pretend being in their shoes, and... yeah that happened.

I think I should've thrown in an extra sentence or two about Zelda's reaction the last chapter. Ah well... I'll fix it eventually. You're right, the entire situation was overwhelming for everyone since, well, pretty much everything happened all at once D:

AquilaMage: Yup! Having Vaati remember everything at that moment in the last chapter would have been much too similar to what I did in my other stories. Shadow Link is... I mean yeah it's my fault I'm putting him in all of these awful situations, but I feel especially bad for him since I don't think I've ever written such a craptacular scenario for any of my characters before. Whoops...

SubZeroChimera: And the creepering continues...

SerpentTailedAngel: Ahhh no don't worry! I also did pump out chapters really quickly, please don't worry, you've been an amazing reader! (thank you ahhhh)
Ohhh I think I know what post you're talking about. That was partly the inspiration, but the true culprit is actually the Star Wars: The Force Awakens hype that happened right around the time I first started thinking about this plot ;)

The Star Wars hype got me thinking about one of my favorite games of all time: Knights of the Old Republic. If anyone is familiar with that game, then they'll see that the plot for this story + characters were heavily inspired by the KotOR plot (it involves an amnesiac 'villain' - but the way they handled it upset me, because no one really brought up the fact that messing with someone's identity is a morally crappy thing to do. The plot for this story is an indirect response to that).

And boy Shadow is paying for it. Hard.

Cattycheeno: Shadow also wonders how he's going to get out of this mess. RIP.

RayHollows: Hi there! Thank you so much for the review, and welcome! :D I know I said I wasn't sure I'd complete this, but I'm enjoying writing this so I probably will :) (I already know the ending to this story, and I really want to get there!)
Whether or not Vaati will go back to evil, hmm, it might not be a good thing if he does go to Twinrova and gets his memories back, yeah?
Urk I have sooo much I want to say in response to your other comments but ahhhh I can't. I guess I can only respond with more chapters haha XD Thanks again!

Lord Siravant: Dethl's a natural... yipes.
I really wasn't sure for the longest time whether the Dethl in this story would be an "it" or a "they." In Rend, 'it' seemed to work better, but in this story they're more like a collective hive mind kind of thing, so the plural seemed to make more sense. I didn't consider the angle that using 'they' might humanize them more (although, on some level I can't help but humanize villains in some way - Dethl in Demonbound is kind of like an apathetic scientist who wants to optimize nightmares in real life). I have a lot of difficulty writing just straight up evil characters with no motive other than insanity (which is really frustrating sometimes because I want to be able to write all types of different villains haha)

I've never seen Four Swords Misadventures, though I've heard it's hilarious! The stick idea came up partly because of this chapter, and also trying to think of something that might be found at the Desert Temple, that can also be used in a frightening way. Let imaginations run wild with what Dethl actually did to Shadow then.