Quick note: I will focus on which timeline this story takes place in later.  Plus, many features of the story are subject to change, and many more will be added as soon as possible.

   
    In my Zelda fanfic, the kingdom of Hyrule is set in a more modern setting.  What I mean by this is that the tried-and-tested colorful medieval style we all know and love in this franchise combines with the modern advancements we all enjoy in the 21st century.  The following are a few examples of this:

1. There's a mix of medieval and modern architecture, like a merger of handcrafted stonework with elements of the modern-day towers and skyscrapers we see from day to day, whether it be in person or on the Internet. 

2. Many people still use the traditional methods of travel within and outside of Hyrule (horse-riding, sailing), but a good portion of the kingdom also utilize wagons and other types vehicles that use an anti-gravity propulsion system based on technology originating from the early, ancient times of Hyrule.

3. Hyrule's best and brightest have even worked out ways to expand Hyrule's infrastructure by using the ancient Hylian technology to create islands (like Skyloft) capable of being suspended at various heights according to each island's overall size, the size of the population they are designed to support, their own infrastructure, and their location in relation to the original landmarks of Hyrule (Death Mountain, Lake Hylia, etc.).

    A more definitive list of characteristics for Hyrule in this story will come later.

Story:

    The kingdom of Hyrule has experienced a grand period of 3,000 years of peace and prosperity since the discovery and reverse-engineering of their ancestors' ancient technology.  This period has been known as the Era of Courage (may change).  During the Era of Courage, the Royal Family of Hyrule has strengthened the kingdom's ties with old allies, forged bonds with new friends, and peacefully settled disputes with rival kingdoms.  Many things have changed and improved, but one thing remains constant in Hyrule: the story of the legendary Hero of Time.
    At this point, the valiant efforts of the Hero are still told and honored by the tales told by the elders of Hyrule's various races and the proper care and passionate protection of the "treasures" the Hero left behind.  Now, there is a force that is considered to be the greatest representation of the Hero of Time: his descendants, the Kingston Family.
    At the establishment of the Era of Courage every male that was ever born into the Kingston Family has been named to honor the Hero.  For example, Leon Isaiah Nathaniel Kingston, the main protagonist, and his father, Lionel Idris Noel Kingston, have their first and middle names line up with their family name in order to make initials that spell out the name of the Hero, and serve as an important part of their heritage.  In addition, the females can be given names in the same style as the males, but it is optional.
    Leon is currently 16 years and has a birthday coming up soon.  He's good friends with other teens from Hyrule's various tribes, including the Gerudo.  He's even a good friend of the princess Zelda.  Leon has several admirers, including his childhood friend Xena.  He doesn't know, and she has had serious feelings for him since they were 10, but she could never bring herself to confess to him because she didn't want to make things awkward between them and because he had other girls who would come up to him and ask him out.
    Even though Leon appreciates his family's heritage and the sacrifices they made to protect Hyrule, he personally doesn't feel any real connection to his ancestors or their deeds.  For his entire life, Leon has always felt that his life was simply ordinary, and that it would never change.  However, on his 17th birthday, Leon's life would go down a path he never expected to happen.  To celebrate his 17th birthday, Lionel and his wife Sophia encourage Leon to invite his friends, including Zelda and Xena, and have the party at their house.  Everybody's having fun, enjoying the food, the music and each other's company....until a group of six dark figures show up at the Kingston residence.
    The leader of these "teens" claims that he and his group are friends of Leon, Zelda, and Xena, but the three say they have never even seen them before.  During the short conversation Sophia had with the suspicious group, a loud bang went off behind the house, and a blinding light caught Leon's crew by surprise.  During the distraction, the uninvited guests barge their way into the house, knocking Sophia aside, quickly surrounded the group, and attempted to take Xena and Zelda.  However, the six fiends were easily repelled by Leon and his father, who were barely affected by the distraction.  After underestimating the combined power of Leon and Lionel, the rogue group's leader orders his men to retreat to the "safe zone", knowing the odds were stacked against them.  Refusing to allow the assailants to escape, Lionel rallies some of the other knights in his neighborhood to help him capture the rogues.  Leon offers to go along, but Lionel refuses, telling him to stay behind and look after his mother, siblings and friends.  Despite the command from his father, Leon sneaks out behind his house, finds his trusty steed Epona, and gives chase after his father's posse.  After a five-minute high-speed pursuit, Lionel and his fellow knights corner the would-be kidnappers against a rock wall deep in the upper southeastern section of the Faron Woods, close to one of the gateways into the Kokiri Forest.  Thinking that they had the advantage, Lionel and his posse surround the dark figures.  However, Lionel sensed that he and his men had went from being the hunters to the prey.  By then, it was too late.
    After hearing a few explosions and the sound of clashing metal, Leon and Epona sped up the pace and finally arrived at the rock wall, only to find the posse lying down in defeat, save his father, who was taken as a prisoner.  Despite their injuries, the posse would survive.  A few seconds after his arrival, Leon's friends showed up, saying that they will not allow their "brother" to fight alone.  Xena, Zelda, and some of Zelda's personal bodyguards stayed behind to tend to the wounded posse, while Leon and his "brothers" gave chase after the rogue figures.
    The young men track the rogues to an old abandoned sawmill.  After confirming that Lionel was inside and tied up against one of the mill's support columns, Leon and his friends position themselves at different points of the mill.  Leon chooses to walk in first and tell his friends to wait until he gives the signal, a hawk cry, for them to burst in, knowing that the rogues were only expecting him to arrive.  As he rushed over to his father to untie him, Leon gets ambushed by five of the rogues, but is able to engage and beat them back with superior speed and strength.  Despite this, Leon is caught off-guard by a sneak attack by the rogues' leader.  After dodging the attack, Leon attempts to give the signal to his friend, but he instead finds himself instantly bound in shadow chains, a dark magic technique that hasn't been seen in Hyrule or anywhere on Earth in over three millennia.  The rogues' leader steps forward and brandishes an ancient round, polished mirror in front of Leon.  The artifact radiates a purplish-black light, and begins absorbing Leon's power, along with a portion of his life force.  Despite the restraining force of the shadow chains and the draining effects of the weird artifact on his body, Leon fights back, using some of the defensive magic techniques he learned from Zelda in an effort to break free of his unwanted restraints and the vortex-like pull of the artifact.  Overly delighted with Leon's display of hidden power, the rogues' leader intensifies the mirror's power, hoping to crush the young knight's spirit and take what his master desired.  However, Leon's resolve only grew stronger, and he suddenly found himself brimming with a power that he had never known before.  Then Leon looked down to his left hand, and saw the mark that many of his predecessors, including his father, had earned during times of crisis.  After seeing this, the rogues' leader attempted another power increase, but Leon gave the signal to his friends.  As his friends burst in from their positions, Leon put all of his focus into the newfound strength granted to him by the mark on his left hand, frees his left hand, grabs his sword, gathered energy into the center of his body, and pivoted quickly and forcibly on his left foot.  The movement unleashed a powerful wave of wind and energy that smashed the rogues' leader against the wall on the other side of the sawmill.  As Leon's friends finished fighting the other rogues and untying Lionel from his chains, Leon cautiously approached the rogues' leader, kicked the artifact away from him, and pulled back the hood covering the leader's face.  The leader of the dark group was a young man with a complexion similar to the Gerudo, but he had jet-black hair with silver streaks and crimson eyes.  To the teens, the rogues' leader was a stranger; to Lionel, he was a familiar face that he thought was gone for good.  After seeing the shock on Lionel's face, the rogue group leader gave a sinister grin and said, "What's wrong Kingston?  It looks like you've seen a ghost." He then looks at the young men who bested his group, finally resting his gaze on Leon.  He then said, "You youngsters are probably wondering why my old buddy Lionel is so shocked to see me, and why I and my comrades attempted to take your lovely friends away.  As much fun as that would be, I can't do that.  It would be rude to my master to spoil the details of his "grand party" so soon.  However, I will say that I cannot wait until my master has regained his true power."  After hearing this, Lionel tells Leon to step back as he prepares to bind the rogues' leader.  Before he was able do that, the rogues' leader unleashed a small sphere that burst open with blinding light.  After that, the leader grabbed the glistening artifact, and teleported himself and his group away.
    After returning to their family's home, Lionel tells Leon and his friends that the leader of the dark fiends that attacked them was Draq Moriarty, a huntsman who was one of the Hylian military's top-rated navigators.  In an attempt to acquire power, Moriarty betrayed Lionel on a routine recon mission and provided his "newfound comrades" with intel that was going to be used to capture or assassinate Zelda's father, Alexander Wilhelm Hyrule.  However, Moriarty's plans were thwarted by Lionel and his team, who were able to escape their captors and quickly warn the king.  Lionel and his team, along with King Alexander himself, led some of Hyrule's best warriors on a covert mission to intercept Moriarty and his forces in a secretive place in order to prevent all-out war from breaking out and to maintain peace throughout the kingdom and the entire world.  The mission succeeded, with no casualties on Hyrule's side, and Moriarty's forces either killed or captured.  During the battle Lionel and Draq himself engaged in a battle to the death.  Using one of the Kingston Family's signature secret spin attacks, the Great Spin, Lionel dealt a lethal, direct horizontal strike to Moriarty's solar plexus.  The force of the attack sent Draq flying off the edge of the cliff on which the two warriors fought, and into a 300-meter drop into the West Hylian Sea.  After hearing this, everyone else understood why Lionel so very shocked to see that his former teammate survived their last battle.  After consulting with Sir Michael Motagne, one of King Alexander's personal historians, Lionel confirmed his fears of the artifact that was used on Leon were true: Moriarty had somehow managed to acquire the Mirror of Creation, a powerful magical mirror that gives the user the ability to see into the soul of the person being reflected in the mirror.  In addition, the mirror enables the user to take a certain amount of a person's energy and even a portion of their life force in order to create a new being or beings with features based on the subject's unique energy signature and vitality.  Leon stated that he did feel like he was getting weaker the longer he was exposed to the Mirror of Creation, almost to the point that he lost consciousness.  While Moriarty's true intentions were still unknown, one thing was certain: evil was on the rise again, and it was determined to destroy any and everything that is good and pure.
    Draq and his allies stretched and checked their gear after teleporting to their safehouse in the Haunted Wasteland.  He placed the round, polished artifact on a massive stone platform covered in ancient Gerudo script, which then started to glow rays of light in various shades and tints of red, yellow, and orange.  On the other end of the platform, a large, elderly man covered in dark robes asked Draq, "Did you acquire what I asked of you?"  "Not all of it, my lord.  The young man proved to be much stronger and smarter than I thought," answered Draq.  Even though I only used 30% of the mirror's full power, he was able to resist it despite the fact that he is very inexperienced in defending against this level of magic."  As he peered into the mirror, the elderly man saw for himself why his disciples were not able to fully complete their task.  After a low, rough snicker, the elderly man said, "No matter.  I'm not surprised that you and your team were not able to take all of his power.  He is a true Kingston, living up to his father's standards as a Hylian Knight, and maybe even the standards of their predecessors.  Even you must admit that, Draq."  Draq responded, "After my last battle with Lionel, I'd be a fool to say no, my lord."  The elderly man then said, "We have more than enough to create a warrior who will possess the same level of willpower to help us realize our goals.  Do not forget: by absorbing a portion of his life force, you have also absorbed the countless years of experience embedded within his soul.  That, combined with the dark magic of my predecessors, will enable our new warrior to equal and even surprise young Leon."  Draq then responded, "I understand.  We will begin the creation ritual whenever you are ready my lord."  The elderly man then created a bomb-sized sphere of highly-charged dark energy, and placed it into the mirror.  After a few seconds, the mirror's reflective surface shimmered like water, and then the dark sphere sunk into the mirror.  "Draq, I leave it to you and the rest of your team to complete the creation ritual," said the elderly man.  "We will see it through, my lord," responded Draq.  As he walked back to his quarters, the elderly man said, "Soon, the peace and prosperity these fools have experienced for far too long will come to an end, and my time will begin."

Hey guys!

    It's been a while since my journal entry and my last submitted piece.  I got really busy with my current career over the past few months, and I basically got lazy in setting back up the equipment I need to upload my art work, even though I spent a good six weeks back home and plenty of downtime to make and upload new artwork.  After my little "vacation" back home, I moved to Virginia to meet and perform another requirement of my career, and during the move I left my printer/scanner behind.  I've had time to set up a mailing address at my current apartment, but b/c I haven't met a specific requirment for my current job, I may be transferred to a new office, so I chose not to set one up. 

    However, that will no longer be a excuse: until I'm positive that I will not leave my current job, I'll upload phone pics of my art work to keep you guys up to date.  Also, I'll get back to uploading journals to let you all know what I'm working on art-wise, and how soon I'll upload it.  Talk to ya later!

Quick update:

Sorry for the lack of new artwork for the past two weeks.  I did have some drawings I wanted to upload, but I chose not to whip up anything last minute because I prefer to take my time making artwork, whether it's finished pieces or sketchwork.  Expect to see some new material in my gallery during the week.  Hopefully, next weekend will be FAR different than this one and last weekend.  Take care guys.

Sup guys:

Sorry for not posting anything at least by Sunday night.  I actually got so caught up with being reinvigorated with artwork, that I chose to wait until tonight to upload anything new.  To get to the point: I have uploaded new figure drawings in my Scrapbook for you guys to critique me on.  I also hope those sketches will help you if you need it.  Plus, I have uploaded the main reason for why there wasn't an update during the weekend: my latest fan art submission titled The Captain.  It's my tribute to the epic F-ZERO champion Captain Falcon.  Expect to see more sketchwork in my Scrapbook, as well as new features to my Gallery.  Talk to you guys soon!