Chapter Text
The quality of the air is altogether different enough for the prey hindbrain of any human to notice, even the sunlight streaming through the crumbling moss covered arches and tiger-striping the floor golden was off in some inexplicable way.
It is this brittle new light, far brighter than he’d ever encountered even in the furthermost reaches of the Gerudo desert that roused the sleeper.
He awakes- more dead than alive- with a haze in the back of his mind where his immediate short-term memories should be.
It is uncomfortably familiar- should humans be able to recognise what death feels like? Isn’t it meant to be beyond their scope?
He rouses slowly, dreamily.
The sky hangs high above in a whitewash-blue and birdsong originates from vibrant blue little rock thrushes, vivid yellow wood warblers and the occasional proud vermillion cardinal.
Somnambulistically our sleeper hauls himself upright.
The first thing of note is of course the arm, or perhaps he flicks his ears and feels something on them, or perhaps as soon as he opened his eyes there's something irritating in his field of vision, or maybe as he levered himself up he notices the tail lying beside him or perhaps none of these, but the sleeper is suddenly, coldly aware that this is not his body .
Have you, gentle reader, ever woken up in a body that is not your own? One should think not.
The universe stills for a moment, but the birds have no instinct for when life-altering realisations are happening and a sharp eyed raven decides it has enough of him brooding and cackles loudly not ten feet from him.
Our sleeper, suitably jolted out of his dumbstruck reverie, doesn’t know what to inspect first. His hands go up to his face and the obstruction in his field of vision is part of him- it’s his mouth. He tongues the inside of his mouth, opens it too. Those are not his teeth. They are far too sharp and situated entirely differently.
Do you know how uncanny and uncomfortable your entire mouth changing is, gentle reader? Something so internal, so well known and mapped suddenly being new territory?
As he’s probing his jaw his eyes catch on the sharp claws as they snag on his skin- his fur. Each dark gray finger is topped with a talon like a peregrine falcon’s, and one hand is bedecked in jewelry which glints lowly in the half-shade. The sight renders him frankly inarticulate, his elongated jaws opening and closing without a single sound.
A sudden noise has his ears flickering and there’s something on them- gentler hands cautioned by the razor sharp claws drawing pinpricks of blood from his face reach up to his ears.
Oh.
There’s nothing on or covering his ears, the sensation was his ears. They’re at least double the size and length and made of a much different composition than one should be used to- instead of malleable flesh he meets with fur and a thin membrane so the whole sensation is not unlike a dog or wolf’s ear.
They’re expertly mobile, swiveling to and fro at noises without his conscious thought.
His hair beyond the ears is thicker than it once was, and the strands which fell into his eyes were a much paler white than his normal blonde.
The tail snaps against the floor with a harsh sound, granite and a whiplike cord appendage colliding without either refusing the meeting- and it hurts.
As he focuses his consciousness there he can make it move, inelegantly of course- like a claymation with too few frames, it snaps side to side, unable to grasp the more dexterous fine-tuned commands.
Hylia’s light itself draws his focus lower, as a sunbeam shifts and his legs are illuminated. They’re a strange sight, an elongated arch and clawed at the end, covered in the same starling gray as his other limbs.
Having woken up once before in similar dire straits doesn’t help the sleeper, his mind half-convinced this was all a cruel nightmare or waking phantasm. However nightmares don’t have such acute pain- and in pain he was.
His right arm is burning, awash in cold flames of agony, particularly halfway up the bicep. He flexes his fingers and they respond without delay, sending fissures of icy molten lava up his right side, all the way to his neck where he has to tense so as to not cry out.
Refraining from movement for the moment, a closer inspection at the source of the most intense agony reveals that halfway up the bicep is a rift in the flesh, stretched over scar tissue marking a site where it looks as though somebody tried to saw through his arm. The two expanses of muscle meet with a rivulet- to obtain such a scar… how is it possible to have kept his hand intact?
Comparing the two arms yields a few interesting facts. His left arm is a slightly different shade of gray, the claws are less pronounced and of course, there is no jewelry adorning his left side.
Could it even be possible?
Could the arm be a prosthetic? He’s struck suddenly by the memory of malignant red otherworldly viscous sludge enveloping his right arm, feeling the agony unlike any other tearing its way through him.
He cautiously rotates the arm. It responds without even a millisecond delay. Reaching with his left, he interlocks his hands. The arm sends him signals of pain, it has nerve endings in it, and it feels alive under his other hand; pulsing in beat and giving off life affirming warmth.
So- it was still his arm perhaps? Or rather it was organic to this body which was not his. Why was he inhibiting it? Where was Zelda? Or the vile shriveled husk that reanimated? And where was he? And what of the sword?
There is no excuse to be inert, he needs to figure out the answer to these pressing matters.
Aware of the pangs like hot coals the right arm is pulsating up into his neck and jaw, he breathes out deeply (and isn’t it strange, how the air flows through his new morphology, the muzzle-snout thing letting the air out a millisecond later than he was expecting in an disorientating motion) and attempts to push off of the ground.
Attempts, because he crumples under his weight in less than a second. His body had been feeling the malaise of something being wrong without him consciously aware of it, and had now proven the issue.
He feels as weak as a newborn lamb, his limbs in no shape to hold a horizontal position, trembling like a tin roof in the wind.
Hylia on the high mountain, what was wrong with him!?
Groaning aloud is an endeavor with an altogether unexpected result, his vocalization coming out so much more gravely and animalistic than intended or was usual.
Around him is a semi-shaded circle, ancient stone walls enshrouding him overgrown with lichen and yellowing vines and ivy reaching overhead, crawling over the arches or rafters above him. The wall is not too far from him, and he is beyond the point of pride.
Thus he drags his awkward, trembling and spasming body inch by inch over to the wall, strength so abandoning him that he’s weaker than the newborn stable kittens.
Agonising minutes later he’s by the wall, his slow passage stirring up dust, swirling in the sunbeams and kicked up into his nose so that he has to snort and sneeze it out. His nose seems so much more sensitive now; he lets himself pity this fact for a second.
It is only the steel grip on the wall that lets him maneuver upright and he almost eats the floor the first step he takes.
Instinct wanted him to place the heel of his foot down, but his new anatomy was digitigrade and his efforts to reconcile his learned walking behavior with his means to execute such behavior is… less than graceful. He shambles forward with the disjointed movements of a puppet on a string.
His eyesight is also sharper, the green twilight under the canopy as easily perceived as though it were in bright sunlight. Here he spots the twisted, desecrated remains of the Sword that Seals the Darkness. She’s stuck unceremoniously in a gnarled knot of the roots bursting through the ground, half of her melted off into slag and leaving her edges brittle.
It might be here for the average person that they break down into tears, hysterics and wailing; it is now most would be prophesying their own doom. But our sleeper is the Fearless Hero, Hylia’s Chosen and the Champion of Hyrule. He helped defeat the Calamity five years ago.
Nothing could be as bad as that again.
Determined now, he grits his teeth and, trailing the curve of the wall, makes it both to where the Master Sword lay, and to the exit to the infernal chamber.
His scars pulse in time to the sword’s chimes as he picks it up- on his arm the skin where the guardian lasers struck is devoid of fur and a pale taut gray skin stretches over it instead. The evidence of his failures more than a century ago are no less harsh on this body than his own. If this is not his own body, that is. Empirical evidence would say that as he inhabits it, it is self-evident this is his body. It even bears his scars.
But he can’t quite face that reality yet.
“Ah, it is good that you are awake, Link!”
The right arm chimes and glows ephemeral; an ombre green to delphinium blue.
A growl too animal to be forgiven rips out of him unconsciously as he tenses, eyes darting around for the speaker.
“I am outside of the sanctum, come out to meet me and I shall explain everything. No doubt you are confused.”
He bites back another growl. He is confused. Anybody would be confused, regardless of how well orientated they are usually. The voice does not seem threatening, and if the figure behind the voice wanted to hurt him they had the chance to do so while he was comatose. The promise of answers is too tempting.
He turns towards the exit, seeing nothing beyond woodland and thistle from the archway.
The bravery of simply stepping through the archway is more than most can manage in a lifetime. It doesn’t feel like it though, as he wobbles and has to steady himself with the frame, legs trembling beneath him.
The tail, though untamed, does help balance him where otherwise he would have tipped over and went down like a lead balloon even with the wall stabalising him.
He doesn’t so much as walk through the doorway as much as he falls through it. There’s no wall to catch himself on so he falls on all fours, the impact jarring up his right arm like flashfire.
Hylia, how pathetic.
It’s intensely difficult to push himself upright again- is it even worth it? He’s just going to fall again.
He glances up, and before him is rough stone covered with myrtle and fine bladed grass trembling in the wind. The rugged stones form a pathway before him, leading to a barren stone cliffside undulating sharply upwards, dotted sparsely with trees and thistles, the occasional lanky flowering saffina a golden yellow.
It’s not going to be possible to climb that.
Here there only lived a few round bodied songbirds, fuzzy fat bees dropping and rising drunkenly and vicious mantids that preyed on the jewel-like dragonflies and monarchs, contested only by the witty char black ravens.
He looks upwards to see a massive ancient oak tree overshadowing the pathway.
Ears snap backwards and lips pull back to snarl at the sudden teal light appearing in front of him. His hand goes to the Master Sword and he tries to crouch in preparation but wobbles dangerously so he just straightens up.
A cold furnace of blue flame, before him appears. He has to tilt his head up slightly to be vis a vis with the figure who materialises.
Staring at him is a person with a face like a domestic rams, massive gray furred ears on which windchime-esque earrings hang and a furred lithe body covered in golden jewelry and a dark blue draping capelet. Shiny blue gems like shards of the sky captured eternal in amber were hung around their neck and waist- it makes him want to reach out and touch them.
Another ghost. Isn’t that something, awake without a clue as to where he is, irrecoverably changed and met with a ghost. Is this what he looks like? The gray fur- the large ears and the claw tipped hands…
Unable to speak, as usual, our hero is.
‘Who you?’ He signs clumsily as his fine motor skills all but abandon him, raising his eyebrows in askance.
Well. This new anatomy might make communication via sign a bit more difficult, he has no idea if the facial expression conveyed what he wanted it to. He lowers his hands, ignoring that they twinge in pain from such a simple action.
The figure tilts their head, gemstones on their ears tinkling as they hit each other.
“I am Rauru. I am truly happy to see you awake Link. I was not sure you would ever wake.”
He- the figure that is, presumably, he because of the deep and sonorous voice- drifts closer, feet never meeting the ground.
“That right arm there originally belonged to me, I had to replace your own arm as the infection had damaged it irreversibly- and such a contagion would have spread further unless the source be removed.”
He speaks with an odd cadence, pausing unnaturally and his intonation is uncanny- just slightly to the left of what Link is used to, and altogether otherworldly for it
“You may notice your physical form looks rather different.”
He pauses here. Oh is he waiting for an answer?
Cautiously, Link nods.
“I am truly sorry to have done so without your permittance, however your body was beyond saving. That arm of mine is imbued with sacred, celestial light, and it could cleanse some of the pestilence, thus preserving your life.”
‘Why change body?’ His signing capacities are so diminished by shaking of his hands, and the uncertainty that he's emoting the correct things with this strange anatomy.
All of this sounds plausible, he could sense Hylia’s light faintly from the arm but why the rest of him? And what reason did this Rauru have for helping him? How did he know Link’s name if he was dead, and they had never met in the flesh? Was he currently waving around a dead person's arm, like some sort of reverse possession?
Rauru for his part heaves a sigh, and with about as much ease as Atlas, continues:
“Your body rejected the arm. It was not built with a Hylian in mind- Zonai technology can work miracles, it could give me functionally with two arms where otherwise I'd have had one, but in this case nothing was taking. I was desperate and well, instead of trying to adapt a Zonai device onto a Hylian body, why didn’t I adapt a Hylian body to a Zonai device?”
That…. made no sense.
His body rejected the arm. That was bad because the arm was or is currently keeping him alive after-
A fetid pulsating mass, the pallid stars couldn’t shine light down here, the darkness as tangible as a creature of its own, those hateful red eyes, ensanguined parched withered corpse, and the agony thousandfold of flame, blasphemous tendrils crawling up his arm and Zelda falling-
Well. He didn’t expect to wake up either, after the blackness claimed his consciousness. A divine object keeping him from the hungry maw of death for the second time.
He opens his eyes, having not realised he shut them. Oh, so thats what concern-heartbreak-worry looks like on his new face, as he stares into Rauru’s deep wet eyes, shining with regret.
“I truly am sorry Link, I owe you my deepest apologies for enacting such a momentous change over your very body without consulting you, however it was the only way I could see to save your life.”
He growls, shaking his head as if to physically get rid of these thoughts.
‘How know name?’ He points to himself afterward, shoving the thoughts of his new body from his mind.
“Ah, Zelda told me a lot about you.”
So that's what amusement looks like on the caprine face of a…. Zonai, was it?
Wait. His ears perk up and he flinches forwards, almost toppling to the ground as the sudden movement jostles his weak limbs.
He finger spells Zelda’s name, slowly and carefully aware of his aching, trembling hands.
“Yes, Princess Zelda. She appeared before me and my wife back when we were still alive, and told of a most noble heroic swordsman who triumphed over a great calamity. She spoke very highly of you, and I’ve been looking forward to meeting you ever since.”
He feels his jaw drop open, confusion and embarrassment raging in his head. She described him like that?
‘Where?’
Rauru’s ears droop. Wow, is he also this expressive?
“I know no more than you do, Link. I have not left the garden, nor was I aware and awake for much longer than you.”
He looks out across the garden they were apparently in, the sun now at its zenith above them.
Link want to explore this new terrain, a habit he hasn’t been able to shake. Two years alone in the wilderness, without much socialisation, left its mark on his very bones. It is unfortunate then, that his knees buckle at the first step, and Rauru reaches out for him seemingly out of instinct.
He phases through the freezing cold absence of the ghost, slamming into the stone pathway and letting out a groan of agony as the impact shudders through his body, absolutely encompassing.
“Link! You must not push yourself! Your body has undergone massive stress and has been inert for long, so you must be careful.”
It’s humiliating, is what it is. He felt paradoxically both worse and better when he first woke up in the shrine, the same weakness seeping through every muscle but thinking about it, this time he fell because he underestimated his steps, his foot moving with the ingrained memory of a leg that was shorter than it was thus.
He doesn’t want to be careful, or go slow. His body shouldn’t be betraying him like this.
Rauru appears to be crouched next to him, hands hovering over Link.
“It might be prudent to talk to the Steward Constructs, they might be able to aid you with your recovery, or get you some clothes at the least…”
It is only then that he discovers he should probably be ashamed of his state of undress. Another relic of his life after the shrine, only slightly tempered by the sensibilities of Zelda and civilized society.
Murmuring a vague sound of agreement, he levers himself upright yet again. By Hylia, he hates feeling this weak.
He promised himself he would never be that weak again. He would never be not strong enough to protect Zelda.
What were all the trials for then? Why was Hylia testing him again? Was she even still watching
over him- or was this just some symptom of an uncaring, unfair universe?
“Come now Link, I will show you the way. We are currently in the Garden of Time, and where you awoke was the sanctuary…”
Link listens absently to what Rauru is saying, but his eyes remain fixed on the horizon line. There’s something strange about the washed out flaxen sky…
Every limb goes slack as he spies over the edge of one cliff, expecting a harsh drop, certainly, but being met with the vastness of empty air and clouds only.
“Ah, I forgot to mention of course, we reside now on one of several Sky Islands, ancestral home of the Zonai. Quite a distance from the surface world of Hyrule.”
There's a certain wistfulness in Rauru’s expression as he stares across the endless expanse of sky. Rauru doesn’t say anything further, just beckoning Link to follow him. Another massive revelation, quietly repressed.
He stumbles towards where Rauru leads him; towards these ‘Steward Constructs’. He walks as though someone completely alien to the mechanics of bipedal walking, tripping and having to steady himself on the sun warmed rocks and trees every few seconds.
Eventually they make it to a clearing past the sparse yellowing trees, to a point where there stand the remains of weather beaten moss covered archways and the warped, sun tortured shingles of the roof of an open air gazebo.
Rauru takes note of none of it, leading him to a curious little structure that Link can’t parse the meaning of.
“Unfortunately I cannot interact with the material world much otherwise I would have called them over to you instead of forcing you to walk here yourself, but they should respond to you.”
With that he gestures for Link to approach and mimes putting his hand against this object. Finding no reason not to do so, Link dutifully places his hand- Rauru’s hand - on the structure, only to jerk backwards and onto his ass when the thing moves , alight with the same teal hue of
the arm and extending upwards and out.
He hisses as he lands strangely on his tail (still not used to having a tail in the first place) but keeps attentive eyes on the creature-object. The parts of the object that previously had no discernable shape suddenly form a head and arms and apparent sentience as the thing tilts its head at Link, hands held placatively out in front of itself. It shudders and shakes as though from a century of disuse and innanimation before trilling mechanically at him
Luckily it does not seem disposed to aggression, though Link's hand has already wrapped around the feeble remains of the Master Sword. Apparently done with its inspection of him, the machine speaks;
“You are [Link]. I was tasked to give this to you, courtesy of [Princess Zelda].”
A compartment slides out of its body and within it rests- is that the Sheikah Slate?
He picks it up with the reverence one reserves for holy objects. He’d given it back to Zelda, and he got the version that Purah had managed to create with blood, sweat and tears and over two whole years- but not having the slate made him feel like a part of himself was missing. During his journey he’d wielded the slate as though it were an extension of himself.
“I have completed the transfer. My records indicate that [Princess Zelda] should be at the location marked on your [Sheikah Slate].”
He frantically checks the slate at that, opening the map function and seeing a glowing golden marker over a series of land masses completely unfamiliar to him.
“You will find her at the [Temple of Time], a building of great religious importance to the Zonai. It has fallen into disuse recently however and receives very few visitors.”
The construct swivels, its free floating plates of hewn stone clanking against each other. What it gestures towards looks nothing like the Temple of Time that Link is used to, none of the towering gothic windows, smashed open and letting in the sunlight and rain, but instead it is a conical shape that boasts impressive architectural skill and self-confidence.
“Ask them for clothing and tools, they shall do their best to abide by your requests.”
He tilts his head in curiosity. Link has proven himself to not be the most conversational of people, why couldn’t Rauru?
“They cannot see me, I’m afraid.”
Telling the truth, Rauru is, because after a moment of observation, indeed, the construct doesn’t react to Rauru’s presence. That is inconvenient.
‘Clothes food tools?’ He signs.
A valiant display of attempting communication, this is, but the construct warbles in its divine mechanical voice
“I apologise, I do not recognise the request you have made.”
Thrice-damned everything. Of course it couldn’t understand him.
He opens his mouth to talk but to his everlasting frustration nothing emerges. He can talk, has proved it before. He doesn’t even understand what is stopping him from speaking right now- it's an object for the Goddesses sake, and Rauru a ghost. What caused this sudden psychic nonverbal block?
Reduced to miming, he gestures to his body vaguely and pretends to put on a shirt. Thank all that is holy and good in the world it understood him and ventured off on its mission.
As the construct floats away in a silent, ghostly glide he spies a shimmering veil of green. A semi-circle of stone has a flat mirror of green energy rounding out the rest of the circle, a stylized hand in the center of it all.
Intuition has him staggering over and pressing his- Rauru’s - hand into it.
A sigil of blue energy sparks to light under his feet, just like the terminals at the entrance of the Divine Beasts, and a great shaking of the ground as a bridge of smooth carved limestone slides across from one isle to the next.
“Link, I do not think it wise to try to make it to the Temple in your current state. Please give yourself time to heal.”
A snarl etches itself onto his face.
Zelda was in there! He was tired of the dead dictating his life.
He stalks across the bridge with the most confidence garnering gait he can manage, and makes it across without veering off to his death on either side.
It is only at the end, by the steps that his feet tangle themselves up, and his frame trembles from exhaustion. He doesn’t fall but does lean heavily against one of the lamps, glaring at Rauru who carefully floats beside him.
“I know you are anxious to get to Zelda, but this way only leads to your death. Your body needs time to recover from your ordeal. You’re no use to Zelda dead.”
He huffs, refusing to agree with Rauru’s admittedly valid point, looking instead away and across the horizon. There was a dragon in the distance, too far to tell which one, and he drank in the comforting familiar sight.
Resting against the lamp and watching the sun crest slightly lower now, it isn’t more than ten minutes before the construct returns.
“I hope these are to your liking, they are traditional [Zonai] garb.” The construct hands him a dark green fabric and turns to its own affairs.
Putting the clothes on is a task of Herculean proportions for his clumsy hands. Little gods, what a finnecky piece of clothing, why did the weathered leather need to be laced so intricately?
There are also several pieces of delicate filigree golden jewelry much like the ones Rauru dons.
He is surprisingly eager to wear them. He’s always appreciated the jewelry Isha made but he never felt such an urge to reach out and touch quite like this.
There’s a bark of laughter and a look of sly vulpine amusement is contorting Rauru’s face.
“That must be the Zonai genetics at work. We’ve universally loved shiny things.”
The sentiment has the opposite intended effect on Link as he draws his hands back, ears flattening against his head. How much of his actions were truly him and not his altered body? Would he ever be able to trust that his desires were his own ever again?
“Ah I seem to have upset you.”
“LEAVE!” He snarls, the first word he’s spoken since he woke up. It comes out thin and reedy, sound producing organs so obviously not Hylian that it just further serves to upset him.
How dare he change who Link was fundamentally as a person and then act so normal about it!
“I’m sorry. I will leave, but please do not strain yourself or push beyond your capacities.”
There’s this awful coyling pity in Rauru’s eyes.
Don’t you dare presume to order me around, he thinks, hoping to get the message across with his bared teeth.
Looking less like a noble ghost and more like a wet stable cat, Rauru bows and vanishes into the ether as though he were never there.
The crackling fire of anger fuelling our brave hero now dies an unceremonious death, and with it too goes all the strength remaining in his body.
He’s alone. He wishes it wasn’t such a familiar feeling.