Chapter Text
❝ It is something that grows over time...a true friendship. A feeling in the heart that becomes even stronger over time... The passion of friendship will soon blossom into a righteous power and through it, you will know which way to go. ❞ - Sheik, Ocarina of Time
“Though the texts of yore have not been properly preserved over the course of time, the prevailing consensus reached is that the sword of legend takes on numerous appearances depending on the hero who wields it.”
Elder Impa scrapes her long, bony finger across the book in front of Ryunosuke, its path along the page weary yet still resolute in its intent. Ryunosuke blinks hard and tries to stifle a yawn. He is seven and history lessons with Elder Impa are dry and difficult to concentrate on, but he knows if he yawns in front of her, he’ll be scolded for being improper. He much prefers spending time with her outside of lessons when she reads him the books meant to be said aloud fast and they both can laugh when they end up saying silly sounds in their haste. He doesn’t know what this sword of legend is even really supposed to be, other than it sounding important.
“When the Goddess Hylia shed her divine form following the great war with the Demon King, Demise, and assumed the body of a mortal, her chosen hero courageously forged his blade into the Master Sword. No matter its appearance, there are two constants that always accompany its reunion with the hero of legend: one, the manifestation of the mark of the Triforce upon the back of the hero’s hand, and, two, the spirit of the sword’s resonance with said hero.”
Ryunosuke can feel his eyelids drooping. He recognizes that name, the Goddess Hylia—he’s been told over and over that supposedly he was once her, millennia ago. She was very powerful and he holds her sacred power within him, if he can just access it properly. That’s why they make him wear the uncomfortable white robes to go visit the springs and why he has to pray at her statues and why he has to learn all this boring history about someone who doesn’t even look the same in any two pictures in the books.
He’s her—or she’s him? It’s all very confusing and Ryunosuke doesn’t really like the idea of him actually being someone else or someone else being him. And he doesn’t like spending hours in cold water praying at creepy statues while the attendants stare at him like they’re waiting for something to happen. And he definitely doesn’t like their sad faces when nothing does happen (nothing ever happens). And he doesn’t like boring history lessons.
“Prince Ryunosuke!” Elder Impa’s voice reverberates like thunder.
He starts, then straightens his back like a ruler, with eyes wide and flittering around. “Y-Yes!”
Elder Impa frowns at him. “Please try to pay attention. This is important.”
“Yes, Elder Impa,” Ryunosuke exhales and he feels guilty. He tries to focus by opening his eyes as wide as he can and staring at the page—maybe if he doesn’t blink, it’ll help him concentrate better and he won’t be tempted to fall asleep. He hates getting scolded, but he hates disappointing Elder Impa even more than that. She’s strict, but fair, and Ryunosuke loves her very much.
“The Master Sword is the sword that seals the darkness and it is—”
Oh no, he blinked. He needs to try harder to focus on not blinking, so he can listen better.
“—Calamity—”
Ryunosuke lost his mother the year prior, but Elder Impa and Ursavra (the Gerudo chief and his mother’s once close friend) are like his other mothers. Or maybe Elder Impa is more like a grandmother—he doesn’t have one of those, so this conclusion feels more satisfactory. He loves them both and he doesn’t want to disappoint either of them. Even though they told him it’s not true, he still worries that the reason why his mother died was because he disappointed her too much.
“—sealing powers—” He’s focusing on not blinking so he can focus on what she’s saying.
And Elder Impa is old now, even for a Sheikah with their long lives. There’s even another Sheikah baby just recently born, named Susato, that’s in line to study under Elder Impa so that one day she can replace her. He still doesn’t fully understand all this talk about birthrights and replacements, but he does know it makes him feel awfully uncomfortable—how can you possibly replace someone else?
(His father says he’s going to have to replace his mother, now that she’s dead. Even though she wasn’t born with the mark of the Triforce, she still had traces of the goddess’s magical power that often accompanied members of the Royal Family. He’s a replacement for her, just like she was a replacement for her mother before her. And her mother’s father before that. And he’s a replacement for all the previous wielders of the Triforce of Wisdom reincarnated before him.
Shortly after he was born, a well-respected fortune teller foretold of Calamity Stronghart’s resurrection sometime after his twenty-third birthday, and that the sacred sealing power is needed to defeat him. That’s why his father still curses her, even in death, for not teaching him how to access his sealing powers quick enough, and instead wasting too much time coddling him and fooling around with a bow. His mother first awakened her powers at age five, without any guidance. He can’t feel any sort of divine power within him, even when given all the attention in the world and with the extensive trips to the sacred springs that use up valuable resources.
He knows he disappoints his father, for he makes it known often.)
“—The Goddess’s Chosen Hero—”
What he knows for certain is that he has some destiny already decided for him and everyone is expecting him to fulfill it, whether he wants to or not. And that no matter how scary it sounds, there’ll come a time when he’s to face Calamity Stronghart, and he doesn’t want to disappoint anyone when that happens. So, he tries to do his best.
And he knows that there’s another person somewhere out there whose destiny is intertwined with his, holding the Triforce of Courage. He just hopes they’re nice and they can become friends.
“—the three wielders of the Triforce—”
He tries to do his best in the role given to him. But he fears his best isn’t good enough.
A yawn escapes him. He blinks.
“Hiyah!” With a loud snap, Kazuma’s wooden sword makes quick work of the small branches he’s laid out on a rock. After his finishing slash, he jump-spins his body around and does a simple flourish. He fumbles a bit with the final twist, but catches it before it can fall out of his hands and concludes the performance by thrusting the sword skyward in a wide stance. The red ribbon tied around its hilt catches in the breeze.
“Well done,” his father says with a sharp smile, applauding him.
Kazuma is seven and the moments when he can practice using his sword with his father are the ones he treasures the most. With the recent uptick in monster sightings, his father is to be deployed as the commander of a specialized squad of knights in the coming weeks for an unknown amount of time. But any span of time his father is gone is much too long in Kazuma’s eyes, so he wants to make the most of the time he has left with him.
“I’m going to work hard on my training every day!” Kazuma exclaims, resting his fists on his hips with his chest puffed out and a determined grin stretched across his face. “So that when you come back, I’ll be ready to become a knight, just like you!”
He loves the feeling of accomplishing something, but he loves the pleased look on his father’s face even more than that. He can be strict, but his judgment is fair, and Kazuma loves him very much.
“Is that your resolve, then?” His father laughs, a gravelly rumble. “But I don’t expect to be gone quite that long. You’d be the youngest knight in the history of Hyrule, I’d wager.”
He wants to make his father proud, in any way possible. He already knows he is proud of him, for, despite his reticence, he makes it known often through his actions.
His father waves him over with a “Kazuma, come here.” He holds up his prized sword, the treasured heirloom of the Asogi clan, as Kazuma watches the sunlight reflect off the lacquered finish of her scabbard with wide eyes. “Remember this, your sword is your soul. And one day, you will inherit this very sword, just as I have from my father before me. Mighty Karuma, she compels her wielder to slice evil in two.” Kazuma tracks his gaze firmly along the length of her. She feels… Alive, in some way.
“But for now”—his father lowers the sword and points to the wooden one fastened to Kazuma’s sash—“you must take care of that one as if it’s your soul, as well.”
Kazuma nods, but he can’t take his eyes off of Karuma. He’s well acquainted with the blade and this is hardly the first time his father has shown him her, but, here, something feels different about her. As he focuses, it starts to become clearer: he can hear a faint melody.
“Will my sword begin to sing just like Karuma does?”
His father gives him a quizzical look. “What do you mean by that?” He lifts Karuma again to look at her more closely.
“Can’t you hear it?” Kazuma asks, face going lax in wonder. “Karuma’s singing. Listen.” The light flit of the flute mixing with the non-organic-sounding, yet still pleasant vocalizations make him feel like he’s floating high above the clouds.
He reaches up with his right hand towards her. His fingertips graze the hilt, and the back of his hand becomes illuminated in brilliant light. There: a larger triangle comprised of three smaller triangles, each outlined in a glowing gold—the bottom-right triangle the brightest of them all and fully filled. The light is mesmerizing and he can’t look away. It feels enthralling. It feels warm. It feels—
“Ow!” Kazuma cries as his father grabs his wrist and yanks his hand away. Horror stains his father’s face, skin pallor as white as Cucco feathers. “W-What?” His father grips his wrist tight and it hurts. He stares up, dazed, at his father’s crazed eyes.
“No, this can’t be…” his father mutters, voice low. “Not him. No, he’s much too young to be wrapped up in all this…” He squeezes harder.
“F-Father, stop! It hurts!”
His father releases his grasp with a start. “I’m, I’m sorry,” he says shakily, then places his hands on Kazuma’s shoulders. “Kazuma, listen to me. This is of the utmost importance. Don’t speak of this to anyone else. Your mother and I, we are the only ones to know. Do you understand?”
Kazuma shakes his head and he feels like he’s about to cry. He can’t cry—not if he’s to become a knight. “What, what happened?”
His father shakes his shoulders lightly, yet with an intentional force behind it. “Cast it away from your memory and make no mention of anything that happened here. Do you understand?”
Kazuma swallows the lump in his throat and nods, even though he doesn’t understand what’s going on at all. Then, he watches his father get up and briskly walk towards their house.
“I need to speak with your mother. Stay out here and play.”
He waits until his father is inside to look at the back of his right hand again. The mark is gone and so is the singing.