Chapter Text
Warm sunlight coats his back as he wakes up. There is a soft voice in his ear and a rumbling below him. When he opens his eyes and looks up, he sees who the voice belongs to. There is a halo of light around his head from the rise of the sun, made even brighter by the miles of sand surrounding them. He says something, but it is in a language he does not understand. It feels like he should, and he has a vague impression that it is some form of greeting. He responds back, saying something in a language he does not know, and looks around them.
“ Good morning, my light. Did you sleep well? ”
“ Morning, my King. I always sleep well in your arms. ”
The thumb from the hand on his waist starts circling on his hip, and he shivers at the contact. They are lying on quilts and furs on a stone balcony, plants spread around to each corner of the area. The tops of palm trees are just below the floor level, but he knows this is one of the lower balconies. He doesn’t know how he knows that, but he does. He knows this is one that is hardly visited by the people, because the only view it has is sand. He sits up, off the person below him, and they reach out a hand, trailing up his sleeve to clasp around the arm cuff on his upper arm. A gift, from one of their first meetings.
A faint smile appears at the corner of his lip as his thumb runs along the edge of the band, along the inside of his arm.
Now that he is sitting up, he can see them clearly for the first time. Beautiful, is his first thought, followed by mine with a degree of proudness he doesn’t think he’s ever felt in his life. His view darkens before fading to black, and he wakes up.
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The dreams started in the fall. The leaves haven’t yet changed, but the air is crisp, and the harvest is plenty. A slight breeze blows through Link’s window, carrying the thoughts of those who care to listen, and those who have no choice but to hear. Maybe it is because of those traveling thoughts that the dreams start happening, but he cannot say for sure. The dreams themselves are strange, coated in the warmth of a sun he hasn’t met, but feels familiar, nonetheless. It feels like home, in the same way that Ordon village does, has come to be through the years.
He doesn’t know how it is possible, that a dreamscape has the same feeling as the village he has made his home, let alone how he remembers these particular dreams in more clarity than any of the others. It’s what makes them so strange to begin with, regardless of the strange architecture, never ending sand, and…him.
He had talked about them before, but only to Rusl, who had looked at him and said he was bound for greatness. He had smiled and said that they were gifts. Guidance from the goddesses to the journeys he would have, or had already had in another life. Rusl believed in those, and believed in the greatness of the goddesses most of all. When he had described the buildings, and the sand… so much sand… he had chuckled and handed him a thin stick and a knife and told him to sharpen it.
“Those who see the desert are either blessed or cursed, and I do not believe you are cursed. From the day you walked into the village as a kid, I think we all knew the goddesses would do anything to protect you.” He rubbed a hand down the side of his pant leg and fiddled with a loose thread, then continued, “I don’t think anyone’s told you, but after you showed up, there hasn’t been a famine. All our food has been enough, and the people have been protected from the creatures beyond the bridge.”
Rusl turns to look at him as he finishes, slight smile on his face. He isn’t really involved in the farming section of the village, being a retired soldier and everything, but he helps out every now and then. And usually takes care of the fishing for the village too, with Collin’s help. Link can’t even begin to count the amount of times he’s sat with Rusl on the shore, fishing rod in hand and back and forth conversation in between each catch.
Link looks down at the stick in his hand, switches his grip on the stick and slides the knife down its length, sharpening it into a point.
“What about the people?”
He had seen people in the dreams, people that weren’t like those of the village, with dark sun-tanned skin, red hair, and a daunting presence and stature. The gerudo, Rusl had explained, hadn’t been around in forever. Supposedly, they had either been wiped out after the last King had succumbed to the curse, or had been forced out after the city’s destruction and were so scattered there was almost no hope of finding any of them. And then, after their city was lost, that same King had tried to take over Hyrule. It had taken everything for the sages to lock him away before that happened.
“Now he – he was cursed, like you wouldn’t believe. Legend says there is a single male gerudo born every hundred years, and that he is destined to be King every time. It’s a double-edged sword, and they always come into the land with the world resting on their shoulders. Gotta be, what with the curse on any male from the Gerudo.”
Rusl looks up at the sky, then, as if recalling some distant memory.
“’A dormant evil resides within, and anything can cause it to take over and bring about their destruction.’”, he quotes, changing his voice to a grandiose proclamation, complete with throwing an arm out in display. “It’s like a sick joke at this point. History has so many recordings of the kings’ betraying their people for the curse, but none as bad as the most recent one. They say his mages tricked him, and it was enough for the curse to latch on to his moment of weakness and destroy them.”
He reached down into the sand and soil mixture at their feet and grabbed a smooth, flat rock. He turned it over in his hands carefully as he spoke, as if the king himself were bound to it, before skipping it across the surface of the water in front of them.
Whenever they had chats like these, they would always go here, far enough from the rest of the village that curious ears wouldn’t eavesdrop easily. Somehow Rusl could always tell what kind of chat it would be, just by looking at him, and would make some excuse to drag him away.
Being a soldier for so long made it hard for Rusl to relate to the other villagers. Hard to even hold conversations for too long on some days. And then Link had wandered into the village as a child, torn up and dirty and on the verge of falling over from exhaustion. The village had taken him in, but Rusl had become his closest friend of them all. It was nice to have someone so similar to him, to his upbringing, even if he couldn’t really remember it.
There were certain things about being a soldier that the others wouldn’t particularly relate to. The nightmares, for one. They both got them, but Link’s had been fewer now that his dreams of the sand had taken up his nights. He still thought about them, and they both had days where they would just go quiet. Speaking got too hard, sometimes, when letting his eyes close meant seeing every nightmare imprinted on his eyelids. When his thoughts were so loud that speaking them felt like a betrayal. It felt like there was an internal fracture in his brain that would get nudged every so often by thoughts, feelings, environments, and anything else that could affect a person in a positive or negative way. The only problem for them was that it was mostly negative responses.
Most of his nightmares were from the time before he became a part of the village, what little he could remember. But there were also flashes of himself on different adventures, from a moon that crept ever closer, a train, falling through clouds, to fighting a weird mechanical spider that looked like an upside down pot. The point was, they were weird dreams. One that didn’t feel like him, specifically, but with a faint familiarity that made him believe they were, to some extent.
He’d never asked about Rusl’s, just like Rusl had never asked about his. It was an unspoken agreement that the terrors they faced in their own minds would remain there, never to plague another victim if they could help it.
He looks back over at Rusl, who is staring into the water at his feet. It’s lapping at the shore from the gentle currents being created by the small waterfall at the back, which seems to come from an infinite supply. As far as he knows, it does.
“I just don’t know where I am supposed to fit into it. Why am I seeing glimpses of someone else’s life? Is there a reason why I need to know about it?” Link pushes the knife just a little too hard, and the tip of the stick snaps off, landing in the water with a tiny plop.
Link’s face contorts, and Rusl laughs at his misfortune.
“Link, like I said earlier. It’s bound to be a blessing from the goddesses. With all blessings, it does take some time for people to realize the meanings behind it. I’m sure all you need is time, and everything will make sense. Have faith in the goddesses.” He gives Link’s shoulder a friendly punch, and he jerks with the movement, just a little bit.
And then Rusl tells him about the gift for the Princess: a sword he forged with the practiced skill of a man who knows how to do too many things. It’s supposed to be delivered soon, and he asks Link to deliver it in his place. ‘A chance to see the world’, he says, and he’s stunned. Couldn’t have predicted the request if he was told it would happen from the lips of the goddesses themselves. But he agrees, because, hey? Why not? It could be fun.
And then the world goes to shit.
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His heart was racing as he pushed his way along the dark tunnel, hand catching on a loose stone and tearing his palm, sending a hot flash of pain through his fingers and up his wrist. He trapped the groan of pain in his throat and kept moving. Pain was not important right now. He had to stop the traitorous mages from killing the future of the Gerudo. He sped up, pushing faster and harder along the packed sand below, until a chamber opened up before him, covered in the soft light from the torches lining the wall in even increments. While still faint, the lights were still bright enough that the sudden change forced him to blink until his vision cleared.
The mages were standing in a circle around a hole in the ground, with a beam of light from above shining directly down into the chasm below. Faint tendrils of a purple red mist crawled up the edges, but never quite reached. There were eight mages, standing around the ring with their hands raised, palms up, while they chanted. It wasn’t the language of the Gerudo, but something older, stranger, with an echo that reverberated around the entire cavern.
He pushed off the wall towards them, brandishing his scimitar.
If they were going to kill his husband, he was going to take as many down as he could before they got the chance.
His chest heaved, anger permeating his senses and drowning everything but the mages in front of him out. His blade caught the light as he swung towards the mage closest, slicing through his shoulder and down towards his abdomen as the mage screamed in anguish. He pushed him forward into the pit and moved to the next, and the next, and the next.
One by one each mage fell into the pit, dead, until it was only the head mage left. She had been a trusted confidant, had been in charge of looking towards the civilization’s future. But she had also been his first friend in the city, and so her betrayal burned through him like the ash in the air from the Goron mines, tearing at his chest and tensing his muscles.
She walked towards him, dark cloak swaying with her steps. She paced along the ring of the chasm with slow, confident steps.
Good job, vakht. I was waiting to see how long it took until you figured it out. Too bad the King won ’ t be able to save you. You ’ ll be long dead before he even gets here. Before he realizes where you are. ”
She stepped into part of the light, the only part to stray from the chasm, and allowing it to illuminate her face. White paint covered her forehead, around her eyes, and then tracked down her cheeks in four mostly solid lines; only broken where her fingers had momentarily lifted. The fifth line went down her nose, stopping just before the tip, skipping over the mouth, and continuing from the chin down the throat.
It was a look he had seen on her many times; one made for ceremonies and the use of her abilities. But the look in her eyes was new, a deep-set hatred that made him reevaluate every conversation he had with both her and her wife. They flashed through his mind, from dinners over a table, to learning the language, to falling asleep on their couch.
He bounces on the balls of his feet before lunging towards her.
She pulls a knife from her thigh and races towards him, slashing and dodging in turn. They make a full circle around each other as they each make attacks.
And then he slips. His foot hit the edge of the cavern and pulls him down, but he catches the edge with his hand, scimitar bouncing off the walls below him and clanging at the bottom of the pit.
He makes to pull himself up, but she steps towards him and crouches down to look at him.
“ Oh, well that ’ s no fun. ” She clicks her tongue. “ I can ’ t have you die like that. Gotta have a body for your king, after all. ” She hauls him up into the air from the back of his neck, boosted by her magic. She flips the knife in her hand.
“ Welcome back, vakht.” Hot pain shoots through his side and tears across his abdomen, and she tosses him across the cavern, where he slides in the sand and collides with the wall.
He can’t stop the pained sound that escapes him, and he chokes in as much air as he can as his vision spots with little black dots.
He doesn’t know how long he’s out for, but when he wakes, there is a warm palm against the side of his neck, and a voice in his ear.
“ Lirien, oh goddesses, Lirien. Baby, you ’ re gonna be okay. It ’ s gonna be okay, oh goddess that ’ s a lot of blood. ”
The name is familiar, like it is both his and someone else’s. He doesn’t know. Hands press to his stomach, but he can’t feel it, can only barely see it because his head has been slightly propped up. His vision clouds and goes dark.
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He’s looking at his body. It’s been torn open from the knife, and his skin is so pale it’s almost translucent. There’s a puddle surrounding him that keeps getting bigger. It’s staining the knees of whoever he is viewing through. Their vision is so blurry now, but it’s not from an injury. He can tell that much. The emotions radiating off him are…sad…but there’s an underlying fear, and anger too.
They’re tears, he realizes, as the body shakes around him. And then, there’s something else with them. The edges of his vision turn shades of purple and red, and the body whips around.
The thing in the ground. It’s made it to the top.
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