Chapter Text
The first two days following the defeat of Calamity Ganon had passed in a blur. Princess Zelda - could she still be called princess?- did think that, considering the semi-corporeal state she had been stuck in for a hundred years fending off the most vile evil Hyrule had ever known, she was justified in being more than a bit shell-shocked. She remembered an achingly familiar boy approaching her slowly with blood just starting to dry at his temple and eyes that held the exhaustion of more than just a lack of sleep and smiling at her. Hesitant and a bit afraid but a true smile nonetheless. Oh, how she had missed that smile.
‘May I ask…Do you really remember me?’
That was what she had asked him; her dear, brave knight Link who had overcome so much, all for a life he had not even remembered when he woke in the Shrine of Resurrection. The nod she received in return meant more than words ever could, and when she rushed forward to meet him, relief washing over her in waves and bringing tears to her eyes, she thought for the first time in many years that everything would be alright.
The next few days felt as if they were just an extension of the hundred year long dream state she had been in while keeping Calamity Ganon at bay. Reality did not yet feel quite real enough and somehow everything felt like too much and not enough at the same time. She had been so solely focused on keeping the Calamity at bay that it had deprived her of most other thoughts and feelings. To see it all now…to feel everything all at once again…it was extremely overwhelming. Old friends looked different than they had before, parties and celebrations were wanted, the very landscape itself had even changed in some places from the destruction of the Great Calamity. There was so much new for Zelda to wrap her mind around.
“Although Ganon is gone for now, there is still so much more for us to do…So many painful memories we must bear.”
There was a hill just outside of Kakariko Village overlooking Hyrule field. She had found it the night before and had sat at the crest of it well after dark just watching the landscape below her in the same sort of haze she had been in all day. Now she was back once more, this time with a mount and a saddle bag of supplies, and a dear friend by her side.
“Rebuilding will take time,” she mused, casting a long look over the hills and valleys below, “but I believe in my heart, that if all of us work together, we can restore Hyrule to its former glory.” She smiled and glanced at Link beside her. “Perhaps even beyond.”
He had smiled at her then, and she was struck once again at how much Link had changed. It seemed that this second shot at life, without the same pressures of knighthood, had allowed him to really embrace a side of himself Zelda had only seen in flashes during their time together 100 years ago. She had asked him back then if, were he given the chance, he might choose a different path. She had not received an answer then, and it had equally perplexed and frustrated her. Now she wondered if it was not a different path that would have made a difference, but the way he was allowed to live along that path. Though she was happy to have him along, Zelda had made it quite clear their first night in Kakariko Village that he was no longer sworn to her now that the Calamity was gone and the Hyrule Royal family dismantled. And yet, her dear knight and companion had chosen to stay by her side despite this.
Zelda drew in a long breath and then released it, squaring her shoulders and scanning the horizon once more in a way that gave her a feeling of something akin to hope.
“Let’s be off.” She said, turning on her heel and marching back up the hill where their horses were waiting. There was much for them to do, and all sorts of plans to be made, but it would all have to start with them if they were to make any difference in restoring the kingdom once more. There was hope and light for the future that Zelda had nearly given up feeling ever again. It shone like a glorious beacon just over the crest of a hill or on the edge of the horizon and all she had to do was run to it.
There was…one final thing, however, which perplexed her.
The white stallion Link had offered to her whinnied excitedly as she approached and she offered a kind pat on his snout as she stopped in front of him to look at Link once more.
“I…can no longer hear the voice inside the sword,” she mused, her eyes flicking to the blade at his back now safely sheathed in its scabbard. “I suppose it would make sense if my power had dwindled in the past 100 years…”
Link only tilted his head, watching her as she thought. The spirit of the Master Sword had saved Link’s life that day all those years ago…She had not necessarily hoped to hear the voice again, but at the same time, she felt as though she had. In a way. Subconsciously, she may have wished for it one last time if only to offer her thanks. Her power now, the sacred power passed down to her by the goddess, if it had truly dwindled, then what did that make her? Hyrule no longer needed a monarch; her position as princess no longer held weight. She was truly just…normal. Nondescript and with endless possibilities ahead of her as she had always dreamed of as a girl.
“I’m surprised to admit it,” she said as she felt a wide smile grow on her face, “but I can accept that.”
And she could. She truly could accept that. Her smile turned into a chuckle and then into a full, bright laugh as warmth bloomed like a flower in her chest. She had no need for ancient goddess power anymore. The path of her life had been littered with heartache and turmoil the entire way until this point, but now, here, she could cast every bit of it aside and truly live. She could live her own life, one dedicated to everything she wanted to accomplish without any pressures or obligation. It would be difficult for sure - restoring a kingdom was no small task - but she was choosing it and she found, as she and Link mounted their horses and started off towards Hateno Village, that that made all the difference in the world.
Notes:
And there you have it! if you liked this, head on over to the next chapter and I'll catch you on the flip flop in those end notes!
If not and this is where you're getting off, I appreciate you reading anyway and I hope it at least didn't make you want to rip your hair out from rage🤘
Peace!
Chapter Text
“Link.”
In a half asleep haze, Link groaned, pulling a blanket even further up over his head.
“ Link. ”
Seven years after waking up from a 100 year slumber, he was still no closer to enjoying mornings. Wretched things. Never did daily tasks feel quite so insurmountable and unappealing as they did in those first few minutes when the heavy hand of sleep still weighed over his eyes and he wanted to just roll over and pass right back out.
“For Hylia’s sake, Link. Wake up !”
Despite his best efforts to ignore responsibility, it seemed there were those with other plans. That same voice again, nearer than it had been the first time his name was called from the bottom of the stairs, was the only warning he got before he was brutally and viciously assailed by a pillow right to his head. He sat straight up with a gasp and gaped at Zelda, who had the absolute nerve to stand there by their desk across the rug and laugh at him. Well…it was more of an exasperated chuckle. But it somehow still felt like a personal attack. He huffed and threw the pillow right back at her, only to watch it hit the guardrail and tumble down to the parlour with a dull ‘ squeak.’ This, of course, just made her laugh harder . He tried to scowl at her, but it was just a bit too over-exaggerated and did not quite hold enough real irritation to feel genuine even to him. That, paired with the fact that she kept laughing at him , successfully deterred him from rolling over and going back to sleep just to spite her. Not five minutes into the day, and an attack had already been made on the once hero of Hyrule, who had in turn exacted revenge, only to be thwarted by a pair of hands and the fact that their sleeping area sat about eight feet off the ground. What exciting lives they lived, indeed.
With the sand seal plush safely out of throwing range for both of them, Link let out a long sigh and at last hoisted himself out of bed. He knew what today was, and for that reason he knew why Zelda was so eager to get him out of bed.
“You know, you could have just said ‘happy Festival of Light,’ right?” he said as he shuffled to the dresser, shooting a wry smile behind him.
“Yes well that wouldn’t have been quite as fun, would it?” Zelda quipped right back. She kissed his cheek as she hurried back downstairs, leaving Link to grab the first tunic and pair of trousers he saw and slip into them for the day.
He was just easing one of his usual, nondescript silver earrings into his ear when she called to him again from the kitchen.
“Today’s a half day at school because of the festival,” she said, “so I’ll be back in time for lunch.”
Link nodded, then remembered she couldn’t see him and added an affirmative, “Right,” to show he had heard her. When he finally made his way downstairs, she was throwing some snacks in a basket for her young students. There were some raisin biscuits which, judging by the smell, had just been made that morning. He also noticed with a hint of dismay that the last of their apple dumplings had been put in the basket as well. Now that was a travesty for the ages.
With skills in stealth and subtlety that would impress even a seasoned Sheikah warrior, Link gently nudged Zelda to the side under the pretense of reaching the cabinet above her head and slowly, ever so slowly he reached into the basket to try and avoid catching her attention while she washed some fruit under the pump next to them. It was a flawless plan, one he had executed with perfection-
“Ah- Hey!”
Well… near perfection. Link snatched his hand away as Zelda swatted at it sharply, successfully dissuading him from trying to snatch up any of the treats in the basket. She gave him a raised-eyebrow, ‘ what were you even trying to do’ sort of look and jabbed a finger in the direction of their pantry.
“These are for the children ,” she said, “If you want something, there’s plenty of food in there. I had some of our dried berries and toast if you need ideas, but I trust that you’re smart enough to come up with something.”
A smirk accompanied that last statement and Link shook his head in a mix of amusement and mock irritation as he made the two steps journey to the pantry. He cast one final, mournful look at the basket of pastries before Zelda closed it up. He’d have to make more another day, he supposed. And he wouldn’t even share with her this time.
Well…he probably would. If she asked. But that was neither here nor there.
He settled for a bread roll and a hunk of the cheese they had bought from Koyin just a few days ago. Not exactly a glamorous breakfast by any means, but easy enough and he did like the new bread recipe they had started using at the bakery.
It seemed Zelda had finished packing up. She let out a sight, with hands on her hips, and nodded once firmly. “Right, I’m off” she said, then she turned to Link as she hooked the basket under her elbow, “You’re sure you don’t want to join? You’re welcome to, and you know the children always love to see you.”
‘Loved bugging him’ is what Zelda obviously meant to say. Clinging to his legs and demanding he regale them with the story of how he had saved Mayor Reede from what they swore was an army of lizalfos despite his insistence time and time again that it had been just one or two. There were worse fates, but he would pass - for today and at least a few more days to come.
He did not tell Zelda this. Instead he just shook his head and said, “Would. But I’m helping the Mayor and Uma with set-up for the festival this morning.”
“Keeping busy,” Zelda nodded, “I like it.”
“Mhm.”
With that, she hoisted the basket just a bit more firmly over her arm and snatched up a stack of papers from the countertop by the door before slipping on her shoes to head out. Before she did though, she turned to him and raised one arm up before bringing it back down, making an odd sort of horn shape with her hand, her pointer and pinky finger on either top and bottom side of her eye. It was Purah’s iconic ‘click, snap!’ hand motion that the two of them had also adopted in the years they had known her. Link did it back as he always did and Zelda laughed as she always did before pulling open the door and hurrying on her way.
It wasn’t long after she left that Link finished his breakfast with a more melancholy sigh than he had intended. Now that she was gone and there was nothing more to keep his mind occupied, he started to feel a prickle of unease in the back of his mind. An itch. It had been at its worst in the first few weeks after he and Zelda returned to Hateno following the defeat of Calamity Ganon. He would go days without being able to get more than an hour or two of sleep at night all because his brain couldn’t seem to calm enough to realise he wasn’t in any danger. The smallest unforeseen noise would send him into alert, even at the most peaceful of times. It had taken nearly a year for him to sleep fully through the night again. The mind healers in Kakariko village had said it was because of both the years he had spent on guard as Zelda’s appointed knight, as well as everything he had to endure in his fight to free the divine beasts and rescue the princess. His brain had adapted to a certain way of thinking, he had been told, but was quickly assured that all would be made well with a bit of healing and plenty of time to adjust to their new, easy life in the Necluda countryside.
It had. Mostly. There were still days when he woke to cold sweat, feeling like the floor was dropping out from under him as he would scramble for his sword. It was never there, always resting safely at its spot on the rack by the door, and remembering this would usually be enough to bring him back to reality. ‘ He was safe , he would remind himself, ‘It was all just another dream.’ He’d be on edge the rest of the day, restless and jumpy. Those days were the worst, the ones where old ghosts were close behind and shadows on the wall seemed nearer than they had been before. They always passed eventually, after a day or two at the longest, but there was something to it that left him feeling just a bit emptier inside each time.
He had only confided in Zelda about it a handful of times; the way he felt like a line without anchor more days than not. It was just…hard. His entire life even before the Calamity, he’d had his path laid out for him. He’d followed in his father’s footsteps in becoming a knight of the royal guard, and then after the master sword had chosen him, his role day in and day out had been to guard the princess. Then, of course, the Calamity had struck and that had been a whole weight of responsibility in and of itself, only for everything to fall apart and force him and Zelda to try again one hundred years later. Even then, when he very well should have just had the opportunity to start over, there was a weight of responsibility almost from the moment he woke up in the Shrine of Resurrection.
That had been almost ten years of his life -one hundred and ten, if you counted the time he was sleeping- and not exactly a system of habit that would be so easily unlearned. As reluctant as Link still was to admit it, that had been a small part of the reason he had stayed with Zelda after things had settled; he simply hadn’t been sure in the beginning if he had the capacity to do anything with his life apart from being by her side.
That, in and of itself, was another issue. Though the unease had diminished a bit over time, the nagging urge of responsibility had not. This was something even Zelda had struggled with for a bit, though not quite to the same extent as him -that odd feeling that something was empty inside him, a hole that he couldn’t seem to fill.
Link let out a long breath, staring at the embroidered flowers on the little matt that held the table centerpiece. The designs were Zelda’s handiwork, as were the flower gardens on the front lawn, and the framed photographs now adoring their walls, and a number of small other homey details he hadn’t even thought of before. Even the clay tableware he had used for his breakfast had come out of a brief stint in investing in the art of pottery. She had filled that hole somehow. She found fulfillment in crafts and research and teaching in the village and Link had…not.
Well he had , he thought as he brought his breakfast plate in the sink for a wash. Sort of. Hylia knew he’d thrown himself into the rebuilding process as much as anyone. The schoolhouse in Hateno had been made almost exclusively under his direction, and he’d spent a good few month’s worth of weekends building up Purah’s base of operations that she had fondly named Lookout Landing. He’d gone with Hudson Construction company to drop off rebuilding supplies, and traveled with Zelda to drop off the memorial plaques in the select locations to honour the lives lost in the Calamity. Their house now had a functioning well which doubled as a personal underground study for Zelda because he had needed something to do one week and he decided now was as good a time as any.
He found himself scrubbing his plate and the other dirty dishes with just a bit more frustration from thinking about it. Because for all his efforts trying to find something that felt truly fulfilling in the same way Zelda had found in her day to day life, he continued to come up with nothing. Nothing that felt fully right . He was just…stuck.
Link let out a long breath as he placed the last of the dishes in the cupboard above the sink. If all else failed, perhaps he could become someone’s personal dish boy.
He was still mulling this little crisis over when he made his way out the door to start his own tasks for the day. More out of habit, he reached for the Master Sword. He stared at it for just a moment, admiring again the delicate craftsmanship of the blade and scrutinising his own tired face in the reflection. He had the off thought that his hair had gotten longer and was in need of a trim soon, before taking the sword and slinging it over his back as easily as breathing.
He heard Zelda’s voice in his head as he adjusted the strap just a bit over his tunic, hesitant and just bordering on concerned. ‘ Link…’ she would say, ‘It’s only festival preparation. I’m sure we’ll all be perfectly safe.’
She said that, or something like it, often when they weren’t doing anything that could reasonably be very dangerous. Link supposed she was right, and most times when she brought it up he would begrudgingly hang the sword back on its hanger by the door and leave it to rest for another day. What he didn’t tell her, however, was that there was more to it than just protection. Yes, of course he always felt safer with his trusted blade by his side in case anything went wrong, but more than anything, it was about the person people saw him as when he wore it. It was the hero’s sword, his sword , one that he had kept by his side and which had protected him and those he cared about for years . It was odd. There was so much of his life tied to it, that when he left home without it, just him , it felt like a piece of him was missing. Maybe if it was any other item he could have made some sort of separation anxiety joke or two and moved on, but somehow with this he just…couldn’t. He couldn’t seem to let it go.
He finished adjusting the strap of the scabbard and pushed open the front door, Zelda’s voice in his head be damned.
As he stepped outside, Link was hit with a wave of cool wind across his face, making him grateful he threw his hair up in a knot behind his head before he left. It was sunny out, warm but not too warm, with just a bit of a coastal breeze coming in from the sea nearby. He couldn’t help but smile and take in one long breath. He may have been biased, but Hateno Village never seemed to have a day where it was anything other than perfect . In the ten years he and Zelda had lived there, the little farming village had become a home to them; shopkeepers knew them by name, and there was a small army of young children who would grin and wave excitedly when they saw him or Zelda. Not to mention the weekend dinners with Uma or with Mayor Reed or really with anyone around who had the time to stop by.
Today would be just another opportunity for everyone in the village to dance and eat together and enjoy one another's company. He didn’t remember who had first come up with the idea for these festivals (probably Zelda or Purah), but they had been going on for roughly ten years now and each one was a success. ‘The Festival of Light’ they called it, a celebration every year to commemorate the Calamity and the subsequent fateful day when Link and Zelda had banished the Calamity Ganon for good. On second thought, it must have been Purah who had suggested it in the first place. He could vaguely remember both his and Zelda’s unease at the idea of having a festival so central to them, especially when the wounds of all that had happened were still so raw. He could somewhat remember Purah saying it would be good for kingdom morale, a good way to memorialise the tragedy, and also who didn’t like a good party? They had agreed. Reluctantly. But neither of them had opted to join for any more of the festivities than they had to for the first few years Purah insisted on putting the festival on. It had eventually become something Link was very fond of, and a way to honour his friends and family he had lost in a way that didn’t feel quite so depressing, but it had taken them both a bit of time.
This year he had even taken a hand in preparations, something he usually left to Zelda, Purah, and the head of whichever town was hosting the festival that year (which was usually Hateno). As he headed down the hill trail from their house to the main street of town, he scanned the already decent crowd of people for either the mayor or Uma, an older woman who had taken up a gentle, grandmotherly role in both his and Zelda’s lives. She was also, this year, overseeing most of the cooking for the festival and had enlisted Link’s culinary skills to her cause.
As he reached the bottom of the hill next to the general store, he did one more pass over the crowd to try and spot either of them. Not entirely surprising, he supposed. Mayor Reed was more likely to be down by the Inn making sure everything would run smoothly for any traveling guests who wanted to stay overnight, and Uma would doubtless be in the kitchens already.
“Oh! Link!”
He turned at the call of his name. It was Ivee, the shopkeeper’s daughter, jogging from her usual place just under the store’s overhang. He smiled kindly when she stopped in front of him and nodded.
“Uma asked me to send you on your way over with this food order,” she said. It was then that he saw the cloth wrapped bundle in her hands. Ivee pulled back a bit of the fabric to show him.
“An extra wheel of cheese, two herb bundles, and a bag of Kakariko pumpkin seeds.” She pointed at each item in turn before folding the cloth back over, “Should be everything she asked for, but if not,” she smiled and handed him the bundle, “run back over here and we’ll get everything sorted out.”
“Thanks, Ivee,” Link nodded, “I’m sure this’ll be perfect.”
She beamed, and after waving goodbye she headed back the way she came. Link lingered just long enough to see her pick up a paintbrush and start back on re-varnishing the post of the store’s overhang before he turned to continue on down the main road. It seemed Hateno had gone all out for the tenth annual Festival of Light, with banners and ribbons and displays of all sorts up and down the entire street. There was even a band playing a soft tune on a thrown-together stage down by the inn. It was nice. Somehow it didn’t feel stiflingly showy, which was admittedly a small worry of Link’s for this year in particular, and instead just felt like the village had all come together to put in a little bit more effort than usual. He actually found himself smiling a bit all the way until he finally stopped at the community kitchen where Uma was already hard at work in the food for that night.
If the old woman was moving any faster, she would be a blur for how she bustled from one pot of soup to a beef cut searing in a sauce and then to a chopping block where she grabbed a knife and began expertly dicing some produce. Link had to stop and just watch her for a moment, mesmerised. He considered himself a pretty good cook by most peoples’ standards, but Uma had taught him enough things in his time living here that he knew who Hateno’s best chef really was.
He set Ivee’s bag of ingredients aside and stepped forward to get started on helping just in time to see the knife Uma held slip on the smooth surface of an apple. Uma let out a gasp of shock, stepping back quickly to avoid getting cut as the knife, cutting board, and fruit all clatter to the ground at her feet. Link lunged to grab at least the apple and board before they hit the ground, figuring catching a knife from midair was probably not the best of ideas. He heard Uma let out a relieved breath as he set them back on the counter.
“Link, my boy,” she smiled, “what would I do without you?”
He didn’t exactly know what to say to that, so he just sort of shrugged awkwardly.
“Well it’s good you’re here in any case,” she went on, turning back to the stoves and pulling out a ladle to stir one of the soups a few times, “these old hands aren’t what they used to be, as you saw.” She laughed good naturedly. “The shakes come for us all, and if they’re only coming for me in my late 90s I’d say I’m doing alright.”
Link smiled and took up a spot at the counter to chop some of the apples and onions Uma had been working on, “It’ll be the memory loss next,” he quipped, falling into the easy rhythm of cooking. “Then your knees, and then Zelda and I will have to come by help you to the bathroom cos your bones are dust and- ow !”
Link rubbed at his ribs where Uma had smacked him with her ladle, but he was still grinning. She pointed her weapon at him, fixing him with a glare, “Now I’ve got a few years before that , I think, so don’t go poking fun at me. Just wait until you're my age. I’ll come back as a spirit just to laugh at you.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Link chuckled.
Uma turned back to the food with a ‘hmph’, “And you’d better not. Now snap to it! Those apple tarts and tomato pudding aren’t going to make themselves!”
“Yes, ma’am,” Link replied with a two finger salute. He diced at the onions he had started on just a bit faster. Duty called.
***
The rest of the day passed faster than Link realised. One minute he was listening to Uma talk about all the latest news in the village, and the next it was nearly sunset and time for dinner. It felt like it had all gone by in a blink, which he vastly preferred over time dragging on.
The festival itself had of course started around midday, so when he and Uma at last finished pulling out every dish and readying it to be eaten, celebrations were already in full swing. He found Zelda quickly, who looked like she’d had her own fun already that afternoon, her dress grass stained at the hem and a bright smile on her face. She pulled him into a one-armed hug and he went willingly, leaning the side of his head on hers as they watched the dancing and singing from the hill where the Inn was. The Sheikah had arrived a few hours earlier- Purah, Robbie, Symin, and Purah’s new student Josha among them- as well as a few Gorons, and a sizable crowd from the Rito and Zora. Riju had sent word a few days prior that the yearly sand storms would keep the Gerudo from making the trek to Hateno for the festival, but that was alright. Link and Zelda had made plans to visit them once the weather was better, so they hoped they would see her soon enough.
He felt Zelda squeeze his shoulder and then adjust her hand to tap at the hilt of the Master Sword, “Who were you fighting today?” she asked, “Killer potatoes?”
Link tried to laugh it off, “It’s always the root vegetables you have to watch out for, you know.”
Zelda hummed, “And yet there’s not a spot of mash on you.”
“They were too intimidated,” replied Link. He was eager to change this subject and avoid another awkward conversation, “How was class today?”
Tucking her arm back around Link’s waist, Zelda hesitated like she might try and redirect the conversation back to him, then the sighed minutely, “Better than I expected, actually,” she said, “I think having just a half day this year eased the usual jitters quite a bit.” She let out a huff of laughter, “All except for Sefaro, of course.”
Ah, Sefaro. The local dye shop owner Sayge’s son was well known as the village’s biggest trouble maker, with stores of energy and hours of unsolicited opinions that the people of Hateno were equal parts exasperated and endeared by. He’d convinced himself that he was Link’s protegee for a good amount of time when he and Zelda had first moved to the village, wielding a sturdy stick and mimicking Link’s every move. It had been more perplexing than anything at the time, but now he often thought back to those times he would see the boy practicing his iteration of one of Link’s sword drills on a tree or a bush and it came with a swell of fondness. He really was a good kid at the end of the day. Wild. Reckless and a bit insufferable. But a good kid.
He smiled a bit and nodded, “It’s always something with him, huh?”
Then they were being called down for supper. A bell was ringing, the mayor’s wife Clavia was waving them down from the village square, and there were loud cheers from the gaggle of children as they pushed past adults to scramble towards the long feast table that had been set out.
Link pulled away just enough to offer a hand to Zelda, which she was quick to take. “Should we see to those killer potatoes, then?” He asked wryly
She rolled her eyes at him, but said, “I think we should. And I’d hate to keep everyone else waiting.”
They took off down the hill, jumping the stairs two at a time with shrieks of laughter all the way down until they were able to join the festival crowd for one of the finest dinners Hateno had ever seen.
And for better or for worse, not a single potato dish was left by the end of the night.
***
Dancing followed the main feast. Link was distinctly not a dancer at the best of times, which worked out well for him when Zelda went off to join a circle with a few people in the village and he got pulled into a long-winded conversation with Purah before he could get roped in as well. She was telling him about…something. Something about the castle and mist. He should probably have been listening, really.
In his defense, everything else was very distracting, and after a long afternoon of smiling and laughing and talking to people, his brain power for keeping up with Purah’s zeal for ancient ruins had dwindled a bit. He nodded along and indulged her as best he could, but he was really more focused on watching the crowds move in time with the music and eyeballing the platter of berry tarts Mayor Reed and Clavia had just brought out. Eventually he knew there was truly no hope in catching anything she was saying, but he stayed where he was all the way until Zleda started waving him over for a dance. He had about as much grace as a bokoblin, but for her, and to get Purah off his back, he could attempt one dance.
“Hey, Purah, will you excuse me…” He didn’t wait for a reply.
Zelda gave him a smile and he offered a matching one in return as he took her hand to join in the spinning sort of polka they had going.
“I see Purah finally tracked you down long enough to tell you about her newest research venture,” she said, her ability to hold conversation while dancing as astounding as always.
He laughed nervously, spinning her away and then tugging her back again, “Yes?”
Zelda gave him a knowing look, “You weren’t listening.”
“Not even a little bit.”
She let out another shout of laughter at his sheepish face as they danced, “It was important, you know, but I’ll fill you in when we get home.”
“Ma’am, yes ma’am,” Link replied, throwing in a little salute just to see her smile again.
He only tripped and nearly fell a handful of times that dance so he counted it as a success. After that, the two of them stepped aside to grab a berry tart apiece and make their rounds saying farewells and goodnights to everyone there. It wasn’t particularly late, the sun had barely gone down, but they knew how long this would take. They needed an early start if they were to get back home at a reasonable hour. They chatted with a few of the Zora guests, and that took about half an hour, the Zora being social folk as they were. The more reserved Rito took the well-wishes quickly and without much small talk, which Link appreciated. The Gorons took a bit longer but only because every time Link and Zelda tried to end the conversation, it would start up a new round of aggressive hugging that lasted about five minutes each time. They went through this cycle of goodbyes and hugs no less than eight of those times. Speaking with the people of the village was a toss up depending on who they were talking to in terms of time, but all in all that took another hour to say hello and goodbye and thank you for coming just because of how many people there were and how they also were counting in the Purah and her group who had mingled with them as well.
When they made it back to their home at last, arms laden with extra food that people didn’t want to bring home, Link leaned himself on the door behind him and let out a long sigh. There truly was nothing in Hyrule more exhausting, he thought.
Zelda made a similar groan of relief and threw herself on the rug behind the table with an arm splayed over her eyes. He found himself inclined to join her, so he pushed off the door, placed the food he carried onto the table, and starfished himself down on the ground beside her. For a few moments they just stared up at the light fixture on the ceiling, both still recovering and too tired to speak.
It was Zelda who broke the silence, as was usually the case. “It was fun,” she admitted.
Link nodded, and though she couldn’t see him, it was as if she knew he had. She pulled the arm from her eyes as she reached over to pat his shoulder a couple of times, “You did well. Very charming and conversational.”
He let out a ‘ psh ’, but did murmur a thank you. Really it was just that he didn’t like talking, but he liked Zelda having to be their voice in social gatherings even less. He knew it reminded her of her old life. Of galas and trade disputes and diplomatic missions where she had to look and act and speak perfectly at all times. So he tried to take part in the conversations with her just so she didn’t feel quite so much like she was all on her own again.
Link and Zelda allowed themselves time to lay on the floor for a bit longer but eventually they managed to pull themselves up to get ready for bed. They fell into the quiet familiarity of routine, existing in each other's orbit but still operating independently. Zelda washed her face in the sink while Link stepped out to shower all the day’s sweat and grime off his body in the small bath house they had constructed just off the well. Then when he came back inside she was in her nightdress and bringing the sand seal plushie they had thrown down that morning back up to their bed and Link followed after her so that he could rifle through their dresser for a pair of pants for the night. Then they crawled into bed together and Zelda read while he pulled his journal and a pen from the drawer of their bedside table to write.
The words did not come easily to him tonight. Usually they did. He often had so much on his mind at any given time that it was no feat to find something to write about. But tonight he stared at the blank page, pen poised to write but never actually bringing it down to etch his thoughts onto the paper. After a moment he tried leafing through previous entries for some inspiration, but when even that didn’t work, he sighed. Perhaps he would forego a journal entry for tonight and just get back on it tomorrow. Which reminded him…
He nudged Zelda’s arm to get her attention. “What was the important thing Purah told you today?”
She tilted her head at him as she set down her book, “Hm? Oh!” Her face lit up for a moment and she remembered, but immediately dropped to a frown. She ran a finger up and down the spine of her book, “Purah said the reports of that strange gloom were getting more frequent the past few weeks. She fears it’s spreading…”
Link’s brow furrowed. After Calamity Ganon had fallen, his toxic malice that had poisoned locations all over Hyrule had disappeared as well. They had assumed it was gone for good and thought nothing of it until a similar, more liquid, substance had begun appearing just a few months ago. It was the same blackened maroon colour as the malice, but those who had the misfortune of coming into contact with it had fallen horribly ill in a very distinct way from those who had touched malice. An unfortunate farmer Link and Zelda had spoken to had said that, though he had only touched it, it felt like the stuff was carving darkness into his soul from the inside out.
If there were increasing reports, this was more than concerning. They’d been trying for months to locate the source to no avail.
“But!” Zelda continued, “Purah said she’d had a breakthrough in discovering where it might be coming from.”
Zelda straightened and turned in the bed to face Link more fully, “She told me her team had gotten into some of the ancient royal histories from their last salvage trip up to the castle library,” she explained, “They found a map. Well, two, actually. One of Hyrule Castle from top to bottom, and a second that showed the lower floors and went even further down. Purah sent a team down to investigate, of course, but eventually the path became too narrow for more than two or three people. However, they did manage to travel far enough down to find that the gloom seemed to be coming up from somewhere even further below them.”
Link listened to every word, taking it all in and processing. Further down…further than the lowest servants’ dormitories? It made sense. Link had heard rumours during his time as a knight of Hyrule that there were ancient ruins beneath the castle, and a monster that dwelled in the darkness, but he had always thought they were just stories.
“So what’s next, then?” He asked. They would need to send a couple trusted researchers down to investigate further, most likely.
Zelda took in a long breath, her shoulders coming up towards her ears in a bit of a shrug, “Well…” she said, “Purah said an elite two or three people would be best to continue down the passage to look into the source of the gloom. But she wasn’t sure exactly who to send. So…”
Oh. There was that face again. That face she made whenever she got the opportunity for a new field research project. Suddenly Link knew exactly what Purah had been trying to talk to him about and he wasn’t sure if he liked it.
“She wants us to go look into it.” He said.
“Yes!” Replied Zelda, “Isn’t that exciting? At first she was going to have Symin and Josha make the trip, but Josha’s so young and Symin’s going to be starting as a teacher here soon, and so she really was at a bit of a loss. But then, Link , an opportunity to discover what’s below the castle? To see if the stories about ruins there are true? I know it’s short notice, but things will settle now for a few weeks at least now that the Festival of Light is past and I just…Well my excitement got ahead of me I think.”
She looked back at him and her lips turned up into an awkward sort of smile, “It’s not a terribly horrible idea to you, is it?”
In all honesty, no it wasn’t. Was he apprehensive about two people with one sword between them traversing an unknown part of Hyrule? Absolutely. But he was intrigued by it all, and Zelda would most likely bring her dagger set anyway, so they wouldn’t be completely helpless.
Something nagged at the back of his mind, something that kept him from being completely at ease with this whole idea…But when he couldn’t pinpoint it exactly after a few moments of hesitation, he brushed it aside and shook his head. “When is she expecting us?”
Zelda beamed, then reached across him to place her book back on the bedside table, “I offered us this weekend, which means we should probably leave tomorrow afternoon at the latest in order to get there on time.”
She pulled back the blanket to tuck herself underneath them as Link nodded and followed suit. They each laid down facing the other, settling under the warmth of the blankets.
“I’ll get the horses ready and bags packed while you’re at school,” Link said and Zleda nodded.
“Good.” Zelda nodded, “Symin will be teaching the rest of the day after the lunch break so I should be back just before noon. Then we can go.”
She smiled a bit and sighed pleasantly as she shifted so she was laying on her back, “This is exciting. Who knows what we’ll find down there? Besides all the gloom of course. We’ll have to take protective measures for that.”
From there, she went on about every theory that had popped in her head since she and Purah had first discussed this expedition at the festival. Perhaps they would find new cave-dwelling species they had never even thought existed, she mused. And what of all the ruins? Would there be ancient texts to find? Link closed his eyes as he listened. Worry still nagged at the back of his mind, but he pushed it away, letting the sound of her voice and all her wonderings carry him into sleep.
Notes:
bada bing bada boom! chapter 1, like i promised :)
i actually wasn't super happy with this chapter when i first wrote it, but after some tweaking it's really grown on me. i love link and zelda's little life they had going in hateno village. it makes me happy
i suck at maintaining a release schedule, HOWEVER! i do have a bunch of this pre-written but i'm trying to pace myself though. yano, life and uni and things that i need to make time for besides silly little fanfiction). so i'm looking at posting every other friday or saturday, but you can count on my updating twice a month at the very least
so i'll see you all in a couple weeks for the start of the actual in-game content for chapter two! and if you want to come bother me on tumblr, you can fine me at @l1ve-l4ugh-lov3craft
peace! 🤘
Chapter 3: Chapter 2
Summary:
Link and Zelda travel down into Hyrule Castle and find a bit more than they bargained for
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Link had plenty of mixed feelings about Hyrule Castle, all things considered. Admittedly, a lot of them had faded in the past ten years, but there was still a certain level of apprehension that he felt setting foot on its grounds again. It looked very much the same as it had when he first returned to it to defeat Calamity Ganon; all dark stone and ghostly towers that seemed to nearly pierce into the sky above them. It was raining. Because of course it was. There was a small mercy in the fact that it was free of wind to blow the droplets in their faces, but Link still frowned as he pulled his cowl further over his face in an attempt to keep out the weather. Beside him, he heard Zelda let out another lightly distressed sigh accompanied by the sound of wet paper swishing as she undoubtedly shook the water from the roll of parchment that was supposed to lead them to their destination. He couldn’t help but laugh a bit, turning his head just in time to catch the tail end of her frown as she carefully tucked it back in her waterproof bag. She saw him do so and shook her head amusedly.
“Over one hundred years,” she mused, “and you would think we would have a way to waterproof paper by now.”
“I bet they could, but where’s the fun in that?” Link replied.
Zelda huffed a laugh and turned back to the winding path up to the castle once more, “Where indeed.”
They continued on their way through the gateway courtyard. Much of Hyrule had begun attempts to leave the horrors of the Great Calamity behind in the ten years since their princess had returned. Sheikah technology was excavated and moved to the most remote reaches of the kingdom, the Divine Beasts were permanently deactivated and left to stand as silent monoliths watching over the land, and it seemed what most people were just trying to move on. But the ghosts, figurative and possibly literal, of the lives lost and the tragedies set upon Hyrule would not be so easily forgotten. Link could feel them with every step they took further away from the castle gates. This place had been his home, their home, back when everything was not quite so haunted and eerily still. There had been life here once. Grand balls and festivals. Peace and long-standing prosperity. Now, as Link pushed open a crumbling wooden door that left rotted splinters and mold spores mixed with dirt on his hands, the stone walls of Castle Hyrule felt more like a tomb than the beacon of light that it had been all those decades ago.
With the open door offering the only measly light down the dungeonous corridor, the long hallway looked hardly more inviting than braving the precipitation outside. Link turned to Zelda, who took in the large puddle directly in their path with a mix of distaste and intrigue, and swept his hand in front of him in a ‘after you’ sort of motion. She made a ‘tsk’ noise that he knew was all in good fun, then made a direct point of splashing her steps ever so slightly too hard so as to smatter Link’s boots and knees with mud. It was done with such finesse that he almost thought it accidental. Until she glanced back at him with a wicked smirk and he realised it had very much been on purpose.
Traversing through the ruins of the old castle was never exactly a pleasant experience. Oftentimes thought especially for Zelda, who had grown up within its walls her whole life. The more he looked around, from the moth-eaten rugs at their feet to the crest of the royal family hanging lop-sided on the wall, there seemed to be more and more reminders of the world they had lost. He knew of her conflict with her own prophesied destiny as princess of Hyrule, and the pieces that still stuck with her even after so long, so he knew returning to this place couldn’t possibly be easy for her. For the most part, they had been happy to leave the castle exploration and research to a couple of Purah’s trusted teams and avoid any painful reminders they were likely to encounter within its walls. After a few years they had accompanied a team or two, first to see what of Zelda’s personal belongings had survived both the initial Calamity and the subsequent 100 years of air exposure, and then a couple times more to recover any lost tomes and scrolls from the royal library which could be of use for rebuilding.
But neither of them enjoyed staying long, not when the past always felt so suffocatingly close when they did.
Zelda had confessed to Link on the ride over to Lookout Landing that she had almost not volunteered them for this trip at all, not so soon after the anniversary of the Calamity, but that curiosity had gotten the better of her.
And so they were here, following the hallways down past the guards’ rooms and the reception hall, down, down, and down still in search of something beneath the very castle itself.
“Strange reports have been coming in to Lookout Landing of a strange crimson blight on the land,” Zelda explained as the two of them pressed forward, making their way through passages that had previously only ever been used by the lowest of staff.
She opened her mouth to continue just as they came to a trap door in the floor which seemed to be the next best option for a pathway, but stopped. Whatever she was going to say was lost as Link lifted up the grate and exposed the cut stone stairway leading even further down below the castle.
He turned to look at her just as she did the same, a curious frown on her face, before looking back down.
“I had…no idea there were any deeper passages below the castle,” she muttered almost to herself.
The most either of them had known were from the rumours and wives tales that circulated through the castle as more gossip than anything. It was fascinating though. He watched as Zelda took the first step down the passage, the echo of her boot spiralling down below, then she looked back at him with that smile that she always had at the prospect of a new discovery. It was his favourite of her smiles.
“It seems we’ll just have to keep going, won’t we?” She said brightly. “Oh, Link, imagine what we might find down there!”
“Keese,” Link mused, following down behind her, “Bokoblins. But big ones that have adapted to living in the pitch black. With black eyes and big ears. And they make little clicking noises to get around.”
“ Link ,” Zelda chuckled, turning just enough so he could see her rolling her eyes.
It should have stopped him, but if anything it was only encouraging. “Maybe the Keese will have extra long fangs,” he mused wryly, lifting his hand to run it along the stone engravings on the wall, “Or maybe there’s even horrible beasts we’ve never even seen who kill Hylians and eat whenever they can because they get food so rarely.”
“ Or terrifying gloom monsters?” Zelda asked him as she walked, “with long fingers to snatch you in the dark.”
Link nodded, “Exactly.”
He removed his hand from the wall, shaking off some of the reddish-black residue that had been left behind. His gaze returned to Zelda in front of him as an idea wormed its way into his head.
The light down the stairwell was fading fast and they would need to light a torch soon, but for his plan, it provided just the right amount of cover. He slowed just enough for his footsteps to go nearly silent, so that there was hardly an echo to be heard. He crept up behind Zelda just enough to reach up behind her…
He let out a short, monstrous shout, quickly grabbing at her shoulders before letting go as she let out a shriek of alarm.
“ Link !” She cried, whirling on him, “That was not -”
But he was laughing. Not great, heaving belly laughs or anything of the sort, but enough for Zelda to falter and put her hands on her hips as the initial outrage faded into something more like fond exasperation.
“Are you quite finished?” She asked once he was able to breathe normally again.
Still chuckling under his breath, he nodded and put up a thumb. He took a few moments more to compose himself and then straightened. They stood side by side, peering down the dark corridor. Zelda pulled the map from her bag again and looked it over.
“This seems to be almost where the research team stopped the first time. Look.” She turned to offer Link a better view of the paper. She pointed to their location, then trailed one finger down the hallway to the red X that marked the spot where the hallway narrowed. “It’s just down here.”
That unsettling feeling of apprehension from the first night when Zelda had told Link about this plan returned. It tugged at the back of his mind, but he couldn’t tell if it was truly anything worth noting, or if it was just the regular buzz of adrenaline at the concept of the unknown. It was probably that. He trusted Purah, and if she had thought they were in any real danger, she would have sent more researchers with them.
Their footsteps echoed against the cold stone walls as they continued on ever deeper into the heart of the castle. Eventually lighting a torch, which cast flickering shadows in the dark. Link wouldn’t say he held his breath, but there was a shallowness to it as they neared the X-marked spot on the map. Then, without preamble, the stone beneath them slanted downward and he heard Zelda gasp as she lost her footing on the uneven ground. He was able to step quickly enough to catch her before she fell, but the next steps they took in the dark were noticeably more cautious even with their torch to light the way.
“These tunnels seem to stretch on for quite some time down here,” Zelda muttered, looking over the map once more, “They go down and down until they just…stop. Hm…”
She met Link’s eyes when he went to peer over her shoulder at the map. “It’s odd,” she said, “We’ll have to be careful.”
They descended deeper and deeper, the minutes turning into what felt like hours. It became mind-numbing, the way that the corridor continued in its exact same stone pattern all the way down. For a while the two of them kept up conversation to pass the time and drive off the growing feeling of unease, but even that faded after time until they were left following the tunnels in the semi-darkness and trying not to jump at every odd flicker of a shadow in the torchlight.
There was a blackened haze in the air, odourless and not harmful, but no less disquieting. In a mild bout of boredom after it felt like they had been following the corridors for all too long, Link had reached out to touch it. It felt…warm, but unnaturally so, in the way that told him if it were any more concentrated it could burn away skin. He pulled his hand back and looked at Zelda, who regarded him with the same confusion and curiosity he felt.
It felt like it had to have been hours before the stone walls began to slowly crumble as they walked, giving way to the packed earth behind them. The pathway beneath their feet remained intact, but it was clear the passages themselves were getting older and older the further down they went. Link felt a buzz of anticipation at the idea of seeing remnants of civilization long forgotten by the people of Hyrule. They had nearly gone off the edge of Purah’s map, and soon would truly be in completely uncharted reaches of the kingdom.
“This strange gloom keeps getting thicker,” Zelda mused as they walked, “But it’s odd. Here it seems almost…misty. Not concentrated enough to harm us like it has others.” She ran her hand through a flurrying cloud of it, then scrutinized the residue left on it when she pulled away. “Hm…”
Zelda turned to him, torch in hand, and nodded firmly, “We’ll keep going. If it’s coming up from beneath us, there has to be something that we haven’t yet seen, so we need to be ready for anything.”
She turned back around again, taking one step forward before looking back at Link with full confidence and trust. “Let’s go solve this mystery.”
He followed after her, just as he always would. She carried the torch and Link drew the Master Sword. They were past the area where Purah’s map reached, so they really had no indication of what they might find or even how much farther these ruins went. When Zelda said they needed to be ready for anything, it was true; they really did need to be ready for anything that could possibly come their way. Link did, however, hope that ‘anything’ did not actually include specially adapted bokoblins or blood thirsty keese, despite joking about it back when they had first started this journey.
When at last the narrow tunnel they had been following for so long opened up and gave way to a small cavernous opening, he felt the relief that came with escaping the claustrophobia of those corridors. He heard Zelda gasp beside him and had to admit the sight was beautiful. Luminous stones lined the walls, and even a small stream followed beside their path. If there were to be any life down here, they would have probably found home in this cavern, but it was empty.
“It reminds me of the caves where we found the Dondons,” Zelda mused, eyes wide as she took it all in.
Link was more than a bit awestruck himself. “Yeah,” he replied quietly. The rocks cast a bluish hue on the rest of the cavern, making it feel far more ethereal and otherworldly than just a small alcove of glow-in-the-dark stones. He almost didn’t want to leave, but they had to keep moving. There was a stone archway ahead of them, but of clearly different make than the ones typically found in Hyrule Castle’s architecture. It was smoother, as if hewn into the rock walls around them, and bore engravings at the top in a language Link didn’t understand. He did try to pick it out. It looked similar to hylian in many ways, but there were letters that were shaped just a bit differently and words that didn’t match up.
“Link!” Zelda gasped.
He had been so engrossed in trying to decipher the strange writing, he hadn’t even noticed the additional glow they were suddenly cast in. The master sword was now radiating silvery-blue sacred light and Link’s heart dropped halfway to his feet. His first thought was of the guardians, their long mechanical legs carrying them at terrifying speeds fast enough to strike before one could even get their bearings. He thought of Calamity Ganon, with his grotesque body of malice and emaciated face. Beautiful as it was, that glow never meant anything good.
“I knew we had cause for concern,” Zelda said, the worry clear in her voice, “We’ll have to be even more careful as we move deeper.”
There was a new tinge of unease in the way they continued into deeper and deeper passages. Link felt on edge as the Master Sword continued to glow its ethereal blue light, indicating that it was only a matter of time before they ran into something evil.
The unease, however, was mixed with curiosity as they stepped into the next corridor. The dark hallway was lined with ruins unlike anything Link, at least, had ever seen, and judging by Zelda’s own expression of shock, she was just as amazed as he was. The pillars that lined the walls looked certainly worse for wear, with home of them half crumbling in piles of dirt and dust. There were cobwebs in the corners, and Link was just a bit surprised that spiders could even live down here at all. He hadn’t seen very many bugs. The architecture looked old . That was the best way he could describe it. Old, but in an elegant way, filled with the remnants of what had surely been a sophisticated, thriving society. No bokoblins could have carved passages and statues into the ground with such precision. He reached out to touch a round, flower bud-shaped carving coming off of one of the pillars, wiping away the layers of dust that had collected in the grooves. It looked like it might have been a candle holder or some other light source.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Zelda approach one of the pillars against the wall, torch held aloft. “These carvings…” she murmured, “I’m sure they are Zonai in origin; they match what I’ve seen in my studies. They lived so long ago, no history book properly gives a full picture of them, so there really is so much we don’t know.”
She leaned even closer to inspect all the intricate details etched down the centre of the column and made his way just a few feet ahead to the end of the corridor. It was the same expertly crafted archway as the one they had entered this passage through, but this time, on either side…
“Zelda,” he called, “look at this.”
He heard the shuffle of her footsteps as she turned, then a gasp, “Oh my…”
Standing like ancient sentinels beside the archway were two statues. The one on the left had clearly been a victim of time, with the top half of its body already eroded away, but the other on the right was remarkably intact.
“Is that…a Zonai?” Zelda asked, excitement bursting from her tone, “They look…so different from us. The ears…It is said that the Zonai were descendants of gods who came down from a civilisation in the sky. How odd that they should end up down here…”
They took a moment longer to look at the entire statue before moving on. A set of descending stairs just ahead of them caught Zelda’s eye, and the pull of discovery was not an urge she was able to so easily ignore. She was quick to follow them, and Link was just as quick to go after her. Similar statues and pillars as the ones in that first corridor lined the path down. They were deep in a Zonai temple, that much was clear. Along the way, Zelda paused frequently to examine the ruins or snap a picture on the new device Purah had developed based on the sheikah slate, which she had dubbed the “Purah Pad”. He could practically feel her excitement rolling off her in infectious waves. It was nearly enough to bury the prickle of anxiety and underlying dread that something was not right.
Just when the novelty of the Zonai statues and corridors seemed to be wearing off even to Zelda, a final hallway of six tall Zonai statues opened up suddenly into a wide chamber unlike anything they had seen thus far. Zelda let out a gasp of excitement and rushed inside, but Link cast one last look back the way they came before following. He looked up, seeming to meet the Zonai statues’ eyes, and their lifeless, stone gazes almost felt like a warning.
It was a sort of dome-shaped antichamber, uncomfortably similar to the sanctum where he fought Calamity Ganon. Instead of constellations and star charts, however, his gaze was quickly drawn to the large carvings etched into the walls. He immediately recognized the Zonai figures in each of them.
“Look at these murals ,” Zelda whispered. There was awe in her voice, and Link could not blame her. She swiped the torch slowly from side to side to get a better look at every angle of the engravings. Her nose nearly touched the stone with how close she was, fixed on the details with rapt fascination.
She ran a hand slowly over the divots, “Do you remember,” she asked, “the event known as the Imprisoning War written about in the kingdom’s ancient histories?”
She looked over at him, and he realised she was waiting for a reply. The Imprisoning War…He thought he might have recalled learning about it in a class or two. Maybe. He nodded anyway.
“It is said to have been a war between allied tribes,” Zelda continued, “and…someone only ever referred to as the Demon King.”
That name, Link remembered. His teacher had described a man, once a good and noble king of his people, who had consumed darkness itself and turned into a horrific beast. One who could destroy cities with a sweep of his hand and who had an army of monsters at his side. He had been just a boy then, and had come home terrified at the thought. Did these murals depict the same man? The one they were standing in front of now - one depicting someone not entirely Hylian, with glowing red eyes and a wave of monsters surrounding him- certainly looked like it could be.
Zelda was clearly not as perturbed by the portrait. She took the torch and dashed to their left, searching for the first of the murals. He followed after her until she skipped to a stop, eyes wide.
She waved him over frantically, “This matches the statues we saw earlier. A Zonai! And look below them. Those figures below…they look like Hylians!”
Link felt he might have remembered from his history classes that the royal family were said to have been descended from a union between the Zonai after they descended from the sky and the Hylians of that same time. As Zelda passed from mural to mural, it certainly looked like these depicted the same legend. He would be lying to admit he wasn’t fascinated. The way that the Zonai had etched their history into the earth so far below, and even more so that it had survived for thousands of years…it was amazing.
Zelda had busied herself every inch of the mural wall. If Link had tried to get her attention, it would have fallen on deaf ears. Zelda was completely consumed by the thrill of discovery, darting from one wall frame to then next at a rapid pace. One depicted that union between Zonai and Hylian that they had been taught in their histories, but whatever happened afterward, it didn’t seem to be in the young kingdom’s favour. The next mural they found showed a man taking…something from the rulers of the kingdom. A stone? Or a gem of some kind? Whatever it was seemed to tip the tide of the war, and not in Hyrule’s favour. The very next scene showed the beast that was surely the Demon King, and the fierce battle against him that would be spoken about for generations afterward.
Zelda stepped forward just enough to touch the Demon King’s jagged horn, “Incredible! This mural must be the great war recorde in the royal histories! The Imprisoning War, and the events that led up to it!”
She whirled around towards him, “Oh, Link! This is a huge discovery!”
Her hands were shaking with excitement as she fumbled for the Purah Pad, “We have to photograph this all for Purah. She’ll be- Oh. Thank you.” Link let out a huff of laughter as he stepped forward to take the torch from her with a nod. He held it aloft over her shoulder so that she could get the best shots. Every ‘click, snap ’ of the camera came with a flash that bathed the murals in a saturated, white light to capture even the most minute details.
It took her a few minutes to be satisfied with the photos she got, bemoaning every other shot that she felt didn’t accurately capture how magnificent the murals truly were. Eventually, she had to sigh and call it good. She tucked the Purah Pad back into the pouch on her belt and retrieved the torch from Link.
“Fascinating,” she breathed, still turning in circles around the room to take it all in, “I can’t wait to bring another team down here with Purah. Now that we know it’s safe, surely we can arrange that. It’s strange though…”
Zelda paused momentarily at one of the murals, the one that most likely depicted the first rulers of Hyrule. She looked puzzled as she spoke. “These figures…they all seem so oddly familiar. Yet I’m sure I’ve not seen them before.”
She turned to Link as if for an answer, but he just shrugged, All these looked like to him were old relics of a very distant past. She took the gesture with one last hum of intrigue before she continued on.
He followed as her wandering led her further into the antichamber. In their excitement, they had failed to notice the presence of a large rubble pile obscuring one half of the mural wall. It was clear the story of the Imprisoning War continued behind it, but the boulders had piled clear to the ceiling; even if Link and Zelda had the means to clear it away, they were already running short on time. It would have to be a discovery for another day.
“We’ll have to make a note to bring the proper equipment to remove that rubble the next time we come down here,” Zelda said, looking to Link for a reply. He nodded and that seemed to be enough for her.
“Is this…as far down as it goes?” Link asked. It did seem like it could be. It would make sense for the Zonai to make some sort of memorial hall to the Imprisoning War.
Except for the fact that the master sword was still glowing in his hand. Link once again felt that uneasy prickle of wrongness. Why would the master sword awaken just to lead them to a history lesson? He looked down at it, but the blade remained just as still and silent as ever, offering no guidance.
Zelda too looked from the sword and back up to Link’s face, brow furrowed, “I’m not sure. It could be but…” She looked to her left, then right, “Let’s look around. Perhaps there’s another passage we missed.”
So they split, each finding part of the wall and following it in opposite directions in search of a door or entryway. Zelda followed the section of the wall obscured by the rubble, and Link made his way in the dark towards the rest of the murals. This was…not their finest idea, considering Zelda had the torch and Link did not, but he kept a hand on the surface of the murals as he walked and trusted that if the wall fell away, that was a good sign that he had found something worth noting.
In the end, after a few minutes of shuffling in the semi-darkness, it seemed they had made the right choice giving Zelda the light anyhow. He heard her call his name, and after a few moments of stumbling on the rough stonework of the floor, he came back more fully into the glow cast by the torch.
“It seems this passage goes further down,” Zelda said, pointing at what was, in fact, a corridor they had missed in the dark. What was immediately concerning however, was the increased amount of gloom fog rising up in obvious tendrils from the ground within.
He peered down the dark hallway, a chill running down his back. Then he looked at Zelda, “It does, but…Zelda this doesn’t feel right.”
He watched as she glanced back at the passage, tugging at her bottom lip with her teeth. “I agree,” she said, “but we need to find out what’s causing this gloom, or more people are just going to get hurt.”
Link drew in a slow breath that he was even slower to release. “Okay,” he at last relented, “But-”
“If anything seems dangerous we’ll turn right around and go back for reinforcements,” Zelda assured him, “Yes, Link, that will be the best option.”
He nodded and took the first step into the passage. ‘Tunnel’ was actually a more apt word for this particular one. It only retained its Zonai architecture for a few feet before the ruins faded away, leaving only dirt and rock behind. It was even more narrow than the others, with even a low ceiling that only added to the claustrophobic feeling. If the walls collapsed on them now, Link thought morbidly, their bodies would never be found. It wasn’t long before he and Zelda had to descend down the passage in single file, almost crouching to not hit their heads. The gloom in the air was even thicker here, enough for them to have to cover their mouths to keep from breathing in the blackened particles drifting around their heads. The tunnel did not go on quite as long as the others they had followed, but it was long enough for the gloom in the air to burn Link’s eyes and what little exposed skin he had, and for the rock walls to feel like they were closing in around them. It smelled like death and dirt, and didn’t feel much better.
It wasn’t until Zelda started coughing behind him and he turned just in time to catch her as she tripped on a jagged rock that he considered just calling it a job well done here and telling her they needed to turn back. A quick examination of her ankle said that she was unharmed, but her eyes were red-rimmed from the gloom -and he guessed his were much the same- and he could tell her cloak which she had held over her mouth was doing just as little as his own was for him to filter out the gloom in the air.
“We should go back.” He said, “It’s not safe.”
Zelda looked torn for a moment, but then she sighed and nodded reluctantly, “You’re right. If this tunnel keeps going on like this for much longer, we’ll get the gloom poisoning for sure if we haven’t already.”
More than a little relieved, Link nodded. He held out a hand, which she took, and started to tug her back up the tunnel the way they came.
Zelda held the torch forward, no doubt looking for any last minute discoveries, and when she gasped, his stomach plummeted to his feet.
“Wait, Link, look!”
He didn’t want to look; he really didn’t. He wanted to turn back around and leave this whole place behind them for the day. But Zelda was already pulling her hand from his and rushing forward. He had no choice but to follow.
There was something they hadn’t noticed before, as distracted as they had been trying to not suck in the gloom from the air. When the tunnel opened up to a small cliff ledge, they could see, across some sort of deep chasm, a platform, and then a figure silhouetted in green and blue light which was swirling…out from it. It looked ancient, but in less of a ‘historical discoveries awaiting them’ way, and more of a ‘some archaic, dormant evil that one shouldn’t approach unless you wanted to get cursed or killed’ sort of way.
He was altogether not in favour when Zelda began to follow the precarious stone walkway towards the light. He grabbed her arm before she could get too far away.
She blinked at him in confusion, “What’s the matter?”
What’s the- Link let go of her arm, “Are we really going over there?”
“That figure is surrounded by gloom,” Zelda said, “We’re here to find the source, and if that’s where it is, then that is where we have to go.”
Link was no stranger to a dangerous situation, and he knew that their goal was to find the source of the gloom, but this…There was something deeper than just unease now. It felt dark. Corrupted . It felt similar to the evil that emanated off of Calamity Ganon, and he was suddenly certain that this had been the reason the master sword was warning them. Whatever it was, he didn’t want to go anywhere near it.
“You can stay here,” Zelda said firmly, taking a step, “I just need to collect data, and then I’ll be back.”
She didn’t wait for a reply. She was a quarter of the way down the staircase by the time he realised what she had said and had the sense to run after her. He caught up to her just as she made it to the foot of the crumbling stairway.
From this distance, they could see the illuminated figure in more detail. They didn’t really need the torch anymore with the brightness of the glow, but neither of them were particularly thinking about that right then.
“What…is it?” Zelda whispered. Her pace quickened and Link matched it to follow her.
What, indeed. The grotesque figure rested at the centre of a stone pedestal, its arms thrown wide and mouth gaping as if caught for eternity in the throes of rage. It had been a man once, that much seemed likely, though he looked too tall to have been Hylian. Gerudo possibly. Riju had mentioned that a son was born to the Gerudo every 100 years. But what would a Gerudo be doing all the way down here…There was no way to tell how old the figure was. Really, ‘mummy’ or ‘skeleton’ were better words for the leathery grey skin stretched over jagged bones and rotted sinews. The last strings of hair clung to the skeleton’s scalp and rags of what once had been clothes hung around emaciated hips.
A spectral hand and forearm were all that remained of the skeleton’s last foe. It clutched at the figure’s rib cage, and it was then that Link realised that was the source of the swirling light rising up towards the surface. But more worrying still were the flows of black and scarlet gloom pouring in heavy clouds down from where the hand met the figure’s chest. It was like a fountain, but sickening and evil; one that even Zelda was hesitant to approach as they drew closer.
“Does this…count as dangerous yet?” Link asked nervously, barely daring to raise his voice over a breath. He felt tense, taut like a bowstring and ready to move at any moment.
“I..” Zelda stuttered, fixed on the skeletal figure before them.
Link was fairly certain somewhere in the back of his mind that the last thing they wanted was for that glowing hand to crackle and then fall to the floor, yet that is exactly what happened. It clattered to the ground, and as it did, a stone dislodged itself from one of the jeweled adornments still clinging to the bone. Before he could stop her, Zelda crouched down to pick up the stone, holding it closer to her face than he would have deemed safe.
It began to glow , and as much as Link wished it was, he did not think it was a good sign.
“Zelda, I think it’s time to-”
There was a sickening crack , and both their heads snapped toward the figure. For half a second, it was still as it had been before. Link’s eyes narrowed. Then with another crack, crack, it began to move . Each movement was halted and jerky from years of unuse, zombie-like and grotesque as it appeared to try and straighten itself upright. Dust and gloom flaked off its body with each twitch, coating the floor.
Then, so abruptly that it startled Link a bit, the body collapsed, bending backwards nearly in half, and for a long moment, it was completely still.
Without warning, it turned its head to them, once empty sockets now flashing deep red, and that was more than Link’s que to get them out of there. Heart hammering in his ribcage, he reached for Zelda, but there wasn’t time for even that. Zelda gasped behind him as great tendrils gloom, unlike anything they had ever seen, burst forth from the skeletal figure’s chest where the hand had been, spouting off in all directions. Link caught sight of six in total, one disappearing down the tunnel they had entered through, three more spiraling into the darkness in different directions, a fourth racing up through the earthen ceiling of the chamber, and the sixth…
He didn’t even think, just threw himself in front of the final stream of gloom with everything he had. He didn’t even know if his blade could stop it.
“Link!”
The mass of gloom barreled into barely fast enough for Link to get up his sword. He flinched back, stumbling as the gloom swarmed up the blade of his sword like poisonous fingers clawing up towards his hand-
A scream tore itself from his throat. The gloom burned up his arm clear up to his shoulder and out of instinct he tried to yank it away. Black spotted the edges of his vision when his struggle only seemed to make it worse, like the dark tendrils were trying to drag him back toward the pedestal, up towards its dark master. He felt sick, the gloom burning like it was trying to rend flesh from bone and then go deeper, if that was even possible.
In a blink, it dissipated, but through the haze of pain, he hardly had the frame of mind to be relieved. He had just a moment to glance down at the master sword, now singed with gloom and pulsing weakly beneath the corruption still clinging to it.
‘ Not good .’
He had barely a second to get any sort of respite before a final tendril of gloom rushed them again, this time even bigger than before. Link clutched at his arm, wincing when moving it sent lances of pain through his body, and gathered every bit of strength he had for one last swing to block the incoming attack.
Between one moment and the next, with no time for Link to react or try and stop it, he watched in horror as he swung the Master Sword down to fend off the gloom. He saw the blade hit the swirling mass head on, splitting it in two. He saw the blade crack. Once. Twice. Then shatter completely as if it were glass and not the strongest blade ever forged. A piece flew off, the tip of the blade, carried forward by momentum to cut across the face of the figure still frozen on the pedestal.
It nicked his face. The shard left a mark barely larger than a paper cut.
Link’s whole arm spasmed in pain and he groaned. His vision swam and he felt himself stumble. Zelda called his name from behind him, but he could barely hear her.
They needed to get out of there and fast but-
“ Was that the sword that seals the darkness? ”
That voice, raspy and cold, had come from the figure on the pedestal. Link watched as it straightened itself up once more, coming to its full height and facing the two of them. Its mouth did not move when it spoke.
“A blade that shatters so easily against my power cannot save you from me.”
Link looked down at the sword in his hand. The blade had been destroyed nearly to the hilt, with a few inches of rotted, corroded metal left at towards the base beneath the crossguard. It no longer glowed with sacred light as it had before.
“ Zelda…” the figure rasped. It fixed its gaze on her before turning its head slowly towards him, “ And you who carries that fragile sword…are Link .”
He felt a shiver drip down his spine at the sound of his name from that creature’s mouth.
“How do you…know our names?” Zelda asked, her voice trembling.
The figure made a sound in the back of his throat like sandpaper scraping brick. A laugh, Link thought. It was laughing at them. They were nothing more than a game to it.
“ Pathetic ,” it continued, not answering the question, “ Rauru placed his faith in you, and this was all you could do? ”
He heard Zelda mutter the name ‘Rauru’ under her breath, just as confused as he was.
Link’s gaze darted around the chamber, from the figure to the stairs and back again, desperately throwing together pieces of a plan as they came to him. They needed to get out . The figure was doing something with the gloom still emanating from its chest, pulling it outward into a ball between his hands, preparing for something, which meant they couldn’t possibly have long to escape. He felt lightheaded and his right arm was nearly useless from the gloom attack, but if he could get Zelda up the stairs and past the tunnel they had come in through…
He didn’t have time to finish the thought as the ground lurched suddenly beneath his feet, heaving like a ship’s deck in a storm. Zelda gasped and Link didn’t have to search hard to know why. Whatever the skeletal figure had done with the gloom, it looked like he was near finished now. Hands reaching towards the sky, the gloom tendrils coiled around its arms and stretched up towards the ceiling. Great pieces of it crashed to the ground around them as the gloom pushed until the very stone above them began to rise . As the stone pedestal fell away beneath it, the figure gave one final shout -from anger or exertion, Link did not know- before it disappeared, down, down, down into the darkness below them completely.
The ceiling was still rising, and Link realised Hyrule Castle itself was rising into the sky with it. Debris crashed down around them and the ground continued to quake. The figure was gone, hopefully for good, and the two of them needed to escape now before they were crushed under falling boulders and several hundred feet of dirt.
“Link!” He heard Zelda cry, “We have to-”
He felt the ground sway beneath them again, more violently than before. He heard Zelda’s gasp, one of fear, not surprise. Link whirled around in an instant and time seemed to slow down before his very eyes.
He would see it behind his eyes every time he closed them for the rest of his life, the way the stonework shuddered and split beneath Zelda’s feet. They way she stumbled, her foot slipping out from beneath her, sending her sprawling back.
He didn’t think. There was no time to. The master sword clattered to the ground and he threw himself after her with his arm outstretched, straining to catch her.
It all happened in the space of a few heartbeats, and he knew this because he could feel his own thundering in his ears.
One .
Falling into the darkness below, he reached for her. He didn’t know what he would do when he caught her, but that didn’t matter.
Two.
He saw her hand outstretched toward his. Their gazes locked and there was very real fear in her eyes. He wouldn’t let that fear be the last thing he ever saw on her face. He wouldn’t. He would not .
Three .
They were inches apart now. He had used his injured arm to catch her, but that was the least of his worries. Her hand was nearly in reach, their fingertips brushing.
Four.
The sudden resistance he was met with made the joint and socket of his other arm scream in pain. Or maybe that was him. In his single-minded goal of catching Zelda, the rest of his body had gone on autopilot and now that she was safe, he had caught one of the boulders still clinging to the remains of the chamber floor. For a second he let out a relieved noise somewhere between a sigh and a laugh. He looked down at Zelda…
Zelda…
Zelda who was nowhere to be seen. He thought he might have caught a flash of golden light before the darkness swallowed her completely.
No. No.
He screamed her name, painful in the way it tore itself from the back of his throat, from deep within his chest. He tried to let go of the rock, to go after her because what if she survived the fall? What if she needed him? But he found that he couldn’t. It was then that he realised he hadn’t grabbed any rock at all. In fact, the entirety of the chamber where they had found that figure had fallen away, floor and all. Instead, that ethereal green hand had grabbed him around his wrist and seemed to be holding him up, suspending him midair.
Link clawed at the fingers wrapped around his wrist, trying desperately to pry them off of him, but the hand was too strong and whatever the gloom had done to his arm was spreading quickly to the rest of his body, rendering him too weak to struggle. There was no point in fighting, but he tried anyway. Screaming his throat raw and struggling furiously in its grasp he tried to escape. Zelda, Zelda, Zelda. His only thought on repeat as the hand dragged him upward. He felt his vision blur, swirling in and out of focus. There was a light above them now. The sun? He didn’t care. His last thought was of her. Only her
Zelda.
Zelda…
***
Beyond the depths of Hyrule Castle, a young mother only just managed to pull her unsuspecting child to safety before a large mass of stone plummeted to the ground exactly where he had been moments before. A Sheikah farmer watched helplessly as his crop of pumpkins was crushed underneath a boulder etched with unfamiliar script, and even in the farther corners of the kingdom, the Zora rushed for shelter in the safety of their homes as debris from above came raining down into their rivers and reservoirs below. It took no more than a glance towards the sky to find the source, large islands far above the people of Hyrule. Islands in the sky that looked like they could have belonged to gods.
Back at Lookout Landing, the sudden rising of the castle from its foundation where it had rested for hundreds of years was a noticeable cause of alarm. The rising cacophony of the same questions soon became more common than any original idea out of anyone’s mouth. What was going on? Where were Link and Zelda? Were they responsible for all this? No one had any answers. That castle was floating, but they did not know what was going on, nor did they have any idea what had become of Link or Zelda. Most looked to their lead researcher, Purah, but she was just as lost as everyone else. Oh, there were theories of course. When the initial panic faded, ideas ranging from ‘Calamity Ganon was back’ to a simple earthquake circulated around the Landing and far beyond in the villages. But as the minutes turned to hours, and the sun faded down below Death Mountain with no sign of their knight or princess, one thing became clear.
Something had gone very, inexplicably wrong below Hyrule Castle.
Notes:
alrighty folks and there's chapter two! and now that we're getting into actual canon things, i'm gonna do actual chapter summaries and add a few more things into the end notes
there is actually SO much more i wanted to add into this chapter but i didn't want it to get so painstakingly long and so i ended up shortening it quite a bit :/ scenes based on some of the early promo trailers that i was going to add in, you will be missed
fun fact! when i wrote link and zelda's little banter moment where they're talking about what they'll find under the castle, and zelda jokes about "terrifying gloom monsters with long fingers to snatch you in the dark" i did not realise until i went BACK and reread this chapter that this basically describes gloom hands lol look at me go
so foreshadowing i guess :)anyway, next chapter will be out next friday i think cos i really want to get the ball rolling on this fic a bit more, and THEN we will probably slow down releases to every other week. but who knows! in this house, we play it by ear 🤘
until next time!
-Nico
Chapter 4: Chapter 3
Summary:
link wakes up and finds more than a few strange things
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
When Link woke, it was with a gasp and a frantic jolt of panic. The feeling was quick to subside, though it did not go away completely as he slowly took in his surroundings. He was in a room or…cave of some kind, with leathery vines and thick tree roots lining the walls. The ground he sat on was cold stone, and it was then that a crick in his lower back made itself known. That, and another spike of panic which made him stand quickly. If his body was aching, he had to have been laying there for a while, but in this dark cavern he had no idea how long that could have been. Hours? Days? Or possibly even…His breath stuttered and then picked back up faster than before, and he felt a cold trickle of dread down the back of his neck. He was alone. In a dark, unfamiliar cavern. He was unarmed and even his tunic, pants, and shoes had been removed to Hylia knew where in the time he had been out. It was familiar, but in no way comforting. The last time he had woken up like this it had been in the Shrine of Resurrection on the Great Plateau, and when that had happened, he had been met with an entirely new Hyrule than the one he had remembered.
At least he could remember anything at all this time, he realised, which was in and of itself a substantial relief. He could picture the exact moments that had led him to where he was. The chamber, the mummified figure and the glowing arm, how it had spoken to them by name and caused the very ceiling to rise above them. He recalled the debris falling down, the haze of pain he tried to work through as he had searched for a way for he and Zelda to escape, and then…and then…
Then reaching for her . Missing. Watching helplessly as she fell into the blackness below and disappeared in a flash of golden light. He tried to calm his breathing, which was coming out in more gasping waves than anything, as tears blurred his vision. Link was no stranger to failure. He knew the sharp pain of unfulfilled duty from that night when he laid dying in the rain in his princess’ arms.
He felt it now. It was an agony in his chest, like some razor-clawed monster digging its talons into his heart and squeezing. Ripping. Tearing at his chest. He heard himself let out a quiet sob, but it was so distant that it almost could have been made by someone else except that he felt the pain in his throat as it tore its way out. He had failed her . He’d failed her again, and now she could be dead as far as he knew. Because of him. Because he was too late to save her.
The thought that he might have lost her for good did nothing to quell his panic, but he put a hand over his chest where his heart was hammering against his ribcage and took one, then two measured breaths. It felt odd there, but he kept forcing himself to breathe, even when fear burned like fire beneath his skin. For the Goddess' sake, he didn’t have time to lose his head like this. He needed to get out of this cave and find out where-
He realised then that panic was not the reason his hand had felt so uncomfortable against his skin. Though of course that might have been some of it, it was due in large part to the fact that his hand, or rather his entire right arm , now looked entirely not his own.
“What the…” He held his hand up by his face to inspect the damage. It didn’t…feel any different. He flexed his fingers, clenching his hand into a fist and then loosening again before bending his arm at the elbow and swinging it back and forth at the joint a few times as well. The arm - his arm, he supposed- worked perfectly fine, as if it had always been there.
The burn and poison from the gloom in the cavern had been cleared away, but from shoulder down, it was now a deep, strange blackish-green colour that did not look entirely healthy. The arm was covered in claywork adornments. He couldn’t quite bring himself to call it jewelry for some reason. It looked old . Older than him, for sure. Where could it have…
A memory hit him hard and fast, enough that he gasped loud enough to send an echo through the chamber. That arm, the one that had been holding the figure beneath Hyrule Castle, it had looked just like this. That had been what had grabbed Link and lifted him away after Zelda fell, and he knew there had to have been a relatively long period of time he was asleep after that. Could it be that the arm had…merged with him somehow? It seemed absurd, but not entirely implausible. He remembered the technology offered by the Sheikah Slate before Impa and her people had decided to shut all their creations down. There had been one that allowed the user of the slate to grab onto metal objects and move them, another that could stop time itself for a few moments, and even one that created small explosives in an instant. If all those were possible by the Sheikah, then was it really that much of a stretch to say they, or another older civilisation had even more fantastical innovations? He glanced down at his new arm again; perhaps it was Zonai. The tunnels beneath Hyrule Castle had seemed to belong to them after all. If that were the case, then who was to say they didn’t have all sorts of abilities no one in the kingdom could ever even imagine.
One thing was for sure, he needed to get out of this cave and find out where he was so he could get back to Lookout Landing. If anyone would have an idea of what had happened to him, it…well… A sigh escaped his lips before he could stop it. If anyone could figure out what had happened to his arm it would be Zelda . She wasn’t here now. He desperately wished she was. In any case, Purah was his next best option; he could find out what was to be done about his arm, and then begin to make a plan on where to find Zelda.
With that goal in mind, he rolled his shoulders, still trying to ease the tension there from laying on the cold ground for…he didn’t want to think of how long. But before he could take so much as a step, a voice called out to him from deep within the cave.
‘So, you’re awake.’
It would be a lie to say he wasn’t startled. He felt himself tense, waiting for anything more from the mysterious voice.
‘I have heard a great deal about you from Zelda,’ he, for it did sound like a man’s voice, continued with a hint of fondness in his tone. It was accented; similar to Hylian but not quite, as if the voice were used to speaking a language only slightly different.
She was alive . Relief eased the tension in his body just a fraction.
He opened his mouth to ask where she was, if she was alright, but the voice continued on before he could speak ‘I am glad to see you escape death. Your wounds were severe, and I did the best I could. Your arm, however, was beyond saving. I had to replace it, lest the injury endanger you further.’
The voice sounded regretful at that, as if he truly did feel bad for having to resort to such extreme measures. Somehow, Link appreciated it.
‘I understand you must have questions, ’ said the voice, ‘Follow the path out of this cave and go down to the larger island below. There is a temple there where we can meet.’
A glance around showed that there was, in fact, a narrow tunnel entrance just across from him that seemed to lead out as the voice had said. He waited just a moment in case there were any further instructions, but it was silent. He had his destination, it seemed there would be more information to come once he got there. As much as he was loath to trust the disembodied voice of someone he did not even know -or at least, he thought bitterly, did not think he knew- he didn’t have many other options. Whether he went to the temple or not, he would have to leave this cave if he wanted to get any closer to finding Zelda.
The warmth of relief washed over him again as he remembered that he even could find Zelda. The voice knew her, it sounded like, and had spoken about him with her, which hopefully meant she was still alive and safe wherever she was. The thought bolstered him as he quickly crossed the cave to the exit.
A glint of light out of the corner of his eye made him falter. There was no sun for anything to catch on and reflect this far beneath the ground, and whatever it was seemed to be buried under a few layers of vines and stuck into the ground. It looked like perhaps a weapon of some kind. He stepped closer and knelt down to push some of the coverage aside and get a better view and grabbed the handle.
In the time between recognising the weight of the hilt and then pulling it from the ground he realised what exactly it was that he had found.
The master sword had seen better days. Never, even in the final hours of the Great Calamity when he and his blade had been at their limits had it been quite this marred by the evidence of corruption. Whoever had restored his arm had either been unwilling or unable to restore the shattered blade of the sword, leaving it half the length it had been before and pockmarked from the gloom’s effects. It felt heavy in his hand, almost…dead. Or dying. When he picked it up to examine it closer, flakes of rust crumbled off of it to land at his feet.
The blade was rotted. Decayed . The sword that had been by his side almost his entire life , with everything he had been through, and now he didn’t know if it could ever be the same again. He felt, though perhaps it was silly to do so, that he had lost something akin to a close friend, and so it didn’t come as all that much of a surprise when he felt the beginnings of tears wet his cheeks.
After drawing in a breath that was shakier than he would have anticipated, he swiped underneath his eyes to clear them and scanned the room once. The master sword would be of no use to him in this state, he knew, but to leave it behind was out of the question. After locating a few smaller tendrils of vine coming off of one of the larger roots, he used them to fasten a makeshift scabbard across his back and sheathed the sword inside. It wasn’t the most comfortable on his bare skin, and the leathery outside of the plant itched a bit when he moved, but it would do for the time being.
The next thing to do was just…go, he supposed. There was only one exit out of the cave, which didn’t exactly leave many options on how to proceed, not that he needed any. He pushed aside the dangling vines that covered the exit and found himself stepping into a much more intricate room than the one he had woken up in. The architecture around him was undeniably Zonai in origin, with a high ceiling and that same smoothed way of carving structures directly from the stone rather than building up with bricks. He noticed two large gears each spinning in opposite directions which took up most of the wall to his left, though how they were moving he had no idea. A few feet in front of him, there was a stone carving of a dragon. Or maybe two dragons? There were two heads at least, but not a tail between them. The dragons seemed to be following each other, caught in some eternal loop.
He approached the statue slowly, stepping into the circle of cool sand that pooled out in front of it and then stopping just shy of the two short steps at its base. As he got closer, a pale green light began to glow within the circle. It pulsed and crackled as if alive, slowly shaping into translucent runic designs in that same almost-hylian-but-not language that he and Zelda had seen beneath Hyrule Castle. What was it? Both the dragon carving and the shimmering runes were unlike anything he had seen before. The strangeness of it all reminded him a bit of the ancient sheikah technology, but…their colour palette of choice had been blue and orange. Which didn’t exactly mean this wasn’t from the Sheikah, but if Link had to guess, this was the Zonai technological precursor to it.
Fascination got the better of him and he reached out to touch it before he really thought through what could happen. Fortunately, the strange glowing matter did not burn away his hand, or destroy him body and soul, or set off loud, blaring alarms. Nothing like that, actually. Before he could even touch it at all, the runes dissipated into swirls of light and vanished before his eyes.
“What-”
Up a small set of steps ahead of him, a smaller door he hadn’t noticed before rumbled open. It seemed to lead to either another room or some more passageways, but when another quick glance around the room made it clear that was the only exit, he shrugged and made his way over. The steps were dusty beneath his feet, and a couple times sharp pebbles dug into his skin, making him wince. He’d need to find shoes soon. Honestly, he’d really need to find clothes . Wherever he was, he wasn’t sure he fancied walking around and then meeting the source of that disembodied voice in only his undershorts.
The doorway led out to, not another chamber, but an earthy tunnel with the grey stone Zonai walls almost entirely corroded away save for a few cracked arches holding the ceiling up. He wasn’t following the passage long before the pathway dropped off suddenly. He was met with a steep dropoff into a flooded pit below. He considered just jumping off into the water, but realised on second thought that wet shorts wouldn’t be the most comfortable. It was cold underground as well, and he had no idea what the weather would be like once he made it outside. For the time being, he carefully slid in a half crouch down the small hill and hugged close to the left wall where the pool was shallower and crossed that way. His feet were wet now, and collecting mud and plant matter with each step, but they would dry eventually.
Unless, of course, he kept running into ruined pathways and more pools of icy water, which is precisely what happened a few minutes later.
Just when his footsteps had stopped leaving prints and he was no longer acrewing pieces of moss on his heel, the pathway dropped off again, and this time the drop was even farther down than before.
Fantastic. Link let out a sigh and did a quick and back and forth across the edge of the drop to examine his options. The water looked deep enough for him to dive, but he’d still really rather avoid getting wet in case the tunnels led out into some frigid, Hebra wasteland or something similar. The exposed dirt of the dropoff itself was relatively well packed, but it was steeper than the last one. It would take skill to climb down. That said, he’d done a fair bit of climbing on awkward surfaces over the years, so he thought that maybe he’d still rather attempt the climb rather than the water.
A cluster of pebbles slipped out from under his foot as if in protest as he lowered himself over the edge, but aside from a gasp and half a moment of scrabbling back for the ledge, he managed to keep himself stable. He went for one of the large twisting tree roots next, putting most of his weight on it while he looked around for a good place to put his feet next. Scaling the decline went very much like this the whole way down; finding one stable spot and then another and another until he at last dropped down into the shallower part of the pool. Link hissed as the cold water hit his skin; it came up to about his knees this time as was far from bath water temperature. He was quick to wade through, and when he at last made it to the other side, he stopped for a moment to rub the prickles out of his legs.
Link was grateful to find that the second ledge was the only other obstacle, save for a few errant keese he spooked on his way, that he would have to worry about. A few more minutes of following the stone path in the semi-darkness led him to another open chamber, this one looking more like an entryway with no deeper purpose than for people to pass through. There were no mysterious carvings or glowing dragon statues, just old stonework and deep brown soil covered in moss and cave plants. Link was relieved to see the door leading out of this room illuminated by sunlight from outside. He’d at last made it to the exit, which meant he’d at least made it over the first hurdle in finding out where Zelda was.
In his excitement, he nearly missed the chest tucked away in a corner of the room by the entryway. It was a relatively large one made of stone and covered in green clay tiles like a mosaic. There were two glowing turquoise gems where he assumed the handles were, and most intriguing of all, an upside down Sheikah eye symbol. Though after a second look, Link realised that maybe it wasn’t quite that. This eye lacked the ovular tear shape beneath the bottom eyelid that the sheikah symbol had. He couldn’t help but imagine Zelda’s excitement if she were here to see it. ‘ This must be the original inspiration for the Sheikah’s sigil! ’ she’d say, and take about a thousand photos from all different angles to take back to Purah and Impa and Robbie. Link couldn’t help but wish she was with him now; she knew so much more about all of this than he did. Wasn’t she the one who deserved to see it firsthand? He couldn’t even try to fill in the gaps by taking photographs of his own, since the Purah Pad had fallen into the darkness along with its owner. Oh boy. Purah was going to have their heads for that when they got back.
He let out a sigh as he crouched down to examine the lock on the chest. It wasn’t a typical Hylian one that could be undone with a key, which posed a problem, and became even more so when a sweep of the general area around the chest did not reveal anything that looked even remotely like it could open the lock. Great. He lifted his hand to touch the eye, maybe there was something he had missed by only looking at it.
The familiar crrrick of a lock grinding open was the only warning he got before the chest lid popped open, accompanied by a flash of that same green light from the strange dragon statue that had opened that door earlier. Link jolted back in shock, missing his balance and landing squarely on his backside as he gaped a bit at the now open chest in surprise.
“Oh.”
He would have to add ‘can open strange treasure chests’ to his list of things his new arm could do. Not exactly expected, but neither was it unwelcome, he supposed. He shifted back over to the chest and pushed the lid up all the way to look inside. There was a mass of green and greyish fabric that looked like it had at one point been beige there. He pulled the green piece out first, since it seemed like there was a bit less of it, and held it out before him. There wasn’t much to it -really it looked like it might have been a belt or a scarf of some kind- just a strip of fabric with gold embroidery in the shape of an archer’s bow around the edge and triangular tassels on either end. There was a hole that looked like it could have been a sleeve as well, which puzzled him, but he’d figure that out once he looked at the rest of the ensemble. Next was that greyish-tan tunic he’d seen. He set the green piece aside on a cleaner looking stone and pulled the other bit from the chest. It didn’t look anything like the tunics they had back in Hyrule. When he slipped the light fabric over his head in an attempt to wear it, he saw how it only had one sleeve and, indeed, only one side to the bit that should have covered his torso. Maybe that was the purpose of the green bit? To serve as the other sleeve? The tunic itself only came down to about mid-thigh, which made him feel a bit awkward and exposed, but there were no pants in the chest so he decided that it would do for now. The last thing inside was a pair of leather sandals similar to the ones the people of Lurelin Village were so fond of. These, however, had long, ropey ties attached to them which took some adjusting to get them to sit right against his legs so that they didn’t just loosen and fall, but he got it eventually.
All that was left was the strange green piece. Link picked it up and turned it over in his hands a few times. The fabric was clearly old, and fraying in more than a few places on the edges. It reminded him very acutely of the plain shirt and trousers that had been left by Purah and Robbie when they had placed him in the Shrine of Resurrection, yet somehow this -the whole outfit really- seemed even older than that. He tried slipping it over his right shoulder to cover the rest of his body (and subsequently the arm that did not look like it should be part of him). This did not feel bad , per se, but nor did it feel right either. It sagged awkwardly, and when he tucked it into the belt that had come with the tunic and retied the makeshift scabbard for the master sword, it bunched in odd places that made it awkward to lift either of his arms fully.
So much for covering the rest of his body. He switched the fabric over to his left side, layering over the grey tunic. This felt marginally better. Still awkward, the sleeve bunched up by his ear when he raised his arm, but at least he would have the other completely free to use with nothing in the way.
Now dressed and feeling a bit better for it, he turned his attention back to the cave exit. The sun shining through was a good sign, but what he was a bit more concerned about were the instructions the voice had given him. ‘Follow the path out of this cave and go down to the larger island below. There is a temple there where we can meet.’
What did that mean? Was he near a beach? Link wracked his brain for anything he could remember in Hyrule that could count as a ‘larger island below,’ but came up blank. Maybe an underwater island? He’d heard from Sidon that the ocean Zora had quite a few colonies in the oceans that very few had ever visited. It could be that, he supposed. But why would the ocean Zora have Zelda?
There was only one way to find out. He picked up his pace to a light jog as he made his way out of the cave at last and followed the sunlight to whatever his destination might be.
It wasn’t far, maybe a few hundred feet, and he could see birds flying ahead of him in the clear sky. He felt a warm gust of wind blow through and he drew closer and closer, though it didn’t exactly smell anything like sea breeze. He was grateful to have shoes now with how cracked and pebbled the stone ground had become; he didn’t fancy having to worry about jabbing the sole of his foot with jagged rocks and sticks.
The last of the stone walls fell away behind him and it took all of two seconds before he realised he was not on a beach at all. In fact. He wasn’t even sure he was in Hyrule.
He stumbled to a stop as miles, and miles, and miles of clear skies were suddenly spread out before him.
Link whirled in a circle, sucking in an involuntary shocked breath. This was…
As far as he could see in any direction it was just azure sky and clouds. It was disorienting. So much so that he felt his head swim behind his eyes for a long moment. It made his stomach roll with nausea. He felt the vertigo of being so high up, paired with the fact that the only thing breaking up the endless blue was the cave wall he was standing next to. That grounded him a bit. Enough, at least, that he could shake his head to clear it, press a hand to his chest to still his breathing. The pathway went on out into the emptiness a bit ahead of him and for some insane reason, he followed it. From this vantage point, he could see more of his surroundings besides the vast sky around him. He looked down, possibly despite his best judgement, and stamped down the buzz of adrenaline in his veins to at last fully see where he was.
Link realised he was in Hyrule. Sort of. Just a few hundred miles above it. He saw Death Mountain, or at least…what he thought was Death Mountain. It looked like it, except that there was a large crimson miasma rising in tendrils from the top. He could see a patch of clouds covering the Hebra snow plains, and the wide expanse of Hyrule field. Even a small blip that looked like Zora’s Domain, and then an even smaller blip in the shadow of the castle that could only have been Lookout Landing. Hyrule Castle itself did not fail to catch his eye either, mostly owing to the fact that it was unmistakably floating high above a good portion of its foundation.
It was quickly becoming clear that he needed to find Zelda and fast. Whatever had happened with that corpse below the castle had sprung something into action in the kingdom that he did not, by any means, want to have to face on his own.
Unfortunately, the only way it seemed to do that was…to jump down. He was quick to put the pieces together in realising what the voice had meant by the “larger island below,’ and he did not have to look very far down to see the great land mass hovering just beneath him in the sky.
He would have gladly jumped right off the platform and down into the large lake that was conveniently positioned directly beneath him if it weren’t for one thing. He was no great measurer of distances, but it seemed to him that if he were to throw himself into the open air below, the force of impact on the water just might kill him. Hylians did tend to handle higher levels of pressure better than would be expected, but when it came to a few hundred feet in height he was less than confident that it would be any help.
Link peered back over the edge once more. Perhaps it…wasn’t quite as high as he thought? The cloud cover between him and the next island did make it a bit harder to measure distances. No, that seemed far too optimistic. There was a very real chance he would jump off this ledge and plunge straight to his death. Not exactly a fantastic option. He turned around, back towards the passage to see if there was anything he might have missed that might help him get down.
And there was. Hidden behind overgrown roots and vines, there was something tucked just to the right of the cave mouth. He used his hands to pull the plant covering away bit by bit to reveal a large, metallic… something behind it. The thing was massive, nearly twice his height, and flat but designed in such a way that it looked like a bird. It was a bit awkward to carry because of its size, but light. At least, light enough that he didn’t have to strain much to carry it back to the edge of the platform. Because of its shape and the weightless material it was made from, he thought it could be some sort of glider, though he had never seen anything like it before. He assumed it was Zonai, considering everything else around him looked to be that way, which meant it could really have been anything.
He did think it was still better than jumping off just on his own though. At the very least, maybe the wideness of the device’s wingspan would slow his fall enough that he could scrape by with just a broken bone or two.
Luckily he had let the glider device fall in a position where it would be relatively easy to just hop on and tilt it over the edge. For good measure though, he pushed it just a few inches forward, watching with semi-bated breath as the glider tilted precariously in the wind before settling. It was with a relieved breath that he stepped onto it, crawling half on his knees and half in a crouch closer to the nose to tip it off. The metal creaked, and it wobbled once, then twice before tumbling beak-first into the open air.
It felt like all the wind rushed out of his lungs at once in a gasp as the glider tumbled downward for one long, terrifying moment. His stomach seemed to float up into his throat and he nearly felt his hand slip from the small divot in the platform he’d used as a grip before it caught a current of air and righted itself. This seemed to be how these things were meant to fly when not controlled in any way; it would plummet for a few feet, then level out, then plummet, then level out again in almost a stair-like motion. However, after tentatively inching closer to the nose of the glider, Link found he could tilt it into a smoother downward track. Likewise, after a bit of trial and error, he quickly discovered that if he leaned closer to the left or right wings, he could tilt the path it flew in towards the respective directions. It wasn’t the most efficient way of controlling the glider, but it worked well enough as he guided its precarious descent down to the ground below.
When he made it down to the treeline, things went a bit sideways.
Quite literally. He did see the glider about to skim over an older, gnarled tree with limbs sticking out at odd angles, but because none of the branches looked strong enough to hold much weight, he did not try to lean and avoid it. This was his mistake, because one of the limbs was in fact strong enough to hold weight. At the very least, enough that when he tried to soar right past that old tree, the branch caught on the junction between the bird head and the wing, jerking the glider to the right side and sending him tumbling all the way down to the forest floor.
Link hissed in pain as he landed hard on his shoulder. He’d been through enough injuries to know nothing felt dislocated or broken, which was a relief, but it sent his nerves firing off in a painful, buzzing jolt all down his arm for a good few minutes before it subsided. At that point he was able to pick himself up with a groan and assess the rest of his body. Half of the remaining leaves that had been on the tree were now in his hair or the creases of his tunic, and his hip on the same side he’d landed on felt bruised. He’d knocked his head on one of the knobs of the tree as he fell and that throbbed like nothing else. He hoped it was not a concussion; that wouldn’t exactly be ideal.
He’d managed to land just on the edge of a clearing, and the first thing he realised once he at last got his bearings was that everything around him was extremely yellow . The grass below his feet was a pallid shade of yellow, the foliage on the bushes and trees are each a similar colour, as if they were dying in the fall air. Even the weathered stone tiles below his feet were covered in a sunshiny moss in places. It was so jarring that, for a moment, Link had to put a hand over his eyes to shield them from it all. A light, blustery breeze carried the scent of the poplar trees around him, accompanied with notes of something else earthy that he didn’t recognise. It blew his hair in his face enough to tickle, but fortunately not quite so much as to be irritating - he did hate when his hair got in his eyes.
There was a large building, larger than any of the other landmarks he could see from where he was, across the sky island. That had to be the temple the voice had told him about, didn’t it? He started along the cobbled stone path towards it, and couldn’t help but stare in rapt fascination at everything he passed. Such an odd forest. The colour couldn’t have been because the plants were dying, not when they had all the sunlight they could possibly need this high up in the air. It almost felt as if the foliage had gotten its hue from absorbing the very glow of the sun itself. Link had seen plants take their colour from stranger things before. There were small gazebos on the sides of the path as Link went on, some of them empty, others with corroded pottery or materials from a time long past laying forgotten on the ground. All of them had more of that same Zonai carving work on the outside edge of the roof, including that strange dragon design. It was from one of these that Link managed to procure an old knife. The thing was rusted at the handle and no longer held its sheen, but when he’d pressed it to his thumb he could feel it was still sharp, and in this unfamiliar place he felt that something to defend himself was better than nothing.
Eventually he ran into a bridge, but either it had never been finished, or the body had crumbled away a long time ago. He could see where it connected across the empty gap of air between this part of the island and the next, but no sign of any way to connect the two.
The only thing he could see was an odd, cylindrical device sitting on a stone circle a few feet to his left.
It was the same shade of green as the glider, but instead made of mosaic tiles rather than light metal. Its body looked like a cone with the tip cut off, and on top of that sat a head or helm of some kind. It was clearly modeled after something reptilian -a frog or a lizard or snake- but with white flower bulbs on either side of its head by its eyes. That same eye motif hung from beneath them like a piece of jewelry. It was bizarre and Link made a note to tell Zelda about it when he found her. Out of curiosity, he reached out to touch the sun-bleached tiles.
He had expected to feel the rough texture of the stone, maybe even to be able to guess what material the pieces had been made of. He had not expected the little device to suddenly begin rattling, dislodging centuries long accumulations of dust, and he certainly didn’t expect it to elongate and produce not only a neck, but hands as well. Link gasped loudly and yanked his hand back as the device straightened to be a few inches taller than he, tilting its reptilian head this way and that to scrutinize him with glowing eyes.
“What are-”
‘ Link. You are Link. I have waited for you. ’
It…It could speak . And even more confusing, it knew his name .
‘ It is good that you are here, ’ the device continued, ‘ Princess Zelda left something for you in my care. ’
The words it spoke were crackly like static and didn’t come out of any mouth, rather it seemed to emanate from somewhere else inside it. He was intrigued by what it had said Zelda had left for him. Had she been here? If she had, why hadn’t she just come to find him herself? Surely the voice that had woken him up could have told her.
He didn’t have time to think about it. From a compartment in the device’s chest, it pulled out a small, rectangular object and held it out to him in both its hands. Link’s eyes widened.
It seemed the Purah Pad had made it out of their encounter below the castle after all. Not only that, but it looked as good as new. Link took it and turned it over in his hands. Barely a scratch on it, save for the couple on the screen he knew had been from past ventures.
‘ I am told it is an invaluable tool and will help aid you in direction .’ The device chimed in and, yes. It wasn’t wrong; one of the more useful purposes of the Purah Pad was as a map of all Hyrule.
Link slid it into one of the pouches that the belt of his clothes had come with before looking at the tall, reptilian device once more. “Where…where am I?” He asked. He still did not know, and this machine had clearly been on this sky island for some time. He figured if anyone or any thing had answers to his questions, it could be this.
The device’s eyes flickered in a way that looked like an imitation of a blink before it replied, ‘We stand in the Garden of Time. ’ It spoke matter of factly, then turned with the clack of stone on stone to gesture with one hand to the tall building he’d seen earlier.
‘ That is the Temple of Time. It was used for Hyrule’s most important rites and ceremonies many centuries ago. But no more. Now it is a lonely place. No one visits. ’ Link could almost hear sadness in the device’s mechanic voice before it finished with, ‘ You will find Princess Zelda there. I will engage the bridge so that you may cross. ’
Link didn’t need to wonder what that meant. In its steady, clattering way, the device approached another of those two dragon stone circles, a smaller one that he had not seen before. As if it had done this a thousand times (which it very well could have), the device raised one hand to the centre of the circle just as Link had done and then moved back when it flashed that translucent green. As the last remains of light dissipated, it returned to its stone circle.
‘ I have delivered my message. ’ It said with finality, and Link watched as it compressed back to its resting state once more.
The bridge was already rumbling into motion. He realised that it had not been destroyed at all, but rather was purposely drawn back. Two great slabs of stone, one from each side, were now sliding out from where he had thought they crumbled away, and when they met with an echoing boom , he realised the worn looking bits were not that at all. In fact, they had locked together, strengthening the bridge so that it did not fall.
He didn’t waste time crossing it. The Temple of Time, as that machine had called it, was not far away, but he could see that the sun was already halfway up in the sky. If he were to find Zelda and make it back to Lookout landing by nightfall, he didn’t have time to spare. The bridge led him to a small pond, which Link detoured around until he found the path again. The trees were thicker here, no longer in a clearing, and the grass on either side of the pathway was taller in an overgrown and unkempt way. That machine was right; no one had been here in a very long time.
He couldn’t help but notice how…lonely it felt. Besides the one device that had pointed him toward the Temple of Time, he hadn’t seen anyone or anything else other than some small woodland animals and a flock of tall birds. He remembered what it had said, about how this place used to be for some of the most important rituals of the kingdom. He could almost imagine it; the cobbled streets filled with people dressed in clothes perhaps similar to what he was wearing now, maybe there was music, even. He passed the crumbled stone remains of what could have even been a home at one point. Had people lived here? The temple grounds keepers perhaps? If they had, there was no longer any sign. Link didn’t enter the ruins for fear of disrespect, but through the old archway that used to be the door, he could see nothing more than stone and dust and shards of withered pottery. He kept going.
Another of those warm breezes blew past his face, and ruffled his bangs. He had the passing thought that it was a good thing he had tied back his hair before he and Zelda left on their journey. Even the wind itself seemed to be filled with a sort of melancholy, like an aimless spirit wandering from place to place on the island. He recalled passing through abandoned villages on his journey to save Zelda ten years ago, and how dreary they had felt. They had left a feeling behind that held the sting of injustice and the heavy weight of tragedy. This did not feel like that, but there were similarities. Where the old ruins of Hyrule kingdom had felt like scars just barely starting to heal, this simply felt perhaps a bit older, more like old wounds long since healed but still full of memories. It did not feel entirely peaceful, but neither did it bear the deep pain of loss.
He did not have to walk long before he made it to the Temple of Time. It looked like there had at one point been a long stairway from the path leading up to it, but now after thousands of years what was left of it was in various states of ruin. A pond now kept the first dozen steps submerged completely in water, and while it seemed just fine for the next few steps after, up higher there were great chunks of stone missing and all sorts of plants slowly reaching their viney tendrils into the cracks in the rock in their goal to one day pull it even further apart.
The pond in his way was too deep for him to wade across, but this time, Link was not as worried about having to swim as he was back in the caves, considering his clothes were of a light, airy material and the sun was shining brightly enough that it would dry him off fast. What he did not realise was how quickly the bank dropped off. He gasped as the cold water shocked against the skin of his upper thighs, then let out a cry when the sediment below him shifted, sending him sprawling unceremoniously the rest of the way in. Once the initial shock wore off, the water was actually pleasantly cool, but regardless he didn’t linger. That machine he had spoken to had said Zelda was just ahead; he needed to get back to her both to know for himself that she was safe and to be able to tell her all the strange things that had happened since they were separated.
He heaved himself out of the water and dashed up the stone stairs as quickly as he could, his calves burned by the time he scrambled up one crumbling pile of rubble after another. There was one more short platform and then a smaller set of steps before he at last made it to the temple doors.
There was another of those stone machines before him. This one was different from the other he’d seen; smaller, with one glowing red eye at the centre of its head and a long knife-like horn atop its head. It wielded a rusted sword and an old wooden shield with that same eye and teardrop motif he’d seen in so many other things on this island. It made a loud whirring noise when it saw him, like an alarm blaring, and advanced on him quickly.
“I was told to come here,” he said, putting his arms out placatingly, “I’m looking for Princess Zel-”
The machine suddenly swung at him with its sword, barely missing his chest as Link lurched backward in shock.
“Wait, it’s okay I’m-”
But either it did not want to know what he was doing there or it did not care because it pursued after him and did not hesitate to jab its sword straight for Link’s stomach. He gasped and dodged to the side, which made the machine stumble forward a bit, buying him time to scramble for an idea on what to do. All he had on him was the old knife he’d found in a pot earlier, and even he knew it was a terrible idea to bring a knife to a sword fight. But he was out of options and out of time so he pulled the blade from its crude sheath at his belt and held it out before him to knock away the machine’s next blow before it carved right into his shoulder. It tumbled back just a bit and Link took advantage of that precious time. Its shield would give it protection, but if he could get the sword out of its hand, that could give him the reach he so desperately needed. It was worth a shot at least. He followed after the disoriented machine and used the few seconds of its confusion to ram into its right side with his shoulder. It let out a robotic creaking noise of shock and by the time it managed to recover, Link had already wrenched the blade out of its hands and was backing away again to a safer distance. He was breathing heavily and his heart felt as if it were trying to escape his chest; this high up in the air, the elevation and lower oxygen took its toll on even the most fit of people.
Blade in hand, he felt more confident in his ability to stop this thing, whatever it was. He hastily tossed the small knife aside for the time being and held the sword in front of him as the machine approached him once more, this time slower and understandably more wary.
He realised he probably shouldn't have been so quick to discard the knife. It would be too risky to grab it now, but if he’d kept it he could have feinted with it and then knocked the shield away with the sword and given himself an opening to attack. However, he was no stranger to improvising. When he’d rammed the machine earlier, that had knocked it back pretty well, but that could have been from the surprise factor. It might be harder to achieve the same result a second time, especially now that it would surely be on the defensive after losing its weapon.
He glanced back at the temple doors, then back at the machine that was now circling him and whirring hostilely. Its red eye flashed a vibrant red before it took one step back (well, it more floated back, seeing as it had no legs to step on ). Between one moment and the next, it spread its arms and began to spin them around on some sort of ball socket inside of it he hadn’t seen before, turning its torso into a whirling blade as it rushed him with alarming speed. Link tried to step back but it kept coming. He felt the brush of air as it grazed dangerously close to his stomach, and in a last ditch effort, swung his sword upward to try and stop the machine from slicing him right in half.
He had expected the blade to halt the machine’s rapid spinning long enough to allow him to scramble back. What he had not expected was for it to stop altogether, arms splayed as if to balance as it tried to regain its stability. Link didn’t waste time taking advantage of the opening. Letting instinct and muscle memory guide his movements, he let out a cry and plunged the blade straight through the machine’s glowing eye.
It stiffened with one final metallic shriek -of agony or defeat, Link didn’t know. Tremors and sparks wracked its body for a minute before the glow of its eye flickered then faded and it collapsed to the stone floor in a pile of green pieces. From inside its chest piece, a glowing blue ball rolled out to land by Link’s foot. It crackled with some sort of strange energy, and when he went to pick it up, he could feel it prickle his fingers ever so slightly. This had to have been what was powering that strange machine, which meant it was definitely something Zelda and Purah would want to look at. He tucked it safely into the pouch on his belt to give to them later and went to pick up the wooden shield the machine had dropped. It was sturdy and clearly well made, with reinforced wood and leather panels on the back by the braces and extra leather guarding on the outside edge. It probably wouldn’t hold up against anything stronger than a moblin or lizalfos, but it was certainly good enough, and if there were more of those hostile machines on this island, he’d need it.
It took him a minute to fasten a good enough strap with the vine rope he’d made his crude sword sheath out of, but eventually he managed to secure both the shield and his new sword. Then he picked up his discarded knife and turned to jog the rest of the way up to the doors of the Temple of Time.
This time he was less surprised to see another glowing green circle of light appear within the two dragons which were engraved into the stone doors. There was a handprint at the centre of this one, just as there had been back in that room in the caves, though this one was a bit larger. He raised his right hand to it just as he had done the first time…
“Ah!”
He had expected the door to open like last time. Unlike last time, however, he quickly tore his hand from the glowing light as a shock of electricity jolted from his fingertips all the way up to his shoulder. He clutched at his hand, a knee-jerk reaction, and scowled at the door as if it had personally offended him, which he supposed it had in a way. The light now shone crimson with a fiery X mark right in the centre, prohibiting any access. He was locked out.
“So, you were able to make it here after all.”
A spike of alarm had Link whirling around to face the source of the new voice, hand already at the hilt of his sword.
The person who had spoken was standing a few feet before him. No, not standing, floating . They were hovering just a few inches off the ground, the same way both of the machines he’d encountered had. They were tall, much taller than anyone Link had ever seen, and wore a strange set of robes covered in all sorts of clay designs and bangles. It was their ears that really caught Link’s eye -long and adorned with five dangling earrings along the bottom. It took him a couple of seconds to put the pieces together to realise he was standing before…a Zonai .
The Zonai seemed to notice his alarm, “I’m sorry, I did not intend to startle you,” they said in a cool voice that he now recognised as the same one that had spoken to him when he woke up, “I am Rauru. It was I who spoke to you earlier, and also I who instructed my steward construct to direct you here. That arm originally belonged to me; I believe I can be of some assistance to you.”
Rauru. The name sounded familiar, but he couldn’t place where he might have heard it. Still wary as to the Zonai’s intentions, he waited for him to continue speaking.
“First, I must apologise for appearing to you in this manner,” Rauru continued after a moment, “Unfortunately, I no longer have a physical form.”
It was then that he noticed the shimmering, turquoise hue that seemed to be coming off of Rauru. Link had initially assumed it was just some characteristic typical of Zonai, but now he realised it looked very similar to the way Mipha, Daruk, Revali, and Urbosa had glowed as spirits when he had freed the Divine Beasts. So Rauru was dead. And had replaced Link’s arm with his own for…what reason? Simply because he didn’t need it anymore?
A look of confusion passed Rauru’s face as his gaze moved past Link and to the door behind him, “Regardless, that arm should have allowed you to open the door. Somehow, it seems to have lost the ability to do so.”
Rauru hummed to himself, raising a hand to his chin in thought and Link shifted awkwardly as he waited, not entirely sure what to do.
Then, after a moment, Rauru said, “There may be a way for you to restore it. There are shrines on this island that my people used to use to communicate with the old gods. These are filled with sacred light and should hold enough to restore the power my arm has lost.”
He turned slowly and pointed towards a tower in the distance where Link could see a large, glowing stone sitting at the very top. Link approached cautiously and stopped next to him in order to get a better look.
“There are three on this island alone,” Rauru said, and indeed, Link could see two other glowing stones in different places, “I will meet you at each to help you obtain the sacred power you need.”
Link looked from the shrine and then back to Rauru, “But wouldn’t it be faster for you to-”
He was going to say ‘guide him to the shrines since he surely knew the island better,’ but when he turned back around, the spirit had vanished.
Great. With a sigh, Link cast one look at the still sealed temple doors. Traversing an unfamiliar land to seek out shrines to earn the help of a long dead spirit? This was sounding far too familiar for Link’s liking. Next, he was going to discover that Rauru had been the last king of Hyrule.
The first shrine on the tower was not far, he could make it there in a few minutes, and then from there he could make his next plans for the other two. He didn’t know how long it would take, but he hoped Zelda wouldn’t berate him for making her wait a few more hours. He cast one more glance back at the temple before making his start back down the stairs.
‘Hang on, Zel. I’m coming.’
Notes:
there's chapter 3!
If you've noticed some of the apostrophes and dialogue markers have a space after them, that's because I edit this on Rich Text and i cannot for the life of me figure out how to get rid of it :/ so if you have suggestions let me know!
Anywayyyy Link's adventure begins :) poor dude's just clinging to the hope that he gets to go home and chill after he gets into the temple of time but alas. bro cannot catch a break ever, i'm afraid
i still giggle a bit at the "next, he was going to discover that Rauru had been the last king of Hyrule" line there at the end cos it's just funny and ironic. like, well, no...but also yes. i think i'm funny, guys
aaaaand do NOT worry if it seemed like Link brushed over the severity of Zelda being gone (idk if it felt that way or not but just in case) he's in his denial era so we're gonna definitely get more of his thoughts and feelings on the matter later
next is chapter 4 huzzah! he's gonna do some shrines and it's gonna be a good time. that'll be out the saturday AFTER next cos i gotta get through final exams next week :/ but it gives yall more time to get hyped woohoo!
see ya then! :)
-Nico
Chapter 5: Chapter 4
Summary:
Shrines and Temple of Time and the like
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
The trek up to the first shrine had taken longer than he had anticipated it would. The first delay had come in the form of a twisted ankle when he fell down a considerably worse for wear set of steps from the Temple of Time and had slipped on a large enough patch of rubble to send him rolling. Luckily it hadn’t been too bad, though it still smarted when he ran. He’d made it to the stone tower where the shrine sat without further incident all the way up until he realised a large section of the spiraling staircase up to it had completely fallen away. He’d tried to jump across and nearly fallen. How embarrassing a fate would that have been if Zelda were to find him later?
An injured ankle and two bruised and bloodied knees later, he did at last make it to the top of the tower. The shrine itself did not at first seem anything to be in awe of, it was just a stone boulder roughly twice his height with a blue and green spiral of light swirling off from the top. Link noted it looked very much like the light that had come up from the mummified figure down below Hyrule Castle, which he supposed made sense if it had been Rauru’s power or something related to it.
He took a look around. Rauru was nowhere to be found yet, so he took the opportunity to step out along the ledge of the tower and pull out the Purah Pad, scanning the treelines in the distance. He could see both of the other shrines from this vantage point; one probably about a mile directly ahead of him, and the other clear across the sky island in the distance. That one he had only found by the very tip of its glowing spiral of light. He had nearly missed it altogether. He lifted the Purah Pad’s camera to his face. One of the conveniences of the device was its ability to add markers on a map just based off of the topography around it. Since the steward construct, as Rauru had called it, had given him the map of this island, he could take a snapshot of these shrines and the technology would then add a small dot to each one so that he could always stay on track whether he could see the shrine or not.
After he’d secured the photos, he checked the map to make sure it had worked. Sure enough, when he compared the two new glowing red beacons on his map to where he anticipated the shrines to be, they seemed to match up perfectly. Half of him hoped that perhaps he had been slightly off at least for the farther one, seeing as it appeared to be right in the middle of a snowy microbiome on the island and he had absolutely nothing to keep himself warm, but if it was correct, he’d find a way to cross that bridge when he got there.
“I see you’ve found the other two shrines on this island.”
Rauru had made it at last, or possibly just decided to appear. He stood by the shrine entrance with his hands folded behind his back and the ghost of a small smile on his face.
“I did,” Link replied as he approached.
Rauru nodded, “Good. I would offer to accompany you to each one, but I’m afraid my limited power no longer allows me to travel freely around the island as it once did.
Link nodded. That explained why he hadn’t let him to this shrine at least.
“Now come,” Rauru said, gesturing to the shrine beside him, “That arm won’t fix itself.”
‘ But there’s no door, ’ Link wanted to say, but he held his tongue as he watched Rauru turn to the shrine. He raised his left arm to press it against the stone, and suddenly Link realised he had not needed to worry about there not being a door at all.
As Rauru stepped back, a line of green flame carved its way down the centre of the shrine. Though it shouldn’t have even been possible , the flames seemed to burn away the stone, tendrils flickering and eating away until he could see straight into the rock.
Link did not even try to hide his shock as he followed Rauru inside, mouth hanging open slightly, and the awe did not subside after he stepped through the entryway. It was bigger on the inside. Far bigger. It looked more like a temple, which Link supposed was apt if this were made originally as a place of worship. He could feel the sacred power radiating from every inch of the shrine and it felt…oddly uneasy. After everything that happened during and leading up to the Great Calamity, he wouldn’t exactly say he had much by way of devotion to Hylia or any of the other divine beings people talked about in Hyrule. It made the warmth of the power in this shrine feel less caring and more like an insistent embrace from someone you didn’t really care to be around.
He noticed, however, that a look of peace had come over Rauru’s face. He took in a breath, eyes closed, and paused for a moment before he turned around. He clearly was not as uncomfortable with the divine and that was something Link could admire.
“This used to be one of our more popular shrines for visiting.” Rauru said.
Link looked up at him, “Our history books say your people worshiped dragons.”
“Dragons?” Rauru mused, “Hm well, I suppose that is correct in a manner of speaking. The three dragons that still roam the skies are said to be descendants of the three golden goddesses from ages even before my time. Their names were Din, Nayru, and Farore.”
Link nodded and thought about what the three dragons had been called by ancient historians in Hyrule -Dinraal, Naydra, and Farosh. Din, Nayru, Farore. Different names but each still extremely similar.
Rauru went on, “We did not worship the dragons themselves, necessarily -though we held them in high regard and deep respect. We primarily worshipped the three goddesses, and these shrines were built as a way to more deeply connect with them. They were less like service halls and more…” he paused, trying to find the word, “places of meditation. People could come and just sit, or speak with the goddesses if they wanted to and then leave when they were finished. We found that people felt less suffocated by the divine that way.”
Link had to admit, that did sound nice, being able to come and go as you pleased and show your respects how you felt was most important. He thought about Zelda, and all her forced prayers and visits to the sacred springs that were more out of duty than devotion. He thought she might have liked to hear that things were not always so rigid.
“Now, as for restoring power to that arm,” Rauru said, now turning fully to Link, “My wife, Sonia, was a priestess of the goddesses, and I aided her in putting some of our own sacred power into the shrines to better strengthen its connection to them. We should be able to pull some of that from this shrine and others to help aid the process.”
Link only nodded. This was entirely new territory for him; he didn’t exactly make a habit of losing his arm and replacing it with a new one from an ancient being from long ago.
Rauru extended his arm out towards him, “Link, give me your hand.”
Link decided not to ask how he knew his name when he had not told him, and instead reached out to place his hand on Rauru’s as he’d been directed.
He watched as Rauru began to mutter something in what was probably the Zonai language. Like the markings on the walls below Hyrule Castle, it sounded similar to Hylian, and yet it was not quite the same, as if someone had come in and mixed up the spellings a bit and pronunciations and called it a new language. His chanting grew steadily more urgent as ribbons of that same blue and green light he’d seen in many places before now whirled around his forearm and up to weave into a ball above his palm. It was mesmerising, and Link found himself transfixed by the sight. The smaller tendrils flickered across his fingertips, making them twitch involuntarily, and somehow, he could feel just a bit of heat emanating from the ball of energy. Not enough to burn, but enough to warm his skin where it hovered. And then, all at once, Rauru was silent, and Link watched as that crackling sphere of energy slowly drifted down until it seemed to absorb into his palm altogether. He waited for a moment, blinking slowly. He had assumed he would feel…different. He had assumed that since this was sacred power, he might feel more, well...sacred? He sort of just felt normal, if he was being very honest. He looked down at his hand and then back up at Rauru.
“Did it…work?” He asked tentatively.
Rauru’s eyes narrowed a fraction as he hummed, “I believe it did, but…” He turned to cast a look around the room. Link saw his gaze fall on the stone pillars that held up the archway entrance to the main room of the shrine. One had fallen, most likely from the wear and tear of time, and lay forgotten across the floor.
Rauru gestured to it as he turned back to Link, “We can use this pillar to test and be sure.”
Link wasn’t exactly sure what he was getting at, so he just waited for any further elaboration.
“I was able to help you retain a special ability given to some of my people,” Rauru said, “It should allow you to easily move objects of any size without additional tools and also attach them to other objects, though that bit has its limitations.”
He nodded to the pillar once more, “Go on. Try and lift that column.”
Link was less skeptical than he thought he might have been, but considering the day he’d had so far, maybe it was understandable. Between ancient forces awakening from beneath the earth and finding the remains of a thousand year old civilisation in the clouds, and speaking with the ghost of one member of said civilisation, he somehow found that he was able to take in the idea of magically lifting a thousand pound pillar with his bare hands somewhat easily. It wasn’t quite as mind boggling of a task if he took it in comparison with the other things that had happened to him thus far.
The pillar was made of old marble and Link could feel the cracks webbing through the stone as he crouched down to reach beneath what would have been the end of it that met the ceiling. Old dust and packed dirt crumbled to the floor by his feet when he touched the cold rock. Then he adjusted his feet beneath him, rolled his shoulders in preparation, and lifted .
The arm immediately began to glow with green light, which was nearly shocking enough to cause Link to drop the column altogether. His shock was not abated when the light began to spread to the column itself until it too was swallowed up in the glow. He faltered for a moment, eyes widening briefly before realising this was just an effect of the Zonai power and put all his strength back into lifting the pillar. Except that he…didn’t need to put in all his strength. He found that he didn’t even really need to put even half of it into lifting the stone pillar which should have been impossible to move at all.
It felt more like he was lifting a slightly heavy wooden plank than a thousand pound piece of marble. The most difficult part was keeping it balanced upright as he began to lean it upwards. Eventually it ground back into its resting place once more, and he watched as the cracked seam where the pillar met the ceiling seemed to fuse back together until it looked as though it had never fallen at all. Well, it seemed the power had worked after all.
He couldn’t help but stare down at his arm in quiet amazement as he turned back to Rauru. The glow had faded after the column had merged back into its original place, but he could almost feel the warm tingle of lingering power when he curled and unfurled his fingers a few times.
Rauru was smiling pleasantly when he approached, “It seems the sacred power restored that ability after all,” he said, “That is good. It means that the process of restoring the remaining abilities will prove just as successful, and with any luck, it will eventually allow you entrance to the Temple of Time.”
Link hoped so. He would have to start thinking of other ways to get inside if it didn’t, though he supposed he could also just…wait for her to come out? Surely she couldn’t stay inside the temple forever. But what if she was trapped there? He didn’t want to entertain the thought for too long, but it was a possibility. He still had no idea what had happened to her.
Rauru must know what had happened to her, shouldn’t he? After all, he’d been the one to save Link in that cavern. As the two of them left the shrine from the same door they had entered through, Link figured it wouldn’t be a terrible idea to ask.
“Rauru,” he started as they stepped out into the fading afternoon light outside, “When you saved me, there was someone else too. The construct said she was in the Temple of Time, but do you...”
Rauru’s face lit almost immediately with recognition, “Ah, yes. Zelda,” he said, “We have met, and she spoke highly of you when we did.”
“Is she-”
“She is safe.” Rauru assured him, though there was a strange sadness in his voice, “Your findings below the castle took their toll on her as much as they did you, but she is alive, that I can promise.”
The odd, sorrowful way he said those words nagged at his mind, but despite this, he could not help the rush of relief he felt at hearing someone confirm outright that she was alive. That she was safe. He had not failed her once again.
“Thank you,” Link replied.
Rauru nodded with a kind smile and then stepped forward to the edge of the tower that the shrine sat on, “The other two shrines on this island are not far. You should be able to reach both of them in one day’s time. I will meet you at each of them and assist you in restoring power to the arm. After that,” he turned around to look at Link, “you should be able to enter the Temple of Time with no issue.”
It was Link’s turn to nod his assent, “Thank you, Rauru.”
“Of course,” the Zonai said.
Link turned to make his way back down the tower and towards the closer of the two shrines, but before he could get far, he heard a gasp behind him.
“Link,” Rauru said, and Link half turned to hear what he had to say.
“Before you go to the second shrine, the one across the island,” he told him, “there is a cave at the base of the hill where the shrine sits. Inside, there used to be a cache of supplies left by the people who lived here for the aid of travelers when they visited that shrine. I admit I have not been back to check and see if it still remained intact in several hundred years, but there may be something there to keep you warm as you travel.”
It was certainly better than nothing, whether the supplies were there or not. He nodded his thanks just before Rauru vanished before his eyes and he watched the trail of silvery green lights be carried off in the evening breeze before turning back on his way.
He felt much better about the whole situation than he had a few hours ago. Not completely better, he still felt the sharp hand of unease pulling on his mind, but Zelda was safe for now and he had a goal to reach her. He looked up at the cloudless sky. It would be dark soon, which meant he most likely did not have enough time to visit the remaining shrines that day, but he would find a place to shelter for the night and in the morning he would set out at first light. The sooner they got home, the better. This adventure was not one he had any interest in drawing out.
With one final look towards the Temple of Time where Zelda was waiting, he took in a long breath to bolster himself and set off in the direction of the next shrine. The sooner he finished this whole ordeal, the better.
~*~
As night fell, Link found shelter beneath the crumbling roof of one of the many small ruined buildings on the sky island. The floor of it was nothing more than crumbled stone, and though it looked as though there had once been a bed in one corner, the fabric of the blankets and mattress had long since rotted away to the elements, leaving only a dried and shaky bed frame behind. But it had three walls to give him respite from the wind, and a roof over his head in the case of any surprise unpleasant weather, and there was an abundance of trees and sticks about for him to build a fire. At the very least, he would not freeze that night.
Food was an easier affair than he had thought it would be. After gathering the things for a fire, he had gone out with his knife to try and cut some green branches to hopefully make into a trap of some kind to catch one or two of the squirrels he’d seen skittering about that day, but what he had found instead was another of those tall steward constructs like the one that had given him the Purah Pad and activated the bridge to the Temple of Time. This one, however, he had found hiding in a tall patch of grass, glittering eyes fixed on something in the field ahead of it. In its reptilian hands was a wooden bow and arrow, which it held at the ready in front of it.
Silently, so as not to startle it or whatever its target was, Link followed the construct’s gaze until it landed on a trio of very strange, tall birds. They stood on two stilt-like feet similar to the Eldin Ostriches found on and around Death Mountain, but their feathers looked longer and almost fur-like on their bodies, with long tendrils hanging over where their eyes must have been.
Unaware of the construct eyeing them from afar, they scratched and pecked through the tall grasses, occasionally bending their long necks to pick at something by their feet. As they did so, Link saw the construct hum in what almost seemed like a contemplative way and then lift the bow to draw it back with excellent form that really should not have been quite as surprising as it was. The poor birds barely had time to react as an arrow pierced one of them directly between its eyes. It let out one single, abrupt squawk of alarm before falling to the ground, dead. Its two companions did not linger, darting off into the trees before they too joined the dead bird in its fate, but the archer construct did not seem upset by this. On the contrary, it was already approaching the body of the bird it had shot before the others had even run away. It crouched down to examine the body. Well…‘crouched’ was a relative term for the way it seemed to half shrink in on itself as it bent its neck to get closer to the bird.
After a moment, it seemed satisfied and grabbed the legs of its target and began to pull it back the way it had come. Link had to admit, he was not sure what the construct planned to do with it. Did robots need to eat? The guardians and other Sheikah technology had not, but this was Zonai creation. Perhaps their inventions needed fuel from a source the Sheikah creations had not. Curiosity led him to approach the construct slowly, still wary of the weapon it had strapped behind it and the skill with which it could wield said weapon. He desperately hoped this was not one of the hostile ones as he jogged over and raised one hand in an attempt to catch its attention.
It turned as it heard him approach, whirring curiously, but made no attempt to attack him even when he stopped right in front of it.
“Ah, a traveler,” it noted in that same crackling monotone as the other steward construct, “there has not been one of your kind to visit the archery range in many centuries.”
“The archery range?”
It was then that Link realised he had completely missed the row of half a dozen canvas archery targets tucked into the overgrown grasses across from the ruin he had made camp in. That explained what this construct was doing here, and why it was so proficient with a bow. It was a teacher .
“This was once a training field for the archers of the king’s forces,” the construct explained, “Many like you would come here every day to train, but now, they are gone.”
It paused, almost as if waiting for a reply, but Link had nothing to say. ‘I’m sorry’ did not feel like a sentiment that would hold weight in this situation, nor really be assuring to this machine still so focused on its task even thousands of years later. The bluntness with which it had said that people no longer visited its archery range was all at once disquieting and intriguing.
After a moment or two, the construct let out an idle whir and looked down at the bird it was still pulling behind it, then back up at Link again.
“In days past, the people of your kind would often share a meal of the animals that had fallen to their bows during practice,” it said, “I have shot down this Forest Ostrich in order to refine my skill, but I have no need of it now. Perhaps you will benefit from it more than I?”
Link took the body of the dead bird when the construct passed it to him. So the construct had not needed it for a fuel source after all. This, if anything, was even more unsettling - the idea that this machine was carrying out its assigned tasks mindlessly every day, killing animals it had no need of, and just. What? Leaving them somewhere to rot? It seemed so sad and so…wasteful. Pointless. He found himself feeling bad for the construct, watching as it now returned to its archery range and was already positioning itself a distance from the targets in the grass.
He made quick work of starting a fire, and then cleaning the bird in a nearby river to roast over it. He had no way to preserve the raw meat, so he figured his best option was to cook the entire thing tonight and then perhaps wrap it in leaves or some of the fabric of his clothes to carry with him. It was a large bird, and even after he had completely skinned and dressed it, the body that remained was only slightly bigger than a turkey. This was the sort of meal he usually shared with at least a dozen other people, and with no pack or bag to store food, he realised with regret that some of this meat would, inevitably, have to be left behind.
As his dinner roasted through, Link found himself watching the archer construct again. It had been at its post firing a round of arrows from its quiver, drifting into the overgrowth to retrieve them, and then repeating the process over and over on a seemingly endless loop for as long as he had been sitting here, which at this point as the last rays of light fled this sky, had to have been a few hours. It seemed caught in this endless loop that had been programmed into it most likely from its creation. Did it need sleep? Would it continue loosing arrow after arrow even into the night, never wavering and never stopping? He noticed that each shot met its exact mark straight into the centre of the eye of the target. It needed no improvement. Its skills were finer than any archer he had ever seen in Hyrule, including his, and yet it seemed not to even notice.
Eventually, there were no sounds but the gentle wind and the steady thok, thok, thok as arrow after arrow after arrow met its mark with measured precision. He eventually ate some of the bird to ease the nagging hunger in his stomach, the noise falling into the background, and realised he hadn’t had anything to eat since before he and Zelda had left Lookout Landing that morning. At least…he hoped it had been that morning. He didn’t feel quite hungry enough for it to have been any longer, but he found that he still could not be quite certain. It felt like a lifetime since they had waved goodbye to Purah and Robbie and headed for Hyrule Castle. He had hoped that he and Zelda would be back by now; perhaps long since finished with their post-exploration debrief with Purah and her research team and sharing a meal slightly more familiar than roast sky bird all together around a fire. Laughing. Happy. Maybe a bit worried about what had come as a result of his and Zelda’s findings. But together , and filled with the confidence to overcome whatever was coming their way.
That would have been the ideal, but when had Link’s life ever been the ideal? Somehow, for all the pain and the worry and the stress that the situation he had found himself in today had caused, he couldn’t find it in himself to be surprised. First it was becoming the fated knight with the Sword That Seals the Darkness, then it was being tasked with saving all of Hyrule from Calamity Ganon after 100 years, now he and Zelda had awoken something dark beneath Hyrule castle, and Zelda herself was missing. He had to admit, this seemed tragically on par with his life. Misfortune after misfortune. Task after task in a never ending loop, as if some old god or demon had cursed him before he had even been born.
Sleep did not come easy, in part due to the cold, stony ground he slept on, but more so because of the way his mind raced with all the thoughts ‘what if’ and ‘what next.’ He found himself tossing and rolling uneasily by the fire, unable to be comfortable for more than a moment or two. Needless to say, what little sleep he did manage to scrape up was not restful. It felt all too much like those cold nights on his own as he traveled across the kingdom to save Zelda. He was in an unfamiliar land with unfamiliar people and no idea where anything beyond the next day would take him. It ached, the familiarity. It was a dull, creeping dread that latched at the base of his neck and whispered in his ear, ‘You have been here before. You cannot escape.’
He tried to dislodge the thought, but it held fast all the way until the sun rose again and he heard the tolling of a bell ring out across the island one, two, three, four, five, then six times. Link pulled himself from the floating, half dozing state he’d been teetering on all night and scrubbed at his face to try and bring himself to alertness. He blinked, taking stock of his surroundings in the early morning light.
Not that there was much of it. The sun was still rising, and on top of that, a heavy blanket of fog now drifted across the forest floor. Through the mist, he could see the archer construct back at its range once more. It had compressed in on itself sometime in the night in what Link had assumed was its form of sleep, which answered Link’s question of whether it needed such a thing or not, but that had been some time between when he had tried to go to sleep and when he had woken up a few hours later, and it seemed to have been long at work by now, so who knew how much it had actually been at rest. A bow, he realised as he folded as much of the ostrich meat as he dared to bring into little packages made from the nearby tree leaves, would be extremely helpful to have on him as he took his journey to the other two shrines. Even after he was done and was able to return home with Zelda, he was sure she and Purah would be furious with him if he didn’t find one to bring back for study and preservation. He placed a few of the leaf bundles in one of his belt pouches and observed the construct and the bow in its hand. It was a long, wooden one, and while from here it appeared to have seen many years of use, he was certain it couldn’t possibly have survived for thousands of years. Perhaps the construct had another one and even a set of arrows it would be willing to offer him.
With that in mind, he made his way over to where it was stationed. He waited until it had let its final arrow fly and was preparing to go retrieve them all before stepping forward into its line of sight.
“Excuse me?” He started. Admittedly not his smoothest greeting, but he hadn’t exactly spoken to many sentient machines in his life.
Regardless, the construct turned and regarded him with what he could almost believe was a quizzical look, waiting for him to continue.
“You said you used to teach people archery,” he said.
“Yes,” the construct replied matter-of-factly, “Do you wish to have a lesson?’
“Ah…no,” Link replied, more awkwardly than he would have liked.
It was not helped when he swore he could have seen the construct wilt a bit, which was why he was quick to add, “But I was wondering if you could help me find a bow.”
He felt that phrasing it that way might give the construct a bit more purpose than simply asking if he could have one. He wasn’t sure why he cared particularly. Maybe it was something about the way he knew Zelda would care if she were here in his place. He really did not know, but either way, it did seem to have its desired effect. The archer construct’s eyes flashed gold for a moment, and then it let out a sharp whirr before drifting over to a small shed on the back side of the house he had made camp in that he had not seen the evening before.
“Yes,” it said as they walked, “Our materials are stored here. We have an assortment of options for all skill levels that you may choose from.”
The door to the small shed cracked open, shedding a layer of dust and dried wood particles in its wake, but inside, the weapons themselves looked to be relatively intact. Link’s eyes widened as the construct stepped aside to let him in.
“Please, have a look.” It said.
It was by no means as extensive as perhaps some other armouries he had seen before in the castle or at the Akkala Citadel, but it was the quality of the remaining weapons that amazed him. This island, if Link understood correctly, and the things on it were millennia old and time was a ruthless master. Even the most well kept artifacts should have rotted or faded away in such an amount of time, but save for a few clearly cruder, simple recurve bows, nearly the entire inventory of weapons here seemed perfectly preserved. He looked to the construct, whose reptilian face offered no commentary, and then back to the shed.
He stepped inside slowly, carefully taking in every item around him. Three longbows, five or so recurve in various states of repair, and about a dozen or so of those same wooden bows that the construct itself used; the ones shaped sort of similar to a longbow, but which curved in a little too far and were shorter in length. He picked one of them up and hefted it in his hand, testing how it held and then slowly drawing the string back a couple of times. He guessed at perhaps 60 to 65 pounds of draw weight. Not the most powerful, but certainly useful and better than nothing.
“That bow was designed by a great Zonai warrior long ago,” the construct interjected from the doorway, “It is designed to require less weight to pull while still maintaining the power of a stronger weapon. That will serve you well with most targets save for perhaps larger game such as elk, moose, or bears, though I have not seen those on the island in many years.”
Link smiled. He figured that would be alright, seeing as he didn’t have much intention of facing down with a bear any time soon. He nodded to the construct, “This is perfect. Thank you.”
The construct bobbed its head in a nod, “I am pleased to help.”
There were three barrels of arrows of various sizes in the corner just inside the door, above which on the wall hung a rack of quivers to hold them. From these, Link fastened a quiver around his waist using one of the belts he found with them before sliding a dozen arrows inside. The bow he clipped to the same makeshift sheath he had made for the master sword and his other weapons, bouncing up and down a couple times on the balls of his feet to make sure it was secure before finally stepping back outside.
He turned and offered the construct a grateful smile, “Thank you.”
The construct let out another of its static whirrs, “It was my pleasure. Please do not hesitate to return should you need any additional assistance.”
With that, it returned to its same spot at the archery range as if it had never left in the first place. Link let out a long breath before turning around in one full circle to determine where to go next. It took him only a moment to find a convenient path just outside the clearing where the construct had shot the bird the day before, and after he remembered he could check his map for direction, he was pleasantly surprised to find that the path would lead him in the direction of the shrine. He started off towards it, not as fast as he would have liked as his ankle reminded him painfully of yesterday’s fall every time he tried to go at more than an easy walking pace, but he managed something between a stroll and a march which he decided would have to do for the time being.
The journey to the second shrine took him only a couple of hours. By the time he reached it, he guessed it was about eight or possibly nine in the morning, and that was in greater part due to the lake that he had assumed he would be unable to cross save for swimming the entire way for close to an hour. It wasn’t until he took a moment to look around on one particular hunt for anything he might be able to fasten logs together into a raft that he remembered the additional tool he had at his disposal. He had already lined up three logs, but rather than tie them together with vines or rope, he had eventually remembered to use the Zonai binding ability he had been gifted from Rauru. He was still getting the hang of it, and he accidentally bound his own hand to the logs more times than once, but after a fair amount of trial and error, he at last managed to fasten them together in a shape he could stand on.
The next issue, however, had come in the form of the current going in the opposite direction than what he needed for the raft to carry him across. Any victory he had felt from finally managing his makeshift raft had flown out the window to be replaced by frustration as he realised he had no way to steer or propel the device. This led to another good while - he was not sure how long, but long enough for the morning fog to lift - as Link scoured the bank of the lake and the forest just beyond it for anything he might use to create a sail to catch the wind, or even a paddle.
In the end, he had not found anything. Using his knife, he had sawed down a sturdy branch from one of the trees by the lake. To this, he had tied a loose panel of rubble from one of the old stone ruins around that could reasonably be considered flat and had tied this together with vines using one of the sturdy Zora knots Sidon had taught him. The result was a crude stone and wood paddle that, in the hopes he would never have use for it again, he had abandoned on the lake shore along with his raft.
At last, as the heat of the sun was just beginning to beat down on the back of his neck, he made it to the shrine. This one also sat on a hill, but this time he had but to climb up a rocky path instead of navigating broken spiral staircases. Rauru was waiting for him at the top.
“We meet again,” Rauru smiled, “Good morning. I’m pleased to see you seem to be getting the hang of the Zonai abilities.”
Right. Of course Rauru had seen all of that. This hill overlooked the lake, and if he had just been waiting for him all this time, that meant he’d had a clear view of all Link’s raft building attempts for the past two hours.
“I’m sure the entertainment was nice, too,” he quipped. It was partly a joke but also he would be lying if there was not just a bit of real irritation.
At this, Rauru chuckled, “Believe me, if I had the ability to, I would have offered you aid. But you figured it out on your own in the end, did you not?”
Link sighed, “I guess.”
“And experience is the best teacher,” Rauru added pleasantly.
Link looked at him, ticking up one eyebrow. Experience was a much better teacher when it did not set him back precious hours, he thought. But then again, the look in Rauru’s eyes and the way he winked in reply seemed to imply a joke of some kind that he missed.
Rauru swept out an arm towards the shrine as the same misty green entryway appeared in front of it, “Shall we?”
Link nodded and followed him inside. This shrine was built exactly the same as the last one. What he had not noticed from the first time however that he did now was the large dias at the far end of the shrine hall. It was a statue of two people; one who looked to be a Hylian woman, and a taller Zonai who, unless his eyes were deceiving him because of the distance, looked very much like Rauru. They were hewn into some sort of elegant grey stone with their arms outstretched, palms poised forward as if to welcome forward the people who had once come here to pray. The statues were placed so close together they were nearly touching, with one short pillar of stone on either side of them and another overhang above them that shone with that same green light he had seen elsewhere on this island. Idly, Link wondered if there was significance to the colour for it to appear in so many places or if it was just common coincidence.
The two of them came to a top in front of this dais and Link did not fail to notice the way Rauru regarded the two statues, particularly the statue of the Hylian woman, with no small amount of fondness. He wondered if this was perhaps his wife whom he had spoken of earlier, or at least a family member of some sort.
“Did you know her?” He found himself asking, his voice echoing even at a whisper in the empty room.
“Oh yes,” Rauru replied softly, “This is Sonia, my wife. She was loath to have these commissioned of us, but there were too many people who insisted. In the end, this statue still does not do justice to her beauty.”
Link looked back at both statues on the dais. There was kindness etched into both their eyes, which he thought was on purpose, but it was only Sonia’s who seemed to shine with it. As if her spirit had inhabited the stone.
“Do you miss her?” He asked.
“Terribly.” The words sounded heavy as they left Rauru’s mouth, filled with what was surely many years of deep sorrow. “She dedicated everything she had to the kingdom and the people she cared for so deeply. I take solace in knowing I will see her again when I am able to do the same.”
Link only nodded, unable to find any words that felt suitable for the moment.
Rauru noticed this and seemed to interpret his silence for discomfort. “Ah, but you aren’t here to listen to an old spirit’s woes,” he said, “Let’s get started on restoring that arm, hm?”
The two of them turned away from the statues to face one another. “I believe that here I can fine tune the attachment ability you received at the last shrine. Give me your hand, Link.”
Once again, he did, and once again a ball of emerald light began to grow and expand in his palm. He watched with more fascination that surprise this time as it grew and then dissipated before his very eyes, the sacred power seeping down through the arm and filling it with renewed energy. When the tingling of his fingertips faded and the light had disappeared once more, Link looked up at Rauru.
“What…does it do?”
“If all went accordingly, you should now be allowed to attach a wider range of objects to others and with far better precision than before. Hm.” Rauru looked around the empty chamber with a hand at his chin.
After a moment, he seemed to come to a decision, “Let us step outside the shrine. I cannot go far, but there should be enough materials on that hill for you to be able to test your new abilities.”
Link wasn’t sure exactly what they were testing one way or another, so this seemed a logical enough plan to him. He followed Rauru out of the shrine and stopped in the sand that pooled at the entrance of both this shrine and the last one. Rauru was already scanning the ground around them, eyes darting from one thing to another in rapid succession.
“You have a sword on you, do you not?” he asked, “Or a knife?”
Link nodded, pulling the small dagger from his belt. It seemed like the safer option so that, should things go wrong, he did not ruin a crucial weapon to defend himself.
“Good,” Rauru nodded, “now let’s see…”
He scanned over the ground at their feet once more, eyes landing at last on a flat, grey rock half buried in the dirt just outside the shrine’s circle of sand.
“Take that in your hand,” he instructed, pointing to the stone.
Link did, then looked up at Rauru, waiting for more instructions. The rock was cool and surprisingly smooth. It pointed at one end in a sort of triangular shape, and if he weren’t using this to test the attachment abilities given to him by the Zonai power in his right arm, he might have even considered it for skipping on the lake below.
“Now,” said Rauru, “fuse the rock with your knife just the same way you did in the first shrine, but this time, I would like you to keep in mind an image of what you might be able to make should the two successfully attach.”
That made very little sense to Link. What would it make? It would just be a knife with a rock on the blade.
Rauru seemed to notice his confusion, so he elaborated. “This addition to the attachment ability allows one to not only attach two items, but shape them into something potentially new as well.” He spread out his hands, “Take an arrow and something that produces fire, and create a flaming arrow. Take a stick and a large leaf and create a fan for a hot day. Take a knife and a small stone, and create…”
He ticked up an eyebrow, waiting for Link to finish the thought. Well, if it could make completely new things, then he supposed that if the blade of the knife were to be replaced by the stone, then…
“A hammer?” The unease in his voice made the syllables tick up at the end.
Rauru smiled, “Precisely. Or, of course, a simple knife with a rock on it if that were what you envisioned instead.”
It was fascinating, Link had to admit. And if the effects of Rauru giving him his arm were permanent, he could only imagine the hoops Purah Robbie, and Zelda would be having him jump through when all was over. They would have a field day . More likely two or three.
He took in a breath and studied the stone and knife in either of his hands. He had no particular use at the present for a hammer, but he felt that he had even less use for a plain rock stuck to his blade. So, as he lifted the two objects together and the arm began to glow green, he found himself focusing more on the former option. At least a hammer would be useful.
With a quiet pop the two snapped into place and Link couldn’t help but gasp. The stone had replaced the blade entirely, as if it had always been there. There wasn’t even a seam between the two to show it had been tampered with. Link turned his new hammer this way and that to examine it, then looked up at Rauru in awe.
He looked pleased by the turn of events, which told Link that they had achieved the outcome he had anticipated.
“Excellent,” Rauru nodded, “There is but one more shrine on the island, and I believe the ability I can restore there will be of even greater use to you.”
Their farewells were not as drawn out as they were at the first shrine. Rauru had no additional advice to offer, and Link was eager to make it to the final shrine before dusk. He headed back down the hill almost dangerously quickly, skidding and stumbling on loose gravel on his way down but being fortunate enough not to sustain any injuries that would keep him from moving. His ankle had stopped hurting so much after he emerged from the shrine, something Link tentatively attributed to the amount of sacred energy inside, but really had no true explanation for. Regardless, he managed to move much faster with full mobility, and for this he was grateful.
The trip there was much more eventful (and dangerous) than reaching the other two shrines had been. His first obstacle came in the form of another encounter with those hostile constructs, this time in a pair directly blocking the path he had been trying to take. He had no intention of fighting them - one had been enough on its own- but they seemed to be constantly vigilant of everything that was happening around them. Sneaking past them had taken large amounts of both time and skill, and he had nearly been caught and had to quickly scramble up a tree to not be seen, but he managed it eventually and was able to continue on his way.
He had needed to cross another lake soon after that, this time one that ended in a steep waterfall. He had not been able to see where the fall dropped off to, but it had looked unsettlingly like it cascaded off the island and all the way down into the open air below. He had not wanted to risk being carried off by the current and out to his death, so he had spent more time than he would have liked trying to find a way across rather than by boat before he, quite literally, stumbled upon another of the taller constructs. This one had been in its compressed resting state until Link had tripped over it in his pacing. It was a good thing that he had, though, because the construct was able to introduce him to a relic of Zonai technology that very well saved his possibilities of crossing the lake. From an old and crumbling stone shed, the construct had pulled out some sort of circular device with rapidly spinning blades that it had called a fan, though it did not look like any fan Link had ever seen. It insisted that, when attached to a log, it would be powerful enough to propel him across without worry of the current. This had seemed doubtful to Link at first, but the construct was happy to demonstrate by sending the makeshift raft across a smaller branch off stream and back, and when it was able to do that without so much as veering off course, he felt his unease lessen a bit. He figured he could position himself as far from the waterfall’s edge as possible, leaving plenty of room for the raft to lean and allow him to still make it to the opposite shore before falling over the side.
This had gone as well as he had hoped, and that was a welcome relief. On the other side of the bank, he found another ruined building that could possibly have been a home, for inside he found another worn out bed frame and this time, he could see the remnants of an old kitchen in the corner of the entry room. He had nothing to cook, and his lunch which he took under the shade of the house roof was nothing more than the roasted ostrich meat from the night before, but sitting in the old house filled him with a sense of melancholy he was familiar with from his time traveling Hyrule ten years prior. He felt the same ghost of bittersweet longing in this abandoned home that he had in many of the quiet ruins he had found throughout the kingdom. As he sat in the doorway overlooking the lake, he found himself wondering idly at the life the people who had once lived here had. One solitary house on a lake. Were they fishers? Farmers who used the lake water for irrigation? Was it a family? Or perhaps just one or two individuals.
In the back of his mind, he could almost envision a life here. Two parents and their children. Perhaps they didn’t have to do fishing or farming and had in fact done both. The children might play in the shallower waters where the current was easier while one of their parents fished for their dinner some feet away. The other might be tending the garden - picking vegetables to go with the fish they would have later and laughing at all the easy games their children were playing in the lake. It would have been nice, Link thought, a quiet life. A good life. One full of love and joy and peace.
If that life had been, it was long gone now, buried under the layers of dust and disrepair.
From there, the trip had been a fair amount of traipsing through caves and climbing hills and sneaking past even more constructs so as not to be attacked. He checked his map often, ensuring that he did not lose his way, and the closer he got to the shrine, the colder it became. First he thought it was just the wind, but the higher he climbed, the more frequent it was that he would see an odd patch of snow dusting the grass on the side of the path, or ice crystals clinging to the edge of a puddle of water. It was not long before the snow capped cliff where the shrine sat came clearly into view. It was bordering on freezing now, and Link had taken to wrapping the green fabric of his clothes around his shoulders for more warmth rather than wearing it on one side. It was here, almost like some sort of magical border, that the ground at last went from dying shrubbery to snowy banks.
It had been a cave system that had led him there, and the moment he poked his way out the exit, he ducked back down again as a freezing gust of wind tore at his skin and tunic, making him shiver violently. His only relief was that he could see the cave that Rauru had told him about from his spot just inside the cave. Whether there was a cache of supplies inside, he could not see, but he would have to brave the freezing temperatures one way or another, and the sooner he got there, the sooner he could take stock of his situation.
‘Okay,’ he thought, ‘ I can do this. Just like visiting Hebra’
It was not like visiting Hebra, he knew this. When he visited Hebra, he always remembered to bring his old Rito down feather tunic and pants to keep out the chill. He repeated the mantra to himself anyways as he rubbed furiously at his arms to try and get some excess warmth and then, without giving himself time to think about it further, he dashed towards the cave entrance as fast as his frozen limbs would allow. He cursed against the wind that seemed to have picked up just to spite him, and kept his arms wrapped so tightly around himself as he ran that he was not certain they wouldn’t leave marks when he reached the cave. The cold bit at him all the way down to his bones, making his muscles scream in agony as they tried to work through the bitter temperatures.
Gasping, with the air still feeling as though it were frozen in his chest, he stumbled through the cave entrance. Warmth flooded his body, though he was sure the cavern itself was only a few degrees warmer than the weather outside. Immediately, he scanned around the room for anything that could be even semi-warmer than what he was wearing right then and to his immense relief, his gaze landed on the shelf of fabric against the back wall. Beside it was a small pyramid of wood and a basket that he could not see inside, but he hoped was flint or firestarter of some kind. He stumbled over, wincing at the spikes of pain in his feet when he moved. He would be surprised if they weren’t frost bitten.
Thick wool pants and three different sets of winter boots were a welcome sight as he approached the shelf. Most of the clothing was moth-eaten to some degree or another, but with the state of his clothes, he didn’t have much room to be picky. He put the pair of snow pants that fit him best along with a set of winter boots that were just half a size or so too big but would do well enough nonetheless. All of the warmer tunics had been put on the top shelf and had either been ruined by water rot or were well on their way to being so. He had hoped to find perhaps a cloak of some kind buried in the piles of fabric but came up empty, much to his disappointment. He was already considerably warmer in the pants and boots he had found, but he decided it would be good still to bring a torch along if he could, that way he would have some source of heat for his hands and even his face should he need it.
This he found the means to do in the basket beside the stacks of wood. Small oak torches had been fastened for quick lighting, along with fairly sized chunks of flint. He used his hammer to strike one of them and light a torch, now even more grateful he had chosen to sacrifice his knife and not his sword, before turning around to see if there was a way out of the cave without going back the way he came.
For a long moment, it seemed that there was not, but then, Link realised he could hear something deeper inside the cave. A sort of clanging noise like the sounds of Goron mining but…more delicate, almost glassy.
“Hello?” He called into the pitch black.
No reply.
He felt that the chances of someone being in there were low. More likely, he would find more constructs working away at whichever task they had been assigned to centuries ago, but curiosity got the better of him.
He lifted his torch higher and headed off into the darkness.
Notes:
Welcome back everyone!
This chapter is a longer one and for that I apologize. It's also why the ending might feel so abrupt? I was realising how long it was getting and did my best with what I had going unfortunately. This is probably one of the ones that has the most creative liberties of all the ones I've written so far, but hopefully you all don't utterly hate it :) lmk what you guys think; I'm kinda curious
ummm....yeah okay I don't actually have a whole lot of notes for this one. So this is where I sign off!
Peace!
-Nico
Chapter 6: Chapter 5
Summary:
At long last, Link finds Zelda! ...Or does he?
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
During Link’s journey to free Hyrule Kingdom from the control of Calamity Ganon, he had found himself at the site of an old set of ruins called ‘Typhlo.’ It had been shrouded in a deep, black fog, and he remembered the immediate darkness, darker than the deepest night, the moment he set foot over the moat that surrounded the island. It was only by torchlight that he was able to traverse the pitch black and locate the shrine inside. It had felt restrictive and suffocating, like the very air itself was closing in on him.
The deeper Link walked into this cave on the Zonai sky island, the more he once again felt like that, only this time, even his torch lit less and less of his surroundings, until he suddenly found himself standing at the center of complete darkness save for the ball of fire by his shoulder that lit only an inch or two around it. Here in the total blackness, the sounds of the cave were more acute. He could hear the dripping of water off the ceiling and the croak of some creatures he had not seen while he was walking. He could even hear the wind blowing and the faint rustling of the bushes just outside the cave.
But as intriguing as it was to see how his other senses were heightened in the absence of sight, he could not see his way to get back nor to keep going without some sort of light. He crouched down, hoping that maybe he could hold his torch close enough to the ground and felt his hand touch something squishy. Something slimy. Something that normally would not have fazed him, but that caught him off guard in the dark and sent him jerking backward with a gasp. He toppled on the balls of his feet and fell back, throwing a hand out to catch himself.
Suddenly, there was light . It arced out in a circle from behind him, casting the cave a few feet all around him in a soft white glow.
“What?”
Link whipped around for the source of the light, for it was surely not his torch unless it had somehow managed to catch the wet cave greenery on fire, which was unlikely. No, in reality, his torch had gone out when he dropped it, and he saw the glow emanating from one of the most beautiful and strange plants he had ever seen.
For a moment, he just stared at it, transfixed by the sight. It was small, probably no bigger than his fist, and cradled at the centre of three deep green leaves. The bulb itself shone with silvery light that seemed to sparkle until he realised they were spores that were only just starting to settle. He must have popped it open when he fell, causing it to light and release its shining spores.
He leaned close, surprised to find that the brightness did not hurt his eyes the same way light normally did, and tapped on the glowing part of the plant. It was warm to the touch and soft as if there was a dusting of fuzz on the outside.
“Wow ,” he breathed, “What are you?”
This, he knew Purah and Zelda would want a picture of. He pulled the Purah Pad from its pouch and trained it on the glowing flower, trying to get a shot that was as close to seeing it in real life as possible. It was then that he realised there were some closed buds around it that had not activated when he had smacked it. Out of sheer curiosity, he tapped one. Nothing happened. Thinking perhaps he needed to try harder, he hit it again and that time the bud burst open, shining more light into the room accompanied by a burst of glittering spores. These new plants were fascinating, and for a moment Link forgot he was on an urgent mission to find a shrine and meet Zelda, too distracted by this newfound plant specimen he had quite literally stumbled upon.
He was quick to realise what a crucial aid these light pods were. With the cave now lit for a few dozen more feet, Link was able to stand and hurry
on his way. Every time the dark began to creep back in, Link would crouch back down to strike a flower bud to light his way all the way until the clanging he heard earlier grew louder. The cave grew ever so slightly warmer as he travelled deeper, which perplexed him, but he did not have time to think on it as the outline of something unfamiliar eventually came into view.
He had been correct in assuming the source of the noise would be more constructs. These ones seemed to be miners of some kind, five of them in total all carrying out a different task. The exit was just across this room of the cave, which provided the additional light needed to quell the darkness so that Link did not have to keep using the light flowers.
Most notably in this section of the cave, however, was the massive stone forge built over almost the entire wall to his left. A fire blazed at its centre where one of the constructs was feeding what looked to be coal into it to keep the flame alive. This explained why the temperature had risen the closer he had gotten. If this forge had been in operation for as long as the island itself had existed, it certainly had enough time to warm the room a few degrees.
He approached one of the constructs hammering away at an odd ore deposit Link had never seen before, but it remained fixed on its task. Attempting to speak to the others in this cave area produced the same result, each of the constructs diligently carrying out their assigned duties with no heed to Link moving around them. It wasn’t until he began to examine the table of strange glowing items that the construct by the forge took notice of him.
“I see you have found our processed zonaite materials.”
He had not heard it coming, so the suddenness of its statement made him jump just a bit. He turned to face the tall construct, a small metal shovel still clasped in its hands.
“I- Yes,” he said, “What are they?”
It had said they were “processed zonaite materials.” Zonaite was most likely the ore they were mining, but what they had made from it perplexed him. On one of the tables were dozens more of those crackling blue balls of energy that had powered the hostile construct outside the temple of Time, but on the table beside it lay dozens more objects in the shapes of small pyramids that he had never seen before.
“These are Zonai Charges,” the construct explained, pointing to the balls of energy, “They are what power Zonai devices like constructs such as myself. And these,” it pointed to the other glowing objects, “are Crystalized Charges. They are a solidified form of Zonai Charges, however, we typically use them in the construction of the energy cells which hold the energy to power various Zonai devices.”
“Huh…”
This was another thing he would have to make note of to tell Purah and Zelda about when he found them. They had never seen anything like it, even with all the wonders of the Sheikah technology; they would be fascinated.
At last, Link left the construct mine behind and stepped out back into the frigid air outside. He came out just in front of a fast moving, icy cold looking river, but this time there was an old bridge a few paces up the bank that he could cross on. This had led him all the way to the base of a small hill where he could see the final shrine at the top. He shivered, now regretting not relighting his torch, but was quick to pick his pace up to as best a jog he could manage in the deep snow. His breath was coming out in crystalline puffs by the time he reached the top, and if there wasn’t ice in his hair, he would count himself lucky.
Once again, Rauru was waiting for him, and this time, rather than stop outside for pleasantries, he revealed the shrine door as Link approached so that they both could hurry quickly inside (though judging from the way Rauru had not changed from his original clothing which was certainly not winter ready, he had a suspicion that this was mostly for his benefit).
Once again, the shrine looked just the same as the previous two he had traveled to thus far. Once they had made it a good distance from the cold entryway, Rauru stopped and faced Link.
“I see you found the supply cache,” he said, “and if you found that, I assume you’ve discovered the brightbloom seeds as well.”
Brightbloom seeds, so that was what they were called. He nodded, “Yes. They were…very cool.”
That made Rauru laugh, “Very cool indeed,” he agreed, “I would have to agree with you. They are one of the only sources of light in all of Hyrule that can dispel any darkness, no matter the circumstances.”
Which explained why they helped him where his torch failed. Interesting. He could not wait to talk about this more with the research team at Lookout Landing.
“Now,” Rauru said, “let us finish this, that way you may make your way inside the Temple of Time.”
He felt the beginning of anticipation buzz in the back of his mind as he held his hand out towards Rauru. A third and final ball of energy pulsed in his hand, crackling at his fingers before it once again disappeared and Link waited for his instruction on what to do.
The look on Rauru’s face spoke of anticipation he had not seen there before. He led Link to one of the many stone archways inside the shrine.
“This was my favourite of the Zonai gifts,” he said, smiling, “Stand beneath that archway.”
Link did, still not sure where this was going, but willing to follow along.
Rauru folded his hands behind his back, “Now, jump. But when you do so, you must imagine that the top of the archway is not there at all.”
“What?” Link asked. How was he supposed to imagine it wasn’t there when it was clearly there right above his head.
“ Trust me, Link.”
Link sighed, but did as he was told. All the old spirit’s cryptic instructions had worked out for him until this point. There was no reason for them to stop now.
He closed his eyes, imagining that the archway was nothing but two pillars beside him, and then…he jumped.
Almost instantly, he was certain something had gone amiss. Suddenly everything around him was too tight, too restrictive, too wrong . He felt as if he were being run through one of the Kakariko olive presses as something cold and solid began to compress in on him. It pushed on his body, tightening vice-like around his skull and, reflexively, his chest constricted in panic. For those few moments of agony, every molecule in his body was screaming at him to run, to escape, but he couldn’t move .
Then, as quickly as it came, the feeling simply…vanished.
He could see again, the pressure of the cold stone around him was gone, and most shockingly, he now found himself standing on top of the pillar he had been beneath just moments ago.
His knees gave out and he clumsily dropped to his knees, though whether it was from shock or relief, Link did not know or care. Down below, Rauru looked very pleased, though Link couldn’t say he was terribly inclined to feel the same way.
The old spirit held a hand up by his mouth, “Are you alright? Have all your limbs in the proper place?”
It was a joke, or at least Link hoped it was a joke, but he did not laugh, still too weary from nearly being squeezed to pulp. “I’m fine,” he replied, looking himself up and down, “Does that really happen?”
“With some of the younger Zonai attempting this skill before they are old enough? Yes.” Rauru replied too casually for Link’s liking, “But fortunately, our healers quickly became aware of how common it would be and created a very simple and quick method to reverse the effects.”
Link nodded his understanding, then attempted to stand. He managed, though he still did not feel entirely stable on his own two feet.
“I think something might have gone wrong still,” he said to Rauru down below, “When I was going through, it felt-”
“Compressed?” Rauru asked when Link couldn’t find the words, “Unyieldingly narrow? As if the weight of ten thousand tons of earth were closing in on you all at once?”
Link’s face tightened, “Yes.”
Rauru nodded with a look that held both sympathy and understanding, “An inevitable side effect of the ability, I’m afraid. After a few decades, you do get used to it.”
This did not reassure him as Rauru might have thought it would. He decided to himself that he would set this particular ability to ascend up solid objects aside to use only when absolutely necessary.
“Try coming down,” Rauru suggested when Link did not reply, “The ability works both ways.”
“ No, ” Link said quickly. Too quickly. He realised this as soon as the words left his mouth and cleared his throat awkwardly, “No...thank you. I can get down just fine.”
This made Rauru laugh, “Of course. Passing through solid stone is not exactly one of the most comfortable experiences, I agree.”
With the amount of worn holes in the stone and carvings that stuck out from the sides, Link was able to find his way back down the side of the arch and come to a stop back in front of Rauru once more.
Rauru looked him up and down once and then bobbed his head in satisfaction, “Wonderful. That was the final of the abilities most Zonai possessed, and everything seems to be in order. All that is left is for you to make your way to the Temple of Time.”
The two of them began to make their way back out of the shrine. “Will I meet you there?” Link asked. Somehow, in just the short white he had known the old spirit, he had become quite fond of him. He wasn’t sure he was ready to say goodbye quite yet, and surely Zelda would want to say her own goodbyes once he found her as well.
Luckily, Rauru smiled at the question and replied, “Yes, I will be there when you arrive. I too am eager to learn the reason Zelda has been in the Temple of Time.”
Link jolted to a stop a few feet from the door. “You…Wait, but I thought you took her there.”
Rauru’s eyebrows rose in surprise, “Me? No. I last saw her at the same place you did. It seems to me she has come to the Temple of her own volition.”
That didn’t make any sense . How could he have last seen her below Hyrule Castle when he had not even been there in the first place?
“In any case,” Rauru said thoughtfully, “we are not far from being able to ask Zelda herself for the answers to our questions. Shall we?”
He gestured out towards the snow beyond the shrine entrance which Link had not forgotten and was loath to go back into.
His expression must have revealed more than he had intended because after a moment he heard Rauru laugh softly beside him.
“I would offer to bring you with me,” he said, “but I fear in offering power to you to restore the arm, my own had dwindled greatly. Transporting even myself to the Temple of Time will be a small feat, I’m afraid.”
Link frowned, “Will you be alright?”
“Yes, I believe I will,” Rauru replied reassuringly, “However, after we reach the Temple, I believe my time with you on this island will be at its limit. We will have to part ways once you and Zelda are seen safely on your way.”
Link nodded once in understanding, “Then you’ll get to rest. See your wife again?”
A soft look came over Rauru’s face and he turned his gaze to the sky as the two of them stepped out into the snow. “I do hope so.”
Link hoped so too. If his soul had been trapped along with his arm and that skeleton below Hyrule Castle for thousands of years, it was a terribly long time to be reunited with someone you loved. He couldn’t imagine having to be in the same position.
Rauru’s eyes flicked to the position of the sun in the sky before he looked back down at Link, “It will be sundown in a few hours. You should be able to make it back to the Temple of Time before then, and I will be waiting for you there.”
He vanished before Link could reply, but there was really no need for it anyway. He took his trip down the snowy hill at a light jog, which kept the chill away but only a bit. By the time he jumped down onto earthy ground once more from one of the final snow banks in the area, his calves were sore from exertion and his ears were throbbing from the cold wind rushing past them for so long. He did not look back as he left the snowscape behind.
His trip to the Temple of Time took him longer than he had anticipated, but not by much. By the time he arrived at the doors of the Temple, the first wisps of pink and orange were just beginning to paint the horizon before nightfall.
Rauru was waiting for him there, but this time, as he approached, Link thought that he could see his form flicker a bit every few moments, like a candle about to blow out.
The old spirit seemed to notice his concern and offered him a kind smile when he stopped beside him. “It seems transportation from the final shrine to here took more of my power than I anticipated,” he said, his voice sounding faint and far away like an echo, “But, all the more reason for us to bring our journey to an end. Shall we?”
Link turned towards the door, now glowing its green symbol again. This time, as he slowly reached to place his hand in the outline, it dissipated into those now more familiar green tendrils and he couldn’t help the slight relief that he felt from it. The stone double doors rumbled open, grinding against the floor as they slid away to reveal the inside of the Temple of Time at last.
He and Rauru stepped quickly inside as the entry hall carried them up a small set of steps inlaid with pebbles on the sides and lined every few feet with those brightbloom seeds Link had seen earlier to cast light along their way. The steps led up to what looked like the main room of the temple, and just ahead of them, an altar with a golden glowing stone hovering just above it.
He heard Rauru’s sharp intake of breath at the sight, “The sacred stone of time…”
“Huh?” Link stopped a few feet in front of the altar, turning his head towards Rauru, who was regarding the stone with unconcealed awe, though Link did not know why.
“Our sacred stones,” Rauru at last explained, pulling his gaze from the altar, “were once used by some of our finest warriors to enhance their skills and aid them in their duty. This was one of only a few that remained, though this one…”
He turned away from Link, leaning in towards the sacred stone, “My wife possessed a sacred stone of time, but as did your Zelda. This bears her symbol, not Sonia’s. But what it is doing here of all places, I do not know.”
Link looked back up at the stone, glowing with sacred light before him. It seemed to pulse softly as it hovered in the air, humming with something that Link could not place. He felt… drawn to it, as if it were ever so gently pulling him in. He reached out with one hand, feeling something akin to warmth as his fingers brushed the smooth stone…
In a flash of golden light, Link felt the world fall away around him. Suddenly, Rauru was gone, the Temple of Time was gone, and all that was left was an endless room surrounded on all sides by gently drifting fog.
Well, not all that was left.
Link lifted his gaze, and a gasp escaped him before he could stop it. There she was.
“ Zelda. ”
She was standing between him and the altar, hands clasped against her chest and her head bowed as if in prayer. She wore a strange dress that Link had never seen before; white with a green layer underneath and a long piece hanging down the centre with old symbols similar to those he had seen elsewhere on the island. Still, it suited her, and despite the odd circumstances, Link couldn’t help but think she looked beautiful. It was then, however, that he noticed she wasn’t standing at all, but hovering a few inches off the ground the same way Rauru did.
“What’s going on?” He tried to ask.
He got no reply. Instead, she extended her hand towards him, slowly as if reaching, and Link did not hesitate to take it. Her hand was cold in his. He tried to tug her down, to pull her into his arms so they could finally be done with all this, but she didn’t move. She stayed rooted in her spot, as if she were nothing more than a statue made flesh.
He didn’t understand . He tried pulling her towards him once more, this time a bit harder and with desperation beginning to creep into his heart.
“ Please, ” he found himself saying, “Zelda…”
Then, she began to glow with what was unmistakably her own sacred power. He had not seen it since that day they vanquished Calamity Ganon for good, but the memory remained. It grew and grew for a long moment, before dimming. No. Not dimming, narrowing . It was compressing in on itself, into one concentrated ball of light as it traveled seemingly through Zelda’s body and down to where their hands were joined.
This time, when the sacred power transferred to Link, it did not crackle or tingle like the others. On the contrary, it felt almost…soft. Gentle like running your hand through warm water. His right arm lit with that same golden glow as the power diminished in Zelda and then, against the back of his hand, a rune suddenly flashed to life within the circle of one of the Zonai adornments there. It pulsed once, then twice before fading and remaining as just a carving in its place.
Link felt utterly helpless as he looked from his hand back up to Zelda, “I don’t…I don’t understand.”
She offered him no answer.
“Zelda!” he tried again, louder this time as if that might help him reach across whatever barrier was between them, “I don’t understand but we- We need to go home . Something happened when we woke that thing below the castle, and-”
She was fading. Suddenly, Link realised he could see the fog not just behind her, but through her.
“No! ” His hand shot out to grab her once more, but though he surely should have been able to take her hand, it passed straight through, making him stumble from the momentum. She was nearly gone, vanishing right before him and he couldn’t do anything to stop it.
Panic washed over him as he scrambled for something, anything he could do but scream her name before she was gone. She was-
And then the fog dissipated. He was back in the Temple of Time with that cursed stone staring at him in the face.
“ No, ” he gasped, rushing back to the sacred stone as if it would give back its secrets; give back her, “Hylia curse it all, no, no!”
He heard Rauru approach him tentatively, “Link...”
Link whirled on him furiously, “You!” He shouted. “You said she would be here! You said she was safe !”
Rauru put his hands up placatingly, looking almost as lost as he felt. Link realised it was unhelpful to yell at him. He was a thousands year old spirit with dwindling power, what control did he have over helping Zelda. He almost felt bad. Almost, but the past two days of exhaustion, and stress, and confusion seemed to all rise to the surface at once. He jabbed a finger at the sacred stone, still glowing above the altar and almost seeming to mock him.
“ Where is she?” Link tried to keep his voice level, but he felt his other hand tremble where he forced it into a fist by his side.
Rauru’s gaze flicked from him, then to the sacred stone behind him, then he said, “I don’t know.”
Link felt another flash of rage, “ You don’t- ”
But Rauru was quick to stop him, “She is alive. That much I can assure you.”
“How do you know that?” Link demanded.
Rauru pointed to the altar, “Because of her sacred stone. It is tied to the life force of its bearer. If she were truly gone, it would no longer glow as it is going now, nor would it still bear her symbol.”
At this, he felt some of his anger fade. Rauru had given him no reason to trust him thus far. If he said she was alive, then he would have to believe that, if only for his own sanity.
“So where is she, then?” He asked shortly.
Rauru shook his head, “That is what I do not know. She was alive when I last saw her, but it has been a very long time since then.”
Link did not have time to linger on the way that ‘a very long time’ seemed an odd way to describe just a few days. He had more important things on his mind.
“How do I find her?”
At first, Rauru hesitated, “I…” Then his eyes widened as if coming to some realisation.
“What?” Link took a quick step towards him.
“I believe I have an idea of where she may be,” Rauru said, but his tone was not reassuring. If anything, it sounded uneasy.
Without another word, he began to make his way past the altar and up into another room ahead that Link had not noticed in his initial shock. Two interlocking gears spun in opposite directions in front of the entrance, but Rauru led them to a set of steps behind they could use to pass into the larger room deeper within the temple. This one was simple, with a pathway leading to one of the familiar goddess statues that Link knew were scattered across Hyrule kingdom below them. Behind the statue was another large door almost identical to the entrance, however this one began to slowly swing open as they approached.
The door led outside, and as it rumbled to a stop, Link couldn't help but be in awe of it. A long pathway extended out past the outer courtyard and further ahead of them as if reaching for the very sun itself. In the fading evening light, it was breathtaking, and in another time, Link thought perhaps he might have wanted to linger there just to soak in the view.
Rauru extended a hand, gesturing out along the path, “If memory serves, there is another sacred altar at the end of this promenade,” he said, “I believe we may be able to find answers there. Then we can-”
But what they could do, Link would never know, for Rauru’s form suddenly began to flicker violently and he stumbled before coming to a stop.
“Rauru!” Link exclaimed, moving to steady him but remembering at the last second that he was not able to touch a spirit.
It was then that he noticed the small flecks of glowing green and silver that appeared to be drifting off of him into the wind. Similarly to Zelda just minutes ago, Link watched Rauru fade slowly into nothing.
“It seems,” Rauru said hoarsely, “that my time has come to a premature end.”
Link’s hands flitted around Rauru’s form, feeling the instinct to touch, to help , but knowing he was unable to do so. His gaze darted from Rauru to his hand and back again rapidly. His power. If it was the fact that Rauru had given all his remaining power to Link that was weakening him, then perhaps he could give some of it back? Just until they reached the altar ahead.
He felt a hand on his arm, pulling him out of his thoughts, “Be at ease, Link,” Rauru said. He offered him a kind smile, “You did not need my assistance to reach the end of this pathway. If this is where we part ways, then will rest easy knowing that I have helped you all I could.”
Link stepped back and Rauru straightened, and brushed himself off in a motion that felt as if it had come more from habit or as a method to ground himself than for need to remove any dirt.
“Now,” Rauru said, folding his hands behind his back, “go. I will remain here in the Temple of Time for whatever time I have left.”
He was fading faster now; within minutes, he would be gone completely. Link nodded once and suddenly he felt as if he had a mountain of words he had left unsaid, but no way to say them.
So instead, he settled on, “Thank you, Rauru. For everything.”
Rauru smiled and inclined his head towards him, “Though our time together has been brief, I am so happy that we finally met. You are exactly as Zelda said.”
He did not have time to ask what it was that Zelda had said about him. The wind suddenly began to blow with a new vigor, swirling the fading particles of Rauru’s form into one elegant spiral. The old spirit looked up, his gaze turning gently to the sky and Link saw the way his smile relaxed, perfectly at peace as the last of him faded away on the breeze and was gone. In the echo that ran through the now empty Temple of Time, he thought he might have heard a woman’s voice. Sonia, Link hoped, welcoming Rauru home.
He lingered for a moment out of respect - for he did feel a good deal of respect for the old Zonai who had guided him across this strange new island - and then turned around, making his way quickly along the path until he came to the altar Rauru had said would be there.
This time, rather than a luminescent golden stone above it, there was a small ball of light, no bigger than his fist. It flickered like a tiny sun at the centre of the altar table.
Then, for the first time in days, he felt the familiar warmth and glow of the Master Sword at his back. At first, Link jolted in shock, not expecting it, but he quickly drew it from its makeshift scabbard, staring in surprise at the way it flickered with its blue glow. Take me there , it seemed to say.
So he did, approaching the altar slowly with the corroded remains of the Master Sword in hand. He took each step slowly, carefully, unsure how to proceed. Was this ball of light from Zelda, or something else entirely?
He stopped just inches from the altar, staring at it wide eyed. In his hand, the Master Sword flashed again, this time with more urgency and, almost as if he were being guided, he placed it on the stone below the glowing light.
Link did not know what he expected to come from doing that, but a click and a flash before the Master Sword disappeared completely was not that. He gasped, feeling sharp horror shoot down his spine.
“No, wait!”
He tried to reach for where it had been, but found nothing. He whipped around in one full circle for any sign of where it might have gone and came up just as blank. What had he done? His sword. The Master Sword . Had he lost it too?
For a moment, there was nothing, only silence and cold dread. Then, a sudden roar caused the platform to shudder beneath his feet like a reply. He let out a cry, throwing out his arms to right himself and then…
Up from the edge of the stone where Link stood he saw, of all things, the cream white head of a dragon soar upward into the sky. Link stood rooted to his spot in shock as its elegant body ascended further and further, tapering off eventually into blue crystals the colour of the nightshade. It was not one he had seen. Naydra, the draconic guardian of the Spring of Wisdom, was a similar azure hue, but this dragon was not her. This one was smaller, more slender, and with a full golden mane around its head that held opalescent branching horns. As he watched it soar away, he saw it shimmer gold between its scales and underneath the blue spines lining its graceful back. It was strange, Link had always found the dragons timeless and majestic, but this new one he realised was the only one he felt he could truly call beautiful . Even stranger, it felt familiar somehow, though he was sure he had never seen it before. Perhaps in one of Zelda’s history books?
‘Link’
That voice. He knew that voice.
‘Link . ’
“Zelda!” Link shouted out for the echo that called his name.
‘You must find me…’
“I’m trying!” He said desperately, “Where are you? Where…”
He let his voice fade. She was no longer there; somehow he knew this. Somehow he knew he was just as alone as he had been all this time on this cursed sky island.
He muttered a curse, blinking the tightness from his eyes before tears spilled over. He was tired . Tired physically, but also tired of this . Of being yet another pawn in a game being played by beings higher than himself. Now there was something dark brewing beneath Hyrule Castle, and on top of it, Zelda was still missing and he had no idea how to get her back. This time he had his memories, and he would not be navigating a completely alien landscape to find her, but this did little to comfort him when the realisation that he was once again being pulled into a larger cause against his own will slowly grew upon him. Ten years. He had gotten ten years of peace after a hundred and seventeen of being on the goddesses’ errand. He only hoped that this time it would not take him another hundred and seventeen years to get that back again.
He let one more curse on the goddess Hylia pass his lips under his breath before he made his way to the edge of the platform. He could see Hyrule below, and if he looked closer, he could even see Lookout Landing not far away. He would need to go there first, touch base with Purah and make a plan on how to proceed from there, but first he needed to find a way down . Rauru had not told him how to get off the islands, and though the Purah Pad’s teleportation functionality seemed to have linked to the shrines on this island, which would be convenient should he ever need to return here, it had still been in development before he and Zelda had gone on their expedition below the castle, which meant it was possible that it was not linked to anything on the kingdom’s surface.
He was certain, however, that he could not be stranded completely. Perhaps if he could find another of those Zonai gliders..
There was a recognisable buzz from behind him and Link whirled to face the long necked construct, the one that had returned the Purah Pad to him the day before. When it stopped in front of him, its eyes seemed to flash with something that could have been an imitation of blink before it spoke.
“There is one final tool that I neglected to give you,” it said. From the same compartment where it had procured the Purah pad, it pulled out a strange looking cluster of glowing green objects, cylindrical in shape and hung two at a time down a short chain that ended in some sort of leather loop. The construct offered it to him and Link took it before tentatively fastening the loop to his belt. The construct did not stop him while he did so, only waited patiently until he was finished.
“Those are energy cells,” it explained, “Made from zonaite stone on this island, they will ensure that the power you have been gifted from the shrines will not dwindle over time.”
Link had not considered that Rauru’s shared power might have a limit. He nodded in understanding, “Thank you.”
The construct continued, “Additionally, it will offer you marginally improved vitality and resilience. This should aid you in descending from this and other sky islands without the risk of injury.”
“Oh,” Link’s eyes widened, “you mean I can…” He glanced down over the edge of the platform.
The construct whirred as it nodded, “Yes. So long as you carry the energy cells on your person, their power will protect you.”
He considered this for a moment, then inclined his head in gratitude to the construct, “Well then, thank you…again.”
“Of course,” it replied, “Now, I must go. Farewell.”
It turned and made its way back to the Temple of Time without another word, and Link returned his attention to the leap down below that he still had to make. He swallowed tightly. Link did not fear heights, but to throw himself down hundreds - he looked down again - no, possibly even thousands of feet onto the ground below…well, it seemed insane even to him. There was a convenient lake just below him and it was one that he knew, from when he had visited earlier that year with Zelda, was deep enough to possibly break his fall were he to land properly, but this did little to reassure him. His stomach twisted violently and he had to step back a few feet to regain his bearings.
He took a deep breath in through his nose, then pushed it back out again through his mouth. He repeated this again, then again, and again until he felt his heartbeat level out somewhat.
“Okay,” he muttered to himself. He could do this. He had to, really.
He did not want to leave himself any more room for overthinking. Link took one final look back at the Temple of Time, then out towards the endless expanse of sky before he dashed forward, pushing off the edge of the platform, and jumped .
Freefall. For a few long moments, all Link felt was the roaring wind in his ears and the pressure of open air around him.
A sudden gust caught his shoulder, sending him tumbling head over heels as he careened toward the ground and he screamed as he flailed desperately to right himself. Every panicked thought he had been trying to ignore came rushing to the surface in a torrent of emotions. How foolish did he have to be to almost blindly leap into the sky without any sort of backup to safeguard him if the energy cells he had been given didn’t work? He hadn’t even thought , he had just jumped forward and now, with naught more than a minute before he hit the lake by his estimate, there was a very real chance that he could die before ever getting the chance to make it back to Lookout Landing.
‘Stupid, stupid, stupid,’ the thought raced through Link’s mind as he at last was able to get himself righted with his arms and legs spread-eagled to slow his fall, ‘What was I thinking?’
It was too late to prepare anything now. He didn’t have time to remove his tunic for any sort of makeshift paraglider, and he thought that the negated force from doing so might pull his arms right out of their sockets anyhow. The lake was close now, close enough that he could see the lily pads growing around its banks.
‘Hylia please, don’t let me die here.’ His final thought just before he pulled his body straight up and down, hands tight by his sides. He leaned back just a bit, hoping to reenter the water at an angle and possibly manage to only break one leg rather than both. Just before he knew he would hit the water, he squeezed his eyes shut. If this was his end, he did not want to see it.
Behind his eyelids there was a flash of dim light, and with a loud fwoom , he plunged into the icy water.
Immediately, all the air seemed to be shocked from his lungs. It took all his willpower to force past what felt like a ten ton iron press closing in on his body from head to toe and manage to shoot his arms and legs back out again to stop the force from shoving him even deeper down, He was disoriented and still feeling the lingering tingle of panic against his skin, but he suppressed the urge to gasp as the lack of oxygen made it feel as if his lungs themselves were spasming. As he managed at last to begin kicking desperately to the surface, both his knees screamed in pain. Broken, he thought, or at least sprained. He hoped it was just a sprain.
Spluttering and choking on the water that had flooded his body through his nose when he fell, he broke the surface. Link swam clumsily to the nearest lake beach as his head spun and throbbed, making him veer off track more than once, but he managed to successfully pull himself onto one sandy bank before collapsing. He gasped for breath, taking in lungfuls of the familiar earthy scent of grass and dirt around him. Flowers too. There were flowers in bloom this time of year, tinting the air with sweetness.
Relief, of all things, was the next thing to fill his mind. He found himself beginning to laugh incredulously, a chuckle turning into more as he rolled over on his back to look up at the sky, still half in the water. He could see the great sky island above him, and even the long walkway and platform he had just thrown himself off of. He could have died , and somehow, in his delirium at being exactly not that, this only made him laugh harder.
At last, as his amusement dimmed down, he cast a look up at the clouds that were now above him rather than in front of him.
“Oh, Zelda,” he huffed a laugh or two more, “wait until I tell you about this.”
She would be utterly aghast to hear it, he knew, and would either insist he never do so again, or demand he try again even more times to test the functionality of the Zonai energy cells.
Speaking of…
Link sat up, moving his hand to touch the chain at his hip. They were glowing brighter now, though it was rapidly fading now that he was safely on land. He realised then that the tingling he felt may not have been from fear at all, but from the power that the construct had said would protect him. He also remembered the split second flash of light before he hit the water. Had that been from this too? However it had worked, it had saved Link’s life, and for that he was extremely grateful.
At last, he decided he had regained enough of his bearings to stand, and so he pushed up off the ground to right himself with a groan, the stiffness from his now cold muscles making themselves known. Immediately, he was reintroduced to another issue in the form of both his knees lighting with pain once more, making him gasp and stumble nearly onto the ground. He cursed, hurrying to drop onto the grass a few feet away so that he could sit and inspect the damage. He was grateful to see that nothing looked out of place or at an odd angle, which meant they were not broken. The Zonai power had saved him from that, at least. He pushed and prodded around the joint there and at his kneecap, which sent small lances of pain shooting up his leg, but felt nothing out of place. His guess was that he had sprained them both, and while this meant he would have to take things slow as he went the rest of the way to Lookout Landing, he would likely still be able to make it there before nightfall. From where he sat at the lake, he could see Purah’s large telescope watch tower in the near distance. With any luck, it would take him half an hour at most to make it there.
“Alright,” he muttered to himself, “let’s go.”
Ignoring the stabbing in his ankle, he stood once more and rolled the tension from his shoulders for good measure before carefully starting on his way. He was quick to locate a makeshift walking stick so as not to further damage his legs, and once he did, it both alleviated some of the pain and allowed him to go at a slightly faster pace. He reached the old Lon Lon Ranch ruins as the sun was turning the sky a deep red, then at last made it to the gates of Lookout Lookout Landing soon after.
Typically, he would stop for conversation with the researchers and guards who took up residence there, but this time he only nodded briefly to the shocked keeper at the gate before moving on. He could answer questions in due time; for now, he needed to find Purah.
Purah’s research centre was at the back of the Landing closest to Hyrule Castle’s town gate, and had been the first part that had been erected when building up the area. One hundred years ago, this area had been known as the Sacred Grounds. It had been the site where Link had been initiated as Zelda’s champion and there others had been appointed to sacred duties before him. Now, Lookout Landing had been built around it, and it was primarily used as the main research hub in all of Hyrule. Purah’s lab itself was two stories, one at ground level with maps and old scrolls on the walls, and crates of materials littering the floor, which was primarily used by Robbie or by Purah’s recently appointed apprentice, Josha. The top floor was Purah’s own personal research room that even Link had only seen the inside of a handful of times. He didn’t know exactly what she did in there, but there was often loud music blaring behind the closed door late into the night and the sounds of all her machines firing intensely.
It was there that Link quickly found himself. He hurried up the creaking wooden steps leading to the observation deck just outside, and was relieved to see Josha there as well. The young girl turned when she heard him approach, and her eyes grew comically wide behind her glasses as he lifted a hand to greet her.
“ L - Link ?” She gasped, “Is that you ?”
He nodded, “It’s me. Where’s Purah?”
Still gaping at him, she pointed towards the door to the research lab with its Sheikah frog insignia that had been decorated with Purah’s own signature red glasses, “She’s in there. I’ll-”
Josha cut herself off, bouncing on the balls of her feet excitedly before dashing to the door and throwing a “Wait here!” over her shoulder.
“Doctor Purah!” She shouted as she ran the few feet to the door, “Doctor Puraaaaaah! It’s the swordsman, Link! He’s back!”
Link was just thinking about how he could very well have done the exact same as Josha on his own…except minus all the yelling, when there was a loud crash, then a shriek, and another series of loud bangs like something clattering to the ground from inside the research room. Link’s eyes widened a fraction, but he couldn’t help the small laugh that escaped him. Yep, that was Purah.
The banging subsided only momentarily before the door flew open to reveal the person inside. Purah’s hair looked as if she had thrown it into a very haphazard bun days ago and not bothered to fix it, her coat rumpled and traces of ink smudged across her cheek. She gasped for breath as she stumbled to a halt, bracing her hands against the doorway. Even from behind the robotic gaze of her red glasses, which sat crooked on her nose, he could feel the scrutiny as she leveled the small hammer in her hand at him.
“Okay,” she said briskly, “now where have you been?”
Notes:
I rather enjoyed rereading this chapter. A few parts had me laughing morbidly to myself and that's always a good time :)
We're five chapters in! How're we feelin?? Shoutout to everyone who's given this a shot so far, it literally makes my day to see people reading this :D
I don't have many notes so I shall be back in a couple weeks with another chapter! Peace!
-Nico
The1970sdeadgaywizard_Regulus on Chapter 1 Fri 04 Jul 2025 04:33PM UTC
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