Chapter Text
Aryll was playing with her telescope again.
Legend was self-aware enough to recognize that despite the vast number of skills he had acquired over the years, taking care of children was decidedly not one of them.
He was starting to pick up on some patterns, though, and one of those was that kids could be endlessly fascinated with even the most mundane toys. Even in the short time that he’d been Aryll’s magic teacher, he’d rarely seen her without her beloved telescope.
Legend munched on an apple slice as he considered what was left of today’s lesson. It was currently the designated snack time. Afterwards, he would usually take Aryll outside so she could apply the theory they had covered to her own specific brand of animal magic. Today’s lesson was less applicable, however, given that they had discussed the basic theories behind enchanted tools.
“Could we enchant Aryll’s telescope?” questioned Wind, having joined in for today’s lesson. He was slathering a small flaky biscuit in apple jam. Legend was still trying to figure out the best way to convince Wind to come to lessons regularly, but for now resigned himself to periodically having Aryll’s older brother as an unexpected second student to manage.
“My telescope’s fine the way it is!” Aryll protested, not looking away from where she was using it to peer out the window.
Legend rolled his shoulders and leaned back against his chair. “Yes, we could enchant her telescope, or any other telescope, but as I mentioned, materials matter. If you aren’t careful enough, you can break something while trying to enchant it, especially if you’re using an element that’s not compatible—”
Aryll interrupted his spiel with a wordless shout. Wind startled, almost dropping his biscuit and getting apple jam smeared onto his chin in the process of catching it.
“Don’t worry, Aryll, I won’t actually try to enchant your telescope!” Wind exclaimed, then stuffed the rest of his snack into his mouth.
Legend snickered at Wind’s chipmunk-like bulging cheeks and gestured at his own chin so that Wind would get the hint to wipe his face.
“No! There’s a dragon!” Aryll shrieked.
Wind, who had just managed to clean his face, almost choked on the remains of his biscuit and sprayed crumbs all over the table.
Legend rushed to Aryll’s side. “Where did you see it?” he urged, taking a good look out the window but not immediately seeing anything of note.
“It’s far away,” Aryll explained, the glee in her tone leaking into her body as she bounced on her toes. “It’s all long and wriggly and really shiny!”
“What!?” Wind shouted, “Let me see!”
“Teacher first,” Legend said, voice deadpan, holding out an expectant hand to Aryll.
Somewhat reluctantly, she passed over the telescope. Legend put it to his eye and peered through the lens in the same direction that Aryll had been looking.
His breath caught in his throat.
The dragon, because it was, without a doubt, a dragon, was indeed far away. Even with the magnification of the lens, he could just barely make out the details of its whole body. It undulated slowly but steadily upwards, shining with a pearlescent shimmer across its coils, accented by teal rock-like spines that glowed even in the daylight. An equally teal set of antlers framed a luscious golden mane waving in the wind as the dragon made its gradual climb further up the sky.
Without a word, Legend handed the telescope over to Wind, who was ineffectively squinting out the window.
“Woah!” he yelped as he brought the telescope to his eye and saw the beast.
“Isn’t it pretty?” Aryll gushed, “Mister Legend, are all the dragons on the mainland like that?”
For once he didn’t bother to try to get Aryll to drop the “mister.” Instead, Legend couldn’t help the eager grin that crept across his face.
“We don’t really have dragons around these parts,” he explained. “Not like that, anyway. I’ve heard of dragons like this existing in other regions though.” Legend clasped his hands together in excitement. “From what I’ve heard, dragons like that drop excellent materials for enchantment.”
“Like scales?” Wind commented, giving the telescope back to an impatient Aryll.
“Stuff like that,” Legend agreed, his mind racing. “Now… how would we figure out exactly where it is…” he muttered, thinking out loud.
“Don’t we already know?” Aryll asked. “It’s in that direction!” She pointed the same way she was holding her telescope.
“That’s east by north,” Wind asserted to Legend, the young sailor scrunching up his face in thought. “But it’s still flying up. By the time we started moving there, it’d probably have already flown away, and we’d lose track of where the items are!”
Legend smirked and headed towards the stairs. By now, Wind should know that for every impossible situation, Legend had the perfect item at hand. Or tucked away in one of his many chests and wardrobes.
Legend opened his mouth to say as such but was interrupted by a sudden clatter from upstairs.
Then, inexplicably, Four barreled down the stairs looking a touch manic and barely avoided stumbling into Legend.
Legend blinked at him, nonplussed. “Where in Din’s blazes did you come from? And what’s with the purple?”
Not only had Legend not heard the telltale chime of Four’s travel door, but the smithy was uncharacteristically dressed head to toe in purple.
Legend certainly had nothing against changing one’s fashion; he’d be a hypocrite otherwise. However, he had never seen Four wear anything that did not feature an equal amount of green, blue, red, and purple regardless of the style of clothing. Legend could respect the dedication to consistency. Ravio liked to say that Four had a solid brand, much like his own consistent purple rabbit theming.
… Maybe Ravio had roped Four into doing purple-based marketing on his behalf?
“It’s more of a violet,” Four replied, answering none of his questions, and beelined straight for Aryll and Wind by the window.
“‘Hoy, Four!” greeted Wind cheerfully, “Do you wanna see the dragon?”
“Not yet,” Four said, “Do you have your picto box on you?”
“Of course! Um… the dragon’s probably too far away to take a pictograph, though…” Wind replied, fishing the camera from his bag.
“Not to worry, this is all part of the plan,” Four insisted. “We need to find out where it is, correct? Come on, you two, we need to take this outside!”
With that, Four ushered both a bewildered Wind and Aryll out the door, leaving Legend feeling like a whirlwind had just passed through his house.
How did Four even know what was going on?
Legend mulled this over as he headed upstairs. As always, Four presented a puzzle for Legend to figure out. Legend had assumed that sooner or later he’d uncover the trick to Four’s uncanny knack for secrets and knowledge of goings-on, but so far, he’d had no luck. At this point, Legend might have to resign himself to waiting for Four to just reveal his methods on his own…
No, Legend wouldn’t give up! Something about Four’s behavior had to have been a clue.
The sudden appearance… the purple clothing…
Alright, he still couldn’t figure what was up with the purple outfit. But if he hadn’t heard Four come through his personal travel door, then Four must have some other kind of way of quickly traveling to Legend’s house.
As Legend rummaged through a chest, he considered the options. Teleportation, flight, maybe he hitched a ride with a roaming witch… well, that was still flight, in a way…
Legend gathered up the items he was looking for and used a foot to ease the chest closed. Just then, a chime rang throughout the house, followed by the sound of a door closing and quiet footsteps padding downstairs.
“Um… hello?” A voice called out. It was Hyrule’s voice, of course. Unlike Four, Hyrule had reasonably come through his travel door, given away by the door’s unique sound.
“Hey, Hyrule! I’m coming downstairs, give me a moment!” Legend shouted as he maneuvered out of the room with his arms full.
Hyrule was in the midst of chomping on an apple when Legend finally put down the items he was holding. He used his sleeve to wipe his mouth clean of juice, and Legend resisted the urge to scold him for the habit. Unlike Aryll (and sometimes Wind), Hyrule was not one of his charges.
“Did everyone leave during snack time?” Hyrule asked, tilting his head with the question. As a well-practiced magic user, Hyrule benefitted little from Legend’s lessons, although Legend would argue that knowing the actual theory behind the magic would still be useful. Nevertheless, Hyrule delighted in coming by for snacks, and would usually stick around for the lesson afterwards, as if he had to justify coming over. Legend was still trying to drill in the concept that Hyrule could visit at any time, for any reason, and that snacks were always available. Full meals, too, but that was its own effort.
“Sort of,” Legend grumbled in response, “Aryll saw a dragon, and then Four dragged both her and her brother out to do… something. We were planning on trying to figure out where it was. For magic items, of course.”
Hyrule gawped at him. “A dragon? Those are dangerous! Aryll’s too little for something like that!”
Legend waved off his concern. “Not the dangerous kind of dragon. You should ask Wind about the dragon he met once. It’s an interesting story.”
Hyrule eyed him skeptically. “If you say so… but Wind’s stories are long. Is this so that I ‘accidentally’ stay later than necessary and then all of a sudden, I’m eating dinner?”
Legend scoffed and tried to hide his smile. “That’s never happened. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He turned his attention to the matter at hand. Several rolls of paper, each bound in different ways, lay before him. Legend had procured a selection of the magic maps he had in his possession. With something as obvious as a dragon, he’d be able to get its location marked in no time!
He unrolled a map bound in ribbon, holding down the edges so they didn’t curl back up.
“East by north, I saw a large, snake-like dragon flying into the sky,” he announced, looking expectantly at the map. Hyrule leaned closer in interest.
Right before their eyes, red ink bloomed on the map. It began to form itself into the shape of an X, marking the location of the dragon.
“Wow… that’s a big mark,” Hyrule commented. Legend frowned.
The map had successfully marked a location, but the X that it had drawn was ridiculously large. It seemed to cover a decent chunk of land that was, as he requested, east by north.
Alright, that was fine. That’s why Legend brought down more than one magic map.
He untied the twine holding another map together.
“East by north, there is a large white dragon flying up towards the sky. Aryll saw it through her telescope in the distance,” Legend proclaimed, and then inspected the map.
A faint yellow glow radiated from the map, closing in on one spot. It grew smaller, and smaller, and then stopped.
A glow now covered only a narrow section of the map, if “narrow” meant spanning multiple regions of Hyrule, that were, again, east by north of where they were.
Legend groaned, throwing his head back and threading his hands through his hair. What was wrong with these maps!? Magic maps were usually pretty good at marking even vague locations when people talked about them. Sure, those locations were usually dungeons, but what made a dragon so different than a dungeon?
“This is why I don’t really use maps,” Hyrule mused. Legend resisted the urge to shove the maps in his face, because Legend was a competent and calm adult.
A competent and calm adult that definitely did not shriek in surprise when the front door slammed open, with Four and Aryll tumbling back inside. Wind followed at a slightly more sedate pace.
“Oh, hey Hyrule!” Wind acknowledged as he sat back down at the table. He leaned forward, eyes wide with curiosity. “Woah, are those magic maps?”
At least someone could appreciate the value of cartography. “Yes,” Legend said primly, “I’m using them to figure out where the dragon is. Or was. Is it still flying up there?”
Wind made a so-so motion with his hand, face screwed up in confusion. “It was pretty much in the clouds last I saw. Four’s apparently trying to do something to figure out where it was too? It’s got something to do with my pictographs, somehow.”
Hyrule, Legend, and Wind looked over to where Four was directing Aryll to look through her telescope at an apple he had snatched from the table.
“Maybe we should enchant a telescope so it can tell us where things are,” Wind suggested. “Like when you get a dungeon compass!”
Legend snapped his fingers and pointed at Wind. “That’s an excellent idea. We’ll make it a project.”
Wind beamed at the praise. Hyrule scratched his head. “You’ve found those compasses too? …Never mind, why is Four purple?”
The three of them glanced over again.
“I thought that Ravio was making him do some sort of promotion,” Legend admitted.
“What if he accidentally dropped all his clothes into purple paint?” Wind asked. “Or enchanted water?”
Hyrule hummed. “You might be onto something... Some sort of magic spell?”
“What kind of spell? Spell of ‘makes you purple’?” Legend asked, bewildered. “We’re probably overthinking this. It could be his laundry day, or something.” Even as he said it, Legend still couldn’t shake the idea that the purple clothes meant something. Curse his curious adventurer’s spirit.
Without warning, Four shoved the maps aside to make room as he slammed down an open journal onto the table. Hyrule lunged to catch the plate of biscuits that now teetered on the edge.
“Hey!” Legend protested. Four paid him no mind, furiously scribbling in his journal. When he filled out one page, he ripped it out, set it to the side, and then wrote on the next page with the same level of fervor. All the while, Four muttered something under his breath.
“…Do you know what he’s doing?” Wind whispered to Aryll. Aryll shrugged.
“I’ve GOT IT!” Four shouted, jabbing a finger at the page he had just finished ripping out and placing on the table next to the first. They all leaned in.
Covering the pages were symbols, letters, and numbers. Inexplicably, there was also a triangle. Four was currently pointing at a number.
“What is this?” asked Hyrule.
“This is math, Hyrule. With the power of trigonometry and the concept of parallax, I was able to use the measurements I took of two of Wind’s pictographs, the estimate of what Aryll saw through her telescope in comparison, and the value of the magnifying power of Aryll’s telescope to derive the exact distance of the dragon from our location! Alright, to be completely honest, it is truly only an approximation, as I had to accept multiple assumptions, however! I am confident that the margin of error is fairly minimal…”
Legend tuned out Four and took a closer look at the number that Four had pointed at earlier. Now with (somewhat incomprehensible) context, he could decipher that it was not just a number, but units of distance.
Units of distance that he said aloud, along with the established “east by north” direction stated before.
As he spoke, the two unrolled maps changed before their eyes. Their respective markers shrunk until they pinpointed a specific spot on the map.
“Wow!” Aryll cheered. “Those maps are amazing!”
Legend scoffed. “These maps are terrible, actually. I must have started with the worst ones of the batch.” Nevertheless, he sent a satisfied smirk in Four’s direction. “But now we’ve actually got a destination to aim for.”