Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Prologue

“Damn it.”

Yuugi frowned at his screen. The level editor had frozen yet again. His cursor was stranded, blinking helplessly over the “render” button.

Yuugi had written about twenty bug reports over the last month and sent them dutifully through Kaiba Corporation’s official ticket system. When the editor continued to choke up and die every time Yuugi looked at it wrong, without any acknowledgement from the coding team, he’d escalated to polite emails. He’d gotten a terse response yesterday instructing him to uninstall and re-install the editor, make sure it was in the correct directory, and then reboot his computer.

This, of course, was bullshit. Yuugi knew the basics of troubleshooting! A fresh install and reboot was one of the first things he’d tried. However, he’d obligingly completed the steps again, and emailed the head of the editor’s coding team that it hadn’t worked.

Yuugi refreshed his inbox yet again. No response from the coding team. There was, however, a message from his supervisor - asking why his level still hadn’t been completed, and warning him that he had been behind on every progress checkpoint for the past four weeks.

“Damn it!” Yuugi repeated, chewing on his thumbnail in frustration.

Thanks for checking in, he wrote. I’ve been unable to meet my progress checkpoints because I’m waiting on the status of ticket #856-E. As you can see in the ticket history, it’s been over a month since the issue began. I’ve cc’ed Tanaka-san in hopes that we can get the level editor back to full functionality soon :)

Translation: I can’t get my job done until you fix the tools I need to do my god damned job, you jerks.

In an added flourish of pettiness, Yuugi cc’ed Tanaka-san, Tanaka-san’s supervisor, and his own supervisor’s supervisor. Good luck ignoring his ticket requests now. He hit ‘send’ with a vindictive little thrill.

“You got in trouble for that?” Jounouchi said, squinting at Yuugi’s phone screen. “Huh? I don’t get it. There was even a smiley face.”

“Cc’ing all those people was kind of an aggressive move,” Yuugi admitted, chewing morosely on his burger. “My supervisor said I shouldn’t waste everyone’s time by bypassing the ticket system.”

“But you tried the ticket system,” Jounouchi said. “And they ignored you.”

“I know,” Yuugi said miserably.

Jounouchi shook his head. “Fuck me. Dunno how you do it, Yuugi. Office are fuckin’ minefields. I’d be putting my foot in it all the time.”

Yuugi sighed, slumping back against the cheap plastic of Burger World’s booth cushions, staring up at the fluorescents above. “It was better when I could talk to Kaiba-kun about it. He wouldn’t solve my problems, exactly, but he’d give pretty good advice on how to get results.”

“You know what else I don’t get?” Jounouchi said.

“That asshole,” Yuugi said in unison with Jounouchi.

“Yeah,” Jounouchi said, jabbing a fry into the cup of ketchup between them. “First he offers you a job at KaibaCorp, then he makes you start at the goddamn bottom-”

“I know,” Yuugi said again.

Truth be told, he hadn’t minded starting in mobile game level design after getting his degree. Job slots at KaibaCorp were coveted, often reaching up to a thousand applicants within a day of posting. Being the King of Games didn’t mean Yuugi had a right to a position that could go to a more talented coder, designer, or artist. He was grateful that Kaiba didn’t make him start as a glorified code janitor and work all the way up, at least.

Sure, making levels for simple mobile platformers only tangentially associated with KaibaCorp’s flagship brands wasn’t exactly Yuugi’s passion, and designing games to be as addictive as possible to fuel endless microtransactions wasn’t exactly in line with Yuugi’s strongly-held values about gaming. But it was something - far more than he deserved graduating with half-assed grades from Domino University.

“What’s that dick even up to these days?” Jounouchi ranted. “Sulking and avoiding us all because-”

“Jou,” Yuugi cut him off. He really wasn’t up for this conversation again.

“I know, I know.” Jounouchi sighed. “I just...sometimes I kinda feel like the team is drifting apart, you know?”

“Is it?” Yuugi said, alarmed.

“No!” Jounouchi backtracked. “No, I didn’t mean that. Maybe it’s just me. Guess I kinda feel like I’m going nowhere fast these days.”

Yuugi nodded thoughtfully as he worked on another bite of burger. He knew exactly what Jounouchi meant.

“I didn’t even get it together and go to college,” Jounouchi said, shaking his head.

“Neither did Honda-kun,” Yuugi pointed out.

“That’s different,” Jounouchi said. “Honda always wanted to open up a garage, and now he’s doing it. I’m...I dunno. Construction isn’t my passion, I think you know that.”

“You’re doing great at pro Dueling,” Yuugi encouraged.

Jounouchi snorted. “Yeah, winning a few small-time tournaments isn’t what I’d call great. Nothing like...like Battle City, or...”

“I know,” Yuugi sighed. “I know. You’re doing great at pro Dueling the same way I’m doing great at my game design career.”

“Exactly,” Jounouchi said, stealing another one of Yuugi’s fries.

“Drifting apart?”

“Yeah,” Yuugi said. “Jou thinks so.”

Anzu chewed her lip. “I mean, we don’t hang out as much as we used to, I guess, but...I guess that happens sometimes when people grow up.”

That was an understatement. It had taken Yuugi and Anzu a full two weeks of texting back and forth to find one measly hour for lunch that would fit with both their schedules. In the end they’d only been able to make it work by eating in the KaibaCorp cafeteria, with Yuugi taking a late lunch break and Anzu ducking out between dance rehearsals.

“It doesn’t mean I have to like it,” Yuugi said, a little petulantly.

“I don’t like it either,” Anzu admitted. “You know I haven’t seen Eri-chan in four days?”

“What?” Yuugi laughed. “You two live together.”

“The life of a grad student is tough,” Anzu said, frowning. “I hope she’s at least remembering to eat.”

“Here’s a tip,” a voice said from behind them. “Hide stashes of snacks in places you know that they frequent.”

“Mokuba-kun!” Anzu exclaimed in delight, turning around in her seat. “You get taller every time I see you.”

“I might still catch up to Seto,” Mokuba said, a triumphant grin on his face. At seventeen, he wasn’t really that close to his brother’s towering height, but he wasn’t the pint-sized kid from Battle City anymore either.

“Come sit with us,” Yuugi invited. “I feel like I haven’t seen you forever, even though we share a workplace now!” He patted the seat next to him. Mokuba happily obliged, setting down his tray of food.

“It’s been nuts,” Mokuba admitted. “If I could just work here full-time instead of two days a week...”

“If you dropped out of school it would break Kaiba-kun’s heart,” Anzu chided lightly, switching immediately into Big Sister Mode.

“I know, I know,” Mokuba said, rolling his eyes good-naturedly. “I’m just saying, nii-sama needs some kind of full-time babysitter to make sure he doesn’t die from overwork.”

“Hence your tips on how to make sure someone’s remembering to eat,” Yuugi said wryly.

Mokuba nodded with a long-suffering sigh. “He’s only getting worse with age. Who are you trying to keep alive, Anzu?”

“My roommate, Eri. You remember her, right?”

Mokuba thought for a moment. “Uh...”

“Éléonore Morin,” Yuugi prompted. “Anzu’s friend from Juilliard. Remember when you and Kaiba-kun were in New York for a product launch while we were all visiting Anzu for winter break, and everyone got together?”

“OH!” Mokuba said, snapping his fingers. “Eri. Yeah, of course. She’s in Japan now?”

“Uh huh,” Anzu nodded happily. “I made her apply to Tohoku for her masters’, just for fun, and she got in. So I talked her into coming here.”

“Did Eri have any say in it?” Mokuba laughed. “You can be pretty convincing, Anzu.”

Anzu pushed Mokuba’s shoulder playfully. “No, I didn’t force her to move to Japan. Anyways, she wouldn’t have studied so hard for the JLPT if she didn’t want to come.”

“That’s ambitious,” Mokuba said. “No way I’d do a master’s degree in another language. Or a master’s degree in general. I’d skip doing a bachelor’s if I could. But Seto says he’ll demote me if I don’t go to college.”

“That’s...a little hypocritical,” Yuugi admitted.

Mokuba grinned. “Tell me about it. So how’s the rest of the gang?”

Anzu and Yuugi exchanged glances.

“Less of a gang these days,” Anzu said wistfully. “Yuugi and I were just talking about how we don’t see each other nearly enough. Honda is so busy with his garage, and Jou is always pulling double shifts at work and then pro Dueling on the weekends...and dance has just been so crazy for me lately...”

“Aw,” Mokuba said, frowning. “That’s no good. I know nii-sama misses you guys lately too.”

“He what?” Yuugi echoed incredulously.

“He does!” Mokuba insisted. “I can tell.”

“We invite him to things, you know,” Anzu said. “He’s been ignoring all of our messages for ages. Since...”

“Yeah.” Mokuba looked down at his tray, poking listlessly at his noodles. “I know. Just...don’t give up on him, okay?”

“It’s not that we’re giving up on him,” Yuugi said gently. “We just...we can’t force him to talk to us...”

Mokuba thought about that for a moment, and then looked up at them with a bright, sunny smile. The kind of smile that with Mokuba usually meant trouble.

“I have an idea...”

“KaibaLand? What is that, an amusement park?”

“Yeah,” Anzu said. “It’s huge. There’s so much stuff to do! It’s going to be a lot of fun.”

“It’s not like I don’t believe you,” Eri said dubiously, chewing on the end of her pencil. “It just...sounds kinda expensive?”

Anzu laughed. Sprawled on the couch surrounded by books, wearing a rumpled pullover sweater with her hair corralled into a messy bun and reading glasses on, Eri looked like the very picture of a grad student - right down to pinching every penny possible. “It’s okay, we know the owner,” Anzu assured her. “We can get in for free.”

“Oh,” Eri said, as it dawned on her. “Kaiba Land. You mean your tall, scary friend?”

“That’s the one,” Anzu said with a grin. “Mokuba-kun will be there too.”

“Mokuba-kun,” Eri said. “That’s Kaiba’s kid brother, right? I like him. He’s sweet.”

“He is,” Anzu agreed. “So what do you think? This Sunday?”

Eri pondered for a second, and then glanced at her massive pile of strewn books, notes, and papers. “I want to,” she said, “but I’m in the middle of grading midterms...”

“It can wait for a few hours,” Anzu said firmly. “Come on, Eri-chan. No one but me has seen you in weeks. Honda thinks you secretly moved back to Canada and I’m just in denial about it.”

Eri laughed. “Okay, okay. Honda’s one to talk. Ever since his garage opened he’s dropped off the face of the earth.”

“Well, that’s part two,” Anzu said, pointing dramatically. “Now that you’ve agreed, we’ve gotta call Honda and get him on board.”

“I see,” Eri said, stroking her chin. “Two against one. All right, let’s get him.”

Honda didn’t pick up the phone at first, so Anzu just kept calling. Finally he answered on the third try.

“Anzu? What’s going on? You okay?”

“Come to KaibaLand this Sunday!” Anzu chirped.

“The fuck,” Honda groaned. “You triple-called me for that? Dude, I thought there was an emergency.”

“There is an emergency,” Eri said. “We miss you. That’s the emergency.”

“Oh, so you haven’t moved back to Canada,” Honda said in exasperation. “What are you two up to? You only ambush me on speakerphone like this when you want something.”

“We want you to come to KaibaLand with us this Sunday,” Anzu repeated.

“You have to,” Eri added. “It’s mandatory.”

“Is it now,” Honda drawled. “And I’m just supposed to close up the garage on a weekend day?”

“You’re supposed to let your apprentice man the shop for just one day,” Anzu said sternly. “Which you’ve been saying you’ll do for months.”

“I will!” Honda protested. “Hideki’s just not ready-”

“Hideki’s ready,” Eri interrupted. “If I gotta to to KaibaLand in the middle of grading midterms, then you gotta let that kid man the shop. It’s only fair.”

“Wait, your logic is kind of...”

“And Jou swapped out both of his shifts that day, and Jii-chan is watching the Kame Game shop even though Sunday is usually his day off so that Yuugi can go,” Anzu added. “I begged off rehearsal, too.”

Honda sighed, long and heavy. Then he laughed. “Damn it. The Eri-Anzu ambush is way too effective.”

“Does that mean you’ll come?” Eri said excitedly, as if she herself hadn’t been dragging her heels just moments before.

“Yeah, yeah,” Honda said. They could practically hear him rolling his eyes on the other end of the line. “Both of you have gotta win me prizes at the game booths, you hear me? And good prizes.”

“Okay,” Anzu laughed. “We’ll win you a plushie as tall as you are.”

“You’d better, or I’m gonna turn around and go straight home.”

After Honda ended the call, Anzu brought up the group chat on LINE.

Anzu: We got him ( ✧ω ✧)b

Jou: damn girl ur efficient as hell

Yuugi: and you got eri-chan too right??

Eri: yeah!!! i wanna go on every single roller coaster!!!

Honda: so anzu n yuugi were behind the whole thing huh...how am i not surprised...

Yuugi: = ￣ω ￣= see you all sunday!!!! 9am!!!

The group arrived at KaibaLand at eight-forty-five. Mokuba was already there, leaning against the gates and playing with his phone, with Isono lurking nearby.

“Hey!” Mokuba called out. He jogged up to meet them. “You guys are early.”

“Well,” Yuugi said sheepishly, “Kaiba-kun did say he’d have security escort us out if we were even a minute late.”

“Aw, he didn’t mean it,” Mokuba said. (Yuugi felt that Mokuba could sometimes be a little in denial about the extent of the elder Kaiba’s misanthropic attitude.)

“Where is your brother, anyways?” Anzu said, looking around.

“Oh, he’s busy,” Mokuba replied. “He won’t be around.”

“The hell?” Jounouchi whined. “We haven’t seen that jackass in months and he’s not even gonna come say hi?”

“Sorry,” Mokuba shrugged. He looked uncomfortable. Yuugi wasn’t surprised, exactly, given Kaiba’s reclusiveness as of late - but the way Mokuba was nervously avoiding everyone’s eyes made him wonder if there was more to it than that.

“What’s Kaiba so busy with, anyways?” Honda wondered.

“Stuff,” Mokuba said evasively. “Anyways, come check this out, we made the Blue-Eyes White Coaster even taller-”

Despite Mokuba’s very obvious attempt at a topic change, the distraction worked well. The newly-renovated KaibaLand was huge. Kaiba had not only added more rides but also interesting new takes on classic games, like a gigantic chessboard where you projected an avatar of yourself and engaged in virtual combat each time you encountered another piece on the board, or a sort of high-stakes backgammon where the players were suspended in midair with an anti-gravity technology and made their moves using a series of exaggerated gestures.

“I gotta give it to Kaiba,” Jounouchi said, arms full of prizes. “This is awesome.”

“Yeah!” Anzu agreed. “You guys did a great job with the renovations. Have you started doing Kids Days again yet?”

“Tomorrow is the first one,” Mokuba said, glowing from the praise.

A core feature of KaibaLand was that one day a week - every single week, in every branch the world over - the park was closed to the public, so that children from group homes, the foster care system, and other under-served communities could come and play for free.

“That’s right,” Yuugi said with a smile. “I bet you’re most excited for that part.”

“Yup.” Mokuba’s answering grin was wide and bright, almost childish in a way that he didn’t often allow himself these days. “Those are my favourite days. Nii-sama’s, too, even though he always says it’s because kids are good beta testers for new attractions.”

“Of course he does,” Anzu laughed.

“Hey, look at this!” Eri cried from behind them. “Look what we got!” She and Honda were struggling to carry a gargantuan stuffed Celtic Guardian between them.

“Did Eri win that for you, Honda?” Jounouchi needled him.

“Yup!” Honda said, completely unruffled. “Archery game.”

“There’s an archery game?” Yuugi marveled. “Jou, you wanna try?”

“Sure. You think I’ll be any good?”

“Only one way to find out,” Mokuba said happily, towing them off in the direction Eri and Honda had just come from.

In the end, they didn’t find out if Jounouchi had a secret talent for archery minigames. Mokuba’s phone buzzed just before they reached the archery range.

“Hey, nii-sama,” he said. A pause. “Oh. That doesn’t sound good.” Another pause. “Yeah, I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“What’s going on, Mokuba-kun?” Yuugi asked.

“Um...tech malfunction,” Mokuba hedged. “It’s no big deal! You guys keep playing. I’ll come back later if I can.”

“It sounds like kind of a big deal,” Anzu said, noting Mokuba’s worried expression. “Can we help?”

“I’m an employee here too, Mokuba-kun,” Yuugi pressed. “Come on…let us come with you. At least for backup.”

“Nii-sama won’t like it,” Mokuba said slowly.

“That’s fine,” Jounouchi said, looping an arm around Mokuba’s shoulder. “Your brother always kicks up a fuss about us helping out, but that never stopped us before, did it?”

“I guess...” Mokuba thought about that for a moment. “Okay. Follow me.” He entered some kind of code on his phone, and the wall right next to them opened smoothly into what appeared to be a maintenance tunnel.

“Where are we going?” Eri whispered to Honda.

“One of Kaiba’s secret tech dungeons,” Honda whispered back. “You’ll love it. It’s like something out of that show you watch, with the bald guy in the jumpsuit-”

“Star Trek,” Eri cut in, eyes wide. “Woah.”

“Hey, you two,” Mokuba said sternly. “This isn’t a game.” He pointed at Eri. “Especially not for you. You’re not used to weird stuff yet.”

Eri saluted. “Yes sir. I’m just here for moral support.” She and Honda high-fived. “Moral support gang!”

Mokuba sighed and pressed a hand to his forehead. “Don’t do that around Seto, I am begging you.”

When they arrived in KaibaCorp’s basement labs, Mokuba led them through another few tunnels, each one getting darker and less populated as they went. Finally he entered a complicated sequence of key-codes at an extremely forbidding metal door, which gave off a pneumatic hiss as it groaned open.

The room they stepped into was dark and cavernous. It took a moment for everyone’s eyes to adjust to the lone figure on its far side.

“Is that...” Yuugi said, eyes wide.

Kaiba was standing there over what looked like a wreck of twisted metal, frowning, his arms folded tightly over his chest. The lighting was so dim that they could barely see him.

“Nii-sama,” Mokuba greeted him, jogging to his side. “What’s going on?”

“Why are they here?” Kaiba snapped, eyes still fixated on the debris in front of him. His deep voice echoed eerily off the polished walls.

“Wow, hello to you too,” Jounouchi muttered under his breath.

“I thought maybe they could help,” Mokuba cajoled. “Especially Yuugi.”

Kaiba finally looked up, and pinned each of them with a glare in turn. It was the first time any of them had seen him in months, but the venom in it still felt surprising. “I highly doubt it.”

“Fill us in, Kaiba-kun,” Yuugi said, brushing off the slight. He stepped forward to examine the dented, crumpled wreckage. His stomach gave an odd little twist as he registered the shape of it - an aircraft with no wings, with a cockpit covered in shattered glass. “Is that…the dimensional domain emulator?”

Mokuba was avoiding looking at it directly, which all but answered Yuugi's question.

Kaiba seemed to weigh his options, then said tersely: “What’s left of it.”

“It blew up this morning,” Mokuba explained, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot. “Nii-sama was down here trying to figure out what happened. And then...”

“It started doing that.” Kaiba pointed. Cracks in the metal briefly illuminated, glowing with a soft blue. The light lasted for only a second before fading.

“What is that?” Anzu said.

Kaiba ignored her and turned to Yuugi. “Watch for a minute,” he instructed. The light flashed on and off a few times, and then a pause, and then again.

“Oh,” Yuugi said, taken aback. “It’s a pattern. Specifically...”

They all watched this time as the light glowed and receded. Three short bursts of light, followed by three longer emittances, followed by three short ones again.

“An S.O.S. signal,” Mokuba said slowly.

Kaiba nodded. He gestured towards the wall. “Look. It’s projecting.”  With every flash of light, very faint, squiggly shapes were appearing on its darkened surface.

“Oh, that’s why you have all the lights off.” Mokuba leaned forward and squinted. “You can barely see them, and they’re gone so fast. What are they?”

“I don’t know,” Kaiba said. “I used the computer up there to take pictures of each projection and sharpen the image, but I can’t read it. All I can tell is that it’s the same series of symbols appearing each time.”

“It looks like an alphabet,” Yuugi said, stepping towards the projection and gazing at it with a furrowed brow.

Kaiba looked up at him with an appraising expression. “Maybe one of you can be useful after all. The same thing had occurred to me. It strongly resembles a simplified hieroglyphic text - but not quite hieratic.” He gestured up towards an isolated booth in the upper corner of the room, protected by thick walls and reachable only by a small lift. “Mokuba, go start running the analysis. Yuugi, over here with me. The rest of you stay out of the way.”

“Can’t you read hieroglyphics, Kaiba-kun?” Yuugi said, as Mokuba made his way into the booth. The heavy door shut behind him.

“Only while the Sennen Items were still around,” Kaiba said. “Now that all of that nonsense is settled, no, I can’t decipher them anymore.” He didn’t sound at all put-out by the loss of that particular ability.

Yuugi stepped hesitantly towards the ruins of the dimensional domain emulator. It made a sudden, sharp hissing noise - Yuugi resisted the urge to skip back a step.

“Kaiba-kun,” Anzu called. “Are you sure this is safe?”

“Obviously not,” Kaiba snapped, “which is why I didn’t invite any of you in here.”

“We’re just trying to help, Kaiba,” Jounouchi said hotly, taking a step towards the destroyed machine. It started to spark.

“Get back,” Kaiba said.

“Now you listen here-”

“Get back!” Kaiba roared, but it was too late. The metal blazed red-hot and the hissing noise became so loud that everyone had to slam their hands over their ears. The flashing started to pick up in pace. Mokuba was trying to get out of the control booth, but it seemed that the door was no longer operational.

Suddenly the room filled with a golden glow, piercing and all-encompassing, and a voice echoed through the space. A woman’s voice.

Help. Help us. Please.

Chapter Text

~△❈△~
Book I: The Three Springs
Part One: Wisdom
~△❈△~

Chapter One: Dawn of the First Day

“What the hell was that?!” Honda groaned, sitting up. “Everyone in one piece?”

“Yup,” Anzu said. She was flat on her back on the ground. “Barely. Yuugi?”

“Ugh.” Yuugi rolled over, propping himself up with an elbow. “What happened?”

Jounouchi and Eri were both starting to stir, and Kaiba had already launched himself to his feet.

“What happened,” Kaiba said, rounding on them, “was that I asked for my brother to come and help me, and then you idiots tagged along and blew up my dimensional domain emulator. Again. Mokuba!” he called. “Mokuba, are you alright?”

There was no answer. Kaiba’s words bounced off the walls, overlapping with each other in a confusing echo. The room was so dark that it was impossible to see.

“Oh, gross,” Jounouchi said. “Why the hell is it damp in here?” He sat up, his fingers sliding unpleasantly on what felt like…wet rock?

The now-familiar blue glow pulsed once again. Weakly, then stronger than it ever had before.

It wasn’t coming from the dimensional domain emulator. It was coming from all around them. The lights faded away after a moment and then pulsed into view again, over and over in a steady pattern.

With their surroundings newly illuminated, it became unavoidably apparent that they weren’t in the KaibaCorp labs anymore.

“What the fuck is this?” Kaiba said. He was on his feet already, pacing the room, his shoes clacking against the polished stone floor. “Mokuba!” he called again. His voice had taken on a frantic edge, and his footsteps quickened.

Before the lights dimmed again, everyone was able to get a good look at their surroundings. They were in a midsized room made entirely of a smooth, dark slate. The floors were covered in rough raised abstract carvings that curled and looped in organic patterns. Intricately detailed pillars drew their eyes up towards the ceiling, where throngs of carved stone twisted and coiled like veins into a massive apparatus suspended just above an altar. Blue light spilled out from the gaps between the raised reliefs.

Along with the pulses of blue light, a rhythmic mechanical thrum whirred through the air. The whole thing gave the effect of a massive heart beating in the centre of the room.

Eri looked around, and shut her eyes tightly for a moment, then opened them and looked around again. “What?” she breathed. “How…”

“What did you do, Kaiba?” Jounouchi yelled, jumping to his feet. He’d come to directly below the huge beating heart, in a platform with an oblong depression in the centre. “Where the hell are we?”

“How the fuck should I know?!” Kaiba shouted back.

“Because it was your tech that blew up!”

“Stop, guys, just stop, we have to calm down-”

“Shut up, Mazaki, I am calm, if you want to do something useful, restrain your idiot friend-”

“Don’t tell her to shut up, asshole!”

Honda sighed, deciding not to join Anzu and Yuugi in their futile attempts to break up the fight. He glanced at Eri. She had wandered over to a pedestal in the corner of the room and was poking at it intently, with a focused look on her face.

“You,” Kaiba snapped suddenly, whirling towards her. “What are you doing?”

Eri didn’t turn to face him, instead continuing to run her hands over the carved stone. “Um…” she said weakly, then glanced over her shoulder and promptly flinched back from Kaiba’s white-hot glare.

Honda got up to join her, subtly angling himself between Eri and Kaiba. “Hey.” He tried for reassuring, even though his own blood pressure was starting to skyrocket. “What are you looking at?”

“This…kind of looks…familiar?” Eri poked at the pedestal again. She gave Honda a beseeching look, like she was hoping he would tell her whether or not she knew what it was.

“What?” Yuugi said. “Do you know where we are?”

“No!” Eri said quickly, then paused. “Maybe? Well…no. It’s impossible. I think. Maybe, if we looked outside…”

Without another word, Kaiba grabbed her roughly by the upper arm and started dragging her towards the entrance.

“Hey,” Honda protested. “Don’t manhandle her like that, come on!”

“Can it, Honda,” Kaiba snarled. “We need to figure this out, immediately, so that I can get back to my brother.”

The rest of the group followed Kaiba and Eri through a pristine, well-lit section of tunnel. It soon gave way to a dark passageway that looked like it had seen better times. The darker section ended with an abrupt cutoff where there may have been stairs long ago but was now just a short rock face; fortunately there was a small, deteriorating crate nearby that offered just enough of a boost so that everyone could easily climb up.

The group emerged from the tunnel and into blinding light.

When their eyes adjusted, they realized that the blinding light was the sun, and that they were standing outside on what appeared to be a lovely spring day. The brilliant blue sky was marked only by a few fluffy clouds, and birds and cicadas chirped raucously around them. They made their way slowly out of the cave; the entrance was flanked by tall pines and juniper shrubs whipping this way and that in the fresh breeze. Long grass brushed at their thighs as they walked.

Eri was standing on the edge of a small cliff nearby, staring out at the landscape. A landscape none of them recognized in the slightest.

It was beautiful, and it was very obviously not Domino City. Or anywhere in Japan, for that matter. Rolling hills and fields stretched out for miles, punctuated by rock formations, forests, and crystalline lakes. The sky was so endlessly clear that you could see all the way to the enormous mountain ranges in the distance, looming tall and imposing at the skyline. For their part, they were on a sizeable plateau bordered by sharp cliff faces; there was no obvious way down other than what would certainly be an unsurvivable plummet. The plateau seemed innocuous enough. It was covered in a lush deciduous forest dotted by ponds and the remains of several crumbled structures. The plateau’s standout feature was the most intact construction in visible distance - a Romanesque cathedral with classic steepled roofs and arched gothic windows.

A hawk shrieked nearby, circling and beating its large wings, on the hunt for prey in the forest below.

Honda’s eyes tracked the hawk, then moved past it towards the horizon. “The…the hell is that?” he said, pointing.

That was what appeared to be a castle in the distance, so utterly massive that its features were plainly visible even from far away. They could tell immediately that it had been scarred by a battle of epic proportions.

“No fucking way,” Eri squeaked out. She skittered back from the cliff’s edge so fast that Anzu moved as if to catch her from falling right off.

“What?” Jounouchi badgered. “Come on, where are we?”

Eri blinked once, twice, then turned around to look at the landscape again, grey eyes wide in her pale, freckled face. “Uh…we seem to be in…” She paused, eyes darting from the castle to an improbably enormous volcano even further away.

“Hyrule? ” It came out as a question.

“Huh?” Jounouchi’s face wrinkled in confusion. “Hy-what?”

Eri finally tore her eyes from the stunning vista ahead of them. “This shouldn’t be possible. I play this game all the time.”

“Game?” Yuugi tilted his head. “Oh...so this is like Legendary Heroes. Or the Virtual World.”

“Ah, I see!” Anzu said, nodding. She frowned and looked around suspiciously. “Can we die here?”

“Kaiba,” Honda called over his shoulder. Kaiba was still standing near the entrance of the cave, scowling. “Can we die in here or what?”

Eri stared from one to the other. “Am...am I the only one freaking out, or...?”

“It’s okay, Eri,” Jounouchi said cheerfully, making his way to Eri’s side and throwing a comforting arm around her shoulder. “We’ve done this before! We got trapped in a game Kaiba made one time. We just had to beat the game then we were able to leave. And then there was the virtual world we got kidnapped into...”

“E-eh? What? ”

“Idiots,” Kaiba said from behind them. “It’s not the same at all.”

“What do you mean, Kaiba-kun?” Yuugi said.

Kaiba sighed impatiently like he couldn’t believe how stupid they all were for not telepathically understanding whatever was in his head. “I mean,” he forced out through gritted teeth, “this isn’t virtual reality. It’s not the same as Legendary Heroes. Do you fools remember what we were doing not ten minutes ago? We were inspecting the remains of my dimensional domain emulator. It misfired. So we are in. Another. Dimension.”

“What about Mokuba-kun?” Yuugi asked. “Where is he?”

“Protected by the isolation booth, which is apparently working as intended,” Kaiba replied, a mixture of irritated and relieved. “Probably wondering where the hell we all went.”

Eri looked helplessly from Kaiba to Yuugi, clearly completely lost. “But...this isn’t another dimension. This is Hyrule, from the Legend of Zelda series. I’ve logged hundreds of hours in this game. There’s no way I’m mistaken.”

“Oh, for god’s sakes,” Kaiba snapped. “I’m not about to explain basic dimensional theory to a grad student in the social sciences.”

“Explain it, asshole,” Jounouchi said, stepping aggressively towards Kaiba and grabbing a handful of his shirt. “Or else we’re leaving you here and figuring out how to get out of this ourselves.”

“Kaiba-kun, Jounouchi-kun,” Yuugi pleaded. “We’re not leaving anybody anywhere. Please just try and help us understand, Kaiba-kun.”

Kaiba stared down at Jounouchi until the latter reluctantly released his shirt and stepped back. “Particles can only arrange themselves in so many ways, so if the universe is infinite then the configurations will inevitably start repeating themselves. Thus, there are infinite parallel universes,” he said curtly.

“Oh,” Eri said, her eyes enormous. “So every video game is a parallel universe, somewhere.”

“Well done,” Kaiba drawled sarcastically. “A stunning takeaway.”

“Would you just stop?” Anzu chided. “Come on, let’s work together to solve this.”

Kaiba looked like he would rather just be lost in the wilds of Hyrule forever instead, but folded his arms and said nothing.

“Are we safe here?” Honda said, peering around. “Eri-chan, is this a tough level?”

That got Kaiba going again. “This is not a video game,” he lectured. “How many times do I have to explain this? It’s a parallel dimension. It could be the exact same as whatever game Morin has wasted a significant portion of her life on, or it could be a completely different place with an identical landscape. There are no levels.”

“Okay,” Yuugi said reasonably, “but we have to work with the data we have, ne? So far we know that this place, at least in appearance, matches ‘Hyrule’ from the Legend of Zelda games. We can’t assume that it’s the exact same, but I think it’s safe to proceed with the assumption that it’s similar, for now. At least until we see notable differences.”

“And what if those notable differences are dangerous enough to kill us flat-out?” Kaiba countered.

“So what, you want us to cower in that cave and hide until we magically figure out some way outta here?” Jounouchi argued.

Kaiba rolled his eyes. “This may be too much for your five brain cells to wrap themselves around, but there is a middle ground between treating this like a game and hiding in a cave.”

“What’s your brilliant idea then, huh?” Jounouchi demanded.

Meanwhile, Eri had sat down right on the ground with her head in her hands. “C’est quoi le grément…?! ” she muttered to herself.

Honda knelt down next to her. “Hey, you okay?” he said, squeezing her shoulder and ignoring the argument raging behind him. Anzu had joined in with admonishments to both sides for their rudeness, and Yuugi was looking more overwhelmed by the second.

“It’s not like I didn’t believe Anzu when she said you guys had been through some crazy stuff,” Eri managed, her voice high and wavering. “It’s just, uh, a lot to take in?”

“Sure is,” Honda said sympathetically. “I guess this is your first freaky supernatural experience. Welcome to the club.”

“Super…natural?” Eri rubbed at her forehead. “But isn’t Kaiba-kun’s big scary machine…science?”

“Don’t think about it too hard. Past a certain point, it’s more or less the same thing.”

The arguing behind them reached a fever pitch, and Eri glanced up worriedly as it became apparent that both Jounouchi and Kaiba were getting way too riled up.

“OKAY!” Yuugi yelled suddenly - loudly enough to not only halt the argument but also to make everyone flinch.

Yuugi immediately coughed, his cheeks staining pink. “Um, I have an idea,” he continued, at a meeker volume. “Why don’t we go back into the cave and see if there’s a way back through?”

“Good idea,” Jounouchi said, shooting one last glare at Kaiba. “Better than nothing, right?”

“Hn.” Kaiba turned and swept away into the cave without further ado. The rest of them exchanged aggravated glances then followed.

While Kaiba silently poked and prodded at the little pedestal in the corner, Yuugi set to quizzing Eri about their whereabouts.

“Shrine of Resurrection, huh?” Yuugi mused, glancing at the altar in the centre of the room - the one Jounouchi had landed in. “It looks like pretty advanced tech.”

“Er, yeah,” Eri said, still quite shaken. “It isn’t powered properly, though, so it takes a long time to operate. If it works the way I think it does. Which I guess isn’t a given.”

“Don’t let Kaiba-kun get to you,” Anzu soothed. “You’re the only one who’s played this game, so you have a better idea of where to start than anyone else does.”

“I’m the only one?” Eri said nervously. “Really? Even Yuugi-kun hasn’t played any games in this series?”

“Sorry, no,” Yuugi shrugged. “I prefer competitive games. Plus, the Legend of Zelda series is more popular abroad.”

“Focus, dweebs,” Kaiba said, sounding more bored than someone trapped in an alternate dimension had any right to be. “Morin. What is this text? Can you read it?”

“Sheikah script.” Eri shook her head. “No, I can’t read it.”

Kaiba rolled his eyes heavenward in exasperation and knelt down to continue his examination of the pedestal’s base.

“Is there a lot of tech in this game?” Yuugi prompted.

“Not a game,” Kaiba corrected.

Eri ignored him. “Yeah, Sheikah tech is everywhere. When you start the game there’s actually a little tablet in that pedestal that can do all sorts of useful things, but...it’s gone. So I guess that means someone - Link, probably - has taken it already.”

“Maybe we can find it,” Yuugi said. “What does the tablet do?”

“Um...I have no idea how we’d find Link, but...the tablet has a magnetic tractor beam...it can freeze things...there’s a camera, a tracking sensor, a teleporter-”

“A what?” Kaiba interrupted. “This tech has teleportation capabilities?”

Eri nodded. “It’s coded to specific locations and is usually only usable by-”

“Doesn’t matter,” Kaiba said dismissively. “Limitations can be worked around. Where do we find the tablet?”

“She just said she didn’t know, Kaiba-kun,” Anzu reminded him.

“Well, this heap of garbage has an obvious power short that I can’t fix without appropriate tools, so I suggest one of you dorks comes up with an educated guess,” Kaiba said.

Honda frowned. “Dude, didn’t you just say this place isn’t the same as the video game? How could any of us guess?”

“For fuck’s sakes,” Kaiba said, “keep up, you pack of morons. Were you not listening to what Yuugi said? We’re working with the data we have, and so far the data is telling us that this place bears at least some similarity to whatever hack RPG you’re all on about. There is a tablet-shaped slot in this pedestal, which means that we can extrapolate that there is a tablet out there somewhere. Do you need me to break it into smaller words?”

“No, we understand, Kaiba-kun,” Eri said, though not before shooting Anzu a brief look that was very clearly asking why are you all friends with this jerkoff? “Unfortunately the tablet could be anywhere. It’s pretty specifically coded to Link, the main character of the series, and he travels all over the country. But,” she added before Kaiba could open his mouth again, “there is somewhere we could try…there’s a lab that specializes in this tech.”

“Well, let’s go then,” Kaiba said brusquely, not waiting for her to elaborate. He turned to leave the cave.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Jounouchi said, starting after him. Kaiba didn’t dignify him with a response. “Wait, asshole,” Jounouchi continued, “you don’t even know which way-”

“Then you’d all better hurry up,” Kaiba snapped.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Eri said, jogging to catch up with Kaiba. “There’s, like, monsters and stuff out there.”

“Are they going to go away if we wait in this cave any longer?”

“Well, no, but-”

“Then make yourself useful and show me which path to take to get down. We’ll deal with anything out there when we get to it.”

Eri sighed in abject misery, clearly anticipating Kaiba’s wrath. “...It’s a plateau. There’s no way off.”

Kaiba fixed her with a horrible, silent stare.

“The main character gets off the plateau using a paraglider,” she continued hesitantly. “Maybe if we...look around, we can find something like that?”

Kaiba said nothing, his glare growing more intense by the second.

“We could try the Temple of Time,” Eri said, gesturing to the big cathedral in the distance.

“I thought I told you,” Kaiba growled, “to show me which path to take. I’m not repeating myself again.”

Eri pointed silently. Once Kaiba had set off down the hill on the dilapidated stone road, the rest of them followed a little ways behind, not wanting to put themselves further in the path of his ire.

“Sorry, Eri-chan,” Yuugi apologized. “Kaiba-kun gets a little...intense when he’s separated from his brother.”

“Understandable,” Eri shrugged. “So...does anyone want to tell me what a dimensional domain emulator is?”

Everyone else exchanged glances. “Well...” Yuugi said uncomfortably. “Kind of what it sounds like, I guess. It’s a device with the ability to travel between dimensions.”

“What the fuck,” Eri breathed. “Kaiba-kun just...has that technology sitting around?”

“Well, not technically,” Anzu said. “He used it once and then the thing powering it, the Quantum Cube, was destroyed in the process. We didn’t think it was operational anymore.”

“What’s a Quantum Cube?”

“…It’s kind of hard to explain, but he dug it up in Egypt. He was initially looking for something else, but…”

“Where did he go when he used it?”

Another silence, as everyone collectively figured out how to word it.

“Okay,” Honda started. “You remember how we told you a while ago about the Pharaoh?”

“Um...yes,” Eri said nervously. “The ghost in Yuugi-kun’s jewelry that you guys had to send back to the afterlife by playing a lot of card games?”

“Er, yeah,” Honda agreed. That was pretty much the gist of the abridged version Anzu had given Eri years ago, when everyone had decided it was okay to tell her - and no one had really elaborated since then. “So...Kaiba kind of...”

“Followed him to the afterlife to challenge him again,” Jounouchi supplied, with a look of disgust on his face.

“Okay,” Eri said slowly. “It’s not like I don’t believe that Kaiba-kun would disrupt someone’s eternal rest to play cards, but...” she buried her face in her hands again. “Oh no,” she moaned. “I do believe it. Inter-dimensional travel is real and it’s happening to us, oh my god...”

“It’s okay,” Yuugi said, rubbing her back in comfort. “We’ll figure it out. We always have before.”

“What do you mean? How many times has this happened?”

“A few,” Jounouchi said vaguely.

“Well,” Anzu chimed in, brisk and businesslike. “On the bright side, this time already seems nicer than the others. It’s very pretty here, isn’t it?” Anzu reached up up to brush her hand against the mossy bark of a thick tree trunk.

“Prettier than Noa’s creepy-ass lair by a mile,” Honda agreed.

Jounouchi plucked a low-hanging apple from a branch in front of him. “Are these real apples? Can we eat ‘em?”

“They should be edible.” Eri lifted her head, staring intently at the apple like she could force it to give up its secrets. Before she could come to a definite conclusion, Jounouchi had already taken a big, enthusiastic bite.

“Oh, that’s tasty,” he declared happily through a mouthful of fruit.

Eri hoisted herself up into the lower branches, and a minute later returned with a handful of apples. They all crunched on the fruit, enjoying the crisp sweetness. A little food, combined with the gorgeous scenery, went a long way towards bringing the group’s collective anxiety down. Anzu stowed a few extra in her purse. In an even better stroke of luck they were all dressed appropriately for the weather, in the casual sorts of outfits a group of friends would wear to an amusement park. Kaiba was the standout in his suit - although he’d ditched the extravagant coats as he grew older, he still had an affinity for expensive tailored garments - but he didn’t seem bothered or make a move to remove his suit jacket as the sun continued to climb in the sky.

“See, this isn’t so bad, is it?” Yuugi said brightly as they picked their way along the worn path. “We have a plan now, and Kaiba-kun will figure out the tech in no time.”

“You think?” Eri said. “I mean, I guess he’s a genius. Once he cools down a bit we can strategize, and...”

“Sorry to break it to you, Eri-chan,” Honda said. “That guy never cools off. Never.”

“I got that impression,” Eri said wryly. “So...what’s his deal?”

“What’s Kaiba’s deal,” Jounouchi whistled. “Now there’s a hell of a question.”

Anzu and Yuugi exchanged glances again. Eri had only met Kaiba a few times in group settings, and he had never been Mr. Gregarious at best; but right now he was acting particularly awful, even by Kaiba standards. An unspoken agreement passed between them, and Anzu cleared her throat.

“Kaiba-kun’s been, er...going through a hard time, since going to challenge the Pharaoh,” Anzu explained. “A really hard time.”

“Why? Did he lose?”

“No one knows,” Yuugi said. “He won’t tell anyone what happened there.”

A fraught, awkward silence descended over the group for a moment.

Finally, Eri nodded. “Got it. Guy’s having some sort of crisis, so we should be understanding with him.”

“Yes,” Anzu said, looking pointedly at Jounouchi.

“I know,” Jounouchi groaned, running a hand through his hair. “He’s just such a massive douchebag. What, am I supposed to not let him piss me off?”

“Yes,” Anzu said again. “Don’t react, you’re giving him exactly what he wants when you-”

“Ugh, sorry I’m not a damn saint-”

As if on cue, Kaiba bellowed back up the hill at them to hurry up. As the rest of the group quickened their pace, Eri ducked off the path for just a moment.

“Whatcha got there?” Honda said, when she caught up with the group. “Oh. Dude. Wow.”

Eri had a large woodcutter’s axe clutched in both hands. It was just about half her height.

“In case of monsters,” she said, giving it an experimental swing. “I’m surprised! It was in the exact place I expected it to be.”

“Give that to me,” Kaiba said flatly. “Now.”

“No.”

“Excuse me? What do you mean, ‘no’?”

“No,” Eri repeated pleasantly, then continued down along the path. Jounouchi looked like he’d had half a mind to relieve her of the axe himself, but as soon as Kaiba spoke up he folded his arms and marched along beside Eri like it was obvious the axe was rightfully hers.

“Did we not just tell those two to be understanding?” Anzu said, rather peevishly.

“We did,” Honda affirmed. “I was there.”

Their trek took them along a pretty forested path, which gradually gave way to a stone road that had all but disintegrated as it brought them to an open, sunny part of the plateau. Meanwhile the sun climbed higher and higher in the sky, marking the passage of hours until the morning was nearly gone. The sheer scale of Hyrule was starting to dawn on them all.

The end of the road brought them onto the flagstones of what must have once been a courtyard. A half-buried fountain was visible underneath a heap of detritus. And then, sprawling over the hills above them: an entire complex of ruined buildings.

The grounds of the Temple of Time lay in varying states of disrepair. Of the auxiliary buildings that lined the main pathway - structures that must have been cloisters, refectories, chapels, and the like - some were mostly whole but bore the scars of long abandonment, and some were reduced to bleak piles of rubble that only hinted at the shapes of their framework. They began a climb up a steep winding stairway. Rather than helping with mounting the hill, the stairs were a challenge in and of themselves. Picking their way up over crumbling stone, which was slick with moss in places and dry and brittle as sand in others, was a task that required both focus and leg strength.

Every time one of them chanced a look up from their feet, the Temple of Time’s grand cathedral loomed larger over them in its dark, silent, eternal vigil.

At the top of the first staircase they passed a half-collapsed parvise, turning right towards yet another flight of steps. Yuugi peeked in through the entryway of the parvise as they passed. The floor was decorated with a beautiful circular design of inlaid stone, bearing strange carvings and symbols. Beyond the inlay were a few stairs leading up to a dais bracketed by ornate pillars.

Yuugi craned his neck a little to see further inside, intrigued - and then an odd sort of chill trickled down his spine as his eyes registered a different shape. A shape that was unmistakably alien in contrast to the architecture around it.

It looked like the leg of a spider extending from the shadows, with dull metal scales overlapping and ending in a clawed foot. The strange construction was inert, just as overgrown with moss as the rest of the parvise, but something about his brain thought: wrong. Doesn’t belong here.

“So if we manage to get off the plateau,” Yuugi said to Eri, more to distract himself from the strange feeling than anything, “then how far is it to this lab?”

“Um...” Eri shrugged helplessly. “I guess since it’s taken us a few hours to make it this far, then…to get to the lab it’ll probably be...” She thought for a moment. “At least a few days?”

As they continued to climb the western stairway, Yuugi’s eyes flicked again towards a dulled metallic glint. Another spider leg. This leg, along with several others, was attached to a body; a peculiar squat shape partially buried in the dirt alongside the path. It was a six-legged statue, whose form hovered somewhere between arachnoid and cephalopodan.

Honda groaned. “Damn it. And this place isn’t even virtual, so we’re gonna get hungry and need to sleep and stuff...”

“Okay, you guys have really got to fill me in on this virtual world thing someday-”

“A few days,” Kaiba barged in, his voice low and menacing. “You had better be fucking joking, Morin.”

Yuugi’s gaze tracked another statue, further up the path, and then another still. Each statue’s legs were extended as if in mid-motion. It looked almost like they were climbing upwards, all in a row.

“Back off, Kaiba-kun,” Anzu said. “It’s not her fault.”

Finally they reached the Temple of Time’s paved-stone forecourt, overgrown with weeds and vines. Yuugi tuned out of the burgeoning argument entirely as he took in the haunting scene in front of him. Like the parvise before it, the cathedral was also half-collapsed; but in a much more literal way, with one half standing very nearly intact. The western half was startling in its wholeness. There was glass still in the windows.

Even more of the six-legged statues were clustered here. On the cathedral’s collapsed eastern side, their metal limbs thrust through stone walls and climbed over the rubble. On the western side one statue was frozen with a leg outstretched, just about to make contact with that improbably intact glass. More were behind it, mounting a landslide of debris. A swarm.

Yuugi had a sudden, clear, and incomprehensible thought in that moment: the Temple of Time had not simply decayed over time. It had been destroyed.

“Cut the sanctimonious bullshit, Mazaki,” Kaiba said, so sharply it made Yuugi’s attention snap back to his friends. “Do any of you have a legal dependent waiting for you to come back? No? Then I suggest you-”

Jounouchi moved in front of Anzu. “Don’t play that card, asshole,” he said, “it’s not like leaving Mokuba behind stopped you when you-”

Kaiba reared back and punched Jounouchi in the face.

“Oh my god,” Eri gasped, hands over her mouth, as Jounouchi returned the punch with equal ferocity. “What the fuck is happening?”

“You’re really getting the full dysfunctional group experience today, aren’t you, Eri-chan,” Honda sighed in resign. “Christ.” With that, he jumped into the fray to try and pry them apart. Yuugi threw himself in too - though he couldn’t really do much, other than hope that Jounouchi’s desire for Yuugi not to get caught in the crossfire was more powerful than Jounouchi’s desire to beat the living shit out of Kaiba.

“Sorry, Eri-chan,” Anzu groaned, pinching the bridge of her nose. “They’re so stupid. Why are they so stupid?”

Eri took a deep breath, and then another. “Okay. We’re trapped in an alternate dimension and our friends are trying to kill each other. This is fine. Okay.”

“That’s the spirit,” Anzu encouraged, patting her arm.

“Are you two done now?” Honda said, holding on to a struggling Kaiba while Yuugi gripped Jounouchi uselessly around the waist. “Are we done with this? Yeah?”

Kaiba yanked himself free of Honda and stormed off into the Temple of Time.

“Let’s go the other way and just leave him to die out here,” Jounouchi spat.

“Jounouchi!” Anzu scolded, grabbing his ear. She yanked him down to her level. “Stop provoking him. I am not going to tell you again.”

“I was just sticking up for-”

“I did not ask for or need you to do that,” Anzu lectured. “Grow up. We know Kaiba-kun’s an asshole. We’ve known that for years. Now is your chance to set a good example for him and be the better man. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes,” Jounouchi muttered, folding his arms. “Sorry.”

After taking a moment to breathe and cool down, the rest of them followed Kaiba under the high arches of the cathedral’s entrance.

The Temple of Time’s interior was just as striking as its exterior, with dappled sunlight filtering in through the gaps in the walls and glinting on the blades of grass that pushed up through the remnants of the floor’s intricate stonework. Though the eastern half of the Temple was nearly decimated, the western roof and walls were solid and grand, their tracery windows casting long shadows throughout the interior. The sounds of birds and insects followed them into the cathedral, but muffled, somehow; the atmosphere was one of imperturbable reverence that not even Kaiba dared break with a snide remark.

“Wow,” Eri breathed, barely an entranced whisper, her earlier anxiety forgotten. Her eyes flicked this way and that. She twisted around to look behind them, and up; her gaze alighted on a high-up gallery, nearly concealed from sight. “I can’t believe we’re actually standing here.”

As they began to walk, their footsteps alternated between soft crunches on the dirt and grass that had encroached on the Temple’s floor, and echoing clack-clacks against the remaining stone tiling. A towering shape was visible at the far side of the nave. As the group moved closer, the dappled sunlight revealed a set of stairs leading up to a grand altar, upon which there was a very tall statue of an angel.

The angel’s hands were clasped serenely in front of her, long-sleeved robes falling gracefully in folds down to her feet. She was older than the rest of the cathedral. It was hard to say why that fact felt so certain; something about the style in which she had been carved, the rough pitting of the stone. Her smile was peaceful, blithe, and discordant all at once as she looked on over the scorched remains of Her temple. Replicas of herself in miniature were arranged in a circle around of the foot of her robes. A mother and her daughters, or a commander and her soldiers.

Yuugi couldn’t help himself. He felt drawn towards the pedestal. He took a step towards her, and then another, and soon enough he was right in front of the lovely statue with his hand outstretched.

“Don’t touch that, Yuugi,” Jounouchi said lowly.

“No, it’s okay,” Eri murmured, coming up to stand next to him. “It’s a statue of the goddess Hylia.” To demonstrate, she pushed Yuugi’s hand gently into the statue’s side.

The light filtering in and crowning the statue in gold took on a strange quality all of a sudden - subtle, but unmistakable - shimmering in rainbow hues that danced along its stone features.

“Welcome,” a voice reverberated through the space, not from the angel, but from all around them. It was deep, and light, and soft and strident all at once; floating on top of the sacred, heavy air of the nave, but also sinking down as an aching rumble in their chests. “Hyrule is glad you are here.”

Everyone stood, hearts pounding at the unmistakable feeling of divinity in their midst, frozen, until-

“Hey,” Honda said nervously. “Can you maybe...help us figure out how to get back?”

All at once the voice and the light and the warmth surrounding them faded. His voice echoed in the silence.

Kaiba was the first to recover. “Fucking typical,” he scoffed.

“Why would Hyrule be glad we’re here?” Jounouchi said, puzzled. “We kinda crash-landed, and not on purpose. Hey, goddess lady,” he called. His voice echoed off the stone walls. “Come back, we're not done talking to you!”

“I don’t think she’s here anymore,” Yuugi said, frowning. “Eri-chan, is there a way to summon her?”

“Probably not.” Eri glanced at the statue. The Goddess’s face was perfectly beatific, just as Eri remembered it, but…in person, the effect was bordering on unnerving. “Hylia’s notorious for being kind of unhelpful.”

“What are those?” Anzu said, pointing at the statue’s base. “Were they there before?”

A row of sticks wrapped in cloth were laid at the statue’s feet - six of them in total.

Eri knelt down and picked one up, testing its weight. Then she unfolded it into a triangular shape. A cheerful pattern was stamped onto the canvas fabric stretching across the frame.

“Paragliders!” Eri cried in delight. “Yes! Thank you, Hylia, I take it back!”

They did a few test runs with the paragliders, using the hill sloping down the Temple’s east side and hiking back up after each pass. Anzu, as it turned out, had a natural aptitude; no one but her was surprised, seeing as Anzu tended towards grace and athleticism. Yuugi and Honda didn’t fare too badly either, but Eri and Jounouchi were flat-out terrible.

Kaiba had vanished during paragliding practice. No one really had the heart to look for him, figuring his intelligence probably outweighed his ego when it came to getting separated from his party whilst trapped in an alien locale. “He already knows how to paraglide,” Yuugi rationalized. “He has a license, I think. I remember Mokuba-kun mentioning it once.”

“What?” Eri said. “Why? Is paragliding a normal rich guy hobby, or is it related to his weird obsession with jumping out of helicopters and stuff for the drama?”

“All of the above,” Honda said.

After a few more practice glides, one of which saw Jounouchi actually manage to stay in the air for more than three seconds, Kaiba returned. His arms were full of gears, springs, and other assorted mechanical parts.

“Where did you get those, Kaiba-kun?” Yuugi asked, puzzled.

Kaiba grunted and inclined his head towards one of the statues surrounding the Temple - the ones that gave Yuugi such a strange, ominous feeling. “Mazaki,” he said, gesturing to her purse.

Anzu gave him a long-suffering look and opened the bag, letting him dump the dirty machine parts in.

“The hell are these?” Honda said, kneeling next to a statue and poking at it. It was so decayed and covered in moss that if it hadn’t been for the intricate carvings visible on its sides it would have looked more like a hillock than anything. On second glance, Honda noticed the positioning of it was a little awkward; what had first registered as a piece of random twisted metal was actually emerging from it like a leg, and the effect made it seem like the thing was crawling up the Temple wall.

“Oh, those are Guardians,” Eri said. “Super powerful enemies that can kill you in one hit with a laser.”

Honda twitched backwards. Yuugi swallowed, licking his dry lips. He supposed he now had his answer as to what, exactly, had destroyed the Temple of Time.

“These ones are all dead, though,” Eri reassured them. She patted the Guardian’s strange oblong head, an oddly affectionate-seeming gesture. Yuugi’s eyes followed her hand, noting the raised circular carving in the centre - an eye.

Jounouchi knelt to grab a random stick off the ground. “You sure about that?” he said suspiciously, squatting next to the Guardian and giving it a firm poke. “All of ‘em?”

“I don’t think there are any live ones up here,” Eri said with a frown. “But once we get down off the plateau, we have to be careful to stay away from Central Hyrule. It’s infested.”

“You don’t think, huh,” Yuugi said faintly.

“What’s the plan?” Kaiba cut in, seemingly unconcerned that he’d just been riffling around in the corpses of unfathomably destructive death machines. “Where are we making the jump from? Are any of you actually going to be able to make it down without dropping out of the sky? Do we know if there are any hostiles around?”

Eri had started walking away as Kaiba was speaking, hooking the axe onto her back through the straps of her little accessory backpack. She put one hand on the crumbling, mossy stones of the Temple of Time’s exterior wall, and then the other; then she stuck the toe of her sneaker into the gap between two bricks and tested it.

“Hey,” Kaiba said loudly. “Quit fucking around for two seconds, Morin. Everyone’s relying on you right now.”

“Um, Eri-chan,” Yuugi said nervously as Eri started to scale the Temple wall. “Where are you going?”

“Up,” Eri called back, which didn’t really clarify anything.

“Oh, she’s going to get a better view,” Anzu translated to the rest of them as she watched Eri climb nimbly up the nearly flat surface.

After a few moments Eri paraglided back down much less adeptly than she’d climbed up, narrowly avoiding a crash landing into a bush. “Coast is clear,” she said, dusting off her jeans. “If we jump off by the eastern parapets we’ll be good.”

The two-hour hike down to the eastern edge of the plateau was much quieter than the walk to the Temple of Time had been. The last of the foraged apples were gone, the atmosphere between Jounouchi and Kaiba was still so thick you could cut it with a knife, and everyone was avoiding the thought of the terrifying jump ahead of them. As such, no one particularly felt like talking.

Yuugi couldn’t get his mind off the Guardians. Now that he knew (sort of) what they were, his eyes started picking out more and more; they were unmistakably swarming up the hill to the Temple, a whole army of them. They seemed so powerful. Every building the army had passed, it had razed to the ground.

And yet, there hadn’t been a single Guardian in the Temple of Time proper. Had the goddess Hylia protected Her home up until the last?

What about the people who had lived here? They were currently walking through another cluster of ruins Eri had called the Eastern Abbey. The refectories and storehouses and other outbuildings of the Abbey suggested an entire community, of monks, nuns, whatever sorts of people made up Hylia’s holy order. Had they all managed to flee into the Temple? Or were their bones laid to rest with fallen Guardians as their tombstones?

The closer they got to the edge the more the dread mounted. The Great Plateau was an unsettling place to be, but Hyrule below was a very long way down.

Yuugi was half-considering asking Eri if there was any plausible way to climb down instead when the decision was made for them. They were just passing by a small green hillock when a sudden high-pitched whirring made Eri stop dead.

“Oh, shit,” Eri said.

The hillock was starting to vibrate, blue light flowing through the crevices of its carved patterns. The same blue light from before.

“Go, go, go!” Eri yelled, shoving Honda towards the cliffside. “Jump!”

Honda screamed and sprinted towards the edge, opening his paraglider at the last second. Jounouchi let out a terrified yell as he watched his friend hurtle off the edge.

“Come on, Jou,” Anzu cried, running for the edge and grabbing Jounouchi’s arm.

“No no no no no-”

Anzu leapt gracefully and Jounouchi followed, barely managing to unfold his paraglider in time. Yuugi and Kaiba sprinted towards the cliff. Kaiba executed a flawless takeoff, Yuugi right on his heels, as a very loud beeping noise began behind them. Eri came last, and shortly after a massive scorching laser blast fired into the space where they had all been an instant before.

The glide down was long, and fast, and brutally terrifying. Jounouchi and Honda managed to holler at the top of their lungs the entire time. Yuugi couldn’t even open his mouth for fear he’d throw up.

“Aim for the water,” Kaiba boomed. There was a large pond approaching rapidly, which Kaiba and Anzu swerved effortlessly towards. Jounouchi jerked his paraglider abruptly, crashing into Honda, and both dropped into the water in a shrieking tangle of limbs.

Moments later they all broke the water’s surface in various states of disarray, gasping for breath and shaking from the sheer adrenaline.

“Oh my god,” Anzu choked. “What was that thing?”

“Are there more of them?” Yuugi said frantically, casting his eyes around. “Hey, are you two drowning?”

“No thanks to this asshole,” Honda coughed, pushing Jounouchi off him. “Learn to swim, idiot! Get off!”

Kaiba was already out of the water, wringing out his expensive suit jacket with a look of disgust on his face.

“That was a live Guardian,” Eri said, trying to smooth her soaked hair out of her face.

They all took a moment to catch their breath, squeeze as much water as possible out of their clothes, and check themselves (and their paragliders) for damage.

“Everyone okay?” Yuugi panted.

Once it had been established that everyone was more or less in one piece, bruises and leftover terror aside, they set off at a wet trudge.

They were on a large, flat plain, with blue skies stretching above and a warm breeze ruffling through the tall grasses and flowers. Eri lead them to a road flanked on either side by yet more ruins. These seemed military in nature, rather than religious; banners that had obviously once been boldly coloured flapped in the breeze, rusted swords could be seen scattered here and there, and the architecture was sturdy and functional.

Walking through these ruins was, improbably, even more discomforting than the ones on the Great Plateau. For one thing, they were out in the open now, lacking the safety of high vantage points. For another, there were even more dead Guardians down here, and Eri seemed significantly more jittery around these.

“We’re gonna fucking die out here,” Honda stated out of absolutely nowhere, glancing this way and that as if there could be Guardians behind every corner.

“We won’t die if we’re careful,” Eri said, as they found the eastward-leading road and started their trek anew. “We could use a few more weapons though.”

“And people who know how to use them,” Kaiba interjected.

“Oh, like you do?” Anzu snapped, whirling around to face him. She normally had a pretty high tolerance for Kaiba’s shitty attitude, but she was cold, wet, had just narrowly avoided being murdered by a laser spider monster, and had been trapped in another dimension by his stupid tech.

“Actually, he does, Anzu,” Yuugi said hesitantly. “Kaiba-kun has won a few kendo championships.”

Eri considered this new information for a moment, then unhooked the axe from where she’d attached it to her backpack and trotted up to Kaiba. “Okay, all yours,” she said, holding the weapon out to him.

Kaiba raised an eyebrow. “About fucking time.”

Unfazed, Eri gave him a thumbs-up and then resumed her place next to Honda at the head of the group.

As the sun began to dip low in the sky, Yuugi started to feel even more unsettled. “Should we stop for the night?” he said, gazing at the beginnings of what promised to be a brilliant sunset.

“No,” Kaiba responded promptly.

“For once, I agree with him,” Jounouchi said, jerking his thumb at Kaiba. “Where would we even sleep? Are there any towns or anything?”

“No, not for a ways.” Eri cast a concerned glance at the sun. “There’s not many people left around here.”

Anzu frowned. “So we’re just going to walk all night?”

“We can’t walk around at night,” Eri cautioned. “Once the sun sets everyone should stay put.”

“Why?” Yuugi said. “Are there more monsters around when it gets dark?”

“They come out of the ground,” Eri said. “Skeletons. I think they sense the vibration of your footsteps.”

“Oh, fuck me,” Honda groaned.

“I think we can still get another hour or so in before it becomes too dangerous,” Eri suggested.

“Let’s, um,” Yuugi said, working very hard to conceal the nerves in his voice, “let’s just stop now.”

Kaiba turned towards Yuugi and levelled him with a profoundly disgusted glare. “Do you idiots want to get home, or not?”

“We want to get home alive, you prick,” Jounouchi retorted. “If you wanna keep walking by yourself, you can fight all the skeleton monsters you want. The rest of us aren’t doing it.”

“If the rest of you want to try and figure out your own dimensional travel after I’ve already left you behind, I welcome you to try it,” Kaiba bit back. He drew himself up to his full intimidating height as he faced Jounouchi.

“We already did this today, and I’m tired of it,” Honda said firmly, stepping between them and pushing them apart. “We’re done with the obnoxious machismo as of right now.”

Jounouchi clenched his fist, took a deep breath, and unclenched it.

“Sorry, Kaiba,” he gritted out. “Just stressed. Shouldn’t’ve snapped at you.”

Kaiba looked down at Jounouchi, smirked, and then turned and continued walking.

“Fuck,” Jounouchi cursed. “You saw that, right, Honda?”

“I saw,” Honda said, suddenly feeling very tired indeed. “You tried, buddy.”

In the end, after Eri had emphasized the concept of skeleton monsters that come out of the ground a few more times, even Kaiba grudgingly consented to a halt. They set up camp in a dilapidated tumble-down with four walls but no roof. It was getting cold, but they dared not attempt a fire in case anything was attracted to the light and smoke. Eri, Yuugi and Honda set out on a brief and tense foraging expedition; they managed a handful of apples, nuts, and some green mushrooms that tasted horrific but did help quite a bit in the filling of their stomachs.

Everyone propped themselves up against the mouldering stone walls as comfortably as they could. And then, just as they started to drift off, the rain began.

So passed their first night in Hyrule - hungry, wet, cold, bruised, and thoroughly downtrodden, all they could do was wait for the sun to rise again.

By midway through the second morning, all the gorgeous scenery in the world wasn’t enough to lift anyone’s spirits or restore even a fraction of the sense of adventure. The group trudged along in total silence. At first the hot sun beating down was a comfort as it dried their sodden clothes and hair, and then it was a menace.

“Can we just,” Anzu burst out, as the sun smoldered high in the midday sky, “can we just - take a fucking break for two seconds.”

“Yeah,” Yuugi said in exhausted agreement. No one contested it.

They collapsed in the shade of a copse of oak trees. The sun was considerably nicer when filtered in through the tree canopy, casting dappled spots of warmth amidst the refreshing shade. The grass was soft and lush, and the fragrant scent of wildflowers hung heavy in the air around them.

“Just a couple minutes,” Jounouchi mumbled.

Within moments, even Kaiba was passed out.

They all drifted back into wakefulness a few hours later to an odd crackling sound, and then a very inviting smell.

“Oh, you two built a fire!” Anzu said, delighted.

Yuugi was grinning ear to ear, with no small sense of accomplishment. “Yeah,” he said. “Well, Honda-kun did. He’s a real outdoorsman!”

“Nah,” Honda said modestly. He rotated one of the skewers on the fire, checking it with a critical eye. “I just led my nephew’s Scouts troop a few summers in a row. Picked up a few things.”

Yuugi and Honda hadn’t cooked up anything fancy - especially with no cooking tools available - but baked apples and roasted mushroom skewers with carrot and radish were an extremely welcome change from choking everything down raw. Kaiba even managed a terse ‘thanks’ when Honda handed him his share.

“Itadakimasu!” everyone cried, before digging in.

They set off again, rested and renewed. It was a beautiful day, the breeze had picked up to clear some of the heat off their backs, there were no enemies in sight - small wonder Kaiba soon had enough energy to start losing his temper again.

“Hey, look at that bridge,” Yuugi said, pointing. “The braziers are lit. Do you think that means someone’s around?”

“That’s not necessarily a good thing,” Kaiba muttered. “Who knows what kind of maniacs could be lurking around here.”

“I feel like I remember there being an NPC in this area,” Eri said, looking this way and that. She cupped her hands around her mouth. “Hey, anyone-”

Kaiba roughly clamped his hand over her mouth, silencing her. “Shut the hell up, would you? You don’t know if - Ow!” he yelled suddenly, his distinctive voice booming out into the air. “What the fuck!”

Eri wiggled free and hopped back a few steps, holding up her hands. “Dude,” she said. “Don’t surprise me like that.”

“What the fuck are you, a god damned animal?” Kaiba hissed, his face darkening with shock and rage. “Jesus Christ! Who just fucking bites people?”

“Sorry about your hand, my man.” And with that, Eri kept going up the path. She didn’t seem at all sorry, or particularly rattled by Kaiba’s red-faced fury.

Jounouchi, Honda, and Yuugi exchanged stunned looks.

“You shouldn’t grab girls from behind like that,” Anzu scolded. “You’re lucky she didn’t take a knee to your-”

“Anzu,” Honda cut in. They did not need another Kaiba meltdown right now, and he looked about five milliseconds from completely flying off the handle.

“So, no NPC around here, then,” Yuugi said sheepishly, scratching the back of his head. He was pretty sure anyone within a fairly wide radius would’ve heard Kaiba’s shouting.

After recovering from the mild trauma of being bitten by an acquaintance, Kaiba doubled down on the needling. He had something to say about everything; they were all walking too slow, Anzu needed to empty all the crap out of her purse so they could store more food, they were behind because of the break they’d taken earlier, Eri’s backpack was stupid because it was too small to really hold anything, on and on and on.

“Permission to deck him?” Jounouchi muttered to Anzu as they trudged along.

“I am so tempted to say yes.”

“Just say the word.”

Yuugi sighed. “No more gratuitous violence today. Let me talk to him.”

“How are you two holding up?” Jounouchi said to Anzu and Eri, as they watched Yuugi break into a jog to catch up with Kaiba’s long strides.

“I’m stressed out, because this whole thing would be so much easier if everyone wasn’t fighting all the time,” Anzu admitted, “but I know that with Kaiba-kun around peace is kind of a lost cause.”

“I’m sorry, Anzu,” Jounouchi said, hanging his head. “You’re right. I gotta work on not responding to him. How do you do it, Eri?”

Eri tilted her head in confusion. “Do what?”

“You don’t really react to his bullshit,” Jounouchi pointed out.

Eri shrugged. “Why would I care? Kaiba-kun doesn’t know anything about me, so the things he’s saying don’t really reflect on me at all. There’s no point in taking it personally.”

“The things he’s saying don’t reflect on you either, Jou,” Anzu said. “We all know he’s just lashing out because he’s upset.”

“Okay, wise women,” Jounouchi laughed, putting his hands up. “I know when I’m outmatched.”

Meanwhile, Yuugi was trying to get through to Kaiba with limited success.

“Kaiba-kun,” he said carefully. “I, um...I get the sense there’s something on your mind.”

“What on earth could possibly be on my mind,” Kaiba deadpanned.

“It might help to talk about it,” Yuugi suggested. “Getting it out there always makes me feel better.”

“Well, let’s see,” Kaiba said snidely, holding up his fingers and counting off on them. “I’ve been thrown into an alternate dimension against my will. Because you idiots couldn’t stay away from anything dangerous if you tried, now I have five burdens along for the ride. I’ve been away from my brother for almost two days now. And worst of all, it’s you of all people I’m trapped with, and your stupid friendship cheer squad has now expanded to include an obnoxious little goblin cannibal-”

“I understand you’re upset, Kaiba-kun,” Yuugi cut in evenly, “but none of that’s going to change at this point. So how are we going to make this journey easier for all of us?”

“Let me guess, you want me to make an effort to be part of the team,” Kaiba sneered. “It’s a little late for that now. I’ll help you morons get home, you don’t have to suck up to me.”

“Kaiba-kun,” Yuugi said, peering up at the other man. “I think you know that’s not what’s happening here.”

Kaiba looked straight ahead, refusing to meet Yuugi’s eyes, and didn’t speak another word.

By a stroke of luck, they found an abandoned campsite by the river just as the sun started to sink in the sky. It wasn’t much - really, just a piece of canvas stretched between a rock and a large branch serving as a tentpole - but the standout was a large iron pot suspended over a crude firepit.

Yuugi managed to cook up a perfectly serviceable little dinner of stewed mushrooms, wild radishes, and greens; Eri had even found a couple of small eggs high up in an oak tree, so Yuugi fried those as well and used them to garnish the vegetables. There wasn’t enough to be particularly satisfying, but it was more than they’d managed for a single meal since they’d arrived.

“Are we sure no one’s gonna come back here?” Jounouchi said, glancing around the campsite for any evidence of its owner.

“Doesn’t look like it,” Honda shrugged. “See, look, that canvas is beat to shit and there weren’t even any ashes in the firepit. I think it’s been a long time since anyone’s camped here.”

“It is kind of weird that we haven’t seen any people or monsters or anything yet,” Yuugi mused. “Eri-chan, didn’t you say that wooden tower over there is a monster fort?”

“I mean, yeah,” Eri said, squinting in the direction Yuugi was pointing. “But I guess someone cleared it out. It doesn’t seem that unusual that we haven’t seen anyone - the population of Hyrule is pretty sparse.”

“Why’s that?” Anzu wondered.

“This game takes place a hundred years after an apocalypse,” Eri explained. “Everything was destroyed, and Hyrule wasn’t able to rebuild properly because the country was still infested with monsters and stuff.”

Jounouchi’s brow furrowed. He peered off into the distance, back in the direction of the Great Plateau. “So that’s why that temple was trashed.”

“Did the Guardians destroy everything?” Yuugi both did and didn’t want to know; thinking about the devastation he’d seen on the Plateau, multiplied by the size of an entire country, seemed like a lot to fathom.

“Well, it wasn’t their fault, really.” Eri bit her lip. “Um…maybe I should start from the beginning?”

“Oh, spare me,” Kaiba snapped. “Who cares? There’s no point in going over the past. All that matters is what we can see in front of us now.”

“It’s called context, Kaiba,” Honda retorted. “What’s the harm in having more information? You don’t have to listen if you don’t want to.”

While Eri explained the rough background of the game, Kaiba moved further away from the group, spreading out all of the machinery he’d looted from the dead Guardians and examining each part carefully. Yuugi cast a worried glance after him, but judging by his frosty silence of the last few hours, it didn’t seem like Kaiba would welcome any company at the moment.

“So…Princess Zelda was pretty distraught about not being able to figure out her sacred sealing power,” Eri continued on. “And the clock was ticking. No one knew when Ganon would be back. The Sheikah-”

“The people who made that weird place we woke up in?” Anzu remembered.

“Yup.” Eri nodded. “They made those big towers we’ve been seeing, too. Anyways, they managed to dig up the Guardians in a series of excavations. They didn’t really know how to work the Guardians, but Princess Zelda is a genius. She figured if she couldn’t unlock her powers, then at least she could help fortify Hyrule’s defenses in other ways. And then…they found the Divine Beasts. Technology like Guardians, but on a massive scale.”

As Eri told the story of Princess Zelda, her knight Link, and the four Champions chosen to pilot the ancient war machines uncovered by the Sheikah, a grim picture started to unfold in everyone’s minds. Princess Zelda’s story had seemed doomed from the beginning, and doomed it was. Even though she’d technically prevailed by unlocking her holy powers...the death of her knight, her Champions, and most of the Hylian people granted her a victory that could only be called pyrrhic.

The scale of destruction and sorrow was unfathomable. It explained the strange, lonely feeling of the Hyrulean wilds. Beautiful and empty, not untouched by civilization, but scarred and then abandoned by it.

“It seems like this place is looking more and more similar to the way it is in the games, then,” Honda said, the first to shake off the disconsolate atmosphere the story had brought about. “That gives us a real advantage, if we know what to expect.”

“Yep,” Eri nodded. “And if I’m correct, I think the game’s already been beaten.”

“You do?” Honda asked. “How would you know that?”

“Usually, Hyrule Castle is surrounded by like...a lot of black and purple smoke, which is the form Calamity Ganon takes. And we’ve been able to see the Castle for days now - the skies are totally clear.”

“I see,” Yuugi said. “And this wouldn’t be before the Calamity, or else we would have found Link’s tablet in the Shrine of Resurrection.”

“Right,” Eri nodded. “But it’s also not too far afterwards either. Neither the Temple of Time or Hyrule Castle have been rebuilt yet and we haven’t seen any travelers, so I’m guessing Ganon’s defeat has been pretty recent and Hyrule is still recovering.”

“So that’s...good?” Jounouchi ventured. “What’s his name has already gone and cleared out a bunch of the monsters for us, yeah?”

“Link,” Eri said again. She glanced over at the abandoned monster fort. “And yeah, I guess he has.”

“Should we explain any of this to Kaiba-kun?” Anzu looked over at him, still poring over his gears and springs.

Eri followed her gaze. “Er…I don’t really get the sense that he’ll care.”

There were so many things twisting and churning in Yuugi’s brain that night that he didn’t even try to sleep, at least not until he’d made some headway in sorting it all out. Jounouchi and Anzu’s bodies were warm on either side of him. He let that warmth stave off the undercurrent of dread that had been steadily building under his diaphragm since he’d seen the first Guardian.

It’s just a game, he told himself firmly, even though he knew it wasn’t. It wasn’t like Noa’s virtual world, or Legendary Heroes, or even the Spirit of the Ring’s twisted Memory RPG. They were standing in a real world, not a memory or a facsimile, and inhabiting this world were real people. Many of whom were alive and breathing and living their own lives; many more who had suffered and died on this soil.

And yet, the horror of their situation - of Hyrule itself - wasn’t what Yuugi’s brain was fixated on. All he could really think about right now was Kaiba.

After Kaiba had finished fiddling with his machinery, he’d chosen to sleep sitting up under a nearby tree while the rest of them huddled together in the threadbare tent. It seemed like a metaphor, an encapsulation of how Kaiba was; he’d deny himself warmth and support seemingly just on principle, even though there was no visible downside to accepting it, even though that self-denial would just make achieving his goals more difficult for himself and everyone around him.

Yuugi had really thought that they’d started getting through to him in the last few years. Kaiba had offered him a job at KaibaCorp, after all, and the two of them saw each other fairly frequently as a result. Kaiba had - not mellowed out, exactly, but had downgraded his interactions with all of them from outright hostility to a dry blend of sarcasm and condescension that didn’t really seem to carry much malice behind it.

Then, for no reason that anyone could understand, things had changed.

It wasn’t something any of them could particularly pinpoint. Kaiba gradually stopped showing up entirely when they invited him out for beers, instead of deigning to attend at least once in a while. He responded to texts and e-mails only out of necessity instead of firing back with the rude, quippy responses they’d all become used to. His insults had shifted from pointed to flat-out mean.

And finally…that day. The day where Kaiba had cornered Yuugi seemingly out of nowhere, so suddenly and incomprehensibly enraged that all he could do was scream. Kaiba had let loose the most vile words he could think of in a bellowing torrent as Yuugi stood there in the middle of the hallway at KaibaCorp, shocked speechless. Vessel, Kaiba had snarled. You’re nothing more than a vessel-

A week later, Kaiba left.

Atem, Yuugi said in his mind. I know you’re not here, but I really want to talk to you, so I’m just going to pretend. Okay?

He tried his best to conjure up a vision of Atem, perhaps sitting on the throne in his soul room in that ridiculously casual way he had. His imaginary Atem was looking at him expectantly, with just a hint of a half-smile.

Yuugi puffed out a little sigh. He hadn’t done this in years - pretending to talk to Atem - but things were just so confusing that he couldn’t help but fall back on an old comfort habit.

I know that as far as cross-dimensional adventures go, we’ve gotten pretty lucky, he said to his imaginary partner. No one’s gotten abducted or killed or had their brains irrevocably altered by the Sennen Items. But it’s still kind of a disaster, you know? Jou and Kaiba-kun got into a fistfight. We nearly got killed by a laser spider monster, and then we nearly got killed again jumping off a cliff to escape it. We’re all hungry and upset and it gets really cold here at night. There are apparently skeleton monsters. It’s...none of this is ideal. It’s chaos.

Yuugi paused. I mean, not like anything about our circumstances are ideal, but...it would be a lot easier if we could all just…work together a little better.

He tried to imagine what Atem would say in response to that. Probably something wise bordering on cryptic. Possibly a questionable metaphor.

Long ago, just after the Battle City finals at Alcatraz, Yuugi had asked Atem a question. He couldn’t remember exactly what the question had been. He just remembered being frustrated and confused; why did Kaiba need to blow up an entire island to make himself feel better? Hadn’t he put them all through enough already? Couldn’t he just deal with his problems like a normal person? It was less a question about Kaiba and more a question about himself - why does Kaiba get to express his rage whenever he wants, with tournaments and battles and explosives, when I have to do my best to keep it inside? Why is all of that still not enough for him?

Atem had given him such a long, level look. The kind of look you gave people when you were acutely aware of the weight your words carried.

Sometimes you think you’ve reached the end of the road, Atem had said, and then, suddenly, another stretches out in front of you. It would be very tiring, wouldn’t it? To know that you’ve been walking for so long, but still have such a long way to go.

Yuugi hadn’t been sure he’d understood what Atem meant - he still wasn’t sure - but something about those words kept him awake long into the night.

Chapter Text

Chapter Two: Bombs Away

Anzu took in a deep, bracing breath of fresh Hyrulean air. For a place that had supposedly been through a devastating apocalypse, it certainly did boast some stunning scenery. The morning’s walk had taken them through a lush forest. The sorts of trees you’d see in an illustrated book of fairytales, their branches heavy with apples and cute mushrooms growing prettily at their bases; the chirping of birds and chittering of squirrels; the refreshing scent and sound of a wide, fast river flowing alongside them. Anzu had even seen a calm, beautiful buck, silently watching them from a safe distance as they passed by.

Her eyes flicked between each of her friends, analysing. Yuugi was very obviously not at ease here. Nor was Honda. Both of them kept sneaking glances around and jumping at every little noise. Kaiba didn’t seem to hate Hyrule particularly more than he hated being anywhere else. Jounouchi was taking things in stride - he was good at being on adventures, at making everyone else feel like they were on an adventure. He was handily keeping Honda and Yuugi’s spirits up with alternating saucy jokes and observations about their surroundings that were so obvious they rounded the bend and became funny.

This was all par for the course. Eri, on the other hand, was a bit of a wild card. She had not spent any part of her formative years being thrown into strange alternate worlds or fighting monsters ranging from ‘very convincing hologram’ to ‘world-ending evil.’ In fact she had spent most of her formative years in the sleepier parts of the Canadian Maritimes, which was about as far away on the cosmic horror scale as one could get.

As such, it was hard for Anzu to evaluate Eri the way she could with the others. Eri had spent much of the morning alternating between looking around with eyes as wide as dinnerplates, or staring at her feet so intently that she seemed liable to walk directly into a tree.

“Eri,” Anzu said quietly, as they lagged at the back of the group. “How are you doing?” she asked in English, so that the boys wouldn’t overhear.

“Um...” Eri furrowed her brow. “I’m trying not to think about it all too hard,” she said honestly. “You know. Have they filed a missing persons report for all of us yet? Is my thesis advisor going to kill me for disappearing and not answering her emails for however long we’re gone? How am I even gonna explain this to my advisor? Will Kaiba-kun write us all, like, a note explaining that we accidentally went to another dimension? Is he even gonna be able to get us out of this? And that’s not even getting into the brain-melting implications of dimensional travel.”

“Yeah,” Anzu said sympathetically, taking Eri’s hand in hers as they walked. “In a way, though, we’re really lucky to have Kaiba-kun with us. He’s the only one I could imagine ever getting us out of a situation like this. And who knows...we might not even have been gone for very long back on Earth.”

“What?”

“Well, when Kaiba-kun went to Aaru, he insisted that he was there for at least three days. But from Mokuba-kun’s perspective, he was back in one.”

“Woah,” Eri said, her eyes huge. “How does that work?”

“I have no idea,” Anzu admitted. “Mokuba-kun said something about time not being linear, and that it works differently depending where you are.”

Eri frowned. “Couldn’t it work in reverse, then? Maybe we’ve already been gone on Earth for like, fifty years. Or maybe time’s been going backwards on Earth this whole time and when we get back it’ll be ten years in the past. Or time is going sideways-”

“Oh, god,” Anzu groaned. “I can see why you’re trying not to think too hard.”

“Sorry,” Eri said sheepishly. “I’m trying really hard not to freak myself out, but...”

“I know,” Anzu sighed. “You have a very active imagination.”

“I wonder if Kaiba-kun would explain some of this stuff if I asked him,” Eri mused.

Anzu stared at her.

“What?” Eri said. “He’s the expert. Who else would I ask?”

“Eri. You bit him.”

“He grabbed me like a serial killer in an alleyway. It’s fine. Water under the bridge.”

In the end, there was no chance to find out if Kaiba did in fact feel like the previous day’s incident was water under the bridge, as Kaiba came storming back from his position ahead of the group with an entirely different issue on his mind.

“Stop,” he said, putting his hands up. “We’ve got a problem.”

“What’s going on?” Yuugi asked.

“There’s something in the pass.”

They were approaching what Eri had informed the group were called the Dueling Peaks; a huge mountain that looked like it had been cloven in two with an axe, with a narrow pass winding in between along the sides of the river.

“What do you mean, something?”

“I don’t know,” Kaiba said tersely. “Creatures. Morin, do you think you’re capable of going to get a better look without alerting everything in the vicinity to our presence like you did yesterday?”

Eri thought about bringing up the fact that Kaiba had in fact been the one to let out a very loud yell the previous day, but decided against it. “Yep,” she said, saluting and jogging towards the rough mountain face.

“I know Eri climbs literally everything all the time, but it still freaks me out,” Jounouchi said, covering his eyes with his hands as Eri navigated her way onto a precarious ledge and then started inching away into the shadows cast by the cliffs.

“I’ve never seen her fall,” Anzu said, patting his shoulder. “Well. Except that time we were really drunk in NYC and she went up a fire escape-”

“Anzu,” Jounouchi groaned. “Not. Helping.”

Eri returned in one piece, but bearing bad news. “It’s bokoblins. Like, a lot of them,” she said, wiping her dusty hands on her jeans. “They’re not super tough, but there’s a lot of them and we only have the one axe.”

“What the fuck is a bokoblin?” Honda demanded, massaging his temples.

“Little asshole goblins,” Eri explained, which wasn’t exactly helpful. “They’re really dumb and super aggressive.”

“Like you?” Kaiba interjected snidely.

“So what do we do?” Yuugi said. “Can we hide in the river and swim by them?”

“Not unless any of you are particularly strong swimmers.” Kaiba cast a critical eye at the water, which was deep and had a strong, fast current, and then at Jounouchi.

“Yeah, he’ll drown for sure,” Honda agreed. “What’s plan B?”

Yuugi cast an eye towards the sun, which was dipping low behind the peaks, then back at the pass. The ledge that Eri had climbed onto widened as it wrapped around the mountain, providing a handy platform that would take them right past any monster camps. “What if we just...sneak past them? It’s going to be dark soon.”

“Bokos do sleep at night,” Eri pondered, her lips pursing as she thought. “And they’re heavy sleepers.”

Jounouchi shook his head. “Dude. Skeleton monsters.”

“Maybe if we’re quiet enough we won’t wake the skeletons,” Yuugi countered. “Eri-chan, you said the vibration of our footsteps could wake them up. If we move really slowly...”

“That does track,” Eri admitted. “You can get stealth sets in the game that don’t set off the skeletons, so it is possible to avoid them if you’re very sneaky.  So…If we can’t swim, and we can’t go on the other side of the pass…I guess it’s our best shot, isn’t it?”

Jounouchi followed Yuugi’s gaze to the ledge, then shrugged. “Seems like it,” he said. “Besides, me and Kaiba could probably take a skeleton monster. I found this sweet club on the ground earlier.”

“That’s not a club,” Anzu said. “It’s a torch.”

“Anzu,” Honda said sagely, “anything becomes a club when you hit stuff with it.”

Jounouchi grinned and whacked his palm with the torch to demonstrate, then set off towards the pass.

“Hold it,” Kaiba said, grabbing the back of his shirt and dragging him to a halt. “I’m going first.”

Jounouchi looked like he was going to have something to say to that, so Anzu butted in before they could start sniping at each other again. “Thank you for protecting us, Kaiba-kun,” she said, as politely as she could manage.

Kaiba looked at her like she had started speaking in tongues, and then started off at a brisk walk, forcing everyone to hustle to catch up to him.

When they had made their way far enough in that they were wreathed in the shade of the pass, Eri motioned for everyone to move in close towards the mountainside. Their pace collectively slowed to a crawl as the sunset cycled through brilliant pinks and oranges and violets and then faded into dusky blue. The riven peaks of the mountain loomed over them, boxing them in on either side, and the nascent moonlight struggled to filter in between the imposing stone cliffs.

No skeletons appeared as they took their first halting steps into the darkness, but it wouldn’t do to get overconfident. They carried on one foot after the other. Constantly stopping, waiting, evaluating the air and the ground under their feet for any hint of the abnormal.

After a long, painstaking period of shuffling through the dark, a flickering glow became visible up ahead.

It was definitely a campfire, with still forms crowded around it, all lying apparently asleep in the dirt. The forms were hard to make out in the firelight, but the shape of them was just a little bit...off. They were short and squat with limbs that bent out at alien angles, at odds with the large bulbous heads. They seemed to be hoarding supplies; the camp was dotted with barrels, including a very ominous-looking red one with a crude skull painted on it.

Eri pointed, drawing the group’s eyes. There was a steep slope beside them that led up to the ledge she’d found earlier - still a finicky climb, but not as precarious as scaling a rock face. Eri made her way up first to test the slope, making sure it wouldn’t crumble, then helped the rest of them onto the ledge as quietly as possible.

Things were going well. Implausibly well. The raucous snores of the bokoblins and the sounds of the river all but covered their footsteps, and it looked like they were going to make it. One last tricky bit was coming up: a stretch of the ledge was laid bare by the bokoblins’ campfire, with no convenient overhangs to cast a shadow. Kaiba went first, stepping silently out into the light. When the horrible little creatures didn’t stir, he motioned for the rest of them to follow.

This meant that in a horrific display of bad timing, they were all completely exposed when a very large heron swooped in low over the bokoblin camp, letting out a mighty squawk that echoed off the walls of the pass with the comparative volume of a car alarm going off in a library.

The bokoblins squealed and shrieked their way into wakefulness, waving their crude clubs around as they all scrambled to their feet. They hadn’t noticed the group of humans yet, but it would be a matter of seconds.

Jounouchi reacted almost without thinking about it. He reached into his pocket, yanked out his lighter and clicked it on in one smooth motion, lit the torch, and hurled it towards the red barrel with the painted-on skull.

The resulting explosion was deafening, and it was all the group could do to keep their footing on the ledge; Kaiba threw his arm out to flatten Yuugi and Anzu against the cliffside, and Jounouchi hurled himself backwards into Honda and Eri to pin them against the rocks. They had barely recovered from the momentary disorientation of being in proximity to an explosion when Kaiba grabbed Yuugi and Anzu’s wrists.

“Run!” he commanded, and they all broke out into a sprint.

The bokoblins’ campsite was engulfed in flame. Some of them were dead, but some of them had figured out where the incendiary projectile had come from and were doing their best to scramble up to the ledge. As the group ran past, dodging pockets of fire, the bokoblins gave up climbing and started running parallel to the ledge with howling war cries and spiked clubs held aloft. The ledge, unfortunately, wouldn’t hold forever. As they got further into the passage, it crumbled and sloped back down to meet the path. The slope deposited them only feet ahead of their pursuers.

Yuugi, the slowest of the group with his short legs and disinclination towards regular exercise, came inches away from having his skull bashed in. At that point Kaiba made a split second decision: he hauled Yuugi up and tossed him over his shoulder.

It barely gave them an edge. They’d been walking for days on very little food and poor rest, and the bokoblins were making quick work of the uneven terrain despite their stumpy legs. Even with some dead from the explosion there were too many to fight.

“Yah! Yah!”

Suddenly two men on horseback thundered out of the darkness, whooping and waving their swords aloft. Kaiba knocked Jounouchi and Anzu aside just in time, sending all three of them plus his spiky-haired cargo tumbling into a tangled heap of limbs as the horsemen galloped past. Eri and Honda were going too fast to avoid their friends and crashed into the pile, ending up sprawled on the ground with the rest.

As they lay panting and trying to catch their breath, the horsemen made short work of the bokoblins, killing three before the rest took off shrieking and jabbering into the night.

“You kids all right?” one of the horsemen asked, pulling up next to them. He was middle-aged, mustachioed, and had the weather-beaten skin of an outdoorsman.

“Yes, thank you,” Anzu groaned, pulling herself into a sitting position.

The other horseman pulled up on the other side of the group, in a clear flanking formation. “Right,” he said gruffly. “What the hell are you all doing out at night in those stupid outfits?”

“We wish we knew,” Eri said miserably, still flat on her back.

“They don’t look dangerous, Joute,” the mustachioed man said. “They look kinda pitiful, actually.”

“That they do, Rensa,” Joute agreed, casting an appraising eye. “Okay, kiddos,” Joute said, hopping off his horse. “Double up, and we’ll take you to the Dueling Peaks Stable, see if Tasseren can’t sort you out.”

“Why should we go with you?” Kaiba demanded, folding his arms.

“Er...you don’t have to,” Rensa said, nonplussed. “Ain’t never heard someone turn down a hot meal at a Stable, but it’s up to you kids if you want to keep wandering around in yer strange pajamas.”

“A hot meal?” Honda said hopefully. “Really?”

“Offer expires in ten seconds,” Joute said. Before he had finished speaking, everyone but Kaiba was nodding enthusiastically.

The men graciously offered them some rest by taking turns on the horses. They helped Yuugi and Anzu onto one, Honda and Jounouchi onto the other, and walked alongside with Eri and Kaiba.

“Shouldn’t be too long,” Rensa said. “What’d you do to those bokos? One of ‘em was on fire.”

“Tried to blow ‘em up,” Jounouchi said cheerfully. “It sort of worked.”

“Yeah, we heard that,” Joute grunted. “Pretty sure everyone from here to Fort Hateno heard it. Lucky you that it was me and Rensa that came running and not more of those goddess-damned beasts.”

The Dueling Peaks Stable was already visible in the distance. The building itself was constructed like a giant horse’s head - which should have been menacing, towering in the darkness, but it was made up of such a cheerful, haphazard patchwork of materials that it was impossible to find it anything but charming. The horse’s neck was draped in colourful blankets and banners, with a rainbow of pennants serving as its reins, and a miniature windmill churned slowly at its base. The tent that served as the horse’s base was lit in a cozy firelight. Not faltering and wild like the bokoblin’s campfire, but the sort of fire that was tamed into a steady blaze for even cooking and warming of cold hands.

As they drew closer, the sound of voices brought even more warmth than a cookfire could to their cold and aching bodies. Amicable chatter, light arguments, laughter, guitar strings inexpertly plucked in a rough tune: the mark of people, a reminder that they weren’t completely alone in this wilderness.

Joute and Rensa fended off the small crowd that began to form as they approached the main tent. “Give ‘em space, come on,” Rensa chided a little boy, who skipped backwards a few steps but kept his wide-eyed gaze riveted to the newcomers.

The stablemaster Tasseren gave them a thoroughly suspicious look as the group trooped in. “So you lot are the source of the ruckus?” he grunted, looking them all up and down. There were a few of women clustered around a table at the back, passing around a book, which they were very obviously using as a cover to look like they weren’t openly staring.

“Um, yes. We’re sorry,” Yuugi said, bowing apologetically on reflex.

Tasseren raised an eyebrow. “You kids wearing those crazy costumes for a reason?”

They were indeed dressed quite differently than any of the Stable’s inhabitants. Their clothes, chosen for a day at KaibaLand - shorts, t-shirts, pretty summer blouses, jeans, even Kaiba’s slate-grey suit - seemed comically flimsy and garishly bright compared to the sturdy wool tunics, serviceable trousers, and worn leather boots adorning the people around them.

“We’re lost,” Anzu said honestly, before she could think about it too much. Tasseren’s voice was gruff, but his weatherbeaten face was creased with kindly lines that suggested an easy smile. “We’re from somewhere far away,” she continued, sticking more or less to the truth, “we don’t know how we got here, and we’re trying to find our way home.”

Tasseren must have sensed the genuine distress in her tone. His face softened. “I see. You’re not Hylian, then?”

“No,” Anzu replied.

“Well, let me tell you,” the Stablemaster said, “I don’t know what things are like back home for you, but I guarantee Hyrule is a damn sight harder than what you’re used to. Can’t believe you only have one weapon between the six of you, and those ridiculous getups aren’t going to do much against the elements.” Tasseren gave them another critical once-over, his moustache twitching. “My money ain’t on your survival, that’s for sure.”

“We don’t have any money, or spare clothes, or...anything, really,” Anzu said. “Is there any way you can help us?”

Tasseren was clearly warming up to her by the minute, but at that his face fell. “Wish I could, girl. We’ve barely enough here to keep ourselves afloat. Best I can do is a hot meal and a couple beds for the night.”

“I’ll take them, Tasseren,” a flat, gravelly voice said from behind them.

The man who had spoken was dressed in clothing that startled them all in how strongly it evoked the home they’d been torn from: an amigasa hat, a cream-coloured haori jacket trimmed in red and tied with a black obi, simple woolen trousers and tan tabi boots. But something about the shape of the haori was distinctly not Japanese, as was the choice of a tight sleeveless shirt underneath in place of a kosode. An obidome in the shape of a large eye completed the odd look.

Like Tasseren, this man was middle-aged with a stern face. A shock of white whiskers framed his jaw, with the rest of his hair twisted into a topknot. Unlike Tasseren, there was something else to the newcomer’s countenance. Something sharp and fierce in his dark eyes, and an uncanny grace to his movements.

“Dorian,” Tasseren greeted, raising his eyebrow. “What brings you here in the dead of night?”

“Lady Impa has taken a special interest in these travelers,” Dorian said, looking them up and down as if he couldn’t quite understand it himself. “So I’ve been sent to bring them back up to the village.”

“We’re actually on our way to Hateno,” Eri said politely, “so we’ll have to pass on that.”

Dorian fixed them all with a steady look that betrayed nothing. “If you come with me and don’t give me any trouble, I’m sure we can arrange for an escort for the rest of your journey after Lady Impa’s done with you.”

“I’m getting the feeling this isn’t optional,” Honda said, looking suspiciously from Tasseren to Dorian and back again.

“Listen, boy,” Tasseren said with a heavy sigh. “There’s really no way you lot are going to make it to Hateno in one piece. You kids are a disaster. It would be madness to turn down Kakariko Village hospitality and a Sheikah escort following that.”

“We don’t have time for a detour,” Kaiba argued. “We have somewhere to be.”

“And you’re not going to get there alive the way you’ve been going,” Dorian returned calmly. “Get some sleep. We’re leaving at dawn.”

Tasseren sent them all to bed after hearty, filling bowls of a meaty and delicious stew; but the anxiety of whatever Dorian was planning to do with them meant that no one could enjoy the food nor the fact that they were sleeping in actual beds for the first time in days. Anzu desperately wanted to ask Eri if she knew anything about Dorian, but the man sat close to their beds all night. His posture remained perfectly upright, without a hint that he might need to sleep himself.

‘It’s okay,’ Eri mouthed to Anzu a few times, but Anzu didn’t know what that meant; okay as in, Dorian wasn’t dangerous at all? Or he wasn’t dangerous as long as they didn’t say or do the wrong thing? Was he lying about letting them go on to Hateno afterwards? Who was Lady Impa, and what did she mean to do with them?

Dawn came all too quickly, and when Dorian roused them everyone felt like they could have used a few more hours of sleep.

“Are we captives, then?” Yuugi asked Dorian, trying to sound just as level as the older man.

“No,” Dorian replied.

“So we don’t have to go with you? We can leave?”

Dorian gave him another of those strange, piercing looks. “You will die if you do,” he said, and nothing about his tone gave any clarity as to whether he thought they’d probably die in the wilderness, or whether he’d just kill them himself if they refused to cooperate.

The northwards path was more well-travelled than any they’d been on so far. Wagon tracks made deep ruts in the mud, which then evened out into hard, well-packed dirt. Tasseren hadn’t been able to spare any cloaks, to his obvious regret, but he’d sent them off with slices of thick bread for breakfast - and an assurance that the day was supposed to be warm, so they just had to make it through the chilly dawn hours without freezing in their ‘funny little costumes.’

“Dorian’s a good sort,” Tasseren had added in a loud stage whisper, just before they’d trudged out the doors. Dorian had given an unimpressed grunt in response. Rensa and Joute waved hesitant goodbyes, and the rest of the Stablefolk clustered around the fence to watch them go, not even bothering to disguise their open curiosity this time.

They missed Tasseren already. At least he had fed them, and didn’t seem interested in taking them hostage.

“We could make a break for it,” Jounouchi whispered to the rest of them after about an hour of walking. “There’s only one of this guy, and six of us.”

Eri shook her head. “Look at the cliffs,” she mouthed.

As subtly as possible, they all glanced at the cliffs on either side of the road. More figures were just barely visible over the top of the precipice - figures clad in the same garb as Dorian.

“Who the hell are these guys?” Honda whispered to Eri.

Eri glanced at Dorian. He was walking a respectful distance ahead and didn’t seem to be listening in to their conversation. “They’re Sheikah,” Eri said quietly.

“What?” Anzu said. “The same people who made the Shrine and all the Guardians?”

“Sort of,” Eri said. “All of that Sheikah tech was made thousands and thousands of years ago. Modern Sheikah are more known for being, like, extremely capable stealth fighters.”

“That’s some of the worst stealth I’ve ever seen,” Kaiba said, glaring at the cliffs.

“They want us to see them,” Eri replied. “If they didn’t, we wouldn’t. There might even be more of them.”

“Okay,” Jounouchi breathed. “So we’re bein’ held hostage by ninjas. That’s, uh. That’s great.”

“We can trust Impa,” Eri said. “I think.”

“No,” Kaiba corrected under his breath. “The main character of your stupid RPG can trust this Impa woman. That doesn’t extend to us. How many times do I have to-”

“I assure you, you have nothing to fear from Lady Impa,” Dorian called back, clearly having heard every word of their whispered conversation, “as long as your own motives are pure.”

That shut everyone up. Apparently Sheikah had superhuman hearing, on top of everything else.

The day-long hike up to Kakariko Village passed mostly in silence. The way there was exceptionally pretty, bordered by towering cliffs with small babbling waterfalls cascading down their sides and countless herbs and wildflowers growing along the road; but the presence of ever-increasing numbers of Sheikah visible along the clifftops made it difficult to focus on much else.

Just as the sun started to hang low in the sky, the path wound around a bend and under a wooden torii-style gate. The flags hanging from it seemed oddly familiar, like something you’d see in an alleyway in Kyoto, and as they walked further the path turned into a dirt road that eventually took them over a little bridge. Then, finally, the tunnel opened up.

Kakariko Village was lovely beyond words - utterly picturesque, nestled into the mountain itself with natural high walls protecting each of its sides. Buildings with tall thatched roofs were clustered together along the stream that wound through the village, constructed in a curiously Japanese style that gave each of them a pang for home - even Eri, who wasn’t actually from Japan. The village bustled with activity. Children and chickens ran around underfoot, Sheikah men and women were out tending to their gardens and fields, and there was even one gentleman who had an easel set up and was either painting or attacking his canvas with a loaded paintbrush, depending on how you looked at it.

They were led onto a promontory housing the village’s largest building: the Town Hall, which was the residence of Lady Impa. The Hall was large enough to seat every person in the village, with rows of zabuton cushions set out for that very purpose, and at the head of the hall sat Impa herself.

The revered Lady Impa turned out to be a tiny old woman, with most of her height made up by an excessively tall kasa hat whose brim shaded her face. She was perched on a stack of three vermillion cushions on a raised dais and only bothered lifting her head to acknowledge them when they approached the dais.

“Rude children, aren’t you,” she rasped, eyeing them all with a steely look. “It’s customary to bow when greeting a village elder.”

“We’re hostages,” Kaiba snapped, “why on earth would we bow to you?” (Even as he spoke, Yuugi, Honda, Eri and Anzu were bowing reflexively.)

“You’re not hostages. Don’t be dramatic, child. You’re guests.”

“Guests who were dragged here by a whole pack of ninjas,” Jounouchi pointed out.

Impa sighed in open exasperation. “I don’t have any idea what a ninja is, but I assure you, you will be treated well during your stay here. Now sit,” she gestured to the zabuton cushions on the floor, “and tell me how you all caused such an intense energy spike at the Shrine of Resurrection that my sister’s laboratory instruments picked it up all the way in Hateno.”

The group obeyed, instinctively sitting on the cushions in the traditional seiza style.

“Is that why you’re kidnapping us?” Honda wanted to know, once he was settled.

“That’s why I had you escorted here,” Impa corrected, whipping a kendama toy out of the folds of her robes and beaning Honda in the middle of the forehead with stunning accuracy. “Now, someone answer me. Chop chop. I don’t have all day.”

They all looked at each other, Honda rubbing his forehead in shock and dismay. “Well,” Anzu said, “we’re from...somewhere else, and...”

Impa struck with the kendama again, this time bonking Anzu on top of the head. “Don’t give me the silly vague story you gave Tasseren. And don’t bother lying to me, either. Sheikah can always spot a lie.”

“Ow,” Anzu complained.

“Is that so,” Kaiba sneered. “Sounds like something you just made up on the spot to intimidate us.”

“Um, actually, that’s pretty plausible,” Eri volunteered. “They have this...lens of truth, it’s a whole thing...”

“Out with it,” Impa interrupted, brandishing the kendama threateningly.

Yuugi let out the breath he’d been holding. “Okay. Er…” Even if Impa had invented the lie-detecting thing, there didn’t seem to be any point in making something up, especially as none of them had discussed it in advance and any cover story would fall apart within minutes. “We got pulled in here from another dimension.”

“Well, why didn’t you say so,” Impa cackled. “That’s the most interesting thing I’ve heard all week!”

Anzu blinked. “You...you believe us? Just like that?”

“Keep up,” Impa said. “I know you weren’t lying, and there doesn’t seem to be any other good reason for a merry group of fools to blunder their way through the Hyrulean wilderness in the silliest clothing I’ve ever seen. Frankly, given what my warriors saw while following you, I’m shocked you made it as far as Dueling Peaks alive.”

“Were your guys tailing us the whole time?” Jounouchi asked incredulously. “You’re telling me someone could’ve helped us?”

This time it was Jounouchi’s turn to get brained by the kendama. “Augh!”

“Sheikah can’t move at the speed of light, you halfwit,” she said, shaking her head. “My warriors have only been tailing you since just after Proxim Bridge. And why in heaven’s name would any spy worth their salt reveal themselves before spending some time gathering information, I ask you? You could’ve all been powerful sorcerers or the like.”

“You don’t know that we aren’t,” Kaiba smirked.

“Oh, I think I have a pretty good idea, after watching you all nearly blow yourselves up trying to deal with a few pathetic bokoblins,” Impa retorted, utterly nonchalant. Suddenly she went at Kaiba with the kendama, at the speed of a cobra’s strike, but he dodged just in time. “Good reflexes on at least one of you, though. Well done.”

“So,” Yuugi said slowly, keeping an eye on the kendama, “now that you know how we got here...will you let us go to Hateno so that we can try and find our way back?”

“I know you wish it could be that easy,” Impa said in a disarmingly kind tone. Just as Yuugi let his guard down, she whacked him with the kendama. “Fool! You think I’m going to just let you waltz off with one pathetic sentence of explanation? What do you take me for?”

“We don’t know anything else,” Anzu protested. This time she was able to dodge the kendama as well - it whizzed past her ear, alarmingly close. “We were in our world, and then there was an explosion, and now we’re here. We’re trying to get to the laboratory in Hateno so that our friend can build a machine to take us back.”

“Hm,” Impa said, eyeing them each in turn. “And what makes you think your friend will be able to build such a machine?”

“He’s the one who invented the machine that brought us here in the first place,” Anzu explained. “It malfunctioned-”

“It was sabotaged,” Kaiba corrected tersely.

“Well, whatever,” Anzu said. “It blew up and sent us here somehow. We didn’t mean to come here and we very much want to get back.”

“You say you didn’t mean to come here,” Impa said shrewdly, eyeing Anzu.

Then, without even looking in her direction, she snapped her wrist out and beaned Eri with the kendama. “But that one seems to know an awful lot about this world.”

“Gah!”

“When my warriors were observing you,” Impa continued, “they overheard a most interesting story told by a campfire. Not unusual for travelers. Except this story - this was the story of the Calamity, told in great detail, including things that only those directly involved should have known.”

“Oh,” Eri said faintly, rubbing the tender spot on her forehead.

“The events of your world are a…fairytale, in our world,” Yuugi cut in, quickly and neatly sidestepping having to explain video games to the suspicious crone. “A story that our friend loves and is very familiar with.”

“Interesting.” Impa snorted. “Well, the same isn’t true here. Can’t say I’ve heard any faerie stories about a gaggle of idiot children with spiky hair and stupid clothes who can’t even take on a few bokoblins.” She turned to Eri. “That doesn’t explain how you know about the Lens of Truth, which has been lost for millennia.”

Eri flinched pre-emptively, but Impa made no move to smack her again. “It’s a long fairytale,” she said hesitantly, “with many different chapters, spanning thousands of years and even alternate histories.”

“And you’ve memorized them all, have you,” Impa cackled. “Well, aren’t we lucky - in Hyrule’s time of need, a little historian drops right into our laps with all the answers! Wah hah hah hah!”

“Wait, what?” Honda said. “Hyrule’s time of need? Didn’t the big smoke pig already get defeated?”

“You tell me,” Impa said to Eri. “You must know Hyrule’s future as well as its past, no?”

“Not exactly,” Eri replied. “This Hyrule is actually...the last chapter. There haven’t been any more stories written yet.”

“Besides, that isn’t how interdimensional travel works,” Kaiba piped up, with a healthy dose of sneering condescension. “Just by arriving here we’ve irrevocably altered whatever the future might have been. Time isn’t a stable loop.”

“I’m guessing you’re the one who built the defective machine,” Impa needled. The look she gave him was knowing, but thoroughly unimpressed. “Why don’t you give me your full account of what brought you here, then?”

Kaiba’s face turned murderous at the jab, but he managed get over himself and spit out the story in as much detail as he could - describing the first explosion of the dimensional domain emulator, then the pulsing blue light sending an S.O.S. signal, the runes projected on the walls, and then finally the second explosion. Once he’d given his terse summary he lapsed back into glowering silence. He at least seemed to be marginally aware that it was a bad idea to piss off the head of the armed warrior contingent that for all intents and purposes had them captive.

“You forgot one thing,” Yuugi pointed out. “The voice that called out to us at the end. It was a woman.”

“Oh, right,” Honda said, having forgotten that part himself in light of the hectic events that had followed. “What did she say again? Something like...”

“Help us,” Yuugi quoted. “She was pleading for help. And there was this…brilliant, golden light.”

There was a long silence as Impa fixed each of them with her piercing gaze in turn. It was impossible to tell what she was thinking or what conclusions she was drawing, but they each experienced the distinct feeling that they were being measured up.

“So...what’s happening in Hyrule, then?” Anzu asked awkwardly, breaking the silence.

Impa’s face turned grave, and she folded her hands in her lap. “Our Princess and her Sworn Knight have been missing for three weeks.”

“Where did they go?”

“I have a proposal for all of you,” Impa said, ignoring Eri’s question. “And despite your ridiculous notion that you’re hostages here, I assure you, you are free to decline.”

“Go on,” Yuugi replied warily.

“There is an artefact, passed down through many generations of the Royal Family,” Impa said, “that has the ability to manipulate time itself. In conjunction with Princess Zelda’s sacred sealing powers, I do believe it could in fact be possible not only to send you back to your home, but to send you to the exact time you departed from.”

“What?” Honda said. “So it would be like we never left?”

“For everyone in your world, yes,” Impa said. “For you, not so much. But I’m sure you can see the merits of this solution.”

“And what’s the catch?” Jounouchi asked, narrowing his eyes.

“There is no catch,” Impa said with a long-suffering sigh. “Our Princess is missing, and the artefact was on her person. If you find her, you find the artefact. Get the picture?”

“How do we know-”

“Ask your little historian if I’m telling the truth,” Impa interrupted Kaiba, then turned to Eri. “You’ve read tales of it, haven’t you? Hard to study any Hyrulean history whatsoever without bumping into mentions of it.”

“The Ocarina of Time,” Eri said in wonder. “I had no idea it was still around.”

“Neither did we, until the excavation of the Catacombs below Hyrule Castle began in earnest,” Impa said. “Princess Zelda has overseen several expeditions in the months since the Calamity ended. It seemed like a good time, before going to all the trouble of rebuilding the Castle. The first and second expeditions went well - we found the Ocarina of Time and numerous other heirlooms - and then the third was an unmitigated disaster.”

“What happened?” Honda said, curious despite himself.

“An archaeologist on the team went mad,” Impa replied darkly. “Killed several of her colleagues before having to be subdued. Then the same madness overtook another, and then another - needless to say, the expedition was shut down and everyone evacuated. The afflicted archaeologists all took sick and died within weeks, and now no one will go near the Castle at all.” She heaved another sigh. “Princess Zelda took it upon herself to investigate. I told her to leave well enough alone, but she was concerned about her powers fading, and she felt that any evil down there should be summarily dealt with instead of left to fester until the sacred sealing magic had left her entirely. Only her Sworn Knight, Link, was willing to accompany her.”

“They’re probably dead,” Kaiba said. “Why would we go on a fool’s errand to uncover a couple of corpses?”

“They’re not dead,” Impa retorted, her voice cool and calm. “My sister, Purah, has been keeping tabs on their Sheikah Slate from her laboratory. Since the Slate is coded to the Sword’s Chosen, it would have sent out an alert in the event of Link’s death.”

“So we...go to this castle,” Anzu ventured hesitantly, “and down into the Catacombs...”

“We don’t even know if Princess Zelda made it to the Catacombs,” Impa said. “She decided first to pray at all three Springs for guidance. You’d do best to retrace her steps and gather clues on her whereabouts.”

“This is sounding like a pretty long trip,” Jounouchi scowled. “And like, really fuckin’ dangerous. Not to mention it’s kinda suspicious that you called us a bunch of - whatever you called us-”

“A merry group of fools,” Impa supplied.

“Yeah, that,” Jounouchi said, narrowing his eyes. “But for some reason you think we’re gonna be able to rescue your Princess?”

“Far be it from me to question Hylia’s chosen,” Impa said placidly. “She seems to think you won’t bungle it, and I assume She has Her reasons.”

“Hylia’s - Hylia’s what now?” Eri repeated, stupefied.

“What’s a Hylia?”

“Pay attention, Jou, it’s that gigantic statue that talked to us and gave us paragliders-”

“Hylia isn’t the statue. She’s a goddess.”

“Well, whatever, giant magic lady-”

“Hylia’s reasons are ever a mystery to us all,” Impa said with a sigh, gazing up at the ceiling, “and yet we often find ourselves beholden to them.”

“Now hold on a minute,” Kaiba said, looking like he was about to leave his seat and start shaking Impa. “You’re trying to tell us that this - this fluke, this freak accident - is somehow predestined? Utter preposterous nonsense! The whole concept of destiny is-”

“Oh, no one cares what you think about destiny,” Impa interrupted. “I never said anything about destiny. I said Hylia chose you. That’s not destiny, that’s agency.”

“So you’re saying that we’re here on the whim of a supernatural creature,” Kaiba said, his words heavy with disgust.

Impa shrugged. “If you want to look at it that way, I’m not going to stop you. Anyways, you’re all ridiculous and exhausting and I need a long nap to recover from this conversation. Papaya!”

“Yes, Grandmother?” A pretty teenager quickly descended the stairs. She was tall, clad in the typical Sheikah garb, with long white hair and the village’s insignia of an eye tattooed on her forehead. She glanced nervously at the group sat in front of her grandmother.

“Take our guests over to the Inn and make sure Ollie feeds them. They’ll have to come back here to sleep, of course - I keep telling Ollie any inn worth its salt needs more than two beds - we’ll have to lay out the futons, ugh, maybe arrange for a bath for these ragamuffins-”

“Wait,” Yuugi said. “Please, Lady Impa, we don’t-”

The kendama made one last appearance, whacking Yuugi on top of the head. “Don’t carry on like that, child,” Impa admonished gleefully, as he flinched and pressed his hand on the sore spot. “Just enjoy Kakariko Village hospitality for the night. Talk it over together, and let me know what you’ve decided in the morning.”

“And if we decide not to-”

“I’ll send you off to Hateno with a Sheikah escort, as promised,” Impa said, making a shooing motion with her hand. “And you’re free to try and build from scratch technology that’s never been seen before in Hyrule’s history, however long that takes you, while sharing limited equipment with my sister and her assistant. Now begone.”

Papaya - or Paya, as she introduced herself - led them all to the inn, shyly asking Ollie if he would please give them dinner at her grandmother’s request. He treated them to a veritable feast, with roast chicken and pumpkin soup and salads made from fresh greens gathered around the outskirts of the village, dressed with tangy infused oils. After they had finished eating they were whisked away to the bath house; Impa hadn’t been joking about getting them cleaned up, although Paya seemed absolutely mortified when Jounouchi started disrobing without a hint of shame before she could even hand them towels.

“Jou,” Anzu scolded, stepping in front of him to block Paya’s view. “Thank you, Paya,” she said kindly, taking the offered towels and soap so that Paya could flee.

“What?” Jounouchi whined. “This shirt is nasty. Four days of sweat. I can’t stand it anymore.”

The bath house contained two very large tubs, separated by a thin partition. The boys took one and the girls took the other. The soap Paya had provided was deliciously fragrant - something that smelled like rosemary with a hint of lavender, although it was impossible to tell of those herbs even existed in Hyrule - and the water was steaming hot.

“So...what do we think?” Yuugi asked, nearly as soon as they were all submerged.

“I don’t know if I can think right now,” Honda sighed. “This hot water just feels so damn good-”

“Get it together, geeks,” Kaiba snapped, somehow able to be his usual difficult and abrasive self whilst in the buff and sharing a tub with three other people he’d spent the last few days antagonizing at every turn. “There’s too much on the line here to get distracted by fake hospitality.”

“Jou, scrub my back, would you-”

“You got it, man-”

“I don’t think the hospitality is fake,” Anzu argued through the partition. “Impa gave us a choice, and even went above and beyond offering us a guard detail if we decide not to go on this mission.”

“It’s not a mission,” Kaiba said flatly. “It’s a fool’s errand. Suicide.”

That got Honda’s attention. “That doesn’t even make sense, Kaiba,” he countered. “What the hell’s in it for this old lady if we all go off and die?”

“Who knows,” Kaiba retorted, “but she apparently has a vested interest in sending us to our deaths, and I’m not interested in playing out that particular scenario.”

“What makes you so sure we’ll die?” Yuugi said.

“You’re talking like you’re already considering her insane proposal,” Kaiba growled. “Please, Yuugi, spare me the bleeding-heart rhetoric. We don’t owe her anything, and if we decline they’ll just find someone else to con into it. Don’t tell me you actually bought that whole line about the goddess choosing us?”

“You heard that voice same as I did just before we were sent here, Kaiba-kun,” Yuugi said, meeting his eyes. “Don’t pretend you didn’t.”

“I dunno, Yuugi,” Jounouchi said. “Yeah, we all heard it. And maybe it’s true that Hylia picked us. But I don’t think that means we have to do it, you know? We’ve all got stuff on the line, people we wanna get back to.”

“Kaiba-kun,” Anzu said. “The other night - I saw you fiddling with all that machinery you harvested from the Guardians. What do you think of their technology? Is it as advanced as whatever you used to build the dimensional domain emulator?”

Kaiba was silent for a moment. “No,” he said. “It’s rudimentary, and the fact that the Shrine of Resurrection was so underpowered that it took a hundred years to get that swordsman up and running is pathetic. Who knows what they have at the laboratory, but I can’t imagine it’s more than a bunch of junk. It doesn’t matter. I invented the dimensional domain emulator once, and I can do it again.”

“We don’t have the Quantum Cube,” Yuugi pointed out.

“We didn’t have it when we traveled here, either,” Kaiba snapped. “It was destroyed on the return trip from Aaru. So obviously it’s possible to travel without it.”

“What about all the supercomputers you used for analysis and calculation?”

“Hn. I’m the one that built those computers in the first place. You think I can’t replicate the math on my own?”

“That’s not what Yuugi means,” Eri said. “We all know you could build another machine if you wanted to. No one’s doubting that. The question is, how long will it take, and will it be able to return us to the right place and time?”

“Huh?” Honda said. “What do you mean, Eri-chan?”

“Your dimensional domain emulator isn’t a hundred percent accurate, is it?” Eri continued. “When you went to Aaru and came back, you miscalculated on the return trip, by two entire days. It was a favourable miscalculation in that case - you actually ended up going backwards in time. But do you really think you’d be able to build a fully-functional and completely accurate emulator with limited technology and no Quantum Cube, when you weren’t even able to do it the first time?”

“You’re questioning my abilities?” Kaiba said, with a malicious laugh. “You. An artist who couldn’t hack it and ended up in some stupid fluff science grad program. I’d say it was amusing, but really, it’s just sad.”

Eri was silent for a second, then her retort came out sharp and brittle: “Fuck you.”

“Oh, did I finally hit a nerve?” Kaiba taunted. “I thought you were too-”

“Kaiba-kun,” Yuugi interrupted, with an uncharacteristic sharpness that immediately shut both Kaiba and Eri up. “It’s a valid question. If you’re not afraid of it, answer it.”

Kaiba let out a long, annoyed sigh, bordering on a growl. “You know what? Fine. Let me lay it out for you morons. Yes, it’s going to take some time to build a fully-functional interdimensional travel device with only archaic technology to rely on. Months, at least. Possibly a year. And there’s nearly no way to guarantee accuracy, which you would know,” he spat, glaring at the partition that blocked Eri and Anzu from his sight, “if you understood anything about unitary quantum mechanics. I should have known that you naive idiots would be expecting a perfect solution. It’s not possible. The best outcome is us getting home alive, and reasonably close to our original position in space-time.”

There was a stunned silence as his words sunk in. Months. Possibly a year.

“We can’t -” Jounouchi gulped. “We can’t be gone for a year. They’re gonna - they’re gonna report us missing - my sister’s gonna think-”

“Would you rather be gone for a year, or never come back at all?” Kaiba said flatly. “Those are the options, Jounouchi. Choose wisely.”

“Those aren’t the options,” Eri said. “If we find the Ocarina of Time, Princess Zelda can send us back to exactly the time and place we came from. It’s been done before.”

Kaiba snorted. “Sure, an elf with a magic knick-knack is going to achieve interdimensional travel, and I’m going to take your word for it because you’ve played a game that bears superficial similarities to this dimension.”

“Nothing Eri’s said so far has been wrong,” Anzu pointed out evenly. “Do you think she’s just been lucky, for four entire days straight? Or is it possible that the data is pointing to more than a superficial similarity, to put it in Kaiba-kun terms?”

“So you really think this ocarina thing is gonna do the trick, huh,” Honda mused.

“I do,” Eri said. “Also, Princess Zelda is Hyrule’s foremost scholar on Sheikah technology. Even if it doesn’t work, she could be an invaluable resource for Kaiba-kun, so he doesn’t have to learn everything from scratch. We have a lot to gain from finding her.”

“And a lot to lose,” Jounouchi said. “A lotta danger to contend with.”

“We’re good at danger,” Anzu pointed out. “We’ve survived a lot of stuff.”

“That’s true,” Jounouchi said slowly, his voice regaining its usual indomitable energy. “Yeah. We can’t just give up now and assume we’re gonna die out there. Who knows - maybe this Hylia knows what she’s talking about.”

The water was rapidly cooling, so they all toweled off and redressed in the clean Sheikah garb provided to them. These looked more like yukata, presumably easier to sleep in, with soft black leggings to provide extra warmth. Paya had been diligently waiting some distance down the road from the bath house, and when they emerged she led them all back to the Town Hall - now furnished for sleeping, with six futons pulled out and the lights dimmed.

Impa was nowhere to be seen, having presumably already retired to the living quarters. Paya shyly wished them good night and went upstairs, leaving them to continue their conversation from earlier in whispers.

As the others thoroughly discussed the pros and cons of each option, Kaiba silently got up and left the hall. Yuugi watched him go, but didn’t stop him. It was easier to have an actual conversation without his constant acerbic interruptions and contradictions.

But, after an hour - when everyone was finally starting to succumb to the combination of food, hot water, and exhaustion, drifting off one by one - Yuugi slipped out of his futon as well.

He only had to wander through the brisk night air for a few moments before finding his target. Kaiba was sitting on the raised veranda around the back of the building, long legs dangling over the edge as he watched koi fish swimming around the base of the waterfall that tumbled through the rocks and fed the pond surrounding Impa’s home.

“Hey,” Yuugi said, sitting down next to him and letting his legs dangle as well. Kaiba said nothing in response, but he didn’t tell Yuugi to go away, which was a good sign. “What are you doing out here?”

“Doing my own thinking, without you dweebs disrupting my train of thought.” His tone wasn’t particularly venomous - he just sounded tired.

Yuugi risked a glance over at him. Kaiba’s posture was as straight-backed and rigid as ever, his face betraying very little. “What’s your train of thought, Kaiba-kun?”

Kaiba didn’t respond for a while. They sat side-by-side in silence, listening to the sounds of the breeze playing through the wooden chimes strung from the rafters and the waterfall tumbling into the pond. In the distance they could hear two old men having a friendly argument about the best way to grow pumpkins.

“You all seem to have made up your mind,” Kaiba said, “and I can’t say I’m surprised. So tomorrow will be goodbye. I’ll be taking up Impa’s offer for an escort to Hateno.”

“What?” Yuugi stared at him.

Kaiba finally met his gaze. “I’m not going to risk my life haring off on some adventure. I made Mokuba a very serious promise. No matter where I go, I’ll always come back to him. If it takes months or years, so be it - but I have to come back.”

Yuugi remembered how devastated Mokuba had been in the weeks after Kaiba had returned from Aaru. Mokuba had passed the worst day of his life wondering if he would ever see his brother again. Something about Kaiba leaving for the literal afterlife with no promise to return had stung of something grim and final.

The puzzle of Kaiba’s true intentions lingered on with the rest of them, as well, but no one dared speak it aloud.

“Kaiba-kun,” Yuugi said slowly. “I don’t...I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to separate.”

Kaiba snorted. “Yuugi. Don’t pretend that any of your cheer squad wants me around, and I won’t pretend I want to be around them either. This is for the best.” His gaze drifted back towards the koi in the pond, swimming in lazy circles. “I wish you the best. I truly hope you all make it back alive.”

He sounded like he meant it, which only made Yuugi even more determined not to accept this course of events. “Kaiba-kun,” he said again, more forcefully this time. “Please come with us. I know we have our differences, but...we’re friends, Kaiba-kun, we’ve all been through so much together. We’re not just going to leave you.”

“It would be me leaving you, actually,” Kaiba said, with a bitter note of amusement. “There’s a part of me that wishes you’d reconsider running off into the wilderness to get yourself killed, but I know you well enough to understand that my chances of convincing you are minimal.”

Yuugi sighed. “Look...I know things have been hard for you, since...”

Kaiba’s posture stiffened, and in the moonlight Yuugi could see the veins standing out on his hands as they clenched into fists. He didn’t get up to leave immediately, so Yuugi continued, emboldened. “I don’t...I can’t pretend to understand why, but...maybe part of you feels just as hurt as I did that he left. Yes, Atem felt that he had a destiny to fulfill - a duty - but I always wondered why...why I wasn’t enough, why all of his friends weren’t enough, for him to even consider an alternate path.”

Stony silence greeted Yuugi as he thought very carefully about his next words.

“He was glad to see you, wasn’t he?”

When Kaiba spoke next, his voice was quiet, but cold. “Does it matter?”

“I don’t know, Kaiba-kun. That’s up to you.”

Kaiba let his posture slump infinitesimally. Someone who didn’t know him quite so well might not have picked up on it.

“What is your point, Yuugi?” he asked finally.

“My point is that this isn’t like you,” Yuugi said. “The Kaiba-kun I know wouldn’t ever assume that he couldn’t rise to a challenge like this. You’ve never been unwilling to face danger when so much is on the line. I remember you standing on the edge of Pegasus’ castle, willing to risk it all to get back to your brother.” He paused. “We need each other. I don’t think we can do this without you, Kaiba-kun, and I also don’t think you can do it without us.”

“Hn,” Kaiba said.

“I’ll leave you to think about it,” Yuugi said, getting to his feet and turning back towards the front of the hall. “Just...”

“Just what?”

“I know you feel like Atem abandoned you,” Yuugi said. “I feel that way sometimes, too. But we can't just stay trapped in that cycle forever. Try and break free.”

With that, Yuugi left, without turning back to see Kaiba’s reaction.

Chapter Text

Chapter Three: Hylia's Chosen

In the morning, they gave Impa their decision.

“We’ll do it,” Yuugi said. “We’ll search for Princess Zelda.”

“All of you?” Impa questioned, shrewdly noting Kaiba’s absence. He’d gotten up earlier than the rest, and no one was exactly sure where he’d gone.

Yuugi felt an all-too-familiar pang in his chest. “I don’t know,” he admitted quietly. “I hope so.”

Impa fed them a lovely breakfast of rice porridge, eggs, fruit, and honeyed nuts; and then it was time to start preparing for the journey in earnest. She spread out a large map of Hyrule over the table.

“A hard road lies ahead,” Impa warned. “First,” she said, “you must climb Mount Lanayru and pray at the Spring there, so that Hylia might appear to you and grant you information on Princess Zelda’s whereabouts. Then you’re in for an even more difficult chore: you’ll have to pay a visit to my sister.”

“Grandmother!” Paya said, scandalized. Impa winked at her.

After Impa had finished explaining the plan - visit each of the three Springs, try not to get killed, gather clues on Zelda’s location - she kicked them all out of the Town Hall so that she could take her morning nap in peace. Paya was their escort around Kakariko Village for the day. She took them to all the shops and bought them some essentials. Food, first aid supplies, bedrolls, flint and tinder, lengths of cloth and twine that they could use for various purposes on the journey, and other such accoutrements. After that they wandered around for a while, killing time until Impa was done napping.

“Is there anything you’d like to see while you’re here?” Paya queried timidly. She’d mostly lost her stutter when talking to Eri and Anzu, but a second of eye contact from any of the boys sent her right back into a blushing tailspin.

Eri didn’t even need a second to think about it. “The Great Faerie Fountain!” she cheered, punching a fist into the air.

For the first time since they’d met her, Paya smiled. “Oh, good choice,” she said. “It’s very beautiful.”

Paya led them up a steep path winding into the mountainside, treating them to a gorgeous view of Kakariko Village nestled into the valley below. The Sheikah garb they’d been lent for the day, simpler and thinner than what the villagers wore, was so finely crafted that it made the hike feel easy. The breathable fabrics cooled them down under the warm afternoon sun, and the tough shoes kept their feet cushioned and protected.

At the top they came upon an odd structure, shaped like a conical mound and covered in carvings.

“What is that?” Yuugi walked up to it, examining the little pedestal in its opening. “I think I’ve seen a couple of these in the distance before.”

“It looks like the Resurrection place,” Anzu added, noting the coiling, spiralling pattern of the carvings, and that strange pulsing blue glow emanating from the gaps.

“That’s a Shrine,” Eri said. “We can’t get in because we don’t have a Sheikah Slate.”

“What do you mean, we can’t get in?” Jounouchi complained, inspecting the opening and knocking on the walls.

“Could have Guardians in it,” Eri shrugged. “Or things that blow up, or an endless abyss. Shrines are tests of strength and cleverness. We shouldn’t fuck with them.”

At the word ‘Guardians,’ Yuugi and Jounouchi stepped away from the pedestal abruptly.

Paya hadn’t seemed to want to go near the Shrine, and now they understood why. They continued on past a it and into a quiet wooded area. After an enjoyable stroll through dappled shade and soft grass, the trees opened up to reveal a truly astonishing sight.

The Great Faerie’s lair was a riot of colours, shining gold and deep green and ruby-rose and cerulean and violet. The central fixture was an enormous magenta flower whose leaves opened invitingly to reveal a little pool of crystal-clear water, its depths seemingly endless, sparkles drifting up from its surface and away into the sky. Surrounding the fountain itself was a wealth of wildflowers of countless shades growing lustily in every direction.

“Wow,” Anzu and Yuugi breathed in unison. Jounouchi and Honda were struck silent for once, staring at the surreal display.

“Look,” Paya whispered. “Someone has come to pay us a visit.”

There was a tiny orb of light drifting towards them. It emitted a soft, welcoming pink glow, and once it got a bit closer they could see miniscule gossamer wings propelling it along.

“Oh,” Eri breathed, as it floated right up to her and flitted lazily around her head. “A fairy.”

“I think it wants to come along with you,” Paya suggested, a hint of excitement sparkling in her eyes. “Here, use this bottle.”

Anzu looked at the bottle, then at the tiny creature, which had come to investigate her as well. She tried to remain perfectly still as it drifted past her nose. “Isn’t it cruel to keep it in a bottle? Won’t it suffocate?”

“No,” Paya explained in that same careful whisper. “These little fairies aren’t really living beings, per se. They’re manifestations of a very old fae magic. The Great Faeries create them with a purpose, and they just drift around waiting to fulfill that purpose.” Paya watched the fairy circle Yuugi’s head this time. “They’re very rare. You can go a whole lifetime without seeing one,” she added. “Some say that they’re gifts from Hylia.”

“I guess we’d better accept it, then?” Anzu said.

Yuugi nearly went cross-eyed as the fairy alighted briefly on his nose.

“I believe it would be wise,” Paya replied, shy but certain.

Eri carefully guided the little glowing thing into Paya’s glass bottle, and corked the lid. It certainly didn’t seem at all distressed, floating around the jar in slow circles.

“What’s its purpose?” Honda wondered.

“Um,” Paya replied, blushing. She took a deep breath. “To...to help travellers.”

“It doesn’t look all that helpful,” Jounouchi said skeptically. He leaned forward to inspect the jar, unimpressed. It didn’t seem to have much of a brain at all - he had no idea what a mindless firefly was supposed to do for any of them.

“Don’t be rude to her,” Eri scolded, cradling the jar protectively to her chest, “if you want her to help you.”

Paya seemed to preternaturally sense when her grandmother was finished napping and ready to get on with the next part of their preparations. She suggested they head to the Hall, and they began the trek back down the mountainside. Eri held tightly onto the jar as they walked, occasionally bringing it to her face to watch the fairy some more. It was so cute that it made her heart flutter in her chest, and its pink glow was soothing to look at.

They’re very rare, Paya had said, but Eri remembered seeing these little things by the dozen when playing the game. She wondered if that was because they were gifts from Hylia. It would make sense for Hylia to be generous with Link, the Sword’s Chosen, but there was really not much reason for the average resident of Hyrule to be collecting that many of Her blessings.

“I hope Hylia’s just sending a bit of extra insurance,” Eri murmured to the bottle, her brow furrowing as she tilted her head this way and that to get a better look at the tiny creature. Actually putting the fairy to use would mean something had gone seriously wrong. “Or maybe you can do something different than what I’m expecting.”

“Don’t talk to bugs,” Jounouchi scolded Eri, coming up behind her and slinging an arm around her shoulder. “Come on, put that creepy thing away, would you?”

They arrived at the hall, and Paya ushered them inside. When they went to take their places on the zabuton cushions they noticed there was a large cloth-wrapped bundle in front of each cushion. No one could remember actually telling Impa their names at any point, but each bundle was labelled with a name just the same.

There was no bundle set out for Kaiba.

“Go change,” Impa ordered them.

“What?” Anzu said, hefting her package. Paya had promised that their Earth clothes would be laundered and returned to them, but this bundle felt much more substantial than the shorts, blouse and sandals Anzu had arrived in.

“I’m not letting you leave my village in those idiotic costumes,” Impa sniffed. “Reflects poorly on me if I send a bunch of adventurers on a mission wearing jester’s clothes.”

“You’re giving us clothes?” Despite himself, Yuugi was touched. Potential concussions from kendama blows to the head aside, Impa did actually seem to care about their survival out in Hyrule.

“I’m not giving you anything,” Impa snapped, promptly disabusing him of any sentimental notions. “They were already yours.”

“What?” Honda said, but then she gave them a menacing look. They all obediently ducked behind the paper partitions in the corner of the room to change. Impa’s kendama was sitting in quick reach next to her knee, and they’d all well learned their lesson about backtalk the previous day.

“Uh...woah,” Jounouchi said, emerging first. He was clad in armour made mostly of animal skins; a leather jerkin strapped on over a fur tunic, tanned-hide leggings, and thick leather boots wrapped with leather laces. The outfit was completed with a cape made from the pelt of a wolf, with the wolf’s head fastened to his shoulder. “Do I, uh…have to wear all the accessories, too?”

“Yes,” Impa said sternly. Jounouchi reluctantly slipped a necklace made of teeth over his head and started fastening leather bracers to his arms.

“Wow,” Honda said, glancing at Jou, “suits you, dude.” He was being sincere. Something about the outfit’s wild look matched Jounouchi’s energy perfectly.

“Ehhh, but look at you!” Jounouchi whistled appreciatively, giving Honda a once-over as the latter stepped out from behind his own partition with a clank. Honda was clad in a classic knight’s outfit - several pieces of shining silver armour, topped with a white-and-blue tabard. Underneath, a chainmail shirt and tightly-fitted, sturdy dark trousers provided extra protection. He looked very dashing, and also very uncomfortable, clearly not sure how to stand with the added weight strapped to his arms, chest, and thighs.

Yuugi, meanwhile, had been outfitted in what seemed to be a variation of the Sheikah raiment. Comprised of a unitard patterned in deep midnight blues, it came with lightweight pauldrons, greaves, and a chestpiece, as well as a long snow-white scarf about his neck. In the center of the chest the mysterious Sheikah Eye was emblazoned in red. Eri  came out next in an embroidered tunic of forest green over cream-coloured leggings, feet encased in thin leather boots. Secured across her chest was a belt that contained rows of tiny pouches. Embossed leather bracers shielded her arms, and a capelet made of deep green fabric-fashioned leaves was fixed around her shoulders.

Anzu was the last, stepping out nervously from behind her partition. Her haori was the same shape as a Sheikah villager’s, but the fabric was an iridescent white, imbued with shimmers of gold and lavender. Underneath that was a coral-coloured tunic that was cut near the bottom to give a rippling dimension to its edges; the effect was reminiscent of a seashell. Pale lavender leggings and soft leather boots completed the ethereal aesthetic.

“Anzu…” Yuugi blinked, taking it all in. “That outfit is so...”

“You look like a fairy,” Honda supplied, and Yuugi nodded in vigorous agreement.

“And you look like a little elf,” Jounouchi said, grabbing Eri into a headlock and mussing her hair as she laughed and struggled to get free. “Hey, can I swap with Honda? This wolf head’s creeping me out.”

“You cannot swap,” Impa said sternly. “They’ve been chosen specifically for each of you. Have you not noticed that they all fit perfectly?”

“Oh,” Anzu said in surprise, glancing between herself and Eri. There was about two inches of height between them; while Anzu tended towards tall, graceful athleticism, Eri was shorter and sturdier. Their clothes had clearly been made to reflect those differences. “How did you make these so fast without taking any measurements?”

“We didn’t make them,” Impa shrugged. “Paya has acquired these over a period of years from traders and travellers.”

“Years?” Jounouchi boggled. “How could she’ve known?”

“She didn’t,” Impa said proudly, as Paya’s cheeks steadily turned a brilliant crimson. “Papaya has excellent instincts.”

“I don’t get it,” Honda said. “You didn’t even know your Princess was missing until a few weeks ago, but you’ve been collecting armour sets for years on the off-chance a bunch of adventurers drop by? And how come, like, Yuugi’s a ninja and I’m a knight?”

Impa lashed out with the kendama. It bounced with a loud clang off Honda’s armour that startled him so much he jumped nearly a foot backwards. “Were you not listening? We didn’t know you were coming, but Paya’s intuition is never wrong.”

“If - if I may,” Paya squeaked, glancing helplessly between all of them.

“Of course, Paya,” Anzu said encouraged. “We’re listening.”

“Um...” She approached Honda first with halting steps, hands clasped meekly in front of her. “You’re...you’re a very resilient person, aren’t you? The kind of person your friends rely on to protect them.”

“Yeah, sounds like Honda,” Jounouchi agreed.

“That’s...” Paya took a deep breath and continued on, gaining confidence as she went. “That’s the core quality one looks for in a knight. Someone with an even temper, a strong sense of honour and duty, and who will go to any length to protect those who need it. So...”

“Do me, do me,” Jounouchi said, waving his hand.

Paya nodded, bravely forging on. “Well...I feel that you’re very brave, and strong, and fiercely loyal. Right?”

“Right again,” Anzu said. “That’s Jou in a nutshell.” Jounouchi tried very hard not to look too flattered at that, but he couldn’t help a little preening.

“And maybe a little rash,” Paya added as an afterthought. “Which is a good thing for a warrior - you need to be able to rush into battle and put your life on the line without a second thought. Your strong heart means you’ll be able to clear any obstacle in your way.”

She turned to Yuugi without being asked. “And you...you’re very thoughtful, and you have a strong sense of right and wrong. You also have a purity of spirit that’s not easily vanquished. Those are the qualities needed by someone who practices the ancient Sheikah arts. Venturing into the shadows is not easy, because your inner light needs to be strong enough to act as a beacon.”

“And you have some experience with shadow magic, don’t you, child,” Impa cackled from her position on the dais. Yuugi’s heart clenched, a strange nervousness overtaking him, and he couldn’t bring himself to reply. How could Impa have known that?

“As for you,” Paya said to Eri, “you’re a very nimble sort of person, aren’t you? Quick to adapt to just about anything.”

“That she is,” Honda agreed, squeezing her shoulder.

“But there’s also a deep well of quiet inside you,” Paya continued. “A steadiness that you can draw on when you need it. You’re very in tune with everyone and everything around you. That combination is very good for an archer! Someone who can constantly observe and aim steadily, but is also be able to adapt when necessary.”

“An archer!” Eri said, unable to hide her delight. “What about Anzu, then?”

“Anzu,” Paya repeated. “I know that you are energetic and determined and you happily carry the burdens of those around you, if only for a little while, until they’re able to take those burdens back onto their own shoulders. All that carrying has given you an incredible strength. You’re kind, but in the way that matters most: kind enough to do the right thing, even if it feels painful in the moment. All of those traits - strength, determination, energy and kindness - are necessary for a healer.”

Paya’s uncannily accurate observations pretty much sold them all on the armour straightaway. Jounouchi made his peace with the wolf’s head, giving it a firm pat, while Honda fiddled with the leather straps on his pauldrons and greaves to try and make them sit properly.

“You’ll have to give those Sheikah outfits back,” Impa said with a malicious little grin, “as I can’t have you lot out there tarnishing the reputation of my people.” In addition to their carefully-selected sets, Impa had in fact packed them gifts: extra sets of clothes, the sorts worn by Hylian villagers. “You’ll dress as Hylians, and your foolishness will be associated to them. Oh, and these ones aren’t tailored. I’m sure they’ll fit well enough. If it really bothers you, there’s a shop in Hateno that you can beg some alterations from.”

“Thank you, Impa,” Eri said, quite earnestly - either she’d been hit with the kendama so many times that she’d lost some brain function, or her affection for Impa from years of playing Zelda games was strong enough as to still be intact, concussive impacts aside.

Yuugi shifted this way and that, getting used to the feel of the flexible, breathable fabric clinging tight to his body. He supposed that since he was technically dressed as a Sheikah, he would have to be on his best behaviour. “Paya,” Yuugi said absently as he picked at the wraps around his wrists.

“Yes?” Paya leaned over and began to busily re-tie his wraps. His Sheikah raiment seemed to make the skittish teenager feel more relaxed around him, enough so that she clicked her tongue at how sloppily he’d tied the wraps in the first place.

“I still don’t really understand where the clothes came from,” Yuugi admitted lowly. He knew Impa’s hearing was excellent, but hoped she was too busy scolding the rest of them to listen in. “You…didn’t know we were coming, did you?”

Paya shook her head, tying a tight and capable knot about his wrist. “No, not at all,” she said. “But we do get a fair few traders and travellers from distant places…there’s this woman in town, Claree, who runs a clothing store. She’s always interested in adding interesting new items to her collection. So often I would come down and look over trader’s wares with her. At first it was just for fun. But sometimes, I would see a piece, and…” She glanced over at Anzu, then pointed at her middle. “That sash Anzu is wearing, with the blue jewel. That was the first one. I felt like I had to hold on to it, like it would be very important.”

“So you did,” Yuugi marvelled. “Just like that.”

“Well, no, not ‘just like that,’” Paya said, with an embarrassed, tittering little laugh. “Claree was shocked, you know. That sash was so expensive, and I was so young…I threw a fit, I felt that strongly about it. Grandmother was the one who stepped in and said I could have it.”

Yuugi could not imagine the sweet, quiet Paya throwing a fit. She must have felt quite strongly indeed. “And how do you know we’re the ones who are supposed to wear these clothes?” he pressed.

“Well, it was that same feeling,” Paya mused. “Except this time I felt strongly that you had to have the items. For example, when I saw your friend, I thought right away: ‘that’s the warrior.’ Quite simply, that thought came to my mind.”

“And it does suit him quite well,” Yuugi admitted, following her gaze to Jounouchi. He and Impa were now arguing over Honda’s armour; Jounouchi felt Honda was at risk in the heat, and that all the metal was too cumbersome. Brave and fiercely loyal, Yuugi thought as he watched Jounouchi make his points with fervent energy.

Anzu had been listening in to their conversation, and stepped towards them, twisting her hands nervously. “Um...Paya,” she said, her words hesitant and ginger. “What...what about Kaiba-kun?”

“Ah,” Paya said. “Your friend is hard to read, isn’t he? Obviously he has a brilliant mind, with an eye for tactics and the ability to think on his feet. But...” Paya trailed off and looked around, as if waiting for Kaiba himself to emerge from behind a partition and glare at her for daring to speculate on him. “I also sense...a great protectiveness, and a strong mind - the kind of person that never gives up, no matter what.”

There was a moment of silence as they all reflected on that. “Well, he gave up on us pretty fast,” Jounouchi muttered. “He’s probably halfway to Hateno by now.”

“None of my warriors are out on escort detail right now,” Impa said evenly. “Now, would you like to see your weapons?”

Later that afternoon, Yuugi found Paya out sweeping the back of the veranda.

“Paya,” he said as gently as he could, hoping not to startle her. No luck. She squeaked and dropped her broom.

“I’m, I’m sorry,” she stammered. “Oh, I’m so clumsy...”

“It’s all right,” Yuugi laughed, awkwardly scratching the back of his head. “I just...I wanted to ask you something, if that’s okay?”

“Yes, yes, of course,” Paya said, bowing low. Then she straightened up, then changed her mind and bowed again, her cheeks flaming red.

“Thank you for letting me impose,” Yuugi said shyly, mirroring her bow.

They both arose again at the same time, made brief eye contact, then laughed. Yuugi really liked Paya. She felt like a kindred spirit.

“What can I help you with?” Paya asked, her timid posture finally relaxing.

“Well,” Yuugi said, “I wanted to ask you about shadow magic. You see...I’m not a mage, not really. I’ve had some experience with magic but I haven’t ever...made magical things happen myself, if that makes sense.”

Paya’s face fell. “I wish I could help, Yuugi,” she fretted, gazing at her boots in obvious regret. “Unfortunately, the ancient shadow arts have been lost to us for the most part. The magic the Sheikah use today is illusory magic that has its basis in the old ways, but what Grandmother senses in you is…”

“Is what?” Yuugi prompted, his heart giving a funny little jump.

“It’s…” Paya deliberated for a moment. “Old. And powerful. Moreso than anything we’ve come across, in our little village here…”

“It’s okay,” Yuugi said. He couldn’t help the powerful feeling of resignation that settled heavy over his shoulders. Old and powerful shadow magic that no one else understood…well, that was nothing new.

“Perhaps…” Paya ventured shyly. “We could try some basics? A bit of rudimentary illusory magic. The sort we use here.”

Yuugi brightened immediately. At least that was something.

They walked together to a small clearing near Impa’s longhouse. “The first thing,” Paya said, “and the most important, is stealth.” She pointed to the other side of the clearing. “Try to make it from one end to the other without making any noise.”

Yuugi took his time, each step careful and slow as he picked around noisy twigs and rustling patches of grass. “How’d I do?” he called, once he’s reached the other side.

“Um...” Paya blushed. “Terrible,” she called back. “I’m sorry.”

“Really?” Yuugi pouted. “I thought I was pretty quiet.” He started to make his way back towards her, and she met him in the middle of the clearing.

“Well, that’s...” Paya said, with a helpless little shrug. “That’s because you’re not very good at listening, either.”

She came to stand next to him. “We have to be very aware of our surroundings before we can blend into them,” she explained. “So, let’s start this way. Name five things you can see, four things you can hear, three things you can touch, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste.”

Yuugi thought about that for a moment. “Well,” he said. “I can see trees...and the mountainside...and...”

Their practice didn’t get very far, but Paya assured Yuugi he had the basics and just needed to keep working on them.

“So where does the illusory magic come in?” Yuugi said.

Paya hummed. “Please forgive me - it’s difficult to explain, but I’ll do my very best. Illusory magic has a long history and was always practiced in the shadows - because deception and sleights can only thrive there. The harsh sun lays them bare. But the problem is that shadows are fickle. Some days they’re abundant, and other days they’re weak, just a flicker. So we can’t always rely on the shadows around us to conceal us. When we practice illusory magic, we must become shadows ourselves.”

Yuugi didn’t quite follow, but the whole thing sounded very intriguing, so he listened intently.

“To become a shadow, you have to understand what a shadow is. Shadows are different from true darkness, because shadows cannot exist without light, and true darkness cannot exist with light. To put it more simply, shadows are defined by the presence of light, and darkness is defined by its absence. So when you’re becoming a shadow, you can’t picture yourself as a being of darkness - because you’re not. You’re just a shape, cast in a certain direction by light hitting an object in front of you. You can only exist in relation to that object and to the light striking it.”

“Oh,” Yuugi breathed, completely entranced. “So...how do I become a shadow?”

Paya smiled. “First, you choose something as your anchor.” She pointed at a boulder nearby. “I can’t be a shadow all by myself. I have to be attached to something. So I will be that boulder’s shadow. Watch this.” Paya stepped towards the boulder, and then - Yuugi swore she just disappeared. He couldn’t make heads or tails of where she’d gone.

“And now I have finished being its shadow,” Paya said, from the other side of the boulder. Yuugi gasped, turning to face her. “If I wanted to keep stealth, I would choose another thing as my anchor, and hop from object to object. I can only really do three or four in a row. Grandmother can keep going for what seems like forever.”

“Wow,” Yuugi said. “That was amazing!”

“Now you try,” Paya said.

“But...” Yuugi frowned. “I still don’t get it.”

“It’s a place, Yuugi,” Paya explained with a smile. She pointed at the boulder’s shadow. “Look at the boundary. Find the place between light and dark, and go there.”

Yuugi focused on the boulder’s shadow. He stared at the sharp line where darkness met light, and for a long moment couldn’t fathom what Paya was talking about. But then he noticed it - a fuzzy little halo around the shadow’s boundary.

He went.

Yuugi felt like he was made of only air. The world around him looked fuzzy and indistinct, much like the halo had. He took one step, and then two, and then re-emerged in the same spot Paya had. The world abruptly phased back into full colour, and Yuugi realized that wherever he’d been had been very, very quiet.

“Well done,” Paya said, clapping her hands. “Well done, Yuugi!”

Yuugi wondered, not for the first time, what Atem would think if he could see him now.

Impa kicked them all awake early the next morning, bearing one final gift: little leather pouches embroidered with a strange spiraling symbol.

“Oh!” Eri cried out. “They’re Korok pouches!”

“Indeed,” Impa said dryly. “Already packed with everything you need. Bedrolls, cloaks, broadcloth, food...those garish costumes of yours, although I can’t imagine why you’d want them back…”

“How?” Honda said, puzzled. The Korok pouch was about the size of a football, and didn’t look big enough to hold even half of what Impa was rattling off.

“They’re enchanted,” Eri said, opening hers and sticking her head inside without hesitation. To everyone’s shock, her head fit in its entirety, with no visible stretching of the bag. “Woah,” she said, her voice muffled. “It’s huge in here.”

“Eri,” Jounouchi groaned. “Stop that! Get outta there!”

Eri exited the bag, laughing. “You try!”

“I’ll, uh, take your word for it.”

“All right, all right,” Impa said impatiently. “Time for you kids to leave my house and let this old woman exist in peace. Young people are exhausting.”

They all donned their armour, complete with weapons this time: a large, gold-emblazoned halberd for Honda, a heavy double-sided axe for Jounouchi, and a beautifully carved lightweight wooden bow for Eri. Anzu and Yuugi would apparently need nothing but their own minds.

Yuugi’s mood had been plummeting throughout the morning and was at an all-time low as it came time to leave. No one had seen Kaiba. He hadn’t even come back to the hall to sleep. Impa wouldn’t elaborate on his whereabouts, other than insisting that none of her warriors were escorting him to Hateno; this was less than comforting, as Kaiba was absolutely the type to just head off by himself, escort or no.

Anzu seemed to be thinking the same thing. “I can’t believe Kaiba-kun didn’t even say goodbye,” she said, halfway between sad and frustrated, as they all stepped out of the hall into the early morning sunlight.

“Why would I say goodbye?” a familiar voice scoffed from behind them. “I’m going to be stuck with you nerds for the foreseeable future.”

“Kaiba-kun!” Yuugi cried, a grin breaking over his face. Kaiba was leaning against one of the pillars outside the hall, arms folded and a bored expression on his face. Even more remarkably, he had foregone his fitted suit for a truly striking ensemble: a midnight-blue tunic with a leather half-breastplate and sapphire-coloured sash around the waist, over dark blue-grey leggings; leather pauldrons, bracers, boots and gloves; and finally a white cloak draped from his shoulders, nearly brushing the wooden veranda. A longsword was strapped to his back.

“Kaiba!” Jounouchi yelled with genuine delight. “You asshole! You had us real worried, you know!”

“We had a nice chat, us two,” Impa said slyly. “You’ll behave, won’t you, swordsman?”

“Hn,” was all Kaiba had to say to that.

“We’re so glad you’re here, Kaiba-kun,” Anzu said. “I have a really good feeling about the trip now!”

“Me too.” Honda nodded firmly. “We fucked up Atlantis the last time we all worked together, you know?”

“What?” Eri said.

“Hell yeah,” Jounouchi agreed happily, slinging his arm around Eri and pinching her cheeks. “And now we’ve got you, too, little miss Hyrule expert. There’s nothing we can’t do!”

“Spare me the speeches,” Kaiba said, rolling his eyes, “or I’m going back to plan A.”

Chapter Text

Chapter Four: The Place between Light and Dark

“I’m gonna miss them,” Eri declared, as they took their final steps out of Kakariko Village. After the group had said their goodbyes to Impa and Paya, they’d made their way up the same hiking path that passed the Great Faerie’s fountain. Now the path was taking them along the mountaintop, on a dirt road bordered by sheer cliffs. The air up here was dry, chilly and thin, but the steadily climbing sun promised a warm afternoon ahead.

Impa had marked their path in an almost insultingly bright red ink on a paper map, as if she was saying ‘Here, even you fools can’t miss this!’ They could practically hear her cackling to herself as they reviewed areas of note circled multiple times with arrows pointing towards them. She’d even written things like ‘MOUNTAIN’ and ‘LAKE’ on the already-obvious map features in her spiky, bold handwriting.

“You’re gonna miss getting whacked with a kendama by an evil old crone?” Honda said. He was the one holding the map, and he made a face as they started downhill just at the bit where Impa had helpfully scrawled ‘DOWNHILL. STEEP.’ “Paya was really sweet, though,” he added.

Eri grinned and shrugged. “I dunno. I’ve just seen Impa in so many games. Meeting her in person felt really special.”

“Was she all you’d hoped and dreamed she would be?” Anzu teased.

“Yes,” Eri said, clasping her hands in starry-eyed joy. “She looks so tough for a centenarian. If I annoyed her enough she’d probably kill me easily, don’t you think?”

Kaiba had been mostly silent during the first hour of their journey. No one could tell if he was making a concerted effort to be nice or if he just couldn’t be bothered to join in the chatter, until he answered the question himself. “Can any of you actually use those weapons without taking your own fingers off?” he said snidely, gesturing at Jounouchi’s axe and Honda’s halberd.

Jounouchi looked like he wanted to say something to that, but Honda cut him off. “Not...really?” Honda replied, looking puzzled. “I asked Impa what I was supposed to do with this thing, but she just said I’d get the hang of it.”

“Fantastic.” Kaiba rolled his eyes. “You three just stay out of fights and let me handle it.”

“I’m just as good a fighter as you are, kendo champion-sama,” Jounouchi shot back. “Or did you forget that I almost took you down the other day?”

“Street brawling isn’t the same as fighting with weapons,” Kaiba replied coolly. “Without training you’re just as likely to kill one of us as an enemy.”

“You know,” Eri said. “I’ve never used a real bow before in my life, but when I went out to practice in the graveyard last night-”

“For fuck’s sakes, Morin,” Kaiba interrupted. “Do you have a death wish? What do you think you’re doing, going out alone at night to use a weapon you’re not trained with? You’re even stupider than I thought, and that’s saying something.”

“That’s my point,” Eri said, cheerfully undeterred. “Actually, I felt like I did kinda know how to use it. It was hard to put my finger on, but...something about it just felt really familiar.”

“Eri-chan,” Honda said, “just...stay out of graveyards at night, would you?”

“What do you mean, familiar?” Yuugi prompted.

“I dunno.” Eri shrugged. “It felt like I’d held a bow a million times before. I tried asking Impa too, but she just said,” here she put on an uncanny Impa impression for effect, “you’re an archer, stupid, and wouldn’t explain what she meant.”

“Huh.” Honda hefted his halberd experimentally. “You know, this thing doesn’t feel too bad in my hands either. And Impa seemed pretty confident we could figure it out.”

“What do you think, Kaiba-kun?” Eri said. “Magic, or some kind of weird dimension-hopping side effect? Like maybe...” she wiggled her fingers, like she was casting a spell. “Maybe coming here has activated secret talents we never knew we had!”

Kaiba looked like his head was going to explode from sheer annoyance. He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I can’t express how much I hate that I’m encouraging your boneheaded bullshit, but...there is some evidence that when traveling to a different dimension you’re influenced by your environment.”

They all pondered that for a moment.

Yuugi wasn’t sure if his next comment would have Kaiba biting his head off, but his curiosity won out in the end. “Mokuba-kun told me that you said...Atem…looked different. When you went to Aaru.”

There was a long, long pause.

The anticipated snap never came. “Yes, because who he is in Aaru is roughly who he was when he was alive,” Kaiba finally confirmed, sounding almost deliberately bored, like he were reciting basic maths instead of the implications of the afterlife as an alternate universe.

“But when we knew him,” Jounouchi said slowly, “He looked more like Yuugi. Even when they weren’t sharing a body. Like when we went into the Puzzle that one time.”

“Didn’t Isis say that Yuugi is who Atem might’ve been if he’d lived in the present?” Honda mused. “So I guess his appearance was reflecting that.”

“Yes, he was in a different dimension, and his physicality was influenced by it,” Kaiba said, just a hair short of condescending, as if they were all stating something so obvious that it pained him.

“What?” Yuugi blinked. “So…the past and present are different dimensions?”

“New dimensions are created every nanosecond.” Kaiba had fully crossed the line into condescension now. “Every time something happens that alters the future’s course, another dimension splits off in parallel. But those things have also already happened, and the dimension is created accordingly.”

“So the past and present and future are all simultaneous,” Anzu said. “And when you’re time-traveling you’re actually hopping to a parallel stream and creating more branches, which...also already exist?”

Kaiba nodded. “Correct. And when you arrive in any other dimension, you’re not only creating branches in the future, but also in the past - namely, your own past. You take on some characteristics of how you would have been if you’d existed in that dimension previously.”

“Why?” Eri asked. “How does somewhere I’ve never been rewrite my past?”

“Think about it,” Kaiba said impatiently. “Of course this place affects you. Look, you have a sunburn.” He roughly poked at the back of her neck. Eri winced at the sting. She hadn’t even noticed. “So if it can physically affect you, why would those effects be contained to the present? Humans aren’t impermeable membranes.”

Yuugi’s mind was drifting again, remembering something - it hadn’t seemed important at the time, but now his brain was digging it back up whether he liked it or not.

Only Mokuba and Yuugi had been allowed to enter the dock after the dimensional domain emulator had winked back into existence, seemingly out of thin air. Yuugi remembered so clearly how Kaiba had looked that day. He didn’t know what he’d been expecting - a corpse, maybe, or at the very least a Kaiba who bore visible signs of dimensional travel. Instead Kaiba had looked startlingly similar to when he’d left. Strong, healthy, no hint of Egyptian sun or sand. He’d been wearing a strange apparatus on his head, almost like an earpiece, that was communicating with nodes attached to his clothing.

Through his heaving sobs, Mokuba had referred to the apparatus as a shield  - the shield worked, he’s okay. Yuugi hadn’t even thought to ask about it at the time. Couldn’t think of anything, in fact, other than the shaking teenager falling apart in his arms as his brother sat up in the cockpit, whole and alive and devastated for reasons they couldn’t understand.

A shield. Had Kaiba taken precautions, then, to ensure that Aaru didn’t affect him physically? Did that mean Kaiba had planned to come back all along?

“I see.” Eri swung her bow back and forth as her mind processed Kaiba’s words, blissfully unaware of the conversation's fraught undercurrents. “So, if I had grown up here, I would have been an archer? And that possible previous version of me has affected the me that’s here today?”

“Not ‘possible’ previous version,” Kaiba corrected. “When you arrived here you created a dimension, numerous dimensions in fact, where you did grow up here as an archer. Those dimensions also already existed, along with dimensions where you grew up here as something else - a tailor, or a gravedigger, or whatever. The archer dimensions are just clustered closer to this one and have more influence on it.”

“So there’s another one where we all traveled here in exactly the same way, but that one’s closer to the gravedigger universes, and so Paya presented me with a mortician’s costume.”

Kaiba smirked. “Oh, so you have deductive reasoning skills after all - you just choose not to use them.”

“If there’s infinite dimensions,” Eri carried on, unfazed by the comment, “then there’s, like, probably one where we got dropped in the middle of Hyrule from five hundred meters in the air and died on impact. And one where we got smoked by that Guardian on the first day.”

“Eri-chan,” Honda said, scandalized.

Kaiba sighed in a long-suffering sort of way. “That is what infinite implies, you morbid goblin.”

Eri’s disturbing speculating had fully shaken Yuugi out of his reverie. “Okay, speaking of dimensional oddities, I just thought of something else,” Yuugi said, half in an attempt to change the subject. “Is it weird that everyone here seems to speak Japanese?”

“Oh.” Anzu was surprised to realize that he was right. “Wow, yeah. That is weird.”

“Maybe we’re not speaking Japanese at all,” Honda said, narrowing his eyes. “Maybe we just think we’re speaking Japanese, but it’s all going through some kind of magic dimensional translator.”

“Ugh, I wish,” Eri said, making a pained face at the sky. “Then I could just speak French. But no, even a whole freaking dimension away, I’m still trying to remember not to use pronouns.” She paused, and added: “At least they don’t seem to care about honorifics here. I have no idea what you’d call someone like Impa.”

Anzu thought about that, tapping her lip with her finger pensively. “Hmm. I don’t know either. Would you use dono, or sama? Maybe shishou?”

“Baa-chan,” Jounouchi cackled.

Yuugi’s brow furrowed in confusion. “That’s…why Japanese, of all languages?”

“Dimensional mystery,” Honda said in English, putting on his spookiest voice and thoroughly butchering the pronounciation.

As the morning gave way to afternoon, the wild and beautiful scenery gave way to ancient flagstones under their feet.

“What is this place?” Anzu wondered aloud as a huge, ruined archway came into sight, supported by two carved pillars draped in vines and moss.

“Lanayru Promenade,” Eri said. “A long time ago, this used to be a common pilgrimage route. Once you turned seventeen you could take this road straight up the mountain to visit the Spring of Wisdom. You still can, of course, it’s just way more dangerous.”

The Lanayru Promenade wound through a narrow pass, with a stone walkway suspended over the rushing river below. There had clearly been much more to the structure before the Calamity; the stone archways marking the path at regular intervals crumbled away into nothing midway through the air. And the Promenade was indeed dangerous - not just in terms of decaying flagstones abruptly giving way to the river underneath in spots, but for other reasons they would soon discover.

As they walked, Yuugi and Eri busily set to work filling their pouches with all manner of nuts and sticks and flowers and mushrooms.

“Oh, grab that one!” Eri said to Honda, pointing at a lizard perched on a rock. Honda caught it by the tail.

“If you stew those with some monster guts for a few hours, they make a restorative tonic,” Eri said excitedly. “Cool. They’re smaller in person than I thought they’d be.”

Honda frowned at the squirming lizard. “So I just...put it in the pouch? Alive?”

“Hmm.” Eri matched his frown. She poked at it, then withdrew her finger as it hissed. “I never thought about that. It seems kind of mean.”

“Isn’t putting it in a stew also kinda mean?” Jounouchi said, bending down to examine the critter. “If you’re gonna kill it anyways, who cares if it spends some time in a pouch?”

“Maybe we kill it first,” Eri mused.

“I don’t wanna kill it,” Honda complained. “Jou, you kill it.”

Jounouchi shrugged. “Okay.” He reached for the lizard.

“Stop it!” Anzu cried. “Ew!”

Yuugi felt a little queasy. “Do we, um...do we have to hurt it?”

Eri stood up and patted his shoulder gently. “It’s food. We can’t be too picky. We’re gonna have to hunt eventually, too.” Impa had packed them some food, but not nearly enough to last the entire way to Mount Lanayru.

“Okay,” Honda said, “Let’s just stuff it in the bag-”

“Wait,” Eri interrupted. “I’m kind of conflicted on the ethics of just letting it suffocate in there.”

Kaiba was suddenly behind them, looming menacingly with a thunderous look on his face. “You are all so stupid that it’s giving me a literal headache.”

“Kaiba-kun,” Anzu said. “There’s no need-”

“No,” he cut her off, “look.” He dug an apple slice out of his pouch and waved it in her face. “I cut this first thing in the morning as a test. It hasn’t browned at all. The enchantments on the pouch keep the contents in stasis,” he snapped. “So put the fucking lizard in the bag and let’s go.”

Honda shrugged, stuffed the lizard in his pouch, and stood up. Suddenly he stopped dead.

“You guys hear that?” he said.

Eri squinted at something in the distance, made a shushing noise, and gestured towards the space behind a rocky outcropping. Everyone quieted down immediately and followed her.

“There’s monsters around here?” Jounouchi whispered loudly.

“There’s monsters everywhere,” Eri whispered back. “We just avoided a big group of them, so I think we’ll be-”

A horrible, high-pitched squealing erupted from in front of them, and they dropped from the cliffs.

It was the same type of beast they had narrowly escaped the other night, short and squat with horns and wide mouths stretched into grotesque permanent grins. Their skin was tough and leathery and their eyes were a dull milky shade, protruding from either side of a porcine snout. These ones carried crude clubs. There were three of them - two with rusty red hides, and one a muted blue.

Kaiba abruptly stepped to the forefront of the group, shoving Anzu behind him and unsheathing his longsword. Jounouchi and Honda flanked him without hesitation before he could wave them off.

The beasts rushed in without delay, gibbering and screeching. Kaiba launched into a practiced series of sword strokes, relentlessly driving the large blue one back. He blocked each clumsy swing of its club, never giving it any ground.

Jounouchi and Honda were faring slightly worse, each never having held a medieval weapon in their lives. Jounouchi took a particularly nasty hit directly across the chest, the club’s spiked tip leaving a long scratch across his jaw as it came down. To his credit, he didn’t stay down for long, and was back up swinging his axe in seconds.

“Um, should we...” Yuugi said, glancing at Eri. “Can we help?”

“I don’t know if I’m a good enough shot to hit the bokos without hurting anyone,” Eri said anxiously. Suddenly her face lit up. “Oh! I do have-” she produced a small shortsword from the sheath at her hip, and abruptly took off running towards Honda.

Honda was taking quite a few blows, but his heavy soldier’s armour protected him well. He was very clearly fighting defensively in contrast to Jounouchi’s enraged offense. Honda never so much as stumbled, even when his blocks failed and he took a vicious swing full-on, instead using the opportunity to knock the creature back with his halberd while it was off-balance. This steady defense just served to enrage the monster, so it didn’t even register Eri as she slipped up behind it and drove her shortsword into the back of its neck.

Honda and Eri wordlessly high-fived over its twitching corpse and went to help Jounouchi - but just before they reached him, Kaiba was there, beheading Jounouchi’s opponent with a neat and controlled slice.

They all stood there breathing heavily for a moment as the adrenaline ebbed away. All at once Jounouchi sat down heavily on his rear end and Eri dropped into a crouch, hugging her knees.

“Look at that, we killed those motherfuckers,” Jounouchi laughed, then winced. “Ow.”

“Oh, man, we killed them,” Eri moaned into her knees.

Anzu nudged at one of the corpses with the toe of her boot. “Ew.”

Honda knelt down next to Eri, patting her shoulder. “Don’t feel bad. They started it.”

“Hey, Anzu?” Jounouchi groaned, flopping onto his back. “Some help over here?”

“I don’t know what you want me to do,” Anzu said, crouching beside him. “I don’t know how to use my magic yet.”

“Just try,” Jounouchi begged. “Ow, ow, ow.”

Anzu shrugged and started unlacing the sides of his leather vest. She pulled it open to reveal a huge red welt that looked like it was going to blossom into a magnificent bruise.

“Ooh,” she remarked sympathetically, poking at it. “That doesn’t look good.”

“OW!” Jounouchi hollered. “Why did you have to poke it?!”

“Shut up, I’m healing,” Anzu said. She thought for a moment, then laid her hand flat across the welt. “Hey,” she said. “There’s a weird tingling in my hand.”

“Maybe…try and focus it,” Yuugi suggested. “Think about what you want it to do.” He was remembering back to Paya’s lesson, and how he’d had to be very intentional about his goals before the illusory magic would work.

“Okay,” Anzu agreed. She gazed intently at her hand, her brow furrowing in concentration.

“Hey, that feels kinda nice.” Jounouchi sighed with obvious relief. “Keep doing whatever that is.”

A white-blue glow started to leak out from between Anzu’s fingers, emanating from where her palm was pressed flat. The glow spread slowly until it was covering the entire welt. “Look, guys,” Anzu squealed. “I’m doing magic!”

“Cool,” Honda admired. “What does it feel like, Jou?”

“Huh,” Jounouchi said. “You know when you’re sick and your mom puts that weird ointment on your chest and it feels kinda cold but in a nice way?”

“Oh, wow,” Anzu said. She withdrew her hand abruptly and teetered backwards. Yuugi caught her just in time.

“Anzu!” he cried. “What’s wrong?”

“Just kind of dizzy,” Anzu said, closing her eyes and letting Yuugi support her. “Sorry Jou, I’ll try again in a second-”

“No, don’t,” Eri cut in. “It looks like it’s sapping your energy. You should rest before doing it again.”

“I’m sure it’s okay,” Anzu protested, finally sitting up with no help from Yuugi. “I’m feeling a little better already.”

“Jounouchi’s fine, look,” Eri said, pointing at Jounouchi. He nodded in agreement. “Don’t be reckless, Anzu-chan.”

“That’s hilarious, coming from you,” Kaiba said rudely. He was leaning against a tree watching the whole thing with his arms folded, seemingly unconcerned about Jounouchi’s injury or Anzu’s magic.

Eri glanced up at him. “Huh? What’s your problem?”

“Aren’t you an archer? What were you doing running into melee combat?” he snapped back. “Don’t get in the way next time. You have a ranged weapon for a reason. Use it.”

“For fuck’s sakes, Kaiba,” Jounouchi said, sitting up and lacing the sides of his vest. “We killed the monsters. Who the hell cares how?”

Kaiba stepped forward, drawing himself to his full height and fixing them all with a deadly serious expression. “I can’t believe I have to repeat this. This is not a virtual world. Any of us could die here. I know you all have patently ridiculous hero complexes, but now is not the time for recklessness. If one of you gets into a bad situation it’s the rest of our responsibility to pull you out, which puts everyone in danger.”

He pointed at Eri. “What if you’d gotten in the way of an axe swing, because no one was expecting you to be in the middle of combat instead of shooting from a safe distance away? Then Mazaki would have more healing to do than her powers could handle, and the group would be forced to choose between your suffering.” Then he glared at Jounouchi. “And because you have absolutely no weapons training and insist on swinging that thing around like a pool noodle, you could easily hurt one of us or get killed fighting when no one’s around to save you. I understand that you’re a barbarian through and through, but at least take a page from his playbook-” here Kaiba jerked his thumb at Honda - “and learn to defend yourself before jumping in like a maniac.”

Eri looked absolutely crestfallen, and even Jounouchi was cowed. They sat in silence for a moment, processing his words.

“Kaiba,” Honda said slowly. “Will you teach us how to fight? Me and Jounouchi, I mean.”

“We’ll call a halt for the day and run through some drills for the afternoon. Tomorrow too. I don’t want any attitude,” Kaiba said directly to Jounouchi. “This is life and death, so I expect you to listen to me carefully.”

Jounouchi scowled but nodded nonetheless.

“And you,” Kaiba said to Eri. “Take the shortsword off your belt and stow it in your pouch. I don’t want to see you touching that thing again until you’ve learned to use your bow properly.”

Eri nodded miserably and obeyed him without any backtalk, for once.

With help from Honda and Anzu Jounouchi got to his feet, and they started to walk again in silence. Yuugi looked back over his shoulder at the dead monsters. He didn’t feel bad for them, per se, but their still corpses were disturbing nonetheless.

Maybe he felt a little bad.

Finally they found a large alcove with a staircase that would provide good cover on every side. The rest of the day was spent training. Jounouchi and Honda followed Kaiba in a series of drills and managed to avoid giving him any attitude, while Eri practiced with her bow.

“I wish we had someone to help train you too,” Yuugi said to her. “It must be hard to learn alone, ne?”

“Actually...” Eri looked at the bow in her hands. “It’s weird. It feels like my brain knows what to do, more or less, but my muscle memory hasn’t caught up yet.”

“What do you mean?” Anzu said, fascinated.

Eri drew her bow. “So I’m standing like this, right? And I know somehow that - you know, my bow shoulder should be relaxed, my feet should be shoulder width apart, my release hand should anchor along my jaw somewhere - but it’s so hard to keep all that stuff in the forefront of my mind at the same time, so I always miss something and screw up.” She let the arrow fly.

“What were you aiming for?”

“Not that,” Eri said with a frown, as her arrow clattered off a pillar.

Yuugi and Anzu noticed that Jounouchi and Honda also seemed to have the same ingrained aptitude; they were naturally adjusting Kaiba’s kendo drills to fit their own weapons and account for the weight and dynamics of each. Kaiba didn’t bother correcting them. He seemed to have a very intuitive understanding of where his own teachings ended and their latent skills picked up.

No such luck for the two magic users. Anzu couldn’t recreate her magic without having something to actually heal, and Yuugi couldn’t even replicate the brief bit of illusory magic he’d done with Paya. It made him more anxious the more he tried, and Anzu eventually suggested they take a break, as the stress couldn’t be doing him any good.

That night Yuugi lay awake for a long time, his mind racing and his stomach doing somersaults. The others snored around him in their bedrolls - it was uncomfortable to sleep on the hard, cracked flagstones, but after a full day of hiking and physical training, they’d all passed out nearly as soon as their heads had hit the thin pillows.

Yuugi felt himself shiver, and not just because their campfire had died down to embers.

It was all finally starting to hit him. He couldn’t take his mind off the monster corpses, cut through with ugly wounds. The one severed head fixed in a rictus grin as it gazed towards the sky. This wasn’t virtual reality. They had really killed those things - the bokoblins - and worse yet, they could have been killed just as easily.

There was a not-insignificant part of him that felt wracking guilt for just standing by while his friends fought. Even though he understood logically what Kaiba had been saying, and that he and Eri and Anzu really shouldn’t be running into the thick of combat, that just meant he had to figure out his magic - and fast.

Atem, Yuugi said again in his mind. What am I supposed to do?

What did “shadow mage” even mean here in Hyrule? Yuugi knew that the Shadow Realm could only be accessed by the Sennen Items, but none of those were here, not even the Puzzle. Did the Shadow Realm even exist anymore?

Thinking about it more, Yuugi supposed it must. The Shadow Realm was in fact its very own dimension with very specific rules; and the powers of that Realm allowed monsters to manifest in the flesh. The question was moreso, was the Shadow Realm accessible from Hyrule; and to that Yuugi didn’t have an answer, although he suspected without the Sennen Items it would be impossible.

However, Paya’s words were stuck fast in his mind. Shadows are different from true darkness, because shadows cannot exist without light. Find the place between light and dark, and go there. Where was that, exactly? Where had he gone, the day Paya had taught him to become a shadow?

The phrase turned in his head over and over again until Yuugi finally fell asleep. He dreamed of ghostly figures in an indistinct twilight.

Kaiba woke them all up absurdly early the next morning. They groggily ate a breakfast of cold rice porridge, and then it was time for Honda and Jounouchi to arm up.

“The rest of you,” he instructed. “Find something productive to do. Target practice. Magical nonsense. Whatever. Just stay out of the way.”

Yuugi, Eri and Anzu wandered a little ways away, climbing some decrepit stairs to see if there was anything interesting higher up, before Anzu gave up and sat down right in the middle of the walkway.

“How am I supposed to practice healing if I can only do it when someone gets hurt?” she said, biting her lip. “I feel weird about that.”

Yuugi sat down next to her. He still felt disturbed and worried after his restless sleep, but he’d come away from his ruminations with a new will to fight. His friends wouldn’t suffer because he couldn’t get it together and figure out his magic. “Well,” he said, sounding more confident than he felt, “there’s more to magic then just performing the actual act of it.”

“Like what?” Anzu said.

“Try to prepare your mind for it properly,” Yuugi suggested, mimicking Paya’s instructions. “Train your focus. Meditation is a good way to do that.” He wasn’t sure exactly how Sheikah illusory magic mapped to whatever the source of Anzu’s healing power was, but he supposed it couldn’t hurt for her to try.

“Whew,” Eri said from nearby, where she was trying to pull a stubborn wild carrot from where it was growing between the flagstones. “I’m glad I’m an archer. Meditating sucks.”

“You’re not helping,” Anzu groaned. “Don’t you have target practice to do?”

“Well, I thought I wanted to watch you guys do magic stuff for a while,” Eri said, “but if you’re just going to be meditating, then...”

Yuugi laughed and waved her off. “Go have fun, Eri-chan.”

Eri trotted off with her bow in hand, and Yuugi turned to Anzu. “Okay. I don’t really know how to do this, I’m just going off of…instinct, more or less.”

“That’s okay, Yuugi,” Anzu said. “It’s better than nothing, right?”

“Right,” Yuugi agreed. “So the first step is to clear your mind. But that doesn’t mean thinking about nothing. Atem told me once that you can’t stop yourself from thinking about things, but you can just let the thoughts pass you by.”

“Atem meditated?” Anzu interrupted, surprised.

“Well…I don’t think so. Not the way we would do it today,” Yuugi explained. “But Atem was really good at clearing his…our…mind before important Duels. He said it’s like standing in a river and watching leaves float past. You know they’re there but you don’t have to pick each one up and inspect it.”

Atem had liked rivers and streams and clean water, using the imagery frequently in speech. He’d also very much liked to have a long bath before Duels when he could manage it - a puzzling habit that Yuugi indulged, because who could question his pre-Duel rituals with a win record like that?

In one of his many late-night deep dives into Egyptology, Yuugi had finally made the connection to ancient Egyptian purity rituals associated with heka. He wished he’d been able to ask Atem about it, during that very brief period where Atem had his memories back and he and Yuugi were still able to talk.

There was no place to take a bath around here, so Yuugi would have to content himself with mental river metaphors. As usual, grasping at shadows, making do with a pale imitation of what he actually wanted.

“Okay, that makes sense.” Anzu hummed thoughtfully. “How do we know when our minds are clear? What do we do then?”

“I don’t know,” Yuugi admitted. “Maybe we’re looking for something. A place, or a feeling.”

They descended into silence.

“Yuugi,” Anzu whispered. “There’s a really annoying bird distracting me.”

Yuugi knew exactly what she meant. Whatever that bird was, it had the shrillest call he’d ever heard, and it was pulling him out of his meditation roughly every forty-five seconds.

“Accept the bird,” he said, trying to sound wise. Anzu nodded.

After another few seconds of silence, the bird made its loudest, shrillest cry yet, ending in an indignant squawk.

“Shut up!” Anzu yelled at it, shaking her fist.

Forty-five seconds passed, and it didn’t make another sound.

“Huh,” Anzu said. “Maybe that’s part of my magic power. Talking to birds.”

“Anzu,” Yuugi pleaded. “Focus.”

“Right, right. Focusing.”

After what felt like an hour, Yuugi was on the verge of giving up. He felt like he was getting pretty good at letting his thoughts drift past, but he didn’t know what to do after that.

“Anzu,” he said.

“I know,” she replied grumpily. “I’m stuck too. I feel kind of relaxed but nothing else.”

They thought for a minute, then Anzu brightened. “Hey, I’ve got an idea!”

Yuugi smiled. “Let’s hear it.”

“At Juilliard,” Anzu explained, “we did lots of warm-ups before each dance class, to get our muscles going. But also we did things like yoga. I had this teacher who felt like it was really important to be connected to both your mind and your body before dancing, and she was right! In her classes I always felt more connected to the music.”

“I see,” Yuugi said thoughtfully. “That makes sense to me. So you think maybe we have to connect with our bodies, too?”

“Right,” Anzu said. “Let’s do it together, I can talk you through it. Close your eyes.” Yuugi obeyed her. “First, try to feel your feet where they’re planted on the ground. Take a deep breath, and try to push the breath all the way down to your toes.” They took a deep breath together. “Okay, now think about the things you can feel against your body. Your clothes, your hands resting on your legs...”

As Anzu talked, Yuugi at first felt uncomfortably aware - of the breeze in his hair, the sound of water from the river nearby, how his palms felt cupped against his knees. But soon enough the discomfort passed and he felt strangely solid. Grounded.

“Now we’ll try to clear our minds again,” Anzu said, and lapsed into silence.

It was easier this time, to let the thoughts go by. Yuugi felt like a stone planted in the river of his mind, solid and immovable, and the sunshine against his face wasn’t a distraction but a buttress.

He felt something brush against his mind.

It wasn’t inside his mind, but rather a featherlight touch as if from a curious passerby. Whatever it was didn’t linger.

Yuugi’s eyes shot open. “What was that?” he gasped.

“You felt it too?” Anzu said, opening her eyes as well.

“Yeah. It was like-”

“So warm-”

“What?”

“You know,” Anzu said. “The pool?”

“Oh.” Yuugi blinked. “I didn’t feel that. I felt a thing brush past me. My mind, that is. Kind of like...a cat, or something.”

Anzu blinked back. “I felt like I found a pool full of warm water that I was almost able to dip my hand into.”

“Woah.”

“Woah.”

They stared at each other for a minute. They were doing it. Magic. Without Paya, or the Sennen Items, or anything but their own minds.

“Hi guys! How’s the meditating?” Eri’s cheerful voice came from behind them. Yuugi twisted around to look at her.

“Is that...” Anzu said.

Eri hefted the large bird carcass dangling from her left hand. An arrow sprouted from its side. “What? It’s a bird. It was really loud, so it was easy to track it down. We can eat it for lunch today.”

Yuugi and Anzu exchanged glances as Eri flopped down next to them. “So...the target practice went well?” Anzu said.

“I hit one thing,” Eri said proudly, “and it was an edible thing. I’m gonna call that a victory.”

“Good job, Ricchan,” Anzu said, patting her on the head. Eri accepted the praise happily. “I wonder how Jounouchi and Honda are doing?”

“They’re doing great!” Eri said. “I climbed a pillar and secretly spied on them for a while so Kaiba-kun wouldn’t see me and chase me away. They look really cool with their weapons, and Jounouchi-kun even managed to land a hit on Kaiba-kun! How about you guys?”

“I think I found my magic!” Anzu said proudly.

Yuugi bit his lip. “I think my magic...found me?”

After Yuugi had explained the strange encounter in more detail, Eri and Anzu stared at him, wide-eyed. “So...it’s a living thing?” Eri said.

“Well, mine kind of felt like that, too,” Anzu said. “Just...within me, I guess.”

“I keep thinking about something Paya told me,” Yuugi admitted. “I have no idea what it means, but it’s really stuck in my head.”

“Tell us,” Anzu urged.

“She said, shadows are different from true darkness, because shadows cannot exist without light,” Yuugi recited, the words burned into his brain. “Find the place between light and dark, and go there.”

“The place between light and dark,” Eri said slowly. “This is what she told you about Sheikah magic?”

“Oh!” Anzu exclaimed. “Of course. Eri-chan, you must know lots of things about the Sheikah.”

“Sort of,” Eri replied. “Their lore has always been kind of mysterious. They’re a tribe who historically serves the Royal Family as protectors, even being buried with them to watch over them in death. Impa has been reincarnated several times, always as Princess Zelda’s guardian.” Eri thought for a moment. “They have a Shadow Temple, but not in this world - in another one.”

“What’s the Shadow Temple like?” Yuugi asked.

Eri frowned. “It’s not a good place. It was used for torture. From what I understand the Sheikah abandoned it a long time ago, and renounced everything it stood for. But it was...hmm. It was really heavy on illusion magic, kind of like...what’s that card you like?”

“The Dark Magician,” Anzu and Yuugi said in unison.

“Of course,” Yuugi said. “Shadow magic and illusory magic are closely tied in both of our worlds, even the same in many cases. But why...” he paused. “Why isn’t my magic inside me like Anzu’s is?”

“Well...if Paya was talking about a place,” Anzu said, “then the Sheikah must have to go somewhere to get their magic. Kind of like...summoning the Shadow Realm for a dark game, right?”

“Right,” Yuugi said thoughtfully. “All shadow magic in our world comes from the Shadow Realm. You either go there, bring it to you, or borrow its powers briefly using the Sennen Items. But it’s not inside you. That makes sense.”

“So does the Shadow Realm exist in Hyrule, too?” Anzu said.

Yuugi shook his head. “I thought about that. I think it’s its own dimension independent of here or Earth - the question is just where you can access it from. And I just don’t think it’s possible to get there anymore without the Sennen Items.”

“Well, you were able to access some kind of place,” Eri pointed out. “When you did that weird shadow hopping thing with Paya.”

“That’s right,” Yuugi mused.

“Try going there again and staying for a bit longer,” Anzu suggested.

Yuugi nodded, and focused his attention on the shadow cast by a corroded old barrel. This time it was much easier to focus in and find that slim, indistinct boundary between dark and light.

He was able to stay for a few seconds longer this time. It was difficult to halt the forward momentum created by his leap into the barrel’s shadow, but he managed to slow himself down just enough that he was suspended for a moment. That was long enough to realize that he was not flying through the air but instead treading something thicker, like water or very soft sand. The space around him wasn’t as dark as he’d thought the first time he’d passed through. It in fact carried tinges of purples and reds, with just a hint of a golden glow pushing upwards from somewhere far, far below him.

The girls both exclaimed in surprise and amazement when he popped back into Hyrule, alighting neatly on the balls of his feet.

“What was it like?” Eri demanded, looking possibly even more excited than he was.

Yuugi tried to describe it in as much detail as he could - the murky haze, the strange thickness of the air, the shades of colour he hadn’t been able to see previously, the little black fragments floating through the air like ash.

“There was just barely enough light to see, so everything seemed really indistinct. The atmosphere was...kind of like the very end of a sunset,” Yuugi said, unsure if he was accurately giving word to his thoughts.

“Twilight,” Anzu supplied.

Eri looked from one to the other. “Wait, what?”

“Twilight,” Anzu repeated. “Sorry, I used tasogare, which is an older term that’s less common - you might know yuugure or hakumei instead.” Anzu loved to read historical fiction, and sometimes romantic feudal Japanese slipped into her speech.

“Oh, um, I’ve seen tasogare in books before, it’s not that...” Eri trailed off, thinking. “I was just remembering that thing Paya said. The place between light and dark. For some reason it’s calling to mind something Princess Zelda said in one of the previous games. I think it was...Shadow and light are two sides of the same coin, one cannot exist without the other,” Eri quoted. 

“That’s very similar, isn’t it?” Yuugi said.

Eri nodded, the gears in her brain clearly churning. “Uh huh. And in this case, Princess Zelda was talking about...” Eri looked between Yuugi and Anzu, stunned. “A place called the Twilight Realm.”

“Huh?” Anzu and Yuugi blinked.

“In the games, there’s this place,” Eri said. “It’s a world of spirits that live in a perpetual twilight, it’s right next to Hyrule...you can almost touch it sometimes, at dusk. If you stay there for too long, you become a spirit too. But Link...used to be able to pass through sometimes, and borrow power from there, to use in this world.”

“The Twilight Realm,” Yuugi repeated, and as soon as he did, it felt right. “That’s where I went. I know it is.”

“Wow,” Eri said. Her eyes were enormous and it looked like her brain was frying in her skull. “Wow. The Sheikah...use Twili magic.”

“Incredible!” Anzu said, clapping her hands. “Yuugi, do you think you can try one more time? Is it safe?”

“I think so,” Yuugi said.

It was easier to find now, even without shadow-hopping; in fact, now that he was aware of the Twilight Realm, it really did behave like a cat, languidly pressing up against the edges of his mind and making itself known. He knew now that he had to go towards it, and he did.

Yuugi encountered a little resistance, like trying to walk through a very thick patch of spiderwebs; the boundaries of the Twilight Realm clung to him, pulling him in, but wouldn’t quite let him past whatever was guarding the entry.

I’m here as a friend, he thought to the Realm, or maybe to its inhabitants. Whatever was listening to him. Just passing through.

He reached forward with his hand, and the Realm finally admitted him, allowing his arm to slip through the barrier. When he opened his eyes, his hand was black.

Anzu and Eri gasped. Yuugi just stared.

It didn’t feel like anything was wrong. In fact, it felt like he was wearing a very smooth glove. He poked at the inky blackness with his other hand, and it gave way a little. It was soft and velvety, the temperature neither warm nor cold.

He was holding pure shadow.

As soon as it had come, the shadow retreated, receding into a small point on his hand and then popping out of existence.

“That,” Eri breathed, “was so fucking cool.”

When they arrived back at the camp, Jounouchi and Honda were sprawled on their backs side-by-side, laughing and talking excitedly. Kaiba was nowhere to be seen.

“How’d it go?” Anzu called.

“We’re badass,” Jounouchi yelled back. “I’m telling you. You shoulda seen this guy.” He punched Honda’s shoulder. “Like a tank.”

“And this guy is a true barbarian!” Honda crowed. “That axe is nothing to sneeze at! How’d the magic tricks go?”

“Anyone get hurt?” Anzu asked brightly, seemingly over her earlier moral dilemma. “I wanna try it out again.”

As they watched Anzu work on a bruise spreading across Honda’s shoulder, Yuugi noticed that her magic really did look like water in some ways. It lapped gently at the edges of the bruise like waves against a seashore and spilled from between Anzu’s fingers with a sparkle that reminded him of sunlight on a pond.

“So pretty,” Eri sighed. “How are you doing that, exactly?”

Anzu thought for a moment. “Well, you know how there’s that pool of water in my mind, right?”

Eri and Yuugi nodded along, but Jounouchi and Honda - who hadn’t been there for any of the magical discoveries - were already quite lost.

“It’s like...” Anzu looked down at her hand. “Like I’ve reached in to take some, and when I put it on a wound, it’s just trying to smooth out all the rough edges it can. I don’t know that I have a lot of control over it exactly, but...the magic seems to know what to do.”

“Whatever it’s doing, it’s doing a damn good job of it,” Honda said appreciatively. They could see the edges of the bruise purpling, yellowing, and fading all in the space of seconds.

“What about you, Yuugi?” Jounouchi said. “Show us what you’ve got.”

Summoning the shadows was easier yet the second time around, and Yuugi even managed to get them to retract from a glove until a pulsating ball sat in the centre of his hand, radiating waves of dark smoke that quickly dissipated as they rolled off the edge of his palm.

“Impressive,” Kaiba said from behind them, returning from wherever he’d been off skulking around. “Can you do anything useful with that?”

The shadow ball sputtered out of existence. “I guess I could throw it at an enemy,” Yuugi said. “I’m not sure what would happen.”

Kaiba shrugged. “Well, at least two of you were practising.” He glared at Eri. “Just because you’re high up doesn’t mean you’re not incredibly conspicuous.”

“I was only spying for a little while,” Eri argued. She stood up and shook the bird carcass directly in his face. “Look. Target. Practice.”

Kaiba pushed the carcass away with a disgusted expression and stalked off.

Honda raised an eyebrow. “Did it ever occur to you that waving dead animals in his face probably isn’t the best way to get on his good side?”

“That had never occurred to me,” Eri deadpanned. “Now let’s cook this noisy motherfucker.”

While Jounouchi and Honda built a fire and then let it burn down to embers, Yuugi helped Eri pick the bird clean of feathers. Eri sorted the feathers into piles by size and tied them together with lengths of twine, and then they gutted the carcass with her shortsword.

“We can eat this,” Eri said, cheerfully picking out the gizzards and other organs, “and this, and this...oh, this is really good for soup...” Yuugi started to get grossed out when Eri mused at length on whether they should try to save the blood and let it congeal, but he made it through, and soon enough the bird’s carcass was roasting on a spit over the fire.

“Where did you get that?” Jounouchi said. Eri had produced a very large cooking pot from...somewhere. It was cast-iron and looked heavy.

“Paya gave it to me,” she shrugged. “It fit in my pouch.” Eri had more confidence in the pouches than the rest of them combined, and had been busily stuffing every neat thing she laid eyes on into her pack as they journeyed. She lifted the pot into the fire and started dumping in the organs, humming to herself all the while. Yuugi took it upon himself to cut up some wild vegetables and herbs he’d collected and add them to the pot as well, grateful that they had at least one cooking utensil with them to go along with the set of sturdy camping bowls Impa had packed.

Soon enough they were all enjoying roast bird. Even Kaiba deigned to sit with them. Once they’d all eaten their fill, Yuugi took over food prep - Eri's talents were solely in butchering, not in cooking - and put the rest of the carcass in the pot with the organs, vegetables and herbs to start a lovely fragrant soup that would be ready in a few hours for dinner.

After lunch, Yuugi, Anzu and Eri watched as Jounouchi and Honda sparred under Kaiba’s brusque guidance.

“Control your swings,” he barked at Jounouchi. “You’re wasting energy. You only need to swing hard enough to make an impact, the axe will take care of the rest.”

Jounouchi actually listened to him, and his next swing was so controlled that he was able to pull out of it in time to block Honda seconds later.

“Wow,” Anzu said, pretending to wipe a tear from her eye. “Look. Our Jou, listening and taking direction, from Kaiba-kun no less. I feel like a proud dad.”

Kaiba heard her and spun around, sending a glare their way. “Do you three not have anything better to do?”

“Like what?” Anzu retorted cheekily.

Kaiba rolled his eyes. “Go run laps.”

“Why?” Eri was horrified.

“Because,” Kaiba said, in his long-suffering way, “I’m assuming there will be points in this little adventure where you idiots will need to run for your lives, and it would be a good idea to prepare for that eventuality.”

More to escape further lectures than out of any desire to actually listen to Kaiba, they wandered away up the Promenade.

“Running is boring,” Eri complained, kicking a rock petulantly. “Doesn’t climbing count as cardio?”

“Well, not really,” Anzu said reasonably. “Anyways, Kaiba-kun is right. You two need to work on your stamina.”

It wasn’t offensive coming from her - as a ballerina, Anzu knew plenty about physical stamina. She examined them critically for a moment, eyeing Yuugi’s scrawny frame and Eri’s grad-student pallor. “But we don’t have to run. What about something more interesting?”

“Like what?” Eri said suspiciously.

“Dance warmups.”

Yuugi and Eri exchanged glances, grinning. Yuugi possessed all the physical grace of a newborn elephant, but that sounded like much more entertaining cardio.

Later, when they returned to camp sweating and out of breath, Kaiba didn’t ask them specifically if they had been running laps, and they didn’t volunteer any information to the contrary.

Chapter Text

Chapter Five: Tactica

Kaiba had deemed Jounouchi and Honda more-or-less capable of not getting killed immediately in a fight, so they decided to get moving again early the following morning. As it would happen, there was a gang of bokoblins lying in wait about two hours down the road, just begging for a test of the group’s nascent fighting skills. This battle went significantly better than the last, and was over in a matter of minutes.

“That bit of shadow magic was...” Anzu trailed off, lost for words.

“Freaky,” Jounouchi supplied. Anzu whacked him.

“Ow! Are you a healer or what?”

“You’re making him feel bad,” Anzu chided. Yuugi sighed and pulled his arms tighter around his knees, crouched a short distance from the dead bokos.

He hadn’t known what exactly to do with the shadow ball he summoned, so he’d just...lobbed it, and hoped for the best. Despite Yuugi’s total lack of a pitching arm it had made a beeline for the nearest bokoblin and had promptly spread out to cover the thing’s entire face. The bokoblin was blinded, possibly suffocating, and squealing in terror until Honda had run it through and put it out of its misery.

“It’s okay, Yuugi,” Honda said, patting his shoulder. “I was gonna kill it anyways.”

“I know,” Yuugi groaned. “It just threw me off a little.”

“You gave me some great advice my first time healing,” Anzu reminded him. “You told me to focus on what I wanted my magic to do. Maybe you can take a second to focus before throwing it next time.”

Eri looked up from the bokoblin corpse she was currently looting. “What do you want it to do, Yuugi-kun?”

“I don’t know,” Yuugi admitted. “Just not...that.”

“That could come in handy later,” Kaiba said practically. “No use being squeamish about it.”

“Um, speaking of squeamish,” Honda said. “Eri-chan, what the fuck are you doing?”

Eri had her shortsword hilt-deep in the thing’s stomach, sending an absolutely putrid smell wafting up and out. “Disembowelling,” she said blithely, not seeming to register the horror on her friends’ faces.

“Yeah, uh, we got that,” Jounouchi said, pinching his nose. “Missing is the why.”

“Oh, its guts have useful properties for elixirs,” Eri said, sounding more excited about a pile of intestines than anyone had any right to. “The horns too. Anyone wanna help me cut those off? No?”

While Eri finished enthusiastically relieving the dead bokoblins of various body parts, and Honda and Jounouchi tried not to look at what she was doing whilst cleaning off their weapons, Anzu moved over to sit down next to Kaiba. “Ne, Kaiba-kun,” she said.

“Hm?” Kaiba, too distracted to be acerbic with her. He was riffling through his pouch, seemingly taking inventory of its contents.

“Can you teach me to use a sword?”

That caught his attention. “No,” Kaiba growled in exasperation. “For the last time. Were you not listening when I told-”

“Yes, yes,” Anzu said. “You told Eri she couldn’t touch her sword until she’d practised more with the bow. But I don’t have a bow. What if I have to fight?”

“You won’t,” Kaiba said firmly. “That’s not your job.”

“But wasn’t it Kaiba-kun that said we should all be prepared to run for our lives? Shouldn’t I be prepared to defend myself too, in case something goes very wrong?”

Kaiba thought about that for a long moment. The idea of Mazaki Anzu fighting wild monsters was ludicruous at first blush, but…he’d seen her pull off some pretty athletic feats, not to mention all but daring the Rare Hunters to drop a gigantic shipping crate on her head. She had all the ingredients for a capable fighter. Not to mention, Kaiba admired preparedness and initiative both.

“I suppose,” Kaiba said slowly. “No swords, though. Honda and Jounouchi have some existing latent skills, but without those it would take months for an amateur to get to a point where a sword would be more danger to an enemy than it would be to you.”

“I understand,” Anzu said, trying to communicate through her tone that she was taking him seriously. It seemed to work. He regarded her for a moment, and then stood up and motioned for her to follow him.

“Should I find a stick or something to use?” Anzu asked, trotting after him.

“No,” Kaiba said. “You’re untrained with weapons and at a height disadvantage, so we’re going to work with that.”

Anzu made an offended face at his back. “What does that mean?”

Kaiba turned around, smirking. “It means judo.”

As the day passed, an odd sort of feeling settled over the group. Though they had had plenty of fighting practice in the morning with assorted gangs of bokoblins dropping in on them, for some reason the last stretch of the Lanayru Promenade was strangely quiet; no bokos waiting in the wings, and even the sounds of birds, squirrels and insects seemed dampened. The air felt charged with something none of them were able to pin down.

Soon enough, the last gate of the Promenade was upon them. It was entirely unremarkable, smaller even than the preceding arches over the walkway, if slightly more intact. Beyond the gate, the constricting cliffs that had shaded them for the past two days opened back up. The scenery they revealed was mostly unremarkable. Rocky foothills, dotted with sparse trees and cut through with a winding dirt path. Of more interest was the enormous, hulking shape in the distance: Mount Lanayru, with its peak wreathed in stormclouds.

They sat down for lunch, earlier than they might have otherwise. It just felt like a good time to take a break. The air was getting colder, and there was something that felt almost like reluctance at the idea of continuing on into the foothills.

“Dude,” Honda said delicately. While the rest of them enjoyed leftover cold stew, Eri had built a fire nearby and brought forth the heavy iron cookpot once again. She was crouched over it, staring at a mess of…something, that she’d dumped in. “That smells vile,” Honda chided her. “I am eating here.”

“Dé-so-lée,” Eri sing-songed, not sounding particularly sorry at all. There was a disgusting wet squelch as she poked at the bottom of the pot with a wooden ladle.

“Come on, man,” Jounouchi sighed. “The hell are you doing over there?”

“Elixirs,” Eri said cheerfully, now mashing around whatever was in the cauldron in earnest. “No idea what I’m doing, though. I’m just gonna cook it for a while.”

“I doubt that even works here,” Kaiba said, helpful and supportive as always. “Magic potions? Give me a break. That sounds more like a game mechanic than anything relevant to the real world.”

Since Yuugi was still harbouring some leftover relief that Kaiba had actually decided to come with them rather than barreling off to Hateno Village by himself, he very magnanimously held his tongue and refrained from reminding Kaiba that Yuugi and Anzu had both performed literal magic today, multiple times, in the real world.

Anzu seemed to be thinking the same thing. She opened her mouth, ready to argue, then sighed and thought better of it. “Well, what’s the harm in trying?” she said instead.

The harm was that the air was filled with a foul, loathsome smell while Eri’s evil concoction bubbled away, and finally even she was overcome and took it off the fire. “Er…it’s not supposed to look like that,” she admitted.

It didn’t look like anything that should be allowed to exist in nature. But, Eri pointed out, the liquid had changed composition in a rather unexpected way. She bottled up some of the abomination and stuffed it in her pouch for later examination.

Then, there was no more dawdling or procrastination to be done. They had to press on.

Jounouchi finally put voice to the reluctance as he finished the last bites of his stew, letting his spoon clatter into the empty bowl. “Hey...anyone else got a strange sense of impending doom right now?”

“Yes,” the rest chorused in relief.

“The hell is it?” Honda asked, shuddering and glancing over each shoulder. “It just feels kinda...sinister.”

Eri frowned and looked up from scrubbing out the cookpot to peer ahead through the gate. “As far as I know, there’s just an empty field through there. I kind of skipped this area, to be honest...”

“How did you get up Mount Lanayru, then?” Yuugi asked.

Eri laughed sheepishly. “Uh...climbed up the wrong side of the mountain. Fell and died a lot of times, then powered my way up with stamina elixirs and stuff.”

“God forbid you play a game the way it’s designed,” Kaiba said in disdain.

“Oh my god,” Anzu said faintly, stunned at the hypocrisy as she reflected on all the times Kaiba had flagrantly defied the rules of traditional Duel Monsters to the point of summoning literal Gods. “I cannot believe you.”

“That’s how the game is designed.” Eri made a face at him. “It’s an open-world game that rewards creativity. You know there’s a twenty-seven minute speedrun-”

“Spare me,” Kaiba cut her off. “Could you just focus for once in your life and think about what might be through that gate?”

Eri rolled her eyes at him, and then lapsed into thought for a moment.

Yuugi was deep in thought as well. He had the beginnings of an idea brewing in his mind.

“Uh, fuck,” Eri said after a few minutes’ intense concentration. “I just can’t remember what’s in this area. Maybe, like, a gang of lizalfos or something?”

“The hell’s a lizalfos?” Jounouchi said.

“Armed bipedal lizards,” Eri explained. “They’re not that tough, but they’re fast. Pretty smart, too. They can actually use their weapons properly, unlike bokoblins.”

“Peachy,” Jounouchi muttered.

“How do you remember every stupid lore detail of this entire series but not have any idea what enemies are in a given area?” Kaiba lectured. “Typical RPG fan. No appreciation for statistics or mechanics, just busy obsessively curating fansites listing the characters’ favourite colours-”

“I just listed a fighting mechanic,” Eri shot back in disbelief. “Can you not understand words unless they have numbers to go with them? I bet you’re the kind of person who takes down a raid boss and then, like, ragequits their entire guild when they get screwed by the loot table, complaining about everyone else’s DPS the whole time-”

“Better than being the idiot dragging down the group with low DPS because they can’t understand armour stats well enough to actually be properly equipped for a raid-”

“Are you guys,” Anzu sighed, “seriously fighting about MMOs right now. Seriously?”

“No, no, keep going,” Honda said, amused. “I wanna see who wins.”

Eri and Kaiba kept arguing right over them. “You know, it’s kind of stunning that you call us nerds and dweebs all the time, when you literally just uttered a sentence containing the words DPS and armour stats-”

“I’m the CEO of a gaming company, you idiot-”

“Fight, fight, fight-” Jounouchi chanted under his breath, pumping his fists in time.

“I have an idea,” Yuugi said suddenly.

No one heard him.

“Being the CEO of a gaming company actually doesn’t preclude you being a nerd, in fact, probably the opposite-”

“The word is meant to connote a pathetic basement-dweller with no practical life skills, which you should be familiar with as a grad student-”

Yuugi leaned over and whispered something to Anzu.

“Ooh, good one, the guy who practically dropped out of high school mocking someone for having a higher education-”

“Fight, fight, fight-”

“Would you shut the fuck up, Jounouchi-”

“YUUGI HAS AN IDEA,” Anzu yelled, so loudly that it echoed off the Promenade walls and startled a couple of birds into flight.

Kaiba shot one last glare at Eri, who stuck out her tongue and crossed her eyes in an impressive display of immaturity.

“Sorry, Yuugi.” Jounouchi was immediately contrite, turning his full attention to his friend. “Got carried away. What’s up?”

“Um,” Yuugi said awkwardly. It felt unnerving to have everyone paying such close attention to him, especially when he wasn’t all that confident in what he was about to say. “Well. Earlier today I was practicing going into the Twilight Realm, and I kind of noticed something.”

“What was it?” Anzu encouraged him.

Yuugi chewed his lip, thinking about how to word it properly. “There was this point just before I got all the way into the Twilight realm - like half a second, and I wasn’t all the way in - where I could kind of see you guys, but you looked different. Er...kind of, pale, and green, and ghostly.”

“Ugh,” Jounouchi shuddered. “The hell does that mean? Did you turn us into ghosts by accident or something?”

“Neat,” Eri said, pivoting out of fight mode on a dime. “That sounds like something out of the games. Link could see the spirits of people trapped in the Twilight realm, and they looked just like that…green and creepy. But then again,” she went on, “we’re obviously not trapped in the Twilight. So why can you see our spirits?”

“Well...” Yuugi hummed. “I was wondering if, maybe, when you’re between worlds...you can kind of sense presences. It didn’t feel like I was seeing all of you, exactly - more like I just knew where you were and my brain was filling in the details.”

“Was that what Link’s wolf senses were doing?” Eri mused to herself. “Interesting…”

“Wow,” Honda nodded approvingly. “That’s super useful. So you can sense things without them seeing you first.”

“Yeah! That’s what I mean,” Yuugi said, getting excited despite himself. “And the Twilight realm doesn’t map exactly to this one - there’s nothing in there, no terrain or anything - so I think I can probably see farther there than I can here.”

Kaiba gave Yuugi an appraising look. “So you can scout ahead with minimal risk.”

“I have a couple ideas for staying in that in-between place a little longer,” Yuugi added. “May I try them and see if I can find anything out in the field?”

Jounouchi frowned. “As long as you come right back here if you see something,” he said, wagging his finger. “No risks, you got that? And don’t spend too long on the whole thing. Being in that freaky place can’t be good for you.”

“It’s not,” Eri said. Her face suddenly furrowed with uncharacteristic concern. “Normally humans can last only a few minutes without turning into spirits, but come to think of it, Yuugi-kun’s been in and out quite a bit over the last few days...”

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Yuugi waved them off. “I promise I won’t take any unnecessary risks.”

It took a fair few shadow-hops for Yuugi to get used to the place where he could sense spirits. It was highly disorienting - it was an in-between of an in-between, after all, and it was also a place where denizens of neither world could exist fully, hence why he perceived only the vaguest outlines of their essences. Yuugi made a mental note to ask Eri exactly what lived in the Twilight Realm. Although it didn’t seem to particularly matter - because as far as he could tell the Twilight Realm seemed to contain a whole lot of...nothing. Just endless dusky skies as far as the eye could see.

Yuugi also found that he had to choose between staying in the in-between spot or moving - he couldn’t move in it, only through it on his way someplace else. If he wanted to linger for more than a split second he had to stop moving entirely and focus all of his energy on keeping himself there, as both his body and his mind desperately wanted to be elsewhere, somewhere that made actual sense.

Even as he shadow-hopped farther and farther away, Yuugi could still see the essences of his friends. Interestingly enough, their ghostly forms - which vanished when Yuugi looked directly at them, so he always had to peek from his peripheral vision - didn’t grow smaller as they grew father away; instead they just faded, bit by bit. Neither the Twilight Realm nor the in-between place offered much in the way of spatial placement.

Yuugi suddenly found himself in the middle of the field, dizzy and disoriented, as he failed to make a planned shadow-hop. He felt strangely shaky and insubstantial, like a light breeze would knock him over.

“Damn it,” he muttered to himself. Eri had warned him about being in the Twilight Realm for too long, but he’d gotten carried away, caught up in the excitement of his new discovery.

The creeping feeling of dread that had plagued them all at the gates of the Promenade had now escalated into a crushing, oppressive sensation that seemed to pin him to the ground just as much as his weakness did. Yuugi took a deep breath. This was not good.

Focus, aibou, Atem’s voice said in his mind.

Yuugi knew it was just his subconscious conjuring up what it thought his partner would say, but it emboldened him all the same. He just had to focus for long enough to get back to his friends. Then he could warn them-

About what, exactly? He hadn’t actually seen or sensed anything. Even now, he was a sitting duck - and nothing had taken advantage of that fact.

Focus, Atem’s voice repeated insistently, so Yuugi tried to clear his mind of thoughts. He let them drift by in the river of his mind, and instead directed his brain into a full-body diagnostic. His legs and arms were trembling, ever so slightly; he felt a bit cold; his mind was foggy and confused; his eyes were having some trouble focusing, as if he’d been in a dark basement for hours and someone had just flipped on all the lights.

Okay, Yuugi thought. That’s fine. I can work with this.

His legs and arms were still solid and fully-functional. The cold was bearable. His mind was sharpening ever-so-slightly with the meditation. His eyes would adjust in time. The horrible feeling of doom was just that: a feeling.

With those thoughts anchoring him, Yuugi pushed himself into the shadow of a nearby tree.

Each jump was more and more disorienting, and each time he surfaced it was harder to force himself to go back in. He did it anyways. He had to keep the momentum he’d built up and get to his friends. Yuugi combated his physical and mental unwillingness by hurling himself into each shadow without even a moment to second-guess -

And that’s how he found himself hurtling back into the world of light and straight into Jounouchi’s lap, knocking him over in the process.

“Woah!” Jounouchi cried, struggling with his sudden armful of Yuugi. “Where the hell’d you come from?”

“Jou,” Yuugi sighed as a wave of relief flooded his whole body, then promptly passed out.

He awoke what couldn’t have been more than a few moments later with a cluster of worried faces hovering over him.

“Yuugi,” Anzu sighed in shaken relief. “What happened? My magic - I couldn’t -”

“Not your fault,” Yuugi mumbled, trying to sit up. Honda put both hands on his shoulders and gently pushed him back into Jounouchi’s lap. “I...was in there too long...”

“I told you not to,” Eri said, her voice panicked. “Yuugi-kun. You could have turned into a spirit, do you understand?”

“’M sorry,” Yuugi slurred, blinking as his exhausted eyes tried to process everything happening above him.

He drifted in and out of consciousness for the next hour, as his friends tried various things to restore him. Anzu’s healing magic did nothing; his was an ailment of the spiritual, not the physical. What did end up helping in the end was just Jounouchi wrapping him up in a blanket and holding him in a firm hug for a while, as Honda took one of Yuugi’s smaller hands in both of his larger ones. The warmth of his friends, combined with their soft voices as they talked to him and to each other, helped Yuugi anchor to something as he pulled his scattered consciousness back together. His friends seemed to sense this, and took turns speaking to him, although he had trouble following the exact words.

Eri was telling him a long and slightly absurd children’s story about hockey when he finally came to all the way. It was like pieces of a puzzle clicking together. Everything suddenly made sense, and his body felt connected to his brain in all the right ways. Yuugi couldn’t help but smile and listen to the end of Eri’s story anyways. She was telling it in Japanese, but her French accent came through in full force whenever she hit a loan word.

“I asked God to please send me one hundred million moths, that would eat up my Toronto Maple Leafs sweater,” Eri finished.

“I don’t get it,” Jounouchi said. “What’s wrong with the Toronto Maple Leafs?”

“Dude,” Eri said, aghast. “They’re the Leafs. What isn’t wrong with them?”

“It’s a portrait of French Canadian culture in the 1940’s,” Anzu laughed, pinching Jounouchi lightly. “It’s not about one hockey team or the other.”

“Nah,” Eri said, “It’s definitely about how much the Leafs suck.”

“I can’t believe you have that whole thing memorized,” Honda said, shaking his head in awe.

“Oh!” Anzu cried. “Yuugi’s awake!”

“Yuugi,” Jounouchi said, squeezing him even tighter for a moment before releasing him. “God damn, you scared us.”

“You said you wouldn’t take risks,” Kaiba said angrily. “What the hell did you think you were doing?”

“Kaiba-kun,” Anzu barged in before he could really get going. “You don’t need to lecture him, he’s already faced the consequences.”

“What did you see?” Honda wanted to know. “What’s in the field?” He still wouldn’t let Yuugi’s hands go, and Yuugi was grateful for the warmth.

“Nothing,” Yuugi said, puzzled. “Absolutely nothing.”

There was a brief moment of silence. “But...” Anzu took a long look in the direction of the gently-sloping foothills. “Then what’s with this...creepy feeling?”

“Maybe this place is haunted,” Eri volunteered.

Jounouchi shuddered. “No. Don’t say that, man.”

“If Yuugi says there’s nothing, there’s nothing,” Kaiba said brusquely. “Let’s not waste any more time here. You,” he said, pointing to Yuugi, “are staying out of any fights we end up in today. No going back into that place until tomorrow.”

“Hate to say it, but I agree,” Jounouchi said. “Can you walk?”

Yuugi could walk, but very slowly. It felt like there was an odd delay between his brain sending signals and his muscles receiving them.

“This isn’t going to work,” Kaiba said, after about ten minutes. “Honda. I’ve seen you cart Jounouchi’s corpse around like it was nothing. Just carry him.”

“Why would you phrase it like that-”

“What, Mazaki? Does one’s soul being separated from one’s body not imply that the leftover shell is a corpse?”

Eri looked from Jounouchi to Honda as the latter lifted Yuugi onto his back. “Um, what? What’s this about corpses?”

“Turned out fine in the end,” Jounouchi said with a vague wave of his hand, which neither answered her question nor cleared anything else up.

Just like Yuugi had experienced, the creeping feeling of dread mounted to an oppressive sensation of doom as they made their way through the empty field that connected the Lanayru Promenade East Gate to the Naydra Snowfield. The area itself was unremarkable; just grass and a few scattered copses of trees, with a small lake off in the distance. There was absolutely nothing to warrant the way everyone’s hearts were pounding in anticipation as they walked.

Two things happened very suddenly: The feeling of dread immediately dissipated as they stepped through the passageway to the Naydra Snowfields, and the climate changed. The temperature had been steadily dropping since the East Gate, but not enough to warrant the disorienting difference. Snow was just starting to fall in gentle curtains. There was at least a foot of it coating the ground.

“Woah,” Honda said, looking back and forth between where they were going and where they’d come from.

“No one mentioned snow,” Anzu complained, rubbing her arms. She’d spent a few winters in New York and it had only made her even more grateful to move back to Domino, which only received light dustings of snow a few times a year.

They each dug the spare cloaks Impa had packed out of their bags and fastened them around their shoulders. The relief was immediate at first. The garments were of a sturdy make, well-lined and decent at keeping the damp out.

Unfortunately, as they trekked along across the field of snow, the cold sank in again quickly - biting at their toes, stinging their cheeks, turning their fingers stiff and clumsy.

“How are you feeling, Yuugi?” Honda asked, shifting Yuugi a little on his back. They were lingering at the back of the group, letting the dynamo team of Eri and Jounouchi forge a path through the snow.

“Better every hour,” Yuugi said. “I’m sorry, Honda-kun, I know it must be-”

“It’s no big deal,” Honda laughed. “Kaiba’s right. It’s nothing compared to lugging Jou around.”

“Thanks,” Yuugi said, smiling even though Honda couldn’t see it.

He leaned his head on Honda’s shoulder, letting his friend’s broad back warm him at every point of contact. Honda was so solid, and steady. Even the way he walked with such an even gait, his footing sure on the snowy path. Kaiba had been needling him, but he was right: Honda was good at carrying people. Over, and over, and over, without complaint. It was an under-appreciated job, Yuugi thought. No matter what happened to any of them, even if they were too hurt be useful, Honda would still make sure that no one was left behind.

“Honda-kun,” he said impulsively.

“Yeah? You uncomfortable back there?”

Honda’s first instinct was to ask after Yuugi, as always. Yuugi’s lips pursed as he registered that.

“I’m fine,” Yuugi said. “I just…I was wondering how you’re doing.”

“Cold,” Honda replied wryly, “but I’ll live.”

“No, not that…I meant, in general. In terms of this whole situation.”

Honda laughed again. “Situation?”

“Don’t turn it into a joke,” Yuugi pouted. “Come on. Answer my question.”

“Ah, I dunno,” Honda said. Yuugi could feel him shrugging. “I kind of thought we were done with the crazy supernatural bullshit for a while, but we’re here now, so there’s probably no use getting riled up about it.”

“Well, sure,” Yuugi said, “but…”

“Easier said than done, of course,” Honda finished for him.

A long pause, punctuated by the rhythmic crunch of Honda’s boots in the snow.

“This is so dumb, but...we’ve been here eight days, right? That means I never showed up to pick up Johji from school last week,” Honda said. “It’s like, fine...my sister would obviously come pick him up instead, and it’s just our weekly uncle-nephew hang...” he shook his head. “I dunno, I know it’s stupid. I’ve got other things to worry about, like leaving the auto shop with my dumbass apprentice to manage. But that one little thing about Johji’s been really bugging me.”

“Honda-kun,” Yuugi said. “That’s perfectly understandable. It’s not stupid, and you shouldn’t say so.”

“Thanks, man, I appreciate it.” Honda sighed, dropping into pensive silence again. “…Honestly, I’m a little creeped out because I don’t really understand all this ‘time isn’t linear’ stuff that Kaiba’s always going on about. Even if we find this Princess and she like, sends us back to the exact moment we left, what happens to all the time we spent here? Does it get rewound, but only in our universe?”

“I don’t really know,” Yuugi mused. “Maybe it doesn’t get rewound at all - maybe we’re just traveling back to that point and creating another different outcome to the explosion.”

Honda thought about that for a long moment. “That’s really sad,” he said finally. “I kind of understand why Kaiba’s being such a dick about all this, you know? I guess in our original dimension, there’s still gonna be a future where Mokuba never sees him again. That’s gotta be eating at him.”

“I hadn’t thought about it that way before,” Yuugi said, glancing towards where Kaiba was walking next to Anzu. He felt a powerful wave of empathy rush over him, and tried not to focus on the fact that this was equally true for all of them.

“Hey, can I ask you something?” Honda said.

“Of course.”

“That night, at Impa’s house…I saw you go out to talk to him. Just before he vanished for the whole next day.”

“Mmhm.”

“…What’d you say to him, anyways?”

“Nothing much,” Yuugi said, eyes fixed on Kaiba’s back. “I just...challenged him, a little.”

Jounouchi liked the snow at first. Thought it was kind of fun, even. It only snowed a couple days of the year in Domino City and he was enjoying the novelty. His wolf pelt had kept him warm for the first little while, and the leg wraps helped keep his feet and lower legs dry.

Three solid hours of wading through knee-deep snow during a steadily-worsening snowstorm started to change his mind.

“Jounouchi-kun,” Yuugi fretted. “You can put me down now. It’s really okay.”

“Nah,” Jounouchi said, trying to sound as upbeat as possible. “We’re good, buddy.” He’d taken Yuugi to give Honda a break. Even though Yuugi wasn’t particularly heavy, the added burden didn’t make it any easier to forge through the snow. He’d gradually fallen farther and farther behind Eri, until she was breaking the path all by herself.

“I can walk, it’s fine-”

“Look at Eri, eh? Kid’s like a tank. She just keeps going and going,” Jounouchi said, laughing and inclining his head towards Eri. “Guess she’s pretty used to snow.”

“Guess so,” Yuugi said, realizing that Jounouchi wasn’t going to listen to him. He tried another tack. “Jounouchi-kun...Are you cold?”

“Nope,” Jounouchi said cheerfully. This, at least, was true. He’d long since given the wolf pelt to Anzu, but Yuugi was warm against his back. “You’re like my personal space heater. Oi, Honda. How’s it going in that metal suit, eh?”

“K-kinda wish I had gloves with fingers,” Honda chattered. “Every time I touch the metal with my bare skin it’s freezing.”

“Aw, you shoulda said so,” Jounouchi replied. “Here, take mine. They have a little separate mitten thing that ties on over the fingers. See, clever, ain’t it?”

“S’okay, Jou, don’t need ‘em-”

“Hondaaaa,” Jounouchi said, making a horrible face and putting his cheek right next to Honda’s. “Take the gloves or I’m gonna make you take ‘em.”

Honda eventually consented to take the fur-lined gloves that had come as accessories with Jounouchi’s armour, and then there was no more energy for talking. All they could do was keep pressing forward.

Jounouchi’s thoughts drifted, like they so often did, to his sister. He was trying not to send himself into a doom spiral, but it was hard - like when you tried not to think about a pink elephant in the corner, and then suddenly you couldn’t think about anything else. He didn’t understand half the crap Kaiba was spouting about dimensions and non-linear time and alternate futures and pasts. It didn’t really matter. The point was that he was really, really far away from Shizuka, and he didn’t know for sure if he’d ever get back to her. Back to their little rented apartment near her college - the place that represented everything they’d both worked for.

He watched Eri, still holding the front of the line all by herself, trudging along with her head down. The sight of her walking alone like that, narrow shoulders hunched against the cold…it made something deep in his chest clench.

Shizuka, he thought fervently, I promise, I won’t - I won’t leave you like that. I won’t be like him.

“Jounouchi-kun,” Yuugi said suddenly, his tone so alarmed that Jounouchi stopped dead. “There’s something-”

An awful hissing sound filled the air as the snow in front of Eri exploded.

Eri was fast, but Honda was faster; he was in front of her with his halberd raised before she could even unhook her bow. “Put me down,” Yuugi insisted, “go-”

Jounouchi let Yuugi off his back, and hefted his axe.

The lizalfos was unlike anything they’d ever fought before. It scaled trees and boulders like it was walking on solid ground, using height to its advantage as often as not, and flipped gracefully away from their strikes. Eri hadn’t been kidding. It was fast as hell, often completing a strike and leaping away before its victim could manage more than a glancing block. Kaiba ended up being the one to take the brunt of its ire, while Honda positioned himself in front of Yuugi and Anzu, and Jounouchi just tried his best to keep up with it.

“What a disaster,” Honda muttered grumpily, after Kaiba had finally managed to distract it for long enough that Jounouchi could sneak up behind it and bludgeon it with his axe.

“Worse than that,” Kaiba spat, wiping his sword clean in the snow. “A fucking disgrace.”

“Isn’t that a little dramatic, Kaiba-kun?” Anzu said with a frown. “We beat it-”

“Barely,” Kaiba interrupted. He glared at Jounouchi. “What the hell happened to those drills I taught you? What do you think you were doing out there?”

“It was fast,” Jounouchi argued, “I didn’t have time to think about drills-”

“That’s not the point!” Kaiba exploded. “You idiot! The point of drills is that you don’t have to think about them, they’re ingrained and form the basis of your technique. If they’re not ingrained, you’re not practicing enough!”

“I practice every goddamned day!” Jounouchi yelled back, kicking the lizalfos’ corpse towards Kaiba. “Sorry I’m not a spoiled brat with a rich dad who paid for kendo lessons! Fuck!”

Kaiba’s fists clenched at his sides, his face darkening with rage.

“Woah,” Eri said, “okay, we’re getting a little out of hand here-”

“And you,” Kaiba rounded on her. “How did you not manage to land a single shot? Utterly. Fucking. Pathetic. It’s no wonder you fail at everything you try.”

“Kaiba!” Honda said loudly, but Kaiba wasn’t done. He pointed at Yuugi.

“And of course we didn’t have any ranged support, because you kept going with your stupid magic when you were expressly told not to, and now you’re going to be useless until God knows when-”

That was it. Jounouchi could take Kaiba’s bullshit - well, sort of - but attacking Eri and Yuugi for no goddamned reason was too far. Jounouchi stepped towards Kaiba and shoved him so hard that he nearly fell backwards into the snow.

“That’s enough!” he roared. “I don’t know who the fuck gave you the impression you were in charge here, but-”

“Stop it,” Anzu said, “please-”

“You know what, Kaiba?” Honda cut in hotly. “We’ve all been pretty damned tolerant of you, but if you’re going to act like this, you can just go to hell-”

“Tolerant?” Kaiba said dangerously, regaining his balance and taking a menacing step towards Jounouchi, “without me, you’d be-”

“All of you just shut the fuck up!” Anzu screamed, so shrilly that it pierced through the air and made everyone flinch.

“God, would you all just shut up,” Anzu repeated, her voice bordering on hysterical. “Look at all of you, taking the smallest excuse to just start fighting like a bunch of kids on the playground. It’s sad. We all know Kaiba-kun can be an ass, but he’s also spent most of the past week teaching you two every morning and night,” she said, pointing at Jounouchi and Honda. “You,” she said, whirling towards Kaiba, “have to understand that berating people isn’t the way to motivate them. That might work at your company - actually, I highly doubt it works as well as you think it does - but here it’s just going to slow us down. Get. Your. Act. Together.”

There was a long silence.

“Well?” Anzu said, crossing her arms.

“Sorry I told you to go to hell,” Honda muttered.

Jounouchi sighed, long and aggrieved. “Shouldn’t’ve lost it like that.”

Anzu fixed Kaiba with a menacing glare.

“What, Mazaki?” Kaiba said flatly.

“We’re not moving until you apologize too,” Anzu said, her tone switching on a dime - so friendly and sweet that the effect was terrifying. “None of us. We’ll camp here if we have to.”

Kaiba pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger and looked heavenward, as if praying for a bolt of lightning to come out of nowhere and kill him.

“I wasn’t wrong,” he said finally. “There are massive gaps in our training that could get us killed.”

“Jounouchi, why don’t you set up the bedrolls,” Anzu said pleasantly. Jounouchi paused for a moment, shot Yuugi and Honda a scared look, and then slowly reached into his pouch and started pulling out his bedroll.

“For fuck’s sakes,” Kaiba muttered. “I get it. I didn’t approach the topic properly. Can we go now?”

Anzu glared at him for a long moment. Apparently deciding that that was as close to an apology as they’d get - in fact, the closest any of them had ever heard from him - she turned and started marching back up the path.

The rest of the afternoon was beyond tense. Yuugi was obviously very down, and was determined to walk for the rest of the day, even though his steps were still slow and uncoordinated. Eri had insisted cheerfully to Honda and Anzu that she was fine, but she also hadn’t said much else since the altercation.

“What a disaster,” Honda said again to Jounouchi, keeping his voice low. “Holy shit. How did things go so far off the rails?”

Jounouchi sighed. “Fuck. I shouldn’t have brought up his dad, but god damn does it piss me off when he goes after Yuugi.”

“I get it,” Honda muttered. “I lost it too. Can’t believe he said that to Eri. Like, why? What was the point of that?”

“That asshole’s really, really good at finding people’s weak spots,” Jounouchi said darkly. “Even if he doesn’t know ‘em very well. It’s like some kind of sick talent.”

It was hard to tell when exactly the sun went down, shrouded as it was behind the wall of grey clouds and snow, but as the light dimmed to almost nothing they were able to find a rocky alcove to camp in.

“Okay,” Anzu sighed, as they all sat around the fire in utter silence. “We have to talk.”

“We already talked,” Jounouchi groaned, flopping onto his back. “Come on, Anzu, you’re killing me.”

Kaiba scoffed. “What, are you going to make us hold hands and sing around the fire now?”

“Don’t test me or I will,” Anzu snapped. Kaiba shut up immediately. “We can’t be angry at each other like this. None of this is going to work if we don’t trust each other. Jounouchi,” she said. “You need to be able to fight with your back to Kaiba-kun and know that he’ll do his best to protect you, right? And Kaiba-kun needs to be able to rely on Jounouchi and Honda as well. There’s no time in battle to think about whether you trust the other person or not. You just have to do it. Trusting takes practice, just like everything else.”

“How am I supposed to trust him if he takes every opportunity to tear the rest of us down?” Jounouchi said hotly.

“Kaiba-kun,” Anzu broke in, before Kaiba could respond. “He’s asking a legitimate question. Try to dignify it with a proper answer.”

Kaiba huffed an annoyed, growling sigh. “I’m not tearing you down,” he said, not even bothering to keep the disdain out of his voice. “I’m trying to impress the gravity of our situation on you, since apparently you’re all still treating it like a game.”

“Dude,” Honda said. “Just because we’re not all acting miserable twenty-four-seven doesn’t mean we’re not taking it seriously. You’re right, our fighting kinda sucks. But can’t we work together to address it, instead of you just yelling at people and making them feel like shit?”

“And what do you suggest, Honda?” Kaiba said icily. “Since my proven expertise apparently isn’t cutting it.”

“Well,” Yuugi piped up, “I think for starters, we should actually be able to have honest conversations about our weaknesses that don’t devolve into brawling. Kaiba-kun, you were right. I pushed my magic too far and it backfired on me, so I wasn’t able to protect my friends. That was a very important lesson for me.”

Kaiba glared at Yuugi, as if he were playing some kind of mind game.

“Good point, Yuugi,” Anzu said, shooting him an encouraging smile. “You’re right. We really do need to be able to talk about our limitations, and then find out how to work around them. I’m not a fighter by any means,” Anzu continued, “but I’ve spent a lot of time watching the rest of you, and I think our big weakness is that we don’t know how to work as a group. Kaiba-kun, Jounouchi and Honda all have their own fighting experience, from Hyrule and before. We just need to put it all together with some tactics.”

At the word ‘tactics,’ Kaiba seemed to perk up a little. Yuugi noticed immediately and turned towards him. “Do you have any ideas, Kaiba-kun?”

“Are you going to listen to them?” Kaiba asked snidely, even though he very clearly wanted to share.

“Yes,” Jounouchi muttered. “We’ll listen.”

“Honda is our heavyweight,” Kaiba said without further ado. He looked at Honda. “You can take the most hits, so you should get in the way and take them, whenever you can. That allows Jounouchi to focus on attacking - if he actually works hard at his training and progresses, he’ll eventually be able to deal the most damage of any of us.”

“You think?” Jounouchi said, despite himself.

Kaiba rolled his eyes. “You’re a good brawler with plenty of fighting experience and you have the biggest weapon. Don’t fish for praise, it’s sad. Anyways, I’m faster than both Honda and Jounouchi. Both of you should try to stay in a given position if you can, but I’ll be more flexible, especially when we’re fighting multiple enemies. Then we have those two as support.” Here he gestured to Yuugi and to Eri, who had been silent the entire time, sitting on her heels and staring into the distance. “You should complement each other,” he lectured them both. “Coordinate your strategy so that you’re not redundant towards each other or the rest of us.”

“That...that’s really smart, actually,” Honda admitted.

“Obviously.”

“Eri-chan,” Anzu prompted gently, squeezing Eri’s elbow. “We haven’t heard anything from you, yet. Anything you want to say?”

Eri was, in fact, staring at the peak of Mount Lanayru - or what she could see of it behind the thick clouds. “Eh?” She blinked, focusing in on Anzu. “Um, no. Nothing.”

“Not even to me?” Kaiba’s tone was clearly provoking: come on, Morin, he seemed to be saying. Are you angry? Did I get under your skin?

Eri turned to Kaiba, finally. Then she put her hands on her knees, folding her upper body into a respectful bow, the kind Anzu had taught her during her first week in Japan. “Thank you,” she said, “for working so hard to keep us all safe.”

Kaiba watched her for a moment, his expression inscrutable. “Don’t patronize me,” he said finally, and abruptly turned away.

Chapter Text

Chapter Six: Sapientia

“Why do you keep staring up at the mountain?” Honda said. Eri’s eyes had been glued to the sky practically since last night, and it was starting to unnerve him.

“Um…” Eri squinted up at the peak again. “You remember how we crossed from the foothills into the snowfield, and the weather changed, like, super fast?”

“Yup,” Honda deadpanned. “That was a pretty significant thing that happened.” The warmth and sunshine of the Lanayru Promenade seemed like a thing of the distant past.

“So…” Eri pointed up west of the peak, on their side. “Check out the clouds up there.”

Honda followed her gaze. It was a little tricky to pick out, but once he saw it, it was distinctive - the brumous grey sky of the snowfields changed abruptly into clouds that were still grey, but unmistakably stormclouds. It was almost like an invisible line had been drawn through the heavens.

“I think we’re in for another weather change,” Eri said.

Honda looked ahead at the others trudging along in front of them. “Do we warn them yet?”

Eri understood what he was really asking. There wasn’t anything they could actually do about the climate shifts, and it was a toss-up whether telling everyone they’d be waltzing right into a winter storm would help prepare them, or if it would just cast the next few hours in exhausting apprehension. “When we’re closer,” she said.

“Maybe we can hunker down for a bit,” Honda suggested, grasping at any straws other than try to get up and down this mountain before the blizzard knocks us right off.

“I think it’s kind of…a perma-snowstorm,” Eri said miserably. “That’s what I remember from the game, and look what Impa’s marked on the map here.”

Right on top of the mountain in that spiky handwriting, next to the mocking label of ‘MOUNTAIN’ :

‘SNOWSTORM.’

“Oh, boy,” Honda sighed. “Snowstorm. Singular. That’s…fantastic.”

“Well, I don’t remember it being too bad,” Eri tried to reassure him. “I only fell off the mountain a lot because I had Link climbing up a steep rock face with really inappropriate gear. There’s actually a really easy path that goes straight up. It was built for pilgrims, after all.”

Honda’s gaze was still riveted to the stormclouds circling the mountain’s jagged peak. It didn’t look like there was any significant wind. Visibility was good enough that he could see individual trees.

“It’s not a blizzard,” Eri said, reading his mind. And if the group’s sole Canadian felt they weren’t in particular danger, Honda wasn’t going to question that.

“You two quit lagging behind,” a voice boomed from in front of them. “You’re slowing the rest of us down.” Even the mighty Kaiba Seto wasn’t particularly experienced with winter weather conditions, and he was clearly just as tired and cold as everyone else.

Eri had been correct - the hike up Mount Lanayru wasn’t particularly technical. There were stairs most of the way, decayed as they were. And the snowstorm stayed mild enough, even after they breached the startlingly sudden change between climes.

The challenge came from the fact that Mount Lanayru was infested with enemies.

Little screeching bats dive-bombed them every few steps, flapping about their heads and threatening to frost-burn them upon contact. Then at unpredictable intervals came the wet, squelching lurch of barely-sentient blobs of jelly, their wall-eyed gaze barely tracking anything in front of them. Those didn’t really hurt but were annoying as hell, especially when they threatened to knock you off the path.

And of course, there were lizalfos.

Using Kaiba’s strategies and everyone else’s renewed determination to mastering their skills, the next lizalfos went down easier. Yuugi was fully revived from the day before and even managed to imbue a bit of will into his shadow-spells; he’d thrown a shadow bolt with the distinct intention of not blinding and suffocating his enemy, and it had instead caused a percussive blast that knocked the lizalfos out of the air mid-jump. Jounouchi and Honda held to their positions and made a special effort to fight with controlled and disciplined movements. Eri had figured out that her bow was stiffer in the cold and needed a little extra pull to for her shots achieve the same distances as before. And Kaiba even offered a terse congratulations after the fight was over, while Anzu practiced healing on a gash he’d sustained across the length of his forearm.

Around midday, two more lizalfos and a very insistent herd of chuchu jellies later, they were forced to stop and regroup. They discussed their circumstances over lunch as they stewed a couple of wood-pigeons caught the previous day.

“So…I know you said it’s a perma-snowstorm that kinda stays the same all the time,” Jounouchi said, then cursed as the fire started to flicker dangerously yet again. Honda blew on it carefully and added more kindling, willing it to come back to life. “But…isn’t it getting colder? Just me?”

“Not just you,” Yuugi agreed. “There’s more snow falling, too.”

Eri nodded. “Yeah…maybe we’d better go back down and wait it out in case things get really bad.”

“Absolutely the fuck not,” Kaiba scoffed. “And have to fight our way all the way back up here? Let’s just get it over with.”

“You shouldn’t mess with blizzards,” Honda countered.

“This isn’t a blizzard. It’s light snowfall and maybe two degrees colder than it was this morning.”

“It could become a blizzard,” Eri said.

Anzu’s brow was creased in thought. “But we could also be stuck camping in the cold for days waiting for the weather to get better, couldn’t we?”

“That is a possibility,” Eri admitted.

It was difficult to reach a consensus, but in the end it seemed reasonable to press on - Impa had marked a cave that could shelter them at the top of the mountain if things got really bad. Before setting out again, they all carefully wrapped themselves in improvised layers, creating scarves and earmuffs out of strips of cloth. Honda melted and warmed some snow over the fire for them all to drink and insisted everyone keep hydrated.

“Can’t we just eat the snow?” Yuugi said, taking a sip. “Not that the warm water isn’t nice, but...”

“Nope,” Honda said. “If you eat snow then your body has to redirect energy inwards to warm it up. It’s a waste and puts you at risk for hypothermia.”

“Man, how do you two know all this wilderness stuff?” Jounouchi said, shivering.

“I hiked a lot as a kid,” Eri said with a shrug. “Not much else to do in the town where we grew up.”

“I already told you,” Honda said. “Scout leader.”

Anzu raised an eyebrow. “Please tell me you weren’t taking the kids to places where hypothermia was a risk.”

“Okay, you caught me,” Honda said sheepishly. “I’m also kind of obsessed with those survival channels on YouTube.”

After lunch they began the arduous trek up the last stretch of the mountain. The path grew steeper and the stairs more and more decayed, so their pace was roughly half as fast as before. By this point a good portion of the monsters were gone; apparently even the beasts had wisely decided that the mountain’s peak wasn’t worth it.

Finally, after half a day of laborious climbing, the crumbling stairs ended. It was even colder now, and the snowflakes were starting to whirl and eddy in the rising wind.

As they rounded the final bend of the path, enormous crystalline ice formations came into view, some over twenty metres high, forbidding and beautiful as they jutted out of the ground violently and pierced into the stormy sky. As they passed one, Jounouchi glanced over and was startled to see the ice was so clear that he could make out a faint hint of his reflection. The ice formations clustered denser and denser, finally creating a jagged forest that made up Mount Lanayru’s peak.

Hylia’s statue had loomed so tall in the Temple of Time, but here She was dwarfed by the immenseness of the natural phenomena guarding Her spring. That same subtle rainbow shimmer rippled in the air around the statue, glittering in endless prismatic refractions through the ice, beckoning them closer.

Surrounding Hylia’s plinth was a huge pool of crystal-clear water, which cascaded down towards them in waterfalls that bracketed a stone causeway. There were no words as they crossed from snow to stone. The bricks were cracked and some of the pillars lining the pathway had fallen. It was the same eerie feeling that had hung heavy in the air on the Great Plateau. Pilgrims had walked here over a hundred years ago, from pious monks to seventeen-year-old girls hoping for whatever blessings of wisdom the gods could spare as they faced down the uncertainty of their nascent adulthood. None of those people were yet living.

Except for one. A seventeen-year-old girl who had pleaded here for help that never came, just before losing everything.

“So this is the Spring?” Yuugi chattered, squinting upwards.

Anzu squinted too, trying to make out Hylia’s face through the snow and shimmer. “I guess so. Why is Hylia so far away?”

They had mounted a short set of stairs onto a raised dais, but there was still an expanse of shallow, freezing water between them and the pedestal upon which Hylia stood. Through the clear water they could see an inlaid stone path leading to Her plinth, submerged beneath the surface.

“Yo, Hylia,” Jounouchi greeted solemnly, raising a hand.

There was no response other than the wind.

“Come on,” Anzu said. “We came all the way up here. Won’t you talk to us? We’re looking for Princess Zelda and we need your help.”

“Impa said we had to pray, right?” Honda said practically. “Let’s try that.” He folded his hands and bowed his head in prayer.

Anzu and Yuugi mimicked his pose. Jounouchi sighed. “Man, I don’t know how to pray,” he said, squeezing his eyes shut. “What do I say?”

Anzu opened her eyes. “Just ask for her guidance,” she said. “Kaiba-kun, you have to do it too.”

Kaiba rolled his eyes but assumed the position anyways.

Moments slipped by. Nothing happened.

“Ah, fuck,” Eri said.

“Eri-chan!” Yuugi scolded. “This is a sacred place.”

“What’s ah, fuck?” Jounouchi asked, a tinge of hysteria in his voice. “We came all this way and now it’s not working?”

“No, it’s just...” Eri sighed and began unbuckling her belt. “Okay. Ugh. I guess this is the way it’s gotta be, huh, Hylia?” she said sourly to the statue, dropped her cloak, and lifted her tunic over her head.

“What the fuck are you doing,” Kaiba said. Eri ignored him, removing her boots and then her breeches.

“Ack!” Honda slammed his palms over his eyes. “Eri! Put your pants back on! What are you doing?”

This time, Eri answered him. “You gotta go into the Spring to pray. I’m assuming none of you want to do it.”

“Eri-chan,” Anzu gasped. “You can’t!”

“If a tiny seventeen-year-old elf princess can do it, I can,” Eri argued. By this point she was down to her chest wrap and undershorts, bundling her long hair into a bun on top of her head. She put a toe in the water and let out an unholy screech. “Goddamn fucking de câlisse! ”

“You are literally going to freeze and die. I can’t watch this,” Jounouchi groaned, putting his face in his hands.

“Just…put your clothes back on, and we can figure out an alternative-”

“Stoppit,” Eri groused. “I’m trying to work up my nerve. Don’t ruin it.” She stuck one foot in, let out another stream of incomprehensible French-Canadian swears under her breath, and then started a slow march up to the dais.

“How can you stand that?” Jounouchi said, peeking through his fingers.

“It’s not so bad,” Eri replied. “The trick is to-” she suddenly dropped into a kneeling position suddenly, submerging herself up to the waist with a squeak.

“I don’t think I can heal hypothermia,” Anzu fretted, staring at her palms as if she could force them to give up the answers. “Can I heal hypothermia?”

Eri let out an annoyed little ‘oof’ and steadied herself, folding her hands in prayer again.

They waited with bated breath. Minutes slipped by, and again nothing happened.

“Maybe-” Anzu started, and then the water started to glitter. The clouds broke above to admit a single sunbeam, which danced around the statue’s head in iridescent rainbow hues. All at once the snowstorm stopped - literally stopped, snowflakes freezing in place in the air and the wind dying down abruptly to nothing.

Even Kaiba looked around with wide eyes as he took in the surreal scene around them. Yuugi’s heart hammered against his ribcage as he reached out to touch one of the thick, fluffy, suspended flakes. It lazily eddied away as he pushed it with his finger.

“Well met,” a powerful voice echoed, from everywhere around them. It was the same as the one in the Temple of Time, a study in irreconcilable tonal contradictions that was as jarring as it was powerfully comforting, and had the same effect as it had back then: each of them felt a strange wrench deep in their chests, an inexplicable welling of emotion. “Heroes of Hyrule, you are always welcome at my Springs.”

“Hylia,” Honda breathed in relief. “You’re here! Can you help us find Princess Zelda? Um...please,” he added, with a polite bow.

“You are on the right path,” Hylia said, the softer tones in Her voice briefly blanketing the stridency. “You have learned so much since you began your journey. And for this, I deem you worthy of the blessings of the Spring of Wisdom.”

“What does that mean, the right path?” Yuugi said. “So Princess Zelda was here after all?”

“Will you accept my blessings, Heroes?” Hylia’s voice boomed, swirling through their midst with the ferocity of the burgeoning blizzard that was still in suspended animation around them.

The time for questions was clearly over. They all nodded, unable to muster any words.

Each of them felt a warm glow spreading through their chests, and then working its way up to their heads and down each extremity. It was impossible to put to words, but they felt inexplicably stronger, mentally sharper, just more than they had been before. They all looked around at each other with a mixture of confusion, wariness and awe - except Kaiba, who was frowning up at Hylia expectantly.

There is a gift for you here too, Seto, Hylia said, this time not quite aloud but somehow resonating still, though it is not mine to give.

There it was again. That unmistakable, powerful, terrifying sense of divinity, but this time laced with something wild and dreadful and beautiful. Each felt a collective chill down their spines, and the knowledge that something was there. Something enormous. Something ancient.

The outlines of a massive shadow became visible in the turbulent clouds, drawing closer and closer, and as they watched with bated breath it emerged from the cloud cover.

Its sinuous silvery body curled gracefully through the sky with no wings to speak of, with a scaled, armoured back and a serpentine underbelly that was the colour of heather streaked with smoke. Its dorsal ridges were studded with azure gems glittering in a blue so bright it didn’t seem like it should be possible. Electric cyan light radiated from the cracks between its scales and cast an eerie glow into the clouds around it.

A dragon.

It alighted noiselessly on one of the crystalline formations, clutching the ice with its enormous claws. From its head jagged icy crystals protruded. Fierce yellow eyes were framed by distinctive purple lashes, long scaled hare-like ears, and a wild mane cascading down over its neck in long floating clumps that drifted and flowed around its visage, unbound by gravity.

“This is Naydra,” Hylia said. “Please accept its blessing.”

Naydra lowered its head until its bright, intelligent eyes were level with Kaiba. Then it let out a thundering roar.

Naydra’s call seemed to reverberate with the crystals around it, enveloping them all in a keening hum that built to a crescendo as the beast made itself known. It was so loud as to be almost painful. Kaiba held his ground, staring at it in fascination until the dragon’s cry died away into silence.

“Now,” Hylia addressed the rest of the group, “go with our blessings, stronger than before. The gifts we have given you are all things each of you already possessed. I am only helping you to realize them. I will await you at the Spring of Courage.”

Her voice receded all at once, and with its absence the snowflakes started to move again, sluggishly at first. Naydra regarded them for a moment, pinning each of them in turn with its kaleidoscopic eyes. Then it looked skyward, and with one swing of its mighty tail propelled itself upwards into the air as silently as a ghost.

Kaiba watched it go for a long time, until the very last of its immense silhouette was lost to the stormclouds.

“What was that?” Jounouchi said weakly.

“I don’t know,” Yuugi said. “But I feel...different.”

“Me too,” Honda said. “It’s hard to explain.”

Jounouchi flexed, slowly recovering from his awe. It was true. There was a sort of humming vitality buzzing through his veins. His exhaustion from the climb hadn’t vanished exactly, but it felt less heavy; even the cold seemed easier to bear.

Anzu was helping Eri out of the spring, wrapping her in a cloak. “Yes!” she said, unable to contain her excitement. “I don’t know what, exactly, but it feels good.”

Kaiba said nothing, still staring at the clouds Naydra had disappeared into.

“Is there a place around here where we can build a fire?” Honda squinted around. “You know, before Eri dies of hypothermia.”

“Yep,” Eri said, not sounding particularly concerned, even though she was shivering violently. “Impa marked it. Look, behind Hylia.” She tugged her boots on and then led them around the back of the Springs. There a little carved entrance opened up suddenly into a cave, revealing a Shrine and a patch of blessedly dry ground behind it.

They built a fire, piling on the firewood in a desperate attempt to heat up the area as the blizzard slowly picked up in ferocity outside. Eri ducked behind the Shrine to switch out her soaked underwraps for dry ones from her pouch, and then redressed in her full gear.

“So...” Honda shrugged. “We didn’t really get any clues on the Princess, did we.” He had his arms wrapped around himself tightly, but it wasn’t doing much against the chill permeating the cave.

“No,” Yuugi sighed. “The blessing was nice though, whatever it did. Kaiba-kun, you feel it too, right? Even though yours came from the dragon.”

Kaiba didn’t answer him, glowering into the flames instead.

“But Hylia did say we were on the right path,” Anzu pointed out after a moment. “That’s good. It means we just have to keep going according to the plan Impa set out.”

“How long is that gonna take, though?” Jounouchi said, trying to rub some warmth back into Honda’s arms. “We’ve been here more than a week and this is only one stop out of three.”

“Four,” Yuugi pointed out. “If Princess Zelda isn’t at the last Spring and we have to go somewhere else to find her.”

“Fuckin’ hell,” Honda groaned, leaning against Jounouchi’s shoulder. “Our princess better not be in another castle.”

“And we better not have to send Eri into a bucket of ice water again,” Jounouchi said, shaking his head. “How’s our Canadian, anyways?” he teased. Eri was sat dangerously close to the fire, sticking her boots so close to the flames that she looked set to become the next piece of kindling.

“I have found the limits of my Canadian-ness,” Eri said sullenly. “This is it. If I ever have to do this again I’m renouncing my citizenship and becoming an Australian.”

“Why Australia?” Yuugi said.

Eri shrugged. “Might as well stay in the Commonwealth.”

“You’re going to burn your feet off, dummy. Come here,” Anzu said, putting an arm around Eri’s shoulders and pulling her away from the fire.

They all stared at each other for a silent moment, processing what had happened to them and what might happen to them next.

“Well…let’s go to bed,” Yuugi suggested. He cast an eye out at the dimming sky. “There’s not much we can do until morning, so we might as well catch up on some sleep.”

They re-heated and ate the last of the wood-pigeon stew, and while their bellies were still warm they crawled into their bedrolls and huddled in close. Kaiba could not be persuaded to join the pile, apparently preferring to freeze by himself on the other side of the waning fire.

Exhausted, cold, and overwhelmed, it wasn’t long before sleep took them. For once Jounouchi was the last one awake.

Jounouchi wondered, as he watched more and more snow be picked up by the howling winds, if everyone else was feeling the same curl of dread low in their stomachs. Maybe Hylia made everyone feel like that. Maybe the dragon had shaken him up a bit more than he was ready to analyze. Or maybe it was just a natural reaction to climbing a haunted mountain in an alien dimension and then realizing that there were a fair few mountains more to climb, both literal and figurative, before he could go back home.

He curled up against Yuugi’s back and shut his eyes, willing sleep to come. It did, and with it, strange and grotesque dreams; the memory of another golden god, huge and terrible against a vast dark sky.

Kaiba awoke the next morning in an absolutely foul mood.

He didn’t even really know why. Fighting with the dork squad was like second nature to him, and he never felt any particular way about it afterwards. Nothing about the other day’s fight had been much different.

Other than the fact that he’d been arm-twisted into apologizing.

Kaiba did not like apologizing for anything. He believed wholeheartedly in making his decisions and letting them speak for themselves. It wasn’t his fault the rest of them had scrambled eggs for brains and chose to interpret everything he did in the worst way possible. He hated that he was in a position now where he had to play their stupid games or risk never getting home.

The encounter at the Spring had bothered him, more than he’d ever be willing to admit aloud.

If they had been back in their own dimension, an encounter with a dragon would have been - it would have at least made sense in some way, as much as he hated to admit that anything about his apparent past life made sense. At the very least, he’d become accustomed to the idea that because he was somehow associated with a cursed Egyptian priest wearing a stupid hat, dragons were just going to be a part of his life.

Here, he had no past life. Isis wasn’t even around to spout her occult garbage. A dragon - a white and blue dragon, no less - showing up out of nowhere just to interact with him didn’t make any sense. There were no ties.

Kaiba had churned through all of the possibilities in his head last night, and none of them were good. Most of them involved Hylia somehow reading his mind or gathering information on his past and using the dragon to trigger a response in him. Like some kind of sick mind game, the sort so-called gods liked to play in their eternal quest to manipulate and control.

The nerd herd was milling around, packing up all the shit they’d inexplicably managed to strew all over the cave over the past nine hours, when idiocy struck like a bolt of lightning.

“Hey, I’ve got an idea,” Eri said, in that overly-gleeful way that made it clear her idea was going to be very stupid and possibly dangerous.

Jounouchi loved stupid and dangerous ideas, so he brightened immediately. “What is it? Does it involve us getting off this mountain faster?”

“Yes,” Eri said. They high-fived.

“What’s your idea?” Yuugi said, a bit more cautious.

“Instead of climbing down, why don’t we just jump off and paraglide into Hateno?” Eri gestured vaguely towards the south.

To Kaiba’s horror, everyone appeared to be considering it - even Yuugi and Anzu, who could normally be counted on for the barest modicum of common sense.

“Well...the winds are kind of strong up here,” Anzu said eventually, to Kaiba’s great relief.

“That’s true,” Eri replied, undeterred, “but there are a lot of smaller peaks between here and there. If we get blown off course we can just land on one of those and try again from lower down.”

“It would be really nice to get out of the cold,” Yuugi said, and that was when Kaiba knew he had to step in and nip this in the bud.

“No,” Kaiba said flatly.

Jounouchi bristled immediately. “Why not, huh?”

It was so irritating that Kaiba could be a literal expert in something - he had a paragliding license, for God’s sakes - and the idiot brigade still required a detailed explanation every time he disagreed with them. Dunning-Kruger syndrome at its finest. “Because,” he snapped. “This is weather that would be suicide for even an experienced glider to take off in. You’re all terrible. The end result would be your corpses splattered against the side of the mountain. Understand?”

They all had the audacity to look like they were thinking over his words before accepting them. What on earth was there to think about? Had the image of their bodies being pulverized on the rocks not been strong enough?

“Okay,” Yuugi said finally. “Understood. Hey, Kaiba-kun, will you teach us to paraglide better when the weather improves?”

“Hn,” Kaiba muttered.

Impa had impressed upon him that it was his role to keep them all safe, and that he was sorely needed for that purpose. It was a role he desperately hated. He wasn’t even sure why he’d agreed, but he supposed that leaving them all to their own devices with the paragliders probably fell somewhere in the realm of homicide via criminal negligence.

The trek down the mountain started poorly, and only got worse. The blizzard that had begun the previous night hadn’t weakened even a fraction as they slept. It had gotten stronger, if anything.

Eri cast a concerned eye up at the sky. Whatever she saw finally managed to rattle her simple mind. “We need to get down fast,” she said, continuing her charming trend of only saying anything useful long after it had become obvious.

Every step threatened to drive them off the path, the winds shrieking in their ears and directly through their clothing, which had been mediocre shelter from the cold on the way up and now felt like useless tissue paper on the way down. Visibility was only getting worse by the minute.

Really, the only bright side Kaiba could see was that their group seemed to be the only collection of living things on this mountain that were stupid enough to be out in a blizzard. The stupid bouncing jelly monsters huddled in groups, not even bothering to jump out at them; and the only time they saw one of those infernal lizards was in passing. It had somehow gotten itself frozen into a block of clear, smooth ice. Kaiba couldn’t bring himself to muster up any sympathy for the damned thing. Some creatures simply got what they deserved.

There was no talk as they made their way faster and faster down the ruined staircase, walking a dangerous and nerve-wracking highwire between speed and balance. If one of them put a foot wrong, the good outcome would be tumbling down a mountain’s worth of stairs. The bad outcome would be plummeting straight off the edge.

By the time they finally made it to the bottom of Mount Lanayru, the blizzard had intensified into a screaming, blinding, sustained howl of what felt like pure rage. Snow and ice were driving into them at such speed that the impacts could be felt through their clothing. Any exposed skin took a beating. Visibility was now so poor that they could barely even see each other, much less the path ahead.

But it had to be up ahead. That disturbingly sudden wall between climates, where maybe, with a single step, they could leave the entire blizzard behind.

Without any verbal consensus - it was too loud to hear even yelling - they all broke into a run.

Through the mounting snow their legs churned, thighs aching with the intensity of staying upright, and then they burst through.

Jounouchi was the first to speak as they all sprawled on the ground, panting and massaging sore muscles. “God, that is fuckin’ weird as hell.”

As much as Kaiba hated agreeing with Jounouchi on principle, this time he couldn’t help it, if only in the privacy of his own mind. They had indeed left the blizzard behind. Now it was a wall - windborne snow so thick and dense it was a wonder to think they’d made it through, slamming up against whatever invisible barrier separated the areas like water against glass.

“How does that even happen?” Honda said.

Kaiba had been trying not to let himself get baited by the nerd herd’s inane questions. This time, he failed. “There’s no way to know,” he said snappishly. “This place has its own climates and pressure systems. There’s absolutely no way to account for-”

“Magic, probably,” Yuugi mused, and the rest of them nodded their heads, blissful in their idiot consensus.

Why did Kaiba even bother?

Even with the weather problem solved, of course their lives couldn’t be easy; on this side of the weather barrier, the lizalfos were out in full force, enjoying the relative mildness of the Naydra snowfields. It seemed like the group was assailed non-stop. Every ten steps, a grating hissing screech would echo through the air, signifying yet another opportunity to practice their combat skills on a recklessly murderous armed lizard. Worse yet, after each fight, Eri crouched down with a sick glee to riffle around in their guts and break off their horns.

None of this did anything to improve Kaiba’s temper. As they sat down for a break after making quick work of yet another lizalfos, he really wanted nothing more to start another fight with one of his companions to let off some steam. The possibilities were endless: Jounouchi was so irresponsible with that ridiculous war-axe of his that it was appalling, and Kaiba had half a mind to tell him that if he wasn’t going to bother cleaning it then it would rust into a glorified woodcutter’s axe. Yuugi was having another overwrought crisis about accidentally casting a shadow spell that was actually useful, just because it had the disturbing effect of crawling down the lizalfos’ throat and garotting it from the inside. And fucking Eri was halfway up a tree like some kind of overgrown monkey, because apparently she couldn’t settle down for a goddamned minute and just walk on solid ground like a regular human being.

In the end Kaiba showed what he felt was truly admirable restraint and did not start a fight with any of them. It was not, he told himself, because he was avoiding provoking Anzu again. It was because stopping to fight was inefficient. He settled instead for assorted methods of petty irritation: walking fast enough that the shorter members of the group had to jog to keep up, ‘accidentally’ kicking up snow behind him, pretending not to hear when anyone spoke to him. The reactions to his pettiness - indignance but an inability to actually prove he was doing it on purpose - were satisfying enough that it took the edge off his frustration.

“Eri,” he heard Anzu saying behind him later that afternoon. “Ne. Eri-chan?”

Well, here was an opportunity he couldn’t resist. Kaiba turned around. Eri was walking some ways behind the rest of the group, so completely and utterly spaced out that she hadn’t seemed to hear any of the times Anzu had called out to her.

Kaiba was just mulling over what to do - make a nasty remark about her inability to pay attention or just subtly trip her to teach her a lesson about watching where she was going - when Eri stopped dead.

“I have a really bad feeling,” she said.

That was alarming to hear from someone who didn’t seem to possess any survival instincts at all. Everyone else apparently felt the same way. The entire group came to an abrupt halt.

“What is it, Eri?” Jounouchi said. He cast a nervous glance around them.

“Listen,” Eri said. “It’s too quiet.”

In this, she was correct. By this point the lizalfos had dwindled, but it wasn’t just that. The flapping of birds overhead, scurrying of squirrels, braying of wild goats in the distance, cooing of wood-pigeons: all of it seemed somehow muted. Not quite gone, but conspicuously suppressed.

Kaiba suddenly realized the source of his plummeting mood throughout the afternoon. It wasn’t purely annoyance with the rest of the group as he’d assumed. It was a powerful, steadily mounting dread.

It felt like his instincts were screaming at him. But screaming what, exactly?

“Yuugi,” Kaiba said. “Are you strong enough to try scouting again?”

“I did it this morning during practice and I was fine,” Yuugi replied, his eyes fixed ahead. The fact that Yuugi had thought to practice scouting just reaffirmed for Kaiba that the rest of them were feeling the very same sense of doom.

“But you didn’t see anything here before,” Jounouchi said.

“I know,” Yuugi said. “I realized something, I think. You’re all so familiar to me that I’m really attuned to you, and that’s what I was looking for before when I was scouting. I think if I try again, and try not to focus on all of you-”

Kaiba was growing more impatient by the second. He didn’t care about them all geeking out over the theory behind their abilities. “Go,” he said, waving his hand dismissively. “I trust you have a better understanding of your limits, now.”

Yuugi nodded, and melted away into the shadow of a nearby tree. It was unnerving to watch, but no more so than any of the other myriad shadow magic Kaiba had had the misfortune to witness in his life.

They waited for him in dead silence. A taut, thick tension had settled in the air that none felt comfortable breaking. Kaiba did not worry for anyone other than his brother, but he couldn’t help idly wondering how Yuugi was managing in his strange twilight world.

Yuugi burst into visibility all at once, looking no worse for the wear. “Something’s up ahead,” he said frantically. “In the area near the East Gate. It’s...really big, with legs like a horse, and...”

“Oh, fuck,” Eri said, realization dawning on her face.

That didn’t sound good at all.

“A Lynel,” Eri groaned, answering the group’s unspoken question as her shoulders slumped. She put a hand over her face and let out a heavy sigh.

“A what?”

“One of the toughest monsters in the game,” Eri muttered. “They’re huge. Kind of like centaurs, but with lions’ heads and paws.”

“That’s what I saw,” Yuugi agreed grimly.

“They have gigantic weapons,” Eri continued on. “They’re smarter than anything else you’ll fight, and they’re spellcasters and archers too.”

“Okay, that doesn’t sound like something we need to deal with,” Honda said. “Can we go around it?”

They all looked up at the high, sheer cliff faces around them, walling them in. Eri stood a chance of getting up them, maybe, but clearly it wasn’t an option for anyone else.

“Let’s make camp here,” Anzu suggested. “We can talk about it more and try to come up with a plan.” It was only late afternoon, but everyone agreed with her readily. There wasn’t any point in pressing on if they were likely to encounter whatever this thing was.

“Is it safe here?” Jounouchi was still looking to and fro, his head twitching about nervously like a spooked horse. Kaiba had the sudden urge to grab his shoulders and shake him out of it.

“Yeah,” Eri said. “Lynels tend to patrol a set area. They’re really territorial and don’t really venture outside of their territory. I think that one’s territory ends at the edge of the snowfield.”

Since there were so few birds and small animals in the vicinity, they cobbled together a meal with as much protein as possible - foraged wild rice, nuts, and assorted vegetables cooked in some rendered bird fat that Yuugi had apparently been keeping in a jar. After the meal was done Eri rinsed out the pot with snowmelt and put it right back on the fire.

“If we eat too much we’re gonna get stomach cramps,” Honda said, his face puzzled.

“No, not food,” Eri explained. “Elixirs.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a foul-smelling bundle.

“Oh, because the ones you’ve made so far have been so delightful and effective,” Kaiba said flatly.

“It’s called practicing,” Anzu shot back. “You know. That thing you have to do to learn skills, because we’re not all born immediately good at everything.”

Kaiba rolled his eyes but lapsed into silence. Anzu got far snappier when she thought Eri was being insulted than Eri herself did.

Eri, meanwhile, had dug out several of the grimy lizalfos horns she’d been saving. She began busily smashing them with a rock.

“And you expect us to ingest that?” Kaiba said skeptically, watching as she reduced the lizalfos horn to splinters, then started grinding it into a coarse powder.

“It’s up to you,” Eri said with an indifferent shrug.

The ground lizalfos horn went into the pot with tough dried boko guts. These were covered with water, and a foul smell began to permeate their camp as the horrible concoction bubbled and frothed. Once it hard turned a thick, sludgy brown, Eri threw in some of the little lizards she’d been chasing behind rocks for the past few days.

“How do you know when to put the lizards in?” Honda wanted to know.

“Ummm…instinct?”

Kaiba resisted the urge to speak, settling instead for a long, loud sigh.

Finally came a radish that Eri carefully chopped into even slices, and then they settled in to wait.

Over the next hour the smell emanating from the pot shifted from vile to merely pungent. The sludgy liquid started to lighten a little. At this point Eri stopped stirring it and let it boil for a while.

“Almost done,” Eri said after another half-hour. She gestured for everyone to take a look.

Despite himself, Kaiba was curious, if only about what the fuck she thought she was doing over there. He peered in. The liquid had against all odds cooked into a glossy, sparkling red, so clear that you could see straight to the bottom of the pot.

“What does it do?” Yuugi marvelled, taking a whiff. The scent had settled down even further into something earthy with just a hint of sweetness, not unlike a strong oolong tea.

“It’s for healing,” Eri said. “Not nearly as effective as what Anzu does, but it’s good to have on hand anyways to give her a bit of a break.”

That dampened the mood. Everyone looked at each other.

“Do you think...” Yuugi started. “Do you think we’ll need it, if we fight the Lynel?”

Eri nodded silently, and then began scooping the mixture into the little glass bottles that had come with her ridiculous elf getup.

Yuugi managed to assemble another reasonably suitable dinner, hearty and filling despite the lack of meat. Their supplies were getting disturbingly low. None of them commented on it aloud, but Kaiba knew they were all thinking about it. How could they not? Impa had apparently counted on them taking five days to reach Hateno Village. They were already on day six. Their rations would have to stretch for at least another day, maybe two, and they weren’t likely to find any game to hunt while the Lynel was menacing the area.

Even though they’d been fighting lizalfos all day, Kaiba kicked Jounouchi and Honda out of their post-dinner stupor and forced them into the daily training session that had become habit. Both of them fought harder than usual despite their exhaustion. During brief breaks Kaiba could see Eri and Yuugi practicing using bushes as targets, and Anzu popped up every time someone sustained so much as a tiny scratch, hands extended and magic at the ready.

Finally it was time to sit down and debate courses of action.

“I say we fight it,” Jounouchi said predictably.

“I say we stay the hell away from it,” Eri argued.

Kaiba hated to admit it, but Eri’s complete reluctance to even go near the thing made him nervous. This was the same Eri who had picked a fight with a bokoblin they could have easily avoided, because she wanted to practice shooting while jumping through the air. (She’d failed spectacularly, crash-landed, and of course Kaiba had had to be the one to bail her out and dispatch the stupid thing.)

“Tell us more about it,” Honda prompted.

Eri thought for a moment, chewing her lip. “Lynels can easily kill you with one hit if you’re not wearing the right armour. They do a lot of damage.” She was obviously trying to play up the beast’s more frightening aspects. “They often have magic arrows-”

“What?”

“There’s a couple different kinds,” Eri explained. “Shock arrows, well, shock you. Ice arrows cause freezing. Fire arrows - pretty self-explanatory. I’ve never seen a Lynel with fire arrows, though.”

Jounouchi sighed with relief.

“Because they don’t need them. They can breathe fire.”

“Fuck me,” Honda said. “I’m starting to think you’re right about avoiding it.”

“Stop trying to scare us,” Jounouchi said. “We get it, the thing’s big and bad. What about its weak points? How do you fight them?”

Eri shrugged. “It doesn’t really have weak points. You just keep whaling on it until it dies. Takes forever, and they’re tough as fuck. I guess sometimes if you can get on its back, you can usually get a few good hits in before it throws you off, but that’s really hard to do.”

Kaiba pondered for a moment. “And whatever the main character’s name is-”

“Link,” Eri reminded him exasperatedly.

He continued like she hadn’t said anything. “-can defeat one by himself.”

“Usually,” Eri said. “I don’t know, I die about half the time I try it, but Link has this resurrection ability...”

“Which we don’t have,” Anzu said firmly.

Eri opened her mouth as if to say something, then stopped short. She closed her mouth and nodded slowly.

“I think this is a bad idea,” Anzu continued.

“There’s no other way past it,” Kaiba argued, jabbing the map. “Unless we want to try climbing up the mountain then back down the other side - which doesn’t have stairs - in a whiteout blizzard. That particular course of action is likely to end with one or all of us dead of hypothermia or splattered against a cliff face.”

That much was true. They’d barely made it down the mountain in the current weather conditions - up again was out of the question. They didn’t have enough food to wait out the blizzard. And the Naydra snowfields were surrounded by high cliffs, with no obvious way through.

“Eri,” Yuugi said, holding eye contact with her. “Do you really think we can’t beat it, even with all six of us working together?”

“It’s not that I don’t think we can beat it!” Eri burst out angrily. “It’s that I highly doubt all of us will make it out alive!”

That prompted a long moment of silence.

“Well, we’re at an impasse then,” Kaiba said flatly. “Because I highly doubt all of us will make it through an ill-advised mountain climbing expedition alive either. If you read the statistics on untrained mountain climbers - well, it’s not pretty.”

Eri sighed a long, exhausted sigh. “I know, Kaiba-kun,” she said. “Our odds aren’t good either way.”

“So then we figure out how to create the best odds for ourselves,” Kaiba said. “None of us except you knows how to climb, and knowing how to climb doesn’t mean you’re prepared for an icy mountain where freezing to death is almost as much of a danger as falling. We do all know how to fight at this point, more-or-less. That gives us something to work with.”

“Okay,” Eri said, leaning her head back against the tree she was sitting under. “I’m listening.”

“It’s a matter of tactics,” Kaiba said. “Until this point we’ve just been going off a rough framework, but for a difficult fight we should map it out beforehand.”

“I see what you’re saying,” Yuugi said. “For example, if Honda-kun and Jounouchi-kun can keep it distracted enough, it likely won’t use its ranged abilities much and will just focus on melee combat.”

“Yes,” Kaiba agreed. “And we need to keep Jounouchi in a position where he can be constantly striking without worrying about having to block and dodge too much. That’s where I come in - I’m the fastest, so if Honda loses the Lynel’s focus and it starts turning on Jounouchi, I stand the best chance of getting in there quickly and giving Jounouchi a chance to reposition.”

“Both of you need to stay to the side of it,” Eri advised. “Don’t ever get behind it. Think about a horse kicking you with its hooves, magnified by a hundred.”

“Noted,” Kaiba said. Since she was being shockingly reasonable, he decided to offer a truce. “Where do you think you and Yuugi should be positioned?”

Eri thought about that for a moment. “High ground,” she said. “Lynels are too heavy to climb, so no danger there, and they can run so fast that if we’re on the ground none of you stand a chance of beating it to us anyways.”

“Fine,” Kaiba said. “What about Mazaki?”

“I’m not hiding,” Anzu said, her voice full of resolve. “I want to be close by, in case someone needs me right away.”

Kaiba frowned. He didn’t like it. Anzu was athletic and good at getting herself out of difficult situations, but she might also become a liability on the field, especially given the way the rest of the geek squad was prone to hurling themselves protectively in front of her at the slightest hint of danger.

“I’m with Anzu on this one,” Eri said, although she didn’t sound thrilled about it either. “Because...” her lips pursed into a tight, unhappy line. “If one of us gets hit full-force by that thing, we won’t have time to wait until the end of the battle for healing.”

“I don’t like it,” Jounouchi said, echoing Kaiba’s thoughts. “I think Anzu should stay out of the way.”

“Yuugi-kun and I will keep the heat off her,” Eri said. Yuugi nodded in agreement. “I think she’s safer with us than being all alone somewhere. The Lynel isn’t the only monster lurking around here, and if something else finds her none of us would be able to come help anyways.”

Jounouchi thought about that for a moment. “I guess you’re right,” he said slowly. “I just...”

“I’ll be careful,” Anzu promised, and they could see by her face that there was no chance of getting her to budge.

That night they slept restlessly, if at all, and the following morning doom hung heavy over them like a stifling fog. As they made their way through the snowfield, the weather changed again - from grey snow to a cold, brittle sunshine.

The narrow pass was ahead, the one that would take them from the snowfield back to that sparse copse of trees. They’d all felt the danger while traversing it the first time. Their luck had held then, but Kaiba had the feeling that they were past the time for luck.

“Still not too late to back out,” Eri said, as they approached the end of the pass. They could see the rocky, snowy path melting into deceptively inviting green grass.

Everyone silently considered it for a moment, even Kaiba.

“We can do this,” Yuugi said finally. “I don’t know why, but I just...I feel like we stand a chance.”

Kaiba took a deep breath. “All right. Let’s go.”

Yuugi and Eri clambered up the sides of the pass and then slipped away to scout. They returned a half-hour later, wearing matching puzzled expressions.

“I don’t see it anywhere,” Eri said, shrugging. “I climbed pretty high, too.”

Yuugi’s brow was furrowed. “I don’t even sense it anymore.”

“Maybe it just...left?” Jounouchi said hopefully. “Someone else got to it before us?”

Kaiba wanted to believe that, he really did, but the feeling of dread that had been gradually overtaking him since yesterday was still sitting there, thick and suffocating in his chest. Something wasn’t right.

They crept carefully into the copse of trees, weapons at the ready. Nothing leapt out at them, and the trees were too thin to offer much cover against an enormous half-lion centaur. As they walked further and further in, Kaiba rationalized to himself that if there really was a gigantic territorial beast lurking around, surely it would have stopped them before they’d crossed halfway through its lair. However, the dread continued to mount.

After a moment he realized why. He looked over at Eri, and knew they were having the same thought.

None of them had heard a single bird all morning.

Kaiba, Yuugi and Eri stopped walking at the exact same time, and a second later, the air was filled with a booming, snarling roar.

Chapter Text

~△❈△~
Book I: The Three Springs
Part Two: Courage
~△❈△~

Chapter Seven: The King of Beasts

They had drilled through the plan so many times that everyone hurtled into action immediately. Eri, Yuugi and Anzu took off at a run towards the rocks, and Kaiba and Jounouchi fell into a flank on either side of Honda.

Nothing could have prepared them for the sight of it.

The Lynel was gargantuan. Its body was made of what looked like pure muscle, littered with ugly scars and covered in a coat so short and leathery that it looked more like skin. It was easily over eight feet tall, which was apparent even when it was bent into a run - a terrifying, unnerving run that used all six of its legs, pounding the ground with hooves and massive paws alike. The thing Kaiba couldn’t tear his eyes from as it bore down on them was its face, hideous and leonine, with cruel, intelligent eyes framed in a rough-hewn red mane.

Honda took a deep breath and then let out a primal war cry as he charged towards it.

Kaiba couldn’t dwell on the awful image of Honda facing down the gruesome monstrosity head-to-head. He had a job to do. He and Jounouchi broke into a sprint and veered around towards its sides.

At the last second, as one of its wicked claws grasped around a savage-looking cleaver hooked on its belt, Honda executed a perfect slide and managed to avoid the blow. He drove up with his halberd, piercing into its side.

The Lynel didn’t seem hurt. It just seemed angry.

Jounouchi went to work immediately with his axe and Kaiba with his longsword, hacking and slashing with all their might. The beast bellowed and swung its cleaver, hitting Honda square in the chest. It didn’t pierce the armour, but the force of it threw him a good six feet, and then it went immediately for Jounouchi.

Kaiba was prepared for this. He took a running roll right under its belly and emerged at Jounouchi’s side, narrowly avoiding the enormous hooves bearing down on the spot where he had been milliseconds earlier. His sudden appearance seemed to throw it off, giving Jounouchi time to duck around out of its direct eyeline.

Honda was on his feet quickly, and Jounouchi and Kaiba backed off for a moment to let him get the Lynel’s attention. Then all three of them were back in. One of Yuugi’s spells came crackling past Kaiba’s left ear, catching the Lynel in the back of the head, and an arrow followed shortly after into its broad shoulder. It screamed in fury and whirled around, charging towards the source of the projectiles.

Eri was right. It was faster than a lizalfos - not in terms of dexterity, but it ran at exactly the speed you’d expect from a very large horse with two extra limbs at its disposal. It quickly realized that it couldn’t get up to the rock ledge where Eri, Yuugi and Anzu had positioned themselves, so it stopped running a few hundred feet away and drew its bow as the other three dashed to catch up with it.

Yuugi threw up a makeshift shadow barrier at the last second - something Kaiba hadn’t even been aware that he was capable of before that moment - just managing to deflect the Lynel’s arrow before it hit Anzu. The arrow skittered away and smashed against the rock face. A huge patch of ice spread away from its point of impact.

Finally Jounouchi, the fastest sprinter, arrived. “Get the fuck away from them!” he yelled, swinging his axe.

The blow he landed tore an enormous gash in the distracted Lynel’s flank, and it retaliated in kind. It hit Jounouchi full across the abdomen, sending him flying at least fifty feet.

Kaiba knew instantly that this was going to be very bad. Jounouchi hit the ground and rolled a few times before coming to a stop. He didn’t move again.

“Jou!” Anzu and Yuugi screamed in unison. Another spell hurtled through the air, this time knocking the Lynel’s back legs out from under it. It went down with an enraged roar.

Kaiba and Honda took full advantage. They leapt on it, driving their weapons deep into its exposed chest and hindquarters. The Lynel lashed out blindly with its meaty paw, managing to knock Kaiba aside as it launched itself back to its feet.

It suddenly turned back towards the ledge. Kaiba realized with a horrific jolt that only Yuugi was there. Eri and Anzu were on the ground, running towards Jounouchi’s prone form.

The Lynel leaned back, sucking in air, and then pitched forward and bellowed a column of pure flame. Honda cried out wordlessly as he watched the fire race towards the girls.

Eri glanced at the flames, but didn’t stop running, dragging Anzu along with one hand. She unhooked her paraglider from her back. Kaiba struggled to his feet. What the fuck was she doing?

Just before the column of flame reached them, Eri looped an arm around Anzu’s waist and unfolded her paraglider in one furious motion. The updraft created by the abrupt onslaught of heat propelled them almost straight upwards, Anzu screaming as she clutched onto Eri.

Kaiba let out the breath he’d been holding. The relief was short-lived. The Lynel quickly realized that its attack had been futile and turned back towards Honda.

As Kaiba and Honda launched into combat again, he lost track of Eri and Anzu, but he assumed they had reached Jounouchi by now. He hoped they’d been fast enough.

The gash Jounouchi had hacked into the beast’s side was bleeding more and more profusely every second, and it was starting to make mistakes. It swung clumsily at Kaiba, who leapt aside while Honda used the opening to drive his halberd into its shoulder. The Lynel dropped its cleaver. Kaiba dived for it and then hurled the cruel weapon as far away as he could. He took a searing blow to the side for that, but disarming the creature was well worth it.

Then Kaiba made a mistake. A critical one.

He ended up behind it, trapped against the rock face, on his back.

Eri’s warning flashed through his brain, a millisecond too late. The Lynel snarled and shifted its weight onto its four front legs. Honda had been knocked aside and was too far away to distract it. There was nowhere to go. Kaiba Seto was fucked.

“Hey!” a panicked voice screamed. “Over here!”

An arrow embedded itself into the Lynel’s belly with a meaty thud. It shrieked in pain and its hind legs landed back on the ground, so close to Kaiba’s head that the percussive impact rattled his skill.

He could tell right away that Eri was too close.

The Lynel swung out with one massive paw and made a solid impact. Eri went hurtling through the air. Her flight was stopped abruptly by the rocks, and Kaiba watched as her body rolled down the slight incline, coming to rest in a crumpled heap on the ground.

Honda was back up. The Lynel seemed to feel that neither Kaiba nor Eri were much of a threat anymore, and made its way towards him. Yuugi finally landed a suffocation spell. That was all the opening Honda needed. 

Kaiba crawled towards Eri, covering the metres between them as fast as he could. His ears were filled with the Lynel roaring behind him, Honda’s yells as he kept its focus on him, the crackling of Yuugi’s magic.

“Morin,” he said, grabbing her shoulder. She didn’t move. “Hey,” he said furiously. “Get up. Come on. Quit fucking around.”

“Gabriel?” Eri said, her voice slurred and confused. She blinked. “Oh. Kaiba-kun.”

Eri was trying to sit up, without much success. One of her arms was clearly broken and she was using the other to leverage herself. Kaiba watched her in disbelief for a second, and then twisted around to look over his shoulder as a keening moan pierced the air.

“Jou - Jounouchi - no!! -”

Kaiba’s stomach dropped, and he could feel all the colour drain from his face. Anzu was slumped over Jounouchi. Her words had dissipated into a long, wordless wail. Jounouchi’s limbs were sprawled, and his head hung limply to the side. Kaiba caught a glimpse of his eyes.

Open, fixed, unseeing.

Kaiba took a deep, shuddering breath. That wasn’t possible. Whatever was happening here could not be happening.

“What-” he gasped, bile rising in his throat. Someone was saying his name.

It was - it was too much, the glassy eyes and the limbs bent at odd angles, it was - too much like him - there was a noise rattling around in his skull, he wanted the noise to stop -

A blow landed firmly in his side, startling him out of his stupor. “Kaiba-kun!” Eri said sharply, delivering another sharp kick. “Breathe!”

Kaiba took a deep breath, and suddenly registered that the rattling noise wasn’t in his head. It was coming from a jar in Eri’s hand.

“I need you to open this for me,” Eri continued, inclining her head towards her mangled arm. “Right now.”

The jar contained some sort of tiny pink firefly, slamming itself against the glass, seemingly trying to break through.

“It’s useless,” he told the little firefly, the words sounding like they were coming from somewhere very far away. It took no notice and continued to hurl itself this way and that. Still in an uncomprehending daze, Kaiba absently reached over and uncorked the bottle before the stupid thing could kill itself trying to get out.

The firefly made a frantic beeline for Jounouchi, but Kaiba’s attention was distracted by a pained yell from Honda, who had taken a vicious sideswipe from the Lynel’s claws.

“Stay down,” he said to Eri. “Do not move a muscle, do you understand me?”

“Okay,” Eri agreed, clearly realizing the futility of getting up, and let herself fall to the ground again. Kaiba hauled himself to his feet and staggered back towards the rampaging titan. He forced his screaming muscles to break into a run, praying for one last surge of adrenaline.

The Lynel knocked Honda flat, and then reared up over him, its hooves kicking the air. Kaiba saw his opportunity. He took a sprinting leap and collided with its back, grabbing a fistful of its coarse, putrid mane. When it bellowed in anger and was momentarily distracted, trying to buck him off, Honda drove his halberd up and through its underbelly. Just before he was thrown Kaiba buried his sword into the side of its neck.

It collapsed with an enormous crash, gurgling and twitching.

For a moment everyone was caught in a stunned silence. Yuugi, hands still outstretched from the last spell he’d cast; Anzu bent over Jounouchi; Honda gripping the handle of his halberd, not even trying to pull it loose yet; Kaiba flat on his back; and Eri, prone next to the rock face.

All at once, everyone burst into movement.

“Jounouchi,” Anzu sobbed, as Jounouchi gave a long, agonized groan. “Jou, you’re - you were-”

“Kaiba-kun, are you okay?” Yuugi gasped, falling to his knees.

“Yes,” Kaiba gritted out. He was in better shape than Jounouchi and Eri, at least.

“Eri!” Honda cried out, spotting her still form.

“I’m fine,” Eri yelled back. “Kaiba-kun told me not to move.”

“Because your arm is broken and that’s probably the least of your injuries, you fucking idiot,” Kaiba said, struggling into a sitting position. Anzu cast an alarmed glance at Eri, and then back down at Jounouchi.

It was bad. He was still bleeding profusely, and Anzu was already starting to look pale and sweaty with the exertion. Honda had begun assisting her - he seemed pretty capable with first aid.

“Go check on Eri,” Honda instructed Kaiba. “I’ll be by in a minute, when Jou’s more stable.”

Jounouchi let out another wordless groan in response. His face was ashen, and his limbs were still bent at grotesque angles; his eyes cast from side to side, looking for his friends but not quite registering them. Kaiba tore his eyes away from the awful sight and started towards Eri.

“Would you just settle the fuck down for two seconds,” Kaiba said, limping over to her and dropping to his knees as she tried uselessly to prop herself up again. “Just...just stop.”

Kaiba didn’t know what he was asking exactly, but Eri clamped her mouth shut, looking up at him with wide eyes. He noticed that she too was getting paler by the second, likely as the adrenaline wore off. A trickle of blood was dripping from the corner of her mouth. That could not be good.

“Jounouchi was dead,” Kaiba said flatly. “He was dead. That - that creature you had trapped in a bottle - it did something to bring him back.”

“Yeah,” Eri said, not sounding nearly as surprised as she should. She coughed, and Kaiba instinctively gripped her shoulder to steady her. “Well, that’s kind of what fairies do. I guess they’re really rare in this Hyrule, but Link usually-”

“Listen to me,” Kaiba said, shaking her a little to stop her aimless rambling, then regretting it immediately when she winced. “Why did you do that?”

“Do what?” Eri blinked, her eyes groggy and vague. It looked like she’d hit her head pretty hard.

“You took a hit for-”

“Stop it,” Honda said sharply from behind him. “What the hell are you doing to her?”

Kaiba said nothing as Honda knelt on Eri’s other side. Honda gave him a hard look, then turned to Eri. “Lift up your tunic,” he ordered. Eri struggled with the belt a little and then pushed it up over her long-sleeved undershirt and breeches. She tugged the undershirt upwards to reveal her stomach. A large ugly purple stain was spreading there.

Honda pressed his mouth into a firm line and took a deep breath. “We have to set the bone quickly so that we can deal with that. It’s gonna hurt. Sorry, Eri-chan.” He wadded up a spare piece of cloth from his pouch and handed it to her. “Bite down on this.”

“Okay,” Eri said, and stuffed it in her mouth. Her face took on a set of grim determination.

Honda cast about for a moment, then found an acceptable stick - straight and sturdy. “Go bring one of these to Jounouchi,” he snapped, digging a vial of healing elixir out of Eri’s pouch and thrusting it at Kaiba.

Kaiba was too exhausted to even question being ordered around like an errand boy. He staggered back towards Anzu, Yuugi and Jounouchi, trying to block out the sound of Eri’s pained, muffled sob from behind him as Honda set her broken arm. He dropped down next to Jounouchi and handed Yuugi the vial of elixir.

“Could you support him -” Yuugi said distractedly, as he uncapped the vial. His tone was even and steady. Kaiba took a strange comfort in it. He hoisted Jounouchi as gently as he could into a sitting position so that he wouldn’t choke on the elixir. Yuugi tilted the glass to Jounouchi’s lips.

After a few swallows, the bruising surrounding Jounouchi’s gruesome wound began to recede visibly. The elixir also seemed to slow the blood flow. Kaiba was beyond being surprised at the effectiveness.

“What happened?” Anzu choked out. She sounded exhausted. “That - that fairy-”

“Morin seemed to know what it would do,” Kaiba gritted out. “God knows why she didn’t tell any of us before.”

“I didn’t know for sure,” Eri said from just behind him. Honda was supporting her - it seemed she had taken a healing elixir as well, as she was now able to mostly walk under her own power. “Everyone would have fought differently if you knew I had it. I didn’t want us fighting the Lynel in the first place-”

“And that was your decision to make?” Kaiba snarled, turning on her. “You let us go into battle with incomplete information?”

“Stop it,” Yuugi said firmly. “This isn’t the time.”

Kaiba deflated, the fight draining out of him unusually fast. He knew Eri was right, that they would have fought differently, and moreover she’d had no guarantee that fairies would work the same way in real life as they’d worked in her game. He turned back towards Jounouchi.

“How is he?” Honda said, kneeling down and carefully bringing Eri with him. Eri reached out for Jounouchi’s hand with her good hand. She was biting her lip so hard that it had turned pale.

“Through the worst of it,” Anzu said. Her hands were visibly shaking as she moved them up and down over the injured area, which covered most of his chest and abdomen.

“Don’t worry,” Jounouchi panted. “Anzu’s - fixing me up real good...”

“Here, come on, we still have another potion,” Honda said, smoothing Jounouchi’s sweaty bangs off his forehead. “Nothing’s broken, right?”

Anzu shook her head. “Just...he’s lost a lot of blood,” she said, her voice trembling with the strain. Honda nodded and tipped the bottle to Jounouchi’s lips.

“What about you two?” Yuugi said anxiously, looking up and casting a critical eye over Kaiba and Eri.

“Fine,” Kaiba said shortly.

Yuugi nodded. “Okay, Anzu, I think that’s enough for now,” he said gently. Anzu sighed and slumped against his shoulder. Her face was alarmingly gray.

“Anzu-chan?” Eri cried in alarm. Anzu took a shallow breath and her eyes drifted closed.

Yuugi bent over her, his eyes wide with fear. “She’s, um, she’s breathing,” he said, his voice breaking. “She passed out.”

“We need to get to that cave,” Kaiba said, gesturing across the lake to the south. Impa had marked a passageway that led from the back of the cave and underneath the Nirvata Plateau, a route that would save them having to hike all the way to Kakariko and then double back to Hateno.

After they bandaged the wound stretching grotesquely across Jounouchi’s torso, Honda carefully lifted Jounouchi onto his back. Kaiba carried the unconscious Anzu, and Yuugi supported Eri as best he could. They made their way slowly across the copse; the only fortunate thing about the situation was that the Lynel had had the courtesy to give up and die reasonably close to their destination.

Reaching the cave meant wading through waist-high water. Kaiba slung Anzu unceremoniously over one shoulder and they started in. Once they had finally reached the cave, Yuugi and Honda set to work laying out the bedrolls and making sure the three injured were resting comfortably as Kaiba scouted the back of the cave to ensure there was nothing lurking in the passage.

Once the camp was reasonably set up, Kaiba climbed down from the cave mouth and removed his boots and armour. He waded into the lake in his breeches. The water felt good in the afternoon heat. Once he felt a bit cleaner he started bandaging himself up, making sure to apply generous amounts of supposedly antibacterial ointment from Kakariko. It likely wouldn’t do much to ward off infection, but keeping wounds hydrated was good for healing in any case.

Kaiba had a lot to process, he didn’t want to process any of it, and he knew it was coming for him anyways.

In the moments after Gozaburo’s suicide, Kaiba had sat at the desk, watching the winds carry papers out the window; then he had gone over and looked down. He had burned the sight of his father’s mangled corpse into his brain, and then he had gone to find Mokuba and made sure he was locked in a spare office until Gozaburo’s remains had been spirited away and scrubbed off the sidewalk. He would carry that image for both of them.

Kaiba had been avoiding thinking about Mokuba. He didn’t feel it would do him any good to torture himself. But now, that image had come back to haunt him, and it had opened the floodgates.

He had left Mokuba. Again. After swearing that he wouldn’t.

Mokuba hadn’t worn his locket once since Kaiba had returned from Aaru.

A seething rage was creeping up in Kaiba, starting in his belly and burning hot in his chest. He had told those idiots in no uncertain terms that he refused to die here - that he had to get back to his brother. Death was not an option. And yet it had come for them anyways, subverted only by a scrap of rare magic that was now lost to them. He wanted to scream at them, to ask them if they understood now what the stakes were.

He couldn’t. He had only himself to blame.

Kaiba turned and punched the cliffside next to him. It wasn’t enough. He struck again and again, until his knuckles were reduced to bleeding shreds.

“Kaiba-kun,” he heard Yuugi say frantically behind him, “Kaiba-kun - stop - what are you doing-”

“Leave, Yuugi,” he spat.

Instead he heard a gentle splashing as Yuugi joined him in the water.

“Hey,” Yuugi said. “What’s wrong?”

Kaiba didn’t answer, or even turn around to face him. There was no part of him that wanted to see whatever pitying expression Yuugi was wearing right now.

“Um...” Yuugi ventured. “Will you come sit with me, Kaiba-kun?”

He finally did turn around, and Yuugi’s face held no traces of pity. He just looked thoughtful. So Kaiba followed him to the banks, and sat next to him on a large sunbeaten rock.

Yuugi didn’t even try to talk to him. He just sat there quietly next to Kaiba, letting the silence be what it was.

Something in that moment reminded Kaiba so much of Mokuba that it hurt his chest. He missed it. The feeling of someone content to simply exist beside you, a feeling of you’re not alone that didn’t require any words.

“I made mistakes,” Kaiba said finally, folding his arms tightly. “I shouldn’t have let myself get trapped behind it. And I wasn’t fast enough to reach it before Jounouchi...”

Yuugi looked up at him. “Kaiba-kun,” he said. “I can’t believe you’re beating yourself up over that. You fought so hard.”

Kaiba shook his head in frustration. “Morin...”

“I know,” Yuugi said. “I saw. She took a hit for you. Don’t let that bruise your pride, Kaiba-kun - you’ve done it for us too.” He frowned. “You’re not blaming yourself for what happened to her and Jou, are you?”

Kaiba said nothing, letting Yuugi assume whatever he wanted about his silence.

“Hey, let me see your hands,” Yuugi said. “If we put some ointment on now and get them cleaned up, they might not scar before Anzu gets her strength back.”

Kaiba said nothing to that either. He was no stranger to scars. But he wasn’t going to explain that to someone like Yuugi, so he let his mind dwell back on Earth for the time it took Yuugi to bandage his hands.

Chapter Text

Chapter Eight: Hateno Village

Anzu drifted into wakefulness for just a moment, just long enough to register Jounouchi breathing evenly beside her.

“Anzu,” she heard from above her, “Anzu...”

The next time she woke up it was dark.

It took a minute for her eyes to adjust to the moonlight streaming in through the cave entrance. It was quiet - so quiet, a kind you’d never hear in New York or Domino City. The only sounds were her friends breathing softly with sleep, a bird calling somewhere in the distance, and...

Anzu listened harder. She couldn’t tell what it was. Her head felt like it weighed a million pounds, and her limbs were like lead. Gradually she realized the sound was a whisper, so quiet it was barely audible. With great effort, she turned her head.

Eri was next to her. Her eyes were squeezed shut. As Anzu struggled to focus her groggy brain, she realized Eri was whispering to herself. Anzu couldn’t understand the words.

Anzu wanted to reach over, take her hand, say something - anything - but her tongue felt like sand and her head was so heavy...

“Anzu?”

“Hey, look! I think she’s waking up!”

Anzu opened her eyes again. Sunlight shone in through the cave entrance. She blinked once - twice - and just like that, she was back.

Anzu had always had a pretty clear picture of the calm, still, sparkling pool of water that resided somewhere within her mind. Hylia’s blessing had made the pool deeper; but had also made her aware that she too could expand it, through regular practice, and that it was nowhere near its full potential yet. So it hadn’t been a surprise when she’d run up against that limit. Anzu had kept pouring her healing magic into Jounouchi’s wound until the edges of her vision started closing in on her, and the last coherent thought she’d had was that it hadn’t been enough.

Jounouchi was leaning over her, grinning from ear to ear.

“Jou!” she cried, sitting up and throwing her arms around him. Tears gathered at the corner of her eyes. “Jou, you idiot! You’re okay!”

“Yeah,” Jounouchi said, sniffling as he wrapped his arms around her. “’Course I am. You sure scared the hell out of all of us, though.”

“Me?” Anzu shook her head, squeezing Jounouchi harder. “You idiot,” she wailed, “you died!”

“I thought you were never gonna wake up,” Jounouchi countered. “You were out like a light for a whole damn day!”

Anzu finally pulled back from Jounouchi’s embrace, only to be caught in another one by Honda and Yuugi both. “What?” she said, muffled by her cheek squishing up into Honda’s shoulder.

“Never do that again,” Honda scolded. “I’m not joking, Anzu. Scariest fuckin’ day of my life. You were totally dead to the world.”

“Ow,” Anzu complained. “You two are squishing me.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Yuugi said, laughing and wiping his eyes. Anzu smiled and reached over to thumb a stray tear off his cheek. “I’m just so happy to see you awake! How do you feel?”

Anzu blinked and stretched experimentally. “I feel great,” she said. Maybe she had slept for a whole day after all. “What about you, huh?” she demanded, pointing at Jounouchi. “I know I didn’t get to finish healing that.”

“Aw, I’m okay,” Jounouchi shrugged, though the motion caused him to wince. “Combo of Honda’s magic first aid skills and those gross elixirs have kept me going.”

“It’s not magic, it’s a certification,” Honda said, folding his arms. “One I tried to make you do with me-”

“I didn’t think I needed to! I wasn’t gonna be the one dragging a bunch of brats through the wilderness every weekend-”

“Hey,” Anzu said, looking around. “Where are Kaiba-kun and Eri-chan?”

“Dunno where the hell Kaiba’s lurking,” Jounouchi said, “but Eri went out to go hunt lizards. For more potions.”

Anzu frowned. “Didn’t she break her arm? She shouldn’t be out messing around.”

“You try telling her that,” Honda snorted.  “She wanted to go disembowel the damned Lynel this morning. Can you believe that? Only reason she didn’t is because none of us would go with her and she can’t do it one-handed by herself.”

Though they were still low on food, especially because Eri couldn’t use her bow, Honda had managed to catch a few fish. He’d tried hand-fishing before back on Earth with limited success, but it seemed that Hyrulean fish were rather trusting and slow-witted in comparison. Yuugi celebrated Anzu’s return to consciousness by setting the fish to roast on the coals of their near-dormant fire. Along with the last of their bread, the three of them enjoyed a simple but serviceable breakfast together.

Kaiba and Eri returned a few hours later. It became clear that Kaiba had somehow gotten himself roped into disemboweling assistant duty. Eri was carrying a horrific-smelling cloth bundle under her good arm, and Kaiba had the Lynel’s cleaver. Eri looked positively thrilled. Kaiba looked bored.

Eri practically flung herself into the cave in her excitement. “Look, Jou, look!” she squealed, dumping a pile of dead lizards and a radish in his lap. “Oooh, if we cook these up together, you’re going to feel so much better!”

Jounouchi offered her a strained smile. “Thanks, kid, that’s real nice…sounds tasty…”

“Check it out, I got the Lynel’s horns too, so gross-” Eri stopped mid-sentence, her hand freezing as she waved one of said horns in midair. She registered Anzu, sitting up and awake, and promptly dropped her entire bundle on the floor. “Acchan!” she squealed, hurling herself into Anzu’s arms. “You’re awake!”

“And you smell disgusting,” Anzu teased, but she didn’t push Eri away.

“Mazaki,” Kaiba said, looming over her and looking down his nose.

“Yes, Kaiba-kun?”

“...Hn.” He turned and walked away.

Jounouchi stared after him. “That guy. I swear to God.”

“How’d you get him to help you gut that thing?” Honda said, crouching down and examining Eri’s foul haul.

“I dunno,” Eri shrugged. “I guess he was in it for the loot.”

“The hell does he think he’s gonna do with that cleaver?”

“Eri-chan, did you get its bow?”

“Nah, I can’t even use it, the stupid thing was taller than me. Looted the ice arrows though.”

“Sick.”

Anzu sat Jounouchi and Eri down to check how their wounds were healing. Eri was her first patient, mainly because she trusted Eri to sit still and cooperate even less than she trusted Jounouchi. She removed the makeshift sling Honda had made and ran her hands gently along Eri’s arm, feeling for the bump where the break would have been.

When Anzu was healing it felt like she was untangling snarls of muscle and flesh and capillaries with the tendrils of her magic, smoothing them down into place and then helping them knit back together. Right now she didn’t feel anything with her hands, but - her magic hit a tiny snag. She pressed down and sent her magic out, just a little, on an exploratory expedition. There it was: a bump where the bone wasn’t healing quite right, and was pulling on the muscles and cartilage around it.

“Huh,” Anzu said in surprise. “I guess I can do diagnostics, too.”

“Amazing,” Yuugi said. “That’s a really powerful ability, isn’t it?”

“If I can figure out how to use it properly,” Anzu replied, letting her magic curl into Eri’s arm and sink down to the bone, gently nudging it back into place.

“This feels weird.” Eri laughed nervously. “So weird.”

Jounouchi was up next, and all five of them winced as Honda unwrapped the bandages. Jounouchi’s wound wasn’t healing nearly as much as it should have given how many healing potions they’d made him down over the past day, and it was obvious why; the rank smell of infection wafted up towards them.

Anzu sent her magic out again, as a diagnostic. It was difficult to fight the magic’s natural tendency to sink into wounds right away, and instead encourage it to gently pass over to detect the wound’s characteristics. What Anzu saw was fascinating. The healing potions appeared to have a sort of carpet-bomb effect, knitting tissue and bone back together without any real regard towards things healing correctly. They didn’t seem to be able to address infection or inflammation. While it had done the trick to keep Jounouchi alive, the wound was large and complex enough that it would require a more strategic approach. Anzu settled in for a longer bout of healing, starting with the worst-off areas first and making sure to heal from the deepest parts of the wound to the shallowest. She had no idea how she knew to do this. Her instincts just took over, and it felt right.

“Okay,” she said, “I think that’ll be fine for now. We’ll keep doing daily sessions until you’re good as new.”

The colour in Jounouchi’s cheeks was already healthier; his face had lost some of the feverish flush that had been building, and his eyes were clearer. “Wow,” he said. “That magic of yours is the good shit.”

They departed later that morning, once Kaiba returned from whatever he’d been off doing. He moved immediately to the front of the group and took off into the tunnels, as if daring the rest of them to try and catch up with him.

Going through a creepy, damp, dark tunnel wasn’t Anzu’s idea of a pleasant morning. At first she figured that was the primary reason for her mood. But there was something else - some kind of tension in the air that she couldn’t really figure out the source of. It was the way Kaiba hadn’t spoken a single word since addressing her; the way Jounouchi and Honda walked shoulder-to-shoulder, talking in low voices; the way Yuugi situated himself between Eri and Anzu, keeping a slightly too-firm grip on both their hands.

The tunnel wound upwards, slowly at first, and then steeper and steeper. The air started to shed its damp cave smell and hints of a fresh breeze tickled their noses. And then, finally, the mouth of the cave opened back up into the wilds.

For the first time in days, Anzu stepped out into the bright sunshine and gorgeous rolling hills they’d come to associate with the Hyrulean wilds. They had come out on top of tall cliffs flanking a large waterfall. The rushing water sounded so refreshing and pleasant, with a fine mist of clean water rising up from its base.

Anzu took a deep, restorative breath of the sweet-smelling air. She peered into the distance. Her eyes caught a new colour - the red-shingled roofs of Hateno Village were finally in view.

“Kaiba-kun,” Yuugi said tentatively. “I guess…now would be a good time for all of us to learn to paraglide properly, right?”

Kaiba looked almost surprised to be addressed. He looked out over the hills, seemingly mentally mapping their trajectory to Hateno, and then gave all of them a long, hard glare.

“You’re all going to listen to me carefully,” he said finally, “and I won’t tolerate any questions unless they’re absolutely necessary.”

No one really had the energy to take umbrage with his tone, especially when Kaiba currently held the keys to making sure this flight wasn’t a repeat of their disastrous plummet off the Great Plateau. They all nodded and resigned themselves to a hell of a lecture.

First, Kaiba made them all sit through a thorough explanation of lift, gravity and drag, seeming to take a sadistic pleasure in the way Eri and Jounouchi were clearly fighting to pay attention and absorb the very technical information. Then he ran them all through the proper way to control their gliders’ angle of attack, and how to sense air currents and updrafts.

“I know you know what an updraft is,” Kaiba said to Eri, snapping his fingers obnoxiously in front of her face the second he saw her spacing out. “I saw you use one to your advantage. You need to understand the theory behind it before you do it again.”

“Do I, though?” Eri took in the look on Kaiba’s face, and backtracked. “Ahem. Yes. I do. I’m listening.”

Kaiba took special care to inform them that he wasn’t going to bother quizzing them, and if anyone forgot vital information that lead to their deaths, he wasn’t going to feel responsible for it. Afterwards he helped each of them tie themselves into their paragliders with unnecessarily rough movements, yanking the leather straps tight.

“Ow,” Anzu complained. “Does it have to be that tight?”

“Are you losing circulation?” Kaiba snapped.

“Nooo,” Anzu hedged, and before she could say anything else he was off to inflict the same petty torture on Jounouchi.

“You first,” Kaiba said once they were all strapped in, pointing at Anzu. “Then you two-” he pointed at Honda and Yuugi, “then you,” he said to Jounouchi. Finally he pointed at Eri. “You last. I’ll take up the rear so I can at least make an attempt to save whichever of you inevitably falls. I’m only going to try hard enough to satisfy my conscience and not a speck more. Understood?”

Anzu took off gracefully, Yuugi and Honda following shortly behind. Then Jounouchi, who screamed a little bit, but managed to right his flailing limbs soon enough and fall into formation; and finally Eri and Kaiba.

The air was clear and quiet and free of turbulence. They sailed over peaks and valleys and forested areas, until finally they were over the rows of orderly fields and the picturesque little cluster of buildings, now wreathed in the pinks and oranges of the outrageously gorgeous sunset painting the sky. It really was a beautiful flight - probably the kind that hobby paragliders dreamed of. Anzu wondered if Kaiba was enjoying it, at least a little bit.

Anzu lead them in a slow, looping descent, finally alighting gently on both feet in a patch of wheat. Yuugi and Honda came next, stumbling a little but managing to stay upright. Jounouchi got excited and veered too sharply to the left, taking out Eri on his way, and both crashed in a yelling heap into a nearby field of pumpkins. Kaiba decided that neither of them needed saving and landed his paraglider without so much as a sideways glance. 

While Honda went to go pick up Eri and Jounouchi off the ground, Anzu and Yuugi gazed out over the village. Like Karariko, it didn’t seem to bear any visible scars of the Calamity. The stucco buildings nestled in the hills were sturdy and lovingly tended with hardly a crack or crumble to be seen.

“This is a cute little village,” Honda commented as he hauled Eri to her feet. “Wonder why Impa’s sister set up her fancy lab all the way out here. Wouldn’t she have an easier time in a bigger town?”

“The are no bigger towns,” Eri said. “This is the largest settlement of Hylians in the country.”

With that, the lovely storybook pastorale in front of them took a different cast. This was it. This was Hylian civilization.

Once they were all steady on their feet and had their paragliders safely stowed, Eri lead them up a winding path parallel to the village. The few villagers still out and about at sunset paid them little mind. They hopped streams and climbed gentle hills, and at one point clambered over a fence to cut through a farm. Fluffy sheep and docile, well-fed cows parted to let them through with only curious lows and bleats. For a little while a pretty dog with a shiny coat and a wagging tail trotted alongside them, seemingly completely unconcerned about the intruders; in fact, rather than barking, she greeted them by rolling over to solicit tummy pats as her legs kicked happily in the air.

Finally they intersected with the main path coming up from the village, and began the long, steep final climb. The dirt road was bordered by progressively more threatening signage: Hateno Ancient Tech Lab, NO SOLICITING. Hateno Ancient Tech Lab, MIND THE LANTERNS. Hateno Ancient Lab, ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK!

“Yeah…that’s Impa’s sister, all right,” Jounouchi said, as they read the last sign in wary bewilderment.

The sky was nearly dark as they crested the last hill to the Ancient Tech Lab, which didn’t really look like a lab all. It was more like a small falling-down lighthouse, complete with an improbably massive telescope jutting out from the side and building additions that looked as if they’d collapse in a strong gust of wind. Anzu could practically feel Kaiba’s disdain radiating in waves off him. The man may have had a decidedly unsafe penchant for making entrances in helicopters and jetpacks, but Anzu knew from Yuugi’s stories about working under his employ that he was very keen on structural safety, often over-engineering his buildings and labs to the point where they’d each be able to withstand a significant explosion. (To put it more simply: his flair for the dramatic was outweighed only by his obsessive paranoia.)

Eri marched right up knocked on the door, and it was answered by an eight-year-old girl. She was clearly Sheikah, with the trademark silver hair and red eyes, and was clad in an aggressively adorable outfit complete with round red spectacles perched on her button nose.

“Hello, Purah,” Eri said. “Impa sent us to see you.”

The little girl narrowed her eyes, looking them each up and down in turn. “Yeah, I got her message,” she said. She was clearly unimpressed, and making no attempt to hide it. “You don’t look like adventurers, though...”

Anzu’s brain was reeling. When Impa had talked about her genius sister, she had mentioned nothing about a child. How was that even possible? Impa was well over a hundred years old and looked it, so obviously Sheikah did actually age. How could this be her sister?

Eri didn’t seem surprised in the slightest by Purah’s appearance. She picked at her tunic with a frown. “What? Why not?”

“Well, come in, come in!” Purah said, ushering them through the door. “You know, when I first met Link I thought: now that’s an adventurer. It’s not about the clothes. It’s the style.”

They stepped into the lab, and it was even more bizarre inside, filled to the brim with bookshelves and strange whirring devices and stray papers covering the floor like a carpet. Bits of dismantled Guardians were in various states of dissection on the tables.

“Symin!” Purah yelled. “My sister’s weird underlings are here.”

A middle-aged man - also Sheikah - popped his head around from behind a bookcase. “Oh! Glad you’re all in one piece. We were expecting you days ago.”

“We’re not Impa’s underlings,” Jounouchi said, looking a bit put-out. “Hey, aren’t you her older sister?”

“You’re running around Hyrule doing her bidding, aren’t you? That makes you underlings.” Purah climbed up onto the wooden table and snapped her fingers directly in his face. “Also, never ask a lady’s age. Very rude.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Purah,” Anzu said politely, bowing.

Purah smiled wide. She pointed to Anzu. “See? That’s an adventurer. I can tell just from looking at you that you’re brave, classy, and have excellent taste in clothing.”

Kaiba had apparently had enough of introductions. “What’s this? What is it you do here, exactly?” He was inspecting a pedestal, which had a large tapered stone slab suspended above it.

Purah ignored him. She folded her arms. “I was told there was some kind of scientific genius travelling with you?” Purah pointed at Anzu again. “It’s you, isn’t it?”

“Sorry, no,” Anzu said, gesturing towards a scowling Kaiba. “It’s him.”

“Huh.” Purah blinked. “I guess appearances really can be deceiving...”

Symin offered them refreshments, but it appeared that all of the food he and Purah had was hard cheese and stale bread. That was about in keeping with any scientist any of them had ever met so they declined, figuring the two researchers needed it more than they did. They all sat around the wooden table. Purah continued to stand on top, pacing back and forth.

“Did Impa tell you why she sent you here?” Purah asked Anzu, who she had apparently decided was the group’s official spokesperson.

“She said you could help us,” Anzu said, “although she was a little vague on what that meant.”

“Ho, ho, Symin,” Purah cackled, turning towards the other researcher. “They think we’re here to help them.”

Symin scratched the back of his head awkwardly. “Well...that’s not strictly untrue, it’s just that...”

“Just what?” Kaiba snapped.

“Impa said that she was sending you to help us.” Symin wilted a little under Kaiba’s glare. “A...a miscommunication, I suppose...”

“Impa knew what she was doing,” Purah said. “My sister is a crafty one!”

“Okay, we can help you,” Yuugi said with a smile. “Just tell us what to do.”

“Oh, another true adventurer,” Purah beamed. “Well, here’s the long and short of it. Heh, that’s my favourite phrase lately, you want to know why?”

“They don’t want to know, Purah,” Symin said with a heavy sigh.

Purah ignored him. “That’s my pet name for our research team. You know, because Symin is tall and I’m short...together, we’re “the long and short of it”...heheheh....”

This earned her a few nonplussed looks, and a burst of laughter from Honda and Eri. Symin looked like he wanted to sink directly into the floor.

“Anyways,” she said, pointing dramatically at Kaiba. “You. Science genius. Listen up. We’re working on a prototype Sheikah Slate, but we can’t figure out how to power it without proximity to the Ancient Furnace. Help us get it working and you can have it.”

Kaiba cast an openly disdainful look at the lab around him. Anzu resisted the urge to kick him under the table. Instead she shot Purah an apologetic look, trying to communicate: We’re sorry for the large and rude disaster we’ve inflicted on you.

Purah met her eyes and winked.

“Fine,” Kaiba said finally. “If you allow me to redraw the schematics and agree to go along with my modifications.”

“You can’t redraw the schematics,” Purah sniffed, “until you do at least some cursory research on Sheikah tech.”

“Provide me with adequate research materials and I’ll think about it.”

“Done. We start tomorrow morning at dawn. Don’t be late or I’ll scalp you.”

Kaiba looked utterly bored at the threat, but Purah didn’t seem to mind. She hopped off the table and started ushering them out. “No, you can’t stay here,” she said, shooing them out the door. “Does this look like an inn? There’s a perfectly nice inn down the road.”

“We don’t have any money!” Jou protested.

“Actually, we do,” Honda said. “Impa gave it to me just before we left Kakariko.”

“See, there you go,” Purah said. “Sleep tight, kids!” She slammed the door in their faces.

And then they were alone again, with the strange lab behind them and a chilly hike down to Hateno ahead.

“That was…quick,” Yuugi said.

“What do you mean?” Kaiba scoffed. “We made a plan for tomorrow. There was nothing more to discuss.”

“How come Impa gave you the money?” Jounouchi exclaimed, grabbing Honda’s shoulders and shaking him gently. “And how come you never told us about it?”

They began the long, winding walk, watching the distant lights in Hateno winking on as the residents finished their daily business and settled into their homes for the night.

Honda shrugged. “I dunno. She said she trusted me to be responsible with it. And I didn’t tell you about it because…we haven’t exactly found anywhere to spend it.”

“Oh, so Honda-kun is our group’s treasurer!” Yuugi said. “That’s a great idea.”

“I didn’t vote on Honda-kun being the treasurer,” Eri argued. “We need to have an election. While we’re at it we should vote in a secretary, too.”

“What would we need a secretary for?” Anzu said.

“Well, if we have a treasurer, we need a secretary,” Eri said matter-of-factly. “Both very important parts of any executive structure. The secretary documents everything and makes sure we all have copies of the bylaws and stuff. Hmm. I guess we also need a Chair and a Vice-Chair.”

“I call Chair!” Jounouchi yelled, sticking his hand into the air.

“You can’t call Chair,” Eri said. “We need to elect the Chair. You know what, we should get some committees going too. Hey, Anzu-chan, want to start a Health and Safety committee with me?”

“Sure!” Anzu said. “Can I make a rule that the Health and Safety committee can intervene and stop training any time when it looks like the participants are getting too competitive and might hurt each other?”

“Great idea,” Eri said.

“I nominate Honda-kun as treasurer,” Yuugi said solemnly.

“Does anyone else second the motion?”

“Me!” Jounouchi said, earlier animosity forgotten.

“Let’s vote.” Everyone’s hand went up, except for Kaiba, who looked like he wanted to die on the spot of irritation.

“Yuugi-kun, you wanna be secretary?”

“Yeah!”

“I second that!”

“Motion passes!”

“I can’t stand this anymore,” Kaiba cut in snappishly. “What are you idiots doing?”

“Establishing a command structure, stupid.” Eri rolled her eyes at him. “It’s a good way to expedite decision-making and provide oversight.”

“What the hell do you know about how a board of directors operates?” he bit back.

“Eri volunteers on a board of directors,” Anzu informed him primly. “You need to respect her experience.”

Kaiba sighed, long and heavy. “Who the fuck let you on a board?”

“An arts and community outreach NPO based out of Keidai.” Eri stuck her tongue out at him. “Suck on that, Executive Man.”

“Nonprofit arts doesn’t count. Try being on a corporate board-”

“Oh, piss off with that, you STEM douche-”

“I vote we kick Kaiba off our board!”

“Motion seconded!”

“I do not second that, be nice, all of you-”

The bickering tapered off into idle-chitchatting as they walked, especially once Kaiba lost interest in the conversation and started pretending the rest of them didn’t exist. Before long they were in Hateno proper, surrounded by warm lantern-light and the faint sounds of voices drifting out from the open windows. The residents of Hateno clearly took great pride in their homes and their village. Porches were swept clean and flower gardens lovingly tended.

Impa had not marked any inn on their map, but it was obvious enough. One of the larger buildings was draped in banners bearing a symbol for night-time.  Finally Yuugi pushed open the creaking wooden doors and they were hit by a wall of cozy comfort: delicious smells, boisterous laughter, chatter, music, the toastiness of a well-tended fire.

Anzu marched up to the counter. “Beds for six, please,” she said.

“Ah, adventurers!” the girl behind the counter clapped. She had a friendly face and a sweet, welcoming smile. “How fun! Welcome to Ton Pu Inn. Twenty rupees a bed, forty for our softest bed.”

“I want that one!” Jounouchi said.

Honda shook his head solemnly. “No can do, dude. We gotta save.”

“Can I move to un-elect you?”

“No. I’m the treasurer forever now. Sorry.”

In the end they found that they could only afford four beds. Impa hadn’t given them that much money after all. No one felt like complaining. Sleeping in actual beds felt like such a luxury after a week of camping that sharing didn’t seem like much of a hardship; especially in such a pretty, homey little inn.

“What about dinner?” Jounouchi said, gazing with obvious longing at the packed dining room. “How much does that cost?”

The friendly inkeeper leaned forward to whisper conspiratorially to them. “It so happens we’re running a special on dinner tonight,” she said with a sly wink. “A group rate. If your party is five or more, it’s ten rupees for everyone.”

 “Oh, we couldn’t,” Yuugi protested.

“Couldn’t what?” the inkeeper said with a bright smile. “If you don’t want the special rate, I’m sure another group would be happy to take me up on it.”

Dinner was the most delicious thing they’d eaten since Kakariko Village, and by far the most plentiful. Robust, toothsome meat pies were accompanied by cream of mushroom soup, fried greens slathered in butter, and wild rice with mushrooms and gravy mixed in. Where Kakariko cuisine had focused on light, delicate flavours, the Hateno palate leaned towards hearty stick-to-your-ribs fare. The food seemed endless. Even after every party in the dining room had been served, the cook himself wandered around looking for empty plates to heap with seconds.

“I could cry,” Anzu said through a mouthful of rice. “This is so good…”

“Enjoy it,” Honda replied, forlorn as he speared another forkful of greens. “We won’t be able to afford it tomorrow. I guess we’ll have to hunt…”

Eri chewed and swallowed her bite of pie. “Not true,” she said. “We can just make more money. It’s easy.”

“Is it?” Yuugi felt a little wary about her confidence, but on the other hand, if her methods meant another dinner like this…he wasn’t going to question her too much.

After they’d all washed up and changed into their sleeping clothes, the boys (sans Kaiba, who had by virtue of being difficult earned a bed to himself) stayed up late, all sitting on the same bed and chatting quietly long after the innkeeper had put out the lanterns. Anzu yawned and stretched out under the downy quilt. The sound of their voices mixing together and tumbling over each other was soothing, as was Eri’s form next to her; if Anzu closed her eyes, she could almost imagine that they were just crashing at Jounouchi’s or Honda’s apartment after a night out, like they had done so many times before.

Eri was apparently thinking the same thing. “Hey,” she whispered to Anzu. “Remember the first school break I spent with you guys in Japan, there was that night we all ended up crammed into Yuugi’s bed for some reason?”

Anzu laughed quietly. “Yeah. Jounouchi really wanted to see if we could all fit. We did a great job, until Honda knocked everyone off in the middle of the night.”

“Shizuka-chan wouldn’t even try,” Eri said with a grin. “So she got the guest futon all to herself.”

“That’s because she’s smarter than the rest of us,” Anzu teased, reaching out to poke Eri’s nose. “Go to sleep. Don’t kick me too much.”

“Aye aye,” Eri saluted, then rolled over and snuggled into her pillow with a contented sigh.

They rose bright and early the next morning, reluctantly skipping breakfast in the dining room in favour of starting the long walk up the hill. Luckily there were plenty of sweet apples to be plucked from the trees along the way. When they finally arrived at the Ancient Tech Lab, Purah was waiting impatiently for them with the door thrown wide open. She ushered them inside.

“Now, let’s get to work,” Purah said with nary a greeting, clapping her fingers. “Come on, science genius. We have notes to read!”

And then they were off. Kaiba actually seemed less grumpy than he’d been...well, since they’d landed. He was in his element, asking complicated technical questions and receiving equally complicated technical answers. Purah kept pace with him easily. Sometimes she even had the audacity to roll her eyes or tap her foot impatiently if he needed extra clarification. To everyone’s surprise, Kaiba let her get away with it, with only minimal rudeness in return.

While Kaiba and Purah duelled each other to the death with increasingly abstruse scientific terminology, the rest of them lounged around the lab, leafing through books here and there and poking at the various bits of machinery. There was no shortage of things to look at. Symin happily showed them several projects he and Purah had in the works, which mostly seemed to involve disemboweling random pieces of ancient technology and reassembling the machinery into even stranger configurations.

“Well, the only problem with Force Theory is that we don’t exactly understand how Force manifests or why it seems to stick to some people,” Purah was explaining to Kaiba. “Just after the Calamity was defeated, Princess Zelda was able to power a dead Guardian just by being near it, but that ability has subsided over time. We don’t know why. Link can still do it sometimes, and none of the rest of us have been able to manage it at all.”

“Well, hasn’t the Princess’ sacred sealing magic also faded?” Eri said absently, not looking up from the little metal spring she was fiddling with. “While the Master Sword’s is still intact?”

Purah stared at her. “What?”

Eri looked up. “Um...I mean...it makes sense for Force to be related to the sacred sealing power, doesn’t it? If you think about all of the evil-repelling swords throughout history that have been Force-powered, then you can extend the same logic to the Master Sword if you look at the Sacred Flames as a manifestation of Force.”

“You,” Purah instructed. “Over here, with us.”

“I think the rest of you can just come back around sunset,” Symin said. “Unless you want to keep listening?”

“Oh hell no,” Jounouchi said. “Come on, guys. Let’s see if we can find some free food.”

After kicking around town for a while, Honda had the idea of selling some of the things they’d gathered. Between them they rustled up some eggs, chickaloo nuts, and a handful of what Eri had assured them were very rare beetles. She’d been right - the beetles especially netted them a nice sum, enough to enjoy a luxurious lunch at the inn on top of the beds they had reserved for the night.

They passed a few blessedly leisurely days like that. In the morning, they would drop Kaiba and Eri off at the Ancient Tech lab. Eri would often leave the lab around midday, letting Kaiba and Purah get into the more technical aspects, and then they would all wander around town. It turned out Eri had been saving an ungodly number of crickets in her bag and knew of a guy in town who would pay an exorbitant amount of money for them.

“I don’t like that guy,” Anzu shuddered.

“Well, we have lots of cash now,” Yuugi said happily. “What should we spend it on?”

As treasurer, Honda decided that the first order of business was taking care of their armour. The blacksmith in town was easygoing and even let Honda hang around to watch as he hammered the dents out of Honda’s breastplate and greaves, while his wife who specialized in leather took care of Kaiba and Jounouchi’s sets. Meanwhile Eri, Yuugi and Anzu visited the tailor, who not only mended the rips and tears in their garments but also taught them how to do some basic mending themselves, and gave them excellent tips for getting bloodstains out of their clothes.

Once their armour was fresh and shiny and good as new, they stocked up on some basic supplies: food staples that were hard to get in the wilderness, bandages, twine, extra flint, and other such things. Honda judiciously treated Eri to a set of wide-mouth amberglass jars so that she didn’t have to store her various stashes of monster guts in wrapped cloth. He allowed the rest of them a few treats as well. Yuugi chose a set of tin mugs coated in pretty patterned enamel that everyone could use to drink tea around the campfire. Jounouchi decided on a trip to the Dye Shop to get some cool designs painted on his armour. Anzu wanted a book on anatomy that Symin had been willing to part with for a small sum. For himself, Honda selected a beautifully crafted pocket knife to replace the convenience-store one he’d brought over in his jacket pocket from Earth.

“Kaiba, look!” Jounouchi said proudly, when they went to collect him that night. “Notice anything different about me?”

Apparently in a good mood from another long day of science, Kaiba actually looked at him and made a credible attempt. “No,” he said finally.

Eri couldn’t contain herself. “Look!” she cried, pointing at Jounouchi’s vest. “He got it painted. Awesome, right?”

Kaiba frowned. “What were you all doing all day, just recklessly spending money in town?”

“That’s unbelievable coming from the man with a dragon jet,” Anzu said.

“Not recklessly,” Honda said matter-of-factly. “I decided that our financial situation was good enough for a few indulgences. Want anything from town? We can go for you tomorrow while the shops are still open.”

Kaiba looked utterly nonplussed. “What on earth would I want from the shops?”

When he thought about it later that night, Honda felt like that maybe Kaiba hadn’t meant that in a sarcastic way. He’d looked genuinely surprised. And that was surprising to Honda, because as Anzu had pointed out, the guy didn’t seem to hesitate in throwing his money at anything back on Earth that caught his fancy, especially anything plastered in dragon motifs.

“Hey, Yuugi,” Hona said the next day, while he and Yuugi washed everyone’s bedrolls at the laundry pool. Anzu and Jounouchi were off doing errands in town for a little extra cash now that they had run out of bugs to sell to the weird guy in the alley, and Eri had been roped into another morning of nerd theorizing with Purah.

“Yeah, Honda-kun?” Yuugi was scrubbing diligently at the bedroll, using way too much soap. They’d have to rinse it twice.

“What does Kaiba spend his money on for fun?”

Yuugi thought about that. “Duel Monsters stuff, I guess?”

“Right,” Honda said. “But isn’t that his job, too? Does he have other hobbies?”

“Sure he does,” Yuugi replied. “Kendo...judo...soccer...”

Honda blinked. “Kaiba plays soccer?”

“Uh huh,” Yuugi said. “When he was younger, before he took over the company, he was on a top-ranked international youth team. Now he just plays with the KaibaCorp team sometimes.”

Of course KaibaCorp had a soccer team. “Okayyy,” Honda said, shrugging. “Anyways, I was just thinking. He didn’t seem to want to buy himself anything fun. But that’s weird, isn’t it? He isn’t the type to hesitate with spending.”

“That’s true,” Yuugi mused. “He usually just buys whatever he wants. Maybe he figures there’s nothing here he would enjoy.”

“Well, that kinda sucks,” Honda said. “Everyone else was able to find something that made them happy.”

“You’re right!” Yuugi said. “Kaiba-kun shouldn’t be left out. Why don’t we buy him a present, if he can’t think of anything himself?”

“A present?” Honda said. “I don’t think he’ll like that.”

“We’ll put it somewhere he can find it,” Yuugi said craftily. “That way he can’t refuse it.”

In the afternoon, they let Eri, Anzu and Jounouchi in on their plan.

“I don’t understand,” Jounouchi said, his brow furrowed. “He doesn’t want a present from us.”

“He doesn’t know he wants a present,” Yuugi said. “Everyone wants presents, even if they don’t realize it.”

“I like it,” Anzu said. “It’s sweet. I think it’s a nice way to show him that he really is a part of this group. Maybe he’ll calm down a little and stop being so paranoid all the time.”

“I like it too,” Eri said. “He’s a dickwad, but he’s our dickwad. Team spirit!”

Jounouchi didn’t say anything. Anzu and Yuugi looked at him expectantly.

“What?” he said, throwing his hands up. “I’ll help. Just don’t tell him I was involved or he’ll probably hurl it into the nearest fireplace.”

For the rest of the afternoon they scoured the shops up and down, debating what they thought Kaiba might like. It was not an easy task. All of the things Kaiba seemed to like were immaterial (power, victory, humiliating his enemies), in another dimension (his brother, Duel Monsters), or otherwise unobtainable (scads of money, cool aircraft.)

“Come on,” Anzu said, “how could he not like this.” She held up a leather belt studded with spikes.

“We’re not buying him even more BDSM-themed accessories,” Eri grumbled. “That’s enabling.”

“BDSM?” Yuugi said, sounding a little hurt.

“It doesn’t look weird on you!” Eri corrected quickly. “The aesthetic suits you!”

“What about this?” Jounouchi cackled, holding up a bath set containing various soaps wrapped in delicately printed paper. “He could maybe relax just enough to get the stick out of his ass.”

Anzu gave a long-suffering sigh. “Ew, Jounouchi.”

Evening was descending over the village, and the shopkeeper was starting to look meaningfully between them and the door. Finally Honda came over with a small glittering object in his hands.

“What’ve you got there, Honda-kun?” Yuugi craned his neck to look.

“I don’t know what it is, but it looked kinda cool,” Honda admitted.

“Oh, wow,” Anzu breathed.

It was a little round stone, brilliant blue streaked with white. Carved into it was an intricately rendered dragon.

“That’s beautiful,” Eri said. “It’s a pommelstone.”

“A what now?”

“You can have it mounted into the hilt of your sword,” she explained. “See, my shortsword has one.” She pulled the shortsword out of her bag. There was a green gem embedded in the top.

“It’s perfect!” Yuugi said. “We have to get it!”

They wrapped the stone carefully in paper and left it on Kaiba’s bedside table, next to his things. Kaiba never said anything about it, but it was gone the next day - which meant he had probably at least put it in his pouch. If he hadn’t thrown it out. He left even earlier than usual the next morning, so no one could ask him about it.

The next day, when Honda was walking past the blacksmith, he glanced at the line of swords on the worktable.

One of them was Kaiba’s, sporting a freshly-mounted bright blue pommelstone.

Kaiba was so much more tolerable while working on the Sheikah Slate that it was a little scary. He wasn’t cheerful by any means, and still hurled insults around right and left, but he didn’t make any scathing personal attacks for days and had mostly stopped picking fights when someone looked at him wrong.

“He’s like this whenever he starts developing a new prototype at KaibaCorp,” Yuugi explained over dinner one night - a dinner Kaiba had skipped because he was still sitting at Purah’s lab table, in the same position he had been all day, surrounded by machine parts. “I guess all his extra energy is channeled into inventing, instead of...”

“Being his usual charming self,” Eri supplied wryly.

“Yes,” Yuugi said with a smile. “So we should enjoy it while we can. It’s kind of cute, ne?”

“Ew,” Jounouchi said. “Did you just imply that Kaiba and cute belong in the same sentence together?”

Honda shrugged. “I dunno. They put the guy on magazine covers all the time. Objectively-”

“Objectively, he is a maniac with a trench coat problem,” Anzu said delicately, popping a piece of fish into her mouth.

“That’s just because we know him too well,” Yuugi pointed out. “He’s got some admirers among the staff.”

“What, really?” Eri said, nonplussed. “What is that, some kinda Stockholm syndrome?”

On their last day in Hateno, Purah gathered them all in the Lab for a demonstration. The completed Sheikah Slate sat on the table, sturdily and meticulously crafted. They all gathered around to admire it; from the raised Sheikah designs on the back to the gentle blue and orange pulses of light emitted by its components, Eri assured the rest that it looked exactly like its predecessor.

The replication of functions, too, was exact. Kaiba had done a flawless job in recreating it even without a reference. The new Sheikah Slate had all of the Runes - Cryonis, Magnesis, Stasis, Bombs, and of course the Camera - and he’d also added a stylus, so that they could easily take notes and make markings on the map.

The only thing they hadn’t been able to wrestle down was the teleportation function. This was not only coded specifically to the Chosen Hero, it also needed to be manually activated at each Shrine, just like its predecessor. Since they weren’t going to be retracing their steps, it wouldn’t have been particularly useful anyways.

Purah insisted on treating them to a celebratory dinner. It consisted of bread, cheese that seemed like it had spent perhaps a little too much time in the back of a cabinet, and a very watery soup. The gesture was touching, though, so they all gathered around the long table and made an attempt to enjoy their last meal in the village.

“So then,” Purah said, waving her spoon, “He suggests we change the screen from one glass layer over a resistive metal to multiple layers of glass, coated with a conductor alloy-”

“It was just switching the screen from resistive to capacitive,” Kaiba said boredly, as if he were stating a well-known fact that wasn’t going over nearly everyone’s heads.

“Oh, don’t be modest, Science Genius,” Purah cackled. The way she said Science Genius somehow still sounded more like mockery than anything, even when she was singing his praises.

“Hey, Purah,” Eri said. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”

Purah eyed her. “You want to know why you nearly got shot out of the sky by a Guardian on your first day here.” She’d apparently noticed them all nervously staring up at the intact Guardian on the roof, as if expecting it to come alive at any moment.

“Um...” Yuugi blinked. “How did you know about that?”

“Well, I had to turn my telescope towards the Great Plateau when you lot set off that crazy energy surge,” Purah said. “What, you thought I wasn’t going to even peek?”

“So you saw...” Jounouchi groaned.

Purah grinned wickedly. “Your graceful leap from the Great Plateau and subsequent landing. Poor form, but I rate it ten out of ten for entertainment factor. Anyways,” she pivoted to Science Mode on a dime, gesturing to a gently pulsing Guardian eye in the corner, “The Guardians didn’t all die with Calamity Ganon. The Calamity wasn’t powering them, it was just hijacking their circuitboards. Many of them were defeated in the Age of Burning fields, but the rest - now they’re not really coded to anyone, and they just wander around killing everything in their way, including each other.”

“Isn’t there a way to get them back under your control?” Anzu said.

“Not my field,” Purah shrugged. “Robbie’s working on it, up in Akkala. So far the only solution seems to be having Princess Zelda go and recode each one manually, but that’s hardly practical. Before the Princess disappeared she was working on this way to get to them remotely by wiring through the Sheikah Towers-” she shook her head. “No offense, Science Genius, but that girl’s mind is just unparalleled. Nothing like it.”

Purah narrowed her eyes at the group, staring them down. “We miss our brilliant little scholar Princess, you hear me? All of Hyrule misses her, but those of us that know her especially. You’d better get her back. You’d better.”

Chapter Text

Chapter Nine: The Board of Directors

Since hitting the road again, Honda decided, the group vibe had been decidedly strange.

Not that there was anything resembling normal about this particular configuration to begin with, of course. It was just that during their time in Hateno, all of the simmering tension following the battle with the Lynel seemed to have died down. Things were...companionable. Friendly, even, if you counted Kaiba and Jounouchi not going for each other’s throats every two seconds as more than basic civility.

Unfortunately, just hours after leaving the village, the tension had returned in full force. Kaiba was so far ahead of the group that they kept losing sight of him in the trees, and he roundly ignored all pleas to slow down. Jounouchi and Yuugi walked quietly next to each other without any of their usual chatter. Eri wasn’t so much walking with the group as she was moving in parallel, weaving in and out of the forest without really clarifying where she was going or why.

Anzu fell to the back of the group alongside Honda and gave him a significant glance. He knew she was thinking the same thing, so he slowed down until they were a little further out of earshot of the rest.

“Any theories on what the hell is up with them?” Honda said.

“Well...it’s not just them,” Anzu admitted. “I’m feeling a little off, too. It’s understandable, isn't it? We’re leaving the nice safe village and going back into the scary part.”

It was true, the village had been nice and safe. A friendly, warm bubble, where they’d shared beers with other adventurers, acquainted themselves with Hateno’s inhabitants, and had gone to bed under soft covers every night with their stomachs full of delicious food. They hadn’t had to look over their shoulders, or jolt awake in the night if a frog croaked a little too loudly. Their weapons had remained untouched for days.

“It’s not that bad,” Honda said, looking around. The route out of Hateno was kind of picturesque, actually; birds were chirping, the sun was streaming through the trees and casting dappled light on the green grass, the air was fresh and clear. “Is it?”

Anzu cast a sidelong glance at Honda. “You’re not feeling any leftover nerves at all after fighting the Lynel?”

“Well, yeah,” Honda said. “Sure. It was scary that Jou...well, kinda died for a hot second, and that you were out nearly an entire day. But we kicked its ass, didn’t we? I think we did pretty good considering we’ve only been at this a couple weeks.”

“That’s what I thought,” Anzu shrugged, “but I think you and me are in the minority. Yuugi and Jou seem to think the fight was a disaster. Kaiba-kun was apparently so upset afterwards he punched a rock.”

“Kaiba?” Honda said in surprise. “Why?”

Anzu shook her head. “Yuugi said it was something about thinking he’d made mistakes in the fight. And Eri-chan taking a hit for him. Pride thing, I guess.”

“That makes sense,” Honda sighed. “He’s gonna need to learn to get over that. Speaking of Eri-chan...”

Anzu shrugged again. “No idea. She says she’s fine.”

“She always says that.”

“I’m aware.”

They walked in silence for a while before Honda piped up again. “Do we try and make them talk about it?”

Anzu peered ahead at her friends with a sharp, examining eye. “No,” she decided. “I think that’s probably just going to end in fighting. Maybe everyone just needs a little time.”

Anzu’s instincts proved to be keen as usual. The first day out of Hateno was quiet and tense until the turning point came: the shrieking and gibbering of monsters, hurtling full-tilt from the forest.

The two bokoblins and lone moblin were the first creatures they’d encountered since the Lynel. Everyone fell nearly immediately into formation. Kaiba and Honda rushed towards the moblin, while Jounouchi took off for the bokoblins. Eri and Yuugi kept constantly on the move and spread their shots out so that no particular enemy would register them as more of a threat than the three warriors. The fight was quick, quiet and efficient; Anzu barely had any healing to do at the end.

“Wow,” Yuugi said at the end, bent with his hands on his knees, panting a little. “That was...”

“Pretty good?” Jounouchi ventured, wiping gore off his war-axe.

“Yeah,” Honda said with a grin. “Pretty good.”

Kaiba surveyed the scene. “Adequate,” he decided, and that set off a round of whoops and high-fives.

By the next morning everyone was laughing and chattering on the road again. Kaiba, of course, did not partake, but he at least made a cursory effort to stay close to the group.

They’d made good enough time that everyone agreed to a midday break. Yuugi and Jounouchi volunteered to go and gather firewood.

“I’m so glad the atmosphere has eased up a little bit,” Yuugi commented to Jounouchi, manoeuvring yet another log of firewood into his Korok pack. The interesting thing about the Korok packs was not only their capacity, but how they always seemed to know more-or-less what you were reaching for whenever you put your hand in, with minimal searching.

“Yeah, got a bit tense for a minute there, didn’t it?” Jounouchi laughed. He gave the log in front of him another mighty whack with his war-axe, splitting it in two. Kaiba kept making annoying comments about how Jounouchi shouldn’t use his axe for firewood, but they didn’t have any other axes, so Jounouchi was for the most part ignoring him.

Yuugi nodded. “You know, I think we’re getting a little better at it.”

“At what?” Whack.

“Everything,” Yuugi shrugged. “Fighting, surviving, working together.”

“We better be,” Jounouchi snorted, “after all those fuckin’ drills and sparring practices. Kaiba’s a god damned slave driver.”

“He’s trying to help in his own way,” Yuugi said gently. “If he didn’t care, he wouldn’t bother teaching you.”

“Damn it. Why’ve you always gotta be so reasonable, huh?”

Yuugi shrugged again with an innocent grin. Jounouchi slung his arm around Yuugi’s shoulders and roughly mussed his hair, as Yuugi laughed and tried to break free. “No! Not the hair!”

“Oh, yes, the hair! Watch out!”

“Jou,” Yuugi whined.

“Okay, okay,” Jounouchi chuckled, releasing Yuugi. “Think we got enough firewood. Let’s go see if Eri’s hunted us something good for lunch.”

Eri had not hunted them something good to eat, because she was too busy arguing with Kaiba.

“I have logged over-”

“Good god, Morin, I do not care how many hours you logged in a stupid video game-”

“It’s relevant, I know exactly how the runes work and where to use them-”

“I rebuilt this thing practically from scratch, I think I know-”

Anzu and Honda were sitting and watching while sharing a snack of nutcakes.

“What’re they on about this time?” Jounouchi asked, sitting down next to Honda and helping himself to a cake.

“Who gets to be in charge of the Sheikah Slate,” Anzu said. “Eri-chan’s making some pretty good points, but Kaiba-kun’s riling her up and she’s starting to lose it.”

“Heh. Like an arts graduate would know jack shit about the inner mechanics of a piece of tech like this.”

“You know who draws the pictures on your precious cards? Artists!”

“And who brings those pictures to life with cutting-edge holographics?”

Honda took a swig of milk to wash down his snack. “Ooh, now they’re back into arts vs. STEM. Always a classic.”

“If Duel Monsters actually had a proper art director and not a crazy one-eyed pervert painting all the monsters himself, maybe the Blue-Eyes White Dragon wouldn’t look so stupid!” Eri yelled. “If you’re going to pick one fucking monster to plaster all over your big horrible buildings, at least choose one that isn’t ugly as shit!”

“What?” Kaiba roared.

“She got him,” Anzu said mildly. “Uh oh. Now they’re equally worked up.”

“And totally off track,” Jounouchi commented. “You know, it’s kinda fun to watch him lose it on someone else for a change.”

“Should we stop them?” Yuugi fretted.

“Nah-” Honda started, then Eri’s fist clenched in threatening sort of way at her side. “Yeah, maybe. Anzu, you wanna take this?”

“I had to break it up last time. Rock-paper-scissors?”

Yuugi sighed and got to his feet. “Stop it, you two,” he said, inserting himself between them. They ignored him. Yuugi took a deep breath and briefly sent himself into the Twilight Realm. When he returned, he brought a bubble of inky blackness with him that plunged the three of them into complete silence and darkness.

After a minute, he let the shadows slip back into the Twilight Realm. Eri was flat on her rear, and Kaiba’s eyes were blown wide.

“Are we calm now?” Yuugi said. “If not, we can take another moment in the dark to cool down.”

“No thanks,” Eri squeaked, scrabbling backwards like a frantic crab.

“Neither of you get total control over the Sheikah Slate,” Yuugi said. “I’m going to keep it with me, and we’re all going to learn to use it. You can both teach us. We’ll take turns.”

“Fine,” Kaiba said, clearly going for aggressive, but coming out a little choked. “Just...don’t fucking do that again.”

As they continued about their camp chores, Anzu was thinking. She watched as Jounouchi loaded another log onto the fire, as Eri diligently scrubbed out the inside of the cookpot so there was no trace of the gross concoction she’d been experimenting with, as Kaiba helped Honda de-feather the partridge they were set to have for lunch.

“Hey, everyone,” she said at last.

Yuugi glanced over at her. “What’s up, Anzu?”

“I have an idea.”

“An idea?”

“Yup,” Anzu nodded. “I nominate Yuugi to be the Chairman. I’ll be Secretary in his place.”

“Oh, come on,” Kaiba groaned, sounding more like himself as he rolled his eyes with typical Kaiba drama. “I can’t believe you’re all still going on about this.”

“I second the motion,” Eri said. “Who’s in favour?”

Jounouchi, Honda, Anzu and Eri’s hands all shot up.

Anzu looked expectantly at Kaiba. “Are you for or against?”

“This is ridiculous,” Kaiba said.

“It’s not, though, Kaiba-kun,” Eri said. Her anger with him seemed to have evaporated abruptly. “Think about why boards have a Chair, and a Vice-Chair. It’s precisely because everyone can’t agree on everything all the time. If you nominate a Chair that you trust, then you can be assured that when they make a decision, they have everyone’s best interests at heart. Right?”

“This...” Kaiba sputtered. “This isn’t a corporation. It’s a group of six people wandering around in the wilderness trying to find a couple of lost elves.”

“Boards aren’t just for corporations,” Eri said. “You said yourself that a nonprofit arts organization isn’t on the same level as a corporation. You’re exactly right. But even so, that just demonstrates that all kinds of groups need structured governance. So why not us? If we trust in Yuugi-kun to be the tiebreaker, then even if we all can’t agree, we at least know that someone brave and rational and kind is making the best decision he can.”

Kaiba stared at her in silence. The combination of her surprisingly level-headed logic, and actually agreeing with something he’d said, had him apparently dumbfounded.

“Well said, Eri-chan,” Anzu said. “But if Yuugi’s going to be our Chairman, I say that it has to be a unanimous vote. If Kaiba-kun doesn’t like it, we won’t do it.”

“I think that’s fair,” Eri said. “I also want to nominate Kaiba-kun to be the Vice-Chair.”

That jolted Kaiba back into action. “What?”

“What?!” Jounouchi and Honda echoed together.

“Aren’t you the one with Vice-Chair experience, Eri-chan?” Yuugi said hesitantly. He wasn’t sure how he felt about this whole Chairman business in the first place.

“Kaiba-kun’s smarter than I am,” Eri said with a shrug. “And I’m too impulsive to make good decisions for the whole group.”

“Man,” Jounouchi said. “I kinda wanted to be Vice-Chair. But when you put it that way...”

“Sounds good to me,” Honda said. “Motion: we elect Mutou Yuugi as Chair, Kaiba Seto as Vice-Chair, and Mazaki Anzu as Secretary.”

“Motion seconded!” Eri said. “All in favour?”

Everyone except Kaiba raised their hands. Kaiba stared around the group. They waited patiently for his brain to finish processing.

“Fine,” Kaiba muttered, and raised his hand.

“Motion passed unanimously!” Anzu said, pumping her fist. “This is so cool! I’ve never been a club secretary before!”

“Are we gonna have meetings?” Jounouchi said, really starting to get into the whole thing.

“For my first official act as Chair,” Yuugi said, “I’d like to propose that we meet regularly as a group. We can freely air any problems, concerns, ideas and suggestions. This will help keep the lines of communication open and ensure that everyone feels heard.”

“Wow, you’re so good at this!” Honda said, punching Yuugi affectionately in the arm. “You were born to be a Chairman!”

“What are we, then?” Jounouchi said to Eri. “Don’t we get cool titles?”

“That’s what committees are for,” Eri said. “Anzu-chan and I already made the Health and Safety committee, but I’m sure you and me can think of another good one.”

“Committee of Kicking Ass!”

“Hell yeah!” They high-fived.

“What does that entail, exactly?” Honda prompted, trying to get them to think it through a little more.

“I dunno,” Jounouchi shrugged.

“Stop slacking,” Honda scolded. “We’re always kicking ass by default. Come up with something productive.”

Eri and Jounouchi stared back at him, nonplussed. Kaiba, apparently at his limit, gave an exasperated groan and stormed off towards the trees.

“Well, a committee for kicking ass would mean like, coordination and planning of the ass-kicking,” Jounouchi said sagely. “Right, Eri?”

Eri nodded. “Correct. So I guess we plan out the beatdowns?”

“Yeah!” Jounouchi agreed. “There’s a word for that...”

“Tactics, you thundering, catastrophic idiots,” Kaiba spat venomously, apparently not quite out of earshot yet. And thus, the Battle Tactics Committee was formed.

Unlike their journey from Kakariko Village to Mount Lanayru, the road from Hateno to Dueling Peaks was busy - for Hyrule, anyways. They greeted fellow travellers passing by on horseback, and, at one point, a merchant leading an affable donkey. Slung over the donkey’s back were panniers filled with fresh Hateno vegetables, bound for the hungry Stablefolk.  

That evening, they came across a tidy little cabin in the woods. An elderly gentleman named Calip invited them in to lay their bedrolls on the floor in front of his warm, cozy fire. In return they shared fresh meat with him. Eri had managed to take down a wild goat earlier in the day, and Calip showed them how to butcher it, making the most efficient cuts to preserve every edible bit possible.

Later on in the evening a younger man showed up at the door, wearing the large rucksack and sturdy clothes of an adventurer. Calip and Garill clearly knew each other. Garill was much chattier than his older friend. “Come to see Fort Hateno, I take it?” he said eagerly, gesturing to the crumbling battlements in the distance. “It's well worth seeing! Fort Hateno here was the last line of defense between Hateno Village and the awful tragedy all those years ago. Everyone's got to come and pay their respects at least once in life, right?”

Garill told them the old story of the soldiers who had died at Fort Hateno, and the one mighty warrior who had fought with them. It was surreal to listen to Link’s story told in this way. Previously they’d only spoken briefly about Link with Impah and Purah, who had known him personally. Garill was telling the story of someone who had died (allegedly) nearly a century before he was even born. He spoke of the events of the Calamity like one of them might explain the Shogunate to a tourist.

“Do people…know that Link is that same warrior from the story?” Anzu said the next morning, after Calip and Garill had cheerfully sent them along down the road.

Eri thought about that. “I don’t really know. In the game you don’t have the option to tell people. Or sometimes you do, but they think you’re joking. Link being over a hundred years old wouldn’t be your first thought when you saw him.”

“I guess he’s probably pretty humble,” Honda surmised, and that was true enough, at least from what Eri knew.

Though the battlements of Fort Hateno were still standing strong, they showed obvious and gruesome signs of the Calamity they’d weathered. The walls were supported in places by wooden stakes driven into the ground and scorch-marks charred the bricks.

“Let’s just cut across this field to get to the Stable,” Jounouchi said as they approached, grabbing the Slate from Kaiba. “No reason we have to take the road and go all the way around, right?”

“I don’t see why not,” Yuugi said, peering over Jounouchi’s shoulder. “Eri-chan? Is it dangerous?”

“No,” Eri said. “Just...”

“Just what?” Anzu prompted.

Eri’s mouth quirked as she thought for a moment. “There’s lots of dead Guardians. It’s creepy.”

“I’m good with creepy stuff,” Jounouchi boasted. “You just stick by me.”

“Wow, that was a bold-faced lie,” Anzu said blandly.

“How can they be dead?” Honda wondered, staring out across the field. “Aren’t they machines?”

Kaiba had already started walking, so the decision was made. They set off after him, still embroiled in debates over whether or not Jounouchi actually could handle scary things and whether Guardians could be counted as alive or not.

Silence fell as soon as they stepped through the battlement gates.

The Guardians at the Temple of Time had been disturbing. That had been before they knew the story of the Calamity. Before they’d walked under the ruined arches of the Lanayru Promenade and climbed the crumbling stairs that had once been the route of pilgrims. Before they’d seen the blissful serenity of Hateno Village, one of the last bastions of the Hylian people.

The destroyed Guardians here were so numerous as to churn the stomach. One of these machines had nearly taken out all six them in a single hit. It was hard to imagine Hylian soldiers standing up against this many of them. Dying in swathes, knowing they were the only thing between their people and utter annihilation.

Yuugi suddenly had a strange and powerful urge to ask Eri exactly where Link had died.

He wasn’t exactly sure if Link had died, or if he’d been right on the verge of it, close enough that the Shrine of Resurrection was necessary. Even if this wasn’t the site of his death in a technical sense, it was the place where he’d died in the eyes of nearly everyone he’d ever known. In the eyes of Hyrule itself. Yuugi had spent a lot of time thinking over technicalities like this. Where death began, and where it crossed from death into history.

Eri had stopped for a moment to rest her hand on a fallen Guardian. It was so decayed that it looked more like a little hillock covered in moss, discernible only by the few carved lines that hadn’t yet been eroded. She was looking down at it with a strange expression as her thumb cleared some of the grime from its lone beady eye.

Yuugi decided not to ask her.

After they had been walking for an hour, they came upon a swampy area, several ponds clustered together along with a handful of collapsed stone structures. The concentration of Guardians was higher here.

“Let’s go around,” Eri said suddenly. “There’s drier ground to the north.”

Her eyes were fixed on a seemingly random spot, an innocuous patch of grass somewhere in the midst of the ponds. Yuugi followed her gaze. An odd feeling crawled in his stomach as he realized that all of the Guardians here were facing in the exact same direction.

“I agree,” Yuugi spoke up. “We’ll go around.”

They rejoined the path soon enough. The oppressive feeling started to lighten little by little, and Yuugi noticed just how silent the field had been. Now that birdsong and woods noises filled the air, it became apparent that nothing living frequented the graveyard that was the Blatchery Plains.

They arrived at the Dueling Peaks Stable in the early evening, just before a bout of rain began. This time around they had money - enough to pay for beds for the night plus a little extra, to thank the stablemaster Tasseren for his generosity the first time they’d been there. Tasseren happily accepted the rupees and offered them another hearty supper. They ate around the little table inside as they watched the rain pour down.

“Can’t see the moon tonight,” a mustachioed man leaning against the wall grumbled. “Damned rain.”

“What do you want to see the moon for?” Jounouchi wondered.

“I’m studying the blood moon,” the man explained, not even bothering to tear his eyes from the sky. “Need to gather data.”

“Oh, you don’t need to bother with that,” Eri said through a mouthful of stew. “There’s not going to be any more blood moons.”

The man gaped. “W-what?”

Eri swallowed her mouthful. “Um, well,” she said uneasily. “Because the Calamity’s gone?”

He stared at her for a moment in what looked like a mixture of disbelief and actual grief, before suddenly bursting into a laugh. “Oh, well isn’t that an interesting theory,” he said in an indulgent tone. “Very cute. You’re wrong, though. The blood moon has nothing to do with the Calamity.”

“Oh,” Eri said, backpedaling. “Yes. I see. You’re right, it was a stupid idea.”

“Nonsense,” the man said kindly. “Every bright young mind needs to start somewhere. Keep coming up with those ideas and someday you’ll be a true scholar yet.”

“Eri-chan,” Honda said sternly when the man had moved away, putting his hands on either side of her face and squishing her cheeks tightly. “Don’t freak out the NPCs. That’s like, rule one of time travel.”

“There were so many things wrong with that sentence I’m not even going to start,” Anzu sighed.

“Ow,” Eri said. “Leggo.”

“Repeat after me,” Honda said. “Don’t. Freak out. The NPCs.”

“Donfreakouthenpcs,” Eri muttered. Honda let her go then patted her on the head. She used the opening to punch him swiftly in the side.

“No fighting in my inn,” Tasseren boomed from the other side of the room, and everyone decided that was their cue to go to bed and quit causing him trouble.

Yuugi examined the three free beds, frowning.

“What’s up, Yuugi?” Jounouchi said.

“You think Anzu, Eri and I could fit in the same bed?” Yuugi asked.

“Probably,” Jounouchi said with a shrug. “You’re all pretty shrimpy. What, you cold or something?”

“No, nothing like that,” Yuugi said. “It’s just, Kaiba-kun doesn’t like sharing, but I don’t want him to have to sleep on the floor again.”

“Oh, who cares?” Jounouchi started, but Eri cut him off.

“Yeah, we can totally all fit,” she said. “Let’s try it!”

“Eri-chan,” Anzu scolded. “You sleep like a caffeinated grasshopper. You’d kick us both to death.”

“I’ll stay still,” Eri insisted.

“Don’t bother,” Kaiba said, rolling his eyes. He sat down in the corner, back against the wall, with his arms crossed against the damp chill.

The next morning Kaiba woke up covered by a warm woollen blanket.

“Who the fuck did this?” he muttered to himself.

“Anzu,” a voice answered. Kaiba looked up. He hadn’t noticed Honda sitting quietly at a table by himself, sipping a warm mug of what smelled like tea.

Honda looked back at him. His expression wasn’t defensive, like Jounouchi’s so frequently was, or disgustingly friendly like Yuugi’s. Just neutral. Maybe that was why Kaiba found himself asking, “Why?”

“Dunno,” Honda said with a shrug. “Girls are mysterious.”

Kaiba grunted in agreement and pushed the blanket off himself. “Is that caffeinated?”

“Another mystery,” Honda said, peering into his cup.

Kaiba sighed, took a seat across from Honda, and poured himself a cup from the teapot on the table. It was worth a try. They sat there in silence for a while, listening as the early-morning drizzle outside gradually tapered off into nothing.

The tea was acceptable, Kaiba thought. It had a mild, grassy flavour to it, sweetened just a little with honey. Although he’d still do unspeakable things for a hot, strong shot of espresso.

“Hey, mister,” a little voice said, from somewhere in the vicinity of Honda’s knee.

“Hey, mister man,” another one echoed from near Kaiba’s elbow.

They looked down to see two very small children. Twins, by the looks of it, decked out in tiny matching caps and with matching innocent expressions.

“What’s up, small humans?” Honda said.

One of them wrinkled his nose. “What’s a human?”

“We’re Hylians, dummy.” The other one pointed at Honda’s head. “Woah. What’s wrong with your ears?”

“Nothing,” Honda said defensively. “What’s wrong with your ears?”

The first little boy clapped his hands over his ears, as if seriously considering the question. His much bolder brother clambered right into Kaiba’s lap. “Lookit, Shibo! This guy’s got weird ears too! Hey, mister, did someone cut off the top part of your ears? How did they get that way?”

Kaiba raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything. He also did not make a move to push the small person off his knee, instead folding his arms.

“Huh,” Honda said. “I guess everyone we’ve seen here has pointy ears, now that I think about it. Well, no one has pointy ears where we’re from.”

“Gross,” the second twin said cheerfully.

Shibo, the more timid one, wandered right up to Honda. “I know a joke about horses,” he said shyly.

“That’s a coincidence,” Honda said. “I’ve been wanting to hear a joke about horses. Lay it on me.”

Shibo giggled. “Lay it on - what? You guys talk weird.”

“You gonna tell me your horse joke or nah?”

“Yeah, yeah. Give me a second to remember it.”

“Is it the giddyup one?”

“Aw, Darton, why’d you have to give it away! Now I gotta remember a different one.”

Darton had climbed up even further and was now hanging off Kaiba’s shoulders. He was industriously reaching for the hilt of Kaiba’s sword.

“Wait, wait, I got it,” Shibo said. “Okay. What’s a good story to tell a runaway horse? A tale of whoa!”

“Aw man,” Honda said, laughing. “Genius. How do you come up with something like that?”

“I didn’t,” Shibo said. He lowered his voice and looked from side to side. “It’s actually my dad’s joke,” he whispered loudly.

“Don’t touch that,” Kaiba said, as Darton finally got his tiny fingers around the pommel.

“I won’t touch it if you give me something good,” Darton said, eyeing Kaiba’s pouch.

Kaiba grabbed Darton by the back of his little vest and dangled him out in the air at arm’s length. “You picked the wrong target for extortion,” he said flatly.

Darton shrieked with laughter. “This is fun! Swing me!”

Shibo tugged at Honda’s trouser leg. “Come on, come play with us,” he pleaded. “Let’s play, let’s play!”

Kaiba and Honda exchanged glances. Darton was still squirming and giggling in Kaiba’s grip.

“You tell anyone about this and I’ll kill you in your sleep,” Kaiba said.

“Deal,” Honda replied. They shook hands and then went outside for a rousing game of tag.

Over the next few days they fell back into their usual travelling routine. Training in the morning, walking, break for lunch, more training, walking again, setting up camp, sleeping.

Chairman Mutou kept them on track with the proposed meetings. They discussed topics like rationing their food (Kaiba all for, Jounouchi against), going off alone to hunt/gather/meditate (hunting alone was practical, meditating alone was sometimes necessary, for everything else they would go in pairs), and their training schedule (Anzu argued for rest days where they didn’t train at all, and against all odds Kaiba actually agreed with her.) During the meetings Secretary Mazaki took notes on the Sheikah Slate, and then often brought them back up again in future meetings to remind her aggrieved fellow executive members that they had indeed said such-and-such or argued for so-and-so. Directors Morin and Jounouchi inaugurated the auspicious Battle Tactics Committee, which Vice-Chair Kaiba refused to officially be a part of on the grounds that he felt it was stupid, but he was often roped into their meetings anyways because he couldn’t stand to hear anyone being wrong about tactics in his general vicinity.

Treasurer Honda didn’t have much to do as they weren’t exactly spending at the moment, but nonetheless he dutifully reported how many rupees they had remaining at each meeting.

“I’d like to add an item to the agenda,” Kaiba said sourly one afternoon, looming in front of Anzu, who was keeper of the agenda since no one else wanted to do it.

“Okay,” Anzu said. “I don’t have the Slate right now, though, so I can’t write it down.”

“That’s exactly the problem.” Kaiba folded his arms. “Look.” He jerked his head, gesturing over his shoulder.

Anzu peered around his large frame. Eri and Yuugi were crouched in the grass. Eri was holding the Slate and Yuugi was pointing at something and giving her instructions.

“What are they doing?” Anzu said, smiling. Whatever it was, their matching expressions of total concentration were adorable.

“They’re taking pictures,” Kaiba said, in a long-suffering voice, “of insects.”

“Oh, did they finally find that butterfly they’ve been looking for?”

“I have no idea,” Kaiba said flatly. “Nor do I care. What I do care about is the fact that the Slate is not a toy.”

Anzu frowned. “They’re following the rules we set out, Kaiba-kun. It’s their turn with it. They can do whatever they want. When it’s your turn, you can do all the serious important things you want.”

“That’s not my point,” Kaiba sighed in frustration. “My point is that we shouldn’t be wasting time like this. They could be practising with the runes right now, or...literally anything other than chasing butterflies.”

“Walk with me, Kaiba-kun,” Anzu said. Kaiba made a scary face at her but fell into step nonetheless. She led him away from Eri and Yuugi, as apparently even the sight of them was annoying him more than usual today.

“Remember how we talked about rest days at the last meeting?” Anzu said. “Because I learned at Juilliard-”

“Yes, yes, you learned some extremely basic principles of osteomyoarthrology-”

“I don’t know that word,” Anzu interrupted cheerfully, “but the point is, it’s a scientific fact that it’s good for the muscles to take a break. It helps them rebuild and grow even stronger. It’s the same for the brain, ne? Your mind has to take a break every once in a while too.”

Kaiba rolled his eyes. “Are you going to give me a thoroughly butchered explanation of the science behind that, too?”

“I don’t have to, because you know I’m right,” Anzu said with a shrug. “If we put it in Kaiba-kun terms, letting everyone rest their mind every once in a while actually makes us more efficient when it’s time to get to work. In fact, I suggest you find something relaxing to do, too. You seem tense.”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, I guess you’re always tense,” Anzu mused. “Maybe that’s it. You don’t have a way to relax here.”

Kaiba snorted. “Please explain to me where, between running a multinational company and raising a kid, I would have found time to relax before.”

“Duel Monsters, obviously,” Anzu said. “How can you be so smart but so dense? You did something you enjoyed regularly, and it kept your mind fresh so that you could go back to your other responsibilities with plenty of energy. Now you just need to find something you enjoy here that will serve the same purpose.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Kaiba grumbled.

“I suggest you find a hobby, Kaiba-kun,” Anzu said sweetly, “or I will put it on the agenda and we’ll all work together to find one for you.”

Kaiba made an exasperated noise and stalked off back in the direction of camp.

Later that evening it was Kaiba’s turn with the Sheikah Slate. Anzu fully expected him to go off and practice Magnesis, which no one had quite gotten the hang of yet, but instead he found a patch of grass nearby and spread out the full array of tools and spare parts Purah had sent along with him. He spent most of the evening tinkering, declining to join them for dinner and working into the night.

As she climbed into her bedroll, Anzu wondered if he’d even listened to her at all. In fact, it seemed he’d doubled down on his whole productivity obsession, so maybe she’d pissed him off so much that her talk with him had had the opposite effect. In the end she decided to leave it alone and maybe broach the topic again when he was through with whatever he was working on.

The next morning Anzu eavesdropped shamelessly as he marched up to where Eri and Yuugi were trying to catch a large beetle they’d spotted on the side of a tree. She was ready to intervene at the slightest hint of asshole behaviour.

“Here,” she heard him say.

“Oh, you seemed to be in the middle of a project, Kaiba-kun,” Yuugi replied amiably. “You can keep it for a bit longer if you want.”

“I’m done,” Kaiba said. “I made some improvements.”

“Neat!” Eri said. “What did you do? You were talking about trying to make Stasis last longer before, right?”

“Hn.” A pause. “There’s a new option in the camera menu. I suggest you take a look at it.”

Once Kaiba had left, Anzu joined Eri and Yuugi in the shade of the trees. “What’d he do to the Slate?” she said curiously.

Eri beamed. “Look at this!” she tapped a few buttons, opening up a screen filled with pictures ordered into neat little rows. “It’s amazing. He built a Compendium just like the one Princess Zelda has. It allows you to sort your pictures with this really neat tagging system that goes by species, colour, habitat, all sorts of things! Look, there’s a section for bugs - one for flowers -”

“Can you believe he made all that in one night?” Yuugi admired the screen over Eri’s shoulder. “Now Eri-chan and I can make a real nature catalogue!”

Eri squealed and clutched the Slate to her chest. “So fucking cool!”

Anzu smiled in the direction Kaiba had gone. He definitely had made some improvements.

“THE END IS NEAR!”

“Oh, god,” Eri said. “I forgot about this guy.”

The first time they had been at Proxim Bridge, on their way from the Great Plateau, they had noticed the mysteriously lit braziers. Now they had finally found the source of the lighting.

“Hi,” Anzu said nervously, waving at the man who was standing directly in their way. He had his arms held up, making an X in front of his face. That was weird. He was audibly panting. That was even weirder.

“Go talk to him,” Honda said, pushing Eri forward.

“Nooo,” she complained. “Why do you always make me talk to the NPCs?”

“Because you’re a people person.”

“I am not. I hate people. People disgust me.”

“We shouldn’t call them NPCs,” Yuugi said, for possibly the hundredth time. “It seems rude.”

“You know how I know the end is near?” the man was ranting, now pacing back and forth.

Eri sighed. “Because there are Sheikah Towers everywhere and for some reason that’s a sign of imminent doom?” She clearly remembered the dialogue options for this particular individual.

“Exactly!” the man cried. “Hey, you get it. You really get it. That’s great.”

“Sure I do,” Eri said, shrugging. “Will you give me something cool if I join your cult?”

The man squinted. “What’s a cult?”

“You know,” Eri said. “A group of likeminded people who share a common mission. Like spreading the word about the end of days.”

“That’s not my mission,” the man said with a frown. “My mission is to guard this bridge. Hey, do you like those braziers? I added those braziers. Really lights up the place. Anyways, sorry to turn down your generous offer, but there can only be one guardian of Proxim Bridge and you’re looking at him.”

“Stop trying to start a cult and let’s go, for god’s sakes,” Kaiba said. He stepped forward and grabbed Eri by the upper arm, marching her past the Guardian of Proxim Bridge. “Are you even capable of going an entire day without finding creative new ways to waste everyone’s time?”

“Honda-kun was the one who made me talk to him,” Eri protested.

“No one, literally no one, made you try and join a cult with an insane bridge hermit.”

“Bridge guardian,” Jounouchi corrected.

It was an exceptionally sunny and beautiful day, and despite Kaiba’s concerns about time-wasting, they were in fact right on schedule for the Bridge of Hylia. The southern road out of the East Post Ruins led them on a lovely winding path through lush hills. The air was fresh and puffy little clouds scudded through the blue sky. Sometimes it was hard not to enjoy Hyrule.

As they rounded another bend, one of the many broken-down wagons that dotted Hyrulean roadsides came into view. Next to this one there was a woman. She was standing there quietly, hand on hip, staring at the wagon. Slung over her back was the same sort of large rucksack all merchants wore.

On autopilot, Eri started to walk towards her. She’d started to really enjoy greeting all of the people they passed. It made the wilderness feel less lonely.

“No,” Kaiba said, stepping in front of her. “You’ve lost your NPC privileges for the day.”

“What? Why?”

“Why do you think, idiot?”

“We should talk to her, though,” Yuugi said reasonably. “At least see what she has for sale.”

“I wanna try negotiating!” Honda said, pumping his fist. “It’s time for the Treasurer to shine! Kaiba, got any tips for me?”

Kaiba sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Set your price ceiling and stick with it. Be willing to walk away. Try to be less stupid than usual.”

“Check, check, and check,” Honda said. He strode confidently towards the woman.

“Well met,” she said, smiling pleasantly at him. She was pretty, with a round, friendly and open face, which boded well for Honda’s mission. “Beautiful weather we’re having. Isn’t it wonderful to be out in the fresh air? Where are you travelling this fine day?”

“It sure is,” Honda agreed. “We’re heading towards Lake Hylia.”

“Oh, how lovely!” the woman replied. “You and your friends are in for a treat. I just came from that direction and the lake is beautiful right now.” She peered around him. “Is it just the six of you, or...”

“That’s right,” Honda said, turning on the charm. “You’re welcome to join us for lunch. It must get a little lonely travelling all by yourself.”

“You are too kind,” the woman smiled. “I am travelling with friends, actually. A group of merchants. They’re just lagging behind a little.”

“What do you have for sale?” Honda asked.

“Well, unfortunately my friends are carrying most of our wares,” the woman said. “All I have on me right now is bananas.” She moved towards him, reaching for a pouch at her hip.

Honda perked up. “Oh, that sounds delicious-”

“Step the fuck away from him.”

Eri had nocked her bow in less than a second and had an arrow trained directly on the woman’s face.

“Eri-chan!” Yuugi cried. “What are you-” he looked back towards Honda, who now had a vicious-looking sickle pressed to the side of his neck while the woman held him still in a vicelike grip around the chest.

“Heheheh,” the impostor chuckled, her tone taking a sharp turn from friendly to sinister. “We heard there was a group of adventurers seeking to help the one that murdered our Master. Would that be you, by any chance?”

“I am giving you a choice,” Eri said. “I know you’re alone, and you’ve already lost the element of surprise. You can pull your little disappearing act and retreat to your hideout, or you can fight all six of us.”

The woman grinned wickedly. “How do you know I’m alone?”

Kaiba and Jounouchi drew their weapons and stepped in front of Yuugi and Anzu respectively. Honda’s heart pounded and his breathing quickened as the cruel edge of the sickle dug into the tender flesh at his throat.

“Because I know your footsoldiers always go out into the field alone,” Eri said. “I know everything about you. I know that next time you’ll send a Blademaster after us, and I assure you that we’ll be ready for their Windcleaver. If you know what’s good for you, Yiga scum, you’ll give up this suicide mission and run back to Karusa Valley.”

The woman snarled, let go of Honda abruptly, and leapt backwards. She vanished into a flurry of red paper slips.

There was a tense, fraught moment of silence, and then Honda sat down right there on the ground in shock. Jounouchi rushed to his side, kneeling down next to him and squeezing his shoulder.

“Well, shit,” Eri said, lowering her bow. “That’s not good.”

“What the fuck just happened?” Honda said, still trying to get control of his breathing. Kaiba was still half-angled in front of Anzu, his head turning sharply as he glanced around, refusing to drop his guard.

“The Yiga know about us,” Eri said. “I’m not sure how they found out we’re affiliated with Link, but they hate Link and offing him is pretty much their prime objective, so I guess that extends to us now-”

“Wait, back up,” Yuugi said. “What is a Yiga?”

“Oh. Um…” Eri blinked, sorting her thoughts. “They’re…Sheikah? Kind of. The Sheikah have a really complicated history,” she explained. “A long time ago, they were forced into exile by the Hyrulean crown. Some of them decided to try and live normal lives, some of them decided that the best way to get revenge for their exile was to ally themselves with Ganon.”

Yuugi did not like this at all. He knelt down to pick up one of the red paper slips. It looked unsettlingly like an ofuda. The marking it bore was the exact same eye emblazoned on his own chest - but upside-down. “I thought the Sheikah had been loyal advisors to the Hyrulean crown for a long time,” Yuugi said. He couldn’t imagine these people being related to the likes of Impa, Paya and Purah.

“They were,” Eri said. “For hundreds and hundreds of years. This exile we’re talking about could have happened as early as ten thousand years ago. No one really knows. The Yiga are a very old organization.”

“You said you know everything about them,” Kaiba said. “Was that true, or just an intimidation tactic?”

Eri bit her lip. “Well...a bit of both. I know everything about them that Link knows, which I feel in the grand scheme of things isn’t all that much. He knows where their hideout is, and what’s inside. He also knew a lot about their previous leader, Kohga…but then he kind of killed him…?” Eri did not sound certain about that part at all. “So I guess that knowledge isn’t really useful anymore.”

“Well, what about their fighting style?” Kaiba pressed. “We need to be prepared if they pop up again.

“They’re ninja, essentially, with extremely rudimentary illusion magic,” Eri said. “Emphasis on speed and avoidance. They only ever come one at a time, I think because they like to be able to get in and out quickly. We just met a footsoldier. Next time it’ll be a Blademaster. Bigger, scarier, and they have Windcleavers, which are pretty much what they sound like - swords that can send out gusts of wind.”

Yuugi and Anzu exchanged concerned glances, taking in all this information. “So...” Anzu said hesitantly. “They could be anywhere?”

“Yeah,” Eri said with a sigh, sitting down next to Honda and Jounouchi. “I’m really sorry. I guess with everything else we have to worry about, the Yiga totally slipped my mind.”

“It’s okay,” Jounouchi said. “You didn’t know they were after us.”

“Yeah, and you saved my ass just in time,” Honda said, wiping the sweat off his forehead. “Man. How did you know?”

Eri rolled her eyes. “They’re obsessed with bananas. It’s practically all they eat. Bananas are hard to find around here, so if someone’s managed to get ahold of them they’re Yiga more likely than not. You okay, Honda-kun?”

“A little shook up,” Honda admitted. “Guess I let my guard down on random assassination attempts, ‘cause in Hyrule there’s no…” He waved his hand vaguely. “Rare Hunters, or DOMA, or Pegasus, or Kaiba’s scary little AI brother, or…”

Kaiba took a deep breath, clearly trying to reign the snark in while Honda was still mildly traumatized. “So we need to be very careful about what NPCs we talk to.”

“On the one hand, yes,” Eri agreed. “We need to be on our guard when we meet random travellers. On the other hand, if we hadn’t talked to her she probably would’ve just attacked us from behind. Yiga aren’t always disguised, either - sometimes they just kind of pop out of thin air.”

“Charming,” Kaiba said, clenching his fists and glancing heavenward.

The newfound knowledge that the Yiga Clan were watching them put a damper on everyone’s spirits, and then in an insultingly obvious bit of pathetic fallacy it started to rain. Shortly afterwards they turned a corner directly into a bokoblin fort and were dive-bombed from above by a good number of the little buggers.

And so they arrived at the magnificent Lake Hylia, exhausted, sodden to the bone, injured, and thoroughly dispirited.

Chapter Text

Chapter Ten: Veritas

The Bridge of Hylia would have been impressive under other circumstances. Eri had assured them it was very majestic, a marvel of architecture, mighty and strong as it spanned the sparkling waters of Lake Hylia.

 As it was, they could barely see a few metres ahead through the pouring rain.

Anzu squinted ahead. “How long is it gonna take to cross this bridge?”

“At least until sundown, maybe longer,” Eri said with a heavy sigh. “It’s a big bridge.”

“Fuuuuuck,” Jounouchi groaned, kicking a rock in the mud. “I’m guessing there’s no stable in the middle?”

They huddled under the arch of the bridge tower as they debated what to do next.

“We could wait a few hours and see if the rain passes,” Honda said hopefully.

“And if it doesn’t, then we’re a few hours behind and still wet,” Kaiba replied, wringing out his cloak.

In the end they pressed on for another two hours until the pouring rain became driving rain, and it seemed pointlessly dangerous to rely on their much-impaired vision in order to avoid falling right off the edge of the bridge. At the halfway point of the bridge there was a ruined wagon that thankfully still possessed most of its weatherproof top. Kaiba and Yuugi did a quick job patching up the leaks with spare cloth, and they all huddled inside.

“Guess we can’t build a fire in here, huh,” Jounouchi said grumpily.

Eri had her arms folded in a classic sulk. “God. Who invented rain? What a shitty idea.”

Kaiba looked between the two of them with an utterly disgusted expression on his face but for once in his life declined to comment, instead leaning his head back against the canvas and closing his eyes.

“What should we do?” Anzu wondered. “Just go to sleep?”

“Let’s play a game!” Yuugi said brightly.

Immediately Jounouchi chimed in. “Fuck, Marry, Kill!”

Kaiba said nothing, but reached out with one long leg to kick Jounouchi in the shin.

“Ow! What the fuck, man-”

“Let’s play Werewolf,” Anzu suggested.

“Yeah!” Eri cheered. “I love Werewolf! Can I be the werewolf?”

“Stupid, you can’t volunteer,” Honda said, pinching her ear.

Predictably the game escalated into a hyper-competitive death match between Kaiba and whoever happened to be in his way, unless the werewolves killed him early on, which they often did not because it was extremely funny to see him get worked up about it. After a particularly long game that ended with Jounouchi laughing in Kaiba’s face after offing him in the last turn, they decided to call it.

“Well, I guess we just go to bed then,” Yuugi said, peering out into the downpour. It was dark out, not that it made much difference for visibility.

After an unsatisfying snack of leftover fruit and nuts, everyone pulled out their blankets, not even bothering with bedrolls in the confined space.

“I’m still cold,” Anzu grumbled.

Honda hummed thoughtfully. “In another few hours, the sun will rise.”

Everyone stared blankly at him.

“What the fuck, man,” Jounouchi said.

“It’s true,” Honda defended with a shrug.

“Hey.”

Kaiba muttered obscenities under his breath, rolling away from the annoying sound.

 The annoying sound persisted. “Hey. Kaiba-kun. Wake up.”

“The fuck do you want.”

“Come with me, I want to show you something,” Eri whispered.

“I’d rather die.”

“You’re gonna like it. Guaranteed. If you don’t like it…I’ll be super quiet and try not to annoy you for the whole day.”

Kaiba considered that, and then considered staying in his blankets for another hour or so. Practicality won in the end. He reluctantly got out from under his covers and followed Eri out onto the bridge. If she tried to show him another goddamned bug he’d push her into the lake.

The Bridge of Hylia was indeed mighty - formidable, even - when viewed under the rising sun. The stonework was still strong and beautiful despite the parts that had fallen, and the lake itself was just as clear and sparkling as Eri had promised.

“Sit up here,” Eri said, climbing onto the stone parapets and letting her legs dangle off the edge of the bridge. “It’s the best view.”

Kaiba gave her an overtly suspicious look. Maybe she was planning to push him off the bridge. He’d certainly given her enough cause. “If you’re wasting my time...”

Eri just grinned in response and patted the spot next to her, indicating that he should sit. Against his better judgment, he did. He supposed that since Yuugi had adopted her into the Friendship Dork Patrol, she probably wasn’t the pushing-people-off-bridges type.

Surprisingly, Eri didn’t hurry to fill the air with her usual stupid, inane chatter. She just sat there quietly, her eyes fixed to a very specific point in the lake. That more than anything piqued Kaiba’s curiosity enough to stick it out.

They waited in the cold, wet darkness for what felt like an hour. As the first rays of dawn crested over the mountain, Eri silently pointed to the spot in the lake she’d been watching. It was glowing. Softly at first, and then brighter and brighter as whatever the source was came closer to the surface.

The dragon slipped noiselessly out of the water, its massive head barely making a ripple.

It looked like Naydra, but it wasn’t. Instead of ice crystals jutting from its forehead this one had a long twisted yellow horn, followed by a mane of luminescent green scales. The amber stones protruding from its spine crackled with energy, occasionally releasing a voltaic burst of pure light out into the air around it. Its belly glowed a verdant neon and cast fierce radiance onto the waves of the lake that jarred violently with the reflections of the pink and orange dawn.

They watched as it twisted and coiled into the sky, orbs of lightning swirling around the length of its undulant body, until it was no more than a speck fading into the sunrise.

“Farosh,” Eri murmured. “Spirit of lightning, guardian of Lake Hylia.” She smiled at Kaiba and then turned and hopped back onto the flagstones. For a long while after, Kaiba’s eyes remained rooted to the spot where the dragon had been swallowed up into the clouds.

The weather stayed clear as they traversed the second half of the Bridge of Hylia and continued along the road until they reached the woods.

Faron Woods was another fairytale forest, like the many they’d traversed in Hyrule before. Sturdy trees with pleasant green foliage rustling in the breeze, soft grass and hard-packed dirt underfoot. Except this one was a little different. Ruins had started to crop up here and there. Not like the ruins in the rest of Hyrule - pillars and toppled statues carved with unfamiliar patterns that looked unlike anything else they’d seen before.

As they walked, the forest grew thicker and the ground softer and marshier. The undergrowth became denser and denser, and slowed their pace to a crawl. The road was now not so much a road as it was a vague path weaving to and fro between the trees.

The way out of Faron Woods was another bridge. This time, a thin, rickety bridge across the Floria river. The trek across was nerve-wracking, because the bridge was so low to the river - furiously churning and swollen by the rainfall - that choppy waves often crashed across the wood, creating slippery patches.

“Focus, idiots,” Kaiba called over his shoulder. “If any of you fall in I’m just going to stand here and watch you drown.” He didn’t seem bothered at all, and wasn’t even gripping the handrails like everyone else. It was a testament to how nervous the rest of them were that no one bothered telling him to fuck off.

“Oh god, finally,” Honda gasped, stepping onto solid land and promptly dropping to his knees.

“I guess we’re officially in the jungle,” Anzu said, peering around at the dense foliage.

Eri sniffed the air. “Hey, it smells really nice here.”

“Uhhh...” Jounouchi took an experimental sniff, then wrinkled his nose. The air smelled, all right, but it was a pungent mixture of odours - earth, animal musk, rotting vegetation, the heady perfume of jungle flowers - that bordered on oppressive.

Yuugi looked around, bemused. “You like this smell?”

“Don’t you?” Eri inhaled deeply. “It’s so light and fresh and flowery.” Suddenly, she turned to face Kaiba, folding her arms. “What did you say? You have a problem with me breathing in air now?”

“I didn’t say anything, moron,” Kaiba snapped. “But since you brought it up, you’re aware that you can breathe air while walking, aren’t you? Let’s go already.”

The change in climate wasn’t quite as sudden as the Naydra Snowfields, but over the course of a few hours the humidity began to climb noticeably, sticking their clothes to their skin and making the air feel close and heavy. The most striking difference was the sound. Whereas Hylian temperate forests tended to be filled with the pleasant chirping of birds and chittering of squirrels, the jungle was thick with the thrum and buzz of everything from frogs to cicadas. As they pressed on further the cries of tropical birds pierced the air above them.

This cacophony did absolutely nothing to detract from the strange and powerful sense of isolation that crept over each one of them. In fact, the plaintive hooting of monkeys in the distance only seemed to add to it. It felt for the first time like they were truly on an alien planet, farther away from home than ever.

“I don’t like it here,” Anzu said suddenly.

Honda, Jounouchi and Eri sighed in relief. “Me too,” Honda agreed, at the same time Jounouchi said “it’s fucking spooky” and Eri nodded rapidly in affirmation.

“Spooky?” Yuugi said, wide-eyed. He looked around this way and that.

“I don’t like anything in this dimension and you don’t hear me complaining about it,” Kaiba lectured. “The slower you all walk, the longer we stay here.”

“Don’t...hear him...complaining about it?” Jounouchi said incredulously as soon as Kaiba was out of earshot. “What has he been doing this whole time? Making conversation?”

“Kaiba-kun really doesn’t understand, does he,” Anzu said, frowning. “This place is different.”

Honda shrugged. “I can’t tell if the guy doesn’t ever get creeped out, or if he does and is just really good at ignoring it.”

“Number one,” Jounouchi snickered. “Someone forgot to write it into his programming.”

“Hey,” Yuugi cut in, with all the sternness he could muster. “Let’s not be unkind. Anyways, if Kaiba-kun’s missing something, then so am I. I thought this place was kind of pretty...Don’t you agree, Eri-chan?”

Eri shrugged. She looked distinctly and uncharacteristically uncomfortable. “I remember liking this area in the game, but actually being here...”

“Come on, Yuugi,” Jounouchi insisted. “How can you not be creeped out? Look at that pillar, man, just look at it.”

Yuugi glanced at the half-crumbled pillar Jounouchi was gesturing towards, which stood all on its own without a hint at what structure it was supposed to be a part of. It was slightly disconcerting, with strange spiral patterns and ending in the snarling mouth of an enraged dragon, but mostly Yuugi just found the architecture fascinating.

“Well, I guess I can see how the atmosphere is kind of eerie,” Yuugi said diplomatically. He certainly didn’t want to dismiss his friends’ experiences, even if he didn’t quite understand them.

Suddenly Honda spun around, gripping his halberd. “What was that?”

The group leapt into action, immediately assuming defensive stances, but no threat materialized.

“Did you, uh, hear something?” Jounouchi prompted after a moment of silence.

“Sounded like footsteps,” Honda replied. He peered around, eyes narrowed. “Whatever it was didn’t sound big. Maybe an animal.”

Kaiba was far enough ahead now that no one could see him. That, if anything, made Yuugi uneasy. “Let’s keep going,” he said. “We’ll all listen carefully.”

In the end it didn’t matter, because Kaiba ended up doubling back to collect them. Not out of courtesy, of course - there was a group of monsters ahead, and he managed to fit in a couple of scathing comments on everyone’s chatter drawing undue attention before herding them all behind a rocky outcropping to strategize.

The good news was that none of the monsters had noticed them yet. The bad news was that this was because they were situated on a very large fort, raised on stilts so high that none of the adventurers stood a chance of getting up there. Worse yet, the fort was full of bokoblins armed with bows. And then came the worst part: they needed to get past the fort to get where they were going.

“Can’t we just get Eri to climb it?” Jounouchi said, squinting upwards at the haphazard structure.

“And what would she do up there exactly?” Kaiba bit back, with considerable exasperation. “Try and shoot them at close range before she gets knocked right back off again?”

Eri piped up. “I could use my sword-”

“No,” Kaiba cut her off.

“What if Eri and I try to attack from down here? We could probably get a couple of ranged shots in,” Yuugi suggested. “Maybe if we climbed a tree for a better vantage point?”

“Unless you can pick ‘em all off at once, they’re going to start firing back,” Honda pointed out. “And if you two are in a tree you can’t exactly get out of the way.”

“Any other ideas?” Anzu said.

Jounouchi raised his hand. “What if we burn down their fort?”

“Yes,” Eri agreed immediately, her eyes lighting up.

Everyone waited for Kaiba to shoot it down. He didn’t. He actually seemed to be considering it.

“Please let us burn down their fort?” Jounouchi said, clasping his hands together.

“The wood is probably too wet,” Kaiba said finally. He paused. “Want to blow it up instead?”

Much to Jounouchi and Eri’s delight, Kaiba had come up with a very clever strategy. He generated a bomb with the Sheikah Slate, and then Eri tied it to one of her arrows. The Slate bombs were lightweight enough that it would theoretically only need a mild adjustment in firing trajectory. Kaiba examined the fort through the Slate’s zoom lens and mentally worked out what the weakest part of the structure would be. He made sure Eri understood where she was supposed to shoot and then sent her up a tree to get a better angle, while he remained on the ground with the Slate, ready to detonate the bomb as it made contact.

The group waited with bated breath, crouched a safe distance away, as they waited for Eri’s signal.

“FIRE!” they heard her yell, and then the bright blue bomb arrow sailed past. Kaiba triggered the detonation with perfect timing, and the resulting explosion hit home with a satisfying boom that sent timbers of rotting wood flying everywhere.

The part of the plan they hadn’t quite thought through was the horde of furiously squealing bokoblins toppling out of the fort and right onto their heads.

Luckily the blast had killed some of them, and the fall had killed even more, so it wasn’t much of a fight in the end. Jounouchi, Honda and Kaiba managed to subdue the remaining beasts without much trouble, while Eri and Yuugi picked off a few stragglers.

“Hell yeah,” Jounouchi yelled as he beheaded the last bokoblin. “Kaiba, that was genius!” He held up his hand for a high-five. Kaiba lifted an eyebrow but, instead of making a derisive comment, elected to simply ignore the raised hand. Although Jounouchi personally felt that it was a grievous breach of etiquette to leave someone hanging in a high-five, he decided he’d let it slide - just this once.

So it seemed like things had gone well, very well in fact, and they started their trek through the Zonai Ruins with renewed spirits.

And then a loud buzzing crackle of energy sailed into their midst and Eri dropped suddenly into a twitching pile in the dirt.

“Don’t-touch-” she gritted, as Anzu cried out and reached for her. Anzu withdrew her hand, just in time to avoid a spark of electricity arcing towards her fingers.

The group immediately fell into protective circle around Eri’s body, and it soon became apparent what had electrocuted her. Another crackling ball of light sailed just past Kaiba’s head, from somewhere above them, accompanied by an echoing giggle.

“What the fuck is that?” Honda said.

It was a little figure clad in a white robe, with a pointy green cowl. Knobbly limbs stuck out from under the cloth. One gnarled hand was grasping a helix-shaped rod, which appeared to be where the electricity was coming from. It was floating some distance above their heads and dancing gleefully.

The creature giggled again and then disappeared into thin air, leaving a shower of sparkles behind it.

“Watch out!” Kaiba yelled, grabbing Anzu and yanking her out of the way of another projectile. The spellcaster had materialized again about ten feet away, chortling merrily the entire time and hopping from one foot to another.

Yuugi quickly formed a handful of shadow into a spear, which he hurled at it. The impact caused the creature to make a pained noise and then vanish again.

It was an odd fight. No one but Yuugi was able to reach the cackling spellcaster, so Kaiba, Jounouchi and Honda were forced to watch as they maintained a protective stance over Eri and Anzu. Anzu couldn’t even touch Eri yet, so she had no choice but to wait anxiously until the electricity subsided, while Eri curled into a miserable ball and rode out the shocks.

Yuugi darted after the creature, firing missiles here and there, but when it disappeared there was no telling where it would re-materialize. He tried doing the same thing to confuse it, hopping into the shadow of a nearby tree and then emerging from the dark space behind a ruined column, but in his brief absence it totally lost interest and started firing on the rest of the group instead. He took a deep breath, and the next time the spellcaster vanished he phased into the Twilight Realm as quickly as he could to try and track it.

This set off an extremely strange run of events that, thinking back on it later, Yuugi wasn’t sure he could have conceived of on his own.

Usually, when Yuugi went into the Twilight, he could see vague imprints of living beings around him; ghostly blue-green shapes with flickering edges. In fact, it didn’t feel like seeing so much as it felt like feeling - he had a strong impression of them but felt like he wouldn’t really be able to describe them later. This time he was surprised to find that he was actually seeing the creature. It was right there in the Twilight Realm with him.

The spellcaster looked nearly as startled as he was, and Yuugi had two simultaneous reactions: to stay in the Twilight Realm and fight it there, and to get the hell away from it and wait until it resurfaced in the world of light. These two reactions were exactly equal, and he could only assume that was what was responsible for the strangeness that came next.

Yuugi phased out of the Twilight Realm, except for his eyes, which didn’t quite make it all the way back.

Or rather, his eyes did make it back, but they were covered in a film of shadow. Rather than darkening his vision, the shadow instead cast a strange purple tint on everything he saw. And he couldn’t see the creature anymore, but he could see little ripples spreading outwards into the air roughly where its feet had been. Acting on instinct, Yuugi hurled a ball of shadow at the the ripples.

The creature blinked back into the light world with the impact; at least Yuugi assumed so, because now he could see its entire form, cast in murky violet though it was. It shrieked indignantly and popped right back into the Twilight Realm.

Now, Yuugi knew he didn’t have to waste time following it there. He followed the ripples left by its feet, and launched a shadow bolt to intercept its trajectory, aiming where he thought its head might be.

The shadow bolt hit home, driving directly through its face. It wailed in anguish and collapsed into an empty pile of robes.

“Wow, Yuugi,” Jounouchi said from behind him. “How’d you know where it was?”

“Well...” Yuugi turned to face the group.

They all screamed.

“What’s wrong with your eyes?” Anzu shrieked, scooting backwards away from him. Even Kaiba gasped and took a full step back.

Yuugi frowned. “What do you mean, what’s wrong with my eyes?”

“Dude,” Honda choked. “They’re black.”

Yuugi glanced into a nearby puddle leftover from the rainfall. There was indeed a pitch-black film covering his entire sclera. The effect looked rather like there was nothing in the sockets.

“Oh,” he said, “let me just...”

Yuugi wasn’t quite sure how to get the film off his eyes, so he phased fully into the Twilight Realm, and then sent himself back. It seemed to work.

“Oh, thank god,” Jounouchi groaned, when Yuugi looked back at them again with his regular eyes. “That was fuckin’ horrible.”

“What did you do?” Anzu said, as Yuugi made his way back towards the group and knelt down next to Eri.

“Hard to explain,” Yuugi said. “Hey, is Eri okay?”

“I think so,” Anzu said. “I was able to heal the burns but I couldn’t figure out how to slow down her heart rate, so I just put her to sleep.”

“You can do that?” Jounouchi said warily.

“Um...” Anzu poked at Eri’s shoulder. Eri let out a soft snore in response. “Apparently.”

Honda sighed. “I’m guessing I’m on body-hauling duty again.”

They managed to press on through the ruins for another hour before it began to rain. Suddenly, and extremely heavily, as if someone had overturned a giant bucket somewhere in the sky.

“Well, it’s only a couple hours until sunset, and it looks like Eri isn’t waking up anytime soon,” Yuugi reasoned, after they’d all sprinted to take shelter under an outcropping. “Maybe we can just stop here for the night.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Kaiba groaned. “Are you all planning on getting old in this disgusting place?”

“What do you want us to do, Kaiba? Huh?” Jounouchi snapped, whirling to face him. “You wanna go back out when it’s pissing rain, with one of us out for the count?” He shifted Eri on his back - he and Honda had been trading off every so often. “You haven’t even offered to help us out, you asshole.”

“Fine,” Kaiba said boredly. “Hand her over-”

“Not what I meant!” Jounouchi interrupted. “Jesus! Do you even listen to yourself?”

“You want me to help cart around whichever of you dweebs has managed to knock themselves out on a given day. I’m agreeing to it for the sake of expediency,” Kaiba retorted. “What the fuck is your problem, exactly?”

“Okay,” Anzu said firmly, stepping between them and fixing them each with a stern look in turn. “Both of you have to chill.”

“I am-”

“Right now,” Anzu cut Kaiba off, folding her arms. “Yuugi is our Chairman. He’s going to give us his rationale for stopping for the night, and we’re all going to talk about it together until we come to an agreement.”

“Why bother?” Kaiba rolled his eyes. “If we’re putting it to a vote, I don’t stand a chance against the entire geek squad. Just admit you’re going to overrule me and get it over with.”

“Uh...” Honda ventured, just before Kaiba could completely check out of the conversation. “Actually, I’m kinda with Kaiba on this one.”

“Dude, what?”

“Eh?”

“Honda?”

Even Kaiba had turned to look at him, a little flicker of curiosity crossing his eyes.

“I just...” Honda shrugged uncomfortably, staring at his feet. “I don’t like it here. I have a bad feeling about this place.”

Jounouchi’s expression softened. “Well...”

“Oh, fuck you,” Kaiba snapped. “I have a legitimate and articulated reason for wanting to keep moving and that makes me an asshole, but if one of the cheer squad has feelings -”

“Did you ever think it’s not about your reasons, but the way you bring ‘em up?” Jounouchi shot back. “If you weren’t such a massive douche about everything-”

“Enough,” Yuugi said loudly. “Both of you. Honda-kun, I’m sorry, but I don’t think the ruins are going to get less strange the farther in we go. Kaiba-kun, we’ll wake up early tomorrow to make up the lost time. And Jou...” he sighed. “Just...take it down a little, okay?”

Jounouchi immediately took it down a notch, not because he didn’t think Kaiba deserved a telling-off, but because the exhausted expression on Yuugi’s face made him feel a pang of guilt. He nodded curtly and turned on his heel, moving further under the overhang.

As they set up camp, it became apparent that they weren’t actually under a rocky outcropping after all; it was in fact a mouldering roof, and they were in what appeared to be an antechamber. A small stone archway marked the beginning of a tunnel that under further investigation was completely caved in.

“Wonder where that leads,” Honda shuddered, kicking lightly at the pile of rocks blocking the passageway.

“Probably an underground sacrifice dungeon,” Jounouchi cackled.

Honda shot him a distraught look. “Dude.”

“How’s Eri?” Yuugi asked, kneeling down next to Anzu and Eri. Anzu had her hand on Eri’s forehead, as if she were taking her temperature.

“What the hell did you do to her, Anzu?” Jounouchi wondered, reaching over to poke at Eri’s sides, which she normally hated enough to start punching wildly in return.

“I...don’t know?” Anzu said. She smoothed Eri’s bangs back off her forehead. “When I was healing, I could feel her heart rate going crazy, so I just focused really hard on slowing it down. She seems okay, though. I can’t sense anything wrong.”

“Electric shocks are complicated injuries,” Kaiba said with a shrug. “She’s probably better off unconscious than running around being a goddamned nuisance like usual.”

The antechamber was sheltered, but still far from ideal sleeping quarters. The air inside was even muggier than outside, which amplified the stifling, acrid jungle odours, combined with a dank musk unique to the chamber itself. The floor was damp and covered in a thin layer of slimy algae. Their bedrolls quickly absorbed the ambient moisture and became unpleasantly soggy.

As the sun set, robbing them of even the faint light that had managed to creep in through the downpour, the chamber went from unsettling to ominous. The firelight cast odd, dancing shadows that flickered across the carvings on the walls, lending them an uncanny sense of movement, and the darkness outside became heavy and stifling - a pitch-black that not even moonlight could penetrate, a darkness that felt like it was exerting pressure on the antechamber’s wide doorway. The jungle did not sleep. The sounds simply shifted, the hooting and buzzing and chirping and cackling taking on a different timbre as its nocturnal denizens awoke.

Though none of them could muster the nerve to talk about it, they all lay awake long into the night, tossing and turning in profound discomfort.

Kaiba dreamed of Egypt.

He followed a bobbing lantern through a desert storm. Sand drove relentlessly into his eyes, his mouth, his nose, between the crevices of his armour - it was the only thing ahead of him and the only thing behind him. The lantern was the only other thing in the world. He had to keep moving, keep dragging one foot after another; his boots sank further into the ground with every step-

Kaiba awoke suddenly, spluttering and coughing. It took him twenty seconds to realize there was no sand in his mouth, that he wasn’t choking on anything.

“Dude. Are you okay?” Honda said, clapping him on the back. He seemed to have been awake already, while the others were in varying states of confusion after being jarred out of their slumber by Kaiba’s coughing fit.

“Fine,” Kaiba spat, shrugging Honda’s hand off.

“What about you, Honda-kun?” Yuugi worried. “You look terrible.”

Honda did indeed look terrible. Dark shadows had formed under his eyes, and his face was pale and haggard.

“Couldn’t sleep at all,” Honda muttered. “The moon was too fucking bright.”

Anzu, Yuugi and Jounouchi exchanged glances. “Was it?” Anzu said. “I didn’t notice that...”

“Me neither,” Eri said.

“Eri-chan!” Anzu cried, throwing her arms around her friend. “You’re awake! I’m so glad I didn’t kill you!”

Eri blinked. “Was that a concern?”

“How are you feeling, punk?” Jounouchi said. He grabbed Eri around the shoulders and mussed her hair violently as she laughed and tried to wiggle out of his grasp.

“She’s obviously fine, so let’s get moving,” Kaiba snapped, practically launching out of his bedroll. “We’ve wasted enough time on her account.” He tucked his bedroll and covers under his arm, marched outside, and began the utterly futile process of trying to wring the dampness out of them before putting them away in his pack.

“What crawled up his ass and died?” Eri said as she watched him go. Kaiba gave her hell all the time, but not usually with this level of vitriol first thing in the morning.

“That’s a question for the ages,” Jounouchi replied with a shrug.

As they made their way deeper into the jungle, the ruins began to take more and more prominence, gradually shifting from scattered structures here and there to massive pillars lining their path and high, forbidding walls closing them in on every side. The path drawn for them by Purah on the Sheikah Slate turned out to be redundant; the ruins only allowed them to go one way. Onwards.

Even the trees seemed to grow larger the further they walked. The forest canopy was now all but a ceiling, allowing only faint dapples of light to steal through.

“Who lived here, Eri-chan?” Anzu asked, peering up at an intricately carved statue that lay half-crumbled against a palm tree. “Before the Calamity?”

“The Zonai, I guess,” Eri replied. Her brow furrowed as she followed Anzu’s gaze. “But they died a long time before the Calamity. No one knows much about them.”

“Not even your gang of internet nerds?” Jounouchi ventured.

“I mean, there’s all sorts of crazy theories,” Eri said. “But the consensus was that the devs just put this stuff in as flavour and hadn’t really created a backstory for them.” She tilted her head. “Hey, Kaiba-kun, how does that work, anyways? Can true creativity really exist if there are infinite dimensions and whatever you’re creating is definitely already out there somewhere? That means there are no original ideas, doesn’t it?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Kaiba retorted. “The devs didn’t know about this dimension. It’s just a coincidence. Million monkeys, million typewriters, infinite time - a statistical inevitability.”

“Wait, wait, everyone shut up,” Honda hissed. The group went silent. “You hear that, right?”

“Hear what?” Yuugi whispered back.

“The footsteps. Same ones from yesterday,” Honda said lowly. He edged into a defensive stance in front of Eri, Yuugi and Anzu. Jounouchi and Kaiba quickly and silently followed suit.

“Do you think something’s tracking us?” Kaiba murmured, his eyes casting left and right.

“Gotta be,” Honda replied. He shifted his grip on his halberd. “It’s the exact same sound.”

A long, tense moment passed by, and then another.

“Please tell me you all heard that,” Honda said, his voice taking on a desperate edge.

“Heard what, buddy?” Jounouchi asked warily.

Honda swallowed. “There’s...there’s a fucking kid out there. It just laughed.”

Kaiba heaved a long sigh and straightened up out of his combat posture. “Oh, for god’s sake, Honda. I thought you were more level-headed than the rest of these morons. It’s obviously a monkey, or have you not been hearing the damn things shrieking all morning?”

“I heard what I heard,” Honda argued, although his voice was shaking and his face had gone rather pale. Jounouchi was also looking a little unsteady, his eyes blown wide in fear.

“You didn’t sleep well last night, ne?” Anzu said nervously. She laid a hand on Honda’s arm.

“That’s - that’s gotta be it,” Jounouchi added. His knuckles were turning white with the intensity of his grip on his war axe. “You’re just tired, man.”

Honda turned to Yuugi and Eri, his eyes beseeching. “Did either of you...”

“I didn’t hear anything either.” Yuugi’s expression was regretful, as if he wished he had heard something just so that he could back Honda up. Eri slowly shook her head.

Kaiba rolled his eyes and started walking at his usual rapid pace, sheathing his longsword pointedly. After a moment the rest of the group followed.

No one was in the mood for chatter anymore, so they walked for hours in near silence. Each murmured phrase seemed like a beacon broadcasting their location to the denizens of the jungle and each clank of armour or weapons rang out like a bell. Even Kaiba stuck a little nearer to the group than usual.

When they stopped for a brief midday meal, they passed rations to each other quietly until Anzu cleared her throat, causing nearly everyone to jump.

“Is...is everyone okay?” she ventured, looking worriedly from one face to another. “I know it’s kind of…creepy, here, but...”

“Honda’s right,” Jounouchi said, glancing from side to side. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this place. Something ain’t right.”

“It’s okay,” Yuugi soothed. He grasped Jounouchi’s arm, a firm reassurance. “We all slept badly and everyone’s a bit on edge. We should be almost out of the ruins, right?”

“About that...” Eri squinted and rotated the Slate. “I think we should’ve gotten through them by now?”

Kaiba reached over and snatched the Slate. Eri tried to smack his hand away, but he was both faster and had longer arms. “You’re right,” he muttered, easily holding the Slate out of Eri’s reach as she grabbed uselessly for it. “We should be at the Dracozu River by now. Explain, Morin.”

“I don’t know,” Eri said. She finally gave up on trying to reclaim the Slate and instead leaned over to look at it. “It seems like our little marker on the map hasn’t moved since yesterday.”

“Is the Slate broken, then?” Anzu said.

“You’d think this thing could withstand a little fucking humidity,” Kaiba growled, digging in his pack for his toolkit.

“Maybe the Slate is malfunctioning,” Eri shrugged, “but we’ve stayed on the path the entire time. We should have either hit mountains or the Dracozu by now. This area is pretty small, all things considered.”

Yuugi leaned over the Slate too. “You’re right,” he said slowly. “It’s not much wider than the Bridge of Hylia, and we made it across the Bridge in a day.”

“What the fuck is goin’ on then?” Jounouchi demanded.

While Eri, Jounouchi, Yuugi and Kaiba discussed the Slate’s map, Anzu sidled over to Honda, who had been very quiet for the past few hours.

“Honda,” she said, squeezing his wrist.

“Look,” Honda snapped, “I heard a little kid laughing. It wasn’t a fucking monkey.”

“Um...I know,” Anzu said, averting her gaze. “I heard it too.”

Honda glanced sharply at Anzu. “You did?”

“I’m sorry,” Anzu apologized. “I hoped...that it really was a monkey, but...”

Honda took a deep, ragged breath. “Fuck.”

“It sounded like a little girl, right?” Anzu pressed. “A happy little girl.”

A few seconds of silence passed. Honda slowly shook his head. “No,” he said hoarsely. “Uh...the one I heard sounded...it kind of made my skin crawl. More of a cackle.”

Anzu sighed and pressed her face into her palms, rubbing vigorously at her eyes. “Shit, shit, shit,” she whispered to herself.

Honda took another steadying breath, and then rested his hand on the middle of Anzu’s back, rubbing soothing circles there. “Okay,” he said firmly. “Yuugi’s right. This place is just getting to us, and we’re all tired.”

“But-” Anzu glanced up at Honda in alarm.

“If we say anything, we’re just going to freak out Jou and piss off Kaiba,” Honda continued. “Let’s...hold off for now, okay? If it happens again, promise you’ll say something to me, and we can go from there.”

Anzu nodded uneasily.

“Hey, it looks like we’re stuck for now,” Eri cut in, bouncing over to sit next to Anzu. “While Kaiba-kun does his spooky tech magic and fixes the Slate-”

“It’s not magic, you insufferable moron-”

“Wanna tell me about what electrocuted me and how you beat it?” Eri tilted her head, and then reached out and took Anzu’s face in her hands. “Hey, you don’t look so good,” she said, leaning in close with an attentive expression. “What’s going on, Acchan?”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Anzu said brightly, waving her hand. “Just a little tired.”

“Aw, that’s right, you didn’t sleep well.” Eri planted an affectionate kiss on Anzu’s nose and then released her face. “Want to use my lap as a pillow? You can rest a little bit.”

“Actually, that sounds kind of nice,” Anzu admitted.

“I get a turn after, right?” Jounouchi butted in.

Yuugi folded his legs and then patted his thighs. “Use my lap, Jounouchi!”

“Awright!” Jounouchi promptly snuggled in. “So who wants to tell Eri about what flattened her yesterday?”

“Um...” Anzu’s brow furrowed as she tried to figure out how to describe it. She settled her head on Eri’s knee and gestured vaguely. “Kind of like...a little wizard thing? It had a robe on and was hopping around laughing like a maniac.”

“Oh, a wizzrobe,” Eri said, rolling her eyes. “God, those things are annoying. How’d you kill it?”

“Yuugi had to fight it all by himself because no one else could get at it,” Honda explained. “He, uh...wow, I can’t even start to describe it. Yuugi, tell her about the horrible thing you did with your eyes.”

“Oh, gross,” Eri said, delighted. “I can’t wait to hear this.”

Yuugi explained in as much detail as he could, about popping into the Twilight Realm and being surprised to find the wizzrobe in there with him, and then the strange occurrence that had followed.

“Then my vision went...sort of purplish?” Yuugi said, at a loss for how to explain it. “And suddenly I could see little ripples near its feet, and I was able to follow where it was going even when it was invisible.”

“Okay, you’re leaving out the most important part, which is that your eyes were totally black and it was fuckin’ awful,” Jounouchi moaned. “You’re never gonna do that again, right, Yuugi?”

“Can I see?” Eri demanded, leaning in close and staring at Yuugi’s eyes, like she could make them turn black again through sheer force of will.

“Well, the answer to both those questions is that I don’t know how I did it, so I’m not sure how I’d go about doing it again,” Yuugi said.

“Hmm. Link can always see those ripples when he’s fighting wizzrobes,” Eri said. “But none of the rest of you could see it?”

Everyone else shook their heads.

“Do you know anything about it, Eri-chan?” Yuugi asked.

Eri shook her head. “Mm...I don’t think so, I’m sorry. I’ll keep thinking and see if I can remember anything.”

“Well, whatever it is, it seems kind of useful,” Anzu said. “It means Yuugi can see through illusions, right?”

“Oh,” Yuugi said. “I hadn’t thought about it that way. Maybe I should practice and try to replicate it.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t,” Jounouchi countered. “On account of it being creepy as hell.”

They casually tossed theories back and forth about Yuugi’s new discovery until Kaiba abruptly threw the Slate down with a growl of frustration.

“Aren’t you always getting on my ass about throwing my axe at the ground?” Jounouchi scolded. “You’re gonna break it.”

“I couldn’t break it on ground this soft if I tried,” Kaiba snapped. “Anyways, there’s nothing wrong with it.”

“Well, obviously there is, because the little arrow thing isn’t moving.”

Kaiba rolled his eyes, but declined to answer. “Are you all done...whatever the hell you’re doing? We need to get going,” he said with obvious disgust, waving his hand at the group. Jounouchi’s head was in Yuugi’s lap, his legs slung over Honda’s. Eri was running her hands idly through Anzu’s hair as the latter rested with her eyes closed. They’d all unconsciously migrated closer and closer to each other, as if guarding against the jungle’s unsettling atmosphere.

“Aw, you want in on this?” Jounouchi said, swinging his legs off Honda’s thighs. “Go on, you can use Honda’s lap-”

“Would you shut the fuck up for once in your life,” Kaiba retorted, so loudly that the words seemed to ricochet off the trees around them. He roughly hoisted his pack over his shoulder and set off, leaving the rest of them to scramble to their feet in order to catch up.

“Dude, would you quit baiting him?” Honda said.

“I wasn’t!” Jounouchi protested. “I was genuinely offering. The guy obviously needs a fuckin’ hug or something.”

“You can’t just offer my lap to people, come on.”

“Well, we’ve gotta get Kaiba into a cuddle pile before this road trip is over. You got any better ideas?”

Honda pondered on that. “We could sneak attack him. By the time he realizes, it’ll be too late and he’ll realize just how great it is.”

“Consent, idiots,” Anzu sighed. “Anyways, Kaiba-kun is like, a judo master. I doubt either of you could pull off a sneak attack.”

“Yuugi-kun could, with his freaky shadow powers,” Eri suggested.

The question of whether or not Yuugi could pull off a Friendship Sneak Attack on Kaiba was never answered. Suddenly a violent hissing filled the air. As the group fell quickly into defensive stances, a gaggle of snarling lizalfos poured out of crevices in the crumbling walls like so many cockroaches.

Unfortunately, that was far from the only obstacle they would come to meet in the ruins; untouched for centuries, the area had become host to a thriving ecosystem of nasty creatures. Eri was kept occupied fending off a near-constant aerial assault of electric keese, and that left Yuugi as the only one who could deal with the charged chuchus that liked to explode out of the ground at random intervals. Jounouchi, Kaiba and Honda were thus forced to do battle without any ranged support every time they encountered a herd of bokoblins or lizalfos. By the time the sun had started to dip low in the sky everyone was exhausted, and they had to call another early halt.

“Kaiba-kun,” Anzu lectured, as she worked on a long gash stretching from Kaiba’s shoulder to his elbow. “Why did you not tell me about this earlier?”

“I didn’t notice,” Kaiba grumbled. “I have high pain tolerance.”

“Didn’t notice?” Anzu said incredulously. “You’re unbelievable. This jungle is so unsanitary, it could’ve gotten infected-”

“Well it didn’t-”

“If you keep hiding injuries, I’m going to kill you,” Anzu said over his protests. She grabbed his hand and shook it. “There. It’s a deal.” Kaiba glared and wrenched his hand away wordlessly.

“I fucking hate this place,” Jounouchi groaned. “Can’t believe we’ve gotta sleep in these awful ruins another night. Is it just me or does it smell even worse inside than outside?”

“Yeah,” Yuugi agreed, wrinkling his nose. “The air in here is a bit stale.”

Eri sniffed the air. “I don’t know what you’re all complaining about. You can smell the sea from here. It’s nice.”

Jounouchi turned around to look at her, eyes boggling. “No, dumbass, you can’t smell the sea. It’s way too far.” He reached out and pinched Eri’s nose between his fingers. “Something wrong with this? Hey, Anzu, do a diagnostic on Eri.”

“No!” Eri protested, scrambling out of Jounouchi’s grasp. “Leave my nose alone!”

That night, without really talking about it, everyone except Kaiba slept close together. Even wedged tightly between Anzu and Honda, Yuugi couldn’t seem to settle. He couldn’t tell if the jungle’s eerie atmosphere was finally starting to get to him or if he was just picking up on the nerves from his friends. Even Kaiba tossed and turned restlessly.

Just as Yuugi finally started to drift off, Anzu let out a little gasp beside him.

“Anzu?” he whispered. Anzu rolled over to face him. Her eyes were wide and her cheeks were streaked with tears.

“What’s wrong?” Yuugi reached for Anzu, but she met him halfway, grasping both of his hands desperately in hers.

“Yuugi,” Anzu sniffled. “We’ll...we’ll be friends forever...won’t we?”

“Of course we will,” Yuugi soothed, squeezing Anzu’s fingers. “Did you have a nightmare?”

“You were leaving.” Anzu’s voice trembled. “Leaving the forest...”

“Hey.” Yuugi wrapped his arms around Anzu, pulling her in close. “I’d never leave anywhere without you. You know that, right?”

Anzu nodded and buried her tearstained face into Yuugi’s chest. Her breathing evened back out into sleep soon after, but the same peace eluded Yuugi, who lay awake long into the night.

“Heard anything weird?” Honda asked Anzu lowly.

Anzu shook her head. “Not since yesterday.”

“You didn’t sleep well, though.”

“How did you know?”

Honda groaned, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Was up all damn night. Heard you crying, but Yuugi fixed you up pretty quick.”

“I’m sorry.” Anzu frowned. “Weird dream. Did I wake you?”

“No,” Honda muttered. “Don’t know how you can all sleep when that giant-ass moon is like a fucking flashlight beaming in.”

“Dunno about that,” Eri chimed in, popping up at Honda’s elbow, “but I couldn’t sleep either because someone was talking to himself all night.” She shot a glare at Kaiba’s back.

“What?” Honda glanced at Kaiba. “I didn’t hear him.”

“How could you not?” Eri crossed her arms. “I think he’s finally gone off his rocker. He’s been muttering to himself the whole time we’ve been in the jungle.”

She looked back and forth from Honda to Anzu to Yuugi, all of whom were wearing matching concerned expressions. “Um...unless there’s someone else around who can make their voice go really deep? Did Jounouchi-kun finally figure out how to do a proper Kaiba-kun impression?”

“Did someone say Kaiba impression?” Jounouchi cackled, slowing his pace to walk with the rest of them. “I do a real good one. Duel me, Yuugi. Blue Eyes White Dragon, Burst Stream of Destruction! Muahahaha!”

It was funny, but a good Kaiba impression it was not. Try as he might, Jounouchi was unable to mimic Kaiba’s signature booming rumble.

“Would you fuck directly off?” said booming rumble floated back towards them, from Kaiba’s position at the head of the group. “I swear to God, you’re all such children. It’s embarrassing.”

“Embarrassing who?” Jounouchi said, grinning. “You worried the monkeys are gonna lose respect?”

“If there’s anyone who could manage to lose a monkey’s respect, it would be you,” Kaiba fired back.

“Ooooh,” Honda and Anzu crowed in unison.

As they walked onwards the morning sun began to recede. The air grew dark and thick and heavy and the decaying walls loomed ever taller, closing them in. The morning’s conversational atmosphere receded as well - the group walked in a tense, uneasy silence, and everyone felt the constant and inexplicable urge to check over their shoulders.

“This isn’t right,” Eri said. Her steps slowed to a halt.

“Elaborate,” Kaiba ordered.

“The ruins are too big.” Eri looked up at the stone walls. “They were never this...complete.”

Kaiba sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Have we not been over this? This dimension isn’t guaranteed to always be exactly the same as your game.”

“Everything else has been the same,” Yuugi pointed out with a frown.

“There’s only one path here.” Anzu glanced around, as if hoping another one would materialize. “And it’s not showing up on the Slate. How could the Slate be wrong?”

Kaiba rolled his eyes. “Any number of reasons,” he said. “This area isn’t exactly populated. Who knows when the last time someone sent cartographers out here was?”

“Link would have had to go through here too,” Honda argued, “to get to the Spring of Courage. Wouldn’t he have told Purah if the Slate’s map was wrong?”

“Who says he went through the ruins?” Kaiba retorted. “Have you all forgotten that we were extremely lucky to not have been killed by the Lynel while we were passing through its territory the first time? Morin had no idea what was in that area because in the game, she accessed the Spring of Wisdom by climbing up the wrong side of the goddamn mountain.”

Eri folded her arms, hugging her chest, and let her gaze drop to her boots in miserable guilt. She had clearly not forgotten.

“Hey,” Anzu defended. “It wasn’t her fault.”

“I didn’t say it was!” Kaiba said, throwing up his hands in exasperation. “Would you all reign in the feelings for two fucking seconds and focus on what I’m actually telling you?”

“Which is?” Yuugi asked patiently.

“Like you said, this is a small geographic area,” Kaiba said. “It’s bordered by mountains and the Floria river. The potential for getting seriously lost is minimal. Sticking to the road is our best bet. There’s only one way out of this place, and it’s by going through.” Kaiba gestured towards the path. “So the lot of you need to grow up and stop getting in your own heads. I know for a fact that most of you have survived the fucking Shadow Realm. You can handle some abandoned structures in a jungle.”

“That’s...strangely motivating, for you,” Honda admitted after a pause.

“I suppose that’s true,” Anzu sighed. “We’ve survived scary things before, right?”

Even Jounouchi was forced to nod in agreement. “Yeah...guess this isn’t any scarier than a duel with that asshole in the Sennen Ring.”

“That’s the spirit,” Yuugi said happily. “You’re right, Kaiba-kun. As long as we’re together everything will be okay.”

“That’s not what I said,” Kaiba muttered, but he was roundly ignored as everyone began walking again, their moods slightly lifted.

Except Eri.

Eri had not survived the Shadow Realm, and in fact had only a very nebulous idea of what it even was. She’d been too afraid to ask before they’d all been dropped headfirst into Hyrule and she was too afraid to ask now.

One of the main currents running through Eri’s childhood had been a rather peculiar French-Canadian expression: lâche pas la patate, which roughly translated to “don’t let go of the potato” but really meant “hold on tight.” Gabriel had often added his own second part to the phrase. Lâche pas la patate, et tout va bien se passer. He’d say it in English, too, simply because it rhymed: “hold on tight and everything will be all right.”

Eri was good at holding on. Exceptional, even. She tried her best to be adaptable and take things as they came with tenacity and good cheer. So when she had woken up in the Shrine of Resurrection, her first instinct had been: oh well, things could be worse than getting to experience my favourite game first-hand. When Jounouchi and Kaiba got into a brawl on the first day and they were nearly killed by a Guardian and then the food ran out and they had to sleep in the rain: okay, a little more challenging, but soon we’ll be in Hateno and Kaiba-kun will figure out how to get us home. When they had learned that things were not nearly that simple and that they had a perilous trek ahead of them: Things will be okay when we find Princess Zelda. We’ll take care of each other. As long as we make it home in the end, it’s fine.

As the adventure wore on, and things got more dangerous and nerve-wracking, Eri began to realize the difference between herself and her friends. Her world had been so small for her whole life. She’d enjoyed believing in magic and fairy tales and ghosts and the possibility of science-fiction technology like dimensional travel, but that’s all it had been: a possibility, an entertaining diversion. Meanwhile, Anzu and Yuugi and Jounouchi and Honda and Kaiba had all been living in this frightening, vast, expanded world since their teens.

The realization made her feel naive. Ignorant. And most of all, lonely.

The truth was, Eri didn’t know what everyone had been through before. She’d been given a brief run-through after she and Anzu had been friends for years and Anzu trusted that she could handle it. But she hadn’t lived it, and she hadn’t known just how utterly earth-shaking it was to face death under circumstances that most people on Earth wouldn’t even be able to grasp.

Now she knew. She wished she didn’t. She wished so hard to un-know it that it was easier just to push it all down into a tiny dark place in her chest. On nights when she felt like everything was too much, crowding any possibility of sleep out of her brain and causing her breath to come in quick short bursts, she whispered her mantra to herself like it was a life-raft she could somehow grab on to: Lâche pas la patate, et tout va bien se passer.

“Lâche pas la patate, lâche pas la patate,” Eri chanted under her breath, as they pressed deeper and deeper into the stale, ugly shadows of the Zonai Ruins.

Chapter Text

Chapter Eleven: Audentia

Jounouchi felt like, all things considered, he was handling the jungle pretty well.

Yeah, it was creepy. So creepy. And smelly, and hot, and loud as hell. And he’d been having some really fucking weird dreams and there was also a crawling feeling of irritation under his skin that kind of made him want to deck Kaiba every time he opened his smug mouth. But that was pretty normal, wasn’t it? Wanting to deck Kaiba was a widespread sentiment in Domino City and beyond.

Okay. Maybe Jounouchi wasn’t handling things perfectly. But Honda was clearly stressed as hell, and Anzu had woken up crying the previous night, and Eri hadn’t said a single word to anyone since Kaiba had made that shitty comment about the Lynel. So Jounouchi had to hold it together. He couldn’t leave Yuugi alone to try and carry the group’s spirits on his shoulders.

“Um...are you sure this is the right way, Kaiba-kun?” Yuugi said hesitantly, as Kaiba made a sharp and confident left turn down yet another decaying hallway.

“This way is north, and we’re supposed to be going north,” Kaiba snapped. “Do you have reason to believe that the Slate’s compass is malfunctioning?”

“Er, no,” Yuugi replied, and promptly shut his mouth.

Jounouchi took a deep breath. Don’t deck Kaiba, don’t deck Kaiba.

He decided to distract himself by checking on Honda, slowing his pace to let the latter catch up. For some reason Honda had spent most of the last two days taking up the rear of the group, and checking over his shoulder every few minutes to boot.

“Hey, buddy,” Jounouchi said casually. “How’s it going back there?”

“Do you really wanna know?” Honda gritted out, staring straight ahead.

Jounouchi took a second too long to think about it.

“Never mind,” Honda muttered.

Well, maybe Anzu would be a little more receptive. Jounouchi sighed and jogged a little to catch up with her.

“Hey there, peach blossom,” he said, ruffling her hair.

Anzu smiled a little at the pet name and poked him good-naturedly in the side. “How’s our big tough barbarian doing?”

“Never better,” Jounouchi answered flippantly. “How’s our big tough healer?”

Anzu pursed her lips and glanced off to the side. “Um, fine.”

“No you’re not,” Jounouchi accused, slinging an arm around her shoulder. “You think I can’t read those big blue eyes one hundred percent of the time? What do you take me for, huh?”

“Ugh,” Anzu groaned. “It’s stupid.”

“Try me.”

Anzu looked around, and then lowered her voice. “Do you think Eri-chan is mad at me?”

“What? No!” Jounouchi assured her, glancing ahead. Eri was doing pretty much her usual thing - leaving and rejoining the larger group every few minutes as she got distracted by wanting to take a closer look at this or that. Over the past weeks she’d mastered the art of staying just close enough to the rest of them that Kaiba wouldn’t chew her out, but still maintaining plenty of independence and/or space to climb on things. Kind of like an energetic house cat.

“No?” Anzu frowned and then glanced at her feet. “What about Yuugi, then?”

Jounouchi looked at Yuugi, then back at Anzu. “Mazaki Anzu,” he said incredulously. “Do you really think Yuugi has ever once in his life been mad at you?”

Anzu shrugged despondently, still staring at the ground.

“What’s up with you?” Jounouchi said. He tightened his grip around her shoulders and swayed her back and forth a bit. “Come on. I think you know those two love you to the moon and back.”

“Yeah,” Anzu admitted. “I guess I just feel...really lonely. Like I’ve lost a friend. Even though you’re all right here.”

Jounouchi squinted at her. “This something to do with that dream you had?”

“Hmm. You know, I think you’re-”

“Don’t fucking touch that, idiot!”

Jounouchi and Anzu both glanced towards the head of the group. Eri stood frozen with her hand outstretched towards a large statue. Kaiba stepped forward, grabbed her arm and roughly yanked her back.

“Can you just give it a rest for two seconds?” Kaiba lectured. “You’re driving me insane. Just walk with the rest of the group and stop wandering off - your stupidity is giving me a migraine -”

“What the fuck is his deal?” Jounouchi said lowly to Anzu. Irritation was bubbling up quick and hot in his chest. “There’s no reason he’s gotta be such an asshole to Eri. I’m gonna-”

Anzu gave him a pained look. The irritation subsided immediately, dampened by a cold splash of guilt.

“Go up and there and break it up,” Jounouchi finished with a sigh. “Don’t worry, I’m not gonna pick a fight with him.” He couldn’t in good conscience let Anzu or Honda take on the burden of stepping in yet again, and Yuugi’s attempts had so far proved futile against Kaiba’s increasingly bad mood.

“All right,” Anzu said dubiously.

“That’s enough, you two,” Jounouchi said, taking a deep breath as he mustered all of his limited patience and moved to catch up with them. “Eri, try and stick a bit closer, okay? You’re making Kaiba nervous.”

“Okay. I’m sorry, Kaiba-kun,” Eri said, her eyes dropping sheepishly to the floor.

“I’m not nervous,” Kaiba argued. Jounouchi mightily resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He’d taken Kaiba’s side, and Kaiba was still nitpicking him. Typical.

“You’re being...a little over-the-top, ain’t you?” Jounouchi said diplomatically, aware of Anzu’s concerned gaze boring a hole in his back. “It’s just a statue. Getting a closer look isn’t gonna hurt her.”

“I don’t care about that idiot getting hurt,” Kaiba snapped. “I give up trying to make her understand basic group safety. It’s the rest of us I’m worried about. This place could be full of traps, or hidden monsters, or-”

“Kaiba,” Jounouchi interrupted. “You’re spiraling out. Eri just agreed to stick closer, and there was no harm done.”

“Yes, because I caught her in time-”

Jounouchi glanced up at the statue, tuning out Kaiba’s bullshit for a moment. It was, admittedly, extremely fucking spooky - a rough-hewn granite likeness of a very tall man wearing a carved breastplate bearing crescent moons. Instead of legs, his torso ended in a long, twining dragon’s tail. Two tails, actually, curving around each other in a double helix. The man’s face was shadowed by the gigantic helm of bone he wore. All over the statue, spiral carvings were inscribed. The same spiral carvings that could be seen on every pillar, wall, and door they’d passed so far.

Not the kind of thing Jounouchi would want to touch voluntarily, but he felt he had to prove a point.

“It’s a statue, Kaiba,” Jounouchi cut in firmly. “A piece of rock. Look.”

With that, he reached out and pressed his hand to the stone.

It was hot to the touch. Suddenly Jounouchi realized he’d made a terrible mistake.

He opened his eyes to fire.

Voices chanted indistinctly all around him, but a woman’s shrill scream cut through the clamour. Jounouchi watched in horror as a young man was bent over the flames, his sobs melting away into a death rattle as his face warped and melted. The women holding him wore wooden masks. Their trembling postures betrayed their horror.

“Don’t -” Jounouchi gasped - “stop, don’t-”

A gigantic form lay bound to a fallen log, its skin was kaleidoscopes on kaleidoscopes like a venomous snake but its shape was that of a man, it looked up and straight at Jounouchi with its eyes - its empty, massive eyes -

There were so many corpses piled around it, their throats slit and their faces burnt to nothing -

Something massive passed overhead, plunging the entire scene into shadow.

When Jounouchi opened his eyes again he was in a forest. A tiny still form lay crumpled against a tree. A child in rags and tatters.

Jounouchi watched mutely as a cloaked form knelt down next to it. The figure crooked a finger under the child’s chin and lifted its face -

But there was no face. Just rough wooden bark, and deep dark holes where its eyes might have been.

“Whenever there is a meeting, a parting is soon to follow,” the cloaked figure murmured. He looked up again and turned his head - looking right at Jounouchi, the same way that those empty, empty eyes had looked at him -

“It’s sad, isn’t it?” The figure sighed, and let the child’s head drop limply back onto its chest.

“Jounouchi!” Kaiba’s voice thundered in his ears. “Get ahold of yourself!”

“Fuck! Fuck!” Jounouchi tried to cover his ears and drown out the frantic screaming, only to realize that the panicked yells were coming from his own mouth, and that he couldn’t lift his arms because they were being solidly restrained. He took a ragged, gasping breath and then forced himself to go limp.

Kaiba had both of his arms pinned behind his back, and Yuugi and Anzu were each sitting on one of his legs. Honda was slumped against a nearby pillar with Eri bent over him.

“What-” Jounouchi choked, “what happened-”

“Jou, are you okay?” Yuugi demanded, grasping the sides of Jounouchi’s face firmly in his hands. “Take a deep breath, come on.” Jounouchi obeyed Yuugi and took one deep breath, and then another. “That’s it,” Yuugi praised shakily. “One more.”

Jounouchi could tell that Anzu was running a diagnostic on him. He feebly tried to squirm out of her grasp. “S’okay, Anzu, I’m fine-”

“I’ll find that out for myself,” Anzu asserted. Her voice was firm but with a distinct quiver to it. “Eri-chan’s looking after Honda, so...”

“Honda? Why?” Jounouchi peered around Anzu and Yuugi. Honda was taking a few swallows of a healing potion and coughing a little.

“Because you kicked him directly in the chest and sent him flying,” Kaiba growled, tightening his grip on Jounouchi’s arms. “Do you not remember that part, you animal?”

“I - I what?” Jounouchi suddenly felt sick to his stomach. “Honda, man, I’m so-”

“It’s okay,” Honda assured him. “All fixed up now.”

“No!” Kaiba said loudly. “Do not tell him it’s okay. You could have been seriously injured - all of us could have been seriously injured if he’d gotten ahold of his axe-”

“You don’t even care about us being injured!” Anzu burst out, her eyes blazing. “Don’t pretend that’s your concern! You’re just rubbing it in that you were right about the statue. Hasn’t Jou suffered enough? Why do you have to be like this?”

“Because none of you listen to me!” Kaiba roared. “Again and again, I point out danger, and again and again you all just run towards it-”

“What have you done to make any of us want to listen to you, huh?” Honda yelled back. “You take every single opportunity to jump up someone’s ass and lecture them, of course you’re gonna be right sometimes, it’s inevitable! Did you ever think people would listen to you more often if you weren’t fucking constantly putting everyone down?”

“Both of you,” Yuugi said sternly, looking between Honda and Anzu. “Just because Kaiba-kun can be a little harsh doesn’t mean you should just disregard him! Hasn’t he helped us many times over the years? And now he’s decided to come along, even though-”

“Oh, so it’s fucking charity, is it?” Honda snapped. “We should be grateful that His Highness has offered to protect us out of the goodness of his heart?”

Jounouchi’s head was spinning. He was feeling sicker and sicker by the second.

“Honda-kun,” Eri said nervously. “That’s not what Yuugi-kun meant-”

“How could you defend him, Eri?” Anzu cried. “Kaiba-kun is awful to you, all the time, and I’m sick of it-”

“I’m awful to her?” Kaiba said coldly. “Why do you think that, Mazaki? Because I’m not obsessed with coddling her like you are? If making sure that god damned moron doesn’t kill herself at every opportunity is being awful, then fine, I’ll let her die next time.”

“Fuck you!” Jounouchi exploded, wrenching his arms out of Kaiba’s grip.

“No, no, stop, all of you-” Yuugi said frantically, but Jounouchi was past the point of being stopped.

“You think anyone actually fucking wants you here?” Jounouchi bellowed, grabbing a fistful of Kaiba’s tunic. “Why the hell did you decide to come with us if you hate us all so much, huh?”

“None of your business, you pathetic dog,” Kaiba spat, trying to shove Jounouchi off him.

“Don’t call me that!”

“Then stop being so fucking pathetic all the time!”

“You know who’s pathetic?” Jounouchi snarled, yanking Kaiba towards him. “You. You’re pathetic. You have all these people who care about you and all you do is spit on them, and you know why? Because you just hate yourself, more than you hate anyone here.”

“So what if I do!” Kaiba yelled, finally managing to wrench free of Jounouchi’s grip. “It’s not like you’re any better! You convince yourself you have some kind of moral high ground by hiding behind your little group, but we both know that deep down you’re trash.”

“Enough.”

Yuugi’s voice was quiet, but it rang through the space crystal-clear. Something about his tone froze everyone in their tracks.

Yuugi took a deep breath and stood up. “You know what? I’ve been trying to keep the peace all this time, but now I see that none of you respect me or each other enough to actually make an honest attempt. I can’t keep smoothing things over anymore. I’m done. It’s up to you now.” With that, he began walking briskly down the hall.

“Yuugi,” Anzu called out weakly after him.

“Catch up,” Yuugi said flatly, “or we’re not going to get out of these ruins before nightfall.”

They did make it out of the ruins well before nightfall. It was curious how quickly the winding labyrinth of stone opened up to spit them back out into the greenery, almost like it was abruptly done with them. The silence, however, persisted.

“Let’s, um...let’s take a break,” Honda ventured awkwardly. “Maybe all just take some fresh air, and...”

Yuugi nodded curtly and marched over to sit on an overturned pillar. After a moment Anzu trailed after him.

Jounouchi still felt sick. Sick with anger, sick with guilt, and sick with worry. He felt like he was going to throw up.

The truth was, he hadn’t meant to be quite that harsh with Kaiba. Somehow his horror over the hallucination and his humiliation over being wrong about the statue had ballooned into something big and ugly and twisted, and seeing Anzu and Honda both lose it hadn’t helped. Before he knew it the awful pressure in his chest had burst.

“Gonna go on a walk,” Jounouchi muttered. He was now about ninety percent sure he was going to throw up, and he really didn’t want an audience.

“Stay close,” Anzu called after him as he beat a hasty retreat into the trees.

Somewhere in the middle of voiding his stomach into the dirt, Jounouchi became aware of someone kneeling beside him.

“Hey, Eri,” he said miserably. Eri handed him a handkerchief and some of the precious bottled water they’d collected before the brackish streams of the jungle became the only nearby water source.

Jounouchi coughed and wiped his mouth with the kerchief. “Doesn’t seem like you to carry one of these,” he joked weakly. “Sorry for wrecking it.”

“You would be correct,” Eri said with a half-smile. “It’s Honda-kun’s. I borrowed it.”

“He send you to tail me and keep me out of trouble?” Jounouchi used some moss to wipe the worst of the vomit off the kerchief, then folded it up and handed it back to Eri.

Eri shook her head. “Um, no. I wanted to apologize.”

“No, don’t,” Jounouchi sighed. “Ain’t your fault I touched the statue in front of you.”

“It’s my fault you touched it, though,” Eri said matter-of-factly. She helped Jounouchi up, and they sat together side-by-side on a fallen log. “Listen, Jounouchi-kun, I’ve been thinking...I know I need to be more careful.” Eri hung her head. “I haven’t seen scary things like you guys have, so I guess I’m not used to being on my guard. Kaiba-kun is right-”

“Don’t listen to that asshole, you hear me?” Jounouchi snapped. “Listen, kid. When we all encountered magic for the first time, all of us made a few dumb decisions here and there. Don’t beat yourself up for it. And I don’t want to ever hear you say that again.”

“Say what?” Eri tilted her head. “Oh. About Kaiba-kun?”

“Kaiba is never right, under any circumstances. Honestly, fuck that guy,” Jounouchi said, hurling a rock against a nearby cliff face with unnecessary force. “I can’t fucking believe it. Back home he throws his money and power around to get his way, but even here, with none of that stuff, he just acts like he’s in charge for....no goddamn reason, really. Just his massive ego.”

“I don’t get it, Jou,” Eri said, rubbing at her face tiredly with both hands. “How come Yuugi-kun’s so determined that all of us be friends with him? It doesn’t seem like he even wants that.”

Jounouchi heaved an annoyed sigh. “Yuugi sees the best in everyone. He can’t help it. And I mean, it’s not like I can complain about that. I was so shitty to Yuugi when we were kids, and he never gave up trying to be friends with me. And Honda, too. But at some point, you have to get something in return, right? With Kaiba it’s like, one step forward two big douchebag steps back. It’s frustrating as hell.”

“Yeah,” Eri agreed. “It’s like he catches himself being too nice and then decides he has to be an even bigger asshole to make up for it.”

“Been like that as long as I’ve known him,” Jounouchi grumbled. “Even back in the day, he’d do something like...sort of decent, then he’d go around making sure that we all knew he regretted it. Always made me feel like shit. Like helping us out was something to be embarrassed about.”

“You know, I always wondered,” Eri said. “I know Kaiba-kun fights with everyone, all the time, but it seems like you two in particular...”

“Yeah,” Jounouchi said with a grim laugh. “We don’t get along. Never have. I don’t even really know how it happened. We’re opposites - rich kid, kid from the wrong side of the tracks, you know how it goes. Anyways, we just shit talked each other all the time. Started out as this testosterone-fuelled teenage boy thing. But it always felt like the things I said to him just bounced right off, and the things he said to me really hit home.” Jounouchi paused. “Like, I don’t think it hurt when I used to give him shit for being a spoiled rich brat, but when he’d call me loser trash or a commoner or whatever...man, that stung, you know?”

Eri rested her chin on her hands and looked at him sympathetically. “It’s an awful thing to say to someone.”

“Especially someone who grew up poor,” Jounouchi said. “I know you get it, but I don’t think anyone who didn’t grow up poor ever could. It’s like...it’s hard enough already, but the worst part is that other people can practically smell it on you.”

“Uh huh,” Eri agreed. “They either look down on you, or they pity you, which is just looking down on you dressed up in something that’s harder to call out.”

Jounouchi nodded. “And coming from a guy like Kaiba...a guy who was rich and powerful and respected and all that...it was like, why’d he have to make me feel like shit when he already had everything? What was the point of all that?”

“It’s not something an emotionally stable person does, that’s for sure,” Eri admitted.

“I just don’t know what I gotta do to get a shred of respect from that guy,” Jounouchi said in frustration. “Don’t know why I even want him to respect me. What do I care if some egomaniac dickhead thinks I’m worth more than dirt?”

“What?” Eri said, her face puzzled. “Kaiba-kun respects you. That’s obvious, even to me.”

Jounouchi blinked. “Huh?”

“Well, think about it,” Eri continued. “There’s no way you’d be able to rile him up so much if he didn’t care what you said. Whenever I needle him he just brushes it off, because it doesn’t mean much to either of us. Kaiba-kun is good at brushing people off. But with you, he can’t - and I think that scares him, so he’s always trying to boss you around to feel more in control.”

“Huh,” Jounouchi said again. “Well, I wouldn’t go that far, but it’s something. I’ll be damned.”

“You ever thought about telling him?”

“Telling him what?”

“That he really hurt you,” Eri said. “It’s possible he just doesn’t know. Kaiba-kun is...well, socially maladjusted, to put it lightly. Maybe he thought you guys were just meaninglessly trash talking.”

Jounouchi considered that. “Mr. Manners, he ain’t. Guy can’t behave himself even when his life’s on the line. Guess it makes sense that he doesn’t really think about whether he’s hurting people.”

“Maybe it’s time to...you know, sort your shit out,” Eri said, punching the air with her fists.

“You mean like, a brawl?” Jounouchi raised an eyebrow. “Yuugi isn’t gonna like that.”

“No, with your words,” Eri said in exasperation. “You know. Man-to-man.” She was still making punching gestures, which was a little confusing, but Jounouchi felt like he got her drift.

Jounouchi really did want to follow Eri’s advice. But every time he tried to catch Kaiba alone over the course of the afternoon as they trekked alongside the Dracozu River, Kaiba would vanish abruptly or find some random reason to avoid him. Jounouchi seriously considered giving up. If Kaiba didn’t want to talk to him, there didn’t seem to be a good reason to force it.

Then Jounouchi would take a good look around at his group of friends. Honda was still clearly on-edge, checking over his shoulder every few minutes. Anzu and Eri were practically glued together, walking with such a tight grip on each other’s hands that it was like they were both afraid the other would be snatched into the trees. And Yuugi was - polite, even-tempered - but decidedly frosty, in a way that rattled Jounouchi to his core.

He kept trying.

It started getting outright suspicious when Jounouchi asked for help getting firewood and Kaiba claimed he’d sprained his shoulder.

“What?” Jounouchi said, nonplussed. “Didn’t seem like it was bothering you when you took out that lizalfos a couple hours ago.”

Kaiba shrugged and turned to walk away.

“Hey, Anzu!” Jounouchi yelled back towards the spot where they’d made camp. “Remember when you told Kaiba not to hide injuries or you’d use your healing powers to kill him?”

“Yes,” Anzu yelled back. “Kaiba-kun, do I have to come over there and kill you?”

“For fuck’s sakes,” Kaiba muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Do any of you even pay attention to the shit that comes out of your mouths?” He started to leave, but Jounouchi grabbed his arm.

After many years of knowing Kaiba and also many failed attempts to use force to stop him from leaving the vicinity, Jounouchi was prepared this time. He dropped into a low stance and executed a perfect leg sweep, aborting Kaiba’s judo throw and sending him to the ground instead. Then he dropped down and knelt on Kaiba’s chest, preventing him from getting up.

“How-” Kaiba snarled.

“Got Anzu to teach me some of what you’ve been teaching her,” Jounouchi said. “How’s that for strategy, dickhead?”

“Get. Off.”

“No.” Jounouchi shook his head. “We gotta talk, and we can’t do that if you keep running away. You promise to stick around, and I’ll get off.”

Kaiba looked like a part of him would rather just take his chances and try to fight his way out of it, but there must have been another tiny part of him that realized how irrational that was. “Fine,” he gritted out.

“Hey, are you two beating each other up?” Honda yelled, apparently having heard the scuffle.

“We would never,” Jounouchi called back brightly, and then got up and offered Kaiba his hand. Kaiba ignored it and got to his feet, brushing the dirt off his tunic.

They walked a little further into the trees, and then Jounouchi sat down on a collapsed pillar. Kaiba sat down too, without prompting, with his back to a large boulder. He circled his arms around his knees and pulled them in close to his chest. The pose was so oddly vulnerable - so completely and utterly un-Kaiba - that it threw Jounouchi off for a moment.

“Say what you’re going to say,” Kaiba muttered, with no real heat to it. He just sounded tired.

Jounouchi thought for a moment, putting the pieces together. “You heard me and Eri talking, huh.”

“Hard not to,” Kaiba scoffed. “You have the loudest voice I’ve ever heard.”

Jounouchi rolled his eyes. “What the hell were you doing skulking around there anyways? How much did you hear?”

“Enough,” Kaiba said. He paused. “You’re wrong.”

“About what?” Jounouchi said, resisting the urge to get riled up.

“That I don’t know what it’s like. You think Mokuba and I were born rich and then got shipped off to a luxury orphanage while we waited to be adopted?” Kaiba glared at his boots, pointedly refusing to make eye contact.

Jounouchi stopped to consider that. “Huh,” he said finally. “Guess I didn’t think about that. Doesn’t that kind of make it worse, though? You knew exactly how shitty the stuff you were saying was.”

Kaiba’s face was carefully blank. He nodded once, curtly.

“Why, then?” Jounouchi said. He didn’t feel particularly angry, just confused. “I don’t get it, man.” He paused. “Maybe...did it bother you when I called you a spoiled rich kid and all that?”

“Fuck off,” Kaiba said, in a way that let Jounouchi know he’d been right on the mark.

Jounouchi would think about all of this in depth later; the way he and Kaiba had so fundamentally misunderstood each other right from the beginning, and the uncomfortable realization that when they’d met they’d just been two traumatized kids play-acting as grown men to mask their own fears and insecurities. For now, though, he felt like he’d made his point, and if he pushed Kaiba any further he’d probably lose the little progress he’d made. He knew they needed to have another longer conversation at some point and he also knew that neither of them were ready for it right now.

“Well, whatever,” Jounouchi said. “Now we both know. It all turned out okay in the end. We’re friends, right?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Kaiba said flatly. “I’m socially maladjusted.”

Jounouchi bit back a snort. “Ain’t we all. Enough of this bullshit, let’s go see if Yuugi’s started making dinner.”

He got to his feet, and when he extended a hand, Kaiba actually took it this time.

When they arrived back at camp, Jounouchi immediately went to sit down next to Yuugi. He didn’t know what he wanted to say, exactly, but he knew it was something along the lines of an apology. For the most recent scuffle, yes, but also for the years that Yuugi had spent playing the thankless task of peacemaker - between all of them, really.

Yuugi headed him off before he could say anything. He reached down and threaded his fingers through Jounouchi’s, then looked up at Jounouchi with a bright smile.

“I’m really proud of you, Jou,” Yuugi said. The sincerity of his voice sent a glow through Jounouchi, from the top of his head all the way down to his toes. “Really, really, really proud.”

Against all odds, Jounouchi was a little bit proud, too. Proud of himself, for the first time in a long time.

“Well, I think the best way would probably be to slow his heart down until it stopped,” Anzu mused, cupping her chin between thumb and forefinger in a classic thinking pose. “You know. Just kind of...put him down.”

“Would your magic even let you do that?” Honda wondered.

Anzu shrugged. “I dunno. Only way to find out is to try.”

“Stop theorizing on how to kill Kaiba-kun with your healing magic,” Yuugi said tiredly. “It’s creepy.”

“That was the deal, though,” Anzu argued, pointing at the gash on Kaiba’s leg. “He didn’t tell us about that, and he’s just lucky it didn’t get infected. I told him I’d kill him if he did it again. We shook on it.”

“We did not,” Kaiba contradicted. “You grabbed my hand and shook it without my consent.”

“God, you are so pedantic,” Eri groaned. “Do you ever get tired of living with yourself? Just...being like that, all the time?”

“No,” Kaiba said. “Don’t you ever get tired of being such a space case?”

Eri suddenly looked a little depressed. “Yeah,” she said with a sigh. “Capitalism doesn’t favour the chronically disorganized. I really need to get my life together.”

Honda blinked. “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t interrupt her, she’s having a rare and valuable moment of introspection,” Kaiba quipped dryly.

“Too late, it’s gone,” Eri chirped. “Anyways, if we’re finally putting Kaiba-kun out of his misery, why don’t we just get Yuugi-kun to do it?”

Jounouchi made his entrance then, striding into the camp and hurling his axe down into the dirt. “Fuck,” he declared. “Found the Spring of fuckin’ Courage.”

“That’s a great way to ruin your axe,” Kaiba said obnoxiously.

“Um...is that a good thing?” Anzu ventured, ignoring Kaiba.

“No,” Jounouchi said, “’cause there’s like ten goddamned lizalfos guarding it, and they all have lightning arrows.”

“Woah,” Honda said. “How’d you get out of that alive?”

“They didn’t see me,” Jounouchi explained. “Watched some poor stupid monkey wander into the middle of ‘em and they all shot at once. Fried the damn thing on the spot. They’re all like...way up high so it’s hard to get at ‘em.” He threw the dead rabbits in his other hand down next to the fire, and then sat on a log and buried his face in his hands.

“Well, do your thing, Battle Tactics Committee,” Anzu said optimistically. “I’m sure you’ll come up with something good.”

Eri and Jounouchi brainstormed for an hour, debating this strategy and that while Kaiba occasionally forgot he’d made a point of not being on their committee and threw a suggestion into the ring. It seemed impossible. It was the wizzrobe all over again; no one but Yuugi and Eri could reach the enemy, and no one could get hit with even one of those lightning arrows or they’d be out for at least a day.

“Okay, hear me out,” Eri said, resting her chin on her laced fingers and leaning forward in a rather businesslike manner. “What if we just...assassinate them?”

Kaiba had completely forgotten himself by this point and was firmly entrenched in the discussion. “I’m listening.”

“Like...Yuugi-kun and I go and quietly take them out, two at a time. We get out of the way, fast, and wait for them to drop their guard again before we kill the next set.”

“I like it,” Jounouchi said slowly. “It’ll take a while, but I don’t think there’s a safer way to do it. What if we have Honda guarding the entrance area, just in case something sneaks up behind, and me and Kaiba waiting in the wings in case one of you gets hit and needs an emergency evac?”

“Good call,” Eri agreed. “That way if they send out a scout on the ground, one of you can kill it before it can report back.”

“Right,” Jounouchi said. “And Anzu stays with Honda, so she’s protected but close by if someone gets shocked.”

Kaiba smirked. “Well done. Seems like the two of you aren’t terrible at this after all.”

Eri and Jounouchi both turned to him, twin dumbfounded expressions on their faces.

“What?” Kaiba said irritably. “Close your damned mouths. Hn. I take it back.”

“You can’t,” Eri sang out, breaking into a sunny smile. “Guess what, Anzu-chan, you’ll never guess what Kaiba-kun just said-”

They all suited up, covering their armour with dark cloaks to blend better into the night; except Eri and Yuugi, whose forest-green and dark blue attire helped them camouflage.

The first pair of lizalfos went down easily, one gurgling as an arrow sprouted through its throat and the other struggling briefly against a shadowy garrotte before succumbing. In fact, they died so quietly that their comrades were none the wiser, so after about ten minutes Yuugi and Eri went for the second pair.

That was when the lizalfos went absolutely ballistic. Upon seeing their compatriots’ corpses drop from their perches and splatter in the mud below, they raised a fierce call of shrieks and blowing horns, and began firing lightning arrows indiscriminately into the sky around them. Yuugi had to hop into the Twilight Realm to avoid one, even though it had been in no way aimed for him, and he hoped that Eri was faring well on the other side of the ruins.

The lizalfos did not elect to send a scout, which was too bad, as that would have been one less to kill. Jounouchi had counted ten but he hadn’t seen the ones hidden even further up in the ruins’ massive walls - about twenty by Yuugi’s estimate after a quick jaunt through the Twilight.

It took them a full half-hour to quit shrieking and hopping and hissing and firing arrows at anything that moved, bugs and plants waving in the breeze included. Then they were hyper-vigilant for another half-hour after that.

Things got harder with every pair Yuugi and Eri killed. It took the lizalfos longer to settle down, and they started positioning themselves back-to-back so that nothing could sneak up on them. Yuugi was forced to find creative paths through the shadows to position himself right in both of their blindspots, for just long enough to plant a suffocation spell, and slipping back into the shadows with only the hope that his magic had hit home. Eri had to keep finding higher and more precarious perches to fire from, until she was so high up in the cliffs that it made Yuugi nauseous to look, knowing that one foot wrong would send her plummeting to the ground below.

Still, they kept at it. Both of them were careful never to be impatient. They fell into a routine. After every single kill Yuugi shadow-hopped to wherever Eri was, whispering to her what he thought their next target ought to be. He made his way back to his position as both of them counted out the seconds in their heads, and then they went in for kills that were above all else clean and methodical. If a kill couldn’t be done safely, they wouldn’t do it, and would regroup before the next attempt.

So it went. All night. Kill, reposition, regroup, kill. Jounouchi, Kaiba, Honda and Anzu remained on the forest floor, with the darkness pressing in all around them and the damp nighttime chill seeping in through their armour. The awful death-shrieks of the lizalfos echoed around them, mixing with the eerie cackling of monkeys and the snorts and snuffles of various nocturnal creatures. None of them spoke a single word. The back of their necks crawled and each of them stood stock-still for the entire night, their muscles tensed and ready to spring into action, their hearts leaping every time a bird alighted on a nearby branch or a snake slithered too close to their feet.

At the very end, Jounouchi and Kaiba finally saw some action when an enormous moblin lumbered out from the ruins of the Spring and cottoned on that most of its comrades had perished. That fight was quick, and then it was all over.

Eri finally climbed down from the cliffs, while Yuugi used the last drops of his magical endurance to shadow-hop through the pillars. They were both so tired that Yuugi abruptly dropped to his knees in the mud and Eri nearly fell the last metre, saved only by Honda, who caught her by the waist and guided her the rest of the way down.

“Okay, we’re taking a break,” Honda said. He was still supporting Eri, who was barely able to stand on her own power, and Yuugi was shivering violently as Anzu crouched down next to him and put her arm around his shoulders. “The Spring can wait.”

The decayed structure that housed the Spring was just becoming visible in the gray pre-dawn light. It became clear that the entrance was shaped like the jaws of a gigantic dragon, ready to swallow them whole.

Menacing as it was, it was also their best option for shelter. They found a secluded spot a little ways from the Spring itself and built a campfire. Eri and Yuugi fell asleep almost immediately when they sat down, Eri leaning against Honda with her head on his shoulder and Yuugi on the ground with his head in Jounouchi’s lap. They were all too exhausted to fuss with bedrolls, and so covered themselves with blankets and cloaks instead before drifting off into a few hours of restless and uncomfortable sleep.

Jounouchi squinted at the water. “So who’s going in?”

Eri put her hands up. “Dibs out. I did it last time.”

“Why don’t we all go in together?” Honda suggested. The resulting scoff from Kaiba answered his question for him.

“Well, it’s the Spring of Courage,” Anzu mused. “Maybe the bravest person should go in.”

Eri laughed. “I don’t think it works that way. We sent the biggest idiot into the Spring of Wisdom and it turned out fine.”

“Aw, Eri,” Jounouchi said, ruffling her hair. “Don’t flatter yourself. You and me are tied for that title.”

“Oh, for god’s sakes, would one of you just do it already,” Kaiba sighed. “Yuugi. Get in the water.”

Yuugi blinked. “Me? Why?”

Kaiba glared at him. “You heard what Mazaki said. Go.”

Yuugi blushed, taken aback. Then he nodded and stepped into the pool. The water was warm and clear, and by the time he reached the base of the statue it came up to his waist. He bowed his head in prayer.

Hello, Hylia, he said in his mind, and was surprised to hear a voice answer back.

Yuugi, Hylia said, her tone strangely kind. You have done well to reach this place. You unlocked your power sooner than I was expecting, but before you use it, there are things you need to understand. And Yuugi - I must warn you: don’t trust her.

He expected the warm glow shimmering over the water, the swell in his chest that he’d felt last time - anything - anything but what happened next.

~

Suddenly Yuugi found himself standing on a ledge, high above a pool of crystalline water, cave walls closing him in on every side. A voice, as ancient as Hylia’s, but of a different timbre.

Those who do not know the danger of wielding power will, before long, be ruled by it.

A girl, suspended in the air above him, upside down. Her eyes were white. She laughed, once.

He was in a room at the top of a castle. Dusky light filtered in through the windows. A cloaked woman knelt in front of a wolf.

You were imprisoned? ...I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

The castle walls became a stone fortress, high and foreboding against a red sky.

My servants have fallen namelessly before the light that guides you...

A spectre dressed in courtly finery, clutching a conductor’s baton -

We dead should not be lingering here in this land.

And finally he stood in long-forgotten crypt bearing a single stone mural.

The rising sun will eventually set,
A newborn's life will fade.

From sun to moon, moon to sun...

Give peaceful rest to the living dead.

~

Yuugi awoke, gasping, floating in the water. He was so disoriented that he couldn’t understand which way was sky and which was ground, he thrashed back and forth in the water trying to find footing - it was cold, so cold -

“Yuugi -”

Honda’s voice was rough and cracked but it brought Yuugi back into himself all the same. Warmth flooded back into his body as Honda’s arms wrapped around him and subdued his struggling. Yuugi’s breaths slowed as he reoriented himself, started feeling the warm water around him, his feet touching the bottom of the pool.

He glanced over to where everyone else had been. Not one of them was still standing. Anzu and Jounouchi were clutching onto each other for what looked like dear life, and Jounouchi was crying. Eri was curled into a little ball off to the side. Kaiba looked like he’d been knocked flat on his back and seemingly hadn’t even made a move to get up yet.

“Honda-kun,” Yuugi choked out. “Did you-”

“God,” Honda said, clutching at his head with the arm not wrapped around Yuugi. “I saw something - something weird...I can’t even...”

“Me too,” Yuugi said. “What was that?”

Honda helped Yuugi out of the water. He’d shed his armour in a pile near the pool’s edge and was wearing only his tabard, undershirt and breeches. They sat in the midst of their friends, trying to catch their breath.

“Is everyone okay?” Honda managed after a minute. “Jou, what did you see?”

“I don’t even know,” Jounouchi said, scrubbing his eyes. “It was...it was fuckin’ scary. I just can’t...”

Yuugi understood exactly what he meant. He didn’t know if he’d be able to describe it all if he tried.

Eri uncurled her limbs with what looked like great effort and pulled herself into a sitting position. Kaiba still hadn’t even attempted to move yet.

“Hey, Honda...” Anzu said in a shaky voice, pointing towards his pile of armour. “What’s that?”

They all looked over. There was a round object sitting off to the side next to Honda’s halberd. Honda reached over and picked it up.

It was a shield, but the surface had been polished so smooth that light reflected off every facet of the carving on the front.

A carving of a terrified, grimacing face.

“What the fuck?” Honda said, sounding truly rattled. “What the - what the hell is this? Where did it come from?”

“Oh,” Eri said weakly. “It’s a mirror shield.”

“A what?”

“It, um...” Eri took a shaky breath. “It's from a place called Ikana. It reflects things. Light. Magic. That’s...that’s an item with a really long history.”

“I feel like I knew that,” Honda said distantly, staring at the disturbing carving on the front. “I think I saw...a temple? A really old temple. In a desert.”

Yuugi looked over at Kaiba, finally taking his appearance in for the first time. He was clearly completely awake, but scowling up at the sky as if refusing to accept whatever had just happened. It was an expression Yuugi had seen on him many times. Clutched to his chest was an open, heavy-looking book.

“And that’s the Book of Mudora,” Eri said after a moment, following Yuugi’s gaze.

“What’s in it?” Yuugi asked, gently tapping Kaiba’s shoulder. Kaiba ignored him.

“It’s a guide to ancient Hylian text,” Eri said. She poked Kaiba too. “Hey. Kaiba-kun. Can you even read that?”

“No,” Kaiba said, in a tone that Yuugi somehow understood meant yes, and I hate it.

“And you’ve got, what, a little flute?” Honda said, reaching over to uncurl Eri’s fingers, which were clamped in a death grip around something small.

“Oh,” Eri said, sounding surprised that she’d even been holding it. She looked down. Her face was puzzled. “It’s...the fairy ocarina? But why?”

“What do you have there, Jou?” Anzu rubbed his shoulder, trying to ground him. Jounouchi wordlessly held up the object in his hands.

A mask. A wooden mask of Jounouchi’s own face, with dark holes where the eyes should be, the cheeks streaked in vicious-looking war paint.

“I don’t like this thing,” Jounouchi said, his voice trembling.

“That’s the Fierce Deity’s mask.” Eri folded her arms and shuddered. “Some really powerful magic in there.”

“Don’t wanna find out,” Jounouchi muttered, and quickly stuffed it in his pouch.

“Did Hylia give you anything, Yuugi?” Anzu asked slowly.

“No,” Yuugi replied. “She said that...I’d already unlocked my power. What about you, Anzu?”

“Um...” Anzu frowned, and wrapped her arms around her knees. “No. I just heard...odd music, and...a voice. It said something strange.”

“What was it, Anzu-chan?” Eri prodded gently.

Anzu looked at Eri, her eyes fearful, and quoted: “You’ve met with a terrible fate, haven’t you?”

There was a long pause.

“Oh,” Eri said faintly, “that’s not good.”

“Explain yourself,” Kaiba said finally, seemingly having recovered a little. He sat up at last, cramming the book furiously into his pouch. “What does that mean?”

“You know the phrase ‘darkest timeline?’” Eri said. “Jounouchi’s mask and...the thing Anzu said. They’re from...well, a game that kind of embodies that phrase.”

“So what you’re saying,” Kaiba pressed, “is that these games have branching timelines?”

“Yeah,” Eri said. “The world we’re in right now takes place at the end of a timeline. No one’s really sure which one. But...the items we were given...” she glanced from her little clay ocarina to Kaiba’s pouch. “They come from at least two different timeline branches. It doesn’t seem like it should be possible.”

“Fuck,” Kaiba said. “This dimension is clearly full of holes and dragging shit in left and right. We just got caught in the crossfire. Unbelievable.”

“What?” Yuugi blinked.

“How much simpler can I make it?” Kaiba snapped. “Some dimensions are more porous than others. It creates a vacuum and pulls things in from its neighbouring dimensions. Eventually it gets bad enough that the whole system gets unstable and collapses.”

“Oh,” Anzu squeaked. “And, um, how long does that normally take?”

“Who knows?” Kaiba said with an irritated shrug. “It’s not like any scientists on Earth have had the chance to actively test that theory.”

“Can we-” Jounouchi cut in, sounding desperate. “Can we just - can we get going? I don’t wanna be here right now. I got a bad feeling.”

Kaiba looked over at him, frowning. “I hate to say it,” he replied finally, “but I do too. Let’s get a move on.”

Eri led them up a steep, scrambling path that carved up along the side of the ruins housing the Spring. She and Kaiba had figured out that if they could get high enough into the hills that surrounded the Spring, they could paraglide out and land in the ruins of Deya Village, skipping the trek back through the jungle entirely (and the Bridge of Hylia, as well.)

Hylia’s words turned over and over in Yuugi’s mind as they climbed, as well as the disturbing collage of images and impressions.

Don’t trust her, Hylia had said. But who was she? The woman in the cloak? The girl with the white eyes?

Yuugi’s question was answered just before they reached the top of the scramble. He felt a chill brush up his spine.

Yuugi whirled around to look behind him. Nothing was there - only the dark shapes of the ruins they’d left behind -

Ee hee hee, a savage voice whispered in Yuugi’s ear. I know you’ve been passing through my Realm, little mage. What right do you think you have?

Chapter Text

~△❈△~
Book I: The Three Springs
Part Three: Power
~△❈△~

Chapter Twelve: Insomnia

“You know what,” Kaiba muttered, “I didn’t think it was possible for you to be even more annoying, but I stand corrected.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Eri said cheerfully, then returned to tootling away on her ocarina.

After wading through the submerged ruins of Deya Village, they were taking a break to dry off on the rocky banks of the Hylia River. No one had even suggested a stop before they’d made it to the far side of Proxim Bridge. Without speaking about it, there had been a group consensus to put as much distance between them and the Spring of Courage as possible, to get as far as they could into the soft grasses and fresh breezes of Hyrule Field.

Kaiba sighed, long and aggrieved. “I’m putting it on the agenda that she’s not allowed to play that thing while I’m in earshot.”

Eri leaned over and blew it right in his ear. Kaiba reacted immediately by going to snatch the ocarina, which Eri was evidently prepared for, launching a kick into his side and dodging. He caught her by the ankle and flipped her, then knelt on her back and finally wrestled the ocarina away.

“Don’t fucking test me, or I will throw this in the river,” he snapped, holding it high above her head.

“Behave,” Anzu said boredly, not looking up from the Sheikah Slate. “Do I have to separate you two?”

Honda was already way ahead of her, hauling Eri away from Kaiba. “You,” he said firmly, grasping her by both shoulders, “quit provoking him.”

“Why does everyone always say I provoke him?” Eri said. “Kaiba-kun, give my ocarina back or I’ll just sing instead. And I promise you, my singing voice is way worse than my ocarina playing.”

“Fuck you,” Kaiba muttered, tossing the ocarina at her. She caught it deftly and grinned at him.

“And you two,” Honda instructed, gesturing at both Eri and Jounouchi. “Go find something constructive to do.”

“What? Why me?” Jounouchi complained.

“You’re bothering Yuugi,” Honda said.

“No I’m not,” Jounouchi protested. “Am I, Yuugi?”

“Well...” Yuugi said sheepishly. Jounouchi had been trying to help him cook, mostly by suggesting extremely weird ingredients and occasionally throwing things into the pot when he wasn’t looking.

“I’m being productive,” Eri defended. “I’m trying to figure out what songs work on this thing.” She had figured out about six notes, and was now trying them in a million different combinations. It hadn’t exactly been clear that she was doing anything other than messing around and making noise for the sake of it.

“What do you mean, what songs work?” Honda asked, taking the ocarina from her and inspecting it.

“Well, the whole point of the ocarina is that you learn songs to control its magic,” Eri explained. “But...I don’t know. I guess you have to do something to activate them first.” She reached over and poked at the ocarina as Honda gave it an experimental blow.

“We haven’t really talked about our items yet,” Anzu pointed out.

A hush fell over the group.

“Do we...have to?” Jounouchi said miserably, flopping onto his back in the grass.

“Yes,” Anzu insisted. “I know yours is kind of horrible, but...”

“Yeah, Anzu’s right,” Honda agreed. “Also, can we like...talk about the shit we all saw? We all saw things, right?”

Yuugi gazed stubbornly into his cooking pot, Jounouchi fiddled with blades of grass, and Kaiba folded his arms and glared off towards some unidentifiable point in the distance.

“Come on,” Honda whined. “I don’t wanna be the only one.”

“I saw something!” Eri chimed in suddenly, patting Honda’s shoulder. “It’s not only you.”

“Don’t lie to make him feel better,” Kaiba snapped.

Eri deflated. “Okay. I didn’t see anything, exactly...”

“Neither did I,” Anzu said. “I only heard the music and the strange voice. It’s something like that for you too, ne, Eri-chan?”

“Yeah.” Eri nodded. “It’s kind of hard to explain. I heard two voices talking to each other in a language I couldn’t understand, but...I was on top of a volcano.”

“How did you know that if you couldn’t see anything?” Yuugi asked.

“I smelled it,” Eri answered sheepishly. “You know. Like...smoky, dry, dusty. A bit of mountain chrysanthemum. A lot of sulphur. I’ve never been to a volcano, but I’m sure of it.”

“Okay,” Honda, raising a dubious eyebrow. “Did you recognize either of the voices?”

Eri nodded again. “One of them was Kaiba-kun.”

Kaiba shot her a glare made of pure daggers. “How the fuck would you know?”

“Your turn!” Anzu said brightly, pointing at Kaiba.

“I didn’t see anything,” Kaiba muttered, immediately regretting speaking up and attracting their attention.

“You always say that,” Jounouchi groaned. He was still flat on his back, staring up at the sky. “Man, you’re so full of shit. You come in second place after Yuugi for most frequent hallucinator in this group.”

“Oh, do I?” Kaiba snapped. “What about you, touching a statue for half a second and then spending a solid five minutes screaming about it?”

“You would’ve screamed too, asshole.”

“How are we supposed to know that if you won’t tell us about it?” Honda said, poking Jounouchi with the toe of his boot.

“Fine,” Jounouchi huffed. “Some guy got his face shoved into a fire, lots of dead bodies, screaming, blah blah. It sucked. Happy now?”

Everyone looked at him blankly.

“You’re making that up to freak us out,” Anzu said nervously. “Right?”

“I’m not!” Jounouchi protested, sitting upright. “Come on. Eri can probably tell us which bit of the games it was from. Any of this ringing a bell? Like, a whole pile of bodies...girls in wooden masks holding some guy’s face in the fire...big tied-up guy with rainbow skin...” Jounouchi trailed off at Eri’s nonplussed look. “Dead little kid in a forest?”

“They’re, uh, E-rated games,” Eri said, eyes wide. “Like, for ten-year-olds and above.”

“Didn’t you say something about the Sheikah having a torture temple?”

“Yeah, but it’s just mentioned. Nothing happens on-screen.”

“Hey, Kaiba, what’s up with that, anyways? How can a video game be rated E for everyone if there’s like, references to torture and stuff?”

“Fuck if I know. If I had my way gaming companies wouldn’t have to capitulate to the ESRB at all. Just a horde of useless busybodies fending off litigation-happy parents looking to score a buck. It’s a disgrace to the industry.”

“Off topic!” Honda sang, whacking Jounouchi and Eri simultaneously on the backs of their heads.

“Ow! Asshole!”

“So you didn’t see anything else?” Anzu tried to steer everyone back on track. “Nothing at the Spring?”

“Kinda?” Jounouchi rubbed the back of his head. “Everything felt real hot, like there was fire all around me, and then some...horrible chanting. That good enough? You go, Honda.”

Honda shrugged. “I dunno. I saw a big temple in the desert with a giant lady statue. I was standing in one of her hands. I felt scared as fuck when I woke up, but looking back it was really cool.”

“Checks out,” Eri said. “That’s the Spirit Temple, where you get the Mirror Shield.”

Yuugi had been uncharacteristically quiet during the whole conversation, so Anzu rounded on him next. “What did you see, Yuugi?”

“Um...” Yuugi hesitated, then gave the stew he was cooking another useless stir. The vision he’d had at the Spring felt all jumbled up in his mind, the images shifting and bleeding into each other, nearly impossible to pin down. There was one thing he remembered very clearly. “I was standing in front of a large stone,” he said. “With words on it. A poem.”

“A poem?”

“Uh huh. It went something like...the rising sun will eventually set, a newborn's life will fade...” Yuugi trailed off, trying to pin down the rest.

“From sun to moon, moon to sun,” Eri continued for him. “Give peaceful rest to the living dead.”

“Babies dying doesn’t push the rating up from E?”

“The hell, Eri-chan. Why do you have that memorized?”

“I dunno. It’s cool. Hey, that poem is about a specific song! The Sun’s Song. I’m gonna try it.”

“What does it do?”

“Turns day into night.”

“Don’t try it! Stop! What if you fuck up the sun?! ”

Yuugi hadn’t told anyone yet about the voice that had whispered in his ear as they’d left the jungle.

The first night after the Spring, when they made camp, he’d slipped into the Twilight Realm and called out to her. He’d asked her to come back and talk to him, even though every fiber of his being rebelled against making himself known.

There had been no answer.

Don’t trust her.

Yuugi had tried to bring the whole thing up with the group, several times in fact, but each attempt was met with a sudden icy chill running down his spine. He took that to mean that whoever she was didn’t want his friends knowing about her. As long as he stayed away from the topic, his steps remained untroubled and the prickling feeling of being watched went away. So he decided to keep it all in his head a little longer, see if he couldn’t try and learn more about her before deciding whether or not it was dangerous to tell his friends.

“Yuugi,” Anzu said. “Hey, you’re spacing out.” She had a hand on his shoulder and Yuugi had the feeling he’d missed the first few times she’d called his name.

“Oh, what?” Yuugi said, blinking. “Sorry, Anzu.”

“Jounouchi, say what you just said again,” Anzu prompted. “I think it was important.”

Jounouchi shrugged “I was just thinking...it doesn’t seem like a coincidence that just before we hit up the Spring of Courage and have a bunch of freaky visions...you suddenly figure out how to do that horrible thing where your eyes go all black. You know?”

“Hmm,” Honda mused. “Anzu, weren’t you saying something at the time about Yuugi being able to see through illusions?”

“Yeah, because he could see where the wizzrobe was, even when he wasn’t in the Twilight Realm with it,” Anzu said. “It would make sense that if anyone else is using shadow magic, he’d be able to see similar indicators when he does the horrible eye thing.”

“Hey, Yuugi-kun,” Eri said. “Tell me again what your vision looked like when you were doing the horrible eye thing.”

“We’re not calling it the horrible eye thing,” Yuugi said defensively. “Anyways, my vision went kind of...purple? But there was darkness around the edges. Kind of like...like when you look into a telescope, or something.”

Eri frowned. “That’s weird. It sounds kind of familiar. Think, Eri, think...”

“Don’t think too hard or you’ll fry your brain,” Kaiba smirked.

“Stop it,” Anzu said, smacking his arm. “Not the time to pick a fight.”

“I wasn’t picking a fight. I was giving some useful advice-”

“Hey,” Eri said suddenly. “What if it’s something like the Lens of Truth?”

“The what now?”

“It was an item from some of the earlier games,” Eri explained. “This little magnifying glass thing that you could look through, and it would show you the truth behind illusions. Now that I think of it...most the things you could see were related to shadow magic, or ghosts. Like shadow monsters that you couldn’t see normally, or ghosts that didn’t want to be seen.”

Yuugi pondered that. “Where did the Lens come from?”

“I don’t really know,” Eri shrugged. “You find it in a village that was founded by the Sheikah. So...maybe they made it?”

“That makes sense,” Yuugi said. “That’s basically what the Sennen Items were - a physical means to harness shadow magic. What if the Sheikah concentrated their own magic abilities into an item that could be wielded by people who weren’t shadow mages?”

“That’s brilliant, Yuugi-kun!” Eri said, pumping her fist victoriously. “I think we have our answer. The rest of us got physical items, you got an ancient precursor to a physical item.”

“Except me,” Anzu pouted. She folded her arms in a peevish sulk. “I just got a creepy warning.”

“Aw, we’ll figure it out,” Honda reassured her. “Yours is probably related to your magic, like Yuugi’s.”

“One should always heed ominous warnings,” chimed in the Guardian of Proxim Bridge, who had been shamelessly eavesdropping on the entire conversation from his perch sitting on the bridge’s fortified walls. “It’s just good practice.” He immediately withered into cowed silence, as Kaiba turned around and pinned him with the full force of a signature death glare.

Anzu turned the whole thing over and over in her mind after they said goodbye to their favourite bridge hermit and continued their trek to the Riverside Stable. She certainly hadn’t unlocked any new facets to her healing abilities, and she didn’t feel much different than she had before the jungle - except for a pervasive sense of being watched.

Anzu assumed that was leftover nerves. The jungle had really done a number on all of them. She knew that everyone had seen, heard and sensed more than they had let on; Anzu would be willing to bet that she hadn’t been the only one experiencing vivid dreams and odd feelings. On the one hand, it was very tempting to sit everyone down again and make them all talk it out some more - maybe Eri could glean some clues - but on the other hand Anzu herself wasn’t keen to relive the powerful feelings of loneliness and dread she’d experienced, and in the end she wondered what the use of it all was. Even if Eri could figure out exactly what each person had seen or heard, there didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to any of it.

She watched her friends carefully throughout the afternoon. Yuugi was definitely on-edge, in a way she hadn’t seen since the early days of Atem’s appearance in their lives. Unfortunately, Anzu knew that pressing Yuugi for information wasn’t particularly effective; he was an expert at dodging and avoiding. She would have to keep an eye on him. Honda and Eri appeared to be more-or-less fine. Jounouchi seemed a bit tetchy, but that made sense given that he’d had some pretty horrifying hallucinations and had received a war-mask of his own face from a deity with questionable motives. And Kaiba...well. He was in top Kaiba form. Predictably irritated by receiving a magical item, completely unwilling to talk about it, and in denial of any “occult garbage” he may or may not have witnessed.

The Riverside Stable was much quieter than the Dueling Peaks Stable, with only a handful of residents. It was the exact same in construction except for about half of the exterior being built out into the river on stilts; the occasional raft or barge passed by, carrying a merchant or simply a group of children enjoying an afternoon float.

This Stable was run by a young, attractive couple named Ember and Parcy. “You kids are in luck,” the stablemaster Ember told them. “All four of our beds are free. Not often that happens, no sir. Discount if you stay two nights. What do you say?”

“Yes,” Jounouchi said, grabbing the money pouch out of Honda’s hands and slamming it onto the table. No one made a move to stop him, even Kaiba. It looked like they would be taking a much-needed day off tomorrow.

“You know what,” Ember said, wrinkling his nose, “I’m gonna throw in some of my nice soap, too, on the condition you all go out back and wash up before sleeping in my beds.”

Eri and Anzu went first, forcing the boys to stand guard. The back of the Stable bordered directly on a cutoff channel, with water that stood cool and clear around little manmade islands. The girls waded in behind one of the islands, where a few goats and chickens were wandering and picking at the grass.

After the murky, muggy, brackish water of the Dracozu River, cold water felt like a blessing. Both girls submerged themselves up to the top of their heads right away, then broke the surface laughing in relief.

“Who knew river water could feel this good?” Eri said, reaching for a bar of soap.

“Ahhh,” Anzu sighed in delight. “Ne, Eri-chan, hand me that other bar.”

They took their time, scrubbing every last inch, including under their fingernails and behind their ears. It felt so good to be clean, and the sun was sparkling off the water’s surface in a particularly appealing way - both of them felt like they could easily spend hours in the river.

“You know what I miss about home?” Anzu said.

“Onsens?”

“Ohhh, don’t talk about onsens right now,” Anzu laughed. “No, not that. I miss the arcade. Is that weird? I didn’t even play that many games. I only ever went with you guys.”

“I get that,” Eri said, rinsing the last of the soap out of her long hair. “Just...doing fun stuff together, for the sake of it.” She paused, a bit of melancholy creeping into her voice. “I guess it’ll be a while before we can have a day like that again.”

Anzu felt inexplicably affronted by that idea. “Says who?”

“Ummm…there’s no arcades here?” Eri could sometimes be a very literal thinker.

“No, no,” Anzu said. “I have an idea.”

Eri leaned forward in anticipation. “Tell me.”

“Why don’t we all do something fun together tomorrow?” Anzu said. “I don’t know what there is to do around here, really, but...”

“That’s a great idea!” Eri said, clapping her hands. If there was one thing Eri could be counted on, it was to immediately get on board with fun ideas. “You know what? If I remember correctly I think there’s a little lake near here. Really secluded. We could go swimming!”

“Swimming!” Anzu said. “Yeah! I haven’t been to a lake in a really long time. Well. Lake Hylia doesn’t count. We could pack a lunch, and-”

“And find really high places for cliff diving-”

“Oi, you two!” Jounouchi yelled. “You drowned out there, or what?”

“We’re done, we’re done!” Eri called. She and Anzu dried themselves off with towels kindly provided by the Stablemaster’s wife and then redressed in their clean spare clothes.

It was their turn to guard the boys, so Anzu and Eri situated themselves close by to continue planning their day out. Eri sat obediently on the grass and let Anzu wrestle her wild mane into a braid, because she knew if she didn’t, she’d be in for a poofy disaster when it dried.

“And, I bet we can get Kaiba-kun to go if we trick him into thinking we just wanna practice Cryonis-”

Anzu tugged gently on the strand of Eri’s hair she was braiding. “We shouldn’t trick him. Let’s just convince him to go because it’s fun to spend time with your friends.”

Eri turned around just so Anzu could see her nonplussed expression.

“Okay, maybe that was a bit optimistic,” Anzu conceded with a grin.

“Woah, Jou, do that again!” they heard from somewhere behind them, and then the sound of splashing.

“Hyehhhh!”

“Dude. Dude. You have delts.”

“Hey Kaiba, let’s see yours-”

“No.”

“Jounouchi-kun, what do you think?”

“Right on, Yuugi, look at those biceps. Man, who knew being trapped in an alternate dimension would make us all ripped.”

“It’s not being trapped in an alternate dimension, idiot, it’s the fact that we’re all getting a lot of exercise-”

“Aw, man,” Eri sighed. “I wanna go compare muscles too. My quads are looking sick lately.”

“I saw them!” Anzu said, patting Eri’s shoulder comfortingly. “I bet you’re even stronger than the boys. All that climbing, ne?”

Eri beamed at the praise. “Have I told you I love you lately, Acchan?”

“You tell me all the time, dummy,” Anzu replied, laughing. “Anyways, you can show off your muscles tomorrow at the lake. Challenge Jounouchi to a swimming contest or something.”

“He’ll drown,” Eri said. “Jou’s a bad combination of impulsive and competitive.”

“I can’t believe you of all people just said that with a straight face.”

Eri grinned. “There’s a reason me and Jounouchi-kun get along so well. Hey. I dare you to challenge Kaiba-kun to a swimming contest.”

“No dare,” Anzu giggled. “I’m not an idiot.”

“Nope,” Eri replied. “You’re smart and mature and kind and pretty and that’s why all us idiots would die without you.”

Anzu blushed. “Ricchan! What does being pretty have to do with anything?”

“Being pretty has to do with everything,” Honda’s voice came from behind them. “Hey, who’s prettier, me or Jou?”

Anzu turned around, and then sighed heavily and rolled her eyes. “Put some clothes on, you animals.”

“We’re air-drying,” Jounouchi defended, adjusting the towel around his waist. “The sun is the best towel.”

Yuugi and Kaiba apparently didn’t share the sentiment, as both were dressed in their spare clothes already, hair dried and neat, while Jounouchi and Honda stood there dripping in their towels and letting the last of the day’s sunlight do its work.

“Hey, you two look nice,” Yuugi said. Eri had done a very pretty and elaborate hairstyle on Anzu, a tight crown around her head made up of several braids and woven through with a few small flowers. Anzu, meanwhile, was more of a functional hairstylist; she’d wrestled Eri’s mass of hair into a snug, neat braid that wouldn’t dare budge as its owner flailed about in her sleep.

“Want your hair done?” Eri said, patting the ground in front of her. Yuugi smiled, nodded and sat down.

“Me too, me too!” Jounouchi said.

“Put some pants on and then I’ll do yours,” Anzu instructed. She smiled at Kaiba and Honda. “Sorry, you two need to grow yours out a little more.”

“What a shame,” Kaiba deadpanned, and then turned to head back into the stable.

“Halt!” Eri yelled, so suddenly it made Yuugi flinch. “We gotta have a meeting tonight. Anzu and I have a proposed agenda item.”

“Okay,” Honda said. “Let’s meet during dinner, because Jounouchi’s gonna fall asleep like, the second we’re done eating.”

“That’s right,” Jounouchi agreed serenely.

That evening they all clustered around one of the Stable’s small dining tables. Now that they were proper adventurers who weren’t too squeamish to riffle around in the belongings of dead monsters, they could actually afford a nice meal with a side of bread and cheese to boot. Parcy gleefully informed them that the crab stir-fry was a recipe she herself had pioneered; it wasn’t clear whether there was much more to the recipe than throwing several crabs into a pan all at once with some butter, but it was delicious nonetheless.

“Why would we go to a lake?” Kaiba said, predictably confused and annoyed about the whole thing.

“I just said why,” Anzu answered patiently. “I think it would be nice if we all did something fun together.”

Kaiba folded his arms. “I repeat: Why?”

“Team-building exercise!” Yuugi said happily.

“The last time you said that I was arm-twisted into revealing very personal information,” Kaiba scowled.

“Oh my god,” Eri said, “are you even listening to yourself, all you told us was that you don’t like udon-”

“Oden,” Honda corrected. “I remember specifically because that information was so disturbing. Who the hell doesn’t like oden?”

“That guy,” Eri said, pointing accusingly at Kaiba. “Although,” she mused, “something about the combo of fish cakes and konnyaku-”

Jounouchi mock-gasped. “Don’t you start shit-talking Japanese food! Or else I’ll start shit-talking Canadian food.”

“Name one Canadian food and then I’ll be real scared.”

“Uhhh....”

“Tourtière,” Kaiba said shortly, “now can we please get back on-topic-”

“Woah.” Eri turned to Anzu, eyes wide in genuine shock. “Did you hear that? Tourtière! And he pronounced it sort-of right, too. Kaiba-kun, how did you know about tourtière?”

“Let’s all focus,” Yuugi said patiently, “we can solve the...to-to-ru...Canadian food mystery later. Kaiba-kun, we already decided to take tomorrow off, so why not have some fun?”

“Depends on your definition of fun.”

“Well, I suppose you don’t have to come,” Anzu said, “but we’d miss you if you didn’t.”

Kaiba snorted out a skeptical laugh.

“We would!” Yuugi insisted. “It wouldn’t be the same without you.”

“You have to come,” Eri added, “I have to grill you about where you got your hands on tourtière in Japan-”

“Just shut up, I’ll come to your stupid lake,” Kaiba snapped, as if they had conjured an entire lake out of thin air specifically to annoy him. The tips of his ears were turning a bit red.

“Attaboy,” Jounouchi said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Hey, look, this guy’s getting soft in his old age.”

“Jou,” Eri scolded, “don’t tease him when he behaves. That goes against every principle of behavioural psychology. We have to reward him.” Eri put a roll of her bread on Kaiba’s plate, smiling benevolently. “Here, have a roll.”

“Fuck off and die,” Kaiba grumbled, getting up from the table and going straight to bed.

Yuugi woke up in the middle of the night.

His dream had been hazy and bathed in the indistinct dusky mantle of the Twilight Realm, except for one part that stayed with him, crystal-clear.

A shrill, bitter little laugh.

He tried to wrestle his breathing under control, but it seemed like a lost cause. Treading very carefully not to disturb Kaiba, who was against all odds still sleeping peacefully next to him, Yuugi eased himself out of bed and padded out the door.

Yuugi wandered out to the goat pen and sat down with his back to a haybale. He was about to pull his knees up to his chest, but the sleeping goat next to him bleated softly and nudged its head into his lap.

“Hey,” Yuugi said softly, rubbing it gently between the horns.

“Hello,” a voice said back.

It took every ounce of Yuugi’s hard-won stealth training not to startle. He took one deep breath, and then another.

“What do you want from me?” he asked, as calmly as he could manage.

“Ee hee hee,” the voice cackled, that sound from his dreams. “You get straight to the point, don’t you, little mage?”

“I’ve been trying to talk to you, and you never answer me,” Yuugi said. “Why is that?”

“Oh, so you think I just loiter around, waiting for your call?” The voice sounded amused.

“You were the one who called me!” Yuugi replied, frustrated.

“Did I?” The voice laughed again, sharp and wicked. “Oh, silly me. Of course I did. I asked a question, didn’t I? Are you ready to give me my answer?”

“I didn’t realize I was intruding,” Yuugi said. “I’m sorry.”

“Light-dwellers,” the voice sighed, clearly irritated. “They just think everything is theirs for the taking.”

“I said I was sorry.”

“Are you going to stay out of my Realm, then?”

Yuugi sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I can’t.”

“And why would that be?” the voice asked snidely. “Oh, wait, I think I know. Your world is in danger and you think abusing our ancient magic is the only way to save it. Ha. I’ve heard that song and dance before, from much better singers and dancers than the likes of you.”

“What do you mean, your Realm?” Yuugi pressed. “Who are you? How are you even talking to me right now?”

“Ask your shadow,” the voice said with malicious glee. Yuugi glanced down.

The shadow cast in the moonlight was sharp and distinct and it wasn’t his.

This time he did startle, scrabbling backwards away from the grotesque little shape as the goat in his lap jerked back with an indignant cry.

“W-what-” Yuugi gasped.

His shadow wagged its finger mockingly at him, one hand on its hip. “I’ll make you a deal, little mage. I’ll allow you free passage through my Realm so long as you agree to help me. It’s a good deal, don’t you think?”

“I- I...” Yuugi gulped in the cool night air, trying to settle himself. “What do you mean?”

“Something has gone very wrong,” his shadow said condescendingly, “in both your world and in mine. I intend to find out why and how to fix it. You’re going to help me, and you’re not going to breathe a word about it to anyone. Is that better? Does that make sense in your pathetic, tiny brain?”

“I’ll help you,” Yuugi said, trying with all his might to keep his voice steady, “but because it’s the right thing to do, not because you’re threatening me.”

“Suit yourself,” the voice said sarcastically. “As long as I get what I want.”

“You never answered my question,” Yuugi pressed. “Who are you?”

There was no answer, and then he looked back down at his shadow, he saw only himself.

“This is weird,” Eri said. “I feel like I’m in the Twilight Zone.”

“What, like Yuugi’s freaky shadow world?” Jounouchi said.

“No, stupid,” Honda cut in. “It’s this old American TV show - come on, you really haven’t heard of it? It’s a classic.”

“Thank god at least one of you gets my references,” Eri said. “The point is, this is weird.”

“It is,” Honda mused, gazing at Anzu and Yuugi’s sleeping forms. “I didn’t know Anzu was even capable of sleeping in later than you.”

It was nearly mid-morning, and Anzu and Yuugi both were still dead to the world, snoring softly under their covers. Anzu looked like she hadn’t moved once all night; Yuugi’s mussed hair bore the evidence of a very restless sleep.

“Will you morons just wake them up so we can go?” Kaiba said impatiently.

“Aw, look who’s excited for a fun day at the lake,” Eri said. “Cute.”

“Piss off.”

“Anzu,” Jounouchi said hesitantly, shaking her shoulder a little. “Anzu?” Anzu left out a soft groan and turned her head, stuffing it into her pillow.

“Hey, Yuugi.” Honda poked him in the cheek. “Dude. Get up.”

“’M up,” Yuugi mumbled sleepily, sitting up and rubbing at his eyes.

“Aw,” Eri said again, this time with no hint of sarcasm. “Was no one gonna tell me that Yuugi-kun is adorable when he wakes up?”

“Isn’t he?” Jounouchi said fondly, mussing Yuugi’s hair. “Hey, man, what’s up? How come it’s the middle of the morning and you’re still knocked out?”

“Um...” Yuugi blinked a few times, then looked up at them blearily, his violet eyes unfocused under heavy drooping lashes. The effect was so cute that even Kaiba felt a weird Pavlovian surge of protectiveness that usually only Mokuba could summon forth from the pits of his heart. “I had...a nightmare, or...something...”

“That sucks,” Honda frowned. “You okay?”

“Anzu-chan,” Eri said gently, sitting down on Anzu’s other side and gently pushing a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “Time to get up.”

“’Kay,” Anzu sighed. She sat up, and then her head dropped right back onto Eri’s shoulder.

“What’s up with you?” Jounouchi said. “You have a nightmare too?”

“Yeah,” Anzu yawned. “S’okay. Let’s...let’s go to the lake.”

“You guys sure you don’t want to sleep some more?”

“No,” Anzu and Yuugi, master architects of all things team-building, chorused in unison.

Ember and Parcy had confirmed that there was indeed a lake nearby, and then collectively launched on a joint pitch, hyping up Batrea Lake’s beauty and fun so much that it was bordering on disconcerting. Parcy even came out to show everyone how the raft across the river worked, even though the premise was painfully simple: pull rope, float across water.

“If you have fun at Lake Batrea, you’ll tell everyone, right?” Parcy said eagerly, as Honda adjusted a snoozing Anzu on his back and stepped onto the gently bobbing raft.

“Uh…sure,” he said, although they didn’t really have anyone to tell - unless Purah wanted to drag her centenarian sister and sheltered great-niece to another province for a day trip.

“We’ve really fixed it up,” Parcy insisted. “There used to be a big monster fort out there, you know? It makes sense why people are scared of Central Hyrule. This area used to be…a bit infested. But the Princess and her knight came by a few weeks after the Calamity was beaten, and the knight cleared all the monsters right out.” The source of Ember and Parcy’s excitement was suddenly clear - they were obviously thrilled that Princess Zelda herself had taken an interest in rejuvenating the quiet Riverside Stable.

“Only took him a day,” Parcy rambled on. “You’ve seen him, right? Link? Tiny guy, but I promise you, any monsters in the area are too scared to ever come around here again-”

“It sounds lovely,” Eri said awkwardly. Kaiba, meanwhile, was starting to pull the rope, causing the raft to begin drifting away in the middle of Parcy’s spiel.

“You should take a look at the improvements the Princess made,” Parcy hollered, cupping her hands around her mouth, completely undeterred as they floated away. “It’s prime beachside fun, only here at the Riverside Stable!”

They’d half-expected Lake Batrea to be a stinking dump after the suspiciously over-the-top boasting. Fortunately, it was lovely - glittering blue waters, pristine grassy shores, enough tree cover next to the lake that the shade would be very pleasant indeed when the afternoon sun started to get hot. Nearby was a strangely familiar structure. Upon examination, it became clear the structure had once been a monster fort; but someone had carefully stripped off all the bones and skulls that bokoblins liked to decorate with, and replaced them with cheerful, colourful banners and blankets. Strewn about the platform were all sorts of amusements. Boards for paddling, goatskin-lined inflatable toys, even small wooden tools that could be used to play in the sand. Next to it all was a sign, with neat, prim handwriting: ‘When you’re finished, please return things so that everyone can enjoy!’

“Man, still out, huh?” Jounouchi said, twisting his head around to peek over his shoulder at Yuugi slumped over his back. “Come on, Yuugi. Check it out, this is so cool!”

“Dumping them in the water would wake them up,” Kaiba commented, as Eri spread out a blanket on a soft patch of grass.

“Would dumping you in the water make you less of an asshole?” Jounouchi grunted. He gently deposited Yuugi next to Anzu on the blanket.

“No.”

“I bet it would be fun, though.”

Kaiba gave him a sharp warning glance that somehow managed to insinuate that Jounouchi wouldn’t survive the encounter. Jounouchi made one of his especially horrible chinny faces and flipped Kaiba the bird.

“Aren’t you gonna tell them to behave?” Honda said to Anzu.

“Go ahead and kill each other,” Anzu called sleepily.

“I got a better idea,” Jounouchi said, striking a pose with a hand on his hip and the other hand pointing into the air. “Hey, Kaiba...teach me to swim.”

“No,” Kaiba said again.

“It’s in your best interest,” Honda reasoned. “As it stands now, if Jou falls into any body of water, you’re gonna have to be the one to jump in and save him.”

“Why me?”

“Because you’re the tallest and the best swimmer and therefore the person who’s least likely to drown in a rescue,” Honda said with a shrug.

Kaiba pondered that for a moment, then opened his mouth.

“Letting him drown is not an option,” Honda scolded before he could say anything.

Kaiba pondered some more. “Fine,” he conceded with an aggrieved sigh.

“Yeah!” Jounouchi crowed, pumping his fist in the air. “Swimming lessons! Man! I always wanted swimming lessons as a kid. Now I’m getting ‘em for free. Hey, we got any of them pool floaties?”

Meanwhile Eri was already down to her chest wrap and shorts, her clothes scattered haphazardly near the blanket, and while they were arguing she had already managed to scale the husk of an enormous tree that emerged from the centre of the lake. “Hey, Honda-kun, watch this!” Eri waved from the top of the hollowed-out stump, which had to be about six metres tall.

“I’m watching!” Honda yelled back. “Hey, you’re not gonna jump off that, are you?”

“What are you doing?” Kaiba shouted. “Stop, idiot-”

Eri leapt into the water, limbs flailing, shrieking all the way down. She hit the water with an enormous splash. After a moment she emerged, laughing, then swam back to shore with strong and capable strokes.

“Nice!” Honda praised. “I wish I had one of those signs to hold up like at the Olympics. Ten out of ten!” Eri’s diving would win no prizes for grace, but Honda awarded her points for fearlessness and enthusiasm.

“Thank you, thank you,” Eri said. She took a bow.

“Since when can you swim?” Kaiba said, nonplussed.

Eri shot him an offended look. “Since always. Why is that surprising, huh?”

“Canadians have to be able to swim,” Jounouchi said sagely, as he stripped down to his shorts. “All that ice melts during the summer and they gotta get around somehow without their skates.”

“Do you just tell him constant lies about Canada to fuck with his mind?” Kaiba accused. “You know what? Never mind. I don’t want to know. You,” he pointed at Jounouchi, “get in the water. Lesson one starts now.”

“It’s not a lie!” Eri defended. “The Rideau Canal-”

“I said I don’t care-”

“Hey, Kaiba, watch this-”

“Jou, he doesn’t need to see your shitty swimming-”

“Yeah he does!”

“I don’t. I already know you can’t swim-”

In the midst of the chaos, Yuugi sighed contentedly and rolled over to face Anzu. He was slowly starting to wake up. The sun and breeze felt good on his skin. “Look, they’re having so much fun. This was a great idea, Anzu.”

Anzu cracked an eye to peek at him. “Yeah,” she agreed, with a fond smile. “Look at that! Kaiba-kun teaching Jounouchi to swim. If you’d told me back on Earth, I never would have believed it.”

“Me neither,” Yuugi admitted. “I guess we just needed one more adventure together to finally get through to Kaiba-kun.”

“Yuugi,” Anzu laughed, poking him in the shoulder. “Don’t say that, it makes it sound like you orchestrated the whole thing in the name of friendship.”

Yuugi smiled gently. “Well, if Kaiba-kun can go to another dimension just to play Duel Monsters with Atem...”

A moment of silence descended over them, full and soft and heavy.

“Do you...” Anzu squinted up at the sun, struggling with her words. “I...I still…often, I…”

“All the time,” Yuugi said honestly. He understood what she was asking. “I miss him every minute of every day.”

Anzu had known that, really, but there was something wrenching about hearing Yuugi confirm it aloud. She let her gaze drift back down to her oldest friend. He had his eyes closed, now, enjoying the warm sunshine on his face. “I’m always thinking of questions I want to ask him,” Yuugi went on, his soft voice drifting here and there, “or things I want to tell him. It makes me a little sad that I can’t show him how beautiful it is here.”

Anzu reached over and squeezed Yuugi’s hand tightly. Her eyes were starting to sting, hot and prickling at the back. Atem would have found it beautiful here. He probably would’ve had plenty of earnest, poetic things to say about the Hyrulean wilderness; things that would have been cheesy coming from anyone else, but from Atem just felt…true.

“What about you, Anzu?” Yuugi said. “Who are you missing most right now?”

Atem, Anzu wanted to say immediately, but she forced that down and really thought about it.

“Everyone and everything,” she said finally. “Domino City, and my parents, and the arcade, and my dance studio, and Shizuka-chan and Bakura-kun, and... just…all of it, as one big thing.”

“It’s a different kind of ache, isn’t it?” Yuugi sighed, lacing his fingers with Anzu's. “Missing people like this.”

“I know what you mean,” Anzu agreed. “Something about not even being on Earth makes the people we love seem farther away.”

“But they aren’t waiting for us, I guess,” Yuugi mused. “If we find Princess Zelda and she’s the one to send us back, they won’t even have realized that we’re gone.”

“Isn’t it kind of melancholy, though?” Anzu said. “We’ll go back to Earth and in the span of a moment we’ll have lived all this time, and we’ll be different at the end of it, but for everyone else it’ll be like that time never existed. Even though I know it’s the best outcome, I...I just don’t know how to feel about it.”

“We have each other,” Yuugi replied firmly. “The time we spent here is important, even if no one else remembers it. It’s ours, and we can’t let it slip away.”

“Yeah,” Anzu replied, giving his hand another squeeze. “We won't.”

They lounged in the sun for a while, enjoying the sounds of their friends laughing and splashing and arguing in the lake.

“Ne, Anzu,” Yuugi said. “What kind of nightmare did you have?”

Anzu frowned. “It was really strange. I was running through the streets of a town. I feel like...like I was very small, because I was at knee-height with a lot of the people in the town. It was really crowded and everyone was panicking, and the sky was dark.”

“That sounds scary,” Yuugi said, turning to look at her again with a worried frown.

“It was,” Anzu agreed. “And then I ducked into a back alley, I guess to catch my breath, and after a minute I looked around, and there was a soldier. He was dressed up kind of like Honda but...different. He was sitting there with his back to the wall. He asked me if I was from the forest.”

“The forest?”

“Yeah,” Anzu said, shrugging. “I think I nodded, and he said some other stuff I can’t remember, and then...he died. Just like that. And I remember being really scared, and there was this little voice in my ear telling me that he wasn’t moving anymore...”

“Ugh.” Yuugi shuddered. “That’s really creepy. Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Anzu said. “I just...it felt so lifelike, you know? It didn’t feel like a dream...more like a memory. I couldn’t sleep for hours after. What did you dream about?”

“I don’t really remember,” Yuugi said, which was a partial truth - he didn’t remember the specifics of his dream, but he remembered the waking moments that had followed in sharp and vivid detail. “It was...disturbing.” That part, at least, was true.

“Hey,” Anzu said, gently grasping his shoulder. “Wanna go play in the water? I bet that would make us both feel better.”

“Yeah,” Yuugi agreed with a big, genuine smile. “I bet it would!”

“You two back in the land of the living?” Honda called as they waded in. He had a struggling Eri tucked under his arm like a belligerent sack of potatoes.

“Leggo, you-”

“No,” Honda said placidly. “You’re in the penalty box for sabotaging Jounouchi’s swimming lessons.”

“Challenging Kaiba-kun to a race is not sabotage-”

“It is, because you know he’s competitive and physically incapable of turning down a challenge.”

“Teach me to swim instead, Eri-chan,” Yuugi suggested. “I can paddle around a little bit, but I want to be fast like you!”

“Okay!” Eri agreed brightly. “Release me, you ruffian,” she said to Honda, thumping his stomach with her fist.

“Yes, Eri-sama,” Honda said, picking her up and throwing her bodily some distance into the water. Unfortunately his aim was a bit dodgy and she ended up taking Kaiba down on her way in a screaming tangle of limbs.

“Oof,” Yuugi winced. “You killed my swimming teacher, Honda-kun.”

“Rest in peace, Eri-chan,” Anzu said solemnly, clasping her hands in prayer in front of her chest.

Kaiba emerged, dripping and silent, from the water. His face was murderous. Without a word he fished Eri out of the water, lifted her over his head and hurled her directly back at Honda.

“Fuck!” Eri shrieked as she sailed by their heads again.

They set off early the next morning, thoroughly refreshed and rejuvenated.

“So we’ll hit the Wetland Stable in another day,” Yuugi said, leaning over Kaiba’s shoulder to look at the map, “and then it’ll take us another two to get to the pass, so we’d better make sure we’re all stocked up on...”

“Why not just cut through the wetlands?” Kaiba interrupted. “Looks like it would save at least a full day.”

“I mean...” Honda made a face. “It’s a swamp, right? It’ll be gross and mucky.”

“Nah, it’s not so bad,” Eri chimed in. “As long as you stick to the forested areas it’s pretty tolerable. I think we should do it.”

Jounouchi blinked, then made a show of pretending to clean his ears. “Am I hearing this right? You’re agreeing with that guy, after he threw you into a lake?”

“I didn’t throw her into the lake,” Kaiba corrected. “She was already in the lake when I threw her.”

“I take it back,” Eri said, folding her arms and sticking her nose in the air. “I don’t agree with you anymore. I refuse to be associated with such unconscionable pedantry.”

“Do we need to have a meeting to talk about it?” Yuugi asked.

“I mean, not right now,” Honda pointed out reasonably. “We can keep walking for at least until evening before we gotta decide.”

“What do you think, Anzu?” Jounouchi said.

“Huh?” Anzu startled, jumping a little. “Um - what?”

The conversation rolled on, Honda and Kaiba debating the pros and cons while Yuugi mediated and Eri switched her opinion every ten seconds to annoy Kaiba. Jounouchi lagged back a little bit.

“Hey, Anzu,” he said. “You okay? You seem a little out of it.”

“Oh,” Anzu said absently, “I’m fine, don’t worry, Jou.”

“Ship’s sailed,” Jounouchi said, putting an arm around her. “I’m already worried. You’re looking kinda twitchy.” He leaned down, putting his face in front of hers so she couldn’t avoid eye contact. “You can’t escape me, Mazaki,” he said in his most menacing voice. “So you better fess up.”

Anzu laughed, pushing his face away. “Oh, Jou, stop that. I’m fine, really. I just haven’t been sleeping well.”

“Eh, why’s that?” Jounouchi prodded. “I took a bullet and shared with Eri last night just so you could have a nice peaceful sleep without her kicking you to death, and all for nothing?”

Anzu giggled at that. “Did you at least kick her back?”

“Sure did,” Jounouchi nodded solemnly. “It was a brawl. We both woke up bruised to hell. Gave as good as I got. Now quit avoiding my question.”

“It’s nothing,” Anzu said, shrugging. “It’s...it’s really dumb. I’ve been having these weird nightmares.”

“Tell me about ‘em,” Jounouchi said.

“Well...it’s really just the one,” Anzu admitted.

After she’d told him the same thing she’d recounted to Yuugi the day before, Jounouchi frowned. “That’s weird as hell. What’s going on? You stressed out?”

Anzu thought about that. “Well...I guess. Aren’t we all?”

“True,” Jounouchi said with a shrug. “Maybe it’s all just getting to you a little. Take it easy, okay? Don’t push yourself.”

“I won’t,” Anzu promised.

Jounouchi eyed her skeptically. “Yeah? And arranging an activity for all us kids to have fun while you were bone-tired wasn’t pushing yourself? I still feel like you could’ve just used a day in bed.”

“Jou,” Anzu laughed. “A day relaxing at the lake was hardly an ordeal. You worry too much. I promise I’ll pace myself, okay?”

Anzu tried to pace herself, she really did. She let Honda step in and break up all the small arguments, excused herself from warmups with Eri and Yuugi, even skipped judo practice with Kaiba (he looked like he wanted to lecture her, and then quickly thought better of it.) But the strange, exhausted, creeped-out feeling dogged her steps the entire day; and then the worried glances from her friends made her feel worse, so she put extra energy into trying to keep up a reasonably cheerful demeanour, which in turn made her even more tired.

When they made camp for the night, Anzu abandoned any pretense of energy and crawled under her blanket, head in Eri’s lap. “Eri-chan,” she said, trying to keep the pleading edge out of her voice. “Would you play me something nice on your ocarina?”

“That would require her being able to play it properly,” Kaiba muttered, just barely in the range of hearing.

Eri responded with a very moderate reaction, for her - a rude gesture and nothing else - then fished her ocarina out of her bag and started to play. Eri had started to get the hang of the ocarina, and her endless experimentation had settled into a few distinctive melodies that she was perfecting. This melody was simple, soft and lilting and lovely.

“Hey, that’s really pretty,” Yuugi said, sighing and propping his chin on his hands. “What is that? It makes me feel kind of...relaxed, and warm.”

“Well, it is a lullaby,” Eri said with a smile. “It was written for Princess Zelda, thousands and thousands of years ago.”

“Play it again,” Anzu said contentedly. For the first time all day she felt at peace; safe and warm and even a little drowsy.

The next thing she was aware of was Honda lifting her onto her bedroll, and tucking the covers in gently around her; and then after that, a blissfully undisturbed slumber.

Until she woke up in the middle of the night, her heart racing. Anzu took a few deep breaths to steady herself, although she felt ready to cry with frustration. The same dream. Again. She just wanted to sleep.

After a moment, she gradually became aware of a very faint sound next to her - a whisper.

“...pas la patate...lâche pas...”

“Eri-chan?” Anzu whispered back. “I’m sorry...did I wake you up?”

Eri rolled over to face her, clearly wide-awake. “Um, no,” she replied, looking a little startled. “What’s wrong, Anzu-chan?”

“Bad dream,” Anzu said, just barely managing to keep the tremble out of her voice. Eri’s expression softened and she gathered Anzu into a hug.

“Me too,” Eri admitted. “It’s okay. We’re okay. Let’s go back to sleep.”

Anzu was so tired that she was already drifting back off, but she couldn’t help picking up a slight edge in Eri’s voice before sleep claimed her again.

Midway through the following morning, the decision on whether or not to cut through the marsh was made for them.

“FOR KOHGA!” a deep voice boomed suddenly from directly behind Yuugi. A blade came slashing down, seemingly out of thin air, and Yuugi was only just barely able to blink into a nearby shadow to avoid the blow.

Kaiba and Eri immediately fell into a protective flank around Anzu, sword and bow at the ready, while Jounouchi and Honda charged towards their attacker.

“What?!” Honda yelled, skidding to a stop. “Where the fuck did he go?”

“There!” Yuugi cried, popping out of Eri’s shadow and pointing to a flurry of red paper tags. Eri fired, and judging by the grunt coming from the centre of the illusion magic, she had hit - but not hard enough. The red paper tags disappeared.

Yuugi turned to Eri, his eyes completely black.

“I can see him,” he said. “Just trust me and shoot where I point.”

Eri nodded.

Soon, the attacker realized that his illusion magic was only serving to keep him on the defensive against Yuugi’s truth-sight and Eri’s quick arrows. He finally gave it up and materialized entirely.

“Yiga coward,” Eri taunted, nocking another arrow. “About time you showed yourself.”

The Yiga drew himself to his full, considerable height. He was nothing like the slight woman they had met before; tall and muscled and moving with the grace of a leopard, he hefted his enormous cleaver like it was nothing. “Don’t test me, archer,” he said. It was impossible to see his expression behind his mask, but his tone was distinctly amused. “You will all pay for your sins against my clan.”

Jounouchi charged, yelling wordlessly, with his axe held aloft. The Yiga man raised his cleaver and held it in the air.

“Jou!” Eri screamed. “Stop!”

The cleaver came down, and with it, a tornado as tall as Jounouchi. Jounouchi dodged, but the tornado just barely managed to catch him, hurling him into a nearby tree.

Yuugi leapt into the Yiga’s shadow and emerged behind him, suffocation spell at the ready. The Yiga gave a brief laugh and waved his arm lazily. A gust of wind dispersed Yuugi’s shadow magic right there in his hands.

“You think to use the magic of my people against me?” the Yiga drawled, seizing Yuugi by the throat and holding him up at eye level. “You impudent child.” He whirled around and held Yuugi between himself and the rest of the group. Eri froze, halting her shot just in time.

“Surrender,” the Yiga said.

“Not a fucking chance,” Honda growled, hefting his halberd.

Eri gripped Kaiba’s arm. “Kaiba-kun,” she said lowly enough that only he could hear. “This man is a Yiga Blademaster. You’re the best swordsman and the only one who stands a chance against the windcleaver.”

Kaiba nodded, tightening his grip on his longsword.

“Let him go,” Honda shouted, taking a step towards the Yiga.

“No, I don’t think I-aaaagh,” the Yiga cried, as Jounouchi caught him directly in the head with a well-aimed rock.

That was their cue. Yuugi took advantage of the Yiga’s momentarily loosened grip to hop back ino the shadows, Honda charged. The Blademaster vanished and then materialized again some distance away, lining up another shot with his windcleaver.

He had them. They were too close together. With just one blow from the windcleaver, they were all caught in its vortex and thrown into the surrounding trees. It would have been a perfect way to incapacitate all of them at once - except he’d had failed to account for Kaiba, who slipped up noiselessly behind him and lunged to drive his sword through the Blademaster’s back.

The Yiga whirled around just in time, meeting Kaiba’s sword in a resounding clash of steel.

Even after the rest had picked themselves up from the tornado that had ripped through their midst, there was nothing to do but watch. Kaiba may not have had Jounouchi’s raw power or Honda’s ability to take hit after hit, but he was fast. They danced in circles around each other, using trees nearby as leverage and sidestepping blows by just a hair. There was no way for Eri or Yuugi to even come close to lining up a shot that would only hit one of them, and Honda and Jounouchi’s halberd and war-axe would likely only distract Kaiba.

After what felt like an eternity, the Blademaster stumbled back, clutching his side.

“You,” he spat, blocking Kaiba’s relentless blows with increasing sloppiness. “You haven’t seen the last of me.”

With that, he vanished once more into a flurry of red. He didn’t reappear.

“Damn it,” Jounouchi said, throwing his axe into the dirt in frustration. “So I’m guessing we can expect more of these clowns?”

“Don’t ruin your fucking axe,” Kaiba muttered as he sheathed his sword.

“Yeah,” Eri said apologetically, ignoring Kaiba. “They’re...persistent, if nothing else.”

Honda thought for a moment. “Okay. We should cut through the wetlands. Maybe being off the main road for a while will throw them off our trail.”

“Agreed,” Yuugi said, massaging the spot where the Blademaster had clenched large fingers around his throat.

When the road forked off into the wetlands, they took it. They kept walking even when the trail faded away entirely, replaced by scattered wooden walkways.

“You know, this isn’t so bad,” Honda said. “Kinda pretty, actually.”

The wetlands were noisy, but in a nice way; filled with the chirping of birds and frogs and insects. Flowers grew everywhere and the trees were tall and lush. If they kept to the walkways their boots barely even got wet. Overall there was no real reason for the group’s mood to be as dampened as it was, but they barely spoke for hours as they trudged along.

“Hey,” Jounouchi said lowly to Yuugi, Honda and Kaiba. “Just me or is something up with the girls?”

Honda glanced behind them. Eri and Anzu were walking quietly hand-in-hand, some distance behind everyone else. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “Well...something’s up with Anzu, anyways.”

Jounouchi thought about that. Eri did in fact seem fine, just sticking very close to Anzu and not wandering off in about eight different directions as usual. “Makes sense. When Anzu’s off, it throws the rest of us off.”

“Speak for yourself,” Kaiba said, even though he too had been oddly downcast all day.

“We’re coming up on some ruins that might be a good place to camp,” Yuugi pointed out. “Maybe we should just call an early halt?”

Jounouchi glanced at Kaiba, expecting him to protest. Kaiba looked over his shoulder at the girls and then shrugged. “We’ve made good time today,” he said gruffly, but Yuugi could tell he was just as worried about Anzu as anyone else.

“So you wanna tell me about your bad dream?” Eri said to Anzu, squeezing her hand. The boys were some distance ahead, and it was all Eri could to do keep Anzu walking faster than an indolent tortoise.

Anzu sighed. She was getting tired of repeating it, but the details came easily. “Um...I’m running through a town, and everyone’s panicking, and I’m...very small...”

Unlike Jounouchi and Yuugi, Eri stopped her every few sentences with questions - what kind of town was it? What did the people look like? What did Anzu mean, the soldier was dressed like Honda, but different? Anzu felt uncharacteristically irritated by the questioning at first, but then she found that by answering the questions, she was able to put words to some things that had only been vague impressions before. She realized that in the dream she was not only small - she was a child. A little boy wearing green. And the tiny voice that spoke at the very end was not just a voice. It was something small and bright flitting around right near her ear.

“Okay,” Eri said, taking a deep breath. “So...that’s a pretty exact description of a moment in one of the earlier games in the series, which I’m assuming you haven’t played before.”

“Oh,” Anzu said. She was surprised, but also not; the dream felt too vivid and precise to be something her mind had conjured out of thin air. “Who am I in the dream then?”

“You’re Link,” Eri replied. “An earlier incarnation than this one. He was a little kid when he started that adventure. You’re dreaming about the part right before the war.”

“Why?” Anzu asked, startled by the sudden teariness in her voice. She felt overwhelmed, and exhausted, and like it was all too much to process.

“I don’t know,” Eri admitted, squeezing her hand comfortingly. “That’s such a strange thing to dream about. It isn’t really a major event. In fact, you can play the whole game without ever encountering that soldier.”

“Hey, you two,” Jounouchi shouted back at them. “We’re calling it early today. Found a nice place to camp.”

Once they had set up camp in a reasonably-intact building in the waterlogged ruins of Goponga Village, Anzu decided she had had enough.

“Group meeting, please,” she said, so loudly that Yuugi jumped about a foot.

No one argued with her. They all sat in an obedient circle and watched her expectantly.

“What’s up, Anzu?” Jounouchi said, his tone wary.

“Stop being weird,” Anzu said. “All of you. I’m having an off day. That doesn’t mean we all have to act like a funeral procession.”

“We’re worried about you, Anzu,” Yuugi protested.

“I know,” Anzu said, her tone a little gentler. “And I appreciate it. But I think it would help a lot more if things were back to normal.”

“That makes sense,” Eri said, putting her arm around Anzu. “It’s not fair to Anzu if we always rely on her to set the mood for everyone.”

“That’s not the point,” Kaiba argued. “I seem to recall more than one lecture from Mazaki about withholding injuries. Isn’t this the same thing? If there’s a problem, let’s just get it out in the open and solve it.”

“It is out in the open,” Anzu said with a shrug. “I’m tired. I’ve been having a really creepy recurring nightmare and it’s making it hard to sleep. It’s not like I’ve been hiding that.”

“Then let’s fix it,” Kaiba said impatiently. “What do we do? Morin, can you knock her out with an elixir or something?”

“Huh,” Eri said. “That’s not a bad idea.”

“That little lullaby thing helped too, right, Anzu?” Honda said. Anzu nodded.

“Okay!” Eri cheered. “We have a plan. Anyone wanna go hunting for herbs with me? I’m sure we can find something good around here. I saw something that looked like chamomile the other day.”

“Count me in!” Honda raised his hand. “Anything I can do to help.”

“Me too!” Yuugi chimed in.

After an evening of watching her friends gather herbs from the sun-dappled shade of a lush oak tree, a warm mug of honey-sweetened goat’s milk infused with Hyrulean plants that tasted just like chamomile and valerian, and listening to Eri play soothing melodies on her ocarina, Anzu drifted off into her first full night’s sleep in nearly a week; dreamless and peaceful.

Almost. She woke up once, in the dead of night, with a little gasp.

“Go back to sleep,” a soft voice instructed her, and she did.

“How are you feeling?” Honda badgered Anzu, nearly the second they’d finished packing up camp and set off again the next morning.

Anzu beamed back at him. “Great, actually.”

“You’re right, you know?” Jounouchi said. “Things are so much better when we just talk about ‘em openly and work together to fix it.”

“Was it necessary to turn this into a life lesson?” Kaiba snapped, rolling his eyes. “Do you idiots shrivel up and die if you go one day without a friendship sermon?”

“He’s got problems,” Honda said gravely to Jounouchi. “Problems that can only be solved...by love.”

“And by love, you mean a group hug, right?” Jounouchi replied with a shit-eating grin.

Kaiba took a step back and grabbed the hilt of his sword. “Stay the fuck away from me.”

“Just kidding!” Jounouchi cackled, slapping Honda on the back. “I’d rather eat my own intestines than hug a prickly jackass like that.”

“I’d hug him if you paid me five thousand yen,” Eri said. She was hanging off Jounouchi’s back like a monkey, and he hadn’t yet made an attempt to dislodge her.

“You don’t count,” Jounouchi said over his shoulder. “You’re a grad student. You’d probably do anything for five thousand yen.”

The trek through the wetlands went smoothly and easily. No more Yiga showed their ugly faces, and the most challenging foe lurking about was a particularly irate lizalfos. Eri even managed to remember in time that there was a large monster fortress up ahead, and was able to suggest a detour through Kincean Island that would spare them the trouble of having to fight their way through.

Of course, every time things were too easy, they were reminded in short order that Hyrule was a very dangerous place.

“Get behind that rock,” Yuugi hissed, materializing so suddenly out of Jounouchi’s shadow that Honda nearly dropped his halberd. They all crowded behind the large rock that Yuugi had indicated.

“There’s something up ahead,” Yuugi said whispered, once they were all safely ensconced. “It’s huge.”

“Is it coming this way?” Jounouchi demanded.

“No,” Yuugi said. “I think...I think it’s asleep?”

A loud, rumbling snore echoed across the wetlands, lending credence to that theory.

“Oh,” Eri said. “Let me guess. It’s an ogre-looking thing with one eye and a big potbelly.”

“That’s right,” Yuugi said. “What is it?”

“Hinox,” Eri said, leaning around the rock with the Sheikah Slate outstretched.

“What are you doing!” Honda hissed, pulling her back.

“I wanna get a picture for the Compendium,” Eri complained. “Come on. It’ll just take a second.”

“Focus, Eri-chan,” Yuugi pleaded. “Just how tough is this thing?”

“Well, you know, it’s big and stompy,” Eri said, sounding unconcerned. “Not nearly as tough as a Lynel, though. Hinox are slow and dumb and they have an actual weakness. I’m sure with all of us working together we can take it down in no time.” She paused. “After I get a picture.”

“Okay,” Jounouchi said. “Let’s get ‘em. What’s our strategy?”

“Its weakness is its eye,” Eri said. “If you get a good hit in they’ll get stunned. Sometimes they’ll even fall over, then you can really whale on it. Also the backs of their knees are pretty vulnerable.”

“So you and I will keep it distracted,” Kaiba said to Honda, “while these two -” he gestured at Jounouchi and Eri - “go for the knees and eye respectively. Mazaki, do you want to sit this one out or stay close by?”

“I’ll stay close!” Anzu said. “I think up on that little ridge there?”

“I wouldn’t,” Eri said. “Hinox like to throw boulders and stuff at things around their eye level. You’re safer on the ground.”

“Understood,” Kaiba said. “Yuugi, try to focus on confusing it. The less hits it gets in, the better.”

“Got it!” Yuugi nodded.

“I’ll sneak up onto the ridge and try to nail it in the eye right off the bat,” Eri said.

Kaiba frowned. “Didn’t you just say it likes to throw things?”

“I’m fast,” Eri shrugged. “Anyways, once I have a good vantage point, I can just keep going for the eye. It can’t throw anything at me if it can’t see me.”

“Fine. Get going,” Kaiba said, making a shooing motion with his hand. Eri began to scale up the rock silently, like a tunic-clad gecko.

They lost sight of her when she hoisted herself up and over the edge, so Kaiba signalled for Honda and Jounouchi to ready their attacks. The three of them lined up behind the rock, waiting.

“Say cheese, motherfucker,” they heard. Then the unmistakable snap of the Sheikah Slate’s camera function, and the twang of a bowstring.

The Hinox roared into wakefulness, launching to its feet with a reverberating impact that nearly knocked everyone off their feet.

Jounouchi led the charge, sliding deftly between its enormous leathery legs and emerging behind its kneecap. He dealt a swift and devastating blow that had it bellowing in pain. The combination of the hit to the knees and the arrow sprouting from its eye caused it to topple like a giant tree. It fell right back to the ground with another booming crash.

Kaiba, Jounouchi and Honda were on it immediately, driving their weapons wherever they could reach. Its skin was so thick and tough that it barely felt like they were doing any damage. The beast was up again soon, blindly swinging.

Honda took a hit full-on and was launched at least ten feet, bouncing and rolling on the ground in a way that looked incredibly painful. Kaiba glanced over his shoulder just in time to see Anzu reach him, and breathed a sigh of relief. He quickly assumed position in front of the Hinox, driving relentless blows to its ankles and shins to distract it from Jounouchi slipping around behind.

Eri drove another arrow home, and another in quick succession. It was starting to bay madly as it stomped its gigantic feet, trying to crush anything it could find. It scooped up an enormous chunk of rock and turned to hurl it in Eri’s direction. Kaiba and Jounouchi took the opportunity to charge its legs and deal simultaneous blows to both knees. The Hinox fell once again.

They went on like this for what felt like forever - knocking it down, slashing at it, trying to get out of the way when it got back up again. Honda was able to get back into battle quickly enough, and Yuugi’s spells were clearly working to confuse and disorient it. It was just very tough and very large.

Then, just as the Hinox started to really weaken, everything went terribly wrong.

A patrolling pair of moblins from the nearby fortress burst through the trees, roaring and gibbering as they hefted their crude dragonbone clubs.

“Fuck,” Jounouchi spat, wiping blood from a cut just above his eye. “What now?”

“You two go,” Kaiba said. “Yuugi and Morin and I can finish this thing off.”

“Got it,” Honda nodded. He and Jounouchi took off at a sprint.

Without his two fellow melee fighters, all of the heat was suddenly on Kaiba. He ducked and dodged as best as he was able, knowing he couldn’t take the kind of hits Honda could. That meant now he couldn’t get around behind it - but he had to keep its attention and prevent it from going for Eri and Yuugi.

Yuugi was still focused on confusing and disorienting it, so that meant that Eri needed to do some real damage. The next few minutes would be crucial.

Worse yet, the Hinox had started covering its eye with its giant hand, apparently deciding that fighting blind was better than taking more hits to its weak spot. Eri’s arrows bounced uselessly off its thick, leathery skin.

Kaiba was starting to get tired. He was making mistakes. The Hinox landed a glancing blow, opening a shallow cut along his side with its gnarled claw.

Meanwhile, Jounouchi and Honda were doing their best with the moblins, but they were both exhausted too; and fighting one-on-one to boot. Jounouchi took a particularly nasty smack across the chest with a club. He staggered back to his feet and drove forward with his axe, returning the blow in kind.

Suddenly, Kaiba heard a series of metallic blows coming from the ridge where Eri was stationed. Yuugi and Kaiba both glanced up. Eri was...hitting one of the boulders the Hinox had thrown, repeatedly, with her little shortsword. What the fuck?

They realized in unison what was happening when Eri climbed up onto the boulder, stuffing the Sheikah Slate back into her pouch.

Stasis.

The boulder abruptly launched through the air, driving straight for the Hinox’s head, while Eri screamed and held on for dear life. It knocked against the cyclops’ skull with an audible, hollow clunk. Eri just barely managed to catch onto the horn protruding from its forehead, dangling from one arm as the boulder ricocheted away. With the other arm, she drove her shortsword into the gap between the Hinox’s fingers, directly into its eye.

The Hinox roared, let go of its face and grabbed Eri, dwarfing nearly her entire body in its gigantic paw. Yuugi hit it directly in the eye with a shadowy disc that attached to the centre of its pupil and expanded, until the entire eye was covered and it was completely blind. Kaiba darted around and slashed at the tendons in its ankles.

It began to collapse to its knees, bellowing in agony, and hurled Eri away from it with dizzying force.

The next few moments happened in what felt like slow motion.

Kaiba had a violent and abrupt flashback - the Lynel’s paw making impact with Jounouchi’s torso - Eri’s body sailing through the air and hitting the rocks with a sickening thud - Jounouchi’s eyes open and unseeing -

“Kaiba-kun!” Anzu screamed, jerking him back into reality just in time for him to dodge a furious swipe-

Jounouchi dealt his moblin a fierce death blow and came charging back towards the Hinox, axe held aloft -

Eri somehow managed to engage her paraglider mid-flight -

Kaiba ran towards Jounouchi -

Wordlessly Kaiba knelt and cupped his hands -

Jounouchi stepped into them and Kaiba propelled him upwards - Jounouchi leaped, springboarding over Kaiba towards the Hinox’s head -

He swung and drove his axe home with stunning accuracy, cleaving the Hinox’s eye in half and cutting all the way through to its brain.

It didn’t even have the time for a death roar. Its legs just twitched once, twice, and then it went limp, falling to the ground with an echoing crash.

The remaining moblin let out an aborted gurgle behind them as Honda finished it off.

“Jounouchi-kun,” Yuugi cried, sprinting towards them. “That was so fucking cool!”

“It was, wasn’t it,” Jounouchi beamed as he tugged his axe out of the gelatinous mess he’d made of the Hinox’s eye. “Thanks for the lift, Kaiba.”

Honda trudged over, panting from the exertion. “I saw Eri-chan hanging off its head. How the hell did she get up there?”

Eri was clumsily trying to land her paraglider without crashing, with mixed success. They could hear an incomprehensible string of French profanity in the distance.

“Oh, it was brilliant, actually,” Anzu said, forcing Honda into down a sitting position so she could take stock of his injuries. “She used Stasis-”

“It. Was. Not. Brilliant,” Kaiba cut in, gritting his teeth.

“Aw, give her some credit, dude-” Honda started.

“No!” Kaiba said loudly. “She does not get credit for being a complete fucking idiot!”

“Who’s an idiot?” Eri said from behind them, apparently having managed to stick some sort of landing.

“You!” Kaiba shouted at the top of his lungs, rounding on her. “What the fuck did you think you were doing? You really think this was the time for your moronic showboating?”

Eri looked stricken. “I wasn’t...I wasn’t trying to...”

“I don’t want to hear it!” Kaiba roared. “What part of being an archer do you not understand? Give me that sword! You obviously can’t be trusted with it!”

Hands shaking, Eri obediently held her shortsword out towards him.

“Woah, man,” Honda said, standing up and putting a hand on Kaiba’s shoulder. “Calm down-”

“Let go,” Kaiba said, his voice suddenly ice-cold. “Do not touch me.” He shrugged Honda’s hand off violently, and then turned and stalked away.

“Uh...” Anzu turned to look at the rest of the group, her eyes wide. “What the fuck was that about?”

Chapter Text

Chapter Thirteen: The Jounouchi Katsuya Theory

Kaiba didn’t know where he was going. All he knew was that he needed to get as far away from those morons as humanly possible.

After about fifteen minutes of walking as fast as he could across the soft, wet ground - bordering on a jog, really - Kaiba finally felt like he was able to stop. He slammed his hand into the rough bark of a nearby tree. He briefly considered hacking at it with his sword to let off some steam, but in the end the worry over dulling the metal outweighed his need to destroy something.

He couldn’t do this.

The morning after all of them had arrived at Kakariko Village, Kaiba had gone to Impa as soon as the dork patrol cleared out of the hall for the day. He had asked her for an escort to Hateno. Impa had said yes, on the condition that he listen to her for a moment first.

It spoke volumes to the old crone’s perceptiveness that she hadn’t tried to sway him with any nonsense about goddesses or destiny or the fate of Hyrule, which Kaiba couldn’t have cared less about. Instead she had simply looked him dead in the eye and asked him what kind of man he’d like to return home as.

Kaiba had protested, saying that he owed it to his brother to do everything in his power to return alive, and that he would always prioritize Mokuba over everyone else.

Why? Impa had asked.

Because he needs me, Kaiba had replied.

They need you, Impa said simply. And your brother needs a guardian who can be trusted to do the right thing.

Kaiba had stood up abruptly and left, violently overturning a stand bearing a lone frog statuette on his way out. He’d slammed the door so hard that he could hear the wood frame creaking in protest.

Even though Impa had no way of knowing his worst mistake, the message seemed clear as day.

Atem hadn’t needed him. He’d gone on a fool’s errand to disturb the peaceful rest of a dead man, and he’d returned to his brother a pathetic shell of a human.

Atem had been kind to him. Excruciatingly kind, in a way that had seared Kaiba to his very core. Yet Kaiba had still been in denial - had been clinging to that denial like a life raft - right up until the point where Atem gave him the most heartbreakingly tentative look, and asked him to watch over Yuugi when he went back.

“You were wrong,” Kaiba spat. “Both of you.”

“Kaiba-kun?”

For once, Jounouchi had the dubious honour of not being the absolute last person that Kaiba wanted to see. That spot went to the owner of the soft, kind voice behind him.

“Leave me alone, Yuugi.”

“No,” Yuugi said firmly, tugging on Kaiba’s cloak. “Come and sit with me.”

“I’m not in the mood for this.”

“Neither am I.”

Very few people could get away with talking to Kaiba Seto like this. Kaiba supposed it was at least fortunate that no one else was around to see his pathetic acquiescence. He gritted his teeth and took a seat next to Yuugi in the grass.

“So...” Yuugi began, fixing Kaiba with that unnervingly clear violet gaze of his.

“I’m going back to Hateno.”

Yuugi didn’t react. He just kept watching Kaiba with that calm, steady gaze.

“That stupid old woman...” Kaiba’s fist clenched of its own accord. “She seemed to think I could protect all of you.”

“Is that what Impa said to you?”

Watch over them, Impa had said after he donned his armour for the first time. Protect them. And allow them to protect you.

“I failed,” Kaiba said.

Yuugi’s wide eyes flickered with surprise. “That’s not true, Kaiba-kun.”

“Isn’t someone dying on my watch the very definition of failure?” Kaiba said sardonically. “I’ve been fooling myself.”

His brother had been left alone, entire dimensions away. One of the people he had been charged with protecting had been killed and another seriously injured protecting him. Afterwards, Yuugi had been the one to comfort Kaiba, not the other way around.

There was no one that Kaiba was capable of protecting. There was no way for him to return as the brother that Mokuba deserved.

“Oh,” Yuugi said, a note of realization in his voice that made Kaiba bristle with anger. “I see.”

“What do you see, exactly?” Kaiba snapped.

“I just...I didn’t realize that was still affecting you,” Yuugi admitted, hanging his head. “I’m so sorry, Kaiba-kun. I should have paid more attention.”

The swell of irritation in Kaiba’s chest was growing by the second, even though on some level he understood how irrational it was. “Were you not affected?” he bit back. “Isn’t Jounouchi your supposed best friend?”

Yuugi never reacted to even Kaiba’s cruelest barbs with anger, and this was no exception. “Of course I was scared,” he said sadly. “I think about it all the time. But...Jounouchi-kun doesn’t like dwelling on things like this. Back at Alcatraz...”

“He was fine,” Kaiba interrupted. “He lost consciousness and received prompt medical care. There was no reason for you all to carry on with the drama.”

Yuugi met his eyes then, with that steady, unblinking gaze of his. The sort of gaze that made Kaiba’s innards feel like they were squirming. Yuugi didn’t even have to speak for Kaiba to understand what he was getting across.

I think you know that’s not true.

Kaiba hadn’t been able to think about it back then. Any of it. Jounouchi lying still in the middle of the arena after Ra’s final attack - Bakura and Mai and Rishid, unmoving for days despite the best efforts of his medical team - the people who had collapsed as shells of themselves after encounters with DOMA. He hadn’t been able to think about it because then he would have had to think about Mokuba’s cold blank eyes as he sat curled in on himself in a damp dark cell underground, and he would have had to admit that there was some truth to it all.

“Jou will talk about it in his own time,” Yuugi continued after a moment. “And when he wants to, I’ll be there to support him. The same thing goes for you, Kaiba-kun.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Kaiba said.

“There clearly is, or you wouldn’t have yelled at Eri like that.” Yuugi shrugged. “I’m happy to wait you out for as long as it takes.”

Kaiba leaned his head back against a tree trunk. “And I suppose nothing will dissuade you from that ridiculous notion?” he said dully.

Yuugi paused, smiled a rueful little smile, and then shook his head. They sat together in silence until the sun started to dip low in the sky.

The next morning Jounouchi woke up from a nightmare, the kind he’d gone years without having, and he was not pleased about it. The kind that smashed together images of Mai collapsing in front of the Sennen Rod, Atem screaming after Yuugi was taken from them by Orichalcos, the Winged Dragon of Ra looming brilliant and terrible at Alcatraz, all in a nonsensical collage of his worst fears.

“Let me do the hunting for today,” he said to Eri that afternoon, clapping her on the shoulder. “Give you a bit of a break. Bet I can find us something nice for dinner.”

“Okay,” Eri agreed absently, preoccupied with the horrible concoction she was brewing out of Hinox guts and god knew what else. She and Kaiba had been up late disemboweling the damn thing - which had been apparently therapeutic, as both seemed a little more normal at breakfast that morning.

Honda caught up with him. “Want some company? I can look for vegetables and stuff, we’re running low.”

“Uh...” Jounouchi laughed and scratched the back of his head. “Thanks, man, but maybe later. Eri always hunts alone, right?”

“Sure, sure,” Honda said, casting him a slightly suspicious glance but dropping it nonetheless. Honda always knew when Jounouchi was full of shit - literally always, like 100% success rate - but he also knew when to just let it go and pretend he was buying it.

Jounouchi didn’t often want to be alone to think, because he usually did his best thinking when bouncing his thoughts off Honda, or Yuugi, or anyone he liked and trusted really. Anzu hadn’t been kidding when she’d said he was an open book. Today, though, he happened to have a lot to reflect on.

Namely the fact that he’d made the admittedly poor decision of eavesdropping on Yuugi and Kaiba, and now his brief and mostly inconsequential death was really rattling him.

Jounouchi had actually died very briefly once before. Not many people knew that. During the finals of Battle City, when he’d taken the full force of the Winged Dragon of Ra, he had apparently flatlined once - for about twenty seconds - until the onboard doctor was able to bring him back around. The only people who knew were the ones who had been there. Yuugi, Atem, Kaiba, Honda, Otogi, Anzu, Isis. And Shizuka.

The thing was, Jounouchi wasn’t the type of person to linger on the past. He hadn’t seen the point at the time on dwelling on the twenty seconds where he’d been not-alive, not when there was so much being alive left to do. So he’d gotten up and charged right back in without a second thought.

But now he had this one little scene playing in his head on repeat, and he couldn’t get it out.

“Katsuya,” Anzu had said to him in the hallway, her eyes brimming with tears. One of the only times he could remember her using his given name. “How can you just act like nothing happened?”

Honda had cried too, if he remembered correctly.

“Ah, man,” he groaned to himself, flopping down on his back and staring up at the sky.

What was throwing Jounouchi off was Kaiba.

Kaiba was an asshole, but chiefly he was an asshole who seemed to lack any sense of perspective. Losing at a card game - devastating, could send him into a deep depression-slash-quest for vengeance. Getting his company hijacked by a millennia-old cult? Eh, he’d deal with it later. The point was that for something to rattle Kaiba, it had to be bad enough to transcend his very weird hierarchy of priorities.

So, now that Jounouchi knew his brief and inconsequential death had actually managed to affect Kaiba Seto of all people, the hazy memories of the fight took on a grotesque tinge. He wanted to throw up thinking about the image of himself as a corpse, how it must have looked to the people around him. He even experienced a vague but chilling recollection of the sound Anzu had made as he went under. It was horrible. And now he realized, years after the fact, that he’d put the people he loved through the same thing before and hadn’t even spared it a second thought.

He’d put Shizuka through that, worst of all. His baby sister, who had already been through the hell of watching both Mai and Bakura succumb to the shadows and Honda dropping into a pit of flames and the countless other horrors of Battle City. She’d watched him draw his last breath, and he’d never even talked to her about it.

Jounouchi had a theory, one he’d developed over the entirety of his lifetime.

The first part of the Jounouchi Katsuya Theory was that kids from bad homes just...knew each other. All of them. If you were a kid from a shitty home, you could look at another person and see it on them. There wasn’t anything in particular he could point to. It wasn’t like all of them acted the same way. It was just a feeling, and they were all drawn to each other because of it.

That was why he and Honda had come together like magnets at the beginning of junior high and never let go. That was why he and Kaiba had a very specific and intense brand of antagonism, but each just couldn’t seem to leave the other alone. That was why he and Mai couldn’t help but love each other. And that was why sometimes it felt like Eri had always been part of their group - part of his little gang with Honda.

The other part of his theory hinged on the one commonality he had noticed in this unfortunate club, that no one had ever asked to be a part of: they were all, without fail, tough as hell. When you grew up realizing that no one was going to look out for you, you just figured out how to become strong enough that it didn’t matter.

So in the end, all of these kids - kids like him, Kaiba, Mai, Honda, Eri - Malik, even, and Bakura - tended to drift together but stop just short of getting close enough to soothe their own loneliness. Sometimes this meant fighting with each other because it was too hard to face up to the bits you saw of yourself in another person. Sometimes this meant loving someone but not quite being able to bridge the gap, held back by the feeling that you were the only person you could count on in the end. That was the core of the Jounouchi Katsuya Theory: if you weren’t careful, it was easy to end up surrounded by other people and yet still be totally alone.

Jounouchi felt like he’d done pretty well for himself over the years, managing to mostly disprove his own theorem as it applied to himself. Especially compared to a walking emotional dumpster fire like Kaiba. It helped that he and Honda had people like Yuugi and Anzu - bright, shining lights, people who loved easily and unselfconsciously and taught him to do the same. But of course there were still old habits that were hard to break, and denial was one of them.

So Jounouchi had convinced himself he was fine, and moved on, because there was no other alternative. At the time he hadn’t felt strong enough to face his own death head-on and reckon with it. Just like Mai hadn’t been able to face her demons and had fallen in with DOMA, or how Kaiba hadn’t been able to face his and had spent years of his life pursuing an empty victory. And then there was Eri, proving the Jounouchi Katsuya Theory by running as fast as she could away from the things she couldn’t make herself look at.

To be totally honest, Jounouchi still didn’t feel strong enough to face it. There were these awful fucked-up questions still lurking around: where had he gone, for those twenty seconds? Was he somehow different now in a way he couldn’t even see? What if he hadn’t come back?

But there was a lesson that was slowly sinking into his thick skull over the years: sometimes you didn’t have to be strong “enough.” Sometimes you just had to do your best.

“Hey, Anzu, Honda,” Jounouchi said, catching them at a moment when the rest were off doing other things.

“What’s up, dude?”

Jounouchi put his arms around each of them and pulled them in close. Anzu let out an indignant squawk and struggled a little, but Honda went in willingly.

“Jou,” Anzu whined. “What’s your problem?”

“I wanna say something. About Battle City.”

Anzu immediately fell silent and quit struggling. She wrapped her arms around his middle, as if bracing herself for whatever he was going to say. Honda put his arms around both of them.

“You know, um, on Alcatraz? After Ra…got me?”

“After you-” Honda bit the rest of his sentence back with great effort. “Yeah. I remember.”

“I should’ve listened to you and stayed in bed,” Jounouchi said, not able to say quite what he meant to, but hoping it was getting across somehow. “I’m really sorry I worried you. You guys were right to be scared. And, uh,” this next part tumbled out of his mouth in a rush, “thanks for always looking after me.”

After a moment, Anzu sniffled into his shoulder. “We love you, you dummy, you know that?”

“Yeah,” Honda said, his voice suspiciously choked. “You’re never allowed to pull something like that again.”

“I won’t,” Jounouchi said. “I promise.” He didn’t even bother trying to wipe his eyes.

Right now, that was his best, and that would have to be enough.

Finally, still steeped in an atmosphere so tense you could slice it with a knife, the group left the Lanayru Wetlands behind and began the climb into Akkala.

“You think any of those Yiga dickheads are lurking around?” Honda said, peering suspiciously from side to side, as they rejoined the path.

“They can’t be everywhere,” Jounouchi said reasonably. “So unless they knew where we were going, we’ve probably lost ‘em.”

Anzu barely registered the chatter. Since the fight with the Hinox and the aftermath, the feeling of dread had been creeping back into her every waking hour, and it was getting harder and harder to act normal; but she didn’t think she could handle another difficult conversation with her friends.

Luckily, she was in good company. Kaiba was even more aloof than usual, Yuugi was strangely downcast, and Eri was doing her best to keep out of sight entirely.

Anzu glanced up, and then immediately looked down at her feet.

It was there again. Just behind a rock outcropping. Anzu shuddered and wrapped her arms around herself.

Maybe if she didn’t look, it would just go away.

“Answer me,” Yuugi called out into the Twilight Realm. His own voice echoed back at him. “Hello?”

Yuugi had never been in the Twilight Realm for longer than a few moments at a time; he had always kept Eri’s warning close to the forefront at his mind, that if humans dwelled there for too long they would fade into spirits. After pushing his limits a few times too many, Yuugi had become familiar with the warning signs. He started to feel...insubstantial, somehow, like a particularly strong gust of wind would blow him to pieces.

So it was only after days of serious thought that Yuugi finally decided to make a longer foray.

The voice hadn’t returned, since the last time they’d talked. Not even a peep. It was a relief, and also disturbing, and bothersome. What was he supposed to be helping her with? What was wrong in the Twilight Realm? What was wrong in Hyrule, for that matter, other than its Princess being missing? It wasn’t like Yuugi had a frame of reference for how Hyrule was supposed to be. He thought about asking Eri, but he wasn’t sure how to frame the conversation without tipping her off to the existence of the voice - Eri could sometimes be oddly perceptive, often at inconvenient times.

So, all on his own, Yuugi had decided to put himself to the test. He was going to go into the Twilight Realm, and if the voice wouldn’t answer him, he’d find her himself.

“Hello?” he called one last time, as his eyes adjusted.

Yuugi had never really spent long enough in the Twilight Realm to process it as something other than an endless haze. It still was that, in a way; the twilight stretched on for what seemed like forever, serene and silent, and Yuugi couldn’t make out any distinct shapes. However, he was struck with a sudden sense of directionality - awareness that there was a sky above him, and endless depths underneath.

He started to walk.

It wasn’t that there was a ground to walk on, per se, but his feet met with resistance against the air; it felt like trudging through very soft sand.

“Ee hee hee! Where do you think you’re going, little mage?”

Yuugi flinched, stopped walking, and turned to face the voice for the first time.

She was an imp-like creature, maybe three feet tall, floating in the air with her arms crossed. Her small black body was covered in patterns; bluish-grey patches and what looked like tattoos of a glowing green. She had a cunning little face that was mostly obscured by a very large helmet, from which a shock of orange hair erupted. The helmet revealed only one eye peeking through. Red and yellow, and currently narrowed into a wickedly sharp slit.

“If you walk too far, you won’t be able to find your way back,” she continued, in a tone of malicious amusement. “And then what would you do?”

Yuugi had already decided, long before entering the Twilight Realm, that he was going to be civil and calm and not let her bait him.

“Hello,” he said steadily. “I’m Yuugi. It’s nice to finally meet you.”

The imp cackled. “Where was that politeness when you decided you could just help yourself to the hallowed magic of my people? A little late, don’t you think?”

Yuugi bowed respectfully. “I apologize for intruding. I want to help you, like we talked about before. Just tell me what to do.”

“Well, well, well...” the imp made a show of thinking about it, hand on her hip as she bobbed in the air. “Since you came all this way, I suppose I can fill you in.”

“Will you tell me your name?”

“You’ve earned that, at least,” the imp said, with a feral little grin. “You’re lucky enough to stand in the presence of Midna, Queen of the Twilight Realm.”

“Oh,” Yuugi said, unable to mask his surprise.

“Oh,” Midna parroted back, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Let me guess - are you surprised that a hideous little imp is the Queen, or surprised because it looks like there’s nothing here to rule over?”

“I’m sorry,” Yuugi said, getting down on one knee. “Your Majesty.”

Midna laughed then - different than her usual cackle, full and delighted. “Oh, I like you. You’re the exact same brand of stupid as him.”

Yuugi tilted his head. “Who?”

“Get up,” Midna ordered. “You look ridiculous. Since you’re funny, I’ll let you in on a little secret.” She winked. “I didn’t always look like this, for one - and for another, my kingdom is beautiful, but you’ll never see it. I’ve gone to great pains to hide it from just any old second-rate magician who fancies a hop through the Twilight.”

“I see,” Yuugi said. “Well, I guess that makes sense.” He paused. “You know, where I’m from, we also have a Shadow Realm.”

It was Midna’s turn to be taken aback. “You’re not Sheikah?”

“No,” Yuugi said. “Look at my ears.”

Midna drifted a little closer to examine him. “Revolting,” she said after a moment. “What are you then?”

“Human.”

“Never seen one of those in my realm,” Midna said, her eyes narrowing suspiciously. “Only the occasional monster that by dumb luck manages to master a little bit of illusory magic, and Sheikah - although I haven’t spotted one in hundreds of years. That’s why I was so interested in you, you know. I thought that maybe it was a signal that the Sheikah were going back to their old ways, and I wondered what that meant for the world of light.” She bared her teeth. “But now that I know you’re not Sheikah...I’m even more interested.”

Even though she was small, Yuugi could practically feel the powerful magic radiating from Midna. In that moment she looked so dangerous that Hylia’s warning rang in his ears afresh.

“Earlier you said that something had gone very wrong, both in your world and in mine,” Yuugi said, sidestepping the implicit question. “What did you mean by that?”

“Use your brain, little mage,” Midna said, her expression still menacing. “That’s exactly what I need your help with. I need to understand what’s happening there, so I can understand what’s happening here.”

“I don’t understand,” Yuugi admitted. “What’s the relation between the two?”

“Did you learn nothing about light and shadow before arrogantly deciding to throw yourself into my Realm? It’s a miracle you’re not dead yet,” Midna snarled. “Think about it for half a second.”

Yuugi thought, trying not to let his racing heart distract him. There was that thing Paya had said, the phrase that had stuck in his mind all this time - “Darkness can only exist in the absence of light. Shadow can only exist with its presence,” he recited.

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Midna said, rolling her eyes. “You light-dwellers are so thickheaded.”

“So...” Yuugi said hesitantly, afraid to be rebuked again. “You could say that our worlds are reflections of one another.”

“Ee hee hee. Now you’re getting it!” Midna crowed. “An old friend of mine once said...they’re two sides of the same coin.” Yuugi felt like he was picking up just the slightest trace of wistfulness in her voice, but it was gone abruptly. “When all is well in the world of light, my people are free to live in peace. When you light-dwellers mess things up, it’s us who pay the price.”

“Which is why you’re stuck in your current form,” Yuugi theorized.

“I’ll have you know I’m quite the looker most of the time. Enough to leave men speechless.” Midna cackled, as if she’d made a hilarious joke. “Anyways, that stupid farm boy and his silly Princess have unleashed Ganondorf on the world of light, and so his servants awake in mine. What a bother.”

“Ganondorf? Farm boy?”

Midna ignored him. “I want to talk to that little historian of yours.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Yuugi said

“Yes you do.” Midna smirked. “Your friend. The one with the bow and the head filled with lore and myth where common sense should be.”

At the alarmed expression on Yuugi’s face, Midna’s smile grew even wider and more feral. “I’ve been spying,” she said matter-of-factly. “You should keep a closer eye on your shadow.”

“What?” Yuugi gasped. “So you...”

“Oh, relax,” Midna drawled, adopting a reclining position midair and putting on a show of an exaggerated yawn. “It’s not like I’m spying all the time. The sunlight gets to be too much, and that shadow of yours puts up a real fight whenever I want to take over. Such a pain.”

“You have to stop that,” Yuugi said firmly. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, but you can’t be spying on us.”

“You’ll do me one better than that,” Midna said slyly, “seeing as you can’t be watching your shadow all the time. You’ll have to offer me something that’s even better than sneaking around.”

Yuugi sighed. Apparently boundaries weren’t one of Midna’s strengths. “What do you want?”

“I told you,” Midna said impatiently, “I want to talk to your little historian.”

“All right.” Yuugi hesitated. “Can you talk to her from my shadow?”

“No,” Midna said. “I can only talk to you from your shadow. You’ll have to bring her here.”

“I can’t do that!” Yuugi protested. “The Twilight Realm is bad for humans. She’ll fade into a spirit.”

“She’ll fade into a spirit eventually,” Midna corrected. “A bit of time won’t hurt. Well. Not much.”

“No deal,” Yuugi replied. “I won’t hurt my friends.”

“Well, then,” Midna said, with another comically large yawn. “I suppose we’re at an impasse. Tell you what, little mage,” she said. “Why don’t you let her decide?”

“No,” Yuugi said firmly. “I know exactly what she’ll say, and it’s the wrong choice. She doesn’t understand-”

“She does understand the dangers,” Midna said, clearly amused. “She understands better than all of you do, actually. You’re all so funny.” She let out a shrill little guffaw. “Trust this, friendship that, but when it comes down to it you all think you know what’s best for each other. Is it really friendship if you feel the need to control them like that?” she said nastily.

“I’m leaving,” Yuugi said. “And if I catch you spying again-”

“You’ll what?” Midna bared her sharp teeth. “You’ll what, little mage?”

Yuugi phased back into the world of light with her piercing laughter echoing in his ears.

“Anzu-chan?”

Anzu startled, nearly dropping her mug of warm herbal milk. “W-what?” She’d wandered a little ways away from camp to quietly enjoy her drink and watch the sunset from the cliffs, and hadn’t been expecting company.

“Can I sit with you for a minute?” Eri asked hesitantly, fiddling with the edge of her sleeve.

Anzu softened immediately. She recognized that expression.

“Of course,” she said, patting the grass next to her. Eri sat down, wrapping her arms around her knees and gazing out at the stunning view.

Anzu knew her friends. She knew that Jounouchi often needed little to no prompting to talk, Yuugi had to be gently encouraged to share what was on his mind, and Honda often needed to be outright bullied. The key with Eri was to wait her out. Yet another way she and Kaiba were alike; you had to approach slowly, and silently, or else they’d spook and run away like wild animals. So Anzu waited, sipping her milk and watching the sun sink down into the mountains. She felt like she understood exactly what Yuugi meant when he said he was sad he couldn’t share Hyrule’s beauty with Atem.

“I’m sorry I’ve been avoiding you,” Eri said finally, in a very small voice. “I just...I wanted to be able to explain properly...”

“You don’t need to,” Anzu said, covering Eri’s hand with her own. “I get it.”

“You do?”

“Eri-chan,” Anzu said gingerly, not exactly sure how to phrase it. “For the rest of us...this wasn’t our first time, seeing something like this. And it’s not Jou’s first time experiencing it.”

Eri blinked. “What?”

“Okay.” Anzu puffed out a sigh. “So…when I told you, years ago, about the Pharaoh…”

“I remember,” Eri said, nodding diligently. Anzu had taken her for a walk at Prospect Park, in Brooklyn. It had seemed like a strange place to tell a big, dark secret, but afterwards Eri had understood - it was better to hear about magic and ghosts and ancient tombs when you were out in the bright, warm sunshine, with the sounds of kids playing and ducks quacking all around you.

“That was…a very short version,” Anzu admitted. “Shorter than I think you realize.”

Eri nodded again. She’d been starting to understand that, based on the disturbing references the rest of them dropped like nothing at all.

“We were trying to protect you,” Anzu explained. “It’s a lot to absorb, and there didn’t really seem to be a reason to burden you with all of it.”

Suddenly, Eri felt overwhelmingly, powerfully lonely.

She rested her head on her knees. For the first time, she really let herself internalize the fact that there was this whole big story, and everyone was in on it - everyone except for her. She was too naive, not strong enough to handle it, not clever enough to be useful and help everyone else bear their burdens.

“Can you tell me now?” Eri whispered, the ache in her heart giving a painful throb.

“Yeah,” Anzu whispered back. She scooted closer to Eri and put a hand on her back. “I’ll tell you as much as I can, okay? The parts that are mine to tell.”

“That’s all I want,” Eri said, and it was true. Anzu was one of exactly two people she wanted to know everything about, to understand inside and out like a well-worn book.

Anzu cleared her throat. “Okay. So…when Yuugi was a little kid, Jii-chan brought home an artefact. A big, golden Puzzle. It took him eight whole years to solve it…”

Eri listened carefully as Anzu’s clear, strong, familiar voice carried her through a terrifying and bizarre series of events. Anzu was no storyteller like Yuugi was, nor a yarn-spinner like Jounouchi. Eri knew she was getting the story precisely as it had happened, at least as Anzu remembered it, mostly untouched by romantic notions or intrigue.

It wasn’t a particularly long story, but Eri wished she were writing it down, so she could remember all the Egyptian names and historical dates and important people. Then Anzu got to the last part - Alcatraz, and Jounouchi’s face-off against the mysterious tomb-keeper - and Eri suddenly understood why she was being told all of this now.

“So this isn’t Jou’s first time…” Eri couldn’t even say the rest of the sentence. Anzu shook her head.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “We should’ve all given you more credit. You could’ve handled it. Or, at least, we should have made sure to explain more of it to you once we landed here.”

“It’s okay, Acchan,” Eri assured quickly. Anzu giving that guilty look was somehow even worse than the lonely feeling from before. “You all had other things to think about.”

“That’s true,” Anzu admitted. “But I guess none of us thought about the fact that seeing someone die is really scary, especially for the first time. I should have checked in on you.”

“I, um, was doing a pretty good job of not thinking about it,” Eri said sheepishly. Anzu gave a knowing nod. They’d all been doing a good job of glossing it over. “Until Kaiba-kun yelled at me.”

“Eri-chan,” Anzu said gently. “He was really shaken up. I think the way the Hinox threw you reminded him of...”

“I know,” Eri said miserably. “That’s why I couldn’t stop thinking about it after.”

“We both know you’re really good at avoiding things,” Anzu said. “We still haven’t talked about what happened at graduation...” Eri shot her a pained look, and Anzu put her hands up in a conciliatory gesture. “I’m not saying we have to talk about it right now!” she said. “I just mean...”

Anzu had in fact had a very good speech lined up, one of her better ones in fact. She had a near-perfect opportunity to impress on Eri that you didn’t have to know how you felt about something before talking to your friends about it; that it was okay to be confused, and that sometimes sharing with someone you trusted could even help you work through your feelings even if they didn’t seem to make sense. She even had a particularly good bit about how since Eri was a known problem-avoider, she probably couldn’t always trust her own instincts on whether something qualified as a big deal or not.

The problem was that giving that speech right now would be unbelievable hypocrisy of the worst order.

“Oh, man,” Anzu groaned, burying her face in her hands. “Hold that thought. Eri, I have to tell you something, and I need you to just...listen, and not freak out, okay?”

Eri took the abrupt change in topic well in stride. “Okay,” she said. She reached for Anzu’s hands and clasped them in her own. “I’m listening.”

“I, um...” Anzu inhaled deeply. “I’ve been having the soldier dream again and the thing I kind of didn’t tell anyone is that I’ve actually been seeing the soldier while I’m awake too,” she said all in one breath, afraid she wouldn’t be able to get it out otherwise.

“Okay,” Eri said again, making a heroic attempt to mask the alarm in her voice. “Okay. Is he here right now?”

Anzu nodded, putting one hand over her face and using the other to point.

The soldier stood silently next to a large aspen, at attention with a straight back and a firm grip on his spear. His eyes were shadowed by his helmet, as always, and a large bloodstain spread out into his tunic from behind his chestplate.

“Please tell me you see him,” Anzu whispered.

“I don’t,” Eri said apologetically, “but...that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you. Maybe Yuugi-kun would be able to see him, with the truth-sight?”

“I...I don’t think we should involve Yuugi right now,” Anzu said hesitantly. “I think he’s...”

“Dealing with something,” Eri finished for her, biting her lip pensively. “He has been really strange the last few days. Doesn’t look like he even slept last night. But, Anzu...” Eri looked conflicted.

“I know,” Anzu groaned, burying her face into both hands this time. “I’m such a hypocrite. After all that stuff I just said to you about talking to your friends...”

“Hey, hey,” Eri soothed, rubbing Anzu’s back. “You’re not a hypocrite. You just told me, didn’t you? Maybe...” Eri thought for a moment. “Maybe you and me can try to fix it, and then if we can’t, we’ll talk to the others.”

“Okay,” Anzu said shakily. “Okay, that sounds like a good plan. So...what do we do?”

“Um...” Eri shrugged. “Why don’t we talk to him?”

“W-what?” Anzu stammered.

“Well, he’s a ghost, right? Don’t ghosts usually have regrets and stuff, and that’s why they hang around?”

Anzu shuddered. “I mean, you’re right, but...”

“I’ll talk to him,” Eri said. “You stay right here. Where’d you say he is, again?”

Anzu pointed again, and Eri marched up to him. “Hi, Ghost-san,” she said, with only the hint of a tremble in her voice. Suddenly Anzu was overwhelmed with a surge of affection for her friend - her friend who was willing to confront a ghost she couldn’t even see on Anzu’s behalf. “Can we help you?”

The soldier ignored her. It was impossible to tell if he was even looking at her, with the way his eyes were cast in shadow.

“No answer,” Anzu said. “Um...maybe I have to do it.” She slowly unfolded herself from her sitting position, and forced herself to cross the few steps to the aspen tree. Eri took her hand firmly.

“Hello?” Anzu said. “Ghost-san?”

The soldier turned his head towards her silently. A thrill ran down Anzu’s spine.

“He’s looking at me,” Anzu gasped. She and Eri gripped each other’s hands for dear life.

“Ask him what he wants,” Eri whispered, eyes wide as saucers.

“What - what do you want?” Anzu managed to eke out.

The soldier watched her for a very long moment. He slowly, slowly lifted a trembling hand, reaching out to her, just like in the dream-

And then he was gone.

“He left,” Anzu said, surprised. Then it all hit her at once and she sank to her knees, hugging herself tightly.

“Well, maybe that was it,” Eri said, wrapping her arms around Anzu and swaying her back and forth. “Maybe he just needed someone to talk to.”

“Maybe,” Anzu said, but somehow she didn’t feel convinced.

Honda Hiroto was a pretty adaptable guy, all things considered.

He’d followed Yuugi and Jounouchi into all sorts of crazy bullshit over the years. All across Japan, to America, to Egypt, to a virtual world. Gotten briefly turned into a robot monkey. Whatever.

The point was that Honda could handle a lot of shit before he started to get twitchy about it.

When they’d landed flat on their asses in an alternate dimension that looked exactly like a popular video game, he’d thought - okay, well, that was fine. Another adventure. They were good at adventures. Everything always turned out okay in the end, so why not just enjoy it while it lasted?

So Honda had worn his heavy chafing suit of armour every day without complaining, patiently learned to use a halberd from the living breathing embodiment of douchebaggery that was Kaiba Seto, taken nasty hits every fight to protect his friends who couldn’t, et cetera, et cetera.

That was fine too. It really was.

What was not fine? Was this bullshit where every single one of his friends had spiralled off into some kind of weird mood and were barely talking to each other. Yuugi spent a lot of time off by himself, sometimes doing that horrible black-eyes thing, and brushed it off as magic practice when anyone asked him about it. Anzu and Eri on the other hand were spending nearly every waking second together, just...exchanging worried glances, sneaking off to have hushed whispered conferences in English, and generally acting sketchy as hell. And Jou was trying - he was really trying - but Honda knew Jounouchi Katsuya better than any member of his actual family, and he knew something was eating at him. Jou had brought up Alcatraz the other day, for the first time in years, and it didn’t take a genius to make the connection.

Maybe the worst part was Kaiba. When they’d first landed in Hyrule and Kaiba had decided to cope by being a titanic raging asshole to anyone in earshot, that had been annoying, but Honda could work with that. He knew how to deal with Kaiba being a jerk from years and years of practice. What Honda had no idea how to deal with was Kaiba moping around quietly, doing things without protest when he was asked, and never volunteering any conversation. Not even the odd snide remark. It was strange and creepy as fuck.

As they climbed higher and higher into the Akkala region, the silence became more and more pervasive. It was some combination of hiking uphill all day, every day, leaving them all tired puddles of sore muscle around the fire every evening; the eerie silence of the highlands, whose whistling winds and sparse trees stood in sharp contrast to the lush and noisy wetlands; and of course the emotional aftermath of...whatever the hell was going on.

Honda shook his head, taking a moment to stand at the edge of the cliffs that bordered the path and take in the view. There was a fuckin’ badass volcano off in the distance, dripping with lava, that he was dying to ask Eri about. Whenever she and Anzu decided they were up for idle chitchat with anyone outside their little ‘no boys allowed’ club.

What was bothering Honda most was the fact that they all knew better. The five of them had survived so much fucking insanity, and then Eri had come along for the ride and they’d all survived even more insanity. Every single time, the thing that had separated ‘surviving’ from ‘untimely death and/or one-way trip to the Shadow Realm’ had been their connection to each other. As a team. As friends. Even Kaiba had always been included in that.

So this shit? Would. Not. Fly. Not on Honda’s watch.

He didn’t call a meeting, because he knew that would just put everyone on guard. Instead, he decided to wait for one of their normal meetings. His plan was to let everyone get the mundane shit out of the way - Kaiba griping about Eri setting up the rain canvas sloppily, Jounouchi making well-meaning suggestions about how to do chores more efficiently that he’d never have the patience to actually commit to, Anzu giving them all her usual little pep talk, et cetera.

Instead they all just sat there staring at their feet for a good ten minutes, the only sound being the crackling of the fire.

“Okay,” Honda said, ditching plan A and getting straight into it. “I’ve had enough of this shit. We’re not doing this anymore.”

Yuugi looked up at him, startled from his stupor. “Huh?”

“Remember when Anzu told everyone to quit being weird, and everyone quit being weird for like, two fucking days? That was really awesome, until it wasn’t.” Honda pointed at Yuugi. “You’re spending way too much time off by yourself apparently practising magic, which I think is bullshit, by the way-” then he pointed at the girls. “You two are acting sketchy as hell-” and last to Kaiba, “and I have no idea what’s going on with you but it’s disturbing as fuck.”

Everyone blinked at him, lost for words.

“Come on,” Honda said. “Just because I don’t always have something to say about it doesn’t mean I don’t notice what’s going on.”

“Uh...” Jounouchi ventured, taken aback. “What d’you think is...going on, exactly?”

Honda shrugged. “Well, if I had to make a guess...I think Yuugi’s keeping something secret, the girls are keeping a different secret, you’re dealing with some stuff and handling it pretty well, and Kaiba’s dealing with some stuff and not handling it well at all.”

“Excuse me?” Kaiba said, with a hint of his old fire.

“You heard me,” Honda replied, unconcerned. “Anyways, here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re going to lay everything out, right here, right now, absolutely no bullshit. And I will know if any of you are bullshitting me.”

Jounouchi caved immediately. “I’m kinda grappling with my own mortality and what happened to me at Alcatraz and it’s giving me all these weird nightmares.” He clutched his head. “Thought I was over it, but...”

“Oh, Jou,” Anzu said, reaching over to rub his back.

Jounouchi patted her knee. “Thanks, buddy. So…what about you two?” Jounouchi’s blunt attempt to redirect the conversation was unsubtle, but effective: even Kaiba was curious about the girls and their weird behaviour, so every head promptly swivelled in their direction.

Eri and Anzu exchanged a look, the kind that made it clear they were trying very hard to have a telepathic conversation.

“Give it up,” Honda said, folding his arms and fixing them with a stare.

“I can’t say it,” Anzu moaned, pulling her knees to her chest and burying her face in them. “Eri-chan, you tell them.”

“Okay,” Eri said with a shrug. “Anzu’s been seeing a ghost lately and we’ve been trying a bunch of stuff to get rid of him but he keeps coming back.”

Honda blinked, completely taken aback. That hadn’t been on his bingo card. “Uh...” he said. “A ghost? You wanna elaborate on that?”

“It’s the soldier from her soldier dream,” Eri explained. “He started popping up in the waking world, too. She’s not hallucinating it. If you go right where he’s standing and get all up in his personal space, that spot is always really cold.”

“Er...” Jounouchi looked back and forth between them, nonplussed. “Does he...mind that you get all up in his personal space?”

“He ignores Eri,” Anzu said, sighing and lifting her head. “He tries to talk to me sometimes, but I can never hear what he’s saying. He’s, um...here now, actually. Right there.” She pointed to a spot next to a large boulder. Everyone looked, including Kaiba.

Yuugi closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again they were pure black. “Oh, I see him!” Yuugi exclaimed. “Wow. You were right, Anzu. His armour looks a lot like Honda-kun’s, but...older, somehow.”

“That’s ‘cause he’s from thousands of years ago,” Eri said. “Turns out Anzu’s soldier dream is a moment straight from one of the games.”

“Okay,” Honda said, taking a deep breath. “Okay, so there’s been a ghost following us around for days that only Anzu can see, and he wants to talk to her but he can’t. Right. Got it. So why didn’t you tell anyone else about it?”

Anzu made a face. “I’m really sorry. Everyone just seemed so preoccupied...and I know Jounouchi is scared of ghosts, so...”

“I am not,” Jounouchi defended, though he was thoroughly undermined by the way he couldn’t take his eyes off the spot Anzu had pointed to.

“He’s gone now,” Anzu said, with a hint of a smile.

“Yep,” Jounouchi said. He swallowed nervously. “You just, uh....you tell me when he pops by again, yeah?”

“Uh...okay,” Honda sighed. “We’ll come back around to that one later. What about you, Yuugi? You gotta tell us what’s going on with you, man.”

Unfortunately for Yuugi, he had exactly zero ability to hide the conflicted expression that spread across his face. “Um...” he said.

“Out with it,” Jounouchi said, reaching over and putting an encouraging hand Yuugi’s knee.

Yuugi stared at the ground for a long time. “I can’t,” he said finally.

“Can’t, or won’t?” Honda pressed.

“Can’t,” Yuugi said firmly. “But...” he glanced at his feet briefly. “Tomorrow. In the daytime. I promise.”

Well, that was almost as creepy as Anzu’s ghost. But it was something. “Okay,” Honda said slowly. “Tomorrow. Anyone else got anything to share?”

He looked pointedly at Kaiba. Kaiba glared back. They made it almost a full minute into their staring match before Honda gave up.

“All right,” he said, shrugging. “That’s all I had on my mind. Secretary Mazaki, what’ve we got on the agenda for tonight?”

It was time for Plan C.

“Huh?” Eri blinked. “You want me to talk to him?”

“Yup,” Honda said.

“Yeah, no,” Eri laughed. “He’s gonna judo throw me off the nearest cliff.”

“Hear me out, Eri-chan,” Honda said. “When Kaiba’s being a huge asshole, there’s usually only two people who can get through to him: Mokuba and Yuugi. Sometimes Anzu. But the thing is, he’s not being a huge asshole.”

“Right,” Jounouchi chimed in. “He didn’t even yell at me yesterday when I chucked my axe at the ground. It’s weird as fuck.”

Honda nodded. “None of us have any experience with this scary new Kaiba. So even though we’ve all known him longer, everyone’s kinda on even footing here.”

“I’d agree with you about the even footing thing,” Eri said, “except for the fact that I’m really, really shitty at having these conversations, which I think is pretty obvious at this point. Why not get someone with actual people skills to talk to him?”

“That’s the point,” Jounouchi insisted. “Kaiba’s totally resistant to people skills, or else he and Anzu would be BFFs by now.”

“Jou’s right,” Honda said. “I think he’s gotta talk to someone who’s just as...” he waved his hand vaguely.

“Just as what?” Eri said, offended.

“Someone who understands him,” Jounouchi stepped in diplomatically. “You guys are pretty similar in some ways, you know?”

“Ugh! Don’t!” Eri screeched, throwing up her hands. “Can’t Anzu just try?”

Honda suddenly saw his angle, and took it. “No,” he said. “I’m...trying to keep things off her plate right now, you know?”

Eri’s face fell, and Honda knew he’d hit his mark. “You’re right,” Eri groaned in sudden and utter defeat. “It’s not fair to just make Anzu and Yuugi deal with him all the time.” She sighed. “I’ll take one for the team.”

“Aw, Eri.” Jounouchi wrapped his arms around her in an affectionate bear hug. “Heart of gold on you, you know that?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Eri muttered, pushing him off and stomping away towards camp.

Honda watched her go. “This could either go really well or really badly.”

“Yup,” Jounouchi agreed, nodding sagely. “They’re gonna come out of this as friends, or with someone dead. At least it won’t be me this time.”

“Dude,” Honda said delicately. “Too soon.”

With that out of the way, it was time to wring the truth out of Yuugi.

Honda and Jounouchi rounded everyone up for a meeting, sitting on either side of Yuugi with the vague idea that they could catch him if he tried to escape. Or be there for comforting hugs. Whichever was appropriate as the situation developed. Jounouchi and Honda also made baked apples - the only treat either of them could reliably cook. It seemed like a good way to soften the blow of what was likely going to be a very stressful conversation. (When Yuugi went to the effort to hide something, it was usually something stressful as hell.)

“Okay, buddy,” Jounouchi said encouragingly, putting an arm around Yuugi. Part comfort, part anti-escape strategy. “We’re listening.”

Yuugi studied the spot near his feet intently for a moment.

“Why do you keep doing that?” Kaiba said, his tone flat. “What are you looking at your shadow for?”

Honda and Jounouchi exchanged glances. They hadn’t put that particular piece together.

“Um...” Yuugi said. “Because...there’s someone spying on us, and they’re doing it through my shadow. Not right now, though. It’s easier to tell in the daylight.”

Honda resisted the urge to put his head in his hands. However weird he’d prepared himself for this conversation to be, he suddenly realized he’d probably underestimated.

“Start from the beginning,” Jounouchi encouraged. To his credit, his voice was only a little strained.

“Well...” Yugi said, with another cursory glance at his shadow. “When we were leaving the Spring of Courage, suddenly I heard this voice...”

The entire group listened with rapt attention. Yuugi did the best he could to include every single detail, sometimes responding to this prompting question or that, but mostly just pouring out the events in the Twilight Realm to his spellbound audience. By the end even Kaiba was leaning forward intently, chin resting on his palm, as he stared at Yuugi.

Eri was the one to break the heavy silence that followed. She sat up and scrubbed a hand over her face. “So...Midna, huh.”

“It’s too bad you weren’t able to tell Eri earlier,” Anzu said. “She probably would have known who it was right away.”

“Not necessarily,” Eri said. “I’m actually kind of surprised that she’s alive. I guess I don’t really know anything about Twili lifespans, but Midna still being their queen wouldn’t have been my first guess.”

“Hylia said not to trust her,” Honda pointed out. “Eri-chan, what do you think?”

Eri frowned. “Midna’s...complicated. She’s a good person, but...” she paused. “She’s very focused on her own ends, and it takes a lot to win her trust.”

“Does she trust Link?” Jounouchi wondered.

“Not this one,” Eri said. “I actually don’t know if she’s even aware of this Link.”

“She said something about...” Yuugi chewed his lip, trying to remember exactly how Midna had phrased it. “A farm boy and a silly Princess, unleashing...um, I don’t know what this word means...Ganon-dorf. I have no idea who the farm boy could be or what a Ganon-dorf is, but I suppose that means she’s aware of Princess Zelda, at least?”

“Oh, shit,” Eri groaned. “Ganondorf. That’s bad. Very, very bad.”

Anzu snapped her fingers. “I knew that word! Eri has mentioned it before. He’s the main villain of the series, right?”

“Yup,” Eri said. “And one of the three aspects of the Triforce. The thing is, you can’t really kill him. You just sort of seal him away until he manages to break out of wherever you’ve put him. So...I guess he’s back, and ready to fuck things up.”

Jounouchi threw his hands up in exasperation. “Didn’t you just beat this game?”

“It’s not like this is Morin’s exact playthrough,” Kaiba said, his first words since the discussion had begun. He frowned. “Is it?”

“No,” Eri said. “It’s not. But that doesn’t matter. The main enemy in this game was Ganon, a sort of manifestation of one man’s hatred and evil that shows up in the series frequently. But Ganondorf is the name of the man himself. He’s less dangerous in the sense that he’s not...you know, huge, and mostly invincible, but he’s more dangerous because he’s an excellent tactician with a knack for manipulating people.”

“Midna mentioned something about his servants awakening in the Twilight Realm,” Yuugi said. “And she didn’t outright say it, but when I asked if that was the reason she’d been turned into an imp, she didn’t deny it.”

“What form does Midna take normally? What does she look like?” Anzu wondered.

“Like, super hot,” Eri replied, without missing a beat.

Anzu poked Eri firmly in the side. “Ricchan, not helpful.”

“What?” Eri said, rubbing her side. “You asked. So...when do I get to talk to her?”

“Slow down, Romeo,” Honda said, putting his hand up. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Why not?” Eri asked. “If anyone stands a chance of getting through Midna’s layers of cryptic double-speak, it’s me.”

“Would she even agree to talk to you?” Anzu said. “She seems pretty secretive.”

Yuugi had that look on his face again - that I’m-keeping-a-secret-and-I-want-to-tell-you-but-I-can’t expression. Jounouchi felt bad for him. It must be hard having the world’s most friendly and wide-open face. Really inconvenient for secret-keeping.

“Yuugi?” Honda prompted.

Yuugi sighed, long and heavy. “Midna specifically asked to talk with Eri. I didn’t want to tell you because I think it’s very dangerous and a bad idea and I knew you’d say yes.”

“Well, of course I’d say-” Eri started.

Kaiba cut her off. “I agree. It’s a bad idea. I vote no.”

Eri made a face. “Huh? This is a vote?”

“Eri-chan,” Yuugi pleaded. “Think about it. You know Midna is a very powerful magic user, with her own agenda, and you know that going into the Twilight Realm is bad for humans. We just can’t risk it.”

During the tense moment that followed, Eri glanced between Yuugi and Kaiba, clearly working through something in her mind. “Okay,” she agreed finally. “I understand.”

“So...what do we do now?” Jounouchi said. “We’ve got a ghost problem and a... scary shadow queen problem. I’m sure we can come up with some kinda action plan.”

“I don’t think we can do anything about Midna right now,” Yuugi shrugged. “We don’t know enough about her situation yet. But...” he peeked at his shadow reflexively. “She did say if I didn’t bring Eri to her, she’d keep spying on us through my shadow.”

“But she can’t be there all the time, because she probably has queen stuff to do,” Eri pointed out reasonably. “I suggest we’re all very careful not to talk about her unless Yuugi brings her up first, so that we know she’s not lurking around.”

“Good plan,” Honda said. “Any other topics we should avoid?”

Yuugi frowned, thinking. “Well...she didn’t know we were from another dimension. She thought I was a Sheikah. I told her we were human and she didn’t seem to know what that was. I think....we should try not to talk about how we got here. It just feels like it’s not a good idea for her to know any more than necessary.”

“I think you’re right,” Eri said. “She’s really tricky. Any information we have that she doesn’t is an advantage.”

“Right,” Yuugi said, nodding. “So what do we do about Anzu’s ghost?”

Anzu’s lips pressed into a tight line as she thought about it. “Sometimes he’ll talk to me,” she said slowly. “But...even though his lips move, I can’t hear him. I think if I just knew what he wanted...”

Yuugi closed his eyes, then opened them again, looking around for the soldier with the truth-sight activated. He spotted him quickly - standing straight and tall in the shade of a pine tree, tell-tale bloodstain spreading across his tunic.

Jounouchi followed Yuugi’s gaze with a shudder. “Oh, god. Please tell me that thing isn’t hanging around here right now.”

“Sorry, Jou,” Anzu said sympathetically, patting his arm.

“He looks so solid,” Yuugi marvelled. “Anzu, try talking to him now.”

Anzu sighed, then turned to face the apparition. “Hello, Ghost-san.”

“Ghost-san?” Honda snorted.

“Eri-chan started it,” Anzu said, flushing.

The soldier mouthed something, his face etched with desperation.

“See?” Anzu glanced back at Yuugi. “His lips move, but-”

Honda and Jounouchi reflexively grabbed each other for protection. “Oh, god,” Jounouchi whimpered. “I don’t like this, man.”

“Tell us more about him,” Kaiba demanded, pointing at Eri.

“Um...” Eri thought for a moment. “He basically stays alive just long enough to pass a message on to Link, and then he dies.”

“Well, that’s obviously what he wants,” Kaiba snapped, rolling his eyes in exasperation.

Anzu and Eri looked at each other sheepishly. They’d both gotten so worked up over trying to communicate with the ghost that they hadn’t really sat down and thought the whole thing through logically.

“Tell him we’re looking for the boy for the forest, and we’re happy to pass along a message,” Eri suggested. Anzu dutifully repeated her words to the ghost.

The soldier’s face took on a marked and obvious cast of relief. He started gesturing - an odd motion with his hands, rather like he was holding a potato.

“What’s that?” Anzu said, tilting her head.

“Oh!” Eri said. “He wanted to tell Link about the Ocarina of Time - Princess Zelda was supposed to give it to him.”

“We’ll tell the boy about Princess Zelda’s ocarina,” Anzu said gently. The soldier sighed wearily, a sigh that seemed to course through his whole body. With a flinch, Anzu noticed that the bloodstain on his front was spreading across his tunic now.

Far from being scared, Anzu suddenly felt something completely different - sadness.

“I don’t know what you want,” Anzu said quietly. “Please, please tell me how to help you.”

The soldier looked up, and made a hesitant beckoning gesture. Anzu stood and walked slowly towards him.

“Anzu,” Jounouchi said nervously. “Whatcha doing? Anzu?”

The soldier reached out with both of his hands, as if trying to take Anzu’s in his own. After only a moment of hesitation, she complied.

The soldier’s hands weren’t solid, but they were cold. Anzu sensed more than felt that he was trying to pull her in closer. She followed the movement of his hand as he lifted hers and placed her fingers against his chest.

“I can’t heal you,” Anzu said sadly. “I’m really sorry. I wish I could.”

The soldier nodded. He seemed to understand. But he gestured to his chest - and then pulled her hand right through.

There was something warm there. A soft, pulsating, wispy ball of light - she could just barely see it, now that she knew it existed.

“What is that?” Anzu gasped. The soldier looked at her, calm and steady.

As Anzu focused, she understood that the ball of light was infused with a powerful magic, the likes of which she’d never felt before; but there was something wrong with it. A fracture running through its centre, with a spiderweb of cracks radiating through and compromising its arcane structure.

Anzu turned to the rest of them, her heart beating rapidly. “Um...I think I have to...heal his soul?”

“Oh my god,” Eri groaned, burying her face into her hands. “I am so stupid.”

It was a real testament to Kaiba’s enduring depression that he didn’t jump on that immediately. Instead Honda put a hand on Eri’s shoulder. “What? Where’s this coming from?”

“Anzu,” Eri said. She pulled her ocarina out of her bag. “I’m going to play a song, and you have to tell me if you recognize it.” She brought the ocarina to her lips and played a haunting little tune.

“I don’t...” Anzu said with a frown, then suddenly gasped. “Oh. Oh. It’s...that song is...”

“You heard it at the Spring of Courage, right?” Eri prompted. Anzu nodded. “It’s the Song of Healing,” Eri continued. “It helps the dead find their rest. Although...I don’t think he can hear me playing it...”

“What do I do?” Anzu said, eyeing the ocarina. “Do I have to play that thing?”

“I don’t think so,” Eri said slowly. “I don’t have any innate powers like Anzu and Yuugi, so I need a magical instrument to channel spells. You have innate magic, so...”

“Okay,” Anzu said, taking a deep breath. “Um...can you...can you keep playing, so I can have the melody in my head?”

Eri nodded. Anzu turned to the soldier. “Please sit down,” she said. “I’ll try to help you.”

The soldier nodded, raising the visor on his helmet for the first time. His eyes were a warm hazel and filled with tears. He saluted Anzu and then eased himself painfully into a sitting position, his back resting against the pine tree.

Anzu knelt down next to him, gripping his shoulder with one hand and putting the other on his chest. A thrill ran up her spine at just how solid he had suddenly become - solid, but cold as ice - and she took another breath to steady herself as she called her magic forth. Eri sat down cross-legged on the soldier’s other side and started to play.

As the music drifted around them, Anzu’s magic visibly reacted. It began to pulse and shimmer and shift ever so slightly in hue, flickering back and forth between its usual white-blue and a new white-purple that Anzu had never seen before. Timidly at first, and then with a little more strength, Anzu started to hum along.

As she hummed, her magic melted from white-blue to white-purple and finally into a soft and gentle pink; much like the fairy they had seen in Kakariko Village. Instead of flowing into the wound, the magic began to drift upwards in a flurry of little pink sparkles, pulsing and fluttering around Anzu and the soldier. The soldier sighed, and his eyes fixed on something over Anzu’s shoulder as the tears finally escaped his eyes and tracked down through the grime on his cheeks.

As the soldier’s form began to fade, he rested a bloodied hand over one of Anzu’s. His hand was no longer ice-cold; it was warm and solid and strong, for just a brief moment, before it too dissolved into the flurry of pink sparkles that were now falling down, down, like a gentle rain. “Thank you,” he breathed. Anzu didn’t know how, but she understood him perfectly.

As the sparkles faded away, Anzu chanced a glance over her shoulder. The soldier was there, but the bloodstain on his tunic was gone. A dark-haired woman with a sweet dimpled face waited for him a short distance away with her arm outstretched invitingly; a little girl was perched on her hip, waving. The soldier looked back at Anzu one last time. He was smiling. Then all three of them were gone.

Anzu turned towards the rest of the group, her eyes full of tears. She was too overwhelmed to speak.

“You did great, Anzu,” Yuugi murmured, gathering her into a hug. She nodded, sniffling into his shoulder. No matter the dread and sometimes outright terror of the last few days, she had done it; and she knew without hesitation that she would do it all over again, if just for that fleeting moment of peace on the face of a good man, long-dead and nearly lost to the sands of time.

Chapter Text

Chapter Fourteen: Stacking the Deck

Eri had been assigned the rather daunting task of having a conversation with Kaiba Seto - not only civil, but personal. There was no part of her that wanted to do it, but Eri was nothing if not punishingly stubborn. Honda and Jounouchi had felt like she could manage it. That meant she had to, or be branded for once and for all a failure in the already-dubious area of her social skills.

Eri knew how to deal with Kaiba when he was being a huge asshole. Or, maybe more accurately, enjoyed provoking him and then running away from the fallout. But she had no clue what to do with this new silent, mostly-compliant Kaiba.

He just kind of...meandered around, looking sort of dejected. He did all his camp chores without complaint, and also without complaining about how other people were doing their camp chores. When you talked to him it was about fifty-fifty odds whether he’d actually answer you.

So Eri decided not to talk to him. Not right away, anyways.

Instead, one cold and drizzly afternoon, she followed him when he wandered away from camp to do whatever he normally did when he wandered away. Eri wasn’t nearly as sneaky as Yuugi, but she liked to think she could move pretty silently when she wanted to.

After a while Kaiba stopped by the side of the treacherous cliffs that bordered the path, overlooking Eldin. For a split-second Eri had the panicked thought that he might throw himself off. Instead he just sat down, cross-legged, and gazed out at the scenery.

“What do you want?” he said after a moment.

Eri sighed. So much for stealth.

“Nothing,” she said, sitting down next to him.

A week ago Kaiba would’ve told her to get bent or maybe threatened to push her off the cliff. Today, they just sat there together in silence for a long time, watching Death Mountain looming sentinel in the distance.

After they crossed the Akkala Span and began their descent, the rough and desolate shale of the mountains yielded to rolling foothills that seemed to be suspended in a perpetual fall; brilliant red maples and oaks lined the path and left piles of crunchy leaves scattered by their bases. The air was crisp and sweet but without the thinness of high altitude. It felt like they were leaving a lot behind in the highlands.

“Gah!” Honda shrieked, leaping backwards and nearly knocking over Jounouchi. “What the hell are you?”

"I'm Boldon, Goron City's ambassador of tourism!” the creature repeated, with an unnervingly large grin fixed on its face. Though it was taller than Honda, it was squat and compact with enormous muscled arms that hung, gorilla-like, nearly down to its feet. Its rotund belly protruded enthusiastically well-past the point where it should’ve caused the thing to topple forwards, if its centre of gravity hadn’t been balanced by a round spiky back that appeared to be made of actual rocks. It had beady little eyes and a hachimaki tied cheerfully around its head.

“Oh!” Eri squealed, clearly delighted. “A Goron!”

“That’s right!” Boldon, Goron City’s ambassador of tourism, replied. “Goron City's great—everyone should visit it at least once in their lives!”

Anzu stared at the Goron, completely nonplussed. “Nice to...meet you?” she managed.

“Sure is a lucky meeting,” the Goron agreed. “Hey, kid, you ever been to Goron City? We have world-famous hot springs!”

“Can’t say that I have,” Anzu said faintly, still clearly trying to make sense of what exactly she was looking at. Boldon was still smiling. Very widely.

“Can we shake hands?” Eri said, trotting up to the creature and sticking out her hand with a grin almost as big as the Goron’s.

“Well, of course we can!” it replied enthusiastically, reaching out to envelop her hand in its gigantic mitt.

Kaiba grabbed her by the upper arm and pulled her back. “What the hell are you doing, stupid?”

“Trying to shake hands with a Goron, stupid,” Eri shot back, trying to wiggle out of his grip. “Let go! I’m never gonna get a chance like this again!”

“Let her follow her dreams, Kaiba,” Jounouchi said absently, his gaze nervously riveted to the sentient boulder in their midst. Kaiba rolled his eyes and released her.

“Wow,” Eri breathed, shaking the Goron’s hand. He returned the handshake so vigorously that it looked like her arm was in danger of being pulled out of its socket, but she didn’t seem to mind. “This is the best day ever!”

“Today’s pretty great, but it would be the best day ever if you were visiting Goron City,” Boldon boomed happily, apparently on an enduring quest to fit as many tourism pitches into a given conversation as possible.

“So...” Yuugi gulped, making a heroic effort to sound casual. “If you’re a Goron, and there’s a Goron City, that means there’s...more of you?”

“That’s right!” Boldon cheered, forgetting he was still engaged in a handshake and pumping his fists in the air. Eri was dragged along for the ride and found herself dangling a couple feet above the ground. “Oops,” Boldon said with a rumbling laugh. “Sorry, tiny Hylian. I just get so darn excited when people ask me about Goron City!”

“Yeah, we got that impression,” Jounouchi muttered as the Goron set Eri back down on the ground.

“Well, it was lovely chatting with you folks,” Boldon said, hefting his oversized backpack higher on his shoulders. “You’re going to come visit, right?”

They stared at him for a moment. He stared back, beady eyes wide with manic excitement, grin never faltering.

“Yes?” Yuugi tried.

“Oh, that’s great,” Boldon cried, then promptly took off running in the direction they’d come from. “Just great!” they heard him whoop as his thundering footsteps faded away into the distance.

Eri smiled after him, eyes sparkling, hands clasped to her chest. “Oh,” she sighed, “Gorons are even better in person.”

“That thing was scary as fuck,” Honda said, bending over and bracing his hands on his knees as he caught his breath. “Holy fucking shit.”

“I dunno,” Anzu said. “It was kind of cute, wasn’t it?”

“No,” Jounouchi and Honda chorused in unison.

“They eat rocks,” Eri volunteered out of nowhere.

“That’s enough out of you,” Honda said. “I can’t believe you like those things. You’re even more disturbed than I thought.”

“How disturbed did you think I was, huh?”

“I dunno, the kind of person who dips fries in milkshakes is basically one step up from a serial killer, so-”

“That is a perfectly normal way to eat fries, you sad, uncultured man-”

Anzu smiled and took Yuugi’s hand as they followed the bickering pair down the hill. The milkshake discussion had escalated to pinching, which was soon to escalate to wrestling, which Eri was destined to lose. “I never thought I’d miss those two arguing about gross snacks, but here I am, thrilled to hear it,” she laughed.

“Me too,” Yuugi said, turning his head to smile at her. “I’m really glad you’re feeling better, Anzu.”

Anzu glanced at Yuugi’s shadow. It looked normal enough. “You too, Yuugi,” she said earnestly, squeezing his hand. “I’m so relieved you don’t have to keep secrets anymore.”

“Yeah,” Yuugi sighed. “It feels like I can even stand up straighter now.” He swung their clasped hands idly between them. That was one of Anzu’s favourite cute Yuugi habits, and she had to fight down the urge to wrap him in a hug.

“Yuugi…” Anzu ventured hesitantly. “Do you think…” She trailed off, and glanced up ahead. Jounouchi was riding on Honda’s back, swinging a giant branch around like a sword as they chased Eri down the hill, bellowing war cries. Eri  was laughing and hurling handfuls of leaves over her shoulder to deter her assailants. Some distance away, Kaiba was walking along with his head down and his hood pulled low over his eyes.

Yuugi followed her gaze. “We’ll be okay,” he told Anzu. “Maybe not right away. But we will.”

“You know, I was real excited for the Spring of Courage,” Jounouchi said to Honda as they stopped for lunch, after a morning of hiking down through the foothills. “After the first Spring I felt totally awesome and like I could fight the whole world. Then we make it all the way through that stupid jungle only to get smacked down with crazy hallucinations? What the hell was up with that?”

“We got some cool stuff, too,” Honda pointed out reasonably.

“Cool, huh?” Jounouchi sniffed. “Ain’t seen you touch that shield of yours.”

Honda shrugged. “What am I gonna deflect with it, exactly? Not like we’ve had any magic or laser beams or anything coming our way. Seems like a waste to let bokoblins splatter their brains all over it.”

“That’s what I mean,” Jounouchi said. “Doesn’t seem like we scored anything particularly great. Kinda the opposite, in fact. You got a useless shiny shield, I got a horrible mask that I don’t ever wanna look at again, Eri got a little flute that doesn’t seem to do anything, Kaiba got a grammar textbook, Yuugi got...uh, the ability to make his eyes look creepy as all get-out, and Anzu just got haunted by a fuckin’ ghost for her troubles.”

They glanced over at their friends. Anzu and Yuugi were getting started on lunch while Kaiba read his book, a ways off from the rest of the group.

“You think Eri-chan’s talked to him yet?” Honda said. They watched as Eri quietly sat down next to Kaiba and pulled a little piece of wood out of her pocket. She started whittling away at it with Honda’s borrowed pocketknife. Kaiba didn’t even look up.

“Pfft, no,” Jounouchi said. “All they ever do is sit together without saying a word. Guess that’s the only way they can coexist without killing each other.”

Honda frowned at that. “Did we make a mistake? Maybe we should sic Yuugi on him instead.”

“Nahhh,” Jounouchi said, waving a hand. “I think whatever the hell she’s doing is working. Kaiba gave Anzu major shit this morning for drinking water straight out of a stream without boiling it first.”

“Huh,” Honda said. “That’s a good sign.” He turned to Jounouchi. “Hey, can I see your mask?”

Jounouchi frowned. “Why?”

“Well, you can’t avoid it forever,” Honda said practically. “I know it creeps you out, but what if you need to use it? Might as well start working up your nerve now.”

“I fuckin’ hate it when you say shit that makes sense,” Jounouchi muttered, rummaging in his bag. “It’s so annoying.”

Honda put his chin on his fist and shot Jounouchi a shit-eating grin, waggling his eyebrows for effect.

“Don’t make that face, man,” Jounouchi warned.

“Or what?”

“Or I’m gonna make a worse one.”

“Oh, god, Jou, that’s fuckin’ grotesque. What if your face gets stuck like that?”

“You sound like Anzu.”

“Quit stalling and get the damn mask.”

Jounouchi sighed and pulled the mask out of his bag. As soon as his fingers brushed the wood, he felt uncomfortable, like a prickle was crawling up the middle of his back. He didn’t like touching it so he set in down in the grass between himself and Honda.

Even though the carving was simple, it was unmistakably Jounouchi’s face, down to the little bump on his nose from when he’d broken it in middle school. Jounouchi’s signature floppy bangs were carved meticulously into the wood and framed the mask’s cheeks. Its expression was blank. The paint was old and faded for the most part, peeling at the edges, more wood than skin-tone; except for the fierce patterns under the mask’s eyes and on its forehead, which looked bright and even, almost like they’d been freshly done.

“Fuck,” Honda said with a shudder. “You’re right. That thing is horrible.”

“I just wanna know where they got my face from,” Jounouchi muttered, crossing his arms protectively in front of his chest as he leaned over to get a better look. “I mean, I know it’s magic and all, but...”

“Does Eri-chan know what it does?”

“Been too afraid to ask her.”

Honda and Jounouchi stared at the mask for a long, silent moment.

“Let’s put it away,” Honda suggested, as a horrible thrill crept down his spine.

“Way ahead of you, pal,” Jounouchi said, stuffing it roughly back into his pouch.

Hiking through the foothills of Akkala was not only easy, but downright pleasant. The weather held, crisp and clear and sunny. They didn’t encounter even a single moblin, bokoblin or lizalfos. Game was plenty; Eri had been able to take out a wild boar early on that fed them for days, and then Yuugi had the brilliant idea of using the pork belly to create a lightly-cured bacon with salt and a few herbs they’d collected along the way.

“I’ll be honest,” Jounouchi said, leaning over the bacon as it smoked away over a bed of maplewood, “I thought there was no way this was gonna work. But...holy shit does this smell good. I could cry.”

“Crying over bacon would be a very Jounouchi thing to do.” Anzu laughed and took a deep whiff. “It does smell amazing though. Hey, what do you say we make a full Western breakfast of it? Find some eggs and things?”

They took Anzu’s wise advice to heart and had breakfast for dinner that evening, the moment Yuugi deemed the smoking process finished - fried bacon and eggs and baked apples garnished with a touch of honey.

“The hell are you doing over there?” Jounouchi called over to Eri, from where he and Anzu lay side-by-side, digesting. “How can you even move after eating that much?”

“If Ricchan stops moving for two seconds, she dies,” Anzu quipped lazily.

“What’ve you got there, Eri-chan?” Yuugi said, crouching down next to Eri. She was on her knees in a patch of fragrant plants, focused intently on her task.

“Scissors!” Eri said happily. “Look, it makes it so much easier to gather herbs.”

“Huh?” Honda wandered over to crouch down at Eri’s other side, curiosity overcoming the urge to go for another round of bacon and eggs. “Where’d you get those?”

“I saw that the Stablemaster’s daughter had some, and I traded them for some chu jellies,” Eri said. “Now we can cut all sorts of things.”

“Like what?” Yuugi wondered.

Eri shrugged and grinned. “I’m sure we’ll find out.”

Honda watched her trim a few more stalks of armoranth. “Hey,” he said suddenly. “You think those are sharp enough for a haircut?”

“Hell yeah!” Eri said. “Whose hair are we cutting? Hey, Yuugi-kun-”

“No, dummy, me,” Honda interrupted. “My hair’s never been this long in my life! It’s driving me insane!” He clutched at his hair dramatically for effect.

“I dunno, I think it’s kind of cute,” Eri mused, prying Honda’s hands out of his hair. “Back me up, Yuugi-kun. The long hair is cute, right?”

Yuugi nodded. “It’s true, Honda-kun.”

“That’s not the point!” Honda cried. “I can feel it on my forehead. How the hell am I supposed to focus when I can feel it on my forehead?”

“Ask that guy,” Eri said, pointing to Jounouchi, whose hair had only gotten longer and floppier since they’d arrived in Hyrule. He’d started tying some of it back in a ponytail, but that didn’t do much to stop the locks that hung in his eyes more often than not.

“Ask me what, huh?” Jounouchi called back.

“Honda-kun looks hot with long hair, right?”

“Smokin’!”

“Restrain yourselves, you animals,” Honda said airily. “The fact that I’m smokin’ isn’t what’s up for debate here. I need this hair outta my face and if one of you doesn’t do it for me, I’m gonna give myself a bowl cut.”

“No!” Eri and Yuugi gasped.

“Please don’t,” Anzu chimed in. “Eri-chan, just cut his hair.”

“Hang on a second,” Jounouchi interrupted. “Since when are we trusting that kid to use scissors so close to someone’s head?”

“You’re right,” Eri said. “I should practice first. On you.” She started advancing on Jounouchi menacingly, snipping the scissors all the while.

“No!” Jounouchi shrieked, scuttling backwards on his hands and feet. “Back me up here, Kaiba. This is a bad idea.”

“It’s a bad idea,” Kaiba agreed in a monotone, without looking up from the Book of Mudora.

“What’s the big deal?” Honda said. “It’s just hair. It’s gotta go from longer to shorter. We have the technology to make that happen.” He gestured at the scissors.

“Your funeral,” Eri said with a sunny smile. She sat Honda down in the grass and then took a seat on a log behind him. “Can I offer you a drink, or a warm towel?”

“Both, please,” Honda said, affecting a posh accent.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, sir,” Eri replied grandly, “We’re fresh out of drinks and warm towels.”

“Why did you offer, then? I want to speak to your manager.”

“I am the manager.”

“That explains so much.”

“You two quit kidding around and focus,” Jounouchi warned, anxiously watching Eri begin to work on Honda’s hair. “If you make him look like a dipshit, or...I dunno, cut his ear off...”

“Get your priorities straight, Jounouchi,” Anzu chided, laughing. “Quit hovering. It’ll be fine.”

Jounouchi looked like he wanted to argue, but he settled for folding his arms and leaning back against a tree trunk to watch the disaster unfold.

“You’re so confident,” Yuugi said admiringly, watching Eri lift sections of Honda’s hair and trim them with precise strokes. “You’ve cut hair before, Eri-chan?”

“Never in my life,” Eri said cheerfully.

Jounouchi covered his hands with his eyes. “Never mind. I can’t watch this.”

“Wow,” Yuugi said, about twenty minutes later. “Are you sure you’ve never cut hair before? Honda-kun looks really handsome!”

Jounouchi pried his fingers off his eyes. “Holy shit,” he said. “Dude.”

“Told you it’d be fine,” Honda said with a shrug.

“But that haircut is really good on you,” Anzu said. “Eri-chan, where’d you learn to do that?”

“Even a broken clock is right twice a day,” Kaiba muttered, nose still in his book.

“I dated a hairdresser once,” Eri said with a shrug, ignoring Kaiba. “Maybe I absorbed her powers through osmosis. There was a minute where I felt like things were getting kinda dicey, but I just powered through. It’s all about perseverance.”

“That is not something you want to hear from a stylist at a top salon,” Honda said, mock-appalled. “Your professionalism leaves much to be desired.”

“Professionalism is nothing in the face of art.”

“I’m still not tipping you.”

“Leave this establishment at once! Security!”

Jounouchi got up and then sat back down again next to Kaiba. He resisted the urge to hover and try to see what Kaiba was reading. Then he resisted the urge to make a joke that maybe Kaiba should be Eri’s next customer, because his hair was getting pretty damn shaggy. After that he resisted the urge to make the annoying little clicking noise with his tongue that he knew drove Kaiba absolutely fucking ballistic.

“What the fuck do you want?” Kaiba grumbled after about forty-five seconds.

Sitting quietly next to Kaiba without setting him off was way harder than it looked. “I tried,” Jounouchi said with a shrug, half to himself, and got back up again.

“What’s over there?”

“Huh?” Eri looked in the direction Honda was pointing.

“Look. Right there. A flashing light.”

The day had dawned rainy and cold, and currently the sky was nearly as dark as evening even though it was barely past noon. Eri squinted. There was indeed a faint blue, flashing against the bottoms of the heavy grey clouds.

“Ordorac Quarry,” Eri replied. “It’s patrolled by Guardian Skywatchers.”

“And those are...”

“Flying Guardians,” Eri said, “but don’t worry - they’re really far away and won’t even notice us unless we get directly in their territority.”

“I’m gonna go scout around and see what else is around there,” Yuugi volunteered.

“No need,” Kaiba cut him off. “Don’t waste your energy.”

Yuugi opened his mouth as if to argue, but quickly thought better of it and shrugged.

“Hmm,” Anzu said pensively. “I suppose I’d just assumed that there would be more and more enemies to fight as we went along...but that’s just thinking like it’s actually a video game, isn’t it? This isn’t a level or anything. It’s just another part of a really big country.”

“I guess when you put it like that...” Honda trailed off, his brow furrowed.

“Still, I have a strange feeling,” Yuugi admitted. “Like...like we shouldn’t let our guard down.”

“Hate to say it, but I agree.” Jounouchi frowned. “Just seems like these damn Springs keep getting worse and worse. Can’t imagine Hylia will just go back to giving us stuff the easy way. I bet she’s gonna make us work for it.”

“Wait, wait,” Anzu said. “Make us work for what?”

Jounouchi shrugged. “Whatever we’re gonna get at the Spring of Power?”

“Who says we’re getting anything?” Anzu said. “We’re supposed to be retracing Princess Zelda’s footsteps, not going on our own personal quest. Maybe we’ll finally get a clue about where she is.”

A silence fell over the group for a moment.

Finally, Honda heaved a sigh and dragged his hand through his newly-cropped hair. “I just...don’t feel like things are gonna work out that way.”

“Why?” Anzu demanded, a sharp edge to her tone. “That’s the whole point of why we’re here.”

“Technically, there’s no point to why we’re here,” Yuugi said. “It was an accident.”

“Accident?” Jounouchi scoffed. “Then how come Impa and Paya have apparently been picking out costumes that fit us perfectly, just waiting for us to get here?”

“And Impa did say that Hylia chose us,” Eri added.

“So?” Anzu said loudly. “She could’ve just been saying anything to get us to help look for Princess Zelda. That doesn’t make it true!”

“Woah, woah,” Honda soothed, gently squeezing Anzu’s wrist. “What’s going on with you? You’re starting to sound like...well, him.” Honda gestured at Kaiba, who was trudging slightly behind everyone else with his hood up, eyes fixed stubbornly on the ground.

“It’s just...” Anzu tugged her hand free of Honda and clenched her fists at her sides. “Jou’s right. The Spring of Courage didn’t seem to be a good thing, did it? I didn’t...I didn’t want ghosts to start following me around...I don’t understand why it’s happening!”

“Ghosts, plural?” Eri said worriedly. “Is it happening again?”

“No,” Anzu snapped. Then she sighed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to...it’s just...there’s no reason it would only happen once, right? Just like Eri isn’t only going to use her ocarina once, and Honda isn’t going to only use that Mirror Shield once. The fact that Hylia gave us these things means that She probably expects us to learn to use them.” Anzu paused, and then let out a long sigh. “Fuck. I think Honda’s right.”

“Well, wait, let’s consider things from all angles,” Yuugi said reasonably. “On the one hand, Impa and Paya did have perfect costumes picked out for us, and these Springs have played out more like parts of a quest than ways to gather clues on Princess Zelda’s location. On the other hand, there’s no evidence proving that Hylia chose us - and we know for a fact that the incident with Kaiba-kun’s dimensional domain emulator was an accident.” Yuugi glanced at Kaiba, seeking confirmation, but Kaiba didn’t even look up. “Anyways,” he continued. “What do you think, Eri-chan? You know the most about Hylia, and...well, quests in general.”

“Um...” Eri blew out a sigh. “Honestly, I don’t think it matters.”

“Why wouldn’t it matter?” Honda said incredulously.

“Well, whether Hylia chose us, or whether she capitalized on us appearing here suddenly - the end result is the same, isn’t it?” Eri replied. “We’re already doing it. We’re on the quest. We can either quit now and go with our original plan, or see it through.”

“I guess so,” Jounouchi said. “But...who knows how long seeing it through could take?”

“The number one rule of Zelda games is that things tend to happen in threes,” Eri said. “To match up with the three aspects of the Triforce.”

“What is the Triforce, anyways?” Yuugi asked. “I’ve heard you mention it, but...”

“It’s a sacred relic left behind by the three Golden Goddesses who created Hyrule,” Eri explained. She knelt down and used her shortsword to draw a shape in the wet dirt - three connected triangles, forming one large triangle. “Each piece of the Triforce represents one goddess. The Triforce of Power is Din, who cultivated the earth. The Triforce of Courage is Farore, who produced all life forms. And the Triforce of Wisdom is Nayru, who gave the spirit of law to those life forms.” Eri stood back up, and then traced a triangle shape onto the back of her hand. “Link, Zelda and Ganondorf each hold one aspect of the Triforce. Zelda holds Wisdom. Link holds Courage. And Ganondorf holds Power - but he's usually trying to get his hands on the other two, because the completed Triforce is the most powerful magic in this world. The Trifoce aspects are what cause them to be reborn over and over again, with marks of the Golden Goddesses appearing on their left hands.”

“Oh,” Anzu said, wide-eyed. “So we’ve already completed two of the three aspects - Wisdom and Courage.”

“Maybe Hylia was testing us from the beginning,” Honda mused. “You know? Like, getting to the Spring of Wisdom alive meant we had to learn a whole lot in a short time. About Hyrule, and how to use our weapons, and all sorts of other stuff.”

Jounouchi thought on that for a moment. “And I guess gettin’ through that fuckin’ nightmare of a jungle took a lot of courage.”

“So this last Spring will be a test of our power,” Yuugi finished.

“Like a boss battle?” Anzu wondered.

“Could be,” Eri shrugged. “Or the boss battle could be after the Spring of Power.”

“Maybe Impa and Hylia made us test ourselves at the three Springs before we go find Zelda for real,” Honda suggested. “Which means whatever is waiting for us at Hyrule Castle is probably...”

“Not good,” Eri groaned, slamming her palm into her face. “Fuck.”

“Don’t give yourself brain damage,” Kaiba piped up finally, grabbing her wrist and yanking her hand off her face. “And don’t call it a fucking boss battle. These are all just theories.”

“Do you have any other theories, Kaiba-kun?” Anzu said, clearly trying her best to be patient with him.

“Use your heads,” Kaiba snapped. “As per that old woman, the princess was headed for Hyrule Castle. We’re only stopping at these stupid Springs to retrace her steps, and Hylia hasn’t been a god damned bit of help on that front. “

“So you’re suggesting we skip the Spring of Power and go straight to the castle?” Anzu said skeptically.

“Absolutely not,” Yuugi said, cutting Kaiba off with uncharacteristic firmness. Kaiba opened his mouth to protest, but Yuugi bulldozed right over him. “At the Spring of Wisdom, we were given an unmitigated blessing that boosted our abilities. I think the Spring of Courage was a blessing, too - if we can learn to use our items and powers properly. Even if we assume the worst about Hylia - that she’s manipulating and using us - that’s still no reason for her to harm us, if she really does need us that badly.”

“She’s definitely interested in keeping us alive,” Eri added. “She gave us the fairy, didn’t she?”

Even Kaiba had to see the inherent logic in that, and protested no further.

“So, if these tests are...uh, for our own good, I guess...” Anzu shrugged helplessly. “What could this last one be?”

“Maybe how well we’ve learned to use our items from the Spring of Courage?” Eri suggested.

“We’re all fucked, then,” Kaiba grumbled, sighing and pushing his bangs back from his forehead.

“Not true,” Honda said. “Yuugi’s getting pretty good at the horrible eye thing, and Anzu did a one-woman exorcism. The rest of us are fucked though.”

Jounouchi folded his arms. “It’s not fair. Hylia didn’t even tell us what we were supposed to do with the stuff we got.”

“Well, let’s figure it out together, then,” Anzu said reassuringly. “Honda, what about that shield of yours?”

Honda took the shield out of his pouch and removed the cloth wrapping. They all looked at it for a moment. The grimacing face was as unsettling as ever.

“Um...” Yuugi said, leaning over to examine it. “How do we tell if it works?”

“You use it to reflect magic stuff,” Eri said, poking at it. “Yuugi-kun, why don’t you try hitting it with something?”

“Good idea!” Yuugi collected a ball of shadow in his hands, and aimed it carefully at the shield as Honda set it on the ground. “Stand back, everyone.”

He gently tossed the ball. It broke over the surface of the shield like a water droplet, and the shadow abruptly melted away into the metal.

“Uh...” Jounouchi gently kicked at the shield. Nothing happened. “It’s broken.”

Honda reached over and picked it up. “Huh,” he said. “It feels kinda warm - fuck!”

A burst of shadow shot out of the shield, scorching a hole in the grass right next to a very unamused Kaiba.

“Woah,” Eri, Honda and Jounouchi said simultaneously.

“So it absorbs projectiles and deflects them with increased force,” Kaiba said, unruffled. He hadn’t even flinched at the impact.

“That’s kinda cool,” Jounouchi admitted. “Okay, so Honda didn’t get totally screwed by a lame gift. What about Kaiba and Eri, then? A book and a flute?”

“I’m trying,” Eri sighed, throwing her arms out dramatically and flopping onto her back. “I practice all the time!”

“Unfortunately,” Kaiba muttered.

“Hey,” Anzu scolded, smacking him lightly. “Eri-chan, it’s not your fault.”

“Yeah, and how about your book?” Jounouchi said, pointing at Kaiba. “See you reading that thing all the damn time. You an expert in Ancient Hylian yet?”

“How would I know? I don’t have anyone to practice with,” Kaiba bit back sarcastically. “Does one of you want to assist me with that?”

Honda, Jounouchi, Yuugi and Anzu exchanged glances. Anzu smiled.

“What?” Kaiba snapped.

“Nothing,” Anzu said. “Just...glad to have you back.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Well,” Yuugi said, unsubtly changing the subject, “maybe we should start practising with your shield, Honda-kun. Just in case, right?”

The night before they planned to glide down into the Spring of Courage, Eri woke up sometime in the silent, heavy darkness long before dawn. She wasn’t prone to nightmares, necessarily; instead she just had a very annoying tendency to hurtle into wakefulness with her heart racing and her mouth bone-dry.

Anzu slumbered peacefully next to her. Eri thought about waking her up for a selfish split second, and then shook her head to clear it. She just needed a little fresh air.

After easing herself out of her bedroll, Eri picked her way over the sleeping bodies and discarded pouches and weapons lying in easy reach of their owners and padded out of the camp barefoot. The damp leaves and grass felt soft and refreshing under her soles as she wandered.

Eri found a very nice spot not too far away, a little overhang that gave her a comprehensive view of both the night sky and the Ordorac Quarry down below. She sat down, dangling her legs over the edge, and took a few deep breaths, hoping that the crisp mountain air would make her feel a little more like she was on solid ground instead of watching herself from five metres in the air.

She heard footsteps behind her, not particularly trying to conceal themselves. Whoever it was had clearly already seen her, so she decided not to worry too much about it.

“Yo,” she said.

“What are you doing out here?” a voice asked rudely.

“What are you doing out here?” she threw back, too tired to even come up with an excuse.

The footsteps paused for a moment, then resumed. Kaiba sat down next to her. He was, of course, in full armour with his sword unsheathed. He often slept like that.

“Can’t sleep,” she admitted after a moment.

“Why?”

Eri turned to look at Kaiba, raising an eyebrow. “You’re nosy tonight.”

Kaiba shrugged. “You’re nosy all the time.”

“Touché.”

“Are you going to answer my question?” Kaiba said.

Eri thought about it, and decided she wouldn’t. And so they sat for a while, in rather companionable silence. Something that Eri had discovered about Kaiba in the last couple of weeks was that he never felt the need to fill silence with anything. She was very much the same. It was nice to find that as friends they had at least one alternative to constant bickering.

“I’ll answer yours if you answer one of mine,” she said finally.

“No.”

“Okay,” Eri laughed, glancing over at him. “You know what I was going to ask, though, don’t you?”

Kaiba frowned, not meeting her eyes. “You wouldn’t understand,” he said after a long pause.

“Try me.”

Kaiba considered it for a quite a while.

Eri waited patiently, watching the Guardian Skywatchers circling down below; endlessly patrolling a desolate wreckage of decay against assailants that would never come.

Finally, Kaiba cleared his throat. “I...my brother...” he managed, then let out a frustrated sigh. “Never mind.”

Eri was careful not to look at him this time, and took a minute to think before answering. “You miss Mokuba-kun,” she guessed, “you’re worried about him being alone, and you’re starting to get really scared by the possibility you could die here and never see him again.”

“This was a mistake,” Kaiba said roughly, suddenly moving to get up. “Don’t talk about things you don’t understand.”

“All right,” Eri shrugged. “But don’t tell me what I do and don’t understand. I miss my brother too.”

Kaiba paused, and then after a long, tense moment, slowly sat back down.

“You never mentioned a brother before,” he said.

“No,” Eri agreed, in a tone that suggested she wasn’t going to elaborate.

They stayed out there for what must have been almost an hour, listening to the night breeze rustling through the pines and the hooting of a nearby owl, before Kaiba got up again.

“Go back to bed,” he ordered, sounding a little more like his old self. He turned back towards camp. “And don’t wander around in the fucking wilderness with no shoes on. It’s like you’re asking to get tetanus.”

“Okay,” Eri said, smiling even though he couldn’t see it. Kaiba started to walk away, then stopped.

“We’ll see them again,” he said gruffly.

Eri nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Then he continued on, his footsteps eventually receding into silence.

“Get up. Are you planning to visit the Spring anytime today?”

“Ugh,” Jounouchi grumbled, as the toe of a boot dug firmly into his ribs. “Stoppit.”

Kaiba was in peak Kaiba form, marching around camp inflicting himself on everyone at every opportunity. He insisted on observing as Honda and Yuugi practised one last time with the Mirror Shield, forced Anzu to finish her entire breakfast, and watched like a hawk as Eri checked and double-checked that her quiver was secured properly. He also managed to find the time to fit in a round lecture about the way the bedrolls had been aired out.

Jounouchi supposed there was no possibility of getting an extra five minutes of sleep with Captain Stickler patrolling around antagonizing everyone, so he forced himself out from under his covers into the morning chill and made his way over to the fire, where Anzu had set aside a bowl for him and covered it to keep it warm.

“The hell are you following me for?” Jounouchi grumbled, as he sensed Kaiba’s presence looming behind him. “I’m up. I’m eating breakfast.”

“Your mask,” Kaiba said, sitting down across from Jounouchi and folding his arms. “Why haven’t you tried to use it yet?”

Jounouchi swallowed his mouthful of rice, partly to try and hide the reflexive shudder that came up every time he thought about the mask. “None of your fuckin’ business,” he muttered, fully aware of the irony of him giving Kaiba of all people that answer.

“Hn,” Kaiba said, decidedly unaware of the irony. “It is my business. It’s all of our business. If Hylia’s going to test us-”

“Who said she’s testing us?” Jounouchi snapped back. “That was just some offhand shit Honda said and everyone ran with it.”

“It doesn’t matter if the test comes now or later,” Kaiba retorted. “We were given these items for a reason.”

“Hah,” Jounouchi laughed bitterly, “sounding a bit like Isis there, aren’t you-”

“That mask is extremely dangerous,” Kaiba cut him off firmly.

That got Jounouchi’s attention. He looked up at Kaiba for the first time.

“Since you’re obviously avoiding the damned thing, I asked Eri what it does,” Kaiba explained, meeting his gaze evenly. “And now I’m going to tell you, and you’re going to listen to me.”

Jounouchi blinked, caught completely off-guard. “Why?” he managed after a second.

“Because I have first-hand experience with inheriting a dangerous magical item and being too stubborn to learn anything about it.” Kaiba averted his gaze and scoffed. “I think you remember how that turned out.”

Jounouchi nodded slowly, crossed his arms over his chest, and fixed his gaze on his boots.

“The Fierce Deity’s Mask transforms the wearer,” Kaiba said. “Completely. You become someone different. The mask was modeled in the image of an ancient warrior god. In putting it on the wearer becomes fused with the god’s spirit - until the mask is taken off. It grants you enormous power, but at a cost.”

“And that is...” Jounouchi mumbled, not looking up.

“You lose yourself. And if you’re not strong enough, the loss becomes permanent.”

Jounouchi sighed, long and heavy, and buried his head in his hands. “Why?” he asked again.

“As we’ve both learned the hard way,” Kaiba said, “some kinds of magic always come with a price.”

“And what makes you think,” Jounouchi continued, muffled by his hands, “that I’m strong enough to come back from whatever the hell that mask does to you?”

“There’s no way to know.”

“Thanks, real comforting.” Jounouchi lifted his head to glare at Kaiba.

“I’m not here to comfort you,” Kaiba said with a shrug. “I’m here to remind you that this isn’t a safe place. Everything we do carries an inherent risk.”

“Then why add more risk onto the pile?” Jounouchi said angrily, even though he knew he was deliberately being obtuse.

“Think of it as stacking the deck in our favour before a hell of a gamble.” Kaiba’s mouth twitched into a sardonic half-smile. “Another concept you of all people should be familiar with.”

Jounouchi thought about that for a long moment. So long, in fact, that Kaiba seemed to feel the conversation was over and got to his feet.

“Hey,” Jounouchi said. Kaiba stopped walking but didn’t turn around. “Thanks.”

“Hn,” Kaiba replied, and resumed his trajectory towards whoever was next on his shit list.

“Asshole,” Jounouchi called after him, grinning despite himself as Kaiba flipped him the bird.

The glide down into the Spring of Power was uneventful. They went one after the other, alighting on the dais in front of Hylia and then making room for the next person. Soon enough they all stood together facing the statue of the Goddess. They could hear the Guardian Skywatchers patrolling in the distance, but the Spring was well-hidden; invisible except from the top, with even the entrance covered by thick vines.

This time there was no flippant banter about who would go in first. Instead they all silently joined hands and stepped into the water together.

“Once again, you have overcome great adversities to reach my Spring,” Hylia said, her voice warm and gentle and powerful and terrible all at once. “And now it is time for you to overcome one more.”

“Hylia,” Jounouchi said boldly, “you never told us what we were supposed to do with the things we got from you last time. I don’t think we’re ready for whatever you’re gonna throw at us.”

There was a pause. “I believe that anyone who dares argue with a deity is ready for most any challenge,” Hylia said, with a note of what may have been amusement in her tone. “No, young Heroes, this is not a test of mastery - you will understand the purpose of my gifts in time. This is a test of strength; of courage, wisdom, power, and above all unity. If you pass then you will be more than ready for the trials that lay ahead.”

“And if we fail?” Eri ventured nervously, her grip tightening on Kaiba and Honda’s hands on either side of her.

“Then you will die here, instead of at the gates of Hyrule Castle,” Hylia replied.

“Wait,” Anzu cut in, with an uncharacteristic fury in her tone. “I don’t understand. Why are you doing this to us? We’re not heroes. None of us asked for a test like this. We just want to find Princess Zelda and go home.”

“Anzu,” Hylia said kindly, “I know you are weary, and that you have already faced a great many things. But your quest is bigger than you could imagine. There is a reason you are here. Know that, and know that I chose well when I chose the six of you.”

With that the Goddess was gone, the weight of her presence evaporating instantly from the air around them. A groaning, creaking noise resounded from the back of the Spring as an enormous stone door opened of its own accord. Beyond, just like at every other Spring, lay a shrine.

This one was glowing, a brilliant, pulsating orange.

“What does that mean?” Honda asked no one in particular.

“I think I know what’s in there,” Eri answered, her tone resigned.

They sat together on the dais, falling into the natural circle they’d adopted over the past months. Yuugi cleared his throat. “Eri-chan, what do you think it is?”

"A test of strength," Eri explained. "Link has to clear these sometimes. There's different levels of difficulty. This one happens to be one of the toughest."

"What's down there?" Yuugi asked.

"A Guardian," Eri sighed. "But not one of the ones we've seen already. This one is a Guardian Scout. It's smaller, but faster and tougher and proficient at weapon use."

“Okay,” Honda said. “Six-on-one isn’t bad odds. We took down a Lynel together before we even really knew how to fight, didn’t we?”

“At a cost,” Anzu interjected quietly.

“The thing is,” Eri explained, “the Shrines are tailored specifically to the Sword’s chosen. Meaning, they’re designed for Link. But...something about Hylia’s wording makes me nervous. She said it was a test of unity above all else. That means that this test is designed for multiple people, doesn’t it?”

Jounouchi blew out a breath. “Fuck. When you put it that way...”

“So that means whatever is in there is custom-made specifically to kill all six of us,” Kaiba said dully.

There was a moment of quiet as they all processed his words.

“We don’t have to do this, you know,” Anzu burst out, her eyes shining with tears. “We can go back to Hateno and the Lab. It’ll take longer, and we won’t be able to go back in time to the same moment we left, but...but I’m sure Kaiba-kun can...”

“You’re right, Anzu,” Yuugi agreed, squeezing her hand. “We can’t lose sight of our other options.”

“What d’you think, Kaiba?” Jounouchi said. “You’ve seen the tech first-hand now. How long would it take for you to get us home?”

Kaiba’s face was utterly blank. He stared at the wall behind them, seemingly lost in thought.

“Kaiba?” Jounouchi prompted after a moment.

“Years,” Kaiba said, still with that same strange blankness.

“Years?” Anzu gasped. “But, Kaiba-kun...before, you were so confident...”

“Now I’m being realistic,” Kaiba replied impassively. “And I think we should do it anyways.”

“What?” Eri demanded, turning to face him. “Why?”

“It’s better to come back alive, isn’t it?” Kaiba said. “No matter how long it takes.”

“What does everyone else think?” Yuugi said softly.

Anzu shook her head, a tear escaping and running down her cheek. “I don’t think we should do the test. Eri-chan?”

Eri bit her lip, thinking. “I...I don’t know.”

“Wait, back the fuck up,” Jounouchi said loudly. “Kaiba, what the hell? Didn’t you just give me a whole fuckin’ sermon this morning about taking risks? Stacking the deck? You remember that?”

“Forgive me if my opinion changed when I learned we were heading for near-certain death,” Kaiba said acidly.

“Near-certain my ass,” Jounouchi argued. “This thing isn’t guaranteed to kill us. Not if we work together. I gotta say, man, it really isn’t like you to back down when things get scary. Wanna share with the class why the hell you’re getting cold feet all of a sudden?”

“Because!” Kaiba said, so sharply it made everyone flinch. “I cannot watch another one of you idiots die. I can’t.” His fists clenched uselessly at his sides.

A long, tense moment passed.

“Fuck,” Jounouchi said, blowing out a sigh and running his hands through his hair. “I just...let me try and wrap my head around it. Years before I see Shizuka again...”

“I know,” Yuugi said dejectedly. “I miss...I miss Grandpa so much...”

“Stop it, all of you,” Honda cut in. “We’re gonna do the test. We have to.”

Five heads abruptly turned towards him, with near-identical expressions of shock.

“W-what?” Anzu stammered. “Honda?”

“Just...think about it,” Honda said. “Hylia said our quest was bigger than we thought, and that she chose the six of us specifically. Doesn’t that kinda seem to you like it’s more than a mission to find a lost princess and march her back to her nanny?” He folded his arms and stared each of them down in turn. “I’m telling you, that’s the reason we got all that magic shit at the Spring of Courage. There’s something big waiting for us at the end of this. It’s not gonna be a simple search and rescue.”

“Isn’t that even more reason to go back to Hateno?” Eri said. “If the goal is for no one to...” she trailed off.

“Come on, Eri-chan, I know you get where I’m going with this,” Honda pressed. “Whatever is going down at Hyrule Castle is something really bad. And if we don’t fix it, who’s going to?”

“Not our problem,” Kaiba argued, even as Eri nodded thoughtfully in agreement with Honda’s words.

“Yes our problem, dude,” Honda retorted evenly. “I remember what you said, back at the Spring of Courage. Something about dimensions having holes in ‘em, which creates a vacuum, and then the whole thing gets unstable and collapses. We can’t just dick around here forever waiting to see if that happens. And what if it’s all related?”

“What do you mean, Honda-kun?” Yuugi asked.

“I dunno.” Honda shrugged. “I just have a feeling. Our dimension, this dimension, whatever the hell’s going on in the Twilight Realm...if Hylia specifically chose us, it must’ve been for a reason. Maybe she thought we could put a stop to all this.”

“So...” Anzu began slowly. “Are you saying that...our dimension might be in danger too?”

“I feel like it might,” Honda said, “but again, that’s just a feeling. Kaiba? What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” Kaiba muttered, in a way that suggested he very much did know and did not like it. Eri reached over and took one of his hands, giving it a comforting squeeze. It was a testament to Kaiba’s current level of inner conflict that he not only let her, but gripped back hard enough to make her wince.

“I’m sorry,” Eri said. “It just...it sounds plausible. Really plausible. Do you remember what Paya said, back in Kakariko Village? She said that magic like Yuugi’s hadn’t been seen for a very long time. Midna also said that she hadn’t seen a Sheikah in her realm for hundreds of years. Couldn’t that mean that the barrier between the Twilight Realm and Hyrule has been closed until now?”

“Which definitely seems to suggest a recent instability,” Yuugi mused.

Eri nodded. “And the timing of Princess Zelda’s disappearance may not be a coincidence.”

They sat together in silence for a while, wrestling with the implications.

“Honda’s right,” Kaiba admitted finally. “My dimensional device didn’t fire us into Hyrule. We were pulled in through a rift that already existed.”

“What?” the rest gasped in near-perfect unison.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Jounouchi demanded.

Kaiba didn’t react, instead continuing in the same monotone. “I had my suspicions, but I didn’t put it all together until recently. The dimensional device acted as a homing beacon. That’s how Hylia found us. I think she was the one who destroyed it, which enlarged the rift enough so that we could be sucked in.”

“What the fuck?” Jounouchi said, sounding more awed than annoyed. “So she just...hunted us down, and dragged us here?”

“Apparently,” Kaiba said dully.

“Well,” Yuugi said thoughtfully, “if whatever is happening affects both our dimensions, then maybe it was...”

“Do not say ‘destiny,’” Kaiba snapped.

“Come on, Kaiba-kun,” Eri argued. “A divine being personally selecting us to come to another dimension and go on a quest is kind of the definition of destiny, isn’t it?”

“No,” Kaiba retorted bitterly. “We carve our own destinies. The caprice of powerful magical creatures doesn’t carry any larger meaning other than a pathetic attempt at forcing us to bend to their whims.”

“Would you both calm down, please?” Yuugi cut in. “You’re both right. A divine being has chosen us, and in doing so has intertwined Hyrule’s destiny with ours. Now it’s up to us to carve out a path.”

Kaiba glared at Yuugi. “And I’m guessing you’ve already chosen yours?”

“I have,” Yuugi said simply. “Honda’s right. This isn’t just about getting home. This is about making sure that all of us - everyone in Hyrule and back in our world - have a home to go back to.”

“Okay,” Jounouchi said. “I’m with you, Yuugi.”

“Me too,” Honda said with a firm nod.

Eri nodded too, and then looked at Kaiba expectantly.

“Kaiba-kun,” Anzu said gently. “I think you understand what our options are, better than anyone else here. What do you think?”

“Does it matter?” Kaiba said dully.

“Yes,” Anzu insisted, “because you matter. To all of us. Whatever we do, we have to be in it together, one hundred percent.”

Kaiba looked around at each of them, and then down at his hand, which was still firmly clasped in Eri’s.

“Morin,” he said, “tell us again what the hell is waiting for us down there, and we’ll figure out how to stack the deck.”

Chapter Text

Chapter Fifteen: Potentia

“Eri-chan.” Honda took hold of Eri’s wrist, pulling her to the side as the rest of the group quietly discussed tactics. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course,” Eri said, although she looked a little wary.

“You think the Mirror Shield would work against one of these Guardian things?”

“Honda-kun,” Eri said sharply.

“Hey,” Honda soothed, taking both her hands in his. “I’m not doing anything. I’m just asking.”

“I don’t know what you want from me,” Eri muttered, glaring down at her boots and trying to pull her hands away.

“I want to know if Link can do it,” Honda said calmly. He kept Eri’s hands firmly in his own.

Eri looked up at him. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, tears gathering in the corners of her eyes. “You’re not Link.”

That pretty much answered Honda’s question, so he stepped forward and gathered her into a hug. “Hey, hey,” he said again. “Promise I won’t do anything stupid. I’m not gonna try it. I just wanted to know.”

“You better not,” Eri said into the front of his tabard, allowing herself a little sniffle before starting to pull away. “Don’t scare me like that.”

“Oh, a hug! Can I join too?” Yuugi said, popping up by Honda’s elbow and giving them such an adorably hopeful look that Honda had no choice but to pull him in.

“Hey, buddy,” Honda said, squeezing them both tightly to his chest. “Anyone else want in on this?”

“Uh huh,” Anzu wobbled, throwing herself into the hug. Jounouchi joined shortly after, yanking a struggling Kaiba along with him.

“Let me go,” Kaiba protested indignantly, but he was no match for all of them at once. He was finally forced to give up and endure his first-ever group hug, arms rigidly at his sides.

And then it was time to enter the Tutsuwa Nima Shrine.

They walked forward, all together, into the Shrine’s entrance. Anzu tapped the Sheikah Slate to the pedestal and the Shrine itself hummed with recognition, the orange light leaking from the carved lines on its surface pulsating twice, as if in greeting. The group crowded together onto the moving platform, and then they descended.

Down, down they went, through a claustrophobic tunnel that seemed to last for ages; and then finally a flickering blue light heralded their emergence into the Shrine itself.

Stepping into the Shrine was like stepping into a completely new world. Every surface was sleek and flawless, some bearing pristine carvings that pulsed with orange light, some inscribed with glowing blue runes. Even though they must have been hundreds of feet underground, it was as bright as if they were in daylight; an illusion lent by the ceiling itself, which seemed to stretch up into the natural sky. A thin layer of pristine water coated the floor, rippling and susurrating gently with every step they took.

It was beautiful and alien and unnerving and fascinating and none of them could appreciate it, not with the mounting sense of dread as they marched towards their biggest challenge to date.

Somehow Yuugi found himself at the front of the group. Even though Yuugi himself would assume it was Atem that his friends had followed across Japan and America and Egypt, the truth was that it was Yuugi his friends always looked to for their next step; Yuugi’s drive and determination to do whatever was right, even if what was right wasn’t easy, and Yuugi’s complete and unwavering faith in the power of their bond. Their appointed Chair - in a gesture that had at the time been light-hearted, but had gradually become more and more significant.

Yuugi stopped before the gate, an opening in an intricately-carved metal wall flanked by pillars composed of the same indescribable, smooth material that made up the outer walls. Through gaps in the metal and the opening itself, they could see an enormous, empty room.

He turned to his friends and resolutely nodded once. They stepped through the gate together.

The large open room was silent at first. Their footsteps and the gentle splashing of the water echoed off the walls all the way up to the high ceiling. And then, from a massive opening in the floor, a mechanical whirring began to sound.

Everyone watched with bated breath as the moving platform finally rose up into the room and settled into place.

The platform bore the armed Guardian Scout Eri had told them about, slightly smaller than a full-sized Guardian and wielding three weapons at once - spear, sword and battle-axe, all a glowing blue. Its articulated torso and lightweight body would allow it easy movement and great speed. But that wasn’t the thing that rattled each of them to their core.

It was the second, full-sized Guardian Stalker standing beside it.

The group fell into combat stances, Honda at the front, Kaiba and Jounouchi flanking. Yuugi and Eri readied their bow and shadow-magic respectively. Kaiba made a brief hand signal, at which Honda and Jounouchi nodded.

“Go,” Yuugi said, and they went.

Kaiba and Yuugi took off at a sprint towards the Scout, and Honda and Jounouchi towards the Stalker. Eri moved protectively in front of Anzu and lined up a shot. She hit the Stalker in the eye, causing it to pause briefly as Honda and Jounouchi immediately went for its legs. Kaiba lunged into close combat with the Scout as Yuugi cast a blinding spell.

The Stalker regained its footing quickly, lurching back into place. The frenzied beeping tone that heralded its deadly laser began to accelerate in speed. Honda and Jounouchi were too close to avoid it, so they fell back. Just as Eri had taught them, they waited for the laser to lock on a second before it fired and then threw themselves in opposite directions. The beam ripped through the air with an explosive sound, igniting on impact and creating a smoking char mark on the floor where the two of them had been. Eri resisted the urge to double-check that her friends had made it out of the way. As the laser had locked on she’d taken off running around to the Stalker’s side, knowing that the smoke would obscure her vision. As the laser fired she lined up another shot and hit it once again directly in the eye.

What they didn’t account for was the two Guardians working in tandem. Upon identifying the archer as a distinct threat to its elder sibling, the Scout promptly lost interest in Kaiba and Yuugi. “Eri! Move!” Kaiba roared, just before the Scout let loose three rapid-fire concussive blasts in Eri’s direction.

Eri dodged, barely, but the Scout was relentless. It scuttled away from its assailants, firing blasts all the while, and parrying Kaiba from behind with its sword. Worse yet, it seemed to be invulnerable to Yuugi’s blinding spell. Its beady little mechanical eye was doing something where it appeared to heat up to the point that any shadow clinging to it dissipated abruptly.

And so they were thrust firmly onto the back foot. With Eri forced to retreat, there was nearly no pause between the Stalker’s projectiles. The only time Honda and Jounouchi had to deal damage was while the laser charged, and that gave them precious few seconds to hack away at the unyielding metal before they had to get out of the way.

Soon enough Honda and Jounouchi realized that the best strategy was to split up. It was impossible for the Stalker to target both at once, so they took it in turns to bear the brunt of its ire. Honda would deal a piercing blow with his halberd, the Stalker would charge its laser, and just as it locked on and began firing Jounouchi would continue the assault from behind, when it was too late for the Stalker to change its course.

Eri was fast, but not fast enough to outrun the Scout, and there was no terrain advantage here. It caught up to her soon enough, and she was just barely able to fire off a shot into the spot where its torso connected with its base before it was close enough that her bow was useless. Kaiba doubled the ferocity of his blows on the Scout in a bid to regain its attention. It turned around and met his sword with its own, parrying elegantly, but as quick as it was, Kaiba was quicker. He threw it off-balance with a well-aimed kick, which didn’t move it backwards at all but did cause it to teeter precariously, and then he drove his sword with a stabbing motion directly into the same spot Eri had aimed before, between its torso and base. The sword hit home.

In reaction, the Scout collapsed in on itself.

This had the double-effect of activating its circular firing mode and also trapping Kaiba’s sword between its metal parts. The steel luckily did not bend or break, instead creating dents and divots in the Scouts’s carriage, but it was firmly lodged. Kaiba was forced to let go in order to leap backwards and avoid the Scout’s beam, which was now circling in wider and wider loops across the floor of the room.

“Honda! Jounouchi!” Anzu yelled, just in time for both to notice the circling beam and fall back. The Stalker fell back as well, moving quickly out of its sibling’s range, and then continued its relentless onslaught against the two warriors.

Kaiba had avoided the first loop of the beam, and the second, but now the third was coming - and heading for Yuugi, who had somehow found himself directly in its path. Kaiba glanced at the Scout, and the beam, and did a quick mental calculation in his head; then he dived directly towards it.

“Kaiba-kun!” Eri screamed, lining up a shot aimed at the Scout. “Stop!”

Kaiba was a man of many talents, and luckily accurate on-the-spot trigonometry was one of them. Because the laser’s trajectory was widening, there was a now a horizontal space next to the Scout, between the laser and the floor, that would accommodate roughly six feet of swordsman. Kaiba slid down into a low tackle that hit the Scout directly in its base and knocked it off-course, its laser sputtering and firing into the wall instead of slicing through Yuugi’s legs. Since the impact of his boot didn’t cause enough damage to deter its programming from its current course of action, it was unable to defend itself as he reached up to grasp his sword.

And then Eri’s arrow found its mark and the Scout exploded upwards into a furious fail of limbs and weapons, unlocking its torso from its base. Kaiba wrenched his sword free, making sure to cause extra damage on the way out.

Meanwhile Jounouchi had been just a hair too late to avoid the last loop of the Scout’s laser and had caught a horrific burning gash across the leg. He leapt right back into the fight, noticeably slower.

“Jou!” Anzu yelled. “Come here!”

“Can’t!” Jounouchi shouted back, dealing a heavy blow to the Stalker’s legs. “Can’t - leave Honda -”

Yuugi leapt out of the Stalker’s shadow, conjured shadow-spear at the ready. He threw it with all his force. “Go!” he yelled at Jounouchi.

Jounouchi shot a conflicted look at his best friends. No part of him wanted to leave Honda and Yuugi alone with the Stalker, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to hold up on one leg for much longer. He started to limp towards Anzu, who came running to meet him.

Meanwhile Kaiba was faring as well as could be expected against a mechanical warrior equipped with three separate weapons and lasers to boot. It had given up trying to best him with its sword and was instead using its spear to drive him back until he was far enough away that it could switch to its battleaxe, coming down with massive cleaving motions that were getting harder and harder to avoid. These assaults it punctuated with short consecutive laser blasts, which took significantly less time to charge than those of its elder sibling.

Eri had begun to focus all of her arrows on the Scout, because Kaiba was now fighting alone and needed the support. The Scout, oddly enough, didn’t turn its attention to her again.

But the aid between siblings went both ways, and the Stalker took notice.

At the last minute, it diverted one of its lasers from Honda to somewhere off on the other side of the room. It took half a second too long for everyone to realize that Eri was its target, including Eri herself.

There was no time for anyone to get to her, so Yuugi did the only thing he could think of; he sent a shadow-blast her way, knocking her forcibly out of the way of the beam. It served its purpose, and was all-too-effective. Eri rolled to a stop face-down in the water.

Anzu and Jounouchi watched for a moment with bated breath. Honda and Yuugi were forced immediately into battle again with the Stalker, and Kaiba’s back had been to the whole thing. Eri managed to prop herself up on her elbows, gasping, and Anzu and Jounouchi breathed a collective sigh of relief.

“I’m okay now,” Jounouchi said to Anzu. The gash had knit back together, not completely, but to the point where it was no longer bleeding and was unlikely to start again. “Go to Eri.” Anzu nodded and set off at a sprint towards her friend. Jounouchi went the other way towards Kaiba.

And just in time, because it was at that moment Kaiba made his first misstep and took a mighty blow from the battleaxe, and then another from the Scout’s laser in a deadly one-two punch. He went flying across the floor, rolling and bouncing and leaving a trail of blood in his wake. Jounouchi resisted the urge to kneel down and check if Kaiba was all right, and continued on towards the Scout, throwing himself into its path.

Anzu stopped, took a deep breath, and abruptly changed her course from Eri to Kaiba.

Now they were firmly down two, and Yuugi wasn’t faring nearly as well against the Stalker as Jounouchi had. His shadows flourished when interacting with organic material, easily crawling into nooks and crevices as they sought to blind and suffocate and burn; but against metal they were only able to cause damage by concussive force. He felt a wave of despair well up in his chest as yet another shadow-blast bounced uselessly off the Stalker. It didn’t even bother looking at him anymore, barely registering him as a threat.

I can’t hurt this thing, he thought wildly. It’s not alive, so I can’t hurt it.

Well, that’s not true, a sardonic little voice said in his head.

Yuugi resisted the urge to flinch. Not a good time, Midna-

Ee hee hee, Midna cackled. Isn’t it, little mage? What if I told you that machines are alive too? That their blood is oil, and their veins are circuits, and their organs are gears and springs?

Yuugi wanted to scream. He didn’t have time to deal with Midna’s bizarre musings right now.

Midna apparently caught the vein of his irritation. I’m trying to help you, you little fool. Think about what I’m saying.

He took a deep breath. He thought about it.

Yuugi sent another volley of shadow-magic towards the Stalker, but this time it wasn’t a spear or a bolt. It was a set of tendrils that remained attached to his hands as they crawled across the floor to their target.

Well done, Midna said, with obvious glee. And now, the truth-sight.

Yuugi closed his eyes, opened them again, and suddenly he could see.

He could see through each tendril at once, his vision pulled apart into six directions, all creeping through the shallow water. His mind felt like it was burning with the effort of processing it all, but he held on. He sent the shadow-tendrils up, up, climbing the smooth surface of the Stalker’s legs and into its undercarriage. There he could see that it was as Midna had said. The circuits running from the Guardian’s core were its veins, and the ball-bearings were its joints; the gears churning away inside lubricated by its lifeblood.

Yuugi could feel that he didn’t have much time left until his mind gave in entirely from the strain.

Keep going, little mage, Midna urged. Just a little further-

He sent one tendril to the base of each leg, wrapping around the joints there. And then he sent a surge of power - everything he could muster.

The Stalker’s bones splintered and its veins ruptured. Its blood splattered on the ground below. Its legs severed and fell uselessly to the ground a half-second before its torso followed, with an echoing crash. And with that, Yuugi’s mind ruptured also, falling away into a thousand crystalline pieces, each one sharp and jagged like a little glass knife, rattling inside his skull the pain was beyond comprehension he could feel every single thing about himself grinding away into dust and beyond the shattered remnants there was nothing, just a void - nothing - Atem -

Yuugi’s vision went dark and he collapsed, letting the final fractured pieces of his consciousness drift away.

Honda kept on fighting, forcing himself not to go to Yuugi immediately, but it was easier now - so much easier - because the Stalker couldn’t move anymore. It was stuck spinning and beeping furiously and completely unable to keep pace with Honda as he circled it.

Meanwhile Eri had managed to pull herself up onto her knees and ready her bow and arrow again. The shadow-bolt had left her weak, but she could do at least this much. She waited patiently as Jounouchi wore the Scout down, landing massive blows on its head and sides. It collapsed in on itself again. Jounouchi retreated. This was the moment.

Eri took a deep breath, and shot. The arrow hit home.

The Scout began to spark and smoke, its limbs moving erratically this way and that. It was still alive and fighting, but it had no sense of purpose anymore; its programming was irreparably damaged, and it could do nothing but flail at the closest opponent. Jounouchi rushed back in and resumed his assault. It was seemed like a sure thing now. He was careful, letting the Scout herd him around the room as he attacked it; he couldn’t get injured now, not when Anzu already had so many to deal with.

Jounouchi raised his axe to deal the Scout its death blow.

The Stalker began to charge a laser. Once again, not in defense of itself, but in defense of its sibling.

“Jou! Jou!” Honda yelled, but Jounouchi was trapped; the Scout had driven him into a corner, and it was now obvious that it had done so on purpose. It kept him there with a sudden burst of energy, swinging all three of its weapons at him with equal intensity, forcing him to concentrate on nothing but dodging.

The Stalker’s laser was charged now, and it fired.

Honda made a split-second decision. He leapt in front of the beam, Mirror Shield held aloft.

The force of the impact hit him like a semi truck, sending him flying directly into the nearest wall. The heat made his armour glow red-hot, burning any skin it touched; the smell of it filled the air. Honda knew immediately that several bones had been broken, and from the blood that was trickling out from under his tabard, something had punctured through the skin as well - the edge of the Mirror Shield, which had slashed him just below his chestplate. The pain was blinding, except for his legs, which were completely numb. It was all he could do not to give up and succumb to the darkness that he was sure awaited him.

But, most importantly, he hadn’t succumbed yet; and the scorching heat of the Mirror Shield on his arm told him that it had absorbed at least some of the blast. He hoped it was enough. Honda used the last of his strength to lift his arm and point his shield toward the Stalker; a second later the blast fired back, the force of it leaving the shield knocking him back against the wall.

It hit, but it wasn’t enough.

The Stalker began to charge once more. The Scout abandoned its deception and continued its ferocious onslaught.

Jounouchi was quite literally the last man standing, and it became clear in that moment that he wouldn’t be standing for much longer at this rate.

He kicked the Scout, hard enough to send it teetering, and then in one smooth motion reached into the pouch at his hip, pulled out the Fierce Deity’s Mask, and slammed it onto his face.

Jounouchi screamed as a percussive wave of dark energy burst from around him, knocking the Scout back a good five feet. The mask found the edges of his face and sent out little wooden tendrils - like vines, or roots - to dig firmly into the skin there, bringing with them the agony of a hundred puncture points.

Worse yet was the pressure on the edges of his consciousness. Suddenly he became aware that his mind - his memories, thoughts, feelings, everything that made him Jounouchi - were all contained in a floating black void, one that he was now sharing with something else. Something large, and primal, and savage. It was whispering. Quietly at first, and then louder and louder in a language he didn’t know; the same words over and over again, swelling from a murmured chant to a screaming war cry, and the war cry grew so loud that Jounouchi felt that he’d never hear anything else again, his entire being was consumed with the vibrations of the harsh guttural words, he felt himself receding away in the face of them.

The pressure on the edges of his mind mounted and then something started to bleed in. Something that wasn’t him, and the foreignness of it felt so wrong that at first he was able to delineate exactly where the intruder had entered his consciousness; and then disjointed images began to flicker to life in front of him and the boundary wavered.

Shizuka, sitting in front of a sandcastle at the beach, grinning up at him with her little gap-toothed smile, the waves coming up to lick at their toes.

Yuugi’s grandfather accepting the final piece of the Sennen Puzzle from him, the one he’d cruelly stolen - Sugoroku smiling kindly and promising not to tell Yuugi which of his friends had come by -

Honda, walking up to the loneliest-looking kid in the entire middle school with single-minded purpose, stopping in front of him - “You’re Jounouchi, right-”

The few letters Shizuka had managed to send him before her eyesight started to deteriorate - he opened one and the writing was strange, in a bold and spiralling alphabet that he’d never seen before, but he somehow knew what it said-

“Hold your hands out,” Anzu had said, and Jounouchi had held his out eagerly, wanting nothing more than a visible symbol of their little group - his family - “Jou,” Anzu said, and she reached out with her marker and drew a heart with two large round eyes in the middle, that didn’t seem right, but her face was the same as always, kind and focused and stubborn and sweet as she carefully added spikes sticking out from the heart’s edges, and-

“Jounouchi,” Anzu said again.

The jungle, those eerie ruins, Yuugi’s eyes were black and it was the worst thing Jounouchi had ever seen because he looked at his best friend and couldn’t see him, couldn’t see into those eyes that always told him exactly what Yuugi was thinking or feeling without needing to exchange a single word. He couldn’t explain to anyone how much he hated it and how much he wanted to stay in the ruins forever and make himself at home in the rows of decayed pillars bearing the crest of a dragon that he knew was long-since dead, to vanish into the darkness there and-

“Katsuya!”

Jounouchi became aware of a pressure around his waist. He looked down. That irritating girl was clinging to him, sobbing, a truly wretched sound that he wanted nothing more than to silence. His axe was raised aloft. One swing and he could do it, he could stop that awful, grating sound-

“Jounouchi,” Anzu sobbed again, “come back, please come back, you won, you have to come back now.”

He lowered his axe and forced himself to loosen his grip. Just enough. The axe clattered to the floor. His other hand wouldn’t give in to his will. It was wrapped firmly around the girl’s neck. It would only take one powerful squeeze from his fingers.

Instead he carefully raised his free hand to his face, to the edges, and he felt nothing. No ridge or bump, just seamless smooth skin, and when his fingers came away there was paint on them. He looked back at Anzu - the girl, his friend Anzu, that annoying girl - and she looked back up at him and it was Anzu. Anzu. He reached up again and found the tiniest unevenness in the skin near his temple and dug his fingers into the flesh there and pulled.

Anzu held him as he screamed in pain, longer and louder than the war cry, driving it back, back into a corner of the void, and then it separated from him abruptly and the mask clattered to the floor.

The Guardians lay dead, destroyed beyond all recognition, more piles of gears and wrecked metal than anything resembling what they had been before. Jounouchi was unhurt.

“Jou,” Anzu cried into his chest.

He wrapped his arms around her, starting to cry as well. “I’m sorry, Anzu, I’m so sorry...I’m back...”

“You’re back,” Anzu repeated, and he felt like maybe it was to soothe him more than herself, and that was Anzu.

A sparking from one of the Guardian corpses caused them both to jump to their feet, but it was nothing; just the last gasp of dying circuitry. In the moment of silence that followed Anzu and Jounouchi looked at each other, meeting eyes in a wild, desperate panic.

“Oh,” Anzu choked out, an utterance that was half-gasp, and half-sob, as she took in the bodies of their friends strewn about the room.

Tears streamed down Jounouchi’s face. He fell to his knees next to Honda. “Oh, god. What do we do?” he moaned, grasping Honda’s lifeless hand.

Anzu allowed herself one more sob, and then took a very deep breath and centred herself.

“I see,” she said, half to Hylia, and half to herself. “This is my test.”

It is, Hylia’s voice echoed in her mind, though it sounded a little strange. And I will be there with you every step of the way.

“Jounouchi,” Anzu said sharply, shocking Jounouchi out of his stupor. “Go to Eri-chan and get as many elixirs as you can out of her pack. Give her a healing elixir and a stamina elixir. We’ll need as many hands as we can get.”

Jounouchi nodded, and took off towards Eri.

Meanwhile, Anzu focused back in on Kaiba. Even in the heat of battle, she’d managed to get him to a point where his most pressing injury - a gigantic laceration across his entire chest that had been bleeding copiously - was no longer critical. He was still barely conscious, with burns and what looked like a broken leg to deal with, possibly a concussion, but Anzu was very aware just now of how limited her resources were in the face of the work she had ahead of her.

“Nngh,” Kaiba grunted, struggling to sit up.

“Don’t,” Anzu instructed him. “Jounouchi will be by to help you. Do not move until then, do you understand me?”

He nodded with a pained sigh as Anzu eased him back down onto the floor. It was a small mercy that he didn’t seem to have been awake to witness what had happened to Jounouchi when he donned the Fierce Deity’s Mask.

She looked between Honda and Yuugi. Yuugi was still breathing. He didn’t look well. His face was ghastly pale and he was completely still other than the minute rise and fall of his chest. Worst of all, his eyes were pitch-black, fixed sightlessly ahead.

Honda, on the other hand, looked like he might not be breathing at all.

Anzu swallowed, licked her dry lips, and chose Honda.

Maybe a more experienced medic would have written him off and gone for the person with a better chance of being saved. But if Honda was still anywhere that she could reach him, she was going to try.

Honda’s injuries were intense and gruesome. “Eri-chan,” Anzu called loudly.

“Coming,” Eri called back. She staggered into view, clearly not completely healed, but close enough. She dropped onto her knees on Honda’s other side as Jounouchi took off the other way towards Kaiba.

“Ah,” she gasped, taking in the smell of burnt flesh and the blood and the limbs sticking out at unnatural angles.

“Can you handle this?” Anzu asked her firmly. Eri gulped, took a deep breath, and nodded. “Good. We need to get his armour off.”

They wrapped their hands in cloth from Anzu’s pack and then set to work pulling the still-hot pieces of armour off Honda’s body, careful not to jostle him. Then Eri used her scissors to cut Honda’s undershirt and trousers off, revealing vast expanses of charred flesh.

Anzu leaned down and began her diagnostic.

Honda was still alive, but only barely. The damage was so extensive that it was hard to pinpoint which was the most critical. The burns covering his body were at a real risk of sending him into shock, but his lung had been punctured by a broken rib and it was filling with fluid fast. Both legs had fractures. Those could be fixed later; of more pressing urgency was the injury to his spinal cord.

“Okay,” Anzu breathed. “Okay. Okay.”

She couldn’t administer an elixir right away. Healing elixirs were like carpet bombs in the sense that they would not take any direction and just started indiscriminately healing anything in their way. That meant that Honda’s lung would heal around the rib that had punctured it, and his spine may never recover properly. But she needed to do something about the burns, and fast.

“Eri-chan,” she said, keeping her tone calm and clinical. She could tell that Eri was struggling to keep it together. “Could you please dilute one of your cooling elixirs with chu jelly and start applying it to the burns? We want it cool enough to stop the burning, but warm enough that you can easily handle it with your bare hands.”

“Yep,” Eri said through gritted teeth, rummaging in her pouch.

As soon as Eri had set to work slathering their improvised burn cream over Honda’s torso, Anzu decided to heal the punctured lung first and deal with the fluid, which would drown Honda from the inside if not taken care of immediately. Her tendrils of healing magic worked their way in, seeping through the skin of Honda’s chest and gently nudging the rib, millimetre by millimetre, until it was out and she could start to work on the tissue of the lung itself.

Meanwhile she could hear Kaiba and Jounouchi talking behind her. Kaiba was calmly instructing Jounouchi on how to set his broken leg so that he could take an elixir without it healing wrong.

Now that Honda seemed to be in marginally less danger of immediate death, Anzu nodded towards Yuugi. “Eri-chan - can you bring him here? I need to understand what his injuries are. Maybe you can help him without me.” Eri nodded, and set off towards Yuugi.

And so it went on like that; Anzu finished working on Honda’s lung, and then began immediately on his spine. The spine was complicated. While Anzu had previously known basically nothing about human anatomy beyond what would normally be needed by a dancer, she found that her magic granted her an innate sense of how to fix what was broken; the shimmering blue-white tendrils tended to go off on their own and guide her in the right direction, reaching out towards damaged capillaries or spongy marrow that she could see in her mind’s eye as clearly as if her patient was opened up in front of her. Sometime during the process Eri gently laid Yuugi out beside them. He was still both breathing and unmoving, and eyes remained entirely black.

Anzu turned her attention momentarily to Yuugi, keeping one grounding hand on Honda so that she could feel if he started to go south again. She put the other hand on Yuugi’s forehead.

“Eri,” Anzu said again, this time quietly enough that it wouldn’t alert Jounouchi or Kaiba.

Eri seemed to sense something in her tone and paused in applying more of the burn cream, giving Anzu her full attention.

“I’m not going to be able to heal both of them,” Anzu continued steadily. “My reserves are going fast and if I don’t finish Honda’s spine now, he’ll be paralyzed.”

A stricken look crossed Eri’s face, but it was gone quickly as she wrestled her reaction under control. “Okay. What are our options?”

“We either stop now, leave Honda’s spine, and help Yuugi. Or...” Anzu cast a worried glance at Yuugi. “I just...I don’t even understand what hit him. I don’t know how to triage when I can’t assess the injuries.”

“So he’s not...hurt?” Eri ventured, smoothing Yuugi’s bangs back across his forehead. A pained grunt sounded from behind them as Jounouchi finished setting Kaiba’s broken leg.

“Not that I can see,” Anzu said helplessly.

There was a small fluttering movement near Yuugi’s foot. Anzu and Eri’s heads turned sharply. But it was not Yuugi who had moved.

It was his shadow.

Anzu recoiled. “What is that? ”

“Midna,” Eri breathed. For Yuugi’s shadow was not Yuugi at all, rather the outline of a small imp-like creature. It was gesturing to them, over and over. Beckoning.

“She wants us to...go somewhere?”

“No,” Eri said. “I think she wants us to come to her.”

“How?” Anzu said, glancing frantically between Yuugi and Honda. “We can’t go into the Twilight Realm.”

“I’ll deal with her,” Eri said resolutely. “You go back to Honda-kun.”

Anzu cast one last pained glance at Yuugi, and then threw herself back into the problem of Honda’s spine. Although he was starting to have some involuntary reflexes in his hands and arms - likely from the pain - Anzu hadn’t seen any movement below his hips whatsoever. As she assessed the damage once more with her magic, she had a sudden and dreadful realization.

Meanwhile Eri was playing an annoying and complicated game of pantomime with Yuugi’s shadow, which if Kaiba or Jounouchi had happened to glance over would look like she’d lost it completely.

“I can’t come to you,” Eri said to Midna, shaking her head. Midna nodded fervently, as if to say yes, you can.

“How?” Eri said. Midna drew a large circle with her hands, and then mimed hopping through it. Eri stared, nonplussed, and then tried the same gesture herself. A circle, then stepping through it.

“Oh,” she said, realization dawning. “A portal?”

Midna nodded again. Eri shook her head. “I don’t have magic. I can’t.”

The little imp made a thoroughly exasperated gesture, then mimed something utterly incomprehensible.

“What?” Eri said blankly.

Midna repeated the mime patiently. It looked like she was trying to eat a messy piece of fruit. Eri copied her, cupping her hands and bringing them to her lips. Midna nodded.

“Oh - wait - oh -” Eri suddenly dug into her pouch, and pulled out the fairy ocarina. Midna jumped up and down in victory. “Um, what do I play?”

Midna pointed to herself, and then to Eri’s shadow.

“Shadow? What...what songs are about...oh!”

It was a testament to how many times Eri had played through The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time that the Nocturne of Shadow was still crystal-clear and note-perfect in her head, so many years after she’d last heard it.

“Okay, that’s it,” Jounouchi said, supporting Kaiba’s head as he finished the rest of the healing elixir. “I think you’re outta the danger zone. How are you-”

From behind them, the unmistakable sound of Eri’s ocarina floated through the air.

“What the fuck-” Kaiba spat. “What is she-”

“Eri,” Jounouchi said, “not the time-”

A deep rumbling echoed through the room, and within seconds a tiny whirling ball of darkness formed in the centre. It grew larger and larger and then flattened out into a rapidly-spinning disc, edged with glowing white patterns and runes.

“Be right back,” Eri called, breaking out in a run towards the shadowy circle.

“No!” Kaiba and Jounouchi yelled in unison, but she stepped directly into it, and then the whole thing collapsed in on itself without a trace.

After watching one of her best friends vanish into a shadowy portal while she held the broken body of another in her arms, Anzu wanted nothing more than to cry. She wanted to scream, anything from I can’t do this to I’m not strong enough to simply a wordless wail into a comforting shoulder.

She knew now with absolute clarity that healing Honda would take more than she had. The damage was just too extensive. Even if she managed to heal his spine, the burns combined with the gash across his torso were more strain than his heart could take.

Hylia, she called in her mind. Please. Please guide me. I don’t know what to do.

I’m not Hylia, child, the voice replied warmly. Anzu suddenly realized she’d known that all along. This voice had the same powerful quality as Hylia’s, but was somehow more primal, wild and ancient all at once. Healing magic is far older than the sacred duty of protection that was entrusted to our Hylia. Healing is as old as creation itself.

May I know your name? Anzu asked, her wonder temporarily distracting from her despair.

In time, the voice replied. For now, I will guide you. Anzu, you must understand that healing is giving to someone of yourself.

My magic?

Not your magic. Yourself.

Tell me how.

The voice paused. When you love someone, you are prepared to sacrifice for them. Think of the love you have for them, and think of what you would give to have them be well again.

Anzu thought of the little fairy from Kakariko Village, the tiny shimmer of hope that drifted around only in hopes of giving itself entirely to bring a traveller from beyond the veil of death, and she understood.

Eri stepped into the Twilight Realm, and the portal abruptly closed behind her.

“Um...Midna?” she called.

“Hello, little historian,” Midna said from directly behind her. Eri jumped and whirled to face her.

“Hello,” she said nervously. “I’m...I’m here?”

“Well done,” the imp congratulated sarcastically, “took you long enough, didn’t it? This way. We don’t have long before you become a permanent denizen of my Realm.”

“Okay,” Eri stammered, following Midna as she drifted away into the Twilight. The act of walking was very strange indeed, just as Yuugi had described it, rather like treading a soft sand.

Yuugi came into sight within moments; or rather, his spirit, luminous and tinged in spectral green. He was curled up into a little ball, looking like he was in immense pain, clutching his head. Eri ran to his side and knelt down, putting a hand on his back. He was solid, but just barely. Eri felt like if she pushed her hand would go right through him. Yuugi didn’t react.

“What’s wrong with him?” Eri said, looking up at Midna worriedly.

“Ee hee hee! He’s fine,” Midna replied offhandedly. “Look at him. Not a scratch. He just needs a little convincing, is all.”

“Convincing?” Eri repeated.

“He sort of broke his mind,” Midna said cheerfully. “Advanced shadow magic will do that to you. You see too many things that don’t quite make sense and - oops! Your mind is in pieces on the ground.”

“Midna, please,” Eri pleaded. “I’ll do anything. I’ll come back and talk to you any time, with or without Yuugi. Just tell me what to do.”

“I already told you,” Midna said, a sharp grin stretching across her face, “although I suppose I’ll elaborate, especially since you sweetened the deal. Our little mage has retreated here to protect himself. It was all just too much for his tiny brain. All you need to do is convince him that it’s safe and that he should come back with you.”

“Okay,” Eri said, taking a deep breath. “I can do that.”

“Can you do it quickly, though?” Midna said, her tone still amused. She was bobbing in the air in a reclined position, head resting on one hand as she examined Eri. “Look at your hand! Ee hee!”

Eri’s hand was taking on a definite ghostly sheen.

“Yuugi-kun,” Eri pleaded. “Hey. It’s me. It’s Eri. You’re safe now.”

Yuugi didn’t react, other than curling in on himself a little tighter.

“Come with me,” Eri said again, trying to make her voice calmer and more soothing, which was difficult as her hand seemed to be getting more translucent by the second. The effect was also noticeably creeping up her wrist. “We’re all waiting for you. Me, and Anzu, and Jounouchi, and,” she swallowed, “and Honda, and Kaiba. We’re all back in the world of light.” She paused.

A choked little noise came from between Yuugi’s hands, which were covering his face.

“Okay, you’re doing great,” Eri said gently, stroking Yuugi’s hair. “You’re okay. You’re safe. We’ll all protect you, all of us. You did great. Atem would be so proud.”

At the mention of Atem’s name, Yuugi removed his face from his hands and looked up. His eyes were dull and empty, but a single tear was tracking its way down his cheek.

“Will you come back with me?” Eri asked, cupping his face with one hand and taking his arm with the other. Yuugi watched her for a long moment with those blank, lifeless eyes, then he finally nodded. He allowed Eri to pull him up, but didn’t make any further movements.

“Um...” Eri glanced at Midna, and then at her arm, which was now mostly transparent and ghostly green. “He...doesn’t look like he can get us back. Does the Nocturne of Shadow work both ways?”

“How should I know?” Midna said boredly. “I’ve never heard that song before. I didn’t even know if that stupid piece of clay would be able to get you here.”

Eri sighed. “It was your idea.”

“Educated guess,” Midna cackled. She regarded them both impassively for a moment, Eri with her good arm clamped protectively around Yuugi, who was still staring at nothing and not reacting to the conversation in the slightest. “Well, I suppose I’ll send you both back.”

“Thank you,” Eri said. “I promise I’ll keep my word.”

“Just this once.” Midna rolled her eyes. “Don’t make a habit of it.”

And with that, Eri felt the same pulling sensation that had drawn her into the Twilight Realm, and suddenly she was surrounded by blinding light.

“What’s wrong?” Jounouchi whirled around as Anzu screamed in pain. “Anzu?”

Jounouchi and Kaiba exchanged glances. Jounouchi pulled Kaiba’s arm around his shoulders and helped him to stand; since Kaiba’s leg was set but not all the way healed, Jounouchi ended up half-carrying him towards Anzu and Honda, moving as quickly as he could. He put Kaiba down next to Honda then rushed to Anzu.

“Anzu,” Jounouchi cried, reaching her side and catching her in his arms just as she collapsed. “Anzu!”

“What happened?” Kaiba demanded. Honda’s legs started thrashing as he moaned in agony. Kaiba found an unburnt patch of skin on each leg and held him down. “Stop,” he said to Honda. “Hey, stop, you’re just hurting yourself-”

“Holy fuck,” Jounouchi gasped, “what the hell is this?”

Kaiba glanced over. Blood was blooming through the white of Anzu’s robes. “When did she-”

Jounouchi undid her sash and tunic, stripping her down to her chest wrap as she dangled limply in his arms. A long gash stretched across her abdomen. “She didn’t get hit,” Jounouchi choked. “Not like this.”

At that moment, Eri came hurtling back into the room from absolutely fucking nowhere, and Yuugi sat up with a sharp gasp.

“Yuugi?” Jounouchi cried with relief. Yuugi’s eyes had returned to their normal brilliant violet, but they were blank and unfocused, and he didn’t respond to his friend’s voice. “Hey,” Jounouchi said urgently, shifting Anzu’s weight to one arm so that he could shake Yuugi’s shoulder with his other hand. “Yuugi - come on, man, answer me-”

“He’s okay,” Eri gasped, struggling to get up.

“Where the fuck did you go?” Kaiba demanded, still holding Honda down.

“Yuugi’s fine,” Eri repeated. Her voice was getting fainter. “He’s okay. He just needs - needs a minute...”

“Eri?” Jounouchi said, his head jerking up in alarm. “Oh my god, your...your arm...”

Kaiba lost his grip on Honda and whirled around just in time to see Eri drop back onto the floor. Her arm was a ghastly shade of green, from the tips of her fingers to just below her shoulder. Worse yet, they could see right through it.

“Just...gotta catch my breath...” Eri mumbled weakly. “Arm’s fine...”

“No it’s not,” Jounouchi said, his voice rising in pitch. He glanced from Honda, who was being wrestled into stillness again by Kaiba, to Yuugi, who was sitting up and pink-cheeked and breathing but staring at absolutely nothing, to Anzu; limp and bleeding in his arms. “It’s not fine, it’s - fuck -”

Once Kaiba had managed to hold Honda still for a moment, he reached up and gripped Jounouchi’s shoulder with one hand. “Look at me,” he commanded.

Jounouchi looked at him, fighting to keep his rising panic under control.

“Calm down,” Kaiba ordered. “It’s up to us right now. Take stock of the situation. What’s the next step?”

The answer came to Jounouchi before he’d even had time to think about it. “Anzu,” he said. “We gotta - we gotta stop the -”

“Right,” Kaiba praised, patting his shoulder. “You stop the bleeding. Be gentle, abdominal wounds are difficult. I think Honda might be able to take an elixir.”

Jounouchi bunched up a handful of cloth from his pouch and pressed it gently to Anzu’s torso, then looked up at Kaiba. “Are you sure about that? What if...what if something heals wrong?”

“He’s moving around enough that Anzu must have healed the most critical parts,” Kaiba said, casting an appraising eye at Honda. “Either way, he’s going to go downhill again fast if we don’t address the burns.”

Jounouchi took a deep breath, and then nodded. “Okay. What about those two?”

Kaiba turned his gaze on Yuugi and then Eri. “Yuugi isn’t critical,” he said reluctantly, “and Eri-”

“I’m fine,” Eri cut in, though she was still facedown on the floor, only her head propped on her good arm saving her from drowning herself in the two inches of water.

“No one asked you,” Kaiba reprimanded. “She’s not fine but also not critical. They can wait.” He took one of the few remaining elixirs, and handed another to Jounouchi, then gently pulled Honda up into his arms.

“Drink this,” Kaiba said. Honda gasped in pain but managed to take a few swallows. “Well done,” Kaiba continued, in the same steady tone. “Just a little more.”

The elixir was having an obvious and immediate effect on Honda, and no effect whatsoever on Anzu. She pressed her lips closed and wouldn’t take more than a few swallows.

“I don’t get it,” Jounouchi said desperately. “Anzu - hey, keep drinking -”

“Won’t work,” Anzu mumbled, her eyes fluttering open to fix on Jounouchi’s. “Don’t - don’t waste it.”

“What? Why? Anzu - answer me -”

“Focus,” Kaiba barked. “It doesn’t matter why right now. It’s not working so you have to treat her without it. Has the bleeding stopped?”

“Yes,” Jounouchi replied, forcing himself to listen to Kaiba and focus.

“Good.” Kaiba nodded. “Now examine the wound. Is it deep? Can you see any organs?”

“No.”

Kaiba talked him through dressing Anzu’s wound as he helped Honda finish the rest of his elixir. The burns started to heal in earnest, some even scabbing over, and Honda’s breathing was evening out from sharp pained gasps to full, deep breaths. He was still badly injured but was firmly past the worst of it, and once Anzu was wrapped in clean bandages, they stopped to reassess.

“Okay,” Jounouchi said, blowing out a forceful sigh. “Well...we’re not going anywhere for a while.”

Eri finally managed to sit up all the way, breathing heavily. “Is Honda all right?” she asked, tears gathering in her eyes as she looked at her friend. “And...what - what happened to Anzu?”

“We were hoping you could answer that,” Jounouchi said, his shoulders slumping. “I never saw her get hit. She was never even near one of those things.”

“She didn’t get hit,” Eri confirmed. “I would’ve - I would’ve seen it, when she was healing Honda. I don’t understand.”

Kaiba looked over his shoulder at Eri, not releasing his hold on Honda. “Where did you go?” he demanded.

Eri crawled over to Honda’s side, taking his hand. “Is he gonna be okay?” she asked, her voice shaking.

“Yes,” Kaiba said impatiently. “Now tell us where you went, what happened to Yuugi, and what in the seven hells is wrong with your arm.”

Eri took a deep breath, clearly trying to hold back her tears. “Okay,” she whispered. “Just...”

Kaiba let out a heavy exhale, his shoulders slumping. “It’s all right,” he muttered. “I’m not going to yell at you.”

After Eri’s account of the Twilight Realm, Kaiba and Jounouchi exchanged a nervous glance. Neither of them had any idea what to do about Yuugi’s mysterious shadow ailment.

“You’ve kinda had your mind shattered, right?” Jounouchi asked hesitantly. “Um...what helped?”

“Six months of convalescent care,” Kaiba replied dully.

Eri looked up sharply, terror written on her features.

“Don’t make that face,” Kaiba chided. “This isn’t the same.”

“It’s a long story,” Jounouchi added. “Okay. What now?”

They decided that leaving the Shrine was out of the question for now, but no one was in favour of staying in the battle chamber; not only because of the blood and gore and dead Guardians splattered about the room, but also because of the water coating the floor. There was a raised dry platform in the antechamber beyond, containing the pedestal that had once housed a long-preserved monk. Jounouchi carried Honda, then came back for Anzu. Kaiba was forced to rely on Eri’s one-armed support to make it up the stairs. And Yuugi followed them placidly, not speaking or making eye contact with anything in particular.

Jounouchi laid out the bedrolls, and with a little help from Eri was able to get Honda and Anzu comfortably settled; pulling the blankets up to their chins and propping them up with their meagre camp pillows supplemented by folded cloaks. They put Yuugi to bed too, because they might as well, and he didn’t seem bothered by it.

And so they settled in to wait.

“Let me go up.”

“No.”

“Come on.”

“No.”

“I’m the best at catching lizards.”

“Are you fucking deaf? I said no.”

Jounouchi was beyond the point where he was going to waste his energy trying to talk sense into either of them. He sighed and put his face into his hands.

“Why not?”

“Because your arm-”

“Is fine. Look. It’s almost completely solid.”

“Let go of me. What are you doing?”

“I’m showing you how solid my hand is. This is me, squeezing at full strength. I am telling you, my arm is-”

“Still glowing, you god damned moron, how do you think climbing is a good idea with an arm like that?”

“We need more elixirs, and Jounouchi hasn’t been able to catch any lizards yet.”

“Why the hell are you so fixated on the lizards? Can’t he just look for other ingredients?”

“Why do I even bother asking you? What are you gonna do, stop me? Oh, hi, Yuugi-kun.”

In the past few days, Yuugi hadn’t...woken up, exactly, but had started to show a little more personality. Currently he was standing in front of Eri, having wandered over sometime during the course of her argument with Kaiba. Eri smiled up at him. He stared back at her blankly, and then sat down cross-legged directly between her and Kaiba.

“The Chairman has spoken,” Jounouchi said. “You two have to give it a rest now.”

“All right,” Eri said primly. “Vice-Chair, please suggest a better course of action.”

Kaiba put on his most intimidating glare, which wasn’t nearly as scary as usual seeing as Jounouchi had confined him to his bedroll with the covers tucked up around his waist. “I suggest you sit the fuck down, stop being annoying, and rest, until you are entirely back in the realm of the living.”

“Oh, I don’t like that suggestion,” Eri said airily. “Got another one?”

“You pain in the ass, do you have an off-switch?”

“Nope.”

Yuugi let out a little sigh and let his head drop sideways onto Kaiba’s shoulder. Kaiba went abruptly rigid and stared down at him, looking for all the world like a particularly creepy toad had hopped up onto his shoulder and he had no idea what to do about it.

“Okay, Yuugi-kun, we’ll stop,” Eri laughed. “We’re sorry.”

“What does he want?” Kaiba said, nonplussed.

“A hug,” Jounouchi answered. When Kaiba shot him a death glare, he put his hands up. “No, really. I’m not fuckin’ with you. Eri and I figured it out yesterday.”

“And what if I don’t?” Kaiba snapped.

“He’s gonna start headbutting you,” Eri said with a shrug. “Oh, look, there he goes.”

Yuugi lifted his head minutely from Kaiba’s shoulder, and then let it drop again.

“Why does he want a hug?” Kaiba demanded, glaring down at him as if he could unravel the mysteries of Yuugi’s mind by boring a hole in Yuugi’s skull with his eyes.

“The Twilight Realm is super fucking weird,” Eri said. “You can’t feel anything at all. It’s like floating in water that’s your exact body temperature. When you come back, it’s just...kinda nice to feel something warm and solid. Grounding. You know?”

Kaiba let out an aggrieved sigh and gingerly put an arm around Yuugi. Yuugi promptly slumped over into Kaiba’s chest with a contented little hum.

“C’mere, you,” Jounouchi said, pulling Eri into a firm hug of his own. “Bet you needed one too, huh,” he murmured into her ear. “Still feeling a bit out of it?”

“Maybe,” Eri admitted quietly. The combination of a shadow bolt to the chest anda journey through the Twilight Realm had left her feeling not quite herself. “Don’t tell Kaiba-kun, or he’ll never let me out of here.”

Jounouchi chuckled. “I’m not letting you climb either until the arm’s all the way healed. Tough luck, kid.”

Anyways, he needed the hug too. Anything to stave off the feeling of vague terror that had constantly dogged the edge of his mind since the battle.

They passed the next few days like that, with Jounouchi making occasional forays to the surface and returning with food, herbs and fresh water. It was almost impossible to tell how much time was passing. The inside of the Shrine remained unchanging, with constant artificial daylight pouring in from the high ceilings above. So they marked time in milestones instead; like when Anzu finally became lucid enough to hold a conversation, and when Honda was finally able to stomach a bit of broth. Then Yuugi’s first word in days - “Please,” as he gestured towards an apple Eri was holding, which he had been staring at for ten minutes.

Eventually things got so tedious that Eri, Jounouchi and Kaiba even ran out of arguments amongst the three of them, which had been their primary form of amusement. Jounouchi didn’t know if he liked that better for the peace and quiet, or worse, because it was unnerving.

“What are you doing,” Kaiba said flatly, turning to look at Eri.

Eri was sitting cross-legged on the vacant pedestal at the back of the antechamber with her eyes closed, her hands held out in front of her, forming a triangle shape with her fingers. “Trying to achieve enlightenment,” she said in a monotone, without opening her eyes.

Kaiba couldn’t help himself - he snorted out a laugh. That surprised Jounouchi so much that he started laughing too, and then Eri was knocked off her path to enlightenment by a rather un-monk-like giggle fit.

“Oh, don’t,” Anzu said, starting to laugh too, even though it made her wince in pain. “Ow, ow, ow.”

Later that evening, after another dose of healing elixir, Honda let out his first utterance since the battle. “Fuuuuuuuck,” he groaned, struggling to sit up.

“Honda-kun!” Eri squealed, grabbing his hand. “You’re talking!”

“’s Jou okay?” Honda grunted.

“Right here, pal,” Jounouchi said, unable to stop the tears that were rapidly escaping down his cheeks. “You saved me. Not a scratch on me.”

“Good,” Honda sighed.

“Honda, man,” Jounouchi said, taking Honda’s other hand in both of his. “Thank-”

“Piss...piss off w’ that,” Honda cut him off.

“Okay,” Jounouchi sniffled.

“Anzu?” Honda asked, casting around until his eyes fell on her.

“Hey,” she replied, waving at him from her bedroll. “You scared the hell out of me, Honda.”

“You-” Honda narrowed his eyes. “You took...my...”

“I had to,” Anzu said gently. “It’s okay. I’ll be fine. I promise.”

“Not okay,” Honda said, with a surprising amount of force. “Don’t ever do that...again.”

Kaiba was staring back and forth between them, something obviously crystallizing in his mind. “I fucking knew it,” he said.

“Knew what?” Jounouchi demanded.

“I saw Honda take that exact hit from the edge of his own shield, and later there wasn’t a trace of it. She found a way to...I don’t know, literally take a wound in Honda’s place.” Kaiba turned the full force of his glare on Anzu. “Didn’t you?”

Anzu nodded calmly. “I did.”

“You want to explain yourself?” Kaiba said angrily. “How did you do it, and why the hell did you think it would be a good idea?”

Anzu had known Kaiba for a very long time, and was at this point generally immune to his interrogations. She thought for a moment about how she wanted to phrase it, unaffected by the increasing ferocity of his gaze.

“I heard a voice,” she said. “It wasn’t Hylia, but it was definitely some kind of divinity. It told me how. Sacrifice is the ultimate skill of a healer. That’s why elixirs won’t work on it - it has to be a real sacrifice, something that isn’t easily reversible. That’s how the fairies work, you know? It’s the most extreme form. A life for a life.”

“Holy shit,” Eri said, her face pale as a sheet. “Anzu-chan - why-”

“It was the only way,” Anzu defended.

“Fuck,” Jounouchi swore. “Anzu. Please promise us you’re never gonna do that again. Promise.”

“No,” Anzu said, so sharply that everyone closed their mouths abruptly and fell into silence. “Listen to me, all of you. It’s not a decision I took lightly. I have to watch you all throw yourselves into deadly combat, and you all make dangerous decisions in the heat of battle. And I don’t complain about it, even when I’m fixing you up in the aftermath...” She stopped, and fixed Jounouchi with a hard gaze. “And in some cases, seeing up close just how dangerous those decisions were. I don’t complain because I trust you all to do your jobs as best you can. Healing is my job, and I need you all to trust me, even if there are risks. Can you do that for me?”

“Of course,” Eri said, recovering quickly. “Of course we can.”

“You can’t talk,” Kaiba said loudly, clearly not having calmed down in the slightest. “You - you summoned a shadow portal with that fucking ocarina, and then just threw yourself in headfirst - you don’t get to talk about making good decisions-”

“For fuck’s sakes, Kaiba,” Jounouchi cut in. “Yuugi shattered his own mind to protect the rest of us, Honda chucked himself in front of me, and don’t think I didn’t notice you literally slide under a laser and tackle one of the damn things to save Yuugi. Welcome to the self-sacrificing idiots club, membership: all of us. Now quit yelling at people about it and accept that you’re just as dumb as everyone else here.”

Kaiba opened and closed his mouth a few times, his face still furious.

“S’okay, man,” Honda rasped, reaching up to pat Kaiba on the arm. “We know you care.”

Kaiba looked like he had words to say about that, very angry words indeed, but Yuugi chose that moment to shuffle over and drop down next to Kaiba, resting his head on the latter’s arm with a small garbled murmur.

“God damn it,” Kaiba said, putting a hand over his face and letting out a long, heavy sigh.

They finally emerged from the Tutsuwa Nima Shrine and into the bright morning sun nearly a week after they’d gone underground, broken and battered and in some cases barely walking, but alive.

“Congratulations from me would ring most hollow after what you have endured,” Hylia said as they entered the water of her Spring, her voice susurrating around them whisper-light, like ripples in a still pond. “So I will refrain. I shall grant you one last gift instead.”

The waters around them began to glow with a shimmering gold.

“Hey, Hylia,” Honda said, as he felt the last of the burns and fractures knit back into perfect newness. “Leave me with a cool scar or two, would you?”

Hylia didn’t answer; he felt rather than heard her laughter in the splashing of the water at the base of the waterfalls that fed the Spring. In the end she left him with just one - the wound that had been taken from him, returned as a mark across his torso to remind him forever just how loved he was.

Chapter Text

Chapter Sixteen: Leap of Faith

Kaiba Seto was on a mission. In the grand scheme of things it was nothing compared to the test they’d just faced. Absolutely nothing. And yet he’d been procrastinating on it for days and felt a combination of dread, annoyance and nervousness whenever he thought about it.

Asking one of those idiots for a very simple favour should not have been this hard, but this was the thing: Kaiba Seto did not ask for favours. He did what he wanted, with or without anyone’s help, consequences be damned. On the rare occasion he managed to get himself indebted to someone it wasn’t by his own choice, and he always went to great lengths to get himself out of said debt immediately.

He considered every angle carefully, including just doing it himself, but there was a potential for disaster there that he couldn’t ignore; and so he had to find Eri, and talk to her, and somehow not completely humiliate himself.

Unfortunately, tracking that damnable woman down and getting her alone for a few minutes proved to be absurdly challenging. Eri had exactly two modes: smack in the middle of the action, or fucking vanished. She’d be laughing and playing stupid wrestling games with Honda and Jounouchi one second and then completely gone the next.

“Where’s Eri?” he asked Anzu crossly, after yet another unsuccessful attempt to locate her.

“Oh, probably hunting, or looking for mushrooms, or climbing something,” Anzu said, seemingly unconcerned. “Why?”

Kaiba frowned. “I know she was there when we made the rule about only going off in pairs.”

“Eri’s usually pretty close by,” Anzu said with a shrug. “She just needs a lot of time alone to function. You of all people should understand that, Kaiba-kun.”

“Whatever,” Kaiba said. “How do I find her?”

“Kaiba-kun,” Anzu sighed. “She didn’t mean to drop the Slate. Please tell me you’re not going to give her hell about it.”

Kaiba had not known that Eri had dropped the Sheikah Slate, but that was as good a cover story as any. “I won’t,” he snapped, feeling real irritation at Eri’s carelessness that probably made him more convincing. “I just want to check it over for damage. She has it right now, doesn’t she?”

Anzu studied him critically for a moment. “Okay,” she said. “She’s trying to find a certain species of river snail for the Compendium, so I guess the stream a little bit west of here would be a good bet. Promise me you’re not going to yell at her.”

“I just said I won’t!” Kaiba threw up his hands. “Why does everyone always think I’m going to yell at her?”

Anzu declined to answer that, raising her eyebrow instead. Kaiba rolled his eyes and set off for the stream.

Eri was indeed there, but she wasn’t hunting snails. She was lying on her back on the bank, quietly playing her ocarina. The sound was nearly obscured by the flowing water, but it was a complex, wistful little melody, nothing like any of the other ones she’d played.

“Morin.”

Eri lowered the ocarina from her lips but didn’t look up at him. “What’s up, Kaiba-kun?”

Kaiba grimaced, and folded his arms. Why was this so hard? It wasn’t an unreasonable request, nor particularly embarrassing. “I need to ask a favour,” he admitted reluctantly.

“You got it,” Eri said.

Kaiba frowned and nudged her roughly with the toe of his boot. “Don’t just agree before you know what I’m asking for.”

Eri pulled herself into a sitting position, cross-legged, and stared up at him. “You are so unbelievably difficult. Has anyone ever told you that?”

“You, all the time.”

“Tell me what you want so I can agree to it,” Eri sighed.

Kaiba felt that she’d entirely missed the point of his comment, which was to hear someone out before deciding whether you wanted to help them, but he pressed on nonetheless. “There was...something you did for Honda,” he said, gesturing towards his head. “I want the same.”

“What?” Eri said, nonplussed. “You want me to check in your ears because you’re paranoid and convinced yourself a spider went in there?”

Kaiba could have gone his whole life without that particular window of insight into Eri and Honda’s relationship. “No,” he said, frustrated. He ran a hand through his hair, trying to figure out how to phrase it.

“Oh!” Eri said, watching the gesture. “You want a haircut.”

“Yes,” Kaiba muttered, suddenly regretting the whole thing. “It’s getting in my eyes all the time.”

“Okay,” Eri said. She seemed completely unfazed. “Sit down.”

“What, now?”

“My appointment calendar is filled for the next month,” Eri said dryly. “Talk to the receptionist if you want a different timeslot.”

Kaiba sighed and sat down where she was pointing. “Thank you,” he said begrudgingly.

“Don’t thank me until after you see it,” Eri teased. She sat on the rock behind him and started rummaging through her bag for her shears.

“That song you were playing. What does it do?” Kaiba said, after she’d been working on his hair for a few minutes.

“Nothing,” Eri laughed. “It’s Bach.”

“It was nice,” Kaiba admitted gruffly. “I didn’t know you liked that kind of music.”

“If you don’t like Bach they kick you out of music school,” Eri deadpanned.

“Hn,” Kaiba said.

“I’m kidding!” Eri said. “You don’t have to like Bach, you just have to suck it up and play a lot of Bach-”

“So you’re a musician,” Kaiba mused, cutting her off. He vaguely recalled Anzu mentioning a long time ago that they’d met at Juilliard. “I suppose that’s how you went from horrible to tolerable so fast on that infernal hunk of clay.”

“Oh my god,” Eri said dramatically, “a compliment from Kaiba-sama, someone please catch me before I faint-”

“What’s the point in going to a world-renowned music school if you’re just going to do a masters degree in something else?” Kaiba interrupted again.

“I don’t play anymore,” Eri said simply, in a tone that suggested she didn’t care to elaborate.

“Hn,” Kaiba said again, “well, why not? If you’re going to invest that much time into learning an instrument-”

“I can’t believe it. You, advocating someone pursue further arts education? You haven’t even broken out in hives yet,” Eri mock-gasped. “Hey. Maybe you’re just so cranky all the time because the hair in your eyes is annoying you. You think after this haircut you’ll mellow out a bit?”

“No,” Kaiba denied, glowering at the river ahead of him. Although, as much as he hated to admit it, he did feel a little more relaxed - whatever she was doing to his hair felt kind of nice, and it was a relief not to have it hanging all over the place.

“Worth a try, ne?” Eri started to work on the front section. “I’m going to cut it a little shorter than you’re used to, so that you can go longer between cuts. Don’t worry, it’ll still look good.”

Kaiba snorted. “I don’t care if it looks good, I care if it’s out of my face.”

“You say that now,” Eri said ominously. “Oh - oops.”

“What’s ‘oops’?” Kaiba snapped. “Hey. What did you do?”

Eri burst out laughing. “Nothing. Just demonstrating that you’re full of shit when you say you don’t care if it looks good.”

“You’re an asshole,” Kaiba said grumpily.

“Ah, such a touching compliment from the king of all assholes,” Eri sighed dreamily. A couple more snips, and then she aggressively mussed Kaiba’s hair. “Done!”

“Stop that,” Kaiba muttered, smoothing his hair back down into place. Eri ignored him, turning his head this way and that to admire her handiwork.

“Amazing,” she said. “I should forget doing a masters in anything and open a hair salon. Let’s go show everyone!”

“Absolutely not,” Kaiba said, but it was too late. She was already on her feet and marching back towards camp, yelling: “Hey, everyone! Check this out!”

Kaiba followed her reluctantly, knowing the longer he put it off the bigger of a deal the geek patrol would make about the whole thing.

“Woah,” Honda said, when Kaiba emerged from the trees. Eri was striking an obnoxious victory pose that kind of made Kaiba want to kill her.

“What?” Kaiba muttered, taking a seat next to Yuugi, whom he hoped would at least make a token attempt to calm his idiot friends down.

“You’re seeing this, right?” Honda said to Jounouchi.

“Yeah, man,” Jounouchi agreed, squinting. “Dude. Kaiba’s hot.”

“You did such a good job, Eri-chan!” Anzu said, clapping. “He looks like a model!”

“Thank you, thank you,” Eri said, with an exaggerated bow that made Kaiba want to kill her even more. He wondered idly if anyone would notice if he tripped her. Probably.

“You look great, Kaiba-kun,” Yuugi said, with a beaming smile.

Kaiba grunted and flipped up the hood of his cloak, hoping to ward off any further nonsense.

“Ah, I see,” Yuugi laughed. “Okay, okay, we’ll leave you alone.”

“No we won’t,” Eri argued. “Friends have got to pump each other up. Everyone needs a hype man!” She said the words ‘hype man’ in English, likely for lack of a Japanese equivalent.

“What the fuck is a ‘hype man’?” Kaiba said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “What are you talking about?”

“You know,” Eri said. “Like, guys who follow you around yelling about how great you are. Celebrities have them. Wait, what am I talking about, you probably have them!”

“I do not, and that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“We’re getting off topic,” Jounouchi cut in. “The important thing is that Kaiba’s got to keep that haircut for the rest of his life because it’s smokin’. Right? Right?”

“Yeah!” Honda said, pumping his fist.

Kaiba would never admit this verbally, and in fact the thought lived in a very deep and dark part of him that he hoped would never see the light of day, but there was a tiny little spark of something in his chest - something that liked being complimented by his friends.

“All right, Kaiba-kun,” Yuugi said magnanimously. “We’ll take your suggestion into consideration.”

“Will we, though?” Honda mused, taking a bite of his baked apple.

“Yes,” Yuugi insisted. “That’s the whole point of these meetings!”

Honda shrugged. “It just seems like a dick-waving competition. Think about it. A bunch of dudes getting together to compare-”

“Oh my god,” Anzu groaned, putting a hand over her face.

“No, he’s right,” Eri said cheerfully. “There’s absolutely some phallic imagery there.”

“For fuck’s sakes, you morons,” Kaiba interjected. “A weekly weapons inspection is practical. And you’re included, stupid, so keep your disgusting comments to yourself,” he added, reaching over to smack the back of Eri’s head.

“Ow.”

“I don’t need you inspecting my weapon,” Honda said with a shit-eating grin, waggling his eyebrows. “I’m perfectly capable of inspecting it myself.”

Kaiba sighed in a particularly long-suffering way and looked at Jounouchi, waiting for the inevitable dogpile that would send any chance of a productive meeting straight to hell.

“Um...Jounouchi-kun?” Eri said after a moment, poking his knee. “You’re really not gonna get in on this?”

“Huh? Wha?” Jounouchi blinked. “What’re we talking about?”

“Weekly weapons inspection,” Kaiba said, before Honda could jump in with another joke. “To make sure the lot of you aren’t slacking on weapon care and maintenance.” He eyed Jounouchi’s axe pointedly.

“Oh, yeah, sure,” Jounouchi said distractedly. “Sounds like a good idea.”

There was a brief moment of silence as the group at large exchanged alarmed glances, even Kaiba.

“Jou,” Yuugi ventured hesitantly, “are you okay?”

“Uh...” Jounouchi reached up and scratched the back of his head. “Something I wanted to bring up, actually...sorry, didn’t get around to adding it to the agenda...”

“That’s okay,” Anzu said. “What is it?”

Jounouchi wordlessly reached into his bag and pulled something out, which he laid in the grass in the centre of their little circle.

The Fierce Deity’s Mask.

“See, the thing is...” Jounouchi said slowly. “I, uh, decided to leave it behind. In the Shrine. I thought it’d be safe there, you know, ‘cause not just anyone can go in. And then this morning I reached into my pouch, and...”

“Magical artefacts have a way of finding their owners,” Yuugi said, reaching out to poke it with a frown.

“What?” Eri said, nonplussed. “So it’s like how in Lord of the Rings, the One Ring sort of had a will of its own?”

Yuugi had been thinking of a different Ring (and Spirit within) finding its way back to its owner after multiple attempts to dispose of it, but the analogy worked well enough that he nodded in agreement. “Something like that.”

“Why did you leave it there?” Kaiba questioned, a look of clear disapproval on his face.

Jounouchi shrugged morosely, pulling his knees in towards his chest and resting his chin on them. He hadn’t attempted to explain to anyone what had gone on in his head while he’d been wearing the mask, partly because he didn’t think he could even find words for it, and partly because the one thing he did remember was that he’d come terrifyingly close to hurting Anzu.

“It’s too dangerous,” he said simply. “Not worth it.”

“You can’t unilaterally make that decision for the group,” Kaiba argued. “It won us the battle in the end, didn’t it? Everyone would have been killed if you hadn’t used it. What’s more dangerous than that?”

“Me being the one to kill all of you,” Jounouchi said sharply, rising to the bait despite himself. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, Kaiba.”

“Of course I don’t, because you won’t give us any details,” Kaiba snapped. “I highly doubt we were in any danger. With most of us completely incapacitated at the time, you could’ve made short work of us if you’d really wanted to.”

“It wasn’t me who wanted to!” Jounouchi exploded, slamming his fist into the ground next to his feet. “It was him! And I was barely able to stop him. Anzu-”

“Him?” Kaiba cut Jounouchi off. “The Fierce Deity?”

“Yes,” Jounouchi muttered.

“Well, you fought him off just fine, and now you know what to expect for next time.”

“Jesus Christ,” Honda said. “Too far, Kaiba. You can’t just offer up Jou like a human sacrifice to that thing. We can find other ways to win fights.”

“No one said anything about a human sacrifice,” Kaiba protested, annoyed. “Don’t be dramatic.”

“Don’t be an unfeeling asshole,” Honda shot back, putting a protective arm around Jounouchi’s shoulder. “You have no idea what he went through.”

“Neither do you,” Kaiba said. “We were both unconscious. Only those two know.” He gestured at Jounouchi and Anzu.`

“Do you really have to interrogate us about it?” Anzu burst out, throwing her hands up. “Can’t you just trust us that it was a really horrible thing that neither of us wants to relive, and leave it alone?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Kaiba said acidly. “I forgot that everything has to be framed in Yuugi-approved language before you idiots will listen. Let me try again. Shouldn’t friends always be honest and share everything so that we can help each other?”

Yuugi’s face fell. “Hey,” Eri warned, taking Yuugi’s hand and squeezing it. “Uncalled for.”

Kaiba glanced at Yuugi, and a flicker of something that may have been regret crossed his face. He abruptly brushed it off and doubled down. “Well, the mask obviously isn’t going away. We can’t just avoid it forever.”

“We can,” Yuugi said resolutely, recovering quickly from his hurt. “Just because Jounouchi-kun has the mask doesn’t mean he’s obligated to use it. It’s dangerous. We escaped the consequences this time, but we might not be so lucky next time. We’re retiring it for now and that’s final.”

“But-”

“Would you stop? ” Honda interrupted. “You’re just pissed because you’re the only person who hasn’t figured out their item.”

Kaiba rolled his eyes. “I have figured it out. It’s an Ancient Hylian grammatical text. I’m sorry it’s not useful in combat. If you’d like I can try bludgeoning something to death with it next time we fight.”

“Enough,” Yuugi said, so firmly that both of them shut up and continued their glaring in silence. “This subject is closed. Next agenda item.”

“Um...that’s it for the agenda, actually,” Anzu said, peering at the Sheikah Slate. She sighed. “I’m going to regret asking, but...other business?”

“Yes,” Kaiba said immediately. “On the topic of magical artefacts-”

“Kaiba-kun,” Yuugi warned, as Honda let out a long, exaggerated groan.

“Not the mask,” Kaiba interrupted in exasperation. “The ocarina.”

Eri blinked. “Huh? What about it?”

Kaiba rolled his eyes. “You summoned a shadow portal,” he said impatiently. “Were we all just going to let that go unaddressed, or...?”

“Hate to say it, but he has a point,” Jounouchi agreed reluctantly. “I remember we talked about it a little back at the Shrine, but we were kinda...distracted,” he gestured vaguely. “I still don’t feel like I really get it.”

“I don’t either,” Eri shrugged. “I’d tried playing the Nocturne of Shadow before, and it didn’t work. But when Midna was trying to tell me how to get to the Twilight Realm, and she pointed at her shadow then at mine, something clicked. It felt like I needed to play it, and I was pretty intent on getting to the Twilight Realm, and everything just kind of lined up.”

“Well, that is how magic works,” Yuugi said thoughtfully. “You need to be really focused on the outcome and how you want to achieve it.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Eri said. “I’ve been playing the songs thinking about the outcome they would have had in the Hyrule of thousands of years ago, not the Hyrule of today. I don’t even know what they’re capable of in the present.”

“Have you tried the Nocturne again?” Anzu questioned.

“Not yet,” Eri said.

Kaiba couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but something about her tone made him sit up and pay attention. He narrowed his eyes and studied her expression carefully as Anzu asked a few more questions about other songs in her repertoire.

Suddenly Eri met his eyes and then made a face. “What are you looking at, huh?”

“Nothing,” Kaiba said evenly.

They made excellent time hiking back through Akkala. Instead of crossing the Akkala Span and making their way back down Ternio Trail, Yuugi studied the Sheikah Slate’s topographical map carefully and came up with the clever idea of a series of paraglides - first over Cephla Lake, landing at the Foothill Stable, and then down into Trilby Valley. This would not only save them days of travel but would also throw off any Yiga who might be able to deduce their trajectory towards Hyrule Castle.

“We’re gonna stop at the Foothill Stable for a day or two, right?” Honda moaned, as they trudged through the rain towards their first takeoff point.

“Don’t be such a child,” Kaiba snapped. “We were already held up for days in that godforsaken Shrine. What on earth do you want more leisure time for?”

“Healing from near-death injuries isn’t leisure time, you colossal dickweed,” Jounouchi said. “And if any of us deserves a break, it’s Honda.”

Kaiba frowned in the way they all knew meant something was actually getting through his thick, stubborn head. “Hn,” he grunted. It was his affirmative grunt, which was hard to tell from his dismissive grunt, but everyone was reasonably fluent in Kaiba-ese by this point.

“Yay!” Anzu cheered. “It feels like it’s been raining for days. I can’t wait to spend some time in front of an actual fire!”

“I just want bread,” Eri sighed. “That’s all I can think about.”

“You carb monster,” Jounouchi teased, slinging an arm around her. “No wonder you’ve been so gloomy lately. Too much protein.”

“Uh huh,” Eri said, nodding miserably. “I hate protein.”

“What, like, all protein?” Honda said. “Chicken wings are protein. I’ve seen you eat scary amounts of barbeque hot wings. And what about hamburgers, huh?”

“Depends on the hamburger,” Yuugi said thoughtfully. “At Burger World the patties were pretty good, but somewhere like McDonald’s you’re barely getting any meat.”

“Please stop talking about hamburgers,” Anzu wailed. “I’d kill someone for a hamburger.”

“Me too,” Jounouchi agreed fervently. “Like, no hesitation. If someone said, ‘I’ll give you a hamburger but you have to push a little old lady down a hill,’ I’d do it.”

“Me three.” Honda nodded. “Yuugi. Don’t lie. You’d kill someone for a hamburger.”

Yuugi looked torn. Finally, he said, “Depends on the hamburger...”

“Meat fiends!” Eri said, pinching Honda in the side. “You’re all meat fiends!”

“Carb monster!” he cried back, putting her in a headlock.

Kaiba sighed and started to quicken his pace. When they got all hyped up like this he was just as like as not to get caught in the crossfire of their idiocy.

“I feel like Kaiba-kun probably wouldn’t kill someone for a hamburger,” Anzu pondered.

Too late. He’d lost his chance to escape. “Don’t lump me in with the rest of you dumbasses,” he said crossly.

“That’s because Kaiba-kun doesn’t like hamburgers,” Yuugi said. “Or at least, he’s indifferent to them.”

“What does Kaiba like?” Honda asked. Kaiba noticed with great irritation that Honda was actually asking Yuugi, not Kaiba himself. Not like he would’ve answered the question, but it was annoying nonetheless.

Even more annoying was the fact that Yuugi answered immediately and confidently. “Well, of course he likes expensive cuisine, like filet mignon. Something that can be enjoyed with a glass of wine. But as for normal food, Kaiba-kun tends to favour simple, healthy meals, like salads and roasted vegetables with chicken or fish. He also likes traditional Japanese breakfast foods.”

“Amazing, Yuugi!” Anzu said, clapping her hands.

“Not amazing,” Kaiba corrected irately. “How do you know he’s even right about any of it?”

“Well, is he?” Eri said, peering up at him.

Kaiba didn’t answer that, because the answer was deeply vexing and he didn’t want to say it out loud.

“We used to eat together almost every day in the KaibaCorp cafeteria,” Yuugi pointed out, noting Kaiba’s stony expression. “You always had similar things.”

“You eat in the cafeteria with the rest of the peons?” Jounouchi raised an eyebrow in disbelief.

“It’s good for the employees to see the CEO eating with everyone else,” Yuugi explained. “It makes him seem more approachable.”

“Um...does it?” Anzu said, nonplussed.

That had been part of an extensive strategy designed by a team of organizational psychologists Kaiba had hired years back to address what he felt were productivity issues in his company. He had been informed that any real or perceived productivity issues likely stemmed from the more pressing company morale issue, which apparently had something to do with the CEO being ‘intimidating,’ ‘terrifying,’ ‘completely unreadable’ and a host of other dramatic adjectives. Kaiba privately shared Anzu’s skepticism on the efficacy of the whole thing, but he’d paid enough for the organizational review that he wasn’t going to question it openly.

Luckily, the idiot brigade had already moved on from dissecting his dietary habits. “Do me next, Yuugi!” Jounouchi cried.

“Okay,” Yuugi said happily. “Jounouchi-kun likes most types of foods and is a huge glutton.” Jounouchi nodded proudly. “But you don’t really eat a lot of sweet things, instead preferring salty snacks like chips. And your favourite food of all is...curry rice!”

“He’s right,” Jounouchi said, throwing his arms up with a cheer. “Curry rice!”

Paragliding in the rain was undoubtedly shitty, but the warm cosy Stable waiting for them was more than enough to make up for it. They trooped in, soggy and chilled to the bone, and paid the stablemaster Ozunda for one night up front.

“Three beds free, so we’ll all have to share,” Anzu said. “Kaiba-kun and Yuugi together, of course...” Kaiba had finally come around and resigned himself to sharing a bed with someone rather than sleeping on floors for the duration of their time in Hyrule, but Yuugi was the only one he’d tolerate.

“Wanna go for round two of trying to kill each other in our sleep?” Jounouchi said, ruffling Eri’s hair fondly.

“Nah,” Eri said. “I was thinking I’d take the floor tonight.”

“What?” Honda said. He grabbed both sides of her head in his hands. “You’re turning down a chance to sleep in an actual bed? What is wrong with you?” He squished her cheeks in. “Did you get possessed by a ghost? Does Anzu have to exorcise you?”

“Nooo,” Eri said, muffled by Honda squishing her face. She tried futilely to pry his hands off. “I just want space to move around for once without killing anyone! Let me go!”

“Leave her alone, Honda,” Anzu said sternly. “Jou!” she scolded, whirling around. “Don’t strip here!”

“But my clothes are wet and there ain’t anywhere to change,” Jounouchi said, continuing to remove his undershirt, oblivious to the Stablemaster’s teenage daughter watching wide-eyed from the table in the corner.

“Go behind the bed, stupid. Get Honda to stand in front of you.”

“Why? We’re all friends here.”

“There are other people in this building who didn’t consent to seeing you naked, dummy-”

“Yeesh, fine, Honda, come be my modesty shield-”

“Don’t wanna, I didn’t consent to that!”

“I’ll do it!”

“No offense, Yuugi, but you’re not really tall enough to block anyone’s view...”

At the point where Yuugi got on Eri’s shoulders to make a precarious and unbelievably stupid attempt at shielding whatever remained of Jounouchi’s virtue, Kaiba gave up any dreams of a peaceful evening and promptly went to bed. He pulled the covers over his head with a long, exhausted sigh.

It was decided that they would remain another day at the Stable. Their gear needed to be maintained, they needed to stock up on elixirs and other things that would take time to procure, and it was also the last Stable they would encounter before storming Hyrule Castle.

“Let’s get some mending done, Kaiba-kun,” Anzu said, in that tone he knew meant she wasn’t going to take ‘no’ for an answer and would just keep very nicely asking him until he agreed out of sheer fatigue.

Dressed in comfortable spare clothing, Kaiba and Anzu took their tunics and robes to a shady patch of grass beside a tall rugged pine and set to work as everyone else dispersed. Honda and Yuugi found a nice open space to spar in, Jounouchi traipsed off into the woods, and Eri set out to collect bugs and frogs for elixirs.

“I heard from Ozunda that it’s frog-hatching season down by the lake,” Anzu said. “Are you sure you don’t want to go there?”

“It’s a little far, isn’t it?” Eri said with a frown. “It’s okay, I’ll just stay close. There must be some up here.”

Kaiba raised an eyebrow. “Are you sick? Since when do you not want to go out of your way to find slimy things?”

Eri made a face at him and then disappeared into a patch of tall grass.

Despite often having to be basically bullied into it, Kaiba found spending time with Anzu to be quite tolerable these days, and she felt the same way about him. They’d both mellowed out quite a bit since their teenage years - but they’d also both learned to accept things about the other that were essentially a given. For example, Kaiba would never stop responding to Anzu’s overtures of friendship like the human equivalent of a cactus, and Anzu would keep right on trying just the same.

However, the basis of any good friendship was compromise. Since Kaiba was frankly terrible at it, Anzu knew she’d always have to take the lead in that particular area. She had noticed in recent weeks, with no small amount of surprise, that Kaiba and Eri could in fact spend more than three minutes in each other’s company without devolving into an argument. The secret ingredient seemed to be total silence. If that was what it took to make Kaiba comfortable while hanging out with her, Anzu was happy to try it.

So they quietly set to work on their sewing. Anzu hated sewing with an unholy passion. She would have much preferred to have someone to chat with to take her mind off it. But through years of being Eri’s friend, Anzu had learned the art of being at peace without talking; enjoying the sounds of birds chirping and the wind rustling through the trees, and appreciating how nice it was to share that with a friend.

Of course, with this group, silence was often a fleeting thing.

“Anzu-chan!” Eri yelled. “Ne, Acchan.”

“What,” Anzu yelled back.

“This kinda looks like something we shouldn’t eat, right?” Eri was waving something bright and multi-coloured in their direction. Anzu squinted. Upon closer inspection she could see that it was a very large frog, a type they’d never seen before.

“Don’t risk it,” she called. “It looks poisonous.”

A few minutes later, Jounouchi wandered over. He flopped down without a word and put his head in Anzu’s lap.

“Hi,” he said.

“What did you do?” Anzu asked patiently, not looking up from her sewing.

“Uhhhh...” Jounouchi laughed sheepishly. “Kinda...wasn’t paying attention while chopping wood, and...” he pulled back his bracer, to reveal a sizeable cut. The bleeding was mostly stemmed but it looked painful.

“Jou,” Anzu scolded. She put her tunic aside and laid her hands on his arm, the pale shimmering blue of her magic welling forth easily.

Jounouchi narrowed his eyes at Kaiba. “I can read your mind, jerk. I wasn’t using my war axe to cut trees, so fuckin’ save it.”

Kaiba smirked. “I never doubted you.”

Jounouchi flipped him off, but he was laughing. A few minutes later his arm was practically good as new.

“Thanks,” he said, squeezing Anzu’s hand. “I owe you one.”

“You owe me about six million!” Anzu yelled after him as he ambled off. She picked her sewing back up. “Oh, shoot, I lost my place.”

Kaiba pointed silently at the spot where she’d left off.

“Thanks, Kaiba-kun,” Anzu said brightly. He shrugged and continued with his own mending.

They hadn’t been back at it for more than fifteen minutes when Yuugi popped up out of absolutely fucking nowhere.

“Ow,” Kaiba said flatly, having accidentally stabbed himself with a sewing needle in surprise.

“Sorry, Kaiba-kun,” Yuugi apologized. “Anzu, do you have a second?”

“Sure, Yuugi,” Anzu said, with only a brief wistful glance at her tunic, which at this rate would never get mended.

“We need another opinion,” Honda called from behind them, jogging to catch up with Yuugi. “Dude, slow down and quit doing that weird shadow-hopping thing.”

“I’m practising,” Yuugi pouted.

“You don’t need any more practice. You’re fast and creepy as hell.”

“What can I do for you two?” Anzu interrupted, not unkindly.

“So I found a way to make my shadow spear last longer,” Yuugi said, then did that bizarre thing where he sort of very briefly phased into the Twilight Realm but not quite enough to disappear. The effect was rather like they were watching him through a blurry, cracked window. When his image sharpened back up he was holding said shadow spear. “Honda-kun’s been teaching me some of the moves he uses with his halberd.”

Kaiba reached over, took Anzu’s tunic and picked up the mending where she’d left off, having finished with his own.

“Yeah,” Honda continued, “and the problem is, I think holding something that’s magic and doesn’t weigh anything is kinda throwing off his form. Wanna watch for a second and see what I mean?”

Anzu watched Yuugi do a thrust with the spear. “Oh, yeah, I see it,” she said thoughtfully. “Your center of gravity is off. Try planting your feet - mmhm, a bit further apart - then use your own momentum, move from the shoulder, not the elbow-”

“Nice,” Honda said appreciatively.

“That feels better,” Yuugi admitted. “Dancers are amazing, ne, Honda-kun?”

“Hell yeah they are. You guys ever gonna let me and Jounouchi join your dance warmups?” Honda threw his arm around Yuugi and roughly mussed his hair as they started back towards the clearing where they’d been sparring.

“Do you not get tired of parenting those idiots?” Kaiba said, handing Anzu’s finished tunic back to her as they watched Honda and Yuugi wander away.

Anzu side-eyed him. “Is that just a mean comment, or are you actually asking?”

“I’m actually asking,” Kaiba said.

“No,” Anzu said. “I like taking care of my friends. It feels nice that they trust me enough to come to me with things.” She peered at Kaiba’s neat, even stitches, which stood in sharp contrast to her own wide and messy ones. “Damn it. You suck. Why do you have to be good at everything?”

Kaiba shrugged. “It’s just a matter of focus.”

“Anyways, they take care of me, too,” Anzu said. “It just looks a little different.”

“Hn,” Kaiba snorted. “Do they now. I find that hard to believe. Yuugi, maybe.”

“Yes, Yuugi is very kind, and thoughtful, and always happy to talk me through anything,” Anzu agreed mildly, not taking the bait. “You know Eri-chan started learning Japanese years before she had even decided to apply to Tohoku?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“She started learning because in her first week of school at Juilliard, she met a terrified international student who was too nervous about her English to even order take-out and basically lived off convenience store food.” Anzu smiled. “That was me, of course. So anyways, one day after morning ballet class I was doing some cooldown stretches, and the student piano accompanist came up to me and said: Ohayou gozaimasu! I was so relieved I cried a little and started talking in Japanese, but then she went totally red and waved her hands and said the only two other sentences she knew at that point, which was I’m sorry my Japanese is very bad, and let’s be friends.”

Kaiba rolled his eyes. “That sounds like Eri.”

“And you know who saved money religiously working at the auto shop, living off cup ramen for months, so that he could afford to fly himself and Jounouchi and Yuugi halfway across the world to watch my very first end-of-semester dance recital?” Anzu continued.

“The only person we know who works in an auto shop?” Kaiba deadpanned, glancing over at Honda.

Anzu laughed. “I didn’t even know they were coming, and they almost missed it because they got so lost on New York public transit.”

Kaiba was curious at this point, despite himself. “And Jounouchi? I suppose he beats up any guy that bothers you?”

“Well, he offers,” Anzu said fondly. “But, no. Jou was the person I cried on the phone to nearly every day of my first three months in New York because I felt so lonely and like I’d never catch up to everyone else. He’d call me and remind me not to practice too hard, and to make sure I was eating breakfast every day.”

“Hm,” Kaiba said. Anzu knew him well enough to read it as surprise.

“Looking after other people comes naturally to Jou, because he’s always protected Shizuka-chan,” Anzu explained. “I think it comes naturally to you too, Kaiba-kun.”

“Where did you get that idea?” Kaiba’s expression was openly nonplussed now.

Anzu put on a deep voice and did her very best Kaiba impression. “Morin, I don’t want to see you touching that sword until you’ve learned how to use it. Jounouchi, don’t use your war axe to chop firewood, you’ll damage it. Mazaki, you suck at sewing so I’m just going to do it for you and do it right.”

“I didn’t say that last one,” Kaiba corrected grumpily.

“You don’t always have to say things out loud for people to understand them, Kaiba-kun,” Anzu said, smiling and patting his arm.

The next glide into Trilby Valley was smooth and pleasant, until they landed directly on top of a camp of bokoblins and then had to awkwardly fight their way out without damaging their paragliders.

“What were these little assholes doing out in the middle of goddamned nowhere?” Jounouchi muttered, wiping the blood off his axe.

“Enjoying their dinner,” Yuugi said sadly. He always felt bad killing bokoblins, especially after he’d learned that they had an adorable habit of dancing around their campfires after a particularly good meal.

“Aw, Yuugi,” Honda said, with a comforting pat on the shoulder. “Don’t feel bad. They started it.”

“We started it by landing on their heads,” Anzu pointed out.

Eri was a little distance off from the rest of the group, crouched down in the grass. She was staring at something.

Kaiba crouched down next to her. “What are you looking at?”

It was a little stump, mostly unremarkable; except for the fact that the surface had been planed smooth, and carved on it was a very distinct leaf.

“You can see this, right?” Eri said, frowning.

He leaned in a little closer to inspect it, then reached out and brushed his hand along the etching. “Yes. Why? What is it?”

“It’s a Korok puzzle.” Eri poked it. Nothing happened. “I thought only Link could see these.”

“What’s a Korok?” Jounouchi said from behind them, peering over Eri’s shoulder.

Anzu popped up next to them. “Isn’t Korok the person who enchanted our pouches?”

“Good memory,” Eri praised. “But it’s not one person. Koroks are little forest spirits. They’re very shy and don’t like to show themselves to just anyone.”

“How is this a puzzle?” Yuugi asked, frowning and crouching down next to Eri and Kaiba to take a closer look. “I don’t understand.”

“Oh, it’s not...” Eri laughed. “No, this isn’t the puzzle. You stand on it and the puzzle appears.”

“Oh!” Yuugi said excitedly. “I want to try!”

Eri smiled. “Don’t get your hopes up. The puzzles are really simple. Koroks just like to play.”

Yuugi nodded and hopped up onto the stump. Nothing happened.

“I guess the Korok isn’t here right now,” Anzu said, disappointed. “Too bad. I really wanted to see it.”

Eri looked around, this way and that. “I don’t understand. Why would it let us see the puzzle but not let us solve it?”

“Maybe we gotta coax ‘em out with an offering,” Honda said, reaching into his pouch. “What do they eat?”

They carefully set an apple and some acorns on the flat surface of the stump, to no avail.

“What else do forest spirits like?” Jounouchi said, shrugging.

“Um...” Eri pondered. “They like games, and treats, and music, and dancing...” Her eyes lit up. “Ah!”

They watched as Eri pulled her ocarina out of her pouch. She raised it to her lips and started to play a cheerful little tune.

“This is a waste of time,” Kaiba complained, even though he privately thought the song was rather catchy. “Let’s just-”

“Ya ha ha!”

A little giggle rang out from just behind his shoulder, clear and sweet as a bell. And then another, and another.

“Oh,” Anzu gasped, her eyes wide.

A Korok was floating near Kaiba’s head, clutching a leaf that spun like a propeller, which kept it floating aloft. Another stood by Jounouchi’s knee, and a third appeared directly in front of Eri. They were tiny, not more than a foot tall each; with bodies made of striped-grain wood, so polished and smooth that it almost didn’t look like wood at all. Each wore a mask made of large leaves with eyeholes clumsily cut in. They were dancing, giggling and bobbing and hopping from foot to foot.

“More, more,” they cried, when Eri finished her song and lowered her ocarina. “We like that song!”

“I thought you might,” Eri said, smiling down at the one in front of her as it clambered boldly into her lap. Its leaf-mask was orange with a yellow streak through the middle.

“Are you here to play with us, mister?” said the one near Jounouchi’s knee, as it tugged on his cuirass. This one was taller and thinner than the others, adorned with a mask of five-pointed maple leaf.

“Play, play,” giggled the one bobbing near Kaiba’s head, the smallest of the lot, wearing a jaunty little clover-shaped leaf.

“We’ll play with you!” Yuugi exclaimed immediately, his eyes shining. “Anything you want.”

“Let’s race!” cried orange-leaf, at the same time maple-leaf yelled “Puzzle!” and clover-leaf chirped, “Dance more!”

“Dibs on racing!” Honda cried.

“I want to do a puzzle,” Yuugi said happily.

“Want to dance together?” Anzu asked clover-leaf, holding out both her hands.

“No,” Kaiba cut in sternly. “We don’t have time to play.”

He was met with so many disappointed faces, human and forest-spirit alike, that he sighed in exasperation and gave up immediately. “An hour,” he conceded, folding his arms. “Then no more delays today.”

“Yeah! You’re the best!” Eri cried, throwing her arms around him with a squeal. Kaiba’s face abruptly turned murderous as he tried to escape.

They played with the Koroks for the full hour and then some, games of tag and chase and puzzles and riddles and of course plenty of music and dancing. By the end everyone was quite exhausted, except for the Koroks, who clearly could have kept playing all day and probably through the night too.

“Fun, fun,” clover-leaf chirped, dancing in circles around Anzu’s legs. “Friends!”

“That’s right,” Anzu said with a beaming grin. “Friends!”

Yuugi was flat on his back, laughing himself to tears as maple-leaf pretended to defeat him with a stick it had found. “Fun!” it cried. “Look! I’m the Sword’s chosen!”

Honda and Jounouchi both had never quite managed to beat orange-leaf in a race, because it had the advantage of being able to fly, but they’d both immensely enjoyed the effort and had even managed to wrangle Kaiba into giving it a shot. “You’re going?” orange-leaf said sadly, bobbing in circles around their heads.

“Yes,” Eri said. “But we’ll always remember all the fun we had together, right?”

“Fun, fun!” the Koroks all giggled together. “Playing with friends is the best!”

“Presents for our friends,” clover-leaf said, gesturing for Yuugi to hold out his hands. Into them it deposited a handful of seeds.

“Thank you,” Yuugi said with a tender smile. “We’ll treasure them forever.”

“Ahh, so cute,” Anzu sighed as they hiked down into the valley.

“I want one,” Honda said. “As a sidekick.”

“So now we know what two of your songs do!” Jounouchi said, clapping Eri on the shoulder. “That’s great.”

“What was that song, anyways?” Yuugi wondered. “It made me feel like I could dance all day.”

Eri grinned. “That’s the effect it has on everyone. It’s called Saria’s Song. It’s from a long time ago, when Koroks called themselves Kokiri.”

“Kokiri?” Anzu said, tilting her head.

“Uh huh,” Eri nodded. “Back then they looked like little kids who never grew up, and each one of them had a fairy guardian.”

“Who cares? Try learning something useful next time,” Kaiba grouched, thumping Eri on the head with his fist. “We don’t need catchy dance songs that summon annoying wooden gremlins.”

“Ow,” Eri said, rubbing her head and glaring up at him. “I can summon shadow portals too. That’s more useful than anything you’ve done with your book.”

“No it’s not,” Kaiba said, “because you should never go into the Twilight Realm. That’s Yuugi’s job, and he doesn’t need your portal.”

“Wow. Who pissed in your Cheerios this morning?”

“What the hell kind of vulgar expression is that?”

Anzu sighed and hung back to walk with the boys, leaving the two of them to their bickering. Kaiba had already been very accommodating today so she supposed it wouldn’t hurt to let him blow off some steam with his second-favourite pastime - arguing.

“I’m glad we got to meet the Koroks before going home,” Yuugi said, grabbing Anzu’s hand in his as they made their way down a tricky bit of terrain.

“Home,” Jounouchi said pensively. “Wow. It’s so weird to think that we’re gonna be home soon.”

Honda frowned, squinting into the distance.

“Hey,” Jounouchi elbowed him. “What’s that face for?”

“Nothing,” Honda said slowly.

“What’s on your mind?” Anzu pressed. “Are you worried about Hyrule Castle?”

Honda thought about that for a moment. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

“Don’t be,” Yuugi comforted him, taking Honda’s hand in his free one. “We already beat Hylia’s test. That means she thinks we’re ready. And we have home to look forward to - we’re so close!”

“You’re right,” Honda said with a smile. “We got this.”

Drawing closer to Central Hyrule came with many different feelings: anticipation, nervousness, and a renewed motivation. Their sparring drills now included defenses against the various creatures they’d encountered, from Lynels to Guardians to the toughest moblins; downtime was often spent practising magic or other assorted skills. Kaiba even relented and taught Eri a few simple defensive moves with her shortsword, on the off-chance she was cornered up close again like in the Tutsuwa Nima Shrine.

Anzu started to feel a very familiar sense of unease as they descended through the Crenel Hills. This time she shared her feelings immediately.

“I think it makes sense,” Eri said pensively, glancing at the enormous outline of the Castle. “Central Hyrule saw the most deaths from the Calamity. There are probably lots of ghosts here.”

“You seeing anything in particular?” Jounouchi asked, unable to keep the note of concern out of his voice.

Anzu shook her head. “No. Just that creepy feeling on the back of my neck.”

“Any weird dreams or anything and you tell us right away,” Honda said, putting an arm around Anzu’s shoulder. “We know how to handle it now, right?”

“Mhm,” Anzu said, with a small smile. “Don’t worry, Honda. It’s not a big deal. I’ll tell you if I see anything.”

Kaiba stared into the flames wordlessly. His expression was schooled into its usual blank slate, but for a very slight conflicted twist at the corner of his lips. Yuugi noticed immediately and was debating whether to say something, but in a very unusual turn of events, Kaiba saved him the trouble.

“I’ve been seeing something,” he said, not looking up from the fire.

Everyone’s heads pivoted towards him immediately, with five matching expressions of shock.

“You...you’ve been seeing something?” Honda sputtered.

“Tell us, Kaiba-kun,” Yuugi encouraged, recovering from his surprise first.

Kaiba sighed and massaged his temples. “It only appears at night, and only at a distance. It doesn’t seem dangerous, but there’s no way to know for sure.”

“What is it?” Anzu pressed gently.

“A golden wolf,” Kaiba replied. “I first saw it two days ago. Just after we met the Koroks. I didn’t say anything because I wasn’t sure what it was.”

“If it is what I think it is...” Eri said, her brow furrowed in thought. “It’s not dangerous. It’s a friend.”

“What do you think it is?” Honda said.

“The Hero’s Shade,” Eri explained. “The spirit of an ancient knight. The Hero’s Shade used to appear to Link to teach him advanced swordsmanship techniques. In Hyrule he appears as a golden wolf. In the Ghostly Ether he appears as something more human-like.”

“Wait, wait, back up,” Jounouchi said. “Ghostly Ether? And what do you mean, human-like?”

“I don’t really know,” Eri said helplessly, waving her hands. “He just used to take Link to another place to train him - some kind of foggy alternate Hyrule - and he’s...um, he’s tall, and mostly made of bones, and he wears armour...”

“Great,” Kaiba muttered. “So I’m being followed by a lich.”

“He’s not a lich,” Eri protested. “He’s Link. An older incarnation. He chose to forego the afterlife to guide newer incarnations of Link on their adventures.” She turned to Anzu. “He’s the same Link from your soldier dream.”

“So he’s good,” Anzu said firmly. “He’s trying to help somehow.”

“Seems like,” Honda shrugged. “You should follow the wolf. See if it takes you somewhere cool.”

“Yeah, maybe you can learn some new moves!” Jounouchi made a slashing motion with an imaginary sword.

“Unbelievable,” Kaiba snapped. “Didn’t you all just give me hell for ‘offering Jounouchi as a human sacrifice’ when I suggested he learn to use his mask? And now you’re all proposing I follow a hallucination to a ghost world and fight the undead.”

“It’s not the same,” Eri argued. “The Fierce Deity’s mask is a very powerful piece of dark magic with unknown origins. I know that the Shade is Link and that he’s here to help.”

“Oh, you know that, do you,” Kaiba said sarcastically. “You know, for someone who’s apparently omniscient in all things to do with Hyrule, you’ve left a lot of questions unanswered. We don’t know what my book does, you’ve barely made any progress with that ocarina, and we still don’t have a clue what’s waiting for us at the end of all this. Forgive me if I don’t always take you at your word.”

“Hey,” Honda cut in sharply. “That’s really unfair. Eri-chan can’t know everything. And when has she been actually wrong about something, rather than just not knowing the answer?”

“She’s been lucky,” Kaiba retorted. He turned to Eri. “You may be willing to throw yourself into all sorts of reckless situations with blind faith in whatever harebrained video-game logic you’re operating on, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us have to.”

Eri held his gaze for a long moment, then let out a little sigh. “I understand. You don’t have to trust me. Decide for yourself.”

Kaiba suddenly felt rather off-kilter. He’d been gearing up for an argument and now it was like he had too much momentum built up, and was about to fall flat on his face. “Fine,” he snapped.

“What’s this really about, Kaiba-kun?” Yuugi asked gently. “No one’s telling you that you have to do anything. We all supported Jounouchi-kun in retiring the Fierce Deity’s Mask, and we’ll all support you if you decide not to meet the Hero’s Shade.”

“I didn’t say I was deciding anything,” Kaiba said flatly. “I need to think about it.”

“Think about it,” Jounouchi said, glaring at him, “but don’t take too long.” He gestured, and their eyes all followed his hand towards Hyrule Castle looming in the distance, an ever-present reminder of just how little time they had.

Later that night, Kaiba was awakened by the sound of soft footsteps moving away from camp. Being a light sleeper had its advantages when it came to detecting approaching enemies, but not so much when one just had friends with too much collective energy to sleep through the fucking night. He rolled over, rubbing his eyes in irritation.

The nerd herd were tucked soundly in their beds, snoring with gusto - except for the girls, whose bedrolls were empty.

Kaiba was torn. On the one hand, if they were out together, they’d probably be fine. On the other hand, if they weren’t fine for whatever reason, Kaiba would now have it on his conscience simply because he’d been unfortunate enough to notice their absence. That thought was so annoying that it forced him the rest of the way into wakefulness. “Ugh,” he grumbled, and pushed his bedcovers off. Little did the girls know that the most dangerous thing out there was yet to come, because he was going to kill them when he found them.

He got up quietly, although he needn’t have bothered - the three idiot musketeers were unwakeable, and Jounouchi’s snoring easily covered any noise he might have made - and set off in the direction he’d heard the footsteps go.

It was easy enough to catch up with Anzu. She wasn’t a particularly fast walker, nor did she have the inclination towards stealth that Yuugi and Eri did. She was alone. Kaiba could have popped out of the shadows and scared the shit out of her to teach her a lesson, but despite himself, he was curious - so he settled in to tail her for a while, see where the hell she thought she was going in the middle of the night.

Anzu walked slowly but deliberately, picking her way through the rocky path down to the Hylia River. Every now and again she’d pause, looking around, and then decide anew on her direction. Soon enough they were at the riverbank, and Kaiba concealed himself behind a large rock outcropping.

“Eri-chan,” Anzu said.

“Oh!” Eri said, sounding startled. “Anzu-chan. What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here?” Anzu asked. “What’s that elixir for?”

“Um, just a warming elixir,” Eri said. “I got kind of cold.”

Kaiba was tempted to jump out from behind the rock and inform Eri that she wouldn’t be cold if she just stayed in her damn bedroll near the fire, but Anzu saved him the trouble. “Why are you out here if it’s cold, then?” she said, in a tone far gentler than Kaiba himself would have used.

There was a long pause. “Just had stuff to think about. I’m really sorry I woke you up, Acchan.”

Kaiba chanced a peek around the edge of the rock. Anzu had sat down at the riverbank next to Eri and put an arm around her. He rolled his eyes. Those dweebs were all so huggy all the time, could none of them have a simple conversation without being literally glued to each other?

“It’s okay,” Anzu said. “I know something’s on your mind. You know how I can tell?”

Eri sighed. “Because I didn’t fight with Kaiba-kun earlier?”

“Mhm,” Anzu said. “How come?”

“I mean...he was right, wasn’t he?” Eri paused. “And I’ve been thinking lately that...even if I know something, maybe it’s not always a good idea to share it. Because what if I am wrong, and it hurts someone?”

“What?” Anzu said, her tone worried. “What do you mean? Where is this coming from?”

Kaiba suddenly became aware that he was blatantly eavesdropping on what was meant to be a private conversation, but matters of basic etiquette had never stopped him before and they wouldn’t stop him now.

“I mean...” Eri’s voice was muffled, as if she were speaking into her hands. “Honda-kun...he asked me about the Mirror Shield, and whether it could deflect a Guardian laser...Lately I’m realizing how much danger I put my friends in by being so careless with the things I say.”

“Ricchan,” Anzu said, with a long sigh. “That’s not your fault. It was Honda’s decision. You should have told me you were feeling that way! Don’t let Kaiba-kun get to you.”

“It wasn’t...it wasn’t what Kaiba-kun said. Actually, Anzu, there’s something else...something I should've told you...”

Eri’s phrasing piqued Kaiba’s interest, but then something much more pressing caught his attention.

It was there. Glowing faintly in the moonlight, sitting on its haunches a mere few metres from the girls. The golden wolf.

“Get away from them,” Kaiba said loudly, stepping out from behind the rock and drawing his sword. The wolf’s hackles raised and it looked directly at him, a rumbling growl emanating from its chest.

“Kaiba-kun?” Anzu burst out angrily. “What are you doing here? Were you eavesdropping?” She and Eri didn’t seem to register the wolf at all, but that didn’t mean they weren’t in danger.

“I need you both to be very quiet,” Kaiba instructed them lowly, “and very still.”

Anzu and Eri glanced at each other, eyes wide. They clutched at each other’s hands as Kaiba advanced, edging between the girls and the wolf. The deep growls had crescendoed into ripping snarls, and the wolf’s teeth were bared. It got to its feet and crouched, ready to spring.

It all happened at once, almost too fast for Kaiba to process. The wolf leapt, and he threw himself in its path, sword aloft. It collided with his chest with so much force that it felt like he’d been knocked back twenty feet, but that wasn’t possible, not by an animal that size-

His vision went dark, and the last thing he heard was the girls crying out in alarm.

Kaiba woke up surrounded by a dim fog. He struggled to his feet, trying to get a read on his surroundings. Hyrule Castle was in the distance, but it was...different, somehow. Bright and gleaming and new, and the only distinguishable thing about the landscape.

Suddenly he heard a clatter behind him, and he whirled around to face it. His sword met another in a resounding clash of steel, and then his opponent parried him so skillfully that he was driven back, stumbling to regain his balance. His opponent lunged and dealt him a blow that should have killed him.

Except...it didn’t hurt. Not really. Landing flat on his back hurt more, and the wound across his torso felt like it might bruise later at most.

A deep, echoing voice spoke, rolling through lilting vowels and soft, clicking consonants that sounded like no speech Kaiba had ever heard before.

And it was true - he hadn’t heard this speech before, but he understood it.

“A sword wields no strength unless the hand that holds it has courage.”

Kaiba pushed himself into a sitting position, glaring up at his attacker.

Eri had described it accurately enough. It was at least seven feet tall, with no flesh to speak of, its moldering armour hanging off bleached-white bones. It was wearing a horned helmet that cast its face into shadow; not that it had much of a face to speak of, just a decayed skeletal grin and sunken eye sockets from which a faint red glow radiated. Vines clung to its pauldrons, bracers, and shield, giving the impression that it had just unearthed itself from a forested grave. It stood over him with its sword pointed directly at his throat.

“You’re Link,” Kaiba said.

It remained silent, gazing at him impassively.

Kaiba thought back to the Book of Mudora, trying to remember how to string a basic sentence together. It came to him more easily than he would’ve imagined, given that he’d only been studying a couple weeks. “You’re Link,” he tried again in Ancient Hylian. “What do you want with me?”

The Hero’s Shade rumbled out a sound that may have been a laugh. “I have not answered to that name in some time,” it said, “but it does the remnants of my soul good to hear it. Well met, Seto.”

“What do you want with me?” Kaiba repeated firmly.

“You may be destined to save our world, and yours,” the Shade said, “but your current level of skill disgraces the sword you wield.”

“I’m not destined for anything,” Kaiba argued. “I’m just trying to get home.”

“For someone with no destiny, you possess an extraordinarily ancient spirit.” The Shade withdrew its blade, letting Kaiba get to his feet unhindered. “Reincarnation is not a gift granted to just any soul.”

Kaiba sighed. “Enough about that damned priest,” he muttered. “What does any of that have to do with Hyrule?”

The Shade watched him for a moment, its head tilted slightly. Kaiba gripped his sword tightly, ready for another attack.

“Destiny is a choice,” it said at last. “And it is time for you to make yours.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You know my story. The story of Link,” the Shade said. “The Hero who was chosen by the Goddesses to embody one aspect of the holy trinity. Again and again he is born, often to a poor family or to no family at all. He is plucked from villages and farms and the wilderness. He is always humble, someone of little status, the kind of child one would not spare a second glance. And somehow this unremarkable boy comes into his power over the course of an epic journey. Again and again he finds the Sacred Sword, and her magic awakens at the touch of her Master. Again and again he reunites with Princess Zelda, each time wielding the ancient sealing magic in tandem to bury the dark beast for another hundred, thousand, ten thousand years.”

The Shade stepped towards him in a way that was just short of menacing. Its voice deepened, reverberating through the foggy vista in a way that somehow sank down through Kaiba’s flesh and into his bones.

“But what of the Links that are never found, and live lives of toiling obscurity? What of the Links that die in their cradles of croup or the pox? The Links that begin their adventure and are slain immediately, found by the enemy’s servants too soon? There are no tales of these Links, no stories, no songs. But they exist, and with each of them a Hyrule doomed to fall, at least until the next Link is born. I myself created such a Hyrule.”

Kaiba felt a sudden sense of unease. “What?”

“We were young,” the Shade said quietly. “So young, although that is a meagre excuse for the mistakes we made. Zelda...she meant only to return to me the childhood that I had lost. She sent me back seven years. In doing so we split the branches of Time itself - and thus her Hyrule was robbed of its Hero, condemning it to be flooded and born anew, while in my Hyrule I roamed with an endless restlessness until my quiet and unacknowledged death.” He sighed. “And in yet another timeline we were both of us defeated, murdered and divested of our pieces of the Golden Power, allowing the Demon King to create a dark, twisted realm that was almost Hyrule’s undoing.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Kaiba demanded, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach.

“Because a choice is ahead of you,” the Shade said. “Hylia plucked you from the streams of space-time - all of you - for Her own reasons. But that is only the seed of destiny, sown in unforgiving soil. I can only hope that by the time this grave decision comes, that small seed will have grown into something strong and good, and that you will not choose the path that will doom both our worlds alike.”

They stared at each other in silence for a long time, each of their breaths emitting a mist that curled upwards, as if it was a cold winter’s day.

“Are you going to teach me something, then?” Kaiba said finally.

The Shade rumbled again - definitely a chuckle this time - and came at him in a roaring charge.

They fought for what felt like hours, the Shade knocking him down again and again. Kaiba could barely land a hit on the damned thing. He had the uncomfortabe realization that he’d been overestimating his skills all this time, fighting only beasts and one Yiga that he had caught by surprise. Against a true swordsman, his years of kendo training and whatever innate sword skills he’d gained upon arriving in Hyrule fell tragically short. The feeling was oddly like dueling Atem - frustration, anger at his own shortcomings, but also the thrill that came with a real challenge and a deep appreciation of his opponent’s artistry.

The sacred sword came for Kaiba again, but this time he had noticed just the slightest tell - the Shade had shifted ever-so-slightly towards its left foot, telegraphing its swing. Kaiba twisted out of the way and ducked under the Shade’s outstretched arm, driving his longsword towards its legs. It stumbled back and finally fell, but Kaiba knew he had seconds before it was back up again, so he acted purely on instinct - he leapt, pointing his longsword directly downwards, and impaled it directly through the chest.

“Well done, child,” the Shade said. Its tone was clearly amused, despite the long piece of metal sticking out from where its diaphragm would have been. “That one is called the Ending Blow. It served me well in my youth.”

Abruptly, it grasped the blade of Kaiba’s longsword. It yanked the sword out of its chest and kicked Kaiba square in his own all in the same fluid movement, sending Kaiba flying.

“Fuck you,” Kaiba muttered in Japanese, lacking the means to express the extent of his displeasure in Ancient Hylian.

“Are you ready to return to the world of the living?” the Shade said. “Or shall I throw you around some more?”

“No thank you,” Kaiba said flatly, getting to his feet for what he hoped would be the final time.

“Very well,” the Shade said.

“Wait,” Kaiba said. “I need to ask you something.”

“Go on.”

“The Book of Mudora,” Kaiba said. “Was I given that just so I could talk to you?”

“Ah, the impatience of young men!” the Shade boomed cheerily. “It makes me feel young again myself.” It paused, taking a moment to study Kaiba. “There are many great and powerful beings who speak only the ancient tongue; and so we are relegated to history as the beasts and ghosts of folklore, because we lack the means to be understood by the modern world. Perhaps you will encounter more of us.”

“Perhaps?” Kaiba said crossly. “Why don’t you just tell me now-”

He felt a slamming force in his chest, just like the one that had brought him there, and the Hero’s Shade’s thundering laugh echoed in his ears as he was hurled back into the corporeal realm.

“Kaiba-kun? I don’t understand - why won’t he -”

“Come on, Kaiba-kun -”

“Ugh,” Kaiba grumbled, registering the cool night breeze on his face. He blinked a few times. Two pale, worried faces swam into view above him.

“Kaiba-kun?” Anzu said, her voice high-pitched with terror. “Are you okay? What happened?”

Kaiba registered that his head was cradled in Anzu’s lap and Eri had a death-grip on one of his hands. “Get off me,” he muttered, struggling to sit up. Both of them summarily disregarded him, gripping his shoulders to stabilize him as he managed to manoeuvre into a sitting position.

“How long was I out for?” he said, taking a ragged breath.

“About five minutes,” Eri said. Her voice was trembling. “You just collapsed out of nowhere - what hit you?”

Kaiba sighed. He knew that he was at a crossroads. He could either claim a freak fainting spell and never speak of it again, or he could admit that Eri had actually been right.

“You were right,” he said, feeling utterly exhausted. “About the Hero’s Shade.” He had no idea what was happening to him these days. The Kaiba Seto of a month ago would have hated it. In fact, that Kaiba Seto of right now hated it.

Eri and Anzu apparently realized that he wasn’t in the best condition to give details, so instead they helped him to his feet and supported him as they all made their way back to camp. Kaiba felt like he probably should have been embarrassed about needing the help of both of them to walk, but he was too tired to care. He could still feel each blow the Shade had landed - not physically, but somewhere deeper.

By the time they reached their bedrolls Kaiba had come to the very last of his energy reserves, and practically collapsed into his. He was vaguely cognizant of a clamour of voices around him, and then the soft warmth of a dreamless sleep.

“Still dead to the world, huh,” Jounouchi said, poking Kaiba’s cheek.

“If he wakes up and kills you on the spot, you have no one but yourself to blame,” Honda said sagely, nudging Kaiba with the toe of his boot from a safer distance than Eri and Jounouchi, who were crouched on either side of him. “I’ll throw you a nice funeral, though.”

“Aw, man,” Eri groaned in exasperation, poking Kaiba’s other cheek. “Wake up already! I want to hear everything about the Hero’s Shade. Why couldn’t I have been the swordsman instead?”

“You three leave him alone,” Anzu scolded. “He’ll wake up when he’s ready.”

“It’s like, noon,” Jounouchi complained. “If I couldn’t see him breathing I’d just assume he was dead.”

“Don’t say that,” Yuugi fretted, fussing with Kaiba’s covers. “I really hope he’s okay.”

“It’s weird, that’s all,” Honda said. “I actually don’t think I’ve ever seen him sleep before. He’s always up before everyone else, ready to start kicking everyone awake the second the sun rises.”

“Huh, you’re right,” Eri said. She leaned over Kaiba’s still form, peering critically at his face. “He looks...significantly less like a dick when he’s sleeping.”

“Okay, that’s it,” Anzu said. “Camp chores. All three of you. Now.”

Kaiba finally woke up just as the sun set. “What the fuck?” were his auspicious first words, as he peered at the brilliant orange shades on the horizon.

“Hey, you’re awake!” Yuugi said happily. “Oh, I’m so relieved. How are you feeling?”

“Like we just wasted another entire fucking day,” Kaiba groaned, flopping back onto his bedroll in a most un-Kaiba-like way. “God damn it.”

“You’re really something else,” Jounouchi scolded, punching him lightly in the shoulder. “You get to go and learn cool sword stuff from a badass undead knight, and you’re complaining?”

“Besides, we used the day productively,” Eri said, leaning over to show him the Sheikah Slate. “Look. We started our battle plan for Hyrule Castle.”

Kaiba sat up again to study the detailed map of the Castle, upon which Eri’s distinctive scribbles had been overlaid. Her handwriting was nearly incomprehensible, her doodles even more so. “What the hell is that?” Kaiba said, nonplussed, as he squinted at a misshapen blob.

“That’s Yuugi-kun,” Eri said impatiently, gesturing at the spikes coming out of its head. “He’s going to scout ahead at certain checkpoints to look for enemies, and then him and me will take out anything we can with ranged attacks.”

“I’m not seeing anything resembling a plan here,” Kaiba said.

“No, there’s a plan!” Yuugi said excitedly. “Look. We’re going to stay close to the Hylia River and then enter near the Cathedral. According to the topography, if we climb up the base of this giant pillar, we should be able to paraglide over the moat into the lower levels.”

“Okay, enough of the boring stuff,” Eri cut in, yanking the Sheikah Slate out of Kaiba’s hands. “What happened with the Hero’s Shade?”

“Planning how to not get us all killed storming the Castle isn’t boring stuff,” Kaiba said in exasperation. “Give that back.”

“We can talk about that later,” Honda chimed in. “Come on, Kaiba. Spill. You can’t just get sword lessons from a ghost samurai and not tell us everything.”

“Fine,” Kaiba said, rolling his eyes. “I’m going to tell you once. I will not repeat anything or answer any stupid questions, and then we get back to the battle plan. Understood?”

Eri raised her hand. “What qualifies as a stupid question?”

“Anything out of your mouth,” Kaiba said, rapping the top of her head sharply with his knuckles. “In fact, I changed my mind. Yuugi is the only one allowed to ask questions.”

Everyone leaned forward in anticipation.

Kaiba sighed. “It started when I saw the golden wolf again...”

The next day they slept in late, then pressed on with a renewed burst of energy. They crossed the Orsedd Bridge and then stayed close to the banks of the Hylia River. The ruins of Hyrule Cathedral were in sight by late morning, and by early evening they had breached the Castle grounds.

Once the first Guardian Skywatchers became visible, swarming the Castle’s turrets, the group slowed their pace. Yuugi scouted ahead frequently, returning to divert them from the sightlines of Stalkers and Skywatchers alike, and they kept close to the Cathedral’s crumbling walls. During breaks they pored over the Sheikah Slate again and again, committing Hyrule Castle’s floor plans to memory, and reviewing their contingency plans.

The sun began to set just as they came within reach of their takeoff point. This was exactly as planned. They would storm the Castle under the cover of night.

“Well...this is it,” Jounouchi said, putting up a hand to shield his eyes from the last of the sun’s rays as he peered out over the moat.

“Yep,” Honda agreed. “I almost can’t believe we’re here, you know? Remember when we landed here and couldn’t even take on a pack of bokoblins?”

“We couldn’t even build a fire when we got here,” Anzu laughed. “And now...”

They all looked at each other and smiled - even Kaiba - warm, affectionate, easy smiles, as they thought about how far they’d come and how much they’d overcome.

“And now we’re ready,” Yuugi said, facing towards the Castle and squaring his shoulders.

Without another word, everyone unfolded their paragliders and angled themselves towards the landing point.

And then, all as one, they leapt.

Chapter Text

~△❈△~
Book II: Leviathans
Part One: The Winter
~△❈△~

Chapter Seventeen: The Storming of Hyrule Castle

“Move!”

Jounouchi caught Honda in a low tackle, narrowly knocking him out of the way of a Guardian’s beam. Above him, he could hear the sounds of a Skywatcher beeping furiously as Yuugi smothered its eye once again in shadow.

“Yuugi!” Anzu screamed from somewhere behind him. Jounouchi glanced up. The Skywatcher was careening headlong into the cliffside, with Yuugi clinging to its frame. Before Jounouchi could react, an arrow flew past him, hitting the Skywatcher’s propeller and knocking it off-course. Yuugi used the extra split-second he’d been given to melt back into the Twilight Realm.

There was no time to freak out about that particular near-miss - Kaiba was whaling on the rooted Guardian Stalker’s metal body with so much ferocity that it had already forgotten about Honda and was clearly charging its next beam with him in mind. Jounouchi and Honda picked themselves up and sprinted back into the fray.

“We have to go!” Yuugi yelled suddenly, just as the Stalker started to weaken in earnest.

“What?” Honda screamed back. “We can’t! We’re gonna get shot down if we leave them alive-”

“There’s another one coming!”

“Fall back!” Kaiba bellowed. “Eri, cover us!”

Jounouchi delivered one last shattering blow to the Stalker, and then the group broke into a flat-out run towards their destination: a door tucked innocuously into the cliff wall. As the Stalker began to charge up again, Eri paused and let an arrow fly - it hit home, directly in the Guardian’s eye. The laser sputtered to a halt.

“Go, go, go!” Honda urged, shepherding them all through the doorway. They sprinted down a dark hallway, until -

CLANG.

A massive gate came loose from the ceiling and slammed down behind them, cutting off the path they’d just came from.

“Okay,” Anzu breathed. “Close call, but-”

“Oh no,” Yuugi groaned. Another gate was shut just ahead of them. They were trapped. Worse yet, the Stalker had recovered - and they weren’t quite out of its sightline, causing it to enthusiastically fire blasts that rattled the hallway. Even though it couldn’t hit them, they needed to get out of its range, and fast, before it caused serious structural damage.

“Can we bomb our way out?” Honda said frantically.

“This space is too small,” Kaiba retorted. “We’d all get blown up along with the gate.”

Yuugi vanished into the Twilight Realm and appeared on the other side of the gate. “There’s no mechanism to open it,” he said, rattling uselessly at the bars. “No lever, nothing-”

“Wait,” Anzu said, stomping her foot. Water splashed up onto her shins. “Eri-chan, is this enough water for-”

“Cryonis,” Eri finished. “Good thinking, we can try it-”

Kaiba was way ahead of them, aiming the Slate and bringing up the Cryonis beam. He aimed carefully for a patch of water directly until the far gate. He fired the beam, and a solid column of ice sprouted from the puddle, pushing the bottom of the gate up from underneath. Everyone quickly ducked underneath and emerged on the other side just as another Guardian laser shook the dust from the walls behind them.

“Still on track,” Eri exhaled, as they found a quiet side chamber and slumped down to catch their breath. “We can get to the Dining Hall if we go through here,” she jabbed her finger at a doorway on the map, “and then...”

“I’m kind of reconsidering the plan,” Honda panted. “It seems like it’s better not to go outside again. It’s infested with Guardians.”

“We talked about this,” Eri said. “We can’t go through the Docks like Zelda and her archaeology team did. They blocked off that passage after the archaeologists started going mental and killing each other, to make sure that whatever had driven them insane couldn’t follow them out. We have to go through the Sanctum. Impa said that was the last entrance left.”

“What about this passage?” Kaiba said, pointing at a tiny pathway leading out of the Library. “It seems to skirt around the worst of the damage to the Docks. Maybe there’s a way through to the Catacombs.”

“It’s not a good idea to change plans now,” Yuugi replied firmly. “We knew this would be tough. We’ve drilled the plan so many times. We can do it.”

Everyone knew he was right, but it took another few minutes to muster up the nerve to venture back out into the Castle proper.

Hyrule Castle’s interior had clearly once been splendid, but now it was a moldering, precarious ruin that threatened their every step with crumbling stairs, frequent cave-ins that hindered their path at nearly every turn, and foul, toxic air that was somehow thick with ash, despite there being no obvious source of smoke or fire. It was not a place of oppressive darkness like the Zonai ruins had been; instead muted, scattered torchlight filtered through smoky haze. The Zonai ruins had been empty save for a ubiquitous, malicious presence. The ruins of Hyrule Castle were full of life. Monstrous, distorted life, which left evidence everywhere - from the piles of fetid waste dropped indifferently in corners, to both the fresh and rotted corpses of beasts that had either lost in petty disputes or had been hunted in lieu of more appealing game.

Link had marked as many cave-ins and blocked passages as he could remember during the course of several of his trips to the Castle, and Purah had in turn helped input this data into their Slate. It was useful information, but often imperfect. Still they pressed on, encountering only a few rogue lizalfos as they hurried through the ravaged corridors.

“Just two groups of lizalfos in here,” Yuugi reassured them as he popped back in from another scouting trip. “We can handle those.”

Even though the beasts were silver-hide - the toughest and most skilled variety - Yuugi was right. They went down quickly and easily. The tactics they had planned out beforehand were flawless. Anzu barely had any healing to do.

Things were going well, and that should have been the first signal that everything was about to go to hell.

The second signal came after another very quick, clean and successful fight against a pair of moblins in the Dining Hall.

BOOM!

“Tabarnak!” Eri swore, as the reverberating impact nearly knocked her off her feet. “Que diable-”

“The hell was that?” Jounouchi demanded. He threw an arm out to steady Kaiba.

“An explosion,” Honda gritted out. “Sounds like it came from...down, somewhere.”

Everyone exchanged glances. That was probably bad.

“We need to get outside,” Kaiba said. “Now.”

The walls were still shaking. Dust was coming loose from the rafters, creating billowing clouds that rained fine particles into their hair. No one needed to be told twice. They all rushed for the nearest exit, an archway that was already trembling precariously above them.

It all happened so fast that for a moment, Jounouchi thought the very worst had happened. A long, horrific, squealing groan of stone on stone - an earsplitting crack -

And then everything was dark, and warm, and utterly silent.

“Yuugi-” Jounouchi gasped, wondering if that word would be his last -

Suddenly his senses rushed back to him all at once. The glow of the stars and moonlight illuminated his surroundings, and the rank smell of rot and ruin flooded back into his nose. He heard Honda coughing beside him and became aware of a small hand fisted into the front of his leather cuirass.

Yuugi was slumped against his chest, breathing raggedly. They were outside. Behind them was a mountain of rubble where the archway had once stood.

“Oh-” Honda choked. “No, no-”

“Honda! Jou! Yuugi!”

Anzu’s scream from the other side of the rubble spurred Jounouchi and Honda into action. Jounouchi gathered Yuugi into his arms and hauled him further away from the danger zone, while Honda sprinted right towards it.

“Anzu!” Honda yelled, beating his fists on the massive pile of stone. “Eri-chan! Kaiba! Is anyone hurt?”

“No,” Eri called, and Jounouchi finally let out the breath he’d been holding.

“Fuck,” Honda nearly sobbed, letting his forehead rest against the stone for a moment. “Thank God.”

“So you’re all alright?” Kaiba demanded. The sharp edge of worry in his tone was unmistakable.

“We’re fine,” Yuugi said, finally sitting up. “I - I pulled them through the Twilight Realm-”

“Both of them?” Kaiba said in disbelief.

“Are you okay, Yuugi?” Anzu chimed in.

“Fine,” Yuugi gritted as Jounouchi helped him stand. “I’ll be...fine...”

“Jounouchi-kun and Honda-kun-” Eri said. “Check your hands-”

They did, and were relieved to find everything perfectly solid. They hadn’t been there for very long - all that remained with both of them was the distinct memory of that terrifying moment of darkness and silence, which now finally made sense in the panicked scramble of Jounouchi’s thoughts.

“How do we get through?” Anzu said. It sounded like she was talking to Kaiba.

“Can Yuugi come back and get us?” Kaiba asked.

Honda and Jounouchi glanced at Yuugi. He did not look good. His face was pale and sweaty, and he seemed to be swaying slightly on his feet.

“I don’t understand,” Honda said to Yuugi. “We were only in there for a second...what happened to you?”

“Humans aren’t...meant to be in there,” Yuugi panted. “The barrier put up...so much resistance...and then I had to protect both of you...”

“From whatever the hell happened to Eri at Tutsuwa Nima,” Jounouchi finished. Even though it had only been a short time, even one of them losing capability in their hands could have proven fatal amidst the constant danger of Hyrule Castle.

“Can we bomb our way through?” That was Eri.

“No,” Kaiba snapped back. “We’re just as likely to bring the rest of this fucking hallway down on ourselves.”

“Okay, so...I guess we’re separating,” Honda said. He clearly did not like it. “Where do we meet up?”

“You three stick to the plan,” Kaiba said. “We’ll meet you in the Catacombs.”

“What?” Jounouchi demanded. “Why don’t you just wait for us to come get you?”

“We have the Slate,” Eri pointed out. “If you come try and find us, you’re just as likely to get lost. At least you guys have a rough idea of where the Sanctum is. We’ll have to find another way there using the map.”

Jounouchi also hated this plan, but unfortunately, it made the most sense. “Fuck,” he groaned. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

“Why don’t you guys try that Library passage Kaiba was talking about earlier? The Library is kinda close to where we are now,” Honda pointed out. “Maybe the passages do connect, and we can meet in the middle.”

“That’s a long shot,” Kaiba said. They could practically hear him frowning.

“You suggested it,” Jounouchi said in disbelief, then caught himself and took a deep breath. Now was not the time to get annoyed.

“If we try and go up to the Sanctum from here, that’ll take us right through the courtyard where the Lynel is,” Eri pointed out. “There are way less monsters if we go through the Library. Worst comes to worst the passage is blocked and then we have to backtrack. Might as well try the easy way first, ne?”

“Okay,” Honda breathed. “Okay. Yuugi, think you’re up for one more trip through the Twilight Realm?”

“We already ruled out Yuugi ferrying us around-”

Honda interrupted Kaiba. “No, I’m sending him by himself. He’s going with you guys.”

“No, he’s not,” Eri said with uncharacteristic firmness. “The three of us will be fine. We can’t afford to use up any more of Yuugi-kun’s energy than necessary.”

“But-” Jounouchi protested.

“We have a healer,” Kaiba said. “You two need the edge more than we do.”

Jounouchi and Honda exchanged glances. “Yuugi?” Jounouchi said slowly.

Yuugi sighed, long and heavy. “I don’t like it,” he said. “But they’re right. If we have to be separated, this is the best way. Without Anzu around neither of you can afford to get hurt any more than a healing elixir will be able to handle.”

Jounouchi nodded tersely, then joined Honda next to the blockage. “You three look after each other, understand? Don’t take any stupid risks.”

“Same to you,” Anzu replied, so quietly he almost couldn’t hear her.

“It’s all right,” Yuugi said firmly. “We’re all going to make it through.” His tone left no room for argument. “We’ll see you soon.”

And with that, Yuugi, Honda and Jounouchi turned and started the climb up to the Hyrule Castle Sanctum.

“Kaiba-kun,” Anzu said gently. “Let’s go.” She tugged on his sleeve.

Kaiba turned to glance at her, and then blinked, as if unaware he’d spent the past thirty seconds staring very intently at the wall of rubble that separated them from their friends. “Morin,” he barked, almost out of habit. “Slow down.”

“You hurry up,” Eri called back, already making her way down the hallway. “The faster we move, the faster we can see them again.”

Kaiba shook his head to clear it, and then followed the girls back into the depths of the Castle.

Privately, he was concerned that he’d gotten the better end of the deal - they had the Slate, Eri (who knew more-or-less what to expect, from firsthand experience) and Anzu, who could heal the results of any mishaps. He tried not to dwell on the growing pit of dread in his stomach as he thought about Honda and Jounouchi and Yuugi out there with Guardians around every corner. Instead he forced himself to focus on Eri and Anzu’s smaller forms, hands clasped tightly together as they wove through the hazy dimness.

As they made their way through the corridors, the lit torches grew less and less in number, until finally they stepped through a doorway and the flickering torchlight gave out entirely. It took a moment for their eyes to adjust to only the faint blue light provided by the Slate. They were in a large room that seemed to have two levels - a wooden platform that they were standing on, and then a rickety wooden staircase leading down to the bottom level. A staircase that had crumbled into almost nothing.

“It looks like there might be a path down the left side of the stairs,” Eri said. Her voice had dropped almost to a whisper. Just as well - they had no idea what could be lurking down there in the shadows. “If we stay as close to the wall as possible.”

“You go first, Eri-chan,” Anzu whispered. “You’re the most sure-footed. We’ll hold on to you.”

“We’ll what?” Kaiba whispered back indignantly.

“Do you want to fall and die?” Anzu retorted, extending her hand. In the dim glow of the Slate Kaiba could make out a very stern expression on her face - the one that meant she wouldn’t budge. Kaiba resisted the urge to heave a sigh and took both her hand and Eri’s without protest.

They flattened themselves against the wall and began to edge forward. Eri carefully tested each step forwards before putting any weight on it, but still, the wood creaked ominously with each inch they gained. It took so much concentration for Kaiba to only step exactly where Eri had stepped - and to ensure Anzu was safely following behind him - that it didn’t occur to him to think about what might be waiting for them at the bottom of those stairs.

He barely had time to feel the relief of stepping onto solid stone before Eri let out a high-pitched gasp and stumbled backwards into his chest, nearly knocking him and Anzu over. Kaiba quickly shoved Eri and Anzu behind him and unsheathed his sword.

A moblin. A rather large one, at that. Without pausing for even a split-second, Kaiba aimed a powerful slice at its torso.

The sound of sword ripping through flesh squelched through the air - but nothing more. No enraged roar or thundering footsteps.

Kaiba sliced again and tore another gash in the beast’s flank, as one of Eri’s arrows hit with a dull thud directly in the centre of its skull.

Still nothing. It didn’t even fall. The only motion it made was a gentle swaying.

Behind him, he heard Anzu rummaging in her Korok pack. She pulled something out, and then with a small clicking noise, a flicker of light illuminated the room better. “Jou’s lighter,” Anzu explained in response to Kaiba’s questioning look. “I confiscated it so he’d stop trying to blow things up.” With that, she stepped closer, holding the lighter up to cast its glow on the beast.

The moblin was already dead. Had been long before Kaiba’s first strike.

It was hanging from a weapon rack mounted to the wall, still swinging back and forth from the force of Kaiba and Eri’s assault. But now they could see that the blows they’d inflicted were nothing compared to whatever had gotten to it previously. Its legs bent at odd angles, as did its neck; and there were jagged putrid wounds all over that looked like-

“Oh god,” Anzu gasped. “Has something been eating it?”

The three of them exchanged glances. Moblins were pretty firmly at the top of the common monster food chain, from what they’d seen; most other monsters preferred the easy prey of bokoblins, octoroks, and keese when they couldn’t get their hands on regular game.

“Put the lighter away,” Eri said lowly. “I don’t think we want to draw any attention.”

Anzu swallowed, then clicked the lighter off. She also stowed the Sheikah Slate in its holster at her hip, and the absence of its blue glow plunged the room into complete darkness.

“Morin,” Kaiba said. “What the fuck is down here hunting moblins?”

“There shouldn’t be anything like that,” Eri replied, an edge of nervousness in her voice. “I’ve never seen...anything like this in the games...any of them...”

“We have no choice but to keep going,” Anzu said. “We have to meet up with the others. So we’ll just have to be on our guard.”

“And stay close,” Kaiba added warningly to Eri. For once, she nodded without complaint. Anzu sealed the deal by taking Kaiba’s hand firmly. It was a testament to how unsettling the atmosphere was that Kaiba didn’t have it in him to protest - instead, he took Eri’s hand silently in his other.

They moved out of the barracks and down the hallway at a creeping pace as their eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness. The amount of light wasn’t the only change from the Castle’s upper levels. This part of the Castle was also strangely absent of sound - the distant screeches and roars of monsters quarreling over food, the crackling of torches and half-dead cookfires, and the distant echoes of Guardians setting each other off and firing warning shots that thudded into the Castle’s exterior walls. Down here all they could hear were their own footsteps.

Kaiba took a deep breath and noticed that the air, too, had changed. The fetid, suffocating odour of monster excrement and blood and smoke had mostly given way to a mildewed staleness - but with a hint of something sickeningly pungent that he couldn’t quite place. His grip unconsciously tightened on both of the girls, as if to reassure himself that he wasn’t completely alone in this foul darkness.

“Why are there no monsters down here?” Anzu whispered, so lightly that they could barely hear her. She was voicing Kaiba’s thoughts exactly.

“I think there are,” Eri murmured back. “And whatever they are, everything else is scared of them.”

“How do you not know what they are?” Kaiba berated, although the effect was somewhat lost in a whisper.

“Remember what we talked about at the Spring of Power?” Eri replied. “With everything being related...problems across all nearby dimensions...and the fact that our items were pulled in from multiple timelines. If the barriers between dimensions are weakening, then....”

“Then whatever is down here could be from anywhere,” Anzu finished.

Eri nodded, the motion barely visible in the darkness. Kaiba suddenly felt a surge of gratitude that they had Eri with them, as she would be the only one with any chance of figuring out how to battle whatever awaited them - and a simultaneous gripping jolt of apprehension thinking about Yuugi, Honda and Jounouchi.

“I hope nothing has made its way to the upper levels,” Anzu said, once again putting a voice to Kaiba’s wordless anxieties.

They didn’t speak again until the Library began to draw close. With their proximity came an increasing weight of dread that settled over their shoulders and in the pits of their stomachs. The silence pressed in on them from all sides - and so did that strange pungent odour. The familiarity of it nagged at Kaiba.

The Library doors were ahead, but they were shut save for a small sliver. Eri managed to wedge a fallen plank of wood into that space and slowly, carefully pry the door ajar, making as little noise as possible. And then suddenly the door swung the rest of the way open, as quickly and silently as if it had been freshly oiled.

It hit them like a wall.

“Oh,” Anzu choked. “What is that smell-”

Rotting, humid, oppressive - with a faint hint of iron, and an overpowering, cloying note of sweetness - Kaiba’s mind conjured along with it the imaginary scent of hot concrete, the sound of passers-by screaming -

“Death,” Kaiba said, and then the air was filled with a long, low groan emanating from the depths.

The climb to the Sanctum was long, and tedious, and utterly terrifying.

Wrapped in their cloaks - partly against the nighttime chill, and partly to conceal any stray glints of metal - Honda and Jounouchi pressed themselves flat against the cliff walls, moving barely faster than a shuffle. Yuugi frequently scouted ahead and then popped out of the shadows nearby. On the occasion when a Guardian was unavoidable, he delved into the Twilight Realm and brought out a blanket of shadow which somehow pressed them even closer in to the rocks. The feeling was profoundly strange; the shadow had no temperature, texture, no smell or even sound, so it was like an invisible pressure that also happened to almost completely obscure their vision. Somehow they had to keep moving, hearts pounding as they listened to the mechanical whirrs and hisses of a Guardian moving mere feet away.

“Damn,” Jounouchi exhaled as they made it past another Guardian and ducked into a reasonably safe little nook. “This is taking forever. I bet the others think we kicked it.”

“Jou,” Yuugi scolded, although he’d been privately worried about the same thing.

“We’re on the right track though?” Honda said, scrubbing a hand over his face wearily.

“I think I found a good course for us,” Yuugi replied. “We can’t keep taking this path, because it leads to the Lynel and a lot of Guardians. But if we double back a little and use those stairs to climb to the parapets, we can cut through Princess Zelda’s chambers.”

“Thought there was a cave-in up there?” Jounouchi said suspiciously. “I remember Eri marking that on the Slate.”

“Wasn’t a cave-in,” Honda sighed. “Just an unstable passage with a real high risk of a cave-in.”

Jounouchi shrugged and grinned. “Well, if I had to pick a way to die, I’d rather a cave-in than a Lynel. Again.”

Honda laughed. Despite himself a smile twitched at the corner of Yuugi’s mouth in response. “Jou,” he said again, although he couldn’t quite manage a disapproving tone.

“Okay, scout,” Honda said, clapping Yuugi on the shoulder. “Tell us what’s up ahead, and we’ll get going.”

The good news was that there was just one Guardian ahead. The bad news is that it was planted directly in front of the one staircase that they needed to climb.

“Fuck,” Jounouchi and Honda chorused in unison upon receiving this news.

“Fuck, indeed,” Yuugi agreed solemnly.

“Do we even try to sneak past it? Or just charge it?”

In the end it was voted to at least give the stealth option a good go. And in the end the Guardian caught them anyways.

“Wait,” Yuugi said, as it started to charge up. “Don’t hurt it. I’ll be back.”

“What? Don’t hurt it? Where are you going-”

“Yuugi!”

In lieu of fighting the Guardian, Honda and Jounouchi elected instead to run in circles around it in opposite directions, yelling. This seemed to utterly confuse it. It whirred around, barely able to lock onto a target before changing its mind.

“Not so tough now, are ya, you stupid fuckin’ excuse for a roomba!” Jounouchi taunted, hopping just out of its range as it started to beep in annoyance.

“I can’t believe this is working,” Honda called back from the other side. He waved his halberd, and that was enough for it to break tracking with Jounouchi and focus in on him instead.

“Eat this, dumbass,” Jounouchi hollered, turning around and shaking his behind at it.

That turned out to be his fatal mistake. It locked on and started whirring furiously.

“Hey!” Honda yelled frantically. “Over here, stupid!”

The Guardian ignored him.

“Oh, shit,” were Jounouchi’s last words, before he had to start running in earnest as it became very clear that the metal monstrosity wasn’t going to switch targets this time.

Until Yuugi popped out of absolutely fucking nowhere, with another Guardian in tow.

“Go!” Yuugi screamed. “Go, go, go!”

Honda and Jounouchi didn’t mean to be told twice, and Jounouchi was in fact already on the move. They booked it for the stairs as the Guardian’s attention turned to Yuugi, barely saving Jounouchi from becoming a smoking hole in the ground. But Yuugi wasn’t interested in the Guardian in front of him - he was interested in the second one behind him that he’d been luring over.

The ferocious beeping of the second Guardian reached a fever pitch, but still Yuugi didn’t move out of the way. Instead he maneuvred himself between the two Guardians.

“Yuugi!” Jounouchi cried. “Yuugi, get out of there!”

The second Guardian locked on, and fired. Jounouchi and Honda’s hearts leapt into their throats, and Yuugi leapt into thin air and vanished. The second Guardian’s laser made explosive impact with the first.

“Oh...my god,” Honda panted, as Yuugi reappeared directly out of his shadow. “Dude. Dude.”

“Let’s go,” Yuugi said cheerfully, and they turned and ran up the stairs until they were out of range and concealed in the shadows once again.

They did allow themselves a brief indulgence - front row seats to a Guardian-on-Guardian battle, from their safe perch in the parapets.

“Damn,” Jounouchi whistled. “How the hell did you know that would work?”

“I didn’t,” Yuugi shrugged. “Just a theory. Remember Purah said the Guardians weren’t coded to anything anymore, and would just kill anything in their way? I figured that must include other Guardians.”

“What about telling us not to hurt the first one, though?” Honda said.

“Eri-chan thinks that they’re programmed to respond to damage,” Yuugi said. “Like, that’s how they decide what to focus on - whatever’s hurting them the most.”

“Smart,” Honda said, ruffling Yuugi’s hair. Yuugi grinned and ducked his head.

Jounouchi eyed Yuugi critically. “Last trip into the Twilight Realm for you unless you absolutely have to, yeah? You’re looking kinda peaky.”

“Well, we are almost there, after all,” Yuugi deflected. He did indeed feel exhausted - the effort of conjuring constant shadow shields along with this latest jaunt through the Twilight Realm had brought a new sallowness to his cheeks and dullness to his eyes, along with that strange numb sensation that made it seem like sounds and sensations were traveling towards him from further away than usual. Yuugi knew better than anyone that he was fading fast, and it worried him deeply.

They trudged up the last stretch of stairs, which were blessedly empty, and then ducked into the entrance of Princess Zelda’s chambers.

“So the path should be...just through this way, I think,” Yuugi said, leading them towards a tall archway. “Oh,” he said, as soon as he stepped over the threshold.

“Oh?” Jounouchi demanded. “What do you mean, oh?”

Honda sighed, long and heavy. The passageway was utterly and completely collapsed. Freshly, judging by the dust floating thickly in the air and the pebbles skittering off the top of the pile.

“I guess the explosion from before pushed it over the edge,” Yuugi said, crestfallen. He stood up straight, took a deep breath, and then plastered a reassuring smile on his face. “It’s fine!” he said, as much to himself as to his friends. “It’s okay. We’ll just take a moment in here to strategize. There must be another way.”

“Yeah, there must be,” Honda said half-heartedly, trying his best to play along. “Right, Jou?”

“Yep,” Jounouchi agreed. His tone was a touch forced, but Yuugi appreciated the effort. “Let’s just...take a little break.”

Yuugi sat gingerly on the most intact piece of furniture in sight, a plush red chaise lounge that was only lightly singed and seemed to have all of its legs. He looked around the room for the first time. Even destroyed and battered and abandoned for a hundred years, the room was very clearly a noblewoman’s bedroom. The remaining furnishings were lavish and the walls were studded with ornate windows wrought in stone and iron. It was, however, strangely impersonal; with the exception of one small corner, which contained a desk absolutely stuffed to the brim with rotting books and papers and drawings tacked haphazardly to the walls.

“So...a princess lived here, huh,” Jounouchi said, leaning in to inspect a fancy knick-knack on one of the numerous bookshelves.

“More like a nerd,” Honda snorted. He was shamelessly leafing through the notes and drawings left on the desk. “I can’t read shit in Hylian, but this is definitely math. And, look - here she’s been drawing plants, and diagramming Guardians, and-”

“Excuse me,” a prim voice came from behind them. “May I ask what exactly you three think you’re doing in here?”

“Oh no,” Eri choked, and that was all any of them managed before things went directly to hell.

The ground at their feet erupted. Slithering out from between the stones was something skinny, and bony, and a sickly white mottled with smears of old dried blood-

A hand, attached to a grotesquely long arm.

Anzu barely managed to dodge it in time before it secured a handful of her hair. Kaiba unsheathed his sword and swung all in one motion, severing it in half. The hand didn’t seem concerned. It continued to crawl along the ground, making horrific clack-clack sounds as it furled and unfurled.

“There’s more of them,” Eri cried. “They could be anywhere! It’s a Dead Hand!”

That word meant nothing to Kaiba and Anzu, but they did understand that this meant nowhere was safe. Another arm burst through the dirt and rubble at their feet. This time they were prepared, throwing themselves in opposite directions as Eri managed to nail it with an arrow. It recoiled, flailing wildly, and Kaiba used that split second to cleave it in two.

Kaiba turned towards Eri and Anzu, his mouth open as if to ask a question, but that question never came.

An shrill, terrible scream filled the air. Kaiba froze in place, his muscles locked against his will, as still as a statue - save for his eyes, rolling wildly back and forth in panic.

“Run, Anzu!” Eri thrust her hand into her pouch and emerged with the Fairy Ocarina. Anzu didn’t argue, but she also didn’t run. Instead she reached in turn for the Sheikah Slate and then dropped into a flexible combat stance.

Eri played a short tune - sweet, but brief, ending in a terse little trill - and suddenly the room was flooded with light.

The first thing they saw were the hands. There were at least four more emerging from the ground, grasping wildly. The next thing they saw was the source of the scream. It was tall and stooped, roughly human-shaped but with limbs bent at strange angles; its skin was grayish-brown and mummified, stretching against every outline of its bones and tendons. The horror’s face was covered with a rough carved wooden mask. Its teeth gnashed behind the mouth opening as its next scream died in its throat.

Whatever Eri had played seemed to have an effect on the creature - as the beams of light illuminated it, something that looked like ice began to spread rapidly over its form. Within a second it was frozen, just like Kaiba, with one bony arm outstretched.

“Kaiba-kun,” Anzu said, grabbing his arm. It remained as solid and still as stone.

“He’ll be fine in a few seconds,” Eri said. “Anzu-chan, whatever you do, stay away from the hands - especially the epicentre-”

As if on cue, another hand darted towards Anzu. She dodged away just in time. Eri let another few arrows fly into the frozen corpse - they hit with a succession of dull thuds, but the creature did not let out another sound, still locked in by the ice covering its decaying flesh.

Kaiba abruptly came to life again, gasping and staggering as he tried to halt the momentum he’d built before the paralysis. “What - what was that -”

“We have to kill it!” Eri screamed. “Now, before something worse gets here!”

Even though he’d barely had any time to recover, Kaiba immediately launched into a series of controlled slices. Eri tried to help with her arrows when she could, but she soon found herself occupied fending off the hands that kept sprouting from the ground and then burrowing back down until their next target came into reach. Anzu seemed to be their target, and now more than ever she was grateful for the flexibility and athleticism afforded by her dance training.

Just as Kaiba lodged a powerful stab into the desiccated corpse’s chest and it groaned its last, Anzu heard a strange new noise emerging from one of the few parts of the Library still cast in shadow. An unsettling, percussive sound, halfway between a clicking and a rattling, oddly repelling for a reason she couldn’t understand - and it was undoubtedly coming closer.

It finally stepped into view, and they all managed to get one long horrifying look at it before the sunbeam Eri had summoned faded away.

The Dead Hand was tall. Taller than the corpse they’d just fought, even bent and hunched as it was; but it was not skin and bones, no, it was made of lumps and mounds of rotting white-gray flesh covered in blotches of both dried and fresh blood. Worse yet it didn’t seem to have any legs - instead its bulk continued uninterrupted down to the ground, with no feet to speak of, a gigantic robe made of putrid tissue that gave its movement the impression of a slug oozing across the ground. Its arms ended in cruel, sharp, bony hooks, which were covered in fresh gore that suggested recent kills; and the last thing they saw before being plunged into darkness was the stretched sinewed face at the end of its grotesquely long neck, with dark eye sockets burrowing back into its head and a jaw that was just starting to unhinge.

Eri managed to nail it straight in the throat. It groaned and sank back into the ground in a flurry of dislodged dirt and tile.

“Morin,” Kaiba gritted. “How do we fight this thing?” He dodged a disembodied hand, and then aimed a swing at another one reaching for Anzu.

“It won’t come out of the ground again until it has a hold on one of us,” Eri replied in resignation. “Until then it’ll just keep sending the hands after us.”

“How many does it have?”

“Infinite.”

“Fuck!”

“Let me be the bait,” Anzu cut in. “I can’t help any other way-”

“No!” Eri and Kaiba cut her off in unison.

“If either of you stop fighting these hands, one of them is going to catch me anyways,” Anzu snapped, sidestepping another hand that chose that moment to have a go at her, as if to prove her point.

“No-” Eri started again, but Kaiba didn’t join her this time. “Kaiba-kun,” she said in disbelief, “you can’t be serious-”

“You know she’s right, Morin,” Kaiba said.

Anzu was tired of talking about it and they didn’t particularly have time to be squabbling, so instead she just took off at a dead run towards the nearest flailing appendage. She could hear Eri screaming her name as the hand closed over her head.

Anzu felt immediately like she’d made a terrible mistake.

The hand was bony, and cold, and slimy; the sick noxious rotting smell was so overwhelming that Anzu had to force down bile rising in the back of her throat. Worse yet it was inhumanly strong. Anzu gasped as its skeletal fingers dug into her skull. It felt like her head was going to give in and be crushed -

And then the pressure stopped increasing. It held fast just enough to keep her in place. Anzu had a sudden horrifying thought - it wants to eat me alive. She bit down a scream but she couldn’t resist the urge to grab at the abomination, her hands flying up of their own accord to try and pry the fingers off of her. Her strength was nothing against its unholy tenacity, but she did manage to budge one finger - just a centimer - which at least allowed her to see, at least as far as the Slate’s dim blue glow reached.

She almost wished she hadn’t. The sight of Kaiba up against the Dead Hand, with Eri frantically dodging its disembodied appendages, was nearly too much for her to bear.

They weren’t doing well. Eri’s arrows were almost completely occupied with keeping the other hands away from Kaiba, and Kaiba’s sword seemed to be ricocheting uselessly off the Dead Hand’s protective masses of fatty tissue. Eri was screaming something about going for its head, but the Dead Hand was one step ahead of her; it had its long serpentine neck extended straight up, its head rolling back and forth far out of Kaiba’s reach, the discs of its spine making a clack-clack-clack sound as its gigantic bulky body undulated towards Kaiba in an unceasing advance.

“Switch!” Kaiba yelled. “You go for its head and I’ll-”

The Dead Hand turned towards Eri and slashed with one cruel hook. Eri skittered back just far enough that the blow was shallow, rather than slicing her straight in two, but the momentary distraction was enough for another of the hands to catch her and yank her screaming and struggling into the air. Kaiba was now firmly on the defensive as the rest of the hands made a beeline for him.

Suddenly Anzu’s panic distilled into an eerie, uncanny calm. She needed to focus. If there was any way that she could help - she took a deep breath, rolling her eyes rapidly around the Library. In the dim light she could make out - tables, pottery, books, bookcases -

It hit her all at once, when the Sheikah Slate’s blue glow glinted in a particular metallic way off one of the bookcases.

Anzu gave up trying to pry the hand off her skull and instead reached for the Slate. If they got out of this alive, she was going to thank Kaiba for nagging them constantly about doing quick drills with the Slate. Her fingers instinctively found the rune symbol, and she pulled up Magnesis. She took a deep breath, aimed, and sent out the tractor beam.

The Dead Hand screamed and whirled towards her, its jaw fully unhinged like that of a snake - and Magnesis’ beam almost instantly found its target, connecting to the metal with a satisfying buzz. Anzu pulled with all of her might.

The enormous metal bookcase gave a mighty creak and toppled. The Dead Hand wasn’t nearly fast enough to react. It was instantly crushed under the bookcase’s considerable weight. The abomination wasn’t defeated yet - its neck thrashed about as it wailed and clack-clacked in rage and pain - but now it was a sitting duck, and Kaiba severed its head with one neat cleave of his sword. With the Dead Hand’s dying gurgle, the rest of its appendages withered instantly, each crumbling to the ground as dry brittle husks.

Anzu fell to her knees, hard, as the force keeping her upright suddenly dissipated. Kaiba had apparently anticipated that Eri had much farther to fall from and caught her neatly before she even had time to swear about it. In the silence that ensued they all looked each other, wide-eyed and too stunned to say a word.

Kaiba was the first to recover. “Credit where credit is due,” he said, a smirk stretching across his features. “That was brilliant, Mazaki.”

“Holy shit, was it ever,” Eri said, suddenly starting to laugh. Anzu started laughing too, half out of relief. Eri thumped Kaiba in the chest with her fist. “Hey, are you gonna put me down?”

“Depends. Be nice or I’ll drop you instead-”

BOOM!

This impact was even larger than the one that had collapsed the exit from the Dining Hall and separated them from their friends. The entire Library groaned in protest, bookcases tumbling left and right and stone tiles rolling under their feet. A series of smaller explosions sounded from somewhere deep, deep underground, and it was a full minute until everything was silent again.

“Oh,” Anzu said faintly. “That can’t be good."

Jounouchi, Honda and Yuugi whirled around, hands on their weapons and shadow magic at the ready.

The voice belonged to a young girl, standing there with her hands on her hips, looking for all the world like she was perfectly comfortable standing in the ruins of one of the most perilous places in Hyrule - other than a mild irritation at their presence. She had blond hair cropped at her chin, delicate facial features, and enormous green eyes, which were currently narrowed in an annoyance. Her pointed ears marked her as a Hylian, and her practical sturdy clothes marked her as an adventurer, which was rather at odds with her haughty demeanour.

“Er...” Yuugi said, nonplussed. “Who are you?”

“You shouldn’t be here,” the little Hylian girl lectured them, a comically stern look on her face. Since she looked about fifteen, the effect was perhaps less intimidating than she might have hoped.

“What?” Jounouchi said, nonplussed. “Says who?”

“Hyrule Castle is very dangerous,” the girl continued, just a hair short of condescending. “Even though the Calamity is gone, we haven’t got through purging all the monster dens. In fact, my knight and I were just in the Catacombs, and-”

“I think there’s a misunderstanding,” Honda said, holding up his hands. “Impa sent us here. To find Princess Zelda.”

“Well, you’ve found her,” the girl said impatiently. “Now let’s go, before we all die here.”

Jounouchi and Honda exchanged looks. “Uh...you’re Princess Zelda?” Honda said warily.

“Yes,” Princess Zelda said. “I’d ask your names, but this castle is going to collapse shortly and we need to get out of it. Come with me, at once.”

“Wait!” Yuugi cut in, panicked. “We have friends - they’re trapped in the Castle-”

Princess Zelda frowned, and then gave them a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said. “But there’s no time to go and find them if you want to escape from here alive. You know, there have been hundreds of flyers mailed out all over Hyrule warning adventurers not to come here-”

Suddenly, Yuugi melted away into the shadows.

“Oh,” Princess Zelda said, not seeming as surprised as she ought. “Well, I suppose your Sheikah friend will be alright on his own. Funny that we haven’t met before, I thought I knew them all...”

The Princess started rummaging in one of the bookcases as she talked, pushing aside books and trinkets until she uncovered a wooden lever. “A ha,” she cried in delight. “Not broken yet, what luck! Oh, you know, I always did like this mirror.” She pocketed a small gilded hand mirror off the shelf, and then gave the lever a hearty yank. The bookcase swung open to reveal a dark steep staircase behind it.

“Come along, you two,” Princess Zelda ordered imperiously, before turning and setting off at a jog down the steps. Jounouchi and Honda exchanged glances. Yuugi had presumably gone off to warn their friends, and there wasn’t much the two of them could do from here, so they gave up and followed her.

The trip down through the castle took significantly less time than the trip upwards. The Princess knew what seemed to be an entire network of servants’ passages by heart, and she also knew which ones were impassable and how to get back into the network almost instantly every time they had to duck out of it. She moved at a sprightly pace, nearly a jog, and stopped only to make impatient faces at Jounouchi and Honda when they lagged more than a few steps behind her.

They heard Kaiba, Anzu, Eri and Yuugi before they saw them. They’d apparently run afoul of a gang of moblins and were just finishing off the last of them. Jounouchi and Honda jumped in to help, and before long the moblins lay dead. Princess Zelda watched the whole thing with the sort of indifference that suggested she’d watched many such battles before.

“Oh, thank god,” Honda breathed, sweeping Anzu and Eri up into a crushing hug. “I’m so glad you guys are-”

“Who’s that?” Kaiba cut him off, apparently unconcerned with pleasantries of any sort. He raised his eyebrow and pointed over Jounouchi’s shoulder.

“We found the Princess,” Jounouchi said, shrugging. “No idea where the other guy is-”

Suddenly, one last enormous, shattering boom - even louder and longer than the others - echoed through the hallways, shaking the very foundations of the Castle. The impact nearly knocked everyone off their feet, forcing them to grab nearby walls and each other to stay standing.

“That’ll be Link,” Princess Zelda said brightly. “Let’s go!”

“Wait,” Yuugi said, “what happened-”

“Let’s. Go,” the Princess ordered them, pointing to another servants’ access tunnel. “Unless you’re that intent on having this castle as your tomb.”

They made it out of the castle proper just in time to watch the upper turrets detach entirely from the structure, hitting the ground with concussive blows that caused the ground under their feet to tremble.

“Come on, Link,” the Princess called back at the castle, sounding more irritated than anything.

“We have to move,” Jounouchi said. “Where is he?”

Their question was answered about thirty seconds later. Another small blond Hylian emerged from the ruined castle gate at a dead run - Link, they presumed - and behind him, a very large man.

“Run!” Link shouted.

They turned and ran.

It was chaos. Towers and walls were toppling all around them, confused Guardians shooting deadly laser blasts in every direction, terrified moblins, bokoblins and lizalfos paying the group no mind as they stampeded towards freedom. In their haste the beasts began to trample each other, leaving corpses in their wake that posed sudden and gory tripping hazards, and the Guardian blasts were just as like to make things worse by taking down the few structures that had withstood the initial explosion.

Against all odds they made it to the gates, only to face the problem that had plagued them when planning how to get into the Castle: the massive iron gate doors were still shut, and they were out of time.

“Into the moat!” Princess Zelda cried, running towards the edge of the raised walkway. Link was right behind her, and grasped her hand in his as they leapt out into open air.

Eri and Anzu and Honda leapt together, hands clasped, then Kaiba and Yuugi and Jounouchi. It was a long way down, and the current was strong. Kaiba surfaced first, towing a disoriented Jounouchi towards a little grassy knoll.

“Yuugi,” he yelled behind him, “who has Yuugi?”

Yuugi was nowhere to be seen. Honda cast around for him, but the current was so strong that there was barely any time before he had to make for the knoll or be swept away. Eri pulled Anzu onto her back and started swimming. Link and the Princess had already made it to solid ground.

Kaiba hauled Jounouchi onto the knoll, and prepared to dive back in for Yuugi, when a deep voice boomed across the water - “I have your friend!”

The very large man emerged from the water next, with Yuugi safely under one arm. Link grasped his hand and helped the man up, while Princess Zelda supported Yuugi as he found his footing.

Kaiba lifted Anzu out of the water and then extended a hand to Eri. There was no time to waste. They were still in the fallout zone. The group staggered up the steep hill and used one last burst of energy to race for the nearest stable ground. Princess Zelda lead them to a small cluster of stone buildings that were mostly shielded from the projectiles of brick and stone and dying Guardians falling from the sky. Everyone collapsed in varying states of exhaustion - against solid walls, to their knees, holding each other up for support, as they gasped and tried to regain both their breath and their nerves.

And there, from the ruins of an abandoned watchtower, the nine of them watched the rest of Hyrule Castle burn to the ground.

Chapter Text

Chapter Eighteen: In Her Mighty Path

“Um...” Anzu ventured after some time, clearly lost for words. “I’m sorry about your castle,” she said to Princess Zelda.

The Princess shrugged. “Out with the old, in with the new,” she said cheerfully. “Pleasure to make your acquaintances...” she looked at them expectantly.

“I’m Honda Hiroto,” Honda said with a polite bow. “Over there we got...Jounouchi Katsuya, Mutou Yuugi...Mazaki Anzu, Kaiba Seto, and Eri Morin. Nice to meet you, Princess Zelda. And Link.”

“Zelda will do just fine,” the Princess corrected with a genial flap of her hand.

The Hero of Hyrule, Chosen of the Sacred Sword, was in fact even smaller than Princess Zelda. She had nearly an inch on him height-wise, and where everything about Zelda’s posture screamed confidence, Link gave off the impression of being significantly more mellow. His face was open and friendly, with weatherbeaten skin and big blue eyes that crinkled merrily at the corners. Link waved silently and offered the group a shy little smile.

Eri broke out into a wide, delighted grin. She raised her hand to wave back. “It’s so nice to-” she managed, before keeling over wholesale. Kaiba attempted to catch her, but had seemingly underestimated his own injuries, and instead ended up going down with her.

“I didn’t have time to heal them,” Anzu said sheepishly to Honda. Between Jounouchi still gasping on his knees from his swimming adventure, and Yuugi looking very pale and drawn after his last hop through the Twilight, their group appeared to be in very sorry shape indeed.

“Jesus,” Honda said, staring at the sorry sight of Kaiba and Eri slumped over and bleeding in the grass. “The hell happened to you three down there?”

“You shouldn’t be so surprised,” Zelda said archly. “Did none of you get my flyers? It was no easy task to rebuild the Hyrulean Postal Service, you know-”

“Zelda,” Link cut in gently, “You can lecture them later.”

Zelda looked at Link, then at the very large man standing silently behind her. “Ah,” she said. “I suppose you’re right.”

Honda followed the Princess’ gaze, forgetting himself entirely in favour of staring at the Herculean specimen in their midst. He was tall. Taller than Kaiba. Possibly clearing seven feet, thickly muscled, with broad shoulders and an absolute tree-trunk of a waist. The man was clad in loose patterned silks, which left his considerable chest bare, and gold-plated armour covering his hips and shoulders. His skin was a rich golden brown, with flashing amber eyes deep-set above a long, regal nose. Perhaps one of his most distinctive features aside from his height was the shock of flaming red hair that cascaded, braided and coiled, over his shoulders and down his back.

“Uh,” Honda said dumbly, forgetting himself entirely. “Who are you?”

“Not important right now,” Zelda replied. “You should be more worried about your friends. Come, we know of a shelter nearby, and we can administer some healing elixirs.”

Anzu shot a look at the large man - both nervous and admiring - and then back at Zelda. “Shelter sounds good,” she admitted. The Castle was still smoldering behind them, belching smoke into the sky. Disoriented, half-charred monsters were milling about on the grounds, and the ones that were in better shape would be regaining their faculties soon enough - it wouldn’t be long before the area was crawling with them.

“Come along, then,” Zelda said brightly.

Honda hauled a surprisingly pliant Kaiba off the ground, dragging Kaiba’s arm around his shoulders and supporting the taller man as best he could, while Jounouchi finally caught his breath and knelt down in front of Yuugi. Yuugi wordlessly clambered onto his back, looking like he might lose consciousness any second.

“Up, Eri-chan,” Anzu coaxed. Though Eri was a little shorter than Anzu, lugging around her friends (weaponry at all) was not Anzu’s strong point, and it was slow going to even get Eri off the ground.

“Allow me,” the strange man said, in a deep, rich baritone. He easily scooped Eri into his hold and set off, walking like the extra weight meant nothing to him.

“No,” Eri said weakly, “put me down-”

“Eri-chan,” Honda scolded. “Quit arguing.”

Link led them further up the embankment and into another cluster of buildings, motioning for everyone to stick close to the crumbling walls. There were still Guardians about, many of which hadn’t been even remotely damaged by the demolition of Hyrule Castle, so the going was slow and quiet as they followed him in single-file. Finally Link crouched down and felt around in the empty grass with his hands. Suddenly he caught hold of something and gave it a mighty tug. The sound of metal squealing filled the air as he pulled open an old, moldering trap door.

“Oh, no,” Anzu couldn’t help but whisper. “We’re going underground again?”

“It’s quite safe,” Zelda assured Anzu while Link helped her climb into the hole. The large man followed, seeming totally unconcerned, and surprisingly limber for a man of his size. “This is the Castle Town prison,” she called up as the others began their descent. “One of the most fortified places in the area! Link cleared out all the monsters ages ago so we could use it as a base of operations of sorts.”

It was fortified, all right, but also very creepy. Jounouchi and Honda instinctively grabbed for each others’ hands as they walked past the rows of cells, some of which still contained half-decomposed prison cots and manacles on the ends of rusted chains bolted into the stone walls.

“Here we are!” Link announced cheerily. He pulled a torch out of seemingly nowhere, lit it, and then set about kindling the lanterns hanging from the walls. They were in another cell - much larger than the rest - and it became obvious that this was what Zelda had meant by “base of operations.” Tables had been set up containing scribbled plans, maps, and diagrams. There were stashes of spare weapons, recently maintained and polished by the looks of it, in racks against the walls. A collection of rough wooden bedframes sat in rows in the corner. They looked hastily-built and sat just high enough to clear the musty, damp floor. Someone had attempted to make the whole place look a bit more homey with a crude braided rug in the centre of the room. The effect was more depressing than anything.

“What do you think?” Zelda said excitedly. “This used to be a holding cell, that’s why it’s so big. You know, mostly used to keep the town drunks in after brawls and the like. Now it’s me and Link’s secret base. I made that rug myself - hmm.” She stopped herself, and narrowed her eyes at the group. “It was our secret base. Do you promise not to tell anyone about it?”

Zelda sounded so much for a moment like the excitable teenager she was that it was all Anzu could do to stifle a smile. “We swear,” she agreed solemnly.

They spread their injured out on the bedframes, and Anzu knelt by each of them in turn, her gaze raking up and down as she quickly assessed them. “Eri-chan took a nasty slice earlier,” she said, “and Kaiba-kun got knocked around quite a bit. Running didn’t help either of them.”

“What about the Sheikah?” Link said, with a concerned glance at Yuugi, who was fully unconscious and breathing shallowly.

“He just needs to rest,” Honda said with a shrug. “Probably used way too much magic.”

“Wait,” Zelda said, as Anzu lifted up Eri’s tunic to reveal the gash across her stomach and laid her hand over it. “Don’t touch an open wound-”

The Princess stopped short as Anzu’s healing magic began to seep out from between her fingers.

“Ooh, that nasty thing got you good, huh, Eri-chan,” Anzu said sympathetically.

“Sure fuckin’ did,” Eri grumbled.

Anzu suddenly seemed to notice Link and Zelda staring at her with twin expressions of dumbfounded shock. “Um…do either of you need healing? I don’t mind, it won’t take much to fix these two up…”

“You’re not a Zora,” Zelda breathed.

“A what?” Anzu said, and that seemed to be the wrong question to ask, as the two Hylians exchanged an aghast look.

“You’re…using Zora magic?” Link tried, as if that would somehow clear things up.

Anzu shrugged helplessly and looked at Eri.

“Honestly, I didn’t think I’d have to explain to you what a Zora was,” Eri said, with a nervous grimace. “They’re. Um. Fish people.”

“Oh,” Anzu said. After meeting a giant talking rock, she felt perhaps less surprised by the concept of fish-people than she would have done otherwise. “Can they all heal, too?”

“No,” Zelda said faintly. “In fact, it’s a very rare skill usually only found in the Zoran royal family. Passed through the matriline.”

“Should we tell them Yuugi ain’t a Sheikah, either?” Jounouchi ventured, then almost immediately realized his mistake and winced. “Ah, shit.”

“So you’re all Hylians, then?” Link said, his voice pleading as he made a last-ditch attempt to wrap his head around the situation.

“I’m sorry,” Honda apologized. He pointed to his ears and sighed.

“Oh, my,” Zelda gasped. “That’s grotesque! Who did that to you?”

“No one,” Jounouchi said. “We ain’t Hylian. Our ears are just like this.”

There was a long pause. “I guess that’s why they didn’t get your flyers,” Link said to Zelda.

The strange man had been silent throughout this entire exchange, watching with nothing more than a mild interest, in contrast to Zelda’s growing dismay and Link’s look of utter confusion. Finally, he glanced over at the cot where Eri was laid out, and noticed that her eyes were locked on him.

“What are you staring at, girl?” he drawled, folding his arms and smirking.

“Who are you?” Eri demanded, and her tone was so outright hostile that even Kaiba shot her a startled glance.

“It’s none of your concern, traveller,” Zelda said hastily, stepping in front of the man, although her diminutive form did little to shield him from view.

“If you are who I think you are,” Eri said flatly, reaching for her bow, “then it is absolutely my concern.”

“Eri-chan,” Honda said, “what the fuck-”

“Hm,” the man said. He sounded more amused than concerned. “And how would someone who isn’t even Hylian know who I am? I wonder…” he paused, his grin taking on a mocking quality. “Could it be that you’re like me, child? Stranded far away from your home, with no way to get back?”

“Stop,” Zelda commanded. “Both of you, stop this at once!”

Jounouchi was already on step ahead, neatly confiscating Eri’s bow before she could do anything with it, and Link also put himself between the rest of the group and the strange man, his hand on the hilt of his sword. There was a long, tense stalemate in which no one moved an inch, and the tension in the air thickened so much that they could all nearly feel it pressing down on them.

“I think you had all better leave,” Link said quietly. “Will your mage be all right?”

“I’m fine,” Yuugi said faintly from his cot, apparently having managed to struggle into consciousness sometime in the last few minutes.

“We’re not leaving,” Kaiba retorted. “Not until we get our reward.”

Zelda’s nose wrinkled. “Excuse me? Reward for what?”

“Impa sent us to find you,” Anzu said, desperately trying to get ahold of the situation, which was obviously going rather pear-shaped. “She was worried when you didn’t come back from the Catacombs.”

“Worried?” Link said, tilting his head. “Why? We’ve only been gone a week.”

Anzu, Honda and Jounouchi exchanged glances. “Well,” Anzu said gently. “Actually, it’s been nearly two months.”

“Oh,” Zelda mused, not looking nearly as surprised as she ought. “Time dilation. I suppose that makes sense. Oh, goodness, I do hope Impa had the sense not to inform the Council that we were missing-” she cut herself off mid-ramble, staring at the adventurers. “Although, if she hired a group of foreign mercenaries to come and fetch us, that doesn’t bode well for her judgment. What on earth was she thinking?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Kaiba said brusquely. “We found you, and Impa promised us that you would reward us by sending us home. You can do that, can’t you?”

“Kaiba-kun,” Yuugi groaned. “You need to back up a little. We’re from…er…”

“Another dimension,” Honda said, figuring there wasn’t a more delicate way to put it. “We sorta got dragged in here by accident. Impa said you had a magic ocarina that could send us back.”

“Can the Ocarina of Time really do that?” Link wondered.

“Of course it can,” Zelda lectured. “Dimensional travel is one of its main capabilities. Well, that and temporal distortion, of course, but there’s a theory that those two concepts are quite closely related-”

“They’re the same thing,” Kaiba cut her off. “Now can you do it, or not?”

“The question is will I do it,” Zelda said, clearly not impressed by his attitude. “You technically found us, yes, but you didn’t really rescue us from anything.”

“Zelda,” Link prodded.

“Oh, all right,” Zelda sighed. “I suppose fair’s fair, isn’t it? Now, I must warn you, I haven’t really had much time to study the Ocarina, so I’ll be relying mostly on instinct. If you’re comfortable with relying on untested magic then I can send you off whenever you’re ready. Is there anything you need to prepare before leaving?”

“We’re not leaving,” Eri said.

“What?” Jounouchi said, whirling around to face her. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“We’re not leaving,” Eri repeated loudly, drawing her shortsword from the scabbard at her hip, “because that is Ganondorf fucking Dragmire, and this is what Hylia was talking about when she said there was reason we were here!”

“Uh…” Jounouchi said, nonplussed. Kaiba stared at Eri like she’d grown a third head.

“Ganon-what?”

“Hylia wants us to kill that dude? Why?”

“Wait,” Honda interrupted, “wait…that guy is the fucking smoke pig?!”

Suddenly there was a flurry of activity as everyone hurtled into action. Honda and Jounouchi drew their weapons, Anzu threw herself in front of Yuugi, Link readied his shield and shoved Zelda behind him, and Kaiba wrestled Eri into submission, easily divesting her of her shortsword.

Only the large man didn’t move, observing them all with a preternatural calmness, his handsome face betraying no expression.

“Fascinating,” Ganondorf Dragmire said in that deep, hypnotic tone of his. “I had never dreamed my name and deeds would travel so far that they would leave Hyrule entirely.” 

“Deeds?” Eri exclaimed. “Deeds? Is that what you call bringing the Calamity down on Hyrule?”

“Sins, if you prefer,” Ganondorf conceded, still wearing that amused smirk.

“It doesn’t matter,” Kaiba said, still doing his best to contain a struggling Eri. “Stop fighting, would you? Just let her send us home! It’s their problem now.”

“Wait,” Link said. He took a deep breath, and slowly hooked his shield back over his shoulder. “Wait. You said something about Hylia.”

The six adventurers exchanged wary glances. No one felt particularly talkative with a millennia-old embodiment of evil sitting casually a few feet a way.

"Impa's just going to tell Zelda everything, anyways," Eri muttered in defeat.

“Well, all right, then," Yuugi said. "We didn’t really come here from our dimension by accident. Hylia chose us to come here.”

Zelda’s face turned somehow even more aghast, and Yuugi belatedly remembered that according to Eri, Hylia was something of a sensitive subject with the young Princess.

"It makes sense," Link ventured hesitantly, patting Zelda's hand, which was rather tightly fisted in the sleeve of his tunic. "Hyrule has been sort of...holey, lately."

"By holey, you mean, unstable and erratically pulling things in from other dimensions, putting this place and every surrounding dimension at risk of imminent collapse," Kaiba said.

Zelda opened and closed her mouth a couple times, then managed: "Hylia chose you?"

"That's what she said," Honda shrugged.

"She talked to you?" Zelda said shrilly.

"Wait," Link said. "Collapse?"

Yuugi sighed, realizing that at this point they may as well lay all their cards on the table. “Yes. It seems that this dimension is in some kind of grave danger due to the instability Kaiba-kun is talking about. We think that's related to why Hylia took us from our dimension. Although she hasn’t explained much about it.”

The brief and heavy silence that followed was broken by Ganondorf booming out a sardonic laugh. “Oh, Hylia, ever the meddler. Too bad for you to find yourselves in Her mighty path.”

“Too bad for you to find yourself in our path,” Eri said savagely, “because I think we’ve found the source of the instability, and we will not hesitate to eliminate it.”

“If only it were that easy,” Ganondorf returned with a wry chuckle. “You can kill me, if you’d like, but I doubt it would accomplish much. No trace of power or destiny remains in me.”

“Ganondorf is correct,” Zelda confirmed, regaining a measure of her composure. “Since none of you are Hylian, none of your mothers would have told you stories of the Calamity. I am telling you now: the Calamity was the embodiment of all of Ganondorf’s hatred and malice over the centuries. So the man who stands before you now is just that - a man, stripped of all those poisonous things.”

“Uh...” Jounouchi glanced nervously between Link, Zelda and Ganondorf. “No offense, big guy, but...you sure about that, Princess?”

“I don’t have to explain myself to you, mercenary,” Zelda snapped. She folded her arms and pinned them each with a glare. Despite her small stature, she managed to exude an unnerving ferocity.

“But we should explain,” Link implored her, squeezing her hand gently. “Maybe they can help.”

“I don’t know how much we can help,” Anzu ventured, “but it seems like taking a little while to just…talk things over calmly wouldn’t be the worst idea.”

“At least we can, you know, compare notes,” Honda said. “Figure out what the next steps are.”

Zelda paused, studying them each in turn. “Will I have your guarantee that there will be no more threats of violence?”

Everyone turned to look at Eri. She gritted her teeth and nodded tersely. Finally, Kaiba seemed to feel that it was safe to release her, although he didn’t return her shortsword.

“I think this conversation would be better over dinner,” Link volunteered shyly.

“Dinner! A capital idea,” Zelda said, in a cheerful tone that invited no argument. “Link quite likes to cook, you know. I think you’ll enjoy it. Link - nothing experimental, if you please,” she added as an aside.

Link saluted genially and made his way over to an iron cookpot set up in the corner. Soon enough he had a hearty fire crackling away and was hurling ingredients into it with merry abandon, pulling fish and spices of all sorts from his pouch.

“That bag seems rather larger on the inside than it appears,” Ganondorf remarked casually, settling his bulk into one of the more structurally sound chairs scattered about the room.

“Oh, is that a Korok pouch?” Anzu wondered. Link nodded and shot a friendly little grin over his shoulder. Anzu smiled back and opened hers. “Look, we all have them too.”

“Those are quite rare.” Zelda raised an eyebrow. “Where did you come across six of them?”

“Impa gave them to us,” Honda defended, putting his hands up.

“Korok?” Ganondorf cut in. “What is a Korok?”

Eri narrowed her eyes at him. “Don’t play dumb,” she muttered, folding her arms.

Zelda glanced warily between Ganondorf and Eri. “Do you...do you really not know what a Korok is?” she ventured, managing to keep most of the skepticism out of her tone. “They’ve been around since the beginning of Hyrule, haven’t they?”

Eri looked torn. “Well...” The nonplussed looks on Zelda, Link and Ganondorf’s faces alike seemed to make her relent a little. “No, they haven’t. They’re descended from a race called the Kokiri...”

“Ah,” Ganondorf rumbled. “The forest children. I remember them well.”

“You remember them?” Eri said, rounding on him with a glare. “There haven’t been Kokiri for a very long time.”

“That sounds about right,” Ganondorf said. He seemed entertained by her ire. “So those little imps have passed out of the realm of common memory, have they...”

“Dinner’s ready!” Link cut in, before things could get any more heated. “Let’s eat!”

Link had prepared a gorgeous paella stuffed to the brim with fish and mussels and clams and vegetables. It was heartily flavoured with a riot of spices and plenty of butter - a luxury the rest had had to do without, for the most part. He brought it to the table right in the large iron cookpot, and soon everyone had served themselves heaping helpings.

“What is this red spice you’ve used?” Yuugi asked through a nearly-impolite mouthful of rice and fish. “It’s incredible. I’ve never tasted anything like it!”

“Warm safflina,” Link replied, a little shyly, although looking very pleased with himself indeed.

“Found in the Gerudo Desert, I presume?” Ganondorf said. “It tastes much like my sisters’ cooking.”

“Yes.” Zelda chanced a hesitant smile. “That’s correct. It’s still used in modern Gerudo cuisine. So, tell me,” she continued, addressing the group, “how did you come to meet Impa?”

“She abducted us,” Kaiba said.

“Well…not exactly,” Yuugi corrected diplomatically. “She, er…became aware of us, somehow, and…”

“Sent her guys out to drag us to Kakariko Village,” Jounouchi finished.

“Impa can be rather direct in her methods,” Zelda admitted, with a touch of sheepishness. “Perhaps we’d better start a bit earlier in your tale. How did you come to be here at all?”

They told her in careful detail the events of the day that they had come to Hyrule, although now they knew enough to explain that Hylia had in fact pulled them in of Her own accord, capitalizing on an already-existing rift between dimensions. Zelda was beyond fascinated with Kaiba’s dimensional domain emulator, although Link kept her scientific curiosity in check by nudging the conversation back on topic every time she strayed too far into the technical. The group recounted their visit to Kakariko Village, Impa’s insistence that they visit each Spring, and the gradual realization that Hylia seemed to be putting them through their paces.

Instinctively, though, the group left some things out: without conferring, they all skirted around the exact events at the Spring of Courage, and no one mentioned Anzu’s soldier ghost, or Jounouchi’s mask, or Kaiba’s trip into the Ghostly Ether. Ganondorf’s piercing gaze was a constant reminder that no matter what Link and Zelda seemed to think, this wasn’t the place to completely let their guard down.

“You six went into the shrine at the Spring of Power?” Zelda groaned, burying her face into her hands. “Why can everyone get into those things except me?”

“Look,” Yuugi said, with a sympathetic glance at the chagrined Princess. “I know this all must be a lot to take in, but...we need to figure out what to do from here. We’d like to at least escort you to Kakariko Village and fulfill our promise to Impa.”

Link and Zelda exchanged glances.

“We’re not going to Kakariko Village,” Link said.

“Oh?” Jounouchi retorted with a suspicious raise of his eyebrow.

“We haven’t...er...” Zelda cleared her throat, then tried again. “We haven’t decided where we’re going quite yet.”

Kaiba snorted. “Didn’t think this whole thing through, did you.”

“There was hardly time to think it through,” Zelda shot back heatedly. “When we journeyed into the Catacombs, we weren’t expecting to find Ganondorf Dragmire, nor were we expecting to find a beast made of shadow, whose hands were so enormous that just one finger was taller than any of us! We weren’t expecting to hear...” she trailed off, furious tears gathering in the corners of her eyes.

“Those horrible drums,” Link finished quietly.

There was a long silence.

Yuugi cleared his throat. “I think it’s your turn to explain exactly what happened down there.”

Zelda gathered her composure with a deep breath. “How much did Impa tell you?”

“Something about an archaeological expedition,” Anzu answered. “That apparently...ended unfortunately. She said that you and Link had gone to investigate.”

“That’s right,” Zelda agreed. “But...the story begins before that. We became aware of odd occurrences long before the expedition. It started with a conversation I had with two scientists in Akkala...”

“Robbie and Jerrin?” Eri prompted.

“Yes!” Zelda replied, looking pleased. “You know them? Actually, Jerrin was the one who tipped us off to the Catacombs being a waypoint in the first place. When the Guardians reawakened, Link and I went to ask Robbie for help. We were all chatting over dinner and Jerrin mentioned offhand that during the course of some historical research, she’d found an interesting pattern of strange occurrences over the centuries, and had started to make note of them - all centering on Hyrule Castle - and it caught my interest for some reason, so we compared notes, and -” Zelda cut herself off abruptly, blushing. “Oh, dear, I’m rambling,” she said sheepishly.  

“Not at all,” Anzu said with an encouraging smile. “It’s good to have all the information.”

Zelda smiled back, wide and genuine. “Well, I suppose when you put it that way...” she cleared her throat, and launched back into scientific mode. “The strange events Jerrin found seemed to have very distinct similarities - all happening on a specific day of the year, and almost always at dusk. When we were looking at old almanacs we even found that there was some correlation with lunar cycles.”

“What kind of events were they?” Eri wondered.

“Sometimes things like earthquakes, or extreme storms,” Zelda explained. “Sometimes confused people found wandering through Castle Town, speaking in dialects of Hylian that were nearly impossible to decipher. Those ones were rather hard to track down, as they were often put down in record as lunatics and institutionalized. And then there was the time a dead creature was found on the Castle grounds. No one could identify it until examination of the creature was opened to scholars outside of Central Hyrule. The Zora were eventually able to compare it to a very rare stone tablet engraving, and confirm that it was an ancestral Zora, of a kind that hadn’t existed for thousands of years.”

“What does that mean?” Anzu said, enthralled.

“We theorized that perhaps Hyrule Castle was…a waypoint, of sorts,” Zelda said. “A place where the veil between worlds is thinner at times.”

“I’m assuming there are more waypoints,” Kaiba said impatiently, having apparently heard enough about Zoras and other nonsense. “These things don’t tend to be isolated.”

“Yes, obviously,” Zelda replied shortly. “We just don’t know where they are. The only one we’re sure of is the Catacombs.”

“So that’s why you chose to do the expedition in the first place?” Yuugi said.

Zelda shrugged, a little sheepishly. “Not exactly,” she said. “There was already an expedition planned with a more...practical focus. Namely, that we might find valuable supplies and heirlooms before the project of rebuilding the Castle made such an excursion too tedious. I may have just...expedited the process a little, when Jerrin and I began formulating our theory about waypoints.”

“And what did you find there, exactly?” Honda wondered.

“Things...” Zelda swallowed, and licked her dry lips. “Things that should not have been there. Should not have been anywhere in this world. The horrors of the Catacombs drove multiple archaeologists on our team to madness. After the first one killed a number of her fellows, we evacuated the rest of the excavation team immediately. We were too late. Several more had already been affected. We could find no cure for their madness, nor could we make sense of their delusions. All of the afflicted took sick and died.”

"And you still went back in there?" Jounouchi said in disbelief.

"Of course," Zelda replied. "I carry the blood of the Goddess, and Link bears the Sacred Sword. It's our duty."

Link nodded beside her, not looking very concerned about this statement at all.

"But you two are like...twelve," Honda said.

Zelda scowled. "We're seventeen."

"One hundred and seventeen, technically," Link chimed in.

"Well, if you're going to get pedantic, my one-hundred-eighteenth birthday is in two months-"

"Seventeen?" Yuugi said faintly. He felt a little nauseous. He'd (wishfully) assumed that both were just on the short side - like he himself was.

"Hn," Kaiba said. "Why is that surprising, given what we were up to at seventeen?"

"Good point," Anzu mused. "Carry on."

And so, Link and Zelda had ventured into the Catacombs under Hyrule Castle, completely alone.

As Zelda described the atmosphere in the Catacombs - an oppressive, stifling pressure that seemed to weight on them from every direction - the six adventurers exchanged glances. It sounded familiar. Disturbingly familiar.

"After two days," Zelda continued, "we found...a mummy."

Yuugi twitched so hard that he nearly knocked his entire bowl of paella over.

"A what?" Ganondorf prompted, a strange little grin pulling at the corner of his lips.

Zelda heaved a sigh. "I was trying to find a nicer way to put it."

"They mean to say that they came upon my dessicated corpse," Ganondorf said, as mildly as if he were commenting on the weather.

Eri was finally unable to keep her mouth shut. "And what was your dessicated corpse doing down there, pray tell?"

Ganondorf seemed unbothered. "I have no idea. I'm assuming it was a side-effect of the bargain I made in order to unleash the Calamity on Hyrule. I'd rather assumed I would just die."

"You're soundin', uh," Jounouchi ventured, "a little casual about all that, ain't you?"

Ganondorf fixed him with that eerily calm, steady gaze, but said nothing.

"Anyways," Zelda cut in. "The real trouble began when..."

"When you touched the dessicated corpse," Link said. "After I told you not to."

"I couldn't just leave it," Zelda argued. "I just wanted a closer look. The runes used to bind him were truly fascinating. It looked so much like Sheikah script, but - somehow different -" she coughed, catching herself in the midst of another burgeoning tangent. "When I made contact with the sealing magic, there was a massive reaction - so much concentrated energy that it nearly fried the Sheikah Slate, in fact - and when everything cleared up, a man stood there. Whole and alive."

"I was hardly standing," Ganondorf corrected blandly.

"We didn't really have too much time to think about it," Link continued. "Because then this gigantic pit opened up in the middle of the room, and...something came out of it."

"What's something?" Kaiba said impatiently. "Stop stalling for dramatic effect."

Link and Zelda both thought for a moment, with nearly-identical expressions of bemusement.

"It had...very large hands," Zelda said faintly.

"It was very large hands."

"Well, there might've been more to it that we couldn't see."

"The hands didn't seem to be attached to anything."

"Well, regardless," Zelda said. "Whatever it was would have killed us where we stood, if not for Ganondorf Dragmire. He saved our lives, and so we saved his in turn. That's why we blew up the Castle, you know - so that it couldn't follow us out."

"You didn't take the opportunity to leave him down there?" Eri said shrilly.

"It was only thanks to him that we were able to make it out alive at all!" Zelda countered.

Ganondorf's expression of mild disinterest had gradually morphed over the last few moments into something resembling suspicion. He pinned Eri with a cold, calculating look.

"I must admit, I'm curious," Ganondorf said. "For a child who is apparently from an entirely different world, you seem to bear the same hatred for me that any born-and-bred Hylian would."

"So?" Eri said, folding her arms tightly. "You're evil as f-"

"Okay," Honda interrupted, clapping a hand over her mouth. "That's enough out of you."

"She's going to bite you," Kaiba said.

"Eri-chan, do not bite him-"

"Fuck!"

"What did I just say-"

"It's a reflex!"

"The hell kind of reflex is that-"

Kaiba sighed, stood up, then walked around the table and hauled Eri out of her chair. "We're going to go and cool off," he informed her, and his tone made it clear that there was no room for argument. Eri listened to him for once, although her expression as he frog-marched her out of the room was downright murderous.

In the awkward silence that ensued, Yuugi pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers, trying to ward off the beginnings of the headache he felt creeping up on him. "Excuse our friend," he said in a last-ditch attempt at diplomacy. "She's just really worried about you two."

Jounouchi cleared his throat nervously. “Er,” he said, eyeing Ganondorf. “So, what, are you...good, now? What’s your deal?”

“Jounouchi,” Anzu hissed, smacking his arm. A nervous look flashed across Link’s face before he wrestled his expression under control.

Ganondorf chuckled, although the sound was humourless. “Hm,” he said. “That’s what a person comes down to, isn’t it? Good or bad. One or the other.”

“I suppose it’s a rather simplistic way of looking at things,” Yuugi said sheepishly.

Ganondorf fixed him with a steady gaze. “Indeed,” he said. “No matter. It’s to be expected from a group of children.”

“We’re not-” Honda started, and then he looked at Ganondorf - the hulking, intimidating, ten-thousand-year-old Demon King with fathomless eyes that burned like coal - and promptly shut his mouth, cutting off his own protest.

“Well, you know what I mean,” Jounouchi barrelled on, undeterred. “You did like, try to destroy all of Hyrule, didn’t you? Got anything to say for yourself about that?”

“Not to you,” Ganondorf replied simply.

Zelda had been very, very quiet during this entire exchange, twisting her hands over and over in her lap, her mouth pursed in thought.

"I...don't hold anything against your friend," she said finally, keeping her eyes fixed firmly downwards. "I suppose this is just a taste of the opposition we'll face in the rest of Hyrule, isn't it?"

"Like you said, you don't owe us an explanation," Yuugi said, "but...maybe it might help if you just tried to make us understand. As practice, for all the other times you're going to have to explain it."

"That's the thing," Zelda replied in the voice of a frustrated and scared teenage girl, instead of a Princess. "I can't explain it. It doesn't make any sense. I just...I know."

"What do you know?" Anzu asked.

"That our destinies are entwined," Zelda replied, and in this she sounded strangely calm and certain. "And that Ganondorf Dragmire will be critically important to the survival of this land."

"And what do you think about that?" Honda asked Ganondorf.

"I think that Zelda's lineage has been inclined towards prophetic visions since long before I was sealed," Ganondorf answered, "and the last time I ignored a royal prophecy, I paid with my own life and the lives of many of my people."

The silence that descended this time was not awkward; it was heavy. Weighted with things beyond understanding.

"We're back," Kaiba announced from the doorway. "Eri has something to say."

Eri looked thoroughly resigned, every ounce of fight gone from her posture.

"Well?" Kaiba prompted.

"I'm sorry," Eri said, dropping into a polite bow. "I don't need to understand your motivations, Princess. I just need to trust your judgment. And I do. You and Link have my full support."

Honda, Jounouchi, Anzu and Yuugi exchanged alarmed glances.

"Dude," Honda said to Kaiba. "Did you drag her off and lobotomize her?"

"No," Kaiba said, which really cleared up absolutely nothing.

"I'm glad to hear this," Zelda replied sincerely, "because I suspect your support is something we'll sorely need. All of you."

Yuugi felt his stomach drop. "What are you saying?"

"She's saying that they need our help with whatever the fuck is going on in this shitshow of a dimension."

Everyone turned to look at Kaiba in stunned silence.

Yuugi turned back to glance at Zelda again, eyes wide. "You...but..."

"I would not ask this lightly," Zelda said. "But...Hylia does not grant Her blessings freely, and the fact that She has chosen you means something."

"But..." Jounouchi tangled his fingers in his hair, panic welling up in his chest. "But, Princess, we gotta get home. Do you understand? We all got...we got jobs, families..."

"This is why I'm asking you," Zelda said simply. "Impa promised aid on my behalf in returning you to your home. That offer still stands, if you should choose it. I won't go back on a promise."

"How long would it take to help you?" Anzu said slowly, gripping her spoon tightly to keep her fingers from shaking.

"There's no way to know," Link answered. "Although...I feel that it will be a long and dangerous task."

Honda studied each small Hylian in turn. "And you're saying that if we don't want to do it, you'll send us back home, no questions asked?"

Zelda nodded.

"We understand what it means to be chosen by the Goddess," Link said. "We won't burden anyone else with it against their will."

They could tell by the heartfelt sincerity on Link's face that he really meant it, and that if they chose to leave, neither Link nor Zelda would begrudge them.

"We...we need to talk about it," Yuugi said faintly.

"Take all the time you need," Zelda replied. "Several of the cells are equipped with camping gear. We also need to discuss...several things, so perhaps we can reconvene in the morning."

Reflexively, Yuugi glanced at the massive figure sitting at the end of the table. His face betrayed no discernible expression. "Right," Yuugi said. "We'll...we'll do that, then."

“We should probably call the Council together again,” Link said, nearly as soon as the six mysterious travelers had left the room.

“I know,” Zelda groaned, burying her face in her hands. “I know.”

Link patted her back gently, in a there, there sort of gesture. He knew as well as she that Dorephan was going to have many things to say on the subject of Hylians digging too greedily and too deep, probably flavoured with a heavy dose of I told you so.

“As before, I’ll need to make an individual visit to each leader to request their presence at the Domain,” Zelda sighed. “And it has to be me,” she continued, managing to cut Link off before he was even able to raise an objection. “We’ve apparently been missing for over a month. I’m sure it’s obvious by now that our expedition was…less than successful. I don’t want you wearing any of that.”

Link frowned. She knew he didn’t like it, but she also knew he saw the sense in it. They couldn’t afford to squander an ounce of diplomatic goodwill right now, and to be frank, Link held most of their combined diplomatic goodwill. Zelda avoided his gaze by waking up her Sheikah Slate and tapping through until she reached the map. Years and years of studying Hyrulean geography meant that, even post-cataclysm, she didn’t really need to look at the map - but it always helped her in plotting her next moves.

“I remember seeing a prototype of that device, many years ago.” Until now, Ganondorf had been watching the whole exchange impassively. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking, or if he understood the undercurrents of their conversation. Despite herself, it made Zelda feel uneasy.

“It has a teleportation function,” she explained, unsure exactly how much Ganondorf knew about the Sheikah Slate. “Which is what I’ll be using to speak to the leader of each race.”

“Fascinating,” Ganondorf said, although he didn’t sound particularly fascinated. “Does the other one have the same functionality?”

“Other one?” Link wondered.

“Those children.” Ganondorf gestured in the vague direction the adventurers had gone. “They have a similar device. I saw it while pulling the smallest one out of the moat.”

It took a great deal of Zelda’s princess training to wrestle her reaction to that under control. Her precious prototype! She and Purah had worked so hard on that, and then Purah had just gone and given it away to a bunch of-

Goddess-chosen Heroes, apparently. Hylia really did have a cruel sense of humour sometimes.

“Likely not,” Zelda admitted, keeping her tone even. “The teleportation function can only be activated by Link and I, it seems, and I doubt they’ve found a way to circumvent it. In fact, I’d be surprised if the one they’re holding is capable of more than the most basic-”

Link nudged her with his foot under the table. Zelda cleared her throat delicately.

The night before she and Link had descended into the Catacombs, Zelda had dreamed - in a way she hadn’t dreamed since the night before the Calamity befell them. She knew now, from long and painful experience, that dreams were one of the few ways Hylia would communicate with her; and that she could ignore those visions at her peril. Link, too, had learned this lesson. He had believed her immediately and implicitly.

The point was that trusting Ganondorf wasn’t something they could do halfway, no matter how his gaze set gooseflesh prickling on the backs of her arms.

“I was wondering,” she ventured, “if either of you had any advice on which leader I should speak to first.”

Ganondorf looked at her for a long moment, then raised an eyebrow, seeming amused. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve been underground for thousands of years.”

“Right, right,” Zelda said, blushing. “Er - I suppose we ought to give you a primer on modern Hyrule at some point.”

“The Gorons first, I think,” Link said. “If you go to either the Zora or the Rito first, the other will assume favour from the Crown.” The note of quiet self-assurance in his tone was something that Zelda was still getting used to. It was purely a creation of the Link who had awakened in the Shrine of Resurrection, not the Link that Zelda had known so well over a century ago.

“Yes, that’s an excellent point,” Zelda mused. The Gorons were always a safe bet. “And then Riju next - she has the farthest distance to travel.” She pointed at the map as she talked, more for Ganondorf’s benefit than for her own. “Then Dorephan, Impa, and Kaneli last - the journey will be easiest for him.”

Ganondorf peered over her shoulder at the map. “You’ve marked Zora’s Domain as the meeting place,” he said. “Why would the journey be easiest for this Kaneli from the other side of the country?”

Zelda blinked. “Oh,” she said, as something occurred to her. “Do you know what a Rito is?”

“A what?”

Apparently not.

“Bird folk,” Link said, flipping through the Slate to find a picture. “They can fly.” He finally landed on one he’d taken of a Rito woman surrounded a rainbow of little fledglings, all of them smiling and posing excitedly for the camera.

“Hm,” Ganondorf said, squinting at the picture. “I see.”

“And the meeting must take place in Zora’s Domain. Traveling is difficult for King Dorephan,” Zelda continued nervously, “because Zora kings tend to be rather...”

“Large,” Ganondorf finished, with a wry smile. “That one I recall.”

Zelda smiled hesitantly back at him.

"No. Absolutely the fuck not."

"I'm sorry," Anzu said, wringing her hands, "I just…I’m not sure..."

"Don't apologize," Yuugi replied, "it's perfectly reasonable-"

"Yes, but I can tell by the look on your face that you're going to feel guilty forever if we don't do it-"

"Come on, Yuugi, it's kinda their problem - they broke the dimensions, or whatever-"

"I mean...what would we even be able to do, really? Link probably fights better than all of us combined, and Zelda’s the mage equivalent of a tank. Rescuing them probably was the most helpful thing we could’ve-”

“Eri-chan, I don’t know if that’s-”

As the debate raged on, Honda sidled over and gingerly sat down next to Kaiba on a mouldering prison cot. “You’re not gonna jump into the fray?”

“No,” Kaiba muttered, glaring at his sword, which was laid across his knees. He kept fiddling with the pommelstone. Honda noticed for the first time that the pommelstone had grown even shinier since he’d bought it - possibly from its owner sunsconsciously polishing it with his fingers as a nervous habit.

“Come on,” Honda wheedled, nudging Kaiba with his shoulder. “I know you’ve got opinions.”

Kaiba continued glaring in silence.

“Besides, you and Jou are on the same page for once, which eliminates about half the usual conflict-”

“No, we’re not.”

A brief silence. Honda whistled. “Well, shit,” he said. “I guess that means you’re gonna back me up then, huh?”

“What?”

“All right,” Honda said loudly, slapping his knees and standing up. “Come on. You all know we gotta stay.”

For just a few seconds, you could practically hear a pin drop. Honda was met with five shocked faces before Jounouchi opened his mouth to protest.

“Listen,” Honda interrupted. “We already had this conversation. It’s been settled.”

“Did we,” Yuugi said, sounding a little queasy.

“Yeah,” Honda said. “At the Spring of Power. Remember? The hole in our dimensions goes two ways. Kaiba said all that stuff about instability and collapsing. The problem is so bad that Hylia had to drag in a bunch of nerds from a whole other dimension to help. I’m just saying, it ain’t looking good for Earth, either. Remember, Yuugi? You said it was about making sure everyone had a home to go back to.”

“That was…when I thought that…”

“That whatever was causing all this was at Hyrule Castle,” Anzu said quietly.

“Doesn’t change anything though, does it? Both our worlds are still in danger.”

“We don’t know that,” Eri pointed out. “It’s just a theory.”

“It’s not,” Kaiba said.

“Wait,” Jounouchi said, stunned. “Wait. Kaiba?”

Kaiba was glaring at his sword with even more intensity.

“Do you…think we should stay?” Anzu ventured.

“No,” Kaiba muttered. “I think we’re likely to get ourselves killed. We don’t owe these people anything. Getting back to Mokuba is more important to me than this entire fucking dimension. They can fix it themselves.”

“Kaiba-kun…” Eri said, sitting down next to him. “Somehow, I feel like you don’t really believe that.”

“But he’s right, for once,” Jounouchi said.

“You’re just saying that because you’re afraid of that fucking mask!” Kaiba exploded, looking up for the first time, directly at Jounouchi. “Don’t be so stupid about all of this! I know you, and it’s not like you to turn down a chance to throw your life on the line for people you barely know! Would you just get over your idiot hang-ups for two seconds so that we can have an honest discussion?”

Jounouchi physically recoiled, as if Kaiba had reached out and slapped him. “Fuck you,” he spat, looking thoroughly rattled. “You don’t know what you’re-”

“And you,” Kaiba said, rounding on Eri. “What are you so afraid of? What the hell is all this stupid bullshit about wondering if we’ll even be able to help? You know we’ll be able to help. We made it through the last seven weeks despite none of you morons having ever touched a weapon before. We’ve faced unbelievable odds, and the fact that no one has died yet - except Jounouchi, and even that was only for five minutes - is pretty much proof that Hylia is at least exerting some effort towards keeping us alive.”

Eri’s eyes had gone wide as saucers.

“Frankly, I’m disappointed in you two,” Kaiba continued angrily. “I was counting on you two reckless dumbasses and Yuugi to forge ahead with your usual idiocy, and instead I have to rely on fucking Honda of all people to be the voice of reason-”

“Hey-”

“Well?” Kaiba turned to Anzu accusingly. “We haven’t heard nearly enough of your opinion, which is strange, considering you’re the bossiest one here.”

“Wow,” Yuugi managed weakly, through his astonishment at the sheer hypocrisy of that statement.

In an even more astonishing turn of events, Anzu didn’t rise to Kaiba’s bait. Instead she continued nervously fiddling with the sash of her tunic, twisting the iridescent fabric this way and that in her lap.

“It’s…it’s hard to think clearly,” she admitted, “because I’m scared.”

“Well, of course you are,” Kaiba said impatiently. “You’re the one who always has to deal with post-battle gore and making sure Honda and Jounouchi and Eri don’t die every other day. At least you’re brave enough to admit it.”

“Ugh,” Honda groaned. “It sucks, but…Kaiba kind of has a point.”

Jounouchi and Eri alike shot Honda looks of utter betrayal.

“Sorry,” Honda said, lifting his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “It’s just…it’s obvious, you know? I know you better than anyone in my own family, Jou, and I know this isn’t like you.”

“Or you, Eri-chan,” Anzu agreed. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but I’m surprised you don’t want to stay.”

Eri said nothing to that, folding her arms tightly and gazing at her boots.

“Well…” Yuugi sighed. “What about you, Kaiba-kun? I think your position is perhaps the most surprising of all, here.”

It was Kaiba’s turn to shift uncomfortably under the weight of his friends’ scrutinizing gazes.

“It was the fucking skeleton,” he muttered.

“Uh…the what?”

“The skeleton,” Kaiba snapped, “that dragged me into its stupid foggy dungeon and forced me to fight it.”

“The Hero’s Shade,” Eri said, barely containing her exasperation.

“Whatever. It told me that we had a very important decision coming up, and that it hoped we wouldn’t choose the path that would…doom both of our worlds.”

“Jesus,” Jounouchi groaned, dragging a hand over his face. “And you just decided not to tell us that?”

“I didn’t know what the decision was!” Kaiba retorted. “For all I knew it was just hoping we wouldn’t run away from whatever nonsense was going on at Hyrule Castle, and then that would be the end of the whole thing.”

“I see,” Yuugi said slowly. “So it’s not only Hylia, but also the ancestor of Link that believes we’re destined to be here. And that lines up with Kaiba-kun’s assessment of the danger to our own dimension. That must be why we were pulled through - there’s a connection between our worlds, somehow. A connection to us.”

Kaiba looked like it was causing him physical pain not to argue. Instead he managed a terse nod.

“That’s what I’ve always felt, to be honest,” Yuugi said softly. “I felt there must be a reason for all of this, and I wondered if maybe…if maybe it made sense.”

“And what d’you think, Anzu?” Honda said. “Fear aside.”

“I don’t really care about the destiny aspect of it,” Anzu admitted. “I just…feel like helping is the right thing to do.”

Jounouchi let out a long, loud groan, and buried his face in his hands.

“It is the right thing to do, and I fuckin’ hate it, and I wanna get back to my sister,” he said loudly into his palms, “and I want to burn that goddamned mask, and I hate it even more that Kaiba’s right and I’m scared shitless of the thing.”

“Eri-chan?” Honda prompted.

“I know,” Eri said miserably. “We have to do it.”

“We don’t have to,” Yuugi said, stepping over to kneel down in front of Eri and take her hands in his own. “Listen to me. There’s always a choice. When we were younger, the things that happened…I never felt like I had a choice, but I did. I always did.”

“How can you say that?” Eri asked. “Both then and now, if you choose wrong then the whole world is fucked. How is that really a choice?”

Jounouchi shrugged. “Just because you’re not the kinda person who’d choose to fuck the world doesn’t mean those people ain’t out there.”

“Jou’s exactly right,” Anzu said. “And we all know Link and Zelda would understand if we made that choice. So if we’re going to do this, we all have to be onboard - none of us can feel coerced into it, or this isn’t going to work.”

Eri nodded and sighed. “I know. Yeah...I know.” She paused, then ventured a tentative smile. “I’m in.”

“So…” Honda said, looking around. “Are we doing this?”

No one slept much, if at all, that night. Anzu and Eri curled up on one of the cots, twining their hands together and holding on for dear life as both wrestled with the implications of their decision. Yuugi curled up into Jounouchi’s side, desperately needing the warmth and comfort, and Jounouchi put his arms around Yuugi so tightly that it nearly hurt, but in the end that was fine because it was the only thing that could stop the trembling that had taken hold of his body. Kaiba predictably situated himself about as far from everyone else as he could get, facing the wall, although the fact that he was awake was made obvious by his unnatural stillness.

Honda didn’t even try to sleep. Instead he pulled up a chair by the cell door, and settled in for a long night of watching over his friends.

In a way, they were grieving: for all the things they loved, and missed, and for the thing that had gone unacknowledged until this moment: they would all be irrevocably different when they returned, even if no time had passed at all for their loved ones. There was no undoing what Hylia had done to them, and with that realization came anger and sadness and also a deep and heavy resignation.

When they gave Zelda their decision in the morning, it felt markedly different from the time - nearly two months ago, but it felt like much longer - that they’d done the same with Impa in Kakariko Village. Back then it had been nothing more than a bargain, weighing a means of getting home faster against a means of getting home slower. This was different. Not only were they once again choosing the more dangerous route; they were aware that this time, they had to be willing to lay their lives on the line for the cause, which was now so much bigger than the six of them.

“We’ll do it,” Yuugi told Link and Zelda, trying not to let the exhaustion seep into his voice. “Whatever it takes.”

“Oh, thank you!” Zelda said, squealing and impulsively throwing herself into Yuugi’s arms. “Oh,” she coughed, releasing him and stepping back and putting her princess voice back on. “Um. Hyrule thanks you for your aid. We are endlessly grateful to all of you.”

“I’ll make you all a really nice breakfast,” Link offered earnestly. “We can have crepes, and wildberries-”

Jounouchi couldn’t help but crack a smile. The two of them were just so damned cute.

Link stayed true to his word, and created a breakfast spread that was in fact nicer than any of them were used to eating even back home in Domino. Crepes smothered in honey and wildberries, hot buttered apples, omelettes - filled to the brim with mushrooms, vegetables, and impossibly fresh crabmeat - and egg tarts. There was even a varied array of rice balls to choose from.

The only thing about the breakfast spread that was amiss was the absence of one particularly large figure around the table.

“So, uh…” Jounouchi gestured. “Where’s the big guy?”

“Reading,” Zelda said simply. They noticed that her Sheikah Slate was nowhere to be seen.

Sensing that they likely wouldn’t get any more from Zelda on that particular topic, Anzu turned the group’s focus back to the food. “You make onigiri so beautifully,” she complimented Link, selecting one filled with fish. It was so perfectly shaped and seasoned that it might as well have been made by a Japanese grandmother, or plucked from the shelves at 7-Eleven.

“Oni-what?” Link said through a mouthful of omelette.

Kaiba lasted all of fifteen minutes into breakfast before losing his patience. “So?” he said loudly out of absolutely nowhere, practically slamming his fork down.

At Link and Zelda’s matching startled expressions, Yuugi promptly stepped in to run interference. “Kaiba-kun is wondering what our next steps are,” he translated.

“Right,” Zelda said. “Well, first, I’ll need to see your Sheikah Slate.”

“Why?” Kaiba snapped, but Anzu just rolled her eyes at him and handed it to Zelda over his protests.

Zelda promptly began flipping through the Slate with practiced ease, although the further she got the more her lips pursed. Finally, she seemed to lose some sort of battle with herself.

“How did you get the Bomb runes working,” the Princess demanded, “and what have you done to the screen?”

“I switched to a capacitative screen to facilitate the use of a stylus,” Kaiba replied, and then they were off to the races.

The other occupants of the table watched in fascination and mild horror as Kaiba and Zelda promptly launched into a rapid-fire technical discussion that seemed to careen between arguments, interrogations, accusations, veiled insults, and back again in the space of sentences. If either were taken aback that the other was keeping pace, neither of them showed it. The spectators were another matter: to Link it was marvelous that a laconic foreigner was even managing to understand the jargon pouring forth from Hyrule’s most brilliant scholar, and to the group of travelers it was thrilling to watch a tiny seventeen-year-old elven Princess put the CEO of Kaiba Corporation through his paces.

Worse yet, both seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely, even at the point where it looked like they were ready to come to blows over the teleportation function.

“You don’t think I’ve tried teleporting multiple people?” Zelda said, waving her arms with such vigor it looked like she might accidentally smack Kaiba in the face.

“Designs can always be worked around,” Kaiba countered. Link bit the inside of his cheek to stifle a laugh. He’d heard that one before.

“What happens when you try?” Yuugi broke in, in an attempt to avert probable fisticuffs.

Zelda and Link exchanged uncomfortable glances.

“We tried with a cucco once...” Link said with a helpless shrug.

“It arrived at its destination in...quite a few pieces,” Zelda finished delicately. “I suppose we were lucky it was the cucco that met an unfortunate fate, and not Link...”

“Took days to get the cucco blood out of my tunic,” Link said forlornly.

“Ew,” Honda said, but he wasn’t even bothering to suppress his own laugh.

“Regardless,” Zelda said firmly, “teleportation is impossible with more than one person, and it’s impossible with your Slate. Only Link and I can activate that particular rune.”

“So we’ll just be slowing you guys down, huh,” Honda sighed.

“Not really, seeing as we’re going in opposite directions.”

That earned Link and Zelda a few very concerned glances.

“You mean we’re not…traveling together?” Anzu ventured.

“No,” Zelda said. “Link, Ganondorf and I will be heading to Zora’s Domain in order to call a meeting of the Hyrulean Council. All of you will be making your way towards the mountains of Hebra.”

“Hyrulean Council? What’s that?” Honda asked.