Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"Link."

He groans, turning his head away from the sound of the voice. He's tired, his body is so heavy-

"Link." A cold finger jabs into his cheek. "Open your eyes."

His eyes peel open, and his vision is blurry. There's a yellow and green blob in his face, but the more he blinks the more the world clears, and the more he can make out that the blob is the face of a girl. 

(A beautiful girl.)

"Took you long enough," she says, her green eyes staring into his soul. Her golden hair is long, spilling over her back and brushing his hands. "I've been trying to wake you up for what feels like forever."

He takes stock of his surroundings. He's lying in some kind of bed, but his back is wet, as are the ends of the girl's hair. He's naked except for some weird underwear and the girl is lying on top of him in a soaked white dress that looks like it's gone through hell, riddled with jagged tears and stained with dirt and...is that blood?

The room they're in is dark, dimly illuminated by blue lights in the ceiling.

(How did he get here? Where is here? And who is he?)

"Me to Link," The girl pokes him again. He registers that her finger is pruny. "You in there?"

"Who's Link?" his voice is hoarse and cracking, like he hasn’t used it in a long time. 

“I’m pretty sure you are,” The girl answers. "I don't know. I woke up, looked at you, and just...called you Link."

She talks a lot, he thinks. "And who are you?"

The girl stares at him, blank. "I have no idea. Who are you?”

He-Link-repeats the sentiment.

"And I'm guessing you don't know where we are?" she asks. "Or why we're here?"

He shakes his head.

(She really talks a lot.)

"We should probably get up," she says, pushing herself up and off of him, sliding her feet to the floor. "See if there's anyone who can-"

She stands and immediately crumples.

Something in Link lurches and the name, "Zelda!" falls from his lips as he sits up, splashing water everywhere. 

The girl-Zelda?-grabs the edge of the bed and pulls herself back to her feet, her legs shaking. She grins up at him and pants, "At least we know each other's names, right?"

He hops out of the bed and finds that his legs are a little sturdier than hers.

"Are you okay?" he asks, holding out his hands, ready to catch her if she falls again.

Zelda hesitantly lets go of the bed, staring down at her knees as if waiting for them to give out. 

"Yes," she says, after a minute passes and she's still standing. There are sandals on her feet that are falling apart and she kicks them off, wiggling her bare toes against the cold floor. “I’m all right, now, thank you."

And there's something about her voice, something about the way she speaks, that tells Link she's...someone. Someone important, because she talks like someone who...Someone who...

(It's hard to make comparisons when the only things he knows are two names, one of them being his own.)

Zelda points to something across the room. "What's that?"

Link follows her finger to a glowing terminal in the corner. Shrugging at her, he walks up to it-

"Wait!" she grabs his elbow, stopping him in his tracks. "What if it's dangerous?”

"You're the one that pointed it out,” he reminds her.

"Still!"

Zelda doesn’t let go of his elbow, walking with him over to the terminal. Her hand is warm on his cold skin, her pruny fingertips anxiously rubbing over the goosebumps littering his flesh, and Link resolves himself to being her human shield should anything jump out at them.

The terminal only glows a brighter orange the closer they get, and once they’re standing in front of it Link sees that there’s some kind of rectangle staring up at him with a blue, crying eye.

“Sheikah Slate,” Zelda blurts, then blinks as if she’s surprised at herself. She looks at him and says, “It was like how I knew your name. I just…did.”

(Now he knows three things. His name is Link, her name is Zelda, and the weird crying box is a Sheikah Slate.)

“Is it safe?” he asks.

She shrugs. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to take it? If it hasn’t killed us already…”

Take it he does, and with a few quiet clicks the terminal dims to a blue that matches the rest of the lights in the room. 

They both jump out of their skin when part of the wall in front of them moves.

“A door,” Link manages, panting as his heart pounds. “Just a door.”

“What kind of door does that?” Zelda peeks out at it over his shoulder. “There wasn’t even a handle!”

She moves out from behind him and inspects the open space where the door once stood, running her hands along the square gap.

“No buttons,” she murmurs. “No levers, no gears, no…anything. I can’t even see where it disappeared into! It slid up, right?”

He nods. “I-I think so.”

“Taking the slate out of that terminal opened it,” she looks back at him. “Put it back.”

“Put it back? But we just took it out!”

“I know, I want to see if that closes the door.”

“Why?”

She stares at him, blank again, like she’s confused as to why he’s asking. “Why not?”

“Shouldn’t we go into the next room? See if we can get outside?”

She blinks. “But I want to know how this works.”

Link sighs and drops the slate back in the terminal. Nothing happens.

“Maybe it’s because I’m in the way?” Zelda takes a step back. When nothing continues to happen, she frowns. “Well, that makes absolutely no sense. Who makes a door that opens but doesn’t close?”

“If we get outside we can ask someone,” Link tells her, impatient, almost vibrating with the need to move, to get out of this room, to feel the sun on his skin and breathe in fresh air and feel grass on the bottoms of his feet- “Can we go now?”

Her eyes flash and her frown turns into a scowl, her eyebrows furrowing together. “There’s no need to get cross with me.”

“I just want to leave, okay?” he picks up the slate and shoves it into her hands. “Figure out how this works if you want to learn something so badly.”

He’s being mean, he knows he is, but he wants-No, he needs to get out-

“What the-Where is this coming from?” she demands, following after him as he storms into the next room. “I know just as much as you do, which is nothing, by the way, so why do you have a problem with me trying to-Ow!”

Link turns around as the sound of a crash and the creak of something opening reaches his ears. Zelda is hunched over on one leg, clutching her right foot with both hands and hissing curses. The Sheikah Slate is facedown on the floor, and next to it is an open chest with dust clouding around it.

“I stubbed my toe on it,” she whines, hopping on her other foot to stay balanced. 

He can’t help it. He laughs as he asks her, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she huffs, dropping her foot and regaining her balance, picking up the slate. “It just hurt for a few seconds.”

He looks inside of the chest she kicked open and pulls out a torn, beige, long-sleeved-

“Tunic,” he says, the word popping into his brain.

“It looks like it could fit you,” Zelda observes.

He pulls it on, and while it’s a little snug, especially around his shoulders and chest, it fits. Finding another chest and opening it up, Link picks up-

“Trousers,” he identifies, tugging them over his legs.

And-

“Boots,” Zelda adds, watching him step into them. She glances down at her bare feet and huffs, “I guess I’m wearing the sandals.”

When she rejoins him in the second chamber, he’s standing over another orange terminal, this time next to an obvious door that won’t scare the life out of them when it opens. She drops the Sheikah Slate into the terminal, and watches with rapt attention as there’s another series of quiet clicks before it all dims to blue and the door slides up into the wall.

Link practically salivates at the sliver of sunlight that spills through the now open doorway.

“Come on!” he urges, grabbing her hand and pulling her up the ramp as he rushes into a cave towards a gentle breeze, his blood almost singing when the warmth of the sun hits his face and causes him to squint. “It’s right-!”

His dreams are squashed by a ledge that blocks the rest of their path to the outside. 

(He decidedly ignores Zelda’s chuckling from behind.)

“What now?” she questions, a smile glaringly obvious in her voice.

“I’ll give you a boost,” he says, turning to her. “And then I’ll climb it.”

The amusement drops from her face. “You’re going to give me a what?”

“A boost?” he repeats, miming shoving his hands up into the air. “Like…lift you up so you can get to the top? It’s not so tall that you wouldn’t reach.”

Her lips settle into a firm line as she glances up at the top of the ledge, where long grass drifts. “I can climb it.”

“Do you know how to climb?”

“Do you?”

Probably better than you, he doesn’t say, noting the lack of muscle in her limbs.

“Here,” she hands him the slate and approaches the ledge, taking off her sandals and tossing them to the top. “Can you catch me if I fall?”

“Of course,” he answers, sliding the slate into a slate-sized carrier on his belt.

She grabs onto the rock and clings, slowly finding footholds and stepping her way up the ledge and onto the grass. She flops on her back next to her sandals, her feet dangling down by Link’s face. 

(He doesn’t miss the way her body shakes, or how her chest heaves like she’s just ran for hours.)

Link easily scrambles up and sits next to her in the grass, dragging his fingers over the thin blades as she pants.

“I hate you so much right now,” she wheezes, wiping sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand and glancing up at him. “Shouldn’t you be running outside? It’s right there.”

“I’m waiting for you,” he tells her. “It feels…wrong.”

“What does?”

He shrugs with one shoulder. “Leaving you behind.” 

(His body, his brain, is screaming at him to stand up and walk outside and bask in the sun. Why is it that her call is stronger?)

Zelda stares into his eyes, and he thinks hers match the color of the grass beneath his fingertips.

“Then I shouldn’t keep you,” she sits up, wincing a little and shaking out her arms as she pulls her sandals back on. “Help me stand?”

He does, getting to his feet and easily pulling her up. She staggers beside him as they walk towards the mouth of the cave, the both of them squinting as the sunlight grows stronger and more overwhelming until finally they’re outside. Link’s feet carry him all the way to the edge of a cliff that overlooks a vast stretch of green, a forest directly below and hills that stretch out for miles. In the far distance, on the horizon, is a mountain split in half, but what catches his eye is the castle.

The castle is a black blot, a stain, on the valley of green. It swarms with dark pink...energy, gigantic black pillars surrounding it, accented with pink and red lights. The energy moves as if it’s alive and has a mind of its own, swirling around the decrepit-looking citadel, and if Link squints hard enough it looks like there’s some kind of animal, some kind of face, glaring back at him.

Beside him, Zelda sucks in a breath. 

“What is that?” she whispers, voice trembling, like she’s afraid if she speaks too loud the…the thing engulfing the castle will hear her and attack. Her hand slides into his.

“I don’t know,” he whispers back, squeezing her fingers, finding himself welcoming the contact. “I don’t think I want to find out.”  

He turns his head, looks at her in the broad daylight, and his mouth falls open.

Zelda glances at him. “What?”

He tells her, “You’re dirty.”

She’s covered in grime, her golden hair dull and limp with dirt and grease, and there’s red streaks that look a little too much like dried blood on her hands and caked beneath her fingernails. Her dress may as well be a scrap of cloth.

Zelda searches his face and responds, “You’re wearing earrings.”

Her lips quirk up, and Link finds himself smiling back.

Over her shoulder, he spots someone watching them down the path. The moment they lock eyes the stranger turns on his heel and walks further down to sit beneath a rocky outcropping before a fire.

“There’s someone over there,” Link says, letting go of Zelda’s hand to point in the direction of the stranger. “We can ask him what’s going on.”

She follows his finger and nods. 

They walk down the path together. On their short trek, Link picks up what he identifies as a tree branch and Zelda grabs what she tells him are Hylian Shrooms.

“What’s Hylian?” he asks, swinging his tree branch around as he walks.

She shrugs, watching him play with it. “We can ask the stranger.”

The stranger, who sits up straight when they finally approach. The stranger, who’s wearing dark leathers and a black hood, and who has a large white beard and wrinkles around the corners of his eyes. The stranger, who is an old man, and who stares at Zelda like he’s seeing a ghost.

The stranger, the old man, who demands in an angry, rough voice, "What are you doing here?"

Chapter Text

"What are you doing here?" The old man demands, so intense that Link flinches, tightening his grip on his tree branch.

Zelda frowns, unfazed, adjusting her hold on the handful of Hylian Shrooms in her arms. "We don't know. We woke up together back there-" she jerks her head up the hill towards the cave, “-and we're trying to figure out what's going on. Neither of us can remember anything except for our names.”

The old man continues to stare at her, wide-eyed, pale as a ghost.

"Do you know something?" Link asks, drawing his attention. "Do you know us?"

The stranger blinks, visibly collecting himself, and clears his throat before ducking his head and answering, "No, I'm sorry. I am just an old man who's lived on this plateau for years. Please, sit and warm yourselves if you must."

Sit and warm themselves they do, staring at him across the fire. 

“Would either of you like a baked apple?” he nudges a dark red…thing towards them. “I have no need for it.”

“A baked apple?” Zelda repeats, peering down at the object. “That’s food?”

“Yes,” The old man nods. Link notices that he doesn’t meet her eyes, that he doesn’t look at her any longer than he has to. “As are the Hylian Shrooms in your arms. If you rest them by the fire they’ll cook.”

She does as he says, and gasps when the shrooms burst into flames and shortly extinguish, smoking and smelling delicious.

“So, you say you know nothing but your names?” The old man looks at Link. “What are they?”

“I’m Link,” he murmurs, fiddling with a leaf on his tree branch, watching Zelda poke a smoking shroom and recoil, clutching her finger with a soft curse. “She’s Zelda.”

A small, almost fond smile crosses the stranger’s face. “It seems she also forgot that things that were just on fire are hot, and therefore will burn if touched.”

“Well, I did say we can’t remember anything,” Zelda scowls down at the Hylian Shrooms before poking the baked apple. When it doesn’t burn her, she picks it up and takes a bite, juice running down her chin when she asks, “What’s your name?”

He swallows. “I am just an old man.”

“Yes-” So does she. “-but surely you get called something else.”

“Zelda,” Link says, quiet. His throat is raw, and it almost hurts to speak. “He doesn’t have to give us his name if he doesn’t want to.”

She huffs and takes another bite of the apple, wiping her mouth with the back of her filthy, bloodstained hand. Link is surprised she doesn’t paint her lips with dirt.

(Just how long has it all been dried on her skin for it not to come off?)

“You can just…” The old man stares at her red fingers, at the pitiful state of her dress, something like sorrow in his eyes. “Just call me Old Man.”

Link and Zelda lock eyes. Zelda makes a face, her nose scrunching in obvious disapproval of not being able to interrogate the man for his real name, possibly because she just isn’t a fan of ‘Old Man’ being his moniker, and all Link can do is shrug in response.

If it bothers you so much we can ask again later, he thinks, dropping his tree branch into his lap and motioning in front of his body in strange, foreign signals, his hands moving of their own accord.

She blinks, staring at him. He stares back.

“What did you just do?” she asks. “And why did I understand it?”

“He spoke without the use of his voice,” Old Man answers. “It’s a language usually reserved for those who can’t hear, but it seems you both know it. We used to call it Signing.”

“Do you know it, too?”

“I know some. It’d definitely be a stretch to call me fluent.”

My throat hurt, Link signs, trying to explain and unsure of how he’s even able to. I didn’t want to talk anymore, and then I wanted to say something anyways and this happened.

Old Man nods. “Sometimes, the body knows what the mind forgot.”

(Well, their minds have forgotten a lot.)

His eyes land on Link’s belt, on the Sheikah Slate glowing on his hip.

“You have the Sheikah Slate,” he says, an abrupt change in subject.

“You know of it?” Zelda questions, perking up. “Is it yours?”

“No,” Old Man shakes his head. “I just…I know someone who loves it very much.”

Where are they? Link interrogates, his hands a flurry of motion. Can we talk to them?

“She…isn’t here, right now, and you won’t be able to find her,” he glances at Zelda as he speaks. “I don’t know if she’ll be coming back.”

Old Man- One of Link’s hands, specifically his fingers, move into the shape of a ‘K’. He presses that hand to his opposite shoulder, bringing it down diagonally across his body to his hip-

Old Man sucks in a breath, going stiff. Zelda frowns.

“I don’t understand that one,” she tells him. “What does it mean?”

Link points to Old Man. When she nods in understanding, he continues to sign, Old Man, do you know how to use the slate?

“I know enough to help you understand the basics. Turn it on for me.”

Link takes the slate off his belt and turns it on, tapping the screen awake. Zelda shuffles close, watching over his shoulder.

(She’s warm from the fire, and her presence at his side makes him…comfortable.) 

“If you press this button,” Old Man leans over and points to a button on the left side of the screen. “The map will open.”

Link jabs it and the screen lights up blue before a map of the plateau appears. 

“What’s that?” Zelda asks, tapping a bright yellow circle in the top right region and frowning when nothing happens. 

“Something important,” Their guide vaguely answers. “I suggest bringing the slate to it.”

Link stares at him, narrowing his eyes. Something is…weird about him. From the way he seems to avoid Zelda to his sudden knowledge of…everything they have questions about, Old Man-whatever his actual name is-puts him on edge.

(Was he lying, before? Does he know who they are? Is he going to try and hurt them?)

All Link has to defend himself is a tree branch, and Zelda has nothing but food. Old Man’s got some kind of cane that doubles as a lantern sitting behind him, which would definitely hurt more than the flimsy stick that almost broke in half when Link first picked it up and swung it. If worse comes to worse, Link supposes he can steal the cane/lantern thing and whack at the stranger until he’s down and they can run, but-

“It doesn’t look very far,” Zelda says of the glowing yellow circle. “What do you think, Link?”

(Link thinks they should get moving, that they should get away from Old Man’s cryptic words and his sad, sad eyes-)

He drags his finger across the slate’s screen, locating a large patch of blue and pointing to it.

Water, he signs, making a ‘W’ with three fingers and tapping them to his lips. He sets the slate down in his lap and points to her before giving two thumbs ups and sliding them up and down his sides, signing, Bath.

“Right,” Zelda nods, laughing a little. “This would be a lot worse if I couldn’t understand you at all.”

(If Old Man wants them to trust him, Link can play along. Once they’re alone, he can ask Zelda what she thinks about the stranger who won’t meet her eyes and they can go from there.)

He hands Zelda the slate and grabs his branch, climbing to his feet.

“We should go,” he croaks, up to speaking again. “To the circle.”

Zelda nods again and stands, stretching. 

“Just one more thing before you leave,” Old Man motions to the cooked Hylian Shrooms. “The slate can hold those for you.”

Zelda’s eyes light up. “Really?”

As he instructs her how to store the shrooms using the slate, Link stares out at the rest of the plateau.

(Why does he get the feeling they’ll find no answers here?)

Chapter Text

The water, as it turns out, is right next to them in the form of a pond with a tall rock in the middle of it. Bidding farewell to Old Man, Link and Zelda walk down the path and-

There’s something sticking out of a tree stump, some kind of curved blade at the end of a hefty-looking stick. Link drops his tree branch and stands in front of it, wrapping his hands around the handle-

He tugs it free with little to no effort, and the word, what this…weapon is, comes to him.

“Axe,” he tells Zelda, who nods. He watches her drop to her knees before his discarded tree branch, the Sheikah Slate gripped tightly in her hands. 

When she aims the slate at the branch, he asks, “What are you doing?”

“What Old Man taught me to do with the Hylian Shrooms,” she answers, tapping the screen a few times. “Watch.”

The slate beeps, and the tree branch glows blue before dematerializing into strings and flying into the slate’s glaring eye.

Link nearly drops the axe. “That’s…like magic.”

“Not magic,” she looks at him over the slate, her green eyes sparkling. “Science.”

“Can you bring it back?”

She rapidly nods and taps the screen again, biting her lip. Blue strings fly out of the slate’s eye, and in a flash of light the tree branch rematerializes on the grass.

“Isn’t it so cool?!” she exclaims, sucking the branch back into the slate and then shooting it back out, only to repeat the process. “It’s like-It’s like-!”

“Magic,” Link says again, because what other explanation could there be?

“Science!” Zelda gleefully repeats, sucking the branch into the slate one last time and standing up. 

“Do you even know what science is? Because I don’t.”

“Old Man said science is like magic we can explain without making stuff up to justify it,” she says, walking next to him as he follows the path along the edge of the water to a small hill that leads right down into it. “It’s knowledge instead of blind faith.”

Link slides the axe onto his back, the handle catching on the strap along his body and keeping it secure on his spine. It clinks with his every movement, a rhythmic sort of sound, but it sounds…wrong.

It’s difficult for him to describe. The clinking is nice, but it’s just…it’s not right, like this axe shouldn’t on in his back, like there should be something else in its place. Something that makes a different kind of noise when he moves.

And he feels empty, all of a sudden, like a piece of himself is missing, and yeah he has amnesia, but this is different. His amnesia is like a fog, like a wall in his mind is blocking him from his identity. This is like there’s a gaping hole in his foundation, like his soul is being devoured by a loneliness he can never even begin to name.

“What was that?” Zelda glances to him, expectant.

“What?” Link asks.

“Didn’t you say something?”

He shakes his head.

“Oh,” she blinks, then turns her attention back to the slate. “Sorry, I thought I heard you talk.”

Does Zelda feel the same emptiness? The same deep, almost primal longing for something she can’t even remember?

“Do you feel lonely?” he blurts as they round the hill and make their way down to the water, stopping on the rocks.

“Lonely?” Zelda frowns. “You’re right next to me.”

“I-I know, but-” his voice breaks and his words stop and his hands move and he signs, I feel like I’m missing more than just my memories, like I’m missing something really important.

“More important than your memories?”

He nods. Like a piece of me is out there, lost, and waiting for me to find it.

“I…” Zelda goes quiet, frowning. Her eyebrows furrow, and she looks down at her hands on the Sheikah Slate like if she stares at them hard enough they’ll give her the answer. “I think so. It feels…It feels like there’s a-”

“Hole,” he croaks.

“Yes, but I think that’s because of the amnesia. What else could it be?”

Link shrugs. 

They stop before the pond. Zelda puts the slate down on the rocks, kicks off her sandals, and says, “I think trying to take this dress off would ruin it completely. I’m going to leave it on until we can find me some better clothes.” 

He nods, she walks towards the water, and the moment Zelda’s feet touch it Link turns his back on her.

“What are you doing?” she asks, sounding confused. “I just told you I wasn’t undressing.”

And Link jolts, looking down at himself, because what is he doing? 

(Because that was automatic. Because he wasn’t thinking when he turned around, he just did.)

Old Man told him just minutes ago, Sometimes, the body knows what the mind forgot.

Why does his body ‘know’ to turn around when Zelda steps into water? 

Link faces her, mumbling an apology, and watches as she crouches down, cups some water in her palms, and violently scrubs at her skin. The way she attacks the dried dirt and blood is wild, borderline frenzied, as she rakes her nails through the grime to scratch the flakes free. The water surrounding her turns from a clear blue to a murky brown, and Zelda’s breaths come out of her in short, rapid bursts.

“Zelda?” he asks, taking a step towards her, the toes of his boots dipping into the muddy shallow.

“I don’t…” she looks at him, her voice trembling and her hands shaking where she holds them over the the water. “I don’t know what’s happening, I…I started cleansing myself and…and my body just-”

Her hands clench into fists, and the pond ripples with the breeze. 

“I think I’m panicking,” she breathes. “I think I’m panicking and I don’t know why. I don’t remember why.”

“How can I help?” Link keeps his voice calm despite the confusion raging through his brain.

Why does Zelda’s body ‘know’ to panic when she steps into water? Why is his first instinct to wrap her in his arms and hold her tight?

“Um,” her eyes stray back to her wavering, bloody hands, and she wets her lips with her tongue. “Can-Can you help me clean them? I think…I think when I see that my hands are clean it’ll get better.”

He joins her in the rippling pond, wading around to stand in front of her. He reaches out and brushes his fingertips over her red knuckles before taking her hands and dunking them in the water.

Zelda closes her eyes, her chest heaving, and her fingers twitch when he begins to gently rub the red from her skin.

“Maybe you just really hate taking baths,” he murmurs. 

Her laugh is weak, but it’s there.

“I wonder how you got so dirty,” he continues. “When I’m clean.”

She shrugs, managing, “I couldn’t tell you.”

“The bed we were in even had water.”

“And you were the one in it,” Zelda opens her eyes, staring into his. Her breathing returns to normal. “I was on top of you, remember?” 

(The water stills.)

“Yeah, well,” he lets go of her hands, having finished cleaning them. “I can’t argue that.” 

She looks down at her hands, at her clean, pale fingers, and smiles so brightly she could rival the sun. “Thank you, Link.”

“Sure,” Link chokes, his throat suddenly dry, and did it get warmer or is that just his face? “No problem.”

He wades back to the rocks and moves to sit, but before he can he notices a circle of lily pads just over Zelda’s shoulder, and the lip of the hill next to it that looks like the perfect diving board. 

“I’ll be right back,” he tells Zelda, who hums in acknowledgement and bends to wash her legs, her long hair blocking her face from view.

The axe clinks against his back as he jogs up to the hill to the spot, and as he stands on the edge and stares down into the circle of lilypads, Link hesitates.

He’s…never dived, before. Or…he has, because his arms are already raised and his legs are already bent to send him into a swan dive, but…That was Before-Amnesiafied Link who dove, not Now-Amnesiafied Link. Now-Amensiafied Link feels the fear of throwing himself off of land and into the open air to be at the mercy of gravity, Now-Amnesiafied Link thinks the water is going to break his bones when he slams into it, Now-Amnesiafied Link-

“Hup!”

Now-Amnesiafied Link is jumping off the edge, Now-Amnesiafied Link is smoothly diving into the water, Now-Amnesiafied Link’s head is going under-

The injuries are extensive, A distant voice whispers, adding, and you’re barely holding on even with the Shrine’s help.

How long? he demands, voice strained.

He sinks into the pond-

Let me die, he’s on his back in a dark, dimly lit room and gripping a woman’s hand as tightly as he can, feeling her rapid pulse bash against his palm as he begs her, If I die, a new Hero is born and you only have to wait until they’re old enough to wield the-

Link floats back to the surface, shoving his face into the open air and gasping for breath, his heart racing and a searing pain in his head. His ears ring, and the world is too bright, and his lungs are writhing in his chest and he can’t breathe and what the fuck was that-

There’s a pop in the air beside him and it sounds like canonfire-

“Yahaha!”

A plant is hovering next to his head. It looks like a small tree, a leaf acting as its face. It holds a rotating sprout in one hand, the spinning of the leaves keeping it aloft. Link, dripping and treading water and wheezing, is distracted from his panic by the sight of it.

“You found me!” The tiny tree chirps, then startles at the sight of him. “Huh? You're not Hestu! But you can...see me?” 

(What the hell is this thing? What the hell is a Hestu?)

“I didn't know your kind could see the children of the forest!” The tiny tree continues, sounding almost as excited as Zelda does about the Sheikah Slate’s ability to store things. “Well, if you run into Hestu, please return this to him!” 

It tosses him a small golden nugget, the object plunking into the water before it floats to the surface.

“Oh, and my friends are hiding in different places too!” It adds. “Don't be shy about poking your nose into suspicious places!”

Link closes his shaking fingers around the nugget, stares at the tiny tree for a moment, and weakly tells it, “Thanks.”

Get out of the water, his mind screams. Get out of the water.

As he races back towards Zelda-he knows how to swim?-, his muscles burning from the effort, he hears its small voice cry, “Bye, Mister!”

Zelda is sitting on the rocks when he reaches her, wringing her hair out. When he collapses down next to her, catching his breath, she nods in the direction of the floating tree and asks, “What happened there?”

Link shakes his head. “I don’t know. It gave me this, though-” he shows her the nugget. “Think the slate can hold it?”

“Here,” she hands it to him. “You try.”

He ignores her smug smile when he laughs in delight at how the nugget disappears from reality under his command.

(He doesn’t tell her about his…vision, not yet, because he doesn’t even know how to explain it.)

“Come on,” Zelda lies back on the rocks, motioning for him to join her. “We can dry off better if we’re all spread out.”

“What, and break our spines?” he asks, sarcastic.

She laughs, grinning as she retorts, “Can’t be any worse than the slab of a bed you woke up on, can it?” 

(But Link, as he sets the slate down in the space between them and lays next to her, basking in the sun in an effort to dry himself, makes a silent promise to himself that he won’t swim in any water unless he has to.) 

“No,” he answers after a minute. “It can’t.”

Get out of the water, his mind screams.

Chapter Text

The sun makes her sleepy.

Zelda is there, lying on the rocks next to Link and waiting for the sun to dry her clothes, and out of nowhere she’s having trouble keeping her eyes open.

“The sun makes me sleepy,” she announces, turning her head to glance at Link.

“Hm?” his eyes blink open, and he looks more than a little drowsy.

She grins. “Guess that’s another thing we have in common.”

“We woke up in the cave an hour ago,” he murmurs, yawning. “How are we so tired already?”

Zelda shrugs, closing her eyes.

(They’re not in a rush. Taking a nap never hurt anyone.)

Please, Goddess, don’t let my crops die.

“What?” she asks, trying to catch what Link said.

“What?” he echoes. 

“What did you say?”

“I didn’t say anything.”

Zelda opens her eyes to find him already staring at her. There’s a hint of worry on his face.

Please, Goddess, let there be rain.

Link’s lips don’t move. An emptiness makes itself known in her chest, and her hands feel cold.

(Well…that’s weird.)

She chooses to ignore it, for now, sitting up and stretching. “Should we head towards the yellow circle?”

“Sure,” Link grabs the slate and hops to his feet, the axe on his back clinking. “Ready when you are!”

He’s so full of energy, all of a sudden, like he wasn’t just about to doze off, like those few milliseconds of rest were all he needed.

Zelda finds herself envying him, stuck with heavy limbs and a slight pounding in her head. She takes his hand when he offers it, lets him pull her up, and catches herself when she wobbles.

“You okay?” he asks.

“Yes,” she nods, glancing back towards the water, making sure they’re leaving nothing behind. “Let’s walk.”

(She also chooses to ignore the way her heart rate picks up and the rolling of her stomach as she takes in the sight of the pond. It’d be a shame to waste the baked apple she took from Old Man by throwing it back up.)

They start walking in the direction of the yellow circle, the activity helping the fog clear from Zelda’s head, and are immediately distracted by the ruins sitting right next to them.

“There’s no rush,” Link reasons, rocking back and forth on his heels as he stares up at the stone temple that rests at the top of the hill.

“Right,” Zelda agrees, feeling an indescribable urge to explore it. 

She and Link lock eyes. He grins.

“Race you,” he says, before he bolts.

“Hey!” Zelda cries, running after him, her strides awkward due to her still-soggy sandals. “Cheater!”

Laughing, he vaults over the wall in front of them and races up the steps. She does the same, throwing herself over the wall, but her sandals trip her up on landing. Cursing, she kicks them off and picks them up, one in each hand, before she follows him barefoot up the stairs, taking them two at a time and ignoring the pain of her skin slapping against the hot stone.

“Link!” she calls.

He looks back at her over his shoulder. He opens his mouth to-

Zelda takes aim and chucks one of her sandals at his face.

Link yelps when it pinwheels into his nose, tripping over his own foot and landing on all fours when he hits the flat cobblestone path. Zelda cackles, ecstatic with her victory as she sprints past him and towards a second set of stairs.

“Who’s the cheater now?!” he shouts from behind, sounding a little nasally.

“I learned from the best!” she calls back, not giving him the satisfaction of glancing over her shoulder as she bounds up the steps. 

It’s why, when she reaches the top of them, she’s able to see the creature and stumble to a stop before it can notice her.

It’s…a pig? Maybe? It stands on two legs and has hands and a face and looks vaguely human, its ears pointed like Zelda’s are, but it’s a pig. A red, snarling, angry-looking human/pig hybrid that holds a wooden bat in its hand, patrolling the space in front of the dilapidated temple like its life mission is to keep people away from it.

And as Zelda stands there, staring at the hideous obstacle standing between her and the temple, she feels a sort of…a sort of tugging, in her gut. One that tells her that she needs to get inside of the building and see what waits for her there.

“What the hell is that thing?” Link appears next to her, panting as he passes her the sandal she threw.

Please, Goddess, don’t let my husband get eaten by the monsters.

“A monster,” Zelda replies. She nods to the axe on his back. “I think we have to kill it to get inside.”

Something in Link changes when he draws the axe. His face goes blank, expression smoothing over, and his gaze sharpens as he stares at the red pig, his pupils dilating and eclipsing the blue of his eyes. The tense line of his shoulders relaxes when he sighs, and he rolls his neck, his ponytail scrunching between his nape and the top bump of his spine.

He positions himself a certain way, turned to the side with his feet spread and knees bent, his mouth set in concentration.

(He looks like an entirely different person.)

“Throw one of your sandals at it,” he murmurs. His fingers flex on the axe’s handle. “It’ll get distracted, and I can sneak up from behind and kill it.”

Zelda nods, takes aim, and tosses one of her sandals at the monster. It sails over its head and clatters to the stone a few feet in front of it.

The pig perks up, snorting a grunt that sounds suspiciously like a, Huh? and ambles over to the object, the wooden club dangling loosely from its claws as it bends down to inspect.

Link crouches and scurries over, his footsteps nearly silent despite the heaviness of his boots. Zelda watches as he pauses behind the monster, tightens his grip on the axe, and viciously swings with a battle cry of, “Hyah!”

The beast squeals, back arching, before it collapses over Zelda’s sandal and dissolves into a puff of purple and black smoke. All that remains of the pig are some horns and its club.

(The kill is merciless.)

Link slides the axe onto his back and picks up the horns, turning to face her with a bright, unbothered smile.

“Come grab the slate,” he beckons, turning his hip towards her to present the Sheikah Slate on his belt. “It might be able to store these!”

Zelda walks over, slipping her sandals back on before grabbing the slate and aiming it at the horns in his arms. She jabs the screen, hitting the button labeled, Intake, and the slate beeps.

Scanning… The screen reads, before the horns glow blue, dematerialize into strings, and fly into the Sheikah Slate’s unblinking eye. 

“The club, too!” Link bends down and picks up the wooden club, able to wield it in one hand like a sword. “Actually…”

He stares at the weapon in his grasp, his eyebrows furrowing. He’s silent for a long moment, just…looking at it.

“Link?” Zelda asks, worried. “What is it?”

Put the axe in the slate, he signs with one hand, rapidly spelling out the words with his fingers as he swaps the axe on his back with the club. I want to try out fighting with this.

The axe gets stored in the slate, too, and it warms in her hands.

She passes it back to Link, who returns it to his belt. Her feet carry her past him and into the temple, where the emptiness in her chest truly decides to make itself known.

It’s just falling apart, a gaping hole in its side and sunlight spilling in, grass covering the floor and peeking out through what remains of the stone tile. There’s a broken-down wagon to the left and shattered windows to the right, but what draws Zelda’s attention is the statue.

It’s tall, probably three times her height, and of a woman whose face she feels like she recognizes, though she can’t place from where. Her stone face is blank except for a small smile, and her hands are cupped together before her chest, making a platform that someone could probably sit on if they dared to climb her. There are folded wings on her back, the bumps of their tips showing over the curves of her shoulders, and the word, angelic pops into Zelda’s head.

(Her knees ache.)

Link stands next to her, humming a song she doesn’t recognize. It’s a short tune that repeats itself twice before lifting and sinking at the end.

“What song is that?” she asks him, voice soft.

(Her tattered white dress feels like a straitjacket.)

“I don’t know,” he responds in kind. “But I feel like I’ve been here, before.”

Zelda looks around again. Her eyes continue to catch on the statue.

(Her hands are so, so cold.)

Please, Goddess-

“So do I,” she says. “Do you recognize that statue?”

He stares at it for a minute, then signs, No, I don’t.

They walk up to it, and Zelda feels like its blank eyes are staring into her soul. Her skin crawls the closer they get, and her stomach is back to doing flips as her heart picks up speed once again.

She finds herself grabbing Link’s hand, trying to distract herself with his warmth like she had in the water.

He doesn’t pull away, but he shoots her a concerned look as he glances down to where they touch.

Your hand is freezing, he signs with his free hand, his fingers a flurry of motion before her eyes. Are you cold?

“No,” Zelda answers, her voice just above a whisper. “We’re standing in the sun.”

They stand before the statue, staring up at it, still holding hands.

“Who do you think it is?” Link asks.

“She’s a goddess,” The words spills from her lips.

He makes a face. “What makes you say that?”

“We’re clearly in a temple of some kind, and this is the centerpiece of it. Plus, she has wings.” 

“How do you know it’s a ‘she’?”

Zelda shrugs. “It’s what I thought when I first looked at her.”

“Seems like no one cares about her,” he points to the gaping hole in the temple’s side. “Or they just forgot about her entirely.”

“We certainly did.”

He laughs. “We can ask Old Man about her the next time we see him.”

Then he lets go of her hand and drops to one knee, lowering his head.

“Um, Link?” Zelda stares down at him, bewildered. She can’t help but laugh a bit. “What are you doing?”

“You said she’s a goddess, right?” he motions for her to join him. “And we just established no one’s acknowledged her in a while. I bet she’s lonely, misses people talking to her.”

He…wants to pray to some random, forgotten goddess? Because he thinks her statue might be lonely?

(Why is her chest full and swelling with warmth? Why are her hands no longer cold?)

Zelda joins him on the ground, getting down on both of her knees and clasping her hands before her chest. She closes her eyes, bows her head, and-

Little Goddess.

Zelda opens her eyes and is met with nothing but darkness. She looks down at herself, and sees that she’s glowing gold, a radiant aura outlining her body.

(Her dress is intact, and her sandals are dry.)

“What…” she falters. Her voice echoes.  

Two large, bright yellow eyes appear in front of her, no irises or pupils to tell her where they’re looking. Her surroundings begin to illuminate, and the darkness pulses pink.   

Little Goddess, The darkness speaks, and its voice brings nothing but dread as it reverberates through her skull and makes her want to disappear into the shadows. Its voice is low, rough, and above all else: familiar.

She…She knows this voice, but where-but who-

I am your destiny, The darkness hisses. She can just barely make out fangs and a snout. I am the end of this world.

“I don’t understand,” she breathes. “Where-” 

It roars in her face. It roars, and the pink rushes forth, and Zelda is in some kind of sac filled with glowing pink goo and the darkness is a giant pig and the giant pig is an absolute monster- 

Hi, there.

Link’s voice cuts through all of the noise, and everything stops.

No, The beast growls. Tendrils of smoke launch her way but dissipate the moment they touch her skin. No, not again-

Link continues, We think you’re some kind of goddess-

The pink goo is rising around her and her head throbs-

-so if you can send us a sign…

You have always been a coward, The monster snarls. 

The world is spinning and Zelda can feel herself falling, can feel herself dissolving into the light that protects her-

You cannot hide from me for another century, The demon threatens. I will find you, Zelda, and I will make you watch as I devour his infinite soul and condemn this land to an eternal ruin-

Link puts his hand on her shoulder, and Zelda opens her eyes.

She can’t breathe, and her frigid hands shake.

“What is it?” Link asks, worried. “What’s wrong?”

She hunches over and vomits baked apple at the forgotten goddess’s feet, unable to get the taste of ash and death off of her tongue.   

Chapter Text

By the time they get near the glowing yellow circle on the slate’s map, Link is starving.

They found pots filled with arrows on their way out of the temple, along with an old chest that held a bow. He’s the one that has to carry it along with the arrows, as Zelda doesn’t have any belts to secure the equipment to, and hearing the metal of it clunk against that monster’s club he stole with every step is more than satisfying.

Are you sure you’re okay? he signs to her as they walk.

“I’m fine,” she answers, adjusting one of the rusted bracelets on her wrists. “I was just a little dizzy. It’s gone, now, I promise.”

Link is starving, but watching Zelda throw up after having that baked apple makes him afraid to eat. 

It’s probably just a side effect from waking up in the cave, he thinks. Like how tired we got by the water.

And if he’s hungry, shouldn’t he just get it over with and deal with the consequences?

They’re walking through a small patch of woods when an…an animal blocks their path.

It’s big, coming up to Link’s hips, with dark brown fur and ivory tusks bracketing its pink snout. The top of its head is covered in white fur, almost like it has a mohawk, and it’s-

“A boar,” Zelda says, stopping beside him. Her hands raise in front of her stomach, her fingers splayed and twitching. 

Link slips the bow from his back and nocks an arrow, taking aim and mentally questioning how he even knows how to do this. The creak of it straining in his hands makes the boar freeze where it grazes.

“What are you doing?” Zelda hisses.

“I’m hungry,” he whispers back. “And meat is a lot better than apples.”

“It’s an animal!”

“It’s also food!”

On the edge of his vision, Zelda opens her mouth before closing it.

“Just…be careful,” she finally says. “Don’t hurt yourself.”

Link smiles. “That’s the plan.”

He aims for one of the boar’s eyes, his fingers steady on the arrow as he pulls it back even further until the string is shaking along with his hand.

His hand. Why is his hand shaking? 

Sometimes, Old Man had said, the body knows what the mind forgot.

His body knows how to shoot a bow. His body knows how to hit the eye and cleanly, painlessly kill the boar in front of them.

His hand knows to tremble when faced with the reality that he’s going to cleanly, painlessly kill the boar in front of them.

(He’s certain, that if he were to take the shot, that his hands also know how to skin it and break it down for cooking.) 

Link swallows. He lowers the bow, taking the arrow off the string with a sigh.

“What’s wrong?” Zelda asks.

I can’t kill it, he signs. You’re right. It might be a pig, but it’s still an animal.

Something in her face changes, her concern morphing into some semblance of...fear? Her widening eyes slide to the boar, which has lied down to sleep in the grass, and she whispers, “A pig?”

He nods, frowning. Yeah. A boar is just a giant pig, isn’t it?

Something in her face changes again, her expression closing over, all signs of fear evaporating into something that looks…grim. Her hands clench into fists before unfurling into flexing fingers. 

“Yes,” she quietly agrees, and holds out her hands to him, her palms up. “Can I have the bow and an arrow, please?”

Link’s frown deepens, but he hands her the bow and the arrow he refused to fire.

(Her green eyes, which only seconds ago were bright and filled with…with light…)

Blinking once, slowly, as if in a daze, Zelda expertly handles the bow, nocking the arrow and drawing it tight, aiming for the sleeping boar’s head.

(Her eyes are empty.) 

“What are you doing?” Link asks, more than a little frantic.

She’s holding the bow too close to her face. If she fires, if she fires well, the fletching will slice her cheek open.

“My duty,” she whispers, so quiet he almost misses it. “Killing a giant pig.”

What?

“Zelda,” he says, reaching for her shoulder to-to stop her, to snap her out of this-this trance- “Zelda, it’s sleeping-”

(She got like this when they were praying at the forgotten goddess’s statue in those temple ruins. He was talking to it, making jokes, and Zelda was so still, so quiet-)

“Good,” she breathes.

(She was like a completely different person.)  

Zelda fires, hissing as the arrow slices across her cheek. It rockets off the bow and slams into the middle of the boar’s forehead, and Link thanks the forgotten goddess that it dies instantly. The last sound the animal makes as the arrow hits its target is a roaring howl of a squeal, its body jerking once before it stops. 

(A fast, clean, but very, very painful kill.)

Zelda lowers the bow, not even fazed by the pure brutality of what she’s just done or the blood dribbling down the side of her face. She glances down at the back of her right hand and frowns.

“Where…?” she falters, her eyebrows furrowing together, and continues to stare at her blank knuckles like they’re the most confusing things she’s ever seen.

“Zelda,” Link closes his fingers around the bow clenched in her left hand. “Can I have this back?”

She meets his eyes and says, reverent, “Link.”

“Can I have this back?” he repeats, nodding to the bow. 

(Whatever’s happening right now, whatever this side effect from the cave is, he’d rather they go through it without a weapon she clearly knows how to wield in her hands.)

She stares at him, blinking, and he almost thinks she doesn’t hear him until she blinks again and passes him the bow, brushing the back of her hand over her cut and smearing blood across her skin.

(Will this happen to him, too, this…confusion?)

“Stay here,” he tells her, his voice low as he puts the bow back on his spine. “Don’t move. I’m going to pull the arrow out and collect the meat.”

(They can’t let their chance at food go to waste.)

Zelda nods, and once Link is confident she won’t go wandering he steps over to the corpse and drops to his knees before it.

His hands, his all-knowing hands, grab the arrow’s shaft and gently pull it out of the boar’s head. There’s no splatter of blood, though some of it stains his fingers, and the arrow stays intact.

Link stares at the fresh red on his skin. He wonders why the sight is so familiar to his eyes.

His eyes, that recognize nothing, not even his own face.

(When he had looked at himself in the reflection of the pond’s water, while he was busy cleaning Zelda’s hands, he found himself struck by how blue his eyes are. He found himself struck by the color of his hair, the slope of his nose, and the height of his cheekbones. He found himself stunned by the small scar he spotted on the curve of his jaw.)

So why is blood on his hands the thing that rings a bell?

(And what even is a bell?) 

Link is brought out of his thoughts by the growling of his stomach. 

Shit, he thinks, touching his abdomen. I really do need to eat.

His eyes drift down to the dead boar below. His eyes drift to the arrow in his grasp.

(The arrowhead is sharp enough, and Link is hungry. Link is starving.)

His hands, his all-knowing hands, tell him what to do, driven by his rumbling, empty stomach.

(They can’t let their chance at food go to waste.)

“Sorry, buddy,” he whispers to the boar, lowering the arrow to its skin and getting to work.

He’s in the middle of cleaning the bones, the raw meat stored in the slate, when there’s a shuddering gasp behind him. Link glances back to see Zelda covering her mouth with both hands. She stares at the dead boar with wide, tear-filled eyes.

(Her eyes, which are filled with light again.)

“Welcome back,” he says, wiping the blood from the arrow with the bottom of his shirt and getting to his feet.

“I killed it,” she says, her entire body shaking. 

“You did,” he nods. “What happened with the bow?”

“I don’t…” she shakes her head, lowering her hands from her trembling lips. “I don’t know.” 

“Are…” his eyes hone in on her cheek. “How did you do that?” 

She stares at him. “Do what?”

“You cut your cheek when you fired the arrow,” he points to where, only minutes ago, there was a drooling line of red marring her skin. “And it’s not there anymore.”

Zelda brushes her fingertips over her face. Her hand is clean of the blood she had smeared, and there’s no sign of her wiping it away on her dress.

(Granted, there are already plenty of bloodstains on her dress, but none of them look fresh.)

“I…I feel fine,” she says. “Nothing hurts.” 

“Do you remember anything from your…um,” he swallows. “Confusion?”

(Confusion. Yeah, he’ll call it that.)

Again, Zelda shakes her head. “What did I do? Besides, you know…”

He shrugs, sliding the arrow back into its quiver and pulling the slate from his belt, opening up the map and seeing how close they are to the yellow circle. He signs with one hand, You didn’t do much. Looked as confused as I feel.

She’s quiet for a moment. Then, “We should find a spot to cook the meat before going to the circle.”

Link nods, and they move on from the boar’s carcass.

(He can’t stop staring at her miraculously healed cheek.)

—

They find a camp of red pig monsters like the one Link killed at the ruined temple, right in front of where the yellow circle is on a patch of stone floor. Coincidentally, the red pigs have a slab of meat roasting over an open fire. 

“Guess we won’t have to cook after all,” Link murmurs to Zelda, hiding with her behind a bush. There are only three pigs, and on a tree stump behind them is littered with weapons and- “Is that a shield?”

Zelda squints at the jagged piece of wood resting against the tree stump. “I think so. I can see handles, if those even are handles-”

Link takes the bow from his back and nocks an arrow, aiming for one of the monsters’ heads. 

His hands don’t shake. He feels no hesitation when he draws the arrow back.

(Why? Why doesn’t he waver when faced with killing these animals, if they could even be called that? What’s the difference between the boar and these other pigs?)

Danger, his hands seem to respond as he mindlessly lets the arrow loose and kills one of the monsters. They have a shield.

And Link, when he watches the monster he sniped collapse into purple smoke and watches its companions freak out and grab their weapons, when he watches them guard their food and become afraid…

Link feels good. Link feels like the gaping hole in his body is filling the tiniest bit, especially when Zelda sucks in a breath before whispering, “Nice shot.”

One of the monsters holds another club, like the one on his back, while the other holds a club and the wooden shield. Link pulls the Sheikah Slate from his belt and swaps his own club for the axe.

“Stay here,” he breathes to Zelda, and before she can protest he shoves the slate into her hands, leaps out from the bush, and rushes the camp. 

His head buzzes with energy and his body practically sings as he dodges swipe after swipe of the first monster’s club and cuts it down with the axe. Laughing, Link turns to the other monster, the one with the shield-

And promptly gets a wooden club to the gut. 

All of the air leaves his lungs in a rush, rendering him stumbling and useless as he struggles to catch his breath. The monster bashes him with its shield and he falls on his ass, the axe falling from his grasp and his palms scraping against the hot cobble.

The monster stands over him, snorting, and raises its club to cave his head in-

“Hyah!” 

SMACK!

The red pig squeals and crumples on top of him, dissipating into purple smoke and a collection of horns. 

The horns, which disappear in strings of blue light along with the discarded club.

Zelda stands there, panting, Link’s club in her fist.

“Here,” she helps him to his feet and hands him the wooden shield. “Use this next time.”

Link huffs a laugh, picking up his axe, and signs, Thanks.

—

They sit in front of the fire, eating the meat the red pig monsters died trying to protect.

Zelda, unable to do anything but fuss over his already-forming bruises, sits next to him, at the ready to do…something that might help him, he isn’t sure. 

(He feels fine, really, especially now that he’s eating.)

“Link?” she asks.

He hums, looking at her, swallowing a bite of his food.

“Remember you talked about feeling a hole, earlier? Like something more important than your memories is missing?”

He nods.

“Well…” Zelda trails off. “Before, when I had the bow? I think…I think that hole inside of me was filled, even if it was just for a moment. I can’t describe it, I just…I felt complete. I felt right. When I woke up from it, I…” she holds her hands up to the flame. “I was so cold. What do you think that means?”

Link takes the final bite of his chunk of meat, chews, and swallows. He licks the juice from his fingers before signing, I’m not sure. I sort of felt like that when I was fighting the monsters, but not to that extent. 

She goes quiet again.

Come on, he grabs her attention, standing up. It’s glowing yellow circle time.

“Yeah,” she smiles a little. “It is.” 

—

The glowing yellow circle, as it turns out, is just a bunch of rocks.

“No, look,” Zelda points to a small opening, where there’s an orange light. “It’s a terminal like the ones in the cave.”

“Oh,” Link’s cheeks get warm. How did he not see that?

They approach the terminal and step onto some kind of platform. It’s black and made out of…out of something sleek and cold, like the floor of the chamber they woke up in. 

“Okay,” he says. “We’ve made it this far. What now?”

“Well, doors opened when we used the slate and the terminals back in the cave,” Zelda frowns. “But we’re outside already.”

“Then why don’t we just see what happens?”

“What if it hurts us?”

“Based on what happened with the cut on your cheek, I have a feeling you’ll be fine.”

“And you?”

He pats his stomach, signing, I can just eat some food.

Zelda chuckles, and together, the both of them holding the slate, they press it to the orange terminal.

Authenticating… The screen reads. Sheikah Slate recognized. Please watch out for falling rocks.

“Oh, wonderful,” Zelda looks at him, raising an eyebrow. “See what I’m sayi-”

She’s drowned out by the sound of the world around them shaking, and before they can even begin to run away the platform beneath them lifts into the sky.

Chapter Text

When Link opens his eyes, he’s on top of the world.

The platform he and Zelda are standing on has raised hundreds—maybe even thousands—of feet into the air, and he can see even more of the world beyond the plateau they’ve woken up on.

Zelda is squeezing his hand in one of hers, almost crushing his fingers, but he can’t even be mad about it because his knuckles are white where they’re wrapped around her palm. 

“Look,” she manages, pointing ahead. “A volcano.”

She’s right. There, past the terminal where the slate rests and just to the right of the consumed black castle, is a volcano. From this far away, he can still see the orange of the lava pouring from its mouth and the darkness of the smoke billowing into the clear blue sky. 

But, for all of his efforts not to look at it, Link’s eyes are drawn back to the castle.

The swirling pink mass surrounding it seems to glow brighter. A pit grows in his stomach.

Zelda sucks in a breath, lifting her other hand to her head. She sways a little.

(Link swears he sees a golden light illuminating the tallest tower of the castle.)

“Zelda?” he asks, staring at her with a concerned frown.

(There’s a tug in his gut, a pull, that urges him to go to the castle, that begs him to go to the golden light-)

“Just a headache,” she waves him off, lowering her hand and letting go of his to itch the knuckles of her right hand. “What now?”

In front of them, the slate beeps in the terminal. 

Distilling… The screen reads. 

Above it is a black, V-like structure with a rounded tip, which glows blue and bears the symbol of the crying eye that decorates the slate. Blue light races from the tops of the V down to the crying eye, and at its peak a drop of blue light spills like a tear and splashes onto the Sheikah Slate’s screen.

Link and Zelda watch, enraptured, as the screen automatically changes to the map, which fills in the rest of the plateau and shows exactly where the cave they woke up in is, marking it with a light blue diamond with a rounded cave inside. 

“This whole place is called the Great Plateau,” Link reads off the map. He takes the slate out of the terminal and shows it to Zelda, pointing to the ruins they explored, the abandoned temple where they prayed to the forgotten goddess. “Those ruins are the Temple of Time, and where we encountered the boar is the Forest of Spirits.”

“And the cave where we woke up,” she points to the blue diamond. “What is that called?”

Link moves the cursor over to the diamond-

Shrine of Resurrection, The map reads. 

He and Zelda go quiet.

Shrine of…Shrine of Resurrection? 

“I think that explains where our memories went,” Zelda murmurs.

“What do you mean?” Link asks. 

“Well it’s in the name, isn’t it?” she looks at him, meeting his eyes. “‘Shrine of Resurrection’. It means we were…we were dead, or close to it, and it healed us, brought us back to full health. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say that our amnesia is a side-effect of the, ah-”

“Resurrecting?”

She nods. “Yes.”

Link swallows. He has so many questions, and the only one who could possibly answer them is the kind stranger who taught them the basics of the Sheikah Slate and sent them here in the first place. “We need to find Old Man, ask him if he knows anything about this whole resurrection thing.”

“I agree,” Zelda looks around, her eyebrows furrowing. “How are we supposed to get down from here?”

“There’s an opening behind the terminal,” Link points to the large gap in the floor only a few feet away, putting the slate back on his belt and following Zelda when she walks over to the hole.

They look down and see a platform at least twenty feet below them.

“That’s a large drop,” Zelda whispers, blanching. 

“There’s handholds,” Link drops to one knee and touches raised ridges on the wall of the…the tower? Is that what they’re on? Is that what he calls it?

She bites her lip. “And there’s no other way?”

He shakes his head. “Here, I’ll go first so I can catch you if you fall.”

After watching her visibly relax, Link steps off the edge and drops at least twenty feet to the platform below, hearing her screech his name as he lands on his feet with no problems. 

“Link!” she yells at him, on her hands and knees and glaring down at him with a wild, panicked anger in her green eyes. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

Cheeky, Link grins up at her. “I can just put you back in the Shrine of Resurrection if that happens, right?”

“Oh, you son of a-” Zelda grumbles threats and curses under her breath that he can’t hear as she slowly climbs down the side of the tower. “Just you wait until I get down there!”

Laughing, he replies, “Can’t wait!”

With periodic glances to the Sheikah Slate’s clock, Link times her. It takes exactly four minutes and thirteen seconds for Zelda to finally drop to the platform next to him, out of breath and wiping sweat from her brow.

“It’s much easier if you just drop,” he tells her.

“I like my ankles not broken, thank you very much,” she says.

“Mine are perfect,” he lifts one of his feet into the air and rolls it around. “See?”

“You’re also wearing boots,” Zelda points to her flimsy sandals. “I think these would snap if I landed too hard on them.”

He bends down, examining them, laughing when she wiggles her toes in his face. He concludes, “I think they’ll manage.”

“Oh yeah? How do you know?”

“I don’t, but if they can survive all of the walking we’ve done I think it’s okay.”

They stand at the edge of the platform, and together they stare down at the next one. It isn’t directly below them, more forward like it’s a step rather than another place to stand on. 

“Were these things stairs for giants?” Link questions, sarcastic.

“I couldn’t tell you,” Zelda shakes her head. “And you want me to, what, jump down there?”

“Not jump,” he takes a step off the platform and drops to the one they’re talking about, easily landing on his feet and ignoring her second, panicked yell of his name. “See? It’s nothing to be afraid of!”

“For you!” she exclaims. “I’ve never done this before!”

“Neither have I!”

“Then you’re just reckless!”

“And I’m having a good time!” Link puts his hands on his hips, puffing his chest and grinning up at her again. “Come on, Zelda, trust me and take a leap of faith! I promise I’ll catch you if you need it!”

She covers her mouth with one hand, giggling.

“What’s so funny?” he asks, his voice growing hoarse from how long he’s had it raised, his throat starting to scratch.

“You look ridiculous standing like that,” she snickers, lowering her hand.

And you look ridiculous standing all the way up there, he signs, making her laugh in earnest. Take the leap of faith, Zelda.

When he signs Zelda’s name, he makes his right hand a claw and raises it to his chin, yanking it down towards his chest and clenching it into a fist at the same time.

Zelda tilts her head. “What’s that last sign? I don’t know that one, either.”

He points to her. When she nods, he continues, Please? At least try this one, and if you don’t like it you can climb down for the rest.

She sighs. “Fine.”

Link pumps a fist into the air in celebration, stepping back a bit and at the ready to lunge and catch her if he has to. Zelda takes a few deep breaths, clenching and unclenching her fists at her sides, and finally takes a step forward, dropping down to the platform with a yelped exclamation of, “Oh!”

She lands on her feet in front of him, holding her arms out to keep her balance as she staggers the slightest bit. Her sandals are intact.

Well? Link signs.

Her laughter is breathless, and the smile on her face is wide. “Maybe you’re right about it being fun.”

“Yes!” he rasps, raising his hand in the air, offering her his palm.

Zelda stares up at his hand, her smile fading. “What are you doing?”

High-five! he signs with his other hand. Good job!

“Thank you,” her eyebrows furrow, and she looks more than a little puzzled. “What’s a high-five?”

You smack my hand with yours, he explains, his fingers moving on autopilot while his brain wonders how he’s even able to explain what this is, because she’s right, what the hell is a high-five? It’s a celebration thing.

“Oh,” Zelda reaches up and lightly smacks his palm with her own. “Like that?”

He nods, dropping his hand and watching her do the same. Ready for the next one?

They walk to the edge of the platform they now stand on, looking at the next one.

He can practically hear Zelda’s racing thoughts, can practically hear the way she’s overthinking this next drop despite how she found the last one semi-enjoyable.

What about this, Link offers her one of his hands, smiling and signing with his other, We’ll do the rest of them together.

Zelda swallows, taking his hand. “All right.”

They make it all the way to the last platform, right above the ground, when they spot it: a black structure that looks like a small hut with glowing orange lights around the base, engraved into the black. 

“Look at that thing,” Zelda breathes in awe, pointing to it. “What do you think it is?”

“I have no idea,” Link says, up to speaking with his voice again, hopping off the platform and offering her his hand to help her down. “Come on, let’s check it out.”

The second Zelda’s feet touch the ground, there’s a whistling noise coming from somewhere behind them. They turn around to see, coincidentally, Old Man gliding in from somewhere in the sky, holding a square of cloth above his head to keep him in the air and help him drift. He snaps it shut and drops in front of them, placing his cane/lantern down and staring at them from beneath his hood, sliding his gliding cloth onto his belt. 

“My, my…” he glances between them. “It would seem we have quite the enigma here.”

“What do you mean?” Link asks.

He points to the tower they just descended. “This tower and others just like it have erupted across the land, one after another. It is almost as though…”

His eyes linger on Zelda.

“Almost as though what?” she questions.

“Almost as though a long-dormant power has awoken quite suddenly,” Old Man finishes. “If you do not mind me asking…Did anything…odd occur while you two were atop that tower?”

“The pink stuff around the castle glowed brighter,” Link answers. “And I thought I saw a golden light coming from the tallest tower.”

“I got a headache,” Zelda replies.

“Well now,” Old Man continues to stare at her, but he says to Link, “And did you happen to recognize the ‘pink stuff’ or the golden light?”

“No,” Link frowns. “How would I recognize those things?”

“I see,” The stranger grows quiet. “Well, that is unfortunate.”

He turns and points his cane/lantern towards the aforementioned castle, directing their attention. “That atrocity enshrouding the castle, that…is Calamity Ganon.”

(Link swears he’s watching Zelda when he says the name. Zelda, who doesn’t react.)

“One hundred years ago, that vile entity brought the kingdom of Hyrule to ruin.”

Hyrule, Link thinks. So that’s the name of the country we’re in. 

“It appeared suddenly and destroyed everything in its path,” Old Man informs them. “So many innocent lives were lost in its wake. For a century, the very symbol of our kingdom, Hyrule Castle, has managed to contain that evil. But just barely. There it festers, building its strength for the moment it will unleash its blight upon the land once again. Unfortunately, it would appear that moment is fast approaching…”

He turns back to them. “Tell me, courageous ones: do you intend to make your way to the castle?”

Link and Zelda look at each other.

“Yes,” They both say, answering at the same time.

(Link is surprised she answers with the same sentiment, and by the looks of it Zelda is too. Did she feel the pull, too? Did she see the golden light?)

“I had a feeling you both would say that,” Old Man murmurs, before telling them, “Here, on this isolated plateau, we are surrounded on all sides by steep cliffs, with no way down. If you were to try and jump off, well…no death could be more certain. Or more foolish. Of course,” Now there’s a smile in his voice, and as he pats the gliding cloth on his belt he entices, “If you had a paraglider like mine, that would be quite another story.”

“Hand it over!” Link blurts, just as he feels Zelda slip the Sheikah Slate from his belt.

“Oho!” Old Man chuckles. “Certainly! Why not? But there is no such thing as a free item in this world, you know.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Link watches Zelda turn on the slate and aim it at the paraglider, jabbing the screen. She stares at the paraglider, her eyes flicking between it and the slate, before she frowns and jabs the screen again.

“It’s not storing,” she hisses in Link’s ear.

“You’re trying to steal it from him?” he hisses back.

“We need it!”

Old Man smiles down at them, looking almost fond. “Is there a problem?”

Link yelps, “No!” at the same time Zelda complains, “The Sheikah Slate won’t store the paraglider.”

He laughs, and it’s a booming sort of sound.

“The paraglider has been enchanted,” he explains. “It will never tear or break. Because of the magic holding it together, the Sheikah Slate can’t recognize it as a storable object. The device just simply won’t process it.”

“And you only have one?” Zelda questions, putting the slate back on Link’s belt.

Old Man swallows, staring at her like he isn’t sure how to answer. “Yes. You see, I only need one, and I wasn’t expecting…”

He trails off, continuing to stare at her. 

“Yes,” he repeats. “I only have one paraglider, but I’m sure I can find the materials to make another one. Maybe it will be done by the time you come to collect the first, after you’ve collected the treasure for me.”

“Treasure?” Link perks up at the word.

“Ah, you like the sound of that, hm?” There’s another smile in the stranger’s voice, a faint one hidden in the large white expanse of his beard. “Come. Let me show you something.” 

Link and Zelda follow as he walks up the small hill in front of them, stopping when he stops at the top. It gives them a much better view of the glowing orange hut, and lets them see the small camp of monstrous red pigs to their right.

“Do you see that structure there?” Old Man asks them, pointing to the orange hut. “The one shining with a strange light? It began glowing at the exact moment those towers rose up from the ground. I would think such a place might house some sort of treasure, wouldn’t you?”

At their nods, he strokes his beard and muses, “Yes, treasure for two paragliders. A fair exchange, I believe.”

“That’s it?” Zelda frowns. “You want us to bring you whatever’s in the hut and you’ll give us the paragliders?”

“If that is what you want, yes,” Old Man smiles for a third time. “Go on, now. Collect my reward so I can bestow yours upon you.”

Again, Link and Zelda look at each other.

“You’re okay with this?” she asks.

“I guess if we have to,” he shrugs. “I’ve got no problem with it.”

Together, under Old Man’s watchful eye, they set out towards the glowing orange structure.

(They don’t see the way the stranger’s smile drops the moment their backs are turned to him, or the way he disappears into thin air.)

Chapter Text

Before they face the glowing hut that houses the treasure they need in exchange for the paragliders, Link and Zelda decide to clear out the monster camp to their right. It won’t do them or Old Man any good to leave this group of red pigs roaming the plateau.

“There’s three laying by the fire,” Zelda murmurs, huddled close to him behind wooden structures that hide them from view. “And an archer on a platform. They’re guarding a chest that looks like a skull on another platform.”

Link pokes his head out, seeing exactly what she described, except that she missed one key detail.

“They ones by the fire are sleeping,” he whispers, taking the bow off his back and an arrow from their quiver, handing both to her. “Can you shoot the archer in the head from here? If you do that it’ll die without waking the others.”

(How does he know this?)

“I don’t know,” she whispers back. “Why?”

He points to the archer’s belt, where a horn sways with its every movement as it scans the surrounding area. “If it spots us it’ll blow that and we’ll have to fight them all head on. I’m not interested in doing that, and I doubt you are either.”

(Sometimes, the body knows what the mind forgot.)

“Okay,” Zelda says, quiet, nocking the arrow and aiming for the archer’s head. She takes a deep breath and repeats, “Okay.”

“You got this,” Link whispers.

The corners of her lips curve into the tiniest of smiles, and wind blows in from behind them in the direction of the camp. She releases the arrow and it whistles as it flies, piercing the red pig’s forehead and popping it into a puff of purple smoke and a collection of guts, horns, and arrows.  

He pumps his fist in the air, grinning. Muffling a giggle behind her right hand, Zelda passes him back the bow before lowering her hand to itch her knuckles. The breeze dies.

Link slips his wooden club from his back and adjusts his hold on it. If he can stay quiet and sneak up on the sleeping monsters, he can kill them without a real fight. 

Take the Sheikah Slate, store the monster parts, and collect the arrows, he signs with one hand, passing her the slate. I’m going to take out the rest of the red pigs. 

Zelda frowns as she takes the slate, whispering, “How?”

He shows her his club, widening his grin. Quietly. 

Crouching low, they separate, Zelda scurrying to the platform where the archer perched and Link flying across the stone, silently rushing up on the three sleeping monsters and easily dispatching them with a swift bashing-in of their heads. 

The skull chest on the platform next to him chimes and he’s quick to scramble up to it, throwing it open-

A sword—A real sword—stares up at him, idle and harmless in a brown leather scabbard.

(His mouth waters, and the back of his right hand tingles.)

Link puts the wooden club on his back and picks up the sword, unsheathing it, his right hand now itching at the feel of the worn leather in his palm and the light, easy weight of the steel. 

It’s…it feels good that he’s holding a sword, he feels at ease, but…but it’s not right, it’s not….it’s not the right sword-

(-old enough to wield the-)

“Link!” Zelda leaps down from the archer’s platform and runs to the base of his, the Sheikah Slate in one hand and a bundle of arrows in the other. “I got them! Is that a sword?”

He nods, dropping off his platform and turning his back to her. “Can you store the club, please? I’m gonna use the sword.”

The weight of the club leaves his spine, and he slides the sword back into its scabbard before buckling it around his chest and slipping it beneath his shield and bow. Zelda’s hands brush his hips as she slots the slate on his belt and puts the gathered arrows into the quiver fastened next to it. 

“We really need to find belts for me,” she remarks. “I feel bad making you carry everything.” 

“It’s fine,” he tells her, facing her, his eyes flicking over her shoulder and into the distance, and- “Oh.”

“What?” she asks.

Link points to the orange glow at the top of a distant cliff. “Another hut.”

Zelda turns her head, following his finger, and frowns. “That’s…strange. It’s identical to the one we’re going to.”

“Do you think we should investigate that one instead?”

“No,” she shakes her head, jabbing her thumb over her shoulder towards their destination. “We should go to the one Old Man wants the treasure from, but…do you think that one has treasure, too?”

He shrugs. “We can check it out after. It’ll probably be easy to get to ‘cause we’ll have paragliders.”

Zelda nods. “Right.”  

They walk towards the glowing orange hut Old Man directed them to, coming to the edge of the ground they stand on, and-

Link’s legs stop moving and his body locks up, frozen. Zelda goes rigid beside him. 

“Oh,” she whispers, and slips her hand into his.

Between them and the hut is another pond. 

Let me die, he’s on his back in a dark, dimly lit room and gripping a woman’s hand as tightly as he can, feeling her rapid pulse slam against his palm as he begs her, If I die, a new Hero is born and you only have to wait until they’re old enough to wield the-

She gave us strict orders to save you, Linky, A woman’s voice tells him, soft and shaking with tears. Warm, calloused fingertips brush his hair out of his eyes and he leans into the gentle touch. So all you need you to do is close your eyes, relax, and let the shrine do its magic, all right? I’ll be here when you wake up.  

“We can go around,” Zelda’s hand shoots up in front of his eyes and she points to the left, where the rock they’re standing on turns into grass and curves around the water, leading to the orange hut. She loosens her grip on his fingers. “See? We can go around.”

Link sucks down a lungful of air (They can go around), exhaling as slowly as he can (They can go around) and feeling his rapid heartbeat calm to a normal (They can go around) rate. 

They can go around.

(Who was talking to him just now, in his…his vision? Who was supposed to be in the cave—in the Shrine of Resurrection—and wasn’t?) 

He doesn’t let go of Zelda’s hand until the pond is at their backs.

—

They stand before the glowing orange hut-

“Shrine,” Zelda says out of nowhere.

“What?” Link asks.

“I think we should call these shrines,” she explains, her eyebrows furrowed. “‘Glowing orange hut’ is a mouthful, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, but why ‘shrine’?”

“Well…” she falters, her eyebrows furrowing even more as she frowns. “We woke up in a place called the Shrine of Resurrection, right? And…it looks like these are made out of the same material as it and the towers with the smooth black stuff, so…shrines.”

He can’t really argue with that. “All right. Should we press the slate to that terminal and see if the door opens?”

Nodding, Zelda takes the Sheikah Slate from his belt and approaches the glowing orange terminal. Link follows, three steps behind her and no less-

He stops. He looks down at his feet, on where he stands on a beige circle at the front of the shrine’s platform. 

(Why is he keeping track of how far behind her he walks?)

Zelda presses the slate to the terminal and it chimes. The circle beneath him lights up blue.

“‘Travel Gate registered to map’,” she reads off the slate’s screen, frowning at him. “What do you think that means?”

Link shrugs, jostling the equipment on his back-

“‘Access granted’,” she continues, and-

The door to the shrine recedes, clicking open.

Zelda stares at the opening, her jaw slack as she looks at the lone circular platform blinking blue inside. 

“I guess we stand on that to get the treasure?” Link asks, stepping into the darkness of the shrine. He swallows, trying to soothe his scratchy throat, and his voice cracks the slightest bit when he exclaims, “Oh, Zelda, look! The Sheikah Slate’s eye is on this! Bring the slate over here!”

Looking around at the inside of the shrine like she’s just discovered the secrets of the world, Zelda silently joins him on the platform with the Sheikah Slate’s eye, only to yelp and grab onto his arm as it trembles beneath them and…and descends?

“This is insane,” she whispers, staring up at the opening where they just were as they continue to move lower. “How was this even built? Who built this? And why?”

Maybe the same people that made the towers and the Shrine of Resurrection, Link signs. And the slate, because that unlocks everything. 

“Sheikah Slate,” she murmurs. “Someone named Sheikah? Maybe we can find them after we get the paragliders.”

They lower into a gigantic chamber illuminated by bright blue lights.

Maybe we can ask them why they like the color blue so much, Link remarks, stepping off the platform-

To you who sets foot in this shrine, A booming voice reverberates in his head, stopping him in his tracks because holy shit that’s loud- I am Oman Au, and I offer you this trial in the name of the Goddess Hylia.

“Link?” Zelda touches his shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

“You didn’t hear that?” he croaks, clutching his head.

“Hear what?”

“I heard a-a voice in my head, saying that this is some kind of trial from a goddess? You really didn’t hear that?”

Zelda frowns, shaking her head. “No, I didn’t hear anything.”

He lowers his hands from his head and signs, I promise I’m not going crazy.

She chuckles. “I hope not. You’re the one with all of the weapons.”

—

There are two huge metal rectangles covering a spot in the center of the floor, and another Sheikah Slate terminal in the corner, this one identical to the one at the top of the tower they had activated. 

Zelda drops the slate into the slate-shaped hole and steps back, standing next to him and watching as the rounded black protrusion above it glows blue.

Sheikah Slate authenticated, The slate’s screen reads. Distilling rune…

“Rune?” Link asks.

A drop of blue liquid splats onto the screen, which changes to an image of six blank boxes. The third one fills in with an image of a tilted red U, and words pop up above and below it, reading-

“‘Rune extracted’,” Zelda reads aloud. “‘Magnesis: Manipulate metallic objects using magnetism. Grab on to metallic objects using the magnetic energy that pours forth from the Magnesis rune. Objects held in the magnetic snare can be lifted up and moved freely’.”

The terminal clicks and the Sheikah Slate is presented to them, the screen now showing a prompt for them to hit a button on top of it. Link picks up the slate, hits the button, and-

“Whoa,” he breathes, staring at the screen. 

“What? What is it?” Zelda’s chin hooks over his shoulder and she echoes, “Whoa.”

The two metal rectangles are highlighted pink. When he directs a pointer in the center of the screen at them, they highlight yellow.

“Hit the select button,” The words leave Zelda in a rush and her hand comes over Link’s shoulder to jab a button on the right of the slate.

With a whirring noise and a whoosh, a bright yellow ball shoots out of the slate’s screen and engulfs the metal rectangle he’s aiming at, catching it with a loud clank.

“Now what if you-” Zelda reaches over him again-

“Hey!” Link moves the slate out of her reach, stepping away from her. “Relax! It’s not like this is going any-”

Voooo…Voooo….

Link stops. He looks back towards the metal rectangles. 

The metal rectangle is hovering in the air, at the exact height he’s holding the slate. He moves the slate to the right, and with a quiet voooo the metal rectangle drifts to the right. He moves the slate to the left, and the metal rectangle drifts to the left. It stops when he stops moving the slate.

(There’s also an opening in the floor leading down to a path that goes to the left, presumably under the gate blocking them from moving forward in the chamber.)

On a whim, he hits the top button that triggered the Magnesis, and flinches back when the metal rectangle drops and CLANGS against the other metal rectangle, landing on its side in front of the platform he and Zelda entered on. 

“Whoa,” Zelda repeats, hushed and wide-eyed. “When is it my turn?”

—

The second obstacle they face with the Magnesis rune is a wall of stone blocks, with a single metal one in the center. Link passes the slate to Zelda and watches her activate Magnesis. 

“All right,” she whispers, and he thinks it’s more to herself than him. “So I tap the select button and-”

The ball of yellow light shoots out and catches the metal block. Zelda grins, and pulls the slate back towards her chest, laughing like a little kid when the metal block slides out from the wall and topples the stone above it. Then she pushes the slate out from her chest, and pushes the metal and a couple of stone blocks out of the way, clearing a path for them to go through.

“This is incredible!” she gushes, practically vibrating with excitement as she follows him through the gap she made. “The things we can do with something like this-”

The hair on the back of Link’s neck stands up and he draws his sword, flicking his shield onto his forearm and effectively cutting her off.

“What’s wrong?” she asks from behind him. “What is it?” 

Link stares hard at the metal block, at what peeks out from its right side: A white, robotic-looking leg with a sharp black claw for a foot.

“There’s something on the other side of the block,” he whispers. “Can you lift it?”

In a flash of yellow and a humming vooo, the metal block hovers into the air-

It’s some kind of spider-looking robot, and the second it’s glowing blue eye spots him it lights up orange like the outside of the shrine and skitters towards him.

Link braces himself, getting ready to leap and attack-

With a shout, Zelda slashes the slate through the air and the metal block slams into the robot, shattering it to pieces.

He blinks, says, “Oh,” and puts his weapons back.  

“Here,” Zelda shoves the Sheikah Slate into his hands, and for some reason hers are shaking. “Take it.”

“What’s wrong?” Link asks.

“I don’t know,” her voice shakes, too, and she’s scratching the back of her right hand so harshly that her knuckles are turning red. “I just-I didn’t like that thing. It was going to kill you.”

“Zelda, it didn’t even get the chance to-”

“It was going to kill you,” she insists, sounding almost desperate, and is it just the brightness of the lights or are her eyes glassy? “I know it, Link.”

“Okay,” he concedes, hoping it’ll calm her down a little. “Okay. Thank you for taking care of it.”

She nods, biting her lip.

—

The final obstacle they face is actually pretty simple: crossing two gaps with only one large metal rectangle and opening colossal metal doors.

Link offers Zelda the honors of opening the doors when they easily cross the gaps, but she turns it down with a quick shake of her head. 

“You sure?” he asks.

“Yes,” she whispers. 

Swallowing, Link looks down at the slate and activates Magnesis, pulling open the doors-

Zelda at least perks up at the sight that greets them.   

There, sitting on a raised dais at the top of a small set of stairs, is an almost-skeleton with dark skin, long white hair, and a Sheikah Slate eye tattooed in white and yellow on its forehead encased in a wall of blue light. Its hands are held in the shape of a triangle before its chest, its fingers steepled, and Link swears he sees movement beneath its closed eyelids. 

“The voice in my head said its name was Oman Au,” he manages, his voice small. “I guess this is him?”

“Wouldn’t hurt to ask, would it?” Zelda questions.

Together they approach who must be Oman Au, walking up the steps side-by-side. The top step leads into a platform right in front of the almost-skeleton that’s too small to fit them both, so Link passes the slate to Zelda and tells her to see what happens.

“Are…” she trails off. “Are you sure?”

“We’re going to the one on the cliff next, right?” he asks, and at her nod he continues, “That one’ll be my turn.”

Nodding again, Zelda steps up to face Oman Au.

“Hello there, sir,” she greets, a weak smile plastered on her face. “My name is Zelda, and this is my friend Link. We’re here for some kind of treasure?”

The skeleton doesn’t move. The voice that had boomed in Link’s head at the start of their trial is silent.

“Maybe he didn’t hear you?” he asks, tilting his head.

“Hello there, sir,” she repeats, raising her voice. “My name is Zelda, and this-Oh, I feel like an idiot-” she turns around and shoves the slate back into his hands. “You try talking to him.”

She moves out of the way so he can approach the glowing blue box housing the body, and taking a moment to brace himself for failure, Link steps up to speak.

Before he can even open his mouth, a dark blue Sheikah Slate eye appears in front of him, embedded in the bright light of the box. 

“What the…” Behind him, Zelda falters. 

His hands move on their own and he’s putting the slate on his belt and reaching out to touch the eye-

His fingertips graze the pupil and his hand comes away wet as the light bursts into thousands of fragments, freezing in the air. 

You have proven to posses the resolve of a true hero. 

Link hisses in pain as the booming voice, Oman Au’s voice, is back in his head.

“Link?” Zelda touches his shoulder.

“He’s talking to me,” he pants.

“But his lips aren’t-”

I am Oman Au, the creator of this trial. I am a humble monk, blessed with the sight of Goddess Hylia and dedicated to helping those who seek to defeat Ganon. 

As the monk talks, Link rapidly signs what he’s saying so Zelda can know, too.

With your arrival, my duty is now fulfilled. In the name of Goddess Hylia, allow me to bestow this gift upon you…

“Gift?” Zelda breathes.

Please accept this Spirit Orb.

There’s a flash of bright light beneath the monk’s steepled hands and a purple orb drifts out from his chest, floating before Link’s before it sinks into the space where his heart beats.

Warmth floods his limbs, and the tension leaves his shoulders in a soothing sort of release.

May the Goddess smile upon you, Omun Au prays, before he fades away into nothing and leaves behind an empty pedestal. 

Link turns around, facing Zelda, and is met with the sight of her nervous smile.

“Now that that’s, um…taken care of,” she says, scratching the back of her right hand, “Shall we go back to Old Man and get our paragliders?”

—

They exit the shrine, stepping out into sunlight-

“Ho!” A voice calls from the sky.

They look up just in time to see Old Man paraglide towards them and drop to the ground just a few feet away.

“It seems you managed to get your hands on a Spirit Orb,” he says in lieu of greeting. “Well done!”

“How did you know?” Link questions at the same time Zelda holds out her hand and asks, “Paraglider, please?”

“Clairvoyance!” he cheerily answers Link first, before chuckling, “Or perhaps just something similar. As one gets older, it can become more difficult to see what is right before one’s own eyes…However, that which was once hidden from view can often be crystal clear. But perhaps that is not true for everyone!”

Zelda butts in, “What about the-”

“The appearance of those towers and the awakening of this shrine…” Old Man holds up a finger, silencing her. “It is all connected to that Sheikah Slate you carry on your hip there.”

Link frowns. “What do you mean?”

“It has been quite some time since I have seen that Sheikah Slate…” he trails off, staring at the device on Link’s hip. “Long ago, a highly advanced tribe known as the Sheikah inhabited these lands.”

“So Sheikah isn’t a person,” Zelda mumbles to herself. 

“The great power of their wisdom-” Old Man’s eyes flick to her. “-saved this kingdom time and time again. But their ancient technology disappeared long ago…Or so it is said. It is interesting, however, to think...that something of them might still remain hidden away in a shrine such as this. These shrines are tucked away in numerous places all across this land. On this plateau alone, I believe there are still three more.”

“What about the paragliders?” Zelda finally manages to demand. “You said we could have them if we completed the shrine’s trial, and we did.”

Link notices a gleam in Old Man’s eye when he stares at Zelda and says, “Bring me the treasure from each of those shrines…and I will give you the paragliders.”

“That wasn’t the deal!” she explodes, and Link flinches at the sudden loudness of her voice.

(Why is she getting so angry with this stranger who’s been nothing but helpful, if a little vague?)

“Oh?” Old Man straightens his spine, . “Well, I suppose I changed my mind. I’m sure that won’t be a problem for young go-getters like you!”

“But you said-!”

“Zelda,” Link grabs her hand. “It’s fine. We were going to check out the shrine on the cliff anyways.”

“He lied to us, Link,” she hisses, glaring at him, and are there tears in her eyes again? “He lied to me again and-”

“To you?” he repeats, confused. “Again? What do you mean?”

Zelda blinks, staring at him. “I don’t…I-”

“Since I’m feeling generous,” Old Man quickly interrupts, drawing their attention, fiddling with his cane/lantern as he speaks, “I will also teach you a trick for finding shrines. It’s always best to survey the area by looking around from a high point. Let’s see here…” he spins on his heel and points to the tower across the way. “How about you make your way to the top of that tower again?”

“Are you joking?” Zelda rasps at the same time Link firmly nods and answers, “Got it!” 

He laughs at their conflicting answers, this time replying to Zelda when he says, “I am afraid not. But do not worry! I have another little trick to share with you for your effort. Take a look at the map on your Sheikah Slate.”

Link pulls the slate off his hip and powers it on, going to the map. “Okay, what now?”

Old Man steps in close to them and points to the blue icons marking the Shrine of Resurrection, the shrine they stand upon, and the tower. “You can travel instantly to any of those places with the Sheikah Slate.” Again, his eyes linger on Zelda before he turns his back on them and continues, “Or so I heard quite some time ago…I do not know if it actually works as such.”

“How do we do it?” Zelda asks, staring at his raised hood.

He shrugs with one shoulder. “I couldn’t tell you.”

“What if we just touch it?” Link asks, glancing at her. “The tower has to be highlighted like this for a reason, right?”

She nods, reaching over and touching the slate. “You press it.”

“You don’t want to?”

“I think we should both be touching the slate at the time of teleportation, just in case. I’m not sure if the screen qualifies and you already have another hand on it.”

Link looks up to ask Old Man a question, but their cloaked stranger is already gone.

(Where the hell did he go so quickly? And without either of them noticing?)

He taps the tower’s icon, and his stomach rolls in his gut as his feet hover off the ground and he watches himself and Zelda dematerializing into little blue strings.

—

They materialize on the edge of the tower’s top platform, all in one piece.

“Wow,” Link breathes, blinking the spots out of his eyes and squinting at the sun. “That was…”

“Insane,” Zelda might as well have stars in her eyes as she stares down at the slate’s map. “We have to do that again, we-”

A laugh comes from their left. Link looks over and finds Old Man.

“Well, you certainly took your time,” The stranger says. “I wanted you to join me up here so you could use this as a vantage point to search for shrines.”

“How did you get up here so fast?” Link asks him. “Where did you go?”

“How does this teleportation work?” Zelda adds, taking the slate out of his hands.

He answers their questions with, of course, another question: “Did you know about the scope on your Sheikah Slate? Look through it, and you can stick a pin anywhere you’d like to mark on the map.”

Zelda holds the slate up and taps the right stick. Link watches in awe as the screen changes to show the world right in front of them.

“It’s like it’s seeing,” she whispers.

“It does have an eye,” Link whispers back. 

Chuckling again, Old Man tells them, “The pins on your map serve as reference points for your travels. Just stick a pin anywhere you’re interested in!”

Zelda immediately swivels the slate to the shrine on the cliff and presses the select button, laughing when a red beacon appears on the shrine’s top.

“How do you know all of this?” Link asks their mysterious guide. 

“Just a few tricks I’ve picked up after many, many years in the wild…” he responds. “You may take my advice or leave it.”

“Look!” Zelda hits the select button again, pointing to the right. “Another shrine’s right over there, in the snow! There’s another tower behind it!”

“And the last one is just this way,” Old Man nods to the left, where a shrine sits in the middle of stone ruins. “There’s a tower just beyond that one, too.”

“Both of those towers are off the plateau,” Link observes.

The stranger smiles. “So you two should get to completing the other three shrines, then, should you not?” 

Chapter Text

They set off towards the shrine in the middle of the stone ruins. 

Eastern Abbey, Old Man had told them before they set out. Be on the lookout for monsters.

It’s closest, Link reasons as he and Zelda descend the tower for a second time, leaping down from platform to platform, his hands a flurry of signing motion. Then we hit the shrine on the cliff, then where the last one is in the snow.

“So we move in a circle across the plateau?” Zelda clarifies, grunting when she lands beside him on the next platform.

Yes, he nods. That’s okay with you, right?

“Of course.”

They reach the ground, and Link double-checks the map for where their green pin is before pointing to the east, where there’s an orange tower past the plateau on the horizon, and declaring, That way. We walk towards the tower.

Zelda nods. “Right.”

—

They stumble upon a…statue? Sitting in a small puddle before the ruins of the Eastern Abbey. There’s another one just like it a few feet away, closer to the stone structures.

It has a rounded base and a cylindrical head with three little bumps coming out of the top. It’s also covered in dirt and moss, probably made out of metal based on all of the rust.

“What do you think this is?” Zelda asks, pressing her hand to the base of the metal statue and wiping the grime of it off on her already-filthy dress. “A forgotten part of some religion like the statue we found in that temple?”

“Maybe it’s art,” Link rasps. “Why do you think there’s another so close?”

“Artistic expression?” she guesses. “Religious significance?”

Something at the bottom of the statue glitters in the sun. Link crouches and approaches it-

Zelda, bewildered, asks, “What are you doing?”

“There’s something under here,” Link tells her, extending his arm into a hole in the center of the base’s bottom. His fingers snag on something jagged. “I want to see what it-There!”

He pulls a metal object free. It’s covered in a thick black liquid that smells, but shaking it off gets most of it away to reveal what exactly it is: a metal cylinder with a swirling sharp edge around the outside. 

“It’s a…” Link stares at the thing in his hand. What the hell would you call this? “A, um…spinny?”

“A screw,” Zelda corrects, laughing a little, reaching over to take the Sheikah Slate from his belt. “It’s called a screw, and don’t ask me how I know that.”

“I like spinny better,” he holds it out for her to absorb it with the slate, watching it disappear from his palm in a trail of blue strings. “Has more charm, don’t you think?”

“Whatever you say,” she puts the slate back on his belt and walks towards the second statue, taking the lead. “Come on, there’s probably more screws-” 

“Spinnies,” Link corrects with a grin. 

She laughs, “Fine, more spinnies in the other-”

Click-whrrrrrrr-

The second statue comes alive, its head popping out to reveal a blue circle of light at the base, dirt flaking off as it twists and its body illuminates pink and a bright blue eye flashes-

Zelda freezes. A red beam of light shoots out of the statue’s eye and lands on her chest.

Beep beep beep beep beep-

It’s aiming, Link realizes, cold dread pooling in his tugging gut.

(save her, A voice whispers in the back of his head. save her. save her.) 

So it’s not a statue, and it’s definitely not a piece of art that’s been abandoned by its creator. It’s…It’s…

(Save her. Save her. Save her.)

He doesn’t know what it is. A machine, like the spider-looking thing that Zelda killed in the Magnesis shrine? The eyes are the same, and sure there are some similarities, maybe they’re siblings? Is it angry at them for killing its brother? Is there some kind of robot hive mind that told all of the spider-robots to avenge that one’s death?

(Save Her. Save Her. Save Her.)

Whatever the fuck this machine is, it’s alive, and it doesn’t like them trespassing on the Eastern Abbey’s grounds.

Link flicks his shield onto his forearm and calls, “Zelda, move out of the way!”

Zelda doesn’t move. 

(Save Her, Save Her, Save Her-)

The red beam grows smaller, more precise on her chest, hovering right over her heart-

Beepbeepbeepbeepbeep-

Link sprints- 

(SaveHer SaveHer SaveHer-)

Zelda slowly lifts her right hand to its metal face-

“Zelda!”

SaveHerSaveHerSaveHerSaveHerPleaseSaveHer-

He tackles her out of the way just as a thick blue laser screeches out of the machine’s eye and slams into his raised shield, shattering it to splinters in a wall of fire.

They land behind an arch of stone that connects to the rest of the ruined abbey, Link on top of Zelda and pressing her into the grass. Panting, he pushes himself up on his arms, staring down at her. He starts, “Are you-”

“Link,” she whispers, splayed on her back beneath him. She says his name with…with a weight to her tone, like she’s seeing him for the first time in a-

“Are you crazy?” he demands, ignoring the distant beeping of the machine as it no doubt searches for them and silently thanking whatever goddess they prayed to at that temple it doesn’t have legs- “Why didn’t you move out of the way? That thing would’ve killed you if I hadn’t-”

(save her.)

“Link,” she says his name again, this time with such reverence, such relief, that he has no choice but to shut his mouth and listen. She lifts her right hand again, ghosting her fingertips over his cheek. “You’re here. You’re really here.”

“Of course I’m here-” For all of the times for Confusion to take hold of her did it have to be now- “Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m fine,” her fingertips press into his cheekbone, just below his eye. “Goddesses, I can’t believe you’re-”

Goddesses? 

“Do you know who you are?” he asks.

She frowns up at him, blinking. “Of course I know who I am, Link, have you hit your head? Who else would I be?”

Shit. What the hell is he supposed to do now?

He rolls off of her, lying next to her in the grass, and watches her sit up.

“Link?” she questions, voice distant. A light breeze lifts her hair from the side of her face, allowing him to trace the invisible line of her profile with his eyes. 

“Yeah?”

“Where’s your sword?”

He furrows his eyebrows. “I’ve got one on my back right here.”

“No, I mean…” she trails off, tilting her head back to stare up at the clouds drifting through the otherwise clear blue sky. “Where did I leave it?”

“Leave what, Zelda?” Link sits up, touching the back of her hand to grab her attention.

She turns her head, looks at him, and smiles. It’s the saddest smile he’s ever seen. 

“I bet she’s lonely,” she says. “with no one to talk to but ghosts.”

“Who are you-”

“Wait,” her smile fades, devolves into a confused grimace that then devolves into another frown. “What am I…?”

“Zelda?” Link wraps his fingers around hers. “Who are you talking about? Who’s lonely?”

She blinks, staring at him for a minute. She blinks again. “Link?”

“I’m here,” he tells her. “Are you?”

“Y-Yes,” she nods. “I am, I…What happened?”

“You weren’t yourself again, talked about me having a sword?” Link shakes his head. “And someone is lonely.”

“Strange,” she swallows, looking around. “It hasn’t been long, has it? Is the machine still-?”

“Yeah, it’s looking for us,” he confirms. “The laser it fired broke my shield, so it’s not like I can even try and fight it without running headfirst into death-”

“Oh, here,” Zelda takes the Sheikah Slate from his belt, taps the screen a few times, and another wooden shield pops out and drops onto the grass between them. “I stole this from the monster camp you and I wiped out, the one before we entered the shrine and got Magnesis onto the slate? There are a few more clubs, swords, and a new bow in there as well.”  

“That’s-” Wonderful, amazing, she’s the best- “That’s really good, Zelda. Great job.”

Zelda beams. “Thank you. Now, how are we getting past the machine?”

Link rolls up onto his feet, crouching, and pokes his head out from behind the wall, spotting the machine twisting back and forth. Just beyond it, on the other side of the opposite wall, is the top of the shrine. 

“If we make a break for it, we can climb over that wall to the shrine before it fires,” he says, pointing. “You might want to take off your sandals, store them in the slate.”

She does so, and with a click they dematerialize into blue strings and absorb into the Sheikah Slate’s eye. She says, voice shaking a little as she puts it back on his belt, “I’m ready when you are.”

“Go in front of me,” he(save her)whispers. “I’ll tell you when.”

Zelda moves in front of him, clenching and unclenching her fists as she gets ready to run.

Sweat rolls down the side of Link’s face as he watches the machine’s head spin. He waits for it to look away-

“Go go go!” he shouts, urging Zelda forward and sprinting at the wall, ignoring the icy fear that shoots down his spine when the machine’s head swivels and immediately lights up pink, its aiming red beam landing on Zelda’s back-

Beep beep beep beep beep-

He all but throws her up the wall, making sure she’s scurried over the edge before leaping up and scrambling to the top-

Beepbeepbeepbeepbeep-

The laser screeches and smashes into the edge of the wall in an explosion of flames just as Link crashes to the grass on the other side, breathless and panting beside an equally out of breath Zelda.

“So,” she manages, hunched over with her hands on her knees. “What do we call our new friend?” 

“Uh,” he thinks, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, “PewPew Machine?”

“What about a Guardian?” Zelda tries with a wheezing laugh. “It seems familiar, that name, I can’t explain why.”

“Sure,” Link, catching his breath, straightens. “I still like my names for things better, though.”

She laughs harder, and he has to catch her when she stumbles.

—

They descend into the second shrine, step off the platform into the blue-lit chamber, and-

To you who sets foot in this shrine, A deep voice booms in Link’s head, making him jump even as he instinctively signs the words to Zelda. I am Ja Baji. In the name of the Goddess Hylia, I offer this trial.

“Goddess Hylia?” Zelda asks with a frown. “Who’s that?”

Link shakes his head. “Not sure. Maybe that statue we prayed to in the temple?”

“But…” Zelda’s frown deepens. “She’s been forgotten, at least it looks like it due to the state of that temple. Why would her temple be in ruin only for these shrines, these-these tests to be pristine?”

Again, he shakes his head. “I know as much as you do.”

Ahead of them, at the front of this first room in the shrine, is a Sheikah Slate terminal that matches the one they found in Magnesis, along with a ramp that leads down to two stone cubes blocking their path. 

“Looks like we have to upgrade the slate again,” Link nods to the terminal. “Maybe another rune like Magnesis?”

“Hopefully,” Zelda is pointing the slate at the stone blocks, when did she take the slate from his belt- “There’s nothing metal in the blocks that Magnesis can latch onto, and I doubt we’ll be able to push them ourselves.”

They walk up to the terminal and Zelda drops the slate into the rectangular slot. There’s a series of clicks- 

Sheikah Slate authenticated, The screen reads as the slate is accepted. Distilling rune…

“I hope it’s as fun as Magnesis,” Zelda says under her breath.

“If it gets rid of giant stone cubes I think we’re fine,” Link replies.

A blue drop of liquid splats on the screen from the rounded black protrusion above it, and once again it changes, this time to the six boxes of the rune screen, Magnesis residing in the third box from the left. 

The first two boxes, the ones to the left of Magnesis, fill in, revealing a blue circle in the first and a blue square in the second, both with a small circular tip. 

“‘Remote Bomb’,” Zelda reads aloud with a growing smile, excitement bleeding into her voice, “‘A bomb that can be detonated remotely. The force of the blast can be used to damage enemies or destroy objects. There are both round and cube bombs, so use whichever best fits the situation.’”

Rune extracted, Appears at the bottom of the screen, before the slate is released from the terminal and Zelda takes it back.

“We can switch between the runes,” she whispers in awe, showing Link the screen where it prompts her to press a different button. When she does, the symbols for the two different bombs and Magnesis appear, allowing them to select one or the other. “Round or cube?”

Link answers, pointing to the ramp, “It’s a ramp, so I guess the circles?”

Biting her lip, Zelda hits the button that had activated Magnesis, gasping when in a flash of light a glowing blue ball the size of Link’s head rests in her palm.

“Here,” she passes it to him. “It’s kind of cold.”

It is, which is strange, because aren’t bombs supposed to be contained balls of fire? 

(And how does he know that?)

He rolls the bomb down the ramp and it settles in the middle of the two cubes. “Okay, what now?”

She presses the rune button again, and the bomb explodes in a blue flash of energy and a static sort of noise, decimating the stone blocking their path.  

They both gape.

“We’re definitely taking turns with these,” Link breathes.

“Of course we are,” Zelda agrees.

—

At the bottom of the ramp is a large hall, and at either end are stone cubes standing in the way.

It’s Link’s turn with the bombs, and staring at the two options he has—round or cube—he comes up with, “What if I tried this?”

He summons a round bomb and sets it on the floor between himself and Zelda. Then, switching over to the cube bomb, he hits the rune button-

A cube bomb pops out of the slate and rests in his palm, the round one still on the floor.

“Yes!” he cheers, grinning at Zelda’s shocked expression as she rolls the round bomb around with one of her feet. “You take the round one to the left barrier and I’ll go to the right with the cube. Maybe we can detonate them at the same time!”

Unfortunately, they can’t detonate them at the same time. Link has to manually switch between bomb types in order to detonate each one, which has Zelda frowning.

She speculates, “Maybe if we explode them next to each other they’ll go off simultaneously.”

Link passes her the slate. “Want to try it?”

She sets both bombs in the middle of the large hall and drags him to the right behind a corner, because, “We have no idea how big the blast will be.”

“Oooh, a chest,” he points behind her to the dead end of this part of the hallway, where a sleek black chest sits in the center of the floor. “It looks like it’s made out of the same stuff as the shrines, it’s even got a Sheikah Slate eye on it!” 

Zelda glances back at it over her shoulder, her eyebrows raising. “We can open it after we test this. Ready?”

Link nods, and they both poke their heads out to watch the bombs as Zelda hits the rune button-

Static, and a large blue explosion as one bomb detonates the other.

Link cheers again, whooping, and Zelda laughs in delight as she turns her attention to the chest by their feet.

“I think we have to match the eyes,” she says, kneeling and tapping the back of the Sheikah Slate to the eye on the chest.

In a few series of clicks the orange eye on the chest changes to blue and the top pops open.

“Smart,” Link says, taking the slate back from her offering hand and putting it back on his belt. “What’s inside?”

Zelda reaches into the tiny chest-

“Holy-” she grunts, dragging a comically large sword out, “Help me-”

He’s quick to step up and take the sword from her grasp, having to use two hands to hold it up.

“Claymore,” The word pops into his head. “This is called a claymore.”

“How did they fit that in there?” she pants, shaking out her hands. “There’s a bottom to that chest, how-”

“Magic, probably,” he drops the claymore, takes out the slate, and stores it. “Or some weird science like you were talking about earlier with the slate’s inventory.”

“Science isn’t weird!”

Link walks to the other end of the hall. “And magic is?”

“Yes!” Zelda trails behind him, following him up a ladder into a new room- “Old Man’s paraglider is enchanted not to get stored by the slate, it’s magic, and I don’t understand it at all.”

“We don’t understand how this Sheikah stuff works, either,” he holds out his hand and pulls her up before pointing to what’s in front of them. “I mean, look at this.”

There’s a gap in the floor, a large square platform hovering back and forth over it, and a wall of stone blocks on the other side.

“Right, but there’s an explanation for it somewhere, or at least there was before that Calamity Ganon we were told about destroyed everything,” Zelda takes the slate from his belt and summons a cube bomb, placing it on the platform when it stops for a second at their side of the gap. “Why do you even want to go that castle, anyways?”

Link thinks about golden light in the tallest tower of the black citadel, about a tugging in his gut-

He answers, “I feel like I have to. What about you?”

She detonates the cube bomb when the platform glides to the other side of the gap, destroying the wall of stone. “Same here.”

—

The last room they face is filled with three sets of pillars that launch items back and forth. The one closest to them, on the right side of the room, only has one pillar shoving up into the air towards a stack of now-familiar stone blocks that leads to the monk in the back. The middle one is a pair of pillars that tosses a ball back and forth, and to the left of it is a single pillar launching towards a chest. 

“That’s an easy enough solution,” Link says, summoning a round bomb.

“What do you mean?” Zelda questions.

He points to the pillars playing catch with a ball. “That’s showing us the pillars can throw things into the air and send them across the room-” he points to the one throwing nothing to a chest- “That’s offering us treasure if we want it, and this one-” he finally points to the one next to them. “Is how we get to the monk. We let it throw a bomb at the blocks and then once we destroy them we climb up that ladder and get another Spirit Orb.”

“You…” she falters. “You want us to get thrown across the room for some treasure?”

“If it wasn’t safe whoever made it wouldn’t have designed it like this, right?” Link lofts the bomb onto the pillar and watches it fly through the air, detonating it when it lands in the middle of the stone blocks and smiling when they all crumble. “I’ll do it if you’re too scared.”

Zelda bites her lip. “If you die I’ll kill you.” 

He laughs. “Meet you by the monk.”

—

Getting thrown across the room is fun.

Link clambers up onto the pillar in front of the chest on the left side of the room, braces himself for launch, and-

The second he’s settled the pillar is shoving against his back and he’s flying-

On the back of a red bird and falling through the clouds to the Surface below-

He lands safely on the ground, the bottoms of his feet only a little sore as he finds Zelda standing in front of the monk’s pedestal and waves to her with a giant grin. 

She waves back, her shoulders shaking with laughter.

Link uses the slate and opens the chest, pulling out-

“It’s an orange gem!” he calls to his partner, holding it up for her to see.

Zelda squints before calling back, “I think it’s called amber?”

He stores it in the slate, leaps down from the platform the chest is on, and runs over to the ladder, practically leaping up it in his rush to return to her side.

“Ready to talk to him?” he asks.

“You’re going to be the one doing the talking,” she responds. “He doesn’t respond to me.”

Together, they walk up the steps to where the monk sits behind a wall of liquid blue light. Link stands in the space meant for one, and when the Sheikah Slate eye appears in front of him he reaches out and touches it-

Your resourcefulness in overcoming this trial speaks to the promise of a hero… The monk, Ja Baij, says in his head and he translates to Zelda through Sign. In the name of the Goddess Hylia, I bestow upon you this Spirit Orb.

The Spirit Orb comes floating out of the monk’s steepled fingers and sinks into his chest, warming him from the inside out as the skeleton fades to dust with the prayer, May the Goddess smile upon you. 

Link turns back to Zelda and finds her smiling.

“Ready for the next one?” she questions.

—

The sun is setting when they exit the shrine.

The Guardian is just behind that rock, Link signs, pointing to the rocky barrier in front of them that they could blow up with the bombs if they wished. I think it’s best to just go around.

“That’s fine,” Zelda agrees with a yawn. 

They climb out of the ruins of the Eastern Abbey and walk towards where their next shrine looms over them on a cliff in the distance. They trudge up a hill and are met with a wide plain-

“There’s a cabin over there,” Zelda says, pointing over Link’s shoulder to where there’s the faint orange glow of torchlight in the trees. 

Want to go check it out? Link signs, and she nods. 

It doesn’t take them long to reach it, pushed forward by their basic need to sate their curiosity, to explore-

They round to the front of the cabin and find Old Man sitting on a log before a fire.

“Oho! Fancy that!” he greets them with a short laugh and a wave. “So we meet again.”

(So this is where their vague guide lives, alone on the edge of the Great Plateau.) 

“What are you doing?” Link asks him, approaching with Zelda to stand before the stranger. “Sitting in front of the fire like that, I mean.”

“This body of mine isn’t what it used to be. Recovering from a bout of hard work takes a while…” he nods to a large black bowl that rests over the flame. “If either of you are hungry, I have an empty pot you can use to cook yourselves a meal.”

“Cook?” Zelda frowns. “I don’t know how to cook.”

Link shakes his head. “Neither do I.”

Like it was waiting for the right moment, his stomach growls. Zelda’s does the same, and she clutches her stomach with flushed cheeks.

Old Man laughs again, standing up. “Then have a seat, the both of you. I’ll whip up something quick!”

Link and Zelda look at each other as he steps into his cabin. Link shrugs, and Zelda sits in the grass, leaning back against the log. He sits down next to her.

“What do you think?” he murmurs. “Eat and then climb up to the next shrine?”  

Zelda cranes her neck to look up at the cliff, and she yawns again. “I’m not sure if I can handle that today. My arms almost gave out when I was climbing that ladder in the shrine, and my legs hurt from all of the walking.”

Link wonders why he’s not feeling the same strain, why he hasn’t even thought about rest since they relaxed by the pond this morning. “All right. We’ll rest tonight and get the last two shrines in the morning?”

She nods. “Sure. We’ll have our paragliders by noon.”

Old Man comes back with an armful of food and three chipped cups. He hands them two of the cups, one each, and asks, “How do you two feel about stew?”

“Never had it,” Link and Zelda answer at the same time. Link glances down into his cup and finds water. 

The stranger chuckles, retaking his spot by the fire and putting himself close to Link. “Of course, my apologies.”

He tosses the ingredients—a handful of meat, white liquid that occupied the third cup, a small yellow rectangle, and golden straws—into the pot above the fire and pulls a ladle from out of nowhere, stirring everything around.

“What foods are those?” Zelda questions, fascinated, as she sips at her drink.

“Chicken,” Old Man taps the meat with his ladle. “The white liquid is milk, the melting rectangle is Goat Butter, and the straws are Tabantha Wheat. You have to try to consider how the ingredients will complement one another, and can even make a dish that increases your stamina! It’s all about being creative and trying different things.”

He stirs everything around again before standing the ladle up in the grass, leaning the cup of it against the edge of the pot.

“I’ll be right back,” he says, getting to his feet. “It’s almost ready, I just have to grab us some bowls.”

The stranger walks back into his cabin, shutting the door behind himself. 

Zelda leans her head on Link’s shoulder, staring into the flames that engulf the bottom of the pot. Her hands lift and she clumsily signs, What do you think about Old Man?

Link blinks, surprised. You can sign, too?

She chuckles. Apparently. It’ll make it much easier for us to talk about him. So?

He swallows, glances towards the closed door of the cabin, and signs back, I don’t know. He definitely knows more than he says he does, and I feel like everything that comes out of his mouth has two meanings.

Do you think he knows who we are?

I don’t know that, either, but I catch him staring at you sometimes.

The stew bubbles, simmering. The scent of the cooked meat drifts into Link’s nose and his stomach rumbles a second time.

Zelda signs, He’s old, and he’s completely alone out here. Maybe I remind him of someone. 

Why wouldn’t he tell us who we are if he knows?

Maybe he thinks we’re fragile because we don’t remember anything? she shrugs. Or he wants to kill us, which if that’s the case we should probably run while he’s distracted.

Link breathes a laugh. If he wanted to kill us he would’ve pushed us off the tower.

The cabin door creaks open and Old Man comes out balancing three bowls on one arm and carrying three spoons in the other.

“All right,” he says, grunting as he sits down next to Link. He passes him two bowls and two spoons. “Hand one of each to Zelda, would you?”

Link does and Zelda murmurs her thanks, picking her head up. 

“Now, I must preface this by saying that I’m not the best cook,” Old Man chuckles at himself, “but I have learned a few things during my time in the wild, and this has been my most successful dish over the years. I sincerely hope you two like it.”

He reaches over and picks up the ladle from the edge of the cooking pot, stirring around the steaming stew before scooping some into Link’s bowl, then Zelda’s, and then finally his own. Link dips his spoon and scoops some stew into his mouth-

Flavor bursts onto his tongue, and with a, “Mmmm!” he shovels the rest into his mouth. One glance at Zelda finds her doing the same, jamming her spoon between her lips and devouring her food alongside him-

“Slow down, slow down!” Old Man laughs, refilling their empty bowls when they offer them to him. “It’s not going anywhere, you’ll make yourselves sick!”

“It’s the best food I’ve ever had,” Zelda manages around a bite of chicken. 

Link emphatically agrees with a nod.

It takes them one more bowl to finally slow down, and once they do, Link decides to ask Old Man—still on his first bowl—a question.

“Old Man?” 

“Yes, Link?”

“Who’s the Goddess Hylia?”

The stranger nearly drops his stew, fumbling to catch the bowl. When he has a good hold on it, he asks, “Where did you hear that name?”

“The shrines,” Zelda answers with a yawn, setting her bowl aside and resting her head back on Link’s shoulder. “There are monks in them that talk about her.”

“I…” Old Man stares at her. “The Goddess Hylia is the patron of Hyrule. She created the land of Hyrule and created us, the Hylians. She’s worshiped widely across the land.”

Why is her temple called the Temple of Time? Link continues through sign. Why not the Temple of Hylia?

When he signs Hylia’s name, he makes his right hand a claw and raises it to his chin, yanking it down towards his chest and clenching it into a fist at the same time.

Old Man raises an eyebrow. “Hylia is also known as the Goddess of Time, hence the temple name. Are you wondering why the temple is in such disarray?”

Link nods. “It doesn’t make sense if she’s a deity why her main temple would be in ruins.”

“The answer to that is Calamity Ganon. When it struck, its followers attacked and destroyed anything and anyone having to do with Hylia. She’s the Calamity’s opposite, you see. Where Hylia is our Goddess, Ganon is our Devil.” 

Link goes quiet. Then, “The cave we woke up in…it’s called the Shrine of Resurrection. Do you know anything about that?”

Old Man’s eyes lower from Link’s face for a moment. He pauses, staring, and vaguely answers, “Nothing for certain.”

“So you do know something and-”

“Shhhh,” The stranger shushes, raising his spoon to his lips in place of a finger before he points to Link’s shoulder. “Seems your friend was in desperate need of a break.”

Frowning, Link looks down-

Zelda’s asleep. She’s…asleep on him, hugging his arm, her fingers resting loosely over his wrist where his pulse beats steady.   

“Sometimes a good meal puts you right to bed,” Old Man whispers, putting his bowl down in the grass and standing up with a grunt. “I’ll be right back.”     

Link watches the man leave, watches him go inside of the cabin and shut the door, before turning his attention to Zelda.

It’s weird, seeing her asleep, seeing her calm and not raving about the Sheikah Slate or asking a million questions. Her lips are parted, her mouth open like she fell asleep in the middle of a sentence, and her cheek is smushed against the cloth of his torn up shirt, her weight heavy and warm against his side.

He looks at the fire, watches it dance, and doesn’t even realize he’s falling asleep, too, until a thin blanket falls around his and Zelda’s shoulders and he opens his eyes, looking up to find Old Man staring down at them with a fond expression on his face.

“I have a bed inside if you’d like to take it,” The stranger whispers. “I could carry her for you.”

Link glances down at Zelda, out cold on his shoulder. 

Sure, he signs with one hand so as not to wake Zelda by either using both or talking right next to her ear. Where will you sleep?

“Don’t worry about me,” Old Man crouches before them. “Once you get this old you’ll learn that sleep doesn’t come as easy as it once did.”

He slips his arms around Zelda and lifts her, holding her close to his chest as he stands back up. Zelda stirs but doesn’t wake, nuzzling into his neck with a sigh.

(Link swears that when the stranger blinks, his eyes are glassy.)

Link stumbles into the cabin, practically asleep on his feet as he unbuckles his sword’s scabbard and places it against the wall along with his bow and shield. He collapses into the bed in the back corner, too exhausted to pay attention about anything else in the house and too indifferent to care about the Sheikah Slate digging into his hip. 

The mattress itself is definitely a step up from the hard, unforgiving slab he woke up on in the Shrine of Resurrection, and he’s quick to learn that pillows and a blanket are a godsend. 

Why didn’t we get any of this in the shrine? he sleepily wonders, rolling onto his side and facing the wall, leaving a space for Zelda beside him. Did the people who put us there want us to wake up stiff, uncomfortable, and cold?

The door opens and he listens to Old Man’s footsteps get close.

Zelda mumbles something incoherent to Link’s ears, too asleep to properly speak. All he can catch from her half-awake slurring is the word, Hair.

“I know,” Old Man murmurs back, somehow able to understand her. The bed dips behind Link and Zelda’s soft, heavy breaths hit the back of his neck. “Just rest.” 

More silence, a little bit of rustling, and then his breathing.

(What…What is he doing?)  

After a few minutes where Link thinks Old Man has fallen asleep right next to them, there’s the soft sound of lips against skin. The blanket moves up Link’s shoulders as the stranger tucks them into his bed.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers, voice close, before his footsteps lead away from the bed and to the door.

Link doesn’t dare move until he hears the door creak shut. When it does, he rolls over and stares at Zelda’s sleeping face.

She’s bundled in the blanket Old Man had given them outside, her face buried in their shared pillow. Link’s nose scrunches at the sight of drool pooling at the corner of her lips, but what really catches his attention is her hair. 

It’s been meticulously braided back behind her head, care poured into every twist. 

(Over Zelda’s shoulder, on an end table next to the bed, Link spots a small cup filled with soil, and the bud of a flower with six blue and white petals beginning to bloom.)

—

“Let me die,” he’s on his back in a dark, dimly lit room and gripping a woman’s hand as tightly as he can, feeling her rapid pulse slam against his palm as he begs her, “If I die, a new Hero is born and you only have to wait until they’re old enough to wield the-”

“She gave us strict orders to save you, Linky,” A woman’s voice tells him, soft and shaking with tears. Warm, calloused fingertips brush his hair out of his eyes and he leans into the gentle touch. “So all you need to do is sleep and let the shrine do its magic, all right? I’ll be here when you wake up.”

“I can’t-” he wraps his fingers around her wrist, squinting, his vision so blurry he can’t see anything of her face except for her blood red eyes, “I don’t want to forget, Purah, please-”

“We can’t stop it once it starts,” The woman—Purah, who the hell is Purah?—whispers. “I’m sorry, I wish there was another way-”

“Damn it,” he hisses, his fingers falling from her wrist and his hand splashing in a small pool of water, why can’t he raise his arms why can’t he think why is his back wet- “Damn it.”

A sob, and palms cup his cheeks, fingers splaying on the sides of his head. Red eyes vow, “I’m gonna be here, okay? I’m not leaving your side, you’re gonna have me when you wake up and I’ll help you remember-”

“Purah?” A distant, rasping voice.

Red eyes leave his sight, and there’s a gasp. “We thought-”   

Link wakes to Zelda’s hair in his mouth and the sun in his eyes.

He’s pressed up against her back, his arms wrapped around her waist, and if it weren’t for the sunlight streaming through an open window and blinding him he’d be able to go back to sleep like Zelda still is. Unfortunately he’s up, which means he’s able to hear a distant, repetitive THUNK from outside.  

Careful not to wake Zelda, he climbs over her and out of the bed, freezing in place when she sighs and rolls over, burrowing deeper into the bed. Once he’s sure he’s not going to wake her up, he puts all of his equipment on as quietly as he can before taking a look around the house. 

In the middle of it there’s a small table with chairs, where an open book lies. A quick glance through the pages tells him it’s a cookbook, and…that’s about it, really, aside from the bed and the end table with a blue and white flower on it. It’s almost strange, how scarce the house is, like there’s not even enough things here for even Old Man to survive off of. There’s no storage of food, no place to bathe, no…nothing.

With one last glance back at Zelda curled in the sheets, Link steps outside and shuts the door behind himself, spotting Old Man in the distance chopping down a tree. 

“Old Man!” he calls, jogging over and grabbing the stranger’s attention.

Old Man turns around just as Link stops before him. “Ah, you’re awake! Good morning!”

“Morning,” Link puts his hands on his hips. “What are you doing?”

“I thought this tree here might make for some good firewood. However…getting a tree to fall exactly where you want it to is quite an art.”

Link raises an eyebrow. “It is?”

“The trick is to turn your hips so that they face where you want the tree to land,” There’s a twinkle in Old Man’s eye. “I know you have an axe stored in that slate of yours, why not help me out and give it a few swings? I’m working up quite a sweat here…but these bones could use a break.”

Link nods, taking the Sheikah Slate off his belt and storing the sword on his back in favor of the axe. 

The next shrine is across the gap in the ground, up the side of a cliff. To get to it, he and Zelda need a bridge, and what’s better than a fallen, giant tree?

He readies his axe, facing one of the trees, squaring his hips so it’ll fall and bridge the gap, and swings. The tree groans and falls, crashing to the ground and crossing the gap with a booming THUNK. 

Old Man laughs, commending him for his cleverness, and Link grins.

“Link?” 

They both turn around to find Zelda walking out of the cabin, squinting from the sun as she easily undoes her braid.

“Zelda!” Link waves her over. “We can go to the next shrine!”

She hurries over, almost tripping in her sandals, and stops before him and Old Man, who greets her with a tiny smile and a nod. “What? How?”

“I chopped down a tree,” Link points to the fallen tree. “We just have to walk across this and then climb up to it!”

Zelda swallows, looking at the fallen tree before leaning to see how far the drop is below. “You want me to walk across a tree?”

“I’ll go first,” he reassures, stepping up onto the fallen tree and holding out his hand. “Come on, we’ll do it together.”

She takes a deep breath before looking up at Old Man, who nods in encouragement. Then she takes his hand and joins him on the tree.

“Good,” Link breathes, and he slowly inches backwards towards the other side of the gap, watching her feet as she shuffles forward. “Good, just like that.”

Her whole body trembles, and when they reach the other side she lets out a huge sigh of relief.

Old Man waves to them from across the way, and once they wave back he turns around and walks back towards his cabin.

Now the only thing standing between Link, Zelda, and the third shrine is a steep cliff.

—

“Holy shit,” Zelda wheezes, flopped on her back at the base of the third shrine.

“You okay?” Link asks her, on his feet and shaking out his limbs, standing at the edge of the cliff. 

“I am…so tired,” she manages through labored pants. “You have to give me a minute, I’m not sure if I can move.”

Chuckling, Link nods, looking out at the plateau and what lies beyond as she catches her breath.

“There’s a bridge,” he points to the east, where a large stone bridge crosses over a (Let me die) lake. “And a tower.”

“Off the plateau, right?”

“Right. Where do you want to go once we get our paragliders?”

“Um,” Zelda continues to huff and puff. “I don’t know. I thought we’d go straight to the castle.”

He looks back at her over his shoulder, frowning. “You want to face that Calamity Ganon thing with a couple swords and wooden shields?”

“Why not? You’re good at fighting.”

“What about you?”

“I can, um,” she lifts shaky hands and mimes pulling back a bow. “Archery. It has eyes.”

“It does?”

A pause. Then, “It has to, right?”

“I guess so.”

“If not straight to the castle, then where?”

Link thinks about it, then shrugs. “That bridge and tower look worth a visit. So do all of the others. Don’t you want to just see the world we forgot in the Shrine of Resurrection?”

Another pause. “I never thought about that, actually.”

“We could even learn about Calamity Ganon before we fight it, see if there’s anyone else out there and if they want to help us.”

“They won’t,” Is Zelda’s immediate response. “They’re scared.”

Link stretches, lifting his hands to the clouds and enjoying the cool breeze. “How do you know that?”

Zelda sits up, slowly rising to her feet. “Why else would it still be around?”

—

They descend into the shrine and step off the platform-

To you who sets foot in this shrine, The now-expected voice echoes in Link’s head as he translates to Zelda through Sign, I am Owa Daim. In the name of the Goddess Hylia, I offer this trial.

Ahead of them is a platform attached to a spinning wheel and a Sheikah Slate terminal. 

“Maybe we’ll be able to control which direction the gear moves?” Zelda theorizes.

“Maybe,” Used to the formula by now, Link walks up and drops the slate into the terminal. “That’s not as fun as Remote Bombs or Magnesis, though.”

Sheikah Slate authenticated. Distilling rune…

Blue liquid splats onto the screen-

Rune extracted.

“‘Stasis’,” Link reads as the rune box to the right of Magnesis fills in, leaving the two boxes on the end of the row blank, “‘Stop the flow of time for an object. Stops an object in time while storing its kinetic energy. The stored energy will act upon the object when the flow of time resumes. Making good use of the stored energy can move even the largest of objects’.”

He takes the slate back and hands it to Zelda. “You try it first.”

She switches over to the Stasis rune from Remote Bombs and hits the rune button, immediately whispering, “Oooooh,” and showing him the screen.

The spinning wheel—the gear, Link supposes, wherever she got that from—is highlighted yellow, as is a stone ball that rolls down a ramp across the way.

“Ready?” he asks, and she nods, aiming at the gear and pressing the select button-

Yellow chains flash on the gear and engulf it in yellow light. The gear stops spinning, and the platform freezes in place, tilted at an angle too high for them to walk on. The slate chimes in Zelda’s hands, a sort of countdown, chiming faster and faster until-

The yellow chains break and the yellow light shatters and the gear moves again, spinning the platform.

“We have to time it,” Link deduces. “Then we run across before the Stasis releases.”

Doing it is easy enough, and once they’re across Zelda passes him the slate. “Your turn.”

They come up on the ramp with the stone ball, standing back as it rolls off and falls somewhere below.

Link pokes his head out and watches another ball drop and start to roll. He readies Stasis, lifting the slate, and when the ball is about to come off the ramp and roll into the abyss below he hits the select button and stops it in place.

“What’s that for?” Zelda asks with a frown as the slate chimes.

Link pulls the axe off his back and spins with it, whacking the frozen ball as he turns, whaling on it with all of his strength, and when Stasis runs out he stops and watches as it rolls back up the ramp before coming back down and falling into the abyss.

“Kinetic energy,” he pants. “Whatever that means. We hit the ball when it’s stopped and then when Stasis releases, the force of the hits slams into it all at once and it goes flying.”

Zelda’s eyes light up with realization, and Link freezes the next ball that drops before dragging her up the ramp to move deeper into the shrine’s chamber.

—

The final obstacle is straightforward: there’s a stone ball blocking their path to the monk, and a…a…

“What is that?” Link points to the…weapon resting against the nearby wall, a black metal brick attached to a thick handle. 

“I don’t know,” Zelda shakes her head, aiming the Sheikah Slate at it. “Maybe the slate can tell us if-Oh.”

“Oh what?” he looks over her shoulder at the screen and frowns. “’Inventory full’?”

“If we want whatever that is we have to get rid of a weapon we already own,” she scrolls through their weapons. “We can get rid of a wooden club, we have one more of those and a couple of swords.”

“Fine by me.”

In a rush of blue strings leaving the slate’s eye, a wooden club pops into existence and drops to the floor. The new weapon dematerializes into blue strings and gets sucked into the slate.

“‘Iron Sledgehammer’,” Zelda reads. “‘This large iron sledgehammer was originally used for mining, but it works reasonably well as a weapon, too’.”

“Let it back out,” Link tells her, taking his axe off his back. “Swap it for the axe.”

She does, and the sledgehammer materializes in his hands, which dip under the new weight.

“It’s heavier than the axe,” he remarks. “It’ll launch the ball pretty far.”

“You do it, then. There’s no way I’ll be able to lift that, much less swing it.”

“If you’ll do me the honors of Stasis-ing the ball?”

Chuckling, Zelda does, and Link makes a run for it, using his momentum to smack the sledgehammer into the ball before swinging at it with all of his might-

Stasis releases and the ball goes flying, bouncing off the walls and nearly colliding with the monk’s blue box before rocketing into the abyss below.

“Yes!” Link laughs, facing Zelda with a grin. He lets the sledgehammer hit the floor as he holds up his hands for a double high-five. “Kinetic energy! That’s what I’m talking about!”

Giggling, Zelda hits his hands. “You know what kinetic energy is, Link?”

“What?”

“Not magic,” her eyes glitter. “It’s science.”

He gapes at her, and she only laughs harder.

—

Your resourcefulness in overcoming this trial speaks to the promise of a hero… The monk, Owa Daim, tells them. In the name of the Goddess Hylia, I bestow upon you this Spirit Orb. 

The Spirit Orb sinks into Link’s chest, and Owa Daim fades with the familiar prayer, May the Goddess smile upon you.

There’s a smile in Zelda’s voice when she says, “Only one more to go.”

—

They exit the shrine and debate how to reach the last. 

“It’s in the snow,” Zelda says, pointing to the blue pin on the map. “And it looks like there’s a path if we go back by the Temple of Time.”

But it’s right there, Link argues, his hands a blur. It’s a straight shot if we just climb over Mount Hylia. It’s faster.

“I thought you wanted not to rush and learn about the world we’re in?”

Yes, but I know the Great Plateau by now. I want to see the rest of it, and we can’t do that without paragliders. Plus, the faster we see the world the faster we can stock up on good equipment and go to Hyrule Castle. He points up the side of the cliff next to them. There’s even a little platform for us to rest on, there. It’s like this mountain wants us to climb it.

Zelda sighs. “Fine, but you owe me one.”

Link pumps his fist in the air, and she laughs. 

—

Snow, as it turns out, is wet and cold.

Link and Zelda huddle together for warmth as they rush across the mountain towards the blue pin that marks the final shrine. 

“I re-really don’t like the cold,” Zelda manages through chattering teeth, goosebumps on her arms and legs and her fingers locked around his. 

“M-Me neither,” Link chokes back, clinging to her arm, sniffing whenever his nose runs and coughing from the sharp sting of the frigid air he sucks down when he breathes through his mouth. “How close are we?”

She shakes her head. “I’m not moving to grab the slate.”

“I’m not, either.”

She nods to a path that spirals up to on top of a large rock. “I th-think that’s the m-mountain’s peak, we can look from-from up there.”

They trudge through the snow to the top of the mountain, Zelda’s face buried in Link’s neck as a gust of wind shoots snow in their eyes, and-

“Oho ho!”

Standing there, his cane/lantern in front of him in the snow, is Old Man.

“Thank Hylia,” The prayer spills from Link’s lips and Zelda mouths something against his throat-

“I enjoy gazing out at the world from here,” Old Man says in lieu of greeting. 

“B-Breathtaking view,” Zelda says from her spot beneath Link’s jaw.

(It is. From this spot, he can see the entirety of the Great Plateau.)

“You’ve both done well to make it this far without proper clothing,” The stranger commends, and pulls two bundles of cloth out from somewhere in his cloak, holding them out to them. “Please, take these warm doublets as a reward for your joint tenacity.”

Link and Zelda each rip one from his offering hands, and Link sighs in relief when he realizes it’s a thick shirt, pulling it on over the torn one he’s already wearing.

“Finally,” Zelda breathes, already in hers. “Sleeves.”

Old Man chuckles, and reaches back into his cloak. “Zelda, these are also for you. Those sandals can’t be doing you any good in this snow.”

He hands her a pair of long socks and black boots, and Zelda looks close to tears as she rips off her sandals off and changes into them, leaning on Link for balance as he sucks the discarded shoes into the Sheikah Slate.

“How’d you know they would fit her?” Link asks, wiping his nose with the warm doublet’s sleeve. 

Old Man swallows. “I’m very good at guessing. Now, have you located your final shrine?”

“Not yet,” he lifts up on his toes and peers over the stranger’s shoulder. “But there’s one behind you, off the plateau.”

Old Man nods, his large white beard bouncing with the movement, before pointing to Link’s right. “I believe it’s over there.”

Zelda gasps. “It’s so close.”

“Then we should get going,” Link says, firm. “Thank you for the warm gear, Old Man, I-”

“Don’t let me keep you two here,” Old Man waves off his thanks. “Go, go! At this rate, you’ll have your paragliders within the hour!”

—

To you who sets foot in this shrine, I am Keh Namut…In the name of the Goddess Hylia, I offer this trial.

Sheikah Slate terminal. 

Sheikah Slate authenticated. Distilling rune…

Blue splat of liquid on the screen-

The rune box to the right of Stasis fills in-

Rune extracted.

Cryonis, Link signs. Create a pillar of ice from a water surface. Builds ice pillars that are very stable. These pillars can be used as stepping stones or as obstacles. Use Cryonis on an ice pillar to break it.

This…This is a rune that can make it so they won’t have to swim in water?

Link and Zelda look at each other, then to the shallow pool to their right. It’s not deep enough to submerge anything but their feet, but still…

Link switches over to Cryonis, aims at the water that glows blue through the screen, and-

A rectangle of ice rises from the water’s surface.

I think I have a favorite, he says. 

“I still like the bombs,” Zelda breathes. 

They use Cryonis to lift a gate and step into the next room-

There’s a spider-robot—a little Guardian—in the middle of the floor, identical to the one that was In the Magnesis shrine. 

“Here,” Link says, passing Zelda the slate as it sees them and comes alive, lighting up orange and its blue eye flashing. “Make a Cryonis block and hide, I’ll kill it.”

“With what?” Zelda whispers as she erects a pillar of ice.

He takes the sledgehammer off his back and smiles at her. “My new toy.”

Before she can protest he rushes the small machine, dodging a quick bullet of its laser-fire and slamming the weapon into its head with a loud, “Hyah!”. It shatters into pieces, and all that remains of it, floating in the shallow water at his feet, is a spinny—a screw.

“Is it gone?” Zelda’s voice echoes from behind the ice. 

“Yeah, it’s gone!” he takes in their final obstacle, a long rectangle platform sitting over the water. “We need Cryonis again to make a ramp and then the Spirit Orb is ours!”

She jogs up to him, the water splashing around her new boots and soaking the bottom of her filthy white dress. “Really? That’s it?”

Link nods, grinning at her. “Looks like we’re getting good at this whole shrine thing.” 

—

May the Goddess smile upon you.

—

They exit the shrine and step back out into the cold-

“Ho!”

Old Man paraglides in from the mountain’s peak and lands in front of them.

“We did it!” Link tells him, eager. “We completed all of the shrines!”

Old Man sighs, straightening his spine. He says in a serious voice, “With this, you have now acquired all of the Spirit Orbs from the shrines on this plateau. That means…it is finally time.”

“For our paragliders?” Zelda asks.

“Link, Zelda,” he ignores her question. “It is finally time for me to tell you two everything. But first…”

He turns around, staring out at the plateau and the Temple of Time in the distance.

“Imagine an X on your map, with the four shrines as the end points. Find the spot where those lines intersect. I shall wait for you there,” he faces them again, and his body lights up blue, flames encircling his waist and he starts to fade- “Do you understand? Where two lines cross…I will…be waiting…”

“Wait!” Link and Zelda call at the same time, both reaching for him, but-but- 

He’s gone.

Chapter Text

Old Man has abandoned them at the top of Mount Hylia, fading into nothing like…like a ghost, and the first words out of Link’s mouth are, “Why does he even need a paraglider?”

“What?” Zelda asks, still staring at where the stranger disappeared. 

“If he can just…fade away like that, why did he need a paraglider to get around?”

She doesn’t answer.

“And what does he even mean, ‘Imagine an X on your map, where two lines cross I’ll be waiting’-”

“The Temple of Time,” she says.

“What?” 

“He’s waiting in the Temple of Time,” she explains, turning her head and staring at Link. Her eyes are big, and it seems like she’s pale from more than just the cold. “I just…I just heard his voice in my head, he…”

“What?” Link repeats, frowning. “What do you mean you heard his voice in your head? How does that mean he’s at the Temple of Time?”

“I can’t really explain it, I-” she shakes her head. “When we were in the Temple of Time I…I heard voices in my head, and it sounded like people praying. Then-”

She stops.

“Then what?” Link presses. 

“Then I heard you when you started talking to that statue—to Hylia,” she talks fast, her words almost blending together, “but it was like I heard you twice, with my ears and then in my head, too, like-like an echo. I haven’t heard anything else like that since but…but just now I heard Old Man say something.”

“What did he say?”

“He…” Zelda swallows. “He asked, ‘Are you happy, now?’”

Link stares at her. “And you’re sure it was him?”

“His voice is the only one I can recognize besides yours,” she nods. “I wish I knew what it meant, or why I can hear him…”

Link takes the Sheikah Slate off his belt. “If we get to the Temple of Time, we can ask him and find out.”

He opens up the map, and one look at it shows them a path straight to the Temple of Time from the shrine they’re still standing at.

“We’ll have to go over the River of the Dead,” Zelda says, pointing to the giant patch of blue standing between them and the other side of the Great Plateau where the path to their destination lies.

“There’s a bridge,” Link zooms in and points to the brown rectangle that crosses three-fourths of the water. “We can probably jump that gap.”

“Are you sure? Just because it’s small on the map doesn’t mean it’ll be that small in real life.”

It…It doesn’t? 

“It doesn’t?” he asks.

She shakes her head. “We’ll probably need something to bridge that last gap, hopefully there’s something already there or we have to go back the way we came, looping all the way back around past the Stasis shrine and Old Man’s cabin.” 

(The cabin, which was lacking almost every basic need for a person to survive off of, which was more of an empty shelter than a home.) 

“Or we could teleport to the Shrine of Resurrection or the Bombs shrine,” Zelda adds after a moment. “I forgot we could do that, now. It’d make a shorter walk, don’t you agree?”

So they can either figure out a way to cross a river, or teleport and walk on solid ground.

Link stares at where the Temple of Time rests in the distance, and the large body of water they’d have to conquer.

Let me die, he keeps hearing himself beg. I don’t want to forget-

We can’t stop it once it starts, The woman with red eyes, someone named Purah, had whispered in response in his dreams, I’m sorry, I wish there was another way-

“Let’s teleport to the Shrine of Resurrection,” he decides. “I want to get to the temple as fast as possible.”

Zelda grabs a corner of the slate and touches the warp point for the shrine. 

—

They materialize in front of the stairs that lead outside, the bed they woke up in at their backs. 

Link glances back at it over his shoulder as he and Zelda walk towards the afternoon sunlight spilling in from ahead, trying to will himself to remember more, but the farther away he gets the harder it is to grasp at any memory that may be buried deep within his subconscious.

(It’s like grasping at smoke, trying to catch something that was never his to have.)

“Wait,” Zelda stops him when they hit the small pool of water before the ledge they have to climb to get back outside. “We can use Cryonis and jump over. No climbing needed!”

He passes her the slate and she aims Cryonis under their feet. With one press of a button they’re lifted into the air on a solid rectangle of ice.

“It’s not slippery,” Link breathes, sliding his foot over the surface and shocked it’s not gliding. “How is it cold like ice is but not slippery?”

“That’s a good question,” she murmurs. “We’ll have to experiment with it later.”

They jump across to the rest of the stairs and hurry outside, turning right and rushing down the path.

(It’s weird, Link thinks. Just yesterday they were marveling at the view and the beauty of the plateau around them, but now it’s like they’ve seen it all.) 

They pass where they sat and spoke with Old Man yesterday morning and Link spots a freshly baked apple in the grass by the blackened kindling. He slows to snag it, stumbling under the weight of the sledgehammer on his back, before speeding up to rejoin Zelda.

“It feels good to be able to run without worrying about my sandals,” she remarks as they jog past the stump where he’d picked up their axe. “And also not get out of breath so easily like yesterday.”

“I hear you,” he says, taking a bite out of the apple he picked up before offering it to her. “Want some?”

“I’m fine, thank you,” her lips curve up and there’s laughter in her voice when she asks, “You’re not worried about choking?”

“Nope!” he shakes his head, taking another bite. “’Sides, if I do you’ll just have to either save me or pop me back in the Shrine of Resurrection.”

Zelda frowns. “What just happened to your voice?”

Link finishes his apple and tosses the core over his shoulder. “What do you mean?”

“‘’Sides’? ‘Pop you back in’ the shrine? You’re talking differently.”

He frowns back at her. “I am?”

“It’s hard to explain, you just…you sound different. It’s not a bad thing, just you talked the same way I do until now.”

He tests it with, “It’s hard to-”

He hears it immediately. When Zelda says ‘hard’, the ‘r’ is softer, less round, so it sounds like she’s saying hah-d. Link’s ‘r’, on the other hand, is sharp and forceful, leaving his ‘hard’ sounding like haRd.

He swallows. “Huh.”

What does that mean? Why would they be talking differently? 

“Old Man talks like you, though,” he remarks. “Why do I sound different?”

Zelda shrugs. “We can ask him that, too.” 

They turn right onto the Temple of Time’s grounds, bounding up staircase after staircase-

“Wait!” Zelda grabs the back of Link’s warm doublet and stops him in his tracks, pointing to the left. “A chest!”

There, sitting in some stone ruins in front of a large, broken window, is a cracked gray chest being guarded by a red pig monster. 

Ducking low, Link takes the sledgehammer off his back and grips it tightly in both hands, sneaking up behind the monster before bashing its head in and relishing in its dying squeal. He sucks up the parts with the slate while Zelda kicks open the chest and reaches inside, pulling out a pair of trousers that resemble the ones Link’s wearing, except the pant legs are longer and the color is lighter. She also pulls out a pair of longer, lighter boots.

“You take the boots and I’ll put these on?” Zelda asks, offering the new footwear.

“Sure,” he says, kicking off his shoes and slipping the fresh boots onto his feet. 

“Um,” her face flushes. “Can you turn around? I’m going to take off my dress now that there’s something to cover my lower half.”

Link turns around, staring up at the Temple of Time and trying not to listen to the rustle of clothing and her soft curses. 

“Okay,” she steps up beside him, her filthy dress clenched in one hand. “Can you put it in the slate, please?”

He does, asking, “You don’t wanna just leave it here?”

Zelda shakes her head. “I want to wash it, that way I can wear it for whenever we have to wash these clothes.”

He nods. “All right. Ready to keep going?”

She nods back, and they continue their trek to the ruined temple. 

—

They reach the top of all of the stairs and- 

Link skids to a stop in front of Zelda, whipping his shield onto his arm and staring ahead, wide-eyed. Zelda sidles up behind him, breathing hard. 

There are…There are Guardians with legs to the right of the entrance to the temple, four of them in a row.

“We ran up that way the first time,” he pants. “How didn’t we notice?”

“We were a little preoccupied racing each other up here,” she reminds him. “Then we killed our first red pig monster and prayed at the statue—Hylia.”

Right. Okay.

“Are you okay?” he asks her, risking a glance back at her out of the corner of his eye. “You’re with me?”

“I’m with you,” she whispers. “You’re with me?”

“Yeah,” he nods, not loosening his hold on his shield even when his fingers cramp, “Why aren’t they waking up like the one by the Bombs shrine?”

“I don’t know,” her hand slithers down to the slate on his hip. “I can Stasis the one closest and we can run inside?”

“Please!”

She taps at the slate, then, “I can’t Stasis them.”

“What do you mean you can’t Stasis them?”

“Look!” she thrusts the slate over his shoulder, and once glance at the screen shows that she can stasis some pots in the Temple of Time but not the Guardians. “It’s strange! They haven’t even moved like the one in the Eastern Abbey did.”

And then it hits him. 

“The Guardian we found right before the one that came alive was like a statue,” Link tells her, slowly lowering his shield. “It let me root around inside it to get that screw. I…I think that one was dead, and these ones are dead, too.”

Zelda puts the Sheikah Slate back on his belt. “You’re sure?”

“I am,” he slides his shield back on his back. “I think we’re okay.”

“Okay,” Zelda softly echoes. 

(It doesn’t stop her from sticking to his back as they slowly walk past the Guardian husks, or stop Link from keeping an eye on them as they enter the temple.) 

Once inside, they’re met with a peculiar sight.

“That’s weird,” Link says, staring at the statue of Hylia across the room.

“What?” Zelda asks.

(Or…he is, at least.)

He nods to the base of the statue, where a ring of white light bathes it in an ethereal glow. “You don’t see it glowing?”

Zelda blinks. “It’s not glowing.”

“You don’t see that?” he repeats, pointing at the light. “There’s a ring of white light around her feet.”

Zelda shakes her head, mystified. “I think you’re seeing things, Link.”

“I’m not! Here, if we walk up to it you’ll see what I’m talking about.”

As they approach the statue, Zelda cranes her neck and looks around. “I don’t see Old Man anywhere.”

“Maybe he’s connected to Hylia somehow,” Link theorizes. “Maybe if we talk to her and ask to see him, he’ll appear?”

The closer they are the dimmer the light gets. When they stop before her, the light is gone completely.

“I still don’t see anything,” Zelda tells him, looking the statue up and down.

“The light disappeared when we got close,” he grumbles. “I swear she was glowing.”

“I’m not hearing anything, either,” she breathes, her eyes lingering on the statue’s serene smile. “Try praying to her, let’s see if I hear you.”

Link opens his mouth to speak to the stone goddess and his chest bursts with heat, stifling his words before he can even get the chance to say them. Zelda hisses beside him, raising her hands to her head, and-

“You who have conquered the shrines and claimed their Spirit Orbs,” she says in a voice that doesn’t sound entirely hers, staring into the statue’s eyes, “I can offer you great power.”   

“What?” Link questions. “Zelda-”

“It appears you have claimed four Spirit Orbs,” she continues, lowering her hands to hang limp by her sides. “In exchange for four Spirit Orbs, I will amplify your being. So tell me what it is that you desire.”

“Zelda,” he repeats, shaking her shoulder-

She meets his eyes, and there’s a pinprick of gold in the center of her pupils.

“Vitality or Stamina?” she asks. 

“Zelda,” he tries again. “Godsdamn it-”

“Vitality or Stamina?” Not-Zelda asks again.

“I don’t fucking know—Vitality! Whatever the hell that means!”

The corners of her lips twitch, and the golden pinprick brightens. “You wish for Vitality, yes?”

“Yes!” Link practically shouts. “Just be you again, please!”

“I shall grant the power you seek.”

Zelda’s right hand lifts and settles on his chest, right over his heart where the Spirit Orbs had sunk. Her fingers curl, knuckles bending, and warmth builds in his chest again, burning, his heartbeat loud in his ears, and then all at once it stops. She lowers her hand back to her side. 

“Go,” she says, smiling, “and bring peace to Hyrule…”

Zelda blinks, her smile fading as fast as it had appeared, and the golden pinprick is gone from her pupils. Her hand flies back to her head and she winces, muttering, “What the…”

“Zelda,” Link says her name for what feels like the hundredth time. “Are you with me?”

“Yes,” she nods. “Yes, I’m with you, I…What happened-”

“I don’t know, I went to pray and something weird happened in my chest and you just started talking-”  

“The blessing of the Goddess has made you that much more resilient, I see,” Old Man’s voice says from above, and they turn around to see him at the top of the gaping hole in the roof, blue flames around his waist. “Here I am. Get up here—quickly!”

There’s nothing friendly about him as he turns and walks off.

“Everything went dark,” Zelda whispers, drawing Link’s attention. She stares up at where the stranger disappeared. “It was dark, and I was alone, and then I was back here.”

Link swallows. He says, “Sounds like another question for Old Man. Let’s go get our answers.” 

—

A ladder just outside brings them up to the Temple of Time’s broken roof, and with a grip on Zelda’s hand to keep both himself and her from falling off, they climb to the top of it and find Old Man waiting for them across the way, standing in the temple’s tower and glowing blue. 

Zelda squeezes his hand, and Link looks back at her. 

“Ready?” he asks.

“Yes,” she replies. 

They slowly walk together, balancing precariously on the triangular edge of the roof, and only let go of each other once they reach the tower and have to climb up and into it. 

“Well done there, young ones,” Old Man greets, resting his cane/lantern in front of his body. “Now, then…The time has come to show you who I truly am.”

Link and Zelda share a glance.

“I was King Rhoam Bosphoramus Hyrule,” he says, his eyes flicking between them.  “I was…the last leader of Hyrule, a kingdom which no longer exists.”

He glows, getting brighter and brighter, until there’s a flash of white light and in a blink an entirely different stranger stands before them.

The cloak and dark clothing are gone, as is the cane. Standing tall is a man in a golden crown and dressed in white and blue regalia, his large white beard connecting to his long white hair. 

Old Man—No, King Rhoam—stares at Zelda, who gapes alongside Link. Something like disappointment flickers on his face before he wets his lips and continues, “The Great Calamity was merciless. It devastated everything in its path, lo, a century ago. It was then that my life was taken from me. And since that time, here I have remained in spirit form.”

“You’re a ghost,” Zelda breathes. “You’re—You’re dead, you-” 

Link’s hands move and he signs, Why didn’t you tell us right away?

“I did not think it was wise to overwhelm you while your memories were still fragile,” The phantom king explains, turning his back to them and drifting to the missing, broken window behind him to stare out at Hyrule Castle and the swirling pink and black fog surrounding it in the distance. “So rather than that, I thought it best to assume a temporary form.”

He looks back at them over his shoulder, his eyes lingering on Zelda as he whispers, “Forgive me.”

Again, Link and Zelda look at each other. 

How was he touching things? Link rapidly signs. He made us dinner and carried you to bed last night, he held his paraglider-

He’s been here for a century, Zelda clumsily signs back, mouthing the words to help her meaning when her fingers fumble. He’s been dead for a century, he’s ancient-

So why is he here? Why did he help us? 

“I think you two are now ready,” King Rhoam declares. “Ready to hear what happened one hundred years ago.”

“Not to sound insensitive, Your Majesty,” Zelda says, and Link doesn’t miss the way the spirit’s shoulders hunch when she uses his title, “But why should we care about ancient history?”

King Rhoam swallows, takes a breath, and requests, “Please, just listen for now.”

Zelda goes quiet, and Link shifts his weight, brushing the back of his hand against her knuckles to grab her attention and giving her a tiny smile when she looks at him. 

Almost paraglider time, he signs, and she smiles back.

“To know Calamity Ganon’s true form, one must know the story from an age long past. The demon king was born into this kingdom, but his transformation into Malice created the horror you see now. Stories of Ganon were passed from generation to generation in the form of legends and fairy tales, but there was also…a prophecy.”

Link signs, A prophecy? and Zelda translates out loud. 

“Yes. It went, ’The signs of a resurrection of Calamity Ganon are clear, and the power to oppose it lies dormant beneath the ground’. We decided to heed the prophecy and began excavating large areas of land. It wasn’t long before we discovered several ancient relics made by the hands of our distant ancestors. These relics, the Divine Beasts, were giant machines piloted by warriors. We also found Guardians, an army of mechanical soldiers who fought autonomously.”

“We’ve encountered a few,” Zelda says, translating Link’s signs. “They haven’t been kind to us. You mean they were supposed to help the kingdom fight the Calamity?”

“They were,” King Rhoam takes another deep breath. “This coincided with ancient legends, oft repeated throughout our land. We…We also learned of a princess with a sacred power and her appointed knight, chosen by the sword that seals the darkness. It was they who sealed Ganon away using the power of these ancient relics.”

Where’s your sword? Link suddenly remembers Zelda asking him yesterday, during her Confusion at Eastern Abbey.

“One hundred years ago,” The spirit’s voice gets rough, thick with something Link can’t describe. “There was a princess set to inherit a sacred power and a skilled knight at her side. It was clear that we must follow our ancestors’ path.”

Princess, Link signs to Zelda. His daughter?

She shrugs, and the dead king continues, “We selected four skilled individuals from across Hyrule and tasked them with the duty of piloting the Divine Beasts. With the princess as their commander, we dubbed these pilots Champions—a name that would solidify their unique bond.”

In the distance, the storm engulfing Hyrule Castle pulses. Zelda itches the back of her right hand, and Link shakes out his as it tingles. 

“The princess, her appointed knight, and the rest of the Champions were on the brink of sealing away Ganon, but nay; Ganon was cunning, and he responded with a plan beyond our imagining: he appeared from deep below Hyrule Castle, seized control of the Guardians and the Divine Beasts, and turned them against us.”

“Goddesses,” Zelda whispers.

“The Champions lost their lives, those residing in the castle as well. The appointed knight, gravely wounded, collapsed while defending the princess, and thus the kingdom of Hyrule was devastated absolutely by Calamity Ganon.”

“So why is Hyrule so…peaceful?” Zelda continues to translate Link’s moving hands, talking to the back of their phantom guide’s head. “Why is Hyrule Castle the only place tainted by Malice?”

King Rhoam is quiet. His hands clench into fists before unclenching. He answers, “The princess survived to face Ganon alone.”

Link remembers seeing a golden light at the top of Hyrule Castle’s tallest tower, and the tug in his gut pulling him towards it. His right hand itches.  

“That princess was my own daughter, my…” Rhoam’s voice trembles, and he turns, facing them with glassy eyes. He stares directly at Zelda and laments, “My dear Zelda.”

Zelda, who stares back at him with wide eyes, who opens her mouth and then closes it, and finally manages a hoarse, “What?”

“You…” The stranger—her father?—falters. “The last time I saw you, you were leaving the castle early in the morning. When the Calamity struck it was evening, and I was having an audience with my advisors, and the next thing I knew I was a sprit and your appointed knight was safe in the Shrine of Resurrection.”

“Appointed knight,” Link rasps, putting the pieces together, “Safe in the Shrine of Resurrection? You mean…”    

“Yes, Link. The courageous knight who protected her right up to the very end was none other than you.”

save her, A voice inside of him had whispered when he and Zelda faced the Guardian at the Eastern Abbey. save her, save her. 

Where’s your sword? Zelda had asked.

“You fought valiantly when your fate took an unfortunate turn,” Rhoam says. “And then you were taken to the Shrine of Resurrection. Here you now stand, revitalized, one hundred years later.”

“With me,” Zelda says, her voice shaking, her hands clenching into fists and unclenching into trembling fingers. “With…With ‘Princess Zelda’, who according to your story is supposed to be there-” she points past him, to where the infected castle lies. “with Calamity Ganon in Hyrule Castle, holding it back. How am I here?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know. I didn’t manifest like this until after the shrine was sealed. I’ve been waiting all this time for Link to wake up so I could guide him into this new world, help him shake off any cobwebs the Slumber of Restoration might have left him with. It’s why I only had the one paraglider when we met.”

What are you doing here? Old Man—Rhoam—had demanded of Zelda when they had walked up to him yesterday, fresh out of the cave. 

We don’t know, Zelda had replied.

(Link wonders what he would have said to them had Zelda not answered first, and had she not answered so quickly, if they could have avoided being lead on and kept out of the loop had they just let the stranger talk himself into a hole.)  

“I wasn’t expecting him to have total amnesia, and I certainly wasn’t expecting you to be by his side and suffering from the same,” Rhoam stares at Zelda, at his daughter, and asks, “Tell me, please: When you look at me, do you remember anything? Do you feel anything?” 

“I…” Zelda trails off, blinking, staring at the ghost of her apparent father. Slowly, she shakes her head. “I’m sorry, I don’t. I just feel confused and...and I’m sorry I don’t know who you are. I’m…I’m sure you were a wonderful father, and that I loved you very much.”

The phantom’s smile is weak, and he gently shakes his head back at her. “I wasn’t the father I should have been, and I would not be surprised if you were relieved when you heard of my demise.”

Link gives them a moment, letting Rhoam’s words hang in the air, before asking out loud, “If I’m the appointed knight, shouldn’t I be able to wield that special sword you talked about?”  

The king nods. “You should.”

“So…where is it?”

Rhoam shakes his head again. “I don’t know. A hundred years ago, when you first wielded it, you wouldn’t tell anyone where it came from. I spent three years of my wait for you searching, but could never find anything pointing to its whereabouts. Whoever hid it after you fell hid it very well.”

Where’s your sword? Zelda had asked during her Confusion at the Eastern Abbey. Where did I leave it?

“I think-” Link’s voice wavers, and he signs, I think you were the one that hid it, Zelda. 

“What?” Zelda raises an eyebrow. “How do you know that?”

After I saved you from the Guardian, you got Confused. You asked me about my sword, then asked where you left it. 

“‘Confused’?” Rhoam echoes, frowning, “What does that mean?”  

It’s like she becomes an entirely different person, saying and doing things that don’t make sense. 

“I don’t remember any of it,” Zelda quietly adds, tucking a strand of her blonde hair behind her ear when a cool breeze ruffles it. “It’s like I blink and Link is calling my name, almost like I’m waking up from a long dream.”

“What about your power? Do you feel it?”

“I don’t know what it would feel like.”

Link remembers golden pinpricks in her eyes only moments ago, her apparently hearing voices near the statue of Hylia, and a cut on her cheek miraculously healing after she killed a boar. He tells her, “I think you’ve used it, though. Whenever you get Confused.”

“That doesn’t help,” Zelda’s voice gets hard as she looks down at her hands. “When I’m Confused I’m not in control of myself. I don’t know the first thing about...about-”

“Magic,” The king supplies. “The sacred power comes from your blood, since you are a descendant of the Goddess Hylia herself.”

That might explain the prayers, Link thinks, but he asks, “So if she has some access to whatever, um, ‘Hylia’s sacred power’ is, what’s the golden light in the castle?”

King Rhoam sighs, adjusting the crown on top of his head. “I don’t know. I’ve spent a century operating under the assumption that it was Zelda, and when you two came up to me yesterday morning I tried to figure it out, asking questions and trying to remember everything I’ve been told about Hyrule’s legends, but I can think of nothing that explains why the Calamity is still confined to Hyrule Castle. However, what I do know is that whatever is holding the Calamity back, it will soon be exhausted. Once that happens, Ganon will freely regenerate himself and nothing will stop him from consuming our land.” 

The ghost turns his full attention to Link, a grave expression on his face as his eyes search his. 

“Considering that I could not save my own kingdom, I have no right to ask you of this, Link, but I am powerless here…” his fists clench and unclench into trembling fingers, and his gaze flicks to Zelda before he begs, “You must save her…my daughter. Bring her memories back, bring her back, and please: do whatever it takes to annihilate Ganon.”

Link stands in the shadow of Hyrule’s last king, an equally-shocked Zelda by his side and an adventure at his fingertips, and there’s a tug in his gut and an itch in his right hand that has the words, “Of course, Your Majesty,” spilling from his lips.

Rhoam looks expectantly at Zelda, who hesitates before she nods. “I go where Link goes. Where…Where do we start?”

He drifts to another opening in the tower, where a wooden platform sticks out and points towards a mountain split in half. “Somehow, Ganon has maintained control over all four Divine Beasts, as well as those Guardians swarming around Hyrule Castle. I believe it would be quite reckless for you to head directly to the castle at this point. I suggest that you make your way east, out to one of the villages in the wilderness,” he points towards the split mountain. “Follow the road out to Kakariko Village. There you will find the elder, Impa. She will tell you more about the path that lies ahead. Consult the map on your Sheikah Slate for the precise location of Kakariko Village, and make your way past the twin summits of the Dueling Peaks. From there, follow the road as it proceeds north.”

Link and Zelda move closer to their guide, staring out and following his finger to spot the distant, winding path that leads through the split mountain, and a faint orange glow. 

Another tower, Link signs. 

“We won’t be able to get off the Great Plateau as we are now,” Zelda reminds them all, and glances up at the stranger. “I believe you owe us something.”

There’s a smile in Rhoam’s eyes and on his face as he chuckles, reaches into his robes, and pulls out two paragliders, the first the red one he’s been using and the second a blue copy of it. He settles both in his daughter’s hands. “Here you are, just as I promised.” 

When Zelda takes them from his hands, Link sees their hands brush and hears the king’s false breath hitch.

(Up this close to both of them, he can almost see the resemblance in their faces.)

“With that, you should be able to safely fly off the cliffs surrounding this area. And…” The stranger hesitates. “I think that’s it. I’ve told you everything I can.” 

“What will you do now?” Zelda asks him as she hands Link the red paraglider.

“My purpose as your guide has been served,” he drifts back from them, pulling away from her touch. “And my wait for hope is over. I no longer need to be here on this isolated plateau.”

“You’re leaving,” Link deduces. “Fading away like you did on the mountain.”

At Rhoam’s reluctant nod, Zelda gets angry. “You can’t just leave.”

“I have been here for a century, Zelda. I have grown tired-”

“I thought I was your daughter,” her voice shakes. “I have so many questions, and you’re just going to leave me?”

“Impa will answer any questions you have, but for now we cannot waste time with idle conversation-”

“Then you’re right,” she snarls, venom dripping from her words, “You’re not the father you should be.”

Rhoam recoils like he’s been slapped.

“Zelda,” Link murmurs, touching her shoulder.

“It’s all right, Link,” The dead man breathes. “I’m sorry, Zelda, I am, but I must go. If you want answers from me, my diary is in the castle’s Library.”

His spectral form begins to fade, blowing away in the breeze.

“No!” Zelda shouts, her voice breaking, and Link has to hold her back from barreling through the spirit’s body and falling out of the tower to the ground below. “Come back!”

“Link,” The ghost says before he’s gone, his words echoing, “You must…save…Hyrule…”

“Father!” she sobs, writhing in Link’s arms.

King Rhoam Bosphoramus Hyrule disappears into nothing, and all Link can do is hold Zelda as she screams.  

Chapter Text

They’re alone on the Great Plateau and Zelda won’t stop crying.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she sniffles, curled in Link’s arms atop the Temple of Time, the thick cloth of their warm doublets scratching together as she shakes, “I just-I can’t-”

“It’s okay,” he whispers, continuing to hold her. The paragliders are safe on his belt, and he wonders if Old Man—King Rhoam, Zelda’s father—is watching over them still. “We have all the time in the world.”

“No we don’t!” she points to the swirling mass of destruction that circles Hyrule Castle in the distance. Calamity Ganon, their phantom guide had called it. “That-That thing is going to break free from whatever golden light is holding it back at any moment and kill us all, we have to go. I can’t waste time crying over a man I can’t even remember-”

“He was your father, Zelda.”

“Princess Zelda,” she mutters, wiping at her eyes and shaking her head, “What does that even mean?”

Princess Zelda, appointed knight, the sword that seals the darkness. 

What does that mean?

“It means we need more answers,” Link says, stepping back from her to pull the paragliders off his hip. He offers her the red one her father used, but she takes the blue. “You don’t want-”

“I like blue,” she murmurs, staring down at it, stretching the fabric with her gloved thumbs, “Is that all right?”

“Yeah,” he nods, sure she’s aware that he wasn’t asking for the sake of the color, “I…I like red.”

—

Paragliding is scarily easy. Link hops off the edge of the Temple of Time and snaps open the cloth, whooping when his stomach flips and he soars through the open air to the grass below, stumbling when he lands.

He turns around, ready to encourage Zelda to do the same, and is instead barreled over by her crashing right into him.

“Oof!” The air whooshes from his lungs as his back collides with the grass, her sprawled on top of him and their paragliders smushed together by their heads, and when he finally opens his eyes to catch his breath he’s met with the sight of Zelda’s red, puffy eyes and shocked laughter.

“I’m sorry!” she apologizes, climbing off of him and helping him to his feet, “I thought you heard me jump off behind you!”

“I thought you were going to hesitate!” he explains, holding his hand up for a high-five, “You did great!”

She gently smacks his palm, smiling. “Thank you! That was such a rush, wasn’t it?”

Link laughs, shaking the dirt from his paraglider and pointing in the direction of the mountain that’s split in half on the horizon. What did Rhoam call it, the Dueling Peaks? “Want to race?”

Zelda follows the line of his finger and her eyes light up. “All the way there?”

“Well…” Link estimates the distance and changes his mind, pointing instead to the orange tower just in front of the mountain. “What about to that? First one to the top gets to activate it?”

She snaps open her paraglider, eyeing the large hill in front of them with a sizable drop to the rest of the plateau. “As long as you’re ready to lose.”

Link opens his, getting ready to run and throw his chances of winning as he lies, “I think you’re going to be the one who loses.”

(Anything to get her mind off of her tears. His pride can take the hit.)

—

Somehow, not even without him purposely slowing himself down so she stays ahead, Zelda is faster in the air than he is. When they jump off the hill in front of them she rockets forward like an arrow flying from the string of a bow, while Link, in comparison, is like a leisurely walk through the woods. 

So Zelda is faster, but he can glide longer before his arms give out and he has to drop back to the ground. He’s still drifting along when Zelda curses and closes her paraglider, falling to the grass and stumbling before breaking into a sprint beneath him to keep up. 

“You okay down there?” he taunts.

“Just fine!” she pants back, leaping over a shallow river, “How’s the weather up there?!” 

“Just fine!” he parrots, grinning when she laughs.

The shrine where they got the Bomb rune is just ahead. Link claps his paraglider shut and drops to the dirt beside Zelda, rolling to cushion his fall before he’s sprinting alongside her, weaving through the stone ruins and scrambling over walls to avoid the Guardian on the left side. 

At the edge of the plateau they both skid to a stop, staring down the long drop to the grassy ground below.  

“That’s-” Zelda hunches over, breathing hard, her hands on her knees and her paraglider wedged between her arm and her ribs, “That’s a long drop.”

“Yeah,” Link agrees, nodding, resting his hands on his hips and holding his paraglider the same way, “it is. Are you nervous?”

“Absolutely,” she sucks in a deep breath before straightening, mimicking him in putting her hands on her hips. “You’re not, of course.”

“Nope,” he shakes his head. “I could very easily leave you up here and win the race.”

“That you could, but I know that you won’t. You’re too nice for that.”

“Yep. So,” he grins at her, “what is it going to take to get you to jump with me? You have a paraglider, you know how to use it, and we both know I’m not going to let you plummet to your death. Like you said, I’m too nice for that.” 

Zelda swallows. She says, “Tell me why you aren’t afraid. How are you not scared out of your mind? It’s a long drop.”

And that question…that question makes Link pause. Why hasn’t he been afraid of the things that Zelda has? The only things that have shaken him so far are the lake, the Guardian, and her bouts of Confusion. He’s not scared of the Calamity waiting for them in Hyrule Castle or that they’re supposed to be the ones to fight it, and he’s not even scared of the fact that he doesn’t even remember if he has a last name like Zelda does. 

“Zelda Hyrule,” he tries the name on his tongue, and it’s wrong in his mouth, clumsy, tastes like something dubious and forbidden.

She frowns. “What?”

“That’s your name,” he tells her. “Princess Zelda Hyrule. Princess Zelda Bosphoramus Hyrule?”  

“Why are you saying my name?”

“It struck me, is all,” Link takes a deep breath, savoring the swell of his lungs and deflating them in a long sigh, “You have a last name. I don’t.”

“Do you think that’s important?” she tilts her head. “Having a last name? Do you think people will look at us weird if you don’t?”

“I don’t know. Your—Old Man said his name like it was important. What if my not having a last name stops us from meeting whoever Impa is?” 

“I think he said it like that because he was a king,” she goes quiet. He lets the silence’s lungs swell. She asks, “Do you want mine?”

Link looks at her. “Want your what?”

Zelda motions back and forth between them with one hand, her paraglider rattling against her side with the movement. “My last name. That way you’ll have one to use in case anyone asks. We’ll be Zelda and Link Hyrule.”

He smiles. “Yeah, sure. Thanks.”

“Of course.”

They stare at each other. Link’s smile widens. 

“What?” Zelda’s eyes flick over his face, searching. “What are you grinning at?”

“Are you afraid of the drop anymore?”

“I-” her eyes drift down to the ground. Her eyebrows furrow. “I forgot we were all the way up here.”

“See, Ms. Hyrule?” he bumps her shoulder with his. “All you needed was a little distraction.”

“That doesn’t answer my question, though, Mr. Hyrule,” she bumps him back. “Why weren’t you afraid and in need of a distraction?” 

Link shrugs. “I guess I’m just not afraid of heights? I don’t find the possibility of falling scary. I’ll find a way to live.”

Zelda takes her paraglider out from under her arm and opens it up. “I suppose I already have.”

He flicks open his. “Same here.”

Her eyes light up, and her lips spread into a wide, eager grin. “Is it wrong of me to assume that our race is back on?”

He grins back, replies, “You’re not wrong at all,” and hops off the edge of the Great Plateau, laughing when she yells his name before following suit.

The air is different all the way up here, it’s—it’s bigger, all-encompassing, and the wind is a force to be reckoned with. Link has to tense his arms and broaden his shoulders to keep himself flying straight, and does his best not to let his legs flail. He bends his knees to keep them still, and finds that he has a better center of gravity that way, an easier time keeping the balance between both ends of the paraglider to not wobble in the breeze.

There’s a shout and Link glances back over his shoulder, feeling the paraglider veer in the direction he’s looking, and laughs at the sight of Zelda laughing as she weaves through the air, her hair a wild tangle as it spirals through the wind. He wonders how she’s going to brush it, and laughs even harder when it flaps into her own face and she splutters, spitting out strands. He starts to spin in a circle and is quick to correct himself. 

Unfortunately, he lands, stumbling to a stop as the momentum carries him forward in the dirt. Zelda similarly staggers after him, but is faster in catching her balance and running off in the direction of the orange tower that is suddenly much, much closer than before. 

“Come on!” Zelda beckons, breathless, her golden hair like an expensive bird’s nest on top of her head, “It’s right there!”

Link sprints after her, doing his best to let her stay in the lead, wondering if he should be similarly out of breath instead of feeling ready to run all the way to Hyrule Castle, not even a pleasant burn in his legs. 

—

They run by a giant lake, and the sight of it both kicks Link’s heart into overdrive and itches something in the back of his brain.

He keeps his eyes ahead, and Zelda puts her head down, huffing and puffing as she finally starts to show signs of flagging. 

—

They walk the rest of the way. The race is called off.

“I would have won,” Zelda says, raking her fingers through her hair in an attempt to tame it as they cross over a bridge. 

“In your dreams,” Link replies, chuckling when she scowls. 

“I won our—Ah-” she winces as her knuckles catch on a knot, “-race on the plateau!”

“You cheated.”

“That’s still winning, isn’t it?”

The grassy path they follow turns to stone turns to sand, and they stop in their tracks on the edge of a river. The tower is on the other side of it. 

The water babbles, lapping against the toes of their boots. Zelda slips her pinky around his. 

“Cryonis, right?” she asks. 

Link readies the slate, and a rectangle of ice sprouts from the water in front of them. “Right.”

All they have to do is take the first step. Climb the block. Make another one and do the same thing. Rinse and repeat until they’re on the other side. All they have to do is take the first step. 

“I’ll go on three,” he says, and at Zelda’s reluctant nod he slowly counts, “One…two…”

He silently finishes, Three, and jumps at the Cryonis block, digging the tips of his fingers and the toes of his boots into the ice, crawling his way up the side to stand on top of it.

The river rushes around him, the water looking much deeper from above than when he was standing on level ground, and he wonders what would happen if he were to fall in. 

Let me die-

She gave us strict orders to save you, Linky-

Purah- 

I’m gonna be here when you wake up and I’ll help you remember-

Would he remember more of what happened then? Would he be able to see more of whoever Purah is than just her red eyes filling with tears? Is it possible that he would see Zelda being put in the Shrine of Resurrection with him? She wasn’t laying on top of him in his dream, his-his memory, so that must have come after he was talking to whoever Purah is.

Was. Whoever Purah was. A hundred years have passed between him being placed in the shrine and him waking up with amnesia. There’s no way she’s still alive, that’s probably why he and Zelda woke up alone. Maybe she has kids? But how would he find them in all of Hyrule, Hyrule is massive, and their map in the Sheikah Slate is nowhere close to being complete with only the Great Plateau revealed, they’d have to travel all over the country and waste time they could be using to find his magic sword and learn how to harness Zelda’s magic powers and defeat Calamity Ganon, and that only happens if his assumption that the stranger in his fractured memories would even have children in the first place is correct because he doesn’t even know her—

“Link?” Zelda is standing next to him on the Cryonis block, frowning, her eyebrows furrowed together. When did she get up here? And by herself, without needing him to encourage her? “Are you with me?”

“Yeah,” he manages, voice hoarse, pulling his eyes from his warped reflection in the river to look at her, “I’m with you.”

“I called your name and it’s like you didn’t hear me. Is everything all right?”

Purah is dead. The only thing he can vaguely remember doesn’t even matter. 

“I was just thinking again,” he tells her, forcing a smile. “It’s nothing to worry about.”

Zelda doesn’t need to know about his memory if his memory is pointless. He doesn’t need to add to her plate when she’s just learned that their guide on the plateau was the ghost of her father, that she’s a princess, that she’s supposed to be the one to save them all. 

You must save her, my daughter. 

Rhoam Bosphoramus Hyrule looked nothing like a king when he made his last request wearing his crown. He looked like a broken man who only wanted his daughter to be safe and happy, and it’s Link’s duty to make it so. Zelda doesn’t need his problems.  

He fires up Cryonis again and spawns another block of ice in front of them. One more after that should get them to the other side of the river. “Ready?”

—

They’re on the other side of the river, walking up a hill that leads right up to the tower, when they spot the red pig monsters. 

One is sitting on the incline, a club in its hand, and one stands on top of a small tower aiming a bow at a bird flying overhead. 

“A camp,” Link says, using the slate to exchange his sledgehammer for his sword and flicking his shield onto his arm, "Here, take the bow and the arrows. I'll rush in, you'll cover me?"

The bow lifts from his back and there's a quiet clink as she removes the quiver from his belt, strapping it to hers. "Now that I have belts I get to keep these, right?"

He smiles, "Yeah. It'd make it easier if you had a weapon on hand instead of relying on me or the slate to get one to you."

“So,” Zelda readies the bow, nocking an arrow, “I’ve got your back, then.”

Link adjusts his grip on his sword, not liking how the hilt creaks in his hand. It’s shoddily made, could break at any moment. “Seems like it.”

The first red pig monster is an easy kill. He’s able to slice its head off before it can pull the horn off of its belt to alert its friend on the tower, who Zelda quickly takes care of with a well-placed shot. They move up the hill, their boots softly crunching in the grass, and-

Link freezes. Zelda sucks in a breath behind him.

There are two…two blue pig monsters sitting at a fire, roasting a prime cut of meat. Link notices that their hands are empty, that there are two clubs resting against a fallen tree to the left, and that there’s a well-used claymore stuck in the grass beside it. 

He wets his lips with the tip of his tongue. He can’t say no to another claymore. 

Zelda nocks another arrow and pulls the string of her bow back. The wood of the bow creaks, straining, and the blue pig monsters both perk up, looking up from the roasting meat to stare at them. She fires, piercing the left one’s eye, and where that would usually result in a red pig monster dissolving into a puff of purple smoke and parts, this blue pig monster only howls, clutching at the shaft of the arrow, before it rips it out and lunges for its weapon on the other side of the small camp, the one on the right already there and picking up a club, charging towards them.

Link slides in front of Zelda and raises his shield just as the blue pig monster strikes, swinging its club at a much faster speed than its red counterpart. He gasps as his shield turns to splinters from the single hit, and shoves Zelda out of the way before he dodges a second swipe. 

“Zelda!” he shouts, his eyes flicking to the other blue monster that’s looking to charge him, too, purple blood leaking from its wounded eye.

“I’ve got it!” she fires again, hitting its other eye, and the monster bellows, crumpling to its knees, blinded-

The back of Link’s neck tingles and he ducks out of the way of a vicious attack from the pig he took his eyes off of, gritting his teeth and swinging his sword at it. The monster raises its club with a roar, and Link’s blade shatters on contact with the club. He curses, thankful that the recoil leaves his opponent stumbling, and sidesteps it, sprinting for the claymore stuck in the grass. 

“Down!”

Link throws himself to the ground, sliding through the dirt as the second blue pig monster flies through the air over his head, only to get a final arrow to the center of its face and die with a whining squeal. He picks himself up and only spares a single glance back over his shoulder to see Zelda already turning her aim on the remaining foe, her teeth bared in a snarl as she shoots out one of its knees.

Rhoam never mentioned anything about Princess Zelda using a bow, he thinks. 

His hands wrap around the claymore’s hilt and he struggles to lift it out of the ground. Whoever stuck it here, whether it was the monsters or a traveler years ago, stuck it in deep, and he’s afraid that if he pulls too hard the whole thing will come apart and-

“Ah!”

He looks-

Zelda is on her back in the grass, the blue pig monster on top of her, its club caught in the curve of her bow. The string is snapped, her quiver is empty, and her arms shake as she struggles to wrench the club out of its grasp by turning it every which way. Blood runs down her temple.

savehersavehersaveher-

The monster knocks the bow out of her hands and winds the club back-

Zelda’s voice breaks on a terrified sob of Link’s name, her eyes squeezing shut as covers her face with her hands-

A scream rips its way out of his throat and he tears the claymore from the earth, barreling at the blue pig monster and slicing it in half with one swing. The stained club drops to the grass beside Zelda’s bleeding head, and Link drops the claymore in favor of crashing to his knees next to her and checking for any other injuries.

“Are you okay?” his voice wavers as he helps her sit up, “Is your head-”

“I think I’m all right,” she breathes, giving him a shaky smile, “just a little dizzy. Is it bad?”

He’s gentle in pushing her bloodied, matted hair away from the wound, inspecting the leaking gash. It’s small, all things considered, and it looks like most of the damage is bruising. He wipes her blood off his glove in the grass, not wanting to stain his pants more than they already are. “I don’t think so. You didn’t black out at all, did you?”

“No,” she shakes her head and winces with a hiss, “It just, ah, stings where you’re touching, and my head is pounding.”

“Could be a concussion,” he says without thinking. He blinks, then adds, “Whatever that is.”

She chuckles.

“Last time you had an injury, I looked away for a second and it was healed.”

“The cut on my cheek from when I got Confused and killed the boar, right?”

“Yeah. I’m pretty sure it was healed by your magic.”

Zelda sighs, “Wonderful. Maybe whoever Impa is can tell me how to use it.” 

“Do you want to sit here for a second, wait for the dizziness to pass?” Link adjusts himself, moving down from his knees to actually sit next to her, “I don’t mind taking a break, we’ve been moving around like crazy since we woke up.”

And how wild that is, that only a few hours ago they woke up in Old Man’s house and finished the last two shrines on the Great Plateau and learned the truth of their purpose in the world, that only a few hours ago they were just Link and Zelda, not Link the Appointed Knight and Princess Zelda, tasked with saving Hyrule from the ultimate evil.  

“A break sounds nice,” Zelda whispers, gingerly resting her head on his shoulder, “Thank you for saving me.”

He gives her a wry smile and says, “Just doing my job.” 

She laughs again, settling against him with another sigh. Soon enough, she relaxes completely, her eyes closed and her breathing even, and Link presses his nose into her hair, inhaling the scent of the grass and savoring the feeling of her alive and breathing in his arms, trying to shove the memory of her scared for her life and calling for him to saveher out of his head. 

—

He wakes her when the sun is at its peak in the sky and the Sheikah Slate’s clock reads, 12:30pm. 

“How does your head feel?” he asks as she blinks herself awake. 

“Much better,” she murmurs, rubbing her eyes and slowly climbing to her feet, “How long was I asleep?”

“Only an hour,” he stands and picks up his discarded claymore, adding it to the slate’s inventory and spawning himself a new sword and shield, along with a fresh bow for Zelda, asking her as they gear up, “Do you feel ready to climb the tower?”

“Yes,” she nods, lifting her hand to her temple and frowning when she pulls it away. “Actually, can you check my head?”

“Yeah, sure,” he steps in close to her, “Why?”

“It doesn’t hurt anymore,” she pushes her hair up, “Does it look better?”

The skin of Zelda’s temple is unblemished, good as new, pale and soft under his light touch. If he didn’t see the damage for himself, Link would never have known that she got a wooden club to the head an hour ago.

“It’s gone,” he whispers. 

“What?”

“It’s gone, Zelda,” he grabs her hand and lifts it back to her temple, dragging it over the blank skin. “See? There’s no gash. Your magic must have activated.”

“I didn’t feel it,” she shakes her head, dropping both of their hands from her face, “I didn’t feel anything besides the pain before I fell asleep, and then I was totally fine when I woke up. I was here, I-I wasn’t Confused.”

Link frowns, “Then how did that happen?”

Zelda shrugs, remarking, “We’d probably know if my…my father stuck around to explain more than the basics.”

He swallows, weakly agrees with a quiet, Mhm, and takes his paraglider off of his belt, motioning for her to do the same. He changes the subject with a swift, “Tower time?”, and at Zelda’s nod he takes the lead in running towards where the tower stands and jumping off the hill towards it, hearing her laugh as she follows. 

—

When they reach the top of the tower, Zelda comments, “It’s so much easier to climb wearing boots instead of sandals! No wonder you were having such a better time than I was on the plateau.”

Link takes the slate off of his hip and passes it over, telling her, “We could have swapped shoes if it was really that bad.”

She laughs, “Your feet are bigger than mine, you wouldn’t have been able to walk!”

He shrugs. “It wouldn’t’ve bothered me.”

Zelda shakes her head with a smile, tapping the Sheikah Slate to the tower’s terminal and watching as the blue liquid from the black rock above splats onto the screen, filling in the chunk to the right of the Great Plateau on their map. 

“Look,” Link points to the label on the map. “This part of Hyrule is called West Necluda.”

“And here,” Zelda points to right beside them, where a mountain is split in half by a river, then to the mountain that’s split in half right before their eyes. “This is the Dueling Peaks.”

“Then this,” Link drags his finger up from the Dueling Peaks on the map to what looks like a small gathering of trees and a large house, “has to be Kakariko, right? We’re not too far. We could even go around the back of the mountains, it looks like there’s a road there.”

“I want to see what this symbol means,” she places hers on a small, light brown square on the other side of the Dueling Peaks, where there’s a picture of…of something with a round head and a long nose in the center, “and there are more roads this way, maybe we’ll see people!”

He examines the map again. “You’re right, I didn’t notice there weren’t roads. And if these ridges on the Dueling Peaks mean mountains, we’d have to climb it before walking anywhere.”

Zelda grins, and whips out her paraglider. Her new bow rattles against her back. “Then what are we waiting for?”

—

They’re back on solid ground, on the same side of the river, when—

“Help! Someone help me!”

Link’s head whips to the left. 

In the shadow of the Dueling Peaks, where the water splits the mountain in half, there’s a man running away from a red pig monster, mud and grass staining his clothes as he bursts into the open sunlight. 

“You were right,” Link breathes, “Another person.”

“A real live person,” Zelda’s face lights up, “We have to help him, he’s defenseless!”

He takes the Sheikah Slate off of his belt and pops a circle bomb into his hand, winding his arm back and lobbing it towards the stranger and the monster. The man yelps at the sight of the bomb, leaping into the river, while the red pig monster stops to examine it, its chest heaving as it tilts its head. Link detonates the bomb, and the monster dies in the static explosion with a howl of pain. 

The man, wheezing, swims to the edge of the river. Zelda runs over, helping him to his feet in the sand and asking, “Are you all right?!”

“Oh, thank you, you two, thank you!” The man breathlessly thanks, dripping from head to toe as Zelda walks him over to Link, “I’m fine, I thought that Bokoblin was going to have my head!”

“Bokoblin?” Link frowns, putting the slate in its slot. Is that what the red pig monsters are called? “You mean the red pig monster?”

“A Bokoblin, yes,” The man nods, wiping water out of his eyes, “They can’t go in the water, this is the third time this week I’ve had to go for a swim!”

Zelda stares at him. “The red—The Bokoblins can’t go in the water?”

“Nope! They dissolve right into that weird smoky stuff, which is so strange, isn’t it?”

“What’s your name?” Link questions.

“Oh!” The stranger perks up. “Right, the name’s Tyso! And where are my manners--” 

Tyso shoves his hands into pockets, his shirt squelching and water dribbling out of the hem to splash on the toes of his drenched boots. He mutters to himself, frowning, before breaking into a wide smile and presenting Link with…two small, blue, six-sided gems that shine in the light.

“Here you are, sir,” The man drops the blue gems into his hand. “Thanks for saving me!”

Link stares at the things resting on his palm. They’re cold and wet from the river, but they are pretty. “What are these?”

Tyso laughs, waving him off and starting to walk away, back into the shadow of the Dueling Peaks. “Nice one, buddy! I’ll have to use that next time-”

“No, wait!” Zelda grabs his sleeve and stops him. “Seriously, what are those?”

Tyso’s smile wavers then fades as he looks between them. “You…You guys don’t know what rupees are?”

In unison, they shake their heads.

“How is that-” he swallows, “Just…how?”

“We, um…” Zelda glances at Link, a silent question in her eyes that Link assumes to be, How much do we say?

He isn’t sure if this man would believe them if they explained everything, if they told him that they woke up yesterday morning in a cave with nothing to their memories but each other’s names, that a ghost led them on a wild goose chase for paragliders he was always going to give them, and that the ghost was Zelda’s father, that Zelda’s father was a king, which makes Zelda a princess who has magic in her blood, and that Link was her bodyguard with a sword, tasked with helping her save the world. He isn’t sure whether Tyso would go along with it or laugh in their faces and leave them alone with whatever rupees are. 

Better to be safe than sorry, Link thinks, and answers, “We have amnesia. We only know our names and how to fight. I’m Link, and she’s…”

He falters, meeting Zelda’s eyes. He rapidly signs, If you’re a princess, he might recognize your name.

When he signs Princess, he makes two sideways thumbs’ ups and curves them up in front of his mouth, his knuckles almost touching and his thumbs pointing to the sky. Zelda frowns at that, but seems to understand the rest of his sentence by how she winces and says her name is, “Linkle.”

Laughter bubbles in Link’s throat but he valiantly shoves it down, fighting to stop the corners of his lips from lifting into an amused grin. Zelda meets his eyes and immediately looks away, visibly fighting her own laugh. 

Again, Tyso looks between them. “All right, then. Do you two know that this is the kingdom of Hyrule?” 

They nod. 

“Those,” Tyso points to the blue gems in his hand, “are called rupees. They’re Hyrule’s currency. A green rupee is equal to one rupee, a blue rupee is equal to five rupees, yellow is ten, and red is twenty. Those are the most common colors you’ll see.”

Zelda tilts her head, “What are the uncommon ones?”

Tyso lists on his fingers, “Purple is equal to fifty, orange is one-hundred, and silver is two-hundred. Out of those three, purple is seen more often. Personally, I’ve never seen an orange or silver, but I know they’re out there somewhere after bandits raided the castle and robbed the Royals’ Treasury. You guys know about the castle?”

“We know about Hyrule Castle,” Link tells him, pocketing the rupees, “that Calamity thing is there, right?”

“Yep! It’s been there my whole life, no one ever goes close to the place unless they have a death wish.” 

“Do-” Zelda clears her throat, “Do you know why it’s staying in the castle? We heard it’s supposed to destroy the whole kingdom.”

Tyso shrugs. “My grandpa says it’s because the princess from his childhood is holding it back with some magic power she has, but his mind has been going for a couple years ‘cause he’s super old. Magic isn’t real, and that princess probably died with the rest of her family when the Calamity struck. I think it likes living in the castle too much to care about killing the rest of us, which is just fine by me. I don’t have a reason to go over there anyways.”

Zelda ducks her head, and Link changes the topic with a swift, “We’re, um, actually looking to go somewhere called Kakariko Village. Do you know how to get there from here? We have a map that shows a road through the Dueling Peaks, but-”

“I’ve never been there myself,” Tyso shakes his head, his wet hair flopping back and forth, “but there’s a stable just past the peaks, the workers there will definitely know.”

Link blinks. Is that what the brown square on the Sheikah Slate’s map means? “What’s a stable?”

Tyso breathes a laugh. “Figured you guys wouldn’t know. How about I walk you there?”

—

On the other side of the Dueling Peaks, Tyso presents with flourish, “The Dueling Peaks Stable!” 

The stable is a large round tent with a manned stall, and a statue of a…of the thing that was in the small brown box on the slate’s map on top of it. People walk in and out of the tent, talking to the man behind the counter, and one woman comes up to the counter riding-

Link gapes, pointing and asking, “What is that?”

It’s an animal of some kind, tall with a strong body, four legs, and an elongated head, that head matching the symbol on the slate's head and the statue on top of the stable.

“That’s called a horse,” Tyso replies, “Us Hylians can ride them to save time while traveling because they’re much faster than we are. You can even fit two people on one saddle in a pinch.”

“Wow,” Zelda breathes, her mouth hanging open, “There’s so many people. And look over there, Link!”

She points, and he follows her finger to see an orange shrine in a pond surrounded by thorny vines.

“We should at least activate it, right?” she asks, “So we can use the slate to get back here fast if we need to?”

“Yeah,” Link watches the woman dismount her horse and hand the man at the counter a couple of rupees, two blues and a lot of greens. “How do I get a horse?”

“Oh, you’d have to ask the stablemaster about that,” Tyso shakes his head, “This is where I’m leaving you two, anyways.”

“What?” They question at the same time, looking at their new guide. 

“I have a family to get back to,” he explains, sheepish, rubbing the back of his neck, “My wife is probably worried sick!”

Link takes the two blue rupees--Ten green ones, he calculates--out of his pocket and tries to hand them back. “At least keep your money, all we really needed was directions-”

“No, no,” Tyso shakes his head, refusing, “That’s my thanks to you for saving my skin! I’ve got plenty more in my wallet.”

“Thank you for your help, Tyso,” Zelda says with a smile, “I won’t forget it.”

“Don’t sweat it, Linkle!” Tyso grins, backing away from them and waving, “Maybe we’ll see each other again out on the road!”

Link and Zelda both wave, watching Tyso turn around and walk back towards the other side of the Dueling Peaks. By themselves again, Link looks at Zelda and says, “Come on, Linkle, let’s get a horse.”

She groans, “I’m never going to live that down, am I?”

He laughs, “Never!”

Together, they walk up to the man behind the stable’s counter.

“Welcome to the Dueling Peaks!” The stablemaster greets, spreading his arms wide, “How can I help you today?”

“We’re, um, not from around here,” Zelda smooths down her warm doublet, runs a hand over her wind-tousled hair, “looking to go to Kakariko Village?”

“Oh, sure!” The stablemaster leans out over the counter and points around the side of the stable. “You just gotta follow the road alongside Blatchery Plain behind us and cross the bridge. The path will take you straight up the mountainside to the village. I hear the Sheikah are welcoming to tourists around this time of year.”

Zelda takes a couple steps away to look out behind the stable, then gasps, going stiff. 

“Sheikah?” Link frowns, remembering how Rhoam inferred on the plateau that the Sheikah weren’t around anymore, “I thought they were gone?”

“Nope! They’re a reclusive people, sure, but it’s a common misconception that they’re extinct. Hell, the only reason I know Kakariko exists is because my brother stumbled upon it a few years ago and made signs pointing the way from here. Can I help with anything else?”

“Um,” Link sneaks a glance at where Zelda is still standing, frozen, and quickly places his ten rupees on the counter. He needs to see what’s wrong with her. “One horse, please?”

The stablemaster looks down at the ten rupees, then up to his face, before laughing. “Damn, you must be coming from Gerudo or something! You can’t buy a horse, kiddo, and especially not for ten measly rupees. You gotta catch one and bring it here! There’s always some out in Blatchery Plain, just pick the one you like the look of most and bring it on over so I can register it. After that, you can board it here and then take it out for a ride at any stable in Hyrule you’d like!” 

Link raises an eyebrow. “How does that work?” 

The stablemaster winks, pushing the ten rupees back to him with a sly grin. “Trade secret.”

He pockets the rupees again, nods his thanks, and rushes over to Zelda. “Hey, are you-”

He stops when he sees it.

Blatchery Plain is a large, grassy field littered with rusted Guardian corpses, and some these Guardians have legs. A bird lands on top of the Guardian closest to them, pecking at its head before whistling and flying off. There are dips in the earth beneath each corpse, and long, thin stretches of scorched, dead grass that could only be from laser-fire. Water pools in places along the plain, and on the other side of the Guardian graveyard is a large stone wall with an empty doorway, travelers passing through it and deep into the trees beyond.

“There’s so many,” she whispers, “What do you think happened here? What do you think…What do you think killed them all?”

Link shakes his head. He signs, It probably happened one hundred years ago. I doubt anyone here knows.

“Are any of them still alive, you think?”

He shakes his head again, signs, If they were dangerous, there wouldn’t be a stable right next to them all. 

She lets out a breath. A light breeze ruffles her golden hair. “You’re right. Any luck with a horse?”

Link can’t take his eyes off of a Guardian with legs that died mid-crawling over the corpse of a Guardian with jagged tears in its head, like a blade sliced clean through the metal. Both of their black, empty eyes look right at him. He signs, I have to catch one and bring it back.

There’s a distant, Neighhhh, and they look to see a single horse weaving its way through the Guardians, grazing in the grass and drinking from one of the puddles. It’s not too far away from the stable, and other travelers whisper, arguing about who gets the chance to try and tame it. It’s beige with a white bottom and black tail, brown patches of fur dotting around it, and Link likes the look of it.

He straightens his spine, something deep within him whispering, Mine, and Zelda chuckles. 

“Go, try and get it for us,” she says, slipping the Sheikah Slate from his belt, “I’m going to activate that shrine so we have it on the map and then ask the stablemaster about the Guardians.”

She doesn’t have to say it twice. 

—

Catching a horse is stupid. It’s stupid and it’s hard and the stables should really make a market out of just selling these things so it’s not as stupid or as hard. 

See, the thing is, the horse gets spooked easily. It gets spooked easily, meaning he can’t just walk up to it, hop on, and hope he can figure out how to ride it over to the stable’s counter. It can’t be like that because nothing has ever been easy in Link’s resurrected life so far, so now he has to make sure the grass doesn't crunch under his boots whenever he approaches the back of the horse to make sure it doesn’t kick him in the head like it had another traveler who dared to try and tame it before he got his chance. 

Link might not remember anything about himself, but he knows he’s not a quitter. Besides, he’s invested way too much time in this already to give up now. He doesn't have the slate, so he can’t check the time, but he just knows that it’s been at least an hour of him sneaking up on this thing and coming oh-so close before, like, a bird chirps somewhere in the sky and the horse runs away from the sound.

This better be the fastest horse in all of fucking Hyrule, he thinks, gritting his teeth as he conducts his…ninety-ninth, one-hundredth approach? It doesn’t matter, it doesn't fucking matter, because this is going to be the one. He can feel it. 

He crouches low in the grass, using the Guardian corpses as cover, and creeps up on the horse while it grazes again. He hopes the sound of its munching is loud enough to mask the whisper of the blades against his pants.

He gets close enough that he could reach out and grab its tail if he wanted to, and holds his breath. His eightieth approach taught him that if the horse feels his breath without there already being a breeze, it’ll kick and run off and he’ll have to dodge a hoof if he doesn’t want to die from a point-blank hit.

The horse continues eating the grass. Link’s heart races. He clenches his shaking hands into fists before he strikes, leaping up and landing on the horse’s back, locking his legs around its body while he tangles his fingers in its ratty mane. 

The horse makes a noise of surprise, whinnying and kicking out, trying to buck him off, but Link holds strong, waiting for it to get tired and submit.

“Come on, girlie,” he soothes, risking taking one hand out of its mane to stroke its face, “I’m not gonna hurt you, come on-”

Under his hands, the horse’s fur flickers between light brown and dark chestnut. The mane switches from brown to black. He’s wearing different gloves, leather with holes for his fingers, and there’s a familiar, comforting weight on his spine. He leads the horse in circles around a tree on a hill overlooking an unblemished, Calamity-free Hyrule Castle. 

“You ride her well!” A man’s voice calls. “She likes you!”

“I like her, too,” he says, stroking his horse’s black mane, smiling when she huffs under his praise, “What d’you think I should call her?”

He blinks and the horse’s fur is light brown. The mane is the same color, and his warm doublet gloves are scratching through it. He’s riding in circles around a Guardian corpse, the horse content to let him guide it. The weight on his back is wrong. 

Link shudders, peeling off his gloves and sinking his bare hands into the horse’s mane, grounding himself by brushing his fingers through the strands. 

“Link!”

He turns his head. Zelda is waving at him from beside the stable with a huge grin.

“You got it!” she cheers. “Get over here so we can register!”

He swallows, putting his gloves back on, whispering a shaky, “Okay.”

Using the mane to steer, he navigates Blatchery Plain and rides to Zelda, stopping in front of the stablemaster’s counter. The stablemaster welcomes him back with a smile, and says, “Registration includes a complimentary saddle and a name tag. It costs twenty rupees.”

Zelda pouts, standing next to their new horse and stroking its nose. “We only have ten.”

The stablemaster’s smile widens, and he leans in close again, cupping a hand over his mouth and whispering to Link, “Don’t tell anyone about this, but I’m giving you a Beginner’s Discount. Give me the ten rupees, and I’ll count my talk with your friend as the other half of the payment. I haven’t had a good conversation like that in years.”

Link glances at Zelda, who shrugs and says, “All I did was ask him a bunch of questions. He did most of the talking.”

“Twenty rupees please!” The stablemaster loudly announces, holding out his hand, “Make it quick!”

He fishes the two blue rupees out of his pocket and tosses them over. The stablemaster snatches them out of the air and loudly thanks them for their payment, telling Link to dismount for a moment and calling for an attendant to bring over a saddle.

“Now,” The stablemaster holds a piece of paper and a pen, watching Link hop off the horse, “what would you like to name her?”

Link looks at Zelda. Zelda looks back.

“Linkle?” he asks. 

“Absolutely not,” she denies with a laugh. “What about Fruitcake?”

He tilts his head. “What’s a fruitcake?”

The stablemaster chuckles, shaking his head with a muttered, “Kids these days.”

“I don’t know,” Zelda shrugs, petting their horse again when it nuzzles against her hands, “but it’s cute, right? Cute name for a cute horse?”

He can’t think of anything else, and he does agree that it’s a cute name, so they name their horse Fruitcake and watch as a stable attendant hooks her up with a saddle and bridle, attaching reins. 

Once they’re done, Link climbs onto Fruitcake’s saddle with ease and pulls Zelda up behind him. Her arms wrap around his waist, and she settles her chin on his shoulder. 

“You’re all set, kids!” The stablemaster puts his paper and pen down, looking at where Zelda is glued to Link’s back and winking at him again, “Have a nice time at Kakariko.”

Link asks her, “Ready to go?”

“Mhm,” her chin digs into his shoulder as she nods. 

He flicks the reins and with a, “Hyah!” spurs Fruitcake into a trot up the road towards Kakariko Village.