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A brisk wind swept the steep hillside and tugged at his tunic. Wild stopped for breath on a narrow ridge, overlooking the fields stretched out before them and scanning the copses of trees for enemies. The other heroes had decided to break for lunch at the foot of hill, stoking a small fire and leaving their horses to graze. They’d been traveling through the Akkala region for the better part of the day and had yet to find anything otherworldly or significant. At least if they made it through this area without much difficulty, it would be a reassuring update to bring back to Zelda.
For now, though, Wild was taking it upon himself to scout ahead. The rest of his party of travelers were still new to his Hyrule overall – not just this northern region – and he didn’t need them running into trouble unprepared if there was something he could do about it.
Progress was slower in a group, as he’d quickly discovered. Nowhere in his journey had he learned how to navigate this kingdom alongside others, with the exception of the Champions who had helped him reach each Divine Beast. Things had been different when it had just been him, his horse, and a wolf companion. Before, he didn’t have to think about who he was leaving behind if he decided to paraglide over a ravine or scale a mountain, because they always managed to find him… eventually.
Wild couldn’t exactly go running off like that anymore. The other heroes didn’t navigate their worlds the way he did, and it reflected in their comparatively slow nature. He didn’t hate it – it allowed him to notice parts of his own world that he hadn’t seen before – but it was definitely different.
So moments like this were nice, when he could get away from the business for a while and move at a pace that was more natural to him.
“Oi, Wild, wait up!”
Wild tore his eyes away from the distant horizon and sharply redirected his attention to the young boy that was sidling along a very narrow cliff ledge, back pressed flush with the hill’s most sheer façade. With his light blue garments and sun-blond hair, he looked remarkably like a younger version of Wild – especially as he tiptoed along with a familiar, excited glint in his eyes.
“You probably shouldn’t be following me up here, Wind,” Wild warned, noting that that was not the path he’d used to get up here. How did Wind even make it this high? “I don’t want you falling…” It was hard to believe how much adventuring their youngest hero had been through, and by all rights he didn’t want to underestimate what he was capable of. Despite that, this wasn’t Wind’s era, and if anything bad were to happen, he wouldn’t know what to do with himself. They hadn’t even been traveling together very long, and yet he already felt this way. This must be what being an older brother feels like.
That thought hurt for a reason he couldn’t properly place. Nevertheless, it was quickly pushed aside when Wind jumped the last of the cliff. Wild gasped and rushed towards him as the sailor hit the cliff face, hands scrabbling for purchase until he could haul himself up the rest of the way to join Wild on his perch.
“Wind!” He grabbed the young hero’s sleeve and tugged him further onto the cliff, away from the steep drop. A spray of rocks skittered down the slope and into their temporary camp below. He could already feel the judgmental stares being directed at him from below. It probably didn’t look great.
“What?! I do stuff like this all the time back at home!” Wind argued defensively, brushing the grass stains off his tunic. The cheeky smile worn on his face told Wild that he had no remorse for the moment of panic that’d just been inflicted onto him.
Wild held back a sigh. He didn’t need to be the one to remind Wind that this wasn’t his era – the older heroes did that enough as it was. It also didn’t do any good to say something as vague as be careful when so much of their adventures involved standing in opposition of that. “Just be sure to watch your step, okay?”
Wind nodded readily before looking around the cliff. He poked at a rushroom and checked underneath a rock, letting out a disappointed sigh when there was no korok to be found. As it turned out, Wind loved the mischievous forest spirits, and he would always talk excitedly about the ones he knew back home. Wind was also the only one to do so, as the other heroes were unfamiliar with them… or at the very least, had made no comment so far. In that regard, Wind had turned out to be his greatest asset in helping him find the locations of all the koroks scattered around Hyrule.
Wild left him to explore the small area, elevated as it was, while he sat down on the cliff edge and looked through his Sheikah Slate to get a better view. He checked on Wind over his shoulder every so often, but there really wasn’t much to do up here.
Eventually, Wind plopped down next to him, legs swinging over the edge, and he brought out his telescope to survey the land just as he was. “Wha’re you looking for, Wild?”
“I dunno, guardians? Yiga? Anything that could be trouble, I guess,” Wild mumbled. In actuality, he hadn’t explored this area as much as some other places. He knew there was a shrine around here somewhere, and likely plenty of koroks he’d yet to discover.
“Oh! What’s that?” Wind asked, leaning forward precariously on the ledge.
Wild held his arm out in an effort to keep Wind from leaning forward any further. With his other hand, he looked through his slate in the direction Wind had indicated, setting his sights on a tree stump with a leaf design painted on it. “Hm. I guess I haven’t shown you one of those yet. It’s another korok game – they want you to stand on the stump, and that begins a race. Judging by its position, it probably wants me to paraglide over from that hill to… I’m guessing the other side of this valley? I can grab it later, since you can’t—“
Wild was hardly given the time of day. No, rather, his words were left suspended in the air while Wind very deliberately moved his protective arm aside and scooted the rest of the way off the cliff.
Hylia, no! Wild felt his heart drop, his hand grasping at nothing as the child dropped out of sight.
His alarm very quickly changed to amazement when he located Wind; he wasn’t tumbling down the cliff-face as he’d previously feared, but instead drifting safely down to the ground on an impressively large korok leaf. The kid appeared to be making a beeline for the tree stump. With only a second of time to be grateful that nothing bad had happened, Wild jumped off the cliff after him, deploying his paraglider to catch the trail of winds left in the sailor’s wake.
It was a short flight compared to most others that Wild had been on, but his heart was racing the whole time wondering if Wind was in his right mind. He watched the hero in question let go of one end of the leaf several feet from the ground and roll into a stand upon impact. Wild was right behind him, folding his paraglider in momentarily before reopening it at the last possible second. When he’d finally managed to reach Wind, he was already investigating the stump, oblivious to the mental turmoil he’d just put Wild through.
“A little warning next time, please?” Wild wheezed, tucking his paraglider away.
Wind looked up from his investigation, his face a clear expression of confusion, before a light seemed to go off in his head. “Oh! I guess I never showed you what I could do with my deku leaf, did I?”
Deku leaf? Wild shook his head, interest piqued. “I’ve seen you pull it out before, but I thought it was just like any other korok leaf. It delivers a big gust of wind when you wave it through the air, right?”
Wind rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. “Uh-huh! But I mostly use it for gliding back in my era. I had to navigate some tricky dungeon puzzles with it. And over the seas, there were plenty of tall, jagged cliffs that would reach high into the air, surrounded by storms and cyclones!”
Wild blanched at the thought of someone so small getting tossed around in storm-driven weather over the ocean. Why was this his first time hearing of it?! Granted, Wild had only ever heard stories of Wind’s elusive Hyrule, so he wasn’t sure what to actually expect compared to the sailor’s stories. It certainly sounded far different from most other eras.
That still didn’t answer the questions forming in his mind, though. “I’ve been traveling with your lot for a while now… why haven’t I seen you use it before? That leaf works like my paraglider, right? You could’ve been gliding with me this whole time,” Wild pointed out.
Wind turned a bit sullen, his fingers dismally tracing the fronds of his leaf. “You always wander off from camp on your own before anyone can say anything,” Wind mumbled. “I tried a few times to follow after you before, but every time you either vanished too fast… or someone else would call me back to camp. It’s like they think I’m gonna bother you or something!” He threw up his hands at that, looking somewhat bothered himself. Then he relaxed, and an easy smile returned to his face like second nature. “This time I waited for everyone to have their backs turned, and it was easy to spot you on the open hillside. And since we’re not traveling at the moment, they won’t gripe at me for flying off! I don’t get many chances to do that, you know?”
Whoops. Did the rest of the heroes not like him doing that? He never intentionally left them behind or anything. Just… scouted ahead.
Wild sat down on the tree stump, causing a pop to go off and sending a bolt of forest magic through the air. It stopped between two trees down below in an odd circle of light and began to count down.
Wind moved to chase after it in a way very similar to what Wild might’ve done before. Wild grabbed him by the back of his belt, trying to keep him from flying off again. “Hang on there, Sailor! The puzzle will reset in a moment, but I’m still wondering…”
Wind tilted his head innocently to the side. “Yeah? What’s up?”
“Can any other heroes fly like we do?” It was a serious question, and one that Wild couldn’t believe he’d waited so long to ask. He didn’t think he had to in the first place, but upon further consideration, he really hadn’t seen much of what the other heroes possessed outside of combat and swordplay. He knew that Sky’s sailcloth was used in his era when flying through the air on his oversized bird, but he’d yet to see the Chosen Hero remove it from his shoulders. And he’d seen Hyrule use his Jump spell before, a magical ability that Wild secretly envied; it could be used in quicker succession than Revali’s Gale, and he worried that the gifted ability could be straining to the rito spirit at times, since it seemed to use a good amount of magic.
As for the others, he just assumed they couldn’t do what he could, perhaps a bit prematurely.
Wind held a hand to his chin, thinking hard. Perhaps Wild’s question wasn’t so simple to answer after all. “Well, Sky is easy – it’s in his name, after all. We don’t see him gliding around because I think he prefers the really high places, but I’ve seen him use his sailcloth before in a pinch! And then there’s Four, he has this cape! It’s woven with wind magic, I can feel it! But it doesn’t catch the wind the same way our items do, so I don’t think he can go very far?”
He heard a lot about magic, but he didn’t quite understand it. That was something he had in common with Twilight. They hadn’t needed to understand it on their adventures, but… in this company, Wild probably should know what the other heroes were capable of.
Wind’s eyes widened for a split second as a thought occurred. “Oh! And Time definitely knows how to fly using a deku leaf. He made a weird comment about it once, but when I tried to press him for answers, he wouldn’t budge!”
Somehow, that one didn’t surprise Wild – Time was a man of tightly-kept secrets. It made him nervous, at times, feeling like he was supposed to know something that was being closely guarded.
Either way, it sounded like almost half the Chain had some capacity for flight, and he wanted to learn more about that. “Do you think they would show me their items?”
Wind shrugged. “I don’t see why not. Let’s go ask!”
Wild doubted the young hero would forget the korok. But for now, he was already racing down the grassy knoll in the direction of camp. Wild had to sprint to catch up with him, but once he did he could keep pace fairly easily, outmatching him in both stride and stamina.
“Back so soon?” Warriors mused, noting that Wild would normally leave them for far longer periods of time.
“I have my reasons,” Wild answered dismissively, moving past the captain to follow Wind as he made a deliberate turn towards Sky. The hero had been laying peacefully in the grass, watching the butterflies dance above his head, when Wind had reached him.
“Hey, Sky! Can you tell us how you use your sailcloth? The Champion and I are taking notes!”
Sky sat bolt upright, surprise melting into something more relaxed once Wind had finished asking his question. “Huh? O-oh, of course.” He stood to his feet and untied the white cloth from his neck. It looked delicate, hand-embroidered with intricate designs, and it smelled of a floral fragrance that Wild had never encountered before. “I’m sure I’ve already mentioned that this was a gift from my Zelda,” he began fondly, a light smile on his lips. “It’s really important for flying through the open air around Skyloft. In some ways, it’s as essential to my exploration as Crimson, my loftwing, is. I don’t really use it like Wild’s paraglider, though – it helps me to land from high places, not so much across distances of land. Though a good burst of wind would likely take me just about anywhere.”
By now, they’d attracted the attention of the rest of the heroes. It didn’t take much deduction to notice that, even with their eyes and focus elsewhere, everyone had at least one ear turned towards the new conversation that had popped up in the center of camp.
“You should demonstrate!” Wind declared outright, far bolder than Wild could imagine himself being. Strong verbal declarations weren’t his strong suit. “Wild and I were just comparing how we glide!” On that note, he turned to Four, who’d been idly checking over one of Wild’s most recently used swords. In his defense, he hadn’t thought he’d been that hard on it, though the smithy’s expression said otherwise. “You too, Four!”
The smallest hero started, caught off guard by the sudden change in focus. “Wha—why me?”
“You have that cape, don’t you?” Wind pressed. They held each other’s eyes for a moment, something quite passing between them, though Wild could only guess what.
“I haven’t had much need for it since joining with you all,” Four began, riffling through his pack. Much like Sky, he couldn’t help smiling as memories returned to him, even if it seemed a bit more strained. “…But yes, I always have my roc’s cape on me.” Saying this, he pulled out a white and blue cape with a feathered hem and a simple clasp.
At that moment, Legend went from a passive listener to an active part of the conversation. “Wait… you also have a roc’s cape?”
Should Wild have been surprised? He’d only ever seen a glimpse of Legend’s bottomless bag of magical items. This guy had everything. It was a bit alarming at times, the kinds of things he produced from that bag. Wild valued his elemental weapons and has had fun in the past experimenting with the different wands dropped by wizzrobes, but even that didn’t hold a candle to the arsenal at Legend’s disposal.
The veteran pulled a different kind of cloak from his bag and immediately marched over to Four to compare. His was lined with ruddy feathers. It looked older and dustier, as if it hadn’t seen the light of day in a long time.
“Yours is… interesting,” Four noted, not unkindly. His face was carefully polite, as if he was trying hard not to say anything rude about the magical item. He held his own cloak up next to it, comparing the magical glimmer of his cape with the tattered feathers. “It not only looks different, but there’s a different magic about it that I can’t quite place.”
Legend just rolled his eyes. “You don’t have to dance around the subject, you know. I got it from a crypt in a country overseas, alright? It probably meant more to someone in another lifetime. But me? Well, I needed it to defeat the two-headed dragon that was guarding something important.”
Wind perked up at that, his eyes bright with amazement. “D’ya mean Gleeok?”
Legend opened his mouth to respond. Then he stopped, eyes narrowed, and tried again. “Don’t tell me you also fought Gleeok…”
“Yeah! He was defending a temple, though, not a crypt!”
Wild’s ear twitched. He had particularly sharp hearing, even compared to the other heroes, and couldn’t help overhearing the whispered words from Hyrule: “Your Gleeoks only had two heads?”
Gleeoks… plural? Wild glanced over at Hyrule, who was sitting in the shade of a nearby true. His face had paled at the discussion of these draconic enemies, and he was picking anxiously at the grass beneath him. Noticing Wild’s look, he carefully averted his gaze, though the concern on his face was difficult to hide.
When Wild thought of dragons, he could only think of the mighty, albeit noticeably benign, dragon spirits that traversed his Hyrule freely, not bound to any one place. The closest he’d ever come to one was… when he’d purified Naydra of corruption, and the spirit had made it clear that she was not one to be trifled with. Wild couldn’t imagine fighting a dragon like that, let alone one with more than one head, and he hoped he never had to.
Legend continued, unbothered by the subject of monstrous dragons. “In any case, once it served its intended purpose, I wasn’t particularly keen on using it again. Besides, I was younger and smaller when I’d first come across it. I doubt it will have the same effect on me now.”
“Now hold on,” Four objected, carding his hands through the feathers. “I understand being able to glide around easier if you’re lighter, but your roc’s cape was made with a purpose in mind, and I think it should still be able to fulfill it, even years later. I know mine was crafted by the Wind Tribe, and it carries the essence of the wind within it—”
“I knew it!” Wind chimed.
“—but yours still contains all the properties it would need to be used, too.”
Legend hesitated. And then, with a heavy sigh, he drew the cloak over his shoulders. It shifted into place around him as if it was made to be there, and between the three magic-users Wild could feel the breeze bend oddly around them. It tousled their hair and made the air buzz in a way that put Wild on edge, but nobody else seemed bothered by it. Was this the natural magic of his world at play here, being attracted to the other heroes?
“I suppose I could try using it again… even if it is missing a few feathers,” Legend hummed. “It certainly beats falling, that’s for sure.”
Four shared a pained expression with the vet. “I understand the sentiment.”
“So it’s settled!” Wind decided, waving for them all to follow him in the direction of the hill marked by the tree stump. “Let’s go get that korok!”
“Oh! So that’s what we’re doing!” Sky said, falling in at Wild’s side.
Legend dragged a hand across his face, as if not quite believing that he’d gotten wrapped up in their antics, and followed at the back of their small group. Hyrule got up from his spot and dogged his predecessor’s heels, eyes lit up with curiosity.
Four stepped lightly around them, even more so than usual with the magic imbued in his cloak. “We might as well play a game while we have the chance.” Wild used to think Four was a “voice of reason” type of hero, but the more he learned about his adventures, the more he discovered that the smithy could be just as mischievous as a forest spirit if given the chance. His nature was fluid – he could be having a serious conversation with Warriors about sword techniques one moment, and the next he could be traipsing through the undergrowth looking for fairies.
Twilight watched them go, and Wild could feel the uncertainty coming off of him. “Y’all have never glided around each other. Just try not to get hurt, alright?” There was more he could’ve said, but he thankfully left it at that.
Time smirked next to him. “Have fun out there. We can watch you all from here.”
Twilight gave the old man an exasperated look, and Wild held back a chuckle. Wind was probably right about Time knowing how to fly. He looked like he knew what was about to happen with them.
Once the six heroes had reached the top of the slope, Wild gave them a run-down. “I’m just wanting to see how everyone’s items compare – it’s not a race or anything.” Legend arched an eyebrow at that, as if he didn’t believe him and was mentally preparing himself for anything to happen. Ignoring the pointed look, Wild indicated the trees nestled further down the valley. “Our target is over there. A korok will light it up once we step on this stump, so it’ll be easy to see. If you think you can go farther than that, then go for it, but it’s pretty far out already. Everyone got that? …Wind?”
Wind has his baton out, his ears trained to some force of nature that even Wild couldn’t hear. As the wand fell into a final flourish and was stowed away, a persistent wind started up around them. It tugged their tunics and threatened to pull at their items before they could even take off. “I’m just giving everyone a boost! Sky said his worked better with a direction, right?”
Sky let his sailcloth flap lightly in the breeze before taking each end in a strong hold. “Ah… appreciated. I’ll admit, I don’t use this much for covering distance, so I’m just as curious to see how this goes.”
Wild stepped up to the stump, his paraglider in hand. The other heroes lined up on either side of him, with only Hyrule looking over their shoulders. Back in the camp beneath them, he could see three more sets of eyes glued to them. “Are we ready?”
Leaves and clothes were being held in anticipation. Capes rustled with old magic. Wild watched Legend crouch as if he was about to start into a run, his hand brushing his Pegasus boots. This isn’t a bad idea, is it? “Three… two… one… Go!”
Wild stepped on the tree stump and jumped off, deploying his paraglider as the korok’s pop! sounded off. All around him, gliding items were raised and put to use. To his left, Wind and Sky floated level with him. And on his other side, the cape users—
They were already ahead.
Legend had blasted ahead of them, that running start giving him an impressive lead while his cloak flapped in the wind like the wings of an eagle. Was it cheating if he used his boots? No, wait, this isn’t a race!
Trailing behind him was Four, his flying quiet and precise as he glided through the air like a seagull on an ocean draft. This was Wild’s first time seeing the roc’s capes in use. He couldn’t believe they didn’t use them more often!
Wild pulled ahead of Sky and Wind, his paraglider more suited to traveling distances, though the wind buffeting them from behind kept those two aloft at a steady pace. For a while, he thought those capes had them all outmatched. Then he watched them lose altitude.
Legend, despite his impressive lead, was the first to start falling. His roc’s cape stopped fluttering as much, and feathers came loose from it. Wild could hear the curse that left him, guided by the wind. Before he knew it, Legend was drifting down to the ground, and only the wind at their backs was moving him forward at all. He abruptly hit the grass before he could get close to the finish and stumbled while trying to keep his balance. Four was doomed to follow, though he was at least able to glide farther before likewise losing altitude. His cape also didn’t suffer the same downfall as Legend’s, keeping itself together and giving Four a much gentler landing. His cape had brought him just shy of the korok circle, and he turned around to watch the remaining gliders as they made their approach.
Wild and the others flew over Legend’s head. He looked up from where he was disgruntledly picking up stray roc feathers and followed after them on foot. Four, meanwhile, waved them on. “C’mon! You’re almost there!”
Wild, to nobody’s surprise, was the first to reach it. It was as if the puzzle was designed for him. With Wind’s… well, wind, he could keep going. And so he did, even as the little korok appeared in the air with a “Ya ha ha! You found me!”
Looking behind him, Wind was still hot on his tail. Sky had been dragging his flight out for a while, and his arms were struggling to keep ahold of the sailcloth.
“I’m going to have to end it here,” Sky said, landing right next to the korok and giving it a friendly, albeit tired, wave. “I’m not used to using it so long!”
Wild could understand that. It’d taken him a long time to build up the kind of stamina needed to travel from one mountain peak to another. It was only through his long adventure, relying on his paraglider the whole way through, that he’d made it this far.
At the same time this was happening, it was becoming clear that Wind was struggling. Oddly enough, it didn’t look like physical strain. Instead, Wind’s face had gone pale, and with it the faint, luminescent light that had been emanating from his deku leaf. But he was headstrong to a fault, and Wild realized that he’d keep going for as long as Wild did if it meant that they were even.
Wild let his hand slip. By now the ground was only a few feet below him anyway. He massaged his wrist, acting as if it’d given out on its own, and watched as Wind drifted past him a little bit further before reaching a sudden end a tree-length away. The sailor swayed on his unsteady feet, and he sat down hard in the grass. Around them, the winds died down, and the other heroes raced over on foot to catch up to where Wild was crouching at Wind’s side.
“You okay, Sailor? It looked like you were really pushing yourself there,” Wild said. He began looking through his slate for a stamina elixir, pulling one out right as Four reached them.
Wind was flopped on the grass, arms and legs sprawled like a starfish. He lifted his head to take one look at the potion offered to him before turning his nose up. “You can’t fool me, I know you don’t carry green potions.”
Wild blinked in surprise. “That would be… for magic?”
“I wouldn’t mind… having one of… your elixirs, Wild!” Sky wheezed, following up behind Four with very little breath to spare. “That korok also gave me… a seed?”
Wild traded the seed for the elixir before turning his attention back to Wind. “So Sky ran out of strength. But you ran out of magic? How does that work?”
Wind sat up with a groan. By now, Legend and Hyrule had joined them as well, forming an uneven semicircle around their youngest hero as he went into an explanation.
“I used to be able to find magic reserves anywhere I went. It was challenging at times, making sure I had enough, but I could normally find enough hiding in the grass or settled at the bottom of pots. Kinda like dust? Monsters might leave some behind after being defeated, too! But not every Hyrule generates magic the same way. Mine just happened to be full of it, and I knew where to look if I wanted to harness it.”
This was a foreign concept to Wild. Some of his weapons had magical properties, but those were self-contained in the items themselves. Then there were the Champion’s abilities but, again, that wasn’t magic that came from him.
Hyrule settled in the grass next to Wind and rested a hand on his arm to help him restore magic while Legend crouched on his other side to investigate the deku leaf. “Me and ‘Rule have magic like that in our era, too. Can’t say for sure what causes it to appear the way it does, but I wouldn’t be able to operate half my items without it.”
“Does that include your roc’s cape?” Sky asked curiously.
Legend shook his head. “It does its own thing, honestly. I’m surprised it still works as well as it does.”
“I see that now,” Four chuckled, running a hand over his own cape with nostalgic familiarity. “At least I can still say that mine is one of a kind, even if they work similarly. And that thing you did with your Pegasus boots? I wish I’d thought to do that in my own adventures.”
Legend handed the deku leaf back to Wind, who was already showing color return to his face. “You’re not implying that you have Pegasus boots as well, are you?”
Four averted his eyes but was unable to hide the nervous smile. “Ah, well, yes and no. They’re just… a little worse for wear? Too many times spent falling into the swamp waters, I suppose. I’ll need to have another pair made, but the last time I tried, the Minish gave me an earful.”
Wild held a smirk behind his hand as Legend dished out his own lecture. Of all people, he thought the smithy was the one who took care of his possessions, but evidently that only applied to swords. Not footwear.
Sky helped Wind to his feet, and they stood with their items of choice still in hand. “So? Did you find out what you wanted?”
“I thought that was fun!” Wind beamed. “I wanna fly like that with you guys more often!”
Wild had to agree. Outside of fighting and camping, there really wasn’t many comparable activities he’d done with the rest of the Chain that had been this… fun. He loved gliding, and hadn’t realized until now that it was something he didn’t have to do alone. “You know, there’s actually an obstacle course that a rito has set up over on Eventide Island. I haven’t shown you all that place yet, but next time we’re on the east coast, we could probably check it out?”
Wind brightened at that, deku leaf clutched in hand. “Really?! Let’s do it! I haven’t done one of those in a while.”
Sky sighed, though there was an easy smile on his face. “I never had any courses or games that improved my use of the sailcloth. Though when it comes to strategically falling, I’d say I’m pretty good at that. Sure, I’d give it a try.”
Four hummed thoughtfully. “Obstacles were easier when I was still traveling with… I suppose that doesn’t matter anymore. If I can navigate the Palace of Winds, then I’m sure I can handle a little game.”
Wild turned to Legend and Hyrule. “Vet? Are you interested in an actual competition?” After all, he could’ve sworn that he’d been enjoying himself out there in a rare moment of carelessness. Even if he’d been the first to land.
“Absolutely not!” Legend stubbornly declared, crossing his arms defensively. “I already knew my cape wouldn’t hold a feather to your items, so what good would a competition be?”
Hyrule tugged on his sleeve, easing the cross adventurer out of his defensive position. “There might be a way to upgrade your cape, but you won’t know that unless you try.” Hyrule’s eyes were wide with wonder, the way they’d get when he was in awe of the different magical items that the other heroes had found in their journeys. It was all so novel to the fairy boy. From what Wild understood, many of the kinds of magical items that Legend had encountered in his journey had been either destroyed or lost to time around when Hyrule’s era had begun. When Wild thought of that, he realized that the same could probably be said for his world. The fleeting magic of his world had to be harnessed by resources and built anew. Nothing had been passed down for generations or left in a dungeon for him to discover. Just weapons and raw materials like gemstones.
Legend didn’t provide an answer, but he at least seemed more thoughtful. Knowing the persistence of this lot, they’d probably get him to come around. Wild liked the idea of traveling with these heroes like this, using their gliding more, and traversing his Hyrule in more of the ways that he was familiar with. It felt right.
Wild eyeballed the distance between their current location and the camp, where the older heroes were still watching them expectantly. Every use of his paraglider inevitably meant an uphill climb. Thankfully, he had a way around that. “If I create an updraft, did you all want to fly back to camp?”
“Yes!”
“Sure?”
“Why?!”
Wild crouched down in the grass as everyone rushed to get their items back in hands and around their necks. Four pulled his green hood over his head, holding onto the hem as wind began to churn beneath their feet. Hyrule stepped back, leaving his predecessor scrambling to get his cloak back on.
The ghostly green magic of Revali’s Gale fluttered through his fingers. “Ready? Three… two… one… Go!”