Author's notes: This one is hard to describe. The best way would probably be lots of inner thoughts, headcanons, and odd formatting. I listened to the Vah Medoh music on a loop while writing this, so maybe it's that the music does odd things to my head. Still, I like the result I got, so enjoy!
"All right. It's showtime," Teba says, his voice just audible over the wind rushing in Link's ears. "Man, even I feel like I'm going to freeze up here!"
It is cold, bitterly so. Link is doing his best to not think about the icy little daggers scratching at his cheeks as they move and at the stinging in his nose with every breath. He has warm clothing. He isn't going to freeze to death.
(if only that were the only death he needs to fear)
The Divine Beast is massive. No, more than massive. He turns the words over in his head as Teba flies them closer. Huge, tremendous, gargantuan... None of them seem large enough to encompass the colossal bird growing even more enormous as they approach.
(even the immense behemoth is tiny compared to the vast sky)
Something crackles in the distance, the air prickling with energy even where Link and Teba fly, and Vah Medoh surrounds itself with a gigantic red shell, one that is (somehow) even more mammoth than the Beast itself. The strange fire-dust-metal-lightning scent he's come to associate with ancient magic rises in the air.
"It has its barrier up again. What a pain..." Teba says. "What's wrong, Link? Too scared to talk?"
"No," Link replies. He's merely keeping his thoughts to himself, as always.
"All right." Teba goes over the plan, the beautiful simple plan. He provides a distraction. Link provides the destruction. With skill and more than a little luck, they'll bring down the barrier and enter Vah Medoh.
(once inside he frees it from calamity ganon somehow)
(he's just a knight he's not a scholar)
"It's up to you!" Teba yells as Link leaps off his back. The Rito surges forward with several powerful beats of his wings.
Link tightens his grip on his paraglider. The Divine Beast looms ahead of him, massive and mighty and monstrous. He can see one of the cannons Teba mentioned on its front. He glides towards it, takes a deep breath (icy cold and tinged with the taste of laser-fire), and lets himself start falling.
(he's falling he's plummeting - and he holds his breath and raises his bow and time itself slows for him and instead he sinks slowly and gently into the vast sky as he takes aim and he fires and the cannon explodes)
(and then he needs to breathe and his focus breaks and time moves and he's falling falling)
He's gliding again, circling the Beast's massive bulk, catching his breath. Teba shouts something at him, most likely encouragement, and swoops towards the Beast again.
One of the other cannons fires from its perch in the distance, but the blue-white beam isn't aimed at either of them. Link closes with it, watching as it turns in place to aim at Teba. It explodes before it can fire.
(he holds his breath and time waits for him)
The remaining cannons fall just as quickly, succumbing quickly to the force of well-aimed bomb arrows. They do not fall quietly. More than one shot comes too close for Link's comfort, and Teba catches at least one blast to his side, though he at least manages to recover.
Something explodes, and the massive glowing red barrier fades. The colossal bird seems even more colossal now as Link glides towards it. He doesn't know what's down there, but he knows his only option is to land on it.
"Bad news, Link," Teba says after circling around to glide near him. His movement isn't as graceful as before. It's slightly awkward, pained. "It looks like I got hit pretty good back here... I think... I think I need to get back to the Flight Range."
Link smells it then, faintly, blood and burned feathers.
"I just hope that... I can make it back..."
Link glances towards him. "You'll make it." (this is nothing a warrior can't handle)
Teba gives Link a thumbs-up and a nod. "You head down to Medoh. Good luck!" He twists in the air, curving back towards the Flight Range and losing altitude fast.
Link watches him as he vanishes into the distance. His flight seems stable enough, so... Yes, he'll make it.
Link feels tinier now. Teba is gone, and Vah Medoh looms beneath him, and the sky is so impossibly vast. He seems insignificant. He tells himself it's merely his nerves (he lies) and continues onward.
Vah Medoh crackles with malice even before he lands on it; flickering sparks of hate rise from its stone-metal surface like embers from a massive fire. Even though he's outside and there's a constant wind from all the motion, the air smells of rust and decay and tastes of ash and copper and something bitter that he can't place. (the malice hates and this place hates and he hates) It's cold being up so high, even with his thick, warm clothing, and already he wants to be down on the ground where it's warmer.
(but he doesn't want to look down, no, down is rito village and the stables and the lake and so, so much, all so faraway and distant and he's almost in another world entirely)
All he can feel as he makes his way inside is eyes glaring daggers into his back. The staring doesn't stop even after he's confident he shoots every one of those disgusting eyes he finds.
(he doesn't want to think about what might be watching him)
It is a strange place, the Divine Beast. He tries not to dwell on that, tries not to acknowledge the vestiges of memories flickering in his mind. He tries to ignore the way the malice festers in the air and soaks into his skin even through his clothing and twists and churns inside his chest. His hands put the Slate into the Guidance Stone, watching without seeing as the Stone distills the map and listening without hearing as Revali's voice fills the air.
(he hates the calamity for this, for broken memories and desecrated grounds)
Hate, such overwhelming, inhuman hate, strains within him, threatens to burst out of him, but where would it go? Out of him means back into the vast workings of the Divine Beast, exactly where it has been for a century now. A long century of coiling in on itself, trapped within a stone-metal cage with naught but lingering regret for company.
(where has this thing been for a century? why is it awake now?)
He stops to open his map, examine his options, and change the Beast's position. The stone-metal floor vibrates and gravity shifts as Vah Medoh tilts its massive form to the left, punctuating the motion with a loud shriek.
Is this all his doing? The towers were all retracted until he unknowingly commanded them to rise and power up for the first time in millennia. The shrines were all dormant until the towers rose. (how does the slate know he's the one holding it?) Were the Divine Beasts, too, dormant until the towers rose?
If so, then they wouldn't be rampaging if not for him. (no not for him for the slate it was the slate that told him to go over there and zelda who told him to follow the slate he didn't know what he was doing)
(he still doesn't know what he's doing look at how he got here)
(it isn't his fault)
And he wonders what the Rito think of this. He knows they can see Vah Medoh tilting left and right as it continues to circle, piercing the sky with its cries, but do they know why? Do they know he's in here? (of course they do; teba must have told them because he made it there safe he has to be safe) Do they think their protector-turned-assailant is about to strike at them?
Do they know it's his doing? (how could they he's just a hylian what could he possibly do to the beast that killed their champion)
That thought, too, joins the list of the many things he's trying to ignore. He needs to focus on what he's doing. There may be few enemies up here with him (but if malice can revive the dead why didn't it just - no no don't think that he doesn't know if he could handle that), but he's still thousands of feet in the air. This isn't the time to shut out the world.
Even if the world is stone-metal hate that tastes and smells of death and despair.
(the vast sky looms around his little stone-metal-hate cage, just waiting for him to slip)
He forces himself to move, and things get easier. (he hates and he lies, and he pretends he does neither, but even so he has work to do) Activating each terminal clears the air a bit, drives the hatred away just a touch, even if at the same time, he swears he feels the malice gathering itself together as he works.
Vah Medoh tilts again and again, following his commands as he picks his way through its insides and beneath its wings. Revali speaks to him occasionally, voice as arrogant as it is in his memories. He has mixed feelings about that, so he never responds. (is revali being revali or is revali just trying to pretend he hasn't been trapped in a stone-metal-hate cage for a century? link doesn't know and revali will never tell) He doesn't trust himself to speak, anyway. Even with most of the terminals under his own control, the malice is still thick and the solidified hate is still burbling and bubbling here and there.
He knows from experience that the only noise the malice lets him make is screaming of his own, snarling and bellowing and roaring like a beast as the hate burns in his skin, boils in his veins, bursts from his throat. It's one thing to lose his composure for a few moments when the Blood Moon rises and the malice surges everywhere, but this isn't the time to lose control. This isn't the time to destroy another weapon in a blind rage.
(especially when he'll have a target for that rage soon enough)
He activates another terminal, the final terminal. He barely hears Revali telling him where to go. Vah Medoh has become a contradiction, a giant mechanical Beast filled with a strange almost-serenity even as hate-sparks rise from every surface and a ball of malice pulses at its core.
The malice leaps at him when he activates the main control unit, some of it swirling around the control unit like a shield, the rest surging past him and forming... He doesn't know what, honestly. Something misshaped, something malformed, something that looks like nothing more than some foul creature growing out of pieces of guardian and coated in that sickening malice sludge.
Revali speaks again, but Link can't hear him. Instead, he watches as the blight (the sickening, festering blight) lets loose a shrill cry and raises its misshapen arm, laser-fire gathering at the end.
"I can't believe I'm actually saying this... But you must avenge me, Link!" Revali calls out, his usual arrogance absent.
Link notices that but doesn't care. His bow is already in his hands, and he lets an arrow (a bomb arrow, because it's what's at hand) fly straight into the blight's head. It answers with a disgusting noise, half-grunt and half-viscous gurgle, but the next shot is already in the air. He presses his attack, arrow after arrow after arrow, explosion after explosion blossoming from the blight's form. The blight teleports itself around the top of Vah Medoh, but he just tracks the strings of light as it does and shoots it again anyway.
(flame and sludge burst from its chest just as hate and focus burst from his own)
He doesn't slow down when the blight summons friends. Their forms are unfamiliar, looking like nothing more than strange jagged pieces of floating metal that remind him vaguely of the cannons he destroyed before he landed. They trail through the air, tips crackling with laser-fire, and he ignores them, instead raining more bomb arrows down on the blight's head. The blight staggers and falls, and that's all the opening he needs.
He charges at where it lays stunned on Vah Medoh's stone-metal back, roaring a warcry. His hands find the largest, heaviest blade he has at hand and start slamming the sharpened steel against the sludge-metal-flesh form before him, feeling it give in unnatural ways beneath the honed edge.
(this place hates and the malice hates and the blight hates and he hates)
(the blight isn't ganon)
(he knows this)
(the blight isn't ganon it is a festering power remnant blight scourge that sing-shrieks with hate malice blood and it is why harth and teba are hurt and he is here and revali is not and)
(revali is watching)
(he doesn't care he will rend its flesh from its stone-metal-bones)
(and then -)
The sword shatters under the next blow, pushed beyond its limits, and the blight teleports again. He whirls around, snarling as he traces the path the blue light-strings take through the air and readies yet another bomb arrow.
The resulting explosion is all the blight can take. It shudders and roars and doubles over on itself before throwing its arms wide and head back and bellowing its pain to the sky. Its body begins to break, spurts of vile, oily blood fountaining from every rend in its skin.
(the air smells of death)
(die and rot)
The blight thrashes in the air, still bellowing, its clawed hand reaching outward for help or vengeance or who knows what. Light begins to burst from its form as well, burning away the oily blood and growing brighter and brighter until it is all Link can see.
And then the light is gone. The blight is gone. The malice swirling around the main control unit is melting away, dissipating into the air. The malice in the air is fading with it.
Vah Medoh is no longer under the Calamity's control.
He forces himself to breathe deep, shoving each breath out with a loud huff. The air tastes clean, pure, free of all of the hate and death, and he needs this even though the cold makes his lungs ache. The tightness in his chest is fading. The adrenaline from the battle is fading.
(the hate inside him is fading, burning itself away now that its source is dead)
He's so tired now. His body aches. His soul aches. He slings his bow across his back with shaking hands as the last of the malice fades.
He takes a moment to lean his head back and look up at the sky, the mostly-clear blue sky with only a few scattered clouds. It's late in the afternoon now. Vah Medoh is higher in the sky than the sinking sun. He idly wonders how long he's been up here.
(do teba and the others think he's dead?)
He can't stay here forever. There are other places to be. Other Divine Beasts that need freeing. Other friends he needs to avenge. A Calamity that needs to be stopped.
(he hates)
But first, he still has unfinished business here. He closes the distance and activates the main control unit with his Slate. The familiar "Sheikah Slate authenticated" chime sounds louder than normal, victorious and defiant.
"Once you activate the main control unit, you will no longer be able to enter this Divine Beast." The unit chirps in the same tiny voice as the Slate. "Do you still want to activate it?"
(revali challenged him to a sparring match here to see who truly deserved to be the champion)
His voice should be nothing more than another malice-fueled snarl, but it is not. It is firm, clear, commanding. It is the only answer he can give. Even if he does want to return and explore, Vah Medoh has something much more important to do than indulge his whim.
"Yes."
The unit before him vibrates, its many orange lights turning that familiar, comforting blue. He nods to himself. (what is this? he can actually tick something off that list of things that need doing that never stops growing)
Perhaps it's just the fresh air. Perhaps it's just the quiet satisfaction of a job well done. Perhaps it's something about purging the malice and hate that built up inside him while he was here. Whatever it is, he feels revitalized. Stronger.
He still wants a quick rest, though.
"Well, I'll be plucked..." Revali says from off to one side. "You defeated him, eh?"
Link blinks in surprise and turns towards the sound; it's the first time he's heard Revali's voice from a specific direction. Revali - or, rather, his spirit - lands nearby, spirit fires dancing around his feet, embers floating gently upwards. The look on Revali's face is no different than it was in life, still with the same arrogant disdain writ so plainly across it.
(he remembers wishing he could shove the sword that seals the darkness into revali's feathered arms and tell the rito champion that if he's so sure he can wield the master sword, then go ahead and try)
Link blinks slowly and nudges that thought away. Even at the time, that thought was petty. Now, it's just an echo of a foolish argument that no longer matters. (destiny is heavier than it seems)
"Who would've thought..." Revali continues. "Well done. I suppose I should thank you now that my spirit is free. This returns Medoh back to its rightful owner!" He turns while he speaks, and then he angles his head to give Link a small glare. "Don't preen yourself for just doing your job."
("have fun sealing the darkness!" laughs the man who later asks to be avenged)
The thought is bitter in his mind, harsh on his tongue, and so he does not voice it. Revali never wanted this. He's certain of that.
(one of the few things he's certain of)
" - I have dubbed Revali's Gale!" Revali practically crows, making several sweeping motions with his wing-arm before heaving a ball of light at Link's chest.
Link has just enough time to wonder what this is (not a spirit orb, not the deep, serene, grounded warmth the monks grant him; this is something else, something warm but intangible, like breath) before his feet lift off the ground as a gust of wind hurls him upwards. He twists in the air, curling himself into an easy backflip, and drops back to Vah Medoh.
Then he snaps his head up and stares at Revali, silently demanding an explanation. (does the rito champion still feel the need to gloat, even here, even now?)
If Revali sees the questions burning in Link's eyes, he doesn't act like it. Instead, he waves his wing-arm dismissively. "It's now time to move on and start making preparations for Medoh's strike on Ganon. But only if you think you'll still need my help while you're fighting inside Hyrule Castle. Feel free to thank me now."
(don't preen yourself for just doing your job)
Link tells himself that is nothing more than the last vestiges of malice talking as they burn away inside him. He sees flickers of light rise from his chest and is surprised that they're a gentle white instead of the angry malice-spark red.
"Or... never mind, just go. Your job is far from finished, you know."
He knows. Oh, how he knows. But he needs rest first. He can do nothing if he breaks.
Revali turns away and snaps his head upwards with a quiet hmph. Link knows he should say something - anything - while he still has this last chance, but there are so many words and so little time.
And so he simply nods to Revali's back in understanding. He knows what has to be done. And it will be done.
Revali starts to speak again, but the magic snatches Link and carries him away from Vah Medoh before the words can reach him. It's not unlike using the Slate to travel, only without the feeling of floating and becoming less solid for a moment. This is more just... being lifted, almost carried.
He hasn't even finished that thought before his boots are on sturdy, solid wood. Rito Village. Revali's Landing, to be specific.
(is this some final parting shot, or is this revali's way of sending him someplace safe? he'll never know)
Link takes a breath of the chilly air - so much warmer than the air on Vah Medoh - and raises his head to the sky again. Vah Medoh has moved. No longer flying its lazy, watchful circles around the village, now it sits perched atop the highest part of the stone tower.
He watches it. He has no real reason to do so. It isn't moving. It isn't going to move, either. Revali isn't going to materialize behind him. The monsters plaguing Hyrule aren't going to vanish. He should go. The Elder needs to know that Vah Medoh won't be a danger to the village now.
(revali's spirit is freed and vah medoh remains)
He needs to rest. He needs to restock. He needs to decide where he's heading next. But he doesn't. He just stands there, watching Vah Medoh as the sky darkens behind it, and he just breathes.
(the divine beast is freed and his quest remains)
After a while, it finally occurs to him (more like rises up from deep within) why he's doing this. Vah Medoh is back in its Champion's hands. This is the first big thing that has actually gone right since he woke, and now it sits on its perch, aiming an energy beam towards Hyrule Castle, indisputable proof that he is here and he is fighting.
(fighting hard with scavenged gear and simple clothing and how many more scars will he have before this is over?)
(you must be the light - our light)
(the light is sheer will and focus and loyalty wrapped in fragile flesh and blood and bone)
(the light purged away the darkness and cleansed a divine beast)
He takes another breath and holds it (he feels them all in his chest, the monks' gifts and Revali's wind and his own focus and the warmth of her voice) and then he blows it out slowly, letting himself relax.
Maybe he really can save the princess and stop the Calamity.
(a scourge has been struck down and the light still remains)
He gives Vah Medoh a small smile and a nod, and he turns towards the Elder's hut.