There was nothing around him– a cold blanket of nothing that chilled him to the bone.
Even when he opened his eyes, he couldn't see anything; his vision was only blackness, shadows and darkness, and he involuntarily sucked in a breath. Immediately, his lungs were cloyed with salt and seaweed– he was underwater. He thrashed, instincts taking over on high alert, chest screaming for air, and when he finally burst above the surface, the water came back up, burning his throat. He choked, gasping, and tried to right himself. It was still dark around him, nothing but inky shadows and the black depths of the unknown.
His feet found solid footing; solid enough, at least, that his heels could dig into it and propel his mass upwards, and he took it, heaving his aching and sputtering body up further. There were voices in his head, snippets of whispers against his ears, and though he could hear them, he could make out nothing of what they were saying. They blended with the images flashing before his eyes against the darkness. A wall of fire, a limping tree branch, a vine-covered wall– he didn't know what any of them meant, and they made his stomach clench and twist. His grappling fingers finally brushed up against the sugar-fine sands, and his fists clenched around it, even though it did little good. One final push with his foot and he was on land, face first in the granules and spewing salt-water. Everything burned.
He writhed in the sand's grasp, twisting like the snake he might have been once until he was lying on his back. Air only slightly less thick than the water brushed against his face, cold and colder still, the winds of the lake. His chest heaved, his heart - was that his heart? - beat a thunderous tattoo, and he wanted to lay there forever. Let him turn to sand, let his charred body become mulch for the birds to feed on.
A slight pressure on his head - a garland of daisies. The voice of a green-haired pixie. "You and I will always be friends, Link."
A pat on his back, a hand like rocks, his knees sinking to the ground. His body, a child's body. "Now you and I are sworn brothers!"
He stood on shaky legs. He had not known until that moment if he could stand... if he would stand. One foot forward, and then another. His feet felt sluggish, water streaming down his entire body, from one point to another, nothing discernible. His joints cracked with the onslaught of movement, every possible bone screaming with the exertion - too much, he thought, and amazed himself with it. I can't do it. I can't. I--
A mountain towering over a village, a towering palisade. A cacophony of voices, together as one, shouting his name - shouting a name. The crackle of fire, hot against his face.
And a girl, with ginger hair and a smile he felt down to his knees.
"What is this?!" he cried, into his hands as he fell, only half-aware that he had said anything out loud. His own voice echoed back at him, compounding in volume and hurling against his already heightened senses. He could not make sense of the images being laid before his vision, nor the thoughts whirling through his head. His vision finally began to sharpen, bits and pieces of terrain coming into focus at the edges of his gaze; he could see the water he had just come from, and the beige blur of the sand beneath his body, and then, like a streak of paint, the cerulean of the sky above him. He did not know sky. He had never seen sky– but he did know it, in his bones, in his very essence, a missing puzzle piece he had not even known he was without.
Dazed, he tried again to stand. Righting himself was even more difficult the second time, and the voices in his head made it hard to concentrate on what he was finally seeing. The landscape looked bleached out, too white; it hurt his head when he opened his eyes, and he forced them apart anyway. He took one staggering step, and then another, barely able to believe he was actually moving.
It felt like an eternity before he turned and looked, and saw the crashing tide yards behind him, and the trailing wet holes of his footsteps.
The horizon went on beyond all possibility, water so pure and crystal, a distance shore beyond it, followed by the sky, the sun. He lifted his face to the sun, staring into its apex as the corona twitched and flailed, invisible hands reaching out to him, warming his face, drying his body. He might have stood there forever, cradled by the sun's rays, listening as he learned to listen, the crash of the waves, the screech of the birds, the rustling of the wind in the grass. He did not understand. Why were these things here? He searched for the answer within the essence that had given him so much surety mere moments ago - why? why? why? - but found nothing, darkness, a soothing balm that had lost its power. He felt hazy, somewhere, like a fog had descended into him, making his thoughts into mist. He tried to reach into his mind, into the place where he knew the past lay, but found only dull pain like rocks in his head.
A man who looked like him, his sword glinting keenly as it cut through the mist. The feeling of a blade in his hand, so natural, so perfect. Looking into his own eyes, feeling himself looking back at him. The pain became sharper, more focused, sending spears of dazzling light into his eyes.
Before he understood what was happening, he leaned over and retched into the sand. All that came up was water.
Focus... focus on the sword, he told himself. The sharpness, the flash of steel, the sound it made as it cut through air. In an alien gesture, he reached over his shoulder and felt his hand touch something. He retracted his hand abruptly, before reaching again, as if extending his limb to a poisonous snake. His fingers wrapped around the hilt, the words appearing in his mind as he relearned it, tighter and tighter still, before pulling. Steel rang out against leather as he stared down at it. The sword was black as nothing, and it wasn't right - hadn't he pulled it from the pedestal? Wasn't it the colour of steel, with a blue hilt? He dropped it as if it had burned, and the blade fell into the sand soundlessly. It wasn't right. It wasn't. He didn't want it. He wanted to be away from it, wanted to run, wanted to be somewhere else.
"Wait!" a soft voice broke through the haze. "Link, you almost forgot your sword," the voice chided, and he felt syrupy inside. There was a girl, the girl with the smile.
"I don't need a sword," he said - him, the him that was standing in the sand, the him that wanted to run. His mouth felt numb. These weren't his words, but he said them anyway.
"Yes you do," she reprimanded. "I never go out into the field without my bow. Don't be reckless!"
"What– is this?" he croaked, too confused to be ashamed of the way his voice broke. "Is– is it mine?"
"Of course it's yours," the girl said, and then her image started to blur, melting in with the sand and the sea and the trees lining the edge of the beach just beyond his reach. He started to reach out to her, then stopped; had he meant to reach? Had he willed his hand to move? He let out a shuddering cry and pulled at the bits of hair that fell just over his eyes, willing the strands to come out in his hands– if he could feel, was any of it real?
When he looked down, there were shadows swirling around his feet. They danced like spiders over the sand, inky against the bleached yellow of the dunes, and inched their way towards the soles of his boots. He stared at them, unable to tear his eyes away and unable to move from their grasp, until the shadows had condensed like fingers on the leather covering his feet– sticky, sticky like molasses and the color of dried blood, they pulled him down.
They pulled him down.
He wanted to succumb to them, then - wanted to succumb so badly. He wanted to let them pull him into the sound, until he drowned in the granules, until he felt nothing else, until he was back in darkness' icy arms. But he was scared, too - fear gripped his chest like a frigid claw, a cold ribbon around his beating heart, and he let loose a guttural, raw cry. His feet worked of their own accord, a dance move too fast to describe, the sword that wasn't his flung straight into the air where he caught it, brandishing it with a flourish. The shadows twirled around him, growing taller and in the shape of monsters, leaning into him as he swung the sword. His arms did the work, bones to muscle to skin, dancing a dance ingrained into his very existence, and he understood, then.
This is what he was for. The bringer of salvation. The vanquisher of monsters. The murderer of anything that was different than he.
"I - understand!" he screamed, as he swung his sword in a weaving circle, only a glint of steel as he worked, too fast for the eyes to see. This was all he knew, this was all he was.
This is why Din had fashioned him out of fire. This is why Nayru had cooled him into bone. This is why Farore had given him thought.
The shadows fell to their defeat. He should have let them have him.
He could see now, what the world around him really was; there was a fuzzy, blurry line, almost like a line drawn in the sand, where the darkness ended. He put a hand inside it, watching as the flesh of his fingers paled and whitened. His hand looked as if it had no skin left, only the milk-white of bone, and he looked up. The shadow was not a line, as he had thought– no, it was much more than a line. It was a world. It was a hovering, all-encompassing fog that shifted over the landscape and pulled it in. It was the low-hanging clouds that threatened to rain. It was a place both ominous and dangerous; he could smell the evil lingering in the shadows, just as he could feel it in his bones.
He could feel the fear that palpitated every corner of the darkness, and he did not know where it came from. The voices and thoughts in his mind went still– they had nothing to offer. The scrambled bits and pieces he had within his wiring did not have any connection to the shadow-covered field just beyond Lake Hylia's edge.
He should have felt lost.
He didn't.
Instead, he felt as if he were home, and it was a bitter taste in the back of his throat; his home was the darkness, after all, despite everything else. He pulled his hand from the shadows, and tried to focus on the images still reeling like a carousel in his mind's eyes. If he could find something, even one thing, that looked familiar, perhaps it would be explained. Perhaps he could fit back together the jigsaw of his memory.
Smiles and ginger hair, hands clasped, the rumbling of laughter within rocks– none of it made any sense, but he had the thoughts. If he could find the sources, the originals, maybe–
Maybe he could put back together what had been lost.