"Interwoven,"
Disclaimer: I do not own Legend of Zelda or any characters/pieces of the franchise. I am not making any profit from writing this story.
AN: Hello~ This is an... odd, story, and I only began WRITING it on the 26th of November... the idea was crawling around long before that, mind you. I am writing it alongside another story, so please bear with me for updates. I should be able to do relatively quick ones for this though, since the chapters are about half Static Red's lengths... hm. Well. you can all thank the lovely Trolly's Bara-chan for this, since she has been cheerfully encouraging me since I told her about the idea I'd had... and she checked over this chapter for me. Thats important too.
So, I'm dedicating this chapter to you, Trolly~! Thanks for the encouragement, and continuing to bounce ideas with me until they're a bloody mess of fun!
Summary: "The blade of heroes, and the key to unlocking the world." Someone had to have gotten something wrong there, he decided.
"Tangling and twisting… the only anomaly in the Temple of Time which truly belongs… the roots and gnarled bark of a great tree which will not fall to the flow of aging in the world outside, but twists itself up in the echoing stone sanctuary until the end of the world.
The keyhole is carved into it's trunk, and the stone prison of the demon…
There is a guardian trapped in the black thorns of hell to watch over the pedestal of time and the heroines in passing, a body trapped under sable vines and branches edged with white blossoms.
And at their feet in that pedestal, the sword of time which ripped apart the world is lodged. It gleams so impossibly bright, like heavens and icy hearts made into metal. Serenity unbecoming of a weapon drifts from within it and bathes the room.
It is the blade of heroes, and the key to unlocking the world."
- Fairytales from all over Hyrule, Vol 1.
Chapter 1: There once was an echo (of fated falling…)
(A bright blue sky was always the beginning.)
There was a temple on the edge of where they lived. It stood proud and tall but lined with leaves and ivy, and no one ever seemed to venture inside anymore. There didn't seem to be anything wrong with it, not even a nest of wolfos on the grounds or poes drifting about in the night… and yet everyone stayed far away, some unspoken promise to never venture in hanging between them.
Not that that mattered much to Link or Zelda.
It was at the edge of a cliff that overlooked the city, and the temple itself was surrounded by trees and felt… almost magical… forest fireflies floated in and out between mist and leaves, and there was such an ancient, tranquil beauty. A lonely beauty, like the moon alone in a sunset's sky.
And that… that was just begging them to explore it.
And who were they to resist the siren call of adventure?... well, they were a very influential family's scion and the son of that influential family's neighbor, who'd grown up alongside her. They probably really shouldn't have been here at all, especially Zelda. But damn it all, it was the last week of break and they were going to have fun.
"Who exactly were they designing these steps for?" Zelda asked with a laugh, helping pull him onto the topmost platform.
"Giants." Link answered bluntly, and scrambled onto the ledge beside her. The great stone façade loomed above them, half-glowing in the sunlight from between the treetops. Vines and roots crawled over the surface and ivy swathed the building. The grounds had been abandoned for years.
The Temple of Time seemed lost in its own name, trapped beyond the passage of days, hours, and minutes in their own world, a foreign unchanging piece of beauty and mystique. Of course they had to go tramping through it. Fate should understand and forgive them, and smack Fortune over the head for even considering aiming its bow and black arrow in their direction.
(Seriously, knock it off Fortune. They couldn't help themselves. )
Carefully ignoring the parts of their brains that screamed just how insane it was to plunge themselves headlong in a temple that was abandoned for centuries (those parts were screaming loud, but Zelda and Link were teenagers), one that was likely crawling with monsters and deranged hermits bent on harvesting their organs, Link and Zelda stepped forward. The stone doors creaked open unaided. The temple was calling them in, for certain this time.
So they both took a breath and stepped inside.
The blue stone that made up the main structure stretched on into darkness. In a few high corners there were cobwebs, but Link didn't hear the distinctive click, click, click, of skulltulas, and the place was almost free of dust. No great swarms of keese littered the ceilings in slumber, and no lumbering moblins came to lunge at them. The temple was at peace.
Supposedly, the hylians built this temple long ago with the aid of the shadow tribe. The illustrations of winged beings and weeping eyes, along with some of the triforce and the royal crest of Hyrule supported this. The temple was built so very long ago…
Demons weren't too common in their quaint city, not for a few centuries, but they had plenty of tales… Night dancers, Winged ones, Flickering shadows… if a story had been told, there was a record of it in the library's great hall. Those tomes they'd read as children inspired them now, made them curious of every secret hidden in the forgotten temple like they'd craved every bit of text in the books back then.
Owing to their rarity, demons were a… fascination. Outside legends there didn't seem to be much concrete knowledge in their sleepy home, but everyone knew what a demon was. And everyone seemed to wonder. The thoughts and theories on everything from how demons really looked, to why they disappeared from the city were as colorful as a shattered rainbow. But there was one general understanding; one should never, ever disturb a demon's rest, or worse – steal from it. The consequences were always… grim. Messy.
Looking around the clear and silent place, knowing something had to have been here… Link couldn't help but wonder if this was a resting place for such beings. Perhaps the demons had never left their part of the country but had just stolen away inside the timeless sanctuary…? A little bit of trepidation entered his heart, but he'd come here to see the temple. He doubted any demons really lived here, anyway…
Something flashed at the corner of his vision, and when he turned he saw Zelda just as she pushed open an old door… the stone of the barrier hissed against the tile, and she called him over with a grin. "It's a hallway."
Light streamed in from cuts in the stone far above them, lined with glass of all colors. The same light reflected against the white tiled floor to create a kaleidoscope that went dancing under their toes… Link watched the floor, transfixed, until they reached the end.
And then there were three doors. They tried each and found that, while the center and inner one were locked, and the one on their right wasn't. Of course, that was one they entered through first. They could pick the locks of the others later…
Link caught himself thinking of how life had gone by as they wandered through the dustless rooms.
Zelda was of noble descent. The scion of a very influential family, one could very easily wonder how she'd come to befriend a country boy who's only claim to fame was that he could fit five chocolate tektites in his mouth when he was ten.
(Link hasn't checked lately to see if he's retained the skill, but he considers that he perhaps may the next time a package of the sweets comes into his possession.)
But, the answer wasn't terribly complicated. They clicked. They fulfilled certain needs in each other. Which translated from very questionable speak to 'Zelda grew up coddled and bored, and Link grew up without many friends'. Because of some overly clichéd moment of meeting and knowing at first glance that it was True Love (I've never seen a girl punch a bigger kid in the teeth like that before!), Link had snuck into Zelda's garden, which had a bizarrely dense number of guards. (It wasn't well-guarded, mind you. There were just a whole lot of them.)
Oh, and they were all ten when this happened. It made the whole thing even better somehow, or Link thought so. He refused to tell Zelda why he was snickering then.
Well anyway, that was the first day Zelda wasn't bored to tears and forced to spend her days plucking daisies and contemplating pushing them up for lack of better things to do. And that was also the first day Link talked to someone his age who didn't try to set his butt on fire, (or become his fiancée, whatever the heck that is, his little ten year old self had thought). They became fast friends, even though Zelda's mom scared the crap out of their little ten year old selves five minutes into their impromptu play date (they were playing tackle-tag) by appearing out of nowhere in the garden's entrance.
And ever since then, they were inseparable. Even when Zelda went to the girl's academy. (Because Navi, being Navi, didn't see anything amoral about putting her son in a skirt and then lying to the school about it.) Yeah, They'd had a pretty awesome time growing up together.
That was all about seven years ago, they'd realized last week with something between despair and amusement. And so they'd started plotting. The rest of it might have been wasted on preparatory classes and magic training - because apparently the teachers had bought it when Link said it was an accident when he lit Mido's pants on fire (it wasn't) - and tea parties with Zelda's parents' friends, the last week of break was theirs. And they would seize it with gauntleted hands in the temple of time, and hell and high water before they let anyone take it. They were growing up, but damn if they wouldn't have fun beforehand. And after. And it was going to be brilliant.
Like a fucking supernova.
Link frowned, edging carefully along the stone ledge. It dropped off into darkness below him, and he wasn't quite ready to find out what was on the bottom.
"Anything?" Zelda called down to him.
Other than a pathway to hell? He shook his head, more to get his hair out of his face then to answer her, and swung down onto a platform with a doorway on it. In the center there was a painting of an eye, unfading like everything else, and more red smeared down below it; a bloody tear.
He heard the rush of rope and the rough scramble of boots against stone, and then the soft sense of wind moving at his back when Zelda landed beside him. She whistled. "Well, if the Shadow tribe didn't help in building this place…"
"Then somebody definitely went to great lengths to makes us think they did." Link murmured, carefully examining not the eye in center, but the runes which bordered the door…
A short, sharp grin – sweet triumph – slid over his face. He waved Zelda back and cast Din's fire. With a begging, crying groan (he supposed that had been there since the temple was built, because it wouldn't make sense for just the noises to age) the door creaked open. As soon as he could fit he slipped through into the darkness, blue eyes flickering around the shadow-room.
"Why, thank you." Zelda cooed as she walked to his side, glancing around the night-black casually. "I suppose I'll take this one." And chanted the spell Illumination. Her fingers glowed warm, soft white and sent the room painted yellow. Link's eyes widened at what it revealed.
A room of hourglasses and clocks… no, really an entire hall of them. They both let out gasps, coming forward to stare upward into the hundreds of faces and each grain of sand behind glass walls…
Zelda gasped again and hurried forward into the place but Link stayed frozen with his gaze on one particular hourglass. It was perched precariously on a stone shelf, smaller than the others and so unassuming… except that it was bleeding. Inside, Link watched as the tic-tic-tok of sand became the plip-plip-plop of blood falling, until that barely-there balance was lost and the hourglass fell and shattered. The spell broke. Link stumbled forward while Zelda called back to him ('are you alright? Did you hurt yourself?') And he heard the sharp fast beat of her shoes against the tile floor, but he couldn't get words past the tape on his lips or the knot in his throat. On the ground where it shattered, between shards of glass, the sand spelled 'time is running out, O' -' and just as his eyes began to glaze over that last word a little gust carried the words away.
"Link! You didn't cut yourself, did you?" Zelda asked him with a voice as sharp as the broken glass, worried and sweet while she checked over his hands and arms…
"I'm fine." He muttered, still eyeing the hourglasses' remains and the innocently-gleaming sand. "It fell over by itself, Zel…"
"Oh, good." She let out a relived sigh, just as she finished her examination. She grinned at him like it was the best news she'd got all year. (Which it really wasn't. Many good things were happening around her. But… it was Zelda.) Link didn't smile back, just glanced down the hall. She followed his eyes. "Oh!" She clapped, and Link supposed she was remembering whatever she'd run off to see in the first place. "You need to come see this, alright?" She demanded of him, slipping around him to jog back off towards the end. With a final curious glance back at the mess of what had once been a timekeeper, he took off after her.
A spiral staircase greeted them at the other end of the newly lit room, leading upwards into the soft light of the sun… Zelda let her spell fade, so it was just rays falling into the dark that lit their way. The stone was still solid and held their weight easy, like kittens were ascending it instead of two very excitable hylians who only acted like baby cats. The stairs led up to an open room, air rushing around them in gentle currents. Funnels for it were cut into the walls and made the place constantly move and swirl, dragging at their hair and clothes. Still, no monsters came to greet them.
Zelda laughed as she stepped into the currents, carelessly drug along like a flower in a stream. Link raced to catch up, almost stumbling over himself in the wind, slipping across air-smoothed tile and finally landing somewhere in the middle with a few chuckles of his own. Zelda kept dancing around the edges, and she called to him about the color of the sky… He tilted his head back and gazed at the ceiling and jolted, because that was not a color of sky but bright red tears. From the ceiling, another eye stared back at him, then two.
The one-eyed gaze which pierces into your mind…
What an unsettling eye.
But this was not the symbol of the Shadow tribe.
No, Link thought, numb, as it let out a spine-chilling bellow, this is not a painting. Wind rushed down,and then his thoughts fled him.
Bang slash scatter went the staccato of a blade, boots scrambling over tile in a symphony for survival. A talon of metal slashed out for him, begging for a taste of sweet screaming red and a bloodied hylian body. He saw his staff clatter against the claw and swing back behind him, and the monster come closer as his feet flew over stone. He jumped for it, bringing the length of his own metal staff down down down-!
And heard the bloody scream as his boots landed, together, on the monster's head, and heard the sickening bloody squelch as his blunt weapon sunk into the eye of the beast. It roared and bucked him screaming so he went crashing, like a wave that outgrew itself, into the terribly hard stone. In the hazy swimming stone-sky his senses were dancing and screaming, begging him to leap up and fight but everything refused to move and, at the corner of reality, he heard Zelda shouting and the shinksnikt of metal unsheathed…
And he heard the ringing crash of it meeting more.
In little bits of color, he can see her dancing with a blade…
It matches beat for beat the monster, but that monster wants a meal and he is helpless because he cannot even reach himself… he is so far away…
And it lunges for his body, and he sees her eyes widen and her lips moved in a curse before she's screaming and a kaleidoscope of soft warm lights is coming over his vision…
The first thing he knew was that he could see again. Brilliant, warming light… it fell down on him in long lines of white, burning against his eyes. It didn't touch him, though, he could just see it shining in from the ceiling. He pushed himself up, observing his new surroundings with an unusual, uneasy calm… Roots lined the earth-and-stone walls to his front, leading up to a great twisting tree. Its bark wove into itself in intricate curvilinear ribbons… There was a slice through the bottom center, a break in the roots which led to darkness, and it was almost shaped human, like a person in a cloak… and in the head of that proposed person there was a stone keyhole. Streams of white light broke through an unseen crack near the top of the room, and soft trails of ivy and moss touched around the ceiling and dangled from the tree like ornaments. On the floor where the light beams touched, there was a pedestal with a blade piercing the stone... And above it, there was a demon sealed into the wall.
Eyes shut in a tranquil face, half the face hidden from the world… he was sleeping. Soft and peaceful now but certainly demonic – his hair shimmered white like the sunlight in the darkness, while two red wings were folded against his back and around his not-quite recumbent body. He was held to the stone and wood behind him very carefully, except his head – the only part of him allowed to hang down, his chin was tucked into his chest in slumber. His face was hidden by strips of white gauze… and his body was bound by tiers of black thorns, suspended below the keyhole in stone.
Link's heart thudded in his chest.
I know this story. So in the pedestal below the demon, it was the mastersword sunk into the stone… He remembered that fairytale, but not much else…
Never wake a sleeping demon… and never, ever steal from it.
One thing burned in the front of his still-dizzy mind, though. Metal clattering against metal, boots scuffing over stone floors. Wind tearing at her hair and clothes as she tried to fight… Zelda was up against the wind weasel, alone. He would never, ever leave it that way.
So he steeled himself and stepped up into the broken beams of light, and set his hand on the hilt of the mastersword.
And the demon's red eyes cracked open.
Chapter 1 end.