HEIRS OF THE SHADOW DAWN
Being an Accelerated Account of the Life and Times of Sir Linus Olsen,
the Link to the Triforce, Hero of the End,
as Told in The Legend of Zelda: Shadow Dawn
For a full accounting of Linus's adventures to this point, please begin with the tale The Amber Twilight. After finishing that story, proceed to The Green Horizon and then to Beyond the Blue Frontier.
Bear in mind that the following project will take on a decidedly different pacing and style than what has come before.
An interlude:
This evening I went out to the garden, where the light fell in sheets of amber and gold through the sycamores. I settled in one of the iron chairs scattered there, drink in hand, listening to the warm air move through the leaves. I sat and sipped whiskey and thought long and hard about why I'm still writing this.
Earlier today, I received a letter from my usual editor, Tomas Rioza. He wanted to know if I had made up my mind about continuing my "sabbatical" from publication. Tomas is a good man, but even he doesn't have the patience of a saint. It's understandable that he has become increasingly nervous.
I've been rattling about the house like a man possessed for the last two weeks – checking the plumbing, repainting the stucco, tidying the garden, and inspecting ceramic roof tiles. Some terrible urgency gripped me. It strikes me that I probably wanted to fit as much in as possible before the next back spasm arrives to drop me once and for all.
Tomas's letter seemed to wake me from this strange, anxious trance. If anything, it slowed me down. Made me take that good, long sit in the late sun. Just some time to think.
I thought about this manuscript – all these linked notebooks in their cramped, ink-splattered handwriting.
I thought about my father.
I thought about how many years it's been since I looked at an architectural drawing with anything but idle curiosity. Oh, I still browse the local digests from time to time. There have been such extraordinary advances, after all.
Nonetheless, it's no longer a professional eye that stares at spires, arches, and column placement. It seems like an epoch since I set down one kind of pen and took up another.
These thoughts sent me down the halls of memory to that day when I started writing again – first as therapy, and then as pleasure. What a revelation it had been! Hours bleeding into hours. Splashes of ink, cramping fingers, scribbled notes in margins. How wonderful it was to discover that I could sublimate all those memories and emotions into written words.
And from that flowed a steady hobby. The hobby became something of an obsession. The obsession turned into a career, God help me.
Here's the crux of the problem with writing this memoir like yet another my novels: The first-person-past perspective renders the main source of suspense – i.e., "Will he survive?" – completely moot. Of course I survived. How could I be writing this if I hadn't?
Yes, yes: I assure you that I am not communicating this through a medium, from the Great Beyond, which all men must explore after death. That's just silly.
I am very much alive. I have the scars and chronic lower back pain to prove it.
I have no idea who it is that will eventually read these pages. Despite all the time that I have poured into it, I have shared the details of this project with absolutely no one. Not even those closest to me. Especially not with those closest to me.
So, who are you, my faceless friend? Did you come across these notebooks by accident, brushing dust from their covers? Have the pages gone jaundiced and brittle? Did you know me? And does this tale come off as the ramblings of a man whose mind has finally gone off to pasture?
It hardly matters, of course. Unless you're some bastard son or daughter I never knew I had, I doubt it will mean much at all. Just some self-indulgent rubbish from a washed-up writer. I suspect that these manuscripts only ever really had an audience of one.
This is one of the underlying issues with writing this account in the same style as my novels – by portraying these events as a species of thrilling adventure, I may have undermined their usefulness as memoir.
Furthermore, reconstructing my memories as narrative has also ended up consuming much more of my time than first anticipated. Tomas's letter was not the first – both from him and from others. The fact of the matter is that I may have already spent far too many hours finessing a narrative that may never be seen by eyes other than mine.
Yes. Too many hours. Too many precious minutes and seconds.
As I swirled good whiskey across my tongue and teeth, I thought about the creep of time. I mulled this memoir. I considered the slow descent of the sun through the leaves, shafts of light growing shorter and tinged with red. I pressed myself more fully against the cool coils of my chair and felt a distant throb radiate from the base of my spine.
I realized – with a gelid, bitter finality – just how entwined these writings and my recent terrors have become. How deeply this little obsession has bored into my soul. I considered, at long last, that I may need to finish this memoir more than I want it to resemble yet another potboiler thriller. Needs versus wants. Inevitability versus frivolity.
Despite the utter dread the decision summoned within me, I resolved to move forward.
The fact is: I'm afraid I don't have much time left. Honestly, I'm quite afraid in general.
So, I've decided to abandon the "first novel draft" method of composition I have employed on this project thus far. From here on out, I will take a much brisker approach to relating this narrative. I already have a mess of content written for these upcoming sections, so I intend to simply recopy that material along with far briefer descriptions of events as they transpired. Hell, I may just physically paste all those loose pages into this notebook. Cut out the middle man.
Think of this as "The Xenogears Approach," if you will. Granted, you probably won't get the reference. Xenogears was a cult-favorite RPG released for the first PlayStation. Largely forgotten now, I should think.
In any event, it was one of the few RPGs (and games in general) that I played on my single non-Nintendo console. It was this grand, over-ambitious science fiction epic that – about two-thirds of the way through the storyline – begins summarizing events that largely occur off-screen. Suddenly, the story's pace becomes jumpy and erratic, alternating between text descriptions of events and short playable sections. This continues almost until the end of the game. It's quite jarring.
It turned out that Xenogears' production went over-budget, and its creators decided to simply edit out large portions of the late-game content in order to cut costs. Instead, they went for a collage-like storytelling method that got across the original plan but actually skipped over large portions of previously outlined story.
That's what I'll be doing here: Sharing what I originally intended to tell, though at a highly accelerated and admittedly jagged pace. I simply need to get the story down.
Yes. Need to. Now, I can admit it. I let the epiphany sneak up on me as I lounged there in the garden. This is something I must do. For the sake of my sanity – and perhaps for my health – I must tell the tale of what really happened.
The war. The journeys. The relics. The Prophet. The Inner Council. Ganon. The secret hidden beyond the desert. The truth behind it all.
Mad as it may make me seem, there must be a record. I owe it to so many others – and, really, I owe it to myself.
And her, of course.
Of course. Of course.
Oh, goddesses: please let all this be a nightmare. Let it be a passing phantasm. Please let me have more time. Give me just a meager portion.
There is still so much to tell.