A/N: I KNOW I KNOW I have (an)other stor(y/ies) I'm supposed to be working on right now but I couldn't help myself, ok? I woke up with this idea this morning and I've already churned out 3,000 words. Please don't kill me. I'm beyond excited—clearly, or I would have the good sense to wait before I post this. Anyway, I hope this in some small way makes up for the fact that I'm overdue with the other project. Let me know what you think!
Prelude
Unholy light, crimson and garnet, bled out of the fissure in the earth, wafting upwards in gnarled tendrils like the hungry arms of a beast. The fissure had been growing, swallowing more of Hyrule Field by the day, and the foul, evil signs it had begun to spew could only precede one thing.
But the Princess and her Champions were ready.
Zelda's heart hammered against her ribs as the light began to coalesce. Smoke mingled with crimson, blending unnaturally and taking shape. She called upon her powers, breathing deeply as they began infusing her with a sacred glow. Her light was of unequaled brightness and purity—an antidote, forged by the gods to snuff out the incarnation of malice forming out of the evil bubbling from the earth before them.
The form took shape, and a cold wind snapped across their battlefield, clearing away the billows of smoke and shafts of red light. What it left behind was not like the hideous form spoken of in legends; from the distance, it looked nearly like a man. But the Champions didn't hesitate.
Mighty Daruk barreled forward, swinging his famed Boulder Breaker as though it weighed next to nothing. Revali the Swift rode the winds skyward, nocking his arrows and taking deadly aim. The Valiant Urbosa surged into battle, weapons blazing in the sunlight. Mipha, gentle though she was, brandished her spear and made a wide arc to strike from the side.
The figure raised his arm to block Daruk's blow, and the Boulder Breaker splintered on it. His fingers spread, and the Goron was sent tumbling by an unseen force, plowing across the grass and dirt away from the fight. Revali's arrows flew, but the Calamity made them fall of the sky with a glance. He summoned a squall that the Rito could not hope to tame, sending him spiraling uselessly. Urbosa changed tactics, throwing down her shield and snapping her fingers. She conjured a bolt of lightning, but the Calamity redirected the current before it landed, mimicking her gesture, and she collapsed as it struck her. Mipha nimbly leapt upwards, hurling her trident with lethal precision. But the Calamity bent back, just a hairsbreadth out of the way, and the spear stuck harmlessly into the dirt. A subtle breath, and the Zora was rendered unconscious at his feet.
Zelda's hand was extended towards him, pulsing with furious light. The Champion's attacks had been easily deflected, but the distraction was enough. The sealing power began to rush out of her, ready to engulf the battlefield. In the next instant he was there, his hand closed firmly on her wrist, close enough that she could see his eyes, brilliant and blue, and the threads of orange light warring for dominance inside them.
"Stop," he ordered; his voice was angry, certainly, but it was still a man's, not the monstrous, resonant thunder she had been taught to expect all her life. Still, she pressed on, urging the power's flow even as his fingers bit painfully into her wrist. He ordered again, more urgently, "Stop!"
Her breathing labored with the exertion, but still he fought back. Her pulse raced as his resistance registered.
This wasn't supposed to happen. This couldn't happen.
Fear coiled in her throat, his muted snarl growing more feral as he gained the upper hand. Her kingdom would never survive an assault from a being with this kind of strength. Hyrule would be reduced to ashes.
"How," she breathed, her voice trembling as she struggled to hold him at bay and with her own fear. "How are you doing this?"
He closed his eyes and took a deep, long breath through his nostrils, raising his left hand, balled into a fist, to show her the triangles burning through the back of his glove. She recognized it as the source of her own power, only there were two brilliant shapes lit on his body instead of one.
Hot tears, visceral, born of both awe and terror, spilled down her cheeks. She knew she could not win.
She threw all her might into one final, desperate attempt to cast him back; light ebbed off them, a pair of burnished embers glowing brighter than the sun. And then he pushed back, and the light collapsed.
She gasped as her power was stamped down, utterly shoved aside by his own. She closed her eyes as her legs gave out, awaiting the frigid, unwelcoming hands of death. Would he kill her bodily, hungry for blood, snapping the bones of her neck cleanly, or impaling her with some dark weapon? Or would he crush her spirit in an irony of poetic justice, casting her mind into an abyss to await eternity, as she had meant to do to him? But instead he stepped forward, catching her before she could fall, slipping one hand around her waist and cradling the back of her neck beneath her hair with the other. His hot breath fell on her ear, and she shivered against his touch, warm and cold on her skin at once.
"Come along, Princess," his low, worn voice breathed as she was swept up in darkness. "We have a long road ahead of us."
