Prologue: The Revelation to John
A wind that had teeth in it rifled through the gray coarseness of Link's fur and he growled, deep in his throat. In the silence of the desert it was always cold when the sun went down.
He loped his way up the staircase to the mirror chamber with a feral grace that belied the bluntness of his lupine body and scented the air; tonight, as on all other nights, it smelled of danger. He had been summoned, and he had come. It was the duty of the Hero to give audience to the Sages that waited in the Arbiter's Grounds, to hear their ancient, dusty complaints and give comfort to them.
But he was not the only soul who had come through the prison of the early Hylians tonight. He smelled the oils on the other's skin from where his hand had brushed up against a stone rampart, smelled vegetable dye and boot leather and the subtle perfume of nostalgia.
Link quickened his pace and knew that he was too late to stop the other before he reached the place where the Sages dwelled. He was already there. Link could hear his voice on the thinnest edge of the wind.
He rounded the staircase and stopped, coiled tight as a spring in a darkness that the incandescence of the Sages could not touch. The other was a Hylian- or was he?- well-built, wrapped head to toe in a brown cloak and something in his hands. The wolf wanted to leap down on him from a high place and tear out his throat with his jaws. Link just wanted to find out what he was doing here. He crept closer. Closer.
"-don't want me here, do you?" the man was saying, and Link knew from his voice that it wasn't the sort of question you ask looking for an answer. "It's always an embarrassment to the destined to run into someone who doesn't want to follow the script. You don't want me here, so speed me on my way. I'm ready."
The sages hesitated and the man pressed on, ferocious in his need. "I want to go back."
"You can never go back," said another mask sadly. "The door we guarded for a thousand years at the behest of the house of kings is closed forever. Hyrule is broken with the Twilight. Turn back, turn back, and return to the life you led. I tell you that you will never look upon the Twilight while you are alive."
"Yes, turn back," said another. "Save yourself while there remains a self to save."
"Only remember," begged a third. "Remember her. Remember us. Remember all of it-"
"Ganondorf was no friend to me," said the man harshly, and at the sound of that hated name Link tensed to leap. "But he taught me something before he died- a lesson. You call yourself sages, but there may still be hope for you. Come and study at the feet of the master, and I'll tell you what Ganondorf had to teach me."
"And what lesson was that?" asked the chief sage.
A plain leather scabbard clattered somewhere in the darkness and suddenly there was a naked sword in the man's hand. "He taught me," said the interloper, "that you could be killed."
As one the circle of sages drew back, horrified, and the man's laugh was a harsh and mirthless rattle in his throat, cut off almost as soon as it had begun. "Send me back," he said quietly. "Send me home. I know you can. Send me where you sent him. Do it."
A long moment passed and the tension rode the man like a pillar of flame. "Do it. There's nothing to keep me here anymore! What was it for, if not for this? Send me back!"
"You must know that we can't do that-" said the voice behind a shining mask, and then he was crumpled against a pillar with the point of the other's sword against his bone-china face hard enough to explode a spider's web of hairline cracks across it.
"Try," said the man, and then Link was exploding out of the shadows- slow, too slow. The cold desert air had the consistency of water and he could feel himself losing momentum; soon he would be trapped at the apex of his leap like a butterfly pinned still-living to the cork. What sorcery is this? wondered Link, and then the other
turned around
and he saw his own face, brilliant and clear by the light of the moon-
With a cry of shock Link vaulted out of bed, sending the sheets cascading into the air like the death throes of unhappy ghosts. Wild-eyed, he grappled with the hilt of his sword- when had he picked it up?- casting about madly in the empty room for an enemy that could not possibly be present.
Midna clawed her way out from under the covers and sprang into the air. She caught his head between her hands and forced it still and looked urgently into his panicked eyes. "Link!" she cried. "Link, what the hell- what's the matter with you? Calm down!"
"He was here," he shouted, flustered, "in this room- with the sages- where did he go?" Midna's fingers dug into his flesh. "There's nobody here," she insisted. "There's nobody here." The frenzy left him by inches. Gradually his grip loosened on the sword; he allowed Midna to pull it from his hands and lean it, cautiously, against the oven. Link flexed and unflexed his fingers. "I could have sworn-" he said, and was silent. Midna trembled in the air, awash with adrenaline. "Goddesses, Link," she said quietly. "What did you see?"
Link turned to look at her with a look on his face that spoke of a deep and haunted confusion. Where was the mirror, Midna?
"Nothing," said Link, and collapsed heavily back into bed. "Nothing. It was just a dream."
The sequel to Cincinnatus and Moments
Prophecy
Coming Soon
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