Shrine Quest #3: Trial of the Labyrinth

When you approached the curious ruins on the island in the Akkala Sea, you heard a voice speak to you. It told you that you will be granted a blessing if you travel through the island maze.

Link and Zelda I:
Where the World Ends

Chapter 1

The whirring macroscopic Sheikah goggles were passed from hand to hand and peered through with squinting eyes. First Link, humming to himself in concern, then Zelda, muttering, look at that, it must be hundreds of feet across, and finally, the goggles' owner, Robbie, restrapping them to his face.

They stood facing north on a cliff face in Deep Akkala, looking out at the silvery Akkalan Sea. Here, the land was full, swollen. Autumnal trees lined the paths, and during the entire journey from Akkala Citadel to the cliff face, the ground had felt as though it were rising, as though leading them somewhere. Zelda had called it an apotheosis. Link had said he certainly hoped so. Autumn in Akkala meant storms, some lasting days, and it was overall a trying part of the country to travel through.

The sun was low on the horizon. Its rays split the fog hugging the sea surface and, a great monolith made itself known.

It rose out of the sea, maybe one hundred, or two hundred feet high. Half a mile wide, or wider, and who knows how deep. Its walls were black, foreboding, and completely unblemished. However long the sea had lapped at the base of the structure, it had not eroded a single grain of its stone. Was it stone?

With a final hum, Zelda pulled her Sheikah Slate from her belt and waited for the screen to flicker on. On the map, she found it - Lomei Labyrinth Island.

"What do we know about the Lomei?" she asked.

"Absolutely nothing," Robbie answered. "If there were records on them before the Calamity, I didn't come across them. There are none now."

"We know they built that," Link chimed in. "And that one of your Monks took residence within it." He gave Robbie a gentle nudge on the shoulder, and the old researcher harrumphed.

"I had nothing to do with it. If the Monks claimed this labyrinth, then the Lomei have been gone for at least 10,000 years."

Lomei. Lo-may. Zelda turned the name over on her tongue, testing it, trying to feel the way it might have been said. She felt for a moment that she could breathe life back into that word - or that name, rather, for it was a name. Just like Hylian, or Hyrulean. An entire people summarised in a few syllables. The desire to know them burned within her.

"I wonder what's inside. What the Lomei might have left behind," she said, stopping to take a few photos of the monolith.

"Danger," Link answered for her. By his scowl, it was clear he had made up his mind; this cliff was as far north as they would go. "The only way in is via paraglider and-"

"Then it should be no problem," Zelda clipped. Link's scowl deepened, his eyes momentarily descending to the paraglider hooked on her belt, blue, to match the red one on his own belt. She'd had it for years, it was even Rito-made, but admittedly using a paraglider was no easy feat, and Zelda had nothing close to the physical ability of Link. Jumping from a tower, or gliding down a sloping hill, or soaring through an updraft maybe, just maybe, he was happy to tolerate. But leaping from a cliff over a half-frozen sea towards an ancient, unknown structure?

"It's dangerous," Link reiterated. Robbie hovered at an uncrossable distance, deliberately neutral but curious enough not to give them their privacy. He wore a small smile but shook his head when Zelda looked at him. Link's right, he mouthed.

Zelda turned back towards the sea, watching the chopping waves, and the faint and perhaps imagined wavering of the monolith.

They had travelled so far, across half the kingdom to find this place; Zelda would not let danger stop them now. She resecured her Sheikah Slate and reached for her paraglider, and before Link could protest, she leapt.

Her paraglider caught the wind with a victorious flap of rippling fabric, and Zelda was carried gently across the strait towards the labyrinth. A similar sound of opening fabric followed behind her, and she glanced over her shoulder to see Link gliding along with his own paraglider, his taut frown peeking through the hair that had been blown across his face.

They landed smoothly at the labyrinth entrance, though Zelda found herself rubbing her sore arms afterwards. The entrance was little more than a gap in the stone, a small break in a curtain to let them in. A hundred feet below the waves lapped at the base of the island, and at their feet was a grate, about a foot square, that looked to lead down to some inaccessible underbelly. Looking back towards the Akkalan Cliffs, Zelda waved to Robbie to signal they had landed safely. He returned a quick solute and disappeared back to his lab.

"What do you think he thinks of us?" Zelda felt compelled to ask, still looking back to the cliffs. It was a strange question. It was not one of if they liked each other; she had known Robbie all her life. In the time before, he had been only a few years older than herself, and they had worked together for many years. By the look on Link's face - that subtle threading of the brows, a bit lip - she could tell he was equally perplexed.

"As a Sheikah, I mean," Zelda clarified. "What do you think he thinks of us, the Hylians?"

"I don't know that he thinks anything."

Zelda shook her head. "He does. If not him, then his people. We've never asked."

Casually, playfully, Link took hold of her arm and spun her around to face inwards, towards the winding corridors of the labyrinth. "I always forget what exploring does to you," he smiled. "It makes you question everything."

"I'm a researcher, shouldn't I question everything?"

"Well let's focus on one question at a time." Link ran a hand over the mouldy stone, uncovering some of the patternings underneath. Under his palm, two loosely carved spirals were revealed. He paused, squinted, and letting his hand fall he said, "Finding the centre of this maze."

For two, perhaps three hours they walked, hands to the left wall to make sure they explored the labyrinth's full extent. They found little; a handful of already opened chests, a dead guardian (along with a few dead Skywatcher Guardians that were resting atop the maze's high stone walls), moss and more moss. Link admitted that he had come here once and only once before. He had found and plundered the now open chests ("Nothing in them that I didn't already have"), tiptoed around the Guardian Stalker and then left out of frustration. The centre was impossible to reach, or at least it had seemed that way once an Akkalan storm broke and the labyrinth began to flood somewhat, the water having nowhere to drain.

"The map was no help," he added in justification. It was not often that he gave up.

"Well, some of the walls are false," Zelda noted as they passed under an archway in one of the high walls. She pointed to the map on the Sheikah Slate. "See? You can't see it here. It's as if we simply passed through."

"Anyway, I didn't want to mess around." He loped an arm around her shoulders. "What could be in that Shrine that was more important than going to get you?"

Zelda gently pried herself free. "I'm flattered, but what we know is if the Sheikah put a Shrine here, in one of the most isolated parts of Hyrule and at the centre of a Guardian protected labyrinth, then it has to contain one of the most valuable treasures they own."

As she said this, the centre of the maze finally came into view. Up a flight of stairs and in a central dais, the low-glow of ancient stone and magic could be seen. Link jogged happily over to the Shrine and patted the console at its entrance.

"Why don't we find out?" he grinned.

"Why don't you find out?" Zelda corrected. "I know these weren't built for me." She handed him the Sheikah Slate with a sigh.

Link returned in less than five minutes, carrying what looked like some ghastly wild animal under his arm and wearing a sheepish grin.

"Well, what was inside?" Zelda asked impatiently.

"A monk named Tu Kah'loh, a bit of water and...this!" he held up the wild animal, which Zelda realised then was nothing but a helm. An ugly, barbaric looking helm. She could have stamped her feet.

"That's what we came here for? A helmet with a ridiculous red mane and tusks like a boar?"

"You said it yourself, this is a treasured artefact. Maybe this what the Sheikah think of us." Link put the helm on and chuckled to himself, teasing out a few strands of its fire-red mane. "Maybe this is all one big joke, and we're the children being fooled."

"At least let me take a photo for the compendium. Don't smile," Zelda was giggling too now. "I said don't. This is serious. This is research."

Shaking from her laughter, Zelda took the photo and read the description: Armor once favoured by an ancient warlike tribe from the Faron region. It was something to go off at least. The Faron region was known for both its tumultuous history and lack of records, perhaps causally related.

They returned quickly to the labyrinth entrance and found that the grate there now had a stream of air roaring out of it, maybe twenty feet high. Zelda readied her paraglider, noting immediately that this updraft was their passage back to the Akkalan Cliffs. Fiddling with the clasp at her belt, she couldn't help but ramble.

"I still don't understand. Why build this at all? Why put a shrine here? There's so much to ask that I don't know where to start."

Link was unphased. "Maybe it was just a trial, like all the others. Could be the Lomei weren't a people. Just a name. Unless this was used for something else."

"Something else. I don't know, maybe." Zelda frowned. Her paraglider ready, she made to step onto the grate. But where the grate once had been was only air, and her foot fell through! She plummeted down through the gap, air escaping her lungs in a shrill scream. There was a cry out from above – Zelda! - but her instincts took control, and she thrashed her paraglider open just in time to slow her fall. Zelda landed on cold, hard stone, collapsing and rolling across it. Dizzied, she pulled herself up and to her knees, finding a panicked Link landing beside her.

The room they had found was dark, barely illuminated, the vast empty space broken up by shadows of organic looking forms.

Forms that, one by one, began to awaken, their bodies flashing blue and then orange, red beady eyes filling the space like stars. Guardians. A horde of hidden, living Guardians. Not possessed anymore - they had survived Ganon's fall, perhaps because they were sleeping, or hidden so well - and so in silence, they looked on at the benign pair who had landed in their domain.

Neither Link nor Zelda could move, and the only sounds they made were protracted breaths. At last, when they realised they were not in danger, Link spoke.

"This is what I'd call something else."

When the sliding doors of the Elders' House close, a great silence follows. I hear the snap, like a whip. It goes through us. What once was raucous chatting between two meeting parties is now silence. The Faronites even manage to sit still as well as quiet, waiting for one of our people to speak. Even so, the room is rank, the air full, pressed in close. The odours come in tiers of strength and repugnance. Burnt flesh is first; it permeates the barbarians that have come to meet us. Then blood, and sweat on their skin, and the filth no doubt beneath their tunics. Then, cured leather and the smoke that made it, the resin and dye used to paint their bodies, the faint mustiness of the lynel fur they wear. Many of them have rotten teeth, their breath smelling of rotting meat, fermented milk.

It's so different from blank way Kakariko usually smells to me. Outsiders complement how clear the air is here, and how much they like the earthy pines or the smell of straw at their feet. But I was born here, so it is little more than a baseline rather than an escape. This new landscape of odours, fragrances even, is somewhat...alluring.

After a few moments of the silence, Monk Koshia gathers his hands into his sleeves, clears his throat, and smiles. I feel the room ease. He's good at that. The Faronites watch his every action, waiting for hostility, but he never gives it. All Monks learn to keep their exterior as clear and inscrutable as possible. We are not the soulless servants the outsiders think us to be, but something more like vessels, like unused parchment to be filled only with the necessary candour. We cannot be questioned because we say nothing except the Goddess' praise.

Koshia speaks slowly and quietly, such that I sense our guests leaning forward. "Before we begin, I would like to pay my respects to our forebears and predecessors, of both the Sheikah and Faronite peoples. We are meeting on ancient land, to settle an ancient dispute and rekindle a partnership, and for this blessing, we give thanks to Hylia, and pay our respects to our elders both past, present and emerging."

As he speaks, I take stock of the room. The Faronites fill most of the room, sitting cross-legged on the floor. It seems like only their leaders, and perhaps some of their respected warriors are here. By their subtly different armour, I can see that multiple tribes are in attendance. The Zonai are closest to the front, the best armoured, then the Lurei, kitted out for warmer weather. The Thyphlo as well, hidden at the back, and then spotted among them are the Lomei, the nomads. There are others too that I cannot name, or cannot recall the names of. The Monks in attendance sit on the dais, and I am slotted in at the back. Lastly, the elders are seated along the back wall, framed by a huge tapestry depicting the map of our Kingdom. Normally, they lead all discussions about the future of our tribe, but in this case, that discussion has already taken place. By the Elders' decree, we will make peace with the Faronites, and unite to combat the looming threat of Ganon's return. Numerous such pacts have been made so far, and many peoples have committed to aiding the preparations for the fight.

It is the monks' duty to oversee then what form these preparations will take. Of course, not all of us attend this meeting. There are too many of us to name let alone fit into this small house, and so only the most senior are here. But my teacher, Ka'loh, snuck me in to observe. He wants me to see that a Monk's duty is both to Hylia and to the tribe and that this is the best way for it.

Koshi drones on. "As you know, the Seer has been given a prophecy of a coming calamity, which we know to be the return of Ganon. It has only been several hundred years since the previous awakening, and thankfully Hyrule was swiftly protected by our then Queen and Hero. In this present day, we are blessed with a skilled Princess, but we are yet to meet our Hero. We also do not know from where Ganon will arrive. Regardless, we need strong fighters, of which I'm sure the Faronites can provide."

An idea catches on my tongue, but I cannot speak. After all, I'm not even meant to be here. I whisper it to Ka'loh, who smiles and immediately stands. He bows quickly.

"Revered Koshia, if I may speak?"

Koshia ushers him on.

"Faronite structures fill our landscape, some thought to predate even Hyrule itself." He turned to the tribes. "We know of your prowess and skill in masonry, and with our new unified Hyrule, we could supply you with the materials needed. What if your peoples were to construct something; a fortress perhaps, to aid in the fight."

The Faronites are in immediate agreement, such that I did not even mind not being given any credit. As I scan the crowd a second time, a face catches my eye. A young man, wearing a red-fur headdress, whispering and grinning. The joy on his face, and the excitement. I am captivated by it. Such freedom.

He sees my staring eyes, and grins, and then winks! I look away, and empty my thoughts, my hands shaking in my lap.

I am a Monk, I tell myself. If not by choice then by destiny. I cannot want. I cannot need.

And then the moment passes.