Chapter 2: Fierce Deity

"WAIT!"

The urgent command made Link pop his eyes open to look at Zelda, who was sitting across the library table, looking very intently at him. The large history book they had been looking at sat open on the table between them, showing an artistic rendition of the Triforce in the Sacred Realm.

"What's going on?" she asked. "It's the second time you come back, and you looked like you were leaving right away again. Are you having trouble finding it? There's no need to jump around madly, we'll search the books a bit more to try and figure out where you need to go."

Link held back a chuckle. Considering they were partly the same person, Zelda was a surprising contrast to the Princess he had just met; that particular past life had been nothing but patience and sweetness, coupled with a regal look that somehow managed to combine beauty with strength of character. The present Zelda, on the other hand, was on the edge of her seat, bossing him around the second she had the chance – admittedly for his own good - and wasn't wearing her nicer clothes today, having opted for a more comfortable outfit since they had no scheduled public appearances; her garb, combined with her usual slightly harried look, made her look more battle-worn than regal.

"No, no, they have it," Link said in answer to her question. "I came back earlier to skip to the next day; it's taking them a while to decide where to hide it. They finally decided they're going to split it and hide it in three spots."

She scribbled down the information. "Where?" she asked without lifting her eyes.

"You promise you're not going to get mad?"

She looked up then, looking worried. "Mad?" she asked suspiciously. "Why would I get mad?"

"Well, I don't know about the other two yet, but right now, they want to send the Triforce of Courage to…err…" he trailed off, looking embarrassed.

"Where? Just spill, already. The way you're going on, you'd think they told you they were going to hide in Termina or something."

Link swallowed. "Heh. Good guess," he said, smiling nervously.

Zelda's eyes widened before narrowing in anger.

"Of all the waste of time…" she groaned. "Termina isn't REAL! It's a legend! Can you go back to the Hero of Time and get a written statement or something? Who knows where it will actually end up if they try sending it to Termina!"

"That's where I was going, but then you screamed at me to wait like there was some kind of emergency. And you know something? The Princess asked WAY nicer."

Zelda's eyes narrowed.

"I'm sure she did. Did she bat her beautiful royal eyelashes at you, too? And for your information, I only called out to you like that because I thought you were trying past lives at random and I wanted to save you the trouble! And I did NOT scream!"

Link quickly cast his spirit back in time again before Zelda could see him grinning at her jealousy.


During their first trip to the ruins of the Eastern Palace, Zelda and Link had been surprised by a vicious thunderstorm while they were in a section of Hyrule Plains best described as the middle of nowhere. The closest thing to shelter had been the occasional tree, and even Link knew better than to seek cover under an isolated tree in the middle of a thunderstorm. They had spent most of one day and one night being battered by pelting rain and wind strong enough to make them lose their balance.

What Link felt from the moment he arrived at his destination was hundreds of times worse. The library had been replaced by a Universe that was shaking and swirling madly around him, tossing him about like a rag doll. He had no anchor, not even the pull downward of the ground he'd had in Hyrule Field or the feel of his body, and panic gripped him in an instant. He felt utterly helpless, a mere toy about to be ripped apart, destroyed by something he could not even begin to understand.

He screamed, or thought he did: he couldn't be sure, he couldn't hear himself over the chaos surrounding him. He tried to backtrack, to go back to his own time, but his mind refused to cooperate and to concentrate on leaving, fixated instead on the fact that he was doomed: this was it, the time travel magic had finally done its thing and backfired. Despair washed over Link: he was never going to get out of whatever this was, he was never going to see Zelda again. He idly wondered how long she would wait for him to wake up, reflecting it never took him long and that therefore, she'd know something was wrong pretty quickly. He didn't know how she would react, he had no idea how she felt about him... maybe she'd be relieved to be rid of him. His heart broke at the thought as sights, sounds, smells, tastes and feelings rushed around him in an indescribable cacophony, tearing away mercilessly at his mind, jumbling his thoughts as though the chaos around him was a disease infecting his very soul.

Guilt overwhelmed him next, the all too familiar feeling tearing him apart as he realized that not only would Zelda now have to do everything by herself, he wouldn't be there for his long-time friends Kariko or Dekussay, either. He wouldn't even be able to keep his promise to Zelda's past self and confirm whether or not Termina was real, whether the Hero of Time had really stopped the moon from falling by going back in time over and over again to set everything right.

Something in Link's brains clicked into place at that last thought: he remembered the famed three days of Termina, the one part of the story that didn't change regardless of who was telling it. In the legends, the Hero didn't have enough time to stop the Moon from destroying the World, so he relived the same three days over and over again until he had done everything he needed to do. Link suddenly understood that his past life, to save the World, had made one big mess of the time around the events and that this mess was what he now found himself caught in. This impossible storm was due to his trying to go to a time within those three days, a time that had been forced to replay itself over and over again. Chances were he just had to aim for a point in time that was outside of those repeated days.

Link crossed his fingers and concentrated on finding his past self after he'd stopped the moon from falling. Almost instantly, the storm settled and the images, sounds and sensations that had been madly trashing around converged into a very big plain, upon which stood what Link could only assume was his past self – he looked like the adult Hero of Time, anyway… or at least like the Hero of Time with white hair, strange clothes, a deadly looking sword and a lot of freaky makeup.

The figure turned fully towards him and its pupil-less, glowing eyes widened.

"You're the future one," it said. Its voice was deeper than the Hero of Time's had been, and Link couldn't help but imagine the girls back home very literally swooning at the deep sounding, mystical looking, glowing Hero.

Link nodded, at a loss for words. The Hero looked him up and down.

"I think he would want me to help you," the Hero said. "The child that is me."

Link gulped, suddenly understanding why the Hero of Time was acting so strange: the mask had taken over, changing his mind as much as his body.

"Aren't you… going to give him back his body?" he asked with a shaky voice.

"Yes."

"When?"

"I feel it is better for me to meet you now than for him. Once you have gone, I expect I will have no more reason to be."

Link gulped again. All traces of jealousy towards his past self for the reaction girls might have to his current state were gone, replaced by a mix of fear and pity.

"I… I just wanted to check that Termina was real."

"He would ask why. Perhaps that is the reason it is better for me to talk to you: so he does not ask questions to which he should not know the answers. I will not ask; I care not what your motivations are. Termina, as you can plainly see, is real. Thanks to the child, it is now also safe."

"O… okay," Link said, his voice still trembling: the Mask was the embodiment of everything that was wrong with magic, and was well past creepy – it was downright terrifying. How the Hero of Time had ever recovered from being taken over by that thing, he'd never understand.

The Mask that was inhabiting the Hero of Time said nothing, merely looking at him, waiting.

"I'll… I'll go now," Link stuttered. "Thanks."

He gladly focused on his own time and opened his physical eyes to the reassuringly familiar sight of the library and of Zelda looking at him, waiting for him to come back.

"So?" she asked.

"It's real," Link said. He shuddered and wrapped his arms around himself. "The Hero had a mask on that turned him into this… thing. He glowed, and it wasn't him… but it was? I could still understand what he was saying, and he knew who I was."

"The Hero of Time was glowing?"

Much to Link's annoyance, Zelda automatically coloured a bit. The original Hero of Time had survived through the generations as what could best be described as a historical sex symbol. Link could attest first hand as to the reason for this: the guy had been, in all fairness, ridiculously good looking. Combining that with the mysteries that surrounded him, you had yourself a very enduring girl magnet.

"He looked scary," he specified. "White hair, weird makeup… and his voice was all freaky, too."

Zelda's cheek went back to their natural colour, but she rubbed her chin pensively.

"I think you saw the fierce deity mask," she mused. "It shows up in some versions of the story…" she trailed off for a moment. "I can't believe it's real!" she started again, her voice filled with awe. "Termina…! Did you ask him about the three days?"

"I didn't have to," Link replied, shuddering again at the memory. "It was like a really bad storm when I got there, but not like a rain storm... it was like everything was a storm. I figured out it was because of the three days, so I aimed for after them. It stopped right away and I was with that mask thing."

"We'll need to figure out how to get there so we'll know if Ganon's going that way, but it's not much good finding out how the Hero of Time did, the geography's changed way too much…" Zelda mused out loud, entirely missing out on the chance to show a bit of sympathy for what Link had been through.

"I should go report to the Princess," Link said drily.

Zelda nodded absently, already trying to decide which books might have information on how to find an entrance into Termina, and Link once again left his body to send his spirit into the distant past.

He came back to Zelda still thinking hard, and cleared his throat to attract her attention. She looked up at him or rather, she tilted her head so that her eyes were pointed in his direction and slowly brought them to focus in on him.

"I know where the other two are," he said. "I checked and everything. Don't freak out, okay?"

She raised her eyebrows.

"It can hardly be worse than Termina," she said with a snort.

Link squirmed in his chair a bit.

"Well, the Triforce of Wisdom is in Hyrule," he started. "They turned it into a decorative tile in the courtyard of Hyrule Castle."

Zelda noted down the information.

"I'm pretty sure the Castle was destroyed and rebuilt a few times since. There's no telling where that particular tile is… it may have been thrown out, yet…" she muttered. "Okay," she added as she looked at him again. "What about the Triforce of Power?"

"You remember I said I checked it out, right?"

Zelda frowned slightly, growing worried. "Please don't tell me it's in a Minish Village."

"Ah! You don't guess right ALL the time!" Link said, smiling nervously before becoming serious again. "They sent it in the Twilight Realm," he finished in one breath.

Zelda's eyes went wide. "You said you checked. Were you there?"

"N… no," Link answered. He had consciously avoided actually going into the Twilight, for reasons he felt should be obvious: namely, it was the TWILIGHT, also known as the realm of permanent night with a weird glow and strange creatures everywhere. "I talked to the Hero chosen by the Gods right after HE was there," he finished.

"Chosen by the Gods?" Zelda asked. "Not by the Goddesses? Wait, did he actually introduce himself like that?"

Link chuckled at the thought of his past self extending his arm to shake hands and saying "Hello, I'm Link, the Hero Chosen by the Gods."

"No," he said with a smirk, "that's just what the Princess called him when she was talking about the Twilight. I did ask him about the Goddesses, though; He knew them, but he said it was the Gods that helped him."

"Oooo-kay," Zelda said. "It doesn't matter anyway. So, had he been to the Twilight?"

Link nodded and became sombre again.

"Yeah, but he couldn't go there anymore. He said the portal was broken by the Twilight Princess… he looked pretty upset. I think they were friends."

Zelda's eyes widened again. "They're lovers in many versions of the legend," she pointed out.

"Do… do you think that's possible?" Link asked. "I kind of thought…" he trailed off without elaborating, his eyes lowering to the table.

Zelda felt her cheeks flush. She knew what Link had been about to say: many people honestly believed that the Hero and the Princess had been a couple in every last one of their incarnations. It was admittedly a charming notion: a love spanning the centuries and uniting to defeat evil… the only problem, and the reason Link had chosen not to elaborate, was that thanks to that belief, many people had been pushing the two of them together ever since Ganon had been defeated. At the same time, Zelda was constantly given completely unneeded sympathy from former higher class citizens, who felt sorry that she had to put up with the former lower class Link and felt the need to ask whether he could even read yet. Link had confided that he was getting similar comments, adapted of course to his having to put up with a supervisor, from fellow former lower class citizens.

All in all, they were both under a lot of pressure to get together and a good bit of counter pressure not to, and they hadn't been given any chance to make up their own mind, leading to a three year long standstill. Link had recently been giving subtle hints that he had feelings for her – this expression of incredulity at any of his past life having feelings for anyone who wasn't one of hers being just one more example – but Zelda couldn't bring herself to respond one way or another and Link seemed afraid to go any further than those barely-there indications, which made her think he was more trying to assess her own feelings than anything else.

She cleared her throat.

"Well, if there's no way in at all, that's actually excellent news," she said. "Ganon will not be able to get the Triforce back together again if he's missing a third of it."

"Right!" Link said, sounding hopeful.

"We can't really assume a new portal hasn't been created since or that Ganon can't create one himself, though," she added.

"Right," Link sighed. "How come nothing's ever easy?"

"Do you know where the pieces are in Termina and the Twilight Realm?" she asked, ignoring the rhetorical question as the aimless venting that it was.

He shook his head.

"They were going to send them there with magic, by using leftover energy from the Hero and Ganon… echoes of their souls or something like that." He let out an embarrassed chuckle. "I think. I didn't really understand that part. Anyway, the point is, they won't know where the pieces went. They disguised them, too, just like the one they're leaving in Hyrule. The Triforce of Courage has a spell on it that makes everyone believe it's a copy, and the Triforce of Power looks like a jewel."

"Okay, I think that's good for today," Zelda said after writing down what he had told her. She got up to stretch and smiled at him. "Thank you, Link. I don't know what I'd do without you."

Link's response was interrupted by the President erupting from behind a bookshelf, looking besides himself.

"There you two are! Oh Goddesses, what are you WEARING? Link! Brown? Really? Zelda, you look like a pauper! Go, go! Go get change! Luckily, I know you well enough, I brought you some proper clothes!"

At that, he produced two bags and, walking to the table, put them on it.

"Sir? We don't have any scheduled appearances today," Zelda remarked.

"I know, I know!" the President said. "He just came out of nowhere. His name's Lakei, he's from out East, he wants to set up some tours around the harder to reach areas. He mentioned diving in Lake Hylia, and spelunking in Death Mountain… that kind of stuff. Come on, he's waiting!"

Zelda and Link sighed. Playing nice to tourists and investors was basically their day job, and although it could hardly be called hard work, getting gawked at and asked all kinds of questions - the answers to which they usually had no way to know - all the while acting heroic and princess-like, respectively, had long since gotten old.

"Sir, we were going to go supervise the Eastern Temple site this afternoon," Zelda said, frowning.

"That can wait a day," the President said dismissively.

"We're booked solid tomorrow," Link reminded him. "Those schools in the morning, and we're doing tours of the castle in the afternoon."

"You are absolutely right," the President said. "Day after that, then."

Zelda opened her mouth to protest, but the President cut her off.

"Zelda, I'm sorry. I know you honestly think building the Wonders back is important…"

"It IS," Zelda snapped. "They are tests for the Hero as well as training grounds. We do NOT want another 5-year-old trapped in a bottle for centuries, now do we?"

Link coughed and shifted, obviously uncomfortable.

"Yes, alright," the President said. "But we NEED all the tourism money we can get, you know that: we can't continue to improve things around here without some funds. Nobody wants to buy our stockpiles of cheap swords and shields and we can barely grow enough food to feed ourselves; our only marketable resource is our history!"

Zelda rolled her eyes and Link snickered: the President made the very same mini-speech regularly, at the slightest prompting. The elected ruler of Hyrule gave them a weak glare and cleared his throat.

"The point is, I can appreciate that you're trying to look after the future, but we first need to look after the present. We need all the money people are willing to give us for the privilege of looking at us and at our various historical sites. You're a BIG part of the attraction, therefore you're needed."

Link and Zelda nodded, resigned, and got up, grabbing their respective bags to go change in the bathrooms. They came out a few minutes later, Link decked out in his green Hero outfit and Zelda in a princess-like gown, complete with ornamental tiara.


Author's Notes

I assure you, things are actually in motion for events that are even MORE thrilling than Link and Zelda doing research in a library. No, really!

Thank you for reading, and thank you for reviewing!