Chapter 3: The Blade That Stole Heaven


When they were young,

"Sister, sister! Look at these!"

"Yes, I see. Those are very ripe, aren't they?"

"They're pretty.~"

"Yes, they are."

And when they weren't quite so,

"Sister, you must eat…"

"I must fulfill my duty."

And when he had given up hope,

"Please, please, eat…"

"You know it will hardly help me now, Talib."

"Impa…"

And the tears flowed freely as he remembered it all again.


"Where are we going to get supplies for so many people?" Zelda moaned to herself the next morning.

Link had no idea, and they sat asking each other and thinking and vetoing and agonizing for three hours after dawn, until Groose walked up and loudly asked why they were making those faces and scared the shit out of them.

His reaction to the news was… about as well as to be expected.

"WHAT?!"

(Across the woods, a certain injured traitor nearly fell out of the tree he'd been sleeping in from the sudden noise. His shadow caster laughed at him because he was objectively terrible in every way.)

"Skyloft? But- but- it's our home! What can we do!?" He wailed, unfortunately unveiling every thought they'd tried to keep calm about throughout the night until then in order… "What about the loftwings? WHAT ABOUT THE LUMPY PUMPKIN!?"

… Okay, they hadn't actually thought of that one. But it was… fairly valid.

Nnn. "I have an idea." Link said, and got his sword before running off into the woods. Zelda and Groose stared after him in confusion, and they called, but he refused to come back or be followed.

That little fox had told them what was coming, so he should be able to tell them how to help it…


Catching a Keaton turned out to be something of a production.

First, Link had to find 'grasses that danced'… which the woods just weren't very willing to pony up. Second, he then had to cut those grasses down, or at least that's what his instincts demanded.

It took a lot of wandering and whacks with deku-nuts… and run-ins with exploding stickers…. Before he'd found some kind of success.


A few more days of crying beside Light – she's gone, she's completely gone now – and the ache had subsided enough, almost secretly, that he could begin to see ahead of himself again. Demise was vanquished, Ghirahim was gone. Demise was sealed and Ghirahim gone.

Impa was dead. The goddess and her champion had come home.

… what was he to do with himself?

He hardly knew, and neither did Light, but they clutched at each other like children and cried more and it was then that he thought, we should at least touch base with the others. After Sheik had gone to the ruined City to bring news of Impa's death, assuredly their longtime comrades deserved some acknowledging.

They hadn't seen them since Demise's first sealing, but with Ghirahim gone… well, they could go. And at least it gave them some sense of purpose, to be doing something.

As the sun was falling into the mountains that evening, Sheik and Light set out for the Doomed Court.


When Link returned to the temple, it was with news from the fox.

Today the infuriating little Keaton had wanted to know the color of switches inside temples, the number of dragon gods, and what Groose used to style his nice hair with. Link sighed and, somehow, answered its questions…

("How should I know? I bet you don't even know!")

And could finally ask Keaton one of his. "What can we do?"

And the little fox, well, it had an interesting answer… "A sheikah lies in these woods, masterless. Seek him out and enlist him to your cause."

So Link trusted the word of the foxy prophet, and went to seek out a sheikah anew. The only problem being… well. How did one find a sheikah?

After all… even super-persistent Ghirahim had trouble.

"Well… we could always look for him?" Groose suggested. Link sighed and nodded, slanting a glance at the dying-red sunset light leaking in the temple doors.

"Just… not now." Zelda added, waving them over for supper. Her eyes were red, and Link had heard her stifle a sob at sheikah. He could relate but… he felt strange crying. He barely knew Impa. So why had it hurt…?

Why did it hurt so much?

He went and sat by the fire, curled his head down between his knees, and bit back tears. Zelda and Groose pretended to see nothing. What would they say, when they did it every evening…?

Dinner tasted good, but he couldn't quite bring himself to appreciate it. Once his stomach was full, he helped put out the fire, then unrolled his bedroll and laid down to sleep.

Dreamless waves of blackness awaited.


The next day, he and Groose went out into the woods to start looking for supplies.

"Hey, I was thinking…"

Call the press. Link ducked under a low-hanging branch to get at some heart fruits.

"We have to ask the dragon to put Skyloft down but… does he just drop it? Or can he put it anywhere?"

… hm. Link looked up and gave Groose his full attention.

Reassured, Groose lifted a hand and continued his ramble. "Who's to say we can't put it somewhere around here, right? Like the goddess statue you dropped in the courtyard… and if the islands came from here, once, anyway…"

Link paused. There were great fissures in Faron's north woods. Could those be...?

"We need to talk to Levias. Help me get these plants, okay?"

"Sure. We should get some of the fruits in the trees, too."

"Those taste terrible…"

"But they're like pumpkins and they're big, right?" Groose nodded to himself. Link sighed.

"Do we have room in the basket for that?"

"No. We'll get some on a return trip. Hey, have you gone looking for the sheikah person yet?"

"I really don't know where to start, Groose." He put another heart fruit in the basket.

Groose made a face but, sadly, he'd met his idea quota for the morning. "We should get these back right? … it's getting really cold here. I wonder if it can snow."

Link nodded. "It'd be pretty to see." He thought aloud, then grimaced. Snow was pretty. But if it fell heavy, food would be much harder to find… and they'd be even further up a creek…

"Damnit." He grumbled, and went back to rifling for heart fruits in the leaves.


It ended up being almost a week until they had enough food to even consider looking for that sheikah, and when they did it was with no luck. The guy just… wasn't here. No fires, no footprints, no ashes. Not a trace he even existed.

Privately, Groose was starting to wonder if he existed at all and if the little fox was screwing with them. Then not so privately. "I mean, what is a fox, even?"

And Link could hardly blame him for that. He wasn't even sure that Keaton had meant a man, just suspected it since… well. That man in the temple when he'd returned… he was a sheikah. So it figured it would be him, right?

He was laying in his bedroll that night when he heard… something, a very soft something within the darkness of the night and temple. It was separate from Groose's snores or Zelda's sleepy mumbling, and it was far from him, and he found himself watching the ceiling. Something moved across the ceiling, and he stumbled for a candle with one hand and his blade with the other.

When he found one and lit it, all he saw was a cloak, fluttering in the rafters, alone. It looked like it had been hanging there for some time now, and he'd only noticed it because he heard its soft flutters when he couldn't quite fall to dreams…

His heart pounded in his ears. Is this why we can't find him?

He's been inside all this time?

He leapt to his feet and searched the temple, ignoring Zelda and Groose's cries of alarm. But try as he might, all he found was that cloak. The sheikah himself, if he had been there at all that night, was gone.


Long ago, the country was peaceful as a grave. True, monsters roamed free, but what could they do without hylians to torment? They lived, as they should, as peacefully as they could manage in the woods. The foxes barked and howled. The wolves and wolfos fought for territory, and the only place left with humans akin to the hylians who'd left the world was tucked away, across a desert and a sea, and sealed up in four great walls of stone and metal. It was a peaceful, industrious city, with great minds and beautiful art and a powerful devotion to their absent goddess, awaiting her return. This was the Great City of the sheikah, and this was where the seeds of the Thief's tale were planted. It was a happy life, one that would all too soon be torn asunder in the waves of a storm.

To say that the kingdom of sheikah and their perfect little world went below Demise's radar would be a filthy lie. Oh, Lord Demise was more than aware of their happy little bubble in the maelstrom of his destruction. He was more than aware of their dedication to his enemy, and their purpose to her plans.

And of course, he was more vicious than any when it came to checking unguarded pawns.

On a night where the islands above, and the perfect little moon, were blotted by stars, the feral Prince and his kingdom marched.

Inside of Hylia's perfect little world at long last, Demise followed the doctrines of War religiously. After all… why stab at the limb when you can cut it off at its root? With this attack, he would destroy the right hand of the goddess.

This would cripple his opponent's efforts once she returned… and it would hurt her spirit, perhaps more amusingly, the death of her angelic little guardsmen.

There was a child in the throne room. He had eyes full of hatred and fire.

Well, well… he wasn't aware that the royals had had any CHILDREN. Oh dear… well. He was a gentleman – he wasn't here for the boy. It was hardly kind to leave him here… alone though, wasn't it.

He was whispering something with fervent eyes locked on Demise.

"….. black tide."

The world was overcome with darkness.


When Demise had come about again, it was to a sharp, obnoxious clicking sound, something poking his leg in about the same vicinity, and the soft mumbles of a child trying not to break down sobbing. What he looked down to find was more than laughable – the child mage who'd cast arcane magic on him was trying to stab him in the leg with a priest's dagger. Him, the great Demise!

The dagger was scratching up his scales and missing anything vital, though it could be… unpleasant, if the child knew what he was doing with that knife. Thankfully, he did not – he was a child. Even the Sheikah weren't so savage as to teach children the arts of War – Demise would make them regret that. He laughed, low and deep, and reached down to pluck up the boy by his scruff.

The little thing mewled and flailed, clawing at the hand big enough to encase his whole body and crush it, if Demise so chose. He was dressed head to toe in gold. Bangles and earrings, a torq and other fine jewelry. He even had beads in his hair.

How… Pretty. A little prince, as he'd thought. The king and queen had left a son behind them. He was hardly of the mind to murder a child, though, so he'd have to find some use for it. The sound of claws clicking stone told him his little pet was returning.

Demise was hardly alone in his war on Hylia, though he was probably the only one motivated by entertainment rather than necessity. Many monsters and beasts, even the great dragons of lore (sans the accursed dragon gods who stood with her), held firm behind his legend. Why?

Because they upset Hylia's perfect world. They were branded evil and turned out to perish by her tiny, perfect hylians, and her tiny, perfect guards.

Demise would hardly turn away strong help. This was just a game to him and if he got the best pawns then so be it. He didn't care about their injustices… but he also didn't care what they were, so perhaps that was why they swore their loyalty.

The dragons in particular, he did rather favor, though. You could even call him their… patron deity, if he were to patronize any race, or claim to have created anything. And these, well, perhaps he could – after all, dragons were elegantly designed machines… weapons of death and war. They were also quite pleasing to the eye, with skin like obsidian glass and claws that could gut a deer with a flick. Their latest emissary had been a prostitute before coming to work in his fortress.

She had come along on this little excursion, as it were. Dragons were rather catlike. They would hunt for fun and profit, and they did so well. Fasalina, this time, had ever so kindly brought him a little mouse in her jaws, still mewling and squirming, crying for its mother.

Well. It seemed the royals had left two orphans behind.

Or rather, in the wake of the Sheikah capital burning, two more soldiers had been found.


Sheik dreamed of strange things the night of their return from the court. Light had stayed behind to offer some help to an injured comrade in the Court, but something in the forest called and Sheik had responded with a flight-like return to its haven.

The world was soft and humming in the twilight. He laid down to rest in the bough of a tree, and fell into a deep sleep…

Inside the world of dreams, he saw wondrous sights. Castles on the horizon, dragons fluttering through the sky freely. Rusalka singing their songs beside Zora and sirens who swept down from above as though they were truly harpies. The beautiful, elegant blade that his sister had guarded along with the goddess shining in the sunlight, when it all began to rot away.

The sunlight died. The sirens and rusalka morphed into ugly, jealous things, and the zora were left bleeding on the shore. Demise's booming laugh eclipsed everything as he choked out the goddess, Impa, everyone…

The hero stood against him and perished.

Light stood against him and perished.

Sheik stood alone in the forest and watched the world turn into nothing.


When Link awoke, it was hardly peaceably. Zelda's sharp scream dragged him out his nest with sword in hand.

"You! What are you doing? Get away from there!"

Mastersword. There was someone touching it- Link leaped up the dais and swung his makeshift blade to chase the intruder back, hissing.

It was the man from before, and he looked… frantic. "No, you must- let me see it-"

Link grabbed the blade and pulled it from the earth. Light filled the temple from its place in the stone, and the, darkness-

The sheikah let out an agonized wail, long and loud and full of sorrow – enough to make their bones crawl beneath the flesh.

The sense of evil passed Link's mind again, like whispers in the night from a monster.

One heartbeat, two heartbeats, three heartbeats-

The blackness condensed again, let light bloom in the temple except for one perfect spot of solid black, solemn as a funeral shroud. A shade of himself standing before Link, touching the sword the same as he'd been. The sheikah let out another garbled sob. Blue eyes met red.

TBC