In response to reviews: Freefan1412 - Wow! Thank you so much for reading and leaving comments. I'm glad to see that you're enjoying Delicious in Wilds so much! As for how I wrote eighty-four chapters in eighty-four days, once I get obsessed with an idea, I just feel compelled to write, and write, and write. Thank you so much for all of the reviews. I'll go through them one by one with brief responses.
Yes, most chapters (though not all) feature some sort of memory triggered by the scent of food, if Link has eaten the food or something similar to that food before. Smell is actually one of the most prominent memory-triggers for human, more so than visuals or hearing. Next time you study for an exam, trying chewing some flavoured/scented gum if you can while you study the material, and then (if possible) chew that same gum during the exam itself. You'll find it much easier to remember the content! As for the king, I'm personally not a fan of the way that ghosts are treated in the game. Since the king was immortal but also capable of physically interacting with the world, why didn't he try to take an axe to Calamity Ganon during the intervening one hundred years? etc. etc. So I decided to cut out the existence of the king as a ghost and focus in on Link herself.
Thank you so much for pointing out the little details. As a writer, it makes me very happy to see these sorts of specifics caught and pointed out, so thank you again. As for the Spirit Orbs, I did indeed make the shrines be a teaching tool, although sadly Link can't understand whatever language is spoken. Link is indeed naturally curious, which is what of what made Link such a fun protagonist to write. Honestly, I wish that the game had had less direction for the player, as figuring out how to activate the tower and the shrines myself would have been a lot of fun.
You'll find out who lived in the cabin and what some of the other letters say in later chapters! And yes, the language does come up. Imagine someone from 1917 suddenly transported to 2017! Though much of the language remains the same, there would be a lot that isn't known. It's easier for Link since technology hasn't advanced as much (due to the destruction caused by the Great Calamity), but it's still a century of language evolution.
Link being a glutton is canon, after all. It's the very thing that made me write this fic in the first place. And yes, Link finding out that she is that Link kickstarts her character development, which will be slowly touched on over the next many, many chapters.
Link will indeed find out more about Zelda. As for when Link remembers Zelda's name, that might surprise you. Impa is being careful not to tell Link too much out of fear that Link will run away and not fulfil her "destiny" as the hero, but yes, heroes aren't made in one day. She'll get there eventually.
And thank you about the flash of memories! The memories become longer over time as Link starts to remember more and more about her past, but for now they're just snatches. I really did want to focus in on Link's past and history before she became the hero.
Yeah, the fact that nearly everyone she knew could be dead (with the exemption of long-lived individuals like Impa) is terrifying. It's understandable that Link would have difficulty coming to grips with this even if the evidence is staring at her in the face. And yes, Link will eventually find out what happened during the Great Calamity, but for now it's something that she simply doesn't understand. As for Purah, she's is going to stay an adult in the story, for a few reasons. One: she's a minor character in this fic who only comes up a few times. Two: I explain the "Shrine of Resurrection" and so forth in a different way than they're explained in the game, and I couldn't figure out a satisfactory way to explain the age regression beam. Three: I personally find crotchety old women funnier than snarky little g irls.
The sages aren't necessarily old. They're more or less just local religious leaders, like a local church minister or synagogue rabbi, and most major towns have their own sages or other religious leaders. They're also, as you can see, the arbiters of justice (at least in Hateno). As for the Sage of Hylia that the historian mentioned...indeed, I wonder how stories can change over change!
To all readers: Please be advised that this chapter features a rather gory fight scene. If you wish to skip it, it begins at the paragraph starting with "She breaks a branch over her knee" and ends at the paragraph starting with "Link remains in her stance."
Chapter Nine: Fireproof Elixir
The northwestern path takes her in the direction of Kakariko. She takes her time, now, unburdened from the sensitivity of time. Link veers from the road in the Ginner Woods in pursuit of an apple tree. The crunch of a fresh apple, the first bite that sprays juice over her mouth, never fails to bring a smile.
She bathes in Nirvata Lake. Scooping sand from the bottom of the lake she scrubs herself down. For the first time since she awoke in the blue chamber, she has a moment to regard herself. Scars criss-cross her abdomen in raised ridges that she traces with her fingers. Some long and thin that curve through her flesh like a road; others, patches of bumpy skin in mottled red and violet like points of interest on a map. She carries someone else's lifetime on her skin. A spirit taking shelter in an abandoned shrine that bears yet the marks and burden of its previous deity. Like the monkey from the fable who, upon stealing the clothes of the Knight, struts about in his image until the moment the Calamitous One awakens.
She wears someone else's skin.
When she swims to the edge of the lake, she hears a peculiar chirping by the shore. A band of hunched-over lizard-like beasts her own size have gotten into her things. One wears her shirt on its tail; another uses her trousers as a wind net; a third has pulled her undergarments over the horn on its face. The light armour over their green hides, and the slight violet tinge to their eyes, reveals them of the same maliced monstrous breed as the bokoblins.
Suddenly the monkey of the fable has grown scales.
Engaging the lizard-beasts in the nude without even her sword—which the shirt-wearing lizard swings about, bumping it into every rock on the shore—seems like a death wish waiting to happen. If she sneaks away now, whistles for Ilia, and regroups, she stands a better chance.
Then she notices the fourth lizard-beast rooting through her satchel. It lifts its head to reveal a mouthful of dried and roasted sunshrooms in its open maw. Its jaws snap shut. Link watches the lizard swallow, run its long tongue over its teeth, and then dive into the satchel for more.
She breaks a branch over her knee. Scaling a nearby tree, she crouches in its boughs, startling a squirrel that scurries down the trunk. Link eyes the shirt-lizard using her blade as a stick with which to poke the soil. She inhales. She springs.
The thick of the branch crashes down upon the shirt-lizard-beast's head. It twitters, stumbling for a few steps, and then flops backwards while she whips the sword from its limp talons. Laughing to herself, Link twirls the sword in her hand; abruptly her palm feels empty and damp.
The lizard wearing her undergarments as a mask has wrapped its tongue around the hilt of the sword. It retracts its tongue and succeeds in smacking the flat of the blade against its companion digging through the satchel. The food-thief-lizard chirps at the undergarments-lizard. Ignoring Link entirely, the two engage in a slap fight, whipping one another with their tails.
Link rolls forward to grab her satchel from under the food-thief. With her most vital possession back in place, she glances over the campsite. Ilia, nowhere to be seen, presumably ran away at the sound of danger. The fourth lizard, holding her trousers, squawks at her presence while she twists around the squabbling lizards to try to wrest her sword from the undergarments-lizard still wielding the blade with its tongue.
She closes her fingers around the blade and pulls. The sudden pain in her palm from the undergarments-lizard's twitched motion of the tongue forces back her arm and brings her to drop the branch. The trousers-lizard spits a glob of saliva towards her. Ducking behind the undergarments-lizard nibbling on her sword, Link cracks her elbow down on the lizard's spine. It coughs up the sword. While she dives to catch it, she feels something curl around her ankle. Trousers-lizard snags her leg with its tongue and knocks her to the ground. Link twists around. Something thin and green slices towards her from the right. She barely has time to lift her sword. Warm blood sprays her face as the food-thief-lizard cuts off its own tail on her blade. The still-wriggling severed tip of tail slams into her face. The scales drag across her skin. A bolt of pain cracks diagonally across her back. Eyes stinging from the blood trickling down in rivulets from her scratched brow, Link grips the slimy tongue around her ankle with her right hand and drives her blade in with her left.
The food-thief-lizard shrieks. Another bolt of pain criss-crosses her back.
Link scrambles to her feet. Wiping the blood from her face with her right arm, she spins around to face the three lizards that remain. The food-thief-lizard kneels on the ground spitting blood from its ruined mouth. The second lizard struggles to rip Link's undergarments from its head. The trousers-lizard picks up the heavy branch. It lunges at her, talons outstretched.
She flips backwards, allows the trousers-lizard's momentum to carry it forward into tripping, and brings the blade down on the back of its neck just under the lower edge of its helmet. The blade sinks into its flesh. It spears through the trousers-lizard's throat. The lizard-beast's body writhes around the sword.
Link pulls back to rip the blade from its body in an upwards arc.
The blade snaps off inside of the trousers-lizard. The impact thunders through Link's arm to send her flying backwards. Landing with her rear end on a hard rock, Link stares at the unevenly broken stump of metal that remains, twisted and warped around the edges. She crouches down to snag the branch from the trousers-lizard's hand. She readies a swing. The other two lizards hiss at her. She observes them: leaping side to side. Movements erratic. Limbs telescoping back and forth.
The undergarments-lizard rears back its head to spit saliva at her. She dodges to the left only to notice the food-thief-lizard rushing her. The branch rises on its arc to ram into the food-thief-lizard's abdomen. It flies backwards. Link steps forward. The undergarments-lizard attempts to spit at her again, but she sidesteps the projectile and cracks the branch across its head.
Too slow.
The undergarments-lizard ducks. Its jaws open wide around her arm. She reels her hand in but all too late; although she pulls her arm in enough for the undergarments-lizard not to bite off her limb entirely, its teeth tear through her flesh. She punches it in the eye with her weaker right hand. A second later the agony of the bite burns through her muscles. Her left hand spasms. She controls herself enough to flex her wrist and smash the branch into the undergarments-lizard's face.
Pushing her elbow into its already bleeding eye, Link drops onto its body. Her weight knocks the undergarments-lizard to the ground. Its teeth loosen from her skin as she grinds the point of her elbow into its throat and lower jaw. She springs backwards. The skin of her arm has broken; several thick holes reveal her red muscle to the open air, throbbing in pain.
Yet the wound does not reach her bone.
She lets her left arm dangle limply at her side. Wet heat spreads from the epicentre of agony. Blinking tears from her eyes, Link stands to thrust her bare foot into the undergarments-lizard-beast's throat. She brings the branch down on the lizard-beast's face with her right hand again and again, grinds in her foot, until it gurgles wetly and she can no longer feel its breaths.
Clutching its stomach, the final lizard—the food thief—lifts its head up to her as Link raises the bloodied branch, the wood oozing with some clear fluid from its former companion's head. It chirrups at her, flicks out the bloodied leftovers of its tongue, turns tail and vanishes into the brush.
Link remains in her stance for another few moments. She pants. The flame-sharp rush of the fight licks up her chest and dries out her mouth. Her arm pulsates. She stumbles forward and drops to her knees on the ground. A convulsion worms up her spine. With her right fingers she grips her left upper arm.
She forces herself to collect her clothing and sling them over her right shoulder. Weakly she whistles.
Ilia comes racing towards her. Her nostrils flare. She whinnies: at the sight or smell of blood, or the corpses of the lizard-beasts, or at Link's own bedraggled body. Link coos soothingly until the horse nears her, neighing softly. She drags herself onto Ilia's back. With her free right hand, she directs Ilia down towards the lake.
She cleans her clothes first, scrubbing blood and lizard-beast saliva off the fabric as much as she can manage. The warm afternoon sun keeps away the chill when she tugs the wet clothing over her body. Then, gritting her teeth, she sinks her arm into the water.
The wounds sting so deeply that for a half second she can see a mirage of the lizard-beast's fangs breaking her flesh once more. She cleanses her arm in the water. She wraps her tunic around the bite marks and ties off the ends, not too tightly.
Herbs. Medicinal herbs. Even if their names have drifted from her knowledge, she can envision their petals and leaves. On Ilia's back, she returns to the campsite to regain her strength with the remaining roasted sunshrooms. The grove flanking the lake of the shore yields little in the way of medicinal plants, but she works with what she can gather. Chewing the leaves and roots up in her mouth, the bitterness dredging bile to set her inner throat aflame, she spreads the salve into the bites.
The pain splotches black at the corners of her vision. She removes her cloak and slips on the tunic. The cloak serves as substitute gauze for now.
At the next town, she'll need to stock up on medical supplies, trading with the rupees that she does not have.
Rupees.
Trading.
Monster parts.
The words flash into her fingers with such speed that she performs the gestures automatically. The red-eyed merchant at the trading post in Hateno who, somehow guessing she was a traveller, had advised that she take up hunting monsters for their coveted horns, their scales, their tails.
She takes her hunting knife to the lizard-beasts. She washes out the parts that she harvests and folds them up in her paraglider, which she closes. No matter how much she scrubs or how carefully she packs the horns and talons into the paraglider, the stink of monster blood radiates from her.
Link dries her eyes. She could return to Hateno, but instead she pushes forward. She passes villages in the distance that spot the mountains, but she cannot climb up the hillsides with Ilia.
She hikes the Peak of Awakening, skirting the actual mountain peak for the sake of Ilia, who shies from the increasingly steep cliffs. Even if she wanted to, she could not make the climb. She rinses her left arm whenever possible and reapplies the makeshift salve. No infection sets in, and ever so slowly the wounds close in on themselves.
Crossing the reservoir between the Lanayru Bluffs and the Phalian Highlands, Link observes—and with the red telescope, confirms—a tunnel winding under the waterfall. She opens up her paraglider and, taking a branch from a nearby tree, set in a wooden support to force the paraglider to stay open.
She leaves Ilia on dry land to investigate.
Her left arm aches. The tendons bunch and spring. She can feel the wounds stretching and re-opening from the strain, and so she drops down instead, holding the paraglider by the middle. The wooden strut holds as she drifts towards the tunnel. She passes into the waterfall.
The wooden support snaps under the pressure.
The paraglider closes.
She falls like a rock onto the jutting platform of the tunnel. Twisting through the air, she smacks her right side on the hard stone. Her wrist creaks audibly in pain. The right half of her face, having kissed rock, stings. Link sits up and takes stock of her body.
At least she landed in one piece.
Link ties the paraglider to her back. She follows the tunnel down into the darkness. The dampness of the cavern ceiling drips moisture onto her shoulders, her head, her arms. Her boots slosh in the thin layer of water. Here and there her foot slides on a patch of moss.
The tunnel curves upwards and to the left. An orange gleam light her path. A shrine.
To her relief the puzzle of the shrine takes little effort to solve, and she works at it one-handed. This time when she touches the cubic curtain of blue light at the end of the shrine, her left arm tingles. The skin near the wounds begins to itch, then burn. She jerks her hand away from the blue light but the sensation continues, as though a million tiny needles had burrowed beneath her skin and begun to crawl towards one another.
Link steps backwards. Her foot expects another step to the stairs, but instead she feels empty air. Gravity takes her down. She clutches her arm to her chest. Frantically she claws off the cloak to stare at the horrors unfolding on her bare skin.
Her flesh puckers visibly inwards towards the holes where the lizard-beast bit through her arm in furrows that mark where her skin has stretched. The bites themselves have capped with angry red-brown scars that radiate thin lines, starring her flesh with the memory of the agony. She counts the starry scars on the left and right sides of her arm in arcs of ten apiece.
The burning diminishes and then halts. The voice of the shrine takes on a different tone, and she looks up at the glittering shards of blue that have broken from the curtain.
The shrine must have healed her.
"Thank you," she signs to no one in particular. She runs her fingers over her arm, to feel the texture of the irregular bumps, like inverse craters over her flesh.
Her own scars, that speak of her own experiences, that tell of her own survival, that affirm her own existence. Not the scars of someone else's body whose skin she has stolen.
Her own.
And she has the lizard-beast to thank.
Link breaks out into laughter. She rocks back and forth on the floor of the shrine. The sides of her mouth ache; her stomach hurts; and she thanks the lizard-beast over and over until her arms weary.
She emerges from the shrine, from the tunnel, from under the waterfall. Climbing up the slick walls on the other side of the falls leads to her slipping downwards more than once, but she accompanies every fall with a laugh. She perseveres. When she passes beneath the waterfall, she tilts her head back to drink of the fresh water flowing over the cliffside. The clean water washes the sweat from her body and the salt from her face. Her hair and the fabric of her clothes stick to her frame.
Soon she has hooked her arm over the top of the fall once again. She pulls herself up into the grass. Link draws her face near the earth and smells the scent of life.
Ilia cycles more readily through her gaits now, walking to trotting to cantering to galloping and back again with the slightest touch. Link directs her left and right with a tuft of her mane. She could fashion a brindle for her horse herself if she has not the rupees to buy one. Then again, a mishandled brindle could cause her horse pain and grief.
Link continues on the western border of the Lanayru Promenade. She picks bananas and durians from the trees that sprout here and there, though she gives up on the durians after her first effort at eating them without prior preparation. The bananas, however, she can eat one-handed, flipping up her chin to thrust the banana further into her mouth for the next bite.
When she approaches the forest outside of Kakariko and the mystery of the depressed platform on the hill, she takes time to prepare for the road ahead. She fletches arrows from wood; the dove she catches for supper supplies the feathers.
The arrows she carves do not fly as far or as straight as the arrows taken from the Great Plateau. She could make the trip to Kakariko to stock up; with Link's reputation as the hero, the shopkeep of the Curious Quiver—Rola, as Cottla and Koko called her—would give her as many as she asked entirely for free.
For that reason alone, Link busies herself making her own arrows.
She wraps the Great Plateau arrows with a strip of fabric torn from her cloak. She tucks them deeper into the quiver for a spare stash of true-flying arrows. Her misshapen arrows will work well for now.
She moves to the northeast, then follows the road west around Quatta's Shelf. She stops by a fishing village inhabited mostly by sheikah and zora, where she attempts to trade in the lizard-beast—lizalfos, the zora at the counter calls the beasts—parts for rupees.
The zora's head-tail swishes about. He chastises her for bringing in such sloppily prepared horns and talons and attempting to trade a severed tail too short to bring much use. When she ducks her head and admits her ignorance, he softens.
She leaves the village with three boons: first, the knowledge of how to better select, prepare, and preserve the parts of monsters; second, a new wooden strut for her paraglider that she carves by hand; and third, a belly full of hylian bass.
As she passes the Rabia Plain the sound of an accordion reaches her, but when she turns in direction the music, the song of the accordion fades. Link marks the spot on her map and continues her journey north, and north, and north.
The Lanayru Wetlands bring with them their own share of woes. Insects buzz around her at alarming densities. She awakens in the middle of the night to bitemarks welting up her arms. For want of a sword. she accepts a rusted halberd sticking up from the half-sunk ruins of the islands near the Millennio Sandbar, the name gleaned from a passing rock-being in a wooden boat who stands a full metre away from the water's edge at all times. The rock-being helps her record the names of local landmarks in exchange for half of her flint pouch. She shares her bananas with the rock-being, but he merely rumbles out a chuckle and offers her a fancy supper of inedible rocks.
The orange glow of a shrine brings her to wade through the waters toward a rocky outcropping called—she checks her map—Shrine Island, appropriately enough. A blue-scaled zora sunbathing on the warm rocks on the island shore dives into the water at her approach. She lunges towards Link, who starts to sprint in the other direction, gripping the halberd tightly in both hands. The zora catches up to her.
"A hylian!" the zora yells. "Finally! I was starting to think my fins would fall off!" Link stares at her, her fingers easing off of the handle of the halberd. The zora arranges herself in the shallows and explains herself: the Prince Zora of the Lanayrish capital of Ruto has sent zora to recruit a strong hylian adventurer to come to the aid of the Lanayrish, for a mysterious mission she cannot disclose, but which threatens the whole of zorakind.
Link pries the zora's webbed hands off of her wrists. Smiling apologetically, Link backs away one step at a time. "You must be looking for a hero. I can't be that."
The zora pouts at her but swims away. Link watches her jump up from the surface of the lake, her body glittering with droplets of water, and then dive back in.
She approaches the shrine on Shrine Island. The challenge involves using the magnesis rune—she grins at herself for remembering Purah's name for it—to scoop orange balls from pools of water. She finishes easily enough; as she works, she wonders at the strangeness of these puzzles; at the strangeness of these shrines ten thousand years ago that toy with her and make her physically put herself through tasks of the mind; at the strangeness of the voices and the instructions that she does not know. Whoever made the shrines must have built them for a reason. Yet she cannot see how playing a game of fetch with a piece of metal would assist anyone, hero or no.
Then again, perhaps not comprehending the shrines marks her as not the hero and frees her from such a burden. She pats the shrine in gratitude.
Her journey continues northward through a series of isles. Goponga Island hosts ruins, while Linebeck Island boasts the waterfront of New Goponga, not on the isle but around the isle, the houses floating on great wooden rafts. On Kincean Island, Link observes the reason for the rafts' existence: a giant rotund being, like an overinflated balloon, that she mistakes at first for a tent or a decoration prior to noticing the giant monster breathing. When it rampages, the villagers cast off the shore to float safely in the deeper waters the monster cannot reach. Link takes the villagers' wisdom to heart and goes around the island, for Ilia's safety as well as her own.
Link dispatches a crowd of three lizalfos on her path to Mercay Island. She preserves their body parts somewhat properly this time. At the very least, she manages to confirm the still-twitching movements of the tail of the bluish-purple lizalfos who seemed to serve as the squad's leader. She takes the forked boomerang that the blue lizalfos wielded and the bony shield. The afternoon sees her practising aiming, throwing, and catching the boomerang repeatedly until she can wield the weapon with confidence.
She rivets her gaze on the orange-tinted golden spire at the peak of elevated rock. Leaving Ilia at Boné Pond in a lush grassland, Link sneaks her way past the camps of bokoblins and lizalfos that infest the base. To her amusement, she catches them fighting amongst themselves at times, over fish or fruit. Link can understand the motivations for such quarreling. She hides behind a crate of arrows—which rapidly fill up her quiver—and uses the forked boomerang to bonk one of the blue bokoblins on the head. Squealing loudly, the bokoblin wheels about, its clawed fists up. It seizes the nearest lizalfos and suplexes the green monster over its head into the water. The lizalfos tongues the bokoblin's snout in response. The bokoblin throws a left cross at its supposed ally's mouth, and suddenly the two wrestle one another in the mud. Another bokoblin joins in to pull on the lizalfos's tail. The commotion draws the attention of other bokoblins and lizalfos who leap into the fray for apparently no reason but their own bloodlust.
Link covers her mouth with her hand to keep her laughter in as she sneaks from crate to crate towards the tower. She watches one bokoblin grab a flammable barrel. The lizalfos shriek at it, but the bokoblin rears and slams the barrel on the head of the nearest monster: a napping red-skinned bokoblin. The resulting explosion sets half the camp aflame.
She ascends the tower. She places the slate into the empty rectangle on the pedestal. As she waits for the black crystal to distill a droplet, she sketches the land to the east on her map, a view of glittering blue-black stone cascading like ripples frozen in time, and farther beyond that, a ridge of mountains snowed at their caps.
To the north the volcano—the pulsating forge of Hyrule—takes up the skyline. It belches smoke into the heavens. Death Mountain.
The slate buzzes to catch her attention. She slides the slate back into the pouch at her right hip. Her hands hold the paraglider tightly as she kicks herself off of the rim of the tower. Below her, bokoblins and lizalfos panic. Some ready their bows, yet she glides too far above them for their arrows to reach.
Link lets go of the right support to waves at them. The paraglider nearly rips from her hand as the wind knocks up the right side of the paraglider. The earth rushes to meet her. She scrambles for the wooden support again. Her right fingers barely reach the strut, and she breaks her fall just before crashing into the ground.
No longer high above the bokoblins and lizalfos, she breaks into a sprint, whistling the entire way down. The monsters give chase. She rips the lizal shield from her back. Throwing the shield down to the ground and wedging the toes of her boots into the handguard, Link attempts to surf down the rocky path. She can hear the shield disintegrating under her feet. She whistles, whistles, whistles until her throat scorches and Ilia's neighs reach her ears.
She twists her body up to maintain speed as the path curves skyward. The shield launches her into the air. Ilia gallops towards her. Before the peak of her rise, she frees her left boot from the handguard and swings down her leg.
Bracing herself for impact, Link lands astride on Ilia's back. The sharp pain of contact thunders up her skull. An arrow cleaves the air by her right ear. She squeezes in her thighs as hard as she can. Ilia rears. When the horse's hooves crash down to the dirt, Link speeds her forward.
They leave the monsters and the tower far, far behind.
Ilia and Link cross the river. A travelling rito hawking rare insects informs her that she walks the Tierno Trail. A group of gerudo and rock-being jewel traders coming down from the mountains share a meal of hot curried rice with her, courtesy of the special goron spice on which they have loaded up. The rice steams her body and reddens her face. Goron spice. The rock-beings. She remembers: not rock-beings, but gorons. Thanking them profusely, she tries to pay them back in monster parts, but the red-haired woman in charge of the group shakes her head.
"A pleasure, instead, to hear of your travels," the woman says in a lilting tongue Link recognises as Eldic. The jewel trader concludes every sentence in the phrase goro; Link recalls what Symin told her, of goro indicating the end of each phrase.
Peppering her speech with goro, Link regales the jewel traders with a story of her tricking the monsters into fighting one another. They share a hearty laugh to accompany the hearty meal. She asks about the monsters, about the violet violence in their eyes, about how they continued to pursue her with ruined mouths and ruined limbs as though unafraid of death.
One of the gorons grunts. Despite the silliness of their actions, he growls in explanation, the monsters pose a threat to people over the land once known as Hyrule, for their tendencies towards destruction and chaos, for their hate that brings them to attack on sight, for the malice that courses through their bodies, their forms animated by magic rather than flesh and blood alone. While the monsters murder one another in cold blood, the same lust for violence chases them towards villages, and they replenish their numbers at such rates that more always rise on the horizon.
The woman in charge of the group nudges him. "You can kvetch down the road. For now let's commemorate another sunrise we've gotten to see."
At the fork in the road, Link bypasses a village that better resembles a fortress. She has had enough of guards and proving herself.
The path grows steeper as she ascends into the mountains, and the air hotter. She removes her undershirt to ride in the sleeveless tunic. Plucking broad leaves from the trees that line the trail, Link fashions herself a fan.
Faint strains of an accordion carry over the mountainside. The sound murmurs an eerie familiarity, caressing her ears with the promise of mists forgotten. Link presses gently on Ilia's sides to quicken her. Over the next hill, the village at the base of Hyrule's spine comes into view. She examines her map: the foothill town of Medigo. The stone buildings give the village an appearance of a pile of pebbles organised by a child playing house. As she approaches Medigo, the carve of individual houses and flowers painting the ground breathe the village into life.
Her gaze settles first on the bulky orange-brown rock-beings that she recognises now as gorons. Other denizens of the village look more familiar: a smaller quantity of sheikah and hylians of varying tones of skin, and many zora bathing in the warm waters of the lake below. She faces no guards on her entrance. If she cranes her neck up, she can observe a goron at the top of a stone guard-tower.
The sound of the accordion pulls her onwards.
A blue- and gold-feathered rito stands in the village square with a sky-coloured sash around his chest. The fountain behind him sprays a fine mist to the air; the rainbows glittering in the droplets pale in comparison to the colourful green-blue-red-feathered adornment the rito bears on the side of his head. The accordion in his hands seems to move of its own accord. The bellows rise and fall. The tones mingle from clear to resonant as the rito, his eyes closed, gradually shifts his hands along the manuals. Passersby toss rupees into the open instrument case by the rito's feet.
Link pats her pockets, but no rupees have spontaneously generated while she looked the other way. She rummages through her satchel, seizes the pouch of candied acorns from Hateno, and drops that into the accordion case. The noise of the nuts tumbling into the case seems to rouse the rito, or perhaps by coincidence he opens his amber-green eyes.
"Greetings, traveller." The rito's rich baritone soothes her exhaustion with the euphony of his voice alone. He speaks with an unplaceable accent that tilts the corners of his words just so, as though his song could rise into the clouds at any moment, as though the rito could take to the heavens without a single look back. "Would you care for a song, passed down by generations in this land?"
Link dips her head in acceptance.
"Excellent. I apologise for any mistranslations on my part; all errors are mine own. The Ballad of the Sealing War has passed through the mouths and memories of nearly every people in the old kingdom of our Hyrule. You hear, now, a reconstructed verse thought to closely resemble the original, translated from Old Hyrulean, to Faronese, to Tabanch, to Eldic. Without further ado..."
He lifts his right wing from the accordion. The singer regards the skies with a gaze so heavy that Link expects the clouds to fall. He hums a low, low note that vibrates visibly in his chest. Singing up the octave, he raises his hand in tandem until he holds the highest tone, feathers outstretched. His voice thrums to harmonise with the very air. Even the passersby still their course to listen.
He sings:
"O Din, grant me Your Power, truths I seek.
"O Nayru, may Your Wisdom freely ring;
"O Farore, Your Courage lets me speak;
"O Erito, lend me Your Voice to sing!"
The final note dies down. The singer bows his head as his wings return to the manuals.
The melody lifts her from her feet. Once more the bellows rise and fall with the whisper of the wind, the song of the heart. Humming with the melody, the singer waits, and waits, and then lends his voice to that of his instrument until both sing as one.
"O Our Hyrule, O Kingdom blessed by Three,
"the Golden Light of Earth, of Sky, of Sea,
"the shadowed Malice chokes Your sacred lands,
"so ravaged by Calamity's dark hands.
"Yet Hope survives: the Princess and her Knight,
"two souls of Courage sent by skyward light.
"whose Goddess-blesséd blood and sacred sword
"repel the vile Malice and its horde.
"I sing of Wisdom's song and Power's blade.
"O Goddess, may their Story never fade!
"For Heroes ours, I sing that you may know,
"the Sealing War, ten thousand years ago.
"O Our Hyrule, O Kingdom blessed by Three,
"long lived in peace and in prosperity,
"yet Seven knew that Malice would arise,
"and so prepared for War against Demise.
"The Seven raised an animated force
"to aid our Heroes on their destined course.
"To match the monsters spun of Maliced spawn,
"they forged an army of automaton
"and built behemoths four whose hearts did shine
"with holy power, named the Beasts Divine.
"To guide each Beast, a Champion pledged his life
"to guard the Kingdom through this darkest strife.
"The Princess with her Knight and Champions four
"awaited fate's predestined Sealing War.
"When Malice struck, its hate eclipsed the sun,
"yet bright with Hope, Hyrule stood strong as one.
"The Guardians turned back the monstrous blight,
"as Beasts Divine unleashed their holy light.
"Though Malice gnashed its jaws of sable rage,
"Hyrule's own heart became its curséd cage.
"With sacred sword, the Knight struck towards the skies.
"With blesséd blood, the Princess sealed Demise.
"For Heroes now I sang, that you may know,
"the Sealing War, ten thousand years ago.
"O Golden Light of Earth, of Sky, of Sea.
"O Our Hyrule, O Kingdom blessed by Three."
The accordion and the singer resonate together on the final tone. The crowd that has gathered around the singer bursts into applause. The singer bows. While the audience disperses, he offers Link a warm smile.
"Thank you ever so much for listening, traveller. Well met." Kass dips his head. "I am Kass, travelling minstrel. I collect songs and stories from the old kingdom of our Hyrule over, so that they may be remembered when all who know them have passed. Even if Hyrule no longer survives, its memories live on in song" Link thanks him, to which he responds with another smile. "If you should care to hear another song, seek me out, traveller. I hope that we will once more cross paths along the road." He rests his hands upon the manuals once more. "Take care, and may the light illuminate your path."
The waves of the crowd sweep Link away from the minstrel. She allows the passersby to carry her forward through the large town. Shops on street corners advertise every kind of product she could think of and many more that she could never. The words, the bright signs, the merchants yelling of their wares, the excited shoppers bartering back just as loudly—
Link uses Ilia's bulk to carve herself a path out of the throng. Her heart has grabbed her ribcage and started to shake as though attempting to free itself of a prison. The blood roars in her ears.
She closes her eyes the instant she extracts herself from the crowd. She breathes.
She trots Ilia to the stable at the edge of Medigo. A woven horsehead with great painted discs for eyes makes the building stand apart from the rest of the town. Link lets her loose to munch on the grass outside while she rests her legs in the shade of a weathered tree.
With the sun dipping down in the horizon, she begins to consider what to have for supper. She makes a grasswhistle in the meantime. Its tinny sound brings a smile to her face as she fails to produce any meaningful music.
"Ho there. I don't suppose you're planning to take your horse to Death Mountain."
The grasswhistle fizzles out with a noise like a deflating balloon. Link spits the blade of grass from her mouth and sits up to stare blankly at the woman who stands over her with crossed arms. She wears the white-hatted uniform of the stable workers, her pointed ears lifting up the sides.
"I also see that you have neither registered your horse nor gotten her fitted for a saddle."
"Can I register here?"
"Sure. It's only twenty rupees, you know."
"Ah," Link responds, "that's why I haven't registered, then."
The woman arches an eyebrow. Link explains her lack of rupees, and the woman—Gaile, she says; Gaile of Medigo—suggests that they also deal in monster parts, jewels, and alcoholic milk if necessary.
"Alcoholic milk...?" she echoes.
Gaile shakes her head. "Never you mind. C'mon. Let's get you set up."
The stable workers fit Ilia with a fine leather saddle and a durable brindle. They affix horseshoes to her hooves. On a wooden table outside of the stable at which Link and Gaile sit, Gaile sorts the monster parts Link has brought. "This'll be enough to board her here for a month or so if you've got business on the mountain."
Link nods.
"Well, you know. If you want to go to the mountain, and don't like to spend a month burning alive—I can never tell with folks these days—you'll want to pack a couple of fireproof elixirs." Gaile enters the stable for a moment. She returns with a box full of large glass vials, swirling with a dark reddish concoction. "They'll keep your body sweating and free from flame, guaranteed as long as the effects last, and they don't come cheap."
"Could I...cook for you instead?"
Gaile's eyebrows, already in a perpetually arched state from Link's ignorance about seemingly every aspect of horsekeeping, threaten to bend so much that they break. "Are you tryin' to flirt with me now?"
Link shakes her head. She might not have the monster parts to pay for Ilia's boarding and the fireproof elixirs, but she can provide a service instead. Cooking a meal for Gaile. For the entire stable, even, and cleaning up afterwards, if Gaile can provide the ingredients.
"Are you bonkers or something? Did your horse kick you a wee too hard in the head? You think that I'm going to give you one of these fireproof elixirs for a single meal?"
Link touches her chin.
Gaile rubs her temples. "All right. I don't want your death on my hands, and I can see you're going up whether you have the elixirs or not." Link bobs her head. "If you help me cook up the next vat of elixir, I'll give you some for free, but only because I can tell your horse likes you."
Link leaps to her feet. She assumes a stance as though about to launch into a race.
Gaile frowns. "Just...come on."
She gestures for Link to follow her into the stable. The stench of horses rolls over her all at once, thick enough to make her eyes water. The hay, the feed, the warm bodies of the horses, the manure, the faint trace of milk.
A flash whirls through her vision. A girl with red hair. A girl in a sky-blue dress with a violet sash around her waist, who holds a basket of cucco eggs half her size, her blue eyes sparkling, her brown skin almost golden in the light of afternoon. A girl who sticks out her pinky, who makes Link promise, promise to...
"Ho there. You planning to help, or should I take back my generosity after all?"
Link snaps from her reverie. Gaile pushes her through a beaded curtain into a tiny galley taken up by a massive pot and two great wooden crates. In front of the pot sits a platform on a spring, with a dial showing three colours in order of green, blue, and red; the thin metal needle points at the base of the green. A glass hourglass that reaches to her knee rests by the platform. The stink radiating from both crates—one of ash and smoke, the other of rotting meat—could keel her over then and there.
"Here's what you gotta do. First: fill up this pot with water. There's a couple'a buckets here, and you can get the water from the spring out back. Second: skin the black lizards from there." She indicates the first crate. "Weigh them there. You want to enough that the arrow reaches red. Load them up five times and put 'em in the pot." She demonstrates how to skin a lizard. Link watches her discard the guts into the second crate of rotting meat, leaving only the outer layer of skin. Vomit wells up in her throat; she swallows it down. "Third: weigh out three loads of talons or horns. Doesn't matter which. They're behind the pot. Don't put them in yet." Gaile points to the hourglass. "Fourth: steep the lizards in the pot until the hourglass is done. Then put in the first load of monster bits. Turn the hourglass over again. Do that for the other two loads. That'll take all night, so I hope you rested up. Did you get all that?"
Link blinks.
Gaile exhales. "Listen. You mess this up, and you have to pay for all of the ruined product, you hear me?"
She bobs her head.
"Good. I'll see you in the morning, Din help us all. And don't come crying to me if you go up in flames."
Link scribbles down the instructions as best she can remember in whatever language comes first to her hand. Not Central Hyrulean or Necludan, but something for sure. Wielding the bucket over her shoulder, she makes the run from the spring to the pot ten or twenty times. Skinning the fireproof lizards takes far longer than she expected. Without practise of the deft motion with which Gaile bisected the lizard in a final slice, Link struggles to flip out the guts. By the final batch of five, however, she wields the knife nearly as quickly as Gaile did.
She turns over the hourglass, which weighs—she feels—heavier than herself.
The night draws long.
Whenever the fire runs low, she adds in a log of wood from the tall pile behind the pot.
Perched on the edge of a short stool, Link plays games with herself to keep herself awake. She accounts for the scars on her abdomen, her limbs, her back where she can reach and pictures a story for each. She closes her eyes to re-envision the snatches of memories that have whispered through her, brought on by scents she knows.
And then, the one memory that stands clearest in her mind.
The woman in black, whom someone in the memory of that party of six named Impa. Impa must be a common sheikah name, she notes to herself, reflecting on the other Impa she knows, of Kakariko. Her thoughts drift to the rest of the party. The hylian girl with the golden hair, with eyes of green—or maybe blue; she doesn't remember—and skin of light brown. The blue-feathered rito, the brown-rocked goron, the dark-skinned gerudo girl with the green hairband, the red-scaled zora, and then herself: Link. The talk of the shrines, of the duty of the girl with the golden hair, of fate isn't fair.
Perhaps not a memory at all, but a dream. A dream that she has conjured up for herself.
She nods off. She slips from the stool. At least banging her head against the floor bids her rise again.
When she adds the final batch of lizalfos talons she notices the firewood running low. She pokes in another log to be sure, then bolts out from the stable.
The sky has begun to blush with dawn when she returns with armfuls of hastily gathered firewood gathered through the miracle of sheikah slate bombs. The last few grains drop in the hourglass.
She lets the fire die.
Curling up on the floor of the galley, Link lowers her eyelids, and the darkness takes her.
—
Fireproof Elixir (low fireproofing for 03:10) - fireproof lizard, lizalfos talon
Chapter Nine. First written: 09 June 2017. Last edited: 2 September 2017.
Author's notes: Another thank you to my most wonderful beta reader, Emma.
Thus begins the character arc of Link feeling like a stranger in her own body. With regards to the combat sequence in this and later chapters, I really want to drive home why Link, well, is one who ends up everything that she does in Delicious in Wilds; I don't know about you, but I would be unable to accomplish half of what Link does.
Completing a shrine in Breath of the Wild brings Link's hearts to full, so I represented this in Delicious in Wilds by the natural healing of the shrine. Don't worry; there's an actual explanation for the healing later, which ties into something already implied about the shrines.
Because the King of the Zora was known as King Zora in A Link to the Past, I have rendered Dorephan's title as the King Zora, and Sidon's as the Prince Zora.
In the Japanese, gorons tend to end their sentences with the word goro. For the Eldic language (Eldic being the adjectival form of Eldin, as Tabanch for Tabantha or Lanayrish for Lanayru), I decided to have this reflected by making Eldic speakers literally end their sentences with goro. The followers of Goro-goro view this as a constant and gentle reminder of their deity's influence on their lives. Since I "translate" all language to English, I don't include the word goro at the end of every line, but there it is. For the curious reader, goro in Eldic sign language is rendered by bringing your right hand up straight at around chin level, the thumb pointed towards the signer, and quickly curling your fingers into a circle twice.
The town of Medigo is named about Medigoron from Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, and replaces the Foothill Stable from Breath of the Wild.
Regarding Kass's song, the English lyrics to the song in Breath of the Wild are terrible (I'm not sure if they're better in the Japanese, but I hope so): they lack rhythm or flow, and some of the rhymes are insulting. Therefore, I chose to rewrite it from scratch in iambic pentameter. I'm sure that someone out there could do a much better job than I. Feel free to say it out loud in rhythm; I actually have a melody that goes along with what I wrote, but there's no place for me to record it in the fic. Of course, I also adjusted the lyrics to better fit with the changed lore of Delicious in Wilds, but many of the lyrics are simply rewritten versions of the appropriate lines from the original in Breath of the Wild. Though Kass uses the word his for the Champions, note that this is from the assumption that heroes ought to be men, just as we saw with the story of the hero of Fort Hateno.
The virtue of Erito is Voice, not as in literal voice, but as in self-expression.
Alcoholic milk, of course, is an old Zelda stand-by, as seen in the Milk Bars of Majora's Mask, Phantom Hourglass, and A Link Between Worlds. Breath of the Wild even had a joke with Link asking for milk in the bar at the Noble Canteen. I couldn't not include alcoholic milk. Of course, alcoholic milk is a real-life thing: I've personally purchased kumis (I'm not actually sure how to write it in English?) at my local deli. It's usually only about 1-3% alcohol; the Delicious in Wilds version can be significantly more alcoholic.
I wanted to make the process of elixir-brewing significantly different from the process of cooking meals, and I hope that I succeeded.
Ah! And with regards to Zelda's design in Delicious in Wilds, I was bothered by the world of difference between the design of Zelda and her father. Obviously, some children do not resemble their parents, but the degree to which Zelda does not resemble King Rhoam is truly incredible. In particular, while King Rhoam is rather brown-skinned, Zelda herself is incredibly pale; even if her mother were the palest of the pale, Zelda herself should have darker skin by genetics. This reminds me of similar issues in The Wind Waker, wherein Tetra's skin becomes pale upon becoming Princess Zelda. In Delicious in Wilds, I have opted to make Zelda more resemble King Rhoam; she has facial features similar to his, including a wide nose, and shares a more similar skin tone, which I describe as light brown.
To everyone who has read this far: thank you from the bottom of my heart. I'm glad to have you along with me on this journey. Next: to Eldin!
midna's ass. 3 September 2017.
Beta reader's comments: The fight scene here is both really funny and really good as a fight scene.
I really love Kass. He's the best. The song rewrite is really impressive.
Emma. 3 September 2017.
