fleets: What can I say, I really wanted to know what happens next (I know it's my story and I should know what happens next, but execution and thought are completely different things haha). Hope you guys don't mind the rapid fire updates here.

This chapter is a little more violent than the others. Blood and stuff. People getting sliced. Er. I don't think it warrants an M rating but just warning you in case that bothers you

Chapter 11: The False God and the False Sheikah

By the time the false Sheikah decides to fight once again, it is much too late for the world to be saved. However, this is no longer about saving the world. This is about retribution: To drag down the false god down from the sky, to rip their wings away from them and send them back to the earth.

And the false Sheikah down with them.

- Grand Scribe Phact

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

It wasn't until after the first attack that it really, truly occurred to Sheik that he hadn't fallen asleep at some point and that this wasn't a dream. He could have easily dodged the attack, but the part of him that was confused and still questioning if any of this was real paralyzed his movement, and he took the full force of Vaati's attack. A scorching red beam shot from the sorcerer's hands and burned his left arm at the elbows, and he shouted in agony as the energy crackled down to the bone and incinerated his nerves. His arm hung limply against his side, and pain shot up from his elbows to his fingers with any attempt at movement.

He managed to dodge the next attack, aimed at his other arm, and just barely rolled out of the way from a sharp burst of air, the pressure refined until it made something like a wind blade. He watched the blade collide with the black wall of the corridor, and a bead of sweat rolled down his nose when he saw how effortlessly it cut into the stone with a sickening crack like a knife through water.

He couldn't die here, not when he had no idea what was going on.

He dodged another attack again, and then another, and then another. After a few more times, he looked up and saw Vaati sneering at him from behind his long bangs, and Sheik realized that the wind mage was toying with him, 'making him dance,' as he'd claimed he would do earlier. Despair clenched his throat when he realized that the sorcerer could easily end his life with a single wave of his arm if he wished it: he was only alive because the sorcerer willed it.

"Tell me, are you too frightened to fight back?" Vaati laughed when he saw Sheik's expression. "I'd assumed that, since you'd come all this way to see me, that you would at least put up some resistance!"

Sheik crouched, getting ready to avoid whatever Vaati might throw at him next. Still, he knew that he couldn't avoid the attacks forever, and eventually the sorcerer was going to get bored of flinging lazy shots that he intended for Sheik to avoid. With his undamaged right hand, Sheik reached into his bag and drew the black dagger that Thuban had provided him.

He didn't want to do this. He wasn't sure if the Vaati he was facing was the Vaati that he knew, or if this was some kind of illusion the strange desert had cast on his mind.

But it's far too real for it to be an illusion, isn't it?

Would he kill? Could he kill? It was almost like Thuban was tempting him to kill Vaati by having him encounter this evil with his likeness. The fox had taunted him before, speaking to him like they knew there would come a time when he would draw the black blade. For that reason alone he didn't want to fight, stubborn as he was not to give the Keaton the satisfaction of having been right.

Even so, questions ran rampant in his mind. He easily rolled out of the way of a projectile that was exactly the same magical attack as the one he'd seen Vaati use back at the well against the invisible monster. He was certain that this creature of wrath was not the Vaati he knew, not the Vaati he traveled with, but at the same time…

He deflected another attack with the dagger in his hand, and he felt the power behind it ripple through his arm. The sorcerer appeared pleased upon seeing Sheik finally armed, and he taunted again.

"I was almost impressed the first time we fought, Sheikah. You had no hope of winning in the first place, but you almost forced me to try. But now look at you! To think I might have respected your tenacity, hah!"

Memories… they define a person, don't they? While this was definitely not the Vaati he knew, perhaps… perhaps this was a glimpse of who he'd once been? He had no idea what this sorcerer was saying; he had no knowledge of the 'Sheikah,' and had no idea what he meant when he spoke of having fought before. But if they had been enemies once, and if this was the history that connected them both -

Vaati would never.

Was that true? Was he certain about that? What made him so confident that this wasn't the truth? And then a more frightening thought: if this monster was Vaati then who was Sheik?

His thoughts were interrupted when a gust of wind caught him from behind, knocking him up several feet into the air. For a few seconds he hung suspended, and then he was slammed back into the ground by an invisible force. Air was knocked out of his lungs and he gritted his teeth through the pain of his elbow jamming into his ribs. Still dazed, he dragged his body across the cold floor towards the dagger that had slipped from his grasp; in the background he heard a vicious snicker.

"Or did you finally recognize that you are in the presence of a god? You came to pay your respects, is that it?" Vaati jeered as he watched the blonde crawl towards the black dagger. With a grin, he swirled a finger in the air, charging a small bead of energy as Sheik slowly stumbled back onto his feet. "Then why don't you kneel." The bead of energy shot towards Sheik's right knee. It was too fast to dodge, and Sheik collapsed back onto the ground when his knee gave out. The blonde bit through the pain even as the smoke sizzled up from the burned flesh and cloth, his skin raw and red with boils from the burn where the attack had hit.

With effort, Sheik lifted his head from where he'd been forced to kneel. He saw the sorcerer standing over him with an expression that wasn't quite there, wasn't quite right. It was the expression of someone who was one thread away from madness before the twine snapped, the expression of someone who'd endured unspeakable injustice and survived, but came out of the experience irreversibly changed.

"V-Vaati… what happened to you?" Sheik asked through gritted teeth, wincing from the pain of his injuries. He held back a shout when a shark kick connected with the side of his head, sending him sprawling backwards.

"The trash speaks out of turn," Vaati chided, and his smile dipped into a disapproving frown. With swift strides, he followed after the body he'd kicked aside, his arms gesturing dramatically as he continued his tirade. "How does it feel to die slowly? I know the feeling quite intimately, actually, thanks to a couple of brats who called themselves heroes. I don't think you're dying quite slowly enough to understand what I've endured."

"Then tell me," Sheik roared curling over his elbows on the floor as he attempted once again to stand up. "Tell me what happened."

"The trash speaks out of turn," Vaati repeated, shouting back this time, and his unnatural calm breaking. He threw out a hand, extended like a gnarled claw, and powerful magic crackled from his fingertips. The attack hit Sheik full on his side, and it once again sent him flying across the corridor. "You don't know what I'm talking about, you say? You think ignorance will excuse you? You think I care?" he hissed while Sheik groaned weakly from the floor several feet away.

Sheik slowly opened his eyes and found that his vision was blurred; the attack had done something to his eyesight. He could no longer focus, and the edges appeared fuzzy and vague. Squinting, he looked up from where he lay on the ground towards where the sorcerer approached him.

It was strange… the darkness seemed to be leaving the corners of his vision, somehow. The blur in his vision pushed away the blackness, bringing with it instead a fuzzy outline of something white.

White pillars, like the ones he'd seen half buried in the sand near the entrance of the Palace of Winds. The sky was overcast, and the thick, grey rainclouds weaved between the pillars. They were in the sky…

"I wonder what you hoped to accomplish by coming to me, knowing that you would die," Vaati said, walking over to Sheik who was writhing on the floor that had, at some point, turned a polished white rather than the black of the void. Rain appeared to have fallen as well, and small puddles formed on the marble floor. "It's a shame you didn't put up more of a fight."

Have I seen this before, Thuban? Sheik wondered as Vaati slowly held out a hand towards his face. Energy gathered in the sorcerer's palms, and Sheik's face was illuminated by an electric blue glow as the magic charged. Tell me, what happened to us?

The sphere finished charging, and Vaati threw his hand downwards in one, swift motion. Wind molded into razor sharp blades slashed down on Sheik, ripping into his tunic, ripping into his skin. The force of impact tossed him into the air, and with another hand motion Vaati froze the battered body in place. Like a mad conductor he whipped his hands, summoning a screeching vortex to swallow Sheik whole. It tore at his limbs and sliced through his body with every rotation, and this lasted for several grueling seconds before Vaati finally released the spell with a snap of his fingers.

The body fell with a wet thud onto the puddles of rain now stained red with blood. It shuddered with a heave, and then a gurgled cough as its lungs tried to breathe. Barely, just barely, Sheik was still alive. He was too weak to move, now, and he no longer made an attempt to stand up on his feet like before. Red spread from where he lay, blood running from the deep lacerations.

"You'll bleed out, soon enough," Vaati said disdainfully. He turned his heel, waving a hand without another glance at the body he left behind. "Know that the agony you feel is not even a fraction of the agony I endured for countless years. I am a merciful god to let you die like this, without a millennia of suffering."

His mouth could no longer form words. Instead, he reached out a shaking hand towards the retreating figure, his blurred vision fading as he did so. Wait, he thought, not… not like this.

Tell me what happened to Vaati.

As though in answer, a light flickered along his reaching hand, slowly tracing the outline of an arrow that ran down to his fingertips. To his surprise, his body began to move of its own accord, like he was a spirit watching someone else, and he could no longer feel anything nor could he hear anything. From where he lay, his other hand reached forward and pulled back on an imaginary string, and then a bright flash blinded his eyes when a bow made of light materialized in his palms.

His damaged vision slowly began to clear into focus. The thick clouds parted, allowing sunlight to stream through like some divine sign.

Blue sleeves. Taped fingers, Sheik thought briefly when he noticed that his arms appeared different than before. Same as in my dream…

He released the arrow. It flew straight for its target, and pierced Vaati through the heart.

The sorcerer stumbled forward from the impact, before he slammed his foot down on the ground, forcing himself to remain standing. Clutching his chest where the arrow had gone through him, Vaati slowly turned around with his face frozen in disbelief. It twisted into rage. Then fear.

They stared at each other for a few seconds, neither saying a word.

And then the sorcerer fell, his legs giving way, and Sheik found his consciousness slipping with a smile on his face.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Sheik woke up.

He jolted up, whipping his head around for Vaati. Immediately upon doing so, he stared down at his hands in surprise: they were no longer cut and burned. In fact, he was perfectly fine, and the injuries he thought he'd suffered from were completely gone. Even his vision was no longer blurred.

His tense expression relaxed, and he allowed himself to give a deep breath. He noticed the obsidian dagger lying a few feet away from where he was sitting, and he slowly got up on his feet to pick it up. He turned the dagger in his hands and looked at it pensively as he thought about what he'd just seen. None of it had been real…

He looked behind him from where he'd walked. The blackness of the corridor had disappeared, and it was no different than any of the other normal corridors of the Palace of Winds they'd walked through before. The air was lit with a soft blue-white glow of the moon, just past the halfway mark in the sky and making its way towards dawn. All of the strange statues had also vanished along with the void.

The false god of the Palace of Winds, Sheik thought as he remembered the passage from the Grand Scribe's book, I wonder if that had been about Vaati…

I wonder if I've been here before.

He didn't really know what to make of the vision (had it been a vision? It had felt too real, but he wasn't sure what else it could have been. The rules of reality didn't seem to apply to this goddess forsaken place). He didn't know if he should believe it.

He didn't know if it changed his opinion about Vaati. He had a difficult time believing that his companion had been someone like the sorcerer he'd encountered, so full of hate and wrath. He looked down at the dagger in his hands again. If Vaati had really been that monster I encountered just now, then -

His thoughts were interrupted by a faint gasp nearby, and his head shot up towards the sound. He froze when he saw, just a few feet away from him, Vaati, the one in the same tattered canvas tunic and the one who'd accompanied him for miles across the desert, staring at him. He, too, looked like he'd just woken from another nightmare, with his hair in a disheveled mess like he'd just escaped a fight and his hands tense and shaking.

Sheik held his breath when he saw that Vaati's fingers were clenched tightly around a black dagger, which he pointed threateningly towards him in warning. The memory of the Wind Mage still fresh in his mind, Sheik's eyes narrowed and he, too, slowly held up the dagger he was holding. His eyes searched his opponent, ready to act with a single hint of movement.

But then -

His eyes landed on Vaati's other hand, clasped around the red spine of the Grand Scribe's book. The book was open, pressed against his chest like he'd kept it open at a certain page so he could refer to its wisdom quickly.

The Scribe… Sheik thought. Then, he remembered the words that the book had spoken to them before they'd split up.

Know your own truth, have faith in what you know

The tension leaving from the corner of his eyes, Sheik blinked, and looked once again towards his former companion who was still brandishing his dagger at him. He took a closer look, setting aside the fear that the encounter with the sorcerer had tainted him with. This Vaati, the Vaati that he knew, did not glare at him with that sadistic evil, but instead mirrored his own uncertain anger borne from suspicion. Like him, Vaati didn't know what was going on, and from the way he looked at him like he was expecting him to attack, Sheik could guess exactly what Vaati had seen a few minutes ago.

The Wind Mage Vaati wasn't Vaati. That's what he knew. He'd had faith in his own words earlier, words that insisted that even if they'd been enemies before, they didn't have to be enemies now. In the short time they'd known each other, Sheik would consider him a friend. The Scribe was telling him to believe that. Visions weren't something he could believe, but he could believe in what he'd experienced and remembered in this short time with his companion in the desert.

They were going to make it to the end.

They were going to wring the truth out of Thuban.

And then they were going to leave this awful place forever with their own strength.

"Vaati," he said.

The other crouched lower at the sound of his voice, and Vaati's eyes narrowed in response.

"Vaati it's… it's okay," Sheik repeated, taking a step forward.

The movement caused Vaati to raise his dagger in warning, and rage burned in his crimson eyes. "Take one more step-" he warned, but he was interrupted by a loud clatter on the floor when Sheik threw his dagger across the floor. The weapon skidded away, out of reach from the both of them, and the action prompted Vaati to look up in surprise.

"We're alive. You're alive."

Less certain now, Vaati took a small step back as Sheik walked towards him. He raised his dagger higher. "I'm warning you," he snarled, but there was a hesitation in his voice, like he couldn't make sense of what was going on. He was briefly distracted when his eyes wavered towards the dagger that Sheik had thrown aside, and by the time he'd looked back the distance between them had closed. He suddenly thrusted his dagger hand down towards Sheik, but the blonde was faster, wrapping his arms around him in a reassuring embrace.

They were alive.

They hadn't died.

They were alive and they were going to make it.

"… That wasn't you," Sheik murmured into his shoulder.

Hands frozen where he'd been about to stab Sheik, Vaati's expression was paralyzed in one of uncertainty and shock. His dagger shook and his knuckles were white where they gripped the hilt of the obsidian blade, and several times he seemed ready to swing his arm back down and bury it into Sheik's back.

Finally, there was a clatter as Vaati finally dropped his arm, the dagger slipping away from his fingers and falling onto the floor.

"What I saw back there was Wrath incarnate. I've been with you long enough to know that that's not who you are."

Vaati's brows furrowed. "Sheik…" His voice was quiet, still processing the nightmarish scene he'd just experienced with what was happening now. The rage that had moments before been reflected in his eyes had simmered into cold coals.

"We're going to get through this together. I can't do this alone, I need you with me," Sheik continued, "That wasn't you."

Vaati remained standing wordlessly, his hands hanging against his sides. Earlier, he'd encountered someone he believed to be Sheik, and they'd threatened to send him back to the Void.

It had terrified him.

He would have demanded to be let go by now, but instead he allowed himself to feel the quiet comfort of Sheik's embrace while he listened to the echo of his words in his head.

It was true.

They were alive.

And, despite the terrible wrath that had consumed him earlier, he felt something different this time; a sense of relief that they were together again, and that they didn't have to go on alone. For the first time, including what his tormented memories revealed to him, his heart felt at peace. His eyes widened at the realization that he remembered feeling something aside from anger, and he pushed against the warmth around him to pull away. He'd expected something awful to come for him as soon as he realized the anger had gone,

(Madness held off only with anger)

but madness never came.

His chin snapped up towards Sheik who was wondering what was wrong. "I-" he started.

And then he stopped. He saw a flicker of movement behind Sheik, and he saw a golden pair of eyes watching them from the darkness. His gaze sharply followed the faint silhouette of Thuban that seemed to blend into the night, and his eyes trailed slightly longer at the Keaton's hooked, ringed tail.

Hooked, like a scorpion's.

The scorpion hunts-

"Sheik!" Vaati shouted in warning, but it was too late. Thuban's apparition vanished as sand, but in its place leapt out a gigantic black scorpion the size of a full-grown man. Its pincers lunged forward, grabbing Sheik and dragging him backwards. In an instant, Vaati ducked down to grab the dagger he'd dropped and dashed forward, plunging it into the creature's head. With a shriek, it flailed backwards, but not before it gave one last strike with its tail, the barb burying into Sheik's leg, flooding poison into it.

"No!" Vaati took a few steps to chase after the retreating monster, but then realized that his companion was in dire trouble. Sheik was on the ground, clutching his leg with his face pulled back in a pained grimace. His leg was growing a darker shade of purple by the second and the blood that dripped from the two-inch wide wound was a hideous black.

More worrisome, however, was the glowing mark that had appeared where his compass had once been. Rather than the compass, numbers glowed on Sheik's hand. The numbers continued to count down, from 5959, to 5958, to 5957.

A timer. And Vaati could guess exactly what it meant.

Sheik had one hour to live.

fleets: hmm not much to say! I can't wait until these two find out about what really happened in the past, it's going to be so messy. Thank you for making it this far!

AquilaMage: Ohh things are going to speed up a little for sure! But oh I didn't realize that! Yeah this is probably the first time I really showcased his ruthless side? My other stories implied it but you never really got to see it, true true. My headcanon for this story (and demonbound) is that he kind of snapped after being stuck in the sword for so long, so he's even more ruthless than he used to be during like, say, MC. (really wanna say stuff about impartial voice but I guess I just have to keep writing). Thank you so much Aquila! :D