The delineation between day and night had disappeared, for all practical purposes. The rain fell heavy and constant from a screen of clouds that defied the sun and shamed the stars, making a curse of a blessing, and if one listened then even from the heart of the domain one could almost hear the reservoir strain against the weight of the torrential bounty. The princess of Hyrule, heir to a crown long gone and a kingdom effectively lost, could hear stone begin to buckle. She tried to tell herself that this was her imagination, on some level she knew that that was true, but the fact of the knowledge was very different from the kind of emotional surety she sought for herself. Vah Ruta was there, seated in the center of the reservoir, its body hidden from sight while its power poured its presence across the nation of the Zora.
Zelda had said before that she walked through a world of ghosts, and that was true; more than that, though, she walked through a world where the hours were her true enemy. Every step she took was accompanied by a new layer to the essential awareness that time was running out, that there was a fundamental driving force that would not let her truly rest. She could take time with reaching Ganon, she thought (or prayed); Vah Ruta would not wait that long. How many days had this rain been falling, a rain that would have flooded the lowlands and stripped it free of habitation and Hylian life a century of centuries before? How many more days could they afford? She should have asked. It didn't matter; she would work as quickly as possible. But not knowing meant that she felt the hour drawing near, every moment the tolling of a bell. When was midnight? She knew not.
They left traveling east, toward the reservoir and the mountain. Looking at the Sheikah Slate, its topographical information did not seem to indicate the best point of egress for the mountain; on every side it was surrounded by tall cliffs, the lowest being of a height that would have pushed her stamina to the utmost in the climbing even without the rain. But they had agreed to go, and go they would, even if that meant that they would not know how to proceed.
Zora's Domain had three bridges, each guarded differently; the one from which they had entered was to the south, the main bridge, the bridge that connected the domain to the roads used by travelers. The bridge they took now, to the east, was a mirror of the bridge to the west, smaller and less majestic, but not lacking in equivalent elegance. This bridge lead to the foot of Ploymus Mountain and that, to the best of her reckoning, did not connect directly to any other major territories. It was naturally defended on all sides, and unless she guessed incorrectly that would mean that there was very little reason to post guards, here.
"Zelda," Paya tapped her on the shoulder, snapping her out of her reverie. "There is a guard ahead of us. We could… ask her for directions?"
The princess (ah, she was beginning to think of herself that way without realizing it, and some part of her would mourn at the change while another part of her would be nothing but satisfied, even relieved) looked ahead, took note of the Zora standing at the edge of the bridge, back to the domain. She was tall and pale in coloring, and something about her communicated strength in a way that Zelda could not put her finger on. She wore the armor common to the guards of Zora's Domain, and in her hand she carried the long, hooked spear that was apparently standard issue.
"Yes, I think we should. I had thought that the map could provide me with the necessary directions, but I have to admit that I'm utterly at a loss. Better to admit our ignorance than to be well and truly lost, I suppose." This answer satisfied her companion, who resumed walking in silence.
The Zora turned and saw them coming and stood waiting for them as they approached. She raised a hand in greeting, and they did the same as she spoke in a gravelly voice, "Hello, there. Didn't expect the war council to have dismissed so quickly. I hope you're not headed out to see the Divine Beast."
"We are not, though I suspect we will need to see it sooner or later. I am Zelda, and this is Paya; we aim to scale Ploymus Mountain and retrieve Shock Arrows from its peak."
"Gaddison." That barest of introductions out of the way, Gaddison seemed to process what she had actually said. "There's a lynel up there. Even if you can…" She raised her fist, coughed into it as she caught herself; it was obvious that she had seen what happened in the plaza, though her view hadn't been close enough to be absolutely sure. "They're dangerous beasts. Are you sure you want to make that trek by yourselves?"
She looked back at Paya, who took the prompt. "We are hoping that we may be able to retrieve the shock arrows without provoking it. If not… we'll deal with the beast as best as we are able." Her wince told the story: how that would look was up in the air, and there was no small chance that Zelda would need to draw on the well of her strength to make it work. "The most pressing concern is that we're not sure how to approach the mountain. We have a map, and it seems to indicate that there are no real foot paths to reach it from the domain."
Gaddison quirked a smile. "Well, that stands to reason. Zora use the falls to travel up the mountain when we need to. To walk up it, you'd have to approach it from the northeast, which would require crossing the reservoir, and right now that's impossible."
"Impossible is a heavy word," Zelda said, though it was more irresponsible from her perspective.
"Heavy but appropriate." Gaddison turned, pointed at the wall of the reservoir. "Ever since it started to pour water out into the atmosphere in such huge quantities, Vah Ruta has grown more and more aggressive with every passing day. Early on it did not react at all to our presence as we investigated it; by the time Seggin and Prince Sidon approached it, it had begun to attack anyone who swam in the water by hurling blocks of ice at them. Since then it's only gotten more and more aggressive; by now, any Zora trying to swim across would be risking their lives." Her expression as she looked at the two of them was neutral, in a soldier's way. "For a Hylian, it would be very close to killing yourself."
"Well, we have no intention of doing that, at least. Is there no other way to scale the mountain?"
"Not by foot. There are a series of waterfalls that feed into the lakes Mikau and Lulu, but only Zora can swim up them. If you had Zora armor, that would be a different matter, but… hm." Gaddison rested the butt of her spear on the ground and stroked her chin with her other hand, looking to the waterfalls in the distance. "I wonder. You're going up to get the shock arrows… to try to stop Vah Ruta, yes?" She didn't even look to see them confirm it. "If that's the case… I'm not as strong as Prince Sidon is, but maybe, if I could find someone to stand in my place…"
"Gaddison." Zelda jumped at the voice, and so did Gaddison, but Paya had no reaction at all. Seggin had followed them across the bridge, bent and scowling and as hateful-looking as ever, but now he was ignoring the two of them to address the guard. "Do you intend to leave your post?"
"Only if I can find someone to relieve me, Sergeant."
Seggin tutted loudly, shaking his head. "To think that this is what we've been reduced to: a ferry service for Hylians." He did not sneer at the two of them, which was… some level of improvement. "I'm not actually a Sergeant anymore, Gaddison. Haven't been one for almost forty years. Still." He held out his hand, palm up, fingers splayed. "I think I can defend this side of the bridge from a few foxes or wandering deer while you do what needs to be done."
The hierarchy of the Zora military did not make immediate sense to Zelda, though Paya observed this exchange with a kind of stoic, observant quiet that suggested she was more familiar with the entire structure. Gaddison clenched her spear tightly for a moment, her eyes on the old soldier's open hand, and then passed her weapon to him. "Be careful with it." It was not clear if she meant the spear or her post. "If anything happens, I'll be the one explaining things to Prince Sidon."
"Feh. If our prince has anything to say about it, I'll remind him who taught him to use a spear. That boy's needed a remedial lesson in humility since he finished growing." He took the spear from Gaddison, and as he took it one could see the comfort and ease with which he turned it, how quickly he found its balance, holding it in two fingers with the kind of gentle, familiar caress that one would expect to see in someone holding their partner. He struck the butt on the ground, as if to get a feel for the sturdiness of the construction, and laughed. "Dento's work is still competent, at least. Yes, I'll hold things here. The three of you hurry up. The Domain's depending on you."
"Thank you, Sergeant." Gaddison saluted, throwing one arm across her chest, before turning away and gesturing for Zelda and Paya to follow. "Come on. I'll show you the way up."
"You two," Seggin said, and it was an effort to not simply ignore him. They waited as he straightened his back, taking on the posture of a guard returning to his duties. When he looked at them, his expression was impossible to read: not exactly malice or disdain but something, some cousin derived from those two things, was written all over his face. "Our prince and our king have placed their trust in you for the second time. You will not have that from me, or any of the elders. We will support you however we can, but if you want our approval then you are going to have to succeed."
"Will we?" Zelda pulled her hood back, just to look Seggin clear in the face, and stalked directly up to him. "I own all of my failures, Seggin, because there is no one else who I can give them to. I will do everything I can to make things right, regardless of whether or not you trust in me. You only have to understand this: I'm doing all of this because it's necessary, because it is moral, because somebody has to." She shoved her index finger directly into his face, close enough that he actually had to lean back to keep from touching her, even as tall as he was. "I will assist your people in every way I can, but you, and all the rest of you short-sighted, hateful relics on the Council, you can keep your approval and choke on it. Do we understand each other?"
To her immense satisfaction, he swallowed. "Perfectly."
She gave him nothing else, turning away and pulling her hood up against the rain. "Come along, Paya. We have devoted more than enough time speaking to this man." She put her shoulders back and marched into the lowlands on the other side of the bridge. She could feel Gaddison gawking at her from further up the path and heard Paya's footsteps beating a quick rhythm to catch up with her once the shock had passed.
The world was all pressure and cold, a roaring sound filling her ears until there was no room in her head for anything else. She held on desperately, all the strength in her body focused into the arms looped around Gaddison's shoulders, and some remote part of her mind considered calling on the goddess's strength just to shore up her grip. It will be fine it will be fine it will be fine, she chanted in her mind as they ascended, the Zora's body undulating under her with a speed and power that she could barely comprehend, she would be fine but she could feel the water pulling at her, she couldn't breathe she had only to hold her breath but the pressure was there. She knew that if Gaddison were to turn her head, if there was even a moment where the streamlining effect of the Zora's cranial fin was no longer protecting Zelda's face, then the force of the water would rip her off of Gaddison's back, maybe break her neck in the bargain. She didn't know how long they'd been climbing; the passage of time felt like a remote, almost impossible thing.
The noise receded, and the air was warm and the rain was falling on her as Gaddison arced, and she let go and pulled out her paraglider, the force of her midair stop sending a shock from her shoulders all the way down into her diaphragm. She descended slowly, regaining her bearings.
Gaddison had landed on the grass and immediately collapsed. She managed to push herself up onto her knees but was panting heavily, the gills at her sides flexing unconsciously as they tried to pull oxygen to make up for what her lungs could not do. As Zelda landed, Gaddison gave her a thumbs-up. Paya, soaked to the bone and on Gaddison's other side, was digging into their pack.
"Perhaps it would be best for us to take a break," the princess said to the guard.
"Can still… swim." She swallowed, gasped again. "Two down. Only one more. Smallest one, too."
"I agree with Zelda." The sheikah woman pulled out a few slivers of roasted mushroom. "However, you are right that time is of the essence." She held the mushrooms out to Gaddison, who regarded them with an expression that could only be produced by a mixture of wariness and extreme exertion. "I don't know if these will work as well for you as they do for the two of us, but you should get some of your strength back if you eat them."
To the light-skinned Zora's credit she did not wince as she took them, though she did allow herself a quiet "hate mushrooms" before biting into them. Her expression made it plain she did not like them; then, apparently deciding that there was no point in drawing out the act of eating them, she opened wide to eat them all at once. The split of her mouth spread out across her entire face, and one could see all of her teeth as she bit down on the lot of mushrooms simultaneously. "Excuse me," she said, and then quietly chewed in a very hurried, business-like way, as Zelda tried very hard to reconcile how different Zora appeared when they were eating. How big was Sidon's mouth?
The cliff shelf between Lake Lulu and the falls that fed down into Lake Mikau was wide and stony and covered in grass. If the sun had been out then it would have probably been lovely, a perfect place for a picnic or something similar; as it was now, with the luminous stones throwing their pale blue light on the world around them and the rain falling in heavy sheets, its effect was rather more melancholy. Not in a wholly bad way, of course: there was a great deal to admire in the interplay between light and water, how the droplets became blazing comets when they fell around the enormous outcroppings of the stone higher up Ploymus. The place had its natural beauty, and more than its own share, but it would be nice to see the sun again when it came out. When Vah Ruta is calmed.
She had yet to see Vah Ruta, still; she had some idea of what to expect, based on the diagrams drawn by the her of a hundred years ago (though how much of that was Purah's work, who could say), but the reality of it would inevitably surprise her. The Guardians had done that enough, and in their case the only transition had been from the ones that were stationary to the ones that were still mobile; going from a drawing of one of the Divine Beasts to an actual view of the genuine article was probably orders of magnitude more different than that.
"Disgusting." Gaddison wiped her fingertips on the grass, and her mouth with the back of her hand. "But I think they're working. I already feel a lot better." Standing, she inclined her head to Paya before looking to Zelda. "Thank you for the mushrooms. Shall we get going?"
"Are you sure you do not want to rest?"
"Better to keep moving even while resting. Less likely to cramp, that way." She gestured with her hand as she walked toward the last waterfall. "Come on. By the time we get there I should be able to take you up the rest of the way." She did not wait for them; they followed her, easily able to keep pace with her shorter gait.
"I do not believe we've thanked you, yet." Zelda had been too angry at Seggin to say much of anything on the way to the first set of waterfalls, and the fact of swimming up one had managed to drive everything else from her mind, even the very foundational propriety that was so deeply ingrained that it superseded her amnesia. "You are putting in a heroic effort toward helping us ascend; we could not do this without you."
Gaddison kept her gaze locked straight ahead, never shifted her posture, so for the long moment she spent walking in silence it was as if she did not hear over the rain and the roar of the waterfalls. Then, "Do not thank me. This is something that any of us would be proud to do. I'm not even the best person to do this on your behalf; Prince Sidon would be. But when I saw you walking down that bridge toward me, after seeing the light in the plaza." Now her eyes found Zelda's, and they were curious and slightly shy. "Was that you, who made it look like dawn had finally come?"
She nodded. What else was there to do?
"I thought it was. When I saw you coming I thought of that light, and how I heard you speaking even from the other end of the domain, as if the gods were talking through your mouth, and I… wanted to be part of it. Of this. Of what you're doing." Eyes forward again, though now she was rubbing her hands together, as if suddenly unsure of what to do with them. "Can you imagine? A guardian of the realm who jumps at the opportunity to shirk her duty and go on an adventure. But I don't even want to be on the adventure, that feels like blasphemy. I just want to help. When your story is written into the history books, when people read of you ten thousand years from now, I don't want to be the person you passed on your way to some important work. I want to be the person who carried you up waterfalls and saw you safely on your way."
"Gaddison of the Waterfalls," Zelda mused, and found that Zora could flush too. "It is auspicious-sounding, I think."
Their guide said nothing, though her smile told a different story as they approached the veil of the last waterfall.
They left Gaddison behind at the top of the waterfall; they were profuse and genuine in their thanks, because the trip would have been genuinely impossible without her and she had saved them both days of travel and deep embarrassment, but she was in poor condition to receive their gratitude. She had waved them away, too drained to speak, the last and shortest of the waterfalls proving to be exactly what had been necessary to put an end to her exertions for the day. They had left her more of the mushrooms she hated, because bitter medicine was nourishing for the spirit, and been on their way.
The rain still fell heavily but now they had a sense that something else was changing in the air. It was not electricity, exactly, not the slow building of charge that warned them of the coming of the lightning, but the tension in the air grew greater and more terrible the further they walked. The path was grassy, and even though it was steep and wet the going was easy enough, but the fact of that ease seemed to belay a much deeper menace that the mountain held.
"Is it my imagination, or can you feel the lynel in the distance?" Well, that wasn't fair; she didn't need her imagination for such a thing, even if it were not exerting real pressure. Still.
Paya's answering nod was thoughtful, cautious, considering of the world around them. "Yes. It's similar to the one at the foot of Mt. Lanayru, but… different, somehow. More intense, perhaps? Lynel give off a sense of menace that the trained or the sensitive can feel at a distance, and the more powerful they are the greater that menace can feel. I don't know if the rain or the presence of the Divine Beast might be having an effect on us, but…" The handmaiden ceased walking, her expression clouding. "Zelda, I'm sorry if this sounds impertinent or ignorant…"
"No! Not at all! Whatever question you have, I'm sure it's well-reasoned." More than that, she valued Paya's questions specifically because she brought a perspective that Zelda did not or could not have; never mind that she provided company that kept her sane, she needed Paya with her in immediate ways, to keep her grounded.
That did not set her wholly at ease. "Still, I am asking these questions because it's beyond my understanding, but… Grandmother said your power isn't limited by distance, and you demonstrated that with both me and Auntie Purah, yes?" She was flushed with her embarrassment, now. "I was just wondering, thinking about how we can feel the lynel, even from a distance, but… can't you reach out to the Divine Beast, like you did with the Guardians? Couldn't you try to reach it, and bypass the entire matter of approaching it physically?"
Zelda looked at her, then at the ground, then off into the distance where she imagined the Divine Beast was, through the mountain. "Oh, damn it."
"Please, I didn't mean to upset you—I just thought…"
"No, Paya, that's just it; you're probably right. I just… I'm still limited in my thinking, I suppose. Too caught up in the concrete to consider the possibilities opened up by my powers when I'm willing to consider them." She rubbed at her forehead. "Thank you. I feel foolish, but thank you for pointing that out to me. I'll try to connect to the Divine Beast now, then." She began to remove her pack; for whatever reason, she thought sitting down would help with her concentration, though that had never been necessary before.
"Is there any way that I can help you? Lend you… strength, somehow?"
Zelda sat down on top of her pack, turning her awareness inward; when she spoke, she heard herself as if from a great distance. "I do not think so; all of the power I need should be at my call. But… if you want, once I have located the Divine Beast and gotten the measure of the Malice infesting it," because there was no doubt that Malice was indeed to blame for all of this, "I could show it to you, like I did for Purah."
"Oh, I would like that very much!" Paya was so enthusiastic that it cut through Zelda's inward-turned attention, reaching deep, and at once the princess of a dead kingdom knew that she had been neglecting her friend's needs and desire. There was no remedying that neglect; she could only address it in the future and hope to do well by the person who thought her only generous, only good.
Still, waiting to connect to Paya was the best idea; the Divine Beast was much further from her than the Guardian had been on the marshes, and the concentration required to reach it and become aware of the danger would be much greater.
So, she went down into that place inside of her where the golden light sat waiting, burning, and took from it only enough to be aware, to let her senses open up to be more than themselves. The world woke up around her as she saw with more than her eyes, and she and Paya were two suns set among a sea of comets that were the falling raindrops. There was no Malice in the rain; it was only ever water, behaving as water must when pushed into particular directions or places. No use in blaming the rain. The mountain beneath them was quiet but enormous, containing worlds of potential energies and memories, and at its base were roots that reached down into the very heart of the world. There was an understanding in the mountain that begged to be explored, a new avenue of meaning and knowing that could expand the part of her that was the goddess incarnate, but it was not why she was reaching out now. She reined in her consciousness, muzzled her curiosity, and turned her awareness to the great expanse of water, the sea of light that pushed hard against the bounds that would hold it in place. She did not even have to travel, not even visualize her awareness moving; it was simply there, however shaky that new placement made her mortal selves.
Vah Ruta was in the center of the reservoir, the water flowing in it and around it, and she could see the rivers of power that swirled around it, leading the water in streams that would be invisible to the naked eye. They were like the root system of a tree reaching up into the sky and then even further, out across the land, a network of power that drew water from the far reaches of Hyrule as easy and as surely as it could have from directly beneath the beast. She could follow those—but no, not follow, she reined herself in again. The goddess part of her was nearly as curious as the human part who had woken up in the chamber, or maybe the one was beginning to affect the other (or maybe we have never truly been that separate from the beginning), and it took every ounce of her will to take her attention and turn it toward the Divine Beast itself.
Later she would see the beast with her eyes and feel this awe again, but it would not be the same as it was now; here she saw Vah Ruta as it really was, a titanic collection of powers, a palace of light, its shoulders four suns that regulated and directed the flow of that light throughout the entire structure. Size did not mean as much to her goddess-senses, but she could feel its construction, the engine that drove it, and every aspect of it that made it what it was left her in a kind of quiet awe. Was this the work of the ancients? Was this the true shape of what they'd been capable of—not the Guardians, or even the shrines, but this machine that was a breaker and shaper of worlds? Had the goddess's power been there, at the making of this thing, and helped to shape it and drive it? She thought perhaps it had. And now something was wrong, deep in the heart of it, down past the light, past the flowing powers, at its very core.
So she dove in, down, flitting through the rivers of molten gold that were the life's blood of Vah Ruta, towards the beating heart that powered the suns, toward the place where she could feel the familiar echo of a presence she had once known and trusted dearly. Mipha?
Then she found the Malice.
Then the Malice found her.
In the Guardian, the Malice core had been the tiniest, most delicate part of the machine, virulent and powerful but so small that it had taken almost none of her power to expunge it. That was not what this Malice was; this thing was solid, a shadow given depth and weight, like the blight that had entered into her own thoughts when the Calamity had attacked her in the snowfield. But to compare this thing to the blight from before was like comparing that blight to the Malice within the Guardian; she could feel it, its vastness and darkness and intensity, so plainly that it was like flame being put to flesh. On some level she thought that this thing was Ganon itself, as the weight of its regard resolved into the weight of its killing intent, as she felt it reach out from inside of Vah Ruta, taking its measure of this new intruder who was not holding enough power to defend herself.
Then it struck her, and the world exploded.
Light flooded her eyes and pain lanced along every synapse as she collapsed.
Paya caught Zelda as she began to slump, thankful beyond measure that the princess did not start screaming. Her first reaction was cold and clinical and distant, making sure that her charge was not in immediate physical danger; she asked no questions at first, checking her vitals with a detached urgency. Airways clear and breathing steady, pulse strong, eyes responding to light as she pulled her eyelids open. Zelda did not try to push her away, but seemed conscious.
Then she allowed herself to react, "Zelda! Are you all right? What happened?" She tried to keep her voice down, desperately aware of the lynel lurking nearby, knowing that they could hear as well as a human or better, even in the rain.
Instead of answering, Zelda grasped her by both of the shoulders. Her grip was strong and steady, and Paya had to fight the urge to ask her again what had happened, what was wrong, the particular intersection of her failures that had led her to this moment so similar to many others that they'd been through. Instead she put her hands on the princess's, gently working her fingers under Zelda's grip so that those grasping fingers clutched hers, and lifted the hands away from her shoulders. Zelda was breathing steadily, trying to orient herself and her thoughts. It was apparently an act of tremendous difficulty, which made Paya's questions more urgent rather than less, but she waited. She could wait.
Finally, after what seemed a very long time, "I have to learn how to protect myself when projecting, it seems." She still did not open her eyes, though she was clearly lucid. "My head hurts enormously. The light hurts my eyes. I feel as if failure to talk through every sensation I'm experiencing would result in me not being able to talk at all. That's ridiculous. I'm rambling. Sorry." She tried to sit up, and wordlessly Paya held her down. She thought that the princess would fight her, but she didn't. "I found the Malice inside of the Divine Beast. I thought that I might be able to treat it like I did the Guardian, but that was foolish. It's taken on an extremely potent form, becoming a monster like I haven't encountered before. The lynel is nothing compared to the Blight that sits in Vah Ruta; it was like looking at Ganon itself." She opened one eye, looking up through a pained wince. "I'm sorry. I don't know if I can move. We may have to reconsider how we're going to get the shock arrows."
"I can take you back to the Domain immediately," and before the words have even left her mouth she knew they would be rejected, and the shake of the princess's head told her everything. "Failing that… I may be able to retrieve the shock arrows by myself. I won't be able to kill the lynel, not without you there, but even if it's keeping all of them on its person…" She couldn't make any promises; the senses of lynel were too sharp. If it were human, even if it were one of the Yiga trained specifically in those arts, she had faith that her grandmother's teachings would see her through. Against a lynel, though? Who could say? But she had to. "I will retrieve all that I can and then return. If the Zora still wish for us to deal with the lynel, then we can tend to it after Vah Ruta." Though that was another thing she found herself carefully filing away to scream about later; if the thing in Vah Ruta was so much worse than the lynel, and the lynel so malignant that she could feel it like a stench in the air, then there was indeed a very great deal working against them now.
Bright blue eyes stared up at her, intense through their pain, and she felt herself becoming unmoored from making contact with them. Zelda did not like it; that was written plainly on her face. Written more subtly, in the bend of her eyebrows and the barely noticeable quirking and unquirking of the side of her mouth, was that she agreed that Paya was right. For all of her training, Zelda had left a very great deal of herself in the past, and her ability to hide her feelings on command was one of those things—or else whatever she had seen inside of Vah Ruta had simply knocked that part of her loose. Now she was running calculations, going through possibilities, trying to think of ways she could help, wrestling with a sudden sense of infirmity.
"I can be back on my feet and ready to fight in a few minutes."
"That will be too long." It was true: Zelda could not feel it because of whatever had just happened, but the lynel was growing closer, the weight of its awareness extended. "The lynel is actively searching for us; it's not sure that we're here, but the closer it gets the surer it will be. I need to go and steal the shock arrows from it, if only so that it will be confused and follow my presence instead of yours. Our only other option is for me to carry you down."
"Fine. Give me your sword. And your shield." Zelda's insistence was absolute. Paya asked no questions, though she had many to ask; instead she drew the eight-fold blade from its scabbard and, once Zelda released her shoulders, placed it in the princess's hands. "Stupid of me not to think of this before." The princess closed her hands around the hilt of the sword, winced in sudden and pronounced pain, and visibly fought it down. After a moment of straining, during which sweat broke out on her forehead and her hands began to shake, the sword began to glow in her hands—golden, producing its own light like a star. With shaking hands she offered it back. "It's not exactly the sword that seals the darkness, but… I think this will help, if you do have to fight."
Paya took back the blade delicately. It felt no warmer, though it looked as if it should; she felt warmer touching it, as if the residual energies of Hylia's power was flowing from it, radiating into her. She slid it back into its scabbard and the light was sealed when she drove it home; in spite of the beauty of the light she was relieved; that radiance and holy might would have made it much more difficult for her to move undetected. She placed her shield in Zelda's hands, and the process was repeated, though this time Zelda did not seem quite so pained by the act of blessing.
"If you take too long," and Zelda's words were a promise, "I will come after you."
Paya nodded, and gave silent thanks to the gods when Zelda closed her eyes and seemed to turn her attention inward, toward healing herself. She said nothing, dared to say nothing, because the enormity of what Zelda had just given her ran almost counter to the way that it had happened. A weapon blessed by the Princess of Hyrule—effectively by the goddess herself. Such a thing was so precious, so beyond her understanding of value or of the sacred, that it beggared belief. To be holding her sword and her shield was to be carrying Zelda's protection, and this knowledge more than the fact of the items themselves filled her up with an emotion for which she did not have a name, until she thought she would explode in a burst of warmth and radiance that would shame every fire that had ever burned. She would not fail. The lynel drew closer and she cared not at all. She would not fail.
She retrieved her stealth armor from her pack and began to change.
Through the rain the lynel stepped, its wide hooves sinking into the softness of the wet earth, purchase thin and slick. Still its steps were confident, its patrol unencumbered, and if it was bothered by the rain or the wet then it gave no sign. The fur on its face was ridged just so that water was kept from its eyes and its nose and its mouth, and as it walked it sniffed at the wet air, picking out scents that were far too subtle for the peoples of Hyrule to pick out. The rain, by all appearances, was no impediment at all.
It was impossible to say if the lynel thought in the same way as the peoples of Hyrule; that it was intelligent seemed irrefutable, given the weapon and shield that it carried, the carefully crafted leather harnesses it used for stowing those when it was not prepared for combat. Those who had seen a lynel and lived to tell of it—and these were always those who knew when to run, because running was the only way to address a lynel and convince it that one sought no challenge—described them as having keenly measuring eyes that communicated an understanding of what they were looking at. They were also cruel, hugely cruel, cruel in a way not unlike cats or humans, a grim amalgam of both that went further than either. Its sword was cruel, shaped for ripping more than killing, crippling rather than executing, and even its shield was lined in blades that would pull at weapons or at flesh in the usage. People had died striking at lynels, not because they had taken a counter-blow from their swords or clubs but because they had found themselves on the receiving end of a vigorous parry and the shield had opened them up, turning the ground red.
This lynel, in particular, was orders of magnitude more dangerous than the one that had attacked the incarnate goddess and her attendant at the foot of Mount Lanayru; whether separated by age or experience or a greater concentration of Malice in its making none could say, because no one had observed a lynel for long enough to say whether or not they aged or grew or shared any of the common processes by which living things changed over time. All that could be said for sure was that the dark coloring of its face and the white coloring of its mane was an indication of brutality in keeping with the finer, keener make of its weapons. Like many of its kin this lynel carried a bow, which by dark arts could fire a single arrow as three; in its quiver, nearly bottomless so long as the lynel drew breath, hummed the potential of thunder.
There was a sense of power in the air, and the lynel followed it, its course ambling and slow; it was reticent to step away from the territory it had claimed for itself, that it had marked with the signs of its archery practice, shock arrows buried in the trunks of trees and even stones. Still, there was something further down the mountain, something that called to it, something that made its hackles rise in the potential for greater and more terrible furies. Two somethings, or only one with a gradient of being; it was impossible to be sure.
A twig snapped behind it and it whirled instantly, rearing up into its hind legs as it turned, nearly losing its footing before bringing its forelegs down in a crash that shook the ground beneath it and flattened the grass within five paces. It roared in challenge, daring anything in the dark to answer its call and whet its appetite for massacre.
But nothing was there. The rain fell on stones and grass and a gently sloping path, and there was no presence to suggest that anything had ever been there.
Except that some part of the presence down the hill had disappeared. Which meant it was here. Challenging the lynel. Hunting it. Seeking to assert dominance over it, claim its territory.
The lynel bellowed again, a sound so terrible the rain fell in sheets around it and for one moment no water struck the monster at all. The echo of its roar faded slowly, and it listened to the quiet after, to the no-answer that came back to it.
A twig snapped further up the hill. The lynel did not roar again. Instead it walked, slowly, drawing its sword and shield from their harnesses, body tensed, waiting for the inevitable attack. Whatever was challenging it wished to fight it within its own territory; this suited the lynel, as much as it could be suited. The ground was slick, its footing unsure, but nothing in the lynel's posture suggested caution, or even the capacity for caution. Whatever sought it out would be met face-to-face; this was the lynel's hunt, now, whether this other power knew it or not.
The walk back up the hill was slow, and its attention would have wandered except that every once in a great while, at irregular intervals, there would be a sound ahead of it: a breaking stick, a rock striking another rock, the barest flash of killing intent floating in the air. They were tiny sounds, and any other beast in Hyrule would not have heard them beneath the rain, but lynels were not like other monsters. They were only like lynels.
Enormous stones at the peak of the mountain obscured its line of sight; it would need to patrol now, focus on its tracking abilities to root out whatever its antagonist was. This suited it, too. It was impossible to say what the lynel believed, or if it was capable of theorizing regarding the minds of other creatures, regarding the sounds that the other presence kept making. Did it think those mistakes? Lures? Did it only process them as sounds, to be followed?
The hum of electric discharge, of wood softly releasing an object it had been holding. The lynel bounded across the clearing, toward one of the trees that it had used for target practice, its full gallop covering the distance in the span of heartbeats. It scrabbled to a stop in front of the tree, which should have been riddled which shock arrows.
The arrows were gone. The places where they had been pulled free were still steaming, the act of pulling the arrows out having activated them just enough to vaporize the rainwater that had touched the point of contact. The lynel sniffed at the air, touched its fingertips against the place where the arrows had been resting. It looked away, back toward the center of its territory. Whatever had invaded its mountain was able to hide itself, but the shock arrows…
It sniffed at the air again, catching a whiff of ozone, feeling the electromagnetic currents that shaped the air and interfered with each other in ways that could not be detected by the nervous systems of any of the peoples of Hyrule. Those could not be hidden. Not as effectively.
It bounded toward where the currents were most interfering with each other, found a boulder that had been emptied of the signs of its practice, the marking of its territory. The interference grew more pronounced, more easily pursued, and pursue the lynel did, now leaping around the peak, all caution abandoned, inspecting trees and stones and little spots on the path. At each place it would stop and examine where the arrows had been, and then it would sniff at the air, at the ground, searching for some sign of the creature that was stealing its property. It found nothing; there was nothing to find. The air around it began to boil, from rage or excitement or some other, unnamable emotion that it did not share with any other monster, and it roared once again, so loud and terrible that the sound made Zora children in the Domain look up at the mountain in sudden, almost primal, fear. There was the sound of death.
Its prey—because the word now was prey, not adversary or antagonist or even quarry but prey—had stolen nearly all of the shock arrows, and somehow managed to evade it up to now. The lynel had not seen its shadow, nor smelled its leavings, or managed to find any sign at all, but it was there, and the shock arrows were with it, and their charge called out like a song.
The lynel drew its bow, nocking an arrow from its quiver, and the magic in that bow made one lightning bolt into three. The arrows called to each other, lines of power intersecting over the entirety of the peak, and it was with perfect, blank-faced confidence that it drew the bowstring taut, aimed into the shadows of a tree, and fired.
A flash—not of light but of motion, and then light and the motion was gone. It turned and drew taut another arrow and fired again, leading based on the movement of its prey, aiming slightly off so that it would strike at a puddle just away from where it assumed its prey to be.
The three shock arrows striking the puddle erupted into domes of killing lightning, a sustained surge of electricity that hissed and roared and bit at the air, and there was another flash of movement as the lynel's prey leaped away, fast, unbelievably fast, the placement of the puddle and the eruption forcing it out into the open.
The lynel took one moment to look at it, seemingly unsure of what it was seeing. A shadow, perhaps, with tightly bound silver hair.
The lynel put its bow away, drew its sword and shield, and roared its challenge. No one knew if lynels experienced anything akin to happiness, but the bards had often sung that they experienced fulfillment in the moment of the challenge, as if they were warriors who sought to test themselves against greater and greater powers until they found something worthy of their true fury. Like as not these ideas were nonsense: the only reality was in the violence itself, in the wickedly hooked sword and shield and the rain falling on its face as it screamed.
The shadow, with nowhere to run, drew a blade and a shield. These were much smaller than the lynel's, but they glowed with an insistent, golden light.
Sidon had not panicked on seeing Gaddison collapsed on the ground, breathing in the great labored gasps of the truly exhausted; he could see she was uninjured, that none of her blood had mixed with the rain. There was a moment, still, brief but intense, where the possibility had assailed him and he had prepared himself to deal with the reality of one needless death, and then very probably two more.
She looked up at him as he ran toward her and stood immediately at attention, banishing her signs of fatigue through sheer force of will and wasn't she magnificent! But she had no breath with which to greet him and so he spoke first:
"Gaddison! The lynel is worse than we had imagined! You have done magnificently in bringing our friends here, but now I must ask you for still more: please, go back to the Domain, and summon as many soldiers as we can spare! We will need all of them!"
How proud he was of her, that she saluted him, that without another word she leapt from the height of the falls and dove. She would run the entire way there, exhaustion be damned, and she would be with the soldiers when they arrived as reinforcements; but he had no time to watch her, no time for anything except to run, spear in hand, up the mountain.
His stride was as long as a Hylian's, his footing no less sure, and he did not stop until he saw a woman in blue seated on the grass, clutching at her head and breathing aloud. His knowledge of Hylian anatomy was not so specific, or so useful, as to be trusted here.
"Zelda! Are you wounded? Where is Paya?"
Zelda looked up at him, her face a perfect expression of surprise. "Sidon? What are you—" She stopped, hissed between her teeth. "Paya has gone up the mountain. I'm… I can tell you later. The lynel had begun to track us, and she thought that she could lure it away and steal the shock arrows without being spotted."
Before this moment Sidon had respected Zelda, who carried the world on her shoulders, but now he also felt that he understood Paya; Paya who walked without the benefit of the power of the gods, Paya whose life was lived in service, Paya who would lay that life down with happiness! To be walking on the same mountain as people of such stout, good hearts—he thought his own was full to bursting. But he imagined her, one lone woman, against the greater senses and overwhelming power of the lynel.
"The lynel is white-maned, Zelda. It's one of the very worst creatures the Calamity has ever spawned—we thought it would be red-maned, like the one that walked Ploymus in the years before the Calamity, but the thing up there now is a walking army! We must warn her and get away from this place!"
From above them the lynel roared, a sound that could drown out thunder, and Sidon could feel the fear sinking down into his chest, the surety of death that accompanied that roar, and that fear was as terrible as the creature that summoned it.
But his spear was in his hand and his people's faith on his shoulders, and he banished fear from his heart, and Zelda was running up the mountain and now Sidon was following behind her and the rain fell.
A lynel was no quicker than a moblin, or a bokoblin, or a lizalfos. In some ways it was slower than each of those, even—a moblin wielding a spear would thrust from its hip and shoulder in one motion, with no wind-up, to make it almost impossible to react to its attack in time. The lynel cared not at all that one could see its attacks coming—every blow was clearly telegraphed, signaled by the winding up of a body that could shatter boulders by the strength of its hands. Its face was a lion's face, and could not be read like a person's, but in its eyes Paya saw a malice that suggested that it wanted its opponent to see the attacks coming, to know that they would be crushed.
There are degrees of power for which technique is no answer, her Grandmother's words echoed in her head. But they are rare, indeed.
Paya launched herself backward, somersaulting in midair as the lynel's sword clove through the space where she had been a fraction of a second before. Their eyes met as she was suspended, as the momentum of a blow that would have cut her in half as if she were not there carried it well past where it should have tried to stop itself. Yes, she thought, those eyes were indeed intelligent. Intelligent and unbelievably, insurmountably cruel.
Her feet touch the ground and she dashed forward, lashing out with her sword in a smooth strike that started at her hip and ended with her arm fully extended, tracing an arc of golden light that ran over the lynel's face like a viper's kiss. Its flesh is like stone, she thought, because that was true, but the thought did not make her despair. She carried a weapon that could cut stone.
The lynel reared back, bellowing, and she dashed forward again, spinning, now inside of its stance and underneath its torso, standing behind its forelegs as they came crashing down in a stampede of boulders. She swung again, once for each of the tendons connecting its hooves to its legs, and though there were spurts of blood and a new bellow of pain and fury the tendons held.
Now the lynel leaped backward, and she understood the depths of the power it was drawing upon as it launched itself a distance of easily thirty meters, coming to a stop with its back against a boulder. It roared again, as if to challenge her to approach.
The Sheikah did not have a combat manual for addressing lynels except in groups. For a red-maned lynel, five capable warriors working in tandem would be necessary to prevail without casualty. For a white-maned—much less a silver—the preferred number was "as many as are available" and was best supplemented by explosives. To face one alone was not brave; it was foolish in the extreme, a waste of life that could be given over in service to the goddess and to the royal family. A single person, faced with a lynel, was expected to do one thing: escape.
So the lynel roared its challenge and Paya bolted. She had enough shock arrows to address the problem of Vah Ruta, and it was a surety that she would die fighting this thing; the only question was how long she would last. She ran as the Sheikah were trained to run, each step an enormous bound, body low to the ground to reduce her profile if she were spotted. The side of the mountain was badly exposed, but if Zelda had recovered sufficiently to jump from the side they could use their paragliders and be away before the lynel could catch up. She needed only to get away from the summit, out of the loose ring of stones that stood like mountains around a minor nation—
She smelled the fireball, heard it, in time to throw herself behind one of those same stones. The space she had been occupying before erupted as if struck by the Calamity, a wall of fire searing her clothes as she shielded her face with one of her arms.
The second fireball struck the stone on the other side, bursting into liquid death that flung itself forward another twenty meters, laying down fires that burned and danced as if the rain was not falling, leaving a corridor of safe earth lined on each side by burning death. She had been funneled into an obvious trap in seconds. But how would it act on that?
She was answered by thunder. She looked up, hearing the shock arrows as they sailed lazily upwards; there were three, radiance burning dark spots on her retinas as they fell, and by their arcs she saw that they would land at regular intervals along the path that the lynel had made for her. There would be no escaping them, not at the speed she could run.
Paya turned and leaped up the stone, scrabbling for purchase against the wet-slick surface, and as she reached its top she saw the lynel nocking another volley. Its expression was utterly incurious, and she felt the shock arrows explode behind her from the feeling of static that made her hair stand nearly on end. It looked at her, but no more than that, as it launched another high volley. She, who was trained to fight archers, saw where they would land; behind her and to either side of her, but now they were aimed at puddles, which would increase their effective range enormously.
She was fast enough, and she ran, legs pumping, as the world exploded into lightning around her. She had the vague sense that the lynel was trying to herd her, and she did not let it; she skirted around the radius of the shock arrows' effects, leaning so hard into her turns that her fingers scraped the grass, and she would have fallen if not for pushing herself up, treating her hand as a third foot in her scramble. Her feet tried to betray her, slipping in the mud, and she forced them to act in accordance with her survival. She would not be hunted; above all things, not that.
The lynel charged and she dashed around a rock, and the lynel leaped over it with a roar as its hooves beat crack-lined pits in the side of the boulder, arms reaching forward with fingers so strong that they actually punched their own purchase into the stone. It reached for her and she ducked beneath its grip, slashing at its wrist, and there was a spurt of blood and a roar of fury and then the lynel's fist swung for her. She slipped around it, tilting her body so that the beast's arm sailed smoothly past her torso—and then the force of that fist hitting the ground was like a bomb going off, not from its sound but from the force that pressed against her back and lifted her into the air. She was a paper lantern caught in the wind, hurled over the lynel's shoulder, over the stone, back toward the center of the clearing.
She landed on her feet and thought perhaps one of her ribs was broken but it did not matter, she spun with her sword ready as the lynel wheeled, sword and shield forgotten. It lowered its head and charged, its whole body a battering ram, presenting such a narrow profile that one could be forgiven for forgetting how enormous it was. Impaled on the horns, or ripped apart by its hands, or trampled under its hooves, she thought, thinking of the most likely ways she might die, and as it bore down on her she shifted to her left and thrust with her sword, pushing with all the force in her arm.
The resistance of the lynel's body nearly tore the sword from her hands but she held firm and traced a long line across its side, from its armpit all the way to its horse-body's hip. More blood, more pain, but it wouldn't matter. She could cut it dozens of times that seriously and gain almost nothing by it. She had to get away. How was she going to get away?
The lynel slid in the mud, hooves and claws digging up great gouges of earth as it spun, and already it was turning on her, she thought to bolt again but it was already rearing back, its sword was in its hand and it was not aiming for her, it was going to thrust its weapon into the ground, and as she felt its power building she realized two things: she did not have time to get out of range of the attack, and the force of blocking it with her shield would break every bone in her body. In some remote place she hoped that the shock arrows she carried would survive. Perhaps they would be thrown down the mountain, where the Zora could retrieve them.
So, for the second of three times, she prepared to die.
The lynel lurched forward in the motion that would bring its sword into the ground and unleash the power that would scorch the entire mountaintop, and at the most forward point of its arc an arrow struck it in the muzzle. It hit the ground on its face, collapsing, momentarily robbed of its power but already gathering itself, already recovering enough to push itself up into what was almost a kneeling position.
"Zelda? Zelda, no!" She couldn't be here, not now, not against this thing, they had to run, even working together—"We have to get out of here! Run!" She turned to the direction that the arrows had come from, ready to tell her charge to run for her life, for Hyrule, for the world, she could not fight Ganon if she was killed by a lynel—
But saw only a mighty, golden light.
Zelda put away her bow and stepped into the clearing, heedless of Paya's warning, and she was enshrouded with the power of the goddess, the power that filled the world around her with a sound like a bell and a light most glorious and terrible. She had to ignore Paya, just for now, and focus on the lynel. She had to make sure it would focus on her.
She was not sure how much of the power she could summon without Ganon striking back against her, but she was confident that the strength needed to obliterate the lynel was comfortably on the wrong side of that threshold. So, when it regained its senses, forced itself to its feet, turned its bright eyes toward her with an expression that she could not read, she did not attack it. She only approached it.
This was her first time consciously seeing a lynel: it was like a nightmare, biological concepts strung together without a mind for sense or utility. Its upper torso was nearly as large as its lower, maybe even bigger, and she did not understand how it could support its own weight distribution, even with legs as powerful and tree-like as those. The way it turned to face her was decidedly like an enormous cat, far too graceful for that colossal frame, and she could feel the potential in its body as it looked at her.
She had no sense of perspective by which to understand how significant it was that the lynel hesitated when it faced her; she only knew that for a moment, as she approached, it did not move. Good. She needed that time.
The lynel hefted its sword and shield, and she carefully walked sideways, trying not to provoke it as she drew the Sheikah Slate from her belt and selected a particular rune. The monster tracked her with its eyes, turned to always be facing her, but for just a moment longer it was still.
Then it bellowed, and it was already charging.
"Zelda!" Paya's scream was a sound of confused anguish.
"Sidon!" In answer to her call a red blur cut across the clearing as she poured some portion of her strength into the Sheikah Slate and fired.
The lynel froze mid-charge, chained down by the temporal properties of the Sheikah Slate, these bolstered by the power of the goddess, as it drew back its sword to cut her down. Normally this would have lasted only for a second, perhaps two, but the power was Hylia's power and against that the lynel was quite ordinary.
Sidon's spear technique was learned from Seggin, Seggin who had taught Mipha, Seggin from whom the Hero had learned by watching. When he thrust and pulled back and thrust again it was with a speed that defied the eye to follow, blows falling on the frozen lynel with a speed to match the rain. The sound of the stasis being struck was deafening, louder even than the Prince's battle cry, his full-throated roar utterly drowned out by the ferocity of his attack as the force of his blows was shunted away, held in reserve to be paid all at once.
The lynel was where Zelda had said it would be. Sidon was where he had been instructed; on the side of it opposite Shatterback Point. They three together perhaps could have killed it in fair combat, but it was risky. Much stronger than they, Zelda had told Sidon, was the hammer of gravity.
Twenty dozen blows did Sidon rain on the lynel, never letting up, never breathing. The slate's power held it as momentum built up like a promise. Then the stasis broke, without warning, and Sidon's spear touched only empty air.
The boulder behind the lynel exploded as the monster went hurtling through it, sending a cloud of gravel flowing outward in a hail of arrowheads that shredded the shrubbery on that side of the clearing. The tree it slammed into after that was similarly obliterated, shivering apart into splinters so fine that they could have been inhaled. On and on the lynel went, skipping and bouncing up the hill toward Shatterback Point.
It lived, still, the iron of its bones and the stone of its flesh mightier than the mere objects it had been sent through. Sidon's attack told on it, opening a great hole in its side that might eventually prove to be its undoing, but in that moment it lived. Mid-somersault it planted its hooves into the earth, stopping its tumble, but the force with which it had been thrown was so great that even then it kept hurtling backward, digging four deep furrows in the ground. With its sword and its shield it dug into the earth, trying to stop itself, and it slowed and it slowed but it did not stop.
The lynel went over the edge of Shatterback Point, but not at speed; its fall was a slow thing, almost graceful, as its hooves slipped over the lip of the cliff. Pride forgotten, the beast let go of its sword and its shield and with all the strength in its arms latched onto the stone, hanging off the edge by virtue of its grip alone. Its hooves dug furrows into the cliff face, seeking purchase, and with its arms it began to try to haul itself up.
They had to run, the handmaiden insisted.
They had to kill it, the prince argued. If it did not die now, then it would only return later, and all of his people would suffer.
They could not leave the Zora to face this beast in the future, the princess decided.
Far, far, far below them, Vah Ruta turned with ponderous slowness toward the drama playing out on the mountain above it. The power that drove it tilted its head up, and the Divine Beast roared, and there was a red light.
The three of them drew close to the lynel, which was making progress in pulling itself up, but only slowly.
To draw too near to it would be death, the handmaiden warned, for its arms could tear any of them apart.
It was a good thing to carry a spear, said the prince, as they drew near to it.
Better still to have bombs, the princess demonstrated, summoning one into her hand. The lynel looked at her and seemed resigned. She looked past the lynel, seeing down into the reservoir, at the red luminescence that shone from Vah Ruta's throat.
What was the Divine Beast doing, she asked, but she already knew the answer, reaching out with the goddess's power and drawing Sidon and Paya bodily to her as she keyed in a teleportation command on the Sheikah Slate.
The three of them were gone, dissolved into lines of blue light, and then Vah Ruta fired.
A pillar of blinding radiance pierced the sky, tilted to the east like a tower that had reached for the heavens and then begun to fall. The clouds parted around it, stopping the rain in that region for a time. It was seen all over Hyrule; in every city, every settlement, every waypoint on the road, people stopped and looked up for the brief moments during which the sky was lit up by something brighter and stranger than the sun.
The Calamity saw this, too, and Hyrule Castle quaked with the force of its laughter.
The peak of Mount Ploymus was gone, evaporated, and the wound left behind smoked and hissed as the rain returned. The wound itself was almost tubular, the beam of destruction perfectly obliterating everything it touched, so that the surface of the stone left behind was as smooth and gleaming as polished glass.
Of the lynel, of course, there was nothing left.
The clouds closed, and the rain began to fall again as Vah Ruta sank back into its waiting posture. It returned to its task, spewing water into the air, but there was a different sense about it now, a sense of what it really was: a weapon, one of the most powerful ever built by humans or demons or gods. A weapon that stood in the reservoir, seeking to break it with the power of water, and more perfectly destroy Hyrule thereby.
Sidon and Paya and Zelda reappeared in front of the shrine in the heart of Zora's Domain, and there was a great deal of shouting when they ran back out into the plaza, how had they survived, surely they should have died, oh we are so relieved to see you our prince, someone run and tell the soldiers not to approach Ploymus, but they three pushed past it all, staring up at the shattered, blasted face of the mountain. There the face of their task: there the mark left by the true power of the forces of the Calamity.
Above them, now, Vah Ruta roared. The rain fell, and fell, and fell.