Chapter 2
.
.
.
Year 30,000
One-hundredth year after the death of Princess Zelda the Last
Third month of Autumn
.
.
His body sensed the oppressive cold before anything else. It lapped at his body in a viscous liquid while frosty air caressed his face. His brain was muddled with too much stimulus, but he tried to move his gangly limbs anyway. The muscles contracted and pulled fire into his arms and legs, and even free of the thick liquid, they burned at every moment.
Despite this, he attempted to stand. The liquid fell away from him and pooled back into the container with echoing slaps. His efforts were met with a hard knock to the head and his foot slipping on slick grime.
Now on the floor, he could see nothing even with his eyes wide open. The distortion of black around him was inherently unnerving.
Something with small, moving legs touched his foot and the boy's cries assaulted his ears. In an effort to flee, his hand walked onto something smooth that immediately lit the small rocky cavern and decorated tub in blue light.
He didn't know what it was but he stole the small object's light and kept it near his beating chest.
Something like water crawled down from his damp hair and onto his back.
The blue light flickered and the boy decided he didn't want to be in a place where his toes were red and numb, and his breaths reverberated like the world's only noise.
His fingers slid over jagged edges and bled raw but he followed the tantalizing scent of fresh air through the cave's crevasses.
The rocks relaxed into an open cave mouth where the boy craned his neck at the red night sky. It bathed the wilting forests in blood like light and dyed their leaves a muddy brown. He stared fervently at the pale face mocking him with its height and presence.
In this moment, the boy would come to recognize the red moon as the first of many things in this world as utterly and irrecoverably wrong.
The sky should be filled with a navy so deep the stars shone through like lanterns in a forest. A blue like the deepest lakes and the richest dyes.
Not weeping with bloody light.
The boy took a step down steep rocks, but tiny pebbles that he had not disturbed raced in front of him. He looked behind him and traced the shadowed rocks until his eyes landed on the swirling patterns of purple. They highlighted the spider-like creature with their center point being a glowing red eye that locked onto him.
Its approaching steps brought forth a primal fear, and he stepped backward. His legs wavered and slipped and it might have been the only thing that saved his life. The spider creature's eye erupted with a searing light that threw itself into the trees below. Without it touching him he felt the burning heat pass by his arm. An explosion of sound stirred him to throw himself down the slope as fast as he could possibly run.
Hiding between trees would not stop the preditor from advancing and in his fear he gripped the smooth slate like a lifeline.
The creature hummed with beeps and another blue beam seared past his back. The concussive force of the explosion caused him to stumble, but he ran on until the trees gave way to an open field.
He wasted time staring down his death and the next explosion ripped him off of the ground. He bounced and slapped the ground. Rolling and rolling until his body rolled into a hole that contorted his limbs and scraped his skin until he surrendered blood.
He slid to a stop. Eyes as wide and pale as the moon, the boy looked through the towering dirt walls and up at the night sky. The entrance to the surface could be blocked with the palm of his hand and it should have concerned him more, but instead he felt resigned sorrow. He had a period of respite from the monster, and he spent it laying in pain in a bone-chilling puddle of mud.
His breaths came out in shudders. The tears were the only thing of warmth he could focus on. Not even holding the flickering blue light could erase the dark thoughts pervading his mind. The little boy didn't understand why he had to hurt, so he wailed and snarled and spat on the earth that drank the blood from his wounds. And he cried until he couldn't convince himself to shed another tear.
And when his own noise wasn't all-consuming, he felt the cold caress his body. He wanted to escape this hole, but the slick walls fell apart in muddy clumps.
He resigned himself to crawling through roots with the tablet flickering uselessly in his hands.
He was hungry.
He was cold.
He could barely hold his eyes open; they felt so swollen.
But he let the pain move him forward until the roots gave way to jagged stone planted in the dirt. The foxhole had opened up into a hallowed section of stone with the outside world in clear view. He looked down the jagged edge at the ground so far away it seemed to twist. Whatever stone architecture he was standing on, it wrapped its way around the cliff wall until it disappeared around the bend.
Farther out, the moon had faded into the skyline, and he knew intrinsically that it would be the sun's turn to grace the sky. The boy, of course, could not fathom how he knew such information. But he knew after some consideration that the shadows of the wilted trees would grow long before the golden orb would reach its peak.
He stood there, looking out at the world and expecting it to lie to him but his predictions held true. And like a golden fish peeking its head through the surface of the water, the sun rose in brilliant fashion and cast its light upon the hideous landscape.
In the dark, the trees had appeared nothing more than whithered by winter's embrace. But in the daylight he saw their trunks spotted with black, being consumed by tar-like, tumorous grows. Far to his right, everything stretching up to the hills was flooded. The water wrapped around trees and mounds of yellow grass as though they were islands, and in its currents swam globules of the tar, soiling the water a deep brown. Watching over it all, the glowing, red mountain spewed black smoke into the air.
It felt gut-wrenchingly wrong and he didn't know why.
Like seeing a phantom of a memory the hazy ruins on the horizons rose up in his mind's eye as the shape of a glorious castle with spires that touched the heavens. He blinked and the beauty was gone, replaced by a pile of ash and stone.
He clutched the tablet and made his way down the stone wall, pressing his feet along the jutting edges. The last jump down ended with crumpled legs. He rolled down the flat slate, the abrasive stone eating at him as he went.
He was face-first in the muddy ground before he forced his arms under him and took off with the black, reflective tablet tucked between his arms.
Out in the open, the boy felt more than just naked. The wind blew across his body and the consumed trees dressed the plains with an ominous atmosphere that made him hurry to keep walking. The smell of poison crawled up his nostrils and he gagged. Nothing was alive here. Not the trees nor the grass. Not even birds dared to soar.
He kept walking and walking, attempting to distance himself from the tar and the bubbling waters that emanated the most foul.
He walked until his feet bled and again until thirst brought him to his knees and his face to the ground where he swallowed dirtied water that disturbed his insides.
He walked until the moon's pale grin barred his path with darkness, and he was forced to hide in the hovel of tree roots lest he find himself falling into the shadows.
He massaged his aching feet and considered how he knew what shoes where but not why. He knew what clothes were and that he didn't have them. But not how to make them or where to obtain them. Only that people made them. People that weren't here.
The more he considered his situation, the more the questions grew and spun their own trails of impossibilities. Perhaps he was left in that cave on purpose? To die. Maybe he was a mistake; who would leave him in this terrible world otherwise? The thoughts crowded his mind until they brought him to tears and it was left to the sun to dry his eyes.
With the light came newfound determination to keep walking in one direction: forward.
Logic determined he couldn't be the only person in the world. The rot that wasted the land didn't extend past the edge of the valley. If life existed then surely it would be there.
However, that optimism didn't make the journey any more bearable. The ground still hurt and his stomach still fought for control, but he maintained his efforts, not daring to look back at the pitiful distance traveled.
His time was filled with passing remnants of man-made structures and their items of contextless nature. He filled his brain with names and could only guess at their purpose.
His fingers ran over dusty wooden structures half collapsed as rotted lumps. Empty jars and jars with rancid mush. Two chairs were tucked into an undisturbed table as though a peaceful snapshot out of time. He moved on and didn't look back.
The sun set.
The moon rose.
And hunger blinded him. By the next day, he hadn't even realized what he was doing before his nose had led him between trees still blushing with autumn leaves. He chased a salty smell that made his mouth salivate, and he looked in wonder at the two red men with flapping ears who were smoking something over a fire.
The smell sang to him and he listened, unsure if he was more excited to eat or to speak with living creatures. With a rasping voice, he mouthed sounds that should have been words, but the pig men heard him either way.
Their ears twitched and they shot up in excited squeals. The boy greeted them with a smile, hope flying above the sky. They raced to greet him with pointed sticks in their hands.
Not understanding, he stepped back, and the red man offered him the point of the spear. It collided with his intestines. Again they held out the spear, taking the blood of his shoulder as payment.
The boy fell to his knees in crippling pain and hopeless fear.
.
.
.
Year 11,669
Seventeenth year under the reign of Queen Zelda the Resurgent
Second Month of Spring
.
.
And then he woke up, feeling the gelatinous substance escape from his throat in fervent breaths that Adler didn't take.
The woman tugging at his pants paused and crawled up the bed. She moved the dark curl off of his sweaty forehead. The sleeve of her red dress spilled down her shoulder and he could do no more than absently stare at the presented breast.
"What's wrong? We haven't even started yet," she whispered.
She kissed the side of his lips and Adler jerked, feeling the tub confining his movements as the water as cold as winter's death lapped around his body. The kiss died with his hand still in her hair.
"Link, babe what's wrong?"
He held a hand to his mouth as though he could still feel the prophetic vision.
"It's Adler," he said but it sounded far away.
Sitting up on the cheap bed soon became a search for his cloak and tunic by candlelight. The smell of Joelenne's rosy perfume lingered on his skin. The smell taunted him with the knowledge that it wasn't Zelda's lavender scent.
"Did I do something wrong, "she pleaded. He stopped tieing his belts to nose her forehead.
"No. No I'm sorry. It's just...something I remembered. From my travels. Bad memories. I promise It's not you. I just can't. Not tonight."
She hugged herself, eyeing him as if a poe about to leave. She looked away and brushed her hair back. She looked both regretful and irritated. He wondered if words could salvage the tarnished mood, but he didn't know the right ones, so he turned his back and left the same way he came.
Foolish as it was to traverse Hyrule after dark, Adler couldn't see himself waking up with Joelenne the next morning while his mind still raced with half finished visions. He let the glow of the town lamps fade behind him as he lit his own flare in the palm of his hand and readjusted his traveling pack.
Like the flickering flame, his thoughts were unsure, yet they settled in him with a foreboding weight. Dreams had come to Adler before. They had led him to Impa in Hyrule's time of need. And often he believed it to be the Gods watching over him, perhaps a bit too vigorously these days, but this had felt different. Not by way of subject, but he hadn't felt like himself in the dream.
It had been many years since he'd had the gangly body of a child.
And the potential for something strange intrigued him more than he cared to admit. He knew, deep down that he shouldn't allow himself to be distracted so easily. Ganon's forces were always lingering in the shadows, attempting to thwart his Quest. This could very well be the Gods' way of warning him of a future unknown.
But surely they could not fault him for mortal sins? Despite the real threat of danger this dream posed, he felt drawn to the mystery in a way he hadn't felt since he was a child exploring the world.
He felt a connection between him a some unknown future. He took his next step and walked past the guilt edging in his chest.
Adler moved his eyes from the flickering flame and hesitatingly smiled at the golden buck staring him down.
In the grand scheme of things, what was one detour?
"What do you think?" he asked the ethereal deer. It huffed. "Can I be of any assistance to you?"
.
.
.
AN: Yes, that was LOZ I & II Link. And yes those were some ahem, extracurricular activities with the "red healer woman". I couldn't resist. His games have almost no information to steal characterization from so I did my own thing. Granted he's supposed to be sixteen in AoL...but for all our sakes (and plot reasons) I decided to age him up. By the way, this is likely as sexy as It'll get.
Why is his name Adler and not Link? I have my reasons, and they mainly consist of preventing this conversation, "Hi my name's Link. What's yours?"
"Oh, it's also Link."
"No way, that's my name as well."
"Mine too."
"Same."
"Are all of us named Link?" Link looked to the other Links, and they subsequently nodded. "Well fuck."
Sorry to burst anyone's bubble.
As of 3/15/20 this chapter has been edited to enhance minor clarity issues. Thank you Verdigirl for Betaing.