Chapter 3 - Meetings
Link traveled north along winding paths and trails through the woods with Impa for the better part of two days. He rode straddling Epona as he followed Impa on her sleek, midnight black mare down the paths and into the woods. They had begun on the royal highway which, he had been taught, ran from Ordon north all the way to Castle Town in the middle of the royal province referred to by most people as "Hyrule Field".
The first day of their journey following the highway took them across the great bridge which spanned a great chasm in the earth beneath them, and kept Ordon largely separate and somewhat independent from the rest of the kingdom. It was a kind of hanging rope bridge made with strong, magically reinforced cables and timbers.
Link had paused when the two travelers had come to the edge of the chasm, even as Impa continued ahead of him. It was the farthest from his village in Ordon that he had ever gone, and he instinctively knew that once he had passed out of his home province and into the Faron woods on the other side of the chasm there was no going back.
A kind of fear began to creep up within him as he looked across the chasm from Epona's back as the realization that he might not be returning began to overwhelm him. It was a choice that he had to make. No, it was a choice that he was being forced to make, and in that moment, he resented all those powers who were forcing him to make that choice.
But this is what I was born to do. The words came to his mind from somewhere inside himself.
Link steeled himself, and urged Epona onto the bridge to follow behind the Sage who had not halted her own steed but kept on moving across to the other side.
As Link rode, the light, coppery chain mail that Rusl insisted he wore under his forest colored tunic chafed the skin of his arms and neck where his cloth undergarments failed to protect his skin. On his head was a long tapered cap the same color as his tunic which he had retrieved along with a few other small items of either practical or sentimental value from his house before setting off. As impractical as the hat seemed some times, it was another piece of clothing which his mother had made for him, and he couldn't just leave it behind. Impa had approved when she saw it, saying it suited him.
A sword hung from his back in a well crafted Deku wood scabbard under a sturdy but light wooden shield with a thin hammered steel face. The very real steel blade Rusl had equipped him with was one of the finest the swordmaster could produce from his anvil and forge. The hilt was a masterfully crafted, intricately carved bronze and polished Deku wood. The blade itself was highly polished and razor sharp with a slightly golden hue to the metal which was inlaid with runes and knotted designs important to the Ordonian people.
"This weapon had been intended as a gift for the royal family from our village." Rusl had told him upon presenting the blade to the boy. "It is the finest sword I have ever crafted for anyone. I have many blades in my workshop which I could have given you, Link. The Mayor and I want you to know how much you mean to us. We don't care what race you are. You are from Ordon, and this will always be your home, and we your family. Never forget that, son. You have been my best student. I could not think of anyone better to wield it and bring our little village greater honor."
The boy had treasured the praise from Rusl, and received the sword with pride and a determination to live up to the Ordonian swordmaster's expectations. He swore within himself to not let the people who had raised him down. He accepted it reverently from the swordmaster, bowing slightly as he did so.
The memories which still struggled to integrate within him, however, pronounced it merely adequate for now, and told him there was only one blade which would suit him for the task which lie ahead of him. It was not a disdain which he felt, only the necessities of experience which told him how it must play out.
Some distance past the bridge, as the light of the sun began to fight its angry red battle for life which all knew it would surrender to the night, Impa drew her horse off the highway, expecting Link to follow, which he did. She moved through the brush and trees until they both came to a little clearing of grass and fallen trees within the woods. In the center of the clearing were the remains of blackened sticks, twigs, and larger pieces of wood which had clearly been used for a campfire.
"Go, find dry wood around the clearing, boy. The night will get cold." She ordered him, and he did as he was told.
Within a short span he had collected a large bundle of small dead branches and sticks to make a fire with from around the edges of the clearing. As he did, he could feel the eyes of many, many creatures on him, watching him. Whereas the boy within him became frightened, the memories of the Hero brought to mind exactly who and what were watching him, and the knowledge that, this close to the highway, they would likely stay far away from the campsite.
Returning to the center of the clearing, he began to instinctively arrange the wood into a tripod which would allow air to flow, placing dry grass and leaves underneath for tinder. He then took a flint which he had packed and began to unsheath his sword to use it with the flint to create a spark for the fire.
"Leave your sword, child. There's no need to mar the swordmaster's work with such a menial task." Impa then stopped him, raising her hand palm up.
Link then began to slide the sword slowly back into its sheath, still watching her and wondering how then she expected him to make a fire.
The old woman then held her open palm towards the arrangement of wood and blew at it gently across her palm. Immediately, the wood burst into flame.
Magic. The thought came unbidden. Hylian magic.
Ordonians practiced very little magic as a rule, preferring to rely on what they could engineer, make, or forge themselves. As he had once been told by his mother, the magical arts didn't come as easily or naturally to the rounded eared people as it did to Hylians. Only his adoptive mother, Saria, out of all those in the village, had been the only person he had known to ever use it or to even appear to know how. Even then, with the exception of their house, she used it only sparingly. She too was Hylian.
Brief images of the experience of magic, both wondrous and terrifying, flashed through his mind from his other memories. Those Heroes he may have been in the past knew about magic only too well, and had even used it somewhat themselves, though none had ever fully understood or trusted it. In that, he took comfort in the idea of him always having had just a little Ordonian within him after all.
That night around the campfire was spent silently as the Sage appeared to fall asleep sitting up with her eyes open. Link himself was preoccupied with his own thoughts, chewing on a piece of jerked meat which Rusl's wife had packed for him until his eyes grew too heavy and he lay down next to the fire.
On both that day of travel and the following, neither Hero nor Sage had said much to the other except what was necessary, and the truth was, he was glad for it. The memories which had been awakened within him were hard to sort out, as though he no longer knew who he was. He was a hundred different people, and yet he was none of them, but still just the boy who lost his mother days before.
Having turned off the main highway to follow barely discernible trails through the woods, Impa led him deeper, far deeper into the forest of Faron Province. More flashes of memory surfaced as he followed her. The image of a poisonous violet fog ran through his mind at one point as they crossed a tree filled depression, but there was no context to the image, no way of knowing if it had been a recent lifetime or thousands of years ago.
The memories which returned to him didn't just settle in his mind, but deeper within his limbs and body as well as his legs and torso adjusted and took control of Epona as though he had been riding her for decades, and not the few months that the goat-herd had possessed her. The muscles of his arms and hands too knew how to hold, slash, block, and parry with a sword in ways that he was certain Rusl could only dream about, but he also knew that he himself had never swung anything else but the wooden practice swords the other boys used, and while he may have been more proficient in his lessons, Rusl had always still been his better before now.
Impa's horse followed a steep, winding, and at times broken path down into a canyon where Link could not see the bottom. Her horse took each step with a sure footing as though it had done this hundreds of times, and Link pressed Epona to follow, even though not sure of it himself. The memories within him urged him onwards, telling him it would be fine.
As they descended, he wondered what forces had formed and shaped the canyon. Were they natural? Were they magic? He was certain the answer must lay within those other memories, but they were silent on the subject.
Eventually, the path led into a cavern which turned into a kind of tunnel into a series of grottoes or gardens walled off from one another except by more passages through the rock. A faint but lively melody played on pan-pipes could be heard echoing off the walls of the grottoes, but the Sage ignored it, and continued on her path, expecting him to keep up.
They finally set eyes on the temple by sunset of the third day of travel, or rather on the ruins of a temple which might had been there millennia ago. At first, Link was confused, and then recognition from his other memory took hold. He knew this place well. His past lives had visited this place many times over the course of thousands of years. The landscape had changed. Buildings had crumbled. But there was no mistaking it for what it was. The ten year old boy never having been there, he nevertheless recognized the ruins for what they were.
They had crumbled even further since the last memory he had of seeing them, but he instinctively knew that didn't matter to the Temple of Time. The roof and walls had collapsed centuries before even then, and he could feel that "his" last visit had been centuries ago. But time itself was irrelevant to this edifice.
Only the doors stood as pristine as the day they were fashioned. The doors set in hinges in a door frame that seemed completely useless and out of place when the rest of the temple was open and exposed to the elements. This is all it would appear to be to the adventurous stranger who managed to make it this far alive.
Appearances could be deceptive where the Temples of Hyrule were concerned.
Impa had led her mount down a worn and broken flight of steps to let her horse graze in what had been the sanctuary of the temple that the doors opened up on to. She then motioned for Link to do the same with Epona, though he hesitated, knowing the dangers of this place.
"She will be fine, you have my word." Impa told him. "We do not believe you will need her further at present. She will be waiting here with us."
"We?" Link asked, though Impa gave no answer.
Impa and he then returned up the broken steps to stand in front of the seemingly useless doors.
Something didn't seem right, however. He looked at the doors more closely, and the space in front of them, and couldn't help but feel that something was missing. Then he knew what it was.
"There was a guardian here." He said, the image of an armored stone warrior positioned eternally on guard in front of the doors.
"Very good. You remember." She said. "There is a guardian when this temple needs one, but why would the temple need to guard itself from me?"
She stood facing the double doors, staring at them intently. She then pulled out a small harp and played six notes, and then three more. She did this twice. The melody was familiar to him, from a very long time ago, except for the last three notes. That didn't seem right. It seemed out of place. She replaced the harp into the folds of her red cloak and then waited. There wasn't long to wait.
The frame of the doorway glowed with a blue light as a series of strange symbols emerged and then vanished around it. The doors creaked and cracked and slowly swung open towards them. A blue haze, like a brilliant pool of water engulfed the door frame. Link had never seen anything like it. He couldn't see the other side, just the reflective pool of water. Link walked up to it and touched the surface of the water. It rippled gently beneath his touch.
Impa said nothing about it. She took one step, and then walked straight into the water, disappearing from sight. Link knew he was to follow. The memory of where he was, and of having done this before was strong. Of course, his memory of it wasn't a pleasant one. Then, he had come to collect a piece of a mirror and kill a demon. Somehow that prospect seemed less daunting. He didn't really know what await him now.
He walked forward into the water. Immediately stars exploded in front of him and he felt himself pulled across the vastness of space and time. Then, just as quickly as it began, it ended and he found himself stepping down onto a stone staircase leading into the center of a temple that looked newly built. Gold gleamed from alcoves and walls. It was beautiful beyond what he could ever know, and yet he knew that he had known it before, and it hadn't changed since then.
"Come, hero." Impa said to him, gesturing him down the stairs. "The others are waiting for us."
"The others?" Link asked.
"What has happened has disturbed the whole of Hyrule, past and present. I am not the only Sage who has noticed. We are meeting here, where we can all discuss what has happened, and best advise you on what to do about it." She said as they walked forward towards another set of doors leading further into the temple.
"What I am to do about it?" He asked, thinking he misunderstood what she said.
"Yes, Hero. We must stay and guard the temples. You and you alone can resolve this. This is the fate of the chosen Hero of the goddesses." She answered him. Her voice was quiet, but in the silence of the temple, it rebounded off the walls and slammed into him with a thud.
She led him into the inner sanctum. It was a smaller room ringed in gold and marble. At the center of it stood a pedestal with a magnificent sword buried to the hilt within its center. Around the pedestal was a gathering of people from every corner of Hyrule.
"Welcome Hero of Hyrule." One among them said to the agreement of the rest.
Link bowed instinctively.
"You are younger now than we had hoped." Another said, this was a "Kokiri" he remembered, one of the mysterious forest people that made their villages deep within the part of Faron Province known as the "Lost Woods."
"I thought there were only eight Sages," Link said, "for the eight temples."
"There are only ever eight Sages at any one point in time, young hero, but time means nothing here in this place, and we need the wisdom of all the ages of Hyrule right now." A Zora woman, one of the gray skinned water dwelling peoples of Lanayru province, spoke up.
"Why? What has happened that is so different?" He asked again, this time to every Sage which had ever lived.
The Legend was always more or less the same. The time and circumstances varied, but it always happened more or less the same. He knew this from both his storybook and from the flashes of memory that came to his mind.
"Tell him," this was an older Hylian man.
Impa spoke up. "The Princess is gone from our world, and with her the Triforce of Wisdom."
"Gone? Where has she gone?" Link questioned.
"We don't know." Impa responded.
"You don't know? You're the great sages of Hyrule from all the ages. You can't find her?" He said, raising his voice. He remembered lifetime after lifetime fighting to save Princess Zelda again and again, and they lost her completely?
"She is nowhere to be found in any time period of Hyrule. She is not in our world." A Goron man with a rocky beard, one of the large, stone based people from Eldin Province, said.
"What about Termina? Or the Twilight realm?" Link asked.
"We searched those places as well. They are still strongly connected to Hyrule's own reality, and subject to her gods. The Princess is nowhere that we can search." Impa said.
"Believe me, hero," a dragon then addressed him, "we've looked intently through all the worlds and times we can reach. She is nowhere among them."
"This has happened only once before." Another Sage spoke up, "many hundreds of years ago. The consequences were profound and dangerous for both our world, and the world to which she was kidnapped. Their timeline and natural course of development were irretrievably altered as we came to learn. This must not happen again."
"You must find her and bring her back, Hero. You must recover the Triforce and the Princess who carries it." Impa told him.
"You remember who she is, do you not, young Hero?" Another woman, younger than Impa yet so much the same stepped forward.
Link thought back. It was an old memory, one of the oldest, from a time when the great city in the sky, Skyloft, was still inhabited. It was from the beginning of Hyrule itself. Yes, he remembered. Just as he was reborn so was she, no less important than the first time she took Hylian form.
"Hylia." He whispered. "The Lady Hylia. I remember."
"Yes, Hero. Hylia herself. If she and the Triforce of Wisdom are not returned to Hyrule our world will be thrown out of balance and into a chaos which we may not be able to undo. Hyrule will destroy itself without Hylia to sustain it."
"What do I do? Where do I start?" Link asked.
The sages murmured among themselves. He could hear their low voices discussing what to say and what not to. Finally the younger woman like Impa answered him, "There are worlds older than Hyrule that we are aware of. Thousands of years ago, before even my time, the first Hylians came to this world from another. I believe it is most prudent to begin there, in that world of our origins."
"How do I do that?" Link asked.
Impa touched the pedestal where the sword was embedded. A great ring rose in front of him until it was completely vertical, like a gateway. Strange symbols etched in blue covered its face. Suddenly, the symbols began to glow brightly as the ring began to spin one way and then the other, back and forth until ten of the symbols on the ring were lit. When this happened, a great, inverted vortex of what looked like water rushed out from the open center of the ring, and then just as quickly, collapsed back into it leaving only a shimmering "puddle" of what appeared to be bright, illuminated water.
"I warn you, hero, once you pass through this portal, we can help you no longer. You will be beyond our protection or even our knowledge. We don't know what will happen, and we don't know how you may return. Once you have Princess Zelda, you must secure a way back to us on your own." Impa warned him gravely.
"I understand." Link said.
"Before you go, you may have need of a Sacred treasure which I'm sure you'll recognize." The Goron told him.
He looked at the sword in the pedestal. He moved towards it, but was blocked by the younger "Impa". "Not now, boy," she said forcefully. "The Master Sword still keeps the Demon King imprisoned. If you take it now, with the Triforce and Hylia gone, Hyrule's destruction is assured. You must retrieve her without it."
Link withdrew his hand and nodded. It seemed strange to go on without the Master Sword, it was out of place. But nothing about this felt normal.
"No, but you will need this," Impa held out what looked like an amethyst magnifying glass set with a pinkish lens.
"This lens will reveal things for what they really are, and will allow you to read books which you couldn't otherwise. It may be more valuable to you than the Master Sword in your search." The old woman said.
Link nodded, then turned to the gateway that had opened up in front of him.
"Where does this portal lead?" Link asked.
"To a place where the first ancestors came from, that is all we know." The Goron said. "No one has stepped back through to this place for ten thousand years."
Once again Link found himself facing a brilliantly lit pool of water. He took Epona's reins tightly in his hand and plunged into it yet again. Every other time before, he knew, he had a good idea of what to expect when his time came. This time... he didn't even know if he could come back.
Zelda had been studying several sets of symbols for hours without rest in an empty office. They had allowed her to sit down at a wooden and copper desk in another wire frame and black padded chair, and given her a kind of highly polished tablet like one might use to write one. Except this tablet lit up with images and words.
At present, its face was covered in the oddly shaped runes which covered the face of the circular ring she had viewed through the bay windows in Mister Woolsey's office. The thirty nine symbols were arranged in rows and columns so that she could see them clearly. They were stylistically different from the previous thirty six symbols that she had studied in that the first set were a series of dots interconnected with thin lines. These looked like they could have been brush strokes with a pen or brush.
But try as she might to make any comparison with the symbols she was given with any design or written language she had been shown or taught, she just couldn't. They did look vaguely familiar, both sets, but she couldn't remember where she had seen them before. Like with the sense of deja vu she kept getting at every corner she turned in this city, she felt she knew them somehow, but the details of that knowledge remained frustratingly out of reach.
Doctor Lee, who turned out to be a gentle and kind man if somewhat awkward, had been instructed by Mister Woolsey to assist her because of his strangely acquired knowledge of her world. He too went over the symbols and compared them with images on a second tablet that he studiously avoided showing her. When she had inquired about seeing what was on his tablet's face, he apologetically replied that it might cause more problems between their two worlds if he did.
The daylight had long ago faded from the office's glass windows when she set the tablet down on the desk one last time, rubbing her eyes to keep the lids from closing on their own. She then felt a slender woman's hand on the shoulder of her dress and looked up to see that hauntingly familiar face of Doctor Jennifer once more.
"Hey, you've been at this non-stop for hours." She told the Princess. "It's not going to do anyone any good if you pass out here from exhaustion. You need to take a break, and try again tomorrow."
Seeing the wisdom in her words, Zelda nodded at her wordlessly, then excused herself politely from Doctor Lee's company and went with the healer.
The doctor led her back to the small, sparsely furnished apartment across the city she had slept in the night before. Some plain white night clothes to change into were already lain out on the bed. Jennifer stayed with the ten year old princess until she was out of her ornate, medieval style, pink and silver dress, dressed in the night clothes, and then under the covers in the bed. Zelda fell asleep within seconds as the doctor watched over her.
"Dr. Keller, please report to the briefing room." Mr. Woolsey's voice came through her earpiece as she stood watch over the unusual girl.
"I'm on my way," she touched her earpiece, responding quietly.
She slipped out of the small studio apartment and past the two soldiers in uniform set to guard the door for the night. It still seemed to her to be overkill for a ten year old, but then as she thought about it, her colleagues had seen far more innocent looking yet incredibly dangerous things in their sojourn within the ancient city.
When she arrived, Mr. Woolsey and Dr. Lee were sitting waiting for her, along with two other men. Rodney McKay, the chief scientist on Atlantis, was a mildly overweight man in his thirties with sandy blond hair and blue eyes. He tended to be a bit on the neurotic side, and Jennifer believed him to have borderline Asperger's Syndrome, but he was a brilliant physicist and mathematician and had been responsible for more than half of all the new research and discoveries in the city. Jennifer had also been in a relationship with him now for a few years. Colonel John Shepherd, the military commander, appeared to be in his early forties with blackish brown hair, somewhat elfish ears, and usually an impish grin.
It was getting later at night, and there was fresh coffee in a decanter set out with ceramic mugs on the wooden half circle or horse shoe shaped copper and synthetics table. The architecture of the room itself followed the same, cathedral like architecture of the chamber which held the stargate. It was dominated by green and copper paneling with the same red marble flooring. Computer monitors hung in a couple of places around the terminal points of the half circle on opposite sides of bay windows that looked out over other parts of the city. It looked comfortable, yet also both academic and professional. Like it had been designed by a race of scholars and scientists.
"Dr. Keller, have a seat please, there's fresh coffee if you'd like some." Mister Woolsey gestured to the decanter. "Dr. Lee and I have just been entertaining Dr. McKay and Colonel Shepherd by bringing them up to speed on our little Princess."
The disbelieving and skeptical looks on the faces of the other two men bore out the truth of his words.
"So, Dr. Keller, what do you think of our... royal charge?" Mr. Woolsey asked.
"She's friendly enough, but she's like no ten year old I've ever seen." Jennifer replied. "She's hardworking, serious, devoted to her duty, and far more mature than most adults I've ever met."
Mr. Woolsey nodded in agreement with her observations.
"Alright, now that we're all here, we need to decide what is the best course of action regarding Princess Zelda and her dilemma." Mr. Woolsey said. "Any thoughts?"
"I used to play this game when I was a kid way back in the eighties," Colonel Shepherd commented, "I never thought I'd be doing it for real."
"I'm with you there," Dr. Lee said, "I mean the implications are mind-boggling."
"Why can't we just send her off-world to one of our allies for the time being? That way if this Demon King comes looking for her, he won't find her here and pass us by." Dr. McKay offered.
"But then we'll just be putting our allies in danger, Rodney," Colonel Shepherd said, "and if I'm not mistaken, it won't reduce us as a target, will it? He'll just get ticked she's not here."
"Uh, that's not really an option, is it?" Dr. Keller asked. "I mean, all things considered she is still just a little girl that needs to get back home, right?"
"In all likelihood, really," Dr. Lee said, answering Colonel Shepherd's question. "I've spent a large part of today going through all the game guides and walkthroughs for the Legend of Zelda games. The demon king isn't the understanding type, I mean... No, if he comes here he's going to do a lot of damage no matter what."
"Alright, next option." Mr. Woolsey said.
Jennifer's expression became increasingly uncomfortable in the way the men at the table were discussing Zelda's near future.
"We help her get back to her own world to let this 'cycle' continue like it's supposed to." Colonel Shepherd stated, glancing at Jennifer.
"Except it's already gone beyond her reality, and spilled over into ours and who knows how many others." Rodney countered.
"What do you mean? Explain." Asked Mr. Woolsey.
"I mean look, she's here. Why is she here? If this demon king, Ori, rogue ascended being whatever you want to call him is responsible for this, then why is she here? Why put her in our hands where we're going to do everything within reason to protect her? Why not just have his way with her wherever he's at?" The chief scientist stated.
It was a good question.
"Are you saying this demon king isn't responsible for her being here?" Dr. Keller asked.
"Maybe not directly at least. But from what I can see, whoever sent her here did it to protect her and whatever power she's carrying. Someone else from outside our reality made this our business for some reason, and now we've been dragged into this, this... video game," he spat the words, "against our will."
"Why would they do that? If they knew it could harm their world for her, what did you call it a 'Triforce'? Yes, for her Triforce to be removed from their world, why risk it?" Mr. Woolsey asked.
"Maybe it has something to do with who she really is, or I mean, who she's supposed to be." Dr. Lee said.
All eyes around the table turned to Dr. Lee with questioning looks.
"Who she really is?" Colonel Shepherd asked.
"What do you mean?" Mr. Woolsey added.
"Well, in one of the more recent games it was revealed that Zelda was actually the reincarnation of the good goddess Hylia. In that game she had to go through several trials to recover her ancient memories. She's bound to Hylian form and tied to the world of Hyrule itself." Dr. Lee explained.
"So whoever sent her here felt like she couldn't be protected there anymore and sent her to us?" Colonel Shepherd reasoned.
"Yeah, I mean, it would explain a lot of things." Dr. Lee said.
"I don't get it, though. Why interrupt the cycle now? How could we defend her any better than her 'hero'?" Colonel Shepherd asked. "It seems like everything's worked up till now."
"Good question." Mr. Woolsey said.
Rodney became silent and thoughtful. Jennifer had no answer to the question asked either.
Dr. Lee then said, "well, if Zelda's ten years old, then Link would be ten years old as well right now. They're always the same age, but I don't know why that would make a difference now. In the games, he's either ten or seventeen when it all happens. Maybe he does have to do it, but needs some help this time."
"But how could we help him?" Mr. Woolsey asked.
Rodney's expression then lit up and he snapped his fingers several times.
"We're talking about a powerful ascended being right?" He asked.
"Well, yes, we think so, I mean that's kind of how he's described in the games." Dr. Lee answered.
"Then we may actually be able to put an end to this demon king once and for all. Let the good guys win for good, so to speak." Dr. McKay told him, a tinge of excitement creeping into his voice.
"How?" Mr. Woolsey asked.
"Well, as you know, we've been on pretty good terms lately with the former priors of the Ori and they've helped us to retrieve Adria's flagship from their galaxy." Rodney started.
"And?" Colonel Shepherd asked.
"And... we were finally able to download the entire database from it and load it into Atlantis' computers." Rodney continued.
"And?" Colonel Shepherd asked again, impatiently.
"And... Along with that database came the plans for the Sangraal device. We didn't have the ability to recreate it before, but with Atlantis' computer system and laboratories, we could conceivably build another one." Rodney said with the beginning of a smile.
"Don't we need an ancient's help for that?" Mr. Woolsey asked. The last time it was used was a sore memory for him.
"Um... Excuse me, what's a Sangraal device?" Jennifer asked.
"It's a weapon designed by Merlin to interrupt the specific frequencies of ascended beings. It's a bomb capable of killing ascended beings." Rodney said, pleased with himself.
"Merlin?" Jennifer asked, even more confused.
"Yeah, he was an ancient around the time Atlantis was evacuated and ascended for a few millennia before he decided to take human form again in the tenth century." Rodney rattled off as though it was unimportant.
"Oh." The doctor replied.
"But wait a second," Dr. Lee began, "not all the gods and spirits of Hyrule are bad according to the games. If we detonate it there, it might have the same effect as keeping Zelda here."
"Could we limit its effects? Make it focus on a single target?" Mr. Woolsey asked.
"Well," Rodney stopped and thought, "we're talking about canceling one set of frequencies with another. It should be possible to point those canceling frequencies in a specific direction."
"Alright, Rodney, work on it." Mr. Woolsey said.
"We would need the Master Sword." Dr. Lee said.
"What is that?" Mr. Woolsey asked.
"Well, it's a magic sword that's found in all the games just like Link and Zelda are. Usually, Link is able to get it about halfway through. In the games it keeps the seal intact on the demon king's prison, and it's the only weapon that can actually harm him. If everything else from the games is real, then we may need to somehow integrate the Sangraal into its blade." Dr. Lee said.
"Alright, we'll take that into consideration." Mr. Woolsey said. "Meeting adjourned."
As the others left the conference room, Mr. Woolsey rubbed his temples again and wished for the simpler days of being a corporate lawyer. Things seemed so much less complicated then.