Chapter 13

Link found himself floating in a void. He knew this was where he needed to be, quiet and still with all of his mind focused. He wasn't sure of how much time was passing around him. He had been able to leave concern for the time behind as his body sat, and he focused on quieting his mind.

The practice was coming back to him, slowly but surely. It had been millennia, but it was all still there as he went through his mind, trying to undo the bonds which tied him to his mortal existence. Though he knew he was ignoring the most important one; the one which tied him most of all. The idea of letting go of her... Link just couldn't face that yet. He never could face it. Maybe Zelda had been right. Maybe he had to get to the point where he was dying before he could release his final burden.

His attachment for Zelda was holding him back and he knew it, but he just couldn't bring himself to face letting go. Every time he approached it in his mind, so also the fear and doubt grew stronger and he turned away from it, unwilling to go to that darkest of places within himself; an existence without his wife in it. His love for her was too strong for him to be able to say good bye and so he quietly left it alone. Neither pulling it towards him nor pushing it away, but just observing it.

There were other dark places within himself as well. These he had been fighting now for... what? Hours? Days? He really wasn't sure. It could have only been minutes, but it didn't seem like it. Again and again, he saw the face of the man or god who had sworn to curse him for eternity. Again and again, he saw the demon's eyes looking out from the beautiful face of his beloved Zelda. Again and again, he had struggled to let the darkness of his past go, and almost as frequently it found new ways to surface and haunt him.

"Do you really think you can let go of me so easily?" Came a voice from the darkness around him.

He found himself, in his mind, standing in a shallow pool of water which only came up to his ankles. Nearby was a tiny island with a single, dead tree protruding out of it. He knew this place very, very well.

In front of him stood a shadow with glowing red eyes. It was the shadow of a young Hylian man, dressed in dark versions of the Hero's tunic, mail, and gauntlets. Except for the vague darkness of the shadow's outline, it might have been a reflection of Link's younger self.

"I defeated you once before." Link told it. "I can do so again."

"Prove it." Said the shadow. "Draw your sword and let's settle this."

"Link, don't!." A familiar voice called out to him in his mind. "Who?" he asked.

"Ignore that. Draw your sword and face me!" The shadow taunted. "Or are you afraid?"

"Link, that's what he wants." The voice said. "He wants you to engage him, fight him, anything but walk away from him."

His mind knew the call wasn't coming through his body's senses, but it was real. In his mind he shifted trying to discern where it was coming from.

"No! Face me! You know you want to destroy me!" The shadow raised its sword, a dark reflection of the Master Sword in an attack posture.

"It's your fear that keeps you bound to it, Link." The familiar voice told him. "You're afraid of this part of yourself. If you stop fighting and accept it as part of who you are, then the battle will be over."

"I don't want to be that person." Link said, turning his attention back to the shadow. "I don't want to be the darkness."

"It's a part of you just like it's a part of every person. If you reject it, you're only rejecting yourself. In order to let him go, you must first embrace and accept him as a part of yourself." Said the voice.

Link stared at the shadow of himself. "I'm too old for this anymore." He said. He looked deeply into the red eyes of the shadow he had fought with so many times before until... there. Te saw his own eyes staring back at him. "It is me isn't it? It always has been."

Suddenly the shadow, and the pool of water were gone and all that remained was the void he had been in before. "It's all a part of me. Even Ganondorf and the Demon King. That's the reason why they still haunt me. It's because they're still a part of who I am."

"Yes, my old friend." Came the voice. "I need to speak more with you."

"Yes?" The old man answered back. "Who are you?"

"It's Daniel, Link." The image of a younger, Ordonian man with glasses in slacks and a white button down shirt appeared in front of him. "Before you respond," he said, "you need to know I'm not supposed to be interfering. Impa is also here watching over both of you, and me as well, but I'm posing as an aspect of your own unconscious mind so she doesn't know that I'm doing this. We have to keep it quiet." Daniel's voice told him.

"Alright." Link agreed. "Are you here to help me complete my ascension?".

"Not exactly." Daniel told him. "The Three don't want me to interfere and go as far as that. I think I might have already done more than they wanted, and also they want to make sure that once you and Zelda ascend again that it's the last time. In order to do that, they want to make sure you've both fully let go of everything tying you to the mortal planes."

"I've been trying." Link told him. "It's not as easy as it looks." He joked.

The image of Daniel smiled. "No, it never is, my friend." It was a humor that only those who had experienced ascension and incarnation more than once could truly appreciate.

"So, what's all this about then?" The old man asked.

"I can't do any of it for you, I can't just ascend you, but maybe I can help make it a little easier." Daniel told him.

"How?" Link questioned.

"Physically, you have everything you need." Daniel told him. "There's nothing that's holding you back in that way. From what I've seen, your problem is in how you're approaching it. You've been looking to the first time you ascended as Copulus for your guide. But even though Copulus is still a part of you, you haven't really been him for thousands of years."

"That's true." Link agreed. "Sometimes it seems like I don't fully know who I am. In here, I see Copulus, but I also see the shadow, and I see the Hero; from every lifetime I've ever lived, and the time I spent ascended. And then there's this person that I have been for forty five years now, the old goat rancher, father, husband, and grandfather. I wander through every corner of my soul, and I see every person I have been, and I don't know which one is truly me. The ones I draw close to seem to slip through my grasp. The ones I don't want to be rise up and want to drag me into the shadow with them. The best I can do with any of them is just to let them be, and then I have some measure of peace and think I'm making progress. But then I don't know who I am or who I'm supposed to be this time in order to do what needs to be done."

"They are all you, my friend, and none of them are you." Daniel replied.

"The ascended always did excel at cryptic answers." Link returned.

Daniel's image grinned. "True."

"Think back to the last time you ascended; what do you remember about it?" Daniel asked, trying to help guide him.

Link thought back, following his chain of memories. Images flashed through his mind, and suddenly he and Daniel's image were surrounded by the memory. "It was in the Sacred Realm." He said, looking around at the still memory of the inky, acidic blackness around him.

"Yes, go on." Daniel encouraged him.

"Wisdom, power, and courage..." Link brought it to the surface, and they both saw an image of the gleaming golden triangles which symbolized the whole of the modern Hylian faith. It was a hazier memory than it should have been, he thought, but it was coming back to him.

"Impa appeared to me," he said and the image of a tall, younger, muscular warrior woman with long white blond hair tied into a thick, long braid appeared in front of them and began speaking silently, "after I was told about the trevirti, the triforce, and how it truly worked. You know, even before I ascended the first time, I didn't actually understand it until Rodney and Impa explained it to me. Neither Hylia nor the others ever really discussed it much with me. Not that science was ever my strong suit."

"And what about the triforce?" The Daniel's image asked, trying to keep him on track.

"It's a belief amplifier. One has to already possess and believe in those virtues in order to use any one piece of the triforce. When fully assembled, it amplifies and bends reality to make it conform to your belief. In the Sacred Realm I focused all of my belief on the three virtues and the one which bound them together." Link said as images and feelings flashed through his mind.

"And what was that?" Daniel asked.

"What binds the three virtues together into one is love." Link said, something stirring within him.

"Do you remember why your parents first came to Hyrule? What is so special about this world, more than any others?" Daniel asked, trying to lead him in the direction of the realizations he needed.

"Hyrule is the nexus, the meeting point between belief and reality more than any other world. It's what they were studying. What you believe becomes your reality. Nowhere is that more true than in this world." Link said, comprehension breaking over his features.

"You discovered something else at that time too, didn't you?" Daniel asked him, and the scene shifted to one of Link standing in the Temple of Time looking at the triforce mark on the back of his left hand as it slowly faded to nothing. And then a golden triangle emerged from patterns of light that flowed from him and fell to the floor.

"Yeah, I did. I realized that I didn't need the device. I already had the three virtues, the whole triforce, inside of me. I only needed to believe it." He said. A light had come on inside of him and around him.

"Exactly." Daniel told him, a look of relieved approval on his face. "Do you understand now, what you need to?"

Link's comprehension grew lighter and more brilliant. "Yes, I think I do."

"I have to go before Impa realizes what I'm doing. Good luck, my friend." Daniel told him.

"Thank you, Daniel." Link told him, and then the ascended being was gone from his mind and he was alone again in the quiet of the void, and then he brought to his mind his last thought, his only thought in the Sacred Realm. It was the one thought and focus which had destroyed the darkness which had threatened his world, and transformed his being. It was the one thought and focus for which he had left everything behind.

From near him came the old question, the one he couldn't ever seem to answer, "But who are you?" And he saw himself reflected in a hundred faces and images. "Do you know who you are? Which one of us?" The reflections all asked in unison.

"I'm all of you." He said, accepting the truth of that statement. "And none of you." And the reflections all merged into a single image as if in a mirror. And then Link walked away from the mirror, and the final reflection faded into nothingness.

"Wisdom, power, courage..." He began to recite within his mind. He believed in each virtue. He knew the truth of the necessity of each. "Wisdom, Power, and Courage are the gifts of the goddesses for us, their children, to live our lives, care for one another, and do what's right." He remembered Impa's words from so long ago. "A person cannot have power without the wisdom to know what to do with it and the courage to actually do it. They cannot be wise without the courage to do what they know is right and the power to be successful in that endeavor. Likewise, they cannot be courageous and powerless to do anything or unwise and do stupid things with their courage*. We ourselves must become the embodiment, the incarnation of the Triforce in order to fulfill their will."

He had to believe. He had to believe in each virtue, and then extend that belief even further. The path of ascension left no room for doubt. Either you believed you would ascend, or you didn't. His mental image of himself began to pulse with light and energy as he let go of each fear and desire one by one narrowing his focus to a single wish, a single thought, a single love.

He brought the one woman whom he couldn't let go of to his mind, and allowed his love for her to fill his being as he narrowed the focus of his contemplation. He reflected that the love was the same, even though the object of that love had shifted once. It was still the same love, and still the same response. It was a love for which he would sacrifice everything, including his own soul. He understood it, accepted it, and welcomed it.

She had been his whole world for many, many lifetimes. He had loved her and cared for her almost since the day they had met as children ten thousand years before. Instead of turning away from it, he clung to the love which grew and expanded and allowed it to flow through him, bringing the three virtues into union bound by it. Then he began his wish, and put the force of his loving belief into that wish. He allowed his love to surround and dominate that wish and with each pulse of that love he let go of each attachment obstructing it. Finally came the object of his love, and in his great love for her he said good-bye until there was only his faith, his wish, and the love which drove and empowered them. And then, the energy which was released filled and transformed his entire being, and all became light.

*Quotation from The Hyrulean Pantheon by Jennie Smith (The Wolfess) and published at the-hyrulian-pantheon/