So yesterday my charger carked it, and then today I had a stomach ache, and then my Mum's bathroom got flooded, but I still fought to get this chapter out on time! Hope you all enjoy :D
Once again, Scarlet references classic literature that they have not actually read. Idk I watched Overly Sarcastic Production's video on Shakespeare's 'The Taming of the Shrew', as well as several video essays pointing out how too many romcoms have a woman's attitude be "tamed" by the right man, and I was like, "Fuck that! If Link wants to be with Midna, he's gonna embrace the chaos."
If he isn't forced to kill her first...
Updated 2 April 2021. Minor typos fixed. Missing text fixed.
The Magic Awakens
Chapter 26
The Untamable Shrew
The sword vanished as Link skid on his knees before Midna. Her breath was long, deep, and shaky as she fought to slow her rapid heartbeat. Veins of malice snaked from her neck like a spider's web. It wasn't trying to remake her. It was trying to control her, one strand at a time. Midna channelled her own essence into keeping it at bay, but she was already so depleted.
Another shock of searing pain. The malice break through her defence. Link shook her shoulders. "You have to fight it!"
Magenta slithered along cyan. Her grip became tighter, tighter, until Link had his own pained grimace. Her arms were already trying to tear his off. "Kill me," Midna begged.
Link shook his head. "You're not a monster yet."
So that was the hill he was willing to be horribly maimed on? "We'll see about that." Midna pried her hands away from him and swiped through the air. A wave of magic sent Link tumbling across the floor. Midna rose into the air, her eyes and hair a glowing magenta. Veiny arms welcomed a relic over her head. The Fused Shadows.
The goo gushed out, swallowing her form in the seven-armed beast. From the helmet, ribbons of magenta snaked through yellow like blood in a headwater. It landed with a thud that shook the room. A powerful Twilit creature, succumbing to the control of a long-gone king. The ultimate Shadowblight.
But Midna was still in there. She had to be. Link just needed to hold his own until she came back. She would come back.
An arm shot out. Link rolled out of the way. It pounded the lino, leaving a shapely dent. More scars adorned the room as he leapt and ducked and dodged and rolled. Rapid fire. Never a break. His muscles ached. His mind was weary. Capable of nothing aside from second-to-second survival as he clung to a fraying strand of hope.
The Shadowblight leapt back and roared. Three arms charged a swirling sphere of dark pink energy. Link was so out of breath that he only just summoned his shield in the nick of time. The barrage crashed into metal. Link's shoes screeched backwards, the sound only adding to the agony in his arm and his heart.
Behind that shield, Link made the hardest decision of his quest yet. He had already broken one promise that night. He wasn't going to break another.
The barrage halted. The Shadowblight hunched over, as if catching its breath. Diluted malice had reached its "elbows" by now, though the middle was less discoloured than it was before.
The Master Sword materialised in Link's hand. In the presence of malice, it was meant to have a holy glow, but Link did not miss it. With a grief-stricken cry, he charged.
Cleaving through that first arm felt like snapping the strand, yet as devastating as it was, it also brought a sense of catharsis. She was gone. She was never coming back, and Link no longer felt obligated to save her. Later, he could fall to pieces. Later, he could be destroyed by guilt. Right now, he needed to be the gladiator handpicked by destiny.
A second arm was lobbed off, eliciting a howl from the beast. He was about to sever a third when a shadow arched through the air. Link whipped towards the detached arm, pudgy palm wide. It collided with his face. Link fell hard on his back. The other loose arm threw itself over him.
The sword and shield disappeared, replaced by an ice arrow in each hand. He slammed them into the pulsing tendrils of goo. They froze solid. A few bashes from his sword, and they shattered. Link scrambled to his feet. An oncoming spell billowed his clothes and hair. Without shield in hand, Link batted the blasts, hitting the Shadowblight square in the middle. It smacked into the wall behind it, and the magenta ripped further down the arms.
Boots crunched over the shards of frozen blight. There was no time to dwell on how Midna might look if she changed back now. Stumps spirting blood. Her flesh hacked to pieces. No time.
The stumps melded with the rest of the goo, as if the Shadowblight had five arms all along. When the blade came swinging in, the monster leapt high and latched itself onto the wall like a spider. Link summoned his crossbow, loaded with ice, and fired. The Shadowblight spun away, swinging from one pucker to another. As Link summoned his next arrow and aimed, the Shadowblight conjured a javelin that glowed like the late afternoon sun. He fired. The Shadowblight swung away and hurled the spear. Link rolled out of trajectory.
An unbroken cycle of dodge, counter-attack, dodge ensued. Neither side could pin down the other. Link had only three ice arrows left, and the Shadowblight's magic was waning. With a desperate roar, it leapt from the wall and thrust the spear. Link jumped high. The tip sailed under his bent legs, skewering the wall at heart-level. He landed on the shaft and ran up it, sword materialising and shooting towards a crack in the Fused Shadows.
Slam! A magenta hand caged his torso against the wall. His back and head throbbed. Vision blurred. Arms pinned to his sides. Can't breathe. The hand. It's squeezing him. Tired. Agony. Sword loose in his grip. She tore the spear from the plaster and reeled back. Link closed his eyes. At least now he wouldn't have to kill her.
Painful, instantaneous death never came. Link cracked open his eyes, half-expecting to see an afterlife. The tip of the spear all but pricked his forehead. The arm twisted around it shook, just as it had when Midna fought for control in the ravine.
She was still in there.
The other hand still constricted him. She needed time. He was out of it. So, he took this moment as exactly what Midna desired it to be. An opening. The sword disappeared from his hand. From above, it appeared, spinning through the arm that pinned him. Boots smacked against the floor. Link summoned his third-last ice arrow and slammed it into the writhing arm.
She twitched and jerked, rocking on her remaining four arms. The pinkish hue had travelled away from her torso to her tendrils instead. The malice should've diffused through her entire body! Why hadn't it?
Was she forcing it to do this, so he could trim it away?
He shouldn't dare to hope. He shouldn't assume she was just as clever in this monstrous form. He should just deliver the final blow to the Fused Shadows and deal with the bloody outcome. At least he would survive.
No. He had a hunch, and he was going to listen to it. He twirled his last two ice arrows in his right hand. First slice. Two arms fell over each other. Slam. They were frozen. The Shadowblight writhed on the side of its two remaining arms. Link kicked it onto its back and slashed through those tendrils too. Another kick, and a palm flopped over a wrist. Link drove the final arrow through.
The blight continued to writhe, the stumps flailing like a cockroach on its back. There was barely any pink in the yellow. Now Link had to wait, wait, wait, to see what remained.
The physical shudders quelled, and when the stillness was absolute, the yellow fluids retreated into the Fused Shadows.
Midna. Whole and unscathed.
Midna. Limp and unmoving.
Link pulled the relic off her head and threw it across the room. His emotions swung like a rapid pendulum. Dead or alive? Corrupted by malice or finally free of it? Gods, he hoped the sword had spared her, that her monster form absorbed the hits for her. At the same time, he couldn't shake the feeling that it was naïve to hope.
He brushed the hair from her face. Her beautiful face so colourless and lolling to the side, exposing two punctures. A single name rose into Link's mind. Veran. She had become just like Veran. Her body was without swollen, leathery flesh or veins of malice, but it looked just as lifeless. Just as tragic.
Link thought it futile, but he checked her pulse. There was none. No, it was there, but very faint. The final weak sputters of her heart. It had to be. Any illusions of the pulse growing steadily stronger was the result of his wrought mind refusing to accept the truth. He held her close. Breathed in the last of her scent so faint under the stench of blood and decay. His eyes stung, but that nagging sliver of hope refused to let the tears fall.
A cough. A wet, gurgling cough. Midna's chest jerked again. That was more than a trick of the imagination. He rolled her onto her side and she shakily raised herself on her hands and knees. Vomit mixed with spots of malice splattered onto the lino, expelling the last of it from her system. Link stroked her hair out of her face, not knowing what else to do. Midna was alive. Actually alive.
When it was all over, Midna's elbows buckled. Link caught her and drew her back before she could come into contact with that vile liquid ever again. She was back in his arms, laying across his lap.
Midna had never seen someone so happy and relieved to hold and behold her. He was so genuine. Everything about him was genuine, and she was a fool to think otherwise.
"I believe you," she said.
"What?"
"When you said you have feelings for me. I believe you now."
Link smiled as their foreheads drifted together. "Thank gods."
She believed him, but that wasn't enough to believe in herself.
Ghirahim stood before an illusion replaying Midna's transformation on loop. Her eyes, hair, and skin were corrupted by the beautiful colour of his master's remains. A colour that had been forced out by that heroic little pest.
"Would you call this a success?" the cultist maintaining the illusion asked.
"Only slightly," Ghirahim droned. "She retained human form, which is promising, but we never saw what it was capable of."
"And she failed to kill the hero for us."
"He wasn't meant to die." The Yiga gaped at him. Ghirahim put on a look of mock surprise. "Oh, you haven't heard? Our great king has graced me with visions. He was able to correct some… misunderstandings I had about the situation."
"What exactly?"
"Aren't you insufferably curious?" Ghirahim sharped. "It's nothing an underling should concern themselves with. All you need to know is that further testing is necessary if we are to bring our master back to his full potential."
The cultist was about to stammer an apology when alarms blared and the illusion flashed red. The Yiga scout swiped through the rooms, including one where the corpses of the shadow beasts were notably missing. Every room Link and Midna had passed through was empty. Where were they now?
"Check the lab!" Ghirahim hissed.
"Which one?"
"Malice recreation, you fool!"
A few hand signs later and the smoke displayed two very troublesome teenagers in a small lab. They laughed and bantered as they tore up equipment and smashed vials of malice against the walls, the floor, and the benches. Years of progress thwarted. Ghirahim snarled. As loyal as he was to his master, he really hated this new "No Murdering the Hero" rule.
In a forest clearing swept free of twigs and leaves, four monstrous corpses lay. Casualties of the encroaching evil. Former individuals who would now be honoured as such by Link and Midna.
They were so identical in this form. Same body type. Same shade of leathery skin. The only difference was the hauntingly human faces behind the masks, lurking in the darkest depths of the uncanny valley.
That narrow face reminded Midna of Zant, but it had actually belonged to a hole-in-the-wall restaurant owner called Cygnus.
High cheekbones identified Dawn. From the photo in the case file, Midna vaguely remembered seeing them as a shop assistant at an independent boutique once.
The square jaw and deep-set eyes vaguely resembled Tahk, aside from the portly cheeks. Sahn. An office worker who was let go by Vaati Incorporated just days before he went missing. His photo showed him embracing his twin children. Two strangers Link did not know yet could relate to on such a tragic level.
Finally, there was Nova, a student from the next school over. Round face and wide eyes. Midna could've sworn she knew her as an acquaintance of an acquaintance, or perhaps she saw her sitting on the bleachers on the other side of the field. She was a stranger and a reminder of how narrowly Midna escaped her fate.
With a snap of her fingers, the bodies were enveloped by dark orange flames. They peeled away skin, shrivelled up flesh, and charred bone.
If Midna had the energy to spare, she would have wept for them. Right now, she felt empty. No, that wasn't it. Her emotions were an expansive cavern filled with a thin air of melancholy. She and Link couldn't save them, but what was done was done. The only regret Midna knew was that the families of the deceased would never get closure. With there being no laws regarding the slaughter of formally human monsters, they could not allow these bodies to be sent to those who held them dear.
The last few embers died. Four thin mounds of ashes remained. The long shadows of the trees rotated as if time-lapsing. Pitch black coiled around the clearing, swallowing the ashes, then the shadows swirled upwards as a wispy tornado. A river of ashy grey swam through the canopy.
When the last of it disappeared, so did an emotional weight that Midna couldn't quite articulate. The mystery of the missing Twili had been solved, the redeads were incapacitated when Link and Midna claimed the medallion, the fear of becoming a monster no longer leered, and villainous mind games had been overcome. The only baggage that remained was what Midna had carried with her for years, and she was almost ready to abandon that as well. Almost.
She turned to her hero, his eyes so breath-taking in the moonlight. Ever since his confession -no- ever since the night began, he beheld at her the way someone beheld their crush when they weren't looking, except she was looking. Sweet Nayru, it still felt too good to be true, and she wanted to bask in that gaze just a little longer.
"So, Mr Important Hero," she began. "Where do you like to go at 3am on a Sunday?"
And that was how the "Allegedly" Chosen Hero and his elusive shadow sorceress partner, after hours of fighting monsters and inner demons, found themselves scarfing down sandwiches at a rundown service station in the middle of nowhere.
There was a strange beauty about the liminal space. Both the flickering light and the fact that the mundane setting juxtaposed all that came before. Link supposed that was what quests did; made the normal abnormal.
Once the magic was sealed away, would he ever get to know normal again? Would the world? Just like his quest, he wasn't sure how to feel about it. He'd return to a life where he could no longer go on legally dubious adventures with his best friend without near-certain jail time. Strict routine would be king again, and he and Midna would never get to be alone.
He'd also earn a world free of monsters, demonic kings, and malice.
"Can I ask you something?" Link asked. Midna brushed the crumbs off her hands as she nodded. "How'd you survive?"
"I think it's pretty obvious your sword had something to do with it."
"You did too."
Midna hummed. "Ghirahim mentioned 'the right dosage'. Turning into something bigger must have diluted it. Made it easier to concentrate it in the arms." She sighed. "It wasn't easy though, fighting off two dark forces."
"Gods, you really are untameable."
Others had said those words to her before. Muttered them under their breath in frustration. Not Link though. His tone was unabashed admiration. As flattering as it was, Midna disagreed. She had been tamed to a degree. Her insecurities and fears instilled in her by her family and peers prevented her from resisting on any radical level. She was too tame to sneak off to parties, too tame to escape her abusive household, and too tame to act on the feelings she had for Link.
On the ride home, she dwelled on that last point in particular. Throughout their time sitting on that bench, she had been dying to kiss him, yet with each opportunity that rose, there was always an excuse. Zelda would feel betrayed. Link wouldn't have been such a flirt earlier if that was still a problem. You'd taste like vomit. She had already rid her mouth of the horrible taste for her own sake via copious water and magic. Maybe Link does only see you as a tool. Yes, because anything Ghirahim said was totally believable. Every excuse was easy to reason away, but there was always another to take its place until the moment was gone.
In the fantasy stories she took comfort in, the dramatic, high stakes confession was always what saved the protagonist from some kind of emotional turmoil of supernatural proportions. Having lived through that trope, she had been exposed to its greatest lie. Knowing and truly grasping how ardently she was admired by one person did not undo a lifetime of abuse. It didn't annihilate all her demons in some lovey-dovey supernova. They still surrounded her, leered at her, and said all the things they did before. Every negative, self-depreciating thought was another rock that pelted her skin. All the confession did was smash those deadly boulders into a shower of pebbles. Midna dreaded the day when the boulders might return.
As the bike rolled through familiar streets, it felt like a deadline was fast approaching. It was not one marked by Link's expectations, but Midna's own desire to free him from the ambiguity she cowered in.
He parked by the leafless tree on her street corner, just out of sight of her house. A house she dreaded returning to, even as her weary body dreamed of her soft bed.
Midna handed her helmet to Link and he stored it. The deadline was here, and she still wasn't ready.
She leaned forward, slid her arms around his middle, and rested her chin on his shoulder with a sigh. Link lay a hand over hers. She parted her fingers, and he threaded his through. For the next few moments, dappled in twilight, they simply were. Appreciating the fact that fate had allowed them to share this moment after a night of mares.
Even though she believed Link, it was still quite the concept to grasp. Link, a frontline protester, fell for a police captain's daughter. Link, brother of Zelda, fell for her childhood bully. Link, the ultimate symbol of light and goodness, fell for a shadow sorceress who almost succumbed to evil.
On the surface, no pairing could be more absurd. Deep below, the similarities were striking. They were everyday rebels who yearned to break away from oppressive routines, who had an insatiable desire to live life on their own terms. The only difference was that Link acted on it while Midna waited for her time.
She was done waiting.
Their joined hands were the only connection between them now. She was going to do it. She was going to tell him how she felt. Or show him. Or…
The connection broke. Midna slank backwards until she was fully cast in the shadow of the tree. She wasn't ready to tell him, and she wasn't ready to leave him. What a ridiculous limbo. It was just like being trapped inside that vile creature where two undesirable forces pulled her taught. One side screamed at her to say something, or do something. The other was far more blunt: Go.
"I guess I should thank you," she said. Was it for the sake of politeness, or more stalling?
Link shrugged, a light smile on his features. There was something sombre about it. "No problem."
Midna chuckled. It was a very big problem. Several of them, actually, and he had helped her through them all. If only he could help her through this one. Magically know what she wanted, so she didn't have to climb a wall of awful just to share a moment. "I guess I'll see you on Monday then."
He wrung the palm she had let go. "See you."
She still stood there. Why? The medallion was his. The formalities were over. The deadline had been missed. Time to go.
Something more powerful bubbled over. Something familiar. A crutch emotion that carried her through times when being confident was oppressively difficult.
Spite.
Spite for her thoughts, spite for her circumstances, and spite for everything else that kept her away from the person she pined for. Spite motivated her first step. Her fear threatened to drag her away. Her inadequacy fought to push her back. Spite told both forces to screw off (they didn't) as she took another step and another, until she was a boulder tumbling further and faster down a hill until several bold gestures folded into a single, magical motion. They reached for each other, and he pulled her in, and she swung her leg over the hood of the bike. He welcomed her waist as she draped her arms over his shoulders.
When they heard and felt every breath against each other, Midna knew she wasn't suffocating anymore. He held her like he wanted her there, and he caressed the corner of her lips like he wanted more. Through great effort, a faint smile shone through her anxiety as she defiantly leaned into their desire.
She kissed him, and he kissed her back like he meant it.
And then Ganondorf bursts from the bushes to give his buddy a high five, I smash a bottle of champagne against the sailing ship, and Tahk drives by as he slowly rolls down the window.
I've tweaked those final lines (aside from the very last one) so many times because I really wanted there to be explicit consent, but I also didn't want any dialogue. Trying to include clear, non-verbal cues while sticking to my vision of Midna just smashing her way through her insecurities was so hard but dammit, I couldn't settle for anything less.
Murder Victim Number 2, Dawn, was named after Midlink's daughter from EquinoxWolf's 'The Strength of Courage' which is an amazing story that you should all read. It's such a perfect name. I also named a few of the other Murder Victims after OCs from a future WIP that I'm currently outlining. Nova goes from *dead* to "I will adopt every stray in the Twilight Realm and that includes Wolf Link."
Also has anyone noticed that I changed all the other chapter titles for April Fool's Day? Next Chapter: Link Simps for Midna's Legs - Part 7