The Legend of Zelda, its characters and locations are all property of Nintendo. Any and all OCs and original locations belong to me unless specifically stated to belong to someone else.

The Voice
14 - Echoes

"Link."

He awoke to Sheik's image crouching over him, looking concerned. Immediately, the Hylian reached for his weapon, afraid he'd been ambushed in his sleep, but Sheik was quick to calm him with a shake of his head.

"Easy, easy, you're not in danger," he said carefully.

"Th-Then wh-what is it?" Link asked.

"Remember the anomaly I picked up in Lanayru?" Sheik asked. "The one whose pings I discovered?"

"Y-Yeah?"

"It's nearby. No more than an hour's walk to the north-east," Sheik said. He gestured to the slate, where the map of Hyrule was displayed. A series of lines and dots had been drawn in the dark region that represented Akkala. Because they'd yet to activate the Sheikah tower (because of, again, flying Guardians!), there was virtually nothing to be seen on the map. "It's difficult without the geological data from the network," Sheik explained, "but I think I've managed to plot the route more or less correctly. It's even on the way to the laboratory."

"M-More or less?" Link asked dubiously, blinking at the bright screen. What time was it, even? The handy little watch in the corner of the screen told him it was three in the morning. Far too early to be having this discussion. "A-Ask me a-again in th-the morning," he said, yawning and putting the slate down, rolling over.

He heard Sheik sigh. "Link, this is important."

"You s-said it c-could be m-malfunctioning," he pointed out, refusing to open his eyes. "W-We'll ch-check it out l-later, after R-Robbie—"

"Can we do it before?"

That caused the Hero to crack open an eyelid, gazing up at the Sheikah's image, which was sitting cross-legged in front of him, looking at him pleadingly. "Wh-Why is it s-so i-important?" he asked.

"Because the signal. Won't. Stop," Sheik said, his image gritting its teeth. "It's always there, just loud enough for me to constantly hear it, to constantly remain on edge. It's getting louder, too, the closer we get to it. I've tried to ignore it, I have, but it's...there! I can't take it anymore. It's like having a gnat buzzing around your ears constantly, and no amount of swatting will kill it or drive it away. It's bad enough you've set your quest aside for my sake already, if I'm not going to ruin it with a foul mood on top of it all."

The mere thought of that gnat had Link scratching at his ear, which twitched in response to the annoying mental image. "Wh-Why d-didn't you s-say so?" he asked, wondering why Sheik had kept such an annoying sensation to himself for so long.

"Because it wasn't a problem until now," Sheik replied.

Link groaned and unwrapped himself from the warm comfort of his blanket. The days in Akkala got unbearably hot, but the nights were freezing. Likely because the ocean was so near, bringing cold, easterly winds.

"Link?" Sheik asked.

"I-It's t-too early f-for small t-talk," the Hero said grumpily, quickly packing up his camp. Sheik took the hint, his image fading away. Link took the slate, studied the map for a second, and then put it on his belt, before waking Maladict from his light slumber. For a moment, Link was convinced he saw pure hatred in the horse's eyes, but it was quickly replaced by quiet indifference, allowing himself to be untied and led onto the road.

It was dark, the hidden by a thin layer of shifting clouds, barely providing enough light for Link to see the road. He'd bring a torch to light his way, but that would draw the attention of all sorts of vermin and monsters that waited along the road for unwary travellers. There was no telling how many Yiga soldiers were waiting for him in the region, either. Ralo and Malo had only been the first, Link suspected.

Half an hour later, Link checked the map again, satisfied to see that he was getting closer to his goal. He'd never know from looking at the landscape around him. He had descended into a valley in the highlands, the bottom of which was covered in dead trees, drowned by the encroaching marshland. It made for an eerie place to pass through—and quiet. Places like these were usually lousy with life, from insects to birds to beasts. Here, not even a cricked gave a sound. All Link could hear was the wind, Maladict's hooves, and his own breathing.

The silence felt...oppressive. His mind began playing tricks on him, convincing him that he was seeing moving shadows, and faces peeking at him from behind dead trees. Dead, deactivated Guardians littered the marsh, half-sunken into the muck, legs and pincers frozen mid-motion. Many were littered with arrows, or surrounded by old, rusted weaponry. A great battle had been fought here, once. Likely a prelude to the destruction of the fortress from which the tower rose. He started counting the Guardians, to occupy himself...but by the time he'd counted eleven, his nerves were beginning to fray, and he was expecting them to spring to life at any moment.

"Link," Sheik said quietly. "Are you okay?"

"N-No," Link replied, wondering why his voice sounded so loud...and dull. There should have been an echo, but it was like the sounds he made were silenced almost immediately. "Wh-Why?"

"Your heart rate is speeding up," Sheik explained. "I got worried. What's wrong?"

"Th-This p-place...s-something's wrong with i-it."

"I know what you mean," Sheik said he'd thought for a few seconds. "There is a...strange atmosphere here. My sensors can't pick up anything out of the ordinary, but I still...feel it, nevertheless. I think a battle was fought here, a century ago. Might be it never ended for those who fell."

Link ignored a particularly man-like shadow that stood in the corner of his eye. Once his eyes flicked towards it, an automatic action shaped by instinct, it was gone, of course. "D-Do you...b-believe in gh-ghosts?" he asked.

"Spirits are real," Sheik said. "And what are ghosts but spirits without a purpose?"

"D-Do y-you th-think th-they linger here?"

Sheik was silent for a long moment. "I'm not sure you will like my answer."

"J-Just...t-talk, please."

"I think what happened here was a tragedy on such a scale it left an impression on the land," Sheik said carefully. "The Sheikah believe that with enough death, enough sorrow, enough anger...any sufficiently strong emotion, really, a place can be permanently scarred, or altered. Many have died here, and whatever they left behind—spirits or just echoes—simply...lingers, now."

It didn't really help. Link could only hope for the sake of the dead that they were just echoes, rather than their spirits—their souls. He could scarcely imagine anything worse than being forced to linger in a place like this.

"Link," Sheik said after another twenty or so minutes. He sounded tired.

"Y-Yeah?"

"We have to go off the road here, directly eastwards."

Link checked the map again, and found to his disappointment that Sheik was right. The blip on the map wasn't far...but still further away from the road than he'd liked. Then again, the Sheikah who'd built the shrines in the first place had clearly never given much thought to practicality.

"F-Fine," he said, putting the slate away and grabbing Maladict's reins. He didn't dare actually ride him among those trees—a low-hanging branch, and he was done for. "H-How are y-you?" he asked the slate. "C-Can you s-still h-hear the s-signal?"

"It's loud," Sheik said. "Like...it's all I can hear. Only your voice is louder, drowning it out."

"I c-can t-talk, if th-that helps?"

"...could you?"

Link smiled a little to himself. It wasn't often he was in a position to comfort Sheik. Problem was, he wasn't very good with small talk. Really, talking in general... So he began talking about the only thing he could think of, which could get their minds off their respective problems—Sheik the signal, and Link the horrible, living dead marsh around them.

"S-so...wh-what do y-you th-think of S-Sidon?" he asked casually (or tried to, at any rate, which of course meant it came out horribly awkward).

"...what?"

"C-Come on, y-you've made f-fun of me f-for liking h-him, but f-fell in th-the same t-trap y-yourself," Link said, cursing his traitorous tongue forever and ever, wishing it would behave just once. "Wh-What w-was it?"

"...his boldness, I think. Or relentless optimism," Sheik said. "He wouldn't stop, even when I told him to bugger off. He is so convinced I'm a better person than I actually am...and while I think he's wrong, I can't help but...appreciate his belief in me. Plus, he is rather handsome...for a fish."

He might have been imagining it, but Link definitely felt the oppressive atmosphere of the marsh lifting a little when he and Sheik laughed together.

"What a mess..."

Sheik's unimpressed tone mirrored Link's grimace as they regarded the remains of a shrine that had, at one point, looked identical to the others that littered Hyrule.

Not anymore, however.

The marsh had grown to swallow the platform on which it had been built, the entrance pedestal smashed to pieces by something a long time ago. Even now, an errant spark issued from the complicated circuits within. The door, too, had been utterly destroyed by something big, but not before it had rusted to oblivion, surely taking no more than a gust of wind to come off its hinges. The metal the shrine itself was made of looked dull, the carvings long-dead.

Truly, it was a wonder the thing was even able to give off a signal at all, in its current state, especially the insides were in a similar condition.

Ignoring how his boots were rapidly filling with filthy marsh water, Link led Maladict to a relatively dry spot and tied him to a nearby tree, and then climbed up on the shrine platform, which was several inches under water.

"C-Can we e-even e-enter?" Link asked aloud as he stepped over the remains of the door, not surprised to find the elevator absolutely ruined; nothing but an empty shaft leading down into the dark. He couldn't hear anything from inside, apart from the sound of dripping and flowing water. With his luck, the damn place was completely flooded.

"I'm trying to establish a connection with the systems here, but they're completely closed off save for the signal," Sheik said. "I need to be connected physically to shut it off."

Link wasn't particularly thrilled about the prospect of climbing down there. Even if the place wasn't flooded, there was no guarantee they'd find any intact connection points. But just leaving wasn't an option either—the signal was going to drive Sheik insane sooner or later.

He gave the matter some thought before returning to Maladict, fetching a bundle of rope he'd purchased at the stable from the saddlebag, and went back to the entrance. He had no idea how deep this shrine went (some of them went on forever, it seemed), but he hoped this bundle was long enough.

"C-Can you s-see how d-deep it is?" he asked Sheik as he secured the end of the rope to the pedestal. The top was smashed, but the bottom half looked sturdy enough to take his weight.

"No idea," Sheik said.

"G-Guess w-we're doing it th-the old w-way, th-then," the Hero said, returning to Maladict once more.

He usually kept a torch or two in his pack, just in case. Together with a piece of flint, he soon had it burning brightly in his hand. Dropping it down the shaft, he was not only relieved to see that this shrine wasn't nearly as deep as some of the others, but that the floor was dry as well, since the torch kept burning. The rope was more than sufficient, the extra length coiling on itself at the bottom.

"R-Ready?" Link asked.

"Just...get on with it, please?" Sheik said.

Link slid down the rope, trying to quash his worry for Sheik. It's just the signal wearing at him, he told himself. It must be a like a toothache for him. As soon as I shut it off, he'll get better.

His boots hit the wet stone, and he immediately crouched down to pick up the torch, drawing his sword at the same time. There was no telling what he'd find down here—wild animals that made the place their home, raiding bokoblins and other filth—but he wasn't about to let down his guard.

What greeted him was a room that had once been cavernous, long since reduced in size by what appeared to be a cave-in, combined with flooding from seawater. A great wall of stone and mud rose in front of him, cutting them off from the rest of the shrine. A short set of stairs led down into a pool of stagnant water, below which he could see traces of what must have been this particular shrine's challenge. There was definitely the rune for Magnesis, though whatever he was supposed to use it on was nowhere to be seen...likely buried beneath the mud and rock.

"N-Nothing," Link said, descending the stairs and stepping into the pool, feeling his way along the rubble, trying to find a gap or a way through.

"There has to be an access point," Sheik said, sounding desperate. "There must be!"

Link didn't put much faith in his chances, but he continued searching anyway. If Sheik was this bothered by signal, they had to do something about it. His spirits sank as he got closer and closer to the actual shrine wall with no result...but then he spotted something. A light. Faint blue, in the corner. He hurried towards it, smile dropping when he saw that there was indeed a pedestal...but it was broken—snapped at the base.

"D-Damn..." he said with a groan.

"Wait, it might still work," Sheik said. "Get me closer!" Link did so, crouching in front of the broken machine. "Yes!" Sheik exclaimed. "It's active—plug me in, and I'll see if I can access the systems. Just a little bit is enough—as long as I can turn off the signal."

It was awkward, trying to fit the slate into the slot when it lay sideways and upside-down, but Link managed to line up the ports after a minute. The mechanism gave a loud, groaning sound, apparently trying to do the usual spin-and-snap, but nothing happened.

"Sheik?" he asked.

"Hang on...establishing connection...executing handshake..."

Link waited, jaw clenched. Every second felt like an hour as he watched Sheik's screen shifting in brightness, strange script scrolling across it as he apparently communicated with the system.

"Almost got it...that's right, open up you son of a bitch...hah! I've got i—"

Sheik's voice was cut off, and his screen went black—as did the light of the pedestal. Link stared at the slate, unsure of how to react. Was this normal? Surely not—Sheik had never gone dark when he'd connected to a system before. Not even when he'd gotten trapped on Vah Ruta! He reached out, hesitant to disconnect the slate, or even touch it!

"Sh-Sheik?" he asked, hating the way his voice echoed in the room. "Sheik! A-Are you okay?" His panic was quickly mounting, his fingers shaking as he ran them across the screen, wondering if that would wake it up. It didn't. "Oh n-no," he said, his body trembling. Was he supposed to unplug Sheik? What if he was, and Link was just sitting there, paralysed like the coward he knew he was? What if every moment Sheik was stuck like this was agony?

He grasped the slate, prepared to tug it loose. But what if unplugging him only made it worse? What if Sheik had made some connection to the main system, and removing him would be like tearing his brain out of his skull?

No, he couldn't doubt. Not now. He'd just have to free Sheik and apologise later—or find a way to fix it. He grasped the slate and started to pull—

"—it, haha! I knew the security protocols couldn't resist my onslaught, and—hey, what are you doing? How'd you move so fast?"

The screen was back on, along with the pedestal, and Sheik had continued speaking, like he hadn't just taken the longest pause in the middle of his sentence. What was...

"Y-You...y-you went d-dark?" Link said, phrasing it more like a question, though whether it was to himself or Sheik, he had no idea.

"...I did?" Sheik asked, confused.

"Y-Yes," Link said, nodding.

"For how long? I didn't notice anything...other than you apparently teleporting a few inches...ah..."

"J-Just a m-minute," Link said. Or had it been just a few seconds? It was hard to tell—time worked differently when he was in the throes of panic, which was ebbing away slowly now that Sheik was back.

"That's strange...I can't find any mention of such an event in my logs," Sheik said. "Might have been a power surge that cut me off for a little while."

"B-But you're o-okay now?"

"Perfect," Sheik said happily. "Especially now that I've managed to turn off that infernal signal. It was a distress beacon, by the way. It was triggered years ago by the cave-in, but when the network shut down the signal didn't actually reach anything of note. The only reason I heard it in the first place was because it bounced off the tower in Lanayru and happened to be picked up by my sensors. Once we got within range it automatically switched to bouncing it off me instead, which was why it got so...well, loud. To me, anyway."

Link pretended that he understood exactly what all that meant, nodding at what he imaged were the appropriate points. "And n-nothing...w-weird happened?"

"I'm running a full diagnostic on myself right now, but I doubt I'll find anything. It was probably just a power surge or...oh. Hang on."

"Wh-What?!" Link exclaimed, unable to take the pressure. It was too much. All he wanted to know was if Sheik was okay or not!

"Hm...that's weird. The shrine appeared to do an extensive scan of the slate...but I would have noticed that, surely...unless it happened while I was..."

"D-Dark," Link finished for him. "Wh-Why did it d-do that?"

"Beats me," Sheik said. "I'm looking through the few systems that are still active, but they're all maintenance or monitoring—nothing that actually does anything now that this place has fallen to pieces, and they certainly haven't stored the information anywhere. Maybe it was for security purposes—authenticating that it was a genuine slate that had been plugged in, and not a fake."

"You c-can f-fake slates?"

"Anything can be faked," Sheik replied. "Granted, you'd need to be on the technological level of the Sheikah who built this in the first place to do so, but...yeah. I don't see why not. I think this shrine might be older or newer than the rest, though, since none of the other ones have scanned the slate when you plugged me in. Maybe it was a new security feature that was meant to be implemented in the rest of the shrines, but my ancestors never finished it in time."

"I-Is that s-so..."

"Anyway, I can bore you with my theorising later. Let's get the hell out of here—this place gives me the creeps."

On that, at least, Link agreed.

Far away, on the other side of hyrule, a control panel lit up in the darkness, glowing a faint purple as text began to scroll across the screen. The viewer of the information could not be seen, but the entire room was filled with its malevolent energy, decidedly pleased with its work.

Hook, line, and sinker.

Oh dear...