(—when there's no one else around you? tell me where i need to go)
Eijiro's quiet while they prepare lunch, but Inko doesn't press him. She seems content to wait for him to express what's bothering him, while they both go about their parts. She keeps up a constant commentary, explaining the steps to everything she does to prepare and cook the food, and all the seasonings she uses, even though Eijiro hasn't asked.
She's either determined to teach him to cook, or just to keep him distracted from the thoughts weighing in his head, but either one is appreciated. At one point, he struggles to keep his hair out of his face as he cuts up the pork he'd hunted down earlier for their meal, and she jumps up from her seat with more agility than he'd expect from someone her age, proclaiming that she has just the thing.
She rummages for only a few moments in a pot at the other end of her small, one-room home, before coming back to him with a few short lengths of string and handkerchiefs.
"Here, sweetie," she says, as she folds one of the handkerchiefs a few times until it's a thin strip, and then helps him secure it around his hair as a headband. "You can keep these. They'll come in handy with that hair of yours."
She's maybe the absolute kindest person in all of Hyrule, and Eijiro's so glad she was here when he awoke. One hundred years—in which he'd been… been resurrected, apparently. And in which the kingdom had fallen apart around him. He could have woken up alone up here, with no help, but instead he has Inko, and he's so grateful.
He must have been silent too long, though, because eventually as she's just finishing up the cooking, she sighs gently and asks, "Eijiro, dear, what's on your mind?"
"Oh." He echoes her sigh, though his is a lot heavier, and looks down at his hands. He's been thinking about it, too much, on and off ever since he saw the words on the map. "Well, it's… I found out the name of the place I came from, the one I was asking about. It's, um, it's the Shrine of Resurrection."
He knows what that word means, okay, he knows—and—and why else would he need to sleep for so many years? And how else could he sleep for so long and come out of it so young? He looks up at Inko, chewing nervously at his lip.
"Inko, do you think I'm dead?" he asks, somewhat pitifully.
She stares at him for a couple of moments, before "Oh, honey," escapes her abruptly in what sounds like a laugh, though it's not unkind. She just sounds sympathetic, if a little amused. "No, no, sweetheart. Of course you're not."
"But… I mean, what if..."
How could they know, really? He can feel himself pouting again as he looks at her with big, worried eyes, but she tilts her head at him with a fond, if concerned expression. "Eijiro, trust me. I've been in this world a very long time. I'm probably one of the most qualified people around to tell you you're not dead. By the time you get to be my age, you've learned a thing or two; I promise I could tell if you were."
Eijiro nods, but he continues to gnaw at his lower lip in thought. A slightly amused huff escapes Inko, and she stands, wiping her hands clean on a rag she's had set aside, before she marches around the table to pinch at his cheek teasingly.
"Ow, ow!" he whines, wiping at the spot she'd pinched even though it hadn't hurt that bad. She chuckles, moving back around the table to move their lunch—sautéed mushrooms and herbs, with seared pork—onto plates for both of them.
"See?" she asks, the laughter lines around her eyes deepening once more. "Couldn't feel that if you were dead. You're flesh and blood and very alive, dear, I promise."
He sighs again, but he does feel better, and he manages a small smile that he's surprised to realize is genuine.
Gods, Eijiro loves meat.
Inko was right, and he's glad he waited to eat before tackling the shrine. There's a monster camp just outside of it, and he's downright gleeful about getting to have that fight on a full stomach—and he can't imagine how much worse it'd have felt, to have to fight past them with arms still shaky and achy from the climb down the Great Plateau Tower.
When he finally steps up onto the level surface before the shrine, admittedly, his shoulders and muscles all feel sore and protest at most movements, but they're still steadier than they might have been. There's a pedestal, just to the side of the gate into the shrine. The gate looks similar to the doors that had kept him sealed into the Shrine of Resurrection, with interlocking panels pressed together—but these ones lie horizontal, instead of vertical.
He hears a tune sound from the Sheikah Slate, and as he pulls it from his hip to approach the pedestal, he sees that the map now displays two new emblems—another bright blue one, where the tower is, and an orange one here, at the shrine. It also displays a name over this shrine—Oman Au Shrine.
It's a little less straightforward than 'Shrine of Resurrection', but it doesn't really matter, he guesses.
He looks down at the pedestal, and the incredibly helpful advice of, 'this isn't complicated,' flashes through his mind, making him chuckle as he moves to press the Sheikah Slate to this pedestal, the same as he did to get out of the Shrine of Resurrection. This time his slate has to confirm instead of authenticate, whatever either of those things even mean, and then the voice delivers another new phrase.
"Travel gate registered to map."
He wonders what travel gate means, turning to look behind him curiously as the large circular emblem in the platform behind him lights up blue, again with that strange blue energy clouding off of it for a moment. And then, after a chime of "Access granted," the door just past the pedestal begins to open—this time the panels swiveling in, instead of sliding past each other.
It's… just a hollow little nook? He expected maybe a stairway or passageway leading down, but it's empty in there, but for another slightly smaller circular emblem on the floor inside. It's patterned differently, but it's also lit up. Cautiously, Eijiro goes to stand on it—gods, he hopes this structure isn't about to shoot up into the sky, too.
Instead, the circular marking on the floor shifts, and smoothly—and gently, thank the Goddesses—it begins to sink down. Eijiro watches, wide-eyed as this apparent platform just—floats? Seemingly suspended by nothing, as it slowly lowers him through a dark tunnel, lower and lower into the ground. He can't quite see yet where the platform is taking him, so he cranes his head instead to watch the sliver of sunlight up above slowly shrink with distance.
When he finally emerges from the bottom of the chute he's been descending down, and the shrine opens up around him, it's—
Oman Au Shrine is otherworldly. It's hard to believe that the rest of the world even can exist, somewhere far above this.
It's not dark and claustrophobic like the Shrine of Resurrection was, and there isn't a thick layer of dust choking the air or the same atmosphere of abandonment, despite what Inko had said about no one being able to enter. There's an unnaturally bright, blue-ish light that beams down from the entirety of the ceiling. Unlike the Shrine of Resurrection, this space is—it's huge, much more open, and instead of the curved walls of the Shrine of Resurrection sealing him in, nearly everything here is angular, compiled of rectangles or squares.
Something… something about the structure reminds him of a child's construction out of blocks—like not all of the shapes fit together quite how they're supposed to, bits of black and tan stone jutting out just a little farther here and there. It adds all the more to the unreal feeling of this place.
An altogether new feeling hits him as soon as he steps down from the platform—unlike with the voice that calls to him from the castle, which he almost hears, though the sound is more in his mind than in his ears, now a sensation of words washes over him, but it's not at all like hearing them. It's barely even like feeling them. It's like the words are just… appearing in his mind.
To you who sets foot in this shrine… I am Oman Au. In the name of the god Bakusatsuo, I offer this trial.
There's a sensation just ghosting at the edges of his mind with the words, something that feels ancient, but… not malicious, at least? It's deeply unfamiliar and unsettling, and he knows he's never experienced anything like it in his life, but he gets the sense that whatever entity or force just—spoke?—to him, it's very, very old.
Off to his left is another pedestal with a black, somewhat-pointed stone suspended above it, just like at the tower, so Eijiro gets to work.
This time, when the glowing fluid drips onto his Sheikah Slate, it's not a map that appears on the screen. It says it's a... rune? He doesn't know exactly what that means in this context, but he does know that Sheikah use runes in their magic—is that what this is? Is this gonna let his slate do magic? Let him do magic? Oh, he so wants to do magic.
Eijiro can fucking do magic.
He's never felt this cool in his life, slinging giant chunks of metal around like they're weightless, through the power of whatever odd tether forms out of the slate when he activates the rune. After he's worn out the fun of marveling in his new unchecked power—(okay, it's a little checked; he can lift anything made of metal, but he can only move it so fast and only up to a certain distance, and he can't even lift metal objects that he's standing on, which is lame)—he finally moves on to the trial that's apparently set before him.
It feels like less of a trial and more of a hands-on lesson to get him used to the rune. There's more than a few opportunities for him to get creative about moving obstacles, finding things that are out of his reach or not immediately visible without use of the rune, and stacking or arranging things to get around to places he otherwise couldn't reach.
He quickly feels like a pro at toppling walls of obstacles, making metal bridges, and climbing metal boxes. It gets almost boring fast, and the only things that throw him off, and that he could have done without, are the automatons sprung on him about halfway through, when he still has the slate out and isn't suddenly ready for combat.
By the time he's using the rune to heave open the hulking metal gates at the end of his trial, wincing from the results of that battle—the machines had shot lasers at him, lasers! And though he'd hardened in time, his skin still stings, feeling burnt and raw where the beams had hit—he feels like he's been here ages. The slate says it's been more like only an hour and a half, but he's still way too ready to be done already.
Past the gates is an odd, elevated—platform? Or altar, or something like that. Eijiro freezes in his spot when he lays eyes on the spectacle before him. There's two tiny sets of stairs, only six shallow steps to each, leading up to the odd platform, which is encased on all sides by some glowing blue screen or window. But it's what's inside that transparent blue wall that gives him pause, because—
Because that's definitely a dead guy. Oh, gods, that's so a dead guy, sitting there.
Eijiro only continues forward very begrudgingly, closing in to notice that this freaky, shriveled and mummified form with long white hair is in some sort of meditative pose, with his hands shaped together to form a triangle. He's also pretty distinctively wearing clothes that remind Eijiro of traditional Sheikah garb, a hat slung over his back that's of obvious Sheikah make, and, oh, Eijiro shouldn't neglect to note the shadow people's symbol painted blatantly on this man's forehead. He's also shirtless, which Eijiro can respect.
Reluctantly, he climbs the steps, coming to a stop at the small, railed-in landing at the top of the second set. Oh, he's way too close to this dead guy for his liking. Is there something he's supposed to do here…?
There are a few seconds spent shuffling awkwardly in place, hoping for something to happen as he alternates between looking at the mummy and the Sheikah eye that hovers between them on the glowing window, before Eijiro finally sighs. He's gonna regret this, but fuck it. He clearly is supposed to do something, so he—with every instinct in his body screaming at him not to—reaches up to touch the Sheikah symbol on the partition in front of him.
The whole thing shatters, and he jumps.
Again, he gets that suggestion of words, not heard or felt but still somehow there, and he knows without a doubt that their origin is this dead Sheikah before him. They're a little stronger now that he's closer to the source, but still a foreign and indistinct feeling.
You have proven to possess the resolve of a true hero. I am Oman Au, the creator of this trial. I am a humble monk, blessed with the sight of the god Bakusatsuo and dedicated to helping those who seek to defeat All For One. With your arrival, my duty is now fulfilled. In the name of the god Bakusatsuo, allow me to bestow this gift upon you. Please accept the strength of my spirit.
Eijiro blinks, brow furrowing as he wonders what that means—but then he sees what it means, as suddenly, a compact, hazy cloud of purple—he doesn't even know, energy?—seeps out of the monk's chest, and—and begins to drift towards him.
A little alarmed, Eijiro staggers half a step back in a probably less-than-manly move, eyes flicking between the monk and the approaching haze—but before he can make the decision to bolt, unsure what the hell that substance is exactly, it touches his chest and begins to absorb into him. He yelps, one hand reaching up to clutch over his heart like he can somehow pull the essence back out of himself, the other clinging at the railing like a lifeline so he doesn't tumble down the stairs in his attempt to reel away.
He feels… he doesn't know, something blanket and course through him, the feeling deeply unsettling and he wants to ask this guy to take it back.
May Bakusatsuo smile upon you.
As Eijiro watches, the monk before him starts to—to disintegrate, freaking him right the hell out as the mummified Sheikah dissolves into greenish particles that float away upwards. His eyes feel like they're about to bug out of his head and he's half a second from hyperventilating as he stares, mouth agape.
Oh, gods. Oh, gods, did he just get possessed? He doesn't want to be possessed! He does not want some weird ancient monk to pilot him around! Not cool! It's not cool!
He needs to sit and have a moment before he can make his way back to the platform out of the shrine.
Inko is waiting for him when he does get out of the shrine. He steps out into the sunlight, still unsettled but comforted by normal fresh air and surroundings again, and she steps up onto the surface at the entrance of the shrine, meeting him.
"How did it go, sweetie?" She looks him over, eyes crinkling warmly in the way he's used to. "You have a different sense about you. You look a little heartier."
This is the last thing Eijiro wants to hear right now, and he looks at her in alarm. "I seem different? What do you mean? Different how? Do I still seem like me?" Oh, he's so possessed. He's so possessed by a weird old dead monk man. This is the worst.
Taken aback, Inko blinks owlishly at him. Concern coloring her expression, she steps closer with furrowed brows. "What do you mean? Of course you do."
"But are you sure?" he asks, a little desperate.
"Yes! Eijiro, sweetheart, what happened in there to have you in this state?"
The story comes pouring out of him all in one breath, voice only getting more hysterical as he goes. "I don't know, I—I went in there and there was a trial? Sort of? It wasn't really hard at all it was just kind of teaching me how to use a new thing on my Sheikah Slate and there were machines that attacked me and then there was this weird old dead guy at the end of it and he said he'd give me 'the strength of his spirit' and then this weird purple stuff came into me and now I think I'm possessed!"
Inko stares. Eijiro stares back, probably a little wild-eyed and frightened. Not for the first time today, Inko's eyebrows lift high on her face, and then she shakes her head as she reaches out to place a hand on his arm. "Eijiro, honey, don't you think you'd notice something different about yourself if you were possessed?"
"Maybe?" He's so desperately hoping she's right, but he's just a little freaked out right now. "Just—I don't know, what if, like, my own thoughts are different so I'm not even thinking like me and that's why I don't notice?"
"I think if you were possessed by something that made you think differently, you wouldn't be worried about being possessed at all," she reasons, firm in her stance. After a beat, she tilts her head and asks, "Are you always this paranoid about silly things?"
"No!" He can't help but be defensive. "I mean. I don't think so?" Given a moment to process the whole conversation, he finds himself a little embarrassed, dropping his face into his hands with a groan. "I'm sorry, I've had a really weird day, Inko."
She chuckles sympathetically, patting his arm comfortingly. He doesn't want to come out from behind his hands, but he appreciates the gesture nonetheless. "How about we get to thinking about your next step, hm? What happened while you were in there? Did your voice speak to you again?"
Eijiro doesn't even want to get into the happy little jump his heart performs when she refers to the voice he's heard so much as his, so instead he focuses on taking a deep breath and removing his fingers from his face. He shakes his head, trying not to be disappointed.
"No, I haven't heard from him again." He'd really been hoping that using Sheikah technology was the key to prompting him to speak but… apparently not. "Um… okay, so. I got down into the shrine, and this, um, really old Sheikah monk, who was like, shriveled up and mummified? He said it was a trial. And when I finished the trial, he said..."
Eijiro's brow furrows as he tries to remember, exactly. He'd gotten pretty distracted and weirded out, afterwards, so the words hadn't exactly had time to stick.
"He said… that I have the resolve of a true hero? And some stuff about Bakusatsuo, and that he was supposed to help anyone who wants to fight All for One." Thinking back on it, Eijiro definitely starts to feel a little silly, now. Obviously, the monk wouldn't possess him if he wanted to help him. "And then he said he was giving me a gift, and he, like—disintegrated, after sending some weird purple… stuff into me, I don't know, that's when I got weirded out."
Inko hums thoughtfully, considering. Just when she's opening her mouth to respond, Eijiro spots an old, battered metal crate nearby and remembers.
"Oh!" He's already whipping the slate out in his excitement, activating the magnesis rune. "And I can do this now!"
He uses the slate to grab the box, lifting it into the air—Inko lets out a quiet cry of, "Goodness!"—and moving it away from them, before dropping it with a heavy thud and beaming at her.
"That looks awfully handy," she admits with an indulgent smile. "Just be careful with it. So, if that shrine gave you an ability like that, and was placed there to help you fight All for One, it stands to reason that the others will probably help you, too? There are a few more shrines even here, on the Great Plateau. Maybe you could go to them, while we figure out how to get you down?"
Moving to clip the slate back to his belt, Eijiro's eyebrows raise. "There are? Where?"
Admittedly, he's not exactly eager to have more of that weird purple… mist, or whatever, thrown at him, but this magnesis thing is cool. If the other shrines have other runes for him… maybe one of them could be something that grants him the ability to get down from the plateau. So, even if the thought of dealing with that again makes him a little uneasy, he knows he has to man up. He's not going to save anyone if he's too scared to even face dead guys trying to help him.
"You could probably see them all from the top of that tower you raised," Inko suggests helpfully. "Your Sheikah Slate should also have a scope feature that will let you mark the shrines on your map from far away."
"Really?" He hasn't even found that feature. It's not his most pressing issue though, because he finds himself looking dubiously at the tower in the near distance, ahead of them. He sighs. "Man, I'm not looking forward to climbing all the way up there. Down was hard enough."
Inko chuckles agreeably, clearly understanding of his plight. "Your slate has something for that, too. To help you travel places faster."
"You mean the map?" he asks, brow furrowing. He guesses that would make sense; having a map that moves with you and shows you exactly where you're facing in relation to your destination probably speeds things up a lot more than using a regular map and constantly having to orient yourself.
"Oh, you know about the fast travel on the map already?" Inko asks, sounding pleasantly surprised, and Eijiro blinks. The shrine had said something about a fast travel gate, right?
"Um… no?" he answers honestly. "Wait, how do you know all this about my slate? I thought you said you didn't know a lot about Sheikah stuff?"
An amused huff escaping her, Inko gives him a chiding look. "Sheikah Slates were around one hundred years ago, young man. I may not know much about Sheikah buildings or how they all work, but your slate is another matter entirely. I've heard quite a bit about what they're supposed to be able to do. Now, pull out your map."
"Oh." He does as she says, but as he's bringing up the map he can't help but furrow his brow as he realizes her wording. She made it sound like she was around one hundred years ago. But she still doesn't look old enough for that—unless she was, like, a baby, and aged really well, and even then, a baby couldn't work a Sheikah Slate. Probably.
"All right," she begins, moving beside him to peer at the map with him. He notes with some interest that the emblem for the shrine where they stand is no longer orange on the map, but blue like the other emblems. "So if you tap on the tower on the map, it should let you move there quickly."
He does as she directs, watching as a message appears on the screen, bearing two words, each separated and outlined: 'Travel' and 'Cancel'. "Like this?" he asks, finger already moving unthinkingly to tap the word travel.
Before Inko can answer, Eijiro is ripped violently out of his body.
Describing the sensation of fast travel would probably be impossible. One moment, Eijiro is normal, and the next—it's like he's blacked out, except not at all because he can still think and panic, but he can't feel his body, like at all. Can't keep track of any part of himself. He feels so disjointed, unable to gain any sense of equilibrium or awareness of his surroundings or the orientation of his own limbs, and the whole while he feels like he's hurtling through the air at horrifying speeds.
And none of that comes close to describing the discordant sensation of all of his senses reassembling themselves all out of order, as he's placed on the circular symbol on the top of Great Plateau Tower—placed gently, but that's too little too late.
The instant his feet hit the surface, Eijiro topples over, and it's all he can do to scramble to the edge of the tower before he's emptying what's left of his lunch over the side. Oh, gods. That was the most jarring experience of his life. That was so bad. What the fuck.
Pressing his forehead to the tan stone that ridges the edge of the tower, Eijiro groans, wind whipping his hair all around his face.
"I'm never doing that again," he swears under his breath to himself, voice thick and arms wrapped around his stomach. He fucking means it, too. That was godsdamned awful.
It takes more time than he'd like to admit to compose himself after that, but once he's finally pulled himself to his feet he can at least say that the scope feature is way easier to find and use than it could have been. There's tons of shrines, it turns out—he can make out so many from up here, but most of them are well out of his reach, until he can get off of the plateau. It's not even a full minute before he has the three shrines Inko had told him about marked down on his map, with glowing beacons that appear on the scope when he moves it over them.
One of them, he notes eagerly, is easily reachable, too; not far at all where it sits surrounded by ruins.
It's just… he can't help but despair, just a little, because now begins the process of climbing all the way back down. After the worst ascent of his life. Again.
A/N: find me on tumblr at belladxne!
please pour one out for inko patiently dealing with eijiro panicking his way through various conspiracy theories. i love her and we don't deserve her. this was, like, one of my favorite chapters to write, eijiro felt so funny to me in it. the theories. the panic over dead guy. he can fucking do magic. i love him.
i'll probably edit the link for the playlist i mentioned into the end of this chapter within a day or two?
anyways pls comment or bug me on tumblr, i will love u forever,