Guardian after Guardian after Guardian after Guardian after Guardian.
They just kept on coming. No matter how far he ran, no matter how many he slew, they just kept coming.
Link grunted as he parried what must have been his thousandth Guardian laser. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Princess Zelda flinching. His shield-bearing arm was terribly sore, and though the sleeve of his tunic covered up his skin, he knew that if he were to pull it up, there would be an ugly mass of purple bruises decorating it. The Hylian Shield that he was carrying was beginning to show cracks, and the once-beautiful emblem which decorated it was now a mess of melded colors, distorted from heat.
It wasn't just the shield that showed wear and tear. The Champion's Tunic, which Princess Zelda herself had so delicately crafted was riddled with holes, revealing bloody, marred flesh underneath. Its beautiful blue fabric was tarnished by ash and soot. His Rito-crafted bow had long since snapped after he shot one too many arrows. The Master Sword though, was still pristine, undamaged. Of course it would be.
The Guardian that he countered had its laser reflected, blasting it right in its eye and nearly flipping it over. And yet, it barely mattered. With only a few seconds of delay, it righted itself up with its long, flexible limbs and began charging up another beam. To make matters worse, he could see several more Guardians approaching in a crescent formation to corner them. If they weren't trying to kill him, he might have stopped and admired their natural sense of cooperation.
He breathed heavily and lifted up the Master Sword. It hummed in anticipation, glowing brightly with the power of the Goddess. In the state the shield was in now, he doubted that it could take more than a few blasts before shattering. No, he had no choice but to hope that he could finish off one or two.
Perhaps he would even delay them long enough for the princess to get away.
Link blinked the sudden memory away just in time to see a Stalkoblin jump at him. It launched itself with a surprising amount of speed and grace, though it bared a fiendish snarl and glaring crimson eyes. He sidestepped just in time, letting it crash into the rocky wall behind him. He stomped on its head with his uninjured foot, crushing its skull with little resistance. It began to crumble and turn into dust, leaving behind only its horn and an arm, which was still moving about.
That was another down. How long had he been fighting for now? It felt like hours. His hands were dotted with festering blisters, worn from wielding the rough and often jagged arms that the Stalkoblins often left behind He would have preferred to still be wielding his broadsword with its superior edge and comfort grip, but it had shattered long ago.
He grabbed the arm just as a pair of Stalizaflos skittered up to him, both bearing forked spears made of bone. They both jabbed at him at the same time, and while Link managed to block the first attack with his newly acquired arm, the second caught him on his shoulder. It teared at the doublet he was wearing with ease, adding a bloody gash to the long list of injuries that he had accumulated. He let out a shout, more out of frustration than pain, and slashed at the both of them. Link used the Sheikah Slate to summon a bomb and tossed it right into the shrieking mob of undead creatures before him, detonating it as soon as he could.
The resulting explosion casted a huge, blinding blast of blue which brought with it a wave of bone fragments, monster parts, spear tips, and other shrapnel that slammed into him. The force of it nearly caused him to fall over, though he somehow managed to stay standing. Without hesitation, he summoned yet another bomb and tossed it at the group of skeletons, which had been reduced to a small group of bouncing skulls.
As he dispatched the group of Stal-monsters, he heard a loud gurgling sound from above him. He looked up just in time to see a waterfall of bones, horns, and claws rain down directly above him. He sidestepped out of the way and groaned in frustration as they-a batch of several Stalmoblins-began to form instantly.
Link lifted his Stalkoblin arm to parry an attack as one of the undead swung at him with a large wooden club. The club smashed through the arm easily, shattering it into hundreds of tiny fragments and leaving him without any weapons. Before he could even curse, another Stalmoblin stepped up to him and grabbed him by his arm. A sudden sense of weightlessness came next as it pivoted to throw him into the nearby cliff face.
He slammed into the jagged rocks of the Dueling Peaks so hard that he blacked out for half a second. As he blinked the dancing shadows out of his eyes, he noticed the group of undead advancing towards him. They were all armed with clubs and it was then that Link realized with a dawning horror that this would be it. Aside from the fact that he had nothing to fight with, the pain coursing through his body turned the simple act of breathing into sheer agony. The mounting collection of bruises and cuts on his body were becoming hot lead, weighing him down. He doubted that he could have stood even if he tried.
He gritted his teeth and took out the Sheikah Slate. At the very least, he could keep lobbing bombs at them as it seemed that the slate had an unlimited quantity. He knew that it would just be delaying the inevitable-even if he survived against this mob, the Calamity would just birth more. But what else could he do?
Link was staring down at the screen when a jolt went through him. Breaking through the piercing ringing noise that had filled his ears, a single thought emerged from his mind.
'Travel.'
He didn't have any time to hesitate. As the Stalmoblins began to surround him, he used the map and used the travel system to teleport to the Dueling Peaks Tower. As the familiar sense of buoyancy overtook him, he looked up once last time to see a giant club being brought down on his head.
Everything hurt.
There were several tears on the doublet that King Rhaom gave to him, which in turn marked his injuries. He was bleeding from about a dozen cuts, ranging from light scratches to deep gashes. A few shards of bone were stuck to his legs, which he only noticed when he tried to stand up. It felt as if a hundred knives were being stabbed into him over and over again.
His entire body ached, and with every second the pain only seemed to worsen. He wondered bitterly if this was how he would die-bleeding out from his wounds after running away from a battle. His mouth was dry and he found himself licking his lips to prevent them from getting chapped-this thirst was only sharpened by hunger, which had begun to gnaw on his stomach.
It was a strange sensation, one he wasn't entirely accustomed to. Throughout his life, he'd never been in any real shortage of food or water. Even if he somehow ran out of supplies while on the road, foraging was always incredibly easy. Game was plentiful throughout all of Hyrule, and if it came to it, there were always travelling merchants who usually carried food with them, although they always marked it up at three times the price.
And of course, water was even easier to find. It seemed that no matter where he looked, there would always be a body of water within line of sight, with the exception of the Gerudo Desert and the area around Death Mountain. Though not always clean enough to drink raw, he always carried flint to make fires with which could be used to boil it.
'Forget medical supplies. I'd be happy with a few more baked apples.' Link thought to himself as he contemplated the arrow stuck to his forearm. It hurt like hell, but if he were to pull it out then he would lose more blood than he could afford at this point.
Glancing down from the tower, he could see several more Stalkoblins wandering around, though they were far enough away so that even with their bows, they wouldn't be a problem. He wondered how many more had been birthed from the tendrils of Calamity. Hundreds? Thousands?
As he teared King Rhoam's doublet intoto strips of cloth-in the state it was in, it wouldn't be able to protect him from a light breeze, much less frigid climates-Link recalled Princess Zelda's words before he had been thrown into the fray: "During the dark hours of the night, Ganon's power grows. It rises to its peak at witching hour. By the blood moon's glow, the malice that taints this land will produce spirits of monsters once slain."
With the doublet, he was able to patch up some of his wounds, though they were shoddily done at best. It was rather difficult to apply self-aid when the slightest movements made you nauseous with pain. He glared up at the blood moon, which stared back at him impassively. If the moon would bring back monsters from the dead, then what was the point in killing them? Perhaps he should try entrapping them instead, though just the thought of trying to herd bokoblins only worsened his already massive headache.
At the very least, Link was somewhat certain that they would retreat when day came. If those things stuck around, then surely he would have run into one at some point before, right? Once it was morning, he could try to go to the village and get help, assuming that it was still there. It wasn't a very compelling plan, but as he laid there barely able to move and bleeding from dozens of wounds, he realized that it was all he had.
So he clung onto that hope as best he could.
He was right.
As the moon fell past the horizon and brooding clouds took its place, the remaining Stal-monsters littering the ground began to turn into ash. Good. He noticed with interest that their weapons hadn't vanished, and were just left lying on the dirt. Also good. That made a total of two good things that had happened to him since waking up.
'Great.' He thought dryly. 'But how do I get those weapons from up here?'
In the condition he was in, there was no way in hell that he would be able to climb down. So that left just the paraglider., which would only be slightly better. He stood up and just barely managed to stay up. His legs groaned in protest but managed to hold him. With careful and deliberate movements, he brought out his paraglider and stared at it for a while.
…
'I have no choice.'
Without a second thought, he hopped off the tower. Then, he deployed the paraglider.
The sudden tension that appeared in his arms was so abrupt that he couldn't help but let out a groan of agony. The pain that was dull and muted only a minute ago was now flashing, alert and coursing through his arms. His arms were being torn by the seams, lit ablaze, ripped into shreds, and that sensation only spread through his body, turning everything red.
His hands, which were already inflamed, simply lost any sort of deeper sensation. Link spared a half-second to glance at them and saw that they were gripping on to the paraglider so tightly that his veins popped out like thick vines. He didn't feel himself gripping though. It was just felt a warm sort of throbbing, raw, stinging, and unlike anything that he's ever felt before. He imagined that if he were to sandpaper his palms for an hour straight before proceeding to squeeze cut lemons, then it might have felt similar.
He was about ten meters from the ground when his body gave up and he was forced to let go. Instinct told him to roll as he hit the ground in order to break his fall. His brain ignored this and instead, he fell and landed like a ragdoll. He laid there, on the uncomfortably warm ground, surrounded by dead grass and wondering if he too, were dead. It certainly felt like he was. Just a few seconds ago, it felt like he was being torn apart from limb by limb. But now he just felt tired.
He couldn't feel his legs.
He was breathing, but he couldn't feel that either.
...
...
...
"Link."
He opened his eyes with a start.
"Link, please get up. Hyrule needs you. Please."
He gave off a rasping cough and tried to stand up, but failed.
"If you fall, then Hyrule will fall with you. You're our last hope. So please…"
That's right.
She needed him. She needed him to do this right. He had to keep moving.
With significant effort, he opened up his Sheikah Slate and glanced at the map.
Then, he began to crawl.