Legal stuff: The Legend of Zelda and its characters belong to Nintendo, not to me. Self-made characters however, do belong to me, so no copying.

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  The trip was rather uneventful, though at one point they did stop at a lecan tree grove that was bursting with fruit. Encouraged by Zyte, Link did try one of the fruit, discovering that it did indeed taste like a Hylian apple. Zyte, though still in her Zeira form, gulped several down as well.

  "I thought you said Zeira ate Guays," Link said after she had finished.

  "Well yeah, I said that, but everything that lives up here likes a good lecan fruit, how's Navi doing?"

  Link glanced up at Navi, who was floating blissfully around his head.

  "You holding up okay Navi?"

  "I'm good, just fine," she answered, her voice a higher pitch that usual.

  "What's with you? You've barely said two words since we left the ground."

  "It's nothing, I just have a weird feeling."

  "A weird feeling? What kind of feeling?"

  "Don't worry Navi, you're just sensing the other guardians, you'll get used to it."

  "Other guardians? You didn't tell me about those."

  "Well you didn't exactly ask, we should probably get going though, so I'll explain on the way."

  About an hour more into the flight, large cloud puffs started looming in the horizon. Zyte slowed down and landed on the clouds.

  "Okay, from here out we fly in ourselves. Needless to say, the villagers wouldn't appreciate a Zeira landing in the square."

  Link jumped off her back and landed lightly on the clouds. Focusing slightly, he made his wings appear on his back. Zyte returned to her normal form and took a look around.

  "That's weird."

  Stretching his wings, Link looked over at Zyte. "What's up?"

  "The wind currents, they just changed."

  A sudden gust blew in, Zyte held up one of her hands to shield her face. Another gust came from behind them. The cloud below them started to turn dark.

  "What the…"

  A large white and yellow bird suddenly shot out of the clouds a few yards away from them, its body covered in dancing static bolts. Its eyes centering on Zyte, it let out a piercing shriek and sent a lightning bolt streaming in her direction.

  Zyte tried to dodge it, but seeing it coming too late, it glanced her side. She sank to her knees, clutching her sides as a few static bolts danced over her.

  Sensing victory, the bird swooped toward her.

  "Oh no you don't!" Link shouted, drawing an arrow to his bow. Releasing it, it buried itself up to the feathered tip in the bird's wing.

  The bird shrieked and halted its flight, focusing on Link.

  Link drew his sword, griping the hilt tightly. "Yeah, that's right, I just hurt you, now come and get me," he muttered under his breath.

  Abandoning Zyte, the bird speeded toward him, its eyes filled with rage. Link readied his sword.

  "Don't attack it with your sword! You'll be electrocuted!" Zyte managed to shout out.

  Noticing the danger of what she had said, Link dodged, barely missing the bird's sharp beak. He quickly flapped his wings to get into the air, he would be a sitting duck if he limited his movement to the cloud top.

  "If I can't use my sword then what should I use?" he shouted back at Zyte.

  "Anything long distance, but they're really fast… Watch it!"

  Link quickly dodged again, feeling the breeze of the bird's wake as it passed by him yet again.

  Link watched as the bird turned for another go by. "Long distance huh?" he muttered, sheathing his sword and focusing Din's Fire into his hand.

  Link let it get a yard away from him before he released the fireball. The bird tried to stop its flight and get away, but it was too late. It was still flapping vainly as the fireball engulfed it. Uttering one last shriek, the bird disappeared in a puff of smoke. A pale yellow gem fell to the clouds below it. Link breathed a sigh of relief and flapped over to Zyte.

  Kneeling down beside her, he took her shoulder and gave it a small shake. "Hey, you okay?"

  Zyte gritted her teeth, "yeah, I'll be fine, just give me a minute." She glanced up at him, "how on earth did you produce that fireball, it was way more powerful than any pyre crystal I've seen."

  "A spell, called Din's Fire."

  This seemed to startle Zyte. "Din's Fire? You can use magic then?"

  "Yeah, how'd you know?"

  "Din's fire was mentioned in one of the ancient scriptures my mother used to translate." Zyte stood up, rubbing her right arm. "Shoot, my arm's gone all numb, stupid Ixila." She gave her arm a shake, a sour look on her face as it hung limply.

  Link in the mean time had walked over and picked up the yellow gem the Ixila had dropped. He held it up to the sun, watching the reflections dance on its surface.

  "Shock crystal, they're able to produce some pretty nasty lightning bolts when cracked. It's pretty rare to find Ixila carrying them though, most of the time they're found in thunderclouds."

  "So you can hurt monsters with these?"

  "Yep, they work great when combined with dew crystals against Zeiras."

  "It's all yours then, I'd rather use my sword." Link tossed the gem over to Zyte, who fumbled with it for a second after catching it one-handed. After giving it a quick examination, she slipped it into a pouch at her belt.

  "Ready to go?" he asked, stretching his wings slightly.

  "Yeah, I should be able to get something for my arm in the village."

  "Hey! Everyone alright over there!"

  Link and Zyte turned to see a Light Soaran wearing pale blue coming toward them, following him was a pale yellow kytel.

  "I saw the Ixila and… Well look at this! Ksumber! Over here, I've found Zyte!"

  "Master Sillis? What are you doing out here?"

  The Light Soaran landed lightly onto the cloud and gave Zyte a piercing look. "I could ask the same of you, we've been worried sick since you didn't show up for the ceremony. And then of course Leyann showed up looking for you and we really got worried. We've been sending out search parties to look for you, but we were starting to fear that Dark Soarans might have gotten you. Why didn't you show up?"

  She lowered her head, "Dark Soarans did attack me."

  "What? Dark Soarans attacked you? Are you hurt?" Another Light Soaran wearing dark gray joined the group, a silver kytel resting on his shoulder.

  "No Master Ksumber, Link made sure my wounds were healed."

  At this, both of the Light Soarans looked confused.

  "Who?"

  Zyte glanced back at Link, who had remained silent through the conversation. "Link saved me from the Dark Soarans, and he's the one who defeated that Ixila just now."

  Both of the Light Soarans laid their eyes on him, curiosity apparent in their gaze. Sillis smiled, "well, then I must thank you for saving Zyte." He gave a slight bow before straightening up and reaching out to tousle Zyte's hair. "I would hate to see my best student gone before I could make her a master."

  Ksumber still looked skeptical. "Tell me Link, if I may ask, but where are you from and what are you doing here?"

  Link quickly made up a lie. "I'm from a village quite a ways from here. As for why I'm here, a prophet from my village had a vision and I was sent to check it out."

  "Excuse me young sir," the kytel atop Ksumber's shoulder piped it, "but what is the name of your guardian? It is only fair we know her name too."

  "Oh, this is Navi."

  Both Sillis and Ksumber looked up to see Navi floating above Link's head. Ksumber gave her a very odd look. "A fairy? Now that is odd, you must live very far away from here to have a fairy guardian for us not to know about it, news like that tends to travel very fast." He gave Link a piercing look as well, as if daring him to tell the truth.

  Sillis gave Ksumber a friendly slap on the back. "Come now Ksumber, don't be so suspicious. Now then, let us return to the village, I'm sure everyone will be happy to see you, fairy guardian or not. And we'll get something to get rid of the numbness in your arm Zyte," he said, eyeing Zyte's arm.

  Zyte gave a slight bow. "Thank you Master Sillis."

  Link was a little nervous about this, he wasn't sure if his flying skills would convince an already skeptical Light Soaran.

  Zyte, sensing this, whispered to him, "don't worry, just remember what I taught you and you'll do just fine."

  Giving Zyte a small nod, Link flapped his wings and hovered, watching the others do the same.

  "Alright, you two follow us, we don't want anything happening to either of you."

  With that, they took off, flying in the direction of the puffs.

  Zyte flew a little closer to Link and whispered, "great, now that they've found me there'll be a big fuss back at the village. Hopefully it will have died down by nightfall, that's when we'll head to the temple. Until then, we'll just have to grin and bare it."

  She gave Link a half-hearted grin and flapped her wings, catching up with the others.

  Link sighed, something told him it wasn't going to be that easy.

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