A/N: Woo not me editing this chapter while experiencing a migraine! I'm not gonna apologise for this chapter being late. Chronic pain was being an ass and so was my mental health. Usually that wouldn't stop me from editing and podficcing my fic but the subject matter of this chapter was too sensitive for my anxiety to handle.
I wrote this chapter in three days. THREE DAYS! I hadn't done that since NaNoWriMo 2021.
This is a chapter that I was so excited to write! But it is, comparatively, a very dark and disturbing chapter. It's no Dead Dove, but if you struggle with intrusive thoughts, especially about hurting other people or jumping to your death, please brace yourself. Or if you'd rather skip this chapter but want to continue reading the story, then feel free to PM me on Tumblr scarletcurls and I'll give you a much less graphic summary, zero questions asked. This one is pretty integral to Link and Midna's development.
The Light Invasion
PART II - LIFT THE LIGHT
Region by region, dungeon by dungeon, trial by trial, Link and Midna build a fragile trust.
Chapter 25 - Do Your Worst
The stalactite teeth of the temple entrance were but a tease of the spikes that flooded the cavernous ceiling. The walkway Link stood upon spiralled around the cavern walls towards a smooth, funnel-like bottom. It fed into a thick, soupy darkness: a curtain over mysteries lost to time, lost to the dead, but close enough for Link to uncover for himself. Go on. Find out what's down there. What no other living being has ever laid eyes upon.
Midna's narrowed eye flew in his way. "And just what do you think you're doing?"
Link froze in place, suddenly aware of exactly what he was doing. The walkway had a stone railing that barely reached most of the way up his thigh, and his left knee was kneeling on it. No. His knee was hanging off the edge, as far as it could go before his foot snagged on the ledge.
His centre of gravity was tilted forward, too. Any further and he'd fall headfirst towards the stone dozens of feet below, and then his broken body would tumble into the void.
Blood ran colder than the frigid valley. His body tingled all over, and he jerked away from the ledge before nerves could turn his legs to lard.
In his backwards stumble, he slammed against the cave wall. Carvings of coarse stone dug into his spine and shoulder blades, as if the walls themselves were trying to drive him away, towards the pit.
"Link." Midna's voice startled him, even though she hadn't gone anywhere. "I feel it, too. The pull. The tug. You need to notice it, acknowledge it, and never let your awareness slip, otherwise you'll find yourself wandering in. Got it?"
Link wet his lips and nodded.
"Good. Now I'm going to stay out of the shadows for this bit. It'll help me stay aware of you if you stay aware of me. Sound like a plan?"
Link nodded again. He could trust Midna to have his back here, too. He could. He always could. Awful attitude and all. He dared her to try him like she always did not too long ago. He could take her on, sting her some… how did his trail of thought make such a sharp turn to the violent? In response to her offer of help, too.
She must also be having those thoughts. Her thoughts winding back towards him. Harming him. He should be prepared to harm her back if– No. No. Stop it. She is the mistress of her own body, just as Link is the master of his. She won't act on her impulses. He trusted her not to, because he wouldn't either, unless she– Stop! Stay awake. Stay aware. She may be snarky or snippy, but she's safe. A safe person to be around.
Staying aware was difficult with no discernible way forward. Their only path was the one that wound towards the pit. Perhaps, along the way, they'd find a crack in the wall they could smash with the hammer, thus revealing a secret entrance.
Link didn't like being reminded of the frailty of stone, of the possibility that it could crumble beneath his foot and send him tumbling into that pit. Where he would become the next mystery. The next lost soul. The one who knew the tru–
"Link!" Midna hissed. He was wandering towards the edge again. Link clenched his fists and forced his feet away to the wall, close enough that the tips of his fur parka snagged on stone. A grating sensation, but better than falling to his doom, right?
The sensation continued to grate. He felt the tug of every individual hair as if they were his own, of the creak of their pull, and the creeping sensation that something was missing, exposing his right side to the cavern. Midna. Where was Midna?
Several feet behind him, she was drifting slow and off course, already a foot off the path. "Midna!" he called. She jolted to a stop, as if she was about to slam into a tree she had failed to notice. Without another word, she flew to Link's side, and they continued down the path, as if she didn't just abandon him. As if she didn't deserve to be thrown into the pit for what she almost did. He shouldn't have bothered to save someone so useless and careless and selfish from herself.
"Why'd you leave?" Link asked, intentionally colouring his tone with some hurt and an edge of righteous, simmering anger. "You broke your word. Said you'd stay by my side."
Midna's nose wrinkled as if she smelled a rotting carcass in the midday sun. "Sorry, Mr Important Hero, but did I lecture you for your aimless wanderings towards your demise? Which I had to save you from several times, by the way."
She thought she was better than him! More resilient than the chosen hero and bearer of the Triforce of Courage. "I'm not the one who made a promise to–"
"I didn't promise anything!"
"But you did say you'd stay by my side, and I agreed so that you could feel useful for once."
"Excuse me!" Midna spun to his other side by the wall, hands on her hips. "Since when did all your toxic thoughts start leaking out of your mouth without even the phantom of a filter?"
How dare she! "Since– Since…" Since he entered this cave. He gnawed his lip. His thoughts were scrambling for more slingshot pellets, more bomb powder to throw over the flame. Keeping them at bay was like wrestling a goat. To keep up that effort while continuing forward would be like wrestling General Alexus herself, and then Dark Beast Ganon.
"We need to go back," he said. "Come up with a new approach." He should apologise for picking this fight too, but he didn't want to. She didn't deserve it after she called him toxic. That was rich coming from her. (His ribs throbbed where Midna had kicked him back in Ordon.)
Link squinted towards the opposite end of the chamber where the ramp began. There was no cave entrance from where they had presumably come. Just a bit of wall as regular as any other.
"I'll save you the trip and investigate," Midna said. There was a hint of remorse in her voice, as if she was trying (or pretending) to make up for their petty argument. He nodded. A test really, to see if she would stay or forsake him to his thoughts.
She forsook him. Flying up and around the ramp to keep as much girth between her and the pit as possible.
What a chore it was to stay present without her. He needed to pay attention to the direction of his fidgeting feet, his proximity to the wall, the bubbling resentment in his chest, Midna in the distance, possible cracks in the wall, the potency of his ugly thoughts. It became a pattern after a while. Feet, wall, chest, Midna, carvings, thoughts. Feet, wall, chest, Midna, pit, thoughts. Feet, wall, pit, Midna, pit, thoughts. Feet, wall, pit, Midna, pit, pit, pit, throw her in the pit throw her in the pit throw her in the pit you can't throw her in the pit why oh why did you ever give her the deku nuts because now you can't throw her in the pit for breaking her word and leaving your side again and again!
There was a snap at his side, and a flurry of black particles. When he whipped towards the sudden fern by his boot, something snapped around his ankle. He bit back a scream. A curse at the parasite who abandoned his shadow.
The former exit wasn't covered by an illusion or a magical seal or anything. It was just stone. Pure, solid stone that refused to chip or budge no matter how many times Midna tried to slam it with that useless hammer. Urgh, no magic in the twilight realm ever worked like this! Where were the sol runes? The stains of shadow? Was this the doing of Eldin or some ancient sorcerer that retained their magic even in death?
After the twelfth slam (because the hammer was showing signs of wear), Midna relented with a ragged sigh and snapped the weapon back into her void. This was it, then. It was too late to heed those warnings, to admit that maybe she and Link weren't any stronger or wiser than the best of the best of the Twili's temple raiders. This was the most stupid gamble she had ever made.
Honestly, why didn't Link stop her? She should've let him fall into the fissure, or the pit, or– No! How dare you think those thoughts. Such vile thoughts. You have no right to be rotten. Not after how you allowed your land to rot under Zant and wither under Fabian. Just get back to Link and race to Eldin's lair before the urge to do unspeakable harm wins the circum and costs Twilux its future.
As she raced across the pit –over that dark, alluring pit that drifted closer and closer– a grunt and a dying wheeze snapped her focus ahead. Link had his sword out, and from his profile, a devious grin on his face. He dropped his sword and dipped below the barrier. Anyone who smiled at a kill was never a good sign. She zoomed faster and spun to a halt behind him and a few metres above, just in time to see him fiddle with something on the front of his belt.
Midna crossed her arms, fingers drumming against her forearms, and glowered. "What were you doing just now?"
His eyes went wide for a second, but he dipped his head, sheathed his sword, stood, and smiled at her as if he was a boutique assistant. "Just a surprise attack from a hungry plant."
A hungry plant? Down here? She and Link were supposed to be the only spots of life for kilometres!
His arms were clasped behind his back, but his elbows were held higher than comfortable, and peaking around his right was a withered fern. No… of all the impossible things that could be down here, did it really have to be a deku baba?
She rushed behind him, and he whirled with her, but that didn't matter. Her shadows searched between the fern fronds and under the dried stalk and in the nearby cracks, but the dried snapper of the plant was missing.
In her shadow form, Midna couldn't feel the cold prickle her skin or numb her fingers or sting her nostrils, but she could feel it in the clutch around her core. "Link," she tremoured. "Where is the deku nut?"
"I swung from the right," Link said. "Lobbed off the head and it fell over the edge. Probably gave a nasty shock to whoever's in that pit."
Him, a lefty, swung from the right? That was not what she saw.
"Right," she said. "Then I want you to empty your pouch. Right now."
Link pressed his hands over it protectively. "Why? I told you what happened to the deku nut."
"Then show me what's in your pouch." He backed away slowly, so she floated closer. Around her, every shadow flickered like a flame, just enough to warn him without spooking him, ready to sting if he ever dared raise his hand against her.
"It's just my charcoals," he pleaded, "You know how protective I–"
"Bullshit!" Midna hissed. "I have never met someone as hypocritical as you. Someone so unworthy of being called a hero. You forced me into a promise of transparency back in Sphaera, and you refuse to hold up your end of the bargain."
His grip on his pouch tightened, and his pale face reddened with fury. "Like hell you have!" he snapped back. "You still haven't told me who you are, or why you look like that when every other Twili is–"
"Shut it!" Midna yelled. "Shut your filthy light-dweller mouth. My body and background are none of your business. Got it? None!"
"Then why should I trust you with my pouch?!"
"YOU ARE TOYING WITH MY LIFE, LINK!" she roared with all her fear and fury. "DO YOU WANT ME TO TOY WITH YOURS?"
At that, his hand dove into the pouch, and withdrew a clenched fist. "Don't come any–"
A shadow from the wall seized the offending wrist. A dozen more tendrils latched his arms and legs and torso and head, binding him flat and high against the wall. He thrashed against his restraints, but her magic held every joint and muscle tight, especially his fist. Veins of black kept it tight, kept it shut, kept it from unleashing the flash that would wither her shadows and expose her to the burning light.
She hovered just above his eye level, staring fire down at her insubordinate servant. His wide eyes pleaded with his mistress for mercy. Good. It was time to ensure that he never forgot what she was capable of. After this moment, never again would he defy her.
"Just this once, I will spare your life." She wanted to tear into him, and she could. It would be so easy to sink her shadows into his chest and his stomach like talons, to cut off a few fingers and claim some chunks from his thighs. To hear his screams echo throughout the cavern and then slice them off with the slash of his throat. But she still needed him. She still needed him to walk, to hold a weapon, and to fight for her life and her realm whenever she commanded it. "But I will make you feel a twinge of what you almost did to me."
"I-I'm sorry," he blubbered like the coward he was. "There was never a– Mmph!" The shadows snapped over his mouth. Perhaps she ought to cut out his tongue for all his rotten lies, but no, she had a different target. The symbol of his false heroism. His blue eyes.
Veins of black slithered around his ears, across his forehead, over his cheeks. He screwed his eyes shut, but the veins travelled over his right lid, bound for his left: the side of the hand that had committed treason against her.
They wormed between his lids and wrenched them open. His eye was bloodshot, twitching, and glossy with tears. Reflective of her smile. Sharp and toothy and so wide that the thorny corners touched her cheekbones. The last time she grinned like that, it was when she had accepted the first fused shadow as her new crown.
And she hated that reflection. Hated her twisted, malevolent, impish smile, how it clashed with her identity as the remorseful princess fighting fang and claw to reclaim her body and throne.
So rip it out, the whispers said. Tear that reflection out of him. Then you won't have to see it anymore.
Tear… it out… Not even Zant would do something so cruel.
Her smile receded, and she was just starting to glimpse herself again. Her shadows retreated too. She wouldn't. She couldn't. But that fist, even though it was now free to open, to harmlessly surrender its deadly weapon, remained firmly clenched. He deserved this fate. He deserved it he deserved it he deserves it he deserves it he deserves it.
The veins reclaimed his fist, tightened every tether, and wrenched his eye open again. He screamed into his gag, tried to twist his head away, but every part of him was pinned in place. The darkness pooled around the edges of his eye, until it was all that there was to see.
Forget the reflection. He deserves this. Any part of her that wanted to stop her needed to be crushed like a bug under her heel, but like a cockroach, it kept twitching, kept fighting, kept refusing to die. But it's not enough to stop her. It's not. It's not. It's too late. Her shadows are seeping under his lids, around his cornea, and her next motion will be it. The deed. The deed she can't take back she can't stop she can't refuse because he deserves it she doesn't want to do it but he deserves it he deserves it and she can't be stopped or swayed or–
She snapped her fingers. The vial of Nova's midnight tonic was clenched between her burning lips, and when Midna tilted back her head for one last cackle before she enacted her glorious revenge, she chugged and chugged until that bitter liquid was too far down her throat to be coughed up or spat out.
It worked faster than the whispers, than Midna's bloodlust, expected. Her limbs and her lids became lead. Her shadows melted and her levitation faded and she fell down, down, until she landed on her side. Fully flesh. Throbbing from impact. The light stinging her skin like alcohol against an open wound.
Something dropped into her blurring vision. Something the size of a marble. It wasn't a deku nut, but a deku seed. A harmless little deku seed.
Oh… What an ironic way to die.
She was on the stone pavement. Limp. On the pavement. Exposed… with an empty vile beside her. What did this mean? He knew what possessed her to threaten him, to almost– Link blinked again. His left eye was so dry from the encounter. The shadows had robbed it of moisture, but hadn't stolen it in repentance. And he had felt how close those shadows were, how they probed at the tethers. It was a surreal and horrifying experience that ended in a way that he couldn't have predicted. That no one could've predicted.
"You'll see her soul and yours stripped down to their blackest parts, and if you see her overcome that part of herself at all, even if her means are less orthodox than yours, then by Hylia's grace, you should consider her inner heroism as equal to yours."
That wise old geyser. Thank the gods he shared the wisdom he did, because it flushed everything into full detail. Midna didn't want to do it, to go through with it, to make Link bleed and scream and blind in his best eye. And she couldn't stop herself with willpower, like Link did when he saw that deku nut and tossed it over the edge as Midna was transfixed by the pit. No, she used the midnight tonic because physically immobilising herself was the only way to do him no harm.
He reached for her head and gave it an approving pat. Clever little imp.
Some of her hairs were brittle. They broke under his light touch. Her skin. It was peeling. And her hairs were curling and turning grey! What should he do? What could he do? She was burning like a bulbo over a campfire, and she couldn't shelter herself in his shadow. Do something. Do something.
Or leave her. She did almost rip out his eye.
No, he owed her for this. Owed her for beating the darkness in her own way. For risking her own flesh for his. He owed her. He owed her. Nothing would wrestle that thought out of his head.
If she couldn't sink into shadow, then he would blanket her in it. He removed the gear on his back, shimmied off his parka, and bundled her in it, ensuring that there was still an open hem for air, but scarce light to leak in. Was it working? He didn't know, and he couldn't check lest more of the light leak in. But what did it matter if she got a little more singed? Serves her right after the trauma she just put him through.
Shut up. He was just as much to blame for this as she was. The whispers, the thoughts, they had tricked him into acting like a guilty fool.
When he found that deku nut, fighting the temptation to stash it was like rolling a log up an uneven hill. He compensated by stuffing the deku seeds into his pouch instead. Why? Because he had reverted back to distrusting Midna with carrying his food, and Link had read a wilderness survival guide that said boiling deku seeds gave them the texture of water chestnuts. (Good luck boiling snacks while his water, kettle, and fire starter kit were all in Midna's void.)
Then when Midna asked him about the whereabouts of the deku nut, Link gave into the temptation to lie. It was a shallow attempt to save face, to stow away his sick and shameful thoughts of flushing her into the light. When she demanded to know what was in his pouch, he got possessive of his treasured possessions and his 'new meal'. When she threatened him (she only ever threatened him when she had good reason to think she was in danger) he seized a deku seed and bluffed. Fat load of help that was. Gods, if she actually did take out his eye, and he was somehow himself again, would he have blamed her?
A thought shivered down his spine. One that was entirely his own. Yes, I would.
But that was before she drank that potion, before her actions had him so shocked that there was hardly any room in his head for those vile voices to come creeping in.
"This experience, though dangerous, may become a hallowed one for you both."
It was, it truly was, but if he didn't hurry down to Eldin, he'd never get to tell her why. That was why he snatched up the vial (just in case there was a drop or two of tonic left for him) and sprinted with Midna snug against his chest.
The wall carvings deepened and sharpened. The abstract right angles and triangles and spirals puzzled into ghastly figures with sharp teeth and hollow eyes and pin-sharp ears. Humans depicted as monsters.
Everything closed in on Link –the walls the darkness the carvings the thoughts– as he descended deeper and deeper, outrunning the whispers' tug on his conscience like a hand on his collar. The cold clutched him tight, but his parka wouldn't have made a difference. This was the chill of fear, of morbid curiously, strangled around Link's very soul.
This was the way to Eldin. The way to Midna's salvation. The way to the hell that she deserved –no, that he deserved –no, that no one deserved. He was running to the pit because there was logic to his hunch. Did Faron hide in a random tree fork within the Sphaera Forest? No. They sheltered in its thorny heart. Therefore Eldin wouldn't hide behind some cracked wall, but the sinister underbelly of the cursed temple.
Was it logic that convinced him of this? Or the whispers? Didn't matter. Even if Link wanted to turn back, he couldn't. He was too far below the surface, and the whispers were his tethered weights: his only hope was to keep kicking for the lakebed and pray to Farore that he'd find a pocket of air below.
The ground, the funnel, was steep under the rush of his boots. He was like a wagon with jammed breaks. He kicked dust and rubble, and it tumbled down the slope in his wake, towards the same pit, the same pit, the same pit.
Link slammed to a halt, body swaying back and forth with the lurch of his heart, his toes hanging just over the edge as sediment and gravel fell from sight.
From far away, the pit had gaped, sure, but it was only a fraction of the floor span of the cavern. Here? It seemed wider than the cavern itself. A deep, wide pool of darkness larger than Lake Hylia.
There wasn't a speck of golden light in the pit. Actually, beyond the edge, it seemed as though no light passed through at all. There was nothing to indicate just how far the pit dropped.
Drop her in, they whispered. See how long it takes for you to hear the crunch of her bones.
His arms were already outstretched, hovering Midna above the void. His left eye twitched, still dry in his socket. Dropping Midna in was for the best. It was for his safety. It was a righteous revenge for what she almost did. After all, was that not why he ran down here? To cast one of the Twili's cruellest (would-be) criminals into her eternal, well-deserved damnation?
"The path to becoming the true hero is a long one, but once you have mastered your vices and virtues, you shall be worthy of walking it."
Yes, Link was a hero. A hero in the making, at least. He didn't know if the goddesses of his world were watching, but with the sol essence and Ora and every other force of nature as his witness, he would emerge from this pit greater and stronger than ever before, and his companion would live to witness it, too.
He turned, heels hanging over the edge. With Midna clutched tight against his chest, he tipped back, and the circle of dim light receded into the oppressive black.
