A/N: I AM SO NERVOUS but I'm gonna pretend like I'm totally NOT and just ROCK THIS! YES! CONFIDENCE! Sorry I made you guys wait 6 months again. T_T Hopefully I'm past this whole spectacularly-terrified-of-writing thing and can get back to a regular schedule... but I'm going to not make a promise because I did that last time and all it did was give me anxiety. XD
Thank you guys SO much for all the reviews, they're what keep me from completely collapsing in on myself and giving up when the going gets tough, and I reread them ALL the time. So, thank you! (And if you're reading this UnicornZombie YES Demons by Imagine Dragons is totally on my Calamitous playlist!)
Enjoy guys.
The Curse
We stepped over the boundary into a realm darker than night, choked by a curse that had been festering on the outskirts of Hyrule, devouring light, for as long as anyone could remember. I stared into oblivion, my brain waiting for input—a shape, a sliver of shadow, a brush of wind—some suggestion of form or existence beyond the silent, hungry nothing sprawling away from us in all directions. The static, coppery taste of old magic danced on my tongue, mingling with stale air and stillwater, and I got the distinct impression the curse meant to devour me next. For once, I was glad for the Calamity's unforgiving grip on my wrist.
The darkness was so thick I could hardly tell if my eyes were open or closed, but even without sight to guide me I could tell Link had gone alarmingly still. He scarcely seemed to breathe. I drifted closer, bound to his silence, clinging onto the promise of his presence like a lifeline in the oblivion.
He summoned a flare, so sudden and brilliant that I flinched away from its light, illuminating his outstretched hand and black mist pooling in it. The way it bobbed and undulated on itself was strange looking, but besides its inherent darkness it seemed harmless to me. But whatever he saw in it was blotting out everything else. I waited so long for him to explain that I began to wonder if he even remembered I was there. And the longer he watched, the more rigid he became, until his eyes were trained so intensely on it that it made my mouth go dry.
Finally, he murmured, "This can't be."
I took a wary step closer, for all my inexperience still wise enough to know that I should fear anything that surprised him.
"What is it?"
He closed his hand slowly, smothering the darkness in his fist. He didn't answer, parsing questions far less benign in his mind. Drawing conclusions that could prove far more deadly. The light he had summoned hung discordantly in the void, its spasming diamond-shapes fluttering and convulsing like a ball of fairylight with too many wings, all bent and broken and forced to life. It spattered bone-white moonglow and shadows over the rigid line of his jaw, over the rise of bone beneath his eye and the muscles sprung taut along his neck.
When his voice finally gnawed at the silence again, his back was still turned. The words were quiet, and venomous, and so certain it made my blood run cold.
"You knew."
I blinked into the endless dark and the harsh pinprick of light, equal parts confused and terrified by the unmistakable threat in his voice. He turned, his grip on my wrist closing and the filament in his eyes smoldering dangerously. I took a breath, steeling myself to address an anger I didn't understand without upsetting the delicate balancing act that kept him from destroying us both, and the rest of the world with us.
I said slowly, carefully, "I don't understand."
His mouth turned down, a sliver of tooth appearing between shadows as his patience began to fracture. Then the light extinguished, darkness twisting and bending around us nauseatingly as he dragged us into another jump, pulling me deeper into the curse. He wrenched me forward, cry trapped in my throat, when we emerged, twisting my arm behind my back and pinning me against him with it.
"You knew I would never follow you as far as you needed me to go," he hissed, breath hot on my cheek, "so you brought me face to face with the one thing that would be enough torture to make me change my mind!"
The dark swerved, and I braced my free hand on his tunic, both to keep him at bay and to keep from falling over. Power was rising in him, humming along the seam between us like an electric current, and my heart jack-knifed in my throat. I was too exhausted to contain him if he turned on me now.
"Link," I panted, blind, grasping desperately at his sense of reason, "I don't know what you're talking about!"
His grip on my wrist tightened, pressing me flush against him with it, and my breath stilled.
"Don't," he breathed, bringing his mouth over my ear, "test me."
I closed my eyes, insides clenching, and offered a silent prayer to the goddess for strength. I couldn't contain him again. I couldn't run. I didn't know if I could reach the Sword if I tried. So I did the opposite. Instead of fighting him, instead of pushing him away or running or giving in to the plethora of other instincts making my blood pound, I held the fear close, accepted it for the inevitability it was and embraced the choices that had brought me there. I leaned into him, trembling, following the line of his cheekbone with mine until I mirrored him, breathing words into his ear, and laid a crumb of logic like an offering.
"Why? Why would I do that?" I swallowed reflexively, eyes darting blindly in the dark as I listened for an answer. "Why would I risk angering you now, when we're so close to answers?"
He was silent for a long time, and still. His grip softened. Our faces still touched, his breath fanning across the edge of my neck. It was almost as if he was lingering. It was almost an embrace.
"You don't even realize," he decided finally, his voice little more than a whisper, and loosed a sardonic breath. "You're as helpless as I am."
He let his hands fall, but didn't step away, or try to pry my fist off his tunic. I exhaled tremulously as his anger ebbed, relieved, pressing my face into his throat while my pulse calmed. He let me, his mind still turning over whatever he had seen in that mist, whatever he had sensed. We stayed like that, motionless and unseen and forgotten, as though we were part of the ruins themselves, surrounded by the echoes of my breath and heartbeat.
The adrenaline drained and my legs buckled. He caught me gingerly, easing me to the mossy floor as the darkness blotched and swam, and I let out a long breath, letting him; I had used more magic in the last day than I ever dared before, and the last jump had depleted what little was left over—intentionally, I realized numbly. It had effectively rendered me helpless. I shivered miserably, teeth chattering, as he let me go, succumbing to chills as my body fed on itself to replenish its energy reserves.
Fingertips splayed against mine as he crouched nearby, a knee brushed my elbow. Tiny indicators that he still existed somewhere in the darkness. Then he slid his hand behind my ear, its usual iciness replaced by an unexpected warmth, and gently lent me power. My eyes fluttered closed as I leaned into the siphon, an oscillating cord of warmth and energy unspooling down my neck and into my ribs, heating me from the inside out like a bowl of hot soup, and a soft sigh escaped my lips.
"This," I whispered, going boneless, "this would've been useful earlier."
"It's not very efficient."
I pondered that for a half a second, his outburst at the mouth of the woods and the countless jumps he had initiated since, before I decided, "You're tired."
"Yes. But you need it more than I do."
I wasn't about to argue, though it registered dimly someplace that I probably should. I reached up to cover his hand with mine instead, keeping it close. The tremors were quieting, reduced to broken shivers. I ground my jaw, fisted hands in the moss, grasping after the unexpected kindness. I said, "Thank you."
He grunted an acknowledgment, shifting his hand further down my neck. The pad of his thumb shifted over my pulse, feeling after the gentle rise and give under my skin. I swallowed, measuring my heartbeat with him. It sped when I thought of his anger. It galloped when I considered asking him about it. It felt ready to burst out of me when I decided I would try. He had to have felt it, but gave no indication he noticed.
I murmured, finally, wetting my lips apprehensively as I dared to breach the silence, "Are you going to tell me what got you so angry?"
The heat didn't slacken, though the muscles running through his wrist flexed, as though to pull away, or perhaps tighten his grip around my throat. He waited for a long time, so long I thought he might never reply, feeding me energy in lieu of answering.
He finally said, "This curse isn't what I expected."
"What were you expecting?"
"Something nameless."
I lost the nerve to question him, stonewalled twice by his ambiguity and not stupid enough to assume it was coincidence. I tried to empty my mind, revel in the warmth and the pleasantness of the energy instead, and right when I decided I was at peace with the mystery of it he spoke again.
"Do you know how curses are born?"
Something about his quietness, the delicacy with which he asked, gave me pause. He wasn't telling me because I had asked. He was telling me because he wanted to. I shifted, answered, "No."
"Not many do," he admitted dryly. "They think it's all anger and sorcery. And there is a magical component. But it's much more to do with emotion—with a feeling."
If it weren't for the warmth of the siphon, I would have felt suddenly cold. He was picking through words as though the wrong one might splinter the darkness or break the ground open beneath us. Everything he said was usually so harsh and precise, delivered without thought for consequence; the great care he was taking now was enough to make my confidence wilt.
Finally, I whispered, "I don't know much about curses."
"Somehow that doesn't surprise me." His thumb moved off my pulse, running along the ribbing of my windpipe to the hollow of my throat. His fingers spread closer to my shoulder, and I couldn't suppress the shudder that moved through me at the rush of heat. "Better?"
For a breathless, aching moment, I couldn't answer, steeped in a memory of that same touch, traveling with painful slowness along a bare shoulder, down an arm, enclosing a wrist before lips planted a soft kiss to the underside of it. I swallowed, managed, voiceless, "Better."
There was another wave of silence as he rummaged through history and magic and lore, through forgotten ages and secrets so old even the sages had lost track of them. Finally, he murmured, "Curses are… elegant, in a way. They never age. They can't starve. They're malleable, always adapting. Always finding ways to survive. Anchored to the world by the memory of something that doesn't exist anymore." There was a frown on his voice. "It's what makes us so difficult to kill."
His touch cooled, draining the last of the heat into my neck, and pulled away. I had to resist the urge to chase it. It was harder, facing the darkness without something tangible to assure me I wasn't alone. The bitter taste of stillwater seeped out of the ground, knitting with the cool, spongy sensations of dirt and moss under my fingernails to form an impression, the ghost of an image, of where we might be. More bogs, shrouded in darkness so ancient and pure I was beginning to forget what the sun looked like.
"Does it matter where they come from?" I muttered, bitterly, pulling my knees to my chest.
"Sometimes."
I ran fingers across my scalp, staring through oblivion, trying to make heads or tails of him and coming up empty. Then he asked,
"Do you know where the Calamity comes from?"
I blinked into the dark, startled. The Calamity was as old as Hyrule, as old as my bloodline, as old as time itself, it seemed. For all my studies, all my sessions with priests and sages and the sacred texts, I couldn't say I truly understood its source. The realization pricked a hole in the back of my head where I imagined my conscience might be. I admitted, "No."
"Knowing where something comes from can help you understand it, help you destroy it. Or, at least, understand why it should be destroyed."
I frowned. "You don't have to worry about me backing out of my promise. I'll keep it. I don't need your persuasion."
"But you should know," he insisted quietly, and I pursed my lips, silenced. He was silent for a long moment, too, and when his voice finally came out of the darkness it seemed to come from someplace much older, someplace so ancient even his 10,000 years seemed inconsequential. "Long before Hyrule was, demons and gods shed each other's blood to lay claim to this land and the gifts the gods that created it had left behind. The hatred of one of them burned so brightly it transcended death and time, taking shape and drawing breath in whatever form it pleased—and always has, and always will, unless we stop it."
For just an instant I could've sworn I could see his eyes in the darkness, burning with their own light—fire and ice, man and beast, part lure and part warning, part savior and part curse, imploring me to understand the gravity and the nature of his beginnings. But the nothing never parted.
"That's how I was born," he finally said. "Emerging out of hatred the world had long forgotten, still slick with malice and blood, not knowing anything except a desire to consume."
I swallowed, trying not to picture it: a primal evil dragging itself from a festering womb, wearing the beautiful, elfin features of a man some part of me had loved millennia ago, twisted up in hatred.
"That's not who you are," I said.
"Isn't it?" he bit out, and then sighed. "You don't know the first thing about who I am."
"Yes, I do," I whispered, the words slipping rebelliously from my mouth before I could think better of them. But he didn't argue the point.
The curse loomed around them like a shell blotting out the world: quiet, listening, eavesdropping. And though I was sure he hadn't moved, he suddenly seemed very far away.
He murmured, "That was all a very long time ago."
I frowned, emboldened by his failure to punish me and by something else, something older and more resolute, something wiser that I wasn't sure was entirely my own. "That hatred doesn't define you. If it did, I would already be dead, and Hyrule would be burning."
He spared the energy to summon a tiny flare of light again, burning above the curve of his hand like an orb of tinder, and used its glow to look me over. His scrutiny was unnerving as ever, as though he was trying to riddle out if I was sane, or stupid, or edible, or perhaps parts of all three. The light caught on the burning filament in his irises, breathed on them as they coiled, serpentlike, like molten ore in the dark.
"Refraining from tearing your throat out doesn't make me less evil," he said levelly, slowly, spelling out a truth I didn't want to hear. "Just patient."
"That's not true."
"You're wrong. If you knew how badly I wanted to—"
He checked, quelling a sudden, transparent hunger. He swallowed down ire and thirst, reaching with a trembling hand to touch my mouth, and though I braced myself for the burn of it it still stole the breath right out of me. I looked for his eyes in the light, but they were elusive, following the sweep of his finger. He seemed transfixed by the contact, by the reflexive part of my lips when I tried to breathe.
His touch was so cold it burned, so gentle it ached, so numbing I couldn't move—and it was a calculated, blistering reminder of what he was. He lingered until I trembled with him, until my heart constricted so tight in my chest I could hardly draw breath, until tears pricked at my eyes—the infuriating, frightened kind he could provoke at will. But I was beyond feeling ashamed of them. Instead of cowering I just let them fall, raising my chin in quiet defiance as they left glistening trails down to my jaw.
"Then what's stopping you?" I challenged.
He frowned, muttered bitterly, scathingly, "You are."
He dropped his hand and stood, pacing away like an animal trapped in a cage over the splash of marsh catching light beneath the mist, and I took a deprived, shuddering breath.
"None of that matters," he growled before I could sort myself out, raking a hand across his scalp. "It's not the point."
I clutched at moss, chest tight, and forced myself to breathe. "What is, then?"
"Why don't you ever think?" he bit out, fuming. "See beyond yourself? I'm talking about where this curse came from!"
"How should I know?" I managed, barking a breathless, incredulous laugh. "This curse is as old as anyone can remember, and the only hatred we've ever been taught to fear is yours!"
"Not hatred," he corrected me tautly, jaw clenching sporadically around the words. "It would've been so much easier if it was."
I sighed, shoulders sagging at his opacity, and got to my feet, holding my arms as I moved closer.
"I don't understand."
"I know you don't," he breathed, dragging a hand over his face, his frustration suddenly melting into resignation. He turned, eyes resting grudgingly on me. "A curse is nothing but a feeling, lingering beyond its inception and given form by power. Emotion and magic. It's why I'm consumed with hatred. It's literally what I am."
My mouth twisted again at his oversimplified origins, but I resisted the urge to argue. I could feel him coming undone, dredging truths he could hardly admit to himself out of depths too nebulous to chart.
"But this curse, this place—it's filled with disappointment, with unfulfilled promises." His teeth clenched around nothing, reflexively trying to keep the words in his throat. "With regret."
I froze as the implication settled, as the bitter memory of a decision she could never unmake welled up in my mind like tidewaters and the taste of that ancient sealing power flooded my mouth like bile. I loosed a shuddering breath and buried my face in one hand, overwhelmed by the rawness of it as it crashed over me again.
I whispered, "Oh, goddesses."
"You told me in the Lost Woods that she died regretting what she did, but I—" he cut off, stopping to smother something desperate, something ancient, that threatened to boil over. "I didn't want to believe it. I survived those 10,000 years by telling myself that this was what she wanted. That I was fulfilling her last wish. And now—"
His frustrated growl tapered off into nothing. A silence, thick, noxious, churned in the wake of that revelation, I unable to conjure words and he unwilling, lingering so long it might have become a curse in itself. His Zelda's regret had lingered on the edge of her kingdom since her death, faceless, nameless, unexplored and unquestioned—and in my ignorance I had unwittingly led him headlong into it.
"I'm sorry," I whispered haltingly. "I didn't know."
"I know you didn't. She did."
I lifted my eyes to meet his miserably. He searched my face for a long time, sometimes seeing me, sometimes not. He turned, jaw set, obscured by shadow as he stared into darkness.
"It's time I rid myself of her," he decided huskily. "She's haunted me long enough."
I watched helplessly, brow creased, as he held his hand out again, watching the mist pool haphazardly in his waiting palm, tasting the regret, feeling its form as he made to untangle it. Power built behind his eyes, trembling between them like heat.
I whispered, "What are you doing?"
He met my eyes for the briefest moment, unguarded and raw. He said, "Lifting it."
And then the curse split open.
The mist groaned and writhed like a great beast struck through its middle as darkness spiraled towards him, and I stumbled back, a scream catching in my throat as the gloom whipped around us, pulling at hair and cloth and stealing the air out of my mouth. I could hardly breathe, winds bludgeoning us from every direction and snuffing out the fairylight. Twilight filtered through the imperfections in the darkness, alighting his form as the curse barreled towards it. His profile appeared in intermittent flashes: head tipped back, jaw clenched, figure quaking as the black vortexed into his chest.
The sky bled through, the first of the evening stars, the sounds of burgeoning nighttime, the taste of fresh air sweeping down from the hills, as the groan escalated, turning hoarse, shrill, until it was grating as a scream.
And then, all at once, it was over.
Link stumbled, shaking, his hand clutched over his chest where the mist had plunged into him, but when I tried to go to him he held out his other hand to keep me at bay. I waited in anxious, brittle silence, only vaguely aware of the surrounding ruins, no longer shrouded in darkness. His eyes fixed on me. They crackled with glowing filament and old fury.
I wet my throat, frowning gently at him. "Are you all right?"
"Not really," he admitted, and then promptly changed the subject. "You recognize it?"
I scanned the ruins as a wind swept down from the hills and tousled its remains with the first gust of fresh air in centuries, my lips pressed into a line. The stone was cracked and ribbed with age, half-sunk into marshland and mottled with moss. The trees were leafless and rotted. Overgrowth obscured the columns and monuments beyond recognition. It felt familiar, but only insofar as I might feel a vague familiarity with a smell or a taste. It was just there, and yet always out of reach, like trying to remember a dream.
I sighed. "Not really."
He righted himself, panting, and gave the ruins a cursory once over. He took a seat on a downed pillar; after dithering a moment I joined him, at a loss for what else to do. We were quiet, absorbing a sight the world hadn't seen for thousands of years.
I glanced at him sidelong, worried what effect lifting the curse might've had on him. His hands were still shaking. His eyes were receded and dark—the eyes of someone who had seen something that would haunt them for the rest of their life. He was waiting, I realized. Waiting for me to make the next move. But I didn't know where to begin. Even with the curse gone, nothing triggered my borrowed memories.
My fingers bit at the rock. It felt like a dead end.
"There has to be something," I whispered, and he shifted forward pensively, pressing his mouth into his hands.
"When you said she spoke to you, told you to come here, I honestly wasn't sure I believed you," he said after a while. "It's clearly not a coincidence that we came to this place, but it might not be for the reasons you thought."
I studied him a moment and decided, "You still don't think there's answers here."
"No, I don't," he murmured. "Not the ones you want."
"Then what was all this for? Would she really lure us all this way just to torment you with something you can't change?"
"She brought us here because she knew I wouldn't be able to deny her," he countered, and my brow puckered. "I wouldn't have followed you anymore, Zelda, not if the choice was mine. But confronted with this, with her regret—"
He didn't finish, and he didn't have to. I nodded, averting my eyes. "I know."
He paused, jaw clenched, his aversion to discussing that part of his past with me etched in the grim lines of his face. "The solution you want isn't here. Wherever this is going, wherever this leads, there's a journey ahead of us yet. She knew that. And she knew I wouldn't follow without persuasion."
He tilted his head back in the ensuing quiet to stare at the stars unfurling in the sky above, sighing, and I did my best not to squirm, feeling thrown into places I didn't belong, intruding on his privacy in the worst possible way. He was whispering, I realized at length, a prayer or a curse in ancient Hylian spilling clandestinely out of his mouth as he resigned himself to his fate: tugged and pulled by marionette strings, both tied and held by a divine being he had found himself in love with so long ago.
"You were right," he finally murmured. "This was what she wanted. For me to follow you, as I once followed her."
My heart squeezed. This was all so far beyond me, beyond what I could have ever imagined this conflict would become. And the worst part was I was fooling no one. He knew how little I understood better than anyone.
His jaw spasmed again, his two halves warring, eyes burning as whatever chaos was churning in his head began to sort itself out.
"I'm not what I once was," he murmured at length. "I don't know what value it will have coming from a demon. But I can't change that, and I can't change what she wanted. So, for what it's worth…" His hands fisted on his knees, then opened, holding nothing. Bereft. "I swear myself to you."
My gaze darted back to his, lips falling apart. I whispered, weighed down by a sudden rush of guilt, "You don't have to do that."
"Who else am I going to serve?" he demanded. "Myself?"
"That's not—"
"Are you rejecting me?"
"What—No!"
"Then leave it alone," he growled.
I bit my cheek, folding my arms and leaning on them, feeling as inadequate as ever. He only lapsed into a nettled silence. It was ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. He held a two-thirds majority of the greatest power in all Hyrule and total mastery over magic that reached back eons, and I was stumbling blindly through an overgrown path without even questioning who had laid it before me. And now he was swearing himself to me.
Finally I scoffed, incredulous, "This can't be the only reason we're here."
He bared a sliver of tooth at me. "Do you take that oath so lightly?"
"No!" I blurted, mortified, and then dragged both hands down my face. "But we couldn't have come all this way just so you could swear yourself to someone who has no idea how to save you. It doesn't make any sense."
He frowned, thinking.
"This place has been cursed since she died," he recounted. "There's nothing here now that wasn't there then. And there was no way to undo something like this. Not here."
I looked over the ruins again, willing myself to remember some detail, be struck with some flicker of inspiration, that might be the key. But it was as alien as ever.
For the first time, I allowed myself to doubt. Maybe there wasn't an answer here anymore. Maybe there never was.
"Why would she do this?" I whispered, hopeless, but he scoffed at me.
"Zelda, she's been dead for 10,000 years. She doesn't exist anymore, except in your subconscious. All that's left of her is here," he said, planting two fingers against my forehead. "Everything that's happened, everything you think she's said or she's done, has ultimately come from your own mind. She didn't lead us here. You did."
My throat closed. I was suddenly teetering very close to the precipice of tears again. I swallowed them down with great effort, my insides trembling.
"No, that can't—" I began, but the more I dwelled, the more I realized he was right. My eyes went wide.
Had I really been so blind?
I turned to hide my face behind a curtain of hair, wishing Hyrule would just split under my feet and swallow me whole. If that was true, then it meant I had conjured all of this. I had fallen victim to my own memories, my own magic, never questioning the validity of it. It meant he was right about me and always had been. I was young and inexperienced and stupid, wielding power I didn't understand and couldn't control, burdened with all the responsibilities and consequences of a decision I hadn't even made and that I didn't know how to begin coping with.
I took a hasty breath, trying to swallow down a sob, and got to my feet—to run, maybe, though I couldn't say where. His hand shot out, trapping my wrist before I could get too far away, and stood after me. The recoil brought me back to him, eyes and face red and shimmering, lips trembling and tasting of salt.
"Just when I think you're beginning to understand, you always prove me wrong," he said, mouth twisting humorlessly. He brushed tears from my jaw as I shrunk out from his scrutiny, and I grudgingly met his eyes. "Why do you always fear what makes you who you are?"
I sniffled in spite of myself. "Because I can't control it. I only make things worse."
"You'll never learn to control it if you keep running away from it." He thumbed at another tear, frowning thoughtfully, and my face crumpled tighter. "You can't change what you are, Zelda, any more than I can."
I sniffled again, dragging my free wrist across my face as my mind tumbled over itself, over bits of possibility that snagged at my thoughts like raised rootstock on a footpath, and my muscles eased with the soothing release of logic snapping together like puzzle pieces.
"If everything that led us here is in my mind," I posed slowly, blinking away blurriness, "then are you telling me the answers are there, too?"
His mouth twitched, eyes twinkling softly as though he wanted to smile. "Only you know the answer to that."
"Then come with me," I said, breathless, spiraling towards hope. "If the answer is somewhere in my memories—"
But what hint of a smile there was in his eyes vanished. "You'll forgive me if I'm not eager to follow you there again."
"You said you would swear yourself to me," I argued, and his eyes narrowed.
"Only you would be so quick to use that against me."
"And what good is that word if you won't follow me where I have to go?" I demanded, and his gaze shuttered. I chanced, hoping his resolve was weakening, "Please?"
He clenched the muscles in his jaw, cornered, and I mirrored him, refusing to back down. After a long moment he finally moved, pulling us both back to the pillar.
"I'll bridge our minds," he iterated, facing me squarely. "I'll guide the memories."
I nodded, swallowing, nerves in a sudden jumble. I hadn't missed the warning in his voice. It was not a concession he made lightly, and if I overstepped my bounds again there would be consequences, one way or another.
He reached out with both hands, sighing out his nose, and touched my mind.
The ruins morphed around us, damage and age filling out again and the pale spattering of moonlight giving way to diffused orange sunbeams. The trees dripped blossom petals; they drifted lazily in the afternoon warmth, trickling with an eerie steadiness. Like grains of sand falling through the neck of an hourglass. A woman knelt beneath them with her knight protector, her eyes glazed over with a ghostly vacancy, feeling things, seeing things, that were not of that world.
"He's getting stronger all the time," she said, splaying her fingers in the grass beneath her unconsciously, as though she were feeling after tremors in the earth. "I always sense him now. I think he can sense me, too."
Her knight frowned, but didn't budge from his place guarding her, dutifully holding his broadsword, planted tip down at his feet. "How long? Months? Weeks?"
"Days," she corrected, with chilling certainty. "His hunger is driving him now."
He gripped the hilt tighter, every nerve in his body burning with the desire to shield her from that, to take the burden of that evil off her shoulders. But it wasn't his place. He glanced down at her, at her pale, unseeing eyes. He gripped it harder until his knuckles turned white.
She reached over blindly, her hand resting on his calf, on the leather of his boot, and a sad smile played on her lips. "I'm glad we were able to come here one last time."
He scanned the ruins for the umpteenth time for signs of danger. For signs of anyone at all. The Sheikah monks had scattered as soon as they had arrived, and hadn't reappeared since. They were alone. He knelt beside her and leaned in closer, but then lost his nerve, throat bobbing as he swallowed.
He promised, voice trembling, "We can stay as long as you want."
I loosed a breath harbored too long, knots spreading through my chest and stomach. I was hardly aware of myself at all until Link's hand closed like a vice over my wrist, startling me out of my reverie, his eyes burning with orange coils that gleamed hot against the afternoon sun.
"Focus," he growled. "Don't forget what we came here for."
I nodded weakly, letting him pull me forward. The dream melted away like dust caught up in rainwater. We were moving upstream through memories, through time, the illusory ruins filling with our duplicates reliving a dozen moments. I saw them caught in a sudden rain, breathless, laughing, fingers intertwining hesitantly in the stolen solitude and the contact so rare it felt to both of them that it might ignite. I saw the gentle smile she gave him when they were in public, a polite show of gratitude that masked a much deeper affection, and that he could see right through. I saw the strained silence between them, the artificial distance, that seemed to spawn out of nothing, but that meant everything. I saw them taking shelter behind one of the stone dragons, fighting an argument that had them both nearly in tears—an argument they were both losing.
I looked away, breath stolen, overwhelmed by the onslaught of borrowed emotion, turning, wandering aimlessly for relief, when Link found both my wrists again.
"Zelda, focus!"
"I can't breathe!" I cried, tears budding in my eyes as I tried to sort through the longing and agony of another lifetime. "I feel everything she felt, and it hurts to look at it anymore, and I—"
I pressed my mouth into my hand, quelling the rest. To my surprise, that actually gave him pause. His expression softened, even if just a little, and with an unpleasant, sodden knot in my throat, I realized it was empathy. Because he was feeling it, too.
"Do you want to stop?"
"No," I warbled. "Not until we get what we came for."
"It might not exist," he reminded me, and I nodded once, tensely.
"Keep going."
He nodded and pulled us forward again, guiding me through moments that tumbled by in waves, filtering through my fingers like water or sunlight. Time lost its meaning altogether eventually, blurring around us as seconds bled into minutes and then hours, or days, or years, or eons. In some ways I felt blind, stumbling aimlessly through history without ambition or direction. But at the same time I knew we were getting closer to what we wanted; I could feel it, like heat from a fire brushing softly against an outstretched hand, and moved unwittingly towards it.
I saw the ruins, encircling them, shrouding them in secret, blotting out the rest of the world as they worked to shield the kingdom from destruction. I saw the monks, always ready to do Hylia's bidding, always seeking her sight, always weaving the tapestry of Hyrule's history into their collective memory as a means to foretell the future. I saw the blue-eyed version of myself and her knight, younger and less experienced—just as devoted to each other, but less sure, less familiar, less wise, puzzling out their destiny and leaning on one another for strength.
Feeling that in her, rich, depthless, unending, I had to admit I longed for it, too, for companionship deeper than what my champions, or even a lover, could give: the fellowship that could only come from someone who shared the same fate.
Then I saw them resting beneath dogwood trees, so early on, before they had let things get so complicated.
Do you ever wonder what you'll do… afterward?
Link was about to pull me forward again, lift my consciousness out of the scene and plant it somewhere else, but I fought him, latching onto the unexpected familiarity of the image.
"Wait," I breathed, watching the peace and their innocence amidst the pillars and monuments, and he furrowed his brow at me. "I've seen this before. That was here?"
He frowned, glancing at the memory of his past self with barely disguised disdain. "What of it?"
Have you heard about Maz's latest invention?
"A shrine," I murmured, not taking my eyes off the spot where, beneath the dogwoods and oaks, a princess of Hyrule had once sat with its Hero and tried in vain to ignore an approaching catastrophe. "She said he was building a new type of shrine."
The vision ended, blurring into dappled colors and sunlight. He didn't answer, his gaze sliding away again, shifting, searching, as he digested her words. Then they stilled, fixed on some mundane place near his boots, and I stepped closer.
"You know what that means," I urged him softly, "don't you?"
He held my gaze, grudgingly, tethered, before he said, his voice nearly as quiet, "It was just a prototype."
"It was here? In Thyphlo?"
"No, of course not," he murmured. "It was on the Great Plateau."
"Link," I breathed, relieved and exasperated at once. "If there's even a chance—don't you see? A shrine with that kind of power? It could purge the Calamity from you!"
His eyes, dark, troubled, flickered up to mine, surprised. Then they shifted, slipping again out of darkness, out of uncertainty, back into tired, practiced armor.
"Do you realize what you're asking of me?" he finally demanded. "Another journey, straight into the heart of Hyrule?"
"I know we can do this," I told him, latching onto that hope, but he scoffed darkly.
He countered, so quietly it felt wrong to argue, "You know less than you think."
My heart sank, my enthusiasm tempered by the realization that no matter how promising a solution was I couldn't force him to reach out and take it. I took a meaningful step forward, steeling myself with a gentle breath.
"Will you come with me?"
He made to answer, but then his eyes unfocused, leaving him eerily vacant, and he took a stiff, slow breath.
He murmured, "We're not alone."
I felt it then, something corporeal, a touch, skin on skin, and it was so foreign after so long in my own mind that I gasped aloud. I panicked, realizing we were seconds from leaving this place, from facing something unknown, and I dove towards him, his name on my lips shattering the dream like iron impacting glass.
My eyes fluttered open as our connection severed, as I snapped back into my own consciousness, my own self, my own body. Link was across from me, still sitting on the downed pillar, a glistening, rosy barrier between us and the gleam of a scimitar catching firelight at his neck.
The champions had found us, and they weren't taking any chances.
Daruk had broadened his spell, encasing me in its humming shell. Mipha and Revali were on either side, weapons aimed at his heart at point-blank range. And Urbosa had his head angled up by his hair, the Sword of the Seven poised to draw a deathstroke across his throat.
"Talk fast," she advised as his eyes drew into focus. "Or I take off your head this time."
He glared witheringly, but didn't deign to answer, his gaze sliding back to me.
"They're more loyal to you than you know," he hissed out of clenched teeth, rage boiling, barely harnessed, through his veins. "They know I could kill them with a breath if I wanted to."
I pounded a fist on the barrier, heart galloping, dizzy with fear, as the taste of old magic swirled around me like a cloud: vibrations of thunder and wind and molten rock, the cool sensation of water, the jarring, metallic presence of malice, all piercing my teeth and turning the edges of my vision white and threatening to devour each other.
"Let me go," I gasped, eyes watering. "Let me go!"
"Who are you?" Urbosa demanded, angling the blade deeper. "What have you done to her?"
He ignored her again, harnessing my eyes. The coils pulsed and undulated against the ice beneath, steady as a heartbeat. And for a brief, breathtaking moment, I saw something there beyond my wildest imaginings, something old and familiar and heartrendingly undeserved.
Trust.
"Stop panicking," he guided me quietly. "Your magic is stronger than theirs."
His voice led me as it had, I realized numbly, so many times before. I opened my fist, feeling the spell's ancient composition on my fingertips, the flinty, fiery roots of it, birthed of mountains and belonging to mountains. It was nothing like my power, all brilliant, searing light and stardust. I summoned it, just for a moment, pitting it against the barrier, earth and heat against sunbeams and starfire.
It shattered. Behind me, Daruk grunted, stumbling back as his power splintered and ricocheted. I could feel the residue of my own power sloughing off my body, radiating from my skin, from my eyes, in a golden glow.
I mustered the courage to meet their eyes—owlish, churning with disbelief and no little fear. Link's were impassive, watching me come into myself and my power with so little reaction it could only have been expected.
And I couldn't look away. I drank strength from his constancy, his immovability, like it was second nature. Like it was an addiction.
"Let him go, Urbosa," I whispered, finally, "and I'll tell you everything."