MisterUnkn0wn: Thank you for letting me know that I'd uploaded a duplicate chapter for 4! I hadn't realized, haha! And thank you very much for the feedback!

Thank you to my beta reader for catching me on my redundancy this chapter!


FIVE - SWORDS

Recommendation: Man or a Monster by Sam Tinnesz, Zayde Wolf

Halls that seemed to stretch on forever clad in marble floors and dark wooded colors, greeted the man of the hour. The escort at Ganon's side, a man dressed in a black suit much like his own, waved a hand into the gaping maw of the hallway. He'd only made it halfway into the castle so to be left on his own… the escort was incredibly useless. The man scoffed, his fiery gaze targeting the soldier with a glare, before he turned. No matter, it wasn't his first time visiting Hyrule's marble castle.

His black shoes clacked against the glistening floors as he tackled the long walk to the Royal Family's study. He'd only paused once to take out the thin smartphone from the inner pocket of his three piece suit. It pulsed in his hand, and when he unlocked the phone with a swipe of his thumb, Ghirahim's contact and a message flashing over the small screen.

We have a rat, but I was able to catch it. How should I handle it?

The sudden silence that enveloped the hall was deafening, and the quick succession of his fingers over the keys did little to quell such a lack of sound. I'll leave that up to you. He left it at that as there was no need to express to his subordinate to use caution and some minor discretion. Rats were common in their line of work, after all.

Before he could put away the cellphone, it vibrated once again. Can I try the poison? This time he hesitated in his reply. Only for a moment, the word "poison" caught him off guard. Despite the ghost of a smile that cut across his sharp features, No. It would draw too many rats in the future. Unless you test the poison in small doses.

He pocketed the cellphone before he crossed the expanse of the hall to the large, ornate doors. Ganon had met with the doors many times, and not once had he ever grown tired of admiring the intricate details chiseled into the thick wood. All along the door were thick branches, an interpretation of a large tree making up its center, that curled and branched out in an endless spiral. Each branch never truly ends. Each mimicry of wood curbs over the sides of the door, almost surpassing the arch way, and curls back into the large tree at the center. Behind the body of the tree were ghosted lines that stretched out, depicting a sun. An addition to the art that he hadn't realized until two years ago. His fingers brushed atop the tree's bark, his ring finger catching on the protruding lips. The face itself was warped and etched in slumber, eyes eternally closed.

A pregnant curiosity hadn't gotten the best of him once and he'd asked Her Highness its origins. She'd mentioned a name, one that had been blessed to a tree sprite that had once protected a forest and its children. As his fingers brushed downward and dropped to one of the iron handles, the metal corkscrewed and shaped to imitate a vine, a whisper of recognition enveloped him. It came within a tidal wave, a stretch of cold that licked up his spine, and from it came the tree's name, Great Deku Tree.

He'd brought an end to that tree many lifetimes ago. A tree that had, at one point, been more than just a picture crafted into a sliding door. The memory was fuzzy though, eaten away by time and vessels, but he felt the aged pride gifted to him when he'd learned of the Deku Tree's death. Not that such a feeling did him any good now.

No one knew of those days or cared to remember such joyous accomplishments, not anymore.

Without delaying any further, Ganon grasped both of the iron wrought handles and pulled. The door slid open easily despite its weight. Beckoning tendrils of lavender and hibiscus to seek refuge from the room that awaited before him. He didn't cross the threshold though. Searching amidst the shelves for the long trail of fabric in between white and red marbled floors.

Every bookshelf, fifteen in total, was almost as tall as the high-rise ceiling. Yet no amount of shelf room had ever seemed enough for Her Highness. Each shelf was occupied, as was the floor. Several books obscured the red marbled floor, their covers either strewn about or stacked in an imitation of a tower. Against many of the bookshelves stood a small table, all of which were covered and stacked high with even more books.

"What a pity. I'd hoped you wouldn't have come." The melodic voice that greeted him was accompanied by a rustle of fabric to his left. Ganon bodily turned then, a grin forming as he performed the slightest of head bows. It looked more like a nod of acknowledgement, but the queen knew better than to find offense in the gesture. Arguing over such irrelevant things would get her nowhere.

"And I'd hoped you'd redecorate." He replied with a steely chuckle once he caught the queen's figure near the back of the library.

Ganon turned to slide the door closed. It was much harder to close than open, but the large door slid shut regardless of the softest of groans. It was when the door latched that the queen had finally pulled away from her literary stroll.

She stood by the mouth of an aisle with gloved hands clasped together across her torso. The jade colored sleeves draping from her thin arms like waterfalls. Gold thread glistened from the hems, and jewels of darker green took on a glow from the lights overhead. A handful of golden hair slipped free from behind her headdress, a backpiece to the porcelain mask that she wore. The backpiece was of dark green mesh, a color that reflected against the sides of the mask's edges.

It was always disconcerting seeing the queen in masks. Many of her disguises often had the eyeholes covered, making her appearance dreadfully eerie. It's what roused the rumors of her disease, of the ugliness she was hiding, or perhaps the deformation she was too ashamed to have on display.

If only it were that simple.

As if sensing his thoughts, the queen reached with both of her small hands to the backpiece. A muffled click resounded, and then the mask slipped away. Her blue eyes flashed at the sudden stream of light, but she still shuffled forward, catching the mask before it fell to the floor.

Ganon took a moment to look over her face. Unlike the rest of his memories, her face was always prevalent and always stayed the same. A young, wintery face with rounded cheeks and a sharp chin, always greeted him with or without the aid of his past lives. Especially the eyes, two pools of freezing blue, which never ceased to amuse him with how expressive they were.

"What did you want this time?"

Her icy gaze flickered between him and the door twice before she rolled her shoulders back. It ruffled the fabric that wrapped around her hips, but Ganon's attention remained on her telling eyes. Their meetings weren't entirely rare, not since the past few years. Despite their current predicament, the queen had seemed to grow restless and paranoid of him and his antics. Each meeting between them often involved questions which were spoken right off the bat, as soon as they'd made eye contact, and she'd taken off her mask. So this silence was strange. She was… hesitant?

The queen bit her lip uncharacteristically, and her gaze dropped from his own. "I had a premonition." It was whispered, but the echo of the library made it sound as if she'd said it while standing beside him.

Ganon's gaze widened. Premonitions were not something she had ever shared with him. Especially him. Not that he blamed her, considering where they stood underneath the crumbling pages of history. Frankly, he believed that it still stood. Even after all these years, the idea of killing her off once and for all was still tickling him from the back of his mind.

"The Hero…" that single word broke his curiosity.

"Stop it, Zelda. The Hero is no more."

Her brows furrowed at her own name falling from his lips. "No. He's not. He is awakening."

Ganon shook his head, "That's impossible." He scoffed, but his gaze betrayed a sliver of nerves. "How do you know?"

"Premonition."

So the voices then. He'd caught onto how her third-eye worked long ago, and although her legacy involved visions and the like, it was still difficult for him to accept such a… strange power. A power that he would have honestly killed for, but right now, that didn't benefit him.

"And the Triforce?" He didn't miss how her body tensed, and definitely didn't miss the glare she'd shot at him. Did she seriously think that this life, this hell, satisfied him? Of course he was going to ask about the damned Triforce, the wretched and glorious treasure left by the goddesses. A treasure that had been lost, likely destroyed by the same wretched goddesses, right as their curse began.

A spell of thick silence encased the shelves around them. So he asked again, "and the Triforce?"

The queen looked away again, hands seeming to tighten on the mask within her grasp. "You're only worried about the Triforce, after all this time?"

"Of course. Why would I be content in a world where we are nothing but characters in a mythology text? Triune, isn't that what they call the belief and worship of the Sisters of Three?" Ganon sneered.

"I had hoped, prayed, that the time we'd suffered under this curse had changed you. I-"

"Not a surprise that your prayers fell on deaf ears. And changed me? Of course it changed me, princess. It changed all of us." He beckoned a hand between them, "in such a way that we have become permanent figures in time."

The scowl that often sought refuge on her face deepened. She seemed to hate it when he brought up one of the key factors surrounding the curse. It's why he kept pressing on, allowing his anger to boil over just this once. "Neither of us can die. A curse that, at one point, would have been an honest gift from the Goddesses. But look at us, as powerless as newborns with immortality at our fingertips." He tsked and shook his head.

"And whose fault do you think that is?" Zelda growled out.

"Look at you, playing the 'damsel in distress' yet again. Holier than thou martyr. Then again, that's what you're good at, right? Must be a shame now though, can't play helpless when you can't even keel over. You're as predictable as the mortals in this century. It takes two to tango, princess." A pause, "And it takes two to start a war."

"Just as it takes one to end the war."

"Goodness, even taking the glory from your knight in shining armor? You haven't changed either. Now, enough of this drivel. It's getting us nowhere, and believe it or not, I do have a business to run." Ganon said. His smile ebbed away, and his hands snaked into his front pockets. "Is the crown in need of money yet again, or perhaps you'll take me up on that offer to get rid of some riffraff clogging your beautiful Hyrulean streets? Unless I'm here because you missed me?"

Powerless her ass. Even as an immortal, the Gerudo before her was a thorn in her side. There had been a time when she'd thought he'd moved on, left Hyrule all together, but he'd only been lying low, shuffling his new deck of vile tricks. Just like the times back then, he was a step ahead. Philanthropy was a powerful weapon, and when it came to manipulation, her adversary was a pro.

In time, he had had the whole country of Hyrule praising him for his so called "good deeds." Deeds of which he'd funded with dirty money behind an even dirtier establishment. Deeds of which gave him reputation, and with reputation comes influence. Zelda hadn't expected it, but faster than she could predict, he'd already gained enough footing to where he could run for a seat at the council. He'd gained enough ground to where one, measly opinion could set off a forest fire.

It had been a dirty trick, to question her authority outright through the news. Stating how it seemed she was not as involved as she should be, how she obscured herself with masks, and how the crime rate had increased. Being immortal had many drawbacks. One of them being that she had to hide the fact that she was ageless through masks, veils, and limited meetings. Most of all, she had to keep the secret that Hyrule's queen hadn't changed for centuries.

The crime rate wasn't because of her lack of involvement, but no one seemed to catch onto the fact of how preposterous it sounded. It was all Ganon's doing, an end result to his dealings with the underworld.

His accusations against her spread far and wide to the point where they drew in rumors and considerations of impeachment. Silly notions, but at the time… it wasn't so silly. She'd allowed herself to fall right into his trap yet again. The impeachment clearly never happened, and that too was thanks to the grotesque man before her. Especially when he'd gained a seat in her council. A position which further brightened his supposedly 'good reputation,' especially when he began donating money to the projects that involved those in need.

If only they knew how fake, how intangible that "ethical, honest man act" was. Comparing or exposing him to what the books now dubbed as "Calamity" would do her no good though. If anything, this generation would take it as psychobabble and it would serve to only gain him favor within society.

Ignoring his remarks, Zelda said, "I summoned you here to discuss my premonition. Although I do not enjoy your company, I do believe that it is imperative that we both try to get rid of this curse. So I want to propose that any information regarding the curse should be shared."

"You're positive it was one of your little visions or whatever and not something you ate?"

The nerve of this monster. "Although I haven't had a solid one for centuries, I damn well recognized it for what it was, a premonition." Her brows furrowed at the memory of it. They had been stripped of their godlike capabilities, but for some reason her gift of visions and omens had remained. Of course, they were nothing like back then. The visions, the voices, everything was a jumbled mess in her head, and no matter how hard she'd try, the premonitions would never settle. "I admit that my third eye has suffered from this curse, but I feel it in my bones."

Her blue eyes settled on the thin line that had split across his face. "The Hero is awakening, Ganon." She stated, her voice confident. In that instance, Ganon's hands withdrew from his pockets, and he lunged toward her.

The princess gasped, and she backpedaled until her back met with the corner of a bookshelf. "Don't feed me that bullshit a second time. The Triforce is gone, the Goddesses are gone, and the Hero. Is. Gone." His left hand smashed in tandem with the last three words against one of the shelves, making the structure tremble against her back. "We are eternal and eternal we will be even after the world rots away." Ganon's voice rose with each word. "A punishment fit for two souls such as ours. Souls that have been touched by war, famine, and plague."

It was then that the large door to the library opened, and a soldier garbed in a navy blue tunic appeared. The decorative emblem of the Royal Family glistened almost as brightly as the decorative sword attached to his hip. However, the black firearm in his grip only reflected the night. "Your Highn-"

"Stand down." Zelda was quick to respond, as was Ganon who quickly resituated in front of her. His large frame obscured most of her body from view, and gave her just enough time to reach for her mask. "I am fine. Please return to your post."

The man hesitated. Suspicion heavy on his face, not that Zelda or Ganon could see it though. His gaze swam over Ganon's back, desperately searching for the face of his queen. "Your Highness, may I please be assured you are well?" It was only when his queen obliged the request that he lowered his weapon.

She'd leaned off to the side, her masked face peeking out from behind her guest's large arms. "Thank you, Your Highness. I will take my leave." He spoke briskly, and with a slight bow of the head, he slipped back through the door.

Ganon only stepped back when the door closed. He neared the bookshelf across from Zelda and burrowed his hands back into the pockets of his pants. "Face the music. The Hero is dead and gone."


Recommendation: Between the Wars by Allman Brown

Dreams had always plagued Link for as long as he could remember. Well, dreams were what he often wished that they were. Most of them were nightmares, and he'd noticed that they increased in frequency whenever his birthday drew near At least, that's the pattern they'd followed until this year. Only then had the dreams came to him with every chance of sleep no matter the day of his birth.

Seeing the dead that had stumbled into his dreams became commonplace. But seeing the old woman earlier… that hadn't been the first time he'd seen something appear only to vanish a moment later. It had been subtle at first. Especially when it came to victims in his ongoing cases. Now, it felt like every dream was becoming more real than the world around him.

Was it a problem? Yes. Was it something he shared or admitted? No. Because talking about it made the horrific things in the dreams feel so tangible. Because admitting it was a problem meant that something was very, very wrong. Whether the wrong was in him, the world around him, or something else; he only knew that sharing just made it worse.

It was like the depression. Admitting the depression made it feel thicker, heavier, and colder. Yet another thing he often failed to share even with Malon. She was a perceptive girl though. She likely knew, but she was also kind, and probably never brought it up for his sake.

So there were two problems that he'd discovered and waded through for the majority of his life. Problems of which were surely driving him insane. Problems of which would surely put a strain on his relationship with Malon. Problems which led him here, to the psychiatric office that Malon had suggested all those months ago.

Link was startled when the door opened. It was noiseless, leaving an eerie deafness, but the sound of footfalls had pulled him from his trance. He resituated on the small couch and sunk further into the plush, brown fabric.

"Good afternoon, Link. I'm Doctor Impa." The room snapped into winter. A whiplash that gnawed on his nerves as his blue eyes whirled on the owner of that painfully familiar voice.

"You-" Link's voice caught, the cold climbing into his mouth and numbing his tongue. The woman from before, the one that had been garbed in a ragged cape of grays and blues, that had disintegrated right before his eyes, was standing before him yet again. She looked less aged, the wrinkles not quite deep enough to carve canyons into her skin. Her eyes were different too, a natural brown instead of bright red. Yet her appearance reeked of nostalgia, just as her voice which sent phantom echoes through him.

"Have we met before?" Her smile seemed misplaced. Those lips did not match that face. "Sorry, I don't recall ever meeting you before. Admittedly, I am forgetful of names and faces." She moved like the leaves in fall, closing the distance to the single chair that was positioned across from Link and the couch. He followed her with his eyes, unable to pull his gaze away just like before. "So the paperwork that you filled out... you're here due to having insomnia triggered by nightmares which in turn resulted in hallucinations, is that correct?" The old woman sat down silently with the foriegn smile still littered over her cheeks.

He doesn't answer. He can't. His mouth won't open for words to come out. Maybe it's the shock or the abrupt chill of the room, but his body can't even move to shiver.

"When did you start losing sleep from dreams?" Her smile was dwindling as was the touch of winter in the room. When he didn't reply right away, she asked again, "when did you start losing sleep due to your dreams, Link?" Then, as if it's an afterthought, "are you all right?"

Since the beginning.

"Y-Yes. Sorry, I'm-I…" he cleared his throat, the cold dwindled just like her smile. "For as long as I can remember." He mentally cursed at the tremble in his voice.

There's no way this woman was a hallucination. There was no reason to be afraid of her, an elderly woman who he'd probably seen out in Farore before. After all, faces in dreams were not concocted straight from the imagination. At least, that's what Malon had told him.

"I see. Are your dreams the same, do they depend on the day you've had?" He didn't remember seeing the yellow notepad in her grasp when she'd walked in. The one which she'd placed over her knees, pen at the ready. Then again he'd been too caught up in the sick feeling of familiarity.

It took him a beat of silence before he could muster a reply. "All of them-well, most of them-have involved death, war, or… sword fighting." Link scrunched his nose at the last part, never one to have really wielded a blade.

"Death? Is it your death or someone else's?"

"It varies."

"I see. What about the dreams that don't involve death, war, or swords?"

"It varies. I mean, I can't remember every dream I've ever had."

"Could you give me an example of one, at least, that wasn't about those three events?"

Discomfort slithered in and coiled around his chest. Talking to Malon about his dreams had been difficult enough, but this? It felt alien. Especially with what had occurred mere seconds ago. "I-I don't know. Failure, I guess?"

"Failure? Could you go into more detail?"

We needed you, but you never came.

He winced visibly, but the woman's attention was focused solely on her notepad. "I'm being depended on, relied on by someone… but I can't remember why. I know I need to finish something or do something, but I don't know what it is. All I know is that if I can't remember, then everything around me will fall, or die. That I will fail and everything…" he stopped and his abrupt trail cut off her attention from her notepad. She looked up then and her eyes met his.

"Everything?" She prompted.

"Everything will-it will become nothing." How else could he explain that gaping hole that burrowed into his very soul each time that dream passed him by? It was one of the few that recurred, over and over. However, it didn't always end on the discovery of a dead body.

"I see. Have you ever been diagnosed with depression?"

"I don't see what that has to do with my knack for not sleeping like a 'normal' person."

"I'm just trying to cover all the bases. I'm not trying to insinuate that this is something as simple as a bout of depression, I assure you. So dreams about death, war, or swords, let's call those the Big Three. Can you talk about one of your dreams that involves the Big Three?"

He couldn't. He hadn't even shared most of those, the ones that focused on people he knew and loved, with Malon. Let alone shared the dreams that involved him dying. No, she only knew that his dreams had an uncanny tendency to end up like deja vu.

Hesitantly, Link relayed one of his recent dreams. It was a recurring one, and it had been with him the longest. It wasn't always the same, but no matter what, the image of a skeleton cloaked in shadows wielding a rusted blade always appeared. Only on special occasions did the skeleton appear garbed in aged armor. When it did appear in its armor, he could always see a single, red eye glowing from one of its eye sockets.

It had only been recently that the skeleton appeared after signs of death. He could never quite remember who died in those dreams though, but there was one that he vividly remembered. One that he tried to forget. In all of these dreams, before a couple of days ago, Malon had never shown up in them. Now? It felt as if he saw glimpses of her in every single moment of sleep. He told the doctor that he supposed it was because he remembered the look on her face, the look of death. That and he could still hear his own cries thrumming at the back of his head.

Not again… not like this…

She asked what he might've meant by saying that, but he honestly wasn't sure.

"Interesting. Well, besides prescribing a sleeping aid, I believe that you should look into changing your diet. You mentioned before," she flipped through the notepad before settling on a single page, "that you drink more coffee than water and most definitely eat less than the recommended 2,000 calories a day. This, along with stress, could easily help in progressing your insomnia. So I think it would be in your best interest if we tackle one thing at a time, and by this I mean the diet."

"And the stress, what should I do to help with stress? And don't say working out or something like that. Physical labor or exercise doesn't always help."

"Well, I wasn't going to suggest only that. You should definitely take a few days off of work, when able, too. But one thing at a time, Link. Now, let's end this session here. I'll just need you to sign a few more papers before you leave. Make sure you talk with the receptionist about your prescription. I'll be giving you a low dosage, take one capsule an hour before bed." As she talked, she set the notepad down on the arm of her chair and rose. Link followed suit, and watched as she rounded the chair she'd sat in and headed to the desk crammed in the farthest corner of the room.

The desk was covered in papers, and the sight of it reminded him of the office back in FCPD. Especially when he caught sight of multiple coffee mugs stacked by the desktop monitor. Doctor Impa squeezed into the narrow passage of the desk and paused at the row of filing cabinets that stood up against the wall behind the desk's chair. The drawer that she pulled on released an awful screech.

"Blasted thing," she murmured as she pilfered through what Link noticed to be a row of manila folders. Her fingers took to one folder and she plucked it out. Flipping it open, she picked the top two papers, and then closed the folder shut before slipping it back into the drawer. It screeched again, and she headed back around her desk toward him with the two papers in tow.

He reached for the proffered papers, but she paused just as she reached the couch. "Oh, and here." She dug through her pocket with her freehand, but when her hand came out empty, she handed him the papers and searched in her other pocket. "Aha! Here, take this. I have so many already from my last order. Besides, you never know when a pen will come in handy." Her laugh was strange, and Link couldn't quite put it into words on just why it sounded so off. He took the offered pen anyways, along with the paper. "Just fill those two out real quick and hand them to reception. I've got another appointment to get ready for so I'll leave first." She bowed her head in parting, grabbed her notebook from her chair, and briskly left the room.

When the door closed, leaving him in solitude and deafening silence, Link let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. The tension in the air, the haze of uncertainty, had gone with the doctor, and now the room felt as empty as it had before her arrival. He shook his head, not wanting to think any more of what he'd just experienced, and drew his attention down to the forms in-hand. Both of them just required his signature along with an agreement that he understood that anything discussed during the session was not to be discussed with anyone else other than him. Well, as long as the doctor didn't feel that his life was in danger.

Link fell back into the couch and sunk into its cushions as he situated the papers on his lap. Twirling the pen in hand, he glanced at it for the briefest moment before assessing the dotted lines on both of the forms. The pen wasn't spectacular in the slightest, a simple silver finishing with a triangle symbol etched near the top. Dragging his thumb up over the side of the pen, he pressed it against the clicker, and the pen vanished.

With a sharp shing, a blade pushed outward and nearly burrowed itself into his leg. A hilt flipped out on either side as the pen's thickness grew within the breath of a second. His fingers slipped under the sudden weight, and the blade… a sword, clattered to the floor. It fell with a solid thud, and Link jumped backward, his legs snapping back as he nearly flew up to the couch's back.

"Holy shit!" His voice ricocheted in the small room as his brows climbed higher and higher up his forehead. I'm losing it. That's it, I've officially gone crazy.

Link looked over the couch at the sword on the floor. Its blade glared underneath the overhead lights, and the insignia of a triangle burnt itself into his mind. That insignia, a triangle made up of three smaller triangles, had quickly become a normal occurrence in his nightmares. It was the very same symbol that constantly etched itself into the back of his left hand as if it were a part of him. As if it belonged there.

The sight of it sent tendrils of fear down his spine. First the deja vu, then the old woman, and then the doctor. Now this? At the very thought of it all, at his capsizing sanity, Link laughed aloud. His laughter took on a sour note, abruptly turned bitter before it ever had the chance to turn into what he would've considered insane. It wasn't out of self-awareness or some form of insecurity. No, his laughter had ebbed into the silence the longer his gaze rested on the blade beneath him.

Just like everything else that shouldn't be real, that shouldn't happen, the sword looked familiar. A torturous feeling of misplaced nostalgia coiled around him, branded his thoughts with a hot iron.

Absently, as if his fingers bore a will of their own, his hand reached to the sword that glistened from the overhead lights. His blue eyes were unseeing as his index finger pressed against the blade. Other fingers followed, and he caressed the smooth surface up to its purple hilt.

This sword, he'd seen it before. No, not just that. He'd felt it, swung it, wore it as a badge of honor. He knew the song it sang in the depths of battle. He knew the weight of it. Without a doubt, he even knew how it felt when it split open flesh and muscle. A strange feeling, this wicked nostalgia, considering he'd never wielded a blade in his life. He'd never had a need to carry and swing around a sword. Why bother when there were firearms? After all, one never brought a knife to a gunfight. Yet this sword made him think otherwise. It made him feel, believe, that it could outlive and out beat any blade and any bullet.

One by one his fingers curled around the hilt, and he pulled the blade up and away from the carpeted floor.

It's dangerous to go alone. Take this.

Link hadn't realized he'd been holding his breath until the blade was sitting atop his knees. Whether it was the touch of cold metal against his jeans or the distant voice resounding in a phantom memory, he wasn't sure what drew him from his stupor. Either way he was reeling backward once again, but the blade followed. He wasn't sure why until his left elbow smacked painfully into the armrest. The blade clattered to the floor again then, no longer held by his left hand.

That feeling of alien nostalgia vanished along with the strange sense of comfort at having the blade in his hand. His eyes followed its fall again, and he stared at it a moment more. Perhaps for too long, as the door to the office squeaked open.

"The receptionist said you hadn't come over so I wanted to make sure everything's okay?" Impa poked her head in and smiled warmly. The smile was short lived though as her eyes swept over Link. He was perched atop her couch and looked ready to flee at any moment. "Why, you've looked like you've seen a ghost…" she trailed as her eyes seemed to follow his gaze down to… "oh, is the pen not to your liking?"

What? Link's blue eyes resurfaced from the pen and narrowed on the doctor. Could she not see it? Was it really his imagination running wild?

She opened the door wider and squeezed in, chuckling all the while. "Apologies. Here, I'll get you another, but let me get that for you." Impa closed the distance between her and the "pen," and reached down to pick it up. As soon as her fingers barely even grazed the hilt, the sword vanished.

Yep… I've totally lost it.