Author's Note: Once again, I'm posting early- shit is hitting the fan at work and we're gonna be super busy this weekend- so I'm posting now so I don't forget. I'm hoping to get back on schedule for next time (10/24/20), but I make no guarantees.
On high peaks where the great winds break,
The Wise their thirst for vision slake
In lost halls where the Blue Flame wakes.
The storm clouds hung, dour and grey, like sentinels over the distant peaks. Zelda kept half an eye on them as they hiked further up Rospro Pass, watching them build and blacken with each step up the ascent.
They'd been pale grey shadows two hours earlier, when Link had urged them all out of bed just after dawn— which Zelda had nearly resented, given the biting cold awaiting them outside the lodge's huddled warmth— and they'd begun the ascent. Ragged banners in red-and-blue canvas had marked the path up the ascent, like tattered sentinels standing guard against the wind and leading them ever higher, until they'd turned off the path to navigate Mount Corvash directly and stumbled directly into the avalanche zone. It was exactly as Medli had said— a tumbled waste of snow and ice, and, distantly, an outcropping of rock with a shadow beneath it that might have been an overhang.
They made it halfway up the slope when the snow and ice Link had been standing on gave out beneath him and sent him sliding back down the slope, until he slammed into something with a yelp. Zelda hurried up towards him, mindful of the way the ice underfoot shifted with every step. She caught hold of his arm and hauled him up out of the snowbank, steadying him against her.
"Are you alright?" she asked.
"Fine," Link said, shaking himself. Snow fell from his hair, still glittering golden in the weak morning light. "I just hit something on the way down. Felt like a rock ."
The snow crunched under Dragmire's feet as he picked his way up the slope towards them, more careful of his footing than Zelda had been. He paused just below the drift Link had crashed into, studying it intently.
"...I think that's a column ," he said, and paced a few steps further up, crouching carefully beside it. "Zelda, come take a look— does this look Hyllic to you?"
Zelda let go of Link reluctantly and picked her way down the slope a little to kneel in the snow beside the low outcropping, ignoring the way the cold pressed at her through her pants. The column was native Hebraic blueschist, worn from the wind and crumbled in places where the shifting snows had torn at it, obscuring and distorting the carvings. She dug another inch at the base, which provided no further answers.
"I can't tell— it's way too damaged for me to make out any identifying stylistic traits," she said at last, standing and brushing the snow from her knees.
"There's another one up here," Link said. When Zelda looked up he'd moved a bit further up the slope, standing beside a second column. This one thrust up a little further, reaching futilely skyward with a broken upper edge.
Past him, higher up the slope, she could see more tops of columns poking out of the tumbled snow. She began picking her way up towards them, pausing at every shift of the unstable snow under her boots— if she slipped, or if the snow down the slope gave way again, she could be carried away to her death. The snow behind her crunched as the other two followed, trailing after her— or in Link's case, darting on ahead— as she made her way higher. She lifted her eyes from the snow to gaze further up the slope—
To the overhang a little further up, clearly recently exposed, with broken columns extending out in straight lines on either side of it. She picked up her pace, darting over the tumbled snow until she reached the left-hand column three out from the overhang. The right-hand column had snapped halfway up when the avalanche had occurred, the upper edge still ragged and glittering in the pale morning light. This close she could see into the overhang, where it extended back a few paces into the stone of the mountain. It was, clearly, not a natural cave— the sides of it were far too regular, and at the back, something orange glowed dully. Something which, when she approached, proved to be a glowing Sheikah eye set into the face of a door.
A door that was sealed behind a layer of ice as thick as her hand.
" Well ," she said, and reached out to rap on the ice with her knuckles. It chilled her hand even through her gloves. "It's a shame the avalanche didn't take this with it."
She stepped back as Link entered the space beneath the overhang, Sheikah Slate already in hand. He tapped at something on the screen— one of the runes, if she had to guess— and held up the Slate to face the door. The eye on the back opened, washing the space in pale blue light.
"What are you doing?" Dragmire asked, still lingering outside the overhang.
"Cryonis," Link said. He tapped at the screen again, then frowned. "It's one of the Slate runes— it usually lets me manipulate ice in my surroundings, breaking or freezing it, but this stuff….isn't responding to it."
"Weird," Zelda said, and peeked over his shoulder at the Slate. The screen showed their surroundings cast in bluish, and while ice that could be broken with the rune usually shone red, the layer over the door was as blue as the wall beside it. "So what do we do, then? We're not going to turn around here."
Link tapped at the Slate, flipping through a few more screens, then frowned. "And we don't have any flameblade gear in the Slate to melt it. Maybe we could light a torch or something…"
"Melt it?" Dragmire asked. The snow underfoot crunched as he ducked under the overhang, making his way up to join them. "In that case, maybe I could handle it."
Zelda scowled at him, clenching her fists in her cloak. "The last time we let you get us into a temple, you were completely out of magic by the time we were done," she said.
Dragmire had the audacity to wink at her. "The last time I got us into a temple, I raised an entire edifice from the sands. This time, I only need to melt a layer of ice." He laced his fingers together and stretched his arms forward, the waxed canvas of his coat creaking, then added, "You two may want to step back. It's about to get very hot in here."
"Hot, you say?" Link said playfully.
Zelda grabbed him by the back of his coat and towed him backwards, rolling her eyes. The two of them had been nearly inseparable— and nearly insufferable — since they'd come back in from getting wood at the cabin the evening before. She'd almost forgotten what it was like to watch Link flirt openly, and now it was on full display: every stupid joke, every bad pun, the way his hands seemed drawn like magnets to the object of his attentions. And goddess , she'd said she wouldn't be jealous. That she didn't need to compete for Link's affection. But it certainly stung watching the gentleness in Dragmire's hands when he'd reached for Link, the easy way Link reached back.
They breached the overhang, emerging back into the chill outside, and Zelda let go of Link's coat and turned back to watch Dragmire. He pulled the hood of his cloak down, letting his braid swing out like a pendulum— and then keep swinging. A shimmer of heat rose around him, and she could smell it, hot and dry through the sharpness of the chill in the air around them.
And then, all at once, he burst into flames.
Link yelped and surged forward. Zelda grabbed him by the back of his coat again, ignoring his protests as a corona of fire licked up around Dragmire's body. Blue flames clung to him, dancing across his shoulders and limning his cloak, bleeding out in red and gold bursts at the edges. He glanced over his shoulder at them and flashed a smile, eyes glowing through the flames, then turned back towards the door. A wet sizzle struck her ears, and a wave of heat rolled out from beneath the overhang. The snow around her boots was beginning to melt.
Dragmire laughed, and the flames around him began to curl and shrink, fading away into the barest shimmer of air and letting the cold surge back in, and he turned back towards them with a wild grin on his face.
"Come on," he said. "The temple's waiting."
Zelda ducked back under the overhang, reaching up to unfasten her coat as she did— the space underneath was still swelteringly hot, despite the chill beginning to roll in from outside— and paused, inspecting the door. Without the wall of ice in the way she could see it clearly, a flat disc of deep brown, metallic stone with a glowing Sheikah eye embossed in the center. The outer edge of it was almost cream-colored, every inch of it engraved with Sheikah writing in a script she didn't recognise, and she squinted at it curiously. It was almost too small to read, but the characters were familiar…
"I think this is a travel gate," Zelda said, and rapped on the door with her knuckles. "I would need to check my notes, but this looks like a similar inscription to the ones on the Divine Beasts— but I've never seen one oriented vertically before. Link, will you—"
He passed her the Slate before she could finish talking, and Zelda snapped a couple pictures of the door and the inscription on the edge. She'd have to transfer it into her field journal when they descended the mountain again— at this height and this chill, the ink would freeze on her nib before she could copy it down.
Then she handed the Slate back to him and stepped aside, gesturing towards the door. "Care to do the honors, Link?"
Link flushed, his fair cheeks and the tips of his ears reddening, but he stepped forward anyway, raising the Slate so the eye on the back pressed against the eye on the door. The orange light shimmered, then brightened to blue, and Zelda felt the spill of energy against her skin. Felt something shift, far beneath their feet. Link pulled the Slate back, dropping it back into its case at his hip.
The door rumbled softly, accompanied by a hiss and sigh of ancient machinery somewhere behind the rock wall. It rocked slightly in place, then rolled off to the left on a hidden track, and bluish light spilled through the new opening onto the snow around them. The space on the other side was wide open— a hallway, leading into the side of the mountain. The walls were sleek, dark stone, the floor cream-colored and covered in swirling patterns— and polished to a high gloss, reflecting the spectral blue sconces on the walls without so much as a mote of dust to mar it.
"...Something about that doesn't look right," Dragmire said softly.
"It looks like the one in Faron," Link said, and stepped over the threshold.
Zelda followed him without hesitation, tilting her head back to gaze around the entryway, to take it all in. The place sported the classic Sheikah shrine vaulted ceilings, high and emitting their own pale blue light, like the moon through a pane of ice. The dark walls were patterned over in places, abstractions curling over them in brown and gold swirls, all interspersed with the spectral blue torches, like in the Chambers of the Flames, broken only by the gap of a shimmering blue door in the opposite wall from the entryway. A Guidance Stone sat in the corner nearest the door, the great black hulk of it suspended from the ceiling, and Link made a beeline for it.
"What's that ?" Dragmire asked from behind her.
"They're called Guidance Stones," Zelda said. "According to my grandmother's research, they're repositories of data, which can be transmitted to an appropriate piece of technology to be accessed— such as the Slate. She did most of her research on the Sacred Towers' Stones, which according to her notes served to process data on the surrounding territory and transmit it to the Slate as a map of the region, though the researchers at the Hateno laboratory have access to one with information on a compendium of native Hyrulean wildlife, and my grandfather is quoted as having used a few Stones that gave additional functionality to the Slate, such as the Cryonis rune Link attempted to use— there are a couple others on the Slate, we'll have to show you sometime—"
Over at the Guidance Stone, Link placed the Slate into the spot on the pedestal beneath it, and Zelda broke off, darting over to watch. The face of the pedestal lit orange around the Slate, which rotated in place, and a moment later lines of blue text began to scroll across the face of the Stone above. They moved too quickly for Zelda to decipher, as always, but she watched eagerly as they coalesced into a brilliant blue droplet at the tip of the Stone. That droplet swelled, quivering at the tip and fattening as more and more text scrolled down towards it, then broke at once from the Stone and splashed down onto— into — the Slate. The face of the pedestal lit up blue, then lifted, releasing the Slate into Link's hands.
"So what did we get?" Zelda asked eagerly, peering over Link's shoulder as he flipped through the screens.
"Map of the temple," Link said. "Let's see...four floors descending from our current position, each one smaller than the one above it. This first floor is about square, the one below it is a rectangle, the third one is...looks like one room with a hallway in a ring around the outside, and then the very bottom floor is a single chamber, I think."
"Which means that bottom floor is probably where the Flame is," Dragmire said, peering over Link's other shoulder. "I could feel it down there when I melted the ice."
Zelda shot him a sidelong glance, a question burning on the tip of her tongue. She'd thought he'd seemed unusually sensitive and alert in the last temple— if he was able to sense the location of the Flames after all, could he sense the Malice as well? What did the realm of spirits look like through the eyes of a Gerudo mage, and how different was it from her own goddess's eyes?
She bit the query back instead, looking up from the map towards the door on the opposite wall, which shimmered invitingly. It was translucent, and showed a cloudy blue glimpse of the space on the other side, though she could make out no details, only dim shapes in the blue.
"Well, we aren't getting to it any more quickly, standing around here," she said, and slipped past Link, striding across the room to the door.
The space on the other side wasn't any clearer up close, no matter how Zelda peered at it. She raised her fist and held it cautiously in front of the shimmering surface, watching as it rippled where her knuckles nearly touched it, sending little shivers across the entire face of the door, and felt the barest hint of energy reach out to brush over her skin.
A warm weight materialized over her shoulder, and then Link bumped up against her hip as he inspected the door himself, blue eyes curious.
"What do you think?" he asked.
"Some kind of ward," Zelda said.
Then she reached out and knocked.
The door made a hollow sound under her knuckles, like she'd rapped on glass, and shattered into light and vanished. The space behind it stood empty now, like there hadn't been anything to block the opening in the wall in the first place, and Zelda peeked her head through curiously.
The next room looked much the same as the one they stood in— dark walls patterned over in pale gold, glossy, cream-colored floor. The wall across from the entrance turned a corner, hiding part of the room from view, so Zelda stepped through, scanning the space for threats. And there she froze, staring at the rows and rows of torches that filled the space.
"What the…?" Link asked, ducking in after her.
"...Looks like torches," Dragmire said.
Zelda looked them over, studying the layout. Three rows of five torches each, all unlit save the centermost of the row furthest from the door they'd entered by, which cradled a blue, smokeless flame in its head. There was a door on the opposite side of the space, directly across from the lit torch, and she made her way across to inspect it. It didn't respond when she pushed on it, and unlike the temple entrance, there was no Sheikah eye on its face, nowhere for the Slate to register. She turned back to the torches.
"I think there's something we're supposed to do with these that'll open the door," she said, and made her way back to the lit torch, inspecting it curiously. There was no fuel in the head, she noticed, but the flame burned anyway, light without smoke or heat. "We have to...light them in a specific order or pattern, or something."
"Or just certain ones," Dragmire said thoughtfully. "Any clues?"
"I didn't see an inscription on the door, but I can check again," Zelda said, biting her lower lip.
"I don't think we need to," Link said, and strode to the torch nearest the door they'd entered by, tapping his foot on the floor. "Look down. The rest of the floor is polished, but there's an unpolished strip running from this torch up to the lit one."
Zelda dropped her gaze, tilting her head until the light shifted— and there, a stripe of tile that didn't reflect the light, which passed from Link's torch to hers, crossing the second torch from the left on the second row. A quick glance showed a second line of unpolished tile extending down to the right, to the furthest torch on the last row, and—
"Dragmire, will you see if—" she started.
"Already on it," he said, darting across to the furthest torch. He paused there, head cocked, then paced across the row towards Link. "There's a non-reflecting path that leads to yours, but not one that leads to Link... ah , here," he said, and stopped at the center torch on that row. "The tile this one's set on doesn't reflect, so this must be the one we light."
"Alright," Zelda said, and slung her bow down from her back.
She took a moment to string it— the change in altitude would have snapped it if she'd left it strung on the hike up— and tested the tension, then pulled one of her arrows from her quiver. Like most Hylian archers, she color-coded her fletchings— ordinary white for broadheads, brown-barred for bomb arrows, feathers dyed red, blue, and green for fire, ice, and lightning respectively. She'd feathered her amber arrows with yellow, of course, and those lingered down at the bottom of her quiver.
The arrow she drew now, though, was fletched with grey, and she took a moment to inspect the heavy coating of pitch on the stone arrowhead. It was intact, she noted with satisfaction, and she nocked it and drew, aiming through the blue flame and through the heads of the torches along the unpolished line. Her grandfather hadn't invented flammable arrows, not by a long shot, but he had pioneered their resurgence in Hylian archery; they were far less expensive, and more easily made, than the ruby-headed fire arrows.
She took a deep, slow breath, her thumb brushing the anchor-point at the corner of her jaw.
Then she loosed the arrow.
The blue flame leapt in the torch, springing up in the second, and then her arrow slammed home in the head of the third, bringing the fire with it. Link whooped excitedly.
She drew again, aiming down the second line of unpolished tile, and loosed again, lighting the other two. Then she turned for the final torch— and paused. Another torch stood between her and the third they needed to light, and if she shot a flammable arrow at it, it would ignite a torch that wasn't marked to light, and Hylia knew what would happen if she did.
"Hang on a second, let me—" Dragmire started. He darted over to one of the lit torches, and thrust his hands into the flames before she could ask what he meant.
When he withdrew them, blue fire danced in his cupped palms and in his eyes, and she felt his gaze like a bolt through her stomach when those eyes met hers. He turned and made his way back to the middle torch on the far row and stood, facing her, and met her eyes again as he settled the flames into the head of the torch. The fire in his eyes faded.
The feeling in her stomach didn't.
There was a soft hum from behind her, and when Zelda turned around, Nayru's crest had lit up in the center of the formerly featureless door. She slung her bow back into place across her back and made her way over to it, pausing with her fingers mere inches over the glowing stone as Link and Ganondorf joined her. The glow brightened when Link reached her side— responding to the Slate, she guessed— and she reached out and placed her hand flat against it.
The door rumbled softly and rolled aside.
The room on the other side was filled with water, save a curved, grated platform near the door. It didn't appear deep, certainly no deeper than she could dive, but the surface of the water was covered in a thin, crackling skin of ice. Link and Dragmire stepped out onto the platform without hesitation, and Zelda followed, peering around further. The room was loosely rectangular, as far as she could tell, and stretched off to their right, where the far end of it wrapped around a corner and disappeared from view.
"Let me guess," she said. "The door is on the other end of the room."
"Unfortunately," Link said. He made his way out to the edge of the platform, peering down into the water, then around the corner. Then he lifted the Slate again and flipped open the map. "...This says there's supposed to be another couple platforms in here— three of them, shaped like Nayru's crest— that'll give us access to the door, but...it looks like they're underwater right now."
"What about cryonis?" Zelda asked. "Can we get to the door without figuring out how to raise them?"
"Map says it's locked," Link replied, shaking his head.
"What about the targets on the walls?" Dragmire asked.
"The...targets?" Zelda asked.
"Well, I assume the orange discs on the wall are targets," Dragmire said, and pointed.
On the center of the left-hand wall, most of the way up towards the ceiling, was a luminous orange circle. Zelda turned and scanned the room, spotting a second at the center of the facing wall— and the right wall, too, just visible past the corner.
"Sure looks like it," Link said.
Zelda pulled an arrow from her quiver, nocked, and raised her bow, sighting for the target. She loosed almost immediately— it was close, not quite point-blank range but near enough that she wasn't worried. The arrow struck home, dead center on the target, which flashed blue momentarily.
Then it faded back to orange. Nothing in the room moved, not even the faintest whisper of machinery.
"That's…..odd," she said. She nocked and drew again, this time to a full draw to put more power behind it, then loosed.
Again, the target flashed blue, then faded back to orange.
"...Maybe we could try a different sort of arrow?" Link said.
Zelda paused, inspecting her quiver. "Only if you have spares in the Slate. I've only got five each of the spellstone arrows, and I don't think it would be a good idea to use a bomb arrow at close range like this."
"Try ice first," Dragmire said. "The last room was fire, so this one must be ice."
"How do you know?" she retorted.
Dragmire rolled his eyes. "Call it an educated guess, Princess," he said.
Zelda rolled her eyes in return, but she drew one of the sapphire-tipped ice arrows anyway, running her fingers gently over the blue fletchings. She nocked and drew, lining up for the shot, then loosed again.
The arrow struck home in a brilliant burst of sapphire light, and the target turned blue and stayed . There was a great rumbling from somewhere below. The surface of the water shivered, breaking the thin skin of ice, and another platform rose before them, sluicing freezing water through the grate. No, not one platform— two, a curved one like a crescent moon, and a half-circle abutting the wall.
"Oh, that's clever ," Dragmire said. He didn't even wait for the platforms to stabilize before he moved, leaping over to the second crescent and setting it swaying with his weight.
"Which target next?" Zelda asked. She stepped over the gap between the first platform and the second crescent one, mindful of the way the damp grate stuck to her boots like it wanted to freeze her in place.
"If I had to guess, the one on the right wall should bring up the third platform, and maybe unlock the door," Link said.
"Then what does the other one do?" Dragmire asked. "There's only three platforms, and we have two of them raised already."
Zelda checked her quiver, running her fingers over the fletching of her arrows. "We have to decide if it's worth finding out, I only have four ice arrows left and we might need them later on. Link, are there any more in the—"
"No, not in the Slate," Link said. He opened it up again, turning it so she could see the storage screens. The slot for ice arrows was empty, and their fire and electric arrows were low as well— one of the former, eight of the latter.
"We're stocked up on bomb arrows though, I see," she said wryly, as she tapped the screen to retrieve them.
Dragmire snorted, and Link shot him a melodramatically wounded look, one Zelda couldn't help laughing at herself. Link pouted at her in turn.
"They're useful, okay," he muttered.
"That's not the point," Zelda replied. "Do we use one of my ice arrows on a target whose functions we don't understand, or do we save it and potentially miss something important?"
"...Or...I could try something," Dragmire said.
"What?" Link asked.
Dragmire sighed. "I'm not especially good at manipulating ice, but if Zelda wants to preserve her arrows, I can certainly give it a shot."
"And if you burn yourself out doing it?" Zelda asked. Her stomach had tightened again— something deep in her gut told her they would be in trouble if Dragmire exhausted his magical strength, and she didn't want to chance it.
"I'll stop if the strain is too much, I promise," Dragmire said. "I know my strength, I won't overtax myself for this."
Zelda nodded and stepped back again, pulling Link with her. Dragmire strode forward, to the edge of the crescent, and held his hand out over the frigid water. His brilliant eyes fell closed, and a moment later his braid began to sway.
The air temperature dropped, from merely chilly to biting, and Zelda gasped in shock. Link's grip tightened on her arm. The air around Dragmire shimmered— filled with small particles of ice swirling around his body. He turned his extended hand over, palm facing up, and the water beneath him shivered. The ice at the surface stirred, lifting jagged edges and moving slowly together.
He raised his hand slowly, until it was level with his face. The ice juddered and rippled, and slowly, slowly, a ball of jagged-edged ice rose, dripping, from the water, until it came level with his hand. Dragmire's eyes opened, and Zelda grabbed at Link's arm— they'd gone flat and silvery, reflective. He raised his hand further, turning his palm outward— and thrust.
The ball of ice shot forward, shattering against the target, which glowed brilliantly blue.
Something rumbled— above them— and Zelda looked up as a panel in the ceiling over the half-circle rolled back, dropping something through it. Another chest crashed down onto the grate, rolling clangorously until it came to a rest on its side. The ceiling rumbled again, the panel hissing closed.
The target faded back to orange.
"Well," Dragmire said, sounding faintly out of breath. He turned back towards them, shaking his head and spraying frost into the air. His armor was, very faintly, rimed in ice.
"How are you feeling?" Link asked, and released Zelda's hand to make his way over and take Dragmire's.
"Perfectly fine," Dragmire replied. His eyes were sparkling, and he raised their joined hands slightly, like he wanted to kiss Link's knuckles.
Zelda felt heat rise in her cheeks, and she brushed past them quickly, hopping the gap between the crescent and the half-circle and stooping to inspect the chest rather than watch them any longer. The metal was chilly even through her gloves, but she ignored it, pressing on the latch and popping the chest open.
Something rattled out onto the icy grate— a circlet of woven silver wire, which curled over and in on itself like the crest of waves. It was heavy when she lifted it, much heavier than she would have expected even for as large as it was, and she turned it over thoughtfully in her hands. There was a clear blue stone nested in the silver wires, almost as broad as her palm and cut in an odd, flat way she'd never seen on a piece of Hyrulean jewelry.
"What did you find?" Link asked from behind her.
"A circlet of some kind," she said, and stood, making the jump back to the crescent platform to show them. "I think it's sapphire."
"May I see it?" Dragmire asked. Zelda passed it over to him, and he held it up to the light, keen gold eyes focusing intently on it. "It's sapphire, alright," he said, thoughtfully, and brushed his fingers across the face of the gem. "It's also magework. The stone was shaped specifically for use as a focus."
"How can you tell?" Zelda asked, leaning against his arm to study it again.
"The way the stone is shaped," Dragmire said "This isn't a conventional jewelry cut— a focus is cut and faced so energy flows most readily through it, so a mage can channel more power more efficiently." He paused, then snorted. "...This would have been much more convenient to have coming in here."
"Well, at least we have it now, right?" Link said. "In case we need it later?"
Zelda hesitated, her eyes darting from Link— leaning against Dragmire's side as if for warmth— up to Dragmire's face. He watched her in turn, as if waiting for her to say something about it. About the way his hand lingered on Link's waist.
"I think you should hold onto it," she said.
Dragmire arched a brow at her, and she read the surprise clearly in his expression.
Then he turned the circlet over in his hands again and settled it on his brow, so the sapphire rested over the center of his forehead.
"Well?" he asked, and tilted his head with a rakish grin.
"Lovely," Link said.
"Silver is not your color," Zelda replied, grinning back.
Dragmire scoffed, mock-offended, and Zelda laughed and slipped past him, heading down the curve of the crescent towards the third target, which glowed invitingly on the wall. It was all too easy, she thought, and drew another ice arrow from her quiver. Nocked. Drew. Her breath fogged gently in the chilly air as she loosed, letting the arrow strike home.
The floor rumbled again, setting the water quivering, and again the thin skin of ice broke as the third set of platforms rose through it, shedding frigid water off their sides as they settled into place at the top. The door, tucked just around the corner at the center of the semicircular platform, shivered in its place. The crest of Nayru lit up on its face, and the wall rumbled softly as it rolled aside, opening onto the room beyond.
"Nice job, Zelda," Link said, bumping up against her shoulder.
"It was nothing," she said. Then she hesitated, her gut twisting again. "Really. This all feels...too easy. It's just a bunch of simple puzzles— surely there's something we've missed?"
"I don't think so," Link said.
Zelda's grip tightened on her bow, and she slung it back over her back before she could damage the wood. Something just didn't feel right— the temple of Farore had been a veritable maze underground, and she had dreamed of the dead Gerudo in pursuit for nights after the Temple of Din. Surely Nayru's temple wouldn't be a simple, straightforward set of logic puzzles?
She sighed quietly and sprang forward onto the next crescent platform, and from there onto the semicircle, letting Link and Dragmire hurry after her. Their boots rang on the grates, which swayed under the weight.
Stepping onto solid ground in the third room was a relief.
At least, until Link and Dragmire crossed through behind her and the door's machinery roared as it slammed shut. Zelda stifled a shriek.
"Oh, what the fuck," Link said. Zelda turned in time to watch him push the face of the Slate against the door, tapping hollowly at its unyielding face. "...It won't open. I think it's locked."
"And I think that may be a problem," Dragmire said. "Did either of you notice the giant heap of bones on the floor?"
Zelda felt his words like a bolt between her shoulderblades. She whipped around, snatching for her bow as her eyes fell on what he'd spotted.
A heap of bones indeed. She hadn't seen them when she first entered— the floor in this room was blue with ice, and the bones were the same hue and texture, but they were certainly bones. The identifiable ones in the heap on the floor were far, far too large to have ever belonged to a humanlike being. The pile was surmounted with a skull, half-again the size of even a Gerudo's head, though it wasn't shaped like a moblin's. Or any monster Zelda was familiar with, for that matter. The eye sockets were deep, the browbones prominent, sweeping up into spikes along the sides of the cranium. Spikes sprouted from the lower mandible as well, sweeping back along the jaw.
And then, abruptly, the empty orbits filled with magenta Malice-light.
The jaw chattered. Magenta light crackled over the pile. The skull lifted, vertebrae following. The clavicle snapped into place, the sternum and ribs. The spine snapped and popped, rippling up into place in a way spines were never meant to move. Zelda grabbed for her bow as the pelvis crackled into place, as the femurs settled and the legs reassembled themselves. The mandible worked, chattering at them and snapping teeth like ice floes. The stal— was it a stal?— held a hand, and something else snapped up from the floor into its skeletal palm.
A halberd.
It swung the blade around, pointing the spear-tip at them, and chattered menacingly, then began to circle, and Zelda's stomach clenched. Goddess, it was half again as big as Dragmire—
Link unsheathed the Sword with a sound like a bell and stepped past her, raising the blade defensively. The stal clacked its jaw again and thrust. Link swatted the blow aside.
A hand landed on her shoulder, and a moment later she felt Dragmire's sideburn brush her ear. "Link and I will give you space to maneuver," he said quietly. "You keep sharp with that bow; if you see an opportunity you take it, understand?"
"Understood," Zelda said.
Dragmire stepped past her, moving to flank the stal. Link darted in, Sword flashing. Got up under its guard—
The stal struck him across the chest with the haft of its spear and sent him tumbling.
Dragmire was on it in an instant. His scimitars sang, striking hammer-blows on the shaft of the halberd. The stal moved back. And back. And back. Slashed with the halberd's axe-face. Dragmire swayed back. His grip on his left blade reversed, dropped pommel-first towards the skull.
The strike shattered the right side of the cranium, and the stal shrieked and shoved him backwards. Ice fell, ringing to the floor. Malice poured through the gap, splattering the ground as the stal retreated and melting holes in the floor.
Link surged up from behind, the Sword thrusting point-first between the ribs. The stal screamed again and turned, swinging with the haft. Link twisted the blade and rolled free. Ribs shattered and crashed to the tiles.
Zelda dropped her hand to her quiver and let her fingers dance over her arrows. Which to choose? Malice dripped from the shattered bones, dripping and oozing, but most of the material was still encased in...
Ice .
Her hand closed on one of her precious fire arrows. She pulled it free immediately, nocking and drawing back, waiting for the stal to still. Dragmire was forcing it back, his blades a blur. Link struck from the sides, a wolf nipping at its heels. Dragmire ducked, the halberd soaring through the space where his head had been.
Zelda loosed her arrow.
The tip struck home between the skull's empty eye sockets. The ruby tip shattered in a gout of flame, and the stal wailed . Water and malice dripped and splattered. Bones liquefied. She fumbled for a second arrow, one of her ambers.
Dragmire yelped, and she saw his hand flash out, grabbing Link by the back of his coat and towing him backwards. The rest of the ice melted, splashing out towards them. The floor cracked and shuddered as the Malice ate into it, sinking down through ice and into stone. And out of sight.
" Fuck ," Link gasped.
"Are you two alright?" Zelda asked, slinging her bow back over her shoulder. She picked her way forward past the places where Malice had pockmarked the floor, to the edge of the yawning hole where the main body of the stal had melted.
"We're fine," Dragmire said, a little breathless. He hadn't let go of Link's coat, and his eyes were wide.
"I've never seen a monster do that," Link said. Her eyes dropped to his hands— to his white-knuckled grip on the Sword's hilt. "They don't just...lose their shapes like that."
"...Maybe it was the cold?" Zelda asked. "It might be reacting differently under the current conditions..."
Dragmire shook his head. "I've fought lizalfos in the highlands before, and they also went up in smoke when they're killed. I've never seen one melt before."
"Me either," Link said.
Zelda sighed quietly. They were right— her grandmother's journals were full of notes on monsters, on their behavior, on the ways they died, and nowhere was it mentioned that they ever returned to liquid Malice. She eyed the gaping hole in the floor warily.
"...And I suppose it's too much to hope doing that made the door unlock," she said.
Link stilled and glanced around, eyes widening. "Right, did either of you see the door forward —?"
"Alcove near the door we came in through," Dragmire said, and gestured vaguely over his shoulder.
Zelda turned, and, sure enough, there was a niche where the room turned a corner, pushing the wall back into the previous room. The door wasn't on that wall, however, but on the wall abutting it— and, in the center of the door, was Nayru's crest, glowing brilliant blue. Zelda heaved a sigh of relief.
"Shall we?" Dragmire asked.
"Of course," Zelda said, and made her way over to the door, laying her hand against it.
The wall rumbled, and the door rolled back, revealing a small, square room on the other side. A sigil glowed on the floor— a Sheikah eye in the center of a circle, rimmed with glowing glyphs.
" That looks like a shrine elevator," Link said, peering over her shoulder.
"And I suppose that's our way onward," she replied. "Not forward, but down."
"Let's hope the Malice isn't down there," Dragmire said.
Zelda shushed him, reaching back to grab his wrist and pull him forward, onto the elevator. Link bounded after them, grabbing Dragmire's other hand as he did. The floor beneath them shivered as his boots touched it, registering the presence of the Slate, and began to descend. The cream-pale walls that slid past them were marked over with symbols, and Zelda reached out carefully to trail her fingers over them. If they'd been moving any more slowly, she would have begged Link to pull out the Slate so she could take a pictograph, to study them later.
The platform came to a smooth stop less than a minute later, and Zelda stepped off it and out of its alcove into the next room. The space was long and rectangular— and utterly empty.
No, not utterly. A pressure-plate sat in the corner to the right of the alcove, just barely covered with a layer of half-frozen water. The door was on the opposite end of the room, on their same wall, and when she made her way over to inspect it, it proved to be locked.
"...Well, then," she said, and turned back to face the other two, who lingered near the elevator. "Opening this is going to have something to do with that plate, but I don't believe there's anything in here to leave on it..."
"Why don't we..." Dragmire started, then paused and made his way over to the pressure plate, stepping on it.
The door clicked behind Zelda, and when she reached out to touch it, it whirred open, revealing another empty room behind it. Dragmire stepped off the plate, and the door slammed shut immediately. Zelda flinched back.
"Well," Link said. "That seems inconvenient."
"Step on it again," Zelda said.
Dragmire obliged, and the door clicked again. When he stepped off, there was a second click— locking and unlocking with weight on the switch.
"So we need to leave something on it, something heavy enough to flip the switch, for long enough to pass through the door," she said.
"Magnesis doesn't reach that far, and I'm not going to leave the sledgehammer behind," Link said.
"...How much weight does it require?" Dragmire asked. "Link, will you—?"
"Yeah, of course," Link said, and stepped onto the plate. The door clicked— evidently he was heavy enough to trigger it too. He paused and stepped off, then stepped back on again— and stamped his boot in the slushy water beside the plate, spraying water. "...I wonder if this is deep enough for cryonis?"
He stepped back, pulling Dragmire along with him, and pulled the Slate from its place on his belt. His fingers darted across the screen. Then he lifted the Slate and aimed it at the water, washing the wall in pale blue light. From this angle Zelda couldn't see his face, but his quiet chuckle was clear enough. He tapped the screen.
A pillar of ice as tall as Link and twice as broad grew from the puddle, shooting up fast enough that Dragmire flinched back, and the door behind Zelda clicked open.
"Well, that's convenient," Zelda said, and put her hand on the door, opening it again.
"Yeah, I'll say," Link said.
He tucked the Slate back into its case and made his way over to the door as well, peering into the next room. He didn't cross the threshold, though, and something about his stillness made the hair on the back of Zelda's neck stand on end. She turned and followed his gaze, inspecting the room for the first time.
The room on the other side of the door was equal in length to the one they currently stood in, and perfectly rectangular, and perfectly empty. The floor was different from the other floors had been— rather than pale cream, the tiles were colored— white tiles, golden tiles, tiles patterned in red and blue and green, all laid irregularly across the floor. They were larger , too, easily twice as large— both length and width— as the ones covering the rest of the temple's floors.
"...Okay, that looks weird," Link said. He stepped through the door onto the first tile, one of the tricolored ones, and tapped his foot, his head tilting. "...Sounds hollow , too."
"Was there anything like this in the temple you two visited before?" Dragmire asked from over her shoulder. Zelda glanced back at him, noting his furrowed brows.
"Nope," Link said. He crossed the first tile and stepped onto the second, a white one, and tapped his foot. "...This one sounds hollow too. I really don't like that."
"Are all of them hollow?" Zelda asked.
Link took a couple more steps out, passing from the white tile to another tricolored one, and tapped his foot again. "...Yeah, it sounds like it, but...they feel stable enough. I think it's just a weird room."
"...It may have had some ceremonial purpose at some point," Dragmire said. He stepped out after Link, crossing the first tile, then paused before he reached the second, looking back at her. "Zelda, are you coming?"
"Yes, give me a second," she said. Her stomach clenched again as she stepped onto the tile, part of her expecting to fall away beneath her at any second.
When it didn't she made her way over to Dragmire, pausing at the edge of the tile, then took a step onto the white one, intending to cross over to Link.
The tile rumbled under her foot. Shuddered. And then she felt it begin to slide—
Dragmire caught her by the forearm and pulled her back onto the tricolored one, to solid ground, as the white tile dropped away into nothing. The darkness below was dizzying. Zelda grabbed at his cloak for stability, grasping for breath.
" Fuck ," Link said.
"Are you okay?" Dragmire asked, pulling her closer and taking a step back from the hole in the floor.
"Yeah, I'm alright," Zelda gasped. She was shaking, she realized, and clutched harder at his cloak. His grip tightened around her back, and she leaned into the hold, pressing her face against his arm and breathing deeply to steady herself.
"...Well, now we know what this room does," Link said. His voice trembled. Fabric and leather rustled, and then he said, "And...this really doesn't look good. All the white and gold tiles show as active objects in the stasis rune."
"...Lovely," Zelda said, and managed to raise her face from its place against Dragmire's arm, turning to scan the room.
Most of the tiles, she realized, were white or gold— the tricolor ones were scattered intermittently across the space, forming a winding path towards the door on the far side of the room. The white ones were most common, and the gold ones even more intermittent, but even so...
"They must respond to weight," Dragmire said. "Link isn't large enough to trigger them, but you or I..."
"Yeah," Zelda said.
There was another tricolored tile touching theirs corner-to-corner, and Zelda carefully released her grip on Dragmire to cross over to it, and from there to Link's tricolored tile. She peeked over his shoulder at the screen of the Slate, where he still had the stasis interface open— the room was awash in gold, almost all of the tiles lit up. Dragmire's boots tapped on the tile, and she felt the weight of his presence at her shoulder.
"...So, what exactly does stasis do?" he asked.
"Essentially, it places a temporal 'lock' on an object," Zelda said. "Any force applied to an object under stasis is converted into momentum— enough force can knock even the largest boulders airborne with stasis applied. It can also be used to hold moving objects in place—"
"So we could use it to hold tiles long enough for you two to cross," Link said, turning to look at her. His eyes had lit up. "We just...have to be careful about it."
"It only lasts for fifteen seconds," Zelda said, glancing back at Dragmire, who nodded.
"Can it be applied to multiple objects at once?" he asked.
"Nope, just one," Link said.
Zelda looked up from the Slate, scanning the room again. The next tricolored tile was further towards the far end of the room and to their right, on the other side of another white tile. The tiles around that one were all white, and there was another white tile between that one and the one nearest the door, but...
"How long do the white ones take to slide, do you think?" she asked. "I wasn't paying attention on the last one, but—"
"We could test it," Dragmire said, and turned to the white tile to their right. "Link, would you mind—"
"Already on it," he said. "When I see you start to drop I'll hit stasis, and you get back to safety, got it?"
"Got it," Dragmire said. "One, two, three—"
He stepped out onto the white tile.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then it shuddered beneath him— once, twice, three times—
Link slammed at the screen of the Slate just as the tile began to drop. Dragmire leapt back to safety, mere moments before stasis gave way and the tile plummeted into the abyss.
"Five seconds," Link said, a little breathless.
" I could cross one in that time," Dragmire said. "My stride is longer than either of yours, but Zelda—"
"I know," she said.
"So how do you think we should do this?" Link asked.
"We'll put the white tile between this one and the next tricolor in stasis and cross," Zelda said. And then...I suppose we'll just have to run for it at the next crossing."
"...I wonder about the gold tiles," Dragmire said. "We know they also move, but if Link can walk on the white..."
"We can check at the next one," Link said. "There's a gold tile next to it, and I can hit stasis if anything goes wrong."
"I'll check it," Zelda said. "It might have a different weight requirement, and— no offense, Dragmire—"
"I know how much I weigh," Dragmire said. "Now, how long do we intend to stand here talking instead of crossing?"
Link turned in reply and tapped the Slate again, and bright gold light flashed around the white tile between them and the next tricolor. Zelda darted across it, hearing the thunder of Dragmire's boots on her heels as he sprinted after her, and came to a skidding stop on the tricolor just as stasis broke with a sound like a bell.
The white tile, thankfully, didn't budge, and Link walked across it a moment later, joining them on the other side.
"Alright," he said. "Gold tile test?"
"I'm ready," Zelda said, and made her way to the edge abutting the gold tile. Its surface shimmered, gently reflective, and she waited for Link to give her the signal.
At his nod, she stepped out onto the tile. She stood, tense, ready to leap to safety at a moment's notice— but nothing happened. The tile was still and stable under her feet.
"Well, that's nice to know," Dragmire said sourly.
"It's certainly useful," Zelda said, stepping back onto the tricolor. She turned back toward the door, their goal, scouting a path. A white and a gold tile sat between them and the one at the door— the second gold abutting theirs, the white against the doorway, and she frowned thoughtfully. "...Link, stasis will reach the gold tile from the door, right?"
"Right," he said.
"Then you should cross first," she said. "You won't tip any tiles, so it'll be safest for you, and then—"
"You'll go after him," Dragmire said. "You'll only need one tile held, so it'll remain in place after you cross. And...Link, hold the golden tile for me. We don't know how long they take to drop, so it's safer for me if I just...get across the white as quickly as possible."
"...Are you sure?" Link asked. "It seems risky."
"Those are our best odds," Zelda said. "I don't like it either, but..."
"...Then we'll do it," Link said.
He made his way to the edge of the gold tile, took a deep breath, and darted across, sliding to a stop on the tricolor. Then he turned around and faced them, pulling the Slate out of its pouch again.
"I'll put the white one in stasis on three," he called. "Zelda, are you ready?"
"Ready when you are," she said.
Link nodded. "Alright. One...two...three—"
Zelda dashed forward. The gold tile flew under her feet, and the white flashed golden the instant before her boots touched it, propelling her across. She skidded to a stop on the tricolor, nearly crashing into the wall, and braced against it, gasping for breath. She shook herself, then turned back towards Dragmire, who lingered on the other tricolor, waiting as the stasis on the white one chimed and broke.
"I'm ready, Link," he called. Link nodded grimly and tapped the screen. Gold light flashed around the golden tile.
Dragmire leapt forward. He crossed the gold one in moments, but the instant his feet touched the white it shuddered. Began to slide. She saw his eyes go wide and darted forward herself. Reached out and caught hold of his forearm.
The tile slipped. He dropped hard— she held him fast. His armor rang as he crashed against the side of the tricolored tile. His other hand grabbed onto the edge beside her as her knees struck the floor, trying to pull him up. He scrabbled for purchase, fingers sliding on the polished surface of the tile.
" Din preserve me ," Dragmire gasped. He tried to pull himself up, shoulders straining, and slipped another inch. Zelda hissed a breath and dug her fingers into his forearm, tightening her grip enough to bruise. "There's nothing— nothing to brace on, it just— drops off after two feet—"
"I've got you," Zelda said. She took hold of his pauldron, and carefully released his forearm, grabbing his upper arm instead. Dragmire hissed and braced both arms against the tile, pushing up. And gained an inch. He tilted his face back looking up at her—
His gold eyes went wide, and the color drained from his face.
"...Zelda, don't look up now," he said softly, "but the Malice is on the ceiling." Zelda froze, and her eyes darted upwards—
Dragmire reached up and grabbed her chin. She felt him slide another inch and grabbed at him again, bracing herself to keep him from sliding. His leather glove was smooth and cool on her face. His thumb brushed her lip.
"I said, don't look up," he said. "You're going to have to let me go. It's going to fall, and you need to shoot it before it does, or neither of us are walking out of here."
"And what about you?" she hissed back. "I'm not letting go of you unless I know you won't fall."
"I can support myself here," he replied, and let go of her, bracing against the tile again. "Zelda, please . You can come back for me when we know the Malice won't kill us both."
"I don't—" she started.
He opened his mouth to answer her— but then his eyes darted upwards and flew wide. He surged upwards. Planted a palm in the center of her chest and shoved . Zelda topped back with a yelp, losing her grip on his pauldron. Her head struck the floor with a crack, and she saw white behind her eyes.
And then she saw the ceiling. The Malice— from the stal, that was the only thing it could be— hung suspended, a dark droplet swelling on the edge of a crack. It glistened darkly and shivered, fattening on itself as its tether stretched.
As its tether snapped. The globule plummeted. Zelda surged upright, grabbing for her bow.
Not fast enough. Time slowed. The Malice plunged. Struck Dragmire over his head and shoulders. She saw his hands slip—
—And then he was gone, over the edge with a cut-off shriek.
"No!" she screamed, and lunged forward.
Link grabbed her by the back of the coat and hauled her back. She shrieked again and pulled against him— but Link was stronger, and he dragged her— away from the edge, over the threshold into the next room. The door slid shut behind them. Zelda threw herself against it, but it didn't budge.
"No!" she shouted again. "No— no , Link, we can't—"
"I won't lose you too!" Link shouted back. His arms were around her, pulling her back against his chest. "I won't. I can't, Zelda, please —"
He was shaking. Zelda turned herself around in his grip and pressed her face against his shoulder, gasping, unable to cry. His shaking felt like stifled sobs. His fingers dug into her back through her coat, almost hard enough to bruise.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I—I tried, I can't—we can't leave him, Link—"
"I don't want to," he whispered back, his voice choked. "But you— I can't— I can't lose you —"
His voice broke, and he buried his face in her chest, hiccuping with sobs. She held him tighter, pressed her face against his head and clung. Her hands were shaking. The world was shards of glass and ice, and she let herself go numb.
Her hands dropped to the Slate's case, and she pulled it free and fumbled it on. Link lifted his head, his reddened eyes gone wide, and he pushed himself closer to her, watching.
"...What are you—" he started.
"There has to be something on the map," Zelda said. "I can't— he has to be somewhere. We're going to get him back ."
Her hands were shaking too badly to operate the Slate. Link took it from her, navigating to the map view, and Zelda bit her lip hard enough to taste blood. The map was floor-by-floor, and the one below them was smaller and the wrong shape, there was no way—
Link tapped at a setting on the side of the screen, and the layers went transparent and rearranged themselves— into a top-down, overlapping view. Their place was marked, the third room of the second floor, and Zelda heaved a sound that would have been a sob if her suddenly-tight throat let it come out any louder.
The place Dragmire had fallen was over a portion of the third floor, the circular room in the center.
"We're going down there," she said.
"We won't leave him," Link agreed, and shoved the Slate back into its pouch, taking her hands. "We won't. We'll get him."
Zelda stilled, then, and swallowed hard. "...Link, what if he's—"
" Don't ," Link said. His eyes went dark, and Zelda bit her lip.
She knew he knew what she was thinking, though. If the third floor were as far down from them as the second was from the first— and even if it wasn't, the Malice had struck him. She knew what Malice did to people. Her grandmother's notes had come with diagrams; a drawing of her grandfather's side, mapped with deep violet whorls where the Calamity or a Blight had struck him, various sketches of other Hylians, all scarred in the same liquid pattern. Like an acid, her grandmother's notes had said.
She shook herself.
"We have to be quick about it," she said, and stood, pulling Link up with her. She turned towards the other end of the room, where the door to the elevator would be.
And froze. The wall where the door should have been was entirely blank, save for a bas-relief carving of the Triforce engraved over the center of the wall. There was a line of script beneath it, and even from a distance she recognized ancient Sheikah writing. She released Link's hands and hurried to it, kneeling in front of the wall and laying her hands on the stone, trying to breathe. To center herself. To read.
"What does it say?" Link asked.
"The flow of Time is always cruel; precious memories fade as sparks in the wind. Sing, O Goddess, the song that wakes flames from embers and opens the Gate of Time," Zelda said. The words flowed easily— not like a translation. They spilled from her lips like water, like they'd been waiting on her tongue since the moment she was born.
"...And what does that mean , exactly?" Link asked.
"I...don't know," she said quietly. "I don't know . The song that opens the gate of time— it has to— why don't I know this ?"
The words left her as a hysterical shriek, and she slammed her hands against the wall, gasping at the pain. That was all it took. A sob clawed its way up her throat and burst out of her, and she sank against the wall, pressing her forehead against the smooth, cold stone. Why didn't she know? What crucial gap was in her grandmother's knowledge, in the knowledge of her foremothers, that she wouldn't know this? What good was it all if she couldn't get past the door?
" Please ," she whispered. "Please— Hylia, I can't do this—"
Something shifted. She felt it more than anything else, a ringing through the stone of the wall. A resonance. She squeezed her eyes shut, ignoring the tears that rolled down her cheeks, and reached, feeling it hollowly behind her breastbone.
Music. A song. A thousand voices overlapping, singing words she didn't know, but the pattern —
She reached out from the edge of time, feeling for the contours of the song as they passed through the stone. Her mortal fingers prickled under her gloves, as though the strings of a harp rested under them. Her soul sang back to the voices in the stone, answering them note for note.
The wall her brow rested again rippled, and vanished.
Zelda opened her eyes, felt her awareness sinking back into her mortal body. She could no longer hear the ancient voices singing, though their tune resonated somewhere in her bones. It was achingly familiar, she thought, as if she'd heard it before— and yet, she couldn't recall where she might have learned it. She shook herself a little and looked up, into the alcove set in the wall before her. A Sheikah eye rested on the center of the floor, ringed by glowing glyphs, and she nodded to herself. Of course it would be an elevator.
One of Link's hands came to rest on her shoulder. "Hey," he said softly, and cupped her chin, turning her face towards him and wiping the tears from her eyes. "Are you alright?"
"...I don't know," she said softly. "I…...we need to get down there. Quickly."
Link nodded, and his hands dropped to her elbows, carefully pulling her back to her feet. She let him, wrapping her arms around him and pressing her face into his shoulder for a moment. His cheek came to rest against the side of her head. She could feel the hitch in his breath, and some lingering goddess-thought told her of the ache in his chest.
"We'll get him back, I promise," she said softly.
Link nodded against her, but didn't speak, and eventually she raised her head and caught his hands, pulling him back towards the elevator.
Like the last one, the platform shivered at the presence of the Slate, the glyphs underfoot growing brighter. And then it began to sink, down and down into the darkness.