Ganon has returned, and no one has any idea what to do.
A messenger arrived yesterday warning that the Guardians were on their way, corrupted, deadly, and fast. The Divine Beasts and their Champions- gone, powered down, corrupted. Useless, now.
They had to flee, the messenger said. The Knights were going to try and hold them off at Fort Hateno, but everyone else had to flee. Mothers, children, families.
When asked where they would go, there was no answer.
Lurelin had open doors, but if Hateno was overrun, the little fishing village would follow soon after. Akkala Citadel was considered the Last Bastion, and impregnable, but it was so far away, and they would have to travel days past the corrupted Vah Ruta and Lanayru's unique challenges, especially with the eldest heir of Zora's Domain missing and presumed dead… And in the end, they were cornered by cliffs, jungle, and the sea.
Ignoring the angry complaints, Aryll pushed her way through the front of the crowd, ignoring their startled glares and irritated complaints. The messenger- she needed to speak to him-
"What about the Princess." Not a question. A command.
She didn't give a damn about the Princess. She couldn't care less whether she was dead or alive or neither.
She counted down the seconds. Five. Four. Three.
Two.
One.
Then she added, "And her knight."
She couldn't have cared less about the princess- it's the knight, it's her brother, that she needed to hear about. Now, of all times, she wished she had read his last letter- was he in the castle when its spires were black with ash? Had he been in there? Had he watched it come crashing down around his shoulders?
She needed to know he was alright.
And if not… What would she do next? How could she live with the grief that she hadn't even given him a response, that she had just put it off until she could see him in person-
But in the end, she was given neither answer. The messenger shrugged, helpless. "Gone," he answered. "Dead or alive, no one knows. If they lived- and this is a big if- they woulda gone to Fort Hateno. Don't think they have anywhere else before the Guardians catch 'em."
Grumbles and angry moans.
"This wouldn't have happened if that damned princess had just gotten her power sooner."
"Stop it," Aryll argued, not out of loyalty to the royal family, but out of determination to defend the person her brother- the hero, the appointed knight of legend, but her brother, most of all her brother- had sworn to protect. "She did everything she could."
"That wasn't-"
"You don't think she wanted to save us?" she snapped. "You think she wanted this? She spent her entire life trying to unlock that power. She did everything she was told to do." Aryll imagines what that would be like, and in the fleeting seconds before her reply, she imagines a lonely life. Every waking moment spent praying to a goddess who never heard your pleas, trapped for the fear of what would happen if you failed-
"And if she still couldn't unlock it, that's not her fault," she finished, biting the words out like they leave a sour taste in her throat. "It's not her fault."
That was yesterday.
Now, her mother believes that their best chance of survival lies in the travel to the Citadel. "If we can just make it there, we'll survive," she says. "Bring the essentials, a few personal items if you can fit them. It'll be a long journey, and crowded."
Aryll shakes her head, even as she knows she is only a child, and her advice is lesser than her mother's, or so she has been told all her life. "What if we don't make it?"
"We don't ask those kinds of questions," she says. "Too much waiting on the ifs."
"But," Aryll presses, "what if we do make it?"
"Why don't you go and pack your things?" comes a cheerful reply, evading her query with practiced, if not awkward execution, as if her mother had known that question would come and it still hit too hard when it did.
There is no safe answer to that question- at least, not one that her mother can give her. Aryll knows the answer to both, anyway.
They could die on the journey, felled by the explosive heat of a Guardian, or impaled upon a Lizal spear, or of starvation and exhaustion and a combination of luck and misfortune and everything dangerous out in the wild. The monsters, the Moblins, and Wizzrobes, and Hinox, and Lynel- they have not arisen in such numbers in years.
Ten thousand, to be exact.
They could make it to the Citadel, with hundreds of other survivors, and be crowded into a cramped, dusty space. Supplies would be scarce. A dozen or so would die each day searching for more. And then maybe they'd have a year, at the most, before the Guardians swarm the place, before Ganon wipes them out or sends the Divine Beasts to trample them.
Either way, they die out there, far from home. Far from Hateno. Far from the lighthouse, and the Cucco pens, and the old dye shop, and the Great Furnace and the apple trees and the warm and cozy inn.
And what scares her the most is how far they'll be from their other half- Aryll's father. And Link.
Link.
His letters, she thinks. She should read his final letter, before the fall. She should stop putting it off, before there is no time to put it off to.
She stops packing, stops doing what she knows she should be doing- uncharacteristic of her, but again her mother brushes it off as she rushes up the stairs and drags the box out from under her bed.
There's the top one, the most recent, a few days old if even that. She hasn't even broken the seal; she does so now with a careful, steady touch. She cannot afford for her hands to shake, anyways.
She stops packing, stops moving, stops breathing (if only for a moment), and begins instead to read.
To Aryll d'Ordon,
We make for the Spring of Wisdom today. The Princess turned seventeen yesterday, and so we will be staying near the Spring for a while while she tries again to pray. I expect the attempts will be, once again, fruitless- it is not her fault. It does seem, so to speak, a little pointless to pray to a goddess that you are the living incarnation of. But I should not say anything.
The mountain is within view of Hateno, just beyond the three cedars- do you remember when we dreamed of climbing it, and finding the treasure from the legend? I wonder if you will be able to see me from down there. I'll wave for you.
In a day or two we'll make our way back down the mountainside and meet with the other champions. I'll see if I can convince the Princess to... "take a photo," I think it's called. Would you be alright with that? Perhaps, since we're so close, I may even be able to drop in for a visit, if time allows.
I'll see you again one day. Love you. Tell Mum hello for me, alright?
Love,
Link d'Ordon
He didn't drop in for a visit. Aryll wishes he had.
She wishes she had read his other letter sooner. Would she have been able to see him up on the Spring of Wisdom? She'll never find out.
Ganon would have attacked right around when they were meeting with the Champions. And Mipha- She was one of them, right? She never met the Zoran princess, not like Link always said she would. She would never get to, now.
But, she thinks, rereading the same line over and over, that would mean they weren't at the castle.
That would mean they had time to run.
She lets out a breath and carefully replaces the letter.
They had time to run.
Somewhere out there, her brother could be alive.
She barely makes a sound as she descends the steps, but her mother notices, somehow. Mother Vision, she'd joked about it as a child. Stronger and more accurate than the finest hawk.
That was years ago.
"Hello," she says softly.
"Aryll. Did you finish packing?"
Her bag lies half-filled on her bed, still. She doesn't think she'll be finishing the job.
She shakes her head slowly. "No."
"Aryll. We should leave early in the morning."
"I know."
"This is uncharacteristic of you."
"I know."
"Is something wrong?" Apart from the obvious apocalypse right outside their window.
Aryll shakes her head again, finally, deciding in a heartbeat, and yet the decision feels right. "I want to stay."
Her mother swivels. "What?"
"I want to stay," she repeats. "I was born here, and you were born here, and Link was born here, and Father was born here-"
Her mother sucks in a breath. "It's dangerous."
"It's always been dangerous."
"You do realize what may happen to you if you stay here?"
Aryll nods. "But everything I know is here. I want to stay." Her eyes meet her mother's in the most defiant glare she can muster.
"I cannot just leave you to die here, Aryll. It's inhumane, and you are too young. You have your life ahead of you, Aryll, perhaps in the Citadel you will-"
"Do I?" she bites back. "Do I really have a life ahead of me?" She points wildly to the horizon. "The royal family is dead. The Guardians are on their way. The Champions are gone. And you think I still have a life? I'd rather stay here and die in the place I love than die out there in somewhere I barely know."
"You are too young to make that decision."
"Do not," she speaks, voice low, "ever speak to me about being too young." It's a defiant tone, an attitude she shouldn't have, but her mother talks in a way that is utterly defeated, and she lets it go. "Four years old is too young to be in the army," she continues. "Hell-" her mother lets the curse slide- "one year old is too young to lose a father, but look where I am, Mother." She hisses in annoyance. "Look where I am. I'm fourteen. I know what I'm choosing." Her mother's shaking her head, staring at her daughter with a horrified expression. Aryll quiets farther, hoping the volume of her speech will disguise the inevitable cracks in her words.
"...Either way, I'm going to die, Mum."
She hasn't called her mother that since she was seven.
"Please-" She takes a deep breath to calm the shaking, keening wail that threatens to snake itself off her tongue.
"-Please don't make me die out there. Please don't make me die out there."
"You don't know if death is truly your only option, Aryll. Perhaps the prophecy will come true, and Ganon will be vanquished." But the words are weakened, half-truths and alternative suggestions that offer little comfort. Aryll gestures tiredly out the window, again.
"Ganon's back. Everyone's dying. I don't know if Link or Father are alive, or if Princess Zelda is still out there. You don't know. Castle Town's completely destroyed. Death Mountain's slated to erupt again, the Gerudo are without a chieftess, the Zora don't have an heir, half the Sheikah are gone. Thousands are dead." A sigh. "Maybe I don't know if I'll die. But with everything out there, there's a decent chance."
Her mother looks at her carefully. "You truly understand what you're asking?"
"Yes."
A pause. Aryll twiddles her fingers, waiting for her final response.
"Then stay," her mother says softly, and her heart lifts and she is grateful, in that moment, for her mother's understanding nature. "Then stay, Aryll, and I will stay with you."
"If you still want to go, you can-"
"What life would I have if I have no family left in it?" She laughs bitterly. "I'm getting old, child. I have little left to bring me joy but you and your brother."
Aryll throws her arms around her mother and squeezes, giving in to that selfish part of her that wants her to stay.
"If you refuse to have a long life, let it be a happy one," her mother murmurs, combing her fingers through her daughter's long, straight hair. "Live, Aryll. Promise me?"
"I promise."