Hello, um... yeah, haven't updated in over a month... yeah... er... I've been busy? Anyway, hope everybody who celebrates it had a great Thanksgiving!
HUGE THANKS to Guest, ultima-owner, and alemery for reviewing!
Oh, I saw Big Hero 6 today. One word: AWESOME. I want to write a TadashiAlive!AU for it, but since my life is going to get very hectic very soon, it probably won't appear for a while, if at all. Fair Warning: I will not update again for a long time. As in, more-than-a-month long. I wasn't kidding about my life getting busy.
Disclaimer: I don't own Legend of Zelda. Hey, I actually have a relatively short Author's Note for once!
Breathe.
In, out.
Exhale.
Focus. Picture it in your head. Clearly, now. As clear as possible.
Breathe.
In, out.
Exhale.
Hollow it out, like an actor's mask. Then flip it around, put that second skin on, and…
There we go.
I opened my eyes and looked into the mirror, seeing sky-blue orbs- a shade or two paler than my own -gaze back at me. Hanging over them were several strands of honey-blond hair, and sitting on top of that was a floppy violet hat that looked like a smaller version of Link's. I lifted my hand and examined it carefully, angling it back and forth as I scrutinized it for flaws.
There weren't any. I remembered this form quite well, quite vividly. Every breath I took was with borrowed lungs, everything I touched was with a borrowed skin. I had always known Vio the best, out of all of them. Known him well enough to take his form and play his part, right up until- until, well, the end.
I took another breath, trying out a smirk. It looked strangely out of place, so I tried to make it seem less mischievous and more... smug. Yeah, smug. That was it. That was what his smirk had looked like.
There was a hiss sound as someone behind me inhaled sharply, most likely in surprise. I turned around, and was rewarded with the sight of Vaati's small involuntary step back as his eyes widened. "Shadow?" he asked after a brief hesitation.
I nodded, letting the illusion melt away as I regained my normal appearance. "Yeah, it's me."
"Great Farore, I forgot you could do that," he muttered as he walked up. "For a minute I thought I was seeing things."
I shrugged. "I figured this would be a good infiltration trick. It's not a true transformation, of course- just an illusion -but most normal people wouldn't be able to tell the difference." My hair flickered from dark purple to light blond. "Besides which, my natural face is pretty distinctive."
"True," Vaati agreed. He held up his hand, and a swirling orb of concentrated maelstrom gathered just above it. "With the remembrance of our past lives, we now have all our old abilities back too. Or, well," he amended, "mostly, anyway."
As if to emphasize his point, the orb destabilized and exploded in his hand, releasing a miniaturized tornado that the Wind Mage dispersed with a simple wave.
I nodded, tipping my head to the side and studying his face for a moment before smirking- and then I pulled his appearance over mine like a second skin, my form rippling for a moment before stabilizing into a perfect replica of my brother.
Quiet footsteps sounded in the hallway, and a voice called, "Hey, Vaati-"
Link poked his head in, mouth open ask if he was about to ask a question, but the words died in this throat as both of us turned to look at him at the same time. "Yes?" we said in unison, doubled words overlapping to give a strange echo effect.
Vaati glanced at me, one eyebrow raised. "Voice too?"
"Yup," I nodded.
Link gaped, eyes wide. "Wait, what-"
I grinned, playful and mischievous as I released the illusion, allowing him to see that it was me. "I can disguise myself as other people," I informed him. "Not a real transformation; just an illusion. But it's not likely anybody's going to notice, so it's a useful infiltration ability."
A dragon's roar echoed somewhere outside. We ignored it, having gotten used to the sound over the week we'd spent here training, getting used to our returned powers, and devising a way to trap Argorok so that we could remove the Mirror Shard without killing him. Now that he had his knowledge back, too, Vaati had found a kindred heart in Midna. The pair then delved into long discussions of magic theory and the differences between their respective powers that lost everyone else at the first sentence.
Our clothing had changed, too. Vaati, now that he had the supplies to back it up, announced that no brothers of his were going to walk around looking like street urchins any longer. When I pointed out that actually, we were street urchins, he just rolled his eyes and told me to shut up, he could do whatever he wanted because it was his stuff we'd be wearing.
I honestly wasn't sure whether I should've been happy or slightly creeped out by the fact that I found an exact replica of my old outfit in one of the closets. I didn't remember having more than one set of clothes. Vaati said that everything in the palace was under stasis spells so they didn't rot, get dusty, or degrade, but he didn't remember putting that outfit in either.
This minor mystery was easily cleared up when Vaati realized that this particular closet was the one he'd enchanted to create clothes from raw materials stored inside according to whatever the user wanted. He'd apparently been playing with it before, making different outfits just to see how well the spell would work, and my outfit was one of them.
"That," Dark had stated in a bewildered tone, "is a weird way to spend your time."
Vaati scowled. "Shut up. I was bored. There's only so much to do waiting for a bunch of heroes to fight their way through death-trapped dungeons, y'know. And monster armies are surprisingly good at managing themselves."
Link raised an incredulous eyebrow, and Vaati amended, "Well, okay, they do end up trying to kill each other once they get to a certain point, but Argorok actually managed a lot of it. As a dragon, he's got a lot of sway in the monster world, so…" the Wind Mage shrugged.
Another roar sounded, and a flock of keese sped past the window squeaking in fear.
I just sighed, grabbed the clothes, and went to an uninhabited room to change. Vaati's magic had made them, therefore, they would work. Simple as that.
The closet was then used to create a replica of Vaati's old outfit, though in darker shades than the original (I snickered at how he even included the red bloomers, though he did hold off on the small heels and make boots instead) and Dark's old outfit. So now Dark and I looked like old fashioned Links in mourning, and Vaati… well, let's just say that I was still questioning his fashion choices. It was his stuff we were using, though, so it wasn't as if I could complain. He was perfectly entitled to wearing whatever he wanted to wear.
Apparently, the only reason he wasn't growing his hair out to it's previous length as well was because he knew it was going to get in the way while fighting. And since we were going to be subduing a giant fire-breathing dragon soon, it was just as likely to get burnt as it was to get in his eyes.
"Y'know, if Vaati's outfit looks this feminine in dark purple rupee color, I shudder to think about what it must've looked like in lavender," Dark mused a few hours later as he settled down next to me on the roof. I laughed, a mental image flashing through my mind of my brother's old appearance.
"Yeah, he did look pretty… girly, I guess, is the best way to put it," I agreed. "You have no idea how long he spent getting ready in the morning. Great Farore, washing all that hair alone must've taken a good half hour."
"Thank the Goddesses he doesn't still do that," Dark chuckled as he leaned back on his hands with his legs extended out in front of him. "I don't think I'd be able to stand it."
I snorted. "Thankfully, I figured out pretty quick that if I disappeared somewhere for a while, he'd forget about me and dive into his crazy experiments or something. Ended up spending a lot of time both in the library and exploring Hyrule that way, actually."
Dark exhaled softly. "Wow. Sounds like your relationship was very different back then."
I nodded. "It was. Much more master-servant than it is now. To be honest, I definitely prefer it this way."
"So do I," Vaati chimed in as he floated down in a swirl of lavender wind. "You have no idea how lonely I was, and with the insanity ruining my logical thinking, that just made things worse."
I nodded in agreement, unsurprised by his arrival. "Yeah, you had some pretty bad days. I think there was this one time, um…" I squinted and racked my mind, trying to remember. "Oh, yeah. A couple weeks before the Oocca thing, you holed up in the lab and spent three days straight cobbling together some weird torture device thing that would supposedly gather Force Gems using nothing but magnetism. If I'm remembering right, I'm pretty sure it backfired spectacularly."
Vaati winced. "Ouch. Okay, I'll admit, that wasn't exactly one of my better ideas."
Dark raised an eyebrow. "Force Gems?"
Vaati waved a dismissive hand. "Eh, colored mini-pyramids that restored the power of the Four Sword, which got weakened when it was pulled out. They're not around anymore, I don't think. Not sure why."
"Oh," Dark said in understanding. Then, after a moment, he admitted, "Okay, I have no idea what you're talking about."
"That's alright, it's not important," Vaati replied.
A flock of birds wheeled and spun in wide loops overhead, a hundred tiny beings all moving as one. Then an aeralfos shot through them with jaws wide open and talons grasping for prey, scattering the flock save for an unlucky few who became dinner.
Hinges creaked, and Link poked his head out through the now-open window just above the roof. "Oh, here you guys are. Hey, Vaati, Midna has some questions for you. Um… something about spatial distortions in different types of teleportation? I don't know, she just wanted me to come find you." He pushed the window farther open and hoisted himself up to crouch lightly on the windowsill, silhouetted for a moment against the dark backdrop of the tower room behind him. Then he hopped down onto the roof, picking his steps carefully across the weathered stone, and sat down next to us.
A cloud of fire bloomed in an orange-red burst of light and heat somewhere in the distance, the product of Argorok's hunt for his evening meal. I hoped it wasn't another Oocca that had gotten roasted. Who was going to teleport us out of dungeons if they all got eaten, after all?
Roughly half a minute later, Midna floated over from the still-open window and immediately engaged Vaati in a complicated discussion on magical theory. She looked happier than she had a while, I'd noticed. It seemed that having a peer she could actually relate to in terms of magical abilities was good for her. I was glad. Over time, she'd grown on me, and I think she'd become good friends with all three of us. There was only so many times you could get thrown into life-or-death situations with people and not bond, after all.
A cold wind swirled across the roof, and I suppressed a shiver. Winter was coming, and the weather was quickly getting chillier. This time, though, unlike all the other winter's my brothers and I had survived over the years of this life, we knew for sure that we would have food, shelter, and warm fire to come back to. Vaati's flying castle was easily large enough for all of us and more.
"So," Link asked, once Midna and Vaati paused long enough for him to get a word in edgewise, "how are things going with, y'know," he gestured to the dark shape flying around over at the far end of the City in the Sky, "the dragon? Argorok?"
The Wind Mage cleared his throat, and turned to fully face the taller hylian. "Not good," he said bluntly. "As far as I can remember, I have never casted a purification spell in either of my lives. It wasn't the type of thing that I was interested in, as you can probably imagine."
This got a snicker from me, the only one who'd had firsthand experience with his… experiments, he called them.
Vaati pointedly ignored me, and continued, "However, I think I do know people who would have the knowledge to perform this sort of thing. The Sheikah Tribe. Unfortunately," he pulled out the map that Impaz had given to Dark back in the Hidden Village, "the last I heard of them, they were hiding deep in the Snowpeak Mountains. Somewhere called the 'Valley of Shadows', I believe."
Link frowned. "The Sheikah Tribe? Who are they?"
"They are- or were, according to rumor -a race of shadow folk who guarded the Royal Family and had an affinity for shadow-based magicks. Supposedly, they all either died out or were almost wiped out during a series of wars. That old lady, Impaz, from the Hidden Village? She's one of them. She gave us this map, and told us to seek out her tribe when we regained our memories," Vaati explained. "Even though they deal in darkness, that tribe has always been close to the Goddesses. Which is why I believe they would know how to remove darkness, just as they would probably know how to use it. Somehow, I think, that old woman knew we were going to need her tribe's help."
"Can we trust her?" Link asked, brow furrowed as he leaned over the dusty paper. "For that matter, actually, this map looks pretty old. Is it still accurate?"
Vaati shrugged. "As far as we can tell, yes. And I can't believe I'm saying this about an old woman we've only met twice, but I think we can trust her."
"The main problem with this, though," Dark interjected smoothly, "is that winter is coming. Snowpeak was cold enough when we went a few months ago, and that was in mid-late summer. We're just as likely to freeze to death as we are to actually find the Sheikah, which would be a feat in itself. They are called the Shadow Folk for a reason, y'know."
"Or," I continued, the three of us carrying on the same train of thought like three parts of a whole, "we could stay here. Hole up for the winter, with Vaati's spells and magic keeping us warm and safe. There's still food kept under stasis spells, and if we start running low we could always go down to the land and hunt. But that means that we'd also have to leave Argorok running wild all winter, and we don't know how much having that Mirror Shard in him is hurting him. What's more, Princess Zelda and Hyrule Castle are still behind that giant golden diamond barrier."
Link thought for a moment, before summarizing, "So basically, our choices are either risking our lives in the freezing mountains during the wintertime to find a tribe that consists of people who apparently as good at hiding as shadows, or playing it safe and staying here but possibly letting Argorok get even crazier and leaving Princess Zelda trapped for longer."
The three of us nodded. "Yeah, that sounds about right."
Midna spoke up, now. "Actually," she pointed out, demeanor uncharacteristically serious without a trace of her mischievous smirks or playful giggles, "it's not as big of a risk to go as you might think."
Four sets of eyes, two pairs of sapphire blue and two pairs of ruby red, turned towards her in interest.
The imp continued. "I can warp you from anywhere in the world to a warp point. Doesn't matter if we're in a blizzard of a sandstorm; as long as I know where you are and have enough magical power left I can get us all out. But," she cautioned, "I won't be able to get us back unless there's a warp point there. Which means that if we leave, we'd have to start all over again from the only warp point I currently have in the Snowpeak Mountains- the one by the tree where we went iceboarding with Yeto."
I sat back, blinked, and absorbed this new information. This meant that we would always have a safeguard, a contingency plan in case things went wrong. Which meant that an expedition to the mountains would be that much safer. I had known that she theoretically had this ability before, but… warping four people wasn't easy. Much less in harsh weather conditions, such as a snowstorm. I hadn't been sure if she could do it, so I hadn't considered it as a factor. It seemed, though, that she'd gotten stronger as well, and I trusted in her ability.
"Well," Dark mused, "that changes things. Then, Option One might actually be, well, an option."
Link nodded absently as he scrutinized the map, tracing a route along the inked-in mountains with one finger. "Hey," he said suddenly, "this route goes by Yeto and Yeta's mansion. I'm sure they'd let us shelter and restock on supplies there if we asked."
"True," Dark said. "Roughly estimating, how long do you think it would take for us to get to the valley?" he addressed Vaati, the most knowledgeable of us about weather patterns.
Vaati hummed, eyes becoming distant as his mind ran through calculations and estimations. "About… a week, I'd guess," he replied.
Link nodded decisively. "Well then," he said, "I suppose this means we're going back to Snowpeak."
"Holy s*** it's cold," Link hissed as we reformed in a flurry of twilit squares on the hilltop. Already the temperature was noticeably lower than it had been the first time we'd come.
"Hey, don't back out on us now," I teased as I flicked snow off one ear. We were all in our animal forms right now, dark fur standing out in stark contrast to the white landscape. Barring Vaati, whose dark-to-light color scheme helped him blend in- but only his top half.
"I'm not, I'm not," Link retorted. He shifted from paw to paw, fur fluffed out as his tail swished.
Dark snorted in amusement, as Midna slipped out of Link's shadow and pulled out the map. She was going to be the only who actually had opposable thumbs as we traveled, since we planned on staying in our animal forms for most of the trek, so we'd given her the map to hold for us.
"Okay, boys," she chirped in a high, giggly voice. "According to this, we're going northeast for about three miles before heading due north."
Link sneezed. "Which way is north again?" he muttered, looking up to squint at the sun before orienting himself accordingly. "This way."
"Alright," I barked with a canine grin. "Let's go find the people who probably spent a century or two trying not to be found!"
A couple days later, we sheltered for the night inside a small cave. Huddling around the fire, we had all shifted back to our animal forms after becoming hylian just long enough to start the fire and pull out food from our supplies.
"Is it a bad sign that I can't feel my paws? Or my nose?" I muttered, shivering. Outside, the wind howled an eerie tune. The fire flickered, and I shifted my body in an attempt to block the worst of the wind from it.
"It's only a bad sign if it's permanent," Dark replied as he rubbed his body along a low-hanging ridge from the ceiling to dislodge some of the ice that had formed on his back. Once the largest chunks had cracked and fallen off, he shook himself and bits of ice flew.
Another howl rose again from outside, but this time it wasn't the wind.
"Wolfos or wolves?" I asked as my ears shot up, twitching and angling as I tried to pinpoint the sound. It came again, long and mournful. There was sadness in that howl, a deep-seated cry that echoed through the frozen air.
"Wolves," Link answered. "That's… I think one of their pack died."
Several other voices joined the first, higher-pitched as their keening melody dipped and rose, weaving a tune as easily as any Castle Town fiddler. I felt inexplicably sad, just listening to it. With a slight jolt, I realized that the wind had stopped, and it was only the wolves who were singing across their frozen home.
"Is it weird," Vaati murmured quietly, "that I feel like an intruder? It's like that time we watched a funeral for a guy we never knew, and we felt so… out of place? Like we were trespassing on some sacred area, and we knew it?"
"It's not weird," Dark replied in an equally hushed tone. His ears flicked, and his eyes were staring out into the darkness. "They're mourning for one of their own. The best thing we can do now is keep quiet, and move on quickly when the morning comes."
The unseen wolves howled.
"Great Goddesses I'm going snow-blind," Vaati growled as he squinted out into the vast expanse of white. The sun was beating down on us yet sharing none of its warmth, just a weak light that was caught and reflected by the pristine white snow. It made the entire terrain glow like we were staring into the sun itself, ruining visibility.
I looked out into the narrow mountain pass we were trekking towards, a mere sliver of dark rock in the distance. We were still a good ten miles out, at least. I groaned inwardly, but was thankful for the fact that at least it wasn't snowing.
Midna giggled, high and bright from her spot within Link's shadow. I bit back an annoyed growl. Lucky her. She got to sit in the darkness and do nothing all day.
Dark, who was taking point, suddenly stopped in his tracks. "Wait," he muttered, nose up as he scented the air. His hackles rose as the fur along his spine bristled. "We're not alone."
Right at that moment, a pack of wolfos rose from the snow and attacked.
"Goddesses d***it Shadow," Vaati panted as we sprinted for the shelter of a nearby cave, "you just had to pull out one of your bombs and cause an avalanche. Nice going."
"Well excuse me for using one of my signature attacks," I retorted as the rumbling of falling snow behind us grew louder. "But hey, at least I'm not the one who called up a Goddesses d***ed tornado!"
Vaati snarled, but before he could snap back, Dark turned and growled at us. "Argue later, outrun avalanche now!" he barked.
Later, when we had reached the safety of a cave, our oldest brother turned, glared at both of us, and said frostily, "For the record, it was both of your faults."
We cringed guiltily.
"Alright!" Midna cheered happily. "We're almost there, boys! Just ten more miles!"
"Easy for you to say," Link grumbled as he lifted his paws high to step through the several-feet-deep layer of soft powder. With every step we all sank up to our chests, until I'd gotten fed up and decided to just fly above the snow. Dark and Vaati had soon done the same, which left Link as the only one still pushing his way through the thick powder.
Midna opened her mouth to reply- but didn't quite get the chance as suddenly, three pale figures dressed all in white appeared in front of us. They seemed to simply blur into existence, skin completely covered except for their eyes.
But their eyes… their eyes were a brilliant, gleaming, crimson red.
Their eyes were the eyes of the Sheikah.
