A/N: Thanks to ZeldaRubix and SuccessfulFailure23 for reviewing last chapter!
ZeldaRubix: Thanks ZR! And yeah, it may already be obvious that Azelon's quite the fan of Link haha. But I like Link to be cool and carefree, so that's what I'm going for haha.
SuccessfulFailure23: Thanks for reviewing! And... well you may get a bit of clarification in this chapter. If not, like you said, time will tell! And I'm glad you guys like Link in this story, but I must thank Norkix for giving him a bit more of a personality in that chapter than I did hehe.
I hope Norkix doesn't mind but I might just mention him every chapter from here on out in these author's notes! It's the least I can do with him catching my mistakes all the time; that and being an awesome guy in general lol. So go and check him out if you get the chance! Really! After you read this chapter go to his profile! DO IT!
III – Eon Part 3
As I woke up, I smelt cinders of fire slowly fading away in my nostrils, filling my mind with a strong feeling of nostalgia. I had the most beautiful dream; that of attending a barbecue with many people from Hogsnest. The pigs were plentiful, and sometimes the numbers would become too much for the farmer. As a result, whoever had a surplus of pigs would host a barbecue for most of the village… at least, enough people to pick four whole hogs clean to the bone. More often than not, after the ale had been broken out, there would be a fistfight, too. It tended to be over within five minutes, with no injuries being too serious since they were a tough bunch. Also-
"Ah, so you're awake, I see," Link said from behind me. I reflexively tensed.
How did he know I was awake by looking at my back?!
"Uh, yeah..." I yawned, rolling over to see what he was doing. He was in the process of striking flints again, sparks landing harmlessly on the grass he had laid out on top of a wood pile. I could tell simply by looking that it was never going to work. The grass was too damp. I imagined he had simply picked some up while there was still morning dew.
I sat up, dusting off my cloak. Link's brow was starting to glisten in the light, and his flint-striking grew more feverish.
"Come on..." he muttered to himself. His hair flopped over one eye but he ignored it.
"Um, how long have you been striking those?"
"Oh… not… important," he said between strikes.
"It won't light, you know. That grass is far too wet."
"But it's dry outside the cave!" he said indignantly, striking fiercely over and over again. As usual, sparks flew but nothing occurred.
"Why are you trying to light a fire now, anyway?" I asked.
"Because I want to have a hot meal for once. Don't feel like eating nuts and berries for another breakfast."
His hair finally got the best of him and he swept it back, wiping his sweat as he did so. I looked at him. His eyes were concentrating very hard on his work, eyebrows like a seagull spreading its wings over two intense orbs. Looking at the grass again, it would be hours until the water from grass would evaporate and he would get a good spark going. Especially in the cold weather that was going on now. It was actually quite anomalous. After all, it was coming to the beginning of March soon. I would expect rain showers and the odd storm, but not snowfall.
I stood and sighed, stretching my spine, hearing dozens of clicks travel up it as my vertebrae shifted into gear. New day, new posture.
Link was still striking at the flints, muttering something about 'blasted stones' or something of that nature. Time to put him out of his misery.
"Um, Link? Don't worry about that for now. I can get us some good material from outside, if you'd prefer?"
Link sighed heavily and dropped the stones, defeated.
"Well I'm sure not gonna get anything done with this stuff. Thanks for offering, Azelon." He smiled, wiping his brow and dusting off his hands.
I smiled back, glad to be of service to the Hero of Twilight. That title made me internally squeal with girly delight. My Goddesses, I'm surprised I could even contain myself after talking to him on such a personal level, let alone offering assistance to him!
"Okay, be right back!" I exclaimed, a little too excitedly, and darted off outside the cave.
"Don't get lost!" Link shouted back.
I scoffed self-assuringly. I didn't just explore around Hogsnest, you know. I explored quite a large radius around the village, seeing Bokoblins and trailing them back to their camps. Sometimes I would even be gone a day or two, being forced to camp out on a branch with only my thin cloak to cover me from the winter winds. I didn't have many spectacular talents like swordplay or archery, but I knew what I was good at, and that was recon and survival skills.
As I left the cave, the wind tussled my hair. Link's horse snuffled and looked at me with those round, brown eyes. I was unsure as to how Link procured such a magnificent horse, but I'd be damned if I didn't say it was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen. The cold wind made its hair look like it was shimmering in the light. I walked up to it and patted it softly. It snuffled and leant towards me in a display of trust. I didn't know much about horses but I knew this was a pretty good sign that you're in for a good relationship with one.
I waved goodbye to the horse and sauntered off in search for some nice dry grass. Link really couldn't have picked a worse day to light a fire; there was still patches of unmelted snow strewn across the field. It didn't make it any better that there was frost across the entire area, making for an eerily lovely grey morning. I thrived in the cold. My mother often called me a lizard. I didn't have the heart to tell her she was using the analogy wrong.
I had walked for about five minutes, craning my head to find even one little patch of preferably dead brown grass, but there was nothing. The air was so damp that the wood wouldn't be dry enough to catch the sparks. Nothing for it. I had to go back.
Suddenly, I heard a harsh voice, shouting commands in a nasally, beastly language. It was coming from the woods about a minute's walk away. I could recognise that language as if it were my own; the tongue of the Bokoblin. I strained my ears to try and catch some words from the speaker.
"Don't drop… need… power… throw that..."
The words wouldn't form a sentence, and it didn't help that the wind ruffling through my clothes was causing a bunch of conflicting noise. I needed to get closer.
Without thinking, I felt myself running towards the woods. When I reached the first tree, I crouched and leant against it, turning my body so as to get a better angle for the sound to project to my ears.
"No, don't play with the- ah, for goodness' sake, you lot are useless. They could have given me a group that obeyed commands more readily," a nasal voice called out in Bokoblin. It was a very rough dialect, common in the leaders of the packs. At least that's what I found during my research.
"Come now! If you're going to be ready for the raid you have to learn how to use these stones well!"
Raid? My heart's pace quickened. I finally caught them in the act!
"But sir," a smaller yet equally nasal voice whimpered, "No matter what we do they just won't work. They just stay the same."
"You're just not using it properly. Give it here!" the authoritative nasal voice commanded. A slapping noise echoed through the branches. Then - "See? Nothing to it."
"Oh. Thanks sir."
I was confused, yet curious. What were they talking about? Stones? That couldn't be… the aevium?!
Curiosity overrode any common sense and I dashed out from cover, running through the trees and following the voices in an attempt to get a closer look at the group. After two minutes, I spotted a wagon in a clearing, surrounded by a haphazard formation of Bokoblins. A few were swinging crude wooden clubs. One group were fighting and pulling each other's hair, but no-one took any notice. Others too were sitting and talking near the horses, and one – who I assumed was the leader of the group – was standing on the back of the wagon, while six Bokoblin sat in front of him, mesmerised. They were holding some lumps of rock. I felt goosebumps.
"Now this discovery is something of incredible importance to us, the Bokoblin. It is our ticket to greater advancement in technology and power! Ever since Knight Gaarda found these-"
Yeah, more like stole, and killed an old guy in the process.
"-We now have the means to a higher power, one otherwise only accessible by the Gods themselves!"
He held his stone aloft. It was noticeably larger than the 'students''.
"Watch carefully now..." he said, cradling his rock like a newborn son. Unlike what any parent would have then done, he smacked the rock hard.
For a second, nothing happened. Then… the stone began to pulse with a vivid blue pattern. The Bokoblin's face lit up with excitement and the stone begin to quiver and pulsate.
Suddenly, a wave of blue energy pulsed outwards, enough to reach the edge of the clearing but not where I was hiding. I had to shield my eyes, for even in the daylight the pulse of light stung my eyes as it travelled outwards. When I looked back, my jaw dropped to the ground. The leader of the Bokoblin had settled the rock down and jumped down from the wagon. The stone continued to glow and pulse with that pattern of light. Everything appeared normal. Except it wasn't.
The other Bokoblin apart from the leader had literally frozen. Seriously, they were not moving a muscle. Once chatting, fighting and talking, they were suddenly stilled. The fighting Bokoblin were completely stuck, one in the process of doing a flying kick. He was stuck in the air, keeping the motion completely still. The horses were still too, one even paused in mid-blink. And not only were the Bokoblins stuck, but it seemed everything in their environment was as well. Some water droplets that were flicked from the branches overhead were now hovering above the students' heads, and they too were stuck in that awestruck gaze.
The leader moved to each student, delicately picking the rocks from their grasp and placing them in his satchel. Then, for good measure it seemed, he strolled over to the fighting pair of Bokoblin and gave the flying one a swift kick to the groin. I winced. Even though they had tough skin, nothing could protect you from the nutshot.
Satisfied with his work, the leader sat down on the end of the wagon, giving the stone a hard slap as he plonked himself down. The blue light slowly faded and ceased to exist, and slowly things started moving again. The water droplets fell on the heads of the students, they gasped in amazement, and the flying Bokoblin collapsed in a heap with a yell.
"Ow, my balls!" he screeched, clutching his berries with a hand. The other Bokoblin backed off, knowing what just happened and having the utmost sympathy for his fighting buddy.
"And there you have it. Though you probably wouldn't know what happened if I hadn't showed you the time stone first." Time stone? "I want you to practice with these. There's plenty to go around, but try not to lose them, of course."
The students nodded excitedly, desperate to get to work on finding out what secrets the aevium held. I was stunned. Link was telling the truth! Not that I doubted him.
I had to get back, and fast. I had just witnessed first-hand what aevium could do. It was like a frightening glimpse into the future, a future with burning buildings and screaming children, the bodies of the murdered strewn across courtyards . This could spell disaster worse than the dark time of Twilight.
I sprinted away as fast and as quietly as I could, knowing full well that those Bokoblin would have killed me straight away. Unless you can lie through your teeth to them in their own language that you're simply a traveller, they won't take any chances.
I remembered the vague direction of where I was meant to go, so thankfully I hadn't gotten lost as Link feared. Soon Link's horse came into view, visibly alarmed that there was a frantic man sprinting towards the cave in a panic. I entered, shouting for Link with a voice of fear, panic and excitement.
"What, what, what?" he asked in as panicky a voice as mine. I was so out of breath that my words barely formed a coherent structure, let alone a sentence.
"I… was… there… aevium… Bokoblins..." I gasped, doubling over. Thankfully Link was already calm.
"Easy there, Azelon. Have some water, you look like you need it," he stated with an eyebrow raised.
"Uhh… huh… thanks..." I panted, forcing some soothing liquid down my gullet. Link looked at me with amusement, arms folded.
"What happened to you? You were out there for at least half an hour doing Goddess knows. I take it you couldn't find any kindling?"
I shook my head, taking large gulps of water and trying to calm down. Not only had I seen aevium in action, but it was everything I had dreamed of… and feared. It was too big of a discovery for me not to be both excited and frightened by.
"No… no, I… at first I was looking for the grass. But… then I heard… Bokoblin voices so… I went out there to investigate," I wheezed. Had I always been this out of shape? Maybe my body just didn't agree with sprinting.
Link looked at me with genuine interest on his face, which was now covering over his earlier amusement.
"Carry on, carry on," he beckoned me to keep talking. "What else did you see?"
So I told him all I could remember. About the fighting Bokoblin, the students and the leader. He nodded as I told the story, even asking questions throughout it. He even laughed when I told of the leaders crunching one of his pack's balls.
I couldn't quite get a grasp on it. I was talking about a Bokoblin's bruised testicles as the Hero of Twilight laughed and slapped his knee. It had been such a surreal last couple of days that I was sure I was going to faint from brain overload.
When I finished my story, Link was quiet for a few seconds, narrowing his eyes and placing a hand on his chin in a pondering thought.
"So this 'aevium'," he whispered wistfully. "What did it look like again?"
"Well at first it was black… kind of like coal but less brittle-looking, if that makes sense. And then when he hit it, it sort of glowed with this weird blue pattern. And it kind of pulsed, although that could have been me imagining things."
"I don't think you were," Link stated plainly. He rummaged in his bag for a second. What he pulled out almost made me fall off my tree stump in shock.
"Y-Y-Y-You have aevium too?!" I yelled in disbelief.
Link grinned and passed the small stone from palm to palm.
"Cool, huh? I nabbed a few of these from the scientists back at Hyrule Castle while they weren't looking."
"Whuh? Link, you can't just take something like aevium from the castle! We don't even know what might happen if we misuse it!" I was also in shock that the Hero of Twilight would take something without permission, though I didn't vocalise my opinion on that matter. That was for another time.
"Oh, pshaw," Link scoffed, waving a dismissive hand. "I think after my services to Hyrule I should be entitled to have some fun, wouldn't you agree?"
I was stunned, really. Link had turned out to be someone completely different than what I had imagined. If anything it was quite reassuring not to feel like I had to be different around him.
"Well, I suppose so..." I muttered in a defeated tone. Hero of Twilight or not, I still couldn't deal with him taking the stones from the scientists. He could tell from my face that I wasn't best pleased.
"Oh, what's with that look?" Link said with a pout. "I bet you anyone who knows about aevium would sneak right in and nab it if they had the chance."
"Yes, but not you, Link!"
The corners of Link's mouth twitched. He couldn't hold it in. That laugh he had been holding for the past few minutes. A real knee-slapper, he was.
"Oh, the look on your face..." he breathed between chuckles. "You were so serious about the whole thing. I'm glad I picked you for this mission."
Oh yeah, my mission. I still had no idea what that entailed.
"Listen to me now," he said in a more serious tone, regaining his composure. "There were some things I couldn't tell you yesterday, but you can hear them now." I leant forward and listened to what he had to say.
"I don't know if you already knew this or not, but I'm actually part of the Hylian Guard."
Come to think of it, I remember seeing his cloak, with that embroidered Hylian crest on the back. Yes, that's where I recognised it from: the Hylian Guard.
"As part of the Hylian Guard, I've been tasked along with everyone else to go out and look for this aevium." He held out the stone to emphasize his point. "And like everyone else I've been spending years trying to find it, to no avail."
He flicked his hair up from his forehead. I mused in my head that he really should have gone to see a hairdresser in Hyrule Castle Town.
"But I've come to realise that we've been going about this all wrong. We're never going to find the stash if we just keep intercepting little Bokoblin nobodies. We have to find the big guys. And to do that means having to communicate with the Bokoblins we do capture." He scratched the back of his neck. "That's where you come in."
"Me?" I knew some of the Bokoblin language but to hell with communicating with those beasts!
He sat forward and placed his chin on his hand. "You should realise that Hogsnest is actually a really important village for Hyrule Castle Town. It supplies them with a lot of food. Especially for festivals organised by the royal family."
"Really?" I asked, feeling a little proud of my humble, pig-filled origins.
Link nodded. "And as such, the royal family talked extensively with the mayor of Hogsnest with discussions of trade and such."
"They spoke with the mayor?"
He nodded again. "Yes, and so did I. Long story short, turns out you're one of the best recon agents in the business. And quite well-versed in many different languages, no less."
"He said that about me?" I beamed in awe. I could feel my head swelling with egotistical pleasure.
"Yep, and that's why I need you," Link said, holding out his hand. I grasped it firmly, as my father always taught, and gave it a good shake. "We're gonna capture some Bokoblins and get some information out of them. Hopefully we can get some good stuff soon. The royal family are getting desperate."
I nodded in understanding, but something came back to mind.
"Wait, capturing Bokoblins? I'm not a good fighter, you know."
He waved his hand dismissively again. "You needn't worry about that. I can do all the capturing. But it would be nice to teach you some moves so you could come along too. I prefer to fight alongside people, really."
I didn't know whether or not I should have been looking forward to that, so I smiled and nodded politely. I had never had a fight in my life, so it would be a new experience for me.
"Besides, and this is a little embarrassing for me to admit..." Link muttered self-consciously, twiddling his thumbs and looking down. "I haven't the foggiest idea about survival skills."
Now that I was surprised at.
"But… you're the great Hero of Twilight! Surely you had to camp out on some weeks just to kill some monsters you've been chasing or something, right?"
He shook his head. "I was always near accommodation, so I guess I never had the need to learn."
I shook my head too. "That's amazing. I never thought of it that way."
"That's where you come in!" he exclaimed. "The mayor also mentioned you had a knack for survival skills. I mean, just this morning you already knew about the grass being wet simply by looking at it." He looked down again. "Like I said, I have no idea."
My head swelled up a bit more. "Well, I suppose I do have a bit of a talent for that kind of stuff." I felt my face heat up at the mere mention of my talents, and cursed my brain for acting so childish.
"Then it's settled!" Link exclaimed.
"I'm sorry, what is?"
"I don't know how long it's gonna be, but you and I are gonna team up to find this aevium source. With both of our skills combined we're sure to succeed."
"We're not?" I felt a rising excitement coming from my stomach. Team up? With the Hero of Twilight?! I mean I know he told me to treat him like everyone else but my Goddesses does he make it hard.
Link gave me a toothy smile. "Hell no, we're not. After all, as long as someone knows how to make a fire, you can go to sleep knowing you've got a good night ahead of you."
He extended his hand again, which I shook again. He smiled at me.
"Looks like you're on fire duty from now on, huh, Mr. Survivalist?"
I laughed and groaned inwardly at the same time.
I hope I'm not on 'laundry duty' too...