Chapter 15: History of the Guardians

Author's note: Sorry about my lateness! I'm a bit behind schedule…

Well, I got no reviews with any preference. DON'T I HAVE ANY FANS OUT THERE? WAAAAAHHHHHHHH!

Sorry. I overreacted there. I know at least a few people are reading this story and like it. Well, besides that, since I have no preference about the 5000 year freeze, I'm going to write a few chapters on it. Just review and let me know when to stop.

Also, this chapter has to deal more with my sort of partial OC characters (meaning that some might've already appeared in games, just with new duties and powers), the Guardians. It goes into detail about their histories, but that's going to be important in the next few chapters.

For those five thousand years, only Anjean was awake, in her silent, seemingly endless vigil. However, that didn't mean that she just stared into space all day and all night, either.

No. Anjean researched. Anjean prepared. Anjean was very busy, actually. She knew her duty: to prepare the tower for Zelda. To prepare for the return of the Sages and Guardians. To prepare for Link, the hero of lore, to reawaken. And there was much to be done.

Anjean knew very little about the Guardians. She knew the Sages very well, but the Guardians were an enigma to her. As a result, she spent most of her research time on them, learning about them as well as she could. The royal Hylian library had been destroyed, but Anjean had tracked down one of the most extensive and secret libraries ever known to Hylians: the library of a man known as Shad.

Unfortunately, Shad was frozen, as everyone else was. however, Anjean was able to gain access to his library all the same. Thankfully, it seemed that Shad and all of his ancestors, after they discovered the sky dwellers, had moved on to the Guardians. Anjean found that basically an entire room of Shad's underground library complex was devoted to the Guardians. So, for a major portion of the freeze, Anjean read about the guardians.

Book after book had been devoted to them, yet the books had never been published. All the authors had instead hidden the books. Anjean hadn't known that Shad's grandmother was a very successful thief, who had willingly devoted her life to stealing the books for her husband, then later her son and grandson. Shad wasn't as innocent and harmless as he seemed, then!

Anjean, however, was the one who benefitted from these books. She read them with the voracity of a young person cramming for a test. As a result, before too long had passed, she was as knowledgeable on the subject of the Guardians as she was on the Sages. She'd also uncovered some fascinating information.

She'd already known that the Sages were sort of the protectors of Hyrule, but hadn't known that their duty was also to protect whatever incarnation of Zelda there was at the time. The Guardians, meanwhile, were vastly talented in skills related to whatever they were the Guardian of. They were also the protectors of the Hylian hero known as Link.

Anjean had discovered to her shock that the current Link was fated to be strangely close to the Guardians. After all, for the first time, Link was related to all six of them.

Most of the time, the Link of the time was related to one or two at best, more likely none. However, the current Link, Link Castellan-Rose, was related to all six of them, being from the same family: the De Nyssa family. There were three branches: De Nyssa, Castellan, and Rose. It seemed, to Anjean at least, that somewhere along the lines of Link's ancestors, a Castellan and a De Nyssa had married, while a Rose and a De Nyssa had as well, and eventually, a descendant of each had married and had had Link. It also appeared that each of these ancestors of Link had been in the immediate family of each Guardian.

This became more and more shocking to her as she learned about each Guardian. They all seemed so different from Link, except for their incredible stories.

The first Guardian she learned about was actually the only one who had had to come to the aid of one of the Links before. Linebeck, Guardian of Oceans, had at the time been a real chicken. He'd been a real coward at first, who's initial contribution to Link's quest was to cart him from island to island for the sake of treasure and wishes. However, he'd bravely stood up to Bellum in the end, and though it did more harm than good, he made a brave stab at Bellum with the Phantom Sword, driving Bellum to Veil the two together. However, the Link of the time had managed to defeat Bellum and save Linebeck. However, Linebeck wasn't made a Guardian for that. He was made a Guardian after Bellum attempted to reincarnate himself. In New Hyrule, Bellum had tried to attack Jolene, whom Linebeck had fallen in love with and married, to take her form. However, Linebeck had attacked Bellum, being mortally wounded in the process, and prevented Jolene's murder. With his dying breath, Farore, the patroness of both Link and the Guardians, had made him her first Guardian. Jolene, however, hadn't had as good luck. After her son (and Linebeck's) was born, she left for the Great Sea, never to be heard from again.

The second Guardian had been made only a little bit later: Aurora, Guardian of Islands. She was Linebeck's twin sister, and had never really gotten over the death of her twin. She'd settled on Mercay Island, where she'd eventually entered the Temple of the Ocean King as its premiere priestess. She became the spokesperson for the islanders, so that they told her what was wrong and she'd tell the Ocean King what could be done to fix the issue. Any concerns the islanders had, they took to her. On the flip side, she ensured that they honored the Ocean King properly, so he wouldn't become angry with them. He was a pretty lenient god, but still… it was better that he didn't get angry. And for years, Aurora Castellan (Linebeck and Aurora were of the Castellan branch) had made sure that peace reigned in the Great Sea. However, all good things must end. The Temple of the Ocean King became corrupted once more with Bellum's energy. Aurora was forced to become Bellum's priestess then, because he now controlled the temple. However, she pleaded with the Ocean King, begging him to kill her, so that she wouldn't serve as the link between a king of evil and the islands she'd come to love. Instead of killing her, however, the Ocean King spoke with Ciela, Farore's messenger, who talked to Farore on his behalf. Before she could do anything, however, Bellum attacked Aurora, learning of her 'betrayal', as he called it. Before he could lay a hand (or tentacle) on Aurora, Farore transformed her into the Guardian of Islands. The people no longer prayed to the Ocean King to save their islands. Why would they have to, when they now had a Guardian of Oceans and a Guardian of Islands to protect them and all other incarnations of Hyrule. The Ocean King wasn't too happy, but was placated when they ousted Bellum and restored him; not as premiere deity (besides the Goddesses), but as their king. He was fine, then.

The third Guardian came from a different time and part of Hyrule. Karola De Nyssa was from the time of Twilight. He had lived in Castle Town and had worked as one of Zelda's finest guards. He wasn't the most gifted with a spear or a sword, the main weapons of the Hylian guard. However, he more than made up for it with his skill with a bow. He was by far the finest archer in the land. Some said he was Link's purple clone, Vio, reincarnated (He wasn't, but he was Vio's descendant. After that Four Swords Adventure, Link's clones had disappeared and were rumored to have had families of their own). He could hit a cherry on a branch fifty feet away, and was charming besides. Zelda was so fond of him that she made him the captain of her guard. She even proposed marriage to him once; not that she loved him, she just saw him as a possible king. However, he'd gracefully declined. "Find your true love, princess," he'd told her at the time. "As I shall find mine." Not even a day later, Zant, acting for Ganondorf, had taken control of Hyrule. Of course, Karola hadn't been in the first fight. His ultimate duty was to defend his princess. However, when Zant's minions attempted to attack her, Karola had gone down fighting. How he had fought, taking out as many shadow beasts as he could before one struck him in the heart. Death was very slow, thankfully for Farore. She changed him into one of the Guardians as well, the Guardian of Warriors.

Karola had a sister as well, Heole. She was but a year older than he, but the two practically thought with the same mind, even though their areas of expertise were vastly different. She was an adept sorceress, while he was an archer. However, she dressed in armor, mainly because her best friend Ashei did. But no armor could protect her from poison. Heole was a very proud woman, besides being a little odd, and constantly kept a vial of poison around her neck, in case events didn't go the way she wanted them to. One day, when she was looking at Hyrule castle from on top of her roof, she noticed that Zant was storming the palace with his army. Realizing that Karola was in there, as well as that the humans were vastly outnumbered by the shadow beasts, she vowed that she'd never live in a country that was ruled by Zant the usurper and drank the poison. It was said that even as Karola was hit in the heart by the shadow beast, the poison entered Heole's veins. However, Farore, noticing her prodigious skill with magic, decided that Heole was a valuable asset and turned her into a guardian as well. She and her brother were reunited in the Sacred Realm, where it was said that even after she became a guardian, she kept a vial of poison around her neck.

The fifth guardian was perhaps the most remarkable. Selaya Rose had extremely mixed heritage, almost an experiment of sorts. His time period was also strange. As the time of Twilight and the time of Flooding were two different alternatives (though by the current time period, the timelines had merged back together), they were sort of two universes. These two universes were connected in some small places, and where Selaya lived was one of those places. His mother, who Anjean discovered, to her surprise, was a girl named Luda, daughter of Renado (it was from this Renado and Luda that Link's friend, the shaman and his daughter got their names). This Luda's father, Renado, was an adept healer, and was an expert on healing all races of Hyrule. Though he hadn't known it, his healing qualities were an inherent trait of the Sheikah, his race, though he'd been raised as a Hylian. He'd developed particular affection for a Zora woman once, and though their relationship was frowned upon by the majority of Hyrule, they married in secret. The Zora woman died in childbirth of their only daughter, Luda. Luda grew up with almost no traces of her mixed genealogy, and one day met a young man who, like her, was bi-racial. He thought he was Hylian as well, but in reality was half Twili. The two fell in love, and with secret prodding from Farore, married. Their son Selaya seemed normal, but Renado,the only one who knew Luda and her husband's true heritage, offered to raise Selaya and his eldest sister Vasilia, who both showed their true heritage more clearly than their siblings. Selaya had a very happy, albeit very training-filled childhood with his sister Vasilia. However, on Selaya's seventeenth birthday, Bellum, back for more, attacked him and corrupted him with evil energy. Vasilia, his sister, who loved him more than she loved anyone else, was forced to kill him in hopes that Bellum might be killed as well. However, Bellum got away. Before Selaya could die, Farore transformed him into the Guardian of Light.

Vasilia was torn apart by her role in what she thought was Selaya's death. She did nothing but cry for weeks on end afterwards, though Renado tried to comfort her. As a matter of fact, nothing could console her. Farore realized this, however, and turned her into the sixth and final Guardian of hers, the Guardian of Chivalry and Healing. Farore also made Vasilia the leader of the Guardians. When she was reunited with Selaya, however, none of this mattered.

And for all of the Links to follow, the Guardians defended them to their utmost abilities. However, according to a prophecy Anjean read, they'd been kidnapped by Bellum, corrupted by his wicked energy, and sealed within six different temples, each devoted to one of them. And it would be up to Link to rescue them.

Anjean sighed. She hoped that Link didn't turn on them as he had with Vio.