The Plateau had seemed large, while Link was there, but it was becoming increasingly clear as he explored the area around the Plateau that it was not in fact very large at all… at least, not compared to the great size of Hyrule as a whole.

There were certainly more signs of the corruption caused by the great enemy, that much was immediately clear. There were more Bokoblins, there were Moblins and Lizalfos… there were devastated ruins where towns had once stood, half-collapsed back into stone, and great bridges with not a soul using them.

There were also several Koroks, as well, but that was more of a general thing, and Link had sniffed out half-a-dozen more seeds before having to change his plans very suddenly when a giant rock beast rose out of the ground.

Link could have fought it, but as he was right now he didn't feel especially ready to do so. So, prudently, he didn't.


Twenty minutes later, Link glared at a chest.

It wasn't that it was a chest at all that was making him glare. He'd already discovered that between the Slate and his own facility with a swift kick he could apparently open any chest – whether it had been underwater for decades, or buried in a shrine for an amount of time he wasn't clear on at all.

In this case, though, the chest was on top of a pole at least twenty feet high.

Link kept glaring for a long moment, then had an idea. He took out the Slate, flicking through the half-dozen weapons he'd stashed in it to take out a farmer's pitchfork, then backed off with one end of the pitchfork in his muzzle. That done, he accelerated into a loping run, then stabbed the tines of the pitchfork into the ground and did his very best to pole vault up to the treasure chest.

It only just didn't work, and Link went sailing past before snapping out the Paraglider and saving himself from a painful crash.

A bit more thought ensued, then Link muttered something and scrolled through the Slate again. This time he brought out an explosive arrow which he held in his jaws, tossed his head, and blasted the chest clean off the pillar.

Whoever had put it up there really hadn't given much thought to how anyone was going to get to it. Especially a wolf, though Link might have been biased there.


Not all chests were on top of pillars, which was fortunate, and Link got several nice things from chests around the north-east side of the Plateau.

He also got several bows, which were basically useless, but the thought was what counted. Night fell as he searched, though, and after a double-check to make sure he'd cleared out all the Bokoblins and Moblins in his immediate area Link sat down on top of a hill and opened the Slate to the map screen.

The map only really showed the Great Plateau itself. Since it hadn't shown anything before Link had activated the towers, it stood to reason that activating a tower would show the area around that tower… but that would mean climbing, and the idea of getting that high was enough to make Link want to put it off for as long as was reasonably practical.

It also, however, showed a little yellow dot which was apparently where he could find Impa. It wasn't much use for navigating, but it was a bit like taking a compass bearing, so Link thought he could probably work with it.

"What's that?"

Link turned, surprised.

Because what he'd heard had been the barks of a wolf, and yet he'd understood it.

He tilted his head in confusion, ears flicking slightly, and saw there were several wolves approaching. One of them was in front, the others hanging back a little, though even the one in front – the biggest one – was still smaller than Link was.

"And why are you so big?" they added.

Link tried to reply reflexively by speaking, and what came out wasn't Hylian speech – but it was wolf speech.

"I don't know," he replied. "I woke up like this about… a day and a half ago."

"Big?" the wolf checked.

"A wolf," Link replied. "And this is something I use to guide me."

Now he thought about it, he hadn't actually slept yet. He hadn't even felt tired yet.

It was a strange thing to realize that he wasn't even tired after being on the go for thirty-six hours, but then again it was a strange thing to do to wake up as a wolf. Or speak wolf.

Given that Link had amnesia anyway, he should probably just go with the flow until he found someone who could let him know what was weird. Preferably someone who wasn't the ghost of a king, now he came to think of it.

"Why would you need that?" the wolf asked.

"Is he here to take our territory?" another member of the pack asked.

"I'm getting there!" the first wolf replied. "Don't provoke him, he's huge!"

Link shook his head. "I'm moving on," he said. "I don't know when yet, but I won't be staying around here."

Then there was a rattling sound, as some skeletal Bokoblins began to pull themselves out of the ground.

Link flicked the Slate to the weapon storage mode, pulled out a hammer, and dealt with the Stalkoblins, but for some reason by the time he'd finished knocking them about the wolves had disappeared.

It was a pity, really. He'd had some questions.


Link examined the strange object he'd found in a chest, which looked sort of like a pair of wide, staring eyes in a heart-shaped base with multicoloured spikes sticking out of it, then shrugged and put it in the Slate along with most of the other things he'd found so far.

For some reason, only so many weapons could fit, but Link had put a lot of various foodstuffs in there already and there was no warning about a possible limit.

While he had the Slate out, he checked the map, then looked off through the morning gloom and decided that the best landmark for where he wanted to go was probably… that tower over there.

He stashed the Slate again, then began to pace through the pre-dawn light. Southeast first, to the road, then cross-country a little way, and turning due east towards the tower.

Link had intended to accelerate to a proper ground-eating lope, but he didn't have much time before he had to slow down again for a bridge, and as he did he spotted an armed Hylian leaning on the side of the bridge – his attention to the north, on the water or on something in the distance.

Interested, he tilted his head, and was about to make a noise to alert the Hylian to his presence when the man began speaking.

"Ah…" he said. "I'm used to bad omens, but… I don't know."

Link made a curious noise, and the man shrugged.

"It's a good time for you to come by," he said. "I'm tired of talking to myself."

He pointed. "See those towers?"

Link reached up with a forepaw, then pulled himself into position to look in the same direction, and nodded.

"Mm?" he added.

"They just came out of nowhere," the man said. "Out of the ground, all over the place… well, I've not met anyone from the Rito lands in the last few days, or anything like that! But I've seen plenty of them, glowing in the night, and it sure seems like they're all over Hyrule. And with those strange mechanical monsters around… those weird shrine places that started glowing all of a sudden… makes you wonder if it's the end times, right?"

Link felt vaguely guilty for having scared someone so much.

"Brigo's the name, by the way," the man said, turning to look – then jumped, almost dropping his spear. "You're… you're a…"

Link tilted his head. "Rrf?"

"A wolf!" Brigo said.

Now Link felt like it was all a bit of an anticlimax.

After all, he'd already known that.

Shrugging, he pushed off from the bridge. Then he got out his Slate, put down an apple for the man to have, and loped off into the dawn.


Link did not like towers.

Specifically, he did not like Sheikah towers.

There was every reason to appreciate the benefits of travelling to the top of them, of course. They'd been around for a tremendously long time and still worked just fine, and they were part of the best way he could find his way around Hyrule without having to keep a mental map of the country in his head based on his own experiences… and yet.

Four levels up this tower, moving one paw at a time through the support structure, it was quite hard for Link to appreciate any of those benefits.

He shifted his weight, holding himself on three paws and shimmying up so the fourth could fit into a new pawhold, then repeated it again before looking up to see how much further there was to go.

The good news was, there wasn't much further to go.

The bad news was that there was an overhang, and Link stared at it with a whine building in his throat before coming to a conclusion.

He let go, dropping back to the platform on the previous level, then jumped off the platform and opened the paraglider.

A change of plans was required.


Ten minutes and several Bokoblins later, Link had two clubs stacked next to one another and a small boulder in position not far from the tower.

He got out his Slate, took careful aim, then hit the Stasis control and stowed the Slate as quickly as possible. Picking up the first club in his jaws, he beat the frozen boulder until the club disintegrated, used the second to do the same, then flicked the boulder upwards with a paw swipe and jumped on board just before the stasis timed out.

That launched him into the air, some way higher than the top of the tower, and he jumped off at the apex before snapping the paraglider out and drifting downwards towards his objective.

If there was one downside of his lupine form, Link had to admit it was this. There had to be a better way to get up a ladder.


Fortunately, the Tower gave him a fairly sizeable area of new map information, along with a Shrine Detector, and Link made his way east through the deep cleft between twin mountains – only to promptly be alerted by the chirping of the Slate that there was a shrine nearby.

After having put in all that effort to get to the top of the tower, Link hadn't been willing to give it up so easily, so he was on a ridge some way above the level of the river itself. That turned out to be an excellent idea, since the shrine detector promptly alerted him to a shrine straight ahead of him, and without being so high up the chirping of the detector might have alerted the bokoblins down by the river.

Link still made a note of where they were before going into the shrine, because stopping bokoblins from raiding a trade route was a good deed in and of itself, then entered the shrine of Ree Dahee.

Ree Dahee's shrine was about timing. There were buttons to press and release at specific times, which controlled whether a rolling orb made it into the receptacle, and Link learned and solved each pattern in turn.

Then he froze the final switch with Stasis, jumped onto the floating platform, ran as soon as he got to the far side, and just about reached a chest before the switch unfroze and made it impossible to get there.

For his pains, Link got a bandana.

He tilted his head, wondering what he could do with it, then picked it up in his jaws and went to Ree Dahee to get his orb.

Your completion of this puzzle shows great skill, Ree Dahee said.

Link put down the bandana, and patted it with his paw.

What? Ree Dahee asked. It's not my fault you're a wolf. Count yourself lucky, at least it's not trousers. Now shut up and take your orb.


Link dealt with the Bokoblins on the trade route, partly by testing an idea about having arrows held between the fingers of his forepaws while he was gliding and letting him fling down a rapid volley of several of them while in mid-air, then checked the Slate's map and continued down the road between the twin peaks.

There was another shrine just as he got out of the gap, one which looked almost impossible to reach right now without a lot of climbing, and Link made a mental note about it before continuing.

On the other side of the road from the shrine was a stable, an instantly recognizable building partly from the paddocks and mostly from the huge horse-head incorporated into the design, and Link was going to just pass it by – until he heard a voice.

"Yeah, you'd better keep going," it said.

Link stopped, looking around more out of confusion than anything, and saw that there weren't any Hylians visible. They'd all gone into the main stable and closed the door, which he supposed made sense, but what was stranger was that there were a few horses glaring at him.

Glares that were quickly turning into apprehension.

Link tilted his head, then padded over.

"Was it one of you who said something?" he asked.

"Wasn't me!" one of the horses said, a bay.

"Nope!" another added, a roan.

"Liar," snorted the third, with a jet-black coat. "If you're going to insult the wolf, at least own up to it."

"I'm mostly curious," Link replied. "I didn't know I could speak to horses until just now."

"What, really?" the roan asked. "...how did you not find that out until now?"

"I've not met a horse until now," Link said, quite reasonably.

"He's got you there," the black horse said.

"I'm not sure how that works," the bay admitted, then did a double-take, which was quite a big deal on a horse. "...what's that on your paw?"

"This?" Link replied, holding out his paw. "It's half a glider."

"No, no, the other paw," the bay said, leaning closer to get a good look. "No way. Those old stories are real?"

"What old stories?" the roan asked. "What are you talking about?"

"You know, the old stories about Epona and her Hylian," the bay replied. "You seriously haven't heard those? What are they teaching foals these days?"

As the three horses started bickering about something, Link looked around at a rustling noise.

He very briefly saw half-a-dozen Hylians leaning around the corner of the stable, before they all made noises a bit like mimblewimble and hurried back into the stable.

The door went slam, which was a bit rude really.

"...anyway," the bay resumed. "The point is, one of those stories is about when Epona found that her human sometimes turned into a wolf."

He paused. "You know, now I know one of them is real, I'm not sure they're all about the same Epona. Or the same Hylian."

"I think I might be a reincarnation?" Link hazarded. "I'm probably supposed to know more about this than I do… I'm actually on my way to find out some of that, so I should get going. But it was nice to talk."

He got out the Sheikah Slate, fiddling with it until he'd got to the right place in the menus, and got out several apples. One of them went in front of each of the horses, then he left the rest in front of the door as a sort of apology and turned towards the marker on his map.

Hopefully Impa would have an idea what was going on. Whoever they were.


The road climbed into the mountains, and Link was fairly sure he was getting close to where Impa lived.

He still wasn't actually there, though, and as he loped along he spotted a peculiar creature by the side of the road.

They looked a bit like a larger Korok, or perhaps like broccoli, though Link wasn't entirely sure what broccoli was.

"Shakala," they sighed, then perked up slightly at the sight of Link. "Oh! Can you help me?"

Link tilted his head. "I don't know. What kind of help do you need?"

"Wow!" the creature said. "That went much better than when I usually ask for help! The Hylians can't see me and I've never been sure if anyone else can. I'm Hestu!"

Link looked Hestu up and down.

"Are you sort of like a Korok?" he asked.

"Yes!" Hestu agreed. "I'm sort of like a Korok because I am one! Shakala! But some Bokoblins stole my maracas and now I can't do anything."

He pointed. "I think they're still over there! Can you help me get them back?"

Link considered that only for a moment, then nodded.

"Thank you!" Hestu said, delighted, and Link prowled up-slope a little.

He could definitely hear Bokoblins… and… a little investigation, coupled with checking the map on his Slate, made him fairly sure that they were in a little section by the side of the path, mostly closed off by high ground.

To put that another way, there was only one way in or out.

Link contemplated whether he should try something special, like scrambling to the top of the high ground and jumping down, or using a bomb in the entryway, but eventually discarded both of those plans in favour of something simpler.

He got out a Boko Spear, which was a fancy name for a length of wood with a vague point on one end, and crept closer to the cul-de-sac before carefully wedging the spear in place across the entrance.

Then he picked up a club, hurdled the spear at a run, and threw the club straight at the Bokoblin on guard duty. The impact knocked the Bokoblin off the cliff entirely with a wail of surprise, and Link ducked underneath a swipe by an alerted Bokoblin before growling at all the remaining monsters.

They shouted back, waving their weapons, and Link circled until he was on the side nearest their fire.

Slowly and deliberately, he picked up the guard's discarded bow, then set it on fire and threw it at them.

That seemed to unnerve the Bokoblins, and one of them turned to run. It tripped straight over the spear Link had set up, and the other two turned to see what the noise had been.

Link pounced.


Once he was finished with the Bokoblins, he retrieved Hestu's maracas and brought them back down to the big Korok.

He was delighted, doing a little dance, then sighed.

"Shakala," he said. "The other Koroks have taken all my Korok Seeds and hidden them as a prank.

He sniffed, then sniffed again.

"...wait!" he said. "You have Korok Seeds?"

"Yeah, about twenty of them," Link said.

"Can you let me have one?" Hestu asked. "Shakala! I can increase your inventory!"

Link blinked.

"Pardon?"

"It's the Slate!" Hestu explained. "I can let you carry more things in it! More weapons, or shields, or bows!"

"I can't actually use bows," Link replied, thinking. "Being able to carry more weapons would be nice."

And it would mean he didn't have quite so many of the pungent Korok Seeds, as well. It was a good thing they were kept in the Slate, or he'd be worried that the Bokoblins would smell them.


By the time Link reached what the Slate called Kakariko Village (and he had no reason to disbelieve it), night had fallen, and it was raining.

He looked around with interest, sniffing the air, and spotted a Cucco standing on the noticeboard.

Something about it made him quite sure that he didn't want to tangle with it, and he looked away before pacing to a nearby fence and having a good look out at the village as a whole.

The buildings were mostly of the same basic design. There were fields, and a couple of pools, and the sound of rushing water in the distance audible even over the rain, and mountains rose on every side with only a couple of passes in or out – and, as Link padded down the street to get a better look, he saw a semicircle of falling water up ahead, heralding a mighty waterfall and drawing his attention to a building on top of a mound out in the lake.

There was a set of stairs leading up to the building, and Link approached with interest – then two guards at the foot of the staircase saw him.

"What the – hey, go away!" one of them said, brandishing a spear.

"Shoo!" the other agreed.

Link tilted his head, then sniffed.

There was a familiar smell…

He padded to the left a little, seeing several troughs with apples in all but one of them, and darted over to the nearest apple tree to knock one out of the branches. Taking the stalk carefully in his jaws, he placed the apple in the final trough, and a Korok appeared with a puff of leaves.

"Yahaha!" they yelped. "You found me!"

As he'd expected, Link got a Korok seed out of it, and he used a paw to press it to where the Slate was in his fur.

Then he looked at the apples.

"Go ahead!" the Korok replied, and Link took two of them. He batted both with his paws, rolling them in front of two very confused guards, and contemplated the little statue of the Goddess in the middle of the village for a moment.

"What just happened?" one guard asked the other. "Aren't wolves supposed to be… aggressive? And… less interested in apples?"

"Perhaps Lady Impa will know?" the other guard suggested, and Link turned back to them.

His ears flicked up in interest, then he darted past the guards and up the stairs in a thumpa-thumpa-thumpa drumbeat of paws on wet wood.

"Hey!" the guards cried, then Link nosed the door open.

The person he saw sitting on a cushion was… probably old enough to have been around a hundred years ago, though he wasn't an expert.

"...hm," she said, calmly. "Interesting."

Link tilted his head, then offered his paw with the triangle symbol on it.

"Ah!" she said. "You must be Link, then, if I'm not mistaken?"

Link nodded.

"I, of course, am Impa," she said, then cackled. "We both look quite different from when we last met, I think!"

The guards came bursting through the door behind Link, panting.

"Lady Impa," one of them said. "Our most sincere apologies-"

Impa cackled again.

"Oh, don't worry," she said. "And you'd better be going! I have business with this wolf."

The guards exchanged a completely baffled look, then went back outside, and Impa waited until the door had closed before smirking.

"I'm sure they'll work out what's going on eventually," she said. "But I wouldn't mind if it took them a while… hmm, now. I don't suppose you can tell me why you're a wolf?"

Link shrugged.

"And you have the Sheikah Slate?" Impa added, then nodded when Link produced it. "Be careful who sees that. The Yiga Clan would try to kill you if they knew who you were. That said, hmm…"

She went silent for a minute, and Link sat on his haunches to wait.

"You're going to want to go to Hateno Village, to the east of here," she said. "If anyone can help you use that more easily, it's Purah, and that's where she lives now."

Link tilted his head, and made a curious noise.

"You don't remember Purah?" she asked.

Link nodded, then made an expansive gesture with both forepaws. He pointed at her, shook his head, then at himself and shook his head again.

It took Impa a long moment of thought, then she winced. "You don't remember anything?"

Link nodded.

"You have met with a terrible fate, haven't you?" she asked.

That made Link feel vaguely uneasy, but he shrugged it off. The shrug doubled for his view of what Impa had said, and she chuckled.

"That's you all over, I suppose," she decided. "Now, if you don't remember anything, you'll need to hear about the Divine Beasts…"


Link ended up with quite a list of tasks, once he'd finished talking to Impa, and he wasn't quite sure which to do first.

As he left her house, though, the glowing lights of a shrine caught his eye, and he loped down the steps before making his way through the rainy village and climbing up a path into the hills.

Unlocking the shrine took only a moment, and as he arrived on the floor inside the voice of a monk reached him.

Welcome to my shrine… I am Ta'Loh Naeg.

There was then a sort of pause, and Link looked around to see if he could spot the challenge.

He couldn't spot anything in particular. There was just a large room, with a hole in the middle and some locked chests, and Link loped over to sniff one of the chests before giving it a good kick.

This unlocked it, which was convenient, and he took out a shield.

As he moved on to the second chest, though, Ta'Loh Naeg spoke up again.

Hmm, he said. This presents some problems.

Link looked over, spotting the monk on the other side of a vertical bar gate, and waved.

I was intending to give you a lesson in certain tricks you can do with your weapons and shield, Ta'Loh Naeg said. However, the lesson was based on you being Hylian… or at least, bipedal.

Link contemplated the shield, which he'd been privately evaluating for using to ride down hills, and picked it up by the handle before making a quizzical noise.

Well, fine, whatever, Ta'Loh Naeg decided. Just don't blame me if you get your fur set on fire.


The lesson was actually quite useful, and it taught Link a few things. One of them was how to reflect away the bolts of energy from a Guardian, and another was how to jump and dodge away from the attacks of the Guardians or other attackers.

The most important element seemed to be timing, and Link did his best to take it thoroughly to heart.

Of course, it was a bit harder to carry a shield and a weapon at the same time than if he'd been a Hylian, but Link was happy to consider that to be a problem for the future. And he got another orb out of it, which was a bonus.


Most of the ways out of the Kakariko area that didn't involve going back the way Link had come involved jumping off a cliff, and while that was definitely an option it seemed like maybe he should have a look around the options at ground level first.

There was a perfectly good road he was already on, and taking it further out of the village soon led him to a wooded glade with some bright blue rabbit-like creatures bounding around, a few fairies, plenty of useful-looking flowers and carrots, and an extremely large plant that looked like an onion made out of three or four big leaves.

Link stopped and looked at the last, tilting his head, and made an inquisitive noise.

Then a voice came from inside the plant.

"Pup…" it began. "I don't suppose you have any rupees?"

Link tilted his head further.

"I just need one hundred rupees," the voice continued, and an elegant hand reached out from inside the plant.

This… was not a situation Link had really expected, but he thought about it for a bit and decided that he wasn't really doing anything else with his rupees. So he began checking his Slate, to see how many he was carrying, then looked up at the sound of drumming paws in front of him.

One of the rabbits had made a little pile of blue rupees, and Link nodded his thanks before adding it to the one red and one purple rupees he'd identified as the largest ones he carried.

The rabbit hopped forwards again, pushing the whole pile together, and it turned into a single silver rupee. Then it scampered off, before lingering at the edge of the clearing.

Picking it up with his jaws, Link put the silver rupee in the hand, and it retracted into the plant with urgent haste.

Then there was an explosion of purple smoke, and the plant bloomed into a kind of glittering fountain – one which, it turned out a moment later, was occupied by the owner of the elegant hand.

"Ah~! Thank you, pup!" she said. "I am the Great Fairy Cotera… oho?"

Splashing down into the water a little, Cotera rested her chin on her hands.

"That's very interesting~" she sang, looking closely. "You're Link, aren't you?"

Link nodded.

"Well, that's interesting," Cotera judged. "Hmm, now… normally I'd offer to enhance your clothing, but you don't have clothing, do you?"

Link flicked through the Slate and took out the bandana he'd got from Ree Dahee's shrine, then the doublet that King Rhoam had given him, and made a quizzical noise.

"Oh!" Cotera said, looking closely at them, then at him. "Well, well… ah, I think there's a possibility there! Though, with the power I have now, I don't think I can enhance your clothing so you can wear it. You'd have to help one of my sisters for that."

"Where are they?" Link asked, realizing he hadn't actually checked yet if she understood him.

Cotera shook her head. "Sorry, pup, I don't know what you said, but I think I can guess… they're around, but I couldn't point to where on a map! I don't get out much, you see~ I much prefer people to come to me!"

Link shrugged.

He also gathered up some carrots, checked his Slate again, then decided to see what was to the east of Cotera's grove. Hateno was meant to be somewhere to the east, and it was exploring past there or going back nearly to the stable.

"Oh, you're going?" Cotera asked, cheerfully.

Link nodded.

The Great Fairy waved. "Bye bye, pup~!"


AN:


This has turned out to continue, at least a bit further.

Accessibility issues continue.