The far side of Cotera's glade narrowed into a canyon, and Link loped down it while wondering idly about how canyons like this actually happened.
He wasn't much of an expert on how rock formations happened, or indeed literally anything else except for slaying monsters and solving puzzles, but after a bit of thought he realized that it wasn't really something it was worth worrying about too much – after all, the whole of Hyrule had been hit by a calamity not that long ago, so the landscape had been carved in ways that wouldn't be expected. Even if this bit was natural, it wasn't like he'd be able to tell.
There were clouds overhead, and it looked like it might rain. Link stopped at a point where the canyon split in two, sniffing the air to see if he could tell, but as he began to move again he spotted a traveller coming along one of the paths.
The traveller waved, and Link paced closer in interest.
"Oh!" the Hylian said, once the two of them were close enough. "A wolf? That's a surprise, heh… I thought that was a dog."
Link sat down, and did his best to look non-threatening.
"Coming from Kakariko, huh…" the traveller added, thinking to himself.
The wind eddied in the canyon, blowing first one way and then another, and Link caught a strange mixture of scents. There were all the normal ones, but there was metal, and something to do with smoke… and bananas, for some reason.
"Well, it's probably nothing to worry about," the traveller said. "It's nice to meet a wolf on the road and not get into a fight with it, huh?"
Link nodded, willing to agree with that, then got out the Slate and retrieved an apple.
When he looked back up, though, the traveller was staring in his direction.
"An apple?!" he said, shocked. "This is an insult to the Yiga Clan! Die in Master Kogha's name!"
The traveller made a pass with his hands, and with a poof of smoke changed into a red and black outfit with a sickle in one hand.
He cackled, menacingly, then swung his sickle at Link, and Link jumped back out of the way before snapping at his opponent.
Link's target vanished in a cloud of foul-smelling smoke, then appeared a little way away with a bow in his hands and shot a pair of arrows at him. Link caught one of the arrows in his jaws, whirled, and flung it right back to hit the footsoldier in the shoulder.
"Agh!" his opponent protested, clutching at his shoulder, then made a pass with his good hand and vanished in another puff of smoke. This time he appeared overhead, bringing the sickle down in a diving strike aimed to hit Link square on the back.
Link dodged away, then darted back in, and managed to grab the footsoldier's ankle.
"Get off, damn mutt!" the Yiga clansman demanded, then made the pass with his hand again, vanishing to reappear some distance away.
This time, though, Link came with him.
"...ulp?" the Yiga clansman tried.
Link demonstrated why this was a bad situation for the Yiga to be in.
With that out of the way – and having obtained some bananas, a sickle, and a conviction to be careful in future around anyone who smelled of bananas – Link turned left at the canyon fork, and tagged a set of flowers leading to a Korok.
One of the flowers was a long way up the side of the canyon wall and required Link to pole-vault to reach it, but while annoying that was… manageable, at least.
Then, only a few minutes of loping later, the canyon broadened out into a high mountain plain. There were taller mountainous regions to the west and south-east, plus one to the north-east, but it was still an impressive place and Link slowed a little to take in the sights and scents.
The sun was out, and wind was making the grasses ripple pleasantly, and Link explored the area for several minutes – snagging three more Koroks, including one that required him to shoot down some flying targets with tossed arrows – before he heard a strange, wailing noise.
His ears perked up, and he padded through the grass to get an idea of where the sound was coming from. It was a little to the west of the forested area… nearer the middle of the plains… then Link caught sight of the source.
It appeared to be a bird person. No, a Rito, that was the word… a particularly colourful one, squeezing an accordion and muttering to himself.
Link considered the best approach, then decided to just literally approach. Muzzle open but teeth not showing, tongue lolling slightly, ears perked up and alert, taking high steps to keep himself clear of the grass.
"Oh!" the Rito said, when Link was close enough. "I didn't see you there."
Link sat on his haunches, and waved.
"...I don't think I've met your people before," he added. "If you haven't met mine, I'm a Rito, and my name is Kass."
Link nodded, then pointed at his muzzle. "Woof," he said.
Kass chuckled. "Ah, I see," he realized. "So you can understand me, but not speak in a way I can understand… well, that's not a worry. They say music is a universal language, anyway."
He tapped his foot on a metallic circle, inlaid with glowing lines. "There's a song about this place… would you like to hear it?"
Link got a little closer, and nodded his interest.
Kass began pumping his accordion, hummed for a moment, then began to sing. "A beast that wears a crown of bone, prancing through the lush green. Mount the beast upon its throne, for only then the shrine is seen."
He smiled, which was interesting to see on a beak. "What do you think? It's an ancient song… I hope I did it justice."
Link nodded, then looked around.
A beast that wears a crown of bone… well, there were several deer that he could see, though only one of them was a stag with a set of antlers. Maybe that was what it meant?
But at the same time, there was something else…
He lifted his muzzle, and howled.
Kass jumped, then realized – at about the same time Link did – that he was singing, voice rising and falling as he used his lupine voice to sing a song that came straight from his heart.
When it ended, Kass applauded.
"Very impressive, wolf!" he said.
Then a hawk landed on Link's back.
"What?" the hawk asked. "Something wrong?"
Link twisted a little, to get a good look at the hawk. "What do you mean?"
The bird sighed. "Don't sing the Song of the Hawk if you don't need a hawk! That's what it's for, you know."
Muttering imprecations, the hawk took off again, circled once, and left.
"...my word," Kass said. "Did you know that was going to happen?"
Link shook his head.
"I might have to write that one down," Kass decided. "But I won't play it… I can't think of any reason I'd need a hawk."
With a puzzle to solve and a vague idea of how to do it, Link started loping around to get a better angle on the stag he'd seen.
He had a few ideas about how to get the stag onto the platform, which seemed like the best guess about what the throne was… it didn't look like part of the shrine, as it wasn't quite like the platforms at the front of all the shrines he'd seen so far.
At the moment, his first instinct was to startle the stag by approaching it from the other side to the platform. That would spook the stag, and then by running and howling at it he might be able to persuade it to go in the right direction… Kass would probably have to get out of the way in a hurry, but Link felt quite sure that the Rito would see the stag coming.
It would be hard to miss.
Several minutes elapsed as Link circled around, getting the line up right, then paced forwards in an unhurried sort of way.
The moment one of the deer saw him, it startled, and that startled the others, and within moments the does were all running away in different directions.
The stag, however, just turned to him and waved his antlers in a menacing sort of way.
"You're new, then?" he asked. "Don't think any of the packs around here still try and come after me. If you do I'll throw you off the cliff. A low bit so you learn your lesson, mind, but it'll hurt."
Link felt distinctly confused.
"...I didn't actually realize that deer could talk," he admitted, sitting down.
"Oh, they can't," the stag replied, lifting his head again. "Absolutely terrible conversationalists, can't string one word together. I could talk your ear off about how much they cannot speak."
Link pointed to the stag.
"Oh, well, that's different," he said, tapping a hoof on the ground. "Take it from me… well, you probably don't need to. Take it from me anyway, if you'd rather be a mundane deer rather than a philosopher the one thing you absolutely need to avoid is licking any orange bits that fall out of those giant metal spider things."
Tilting his head as he thought, Link processed that a bit.
"So you licked something that fell out of a Guardian?" he asked, just to confirm.
"Yes," the stag agreed. "My tongue tingled, and I thought, that's not how things normally taste. Then I thought, wait, I'm thinking, that doesn't seem right. And, well, a lot of self-referential thinking happened, and now here we are."
Link absorbed that.
"Well, it's good to know that I didn't do something wrong by hunting those deer on the plateau," he said, half to himself. "I can stop if you want?"
"No, no, go ahead," the stag said. "All the other deer are as dense as stone and it's probably more ethical than eating the grass. Honestly, I do understand the food chain, I just want no part in it personally."
"Right," Link replied, with a nod. "Then… actually, can I get your help on something?"
"Fascinating!" Kass said, as the shrine rose out of the ground. "So that's what that old song meant… and it actually meant something, as well. I'll have to see if I can find any others."
Link nodded his thanks.
"Wonder if that would have happened if I did that last week," the stag mused, looking down at his hooves and then over at the shrine. "Before those towers rose up everywhere, that is…"
The shine of Mezza Lo involved a crystal, a platform, and some kind of ancient mechanism where striking the crystal would make the platform rotate through ninety degrees.
Link contemplated carefully how he could use some kind of combination of the Magnesis rune, the metal block available, a bomb and an arrow to move the platform through the different combinations of positions necessary to complete the shrine… then shook his head, took a run-up, and jumped from the starting position at full speed.
Opening the glider gave him a momentary extra boost in height, which he used to scramble on to the second position, and to move from there to the third was just the same thing again.
The treasure chest in the shrine had a sword that crackled with lightning, which Link was sure would be useful later at some point, then he jumped to the fourth platform and caught his breath a bit.
You know that's not the solution, right? Mezza Lo asked.
Link shrugged.
I doubt the Hero of Time was this much trouble, the ancient monk decided, then provided an Orb.
Kass had left by the time Link returned to the surface, and he looked around the plain as a whole while thinking about his next move.
He could try jumping down from the plains into the river to the north, or continuing to the northeast along a tongue of land, but neither of those would really get him to where he was intending to go. They'd be options in future, but not right now, and Link said goodbye to the stag before heading south at a steady lope.
This time, when he got back to the canyon fork, he took the road heading southeast, and soon came to an area of ruins flooded by a waterfall cascading down a cliff to the south.
It was full of monsters, mostly Lizalfos but not entirely, and well stocked with treasure, and Link fought his way through heading from west to east. He came out of the whole experience with several arrows, two more Korok seeds, and some Rupees as well, then passed through the gate on the far side into a chill, wooded area with snow dusting the ground ahead.
There was also a Lynel.
Several minutes later, back on the western side of the flooded region, Link decided that the Lynel had probably stopped trying to get him for now.
The lupine hero was under no illusions – he would have to battle Lynels in the future. But right now, he didn't feel well enough equipped, and it seemed as though an alternative route to his destination would be needed.
The only problem was, how was he going to do that?
The cliffs on the southern side of the flooded valley were too steep for him to reasonably climb, or that was how they looked. Though, come to think of it, it did seem a bit like he could get up onto the northern side…
Turning, Link evaluated the width of the canyon at the western gate.
It looked… doable, at a run.
He had to admit, though, sometimes he did feel like hands would be useful.
Link circled around, going through the canyon again back to the plain, and as he did the stag came trotting over.
"Surprised to see you again so soon," he said. "Any reason you're back?"
"I was aiming to go somewhere, but my first guess at a good path turned out to lead directly to a Lynel," Link replied. "Any route that leads directly to a Lynel is not a good idea at this point,"
"Fair enough, I've not seen one but I doubt I'd want to," the stag replied, following with interest as Link climbed up the slopes on the southern side of the plains. "So… you do have a plan, right? Just asking."
"Yes, I have a plan," Link confirmed.
Now up at the right level, he stopped for a moment to double-check what he was planning, then braced himself and broke into a sprint.
The stag was left behind, not expecting Link to suddenly accelerate like that, and the lupine hero sprang into the air from the lip of the cliff before snapping his glider out to give himself extra distance.
That just about worked, and he scrambled up onto the cliff on the south side.
"Better you than me!" the stag called, turning to head home again, and Link snorted before turning to travel southeast.
The path he was on was a bit steep, but manageable, and Link climbed higher as he travelled until he was on a nice mostly-flat highland and much higher than the flooded area. He was even higher than the top of the waterfall from before, which was a relief, and Link loped along as the sun set.
Then, as he came to a curve in the cliff, he saw a Sheikah tower on a high bluff, and below it an expanse of craggy land… and, lit mostly by torchlight, a village.
That was probably Hateno. Link jumped off the cliff, snapping out his glider to get a little way there before having to walk the rest of the way, but as he drifted southeast he heard the sound of Bokoblins below.
They were armed with hoes and brooms, by the looks of it, and they were right by the side of a road. Probably waiting to ambush a merchant.
Link demonstrated that he was better at ambushes, though none of the Bokoblins seemed to appreciate the lesson.
By the time he was near Hateno, after going first along the road and then into some woods, Link had a mop.
He'd had several other obviously-scavenged weapons during his battles under the starry night sky, but most of them had broken. Link was impressed with the mop, though, and it felt like it would last a bit longer at least.
He also had a lot of mushrooms, several acorns, some honey and a firefly, though that had taken a lot of catching.
Then he saw a Hylian girl being attacked by a Bokoblin, and ran past with the mop head held out so that it clonked the Bokoblin squarely on the head. The creature screeched at him, waving a soup ladle, then Link switched his grip on the mop so he was holding it nearer the head and used the haft to hit the Bokoblin in the abdomen.
Then again in the side.
Then, with a deft flick, Link launched the Bokoblin into the air before dropping the mop and intercepting his foe as it fell. The collision let him drive the Bokoblin into a tree with his full weight, finishing it off, and Link turned to retrieve his now-cracked mop before waving a cheerful paw at the girl.
"...um," the girl said, and Link dropped the mop once more before leaving her an apple. Then he picked the mop up, wincing as his jaws put too much pressure on it and it fell apart, and he substituted the soup ladle before heading on to Hateno.
When he got there, however, it was still dark, and Link could see the ancient-tech laboratory up on top of the hill but he wasn't sure it would be very polite to wake them up before dawn.
Fortunately, there was a Shrine right there in the village, so he loped over to see what the monk had for him.
What the monk had for him turned out to not be how Link had been hoping to spend the rest of his night.
The monk Myahm Agana had set up a kind of maze that floated in mid-air, with tall walls and openings in the sides, and the goal was clear enough – the Slate could be used to move the maze around, tilting it first one way and then another to let a ball roll around before having it end up in the right place to complete the puzzle.
In theory.
In practice, it was both fiddly in general and very difficult for Link specifically to use. He wasn't blessed with anything so useful in this context as hands, and so he tried several different ways to somehow give himself freedom of movement with the Slate while still being able to watch the way the ball moved around. But ball after ball went falling into the abyss below the maze, only to be replaced with another ball which bounced around before falling into the abyss in turn.
Even taking a break to go and retrieve the contents of the maze's chest didn't help much, either, because it was a bow anyway and Link wasn't really finding much use for bows right now. And when Link tried to move the ball around himself, he was faced with a collection of problems starting with how it was far bigger than a bomb and almost too big to move and continuing through how to get across the gap to the actual solution spot it needed momentum.
When Link tried using a bomb, that didn't help either. Nor did two bombs at once, though the combined pair of explosions did make him feel better. And trying to kick the ball hard enough to get it over the gap just led to sore paws.
Eventually, and trying not to just give up entirely, Link connected the Slate and then rolled over onto his back so he could use his forepaws.
Much to his surprise, the whole maze rolled over a hundred and eighty degrees as well, with the actual maze section facing directly down and a flat section replacing it as the ball section.
Link grumbled something, wishing he'd noticed that before, then tilted the Slate a little to direct the ball and combined that with a flick. It didn't work on the first try, but it did on the third, and he watched the ball roll down into the recess with an intense sense of satisfaction.
Then he went to demand an explanation from Myahm Agana. It would have to be non-verbal, but he was quite good at that.
You seem upset, the Sheikah Monk said blandly.
Link just levelled a lupine glare at him.
There was a long silence, then Myahm Agana fidgeted slightly.
It is a legitimate test of hand-eye coordination, he said.
Link held up a paw, and continued to look thoroughly unimpressed.
Ah. Well, that is… Myahm Agana began, then created a Spirit Orb and dissolved.
Link decided to take that as a win.
The sun was just rising over Hateno as Link emerged from the very annoying shrine, and he headed up to the easily-recognizable lab at a fast walk that wasn't quite a lope.
Mostly he was wondering what kind of walk he was actually doing, whether it was trotting or pacing or some other word like that. Someone muttered in shock at one point, and he looked over to give them an absent wave with one paw before continuing on his way up the hill.
There were little structures every ten seconds or so, which Link couldn't quite identify. Then he reached the lab itself, raised a paw, and knocked.
"Come in!" a voice called from inside, and Link pushed the door open.
"...what the!?" the same voice demanded, coming from a Hylian man standing in one corner of the lab. "Director! Ah, um, there's a wolf in the lab!"
"And what do you expect me to do?" a young, sharp voice responded from upstairs.
"I don't know!" the man replied. "Something?"
Link tilted his head, thinking about how best to approach this, then looked around the lab to see if there were any hints.
One thing he did notice, right away, was one of the same kind of stone as he'd seen on the Sheikah Tower or in those Shrines where he'd picked up his runes. So he padded over to give it a sniff, then got out his Slate to see what would happen.
Disappointingly, the stone didn't respond to his Slate. However, the sight did make the Hylian do a double-take.
"What the…" he said. "Is that… a Sheikah Slate?"
"Symin, have you been drinking?" the young voice asked. "How bad is it if you're mistaking something for both a wolf and a slate?"
"No, the wolf has the Slate, I think?" Symin replied. "I've never actually seen a Sheikah Slate, director, but it looks like your sketches!"
"Okay, now Purah has to see this!" the voice replied, and a six-year-old girl came hurrying down from the upper floor of the lab.
She stopped on reaching somewhere she could see Link, and her gaze went to the Slate, then Link, then specifically his paw.
"Oh!" she said. "Linky!"
Link made a curious noise.
"It's me, Purah!" Purah said, tapping herself on the chest. "Hehe, though you probably don't recognize me, because I look younger! Aww, I was going to pretend not to be the Director but Symin messed it up…"
Link had tilted his head in the other direction, by now, and Purah scampered over to the lab table to pick up a notebook. She flicked through it, then discarded it, then went over to the shelves and pulled out a different notebook.
On the front, she wrote LINK in large capitals, then flipped it open to the first page.
"Subject… is a wolf," she said. "Cause unknown, suspected Shrine of Resurrection. The triangle symbol from the Master Sword has appeared on his paw… oh! It's still him, right?"
Link nodded, trying to keep up, and Purah nodded.
"Good!" she said. "Well, either would be good, but it means I was right first time. About that, anyway. Now, hmm… let's see… quadrupedal body form… let's see those paws, Linky!"
Now feeling distinctly overwhelmed, Link raised a forepaw, and Purah immediately came around to push the second page of her notebook against it. She drew around his paw in moments, then labelled the paw-print, and tapped her pen against her chin for a moment.
"Oh!" she said. "Hmm, how many runes are working on that Slate? I suppose some might not be working, so that might be why you came here, but it's much more obvious why you're really here. Say it with me, Symin! Ergonomics!"
Symin had not said it with her, and Purah pouted before shaking her head. "Oh well, you're still learning. Now! The Sheikah Slate is very convenient for a Hylian or Sheikah to use, but! It's built for someone with hands, so obviously you're here to get it modified so it'll work without the need for hands!"
Purah flicked to another page, then got out a previous notebook, then flicked through that. "Fortunately, I've got several ideas! But in order to be able to work on any of them, I'm going to need the ancient tech furnace turned on. See to it, will you, Linky?"
Link had no idea what she meant.
"The Director means that the furnace built into the lab needs to be lit," Symin explained, mercifully. "It has to be a blue flame, I think there's a source somewhere down in Hateno…"
Link got a torch out of his Slate, picked it up in his muzzle, and went down through Hateno to reach the source of the blue flame. It took a bit of finding, especially since Link was making sure he could get back up to the lab when he needed to, but once he'd located the blue flame he lit the torch he was carrying.
It was neat how the torch was burning blue, now. Link couldn't have told you the first thing about how that worked, but it clearly did, and he turned around to make his way back up to the lab.
The weather looked gloomy, like it might rain, and after a bit of thought Link realized the purpose of those strange covered shapes he'd noticed the first time he'd come this way. They were lanterns, protected from the rain, so he lit them one by one with blue flames from the blue torch he was carrying.
One of the local farmers gave him a very, very strange look as he slowly progressed up the hillside, which didn't seem fair to Link. It was obvious what he was doing, after all, it wasn't like there was anything confusing about it.
Purah, now, dealing with her was confusing. Apparently.
Eventually, though, he managed to get back to the lab before it rained, and lit the Ancient Tech furnace with the blue flame it was built to use.
A little circle flashed into blue life in front of the lab, and Link examined it curiously for a moment before shrugging. He snapped the torch across fast enough to blow it out, then stowed it in the Slate, and entered the lab once more.
The moment he was in the lab again, Purah descended on him like a tornado.
"Linky!" she cheered. "Wow, you're fluffy now… I should take notes on that! I assume you'll be fine in cold weather but might need some kind of extra protection when it's warm… oh, but you can't tell me about if that happens, not directly – well, that will have to wait, for now, let's fix that Slate!"
She hustled him over to the stone in the corner of the lab, which was working now, and in moments several more features had been unlocked on the Slate. There was a Camera rune, a Compendium that could record the traits of anything he used the Camera on, and a Gallery containing old photos.
Some of them looked a little familiar, but only because Link had been near there before.
"Now, as for ergonomics…" Purah said, putting her hand to her chin and thinking hard. "Let me see… well, Linky, I think the main things you're going to need are… hands-free controls for at least some of the functionality, that's important of course! I don't think you'll need that for scrolling through the inventory or checking the map, that's exactly the kind of thing you'd want to do while sitting there so you can take it all in!"
Link looked at Symin, in a way that was a combination of sympathetic and a plea for assistance, and the Hylian man just shrugged helplessly.
"But taking things out, oh, that might be something you'd need to do in a hurry!" Purah went on. "To get more arrows, or a weapon when one breaks… and to use the runes, of course! So I'll need to factor that in… and, how could I forget! There needs to be an aiming system as well, it'll have to be based on where you're looking and I'm sure you'll get used to it over time so long as it's nice and responsive. But the big word here is haptic interface! How good are you at making gestures with those paws, Linky?"
Link tried holding his paw and making a gesture, and Purah tutted before taking notes.
"Then maybe… aha, I have it!" she said. "Now, I'm going to need some ancient tech parts and I can get started!"
Link shrugged, then did his best to imitate climbing a ladder.
"Oh, hmm…" Purah said, quiet for a few seconds. "Maybe… I'll see what I can think of, Linky! But if you really don't have any ancient tech parts right now then I'll have to refine my designs on paper while you fetch me some ingredients!"
She gasped. "Oh, but first – let's get a photo! With a big SNAP!"
When he eventually left the Tech Lab, Link wondered if he should have taken his chances with the Lynel.
AN:
The idea of Wolf Link having the magic songs side of being a Link seems like a reasonable take to me… he has an instrument, after all.
