The greatest crisis within written memory is surely the appearance of Ganonort, the self-styled King of the Gerudo. No man before him has so effectively fought against the Royal Army and the forces of the Sheikah. But that is far from his most terrible accomplishment, for it is said that he came closer than any other to unleashing the force of his ancestor, the Calamity. His corpse lies beneath the graves of his vanquisher, the Hero Narah, and her husband Sefaro, later King of Hyrule; and their magic binds him even unto death.
Mellie the Historian, The Sheikah Legacy
Sepia flickered at the edges of his vision. There was a castle, fields of green, and a platform of stone. A Hylian with golden hair was speaking to another, his hair a dirtier blonde, her hand raised above his kneeling form. Her hesitance and fear and anxiety were palpable. The blue-clad soldier was completely still, his head bowed, his eyes on the ground. She stared at him contemplatively. Then she too dropped her head, eyes full of sadness.
It was very clear to him. But he was not sure what he was seeing. Was this the afterlife? The spiritual realm? He remembered the pain, the arrows, and the Lynel's victory. He had begged his magic for healing. Was this healing? Or had the Lynel immediately snuffed him out? He had been fighting on the Summit of the Gerudo Highlands. How had he journeyed all the way to that strange place? It was surely nowhere in his homeland (although there had been one Gerudo). He supposed he could not have been there, for it was different than an experience or a memory. The perspective of observation moved rapidly and freely through the air, then would snap instantly to a different view. Was it some new scrying magic, come to him in his desperate meditations? By now, though, it was also clear that he was thinking, and if he was still thinking he must be healing. The sepia had returned to the corners of his awareness, and a rush of white was the last thing he could perceive.
It returned, that faded golden color. He had no sense of time. But he had begun to sense the flow of his magic. His wounds were mending but there was more happening. The magic of connection that he had spent so much effort developing was coming into flower. His vision filled again with the two blonde Hylians. The woman was staring excitedly at some small object in her hands, her bearing far more confident than it had been in the previous scene. The soldier walked behind her with an impassive gaze. Suddenly, her steps came short. Her eyes narrowed with the same self-doubt he had seen previously. Then she looked back shyly, and he could feel the tension in that far-off air. Can you hear it…? Yes. The resonance of an ancient voice. And hers too: its braid of youthful emotion no less rich. There was desperation there, and depression, and fear and curiosity. Again the fade.
The man woke. He was sheltered against a stone wall, which rose behind him to form a small plateau. He could see he was still atop the Summit. Had the Lynel moved him out of its territory and into cover? Had that giant sword always been there? He shook himself and found he had control of his limbs. His body was—he was shocked to find—perfectly fine. The hunger of his stomach told him that a great deal of time had passed. He stumbled home to meditate on what had just happened, and to eat, and to continue healing. It was late by the time he arrived. Sleep overcame him the moment he lay down, and he did not wake for days.
He was still sleeping in heavy stretches weeks later. Visions replaced his dreams. The Hylian woman stood alone among odd ruins. The man could not make out what she was saying to herself but her look was one of intense concentration. Then it seemed she must have heard something, for she sighed and turned and narrowed her eyes in apparent displeasure. The soldier dismounted his horse and approached. The woman moved through a sequence of gestures both beautiful and artless. She glared at him, scoffed at him, averted her eyes so she would not have to see him, stormed past him, turned, narrowed her eyes again. She scolded him petulantly. The man was beginning to understand. The emotional texture was becoming clearer to him. His magic was coming to know hers, and through her magic, to know her thought. From her thought, herself. The soldier meanwhile observed everything with baffled concern.
The desert. The setting was sympathetic to his magic, he could feel it expanding, feel it taking strength from the sands. The Gerudo he had seen before was cradling the Hylian woman. The soldier approached; he could not hear their exchange. The soldier was hard for him to read. The Gerudo's care was obvious. She was a person of loud gestures, the meanings of which were transparent to him through the example of his mother (whom she reminded him of with soulsharp clarity). Why would she look out with such deep affection on these two Hylians? The Gerudo smiled at the soldier and stroked the woman's hair. She snapped her fingers and summoned a bolt of tremendous lightning. He had never seen its like. This was magic out of stories—what he had hoped and failed to achieve himself, beyond the capability even of his mother. The crash of thunder woke the sleeper in a frantic shuffle. She startled, then she saw the soldier. Her cheeks began to flush. His presence flustered her completely. The Gerudo threw back her head in laughter. He suspected that she had made similar conclusions to his: that this was a vai who had found her voe. The desert made his magic sensitive. He could read the pulse and flow of hers, surging unmistakably in the direction of the Hylian soldier. This impetus was so strong that he was taken aback. From the Gerudo's reaction, he assumed the Hylian had not yet realized this truth of herself for herself. He knew it would be irresistible for her in time. This, too, was magic out of stories.
He faded out and then back in. The woman was running through the desert in an attitude he had never seen on her, although he recognized it easily from his own memories. It was the terror of being pursued. The sand sucked at her stride and she stumbled. Not that there was anywhere to run, when ambushed by the Yiga. They encircled her and then closed in. From the ground, the assassin loomed hugely, his sickle raised to the sky. He could almost taste her raw helpless fear. She expected to die. The stroke was, however, parried and the blade sent flying. The soldier was confident and skilled. He stepped before her in a ready stance. His eyes, which brook no distraction, are implacable chips of blue. The Yiga backed away slowly, knowing they were far outmatched and their new opponent furious. The woman stared up at him in awe. Perhaps she was seeing him with her heart's first time? The gold closed over her face.
The man could not shake the image of the woman's eyes. They had been full of emotion. The soldier had just saved her life. He was the one her magic sang to. Surely even a Hylian could not miss its pull in such a moment? There was an aspect of revelation in that gaze. The struggle of life and death is a crucible and a test, he had witnessed it many times while hunting, had experienced it himself in flight and in defeat. Self-deceptions, those barriers of the ego, fall away. The man continued in his meditations. He could barely spare a thought to the Lynel, though he knew that brush with its mind had been significant, because these visions were far too distracting. He was following his magic, which was the standard practice of his meditation. He trusted in its guidance, because it was connected with the land of his people, and the spirit of his mother, and the whole line of his ancestors. There was something special about the Hylian woman and her beloved soldier, something about them that resonated with his magic in a way that felt deep and ancient and powerful. This last most of all.
He was hunting when the next vision came. He was instantly, incredibly jealous. There were corpses scattered in huge number on the slopes of a mountain he supposed must be Eldin. He could see two Lynels. The man had noticed the soldier's ability in the Yiga incident, but this massacre was another matter entirely. The direction of the woman's magic was beginning to make sense to him. Such a feat was breathtaking. The assassins had been weak, at least relatively speaking, and their defeat had not seriously impressed him. The soldier now had his complete attention. He hoped his magic would begin to latch onto his as well.
The man was in the middle of his dinner when the telltale flickering set in on the edges of his vision. Flowers did not grow well in the Highlands. Certainly he had never seen anything like the delicate blossom the Hylian woman was inspecting with a pensive air. Something caught her eye, and she leapt to catch it. Her mood opened in a heartbeat. It seemed she was teasing the soldier as she offered him the frog. His closeness was affecting her. She was closing the distance, her heart was dancing, her magic glowing. The soldier seemed unsure, caught off guard by the change in her attitude. Perhaps he had not trained in magic? Perhaps he did not enjoy the taste of frogs? The man did have to wonder at the taste of frogs.
Another day another vision. It was something the man practiced religiously. The sword forms of the Hylian were unlike his. The soldier favored a two handed grip and a stable base. The Gerudo art was heavier and more brutal, even in the modified version that his mother had taught him. (The man did not know how strongly these changes were based on Sheikah technique.) That the soldier practiced despite the rain (a discomfort the man had only ever imagined) spoke to his diligence and was a reminder that his apparent skill was no accident. The woman could barely watch the soldier's perfect movements. It seemed she was fighting tears, her face a mask of shame; this moment was a confession, and not the happy kind. She spoke of destiny and the possibility of another path, her voice a mixture of pleading and longing strong enough to reach his ears.
The man learned three things from his next vision. First, the woman was probably royalty. Second, she chafed at her father (although she also loved him). Third, the soldier hated his king for distressing her (although he had sworn to serve him). Could it be a hint at the depths beneath his stoic mask? Another hint came a few days later when he saw the pair in some ruined temple. The woman prayed in the waist-deep water. And then her prayer became a curse and a cry of despair. There was a blockage in her magic—his sense of their connection was even stronger in this temple as it had been in the desert—and until she managed to open up, whatever capacity or technique she was attempting to learn would remain impossible. The love of a vai could work fabulously powerful magic. From the way the soldier broke from his stance of dutiful attention, turning quietly to face his crying charge, the man was forced to wonder if the soldier had felt the urging of his own connection pushing him toward her. And from the way the man saw the soldier look at her, golden hair aflame in the sunset, a cautious optimism on her face, he grew still more confident in his guess.
The next vision came during his regular meditation. They were coming quickly now. The woman wore the same white dress as she had in the earlier temple scene, descending a lonely mountain in the company of the solider. Her eyes were downcast. The whole group of the first scene was assembled at the gate of some promenade to receive her. The man can sense the sympathy and the pity, and also the resolution, as these emotions washed over the broken woman. Suddenly, the vision rose to follow the blue-feathered Rito and looked out over the landscape in the direction of the castle. It was beset by a storm of fuchsia lightning—Malice. The word came to his mind without thought, deposited presumably by old magic. All stared agape at the appearance of this new menace.
When the vision faded, he reached out through his magic in search of Malice, in search of the woman, the soldier, their company of friends. But he was too agitated by these new events to maintain the equilibrium of his meditation, and failed to bind any of these various connections. Except to the Malice. The Malice found him. Its touch was corrosive and disgusted him. It had sought him out. He recognized it from the legends that had slandered his people for millenia. The falsehood of these accusations were never more obvious to him than in that moment, for the thought that this Calamity could be controlled was self-evidently insane. It was simply a force of nature, or he supposed rather, a force of the supernatural—something belonging to the realm of deities far beyond the scope of mortals. He had sunk his magic in to the earth of this mountain for years, and had allowed its magic to fill him in return. This connection called out to him in a sense nearer to language than anything he had felt from it before. Run from this. He packed provisions for a voyage and headed west.
The gold and black resurfaced as he was trekking across the plains. The two Hylians were covered in mud. They were fleeing together through some Hyrule forest, the soldier leading her by the hand. She slipped and fell. Her voice was very clear. Her heart was breaking for the land itself and her tears ran together with the pounding rain. She was, it seemed to the man, in the grip of true despair. And the one man she had left, the man it was clear she loved most of all, could only look upon her with real concern and hold her when she lunged forward into his embrace, the only strength she had to trust.
The vision faded in that rush of golden white, but the man made little progress before he was again assailed. The couple were exhausted. It appeared they had been hunted to a graveyard of machinery. The machines hunted tirelessly. The woman begged the soldier to use his last strength and run, but he refused to leave her and staggered again to his feet and prepared his sword. A beam of light targeted the soldier's chest. He would die serving the woman who loved him, the man foresaw, ignorant of that affection. In this prediction the man was wrong. For the woman then rushed forward, pushing her beloved aside, raised her arm in regal command—and then everything was all aglow. A sphere of blinding light burst forth. A triangle of golden triangles shone with refulgent brilliance upon the back of her hand.
The machines were ruined. Her beloved collapsed, breaking her reverie. Her eyes were wide. His eyes closed, he slumped in her arms. The man realized he had also been wrong before. This was the moment of utter desolation. Her face was buried in his chest and then—there was another sudden pulse of strange magic. The man felt it reaching into his core, this unmistakable magic of the soldier, linking them together as he had been linked with the woman, and as the woman was linked with the soldier. Through this connection, it was now obvious to both the man and the woman that the soldier yet lived. She committed him to two Sheikah, and left the devastated scene with a sense of absolute determination.
The man returned to himself in the mountains. He pressed onward. Battle had been joined against the Calamity, which tempted him to join. Still, he trusted the magic of the wild. The Highlands had taken care of him through all these years of danger. He recalled his mother's voice, pointing out Mount Agaat in the far west distance. That was his current destination. He climbed the face of the mountainside. And within moments of his setting foot on that long flat plateau he heard the tolling of a deep bell. He heard it in his bones and in his magic and in the very bedrock of his soul. He turned back toward Hyrule and was confronted with a golden barrier, shimmering in the falling snow.