Time the riddle, time the answer. The moon, the mask. Oh, by the stars and the heavens! These mysteries of the world! Are not their solutions further mysteries? Oh, let us join our researches!

Shikashi's Journals

The removal of the curse had been almost unbearably painful. The man felt twinges of it every time he stepped into the clocktower, which was often, because it was the preferred domain of his master. He had been invited to study with the red haired Hylian after completing the quest of the mask. Once the confetti had dissipated, the green-clad Hylian exuberantly led the man back to the clocktower, where he was informed it had been a test and was congratulated for his success. The man did not especially think that this so-called invitation to join the Hylian's so-called atelier could be safely declined. Thus he found himself a master and a fellow apprentice, within hours of his arrival in this strange city of strange magic, this man who had lived for so long in solitude and isolation.

The man had, of course, never studied under anyone besides his mother. His new master approved the proposed study of barriers and wards, though not without mentioning his belief that the man would also find himself immersed deeply in history. The history of your former world, he had said, to be precise, with that profoundly unsettling combination of insight and vocal tone that suggested omniscience. Before he could be of any help, though, the master claimed he would need to see the man's magic. The test of the mask had been one of perseverance, luck, and intuition rather than of magical ability—for it was only the last, he said, that he could impart.

The man received no further instructions, so he asked if they could move to the outdoors, where he was most comfortable. One look from his new master sent the soldier at the town gate into a pose of strict attention, and he let them pass without daring a second glance. The other apprentice had come along as well, out of simple curiosity. The man decided he would start with a display of his elemental magic. The spells of warmth and cooling were second nature to him, and he felt they would be a good demonstration of his control. (He planned to skip over electricity, which he had never got the hang of, Gerudo or not.) He could then move on to other magic of internal manipulation, those magics of silence and satiety that had always been so crucial to his life in the wild. This train of thought was disrupted by his new master, who said he should skip his useless parlor tricks and move straight into something that was either more relevant or more fundamental. Magic, he would learn, the master argued, must be interesting.

As he pondered this observation (or was it a rule or dogma or theorem?), the man slipped into his habitual state of meditation. It was a reflex trained in the uninterrupted silence of his adult life. The master's clapping brought him back to the moment, and he was again commended for his impressive work. The style of his meditation, then, must have been this "fundamental" magic that the master was looking for. It was indeed, the master said, and something very much to be approved of, for the wild is a fine teacher and techniques that can absorb its lessons he considered very powerful. The teaching of magical academies would not have suited him, he explained, since they were so fond of clever elegance and so obsessed with theoretical rigor. That those given the power of ancient magics should ignore trifles would be the premise of his master's instruction.

The man passed his days within a small circle. He had inquired after a room from the owner of a building on the town square, on the suggestion of his fellow apprentice, and received a set of keys within minutes of mentioning who had sent him and what he planned to do and study while in this city. But the man spent most of his time in the clocktower. The true furnishing of the place was invisible to the unaware, whereas those let in on the secret would find nothing of the moss-grown and mildewed stone or empty unused space and instead a comfortably appointed sitting room. More importantly, the belief that the upper floors of the clocktower opened only once per year, at midnight on the eve of the Carnival, stemmed from an obvious deception. One need only mount the hidden stair within the tower to reach the upper floors—the door outside was simply extraneous. Secreted within these upper floors were the true riches of the clocktower, namely its studies and library, and this was where the man most often found himself occupied.

True to his word, the master did not bother the man about technicalities (as would have been the case in an academy). Neither did he bother himself with technicalities such as a lesson plan or defined course of study (as would also have been the case in an academy). The master would instead pose questions and problems. These could be clear and specific (what is the goal of a ward? and what is your goal in learning about them?), or obscure and specific (what is duration? what is the relation of time and object?), or obscure and general (investigate the color of magic or consider the different forms and qualities of connection). The man was tempted to rely exclusively on his meditation to seek these answers, but found himself stymied often by the unfamiliar nature of this foreign world. He did not have the same absolute inborn affinity with this landscape. Eventually, he would realize that he had assuredly been guided to this discovery by his master, and that it was therefore an important one. Despite its effectiveness as a survivalist method, meditation could not give the kind of subtlety to his researches that his master seemed to desire. The subtlety in question was not about quibbling but rather about the fineness of intuition. The ability, for example, to sense the weaknesses in magic, the lines of fracture along which its construction was secretly brittle and liable to failure; or more generally, to discern the manner in which the great power he could access might be made suggestible—these were the sorts of thing for which the man made recourse to books.

His fellow apprentice was, naturally, often also to be found within the clocktower. The Hylian—whose queer manner of dress seemed to vary only with respect to color (rotating through pink and blue and white, in addition to that first day's green)—did a great deal of reading in the library. When asked about his research, he groaned in complaint. He was an artist by nature, not an academic, but the master had told him that he could not progress in his chosen field without a better grounding in magical principles. He had come to the study of magic late, ignorant of the basics he would need if he had any hope of fulfilling the master's great expectations for his future. (Both the master's conclusion and his confidence in it were, he admitted readily, fully inexplicable.) His focus was applied aesthetics with reference to the magic of illusion.

It was a touch unusual that the two apprentices had been given such directly opposed advice with respect to their appropriate paths forward. One had been told to focus on intuition, to trust the thrum of ancient power, and feel his way forward. The other, by contrast, was working systematically to lay the foundations for magic of great delicacy. Considering the differences in their past experience and future ambition, the man allowed that their master might be rather less dogmatic in his method than his conversational manner of certain conviction would otherwise suggest. That the master always struck one as knowing what was absolutely and precisely correct tended to give his pronouncements a universal quality that was actually misleading. Despite the disinterested and hands-off persona he tended to evoke, it seemed that he tailored his lessons to his students and their needs, that he gave them that level of attention.

When he was not reading, the man could most often be found practicing his magic or meditating (which was much the same thing). He felt he was making great progress in many facets of his life. Never before had he been so freely encouraged to experiment with his magic. His mother had been willing to experiment with him, having for example dropped the study of lightning, but was inclined to discipline and routine as befit her own upbringing in the military. On his own, he lacked the direction of an instructor, but was very much constrained in his investigations by the hard line of survival. In this new environment, the man could work at his leisure through the practical exercises of warding he had found in a reference (how useful these would have been in the mountains, when they had sheltered from the Sheikah!), and then, following the suggestion of his master, experiment in how to break through those protections. His meditation had taken on a new feeling here as well. The principle of connection had never been so qualified or moderated. This new place did not resonate with him in the same way as his homeland had, did not whisper its suggestions with the same clarity or frequency, did not return his infusions of magic at the same rate of exchange. Even more stark was the new state of his connection with his lost homeland, for the golden barrier allowed him only the most passing awareness of the two blonde Hylians, who seemed both to be in some kind of magical stasis. It was a magic of attunement that had gone off-key, and this bothered him enough to push him more deeply into the study of books than he might otherwise have been.

The less time he spent in strict meditation, and the more he spent with books, the more he was led to spend in the company of the atelier. The other apprentice might be reading, or drawing, or working on some sculpture. Depending on his mood and his current task, the other apprentice could be quite talkative. He was enthusiastic about magic and about the master. As these topics interested also the man greatly, he was always happy to spend time discussing them together. It was comfortable, because the apprentice was (like the others in town) prone to speak at length and entirely unperturbed by silence. The man was still learning the art of conversation and appreciated the practice that his fellow apprentice was able to give him. They also spent time discussing their progress, their successes and difficulties, with the master. He encouraged them to join him for meals in the common room of the clocktower, and it was at one such occasion that the master decided that his two apprentices should undertake an assignment.

The master had asked them to steal from his rival. The two indulged in petty competitions of this kind whenever the master found himself in town. The moon tear was kept in a glass case, doubtless secured with some variety of magic, beside his telescope. The old astrologer, the apprentices were told, considered it his most precious possession. The two were left mostly to their own devices to plan this heist. It was the Hylian who took most of burden of preparation. Prior to the man's admission to the atelier, he had managed to replicate one of the master's masks; ever since he had been working to construct a mask of his own. The strategy that he proposed relied on these two masks. (They both could easily detect the hand of their master behind these coincidences: that he would have made two masks, that the two masks turned out well-suited to the task, and that there would be two apprentices to carry it out, all seemed a little much to take on faith.)

First, however, the two apprentices needed to gain entrance to the Astral Observatory, where the tear was kept. The odd Hylian told the man that he had heard in passing that the town's so-called "gang" of small children knew a secret passageway that lead beneath the square and out past the fields, before it resurfaced in the basement of astrologer's tower. He had even been told the secret code. So the next morning the pair made their way out of the clocktower and gave the password to the hideout guard, who promptly stuck out his tongue and laughed at the pair. Their guess not been valid since before the last Carnival, and so was nearly a year out of date. They would have to convince the leader to give them the new one. The leader was, as usual, to be found playing in the north of town. He challenged them to a game of hide and seek, which was child's play for the man. Even his attenuated sense of observation was more than enough to locate the five carefree spirits they needed, and chasing them down was no difficulty for someone who had depended on the hunt for his survival his entire life. The new password was acquired, then given, and the two apprentices moved on through the passageway and into the sewers beneath the town.

They stopped at the foot of the ladder that they assumed would bring them up into the observatory. The Hylian removed the two masks from his pack. The first he gave to the man. It was a deceptively heavy object, with a disfigured or warped appearance. Its color was grey and its aura was slightly repulsive, in a depressing sort of way. This mask, the Hylian reminded him, should let him pass through the observatory unnoticed. He had worked to improve its strength relative to its original, but he could not, of course, be sure that it would suffice to slip past the astrologer's observation. For himself, the Hylian had brought his own unique creation. The idea had come to him out of a discussion he had had with the master while reminiscing about the adventures of a mutual acquaintance, who had contrived with magic to force himself to endure the old granny's stories. When an opportunity to acquire the necessary materials arose, the apprentice had struck quickly.

The pair had successfully infiltrated the observatory. The ladder brought them into a stone-walled basement, where scattered boxes were kept along with an old globe and an out-of-place planter guarded by a whimsical scarecrow. (The man had donned his mask of un-notice already, so why did he feel that jab of laughing recognition?) They climbed the stair and arrived in the observatory proper. The moon tear in its case was plain to see. The man set to work immediately, relieved not to feel any further signs of detection (magical or otherwise), and began to run through the diagnostic course he had prepared. He had built a good amount of intuition for such magics of protection over his time in hiding, and in the months he had spent in the clocktower done much to refine his understanding. He could sense how the magic was wrapped around the object, and how this seal could be unraveled. How much easier it would be if he could just force it open! But the master had been unusually explicit in saying that all good wards will deflect raw magic, and that only with carefully intimate familiarity with their schema can one reliably break through such protections without harming what they sealed.

The man's mask was, of course, not all powerful. Even though the improvements seemed to be effective, he could not realistically expect to remain out of notice indefinitely. And even if he could remain undetected, it was unlikely that his work breaking into the case and stealing the tear would likewise escape notice. This consideration prompted the first apprentice's role. The fearsome visage he now wore—with its wide mouth, narrow eyes, and long pointed nose—was designed to imprison someone in conversation. Once someone acknowledged the telling of a story, they would be forced to listen to its entire duration. The odd Hylian was, naturally, an enthusiastically social person. The astrologer allowed him to begin recounting the events of the past Carnival, from that moment his attention was riveted to the mask's dark eyes, and the apprentice's narrative could stretch for days if needed. Fortunately, the man was quicker than that, and within four hours signaled his success then returned down the stairs. The Hylian backed away from the astrologer, still maintaining eye-contact as he continued his story, before making the turn of the stair. He kept his mask on and kept speaking (with lesser effect now they were not face-to-face), before finally reaching the ladder and making his break for home.

The master was pleased with their success. So what if the astrologer had managed to retake his prize inside of a mere three days?