Link was regretting ever thinking the abominations that were popping up all over Hyrule were pushovers. The first few he'd defeated had been, yes, but it seemed like they just got stronger every time, and their numbers were increasing, as well.

He'd gone back to the Palace as planned after killing the three that had viciously murdered everyone in that village. Buddy had been an ideal horse, fast and obedient, and had gotten him there in record time, but nothing else had gone Link's way since.

The King had been, unsurprisingly when you thought about it, very well guarded. Link hadn't made it two steps into the throne room before feeling multiple pricks on his body. He'd woken up on the floor of the bedroom assigned to him, the Master Sword gone and a note left for him right next to his head, reading: "Sheikahs are real, you stupid child."

He'd thankfully been given back his sword and sent out again. The coachman, a different one than the coachman who'd given Buddy to Link, was issued with a talking stone that would allow him to receive instructions on where to go next, and instructed not to bring Link back to the castle. Buddy was not one of the four horses attached to the carriage. Link wished he had been, he'd gotten attached to him.

The following few days were a blur of horrors. Whenever he tried to remember mundane details like when he'd last managed to sleep in the carriage or what he had eaten last, Link's mind just fixated on the scenes of carnage he kept riding into. He was too late most of the time, catching the monsters after they had ripped through a town or village.

The one thing he could remember beyond the images of the ever increasing number of dead people that still never left his mind was the fighting. He knew without a doubt that defeating the monsters kept getting harder every time, with the number of abominations he faced at a time increasing and the beasts themselves getting tougher by being faster, stronger, and smarter.

He had found out a couple of days earlier, by seeing it in action, that the monsters could surround settlements they targeted with some kind of magical barrier that prevented people from getting out. That explained why the places that got attacked were never evacuated, and why there were always a lot of bodies in the outskirts: people would try to flee and hit an invisible wall. Link had arrived in the middle of the slaughter the first time he'd seen the barrier, and he'd been able to destroy the ten monsters besieging the town, but not before all but about twenty people had been brutally killed. The tears of the living accompanied the faces of the dead in his mind ever since.

Today was another instance of arriving too late. The monsters were still there but other than the noises the abominations were making, all was quiet. The streets were littered with body parts that Link was not allowing his eyes to linger on as he looked for an opportunity to quickly dispatch some of the monsters before starting the fight in earnest.

He suddenly heard a scream. He whipped his head around towards the source and his eyes widened: one of the monsters had ripped a house off its foundations and the screams came from there: there were still some survivors.

Link ran, scaled a wall for height and jumped at the monster that had ripped the house off the ground, impaling it in what appeared to be one of three torsos. It worked to slow the beast down, long enough for Link to swipe at anything that looked like a head, successfully severing four. It was enough: the monster turned to dust.

Unfortunately, five more materialized right around the former house and Link himself. Screams were still coming from the hole where the house had been. Link ran for the nearest monster and caught a glance at the cluster of survivors: seven people of varying ages, from an elderly man to a pre-teen girl. They were huddling together, too scared to think of running. To be fair, it wasn't like running would have helped them.

Link cut one of the monsters' legs, mostly to get its attention: no monster since the very first one Link had fought in the Master Sword's clearing ever fell from having one of their many legs cut off. The monster did exactly what Link wanted anyway, extending parts of its body towards him to attack. Link went into a spin with the Master Sword, slashing every body part that came close enough, and eventually did enough damage for that monster to turn to dust as well.

He then turned for the next one, just in time to see it rip one of the survivors in two, roughly at the waist. Blood sprayed on some of the other survivors.

The screaming intensified despite the loss of one of the voices. Link's jaw clenched. Down to six people he could save.

He slashed at the monster that still had half a townsperson in its maw several times in quick succession. The beast fell to the ground in pieces and dissolved into dust, leaving both half of its last victim behind. Link turned again to face the remaining monstrosities, only to find they'd multiplied, and that all six survivors were grasped by several monsters each, and being tugged in several directions at once.

Before he could even decide on a target, limbs seemed to shout out from every direction around him, from the mass that had the townspeople, from behind him, and even from the ground. He was yanked into the air and the Master Sword was ripped right out of his hand.

He heard another voice stop. Five. He was down to five people he could save. He tried reaching for the sword, but it was well out of reach, on the ground and a few steps away from where he was being held about one man's height off the ground. Pain exploded in his right leg as one of the things holding him sunk some of its teeth into it.

He screamed in rage more than in pain. If the monsters killed him now, he wouldn't be able to save ANYONE else, and he wouldn't be able to save any of the five survivors here. He wouldn't be able to stop whatever was continuing to spawn them and to save his own town from eventually being wiped out too.

The faces of the dead swam in front of his eyes, from the first one he'd seen - that brown eyed boy with one of his ears partly ripped and most of his body missing - to the adult man who he'd just seen being ripped in two. They morphed into the faces of people he knew from home. The brown eyed boy was suddenly one of the little kids at school, Sana. The arm with the blood covered lace was now recognizable as his mother's. The man who'd just been ripped apart was one of Link's companions in the Saria Village division of Din's Justice.

"NO" he roared. "NO NO FUCK NO NO NO NO NOOO!"

Something bit his stomach. He screamed, tears streaming down his eyes because it HURT and that's how everyone was going to die: brutally, in pain, terrified. And there was nothing he could do. He screamed in rage: it couldn't end like this, he had to be able to help more than he had so far. The familiar sight of all the dead he'd seen, the familiar sound of all the tears and screams he'd heard, filled his head.

And suddenly, the world went gold.

Link couldn't tell where the light was coming from, and couldn't understand why he could see through it at all despite its brightness, but the effect was unmistakable: every monster present screeched and melted before evaporating into nothing. Link, no longer held up by anything, floated to the ground rather than simply falling, and landed gently on his feet. The five survivors were staring at him.

The golden light dimmed and went out. Link noticed that none of the survivors were hurt, and that neither was he: the pain in his leg and in his stomach was gone. Had the light healed everyone, too?

"What…? Did…did anyone see what that was?" He stammered. "Where…?" He turned around, looking for a source for what appeared to have been some kind of spell.

The survivors were huddled together around their two dead. Some of them were crying, some seemed to be too much in shock to be able to do that just yet. One of them shakily pointed at Link's sword hand. Link looked at it and his eyebrows shot up: on the back of his hand, glowing fainter by the second, was the mark of the triforce, just like the heroes and princesses often had on their hands in the old legends.

"You were just like the Dragon Princess."

Link tore his eyes from his hand to look at the pre-teen girl who had just made that remark. She wasn't looking at him, her head buried in a woman's chest and her whole body shaking.

Link swallowed. The Dragon Princess was, in legends, a Princess of Hyrule who could turn into a huge sky dragon and who had possessed the Golden Power.

The Golden Power was the stuff of legends. If you believed historians, it had been a real thing that the Princesses could access, once, but it hadn't been seen in ages.

Link swallowed again. He had caused a very bright golden light to kill every monster around instantly and simultaneously heal the people within its reach, and it had apparently emanated from a triforce mark that had appeared on his hand and was now fading, its job done for now.

The girl was right. There was no other way to explain this.

In desperation, without knowing he was about to and with no idea that he could do such a thing, Link had just used the Golden Power of legend. His mother's advice not to refuse a gift no matter its origin was finally explained: Link was a direct descendant of Hylia through the lineage of the Royal Family, and his mother had both hoped he'd receive the Golden Power and feared he'd refuse to use it because if he had access to it, if he had royal blood, it meant one thing: the rich influential bastard who had raped his mother when she was fifteen was the King himself, and the Golden Power came from that evil fucker's blood.

Link's fists clenched and he heard himself growl. That was it. He was going to survive this, and someway, somehow, he was going to slice the King's fucking head off before his protectors could stop him, and welcome the retaliation from every Sheikah and Guard in Hyrule, and at least, AT LEAST, die happy.

As for the Golden Power, there was absolutely no way he was ever using it again. He understood his mother's advice, but it was too much to ask. He couldn't do it: this was the power of the Royal Family, this was the power of the family that was the direct cause of all the misery and death in Hyrule. The fact he'd accidentally used it just now made him feel tainted already, and the only consolation was that it had saved five people. Using it again, on purpose, was out of the question.