Link staggered back to the carriage, worn out. He'd been on the road for nearly two weeks now, fighting almost constantly with never enough sleep or rest in between.

The only thing he was happy about was that he'd held on to his resolution and had not used the Golden Power again. Nothing else, absolutely nothing else, was going well.

The 'light show', as the coachman referred to the one time Link had used his unwanted heritage, accidentally and without knowing it was even a possibility, had been seen throughout half of Hyrule. Needless to say, the King was fully aware that Link had manifested the Royal Family's ancestral power. In response, the monarch had issued an official statement to the effect that Link was not of Royal Blood and that therefore, the power he'd exhibited was something else than the legendary golden power. All of Hyrule was to give thanks to the Gods and Goddesses for so blessing the Chosen One, while not insulting Hylia by mislabeling that blessing as something it clearly couldn't be. The lie wasn't surprising, and it wasn't like Link wanted people to think he was related to the King, but the fact that the evil fucker could say something so obviously false with the full knowledge nobody would dare to contradict him was infuriating.

In the grand scheme of things, however, that was just a minor irritant. The much bigger problem was that the monsters weren't letting up at all. Link was exhausted. The fighting was getting harder still for it, and he couldn't truly rest even when he wasn't fighting because he couldn't stop thinking about all the dead, seeing them in his mind's eye and hearing the cries of the survivors in his head. He wasn't sure how much longer he could last. He did know that he needed to lie down for a bit right now: he'd managed to save some people this time, maybe a couple of dozen, but he'd had to destroy about as many monsters, and he really longed for a nap.

The coachman was waiting by the carriage with a saddled and reined horse, a black mare, when Link got there. Link tilted his head in question. Why would the coachman suggest he go on alone, and was he imagining things or was the man pale?

"Saria Village is under attack," the coachman said hurriedly.

He said some more stuff after that, but Link didn't hear it.

Saria Village was his home. It couldn't be under attack, because it was at least an hour's ride away from here. If it was under attack right now, it would be all over well before Link could get there. Therefore, it couldn't be under attack. It couldn't. The coachman was having a laugh, he was being cruel, he could tell Link was tired and needed some rest, so he was pretending Link's home was in the middle of being wiped out to make his passenger rush there in a panic while he laughed it up.

"That's a sick joke," Link growled, fists clenched and his upper lip curled up in a snarl. How DARE the coachman joke about something like that? How dare he use the fact that so many people were dying to make a stupid prank?

The driver swallowed and took a step back, putting the horse between Link and himself. "No joke," he said. "I'm sorry. Just... take the horse. Go. Maybe... maybe some of them are well hidden. There's a revolutionary group there, isn't there? Maybe they're holding on? I only JUST heard, I swear."

Link swallowed. The coachman looked serious. But he couldn't be. Link refused to believe, even for one second, that the coachman was telling the truth. The man had not been friendly to him once since they'd left the palace, he was completely in the King's pocket. No, the coachman was lying. He was definitely lying.

So! Fine then. Link would play along and go home out of it. He'd check on things, make sure there weren't any monsters nearby, and then find the coachman again and punch him in his stupid face for scaring him like that and disrespecting everyone who really WAS dying. He'd get to talk to his mother again after all. Apologize for not following her advice about the stinking Golden Power. All good things.

He took the reins, mounted the horse and took off at a full gallop. It was a sick joke, and he was looking forward to throwing it back in the coachman's face with his fists.

It was a cruel, stupid, disrespectful prank. The unmistakable work of a true Royalist. Saria was fine, it was not under attack, because it was too far for Link to do anything about it if it was. So it wasn't. It couldn't be. The coachman was going to regret this heartless prank as soon as Link found him again.

He leaned on the horse's neck to decrease the wind resistance and to make it easier for the mare to go faster, longer.

Link stared at the flames without seeing them.

Making the funeral pyre had been selfish. He knew that. He should have gone back to the castle immediately after killing the monsters to reunite with the coachman and to go after the next batch of monsters.

Should have, could have, would have. There were limits to what he was capable of. As it turned out, he was incapable of protecting anyone he cared for, but he WAS capable of dragging their remains to one central location.

He hadn't been able to keep them safe after all, but he was capable of gathering as many body parts as he could from the very same school kids he'd saved at the museum about an eternity ago, and he was capable of bringing them all together, one wagon at a time, in the middle of the village where he had already brought his mother and his closer neighbors. Some of them in pieces. Some of them mangled beyond recognition. None of them anywhere close to intact.

He was capable of doing the same for his former crew, the local cell of Din's Justice. And he was capable of going through the whole village to accomplish the same grizzly task, even though it had taken all day and most of the night, just so everyone could be together. It was not proper to send anyone off alone when so many were dead together. It just wasn't. He'd had to light the street oil lamps when it got too dark to see what he was doing, and he kept having to stop when his stomach revolted or when he couldn't move from shaking in exhaustion or crying, but he had done it. That much wasn't beyond what he could do. He couldn't save them, but he could gather them.

He was also capable of surrounding their remains with all the wood he could gather without chopping more trees or taking houses apart. And he was capable of going around the whole improvised pyre with oil to douse the bodies and the wood with. He'd been worried it wouldn't be enough oil, but he'd gathered as much as he could. And he was capable of setting it all on fire with the ceremonial torch he'd found at the Church of Hylia he used to go to with his mother now and again. As it turned out, the fire did take, and it was still burning now. The smell was horrible and painful.

He'd been capable of that much. The most basic funeral rites. What he wasn't capable of was to NOT do that, to not to do at LEAST that. He hadn't been there to save them. He'd saved a few people in a town one hour away from here, and while he was there, his home had come under attack and he hadn't been there to save anyone. His mother, his friends, everyone he knew, everyone he loved… they had died horrible deaths while he was one hour away, trying to save total strangers.

He'd gone after the monsters first, before gathering everyone for the pyre. He'd caught the abominations before they reached the next village over, and he'd destroyed them. It hadn't been to save others from them, that was just a bonus: it had been revenge, pure and simple. There had been ten monsters, and Link had finished them quickly enough that they hadn't had a chance to multiply. Once that had been done, he'd come back and set to work because there was absolutely no way he could possibly just leave everyone as they were.

He hadn't done any kind of funeral rite for any of the other victims in any of the other towns and villages, and it was entirely possible that more people had died somewhere else while he lingered here. It was selfish to have stayed so long, just to satisfy his own desire for his loved ones to be sent off properly. Completely selfish. He needed to move, he couldn't stay here any longer, he needed to do what he could to save more strangers, because the people of Saria Village didn't need him anymore, but those strangers did.

He took a deep breath and turned his back on the flames. He walked to his empty house and went to his bedroom. His clothing, the same shirt and pants he'd left the castle with two weeks earlier, were full of his mother and his friends' blood: he couldn't bear to wear them a moment more. They hadn't been in good condition anymore to start with, stained and dirty and torn, but the fact that some of the blood on it now belonged to the people he'd cared for was too much to endure.

His hands automatically grabbed a pair of light brown pants and a green shirt. Link blinked at the pair of items, which looked like a lazy legendary hero costume, and shrugged. He changed, down to his underwear and his boots, and walked back out with the ruined linen clothing in hand.

He needed to get going. Attacks were still happening elsewhere. He could save some other people.

The fire was still burning outside. He tossed the ruined clothes on the flames, sat a few steps away, upwind from the smoke and the worst of the smell, and stared.

He couldn't stay here any longer, he'd wasted too much time already. He was being selfish.

He couldn't move.

Eventually, the coachman approached. Link ignored him.

The coachman cleared his throat. "Hero. Chosen One."

Link circled his knees with his arms and kept his eyes on the fire.

"His Majesty The King talked to me through the stone," the coachman insisted. "The Unnamed has been found. The source of all this."

Link frowned. If there was a source, whatever its name or absence of name, it had to be what the King had actually summoned. Which meant the King hadn't just 'found' it, the fucking bastard was just ready to finally send Link after it and end this madness.

End it. Yes, make it end, make it all be over… no more monsters, no more fighting, no more being too late to be of any good to anybody. Link swallowed and tore his eyes from the flames to glare at the coachman.

"Where?" he asked.

The Coachman handed him the stone instead of answering his question. Link snarled at it.

"WHERE?" he repeated. He thought of confronting the King about the fact he would have known where this Unnamed thing was all along and had allowed the slaughters to go on for weeks anyway to terrorize the population. It didn't feel like there was any point. He was going to kill the King, he was going to figure out a way to make the man very, very dead before his protectors stopped him, and he could only kill him once.

"The Unnamed has restored an ancient fortress on the south shore of Lake Hylia," the King said.

Link tossed the stone back to the coachman and got up, walking towards the carriage. The coachman followed without a word.