Link hadn't been up to the Sky Islands in years, and certainly not this empty godforsaken shard in the Lanayru Archipelago. Like most of the specks and barren archipelagos, there was little here to compel anyone to visit, let alone recall its existence. There was a barren stone shelter whose purpose had long ago gone extinct, and a few yellow elm trees clinging to their meager apple harvest. A single pond was home to a society of the tough, prehistoric fish that mysteriously remained here, one of which he'd skewered over the fire for a dinner neither he or Purah felt inclined to eat.
"We can't go to the Great Sky Islands," she had said as way of apology while steering the Zonai glider away from the abandoned metropolis ringing the Temple of Time. "That's the first place they'd look… up."
So instead they were here as the fire dimmed, letting their intense focus fall into the embers, compelling the sparks to jump and snap. On any other night he'd be asleep by now, lulled by Zelda's drowsy closeness and the nighttime crickets' conversations. Now all he could do was mark the time between now and her last desperate kiss. The gap would keep yawning open for, what, days? Weeks? Eons? What was the price this time, destiny?
Purah curled her knees up to her chest, resting her head down against her legs. Her glasses reflected the flickering fire as she stared at Link. He could feel the hesitation in the way she held her breath, her analyzing mind brimming with questions she didn't know how to start asking.
"Josha should be back any time now," she said at last, officially conceding the silence game. She'd turned the glider back almost as soon as they'd landed on the island, headed to find the priestess Paya from Kakariko Village.
"The Yiga will be chomping at the bit to take over the Sheikah's home," Josha was certain. "She won't be safe, and it won't be long."
Link kept his gaze locked on the fire as he nodded. "You didn't tell me how he returned." The words surprised even himself; they seemed to rise of their own accord. He was used to silence, spending swaths of his life alone between wilderness and the sporadic outpost. This wasn't a desperate attempt to fill the silence. His mind was shredding itself apart trying to comprehend how, in any reality, this monster could rise from the eradication they'd given everything to secure.
Purah was just as shocked as he was, pulling back from her pose to sit up straight. "How–Ganondorf–is here?" Her eyes shifted back to the flames, and she shook her head. "I don't know for sure. But remember what Mineru told Zelda, about dragonification? That to swallow a stone was to lose one's self in a forbidden act?"
He'd seen the memory suspended in the Dragon's Tear. Listened as Zelda first described the primeval conversation to him in her own words, then to the Zonai Survey Team, the Sheikahs and Sages gathered. He was napping in the Hateno House that afternoon when she was working on her write-up for the Royal Library Collection, when her voice from the desk nudged him awake. "You can see the Dragons, can't you?"
He stretched his legs out to the foot of the bed, still groggy. "I saw you."
"I know, of course. I mean… you can see the others too, can't you? There are others, aren't there?" She dropped her voice, certainly knowing that she was pushing.
Here now, far above and away from it, he squinted his eyes as if he could blot out the memory. Slip back into it and tell her of how he had never seen anything as majestic as their shining, rippling bodies paddling through the sky. He'd take the box of colored pencils from her drawer and sketch the fluorescent lightening rod crowning Farosh, the ice shards dotting Naydra like a rolling mountain range, Dinraal's wicked horns crackling with immortal inferno. What he wouldn't give to see her face spark with delight at the wonder, her eyes brimming with gratitude as they did anytime she realized she'd be able to share something unseen or forgotten not just with this Hyrule's children, but in perpetuity, her gift from one age to another.
Instead he'd huffed like a child, skulking out of the loft to retrieve his shoes from the landing. "Link," she called after him. "I'm 've told me you don't like to talk about it; that was unfair of me."
"I don't want everyone in Hyrule knowing what I can and can't see," he mumbled, shoving his feet into the yielding buttery leather, not finding the fight he was after. "They know where I came from, where I've been, the minutiae of every stupid journey I've taken and any loss I've ever counted. God dammit, Zelda. Don't they know enough by now? Haven't we given them enough?"
It seemed like such a perfect plan at the time. If he didn't pick around at the past, it would stay there. So he left the woman he loved more than the sun in the sky alone in the loft as he went off to pout, confident that she would still be there with her pages and her pencils for all their days.
"Yes," Link said to Purah now.
"Mineru said that, but it doesn't quite match with what happened, did it? The Demon Dragon had all of the anger and vindictiveness of Ganondorf. And the Light Dragon, that was Princess Zelda through and through, rushing in to save you at the last minute. I'm sorry, I mean Hyrule," she said, flashing a warm smile.
"We still defeated him," he pointed out.
"You defeated the dragon. Zelda didn't turn out to be truly in the Light Dragon. Her body and her mind were safe in the Sacred Realm. Right? Please tell me I'm right. I wasn't there. I just read the books."
He vaguely registered a nod of agreement, sprinting with her to the same conclusion. "And if Zelda was safe in the Sacred Realm…"
"Then so was Ganondorf," he finished. He raked his hands through his hair, his body too frantic to contain. "How could we…why did we sit on a lie like this!?"
Purah leaned toward him, squeezing his arm in a tug back to reality. "Because everyone wants to believe that it's going to be okay. It's the only way we survive at all."
From the distance, Link could hear the familiar sound of Zonai fans chopping through the air. Josha's glider made a graceful landing on the south side of the island, depositing a petrified Paya to blessed solid ground. She sank down on her knees, her fists clenching the grass. Tented by her overwhelming cone-shaped hat, she looked like a frightened construct.
"Paya!" Purah tore herself from the fire, swallowing the Priestess up in love and relief. "Are you all right? Did they come through Kakariko?"
Purah helped her up to her shaky feet, and she nodded solemnly toward Link. "The invasion came through Kakariko Village on the road to the castle. None of us had any idea who they were, or that they were coming. They didn't even pause at the gates, they rode their horses straight through. We scarcely had time to wake up, let alone try and stop them."
"I'm surprised they didn't stop," said Purah, tapping her lip thoughtfully. "It wouldn't be too much of an inconvenience to toss some torches on the roofs. Not that I'm willing it," she said quickly, apologizing to the shaken Priestess. "It just seems so strange."
"It is strange," Paya admitted, pursing her lips. "There were no monsters, no terrors. Nothing like the scrolls depict every other Demon King in the history of Hyrule. Just the Yiga and Varina."
Link's ears perked at the name he'd only heard from Riju. For years their existence was a legend, much like Ganondorf himself. A story to scare the rowdy girls at sleepovers into tucking in to avoid. But as the years wore on, the Chief felt the threat growing exponentially. There was an anger simmering within the crevices of Gerudo Town's open hospitality and grace. An impatience. Arguments spilled out from dinner tables and closed doors into the market and streets. Slowly, that resentment turned into disappearances. Incredible warriors spiriting away in the night, never to be seen again except in stories of ambush in the deepest recesses of the desert.
"There used to be so few of them, it may have well have been a fairy tale," explained Riju in confidence a year prior, one legendary fighter to another from the sanctity of her throne room. "For as long as legend traces back, they've been deflected warriors who were dissatisfied with the tribe's loyalty to Hyrule and its deference to the Hylian royal family. Rumor has it that the first of them conspired with Ganondorf to attack King Rauru and Queen Sonia's kingdom thousands of years ago. But now there have been too many sightings to keep sticking my head in the sand. Too many powerful women suddenly vanishing from town to chalk it up to a coincidence. They're growing in numbers and abilities, and from what I can gather, it's exponentially."
"Why now?" Link had asked. "Why would they be mobilizing when there's no threat? Do they think they can create one? They'd have no allies outside of their own borders."
She raised an eyebrow, tilting her hip into a question mark. "Hasn't the Royal Guard been tracking the Yiga?"
"Master Kogha hasn't been spotted in years," Link shrugged. "There's not much to watch except for some shacks in the depths."
"That's interesting," she said, a chill edging her tone. "Our sources have been watching those shacks ballooning out into full-grown fortresses. Are the Hylians even patrolling the Depths any longer?"
"Talk to Hoz," Link shot back. "I'm not the Commander."
"You're right," she shifted, breathing in her patience. "I didn't want to speak with you to give a lecture about defensive strategy. I'm only trying to tell you, as one of my closest friends, that all of this seems to be a reflection of a…deep dissatisfaction." Her green eyes fell, as if suddenly hesitant to hold his gaze.
"At what?"
"Many of us–the entire tribe, not just the zealots–there's a sense that Princess Zelda has been absent from Hyrule Castle for too long. People don't understand why there is no Queen of Hyrule. How has the coronation been put off for almost a decade? There's no reason to delay. She's been of age since The Calamity. She's found a worthy King. You know how traditionalist we are here in the southwest, but I believe the sentiment spreads beyond our borders. There have been whispers…"
She trailed off as Link took deep strides toward the stairs, where Epona waited to take him back home.
"Link! I'm only trying to warn you…as a friend!" She leaned over the balcony, her crown blinding in the sun, obscuring the desperation across her face. "Hyrule needs both of you!"
"Come and visit then," Link shot back, adjusting the saddle in preparation for the long ride home. "Look Zelda in the eyes and tell her what she's done for her people isn't enough for you. Let her know that she doesn't deserve to enjoy peace like anyone else."
"She isn't anyone else! She's the Princess of Hyrule, Link!" The clop of Epona's hooves on the tender terracotta drowned out his friends' last words, left rising with the heat.
If she won't claim the throne, someone else will!
His friends.
"The Sages," he broke back in to Purah and Paya's soft conversation. "Do we know where they are now?"
Paya lowered her head, clasping her hands at her waist as if holding an apology. "A few hours after the cavalry came through town, we did have a small legion of Zora arrive to share what they'd seen in their Domain. They told us that a small team of Ganondorf's warriors were dispatched separately to retrieve King Sidon from his throne. I can only assume the same can be said for Tulin, Yunobo, and Riju as well. As I understand from the Zoras, there was no struggle. The invaders told the King unequivocally that his audience was required at…" Her voice trailed off, her knuckles turning white in her own grasp.
"Paya." Purah was gentle, but clear. "Link has to know everything to stand any chance against this."
She drew in a breath. "Required at the King of Hyrule's coronation."
"Commanding an invading army to the castle for a formal Coronation. No demons or monsters, no fire and gloomstorms." Purah paced the edge of their camp, nervously fiddling with her telescope. "Since when did Ganondorf start acting positively human?"
The soft, hesitant voice of Paya emerged from beneath her shroud once more. "And not just the Demon King. They vowed the Coronation of the Queen as well."