I wish I had a cover image for this fic. Sadly, I cannot draw to save my life.
No one wanted to remain outside the cave, just in case the creatures came back. So, everyone packed into the cave. Hubert and Dorothea covered the entrance just in case the creatures came back.
At least the group was better armed now, having taken weapons from their fallen foes. Even Kronya had gotten a weapon, a crude flint knife. It wasn't much of a weapon, but it was better than a tree branch. Of course, Edelgard and her hound didn't know she had it.
It was incredibly obvious that Flayn was one of the ancient enemies of the Agarthans. If Edelgard decided to sell her out, she was as good as dead. Unless, maybe, she could get Link on her side. If she could figure out something that he would want that the primitives couldn't provide...
"Fascinating," one of the primitives—Linhardt, she thought—spoke. "This technology is far beyond anything in Fódlan. I've never seen anything like it."
She turned her attention back to Link and the pedestal. Unlike most of her fellows, she had seen actual technology before, but this was quite a bit different. It could be a useful asset. Anything to avoid her mission being a total failure.
"Well, let's get that map," Kronya said. Already a plan was forming. She would wait until they got back to civilization. There she would silence Edelgard and Hubert, the dragon too if she got the chance. She'd steal the Sheikah Slate and discard her Monica disguise. She didn't have the resources to steal another person's identity, but a generic human disguise would be doable. She'd then find her way back to Shambhala...somehow. Thales could use Edelgard's disappearance as a pretext for war.
It wasn't a perfect plan, but it would do.
Link placed the Slate in the pedestal. "SHEIKAH TOWER ACTIVATED," an inhuman voice reverberated from the ancient stone. "PLEASE WATCH FOR FALLING ROCKS."
"Huh? What the heck?" Link blinked in confusion, "Please watch for whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-!"
Kronya wasn't prepared for the ground beneath her to start rising. But that's exactly what it did. A tower rose beneath the group's feet, elevating them to its full height.
Kronya recovered from the shock quicker than most of the primitives. Naturally, she had been trained as an assassin since childhood. Recovering from the unexpected was a part of that. Shortly afterwards, the primitives seemed to start recovering. Well, except for Hubert. He was focused on how far it was to the ground.
And then...all Kronya could describe the sensation that occurred next was that she was exposed to a force of pure hatred and evil. She tried to shrink away from the sensation, but she had nowhere to hide, not that she even could. If she had thought the primitives or the Nabateans were her enemy, she had severely overestimated their capacity for hate. Whatever it was that was focused on her was incredibly powerful, completely alien to her, and it was livid over the very fact that she existed.
She dared to look at the source. From here there was a clearer view of the castle to the north. Above it flew a spectral creature in the shape of a boar, but made of dark smoke. Kronya had no idea what this thing was, but she knew it wanted nothing more than to destroy everything within its horrible reach.
Unable to withstand looking at IT any longer, she turned her attention to the others. Most were having similar reactions. "Dear Goddess, what is that?" Dorothea said.
"No, no, leave me alone! LEAVE ME ALONE!" Hilda begged.
"Please, Goddess, I'll never doubt you again, just please, save us!" Lorenz pleaded.
Everyone else had similar reactions, except for two people. Link stood steadfast against the psychic onslaught, staring the abomination down without even flinching.
And though Flayn seemed to be as affected as everyone else, there was still defiance in her. "Leave...us...ALONE!" she shouted, casting a spell that bathed the tower in white light, shielding the occupants from the horror's terrible gaze. Kronya didn't care that she was a dragon in that moment; she just felt gratitude.
The horror redoubled its efforts to pierce the shield, but a burst of light from the castle hit it, forcing it to return its focus to said castle.
The old man suddenly flew to the tower using a strange glider. "You have power, child," he said to Flayn. "Not just anyone can force away the gaze of Calamity Ganon. You have divine blood."
"No!" Flayn said too quickly. "It was just a simple light spell. Any light mage could have done it."
"Not just any light mage," the old man disagreed. "The only other light mage who could do what you just did is Princess Zelda, and she is the mortal incarnation of the Goddess. For a century she has held Calamity Ganon in that castle.
"And you," he turned to Link, "you have a rare kind of courage, to meet Calamity Ganon's gaze without turning away or going mad."
"What was that thing anyway?" Ingrid asked, genuinely shaken.
"Evil," Dedue said. "A spirit of pure darkness and destruction. The very embodiment of all that is wicked."
"True enough," the old man said. "It's called Calamity Ganon. The legends say it was once a man. But even when it was, it was also a curse. A wicked being created from the hatred of a dying dark god. It devastated Hyrule one hundred years ago, and tried to destroy it outright. Only Princess Zelda prevented it from finishing the job. And it seeks to get free, in order to finish what it started.
"Still, it was defeated before," the man continued. "And it may yet be defeated again. Where there's life, there's hope."
Kronya wasn't sure how something like that could be defeated, but she was sure that it needed to be. If it escaped, it surely wouldn't stop its reign of destruction with Hyrule. It would eventually reach Leicester, and after that, Shambhala. And if that happened, it would destroy the Agarthans far more cruelly than the dragons ever would.
Too bad Solon wasn't there. The Forbidden Spell of Zaharas was meant to destroy gods, and it might be able to destroy Calamity Ganon. But if Ganon had been defeated before, there must have been alternative ways of handling it. "How was it defeated before?"
In fact, she decided, if somehow Flayn could defeat Calamity Ganon, she'd give her a gift that no other Agarthan had ever thought to give a Nabatean. She would spare her life. She would leave Flayn in Hyrule somehow, and return to Shambhala without her. And she would make a report that would steer the Agarthan empire away from Hyrule.
"A warrior wielded the sword that seals the darkness against Calamity Ganon ten thousand years ago," the old man said. "And with it, and with the power of the four Divine Beasts, he was able to weaken it enough for the princess at the time to seal it away."
"How do we find this sword, then?" Kronya asked.
"My, my, you took to wanting to defeat Ganon rather quickly, young lady," the old man said. "I could give you more information, but first, you would have to prove yourself."
"What do you want us to do, then?" Link asked.
"Well, let me see that Sheikah Slate for a moment," the old man said. "If you press this button, it lets you see things that are far away and identify where they are on the map."
He pointed out a glowing orange structure. "That is a shrine. There are four of them on the Great Plateau. Show me the treasure hidden in all four of them, and I'll tell you everything I can. As a bonus, I'll even give you this paraglider." He opened a glider. "It will be useful, I think.
"Oh, and one more thing," the old man said. "You might want to find shelter before nightfall." With that, he used his glider to glide off the tower.
What none of the heroes knew at the time was that they were being watched, and not just by the old man.
"So, the Hero of Hyrule has returned, has he? And he brought allies," a very old seer mused.
"Is that so?" a fat man challenged. "It's about time you actually saw something significant, Astor. You've been just sitting here eating our food since my grandpa led the Yiga Clan. Did you really see the Hero, or did you see that I was just about ready to kick you out?"
"I do not lie, Master Kohga," Astor told the Yiga leader. "The Hero lives. He is on the Great Plateau with two dozen and three fools who wish to fight alongside him."
"I'll send some guys to watch the trail off the Plateau," Master Kohga said.
"Send your best," Astor told him. "Kill the Hero and his allies, and ensure Calamity Ganon's victory, and in turn, he shall elevate us to a glorious new existence."
"So, yeah. After Calamity Ganon, Thales's grudges seemed a lot more insignificant by comparison," Kronya said. "It wasn't until later that I actually decided I didn't want to be part of the Agarthan cause anymore, but we'll get there when we get there."
Seteth looked at Flayn. "I don't know whether I should be feeling proud or worried at the moment."
Rhea's mind couldn't help but wander to a different topic. "I am curious about that Sheikah Tower... what does it actually do?"
While this may have seemed like a random question, Rhea was in fact quite alarmed by the sudden appearance of these 'Sheikah Towers'. Technology from a time before the founding of Fódlan had been incredibly advanced, possessing wonders that would make the current state of the art look laughable. However, with those wonders came terrible weapons that Rhea still shuddered to remember...and in particular if those the function of those towers was what Rhea suspected them to be, then that was something that the Archbishop had reason to worry about.
After all, global satellite technology could do far more than just providing accurate 'maps'. For instance, it could be used to guide weapons of mass destruction.
"Well, principally, Sheikah Towers were designed to upload map data of the surrounding region onto a Sheikah Slate that had been inserted into the main console," Zelda supplied excitedly, "We also believe the towers are what helps the Slate's map function pinpoint the exact position of the Slate's holder on the map itself. Purah has also hypothesized that the towers are part of the Sheikah Shrine Network that allows for teleportation. And we suspect that they were once used to control the Guardians..."
"They aren't used for weapon guidance systems, if that's what you're worried about," Flayn assured her.
Rhea wasn't entirely comforted by the assurance. Just because they weren't being used for weapon guidance systems now didn't mean they wouldn't be in the future. Even so, she decided not to press the issue.
"So, what happened next?" she asked.
"Well, by the time we all got down from the tower, it was getting close to nightfall," Claude said. "So, we decided to head to the Temple of Time and spend the night there. It seemed like the safest option."
"And it's a good thing that we did," Dimitri said. "Because we were not prepared for the dead to rise."
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