With the success of the last chapter, I did indeed attempt to get in Groose's head for you guys! I don't know how well I've managed - small-time bully is possibly one of the hardest kinds of character for me to write - but hopefully not too badly. Many thanks as always for the reviews!

Chapter 61: Chosen of Fate

Groose ran through the huge trees in the direction Link had pointed, scrambling up strange plant-cloaked rock mounds and jumping down on the other side, sometimes casting about for a better path. This weird place wasn't anything like what he had expected or like Strich and Cawlin had told him the stories were saying. Probably the Headmaster had been keeping what it was really like to himself so all the students didn't start flying out there. He'd reckoned without Groose! He wasn't enough of a baby to be cowed by scary stories!

For once, he didn't blame Link for the lie, his feelings towards the dopey kid unusually warm. After all, Link had showed him the way out here and told him how to rescue Zelda! Maybe he was finally learning to respect his seniors. Magnanimously, Groose decided he and Link could start again, despite the way Link had totally messed up their landing.

Most of his mind, however, was on where he was going – and Zelda. Pretty Zelda, with her sun-gold hair; much prettier than stuck-up Karane or sharp-featured Sperah. Whatever trouble she was in, Groose would rescue her, and fly her back to Skyloft since her loftwing couldn't fly, sick and sad in the pens behind the Academy. Of course, he'd have to carry her on the back of his own loftwing, maybe hold onto her since he was sure his bird's bold flight would catch her by surprise. He'd return to the Academy a hero, and then…

A lighter patch in the forest beckoned him on. Groose shot out into the open space, and realised that the green and grey ahead of him wasn't just more undergrowth, but a stone wall cloaked in trees and creepers. This had to be the temple Link had told him about! There were the doors, big heavy-looking things, and inside there was supposed to be some old lady who knew how to get to where Zelda was! Taking a deep breath of the weirdly thick, warm air, he set his shoulder to the right-hand door and shoved.

It ground open with an unpleasant grating sound, spilling cool air out over him, musty and strange, dark enough inside that it took his eyes a moment to adjust. Probably Link would have thought it was spooky, but Groose gathered all his resolve and stepped inside.

"Welcome… child of the sky?" The softly spoken voice echoed around the crumbling temple: an old woman's voice with a funny accent, rising at the end in uncertainty. Groose looked around wildly until he found her, up at the top of some stairs to his right, sitting in a beam of daylight shining through a hole in the roof, hooded and cloaked in red. This had to be the old woman Link had told him about!

Heedless of anything else, Groose ran up the stairs to stand in front of her. She was so stooped and frail, he towered over her even when she stood up, looking up at him from a face like crumpled parchment.

"Yo, Grannie! Link tells me you're the lady who knows where Zelda is!"

"Ah… you know Link?"

Well, that made sense, Groose supposed. If the old lady had only ever met Link, she wouldn't know about anyone else up in the sky. It was sort of a shame she had to meet him first, but he wasn't actually all that bad after all, so maybe she hadn't been too disappointed.

"Yeah! He's my junior classmate! He's kind of a weed, but I guess you met him already. Anyway, I'm Groose. I'm here to save Zelda! You know where she is, right? And she's OK?"

"Wherever the spirit maiden, your Zelda, is, I believe she is safe."

"Huh huh…" Just hearing it again made Groose laugh in relief.

"However, young Groose…"

Groose looked at her quizzically.

"At this time, there is unlikely to be anything you can do to help her."

"What?!" Groose shouted, his voice echoing around the temple. "No way! Listen, I can do anything she needs me to do! Anything!"

"I am afraid that is not so. You are not the one who will save her, if saving she should need, for it is not your destiny to do so."

"Huh? You gotta be kidding me, Grannie! You're messing with me. Say it again, I dare you!" A grating sound echoed through the hollow, empty temple as Groose spoke, but he ignored it. No-one told Groose what he could or couldn't do!

Pushing the door Groose had left open shut again, Link listened for a moment to the voices before beginning to walk slowly towards the stairs, and Groose and the old lady at their top.

"I only speak the truth," the old woman said, impossibly calm. "You are not the one who will save her. The spirit maiden, your Zelda, can only be saved by another. It has been his fate to do this thing, and in doing so save us, since long before you were brought crying into this world."

"Shut it, Grannie!" Groose yelled. "You obviously don't know me well, 'cause if you did, you'd know that if anyone's gonna save Zelda, it's Groose! How could it not be me? Plus, if it ain't me, why would I even be here?" Who else would have dared to ignore all the scare stories? Who else would have been smart enough to find the weird hole in the clouds, or brave enough to ignore all the crazy things he'd seen in this impossible gigantic land? "Pffft. If I'm not up to the job of being the hero, just who is?"

The old woman looked to her left as soft footfalls sounded on the final few stairs.

"Huh?" He tore his eyes from her, realising in surprise that Link had caught up, his arms full of bundled sailcloth. He really was shaping up if he'd brought Groose's sailcloth to him without even being told!

A few moments later, as Link stopped at the top of the stairs and looked between them, the old woman's expectant air finally sunk in.

"Oh… now I getcha." Groose didn't know whether to be frustrated or infuriated, and he turned to the only other person he could speak to, making it clear as day there was no way that Link of all people could possibly take his place. "Link, Grannie here has been trying to tell me you're gonna be the big hero who rescues Zelda. What a joke! Look, all I've heard so far is a bunch of babbling about destiny, but that's a load of garbage. I know you, and you're no hero, shrimp!"

Link didn't even blink. Groose's opinion had never mattered to him… now, in the face of everything he had seen and done, it meant nothing at all.

"I got your sailcloth down," he offered, quietly. It seemed to be the straw that dragged the loftwing down, as Groose looked between them both in disgust, then abruptly ran off in the direction of the large double doors and their sealed evil, screaming in inarticulate frustration. Link watched him go for a few moments, then shrugged internally – horrifying as the yawning pit was, Groose probably couldn't come to much harm out there unless he walked off a ledge – and set the bundle of the two sailcloths down gently on the stone floor.

"Greetings, Link," the old lady said politely, as calm as if Groose had never existed.

"Greetings… Mahra Impa?"

The pleased smile that crossed her face made Link glad he had been right.

"Were you able to catch up with Zelda?" she went on.

"Sort of…" Link explained, sparing nothing, and Mahra Impa listened, her long white braid swaying gently with her every breath.

"Ah, I see," she said finally, when he had finished. "So young Impa was there as well, was she? That is good. She is the one I sent forth to find Zelda and assist her, after she fell here before you… and she will have had the sacred one with her."

"The sacred one?" Link asked

"The sacred one is a being sent forth by the goddess to aid the spirit maiden in her quest," Mahra Impa said, an explanation that Link felt didn't really help. "With the aid of the sacred one, the spirit maiden will have the same certain guidance as you do through the Goddess Sword you bear. If they have even now travelled into the past, it will be to accomplish a part of the great task destiny has set before them. However," and as her eyes met Link's, he saw that she recognised his urgent determination, "now that Zelda has destroyed the great Gate that they used, there is only one way left for you to reach them."

"Yes?" Link spoke the single word quietly, though his whole being demanded to know the answer.

"Please show me the harp that the spirit maiden gave you?"

Somewhat puzzled, but obedient – Zelda had said he would need it if she wasn't with him – Link drew it from its pouch, solid in his hand yet with just the faintest echo of the feel of a sunbeam, of the light through which Zelda had somehow given it to him. He held it out to Mahra Impa, who studied it closely for several moments.

"Yes…" she breathed. "This harp has been imbued with the power of the goddess herself. Tell me, Link, have you yet attempted to play it?"

Link shook his head. "Zelda said I'd need it, but there hasn't been any reason to… yet."

"Do you know how to play it?"

"Sort of," he ventured. He knew the basics – he'd taken the same music class as Zelda when they were both thirteen – but she'd been the one to truly fall in love with the instrument.

"I suggest you familiarise yourself with it before we begin the next step," Mahra Impa suggested, kindly.

Next step? Link looked at the harp in his hands; turned it and touched his fingers lightly to the strings. It felt somehow slightly more responsive than the one he'd played before in those half-forgotten classes, as if the sounds he hadn't yet played were almost shimmering under his fingertips. Slowly, Link ran his fingers across the strings, the notes rippling forth gently. To his surprise, it sounded perfectly tuned, despite the days it had spent being carried around unused. He supposed Headmaster Gaepora could have tuned it, but…

As he switched from simply caressing the strings to picking out a simple child's melody, Mahra Impa nodded approvingly.

"Very good. Now, if I sing for you, can you follow the melody?"

"I can try," Link said, somewhat uncertainly. Mahra Impa seemed to accept that as a certain confirmation, as she didn't even pause before speaking again.

"Then we will begin. Listen closely…"

Her old voice rose in a remarkably true, wordless note, and Link's half-remembered feel for the instrument guided his fingers to the right string, his focus narrowing to Mahra Impa's voice, the harp in his hands, and little more as the ancient temple echoed once again with music, at first slow, faltering and uncertain, but growing more sure as Mahra Impa repeated the melody over and over with endless patience.

I think we might be sticking to fortnightly rather than weekly chapters for the next while. Sorry about this! October and especially November are dead busy…

Patch Notes
- Thousand-year advisor confirmed as actual functional semi-immortal. (Parasova may wear down, but she's believably able to last a long time!)
- Game mechanic tuition replaced with in-character tuition.
- Link given some prior experience with a harp to justify how quickly he learns.