Chapter 10
Discovering renewed purpose in his step, Link hastily made his way back to the castle. He felt something pulling him nearer, to the princess deep in its heart, to the darkness that only existed behind walls and underneath shadows. When he'd gone before, he only explored the first few levels, closer to the exterior. Every day, he got closer to the castle, and every day, his soreness went away.
He was now in the Mabe Plain just southeast of the castle, traveling northwards. The sun was nearly below the horizon to his left, and the intermittent trees had provided welcome shade during these late summer days. The trees thinned further, and Link came upon yet another ruined village, significantly smaller than the destroyed castle town he'd seen during his earlier travels, yet no less sobering. Plots of land and ruined stone houses were hastily abandoned, residents' belongings—pots and pans, bedding, tools—strewn everywhere in the destruction. There were no human or animal remains, which gave him hope that everyone made it out of Calamity's attack alive.
Link found a bed that still had its mattress, despite it being weathered beyond recognition. He sat on it, and flecks of frayed fabric flew out from underneath him, moth-bitten to the point it could hardly be called a blanket. But Link poked his head around all the walls, and it was the nicest bed in the village that he could see. He set his things down, grateful to have found a scabbard for the Master Sword from a merchant at a stable a few days back. It wasn't the perfect fit, but it would do. He could at least strap it on his back now.
Link lay down on the bed that smelled so old even rats didn't want it anymore. The rats had long given up on living here. He put his palms under his head, admiring the starry night sky coming on. He listened to the yipping foxes as they scavenged in the trees across the path. A large blue hinox snored in the distance. Based on the volume, it sounded like it was miles away. Warm darners darted past him occasionally, curious about his scent, then scattered away just as quickly as they'd come. While he lay there, he snatched one to admire its translucent wings, then let it go. For how much he dreaded the next day, he was making the most of enjoying the moment. Tomorrow, he decided, he would train. His arms were almost back to full motion with no soreness, and Link had neglected his swordplay for much too long. He sat up, ate a wrapped rice ball with cooked meat in the center, and then lay back down, satisfied. He hummed a short old tune about riding a horse and drifted off to sleep.
Waking before dawn, Link slowly hefted himself out of the bed, taking his time before his training for the day. It would be a long day, and it was already starting. He cleared his thoughts, leaned over to grab the sword from the floor, then stood.
Behind a different wall, Link found a pot lid and decided to use it as a shield. It was one of the sturdiest things he could find, and it would do magnificently. It even had intact straps, typically used for lifting a hot lid off of a hot pot, but he would use them on his arm. The lid itself was crafted of thick iron. If anything, this pot lid would last longer than Link would. There were very few alternatives around him; this was not a village that had a heavy military presence, but of common folk whose best defense against the Calamity was leaving. No, this pot lid would be the best he would find here.
He adjusted the lid onto his arm and readied the sword, unsheathing it, still in awe at how visually pleasing the blade was. He held it up to the pale morning light, admiring the sheen, the horizon's pink reflection dancing around him. Setting his equipment down, he tied his hair back and snacked on an apple, mentally preparing himself. He was not only out of practice, but he would get sore again. He wished it wouldn't be the case, but it was part of the job. If he was going to defeat Calamity Ganon, he needed to remember how to fight.
Link donned his armor once again, left his meager belongings by the faded bed, then walked around the walls of the fallen house he had stayed in. Most of the houses in this tiny village barely had any walls at all, but the one he'd chosen had three, protected on three sides. The sun's shadows were barely peaking past the mountains and the trees, telling Link he only had a few hours before the day got too hot to train in. Rounding corners of dilapidated houses, he ducked behind a broken space that used to be a window, and he watched the movements of a Guardian a quarter mile away. He'd spotted the robotic Guardian easily the night before, as it had blinking lights and a roaming beam for its visual sense. Link was careful not to make too much movement, and he counted on the walls hiding him, which they did. The Guardian wasn't quite smart enough to look at the ruins for hungry scavengers; rather, it roamed its own little area and didn't venture far from its original spot.
The Guardian acted mostly like a spider while it wasn't attacking something. It would skitter along on its many mechanical legs, sweeping the area back and forth, keeping somewhat of an eye in each direction. When it saw something moving in its tunnel vision, it would dart its head toward the potential threat, and then fire a laser from its eye with terrifying precision. Once targeted, the offender would have only a few seconds to move out of the laser's trajectory. To attack, the Guardian emitted beeps in a certain sequence while aiming its sight, pinched its eye nearly closed to focus, then fired a bright, white-hot blue beam. Then, depending on how far away the Guardian was from its target, the emitting white beam might take longer or shorter time to reach its destination. Link watched in fascination as the Guardian would contently roam around, spot a squirrel in the grass, target it, then fire. Link tried to match the whistling, mesmerizing pitch to the distance of the beam. It seemed the further the beam traveled, the more its pitch would lower.
While Link dreaded his training this morning, he had to admit that the Guardian was fascinating to watch. This Guardian Stalker was weaponless, so it wouldn't be optimal for swordfighting training, but combat was combat, and Link welcomed any experience. Exhaling, he straightened, exposing more of himself through the broken window. The guardian was looking the other way, meandering through the tall grass, roving its head back and forth like a sentinel. In no hurry, Link waited patiently for the Guardian to turn and spot him.
After a few moments, Link got what he asked for. The Guardian altered its direction and started walking parallel to Link's field of vision. It turned its head to an angle to spot Link—
And it kept going. Link's shoulders sagged in both relief and impatience. He'd have to wait even longer for the Guardian to turn fully his way and—
It spotted him and entered a panicked state by chaotically waving its annelid arms and spinning its head around multiple times before settling on Link. It flurried through the grass toward him, and when it got close enough, it let out its red sight laser and nearly blinded Link with it. The Guardian was now only a hundred feet away, and Link scurried behind his wall when he heard the beeps. Almost exactly one second later, its white beam fired on the other side of the wall, causing chunks of stone to fly past Link from the explosion. The fallout dust nearly choked him ragged, and until the stone's dust settled, he had to cover his face with his shirt. The wall rumbled as he braced himself against it, and within moments, the Guardian was beeping again, frantically searching for Link. It attempted to round the corner of the wall he huddled under, but there was too much stone rubble from the ruined village that the Guardian couldn't get around.
Link listened as it skittered, letting the dust around him settle onto the ground. He lifted his head up just a little so he could see through the nonexistent window. The Guardian excitedly spotted Link again, braced itself by planting its legs on the ground, then beeped and fired again. This time, Link was ready to move out of the way. He lunged away from the wall and followed the adjacent wall's side, rounding the corner right as the wall the Guardian attacked toppled into rubble. Link climbed what was remaining of the adjacent wall and landed on top, the house's roof having been blown off and destroyed long ago. The stone was wide enough that Link could easily maneuver around what remained of the wall.
The Guardian spotted him yet again, scrambled backward into the tall grass to get a better angle of Link, then aimed. Link held up his pot lid shield, putting one foot behind the other to ensure his balance, then waited. Soon enough, the beeping sound that made Link's heart race sang its pattern, and the Guardian zoned in and fired. Link listened to the tone, anticipating when the beam would hit. He held up his shield at such an angle that the brunt of it reflected away from Link. Pushed back by the force of it, Link had to take one step back, and nearly fell off the wall. And the strength it took to parry the attack was more than he expected; his muscles would only allow a few hits before the repeated strain exhausted his arm and chest. He'd already felt his soreness from the last week come back to him, not completely recovered before departing from Kakariko.
Link's parry nearly dazed him. The beam's bright light, the agonizing shoulder strain, and the exploding stone's fallout in his lungs were enough to make the best soldier turn away and give up. But Link would need to learn to fight these Guardians if he was going to survive the castle proper. Besides, if he couldn't fight a Guardian, could he really trust himself to fight Calamity Ganon?
The Guardian circled around the ruined walls, trying to analyze Link with as many angles as it could find. It seemed to sidestep between two spots, as if deciding which spot was best. It did this in a flurry, not stopping its motions in any way that made sense. But it finally locked on after Link had walked further along the wall, creating an opening for the Guardian. A series of beeping later, and the Guardian fired another beam. This time when it hit Link's pot lid, he tried to angle it so that the beam reflected back to the Guardian. His reflection aimed true, and the beam ricocheted back, pummeling the Guardian with its own attack. Pushed back, the robot then paused as if to recalibrate its trajectory. It hadn't exploded like the walls underneath Link, but it took notable damage. Exposing some internal wiring, one unresponsive arm and a chunk of its body flew off dozens of feet away, landing in the grass. The impact on Link's shoulder was just as bad as the first hit, and the pot lid's straps rubbed against the skin of Link's arms, causing a light burn. He grunted as he braced himself on the wall, readying another parry.
Link watched carefully as the Guardian reoriented itself. He tried to figure out what repair mechanisms or defenses it had, but he couldn't find any. Guardians were evidently built only for attack rather than survival. Link would use that to his advantage, as it seemed the only way to thwart its defenses was to use its own attacks against it. The exposed wiring was also an interesting development. If Link could attack from the inside, he could do even more damage.
The Guardian spotted him again, frantically running close to him to get a more focused attack. It approached the wall as if to climb it, but couldn't with its weak leg. It was getting desperate. Whether Guardians actually had emotions, Link didn't want to find out. It skittered around, shuffling through the tall grass, scraping its metal claws against the stone with a shriek. It readied its sights, and a few beeps accompanying a piercing beam later, it fired. Link parried again, having to recalculate the timing of the attack based on the Guardian's proximity. Nearly instantaneously after the Guardian fired, Link braced himself and shoved the pot lid shield forward. The white-blue beam changed course and hit the Guardian again, causing a bright white explosion as it made contact. More Guardian parts shattered and flew away from the force. It only had two legs now, and its core pounded on the ground from its clumsy fall. More wiring exposed, the Guardian spun its head all the way around a few more times, twisting the wires. Link deftly hopped off the wall and approached the machine, which now was stuck at an angle that it couldn't attack him from this direction.
Link dropped the pot lid, unsheathed the Master Sword, and leaped onto the back of the Guardian. Most of the wiring was thick and intact, but there were a few thinner ones that were frayed, almost completely severed. Link went after those first—the easy bait. He sliced them clean apart, gripped the thicker wires, then started hacking away. As he sliced wire by wire, the Guardian's functionalities gradually shut down. First, its homing capability stopped. The Guardian's red sighting laser shut off completely, followed shortly by the sudden lack of beeping. Then with the next few wires, the Guardian's spinning head and twitching leg stopped, causing the Guardian to fall forward, unbalancing Link for a moment. Severing the last thick wire, which seemed to be connected to a power supply, the Guardian powered down entirely with a sighing sound, its electrical glow fading away.
Guardian fully down and rendered inept, Link sagged his shoulders in relief. He'd figured out a decent strategy for defeating the Guardians, but if it took this much fortitude in his upper body, he would need to be more resourceful to defeat them. A different shield was also needed, because the pot lid he was using was getting heavy on his arms and his back, dutiful as it was. It was certainly better than a wooden shield, which would crumble under even a portion of the Guardian's beams.
He slid five feet along the Guardian and took comfort in the hard, motionless ground. He revolved around the Guardian and noticed that many of its pieces had detached and fallen onto the ground underneath its core. Link let them sit there, as he had no use for them, but perhaps someone else might. He could pick them up for the Sheikah scholars, but his pack was reaching capacity, and he could come back to them later. Rounding the corners of the ruined village, he returned to the poor bed he'd slept in and gathered his things, trying to tell himself he was ready to save the princess.
He wasn't.
He'd had this striking realization for a long time now. When he first woke from the Shrine of Resurrection and met the ghost king, he was lost. When he revisited the memories of Shara in the desert, and tried to go back home to the Clan, he was unwanted. When he pulled the Master Sword from the forest and the Great Deku Tree gave him commands, he was hesitant. Even so, he had to face these blaring shortcomings. He still had no idea why Goddess Hylia chose him—a Yiga by upbringing and a liar by trade—to be the Hero. Why had the Goddess cursed him so? He sympathized with the troubled princess of his past, who felt that Hylia was ignoring her. But this time, Hylia was making Link question himself at his very core. He did not feel ready, he did not feel worthy, and he should never have been the Hero. All he really wanted was to have a home again, a belonging. He wanted to go back to his past and understand his friend Shara better, and to let the princess know she was not alone in her sense of unworthiness. That it was no one's fault that Calamity Ganon rose again—Zelda was not powerless, and Shara was not abandoned.
He contemplated all this as he walked towards the dilapidated Castle Town, overrun with Guardians. His fight with the machine earlier today was a precursor, a warmup. Now that he determined the mechanisms and timing of their attacks, the next ones would be much easier. The ones roaming around with weapons tended to not have lasers and beams. All had annelid mechanical legs, but the amount of arms that could grasp weapons varied. Some only had one sword, some had two, and some even had three appendages, each carrying a sword, an axe, or a spear. Others—the Stalkers that had beams but no weapons—were often stuck in the ground, their spindly legs blown off, the dirt having settled over them throughout the years. They could still spin their heads and attack with beams, however, so he learned quickly to distinguish those from the dead Guardians that hadn't operated in one hundred years. All it took was one close call, and he learned to watch for the electric lines embedded in their metallic coats.
Most of the Guardians were easily avoidable, helped by the tall town walls that somehow remained standing. The Stalkers with the beams had a harder time spotting him, and the Scouts with the Ancient weapons couldn't attack him at longer range, even if they saw him. Sure, they could skitter to him, but they didn't seem to communicate much with each other, so if one spotted him, it didn't alert a pack. Then, upon discovering their lack of reach, they would skitter back away and ignore him.
The Stalkers that could see him and get into a range and angle to attack him were fewer, but their lack of numbers didn't make them less dangerous. As he went through town, every time he heard the beeping or saw the lasers of the sights, he would arrange himself to parry. His shield arm was getting tired, but once he got through town, he decided he would find a dark alcove and take a break for the day. It took nearly half a day to get to Castle Town, and an hour or two to get through, so it was completely dark outside at this point. The moon was full and orange, and it lit his dark path through the town.
Link went through the main castle gate, much like he had when he'd been here three weeks before. He already knew the locations of several protective shadowy alcoves and stone overhangs. Not wanting to be exposed to the monsters crawling inside, and not trusting they couldn't sniff him out and destroy him in his sleep, Link decided to take shelter outside.
He found an alcove near the library entrance and settled in for the night: taking his pot lid off his back, setting the sword down, and eating one last snack before sleeping. He was nearly approaching sleep when he heard a poof sound, like air whooshing around him with a blow of the lungs.
Before he knew it, a Yiga soldier was a dozen feet in front of him, standing on the pathway leading up to the next gate. His arms were folded across his chest, and though he wore a red Yiga uniform, his face was uncovered and his hair draped down the sides of his face. By the light of the moon, Link knew his attacker. Panicked and now fully awake with adrenaline coursing through his veins, Link hoisted himself onto his feet, Master Sword in hand.
"I don't want to do this," Daren said, not moving from his relaxed position. "But I'm afraid I have to kill you now."