Birdie! Thank you so much for checking in, it was a really nice message to get. I pushed to get this finished today for you!

As always, it's been great hearing what you all enjoy! Thank you! Sorry it's taken so long - I got asked to do a ton of extra work I hadn't signed up for, and I agreed to help out since everyone was a bit desperate, but wow that was a workload, and it overran to boot! This is the first week I've had time to write almost anything in...

Chapter 62: The Hunger

Once Link could play the melody alone, Mahra Impa had bade him do so, this time winding her voice around it in a song so ancient Link could barely understand half the words in it: a song of gratitude; of praise; of love and of being loved. The music flowed through the temple like a memory of light, and in its echoes Link could almost envision it as it must once have been, pristine and undamaged, filled with worshippers who might listen to or raise their voices as part of such music.

As the last note died away, something unheard drew Link to turn, a sense of something opening behind him. He turned, startled, catching his breath as, shimmering with softly bluish light, a great obelisk seemed to draw itself into being in the space between the tongue of stone along the centre of the temple and the circular platform on which he stood. Parts of its surface were clad in a material that at first glance seemed dull, but on a second look was carved with intricate etchings that seemed to continue to scales smaller than his eye could see; parts shimmered an infinite yet depthless deep blue, faintly reminiscent of the Timeshift Stone he had seen in the desert, but so much… more. Link gazed at it in wonder, a part of him already recognising it as the quiescent version of something he had seen but once before.

"Imbued with the power of the goddess who once watched over this land, the harp you bear is a divine instrument." Mahra Impa spoke softly from behind him, at once awed and unsurprised. Had she known this would happen? "Any melody you bring to life upon it will have power… power enough to produce a variety of effects, even the otherworldly. Legend tells that when the Ballad of the Goddess is played with the Goddess' power in this, her sacred temple, it will bring forth the Gate of Time that was built here long ago."

"This is the Gate of Time…?" The intricately ornate block looked nothing like the stately turning gear that he had seen so briefly deep in the desert, and yet something about it, perhaps the graven symbols, or the almost endless depth of the blue stone beneath them, brought back to his mind an echo of that strange and timeless grandeur.

"That is what the legends tell us," Mahra Impa confirmed. "It is now the last in existence… the only portal binding our time to the one in which Zelda now resides. If you are able to open it and pass through, surely you must end up in the same era as Zelda." Though her words were qualified, her voice held the certainty of faith. She paused for a moment, and when she spoke again, it was in a tone of serious fact – not a warning, for all that it sounded like one; only a statement. "You will need to endure many hardships and put yourself in great danger to awaken the gate from its dormant state."

Two weeks ago, Link would have protested. Now he just nodded. After all he had already been through, down here on the mythical surface, how could he have expected anything but?

"Though your journey will put you in harm's way, Link… you must endure. And I know that you can." If anything, her voice was kindly. Link couldn't imagine her speaking to her own people in anything other than the same way. Ireya and Davar, heading knowingly into terrible danger, accepting it unflinchingly… he didn't think anyone had ever told them that they would be safe. Only that they must face it. "It is your fate as the chosen hero of the godde-"

Something happened then, a silent shifting like a cloud blotting out the sun, a sense of oppression, of a yawning emptiness, washing over them, silencing Mahra Impa and Link alike for a moment as the temple's gentle sense of safety was replaced with emptiness and haunting shadows. All at once Link was aware again of tumbled stone and broken roof, of the hollow brittle structure built in ancient times and now ready to fall apart.

A sound like a tremendous and terrible indrawn breath filled the air, the ground shaking beneath their feet, and Link looked around frantically for a threat that felt as though it were everywhere.

"No…" Mahra Impa whispered under her breath, and for once she sounded no more than a frightened old lady. "This cannot be… I fear the seal is breaking!"

"Wh-what can I do?!" Link asked, urgent, the hilt of his sword over his shoulder shining with a pale blue light.

"You must go to the bottom of the pit outside. With the power of the sacred blade, you may be able to restore it if you hurry!" Mahra Impa's voice shook with desperation and fear.

There was no choice. Link didn't even hesitate, bolting for the great doors though the shaking ground threatened to throw him off-balance with every step and a chunk of stone crashed down from the ceiling above as he ran. The awful yawning horror, the scream threaded through everything, the too-real images of despair – everything he'd felt the last time was shoved to the back of his mind as he fetched up against the doors, forcing one open enough to slip through in fits and starts as the trembling ground shook it on its hinges. Link staggered out into the strangely dim-feeling daylight – and stopped dead.

Four paces from the temple's doors, it came crashing in on him, a darkness, a hunger gnawing at him from all sides, only the frail and faint light of the sword on his back holding it off as if he stood upon a narrow pillar with a storm raging on all sides that might tear him from his perch in an instant. He reached over his shoulder without conscious thought, gripping the shining hilt for reassurance alone; drew it for the sake of having the blade in his hand. Fi was silent, but not still: he could feel her purity of purpose, feel all her power pressing back the evil that assaulted him – not far, but far enough. He forced himself to take a deep breath, to look around and take another step, and as he did he saw Groose off to his left, cowering curled up at the foot of the crumbling wall that extended from the temple, one fist jammed into his mouth as if to stop himself screaming, blood trickling down the back of his hand, eyes wide and staring at nothing.

Master, the temple radiates a protective aura.

The words were barely even spoken in his mind: Fi knew it, it was relevant, and she imparted it to him in an instant. Groose was outside the protective aura, just as Link had been after four short steps, and unlike Link he had no sacred sword to protect him.

Almost before he could think about it he was already moving, slamming the sword back into its sheath though all he wanted was to grip it with all his strength and never let go. He grabbed Groose under the armpits; the bully flinched, began to make some abortive motion – but Link was already yanking him backwards, and he was within Fi's protection, then, soon, three paces from the temple and safe within its. Link dropped him there unceremoniously, half-aware of Mahra Impa emerging from the part-open door, but he could do nothing more than meet her eyes for an instant as he ran towards the long spiralling ramp that led to the bottom of the pit, to the hole in the bottom of the world, sword once more in his hand as weapon, as light, as shield. Down he ran, as something that felt like a hollow, booming impact seemed to shudder through his soul, though he could see and hear nothing other than the shaking of the ground.

Down, spiralling down, into the abyss.

Down – and then suddenly he was at the bottom, sooner than he had quite expected. The triangular pillar seemed utterly shrouded in shadow, the designs on it blurred almost out of existence, the complex patterns of dead and dying moss on the ground seeming tainted as if with blood, or some vile black liquid, that gave off an insubstantial yet terrifying smoke as if something that should never have existed was even now seeping forth from it into the world. Darkness seemed to spread from it, shadows creeping outwards, ebbing, pausing like a held breath.

Everything seemed to stop, as if just for an instant the entire world was still. Link forced himself to move, but even as his weight began to shift, the shadows suddenly rushed outwards, like a boiling river too long denied, an utter darkness that was an emptiness, as if he stood on the rim of a pit deeper yet, and he watched in frozen horror as something began to drag itself forth from that lightless void.

It was the thing he had seen in his nightmares, in the terrible vision when first he had landed outside the temple, all teeth and all-consuming maw, not quite shapeless, not quite formless, as if it was struggling to impose itself upon a world in which there was no place it could fit. He had an impression of scales, red-black on blackness like an imperfect steel cage cloaking the end of the world; it was a mouth, it was all mouth, split almost down the middle to roar with a voice that shook the air and battered at his thoughts. It was want, it was need, it was the emptiness at the end of empires, a devouring hunger that could never be sated.

It folded itself to peer at him, eyeless, its lumpish form bulging and reconfiguring, splitting at the base into limbs, roiling blackness like a wound in the world cracking to spit forth bones: the bones of a splayed foot larger than anything Link had ever seen, the pitted remnants of something that had moved and walked and worn a body, now animated in a hideous dead mockery of life as the thing that had long ago devoured form and now wore its corpse imperfectly turned itself away from the morsel before it and towards the great banquet of life above.

With a foot of bone lashed together by a yawning void, it took a long and terrible step, covering several times Link's height in a single motion, the ground shuddering as the great foot came down, almost as much as if even it flinched at the touch as from its weight. Link backed away, staring up at it, knowing he had to keep himself between it and escape at all costs, but not knowing what he could even do against this nightmare.

"Fi," he whispered, never taking his eyes from the horror before him, "how do we stop it?"

Her voice in his mind was inexpressibly welcome, though it was almost as flat as when they had faced Ghirahim, its music all but vanished and her every sentence terse.

Although I can defend you against its aura, Master, your sword does not yet have sufficient power to destroy this being permanently. I detect that this manifestation possesses only a reduced amount of its previous power. Analysis suggests that its intelligence is reduced or absent. In addition, elements of the seal persist upon its form. I conclude that the seal must not be fully broken. I therefore recommend weakening the manifestation by direct attack. This may bring the surviving elements of the seal within your reach. However, it is imperative that you avoid direct physical contact with it. Anything other than the sword will be corroded and drained by its touch.

As the monstrosity took another earth-shaking step, Link could see what she meant for himself: where it had trod the ground was utterly lifeless, the carpet of ailing moss stripped away and only bare rock remaining, strangely ridged and pitted. For a moment, he pictured the forest above as a grey wasteland, lifeless and cold, victim to the all-consuming hunger that gnawed at him from all sides until he and Fi stood alone, a single light at the edge of an abyss. He desperately wanted to turn and flee, but if he did it would be unleashed upon all the world.

He backed away as the first great foot rose and fell again, leaving another blackened, dead footprint in its wake and bringing the monster almost upon him. Another step and it might crush him, or even pass over his head. Against all sense, in the face of all his fear, Link dashed forwards to meet the foot that had just planted itself a scant few paces from him.

It was even more horrifying close to, a single skeletal foot broader than he was tall and far longer, gigantic bones splayed just slightly too far apart so that they seemed an obscene parody of a human's, wound about by tendrils of writhing blackness that seemed, somehow, to suck in all light. Link didn't realise he was shouting as he struck, barely even hearing his own voice in the immensity and the horror of it, a two-handed swing with all his strength behind it slicing down through the air, cleaving through the void and into the bone, which cracked in a long, jagged line but did not break.

He'd hurt it.

The slow and ponderous motion stopped, the roiling mass above him letting out another ear-splitting, soul-shaking roar. There was a moment's resistance as he yanked the shining sword back out of the crack it had opened, staggering back one pace; leaping back another; spinning and bolting as he saw the foot he had struck begin to lift with ominously threatening purpose. Only when he'd put some distance between them did he turn, panting, just in time to see the immense foot slam down with earth-shattering force that almost knocked him from his feet, a wave of darkness spilling from it as if questing out for whatever had struck it – Link turned and ran again, unwilling to risk waiting to see if it would reach him, only glancing over his shoulder once he was a good distance further still. He slowed and stopped as he saw, with a brief moment of relief, that the darkness had dissipated or retreated, though once again it had left death in its wake.

Perhaps satisfied that it had removed the irritation, perhaps urgent to reach something it could devour, perhaps neither of those but simply impelled forwards, the gigantic horror took another slow, ponderous step.

We hurt it, right, Fi? Link thought, clutching the sword in a hand that he abruptly realised was slick with sweat.

Yes. The damage to the bone-like regions has reduced its ability to take coherent form. You have reduced the structural cohesion of the manifestation by approximately 8%.

So I have to do that… maybe ten more times. Or more. And that was if it didn't kick him, step on him, catch him in another wave of darkness, or something else it hadn't done yet. Another shudder ran through him, convulsive, unstoppable. For a moment, he glanced up to the top of the pit.

From the depth he was at, he could see nothing but the tops of the trees and the clouds above, even the roof of the temple hidden. Mahra Impa and Groose were nowhere to be seen, hopefully still at the temple doors, safe – or at least, safer – within its protection. Link had no illusions that protection would survive if the monster reached the top of the pit.

Taking a deep breath through gritted teeth, Link dashed back towards the monster, already far too close to him with the distance it covered with each heavy stride. A foot thumped down almost as he reached it, nearly throwing him to the ground with the force of its impact; he staggered, but struck anyway, shouting in wordless defiance as the shining blade once again cut through the tendrils of darkness and, this time, severed an angled slice from the very tip of a skeletal toe. The severed portion crashed to the ground and shattered into dust in time with another terrible roar, but Link was already running, getting as far as he could as fast as possible before, just as it had the last time, the monstrosity slammed its injured foot to the ground in a wash of writhing darkness.

This time, he looked back to see how far the ring of death had gone; slowed and stopped sooner, turning back once again to face it while still panting from his dead run. He could see the harm he had wrought, cracks in one bone and a fragment missing from another, but it seemed so little in the face of the crushing immensity looming over him.

As long as it takes… he thought, clinging to the knowledge as strongly as to his sword, and once again ran back towards it as it took another step. This time he ran further; pivoted; brought his sword down on the outermost of the long bones, embedding it with another crack, another spine-freezing roar. The thick and ropy tendrils of darkness he had cleaved through to do it lashed about as they were severed; lashed out at him, and Link yanked the sword back so hard he fell over, almost cutting himself on the peerless blade as he scrambled back on his elbows, the great foot already beginning to lift as he rolled over and ran for his life.

The horror took two more steps while he was still steadying himself, getting his breath back, advancing inexorably forwards and upwards. Again he ran towards it, straight into the face of the inevitable, striking with a yell and, this time, immediately fleeing despite the shock that ran up his arms, the moment of resistance as he yanked the sword free. It felt as though he had been fighting this thing forever; he doubted it had yet lasted two minutes, but time seemed to have lost all meaning and somewhere a part of him tasted ash, and smoke, and death.

A fifth time he charged, the light of his blade his only defence, running defiant into the all-consuming hunger that surrounded him before it could escape, rise up and reach out into the living world beyond to devour all it touched. It clawed at him even through Fi's protection, a maddening urge to consume and rend and destroy, to send the whole of existence spiralling down into a lightless void. Pivot and strike and run, leaving shattered bone behind him; he couldn't escape the pall it cast across everything, but he could escape the shadows that spilt from it, searching, hungry. It seemed to be moving slower, or was he just imagining it, a slight drag to the more-damaged foot so that he waited for it to take another step before dashing towards it yet again, every breath a slowly increasing struggle in air that felt smoke-laden though it was perfectly pure.

Link ran, and turned, and brought his sword down with all his strength into a gouge he had opened before – and the bone shattered in half, almost exploding, a shard catching him full in the chest and throwing him backwards! He hit the ground hard, winded, though the bone shard was already crumbling into sharp-edged glassy dust into nothing, urgency his own and Fi's intermingled pushing him to get up before his own body would fully respond. He rolled over, staggering to his feet, breaking into as close to a run as he could as behind him the damaged foot slammed down, that awful black emptiness washing out from it; he was almost out of its reach-

Something caught him at the ankle as if his foot were stuck in quicksand, and he fell, a horrible gnawing burning beginning to spread up his leg even as he frantically drew the other up to his chest; twisted enough, wrenching his trapped leg badly, to see. He'd almost cleared the darkness, almost: it was receding everywhere save where his foot was mired in it, but there it had shaped itself into clutching tendrils, questing further up his leg with a greedy, grasping motion, and as it reached above his boot where there was only sturdy cloth to protect him from the elements he felt it in full. Link screamed: it was like being eaten alive, body and soul alike, as if tiny pieces of himself were being torn off and torn apart, and he hacked frantically at the darkness with the shining blade he still held, seeing it recoil but never enough. A wordless impulse from Fi, felt more than even thought, and he lay the sword along his leg, the flat of the blade pressed against clothes and skin, and though where it touched it burned with a cold and unyielding flame, it burnt the darkness far worse: the tendrils drew back from it, retreated, and Link yanked himself free, half-sobbing as he scrambled away.

The monster, mindless, ignored him, refocusing its aim once more on the bounty of life above.

"F-F-Fi…" By the time Link had stopped, he was pressed against the rocky wall of the pit, trembling. He didn't know what he wanted to ask her, couldn't quite form the question, the pain unlike anything he had ever felt still sapping his strength, his will.

Master, I have purged the evil from you. All at once she was in front of him, floating implausibly bent so that her strange, perfect face took up almost his entire field of vision, so close that their noses should have touched and he could almost feel a faint, cool tingle where hers would have brushed his. Link could have hugged her for it; weakly tightened his hand on the sword instead.

"It is imperative that you heal yourself immediately."

There was an urgency to her flat, clipped voice, and something even beyond it. Link couldn't focus, couldn't say what it was, only that Fi, too, felt somehow on the edge of a precipice. Her words were enough to make him move again, fumbling with a shaking hand for the elixirs he'd forgotten, the simple feel of glass in his grip almost reassuring. He couldn't spare his other hand for the stopper, yanked it out with his teeth and dropped it, nothing more important than drinking as quickly as he could.

Blessedly, the pain faded – not to nothing, or not exactly, but to a phantom echo of what it had been, felt only in his mind. Fi had moved back slightly when he drank, and for the first time Link focused on something beyond her. He'd been bleeding, he realised with numbed surprise, a trail of blood on rock and thin soil leading to the place he sat. His leg he only glanced at, the cloth of his trousers ragged, eaten away; his boot no less scarred, only thicker, a sword-shaped pale mark like a burn running straight as a blade up its side atop all the rest of the damage. Link looked away hastily; got to his feet, Fi vanishing back into the sword as he did. His leg supported his weight and didn't hurt any worse, and that would have to be good enough.

Tucking the unstoppered bottle away, he looked across the pit to where the monstrosity was already almost a quarter of the way around. Even as he watched, it took another slow, dragging, almost unstable step.

We've hurt it. We can stop it.

The thought was enough to allow him to spur himself into motion again, running after the terrible creature, sword out before him as if to cut through its crushing aura, an island of light all but alone in the dark. It took another step before he reached it, and another – and then he was there, and as it lifted its broken left foot he struck at its right, at the back where the huge knobbly bone of the heel protruded from the void-dark tendrils that bound it together. The sword shone in his hands, cutting deep into the bone, and cracks shot across it in multiple directions with a dry snapping sound that even the roar couldn't fully drown out. Expecting the worst, Link yanked his sword back and ran, past the hideous foot, determined to put himself in front of the monstrosity once again.

There was no slamming jolt of the ground behind him, no foot coming down like an island falling from the sky, and Link looked over his shoulder as he slowed. The vast horror was quivering, scales flexing this way and that, as if tremendous rats were scurrying about inside it, bulging it out in one spot or another before leaving and leaving it sagging inwards. It drooped downwards like a waterskin placed atop a too-narrow pole, the outer edges of it sinking to the ground in an unnatural, almost fluid way that made Link's stomach roll.

Master, the manifestation appears to be attempting to abandon its form. This is not a viable long-term strategy.

It wobbled, quivering, a blob of scaled jelly collapsing under its own weight for a moment before it split apart, opening up and up and up across itself until it was all mouth, nothing but mouth, an endless lightless sucking maw that flexed and flowed across the ground with a sudden obscene speed, rippling towards him like water flowing uphill, like a wound in the world, covering the sloping path from cliff to edge, filling the very air with darkness.

Link didn't need Fi's prompting to turn and run, frantic, the thing behind him chasing. He could feel its hunger clawing at him, sucking, trying to drag him back into its devouring void.

It is not possible for it to maintain this formless state for long. You must outrun it.

Panting for breath, Link was doing his best, but he could feel the darkness gaining. He couldn't risk looking over his shoulder at it, losing precious fractions of a second just to see whether it was five paces behind him or only one. With his off hand, he fumbled for another bottle: the Second Wind elixir, the one he'd given to Fledge and briefly considered not buying a replacement for. By feel alone he yanked it out; tore loose the cork; tipped it back, spilling some – but drinking enough. New energy flooded through him, revitalising, the incipient stitch in his side fading, and he sped up again, suddenly outpacing the dark tide that had been all but lapping at his heels.

Surely it couldn't chase him all the way to the top. Surely it would have to stop; Fi had said it would have to stop – surely he only had to run one more step, or another-

Master.

Trusting the impulse absolutely, Link looked over his shoulder, slowing and stopping. Though he was at least three quarters of the way to the top of the pit, the lightless maw behind him had stopped, writhing and humping as it slowly flexed red-black scales out of itself in a manner that should have been impossible. Amongst them, something caught Link's eye in the same moment that he felt Fi nudging his attention towards it: a pale shape that didn't belong, the core of the faintest pattern of cobweb strands that slipped beneath the flexing scales – the pillar, or something that looked like it, the triangular pillar from the base of the pit. Embedded like a splinter in the abyss, one scale caught and lifted upon it, it was moving as they did, rising slowly higher one tiny jerking motion at a time.

That is the key to the seal, Master, Fi confirmed, swift and silent. If you are able to drive it deeper with your sword now, while the manifestation is weakened, there is an 88% probability that it will imprison it fully once more.

"Right."

Link eyed the pillar for a moment, near the edge of the horrendous monstrosity, inching slowly away from him second by second, but still within his reach. With a sharp breath, he dashed towards it one last time, through the hunger assaulting him and the fear gnawing at him, to the very edge of the amorphous shape as it slowly, slowly caged itself once again in form.

He leapt as he reached it, sword held high, striking true with all his might. The shining blade hit the top of the pillar dead-centre, driving it deeper into the monster, into the void it somehow clung to, and a silent scream of rage and hunger unsated ripped through Link's mind. Even as he was falling, the void-

Imploded.

Half-formed scales flew everywhere like shards of glass, the darkness within shrinking to a point bound in a light part the bluish-white of the Goddess Sword, part a different, white-gold hue. Another instant passed, barely enough for Link's feet to hit the suddenly shadowless ground, and the scales were drawn inexorably after the tiny orb as it floated gently down to the centre of the pit, the pillar balanced implausibly atop it.

At last, the oppressive weight lifted from Link's mind. He took a deep breath, tasting it for the first time in what felt like years, and began to walk, spiralling back down, down, down into the bottom of the pit, where the patterns of dead moss now shone with a faint, weak light and the pillar hovered on the dull point of its base at their exact centre.

Looking at it, remembering, Link almost felt sick.

Master, Fi prompted, uninflected, raise your blade to the sky.

In a way, it felt like permission.

Bracing himself for what he would feel, Link held the sword above his head, light catching in it, filling it, spilling down the blade and shining…

...but the vision was leaving him, and there was only her face – a single faint light between himself and the void – he could feel the evil, the hunger coming for him – light in the blade pitted against darkness, and a vast horror looming over it all –

and the other voice was screaming, pitch-perfect and unbroken, but Link knew and recognised it, and to save her and save himself he swung the sword down, guided by something deep as instinct: diagonally down, and up, and across, following a shape he could not see but could sense embedded within the seal. As it struck the pillar every symbol upon it glowed with the same blue-white light, and when he drove the sword down as though he could, through it, force the pillar into the scarred rock and soil, so it drove itself into the ground.

He was standing alone on the stony ground at the bottom of the pit, shaking, sword in hand but the light faded from its blade. The pillar stood before him, once more seeming nothing more than an ornately carved stone. Still trembling, Link staggered back from it as far as he could before dropping to his knees, this time keeping enough presence of mind to rest the sword gently across his lap, left hand on the hilt, right lightly atop the blade.

Perhaps it would help.

That was fun to write! I wanted to make the Imprisoned at least a little bit more scary and threatening, and I hope I succeeded!

Patch Notes
- Impa now takes her own advice and doesn't stop to explain in the dire emergency.
- Impa displays fear.
- Groose given really really really good reason to cower.
- The Imprisoned now scary.
- Slug Mode now terrifying (I hope).
- Regeneration removed from toes.
- Slightly comedic wiggly wobbly vulnerable white flesh replaced with the bones of dead gods.
- Plot threads and character development based on backstory events continue.