Link stopped again, clinging to the wall with his good arm as his vision crowded.
He had to press on. Even if his head felt like it was about to explode; even the pain coursing through the right side of his body was incredible; even if he had no plan, or even the slightest idea where he was going.
“You must rest. You cannot help her if you can barely stand.”
He swayed, forcing one foot in front of the other, and gritted out, “Get out of my head.”
The caverns blurred and tilted, the pain radiating from his arm getting inexplicably worse. He reached out to steady himself again and stumbled when he misread the distance. His hands caught luminous stone and dolomite before he hit the floor. Just barely.
He clung to the wall like he was clinging to consciousness. The voice came again, insistent. Impatient.
“Rest. The blending takes time.”
He glared at his hands, one dark and mottled with scars, the other glowing like luminous stone.
Some said that glow came from the souls of the dead.
“I can’t rest,” he hissed, pushing himself up, even as vertigo and fever tried to send him crashing down. “That thing took her. She could be hurt, or worse by now. If I can’t find her—”
The voice scoffed, and his blood boiled. “Is your Zelda really so fragile?”
“No, she is not fragile.”
“Then rest. Trust her, as she trusts you.”
The cave swam, all blotchy and hot, and he swerved to his knees, and then to his hands. Sweat dripped off his nose and pattered on the cool floor, the sound of his haggard breath drowning out the hollow moan and trickle of water echoing out of distant tunnels.
He whispered, sagging, trembling, “What’s happening to me?”
“Your body fights me off as it would an infection. Resists.”
“Then get out of it.”
“That beast was mine to contain. You will help me seal him again.”
His arms gave out, sending him sprawling on his back. The heat pumping through him was unreal. Like his blood was on fire. His vision pulsed red and thick. A heartbeat in the dark.
The pain jolted again, sending his back arching. Running up his wrist, his arm, into his neck, his shoulder, his chest, his ribs. He loosed a stale, broken breath when it ebbed, stars behind his eyes.
“I have to save her,” he growled, demanding, or pleading.
“She carries the blood of the goddess. Her power is ancient.”
“You don’t understand. I—” He puffed a sigh, defeated. All the strength in his voice was gone. “I just got her back.”
The voice was silent for a moment, considering. “Link, is it?”
He closed his eyes, swallowed sludge, all but melted to the rock. It was like he was draining away—muscles atrophying, soul disintegrating, as his body waged a losing battle. He could feel the fever rising like an ember in his chest, in his brain.
He gasped, breathless at the heat, “Yes.”
“Yield, Link, and the pain will be quick.”
Lightning and fire burst out of his arm, spreading to his throat, his belly, his mind. And the scream that burst out of him was long, and anguished, and burning.
Link came to with a jolt. He had to blink more than once to bring the cave into focus, had to stare for too long to get the blurred layers to merge. It was like trying to readjust two sets of eyes at once.
He sat up gingerly, gave his glowing right hand an experimental flex. The pain had ebbed, mostly. It was just his head that was still in a fog—still clouded with something nebulous, indistinct. Ethereal.
A presence.
He gritted his teeth and rolled to his feet, determined to ignore it.
The first few steps were unsteady, and the ones that came after not much of an improvement. But he didn’t have a choice. He limped on, following veins of luminous stone like beacons in the dark.
The haze shifted, settled. He could feel its attention, sliding to him like a beast turning a lazy eye on prey. Watching out of his own eyes with him. It observed in silence, but impressions, feelings, filtered through the shared space between them, unspoken but unmistakable.
Impatience. Disappointment. Judgement.
“What?” he finally snapped, but it lacked bite. His voice was hoarse from screaming.
He could feel the malcontent, the immaterial eye roll. “You’re a child.”
“You’re a parasite.”
Whatever nerve he hoped to strike, he missed; there was only a soft flicker of amusement. It made him bristle.
“You’re weak from the blend. Desperate. Lost. And yet you resist. I could help you.”
“I don’t want your help,” he spat, wincing at the twinge of doubt that tugged at him. At the answering ripple of smugness.
“Are you certain?”
He set his jaw, trying to retrace his route: the entrance to the cave network in Mount Hylia, where the Temple of Time had once stood in an era past; the tunnels that went down, down into the heart of the Great Plateau; the massive, imposing ruins they had run across. A place of worship, Zelda had theorized, or some kind of stronghold for an ancient power.
Her name drifting through his mind made him flinch. Desperate, the voice had called him. And he was desperate to save her. It made his shoulders sag, made the stubborn walls he had erected in his mind to keep them closed off from each other less impassable. And suddenly he saw it all again, but in a different light: glistening, fresh carvings in pristine stone, and walls upon walls in the heart of a mountain.
A stronghold. A prison.
And they’d unleashed the monster they’d buried down there.
He loosed a shaky breath, squaring his shoulders. Left. He needed to turn left.
Images flickered in and out of his head when he wanted them, answering questions he hadn’t asked, laying out a path before him before he had a chance to lose his way. His hands met carved stone—a balustrade, or something like it. The bridge where they’d had to abandon their ox. He limped on faster, feeling after the pillars with his glowing hand.
Soon the air was less stale, the darkness not so dense. He picked up the pace, stumbling towards light.
The sun hitting Mount Hylia was blinding. He had the miserable sensation, as he hobbled out into its brilliance, that he was stumbling again out of the Shrine of Resurrection: dazed, weak, without a memory to guide him.
Just a voice.
He dropped himself down to rest, breathing hard, and swallowed his pride and said, “Thank you.”
“We have similar goals,” it reasoned, decidedly placid. A bit patronizing. “If we work together, perhaps we may both find what we’re looking for.”
He murmured, “Maybe so.”
But then the ground shook, a horrible rumble vibrating the earth beneath his feet that made his stomach churn.
There, bathed in the orange glow of the sinking sun, Hyrule Castle was wrested violently from its foundation stones, drawing impossibly into the air. And the blend flooded with a feeling so overwhelming he tasted it on his tongue, acrid and hot, burning in his throat like bile: wrath.
He saw the monster’s face, and he knew it’s name.
He demanded, shaken, “Tell me everything about him. About Ganondorf.”
But there was no trace of the voice’s earlier patience, none of the level-headedness that had gotten them out of those tunnels. Everything behind his eyes was red and pounding, a fury so bright he wanted to shrink out from under it. He felt its need, its thirst for answers. And it had no intention of simply asking questions. It barely warned him at all.
It shouted, the sound so horrible he clapped his hands over his ears, “YIELD!”
It tore through the last barriers protecting his mind before he had a chance to comply, a flurry of lightning and fire, and ripped him open, taking everything he knew at once. Every memory. Every thought. Even the parts of him he had long thought lost forever, dredged up from the black place the shrine had buried them.
He screamed until he thought his throat would bleed.
For the scene thing: Absolutely the scene from the first World Tour where they go to Lurelin where Link wakes up and finds Zelda gone… and finds her outside at dawn just sitting in the surf. She tells him how to used to enjoy this sometimes as Hylia because she WAS essentially Hyrule, and scoops up a handful of water… and he watches as the foam glitters as it drips from between her fingers… I want art of this and I want it to live on my wall forever.
ohhh that's a good one, I loved writing lurelin. and honestly all the scenes where I make zelda glow are my favorite lmao it was just really fun to play with the idea of her powers lingering and not just going away completely.
and maybe one day....I will draw this scene. it would be fun to try!
@bunniebard replied to your link “Adventures in Human Sitting: The Cat Came Back”
OH MY GOSH-- I've read none of Under Shield yet, but this one didn't look too end-game spoiler-y.... it never ceases to amaze me how SPOT ON you are with characterization and dialog!! Amazing.
Thank you so much! Stories like this one get really challenging, trying to extrapolate how the characters change as they grow. <3 I’m so glad you liked it!
bunniebard replied to your post: when I die I want all the music at my funeral to...
Whenever “Unfinished Battle” starts to play on my ipod… there’s a moment of “where’s the drums?” then a moment of deep sadness because it’s not Unfinished Slam Battle.
