Chapter Text
The dawn paints the roots of the Great Deku Tree in a light blush. The pink hues filter through the greens of the forest floor and send the Koroks twirling and dancing; chasing the sunbeams as they continue their sweeping brushstroke upwards.
The Kokiri wake up easily. It is no surprise to anyone that Link does not.
In a few hours, a bird will squawk loudly in his window. He will get up, bleary-eyed, and help with the grass cutting. He will pretend not to see the tuts and eyerolls of his friends as he wakes up late again. He will not see how the Father of Forests looks down upon him, smiling like one who has seen the end but knows it is not yet time.
He will play music with the Koroks in the evening; they will ask for one more song deep into the coal-dark of night, over and over.
He will sleep, and he will wake, and he will not know how fast tomorrow is coming. How fast change is coming.
The boughs of the Great Deku Tree sag under the mighty weight of his foresight and wisdom. The wind carries scorching desert air, singeing and curling the leaves of his many branches. The days have been disappearing like sand, the stickiness of the air cloys in the throats of the forest children.
Off to the West, deep in the rolling red wastes, another begins to stir.
He is waking.
And so, the dawn of the hero, approaches.
***
Zelda does not sleep.
She’s never had much luck at it. Her father has called for physician after physician. She has tried every herbal root and mental exercise. Sometimes, her body cannot and will not allow her rest under the weight of her thoughts.
She takes a deep, frustrated, breath.
Stretching out of bed, she moves to sit down at her desk and desk chair. The familiar hard oak wood scraping gently across the cobbled stone floor. Ever present shadows move quickly behind her door – guards, listening for any disturbance, any cry, any anything.
‘How boring their lives must be,’ the princess thinks, ‘to do nothing but wait for something to go wrong.’
The irony is not lost on her that so has she.
She is a princess of Hyrule, a Zelda, one of many. She exists because Hyrule needs her too, and Ganon needs her to conquer Hyrule, and The Hero must exist to stop it all from happening.
Same waltz, new composition.
Even thinking His name, that dark dreaded word, the word ‘Ganon’; makes the shadows in the room feel darker. The torchlight on her desk a bit dimmer. She looks out her desk window. She normally sits here so that she can look out and see the sea as the tides rise and fall, but the Gem Sea is hidden beneath a roiling, claustrophobic fog that takes even this small comfort from her.
She turns to her bookshelves. Eyes dragging from title to tile, encyclopaedia to compendium. Her mind begins to wander to the place it always does in these fitful, restless nights. When she’ll meet him.
The Hero.
It’s an odd thing, reading the stories written by her ancestors. All different Zeldas, and yet they all share a distaste for Wildberry. All different Heroes, but each of them are strong, stronger than the words can express, with a fire in their eyes that that could raze the kingdom of Hyrule if he was not its sworn protector.
She draws what he thinks he looks like sometimes. The coal stains her fingertips and takes days to truly wash out, but there’s something in the prize of that. That for one singular moment, she’s truly anchored to something real, something that’s hers.
When she was little, she’d ask her father over and over. Each birthday, each Winter solstice. ‘When can I meet him? Can’t I meet him now?’
He’d joke that you can’t gift a person. But as she grew, the answer changed. His head would hang heavier. His shoulders would stoop, and he’d go quiet a while. A long while. A scribe for the Royal Family once told her they might be worried that the earlier a Hero and a Zelda met, the earlier Ganon might resurface. That had made sense when she was small; it seemed that the Hero and Zeldas only ever met moments before the earth would break.
When she got a little older, she realised her father was protecting the Hero. He said that the Hero didn’t know what part he had to play yet, that the sacrifice he would need to bear would be a heavy weight indeed.
Zelda resented them both for that.
Her whole life, on standby. Her whole life, waiting for the end of the world and the one who might save it.
But now? Now, she understood. A life of waiting for the end is a heavy burden to bear. She knew from her family’s library that not all Heroes survive the fight with Ganon; would she condemn him to a life knowing it could end in not only his death but the death of all Hyrule?
A part of Zelda wished she too was blissfully ignorant. But wisdom would be her burden, as courage must one day be his.
Still, she’d never quite shaken that wish, that want. To know him. To watch him run to her, hand resting on the hilt of the sword that seals the darkness, and he would look to her and her heart would flutter -
She shook her head to rid herself of such silly notions and took herself back to her mattress. She traced lines in the stone walls of her room for the remainder of the waning night.
The King knocked gently on her door in the early morning.
“Good sleep, my princess?” he asked her, warmly.
“Yes, father.”
***
If it was not the yelling that woke Link, it was the coughing.
A black, heady smoke filled his home inside and out and he ran out blindly to find its source.
His hip crashed against something large and sent him tumbling to the floor. The greens of the grass he had known his whole life had faded into a crisp brown that shattered on impact. He thought vaguely of the trees of the woods in their ochre dressings in fall, but this was early spring. There could be no reason for this heat, this brittleness.
Something stepped on his back and cried out as it moved, it sounded like his friend Moto but there was no way to be sure. He scrambled to stand (although with no small effort), every movement felt thick and heavy; like trying to run through tree sap.
Was it just him, who could hardly move? He had seen the trees by his hut rip themselves from the ground, roving wildly - like the ground itself was run with fire.
‘L i n k - / I t / I s / T i m e - / M e e t / M e / A t / M y / R o o t s.’
The voice of the Deku tree boomed in his mind, though not with its usual strength. There was a wheezing, reedy rasp in its usually thunderous winds.
Gnarled tree roots shook forth from the bindings of the ground and wrapped lithely around Link’s wrist. They pulled him closer to the centre of the clearing, his sight line only broken by the green flashing of his brethren in the seemingly endless black.
He tried calling to them. Tried to grasp for them whenever he thought they were near. But his movements were slow and his throat was tight, so tight. There was nothing but the occasional pad of footsteps and it had been a while since he’d heard even that.
Reaching the Father of all Forests, he placed his hands upon the bark in greeting, and for comfort in the confusion. But his hands came away ashen, covered in a grime more weighty than regular soot.
Slowly, creaking with the effort in a way Link had never known it to take him, the Great Deku Tree lifted Link from the ground and up toward him.
And while the smoke thinned, it did not dissipate. Swirls and sparks of white were starting to encroach on Link’s vision.
“ M y / D e a r / B o y - / T h e / T i m e / H a s / C o m e - / A s / I t / A l w a y s / M u s t ”
A leaf, still smouldering, with so deep a purple as to appear black pulsated in each vein, each branch, in broad tendrils into the heart of the Great Deku Tree.
“ W e / H a v e n ‘ T / M u c h / T i m e - ”
***
Zelda picked at the sweet bread she’d been served for breakfast.
The warm roll lay in decimated pieces scattered from her table to her plate. Had her father have noticed her, he would reprimand her for so unladylike a thing as to waste food (and to make mess while she was at it!). She’d be sent to the library to study. She’d be served an early lunch in sheepish not quite apology. She knew her father, knew the routines of this castle, knew what cogs turned what spokes in the grand design of Hyrule castles clockwork day to day.
So when her father did not notice her, she took notice.
When the fog on the sea seemed thicker than it had in the early hours of the night, she took notice.
When two guards became four, became eight around the royal banquet hall, she took notice.
And when her father tightly smiled and asked if she wouldn’t mind adjourning to her room for a small while, she knew every word he wasn’t saying. Every question he was begging her not to ask. Every goddess and twist of fate that he was praying to that it wasn’t exactly what he had spent his life preparing for it to be.
She also noticed the silence his prayers seemed get.
She gave him a small kiss on the cheek as her guardsmen walked her out.
She’s not sure he noticed.
***
“ L i n k / . . . D e a r / L i n k . . . / “
In his weakened state, The Great Deku Tree was unable to continue to speak. Instead, he showed pictures in Links mind eye. Of a boy of yellow hair and pointed ears, long long ago. Of the sword he wielded and the shield. Of a deep shadow that fell across the land that drown all in its unending thirst for more. Of a princess of light, pure light, with pointed ears like the boys own and the sorrow of the goddesses swimming in her eyes. And he saw the hero win, and fall, and win again. He saw battles upon battles against colossi and monsters. Trials and golden triangles and the blue skin of a towering boar and the glint of sword against the swell of it all. And he saw it as one might see the sun rise and fall, as one might watch their own ribcage rise and fall.
There is a kingdom, and a girl. There is a monster, who seeks the kingdom and its girl. And there is a hero, who must defeat the monster for the good of all.
Time after time.
And its as he thinks on time that he sees a small shift in the images shown. A boy with blonde hair and elven ears, sure, but it changes. Ripples. A boy into a man. A man into a boy again. An ocarina, much like the one he plays for the Koroks, and a shift in time.
The world is on fire and thick with smoke. The children of the forest are dying with their father. But it is this image, of a man who is a boy, holding a sword like he isn’t so much smaller than the goliath laughing in front of him, that makes The Great Deku Tree weep.
“ T h e / H e r o / O f / T i m e ’ he says, clean, forest haven water spilling from his eyes, bringing flowers and orchids to life in a burst of colour only to wilt and petrify moments later.
“ Y o u / A r e / O u r / H e r o .. / L i n k / . . O n l y / Y o u / C a n / S t o p / T h e / E v i l / T h a t / I s / C o m i n g / F o r / U s / A l l “
He tries to understand. Tries to nod or shake his head or ask a singular question but there’s a dizziness in every movement and thought of movement and the ground seems to be coming up to swallow him.
“ Y o u / M u s t / G O / F r o m / H e r e .. / S e e k / P r i n c e s s / Z e l d a / A n d / T h e / M a s t e r / S w o r d / . . . . . . . . . / S a v e / U s / A l l . . . . . . / M y / S o n . . . . . . “
And the wheezing of the Great Deku Tree stilled. The branch beneath him stiffened and began to turn ashen and grey. He fell from the Forest Father’s grasp and was in no small amount of pain as he forced his body to crawl forwards.
And that was when the horns sounded.
***
“My father is worried about the fog, isn’t he?”
“Please, Princess. You know I’m unable to break my oath.”
“Is your oath not to this family?”
“It is to my king, your majesty. And I must uphold it for your protection.”
It is the gentleness in these words, like one might plead with a child close to a tantrum that nearly forces Zelda to have one.
She places her fingers to her temples and rubs in concentric circles. The guards have been told not to leave her alone, not for a second. They won’t even accept being on the other side of her bedroom door. There’s four of them crammed in here, and the rest lining in her hallway like a funeral procession. In many ways, it could be.
There’s a grim relief in it. For it to finally be here. Seventeen years of waiting and it was her time.
It’s hard not to pivot dramatically from a panic induced break down to eerie calm. Thoughts of the other Zelda’s, of their fates, haunt her in the very air she breathes. A cold, clammy feeling as she methodically considers the worst-case scenarios now that it’s finally here. She will meet Him. Ganon. As her namesakes have done before her.
He’s clever, she knows this. He never strikes the same way twice. This time it may be a mystery fog on the sea. Many years ago, when Hyrule suffered strong earthquakes, the castle took almost eighteen months to relax defences again.
But the feeling was different. Zelda and her father know it. Perhaps the guards feel it too.
She hopes her fate is not to wander and wait. A life of waiting for the end has always made Zelda more frightened of being one of the Zeldas who become stuck for decades, awaiting the Hero to awaken from a deep slumber. As Ganon strengthens, the Hero strengthens, and an almighty battle of good and evil decide the fate of Hyrule for the next generation of Zeldas and Heroes.
But only ever one, Ganon. He will know both of their ancestors far better than they ever will.
How will they measure up? How will she, Zelda, continue the legacies of the sacrifices that have proceeded her?
The very thought sends shivers down her spine.
And yet... is she not happy to finally know?
To know that she will finally know her hero? To know that the restless, desperate plea within her to no longer look to the world like a sacrificial lamb is finally to be answered?
The endless swaying emotions was beginning to make her head throb.
And .. there was that cold shiver again.
She opened her eyes. She didn’t know when she had slumped over, but she was no longer upright in her bed but fallen helplessly against her wall.
As had her guards. She sluggishly pushed forwards, tripping over them and catching herself on the door in her room. The castle had filled with a whispy, white smoke (how long had she been unconscious?). The smoke was so thin, at first, you could see the tendrils hooking through the bricks in the walls, coiling around anything staying stationary. With struggle, tremendous struggle, she carried herself to the banquet hall.
She screamed out for her father, and the rush of air that forced itself through her nose and down her throat choked her so quickly the following coughing fit might be the only reason she was able to stay conscious.
“PRINCESS!”
Her head is rolling from side to side. She tries to see who’s talking, but she’s barely able to keep her eyes open.
A lifetime awake .. it might be nice to finally get some sleep.
***
Hoofbeats hit the ground like a thunderstorm around him. Part of Link recognises them from the dream the Great Tree shared with him, but some part of him thinks he would always have known them. Had already seen their eyes staring back at him in the dark recesses of his worst nights.
He hears the whisper light scream of a Kokiri to his left. He feels the urge of the Treefather like an orb in his chest, but he can’t just leave the others.
He breaks the root his wrist was attached to and cringes at how easily it comes away from the ground. He grips the branch in his hand tightly and rounds on where he heard the noise.
Moving as quickly as he can, reinvigorated from the disturbance in air, he holds the branch loftily as he hones in on -
***
- Red.
There is a blackened forest, red bokoblins. Horses and screaming children. Something truly great has been taken from the world.
Thoughts that fleetingly pass Zelda’s mind as she begins to -
***
- fly, that’s what it feels like.
He’s taken one of their horses and the beast listens to him instantly. Whether in fear or in gratitude, he doesn’t have time to know. He continues to fight and fight, he’s pushing them back, packing the Kokiri on the now empty mares’ backs and sending them any direction, it has to be better than here.
The black air is finally starting to thin to small spindly threads. The threat is unending and likely to come in many more ebbs and flows.
He doesn’t know if any of them are alive, thwack.
He doesn’t know how many there are still to save, crunch.
The horse rears and something hard hits the back of his head.
The dark miasma that threatened to swallow him all day finally seems to find its purchase. He falls, prays he saved more than he lost, and that final hope is all that gives him -
***
- Solace.
She’s outside and trying to breathe out the salt foam feeling pervading her sinuses. Finally, freedom. She dimly wonders when the last time she was permitted to leave the castle was. She doesn’t know if she ever has.
“It is a good job I found you when I did, my lady.” Her saviour murmurs. She confusedly tries to free herself from the white of his feathers, fearing it as that dreaded fog again. Noticing, the Rito guardsman helps her to stand, but keeps her firmly steadied.
“My..my father?” Zelda whispers, her voice cracking with the effort of it.
The Rito looks away, his gaze burning with shame.
“I was not able to save him, majesty.” There’s a pause, as the Rito looks back to the castle as it is slowly consumed from view by the same milk white Zelda can’t quite get out her lungs. “Come, princess, we must away from this place.”
She goes to move and falls, there’s a crack -
***
- as his head hits the ground.
He’s aware of being dragged, somewhere. He attempts resistance but is lulled by -
***
- familiar music.
A song she knows, like a lullaby -
***
‘You must go on, Link!’
He wants to tell them they must as well. He wants to know where to go next, what to do. He wants to breathe clean air and go back to fighting for the only home he has ever known.
But there is no answer, save the far away echoing chimes of the children of the forests and the rush of new wind in new trees. The last thing he sees is bright, white, light, her face brimming with sorrow. The worlds evil standing behind her, too large to see, but a smile that sends a sick shiver through his stomach. He raises his sword.
And then, nothing.
***
‘Highness! We must go!’
She wants to tell him she has never been anywhere but here. She wants to know where possibly there is to go next, what they can do. She wants to turn back and find her father who will surely answer all these questions.
But she is too weak to ask and so receives no answer. Just feels the rush of new wind in new trees as they fly above the only part of Hyrule Zelda has ever known, and she can’t help but think as they move how small it all looks.
As she begins to succumb to sleep, the last thing she sees is his face. A knight clad in green, looking past her to the shadow she knows is behind her. He’s ready to die, for her, for Hyrule, for good vs evil. He looks at her then, as the tears stream down her face and raises his sword.
And then, nothing.
***
He sits in his desert temple, leaning forward on his throne.
His teeth are sharpened like a shark and each pointed tooth gleams in malicious grin.
He raises a hand, lets it fall. Conducts the winds and their song fills the temple.
It’s time, finally time.
The dance begins again.