Chapter Text
The voice was persistent in it's nagging. Reaching and digging in with sharp pitches, to drag her from her slumber. "Link...Link! Wake up!" Clear eyes opened and she sat up. Aches from battles she doesn't remember winning spread slowly through her body. "Morning sleepy head."
The voice. It was so familiar, in the soft timber, the rolling r's and the subtle e's. But no name came to her, no image, no memory. Why? She focused on the voice, climbed out of the water, the liquid sticking to her before sliding off. Her feet ached as if she had stood for years, running after a fading image.
She rocked back as pain ricocheted through her head. She didn't understand, she just wanted to rest again. But a deep feeling, in her guts, no. In her bones , told her to stand and to walk and to reach out and take the slate and to leave her place of rest behind. A hundred years. Sunlight burned her eyes, through her eyelids as she closed them and raised a hand to shield her face.
Fresh air stung her lungs as she came to the cliff's edge and looked out over the land. A smile graced her features. The wind blew through her hair and over her skin, whipping the blonde strands around her face. A movement to the side drew her attention and she turned. A man stood ways down the path, a large staff between his hands and a hood over his head, hiding his face. Instinct climbed up her spine, bared it's teeth and screamed danger.
The ground shook and she had to widen her stance to stay steady as black skies suddenly manifested, suddenly a feeling of horror and pain erupted from her, at the moment that the malice and hate tore from the ground. It surrounded the building on the horizon, roaring it’s battle cry. She hadn’t even realized she had bared her teeth in response, before she pulled her lips from her teeth, sticking to the ivory. She tore her eyes from the distant cloud that took the shape of a boar, before leaving her cliff.
She followed the path, worn boots she found in the cave thin enough that she can feel each groove in the stone, each misplaced gravel. The wind blew a smell to her, burning and soft. Fire. She approached the outlet and settled on the log across from the old man. His presence was familiar and it bothered her - she knew them but couldn't place them, him and the voice that hovered on the edge of her mind, watching, waiting. A task was given.
And she followed it to the letter. It was carved into her very essence, to follow the orders given to her. It was unnerving, to know she had had a life before this, that she had slept for so long. Her mind had forgotten her past, but her body knew it well enough.
She dodged the arrow that sunk into the ground in front of her, back peddling and falling on her butt. One wedged itself between her skin and her trousers. She tore away from the enemies, racing from the flat ground and launching up to the rock before her. One sat just below her, beside the slate reader she needed to get to. She slid off the rock and quietly snuck to the reader, shoving the slate into it.
The tower awoke, rumbling and shaking the platform. The monster was rocked off the platform, a sickening snap echoing as it hit the ground and stayed there. Link clenched the side of the platform, as it rose from the ground, higher, higher, higher until it finally stopped, and the information downloaded into her slate. She let go, took her slate, and stood at attention when the old man appeared.
She turns and the scenery is not much better than the one at the Shrine of Resurrection, but it still stole her breath away. The old man gave her another task and she left to fulfill it. Climbing down wasn't nearly as bad as climbing up and when her feet landed on the hard ground, the dust flying up around her, she had never felt more alive. Her strides were long as she jogged to the first shrine. A shiver flew down her spine and she dodged.
An arrow lodged into the ground where she once stood and her eyes quickly found who was responsible. A bokoblin. A red one, easy to kill, a few well-placed hits with - her hand had reached to her back, muscle memory kicking in, but she grasped empty air. She tried to search her memory for what she was reaching for, but pulled a blank, as usual.
But she knew what the empty air meant. She had no weapon. She couldn't fight. So she ran. Find a weapon. Kill the bokoblins. Enter the shrine. It was a well-thought-out plan. So she went to start it. Her weapons were limited. Sticks. A dull ax she found in a stump, the blade chipped and the handle rotted. By the time she had collected enough sticks to deal enough damage to wound the bokoblin, night had fallen.
She crept back to the camp and realized there were more than two. There were six, and they were mostly blue. One was a black and Link decided it might be best to kill him first. They slept, and she snuck up to them. They had better weapons, clubs with spikes, and a sword that glinted with familiar purple and gold.
She took it, careful with her movements, and brought it down on the neck of the sleeping bokoblin. It sliced through with ease and the head rolled away. The sludge of blood that came after was nauseating, but she had a job to do.
She fell into a familiar movement, slicing through bokoblin flesh. A horn sounded, but she ignored it. She dodged arrows and climbed the lookout tower and sliced through the ankles of the archer. It screeched in pain before Link shoved the sword through it’s eye.
Labored breaths ripped from her lungs, fogging in the quickly cooling air. She takes the sword, cleans it, and scavenges the bokoblin. The bow is swung across her back and it’s quiver is tied to her side. She collects as many arrows as she could, from the ground and from the logs around the camp.
She lifts a shield and tests its weight. Light enough to carry easily, but not heavy enough to survive more than a few blows. It would do. She keeps it and a loud chime rings through the quiet air. She lifts her head to the other lookout tower, but atop this one was a chest. She climbs it and opens it.
A bundle of arrows lays in it, but the tips are shaped like fire. They’re warm when she lifts them, almost hot enough to burn when she brushes her finger against the tip. She puts them in her quiver, makes sure to pull a few feathers from them to differentiate them from the regular arrows.
Once she is done with collecting what she can from the camp, she continues to the shrine. It glows an ominous orange against the dark sky. A faint memory edged on her mind. Like she had seen this silhouette before. Maybe she had. She was sure she would recover all her memories one day.
She slides the slate into it’s place and the shrine opens. It smells like dust. She scrunches her nose up but continues into the shrine. By the time she left, the sun was high in the sky. But she had earned a new power. No time to waste. She took her slate out and flipped to the runes.
The magnet shape glowed for a moment before she chose it and effortlessly lifted a metal cube from the water beside the shrine. The old man flew from the sky and after a moment, Link didn't try to figure out from where. She listened and for a fleeting moment, anger unfurled it’s petals in her stomach.
But she gritted her teeth and nodded. She teleported to the tower and searched the landscape for glowing shrines, but she couldn’t differentiate them from the sun hitting rocks or actual shrines. She sighed through her nose and fiddled with the slate.
She lifted it and brought it to her face and the landscape suddenly widened and she could see where the shrines were. One was atop a high mountain, covered in snow, another tucked away on a cliffside, and the closest was in a small maze, just a league west from the tower. She would go there first.
She swung over the edge of the wall, hitting the ground with a thump. She needed to get to the second shrine before night fell. It was still mid-day, but she was still trying to figure out the lay of the land. She enters a space and freezes. Danger seeped from it, the still metal dead for a century, but still tore a labored breath from Link.
She had seen first hand what they could do. Her side still burned from when one had - her memory stopped, it was foggy, a voice, her voice, no, no. Someone she loved...they were calling for her. They were saying hold on, they would save her. Tears ran down her face and she shook her head, she couldn’t remember. She needed to. She had never wanted to know a face or name so much before now.
She needed to go. The shrine. The second. The third. Get off the Plateau. A plan. She took a shaky breath. She had a plan. She needed to follow it. She left the hunk of metal to rot even more in the ground. She climbed the next wall and a creaking sound drew her eyes up. This one wasn’t dead. Red light spilled from the veins as it spun it’s head, before focusing a beam of light on her. Targeting her.
She leaps from the top of the wall just as it fires, tearing a chunk of wall with it. She ran and hid behind a truly dead one, trying to calm her head, her breathing. She was going to die. This is where it all ended. No! The voice rang high in her head. But it wasn’t the one that woke her up. It was harsher, and a wave of heat swept through Link, heating her lungs, a spark glowing in her chest.
She opened her eyes, a memory of a tall woman and a shock of red hair leaving her as quickly as it came. She needed to live. She pushed off the dead metal and ran to the parallel wall, jumping up, pushing herself to cling to the brick, and pull herself up before it fired again. She landed on her back, sucking in breaths, pain ricocheting in her ribs and spine.
She covered her face, hiding from the sun, and let herself cry her last tears. They dried on her cheeks and she smiled. She survived. Of course, she did. She stood on shaky legs and walked to the shrine.
She left the shrine and it was dark. The stars were visible, glowing high above her head, another day gone within the walls of a dusty shrine. She sucked her teeth and continued on, this time staying to the outside of the walls. She narrowly avoided another live one, disappearing behind a wall just as it woke up.
The open meadow gave her the space needed to breathe. She could see a small light in ahead, flickering, like a fire. She chased after it, old rainwater splashing up on her pants as she ran through a puddle. She paused at a tree heavy with apples, tugging the closest one down and sinking her teeth into it. The satisfying crunch of the ripe apple echoed in her head, rung through her bones as she walked towards the firelight, vision adjusting to the dark in time to see the three figures sleeping beside it, jumping up at the sound of her approach. She stopped. Bokoblins. And she just woke them up.