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Each step is heavier than the last. A thin layer of green, murky water lines the floor and makes each step an independent splash as he continues to trudge on through. Everything echoes through the hollow belly of this divine beast, and if Link closes his eyes for a second longer than a blink, the sound of violent water might be mistaken for some strange form of accompaniment.
Despite being the only one here, he is not truly alone; Mipha’s voice comes to greet him every few minutes, offering him direction and encouragement. Link, in his uninvited rebirth, barely remembers her. Though he appreciates having someone else here to help him through the chambers, the only comfort he truly receives is the lack of solitude and nothing more. There is no emotion attached.
All he knows of the disembodied voice following him has been washed out into a hazy, century-old memory. A brief series of stories from the Zora guard gives her personality, and if not for the memorial statue in her people’s Domain, Link wouldn’t even be able to recall her face. Mipha can talk to him like they’re old friends and more, but to him, she is no more than a glorified stranger. He knows he’s supposed to be comforted by her voice, but it means nothing to him now.
He’s been here for hours. He’s soaked down to the bone, thanks to Vah Ruta’s aquatic defense systems. His hands actually hurt for how deeply wrinkled and water-logged his skin has become, but there’s nowhere to dry them.
Thankfully, all that’s left to do now is to turn this giant machine off. The control unit feels so far away, but once he shut it down, the flooding would end and he could rest. It keeps him going as the stale water splashes around him. After everything he’s done here, this feels like too easy a task.
Despite having a void where memories should be, Link knows that nothing in this new, unfamiliar kingdom would be simple or at all in his favor.
The glowing orange control panel at the other end of the room beckons him through. His pace does not falter, nor does it quicken. Maybe Mipha, even as just a spectator, feels it too, but doesn’t mention it. Something feels wrong about the room. It didn’t feel this way when he was here before. Reality is just a second off from where it’s supposed to be.
When he’s close enough, Link removes the Sheikah Slate from his hip and powers it on without even a glance at the screen. He’s seen enough of this technology to know without any true guidance that the Slate will be a necessary instrument to this Divine Beast.
The slate clicks into place on the iron face of the control unit. This is supposed to be all it takes: the Slate would know what to do and soon Link would be on his way out.
This obviously is not to happen. He feels the malignant presence before he sees it. With one hand, he withdraws his rusty, scavenged broadsword, and with the other, he snatches back the Slate the second the entire control panel engulfs in a thick, black haze.
Replacing the Slate at his side, Link spins, anticipating an assailant from behind as the smoke passes cleanly through him, to the center of the chamber.
As the smoke clears in its own time, all he can do is widen his eyes as recognition confounds him.
Before him stands the fallen Zora princess. He barely recognizes her, but she resembles the statue he’d admired just this morning.
The longer he stares, the more loathly she becomes: as if she were aging before him, her scales gray and flake like they’d never belonged to her body. Her posture, once proud and rigid at the Domain, is broken here--like she’s been mangled and subsequently put back together incorrectly. Her shoulders cave forward, her knees tremble and buckle and her bones crack. It all happens at once and Link doesn’t know where to focus. All he knows is that he can’t bear to look her in the eye.
When she most looks like she’s on the brink of collapse, her familiar trident materializes before her and she leans into it. Link almost feels compelled to lunge forward to offer support, but then he hears her voice and he’s all but paralyzed by it.
Her voice does not originate from her diseased, convulsing body.
“Link,” she says, distant, hesitant. For the first time, his stomach drops at the sound of her voice. She continues regardless. “There is no other way.” She’s too calm--it skyrockets Link’s despair.
Unfortunately for the disembodied voice, Link understands not a single word she has said. He tightens his grip on his sword until he loses feeling in his fingertips. He forgets it’s there.
This is not the Mipha he is supposed to remember.
It’s unfair that this is the only Mipha he knows.
The person before him suddenly takes a jerky, rigid step toward him. She tries to say something, but she chokes, coughs, and blood like tar escapes from the corners of her lips. She’s been slain, and here she stands in the aftermath.
Link doesn’t move. How could he? Her voice is still speaking coherently to him. He doesn’t hear it. Leaning on her weapon, her neck snaps upward to look him in the eye, and somehow he’s forced to make the connection.
He does, and it’s wrong. He doesn’t have much to compare to but he knows in his body and soul that something is horribly, fatally wrong. There’s nothing beyond her eyes. In fact, there’s barely anything in her eyes, glossy and pale.
She speaks a little louder, and he somehow hears her. “Please, Link.” Mipha’s voice is pleading, toeing the line of wholly yelling at him. “Don’t be deceived. This is Calamity Ganon’s work. My spirit will survive this fight no matter the outcome.”
Link tries to swallow but seemingly forgets how to. He chokes, and in the same split second, the impostor growls, leans away from her trident, and lunges in his direction, swift like she had been coordinated all along.
If he’d been at his best, he’d have leapt away from the platform that housed the control panel, drawn his opponent away from the fixture. But he isn’t thinking rationally, and all he’s able to do is instinctively parry the attack, finding himself with his back against the panel.
In the one second he grants himself to think rationally, to ignore the fact that this is, in fact, somehow supposed to be a friend, he dives away from her weapon’s range, water rippling in every direction to escape. He’s on his feet easily, and she’s still on the offense, chasing after him off the platform where the control panel waits.
The Lightscale Trident collides with his damaged shield as he continues to move backwards. His sword is right there, just in his hand, but he hasn’t the will to use it in a way that matters. The voice that was once following him throughout this dungeon is now unhelpfully silent. Maybe he just cannot hear it. Every step backwards is just one more chip in his shield.
Link, despite common sense, is beginning to feel comfortable here with this pattern of combat: every advance she makes is just another step backward, a meager defense as he scrambles to restart his mind. Even in death, her coordination and speed have him exhausting any strength he has left.
He can’t tell where exactly his apprehension originates--he doesn’t know a single thing about who it is he’s fighting. Certainly, they’ve sparred before in a playful or friendly manner, but he can’t recall. He sees nothing in her dead eyes, and it cannot help him. All he sees is that she’s smiling. Grinning, even, like she’s been anticipating this for some time. Her jagged, sharky teeth only leave him more disturbed.
As her smile becomes more and more unhinged, Link notes that the scales of her cheeks are shedding, flaking away to reveal an even paler, more desolate layer underneath. Perhaps she does not notice.
What haunts Link isn’t how unnatural she looks while her body actively decays before him: it’s the realization that she’d have made an excellent, formidable queen. Her sharp, toothy grin is fitting of a valiant Zora soldier. Link hesitates: a split second stalls him where he’s overwhelmed with what could have been. Another advance that he must instinctively counter is what pulls him from the temporary haze.
Whoever this is now would never become queen of anything. He can’t bear to think this.
They could have done this for hours. Perhaps they do, as Link continues to lose ground, until the integrity of his shield finally collapses. The bevel coming away from its base seems to strike something in Link. Perhaps it’s realization that has broken through, for as the metal clatters to the ground with a faint, unimpressive splash, Link finally tears his gaze away from his opponent’s unsettling, uncanny semblance and surveys what he has left.
He has nothing. He’s desperate when he takes a sharp inhale and calls her name.
He hasn’t said her name in a hundred years. It feels familiar in his mouth, but in a way he remorsefully can’t exactly place. He says her name and it’s spoken as an apology.
Whoever he’s fighting clearly does not accept this apology. There’s no time to see how much space remains behind him until his back’s against a wall. He has to do something and he has to do it now.
The deteriorating shield is discarded as he swings his blade horizontally. Immediately, as if she’d predicted this, she is able to jerk the shoulder backwards and block his attack. They are both too fast for dodging. It’s now a matter of waiting for a mistake to be made, and Link’s already made too many.
He’s cringing now at the sound of metal on metal; her Lightscale is so much stronger than anything he has, or anything he is. His blade is seconds from shattering, he knows this, because he’s blinking away a very, very, way too old memory of learning how to fight in the first place, and by the time he’s done unpacking this very intrusive recollection, his sword goes, shrapnel threatening to scrape his skin if not for the silver gauntlet he wears, that she’d made, and--
He doesn’t see it, but he feels it.
The Lightscale Trident collides with his armor and it goes right through, piercing him just beneath his ribcage, Like she knows that this is how to get to him, like this is how to make it hurt.
And hurt it does. The forks penetrate not only the hand-dyed scales she’d worked so diligently to put together, but his own flesh, too. Link can’t fathom the agony, nor does he want to. As if complying with an unspoken demand, he stumbles back, finally finding the wall, knees weak, and she follows.
She does not let go until the wall finds her weapon in a solemn, muted thud. This strength isn’t natural, he’s sure, as she sinks the forks further into the wall, and he’s pinned and can’t even dream of an escape.
Blood--his own blood, too red and too warm and too vulnerable-- escapes into the water below and he cannot breathe and he cannot think and he cannot see anything except her smile: no longer beastly.
It’s…humane.
She’s satisfied with her job.
She’s satisfied with what she has done to him.
All Link does is stare, trying to gasp. No air comes. She’s inches from him, still trying to embed him to this wall, and somehow, she does. His knees are weak but they can not give out. He does not want to find out what would happen to his body suspended on these blades. Now it is his knees that shake.
Something escapes from his mouth. It’s likely blood. Her face reads condescending. He continues to stare. He has nothing else left.
This is when Link pitifully realizes this is not Mipha.
This is not her, and he doesn’t understand how he couldn’t have come to this conclusion sooner, and his head hurts, but her smile anguishes more than any drop of blood he could ever shed. It takes everything he has and more to lift an arm high enough to grab her hand. Maybe this is a feeble attempt to push her away. Maybe it’s just to confirm that this is still real.
It’s acceptance: he’s been defeated.
One Champion succumbs to another.
He doesn’t know where the strength came from that takes his hand from hers, to touch her face. It’s cold, but so is Link. As they both stare at one another with widely varying levels of empathy, his hand falls and he cannot feel it anymore. He feels nothing.
Surely she realizes his resignation. At the same time that his knees collapse, she expertly removes the trident in one cohesive arc, tearing more of his skin away as she pulls at a new angle, fresh blood finding its way to reunite with the pool of it below. He whines pathetically, sinks to the floor, and falls; she turns her back to him and walks away.
Link’s vision is getting hazy. Coherency is taking its leave.
The impostor, walking away, does not see Link as he remembers he has a bow.
The impostor, proud of what she’s done, does not see him shakily knock an arrow. By the time the impostor hears the crackle of electricity he’s imbued in this arrow, it’s too late for her. Before the doppelganger assailant even hits the ground with a telltale splash, Link is gone.
This was a lucky shot, he may admit later, but for now they are both dead.
He wakes abruptly, violently. His muscles burn from overexertion and he almost cries out in pain, but he has neither the voice nor the energy. All he can do is lay here, a step away from tranquility, staring up into the ceiling. He is simply devoid of emotion.
The ceiling gives him no answers. It only reminds him that he is in the main chamber of Vah Ruta. As if reliving the memory in slow motion, he realizes just how he'd ended up laying in the shallow water.
And here, he begins to panic. Without thinking, he reaches for his torso, anticipating a gory mess of innards exposed. Instead, his sore arm finds nothing but the jagged edges of scales in his torn armor. His skin is smooth and intact, contradicting the injury he had just suffered at the relentless hand of--
Her.
If he's alive, however miraculously, then the impostor couldn't be. She wouldn’t have let him live. He sighs in pure relief and drops his arm back to the floor with a gentle splash. How nice it feels simply to breathe. He does not question how it is that he survived. He just breathes.
Her voice stops him. For a split second, he cannot differentiate her gentle voice from her horrific body. His breath falters, and she notices it.
"You're safe now, Link." Despite everything, Link believes it because anything else would destroy him. He exhales.
He still hears running water from somewhere beyond, but it’s not as intense as before. Vah Ruta’s assault on Zora’s Domain has surely come to an end. Though he’s uncomfortably soaked, Link wonders how long he could stay here before anyone comes to look for him. It’s tempting to just take a moment to rest but he still has three more Divine Beasts to free. He tries to sit up. As he does, something moves in the corner of his eye.
Mipha is sitting beside him. Rather, it’s a ghost--a translucent rendition of her. It doesn’t surprise him, considering he’d already spoken to the ghost of the former Hyrulean King. Link tries to get his eyes to focus, but sitting up seems to have given him a headache. He winces and draws his knees in.
As he rests his chin on his knees, the headache… melts. It’s gone within seconds. He raises his head and looks at the viridescent silhouette of an old friend. Her hand is raised, like she’s inches from grabbing him. But she doesn’t: she pulls her hand back calmly into her lap.
She doesn't look at him when she says, "You're wearing the armor I made. I'm glad that it fits. And I'm glad that…" Link doesn't know where she was going, but she didn't finish the statement.
Instead, she turns to look him in the eye. Her eyes appear as they should, and it's a small comfort. There's a fire within them, inspiring in a way that no statue could ever capture.
“I’ve been trapped here for a hundred years,” she says, quietly but intensely. “I had all the time in the world to reflect, but all I wanted was to see you again. Now you’re here, and I’m overcome with the need to apologize. What Ganon has done… It’s not my responsibility to apologize for that, but I detest what I’d become under its control. And you had to destroy it--me. And for that I’m sorry.” As she spoke, her intensity gave way to vulnerability, and now Link feels he cannot look away.
He is no longer bound to the century-old burden that drove him into silence, but he says nothing still, even now. He doesn’t remember who he used to be. Mipha may as well be on the brink of tears, and Link has no emotions to match.
“I know that you don’t remember,” she continued, “but I’m glad that you are okay. And not just here, now. I mean… Calamity Ganon felled all of us. You and Zelda survived, and in that there is hope.
“You should be getting back. Please let my father and brother know that I am fine, now that you have freed my spirit. And please take my trident with you, too. It won’t be of any use to me here. My father may want it, though he'll probably insist that you keep it. I must stay here, you know; someone has to pilot Ruta when you’re ready. And you will be ready. But in the meantime--” Mipha stands, and so does Link, with minor difficulty as his sore muscles protest, “--know that I will always be there to heal your wounds. I will always be here for you.”
That resonates with the one memory he’s been able to cling to. Mipha does not see him fighting back his own tears as he retrieves the weapon from her corpse. The metal is cold, and still soaked in his discarded skin and blood. As he admires it in varying levels of simultaneous curiosity and disgust, Mipha watches from the control unit. They make eye contact one last time when he’s done. Maybe she sees his tears now.
He really wants to say something, as he’s walking to the exit for the last time, but there’s nothing he could say that she didn’t already know.