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Despite the heavy cloud cover, anyone could see the red glow of the moon. It glared through the storm, malevolent gaze fixed on the horse thundering through Duelling Peaks’ Ravine. Two people were bent over its back: a girl in white, a boy in blue.
Zelda tightened her grip around Link’s torso, risking a glance behind her at the horde of bokoblins on horseback and snarling moblins. Their battle-cries echoed off the stone in a horrifying cacophony. The wind pelted whip-sharp rain into her eyes, stinging the skin of her arms and face. She was so cold that she could barely feel it anymore, and so terrified that nothing mattered but running.
A shudder ran through her body as she risked a glance at the blood moon looming above them. Epona huffed beneath them, as would any horse upholding the thundering speed that carried them along the river. Howling rain and wind whirled past as the trio raced for their lives.
Blatchery Plain appeared ahead, the rock on either side of them opening up. Zelda peered ahead, hoping that the field was empty enough for them to ride straight through Hateno Fort.
Her chest tightened at the sight she was met with. Guardians crowded the fort, clambering up its walls as the distant figures of soldiers slashed at their limbs in a feeble attempt to slow the mechanical beasts. Their crimson smoulder ebbed in Zelda’s gaze. Her heart pounded inside her chest, so hard and fast that it almost hurt.
“What do we do?” she said, face buried in the crook of his neck. At any other time, it would have almost been romantic. She shook her head and tried not to think of it.
He glanced at her, blue eyes almost black in the rain. Taking one hand off the reins, he signed, ‘We fight.’
Epona cleared the bridge in two strides, and they were cutting straight across the field. Link’s back was tight, his entire body tense as he steered Epona through the crowd of guardians. She snorted and threw her head, eyes rolling at the menacing glow, but did not buck. The clattering of guardians chased them as they ran.
There was a bright flare of blue light. Heat seared past on the right. The ground ahead exploded into clods of grass and mud. Epona leapt with a high-pitched whinny.
They landed with a bone-juddering jolt and kept sprinting. Another beam on the left, taking out a nearby tree in a fiery explosion.
Link steered Epona further into the woods, weaving in and out of trees as blue beams followed in their wake. Zelda couldn’t breathe right, air unable to find its way in or out of her lungs. She murmured prayers under her breath. “Hylia, please protect us. Guide us. O’ Hylia, goddess Hylia. Awaken my powers, my goddess. Let me save them.”
Hot tears spilled from her eyes as she leaned against Link. They ran down her face with the rain. Everyone was going to die, and it was all her fault.
Epona cried out, the sound piercing. Then, Zelda was falling. The fabric of Link’s tunic still clutched in her hands. She could not even scream before she hit the ground, skidding in the mud. She gasped, trying to regain the air that had been forced from her lungs. She could taste the mud, sticky in her mouth, coating her throat. It had found its way into her eyes, and she scrubbed at them with her fingers.
Link’s hands were lifting her, tugging her to her feet. His eyes flashed as a guardian beam struck the tree beside them. He was signing with one hand, too fast, too desperate for her to make out.
Epona’s body lay still a few metres behind. A smoking gash gaped along her side. Black blood, already dried by the heat of the beam, coated edges of the wound. Zelda released a sob, hand pressed to her mouth.
Link’s hands were clammy in hers as he drew her away. His own horse was dead, and he could do nothing but leave her to the monsters that pursued them. She could not tell if it was the tears or the rain that coursed down his cheeks. The mud caught their shoes, making them slip. Zelda couldn’t see more than a few metres in front, the shapes of trees looming out of the shadows. All they had to guide them were the occasional flashes of blue and red, guardians rattling behind them.
A beam clipped Link’s shoulder, and he staggered, but did not fall. She called out his name, caught him by the arm. They stopped to catch their breaths, even as he tried to draw her into a run once again. She gripped his hands in hers, squeezing them tightly. “Link…” she sobbed. “Link, before we…before we—” She couldn’t even say it, but they both knew what she meant. “I want to tell you, I—”
The searing blue light, too quick for either of them to do anything but duck. Link pressed her against the roots of the tree. Her face pressed to his chest. She felt him jolt against her, the impact of the guardian’s beam travelling through his body to hers. “Link!” she found herself screaming, but he was already staggering to his feet, pulling her along as they ran.
The trees were clearing ahead of them. She could make out even more guardians than the many that pursued them. By Hylia, they were dead. They were dead. She would die in this field, her goddess having abandoned her.
Her breath clawed its way from her throat as they sprinted through the mud, skidding back and forth. “We can’t! There’s even more there,” she shouted, trying to tug him back towards the trees. “Link! Listen to me!” In the red glow of the moon, she could see the tight set of his jaw and the furrow of his brows. “Listen!”
He finally slowed, behind a cluster of boulders. Around them, the mud swirled in a swampy puddle. He unsheathed his sword, its usual whistle muffled by the pouring rain. The guardians clanked in the distance. A look of utter resolve had settled onto his face. In that moment, Zelda knew what she had to do.
“I’m in love with you!” she shouted, seizing him by his shoulders. “I love you, Link! I want—I wanted to marry you.”
He was staring at her with an expression so acutely melancholic that she sobbed. “Please, say something.” His sword hung limply at his side. A nearby flash of light made his eyes shine blue for a second. Their surface was glassy. “Please…”
‘Zelda…’ That was the first time he had ever signed her name. They had made that sign-name months ago, and he had finally used it. She was smiling despite the absolute terror, the guardians drawing nearer, the moon shining an unnatural red above them. ‘I—’
They heard it before they saw it. The noisy clanking, the high-pitched whine as its beam charged up. Whipping his shield off his back, Link crouched into position just as the now-familiar light flashed. It was blinding for a second. Zelda dropped to her knees in the mud, hands over head.
The guardian fell with an earth-shuddering bang. Zelda released a shuddering breath. Link looked to her with tears in his eyes, reaching his hand out to hold hers.
The ground exploded beneath their feet. Link’s hand slipped from her grasp. She was flying for a moment, all the air expelled from her lungs. She couldn’t scream, or breathe, or see.
Then she landed, jarring her shoulder. Her head hit the ground with a wet thud. The world spun. She tried to blink her eyes open, and could only see the blood-red of the moon.The ground was cold. The mud cloying against her neck. “Link,” she croaked, hands reaching blindly.
She struggled onto her hands and knees, crawled to his prone form. He stared up at her with dark eyes, hands twitching for the shield and sword that lay a metre away.
Zelda looked up to see another guardian had replaced the other on the boulder. Its red target was fixed on the middle of Link’s forehead. “Link!” she yelled, slapping him across the face.
He coughed, dark blood blotting his lips. She wrested him up, hands under his shoulders. With another rasping cough, he grasped his shield. Link staggered to his feet, throwing a glance in her direction. Leaning dangerously to one side, he dragged his shield up in front of him.
Zelda jumped to her feet, head still spinning slightly. “Link, you don’t have to do this,” she told him as the guardian began its whirring charge. “Run, get away. I’ll be fine.” He ignored her, and she recognised the stubborn set of his jaw once again. She put a hand on his shoulder, tried to turn him towards her. “Link! Please, go,” she said in a voice barely above a whisper, a sob interrupting her words. He stared at her for a second, and in his gaze she saw he was asking her the same.
The guardian’s beam flashed. Zelda saw what would happen. Link would fall. She had distracted him, the positioning was off. He would die, and it would be her fault.
“No!” She shoved past him, her hand outstretched. She squeezed her eyes shut as she felt the heat of its light, and…
She opened her eyes to a warm glow. Her hand. The Triforce. It was glowing. The light spread rapidly from her, outlining the world in gold. She watched as the guardian fell to its knees atop the boulder, its light disappearing as the red turned into smoke that quickly evaporated in the light.
Zelda could not help the incredulous laugh that burst from her lips. “Is this…?” she murmured to herself, turning her hand to study the light seeping from beneath her skin.
A thud sounded from behind her. She whirled to find Link sprawled on the ground. “Link!” She collapsed to her knees beside him, lifting him so he lay in her lap. He blinked weakly up at her, his left hand reaching up to hers. She clutched it, and stared at the mirror image of her own Triforce.
Its glow was fading, though. She squeezed his hand as if she could force the light back into him. He clutched at her as well, breath heavy. He coughed, choking a little. “Link, get up. We can make it to Hateno. We’ll be safe, and then we can find everyone else.” She was rambling, her tears dripping onto his face. “Please, get up.” A sob shook her. She tried to swallow the rest as they rose to seize her lungs.
His fingers were moving against her palm. Tears blurring her vision, she stared down at him as he signed, ‘Stay safe,’ into her hand. ‘I’ll find you.’
She managed a soft, bitter laugh. “You fool,” she breathed. “You complete, utter fool.”
Then she bent over him, lips pressed against his. The kiss was short, and salty with both their tears and his blood. As she drew away, he managed a brief smile. There was a pathetic squeeze in her chest.
He was signing something else: ‘I love…’
He froze halfway through the final word, his eyes sliding closed. The ghost of his smile still remained on his lips. The dying lips she had just kissed.
Zelda buried her face in his still-warm chest and cried. She sobbed and shuddered and begged him to come back. Pleaded with him to get up. They could escape, she told him. They could escape and save the others. She told him she loved him. She whispered the things she had yet to tell him. She dreamed of falling asleep beside him and waking up curled against him. She wished for mornings spent reading quietly, afternoons watching him cook something delicious. She wanted to see him smile again, to laugh freely like he so often had in these past weeks.
O’ Goddess, there was nothing she had ever wanted more. She would give up everything just to have him back here with her. She would give up this power if she could just have him stand up from this mud and offer her a hand, smiling.
She cried as the rain slowed to a light patter. When at last she had nothing left inside her, she lifted her head. She stared at the husks of the guardians she had just killed. The Goddess-Blood Princess sighed as she beheld the destruction she had wreaked.
An insistent buzz nagged at her. She searched for the source of the sound, and found Link’s sword was glowing. The Triforce on his hand was flashing, slowly building to full brightness and then dimming back to nothing again.
She stared up at the sky, past the red moon to the stars, and thanked Hylia. He could still live. She knew it. There was another chance for her to see him smile.
Zelda lurched to her feet. A new energy tingled through her blood. She bent to retrieve Link’s scabbard and shield, and slung them over her shoulder. She gently lifted Link’s body into her arms, brushing the hair out of his face.
Staggering, back the way they’d come, past the corpses of monsters and guardians alike, Zelda smiled. It was a wide, uncontrollable smile. The smile of a woman reforged.
The crimson moon still glared down at the pair, a new hatred in its eye. A woman in white, a dead man in her arms. Her glow was so potent that the moon had to shy further away, its red less threatening to those that basked in her warmth. This woman threw no shadow. She had no fear.