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“It was my pleasure.”
Link gasps awake and immediately chokes, wind howling in his ears and stealing the breath from his lungs. He opens his eyes and is met with nothing but darkness, a fog of sand blinding him.
A sand storm, he thinks. Like the ones I pushed through to access that shrine and the Great Fairy.
(Not even the sun is visible. For all he knows, he’s been unconscious for hours.)
He sits up. The Yiga arrows that had stabbed into him lay broken in the sand, and there are six holes in the Champion’s tunic, exposing his chest and the new scars the Archers have left him with.
He realizes that he’s alone. Where did Rossu go? Where’s the Master Sword?
“Fi?” he calls, voice hoarse as he climbs to his feet. He stumbles forwards, almost blown over by the strength of the wind. “Fi?”
Somewhere deep inside of him, there is an overwhelming sense of fear, of something like separation anxiety, like his soul is crying out for the spirit of the sword like it once cried out for Zelda.
I just got her back, Link thinks, though he isn’t entirely sure which ‘she’ he’s thinking about. I can’t lose her again.
They were both right in front of him when Zelda-
Tell me what you are. Tell me how to save him.
Her eyes had turned yellow and there was light-
(It was just like Before, on Blatchery Plain. He was in danger and she unleashed her power to save him.)
Link’s foot catches against a rock and he trips, nearly falling. He catches himself, regaining his balance, and the rock coughs.
“Help me,” A voice rasps. A frail hand lifts from the sand.
Link curses, dropping to his knees and brushing the person off. He didn’t see any travelers or Gerudo around when he told Zelda to stop holding back, much less an older-
Rossu, the reason they’re in this mess, stares up at him. His whole body is blackened, scorched as if he was set on fire. His brittle hand drops back to his side. The only way Link is able to recognize him is the color of his eyes.
“Hero,” The Yiga wheezes. His voice is quiet and creaking.
“What…” Link falters, his stomach churning at the smell of burnt flesh. “What happened to you?”
The liar coughs again. “It seems I…worshipped the wrong god-”
Another cough. His breaths rattle in the back of his throat.
“Please don’t leave me,” he stares into Link’s eyes. His hand twitches by his side, like he doesn’t have the strength to lift it again. “I don’t want to die alone.”
(This man is a member of the Yiga Clan. This man and his kind have hunted Link for, quite literally, as long as he can remember. This man’s friends almost murdered him, were about to murder Zelda, and made her do…whatever this is.)
“I…” Link swallows. “I…”
(He is not ready to kill people. Zelda, or Zelda’s power, however, is. Is killing someone right now.)
“I have a fairy with my things,” he finally says. “If you can hold on long enough for me to find it-”
(He is the Hero. He only kills monsters.)
“No,” Rossu inhales. “No, that’s all right. Just…”
He exhales, and the life leaves his eyes.
Link promptly turns away from the body and retches. The wind, relentless, sends sand down his throat and he vomits again, coughing until he’s breathless and his vision is blurry with tears.
(There is no Shrine of Resurrection for soldiers fighting for what they have been fooled to believe is right.)
He staggers to his feet, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and that’s when he sees it: A golden light illuminating the darkness.
Zelda.
“Please!” A deep voice cries. The unlucky Blademaster, Link identifies, the one that was going to execute her. “I-I was only following orders-”
The unlucky Blademaster howls.
“Cadro!” Another voice screams, a woman, possibly one of the Archers or the other Footsoldier? She’s vicious when she roars, “I’ll fucking kill you-!”
The next sound is the clashing of blades, and the next after that is the woman choking.
Link runs as fast as the desert will allow him, sprinting towards the light. It becomes easier the closer he gets, the wind dying down and the wall of sand thinning-
He bursts into the eye of the storm and is brought to his knees by the pressure of divine magic crushing him to the ground. He can see everything clearly, and the wind is gone, however there’s a loud buzzing noise that rattles his brain.
Magic, he identifies. Pure magic.
(The last time he heard this sound he was directly under Dark Beast Ganon, shooting a Light Arrow at its stomach. )
Zelda stands with her back to him, her hair floating around her head like tendrils. Staring directly at her hurts, but if Link squints hard enough he can see that her left hand hangs by her side, and that she holds her right hand up, but it’s different. Whenever she uses her power, she always reaches towards her target, fingers splayed, and pushes the light forward with her palm.
Now, she holds her right hand differently. It looks as if she’s flexing, her fist clenched tightly before her face as an even brighter light emanates from the back of her hand-
(Link sees a Gerudo man with red hair and grayish, green skin sitting on an ornate throne. He holds his fist before his face like he’s flexing, the Triforce blazes on his knuckles, and he cackles as the floor crumbles beneath their feet.)
The woman who threatened her hovers in the air, legs dangling as she claws at her throat with one hand, a Vicious Sickle grasped tightly in her other. Her mask is nowhere to be seen but her face is destroyed by burns. The unlucky Blademaster lies motionless at Zelda’s feet, his own Windcleaver buried in his charcoal chest.
(Did…Did Zelda’s light burn everyone? Mipha’s Grace was triggered, does that mean-)
Master!
Link’s head snaps to the side. His soul practically sings. Fi?
She sounds close, where is she-
Master, on your left!
He looks to his left, and sees the familiar red and blue of the Hylian Shield along with the hilt of the Master Sword sticking out of a mound of sand. He digs them both free, fastening his shield on his arm before he dusts off the blade of evil’s bane. When he picks it up, the pressure holding him down evaporates and he’s able to stand again.
“Are you okay?!” he asks over the droning buzz of the Triforce. “Are you hurt?!”
I am just fine, Master, she answers, and is there a smile in her voice? I have figured out-
The second Blademaster, Zelda’s other captor, comes stumbling out of the storm next to Link, his Windcleaver gripped tightly in his charred hand. His mask is gone, too, but like the woman his face is half destroyed.
(The woman in Zelda’s grasp is the second Footsoldier, one Blademaster and Rossu are dead, and the second Blademaster just arrived. Where are the Archers?)
“You killed them!” The second Blademaster snarls, glaring at Zelda, unaware that she probably can’t hear him over the sound of her own power. “You turned them to ash!”
The Archers are dead too? That means-
Four people, Link counts. She’s killed four people.
The way the woman’s face is changing color and her eyes are rolling back in her head, it’s about to be five.
(There is no world that exists where Zelda is in control of herself and doing this on purpose.)
Fi says, urgent, Master, listen to me. Having taken into account the words of Ganondorf’s spirit along with what is currently happening, I can confidently say with 100% certainty that this is-
The Blademaster raises his Windcleaver and readies himself to swing-
“Stop!” Link slashes the Master Sword up and stops him before he can. “Attacking her is suicide!”
“She’s killed my brothers and sisters!” The Blademaster tells him. “I can’t just sit back and let her!”
He needs this guy out of the way so he can save the Footsoldier and not have to worry-
“Rossu is alive!” he lies, and points in the direction he came from. “He’s that way, but he’s burned worse than either of you! I’ve got a fairy, if you bring him here I can heal him!”
“Why would you help the Yiga Clan?”
“Because I’m the Hero!”
(It’s the first time he’s said it and not felt like he’s lying through his teeth.)
After a moment, the Blademaster turns and runs back into the storm.
Master, Fi says. Be careful. This is-
“I will,” he tells her.
(Mipha’s Grace isn’t ready yet, and Daruk’s Protection is still down. He has to be extra careful.)
“Zelda!” Link screams her name at the top of his lungs. “Zelda!”
She whirls around and shoves her left hand towards him. A ray of golden light shoots from her palm, and it’s only by the grace of the Goddess that he raises his shield in time to parry the blast.
She unclenches her right hand’s fist and crosses her arms in front of her face, blocking the redirected beam. The Yiga woman drops to the sand like a sack of flour, lifeless.
(She’s killed five people.)
Zelda’s irises are still yellow. There’s no emotion on her face as she stares at him, no recognition in her eyes, and she sways as if suspended by strings.
Sounding frustrated, Fi insists, Master-
“How the hell do I snap her out of it?” he demands, rolling out of the way of another golden blast. “And don’t say by attacking her!"
Fi is silent for a second. Then, Touching me burns her. There is a 98% chance touching the Master Sword will stop the-
“I don’t want to hurt her, Fi!”
It is the only way. The Master Sword was created to repel this kind of magic.
Zelda clenches her fist before her face, the Triforce blazing, and the storm around them closes in, shrinking the eye.
Link grits his teeth and runs at her. Maybe if he tackles her and presses the Master Sword to her hand for a moment and only a moment, it’ll be enough and won’t hurt as bad-
She sends another beam his way and he dodges at just the right moment-
Time slows, bending around him.
(He’s never really understood why he’s able to to induce this strange bullet time to either Flurry Rush or fire the perfect arrow.)
You are the Hero, Fi answers. It is simply one of your advantages in battle.
He launches himself at Zelda, his arms wrapping around her waist. He can feel that his bullet time is almost up, he needs to move even faster-
The flow of time resumes, and as planned he brings her down, landing on top of her. Her shirt rides up a bit as her back hits the sand, Link’s fingers finding her bare skin, and it is then that he replaces them with the hilt of the Master Sword.
Zelda screams in his ear, the first sound she’s made, and thrashes in his grip. The sand storm, slowly, begins to die.
Hold it there, Fi orders when he moves to pull the Master Sword away from her. Do not pull away until the storm fades.
Eventually, Zelda goes limp. The storm stops. Link feels the warmth of the sun on his back.
He moves the Master Sword out from under Zelda’s body and tosses it aside, pushing himself up on his arms and looking down at her.
Her eyes are closed, and her chest heaves. She’s no longer glowing.
“Zelda?” he asks.
She opens her eyes, and they’re green instead of yellow. Link has never felt more relieved.
“Thank the Goddesses,” he pants, resting his forehead against hers. “I don’t know what I would have done if that didn’t work.”
“If what didn’t work?” she asks, voice hoarse, small, and trembling. She stares up at him, anxiety clear in her expression. “What just happened? What did I do?”