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I’m a monster.
That is the only thought running through my head as I stand here in this field, overlooking the slaughter. These creatures don’t realize what they are doing, they’re just mindless abominations. But me? I’m a monster. When somebody wants something dead, they ask me. Mipha can heal, Daruk can shield, Revali can scout, and Urbosa can disarm, but me?
My only power is to kill.
I feel her hand on my forearm, tentatively pulling me away from the horror I’ve created. I let her, but my gaze doesn’t break away until a few moments later, when I am shocked back into reality by the pain in my right arm.
“Please, Link, let me try to help you with that.” Zelda leads me, still a bit distracted, to sit down. As I do, I collapse under myself a little bit, the exhaustion of the battle seeping in, and I put my other hand on her shoulder to stray myself. She helps me regain my balance, and my vision fades slightly, dancing lights appearing in fuzzy darkness for a moment. “You’ve lost a lot of blood,” she’s saying, and her delicate hands are removing the leather straps of my bracers. She looks at the wound, and I can hear the familiar sigh of resignation as she busies herself with gathering a tonic from her pouch. “That cut doesn’t look too bad, actually,” and she’s gently cleaning the dirt and blood off of a wound and patting the pink liquid onto the cut with a cloth. I hadn’t realized how much a lynel sword’s poison hurts until it was out of my body. “ but there’s a fine line between courage and recklessness”, she says. And turning into my own enemy, I add silently. Looking up at the sky, I can see that the sun will be down in less than an hour. “But as brave as you are, that doesn’t make you immortal.” She says, and her small fingers are nimbly wrapping a strip of cloth around the wound. She goes on talking about how the monsters are an indication of the coming calamity, and I wonder if I’m the monster Hyrule has raised to pit against it, if I’m just another one of these things that herald the calamity, one of these things that should be gotten rid of. Finally, she leads me, still a bit lost in thought, to my horse. I help her gracefully up onto Lucian, her stallion, and then leap up onto Epona’s back. I click my tongue absentmindedly and tap Epona’s slides with the heels of my boots. She falls into step next to Lucian easily, and after a moment I let Epona drive and stare off into the sunset. We ride in silence for a while, Zelda clearly thinking about bigger things, and myself trying to not think at all. Not thinking at all, however, is not my strong suit.
I find myself back in Impa’s training yard, on the day before Midsummer. It’s hot, and we’ve been permitted to remove our helmets for a brief while, to talk amongst ourselves. I’m sitting under a tree with my friend Sheik. He’s one of Impa’s prodigies, a talented scout and assassin. There isn’t a man on the planet who can find him if he wants to disappear. We’re talking about some of the girls who have been watching drills, or rather I’m listening as he tells me all about each one, trying to get me to ask one of them to the Midsummer Ball. I’m only half listening, and instead looking up at the balcony where Lady Impa is talking with a long haired, regally dressed blonde who I can only assume is the princess. Impa points out a few soldiers to her, and then she points at our tree. I hold up my hand, interrupting Sheik’s thrilling description of how good Malon Ranch looks in a pink ball gown, and then gesture towards the balcony.
“I don’t think you should aim that high quite yet, Link,” he says, laughing.
“No, idiot”, I respond. “They’re looking at us, I think Impa’s pointing out the fact that shades work with us soldiers, sometimes,” I say as I turn to look at him.
“Link, I don’t think they’re looking at me,” he says. “Look again.” He’s pointing up at the balcony, where the princess is shielding her eyes and looking down at us. As I look back, we lock eyes, and she glances away. Why would she be looking for me? Sure, I’m good, but I’m just a soldier. There’s no way that Impa would be recommending people from a group of greenies for anything the princess is directly involved in. “Link, I take it back. With all the attention you’re getting, you might as well shoot that high, you charming little forest boy,” Sheik says, but I barely hear him. I’ve spotted a glint of metal on the rooftop adjacent the balcony where Impa and the princess are standing. The glint is gone as soon as it appears, but I know a demon carver when I see one.
“Sheik, give me your whistler, now,” I say, looking at him. He shrugs, and hands over the tiny apparatus. It’s a tiny crossbow that fires darts that whistle as they fly, and it requires a lot of talent to aim. I point it at the rooftop, and wait for my opportunity. The glint appears again, this time moving, and as I’m about to fire, I switch my aim slightly higher and pull the trigger. As the dart travels towards the rooftop, a red-clad form leaps out of the shadow, the demon carver I spotted earlier above it’s head. The two collide mid-air, and a Yiga Footsoldier drops dead at the princesses feet.
Ever since that day, I’ve been an instrument of death for the royal family, and nothing more.
I’m jolted back to reality by Zelda’s voice, and I realize that it’s far later than I had previously realized. We’re nearing the bottom of the mountain. “We should probably stop for the night,” she says, and I cringe at the thought of what Impa will do to me because I was late. Then again, I can’t have her passing out on top of her horse. If it hadn’t been for our being attacked, we would have been to the outpost by nightfall, but that’s still a few hours away, between slower travel and the time it takes for a single man to take out upwards of forty monsters along with three lynels.
“Are you sure, princess? I don’t think it’s safe out here, especially at night,” I say, my tone betraying my exhaustion.
“We’ll be alright. Besides, if anything does come up, you’ve got that sword, don’t you?” she says, and I grunt my consent.
“Whoa, girl,” I say to Epona softly, and she stops obediently, nickering in confusion. “We’re going to find a place to stay the night, okay?” I ask her, as though she could respond, but my tone soothes her and she seems to relax. I help Zelda off of her steed, and after a few moments of looking, she calls me over to an alcove in the rock. I inspect it, before tying the horses to a rock that can’t hold them, but tells them it isn’t a good time to wander, and then I set to building a fire. As I work, Zelda sits down on the ground next to me, hugging her knees to keep warm. My arm still hurts, and I fumble with the flint a bit, dropping it. The shards that I pick up are too small to be useful. “I’m sorry princess, but I don’t think we’ll get a fire tonight. My arm isn’t in great shape.” She nods, and I can tell that she’s cold. I rack my brain, trying to remember if I have any other flints stashed away, but I don't. If we were closer, I would go to get a fire rod from a wizzrobe I had killed. I sit and think a bit longer, before walking over to a patch of dead grass and pulling it out of the dirt. I pull out a dagger and start thinning the handful until I have some reasonable tinder, and once I do I place it in the base of the fire triangle. Taking one of the shards of flint, I strike the tony piece against my dagger, and the grass goes up. My actual tinder catches soon after, a strip of birchbark, and a small flame starts to grow. Just as it does, however, a gust of wind comes through, and the little flame dies down. I stand up to go get more grass, but a hand on my forearm stops me.
“Don’t, Link.”
Zelda is sitting, one arm still hugging her knees, and I can tell she’s cold. I nod and sit down next to her.
“Are you okay?” I ask, and she nods, looking out across the road to the sheer rock face, a dull orange in the moonlight.
She turns and leans into my side slightly, and I can feel her shivering pretty badly. “I’m fine, Link, but I can tell you aren’t. What’s bothering you?” The fact that I can’t seem to do anything well except kill things, I want to say but I don’t. The fact that I haven’t been told much of anything about what’s going to happen to me, and all you seem to think is that I’m just a paragon of heroics who’s too noble for his own good .
“Nothing,” I say coldly.
She looks up at me, and I can feel some of the shivering stop. “I can tell you’re lying, Link. I think that this fire here,” she says gesturing to my little pyramid, “was the last straw. Something’s nagging you, and I-” she sighs. “I don’t like it when you’re not present. I can’t help it when you’re so, so…” she trails off.
Maybe I was wrong about you, I think, and I find my bad arm around her, the shivering almost gone. Maybe you do understand what it’s like. “It’s just,” I start, before losing track of my thoughts. Din, she’s warm. “I just feel like all I can do is harm people. Sure, the others are warriors as well, but they have other talents, they have other duties to do. They’re the pilots of Divine Beasts, and all I am is…”
“A killer?” I look down at Zelda, and her piercing green eyes are looking back up at me.
“Yeah.”
“You aren’t a monster, Link.” She reaches up and puts her hand on the side of my face, and it’s a very warm hand. Or maybe that’s me, I’m not sure. “You’re the only person in this world who shares my burden. You, Link,” she says, “only think that you’re a monster because you don’t have anything to fight for. A monster kills senselessly, and I don’t think you know why you’re killing.” She’s right, of course. I know that. She has a nasty habit of being right, but I don’t necessarily mind it at the moment- Farore, she’s warm, or I’m warm. One of us is warmer than we should be. “Let me give you something to fight for, Link.”
And then she pulls me down and kisses me. On the mouth. My brain isn’t entirely sure what’s going on, but before I can process what’s happening, she’s pulled away and I can confirm that both of us are very warm. After fifteen seconds, my brain catches back up, and I let out a huge breath. Both of us are sort of staring wide eyed at each other, and I can tell that although I’m definitely less sure of what just happened, we’re both terrified.
“I think,” she says after a moment, “that we should do that again.”
“Mm-hm,” I manage, before she’s kissing me again, but this time my brain manages to keep up a bit better. I’m actually a bit upset at my body, there are a lot of nerves firing that I’m not entirely sure I’ve ever used before.
Kissing the princess of Hyrule is hard to explain, but it’s a bit like taking cookies from the cookie jar right after your mother told you not to. You know you shouldn’t, but it’s also so gratifying that you really can’t help yourself. I realize I’ve been forgetting to breathe when she pulls away for air, and I sort of realize my brain wasn’t nearly as caught up as I thought it was.
“Is that good enough?” she asks, and I look at her confused, until she manages a half laugh and says “Is that enough to convince you that you aren’t a monster?”
And I realize that she’s right. She has a nasty habit of being right, I’m not sure if I mentioned that. I’m not a monster. Monsters fight because they crave the battle. I fight because I have someone I need to protect, to care for.
“Yes, princess. That’s good enough, I think.”
“Mmh. I’d been hoping you would need a bit more,” she starts, but start is all she does.
The next morning, I wake up to the sound of a disapproving “Ahem.” Zelda and I are still nestled together in the alcove, she sitting with her arms around her knees, and mine around her. Our heads lie on top of one another, hers in the crook of my shoulder and mine comfortably lain into a sea of golden hair. “I trust that you slept well, hero. If I find out that you were anything but the image of chivalry, you know very well what will happen to you.” I look up to see a tall Gerudo woman looking down at us, and though she’s hard to see, backlit by the rising sun, I think I see a grin on her face.
“You’re lucky, by the way,” she calls out to me as she walks down the path, “that we didn’t elect to send Mipha to look for you two.”
Wait, what? Oh. Good Nayru. I look up at the sunrise, and as Zelda stirs on my shoulder I realize that just because I can spot a knife moving a thousand feet away does not make me the most aware fellow in all of Hyrule. I still have a lot to learn, don’t I?