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For the first time since he was a fledgling, the arrow does not meet its target.
Which is an idea so foreign to him that for a long moment Revali is struck still. He doesn't recognize the feeling roiling in his chest that is sending the feathers on his wings fluttering with unrest. He watches the Hylian soldier whose shield had blocked the arrow, and burns his face into memory for a reason he can't quite put words to.
"Link," the Hylian queen gasps, and the blond soldier is off into the woods, heading directly for Revali's perch. The man discards his shield in the snow and draws a sword, flashing through the trees faster than he should be capable of if he were simply running.
Although, Revali can hardly describe the man as being fast - it isn't really about speed when one can step from one space to another without actually moving. The Yiga are rare in the Hebra mountains, but not unheard of, and they are certainly seen more often than the reclusive Sheikah. The soldier is teleporting like they do, but without the dramatics of smoke and talismans cluttering up the air.
He watches the man kick off the side of a tree trunk and launch himself into the lower branches of a tree. Then he flickers to a higher space, climbing up (in a frankly odd and completely unnecessary way) to meet Revali.
Well fine. If the man wants to go higher, then Revali would go higher. He takes off into flight just as the soldier reaches him in the canopy, and offers a cheeky salute that only deepens the Hylian's scowl.
"Come to settle this one-on-one, have you?" Revali says, circling in the air around him. He tightens the cap of his quiver and slings his Great Eagle Bow over his back. The tree sways in the chilled Hebra breeze and the soldier with it, one hand clenched on a sturdy pine bough. The man says nothing in response, but Revali isn't bothered; he's far more fond of his own voice than any others. "As though you could even think to challenge my mastery of the sky. How arrogant."
He had a roost in the village, once. He hung his hammock on the highest platform, with a hut that opened out toward the valley proper instead of the wooden walkways. He kept his own cookpot, would sew his own clothes, and maintained his own weapons with all the care of a parent to their hatchling.
But the pride of the Rito was a universal thing, and Revali was never the sort to adhere to pleasantries with those he didn't view as an equal. At first it was friendly rivalry, a contest here, a show of arms there. Then came duels, and races, and feats of strength and skill.
Then there was a challenge over something so insignificant that he couldn't even remember what it was - perhaps the honor of a lover, or words that were true, but had wounded too deeply. It became a fight to the death, and the first feather that Revali would take as victory trophy. He couldn't remember what colour it had been.
One challenge became two, then three, and so on. In the air, or on the ground. In the swirling hollow of the shooting range, or far north in the mountains where blizzards threatened to do them both in.
All of them reduced to feathers that Revali had taken to sewing on a foraging satchel. All of them daring to think that they were stronger, faster, smarter, better than him, who made the very winds bend to his will.
And now, this featherless Hylian is still glaring at him from a treetop with a sword in hand. He'd accepted less articulate challenges from more vocal Rito.
"Disappointing," Revali sighs, letting a breeze carry him around the man once more. "And mute, are you? I suppose I should be grateful for such small mercies."
Between one breath and the next, the soldier vanishes from the tree and drops down on him from above, blade gleaming in mid-swing.
Startling, Revali pitches himself backwards and instinctively pulls the winds tighter around himself. It's half protection and half defence, keeping the two of them separated and swirling opposite in the sky. Then Revali pushes out, summons his galewind, and rides it high and fast away from his attacker. In an instant the soldier is left behind, a dropping shape below him.
Then he isn't. The edges of him blurring, the Hylian reappears in Revali's path above him, causing him to swear and swerve out of the way. He dodges another swing of the sword, and continues upward.
The man jumps again, and again, blinking to Revali's side over and over as they climb through the clouds. The air is thinner, the wind cold and wild, and it's still not any strain on Revali, whose hearty lungs and body were built for such environments. But the wingless Hylian?
Revali lets go of the galewind and glides on the natural current as the soldier continues on without him. He watches the man vanish and reappear two more times, meters higher than the soldier needed to be. Revali smirks and waits for the inevitable drop.
The soldier does, but not like a sack of stones as Revali expects. Instead of plummeting past, the man spreads himself over the buffeting wind as the Rito do, arms and legs spread to slow his descent. He has no form and is unsteady without wings, but he manages to sufficiently mimic the slant of Revali's body enough so that he is almost kept aloft.
"Don't you ever give up?" Revali calls out to him. "I'm sure it feels like flying now, but it won't when-"
The breath pushes hard out of Revali's lungs as the soldier blink-teleports again, and suddenly crashes into him. It sends them both spinning wildly through the clouds, cold air whistling past them as they fall. Luck has sent the soldier's sword tumbling apart from the two of them, but the Hylian's hands instead latch tightly to the straps on Revali's breastplate.
Amid the rushing air, Revali hears the snarled words, "I never give up," from the soldier.
Revali always forgets how heavy the other races are, with their dense bodies and bones filled with marrow. He tries without success to pry the man's hands free, but the grip only goes tighter. Some instinct in the back of Revali's throat starts to rear its head, and he knows he has to get the situation under control, and fast. He refuses to get hurt - or die - to something as stupid as falling out of the sky.
"Neither do I," he declares belatedly. Revali stops fussing with the Hylian attached to his chest, and wraps the man fully in his wings. He locks their legs together and completely alters the shape that they make against the wind. He twists with an exactness that comes from experience, and swiftly brings their fall under his control. They were falling, but now they are diving, accelerating more the closer they get to the ground.
A wave of calm floods Revali, and he eyes the incoming snowfields below them for wayward trees and other obstacles. After a quiet heartbeat, he realizes that the Hylian has his face tipped up, too, watching as much of their descent as the ripping wind would allow. And the man is laughing.
The rapid altitude change and lack of oxygen must be getting to the soldier - which is exactly what Revali is looking for.
In the last possible instant, Revali snaps his wings out and lets his legs swing forward in order to bring himself out of the stoop. But instead of being flung off Revali and into the snow, the soldier is still hanging on tightly (still conscious, most inconveniently) and the sudden velocity shift yanks Revali along with him.
They crash together in a mixture of feathers and limbs, skidding to a stop in a bank on the edge of a slushy pond.
Breathless and dazed, Revali lets himself lay in the snow for a moment. He listens to the nearby bushes resettle, and blinks up at the clear blue sky.
The soldier is half overtop him, gasping for air, one wrist over his eyes. There's no more sound coming from his lips, but his shoulders are still shaking with mirth, and the apparent delight of freefalling. Were the situation different, and if Revali hadn't toppled to the earth like a fledgling straight from the shell, he might have been tempted to do something like smile.
Irritably, Revali smacks him on the shoulder. Then in the face for good measure. "Stop laughing and get off me!"
He sees the exact moment that the soldier remembers who they are in relation to each other, and what they were doing before they'd gotten into such a mess. Revali watches the laughter die on the end of a hitched breath, before both of them go for their knives; one in the Hylian's boot, one sheathed next to a pouch at Revali's waist.
Revali rolls out of the way of the soldier' predictable on-the-off-chance stab. He tries to knock the man off his feet with a sweep of a wing, but the soldier flips over it, one hand in the snow, and back into standing. On the ground the Hylian obviously has the advantage, acrobatic and trained with a solid surface beneath his feet, but Revali is faster, and his wings carve out space around him, masking his true mass as the soldier tries to get a hit in.
Unexpectedly, the man speaks. "This isn't the sky anymore," he says, ducking under a wing, and darting close inside Revali's guard to press for an advantage. The look in the man's blue eyes is familiar - one that Revali has seen on countless challengers before.
They always think they're the victor, even before they've done the winning.
He twists away from the soldier's blade once, twice, and throws out a slice that is easily avoided. He lets the Hylian walk him backward a few paces and gives him the fleeting taste of a would-be easy fight.
"Unlike you," Revali says, when the soldier goes for the kill stab, "I'm not helpless when out of my element." A few feathers are cut when he sweeps the Hylian's blade arm aside, but it opens the man up for Revali's follow through with a spin. He kicks out with the claws of his foot clenched tightly and knocks the man back with a hard punch to the torso.
Revali thinks he hears a bone crack. It's satisfying.
He follows with an overhead strike of his knife, which the Hylian only manages to block at the last second. The steel tip cuts across the soldier's face just barely, and he shoves Revali away with a burst of strength that Revali doesn't bother trying to fight. He cedes the space and skips back with a flap of his wings.
Something about the blond soldier changes as he staggers winded and stunned. His breath is harsh, misty clouds puffing from his lips, his scarf undone from their adventure in midair and half-tugged out of the collar of the soldier's down-lined jacket. The gouge on his face bleeds freely, and Revali can't tell if he nicked the eye or not.
Revali makes a scornful noise with a click of his tongue, and smiles.
Either Revali blinks or the soldier does, and suddenly the man is lunging in close, throwing his weight into Revail to send them both into the snow. Clearly seeking to trade blood for blood, the soldier brings his knife down immediately, stabbing with two hands directly into the meat of Revali's wing.
The soldier keeps Revali pinned as he thrashes from the pain, with one knee to Revali's chest, and the opposite foot pressed down on the bicep of his unharmed wing. Again, Revali mourns the weight of Hylians, and clacks his beak at the man in annoyance.
The anger is reflected in the soldier's pale eyes, and he leans down over Revali. "You tried to kill my Queen," he says evenly. His voice is quiet, dangerous in the way that a brightly coloured snake is dangerous; without any fanfare and apparent to anyone paying a modicum of attention. It sends an unwelcome shiver down Revali's spine.
Refusing to let pain show in his voice, Revali scoffs. "Hardly. If I wished, she would be dead."
"You shot at Her."
"Near her," Revali corrects. He's not surprised that the soldier is unable to tell the difference. In his experience, very few were. Especially if they weren't Rito. "If you hadn't interrupted, it would have lodged in the back of the saddle horn."
"Or Her belly." The soldier leans harder on the knife and this time Revali can't hold back the pained groan as it slips from his beak.
Somehow, the doubt of his intentions is more irritating than the threat of death that hangs off the Hylian's every word like a promise. "Why wouldn't I aim for her head," Revali asks, "If my intention was to kill her?"
Confidently, the man says, "You weren't sure you'd hit."
"Weren't sure I'd-" Revali chokes on the words and tries to buck the man off of him again. Now he's furious and, worse, offended. "I'm the most skilled of all the Rito, I'll have you know-"
The soldier bares his teeth at him, and mocks him in the same tone Revali had used earlier. "Disappointing."
"Why you impetulant, featherless-"
In the backdrop of the sky above the soldier's head, a small cloud of white pigeons startle into flight from the treeline. Both Revali and the soldier fall silent while they listen for signs of what had scared the birds away. At first there's only the crunch of snow, but it's followed quickly by the shifting sound of leather that usually meant someone in armor.
Then Revali reads the answer in the way that the frown lines on the soldier's face relax slightly. The Hylian delegation has finally caught up with them.
"Ser Knight," a woman's voice commands, "Let him up."
The soldier obeys immediately, stepping off Revali's arm and reclaiming the knife from his wing in one swift yank. He gives Revali space to recover, and then returns to where his people are emerging from the trees. His place, it seems, is in among the ranks and not next to the queen.
Revali takes his time standing, nonchalantly examining his new stab wound, and then wiping the blood of his knife in the tamped down snow. When he finally turns his attention to the Hylians, the Hylian queen seems as unbothered as he is. She glitters gold in the sunlight from the gold fastenings on her leather jacket, and the delicate clasps of filigree that drip in her hair. He quite likes her style, especially when he notices that the riding boots she wears are worn-in and practical, and properly hooked in the horse's stirrups. There's no noble's side saddle for her majesty.
"Master Revali," she says mildly. "Some would take this as an act of war."
He flourishes a bow without actually bowing, because she is no queen of his. She returns the slight inclination of his head with one of her own, and his opinion of her increases slightly. There's much said about the queen's beauty and power, but he sees the keen intelligence in her eyes and the surety of her spirit that's hidden by all her dazzling gold.
"Queen Zelda." Revali says. "I was merely saying hello."
"With the point of an arrow?"
"Is there a swifter greeting?" He thinks he sees the beginning of a smile linger at the queen's mouth, and continues with confidence, "I believe you came all this way to witness a show of Rito skill."
The beginnings of a smile becomes one, and the other members of the Hylian delegation seem to relax around her.
All except the blond soldier, that is. The soldier's expression is carefully controlled in a way that Revali finds almost comical - especially while the soldier squints with one eye, the other closed against the sluggish drip of drying blood. He's rife with anger, Revali knows, because he's seen the fury up close, and because the emotion in the man's sky-coloured eyes are as easy to read as the currents of the wind.
"Come," Revali says to the queen. "My roost is near, and I imagine you wish to talk."
-
Revali's roost is anchored in the rock of a nearby peak, surrounded by open air and low vegetation. It's a treetop-height nest of privacy, without actually being in the trees.
The Hylians set up camp at the base of the cliff among the pine grove, and Revali spends a better part of the afternoon watching the skies with the queen, listening and discussing her plans for the future. She's a little too kind for his liking, but has a logical mind that makes her concise, and more forward than other nobles he's met. It's almost refreshing.
After the sun sets and there's nothing more to gaze out at, he escorts her back to the Hylian's camp, walking the narrow footpath down from his roost out of infuriating necessity. His wound is clean, and isn't serious, but he won't be flying until it heals.
The tents are pitched in a circle together, with one exception hiding deeper into the trees. When Revali ventures toward the outlier out of curiosity, he spots a familiar blond soldier tucked close to the crackling logs of a hot fire, huddled down and wrapped in both a hooded cloak and wool blanket. It looks sweltering, but the man only seems to curl closer to the fire.
The man is also clearly aware of Revali's approach, so he doesn't bother announcing himself. "I had assumed you were the queen's bodyguard, but it turns out you're just another soldier." Revali steps into the firelight enough to be seen clearly and remains standing. "Why aren't you with the rest of them?"
A faint grunt comes from the blanket-clad Hylian. "Warmer here."
"Well, yes, you're practically in the fire, of course it's warmer here." He receives no reply, not that he expected one, however unlike talking to himself, a conversation requires at least one other active participant. Revali ruffles and resettles his feathers, and then forces out, "I've been asked…to apologise."
The soldier's gaze slides over finally, and locks on Revali expectantly. Still no comment.
"Obviously," Revali says slowly, "I'm not going to."
The man breathes out heavily and reluctantly unearths himself from the tight clutch of his blanket. "What do you want, then?"
It's a good question, and one that Revali doesn't expect to immediately have an answer to. But it rises on his tongue unbidden, and he hears himself request, "A rematch." The Hylian raises an eyebrow at him. "Not now. Some time when you're ready to lose and die."
A snort of laughter works its way out of the soldier, who tips his head back to look amusedly at Revali. "You're so certain."
Revali suspects it's a symptom of becoming a challenger. How else would someone have the sheer gall to demand a fight that they may not return from? "I hear you're the 'Swordbearer' or something. I am unparalleled as an archer. No sword for you, no bow for me. Should assuage your inevitable doubts of fairness, I expect. And it wouldn't be a challenge if I were to simply shoot you."
The soldier is quiet for a moment while he thoughtfully examines Revali's face. "Why didn't you use your bow before?"
"As I said, I was only saying hello." He hadn't lied about that, and it really wasn't his fault that it had been misconstrued as an assassination attempt. If uninterrupted, it would have been a tidy display of skill. "And now," Revail says, turning on his heel, "I'm saying 'goodbye', which I do hope you don't also overreact to."
"Hey," the soldier calls out as he walks away, "My name's Link."
Revali raises a wing in acknowledgement, and continues to leave. He replies over one shoulder, "I really don't care."
Another challenger, another name. It all blurs together eventually.
---
When Link sees Revali's satchel for the first time, he examines it with unfamiliar excitement and a critical eye. Revali obviously tries not to preen as Link admires the collection of feathers. There are dozens of colours from dozens of defeated challengers, all sewn in overlapping rows that cover the bag. It's a visual collage of Revali's skill, and all the brushes with death that never became anything more permanent for him.
Impulsively, Link reaches out and plucks a feather right from Revali's midnight-blue plumage.
"Since I was the victor," he explains, feeling a grin begging to be let loose from the corner of his mouth. He considers the glossy feather in his hands and wonders what he should sew it to.
In the next moment, Link yelps when Revali tears a chunk of hair free from under the soldier's hood. The Rito looks serious, but his feathers are fluffy and relaxed, which Link usually takes to mean that they're fine.
Revali reclaims his satchel and holds the stolen lock of hair up to it as if envisioning where to sew it in. "It was a draw," he replies.