Chapter Text
Hyrule didn’t think his Hyrule’s castle ever felt this cold. He stuck to the dim rugs that flowed down the fanciest corridors like rivers of blood, and tiptoed through the passages with only the chilly stone. His two Zeldas preferred to banish chill and loneliness with the somewhat extravagant use of constant burning fires and invited guests, meaning that every corner of the castle he was familiar with glowed with light and laughter.
Of course, this Hyrule Castle, Warriors’s, sprawled like a cat rather than perching stout and compact on a mountaintop. It had its fair share of defenses, but it was too big to keep warm all the time, even for a kingdom as rich as this one seemed to be.
It felt like an abandoned building more than a lived-in castle, especially this late at night.
Hyrule couldn’t sleep. He’d gotten roughly four or five hours, the amount he’d long ago deemed his usual—more like his absolute minimum these days—but he’d woken up at the distant, rhythmic sound of greaves on stone floors and couldn’t get back to sleep, however hard he’d curled up. He’d even tried hiding under the bed that he, Legend, and Wind were sharing for the night. Not even the comforting, musty smell of old dust and wood could get him back to sleep.
So he stood up, crept between beds, and exited the room with the quietest footsteps he could manage. Warriors had his own room down by the barracks, being a captain and all, but he’d elected to stay in the unused guest room with the rest of them, helping to drag in three more beds so they’d all fit. After weeks of traveling together, nobody really wanted to be alone. Though nobody would actually admit it, either.
Hyrule wandered into a portion of the castle where doors lined wide hallways and a few windows on one side looked out on a training field. That field, like everything else here, seemed far too big. A few of the sconces on the wall flickered with dying light, scattering shadows sideways across the stone. Little frames filled with parchment labeled the doors in neat, regular writing, though Warriors’s time had a different writing system than Hyrule’s, and he couldn’t make out what they said. He’d always found that strange, how the writing changed but the spoken words didn’t.
On one particular stretch of wall, between two curtained windows, a huge, polished wooden frame hung. If Hyrule had to guess, he’d say it looked about two of him tall and maybe three or four of him wide.
Painted on the canvas, the biggest map Hyrule had ever seen sat brightly and boldly even in the dim light. Words and names he couldn’t read curved across rivers drawn in blue lines, over gray and purple mountain ranges, skirted around tiny overhead views of towns scattered through lush green forests.
He could see the castle and the town surrounding it near the center. He followed the road they’d traveled to get here, and tracing backwards with his eyes—he had to step back and crane his neck upward to see—he thought he could pick out the stretch of land where they’d emerged from the portal earlier that day.
Hyrule clasped his hands behind him to avoid touching the aging work of art as he leaned in to see the brushwork. He wondered if that huge flower by that cliff was actually a flower or a stand-in for something else, a fairy fountain, perhaps. Did the land look like this still, after the battles Warriors mentioned, or had that lake become unfit to swim in, had that forest withered away?
Something Hyrule tried to not really mention among the other Links was the fact that he hadn’t really… uh… seen a map… until he’d taken Zelda back to her castle and she’d pulled one out of a desk. Upon his admittance that he’d never used one, she had one copied just for him, and tried to teach him how to use it to determine where he was and how far he had to go.
Honestly? He didn’t pull it out very often. He didn’t know maps very well, but he did know Hyrule. Navigating by looking at the mountains and following the scent of livestock became second-nature, he didn’t need to risk destroying a delicate roll of parchment for something as simple as that.
Hyrule knew decorative maps existed, but this one struck him differently. It was beautiful , and meant to be beautiful.
The details in the map fascinated him so much that he didn’t hear Warriors approach until he spoke.
“This isn’t where I expected to find you, but I can’t say I’m too surprised.”
Hyrule jumped, his heart pattering like a rabbit’s. The knife on his belt slid out halfway before the voice’s timbre registered, and Hyrule flushed as he resheathed the knife.
“Sorry,” he said.
“Don’t be, you didn’t do anything wrong.” Warriors joined him in staring up at the map, letting an audible sigh out of his nose. He hadn’t put on any armor, though he, like Hyrule, still wore a small weapon. He stood in a loose tunic and pants, rumpled from the night. The casual outfit and uncombed hair gave him a calmer air. He rubbed a knuckle against his smile as he gazed up at the painting.
“It’s really pretty,” Hyrule offered after a few moments of silence.
Warriors nodded. “It is. I truly love my kingdom. I’ve done a lot to keep it and its people safe, and I’ll do a lot more.”
“I understand that.”
The clinking noise of the night guards moving around elsewhere echoed faintly through the hall. Moonlight added to the lantern light on the floor.
The forest to the left of the castle in the painting seemed to shift in the low lantern light as Hyrule looked back up at it, flickering between vibrant green and dead, dark brown. It didn’t actually change color, as far as Hyrule could tell, but it kind of looked like it did.
“This part,” Warriors said, reaching up to point at that particular forest, “was mostly burned down when we fought there a few years ago. But Zelda says that they’ve been focused on regrowing it. Ashes are good for plants, from what I’ve heard.” His voice sounded a little strained, a little wistful.
“I wondered about that,” Hyrule admitted. “I’m glad it’s growing back, I hope that mine can too, someday.”
“Your forest?” Warriors stepped back again and looked over.
“My whole Hyrule. Forests, mountains, plains, all of it.”
“What’s it like? I haven’t heard much about it from you, and… we haven’t been there yet.” Warriors began to scowl.
Hyrule shifted his weight a little away from him. “Uh… something wrong?”
“We… haven’t been there yet. That’s weird.” Warriors held his hands out and began counting on his fingers. “Obviously, we’re here. We just came from Wind’s home. We spent a lot of time in Wild’s. Time has the ranch. Four had that mountain. We went through Legend’s woods and desert. Skyloft, and that surface forest of his. Twilight’s village.”
He had eight fingers raised. “There are nine of us. Your Hyrule is the only one we haven’t visited. That doesn’t strike you as strange?”
So that’s why he scowled. Hyrule relaxed, though he picked at the bottom of his own tunic. He shrugged. “If it’s Hylia in charge of the portals, maybe she doesn’t want us to die, and if it’s an enemy, maybe they don’t want us to die yet.”
“You’re so sure that taking a portal there is certain death?” Warriors’s eyebrows rose. “But you live there, and you know we’re all capable, especially as a group. What is it like?” he asked again.
Hyrule chewed on his cheek and traced the snaking of a long river in the map with his eyes—from the sea to the shining castle, through a small lake, into a patch of villages. He thought. Warriors didn’t press.
“It’s not just monsters,” Hyrule told him after a minute. “Believe me, I know you can handle them. Even if I try to, you know, avoid having to fight them. But what I’m worried about for you guys is the… other stuff.”
“What other stuff? What’s dangerous besides monsters?”
Did he really not know? Hyrule glanced at him askance, and received an amused smile in return.
“You can’t just drink out of the rivers,” Hyrule said, gesturing. It was obvious to him, and it felt very strange to have to tell someone that the water was dangerous to be in and to consume. But of course, everyone else came from clean worlds. “It’s not safe. Only a few pools in caves are even fit to boil. You have to put alcohol in most water to counteract all the gross stuff.”
“You drank alcohol your whole life?” Warriors looked confused. Well, at least he wasn’t horrified and repulsed.
“I still do. It’s cleaner than water. Look, it’s not just that. The air isn’t clean, either, and Sky has a hard enough time breathing below the clouds in a place like this; I’m worried about that.”
Warriors winced. “How does air get dirty?”
“I don’t know, apocalypse?” Hyrule swept his arm out at the gorgeous, pristine map. “We don’t have forests, Wars, we have mazes of dead wood, with mushrooms if you’re lucky. I didn’t know what farms were before this. People can’t afford to be as friendly as they are here. I’m sure you’ve noticed the way my monsters target me on purpose, that’s not actually your imagination. It’s dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing.”
It evidently took Warriors a moment to process that. He blinked down at Hyrule with a blank expression on his face. “You don’t have forests?”
Hyrule shrugged. “We did. And we will again. They’re just… mostly dead right now.”
“And the rivers?”
“Poisonous and full of monsters, usually.”
“Oh.” Warriors ran a hand through his hair. “I can see why you’d be worried, then. Well. I’ll… ah, keep all that in mind, I think we’re due for a stop in your world soon.” He shook his head as if to clear it. “That’s not what I came to talk about, though.”
At his words, Hyrule remembered that they currently stood in a quiet part of the castle in the middle of the night. He winced. “Sorry if I woke you up.”
“It’s all right, I was already awake. Did you really climb under the bed to try and get to sleep?”
“Uh… yes.”
A single laugh burst from Warriors’s lungs. “I wouldn’t have thought of trying that . Anyway. Now that we’re back in my Hyrule, and I can vet the quality of merchants, there’s somewhere I’d like to take you.”
Hyrule gave him a very strange look. “Me? Where?”
“It’s… a surprise. Hopefully a good one, I’ve been thinking about this for a while now.”
“Wars, I don’t need fancy things.”
“I know,” Warriors said, laughing again. “Believe me, I know. Tell you what—let me buy you just this one thing, and we’ll stop by Floretta’s Bakery on the way back, and spend a lot of money on sweets that Wild can cram into his slate for now and for later. Sound good?”
Yeah, it did. Hyrule was sold. “I don’t know…”
“They make a cake infused with real fairy dust, ‘Rule.”
“All right, fine, fine,” Hyrule smiled. “I’ll go and sit through whatever it is, okay?”
Warriors slapped his shoulder. “Thank you. I might go back to sleep, I think I got my energy out—you?”
“Mm… maybe. I can try.”
“If not, you can definitely wander, but stay inside the castle and don’t go to the higher floors. The guards up there are tetchy.”
“Thanks, that’s good to know.”
The two of them turned, and Warriors led the way back to their shared room. Hyrule, of course, had no idea what route he’d taken to the huge map, so he didn’t know how to get back.
Warriors hadn’t worn shoes or slippers to follow him, so they both stuck to the carpets rather than the icy stone, sharing amused and somewhat embarrassed smiles in the moonlight that filtered in through the colorful windows.
“After breakfast?” Warriors whispered just before he opened the door.
Hyrule nodded his agreement and slipped inside, finding a place for himself at the edge of the bed nearest the window, the one he’d abandoned before. He gently moved Wind’s leg to the side to make a little more room for him to curl up at the end of the bed.
And somehow, staring up at the setting moon, Hyrule fell asleep.