Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Link does not remember his parents. His mother had died giving birth, and his father had died fighting back the evils of the land before he was old enough to properly remember him. His only real family is his grandfather, the royal blacksmith, and his only real friend is the princess.

“Father says our lands are shrinking,” Zelda says to him one afternoon, voice barely above a whisper. “That all the mountains are being overrun with monsters, Talus, Crenel, Tabantha, Veil, Death… even the forests south of your grandpa’s house are getting too dangerous to head into.”

It pulls at Link’s heartstrings. Zelda likes to be free, he likes to be free. Likes to go out and explore even the small bit of land around his grandfather’s forge. If the kingdom is being closed in on like this… What’s going to happen?

----

The Picori—strange but friendly creatures said to be from another world, another time even—only to be seen by children, are a fairy tale.

Until they’re not.

Two show up on his grandfather’s door, one in green robes with a long white beard and a staff, and a small one in purple with ashen skin, pale hair, and brilliant entirely red eyes. They have what looks like feathers for tails, and pointed faces like mice, tiny hands that look like paws covered in soft and fine fuzz.

“I am Ezlo,” the old one says in a gruff voice that sounds like cawing, “and this is my apprentice Vaati, may we come in?”

Link lets them in, calling for his grandfather.

----

The Light Force burns in his veins, an energy beyond his understanding. But he needs it, he was told. The strange Picori man, the mage, the crafter, Ezlo… he had said that if Hyrule falls then light itself would fall. So he made an artifact purely out of light, of good energy from good people and their bountiful wishes to be wielded by only the purest of hearts, to drive out the darkness in the land.

But it was hard, burning and hot inside him. Nor was it the only gift.

“We are gentle, my people, we love to help,” Ezlo had said, “I could not stand idly by, but… I am old, and Vaati is young, and none of my fellows knew enough. They could not help like I can… but I still can’t do enough.”

The forest is deep and dark and green around him and Link wants to hide. The boomerang in his hand is useful, but not good enough. And he’s not yet strong enough to hold the sword for long.

“Like a bell, it will chime out purity and goodness, but not without blessing to temper it. Forged in light is this blade, but it needs power. It needs the blessings of fairies in order to heal your land.”

Link wishes he had a friend to help him, but he has to do this alone.

“They will honour bravery, I am told. Courage. Drive away any intruders and surely they will bless you if you ask.”

Link throws the boomerang and watches it catch on the big manhandla’s neck, severing one of its heads and he nearly pukes in relief as it finally withers and dies.

“It must be a child, only a child can be the hero. Only a child will have the heart and the courage and the purity to see this task through. Only a child will be able to forge a sword pure enough to save you. Only a child has a heart pure enough to cleanse your land.”

Link cries as the Dragonfly Fairy pushes the blessing of her sea of trees into the blade and into him. The brilliant green energy soothing against the burning brightness in his belly. It feels like millions of tiny thoughts suddenly whispering in unison.

Good job, small one. The trees praise him.

The sword glimmers slightly with a strange light as he holds it aloft with newfound strength, cleaving through magicians and wraiths and skeletons, too terrified to think about if they were once people, if they had feelings or thoughts. He barely had them himself anymore, just panic as he flings himself through the caves, bow after bow breaking in his hands.

The ice covering the cave walls of the Talus Caverns is too cold, his body shivering constantly. Darkness lurks behind every corner, in bottomless pits that span underneath treacherous pathways of slippery ice. Link is afraid of falling, of freezing, of losing his way. Everything in this place scares him to death. But he can’t stop. Not now.

He pukes when he sees the Dera Zol, the plated monstrosity of slime and gel that looks like a fat slug with weeds for a mouth.

He cries from his frozen toes that not even pegasus boots are warm enough to protect him from.

When all the slime is finally peeled away and the creature slain Link curls into a ball and whimpers in the cold. He wants to go back home. He doesn’t want to be alone anymore.

You’re never alone. A voice whispers.

The Mayfly Fairy is gentle as she pushes the essence of her cold mountain caves into his body, soothing his wounds with touches he wishes didn’t feel so warm.

“You’re so close, tiny hero,” she encourages, “just one more fairy, isn’t that right? One more place to free from darkness on your own and then all of Hyrule will be clean, won’t that be so nice?”

The coldness in his belly is freezing, winter without cocoa. He misses his grandfather’s forge, sitting with Zelda in the summer, fresh pie from the bakery in town. Warmth.

“Come with me?” he pleads.

She disappears, leaving him only with a million whispers and cold howls.

Death Mountain is blisteringly hot, and he is strangely glad for the coldness inside him to counter it. Still, he sweats so much, had to put his headband back on just to keep his vision clear as animate fire chases him through the caverns.

It’ll be over soon, just a little bit longer, right? Just a little bit, yeah?

The lava is dangerous, but at least he can see it, unlike the dark empty chasms of Talus. At least here he can remove clothing to rid himself of his sweat.

Gouen, prince of flames makes him think of pain. His flaming moustache is similar to one he’d seen on a crooked man once and the comparison seems apt to him, even as the memory makes him want to cry. The man had long bony fingers that tried to grab at him and only quick reflexes had kept him away.

Gouen is more flexible than that. His fire is strong, but Link has magnet gloves that can send the flaming iron-rich boulders back at the monster.

He passes out after the demon is extinguished, too tired and overheated to keep going.

He wakes to heat flooding his veins again, fire reigniting the blistering light inside him and making the blade shine even through its scabbard.

“I’m so proud of your courage,” the Butterfly Fairy says to him, giving him a warming hug, and for that he weeps.

Another presence joins the two already in his belly and he wants to be rid of them, even as they provide him company. They’re empty companionship, hardly speaking or comforting. He doesn’t want them anymore.

Link kicks open the chest at his feet and raises the Picori Blade high, the light within it, and within him, shines bright and he feels like he is everywhere at once. Every tiny shadow, every little darkness, even the smallest of monsters that threaten the land is dealt with. Captured. Pulled to him.

The chest seals with a click as Link slides the sword into it, so ready to be done with it. The blessings of the fairies will keep the monsters in check, counter them until they have been purified into nothing but dust… but not for hundreds of years.

Zelda is only too happy to take the Light Force from him. It probably doesn't help that he cries when he asks her.

Chapter Text

The Picori Festival is a happy time. Zelda wins him a cute little shield to “replace the one he lost” and also “because it suits him”. He hopes it will have happier memories tied to it.

Vaati shows up and Link is confused. He looks hylian, and older. Wearing a floppy purple hat with a gem on the brim that he didn’t have before. Where was Ezlo?

“Hello again, Link,” he greets, gently caressing the boy’s cheek with a cold hand.

Link pulls back with a shiver, feeling like the other did much more than just touch him, and Vaati frowns. “Hm.”

Vaati demands to touch the Picori Blade as his prize for winning the festival’s sword tournament and the king reluctantly agrees.

The Picori Blade snaps. Evil gets released. Zelda dares to ask what Vaati is doing and gets turned to stone.

Link heaves on the ground.

“Where did you hide it!?” Vaati screams at him.

Link just shivers on the grass, shaking his head. Nonononononononono.

“Oh, did I break you?” Vaati asks, sounding amused.

Link sobs into the dirt.

“Ah, too bad, guess I’ll have to find where you hid it myself.”

Vaati disappears, leaving Link alone with Zelda’s statue. He can feel the burn of the light force if he touches her, glad that Vaati didn’t find it, but… she’s still stone.

The king demands he help Zelda, protect the kingdom again. Turn back the tragedy. The Picori are known to dwell in the Minish Woods. Surely he will find the one who had first brought the sword there?

Link stands tall and runs to the woods, fury at Vaati fueling his legs.

He doesn’t expect to find Ezlo in the woods, especially not in the form of a bird-themed hat.

“Link, help! Do something!” Ezlo pleads—demands really—with pain in his voice.

The nearby Octorok hits him again.

Link slays it with his grandfather’s sword and watches the creature turn to smoke.

“Vaati broke the Picori Blade,” he says quietly afterwards. “I think he was after the Light Force, asked me where I’d hidden it. And he cursed the princess into a statue.”

“He’s getting very good at the cursing thing if you ask me,” Ezlo grumps.

“I need to, th-the sword,” Link says lamely.

“Ah…” Ezlo says, words apparently failing him.

“Help me?” Link begs.

Ezlo looks him up and down, the green fabric of his body bending with the magic of Vaati’s curse on him.

“Surely you can tell I don’t have legs let alone arms,” Ezlo says snarkily. “How can I possibly help you?”

“You can give me advice?” Link tries.

“Boy, I am a hat!” Ezlo shouts.

Link raises an angry eyebrow at him and snatches him up off the ground, placing the old Picori on his head.

“Please don’t leave me alone.”

Ezlo hits him lightly with his beak. “You troublesome boy, can’t handle being alone, can you?”

Link stays silent.

Ezlo sighs. “Ah, you hopeless child. I guess it’s more comfortable up here than I first thought. Fine, I’ll stay. Help you out if you ever need the knowledge of an elder, hm?”

Link smiles, even though Ezlo can’t see it.

“And, the world of the minish is quite small, I can help you with that.”

Link makes a thoughtful noise, wordlessly asking how as he continues through the woods.

“Oh, yes, my apologies, I must explain!” Ezlo says. “You people call them Picori, don’t you?”
Link nods, glad that Ezlo’s brim is thick enough to keep him in place.

“Well, they aren’t from this world, as I believe I told you when we met before, but here they are normally quite small! Smaller than a thumb even! You’re much too big to meet them as you are, but I can fix that! Get you access to the village they’ve made here in these woods.”

Link hums. That’s actually kinda cool.

“There are a few places in this world where the minish world and your world cross over and we used to place magical structures there where humans could shrink down, but it’s been hundreds of years since anyone has used them, so none of your people know the spell anymore… but thankfully I do.”

Oh, this was going to get interesting.

Link steps foot into the minish village and several of its citizens rush to crowd around him, their high voices squeaking out words he doesn’t understand.

“Ezlo?” he asks as they rush away, their curiosity seemingly sated.

“Ah, they’re speaking the minish tongue,” the minish on his head says, “the hylian dialect is one I understand, but it’s a little clunky. It’s been a while since I’ve talked with the forest minish.”

“Do… do you know what they said?” Link asks.

Ezlo chuckles. “Dear lad, they were just happy to see a human! It’s been many ages since a human has come to visit them, I’m sure.”

Link thinks for a moment. “Would you… be willing to talk to them for me?”

Ezlo laughs but it doesn’t sound amused. “Boy, I am old and this dialect is strange, they’d have difficulty understanding me beyond simple setences. It would be much better to try and find someone else who also speaks your language. I’m sure someone has kept up with the way your people talk.”

Link sighs. So much for an easy solution.

The jabber nut tastes the way Link imagines a book might, rough over his tongue, but it slides down his throat anyway, settling in his belly.

“The fruit is magic,” Ezlo tells him, “but not inherent. It knows our language because the minish spoke to it. And now they will speak to you.”

Link opens his mouth and words in minish flow out naturally, followed by a surprised exclamation in hylian.

So cool!

The four pale magics in his belly swirl together, almost pleased, even as Link feels nauseated from the motion.

“That Festari guy said we should talk to the elder, right?” Link asked.

Ezlo squawks and baps him with his beak. “The only one here to speak your language and you didn’t listen? You silly boy!”

“I was just checking, gosh!”

Ezlo sighs. “Yes, yes, Festari said talk to the elder.”

The minish elder’s bushy eyebrows raise and his needle staff slips a little in his grip.

“The Picori Blade you say?”

Link feels Ezlo shift atop his head as if looking away. “Hyrule needed help.”

Gentari waves his free hand. “Oh, yes, yes, of course, I just didn’t realize…”

“I’m not a sword maker!” Ezlo huffs.

Link doesn’t get it.

“Ezlo?” he asks softly.

The hat sighs. “I didn’t make the sword I gave you, Link. It was already magic and special I just made it… more special.”

“Indeed,” Gentari agrees, “young Ezlo here took one of minish-kind’s greatest artifacts and just gave it to you.” he chuckles gently in amusement. “I hope you got some good out of it!”

Link makes another noise of confusion. Is Gentari mad or not?

Ezlo sighs again. “The minish derive energy from helping. Lost rupees placed where people can more easily find them, crafting kinstones, any sort of tiny little task. Usually it’s done in secret, we get more joy and energy that way, but…”

Sometimes it can’t be avoided , Link thinks. Like when an entire nation faces destruction from monsters.

“You’ll have to find the elements,” Gentari says, switching topics, “if you want to reforge the sword. And I’m sure Melari will be quite happy to see his old masterpiece once again.”

The Elder holds out a hand. “Here, give me your map, I can mark where I know the elements to be. There’s one in the shrine just north of here, so go there first, lad, but make your way to Mount Crenel after. Melari, the minish mastersmith lives there and will fix the blade.”

Link nearly shoves his map into Gentari’s hands, glad to at least have a semblance of a plan now.

Being the size of a thumbnail is so peculiar. The deepwood shrine is so small, can’t be bigger than a bed to a normal hylian and yet Link is inside it, tiny sticky cobwebs tougher than metal bars blocking him access to two stairwells just in the first chamber.

The next room is dim and filled with slugs about as big as him, crawling and slithering across the ground, coating it gross slime.

Links hits them until they stop, until their sluggy bodies are messy stains on the stonework. It’s far too easy.

A room with a springy-stretchy mushroom he creatively uses as a catapult for his own body flings him across a watery gap to thud against the far wall hard, but at least he avoided the water if not the pain.

A barrel with three holes in its sides hangs suspended in the middle of the shrine, plantlife keeping it from rotating or sliding, but a few careful sword swings knocks it down into smooth gaps in the stonework, making it rotate freely as he walks inside it. Like a mooving floor.

Link giggles as he stares at the one holes in the barrel covered with cobweb, feeling so dizzy from the slipping and sliding of the wood beneath his feet.

The next few rooms he navigates through are filled only with piles of dust and puffy walking toadstools… or with bugs. Icky bugs that at his current size come up to his waist. They scitter and slither and crawl, their little buggy mouths making him think of the Dera Zol despite the differences. They’re just so… otherly. At least they’re easy to defeat, compared to some of the things he’d had to fight for the blessings of the great faeries.

The big and plump madderpillar is almost a refreshing sight compared to the other bugs and things in the shrine, its tiny mouth hidden away under a giant “nose”. Its body seems impervious to his sword strikes until one lands on the “nose”, all colour draining from its blue body until its candle-like tail plumps up bright and red and heart-shaped.

Well, that certainly seems like a weakspot .

It’s easy after that to slay the creature, even as it turns red and runs around wildly. The chest it was guarding pops out of the floor with a magical sparkle and from it Link pulls… a jar?

“Ezlo?” Link asks.

The hat chortles. “Oh, never seen one of these before have you? I’m not surprised! It’s of minish origin after all. A gust jar! If you squeeze tight on the handles it’ll suck up air and all sorts of other things. I don’t really know where it goes, but… eh! Once you’re done it’ll puff out some extra air, some sort of magical backlash from the sucking, I’m not sure. I didn’t design the thing, probably could have done better.”

Link peers down at the magical object, quietly amused at Ezlo’s huffiness. Sucks things up, huh? Like the webbing all along the walls?

Link smiles.

Sailing on a lilypad using what’s essentially a bag of air to steer is an experience, but at least it keeps him out of the water. It’s cold and deep and his clothes hold him down with their wet weight if he falls in. He knows well. Only quick reflexes have drifted him back to the edges of the floating leaf and not into the depths.

He wishes he could suck up the water, boil it away with his eyes, but there’s too much. He’d never learned how to swim and now he’s angry at himself for the failure.

Angry-upset tears well in his eyes and he turns away. He has a mission, he can’t get distracted right now.

A green chuchu drops down from the ceiling and Link wants to scream in frustration. How is he supposed to kill that? It’s huge!

It’s better that he’s angry rather than scared right now. If he was scared he’d be dead, and there was nothing worse than a dead hero.

“Try the jar!” Ezlo suggests.

Link wants to shout, tell the stupid hat he already thought of that, was just going to try that, but he refrains. Ezlo is trying to help, he’s helping!

Link’s head hurts from the sound of the Chuchu’s head hitting the ground, but still he slices at the creature with his sword, carving away at its slimy body, ripping gel exterior from soupy interior, watching the liquidy insides spill across the floor with manic glee until the creature forces itself back up, the holes in its face squeezing shut.

Link screams in fury.

Link carves at it again and again until the chuchu bursts open, insides spilling down the gaps in the stonework to disappear and a purple glow fills the room. Floating down as if from nowhere drops a small purple crystal that looks like three raindrops. The earth element, if he remembers right. It doesn’t look like earth. Maybe if it was green it would look like trees, but maybe it’s supposed to be mountains?

Link sighs and gently scoops the gemstone into his bag, wrapping it in some spare cloth so it doesn’t get damaged. It’s magic so it probably wouldn’t, but it feels better to keep everything in his bag organized, in its proper places.

He heads back to see Gentari, to tell the elder of his success.

Chapter Text

His granduncle Boaz runs a small sword-fighting dojo in the castle town. He teaches anyone who comes by the “way of the blade brothers”. Although Link has learned from the man on and off since he was four or so, he tended to avoid the place—all of castle town really—after he returned from his first adventure.

The fact that the guards patrolling the far perimeter of the town won’t let him go out to the eastern passage of the trilby highlands in order to head to Mt. Crenel unless he has written proof from the local swordmaster that he can “defend himself” feels like a bit of an insult, given what he’s done for the people of Hyrule.

The door to “The Swiftblade School of the Sword” is open, as it usually is during the day, but Link gives himself a few minutes of staring into it before he walks inside.

“Granduncle?” He calls softly, and he feels Ezlo perk up from on top of his head.

There’s the sound of some rummaging, then quiet footfalls from behind a rice-paper wall.

“Link? Is that you, child?” Granduncle Boaz asks as he enters into view. “With all the monsters and guards around I thought you’d be at home with your grandpa Smith.”

Link swallows and feels his face flush. “I… I need some lessons, granduncle.”

Boaz’s face turns several shades of surprised. “Whatever for? I thought you had given up the blade after that ordeal with those Great Fairies. Being in class afterwards… well, I was worried that just being here was going to make you sick.”

Boaz is not wrong, being here is… it makes Link feel uneasy. Swords and monsters aren’t fun, but… He has a job, and he’s going to do it.

Link swallows down his nerves. “I… I have another quest granduncle, but the guards won’t let me go to Mount Crenel unless I have proof from you that I can ‘defend myself’.”

His granduncle’s face is hard to read now, full of many emotions that Link can’t identify. Anger, maybe? Grief? He really can’t tell.

Boaz kneels down and places a hand on his shoulder. “Link… Grandnephew… are you sure?”

Link blinks at him. “I… I have a job to do, sir. I have to save Zelda, she… I have to.”

Boaz sighs, but smiles and stands back up. “I believe you. Come, follow, I will train you in the Albertson’s signature spin attack and then I guarantee that no one will ever be able to question your skill ever again!”

The Swiftblade Possession Maneouver is a marvel of sensation. Feeling his limbs move as they are guided by a master of the blade so he can know the technique before he himself can master it is… There’s no way to describe how much it speeds up the learning process.

When finally he is able to replicate his Granduncle’s movements without tripping over his feet or accidentally throwing his grandfather’s sword across the room, Boaz smiles at him and bows.

“Fine work, young one. Quite the quick student you are,” he says with a wry chuckle.

He then holds out a scroll stamped with the green ink of the Albertson tiger emblem.

“I now give you this tiger scroll, as proof of your learning and skill.”

Link smiles brightly and bows as he accepts it.

“Be swift of blade and strong of will, young one.”

“Thank you, granduncle.”

Mt. Crenel is rocky but strange, the soil good for beans of all possible plants to grow mighty and tall. Strong enough to be climbing up along the walls. Maybe the mountain wouldn’t have such a fearsome reputation if someone carved slopes into it.

Except there’s whirlwinds, which totally debunks that theory. Ezlo’s fabric stretches wide between his hands, full of air slowly leaking out as Link floats from one ledge to another. It’s terrifying. It’s exhilarating. It’s wonderful. It’s just another thing he has to get used to.

Link upends the bottle he’d bought from a business scrub hours ago and watches the mineral water he’d scooped from a minish-sized spring slide around the green crenel bean. In only a few seconds it grows crazily fast, blazing up the wall and rooting itself into the rock, clinging onto small divots and handholds with tiny leaves. A perfectly grown climbing rope to the peak.

Link feels his fingers ache in sympathy for his future self. It’s easier than climbing a bare rock face, but couldn’t someone have built some stairs? That would have been the smart thing to do.

Another business scrub sells him a “grip ring” and just putting it on makes his fingers feel soothed, as if he’d been a mountain climber for years instead of hours. It’s slow and dangerous, climing up the crumbling rock walls of crenel, but it brings him to the western peak, where he flings himself with a springy red mushroom to the rainy eastern peak. A forced walk in minish form makes his body freeze from more than just the cold, because the raindrops are wet and sticky and falling like stones from the sky, shaking the ground beneath him at this small scale.He wants to hide but there’s nowhere to do that, just sharp rocks that stick up like mountains at this size no matter where he looks.

Link is relieved that he can return to his normal size quickly though, and ducks down a ladder to the inside of the peak to relative safety after pushing around some rocks into holes. The caverns there are filled with pushblocks and red chuchus and spiky grey chuchus and even a new mechanical switch that only activates when hit. There’s a gap in the floor between him and it though, so he has to throw one of the bombs he got from a kind minish just outside of the forest village in order to activate it and extend the tiny bridge to let him cross, but that’s still so much easier than dodging raindrops bigger than he was.

And then it’s over so quickly, Link shrinking once more and he’s inside the mining settlement of Melari. The wide but strong minish with blonde hair happy to help.

“It’s been so long, lad, since I’ve gotten to forge something magical. Just you see, once you’re done with that human mine and have the fire element in yours hands your Picori Blade will be better than fixed! I didn’t have so many helpers when I made it the first time!” he gives a great laugh and Link gently lays down the sword on the forging surface like his grandfather had taught him to. The small bit of smithing knowledge in his head is better than nothing, but he still has no idea how Melari is going to fix a magical blade in only a few hours. His grandfather was good, but even he took a day or two to make a sword.

The first thing Link sees when entering the Cave of Flames is bob-ombs and he’s thrown head-first back into memories of Death Mountain. Holding himself to walls over lava with magnet gloves, crawling through tiny holes only to be squeezed by rupee-likes, dodging steam jets with pegasus boots that needed constant repair due to falling apart after only a few dashes.

When Link wakes up he’s sitting against a wall, face wet with tears he doesn’t remember crying. The bob-ombs around him are dead or exploded and the path to the next chamber is open, but his legs feel stiff as if he’s been in the same position for several minutes.

“Ezlo, what happened?” Link asks quietly.

“Lad, I have never more in my life wished I could have my arms back, because you need a solid hug,” Ezlo says, ignoring the question.

“I… cried?” Link tries.

“We should keep going.”

Keeping going means more dungeon, more enemies, more bob-ombs .

Link gets up and goes. Ezlo would just get more and more huffy, he was sure.

He encounters two spike-tops in the next room and deflects their strikes with his shield, flipping them onto their backs and stabbing them int he belly to defeat them. The room after that is large, having a set of stairs to a higher level and … tracks? Minecart tracks, this place was said by the minish to be a human mine, but the tracks go through doors that currently sit closed.

He leaps into the first minecart he can, just because, and it shoots off like an arrow, Ezlo nearly flying off of his head from the drag of the air.

“From now on, dear boy,” Ezlo says woozily, “let’s stick to using our… er, your feet. Because sweet jumping jellyfish was the ride in that rickety human contraption awful.”

Link smiles despite agreeing. Ezlo just… had a way with words.

“And just what are you smiling about, Link?” Ezlo asks.

Linkcovers his mouth to giggle. “You just talk funny.”

Ezlo sighs. “I’m old, child.”

Link politely disagrees and takes the few steps into the next room.

Helmasaurs are easy to defeat once link uses the gust jar to pull their iron masks off, and when the room is finally empty of them a stone slap decorated with small brass archways on its sides appears in the centre.

“Oh, I didn’t think they’d have minish devices here!” Ezlo says, “But with Melari nearby perhaps I should have.”
Link’s only thought is that the mine must be very old, for minish devices to be there. Just how long ago had the minish put into action their plan to protect the elements?

The next few rooms are lava and sinking rock platforms and rollobites and whirlwinds. Link pulls his headband back on, to keep his sweat out of Ezlo’s fabric as they dance around and above the lava. He tries not to think about how close he is to imminent death.

A small key lets him ride the first minecart back and open a door to flip a switch, changing its intended path, giving him access to more mine, more dungeon… more lava.

And an upturned minecart that’s too heavy for him to even attempt to move.

Eight spiky grey chuchus drop down around him and Link drops into a spin slash on instinct, even as rage at the ambush fills his mind. That isn’t fair, none of this is fair! Why did he have to be the one who said yes to Ezlo’s plea, why couldn’t someone else be fixing the Picori Blade, why did he have to be the hero? There’s no demon of hatred here, no goddess calling him to the fore!

The chuchus die and a chest appears, inside it a brass cane with “Pacci” inscribed on it.

“Ezlo?” Link asks.

“It’s magic, but I don’t recognize it,” the hat says. “ I suppose you just point it at something and cast?”

In the next room there are two pots next to a lava pond with one flat and one spiky rock platform floating in the molten heat. Link points the cane at one of the jars and watches it flip over, breaking in the process.

Oh, that… that’s silly, but super useful.

Link points it at the spiky rock platform, sees it flip over to a flat-top and smiles.

He skips over the rocky slabs to the safe ground on the other side of the lava lake. There’s a locked door over there and a small hole in the ground next to a wall for a higher ledge.

“I… I don’t have any small keys,” Link whispers. “I don’t know what to do next.”

“Kid, you have a new magic item and a hole in the ground. You never know what could happen! Try it!”

Flipping up onto the ledge is nauseating, but it works. There’s a button up here that when pressed opens a blue teleport pad back to the start of the dungeon. And also opens a door back to the room with the turned-over minecart.

“Oh thank goodness.”

Another turned over minecart greets him on the lower level and Link wants to punch it, even though he knows it’ll hurt. He has the cane now, but would it have really hurt the miners of this place to have left their stuff in working order? To have kept it all in the right places?

Hanging from Ezlo, steering through the air and hovering over lava is absolutely terrifying. There’s so much lava, too much lava, he can’t see anything but lava. It fills his head, his thoughts. He carefully times how long he can stay aloft, just so he never runs out of time between whirlwinds, but the clench of fear in his heart doesn’t stop until the lava is safely behind him and the only thing in front of him is a hole in the ground leading to the deepest part of the mine, a small pool of lava in the middle of the chamber.

“Guardian of the element is there, I take it?” Link asks.

“You would know better than me, lad,” Ezlo says.

Link throws himself down the pit and lands on the safe ground just to the side of the lava lake.

A creature rises from the lake, white and blue, looking like a skeleton even though it’s covered in flesh and scales. Four spikes protrude from it’s face, two red from behind its eyes and two white out of its cheeks. On its back is a spiky rock shell that looks like the undersides of the rocky platforms he’d been riding on for this entire dungeon.

He hates it. Every part of him hates it.

The thing opens its mouth and fire spews out.

Link dodges, desperation fueling his limbs, anger fueling his movements. The solution was easy, just use the cane on the thing’s shell, but he wanted to make the thing hurt . Link raises the cane an-

Link touches the Fire element, unable to remember how he got it. There’s nothing in his head when he tries to recall how he beat the lava dragon. He hoped it was heroic, that he’d been levelheaded and courageous and swift. Like he’d always heard and imagined the goddess’s chosen hero to be.

He doesn’t ask Ezlo. He didn’t really want to know if he’d been otherwise.

Link returns to Melari’s forge and is amazed to see that the minish mastersmith has not only completely changed the shape of the hilt—it’s much more square and simple now—but has also changed its colour to green.

“I’ve renamed it,” Melari declares, “the Elemental White Sword!”

Link picks it up gingerly and feels the magic in the blade is both the same and not. The blessings of the fairies is still present, but it seems worked over. Mixed. Together. Solid and part of the magic of the blade itself now.

“It’s not perfect just yet though,” Melari adds, “there’s a doorway, somewhere in the castle, if I remember right. It leads to the minish realm, and there you will find a sanctuary. You can fill the sword with the energy of the elements there. Good luck!”

Link feels only a little annoyed that he can’t do that just anywhere, that he has to travel to an entire other realm to empower the sword.

Link focusses his magic—doing as the magically appeared tablet instructs—lets it collect and flow through the freshly empowered sword—now red—until he lets it burst.

Link turns to the leftright and sees two very different things. He sees himself, and he sees a shade of himself. He reaches out with his rightleft hand to touch and the illusion shatters, his mind reforming back to a single entity and he pukes from the sensation of pushing back into his own body.

“It splits me,” he whispers into the flooring of the elemental sanctuary. “It splits me into multiple people.”

He feels like his brain is throbbing, like there’s something building, and he blacks out, coming to with a puddle of tears under him.

“I want someone else to be the hero,” he whispers. “It’s my job, my duty, I’m gonna do it, I have to, but…” he trails off.

Ezlo doesn’t reply.

I don’t like having to do it alone.

“Why is there only ever one hero?” he asks.

“You’ve been asking interesting questions here, lad.”

Link doesn’t remember asking any other questions.

“Couldn’t someone else, someone better , have done this instead?” he asks.

“There is no one else, dear boy.”

Link doesn’t believe him. He’s a smart kid, but he’s a kid . Wouldn’t someone even a little bit older, a little bit better with swords, a little bit less likely to cry or rage at the drop of a hat… wouldn’t that kind of hero been better?

“I don’t think the goddess’s chosen hero cried this much,” Link whispers.

He hopes Ezlo didn’t hear him, but he has no way to know because the hat doesn’t reply.

Chapter Text

“Oh, how interesting,” a voice whispers like wind as Link steps out onto the field, “you’re the last person I expected to see here. And just as I was wondering who could be behind this I find you , my old master.”

“E-Ezlo?” Link asks, hating the way his voice wavers.

The old minish doesn’t have time to reply, because Vaati is suddenly appearing before them in a flash of darkness.

“Vaati!” Ezlo shouts.

A smile stretches across Vaati’s face as Link pulls out his sword, ready for action even as his tears continue to dry on his face.

“Ah, look at you, dressed in, heh heh heh, dressed in only the shabbiest of rags as always, dear master,” Vaati laughs as if his insult is funny. Link thinks it’s just cruel, to taunt someone he cursed into being a hat.

Ezlo growls. “Just as vile as the day I found you. Alas, I thought I could change you, but you’re still filled with darkness. I should never have made that cap, all it did was spark the evil fuel into a raging fire within your heart!”

“Oh, poetry, dear master Ezlo?” Vaati asks as if touched. “Such a foolish waste of time, more foolish than your belief that your Minish Cap should not have been made. It is the most spectacular creation! Its ability to grant wishes has changed me from something meek and minuscule, needing you of all people to make my way in the world, to becoming the greatest sorcerer alive! Perhaps I should thank you for making it, hm?”

Vaati turns around and looks over his shoulder. “Have a little gesture of gratitude from me,” he says, before moving forward across the ground at a sickening pace without even lifting his feet.

Link runs forward, intent to strike him, shake him, ask him what he’s talking about, what hat he was talking about.

A small rocky arena rises out of the ground and two moblins pop into existence, raising their spears to point them at Link as he stands between them.

Link takes one breath, just one. He’s a hero, he knows he is. He’s saved Hyrule before and he’s doing it again, he can handle two moblins even if he ends up sobbing into the dirt afterwards.

He raises his sword, feels his skin heat with anger, and then comes to moments later, the moblins gone and no memory of their defeat.

“I owe you an apology, dear boy,” Ezlo says, “as I’m afraid that all of this is my fault.”

What. No. Ezlo has been helping , even if he is a grouchy old man that currently looked like a hat.

“You know I’m a craftsman, that I improved the Picori Blade, that I fashioned the Light Force to be a well of near limitless magical power…” Ezlo sighs. “I made a magical hat that grants its wearers wishes, my masterpiece, my final gift for the humans, and Vaati was enchanted by its possibilities. He wanted to get back at the humans, wanted to help himself rather than them. He’d always been a selfish boy, so unusual for a minish. So he took the hat, intent on taking the Light Force with it so he could become unstoppable.”

“You tried to help him?” Link asks. Remembers.

Ezlo sighs. “I thought by keeping him near me I could stop the darkness in his heart, but my greatest folly was not keeping a close enough eye on him, I suppose.”

Link frowns. “You didn’t know, though, d-did you? That he’d take the hat? That he’d be that… vile inside?”

Ezlo is quiet for a bit. “No, I had not guessed the depth of his selfishness.”

Link clenches his fist around the grip of his sword. “Then it’s not your fault. It can’t be.”

Ezlo hums thoughtfully, quiet for a moment. “Ah, Link…” a tiny sigh, something between happy and tired, “Thank you. Your words… your words are helpful.”

Link smiles, just a small one. He may be a mess, but he was still helping people. He was still a hero, he would be, no matter what. He promised himself that.

Link looks at the rock blocking the passage west, where maybe there’s another way out, to the south, to the rest of the trilby highlands and the western woods beyond them. He’s not strong enough to push it… on his own.

He takes a deep breath and holds out his sword, lets it gather energy, focus… and then releases. He feels his mind stretch, expand, two bodies occupying two spaces, two sets of eyes feeding him two slightly different images, two sets of feet standing on different bits of ground.

Link begins to pant, his brain feeling hot and stuffy, too much going on. He focuses on his hands, on his feet. Just… walk forward.

One step, two, four… he reaches out with his hands and pushes, ignoring the way the rock grates against each of his four palms differently. If he lets himself feel he’ll be overwhelmed, so he doesn’t he just goes, ignores, blocks it out. Walks until the rock moves no more. Until his lungs heave and his shade dissipates into mist with a snap as he falls to his knees, his skull rattling his brain around inside it like a baby’s toy as he feels less and yet more.

He doesn’t have time to do anything other than go forward though. Vaati could be anywhere, knows he’s working to stop him, has Ezlo helping him.

He has no time to be Link, he must just be a hero. Must strive to be like the chosen hero. Calm, competent, in charge, and good .

Crying, anger, any feelings at all must come later or else he risks failure. Risks losing time that Vaati could use against him.

Link gets up off the ground. He has a job to do and he’s going to do it properly. Smartly. Good.

The castor wilds are a swampy barrier between him and where Gentari had said the wind element was kept. He’s too heavy, too slow, to walk through the mud without sinking up to his neck, to his nose.

Which is why he’s here at the castle town’s shoe shop, staring in exasperation at the shoemaker—Rem—and his sleeping form.

He wants to be angry. He has a quest, has needs, things he must do to save the kingdom. And this man he has need of is asleep. But he refuses to feel that anger, refuses to be a hothead, to scream and yell and curse at the sleeping man for having a body, a mind, a vessel that needed rest.

The minish on Rem’s desk tell him that although they help the man make his shoes when he sleeps, they’re not experts. Only Rem can put the finishing touches on any shoes he creates. Especially if they’re pegasus boots. But they also say that there’s a witch in the minish woods who will sell Link a special mushroom that will wake up the shoe maker near instantly. He just has to get it himself. That perhaps the man won’t be as likely to fall asleep on the job if he has that mushroom around to help him.

So Link heads east, to Lon Lon Ranch, to Lake Hylia beyond it and the only place with a traversible path to the north half of the minish woods that isn’t currently covered in mudfall.

Malon and Talon thank him profusely when he sneaks into their house in minish form to grab the spare key from inside, tell him he can have access to their house anytime he wants to head to the lake. He feels like that’s a bit much of a reward, he’d barely done anything other than sneak in through a mouse-hole in the walls. Someone will be along in the coming days to clear the imposing terrain preventing access to the lake, so their boon isn’t even permanent, though he guesses that might be the point?

He’s not sure, normal people confuse him. The only people who have always made sense to him have been his grandpa Smith and the Princess.

The witch happily sells him the wake-up mushroom, carefully wrapping it back up in layers of cloth so its scent won’t escape early. And just as happily Link waves the mushroom in front of Rem’s face to watch the man jolt into alertness. Helping, he’s helping.

Rem doesn’t charge Link for the pegasus boots he asks for—much better made than the ones he’d been using before, unlikely to fall apart anytime soon—despite how expensive they mush cost. Perhaps he felt Link had spent enough on the mushroom to wake him up.

Just across the muddy field, in the middle of the swamp, there’s a cave entrance. A very strange cave entrance. It has masonry, bricks, pillars and stairs. It makes Link uneasy. Were people living here? Dangerous people? Why would there be structure here if no people?

At the end of the single hallway is a wide open room, square and plain. With a chest in the middle.

Link can feel the trap in his bones even as he hopefully steps forward.

The chest vanishes when he’s only three steps away, a spot only a little bit further away flashing with dark magic.

A darknut. A knight. An armoured monster with a shield and sword.

Link feels intimidated. This thing would be smart, tactical, probably better than him. It won’t move wildly or ignorantly, like a mindless beast. Intelligence shines from its eyes and Link feels proper fear for the first time in a while. Not anger, not despair, not sadness or grief. Fear.

The thing moves its sword, the blade nearly as big as Link, and swings in an arc as it steps closer.

Link pulls up his shield, the tiny gift strong enough to keep the blade away from his most vulnerable parts, but it’s not perfect. Link has to hide behind it, nearly cowering. He steps back.

The thing steps forward with a thrust, its shield arm moving back as it twists its body to extend its sword arm. The movement sparks something in Link’s mind. He can use that… if he’s fast enough.

Link moves his own shield arm to knock the sword aside. Its heavy, but he’s not trying to stop it, just move it to the right a bit. He steps in close with his left foot and swings the white sword, punching a small hole in his enemy’s armour.

He steps away in shock, only just barely remembering to keep his shield raised, to keep his defence intact. The darknut’s armour was flimsy! Or at least wasn’t hard enough to deflect his very magical blade.

Link pulls back, watching carefully for when the darknut will next strike. It’s better when the thing uses a lunge instead of a swing, more time for Link to act as the thing pulls away, more opening to take advantage of.

The darknut’s red eyes glow sinisterly and its shoulders shake without a sound, as if it were laughing without a voice.

It lunges and Link rolls to the side, catching it in the leg with his own sword swing.

The thing twirls around, eyes so bright they leave trails, and Link pulls back, circling around the room slowly. He needs more opening, but the thing seems to be calculating carefully, it knows that Link knows its weakness.

It swings, but its shield is still raised, so Link thrusts forward his shield to redirect the movement and then in a bold move that he barely thinks about before trying he ducks under the thing’s arm and swings, catching the monster in the shoulder and watches it disintegrate into darkness and ash.

Link pants, even though he barely moved during the fight. His shield feels heavy, his sword even heavier. The chest reappears with a sparkle and Link feels his sweat drip from his fingers onto the floor.

He opens the chest to retrieve a golden kinstone half. A very specially made kinstone. This one won’t bring just any good fortune when matched with its other half, but something specific. It’s probably meant to act as some kind of magical key for some sort of magical lock. It’s probably not the only one hidden in this muddy swamp.

Cycloptic statues block his passage through the swamp. Unless he somehow becomes far more gymnastic or acrobatic there’s no way to avoid them, go around them. They’re too wide, filling up all the space between rocky walls along thin pathways, thorny bushes clinging to everything, wrapped around everything and rooted under the stones.

He’s too short to hit them in the eye with his sword, even with a running jump. Clearly, someone didn’t want anyone to be getting to the air element.

There’s a big patch of mud filled with thorny weeds under the surface. Link has to be swift with his corners, turn sharply and fast as he dodges around the bushes that protrude through the surface as he makes his way to a far off bit of dry land where he can see a stump. A stump that is very likely to be a minish resizing device in disguise.

A tiny lilypad greets a tiny him after he walks through a hollow log and into a reedy patch of water that’s clear of mud and slime. That’s familiar, that’s easy. Link pulls out the gust jar and blows, reaching the far shore quickly where a small small crack in the ground leads to a cavern with a patterned stone floor. A little minish hole… that was now filled with bugs.

They dart around, skittering swiftly, but they’re so easy to defeat that Link barely thinks as he swipes through them.

His reward is a bow. A very fine bow. Thick hearty wood, with metal caps to support the strong sinew bowstring. So very unlike the twig and thread bows he’d had to make for himself before. This would shoot arrows farther and much better.

One eyegore statue on the east of the swamp falls, and the cave beyond it to the north has a second kinstone piece. Another in the far south that blocked access to a whirlwind leads him to another cave and another kinstone piece. It’s so easy then to dash across the mud on his winged boots to the far southwest corner where three great smiling statues stand. In one hand they each hold a golden kinstone piece, the other empty.

Link smiles as he matches the pieces and watches the statues lift in the air, the nearby boulder crumbling when they fall until between him and the wind ruins is nothing but open path.

Chapter Text

Sitting snuggly between ruined walls with a single glowing white eye is a solid metal statue armed with a tower shield and a spear. It looks rusted, but as Link draws near it rises onto its feet, pullings its arms apart. It wanders side to side a bit aimlessly, but the glowing hole in its head never faces away from Link.

Ezlo breathes out in wonder. “Oh, Link, it’s an armos ! A minish creation, a living machine designed to guard. We gave them to the wind people as gifts for their help, the knowledge they gained from the wind and dared to share with our people.”

Link plunges his sword into its belly swiftly three times and the light in its eye fades, the body slumping. The metal weak with age and rust was no match for his fortified magic blade.

“It… it’s in our way,” Link says softly in apology.

The minish on his head sighs. “Yes, yes it is.”

The next armos is unmoving as the other was at first, but this one’s single eye was dark. A pale light swirled around it, pulsing out into the nearby walls.

Link approaches and it does not move. He reaches out and the air around it is solid, he can’t even reach out to touch the walls it sits between.

“It’s shielded, dear boy,” Ezlo comments, “turned off. The magic that normally powers it has been redirected to protecting the area. When it’s active it can move, attack, prevent intruders from climbing over it and its walls, but like this it just sits. You’ll have to climb inside it, flip a switch that only a minish can reach.”

Link blinks and feels his mind expand with the knowledge. Suddenly, what looked like a strange pattern on the shield at first glance, made much more sense as a minish-sized ladder.

The inside of the Armos’ head is empty and echoes with his every step, the metallic sound going and going and going and going around him in waves. It’s almost spooky.

There’s a switch on the floor, in front of a tiny pyramidal structure that pitted in the middle, and as soon as Link hits the switch a flame sprouts from the structure, burning bright and crackling. The strange lines in the walls around him pulse with light and a low groaning drone sound grows louder then weaker then louder again, pulsing with the light.

It echoes around him, loud loud loud, everywhere and all at once and Link runs out, unable to stay, unwilling to keep himself in a place so empty yet so full .

He has to do it again only minutes later, and then a third time after that. It’s such a small thing but it leaves Link feeling just how small he was, how large and intimidating the world could be if it decided. Everything could be glowing and loud and bright and everywhere at all once if it wanted and he’s so so glad that it isn’t. He refuses himself the satisfaction of crying about it.

He mindlessly smites some snakes, some tektites, and some rock-dwelling spiny beetles, before the two stony large-eyed statues move to stop blocking his way to the Fortress of Winds.

Inside the cliff face, the fortress entrance is made of an uneven dirt hallway connecting four doorways together. The one closest to the entryway leads to a small room with a cross made of faces carved into the floor and four skull-shaped statues in each corner of the room. Their eyes seem to pulsate with a gentle white light.

“I don’t like how… alive they look,” Link whispers, feeling so stared at it hurts.

Ezlo shudders atop his head. “I agree, dear boy. The wind tribe seems to have had… an interesting taste in decorations.”

Link hurries to the stairwell at the other end of the room, not wanting to stay longer than necessary. Upstairs is a room with four roaming stalfos between him and a doorway, but it’s easy to dodge past them and the pillars with faintly glowing red eyes.

This room, just like the entrance, is filled with dirt. Lots of dirt. There’s a switch in the floor to his left. Pressing it makes a chest appear, but getting off makes it disappear again so Link sighs. He’ll have to come back later, maybe with something to get rid of the dirt?

Link heads up the ladder and finds himself absolutely surrounded by dirt. He’s just in a tiny little pocket with the ladder behind him.

Link sighs again. This place was going to be tedious, more so than his other escapades had been. He was sure of it.

Back in the room with the pillars and the stalfos Link’s new perspective on the room lets him see the eyegore statues he’d missed the first time. One on either side of the stairway exit. Before he shoots them though, Link peer beyond them, seeing only two locked doors and more Stalfos.

Okay, plan of action: Keys, then eyegores, then maybe clearing the dirt. Simple. He can get keys at least. That was always easy.

The door to the far right of the main entrance leads to a room split in half by blocks he’s unable to move, a single anti-fairy patrolling against the sides of them. But getting up on his tippy toes he can see a minish device and a piece of heart . Off to the right is a tiny hole in the wall, marked out with a lining of steel. Okay, that he can deal with, there is an obvious solution here. He just has to do it.

The door only one to the right only has two skull-shaped monoliths and a square of face markings in the floor. Up the stairs brings him to a room split in three with a hole in the floor and a closed door at the other end. Stalfos skulls litter the floor, needing to be broken, but the solution here is simple too. There are two pull-switches in the walls, easy access blocked by the chest-high walls that segment the room.

More dirt greets him in the other room, spiky grey chuchus and sparks and even more dirt up the ladder.

Link is getting tired of the dirt, can feel the loose stuff beneath his feet sticking to his clothes. Or, well, he can’t, but he knows it’s there, can see it. It tickles the back of his mind.

Dirty, dirty, you’re dirty. It’s unkempt, unclean, improper. Need to organize, need to clean, need to arrange and move and soak and wash, need this place to not be so gross.

Link ignores the thoughts. Heroes don’t get distracted by wanting to do laundry, by wanting to change out his tunic for a fresh one, folding his dirty one gently with crisp edges and fitting it nicely into his bag until he gets to a stream or wanders back to his grandfather’s forge.

Soft, crisp folds of clothing, clean and neat. Good. Proper. Their lack is aggravating, annoying.

Link shakes his head. Not the time! Not the place! Not the hero!

He pushes down his annoyance, his anger, his itchy fingers and toes. He can clean later, when he’s no longer busy being a hero, busy performing his duty, for the good of Hyrule, for the health of his best friend the princess. For everyone.

He heads into the next room and sees two armos statues guarding two floor switches, but like all the other active and sitting soldiers of metal and magic they dn’t move, won’t move until he touches them. He needs to turn them off.

There’s another room he can access, in it a minish device. Perfect.

The armos are shut down and then Link pauses.

Two switches, there are two. He’ll have to split again.

He focusses, gathers the energy of the universe, of himself, into his sword, and-

Link stands beside himself, feels twice as dirty on twice the number of pants. He turns towards the leftright in a moment of weakness and he stares at the shadehimself.

His freckles stare back him, hooked eyebrows over wide grey eyes and soft cheeks just loosing the babyfat. A tapered triangular nose rests in the middle, just brushed by wavy golden-blond hair.

The shade is the same, if a little translucent. But Link still feels from it, still sees from it, hears his beating heart in his hears from it. He reaches out and takes his own hand, just to hold it and it feels warm in his shade hand and sparkly-cold in his actual one.

Link moves his bodies forward and steps on the buttons, letting himself stand still for just a moment, to let himself feel, just for a moment, like he wasn’t alone, wasn’t doing this alone with only a huffy talking hat as his companionship.

The shade shimmers and falls to dust, Link snapping back to one body more gently this time.

“Please talk more,” Link nearly whispers. “I… I get lonely.”

Ezlo huffs, but he sounds amused instead of annoyed.

“If you wish, dear boy.”

The locked door looped back to over the hole in the floor, another hole in the floor here and another pull-switch.

A small key clatters to the floor below when Link pulls it all the way. Landing right next to the minish hole that leads to the room with the heart piece.

Good, this is good. Link feels in control, unafraid, like his mind is clear for the first time in weeks. He can barely remember what he’d done in the other elemental hideaways, too much anger and despair clouding over the details.

Here Link feels like the world is simple, when he is doing the good thing, the smart thing, working his way forwards without losing control of himself and his emotions. Link is being a hero.

The left doorway also leads to a room with two skull monoliths, and then a room with a hole inthe floor up the stairs, but that’s where the similarities ended. Eye-shaped reliefs in the walls greet him—which he greets back with arrows into their pupils—along with entire companies of stalfos. Swarming him in one room as the doors closed behind him.

Link fills himself with determination, confidence, courage, and resolution, and slays them all. Control, he is in control. Not his anger, not his despair. Jut him, Link.

Platforms slide over darkness and Link carefully aims for the eyes in the walls, shotting all four of them as quickly as he can and cheering when the door at the other side of the room clicks open.

He’s greeted by more large blocks to push, more splitting required.

Link gathers his energy and holds out his swo-

Link stands beside himself.

Link and Link’s shade push one block, then another block, then another block. Shoving and pushing them out of the way, clearing the path to the pull switch.

Link rushes back to himself, pulls the switch, and hears the clatter of metal on stone two floors below.

Link enters the left door of the pair after he slays the eyegores. Another sliding platform greets him, then more eye targets.

And then a darknut.

“Heck,” Link mutters. “I’m gonna be so sore after this.”

Where the first darknut had been white and green, this one is white and red, but it’s just as intelligent, falls to the same tactics of dodging and slicing and parrying.

Still takes far longer than he wishes it did.

The next room is full of sharp metal sliders and a switch that he races towards, not wanting to have to do needlework on his tunic when it was already so dirty.

Two skulls greet him on a raised walkway, overtop and to the north of the chambers from the door to the left of the main entrance. At the far end he can see the pair of doors, just down the drop of the edge of the walkway. The skulls, meanwhile, are placed on clearly demarcated spots on the ground, however the wall between them is bare.

Link taps it with his sword and hears a hollow echo. How interesting.

Link raises the mole mitts overtop of his head and feel so smart ! He knew clearing the dirt would be part of this dungeon, he knew it!

“Sure you did, kid,” Ezlo mutters, making Link realize he’d said that out loud.

The right door of the pair makes him run on his pegasus boots, as the walkway disappears behind him, scares him half to death for a moment, until Link masters himself, calms himself. He’s safe here, nothing hurting him, and he got across. He’s fine, nothing to be afraid of, nothing to despair over, to remember, or to rage against.

He’s good.

Giant floating hands greet him in the next room and Link screams , rage and despair filling him in equal parts because they’re horrific . Mottled green with long blue nails that clack-clack-clack against the stone. He wants to hide, to fight, to cry, to rage. His legs are stuck. His head is bursting. He wants his emotions to go away, to stop being so strong to stop having such influence over him. He’s okay with crying, with being angry, but this is absurd !!

A sob wrenches out of his throat and Link feels like defeat. He walks slowly backwards and sits against the wall, away from the clacking nails of the floormasters.

Link comes to with his face wet and his sleeves a mess, covered in tears and snot he doesn’t remember wiping. He… he was pathetic. Not heroic, pathetic. Weak and sniffling and uncontrollable. Maybe he was always this weak and damp when he blacked out… except sometimes he was angry, wrathful, overzealous.

Sometimes Link felt like someone else was doing the crying for him, someone else was getting angry on his behalf. Wouldn’t that be nice? To have someone else, even if they cried or yelled? He wouldn’t be so alone. Maybe when he finished purifying the sword with the elements his shade would be solid, real. Who knew? Not him.

Link lifts himself off of the floor and wipes his tears away once more. Because he did know. They were his tears, his anger. His loneliness for absolute certain. He just… didn’t want them. Just wanted to be a hero. Just wanted to help people. He always would.

Link slays the floormasters, feeling relief when they crumble to dust. He’d spent too long in this dungeon.

“You’re a strange boy, Link,” Ezlo says.

“And you’re still too quiet, old man,” Link snarks. “You didn’t even say anything when I started screaming at the hand monsters.”

“Link, I was shouting your name,” Ezlo says, sounding almost too kind.

Link tightens his grip on his sword. He doesn’t remember that. He wants to, wants to think of Ezlo as sarcastic instead of huffy, as wise instead of old, as kind instead of… mean. But he can’t. He doesn’t remember.

“My memory is full of holes,” Link mutters out loud for the first time.

Ezlo laughs. “So’s mine, kid, so’s mine.”

Link’s not sure how he feels about that. It’s certainly a feeling, but which is beyond him.

Link clears dirt out of his way using his new mitts and ascends a ladder, dodging past more Stalfos to unlock a door and find two holes in the flooring.

He can see a chest through the one on the right and drops down with a small grunt as his knees bend from the force, and grabs the big key from inside.

A giant brass statue of a head sits inside the boss room, one half red and the other blue. It begins to glow and then lifts into the air . Hands that match its strange appearance pull themselves from the walls and float along with it, the centre of their palms containing a pink orb with a yellow dot. An eye. A target.

There are minish devices at the back of the room.

Okay, okay, be calm and think. Shoot the eyes first, right?

The red hand drop to the ground and its eye hangs limp out of the socket. Link bats at it with his sword until the hand stop glowing, until the damaged eye pulls itself inside the hand with a click and a gentle white aura sparkles around it. Healing itself, maybe? Hopefully not.

The red on the head isn’t glowing anymore and Link feels his brain spark.

The blue hand falls just as easily, all it required was waiting for the right moment, waiting to dodge the slaps and the slams and the grabs.

The head falls to the ground, smoking and dim, and Link climbs inside it at minish size through its small mouth. There are six green pillars inside, but one of them has eyes decorating the base and a magic glyph on the floor under it.

Link slashes at it until it crumbles and a small pincer drone comes to drag him out.

Link grows back to hylian size and dodges out of the way of a heat beam from the head, only to have to roll out of the way of a grab from the blue hand, and then slide down under the red hands close-fisted slam.

Faster, it was faster now, and repaired. Link had to be swift to match.

When the drone pulls him out after his third trip inside and the head is still dim and the hands still fallen Link knows something is up. The head shakes, lifts, falls, glows once… and then crumples, the whole thing glowing white, even the brass, and then it disappears. As if it was never there.

Unlike before, there is no glow on the floor, no gem descending from the ether. Instead, the door on the far wall clicks open and Link heads out. A garden of arches and grass greets him, a gentle breeze ruffling the feathers of hundreds of birds sitting amongst the ruins. And standing tall at the cliff’s edge is a tablet.

“We are the tribe of the winds,” it reads. “Long have we lived with the winds. We have mastered them. And now we join them. Together, with the great winds at our backs we head to the skies. Those who come seeking our power must play the notes Zeffa teaches.”

“Zeffa?” Link asks, only for a small blue and white bird the land on the tablet and sing clearly six notes. It lifts off again and Link follows it, turning around to see it drop an ocarina to the ground and sing the notes again.

“I would assume this is Zeffa,” Ezlo comments… helpfully.

Link picks up the instrument and plays the notes back to the bird.

The bird sings again and then flies away.

“So… Are the wind people just… gone?” Link asks.

Ezlo sighs. “It looks like it, and they’ve taken their element with them. It seems like the wind element is beyond us for now, so I guess the only thing we can do, dear boy, is try for the water element and hope we come across something useful to get us up into the skies.”

Link refuses to cry from frustration, to throw the ocarina, his pity prize, and watch it shatter. He refuses.

“Okay,” he responds.

Link tucks the ocarina away in his bag and leaves. He wants to have a bath, to sleep in his bed, to learn more about forging from his grandfather, to hear the clang of hammer on metal. 

He wants to go home, so he does. Just for one night. Hyrule can wait one night for him to get a good night’s sleep.

Chapter Text

Link can’t help but burst into tears when he sees his grandfather again, dropping his sword and his shield and just sobbing into the shoulder of the man who raised him.

“Oh, Link, my dear Link,” Grandpa Smith coos at him. “Not old enough yet to no longer need your grandfather, hm?”

Link shakes his head. “I… I’m so lonely all the time.”

“Hey!” Ezlo squawks. “What about me?”

Link sniffles and reluctantly pulls himself out of the hug. “Grandpa, this is Ezlo, he’s a hat now.”

Grandpa strokes his beard. “Looks like a bird to me.”

Ezlo sighs. “Vaati cursed me, good sir. You know what I normally look like.”

Grandpa hums thoughtfully. “Would you two like something to eat? Your uncle Leon stopped by with pie from your aunt again.”
Link nods as he rubs a moist eye with a fist. “I’d like some pie, please.”

Ezlo scoffs. “Oh, you have manners for your grandfather, but not me? I see how it is.” But he sounds fond instead of angry and it makes Link smile to know that Ezlo has that softness to him under the sarcasm and the snark and the huffiness. Means he actually enjoys Link’s presence, means Link can find a friend in him, if he wants.

Link wants. His only friend is currently stone, he’ll need another, at least for a little while.

Leon isn’t actually his uncle, but his dad and Leon were apparently inseparable friends in their youth, even trained for the guard together. They were brothers in every way but blood and then Link’s father had died in the war against the monsters. Leon had offered to raise Link, said Smith was too old to raise another child, but grandpa Smith had insisted. Said if anyone was to raise his grandson it was to be him. Not his wayward brothers-in-law or his second-son-in-all-but-blood. 

Apparently Leon had cried when Smith had called him his son. Leon got his wife to bake them pie regularly, out of gratitude for Smith’s kindness, for letting them into Link’s life, for making them part of the family.

Link did have other family, but all except one were distant. Wanderers and lonesome hermits. Boaz, known as Swiftblade II and the castle town’s sword master, was Link’s grand uncle. The younger brother of his grandmother Jumelle the Twinblade and her twin Daíthí, the first Swiftblade. Smith, Jumelle, and Daíthí had been the best of friends to the point that even before marrying Jumelle his grandpa was considered a "Blade Brother" along with all of Daíthí's younger brothers. Smith had even been titled as Smithblade, back when he still fought in tournaments. The three of them—Leon, Grandpa and Swiftblade II—were always happy to let him practise sword fighting with sticks and wooden blades in his free time, whenever he felt like it. Back before he got his own sword, that is. It was a family tradition after all.

Thinking about it made him warm. They were his family, even if some of them weren’t his blood, even if he didn’t spend as much time with them as he should.

Link looks up at Ezlo and feels soft, kind.

“I think we’re friends,” he says to the hat, “even though you’re huffy and mean sometimes, I think we’re friends.”

Ezlo stills and curls in on himself. “Ah, dear boy, dear Link, you are too kind to an old minish like me.”

Link smiles. Tomorrow, he’ll be ready for more adventure tomorrow.

He can’t swim and the next element hideaway is in Lake Hylia. A helpful minish living near the lake tells him that the minish elder in the castle town, Gentari’s twin Librari, was once able to get in there though and Link heads to the library to find him.

The minish elder lives up on the top self on a bookshelf on the second floor that Link can’t reach even on his tippy toes. The Library refuses to keep a ladder or a stool—children aren’t usually checking out books by themselves—and trying to make something to help his minish self reach up there would be… tricky. Indelicate. Likely to collapse or entirely the wrong size.

The helpful minish—gosh they’re always helpful, they like helping humans, why is no one aware of all the things they do to help—on the bottom bookshelf tells him that there are some books that have been checked out which the spines of had long ago been modified by the minish to act as ladders through the bookshelf.

Meaning Link has to go and track down the late returns himself. Has to become the library’s errand boy for a couple hours. But it’s fine, he’s fine, he can do that, he’s not wasting precious time he could be getting the next element with, isn’t so worried about Vaati that his heart shivers in his chest with every breath. No, Link can do some regular helping, he can. He likes helping.

Link takes in a breath and ignores it all, pretends he’s unaffected, that he’s calm and collected and level-headed. That he isn’t likely to freak out at any moment. He can be a regular person instead of a hero for a little bit. He’s still helping, both normal people and the kingdom as a whole. He can handle this.

Julietta was busy talking with Romio at Mama’s Café about how to convince their pets to let them marry and was unwilling to go and get her overdue book from her own house herself. So Link grudgingly walked his way across town to her house, only to discover she was apparently the absolute worst and used her full adult height to leave her copy of a Hyrule Bestiary on top of her tall bookcase. And just like the library she didn’t own a stool or ladder, despite the existence of her younger brother Jim.

It was such a mundane hurdle, such a small thing, and yet it was still another thing in Link’s way, another blockage he had to overcome. Another goddessdamn puzzle.

Link doesn’t want to climb the bookshelf, doesn’t want to risk it falling and harming Julietta’s cat, Scratcher, or any of the books inside, or, you know, himself. So, instead he takes great satisfaction in pulling all the books he can reach off of Julietta’s shelves and stacking them up like stairs so he can grab the overdue library book that way.

And then he just walks out, feeling like the reminder to Julietta that not having a way to reach that high was not nice .

At least, he does that for about six seconds before turning around and putting the books back, leaving a polite note instead. He was annoyed, not rude .

Dr. Left doesn’t even know where he left his copy of Legends of the Picori and Link feels so tired. Is this how the poor returns girl at the library always feels? No wonder the check-out girl felt bad for her.

So once more Link shrinks down to minish size—using the jar-that’s-actually-a-minish-device in the carpenters’s shop—and hopes that maybe one of the town minish in Dr. Left’s house payed more attention than the man himself.

The book is in the rafters. Somehow. What did Dr. Left do, throw it up there? Also, getting up into the rafters is impossible right now without moving some of Dr. Left’s heavy cabinets because the man had recently had his furniture rearranged—for “fire safety reasons” supposedly—and the minish weren’t that fast at building new ladders and walkways and hidey-holes.

He didn’t have the money or the means to move the cabinets himself. But one very helpful minish gives him a ray of hope. A glimmer of a myth, of a legend, of a story to find minish-crafted power bracelets that would let him move those cabinets with ease… as long as he was minish sized, at least.

Cross the bridge that spans the rapid flow…

Through the land of the fearsome beast…

Until you reach the misty falls…

The treasure sleeps on the other side of the entrance there.

Link wanders his way through a red-haired stranger’s yellow house on the west side of town, crosses the single-plank bridge that rests near the top of the small waterfall of the river running through town… and then sees the cats. The two very large, very sharp clawed, very feral cats that have long since made their home in the grassy field south of the library. Supposedly the old couple, Dottie and Klaus, brought them food on occasion, so the two seniors were the only people the cats didn’t try to attack on sight.

Link was currently the size of a mouse. Link was going to get eaten .

Link charged through the grass, feeling invigorated by the danger. If he didn’t feel that way he would break down, would curl into a ball and shake his feelings out until he ran dry.

So Link runs, pretends he’s the hero everyone wants him to be, Ezlo wants him to be, the kingdom needs him to be, Zelda needs him to be, his grandfather needs him to be. Pretends so hard that it might be true.

Link’s hands shake as he descends a tiny vine to the fountain’s edge, but his mind does not waver, his determination does not falter. He steps into the tinhy minish hole and sees exactly what he expects. Slugs, bugs, and damp cool earth that clings to his boots.

There’s water to his left, flowing out of the grate and into the pool of the fountain, and a passageway to his right. Through it two red mulldozer bugs scutter about, but they’re not important. There’s a hole in the ground right next to the wall, where the higher ledge above it has a door, and the only thing guarding the hole is two bladed sliders, easily dodged.

After one magically generated leap into the air, Link passes through the door and finds a room with lit sconces in each corner providing light and four blue mulldozer bugs rushing around, shooting dust into the air.

A door snaps shut behind him.

Passing by the cats on the way back is just as terrifying as the first time, but Link makes it, breath heaving in his lungs. He makes it and this time he has the power bracelets.

Link stealthily moves Dr. Left’s cabinets around in minish form, ecstatic that the man is too engrossed in the book he’s currently reading to hear the scrape of wood on floor, and then dashes up the ladder by the fireplace. The cabinets now form a walkway from the ladder to a clearly visible hole in the wall that leads up to the rafters, the book up there just within his grasp.

The book is stuck, just dangling off the edge of a plank. One kind minish is trying to knock it down by standing on it, but her alone isn’t heavy enough and her brother is too busy reading another book that’s somehow up in the rafters to help her.

Even together they’re not heavy enough to tip it. So Link splits apart. Three people is more than enough.

The book thumps to the ground along with Link and the minish lady. Dr. Left doesn’t even notice.

Apparently Mayor Hagen took out a book several months ago and hasn’t yet returned it. A book on the history of masks. Because Mayor Hagen was a weirdo who was really into masks. He even had them decorating the walls of his mayoral office .

When asked about it though, the man has the audacity to question if he even actually took out the book!

Staring up over the Mayor’s desk at the man thoughtfully twiling his moustache Link thinks he finally understands returns-girl’s state of mind.

So Link finds the minish in Mayor Hagen’s walls. They’ll be more help than him, clearly.

Mayor Hagen has a lakeside cabin only accessible through the north half of Minish woods, just north east of the witch’s hut. He’s gonna have to go to Lake Hylia and come back just so he can go back there again to get the element?!

Link returns to normal size and punches the wall of Mayor’s office once he’s stepped outside. This whole book distraction is just… so infuriating! Why are people so careless with their library books!? Why don’t the library minish have ladders dug into the wood of the bookshelves they live in?!?

“Why is every step of this journey so hard? ” Link whispers to himself, even as he pulls out the ocarina of wind to play Zeffa’s song.

He doesn’t find the book until he stands on the edge of the man’s overly decorative … bathtub? Link isn’t sure, it’s a wooden structure filled with water next to an oven, so maybe the man had engineered a way to heat up the water?

Anyway, the book is on top of the oven and Link grabs at it so quickly he nearly topples over into the water.

Finally, with this he can go talk to Librari. Heck.

The minish elder lives in a book!! In! A book!! There’s even a minish sized door and a sigh overtop! A lot of the pages of the book have been torn out or folded out of the way so Librari can actually have space inside, but it’s still so cool! He even cut out squares into some pages so he has space for a bed and a shelf!

“Oh, a human!” the elder say as soon as he notices Link, the comparatively giant feather he’s using as a staff tapping on the bookmark he’s using as a carpet. “Been a while since I’ve gotten to actually talk to one of you folk. Are you here to listen stories of my adventurous youth? I’ve been writing some of them down, but… There’s still so many.”

“Um, sorta…” Link says. “I actually want to know something specific. I wanna know how you got into the Temple of Droplets.” Link holds out the Elemental White Sword. “I need the element from inside, to reverse a curse on the princess.”

Librari’s chuckles bounce off of the pages. “Oh ho ho, a brave young lad are you? Fancy yourself a hero?”

Link can’t decipher his tone, can’t tell if he’s being mocked.

“I’ve saved Hyrule once before. I am called the Hero of Men!” Link declares with a hard stare.

Librari’s expression turns considering, his blue robes swaying as he rubs at his chin.

“Well then, young hero. If you’re so determined, sit yourself on the clover and I shall reveal to you my secret.”

The clover was a goddesses damned trapdoor. Librari’s amused laughter follows Link down to the wet stone below.

Yellow bugs with big blue pincers, scissor beetles, scuttle around Link, sending their pincers flying through the air at him. When they aren’t throwing their pincers around like boomerangs the bugs are using them as effective blocks against Link’s attacks, so he times himself carefully, rolls under the throws like his Granduncle Hazen—known professionally as Greyblade—had taught him, and then stabs the scissor beetle in the underside of the neck, right between the plates of its chitin.

And then he does it again, and again, until all of them are dripping their cyan blood onto the stone.

And at last, Link finally gets what he actually needs to get into the Temple of Droplets. Link gets his hands on some magical flippers.

Goddesses, this took way too long.

Chapter Text

Link spends a few hours with uncle Leon in the river learning how to actually swim for once. It’s pretty easy with the magic flippers keeping his clothes dry and buoyant, but the water is still cool to the touch and flowing past him at a leisurely pace. Definitely faster than the still water of lake hylia.

Leon stands behind him by a few paces, wearing nothing but his trousers and holding his arms at the ready, just in case Link slows down, stops kicking, makes a mistake and starts drifting downstream. He pretends, just the once. Let’s go of the rock he’d been holding onto, had been using to ground himself and feel the way the water felt as he kicked at different speeds. He lets go and finds himself in his uncle’s embrace.

“You’re doing great, Link,” the captain of the guard says to him, his arms warm around him.

Link shivers, not from the cold of the water, but from the warmth of family. He’d needed this.

Link’s mother had been a professional seamstress. Had spent her free hours sewing clothes for everyone in town, making blankets and quilts and fixing tears in fabric.

He pushes the needle through the edge of the wide fabric strip on his knee and then through Ezlo’s hem, fingers guided by training with his aunt.

“I don’t want to get separated from you if there’s a strong current,” Link says, attempting to turn Ezlo from a cap into a hood for his tunic.

Ezlo hums. “That is a reasonable thought, boy, but do you have to stab me? Even with only a needle?”

Link turns to look at his companion in the eye, hands frozen in the air.

“Do you have any better ideas?” he asks.

Ezlo makes a face. “What if you need to use a whirlwind again? How will you steer?”

Link picks up a pair of scissors. “I’m gonna put handholds in.”

Ezlo squawks. “In me!?!”

Link’s heart stops. “NO!! In the extra fabric I’m using, gosh! Ezlo, I’m not stupid!”

Ezlo makes grumbling noises, mutters something along the lines of “I knew that” falling from his beak.

Link completes the seams and cuts several thin dotted cuts around the middle, allowing the hood to both catch and release air, stabilizing them like button-holes with a ring of thread. And then he sews in two strips of fabric as handholds, to allow him to steer.

“It’s perfect.”

“You had better hope it is!” Ezlo complains. “It’s both of our lives on the line if it isn’t!”

Link rolls his eyes. He’s gonna test it at Lon Lon Ranch, he’s a kid, not an idiot.

The seams break when Link tests them. So he sourly heads to his aunt to ask her to re-do them.

She just smiles, pats him on the head, and takes Ezlo and the now ruined tunic to her sewing room, leaving him with a bowl of soup to eat while she works.

The water is cold, the water is cold, the water is so so so cold.

Link pulls himself out of the wet and onto the cracked sheet of ice, the minish sized entrance to the Temple of Droplets sitting beneath his feet. The magic below makes his tunic and hood sway gently, like rising steam from boiling water.

“E-E-Ez-zlo?” Link stutters.

The magic minish begins to chant, familiar glowing symbols appearing and swirling around them as the hat dances upon Link’s head, the magic tinkling and whirling and swirling.

Link rises into the air gently, feeling his body stretch, expand, shrink, snap. 

He’s the size of a thumb and he plummets, descends through the cracks and lands on a frosty clover that cushions his fall.

The magics in his belly swirl, the breath puffs out of his mouth. It’s cold, so cold. Colder than the water. Cold like a mountain cave. Cold like Talus.
"I can't," he whispers. "You can't make me."

"Link?" Ezlo asks, but Link doesn't hear him. All he hears is the howling of water, the crack of ice. Deep darkness surrounds him as he remembers walking on thin ice platforms above bottomless pits. The burn of the Light Force had kept him a little bit warm there but he doesn’t have it now. It’s so cold. Colder.

"You can't make me do this again!" He sobs. "You can't!"

"Link, I do not understand."

Link sinks to the floor curling into a ball, already feeling the cold in his fingers, his toes, his chest. "Talus is so cold, too cold. I don't wanna be that cold again, you can't make me that cold again."

"Link you're not in talus!" Ezlo shouts.

"WHY AM I SO COLD THEN!?" Link shouts back, accusatory.

Ezlo is quiet.

"You can't make me," Link whispers again, pushing his hands under his armpits to keep them warm. "You can't force me to be that cold again."

"I'm not forcing you to do anything, dear boy, Vaati is," Ezlo says gently.

Link sniffles. "I hate him."

Ezlo is quiet again.

“He hurt Zelda, she’s my best friend,” Link says wetly. “I gave her the Light Force because I knew she’d protect it and then I failed to protect her. I’m supposed to protect her!”

“Link, you are protecting her,” Ezlo corrects him, “Vaati doesn’t know she has it. As long as he doesn’t know she is safe. As long as you are going on this quest you are helping her. You did your best and you… you still are, dear boy, dear Link.”

Link curls tighter. “Doesn’t feel like it,” he whines. “Feels like I’m gonna cry again, but I can’t. My tears will freeze, like last time. Like at Talus. I can’t cry. I can’t. I’ll black out and, and, and…” Link sucks in a breath. “I want it to stoooooop!” he wails softly. “I want it all to stop hurting.”

Ezlo doesn’t respond, he probably doesn’t know how.

Link sniffles again. “I wish you could hug me… that’s part of why I made the hood… so when I wear you it feels like wearing a hug.”

Ezlo shifts, the fabric dragging on the icy stone. “Oh, poor Link. I will hug you as much as you desire when Vaati’s curse is broken. I promise you, lad.”

Link uncurls just the tiniest amount. “Remember for me, please?” he asks. “I’d like that… but I’m worried I’ll forget. I’m forgetting so much. I hate it. I’m supposed to be smart, smart people don’t forget.”

Ezlo sighs and Link feels like his hood has wrapped around him tighter. “Ah, Link, of course I will remember. You have done so much for your people, for me. The least I can do is remember to give you a hug.”

Link lets himself smile, just a tiny little bit.

And then his brain sparks.

“You’re magic, right?” he asks.

Ezlo seems to hesitate, probably surprised from the shift in topic. “I… yes, I am dear child.”

“I… I still have some fairy blessing, I feel them in my belly… Could… could I use that to warm myself?”

Ezlo chuckles with what sounds like amusement. “Hold you hands together, over your heart, and think of campfires, of sleeping under the stars. Focus on the fire and the trees in your belly, lad, and the ice will sleep.”

The magics swirl, whirl, curl, turn. The jabbering jumps and tumbles, rising into his throat and falling down in a nauseating rhythm, but Link focusses, pulls the fire and the forest into his heart, sends the ice to sleep even lower in his belly, down under his navel, near his bladder.

His fingers warm.

“Could… Am I able to do anything else with them?”

“Ah, no, I do not think so, child,” Ezlo says. “You would need training, and the blessings in you are pale, small. Barely enough for this, even. You would exhaust yourself trying to light a match. I would not recommend it. I remember my first time trying magic, I nearly fell into my father’s fireplace after I lit it ablaze. Only his quick thinking stopped me from… well, from a very nasty burn at the very least.”

Link frowns, but gets over it quickly. It’s okay, he doesn’t need magic for himself. He just needed to be warm.

“Thank you for the story,” Link mumbles as he gets to his feet.

“Anything for you, dear boy,” Ezlo says, happiness evident in his voice. “You may annoy me sometimes, but you are a good child. A true hero.”

Link does his best to ignore how he disagrees with the hero part, suspends himself in the feeling of being good, of being loved by the old minish, by his companion and friend.

Link descends the stairs and enters the dungeon proper. He’s ready.

The big door is right there . Literally at the south end of the first room. Is the dungeon going to be… short? That doesn’t seem right.

“It’s kinda foreboding, with the door at the start,” Link says, “makes me think something is… wrong.”

“It is certainly unusual,” Ezlo agrees.

Link turns away and goes the only direction he can, north. Slowly walking around the disc of slippery ice extending from the central stone plateau. His feet slip and slide, and it makes him wish he’d acquired some better boots, something with spikes to dig into the ice and keep him still with each step.

Unfortunately he doesn’t have boots like that, just his pegasus ones, so he carefully inches his way to the northern door and passes into a room that is thankfully made only out of stone.

Four sconces of fire sit in the middle of the room, with pots in each corner. Balls of colourful light appear above the flames and fly towards Link as the pots lift up in the air to join them. Link rolls to the right, away from the locked door and towards the only other open one, avoiding the fairly soow moving magic objects.

Light streams in from above through a section of ceiling where the ice above has melted. Under it sits a strange square of floor split down the middle. It looks like maybe it’ll open, if he finds the way to do it. But the only other thing in the room is stairs down.

“It’s so empty,” Link says as he descends. “There’s no bugs, or plants, or anything… It’s making me worried.”

Ezlo hums in agreement. “Worrying, indeed.”

The room down here is split unevenly into two, the smaller eastern section stone, with a lever, and the other ice, with a few rocks from below sticking out of the frozen surface. There’s a solid block of ice with a small key encased inside it sitting on the ice sheet. There’s no way to get onto the ice, bars of stone too close together to pass through even at minish size are in the way, except where a block too smooth to pull sits right up against the south wall, just beyond a small gap in the bars that sit parallel to it.

Link pushes the lever and the floor above opens up, light and gentle warmth streaming in.

“There’s… there’s no way that light is bright or hot enough to melt the key out of the ice, right?” Link asks, even though the block isn’t even under the light yet. Even though he hasn’t moved from the lever. It’s just obvious.

“It’s our only option at this point, lad. We aren’t magic, but… perhaps the ice is?”

Link hopes.

He goes back upstairs and throws himself down the hole in the floor onto the ice below.

The ice block is in the northwest corner, while the light is in the exact middle of the room. There’s one rock right next to the light, and another directly south of the block.

Link pushes the block south, watches it slide smoothly until it crashes to a stop. Then to the east, where it stops in the beam of light, right against the rock.

The ice melts instantly, even though the sheet beneath it is untouched, not even a little bit moist or pitted with melt.

“Definitely magic,” Link says, feeling perturbed. Justified, but also distrusting. If ice can be magic and melt in even that gently warm light then this dungeon was gonna be full of tricks.

The room behind the locked door has a few blue mulldozers, but more importantly it is split into two. Walls go north-south down the middle but are broken by the hole in the floor where light streams down from above onto the ice below. There’s no way across, only down. Link has to fall into the hole.

There’s a switch down here on the ice, about two paces ahead, and a rock about the same distance just about south of it. Link turns around and sees six more rocks, three lined up neatly closest to the wall, two paired in a diagonal line in the middle, and a lone rock right next to the wall. Beyond them are three ice blocks, two empty and one with the big door’s key stuck inside, right between them.

Link walks over and looks at all the blocks and the rocks from multiple angles. He could push the big key block south, into one of the empty ones, and then push it over to the light. It would pass between two of the three lined-up rocks, but it would miss the light, just keep going until it hit the far wall. No, the solution is more clever, more thoughtful. Perhaps… working backwards?

Link closes his eyes and thinks. He needs the block to stop in the light patch, and there’s only one rock close enough to do that. It’s on the east side of the beam, meaning he’ll have to push it east from the west side of the room, and the only thing that lines up is the body of the switch that controls the floor cover. There’s only one rock other than the pair close enough to the switch for it to approach from, but… there’s no way to get the block over there, the rocks on their own don’t line up.

…on their own.

Link opens his eyes. Solution, he has a solution.

He pushes the southern empty ice block into the wall, then pushes it over to collide with the lonely rock, perfectly in line with the other side of the pair of diagonal rocks. He pushes the upper empty ice block against the upper of the three lined up rocks, then the big key block into the middle, then up against the empty one, then across to the pair. Over to the southern empty ice block, then the rock near the switch, then the switch, then into the light!

The block melts and the big key clinks against the ice.

“That can’t be all, it can’t be,” Link says as he picks up it.

Ezlo is quiet, contemplative, as Link closes the floor above.

“It can’t be this easy, that was only two rooms!” Link says.

Ezlo sighs. “I do not disagree.”

The big door opens and the first thing Link sees is a giant block of ice many times his size in the middle of the room. No boss. The water element sits inside, a tiny blue splotch barely visible but definitely there .

Link looks around, spots walls that don’t go all the way up, where there have to be higher platforms he can’t get to from here. There are pots against the walls of the ledges. Further south the room splits into a T, the way east blocked by walls frozen closed, but the way west is clear.

The wide south wall has a surprise. There’s a giant goddesses-damned octorock frozen in place inside it. Shiny and crystalline, its eyes are empty, the snout dripping with icicles.

Link avoids looking at it, thinking about it. It’s so close to the element. If it didn’t get dethawed with the relic he’d eat his tights.

“That’s… what’s guarding the element, isn’t it?” Link dares to ask.

Ezlo doesn’t answer him.

So Link goes west.

There’s a channel of water to his right, a spiked roller moving across the surface, and a hallway leaving to a balcony to his left. When he goes to look all he can see is a waterfall off to the side that he assumes he’ll be falling down at some point.

Link jumps into the water— cold, cold, still so cold, I thought I was warm —and dives under the spiked roller. The channel widens into a pool after a turned corner and off to his left the pool shallows as the floor below curves up to meet a set of stairs. Link pushes himself forward with hands carefully held in a scoop shape and aggressive kicks he keeps under the water so he doesn’t lose any pushing force trying to swim through the air. Standing up on the water-lapped stone Link feels warmth fill his fingers again, the cold water no longer there to fight at his magic. Limits, it’s all about limits, he doesn’t have enough passive magic to keep himself warm in the water. Heck.

Link climbed the stairs and stops. Water, there’s more water. Just a small ledge of stone and more water .

“This dungeon hates me,” Link decides.

Ezlo is too busy shivering on his head to disagree.

There are two options before him. He’s stood at a corner that goes south and east. South, he can tell from here isn’t an option. There are bars all along the inner edge of the channel that block off access to another ledge with a locked door. The only option is east.

Link plunges into the freezing water again and keeps himself moving. It only makes sense, stay still and he’ll die. He must stay moving, must keep warm, must get back to land as quickly as possible.

The corner turns south and there’s a ledge here with a locked door, like on the other side, but it’s not blocked off by bars lining its edge. Link pulls himself up to the stone with desperation even though it’s only been seconds, even though he won’t be wet when he leaves. He’s still cold.

“Talus was l-like this,” Link says, shivering despite the return of his fairy blessing warmth, “Icy, and stony, and w-w-wet. Pits deep and dark and impossible to see the bottom of. At least this place is mostly water.”

“I imagine it would be difficult even for the minish to make bottomless pits when this place is surrounded by a lake,” Ezlo comments.

Oh, yeah, that makes sense, so much sense. He hopes the old minish is right.

Across from him is another platform, the roof of the hallway that led to the balcony. There’s a button and a springy mushroom over there. To his right is the waterfall, barred off right at the edge with thick metal spires.

He pulls the mushroom with the gust jar and leaves himself with the only fate he can. The walls of the channel are too smooth and flat here, just above the surface of the fluid. He wouldn’t be able to pull himself back to the platforms if he fell in. So he presses the button, watches the spires sink below the surface, and leaps, tumbling down the waterfall to the water below.

Another spiked roller quickly greets him and he dives under it, continues to ignore the cold cold, oh so cold around him. Then more metal spires at the turn of the corner. There’s no break in this dungeon, so much in and out of the water, so much ina nd out of the cold, in and out of the worst feelings Link has ever had.

Link pulls himself onto the platform where the obvious button awaits and sees a tablet. A tiny little thing that looks like a gravestone.

The way forward is hidden in the bottom of the pot.

Link turn to the right, where the spires have now sunk below the surface, where he can see the very pot the tablet is talking about. Why would they give this hint, this solution, so readily? If he were an adventurer intent on obtaining the element would he not have looked in the pot without being told? Was this dungeon patronizing him, trying to fool him, psych him out?

“You’re pointless,” he tells the tablet. “Useless. You’re only here to help the clueless that wouldn’t even have made it this far on their own. You are a mockery. A waste.”

He uses big words to make himself feel better, feel smarter, feel like he’s pulling himself above the tablet, even though it can’t speak back. It’s just words in minish carved into stone.

“You’re just a placeholder, a relic, something to look to when you feel lost. A beacon of light to the weak, but you’re just as weak yourself. You don’t belong here, you’re not supposed to be here. You’re simple, in need of replacing. Your function is forfeit.”

Hot tears drip down Link’s face as he keeps talking, taunting the brainless slab of stone, feels like he’s doing more than speak to it, like he’s only taunting himself, seeing himself in the lack of function it provides.

“You’re not a saviour,” he says, voice wet and thick, “you’re just there , just here , pointing to something obvious, anything else could do what you do. Why do you have to be here? What’ the point of you?”

What’s the point of you?

Link sinks to his knees. “I’m supposed to be a hero, and here I am… crying from a… from a sign .”

Link climbed up the rough rock wall next to the waterfall, the key on his belt still dripping from when he’d pulled it out of the bottom of the pot. He has feelings in his belly, the magic roiling from his upset, but he ignores it, ignores how he feels. Someone else will come along to feel it for him eventually. It’s what always happened, he’d feel and feel and feel and then it would be too much and then he’d go away. Someone else would take his place and they’d feel for him and he’d be right back at the start, feeling and feeling and pretending he didn’t until it overwhelmed him.

He remembers, long ago falling from a tree and scraping all over his knees and his hands and crying from it, his grandfather gently wrapping up his injuries and telling him it was okay to cry, to feel. If you didn’t let yourself feel then you were just going to bottle up until you exploded, until you had too much and someone got hurt.

The only one getting hurt here was him and he didn’t know what to do. Feeling too much wasn’t allowed, he couldn’t not be in control, he couldn’t let someone else do his job, he was the hero… he hoped. But that meant bottling, bottling and bottling and bottling until he collapsed, until he lost control of himself, until he hurt himself. Until his heart ached and his heart burned and his soul quivered. Until the very fabric of his being drifted away like mist, until he didn’t even feel real anymore. Until nothing but blackness greeted him and his memory faded.

There was no right answer. No simple solution. No happily ever after here. Just suffering. Just pain. Just… him.

Link pulled himself over onto the edge he’d been on before and pushed away the blocks that had prevented him from descending down this way before.

“I am the hero,” he reminded himself, “and heroes are in control. Heroes do not waver or fail. I am a hero.”

The locked door opened and the spires here fell too, revealing a lilypad he could steer to the waterfall, use to keep himself above the water and press the button down below that controlled the spires there. So many spires, so many buttons, so much repetition .

Link clenches his fist and steps on the frosty-lipped plant. Control, calm. Not anger. He can wait to be angry at this nonsense.

At least, he hopes so.

Chapter Text

Link steers the lilypad past more spire blockages, past another block pushing puzzle set on an ice sheet intersected by the channel of water, and over to a doorway back on safe and solid stone. The room beyond is pitch black, empty and dark and full of unknown. It’s like looking down, down, down into the abyss beneath the ice, to the nothingness that made up the bottom of Talus’ caverns. There are no fairies here to light up the way, no glowing mushroom or hot lava. Just darkness, darkness, darkness. Swallowing him whole.

Link stares at it and laughs at his fear, laughs at how afraid he is, amused at how terrible it feels.

“If I’m lucky, I won’t walk out of this dungeon with a fear of the dark,” he says softly. Fakely. Because he knows he isn’t lucky. He’s going to be afraid of darkness for the rest of his life, he’s sure.

He moves slowly, just as slowly as he had on the ice sheets, feeling his way with a hand on the wall, walking diagonally until he makes his way to the glowing exit that is the door to the next chamber.

There’s stairs, then stairs again, taking him back up to the main floor where the doorway behind him seals when he steps through. With the thud of it sliding into place, the room full of scissor beetles turns to face him. They’re insects, they probably don’t have ears, but they likely felt it through their legs, in the air.

Link avoids the anger in his belly at the number of them, ignores it completely. Lets it fester inside him so it can dissipate later, when he’s succeeded, when he can go and hit trees with sticks again, pretend to fight his uncle or Swiftblade. His anger can wait, it has to.

Link slays them as quickly as he can manage, the boomerang he’d kept with him this whole time coming in handy to stun the beetles he’s not currently focussing on. It’s over before he knows it and the room’s doors slide back open. With only a few strides he finds himself back in the main room with the element, a lever far larger than the ones he’s encounter so far resting on the upper eastern ledge he’s standing on.

It’s too big, too heavy for him alone.

Link focusses on his sword, focusses hard, feels the magic gather slower than he remembers. It sits, right at the tip of the blade, flashing and sparkling for several seconds unti-

Link’s shade blooms into existence in the left part of his mind, taking up space he’d previously used for his one body with its own. Together they push the lever, feeling it struggle beneath their four hands, shaking and shaking and quivering in their grasp until it snaps into place.

Above them, one half of the ceiling opens up, light streaming down to cover the eastern half of the room. It’s not enough, the element doesn’t melt. But to the south, the wall previously sealed shut with ice… melts away, leaving the eastern way open for Link to take.

He looks over to the west as his shade mists away into dust, sees the other lever he’ll have to push. Then to the element and the octorok, sees how both of them are bathed in light.

He’s right, of course he is. He’s going to have to fight an octoroc at minish size. The pebbles it will shoot will be bigger than him, will hit hard and hurt.

Link swallows his fury, feels it burn in his gut, feels his insides roil as he refuses them, as he refuses his feelings their purchase in his mind. His mind is his own, he won’t let someone else take control.

Not… not unless they’re better. Not unless they’re a real hero. Like he isn’t.

Because real heroes don’t cry. Don’t get angry over nothing. Heroes do their duty and go back to real life, once the story is over. No crying, no pain. They’re pefectly fine.

Link isn’t fine.

But Link is the hero, so Link goes east.

Instead of water, Link is greeted by a sheet of ice over

No. No, that isn’t allowed. That isn’t fair!

Darkness. Thick black darkness is below the meandering bridges spawning from the sheet of ice.

Link’s heart leaps into his throat and he gasps, heaves, pukes over the edge of the ice. His fingers chill as his stomach heats, as his face heats with a flush of upset and a torrent of tears and stomach acid. It drips from his nose, from his lips, silently falling into the abyss below.

Ezlo hangs over the edge too, the only thing keeping him attached is the hood Link had made earlier.

“I hate it here,” Link says in the smallest voice he’d heard come from his lips. “The cold and the dark and the…” he can’t find the words to express himself. “I hate it.”

His eyes swim and his limbs shake, so he pulls himself from the edge. He may be afraid but he isn’t stupid enough to court death. He shoves himself over to the wall, lets the chilly stone warm against his back as his butt freezes against the ice.

His vision swims more and Link can not see his hand in front of him, can not feel his legs or his feet under him. Can barely feel the clothes on his arms. He swore that if he tried to touch himself his limbs would pass through each other like mist.

A hero, he’s supposed to be a hero, but right now he’s a joke, a fool. It makes him angry, makes him afraid. Makes him upset and so many other things.

“I am the Hero Link,” he whispers with lips he can’t feel, says with words he can’t hear.

“I am the Hero Link,” He whispers, clenching his fists, scratching his nails into the ice, not feeling them tear against the cold surface.

“The Hero Link does not cry over nothing,” he says sobbing.

“The Hero Link does not get angry at the drop of a hat,” he says with simmering heat.

“The Hero Link is courageous,” he tells himself, pleads to his very soul.

“The Hero Link is good, the Hero Link is skilled, the Hero Link is not a crybaby, is not a hothead. The Hero Link is balanced and wonderful and good! He is not afraid to do what he must!”

Tears freeze to his face and Link does not feel them.

“I am the Hero Link!” He screams, his throat burning.

“I am a Hero, I am a hero! I am the Hero Link and I am good!”

He blinks and his eyes clear. There’s… something on his face. He can feel it.

He brings his hand up and rubs at his cheeks, feels the frozen remains of tears slide off of his skin.

Crying, someone had been crying. Had it been him? He wasn’t sure. He didn’t think he was the kind to cry, not here at least. There was nothing here to cry over, just ice and darkness below. Just a temple, just a dungeon. Nothing to fear here if he’s careful. It’s just another step on his way to get his friend, the wonderful princess Zelda, back to him.

His chest warms as the magic inside him flutters. Zelda, lovely Zelda, who laughs with him, lays with him in the grass, lets him pretend to be whatever he wants, lets him tell her stories she knows and she corrects him back with mirth in her eyes. Ages of royal stories fill her brain and he loves it, loves to hear them. Stories and books are a wonderful source of knowledge. But his favourite… was always of the Goddess’s Chosen Hero.

He breathes in deep and centers himself. Be a hero, he can be a hero. He’d spent his whole life hearing stories about the Chosen Hero. He knows just how to act.

“Ezlo,” he asks, tilting his head up towards the minish on his hood, “do you think I could spread my magic to you as well? I don’t want you freezing…” he stumbles over his words for a moment, “…your beak off?”

Ezlo chuckles. “Ah, no need to worry about me, Link, I’ll be fine once we leave this place, I’m only cloth after all!”

Ezlo only sounds a little bitter about it. Maybe he’s happy that he can’t feel the cold as much as he would if he were still minish, sees it as a blessing. It’s hard to tell.

He makes his way slowly across the ice sheet, following its curves with sure steps, waiting patiently for the incomplete circle of slicers to pass by and progress south, to a west facing doorway.

The next room is full of blocks of ice to the west, has a locked door to the south, but an open hallway to the north where a stairwell down, and another—closed this time—skylight sits waiting for him.

Down those stairs is an open skylight, no warmth passing through it thanks to the closed one above. There’s a switch on the other side of this skylight, but there’s no way around it, it’s closed in by walls, meaning his only option is down, down another set of stairs to the lowest point of the dungeon.

A frozen solid chest sits underneath here, accompanied only by a switch.

His mind sparks. Solution: Low switch, up, high switch, down, low switch again.

The thick layer of ice around the chest melts, the small key within swiftly acquired.

He hurries to the locked door and twists the key in the lock, the key sparkling to dust in his hands as the lock clicks open.

The room is empty barren stone, the only thing in it is icicles that stick out of the walls too high up to be useful… and another switch. But there’s no ice, nothing to melt, just stone.

He pushes the switch and light floods the room from above… followed by bright cyan droplets.

It’s jelly. Chuchu jelly. Falling from the ceiling. Like before.

His mind races, aches, memory failing him. The sight is familiar but he doens’t remember why, only remembers anger not his own, ferocity he wanted to forget, did forget. Only remembers green.

A sparkling electric cyan chuchu falls from the ceiling with a thud and he stares at the arcs of static pulsing over its gelled surface, as it wiggles and waggles and its eyes roll in its head to look at him. Just stares as it gets closer.

“Link, the gust jar, remember?!” Ezlo shouts.

He ignores the twist forming in his gut, the chill in his spine, and pulls out the gust jar, holding it steady as he circles around the chuchu, sucking the free liquid out from under it until it grows unstable, until its head lurches to the side and falls with a thud. He races over and slashes clearly, quickly, digging jelly out with the flat of his sword from the gaping gash he cut into the gel, runs around the creature and slices it in half, watching with a smile as it oozes out its insides and dies quickly, the gel of its surface disintegrating without insides to hold it solid.

A big chest appears, once the liquid has oozed away, filled the room with a thin film.

From it he pulls a lantern and feels it shimmer through his hands. Magic, it’s magic. He can feel the way it wants to spread warmth into ice, light into dark, spark flames where none exist.

He smiles… and then sees his reflection in the glass of the red lamp. Straight blond hair and wide grey eyes stare at him. That… something seems wrong about that, seems incorrect. Aren’t his eyebrows supposed to be thicker? Flatter? And his eyes are supposed to be green, but he can see how grey they are instead. His freckles look too intense, his nose slightly too wide than what he expects to see. That…

“That’s not my face,” he says softly, wondering, puzzling.

Ezlo makes a noise of confusion. “What are you talking about Link, you’re always looked like this?!”

He shakes his head, feeling... something. Something unravels in his belly, and Link blinks his eyes, holds the lamp he fought hard to obtain and stares at his eyes as his recognition fades in, as his confusion fades away.

Link chuckles. “Ah, sorry,” he mumbles, “the glass must just be weird.”

Ezlo buys it, but Link… Link doesn’t. Something is wrong here, something is truly truly wrong with him.

Link holds the lamp to the ice outside the chuchu’s chamber and feels like his limbs aren’t his own anymore. Not entirely. He walks down the stairwell the ice blocked and wonders what he was thinking.

He moves mechanically as he holds his lamp in one hand and his sword in the other, fighting scissor beetles in dim light, the only thing lighting the room being his lamp and a few small sconces in the middle.

Had he pretended? He wonders as he walks through a maze in darkness, as he slays mulldozers for a small key. Had he pretended to be someone else so hard he’d made it come true, for a little bit? His mind feels blank, yet filled, pages written in invisible ink flipping and flipping in his brain. He knows the letters are there but he can’t read them, can’t understand what’s going on.

He opens a locked door and slides on more ice past worms of fire that light the darkness, over a diagonal bridge of ice to a cramped hallway that bends and twists, until finally he stops in a well lit room where he’s faced with large push blocks, three of them, each too big for him alone to move.

He doesn’t want to split again, he doesn’t want to, his mind is too full already, he can’t handle it, he can’t. There’s no space for another body, another person in here, how could there be another person in his head.

“I was only pretending, I swear,” he whispers, as if trying to convince himself.

It doesn’t work.

“There’s only one Link,” he pleads. “There can’t be another.”

Tears slide down his face and Link slides down a wall, muffling his crying into his cold cold hands.

“Link?” Ezlo asks softly.

“It wasn’t me,” Link says in a near whisper. “It wasn’t me who fought that chuchu for the lamp. It was… there was someone else doing that.”

Ezlo is quiet, too quiet.

“He has green eyes,” Link says and it’s wet, wrecked, broken. “Green eyes and large flat eyebrows and fewer freckles than me. And, and, and…”

Link puts his head between his knees, feels his breaths come too quickly, sees Ezlo touch the floor to keep looking at him.

“I think I made him up, to be… to be the real hero… when…”

Ezlo is still quiet and Link doesn’t want him to be, can’t handle his only support not talking right now.

“When I can’t do it anymore, I think I made him up so he can do it for me, because I just can’t anymore,” Link says whisper quiet and then breaks into sobs.

“Oh, Link,” Ezlo says, voice raw but soft. “Oh, still such a young child.”

Link sobs harder.

“It’s just so much,” he admits, “being the hero. I just… I want someone else to do it… for a little while. So I don’t have to.”

Ezlo sighs. “Ah, Link, dear Link, I’m so sorry,” he whispers. “I’m sorry this is so hard on you. For you.”

Link sniffles until he can’t cry anymore, until his eyes dry up and the puddle between his feet has frozen over, until his mind fades away and then back and away again, until he has no idea how much time has passed.

“I don’t wanna keep going,” Link admits.

“But you must, Link, I’m sorry.”

Link shudders and shivers as he continues to sit on the ground.

He can’t, he won’t. He’s cried too much, it’s not worth it anymore. He’s not…

“I’m not a hero,” he admits and makes such a wrecked sound with his mouth he wonders how it was even possible.

“You are a hero Link,” Ezlo says, “I promise you, lad, that you are a hero. You said so yourself that you’ve saved hyrule. That you’re the Hero of Men.”

Link shakes his head. No. No. Nonononononono. He’s not a hero, he’s not, the only hero here is

He blinks. “H-hello?” He’s somewhere new, remembers only snippets of darkness and flame between the chuchu and now.

Ezlo squawks. “Hello?! What do you mean ‘hello’?!”

“I was… away,” he says, unsure how else to describe it.

Ezlo makes a huffy annoyed sound. “Away?! You were crying, and then just stopped! Now is not the time to play games, Link! There’s an element to get!”

“Of course it isn’t,” he says, rising to his feet, “this is a dungeon. No one plays games in a dungeon. That would be dangerous.”

Ezlo makes a noise that seems aggravated and then falls quiet. Had he upset the minish somehow? He can’t recall. His memories are too foggy for precise details.

How concerning.

But, he has a duty, a job he must do. A princess to rescue. An evil to stop.

He raises his sword and splits, summoning the shade. It, oh, it feels so odd to be in two places at once. Every movement he makes the shade does as well, every twist of his wrist, every step of his foot. He concentrates hard and is fascinated to see only through his shade’s eyes that an arm has moved. It’s remarkable yet utterly normal. It feels like deja vu.

Calmly, he pushes the blocks in the room around, barely even thinking about it as he uncovers the way to the next room.

This room is multi-layered, a meandering bridge of ice crossing the room overhead as more chest-high walls force the ground below to be less a room and more a very snakey hallway. In the middle of the room is another pushblock, just one, stuck behind a large ice lump. Its easy enough to get them both out of his way. But then he ascends some stairs and realizes he’s gonna be getting a very intense leg workout.

A floor of ice, with nine sconces inset into it, all unlit, and a closed door just right there.

Is it a code? He touches the flame lantern to the closest sconce, but nothing happens, no sound, no colour change, nothing.

The flame goes out.

“Oh,” he breathes. He needs to light all of them. In a limited amount of time. While walking on ice. Definitely a leg workout.

He slides by them all, waving the lantern, but every time he gets to the last sconce the first one goes out, forcing him to go around and around in loops, one time, two times, three, four, five… he loses count, just keeps going, sliding on the ice, mind blank of anything except the task, except the unlit sconces. He chases them around the small room until finally, with a heaving breath, he lights all nine and the door clicks open.

Sweat drips from his face, his hands, the heat of the lantern and the sconces is intense, but the rest of the dungeon is cold. He needs to sit, to rest, to let his sweat evaporate or else he’ll be freezing.

He pulls his tunic off and sets himself next to one of the fires, warming himself, watching the sweat pool in his tights. It’s fine, it’s okay. He needs to do this, so he doesn’t freeze.

It’s dirty, I don’t like it because it’s dirty, a voice that doesn’t quite sound like him whispers in the back of his mind.

He shakes his head. No. Not at all. That’s not a thought of his own, that’s…

He pauses. He doesn’t know whose thought it is, if it’s not his.

He breathes out slowly. It doesn’t matter much, if there are other thoughts though. They’re not interfering… much. And he’s fixing the issue anyway. If he really doesn’t like it because he thinks sweat is dirty then he’s still solving the problem by sitting here and heating it away.

It’s fine. Truly.

He’s only mostly convinced by the time he steps foot into the next room.

Water and spiked rollers. So he swims.

Scissor beetles. So he slays.

A crumbling wall. So he bombs.

Madderpillers. Two of them. In a dark room covered in cobwebs. Nothing he can’t handle.

He hits one on the nose, then climbs over it to reach its tail, leaving slice after slice in the throbbing red organ there until it bleeds out, until its body dissintigrates into nothing but smoke.

Then he does it again on the other one until the door to the east opens.

The ice bridge, he’s back to the ice bridge, only now he’s on it. He steps confidently, avoids falling off of the eges to the floor below, avoids the slugs falling from the ceiling above to ambush him.

Stairs, then more stairs, and then

The lever. The lever he must split for. The lever that will release the element… and the octorok.

His heart clenches at the thought and he isn’t sure why. He doesn’t feel afraid.

He and his shade flip the lever and the light shines in, the element’s ice encasement bursting into steam in an instant. But not the octorok…

“Well!” Ezlo pipes up after so long being silent, “that was certainly a lot of trouble, but you did it dear boy! We can take th-”

The octorok’s frozen body shifts.

“What in blazes?!?” The old minish whispers.

The octorok comes to life, steam pouring off of it slowly and water dripping to the floor as its limbs jerk forward.

The Hero feels his heart thud in his chest. He needs to move!

He leaps off of the ledge. The octorok draws close. He runs forward. The octorok sucks in a breath. He reaches out with his left hand, only three yards away, two.

The octorok pulls in air and the element goes with it.

He goes still all over. Link knew this would happen, he knew it. He’d tried to stop it and still…

He shakes his head, shakes it until the thinking stops. That sounded like quitter talk. He isn’t a quitter, he is the hero. The Hero of Men. It’s just an octorok, not something impossible to beat, not a living mountain. He can do this.

The octorok backs up into another room and The Hero follows.

The room is ginourmous and covered in a thin layer of water, and at its centre is the octorok.

The creature turns to face him and its snout scrunches up, then out of it comes a large round stone, brown and rough and spinning.
He rolls out of the way and it smashes against the wall behind him, shards of it spreading everywhere around the room. He lets himself wince, that’s… not ideal.

He rushes at it with his pegasus boots, tries to hit it with his sword, but even the magical blade can’t pierce through the beast’s skin. Oh no.

He retreats to a corner and watches, thinks. The beast is red, but its behind is covered in ingrained plantlife, icy and one very long flower acting like a tail is curled over its back. It spews rocks but they just shatter when he avoids them. He can’t… there’s no way to hurt it.

The octorok turns to face him and he sees its eyes shimmer with blue.

“Oh,” he breathes out. It’s using the element to protect itself. Its using magic… meaning he’ll have to use just a little bit of magic himself, more than just the passive stuff within his blade.

He walks back into the middle of the room and circles around the octorok, shield raised. He feels the magics within him flutter and bubble as he calls them to the surface. His sword has Fire and Earth, but he has Forest and Ice within him. He calls them to his hand, to just drift out of him a little bit, into his shield.

Deflect, he wishes, commands. I need to deflect.

The creature’s large snout, large enough to suck him in whole, quivers and releases another stone and he charges forward, bashing the shield his princess gifted him into it and watches it go flying back at the beast, bump into it.

The stone shatters into sparkles, but it left a mark, left a gash in the beast’s smooth skin, dripping fluid, dripping… water?

The creature sucks in air and Link dodges out of the way, doing his best to avoid being eaten, consumed and shot back out like one of the creature’s stones.

It shoots another stone and The Hero sends it back. Leaves another gash.

The creature sits quietly, seeming to think for a moment… and then black billows out of its snout, filling the room with inky darkness. Goddesses he won’t be able to see!

He pulls out his lantern just in time to see the beast charge, and he rolls just barely out of the way, hears it collide into the wall behind him, hears loose stones fall from the ceiling and crash to the wet floor.

Avoid, he needs to avoid, it’s too dark to think about anything else right now.

He runs into a corner, holds his shield out in front of him and his lantern out beside it. He stands stalwart as he hears the best charge and shoot blindly, just as lost as him. He pants and wait, feels water soak between the stitching of his shoes and get his toes wet.

Slowly, slowly, the darkness dissipates and he gets up again. He needs to defeat the beast before it does that again. It was such a waste of time having to be evasive instead of defensive or offensive.

The Hero charges forward and the best retaliates, shooting another stone, and he slaps it with his shield, watches as it shatters and vaporizes, turning into nothing. Another gash dribbles with fluid that shines strangely, shines like a liquid jewel.

It stops. The beast shivers, skin going from red-orange to red-violet as the gashes drip slower and slower. Its limbs move erratically. It’s panicking, afraid, doesn’t know what’s happening.

Neither does he, so he backs away, holds his shield steady as he watches the gashes freeze over, as shimmering ice covers the beast whole.

The octorok moves its tail out of the way, closes the flower and dangles it away from it sbody as it freezes over, until the transformation is complete.

“Did.. did it lose control of the element’s power?” The Hero asks.

“I… I don’t know, dear boy,” Ezlo answers.

It didnt’ matter much anyway, knowing why. He rolls forward and the beast turns towards him, sucking in air, but he keeps rolling, trying to get behind it. He can’t strike ice, it’s magical, clearly, but maybe… the flower.

The beast turns again and he rolls the other way, moving behind the beast as it tries to spew freezing cold air, makes his way behind it and lifts his lantern to the flowering tail of the octorok.

Fire catches, spreads. Sneaks under the ice covering the beast and it burns. Burns brightly like nothing he’s seen before. The beast goes crazy, crashing wildly into the walls, making the ceiling fall and fall and fall, so he hides again in a corner, shield over his head and watches the madness consume the beast, watches ice form and melt and fire consume, until the octorok is just a shimmering mess of flames in the middle of the room, until the body bursts with power and blue smoke fills the room for a moment until there is nothing but him… and the element.

“Oh goddesses,” he breathes out with relief. He’s done here, he’s done with this cold dreary temple he’s

Link steps forward carefully, unsure how to feel about knowing for sure that someone else was in control. He’d done it on accident, made someone to do his job, but… it feels so isolating, to be… gone. To be unable to know what he’d done, how he’d acted. He can just barely touch at memories of the-hero-with-green-eyes, remembers water and ice and stones flying, but that’s it.

He touches the element, the strange orb-with-an-orb shaped jewel, and his mind is filled with thoughts of quenched thirst, rain after drought, rivers running through forests.

When Link finally, finally, steps out of the temple, the very air seems to darken. And then before him a shimmer, a waver of light, an apparition appears before him. An apparition dressed like a king.

“O Young one…” his voice whispers like wind in leaves, heaves out like heavy sighs.

“You aid the… princess. I was long… ages ago… King Gustaf…”

Link watches as the apparition flickers, his ghostly arm lifting to point at him.

“Find… Royal Valley… Find… wind tribe…”

And then the ghost disappears.

Link feels like something has been left behind though, like the ghost did more than speak, so he pulls out his map and…

There’s a mark.

“E-Ezlo, the ghost… The ghost marked my map.”

“I…” Ezlo chokes, gasps roughly, “that was real?!”

Link nods dumbly.

Ezlo sputters. “If… If it weren’t for that mark I would have thought the whole encounter a dream.”

Link holds up the map. “He said… to find the ‘royal valley’.”

Ezlo is quiet for a moment. “It’s probably where he’s buried, where he can appear for… well longer than he just did, surely. If he can help us with… with the wind tribe, then after you infuse the sword again it must be worth at least going to check. It’s our only lead!”

Link nods and rolls up his map, stuffing it back into its spot in his bag. Hope flickers in his heart. Maybe this adventure does have an end, just looming beyond the horizon.

Chapter Text

Link slides the White Sword into the pedestal at the centre of the elemental sanctuary and watches as once more the elements he’s gathered shoot beams of light and power at the hilt of the blade, making it glow golden and bright. Waves of it pour off of the sword even after the beams have stopped, until it finally glows a solid blue and the light fades, revealing the newly coloured hilt of the elemental sword. The same colour as the water element.

He pulls it out and can tell just by touching it that it’s more powerful, that there’s ore magic imbued. The merged fairy blessing, its purity, has stitched together the elemental energies and the innate minish spellwork imbued into the metal. Slotted them together where the magic had holes just waiting for them. Extra energy has braided together as more protection, more potency.

Just one more, Link thinks, just one .

He raises the sword above him, pulls energy from the air, soaks the blade in it, until

He… they… It’s different this time.

His head aches, his eyes throb, his throat dries. He hurts. It’s so much input.

He opens one set of eyes, then another… then another.

All three of Link’s bodies hit the ground with their knees, the two shades shimmering before collapsing in on themselves, reduced back to dust.

“Did they know?” Link gasps out. “Did your people know it would feel like that, be like that?”

Ezlo makes a rasping sound, but doesn’t reply.

Link curls around himself, trying to remember how many fingers he’s supposed to have, still feels like he has too many, and it burns . Just trying to feel with three bodies had burned .

“I really don’t think I can do it alone anymore,” Link whispers. “Not if it’s just going to get… more.”

Not if, once he has the last element, the sword will split him into four.

He curls more, wants to be smaller, wants to be… different, from this, from this hurt.

“Why couldn’t I have been a minish?” he croaks out. “They’re not heroes, but they still help. I like helping, but this is hurting me .”

“Link…” Ezlo trails off.

Link takes in a shaky breath. “They seem so simple, and yet so happy. Your people. Just helping. I wanna be like them. I wanna be small and happy and helpful. Not… this.”

He feels it down to his very bones, how so very tired he is right now. How wonderful it would be to just be a little helper. He could make shoes, find lost rupees, craft kinstones… he could be happy like that, he thinks. He could be a blacksmith, like Melari, like his grandpa.

“But I have to be hylian! ” he says, voice wet. “I have to be a hero! ”

He sniffles. “And I’d miss my family,” he says, as he realizes how true that is.

Ezlo sighs. “You would, of course you would, dear Link. Your family is wonderful. And I’m sure your princess is too. You’d miss them terribly, child.”

Link sniffles again. “She gave me my shield, won it from a game. I’ll treasure it always. She’s my best friend.”

His heart flutters as he says it.

“I love her,” he whispers. “She’s my favourite person, other than my grandpa, and… I love her so much.”

Ezlo chuckles softly. “Have a crush, dear boy?” he asks.

Link shakes his head. “I… I don’t know. Sometimes, I feel like I should, but… I just… love my best friend. If she could be my sister, or…” he flushes, “someone I could kiss, I guess, that might make me happy, but…”

He lets himself smile, just the smallest bit. “She’ll always be my best friend, and that’s all I need from her, I think. I’ll love her no matter what we are to each other.”

Ezlo chuckles again. “That’s so sweet, Link. Make sure, when we’re done with this, that you tell her. Make sure she knows.”

Link’s mind is filled with images of Zelda’s smile, of her practising speeches and poetry and reciting legends and rules and family trees. Of the sparkle in her eyes as he would listen, as he would listen to her sing and play.

“I think she does.”

There’s a stone, in an underground passage, in north hyrule field. Just like the one in the trilby highlands. Only this one is larger, surely needs three people to push it.

He doesn’t want to, doesn’t want his mind to burn, his body to ache, just from feeling three things at once, but he must. He has to, if he wants to get rid of Vaati. If he wants the princess back.

He holds the white sword steady, readying it’s magic, charging i-

He’s three. He’s three people. He’s so many people.

Six images from six eyes flood his single brain and he feels tears well up. Six fists clench as pain shoots through his spine.

Which spine, which spine, which spine is his? Which spine is the one that hurts?

“I can’t,” he gasps, breaths heaving, chest rising and falling quickly. Panic, he’s panicking. 

“I can’t do it alone,” he cries, tears falling down six cheeks. “I can’t be a hero, not on my own, not like this.”

He gulps, tries to slow his breathing. “I need help,” he whispers. “I need another hero. I can’t do it without another.”

His brain hurts so much. Tears drip from his chin.

“Please.”

His shoulders shake.

“Please, I know you’re there.”

His knees wobble.

“I… I need you.”

His… one of his feet slip. How many feet, how many feet does he have, he can’t remember. He can’t remember.

“Don’t leave me alone, please.”

His skull is splitting. He feels like his chest is being pulled open, his heart is beating too fast.

“I just… I want there to be another hero.”

His brain cascades, like falling stones. Rearranges. Reorganizes.

“Please,” he says again, desperate.
“Another hero?” his mouth says, all of his mouths say.

Link falls to the ground, his shades dissipating, and he sobs. He can’t stop it, can’t help it.

“I knew it,” he whispers, moist and wrecked. “I knew you were there.”

His hand lifts without him telling it to, swiping at his cheek, wiping the tears away.

“So brave,” the hero says, “knowing when to ask for help.”

“I’m not,” Link sobs. “I-I not brave. I made you because I’m not brave.”

“Why are you still here, why are you still trying?” the hero asks.

Link is quiet for a few seconds, doesn’t know how to answer that, can’t answer that. He just keeps crying.

“I don’t know,” Link whispers.

He feels a smile, a happiness, in the back of his head. “Then keep going Hero of Men,” the hero says. “I’ll be here if you need to take a break.”

Link’s tears fall faster. “You… y-y-you need a name.”

“Think of one for me.”

He thinks of green eyes, of the green tunic of the goddess’s chosen hero, of his own green tunic. Of the green headband he still wears because it’s comfortable and feels so nice pressing against his skin.

“Okay,” he whispers.

There is silence for several long moments as Link catches his breath, as the green hero breathes in and out.

“You weren’t joking,” Ezlo says, awed. “You… you really have someone else in your head.”

Link laughs, laughs until his chest hurts, until he can’t breath again. Until it turns into crying again.

“I want to be angry at you,” Link whispers after, still on the ground. “But I can’t. I wouldn’t have believed myself either.”

Link gets up, moves the limbs he knows he shares with another, and lifts his sword.

The royal valley is dim and chilly and the trees all look dead. The very ground is purple with darkness and death. Ghostly ghinis float about, trying to get their long tails wrapped around his body, lick away his life force with their tongues. Red crows with glares like thunder stare him down, eyes focused on his rupee pouch.

“Why did king Gustaf want to be buried here? ” Link asks. “It’s so… creepy.

Ezlo shudders in agreement. “Perhaps it didn’t look like this when he made the decision.”

Link looks around, tries to imagine flowers and greenery. “Maybe…”

He holds his lantern closer as the trees get denser, until he’s surrounded by the empty trunks and gnarled branches. Holds it as the dimness fades to darkness and the unknown faces him.

“I’m absolutely gonna hate the dark when this is over,” Link mumbles.

The trees twist and the path beneath him fades out until he can barely see it anymore.

“I don’t like it here,” Link says.

The path swerves north, then west, then north, then east, then north again. Everything blends together except for the faint impression of feet from long ago on the grass.

And then the trees suddenly stop, warped and beaten fences replacing them, snaking around wildly as if trying to confuse people. It certainly confuses him.

The gravekeeper, in his little house by the gate, doesn’t question why Link wants to visit the grave of a long-dead king. Just hands him the key and sends him on his way.

One of the pesky crows tries to steal it, but Link holds it tight. He’ll return it when he’s done.

King Gustaf’s grave is large, adorned with the emblem of the Triforce and surrounded by candles. It stands taller than him, than even two fully grown men, listing the royal’s deeds for his kingdom and his family who had buried him. And under that is something else, written in another language. Written in the minish language.

Fu popoi ci. The wind speaks within.

“The wind... speaks within?” Link reads in a whisper. “Am I going to have to… push the grave open?”

Ezlo is quiet. The hero is quiet.

“I’ll… I have to split to do it,” Link says, stutters.

You can do it , the hero thinks at him.

Link… might believe him.

He lifts the White Sword and feels magic sink into the blade, feels his skin grow tight and his body grow fuzzy at the edges. The blade sparkl-

Link’s body burns, but he can do this. He has to. He reaches out, two of his hands holding the sides of the tombstone, while his four others touch the face of it, digging into the text and pushing.

The grave slides and Link’s feet dip down onto stairs just peeking at a reveal. He pushes more, feels his legs strain, his shoulders resist. His whole body is a taught string, a page ready to tear from a book.

He takes another step, another. He sinks deeper as his shades stay above and his grip grows weaker. His mind is a void, a gap where the only thought is forward , is onward , is push .

The tomb falls of out his reach as he descends too far to keep pushing and then his shades meet resistance, as the stone clicks against what must be a lip somewhere behind it. It’s open.

The shades dissipate and Link collapses onto the steps, sweat dripping from his face, his hair. It drips from his eyelashes and his nose and elbows and down his knees. His face is hot and he pants roughly, his lungs feeling too small. He’d done three people’s worth of effort and he can’t suck in enough air for his brain to realize he only has one body again.

His vision goes fuzzy at the edges and Link let’s go.

“Catch me,” he whispers. Surely the green-eyed hero will be able to breathe better than him.

His head slides against the wall of the stairwell and Link is out. The hero breathes in deeply, filling his shared lungs with air he desperately needs to power his exhausted body, the body gifted to him by Link.

His mind stutters, but stays. He’s okay, their okay. He’s taking care of their body. Taking care of Link. He’s helping.

“Ezlo?” the hero pants.

“Link?” the hat asks.

The hero shakes his head. “He passed out, went to sleep. Not enough air. He wanted me to take over.”

Ezlo hums. “You need a name.”

The hero chuckles.

Ezlo is quiet, contemplative.

The hero sighs and stands on shaky legs. “I think, despite the name, he still thinks of me as ‘the hero’.”

Ezlo barks out a laugh. “Of course he does!”

The hero smiles. “You love him, don’t you?” he asks as he descends the stairs into the crypt.

Ezlo hums but doesn’t reply.

The hero smiles wider. What a telling answer.

“It’s okay, he loves you too. You’ve been kinder lately. I can see some of his memories.”

Ezlo huffs. “He’s been crying, I can’t be mean to a child with tears on his face.”

There’s a light up ahead and the hero pauses, steps slower, creeps forward to the end of the stairway.

There’s two gibdos, one that seems to have dormant bombs stuffed into its bandages, and another with a key glinting in the strange light from where it sits on the other’s neck.

The hero pulls out their lantern. Has a memory of Link reading about them being Stalfos wrapped in enchanted bandages. Easy to burn.

He rolls and touches the lantern to one gibdo, then the other, then rolls back to the stairway and swaps the lantern for the cane of pacci, swinging it the stalfos and watching with satisfaction as their skulls go flying up and breaking on the floor, the remaining skeletons shivering and staggering for several seconds before collapsing.

Nothing is left except for the miraculously untouched bombs and the small key.

“You… are quite good, hero,” Ezlo says after a moment of stunned silence.

The hero tucks the cane back into his pack and shrugs. “I’m just Link without fear. I’m his courage unbounded… I think.”

Ezlo chuckles. “And he says he isn’t a hero, huh?”

The Hero smiles and steps into the next room. “I have… been trying to stay out of his way. I think that… I think he’s too affected to realize how good he really is. He’s just… a kid.”

Ezlo makes a sound. “And you’re not?”

The hero stops before he touches the locked door. That…

Something feels changed. Different. Realized.

The hero touches his face. No, Link’s face. Their face.

They’re kids. Just kids. No wonder Link is so… that. So… emotional.

“Oh,” he breathes out.

“Hero?” Ezlo asks.

The hero takes in a quiet breath. “Do… do you think…”

“Hero?” there’s concern there, such clear concern. He… he’s so thirsty for it.

“Would,” a tiny gasp, nearly a hiccup, “ would his grandfather like me? Care for me? I… I’m… I’m sort of his kid too.”

The hero’s, no, Link’s chest constricts. Their shared heart pounding just a little faster as the hero waits for his answer.

Ezlo sighs softly. “Ah, just as silly as Link, dear child. Why would he not?”

The hero breathes out softly.

“Ah, good. That… That’s good.”

The hero doesn’t move for a long moment. He has opportunity here, to ask questions without Link knowing, to ask the things that bother him, that make him question about their shared existence.

“What will our hero title be this time?” he asks instead as he finally pushes through the door.

“What do you want it to be?”

The hero looks down at his hands, at the sword in his grasp. The sword made from the picori blade. The sword given to him by the minish . The sword broken and reforged by minish people. Given light by minish relics. He thinks of the minish on his hood, of the minish artifact still dwelling inside princess Zelda. Of the minish bow and the gust jar and the pegasus boots halfway made by minish hands. Of the power bracelets and the flippers and the flame lantern. Of the Wind Tribe and their alliance with the minish long ago.

“I have an idea,” he says, instead of any of what he’s been thinking. “An idea I think Link will love.”

Ezlo makes an interested noise.

The hero smiles. “We should be called ‘the hero of the minish’.”

Ezlo makes a sound so wounded, so touched, that it makes the hero’s heart ache.

The hero steps into the next room, which has chest high walls splitting it in three. There’s a ripped and torn wine-red carpet leading to two statues holding triforces, with two keyholed blocks preventing him passage between them.

He moves to the west section first, where tall bars mark three thin hallways down the room, the flooring under them shining with a faint rainbow light that makes the hero think of magic… or the absence of magic. It feels… strange, when he steps there.

There are buttons, three of them. One in each barred hallway, but they’re close enough that maybe he can split through the bars. He lifts the sword and

Nothing. No power, no magic. Nothing gathers.

He sheaths the white sword and sinks to his knees, touching the flooring with his left hand.

“It’s… it’s resisting magic. It’s preventing me from using magic to solve this puzzle.”

The light is beautiful, iridescent and shifting, and it feels so sticky against his skin. It’s pulling, but only a little, unable to tear away the enchantments of his boots, of his grip ring, of his bracelets. It merely… prevents them from gathering magic to fuel their effects. Is doing the same thing to the white sword.

“I can’t split while on this flooring,” he gasps, “I have to… to get them to walk to the buttons before the flooring sucks the magic out of them. I have a time limit.”

Did the king know, did Gustaf know that someone would be coming with this exact power? How? He knows of no prophecy of a hero who can split. Unless… it was silenced to keep it safe.

He has so many questions. Questions that the answers to would make Link cry. Might make him cry.

He rushes to the western third of the room and finds the same puzzle, the same flooring, but this time it’s mobile, platforms crossing over dark gaps and the hero is so glad Link can’t see it. He’d be afraid of the darkness below.

“My most useful ability, taken from me,” he says out loud. “What a crafty king. We’ll have to look him up in the library later.”

He slides the second key into the block and watches it turn to dust before him, blowing away on invisible wind.

He descends down the next set of stairs and the walls go from cobbled and grey to a deep blue brickwork, shallow pools of water sitting upon the floor. Holy maybe? To turn away untoward adventures looking to graverob? He’s not sure.

A twinge sits in his brain as he slices at the snakes charging from deeper in the chajmber and the hero realizes that Link is awake again. Thank goodness.

“Hello, Link, nice to see you again,” he jokes.

He feels the frown Link gives him. “You’re not funny.”

The hero laughs. “I can try to be!”

Link sighs. “Please don’t.”

The hero smiles. “I’m gonna try twice as hard now. You can’t stop me!”

Link brings their face to their palms. “What did I miss?”

The hero moves their feet forward, forces their eyes up to wander around the room, waiting for something else from this strangely empty room.

“Just some anti-magic, prevented splitting.”

Link is quiet, and then he takes over their feet, their steps stumbling only the tiniest bit.

“He picked out your hero title,” Ezlo says calmly.

Link stops halfway down the next staircase. “What is it?”

The hero stretches their mouth into a smile. “The Hero of the Minish.”

Their heart thuds, tears gather in their eyes. “Oh. Oh, it… it’s perfect. Minish. Heck.”

A hand goes up to cover their mouth and Link isn’t sure if he or Green moved it.

“I’m gonna ask grandpa to give me a middle name,” Link whispers into their fingers. “‘O-rawn’, O-D-H-R-A-N, i-it mean-”

“Little pale green one,” Green interrupts.

Link nods. “Your name is Green,” he says, shaky. Their fingers aren’t steady against their mouth.

Green licks at their lips, a little pop-click as their tongue darts back inside.

“Did you look it up a-”

“At the library?” Link nods.

Their mouth stretches even wider, fingers get even shakier, but they’re laughing, laughing together.

They complete the descent, enter a room with sconces in each corner and a large door in front of them. They move automatically, bring their lamp to the sconces with shaky hands, hands that shake because they’re not sure how to hold it right, how to keep it steady with both of them here, but they hold it tightly. Don’t let it slip.

Gibdos appear in a cloud of smoke and Link pushes them into a roll, grabs at the cane of pacci with his left hand as Green holds the lantern to their bandages. Green turns their head to the next one and Link rolls again, sends the cane’s magic flying at the burning gibdo, not letting it go down in flame completely before sending its skull into the air to shatter on the ground. He rolls to the door and sends magic flying again without even looking at the second burning gibdo, just trusts that their body is angled right.

Piles of dust greet Green when he opens his eyes and the door behind them clicks, then thuds open.

Link turns them around and stumbles, knees crashing to the stone. The legs are shaking. They won’t stop.

“My head hurts,” he mumbles, his tongue not working right. Green had tried to talk, he could feel it. Had tried to ask him if he was okay. But Link was faster.

Green reaches out to the doorway, grasping tightly with fingers that no longer shake.

“You’re okay,” Green says softly, moves their misbehaving tongue. “We’re okay.”

Link takes in a deep breath and stands on shaking feet. They’re okay. They worked together, this once. They’re okay. They’re together, he’s a hero and he’s not alone and he’s not a hero alone.

“E-Ezlo?” Link stutters as he stumbles their way into the deepest room of the crypt.

“Yes, dear boy?”

Link puts on a smile, even though the old minish can see it, surely.

“Where do you live, normally? Is it the minish realm? Where Melari came from?”

The room has triforces on its walls, triforces that glow in deep blue. The floor has the crest of the royal family, a bird with a triforce, adorned on it. In the middle of the room is a raised platform with another tombstone, this time with a triforce in gold emblazoned on it.

“I live in the minish realm, yes. I live quite close to the sanctuary, actually.”

“Will you visit, when this is over? I want to hear more stories of the minish. I wanna read their books, now that I can.”

Link steps up to the grave and Ezlo laughs joyously. “Of course, dear boy, anything for you.”

Link reaches out, presses his hand to the stone, and gustaf appears, form just as wavering as it had been at lake hylia.

“O young one… Hero who has fought his way here, proven himself… I grant you this…”

A slot opens on the grave and out pops a golden kinstone, marked with a crown one one side, and a triforce on the other where normally there was a clover. Link grabs at it frantically.

“Seek… the source of the flow… and you will find my allies there. The people my queen came from. The path will open… for you… for the one hyrule needs.”

Link stares up at the ghost, wondering why he has to be so cryptic. He hopes his plea, his confusion, doesn’t show on h-, their face.

“Thank you, King Gustaf,” he says, instead of anything disrespectful.

Gustaf’s ghost smiles, the room floods white, and suddenly they are outside. Back in the graveyard of the royal valley.

“I… I guess we find the source of the flow then…” Link mumbles, still holding the golden kinstone in his hands.

Chapter Text

He goes home first. He has to. He has people who need to be aware that Green even exists .

“Grandpa?” He calls as he slides through the door.

The sound of hammering in the other room stops. “Link?”

Grandpa Smith enters the main room and Link puts on a smile, nerves flooding through both him and Green.

“I… I want you to… to meet someone…”

Grandpa’s eyes dart to Ezlo and then back. “Who… is it that you want me to meet, Link?”

Green takes in a breath. "M-my name is Green," he says softly.

Grandpa blinks and then his eyes dart back up to Ezlo.

“Is he joking?” he asks, sounding so confused.

Link feels Ezlo shake his head, the edges of their hood wobbling.

“No, he’s not joking, sir… Link seems to… to have someone else in his head. Someone they’ve decided together to name ‘Green’.”

Link swallows some of their nerves. “He’s been… worried, that you won’t… won’t accept him as your grandson as well.”

Grandpa’s face falls and Link knows they’ve convinced him. He has never doubted his grandfather’s love, not once.

“Green, you said?” Grandpa asks as he takes a step closer, arms opening for a hug.

Green nods and Link steps forward, fingers ghosting over their grandfather’s arms.

"It’s a stupid name, but… Link gave it to me. When… when I… was ‘born’, I guess, I thought I had green eyes, so…"

Grandpa wraps them in a hug and soft tears drip down their cheeks.

“It’s a lovely name,” Grandpa tells them.

Link sniffles and smiles. “I… I want Odhran as a middle name, in the town records… Because Green can’t…” he trails off, doesn’t know how to finish that sentence.

Grandpa hugs them tighter. “I’ll see what I can do, my boy. My boys.”

Link bursts into tears, but Green smiles, smiles so brightly. It’s worth it, crying, for that.

“Your aunt Arba dropped by yesterday with some cake. There’s still a slice left if you boys w-”

“Please,” Link whispers.

Grandpa smiles and reaches under their hood to ruffle their hair. They’re happy, so happy.

Link takes the path through north hyrule field to get to veil falls, the mountain whose snowmelt and rainfall fuels all the rivers in hyrule. The ‘source of the flow’ if you will. He could free-climb the mountain if he wanted—he has his grip ring after all—but he doesn’t think that will be necessary, he has Gustaf’s kinstone for a reason. There’s likely a secret passage somewhere that will lead to where he needs to go. He just has to find it.

Unfortunately, Link actually does have to freeclimb over most of the mountain, because the matching half of Gustaf’s Kinstone was embedded into a stone tablet at the peak! At the peak!! He gets it, it’s about the wind people, who went to the skies and all that, but come on! It didn’t need to be there of all places.

“This adventure is stupid,” Link grumbles as he slides the golden kinstone into the stone, the two halves sparkling and releasing a tiny wave of magic.

"You only say that because you want it to be easy," Green comments. "Didn’t the Goddess’s chosen hero have to face difficult and tedious tasks."

Link wants to glare at Green, but Green is only inside his head.

“The goddess’s chosen hero was a teenager. We’re not even to double-digits yet.”

He feels Green’s embarrassment flood through them. Ah, good.

“He has a point there, dear boy,” Ezlo chimes in.

Link smiles wide and satisfied.

Green grumbles with their tongue and Link feels like victory as the tablet before them splits in two, revealing a stairway to a higher platform where a giant hecking tornado rests.

Link takes shaky steps upwards. “I’m glad I got aunt Arba to redo the stitching on Ezlo, I don’t think mine would have withstood these winds.”

Ezlo squawks. “And what exactly does that meeeeee-

Ezlo is interrupted by Link stepping into the whirlwind, air collecting in his hood and launching them up into the sky like a cannonball straight upwards. Up, up, up to the clouds where Link rolls forwards out of the wind and onto the safety of oh-golden-goddesses that’s not land that’s clouds!
Link screams, Ezlo screams, Green screams! There’s screaming everywhere, the very air around them is death, they

They’re fine. They’re laying face first on soft white fluffy clouds and they’re fine.

“A-a-am I still alive?” Ezlo asks, sounding dazed and nauseated.

Link turns around and loses his lunch over the edge of the clouds, completely agreeing with the sentiment.

“I’m puking to much to be dead, I think,” Link says.

There’s silence for a moment.

“Never do that again, Link.”

Link breathes roughly, throat burning from the stomach acid and nods. “You don’t… have to tell… me twice.”

He takes a moment to catch his breath and then looks up, catching sight of a tall towering building of what appeared to be sandstone. Covered in red flags hanging from ropes and surrounded by tiny little pinwheels blowing in the gentle breeze.

“There’s no what this isn’t the home of the wind tribe,” Link says. “In fact, I’ll eat my headband if it isn’t.”

Ezlo makes a thoughtful hum as he draws close to the entrance. “I think I’d have to be insane to take that bet, so I won’t. I don’t want you trying to eat cloth anyway, might give me the spooks!”

Link giggles, amused.

The moment he steps inside a tall red-haired woman in blue robes notices him and rushes over.

“A visitor?” She exclaims. “We haven’t had a visitor in ages! Not since King Gustaf said his goodbye. You must surely be a purehearted one to be able to walk upon the clouds on which we make our home. Just who might you be, child?”

Link blinks, feeling like something is … off. The wind people can’t really be this friendly, right?

“I’m Link, the Hero of Men, and the bird looking thing attached to my hood is the minish sage Ezlo. He’s been cursed.”

“How do you do?” Ezlo greets.

The woman’s eyes widen. “Minish?” she asks, covering her mouth with a dainty little hand. “Goodness, it’s been even longer since we’ve had minish here! And you say he’s cursed? Oh, how terrible! I must take you to Siroc right away.”

And without bothering to ask Link any other questions, the woman—who hadn’t even given her name—whisks Link up to the forth floor of the building, where a very elderly looking lady with hair that had long ago faded from red to pink sits, looking out the window as if in thought.

“My lady Siroc, my lady, there is a cursed Minish here, just like you said the winds told you would happen!”

“The winds… told her?” Link questions under his breath.

The woman turns and her aged eyes stare him down. They look far too wide to be comfortable, as if she suffers from constantly dry irises.

“A cursed minish, you say? Which one is the minish? You have brought me a boy and a hat.” She then smiles wide and toothy, as if she’d told a joke.

“Ma’am, I am not a hat!” Ezlo yelps. “I am a respected minish elder!”

Siroc laughs, airy and thin. “Oh, I know, sir craftsman, I know. The winds tell me of many things. Such as the arrival of a hylian hero from the surface…” her eyes shift to Link and then back to Ezlo, “and his minish companion. I even know of your precious princess Zelda and what has befallen her at the hands of the evil Vaati.”

Link gulps. “You sure know a lot, ma’am.”

She nods. “Indeed… but I do not know everything. There is only so much wind, and so much time. I am not privy to every secret. But I know your quest, Hero of Men.” her smile turns almost cruel. “And the wind tribe is not just going to hand over our element lightly. The minish entrusted us long ago, ages and ages and then an age before that, to protect it. Even one so clearly pure of heart to stand before me on these clouds can not be trusted without trial, Hero.”

Link feels his heart constrict. “W-w-why not.”

“Because the Palace of Winds is a sacred place, child, and only those who stand our people’s trials can enter.”

Link stares. But why? Why must I do more to prove myself? Am I not good enough?!

The woman frowns at his silence. “We test you to protect you, child. The winds are fickle, the skies unstable. The trial will test you against every wind, every possible cloud, and assure us you will not be felled by the winds that guard our Palace of Winds. They are unkind, even to those of our windy blood, and only those that pass our trial are known to enter unscathed. You, without that blood, must pass this trial and then be given a token of protection. A tiny enchantment that will keep you from being unfairly buffetted by the Palace’s stormy gales.”

Oh.

“W-what is the token?” he asks, his anger deflating without a target, even as it sits restless in his belly still.

Siroc smiles. “You will find out soon enough, boy.”

Five winds flow over hyrule, the wind people had said. Wild, cool, warm, dry, and wet. You must seek each of them and discover their favour towards you. Only they who is favoured by all winds may pass into the palace unscathed.

Link isn’t sure what he’s supposed to do once he has their favour, what else he’s supposed to do other than just walk around in the clouds for a bit, but he goes anyway. There’s not much else he can do right now, even if the very idea makes him miffed, makes him angry.

Literal invisible forces are in his way right now and he feels sick with it, with how much distate is filling his belly, his throat. So he stays silent, fuming. If he opens his mouth all that will fall out is sickness, darkness, anger and vitriol.

You are lucky, the wind tribe had said, that our home lies at the crossroads of the five winds. We had built it there, for their equalled favour, that they might not fail us and the secrets we exchange with them.

His belly flops, icky and full of slime and he hates it, hates them, hates this useless trial, hates the way the empty sky sits below him, so intimidating. So haunting.

The wild wind is surprisingly close by, sitting like a ghost upon a red cloud.

“Child,” it greets him, a crown of thunder upon its head.

Link doesn’t talk, can’t talk, doesn’t want to spit poison at it. He just bows, sarcasm in his gaze as he does it.

Green opens their mouth. "Oh, wild wind, we are tasked by the wind tribe to know the favour of the winds, so we may enter the palace and obtain the wind element."

The wind blinks slowly, solemn and calm despite its name, its title, its duty.

It opens its hand and tosses a small golden emblem. It looks almost like a kinstone, but it’s not. It’s larger, has a symbol of a whirlwind upon it, lightning upon the reverse.

“What wild temperament you have, silent one,” it says and Link feels sick, sicker. Feels looked into, pried open.

“Thank you,” he rasps out.

It holds out an arm and a path of red clouds appears, leading to a red whirlwind. “I think you will find my siblings far less agreeable, even if they already favour you, wild child. Be careful.”

Link runs.

The warm wind sits on an orange cloud and has a crown of leaves, just tinged brown at the edges.

It summons a lakitu for Link to defeat, its balls of lightning falling from its yellow hands like water from a raincloud, but Link remains calm. Forces it upon himself. Pulls out the gust jar to remove the cloud the creature sits upon until it falls into the empty abyss of sky below.

The warm wind does not smile, but clasps his hand when it gands him its emblem, this one marked with a leaf.

It does not speak, merely points with its arm onwards and Link goes looking again.

The cool wind is on a cyan cloud and crowned with ice. Its trial of combat is a horde of cloud piranhas, their tall dorsal fins poking out of the fluffy whiteness as they circle him. Makes him think of sharks, a creature he’d once read about long ago.

They leap out of the clouds to try and bite at him, but he steps back, swings his body away to dodge them, glad they aren’t all trying to leap at once. On a whim he pulls out the cane of pacci and points it at one piranha still in the clouds and watches it flop onto its side above the surface.

Link takes no satisfaction in slaying the strange fish creatures. He just waits and takes the whirlwind-snowflake emblem from the wind and presses on.

The wet wind is crowned with water somehow held in a solid shape, sitting upon a blue cloud, and asks him to navigate a maze of whirlwinds and platforms, two levels of cloudy platforms blocked from each other either by abyss or thick blue cloud walls.

Link hates it, has to pull out some spare paper to draw a map just to make sense of it. It makes his brain hurt, but he doesn’t want to rely on Green for this. He wants to just get the task done so his anger can burn out on its own. So he can stop and rest and eat some food, listen to Ezlo tell him a fairy tale before he goes to sleep, his last sleep before the palace.

But he still has one more wind to meet after this.

The dry wind is crowned with sand and sits on a yellow cloud.

It stares and stares and stares, unblinking at him.

“You have my favour,” it says after several long minutes of Link holding his breath, of being surrounded by nothing, not even air, his lungs aching from the lack. From the sudden rush of air back to him.

Frustrated tears gather in his eyes, but he does not cry, not until he’s back to the home of the wind tribe with the five emblems. Not until he’s alone in a spare bed with only Green and Ezlo to hear him.

He doesn’t cry until after the wind tribe has pierced his ear and hung an enchanted minish feather from the hole, until his blood has clotted and his anger cooled.

He cries because it hurt so much, this whole day, this whole task. And he still has to do more. Still has to actually get the wind element from the palace.

"It will be over soon, Link, do not worry," Green tries to soothe him. "You have done so well."

Link doesn’t blame him when it doesn’t work. He didn’t expect it to.

He cries until he falls asleep, until he wakes with reddened eyes blinking away the morning sun.

Chapter Text

Link is fed a meal by the wind tribe, something hearty and filled with bird meat. As he passes back to the room he’d slept in before he happens to peek inside another of the bedrooms and sees a sick older man, face blue with illness, lying in one of the beds.

“What’s wrong with him?” Link asks.

The woman tending to him, Gale, if he remembered right, turned a sad smile.

“We don’t know. It’s not a normal illness. We think dear old Gregal here might be cursed.”

Link frowns. That’s worrying. That’s bad. He wants to help. He needs to help.

Link reaches out and grasps Gregal’s wrist gently in his hands and feels . Feels for anything that might be amiss.

He counts under his breath, two, four, seven, ten… The man’s heart is beating slow, but his body is warm. He’s mumbling out whispers of words, fragments that don’t sound like language even if he leans in close.

“Has he been eating? Drinking? My aunt makes me soup when I’m sick.”

The woman shakes her head. “Doesn’t help. He just keeps getting worse. He’s been like this for weeks.”

Link frowns harder. Weeks. Too many days, too much time. Gregal should be telling stories, painting pictures, carving wood, making something people will remember, but instead he’s dying.

Link laces a thread of the dragonfly fairy’s forest blessing into his touch and suddenly he feels cold. Intensely cold. The world darkens and the air grows thick. Sick. Breathing becomes like trying to drink honey. Is… is this what Gregal feels?

“He can’t breath,” Link gasps out. “Everything is dark and empty around him.”

His eyes feel unseeing, seeing beyond. Something is wrong, very wrong.

Link looks up and there’s a specter hovering over Gregal’s form. A frowning face with a tail like a comet, smoke pouring off of it in waves and billows.

“He’s being haunted,” Link manages to say before he forces his magic out .

He’s lightheaded, chest aching and eyes wet. His mouth is dry though, tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth.

“There’s a ghost,” he repeats hollowly.

Gale’s hands are hovering over his shoulders, concern clear on her face. So clear, so plain, so welcome. Very few people are so openly expressive like the wind tribe.

“What did you do, Hero?” she asks.

Link pants a bit, trying to catch his breath. “I… I was blessed by some great fairies awhile ago. I’m just… Just a little bit magic,” he mumbles as he sits down on the ground.

The woman’s concern doesn’t leave her face. “What did it look like, the ghost?”

Link frowns, tries to remember, but his mind is like pudding. “A… a face, no nose… I think. Had a tail… like a falling star.” He remembers nothing else but stuffing darkness. “It was choking him.”

“How’d you know your magic would work?” she asks.

Link smiles. “I didn’t, I just guessed. I’ve only ever used it to make myself warm before.”

“He’s a goddess-damned prodigy,” Ezlo huffs, sounding both pleased and grumpy at the same time. “Would make a fine healer one day.”

Link brings his hands to his chest and feels warm.

“Can he be helped now?” He asks.

The woman smiles. “Yes, dear hero, I think he can.”

Link smiles and leaves. He’s done what he came to do. Now he has to go do what he actually came here to do.

There’s another whirlwind tornado on top of the wind tribe’s home. Birds sing, breezes clash, the air screams, and Link is sent high up again, launched into the sphere of wind that surrounds the wind tribe’s palace.

The first thing he notices is that it’s carpeted. Not on the inside, because he’s not there, but on the outside. There are layers and layers of platforms around the central building and this one he’s landed on has carpet. Carpet!

“I know it’s a sacred place, but why would they put carpet here?” Link asks. “The monsters are just going to wreck it.”

He can see where it’s fraying and tearing already.

Link shakes his, their, head. He needs to focus.

He looks up and sees a column of wind stretching up the whole height of the building. It looks like if he even tried to enter from outside it would push him away. Meaning he’ll have to climb up all the way from the outside and find another way in from the top. Probably. Maybe.

“This is going to be a long dungeon, isn’t it.”

“Of course it is, it’s the last one,” Green says.

Link ignores the thought of not knowing where Vaati is. He grabs all his wayward emotions, packs them into a box and shoves them to the back his mind. He and Green can deal with all of that later, once they have the element. Right now getting it is the only thing that matters. Not Vaati, not feelings, nothing. Just the element.

Link breathes in and out slowly. “Our final trial on our magnificent journey.”

Ezlo makes an intrigued sound as Link steps forward, onward. “Feeling wordy today, are you?”

Link gulps down his nerves, pats out his anxieties. “Words, proper descriptions, will help me feel better, I think. Defining my next steps will turn them into tasks instead of fears.”

There is quiet for a moment as Link approaches a coloured orb, translucent cloudy red, next to a bridge that doesn’t make it all the way to the next platform. Hitting it extends the bridge after the orb changes colour to a luminent blue.

“How much time have you spent reading the dictionary?” Ezlo asks.

Link doesn’t answer. Doesn’t want to answer that all the free time not spent with Leon and Arba or Swiftblade or Zelda or his grandpa was spent at the library, reading, reading, reading. Grabbing whatever he could reach off of the shelves and reading stories of love, reading up on old histories, reading up on science and battle tactics, reading the goddesses damned dictionary when he felt like he’d run out of other books he could enjoy. Doesn’t say that he locked all that knowledge away because he’s already such a lonely kid. No one at the funday school wanted to talk to the kid with the big words. With the big mouth. With the temper and the tears.

“An appropriate amount,” he lies as he rolls past some peahats, as he ignores memories of Grandpa having to homeschool him. He ends up on a platform so very close to the column of wind, just enough for his hood to start dancing in the wind. From here he can see a platform in the wind, but it’s far away, even if he tried jumping from here he’d just end up falling to his doom, minutes spent whistling through the wind until he landed and died. Not worth it. Never worth it.

The next orb isn’t on this platform, it’s blocked off and on the next one. He can’t hit it with an arrow from here so he throws his boomerang, now magically upgraded thanks to… eugh, Tingle and his brothers of all people. He moves his hand, the magically linked glove on it directing the boomerang to strike the orb and extend the bridge to the next platform.

There’s a large push block here and Link clenches his fist around the white sword’s grip.

“Can we do a shorter split this time?” he asks. “I think to get past it we only require the block to be moved about a single stride.”

Green chuckles. “Only one step? I think we can do that.”

Link closes his eyes and lifts the sw-

Everything aches. But he endures it. He has Green here to help. He focusses only on their six legs, striding forward while Green lifts their hands for them. He feels the texture of stone on his palms and he pushes, pushing forward with his feet as sweat already starts dripping down his face.

The block grinds on the floor, but it moves, shoved back a single pace and Link dismisses the shades, feeling like heat and pressure has built up behind his eyes.

“Short… short works well,” Link pants for a few seconds before standing tall again.

They’re right up against the outer wall of the palace, but there’s no door, only a moving platform to the north sliding under floating walls. They must be swift to avoid being swept to the yearning void below.

Dont think about it , Link orders himself. Don’t think about falling .

“I can’t keep calling us ‘them’,” Link forces himself to say. “‘Our body’, ‘our hands’, ‘our heart’, ‘our head’… it feels wrong.”

“It’s your body though,” Green reminds him.

Link scowls. “You’re in here as well. Calling it ‘my body’ is… no. We share it. We’re in here together.”

He feels Green’s happiness bloom into existence. “Perhaps you need a new name then, Link, and… ‘the body’ can stay as Link. It’s what links us after all”

Not-Link wants to hit him. “That was really really bad,” he says, deadpan and unimpressed.

Green shrugs the shoulders. “I told you, I’m gonna make jokes.”

Not-Link slides Link towards the edge of the platform, towards the moving one. “I will throw us off,” he threatens, not serious in the lsightest despite his tone.

Green laughs, even as Ezlo shouts in alarm.

“Think of a name, Not-Link,” Green suggests, “and I’ll handle the dungeon, yeah?”

Not-Link shrugs, then nods, and Green slides Link onto the moving platform.

“You boys are so strange,” Ezlo says as Green slides and rolls his way around the walls scraping against the moving platform’s surface.

“Oh, yeah, and a talking hat that’s really an old man isn’t?” Green playfully snarks.

Ezlo is quiet for an extended moment. “Perhaps,” he eventually says, once they’re on safe ground.

There are a few floating clouds sitting in a column reaching upwards, but they start about two people’s worth of height off of the ground, the same distance between each. There’s no way to reach them right now. No, instead, progress lies to the south and another—currently unextended—bridge and an orb switch sitting on the next platform over.

Green throws the boomerang—its best to be conservative with arrows right now, the palace is huge and enemies surely plentiful inside—and strikes the switch, running over to the platform the the spikes sticking out of it.

A spiked roller comes his way and Green takes half a step back onto the bridge into safety and rolls quickly to his right. He can see the next platform, over to the west, bridge already extended, but the platform beyond it to the north isn’t connected and there’s only one orb in this region. Blocked on the west side by a medium wall.

Green runs to the west platform and throws the boomerang behind him as he does. It strikes the orb the moment his feet touch the next platform and Green smiles. How efficient!

The final platform—sitting just west of the one with the clouds but no bridge connecting them— is empty except for spikes and an emblem of a… Manta ray? Maybe? Emblazoned in the centre. Green steps forward once to get a closer look and the edges of the platforms rise up, spires protruding and caging him in as two green wizzrobes fade into existence, magic already on their fingers!

“Any weaknesses?” Green asks as he dodges to the back a pace, out of the line of fire of either of them by barely a finger’s width.

“Not that I know of!” Ezlo shouts as they teleport to new positions to aim at Link.

Something winks into awareness at the back of the mind.

“They won’t like fire,” Not-Link recites from memory. “They’re basically clothes given form by magic and ghosts, get rid of the clothing and the magic has nothing left to cling to.”

Green takes a single moment between blasts of magic from the wizzrobes to pull out the flame lantern. Just the one set of heartbeats where he’s able to free his focus. And then he goes on the offensive. He rolls around one Wizzrobe and just barely grazes its clothing with the edge of the lantern’s magic, but the artifact is hungry and its fire spreads, covering the monster in fire withing a few blinks and then it drops into a pile of ash and blows away in the wind.

And then the second one.

The spires don’t drop, four more wizzrobes appear.

They die just as quickly.

Six more wizzrobes.

Green feels a bit overwhelmed. That’s so many. But he can do it. He has to!

He rolls past two of them at once and lights them both on fire. He barely manages not to impale his legs on the spikes they were standing near, but it’s still close. The leggings take a hit and now there’s a scratch down the left leg.

“Sorry Link,” Green mutters under his breath.

With only four left it’s barely any time before they fall, all screaming in outrage as they all crumble to ash.

The spires fall and a chest appears.

Green doesn’t even hesitate before flinging it open and finds…

A beautiful feathered cape.

“Oh my goddesses,” Ezlo breathes out in awe. “It’s a cape made of Roc’s feathers. With this you could practically fly! The wind tribe must have taken generations to make it! The roc are very careful with their feathers.”

“Fly?” Green asks.

Ezlo makes an aborted noise, something between a clearing of his throat and a hum.

“Practically, dear Green. With it you can fling yourself up into the air and glide down slowly. A single feather is often enough to leap about twice a man’s height and glide for maybe a half of a second, but with a full cape like this I’m sure you could leap maybe twice that and glide forever .”

Green wraps the cape around himself and clasps it closed. “Perfect for those stack of clouds then, yeah?”

Ezlo chuckles. “Indeed.”

Green leaps into the air and glides over the platform with the clouds, climbing up them one leap after another until he arrives level with another set of stone platforms. There are crows and cyan chuchus roaming around and Green has flashbacks to the temple of droplets, where the aura around the slimy beast that guarded the flame lantern had been glowing with lightning. At the size of a minish he could have been really hurt and yet… he’d run in daringly, succeeded even.

“Am I reckless?” Green asks as he flies over another gap to the east. The only available route forward.

He doesn’t get an answer more thorough than a thoughtful hum.

Yes, you are . Something says inside of him and Green feels… unsure.

“Not-Link?” he asks as he lands on another larger platform, this one with four of those strange impact buttons that can be activated with bombs or swords or arrows alike.

“We’ll need to split again.”

Not-Link sighs. “Okay.”

They stride forward and split, three evenly placed bodies between the four impact-buttons. Three bodies perform three spin attacks and the buttons light up. Two sparks of lightning go off behind them and Not-Link dismisses the shades as he turns them around, nearly tripping over the feet beneath him.

Two spike tops.

Green pulls out the cane of pacci from their belt as Not-Link rolls towards one of them, flinging the magic when Not-Link stops behind it. Both of them quickly go flying into the air, landing on their backsides, and Not-Link quickly punts them over the edge of the platform with the white sword.

The door nestled in the east wall, which juts out from the main body of the palace, click-thuds open.

“You process quickly,” Not-Link comments, feeling only a little like his smart-sounding words aren’t forced. He is smart. He knows this, knows the meaning of the words he’s saying… he just hasn’t used them in so long it feels foreign, wrong. Out of touch. He’ll fix that though, with time. He wants to fix it. Wants to be different.

Green smiles with Link’s lips, wide and pleased as he pushes the cane of pacci back into their belt. “Thanks!”

Not-Link walks them over to the now open door, which unfortunately doesn’t take him inside the palace, but only through the jutting wall to the other side, where not only is there more—this time much more damaged—carpetting on the ground, there are rotating blades embedded into the walls. Fans. Giant fans that are turning on and off on a rhythm, making such a loud noise as they do it that Not-Link is sure he can see the sound as they shove the air away. There are also a few holes dug out of the flooring of the platform in front of each fan and Not-Link can easily guess what they’re for. Hiding. Waiting.

There’s another platform just to the east, maybe two people lengths away, but the near edge is covered in bars except for the far end, past all three fans. It almost looks like the space between the two platforms used to be one and it had just crumbled away with age.

Green moves them forward slowly, waiting for each fan to turn off before making his way past it. There’s just enough space between them for Green to wait for the cycle to pass, but it’s slow.

He leaps them over the gap between the platforms with the roc’s cape and then runs on his pegasus boots to the south edge of the second platform where it curves west to face two more fans side-by-side, a single hole in the ground right in front of them and no stairs to be seen.

“Do you think the cane of pacci was invented by the wind tribe?” Not-Link asks as he waits for the paired fans to turn off again. “The only places that have required it are on the surface and… this place.”

Silence is his only answer as Green rushes over to the hole in the ground and rolls around inside of it with the cane’s magic, throwing himself up like ball onto the higher edge. He falls to his knees, then onto his belly, as the dizziness from his leap catches up to him. Normally it’s really fun to be launched out of holes with the cane, but with the air so thin here they’re starting to have trouble breathing.

“This place sucks,” Not-Link says, cheek against the ground.

“Actually, I believe it blows,” Green replies, the cheeky smile evident from his voice alone.

Not-Link—sorry, no, Link hasn’t spent a single moment of free time thinking of a new name, he’d rather keep the one his parents gave him—wants to hit Green so hard. But he can’t. Instead he just groans.

“Your jokes are bad and you should feel worse,” Link says, not meaning a word of it.

Green shrugs their shoulders. “If you say so.”

Link pants for a few more seconds, unable to reply, and then simply but slowly gets to his feet.

“I do say so,” he mutters, knowing Green hears him. Green can’t not hear him.

Ezlo gives a long suffered sigh. “You boys are so temperamental!”

Link presses their lips together. “Ezlo, we are eight years old and traumatized . Be glad we’re even functional!”

Ezlo scoffs, but doesn’t say anything more.

Link walks them forward and ascends up the next column of clouds.

Chapter Text

There are two long parallel moving platforms stretching to the south, sliding underneath some blocks while crows watch from their perches on the walls. Link finds it a little bit intimidating actually.

Green walks them onto the one platform and leaps with the cape to the other, rolling and spinning on his feet quickly to dodge the swooping crows. Crows that seem to only want to scratch and nip and distract. Force them to lose track of the twinned platforms’s progress and fall. Fall fall fall, down through the sky.

They can’t leap if they’re falling.

Link takes a breath and narrows his thoughts. Focus. Don’t lose focus. Don’t lose track of the platforms. Don’t lose the forest for the trees.

Green leaps across the gap again, just narrowly dodging above the next two swooping crows in time to land safely.

Link swings the White Sword and takes out a crow to their left that’s trying to take off back into the air.

Green rolls them forward until they’re up against the next wall, ducking under the next three swoops.

Link raises them up and runs, spreading his arms wide like wings and lands them on the other platform again. Once more, just once more, surely.

A crow swoops and Green isn’t looking. Is focusing on the next jump already. Ready to leap with his knees bending. Link sees it in the corner of their sight. Panics.

Their feet spasm and Link directs their hips into a twirled backstep to dodge out of the way, but now there’s barely any platform left, the rest of it passing under the next wall. No space, no space!

You weren’t supposed to lose focus!! Link screams at his companion within the confines of their mind.

Green keeps the twirl going and sends their legs going spinning, pushing them into a leap backwards, up in the air, and urges them forward anyway, back to the first platform. Back to safety.

Link scrambles them to the unmoving ground the platforms have brought them to and grinds their fingertips into the stone.

“Reckless!” he seethes. “Green, you’re reckless!”

Green’s anger meets his own. “Oh, as if you’re not impulsive either, huh?”

“You didn’t see the crow!!” Link shouts.

“It was going to miss us!”

Link curls their fingers into fists, feels his fury in the set of their jaw. “It was turning, it was predicting us. It would have hit us no matter what.”

“Yeah, well you nearly got us killed trying to dodge it!”

“I was panicking!” Link yells back, defends himself.

“You were gonna ruin my ju-”

“BOYS!” Ezlo shouts.

Link and Green fall silent, panting in sync.

Ezlo clears his throat. “There, now that you’re both quiet …”

Link feels shame creep up his throat. He shouldn’t have been angry like that. He picks up his latent rage and shoves it into a box, away, where it can’t interfere.

“I can inform you that your anger is misplaced,” Ezlo finishes.

“But, h-”

“But nothing! You both made mistakes. Say sorry! None of that was either of your faults!”

Hot tears gather in Link’s eyes. “I… I was scared. Scared that we’d get hit off, knocked out of the sky. I didn’t want you getting hurt. I’m sorry I messed up your jump.”

Green gulps. “I’m sorry for yelling at you.”

Ezlo sighs with satisfaction. “Good, good. Now, can we keep going? Hm?”

Link relaxes his grip and gets them up onto their knees, Green stepping back up into standing.

“Yeah, let’s keep going,” Green says.

The platform curls around another jutting wall protruding from the main body of the palace, leading into a space between two such walls. Link can see, before they turn the corner, that the next cloud pillar is on the side he’s leaving behind, but it’s blocked off by thin bars. There’s a door through the wall between them and it, but ti’s currently closed. Locked.

Here, between the two jutting walls, there’s not much. A few dotted holes in the platform and two minish pathways. One leading north into the palace, and one east to… somewhere.

Green bends their knees and leaps up, grabbing the edge of the wall and pulling them up. From here Link can see east, where a Minish device rests on ground beyond the wall and a T-branch of wall pokes out, separating the platform into two. He can’t see beyond it to what’s behind, but there must be something there. It’s where one of the minish pathways came from.

Link wants to ask Green what he thinks is hiding there, but the other boy is already running forward and leaping down next to the minish device, stepping on top to let Ezlo do his magic.

Impatient , Link thinks. But not unkindly. They shouldn’t be spending spare seconds chatting, not when Vaati is waiting.

Pots were waiting on the other side of the wall. A whole platform full of them needing to be pushed around and out of the way for Link-and-Green t-

Link pauses in his steps as they approaches the pathway into the palace. There’s a thought here, something to reconsider. If Link is Link and Green is Green… Then the body needed a new name. The body can’t be Link, it’s too inconvenient, even if everyone they knew thought it was their only name. Only…

“Only grandpa knows that Link isn’t my only name…” Link whispers. “Everyone still thinks I’m… just Link.”

There’s silence for a moment and Green takes over, walks them into the minish hole.

“You decided against changing your name?” Green asks.

Link nods. “It’s mine. My name. It belongs to me , not my body.”

Green is quiet again, but it’s contemplative more than anything else.

“I don’t want to just call it ‘the body’,” Link whispers. “That’s so… impersonal. I think… I think ‘the body’ needs a new name.”

They emerge through the wall into the palace and Green hums. “What about your middle name, the one you wanted because…” he goes quiet for a moment. “Why didn’t you switch to calling me Ohdran after picking it for yourself?” he asks. He sounds genuinely curious, but Link would almost prefer him to be upset. Ohdran is a much cooler name than Green.

Link avoids answering. Instead looks around. There’s metals bars splitting this room into two, but the bottom of them is encased in a solid line of metal, too high even for the roc’s cape to leap over at this size. There’s nothing to see here but walls. Walls of stone and walls of iron.

Is there anything else to this room?

Link lets out a sigh. “Zelda used to call me that,” he admits. “I thought you might…”

“Ah. No. I don’t have that memory.”

“She called me ‘Greenbean’, made fun of my dislike of the vegetable despite our… apparent resemblance.” Link sticks out their tongue at the thought.

Green is quiet, for just a moment, and then a single tear drops down their cheeks.

“You gave me a childhood nickname as my name . You named me after beans! ”

He cackles with something that sounds like delight, but Link isn’t sure.

“When we played pretend I’d be ‘Green the bean-y hero’ and she’d be my cool shiekah partner ‘Ninji’,” Link says, the words spilling out. “And then we had to stop when Impa found out.”

Green cackles again. “I really am your hero, aren’t I?”

Link feels his face heat. He wants to hide or cuss, but the first is impossible and the second rude. He puts the impulse into the box with his anger, forces himself to not be kind of person.

“Just for that I’m letting you figure out this room on your own.”

Green just keeps on laughing.

One hidden minish device, their boomerang weaved through the bars to hit an impact switch, and a single small key later Green is hopping them up the pillar of cloud platforms. This stack is extra tall and disjointed, forcing them to have to glide around the walls of the palace to keep ascending. There are a few ground platforms Link can see, but they’re out of reach even with the cape, so up they keep going, all the way to the top of the palace.

The wind blows extra hard, ruffling at their clothes, and Green feels peace. Link just feels tightness in their chest.

“I can’t wait to be back on the surface,” Link whines. He honest to Hylia whines .

“Be patient, we’ll be back eventually,” Green says.
Link chuckles and it sounds unkind. “I don’t think I can. You can have me as impatient or have me as angry. And I’m pretty sure which I’d rather be.”

Green is silent and Link smiles remorsefully. “I don’t wanna be angry at you again. It hurt too much, didn’t feel right.”

It had felt like being angry at a mountain for being tall. Anger felt like poison, and heroes didn’t use underhanded tactics like that.

The box at the back of his mind rattles but Link ignores it. It’s not him, it can’t be, shouldn’t be. Link is smart and anger is decidedly not.

The fifth floor starts with  a doorway into the palace proper, a hall full of standing torches and thick cared for carpet and a large locked door at the other end.

Oh, and also two flail knights. That’s kinda important.

Link ducks into a roll attack, leaping up into a spin from behind the closer knight, the decapitated head turning to dust as it flies across the room.

The other knight doesn’t back down. Mindless evil and darkness is all that fill its thoughts, its actions. It has no motive other than heed orders and attack .

Link pulls out the bow and strikes the knight quickly four times in the face, timing his shots perfectly between the swings of the knight’s flail.

The door into the next room opens. Not the big door, no it’s still locked, but the small door heading to the west that Link hadn’t seen at first. Too focused on the fight.

A fan—turned off—sits at the far west end of this floor of the palace, this entire half of the building split between north and south by a gaping ravine in the floor where either open sky or spike-covered-roofing leers from below.

Green steps on a switch and the fan turns on, blowing wind hard enough to rustle the banners on the walls of the room across the gap.

“We have to ride the wind, don’t we?” Link asks.

Green nods. “Its the only way forward, and we must keep going if we want to succeed.”

Link steps them forward, inching towards the rush of air coming from the fan. Fast, so fast, and so much empty space between them and… he looks across the gap …and there.

Instead of asking who designed this dungeon, who would dare ask children to risk falling through the empty sky to their deaths on the ground below, Link closes the eyes and pulls the roc’s cape out, slides into the current of air, and leaps them up and across the gap, landing in a rough but safe roll onto the safety of the other room.

Where the instant they stand up monsters spawn, two spear wielding moblins and two ice wizzrobes.

Who designed this place, why is this place like this, why is there so much here, why can’t they just have given us the element, what’s wrong with this pla-

Green kills the monsters. Green turns on the next fan. Green grabs the big key. Green is the one who opens the big door that leads to the column of wind they’d seen when they’d first arrived at the palace. Green is the one to take a breath and a leap, and fall half a dozen stories to the floating circular platform below marked with the same manta ray-like emblem from earlier.

Green is the one who drinks their last red potion when the red dark nut appears in a flash of lightning. Green is the one who crosses blades with the enemy who can summon tornadoes around his sword.

Link fumes. Spends his every moment holding back his spite and his contempt and his anger. His hope that the people who’d made this place hadn’t truly been intending to be so cruel to him, to Green, to whoever was destined to come and ask for the element. They would have had to be stupid, surely.

Green rolls and parries. Link shoves his ever-spawning thoughts into the lockbox, where they can’t hurt anyone, where they can’t be voiced. Link refuses to let hi-

Pain. Sharp burning pain.

Green looks down and, oh.

“We’ve been stabbed,” he whispers as the Red Darknut pulls the blade out of their torso.

The lockbox overflows and Link is unable to stop the anger as it redirects itself at the darknut, at himself, at the idea of failure.

“I’m sorry,” Link whispers as they crumble, as blood spills from between the fingers grasping at their wound. When… when had they done that?

“W-we can’t,” Link whispers. “We can’t fail. Heroes can’t fail!”

Green smiles but it’s sad. “Now, whoever told you that?”
A cough pushes its way out of their throat. “No one,” Link says. “I just know it’s true.”

The Red Darknut is watching, its eyes burning as they… as they die. As they fail.

The hero is failing.

The hero has failed.

Link tries to stand but their knees just continue to buckle. He sinks down further, more blood soaking into the tunic.

“We have to keep going,” Link says, rough and weak.

Green laughs but does not move, and Link hates him for it.

“We can’t give up! We can’t fail!”

He feels Green fade away, goes to sleep. He feels the hero leave. Feels the hero fail.

Link pants, feels more heat spill over his fingers. “But…” he whispers.

“Link, you can’t keep going like this,” Ezlo murmurs and it hurts, hurts so much. It hurts how angry that makes him. How it makes his insides feel more on fire from rage. Makes his head go all floaty from the anger mixed with the pain.

“Failure is not an option,” he whispers, furious.

He moves slowly. Slowly he clenches his fist around his wound as he props himself on the White Sword. It feels like watching someone else move with his body, like Link isn’t both in control and not, like his mind is separate from himself.

“Failure is not an option.”

He stands and lifts the sword, pointing it at the darknut and watches at it seems to laugh. It lifts its sword as well, pointing it at Link’s neck.

“Yeah, sure, I get it, you want me dead, but you ca-can’t stop me. No one will stop me.”

He’s not sure why he’s being so cocky right now, but it feels right, feels good to show this determination in spite of his injuries.

He lets go of his wound and lets his anger burn away at his pain. “I am Link and I do not fail.”

Link watches, detached, as he leaps up into the air and plunches his blade into the Darknut’s head, leaping off again and landing on his knees, likely bruising them, but it’s okay. The monster was damaged now.

The beast roars silently and Link… no.

Link snaps back into place and feels his anger distance itself from him. It was never his anger. It can’t be. Link is smart. Link isn’t angry.

“Link isn’t angry,” he mutters.

The-Link-who-isn’t-Link laughs. “Oh yeah he is, buddy!”

The angry Link lowers himself down and spin, dodging under the Darknut’s next thrust and stabbing his sword into the creature’s armpit. Then he rolls between the legs and slashes at the back of the creature’s knees, felling it.

Not-Link walks, limps really, around and looks into the still flaring eyes of the red darknut.

“You really shouldn’t have stabbed me.”

He yells and shrusts the White Sword into the creature’s face, as if punching it with the blade.

The creature melts around their hand, goop seeping out of the helm and dripping down onto the ground, the eyes slowly dimming into wisps and then nothing.

“Who are you?” Link asks as the creature melts into nothing, its armor cracking and breaking and falling to dust. As a bridge extending to the main body of the palace appears.

Their eyes roll. “I told you, I’m Link.”

“But…”

“We need to keep going,” ‘Link’ says, and limps them onward into the Palace of the Winds. Keeps going through the pain and bleeding and the darkness within until finally they stumble upon a fairy. Until their wound is stitched up and Link forces ‘Link’ back into the lockbox. Back where the anger and the spite belongs.

“There… There is only one Link,” Link whispers, even though he knows it’s a lie.

Chapter Text

Link sits in the corner, curled around his lanter in the dark, as he waits for Green to wake back up, to come back from … wherever it is he went after they got stabbed.

“Ezlo, I don’t think I’m okay,” he breathes out.

The minish gently brushes Link’s hair out of his eyes with his beak. “Ah, Link, of course you’re not. I don’t think anyone would be.”

Link doesn’t like that response, it just makes him sad. Why can’t he be okay? Why can’t everyone just be okay right now?

A tickling at the back of the mind.

“G-G-Green?” Link asks.

Their hands immediately grasp at the hole in their tunic where their wound had been, where blood was still drying in the heat of the lantern.

“We’re okay!” Link says, feeling their chest constrict with Green’s panic before deflating. “We’re okay, Green, I promise.”

Green digs their fingers into the fabric. “But… how? How are we alive?”

Link hesitates on his answer, is unsure how to word it.

“I… I got angry,” he eventually says, and the lockbox starts banging.

Green is quiet for a moment. “…What happened?” he asks in a quiet voice.

Link laces their fingers together and looks away, to the side where he doesn’t have to see his reflection in the glass. It had stopped looking right after Green first saw himself, but now it looks all wrong. His face is all wrong.

“I think I made someone else,” Link whispers. “Someone… Someone who also thinks he’s Link.”

Green doesn’t respond.

Link gulps. “He’s… I didn’t want to be angry, but…” the box rattles and Link ignores it, shuts it behind a door so it can’t interrupt him, “I couldn’t help it, so I gave my anger, my fury, to someone else. Someone who could keep us from harm.”

Link chuckles, but it’s not funny. “He’s really intense, and cocky, and…” Link sucks in a breath, “I think he might be everything I wish myself not to be.”

“But he still saved us?” Green asked.

Link nods their head. “I don’t think there’s a single part of me that doesn’t want to be a hero. To help people, but… That part of me… That other Link… I think he wants to do it out of spite, because other people… because I have said that heroes can’t be angry.”

“He wants to prove everyone wrong.”

Link chuckles again, still not amused. “And he’s not wrong to want to do so, but I think he’d go about it in an incorrect way, he’d take satisfaction in the fear he makes, in the pain he can inflict on his enemies. And that scares me, that I could have been like that.”

They’re all quiet for a long moment.

Link breathes out. “But he’s still a hero. He wants to protect innocents, he’s just… angry about it. And I don’t want that to get out of control, so… I’ve locked him away.”

Link bites down on his hand, to keep himself from shaking as the other Link shakes inside the lockbox, thrashes with rage.

“I don’t think he likes it. Why would he? But…”

“You think he’s dangerous.”

Tears flow down their face. “The one thing a hero shouldn’t be is dangerous.”

The thrashing stops for a moment, then picks back up even harder. Clearly the other Link doesn’t like their conclusion.

It’s not a good sign. And it’s not the only one.

Link stares back at the lantern glass and wonders when he started to believe his eyes were purple instead of grey.

Green breathed in, then out. Darkness surrounded them, but Green had the lantern and thus he had nothing to fear, nothing to be wary of. The palace was a rectangular room with two pillars rising through the middle, one of which contained a stairway upwards. There was a high ledge at the north end of the room—on it a chest illuminated by the only torches in the room—opposite the doorway the two Links had entered through

Another breath in and out. Two Links, a perceptive one that he knew and an impassioned one he didn’t, but…

Link had been angry before, with him, but he’d apologized because he’d been scared Green would get hurt. This hotheaded personality was like a version of Link whose central tenet was spite instead of intelligence. Just like Green was similar to a version of Link who preferred courage and dedication over book learning and self-regulation.

“I want to talk to him,” Green said as he started to ascend the stairs.

A fist clenched, but it was Link’s doing, not Green’s.

“I d-”
The box Link had placed the other Link into shook and Green interrupted them both.

“If you can let him speak, without acting, I just want to talk.”

“It will take all of my focus, you’ll be the only one completing the dungeon.”

Green shrugged. “Isn’t that why you ‘made’ me?”

Link didn’t respond, but Green understood his agreement as a trickle of consciousness dripped into their mind.

“Why’d you hide me?” the deep voice—well, deep for the children they all are—of the other Link asks accusingly.

“That wasn’t me,” Green said. “That was the other one.”

Green felt a scowl cover their face. “I know .”

Green took another breath. “Link thinks that you’re dangerous. That your rage could hurt people.”

“Fuck you!” the furious one said, and Green could feel Link’s will tightening around the other boy’s anger to keep him from moving the body. “I’m a hero and you’re both hypocrites! You two have already hurt each other with rage!”

He… wasn’t wrong.

Green opened his mouth and kept himself calm. “Prove it. Prove you can be trusted.”

He felt Link listening in, but he knew the other boy couldn’t react without loosening his hold on the third boy’s cage. He could feel Link’s wariness.

A smirk crossed their face. “I can do that.”

Link released his hold enough that he could speak.

“Complete the dungeon on your own without us believing you’ve gone too far and we’ll trust you.”

Green smiled. What a quick thinker.

The other Link rolled his eyes, then opened their mouth. “I want a name first. Or Link needs a new one. We can’t both be Link.”

Link paused.

“No.”

“You know we need names.”

“I refuse to be anything but Link.”

“How about Smith the third?”

“How about Temperance?” Link replied with considerable sass. Temperance was, after all, the virtue of moderation and self-regulation.

“No, screw you, if I’m any of the four cardinal virtues I’m totally Justice,” the other one shot back. Righteousness, acting in accordance with what others need and, more importantly, deserve.

Link scowled. “You’re definitely not Justice. And also I hate that you have access to that knowledge.”

The other one cackles. “I was bound to have some knowledge, Prudence.” Reasoning and forethought.
“Does that make me Fortitude?” Green interrupted. He was the most courageous of the three.

All of them went silent.

“As nicknames they… work.” Li-, Prudence said reluctantly.

Justice smiled and it was all teeth. “Thank you.”

Prudence scowled again. “Justice… be Just, or you’re going back in the box.”

Justice scowled back. “I’ll hate you forever.”

“I know. It would be Justified to hate me.” Green could feel the sarcastic laughter Prudence wasn’t letting out bubble in their belly.

Justice smiled, and Green and Prudence pulled back until he was in complete control.

“Alright, it’s hero time .” Justice breathed out and finished ascending the stairs.

The room here had a wall to the left and a doorway out of the palace right in front of him, and Justice could see that the room continued around the stairway column to his right.

Justice went forward, there’s no way the path through this place would split so late.

Crumbled flooring waited outside. A locked door to the left and a closed door a little bit away and to the right. Impact switches at the far end of the cracked platform. Also peahats.

Justice dashes over to the other end of the platform, dodging around the peahats as the floor crumbles underneath his feet. He stops at the switches near the closed door and raises the white sword skyward.

Justice is three people now. One body and two shades. The body aches, but he can take it. He’s built for strain and stress. Three people swing three swords and the four switches light up, the door to his right opening with a clack.

Justice smiles and turns towards the door, but all of his bodies move and…

“That’s not right,” he breathes out. The body he sees, it’s all wrong, all the wrong colours. He can see his hair streaming down the back of his head, Ezlo’s hood streaming down his back, the minish sage asleep for now.

It’s blond. Bright yellow and golden. And that’s wrong. His skin is pink and sunkissed, but it’s supposed to be tanned. He knows it is! He’s supposed to have honey hair and darker skin an-

He flips his body around and stares at himself. Freckles. He has too many freckles.

“No,” he gasps.

A mouth that looks too small, a nose that’s too big, hooked eyebrows instead of triangular.

Grey eyes instead of blue.

“No!” He shouts and punches the shade in the face, watching as it shimmers and crumbles to sparkling dust.

“They’re supposed to be blue!” he screams.

He grabs at his hair, running his fingers through it, but it doesn’t stop the thoughts, the fear.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. It’s all so wrong, how can he fix it, what can he do?

His knees shake and he plants a hand on the wall to keep himself upright.

He feels dust slide over his palm.

Dirty, dirty, dirty, you need to be clean. You have to clean, you have to wash your hands. You can fix that and it’ll all be better.

He pulls a spare cloth from his bag and rubs at his hands until they’re clean, until they’re rubbed red.

Still dirty, still dirty, still dirty. Clean more, clean more, they’re not clean yet. You need to clean!

Justice screams when the cloth comes away bloody.

“What did you do to me?! Why do I have this, this… this!”

Justice folds the cloth and starts rubbing at the boots, wiping away dirt and grime from the leather even as his hand drips blood.

“You need to calm down,” Prudence instructs.

Justice punches the floor. “I am calm!” he shouts

“Act like it!” Prudence shouts back. “Because right now you’re having a panic attack!”

“Heroes don’t fucking panic!”

“Then calm down! Breathe! Reorganize our bag, anything except bleed on the ground! ”

Justice punches the ground again and his knuckles come away bloody. “I just need to punch something.”

“That’s not healthy!” Green interrupts.

Justice bites his hand. The pain will help, he just knows it will.
“F~ck ‘ou!” He says, muffled around his fingers.

He stands up and spits blood onto the ground, the pain in their hands clearing his mind somewhat. They also look a bit better now, with the red tint of blood covering the too pale colouration of the skin.

A peahat draws near and Justice punches it so hard the propeller flies off, sending the bulb falling through the floor as it plummets.

He breaths raggedly, but he feels better. “I told you. I just need to punch something.”

The others are silent, but he knows they’re still there. He can even feel Ezlo stirring, concern probably filling his every fibre.

“I’m gonna keep going and you two can’t stop me,” Justice declares.

“No… I don’t think we can.”

Justice smiles, all teeth again, and feels the coppery taste of blood drip from their lips.

The spiked rollers prove to be barely an obstacle, and Justice quickly claims the small key from the chest, dropping back down to the cracked platform so he can use it to unlock the next door.

It’s empty air, filled with only floating explosives and waiting whirlwinds. One rounded path off to the right, and another direct over to the next doorway back into the palace right in front of him.

Justice doesn’t even think as he runs and leaps, extending the roc’s cape and landing himself into a whirlwind that was several paces away from the platform’s edge, filling Ezlo will air and billowing him up.

He’s more reckless than you, Green , Prudence comments. …Even if it did work.

Justice grins wide and tilt to the left, dodging around one of the exploding spheres and gently glides to the platform with the open door.

There’s stairs upwards here, but the room also curls around the stairway column and Justice is pretty sure the small chest from downstairs won’t be accessed from two floors up, so he ignores them for now and runs past the gibdos who want to hug him to death.

One spin attack activates a pair of impact switches and opens a door to a room that Justice was pretty sure was right over the small chest downstairs, an-, yep, that’s a hole in the floor.

Justice jumps down into the waiting darkness and claims the key from the chest.

Up the stairs reveals a room that’s very familiar if Green’s memories have anything to say about it.

There’re bars splitting the room in two, with an already active impact switch on this side and a minish device on the other. Just outside the walls there’s definitely a platform filled with pots somewhere not too far.

Justice ignores it and heads to the left, around the stair column again. There’s a pattern now of switching between the columns and that means the hole in the floor to the right is a distraction. He’d passed by the room it must lead to twice while downstairs and there’s no way the room leads anywhere when there’s a hole leading down to it from up here.

There’s nothing in his way; a few wizzrobes in the central room he dodges around, a few floormasters in a room with a pull switch he just ignores, and two stalfos in the room with the stairs who get the same treatment. There are no monster doors, so he has no reason to fight… not yet at least.

I thought you’d fight everything , Prudence thinks at him.

Justice scowls. “I’m saving my anger for the boss.”

Silence is his response, so Justice feels okay smiling wide again. He’d definitely won that interaction.

The fourth floor is dark, like the first one, and Justice begrudgingly pulls out the flame lantern, casting dark shadows on the walls. The only thing he can see of the room is that it’s narrow and very quickly comes to a stop with a hole int he floor.

A floating explosive, a bombarossa, slides into view, the lanternlight flickering over its metallic red body.

Justice moves forward carefully for once. Explosives are not to be trifled with.

The far side of the hole becomes lit and Justice sees that there’s a wall there, cracked, but still roughly intact.

He waits, silent, breathing evenly and calm, until the bombarossa passes in front of the far wall…

And shoots it in the eye with an arrow.

The enemy explodes and the wall crumbles, and Justice soars with the roc’s cape to the other side.

Beyond the broken wall there are windows pulling in light from outside. A crumbling wall is righ ahead of him, but the room curves around the column over here and Justice wants to make sure he’s going the right way before he uses more explosives.

Bars split the hallway in two, but there’s another crumbling wall beyond them. Meaning that whatever is outside can lead back in. He just… has to remember where the weak point is once he’s out there.

It’s a relatively large platform out there, covered in enemies, but they’re all distractions, just something in the way of his real goal: place the goddess-dang bomb in the right spot.

It takes him three tries and he has to fend off a few red stalfos just so they don’t try to claw the meat from his bones while he waits for the bombs to explode.

“I’m totally surprising you guys, aren’t I?” He gloats when he’s back in.

There’s a suspicious silence as his response.

Justice pumps his fist in celebration. He’s totally showing those two!

“We shouldn’t have doubted you,” Green says, and it makes Justice stop in his tracks.

“Yeah, w-well, now you know!” He stutters, unsure how else to respond to the other’s honesty.

“I’m not totally convinced yet,” Prudence comments. “…but I’m getting there.”

Justice scowls and walks into the next room of the palace.

“Yeah, well, fuck you, I guess,” he mumbles.

He distinctly feels like he’d being blown a raspberry, even though he’s the only one with control of the body. Frankly, it’s kinda rude.

And so is the room. It’s full of bombarossa with an impact switch in the middle.

“Oh, fuck, that does not look friendly.”

The instant he even touches one of those they’ll all explode in a line and set off the switch, likely closing the currently open door at the other side of the room.

“What the hell kind of people even designed this place?” he shouts, aggravated.

“THAT’S WHAT I’VE BEEN SAYING!” Prudence shouts back.

Justice grits his teeth. “Dumb people, clearly.” And then he starts to inch his way forward. It’s slow, but it’s safe, and goddesses does it get on his nerves that he has to move as such a crawling speed.

He clenches and unclenches his hands, trying not to dig his nails into his palms as he shuffles around a corner, lifting his arms into the air to make himself take up less space.

“I’m starting to see why this place made you so angry,” Justice says as he turns another corner. He had tried to keep his voice level, but he knows he failed.

“Well, I guess hating this place is your problem now.” Prudence says.

Justice stops walking. “What did you just say?” he says, far too evenly.

He feels his rage simmering in his stomach, the butterfly fairy’s blessing burning hot along with it.

He feels the regret spilling off of Prudence, but it’s not enough, it’s not enough. He needs Prudence to know just how angry that comment made him.

“Fuck. You.” he says, seething mad, and starts running, only barely making it through the door before the explosions hit the impact switch and the door closes shut behind him.

He stops and pants into the open air and the others are silent. Good. Very good.

“Never talk to me that way again,” he demands and he knows they hear him. “I am not a punching bag!”

Quiet for a long moment, and then…

“I’m sorry.”

Justice breathes in deeply through his nose, out through his mouth. In, out, in, out.

And with a scream he turns around and punches the wall.

“One of you take over!” He yells as his knuckles start bleeding anew. “I’m done here!”

Green slides in and Justice slides out, slamming the lockbox that Link had so carefully constructed just for him. Even with the box shut Green could feel the spite and concept rolling off of him in plumes and waves.

“You’re going to have to make it up to him somehow,” Green says, and he sounds upset, angry… no, disappointed.

“I’ll…” Link stumbles for words, for thoughts, but none come, “I’ll think of something.”

“Start with a real name for him, Prudence ,” Green says, and it’s so thick with emotion Link can taste it on their shared tongue.

Link gulps. “I-I will.”

“Good.”

Green breathes in and out, calm coming to him quickly.

“I don’t blame any of us, you know,” he says, “we’re just scared kids. Especially you.”

“I still shouldn’t have said it.”

Green smiles. “And it’s good that you realize that. Means you’re unlikely to do it again.”

Link pouts. “Why are you talking like a parent?”

“Because you were acting like a bratty child,” Green says, but not meanly.

Link sighs. “Do your job, hero.”

So Green does. He can see the cloud column that will take them back to the top from here, and that means there’s barely anything left for him to do. Just slaying moblins and pushing blocks and leaping over spikes and gaps. Easy.

At the top of the palace is another large whirlwind, and Green hopes, at least for Ezlo’s sake, that it is the last.

“Last boss,” Green murmurs to himself, and with only a smidge of trepidation he walks into the spinning air.

It’s only after he’s shooting through the air that Green remembers to look up, to see what he’s headed towards, and he’s terrified to discover that there’s nothing . Just open sky. Nothing.

The peak of his ascent passes and he’s hanging in open air, reaching for the handles of his hood in order to slow his fall to something safe when something deep blue swoops around his vision and then underneath him , catching him out of the air. Green is so thankful he doesn’t even look up from where his face is pressed into the smooth blue skin of what can only both his saviour and the boss monster until his breath comes back in even puffs.

It’s a manta-ray like creature, similar to the emblems that have sparsely dotted the flooring of the palace. It has four lumps in each corner of its body, two narrow curled fins on either side of its body, and a long tail tipped with a structure that looks vaguely like a closed pair of scissors. It seems to swim through the air by gently flapping its fins, gliding towards a far off reddish splotch circling around a bit further away from the palace.

“Just where are you taking me, buddy?” Green asks it, knowing he won’t get a reply.

As they draw closer Green begins to realize that the red splotch is also a manta-ray like creature. Larger, longer, with wide stiff triangular fins, and a heart shaped tip to its tail.

“Link?” Green asks, hesitant and unknowing.

“They’re wind-gyorgs,” Link answers, but he sounds a little unsure. “The large red one is female, and the blue one is her chosen mate. They’re rarely seen, usually peaceful, but….”

“Do you think the wind tribe trained them to protect the element?”

“It’s not unlikely.”

Green sighs out a breath and the male wind-gyorg draws close to the female, sliding right against his mate, sliding under her, and Green leaps off to avoid being swept off into the infinite void below.

Eight eyes in two rows of four open wide, the four closer turning back to stare at them.

“Is she… will she attack?”

A shadow passes over him and Green rolls to the side as the female’s tail bashes down where he was just a heartbeat before.

“Definitely attacking!” he shouts as he scrambles back to his feet.

“Did you expect her to just stare at you? She’s guarding the element!” Ezlo shouts.

“I was being hopeful!” Green shouts back as the male wind-gyorg swoops low with a screech, nearly bumping into Green as it does.

Green moves himself over to standing near one of the female’s fins, just slightly out of range of the tail. She’s still looking at him, but only with a single eye now. Most of them are actually closed, even, only three open. One looking forward, one looking at… the male, possibly? And the last one looking at him.

“I seriously doubt these things are going to be vulnerable anywhere except in their eyes.”

“Considering your experiences, I’d have to agree with you, boy,” Ezlo says.

Link pulls out the bow and aims for the eye looking at the male.

The eye closes, another one taking its place, and the arrow clinks off of the wind-gyorg’s grey eyelids.

“Oh, oh no,” Green breathes out, lowering the bow.

The male wind-gryorg swoops again and he rolls to the other side of the female’s body.

“She has too many eyes, she can just swap them out!”

He grabs the White Sword and holds the handle tightly, but doesn’t raise it, not yet.

“But I think I have an idea…”

Having to look at five things must be harder than three things, it only makes sense.

Green rolls forward and raises the White Sword high u-

Green stabs three of the eight very surprised eyes right in the pupil and the wind-gyorg screams.

She starts to thrash, whining and groaning and her place in the sky becomes unstable, her mate flying in close in concern.

Green jumps onto the male’s back, worried about being thrown off.

Four eyes stare at him and they look pissed off .

Green shrugs at the wind-gyorg. They had attacked him, so he’s not all that sorry.

“Did you just shrug at the wind-gyorg?” Link asks incredulously as the beast flies away from its thrashing mate.

The creature swings its tail and Green jumps over it. “Shut up! He was glaring at me!”

Link chuckles. “I will definitely not, because you are ridiculous .”

“Is now really the time for banter, boys?!?” Ezlo screeches.

Green doesn’t answer, instead just slashing the male wind-gyorg through the eye with a spin attack, eye goop flinging everywhere.

“All times are banter times,” he says as the wind-gyorg groans.

The creature drifts through the sky in a no longer straight path, headed roughly for his mate who seems to no longer be thrashing in pain.

The male crashes into his mate’s side and Green leaps back onto her.

Her five remaining eyes are already open, three looking at him and one each on her mate and the sky in front of her.

The male twirls in the air in front of them, a glowing ball of energy forming in front of his face.

“Oh Hylia,” Green says and rolls out of the way as the orb ploughs through the air where he was just a moment before.

“I don’t think he likes me much,” Green says as he dodges another energy ball.

“Oh, you think?” Link asks.

Green rolls out of the way of the female’s crashing tail. “Shut up!”

Another energy ball comes flying his way and Green is starting to get bored of being evasive. He needs to take action, he just… doesn’t know what action.

“How do I take out the rest of the eyes if she won’t stop looking at me?”

He feels Link’s mind whiz, heat gathering in the core of their brain. 

The female’s tail crashes down again and Green slashes at it, but just as expected it does nothing.

Another energy ball shoots and Green rolls closer to the eyes, watches the three looking his way twitch with dissatisfaction.

“If she’s trying to keep you in her sights she can’t close more than two eyes at once.”

Green blinks. “What.” That’s wasn’t a plan!

Link sighs and Green sidesteps another energy ball.

“She’s looking at three different things. Seems to want to keep looking at all of them. She has only five working eyes so she can’t close more than two eyes at once if she wants to keep her eyes on those three things. You can have three bodies, you do the math.”

Green rolls away from another tail and does as asked. 

Three eyes must remain open, five exist. He has three bodies to threaten eyes with, she can only close two to keep three open… one eye can successfully be threatened with his three bodies.

Green raises the sword and marches forward as the three eyes looking his way widen with fear. The eye looking towards her mate flickers, shifting between him and her mate as two of the eyes previously on him shut tight.

Green doesn’t smile, but he does have his two shades step up on top of each closed eye, keeping them closed.

The eye staring at him flickers, the eyelid half down, but it’s not enough. She can’t lose sight of him, not if she wants to guarantee one of her other eyes will get stabbed.

Green plunges his sword into the eye, its pupil looking directly at him, and the monster thrashes anew, tail going wild behind him.

The closed eyes open and the shades slam their swords into them too.

And then an energy ball from the male obliterates them. Whoops!

Green rolls to the side and leaps off of the female onto the male again.

A swarm of tiny green wind-gyorgs fly up from under the female and Green feels a flicker of concern wash over him.

The male swings his tail, one eye studiously on him, and Green leaps over it, slashing at the charging baby wind-gyorgs as they pass by in a wave.

The male underneath him quivers with rage, all eyes open, and Green does a spin attack, slashing all of them though the bulbous part of their eyes, fluid spilling out clear, then red.

The male shrieks, and Green stabs the closest eye, wrenching the White Sword into the fat around the eyesocket and up through cartiladge, slicing through the body of the male from within.

The male crashes into the female and Green jumps off to watch him plummet through the void of air below.

Waves and waves of green babies are charging at him, but Green doesn’t think, just acts. Just slices and rolls and leaps. The mother is still writhing in pain under his feet, tears and blood pooling around all eight of her eyes.

Green raises the White Sword again and sends his shades to stab her remaining two eyes, a smile on his face when he sees she’s been flying back to the top of the Palace of Winds. Back to safety.

Green slices at the final wave of babies and his shades stab at their mother’s remaining eyes, and with a final howl of pain the mated pair perishes, scattering into dust on the wind.

Green leaps up and over, landing back on the platform where the tornado that had brought him up to them had once rested, and watches as the green jewel of the wind element floats down, a swirl resting on a curved base.

Green reaches out and touches the gemstone, mind filling with images of seeds on wind, scattering over countless stretches of land, bringing life.

“Goddesses, finally,” Green whispers, and feels only agreement from Link.

Chapter Text

“Is he gonna come back out anytime soon?” Link asks as they sit on another bed in the Wind Tribe’s home.

Green shrugs their shoulders. “He’s angry with us, he’ll come out when he wants to.”

Link frowns. “And what if he never comes back out?” he asks softly.

It’s a reasonable concern, and even if Link doesn’t like him, he created the blue-eyed-and-honey-haired splinter from the parts of himself he no longer wanted, they were still connected, parts of each other. It wouldn’t be good for him to never show up again.

Green sighs. “I’m not your therapist, or your parent. I don’t have the answers.”

Link cringes at himself, hates himself a little bit for becoming so dependant on … himself. He feels like a child.

He picks up that feeling, that impulse, and puts it into its own tiny box. He may be young, but he is not a child. He is a hero.

“Let me rephrase then,” Link manages to say, “what do we do if he doesn’t come back out?”

Green shrugs again. “Nothing, I guess. It would be… rude, to pull him out here to talk to us before he’s ready.”

Link sighs again. It’s not a satisfying answer, but it does seem to be the most reasonable.

“Are you boys quite done talking in circles?” Ezlo asks, sounding put out. “It seems like the more of you there are the less you talk to me!”

Link knows what his angry counterpart would snark back at that, something about having ‘important personal problems’, but that wasn’t Link’s territory anymore.

“Logically, there are more of us to talk to then there are of you,” he says instead. “It stands to reason there would be less talking to you the more of… me… that exists.”

Ezlo doesn’t reply and Link can just imagine the open-beaked look of exasperation he’s sure to be wearing. It makes him smile.

Ezlo shakes his head with a resigned sigh. “You boys need to stop sounding so adult all the time, it’s freaky!”

This time Link shrugs. “We’re kids sent to do an adult’s job, what did you expect, that we’d just go back and act like kids again once it was all over?”

Their heart thuds and Link realizes that their childhood is over, has been for a long time.

Link curls his arms around his legs, holds them to himself, suddenly needing the comfort.

“Tell me a story, before we leave, please?” he asks, indulgent of his childhood for just this moment.

Ezlo sighs, but this time it sounds sad. “Ah, dear child. Have I told you the tale of the origin of kinstones?”

Link shakes his head and let’s Ezlo’s voice wash over his ears, telling of princesses and clovers and promises.

Before they leave Gregal hurries over to them on a cane and hands them a bow.

“I know you have that minish bow there, wonderful craftsmanship, but… I used to be an adventurer and I must do something to thank you for helping me.”

Ezlo makes a humming sound. “If I had my tools…”

Gregal looks up and Link just feels confused. “Oh, you’re a craftsman, isn’t that right sir minish?”

Ezlo nods. “Quite a good one, if my peers are to be believed! Just by looking I’m pretty sure this bow of yours is mostly a few lightly enchanted artifacts using the wood as a medium of connection… so if I had my tools I’m sure I could affix them to dear Link’s bow instead! But alas…”

Link grabs the bow. “Thank you, I’ll take it, but… I don’t need payment for helping.”

Gregal shakes his head. “Our magic is so different from normal hylian stuff, or even that fairy blessing you got, kid. You deciding to help… it means a lot. I couldn’t let you go without some kind of returned gesture!”

Link holds the bow, the metal decorations on it both cool and warm at the same time.

“Thank you,” he repeats.

Gregal nods and then shakily walks back to his room.

A hand touches Link’s shoulder and he turns around to see Siroc, her old eyes gentle and her mouth upticked in just the barest hint of a smile.

“Gregal gave you the Cyclos bow, hm?”

Link nods, unsure what else to say.

Siroc chuckles quietly. “He claims he got it from the deity Cyclos himself, a being even more powerful than the wind spirits of our home.”

Link looks down at the bow, at the metal handholds right in the middle that would surely break his current bow to incorporate.

“Ezlo, is my current bow magic?” he asks quietly.

Ezlo huffs. “Not yet!”

Link holds the Cyclos bow closer to his chest. “I’m keeping this, then.”

Siroc’s smile widens.

Link goes home first. The wind tribe is helpful enough to teleport him nearby, just barely a short walk away.

The house smells cold, the forge not used recently which is… odd.

“Grandpa?” Link calls.

The door to the forge opens and Grandpa Smith’s eyes are wide and teary when the lock with his.

“Oh, my boy, my boys. You’re safe.”

Link frowns as grandpa hugs him. “Of course I’m safe, grandpa, why wouldn’t I be?”

The hug tightens around him. “Your aunt isn’t,” Grandpa says, “the King has been growing restless and the royal guards are getting angsty.”

Link feels his spine tingle, news he knows he’s not gonna like is coming.

“She got stabbed, and… now she can’t have babies. Your uncle is calling for the other guard to be stripped of his duties.”

Link’s hands curl into fists, grabbing at his Grandfather’s tunic. “She wanted a little girl, a girl named Maggie,” he whispers.

But now Maggie is dead, never-born, killed by the other guard.

“I was worried, it’s been a few days,” Grandpa whispers back. “I’ve been waiting for you to come back again.”

Link hugs his grandfather tighter, too many feelings filling his belly, his heart, his head. “I…” He trails off. He doens’t know what to say, he can’t think, he can’t be her-

“We’ll always come back,” Green says, taking over in a flash. “We’ll always come back home.”

Grandpa hugs Green tight and he decides that he’ll mention the blue-eyed one later, when Link is around and the air is less sad.

Green sits on Link’s bed—Ezlo was left downstairs to talk with Grandpa—and looks over the room, at the things he can foggily remember if he thinks hard enough. Some things though, like the stuffed bear sitting on the night table, escape his memory even then.

Green takes in a deep breath. The carpet is familiar, as is the patterning on the blanket. He can almost hear aunt Arba sewing it up from when Link was four.

Another deep breath, more immersing himself, familiarizing himself. Balancing himself anew in this place that should be familiar but isn’t.

“Are you ready to come out?” he asks.

The lockbox doesn’t answer, but it’s been quiet and unmoving, nothing coming out of it—no feelings, no sounds—for several hours now.

“He’s not here, if that matters.”

The hinges creak.

“What is he going to name me?” comes the heated whisper.

Green lets himself smile just a little bit. “I think… he’s decided to let you pick.”

“So he couldn’t think of anything, huh?”

Green sighs. “Given his record of—well, one name so far—he’s not very good at naming things.”

“He was thinking Blue, wasn’t he?” the honey-haired one asks grumpily.

Green shrugs, arms close to his sides still. “I’m pretty sure, yeah.”

The other one lets out a long sigh. “I won’t like it, and if I ever think of anything better I’m changing it immediately!”

Green smiles. “If you say so.”

Blue scrunches their face up into something between a scowl and a pout. “You suck. Aren’t you supposed to be good at thing?!”

Green laughs. “I’m a hero, not an adult . Why is this the second time I’ve had to mention that?”

“Fuck you!” was the intelligent reply.

Green raises an eyebrow. “I don’t think that’s very possible.”

Blue grumbles and fades into the background. Apparently not pissed off enough to shove his way back into the box, but still unhappy. Good enough. Link wanted him around, for … some reason.

“You’re kinda like a little brother,” Green comments, laying down and turning their head to face the stuffed bear. “You’re all huffy and annoying, but you care anyway.”

He feels the glare coming from the dark where Blue was sulking, but that’s okay. Green deserves it, for being the earnest and teasing older brother. He likes it. It feels right.

“Am I also a little brother?”

Green blinks slowly. “What’s the name of your bear?”

Link is quiet.

Green stares at the stuffed creature, at its single blue-button eyeball and the scrab fabric sticking out of a torn seam on the side.

“His name is Blue, because aunt Arba had some extra money and bought those special buttons for his eyes, the other one is in the drawer where I won’t lose it and…” Link admits. “He protected me from nightmares, after… after.”

After the Light Force, and the great fairies, and the Picori Blade, and the chest.

After Death Mountain and the Sea of Trees and Talus Caves.

“You fucking named me after your bear?!?! ”

Link heaves in a hiccup. “Yes, and?” he asks softly.

There’s a fuming noise, but no actual response in words.

“I think it’s sweet. He could have named you anything and he named you for the one object he used as a comfort from nightmares.”

Blue presses their lips together. “I’m named after a toy,” he almost, almost , seethes.

Green furrows their brow into an unimpressed glare aimed at Blue-the-bear due to sharing a body with Blue-the-person.

“Admit you’re touched or leave.”

“I’m allowed to be angry!” Blue shouts.

Green takes in a deep breath. “Yes, you are, but we are allowed to not want it around us. You’ll only hurt us if you’re angry… especially about this .”

Blue glowers. “And you say you aren’t an adult.”

And then his presence disappears, back into the box. Dammit.

Silence stretches for several long moments.

“That went well, I think.”

Link reaches out and hugs the bear. Dismissive. Clearly not the time for joking. Double Dammit.

Green sighs. He’ll get better at this mediation thing. He has to.

When he comes back down for dinner Grandpa has a patient expression on his face. He’d probably heard the shouting.

“His name is Blue,” Link murmurs, only feeling a little bit like he’s in trouble. “He’s grumpy and also not here right now.”

Grandpa smiles. “And your new middle name?”

Link takes a seat at the table but looks away. “Mavi, it’s minish for, well, ‘blue’, and…”

Grandpa blinks, putting his fork down. “And?”

Link curls his fingers together and he knows that he’s concerning not only Grandpa Smith, but Ezlo and Green and possibly Blue as well. And of course he is, what he’s about to say he hasn’t discussed with anyone.

“When I look in the mirror… I expected my eyes to be violet, grandpa,” he nearly whispers. “But they’re grey, they always have been. I know this.”

“Link?” Grandpa says with concern.

Link shakes his head. “I don’t… think I can be… Link anymore,” he says haltingly.

He takes in a breath, a gulp.

“Tell me mother’s name again,” he asks.

“You know it, don’t you?” More concern.

Link smiles sadly. “I could never forget. But… humour me.”

Grandpa Smith sighs. “Viorela.” Sweet violet, feminine.

Link closes his eyes to keep himself from crying. “I want that as a middle name. I want to be Viorel.” Sweet violet, masculine.

Grandpa gets up and curls a hug around him. “What else is different?”

Tears spill over his cheeks. “Everything. My hair is platinum, my nose upturned, my eyebrows lower and my cheeks less full. I don’t even have freckles.”

It hurts that he can see Link’s freckles in his peripheral vision, knows that he’s describing a face that doesn’t exist.

“I’m scared I invented myself too,” he whispers. “I’m scared that I’m not real, tha-”

Grandpa hugs him tight, squeezing the words away. “You are my grandson, whether you are Link MacSmith or not.”

He sniffles and Grandpa’s expression softens.

“Introduce me, will you?”

He smiles softly, so softly, and looks into his grandpa’s eyes directly.

“Vio, short for Violet.”

‘ Should have been purple ,’ Blue complains.

‘ Shut up, blueberry, ’ Violet thinks back at him.

Grandpa’s eyes are shining with tears. “Hello, Violet.”

He cries until his grandpa’s tunic is soaked. He allows himself that much, because Link is dead and he’s pretty sure he killed him.

Chapter Text

He takes Blue-the-bear with him when they leave. A show of support, of acceptance. Blue is welcome here he wants it to mean.

Violet isn’t sure if Blue-the-person gets the message.

Sneaking into the castle is just as easy as the last time, the guards still as lazy about their job guarding the gardens as they always have been.

“If you get to be Violet, why can’t I be like, Cerulean, or Woad, or anything cooler than Blue ,” Blue asks when they’re inside the secret passage.

Violet sighs. “You’ve missed the point of both my name and yours if you want something ‘cooler’.”

“I’m calling myself Cerulean.”

Violet grimaces. “No, you’re not.”

“I totally am.”

Violet changes to a scowl. “Blue, please.”

“It’s Cerulean ,” Blue says haughtily.

“For someone named after buttons, he really likes pressing yours,” Green comments.

Violet puts his face in his hands. “You’re both terrible.”

“And just whose fault is that?”

Violet muffles a scream into his palms.

“That’s what I thought.”

Violet places each element on its own altar around the sword pedestal.

Earth, Fire, Water, Wind.

Violet, Red, Blue, Green.

The sword was violet as the Picori Blade, green when it was reforged, and has since gone through red and blue colourations. All four.

“Will it turn back to green this time?” he asks.

Ezlo makes a thoughtful noise.

“I’m not sure, my boy. Magic as strong as this, while it can be guided by the material binding it, and the rituals guiding it, artifacts are known to take on a bit of a mind of their own, especially when it comes to their ultimate shape. Why, when I made that blasted cap that Vaati stole it had started as white! But as I worked and worked and worked on it the fabric slowly leeched a red colouration from the gemstone I had inset onto the brow as an anchor for the working. And now that Vaati has asked it to give him so much dark and evil power it’s been tainted and become a deep purple. He could obviously have just wished it to that colour so it matched his outfit, but I don’t doubt for a second that it may have changed colour on its own just from the dark magic flowing through its fibres!”

Violet stares at the White Sword, at its blue squared hilt and brass ridged handle. The brass triangle right at the base of the blade and the small cyan gems set into the pommel and guard. It wouldn’t look like this again, even if only in colour. And the Picori Blade was now long long gone.

Perhaps he’d ask Grandpa to help him make replicas—there was no way he’d be able to forget the way the swords had looked—and actually start helping around with the smithing business. That would be delightful.

Violet took a deep breath, steadying himself, and gently slid the White Sword into the pedestal.

The floor lit up like the night sky, the markings carved and dyed into the stone glowing bright, and an aura of power burst into existence around each of the elements.

Violet couldn’t move, Link—Link’s body—was frozen. He couldn’t take their hand off of the blade!

Beams of magic poured from the elements and collided with the handle of the White Sword, the whole thing glowing with golden light and Violet could feel the magic reforming as the final element’s magic slid into place. Minish forging, minish magic, fairy blessing, and the force of the very elements of the world itself weaved together, creating something more than just its parts, creating something holy .

The room filled with light and Violet feel suffused, felt surrounded, like he was floating in magic and brightness. Like he was perfectly at peace. Like evil was just a dream.

The handle under his grip shifted and at last Violet finally let go, watched as the glowing silhouette of the sword he’d been wielding for weeks now changed . The grip went from smooth to slightly bulbous, and the guard became wider and curved, cornering inward with a sharp point right at the edges, and the blade itself shifted from straight to forming a sharp thorny point on either side right near the guard.

Motes of light swirled and swirled, and the golden aura around the sword dimmed as ribbons flew out from the handle of the blade, billowing upwards in a non-existent wind. Violet was amazed to see that the sword itself was golden now, with three inset ridges radiating out along the curved guard from the red gemstone in the middle, while three points of metal coming up from the base of the blade like a crown around it and the central point getting an inset arrow pointing up from the same central red gem. Pale ribboning wound around the handle, with two trailing tails, and the pommel of the sword inset with a white gem, caged in by a triforce emblem on each side.

Motes of light continued to swirl and sparkle around the sword and Violet reached out slowly, reverently. This sword was beautiful , the most beautiful weapon he had ever seen. And it was… it was his. For Link to use, for Violet and Green and Blue.

Violet grabbed the sword and held it high, feeling blessed to be able to hold something so clearly sacred .

Violet split into four, and felt nearly no strain on his body at all.

“Fuck,” he whispered, “it’s amazing.”

The room shuddered, and Violet turned around to see the far wall, which had previously been inset with a tablet instructing Link on how to split using the sword, now had a door.

“Ezlo?” Violet asked, surprised at how steady his voice came out.

“Do not ask me, child, I did not construct this place.”

Violet closed his eyes, set his jaw, and walked in.

Stained glass filled the whole back wall of this small back room. A million million colours spilled out over the floor. And right in the middle was a plaque set into a raised stone.

Violet’s steps echoed through the empty room as he approached, wary and confused at the sight of pictures of himself and Zelda filling this room.

“What is this place?”

“You will likely have to read that tablet there to find out, dear boy.”

Violet clenched a fist and looked down at the inscribed words.

To the one these words are for: Read forth.
Many moons ago, though yet to pass for us

You took up a sword gifted, and bore a shining force

Your home you did protect from monsters who invaded

Sealed them away in a chest, a prison created

Your task done, your duty fulfilled

Your gifted light passed on to a royal girl

Now once more evil comes to call

Young boy hero, will you still stand tall?

A Sword of Four made by your hand,

Will it seal the darkness that plagues your land?

Violet felt empty, too much and too little.

That… this was his life ! His story ! The minish people had known this would happen!

“Ezlo,” Violet said carefully. “Tell me you knew nothing of this.”

Blubbering. “I-I-I-I swear! Violet, I did no-, I knew not of this prophecy! This sanctuary is older than I am! I know it only as the birthplace of the elements.”

Violet closed his eyes, breathing in raggedly through his nose.

“Blue,” he said stiffly, “Blue please.”

“It’s Cerulean,” Blue says tersely, “and do you want me to punch something?”

Another deep breath in. “I want you to smash this tablet. Vaati can never find this room. It’s the only place other than our minds that could tell him that Zelda has the Light Force.”

Chuckling filled the room. Deep, dark, evil chuckling.

“Oh, he can’t find this place, can he? Can’t ever know about Zelda?”

Violet looked up and there was… the king?!

Oh no. Oh no. No wonder the king and the guards had been so different lately.

The king’s face smiled and his form melted into darkness, revealing Vaati after only two heartbeats.

“Ah ha ha haaaaa,” Vaati chuckled, voice smooth and disturbing, “Ezlo, you are too kind. First you make me a cap, then you guide me here as you instruct your poor little errand boy on how to defeat me. So sad that it will never happen now…” the dark sorcerer mused, his voice sending chills down their spine.

“You’ll never take the Light Force from Princess Zelda!” Blue shouted.

Vaati tilted his head and raised an eyebrow. “Oh, but can’t I? Am I not the most powerful sorcerer in the world? It’s what I wished for, after all. And since your pretty little friend is a bit statue-stiff right now, I don’t think she’s in any place to resist.”

Vaati’s expression turned hard. “And neither, I think, are you!”

A ball of lightning formed in Vaati’s hand and Violet nor Blue could dodge it. Vaati was right there, right in front of them, there was simply no space!

They passed out, Blue’s fury still singing through their veins.

The first thing Violet does when he comes to is run out into the sanctuary and grab the elements. Even if they’re not the Light Force they’re still powerful artifacts and Vaati should never have them either.

“Is… the Minish Realm, is there anything in the Minish Realm that could help us?” Violet asks.

He feels Ezlo shake his head. “All our most powerful artifacts are currently in your hold, dear boy. All except the Light Force and my Minish Cap.”

Blue’s fury surges, but Violet forces himself to stay in control, keeps his spot as the pilot of Link’s body.

“Then there’s no time to lose!”

He runs out of the sanctuary and

No, that’s not right. That’s not the castle courtyard. That’s not the inside garden.

“Oh ho ho! Do you like it?” booms the voice of Vaati from everywhere as a bell above them rings loud and grating. “I’ve managed to gather such power while you’ve been gallivanting around the kingdom that I’ve placed my own little realm in between the sanctuary and Hyrule! Soon, once I have the Light Force I will even be able to set my own rules here! I will be a master of reality, I can make my own time, my own space! I will be a god!”

More laughter spews from the walls.

“I hope you like my little test, hero . I’d like to see if you can even get close to beating me, so here is your last fighting chance. Find me, come to me before the bell rings three times… I will have all of the light force once it does.”

Vaati’s cackling fades, the air around them growing eerily silent.

They’re in a taunting mirror of the castle of Hyrule, the ground below them a twisted red brick reflection of the path through the courtyard. There are even carved stone slabs where flower beds and bushes are back in the actual garden.

“He can’t… actually become a god, right?” Green asks, presence coming out of nowhere.

Ezlo is quiet for a long dangerous moment.

“I do not know.”

Blue growls and Violet finds himself agreeing with the sentiment despite the lack of words. That sounds really bad .

Violet runs out of the courtyard and is smacked in the face with how dark everything here feels. Not just because of the purple-dyed stone flooring or the deep emerald carpeting or the dark slate walls adorned with eyeball emblems. No, the very air itself feels suffused with darkness.

“He made a castle from dark magic, an entire building made out of darkness…” Violet whispers in fearful awe.

He scans around himself and the only way forward seems to be to the west, where stairs ascend to a higher floor level.

“I can feel your fear, hero!” Vaati’s voice springs forth and Violet runs. Runs because it’s the only thing he can do.

Further west: a stairwell down. South: one locked door. North: a second locked door.

Violet finds himself in a prison, where he is stunned to discover that the king of Hyrule is being locked up in this dreary place.

“Your highness!”

King Daltus looks up and his eyes widened.

“Link? Smith’s boy?” he asks.

Violet nods because there’s no time to explain. “Y-yes.”

A hand pokes out through the bars and drops a small key. “My only instructions were ‘give him hope, so I can crush it’.”

Violet scowls as he grabs the key. “I’ll fix this. I’ll get you out of here… once I’ve rescued Zelda.”

The king smiles, soft and sad. “If you must, leave me. Zelda is the future of my kingdom. The people do not need me any longer.”

Violet frowns, but nods. Zelda is the priority. Will always be the priority.

The door to the south is fake. It tried to fall down and squish them.

Blue blows it up with a bomb.

The real door clicks open when the key is inserted and a room with four round-shot shooting statues at the far end is revealed. There are bars set up just wide enough for the iron balls to pass through but prevent any actual people from passing without going the long way winding through the path the bars have created.

Violet lifts their shield and walks carefully, back and forth through the room and between the rows of bars. There’s little challenge to it, only keeping the eyes and ears clocked onto the turrets as he walks.

There are raised spires blocking their way forward, just behind the turrets, so similar to those from the temple of droplets.

Violet’s first instinct is to blow up the turrets with bombs, but there is neither scratch nor crack in them after the explosion.

He slashes at them with the Four Sword, but any marks he leaves is quickly regenerated away. He tries the cane of pacci, the mole mits, the Cyclos bow, the magical boomerang, even running at them with the pegasus boots.

Nothing. Nothing is gained and all that is lost is time.

The turrets decorative red eyes taunt him, staring him down as the four of them continue to shoot their…

Wait.

“We’re idiots,” Violet spits, “there’s four of them. Vaati is being cheeky!”

“Having four of us isn’t going to fix the fact that we can’t damage them!” Blue growls.

Violet smirks. “Watch.”

He raises the Four Sword, splitting into four in an instant, and lines Link and the shades up with the turrets, and when the balls of metal come flying Violet swings the blades, sending them flying back at the turrets where they crumble to ruin.

The spires sink into the floor.

Violet feels his smirk stretch wide across Link’s face.

“Fuck you, pretentious prick,” Blue mutters insolently.

Violet rolls their eyes. “You really should watch our mouth, I don’t think grandpa would like all the colourful language you’re using.”

Blue’s furious silence is one of the most beautiful things Violet has ever heard.

Spirits high, he saunters forward into the next room, where he is immediately brick-walled by the sight of high walls sectioning off the room into what seems to be three sections. The first only has a button on the floor, the second is entirely tiled with brilliant blue tiles, and the third… well Violet can’t see it yet without crossing through the middle.

It appears to be a 4-by-6 tiled space, with two tiles missing right next to the entrance in the bottom left corner and an opening into the third section of the room one tile away from the wall on the diagonal opposite side.

Violet takes a step on the button and… nothing happens.

So Violet moves to the tiles and takes a step, watching as the floor beneath his foot goes from chilling blue to burning red.

“Tracking me? ” he mutters. “Do I need to make a pattern? I don’t have one given to me yet… so, entirely position based? A maze?”

He takes another step and nothing continues to happen except the tile turning red.

“Hurry up and head for the exit already, dumbass,” Blue curses at him.

Violet shushes him. “I’m concentrating, be quiet.”

“You can concentrate from the exit!”

Violet sighs deeply and complies, but not because Blue is right. No, he just needs more information.

He cuts through the tiles, leaving a path of red behind him, and is entirely unsurprised by the locked door he finds in the other portion of the room.

“Not a shortest path, so is it…” he turns around and heads back, the tiles beneath him unchanging this time as he stalks towards the button, the click of it echoed by the click of the tiles all returning to being blue.

“It wouldn’t be a challenge if I just had to change all of the tiles to red without caring about where I stepped. I gotta path over each tile just once.”

He takes a quick breath.

“I think.”

He only feels simmering annoyance from Blue and boredom from Green, and Ezlo is apparently not arguing…

He steps on the first tile and continues in a line for four, next row back three, again for the third, and four again for the fourth. Only two rows remain, one of five with the exit and one of four beyond that. But the exit is at the other end of the room from him so he goes up and down across the rows until he lands on the exit tile and watches the locked door slide open.

“Oh, goddesses, I was right, oh gosh,” Violet breathes out.

Burning emotions rise up from Blue. “Keep going! We’re wasting time just standing here!”

Violet hates that he’s right, but he is. There is no time to waste, not with Zelda, with all of Hyrule potentially on the line.

“I don’t want to hate you,” Violet mutters, his voice full of frustration, “but you make it so hard.”

Blue doesn’t answer and Violet sighs to fill the silence as he ascends the stairs in the next room.

Which apparently leads to a throne room of all places. Gosh, Vaati was just showing off at this point. Everything was placed here to get a reaction out of them, to waste time, and Violet was mad that it was working.

“You’re the worst, Vaati,” Violet mutters.

Cackling echoes from the walls. “Not yet, I’m not.”

Lightning strikes the middle of the room, just in front of the throne, and leaves a red darknut behind.

Violet staggers back a step.

Blood, red and hot and piercing. He remembers it. The pain, the searing, the liquid life spilling from between his fingers.

“H-h-how dare y-you,” Violet stutters. “How dare you get inside my head .”

The darknut raises its sword and Violet swears there is blood already on it. His blood, Link’s blood.

Green’s blood.

His vision blurs, darkens. He

Cerulean feels the floor beneath Link’s boots slide out from under them and realizes he’s been pushed into control. That Violet ducked out, cuccood out.

“Pansy,” Cerulean mutters as he saves Violet’s loss of control by turning it into a backwards roll.

“Be nice,” Green mutters, “he trusts you to deal with this guy.”

Cerulean laughs and knows it sounds mean.

“He should be less of a pansy and deal with it himself then!”

The darknut strikes with its sword and Cerulean parries with Link’s shield, striking back at the darknut’s armpit.

“You wouldn’t exist if we could deal with these darknuts.”

Cerulean falters but manages to dodge out of the way of the incoming swing. It leaves him offbeat for several seconds, playing catch-up with the movement of the fight until he manages to feint the darknut into using its lightning strike and Cerulean takes the time to strike quickly at the knight’s exposed back with a spin attack, taking it out quickly.

He stares silently at the fallen red armour, now empty, and has no reply to what Green said.

“Don’t talk to me,” He mutters, seethes, pleads.

He can’t tell if the tears in his eyes are frustration or… something else.

He turns to the throne and like any adventurer worth their salt pushes it aside to reveal the staircase underneath.

Chapter Text

The end of the passage under the throne led them outside by what seemed to be the north-east corner of the castle, where rain fell and thunder crashed and the edge of the world was a wall of swirling purple clouds.

“Why’d you call him a pansy when he trusts you,” Green says, ignoring Cerulean’s request to not be talked to.

Cerulean scowls as the rain pelts at his face. “Because he’s better than checking out of situations! Heck, you were the one who actually checked out when Link got stabbed!”

“Meaning he felt it all, all the pain I wasn’t there to feel. And I’m sure he blames himself for me getting hurt.”

Cerulean scowls harder.

“Whatever,” he mutters. “Stop being so, so, so… insightful, it’s weird.”

Green chuckles. “Stop being so angry,” he says, but it’s playful, teasing.

Cerulean looks out at the empty expanse of air to the south, dotted only with whirlwinds, and doesn’t reply.

A sigh. “Not easy, is it?”

Cerulean growls, but not very much. “Violet should be better, he’s a hero too. Even if he’s not Link anymore he’s still…” he trails off before growling again. “I expect better of him!”

Green opens their mouth, about to speak, but Cerulean runs and jumps into the nearest vortex to cut him off.

“We’re on a time limit Green, we don’t have time to waste!” he reminds the other.

Green opens then closes their mouth with a click of teeth.

“Okay.”

The journey through the air is agonizingly slow. Drifting from vortex to vortex isn’t fast and it leaves Cerulean on edge, having to trust over and over again that Vaati was just being an asshole when he designed this place, that he was trying to get in their heads, to make their fears peak.

He hates that it’s working so well.

It takes several minutes for them to reach the platform by the south-eastern tower, dropping to the stonework with a wince and a pop of sensation as Violet’s presence forces its way back into wakefullness.

“Oh, we’re outside. You won. Good.”

Cerulean dodges past a few keatons and moblins to head his way around the tower and to the west where he can see a large door in the middle of the southern wall. It helps distract him from the twinge of concern over the way Violet is suddenly talking so… flatly.

“Have a nice nap?” Cerulean asks as he strikes at an impact switch, causing the large door to open.

“I was not asleep.”

The response was so bland, so flat and dismissive, that Cerulean doesn’t know how to reply. Has no opening to taunt or even to offer the vestige of comfort… not that he’d do that.

“Alright, whatever,” he mutters and walks into the castle.

Violet flickers their eyes over the large room, surprised at how empty it is. There’s four pairs of large stone sconces holding bright green flames, but other than that there’s nothing actually filling the room other than a set of four impact buttons arranged in a trapezoid at the far end of the room in front of a large door heading onward to the rest of the castle.

“He’s taunting us, finding small ways as simple as room size to waste our time,” he mutters under their breath.

“He’s being a pain in the butt is what he’s being,” Blue agrees.

Violet is probably as surprised as Green himself when a chuckle escapes the confines of his mind and spills from their shared lips.

Shocked silence for a single heartbeat, and then

“I’ll take control, yeah?”

Blue scowls, but only a little bit.

“Yeah, sure, whatever.”

Green smiles and sprints across the room, showing off with a spin attack that activates all of the impact buttons quickly.

“Stop being so good at that,” Blue says sourly.

“Get better at it then,” Green says back cheerfully.

Blue is suspiciously quiet in response as Green leads them through the door, where two flail knights and a locked big door awaits them.

Green rolls to the side as a morningstar impacts the floor where they’d been standing just half a heartbeat earlier.

“Found the boss door, I guess,” Green says, before rushing over throwing a boomerang at one knight while slicing at the other with the Four Sword.

“We still need the key,” Violet reminds them.

The first flail knight falls, and the second quickly follows.

A bell tolls, deep and loud and everywhere.

They freeze in place, images of four rooms filling their mind. Each with one red Dark Nut and a purple-tinted silver Dark Nut.

“Hero in four, swordsman of plenty, prove yourself in combat against my four challenges,” Vaati’s voice fills the room, menacing and sinister. “Each pair guards a key… let’s see if you can get them all before your precious princess fails.”

Violet clenches their eyes shut. Dark Nuts, of course it was Dark Nuts.

The grip on the Four Sword shakes.

“Violet?”

He shakes their head. He can’t reply, can’t get the words out of their throat, to pass their lips.

“Violet, it’s okay.”

Violet shakes their head again. It’s not okay, he’s not okay.

“Pansy.”

Violet blinks their eyes open in shock.

“What did you call me?”

“A pansy,” Blue says with a strange level of confidence.

He takes in a soft breath in. “A fitting nickname, they are thinking flowers, heads bowed in thought,” he manages to say, but it’s flat, humourless.

Blue scowls. “I’m insulting you. Get your shit together.”

Violet chuckles, sad and sarcastic. “Fuck you.”

Blue scowls more. “Either get your shit together or get your shit out of here.”

Violet breaths in deep, shoulders rising then falling. “Green is in control,” he recalls.

Silence, broken only by Violet’s ragged panting.

“Green should be the leader,” Violet says softly. “He’s the most level-headed right now.”

He feels simmering resentment from Blue, but with only him disagreeing there’s little point.

There are two open doors heading out of the room, one east and one west. Green heads east.

Doors slam shut and the Dark Nuts instantly turn to face them. Two swords raise and Violet feels like their vision is flicking. Colour fading in and out, dots of darkness clouding the edge of their vision.

His vision flickers out and he knows nothing. Sees only flashes of the fight.

One sword, two.

A crackle of lightning and wind.

A roll along the floor.
A stab in the opening of a red helmet.

A purple cape being torn away.

Armour clattering to the floor.
A thud of stonework.
A spin attack, maybe?

A view from above.

Smoke.

A bow.

Running at a wall with the pegasus boots.

More armor thudding.

Violet blinks and realizes that the room is empty.

“You beat them both?” he asks.

Silence. Concern.

“Green? Blue?”

More silence, more concern. Blue doesn’t even try to “correct” him about his name.

“Guys?”

A swallow of their throat. “I beat them. I beat them all. All eight of them.”

Violet feels like their stomach has sunk into their knees. “I was…”

He was out of it for that long?

“We had trouble with the puzzles without you,” Green says casually, as if that’s a comfort. Because it isn’t. Nothing can comfort him, not right now.

His breath whooshes out of him and he feels his heart thud thud thud in his chest.

Calm, calm, he needs to be calm. He needs to be emotionless and steady and responsible. He’s a hero, he’s a hero, he’s a hero.

“I’m a hero,” he wheezes out. “Heroes don’t panic like this.”

He’s only allowed to panic like this if he isn’t a hero and he knows he’s a hero, it’s the only thing he can be.

Because otherwise he’s nothing, just facts and knowledge barely tying a personality together.

“I am calm,” he wishes, pleads, prays, as their blood rushes in their ears.

Calm.

Calm.
Calm.

Calm!

Violet blinks. He’s on the floor, on his hands and knees, a small puddle of wetness in the middle of his vision, right there on the floor. Was it drool, tears, snot?

It didn’t matter. Because he is calm.

“We only have three of the keys right now, correct? Because you just defeated the four pairs of Dark Nuts?”

Silence for a heartbeat, three, five…

“Correct?” he asks again.

A sigh. “Yes.”

Violet gets to their feet and nods. “Let’s get the next one then.”

The puzzle in the next room is beyond easy. A few red stalfos wander about the southern part of the room while at the northern end there’s a rotating fire bar with a pit next to a wall dotted with four eye-switch-targets.

Violet barely even thinks before he’s firing off arrows into each of the targets and heading into the attached corner tower, opening the chest at the top to retrieve the fourth and final small key.

Violet turns the Big Key in the lock and winces as the second of three bells toll. As Zelda progresses closer and closer to losing all of the Light Force.

Laughter fills the air as he walks them onto the walkway above the fake courtyard garden, thick panes of glass separating them from the stone below.

“Ha ha ha! You are very persistent, aren’t you?” Vaati taunts them from nowhere and everywhere.

“You’ve come to stop my ceremony, but you’re too late. The bell will ring again so soon now, your princess will be reduced to just cold dead stone, and I will become a god of darkness. Already I have so much control of this place, reality is no longer blocks but putty in my hands! Soon, even time and space will bow before me!”

Violet grits their teeth and feels Ezlo atop their head shudder. “There’s no more time, boys,” the old minish urges, “it’s the final stretch!”

Violet runs across the walkway and up the stairs it leads to. The journey is over in an instant, or perhaps after several minutes. It feels hard to tell, with the way the walls are wavering just slightly and how his blinks trail in his memory for ages.

The room at the top of the stairs is open and large, a vast green rug covering the floor.

The doors on either side of the room slam shut and lightning strikes the ground, leaving behind a Black Dark Nut accompanied by three Red ones.

“Heh heh heh heh heh, my strongest knights… see if you can beat them before your dear Zelda dies, before I can wish you out of existence.”

Violet freezes for only a moment, his calm leaving for just one heartbeat.

How are they… there’s four of them, even with four bodies there’s no way…

The Four Sword flashes and they split.

“It’s the only way,” Green says softly and Violet can’t disagree. Feels it so certainly in the core of himself that it is the only course of action they could, would, take here and now.

Fighting four battles at once though, while it won’t be a drain on their body, it will be a serious drain on their focus. There’s no way they can fight all four of them at the same time. Which means

“Evasion tactics,” Violet suggests. “Me and Blue will focus on staying back, Green will fight.”

The black nut lunges forward, wind and lightning spewing from his sword.

“I wanna fight!” Blue argues with one shade’s mouth as the four of them scatter.

Violet urges the other two shades to far corners of the room. “Do you trust me to be able to finely control two copies on my own?” he shouts back.

Blue doesn’t reply and the fight begins.

It’s practically a dance, Green ducking in and out of slashing distance with the Black Knight while Violet and Blue trade off between the shades to keep the red dark nuts busy and away from Green. There’s no space for fancy movement or sword tricks, controlling one and a half shades to such precision is difficult enough as it is just keeping them unharmed.

Any damage the shades take would make them disappear anyway. They function only to draw attention away from the real body.

The black knight charges at Green as Violet and Blue stagger out of slashing distance. Green runs up the wall with the pegasus boots and leaps behind the black knight, slashing through the back of midnight armour until it’s nothing but scraps.

The black knight buckles, but turns, eyes glowing fierce.

Blue’s focus shifts, perhaps caught by the battle-passion in those monstrous eyes.

A swipe catches one of the shades in the side.

Violet screams, their head pounding as the shades turn to dust.

Green leaps them back a pace, two. They need to split again and fast, before the dark nuts regroup.

Green rolls to the side, splitting as he goes, leaving copies in his wake.

“Stay focused!” he reprimands. “We need the shades to stick around if we want to beat them quickly.”

Blue growls but doesn’t argue, running two shades around a Red Dark Nut to lead its oncoming slash into the arm of a second one.

Green has their shield raised as the Black Nut slashes from overhead, stepping to the side with a push to the sword to prevent their arm from being broken by the force of the large sword’s drop.

Violet is focusing on only one Red Nut, shadely shield raised as they step around each other, stares locked as Violet impatiently twirls his sword. But they have no time for waiting around, even if the Black Nut is still around.

Blue smacks one Red Nut in the butt with his shield as he continues to run around a pair of them, one of his shades is cornered but it’s okay. He’s got this.

Two swords come down and Blue’s cornered shade dodges one, but catches the other with his shield at the wrong angle, forcing him to his knees.

‘ Fuck .’

Violet panics, Green starts to sweat. A black shield coming out to block what would have been a critical strike to a knee.

Violet abandons his current Red Nut target and runs to Blue’s assistance, stabbing his sword into the back of one Red Nut between his upper and lower plates, tearing through the chainmail below with one slash, tw-

A shield smacks Violet in the side, sending him flying as Blue’s second shade blocks a sword coming for his first shade, angling it down to the floor instead of into his neck.

Green ducks under a slash from the Black Nut and gets behind it, plunges his blade into the back of the knee and forces the Black Nut to the floor. He stabs the Nut in one armpit, but the enemy twirls on its still capable leg, shield coming round to hit Green in the nose but he rolls out of the way, stopping in a crouch.

The Black Nut’s sword scrapes by his right cheek and Green curses.

The face Violet is focussing on may not be real, but he can tell it would bruise if it was. He stands and locks eyes with two Red Nuts, sees Green beyond them crouching in front of the Black Nut.

‘ We’re gonna lose, ’ he thinks.

Two swords come down.

Two shields step in to block them.

Violet startles himself to his feet, turns to where Blue had been cornered and sees empty armour crumbling to dust.

“Focus!” Blue shouts at him with two mouths.

Green stands up and steps back a pace, two. He needs the space to think, to plan.

The Black Nut limps forward, sword hanging loosely, but it’s still a threat.

Green steps to the side, to the left where the Black Nut will have to turn on his injured leg to face him.

The Black Nut stops in his tracks for one heartbeat, two…

The shield is dropped and the free hand goes to grip the sword as well.

Violet runs around the left of Blue’s shades and slashes at the exposed armpit of a Red Nut’s shield arm, punching through the mail and leather and muscle.

The shield drops and the sword swings around, the loose arm hanging by the Red Nut’s side as Blue’s shades two-v-one the other Red Nut.

Blue smacks a shield away with his sword, catching the wrist with the point of one blade while the other shade blocks an oncoming sword with a shield, pushing his own sword into the side of the Dark Nut’s waist.

Green can’t block, can’t redirect a sword swung by two hands, not without endangering his very real bones in his very real body.

He runs, shield above his head, ducking into a roll just in time under an overhead swing, before he leaps into a spin, knocking the Black Nut in the head with the tip of his sword.

The Black Nut pitches forward, but on his injured leg, and collapses to the floor.

Green stabs it in the neck, cutting the head cleanly off.

The shades dissipate.

Violet stalks forward in their shared body and slashes across the exposed chest of the only remaining Red Nut.

“Fuck you,” he mutters under their breath as the monster dies. “That’s for hitting me in the face.”

They stand in the middle of the room, alone and singular, panting raggedly. Sweat is dripping from their brow, from every strand of their hair, even with the headband.

“Quickly boys!” Ezlo cries, “to the roof!”

Violet runs to the door.

Chapter Text

Vaati turns to face them, hair no longer covering one side of his face and a strange two-spired helmet of some sort on his head, tunic and baggy pants swapped out for gold-lined purple robes with a thick metal collar containing a giant glimmering jewel from which hangs a decorative strip of red fabric bearing a symbol of a circle with horns. Makeup covers his face, long lines of dark purple running down from his eyes.

He looks angry. Furious.

“You made it here. How unfortunate. Just a few more moments and the ceremony would have been complete. You really are obsessed with stopping me, aren’t you?”

His expression turns into a sinister smile. “Ah, very well. While I do not have all of the light force drained from your dear Zelda, most will have to suffice for now. It will certainly be enough to transform me, to crush you beneath my unstoppable heel!”

Vaati lifts one arm and sparkling darkness escapes from his fingers, shooting out in a wave.

The world transforms, a large purple room of infinite size stretching beyond imagination with no sign of Zelda who had previously been with them on the rooftop altar.

It’s only them. Green, Violet, Blue… Link…… and Vaati.

“I will have no more of you interfering with my plans!” Vaati shouts with arms spread wide, “Let me show you true power!”

His entire form turns black, stretching and warping, until an unnaturally tall and slender demon floats just off of the floor in front of them, two red ribbons framing an opening in purple robes where a sideways red-tinted eye lined in gold blinks. Two large purple sleeves with flaming golden cuffs come up, clawed pale hands poking out from the darkness within to hold balls of shadow.

A round head with intense red eyes and long straight hair that flows down his back rests on gold-crested shoulders. Glistening shiny golden horns rise from the top of his head, and a smile slowly crosses Vaati’s purple-tear-tracked face.

“I am Reborn and now… you will die.”

The eye on his belly closes, the robes swaying together to block the sight of the empty darkness under them. The lack of a body.

Orbs fly from under the darkness of Vaati’s robes. Four purple spheres with a single gold-lined red eye each, just like Vaati. They stare endlessly, looking at the hero unblinkingly.

Lightning springs out of one of them and Green raises their shield while Blue jumps them to the side.

Vaati raises a hand and a wall of darkness forms in their way, making them stumble on their next step.

“There is no escaping Fate in this place. I have control here,” he boasts.

The world blurs for a moment and then Vaati is in front of them, a pitch-black sword fuming with darkness in his right hand.

The sword swings and Green swings their shield to intercept, trying not to break their arm against the nearly person-sized blade.

Vaati’s eyes are wide, his grin crazed and manic as he loosely swings with glee, seemingly not caring about how hard his strikes are. He’s toying with them, taunting them. Proving they can’t get an opening to attack even when Vaati is just playing around.

Blue screams in rage and swings the Four Sword at Vaati’s belly, the blade putting a cut into the robe, then clanging against the metal eyelids of the giant eye.

Vaati starts cackling as his robe stitches itself back together, shoulders shaking as his grip on his shadow sword weakens for a moment.

“You can not hurt me!” he shouts, reaching out to slash at them with pointed fingers that miss their face by only an inch thanks to Violet jumping a step back.

“I am invincible!” Vaati screams, swinging the sword again as his eyeball drones swarm behind him, staring right at them.

Green swings the Four Sword to divert the sword away, its cutting edge just barely biting into the toes of their boots.

Lightning strikes them and they are frozen with pain. Stuck as Vaati laughs and laughs at them. They can’t move, can’t breathe, can’t even think.

It’s just pain
Pain
Pain
Endless pain.

Until it stops and they collapse to the floor, the impact forcing the air from their lungs. Forcing their breathing back.

The edge of something taps at the back of their head and their eyes weakly flick up to look at Vaati, who is holding his sword out with a contemplative look on his face.

“Maybe I won’t kill you, what do you think about that?” he says, as if they could possibly reply.

His eyes swirl with such redness that Green wonders how they’re not bleeding.

“Maybe,” Vaati continues on as Violet shakily tries to push them into a bent-over kneel, “I will take all your things, your items, your shield, your sword… and trap you here in this place forever. Force you to care for that statue that used to be your princess.”

Green lifts one arm, pushes the Four Sword against the floor to lift them to their knees, breath raggedly passing their lips as Vaati muses at them.

“Or maybe I’ll have you be my personal servant, butler-ing me for all time,” the demon continues speaking, the words washing over them like the nonsense they are.

‘ We can’t give up, ’ Green thinks and the thought resonates with all three of them.

Violet gets one knee up, foot on the ground, then another as they unfortunately use the Four Sword as a prop.

“…Oh, look,” Vaati drawls, swishing his shadow sword lightly in their direction, “the mouse decided to stand. How terrible for it.”

Something clicks audibly, menacingly.

The sword swing comes from above and Blue sidesteps it, Green throwing their shield arm out to redirect the blade.

Violet jumps them into the air with the Roc’s cape and takes one of the eye-drones out with a sword swing of his own. The thing explodes into a burst of darkness that is quickly eaten by the Four Sword, its blade shining brighter after.

They land, facing Vaati’s back thanks to a mid-air turn, and the enemy is frozen, not even the flames of his cloak moving.

And then he’s moving again, turning slowly as darkness plumes out like smoke from under him.

The remaining orbs get cloaked in it, cackling clouds of darkness surrounding them like miniature storms.

“You really really shouldn’t have done that, little mouse,” Vaati says tonelessly, as if lightly scolding a child.

Fortunately, Link is not his child to scold.

“It’s not your place to decide that!” Blue shouts.

Three strikes of lightning land by their feet.

“A warning,” Vaati says, and then swings his sword again.

Violet pulls them backwards, out of range of the strike.

“So, we all saw him freeze right?” Violet mutters under his breath as continues to keep them distanced from Vaati and his blade.

They’re good with swords, the three of them. Had learned really quickly how not to die , but that doesn’t help them against the clearly well-trained Vaati. He’d won the sword tournament what felt like so long ago, and it shows in the way he’s using his blade that he clearly deserved it.

“It was pretty obvious,” Green murmurs back, “but we need a way to get rid of those… clouds, if we want to keep taking out his drones.”

Violet mentally runs through their bag of items and the only thing that seems even remotely useful is…

“The gust jar?” he questions out loud as he ducks out of the way of another sword swing.

“Is that your only suggestion!?” Blue shouts over the blast of lightning and the cackling of a madman.

“More like it’s our only option!” Violet shouts back.

“We’re gonna need to be fast,” Green mumbles as he rolls under a slash.

Violet sheaths the Four Sword and leaps back from a snarling Vaati.

“You have no options against me!” the demon squeals. “None!”

“We’ll see about that,” Green says and pulls out the gust jar from their pack.

Step.
Step.
Pick up speed.

Step. Step.

Step. Step. Step. Step.

Green runs them in a circle around Vaati, moving fast as the wind with the Pegasus boots Rem had gifted them, forming a swirling vortex that feeds into the mouth of the gust jar.

Around and around, darkness and fire, billows of smoke pulling from Vaati and his eyeball-drones alike.

‘ Come on ,’ Green thinks, legs growing tired even with the magic of the boots assisting him.

One eye became visible.

‘ Come on .’

Two eyes.

‘ Come on! ’

All eyes are freed and Green trips, planting face-first into the shining floor.

A sword touches their neck.

“What a cute trick, little mouse, but a mouse you are still.”

Violet stares up in horror at the demon standing above them, but Blue moves a steady hand to the hilt of their sword.

The blade moves to their wrist.

“Uh uh,” Vaati sing-songs. “None of that.”

Blue smirks but let go, just as three shades slash through each of the remaining eyeball-drones.

A shudder runs through Vaati’s form, his whole body going rigid and unnaturally still.

And then the screaming, the high-pitched screech of noise that wails out of Vaati’s entire body as his body seems to…. Lose hold of itself.

One blink and it was far away, another and it was closer. Then to the left, then upside down.

Green raises them to their knees, slowly and surely and draws their sword.

“I think, Vaati, that you said something about not having options?”

The screaming grows louder and then Vaati just… stops.

Right in front of them, the eyeball on his chest wide open, and a single note of noise still tearing through the air.

Green stabs forward and watches in horror as Vaati’s eyeball bleeds like a river, torrents of thick almost goopy blood pouring out of the fresh wound in the eye.

The screaming grows more shrill until Violet is forced to cover their ears.

The realm shakes and

then there is a flash of darkness.

nothing

Just empty.

And then it all comes back.

The purple realm, Vaati.

Floating before them and with a murderously intense look on his face.

“You hero boy and your cheap tricks,” he mutters from out of their reach. “Do you think that puny sword can save you? That you can outsmart me? Me and my power? You can not even begin to understand it!”

Vaati raises his arms and faces up, as if inviting the very gods themselves to bless him.

“I have the Light Force!” he screams. “I should be unstoppable! Incapable of damage let alone defeat!”

His eyes flick back down, a sneer crossing his lips. “I think I know how to fix that. I think… that you will not survive this.”

Once again Vaati turns to blackness, only the golden horns on his head remaining stable as his body changes to a shapeless mass of darkness. Something that looks like webbing and smoke and fabric meshed together. Like insanity in physical form.

Then a golden set of lips appears in the middle, blinking open to reveal a solid red eye with only a black iris to show where it is looking and three long triangular eyelashes branching from the upper lid.

Then, with a crash of noise the mass forms into a ball of pure darkness. Brass horns stretch out like the widest of thin grinned smiles while the base where they meet the top of his new spherical body is surrounded with a circlet of gold.

There is no mouth, only a plate of golden metal under the bottom of the sphere, partially obscured by the pillow of smoke that holds it aloft.

“Fear me!” Vaati’s voice booms like thunder as larger eyeball-like drones—this time with either deep red wings or bright cyan scales covering their surface—arise from the smoke. “I have transfigured myself into the perfect form. Infinitely capable of taking you down in unlimited ways! Your silly jar of wind will no longer work on me!”

The cyan-scaled orbs orbit fast, coming in close to Vaati’s side while the red-winged orbs swirl outwards, staring them down with their blood-red eyes which begin to glow with power.

Green doesn’t think, just flings the edges of the roc’s cape wide, and leaps backwards out of the way of the incoming lightning strikes, pulling their boomerang out to throw it at the drones and hoping that it does at least something to them. Hoping that one weakness had been exchanged for another.

“Ezlo, I’m going to need more eyes!” he shouts as electricity builds between Vaati’s golden horns. As the drones swirl around Link in a chaotic pattern, shafts of lightning landing both near and far.

“I do think you might need more than just my old eyes, boy!” Elzo shouts back as the boomerang returns, having left not a mark on any of Vaati’s drones.

“We should split,” Blue suggests.

Green barely dodges the next lightning bolt.

“Do you want to get hit by lightning?!” he shouts with increasing amounts of both alarm and vocal pitch.

“I’m with Green on this one!” Violet quickly says as Green tosses a bomb at Vaati and his protective drones.

The bomb explodes but seemingly has no effect as Vaati starts to laugh maniacally.

“You’re with Green on everything!” Blue growls.

“Left!” Ezlo shouts, and Blue ducks them into a roll without a thought.

A ball of electricity passes over their head and Blue leaps them up into the air, putting more distance between them and Vaati.

“We don’t really have a lot of weapons…” Green pants out sounding almost pouty, “I don’t think the cane or th-,” a swift turn away from a beam of energy fired their way, “the cane or lantern or mitts will do much to him or his drone things!”

Violet pulls out the Cyclos Bow and aims it at the eye of a nearby red-winged drone.

“Only one option left then,” he mutters.

He fires.
The arrow tinks off of the surface of the drone.

More laughter rings out as Violet gapes at the unharmed drone, as it stares at him with what looks like smugness for daring to try and defeat the mighty Vaati.

“Oh, did the little hero think that would work?!” Vaati croons. “Did you really think I wasn’t prepared for everything you could possibly throw at me?!”

The eye in front of them starts to glow and Violet can feel Green’s desperate fear of the unbeatable, Blue’s rage at the unfairness. But his mind whirrs, looking for some way, any way, to get out of this.
He comes up blank for several horrible heartbeats, but still he tries.

“I told you,” Vaati nearly coos as his eldritch form draws close, “I am a god, no force or fight you can put up is capable of stopping me. I have more power than you can conceive, more force than you can ever know, no one is more powerful than Vaati.”

The eye glows a terrifying bright blue and something goes click inside Violet’s head. A strategy. A possibility.

He turns to face Vaati and walks slowly, ever aware of the drones still staring at him.

“Link what are you doing?!” Ezlo shouts. “This is suicide!”

Violet looks Vaati straight in the eye and smiles as he pulls out the shield Princess Zelda had so lovingly gifted to him shortly before this stupid adventure started.

“I will not let us,” he takes a breath and hears the whining of the drone go high-pitched behind him, “I can not let us die without trying everything .”

Vaati cackles. “Foolish child, your tenacity is endearing, but you have no way to stop me.”

Violet pulls out a bottled “charm” he had received from a visiting musician woman after he’d helped her move into a new house and drinks it down, feeling his body stiffen as if suddenly filled with cotton.

“I know,” he says, and leaps over Vaati the moment he hears the drones fire, throwing the shield so it would absorb most of the impact.

The beams of lightning follow him along his jump and Violet feels their body go stiff and rigid as they are struck, as they burn and ache and freeze and lose control for several long agonizing moments. As they drop to the floor in a heap behind Vaati twitching uncontrollably.

They watch, paralyzed, as Vaati screams in terror, as nearly the full might of his lightning blast pushes through his own defences and tears through his body, leaving gaping holes in his misty dark form.

Vaati’s spherical body crashes to the floor, leaking purple goo over the iridescent floor.

“Madness…” he mutters, voice far less echoing and menacing than Violet remembered it being.

“I have the unstoppable might of a god and still this madness comes to be…”

His form starts to waver, bright white smoke pluming off of his dissolving body.

“… how could I lose…… to a child?!?”

Vaati’s form liquifies, shuddering and squirming, before glowing a brilliant white that Violet physically can not look away from and then everything glows that bright, that brilliant burning white, before Violet is left laying prone on the floor of the highest castle chamber once more, his face pressed into the green carpeting.

Their sword hand twitches, then the whole arm, and Violet feels Blue pulling them to their feet—perhaps a bit too quickly for their still aching body.

Someone makes an attempt at speech, but all that expells from their mouth is breath.

Fingers grasp at the carpeting, toes pushing into the soles of their boots.

“Eh… Ehhhzz-loohhh…?” Green manages to say with incredible effort.

The castle gives a single soft shudder. Something to worry about later.

“I… I’m alright boys,” their companion replies, bringing a great sense of relief.

Violet closes their eyes as tears well up in them.

They did it, they’d won. They beat Vaati.

“We did it,” Green croaks out. “We saved the day… again.”

Ezlo coughs out a chuckle. “You sure did, boys. Impressive work.”

Green pulls out a bottle from their pack, holding it between their bent knees to uncork it and quickly quaffs down a mouthful of vibrant red, the aches throughout their entire body dulling.

A sigh of relief. The return of feeling in their shield arm.

They move to stand, still wobbly on their feet, but they walk slowly and steadily to the door at the far end of the room, back up to the altar where Zelda was sure to be waiting for them.

Blue stops them in their tracks, digging their heels into the carpet.

“I…” his voice sounds unsure, rough, “Violet…”

“Yes?”

A deep and tired sigh. “I may not like you, but… you’re the one who defeated Vaati, who figured out how to harm him. I… I respect that. After all, it’s…” he chuckles lowly, darkly, “it’s the whole reason I exist.”

Violet feels stuck. That didn’t sound good.

“I… I think fast,” he says in excuse.

Bitter angry tears start to gather in their eyes. “I was made to be impulsive though!”

But, but no!

“Shut up!” Violet yells. “That’s not true!”

“Boys, stop it!” Ezlo shouts, but it does nothing.

“You made me to be angry a-and… and desperate! I should have gotten us out of that impossible situation but it was you instead!” Blue cries.

It hurts, their chest hurts.

“I… I’m not replacing you,” Violet whispers. “It was just luck, I… I think and I plan. I look for weaknesses specifically. You just…” he stops himself.

“I just rage?” Blue spits.

Violet doesn’t answer. Can’t answer.

Their chest tightens, their mouth draws into a line, then a snarl.

“Is that all I am to you?!”

Violet shakes his head weakly. He’s supposed to be calm, but he feels like he’s drowning in the face of Blue’s rage.

“No, you… I don’t think that!”

He needs to get his fear under wraps.

Blue glares at nothing in particular. “Prove it.”

Violet’s hands shake, but he takes a deep breath, tries to soothe his fear and Blue’s rage both, but it’s hard when half of his feelings, a third of his feelings really, aren’t even his.

His hands shake more. He can’t do this, not on his own.

“Green… can you?”

The shaking lessens. Hands reach into their bag as Violet stuffs his fear into a sack and holds it close. They don’t need another one of them, not now. He allows himself to feel but not show. He can do that, he can mask. He allows himself that, hoping that one day all these feelings won’t be enough to paralyze him anymore.

Blue-the-bear is pulled out.

“You…” Violet struggles to breathe through the surge of feelings coursing through their body.

“Green is my hero, my courage, the cut of my sword. I am the arrow that flies to only the spots I can see… But Blue is my protector, my shield. He…”

A lump forms in their throat, and their airway goes tight around it.

“He protects me from injustice,” he whispers with a weak smile. “From injury and pain. From nightmare and fear. He puts fear into my enemies instead.”

Violet hugs the bear close. “He is like a brother, even if he does not like me. He is here to keep me safe from those who would hurt me, even if he wants to hurt me sometimes I can trust he will be there to prevent the real hurt.”

Blue is quiet for a moment, then scoffs.

“Fucking pansy,” he says, but it’s soft. Violet wonders if he remembers just how fitting the insult really is.

Violet looks down into Blue-the-bear’s single remaining eye. “I knew that if I couldn’t come up with a way to defeat Vaati that Blue would be there to make sure I would have the time to figure it out. That he would keep our enemies at bay.”

Green puts Blue-the-bear back.

“I think… you two need a nap.”

Violet laughs, but it’s not funny. He laughs because it’s true.

“How are you not as tired as either of us?” Blue asks.

A shrug. “I’m the hero. I go where I am needed and do what I must. I keep us moving even when the odds are against us.”

A moment of contemplation. “There… there’s stuff that all of us share, even if we’re really different around the edges. We’re not only the things that make us different. We are all heroes, we are Link, even if we’re also not.”

Violet blinks. That was… really smart.

A deep sigh from above them. “Well said, Green, well said… but would it kill you to get a move on? Your princess is waiting for you!”

A hand comes up to rub self-consciously at the back of their neck. “Ah, yeah, right, right.”

Quickly they hurry up the stairs, returning to the rooftop platform where Zelda remains a statue, standing on top of a blocky altar in front of the bell held aloft that would have spelled her doom had it rung but one more time.

They approach slowly and carefully, the Four Sword in their grasp glowing brightly with pure magic.

“The blade, it should… it should drive the curse from her, right?” Green asks. “It’s why we went on this quest to begin with.”

They feel Ezlo shift atop them, a weight change they’ve long since come to recognize as nodding.

“The blade is pure, shining with the light of the minish who made it, the fairies that blessed it, and the elements that have empowered it! Especially now that it has been re-forged by the hands of a pure-hearted child. There is no darkness that should be able to touch it without repercussion.”

Green and Violet feel Blue go stiff with feeling inside them.

“E-even…” Violet can’t finish the question, not so soon after that emotional talk, but he needs to know this. Not just for his sake, but all of theirs.

Ezlo chuckles. “The purity of your hearts, boys, is measured not by the choice of your words or the commonness of your joy, but by what you fight for and why. You are all heroes today boys, and have been for many todays. You are, all of you, pure-hearted heroes.”

Their eyes grow wet, but they ignore it. Now is not the time for crying. No, that will be soon.

Green raises the Four Sword towards the sky, like the Goddess’s Chosen Hero had done many times for his journey, and wishes.

‘ Please, bring Zelda back to me, to us. ’

Green swings the Four Sword down with only one intent. Drive the curse away from the princess.

Light springs forth from the tip of the Four Sword, sparkling and swirling like magic from a wand, and flies forward to collide with Zelda’s chest, sinking into the stone. Light blooms from under the surface of what would have been Zelda’s skin, shining and glowing in blobs and shifting shapes that begin to move, faster and faster, brighter and brighter, until she is shining like the sun, forcing them to look away. Forcing them to cover their ears as high-pitched humming erupts… and then dies with a brilliant flash that nearly eliminates their shadow from beneath them with how strong the light is.

A soft gasp.

The rustle of fabric.

They turn around, quick and instinctual.

“Zelda!”

A smile breaks out across Zelda’s face. “Link… You saved me,” she says softly, adoringly. “I…” she covers her mouth with a hand. “I had visions of you, Link, like dreams. I saw you be a hero.”

Joy builds in their heart, ecstasy from finally, finally , rescuing their best friend. The feeling is so overwhelming they don’t even flinch at the use of the name that is now only all of them instead of any one of them. It doesn’t matter, not when Zelda is safe now.

Green holds out a hand and she takes it carefully, using it as a brace to assist her descent from the tall altar.

The castle shakes, more strongly than the first time, then shakes again.

The arch holding up the bell crumbles, crashing to the ground with a clang and a boom.

“We need to get out of here!” Blue cries.

Zelda’s grip on their hand tightens. Trust, trust so easily given, oh how they missed it.

They make only one stop on their way back to the sanctuary, to the one place they know to be safe from the collapse of this in-between dimension.

They free King Daltus from his cell.

Monsters still fill the castle, following them into the parody of a courtyard.

“Get to the sanctuary!” Green orders, “I’ll keep them back until you’re safe!”

Zelda looks stricken, but her father takes her by the shoulder and turns her to the doorway surely he can not see, not as an adult, and follows her inside.

They take careful steps, working their way backwards slowly as they take out foe after foe, until the garden is empty and there is nothing left but to join the royals in the sanctuary.

Lightning strikes between them and the door to safety, followed by the sinister sound of chortling none of them ever wanted to hear again. They are stuck frozen, probably by magic, helpless to watch the fear in Zelda’s eyes grow as the chortling morphs into howling laughter.

“Did you really think it so easy, boy?!” Vaati’s voice sneers at them. “There is no escaping from me, from your destiny, your doom. Now you will see the true power of the Light Force. For I am Vaati, the master of this world, and you will face my wrath! ”

The world flashes white as Zelda’s frightened face disappears from view.

A new world flashes into being. A gigantic stone platform hanging in empty space, the far-off distance full with only purple-ish red clouds of dust and what seems like burning yellow stars.

And then from above descends an incarnation of death.

Vaati.

His spherical body is huge, about three times as tall as a man, and made of burning purple-black fire with a pure red eye holding a golden iris.

There is so much gold actually, covering his form. Giant golden horns in a continuous double-sickle shape joined in the middle at the top of his body, clasped to his form by a band of brass. Intricate swirling patterns cover them across their whole lengths. Where before he’d had three flat triangular eyelashes and a curl of metal at the corners of his eye Vaati now has curled claw-like shapes erupting out and away from the golden lining of his eyelids and the swirl at each corner is also part of its own claw reaching up and away. Five claws on his upper lid, four—in pairs, each closer to the edge than the middle—on the lower.

A carmine jewel shaped like a four-pointed star is embedded in what could arguably be called his forehead, surrounded by curving golden filigree that almost looks like a crown. Meanwhile, below the giant eyeball is a single line of twisted golden vines, broken only right in the middle underneath the pupil by an emblem they do not recognize, leafy decoration curving off of the vines like some kind of collar.

Three pairs of wings curl and flap together, each dark purple with golden claws at the end of each finger, and a golden cap at the wrist.

Two long arms, made of consecutively smaller orbs of the dark purple fire, each ends in two golden bracelets before a trio of long menacing shadow fingers with brass claws just as long, and violently sharp.

In front of him serenely float four small orbs, their eyes currently closed.

There is only one way to describe the form Vaati has taken. He had chosen a body that was terrifyingly beautiful. Wisps of his dark power stream off of him as if the waste is nothing, as if the demon he has become is not just any demon, but the king of all demons.

“Face my wrath, little boy. Face it and die ,” Vaati hisses, curling his arms in to bring his hands close, their grasping sword-length claws coming together to mimic the shape of an acorn.

Violet can’t help but notice the nature imagery, even as one clawed hand lunges forth to stab them through the chest.

“I think something is wrong with him!” he shouts as Green runs them to one far edge of the platform.

“Oh, really?!?” Blue shouts back snarkily. “Was it the wanting to be a god that tipped you off?!”

Vaati slowly lifts his right arm up in the air, eye staring unblinkingly right at them and slowly lowers it towards the ground, hand first.

“No, I mean something unintended , he’s got leaves!”

A puddle of liquid darkness forms on the ground about the height of two people away from them, and while Vaati’s arm sinks into the ground it rises up from the puddle.

The shape of Vaati’s eye bulges, as if smiling maniacally, and then his arm spins in a circle, whipping around like a flail.

Green jumps into the air, leaping over the arm and gliding across the battlefield to the other edge.

“Why do you think that’s important?” Green asks once he’s landed.

“I think, and goddesses Ezlo please confirm this for me, that something about his magic is acting without his input, making modifications to his desires. Perhaps the Light Force, a minish artifact, is fighting to express itself through this minish-born demon.”

A caw of understanding from the elderly Minish as Vaati’s other arm dips into the stone, as another puddle of darkness forms near them.

They’re running out of room on this platform, there’s only so much safe space to stand and with Vaati being able to disjoint himself he’s spreading his radius of danger far far wider than any of them would like.

Green leaps again, the arc of his jump barely dodging a passing ball of electricity shot from between Vaati’s horns.

“Oh, fuck, this is not good,” Blue mutters. “He’s got so much range!”

“We need to get rid of those arms,” Vio thinks aloud, “and if the Light Force is resisting him he may actually be vulnerable, even after taking this more powerful form. He may have sacrificed a weakness to allow for more versatility and power.”

“I hear you,” Vaati croons almost sweetly as electricity crackles between his horns again. “I seeeee you!! Nothing can escape me, not here, not now! Even if I were to have a weakness you would not find it! You would find your own death first!”

Electricity spills down to the platform as Vaati laughs, expanding out like quickly growing roots.

Green jumps, but one of the arms had crept close and only a quick reflex from Blue with their shield saves them from becoming speared through the gut by a claw.

They land only a little clumsily, excess electricity making the skin of their arms and legs tingle aggressively. The continued exertion is leaving them drained, panting hard into what little empty space Vaati has decided to let them have.

“It can’t… his weakness has to be magical, right? He’s not stupid.”

Violet readies an arrow in the Cyclos bow. “We try everything, or we die,” he says plainly.

 The arrow is released, spinning forward on its path toward Vaati’s single giant eye.

One of the four small eyeballs opens its eye wide and a shield of energy forms, the arrow fizzing into nothing against it.

Their arms drop, disbelief weighing them down.

“It did nothing, this wind god blessed piece of shit did nothing!”

The corners of Vaati’s eye twitch, as if he’s smiling.

“Oh, did you not hear me, little boy? Did you not know?! I have become a god!! Of course your silly little bow’s blessing did nothing against my full might!!!”

Green throws their magical boomerang and dodges out of the way of an incoming arm swing, ducking under their shield and rolling out of the way of the other one attempting to smash them into the ground.

Vaati’s first arm snatches the boomerang out of the air, crushing it between its claws.

A cry of outrage is ripped from Green lips. The boomerang was his favourite!

“Fighting me with toys, child?” Vaati mocks.

Blue grabs a remote bomb from their bag. “If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all, you overgrown bat piece of shit!”

It strikes Vaati’s main body, but bounces off harmlessly, exploding automatically from the force of hitting the ground. It leaves behind a large crack in the platform surface.

Vaati looks over slowly, then turns his gaze back, eye quivering in a motion Green can only describe as humorous.

“You are truly such a child,” he croons as he slowly draws closer, “full of temper, full of tricks, but nothing worthwhile between your Hylian ears. Only distraction and emotion and nothing else. You have no way to hurt me, no way to stop me. There is nothing you can do, you are already dead.”

Violet’s mind screams. There must be a way, any way. Surely not the gust jar, Vaati’s not an idiot, the boomerang is broken and both bombs and the bow didn’t work, meaning the only things left at the lantern, the mole mitts, and…

Violet’s eyes snap to Vaati’s arms, the way they’re sticking straight up out of the ground from the puddles of darkness they’re attached to. The cane's magic would pull on them; pull them up, out, attempt to flip them into the air. It would tear his arms off.

Violet blindly rummaged through their bag, staring down Vaati with a carefully curated blank expression as the demon drew closer, slowly floating nearer, laughing lowly.

“Oh, have you run out already? No more tricks in your litt-”

Violet waves the cane of Pacci and watches with only a mild amount of horror as Vaati’s arm stretches like flaming tar, ripping and tearing away from the puddle of darkness and lifting into the air nearly half their height before slamming down, flaming darkness falling away from the largest base sphere to reveal a small golden-lined doorway, perfectly sized for a minish to enter into.

Vaati screams with pain and terror and rage, his single eye flashing bright dangerous magenta, red, and pink as strings of darkness drip from where his arm used to meet his body, wisps of flame rising until it turns into a proper fire, sealing the wound.

“We need a portal!” Violet shouts, trying to ignore the fact he just partially dismembered someone, even if that someone is Vaati.

“To the fissure!” Ezlo screams, “use the Four Sword, it surely has the power to make one, it’s the only way!”

Blue lunges forward, slamming the sword down into the centre of the fissure left behind by his mindless bomb throw.

‘ Help us, let us shrink here, make us a portal. Just this once, please . ’

The blade flashes, then shines, light filling every crack of the fissure. Quickly, the wounded surface starts to repair itself, the loose stones in the crumbled centre lifting into the air while the cracks seal shut. Blue stands back, watches as a small minish portal melts together out of the loose stonework around the blade of the Four Sword.

Ezlo is already chanting as Blue draws the Four Sword out of the portal and stands atop it, pulses of magic lifting the loose edges of their clothes.

And then they’re tiny. Barely the size of a pebble. Running the several seconds it takes to get them to Vaati’s severed arm as the demon himself begins to regain his composure.

The chamber within the arm is floored in hot pink, with purple symbols resembling Vaati’s newest form covering it from one smokey black wall to the other. Filling the room, however, are them-sized brass spheres with single eyes that are pure black except for their irises, which are bloody red. They are ringed with multiple copies of the crescent horns that Vaati has, from top to bottom around the middle.

The room flashes with light once and the enemies scatter, seeming to wander in aimless orthogonal paths, changing direction at random moments for unknown reasons. Watching them is like seeing organized chaos.

Blue leaps forward and strikes the closest of the strange eyeballs, only for the Four Sword to smack against it, launching it away completely unharmed .

“What the fuck?!”

Blue turns to another eye and swings again, this one also bouncing off of the blade harmlessly.

“This sword is supposed to be fucking magic! ” Blue swears. “Why the shit isn’t it doing anything!!”

“Calm your temper, boy!” Ezlo scolds, “while you have succeeded in harming Vaati he is not weak . As he keeps reminding you, he has most of the Light Force at his disposal, he is still quite powerful. He’s not going to make this easy just because you’re children!”

Their left hand clenches around the handle of the Four Sword.

“He fucking should have!” Blue shouts, voice harsh and dripping with a million emotions.

An eyeball draws near and Blue wacks at it automatically, anger and upset clouding the entirety of their shared brain-space.

“We just… We just wanted to enjoy the festival with Zelda and…!”

Blood drips from their right palm where fingernails dug in so deep that they cut into flesh.

Violet watches placidly as Blue rages, as he slashes and stabs at the army of invincible eyeballs. There is no stopping him, Violet doesn’t even want to. There is nothing he can do to change the past, but he is just as upset about it, just as mournful for the loss.

They’re just kids after all.

“I hate him! I hate him so much!” Blue shouts and shouts and shouts.

“He ruined us, ended us, he’s fucking killed us,” he rambles out in loud sweeping tones.

Blue swings one last time and this time it sticks, but he’s is too deep in his emotions to notice, to care.

“Without him we wouldn’t exist, but… wouldn’t that be better?”

Green pulls the sword out of the eyeball, and watches as its golden iris shakes violently, unable to hold a gaze on them.

“Shut”

One slash diagonally up.

“Your”

Another slash horizontally flat.

“Fucking”

A slash vertically down.

“Mouth!”

A stab right in the middle.

The crescent-shaped feelers ringing the eyeball creature wilt, turning down as the iris stares right at them, locked in place by the blade of the Four Sword. And then it melts, puddles itself into a pool of dark goo that smokes until it’s gone.

The room starts to flash erratically and shake and Green runs for the doorway.

“We can fight all we want about if our, or rather Link’s life, would be better if Vaati hadn’t shown up,” he says as he runs from the collapsing arm, its sections ballooning until they crumble into smoke, “but there’s no point! We exist, ta-da! Deal with it! And, although I wish we’d been… made… under better circumstances, I’m glad that I’m here to live and help people and do what I can. I exist and I’m going to make the best of it!”

Blue rubs at their face with the edge of their sleeve. “Shut up,” he says, but it’s weak.

“You can’t make me,” Green says with a smile and steps into the minish portal.

“You pesky brat! ” Vaati bellows at them once they return to normal size. “I’ll obliterate you!”

They stare down the demon and his single eye.

“I am not a brat,” Violet says as calmly as he can.
“I am a hero,” Green continues.

“And I am going to defeat you!” Blue finishes.

Lightning crackles down from Vaati’s horns, flooding over the platform once more as Green rushes them forward, leaping into the air with a flip before pulling the Roc’s cape open to rocket them up out of Vaati’s one-armed reach. They land on the farthest away edge of the arena from Vaati, toes only tingling a little as they touch down.

“Come and get us, fuck face!” Blue taunts.

Green grimaces at the coarse language, even as rage visibly fills Vaati’s eye.

A ball of lightning hurtles their way and Violet runs to dodge it, moving to a corner of the platform. Hopefully, the positioning will make Vaati—or at least his arm—draw closer.

Vaati is all too suddenly right in their face, as if he’d teleported.

“Die!” he shouts, arm raised high and poised to stab them in the chest.

The claws come down.

And Vaati screams as his arm flies off of his shoulder, propelled away by the magic of the Cane of Pacci that Violet had hidden in Link’s sleeve.

Green runs for the minish portal as Vaati’s pain echoes through the vast beautiful emptiness that he made to fight them in, as his voice bounces off of far away dust clouds and stars.

This time Vaati’s arm is pitch black inside despite the still prismatic and colour-shifting flooring, forcing Violet to reluctantly pull the flame lantern from their bag. He can only see three or four of the at least eight brass eyeball minions at a time, their bloody red irises looming extra spookily in the dark.

“Where is it?!” Blue grouches.

“I don’t know, that’s why I’m looking!”

“Look faster!”

Violet scoffs. ‘ Look faster he says, as if it’s not goddesses-damned completely dark in here! ’

“Shut up,” he says instead. “I’m looking as fast as I can.”

The anguished screams of Vaati echo even in here, from the outside where he rages at the empty air. It’s horrific, a haunting backdrop for the darkness they’re attempting to navigate.

Green slices out blindly with the Four Sword, but the blade doesn’t connect with anything nor sink into any demonic flesh.

“I don’t think we have much time before Vaati tries to just squish us while we’re in here,” he says, worry suffusing his voice.

Violet clenches their grip on the lantern.

“I know, but it’s not like the one we want is just going to wander right up to us and let us hack away at it!”

As if the goddesses above were listening to him right then, as Violet spreads their arms wide in an exasperated motion, the light catches on the golden iris of the unique thing inhabiting Vaati’s arm.

Violet can’t help it, he laughs. Laughs so hard that he nearly stops breathing and almost loses sight of the eyeball drone, but Blue grabs at their face, holds their nose and mouth shut to stop the chortling falling from their lips.

“Shut the fuck up,” he mutters as he stalks quickly toward the golden-eyed construct. “This is hero business, not funny business!”

Blue slashes through the creature in a single clean swipe.

Violet swallows and Green sighs as the room starts shaking around them. “We’re stressed , that was a stress response.”

“Stop sounding like a textbook!” Blue shouts intelligently as he runs them out of the arm.

Vaati’s enraged thrashing is already done, and it’s a challenge to not draw attention to theirself as they make their way back to the minish portal, but somehow they find themselves back to hylian size and are now presented with a new problem.

How do they kill Vaati?

“You miscreant, you foul fiend, you overlucky worthless worm ,” Vaati taunts at them as electricity crackles between his horns, “how dare you get this far, how dare you make a mockery of what I’ve worked for! How dare you!!”

The four eyeballs in front of Vaati open, their crimson sclera wide and brimming with malice and murder.

“You will be forgotten when I am done with you, no one will know you tried to stop me from becoming perfection, from becoming greatness, from becoming Vaati the God of Worlds!”

The eyes pulsate and glow with energy, cyan-coloured power pouring off of them in waves and bursts as Vaati’s body floats menacingly toward them.

Violet is still, Blue is seething, Green is waiting. None of them have a plan.

“Be reduced to ashes,” Vaati says, and his mini eyes fire out balls of sparking energy toward them.

Green reacts. He swings the Four Sword with only a prayer filling his mind that its magic will stop the oncoming attack.

The sword does better. The sword bats the energy balls away in various directions, sending them flying away from their intended target. Except…

Vaati grunts in pain, one of the eyes in front of him reduced to smoulders. The eye next to it bulges and shakes until it splits into two, the destroyed one falling off and dissolving into smoke.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid child,” Vaati seethes at them as he draws closer, “pretending you have a chance against me? You will die painfully, I assure you.”

“Fuck you!” Blue shouts with all the wit of a stiff wooden board.

Violet sighs inside their mind, and Vaati bellows out a laugh. “Truly the smartest of comebacks, you pompous brat.”

The electricity between Vaati’s horns finally spills down to the floor and they don’t have time enough to react, to flee.

They fall to their knees again, unable to breathe with every muscle in their body spasming and clenching at once, as their blood boils inside their veins.

Vaati drifts closer, nearly close enough to touch. “I will take great pleasure in watching you fail, slowly and then all at once. I will show you just what happens to wanna-be heroes like you, child, who dares to defy the true order of things.”

Their mind is blank of thoughts, only quiet murmurs escaping their lips as Blue fights to say something scathing in reply. But their tongue isn’t working enough to support his vision of a perfect comeback.

“Pathetic,” Vaati says with what sounds like a smile in his voice.

Their grip around the hilt of the Four Sword twitches, trying to close tight but it’s not good enough yet. They groan, trying to buy some time with a show of weakness, trying to form a proper fist around the wrapped metal.

“Your silly hylian body has so many weaknesses, fire, lightning, a particularly strong breeze…  You’ve needed magic to defeat me before, I am beyond your abilities to defeat and now look at you, splayed out before me like a carcass.”

A pleased shuddering noise comes from Vaati and Green blocks it out, tries to ignore the implications of what Vaati is getting from gloating like this at them. It doesn’t matter, Vaati doesn’t matter, all that they need is to
grab
the
Sword!

Their fist closes completely and Green lets out a soft nearly wet sigh at how the weight of the blade feels in their grip.

“Oh, crying tears now are you?” Vaati asks. “How fitting that you snivel and grovel before me in your final moments.”

Green grins and looks up into the demon’s eye, the sword growing warm in their fist, ignoring the glowing of the eyeballs floating in front of Vaati’s form, the charging of dangerous power inside of them.

“Even if you kill me, I will still be better than you,” he says with a voice that still shakes from exertion, “I didn’t have to steal from a princess or become a goddess-damned demon to be strong.”

Vaati’s eye closes slightly in a glare. “Your foolishness proves just how weak you are, puny dying child.”

Green pushes their body up with their free arm, struggling to hold their weight as the limb shakes.

“Then prove your worth and kill me already.”

“Link no!” Ezlo shouts.

Green gets a leg underneath them.

“Have you not killed people before?” Green taunts slowly, voice starting to shake less, “shouldn’t it be easy by now? What’s taking you so long to just kill me ?!”

Vaati’s eye closes and then opens wide in rage.
“Do not question me, worm!” he shouts.

Greens tumbles forward one step, the blade in their hand practically vibrating out of his grip with how excited it feels. “Is it the Light Force fighting you? Or your minish nature? Your swordsman’s courtesy stopping you from slaying a downed foe?”

Vaati screams wordlessly and releases the four blasts of energy, but Green was prepared.

Green splits into four and commands each body, both shade and not, to spin in sync, watching in awe as the shining power of the Four Sword leaves afterimages on their vision. The balls of energy clash with the blade, bouncing off of the brilliant light, and strike back at the eyes they had come from.

Power sparks in waves over Vaati’s form, cyan, purple, red, black, lines of lightning over his spherical body coming from random places and striking back down against him, the burning aura going out slowly, then all at once. Wings burn away into nothingness and gold and brass crumble and crack until Vaati is sinking to the ground, eyeball flashing bright crazy rings and body a glowing red ball of shock and anger and fear.

Green dismisses the shades, walks forward, and stabs him in the eye. The burning light of the Four Sword sinking into him like a red-hot knife through a tallow candle.

“You will never come back!” he shouts. “You will never scare me or terrorize the people of Hyrule ever again!!”

“Fuck off forever, you bat bitch!” Blue helpfully adds.

The world starts shaking violently and Green uses their other hand to grab the hilt of the sword as shrill background screaming echoes around them, as tears in reality swirl and bubble and rip.

A crack forms on Vaati’s side, then another, then another!

A beam of light explodes out of his left, followed by one that takes off his left horn. Light spews out of him like spires and spikes, radiating the pure light of the Four Sword.

Green holds tighter onto the Four Sword and focuses. He needs to focus! Needs to make sure that Vaati doesn’t get away again. Ever.
Violet grabs hold of the pale magics inside them and channels them through the Four Sword, through the fatal wound in Vaati’s body and pulls. He can feel the bright brilliance shining inside, the only thing light at all within the demon’s new form. He grabs hold of one shard and pulls it into himself, feels a familiar burning settle into his belly. Light Force.

“NO! I am a god! I can not die!” Vaati screams from nowhere and everywhere at once. “I have the Light Force, you can not take it! I AM UNBEATABLE!”

They pull another shard of stolen Light Force from Vaati’s energy as his form continues to convulse, waver, shatter and break. The darkness and sorcery and demonry he had spent so long gathering to himself is collapsing on him. It was all that held him together anymore.

“You are no god!” Ezlo shouts above the sound of the realm around them shattering. “You’re just a lost demon, the corruption of power given form!”

They pull three more shards, Light calling to Light, until there is nothing but a small glimmer left and they pull that too. It’s not Light Force but it’s a light magic. Vaati is a demon now, he deserves no such light within him.

“NOOOOOoooo!!” Vaati screams, voice cracking just like his body. “I was going to be a God, a master above the men, have an army of maidens at my call… I was going to b-”

A thread of magic snaps.

Vaati collapses into billows of darkness and the Four Sword shines, bursting beams out through Vaati and then…. It fades, leaving the darkness to be swallowed up by the blade until nothing is left of Vaati except for his presence now sealed within the sword.
Green blinks the flashes and dots of light and darkness from his eyes, until the castle courtyard is revealed around him with a cap on the ground, coloured red once more.

Ezlo shimmies himself back, until the hood is fully off of Link’s head and hanging over their shoulder. “I think… that it might be over, boy.”

Green turns to the left and there’s Zelda again, relief plain on her face.

“You won?” she asks carefully.

Green nods while Violet staggers over, the Light Force still burning in their belly along with the tiny glimmer he’d stolen from Vaati. Six kinds of magics were roiling inside them now and he didn’t want them all.

“Take it,” Violet rasps, his palm outstretched. “Take it again, please.”

Zelda gasps and steps forward, grabbing his hand and Violet feels instantly better as the six shards of Light Force inside them slide away, going back to join the shard he knows to still rest within his princess.

“There’s still work to be done, your highness,” Ezlo speaks up from where he’s draped over Link’s shoulder. “Vaati has left his mark on this kingdom, but it can be undone.”

They turn to the Mage’s Cap. The item that can do anything, given enough power.

“Princess, if you may?” Ezlo asks. “I’m sure someone as pure-hearted as you will be easily able to undo Vaati’s darkness. Put on the cap and let your wishes be known to it.”

Zelda’s eyes widen and she nods, gracefully bending down to pick up the magical cap.

King Daltus’ hand darts out to grab at her wrist.

“Dottie…” he nearly whispers, “my dear Zelda Dorothea Hyrule…”

She lifts his hand away. “Dad, I can do this, I promise.”

He visibly swallows away any words he might have said and nods, pulling back a step.

Zelda smiles, closes her eyes and clasps her hands together, and starts to glow, energy radiating out of the hat upon her head.

Visions fill Link’s mind of demon-tainted monsters being purified, of hundreds of petrified castle servants suddenly being freed from their stony prisons, of a chest that was once broken open sealing itself shut, of roiling malice being burned away.

The sound of snapping seams steals Violet’s attention and he turns as the light surrounding Zelda fades to see Ezlo floating in the air, glowing. Shifting.

An old minish sage in green robes appears with a flash and stumbles to his knees.

Blue lunges forward and takes his arms, pulling him up so he can use his bird-headed staff to keep himself standing.

“Oh, oh, Link, you caught me, thank you dear boy,” he mumbles.

He clears his throat and looks up at the amazed faces of Zelda and Daltus.

“Hello your majesty, your highness, I am Ezlo, minish sage of sorcery and master of lore. Though I believe your people like to call us the Picori.”

King Daltus’s mouth is wide open. “The Picori look like that?”

Ezlo chuckles softly and then sobers, gesturing at the hat upon Zelda’s head.

“That cap, the Mage’s Cap, was my creation, intended as a gift to your people… but it and its power of wishes has caused nothing but trouble in the hands of Vaati… my apprentice.”

He gets down on one knee slowly, bowing his head. “Please, is there any way you can forgive me?”

Zelda walks forward and gently grasps Ezlo’s free hand in both of hers.

“You helped my friend save Hyrule from Vaati, I saw you two together in my visions. You kept him company, kept him safe. Guided him. And all while stuck in the shape of a hat. I think you have done enough to deserve my forgiveness.”

Violet watches in amazement as tears gather in Ezlo’s pale eyes.

“Oh thank you, dear princess. That makes me so happy to hear.”

He then looks around and seems to come to a realization.

“How did you two get back here anyhow?”

Zelda frowns. “The sanctuary turned dark shortly after Vaati took Link away, and then suddenly we were here in the courtyard, watching the doorway back in crumble to dust. We were very worried about you two for quite a while until you popped back into existence.”

Ezlo gets up and walks over slowly, his empty hand touching over the surface of the now blank wall at the end of the courtyard.

“I guess the only thing keeping the doorway open this long was the elements being inside. It should have closed weeks ago afterall.”

Green blinks, hands twitching. “We… we took them. In our bag.”

Ezlo turns and nods. “Indeed you did, boys. It looks like I’m stuck here in your world for a few months.” He chuckles, “but I don’t think I’ll mind very much.”

He turns back to Zelda. “Although…”

“May I have my cap back, princess?” he asks.

Zelda blinks and takes it off, handing it to him.

The old minish smiles and puts it on his own head.

“I think Link here is going to need a new hat.”

Violet shoves his hands out. “Wait!”

Ezlo blinks at him. “Yes, boy, what is it?”

Violet looks away. “I took something from Vaati, something other than the Light Force. I didn’t think he deserved it anymore.”

Ezlo frowns deeply. “Took something you say, child?” he walks close and touches their face.

His eyes widen. “Oh, dear boy, oh my dear child, you have taken something wonderful.

Violet blinks up at the old minish. “Ezlo?”

Ezlo smiles. “I know exactly the kind of hat you need.”

The gemstone on the hat flashes with light and when Link’s vision clears dangling in front of his face is a tiny metal charm hung from the pointed end of a bit of green fabric.

It’s shaped like a tiny bird head, like Ezlo had been.

“That, dear child, is the last of the magic of my mage’s cap, repurposed for you and you alone. With it, you will be able to take on minish size and form wherever you desire. I think you’ll find it quite fitting as a charm on the end of your new hood.”

Blue pulls the hood off of their head and pulls it around their neck, holding it tight.

“Th-thank you, sir.”

Ezlo smiles wider. “And I must say, it does quite suit you, wearing a hood like that. I haven’t actually seen you wearing one properly until now.”

Ezlo turns back to Zelda and the King. “I’m afraid we must part ways, your majesty, your highness. I think it’s time that these boys returned home.”

Daltus’s face betrays his confusion, but Zelda only smiles serenely.

“Goodbye, Ezlo, Goodbye Violet Green and Blue.”

Green gapes at her as Ezlo guides them by the shoulder out of the courtyard, back home.