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Zelda woke up coughing.
She couldn’t even open her eyes, unable to do anything but curl up weakly on her side as her body attempted to hack up a lung – whatever was clogging them up digging its gritty claws deeper into her ribs. It was a struggle to get even half a breath in before it was violently expelled, along with the rest of her precious air.
The coughs took on a distinctly rough undertone, tearing at her throat until the beginnings of nausea started to creep up her chest. One cough ended in a weak gag, screwed-shut eyes watering.
She felt light-headed.
There was a twinge of instinctual fear in the back of Zelda’s barely-there consciousness, some base part of her threatening to turn desperate the longer this dragged on.
She needed to breathe. She needed air, why couldn’t-
Survival mode kicked in, bringing with it a much needed clarity.
She needed to stop.
So in a burst of grim willpower, she forced herself to stop; stop breathing, stop panicking, stop floundering for something that evidently was only making it worse. She held everything still, fiercely pushing down on the urge to keep coughing until her spasming lungs were clear – no matter how much her body desperately wanted to.
It took a few attempts, the coughing fit coming back full force a few times, but eventually Zelda managed to uncurl slightly and take a few gasping breaths. For a while she just lay there, letting her exhausted lungs slowly recover from the onslaught.
Ow.
After the nausea had faded a bit, she slowly, cautiously, wiggled her toes. No shooting pain or terrifying lack of feeling greeted her, so she moved on to her ankles, slowly working her way up her body and taking stock of any injuries.
Miraculously, nothing felt broken; just wholly and incredibly sore. An ankle and her back had a distinct twinge to them, and her head hurt something fierce, but nothing immediately life-threatening, thankfully.
There was also something perpetually tickling her throat, but she knew better than to let herself start coughing again.
Alright.
Still lying on her side, Zelda reached a hand out, blindly feeling the ground beside her.
Rock, dirt.
She reached out further, and ran her hand over the wall it met nearby.
More rocks, these ones stacked on top of each other haphazardly.
She carefully shuffled closer, following the wall. It didn’t seem to have any end, curving in, like it was…
Zelda froze.
Surrounding her.
She sat up slightly, and raised her arm up slowly. Sure enough, there, far too close to her head for her liking, was even more rough stone, completely closing her in.
She was trapped.
Her aching head finally stuttered into action, reminding her of the underground expedition, the emaciated body, the eerily glowing arm. The ground cracking.
Falling.
Zelda took a moment – drawing a blanket of forced calm over her panicked mind – and decided to review the facts of the situation.
She was somewhere below where they had been exploring, buried under an unclear amount of rubble.
She was alone, as far as she could tell.
She was, somehow, alive, and overall able to move.
The former princess of Hyrule took a steadying breath, determination settling in her chest.
She was going to get out of here.
Finally, Zelda cracked her eyes open – not that it did much. It was just as, if not more, dark in the semi-cave as it was behind her eyelids, not even vague shapes visible through the all-encompassing black.
Waiting a few moments did nothing – still functionally blind despite her eyes adjusting – so she pursed her lips slightly and extended a hand in front of her.
Zelda’s power had never fully recovered from one hundred years of containing the Calamity, but there was still just enough for her to call upon now – soft golden light illuminating the rubble she was buried under.
She moved her hand in a slow, sweeping motion, taking in every detail of her prison with an analytical eye. Shadows contorted, shifting grotesquely with their light source, but she steadfastly refused to be cowed by a bunch of rocks.
She could panic later, when she wasn’t at risk of being buried alive.
Some part of her couldn’t help but scoff as she cautiously twisted around, careful not to disturb anything in case it would set off another cave in.
‘All those years spent praying and begging for even a shred of your birthright, and now look at you,' it spat, all spite and curled defensiveness, 'The Goddess’s power, reduced to a mere torch.’
“I’m sure the Goddess will understand,” Zelda muttered back to herself, voice hoarse from all the dust hanging in the air. She cleared her throat roughly, spitting out a thick globule of something that she pointedly decided not to examine.
“Extenuating circumstances and all that.”
She shuffled forward cautiously, mindful of her surroundings, and peered closer at the makeshift walls the rubble had created.
“Besides,” she continued, falling back into the old comfort of hearing a voice, even if it was just her own, once more ringing out into the dark, “This is my power, meagre as it may be. If I choose to use it as a torch, then so be it.”
Her attention was drawn to the thick dust that refused to settle, coiling lazily through the air. She stilled, glowing hand still outstretched, and watched it dance, slowly, but surely…
“And what a wonderful torch it is,” Zelda breathed, as the illuminated dust was clearly drawn towards a gap in the rocks.
A cautionary prod at the rubble surrounding it bore no reaction – even when she pushed a chunk to the side – so she set about making the gap bigger as fast as she dared, piling any removed rocks out of the way behind her where she had previously been laying.
Rumble.
Zelda froze as the walls shifted ominously, a particularly ambitious hunk of stone clutched in white-knuckled hands. She didn’t move for a good few moments after they settled, eyes fixed on the layer of rocks that stood between her and a more than likely horrible death; then forced herself to loosen her grip, placing the stone on the pile with a deliberate gentleness.
“Okay,” she whispered to herself shakily.
A few more rocks were painstakingly inched from their homes, glowing hands stiff with nerves, as Zelda forced herself to keep her breathing shallow and even. The amount of grit in the air made hyperventilating a decidedly poor option, despite how much her lungs desperately wanted to match her rabbit-quick heart.
The rubble shifted again – Zelda couldn’t stifle the terrified squeak that escaped her as it rained a shower of pebbles and another cloud of thick dust down into her little cave.
It took even longer this time to muster up the will to uncurl from her defensive huddle, eyes squeezed shut against the grit and arms protectively shielding her vulnerable head. She carefully cleared the dirt from her eyes, blearily squinting them open to find her light source flickering warningly – the soft golden radiance stuttering with the pounding in her ears.
The thought of having to deal with this nightmare in pitch darkness did nothing to calm the flickering; nor did the coughing fit that once again reared its ugly head. The hacking only subsided once the dust had settled a touch, a corner of her cloak, roughly shaken clean as possible, used to cover her mouth and nose.
Zelda turned her tired gaze to the ceiling once more, belatedly tugging her hood on. The fabric would do nothing in the event of a cave in, but having a barrier between her skull and the rocks helped ease the trembling that had taken over her body, the light finally steadying.
She was going to be so claustrophobic after this this, she just knew it.
The gap in the rubble thankfully remained intact, hopefully now big enough for Zelda to squeeze through. Though, she couldn’t risk moving anything else, as had been made abundantly clear, so…
It would have to be big enough. She had no other choice.
She stared at the hole in trepidation, before taking one last filtered breath, dropping the corner of her cloak, and crouching down to wriggle her way in.
“I should have listened to Link,” she muttered to herself.
She slowly managed to inch herself slowly forwards on her stomach, arms stretched ahead of her as the light spilled through the makeshift tunnel.
“Sure, he didn’t actually say anything, but I saw the way he wrinkled his nose when I brought this expedition idea up to him,” Zelda continued, desperate to distract herself from the sensation of stone pressing into her shoulders. “I should have taken that as the omen it was; if Link doesn’t want to explore somewhere, then it’s likely some festering cesspit of-“
She cut herself off with a choked gasp, shrinking backward to ease the press of her cloak’s clasp into her throat. It was too narrow for her to even bend her elbows enough to reach it, so she dug her chin into the fabric and pulled as best she could until the end finally came loose of whatever had snagged it.
She wheezed softly, turning her head to cough into her shoulder, before picking up right where she left off.
“-Stupid thrice-damned Goddess-forsaken rocks!”
Zelda took a moment to rest her forehead against the rough ground, already exhausted from the effort of having to crawl forwards with what was essentially only her torso. She closed her eyes, panting as shallowly as possible, then took a breath, craned her face back forwards and kept going.
“We should have just gone somewhere nice and open-air. The ancient columns are always interesting. Plenty of space to move around.”
She had to rest again, energy sapped even quicker this time, and allowed her body to fall slack as she closed her eyes again.
“…Next time Link shows even a hint of reluctance to go somewhere,” Zelda croaked, after a long moment of just laying there and breathing, “I’m just going to take it as a sign that the place is a death-trap.”
She weakly inched forward again. “It has to be infinitely more efficient than this.”
Finally, miraculously, her forearms emerged out of the tunnel, wherever it ended thankfully having enough room for her to move her arms and probe the area blindly. No pits or cave-dwelling monsters greeted her trembling hands, so she took advantage of finally being able to use her arms to pull herself along faster.
Her cloak got caught on something again – Zelda once more used her chin to roughly pull it free, the prospect of being so close to freedom sapping her patience.
The rubble rumbled in response, something scraping ominously. She froze up, breath hitching.
The sound didn’t settle down this time – in fact, it was only getting louder. The clattering of stone on stone was all the motivation Zelda needed to frantically scrabble the rest of her body out, stumbling further away from the pile with a raw desperation she had hoped she wouldn’t have to feel again.
Her light had snuffed itself out somewhere in the process. She called upon it again, just in time to watch the mountain of rubble she had been trapped under collapse under its own weight.
The noise was deafening in the still underground air, dust and shrapnel billowing out from the destruction.
And Zelda could only watch, chest heaving, as her combination prison and sanctuary was buried under countless tons of cold stone.
Finally, after what felt like aeons, the rockslide slowed, then stopped altogether; once again returning the area to a silence that somehow felt louder than the roar of crumbling rocks ever had.
Zelda took a deep breath in. The air was stale and dust-filled, yet still cleaner than she had breathed since she had woken up.
“Okay,” she said hoarsely – and then curled in on herself as the great wave of panic she had been suppressing finally pulled her under.
It was unclear how much time had passed when she finally surfaced again, throat dry and aching from the force of her rough gasps for air. Any hopes her disoriented mind had of managing to keep track of such things were dashed by the utter lack of any change in environment being this far underground entailed – especially since her one divine light source had once again flickered out, presumably whilst she was preoccupied with feeling as if she were dying.
Even so, arms still wrapped tight around her torso, Zelda couldn’t muster up the energy to particularly care – instead content to stare blankly into the all-encompassing darkness, as her thoroughly wrung out body and mind clumsily started the familiar process of remembering how to be a person again.
Oh, but it wasn’t all-encompassing, was it?
Her brain vaguely registered it before she was finally present enough to properly comprehend what she saw; a glowing speck of cyan, gently pulsing with an undefined energy.
Once she saw it, she couldn’t help but find more, lights of differing size and shape scattered all throughout the oppressive black – too dim to truly illuminate anything, but unmistakably there.
‘Luminous stones,’ her mind softly supplied.
They had been a common sight whilst they were exploring the caverns – crystalline structures shining around what had felt like every corner – so it would stand to reason that there would be some further down. They were likely throughout the entire vast cave system.
And yet, in the deep recesses of her being, some part of her finally settled at the sight of something so achingly familiar – death grip on her sides slowly loosening as she gazed at the faint specks, still-wet tear tracks cutting through the dirt caked on her cheeks.
…They almost looked like stars, the way they glinted against the dark.
For a good few minutes, Zelda did nothing but sit there staring at the distant stones, winding down increment by increment with every new light she counted. It was only once she could take a breath without it stuttering on the way out that she blindly got to her feet, stumbling against the unseen rocks and rubble hidden in the dark around her.
Then, with one last lingering look at the cyan glints of light, she scraped her power together once more and glowed – illuminated from within by the gentle gold she’d come to call her own.
Zelda kept it dim – both to conserve energy and to avoid blinding herself before her eyes could adjust – but, to her dismay, even the barely-there sway of her light easily drowned out the faint shine of the luminous stones.
‘They’re still there,’ she reminded herself, forcing her gaze from the darkness that paced around the far reaches of her soft light. She took a breath, deep and slow.
‘You’re still here.’
One more steadying breath, and Zelda forced her mind into analysis mode, trying to formulate something resembling a plan.
She needed to get back to the surface somehow, that much was clear. Up was not an option – even Link wouldn’t be able to scale the pit she’d fallen down – so her next best bet was searching for any tunnels to follow.
Long term goal set. Now for short term.
All their supplies were back at the camp they’d set up, watched over by the pack animal she briefly but fervently hoped was alright. The foray into the cavern that had held the body and the arm was supposed to be brief, getting a lay of the land before settling down for the day, so she hadn’t bothered to grab anything actually useful.
Zelda threw her mind back, trying to recall what survival skills she’d watched Link acquire when he’d first woken up. Food, water. A way to protect himself.
Tragically bereft of any convenient sticks, she placed that one at the lowest priority. Water first.
Hopefully there was an underground river down here, because her water-purifying canteen was back at camp. Running water would be safer – and she could follow it upstream, if she was lucky.
Food was going to be a bit more of an issue, but Zelda made the decision to cross that bridge later, resolving to follow Link’s tactic of hoarding everything he came across until something could be worked out with them.
There, plan made.
Having a set of tasks to follow was almost a comfort, distracting her fluttering mind from the enormity of the situation by breaking it down into relatively manageable parts. It was like a reminder that she wasn’t really trapped, not this time. That she had options to move forward if she so chose.
Zelda gave the massive mountain of rubble a long, ponderous look, far calmer now.
‘I really shouldn’t have survived that,’ her mind said thoughtfully, less fearful and more just… stating a fact. ‘The fall should’ve killed me, not just knocked me unconscious.’
Perhaps there were fairies down here? But she’d been buried – unless one had squeezed in through that gap and left the same way before she woke up. Unlikely, even for a fairy.
Dwelling on it would achieve nothing, though; she turned from the pile and set her sights on the other side of the vast cavern, weary determination steeling her gaze.
Find a river, then go from there.
Zelda had only taken a few steps when a faint, barely-there noise rung out, almost drowned out by the sound of her footsteps.
A strained, yet melodic chime.
She stopped dead in her tracks, ears twitching as she whipped her head back to stare at the rubble with wide eyes.
She knew that chime.
It sounded again, just as weak, and Zelda scrambled back to the pile with a choked gasp – light flaring brighter as she climbed onto it to start digging through the loose rocks.
She knew that chime, where was she-
Zelda was sifting through the rubble practically blind, the sudden increase in brightness leaving her blinking sunspots out of her eyes, but she didn’t let that affect her pace. It wasn’t until her fingers met something sharp that she stopped, jerking her hand back with a strangled hiss and checking the damage to her already battered digits through a bleary squint.
A shallow slice across three fingers, blood lazily welling to the surface when she pressed down. Practically negligible, so long as it was kept clean.
She balled her injured hand into a loose fist – already resigned to losing that particular battle – and turned her attention to the culprit.
A twisted mass of dull metal, sharp prongs jutting out from the rocks. Not remotely what she was looking for, but still…
“Strange,” Zelda croaked out thoughtfully, “…What is scrap metal doing down here?”
She knew for a fact that she and Link were the first living people to set foot in these catacombs in countless millennia. There was a reason they had only found stonework – any other material would have long since degraded, even in such a stable environment.
So how…?
Mindful of gaining another injury, Zelda carefully removed the stones surrounding the gnarled metal with her intact hand. It was slow going, and she had to resort to using her other elbow to help shift some of the heavier ones, but eventually she was rewarded with the sound of scraping metal as the impossible object came loose of whatever had it pinned.
Wrapping her hand in the edge of her cloak, she wiggled it fully free, placing it on the rubble before her to see what she had found.
It was half the blade of a sword – most of it actually surprisingly intact despite the state of the bit she had cut herself on. Silvery-white, almost pristine, and…
Zelda reeled back, injured fingers twinging as her hands flew to her mouth.
Even snapped, mangled, and buried deep within the bowels of the earth, the sword that sealed the darkness still glowed.
“No,” Zelda breathed, horrified.
“No, no no no-“
If the sword was here, shattered and twisted and impossibly broken, then where was-
Zelda let out a noise, wordless and distressed, before whipping her head around – light flaring once more.
“Link?” she called, wrecked voice cracking at the raised volume.
She stood up, stumbling on the loose rocks as she desperately searched the darkness.
“Link?”
He would never let himself be separated from the Master Sword like this, he had to be down here somewhere-
Zelda tripped as she spun, foot catching on a gap in the rubble; and then she froze, eyes wide as she stared at the remnants of the rockslide beneath her.
The rockslide she had caused.
No.
“Link?” Zelda breathed out, waiting for a reply that would never come.
The mindless panic of before was back, scraping along her lungs with careless claws of ice. She let out a soft keen, crumpling inwards at the weight of it all.
They were all each other had left. It wasn’t fair, they were supposed to be okay, to keep each other safe, not-
Zelda keened again, grief and misery rolled into one hopeless noise.
She couldn’t do this again – even if she managed to find him under all this, she’d promised-
“Not… here…”
Zelda raised her head, staring through her tears once more at the softly pulsing light of the blade.
“…What?” she whispered.
The broken sword flickered, and Zelda thought of rain and muddied fields, of the smell of burning.
“Not… here…” the voice of the sword said again, faint but unmistakable.
“Not here…” Zelda repeated slowly – distraught mind taking a second to understand before a rush of pure relief flooded through her.
He wasn’t here, buried once more in cold stone.
She hadn’t gotten her best friend killed (again, again, again).
For a moment, Zelda closed her eyes and just breathed, lost in the heady sensation of fragile hope. Link wasn’t here.
“…Do you know where he is?” she asked hoarsely, eyes opening back up.
The blade pulsed, and the voice she had been sure she’d never hear again sounded once more, still as weak.
“A… bove…”
“He’s above?” Zelda asked, reaching out to lay a tentative hand on the gleaming metal. “Is he okay, is he hurt?”
“A… bove…”
She leaned back with a sigh, reprimanding herself silently. “I… I’m sorry – it stands to reason that you wouldn’t know, either.”
The broken sword chimed softly, as if to apologise back. Zelda wiped her wet eyes, sniffing quietly, before she managed to muster up a shaky, grateful smile.
Link wasn’t down here; he hadn’t fallen as well. That was enough.
“Thank you,” she said – voice rough with tears and grit, yet no less genuine for it, “For once more giving me hope.”
The spirit chimed again, apparently too worn out for words; Zelda chewed on a stunningly chapped lip, taking the opportunity to fully examine the damage done to her. Her recollection of the events directly before she fell were admittedly fuzzy at best – ever-present headache doing its damndest to drill a hole into the base of her skull – but surely she would remember something like this.
“…What happened?” the once-princess asked, tracing along the twisted portion with a cautious hand. “I didn’t think anything could’ve done this to you."
The next chime, whilst tired, didn’t give her any answers, save for the vague sensation of something being twisted until it snapped.
“Yes, I can see that,” she said, tone barely bordering the edge of dry amusement.
No further clarification came, so she decided to let that one be for now, looking back out into the darkness of the cavern.
It was strange, how this discovery managed to change everything, yet nothing. She was still underground, still lost in the dark, but now she wasn’t alone. Not really.
Such a small thing, and yet it made all the difference.
Zelda’s half-baked plan still remained overall the same – just now with the addition of transporting a divine blade. She couldn’t, wouldn’t leave her behind down here, abandoned amongst the rocks and the dirt, but…
“Is… the rest of you down here, somewhere?” Zelda asked delicately.
No reply.
She really hoped that was a ‘no’, because she did not have the time, nor energy, to go sifting through a mountain’s worth of loose stone in the hopes of finding something that might not even be there for a second time.
The distinct lack of the hilt did make some things a tad more difficult, though, as Zelda’s sliced fingers helpfully throbbed in reminder.
‘How to carry her…’
She needed to wrap the warped end in something. She fingered the tattered edge of her cloak, fabric ripped in several places by various rocks; nodding to herself before straightening up from her exhausted slouch slightly.
“Might I bear you once more?” Zelda asked the Master Sword, quiet yet respectful.
The sword sung – shining with the light of the divine – and Zelda got the distinct impression that she was amused yet pleased that she felt the need to ask.
She’d had the exact same reaction a hundred years ago – a fact that made Zelda’s heart ache.
Still, the ‘yes’ was unmistakable, so she set about tearing a long strip of fabric from her cloak – occasionally using the sharp, twisted edge of the blade to cut through any particularly tough spots.
If she felt a small amount of vindictive satisfaction at ripping up the thing that had nearly gotten her crushed, that was between her and the Goddess Hylia.
Soon enough, Zelda had a serviceable length of fabric, a few smaller strips, and a much shorter cloak. She wasted no time in wrapping the mangled-up part of the blade, making sure to take extra care with the sharp prongs.
The shorter pieces were used to tie the first one in place, knotted as tightly as she could manage until the cloth barely moved, even when she twisted and tugged at it.
Finished, Zelda picked up the broken sword, giving it a few cautious, experimental swings.
Unwieldy – and she certainly would never make for a particularly talented swordswoman – but the makeshift hilt held fast, successfully protecting her from losing any fingers.
“That should do the trick,” Zelda muttered, more to herself than anything – then gave a half-smile when the sword chimed in agreement.
She stood, blade in hand, and carefully made her way down the pile of rubble, stumbling a few times as it shifted underfoot. The last few steps had her sliding down, hopping off at the bottom onto solid ground with a quiet grunt of effort and staggering for a few seconds before she regained her balance.
Alright.
Zelda took a steady breath, gazing once more into the shadows masking the rest of the cavern. Same plan, just with a weapon now.
It would make things much easier if there did turn out to be cave-dwelling monsters down here. She was by no means a skilled fighter, but having something to defend herself with was infinitely better than having nothing.
Find a river, then go from there.
They shone against the dark, silvery-blue gleam twining with heavenly gold; divine and damaged and still there, despite it all.
Zelda set her jaw, tightened her grip on the sword that sealed the darkness, and set off.
She had work to do.