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This was a dream. It must have been.
He was traveling in a group, that much Warriors could tell. He tried to turn his head, he could hear footsteps behind him, Warriors guessed that they must have belonged to the rest of the group towards the back, but found that he couldn’t move. While his body trooped forward, he couldn’t move a muscle. It seemed that this was his least favorite type of dream, the type where he was a prisoner in his own body, forced to watch as everything happened around him, unable to help when needed.
This wasn’t the first time Warriors had had a dream like this. In fact, it had been happening more and more as of recently. It was always the same people, never a new face within the group. He never recognized any of them, save for the sailor, still dressed in that same blue lobster shirt. Warriors had told him before that he should really change into something else, that the brightness of the clothing would give him away if he were to hide from something, but the sailor would just wave him away with something along the lines of “It brings out my eyes, you prick”.
There was also another. While his face itself was not familiar to the captain, there was something about it that kept nagging at the back of his mind. He thought maybe it was the bright markings upon his face. They were not so dissimilar to the ones painted onto the fierce deity mask that the child brought with him everywhere. Though he very much preferred this face compared to the blank stare that the deity always wore.
Now they walked through a forest path, the setting sun cast a golden glow through the canopy of leaves above them. The group was relatively silent, an occasional whisper the only thing to break the quiet atmosphere.
As they walked, Warriors took notice of the crumbling ruins that were scattered throughout the overgrown trail they were traveling. Mossy pillars stuck out of the ground around them, the travelers making sure to watch their step as they marched forward.
The faint sound of rattling bones was what alerted them that something was wrong. He saw the sailor turn around at the front of the group, his mouth opening to yell a warning, but was cut off when a stalfos jumped from a wall nearby, nearly landing on the young hero.
A hiss from behind made Warriors turn around and draw his sword. Out of the shadows emerged what had to be more than a dozen lizalfos, some more stalfos mixed in here and there. The captain found himself shouting as chaos broke out all around him. “They’ve got us surrounded!”
Beside him, he heard a bow being drawn before he saw a stalfos collapse into a pile of bones.
Monsters surrounded them from all sides. Warriors grabbed his shield quickly to block an incoming attack. A cry sounded out through the area. His head whipped around, searching for the source, only to find the sailor lying on his back, a large lizalfos as dark as the night with blood red eyes standing before him. An appearance the captain couldn’t help but compare to a shadow.
Warriors begged his body to move, but all he could do was watch as the monster drew nearer, too busy with his own battles at the moment to make it to the sailor in time.
“Hey, behind you, asshole!”
The beast turned his head towards the voice. Luckily, the one with a bow had seen that the sailor was in trouble, and had distracted the shadow long enough for him to get away.
The rest of the battle seemed to fly past in a blur. A continuous loop of the dark being trying to run away, only to get caught last minute.
The shadow disappeared for a long while, a man on horseback following him closely through the woods. The others stayed at the main site of the battle, still too many monsters swarming them to afford another to give chase.
The clashing of metal on metal and the pained cries of the beasts around them as they were felled were the only sounds that filled Warrior’s mind. A fight with a nearby stalfos was cut short when the shadow burst into camp again. He heard someone shout, but the noise was drowned out by a deep growl behind him.
Without any warning, something rushed by his legs, so fast Warriors could only make out a dark flash of fur before it was jumping through the air to latch its jaws around the shadow’s throat. They fell to the ground, the wolf (as he could now make out) was thrown off onto the ground. Warriors noticed the shocking similarity to this wolf and the creature of shadows that he saw Midna often use to get around.
The wolf readied itself to jump again, crouching low to the ground and launching itself up with its back legs. But before it could land another bite, the shadow shifted, stretching and morphing into an armored demon, a double sided axe appearing in its gloved hands. It was too late when Warriors noticed what was going to happen. The wolf was stretched out in midair, a perfect opening for the blade to cut right across its belly.
He heard shouts from other spots in the battle field, and he felt his chest tightening for reasons unknown. His breathing became erratic as he watched the wolf lay motionless on the floor. He didn’t know why he was acting this way, he didn’t know these people, and he most definitely didn’t know that wolf. Yet his lungs screamed for air. He couldn’t think, he couldn’t breath, he couldn’t-
“Captain!”
Warrior’s eyes flew open, his chest heaving and body shaking. “Captain, what’s wrong, are you hurt? Do you need me to go find Lana, I know she’s not a medic but-”
“Shut up sailor, he probably just had another one of those dreams again, right?”
Warriors was confused, he tried to move his hands, but found that they were held down by a weight. He looked down. There he found two pairs of wide and questioning eyes looking right at him.
On his right was the sailor, who had made himself comfortable laying on his arm, and on top of his chest sat Mask, his legs crossed over each other as he pinned Warriors down with a burning gaze.
“What are you two doing here, this is my tent, and you’re supposed to be sleeping.” The two looked at each other, silently communicating with their eyes. They seemed to come to an agreement, Mask turning back to face Warriors as he took a deep breath to begin his explanation.
“Well, we knew you’ve been having these really weird dreams recently, ya know with those randos and all, and-”
“Hey, I’m in them too!”
“Yeah, yeah, plus him too.” The sailor stuck his tongue out at the Mask, the kid blissfully ignoring him in favor of continuing his story.
“As I was saying, we know that they aren’t very nice and you don’t like having them, so we decided to come in here and cheer you up!”
“Yeah, but you were already asleep when we got here, so we decided to just be here when you woke up to distract you from it, is it working?” The sailor butted in, Mask throwing a stink eye his way in retaliation.
Warriors looked between the two of them, emotion suddenly overcoming him. He tugged them both closer to him in a tight hug. Mask wriggled against his hold, not wanting to be trapped against his chest, but the sailor just layed there, probably already half asleep from being awake almost the entire night prior strategizing various battle plans.
As Mask slowly relaxed against him, Warriors couldn’t help but think about how lucky he was for the both of them. He may not be able to breathe with the child curled up on his chest, but it didn’t matter, because he loved them.
“Yes,” He said as they slowly slipped away into unconsciousness, “It is working.”