Chapter Text
Wild jerked up in her bed roll, falling over and initiating a strange, and hilarious, domino effect. Everyone was sitting up and looking at the startled Wild.
Twilight sat up, having transformed back from Wolfie to frown at Wild worried, “Is something wrong?”
Wild frowned looking around, “I just had the weirdest dream? It was me and Zelda and we… were going beneath the castle.” She sat up further staring into the distance, “She said people were getting sick investigating deep tunnels…”
Twilight hummed, “You have mentioned weird things have been found in the deeper tunnels. That the healers are leery of the way people are acting after going down the deeper tunnels as they are trying to clean out old East Domain.”
Hyrule nodded, “You told me the only thing that seemed to help was exposure to sunlight. I recommend that anyone investigating any of the older places spend a lot of time in the sun even if they aren’t feeling sick.”
Four bit their lip, “Vio wanted a sample if you could get it, not exposed to light so they could investigate if it was some sort of dark magic.”
Wild nodded absently, “We kept walking down and there was this mist, Zelda said it wasn’t dangerous like that. Then the Master Sword,” Wild shot a guilty look at Sky, “Uh, it started glowing.”
Sky nodded, “She was sensing something evil then.”
“Yeah… then we ran into some ruins from an ancient civilization.”
Time frowned, “You found things from Skyloft under the castle?”
She shook her head, “No something pre-Skyloft I think.”
Wind blinked, “Before Sky? That’s possible?”
Sky nodded, “She must be talking about the people that were on the ground before the imprisoning war.”
Wild nodded, “She talked about the imprisoning war being depicted on one of the murals.”
Twilight tilted his head, “Murals?”
“There were a couple, one showed the Zonai coming from the sky, and then apparently the marriage between a Hylian and a Zonai, next was the demon king stealing something and the Zonai’s wife looked hurt and then Zelda said it depicted the imprisoning war.”
Sky nodded, “That does make sense the mural depicted the history Skyloft knows.”
Wind glanced around the group, “Zonai? Is that something I haven’t heard of that you guys have?”
The entire group shook their heads before Wild added, “I only found out about them when Zelda started talking about them… they were strange looking.”
Twilight smiled at her, “What happened next?”
“We kept walking down and the,” Wild’s nose scrunched up, “Gloom just kept getting worse.”
“Worse?” Warriors leaned forward, “Worse how?”
“It was getting thicker; specks of glowing red spots were floating in the air. We kept descending until we got to this,” Wild narrowed her eyes looking into the distance trying to pick the right word, “Cliff? It was small but looked natural, even though it was at the end of the stairs.”
“Wait,” Legend sat up, “Stairs?”
“Yes, we had been walking down a giant set of stone steps and had now reached the end of the tunnel portion of the steps. Off in the distance we could see a spiral of green light that slowly transitioned into blue.”
“I’m guessing magic?”
Wild shrugged unsure, “Maybe? But we kept going down until we reached a flat portion of ground and started to approach the light. At the end of the light was a,” She bit her lip before continuing, “Corpse?”
Warriors frowned, “You don’t seem sure of that, did it look strange?”
“His skin was dried out, like Time’s Redeads but he, you could, if I had known who he was when he was alive, I would have been able to recognize him. There was an arm attached to his chest.”
Time frowned, “An arm? Was it Mummified too?”
“No, it was a magic arm? It was directly at the end of the stream of light, the spiral of light was coming out of it. There was a glowing stone on it that fell off the hand when the hand fell.”
“Wait,” Four leaned forward, “The arm fell off? Not let go?”
“No, it definitely fell off, it stopped glowing and fell, the glowing rock rolling towards us. Zelda picked it up. Then the mummy started… moving.”
Wind blinked, “Like a Redead moves all slow like or a normal monster?”
“In sudden jerks letting out these,” She shuddered, “Snapping sounds. Before it fell back to how it had been floating.”
Hyrule blinked, “It had been floating?”
“Uh, yeah in midair.”
Time looked around the group, “Let her tell us what happened without bombarding her with questions.”
Wild shook her head, “It’s fine, it helps breaking it up, but next the head turned towards us and...”
When Wild didn’t continue Hyrule laid his hand on Wilds, “What happened?”
“This red, it looked like malice, erupted from the body and tried to attack Zelda, I got in the way and tried to hit it with the Master Sword but it flowed up the sword and started hurting me. It, it burned.” Wild shuddered, rubbing her arm.
Hyrule’s hands lit up as he quickly checked over her arm, “There isn’t anything actually wrong.”
“It hurt so much, my arm was just burning in agony as another stream of malice attacked and,” She turned a guilty look towards Sky before looking away.
Sky smiled, “Whatever happened isn’t your fault.”
Her shoulders reached up towards her ears, “The Master Sword shattered.”
“She WHAT?”
Legend shot a glance at the Master Sword before turning to Wild, “The sort of magic that would be needed to shatter the Master Sword would be immense, and you weren’t screaming in pain from whatever it did to your arm?”
Four frowned, “The Master Sword would have been around for a long time at that, even magic swords get weaker over time.”
Sky turned to stare at them, “She’s blessed by Hylia! She shouldn’t be able to break, let alone shatter!”
“Still the sword would have been weakened over time and even Vio thinks malice is well, not as bad as you know but definitely really powerful dark magic. Something like that going directly against a sword of the opposite type? Would cause a lot of stress on the sword.”
Time placed a hand on Sky’s shoulder, “Breathe. We need to hear what happened. Let's focus on what Wild remembers for now.”
Sky nodded, taking careful breaths, shooting a worried look at the Master Sword.
Time turned to Wild, “Now what happened?”
“He, the man, corpse thing called the Master Sword the ‘sword that seals the darkness’ and called it weak for shattering against his power. He knew our names.”
Warriors frowned, “Your enemy, who had been dead for a few ages as he must have been sealed during the Zonia’s time, knew your name?”
“He mentioned a Rauru and seemed to recognize Zelda, but,” Wild frowned, “He only called me by name because I was holding the Master Sword. It was like he knew Zelda but had only heard of me.”
“Maybe,” Wind tilted his head to the side, “He knew a different Zelda and they looked alike? I mean they are from the same family.”
Four frowned, “I doubt that as there would have been an innumerable amount of generations between them.”
“Well Flora sort of looks like Sun.”
Hyrule frowned, “I mean they have the same coloration but they wouldn’t get mistaken for each other. None of our Zelda’s look that similar as to automatically assume they are the Zelda because you looked at one of them.”
Warriors rolled his eyes, turning to Wild, “What happened next?”
“He shot malice… or gloom up and the cave above us started to move up.”
Warriors blinked, “Do you think he was moving the entire castle? I mean you were under the castle right?”
Wild shrugged nodding as she did, “Then the floor fell away and, I tried to catch Zelda, but she fell too fast,” Wild’s forehead furrowed, “And she disappeared in a flash of light.”
Legend cocked his head, “What color?”
Warriors looked at him, “Really you care about the color?”
“Hey! Colors in magic can tell you a lot!”
Wild answered before they could descend into a fight, “Gold.”
“Well, that’s good. Lots of holy magic is good and I’ve never heard of bad magic being gold so she was probably teleported somewhere safe.”
Wild’s shoulders slumped in relief continuing, “Then the arm grabbed me.”
Twilight blinked, “What arm?”
“The one that had been grabbing the corpse's chest. It tugged me up and I woke up here.”
Warriors frowned, “It sounds like there’s nothing else to do for now.”
Time looked at the sky and then around the group, “It’s still dark enough out, let's all try to get some more sleep.”
Wild shook her head, “I’m too shook up to sleep, Legend, I’ll take over watch.”
Legend cheered, “Awesome more sleep!” Before detangling his bed roll from the others and crawling in.
The rest of the group slowly followed him, Sky being the last to settle in as he checked over the Master Sword once before turning in.
Wild turned to the cooking pot and pulled out her slate, it was still pretty early so she could make something more complicated today to keep herself distracted from what happened, what she dreamed happened? She shook her head concentrating on making breakfast. She could think about all of that later, for now, breakfast. She could keep an ear and eye on the surroundings as she cooked.