Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ravio awoke to the sound of someone yelling.

For once, it wasn’t coming from himself, which surprised him as he flailed towards wakefulness.

He opened his eyes, blinking stupidly. Why was the fortress ceiling replaced by towering tree-trunks? Why was his nose itching with nature-magic? Why did his bed feel like pine needles? And why was some asshole kid shouting his head off?

Then he remembered.

Last night, he had carried the unconscious young Link as far into the dark woods as he could go, the two of them sopping wet and frigidly cold after their dunk in the river. Eventually, he collapsed in a hollow at the base of a redwood, flared roots making for a semi-hidden enclosure. After setting up the sloppiest concealment hexes of his entire life, Ravio then took off both their outer layers of soaked clothes and hung them on the buttress roots to dry. Still shivering in his long underwear, he gathered firewood from the many fallen branches that littered the ground, setting it alight with the last of his magic.

The cold had apparently made him stupid. Because after draining his magical reserves several times over in the past three days, this final drain on his magic instantly knocked him out.

Really, it was a miracle that he didn’t fall into the fire, or that some terrible monster hadn’t bypassed the shitty concealment sigils scrawled in the dirt and eaten them alive.

Now that he knew where he was (sort of, location in the Lost Woods was a bit of a fuzzy thing), he rolled over to see the boy on the ground where Ravio had left him. He was wearing nothing but his green shorts, wriggling around on his back but unable to get up as if pinned, swearing loudly in multiple languages (only some were being translated by the translation spell Lana had placed on Ravio, the rest being a strange mix of clicks and birdlike sounds) while digging trenches into the dirt with his bare feet as he attempted to get up. The undead fairy that followed him was frantically circling the area, adding to the chaos.

Perhaps later Ravio would be thankful that the boy’s lungs weren’t damaged in the gassing of Fort Baumer, but now? After being startled awake after a night of poor sleep in the Lost Woods? The Lost Woods full of predators with sharp ears and sharper teeth? Absolutely not.

“Where’s th’mask?! Where’s th’ocarina?!”  The kid’s hands were at the back of his neck, working furiously to undo… something. Ravio had no idea what kept him pinned down.

“Shhh! Something might hear us!” he hissed, “I left all your equipment in your belt bags, calm down.”

“I need it now! It’s been sebenty-one hours! Where’s th’fucking moon!” The kid demanded, placing both hands behind his head and ripping something apart. Abruptly, he shot up.

On the ground where the boy had lain, ivy vines squirmed, broken tips weeping blood-red sap. With horror, Ravio realized that the small leaves on the back of the boy’s neck and shoulders had filled out into full vines, now broken and bleeding.

Had he been growing roots?

Ignoring the amputated vines bleeding onto his bare back, the boy whirled around the clearing, eyes wild, nearly stepping barefoot onto the dying fire Ravio had made earlier, poe-fairy trailing behind him.

Upon spotting his leather belt and bag hanging over a tall root, he ran to it and pulled out the Fierce Deity’s mask, alongside a sky-blue sweet-potato-shaped flute.

“You just recovered from magic exhaustion, do not go wrathful-god-mode now!” Ravio was now wide awake, and he lunged after the tiny hero, grabbing hold of the mask just before the boy put it on, dark magic numbing his fingers. The boy wouldn’t let go, and Ravio wasn’t strong enough to take it from him, but he kept the child from donning the mask. Barely.

The kid stared upwards, trees and mist blocking his view of the sky. He was breathing heavily, clenching the mask and ocarina with pale fingers. A painful memory flared up in Ravio’s chest.

“What about the moon?” Ravio asked as calmly as he could. The falling moon had loomed large in the mask’s dreams, so this panic had to be related. Mr. Tiny Hero had talked so casually about witnessing the apocalypse earlier, Ravio had forgotten how fucked the whole thing sounded. You don’t drop a celestial object on a pre-teen and expect them to walk it off.

The boy didn’t respond. Ravio tried gently tugging on the mask, trying to disregard the anesthetizing feel of its dark magic, but the child’s grip was like iron. Stupid Goron strength. He needed to negotiate his way to keeping the kid out of yet another magic exhaustion coma. He tried to think about what the dream visions of Termina had been like.

“The moon caused earthquakes, didn’t it? I don’t feel any earthquakes at all. That means the moon isn’t falling, right?”

Mr. Tiny Hero’s breathing slowly evened out, and the poe-fairy plonked onto his head, making soothing chimes. He kept looking up though.

“You can hold on to the mask and flute. Just please don’t do any magic yet. My arms are still sore from carrying you yesterday, I refuse to do that again.”

The boy gave a small nod, gloomy blue-green eyes still fixed on the gray sky crowded with trees.

“I think our stuff is dry now, so I’m going to get my robe and start breakfast. But I’m right here, okay?” Ravio took his hands off the mask, grateful to no longer be in contact with that level of dark magic, and the child thankfully made no move to put it on. He kept his eyes on the boy as he grabbed his cloak and scarf.

Once fully clothed, Ravio poked around the edges of their camp, gathering more firewood and a few wild onions, never leaving sight of the boy. Each time he looked back, the tiny hero still had his face to the sky, glaring at it like it had personally wronged him. Which, well, it had.

But he didn’t put the mask on, and that was good enough.

Breakfast was soup made from bouillon, dried fish, and wild onions. The first two came out of Ravio’s pockets sealed in wax paper and wrapped in twine, and he hoped the goddesses would forever bless Staven for his insistence on giving everyone waterproof rations before all the chaos in the escape of Fort Baumer.

His lone preservation bottle had been filled with drinking water, now being used as the base of the soup, with the bottle itself as the container. All he needed to do was heat it to make it more palatable, because with the clumped bouillon and fish bits it looked like something left in a chamber pot after a bad meal.

This presented a problem, because the embers of last night’s fire had cooled hours ago. Ravio expending any more magic was out of the question for at least another day, and while he considered trying to take apart one of the fuses of the leftover bombs, he didn’t trust himself to not accidentally blow himself up. He was an artificer and not a pyrotechnician for a reason.

He turned to Mr. Tiny Hero, who had finally managed to end his staring contest with the sky and was putting on his own clothes. The severed vines were mostly tucked under his tunic, though the green fabric now bore small bloodstains around the neck. “Ah. Do you have anything to light fires with? I’m low on magic.”

The boy stuck his hand out, and Ravio placed a branch from the new pile of firewood against his open palm.

Ravio had already arranged the firewood into a cone over the ashes, expecting the boy to pull out a flint or do that fancy rub-two-sticks-together-real-fast thing that he’d never actually seen work. Instead, the kid hummed softly, and the end of the stick burst into hot flames.

“Here.” Mr. Tiny Hero handed him the unlit end as Ravio gaped.

“You shouldn’t—gah!” he shoved the burning end of the stick into the firewood before the inferno could spread down the rest of it, and by extension, to him. “You shouldn’t be doing magic yet!” He couldn’t see any items used to create the fire, or even focus the magic, which meant that it was raw magic, a level of which would probably kill Ravio if he ever tried conjuring a flame that hot.

“Pfft. It’s like a fire arrow, those are easy. You saw real magic at th’fort! Cia’s been teaching me how t’add dark magic t’spells! I’m calling it Din’s Dark Fire! Yuga said it sounds tacky but fuck him.” The kid preened, then quickly stopped.

The fact that they were both stuck in the Lost Woods with someone working for their enemy dawned on them both. It was a disturbing realization, especially for Ravio, because he had no idea whatsoever how to escape the woods aside from waiting for Sheerow, and his potential adversary was a kid with Goron-strength and more raw magic than he had ever seen aside from Ganon himself. And that wasn’t even counting the death mask of Termina.

“So. Uhm. Why are we in th’Lost Woods? What happened at th’fort?” Mr. Tiny Hero threw out a lifeline by changing the subject and Ravio gladly took it.

“Ah. Well. After you warped us outside, the people the mask met in the dream helped us out. Zelda—er... Wizzro was planning on dumping poisonous gas into the dungeon, but we put a stop to that. We still had to escape the fort of course. Everyone else made it to the boats and fled downstream, but you and I missed the last boat out. So, I made an ice bridge and got us across the river. Then Sheerow flew off to deliver their message.” He glossed over the messy bits, and the cuccoo horror, but that was in fact most of what happened.

“Oh. Were th’horses okay?” the boy asked.

“The horses?”

“Yeah. There were a bunch of horses at th’fort. Are they okay?”

“Ah, the stable hand took them out every day at noon to graze, that’s when everything went to shit, she should have been able to escape with them.” He had barely been able to see thanks to the acid gas when he fled the fort, he hoped he was right about the stable hand.

“That’s good. Thanks.”

Ravio poked at the fire with another stick as it continued to grow. Sparks popped, warm splashes of color against the moss riddled wood. He nestled the soup jar into the edge of the flame. “Sooo… do you know how to get out of here? This isn’t the Easily-Navigable Woods.”

“Um. Well. I set th’return point for Farore’s wind back at th’fort, but I don’t think we want t’go back there. And my warp songs don’t work anymore. Where d’you think we should go? I kinda wanna back and kill Wizzro but I should prob’ly warn Cia that she’s been betrayed first.” Mr. Tiny Hero gently rubbed the torn vines at the back of his neck as he thought. “I think, I think Cia would like you! You should come with me! You’re real smart and she’s not mean t’people with dark magic!”

Well shit. Maybe he could follow the kid to the edge of the woods and make a run for it. It would break the little guy’s heart, but there was no way Ravio was about to work for someone invading Hyrule. Again. And pretending to work for Cia while secretly planning to betray her was right out, Yuga could have told Cia what a sneaky little liar Ravio was.

At the same time, running away meant leaving this child in her clutches. And Ravio had some real concerns about leaving a young boy alone with an ancient sorceress who was trying to capture another young man for goddesses-knew-what reasons.

Cia had to be keeping Mr. Tiny Hero away from the truth of what she was doing. After all, despite being deeply angry and gifted with disturbing magic, the boy worried about horses and hadn’t killed anyone at the fort despite having ample opportunity. And while the Fierce Deity should have been an army-shredding military asset for Cia, right beside her dragon-knight, Ravio had never heard of it doing that. Rather, it mostly appeared after battles to eat the souls of the dead. She had to be keeping secrets from the child, perhaps if he could see first-hand the horrors that Cia had wrought, he would rethink his allegiance. Considering how the Hyrulean army had treated the poor kid, he would never be a loyal subject again, but Ravio only needed to stop Mr. Tiny Hero from working with Cia.

So, he was going to manipulate Farore’s blessed hero. Again.

Ravio supposed it had worked out well enough last time.

“Let’s not be too hasty Mr. Tiny Hero. Sheerow is an accomplished courier, but they could get stuck or delayed. If Sheerow can’t get there in time, Lieutenant Link will pull that sword and we’ll all be in deep shit. Let’s go to the sword itself and make sure he doesn’t pull it. I’ll talk to them, let them know they’re making a mistake, explain that you’re helping to stop Ganon, save the day, get paid, all that good stuff.”

The small hero was so painfully easy to read, Ravio could practically see the gears turning in his head as he processed this plan. It wasn’t hard to understand how Cia had made him her flunky, the boy burned with a need to be needed. He could use that. This was good.

He felt like an asshole.

The kid perked up and started sketching a map in the dirt with his boot. Ravio recognized Hyrule field immediately, a big circle with a dot for Castletown at the top, and a line curving around its eastern edge for the Zora River, marking the border between Hyrule Field and the Lost Woods. One dot at the eastern edge of the circle marked Fort Baumer, and another dot beyond the river to its east marked their (likely) position within the woods. “Yeah—yeah! We’re prob’ly about here, in th’woods. I mean, space is kinda weird here, but still.” He then toed another dot into the ground beyond the southern edge of the field. “Th’sword’s still in th’Temple of Time, but th’Temple moved, into th’woods. No idea how. It’s faster t’trabel across th’field than th’woods, so let’s get t’Hyrule Field, south of th’fort, then cross th’bridges in Ordon, that should be far enough from th’fort t’be safe,” he made a few lines over the river to indicate bridges. “We can then go ober th’field t’get closer t’th’Temple. That’s where th’new Link will prob’ly go.”  

Mr. Tiny Hero turned around slowly, then pointed at a tree that looked exactly like every other tree, “Th’groundwater was flowing that way, towards th’riber, that must be southwest. Th’Ordon bridges are about three days of walking from here. I think. Cia made me study maps.”

“Groundwater?” Ravio asked.

“Um” Mr. Tiny Hero paused, as if realizing he had let slip something he shouldn’t. Something twitched at the back of his neck.

“It’s a Deku scrub thing, isn’t it?” He knew little about them aside from being plantlike conmen of the great forest (Ravio had really wanted to investigate his competition), which meant somehow they had to be able to navigate it.

The boy made a small nod.

“Mr. Tiny Hero, if you having roots saves Hyrule then that’s a good thing.”

“S’weird though. Weird gets you shot.” One of the boy’s hands involuntarily clutched the arrow scar on his other arm.

“In this Hyrule? Honestly? Yes. But I’ve met a weird hero and… he was pretty great! Maybe Loruleans have a higher tolerance for weird. We’ll be careful around these Hyruleans, alright?”

“He was weird too?” the boy asked softly.

“Well, yes. Nice guy. Maybe a little too nice if you ask me. Spent about half his adventure as a painting” Ravio paused, thumbing the ice rod in his robe pocket, checking it was still there. “I miss him.”

“A painting?”

“That’s right, with the help of a magic bracelet he could become flat as paper and stick to walls. Saved both Hyrule and Lorule with that ability. Though, Mr. Hero was starting to look a bit different near the end. Light hit him strangely. Probably spent too much time as art.”

The boy pondered the existence of another strange hero, chewing on his lip. Ravio didn’t have any issues with the kid’s plan to leave these awful woods ASAP and book it across Hyrule Field, but his stint in jail had made it clear that this Hyrule was far more conformist than Mr. Hero’s Hyrule. The two of them were dark-magic tainted foreigners traveling outside of the auspices of the military in a deeply fearful country during wartime. That could be a problem, and he’d need to be careful once they entered the Ordonian province, especially with the kid’s transformation scars getting more obvious.

With a burble, the soup announced it had finally come to a boil, and Ravio rushed over to carefully push it away from the fire with an unlit stick. Pondering could wait; he was starving.

Breakfast was best described as edible. Nevertheless, the two of them made quick work of the soup, Ravio poured half into one of Mr. Tiny Hero’s jars so they could each sip it at their leisure. Once finished, they spread out their items on the forest floor to see what they had available to work with.

Ravio had one (now empty) preservation jar; his warm scarf, robe, and sash (with a few hexes sewn into them for hygiene); the kid’s borrowed bomb bag with both bombs and bombchus (also hexed for waterproofedness, thank goodness); the wind-enchanted boomerang also given to him by the kid; the time traveling ice rod from Mr. Hero; one-hundred-eighty-four rupees (Colonel Firne, that rat bastard, hadn’t actually paid Ravio yet despite his promises); a small folding knife; a sewing kit he had scrounged together at the fort; a few handkerchiefs; and enough wax-wrapped bullion and jerky for one person for two days (down from three after their breakfast).

In contrast, Mr. Tiny Hero had a goddess-spurned arsenal stuffed in his little belt bag: six preservation jars with cute little cow logos (all empty now); one purple-green obsidian claymore longer than he was tall, with thorned roses carved into the fuller; a smaller sword with fine mosaic gold patterns set into the silver blade; a reflective shield (at first this seemed fairly normal, until Ravio glimpsed a howling face in that mirror); a delicately carved wooden flute; a wickedly strong looking bow (currently unstrung and minus any arrows); a hookshot; the Fierce Deity’s mask; a strange purple spyglass (a single look and it tried to suck down what little magic Ravio had, he avoided it after that); and a pictograph box. Notably, the blue flute Ravio had seen earlier was kept hidden. He filed that information away for later use.

Ravio sighed as he looked at the items. “Water might be a problem. Maybe you can drink out of the ground, but I can’t.”

“We’re fine. I’ll just make it rain.”

“Well… that’s a good skill to have if you keep setting things on fire. If water is covered, that leaves food. There’s enough for both of us for one more day. I think I can scrounge up some pine nuts and wild onions this time of year, but I don’t trust myself with mushroom foraging.

“Saria taught me th’easier mushrooms, and I can hunt! Th’woods are dangerous though. We should get going.”

“I agree we shouldn’t dilly-dally, but I carried your scrawny ass here yesterday. I’m taking a break.”

The boy fixed his gloomy eyes on Ravio. “Th’woods want your bones. We gotta go.”

“My bones?” Ravio asked incredulously.

“Yeah.”

“But I’m using those.”

“Yeah.”

“Well! We’ve certainly been here long enough!” Ravio snatched his items off the ground, squirreling them away in his various pockets, then he kicked dirt over the campfire. The boy followed suit, moving his small armory into his belt bag. Somehow it all fit, thanks to the wonders of compaction enchantments.

Ravio could barely contain his impatience as the tiny hero packed. Memories of Lorule’s Skull Woods played in his mind. Apparently, the Lost Woods were just as deadly under a slightly more pleasant veneer. As the boy finished shoving the stupidly huge purple blade into the bag, Ravio started walking toward the tree Mr. Tiny Hero had pointed out earlier.

“Rabbio!” the boy called out.

“I’m rather attached to my bones Mr. Tiny Hero! I’m getting out of here!”

“RABBIO!” the boy shouted again. Ravio turned around to see what the fuss was.

The kid was glaring at Ravio, pointing his arm in a completely different direction from where he had been going.

“Oh.” Ravio looked around. The trees all looked the same. Maybe one had slightly more ivy than the other. Maybe. “Well then, lead on Mr. Tiny Hero.”

Mr. Tiny Hero stalked to the southwest, grumbling something about not being a hero and not staying tiny. Ravio rushed to follow.

Pine needles crunched underfoot as they trekked through the woods. Despite walking for hours, there was no change in the dull misty sky, in fact, Ravio couldn’t remember if it had even gotten dark before he passed out last night. The concepts of time and location seemed foreign to Farore’s holy ground. “Lost Woods” was right, Ravio would be wandering in circles until he was deboned if Mr. Tiny Hero wasn’t here to guide him.

As they traveled, the boy played little ditties on his wooden ocarina, and sometimes broke out into rhymes and songs, mostly in that clicking warbling language he had heard earlier, poe-fairy happily bobbling along in time with the beat. He could feel the translation spell strain, but aside from the occasional word it couldn’t translate that strange language to Hylian.

“Shouldn’t we be quiet?” Ravio whispered. The only other noise was the sound of them walking and the buzzing of oversized insects.

“They like music. Keeps them calm.” The boy answered, then piped another little tune into the ocarina.

“They?”

Mr. Tiny Hero pointed to a shadowed area under oversized ferns, where two yellow eyes peered out at them beneath wagon-wheel sized fiddlesticks. As soon as Ravio made eye contact it giggled and rattled.

“Skull kids. They hate adults. But they want t’be friends with your skeleton.” The boy said casually, as if reciting a boring fact about the weather. “I don’t know why they didn’t bother us last light.”

“I had a concealment hex on our little campsite.” Nervous as he was, Ravio couldn’t help but boast, apparently his hex had worked, even scrawled in his tired stupor.

“A what?”

“I’ll tell you once we’re a little further from ah, that.”

They walked on, away from the giggling yellow-eyed thing in the shadows. Sometimes their path was blocked by tree roots so large they had to climb over them, using furrows in the mossy bark for handholds. Once they encountered a rotting tree stump the width of Fort Baumer, bright red wood sloughing off the decomposing core like a slow-motion waterfall. For this, they had to walk around, and Mr. Tiny Hero gathered some frilly mushrooms and iridescent beetles off the dying wood. When asked why he was collecting the beetles, he said it was “for reasons.”

At times, even when the path was clear, the boy would suddenly point in a different direction, following some strange Deku-scrub instinct. Ravio fretted the entire time, head on a swivel, trying to spot any more little imps waiting to befriend his bones.   

Terror is an excellent motivator, but it can only do so much in the face of exhaustion. So, at a location he felt was marginally safer than average, Ravio stopped to rest and picked up a broken branch to draw lines in the dirt. “Mr. Tiny Hero, welcome to introductory anti-memetic script-based magic class, we’re starting with a concealment sigil: here’s the first half—” He made a squiggle in the dirt as the boy settled beside him. “And here’s the other,” he said as he drew another series of lines. “Put them together with this line connected to this squiggle and…” He redrew the first squiggle, then closed his eyes and tried to put it out of his head as he drew the second set of lines on top by memory.

When he opened them, there was nothing. His eyes simply didn’t want to look at that spot or think about anything beyond it. Only with experience could he squint to see something like scratches in the dirt. A perfect success.

“WHAT TH’FUCK!” The kid yelled, and pulled out the purple spyglass from his bag, alternating looking at the hex with and without it. Ravio tried to avoid the spyglass even as it clawed and begged for his magic. Like so many of the boy’s items, it reeked of death.

“Is this a Sheikah thing? Could I try?” The boy’s eyes lit up as Ravio handed him the stick.

“Well, yes, I think the Sheikah developed it first, a long time ago. Practice that first sigil for now, we’ll add the second one later.” As the child put away the spyglass and happily scribbled in the dirt, Ravio wandered nearby, gathering fresh pinecones, then sat down to place them into his folded scarf, repeatedly smacking it against the ground until the cones broke apart and he could pick out the seeds, dropping them into his preservation jar with a satisfying plink. He found himself rambling about the Sheikah usage of the concealment hex in Lorule prior to their full integration into the royal family; the various limitations of it (you had to see the sigil for the hex to work); and the difficulties in learning it, because if you thought of the entire shape of the sigil at once, you’d simply forget what you were doing.

After about an hour, Mr. Tiny Hero was slightly less terrible at the first part of the sigil and Ravio had a small layer of pine nuts at the bottom of his jar. The boy’s handwriting was atrocious, and he held his stick like a sword, not a pen. Once again, Ravio wondered what kind of schooling the kid had, if any. But he complimented him on his persistence, gave him a handful of nuts, and offered to continue the lessons when they made camp for the night.

As they walked further through the woods, Ravio found he was tired earlier than expected. Not much of a surprise considering all that had happened the past few days. They had made good time anyways so he hoped an early rest would set him right for tomorrow.

They took shelter under an enormous mushroom clinging to an even larger stump. After gathering firewood into a pile under the protection of the mushroom cap, they placed their empty jars in the open air. Mr. Tiny Hero played a whirling tune with his wooden ocarina and rain poured down as thunder split the air. Eventually, the storm faded away and they greedily drank the storm water, saving what was left in one jar for soup.

Ravio attempted to play the same tune on the flute, but he could barely make the right notes, let alone make magic with it. Well, the boy could keep his expertise with songs and raw magic, and Ravio could have his with making sigils and programming magical circuits into metal.

They finished the pine nuts and most of the dried fish in silence, watching the mist thread through the trees as the ground slowly dried after the rainstorm. When they were done, Ravio continued giving the boy lessons in the concealment hex in the mud until he could shakily draw both of the required shapes. Combining them eluded the child however, and Ravio couldn’t stop yawning. Eventually, Mr. Tiny Hero grew too frustrated and Ravio sent him off to look for food.

In the warmth of the campfire, Ravio’s eyes grew heavy as he watched the boy return with some more frilly mushrooms. He finished the hexes, with Mr. Tiny Hero leaning over his shoulder to watch. As soon as he finished, Ravio laid down and fell asleep instantly, dreaming of lines that couldn’t be seen.

An early rest had not set him right. Ravio was uncomfortable laying on the ground, and felt worse getting up. He was greeted by the same dull gray sky and had no idea how long he had slept.

The fire burned with newly added wood, smoke rising into the pale gills of the fungus overhead, escaping out the sides into the damp air. Two mushroom skewers roasted above the flames. The smell of post-rain petrichor mingled with the scent of forest magic, and the jars were full of collected rainwater.

Ravio’s tongue felt gritty, and as he carefully sat up to reach for a jar, he noticed Mr. Tiny Hero in the distance, tirelessly scratching sigils into the damp soil with the poe-fairy resting on his head. He should have expected this, Farore’s blessed risked life and limb for silly magical tchotchkes, bad handwriting wasn’t going to deter the kid from a cool new ability.

One jar clinked against another as he grabbed for it, and the kid whirled around, dragging his stick through the current sigil and ruining it.

“Rabbio! You’re awake!”

“Regretfully, yes. Is this breakfast?” He pointed at the mushrooms.

“They’re not done yet, you hafta cook them really well or you’ll meet Farore if you eat them.”

“Of course,” Ravio muttered. It was too early for this.

“Yeah, and She’s usually pretty mad you just barged in t’see her. That’s what Fado says anyways. She ate them raw once and now she’s all weird.”

“I will defer to your mushroom wisdom Mr. Tiny Hero.” Inwardly, Ravio wondered if the kid had already eaten some of the psychedelic mushrooms given his… everything.

“Um.” The boy hesitated, like he didn’t want to say whatever would come next. “I can’t make the hex. I don’t— I don’t know why.”

“Well, have you ever made a sigil before?”

The kid shrugged. “No, but I can do plenty of magic. It’s always, y’know, just worked.”

That wasn’t a big surprise, the boy had magical power to spare, but finesse was a different beast. “Think of magic as being like art. You’re like a natural born musician who’s starting to learn calligraphy, meanwhile I have great penmanship but can’t carry a tune. Some things might come more-or-less easily to us, but with practice we can always improve. Here, I just drew the first part, show me how you draw the next.”

It took several more tries, with Ravio pausing to teach the kid how to hold the stick like a pen instead of a sword, and midway through they took a break to eat the fully cooked mushrooms (they did not meet Farore, much to his relief), but eventually Mr. Tiny Hero created something that you could kind-of sort-of only see when squinting.

“It worked! It worked Rabbio!” For a brief moment, the little boy was just that, a happy little boy who had mastered a difficult skill. Not a gloomy child warrior that knew about Sheikah dungeons and carried too many weapons.  

It was nice to see.

Afterwards, Ravio extinguished the campfire with a very judicious application of the ice rod that exhausted him far more than it should have, and they packed up, with Mr. Tiny Hero leading the way through the woods, playing more little tunes on his wooden flute. Ravio wanted nothing more than to rest his aching body, but again and again he forced one foot in front of the other. The trees loomed high overhead and he kept hearing giggles in the distance.

The faster they got out of the woods, the better.

Ravio chewed on a sprig as he trundled along after the boy. His joints hurt, a fierce headache was building in his left temple, the hygiene hexes on his robe were being pushed to the limit, and his mouth tasted disgusting after two days without tooth scrub.

On top of that, it was getting cold. The autumn chill had apparently penetrated the depths of the woods and he shivered as he walked.

“You look like shit Rabbio,” the boy piped up, arms full of wild onion and mushrooms collected along the way. The dead fairy chimed in agreement.

“What a coincidence. I feel like shit too,” he snipped back.

As they passed a fallen log with a room-sized empty core, Mr. Tiny Hero pointed at it with his sharp nose “Let’s take a break.”

“We are still days away from exiting these Goddess-spurned woods, the fate of Hyrule might rest on our shoulders, and creepy things are watching us. We need to keep going,” was what Ravio wanted to say. Instead, he just sat down. Right there. Not even at the log he was probably going to have to sleep in. He didn’t want to think about the insects it held.

What was wrong with him? Normally he could walk twice as far in half the time. What was his excuse when the stakes were this high? He had only had three horrifyingly stressful days at Fort Baumer, a dunk in an ice-filled river, exhausted his magic multiple times, and two days of sleeping on the ground with barely enough food to sustain himself.

Oh no.

He was getting sick.

Fuck.

What was he supposed to do? Usually when he got ill he laid in bed, drank too much tea, and sent Sheerow to buy potions from the local witch.

“Regretfully, I appear to be getting sick Mr. Tiny Hero.” Ravio shivered slightly “I… ah. I don’t know very much about medicine, how about you and your friend?”

The poe-fairy lifted off from the boy’s head and rang in the negative.

Meanwhile the boy perked up in his obvious please love me I’m helpful way “Saria taught me some stuff! What kinda sick are you?”

Ravio looked down at the shaking hands in his lap. “Feverish. Headache. Aching joints.”

The boy dropped the wild onions and mushrooms on the ground, and Ravio winced inwardly as they were covered in dirt. Even children raised in polite society had trouble understanding sanitation, there was no hope for the borderline feral hero. “I’ll get you some medicine! Stay here!” He then rushed away before Ravio could protest, disappearing into the plant life like he had been born there.

Ravio sighed and pulled out the bouillon and last bits of dried fish. This was going to be a long day.

“That’s bark Mr. Tiny Hero. From a tree,” Ravio noted.

“Where th’fuck else would bark come from? I had t’look all over for a willow tree.” The kid placed the sheaths of bark on the ground, dangerously close to the pile of wood for the campfire that Ravio had (painfully, creakingly) gathered. As the young Link arranged the branches and started the fire, Ravio gave it even odds that one of them would accidentally chuck the bark accidentally into the flames.

“I am not going to eat bark.” He stated flatly. What was next? Would the kid make a mud puddle with sticks in it and call it a potion?

“It’s good for febers!” Mr. Tiny Hero protested, pointy nose scrunched up in disapproval.

“Well, if I’m utterly incapacitated by a ‘feber’ you can give it to me.” Shit. That was mean. Ravio was asshole when he was sick and now he didn’t even have Sheerow and their saintly patience to help.

“Whateber” Mr. Tiny Hero picked up a stick and made to move away, presumably to practice more sigils.

Ravio sighed and decided to move the conversation towards something that would let Mr. Tiny Hero be the expert. That, and make soup. Soup and flattery let all sins be forgiven.

“So, Cia was nice to you?”

The boy’s head snapped to face him so quickly the dead fairy fell off and had to take wing. “Yeah! She’s got like, a whole mansion, with big warm beds, and spells that make food, and there’s hot water that comes out of pipes! It’s a lot nicer than Zelda’s castle, and people don’t follow me around! She eben had an artist make a statue of me for th’rose garden! She’s got more statues of th’other hero though, plus some dog.”

Ravio felt a cold pit in his stomach that had nothing to do with his fever. “She, ah, does she like this other hero?”

“I think she like, needs him. Cia has t’fix time, and she needs a hero for that. So, she made one appear by pretending to be th’bad guy.”

“Pretending?”

“Yeah” The kid started fidgeting with the stick, uncomfortable. “Sometimes people call you a bad guy when you sabe eberybody. Sometimes people call you a hero when you’re fucking everything up. It—it’s confusing.”

“And the battlefields?” Ravio attempted to be gentle. The kid was naïve, but not stupid, he had to know something was up with the sorceress.

The boy idly stabbed the stick at the ground. “They attack anyone with dark magic. You got lucky they didn’t kill you. She has t’defend herself. I make sure nobody’s soul is stuck here though.”

“Colonel Firne said they attacked Castle Town too.” Ravio replied, then cursed inwardly as soon as the words left his mouth. He couldn’t afford to have the kid hate him.

“Well Colonel Firne lied and he was gonna kill you!” The stick snapped in two as the boy thrust it into the ground again. Fists clenched and shoulders up at his overlarge ears, Mr. Tiny Hero tensed up into a tight little spring of rage. Then, with a sharp exhale, the boy’s anger deflated. He dropped the remaining end of the stick to the ground and stalked off.

Ravio sighed. So much for his attempt at being nice. It just took so much effort to play the endearing comic relief role. As soon as he was tired everything always came out more sharply than he wanted. Yes, technically Mr. Tiny Hero was working with the mad sorceress, but he had been threatened with torture by a Hyrulean Colonel, shot by Hyrulean archers, and still was helping Ravio escape from the woods. The kid could leave Ravio behind at any point and simply hadn’t so far.

Where words had failed perhaps soup would succeed. Ravio cut up the wild onions, combining them and the last bouillon bits into the soup jar, then placed it by the fire.

Eventually, the boy came back with another stick, and Ravio gave him half of the soup and gently instructed him on making the concealment hexes for the night, despite his frustrations at his growing headache and whomever had failed to teach the child basic penmanship. Mr. Tiny Hero seemed at least somewhat agreeable, and Ravio figured that was as good as he would get.

Aching, shivering, but full of soup and protected by shaky concealment hexes, Ravio laid down to rest in the core of the rotted log.

He came to consciousness like a drowning man came up for air, briefly, gulping down fresh breaths of reality before being submerged again.

It was hard to tell what was real and what wasn’t. The only constant was bitter cold and chattering teeth.

Small but strong arms carried him across a swaying bridge that spanned a deep ravine. The bridge was formed of woven roots, tied and knotted together by tiny hands. “Saria!” the boy holding him called out. There was no response. He heard sniffling as he was carried onwards.

Hilda looked at him, raven hair thrashing about in the wind as the two of them stood on a decaying parapet. The storms were getting worse. “Do you think I want to do this? The bracelet only works for people with natural magic. Evacuation is not an option.” Her hands gripped her scepter so hard she shook. “I will not abandon them.”  

Ravio was in a circular room made entirely of wood, laid down on a rotting bed frame padded with dried leaves. A fire pit in the center of the room crackled with a guttering flame, illuminating cracked pots and childlike carvings in the wooden walls. Clearly no one had been there for ages. Lightning flashed, chased by thunder, revealing silvery rain and the silhouette of the boy in the open doorway. He spoke to the undead fairy, but the sound was lost in the thunder. When lightning flashed again, Ravio could see that the child had been crying.

Lavishly illustrated tomes littered the carved hardwood table he sat at. Yuga sat down next to him, carrying even more books. It was the early hours of the morning in Mr. Hero’s Hyrule and the two of them had snuck into the Royal Library, using their bracelets to slip past the guards by flattening themselves against tapestry covered walls. Ravio sighed, flipping through the book adorned with gold leaf. “We know the royal family has a third of the Tri-Force; supposedly another third went to a sealed monster by the name of Ganon; and the third can only be found by the soul of a hero or something. How do we even start looking for that?” The taller man grinned as he opened one of the illuminated manuscripts he had brought over, revealing a figure in green standing before a dark monster. “That part’s simple Ravio, to summon a hero, all you require is a villain.”

He was by a firepit again, this time outside, propped up against an ivy-covered tree. Ravio was sick of trees. He’d do almost anything to see a lake, or a field, or a road; anything but these overwhelmingly magical trees that made his nose itch. To his left he heard the boy yell, but it was harder than usual to focus in that direction… Ah. A poorly drawn concealment sigil had been scrawled into the dirt. With the clang of a sword against armor, the scene came into focus, a hulking spider circled the child and poe-fairy, looking for an opening past the boy’s violet-green claymore. The spider lunged, but the tiny hero executed an acrobatic flip over the spider and plunged the blade into the soft gaps in the spider’s carapace. Green blood spurted from the wound, covering the boy’s grinning face as the spider curled up in its death throes. The boy wiped the blood off his face with the tail of his hat and looked up at the skeletal fairy fondly. “Now we don’t hafta worry about dinner!”

“Even if we unseal Ganon, how do we get his Tri-Force piece? Supposedly he wasn’t the cooperative type,” Ravio asked his two co-conspirators. “I’d say let the hero kill him, but at least once the hero either never showed up or died, I can’t tell which. That’s not exactly reassuring!” All three of them were standing at a table covered with a map of Hyrule they had smuggled back into Lorule castle. This scheme was getting too complicated. Maybe they could go back to the evacuation idea, figure out a way to make the bracelet store enough magic to let anyone cross the rift, but Yuga kept quashing that plan and Ravio was starting to become suspicious. “Leave that to me,” Yuga replied. “I can control him, if their histories are correct Ganon is a mindless beast now anyways, easily dominated.” Hilda furrowed her brows. “That’s impossible, that dark power would kill you,” she said. Yuga grinned toothily, and Ravio was surer than ever that the sorcerer was up to something. “You are mostly correct, your grace. But Ganon was a man once himself and he channeled this magic. In the same way your lineage allows you to channel light magic far beyond what any of us could survive, certain… lineages allow similar things for dark magic. I belong to one of them.”

The boy sat on a log facing away from him. He was talking again, perhaps to the dead fairy. “I remembered more of th’dream. Th’first one. With th’fire. And Ganondorf laughing. I didn’t want Ruto’s timeline to be real because then —” he leaned over and dug his fingers into his hair, letting out a single choked sob. “I keep fucking it up! I’m trying t’help! I really am! Why do I always get it wrong?!”

Ravio was in the high-security cell in Fort Baumer, trying to extract information from the young Link on how to use the Fierce Deity mask without dying. Except the kid had just dropped the fact that Yuga was alive. “Crazy artist with too much makeup. Said my nose was too big. D’you know him?” the boy had asked Ravio. At the time, he was too terrified of the sorcerer’s return to pay attention to how odd that statement was, because Yuga had one of the biggest beaks Ravio had ever seen, in fact, it looked a little like Mr. Tiny Hero’s…  

There was something important he needed to figure out, some clues he hadn’t pieced together. He needed… He needed to…

Wake.

Up.

Ravio sat up. He felt lighter, the piercing chills of the fever having gone away. He looked over to see Mr. Tiny Hero intently stirring bark in a bottle of boiling water on the campfire with a stick. It looked disgusting.

Then he realized there was a second child watching the potion-making. It slowly turned its head to look at him, terrible blind eyes piercing through his soul.

It was wearing the Fierce Deity’s mask.

“Link... Ravio’s soul is coming out.” The second child whispered loudly.

Ravio blinked stupidly, then looked down.

His own body was beneath him, covered in sweat, pale as a corpse, and shaking like an aspen leaf.

“OH-NONONONO!” In a panic, he made to back away from himself, but the masked child rushed over and tackled him back down into his body.

“What are you doing?!” As the chills and aches returned with a vengeance, Ravio struggled against the masked child’s grip.

“You can see me? Oh… you’re almost out of Hyrule then.”

“I’m dyING?!” Ravio screeched.

“Probably. So… your face… could I have it?”

“Mask, you can’t just ask for people’s faces!” Mr. Tiny Hero yelled from his place at the campfire. “Keep his soul in for fibe more minutes! Th’potion’s almost ready!”

“Probably doesn’t have any cool powers anyways…” the other child groused as it continued to hold him down. Ravio tried again to wriggle his way out of its clutches and failed. One overpowered nightmare child was enough, now he had to deal with two of the little bastards.

Then again, sick as he was, he probably couldn’t fight his way out of a wet paper bag, let alone a weird spirit-mask-god-child-thing’s grip.

Being back in his own body was miserable, the trees spun overhead like a cheap carnival ride, and he couldn’t tell if he was burning up or freezing to death. Surely it wouldn’t be so bad to leave his body again, just a little? He felt himself trying to sit up while also laying down.

“Stay in! Or you’ll die… and then I’ll take your face!” the masked child hissed, now sitting on him, straddling his torso and pushing down on something near his heart.

“Honestly I’m considering letting you have it.” he croaked. This was awful. He was tired. Couldn’t he just… leave?

“What ties you here?”

“Huh?”

“What ties you to living?”

Well. That was a good question. Rupees, mostly. And baked goods. And Sheerow. And…

Mr. Hero…

Tears welled up in his eyes. It was terrible. How dare his face betray him like that. How dare he start weeping like a child in front of actual children. He was supposed to be the adult! He needed to get over the hero he had met in another timeline. He wasn’t going to see him again and that was that. Two different worlds and such.

“I… could I have my ice rod? It’s… It’s important,” he forced himself to say through a snotty nose and chattering teeth.

The masked child looked over at the poe-fairy, who bobbled in acknowledgement and went over to his robe, diving into a pocket and, wings beating furiously, pulled out the ice rod. It dropped to the ground, and she picked up one end and dragged it over, sapphire end scraping on the dirt. He wanted to yell at her for damaging expensive items but found he was too tired to bother. As soon as it came within reach, he clumsily grabbed for it.

The ice rod was cold of course. Something his feverish body despised at that moment.  But he missed Mr. Hero with a terrible ferocity and clutched the ice rod against his chest as tightly as he could, as if Mr. Hero having held it before meant that they were holding hands in some strange time-displaced way. He sniffled and shivered in the dirt some more.

“I’be got th’potion!” Mr. Tiny Hero ran over, bottle full of disgusting bark-juice in one hand. The masked child moved over, and both children helped Ravio sit up slightly (body and soul).  Mr. Tiny Hero held up the jar to his lips with his free hand.

Disgusting bitter taste aside, the liquid was very warm, and Ravio felt paradoxically cold in the way only the truly sick could. He drank eagerly and let the hot tea run down his throat. It tasted exactly like he expected bark would taste and his shivering meant that half the liquid ended up on his chest, but he didn’t care.

“How long until it works?” the masked child asked, still holding its hands halfway inside his chest. He could feel its little fingers around his sternum. Gross.

“Thirty minutes or so. Might help if he sleeps.”

“Hah. I’m not going to fall asleep anytime soon feeling this shitty—” Ravio slurred as Mr. Tiny Hero pulled out that little wooden flute and played that same soft lilting tune he had hummed in the dungeon earlier.

Within seconds Ravio was asleep.

Ravio swirled about in his dreams like ink in water. He was fleeing Yuga, then Wizzro, then the Fierce Deity, sometimes through the woods, and sometimes as a flat painting on a wall. As he dodged and twisted through a small crack in existence filled with impossible colors, he found himself in the upstairs bedroom of his childhood home.

The window was wide open, with a few purple feathers resting on the windowsill, gently rocking in the breeze. It was a beautiful day, clear blue evening sky with only some hints of the void eating the world. When Ravio looked down he could see he was in his ten-year-old body again, wearing purple bunny jammies. He could even feel the gap in his gums from a recently lost tooth.

Ah. This dream again. The last he had seen of his mother.

“Oh. So this is Lorule?”

Ravio flung himself to the side so hard he landed in his mother’s bed, the tri-force patterned quilt cushioning his impact. The masked child was there, looking out the open window.

Of course, the ghost of Termina had gotten into his dreams before, why not again?

“This is a private dream you know,” Ravio said as he stood up and faced the other child, whistling slightly through his missing tooth. Once again, the bizarre gigantism of this era’s Hyrule was obvious; despite looking about the same age the masked child was almost a head taller than him. He wondered if the third timeline was any different.

“Sorry. You were having bad dreams so I… moved you. Would you like to go somewhere else?” it replied.

One of the feathers on the windowsill blew away in the wind. “No.” Ravio said with a forcefulness that surprised him.

“This place is important to you, isn’t it?”

Ravio nodded, bunny ears of his jammies bobbing along. He sat down on his mother’s bed, touching the blue-and-gold quilted pattern she had spent so many nights working on.

“Am I dying?” he blurted out. Tears welled up in his eyes and he found himself getting unreasonably angry because they got in the way of seeing her handiwork.

“Not yet, but… you’re close. It could go either way.”

He wiped his eyes on his sleeve and went back to looking out the window.

“Didn’t you say you came from a dark world?” he asked.

“Yes, though it was… not as imbalanced as here. In Termina, both good and evil used darkness and light.”

“Do you know what happens when a world gets too dark?”

The masked child shook its head.

“It loses form. People lose form. Some of them forget who they are and just…” he gestured to the window “…they become animals. Or monsters. We had a whole cult wearing masks to try to make that happen faster. A cleaner sort of suicide I guess.”

He took a shuddering breath and continued. “She wasn’t one of them. Mom. Held on as long as she could, but she wasn’t a happy sort of person. Tried to hide it, like parents do, but I could tell. I’m good at reading people, I guess. She taught me how to fix magical items and bake, everything I know really. But the famine was getting bad and I think one day she figured that there’d be more food if there was only one of us and well…”

The window stared through him as much as he stared through it.

“Sheerow was once a person too, I think. They don’t remember anything, so even if I ever saw her again, I don’t think she’d remember me.” His tiny hand clenched the soft quilt.

The last feather blew out the window.

“Would you like me to stay with you?”

“Yeah. Yeah. I think I’d like that.”

Termina’s dead sat down next to Ravio on his mother’s beautiful quilt, and together they watched the sunset through the window, sparkling stars coming out in patches where they weren’t obscured by the void.

Chapter Text

Ravio woke up, for real this time. He was covered in sweat, overheated, stinking, crusty-eyed, cotton-mouthed, full-bladdered, stiff-legged, and still he felt ten times better than he had before. The fever had broken.

A jar of water had been placed next to him and he clumsily uncorked the cap to drink it, spilling nearly as much as he imbibed. Nothing had ever tasted so sweet as post-fever rainwater.

This was a new camp, in a small cavern formed by a lifted root overhung with ivy and moss. A campfire burned in the shelter, beyond it the boy slept curled up in the dirt, vines unfurled over his collar and inserted into the earth. They had grown larger than Ravio remembered, visibly twisting under his skin in places. The black tipped scales on his forearms had also become more prominent, no longer able to be explained away as eczema. He’d have to figure something out if they wandered into a town full of people.

Was this what happened to all heroes? It had been years since Ravio had last seen Mr. Hero, had he changed since then? Was he even more of a painting? Was he the same man that Ravio had met years ago?

Ravio thumbed the cool sapphire of the ice rod in his pocket nervously.

He couldn’t do anything about that now, so he got to his feet (slowly and painfully, head pounding the entire time) and staggered around a nearby tree for privacy to relieve himself.

Afterwards, he dressed again and returned to the camp, sitting down in front of the fire, exhausted by the short trip around the tree and back.

As Ravio tried to remember his fever dreams, Mr. Tiny Hero stirred, vines retracting from the ground.

“Morning, Mr. Tiny Hero,” Ravio wheezed. He probably looked like a corpse. He certainly felt like one.

“Rabbio!” The little boy perked up immediately despite the bags under his eyes. Had he been staying awake to keep watch? With a tug to free a few straggling roots from the ground, he ran over to Ravio and swept him up in a bear hug. “You’re alibe!” the kid sobbed, squeezing Ravio hard enough to make his back pop.

“Could you loosen up your grip so I stay that way?” Ravio croaked, and the kid released his Goron-strong hug to stand back, eyes red but face plastered with a big grin. There was a strange chisel-edged straightness to his teeth, perhaps another Goron trait. No wonder Warden Melo had screamed when he bit her through her greaves.

Despite feeling like shit, Ravio couldn’t help but return the grin. He was alive! The masked child hadn’t taken his face! There wouldn’t be a new purple-robed skeleton wandering the woods to play with the skull kids!

Or at least, not for now. They weren’t out of the woods yet. He took in his new surroundings. The surrounding trees were slightly smaller than the overgrown monsters they had traveled through before. But the trunks started to spin, and he had to sit down before his vertigo got worse.

As Ravio avoided looking up, a few distinctive areas in the dirt around the campsite attracted his attention by how much he didn’t want to pay attention to them.

“You’ve gotten pretty good at those sigils, Mr. Tiny Hero.” He pointed where his eyes didn’t want to look.

“Y’think so?”

“Well, you have an excellent teacher, so obviously.” Ravio tried to inspect a sigil out of the corner of his eye and failed, the kid had clearly improved, even if it had taken him a long time. He’d probably never be great at writing magical scripts, but even being a mediocre hex-maker was useful.

“How far are we from the field?” Ravio asked.

“Half a day, but prob’ly longer since you’re still sick.” The boy pulled a full jar out of his leather bag and handed it to Ravio. “We’be been trabeling for six days. I had t’carry you a bunch. Eben to get up and pee.”

Ravio shuddered, he barely remembered any of those last few days, and hated being that helpless. He turned his attention to the jar, something like oversized crawfish flesh floated in the broth. “What’s in the soup?” Ravio forced himself to ask.

Mr. Tiny Hero failed to meet Ravio’s eyes. “Y’know, meat.”

He thought about the giant spider he half-remembered the kid fighting. Well. Protein was protein, and he was famished. He chugged the soup, it even tasted a little like crawfish, hard to come by in Lorule since the Ku guarded the rivers jealously.

Ravio wondered how much of his fever dreams had been real, and a question floated to the top of his memories.

“Did Yuga say anything strange to you? He’s planning on resurrecting Ganon so any clues as to how could help us,” he asked.

“It’s Ganondorf, not Ganon, you keep getting it wrong. Ganon’s like, th’Gerudo family name, means ‘wielder of darkness’ or something like that. Ganondorf’s th’man, Ganon’s th’family, or th’dark monster,” the boy corrected.

“Close enough. Yuga must have been part of that rotten family too, considering how much dark magic that bastard could handle.” Maybe when Ravio was in top form he would have noticed the boy flinch when he said the word ‘rotten.’ But Ravio wasn’t in top form right then, barely even mid form, probably bottom form, in fact.

Mr. Tiny Hero took a deep breath, “Yuga said he was a bmeigeru. Weak-blooded. Usually, Gerudo habe Gerudo babies but not always, sometimes they take after both parents. There used t’be lots in South Hyrule but during th’Cibil War they got killed or ran into th’woods.”

Ravio narrowed his eyes at the boy. “Is this what Yuga told you?”

“No, I knew some of it before I met him. Like, I knew th’Sheikah were almost all killed too. Th’Cibil War was around when I was born. You’re a lot later, right?” the boy asked.

“Quite some time after, yes.” Ravio replied, half lost in the implications. He had some vague idea of the history of Lorule’s fall. A Civil War so bloody that the people decided that severing their connection to the Goddesses might be preferable to continuing to suffer under it.

“So,” the kid continued on, “at least one of these bmeigeru was related to th’Ganon family. I don't— I don’t know how. But they were. And somehow, they surbibed. And that’s Yuga. So, he has Ganon blood. Maybe that’s something.”

Ravio pinched his nose between his fingers in a futile attempt to ward off his growing headache. “You’re telling me that Yuga outright told you that he was from the family that tried to take over Hyrule and you… didn’t think that was a problem?”

“They can’t— they can’t all be bad!” the boy protested louder than Ravio expected. This wasn’t helping his headache at all.

“Mr. Tiny Hero, it’s terribly sweet that you want to trust everyone but—” Ravio took his hand from his face to look at the boy and—

There were tears in the kid’s gloomy eyes, threatening to run down the sides of his too-large nose, and for the first time, Ravio put together the fact that Mr. Tiny Hero had sharper features and far more command of dark magic than any Hylian he had ever met.

Aside from Yuga.

Oh. Oh.

Together, the two of them slowly limped to the edge of the woods, with the sullen young Link supporting the older man in between frequent breaks. Ravio’s usual chattiness had failed him, and he didn’t know how to fix things.

He had never even met any Gerudo, Yuga was the closest he had ever come to one, and perhaps he was projecting one asshole onto the entire people. If the desert women still lived in Lorule or Mr. Hero’s Hyrule, they had all fled long ago. That was, if something worse hadn’t happened to them.  

There was so much he didn’t know. Had the boy fought Ganondorf knowing they were family? Did he find out later?

As the trees grew smaller and further apart, shafts of actual sunlight appeared, angling with the position of the sun and granting a sense of time that Ravio dearly missed.

Eventually, the trees grew closer to average-sized and transitioned from pines to deciduous.  They entered a grove of what could have once been an orchard, perhaps before being overtaken by the woods, branches bending down with the autumn crop. Ravio used the magical boomerang to whisk the fruit off the trees, and they stuffed themselves on sweet pears and tart apples until they were full and covered in sticky juices. Even the boy’s mood started to lift.

Once they stuffed as much fruit as they could into jars and pockets, they kept walking, the omnipresent scent of forest magic fading away as everything grew less wild and more mundane. When they reached the edge of the woods, Ravio had to blink a few times before he understood what he was looking at, it had been so long since he had seen the horizon. The sun was low and honey colored, gilding the undulating expanse of field grass in dusky gold. It would have been one of the most beautiful sights he had ever seen, except for one very big thing.

A dark wall stood before them, so tall it disappeared into the sky and vanished into perspective. Raised black and gold patterns adorned its surface, and Ravio knew enough about ancient magic to be very afraid. Beyond the dark wall, the land beyond was swathed in murky twilight.

“Ah. Hmm. Do you know what this is?” Ravio asked Mr. Tiny Hero.

“It kinda looks like Zant’s magic.”

Figured. Another one of Cia’s time-traveling traitors. Zant was the Twili usurper, wasn’t he? Some sort of wizard from the edges of the Sacred Realm. He didn’t know much about Zant but the things the patterns on the wall suggested terrified him. Could they get around it? Would the wall block Sheerow’s path? “Well let’s stay clear of that thing, I don’t like how it lo—”

And that was all he had time to say before the wall surged toward them and his body collapsed in on itself.

Ravio had, many times, wondered what it would be like to be reduced to a dark form. The masked preacher and its cult had made it sound like a glorious inevitability (it still gave those idiot sermons, even with the light returned to Lorule, but now to a much smaller crowd). For the sake of his mother and Sheerow, Ravio hoped that it wasn’t painful.

And maybe it wasn’t painful in Lorule, where the overwhelming darkness was like a slow decay into sleep. He never heard his mother scream, after all.

But this was painful. He screamed as his ribcage contracted and felt his cry change in pitch to an animal shriek. The boy was screaming too, howling even.

Unable to balance on two legs, he toppled over into the grass and blessedly passed out.

Something was poking his back.

“Hhhhngh, five more minutes.” Ravio moaned and rubbed his face with his hands. He couldn’t get his thumbs to work properly. Maybe he slept on his arms funny.

“Rabbio. We’be got a problem.” The boy insisted.

He groaned and rolled over. “Fine, what happened now—”

One issue was immediately clear. There was an enormous sand-colored wolf staring at him, nose so close he could feel the hot air of its breath. Ravio shrieked, attempted to run, and only managed to fall over tangled up in his own limbs. The wolf didn’t pursue, instead it sat down and watched, head tilted to one side. It was a very youthful wolf, with one ear still flopping over and big puppy feet, but a wolf nonetheless.

“Don’t fight th’instincts, it hurts less,” it said. Mr. Tiny Hero’s poe-fairy fluttered over its head.

The wolf was talking to him. Ravio couldn’t speak wolf. Just bird. Why was the wolf talking to him and why was it speaking with Mr. Tiny Hero’s speech impediment?

On top of that nonsense, Ravio’s field of vision had expanded and gone green-blue, like a funhouse mirror that let him see everything around him at once but minus any reddish hues; it barely took any motion for him to look down at his body.

Ah.

A jackrabbit. He was a jackrabbit. That… made a lot of sense. He looked like a stretched-out bunny, all ears and long legs. A black stripe ran down his back to a short black tail.

At least he wasn’t feeling so ill anymore. Maybe lagomorphs didn’t get whatever sickness he had earlier.

“You’re a bunny! That’s so cool!" the wolf/boy proclaimed, prancing on big white-furred paws. “It’s okay, I habe a song t’turn us back! Usually th’ocarina turns t’an instrument but I don’t think wolfos can play music. But they can sing!”

Mr. Not-So-Tiny-Wolf-Hero lifted his snout to the evening sky and howled out a mournful tune. There was an ancient and primordial magic to it, something that spoke to the core of him and soothed aches he didn’t know he had. He felt himself swaying, and something on his face loosened.

Then it slammed back onto him so hard he fell over. He heard a pained yelp from the wolf.

"Why didn't it work?! It's s’posed t’work!” As Ravio got back on his feet the wolf was in a full-on panic, scratching at the sides of his own face, hard enough to leave red marks under gold fur with blunt claws. “I don’t wanna do this again! I don’t!”

Ravio tried to fight down his own desire to panic. He knew Hyrule field had been inundated with a spreading darkness, possibly related to the time-traveling Twili wizard, strong enough to reduce the two of them to their dark forms. The song the wolf-child had sang had started to work but then failed.

“Mr. Tiny Hero, hey, hey, calm down. Was that a cursebreaker? It felt pretty strong to me.” Ravio tried to distract the kid, and he wondered about the circumstances of the transformations the hero had mentioned before.

“Yeah, but it didn’t work,” the boy whined, pausing momentarily from trying to peel his face off with puppy claws.

“Okay. But it was starting to work. Except you can’t break a curse if you’re still being cursed. Does that make sense? We’re still within this darkness. If we break the curse it will just curse us again as long as we’re in here.” Ravio hoped that was the case anyways. “So, we just need to get out of this, veil of darkness thing, and then you can sing your song. Sound like a plan?”

“Y-yeah,” the wolf-boy replied. He stopped clawing at his face. “Why are we animals?”

“Good question. Give me a moment, have you seen our stuff?” Ravio looked around for his robe and items. The thought of leaving Mr. Hero’s ice rod behind was unbearable. But there was nothing but grass and dirt around him, and his rabbit body was naked as a newborn.

“Well, I can feel th’mask and th’ocarina, but I can’t get them. It’s weird,” the wolf said, furrowing his brows with effort, like someone trying to fart. “I can’t do any magic ether. Th’song worked, but I can’t do my spells.”

That wasn’t good. Ravio could feel an emptiness where his own meager magical abilities usually lay. They were truly unarmed. In retrospect, Ravio had never heard of a transformed Lorulean leaving any clothing behind, his mother certainly hadn’t.

“Ugh. Well, hopefully we’ll get our items and magic once we’re back to ourselves. As for why we’re animals, the darkness… well it takes away the truth. Except sometimes it reveals truths. Ah, we’re getting into some real esoteric philosophy, sorry. Light is truth, except sometimes it blinds, and darkness is lies, but lies can reveal truths. That’s literally what most art is. Lies pointing to truths” Ravio looked down at himself again (except not really because of his disturbingly wide field of vision). “This happened in Lorule, when the light was gone. Your dark form usually reveals something about yourself. It’s a lie but it’s also more truthful than your real body in some ways.” It was embarrassing to have Ravio’s own truth so painfully apparent. Like being naked, or having your diary found. It made perfect sense Ravio was a hare, deep down inside he was good for nothing but sensing danger and running.

The wolf pondered this, blue-green eyes staring into the distance. “So that’s why you’re a bunny! They’re brabe and fast.”

“Excuse me?” he snapped.

“They’re legendary beasts! I used t’see them deep in th’woods! When wolfos came by they hit th’ground with their feet t’warn eberybody, then ran away fast. They’re brabe eben if they’re small. I think I’d like t’be a bunny, not a stupid scary wolfos.”

Ravio froze in place, only his whiskers twitched. Something hard in his chest melted and he didn’t know what to do with the thawed emotional slush. He shook his head to clear his thoughts, long ears flopping about, then gathered himself up as best a jackrabbit could. “Well, let’s not oversell your fearsomeness Mr. Tiny Hero, nearly everything scares me. You’re really just an overgrown puppy.”  

The overgrown puppy wagged his tail and Ravio fervently wished that he could introduce him to Mr. Hero someday. The two would probably get along like a house on fire. Perhaps literally, given Mr. Hero’s fire rod and Mr. Tiny Hero’s gifts from Din. He wondered what Mr. Hero’s dark form would be. Maybe a lion. Or an eagle. Or a lion-eagle with mighty wings and claws that slashed evil.

Focusing back on the present, Ravio looked around (without turning his head, he tried not to think about that too hard and let the hare instincts take over). The wall of darkness extended in all directions as far as he could see. The air itself smelled damp and stagnant, like an olfactory version of the sensation of darkness. His ears swiveled to seek out any clues but heard nothing but a muffled wind blowing on the grass.

“I can’t sense any edge to this darkness, the closest exit may be in the woods since that’s the direction it was growing, but I think we should stick to our plan. Worst case scenario, the Master Sword is a powerful artifact of light, we might be about to dispel the darkness with it.”

The wolf-boy nodded, and together they walked (and hopped) towards the umber glow of what passed for sunset in the darkness veiled land.

The field grass had been waist-high to Ravio when he was in his own body, and as a hare, it towered over him. The boy in wolf form fared better, but was still on all fours, and needed to balance precariously on his hind legs to see over the grass. The undead fairy could see further while flying but Ravio didn’t trust that horrid little thing one bit, and under the pretense of having at least two navigators, he managed to get on top of Mr. Tiny Hero’s head (after falling off a few times).

So, they continued onward, half of a musicians-of-Bremen style troupe, with Ravio steering by pushing the wolf’s ear in the direction he thought was best. Eventually, a stone wall came into view and he guided them toward it.

It looked rather like where he had entered this Hyrule, especially now that night had fallen. Back then he hadn’t had much time to observe his surroundings before being kidnapped by soldiers and conscripted into the military. As the wolf-boy brought his head close to the stone wall, Ravio hopped off and onto the rocks. The boy jumped up after him, knocking a few stones free as he scrabbled up. On the other side of the wall was a dirt road, traveling roughly east-west, and they followed the westward path to Ordon.

No longer on Mr. Tiny Hero’s head, Ravio hopped besides him, trying to keep up with his longer legs. Despite being nighttime within a magical veil of darkness, they were both able to see well enough in their animal forms.

He expected to hear bats chirping and owls calling, especially with his sensitive jackrabbit ears. But he hadn’t noticed any living creatures aside from the two of them. Nothing but the languid wind moved in this dim world. They walked silently and alone on furred feet.

A hulking form in the distance gradually resolved into the shape of buildings clustered beside the road, one with a crooked signpost proclaiming itself an inn. All were constructed of wood framed wattle-and-daub, only Ordonians would be mad enough to use trees for construction this close to the Lost Woods.

The door of the inn was ajar, and Ravio stopped in his tracks, hissing at Mr. Tiny Wolf Hero to stop.

“What’s wrong?” the wolf asked.

“You don’t leave doors wide open at night for good reasons, especially when there’s a war on.” Ravio whispered.

“Really?” The wolf also dropped his voice to a lower volume, sounding like a quietly whining dog to anyone who couldn’t speak the language of animals.

“Yes, really. Where the blazes did you grow up?”

“In th’woods,” said the wolf, “also something smells really tasty in there.”

Ravio paused, considering the dangers of barging through the suspicious door compared with his companion being a hungry wolf. He hopped over to a bench situated in front of a window and leapt onto it, peering through the glass.

It was difficult to see through the filmy window-pane, but inside he spotted a wide dining area with tables and chairs scattered between thick wooden supports. A fireplace at the back still had a few red coals guttering in the ash.

And the entire room was full of spirits.

Ghostly will-o-wisps floated at waist height, blue-green flames flickering in a nonexistent wind. If Ravio listened as hard as he could, he could hear them whisper, but he couldn’t make out the words from outside.

With a rush of fear, he wondered if there was some sort of terrible attack, but there were no bodies. Some chairs were tipped over, and some of the souls were huddled close to one another, but no other signs of violence. Could the darkness have done this to them? In Lorule it slowly turned people into monsters and animals, not disembodied souls. This had felt like a more intense version of Lorule’s fading light however, could it strip away even more? Could it entirely take away one’s physical form?

And if that was the case, why hadn’t it done the same to him and Mr. Tiny Hero?

The wolf-boy sidled up beside him and put his white paws on the bench. “Oh wow! Poes!” With that, he darted into the inn through the open door.

Ravio yelped and chased after him, blunt claws tapping on the wooden floor as he entered the dining area. The wolf-boy was up on his hind legs, swaying as he tried to balance, mouth open and about to snap around the glowing light. Ravio ran into his leg, and the two of them fell over in a pile.

“Don’t eat that!” Ravio yelled, all prior attempts at stealth forgotten.

“Why not? I’be eaten lots of poes. I don’t eben get sick anymore,” the wolf-boy whined.

“What? That’s not— oh goddesses of course you’re able to eat poes. Why not. But the issue here is that they might not be dead.”

The wolf-boy eyed the flickering poe warily. “Oh. How?”

“No idea. I’ve never seen anything like this before, but I don’t see any bodies” Ravio responded.

 Now that he was inside, the ghostly whispers were loud enough to comprehend. He turned his ears towards the one the wolf-boy had just attempted to ingest.

“No! No! Keep the door shut!” they whispered with a quiet terror. After a few seconds of hushed breathing, they repeated their earlier refrain.

Ravio’s heart was doing its best to crawl up his throat, but he needed to know more, if only so he knew the proper direction to run away to. He hopped over to two spirits next to each other.

“Ordona save and protect us,” the first voice whimpered.

“The old goat’s not coming. Now shut up before it hears us!” the second snapped.

Ravio continued around the room, listening to the last words of each soul, now forever looping in their endless terror.

“Can it open the door? Can it do that?”

“There wasn’t supposed to be any fighting this far south!”

“It had a bracelet, just like —just like—she wouldn’t hurt anyone! She wouldn’t!”

“Grandpa talked about something like this, before his time, an endless twilight heralded by monsters...”

He had enough. He turned to look for the wolf, finding him up on a table and happily snacking on a plate of cold biscuits and gravy. At least he was solving the hungry-wolf problem.

Ravio strained his ears, listening for any clue to what had terrified these people before the darkness had closed in on them. But he could only hear the mutters of the half-dead and the wolf licking the plate clean.

Would the darkness have rendered monsters into mere spirits too?

As the wolf walked along the table, homing in on a dish of grilled pumpkin and jam, his eerie poe-fairy fluttered overhead. She hadn’t been affected by the darkness at all. Ravio suspected that any other monster would similarly be unscathed. Optimism, as usual, would be a mistake here.

There were several doorways leading out of the dining area, with the one at the back open to the courtyard. Beyond it, a little herb garden sat, leaves bobbing in the listless wind.

His stomach growled (a very un-rabbit-like sound) and Ravio found himself moving forward, eyes locked onto a patch of cilantro. He couldn’t bear the thought of eating grass, not yet, but cilantro? That sounded perfectly fine to him, human or rabbit. The courtyard should be safe, at least.

He crept through the doorway, eyes wide, ears scanning for whatever terrible thing spooked the ghosts. Nothing announced itself, and he hopped along the little brick path to the garden, filling his mouth with delicious greens.

The thick walls of the inn enclosed all four sides of the courtyard, making for a secure area, and it was entirely devoid of spirits, making for a restful place to dine.

Ravio’s mouth fell open, dropping half chewed leaves onto the dirt.

The spirits were terrified of the door opening. Both the doors to the inn’s entrance and courtyard were open. Which door was the one that scared them?

If what had scared them came from outside, why wasn’t anyone hiding in the courtyard behind two sets of thick walls?

Ravio took a closer look at his surroundings.

Waiting on the rooftop, blending into the shadow of a brick chimney, a spidery figure perched on the shingles. It was jet black, with angry red runes running up and down lean arms and legs. Its emaciated body was topped by an oversized flat shield for a head, utterly faceless, with fleshy rags of skin floating around it like hair underwater.

His throat clenched, he froze in place. Had it seen him? Could it even see? It didn’t have eyes.

It flexed one bony hand, index and pinky fingers distorted and long compared to the rest. In one quiet motion it dropped down to the ground, cutting off the path back to the dining area.

None of the other doors to the courtyard were open. There was no way out.

The monster lurched forward on all fours, gaunt shoulders straining to keep that oversized shield-face from dragging on the ground. A beaded bracelet glinted on its bony arm, strangely pleasant amongst the rest of the horror show.

Ravio was trapped. He had wandered into a dead end and now he was going to be cornered and eaten (did it have a mouth?). Maybe he could taunt it into chasing after him and he could loop back to the door to escape.

What about the boy?! He had no idea that they weren’t alone!

He felt his back legs tense up, but instead of springing away, he slammed a foot against the dirt with a loud ‘THOCK!’ that reverberated against the courtyard walls.

Unnervingly quiet, the monster advanced in a tumble of limbs and rags. Ravio drummed the ground again, then leapt backwards before it could wrap its malformed hands around his rabbit-neck.

The monster clutched at the dirt, turning to match Ravio’s new heading, and barreled after him. He jerked hard to the right, feeling the wind of the dark beast’s arm as it shot past. He turned again, darting back to the open door, but spindly fingers swiped across his backside, and he was knocked into the courtyard wall, stunned.

The flat black shield of the monster’s face filled his vision, and Ravio struggled to stand upright. Its crooked arm with the out-of-place cheery bracelet arced back, ready to strike.

Before it could sweep forwards and break every bone in his body, something yellow and white slammed into the monster, forcing it to the ground. As the boy and the beast fell over each other, the wolf twisted and brought puppy fangs to bear onto the beast’s overburdened neck.

“Rabbio, Run!” the wolf made a muffled shout through teeth tearing into sinewy flesh.

Ravio didn’t need to be told twice. He sprinted through the open door, past the whispering ghosts, and out of the inn onto the road. Only then did he stop to turn around.

From the inn came a howled song that felt like the sun breaking through clouds, a bright beam of light erupted from the courtyard, visible over the roof of the building, fading quickly into the darkness again. A wild tearing shriek followed.

In the span of several nervous rabbit-breaths, a golden shape appeared at the door of the inn, leaning heavily onto the frame, mouth covered in dark blood.

“You okay, Mr. Tiny Hero?” Ravio called out as he hopped toward the boy.

“Yeah. I’m alibe,” the wolf-boy panted through blackened teeth. “Th’sun’s song stunned it, but not for long. Hits pretty hard, whateber it is.”

“How many songs do you have?”

“Lots!” the wolf grinned bloodily as his dark fairy flew out of the inn and tiredly dropped onto his head. Perhaps the magical sunlight hadn’t been kind to her.

“Is—is it dead?” Ravio had to ask.

“Oh, yeah. Well, it stopped mobing at least—” the boy was cut off by a resounding screech, longer and louder than the monster’s death cry. It wasn’t as horrible as the Fierce Deity’s terrible scream back at Fort Baumer, but it grated at Ravio’s bones and both rabbit and wolf pinned their ears back to try to block out the awful noise.

As that sound faded away, something awkwardly shuffling to its feet could be heard from the courtyard.

“Unfair!” the kid yelled.

Together, the two of them sprinted away from the inn and down the road. Behind him, Ravio could see two of the monsters, including the one with the bracelet, back from the dead. They had scrabbled over the roof of the inn, bounding along the shingles and jumped gracelessly to the ground to follow them.

“There’s two of them chasing us!” Ravio yelled. Lucky him, being able to look behind himself while running, the wolf had the forward eyes of a predator and couldn’t do the same. To Ravio’s horror, he realized that the boy was limping and falling behind.

The wolf gulped air and cried out the sun’s song again. Now that Ravio was closer to the magic, it was blindingly bright after so much time spent in darkness. The monsters seemed to like it even less, shrieking and wailing and falling back momentarily.

The road turned up ahead, avoiding a silty ditch that likely flooded each spring. Ravio jumped down the banking, hissing for the wolf to follow. He started scratching out the concealment sigil into the sediment, shaking as he tried to make his stiff rabbit-paws work like a human hand.

His first attempt failed, and Ravio resisted the urge to swear as he started again. The monsters had gone silent and would be upon them any second now. As Ravio tore into the dirt, the boy staggered past him and fell down into the brush.

Would the sigil even work? The monsters didn’t have eyes. Were their senses close enough to vision for it to take effect?

As he put down the final line, the shieldlike head of the new monster rose over the edge of the ditch, directly facing Ravio. He froze, and the boy stopped his pained panting as well. He could see every ridge and pattern on the beast’s planar excuse for a face, could see the twin serpents endlessly chasing each other across the black expanse. He didn’t dare to breath or even think as if that could alert the monster.

It turned to the left, then the right. The bracelet-wearing monster sauntered to its side, and they both loped down the road, away from them.

Ravio finally dared to breathe. He turned to the wolf, who was panting heavily again, eyes wide in terror.

“Let’s stay here for a little while. I’ll make a few more sigils.”

“Th—thanks Rabbio. That was—thanks.”

Ravio felt his heart turn mushy again, but he turned away from that feeling to focus on the sigil-marking. Once he felt somewhat more secure (though nothing would feel safe in this grim darkness) he snuggled up against the warm fur of the wolf and they both slept fitfully through the rest of the night.

“See? I told you that you were wearing a mask.”

Ravio opened his eyes, he was underneath that enormous leafy tree in the masked god’s pocket universe again (always with the trees with this kid...). The grass looked especially lush, and he nearly wept at the sight of so many bright colors after being in the twilight for so long. It was like his first trip to Hyrule, a blinding rainbow of hues and shades that threatened to overwhelm him.

As he took in the sights, childlike hands scooped him up and with dismay he realized he was still a jackrabbit, now being held up in front of the creepy masked child of Termina, with its actinic eyes leaving bright-dark afterimages in his vision.

“Hello Mx. Fierce Deity. I’m dreaming again, aren’t I?” Ravio said.

“Yes, I wanted to make sure you were okay, and you are!”

“Well, I’m a bunny now.”

“That’s fine. Heroes change shape all the time.” Ravio wanted to interrupt that he wasn’t much of a hero, but the masked child continued before he could, “Also, I’m not the Fierce Deity. I’m the Fierce Deity’s mask.”

“Wait. Who’s the Fierce Deity then?”

“The destructive aspect of the gods. That which removes obstacles to enlightenment. The face under his mask.”

“Huh?”

“Heehee! You’re funny. Now I think you should wake up to meet someone else wearing a mask.”

Ravio stirred as something dim and yellow rose over the horizon, perhaps it was the sun, perhaps it was the moon, he couldn’t tell through the filtered light. He stretched his long jackrabbit legs and yawned as he stood up. The wolf snored gently beside him.

“Well. Aren’t you two interesting?” A strange sing-song voice spoke, and Ravio found himself staring into the bright gold eye of a floating imp-like creature, the other eye being covered with yellow hair that hung down over half the imps face.

His mouth hung open.

“Ah, well, it’s certainly not my beauty that has you rendered speechless,” the imp said, azure lines of powerful magic glinting on gray and black skin. As Ravio continued to gawk, the imp leaned in.

“You can call me Midna.”

Chapter Text

“First things first,” the imp spoke, breaking into a monotone recital like they had done this a dozen times before, “I’m a Twili sorceress from this past. No, I don’t usually look like this, it’s a curse like yours. No, I’m not going to eat your shadow, unless you give me a good reason. Now, who are you and how are you two not disembodied spirits?”

A Twili sorceress? Like Zant? A master of dark magic amongst people known for dark magic? No wonder she had bypassed his concealment hexes. The fur on the back of Ravio’s neck stood up.

Mr. Tiny Hero, as usual, wasn’t scared at all and stood up on all fours to greet her. “I’m Link! And this is Rabbio!” The wolf placed a big paw on Ravio’s head, gently squishing him into the ground.

“Ravio. And I’m afraid we don’t know the answer to your second question. The darkness enveloped us and then we were cursed.” With a huff, he squeezed himself out from under the wolf’s paw.

“You’re Link huh? Lotta those running around.” She eyed the boy thoughtfully. “And a golden wolf. Fascinating. To avoid becoming a spirit, you either need your own source of light, or are already acclimated to darkness.” She floated in close, blue-green sigils on her arms flaring in a pulse of power that made his skin crawl. “I’m guessing it’s the latter with you two.”

“That would make sense…” Ravio mused. Lorule’s inhabitants had generations to acclimate to the spreading darkness after the Tri-Force was destroyed. And the boy had all of Ganon’s abilities with dark magic, plus exposure to an entire world’s death mask. “We’ve both been, ah, let’s say, exposed to it.”

“Hmmm. Be careful with that. Hyrule doesn’t like dark magic,” she said. Mr. Tiny Hero cringed slightly and his foreleg with the arrow scar twitched. “So, what are you two doing here?”

Ravio took a deep breath and started his own spiel. “Well, long story short, we escaped from Fort Baumer after Wizzro took it over. Some of Cia’s former flunkies have betrayed her and are trying to resurrect Ganondorf. They probably plan to use the fort to mount an invasion via the Zora River. The Master Sword is helping to seal Ganondorf away, so we need to warn the hero not to pull it.”

“Hmmm. Too late. Lieutenant Link has the sword now.” The sorceress glibly replied.

“WHAT?!” Ravio yelled as loud as his jackrabbit lungs would let him. Today was turning into a disaster and he had just woken up. It was bad enough that the imp had made a joke of his concealment hexes. But to find out that his plan to warn the hero to not draw the Master Sword had already failed? Ravio was one mad hare.

So much for getting any reward money.

Beside him, the wolf form of Mr. Tiny Hero flopped over and groaned. “They always hafta pull th’stupid sword.”

“You don’t have to shout, Ravio. I’m right here,” The imp said, wincing as she rubbed her knifelike ears. “The new hero did pull the sword, but Ganondorf’s dead in this timeline. Trust me— I kicked his corpse. He’s not coming back. And Wizzro was the one fighting us on the way to the sword. Why do that if it wanted us to get it?”

Ravio tried to think back to his talks with the historians upon his arrival, and what Mr. Tiny Hero had said. “There’s more than one Ganondorf, Ganon’s a Gerudo family name, not just one guy. This could be another. As for Wizzro, well, Wizzro’s a tricky one. It used Colonel Firne, could it have been using you?”

Midna’s uncovered eye went wide. “That motherfucker! It literally told us where to find Cia once we got the sword! It wants us to fight her! And half the time we were fighting the Sacred Grove’s dead guardians, Wizzro only brought in its own mooks later!”  

She paced around them angrily, or rather, floated around them angrily. “We’ve been had! The army is marching to Cia’s mansion with the sword as we speak. I only stayed behind to track down Zant, the asshole behind—” she waved an arm at the darkness surrounding them, “—all this. But you’re right, there was another invasion of Hyrule by Ganondorf the fifth, if I remember Lana’s nattering correctly. And if he was as bad as Ganondorf the third was, we’re in trouble.”

“They’re going after Cia? We hafta stop them!” the wolf sprang to his feet so quickly his poe-fairy was launched off his head and took wing.

The imp glared at the boy. “Now why exactly would I help that tarted-up witch?” There was a smoldering edge to her words. Not a surprise really, everybody except for Mr. Tiny Hero hated Cia. Ravio needed to head off this confrontation before the wolf and the imp came to blows.

“Look Ms. Imp,” Ravio began.

“Midna.” She growled.

“Ms. Midna,” he corrected himself, “We need to prioritize Ganondorf. If he was dangerous enough to imprison with the help of the Master Sword, he must be extremely dangerous.” As he looked at her, he desperately tried to beam talk to me later without the kid into her mind.  

She narrowed her eyes. “Okay. Fine! Ugh. I can’t believe I fell for Wizzro’s trick. Charging that seal was miserable. And for what? That blue-haired ditz was soooo confident that there was no danger… wait. She lied to us too! LANA’S BEHIND THIS!”

“Whoa, whoa, Lana? The time sorceress?” Ravio asked.

“Ha! She’s a filthy liar! Lana’s part of Cia, did you know that? She wasn’t going to tell anyone until I forced her to! Claims she’s the ‘light from Cia’s heart’ as if light is always good. Pft.”

“Lana’s ebil! She sent th’army after me. Maybe she’s th’bad part of Cia!” the wolf exclaimed.

As the young Link and Midna squabbled about whether half or all of the Lana/Cia duo was evil or not, Ravio struggled to parse this new information. How could Lana be part of Cia? And why had she pushed to pull the sword? The time-sorceress had seemed nice enough when Ravio had briefly met her but looks could be deceiving. Was Lana working with Wizzro? Secretly manipulating the Hyrulean army for her own ends? Did she think Ganondorf would rid her of her other half?

Ravio had to admit, he was still peeved that Lana sent the military out every time she sensed dark magic. He wasn’t a villain! Sure, he wasn’t exactly a hero, but still!

What should he do? There was too much he didn’t know. Geber from Fort Baumer sprang to mind. She was the smartest person he had met in this timeline, and she had been in a similar situation. How would she handle this? Focus on what was known while trying to learn more, of course.

Ravio spoke up, “I think we’re missing something, but Wizzro wanted the sword pulled, and that can’t be good.”

The imp let her head roll back as she sighed and looked to the dark heavens for an answer that never came. “Fine. I left a warp point back there. You coming with?” She held out a hand with sharp little claws.

“But what about Cia?” the wolf whined.

“Mr. Tiny Hero, what do you think is more dangerous to her? The army she’s already defeated? Or a man that conquered Hyrule before?” Ravio said. He didn’t like manipulating the young hero like this, but he couldn’t let the kid run off by himself, and if he went back to Cia she might try unleashing him upon the army. The child wouldn’t want to hurt anyone, but what if he thought his caretaker was in danger? Would he tear through the army like he did the fortress wall?   

And could he blame the boy if he did? He himself had almost helped ruin Hyrule for his beloved princess and country. Sometimes people do terrible things in the name of love, especially when young and stupid and scared.

“Fine,” Mr. Tiny Hero huffed.

“Alright, Ms. Midna, take us to the sword’s resting place. It’s, ah, perfectly safe to warp there, right?”

“Please. I’ve shoved bridges through these things.” The imp laughed as the sky opened up overhead, like an inverted funnel cloud, cyan lightning flashing in arcane patterns. The world turned into a mosaic, cracking into bits and pieces, and with a jolt, Ravio realized he was the one being segmented apart as he was transported in shards through the portal.

The Sacred Grove, once called the Temple of Time, was magnificent. Emphasis on “was.” Now it was half-collapsed and what little remained standing was covered by ivy, the vines determined to pull what was left of it to the ground. Enormous trees blended with fluted pillars that no longer supported a roof, and filtered green light fell onto the plaza of cracked and moss-covered marble tiles underneath Ravio’s jackrabbit feet.

Ages ago, this had been the entrance to a holy place, leading to a wide archway with both ancient doors wide open, each bearing half the winged crest of the royal family. Beyond it was more broken and vine-riddled architecture, in the process of being reclaimed by the forest.

But amidst all this life was evidence of war. The dirt between the tiles had been churned up recently, with rust-red mud dried in the shape of army boots, broken stalfos skeletons clad in tarnished armor littered the ground, and the air was filled with the scent of days-old blood. It all set Ravio’s hare-brain into a tizzy, a cacophony of new and old death.

In the rush of bright light and the buzz of flies feasting on puddles of coagulated gore, it took a moment before Ravio realized he was alone.

His body tensed like a coiled spring, but before he could go on a tear searching for the boy, a voice spoke from beneath him.

“He’s fine. I sent him and his fairy-thing through the portal the long way. But you will explain what is going on with that kid.” Midna spoke from Ravio’s shade. In the dappled blurry light of the forest, the edges of shadows were hard to make out, but it looked as if the imp was riding his jackrabbit silhouette, like the world’s cutest cataphract.

Ravio swallowed. The imp had a sharp wit and a sharper tongue. She wasn’t going to be as easy to manipulate as the kid, so he opted for at least some of the truth.

“Ah. Where to start, really? He’s got stupid amounts of magic and the mask of a dead god. You know the Fierce Deity thing? Bigass-white-eyed-scary-guy? That’s him wearing it. He was attacked by the Hyrulean army when he showed up, things went bad, Cia took the opportunity to grab him, and she’s been lying to keep him on her side. I think the poe-fairy is also Cia’s, she’s creepy but he loves her for some reason. He’s a good kid but really confused, and I want him as far away from her as possible. Could you— could you help me with that?”

The mounted figure on his shadow sighed. “Great. Babysitting duty for a kid with a dark mask. Congratulations Bunny-Boy, you’ve found the single most qualified person for the job.”

Bunny Boy?! Was she giving out nicknames?! That was his job!

The portal reappeared overhead, cyan lightning arcing between massive tree branches. “I’ll help you, mostly to piss off Cia, and because I think some time travel fuckery is happening with him, but I will help you,” she said, and with that, the golden wolf pup dropped down onto the plaza, dead fairy clutched onto one of his ears.

“That was awesome!” he yipped as he hit the tiles, ears and fairy bouncing with the impact. As the wolf regained his balance he spun around, taking in the ancient empty temple. “This place got old.”

“Wasn’t in good shape when I saw it either.”  Midna said, then disappeared into a quick blur that darted from broken pillar to broken pillar, then back to the two animals. “Past those doors is the Sacred Realm. I didn’t get that far during the battle, but the resting place of the Master Sword is through there.”

“So, whoever is trying to release Ganondorf is probably back there too, got it. Mr. Tiny Hero, how quietly can you use that cursebreaker song?” he asked. Midna’s shadow cocked her head in curiosity.

“Um. I’ll try.” The wolf took a deep breath, then let out a softer version of that mournful song he had sang earlier. The dirge wrapped itself around Ravio, and something lifted from him, like a weight he didn’t know he was carrying. A wooden mask hit the tiled ground with a tok, and in a rush of air as he grew vertically, Ravio was painlessly back in his original body. A quick pat of his hands on his robe revealed that he still had all his items. Yes, that was an ice rod in his pocket, and he was happy to see it. Beside him, the boy stood up on two legs again and was checking on the Fierce Deity’s mask, which had also returned intact. A yellow canine mask lay at the boy’s feet.

“Oh thank the Three, that was terr—” a shrill scream cut him off before Ravio could finish.

Someone he had never seen before was writhing on the broken tiles behind them, shrieking in pain. Even laying on the ground and covered with a jet-black shawl, it was obvious they were quite tall. Dark gray hands gripped at their face as they howled in agony, fingertips blanching white as they were seared by the murky forest light.

“What—what’s happening?!” the boy looked stricken, clutching the Fierce Deity’s mask.

A memory jogged loose in Ravio’s brain. Hadn’t the dead god said something about masks in his dream? Hadn’t Midna also said she was cursed?

Shit.

He couldn’t see any masks on the ground other than his rabbit and the boy’s yellow wolf-pup, so he knelt down and heaved the stricken figure over, not an easy feat given that they probably weighed twice as much as he did despite their slender frame, revealing a mask covered by their shawl (a shadowy fabric so fine it would sell for a fortune, but there wasn’t any time to think about that).  They had stopped screaming and were now reduced to a terrible heaving gasp, having run out of strength to shout.

The mask looked rather like the imp, a distant part of Ravio thought as he pulled bleaching arms away from their gray face, skin feverishly hot in his hands, and slammed the mask on. He caught nothing more than a glimpse of bright orange eyes and hair before a burst of darkness filled his vision, and then only an imp-sized shadow remained on the ground beneath him.

The shadow slunk into his own, and he held his breath.

“Midna?! Midna! I’m sorry! I didn’t—I’m sorry!” The boy sobbed.

A tired voice came out of the shade “Kid, I’m fine. Stings like a bitch but you did me a favor.”

The boy furrowed his brows and cocked his head to the side, like a confused dog. Had he picked that up from being a wolf? Oh no. Ravio hoped desperately that he hadn’t picked up any jackrabbit traits. His foot itched with the desire to tap it nervously, was that from the hare? Or was his mind playing tricks on him?

Thankfully, Midna interrupted his spiraling. “Hah! I told you, I’m Twili. We’ve lived in the dark for ages. Me trying to have my real body in the light is like you trying to keep yours in the twilight. It doesn’t work. I’ve only been able to do it before with the blessings of the light spirits.” Her shadow moved to perch on his own shadow’s shoulder. “I hate this form but it does let me travel in the light of Hyrule. When I felt the curse start to break, I tried to finish the job, thought I could handle it. Bad idea. Thankfully Bunny-Boy is pretty quick on the uptake and got me back into this body.”

“But now—” her hand tapped her face in silhouette, “you’ve contained my curse! As soon as I get back into the darkness I can take off this horrid little imp suit! You’ve done me a big favor kid, I’ll need to stay in the shade while I recover, the light here burns.”

“Oh—okay! That’s good!” The kid perked up again and picked up his own canine-mask, trailing little leather straps beneath each ear as he picked it up on the ground. “It looks kinda like a Keaton!” he said, whatever that was. The boy then tied it on his head at a jaunty angle, and it stayed there, strangely secure. Maybe curses were loath to entirely leave the cursed.

Ravio stared down into the wide-set eyeholes of his own mask as it lay on the ancient tiles. The cursed hare stared back through empty wooden sockets. He wanted to burn it, to never see it again. Being scared and small was a familiar feeling but that didn’t mean he enjoyed it.

But he also couldn’t leave a rare and valuable item laying around, unstudied and unsold. And, well, Mr. Tiny Hero had thought so highly of rabbits.

Ravio gingerly picked the mask up, keeping it far away from his head (the boy was brave for keeping it right next to his face), and stuffed it into a pocket.

He took a deep breath. He did not want to do any of this, but what were his options? Give Cia back her overpowered pre-teen minion? Let another Ganondorf conquer Hyrule? He was a coward yes, but he wasn’t stupid. He was going into the fire whether he liked it or not, might as well try to do it right.

And doing things right meant having a plan and full stomachs. “We may be dealing with Yuga; he’s a lightning and paint-magic guy. Not super powerful on his own, but he’s tricky and good with traps. Wizzro had Yuga’s painted soldiers with him, so we know they’re working together,” he said as he pulled a few pears out of the depths of his pockets and handed one to the kid, who attacked it with gusto. Midna refused hers so he gave that one to the boy as well. He really hoped her comment about people’s shadows earlier was a joke.

As Ravio took a bite, Midna piped up from beneath him. “What about Cia’s other goons?  I don’t think Zant wants any Ganondorf back, they parted on bad terms, but someone’s still spreading the Twilight out there. We tracked Wizzro fleeing towards Cia’s mansion but he could double-back. Then there’s Ghirahim, Volga, and Vaati.”

The boy looked up from demolishing his pears, all that remained was the mess on his face, “Bolga wouldn’t do this. He doesn’t like sneaky stuff or lying. Baati is… not going t’be there. Ghirahim is… I dunno. He’s confusing.” Once again, the boy spoke Ghirahim’s name with an odd inflection.

“You’re going to have to explain more about Vaati, kid. General Impa’s sources seemed to think he returned, and she was consulting with me on how to handle his mirror magic.” Midna said.

The boy looked away from them, refusing to make eye contact. “He tried on th’mask. It was bad. He won’t be here.”

The memory of Unler’s shriveled corpse wearing the Fierce Deity’s mask forced itself into Ravio’s consciousness, and he failed to suppress a shudder.

Midna’s silhouette on the ground took note of Ravio’s discomfort and moved on. “Good. We don’t have to worry about him or Volga then. I’m told Ghirahim’s an ancient sword guy with a tongue schtick, that’s all I’ve got on him. I don’t think he has anything to do with Ganondorf, but who knows. So, we could be facing Yuga and maybe Ghirahim or Wizzro. How do you think they’ll try to free Ganondorf? Removing the sword can open the path to the Temple of Light, my Link did that once, but my knowledge is a few centuries out-of-date.”

“Ah. Good question. Colonel Firne back at the fort mentioned something about a ‘Lord of the Woods.’ Any idea who that could be?” Ravio added.

“Th’Great Deku Tree went t’another part of th’woods, so it’s not him,” the boy said. “There’s also th’Forest Totem. Th’Deku scrubs beliebed it was going t’come and sabe them all someday. I had a horned-skull mask used t’worship it, at least that’s what they said. Ganondorf also used a mask like that t’trick eberyone guarding th’Forest Temple into working for him.”

“Hold on, hold on.” Midna’s shadowy hands were up. “A horned skull in the woods?”

“Yeah! Did you find that mask? I gave it t’Skull Kid but he lost it.”

“But that was— nevermind, I hate time travel.” She sank back into Ravio’s shade.

“It sucks.” The boy replied with conviction.

“Well.” Ravio finished his pear and tossed the core onto the ground, where it came to a stop next to a blood-spattered thigh bone. He pulled out his ice rod and the magical boomerang. “That doesn’t tell us a lot. Midna, could you warp us out of there if things look bad? How’re your magic reserves Mr. Tiny Hero? We’ll want your angry side.”

Midna nodded from the shadows, but the boy paused to thumb the grotesque mask on his belt. “Um. Th’mask thinks it won’t work in Hyrule’s Sacred Realm. I’m th’bridge between Termina and Hyrule, but th’Sacred Realm is… different.”

Ravio pressed on his forehead with the gem of the ice rod, trying to avert a potential headache. “So you’re saying we won’t have the giant armored warrior god when we’re potentially going up against some of the worst villains Hyrule has ever seen.”

“Yeah,” the boy replied.

He gave in to the urge to stamp his foot and paced in a small circle, swearing throughout the entire rotation. “Midna’s fried, I’m not a fighter, and no offense kid, but you don’t even have armpit hairs. We should leave and warn the Hyrulean army and Cia. Maybe they’ll team up together to defeat the real bad guy or something cute like that.”

“I had armpit hairs.” The boy spoke up.

“What?”

“Last year, when I was older. It stank.” The boy’s pointy nose scrunched up.

“Okay, when Hyrule’s not in mortal peril you need to explain some things to me.” Ravio griped.

“Hold on, I can still warp us out if anything looks bad. If we go to the army all we have is your word, and I don’t think General Impa will believe it. I’m only trusting you two because I know a hero when I see one.”

Goddesses burn it all to ashes. Midna was right. And Ravio hated it.

“Okay. Sure. We warp out if things go to shit. Please do it before I get electrocuted. Any other ideas before we head in?”

The kid shrugged and Midna stayed silent. Wonderful. They were going to walk in there with a terrible excuse for a plan, and Midna’s tortured shrieks from before may have lost them the element of surprise. Every bone in his body screamed for him to run away, but his brain screamed right back at his bones that they were either going to fight Yuga or some variant of Ganon-Yuga and given the choice he’d prefer the former. He tried to summon what he remembered of Mr. Hero’s courage to stop his knees from shaking. He failed.

Beside him, the boy was pulling his enormous purple-green claymore from his little leather belt bag like a magic trick. Well, at least Ravio did have a hero here, even if they were (maybe???) too young for armpit hair. He swallowed hard and took a step towards the door.

Together, two bodies and three shadows walked through the vine-choked arch.  

Was Ravio a coward for letting the boy go through the archway first. Oh yes, absolutely, but he figured he deserved a little credit for even going through the door at all. It simply made more sense for the boy to take lead. After all, Ravio’s skills were shopkeeping, baking, haggling, and arcane programming. Meanwhile, Mr. Tiny Hero’s skills included beating up Sheikah guards while unarmed, killing giant spiders, and setting things on fire by humming.

The golden light that filled the doorway obscured the other side, but as soon as they passed the threshold Ravio realized they were no longer in Hyrule as he knew it. A few steps back, and the archway was a crumbling heap with trees and a decrepit temple beyond it, but now they were at the top of an intact stairway leading down into a whole church nave. Columns supported a vaulted ceiling above, his boots clacked on smooth marble, and stained-glass windows threw shafts of light from an unseen sun. At the far end of the nave, two large statues flanked a magnificently decorated archway leading to another set of stairs going upwards.

But marring all this sterile perfection was ivy and dried blood. Vines had crawled in through the gaps in the door, and rooted in the floor, buckling the blood-encrusted tiles as the vines dove into the ground, only to spring up again by the windows, breaking out through shattered glass. There were no bodies, those had likely been removed by the survivors, but the amount of gore smeared across the floor and spattered on the walls in graceless arcs spoke of a pitched battle.

They stepped down the stairs and crossed the nave as quietly as possible, scuffing away flakes of rust-red blood where they stepped. The boy was the more effective stalker, intent and predatory, big sword held in a low guard where it glinted like a razor. In the golden light, Ravio watched the boy’s dead fairy crawl into his green cap. She had thrived in the darkness, was this light-filled place hurting her? He glanced back to check on Midna, she was still in his shadow, big eyes blinking like a cat, hunkered down and quiet.

Ravio wasn’t enjoying the pervasive gold himself. It reminded him of Lorule’s sacred realm, when he witnessed the return of their Tri-Force. Beautiful, serene, and blinding in a way that forced him to squint. He found himself staring at the vines and their soothing green hues instead of all the gilt architecture.

They crossed into the next room, passing the ancient statues that seemed to judge him despite their motionless faces, then walked up stairs that went from polished marble to weathered stone and moss. The new room was an octagonal courtyard, open to the elements, its once-mighty stained-glass windows entirely shattered by intruding vines, likely the same plants that escaped through the windows of the nave. They crawled up the fluted columns with enthusiasm and broke through the domed ceiling to the golden sky above, letting through shafts of light that illuminated a pedestal at the center of the courtyard. Trees and shrubs followed the ivy inside and made their own home inside the courtyard, though less aggressively.

He felt like he had passed back outside into the ruined exterior of the temple, but the light still felt impossibly bright and uncanny.

At the other end of the room, one of the window frames was entirely filled with ivy, but unlike the rest of the ruined stained-glass windows which opened into brightly lit forest, the vines had been hacked away to reveal an elevated entrance into a stone corridor, dripping with red blood.

At first, Ravio thought it had to be the aftermath of the battle, but it was too red, too fresh. It covered the ivy and dribbled down the walls, puddling in the mossy ground. There was too much to have come from a single body, even dozens of exsanguinated Hylians would not have sufficed.

Beside him, the boy looked terrified, and he dropped his guard to hold one hand to the back of his neck.

That’s when Ravio realized it was the vines that were bleeding, just like Mr. Tiny Hero’s had when he tore them apart in his rush to get up after growing roots.

What in the blazes was happening? Did Deku scrubs bleed red? Was the Lord of the Woods/Forest Totem/whatever-it-was the vines?

“The blood door is new.” Midna whispered in his ear. “That must be where Ganondorf’s sealed piece is. This is the path to the Temple of Light. Now that the Master Sword is pulled, the way is open.”

“Okay, well, ah. I guess we know where to go.” He said softly, trying not to whimper.  

With a look of grim determination on his face, the boy pulled his own ivy out of the back of his tunic and hat, and placed the sword on his back, letting the vines wrap around the handle in a makeshift scabbard. Then he put both hands on the bleeding vines and climbed upwards. Upon reaching the windowsill, he turned around and held out a bloody hand.

Goddesses, was he really going to have to climb that gory mess? Ravio took a deep breath, then put both hands on the ivy, trying very hard not to think about how warm it was and how it had a pulse. He hefted himself up, only to slip on the blood, but the boy grabbed his arm just before he fell and heaved him up the rest of the way.

They stood at the entrance of the blood-filled corridor, a light visible in the distance at the end.

He couldn’t do this. This was too much. His knees shook and he was covered in blood and he felt dizzy. But before he could turn around Mr. Tiny Hero was already jogging down the corridor, big sword back in his hands, leaving Ravio behind in the blood-filled entrance to the tunnel.

Turned out, being alone in impossible brightness amidst bleeding pulsating plants was also terrifying, and Ravio found himself scurrying after the kid.

Two men stood in the entry chamber of the Temple of Light. One man paced nervously but precisely in his sliver tights and leotard. The other knelt on the ground, brush in hand, carefully painting a magic circle onto the floor.

The chamber was large enough to house a small village. Vaulted ceilings arced high overhead, marble ribs curving down to gold trimmed columns inset into the walls. At one end, two enormous stairways flanked the entryway, leading to a higher platform with another doorway to the temple above. Facing the entrance, on the other side of the chamber, lay yet another doorway to the ancient core of the temple, guarded by two stone statues, each wielding hammers bigger than a man. Between these sets of doors, the expansive central area of the temple hosted a ciborium, a stone tower from which hung a golden bell large enough to fit a room inside. Like everywhere else, vines had forced their way through the entrance like an unruly crowd. They drank in the inescapable light of the sacred realm and rioted through the perfect gold-white floor, wrapping themselves around the ciborium and its bell like drunken lovers, at one point having pulled the metal cup down to the ground to seal off the area underneath it.

Those vines had been slashed apart, bleeding red onto the white tile, the bell now retracted up into its tower, revealing a golden sword set into the pedestal beneath it. It was of a simpler design than the master sword, with a forward-raked hilt and a purple gem set into its pommel, but it radiated no less divinity.

Yuga muttered as he continued painting, reaching back to move his purple cape out of the way of the still-drying paint. The magic circle enclosed the ciborium and its treasure and was intended to break through the intricate sealing wards of the sword. He wiped the sweat from his brow with a thick sleeve and considered how best to compensate for the ivy and cracks that had ruined the smooth artistic surface of the marble floor.

“It’s odd. My Master is in here, with us, unlike the other seventy-five percent of Ganondorf walking around like he owns the place. The man certainly could host Demise’s power, so perhaps that was somehow separated into this particular blade when he was sealed. This was the most heavily guarded of the four swords after all. But my Master’s presence is, how shall I say, more diffuse than I expected.” Ghirahim paused his striding to face the golden sword, red cloak swishing behind him. “It feels like he extends beyond the reach of the Quartered Blade. But if that were true then he would have already escaped.”

“Do you think Wizzro lied?” Yuga finished off one rune, then added a dollop of pyrrol scarlet from a tube onto his palette, mixing it into some phthalo blue with a palette knife and long-practiced motions. Multi-hued magic circles required far more planning and preparation than monochromatic ones, but this was a Minish-forged sword. He had gleaned as much information as he could from Vaati before the wind mage’s untimely end, and that included the fact that a magic circle intended to break through Minish seals required a whole spectrum of colorful runes to work. He couldn’t help but admire the small folk’s mastery of their craft.

“Were its revolting lips moving? Of course, Wizzro was lying.” Ghirahim huffed. “But my Master is trapped here, and that sword has something that wants out. This is the closest I’ve come in centuries to finding him and I won’t be daunted now. If I prove myself to him, he’ll—he’ll forgive me.”

“Of course.” Satisfied with the hue, Yuga took his paintbrush to the next rune. The circle was nearly complete. “Still, I worry about his host from the past. I don’t understand how he returns without generating a paradox. Though I must admit, my own time-travel experience was entirely sideways, not back and forth. You would understand it better than I do.”

Ghirahim scoffed, “he’s Din’s beloved son, he can rend time in twain given half the opportunity. Hylia could merely smooth over inconsistencies, and not even by herself. His powers are beyond even my ken. I wouldn’t worry your mortal head about time paradoxes. Once we free him, he’ll set everything right.”

There was a rapturous quality to Ghirahim’s voice whenever he spoke about his master that worried Yuga, especially because he could recognize it in himself, and he frowned as he brushed in a particularly difficult stroke. “Then I hope he pardons my doubts, because it disturbs me. It feels like an errant note in a symphony.”

“Eugh. I don’t blame you. Disgusting to see that horrid amalgamation. My perfect Master reduced to that.” Ghirahim walked over and leaned over to place his hands on Yuga’s shoulders, careful not to disturb his brushwork. “You saw his true glory once, didn’t you? We’ll bring him back to his proper self, and it will be beautiful.”

Yuga closed his eyes, remembered being him. Having that intoxicating power. Even being “trapped” by Hilda as part of their ruse had felt better than being in this frail mortal shell that got sweaty and tired and had aching knees. He had merged with a god once, and despite it being mad and mangled, he’d still do anything to have that back. Being torn away and waking up in his own body in yet another Hyrule had been torturous.

The final rune was completed, and Ghirahim stepped away as Yuga stood up to inspect his creation. It wouldn’t be long at all now. Ghirahim would have his master, and Yuga would have his masterpiece.

Chapter Text

Half-clotted blood from severed vines squelched under Ravio’s feet as he chased the boy through the tunnel. The arterial ivy had filled most of the corridor before being slashed apart and he wondered if this was the so-called Lord of the Woods’ attempt at guarding Ganondorf’s seal.

The end of the tunnel opened into brightness, and Mr. Tiny Hero came to an abrupt halt as soon as he exited. Ravio failed to do the same, skidding on the slick bloody floor. He flailed as he tumbled into the boy and fell, still gripping his ice rod and boomerang.

The boy hadn’t budged from his stance, staring intently ahead with both hands on his oversized purple-green claymore, and Ravio followed the kid’s gaze from his own vantage point down on the ground.

White and gray walls and ceiling filled his vision; all embellished with gold. At the center of the expansive room hung a large bell tower, also covered in hacked-apart bleeding vines. Underneath the room-sized bell was a golden sword, surrounded by a multicolored magical circle, with runes unlike anything he had ever seen. As near as he could tell it was complete, but inactive. Had it already been used? Did this have something to do with Ganondorf the fifth’s seal?

But his attention was drawn away by the fact that between him and the magic circle stood Yuga. Ravio felt his heart skip a beat. The sorcerer looked as he had before his death; tall, covered in jester face paint, one hand holding a flaming scepter, and much more alive than Ravio wished. Beside him stood an equally tall man with metal-gray skin, a red cape, and a white leotard.

Both of them had purple eyeshadow. Which was honestly kind of weird. Ravio despaired at how often villains wore purple. It was a wonderful color that deserved better.

“Figures. That’s Ghirahim, the tongue freak.” Midna muttered in his ear, too quiet for anyone else to notice.

“You!” Yuga hissed, rage in his purple rimmed eyes.

“Oh. Is this the little snitch you talked about earlier? What was his name? Hank?” said the tongue freak. He sounded bored but there was a steel edge to his voice.

“Hank?” Mr. Tiny Hero broke away from glaring at the two men to look down at Ravio as he struggled to get up off the floor.

Oh. Oh no.

“Don’t tell me you’re still going by that idiotic little moniker, Hank.” Yuga said, face lit by the flickering magical flames of his scepter.

“Hank doesn’t have the same amount of panache!” Ravio protested as he heaved himself up, ice rod at the ready. Of course he had changed his name. His mother had shown her love in many ways but naming him “Hank” wasn’t one of them, even if it was supposedly the name of an ancient hero. Ravio, in contrast, was a mysterious name, a name for a smiling purple salesman that knew more than you, a name for someone two steps ahead of everyone else. Hank was a name for a reliable but slightly dim neighbor.

Too bad he had tried to change it after meeting Yuga. The sorcerer only ever used it when he wanted Ravio to work for him, and that wouldn’t happen again.

Midna’s soft laugh caught in his ear. If he lived, he was never going to live this down. Ravio (the artificer formerly known as Hank) was doomed either way.

Even the boy giggled but quickly hardened his glare. “We’re not gonna let you free Ganondorf, so step away from th’sword!”

Ghirahim sighed. “By the pristine void we’re not here for some mortal. We’re here to free the Demon King, Din’s beloved son, my Master Demise himself!” As he talked, he flourished his hands like a performer. Yeah, Ravio could see Ghirahim and Yuga getting along with each other. He was struck by the terrible mental image of them doing each other’s eyeliner while talking about how much they hated heroes.

“Who’s th’fuck is Denise?” Mr. Tiny Hero responded, scrunching up his nose.

“Who’s De— you horrid little amalgamated freak! YOU HAVE HIM. He LANGUISHED in the goddess’ sword for ages, trapped but unable to be killed by her pitiable magics, calling for the most powerful wielders of dark magic to him to serve as a host, and what did he get? Not a king! Not a sorcerer! Not even a man! BUT AN IDIOT CHILD IN GREEN!” Ghirahim shrieked.

Yuga put a hand on Ghirahim’s shoulder to calm him as he spoke, “specifically in this timeline the young Link was the first dark-magic prodigy to hold the Master Sword after Demise was jailed within it, perhaps in the flooded timeline as well. Ganondorf the Third took hold of Demise’s soul in the Hyrule I nearly conquered.” The sorcerer smiled wistfully. “My, it’s wonderful to say all of this without Cia threatening to skin us alive if we told you the wrong thing. Frankly I’m amazed I managed to hint that we are both kin with the Ganons.”

Ravio had to admit, the two of them did look somewhat similar, the poor tiny hero was never going to grow into that nose of his, was he? But he was having trouble following the rest of the villain’s speech. There had been sort of dark god in the master sword? And now it lurked within a nice boy that liked horses and carried his sick enemy out of the Lost Woods? Why didn’t the Fierce Deity’s mask say anything about it?

Except. It had, hadn’t it? In its own weird cryptic way. It had outright said that it belonged to the Fierce Deity, that it was his mask. That the Fierce Deity was the destructive aspect of the gods, and wasn’t Din the goddess of destruction? The same Din that Ghirahim claimed was Demise’s mother?

It was stupidly obvious in retrospect. The mask called itself the Fierce Deity’s mask, therefore it belonged to the Fierce Deity.

And the mask belonged to the boy.

“There really was something in th’sword? I wasn’t crazy?” The boy squinted at Ghirahim. “Did—did I know you?”

“It pains me to see you like this, dressed up like Hylia’s green simp.” Ghirahim bent over, putting both hands on his knees to look the young Link level in the eye. “Master, I know you’re in there. I swear I’ll free you and you can fix this mistake.” He stood up and clapped his hands together, manic grin showing his too-shiny teeth. “This will just be a hilarious blip and you’ll be perfect again! We’ll laugh about it as we’re torturing Hylia’s spawn, it’ll be delightful!”  

The boy furrowed his eyebrows. “What th’fuck are you talking about? Hylia? Lake Hylia? I mean—okay, I do fucking hate th’lake. And its temple. I don’t know how you torture a lake though. Eben if it deserbes it.” The boy paused in thought, then held up his sword to Ghirahim again. “But why didn’t anyone tell me! I asked Rauru why eberything felt weird and he said it was puberty! He just said th’sword sealed me for seben years until I was big enough t’wield it, and I had weird dreams and stuff because I was an adult! Nothin’ about a Denise!”

“DEMISE! Ugh, Yuga, you handle this, this is worse than when Master was sealed away as a toothy avocado.” Ghirahim stalked off to the side, pacing angrily. Ravio tried to keep one eye on him while he also inspected the magic circle. Whatever they were talking about was important, but the magic circle meant trouble.

“Ah, Rauru, he was the sage of light during the civil war, wasn’t he?” Yuga tapped his chin in thought. “Lorule and Hyrule only diverged after the war, so I did read about him in my studies. But it’s funny you mentioned the Master Sword sealing you, because, well, she’s the sword that seals the darkness. Not heroes. And you weren’t sealed that long ago, were you? So, after seven years you broke out of her seal at the age of what? Fifteen? Sixteen?”

“Sixteen,” the boy replied, the tip of the purple sword shaking slightly.

“What a superb liar Rauru was! Hank, take notes. You figured out some of his lies already, haven’t you? You’ve seen the propaganda posters of the hero of the flooded timeline, right? Rather artfully done bit of block printing I must say. I’d love to pick the artist’s brain. But that young hero wielded the Master Sword when he was twelve and even today he’s not much taller than you! Now why would the sword need a sixteen-year old when a shrimpy twelve year old also sufficed? If anything, being sealed by her would stunt your growth.” The sorcerer grinned. “You already know how tall you’ll actually be, don’t you? I’ve seen you with your mask, playing pretend at being an adult.” 

The kid’s sword tip shook even more.

Yuga continued. “This is all theory, but thanks to the bounties of Cia’s library and my own research, here’s what I think happened. Somehow, in the first Hyrulean timeline, Ganondorf the Third got ahold of Demise’s soul sealed away in the Master Sword. He also obtained the Tri-Force, but as only mortals can use it, all he could do was twist the sacred realm he was trapped within to reflect his heart. He was eventually defeated by one of Farore’s blessed heroes but returned time and time again. Now, instead of accepting his beautiful godly rule, someone managed to split the timeline, who knows how. In this second timeline, they hoped to send someone else to snatch away Demise’s soul instead of the Gerudo king, and who better than some sickeningly sweet little boy from the woods that coincidentally also bore Ganon blood? A fine little sacrifice to seal away forever and keep Ganondorf away from Demise’s power. Of course, that turned into its own disaster as Ganondorf survived the trials on the way to the Tri-Force even as a mortal, and with only a third of it was still powerful enough to wreak havoc. That and the pathetic Master Sword merely sealed you away for seven years. So, I think Rauru scrambled to concoct a lie that would send Din’s son now trapped in a stunted young man off to kill the Great Ganondorf.  Send one enemy to fight another and then quarantine the survivor in yet another timeline, genius! Too bad you shattered the Tri-Force of courage on your way out in a fit of pique.”

Tears were streaming down the child’s face. He still held the sword but less like a weapon and more like a lifeline. “I didn’t— I didn’t mean to! Th’Tri-Force was s’posed t-be mine! I didn’t know what was happening! Was that why She—Zelda sent me back? T’get rid of me?”

Ravio wanted to yell at Yuga, that he was just being a jerk to a child, but Yuga’s words were meshing too well with what Mr. Tiny Hero had said himself. About how he had split time, how he had been older but now wasn’t.

That and the fact that Mr. Hero had been Ravio’s size, and therefore also not much taller than Mr. Tiny Hero when he wielded the Master Sword. If there really was a height requirement to wield the Master Sword, it didn’t seem very consistent.

Yuga nodded at the boy with fake empathy. “And then you had some sort of adventure in another land and came back with a mask of your own face. You ended up here for some reason, but eventually you’ll return to the past, where somehow Ganondorf the Fifth takes the soul of Demise from you, only to be sealed away in a sword by yet another hero.” Yuga frowned, thinking. “Though it is odd that you broke out on your own in only seven years and he’s still imprisoned.”  

“Probably because the Quartering Blade is better than the ugly scrap you call the Master Sword.” Ghirahim yelled back, still pacing angrily.

“Hmmm, maybe.” Yuga looked down at the magic circle behind him. “Oh goody. It’s dry now. That was getting tiresome. I do love a good monologue but my throat was getting sore.”

Before Ravio could react, Yuga slammed his scepter down on an empty gap in a rune, completing the circuit. The massive array of magical programming came to life in a flare of multicolored magic, and the sword at the center made a terrible metal shriek.

“Really, it’s convenient how curious you heroes are! Dangle a morsel of lore in front of you and you slaver like dogs! I was worried the paint wouldn’t dry in time but you hung on my every word!” Yuga cackled as the sword continued to scream in agony, pitching even higher as the magic circle forced its way through its protective wards.

Ghirahim’s steely laughter joined in and Ravio watched in horror as a wicked-looking black saber materialized in his hand with a burst of diamond shaped sparkles.

Lit by the multicolored magic circle, Yuga’s grinning face filled Ravio’s vision like a nightmare. “Now the real fun begins!”

The sharp clash of steel on fae obsidian rang out to his side, and Ravio realized that Ghirahim had already lunged at his neck with his saber, only to be blocked by Mr. Tiny Hero’s two-handed glassy sword.

“Rabbio! Get Yuga! I’ll fight Ghirahim!” the boy yelled, pushing back on the larger gray man. He wasn’t calling him Hank at least. Small blessings, he supposed.

Ravio turned towards Yuga, arming his ice-rod, only to hear Midna cry out. He darted backwards, narrowly avoiding a fountain of electrical sparks erupting from the ground. A painted picture frame was gliding across the floor, directed by the motion of Yuga’s scepter. Within the frame was a painting of a storm, ready to flash into three-dimensions at Yuga’s behest.

The painting slid after him.

“Midna, get us out of here!” Ravio cried. He ran from the menacing picture, trying to bring up his ice rod for a shot on the sorcerer, only for the picture frame to chase him down again. He flung himself away from it and felt the sound of thunder resonate in his bones as it unleashed another bolt of lightning. The air stank of ozone.

“Not yet! Something’s still trying to get out of the sword! It’s not what they think but it’s still bad! We need to stop that magic circle!” Midna yelled over the noise of the thunder and the sword’s shrill screaming from underneath the bell tower.

Why was every one of his companions so irresponsibly brave?! He had hoped that the imp was more rational than the boy, but he should have known he wouldn’t be that lucky.

Ravio zigged and zagged across the marble floor, dodging the mobile painting as it chased after him. He caught glimpses of the boy and Ghirahim dueling, with the young Link on the defensive as the metal man summoned flying daggers out of thin air to harry the boy. The swordsman’s face was plastered with a look of maniac glee, in contrast to the tiny hero’s grim concentration.

This wasn’t working. Both he and the boy were outmatched, and Midna was still recovering from her exposure to the light. Ravio had enough magic for one, maybe two charges of the ice rod. He needed to change plans.

He readied the boomerang, which had its own source of magic and didn’t draw upon his own reserves, throwing it at Yuga. The boomerang itself missed the sorcerer but the dust devil that followed swirled the man’s heavy cloak up and over his face. As Yuga struggled against his own clothes, staggering wildly about and too hard to target directly, Ravio snatched the boomerang out of the air on its return path and with his other hand pointed the ice rod at the ground beneath the man’s feet.

Modulating magic, especially during a chaotic fight, was no easy feat. But Ravio always had more finesse than strength, and he coaxed what little magic he had through the lens of the ice rod’s sapphire and into a heavy mist of ice that billowed over the marble floor. A glaze of ice spread over the ground near Yuga’s feet, and just as he pulled his cloak away from his face, he slipped and fell with a load crack as his face hit the ground, then lay there, unmoving.

“Hah!” the noise Ravio made was more of a nervous bark than a laugh, he still had to stop Yuga’s magic circle from breaking through the magical sword’s defenses. He rushed to the painted sigils, doing his best to avoid slipping on the ice. It was an eerie sight, frosted floor lit up from below with a rainbow of glowing colors. Up close, he recognized some of the runes as they channeled elemental magic into the sword. Unlike the light-filled Master Sword (that he had snooped on while Mr. Hero rested at his house) this sword dealt in the elements as much as the light, with an emphasis on land magic coded into the purple streams.

He wanted to study it more, but understanding even the basic magical circuits could take days, time Ravio didn’t have. The lines of magic were slowly encroaching on the blade as it screamed and shuddered in defiance. Simply breaking the circuit was out of the question. The magic circle had already drawn in too much energy, aided by the fact that it was at the center of a temple inside the sacred realm. Haphazardly breaking the magical circuit would cause a short so powerful it would make Yuga’s lightning look like a static spark.

Ravio reached into the bomb bag strapped to his side and pulled out a bombchu. The bell hanging from the stone tower above had once enclosed the sword, protecting it before being retracted upwards by Yuga and Ghirahim. He couldn’t quite read the sigils on the bell, but they appeared to be written to absorb and redirect vast amounts of energy safely. A perfect hiding place for an extremely magical sword.

Ravio was sure his plan would work. Pretty sure. Mostly sure. Sure-ish.

He placed the bombchu on the ground, triggered it, and watched it race up one of the legs of the bell tower. At the very top where the bell was hung, it exploded into flames, and the bell tipped perilously to one side, still hanging on stubbornly.

Not enough! He pulled out a second bombchu, hand on its trigger, only to be interrupted by Midna’s shout.

He turned around. Mr. Tiny Hero faced an enraged Ghirahim, one small arm bleeding profusely, the other holding his one-handed gilded sword in a shaky guard, his glassy claymore now in the vines on his back, facing away from the swordsman.

And at the edge of the magic circle, Yuga stood up, dripping blood from his nose, flaming staff aimed right at Ravio. A bolt of magic arced out and he screamed as he was compressed down into a painting, this time without his bracelet to free him.

Hilda had said that the experience of being turned into a painting was not unlike sleep, that after Yuga had betrayed her, she woke up afterwards as if no time had passed for her at all.

Alas, this was not how it was for Ravio.

The frame he had been flattened into dropped to the floor, falling backwards onto one of the supports for the bell tower, keeping it upright just enough for him to see everything.

And that was all he could do. When he wore the bracelet he could at least shuffle side-to-side, but now he was adhered to the canvas, able only to look around and feel his heart make an awful sideways pulse.

What made his experience different than Hilda’s? Was it the fact that he had worn and used the bracelet several times before? Once used, magic did tend to stick to people. Mr. Tiny Hero’s Deku scrub scars and Mr. Hero’s painted complexion spoke to that.

He tried to pull himself out, but aside from the barest amount of peeling at his fingers, nothing happened. He could only watch and listen, realizing to his horror that the magical sword was no longer screaming in defiance, and could only shake in its pedestal as the magic circle flayed apart its defenses. With its silence it was easy to hear Mr. Tiny Hero call out his name in terror.

“Psst. Bunny boy. You still awake?” Midna’s voice chimed. He had been transformed with her hidden in his shadow, had she come with him? Was she okay? Shadows were already flat, weren’t they?

He attempted to pull away from the canvas again.

“Okay, don’t strain yourself. I can feel your wriggling. I’m going to try to get under the paint and… delaminate you. Or something. I think I can get you back to normal that way. After that let’s cut our losses and skedaddle with the kid.”

Thank the goddesses. The imp was seeing the wisdom in running away. As she wriggled and swore under his painted back Ravio kept an eye on what was happening in the three-dimensional world.

Yuga rubbed his bleeding nose on his sleeve. He didn’t seem to notice that Ravio’s painted eyes still moved and turned to Ghirahim. “Stop toying with him! Demise’s prison is almost open!”

Ghirahim paid him no attention. “Where did you get that sword?” he hissed at the boy with a voice like a knife being sharpened.

“Th’smiths on the mountain made it! But they asked what I wanted, and—and I thought—why does it look like you?! Cia said not t’show you it!”

“That is not me.” The swordsman hissed.

“But it looks like you! It’s pretty and cobered in gold diamonds! It’s a good sword!”

“Swords aren’t supposed to be pretty. They’re supposed to kill. My Master didn’t want a pretty sword.”

Both the boy and Ravio looked at the gilded sword, then back to Ghirahim. They were indeed similar; elegant, deadly, and slightly ostentatious. Gold, red, and silver. If the gilded sword came to life, it would look exactly like Ghirahim.

“I remember… Denise didn’t… he didn’t let you look like this, did he? Eben though you wanted t’be pretty. He made you something else. Ugly and mean.”

“You know nothing you soft little whelp. Metal needs to have its impurities beaten out of it. Swords need to be honed. Extravagance and frippery are for victims.”

“Then why do you look like that now, when he’s not here? I habe dreams and they’re not nice and there’s a thorny sword in them, but it wanted t’be silber and gold once. When Zubora asked what kind of sword I wanted that’s all I could think of. I’m sorry. I think Denise was mean t’you. Let Rabbio go, we can be friends. You can be a nice sword!” The boy’s injured right arm was held tightly against his side, hand in a tight fist as he confronted Ghirahim with his doppelganger weapon in his other hand.

Ghirahim clenched his teeth so hard Ravio could hear the grinding. “Stop clinging to little prey animals like they’ll protect you! We’re not letting Hank go. Maybe you’ll remember a thing or two about strength if I burn him away like the dross he is. Maybe that will make you into the merciless killer you ought to be. Have you even taken a life before?”

The boy looked taken aback. “Yeah. I killed people. The Twin Roba. Sakon,” he said quietly, as his bleeding arm dripped blood onto his belt bags.

“You slaughtered Rova? Well, that’s almost impressive, the desert witches can be formidable. But who is Sakon?”

“SAKON DEEZ NUTS!” The boy yelled as he opened his injured hand and threw a deku nut at the ground. Blinding light filled the room and even Ravio blinked his painted eyes. As the light faded the boy flew at the swordsman, letting loose a furious war cry, and then the two of them were engulfed in a column of roaring dark flames, violent updraft rustling the leaves of the ivy scattered about the chamber and whipping up Yuga’s cloak.

The sorcerer swore as the inferno dissipated. At the center of the conflagration the boy stood, unscathed by Din’s Dark Fire. Ghirahim was nowhere to be seen.

Then a flurry of diamonds appeared behind the boy.

Ravio tried to scream out a warning but there wasn’t any air in his lungs to scream with. He could only watch as the diamonds materialized into Ghirahim and his saber tore into the boy’s side.

Mr. Tiny Hero fell forwards and curled up into a little ball.

“Don’t kill him yet! Until Demise is freed we need to keep the timeline intact!” Yuga scolded.

“Doesn’t mean I can’t maim him a little.” Ghirahim gloated, wiping the blood off his saber with his cape. He walked over to the boy and placed his sword at his neck.

“Perhaps he returns to the past missing an arm. Or a leg. Or an eye.” The swordsman moved the point of the blade to the child’s face.

Without warning, the boy’s vines whipped out, slapping away the sword.

“Vines?! Yuga, he has vines!” Ghirahim exclaimed as he jumped back, summoning a hemisphere of diamond-patterned magic to contain the boy and his flailing ivy.

“What are you talking about?” Yuga yelled back.

The swordsman glanced frantically around the temple chamber, at the ivy vines that littered the ground and had tried to bodily seal away the magical sword.

“Wizzro tricked us! The Master isn’t in the sword! HE’S IN THE VINES!”

“You mean— then who’s in the sword?!” Yuga demanded, purple rimmed eyes wide.

“Who cares! Shut down the circle!” Ghirahim shouted.

Every half-decent spell-writer knew to insert a killswitch into any complex magical code; on the off chance it went haywire and needed to be shut down safely. As much as Ravio hated to admit it, Yuga was a competent spell-writer and would not have failed to include one, though he’d make it tough to find because he was an ass like that.

But as the sorcerer rushed to the center of the magic circle with his staff held high, a blinding rainbow of color exploded from the sword, knocking him backwards. As the multicolored light faded, a crack formed in the blade, leaking out a billowing cloud of dark magic.

Yuga watched from the ground as the cloud rose above the sword, swirling and condensing into a sphere that simmered a baleful red.

A deep, regal voice spoke. “Excellent, my final piece calls out to me. I was concerned Wizzro’s scheme wouldn’t work, but it has proven itself once again.” An enormous man strode towards the sphere, having appeared out of nowhere. With the armor of a conqueror king and the bearing of a peerless sorcerer, he had to be the man that had once subjugated Hyrule, Ganondorf the Fifth.

Or, well, seventy-five percent of him at least.

Half of the man’s torso, head, and entire left arm were missing. As if he had been bisected from nose to groin and then hip to hip, then recombined save for the upper left quadrant. Organs and blood vessels pulsed against nothing in a gruesome display of tenacity. What sort of man could survive being quartered by a holy blade? The exact same kind that brought Hyrule to its knees once before.

He was handsome in a fearsome way, with somewhat similar features to the boy and Yuga, though his nose arced gracefully in contrast to their sharper triangles. A mane of red hair flowed behind him like a cape, barely kept in check by golden hairpieces set with rubies, matching the gauntlet on his one hand. He wore dark purple and gold-lined armor, inscribed with runes of protection that Ravio would have gasped at if he could move at all.

Yuga simply stared up from the ground, mouth agape. Ravio could only imagine the sorcerer felt the same way he had felt upon first meeting Mr. Hero. This is what I would be like if I had courage. This is what I would be like if I had power.

It had been a humiliating experience.

As the man advanced to the hovering sphere, Ghirahim stepped in front of him, saber pointed at his halved chest.

“I came here to free my Master from his prison, and I will not leave until I do. Now tell me how to free Demise before I cut you into eighths, mortal,” he hissed at the taller man.

Ganondorf sighed, looking down at the swordsman with one eye, “Ah. You must mean the darkness in the vines? He assisted the wielder of the Four Sword in sealing me away decades ago. Perhaps it was revenge for using his name to incite the Deku scrubs to rebel against Hyrule. Fair enough I suppose, but rest assured I will not free him.”

The mania was creeping back into Ghirahim’s voice. “HE IS DEMISE. King of the land of roots, ruler of demons, and the only reason you Ganons have any power at all despite being mewling little mortals is because he made the mistake of caring about you as a young god and bedded with them.”

“Ghirahim!” Yuga hissed worriedly at the swordsman.

“Hmmm. So that part of the old myths is true. How fascinating.” It was disgusting watching the interior of the man’s mouth as he spoke, and his tongue squirmed like a fat word with every syllable.

As Ghirahim seethed harder Yuga cut him off before he could begin another rant. “Your highness, you were merged with Cia were you not? She knew the entire history of this land. Do you not also know?”

“Cia,” Ganondorf drew out her name like a slur, “is a stark raving lunatic. Even if I could pierce through the cacophony of her madness her thoughts would be incomprehensible. I could only guide her heart. For that reason, the two of you could be useful to me. Understanding history is crucial in a war across time.” The man held up one huge empty gauntleted hand in a gesture of peace. “Come. Join Wizzro as my commanders. I myself will lead two armies to Cia’s Mansion. One army to meet the hero and the princess head-on. The other army to outflank them and strike from the side as they attempt to regroup. But I expect heavy losses and will need to muster more forces to conquer both Cia’s army and what remains of Hyrule. Assist me and I will reward you greatly.”

Ghirahim watched angrily as Ganondorf’s gauntleted hand went down to a jagged black sword strapped to his hip. “Or die. The choice belongs to you. I am nothing if not a benevolent king,” the man intoned.

“I serve only one Master. Why don’t you make like all mortals and die!” Ghirahim spat as he lunged forwards with the saber, only for the larger man to sidestep the thrust with a deceptive grace, letting the point pass through the empty space where the left side of his torso should have been.

“As you wish.” Ganondorf muttered as he drew his own sword with his singular right arm, the two blades clashing against each other, Ghirahim’s elegant black saber scraping against Ganondorf’s serrated cleaver.

As Ravio watched the sparks fly with flat eyes, Midna’s voice reappeared. “They’re distracted. Good. I think I’ve found a weak spot in the paint magic. On the count of three I’m going to try to peel you off. I’ll need you to pull as hard as you can. I know you can do this. Then… we’ll get the kid out of the tongue freak’s magic sphere somehow. Okay? One…”

Ghirahim deftly leapt out of the arc of Ganondorf’s mighty one-armed swing. But it was a near thing. Perhaps the swordsman was tired from his fight with the boy.

Or perhaps even with a quarter of his body missing and only one arm available, the Gerudo king was more than a match for the swordsman.

“Two…” Midna huffed, straining as she wedged herself between layers of paint as a two-dimensional shadow.

Ghirahim summoned a plethora of daggers, raining down on Ganondorf from all directions, only for them to stop, frozen in place as the larger man laughed. A circle of dark magic, flowing like shadows on an oil slick, spread out from Ganondorf’s feet as he rose into the air, right arm lifted high as fiery magic concentrated in his palm.

Then he dropped to the ground, slamming the energy into the earth. Marble splinters flew everywhere and Ravio felt one ricochet off his forehead, scraping away a layer of paint.

Ghirahim had been caught up in the blast, and Yuga rushed to his side. Ganondorf chuckled as he stood in the center of a smoking crater, then took a step towards the sorcerer and the swordsman.

“Three!” Midna yelled, and Ravio pulled. He tried to remember how it felt using the bracelet he had made and given to Mr. Hero, tried to hold in his head the specific magical instructions and logic diagrams embedded within it, tried to summon every last bit of magic he had to flee.

With Midna at his back, thin as a shadow and sharp as a knife, she slid like a spatula under an especially sticky pancake, and Ravio came free.

He couldn’t help but yell as he fell forwards onto the painted, ivy-riddled, icy, shrapnel littered temple floor, now gloriously three dimensional and perfectly fine, aside from a stinging cut on his forehead. Annoyingly, the bombchu hadn’t come with, and he looked back to see it still stuck inside the picture frame. Darn. He hated wasting items.

Then he looked up to see Ganondorf with one foot placed on Ghirahim’s chest, while Yuga knelt in a pleading position, ready to beg for the swordsman’s life.

All three stared at him.

“Who are—” Ganondorf asked, brows furrowed and looking surprised for the first time, but he didn’t get very far because Ravio was already darting rabbit-quick towards what the king had called the Four Sword, praying that it would still function even with its dire-looking fissure.

Though, even if it did work, pulling it was still a gamble. This sword looked like a hero’s sword. A holy thing for those blessed by Farore with courage in their veins. Not cowards who wanted to use it to cut and run.

Please please PLEASE even if you won’t work for me, you’ve got to help save Mr. Tiny Hero. Ravio begged silently as his hand closed over the grip, half expecting to be burned once he was found unworthy.

And something in the sword answered. Not in words, but the crystal in the pommel glowed violet as something solid and grounded hummed in acceptance.

Ravio pulled the sword and lifted it overhead, silver edge and golden hilt gleaming under the canopy of the belltower at the center of the Temple of Light.

“Ah,” he said, more than a little surprised that it had worked.

But his awe was interrupted by a guttural shout as Ganondorf ran straight for him.

“AH!” he yelled as he scampered towards Mr. Tiny Hero as he lay unconscious at the center of Ghirahim’s diamond-patterned magical seal.

Ravio wasn’t stupid. Perhaps a hero would pull the sword and find themselves an expert swordfighter, able to fend off monsters and villains. But despite the magic he could feel radiating from the blade, the sword felt ungainly and awkward in his hands, and if the terrifying silver swordsman had been bested by three-quarters of Ganondorf, then Ravio stood no chance.

He vastly preferred hammers to swords anyways, thankyouverymuch.

So, he ran, Midna yelling in his shadow, but Ganondorf had much (absurdly so) longer legs and caught up to him halfway to Mr. Tiny Hero, giant cleaver of a sword arcing down like a guillotine aimed straight for his neck.

Ravio expected this and already had the jackrabbit mask up to his face. The sword sliced through air, right over the head of a much smaller hare that bounded swiftly to the boy’s enclosure.

“WHAT?!” Ganondorf yelled, as his prey seemed to suddenly vanish.

As soon as Ravio reached the wall of the magical seal, he kicked off the hare-mask with one fuzzy foot, grabbing it with his teeth as he returned to his normal form, and with both hands on the Four Sword’s grip, he drove it into the magical wall imprisoning Mr. Tiny Hero.

He was expecting some terrible explosion or outrush of magic, but instead it burst with all the force of a soap bubble. Whoever made this blade was good.

“MIMNA!” he shouted through clenched teeth as soon as the boy was free.

“On it, Hank!”

The bright ceiling above them was obscured in a whirlpool of dark and cyan magic as the portal opened, and Ravio watched the world shatter into a mosaic as Midna warped him and the boy away to safety.

The look of incandescent rage on Ganondorf’s bisected face chilled Ravio to his bones, just before his image dissolved into gentle blackness.

Now there were even more sorcerers that hated his guts. Ravio sure had amassed quite a collection, hadn’t he?

Chapter Text

As the former king of the Gerudo roared in frustration at his escaped quarry, Yuga knelt down besides his fallen companion and whispered in Ghirahim’s ear. “Let me talk. We tell him nothing about what the boy carries.”

The swordsman frowned, silver skin of his handsome face wrinkling as Yuga tried to concoct a plan. Their hopes of releasing Demise had been dashed yet again, but there was no hope at all if they were both dead.

And it was obvious that neither of them could take down the Gerudo King in a fair fight.

Yuga allowed a wave of red-hot frustration to wash over him. Assuming that the soul of Demise was in the Minish sword and not the vines surrounding it had led to their current predicament. He needed to be more careful.

He glared at an ivy leaf as it bled crimson sap onto the ruined temple floor. He could kick himself for not investigating the strange plant further. The vines had been nearly indestructible. They happily resisted his lightning, shrugged off fire like a Goron, drank salt water like an ocean Zora, and were so infuriatingly tough that they dulled even Ghirahim’s blades. It had taken the pair days to break through to the Temple of Light. All that work, and it was doomed from the start by Wizzro’s clever lies.

He'd take a jeweler’s saw to that tacky possessed ring someday.

“Who. Was. That.” Ganondorf seethed, pointing his sword at the space where Ravio and the young Link had been. His veins were visibly throbbing in his bisected neck.

Yuga spoke before Ghirahim could blurt out something rude. The swordsman’s temper would likely be the death of him one day. “My lord, that was Ravio, nee Hank. An artificer from my world. The boy in green is a hero from the past. I do not know who the shadow person was, but the portal looked like Zant’s magic. Perhaps another Twili.”

“Hrmph.” The larger man grumbled as he walked to the hovering sphere of magic as it hung beneath the bell-tower.

Ganondorf sheathed his sword and lifted a golden-gauntleted hand to the angry sphere. At a touch, the magic flowed down his arm and Yuga watched in horror as the king’s blood vessels filled out and grew from his halved torso. Bones sliced in half sprouted like mushrooms after rain, followed by strips of muscle.

It was too much. He had to look away. Yuga turned his eyes downwards to Ghirahim, still on the ground and staring up at the ceiling like someone waiting for a painful dental procedure to finish. His perfect silver skin had been cracked in several places, revealing his jet-black inner core. Yuga didn’t entirely understand the business between Ghirahim and the young Link’s elegant sword, but despite the swordsman’s fanatical devotion to Demise, he always sulked like a child whenever evidence of his master’s wicked-looking blade leaked out. Yuga wondered what the man’s relationship with his god had been like. Nonetheless, he was glad the swordsman was sulking, his sulks were safer than his tantrums at this critical moment.

Now here’s a terrible thought—if Yuga became the bearer of Demise once again, would he care about this beautiful snarky silver man? Or would he prefer the jagged monster of a sword beneath? Yuga knew he held both beauty and power dear to his heart, which would win out in a contest? Did he want to know?

“There we are.” Ganondorf exhaled in pleasure. When Yuga looked up again the man was complete, whole. Brimming with magic and muscles and standing head-and-shoulders above even the tallest Hylian.

Yuga swallowed his jealousy like acid reflux. This was not the time for envy. He needed to play his cards right.

“Now. What were your names again?” Ganondorf asked while he opened and closed his newly regenerated fist, as if testing it out.

“I am Yuga, an expert magic scripter and painter. This is Ghirahim, sword of Demise.”

“Sa’at lohesh, vmeigeru?” The king spoke in Gerudo.

“Yes,” he replied, after struggling to parse the words. They didn’t sound like he imagined they would.

“You had to think about it.”

“I… can read Gerudo script. Though I have little practice with the spoken word,” Yuga said, hoping his foundation would disguise his cheeks flushing with embarrassment. The Gerudo had fled the crumbling Lorule, leaving behind nothing but ancient temples and deteriorating libraries. As a young man, Yuga had pored over the books of his ancestors, hoping for a connection he had never felt with the Lorulians as they descended into barbarism. With only the help of various trade receipts written in both Lorulian and Gerudo, Yuga had painstakingly translated the books, eventually finding the old diaries of a great king who described a path into the sacred realm and its treasures.

“Hmmm. Pitiable. Though it is good to see another Gerudo with ambition. My sisters were cowards, content to dwell within the harsh desert. But what sort of a king fails to conquer?”

“A failed king, my lord.”

“Yes. Like the old fool Ganondorf the Fourth. A fragile weakling who only built aquaducts and forged treaties with the Zunaii. Pathetic.”  

“Indeed sir.” Yuga kept his blasted mouth shut about the engineering marvels of the ancient Gerudo he had witnessed on his travels. Defending Ganondorf the Fourth’s architectural genius would not help him here. “But you are closer to Ganondorf the Third’s brilliance. A man that defied even the gods."

The king snorted, but Yuga could tell he enjoyed the flattery. Hilda had been similar, easy to regale with tales of her family’s past glory.

The king stepped closer, boots crunching on the marble shrapnel that littered the floor. “Now. What to do with the two of you? You’ve already betrayed Cia, why should I trust you?”

Ah yes. Having been denied his prey in the form of Hank, the errant relative of Ganondorf the Third, and some meddling Twili, the Gerudo king would take out his frustrations on the nearest victims. Himself and Ghirahim.

“Because we want revenge. I want Hank reduced to rabbit stew. Ghirahim wants to skin alive every single one of Hylia’s lackeys in green. Cia denied us that. We weren’t allowed to kill the so-called heroes or any iteration of them. She wants them as dolls, collectables, objects to place on a shelf and admire. We want them dead. Give us a chance to kill them and we’re yours.”

“And what of your hopes to release the darkness in the vines?”

Yuga sighed, eyeing the fat vines that wrapped around the bell tower. “There’s no point in trying to free something that isn’t imprisoned. The dark god wants to be here. I cannot change that. But at least allow me to have my revenge on Hank.”

“Good enough. Work as my new commanders and I will allow you to live and even partake in the spoils of victory. Betray me and I will make you beg for death. How does that sound?”

“Your generosity knows no bounds, my lord, I am honored,” Yuga lied as he reached up to shake hands with the king, already formulating his next plan as his hand was engulfed in Ganondorf’s giant gauntlet.

Royalty was always so easy to influence.

Ravio felt himself re-materialize in cool twilight air, then dropped down into damp soil on all fours. The jackrabbit mask that had been clenched in his teeth was back on his face, an unpleasant but not surprising development.

His panoramic hare-vision showed him to be in a small fenced-off garden behind a cottage with cedar shingles. Rows of herbs and vegetables filled the little plot, and a pumpkin larger than him loomed to his left.

Above him stood Midna, unmasked.

He had only seen a glimpse of her true form earlier. But here she was, whole and healthy in the dark. Her bright hair practically glowed and her dark robes drifted in the languid twilight wind. She was probably nearly the height of Yuga and Ghirahim, and she smiled as she held the unconscious wolf pup in one arm, leaving her free hand to make complicated arcane motions above him. The poe-fairy circled them both anxiously.

“Hello Hank,” she said, grinning.

Ravio sighed. No matter what she looked like, she was still the same imp.

“Please don’t call me that,” he grumbled.

“As you wish, Bunny Boy,” she said while making another complicated gesture over the wolf.

“Fair enough,” he replied, “how’s Mr. Tiny Hero?” He couldn’t see red in hare-form, but something dark coated the wolf’s fur.

“My magic can’t heal, but I can stitch him up. We’ll need to get some food in him though. If he’s anything like my Link some soup will work miracles.”

“Well, that’s good. I guess.” Ravio took a breath of cool air. “Was all that true? About Denise—er, Demise? He’s a decent kid, how the blazes is he also a god with a bastard like Ghirahim for a sword?”

Midna hummed. The boy made a painful whine and she stopped weaving magic with her free hand, moving to support the wolf pup with both arms. Once secured, she swayed gently like a mother trying to lull a fussy infant to sleep. “Let me tell you an old story, one that my people hold dear, about who we first learned dark magic from. When the land was new and there was an ocean in the west instead of sand, the children of the Golden Goddesses lived in peace. Din had her loving son of darkness that lived across the sea, Nayru had her searing daughter of light that dwelled in Hyrule, and Farore was mother to every mortal and animal everywhere. But the goddess of light did not perceive time as we do. Cause and effect were twisted in her mind. So, when she foresaw the dark god raising an army and laying waste to the land in a mad rage, she had her sages forge a sword and built an army of deadly automatons. While the dark god was away on his wanderings, she slaughtered the mortals that loved him so that they could not aid him in the future. His family, his lovers, his friends, all left to rot under the burning sun. She then had her minions build a mining operation to make her a weapon that would let her truly conquer time, while also draining the western ocean, turning it into a desert so lethal it would kill those that survived her initial onslaught,” Midna paused to smile. “But my ancestors are very hard to kill.”

“When he returned to find his people slain, Din’s son went mad with grief. He begged his mother to open the doors to the void for an army of demons so he could have his vengeance. He reforged his own beloved sword into sometime terrible, and then went on a rampage across Hyrule, exactly as predicted. The goddess of light sent her own worshippers safely into the heavens but eagerly sacrificed the rest of Hyrule to stop him. Eventually the goddess was slain, but even after her death her plans lived on, and she managed to seal the dark god away in a sword in a scheme across time.”

“Wait,” Ravio interrupted, “was that who Ghirahim was talking about? Hylia? She saw that Demise was going to go berserk in the future, so she committed genocide and made it happen?”  

Midna shrugged. “It’s an old Twili story, I’m sure Hyruleans have a different version. Funny how that works. I encountered her terrible sword ages ago myself, but it was empty, and sad. Yet I still felt a gentle dark presence at the sword’s resting place. I guess I know why now. I hope that he found peace.”

She stopped rocking the wolf pup and gently placed him on the ground, where the dead fairy descended to land on his head. “Please watch him, he’s too cold. I remember this house had a good larder, so I’m going to try to recreate a soup my Link loved. She bent over beside Ravio and picked up the pumpkin beside him, cutting its stem with a blade of summoned shadow, then carried it into the cottage.

Once she disappeared inside, Ravio crept over to Mr. Tiny Hero, as he lay on the ground and took wheezing breaths. His side was covered with dark blood, but at least it looked like he had stopped bleeding.

Ravio curled up by the wolf’s fluffy neck. His hare form wasn’t that large, but perhaps he could offer some warmth.

Ravio’s nose twitched. Something smelled delectable.

“I have learned a thing about making soup,” Midna proclaimed as she walked out of the cottage, holding a steaming bowl high, “there is such a thing as too much pepper. I didn’t think that was possible. This is the second batch.”

“I could have helped.” Ravio whined as he extricated himself from the wolf’s fuzzy neck.

“Bunny-Boy you don’t have thumbs right now. Anyways, while you could have this soup, I must warn you that it was made with rabbit jerky. I figured I would tell you before you committed cannibalism.”

“Yeesh, Ms. Midna.” Ravio walked over to a patch of green onions and nibbled on a fresh leaf. Zesty.

She shrugged. “He needs protein,” she said as she placed the bowl in front of the wolf pup. Apparently, the pleasant smell of the pumpkin-rabbit soup overpowered the tiny hero’s need to rest, and he managed to lift his head, wet nose quivering.

“There’s a good boy.” Midna hummed as she knelt down to slip the bowl under his snout. The wolf immediately began lapping at the soup, poe-fairy atop his head, faithfully by his side as always.

Once he had downed a significant portion of stew (Like Mr. Hero, Mr. Tiny Hero seemed capable of packing away truly terrifying amounts of food in one sitting) the young hero signaled that he was done by falling asleep with his nose in the remaining soup, blowing bubbles as his nostrils sank into the liquid. As the dead fairy squealed in horror. Midna pulled him out by the scruff of his neck and placed the soup bowl further away on the ground. Mr. Tiny Hero then peacefully conked out in the dirt; nose covered in orange soup.

“Now, what to do about you?” Midna said ominously, and for a terrifying moment Ravio thought she was talking to him, but instead her bright eyes were fixed on the animated fairy corpse atop the wolf pup’s head. The little skeleton squeaked and darted away, trailed by blue-green ghostly flames, but a man-sized black hand marked with Midna’s own cyan magic materialized out of nowhere and caught the little abomination between thumb and index-finger, returning it to Midna.

The Twili sorceress gently extricated the dead fairy from her summoned magical hand, heedless of its attempts to bite and claw her, and then she pulled on something within the former fairy like one pulled on a loose thread, and the little creature went limp.

“Who were you?” Midna asked the fairy corpse. Ravio watched the thing’s rib cage expand and contract in a gross facsimile of breathing. Did it still remember needing air? Then it picked itself up out of Midna’s hands and hovered back down to sit on the tiny hero’s head again.

“You can leave now. I’ve broken the geas Cia placed upon you. You’re free to move on.”

The poe-fairy didn’t budge.

Midna sighed. “You loved him, didn’t you?”

The poe-fairy’s tiny skull nodded.

Something glittered at the edge of the Twili’s eye. “Of course you did. He’s a good boy. I’m glad you managed to… return to him.”

Midna faced Ravio but failed to look him in the eye. “I… am going to scout the area. Maybe you could add those look-away runes you used before? Those were pretty good, for a Hylian.”

“Not a Hylian—” Ravio started to say, but Midna had already flown off into the dark, black robe fluttering behind her.

It was hard work, writing runes when you didn’t have thumbs. But Ravio managed to scratch out concealment hexes on the posts of the fence surrounding the garden, and another on the outside door of the cottage.

If the twilight ever lifted, the people that owned this house would be very confused.

Midna returned while Ravio was snacking on chives in the herb patch. Mr. Tiny Hero slept, twitching as he dreamed.

“We need to talk, Bunny Boy.”

“About what? The dead god in the kid? The freaky fairy that refuses to leave? The other dead god with him? Or the fact that Ganondorf’s back and he’s marching two armies to eradicate what remains of Hyrule’s forces?”

“The last two,” Midna clenched her robes in her hand, looking the least confident Ravio had ever seen her. “We need the Fierce Deity.”

“Wha—are you kidding me? Ms. Midna, he’s a child. A stabbed child. You want to send a stabbed child to war?”

“Hyrule’s army is going to be limping away from Cia’s mansion, if we’re lucky. It will be a miracle if they can defeat even one of Ganondorf’s armies after that, let alone two. But I’ve heard of what the Fierce Deity can do, and I can sense how strong he is. He could win this war.”

“Goddesses! Is that what he is, a tool? A win-the-game-button? He’s still crusty with blood!”

Midna spoke quietly, “Ravio, what do you think is going to happen if he doesn’t go?”

Ravio felt his ears twitch. Every time Mr. Hero had walked into his store covered in blood and recently revived by the fairy he had sent Sheerow out with, Ravio had wanted to grab his Hylian counterpart and run away with him. Maybe they could outrun Yuga’s reach, maybe there was someplace far beyond even Lorule and Hyrule where there were no gods and goddesses and world-ending triangles. Someplace better.

But he never did. He just rented out his equipment to the hero and watched him go (sure, people called him greedy for not just giving back the items, but fairy-gathering and repairing magical equipment was not cheap!).

It didn’t feel good then and it didn’t feel good now.

“I’m going Rabbio.” Mr. Tiny Hero spoke. He was awake now, and truly a pathetic sight. Face crusted with orange soup; he stood shakily on two front legs while the back legs didn’t quite seem to want to work properly. “I’ll sabe Cia and stop Ganondorf’s army. Just gimme some time t’get better.”

Ravio exhaled. He couldn’t stop the kid if he wanted to.

Midna spoke again, “Link, Ravio, I’m going to travel to Hyrule’s army. I can move swiftly in the twilight but once I’m in the light I’m only an imp again. It’s going to take a while to get there, and the army will already be at Cia’s mansion by the time I reach them. Once I arrive, I’ll make a portal and warp you two there. Until then, get all the rest and food you can.”

The wolf-pup nodded, bobbing his strangely loyal dead fairy as she clung to his head.

As for Ravio, well, he couldn’t come up with a better plan. But given how badly their attempt at stopping the release of Ganondorf had failed, he couldn’t help but be pessimistic.

Midna bent over and scratched Mr. Tiny Hero’s furry head just under one floppy ear, and his tail tried to wag as he leaned into her touch.

“Stay safe, Ms. Midna.” Ravio said as the Twili sorceress took her hand away from the wolf pup.

“Don’t worry about me, Bunny Boy.” She said as she smiled, then lifted off into the dim sky. Ravio watched until she was nothing more than a dark spot on the dusky horizon.

He was angry with her. He already missed her.

“Rabbio, that soup was so good! D’you know what’s in it?” The boy was already slouching towards the bowl on the ground, eager for more food.

“Ah. Pumpkin.”

“Huh. Anything else?”

“No! Just pumpkin!”