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“Who is this…?”
“I don't know his name. Sorry Impa did you need something? I’m kinda in the middle of something.”
“I wanted to know if you’d be coming home with me this leave. Mother wanted to see us both.”
“I can’t, I’ve got things to do and chickadee here to look after. Maybe next time. Apologise to Father for me, would you?”
“I’m sure it's parents can look after it, Purah. You really should–”
“His parents, Impa, and they can’t! They can’t because the King has made me a Goddess damned kidnapper and the only way I can keep him safe is if I keep him with me until I can get him home!”
“The King made you a– oh fucking hell, Purah, what did you do now?”
“I… I was ordered by the King to find a way to locate the new hero. I couldn't say no, you have to understand– the machine wasn’t meant to do this, Impa. It was meant to locate the hero, not–”
“Not kidnap a child… damn it, Purah. Right. Send him home and break the machine before–”
“Everyone already saw! The King broke into the labs with his guards and was yelling about wanting results, and I– I was on my own, Impa, and I tried to tell him it wasn’t ready, that it wasn't calibrated, I did!, but he–”
“What have you done to your wrist?”
“Nothing, nothing it’s fine.”
“Purah-”
“And sure, the machine might have turned on, but it wasn’t ready! Did anyone listen? Ha!”
“–Purah!”
“Sorry, it-heh! It’s been a day. Where– the machine. Well, it turned on. The next thing I know a portal is open, and it was– it was all dark and blue and it was stunning, and then there’s this little boy and this huge red-haired lady with the same skin patterns as him, and he’s being yanked out of her arms and he’s flying at me and I-I–”
“Breathe, sister. It’s okay. Just… take a breath and tell me happened next.”
“I caught him, and I tried to send him back, and she was trying to get to me and a man, I think? Was really different to her, came running into the rooms she was in, but… but the soldiers broke it when they moved to “protect the King”. Nonsense, they just wanted their boy back, but um… Well the portal closed before I could do anything, and-and he was crying and then his hand glowed. He’s got the the Triforce, Impa, the Triforce like in the story books and apparently that’s enough to, to keep him. The King doesn't care that he’s– that he’s not meant to be here, that we've stolen him from his home. He only cares that he’s got his ‘hero’. I-it wasn't meant to do this, Impa, I didn't mean to–!”
The child watches them blankly and understands nothing at all.
“Impa.” Purah barges into Impa’s quarters, a nasty bruise on her cheek, clothes in disarray and utterly distraught. “Impa I need your help–”
For the first time, Impa turns away from her sister when she asks that. She instead speaks to the boards in front of her, examines the plans for the latest attack, and pretends she’s distracted when in actuality the hitching breaths behind her are all she can hear.
“The King and the General have deemed the child in need of training. I can’t help you, Purah, I’m sorry. We’ve been given orders to keep you apart.”
Fast footsteps and then her dragon-fire wisp of her sister is slipping between her and the boards.
“He’s a boy, Impa!” Her eyes bore into her pleadingly, hands up placatingly, and Impa looks away just for her sister to follow. “He’s a little boy who was stolen from his home, he doesn’t belong here. If you could speak to them, make them give him back just until–”
“He’s exactly where he needs to be.” The words taste bitter in her mouth. “He’s been disguised, no one is aware that he’s anything other than a talented, silent child and those in the know will keep it a secret from everyone. He’s perfectly safe.”
If she says it enough, maybe she’ll believe it herself. Purah’s hysterical little laugh says the lie is more than apparent.
“‘Safe’?! He can’t be any older than four or five!” She starts pacing, coat billowing behind her to make the carefully organised stacks of paper rustle dangerously. “He can’t understand us, he doesn’t speak, he’s traumatised– he’s a damn child. Impa, please,” her sister returns to her, expression wretched. “Please, he’s just a little boy. He’s a decade too young to be joining the army at least! He’s not Hylian, we don’t know what his age is o-or the abilities he has or even his name! He could be an infant for all we know!”
“He will be fine, Purah. He’s clever and already proving to be skilled. Not to mention that you’re eighteen with a new career, surely you can see you shouldn’t be raising a child? Let alone one that isn’t your own?” Impa has barely finished the question before she’s realising that her fool-hearted sister won’t hear a word otherwise. Especially when she’s all but raising a child herself. “No, Purah, I won’t help you.”
“…no? What do you mean no? Impa, please, please I’m begging you–”
“You were going to send him back!” Impa shouts over her, wrenching her arm from her sister’s grasp before she can remember herself. “You were going to betray your King three months after his wife died and get yourself executed in the process because you were too damn stupid to do the right thing for once in your fucking life and not. Get. Attached!”
Chest heaving in the silence, Impa finally processes what she has just said. What she's confessed. Betrayal has twisted her sister’s features into an ugly expression she has never seen before. If it weren’t for the tears in her eyes, Impa would call it hate.
Maybe she should call it hate. Impa has, to her sister, done something terrible. In the silence of the night, she will undoubtedly agree with the assessment. It might be a secret to everyone, but to her? To her sister? A young, stolen, changeling child has been sentenced to a life enslaved to the will of a King that is not his own.
The triforce brand will never let him be freed even when his job is done.
“Purah–”
“Tell me you didn’t do this,” she whispers, lifting a shaking hand to ward her away when Impa makes to move closer. Her sleeve begins to fall from her fingers as they tremble. “Please, Impa, tell me it wasn’t you.”
“Purah…”
“Tell me!”
“I told the King I felt you had got too attached and that it might be best to separate you,” she explains through a dry mouth. Every step closer she takes, her sister takes another back. She reaches out anyway. “I didn't know when they were taking him, I wasn't told. Everyone is under orders to keep you apart. You must see that it’s for the best, Purah!”
“You did this. You did this to me, to him, it was you– you’re the reason they–”
Her sister stumbles over the rug, catches herself, and too late, the bruises decorating her fragile bones are clear to Impa’s eyes.
“Purah, what–”
What truly happened that day, Impa never learns. In the space of a breath between one word and the next, her sister vanishes from her reach completely.
“Purah!”
“Impa,” her puffy-eyed father greets. “Thank you for coming home.”
“You said it was an emergency.” Impa shakes off the rain and follows on his heels through the house. Her mother is pale and wan before the altar, but rises upon seeing her. A new candle has been lit. “Mother, are you okay? Is it grandmother? Has something happened?”
“No love, no your grandmother is fine. It’s your sis–” Mother’s breath catches brokenly, gaze returning to the altar.
“It’s Purah,” Father finishes for her. “We needed to talk to you about Purah.”
Impa goes cold, heart sinking. She knew it was coming, she did, but she thought she had more time before she would have to explain herself to the council. What they might make of her actions she truly couldn’t say. The council and its Chief are impartial. The only protection she has is that of her own word.
“She’s left the Kakariko Clan in favour of the Nomad’s Path,” Mother interrupts in a rush before Impa can find the right words to say. “She departed the very same day she announced it. We didn’t know until it was done.”
Her stomach drops and ice takes it’s place. Why would– Impa can’t bare to ask. The world has twisted, turned nonsensically from right to left and down to up until she has little idea of where she might find solid ground. Something has gone so terribly, terribly wrong.
Her mother looks away, exchanging a glance with Father that appears nervous.
“Purah came to us, and said that she wished to raise a grievance,” Mother finally says. “Nonsense, of course, teenage angst undoubtedly taken too far, but she was insistent. When I told her I wouldn’t hear it she left. Probably stayed with that Robbie boy for the night. The following morning she went to the council and said she was taking the Path. I… I didn't know until it was too late to do anything about it.”
“You did what?! ”
The world hasn’t seemed right, the song of of the land discordant and twisting, since that child arrived. It got worse when she’d had him and her sister separated, but now? Now it's like the foundation of everything she knows has been torn out from under her. Her mother has always been a stickler for protocol, for procedures, for following the rules to a letter, why wouldn’t she…
“Why would I need to?” Mother exclaims exasperatedly, turning on her heel to stalk across the room. Yet for all her dramatics, there’s a note of uncertainty. “You’re her sister, the future Chief, what could you have possibly done that is grievance worthy?”
Impa can only remain breathlessly silent in the face of that question. What could she have possibly done indeed?
Two and a half years after her sister was last seen upon leaving the Clan, Impa watches the first crack splinter across the twilight sky.
Her charge, the eight year old Princess she’s all cared for alone these last two years, steps away from the window with a look of resigned apprehension. She knows what is coming.
In the courtyard below, the child Impa helped remove all sense of self from continues his drills. He’s been named, and he still doesn't speak. She’s uncertain if he even can.
“When you discover what this truly cost,” Robbie had told her those years ago upon learning what had happened and leaving the Clan himself, “I hope it kills you.”
Looking between the two children irrevocably tied to a terrible fate and the distortion in the sky above, Impa can only imagine that it already has.
“Sound off, who’s here?” Warriors chokes out between gasps for air.
He’s normally unaffected by the portals but something about this one was resistant to their travel. Hauling himself to his feet, cursing quietly when he gets only two responses, he examines where they’ve landed through bleary eyes. They’re on an open plain, rich and lush with plant life that‘s overtaking the tumbled ruins scattered here and there. A large metal tower looms in the distance. There are more of them he can see even further away. This place seems enormous, he realises with a mild sense of alarm. How in the hells are they meant to find the others?
Twilight snarls suddenly, head jerking to the side. His eyes are locked onto the trees not twelve feet from where they landed. There’s something unnatural about him right now. Unsettling as it is, Warriors draws his sword.
“What is it?” He doesn’t get an answer. He resists the urge to strange him. “Twilight, is something there?”
“…No, ” Twilight responds at length. It sounds like it takes great effort to respond. “No danger, I think, s’just…”
“The magic of this place is weird and the land is screaming.” Legend interrupts him, sounding entirely nauseous. “It doesn’t feel safe. Something is wrong here… it’s like it’s been messed with? Or that something has meddled and it’s– fuck me…”
“It’s unsafe?!” Warriors asks sharply. “And what do you mean meddled?”
He doesn’t get an answer, the Vet’s too busy emptying his stomach again to reply. Twilight attends to him, features still so uncomfortably animalistic in a way he feels so guilty for disliking, and Warriors can only turn away. Wandering closer to the cliff edge in front of him, he immediately sees what could be the problem… or at least is a consequence of.
“Guys?” He calls back, suddenly deeply concerned for the safety of them all. “Slight issue here…”
There’s cracks in the sky, gaping holes in the ground, the castle is pieces and he sees no sign of settlements or life outside of wilderness. Did Ganondorf win? Has the world ended?
…Is anyone even still alive?
A giant rumble echoes through the ground. Overhead a crack splits the sky and a beast– giant wings and fanned tail, too far away to see clearly– swoops through it to spiral overhead. Behind him Twilight curses heavily.
“We need to find cover,” he says quickly. “We need to find cover now.”
“So…” Wind says slowly. “This is new.”
Staring at a glowing blue rabbit-thing with eyes far too sharp for it to be anything other than a clever little beastie, Wind wonders whether it could maybe tell him where anyone is. He is very, very lost; the sky might actually be falling; and he’s hungry.
The rabbit opens its mouth and swallows a passing bushy-tailed critter whole. It has fangs?! Sitting back on its haunches, the teethie-beastie (that is definitely not a vegetarian like Legend and Four are, like it's meant to be) blinks at him slowly.
“What the fuck,” Wind whines to himself as he backs away from the creature who might still be hungry whilst praying it’s not a pack hunter. “Why is this my life right now?”
“That,” Four spits as he decides that taking shelter behind Time is a reasonable action to take, “is big enough to eat me in one go. Let’s go.”
Unfortunately, leaving their highly unfortunate landing spot draws attention. The volley of curse words that Time releases upon the Lynel spitting fire at them is impressive, inspiring and very, very bloody reasonable.
“Why,” Legend cries in outrage, “is there a gleeok out in broad fucking daylight?!”
“Let's avoid the murder hole,” Wind whispers quietly as he skirts around the pitch-black nothingness. “And find another way to get the glowing tower of hopefully not doom…”
“Twilight.” Warriors presses his hands together and lifts them to his lips, and Legend wonders if this might just be the final straw. “Twilight why, exactly, did the shadows turn you into your wolf friend?”
“Dark world form I guess,” he shrugs since Warriors is staring at the wolf like wolves can talk. “Involuntary transformations are a bitch though, are you in pain?”
Twilight shrugs back, a very strange thing to see on a canine but still translatable, and sits back to scratch at his ear.
“Deities above,” Warriors groans. “I hate this place.”
“It’s Wind!” Four tugs at Time’s hair sharply. “Look!”
Time looks and is sprinting before he can think to do otherwise. He’s jolting Four’s cracked ribs with every step, his own burns protesting loudly, but he can’t bring himself to care. Not when the teenager is sat alone on the steps of the tower all bloodied and bruised and exhausted looking. Four, clinging to his neck, doesn’t seem to mind much either. Wind looks up when he calls out, stumbling down the steps to stagger towards them.
“Wind…”
“A rabbit ate an animal, Time!” He bursts into overwrought tears, words garbled against his chest. “They’re not meant to do that! And a dragon nearly threw me into a murder hole and the bokoblins have fucking bomb barrels and–”
Lowering them to the ground as Wind narrates the last three days, Time scans the area for any sign of the others as Four slides off his back with a groan. It’s a futile effort. All there is to see are the same wilderness and ruins they’ve been suffering through. It’s with a sinking sense of dread that he thinks on what this could possibly mean for the world… and for them.
Nothing good, he imagines. Nothing good at all.
“Look,” Hyrule whispers, tugging hard at Sky’s arm. “Look, Sky, it’s an actual person?”
Sky turns sharply. It’s been four days with no one but them (and endless monsters and giant wounds in the earth and cracks like bloody maws splintering across the sky), so there truly…? There is. There through the trees is a figure at the edge of a lake, drowned by dappled shadows of heavy canopies, and seemingly at ease. There’s something…
“Wait.” he urges. Hyrule glares– they’re all too aware of the risk of the unknown– but Sky’s a little too wound up to even consider apologising.
Drawing closer on cautious feet shows his instincts were right– this figure isn’t a Hylian. They’re not exactly threatening though, far from it in fact. The boy (Sky thinks, hoping it's not offensive for him to assume since they're like no-one he's seen before) dances around on light feet through overgrown grass, dandelion fluff kicked into the air with each step and wave of tail. He’s grinning wildly, sharp incisors shamelessly bared to glint in the dappled sunlight.
Rather adorable actually.
Mid-spin, the boy catches sight of them and freezes. The previous momentum forces him to throw his arms out, giggling as he catches himself. For all he appears to be a teenager his behaviour is somewhat child-like. There’s also something– familiar about him. The boy speaks before Sky can contemplate that further.
“Hi!” Blue-orange bright eyes examine them closely, mischievous glee belying caution. “Can I help you?”
Then the boy shrinks. Suddenly airborne he zips across the flowers to sit before Sky’s face, rotating slowly through the air even as he maintains eye-contact. For all Sky is startled, he can’t bring himself to fear the now imp-like teenager. Not with how Fi is heating his back under the covering.
Link. The realisation tugs at his lips. What an unusual brother they've found.
“Banana, perhaps…?” The floating boy taunts, a hand waving what Sky can only assumes is a food in front of his face. It’s a skilful lure, effortless in execution– or it would be, at least, if not for…
“What’s a banana?”
The imp freezes mid-rotation. The yellow thing falls to the ground, Rulie tensing as though to grab it – food has been a little scarce lately– but resists. The teen rolls from his upside down seat onto his stomach, chin resting on his arms and head tilted curiously. Sky bites back a coo at how adorable this now pint-sized kid is. Don’t be rude.
“Not Yiga then, huh? Interesting.” The last word comes out like a purr. Sky doesn’t think he much likes his new-found little brother sounding like that.
“…what’s a Yiga?” Hyrule asks meekly. His cheeks are flushed as he stares at the imp. Sky decides then and there he is not going to look into that.
“Traitorous Sheikah that wanna kill anyone who stands in the Calamity’s way,” the boy shrugs. Sky doesn't entirely buy the nonchalance, not with the tensed muscles and still wary gaze tightening his frame. “Mainly me and Zel now, cos y’know, the whole chosen hero and the princess thing.”
“Chosen… wait, are you Link?”
There’s a pause before Link grins wider, expression almost disbelieving at the question. He looks greatly amused– why?
“I am he, yes. Now…” the imp is once more Hylian shaped, albeit not Hylian coloured, and nose-to-nose with the travelling hero. Hyrule squeaks. A wicked smile slowly seeps across Link’s face, head tilting slightly. “What did you want to do with me, hmm?”
Sky turns to hide a laugh when Hyrule goes bright red. He wasn’t going to think about it, but that is just funny.
His moment of distraction costs them. In an instant he has a blade pressed to his throat. Orange-blue has darkened toward blood amber and storm clouds, good-natured humour gone, hair writhing like furious snakes, and Sky doesn’t know why, not until–
Something vaguely hand-like forms from his hair to smoothly pull Sky’s sailcloth aside to display the Master Sword. Shit.
“After all,” Link murmurs darkly. “You do have my blade.”