Chapter 1: Light
Chapter Text
"Princess, if you close your eyes and stare through the wall, you can see the shadow of a temple identical to this one in nearly every respect."
It is an odd way for Impa to start a conversation. But given the circumstances, we grasp at any straw we can. There is nothing more boring than a dubbing (besides, of course, a coronation, but the next crowning ceremony I have to dread is my own). So it seems natural for her to want to dangle the bait of a tale before me. I am always eager for a conversation, and seeing as we are seated in the back of the temple, far from the inane mutterings of my visibly bored father and the poor knight-to-be kneeling before him, it is unlikely we will be bothered. Even during a lengthy and pompous ceremony such as a knighting, few people would dare tell a princess to shut up, even when they should.
"What sort of temple?" I ask. My words emerge as a series of constricted sighs, but Impa knows exactly how to interpret my "adolescent grunts" as she calls them. She grins, white tattoos wrinkling under her shining eyes. It is the wrinkle of a storyteller on the cusp of a tale.
"It is a temple built of light itself," she answers. "Its walls are ivory, its floors are the whitest marble. The altar is a pillar of sunlight and the pews are the purest sea foam."
A heavy, helmeted head in the seat directly in front of us turns slowly toward us like a creaking weathervane. The boundless, concerned frown of Viscen, captain of the guard, sits atop that shining vane like an accusation. "Lady Impa, if you please." His drone rivals my father's.
I should mention that although few people are willing to tell a princess to shut her mouth, they do not extend the same courtesy to her nursemaid.
"As you command, captain." Impa's narrow brown face hovers close to mine as Viscen returns his attention, if silent head-nodding and an occasional drifting-off can be called that, back to the altar at the temple's dais. "Princess," she whispers (I can hardly call it a whisper—the sound is low, and to any other ears than mine resembles the hungry growl of a dog). "Perhaps you'd like a better view of the ceremony."
"I always appreciate a better view," I say. Viscen does not turn his head to watch us go, and it is all the better. A man of such pure heart does not need to see such a wicked simper on the face of the crown's only heir.
Whenever Impa offers a view, she delivers. As soon as we sneak out the temple's doors, she lifts me almost completely onto her shoulder and starts her way up a crumbling pillar. She spends a moment making sure that no passersby will see her carry the fully gowned and half-grown scion of the nation's royal family on her shoulder like a sack of pilfered vegetables. I like the way she carries me when she climbs. I can pretend she's kidnapping me, and according to all the stories I've read in my family's library, that seems to be a princess's only function (besides giving birth, of course). If Impa helps me serve my purpose by hauling me over her back and into places I am not normally allowed to venture, all the better. I hope no prince scrounges up the audacity to rescue me.
When Impa reaches the tiled ridge of the Temple of Time, she sets me on my white-clad feet, never releasing me completely. Worse things would happen to her than a mere firing if she were to let me tumble to my death. She holds my gloved hands steady as we walk across the spine of the temple, under the vast, ebullient Lanayru-blue sky. We raise our eyes to the cloudless distance as we come to a stop above the temple's radiant rose window, glowing in a kaleidoscope of colors. Here, Impa loosens her hold on my hands, and I teeter at the end of the building's solid face, staring down at the gardens below. I love the way the wind tickles the tiny hairs on the back of my neck, the way it billows through my dress and pulls at my clothes as if daring me to let it lift me to the sky like a wayward leaf of paper. Sometimes I do give into its will—allowing it to buoy me toward the mouth of the sky's endless blue dome, but whenever my toes leave the ground Impa is there, grasping my wrists and securing me earthward. She says I am not ready to learn such magic (I tell her I already clearly know it, but she does not find that argument particularly persuasive).
"I believe you owe me a story," I say, curling my toes in my ivory shoes, as if they could hold me to the safety of the temple roof.
"I do," Impa replies. She twists her body and suddenly she is crouching beside me, in that idiosyncratic Sheikah way. They do not, apparently, let themselves recline fully—it is always as if they have somewhere to spring, something on which to pounce. I sit beside her and smooth out my dress against the forceful air (in vain, of course), tucking a stray hair back into my windswept headdress. "You probably already know much about the temples of this country," Impa starts. "Since you've read more books than there are hairs on your head."
"There is little else for me to do." She knows this, everyone does. There are only two things I do with any regularity: read, and dream—the former to the general approval of my father and all the royal retainers, the latter to their exasperation. I'm sure they would rather I not speak of the things I see at night.
"But do you know that the oldest is not within the borders of our land?"
"The oldest meaning this one? Impa, we are sitting on it."
My insolence does not aggrieve Impa. She laughs where a wiser woman would scold.
"Assuredly, my princess. We are sitting on it. For the temple I speak of is in this very spot. We are in its shadow, hearing its echo, sensing it around us when we cannot see it. Like I said, it is made of light."
"And how is that possible?" I ask. I do not doubt the veracity of Impa's claim—she has never told me a lie (odd, for having come from a tribe known for their deceit), I'm merely curious for an explanation. "It does not take a natural philosopher to know that you can't lay a brick of light."
"True, but this temple has no bricks—and at its founding, no masons to lay them. The story of the Temple of Light is really the story of the creation of the world itself."
I raise an eyebrow. She knows to take it as a sign of interest—she knows all my adolescent signatures.
"I would assume you'd like to know at least something of the nativity of the country you were born to rule." Her face of incredulity rivals my own. "If not, I fear for the future of this nation." I take a moment to roll my eyes. "So sit and listen, child, and learn."
*
Long ago, and this goes without saying, the world was made. There are disagreements as to how or when, and no one to this day has ever come up with a plausible why, but it is generally agreed upon that it was the doing of three sisters: Din, born of the bright sun, Farore, born of the silver moon, and Nayru, born of those endless stars in the void beyond our reckoning. Din with her dancing feet stomped the first craters and mountains of the world, summoning geysers of flame and rock to the beat of her drums. It was on a whim that she began her dance, and she usually thought to unmake such projects as planets or shooting stars (for every one was tiny and insignificant before her might), but she was particularly fond of this one. She looked over the bare red earth and decided she would ask her sister Farore for her opinion.
"It is decent, but I can improve upon it," Farore said. With a few trills of her cosmic flute, she summoned life from the earth. First the vast waters of the sea poured from fissures in the ground, and the smallest, lowliest creatures flitted through its depths. Then the strong forests thrust from the hard soil, shading the lands from the sun and covering the earth with green. Then the beasts crawled from the shadows, long-toothed and fierce. Then the birds tore across the sky, calling love and fury in the silent air.
Farore and Din looked well upon their work. They saw how the animals soared and ran, swam and burrowed, and were quite pleased with themselves. But it wasn't long before the brilliant world they had created began to wither and die. Birds fell from the sky in great black blankets, trees rotted from their roots and flowers wilted; even the greatest beasts fell to the ground and could not get back up. So the two sisters sought the counsel of the third and wisest among them.
"You fools!" Nayru howled when she heard what they had done (for she was most displeased with the loss of life; above all else she values living, feeling things and cannot stand to see them suffer). "Life cannot survive without laws to govern it."
(Wait, Impa.
What is it, child? Does this story displease you?
No, but how could Nayru know what life needs if it was the first time she'd seen it?
Nayru's wisdom and love spread far, through the ages and through all spaces of the world. She knows many things her sisters do not, and that we mortals never will. Are you satisfied?
Not at all. But continue.)
So Nayru created all the unspoken and unbreakable rules of Nature—she put in place all the cycles of the world; the laws of life and death, the turn of the earth that separates day from night, the force that exchanges water between the sky and the ocean, the seasons that bring forth the blossoms in spring and sleepy snows in winter. Governed by these wise laws and cycles, the plants and animals thrived in the new world, and the three goddesses sat back and viewed their work with satisfaction.
"Never before have we created a work of art like this," Farore said.
"True, but there is something missing," Din said, for she was rarely satisfied with anything.
"Perhaps a being with which we can converse," suggested Nayru. "It does us some good to look upon what we made, but of what use is it to us if it is empty of intelligence?"
The others agreed. They had been each other's only company for millennia; a few new faces could do no harm.
"Let us improve on the animal that resembles us most," Farore proposed. Her favorite creature was by far the monkey—not only did it share the most physical characteristics with the goddesses, it had a cleverness and humor all three found charming. So the others acquiesced to her suggestion.
"Let us give it thought, so that it might speak and joke with us," said Farore.
"And give it ability and strength so it might impress us," said Din.
"And give it love and kindness so that it might endear itself to us," said Nayru.
So Din pulled clay from the earth and mounded it into a long shape, taller than Farore's monkey, and smooth-skinned, but with the same five fingers and expressive face. Farore pulled blue from the sky and yellow from the prairie grasses and made eyes and hair for the creature, shaping the cheekbones, the lips, and the finer details of the face. Nayru wove a soul from her mystic loom and imbued the clay and straw with thought, with a sense of being that was beyond the simple functions of the body.
When the creature woke before them (it was a woman, of course, molded after the sisters' own image), they looked upon her with delight. The first woman looked back at her creators and when she smiled, the goddesses knew they had done well.
The woman lived under their care for years; she laughed with them, learned from them, ate the fruit and vegetables they provided (for it was unthinkable for Nayru to permit the woman to eat other living, breathing creatures), and grew wise and strong and brave.
But she also grew lonely. She saw how the animals of the forest paired off to face the trials of birth and death together—she saw litters of wolf pups born to proud parents, she saw the families of monkeys groom and dote on one another, she saw the effort of mother and father birds building their nests, and longed for a companion of her own.
So the goddesses, seeing her so disconsolate, scrounged what materials from the earth they could find and molded her a friend and lover. When he rose to life and took her in his arms, the goddesses saw the joy on the woman's face and knew they had done right by their creation. They smiled secretly at one another and quietly stole into the night, leaving the two alone.
But they returned the day after, and the day after that, sharing laughter and philosophy with the pair, until the woman grew big about the waist and the two became three.
"By the stars," Din bellowed with joy when she laid eyes upon the woman with her child, "our creation has become a creator!"
"And without our help," Farore said (with that proud sort of sadness of a parent for an accomplished child).
"It will not do well to have them raise a babe in the wilderness," Nayru said. "For it is soft and helpless, and the creatures of the forest may seek an easy meal."
"And we cannot kill the wildness in those creatures," Din said. "It would be unfair to their natures."
"Then let us make for this family a house, and bless it with walls of light, with a fruitful garden and all the privacy they might desire," Farore said.
So the goddesses built for the family a sanctuary, where they could raise their child in safety until he was strong and grown and could hold his own against the wild. They blessed the house and its members; to the mother Nayru gave wisdom, so that she might guide her growing family judiciously into the future and care for their wellbeing. To the father Din gave power, so he would have the strength to protect and support them, to upkeep their house and serve their needs. And to the son, who was still then a babe, Farore gave the courage to explore the world he had been born into and learn its secrets.
Years passed and the family lived under the goddesses' blessings. The boy grew to a strong lad, fast and clever and brave, but he longed for company besides his parents and the lonely wilderness. He desired a wife of his own, so the goddesses' made another woman for him; his younger sisters desired husbands, so they made more men from the earth. In turn, it came to pass that the children's children also wanted lovers for themselves, so the goddesses built as many as was needed, until the families grew big and far enough apart that they no longer desired the goddesses' help to find love.
(This is turning out to be a much different tale than the ones the priests told me.
You didn't think there was only one, did you? Hundreds of different accounts of the world's creation are told all over Hyrule—remind me to tell you the Goron version sometime. It is strange indeed. But for now, let me continue.)
The first mother and father died, as all people do, but they passed on the goddesses' blessings to their children, and their children's children, and so on into the future. With the virtues of power, wisdom and courage the family grew to be a great society of builders, inventors and adventurers. Cities rose from the earth, villages sprang up in the remotest corners of the world, wide roads split the dark forests, and bridges spanned the wildest rivers.
The sisters were pleased with the inventiveness and tenacity of their creations, but because the creatures were so successful, so prolific and so filled with longings and ideas, the goddesses found themselves spread thin across nations, unable to solve every skirmish and dispute between their millions of peoples. And the people had little time for gods, either. With each passing year, their devotees, the ones who sought to walk and talk with them in the solitude of nature, declined in number. Temples rose like spring flowers, each blooming with a different sermon, a different statue or dedication to one sister or another, but few men or women bothered to wander the forests of the land to actually seek out the goddesses themselves.
As devotion to their idols increased, wars broke out in their names. Brothers and sisters cut each other down according to the wills of goddesses they had never spoken to, though they could've if they'd only tried. The world had descended into chaos without the sisters' direct guidance, and it seemed, for the first time, that their creation had been a mistake.
But there was one man who still sought them out. Rauron was his name, and he came from a wealthy family in the most luxurious of cities, but while many of his kin concerned themselves only with worldly things, he preferred the company of the goddesses. He came to them later in life, after he'd had a taste of the meaninglessness of mundane things: he had left the city, left his home and his children to seek them out, though he admitted more than once he had not believed he could find them. He proved himself an astute and eager learner, a kind and loyal man, clever and filled with humor and a love of beauty. When the three sisters convened in the deep forest grove where they had created the first woman, he met them there with the fate of the world on his mind.
"My Ladies of the Void," he addressed them. "There are a great many men and women in this world, so it is no surprise that quarrels should arise between them. But few of them mean any harm, my goddesses, for they are your creations and each possesses a portion of your goodness. They are merely at odds because they have different ways of worshipping you.
"Some say that Din is the greatest sister because she was the first to mold the clay of the world, and hers is the foundation the other two merely built upon. Some say Farore is the greatest because she gave life to all the earth—but of course life will consider its own creation the most important. Yet others say Nayru is the greatest since all life would be meaningless without the natural laws of the world."
"But we three are equal," Din said. "Surely those that still take the time to consider our teachings know this."
"Time has passed," said the man, "and your teachings have been told and retold many times in many different ways. There are plenty who still believe you do not exist, since they have never seen you. You must provide the people with proof of your strength, of your equity and love; you must give them a symbol so they may rally behind it as one. A symbol that embodies your three virtues of power, wisdom and courage."
(I can tell where this is going.
So you can. You wear that symbol now, as did all your predecessors.)
The goddesses thought of a symbol and created a great golden power, a representation of all three of them and their respective virtues. They thought up a great triangle, itself made of three triangles; symmetrical so that at any inversion one goddess may be on the top and be other two on the left and right. Into this golden artifact they imbued their power, so that all shall know the presence of the goddesses was still strong in the world.
They bestowed this power upon Rauron so that he might carry it back to his people, and house it in that great Temple of Light that was once the abode of the first woman and her family. The man bowed his head in deference and took the golden power in his hands. He promised he would deliver it to the temple, where it belonged, to remind the people of the blessings the goddesses had bestowed upon them. He left the forest with every intention of restoring the world's faith in its creators.
But the power was too great and too holy for even a man like Rauron to resist. It was no later than he touched the glorious artifact that he was overcome with the desire to take it for himself. For when he held it in his hands, the power of the goddesses themselves flowed through his own mortal veins, and he could not bear the thought of parting with it. So he did not take it to the Temple of Light, but kept it for himself, betraying the goddesses' trust in him.
(But Impa, what sort of goddess allows herself to be tricked by a mortal man? They had to have been smarter than that.
Shush, irreverent girl. The gods are people, as much as we are. They make mistakes just as we do. Take one look at a like-like and tell me it is not an egregious error of creation.
I suppose you do have a point. Go on.)
Though Rauron had promised to deliver the golden power to the Temple of Light, he fled with it to the farthest corner of the world. He hid himself among the shadows, so the sisters would not see him as he took the power into himself and emerged from the darkness with all the might of a god.
With the golden artifact on his side he had no difficulty forcing the world under his control. He established himself ruler of the land, crushing all who resisted him under his feet, until he rose to absolute power.
The goddesses, seeing his betrayal, first mourned the loss of their most devoted friend, then chastised themselves for trusting a mortal man with such a dangerous task as transporting the embodiment of their power. Then, they grew angry. They descended upon the city where he had built his palace, and lay siege to it.
The war between them was as one would expect a war between gods to be—their weapons were the rain and thunder, the wild gales and the spurting smoke of volcanoes. Their battle scourged the land; crops failed, civilians fled, forests burned and rivers ran dry, the sun refused to rise for days on end. But in the end, the three goddesses triumphed over their betrayer; and it was with a great sadness weighing on all their hearts (for they mourned the needless loss of land and life) that they seized their power once more.
Deprived of the golden artifact, Rauron fell to his knees again a mortal man, weak and trembling like a frightened animal before the might of his goddesses. As the golden light fled from him, so did his ambition, his greed, and he lowered his head before his creators in shame and despair. He begged for forgiveness, tore at his clothes and hair and tears poured from his eyes, and the sisters knew his regret was genuine.
"This is too dangerous an artifact to remain in the hands of any mortal," Din said.
"There are others, like you, who would seek its power," Nayru added. "And they will not be so contrite when they misuse it."
"We should not like to wage war again on our own creation," Farore said. "Therefore we must seal it away so none but the worthiest may lay their hands on it."
"Let me guard it, my goddesses," Rauron begged. "Let it reside in the temple of the first woman and her family, and let me watch over it so that none may make the mistake I made."
The goddesses knew not to err again in giving him power over the artifact, for he had proven once to be unworthy of it. But they knew the man was genuine and eager to redeem himself.
"Rauron," Din started, and the other goddesses let her speak for them. "We once counted you among our closest friends, we trusted you with our most precious treasure, and you betrayed that trust. Because of you, this land is scorched and barren, its people miserable and weary. You have hurt many more than just us, and for that you must suffer punishment.
"But we will also allow you to fulfill your wish for redemption. We will allow you to guard this golden power of ours, as you wanted. But we will seal the doors of the Temple of Light so none with ill intent may pass. You are hereby cursed from this day forth to reside in that temple and watch over this artifact, never leaving, never again seeing the green fields or the light of the stars. Never again will you speak to us, never again shall you see your children or your comrades. And when the time comes that you die, your nearest progeny will suffer the same fate."
Rauron bowed his head and accepted their words with a heavy heart. "It is a noble fate," he said, and his tears were pure, his resolve strong.
So the goddesses sealed both the golden power and its penitent protector into the Temple of Light, where he might meditate on his mistakes and grow to be a wise sage—or, if he fell again into greed, the doors might keep him trapped and harmless to the outside world.
When the goddesses again looked upon the vast lands of their creation, they wept for the loss. In the great battle between them and their betrayer, the fields and forests had turned to ashes, the lakes were nothing more than empty craters, the animals and people had fled to the far corners of the earth to escape their godly wrath.
"Look what we have done," Nayru cried. "Rauron has received his fitting punishment, but what about ours?"
"We will ask forgiveness of the creatures of this destroyed land," Farore said. "We will make for them a new home, and remove ourselves from it."
"No longer shall we walk among our people and converse with them," Din growled. "No longer will we show our faces. Let them believe what they will and worship us if they want, but we are not fit to know them as friends."
(Gods who think themselves unfit for worship... That is certainly not the way the priests speak of them.
This is the Sheikah version of this myth. We have a different view of the gods than your Hylian priests, and much different stories about them. They are fallible to us—as any god who made this world should be...
Impa? Don't drift off now, I feel we are so close to the end.
Of course, my princess.)
So the goddesses gathered what remained of their once-great people, and the animals and seeds of the plants so that they might regrow in a different, better land. The people were all too thankful the battles had ended, and accepted the goddesses' gift of a new kingdom, one with only an echo of their powerful influence. The sisters were content to remain silent as the people flourished in their new world, and a little country called Hyrule was born.
Before the goddesses fled from this world and back to the burnt wastes of the old country, now called the Sacred Realm, each left a token of her kindness behind—friends to the Hyrulean people to keep them company in place of their goddesses. From Farore's deft hands came the mysterious Kokiri, from Nayru's watery loom came the lovely Zora, and from the strong clay of Din came the honorable Gorons; each tribe an asset to our great nation. With this final tribute, the goddesses disappeared back to the void, silent and impartial to our fate, leaving us with only the guidance of their teachings and the legend of a great golden power, told and retold through the ages.
In the very spot where the goddesses left the world, the Temple of Time was built, to both commemorate the pilgrimage from one land to another, and to house the door that may one day lead us back home, back to the fields and valleys of the Sacred Realm, where flowers and forests might even now be regrowing over the burnt and desolate earth. The temple also houses the key to that door, so that if we ever prove ourselves worthy to return, the Sage of Light will open it for us and let us gaze upon the goddesses' golden power. Then, he will be free of his prison and his duty, and we will be free of all the vices that plague us. But until that day, we must rely only on legends to carry us through the night, and to guide us back toward the light of the morning.
*
This night, as with all nights, I am plagued by terrifying dreams. While I can usually suffer through them on my own, clutching my sheets to my chin and assuring myself that I am simply crazy, that what I see is not real, I cannot do that tonight. So like I did when I was a tiny child, I seek out Impa.
She is where she always is, in her humble bed in her humble room—the same room where all the princesses' nursemaids have slept for centuries. I think it does not become her—a warrior, a woman powerful and adept, sleeping like a servant in servant's quarters. But she is my servant, by some joke of fate. Gods knew what the woman was thinking when she agreed to degrade herself like this. And now I am going to degrade her further, but with this abject fear rising inside me, I cannot help it.
I whisper her name and she wakes, uneasily propping herself on one strong elbow. She says nothing as I crawl to her, pressing my face into her collarbone and clinging to her waist. She just pulls the sheets over us both and holds me, as she always had since my mother died. There is no judgement from Impa—we both know I am far too old for this, but my heart will not stop pounding in my chest, the sweat will not cease dripping from my forehead.
"What did you dream of tonight?" she asks.
"Rauron, from the story you told me yesterday. Only it wasn't Rauron. He was dark, evil-eyed, and he is pacing around in the western tower—I've seen him."
"Oh, Zelda, I should know better than to fill your head with stories like that," Impa mutters. I think she is talking to herself in half-sleep, rather than to me.
I begin to cry, and with the first tears come the flow of embarrassment at my position—a girl on the eve of her womanhood, crying like a baby in the arms of her nursemaid. "Do you not believe me?" I stutter (the day Impa stops believing me is the day I die, of this I am certain).
"Of course I believe you," she says, but I am sure it is only to appease me. "Tell me about this other Rauron you saw."
I settle against her shoulder; she is always warm, always gentle with me, though I know she could snap me in half like a dry twig. "He was a cloud on the horizon, coming from the west..." I close my eyes and recall the man I had seen at court several times. "He is your old comrade, the one from the War. The man from the desert."
"The Gerudo king?" Impa starts, half-sitting—I think I have struck a nerve, or roused her anger somehow. I know they had fought alongside one another during the Civil War; she may not believe he was the dark cloud of my dreams.
"Zelda... are you sure?" She asks not with the malice of doubt, but with a startling sincerity.
"No..." I answer. I cannot lie to her. I am never sure of the nonsensical things I see in my dreams. "But there is a ray of light that splits the cloud... maybe like Rauron he wants to redeem himself."
Impa settles back down beside me, running her fingers through my sweaty hair. "There is nothing to redeem him from," she says. "He is blameless, as of yet." She kisses me on the forehead and I push my face against her strong neck, hoping to disappear entirely into her warm arms. "For now, child, I will protect you from your dreams. Everything will be all right. Everything will be just fine..." She kisses me again and rests her head against the thin pillow. Her arms loosen a little around me and she falls into a calm sleep, while I, mess that I am, lie awake, borne up and away from dreams by my own anxiety.
I know, somehow, it is the first time Impa has ever lied to me.
Chapter 2: Forest
Chapter Text
My father is found in a heap of silken robes, collapsed beside his throne with his throat cut. My tutors lock themselves in the library, but they burn anyway, along with the thousands of scrolls and books. Viscen's pure heart bleeds out in a back alley, spear still clutched in his hand. And I, coward that I am, ride to safety, clutched in the arms of my only surviving nursemaid.
But I am too angry to feel sadness—I am too furious with myself for having seen this coming and been able to do nothing. I am angry with Impa for failing as I did to prevent this tragedy. And I am angry—yes, I am angry with my father, too, for not having had the strength or foresight to defend his own throne.
But my anger means nothing; it is only the useless turmoil of a helpless girl. All I can do is let Impa carry me from the ruins of my previous life as the Rauron from my dreams, the evil-eyed pretender that had sworn fealty to my family, burns my home in his wake. All I can do is look behind me at the shrinking castle, all I can do is throw a gift to the last hope of our salvation, a boy I barely know who stands bewildered at the town's moat, watching our horse kick up dust as we gallop into obscurity.
Impa now stands beside me, shadows of the forest darkening her brown face, deepening her already terrifying frown. As we stare into the open, hungry mouth of the forest, I feel her nails dig into my palm in unconscious agitation. I can sense the creeping, almost living darkness of this place reach for the hem of my ripped and stained dress. I feel half-compelled to let it eat me alive. At least then this day would end.
"It is through here," Impa whispers. Even the slightest breath sounds like a gale in this obscene forest. It is too silent; no songs of birds, no shuddering of leaves in the wind or animals creeping through the grass. She has led me through the horrifying maze of roots and brush without fear, though with more than a little caution. Gods forbid Impa show trepidation—the moment she does, I know we are both done for.
She is not afraid, merely unsure. As she guides me, her large hand clutching my wrist, through the labyrinth of trees and water of a dark grove, I cannot help but watch the wide frown on her face. She is as cross with me as I am with her. She saw me throw my family's beloved treasure—that tiny blue ocarina—into the moat behind us as we rode away from the smoke and chaos of Castletown, away from the corpse of my father and the burning castle. How could she have known what I had; that another had more use of this instrument than either of us? Even I did not know how I came to that conclusion, but I cannot explain it to her now any more than I could then. She knows she does not have the time to chastise or punish me, so she stays silent, though I cannot tell if the fuel of her anger has burned out or is merely simmering inside her.
"Are we... are we going to hide here?" I stutter.
"No," she answers. She does not look at me. "At least not for long. We are going to retrieve something that may be of use to us. My people left it here years ago, in preparation for an incident like this."
It doesn't surprise me to learn the Sheikah would plan for a day like today. Even before the butchery the Civil War brought, they were half-buried in our country's history of greed and hatred—if anyone could predict Hyrule's day of reckoning, it would be them. Only the Sheikah could find truth in the darkness, look at the black and endless horizon of the future and make out the silhouette of annihilation. It didn't help them escape their end, but if I am lucky, it will help me escape mine.
Impa and I enter something of a courtyard, small and bathed in the green-tinted light of the woods. I would never expect to see a man-made structure this deep in the forest, but here it is—four walls, a decorative platform, a collapsed length of crumbled, impassable stairs leading up to some sort of gateway. It has no door, but the greenish darkness emanating from the stones seems to comprise a foreboding enough barrier. "Wait here," Impa says. I do not want to wait here, but she lifts me up and sets me on the nearest stump. She moves me sternly, as one might move an animal (and certainly not a princess), so I just stiffen, letting her position me on the wood. "The beasts and fiends of the forest will not dare to come here, so you'll be safe," she tells me. "As long as you do not move from this spot." She lifts her head and glances about us, at the flitting orbs of insect-light, at the shuddering trees and waving leaves. "If you do, you will not find the way back here."
I nod. I almost reach out for her as she slinks away, but I clench my fists in my lap, pinching them with my legs to stop their incessant shaking. Impa lifts herself up the vines on the wall, creeps along its edge and throws herself toward the broken stairs, landing gracefully on the platform before the stone passageway. She turns and narrows her eye at me, as if she can rivet me here with a look, before she disappears into the darkness.
It isn't a second after she leaves that my own solitude crashes over me like water. I suddenly can't breathe, and I feel like a sacrifice under the gaze of the old forest, sitting on this stump like an offering sitting on a temple dais. I hear shuffles and scrapes in the nooks and crannies of the courtyard, I start to see shapes move against the wall, long and nefarious. It is too dark under this dense forest canopy to truly tell if night has fallen, so I am not sure if the sudden darkness is natural or just a product of my eternally overactive imagination. But I swear I can see the long outlines of familiar bodies—the bell shapes of ladies' dresses, the simple caps of my maids, the hunchback of the old librarian… I think I see my father, bent over as if in pain, and behind him—
I close my eyes and bite my lip. A cry rises and dies in my throat, and all that emerges is a soft, high-pitched whine, like that of a lost dog. I shake and shut my eyes and wish with every forsaken inch of my being to be somewhere else, to be safe, to erase the events of this day and wake up in Impa's arms, where the only thing I have to fear is the uneasiness of my own dreams.
But when I open them again, I am still in the wooded courtyard, alone except for the horrifying sounds of creeping life around me—even the light-tipped insects have flitted to safety from the oncoming darkness. But I stay strong, I stay silent, I stay on the stump, and I wait. The shapes continue to flicker around me, and I clench my jaw, summoning Impa back to me in my frantic mind. A few shadows pass by me, reaching out to grasp the hem of my dress, so I raise my knees to my chin and shrink into a ball, hoping they will pass by without noticing me. But the shadows only circle faster, deeper, crawling toward me like the darkness of my own dreams. I hear music—the distant, fluttering notes of an ocarina, as if the forest itself is chastising me for losing our family's treasure—and I see a flicker of green among the shadows, a white face, bare legs, I see the boy who had come too late, I see—
Impa. Thank all the gods, I see Impa. She reappears on the ledge of the broken stairwell, and when she steps into the courtyard, all the shadows disappear, undulating and slinking away as if in deference to her. She leaps off the ledge and lands at the courtyard's center, near the decorative platform, and the malevolent silhouettes disappear, replaced by the quiet, greenish hues of dusk. I rush from my stump to throw myself into her arms, but there is something in my way—a golden lyre, browned with age and strung with old gut strings. I skid to a stop and she extends it to me in offering.
"Seeing as you have given up one instrument, I have brought you another," she says. "The years have not been kind to it, but if anyone can play it back to health, it is you."
I reach out and take the thing in my hands, surprised at how cozily it falls into my grip. It feels right—the weight, the shape, everything about it seems oddly comfortable, though I have never played an instrument like this before. Of course, any princess can play the ocarina and the harp, can fumble her way through an organ piece or two, but never before have I seen a lyre of this shape anywhere in the castle. "Why… whose is this…" I start, but I can't quite form words over the strange friendliness with which the instrument greets me.
"It's yours now," Impa says. She lowers her eyes and her face falls with it. "Zelda… I know this will be difficult to hear, especially after the tragedies of today. But you must listen with a wise heart and an open mind." She pauses for an infinite, nerve-racking moment. "You are no longer princess of this kingdom."
My breath shouldn't stop cold, my throat shouldn't constrict as it does. I have known this for hours now—for months, counting the intuition my dreams have given me—but hearing it aloud for the first time, hearing the confirmation of my father's murder and my throne's usurping, hearing that it had not been simply a nightmare, seems to destroy the internal dam that had held back the day's emotions. I burst into tears, clutching my new lyre to my chest. The water runs down my face in an unstoppable torrent, but my weeping is silent—my eyes are still on Impa, my mind and heart still ready. I can listen, I can still think clearly despite it.
"No doubt the usurper will come looking for you. But he will not find us here tonight, and he will not find us in the future. Not until we have the strength to defeat him." She crosses her arms, a steeled frown shielding her face. "Zelda… long have you told me you wanted to learn the arts of my people. Now is the time to prove your conviction."
I swallow a sob and nod vigorously. It's all I can do at this point. It has been my dream for years, ever since Impa came into my life. Though I would've rather she offered in a less dire situation, I can't help stepping toward her, lyre still in hand, and pressing my forehead against her chest in thanks. She takes me into her arms, laying a big brown hand on the back of my head and kissing my brow. "It will not be easy," she says, and she knows I don't care.
We stay in the courtyard that night. Impa builds a fire because she's confident we will not be found this deep in the forest. We sit around it, and she offers me a few nuts and berries for supper. I am used to better fare, to roast chicken and wild boar, to baked vegetables and buttered bread, but I take what she offers eagerly. I have not eaten since yesterday, and the rumbling of my stomach is starting to deafen me.
As I eat, savoring the ugly, bitter nuts by virtue of being food at all, I lay myself against Impa, reveling in the way her arm curls around my waist, and suddenly, I am torn apart by gratitude. If it weren't for her, no doubt I would be lying in the castle somewhere, perhaps dead beside my father, perhaps in its deepest dungeons. If it weren't for her, I might be worse than dead. Something itches in the back of my throat, and I make an embarrassing sound, a squeak of thanks perhaps, unintelligible and wholly unintentional.
"What was that?" Impa asks.
"Tell me a story," I recover, clearing my throat. "Tell me the grimmest one you know."
"Zelda, I'm not sure if now is the time."
"Indulge me, Impa. Something has to drown out the rumbling of my stomach." She glances down at me and sees the look in my eyes, the desire to take my mind off my own discomfort and occupy it with someone else's.
"Do you know of the temple that lies behind us?" she says. Again I can recognize the glint of the storyteller in her eyes, dulled with exhaustion as it may be.
"No," I answer. "Please tell me it's tragic."
"You will like this one, I think." Impa smiles, though I see sadness in it. She knows my favorite stories have always been the ones with ghosts and ghouls and devils. Circumstances cannot change that—or so I might dare to think. I finish my meager meal and lay my head in her lap, stare in to the small fire, and listen.
*
Just a few feet from where you're sitting now, just past that mossy rock, once stood the golden staircase that led to the largest and stateliest palace ever built. Hundreds of years ago, when it was first constructed, it rivaled even the royal palace, though it does not look like it now that it has crumbled into ruin and been forgotten by the world.
The mind behind the palace, the matron, the first resident and founder was a Faronian woman named Madame Jovani. She was born a duchess, married an earl, and consolidated both her and her husband's family fortunes when he died. She had come from a long line of nobility, whose influence spread so far and wide that she was on nearly every one of her relative's wills. She had one daughter, who never married, so she did not have to cough up a dowry for any other family.
(What's a dowry?
It's what rich people used to pay other rich people in order to breed their children with one another.
You mean… like we do with horses sometimes?
Precisely.)
Putting it simply, they were a fabulously rich family. They had all the money in the world, all the servants, all the horses and hounds and guests and wonderful balls that any rich family would want. They had plenty of friends and allies, plenty of time for leisure; they were perfectly ordinary as far as the wealthy went, and they were perfectly respectable in every way. Except for one.
Madame Jovani's daughter had taken one too many liberties with her leisure time. One day, a few weeks after a particularly scandalous and obscenely indulgent masquerade, the young woman had found herself unexpectedly pregnant. She was not married, and confessed to her mother there was no way for her to be sure who had fathered her child that night (that particular ball was considered the most fashionably prurient party of the decade). Madame Jovani knew it would bring unspeakable shame on their family name if her daughter were to have a child out of wedlock, so she quickly searched for a safe place, a hidden sanctuary, where she could give birth without the ever-prying eyes of the world on her (for the Jovanis' circle of noble friends was notorious for being incredibly nosy). She sought out empty castles and remote palaces, anything that would let her daughter give birth and privacy and comfort, but found nothing. She knew, in the end, she would have to build her own.
So she hid her daughter away before she could grow too big, and sent for a man whom she had heard knew all the corners of the earth. When he came to her, she asked him for the name of a spot, remote and quiet, on which to build her manor. She asked for a place that was impossible to find if someone had not been there before, that was so far removed from the vicissitudes of the world none would ever think to search for it. And he told her of this grove, a holy place in the Lost Woods, well into Kokiri territory, that he had only stumbled upon by some mistake of his own navigation. He assured her it was a hidden place, a sacred place, somewhere where no sane man would venture of his own free will. Madame Jovani was delighted. She called architects and masons, carpenters and roofers, and had the adventurer guide them to the right place. She would pay them all a fortune large enough to last their progeny until doomsday as long as they could build the structure within nine months.
It was not an easy offer to refuse. There were hundreds of people working on the palace at any time—and at first it seemed like they would have the building completed well within the lady's allotted time. But not long after they started building, strange occurrences began to visit upon the workers.
Accidents abounded. Beams collapsed, men fell, whole piles of materials seemed to disappear without a trace. When a mason fell to his death, they would find the rope he had used to secure himself broken, chewed away by some beast or sliced with a blade. When a wall or doorway collapsed, they would find that someone had removed a keystone or other such base. Sometimes men would simply disappear, wandering into the forest with no explanation.
They told Madame Jovani about these occurrences, that she should not even have thought to build a mansion so far into the wooded wilderness, that it was madness to have thought up the project. Others insisted that it was a mistake to build on a sacred place for the Kokiri, and now the mythical children of the forest were exacting revenge on this desecration of their land. Others said it was the mansion itself, its maze-like design and the way it rose too proudly to the sky, that was the cause of such misfortune. It angered to gods, it angered the Kokiri, it angered some spirit or another—all these words fell on deaf ears; Madame Jovani needed her palace, though she refused to divulge why.
The woman brought in new workers where the old ones quit or disappeared or died, offering them twenty times their weight in gold just for a few months' work. There was no lack of new builders—they came, called by the promise of wealth, but left just as easily. No one stayed for more than a few weeks, except for the butler, who had been with the family for decades and was left in charge of supervising the process. He was intrepid and practical, a man not easily spooked by trite stories of ghosts and ghouls. But even he could not hide his uneasiness when the workers spoke about how someone had seen the spirit of a man who'd died crushed under stone, or one who'd hung himself on the rafters of the newly-constructed banquet hall. Even he could not stop the shivers from running up his spine when the men around him told stories of the ghostly pale faces of children they'd see at the edge of the manor's garden, framed in green and flitting between shadows like evil spirits.
The going was slow, of course, impeded by the appearance of ghosts and phantoms and woodland sprites and all sorts of things that meant harm to the mansion and its builders. But eventually the last stone was laid, the last windowpane fitted, the last fixture of furniture laid down, the last doorway carved and the last rupee paid. The workers cleared out as fast as they could, returning to their families with generous earnings and an abundance of horrifying stories on their lips, but, as with all such stories, very few people believed them. As time wore on, the workers stopped talking and started forgetting—even the location of the mansion was lost to all of them eventually.
(Why?
It is the nature of this place. There's a reason it's called the Lost Woods.
Are we lost, then?
Very much so. But we will find our way again. Count yourself lucky; most never do.)
The day after the three residents moved in—the stalwart butler, Madame Jovani, and her heavily pregnant daughter—the latter gave birth. The young woman bore a child, as expected, but she did not stop at one; she pushed out four daughters, one right after the other, all healthy. The poor woman did not live through the strain of it, and Madame Jovani found herself the grandmother of four orphan girls.
She sent for four wet nurses, all of them from poor families in the forest and who would have no interest in questioning where a woman like her had come across four infants at once. They did their duty and were paid well, acting as mothers should to the little girls until it was time for them to leave, all under the watchful eye of the butler. Madame Jovani, driven half-mad by the trials of building her mansion and the tragedy of her daughter's death, shut herself up in the tower, surrounded by jewels and silks, as the babes grew into children, then into young women. Though they rarely saw their grandmother, they wanted for nothing; they had healthy appetites and active minds, they played in the courtyards and planted in the garden, drew water from the well and read in the library, chatted and sewed in the many drawing rooms. Like all children, they suffered from selfish desires; they contended with one another for rare treasures like dresses and jewels, they picked on one another and had their moments of hatred. In other words, they were ordinary children—apart from their complete isolation, an acute sense of their own wealth, and the fact that the house in which they grew up was decidedly haunted.
This did not bother Meg. She was the first to be born (only a few minutes before the second), and often claimed to be the eldest by that virtue alone. Her amethyst eyes shone with confidence; she was domineering and active, and she was not interested in the history nor the haunting of her chateau. She busied herself with dancing, aided by an instructor the butler hired from afar (who, of course, left after only a few months of living with them, claiming every morning she woke up with a hanged man at the foot of her bed, rope creaking with the strain as he dangled in the morning light). Meg was prone to a somewhat cruel disposition—she was quick to anger and had no qualms with taking it out on her younger sisters. But she could be kind as well; as the self-proclaimed eldest, she often doted on her sisters, feeding them sweet cakes and sewing dolls for them, acting as she supposed a mother should (which was a complete guess on her part as she had never had one).
Joelle, the second child, had a passion for painting. She was a quiet girl of a ruby hue and very much fascinated with her surroundings—she painted the woodlands, she painted her sisters, she painted the palace's salon and the bedrooms, the courtyards and the well. Each of her pieces was perfectly represented to the smallest bizarre detail; in a woodland landscape, she would add a small child, clad in green and crawling furtively through the bushes. In the paintings of the mansion, if one squinted carefully, one could see the small markings in shadow where a phantom might creep—in the edges of the canvas, behind walls, or on the surface of the oil so that it appeared only when the painting was placed in the light a certain way. In the portraits of her sisters, always there were faces watching from the mirrors and windows behind them, almost invisible in the streaks of glass. She painted, as most artists do, what she saw—the hanged man the dancing instructor complained about, the flitting shadows of the ill-intentioned sprites of the forest, and the lost souls of the workers and planners who had died during construction. She saw disembodied skulls floating in the hallways where others saw the flames of candles, she saw enormous skulltulas where others saw only house spiders, she saw ghostly, deformed black hands descend from the ceiling where the others only saw flickering shadows. Even when her sisters glimpsed a white phantom disappearing into the kitchen door, or heard incorporeal laughter peal down the empty halls, or saw the torches of the main hall light themselves or flicker out of their own accord, Meg would appear, all common sense and matronly disdain, ready to dismiss them. Only Joelle could not laugh off the specters as figments of her imagination.
The third daughter, Beth, had eyes of sapphire. She was a skilled archer and lover of animals—she could often be seen riding in the palace grounds with her hounds at her horse's feet. They also slept in her bed at night (she once made the mistake mentioning to Joelle that she kept the animals close to scare the ghosts away while she slept). Beth was kinder with her sisters than Meg, but avoided the butler and their grandmother, whom she insisted was insane (she was quite right, of course; after only a few years of living up in that tower, the woman had succumbed to her madness). She was more willing to indulge Joelle in her stories of black hands and floating skulls, since once when she had returned from the woods after a leisurely hunt, she brought back her own strange tale: she had seen a child, much younger than her, clad in green and utterly alone. She, being a practical girl, at first did not believe all the stories of the mythical Kokiri, but she did not know what else it could've been. The child had beaten her to her quarry—as the elk lay there, arrow in its side, the Kokiri had laid a hand on its heaving flank, and the animal rose to its feet, bellowing once before fleeing into the forest. With an evil look in its eye, the child had glanced back at Beth before it too disappeared, and she felt a horrible pain in her side, in the same spot where her arrow had hit the elk. She carried that pain, and that story, all the way back to her sisters, only one of which believed her.
The fourth daughter, Amy, spent most of her time in the library, reading stories of her own. Above all things, she loved her books.
(So Amy was a little like me.
Yes, she was quite like you.
Though I… I can't… my library is gone…
Don't cry, Zelda. Even without your books, there will be plenty of stories for you. For now, let us finish this one.)
Amy was an intelligent girl, and behind her green eyes she stored thousands of facts, figures, narratives and maxims. She had a quick wit that matched the greatest minds of her generation, but, of course, growing up in an isolated forest only in the company of her sisters, she had never met any of them. She had an appreciation for all things logical and beautiful—she was not fond of the stories of Joelle and Beth, but she was also a girl swayed by evidence. She could not deny the strange things she had seen with her own eyes, and sometimes she took a page out of her nearest sister's book and borrowed a few hounds to warn her of the phantoms, for she had read many times, in many languages, that animals are sensitive to the dead and can speak with them. Many times she held a dog down and recited to it what it should relay to the wandering ghosts, but as far as she gathered, no messages got through. Out of all four sisters, she was the one who spoke most often with their grandmother, and would make the trek to the top of the tower to visit her. She carried the old woman meals and treats, relieving the elderly butler of the duty (his bones and joints by then were old and creaked audibly—the sisters could always tell when he came down the hall by the clicking of his knees, not to mention the grumbles of pain. When he died, the mansion doubled in eerie quietness).
The four sisters lived in relative harmony, clashing as sisters do, comforting one another as sisters do, until they became women. Each was restless in her own way, having grown up isolated in the woods for so long, and more than once each wished that she could leave and go into the world to make something of herself. But they could not leave—not only did they not know the way back to civilization, they had their ailing grandmother to care for, a grandmother who rapidly grew old and demented up in her tower. Each day she seemed a little worse, and since the butler had died (though Joelle insisted she saw him wandering the halls, plates of hot food in hand, knees creaking louder than ever before), there was no one but the sisters to care for her. Out here in the woods, they did not know how to call for a doctor, and all they could do was bring her food and change her sheets and endure her nonsensical ramblings as best they could.
It wasn't long before the sisters came to the realization that their grandmother was to pass on the entirety of her wealth to them. When they asked her who got what, she only muttered unintelligibly at them; by this point she was too far gone. So they searched for a will, or any other such document that would indicate her wishes. When they found none, they realized they would have to decide among themselves.
It was an impressive fight that filled the halls with noise and anger all night, so fierce and so prolonged that even the spirits retreated back into the walls, put off by the screaming. At first, they decided to split the fortune evenly in four, but the definitions of "even" changed with the minute, and soon each sister was greedily claiming what the others did, until each one insisted she get the entirety of the fortune. These sisters, who could've easily argued for a full day about who got to sew with what needles, who had to make the tea, or who got the last spread of jam, had no chance of solving the dispute overnight. So they argued into the next day, and the next, and the next, until Meg could not stand it and ascended the spiral staircase to the tower where her grandmother slept. Her sisters followed, and when she burst into Madame Jovani's room and threw the covers off her, the old woman started awake and sat up.
Meg demanded to know to whom the family fortune would pass. "Pick one of us, grandmother, since you are not of sound enough mind to apportion to each of us a fair piece of it. I am the eldest so it only makes sense to choose me."
"But I am the one who cared for you most," Amy put in. "So I should get it."
"We're of the same age, so Meg has no right to demand it all for herself," Joelle said. "Give it to me, because I am the most devoted to preserving the memory of our house in oils and canvas."
"And I'm the most likely to actually make something of it," said Beth. "I should get it."
Madame Jovani lifted her head and looked at each of them with an uncommon lucidity. "You will get what you deserve," she said, before collapsing back into a deep sleep.
(But what did any of them hope to do with such a fortune this deep in the woods?
That is the essence of the foolishness of greed, Zelda.)
The squabbling and scrambling continued. No sister could glean a clear meaning from their grandmother's statement, but each was sure that she was the one worthy, she was the one who deserved it. The days dragged into weeks, and they got nowhere. Their grandmother had not woken up from her deep sleep—her cheeks were hollow and grey, her eyes seemed to sink back into her head; there was no doubt she would not wake again. And the sisters still had not given in; each declared herself worthiest, each was unwilling to back down or compromise.
It was the day after Madame Jovani died that Meg decided there was only one way to solve the dispute. She awoke that morning, dressed herself and did her hair, applied her makeup carefully in her mirror, spread jam on her toast, and decided to kill her sisters. She spent a few hours thinking about it; how she could go from room to room with a knife and end each of them. They would not suspect a thing—she doubted they even thought her capable of such a deed. She herself didn't until recently, but she was sure she had been driven to this by forces outside herself, forces she could not control. So the next morning, she ate her toast with extra jam, did her hair up in an impeccable bun, slid a knife in her sleeve and prowled the halls looking for her sisters. She did not suspect that each one of them, Joelle, Amy and Beth, had arrived at the same conclusion, at nearly the exact same moment.
Joelle had been up all night painting. She had locked herself in the darkest room in the basement of their manor with her oils and canvas—she descended to the depths of the chateau, where only the rats and ghosts go, and sought out the best place to paint. When she found a suitable location, where the ghouls and ghosts and angry spirits were most active, she started her painting. She splashed oil over canvas like a madwoman, smearing it with her fingers, running her nails down its middle, scratching and screaming and cursing the names of her sisters for their greed, for their disregard of her stories, for their cruelty. She knew she could show them, if she could get the spirits to listen to the will of her paint, to the content of her curses. And by the morning, when she had finished a painting so hideous even she could not dare look at it, she knew she had succeeded. From the canvas an evil spirit slithered, insubstantial and white, tortured moans echoing down the halls of the mansion. She watched it go, watched it crawl on broken arms and legs through the halls of her home. Cats fled from its path, the dogs howled in the kennels outside, and the spirit wandered, moaning and screaming from its broken jaw. From the way it collapsed over itself as it tumbled, Joelle knew it had been one of the workers who had fallen from the highest heights of the courtyard wall—there seemed no bone left unbroken, no human shape left in its elongated limbs. She followed it at a distance, making sure it did not see her, waiting for it to find one of her sisters, waiting for it to secure for her what was hers by right.
Amy had been up all night as well. But she had been concocting a different sort of art, one of science and medicine. In her grandmother's extensive library she had found a book on herbs and oils, worn with age and filled with yellowed illustrations. It had been one of her favorites for years, and it had come in handy when it came to patching herself up if she fell, or helping her through headaches and stomach pains. Now, she used it for a different purpose. In the darkest hours of the night, while Meg plotted and Joelle painted, she snuck from her bedroom and crept into the ghoul-filled forest, ignoring the dancing shadows around her to gather what she needed: nuts, flower petals, the stem of a certain herb. She made a concoction in perfect proportions, and after ensuring the kitchen was devoid of life, she crept her way to the pantry and mixed it in with the jam.
Beth had not planned so assiduously. She had slept soundly, hands clasped under her sweet face, and dreamt of her animals. When she rose in the morning, she skipped breakfast and made her way to her personal armory, where she kept her bows and quivers, her saddles and riding crops. She chose her favorite hunting bow and slung her quiver across her shoulder. She took with her only three arrows, because she was entirely confident she would not miss. When Beth set her mind to something, it got done; there was no room for failure. So she perched herself on the top of the western tower, with a clear view of where Amy would no doubt emerge from the dining room after breakfast, as she had done every day for her entire life. Beth crouched in the shadows, arrow nocked, eyes focused on the one decorative balcony where she knew Amy would emerge. She didn't blink when the dogs started howling in fury and fear at nothing; she could comfort them later, when whatever ghost that had passed by sank back into obscurity. She waited in hiding on the veranda of the tower until Amy emerged below her, shaking out her hair. Her strong features were wrinkled in discontent, and she seemed to be searching for something. Her fingers curled around the balcony's decorative balustrade, and from this distance Beth could not read the complex mess of emotion that crossed her face. But she didn't need to. She drew her bow and with no hesitation, loosed an arrow into her sister's throat. Amy fell, and Beth stood; she still had two more sisters to rid herself of that day, so she would have to hurry if she wanted to catch them before they came across the body.
But when she turned, she felt cold hands wrap around her neck. She heard the ghostly echo of snapping bones, the groan of the tortured phantom, but she got only a glimpse of the broken, deformed limbs that gripped her before her vision started to fade. She thought she saw Joelle emerge from the door behind the specter, thought she saw her sister's hands rise to her mouth in contrition and her eyes widen. Beth fought, hands passing uselessly through hollow, cold flesh. She tried to cry out, but the ghost bore down on her, wrapping itself tighter around her throat, before in a panic she backed up, tripping over the veranda's edge and falling to the courtyard below.
Joelle watched the ghost flutter after her sister, disappearing into the mist, and rushed to the edge of the balcony. Seeing Beth splayed and broken in the courtyard, seeing Amy lying bloodied on the lower walkway, hearing the howl of the dogs—all of it cleared her head. She was suddenly overtaken by the knowledge of the evil of her actions. She backed away from the veranda's edge, terrified, and turned to flee, turned to hide anywhere from the knowledge of what she had done, but she did not get far before she met Meg. And in the course of a second, her sister freed her from her actions, from her terror. Joelle fell to the ground before Meg, heart pierced with the tip of a hidden blade, and stilled.
Meg wiped the knife on her red dress and made her way up to the tower, where she found that someone had already done her work for her. Finding Amy with an arrow in her throat and Beth lying shattered in a spray of blood on the courtyard tiles, she simply put her knife away and returned to the dining hall, where she made herself a pot of tea, and died from Amy's poisoned jam before it finished steeping.
Though the Kokiri have reclaimed the sacred land under this place and reestablished it as a temple of silent devotion, it is said to this day that Meg's tea remains untouched, still hot, still fresh on the Jovanis' table. Around it, nature has reclaimed the palace—Beth's dogs have turned to wolfos, Amy's medicinal plants and flowers have crept up the walls and covered the place with vines and green shadows, and Joelle's paintings have taken on a life of their own; the phantoms walk between them like rooms in a house, appearing and disappearing at will. The angry ghosts and spirits Joelle saw still wander the halls of that place, and the laughter of little girls still echoes through its rooms and courtyards.
The riches of Madame Jovani remain unclaimed to this day, but in these very halls the sisters roam, protecting their house and their fortune from anyone who dares trespass on their property. They still light the torches in the mansion's main hall, looking for their gold, they still carry meals up to the ghost of their grandmother, and if you listen closely to the forest, that's not the clicking of a woodpecker you hear, it's the creaking and popping of the butler's old, aching knees, as he wanders in darkness forever. And if you see a light, any light in this wood, a torch of any color, do not follow it, for it is one of the sisters trying to lure another to her death. But she will not discriminate if she finds you instead, for none of them has anything left to lose but her fortune.
*
I dream of gold. At first I think it is a torch of one of the ghostly sisters, luring me into the darkness, then I think it is the glinting gold of Madame Jovani's fortune, sliding through my fingers, but it is neither of these. It burns me, it sears the skin of my hand, and I want nothing more than to get it away from me, to pull myself from its light. I open my mouth to tell it to leave, to say I do not want the fortune, I do not want to follow this glowing light into the depths of the temple. I tell it I do not care about gold and rupees, though I have none of my own anymore; all I want is to shut the ghosts from my head—Viscen, my father, the charred bodies of the old librarians—to sleep in darkness and quietness and forget everything.
When Impa shakes me awake, it is grey morning. There are leaves and twigs stuck in my clothes and hair, every inch of me hurts, and for a moment I cannot tell where I am, what has happened or what I dreamt about. When Impa lifts me from the ground, it comes back to me too slowly—the events of yesterday, my fears, my dreams.
I look down at my hand, where the pain is sharpest, and see something on it—thinking it's a firefly for a second, I brush it off, but it stays, locked to my skin through my stained gloves. When Impa examines it, she says nothing, merely grips my hand and squeezes, pressing her forehead against mine and muttering in old Sheikah. I do not know what to think; she only does this when something is very wrong or very right. I gulp, glancing again at the strange triangle on the back of my hand, and begin to understand.
Despite my horror, despite my bewilderment, I allow Impa to pull me to my feet. When I stand, I notice a spot of blood has spread through the back of my white dress, and I start to cry anew.
It is a day of all sorts of changes.
Chapter Text
There has been plenty of talk of heroes lately. From Kakariko to Lake Hylia, from the eastern cliffs of the Gerudo Valley to the fiery halls of Goron City, there is hardly word of anything but heroes. Namely, the suspicious lack of them.
The darkness that descended on Hyrule has spread rapidly and unhindered to nearly every corner of the land. Castletown has fallen into decay, occupied now only by the restless dead (and, according to the more fanciful tales, their reanimated corpses, hungry for the flesh of the living). Ghosts have started to slip from the cracks in the walls of Kakariko’s graveyard—Sheikah souls who had died in the Civil War, specters of ancestors of the Hyrulean royal line, generals and composers and naturalists, each glowing angry violet under the endless storm clouds. Lakebeds are drying, crops are failing, and winter descends early and mercilessly from the mountains, blowing across the potter’s fields and bringing the howling of the waking dead with it. No homestead in the nation remains untouched by the relentless shadows that spread from the seat of the capital.
It has never been a worse time to be a hero, or a better one. So I, like many unfortunate young warriors before me, take up the mantle.
Impa tells me Sheik was a fighter of laudable repute. He was the one from which her tribe derives their name—the first man to master the subtleties of shadow, the first to stare into the eye of the abyss without fear, the first to merge himself with darkness for so long he became it. He was the first man to look at the specter of death and see the truth: that it is a trick of the mind, a powerful illusion with which we lure fear into our own hearts.
I do not understand the extant wisdom of the hero Sheik enough to be worthy of his name, but I take it anyway. I take his face, I take his red eyes and dark skin, I take the emblem of his people, slipping it from his identity to my own like a cheap pickpocket. Impa tells me I might even be playing his harp, though it is impossible to tell for sure. With each pluck of that arcane lyre I become a little more like him, a little more like me, and a little less like the exiled, spineless princess of Hyrule. She flees from me as she fled from her castle—and I cherish the freedom from her. Zelda was weak; she could not protect herself or her kingdom from invaders and usurpers. Sheik can.
But first Sheik has to learn to hold his liquor. He has to keep his face from reddening and his bloodshot eyes from closing as his companions drink him piteously under the table. He has to pay attention to the words around him, he has to remember the Goronic name of the contents of the ceramic pot he now brings to his uncovered mouth (its colloquial name, he learns, is “dragon spit,” and it has the volcanic singe to live up to it).
Impa sits cross-legged before a hearty fire and confesses she hasn’t laughed this much in years. Outside, the early winter snows bury the slopes of Eldin Province, falling over frozen fields and muffling the land in silence. The Goron patriarch who has invited us into the warmth of his home, a round, muscled creature, drinks his dragon spit like elixir. When he laughs he bellows, his joyful fist hammers the floor, cracks running from a worn depression where he has laughed many times before. With each pound, a tremor jolts through the stone and into my sore muscles, reigniting my pains until I take another hearty gulp from my pot. The burning of my tongue distracts me from the bruises and aches in my sides and legs.
Darunia is an old friend from the War. He has thrown me to the stone floor more times today than I can count, he has twisted my arms and knocked the wind from me so efficiently I still have trouble breathing. It is as much as we all expected.
Impa says no true warrior learns from one master alone. This is why she shows me the essence of Goronic wrestling, an art Sheikah have adopted over the centuries and one that Impa herself had mastered during the War. When I fly into the wall for the dozenth time, wiping blood from my mouth as Darunia teases me, she steps up to demonstrate. She slips through the Goron’s grasp and lifts him from the ground as easily as she does me, bludgeoning the floor with his massive body in a spray of chipped rock. I watch as they revolve about each other with the slow deliberation of planets, waiting for an opening. Impa falls as much as Darunia, but she twists and redirects her momentum so she recovers without a bruise. When she tires of the game (and tires of seeing her supposedly precocious student repeatedly trounced so thoroughly), we stop for the night.
I drink to stifle the pain and embarrassment, but Impa and Darunia drink for their own pleasure. At first Impa is reluctant to let me try dragon spit, but Darunia tells her that if I am so young and soft, I will not be able to brave the horrid taste anyway. I will not let him win this round as well, so I take another gulp, cringing and shaking my head, much to the amusement of the others.
When Darunia asks who I am, Impa answers him with a quintessentially Sheikah half-truth. I am her disciple. As an infant I avoided the carnage of the Civil War, though both my parents are gone. He smiles and questions no further, only offers her another pot of dragon spit and says nothing about a lost princess or the duty of Impa as a retainer to the royal family. I am not sure how much he has inferred. His eyes are black marbles—smooth and unreadable.
“Brother Impa, you think you can mold a hero from such soft clay?” he grins, gesturing to me.
“You don’t trust me?” Impa narrows her eyes over her steaming drink. “I’ve made warriors out of worse.”
“I have seen it myself. But I doubt even the best Goronic techniques can wrestle this land back from that usurper. There have been attempts—surely you’ve heard.”
“Well-intentioned young idiots lining up to die on the end of a Gerudo pike,” Impa says. “Yes, I have heard.”
“And the search for a hero continues. There was one boy I met, a long time ago, who showed potential. But he has likely died with the rest of them.”
“Likely,” Impa says. “If the War has taught me anything, it is that heroism is usually defined by failure.”
“Or worse, success. The greatest heroes make the greatest tyrants.”
“You’re speaking of Ganondorf?”
“No! Damn him to the worst of all hells!” Darunia roars. “But it is an easy mistake to make, now that I think on it. A truly great warrior, he was. But he is nothing compared to Darmin.” He raises his eyes to the shape of a Goron warrior carved against the wall.
“A sad tale, that was,” Impa sighs. “I remember it well.”
“No you don’t! You’ve heard it once—and drunk in a bunker at that. None of us could find our own asses that night, much less memorize an ancient story.” I cannot imagine Impa drunk—even though I am fairly sure I am witnessing the spectacle right now. She does not slur, she does not sway. Her smile is wider than usual, but it might simply be an effect of Darunia’s presence. Even Sheik is smiling tonight, under the grimace.
“I remember every word,” Impa says.
“Prove it.” His brows wrinkle playfully.
“Is everything a contest with you?”
“Why not? I win every time.” Darunia sits back, crossing his hard-muscled brown arms. “For each mistake I catch, you take a drink. You’ll be dead by the end of it.”
Impa laughs. “Very well. Sheik will enjoy a good story.”
“I always do,” I mumble, with much difficulty.
Impa’s red eyes shine in the flames, tattoos wrinkled from her smile.
*
In the early days of this fiery land, before there were trees or rivers or rain, when the flaking, smoldering shell of Volagnid’s great egg was still piping hot—
(A mistake already, Brother Impa! You have not told this one who Volagnid is yet.
So I haven’t. Volagnid is the progenitor of the world, Sheik. He created the land when he hatched from a gargantuan red-hot egg he himself had laid.
How does that work?
Darunia, please explain how that works.
Damned if I know. He’s a god.
He burst from his own egg, cracking the shell into mountains and releasing the magma yolk, before flying into the sky and becoming the fire of the stars.)
The broken, jagged shell of the world-egg was so hot, it was inhospitable to any creatures Gorons. In those days the volcanoes gurgled merrily, full to the brim with nutritious magma. Fire and smoke poured from the mouths of the mountains, filling the sky and lighting the heart and home of every Goron. For hundreds of years the world prospered with the bounty of Volagnid’s yolk, but over time the eggshells of the surface began to cool. Great flames sputtered to glowing ashes, the free-flowing lava dried and cracked into red rock, and the mouths of the mountains closed and dried shut. Soon the only molten rocks to be found were concealed deep underground.
When the rumblings of the mountains died, so began the rumblings of Goron stomachs. Houses and caves darkened with cold as the fires of the world sputtered out. Gorons fought over what little food was left between them. They hoarded and killed, they betrayed one another as desperation starved the spirit of fellowship in their souls. To make matters worse, fell dragons began to crawl from the cracks in the earth, starving and all too willing to feast on Goronic flesh.
The Gorons raised their eyes to the sky and wondered what sins they had committed that had brought on this misery. They prayed and prayed to the stars of Volagnid to deliver them from the cold and hunger, but the god stayed silent in the sky, too far to hear their pleas.
Many of them began to turn their hopes earthward—namely, in a young Goron warrior named Darmin, whose strength and bravery propelled him to the heights of respect among his people. Like the others, this Goron had grown tough and resilient through hardship; his arms were thin but lean, his face chiseled and plain like the barren rock on which he had been raised. But his mind was sharp and clear as obsidian, and his will was stronger than the steel of his hammer. He was the clan’s patriarch, as was his father, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather—a line of noble Darmins all the way back to the conception of his race—
(Ah, drink again, Brother Impa, you forget the fourth patriarch down that line was Darmani. He was a second son.
Must you nitpick, Darunia? Darmin, Darmani, they’re all related.
You must give the little brothers some credit where credit is due! Darmin IV died in battle before he had a son so Darmani took his place. It's common knowledge.)
Darmin, unlike his forefathers, was not content to scavenge slivers and flecks of edible rock from the barren lands around him. So one day, he slung his hammer over his shoulder and decided to leave his ancestral home, where the mountains slept in cold silence, and seek better, warmer lands. He and his many sons and brothers wandered for seasons and seasons, moving from one dead mountain to the next, barely scraping up enough edible rock to keep them alive. As they journeyed, the sky slowly cleared and cooled, banishing the warmth of the smog and ash that blanketed the world. When the last columns of smoke dissipated, the Gorons were horrified to find the sky was a sickly, freezing blue. Snowcaps covered the coldest mountains, melting and freezing and melting again, displacing the rivers of lava with impassible rivers of water. Rain fell from the sky and stung their backs, streams carved gashes into the faces of the slopes, cold white clouds gathered above and blocked the warmth of the sun. Stalks of leaf and bark split the skin of the earth and crawled across the landscape like a disease. It was a tumultuous time for the world, and each day, Darmin and his people got thinner and colder, until it seemed they were made of ice rather than rock.
After a hundred years of wandering (for Gorons live quite long, you see, like the mountains from which they are carved), Darmin’s eldest son came back to their camp with wonderful news. A peak, lonesome and far in the distance, still lived. From the rocky ledge of their hiding place they could see it clearly—the red-hot tip of a smoky volcano.
At last, the survival of Darmin’s people seemed within reach. He led them through the valleys of what is now known as Eldin, all the way to the base of that rumbling mountain. They sang and drummed all the way; their ditties painted pictures of fiery homes, of the warm kiss of magma, of rubies and opals and all manner of delicious rocks one can grind between one’s teeth.
(Grind, Brother Impa? You make it sound so unpleasant.
It is unpleasant. I will never forgive you for the time you tried to feed me lapis.
How are you old teeth, by the way?
Let me tell the story, Brother. You can worry about my teeth later.)
When the Gorons arrived at the base of the mountain, they found the path up was blocked. Before them, scaly and plump, slept a gargantuan creature. The Gorons knew better than to wake it, but as they turned to flee, they saw the shadow shuddering and lifting itself from the barren dirt.
Unfurling before them, slithering in a black arc against the endless sky, rose the knotted spine of a great dragon. Its eyes were brighter than the hottest flames, its teeth blacker than obsidian, and even the slightest whips of its long tail turned the water in the air to steam. It folded its long-nailed claws, arching its neck to get a good view of its tiny visitors. “So the meal comes to me!” it bellowed. “Truly, these are bountiful times!” The force of its voice shook the pebbles from the ground and dislodged the weaker plants from the hillside.
Now, Darmin was a great warrior, but he was not stupid. He knew he could not take on a dragon of this size, and with scales of such pure steel, at least not while he was underfed and weary from travel. But he knew a bit about these travesties of Volagnid, and had heard stories that these creatures had a heart similar to the Gorons’—similar in strength, and similar in weakness.
“Esteemed beast,” Darmin started. He dropped his hammer, much to the dismay of his compatriots, and knelt. “Have your pick of any one of us, for this world has treated us with nothing but cruelty. Your warm stomach will be a relief from this freezing world. Look at us, at our thin limbs and sunken faces; look at how our backs flake and crumble, at the way our bodies are nothing but steely bones and leathery skin.”
The dragon made a noise of disgust, but it crept closer regardless. “A meal is a meal.”
“Indeed it is. No matter how horrible it might taste.” Darmin lowered his head, and the Gorons, recognizing a ruse, began to cough and wail, rolling in misery on the ground, showing off their protruding ribcages and calloused, filthy limbs, lean and leathery from hardship.
The dragon looked its free meal over and decided it was not worth the price. “You have soiled my appetite,” it said. “Be on your way, before I change my mind.”
Many of the Gorons were thankful they had simply avoided being eaten, but Darmin had his sights set high, on the flaming peak above them, so full of the promise of warmth and delicious jewels.
“Oh, cruel dragon!” Darmin wailed. “You are sending us away, back into the world that has starved us! I am telling you—eat us! It is warmer in your belly than it is in the wilderness!”
“I will not eat you, but there is nothing stopping me from killing you,” the dragon growled, rising to its full height. Its spines rose and its menacing teeth snapped at them. A few of the Gorons scattered, but Darmin refused to move.
“If we are too thin,” he said, “let us fatten ourselves up for you. Let us into your mountain, esteemed one, so that we might make ourselves more appetizing to you.”
“And let you eat my treasures?” the dragon laughed. “Let you chew on my rubies and melt my gold to sip from your clay cups? I think not.”
“I ask not that you part with your riches,” (Darmin, like everyone, knew better than to ask that of a dragon), “but to let us go deeper into the mountain, to crawl down the small tunnels you cannot, and collect food for ourselves. If you allow us to use your mountain to fatten ourselves up, then you might want to eat us.”
The dragon mulled this over. It knew in the deepest belly of its mountain there lay chambers of rare jewels, veins and arteries of gold and silver, boulders of jade and quartz, all inaccessible. It knew it could not dig nearly as well as Gorons, nor could its size allow it to reach the deepest caverns where the greatest riches lay. “I will allow you to enter my mountain,” it said, thinking itself clever, “on these conditions: one, you may only keep one jewel out of every five you mine, and two, on each fortnight you will offer me one of your brothers to eat. There is no point in fattening you up if I do not get to reap the rewards of the offer.”
Despite the vehemently shaking heads of his compatriots, Darmin acquiesced. “Truly, you are a kind and generous creature.”
The dragon was rather pleased to have secured a steady supply of meals for the next few years. “It is a dangerous world out there,” it said with a wide smile. “And I know better than anyone. I can see from my mountaintop the changes of the land: the volcanoes are cooling, the sky is emptying, food is scarce, and new creatures are crawling from the earth by the day. You will be safest and happiest with me, I can assure you.” It proudly showed its teeth. “But remember, if I suspect you are hoarding the fruits of my land for yourself, or if you in any way fail to uphold your end of our deal, you will regret the day you cheated Volvagia of Death Mountain.”
(Oh, a horrible mistake, Brother Impa!
What is it this time?
The dragon did not give the name Death Mountain to his home, it was my forefather who named it that. Another drink!
I’m starting to believe you’re nitpicking so for once you can outdrink me.
Are you listening to this, Brother Sheik? “For once,” he says. As if he wants to erase all those times during the War. They happened, Brother Impa. You just can’t remember them.)
The Gorons, needless to say, were not happy with Darmin’s arrangement. But they trusted his choice—after all, they figured it was better to have only one of them die every fortnight than to have all of them starve in the wilderness. So, reluctantly, the Gorons got to work. With Volvagia meticulously keeping watch, they slaved away in the belly of the mountain. They began in the huge gashes the dragon’s claws had made as it tried to dig deeper into the rich earth, and it did not take them long to come across the treasures Volvagia could not reach.
The belly of the mountain held more bounty than the Gorons could believe: shining caves and chambers of jewels, solidified rivers of gold and silver, shining stalactites and pools of the most relaxing boiling magma. They were overtaken by joyful relief, but they only feasted as much as they dared. They mined and ate, ate and mined, and within days they felt their strength return to them. Even when they left the majority of their spoils at the feet of Volvagia (who was quite pleased with the affair so far), there was enough left to feed them. Everyone, even Darmin, seemed to forget about the price the dragon had demanded in exchange.
Darmin’s youngest son, Darunia—
(Name sound familiar, Brother Sheik?
Gods almighty, let me tell the story!)
Darunia was the only one who seemed to be worried about the oncoming new moon, which marked the end of the fortnight. He was not worried he would be offered up to Volvagia, for he was Darmin’s son (and still small enough that he would not make a satisfactory meal for a dragon), but he cared for his brothers very deeply. One night, after Darmin and the others had satiated themselves on what had been left to them, Darunia approached his father.
“Surely you’re not going to give up one of us to be eaten,” he said.
“Of course I’m not,” Darmin replied. “Do you think so little of me that I’d trade the lives of my brethren for food?”
“I say we take what we can and run,” Darunia suggested.
“Back into the wilderness? No, my littlest, I hate to say it, but Volvagia is right. The world out there has become too dangerous. New threats rise by the day. This is the last hospitable place left to us.”
“Then perhaps we can live in the deepest tunnels, where Volvagia cannot reach us.”
“Then it will only spew its hideous breath down there and smoke us out.” Darmin thought for a long moment. “Listen. Volvagia sleeps still in its chamber. Gather the others, for I have come up with a plan.”
Darunia summoned the Gorons with fervent whispers, and they stood before Darmin to hear his words. “Brothers—you have grown stronger and happier in the past few days—your faces have a healthy glow, like molten rock. But we must not forget the price we have to pay for it. One of us must go up to the dragon’s lair. On the new moon, when Volvagia asks for a sacrifice, I will offer myself to be eaten.”
The other Gorons hissed in protest, paralyzed by the mere thought of offering up their leader to the creature.
“Quiet, you lot! Now, listen. When I go up to Volvagia’s chamber, I’m going to bring my hammer with me. It will think I have come on behalf of my people to spare them—but I will crush its head before the thought even sparks in its brain. Volvagia no doubt thinks I am too weak to fight back, and that’s right. As weak as I am now, I would doubtless lose. But there are many nutritious rocks in this mountain—more than I’ve seen in centuries. I ask that you give me the best jewels and let me eat the most, for if I’m to face Volvagia I must be at my strongest. I know you might have to forgo a few meals for my sake, but if I have no strength, even my beloved hammer will be of no help to me.”
The other Gorons agreed. They knew if anyone would be strong enough to face a dragon, it would be Darmin.
“We will have to be sneaky about it, my brethren. The dragon watches us closely, because it fears our trickery. As it should. Come the new moon I will be strong enough to fight it. And I will not fail.”
He said it with such confidence the other Gorons could not help but believe him. So they offered up their fair share of food, knowing that after Darmin killed the dragon, they would have the immense stores of the mountain to feed from—and even more when the next eruption came. So as the days wore on, Darmin grew stronger. He practiced with his hammer, he trained with his sons, he ate and ate and ate and ate. On the night of the new moon, when he had promised to provide Volvagia with a sacrifice, he was as strong as he had ever been.
He grabbed his hammer, his sons and brothers bid him good luck, and he went up to Volvagia’s chamber to kill the beast.
“Ah, so the biggest brother offers himself,” the dragon said when it saw Darmin’s outline in the shadows of its chamber. “That is truly honorable.”
“A dragon should know,” Darmin replied. “For I have heard from stories your kind have hearts much like ours.”
“You think flattery can save you?” the dragon laughed. “Do not try to appeal to me. You know the terms of our deal. Now, step forward so I can get a good look at my supper.”
When Darmin stepped into the light, Volvagia saw the outline of his hammer. The dragon at once knew that Darmin had gone back on their deal. A great anger overtook the creature, and he lunged at the Goron, ready to tear him limb from limb.
The battle raged all night. The Gorons below the chamber heard the bangs and the roars, could feel the fire and the blows from the fight above. Many of them wanted to help their brother, but they had sacrificed so much of their nourishment to him they knew they would likely do no good. So they waited, clutching one another for comfort, as the mountain roared with anger around them.
When the sun rose over the crater, and the mountain fell again into silence, the Gorons poured into the chamber. There they found Darmin, battered and broken but triumphant, holding the shattered skull of Volvagia for all to see.
(And then he named it Death Mountain in celebration of the death of the dragon, and the Gorons lived happily ever after.
Don’t get ahead of yourself, Sheik. Volvagia’s defeat only marks the halfway point of Darmin’s story.
So at what point is it named Death Mountain?
Well, Brother Darunia?
Ah, you see, Brothers. That’s just a mistranslation. My great forefather named it the Mountain of Good Sleep, because there is a perfect crag on the southern side that suns a Goron just right for afternoon naps. Somewhere in the passing centuries some Hylian translator dropped a letter somewhere, and no one bothered to correct it. Don’t look so disappointed, Brother Sheik. Not all stories are exciting.)
The Gorons, now free from the dragon and in possession of a plot of land fertile with jewels, threw the biggest party the world had ever known. They sang and danced and drank and ate so heartily it was a wonder any of them got back up in the morning. But they did, tough as they were, and began their work anew.
For years afterward, they lived happily. They gorged themselves on the fruits of the mountain, which, compared to the tiny plots of barely-edible rock they had scavenged for so many decades, seemed endless. For the first time since the sky cleared, for the first time since water appeared and cut the soft earth with its icy edge, the Gorons felt as if they had made a home. For the first time in centuries, the had hope for their future.
But Darmin was a Goron who liked to plan ahead—after all, his heroism was as much due to his schemes and cleverness as it was to his strength. He knew, though he had vanquished Volvagia, there were other dragons wandering the wastes, hearts limitless in their greed and hunger. He knew there would be battles yet to be fought, famines yet to be endured, hardships yet to be encountered.
So he gathered his friends and brothers, and with their help, he built a fortress deep within the mountain to protect their treasures. With the land’s durable stone, the Gorons built labyrinths and halls. With metals and springs of their own making, they designed and planted cunning traps. With the forges and flames of their beloved new home (apparently not yet called Death Mountain), they strengthened Darmin’s hammer, so that it might one day again meet a dragon’s skull. And with the precious stones, heightened in spiritual power, they built statues of their greatest patriarchs, to look down upon them and bless them with strength and bravery. At the center of this temple was the chamber where, as Darmin promised them, they would upkeep a generous stockpile of jewels to be shared when difficult times returned.
Every day, they mined a little more than they needed. They carried their extra harvest to Darmin and his sons, who promised to keep them safe. It was difficult work, and some days were better than others, but the Gorons could all remember the suffering they had endured out in the wilderness, and were much more satisfied knowing there would be some uneaten treasure stored in their mountain, just in case.
The chamber filled quite nicely. When the piles of gold nuggets and rubies and sapphires nearly reached the ceiling, Darunia told his father that there was no room left.
“Then expand it!” Darmin answered, confident they would need it. “We do not know when our mines will run dry, or where we will go when they do. We don’t know when this mountain will again erupt—or if it will. We don’t know when a dragon might appear again, or if other threats will ascent the slopes to come after us.”
So the Gorons sacrificed just another ruby or two every week, and did not suffer much for it. They expanded their stockpile, and again the mountain provided them with all the glittering meals they needed. But as they mined, they forwent their favorite gemstones, offering them instead, selflessly, to be saved for their progeny. This didn’t sit well with a few Gorons, but Darmin always assured them it was for the best.
“Do you not remember how well this worked once before?” he said to his dissatisfied brothers. “It was only through your sacrifice that I was able to protect you from Volvagia. And it will only be through the same sacrifice that I will protect you from whatever threat comes next.”
The Gorons could not deny the truth in his words, so they got back to work. Their laughter and songs faded as the sound of mining took over the mountain, but they slept deeply, they ate well enough. Darmin had protected them thus far, and they had faith he would protect them and their sons far into the future. That is, until a strange new beast appeared on the scene.
Darunia was the one who ran up to his father with the news of the odd creatures. They crawled through the poisonous green forests, seemingly immune to the pains of sap and water. They had arms and legs and stood upright, but they were pale and soft like the insides of a Goron reassembled without its rocky shell. “What a hideous creature it must be!” Darmin shouted, grabbing his hammer.
(And hideous you are still!
If you continue to insult me, Brother Darunia, I will not finish the story.
It’s probably for the better. You tell it like an amateur.)
When Darmin followed his son to the cliffside and gazed down on the land below, he saw the creatures, naked and new to the world, creeping among the trees. When he shouted down to them, they scattered into the shadows. “They are not dragons, at least,” he said. “But still, they are small and they may sneak into our halls to do who knows what damage.” Darmin, of course, was familiar with how a smaller creature might trick and destroy a larger one.
Thinking that these animals would likely burn like the hideous trees from which they emerged, he had his engineers and welders build pipes and valves that spewed fire and gas—harmless to a Goron but lethal to all others. His people sacrificed a little more of their time on Darmin’s fortress, giving up their spiciest and most delicious stones to power the machines that would burn the new threat.
Darmin assigned his son to keep an eye on these new creatures, but Darunia found them far more fascinating than threatening. He watched them bathe in poisonous clear water, watched them lift their eyes to the blue sky and smile, watched them hunt and farm (the first time he saw one pull a soft, disgusting root from the ground and eat it, he could not keep his stomach from turning). Clearly they were unaware of their Goron neighbors, and were likely uninterested in eating the rocks from the earth. He knew they were of little threat to the Gorons, and when he spied them using fire—warming themselves by it!—he knew they might even have a few things in common.
But when he told his father about it, Darmin just stroked the crystals of his beard and replied, “Then fire might not harm them as much as I’d hoped.”
So he asked the Gorons to improve the mazes they had built—for months they dragged up the biggest boulders from the side of the mountain and pushed them into the labyrinth, thinking perhaps if the creatures would not burn, they could be crushed. Every day they spent more and more time on Darmin’s maze, and less on themselves or their families. Some of them expressed dissatisfaction with the work, but Darmin was quick to remind them of the sufferings they had endured when they were racked with starvation and homelessness.
“You know as well as I that we must do everything in our power to protect our new home. If our mountain is attacked or our jewels stolen, we might have to leave again. You remember the pangs of starvation, the callouses on your feet, the danger, the hopelessness. Surely none of you want to go through that again, and even less so condemn your sons to it. So we must save enough food for our children and their children, and we must protect it with everything we have. Surely the pain of a day’s hard work is preferable to the pain of starvation.”
The Gorons thought this reasonable, and they were satisfied in their labor for a time. They spent longer and longer hours in the mines, ate less and less, devoted more resources to the stash that would keep their children alive for centuries to come. But they never knew if it would be enough—or if it could be stolen by these odd creatures that hid safely from them in their poison forests. So each day they worked a little harder.
And Darunia kept his eyes on their new neighbors. By the time Darmin’s great mazes were finished, the creatures had darkened in the sun, they wove clothes and tents, they tended to large plots of land and built homes from stones of the mountain—much like Gorons had done when warm caves could not be found. Darunia, though he did not quite dare cross the streams to get a close look, even swore he could hear them use language—once, he even heard them singing.
But when he told his father these fascinating details, he just shook his head and muttered, “They are getting clever!” So Darmin asked his brothers to give up their daily ration of silver so that he might make keys and locks and chains—puzzles their new neighbors could not possibly outwit, should they choose to invade the Goronic hillside.
When the creatures began to forge their own weapons and tools, gathering metals from the base of the mountain and crafting simple devices (Darunia thought they were admirable tools, simple and elegant but nothing compared to the Gorons’), Darmin’s paranoia reached its height. “We will have to go down to the mountain and destroy these things,” he told his sons.
“Father,” Darunia said. “You are overthinking this. You are a warrior of great cunning and strength, but now is a time of peace and plenty. You do not have to spend all your days thinking up something to fight.”
“Do you not remember, Darunia, what our people went through? Do you not remember starving under Volvagia, the terrible journeys and the freezing nights? I am only making sure my people are protected. It is my duty, and it is what they expect of me.”
“You are working them so hard, Father,” Darunia said. “They are preparing for a disaster that will never come.”
“But what if it does?” said Darmin’s eldest son. “You will be sorry you did not take action when you could.”
“I say we go down and eliminate the threat,” said another son. “It will be easy since the creatures are so soft.”
“But that makes them resilient,” said another. “And who knows why they’re so soft? Some say it’s because they’re made of water.”
“Damn that blasted poison!” Darmin cried.
“Let the creatures be,” Darunia said. “They have shown no interest in us. They keep to themselves. They are not after our food.”
“Of course they are,” his father cried. “Look at that barren wasteland out there! How do they survive? And the dragons, Volagnid’s great breath, the dragons are still out there.”
“I haven’t seen one in a hundred years,” Darunia offered.
“Then it is high time one appeared again! Damn them all. And I’ve heard that even the plants are moving now! They’ve grown legs, and they’re spreading their nuts and leaves and their awful scent everywhere. And not to mention the water has begun to spin monsters from itself—just yesterday a scout reported seeing eyes, eyes in the river! Soon we’ll have creatures coming at us from every angle. If we cannot outwit these parasites at the bottom of our mountain, we can at least outmatch them in strength. It is time we prepared for the worst.”
His sons agreed, except for Darunia, of course, who was fairly sure the creatures of the rivers and forests had no interest in braving the fires of the mountain. But he was the smallest and the youngest, so his opinion was drowned in the voices of his brothers’.
Each day, more and more resources poured into protecting the mountain and the treasures inside. Each day Darmin demanded a little more from his brothers, so they might help him upkeep his strength for the inevitable attack, and they gladly offered. No one knew from where this attack would come—the dragons, the small creatures popping up around them, or if the skies would open and dump enough water to drown them—all they knew was that Darmin would keep them safe from the mysteries and dangers of a changing world.
Year by year, he demanded more of the Gorons. He drove them deeper into the mountain, he took more from their efforts—soon they were barely able to see a fraction of their day’s work. But they remembered that he had been the only one who had saved them from Volvagia, and believed wholeheartedly he could save them again when a new threat rose, if only they could keep him strong enough.
As the Gorons shrank and weakened, Darmin himself grew and grew and grew. When he left the chamber to mingle with his compatriots, it was impossible not to notice how tall he seemed, how thick and muscular he had become. Some were quite sure Darmin was eating from their shared storage of food, but few of them cared. “Surely this is a good sign,” they said. “For the larger he is, the easier he will keep us from danger. He will preserve our wealth and our bounty.”
The Gorons could not imagine how terrible it would be if they had to go back to the old days of wandering, of starvation, or worse—of serving a fell creature like Volvagia.
Darunia knew his people were no strangers to hopelessness. It dismayed him how easily they fell back into the mindset of desperation and fear. Even his closest brothers, the older and supposedly stronger sons of Darmin, dragged their tired feet day after day, forcing themselves to give thanks for what they got.
Darmin, by that time, was so big he was unable to leave his chamber. He had gotten so strong, it was said, that no dragon could ever stand up to him. None but his family were allowed to go inside, and he had to send his eldest son to pass down edicts and collect the people’s offerings to their leader. Always, the demands were the same—more stones for eating, more stones for building, more stones for powering the great temple’s traps and fires.
Darunia did not want to believe in the transformation he saw. He watched his father’s limbs change, his skin harden and split into scaly notches, watched the fire of paranoia rise in his eyes. And Darmin just ate and ate, gorging himself on their supply of jewels, gorging himself on the fruits of their labor, gorging himself on the hard work of his own kin, for nothing could satisfy his fears. And even as Darmin turned his eyes to the sky, beyond the open throat of the active mountain, looking for dragons to fight, celebrating his people’s sacrifice by growing even larger, even harder, even meaner, he did not notice his own change.
(Brother Impa, your ward is fading. He’s about to fall.
Are you all right, Sheik?
I’m… fine.
He’s getting bored with your awful story. What he needs is another pot of dragon spit.
I’d rather not…
It is probably best if we do not kill Sheik tonight, Brother Darunia.
Aye, perhaps you’re right. He will have plenty of opportunity in the future to die as he likes. If we let him suffer he’ll learn to pace himself.
I suppose it’s how we all learned.)
Twenty years earlier a Goron had entered the chamber with the best intentions, and now reemerged a dragon, fire-eyed and fierce. It was this moment when Darunia learned how a dragon is made, and why the ancient tales said that dragons and Gorons used to be of one heart and body.
The creature, nothing less than Volvagia reborn, tore through the Goronic halls, devouring Darunia’s brothers by the mouthful. Even Darmin’s own closest sons were not spared the gnashing black teeth of the dragon. But Volvagia’s rage was not without its own method. Flashing a grin of obsidian, it extracted its unfulfilled end of the bargain: a Goron for every fortnight that had passed since its demise. Too weak to fight back, the Gorons fell to their knees and begged for mercy, pleading for Darmin to regain himself. Only Darunia knew that the old patriarch had long vanished into the scaly body of the dragon. In the panic he rushed to his father’s old chamber and took up his hammer, sure that he would be the only one willing to strike the creature down.
It was a long and bloody battle. Volvagia had reemerged stronger than ever; all of the food and dedication the people had given Darmin had made the Goron strong, but they only made the dragon stronger. Volvagia’s scales were hard as diamond, glittering with all the health and beauty of the stones the Gorons had sacrificed to their beloved leader, and when Darunia’s hammer struck the dragon’s body, hardly a crack could be seen.
But Darunia was bolstered by his sheer strength of will; the death of his beloved brothers still glowed fresh like hot coals in his mind, sending burning anger through every limb. For hours, before the terrified eyes of the surviving Gorons, the two fought mercilessly, pointlessly. Between the dragon’s strength and size, and Darunia’s fortifying anger, neither could muster the strength to overpower the other and land a final blow.
“Darunia, tell me why,” Volvagia growled, slithering around the heights of the great chambers of the mountain. “Why must you fight? I am only taking what was rightfully promised me.”
“You ate my brothers,” Darunia replied, as if it needed to be said.
“Glance upon yourself and see how weak you are,” hissed the dragon. “You cannot win, so lower your hammer and let me take what is mine. One brother a fortnight is all I ask. It is not a high price to pay for protection against the creatures of the trees, against the rainstorms and the advancing poison of the woods.” When Darunia remained unmoved, the dragon lowered its eyes to him with a wicked smile. “What right has a youngest son to deny his father?”
The tones and lulls of Darmin’s voice, echoing in the dragon’s words, threw him into a fury. It was with tears streaming down his hardened cheeks that Darunia launched himself at the dragon, hammer-first. He collided with the creature with such phenomenal velocity, the two of them burst through the side of the mountain and into the cold air. They tumbled down the slopes, a chaotic cloud of gnashing teeth and glinting hammer, of whipping tail and fierce, Goronic bellow. The hapless Goron survivors rushed to the hole and watched the wretched spectacle with horror. None could make out a victor through the mayhem of their fight—their blows shook whole sections of the mountain, their falls and scrambles dislodged boulders and clouds of dust. With a shower of fire and fury, Goron and dragon rolled to a stop in the depths of the valley. The impact tore massive trees up by their roots, set the fields of grass ablaze, and covered the entire vale with smoke and dust. When the rumbling of their fight ceased, a deafening silence overtook the entire mountain range.
A few brave Goron souls made their way down the mountain after the two, praying to every patriarch they held dear that it would be Darunia who rose from the ashes and dust clouds. When they arrived at the foothills of the mountain, hands wringing in distress, they indeed found the dragon unmoving, skull crushed by Darmin’s mighty hammer. And beside Volvagia, unmoving in the dust, lay the body of their hero.
The rocks of his strong back had crumbled to pebbles, and the steel of his bones jutted from his broken limbs. Though his iron heart still pumped, barely, the marbles of his black eyes had dulled to a torpid grey. When he moved his mouth, his voice stayed stuck in his throat but they could read the small, shaking motions of his lips.
“Do not weep for me, brothers,” he mouthed.
Of course, they all fell to weeping, beating their chests and chanting songs of mourning for their lost brother. And while they cried and argued about what to do with the body—or if indeed their near-dead brother could still be revived, curious faces emerged from the gnarled, blackened trees. They were long, thin, and they moved with such quietness the Gorons could not hear them over the sorrowful cants and furious arguing.
It wasn’t until the strange creatures were already upon the body of their brother that the Gorons even noticed they were not alone. And when they recognized the long, rock-less limbs of the fell creatures Darmin himself had so feared, they stood paralyzed. “These are those awful creatures of water,” they whispered to themselves, “come to finish us off.”
The people indeed had weapons of steel and wood, for what were we to expect from them but caution, after witnessing the bodies of a Goron and a dragon fall from the sky and burn a quarter of their valley to ash? But the people, seeing the Gorons in such distress, lowered their weapons. They looked at one another and forwent their attack, instead circling the Gorons and whispering to one another in a harsh and unintelligible language. Immediately Darunia’s brothers knew they were planning on how to best slaughter them—they could only guess if they were to cut them, pierce them, poison them, or leave them to die in their own pitiful weakness.
Instead, they wrapped their thin arms around Darunia’s broken limbs and carried him to their blacksmiths. The Gorons watched in helpless amazement as strong men and women set his arms and legs right with heat and hammer. Chirping with songs in a language none could understand, the children of the village brought wood to set a fire under him and warm his aching body. People in robes came to cast protective spells over him and heal his wounds with foul-smelling salve. The farmers brought him vegetables and the hunters brought him game, but the Gorons, with so many grunts and gestures, told them what their patriarch needed. So they brought to him their own jewelry, their own stores of treasure, and with the help of the Gorons, searched and dug across the mountainside for sustenance. When the smiths had set right his iron bones, and the healers and magicians had painted spells across his broken back, when the fires of the village had warmed him and his friends and brothers brought him enough food to eat, Darunia opened his eyes.
“Oh my brethren,” he groaned. He looked upon the strange people of water and earth, and though he did not know if they could understand him, addressed them also. “Thank you to all of you as well, strangers who helped me when you did not need to. It is because of your generosity that you have staved off my death, and I will never forget that.”
“It is not as much as you deserve,” his brothers replied. “For you have destroyed Volvagia.”
“Volvagia is far from destroyed. The corpse on the foothill is not Volvagia—I am. And so are all of you. It is a monster of our own making, and we will make it again, so long as we let desperation drive us. So long as we let the wrongs we have suffered flame the fires of our rage and fear, we will never be free of the fell dragon. So I ask you, brothers, to be brave, to be generous and unafraid, to value brotherhood above comfort and comradeship above safety. I want you to keep vigilant of the real threats, the ghosts of all the Volvagias that still linger in our great halls of the mountains, and above all, I want you to be happy. And I want you to do this for yourselves, and not for me. I am unworthy to call myself a leader of such a tribe of hardworking and selfless Gorons.”
A few turned their heads to one another and nodded. “Surely you are worthy of us,” they said. “And we will try to be worthy of you.”
“So, the first thing to do is introduce ourselves properly to these new people who share our world,” Darunia said.
And introduce themselves they did. It was from Goronic smithing techniques that the Sheikah learned to make the thinnest, strongest blades in Hyrule. It was from the Gorons that they learned to cultivate and harvest the crops of bombcraft, it was from them that the Sheikah learned to throw a proper celebration.
(Your own words, not mine, Brother Impa!
It is true, though, and you cannot deny it.)
Days of peace and prosperity followed. Darunia, though he had proven himself a warrior, hid his father’s hammer away. In times of peace, he attested, there is no need for such a weapon. But he did not destroy it outright, for he knew that if he were ever to follow the footsteps of his father and let the hidden heart of the tyrant take over his own, it would be needed. He hoped that if he, or any Goron, for that matter, let the hurt of hardship turn him into Volvagia, that if ever the heart of a dragon emerged to once again devour his people’s minds and bodies, a hero might rise and strike him down. It was the greatest act of loyalty he could ever ask for.
*
“A terrible retelling,” Darunia claims. “But I will let it go, just this once.”
“I did not tell it for you,” Impa says. “Sheik, you enjoyed it, did you not?”
She looks my way, and I try not to teeter. My stomach churns, my sight spins, and I find my face acquainting itself with the stone floor.
“Look at him, Brother Impa!” Darunia laughs. “He’s been the one to drink for every one of your mistakes!” When he sees me lower my head and gurgle, he pulls himself to his feet. “You Sheikah and your sensitive constitutions. If you’re going to vomit, go outside. I cannot stand the smell of half-digested plants.”
“It’s better than the smell of half-digested rock,” Impa insists, but helps me up anyway. She drags me through the halls of Goron city, steadying my waist, until we reach the exit.
The snow sparkles in the moon, disorienting me. I lean by an outcropping, brain aching, sight spinning. “Impa…” I mutter, bending over my knees. “Why did you do this to me?”
“It’s a lesson we all must learn,” she says, but I can hear the smile in her voice. “Some learn it earlier than others.” I cannot imagine her learning the same lesson. Even drunk Impa is graceful and flawless. She does not stutter or slur when she tells her stories, she is no slower in a fight, no less clever or put-together.
When I am done throwing up, she removes her cloak and puts it around me. I linger in her arms for a moment. I smell dragon spit, but I am fairly sure it comes from my own breath. “Do you think Darunia is right?” I ask her, as she leads me back toward the warmth of Goron City.
“About what?”
“Do you think my clay is too soft? To make into a hero?”
“If clay is not soft, it cannot be sculpted,” Impa says. “And we have much more sculpting to do yet. Until it is time to plunge you into the fire, I will keep you soft.” A few Gorons linger in the doorway to the town, warming themselves on the generous flames that light the halls, and they smile at me—kindly, but no less amused at my state. “And you must always keep a bit of softness at your center, Sheik.”
“Lest I become a dragon, I know,” I sigh. Impa finds a warm place for me and lays me down. Her hand lingers on my forehead for a moment, and I reach up to hold it there. “Your stories never fail to have more morals than I can keep track of.”
“It is not so much that my stories have morals,” she says. She lets me tug her closer to my side. “It is that my morals have stories.”
I suppose everyone has a story for when they learn something important. Otherwise, it would not be important, would it? Even I have tales upon tales, from my mundane life, of small mistakes and large transgressions, of moments and narratives that taught me one thing or another about how the world works. “Impa, if I retake the throne—“
“When. When you retake the throne, my liege—“ she stops, letting her voice fall to a whisper. “I will ensure you do not make the mistakes of your father. I will ensure you do not make the mistakes of any that came before, spineless or tyrannical. If I see so much as a puff of dragon smoke coming from you, I will take up the hero’s hammer myself.”
It is as much of an expression of love as I can ever get from her. I smile so widely I cannot keep my eyes open.
I expect it is a familiar scenario for Impa. Somewhere in the spinning rooms of my memories, I hear praises sung to a Gerudo King of great strength and valor, of a man whose very essence was that of noble violence. Perhaps it is the pointless boredom of rulership that drives him to torment a country that poses no threat to him. Perhaps that is why he sends out his armies to take what is already his—to torture the Eldine mountains with the frigid magic of unnatural winter, to raise the dead from potter’s fields and send them screaming across the plains. Perhaps that is why he has built such an impenetrable castle, floating over lakes of fire, perhaps that is why he has gone out of his way to weaken this country.
“He is afraid,” I say aloud. “He is so afraid.” I find my idiotic smile spreading, sending waves of stupidity and joy down my neck and into my very heart.
“Who?” Impa asks, and I simply laugh in reply. She sighs and settles beside me, letting me rest my head on her shoulder. “Of what, Sheik?”
I take a breath, still stinking of dragon spit, and sink happily into her arms. “Of me.”
Notes:
Phew, it's been a while for this one. Mostly because this chapter was sitting on my computer for months, waiting to be fixed.
I didn't fix it. I just decided to let it go free because maybe there's only so much you can do before your dumb chapter devours you. I'll probably go back and do some retrofitting once the whole story is written--that's usually when I do polishing.
Loto (Guest) on Chapter 1 Fri 19 Aug 2016 05:52AM UTC
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