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Wandering markets in random towns was one of Legend’s favourite past times.
As much as he got on with the other Links, he had always valued alone time. In the last few months, it had become even more precious to him with the majority of his days being spent in the undiluted company of eight other people.
Market places were anonymous. He could meander between stalls, perusing wares, and people-watching without having to speak to anyone. If he wanted to barter for an interesting item, he would make himself known to the stallholder.
Legend wasn’t sure where the rest of the Chain were. He thought he remembered Four and Wind going to check out a bookstore, while Twilight, Sky, and Time looked for somewhere to get their weapons serviced. Hyrule and Wild were anyone’s guess – but they certainly weren’t Legend’s problem. Not right now.
The time passed slowly as he wandered the stalls, buying a cup of mead and perching on the edge of a fountain to watch the townspeople go about their days. It was something he missed, sometimes – stability, having the option to slow down a bit because everything you needed was in one place, all the time.
He’d known the nomadic lifestyle for so long, it had become ingrained in him at this point.
Sighing and returning his empty cup to the vendor, Legend checked he had all his things on his person and took stock of which direction the inn was in. It had been several hours, he felt suitably recharged – and it was best not to linger too long in case the others started to wonder where he was. They might have been in a town, but the market was winding down for the day and the sun was getting low. It was unfamiliar territory, nonetheless.
He wound his way through the streets, admiring the different shops and homes as he stepped quickly over the rounded cobbles.
He would think later about how he had allowed himself to become a little too complacent, a little too secure in this quaint and, by all appearances, innocent town. A lesson learned for another time, perhaps.
Rough hands circling his upper arms were all the warning he got before he was wrestled bodily into an alleyway between two shops. He grunted in surprise, instincts taking over as he lifted a foot and drove it back into the knee of his captor. A bitten off swear came from somewhere behind and above Legend before a hand wound itself in his hair and thrust him headfirst into a wall.
The world flashed white for a moment before slotting back into place with the feeling of rope winding around his wrists. The knot was cinched tight behind his back, his cheek grinding into the stone in front of him. For the first time, he could see who his assailants were.
There were four men, and the one doing all the wrestling – the one tying Legend’s hands behind him now - was well over six foot. Legend barely came up to the man’s chest. No wonder kicking him hadn’t done anything.
He tried to become a dead weight and shock the man into dropping him, instead. It had little effect; the man simply grabbed him by the wrists and thrust him up against the wall again.
“Keep still, you little shit,” the man hissed.
“Fuck you,” Legend ground out. He wriggled, trying to loosen the hands. He opened his mouth and took a deep breath. He got out a single “HELP -” before a sweaty hand jammed over his mouth.
“Shut it, brat.” Someone procured a cloth from somewhere and shoved it into his mouth, tying it behind his head. “You’re coming with us.”
Legend had an item for everything. Everything. And this served him well 99% of the time.
The other 1% was right fucking now - in a situation where his hands were tied, he couldn’t move, and some assholes were rifling through his bag and pulling items out at random like toys from a toybox.
Legend protested loudly, and the effect was absolutely ruined by the gag in his mouth.
From what the group of men had been saying, he surmised that they clocked the Chain when they’d first arrived in town and walked into the inn. Groups of travellers were always good targets for robbery, it seemed, and one of them had seen Legend pull a couple of items out of his bag while searching for the mirror shield for Warriors.
Legend couldn’t even remember what those items had been, but it was clearly enough to pique the men’s interest. Even more so, the men had picked up on the apparent wealth shared among the group when Time and Twilight were paying the innkeeper for the use of five rooms.
The idiots had decided to steal Legend’s items to fence on the black market, and to steal Legend himself and ransom him back to the Chain - for the measly price of ten thousand rupees.
He was, in all honesty, a little bit offended. Not only did he know that the Chain held more than that collectively among them - he was also for damn sure worth more than ten thousand rupees. They were idiots for asking that low.
However - if there was one thing Legend hated more than idiots, it was competent idiots. And these men had already proven that they knew what they were doing, if the speed and efficiency with which they had grabbed Legend was anything to go by.
Idiots they remained, however, for thinking they could kidnap one of a group of nine heavily armed travellers and get away with it.
Legend huffed out a breath and wriggled, pulling again at the rope around his wrists. joints clicked from the force, small bursts of pain shooting up his arms. The ropes were already gaining a little slack. If he could just…
“Oi! Stop that!” Loud footsteps preluded a hand grabbing him by the hair and pulling his head up. A leering smile and eyes just this side of crazy met Legend’s gaze when his head was forced back against the post behind him. Legend fixed him with his fiercest glare. “You’re not going anywhere, so settle in sweetheart.”
Delivering a sharp smack to Legend’s cheek, the man moved to grab an extra length of rope. He looped it around Legend’s torso three times before tying it. Tightly.
He wiggled his eyebrows. “Like to see you get out of that one in a hurry.”
Joke was on him – he’d left Legend’s legs free.
It was against his better judgement, if Legend were honest, but he stuck a foot out as the man stepped away. The man’s large boot caught on Legend’s ankle and he went down hard.
If Legend could actually breathe through more than his nose, he’d have laughed. As it was, he had little time to soak in the satisfaction before the man was climbing to his feet, wiping a hand across a freshly bloodied nose and chin.
“You little shit,” he hissed. “You need to be in one piece for a ransom, but you don’t need to be in good nick.”
He really did look unhinged now. He marched the three steps back over to Legend and drove his boot into Legend’s stomach. Legend gagged behind the cloth, his body instinctually trying and failing to double over. His stomach spasmed in response to the shock of pain.
This guy was more than just a smuggler, Legend had already surmised. Or rather, he was a smuggler with a slightly sadistic edge who used his chosen profession to get his jolly’s off whenever he wanted. He’d already taken great delight in manhandling Legend down the flight of stairs into this grotty basement and had taken every opportunity since to lay hands on him.
The guy clearly didn’t need an excuse to inflict pain, but giving him a reason hadn’t been Legend’s best idea regardless.
The man stared down at Legend, nostrils flaring, before turning and marching back to where the other three men were crouched, surrounded by Legend’s stuff. The man scanned the items for a moment before picking something up. Legend’s heart sank. Surely, he wouldn’t know how to use –
A sharp crackle and fizz answered his question. The man grinned with success, lightning dancing from the end of the rod in his hand.
One of the men on the floor spoke without turning away from the object in his hands, his voice slightly chiding. “Be gentle Darius, we won’t get any money for him if he’s dead.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Darius waved the man off, sauntering over to Legend while running his hand up and down the rod. “I’ve seen these before,” he mused. “Interesting tools, very effective for fighting multiple people at once. Also effective for making people talk. Or,” he shrugged. “For making them scream.”
Legend would have rolled his eyes at what a cliché this guy was – if he hadn’t been staring at the business end of a lightning rod.
Darius stopped in front of him, staring him down. The light from the rod glinted off his eyes, reflecting the anger in them. Legend gulped. He knew he had a big mouth, and he didn’t always think things through before he did them. He regretted that trait no more than he did in that moment.
Darius grinned and pressed the rod against Legend’s neck.
Legend screamed. His entire body seized, arching against the ropes that kept him pinned against the wooden beam. Fire danced up his neck and down into his arms. The ropes bit into his wrists as he tried to move away, to just get away –
The rod was lifted.
Legend breathed heavily through his nose, limp in his bindings. Sadistic bastard.
Said bastard grabbed the neck of Legend’s tunic in one rough fist and ripped it to the side, before pushing the lightning rod against his exposed shoulder.
Legend seized again, head battering off the wood behind him, teeth clenched around the gag. The electricity blazed across his chest and down his torso, making his muscles convulse and his legs shake.
When it finally stopped, Legend kept trembling. If his teeth weren’t slightly cushioned by the gag, he was sure they would be rattling. Shocks rippled across his torso, made his arms shudder in their bindings. He had to swallow bile in his throat back down.
A brutal kick lit up pain in his knee. “Not being such a little shit now, are you?”
Legend couldn’t even think of responding, eyes screwed shut and breaths coming in sharp inhales through his nose.
He wasn’t even given a full minute’s reprieve before Darius pressed the rod back onto the same spot. The convulsions were worse this time, Legend’s arms straining against the bindings, his shoulders screaming from the pain of the electricity and the pulling of muscles. His legs kicked; his eyes squeezed shut. He was pretty sure he’d bitten his tongue.
When the rod was finally pulled back, Legend couldn’t control the bile this time. He started gagging, panicking because the cloth was still in his mouth. And then, mercifully, the gag was pulled down. Bile and blood spilled out onto his chest.
It hadn’t been Darius that took pity on him, but one of the other men, who was facing Darius now with his arms crossed. “We won’t get money for him if he’s dead,” he said again. “You’ve had your fun. Now let him be.”
Legend lolled his head back against the post, blood dribbling down his chin. He caught Darius’ gaze and did his best to pull his lips back in a snarl. “F-fuck…you…” he rasped.
The second man rolled his eyes. “Kid, don’t - ” he began to warn Legend.
Darius ploughed another kick into Legend’s stomach, and Legend really did throw up this time. His body gagged relentlessly; the pain of his muscles clenching was even more potent in the aftermath of the electricity.
He wouldn’t have been surprised if some of the blood mixing with his sick was from more than his tongue, now.
When he finally stopped gagging, he slumped in his bindings. His whole body was shaking, his extremities juddering at random intervals. His sight began to blur over, and he watched in a haze as both sets of boots in front of him turned and walked away.
He hoped the others would come soon.
It hadn’t taken the Chain long to track down the warehouse. The people who had taken Legend were either cocky or stupid enough that they hadn’t bothered to hide their tracks very well. Perhaps a mix of both, Warriors thought, which was usually worse.
Whisperings from the townsfolk and some helpful information from the innkeeper revealed that, beneath its quaint surface, the town had a history with smuggling. It didn’t take a genius to piece together why their veteran hero had been snatched; he had a bag full of magical items that must have been worth millions.
Leads were uncovered by dividing into four pairs, and eventually the group had ended up here - an old industrial district on the edge of the town. The derelict area had been used to process lumber before the town became a centre for commerce and trade. Now the area was deserted and in the dark of the night it was easy to locate the warehouse they needed – it was the only one with the flickering glow of a fire spilling from its windows.
Yep. Cocky and stupid, Warriors thought.
Peering through a window revealed one large open room inside. Two men sleeping on bedrolls next to a fire and two sitting on crates across an old table from each other, playing cards. Both were armed. Legend’s bag sat on the floor next to them, items spilling out onto the floor.
Warriors scanned the flickering shadows at the edge of the firelight, his eyes landing on a figure slumped against a wooden beam. His jaw clenched and he crouched back down, facing the others.
“Four men - two sleeping, two sitting at a table. Ten feet in from the door, ten o’clock,” Warriors whispered. “They have swords. Legend is tied to a post, about 20 feet from the front door. The men are between us and him.”
Wind grinned devilishly, gripping the hilt of his sword. “Good.”
They had opted for speed over subtlety in the end, with Twilight and Warriors kicking the doors in, followed by the six others charging in with wielded swords.
The fight was rather anticlimactic in the end.
The two men at the table reacted far too slow, but the two on the floor barely reacted at all. Sky and Twilight had them on their fronts, with Hyrule looping rope around their wrists and ankles before they had even fully woken up.
The two at the table grabbed their swords and lurched clumsily to their feet. Warriors parried hits from the shorter one for a moment before an opening allowed him to bring the hilt of his sword down on the man’s brow; he dropped like a bag of rocks.
Time was face-to-face with the big one, sweat beading on his brow as he blocked blows that rang across the hollow warehouse. Wild rushed in behind the man, dropping into a crouch and sweeping his leg under the man’s feet. He, too, went down. One last ditch attempt saw his sword knocked from his hand by Time, and his wrist pinned to the ground under Sky’s heel.
Satisfied that the group of men was under control, Warriors jogged to where Legend was bound, skidding to his knees, breath catching in his throat. Four was right behind him.
Warriors hadn’t been able to see much through the window, and now his breath caught in his throat.
Legend was tied to the post hip to shoulder with rope, his body hanging limply in his bindings. His hair hid his face, but Warriors could see that his tunic had been ripped from neck to mid-chest, his left shoulder bare. The remains of sick stained the material down his front. Tremors ran irregularly through his whole body.
Four hissed, reaching out a hand and hovering it over the ugly, dark wound on Legend’s shoulder, afraid to touch.
“Electricity burns,” Warriors ground out. He reached out a gentle hand that belied his anger and tilted Legend’s head to the side. “On his neck, too.” His hands flitted across Legend’s body, testing here, and prodding there, making judgements about the state of his friend.
Gently, oh so gently, he placed a hand at the back of Legend’s neck and another on his forehead and tilted his head up. There was dried blood at the edge of his mouth that Warriors prayed to Hylia was only from a bitten tongue. Deep scratches on his cheek. The vet’s hair was tangled on his forehead, his eyelashes damp. He didn’t react to Warriors’ touch.
Warriors rested Legends’ head gently against the wooden beam and rose to his feet. He turned, slowly, purposefully, and marched toward the group of captive men.
“Which one of you was it?” he growled. No one spoke. “Which one?!”
The glint in the big man’s eyes gave him away. Warriors bent over him, grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, got right up in his face. “You piece of shit,” he spat.
The man laughed. He looked Warriors right in the eye. “He screamed so easily,” he said, with a toothy grin.
Cocky and stupid.
Red descended in front of Warriors’ eyes, and he reached for his sword. It was only a hand from Time and Twilight on each of his arms that stayed him.
“As much as I would love for you to,” Time ground out. “There are soldiers on their way here to arrest them. We can’t kill one of them – they’ll arrest us.”
Warriors’ chest was heaving. “They electrocuted him.”
Time tensed. He passed Warriors off to Twilight and spun to the man kneeling in front of them. There was a brief pause, a moment where Warriors wondered what Time was doing – and then Time rammed the hilt of his sword, hard, into the man’s stomach, and brought a heavy boot down on his ankle. There was a crunch, and the man screamed.
“Oops,” Time said, deadpan.
Behind them, a shout alerted them to Hyrule and Four's success in untying Legend. Twilight left Warriors, bending down on one knee in front of the vet.
“Am I okay to lift him, Wars?” he asked over his shoulder.
Warriors nodded. “I checked. No broken bones, and no apparent spinal injury.”
Twilight slipped an arm under Legend’s knees and shoulders, hugging the smaller hero to his chest. “Let’s get him somewhere safe.”
Warriors sat at the side of Legend’s bed, keeping watch over his younger companion. It was unnatural to see the vet so still, but for the tremors continuously running through his body. His face was lax and absent of his signature snark.
They’d fixed up the cuts on Legend’s cheek, cleaned his face and gently sanitised the electricity burns. Removing his tunic had revealed some severe bruising on the vet’s stomach – but no internal bleeding, Warriors was pleased to find. The blood around his mouth had just been from a tongue injury. Small mercies.
The group had spent hours discussing how to prevent something like this happening again. Several bemoaned the fact that they couldn’t even spend time alone somewhere as apparently safe as this without something going wrong. They were probably going to need to move in pairs or trios from now on.
Warriors wasn’t sure how that would go down with Legend – he knew the vet valued his alone time almost as much as his prized items.
That was problem for another day, Warriors surmised as Legend moved his hand slightly, his face scrunching up.
He leaned forward, resting a hand over Legend’s. “Hey, Link,” he said softly. “It’s Wars, you’re safe. You’re in our room at the inn. Everyone else is just down the hall.”
Legend sucked in a breath, eyes squeezing tight for a second before cracking open. He blinked up at the ceiling once, twice, then swivelled his eyes toward Warriors. “What…” he croaked. He stopped, licked his lips. Warriors leaned closer.
“What was that?” he murmured.
Legend’s voice was raspy when it came out. “W-what…th-the fuck took y-you all s-s-so long?”
Warriors dropped his head and chuckled. “Nice to know the snark is still intact.” He flicked his eyes back up to see Legend glaring at him half-heartedly. No, a quarter-heartedly. “Trying to look tough right now is just making you look more pathetic, vet.”
Legend lifted his left hand, the residual tremors from the electricity making the whole limb shake violently. He formed a fist and slowly, so slowly, extended his middle finger. “F-fuck you.”
Warriors smiled drily and reached out, folding both of his hands over Legend’s trembling fingers. “The shaking will go away,” he assured. “It’s from the… it won’t last.”
“Hmm,” Legend hummed. “C-can’t wait to b-be able t-to swear at you pro-properly, pr-pretty boy. It kind of loses its eff-effect like th-this.”
Warriors rolled his eyes, but the mirth was dampened by the affection shining in them. “I look forward to it. But for now, get some more sleep, vet.”