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Rumor Mill: Volume 2
Greetings from Traysi—your source for the best gossip and news!
Have you been hearing any good stories on your travels? I've got a great one for you today!
The Sword that Seals the Darkness
The only one who can wield this sword carries the blood of the hero in their veins.
That's what they say about this special blade! Rumor has it the blade has been hidden away in a forest somewhere...
I have to admit that this rumor really has me interested, but sometimes you have to face reality.
My reality is... There isn't any hero in my bloodline, so this sword would just be a big paperweight to me...
Traysi's Recommendation: ★☆☆☆☆
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
“Heeeeeyyyyy!”
Link pocketed a brightbloom seed and sighed. That voice was unmistakable. His journalistic partner Penn had a knack for placing himself in troubling situations, and this would surely be no exception.
He raised his hand towards the ceiling and ascended to the surface, right beside the cooking pot and a light brown Hylian retriever. Penn, an unusual-looking Rito, spoke frantically to the stable attendant Kenyo.
“She’s gone!” Penn exclaimed, waving his wings in the air. “The boss, she’s been kidnapped!”
Link’s frown deepened. Penn’s boss was also technically his boss, and she wasn’t the kind of boss that left a heart container when defeated. If Traysi, lead editor of the Lucky Clover Gazette, was really in danger… well, she wasn’t exactly a castle knight. He wasn’t even sure she knew how to use a sword.
Wait, thought Link. Kidnapped?
“I’m sorry, sir,” said Kenyo, “but I’m not sure how I can help.”
Penn groaned. “Where’s a hero when you need one?”
Link wasn’t surprised by Penn’s obliviousness. He tended to go unnoticed while traveling, due to his small stature and typically casual dress. Sure, some people recognized the sword on his back and his magical arm, but they were few and far between. And in Penn’s case, their boss had intentionally kept him in the dark about Link’s true identity—for ‘journalistic objectivity,’ she’d once privately explained.
“It’s those guys,” Penn said. He motioned to his own face. “You know, the ones with the…”
“Noses?”
“No, the masks! They all wear masks!”
Link’s blood went cold. The Yiga Clan kidnapped Traysi.
What in Hyrule did she write?
He cleared his throat, but Penn remained fixated on Kenyo. Link sighed, grabbed a nearby wooden spoon, and slammed it against the side of the cooking pot.
“Link!” Penn exclaimed, lighting up at the familiar face. “My faithful reporting assistant! Something absolutely terrible has happened to our esteemed editor.”
Link nodded. Penn glanced behind his back, suddenly suspicious. “Do you know a place we can talk… privately? They could be anywhere. I trust you with the details, but everyone else…”
Penn eyed the Hylian retriever suspiciously. Link would have found his wariness rather silly, if not for the fact that Yiga Clan members regularly disguised themselves as random Hylians, cuccos, and even trees just to ruin his day.
He led Penn to the well and climbed over the edge.
“Wait!” Penn whisper-yelled. “You expect me to go down there?!”
Link met his eyes, willing him to understand.
“Right,” Penn muttered, reminding himself. “You don’t like to talk.”
It was partially true. Before the Calamity, Link had restrained himself from speaking out of duty. Despite being a rather gregarious child, he’d taken a voluntary vow of silence just before his assignment as Princess Zelda’s knight. Over time, though, he’d grown comfortable enough in her presence to occasionally speak.
At the time it had felt like a favor to Zelda more than anything else. As a very vocal person herself, it had made sense that she saw his speech as a sign of growth. But Link often found contentment in silence, especially in a post-Calamity world.
After his century of restoration, he’d traveled the world alone for nearly two years. Not with his father, not with the knights or Champions, not even with Princess Zelda—just himself. And throughout the duration of his travels, Link hadn’t really found a reason to speak. He’d devised other ways to communicate with his newfound allies, people from a time that wasn’t his own. He’d been a visitor in their world, sent from the past to save them all. And he did save them all, along with Princess Zelda. But then time... just kept passing. And they all just kept living. Distant allies became close and treasured friends, and all the places he’d used to just visit became his home.
These days, Link was known to occasionally talk, usually in order to keep other people safe and informed. The fact that he could do this without issue was a great improvement to the way he’d silenced himself before the Calamity. But mostly, when he was given the choice, Link still preferred to remain silent. He often found that words only complicated the world’s simple truths anyway. His friends did their best to respect his unique communicative habits, although it occasionally caused some frustration. Eventually, even Zelda had come to understand that his silence was a choice, rather than a limitation. Link had always admired that quality of hers: the willingness to change.
He pictured the Light Dragon soaring through Hyrule’s skies and winced at the poor choice of words. Yet another reason he preferred silence.
“Fine,” Penn groaned, glaring distastefully down the well. “But only because the boss is in trouble.”
Link gave him a thumbs-up and slid inside. The fall was brief and broken by a small pool of water. Several hot-footed frogs scattered as he waded over to dry land.
Penn drifted downward into the small cave, skipping the water entirely. He regarded the moss and lichen with disgust. “Do you spend a lot of your time in these kinds of places, partner?”
Link shrugged. He rather enjoyed the sound of rushing water and the quiet stable music from above. A sticky lizard fell onto him from the ceiling and he didn’t even flinch.
“What was that?!” Penn exclaimed, as the yellow creature skittered away. “Oh, forget it.”
Link gestured to an imaginary mask on his face. Mimicry, he’d found, could be an incredibly effective method of communication.
“Okay, partner,” said Penn, nodding with determination. “I’ll give you the scoop.”
Link plucked a nearby bright cap and bit into it like an apple.
“Ever since the Princess Zelda case went cold, the boss has been searching for new leads to follow. First it was the disappearance of the Guardians and Sheikah technology, but when we sent investigators to Kakariko Village they were all turned away. But we both know that Traysi never gives up, so she kept digging on her own.”
Link raised an eyebrow and pointed to himself.
Penn burst out laughing. “Sorry, pal, but I think all that Sheikah stuff might be a little above your pay grade.”
Link frowned. Penn was oblivious to his reporting partner’s true identity, but Traysi knew exactly who she employed. She could have just asked—although, Link wasn’t exactly the easiest person to track down. He should have visited the Gazette more often throughout the past few weeks. He still enjoyed Traysi’s company, even though he’d already earned the Froggy Armor and discovered Zelda’s fate.
Which… maybe that was why Traysi hadn’t asked him for help. When she’d asked what happened to Zelda, Link had just teleported away. He’d hoped, at the time, that she would just run with the Demon King story instead.
“And there’s always the Demon King,” Penn continued, “but all we have on him is history. Traysi says people don’t care about history, they want current events. And we can only run the headline ‘Demonic Demagogue Does Dastardly Deeds in Desolate Depths’ so many times before people start to complain. Although maybe it’s the alliteration, not the repetition, that really gets under their skin…”
Link took another loud bite out of the raw mushroom.
“Anyway,” Penn said, “the Guardian stuff was a no-go. But she found something else while looking into the Sheikah, a story she seemed even more excited to chase: the Yiga Clan.”
That surprised Link. He'd forgotten that the Yiga were connected to the Sheikah—although in retrospect, their symbol literally being an upside-down Sheikah eye wasn’t exactly subtle. And there was that shrine orb confrontation in Kakariko Village, years ago…
“We’ve mentioned the Yiga before in the Gazette,” said Penn, “but only while debunking rumors about the Princess. They do like to disguise themselves as Zelda, huh?”
Link scowled. That, they did. The worst time had been on the Great Plateau, where a not-Zelda had waited for him at a fire near the Cave of Resurrection. For just a second, he’d let his guard down and hoped it was her. But then he’d looked up at the sky and spotted the Light Dragon overhead.
Like all Yiga footsoldiers, not-Zelda had managed to teleport away before Link could land a final blow. Normally Link was fine with that—he wasn’t exactly eager to take lives—but in that specific instance he’d been very tempted to make an exception.
“I’m sure it drives her swordsman crazy,” remarked Penn. “Poor guy.”
Link nodded sympathetically. Penn continued.
“After learning about the Yiga Clan’s history, Traysi started digging into their present operations. She sent a few scouts to the Great Plateau but they all returned empty-handed. All they found were some perfectly nice travelers and a few weird frog statues.”
Link pointed to Penn. The reporter shook his head.
“Way too dangerous, partner. We’re writers, not fighters. I still have no idea how you managed to survive so many scuffles while we were in the field. And Traysi… she’s mentioned looking after herself during the Rumor Mill days, but it’s been years since she’s been on the beat.”
Link remembered meeting Traysi during his post-Calamity adventures, when she’d been kept out of the Gerudo palace for annoying the guards. The Gerudo Desert was a dangerous place for someone without combat training. It was impressive, really, that Traysi had been able to travel there on her own.
“I came into work today and she was gone,” Penn explained. “I searched the entire stabl—uh, base of operations—but the only thing I found was…”
He pulled a distinctive red talisman out of his messenger bag. Link was all-too-familiar with the Yiga Clan’s literal calling card.
He pointed to his own eyes. Penn shook his head again.
“Nobody else was around. Juanelle spent the night in Rito Village and Galli’s on paid leave because he threw out his back chopping wood.”
Link finished his mushroom and took the Yiga talisman from Penn.
“Good idea,” said the reporter. “Find a hero and pass that on to them. It might be a hard ask, though—as strange as it sounds, most people are completely unaware of the Yiga Clan.”
Penn seemed genuinely surprised that most Hylians hadn’t noticed the Yiga, but after eight years in this post-Calamity world Link had long since accepted that most people experienced life in a very different way from himself. They had no reason to pay attention to mysterious assassins or giant bleeding chasms, because those things weren’t their responsibility to confront. Most normal Hylians spent their time thinking about what to make for breakfast and admiring the sunset over the sea.
Link often reminded himself that he, too, deserved to indulge in life’s simplicities. It was why he'd taken the job at the Lucky Clover Gazette in the first place, instead of simply investigating Princess Zelda’s disappearance on his own. It was why he spent several hours a week transporting koroks to their friends, even though Hestu already fully upgraded his weapons capacity. And it was why, during the initial panic of the Upheaval, he’d made a habit of visiting the Lucky Clover Gazette’s headquarters in the old Rito stable. Because Penn and Traysi were his friends, and he liked to make sure they were okay.
It was nice to remind himself that most of his friends were okay.
“I’ll hold down the fort while you search,” Penn told Link. He seemed quite relieved to have someone else on this specific case. “Soar long!”
Penn saluted, as he always did, and then he flew directly into the ceiling. Link offered him a mushroom to offset the damage.