Chapter Text
Hyrule blinked bemusedly at the expanse of ocean in front of him, then down at the small, lone hermit crab trundling determinately across the sand next to his boot. He looked left. More beach. More ocean.
He looked right. More beach. More ocean.
He looked behind him. Thick forest. No sign of the rest of the Chain anywhere. By the position of the sun, he estimated it was around midday. When they'd left their previous travel destination, it had been early morning.
“Well,” he sighed, glancing down at the hermit crab. “Guess the portal split us up again.”
His first order of business should be to try getting his bearings, see if he knew whose Hyrule this was and also see if he had the good fortune to be spat out anywhere near the rest of the heroes. Leaving the little hermit crab behind, he jogged into the woods, picked a tree, and started climbing.
Once he reached the top, he glanced around at the surrounding landscape, looking for landmarks. He extended his magic at the same time, casting his senses out like a fishing net to see if he could catch familiar inside it even as he prodded at the land, testing its magic signature and trying to touch any nearby ley lines. All their Hyrules had subtly or not-so-subtly different magic signatures, barring the sailor's, whose Great Sea was the obvious outlier. And that wasn't even counting the possibility they'd gotten dropped off in a time between eras without Heroes, too.
As his senses brushed a distant ley line, though, he grinned. The weary, battered, but distinctively determined thrum of his era's land hummed faintly as his magic briefly twined with it and let it go. This was his home! His broken, strong, beautiful, wild home!
Buoyed by this revelation, Hyrule drew his magic back into himself, and encountered a very familiar presence on the way. A warm, blazing bonfire, its presence a bright beacon of comfort and strength. And it was close, too. Things were looking up already!
Hyrule shimmied deftly down the tree, hopped off the lowest branch, and darted off through the woods towards where the bonfire energy had been. And sure enough, he quickly found it.
“Hey, Wars!” Hyrule said brightly, deftly dodging the reflexive swipe from the captain’s sword that he’d seen coming a mile away. “Fancy meeting you here!”
“Don’t! Do that!” Warriors scolded, placing a hand over his racing heart as he sheathed his sword. “It’s like you kids want me to stab you, constantly sneaking up on me like that. And yes, I'm including Time in that statement”
“As if I'd let you,” Hyrule scoffed, coming closer and knocking his side companionably against the older man’s. “Have a little faith, Cap.”
“Aren’t you in a jolly mood today.”
“Because I'm home! This is my Hyrule.” Hyrule spread his arms and twirled in a small circle. “Anyway, have you found the others?”
“No, you’re the first person I’ve seen since we went through the portal. Stupid thing must have spat us out at different places again,” Warriors said tiredly, rubbing the back of his head.
“Must have had a reason,” Hyrule said practically. “We can cover more ground this way, maybe.”
“Maybe, but I still don't like being separated like this,” Warriors said, drumming the fingers of his left hand absently against his sword hilt. “Nothing good ever comes of it. I'm not in a hurry to have a repeat of the trafficking incident.”
Hyrule sobered slightly at the reminder. “Fair point, but... we're not in that much of a hurry, are we? I don't think I've been in this area before.”
“Rulie...” Warriors sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose in a manner eerily reminiscent to Time.
“Oh, come on!” Hyrule wheedled. “We need more herbs, anyway! Wild will thank us both later, it'll only take a few minutes. Please?”
“You can forage after we find the others, how does that sound?”
Hyrule narrowed hazel eyes, and then let a cherubic grin spread across his face. Fine, then. If that's the way the captain wanted to play. In a taunting sing-song tone, he said, “Yes sir, Captain Killjoy, sir! By the by, this means I can tell Legend about where his shovel went, right?”
Cornflower blue eyes narrowed in turn. “You wouldn’t.”
Hyrule smiled with all his teeth, letting a little of his fae ancestry shine through in the glint of his eyes. “Would you bet rupees on that?”
Warriors buried his face in his hands with a groan. “Fine. You get twenty minutes to frolic in the woods to your little heart’s content, but then we really have to move out, got it?”
“Yes!” Hyrule crowed in triumph, bouncing in place for a moment in sheer excitement before he ran full tilt into the underbrush.
“Wh- Hyrule!” The captain scrambled to follow him.
“Come on, captain, keep up!” Hyrule laughed over his shoulder. “Or, should I start calling you 'old man,' too?”
“Brat!”
Hyrule giggled and continued running, relishing the feel of the wind in his hair and the smell of green, growing things filling his nose. He kept his eyes peeled for anything he could forage as he ran, noting the health of the trees and underbrush around him, searching for any changes indicating a water source or hidden vale.
The grass turned lusher, greener to his left. He veered and ran right into it, ducked around a large boulder, and stumbled into a large clearing full of wildflowers. Hyrule let out a little wordless exclamation of delight and darted for the nearest patch of dandelions.
The jingling of armor and chain mail signaled Warriors’ arrival to the clearing a minute later. Hyrule popped up from where he’d been shoving handfuls of dandelions into his pack and gave him a goofy grin.
“Nice of you to join us.”
Warriors flashed a rude gesture in his direction as he bent over to catch his breath. Between pants, he said, “What... what is this place?”
“Gorgeous, is what it is,” Hyrule said, looking lovingly down at the handful of yellow dandelions he held. He trotted over to warriors and thrust them into the taller man’s hands. “Here, make yourself useful. Get some more of those dandelions, and I’ll get the meadowsweet and valerian.”
Without waiting for a response, he turned and practically dove into a large cluster of valerian. As he stuffed sprig after sprig into his bag, he glanced around and smiled to himself as he saw Warriors dutifully gathering dandelions, dropping them into a pile near his knees as he worked.
Hyrule bounced over and tucked a sprig of valerian behind the captain’s ear.
“For you!” Hyrule beamed down at his brother, dropping to his knees beside him to start shoving dandelions into his pack.
Warriors huffed and reached up to brush the flower’s petals with a finger. But he didn’t remove it. “You’re a menace.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere.”
“You have been spending far too much time around Legend, kid.” Warriors shook his head ruefully.
“He gave me express permission to bully you in his place,” Hyrule said sagely. “Said you shouldn’t get complacent.”
“How thoughtful of him,” came the toneless response.
“I know, right?”
“Well, in the spirit of telling Legend exactly what I think of his chicanery, shall we get a move on?”
“We shall,” Hyrule said magnanimously, his wanderlust sated by this quick detour, at least for now.
They got to their feet and fell into step beside each other as they made their way out of the glade, Hyrule peeking inside his satchel every so often to look fondly at the herbs he'd gathered. He'd have to see about drying and preserving them as soon as possible, or, barring that, getting Wild to stash them in his slate so they'd stay fresh until he could find the time, provided they found the champion in time.
“So, what were those white flowers you picked up?” Warriors asked as they walked, fingers brushing the flower still tucked securely behind his ear. “Some kind of herb?”
“Oh! Yes, they’re called valerian, they’re used for-” Hyrule launched into an eager description of the plant and all its medicinal uses as a sleeping agent and sedative. Warriors nodded and asked questions in all the right places, and happiness sang in Hyrule’s chest as they walked. He'd never considered himself a very chatty or extroverted person, and his life of solitary wandering used to suit him just fine. Sure, sometimes it got lonely without anyone to talk to, but the thrill of adventure, of exploring, of helping people, of making a difference in his wild, scarred land as it healed and flourished, blossoming like a flower finally getting enough water after a long drought... he loved it, truly.
Still, though, he couldn't deny traveling with the other eight Heroes had been shockingly easy to get used to. It would be hard to go back to silence when- no. He wouldn’t think about it. He'd deal with it when the time came and not a moment before, thank you. Today had enough problems of its own without bringing tomorrow's into it, too.
They walked for a good hour or so, making good time considering the terrain. Then, distant sounds of monster roars and the clang of metal against metal carried to Hyrule's sensitive ears, and he looked up to meet Warriors' gaze at the same time the man looked over to meet his. They broke into a run at the same time. Even if it didn't turn out to be one of their brothers, whoever was involved in an altercation with his Hyrule's monsters would surely welcome their assistance.
And if it was one of their brothers... Hyrule cast out with his magic as far as he could fling it, probing, searching for one of the eight magic signatures that had become as familiar to him as his own. Zinging warmth entwined playfully against his searching sunbeam, similar to the cold fire of his lightning spell; where his lightning spell raged with mindless determination before he set it loose on his foes to wreak indiscriminate destruction, though, these sparks felt curious, grounded, powerful but not destructive. He smiled, pressed a comforting beam of sunlight through the connection even though he wasn't sure his brother would feel it, and withdrew.
“It's Four,” Hyrule panted to his companion. “He's...” Hyrule lifted a finger and pointed north. “That way.”
Warriors gave a sharp nod and followed his leading. In just a few minutes, they came upon a small clearing in the trees. Bodies of monsters already littered the ground, all of them bleeding black blood onto the soil. The surviving monsters clustered around a small, multicolored figure, moving so fast he was nearly a blur as he swung and spun and stabbed with his sword.
As they watched, a flash of light flared across the battlefield, and Four separated into his component parts, who picked up the slack, clearing a space around them to allow more room for maneuvering. Blue and Vio harried a moblin, taking it down between them in just a few seconds, while Red and Green cut down a geru. All four Colors reconvened, becoming one once again. Four immediately pressed his attack, smashing a stalfos to pieces. Then, he caught sight of Warriors and Hyrule.
Seeing the other heroes caused a look of utter relief to cross his face, and he faltered briefly for just a moment. A moment was all it took. The remaining black-blooded geru took full advantage of the break in Four’s concentration, knocking aside his sword with a swift parry and thrusting its trident forward.
The middle prong embedded itself in Four’s stomach with a soft, slick sound of metal cleaving cleanly through skin and muscle. The impact knocked him backwards several feet until he slammed into a tree, his sword falling uselessly to the ground with the impact. Four’s skull knocked against the hard wood with a dull thunk that could be heard even across the clearing. He doubled over, hair falling around his face in pale curtains as his small hands futilely grasped the shaft of the trident, the tips of his boots barely brushing the ground.
The geru snarled in triumph, exerting more pressure on the trident and eliciting a piercing cry from the little hero. The smaller prongs on either side of Four made shallow cuts into his tunic and skin as they dug into bark, while the larger, middle prong skewered him completely, the bloody blade emerging from his back and pinning him firmly to the tree. Four’s cry quickly turned into a miserable retch, which then turned into a guttural, hacking cough that splattered his lips with vivid red.
Everything became a blur after that. Hyrule came back to himself surrounded by dead bodies of monsters, the smell of ozone and charred flesh filling the air. He stood back-to-back with Warriors in front of Four’s trembling, immobilized body, shielding it from any further harm.
A faint cough from Four broke the two out of their battle frenzy, and they rushed to his side.
“Hey, g-guys,” he gasped out, one corner of his mouth turning up in a wry grimace as more blood trickled down his chin, standing out starkly against his horribly pale skin. “F-fancy meeting you here.”
“It would certainly do wonders for my blood pressure if I could stop meeting people like this, kid,” Warriors said conversationally, placing a hand on Four’s neck to check his pulse.
The corners of Four’s mouth turned down in a petulant glower, his lips alarmingly ashen. “N-not a k-k-”
“Don’t argue semantics with me right now, Link, you will lose.” Warriors’ hand slid up to cup the side of Four’s face and wiped away a tear trailing a silvery line down pallid skin. Expression darkening, he turned to Hyrule.
“Hyrule, can you-?"
“I’ve got it,” Hyrule said, his life spell setting his hands ablaze with blue-white fire.
“Okay, Link, I’m going to pull this out, and Rulie is going to heal you, okay?”
“Mmm,” Four agreed with a weary hum, too hurt and weak to do more than press into the hand cradling his face, instinctively seeking comfort. He whimpered plaintively at the loss of it when Warriors pulled away to grasp the thick rod skewering him.
“I know, Link, I know, I’m sorry,” Warriors soothed, an anguished expression briefly flashing across his face before it was replaced by cold focus. He glanced at Hyrule and nodded.
Hyrule moved closer, hovering his hands right over Four’s shoulders, ready to catch his brother the second the trident no longer supported his weight.
Warriors set his jaw, steeled himself, and with one brutal wrench, he ripped the trident out of Four’s small, quivering body. Four seized, every line in his frame going utterly rigid with agony. A soft, broken mewl escaped breathless lungs, sounding almost exactly like a dying kitten Hyrule had found curled under a crumbling bridge a few years ago.
And then Hyrule's hands were on his shoulders, gently lowering the smaller youth to the ground, blood trailing down the tree behind him as the life spell sunk into him. Four, thankfully, passed out the second he hit the ground, head lolling limply on his neck before Warriors appeared as if by magic on his other side and cradled the back of his head, supporting his upper body as Hyrule pressed his glowing hands as hard as he could on the injury to staunch the flow of blood before the little body completely ran out.
Four jerked and keened plaintively at the pressure even in unconsciousness, but Hyrule held him fast, pouring his magic into the mortal injury and painstakingly knitting tissue, muscle, and sinew back together. Finally, finally, the wound closed, skin still reddened and faintly scarred, but whole underneath the copious amounts of red staining his skin and clothes.
Hyrule slumped, a significant amount of his magic stores depleted. He rubbed his fingers together, tacky and sticky with Four’s blood, and wished desperately for water to wash them off with. He settled for summoning a brief burst of fire to burn the worst of it off.
Across from him, Warriors moved to pick Four up, then flinched with a hiss and a wince, hand hovering over his right arm and shoulder. An image of the captain bodily throwing himself in front of Four to deflect a mace blow meant for the helpless, injured smithy arose from the chaotic jumble of memories from the previous battle.
“Let me get that for you,” Hyrule panted, reaching for the captain’s arm. “Is it dislocated or just broken?”
“Rulie, no, you’ve used up too much magic already. I can use a potion,” Warriors tried to deflect, gently pushing Hyrule’s hands away with his good arm.
“We should save the potions for later. My magic will replenish itself anyway, and I have a couple green potions and one of Wild’s elixirs besides,” Hyrule insisted, stubbornly reaching again for the arm, bent at an unnatural angle and surely hurting like hell. “It’ll be fine.”
“‘Fine,’” Warriors huffed, but resignedly let Hyrule hover his hands above the pulverized bone and wrenched joints, the glow of magic lighting them up from within. “You know, I’m not quite sure we share the same definition of ‘fine.’”
“If you're alive and walking you're fine, captain,” Hyrule said, sweat standing out on his brow as he pushed more and more power into his spell. They could not afford any injury that would slow them down, not right now. They needed to get to shelter soon, make sure Four was fully recovered before they set about finding the rest of the Chain.
“There,” he finally wheezed, pouring the last of his mana into Warriors. “Better?”
“Much,” Warriors said, rolling his shoulder with a greatly relieved expression. “Now.” He easily scooped the smithy's limp, bloodstained body into his arms. “Let's get out of here.”
Hyrule could not agree more.
They found a relatively safe place under a rock outcropping that formed a sort of shallow cave to set up camp, hidden enough by trees that they wouldn't be readily obvious to anyone passing nearby, and the cave ceiling would help disguise the smoke from their fire. Warriors laid Four out on the grass beside a prepared bedroll and began carefully stripping him of his torn, blood-soaked clothes. Hyrule gathered wood, made a fire, and took Four's clothes and the captain's gloves to a nearby stream to wash the blood out of them. After rummaging through his pack for his small pot and filling it, he returned to camp, hung up his clean laundry on the branches of a nearby tree and turned his attention to his brothers.
Warriors had already wiped down Four, dressed him in a spare tunic and leggings, and covered him with a blanket so he could finish sleeping his injury off. The captain was currently in the process of slicing up a yellow squash into bite-sized chunks with a spare dagger. A small pile of vegetables - Hyrule spotted onions, tomatoes, zucchini, and bell peppers - rested next to him on a cloth along with a chunk of what looked like mutton.
“Dinner?” Hyrule asked, nodding at the vegetables and meat next to him.
“Yeah. Figured we could try... what did the champion call them? Kebabs? That. They seem straightforward enough, and we have the ingredients. Maybe some dandelion salad, too, if you’re willing to part with some of those weeds.”
“Remind me to thank Twilight for suggesting Wild give us all a couple days of rations before going through any more portals next time we see him,” Hyrule said, setting his pot of water on the fire to boil.
As it started to steam, he dug back into his pack for his satchel of herbs. He pushed past all the dandelions, valerian, and meadowsweet he'd gathered to locate the herbs that would help the most with pain and blood loss. He tossed the last of his arnica, some yarrow, white willow bark, and ginger into the pot. Actually, he might as well add some of the valerian to help Four sleep, too, and the dandelions and meadowsweet would help with any lingering inflammation. Into the pot they went.
Hyrule then carefully lifted out a jar of honey, a gift the fairy enclaves always insisted he take whenever he got the chance to visit them. He always used it sparingly, never knowing when he'd be able to get more, but he reckoned this was as good a time as any to use some. He poured about a spoonful carefully into his travel cup, then filled it with the herbal tonic from his pot.
“Need help?” Warriors asked as Hyrule gingerly walked to Four's bedside with the brimming cup.
“If you've got a second, that would be nice.”
Warriors set his knife and the onion he was quartering down. “Sure.”
Between the two of them, they got the entire cup of tea down Four's throat, and the exhausted little smithy fell back asleep the second he'd swallowed the last drop. His first task completed, Hyrule rinsed his cup off with his waterskin, grabbed Four's tunics off the branch they were drying on, and then settled himself down next to Four with a needle and thread. The fabric was still damp, but a faint fire spell held next to the tears for a minute fixed that quickly enough.
He knew he had a long day of mending head of him, but that was alright. Hyrule needed something to occupy himself so he didn't go wandering off again, anyway. He itched to, but he had a feeling the captain would have an aneurysm if he tried. The man had positioned himself in such a way that he could keep an eye on the entrance to their camp and the two younger heroes as he continued peeling and chopping vegetables. So sticking around and doing some mending it was.
The hours passed in companionable silence. Warriors eventually finished with the food preparation, cut some sticks to sharpen, clean, and skewer the meat and vegetables, and the smell of cooking food soon filled the campsite. Once they were done, the kebabs turned out entirely decent. Not quite as good as Wild's, but probably no one's ever would be. Though food had to be neigh inedible for Hyrule to turn up his nose at it. He couldn't afford to be picky with his meals.
“Next time, if we still haven’t found the others, I can cook,” Hyrule offered around a mouthful of mutton.
Warriors briefly froze with a piece of squash halfway up to his mouth, but to his credit, said, “We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, Rulie. Thanks for the offer, though.”
“Okay.” Hyrule tried very hard not to feel offended. He knew not all his eclectic tastes were everyone's cup of tea (Wild excepted, of course; the older boy had always been a kindred soul in more ways than one), but still, he could feed himself just fine, thank you very much! He’d been doing it for years, and he had yet to starve to death. Personally, he thought that was a pretty good track record. It wasn't his fault everyone was just so persnickety. So what if the meat sometimes had a bit of extra char on it or the vegetables got mushy? Food was food.
As they cleaned up after eating, the stars starting to appear in the twilit sky, Warriors having gone off to wash up in the nearby stream, Four finally stirred.
“Ugh,” he groaned, lifting a hand to his head. “I feel like a horse just ran me over.”
“That’s not too far off,” Hyrule said wryly, setting his sword and polishing rag to the side. “What do you remember?”
“I…” Four visibly reached for his latest memories, and then his face paled as he rocketed into a sitting position, clutching his midsection.
“Hey!” Hyrule darted to Four’s side, catching the smaller hero around the shoulders. “Easy, easy, Link, you’re fine, I healed you completely, you’ll probably just be sore and tired for the next day or so.”
Four gradually calmed down, placing a hand on Hyrule's arm and slumping against him, resting his pale head briefly against Hyrule’s chest. “Thanks. I owe you one.”
“You don't, but you're welcome,” Hyrule said, giving Four's shoulder a comforting squeeze. He reached out with his magic and brushed cozy sunlight onto the fritzing, agitated aura in front of him, gratified when the older boy visibly relaxed. “Now come on, the captain's saved you a couple kebabs. Hope you're hungry.”
“Starving,” Four said fervently, before pausing. “…I hope that isn’t some kind of macabre joke, by the way.”
Hyrule had to think about that one for a second. When he got it, his loud bark of laughter nearly startled a returning Warriors into dropping the armful of firewood he’d just come back with.
The next morning, after a cold breakfast of apples, the three heroes were in the middle of packing up their campsite when a sudden noise of an approaching group carried to their ears. They all barely had time to look up and around before an entourage of about seven cultists of Ganon accompanied by a pair of moblins and a few achemen emerged through the trees. The envoy of cultists and monsters stopped short, seemingly just as surprised to see the trio of heroes.
“Oh, for the love of the Three,” Four muttered wearily, grabbing his sword and breaking the brief, startled stupor they’d all fallen under. Hyrule would have grabbed his own sword, but he'd left it with Warriors to get a quick coating of oil (Warriors always had the best stuff, and he was usually willing to share in return for a favor or two) while he fetched the rest of the washing. Stupid, stupid-
“Wh- more travelers?” a man dressed in the garb of a high priest said in disbelief. He sounded... strangely young. Maybe Legend’s age, if Hyrule had to hazard a guess. “Do we have an infestation or something? Bah, no matter. Our Lord clearly wishes to feast well this upcoming new moon.” He unsheathed a gleaming sword and pointed it at the three heroes. “Take them.”
Warriors barely had enough time to grab the nearest weapon – which just so happened to be Hyrule’s Magic Sword – and use it to block a brutal overhanded swing from the priest. Four leapt into the fray, deftly wielding the Four Sword to drive the pair of moblins away from their camp while Hyrule scrambled to get his hands on the captain’s sword. There was no time to switch, and while he would have preferred the comforting weight of his chosen weapon in his hands, a sword was a sword. It’d do.
As he guarded Four’s back and fought off a squad of cultists wielding clubs and rusty sickles, Warriors and the high priest crossed swords. From what little Hyrule could catch of the battle, it seemed that the priest was giving as good as he got, a skill not boasted by many when facing their capable captain. They’d given each other a couple nicks and cuts, but nothing more serious than that. Suddenly, the high priest disengaged from his battle with Warriors, a flurry of achemen taking his place and keeping Warriors handily occupied as he stared fixedly at a splash of the captain’s blood on his sword. And then a cultist tried to stave Hyrule’s skull in with a mace, and he had to focus very hard on not dying for a good couple of minutes.
“Brothers and sisters!” came a loud bellow over the din of battle. “Fall back!”
The cultists and monsters looked just as confused as Hyrule felt, but they obediently followed the instructions and withdrew, congregating on one side of the clearing, and the heroes on the other.
The high priest strode forward, the bloodstained blade of his sword cradled almost reverently in his hands. “This is no group of mere hapless travelers like the others. We have the illustrious Hero of Hyrule himself in our midst!”
And with that, the priest swept his sword up with a dramatic flourish, then lowered it, pointing it straight…
…at Warriors.