Work Text:
The sky was a forest of sunbeams, as golden as her hair. He closed his eyes, feeling the warmth of the slanting rays on his face even high up here in the cold thin air. Feeling her warmth, radiating out through her scales, her fur, generated perhaps by the ancient magic he now knew had powered this…transformation. But perhaps no magic was necessary. She had always warmed him like no other.
Thank you, he thought, gripping his prize in the hand that was not his hand — the hand of a king. Oh, thank you, Zelda.
Link had thought he’d given his life for Hyrule. He didn’t mean the times he’d thought he’d died, only to be brought back so serve a new purpose. It was in fact that very purpose that had claimed his life, the way a rich man claims that which is his. Link was not his own man. Ever since he was a child, he’d belonged to Hyrule.
Three times now he’d gone to war agains the Great Enemy of the Kingdom and its peoples. A century ago, he held out against the Calamity and its servants long enough for her to force him to a stalemate. When he awoke again just a few years ago, somehow no older than the boy he’d been before, he helped her break that stalemate, banishing the Calamity once and for all.
The time that followed…those were good years. Together, they helped restore the shattered Kingdom. Together, they explored.
And when they explored too deeply, the Demon King was reborn. Link lost his arm, his Sword…and her.
Then a new arm was given him, inherited from a hero long dead. With its powers in hand, he set out on a quest to recover what he’d lost, using skills and weapons bequeathed him by the ancients. That quest had taken him not only across the length and breadth of this world, but to new worlds, layered above and below the one he thought he knew better than anyone alive or dead. High in the ruins of the sky, down in the phosphorescent darkness of the Depths, he had marveled at new wonders and been haunted by new horrors.
And he had killed. Over and over, he had killed. Blood Moons rose and set and he would kill again. By now he was a rumor that spread terror in bokoblin camps, a crimson scar carved into Yiga Clan strongholds, an apex predator who’d driven the mighty Hynox, the impregnable Frox, and the proud and lethal Lynel to near extinction. Two wars he’d fought before, a third was upon him, and had Hyrule ever seen a killer of his like?
At night he would huddle close to the campfire to warm himself against the truth, which is that he was but one of three such slayers to stalk the realm of Hyrule. The others were the very monsters against whom he’d waged his wars.
Yet she was always with him. Even now, knowing what he knew, it was as though she’d been by his side with every step. Part of that was the Impostor, of course, the False Zelda let loose to lead him to his doom. There were other, lesser attempts at deceiving him. There were times when he deceived himself.
And, he was ashamed to admit, there were times he deceived others. Violynne, met upon the road when the evening was bright and the music was right. Riju, in the quiet of the desert night. Paya, while her new man, a good man, was off at work studying the rings. Purah, insatiably curious about the capabilities — and limits — of her new body. Did any of them realize who he was really making love to when he was with them?
But there were other times, wonderful times, when he saw her, the real her, for certain and for true. The visions from the Dragon’s Tears offered tantalizing glimpses of the life she’d lived without him, in a time before time was measured. How he’d longed for her in those moments. He’d reached in once, tried to touch her, and found the fluid smooth and viscous against his fingers.
When the sight of her, resplendent in her prehistoric finery, would prove too much, he used the Dragon’s Tears to ease the passage of his biomechanical hand against himself, racing to release before the visions ended.
Yet now he knew she was never lost to him at all. She’d been here all along, swimming through the skies, as Dinraal and Naydra and Farosh had long done. Smaller than her draconic siblings but still more beautiful, her eyes looked as though they held a cosmos within. Somewhere deep inside in that engrossing abyss, he believed — he had to believe — a mind still resided.
He knew now he’d never understood the true meaning of sacrifice. All he’d ever given was his life. How could he ever thank her for giving up an endless series of lifetimes? How could he replay a woman who annihilated herself on the altar of her faith in him?
Link sheathed the Master Sword in the scabbard slung across his back. He could feel instantly, instinctively, how right it was. How perfectly she fit in the space prepared for her, ordained for her by the Great Deku Tree — and, now, by Zelda, who gave up her humanity and became an immortal dragon for the Sword’s sake and his.
He opened his eyes, turned around, and gazed her magnificence as he rode her, here in the clouds. He saw her radiant yellow mane glowing in the sunlight, her ice-blue antler-horns glimmering teal and turquoise within, the endless silver and blue of her scales and spines trailing out in an undulating wave behind them. Beneath her sinewy body her six limbs clawed at the sky.
He turned around and looked forward, facing off into the distance as she was. There beneath him was her white fur, pure as the snows of Hebra. Her bright orange eyelashes, like the fronds of an exotic flower from the jungles of Faron. Beneath them, he knew, were those eyes, mindless and mesmerizing, blue and violet like nothing he’d seen anywhere above or below the land of Hyrule.
In all their time together in good years, he had never found her more beautiful. He needed to thank her. He needed to show her.
He fell to his knees and leaned forward, dipping his hands — one the sun-kissed color of his skin, the other the deep green of a technology he still only half-understood — into the soft fur of her massive dragon’s head. It didn’t take him long to find. There, beneath the still-twisted tangle of her short white locks, was a divot in the armor and flesh of her skull where the Master Sword had been housed and healed for millennia.
She had given him so much. Oh by the Goddess Hyrule, how he wanted to give her something back.
He was already hard by the time he pulled himself out of his trousers. He was going to be so close to her. He was going to be inside of her. There was nothing closer.
He leaned forward slowly, carefully aligning his cock with the hole as he laid prone upon her gargantuan skull. He reached back with his artificial hand and found himself already pulsing with excitement. Carefully, he penetrated her.
Her heartrending metallic cry pierced the air. Not of fear, as it sounded when he’d started to remove the Master Sword from its home. He knew — somehow, he knew — that this bestial growl was full to bursting with joy.
He shuddered and smiled reflexively. It felt good in there, the walls warm and lined with downy fur. And that sound she’d made…it wouldn’t be long, he knew. He’d trained himself so well for her by the puddles of her tears.
But as he fucked her, he began to feel something more than physical happening to him. A heat that grew and grew but did not burn enveloped his penis. With each thrust he grew more mindless with pleasure, but some part of him was still able to understand what was going on. Your sacred power, he thought to her. The healing of the Sword. Oh Goddess, I’m inside the deepest part of you there is!
His orgasm felt like an ejection of himself into her, like each spurt of his semen was his body’s attempt to put his soul inside of hers. He thought with piercing clarity: I hope it swims into her mind and finds her there.
He came down to the sound of another, even more deeply joyous roar trailing off. Some part of her knew, and some part of her was glad of it. We shook the skies, Zelda, he thought. Then, without thinking at all, he squeezed his eyes shut, pressed his head hard against hers, and kissed her like a desperate child, holding his lips tight against the softness of her fur.
He stopped only because he knew he had to. There was work for him left to do. No, now was the time to be honest: There was killing left to do. For some of it, he thought, I may even need your help again.
He rose to his knees, his slowly softening cock emerging from the hole with a quick upward motion through the fur. He tucked his cock back in his trousers. Clearing his throat, he stood and walked to the edge of the colossal head. He looked down and could not see the ground below for the clouds between.
Please, dear Zelda, he thought. Please, my love. Please don’t forget me, here in the clouds.
He jumped.