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The dappled light peeking through the gaps between the leaves— shimmering in painted shades of rich amber— casts this sparse forest in a perfect golden aura.
Breath expelling a fair bit heavier than it used to after such a hike, Link briefly slows to readjust the strap of the baldric upon his shoulder. His brow creases, a woefully familiar frustration boiling like liquid fire within his veins. The weeks beyond the Demon King’s demise have brought nothing but revelry and good cheer to the rest of the kingdom, but alas, for him, the closing of this harrowing chapter also bequeathed him with a few unexpected consequences. He lifts his right hand into view… extends his fingers to their widest span, flexing them inwards as far as he can muster given the awkward bulk of those ancient, metallic rings.
When Rauru’s spirit passed on to the next realm, so too did this grafted arm’s powers. So too did much of his capacity to wield this arm at all. Even when he glosses his opposing hand’s fingers against the darkened Zonai skin beneath the golden bands that encase it, he feels next to nothing. The limb is numb, capable of little more than basic movement… a far cry from the sheer martial dexterity he’d honed from the earliest days of his forgotten childhood. Though to be frank, he should count himself lucky. After all, his predicament could be worse. Given his earlier injury, his arm could have been left paralyzed, or else missing in its entirety.
“Link?”
His ears perk up, and he turns his head to his companion as he pauses his advance. Zelda stands still a few paces ahead of him, features creased with unquestioned worry.
He bites at his lower lip, gaze slipping astray for a scant few heartbeats. Whenever he’s caught within the full intensity of her glimmering green eyes, he may as well be stripped bare, exposed and wholly vulnerable to her sage purview.
“Are you all right?” she asks. “Do you need to take another rest?”
A faint well of shame settling like a heavy stone in his throat, he shakes his head. Drops his deadened arm to his side.
“Coming,” he communicates with a swift flick of his other wrist.
Huffing a labored sigh, he squints against the glare of the setting sun as he picks up his pace and dutifully jogs after the goddess-touched woman that fate’s whims had bound him to oh so many years ago.
The two of them journey across the verdant plains and up towards the summit of Mount Daphnes. Whatever she’s pulled him here for, it better be quick— their daylight’s dwindling, and while a great many bokoblin camps have been eradicated since the end of the Upheaval, there’s no telling what dangers the night may bring. Or whether he’s strong enough to face such danger head on in the first place.
After all, even with the revitalized Master Sword strapped to his back, he fears he’s nothing but a hindrance to Zelda in this state… a hero who’s long since slipped past his prime.
Incapacitated.
Helpless.
Dead weight.
He wonders if he’ll ever grow used to this change.
“So… tell me,” he says as they approach the top of this humble peak, his tone whisper-quiet. “What exactly is this mysterious place you’re taking me to?”
“Patience, will you,” she responds with a faint ripple of laughter. “All in good time. In any case, we’ve almost arrived. Follow me, it’s this way.”
Zelda leads him down the north face of the hill, towards the ruins by that bridge that leads across to the ancient tree stump, the one he found one of Misko’s treasures in. She stops here, perching herself on a small rock overlooking the lake. Link follows suit. Quite relieved for another break (not that he’d dare admit this to her, of course), he removes his baldric… reverently laying his sword upright against the dilapidated wooden wall of this long-lost structure.
They spend the next minute or so caught up in a meditative silence, gazing out upon the mirror-like surface of the water and listening to the birds chatter in the sparse few pines that still stand tall around them.
In time, his partner parts her lips.
“I brought you here because there’s one story I have from my stint in ancient Hyrule that I haven’t told anyone else yet,” she admits. “Something that never made the cut in what little recorded history still exists..."
She clasps her hands together in her lap, pausing for a moment as she gathers her thoughts… considers what kind of portrait she’d like to paint with them. Amidst the magical glow of this golden hour, her hair shines with all the divine radiance of the Goddess herself. But alas, there’s no masking the woeful melancholy staining her expression.
He locks his full attention on her, giving a soft hum for her to continue.
“During that era, beyond Rauru, beyond the sages, I fought alongside one of the bravest souls I’ve ever known. A Korok,” she says, her fondness evident by the way her words quaver. “Calamo, his name was. And then there was this, um—” her features scrunch inwards for a short moment, as if struggling to grasp an appropriate description— “this companion he had. A forbidden construct, forged by the Zonai long, long ago…”
She bows her head as she trails off. Her voice hitches, that sharpened breath rife with as-of-yet unprocessed grief.
“‘M sorry,” she mumbles, dabbing away the sudden damp from her eyes with a curled knuckle and glancing back towards him with an apologetic look. “I don’t know why I’m getting so emotional about this already.”
He rests his palm— the one that’s still cast from flesh and blood— upon her leg, sweeping his thumb along the curvature of her lower thigh in what he hopes is a comforting gesture as he weaves his swift response with his opposing hand. “You’re fine. Please, continue.”
Zelda sniffles, clasping her own hand over his own.
“Okay. Okay. So y’see…”
Over the span of the next few minutes, she works to paint him a lavish portrait of the history time forgot. Those constructs she mentioned— the ones described as ‘forbidden’— were unearthed by Mineru, Rauru, and herself on a survey mission in the Depths. After extensive analysis, Mineru theorized that these entities must be the dark machinations that ultimately brought the once prosperous Zonai to ruin. For that reason, everyone else was quite wary when that Korok first showed up on the battlefield with his constrict companion in tow… particularly since the Demon King Ganondorf had awoken another with his dark magic and used it to slay the king of the Zora and wreak havoc on the lands. But Calamo’s construct was different. Despite his shadowed, ill-fated origins, this vessel of war was thrumming with a divine, unwavering light.
He was fighting with them, not against them.
“He—?” Link asks with furrowed brows, finding her choice of language here rather interesting given she’s speaking of an intricate machine and not a man.
Zelda chuckles, tucking a stray strand of hair back behind her ear. “Yes,” she says, a soft smile briefly brightening her otherwise downcast disposition. “Force of habit. He may have only been a construct, and one incapable of speech, but his Korok friend took to personifying him. We all did, after a while. We called him the ‘Knight Construct.’ Everyone was very fond of him, and Calamo too. I’m… not the best artist, but I’ll have to try to draw you a picture of them, one day…”
Thinking back to the most recent glimpse he caught of her research notes and all the annotated diagrams of ancient Zonai tech she sketched at the margins, he can’t help but frown a little at her subtle put-down.
“Well, I think you’re a good artist,” he tells her.
She hums, a melodic note that makes his heart flutter.
“Oh, you’re very sweet, but I could stand to practice my figure drawing a bit more. That Knight Construct, though,” she digresses, a twinge of wistful remembrance in her tone. “From the very first moment I set eyes on him, I could feel that something was familiar about him. It took weeks before we crossed paths with him and Calamo long enough to talk, but once we did, it was obvious why.”
Deep inhale.
“Because this construct… he was powered by a shard of the Master Sword.” Her eyes trail beyond him, toward the ornate scabbard he leaned up against the rotting ruins. “A shard that got whisked away to the past, just like I did.”
Link’s eyes blow wide, his lips parting to respond, but then his tongue falls limp. His lungs stall, all manner of coherent thinking brought to a startling halt at such an unexpected revelation. The more he considers it, the more it makes sense, though. How else could the rest of this blade have known what era to recall itself to?
His gaze falls to the parched, rocky soil under his boots as he briefly digests this new information. Slow and methodical, he flexes the metal banded fingers of his right hand into a loose fist at his side, doing his best to ignore the faint sensation of pins and needles riding up those nerves.
If only all the other lingering mysteries of the past few seasons could be solved with such elegant ease. In all his brutish cruelty, the Demon King left a veritable armada of unanswered questions in the wake of his world ending campaign… a means by which— even after Hyrule’s victory— the acrid memory of his gloom’s touch could haunt Link forever. Like, what manner of wicked interference barred Mineru from establishing contact with him the moment he reclaimed the Purah Pad? What arcane forces hid the sky islands from the denizens of the surface until the precise hour and minute of the Upheaval’s onset? Were the fateful events he and Zelda endured that day predestined, or did they weave the hardships of their split futures into existence the very moment they stepped up onto that chamber’s central dais?
Was there ever any path where he caught her, during their first fall? Is there a version of their world where he convinced her to turn back, where the fruits of this kingdom’s hard won peace were never so thoroughly desecrated to begin with?
Is there some unreachable present out there where none of his disgraceful mistakes ever came to pass and he isn’t stuck with nothing but shattered pride and this useless fucking arm?
Thankfully, the other question dancing along the rippling shoreline of his consciousness isn’t as daunting. He’s still not sure what this place has to do with Zelda’s story— though he’s got this itching, aggravating feeling that it should be obvious— but unlike all the Upheaval’s everlasting riddles, at least he can be fairly confident that the nuances of her tale will make sense by the end.
Everything in due time.
Like a welcoming breeze dancing through the tousled tresses of his hair, the lush, lilting notes of Zelda’s voice calls his attention back to their hallowed present again.
“Honestly,” she says, a familiar little twinkle of scholarly curiosity shimmering in her eyes as she tilts her head towards him, “I think the most fascinating part of all this was how much that shard looked to you as its template. That construct’s appearance, his style of fighting, even his mannerisms— he looked so much like you it was uncanny.”
She clasps her hands in her lap, flashing a watery smile.
“In a way,” she continues, “even though we were separated… it was almost like some fragmented echo of you was there fighting by my side all along.”
The sheer longing tinting her words is enough to pull his ever-lingering grief to the surface. He takes a deep, stuttering breath, blinking rapidly to clear the moisture from his eyes.
“I wish I could have been there for you,” he whispers, his posture crumpling as he sinks inwards upon himself. “I wish I could’ve—”
A warm, gentle hand interrupts what might have otherwise become a downward spiral, curving against his jawline to tilt his head back towards her. For a brief few seconds he tries to evade her gaze, tries to draw a veil of perfect neutrality over his features once again, but deep down he knows such stubbornness is futile with Zelda. By this point she probably understands all the shifting subtleties of his demeanor better than he does himself.
She leans in, drawing his forehead against hers as she murmurs her soft reassurance:
“Hey… it’s all right. We’re all right.”
A faint breeze tickles at the nape of his neck as the sun finally brushes up against those distant hills. His partner shivers, the heat of her breath tickling the faint, downy fuzz beneath his nose. The evening chill that’s starting to descend upon this locale threatens to seep through their pores and into the deepest marrow of their very bones. Link’s lips pucker into a contemplative frown as he ponders his options. He finds himself wishing he brought his cape today, if only to have something warm to offer her.
In lieu of such luxuries, he provides the only form of respite he’s capable of summoning:
He tugs her close, wrapping his arm around her back and inviting her to rest her cheek against his shoulder.
Zelda accepts this offered comfort with wholehearted zeal. She sinks into his loving hold like they’re seconds away from melding into one cohesive body, the golden, gossamer threads that connect their hearts and minds weaving themselves into a fabled tapestry that no mortal soul could dare glimpse the fullest extent of. Their pulses aligning, they gaze out upon the lone stump standing at the heart of that isolated lake as one.
In time, his partner once again moves to speak.
“Anyways, to finish my story,” she says, still curled up against his side, “that Knight Construct fell in battle, at the end. I only found out after the fact, from his friend Calamo. Apparently, the construct exerted his last traces of energy to save him. And in honor of that sacrifice, Calamo decided to take root right where he fell… so that one day, his companion’s final resting place could be crowned with a beautiful forest.”
That final sentence reverberates through his mind like a set of wooden chimes singing in the gentle breeze before he manages to put two and two together. Link squints, peering at that twisting, truncated tree far more closely than he ever bothered to in his previous travels. There’s no grand forest peppering the hillside surrounding this lake anymore, but the remnants of thick roots underfoot as he hiked up here with Zelda about half an hour prior makes it obvious that there used to be. He’s heard the stories before— fanciful creation myths about the Mother Forest’s children setting out on brave pilgrimages to find fresh soils to take root in, soils in which brand new forests may one day thrive— but for whatever reason, despite every impossible legend he’s died and lived for, it never quite occurred to him that this story may hold a great deal more truth than he previously imagined.
He knits his brow. “Wait. This Korok. So you’re saying he’s—”
The rest of his sentence dies on his tongue before as much as a passing syllable can stake its home there. It’s a fate observed by a great deal of the thoughts he chooses to vocalize, the sheer weight of such spoken sentiment causing his words to cluster at the back of his throat until he has no choice but to swallow them down again like a chunk of grizzly meat he can’t quite seem to spit out. Mind you, such dreadful, unexpected challenge isn’t for lack of trying.
With Zelda though, he’s long since learned that words are oft unnecessary.
“Yes,” she confirms with a somber nod, pulling away from him in this moment to sit up straight again. “This is him. This is Calamo.”
His lungs deflate as he sighs, already missing her embrace. Suddenly, her morose demeanor whilst recalling this story makes sense. His partner isn’t merely sharing another precious facet of her adventure to him.
No, no… she brought him to a gravesite.
She’s mourning a dear friend.
Did she already know his fate, he wonders… when this Korok decided to take root here? Did she already recognize the location, recognize what ancient, long fallen tree he ultimately became?
In any case he imagines his curious, probing questions are the last thing she needs at this time. So instead he draws his left palm upwards to meet her shoulder, tracing faint spirals there with the calloused pad of his thumb. She gladly melts under his tactile comfort. Now appearing suitably grounded, her gaze once again glides across the water’s surface to the remains of that gnarled, ancient tree.
“The two of them were more than just brave,” she says, her lip quirking upwards in warm remembrance. “They were heroes. They kept the surface safe while the sages and I fought with Ganondorf below… but because that construct was forbidden technology, Mineru told us we couldn’t include them in those murals. She said that it’d be too dangerous, keeping any record of something that could bring a whole kingdom to ruin. And because of her decision—” she takes a deep, laborious breath, quavering amid her present heartache— “I’m the only person left who can tell their story. It hardly seems fair.”
“One of the only people,” he corrects, almost surprising himself at how quick he is in blurting out this response.
Zelda’s brows scrunch inwards. “Pardon—?”
“You’re one of the only people left who knows their story. A-and… and now that I know… we can try to keep it alive together.”
Link’s fluttering heart nearly overflows in its worship as their eyes meet and her lips slowly curve upward, casting new light upon her previously melancholic countenance.
No sunset in all of Hyrule could rival the effortless beauty of her smile.
“I’d like that,” she says.
The breeze picks up, rustling through the sparse foliage of the pines behind them, causing the loose needles scattered amongst the rocky soil to spin in dizzy circles at their feet. He finds this dance rather mesmerizing… like some bespoke form of meditation the natural world created with him and him alone in mind. Watching this waltz, the two of them share another extended period in quiet contemplation atop this humble mount. Such tranquil silence has never bothered him— he often goes days without uttering more than a word or two as it is— but Zelda’s preferences stand in stark contrast. Ever since she emerged from under the smothering shadow of her neglectful childhood, she’s never been one to leave a thought or an opinion unspoken, and he loves her for it.
“It’s… strange,” she muses, balling a loose fist against her mouth. “To gaze upon an old friend in such a different form. Unsettling, and strange. Can you hold on to what they used to look like, you wonder… or will even this memory, in turn, fade to time?”
His gaze slants towards the soil as this sentiment graces his ears, a desperate ploy to distract himself from the burden of the all-too-recent memories it seeks to unearth.
Every few days, he’d traverse the skies for her. He‘d fly over on some daft, hodgepodge Zonai machine to lay on her head for an hour or two and share her new stories of his travels, careful not to get his rings caught in the magnificent golden threads of her mane.
Every few days, he’d cry into the soft fur of her muzzle, and his weary soul would shatter all over again.
Recognizing his distress, she reaches across his lap, towards his right arm... that strange, hastily grafted arm that Rauru bequeathed him at the Upheaval’s onset a good two seasons ago.
(Two seasons past, and yet most mornings he thrashes awake next to her in a blind panic, like he’s still lost and alone on that cold, isolated sky island and this drastic transplant only happened yesterday.)
His eyelids fall shut for a moment as her lithe fingers— warm, and oh so alive against that skin even despite this limb’s dulled sensitivity— brush against the back of his palm and move to intertwine themselves with his.
After all the tragedy they’ve survived it’d be foolish to assume that anything about the intimate little world they created together could ever be the same. For better or for worse, the journey home has transformed them. And while there’s clearly still a great deal of unresolved grief wound up in such abrupt change, one mustn’t neglect its silver lining:
That their tireless sacrifice has finally won them a future unencumbered by the once inescapable prophecy that ruled their childhoods.
Ganondorf, the blighted root of Hyrule’s cyclical demise, is no more... and thus, so are their ties to destiny’s hand.
Link smiles, gazing upon the sunset’s watercolor reflection as he dreams of untold days to come… of this kingdom’s slow and steady restoration, of every last scrap of its once forbidden lore documented for future generations to learn from, of stories and laughter shared with dear friends over a fresh cooked meal. Of the family he and Zelda could build, if she's amenable to such a possibility.
From here on out, the sky’s the limit.
From here on out, they’re free.