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Link tried to pull off the Mermaid Suit. It didn’t come off.
Well, that was going to be a hassle. He kind of needed legs in order to walk back home. A tail was not going to be the means of transportation most conducive to that. Walking wasn’t either, but he was fresh out of animal favors at the moment, which meant he needed to get home on his own.
Besides, he did not want to be stuck in water for even longer. Land was a wonderful thing he had yet to step foot on in a very long time in the waking world.
Link’s body suddenly decided to remind him that he had been out at sea for days without food or drink and stopped cooperating with him–muscles would barely move. He was not going to be making it very far like this.
It seemed it was nap time; at least the sky was dark enough for that.
Link dragged himself out of the water with his hands as best he could, getting scratched up on the sand.
Darn Labrynnian sand was the worst, and he had way too far to go to get to Hyrule from here.
With the mermaid suit still on, this position made him effectively a beached fish. He didn’t like that comparison considering what usually happened with beached fish. He decided to carefully take that thought and shove it in a cupboard. That was a problem to deal with when he woke up.
Sleep overtook him too fast, but at least he didn’t dream.
When Link woke up, the thought burst out of the cupboard, toppling over Hyrulean geography and Holodonese battle tactics on the way, and he had just reorganized. Link was forced to realize that he was still a beached fish. He tried again to take off the mermaid suit, but to no avail. Zelda might be able to help, or Nayru, or Syrup, and he could probably figure it out himself, but lying on the beach waiting it out wasn’t going to do him any good. There was a chance a seagull could come by that could give him a ride to Hyrule, but it wasn’t a very good chance.
He dragged himself back out into the water and swam along the beach until he found a river, turning into there and continuing swimming.
After days out at sea, the last thing he wanted to do was more swimming, but swim he did for another four days. It was very boring. Whoever decided that inland rivers should have near-uniform shoreline geography had clearly not had people’s best interests in mind. His boredom was only slightly alleviated by the Black Tower being visible, which at least gave him a clear destination to aim for, since Hyrule wasn’t that far from it.
When he finally reached the Black Tower, he decided he deserved a break after all that swimming. Also, he wanted to look at the weird void eating it up from the top. It was weird.
That hadn’t been there the last time he had been at the Black Tower, which meant it was something new, and he hadn’t seen something properly new since waking up at sea. Investigating the void would be slightly complicated by his lack of legs, but he had enough items that he could probably figure something out.
Link quickly began concocting a plan. Step One: Pull himself as close as he could to the tower. He was in the middle of thinking of step two when he was rudely interrupted by something purple falling out of the void, all the way down the tower, and onto the ground. That was also something new. Today seemed to be his lucky day.
When the thing got up, Link realized it was a person. Granted it was hard to see from all the way in the river, but it was either that or a walking purple blob. He wasn’t going to discount the possibility of the former, but the latter did seem more likely.
Assuming it was a person, he was pretty sure people falling out of presumably-magical voids were statistically more likely to know how to deal with broken magic items than the average person that didn’t fall out of magical voids. Maybe they would be able to help him get the mermaid suit off.
“Yeāh, cōłoīmēeā-uūyoī oīmēfēr eāłeāwārh?” Link called out.
The guy–upon further inspection Link was ninety-three point six percent sure it was a person–looked around, clearly trying to figure out where the voice was coming from.
“Voīłeār eāłeārh” Link called out again.
The guy looked at Link and started walking towards him. Good thing he did too, since right after he moved from his spot, it was promptly occupied by a pile of colors, mostly green.
“Realm! Get off me!” a voice cried out from within the pile, loud enough for Link to hear from all the way in the river.
The purple guy kept going until he stood by the river, but Link’s gaze was held by the pile, as the people composing it disentangled themselves.
“Tōsēnēełāeāgāgāir,” the purple guy said. That was awfully formal for talking to someone in a river, and his pronunciation was horrible for a local; maybe he’d gotten a concussion in the fall.
“Iāh, cōmēgāiāłaā tōsēmēeāiā oīkīwār-uūyoī lēlēeāwā,” Link responded.
The purple guy’s brow creased, his mouth moving in repetition of some of the words Link had said. He was taking a really long time to answer the question. It was either a yes or a no.
“I tōoīnē oīkīnēwā nēnēmēeāgāiāłaā–” he started saying slowly before stopping when the blue guy from the pile appeared behind him.
“Vio, why are you speaking tongues into a river?” he asked.
“There’s a person in the river, and I’m simply speaking a language other than Hylian, which you clearly don’t understand. I was hoping he could point us to the local Link,” said the purple guy–or Vio as Link was now assuming he was called.
“You speak Hylian? Why didn’t you just say so?” Link said. “Your Labrynnian is terrible.”
“I didn’t know you knew Hylian,” Vio said. “You spoke to me first.”
“Also, there isn’t a local Link around here,” Link said.
“How do you know?” said a guy in green, with a face matching the other two, also from the pile, who had made it here during the conversation.
“Since I’m pretty sure I’m the only Link in all of Labrynna. Unless someone changed their name, which could have happened, but I think somebody would have told me if someone changed their name to match mine. Though it could have happened while I was lost at sea, because I straight up have no idea how long it's been since I was on land, which is totally the Wind Fish’s fault.”
“I think we found him,” said another guy in green who looked nearly identical to the other three.
A teen in green pushed forward. There must have been some kind of convention. Link was glad he was in green; it meant he matched the theme. “Nice to meet you, Link. We’re all also named Link, and I assume you’re a Hero too?” He paused.
“Of three different kingdoms, or four if you count dream kingdoms. They call me the Hero of Legend.”
“Dream kingdom,” the guy muttered, as if he’d never even heard of one before. Notwithstanding the fact that Link hadn’t heard of one before seeing the literal writing on the wall–or was it figurative writing on the wall since it had been in a dream?–it wasn’t that absurd.
The guy gave a firm nod before continuing. “We’re traveling across different dimensions, or points in time, we’re not really sure, through these voids that have been appearing. Everything else that touches them disappears, but when we touch them we’re transported to another Hyrule. We have nicknames since we’re all named Link. You can call me Dusk, that’s Red, Green, Blue, and Vio, Steam, Wind, Sketch and–” Dusk turned around and looked from side to side. Link looked with him, seeing, empty space on his left, and empty space with two tumbleweeds on the right. “Where’s Realm?”
Nobody answered.
“Somebody has to go get him,” Green said.
“How did he get lost going from the tower to the river?” someone Link couldn’t see past the crowd muttered.
Link would offer to go, but he had no idea who Realm was, or what he looked like, so he wasn’t sure he would be much help. He could try of course, but looking for people without knowing what they looked like was usually hard.
After a moment, Wind spoke up. “I’ll go look for him,” he said, glancing around before picking a direction–Link would say at random, but he happened to know there was actually an excellent bakery in that direction if one kept going, so it wasn’t exactly an unmotivated decision–and started walking.
With that resolved, Link decided it was his turn in the conversation. “When do I get a nickname?”
“Now works,” Red said, pushing past Dusk, which meant Red was precariously standing on the edge of the river. “You’re the Hero of Legend, right?”
“Yes.”
“Vio, give me synonyms for legend,” Red said.
“Right now?” Vio asked.
“He needs his nickname now, so yes.”
“There’s fable, story, myth, lore, tale, folktale, should I keep going?”
“I like Lore. Can I be Lore?” Link asked.
“Yes,” Red said.
“Cool,” Lore said.
“So, Lore, could you come out of the water?” Sketch said. Or at least a voice that sounded like a person came from the general direction Dusk had pointed at when he named Sketch.
“As long as one of you can help me get out. The tail is a pain,” Lore said.
“Tail?” Steam asked.
Lore lifted his legs/tail to splash some water, clearly showing off the scales.
“Why do you have a tail?” Steam asked.
“Because Mage had a prompt and–” Blue was interrupted by Vio tackling him, the pair landing in the water next to Lore with a splash.
“Stop breaking things!” Vio yelled.
Lore wasn’t sure who he agreed with. On one hand, breaking things usually ended up with bad things happening, but also, as he always said, you’ve got to break a few pots to save a kingdom.
“It’s a magic item, but it won’t come off, which is very annoying, because I would like to get back on land,” Lore said.
“It’s stuck?” Sketch asked, and with Vio and Blue now in the water, Lore could actually see him, though he was standing a few feet farther back than everyone else.
“Thing won’t come off, and it came off perfectly fine the last time I used it,” Lore said.
“We can haul you out,” Dusk said.
Once the two non-aquatic Links were out of the river, they joined Dusk, Green, Red, and Steam in dragging Lore out. It took multiple Hookshots, some Power Bracelets, and a fair bit of maneuvering, but Lore was on the ground, tail and all.
“Why do you have a tail?” Sketch asked.
“Realm-wait are we? We’re back?” Wind stumbled into their group, another boy dressed in green in tow. “I think I’m going to be seasick, and I’ve never been seasick before. Realm how do you–why does new Link have a tail?”
“I’m Lore,” Lore said. He was decidedly not called ‘new Link.’
“Wind, why didn’t you say the new Link was a mermaid?” Realm, because obviously the new guy in green was the missing Link, said.
“He wasn’t when I left,” Wind said. “Mermaids aren’t even supposed to be real.”
“I’m plenty real, probably. Though, I did just spend a bunch of time with not so real people, so it might have rubbed off on me, but I’m mostly real at least. And I’m not a mermaid,” Lore said, if anything he was a merman, “I’m a Hylian.”
“Then why do you have a fish tail?” Dusk asked.
“Do you want the voice in a dream starting point, the kidnapping starting point, the cave starting point, the storm starting point, the waking up starting point, or the beach starting point?” Lore asked.
“Which one goes the farthest back?” Dusk asked.
“The voice in a dream one. Starts all the way back when I was ten,” Lore said. “Covers three kingdoms and a magic fish.”
“Storytime?” Steam asked.
“I call first!” said Realm.
“Second!” said Steam.
“Come on, you were first last time,” Wind said, “and Sketch and I just had to sit through all of them.”
“Third!” cried Blue.
“Really?” Wind said. “Fourth!”
“Fifth!” interjected Sketch.
Dusk sighed. “Guess that means I’m last. Go ahead, Lore.”
“Thank you,” Lore said, before launching into a two and half hour long detailed retelling of his map-spanning adventures.