Chapter Text
She hadn't been, and then, she was. Her body felt weightless, without form, until she heard the faintest voice. It grew in volume, breaking through as the darkness ebbed away, replaced by an all-consuming light. The voice rang out, and felt so familiar, yet she couldn't say why she thought so.
"Link..." the voice beckoned. "Please, open your eyes..."
She fought through the aches and pains of disused muscles, trying to will her body to move. She couldn't remember when she had gone to sleep, or how long she had been there. The golden light gave way to several smaller lights above her when her eyes opened. Stars of blue against against a sky of brass, carved into shapes she didn't recognize.
She had been lying on her back, in a pool of water that receded and left her on a bed of warm metal. She squinted from the contrast between the light and darkness, until her eyes adjusted and she saw no one else in the room with her when she sat upright in the empty pool. Orange star patterns and golden swirls lined the dark metal walls.
She had no memory of ever arriving in such a place. And, she soon realized, she had no memory of anything else. No childhood memories, no aspirations, nothing to remind her of who she had been.
And the room held no living soul except for her.
That voice... She thought to herself, her throat too dry to think about calling out. Someone had been speaking to her. She knew she didn't imagine it. The voice had sounded too real, nothing like the muted sounds of dreaming.
And the voice had called her Link. That sounded right, the more she thought about it. She at least had a name.
She stepped out of the pool, regarding it for a moment. The stone felt cold against her feet, sending a shiver up her spine. The entire room felt unbearably cold now that she was outside the protection of the water. How had she been able to sleep like this?
Above the pool, roots of brass and pulsing blue light reached into the ceiling, old and weathered. A door stood in front of her, next to a terminal that glowed a harsh blue.
Upon her approach, the terminal opened up, a metal object held out for her to take. She stared at it, and a bright blue eye cradled in orange light stared back at her. She had seen something like it before, so distant that it slipped from her grasp.
"That is a Sheikah Slate," the voice echoed inside her mind again, regal and commanding. She wished she could remember who it belonged to. "Take it."
Who are you? She tried to ask, but her throat was so dry that no words came out. With a cough, she reached for the device, the metal cold to the touch. She looked it over, running her thumb across the smooth glass on the other side, the screen lighting up. Her fingers flipped through the 'pages', all of them empty.
"It will help you on your journey after such a long slumber," the voice explained, as the doorway opened near her. Another corridor, illuminated by weak blue lights that lined the walls. And still devoid of life.
Old wooden crates and broken barrels were strewn about the floor, and piles of dust and debris filled the room. A single stone chest caught her eye, and she opened it, finding old clothes and leather among all the dust and webs. That'll do.
She approached the terminal near another door, its dim orange light reflecting off the walls. She took a closer look at the door, realizing that she wouldn't have been able to break through it on her own. It had been built to withstand worse than anything she could devise.
“Place the slate in the terminal,” the voice echoed inside her head again, impassive but strained. Link couldn't tell if the voice's owner thought she hadn't figured that out, or just wanted her to hurry up. “It will open the door.”
The slate in place, the door opened to reveal the outside world, grass blowing in the wind against a blue sky just outside. Link shielded her eyes from the rays of sunlight pouring down the stairway, until she could see again.
"Link," she paused at the sound of the voice, listening. "You are the last light that stands against the darkness... Our last hope."
Stepping out of the cavern and the cliff's edge, she was hit with the full force of it all. The clean air and the warmth of the sun on her skin, a cool breeze traveling through the trees. Overlooking the cliff, she saw a vast, green land beyond the cavern and the plateau. Rows upon rows of mountains lined the land, but what caught her eye was the castle in the distance. Something tickled at her brain, a flicker of memory that couldn't solidify.
A whole world she couldn't remember. A whole world to rediscover.
The smell of smoke caught her attention, and even through the wind she made out the faint crackling of fire. The scent and the sound triggered something inside her, contradictory feelings of comfort and dread. Snippets of memories awoke of sitting by a campfire and of running through flames.
She shook her head and chased the feelings away, noticing an old man standing on the hill and looking up at her. He turned away and walked down the hill without a word, and she got the feeling that he expected her to follow him.
Sure, why not follow a complete stranger? Link thought to herself. Her throat still felt too scratchy to try speaking. I can't remember a time that ever ended badly.
She still didn't remember anything except for fleeting moments the longer she remained awake. She walked down the overgrown stairs where the old man had disappeared. Hylian shrooms grew under the shade of trees and along the cliff side.
For reasons she could not comprehend, her first course of action was to reach for several of the mushrooms and, holding the Sheikah Slate in her other hand, dropped them on its screen and watched them fade into particles of blue light. New images appeared on the screen, showing the mushrooms she had just collected.
She blinked. Why did I do that? Why did I even think that would work? And most importantly, why did it work?
She attached the slate back to her belt and decided not to think about it further.
The old man sat down at a campfire, in the shade of a rocky alcove. He held a thin skewer over the fire, three apples speared on it.
Her stomach ached from emptiness. When had she eaten last?
"Help yourself, lass," the old man, previously still as a statue, spoke up. He pulled one of the apples from the skewer and held it out to her, and it took all of her restraint not to impolitely snatch it from him. She did not, however, possess the restraint necessary to keep herself from devouring it like a hungry wolf. For his own part, the old man laughed. "Feel better?"
Her throat didn't feel as dry anymore. Her voice, having gone unused for an as yet unknown length of time, sounded raspy when she managed to speak. "Yes. A little."
"Bit strange to see another soul around these parts," he hummed thoughtfully. "Could you spare this old man a moment of your time?"
She didn't have anywhere to be, so she sat down against the stone wall, the campfire crackling between them. She looked at him expectantly, mind racing with a million questions. Something about him seemed familiar, she realized, and the more she thought about it, the more said familiarity didn't feel positive.
"Who are you?" She finally asked, as she watched the light of the flames dance along the stone walls and the dusty glass of the old man's lantern.
"I'll spare you my life's story," the old man's gaze didn't quite meet hers, obscured by the hood of his thick coat. "I'm merely an old fool who has lived alone for quite some time. What about you?"
"I'm just a traveler," she told him. She couldn't think of anything else.
"You must have a name," the old man said, boldly for someone who refused to say his own name. Maybe he no longer remembered it.
"Link," she answered with less hesitation than before. The name had to be hers. It felt like hers. And the voice had been speaking to her.
"A fine name," the old man said, and Link couldn't help but notice how carefully he chose that answer. The name seemed to weigh on him, but he said nothing else about it. "What brings a young woman like yourself to such a lonely place?"
Link hardened her gaze. "Where is here?"
The old man laughed. "Answer my question with a question of your own... I suppose that's fair."
He tossed a branch into the fire. "This is the Great Plateau, said to be the birthplace of Hyrule. In a place steeped in history and myth such as this, I do not believe our meeting is pure chance."
He stood up and gripped his staff, the lantern rattling with each step he took. Link followed, and saw an old temple past the pond, ruined and covered in vegetation.
"Long ago, many sacred ceremonies were held at this temple," the old man said, his staff set in the soil and his hands gripping the handle like it was an ancient blade. "But it has sat abandoned for a hundred years, and forgotten. Nothing more than a ghost."
A temple... Link supposed it should have meant something to her, yet she felt nothing. But maybe going there would jog my memory...
The old man returned to his fire. “Of course, I'm sure you have places to be, so I won't be taking more of your time."
She didn't have anywhere to be, but she wasn't going to tell him that.
"You‘ll not find anyone but me or Bokoblins for miles," he added, sticking another apple on the skewer.
Bokoblins. Another small flicker of memory, enough to tell her they would not react to her with friendliness. She remembered there were others that were much worse, but not what they looked like or what they were called.
The old man’s campfire was suspiciously close to the cavern she had just left. Maybe the old man had been waiting for someone to leave that place; perhaps he knew more than he had told her.
But Link had decided not to linger, and left the old man to his own company. She stood atop the cliff overlooking the pond, noticing a rusted sword resting in the soil of a small island at the center of the pond. She took a cautious step forward, to the very edge of the cliff, crying out in alarm when the ground underneath her crumbled, plunging her into the center of a ring of lily pads.
"Yahaha, you found me!" A childish voice rang out above her as she scrambled up to the water's surface. She found herself looking up at a forest spirit. A Korok, yes, that's what they were called. Even with such an expressionless face, she could tell the Korok was confused. "Wait a minute! You're not Hestu!"
"I have no idea who that even is," Link grumbled, spitting water out of her mouth and swimming over to the island, hoisting herself onto the solid ground.
Floating over her head with a spinning leaf umbrella, the Korok looked her over. "You can... see me? You can hear me! Most people can't! You must be a very special person!"
Link had stopped listening about halfway through the Korok's rambling, far more occupied with checking the Sheikah Slate to make sure she hadn't broken it. "Yeah, sure, okay."
"You should take this!" The Korok suddenly announced, holding a peculiar, gold-coloured seed in their free hand. It had a strange, not exactly pleasant smell.
"I don't want that," Link insisted, but the Korok either ignored that or did not care, because they tossed it at her anyway, where it landed on the Sheikah Slate's screen and was immediately placed into the device's magical storage. "Give it to Hestu if you find them!"
"I don't know who Hestu is!" Link felt her voice crack from frustration, but the Korok had already disappeared, leaving her alone in the pond. She rolled her eyes. Spirits...
She climbed up the grass and stone, getting a better look at the rusty blade. A shadow of its former glory, but beggars couldn't be choosers. She gripped the hilt with both hands, pulling it out of the soil with ease. She tested its weight in her hands; old and chipped, but still heavy and sharp enough to be of use.
She let it rest across her back. She crossed the rest of the pond, reaching the temple and standing in front of its old, worn stairs. She climbed up them, listening to the sounds of her boots against the cracked and overgrown stone. Sunlight shone through the windows, some intact and others broken, all of them covered in dust.
Nature had overrun the interior of the temple just as much as the exterior, grass and flowers covering the stone floors. Much of the roof had been smashed through, rotted wood and broken stone lying in heaps. Pieces of old pottery lay scattered across the stone and grassy floors, and Link felt the mildest disappointment at not being the one to have broken them. Across the room stood a large statue of a woman with wings, surrounded by smaller statues.
Link stepped closer to the larger statue, the Goddess Hylia carved from what had once been pristine stone. She reached to touch the coarse rock, rays of light rising up from the pedestal the statue stood upon.
Energy from that light warmed her skin and seemed to flow within her spirit, opening her up to another realm and to another time. But nothing else seemed to happen, and no memories were uncovered, and she stood there feeling a renewed sense of frustration.
She didn't remember what she was supposed to expect from a statue of Hylia, and had forgotten how to pray, if she ever had known. She thought that the statues of Hylia were supposed to talk, but the statue did no such thing. Not that she expected it to, when she hadn't said a word herself.
“Link,” the voice suddenly said, pulling her out of her thoughts. The statue remained silent, and Link was quite certain that it and the voice were not the same. "Follow the Sheikah Slate's map. It will guide your way."
Once again, Link couldn't tell if the voice was genuinely trying to be helpful or just speaking to get her moving.
The Sheikah Slate's map could barely be called one, being nothing more than a blank, dark blue grid. But a golden circle marked an area that Link could see was further from the temple. There would be possibly be Bokoblins or worse on the way there, but she found that she didn't possess any fear of them.
A striking blue caught Link's eye as she moved to leave the temple. Among the grass and wild flowers that grew into the old building, she recognized one of the flowers, and reached to pluck one of them from the ground. The Azure Lady, so named for its striking blue and its use in an elixir she now remembered drinking and knew she needed.
The screen rippled like water when the flower touched it, and she picked two more. She would need to find a bottle or some other vessel, but she saw nothing in the temple that she felt she could use. She would figure something out later.
Outside the temple Link was overcome yet again by the sheer vastness of the world around her, and then by the loneliness of it. Butterflies flew around the flowers, and birds chirped from the safety of their nests. She saw no signs of the old man or any Bokoblins as she walked down the stairs and towards the distant pile of rocks that the Sheikah Slate had marked.
The stairway down from the temple felt like they had taken Link an eternity to walk down, and when she saw how much further she still had to go before she reached the marked spot on the map, she groaned. The sun blazed in the sky above, and though she couldn't be sure what time of day it was, she reasoned the sun would begin to set by the time she reached her destination.
Nothing to be done about it. Passing by an apple tree, she reached up and pulled one of the apples from a branch, biting into it as she walked. In the distance at one side, she saw a massive rock formation carved in the shape of a skull, and her mind provided the fragmented memories of Bokoblins and other monsters living in such places.
She kept moving, passing the time by counting her footsteps until she couldn't keep track anymore. She followed the overgrown stairs and the road until she had to step out onto the patches of grass, parched dirt and rock. The wind, still a gentle whistle, kicked up dust and carried long dead leaves.
Buried under the pile of boulders stood a strange metal structure, made from the same materials and in the same style as the cavern she had woken up in. In the center, another terminal stood, a Sheikah Slate-shaped hole resting in it and glowing orange.
A trickle of memory. She had known Sheikah in the past, but this structure was far older than even the oldest Sheikah she could remember ever meeting personally. But this, whatever it was, still belonged to them. It would help, she knew somehow, in the depths of her mind.
Link placed the Sheikah Slate down in the terminal without hesitation.
"Sheikah Tower activated," appeared on the slate's screen. "Please watch for falling rocks."
Link's eyes widened. "Uh-"
When the ground started shaking, she thought that perhaps she should have hesitated a little. The structure she stood on, the Sheikah Tower, smashed through the boulders that had kept it buried, rising up into the sky. She fell onto her back and shielded her face from the debris that fell from the tower's spire.
The tower continued to rise and rise, closer and closer to the sun, until finally it stopped with a jerking motion. Link held still, holding her breath when she heard a loud thud from above.
By the time all movement had stopped, Link’s heartbeat drowned out any other sound. The air was thin, and the dust irritated her throat.
"Distilling local information..." the screen read, and a teardrop of blue energy fell from the stone above and onto the Sheikah Slate's screen. "Regional map extracted."
Standing on shaky legs, Link retrieved the Sheikah Slate and looked at the screen. The Great Plateau and everything on it, now drawn and marked like a map made out of parchment. She could still read it wrong by holding the slate upside down, so by all accounts, it was a proper map.
The slate once more safely attached to her belt, she took several careful steps towards the railing and steeled herself before placing her hands on the old metal and looking over. Up so high, she felt like she could see all of Hyrule itself.
And, oh, how beautiful Hyrule was... until her eyes strayed to the castle, wreathed in vile magic.
"Link," the voice from her awakening spoke to her again, still so familiar and yet she couldn't understand why. "Please, you must remember..."
Remember what? She wanted to say, but there would have been no point to it. She didn't think the woman could hear her. The magic around the castle swirled like smoke, until she saw the monster within it, roaring at the sky.
"You have slept for one hundred years," the voice continued, but Link was too focused on the monster circling the castle to even think a response. "That beast... Once it regains its true power, the world will come to an end."
The monster roared once more against a golden light, and then collapsed upon itself, disappearing into the inky smoke.
"You must hurry, Link," the voice said after. "Before it's too late..."
Whoever that voice belonged to put a truly staggering amount of faith in Link, a woman who had to be told her own name. Whoever she had been before, her mind simply didn't remember. She hoped that the heart and body did.
The only way down from the Sheikah Tower was to climb down to platform and platform on thin metal bars, because the Sheikah of that distant age didn't seem to believe in stairs. By the time she made it down, the sky had begun to turn orange from the sun sinking blow the horizon.
Standing on solid ground once again, Link had barely taken another step forward before a holler from afar stopped her in her tracks. She looked and saw the old man from before gliding towards her, a large cloth carrying him across the wind. She scoffed. "Show off..." she murmured moments before he landed.
"Hello again," the old man rested his hands on his staff. He stared beyond her, up at the Sheikah Tower, and hummed in thought. "Quite the enigma that we have here... This tower suddenly erupted from the earth, and then others just like it followed, one by one, all across the land."
He steadied himself, the lantern rattling. "Almost as if a long-dormant power has finally awakened. So, if you do not mind me asking... Did anything you might call odd occur while you were up there?"
Link didn't particularly want to answer, the sound of the old man's voice still digging up feelings of disdain she didn't understand. But he was the only other flesh and blood person she had to speak with. "I heard a... voice."
I'm sure that will go over well, she thought to herself.
"Now isn't that a surprise!" The old man tapped the lantern. Link couldn't tell what he was thinking. "A voice, you say? Tell me, did this mysterious voice sound like anyone you know?"
Yes, Link thought, even as she answered, "No."
The old man's shoulders sagged. "That is rather unfortunate. Well... I assume you were able to see the castle and the atrocity that enshrouds it."
Something in his voice broke, but Link couldn't see his eyes. "That thing... is Calamity Ganon. One hundred years ago, it brought Hyrule to ruin. Many innocent lives were lost in the wake of its emergence. But that evil has been contained within the castle since then... though I fear it will not be much longer before it breaks free."
The voice hadn't spoken in jest, not that she believed the voice would lead her astray. She knew, somehow, that she could trust the speaker. That she had known her. She must have.
"The voice said as much," Link offered, but held everything else close.
"I have watched it fester for many years," the old man continued, slivers of anguish in his voice. "It builds its strength, until the time comes..."
Neither one of them could see the castle from where they stood, ancient stone walls and rubble blocking their view. But Link still found herself looking in the direction of Hyrule Castle, feeling something pulling at her to go there. Armed with only a rusted blade, she felt the compulsion to face the monster that lie within the heart of the queendom.
"Let me ask you one question, courageous one," the old man phrased it so plainly that if there was a compliment or veiled insult intended, neither came across. "Do you plan to journey to Hyrule Castle?"
"Yes," Link didn't hesitate, staring all the more intensely in the direction of the monster she couldn't see. "Someone has to."
"It does not surprise me that you would say that," the old man said, "however, as I'm sure you noticed, this plateau is kept isolated by steep cliffs. Once, they were part of a circular fortress, but all entrances have since caved in. How do you plan to get down? I should hope you are not foolish enough to leap over the cliff to certain death!"
"Give me your paraglider," Link spoke with far more force than she had since waking up. She needed the old man to stop talking. The Great Plateau must have been lonely (she doubted Bokoblins made good conversation), but that wasn't her problem. "You don't seem like you actually need it."
"Oho!" Now the old man started to laugh, and the lantern's rattling had become unbearably loud. "You think I would hand it over that easily? Because you asked so nicely? No, I don't think so. Follow me, I have something to show you."
His staff cutting into the dry dirt, the old man began to walk away from the base of the Sheikah Tower without waiting to see if Link followed him. He knew she would, because he had something she needed, and she had already considered the logistics of simply fighting him for it and decided it wasn't worth the effort. She would feel bad about it.
"Look at that structure over there," the old man pointed across a lake's worth of flooded ruins, to another Sheikah structure. It glowed the same orange that Link was beginning to recognize as an indicator of something left undone. "Once those towers rose up into the sky, it began glowing. Such a place should house some sort of treasure, wouldn't you think?"
Link didn't answer. She had elected to silently fume about the old man's games instead.
"I would consider treasure for the paraglider to be a fair exchange," the old man finished, letting the wind rattle the lantern again.
If Link had slightly less self-control, she might have snapped the lantern from the staff and thrown it into one of the smaller ponds below them. But she had just enough self-control to instead storm off towards the structure without another word. She didn't wait to see or hear the old man's reaction, but she could imagine that he was mocking her.
The sun had disappeared behind the walls of the old fortress by the time Link had walked around the lake and through the wetland that had been formed a century ago. The stairway leading down from the temple disappeared into the lake, a grand gate buried under debris and submerged in the water.
The shrine, she remembered that now, looked even smaller once she had gotten close to it. A Sheikah Shrine, built thousands of years ago, for a purpose she felt like she should have remembered. She placed the Sheikah Slate screen down on the terminal, the two eyes touching and turning the orange light blue. In front of her, metal bars that formed a wall pulled away, revealing a glowing blue sigil on the floor.
"That's nice, I guess," Link muttered, stepping inside and finding nothing but metal walls and the carved sigil. "Is that it? Come on, do something-"
The sigil glowed brighter, and Link almost fell over as the floor rumbled underneath her, before the circular platform dropped down with her on it.
She disappeared below the shrine, but it felt as if she had entered another world.