Chapter Text
Zelda used to pray.
She used to stand in water, used to hold her hands together, used to close her eyes and beg. Prayer was meant to be as easy as breathing. But she couldn’t breathe, not with the rain falling so heavy from the sky, threatening to choke her. She couldn’t breathe, not with the weight of the boy she loved, heavy against her chest.
She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t pray. The words wouldn’t come.
Take me instead.
This was what she begged of the Goddess. It was not a prayer for healing. It was not asking for salvation. Just a bargain. An offering. Take me and not him.
But if anything came easy for the Goddess, it was turning the other way.
Link reached up to grip her hand. She entwined their fingers together, leaned down to press her forehead to his. He was trying to say something to her, his last breath on his lips.
She wiped the rain from his face.
“You’re going to be just fine,” she lied.
Zelda was seventeen when she held a dying boy in her arms.
She was seventeen and she would be no older.
On the morning of Zelda’s sixteenth birthday, she was in the library.
The library was one of her favorite places in the world, and yet she rarely had time for a visit. The ceilings and shelves towered overhead, but held no menace, only familiarity. The arching windows let in the bright light, illuminating the specks of dust wafting through the air. But the dust was welcome, too.
She breathed in the smell of paper and faded ink, skimming her finger across the spines of a row of books. Habit brought her past the encyclopedias of Hyrule’s flora and fauna, the research notes on Guardians, the papers on Sheikah technology; nostalgia brought her farther back still. Past the section on the kingdom’s history, to a tiny little corner where the light barely reached. Here was where the books deemed least useful were kept, and where she found a well-worn copy of Hyrulean fairy tales.
She slid the book from the shelf and let it fall open on one of the many cracks of its spine, a soft smile at the edge of her lips. She found herself in the middle of a story about the children of the forest and their fairy guardians, and a young boy who didn’t have one.
Without even bothering to flip back to the beginning, she started to read from the page she had opened. With her nose buried in the book, she walked herself back to one of the plush red chairs set up by the windows, tucking her legs up underneath her as she sat down.
She let herself get immersed in it, in a world where a princess faced her destiny on her own terms. She was nearing the end of the tale when a pair of hands closed over her eyes.
“Guess who!” came Impa’s cheery, familiar voice.
“Purah,” Zelda said.
Impa scoffed. “No…”
“Oh. Robbie?”
“You know it isn’t.”
“Must be my father, then?”
Impa groaned and threw herself into the armchair across from Zelda. She noticed that Impa still wore her white hair pinned back from her forehead, allowing her recent tattoo to heal. Impa had received the crest of the Sheikah when she came of age, and Zelda remembered how her friend’s eyes had welled up with tears when she’d recounted the experience to her.
“Happy birthday. Brat,” Impa said.
“Takes one to know one,” Zelda shot back.
The corner of Impa’s mouth twitched. “Shouldn’t you be celebrating? Or sleeping in? Opening presents and pretending to like them?”
“A quiet morning in the library is my present to myself.”
Impa drummed her fingers on the arms of the chair, looking at Zelda. It was a look that she knew all too well. Impa was bursting to say something. “Well, sorry to intrude. But, speaking of presents…”
Impa pulled out a small parcel from the pouch around her waist, passing it across the low table to Zelda. It was wrapped carefully in a white handkerchief and tied with one of the red ribbons that Impa often wore in her hair.
Zelda tugged on the ribbon, revealing a small, dark, wooden sheath with delicate carvings. Zelda grinned at Impa, who nodded at her encouragingly. Eagerly, Zelda took hold of the hilt and pulled.
It was a knife. Sharp, silver, Sheikah-made. And beautiful. The folded steel blade was the size of her hand and engraved with a depiction of her favorite flower: the silent princess. Zelda slid the blade back into the sheath with a snap and looked up to see Impa watching her gleefully.
“Don’t cut yourself with it, alright?” Impa said.
“No promises. You know me and my luck,” Zelda replied, and Impa rolled her eyes. “Thank you. I love it.”
“A pretty blade for a pretty princess.” Impa still fidgeted, looking as if she were deciding whether or not to say something. But she knew Impa wouldn’t be able to resist for very long.
“Is there something else?” Zelda prompted.
“Kind of,” Impa said carefully. “Not a gift, exactly, but… news.”
“Oh?”
“They’re sending someone into the forest again. To try to retrieve the sword.”
Zelda didn’t respond immediately. She frowned, not meeting Impa’s gaze, staring at her knife instead. She ran her finger up and down along the sheath, feeling the grooves of the carvings.
“Really?” she said finally, more irritated than curious. “It’s been ages since anyone’s attempted it. But I suppose, desperate times and all that.”
“Not desperate,” Impa said, and Zelda’s movements paused. “I think everyone just has a good feeling about him, that’s all.”
“And who is he?”
“One of the royal knights. The, uh… the young one.”
Zelda raised her eyebrows. She had heard of someone who had joined the royal guard recently, some sort of prodigy who could apparently best knights twice his size in combat. Zelda didn’t know much else about him. Though he had been the talk of the castle, Zelda had just tuned the gossip out. She had never been interested in the knights, prodigies or otherwise.
“But he’s just a boy,” Zelda said, frowning. “And he—well, how did my father even agree to this?”
“Well, apparently… his father argued for it. Nearly got himself thrown out of the throne room. Until, well…” Impa pressed her finger to the tip of her nose, and Zelda glanced over to see the hawkish librarian peering at them through one of the shelves. “You want to take this somewhere more private?”
Leaving the book on the seat of the chair—ignoring the nagging feeling telling her to put it back on its shelf—Zelda followed Impa out of the library. “I hate that old bat,” Impa whispered as they passed through the doors. “So nosy.”
Zelda smiled to herself. She rather thought that Impa and the librarian shared similar traits pertaining to nosiness.
Impa grabbed Zelda’s arm, pulling her towards the edge of the balcony. Below them, sunlight glistened off the streams of water that ran throughout the castle. Zelda could see small fish darting in the pools.
“Seems like the King and the boy’s father have some sort of history,” Impa continued. “It was enough to change the King’s mind, I guess. In two weeks, they’ll be sending a party to the training grounds at the edge of the forest and then they’ll send the little guy in. His father is even coming out of retirement to go with him.”
“And who is this man, that he was able to get an audience with my father over this matter? I’m barely able to see him for breakfast,” Zelda spat.
“Apparently, he used to be the captain of your mother’s guard.”
Zelda’s eyes widened. Impa scanned her face, judging her reaction.
“Really?” Zelda asked. She felt curiosity for a moment, before beating it back in favor of annoyance. “I suppose that makes him something special, does it?”
Impa shrugged, turning her head to peer over the balcony railing and towards the castle grounds. Zelda sighed, moving to lean against the railing, pressing her shoulder to her friend’s.
“Poor thing, really,” Zelda said after a moment.
“You think?”
“He’ll be like all the rest. The failure will break him.”
Impa snorted. “So, you don’t think there’s even a chance that—”
“Of course not,” Zelda said quickly, cutting Impa off. “The Hero hasn’t shown himself in all this time. What makes you think he’s hiding in a teenage boy?”
“Well, it would explain what’s taking him so long.”
Zelda tried to ignore that this was a decent point. She shook her head. “There’s no way. What chance would a child have against the Calamity?”
Impa looked at her, something unreadable in her expression. “Do you really think that?”
“Of course, I do,” Zelda sniffed. “When the Chosen One does show his stupid face, we’ll all be sure of it.”
“He doesn’t have to show his face,” Impa responded. “Just the sword.”
Impa left not long after to return to the duties she was most certainly shirking, and Zelda turned back down the hallway towards the library. But her hand paused on the handle of the door. She bit her lip. And had a bad idea.
Zelda turned back down the hallway, walking towards the guard’s barracks. They were on the opposite side of the castle, so she had a nice long walk to think about what exactly she was doing. She told herself it was nothing more than professional curiosity. She didn’t have all the facts. She just wanted to get a look at the boy so she could see for herself what the deal was, and that was all.
It shouldn’t matter so much, anyway. There was no need for her to pry. She should just turn back.
But she didn’t.
At the first gatehouse, she paused at the sounds of chatter coming from the practice yard below. She approached the balcony railing, peering down.
A group of guards was in the process of wrapping up their training, talking and laughing amicably amongst themselves. Zelda watched as some of them picked up their gear, heading back towards the barracks. Others lingered by the gate, trading jokes. She scanned them all, looking for anyone who looked particularly young.
She nearly didn’t notice him. He stood alone, back by the training dummies, drinking from a canteen. None of the rest were waiting for him to catch up. If this bothered him at all, he certainly didn’t show it. Zelda hesitated for a split second, then walked down the stairs and into the practice yard.
“You,” she said as she approached, and he turned to look at her. She registered the shock on his face before he lowered his gaze and dropped to one knee with such speed that his canteen went flying into the dirt. Zelda restrained herself from rolling her eyes as the canteen emptied its contents onto the ground.
“That’s not necessary,” she said. “Stand up.”
He paused for a moment, daring to glance up at her from beneath his eyelashes. When she raised an eyebrow at him, he finally stood. He couldn’t have been much taller than she was, and his dusty blond hair was almost certainly not cut to military standards. His face was carefully blank once again, but his eyes followed her movements almost warily.
“Well?” she asked, crossing her arms. “What is your name?”
He took a moment to find his voice, too. “Link,” he finally said.
“Link,” she repeated, unable to hide a note of disdain. He frowned, and Zelda suddenly felt self-conscious that she was being rude. She uncrossed her arms and said, “My name is Zelda.”
His frown turned into a look of confusion before he smoothed out his features. “Yes, Princess. I know who you are.”
And then she felt stupid. Of course, he knew who she was—and what kind of introduction was that, anyway? Just Zelda? So, they’re on a first name basis now? She felt heat rise to her face and looked away from him. She faced the training yard, glaring out as if looking for something wrong with it. A moment passed in uncomfortable silence.
“So,” she said, turning back to him and looking him up and down, sizing him up. “How long have you been with the royal guard?”
“Four months, Princess.”
“That’s not very long, is it?”
“No, Princess.”
“And yet they’re sending you into the Great Forest, to retrieve the sword?”
He paused before he responded, and when he spoke there was something almost like annoyance in his voice. “It seems that way, Princess.”
Zelda took a step closer to him, pursing her lips. “You know that you’re far from the first person who has made the attempt, don’t you?” she asked.
He kept his eyes locked with hers but said nothing.
“So many of our royal guards have gone into the forest and all of them have come back empty handed. So, what about you?”
He blinked. “Princess?”
“What makes you think you’ll be able to bring back the sword?”
He took a long moment to answer. “I have no reason to believe that I will.”
Now it was her turn to halt the conversation as she thought of what to say next.
“Well, it seems we’ve had your father throwing his weight around the castle for you, so he seems awfully sure about it.”
Link clenched his jaw, glaring at her openly. If he wasn’t annoyed with her before, he definitely was now. Zelda didn’t think anyone had regarded her with such contempt before in her life. It might have been refreshing, if she didn’t hate that look on him so much.
What was she doing? Had she come down here specifically to try to get a rise out of him?
“Well,” Zelda said, turning around to leave. “Whatever the outcome may be, I wish you the best of luck on your trial.”
“Thank you, Princess.” Link couldn’t hide the way he said the words through gritted teeth, and it almost made Zelda turn around to say something—the nerve of him!—before she decided it wasn’t worth it. She just shook her head slightly and walked away.
Zelda’s heart was pounding. If her father caught wind of how she behaved she’d never hear the end of it. She didn’t know where all that had come from—she certainly hadn’t felt like she was harboring any ill feelings towards the boy before she spoke to him. But something about him just… rubbed her the wrong way.
She took a deep breath and tried her best to clear her mind of their conversation. It didn’t matter. She was certain that nothing would come of this, anyway.
She didn’t see him at all in the days before he left for the Great Forest. Not that she was in any danger of running into him, really. The circles of the royal princess and the royal guard didn’t exactly overlap.
She told herself she didn’t care. It was almost true. She couldn’t stop thinking about him and wondering.
She wasn’t the only one, either. It seemed everywhere that she went in the castle, she heard whispers about him. People kept throwing around phrases like greatest swordsman in Hyrule and youngest ever member of the royal guard. It seemed everyone had high hopes for him.
As much as Zelda tried not to care about the outcome, it was almost unavoidable. It was like the whole castle was waiting with bated breath for news.
Zelda thought of her nine years of training. She thought of prayers that fell on deaf ears. Don’t get your hopes up, she told herself.
When the news came, Zelda wasn’t there to witness it. By the time she had finished with her daily prayer, the castle was already dealing with the aftermath of what had happened. Yet, no one would give her the full story, not even Impa. Everything she learned was caught secondhand from snippets of whispered conversation.
Fourteen men had left a week ago, including Link and his father. Five made it back.
They arrived at the gates of Castle Town with a sheet drawn over their single remaining cart. The horses had been ridden nearly to the point of exhaustion. The entire envoy reeked of blood.
Someone was sent to get the King.
The King demanded to know what happened?
It was an ambush.
Monsters. Hundreds of them. Like they’d been there, waiting for them. For him.
What happened to the boy?
It was like the forest swallowed him up. He went in, and then suddenly the monsters were everywhere. They saw the fight. They saw him fall. They saw the cut that felled him. No man could survive that, they said. And he was just a boy.
Yet the monsters were not sated. They came for the men next. There were so many monsters, and so few soldiers to fight back. They were dying.
And the father—yes, the father—he was a hero, the reason any of them made it out at all.
His body was lying in that cart that the horses had dragged back through Crenel Hills. A dead hero covered with a bloodstained sheet.
That was all that was left. Five living men and four bodies and nothing else. No sword, no boy, and certainly no Hero of Legend.
As Zelda cried alone in her room, her own words to Impa echoed in her head.
What chance does a child have against the Calamity?