Chapter Text
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He . . . won?
Well, Link assumed that that was what he did. Beat the beast, saved the princess, honored the legacy of his dying friends . . . were they friends?
Link wasn’t sure of anything except that he had done his duty, what he was meant to do.
And he was glad of it, make no mistake. All the people that he met on his travels, all of the memories that had just started returning to him . . . he had protected them all. After his failure, after the loss of so many, Link knew that it was the minimum he could do to return them to some tiny speck of peace that they had once had.
And he here was, as he always was, doing what he could.
Blood trickled down into his eyes, and he had snapped at least two bows getting that arrow into that beast’s craw, meaning that his forearms looked like they had just been lashed.
But it was done.
Two years, one hundred years, and it was done.
Zelda was safe. The Castle was safe. Hyrule was safe.
He had won.
Second time seems to have been the charm, Link thought almost bitterly.
And, as Link looked at the swaying grass of Hyrule field, a few elusive Silent Princess dancing in the wind, the Hero thought that it might be over.
Oh Hylia.
What on earth was he going to do now?
He could do what he imagined everyone wanted for him--return to life at the side of a princess he only had a dozen memories of (half of them involving her yelling at him) and return Hyrule to the civilization that it once was.
He could change the only world that he had ever known into one that he barely even remembered.
His stomach roiled at the thought.
But he stomped that deep, deep down. Because that wasn’t his place. He had finally, finally , done what everyone said the Hero should have done 100 years ago, but he had finally done it.
After?
Well, that was for the people of Hyrule, for Zelda, for Sidon, for Riju, for Yunobo, for Teba.
Link fell down onto the grass and closed his eyes against the clear sky.
After?
That wasn’t for him, he thought as he closed his eyes.
His job was done.
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Somewhere in the deep, dwelling cosmos, someone disagreed.
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The first thing that Link registered was that he’s sleeping on a bed.
The second thing that Link registered was that he didn’t fall asleep on a bed. Hylia, he can’t even remember falling asleep.
That doesn’t mean that he didn’t though. He remembered, early (late?) in his adventure when he would stumble onto a Hinox or, on one memorable occasion, a Silver Lynel, and run like hell for hours only to collapse the second that he was safe.
So, yeah, waking up randomly wasn’t something that he was too concerned about.
What he was concerned about was that as he’s apparently in a building, and he definitely didn’t pay for an inn.
It was still early morning and there wasn’t enough sunlight filtering through the shuttered windows for him to get a good idea of where he was, but cataloguing what he can see lets him know that he was in a bunk bed of some sorts, on the bottom bunk, and that there were other people sleeping around him in similar arrangements. The room wasn’t small, likely the size of the inn in Gerudo Town, but there was no smell of sand and heat in the air.
Likely an inn somewhere in the Hylian towns then. He doesn’t recognize it, but he rarely spent that much time in Hateno or Kakariko Villages anyway.
People there always seem to expect things of him and he felt too much like a bug under a magnifying glass.
He wondered if he passed out. It . . . wouldn’t be the first time that had happened.
He stretched and debated getting five more minutes of much needed rest before huffing and rolling over, reaching to his belt for his Sheikah Slate.
. . . Which wasn’t there.
Link knew that he wasn’t much of a hero, although he made up for it in the end, but he thinks that he’s got a couple of good traits for being heroic underneath it all. One of them, one that has come in usual more than a couple dozen of times, was that Link doesn’t flinch or freeze when he’s shocked.
He took two deep breaths and started to reassess his situation from “nice villager brought me to an inn” to something more along the lines of “Yiga Clan member has tried to kidnap me for the umpteenth time and has somehow actually succeeded.”
He wasn’t wearing his Sheikah suit, which was what he usually wears when he slept out in the wild, or his Champion’s Tunic, which was what he remembered wearing while fighting Calamity Ganon. From what he can see in the low light, he’s wearing something similar to a cross between the Royal Guard’s Set that he found in the barracks of Hyrule Castle a couple months back when he was testing his mettle and the Hylian Set that he bought on a whim when he started carrying around more diamonds than Keese wings.
Not having the Sheikah Slate meant he doesn’t have access to any of his gear . . . but he can’t even find the Master Sword, which never, ever left his side, Slate or no. No shield, no bow, no quiver.
Link fought to keep his breathing steady.
For these past two years, his entire life it felt like he has never once been without a weapon. Even when he broke every sword he owned against a Lynel’s side, he still could summon his courage to pull the Master Sword out of the ether once more for a final fight.
Even when he woke up the first time, he had beaten Bobokins to death with a tree branch and a hive full of bees, which yes, was incredibly traumatizing and satisfying at the same time.
As the light started to filter through the windows, Link noticed something very, very odd:
His hair was shorter than it should be.
He’s always liked it long. It hasn’t ever really gotten in his way in a fight, because he was pretty good at his job, and it suited him better than this short cut when he was a girl.
He looked at his arms -- he’s missing scars, even though he’s still muscular.
Link rotated his shoulders, twisted in the bed -- he wasn’t as flexible as he used to be, although somehow he felt stronger .
Perhaps it should have taken longer, or maybe he should have gotten hung up on the impossibility of it all, but Link had always been up for something impossible so it came to him rather quickly:
This isn’t my body .
Or was it? He thought he looked the same. Same height, same general build. Cosmetic differences.
But it wasn’t the one he fell asleep in.
Somewhere outside, a bell started to ring, loud enough that the other figures in the room started to yawn and curse.
“Get up, Grig, you lazy slob.”
“Ughhh nooo . . .”
A crash. “Fuck!”
“PIERCE!”
“Be quiet, all of you, Hylia.”
Everyone’s speaking Hylian , Link thinks immediately. He hasn’t moved from his bunk-- around half of the figures, eight or so, are milling about while the rest have stayed on their beds. No one’s looking at him, which gives him a lot of time to look at them.
First things first: where did they come from? Link thinks that he’s only seen more Hylians than these in villages, and that’s a close margin. Hell, Link built Tarrey Town with a proud population of fifteen, most of them not Hylian.
They were also all men, it seemed like. Around Link’s age, likely, adults but still young. All muscular, all in good shape. Mostly all blond and pale--except for one man, taller than the rest with skin like a Gerudo’s, although just as blond as the others, and a figure in the back, hidden in shadows, with the pale hair of a Sheikah. All getting dressed in the same clothes that Link was wearing: white tunics with the red Hylian crest over leather armor and dyed navy britches. Greaves, shoulder plates, brown boots.
He’s in a garrison.
A Hylian garrison.
And it seemed like he was supposed to be there too, because one of them, a big man with a square jaw, said, “Reginson! Are you just gonna sit there like a mute?”
Reginson?
But he was definitely talking to Link, so Link just hummed and got down from his bunk in a smooth jump. He started putting on the boots that seemed to be his, keeping his careful gaze on everyone.
The big man squinted at him. “You ignoring me? Wow. What did I do now?”
Link just shrugged. They knew whoever’s body he was supposed to be inhabiting? Curious and curiouser. Hopefully he hadn’t displaced someone who needed the body.
Apparently silence wasn’t the answer because the big man moved to-- Link didn’t know, poke him maybe? Something physical but not necessarily aggressive.
His body moved before he could think. As soon as the man’s hand came close to him, Link grabbed the man’s wrist and locked it in a hold, fast as lightning. It was virtually painless, just uncomfortable, but the man purpled like he had been struck.
“Reginson! What the fuck?”
Softly, Link just said, “Please don’t touch me.” His voice was higher-pitched than most of these other men, he noticed. More melodic, less gruff.
The man seemed a little bit startled at his voice. Link paid it no heed but pushed the man away slightly when he released him.
Surprisingly, the man didn’t move. “Link, are you alright?”
Link.
Link nodded, a bit numbly.
The man gave him a couple once-overs. “You’re acting weird. Still agonizing over that diplomatic mission to the Zoras? I know it wasn’t fun, mate, but you have to let it go.”
“I’m . . . just tired.”
The man clapped him on the back, and Link let him touch him this time. “Well, nothing that morning drills won’t make infinitely worse. Buck up, we’ve got a double session today.”
The men did seem to be getting ready, finishing up their morning routines with surprising efficiency. Link began lacing his boots faster. He didn’t reach for the plate armor -- he had never used it before and didn’t want to give anything away by not knowing how to put it on. Some of the others had forgotten it as well, so Link assumed that it was a personal choice. He did pull some leather bracers across his wrists and some supple fingerless gloves -- he didn’t have a bow yet, but it was definitely his first priority.
Another soldier (?) got up from his bunk after lacing the sides of his boots. “Kilnson, Reginson, come on, we’re gonna be late.”
Link followed the big man, Kilnson, as the rest of them funneled out of the room. Despite their boisterous attitudes in the morning, all of them seemed to sober as they left the barracks.
The sun was just breaking over the horizon, but Link recognized the Dueling Peaks and Satori Mountain in the distance. So he was in Hyrule Field.
But something was . . . off? It didn’t smell right, if that made sense. Too cluttered, almost. Too many scents.
And . . . oh.
There were buildings and people and the sounds, the noises! The training grounds were full of different knights-in-training, all of them men, more people contained in this small little training ground than Link thought that he had ever seen. Horse-drawn carriages rumble down the streets with children sitting the hay and women with conservative dresses and hair scarves next to their farmer husbands.
All of them . . . Hylian.
In the distance, across the rolling plains, Link could see Hyrule Castle, unbroken, surrounded by a town. Castle Town. He recognized it from his memories, the few that he had.
Not a single Guardian in sight.
This wasn’t his beautiful, broken, wild Hyrule.
This was Hyrule before the fall.
It was only his battle prowess that kept him from fainting from the shock.
“Reginson!” His name was roared across the field by an older man with a scruffy beard -- likely his sergeant.
Link had fallen behind and jogged to catch up. Was he in a memory? His memories had always been fuzzy, hazy, things that came upon him suddenly. Although he was often immobilized by their sudden appearance, he had never been caught in one for more than a couple minutes. Was this a new one? Had all of his memories come back at once?
But he didn’t feel that guiding hand of knowing what to do. He had always reacted instinctively in those memories, known how to act and what to do. Here, Link seemed to have agency. It made no sense.
The--Link counted quickly--the sixteen of them seemed to be doing laps, so he hung back and tried to think of what he could do. If he was in a memory, he was likely still passed out from defeating Calamity Ganon and should just wait for it to fade. If he was in some sort of illusion magic . . . hmmm. Maybe try finding the Master Sword? It seemed to cut through mind magic pretty well. Or wait it out.
No reason to not go with the flow until he figured out what was going on.
Apparently Link wasn’t a terribly quiet guy because Kilnson kept giving him odd looks and tried to strike up a conversation. The others were watching him strangely as well, especially that Sheikah.
“Alright, Reginson?” One of them asked, a blonde boy who seemed to be the youngest, based on his baby face.
Link just hummed.
The other quit talking immediately, giving him a look like he was offended.
Maybe this Link talked more? He had never spoken in any of his memories, but this seemed to be earlier in his memories than ever before, and Zelda’s diary had mentioned that he only stopped speaking so frequently because he felt the burden of being the Chosen Hero so acutely.
Link, during his two years of adventures, wasn’t exactly a chatterbox, but talked easily to everyone he encountered, getting news and bargaining. After spending most of the time alone, he didn’t need conversation, but he was glad to take it when he could.
He could talk more, but that opened up the can of worms of not knowing what to say. He didn’t even know anyone’s name.
Alright . Time to think up a plan.
First things first, Link needs to wait it out. He’ll give it a week, maybe. That was twice as long as the longest that he’d ever been caught in a memory, although it was only actually an hour or two daydreaming as he stared at a pond in Hateno Village, remembering spending a few days tinkering on Ruta with Zelda and Mipha.
And during that time, he needed to find some weapons. At least a bow. If he was in a memory or an illusion, there was no way he could get his hands on the Sheikah Slate, let alone having it work for him. Just a cursory glance of the horizon let him know that the Towers were all still deep underground. A bow and maybe a sword. A couple of knives. Things that he could slip into a pack if he decided waiting it out wasn’t an option any more.
And then?
Hylia, Link didn’t know. Maybe he should try to find Zelda? Or go get the Master Sword?
But if there wasn’t anything to fight -- and he didn’t see Calamity Ganon swirling around the castle -- was there really a point to it?
Link kept his head down and jogged. All he could do was hope that he woke up sooner rather than later.
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Spint was going to be a knight. He came from a long line of knights, you know, some of them pretty prestigious. His father always told him that being a knight was the finest thing that a Hylian could do, a protector of their noble people, a guardian for their borders against all manner of evil. Spint was going to be a knight and do his noble legacy pride.
That’s what they were all here to do really, these sons of knights and lords and landowners, proud carriers of the noble Hylian blood, here to bring order and security to the common folk. The fifteen of them were the best of the best, training to become royal guards of the king himself.
They all had a goal.
The sixteen of them, the royal squires, worked hard. They ate together, lived together, laughed, cried, triumphed -- all of it together.
Which is why it was very noticeable when Link Reginson seemed to obtain an entirely different personality overnight.
Spint, who honestly would be the first to admit that he was not the brightest of the bunch, was probably the last to notice. He didn’t spend that much time with Link, honestly--he found the guy a little bit snobbish honestly, and didn’t spend much time trying to seek out his company.
Grina, Link’s bunkmate and best friend, was a pretty good deterrent as well; Grina was large, excellent in a fight, boisterous, and full of some very strong opinions about what it meant to be a knight . . . and who wasn’t fit to be one.
Spint, of course, was above reproach, being of a noble Hylian stock with his classical ears and blond hair, but he . . . well, he noticed that Jiphi had been almost completely edged out of their social circle and that didn’t suit him very well.He was supposed to be honorable! It wasn’t as though he was a Gerudo or anything silly like that. It’s just his grandmother? Or maybe his great-grandmother?
Although he couldn’t argue that it was a bit strange that Bariko had been allowed to train as a knight. The Sheikah weren’t not Hylians, he guessed, but there was just something off about one of them being trained to be a knight. They were spies, assassins. Not honorable men. Necessary, but not honorable.
But yeah, it wasn’t that he didn’t like Link and Grina, it was just that Spint preferred to keep his head down and his opinions to himself.
Link, to Spint, was a pretty stand-up guy. His father worked at one of the Royal Knights, he knew, and Link was probably the best swordsman out of all of them. The guy was a bit full of himself, sure, always talking about how great of a knight he would be, but Link always trained the hardest and stayed the latest practicing sword forms.
And even though it was pretty obvious that Link came from money, he didn’t fault it as much as he usually did.
If Spint was honest with himself, he had always been a little jealous of Link. Link was chivalrous, handsome, and had perfect manners and speech. He was a noble, more than just a knight, and everyone knew that he was going to have the brightest future out of all of them. He was the perfect Hylian knight.
. . . Until this morning.
It was strange, a lot of the others were whispering as they went through morning and afternoon drills. Link was silent, almost sullen, and went through his morning practices with a surprising amount of hesitance. If it was anyone else, Spint would say that he was being lazy, but it was Link, and Link was never lazy.
Honestly, he assumed that Link was just having a bad day. Maybe he received some bad news in the night?
But then during a break in their morning routine, after their lunges, Link went and sat next to Jiphi and Spint during his break.
. . . Link never spoke to Jiphi.
It was like a thing, him and Grina and the three or four others who seemed to hang on Link’s every word. They were very, very proud of being Hylian. Which oftentimes meant that they were very, very discourteous to anyone who wasn’t.
In fact, Grina Kilnson was watching Link with something akin to shock and amazement from the other side of the training ground. He must have thought that his best friend had gone insane.
Link gave a nod when he sat down and started to pat away the sweat. Instead of chatting and cooling off like the rest of them, Link began a series of stretches that Spint didn’t recognize, folding his body in an increasingly tangled-up manner.
“Reginson?” Spint ventured cautiously. “What are you doing?”
A hum. After a couple beats of silence, in which Spint didn’t move, Link finally said, “I’m stretching. I’d like to get more flexible.”
There was definitely something wrong with Link. For one thing, he had lost the crisp, clear accent of the Hylian elite. Spint thought that he had noticed this morning but had chalked it up to tiredness. Link’s voice was higher than it usually was and had easier, rounded vowels.
More like a country accent, almost. Like the people out in Hateno territory past the Dueling Peaks.
“Stretching?” Spint just wanted to keep Link talking. Maybe he wasn’t okay? Maybe something had happened? “Looks a lot different than the stuff we do.”
Link hummed again. The man seemed to be full of nothing but hums and grunts today it seemed like.
Jiphi was watching the golden boy with distrustful eyes. Link had never done anything like a prank before, but he was acting all sorts of out of character today.
“Reginson!” Commander Kreig shouted across the field. “Get over here, cadet!”
Link uncoiled himself and brought himself to his feet in one smooth move and looked at the commander curiously for a moment before giving a small little wave back to the two of them. He jogged over to the commander, leaving Jiphi and Spint behind.
“He’s acting very weird,” Jiphi said, stating the obvious.
“Maybe someone told him he was being an asshole and he’s trying to make up for it?” Not that Link had ever really been rude or anything. Just . . . choosy? Cliquey? Very, very aware of his personal image?
Jiphi snorted. “I doubt it. Still . . . I wonder what’s going through his head.”
The mystery only increased when they were paired up for sparring in the afternoon. A lot of them were still getting used to these long days of training. It was spring bootcamp, after all. After they made it through the twelve weeks of training and fighting and patrolling, they would be Royal Knights--or something close to it at least. You had to be knighted by the king to be a Royal Knight, but there were royal guards, which was what they would be, all waiting for the moment to prove themselves up to the task.
Anyway, nearly all of them had been squires and soldiers before this -- the exception being Bariko, but who knew what kind of training the Sheikah give their offspring -- so they were used to working hard. But the constant physical training was draining no matter how used to it you were. Spint understood the rationale of sparring later in the day after they were exhausted, but that didn’t making it any less trying.
Commander Krieg clapped his hands twice to gather them all up. The sixteen of them immediately made two lines of eight, Link falling in a second behind the rest.
“Alright, children. Time for some sparring practice. Today, I’ll go easy on you so it’s weapon of choice, but you can’t have the same weapon as your partner. Two rounds on your own, one round for exhibition if I think that any of you greenies have what it takes to show some mettle.”
Spint nodded to Jiphi, his usual sparring partner. Link got snapped up by Grina, although he didn’t look too pleased with the arrangement. Spint shuddered in sympathy. Grina’s weapon of choice was the claymore and he had the strength to wield it with a speed that was hard to counter.
Spint and Jiphi were both spearmen, so Spint took the disadvantage, picking up the classical one-handed sword and shield of the typical knight. All of them learned sword-and-shield techniques, as those were the typical tools of the knight, as well as keeping one other type of weapon if they choose.
Link, the most classic knight that there was, seemed to be having a more difficult time deciding than he usually did. He looked over the weapons, spread across their peg boards once, twice. Like he was looking for something in particular.
He opened his mouth to speak before he closed it. Opened again and asked, in that odd accent with that odd tone, “Where are the bows? . . . Sir.”
Commander Krieg only laughed. “A bow? For a knight? Only as a last resort. Weapons of Rito and women.”
Link’s face shuttered into a cold mask at that. He nodded deferentially to the commander in a crisp movement before picking up a knight’s broadsword and a shield.
The spars began in earnest then. The commander paced through them, his tunic crisp and white while the rest of the end up falling in the dirt. Spint didn’t have much energy to spare between his bouts--Jiphi had both height and reach on him, although Spint was lighter on his feet. They were a good pair, the two of them.
Bariko, who was fighting to their left, was always an interesting fighter to watch. His preferred weapon, daggers, were another weapon frowned upon in Hylian culture, much like bows. He always ended up fighting with an one-and-a-half hand sword. Bariko was graceful though and tended to win even with a disadvantage.
The commander stopped them after two rounds, his mouth set in a grim line. “Kilnson! Reginson! Come out and show me what you can do!”
That was an odd choice, as Grina had been in the showcase match two days before and the commander tended to be more lenient with the rotations, as not to show off or shame his charges any more than he needed to.
Maybe it was because of Link? He knew that the exhibition at the Hyrule Coliseum was coming up, perhaps the commander wanted Link to have extra practice?
The fourteen of them, along with Commander Krieg and Sergeant Gren, the commander’s second, gathered around Link and Grina in a wide circle. This practice always felt odd to Spint, reminding him of the schoolyard fights he remembers from his time at the Academy.
Link and Grina stood on opposite side. Grina held his claymore as easily in one as in two, a mountain of muscle and strength. Link, on the other hand, seemed practically tiny compared to his goliath of a friend. He held his shield in front of him, his sword at his side, a picture-perfect defensive knight’s stance.
Except for his feet, Spint noticed. His feet were at the wrong angles.
Sergeant Gren, holding his clipboard, walked forward and held out his hand as a referee. “Combatants! Ready . . . Begin!”
Throwing his hand down in a swift chop, Sergeant Gren stepped out of the ring.
Grina threw himself forward but Link didn’t move. His eyes were patient and watchful on the rim of his shield. There was this subtle intensity to his gaze, something untamed.
Grina smiled fiercely before swinging his claymore in a fierce side sweep. Link jumped to the side quickly before taking up his odd footstance again.
Another swipe from Grina, another jump.
Grina did a large sweep, cutting off Link’s side-stepping.
Link just backflipped out of the way.
That explained the odd stance of his feet.
Link landed a bit unsteadily and cursed softly, too soft for Spint to hear. Fortunately, he had enough space from Grina that the opening couldn’t be taken advantage of.
Grina advanced more cautiously. A few more swipes dodged easily in that very un-Hylian style. Grina did an overhand blow that Link pushed aside with his shield before catching Grina’s forward foot with his own and pulling the man off balance.
Grina kept his footing but growled in annoyance.
The sergeant and commander were both watching Link with shocked eyes. This was not how the young man fought before -- this was not how any Hylian fought.
A stab from Grina, this one Link took on his shield before he flipped the grip on his broadsword in midair and slammed the pummel against Grina’s knee. There was a high pitched pop and a high curse from the large man that was cut off mid-shout by Link essentially back-handing him across the face with a shield.
Grina toppled to the ground. Link placed the tip of his sword against his throat.
“Dead,” Link said in that high-pitched, melodic voice.
“Kilnson incapacitated, Reginson wins,” Sergeant Gren said without any excitement.
Commander Kreig advanced fiercely on the young man. “What in the hell was that, boy? This is a spar, are you trying to kill him?”
Link tilted his head slightly to the side. “I only dislocated his knee. It’s just the shock of the fall.”
“That is not Hylian fighting,” the commander seethed.
“I--”
“Trying out new things is one thing, but we are the Royal Guard. We are Hylian’s best. We do not fight like street thugs. You’re on kitchen duty for the next two weeks. And give me 30 laps!” The commander’s voice rose steadily through his speech so the end was a bellow.
Link just nodded. Didn’t flinch, didn’t salute. Just put his shield down, sheathed his sword and took off running.
“And the REST OF YOU. Don’t you dare try to do what Reginson just did. He was out of line and so are the rest of you if you try to imitate him. DISMISSED.”
Spint, along with his fellow recruits, snapped immediately to a salute. When Commander Kreig had left the field, he let himself relax.
The other cadets immediately started whispering to each other. Spint looked after Link, running laps around the field.
No one seemed to notice that he had taken his sword.
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Zelda screamed as she bolted upright in her chair.
She must have fallen asleep in her workshop again. It seemed to happen all the time now, mainly because she felt like she spent every waking hour in this workshop, hoping that she could do something other than rely on her faith. Ever since they had discovered that first Sheikah ruin two months ago, it was like a whole world had opened up for Hyrule . . .
But not for her.
Zelda tried to calm down. Her breathing was ragged, sharp. Sweat prickled on her brow and down her back. She remembered . . . something. A strange set of images, none of them monstrous or terrifying, had flashed through her dream, none of which she can remember now.
She . . . she thinks she remembered red hair . . . and a girl with a green veil . . .
It wasn’t a nightmare. Why was she so shocked? Why was her pulse racing?
There was a tinkling sound. On the shelves above her head, her bottles full of dried flowers and herbs were shaking, tapping together softly, ringing sweet notes into the air.
She watched, almost transfixed, as the one closest to edge, holding the petals of dried warm saffina, toppled over. Quicker than she thought herself capable of moving, Zelda grabbed it out of the air.
An earthquake.
How strange. It had been so long since Hyrule had had one, some children thought that they were myths and stories.
Maybe it was a portent? Maybe Zelda had finally tapped into some of that holy power that everyone wished her to have and she knew that it was coming?
Zelda sighed as the shaking seemed to calm down.
When the glass bottles stopped rattling, she returned the saffina to its shelf. She swept her tangled knots of hair behind her ears and began to straighten the bottles so that all the labels faced out. A lot of them were from places she had never been but always dreamed of seeing, of discovering.
All everyone wanted from her was to be a true woman of the faith. All she wanted for herself was to be a woman of science.
Zelda thought that she must be the Royal Family’s worst disappointment that she can’t manage to be either.
The princess turned another bottle towards her -- endura carrot roots. She knew that it was just a dream broken by an earthquake but she can’t help thinking of that image of that girl in a veil . . . and a red-haired figure . . .
. . . a ship on the sea . . . a red dragon . . . an empty pedestal in a hallowed place . . .
. . . Hyrule Castle at sunset . . . a waterfall from the sky, flowing to mist . . .
. . . a deep orange eye and a carved grey one . . .
And an image of a mass of pulsating pink and black, a swirl of malice and disease, a roar sounding almost tortured as the beast consumes Hyrule Castle--
A glass jar holding the only Silent Princess she has ever managed to collect slipped from her fingers and shattered against the cold stones of her workshop.
Her eyes were throbbing in her skull and she placed a hand to her head. What was that? She had never had visions. Nothing that she had ever read had ever even indicated that visions were a part of the bloodline of the Sealing Power.
She was probably just tired. She crouched down to pick up the glass.
“Oh, good,” Zelda breathed, picking up the mostly intact, if slightly crumpled, Silent Princess. “You managed to stay in one piece.”
The flower was placed back into a new jar and precisely on the shelf, label facing out.
“There, it’s like it never happened,” Zelda states firmly. “Nothing strange at all.”
“Well,” a voice drawled from outside her window, “I wouldn’t got so far as that.”
Zelda whirled, placing a hand to her chest. Her window was dark--it was night after all--but from the glow of the castle torches and the waxing moon, she could see the shadowed figure of a Sheikah leaning against the window frame.
“Don’t scare me like that!”
The Sheikah -- not one she recognizes, not that that means much, she only really knows Impa -- gave a slight bow. Far too slight, in her opinion, but it figured that not even her own royal bodyguards respected her that much.
They’re a genderless figure, with a lean, athletic frame and a masked face. Their hair is long and not quite the classical Sheikah white, strung through with streaks of gold, caught up in the typical Sheikah topknot used by the males in the tribe. Most of their face is covered by a black mask, although Zelda can see that they don’t have the Tear. Impa dared to send one of the UnBlooded to her? It just figured.
“You’re new,” Zelda said curtly, giving the figure a blatant once-over.
“My name is Ren,” the Sheikah said blandly, and Zelda noticed that their--his?-- voice had a distinct masculine quality. “Impa has assigned me to pass along a message so that you can join her whenever possible.”
Zelda crossed her arms. This Sheikah had seen her in a moment of weakness and she knew that she couldn’t take it back but now she felt like she had lost all of the control over this conversation. Wasn’t she the princess? Didn’t she need to be able to effortless hold authority regardless of what came her way? She straightened her shoulders and tilted her chin up, just the tiniest bit.
“Yes? And what news do you bring?”
Ren’s mask twitched ever so slightly, and she thought that they might have smiled. Their bow, when addressing her, was slightly deeper than the one before.
“Impa says that the earthquake has unearthed a new structure that she thinks will be of some interest to you. It hasn’t been uncovered yet, but she thinks that it’s likely more of the ancient Sheikah technology.”
Zelda’s eyes sparkled. “Could it be a Divine Beast?”
The tiniest of shrugs. “The chief does not know, but says that if anyone would know it would be you and her finest scholars.”
“I must go immediately! Oh . . .” Zelda’s scrambling slowed and then halted entirely. “My father . . .”
Ren shifted and placed their arms behind their back. They really were quite thin. Zelda wondered how they managed to do all the sneaky stealth when they were all rail thin. Or maybe only the lithe ones were able to be the stealthy part of the clan.
“. . . I will accompany you. If you have a proper guard, I see no reason why you should not be able to attend the dig site. It is rather protected, after all.”
Zelda hoped that this wasn’t another attempt by her father to give her a permanent knight. There had been discussions for years about giving her a permanent guard, and she knew that there was a contingent of Sheikah around her at all times, but it just seemed so much more . . . stifling, to know that there was one person whose entire life revolved around her being safe and caged.
But the technology! If they had uncovered something new, something that she could help unravel from all of her readings and all of her research . . . how could she miss this chance?
“Of course. Thank you, . . .”--How did one address the UnBlooded? She couldn’t remember -- “Sheikah Ren, for your assistance. I will be ready promptly.” Did she sound pompous? Oh, how on earth does the court follow these manners without tripping over themselves was such a wonder.
The Sheikah bowed again. “Yes, Your Highness.” Delightful, she had forced them into formality as well. “I am ready whenever you are ready to leave. Impa also wanted me to pass along an artifact that she had found at the site.”
Ren handed over a rectangular package covered in a thick cotton cloth. Zelda took it delicately -- an artifact from the Sheikah age?
Zelda’s face was bathed in a blue glow as she pulled off the wrapping slowly.
“Oh,” Zelda gasped.
The Sheikah Slate .
. . . How did she know that?
A headache banged against her skull. Zelda held a hand up to her temple.
Ren took an aborted step forward. “Are you alright, princess?”
“. . . Yes,” she said slowly, tracing her fingers over the oddly familiar runes--no, shapes. “Yes, I’m fine.”