Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Mineru stood, finally free.

Free from the labored breath and pain in her joints that had kept her bound to that chair. Years of agony, the parting gift of the Demon King, suffered to set their plans in place. Mineru turned to look at the body she had left behind. So fragile and thin, unrecognizable even to her own eyes. Once she was tall and lithe, with lustrous grey fur lined by white hair up to the tips of her ears, dressed in the finest style of the Zonai people. All she could see now was a gloom-corrupted shell. Alone in the study where she had spent most of her final days.

Enough. Zelda had done her part, and she was trusting Mineru to follow through with hers.

A gesture and a pulse of power washed over the youngest of her loyal constructs. It rose to its feet, tall and imposing. Crafted from the finest materials that remained from her tribe, her magnum opus. Gleaming gold and teal rings held aloft by brilliantly shining light within, modular access points across its frame for adaptation to any task, and a personal touch – the mask of an owl, a mirror to the one she wore in life, which she considered a personal emblem. Her primary contingency, the Guardian she would pilot in the war for Hyrule's future.

"It is time. Enact the final stage of the Upheaval and oversee the final stasis of the Stewards who remain behind. Deliver my final will and testament to my niece. Secure the Temple and Armory, and enter stasis until it is time." She spoke purely for the sake of ritual, her Guardian knew exactly what to do.

It reached down to gently remove the tear shaped jewel from the gorget around her body's neck.

She hoped that her family would understand, though they may be cross with her for stealing away the Temple of Time and a not insignificant amount of the surrounding land. To be fair, it was for a very good cause.

A thin, finely crafted box laid on her desk, containing an elaborate slate resting on cloth. Her ghostly hand reached out to rest on the emblem of a three-ridged eye.

"I look forward to meeting all of you."

Another pulse of power pulsed through the room as Mineru allowed her spiritual form to condense into a mote, her awareness shrinking as she embedded herself deep within the slate.

A stillness began to enter her mind…

Sensation faded to black…

Time…

Slipped…

Away…

Suddenly, darkness gave way to a blinding light.

"…left something for you in my care."

Consciousness was not nearly so quick to recover, however.

"Status… report…" she managed to hiss out, activating a subroutine within the Purah Pad. The eye-like sensor on the slate whirred to life and opened, running a full strength scan on several grid coordinates within the region.

"Well, that's not encouraging…" she internally grumbled. She felt weak, weaker than she had ever felt before in her spiritual form. How long had truly passed while she was asleep? Something had clearly gone wrong, her temple had been reinforced and fortified to a frankly ridiculous degree, why was it transmitting garbage data? Both of her backups were under security threat, and eight of the major refineries weren't transmitting at all.

No sense pondering on that now, she needed to turn her attention to her immediate surroundings. With a concerningly large amount of effort, Mineru slowly expanded her senses to a small sphere around her core, half a meter in each direction.

She beheld a young man, with tanned, furless skin, wearing a light white tunic. Long golden hair, sharp features, and the pointed ears common to the Hylian people. By all descriptions, this surely must be the swordsman Link that Zelda had spoken of so often and so fondly. However, she could quickly tell that something was terribly wrong – his face was gaunt and drawn, his chest was emaciated, weak, and his arm… That was Rauru's arm! How in the name of Hylia and the Dragons had Link come to be wearing her dead brother's right arm? The fur, the nails, and most of all the channeling gauntlet she had designed for him, there was no doubting it.

Suddenly, her power flickered and her sphere of senses collapsed into nothing. Panic began to set in, had she miscalculated the strength of her spirit without the reinforcing structure of the Stone? With the Temple of Spirit compromised she had no way to recover it, even if she directed Link there straight away. In his condition there was no way he would be able to defeat any sort of threat that could take down her defensive structures.

No, she would have to improvise. A tendril of soul reaches out to the nearest being, ever so gently attaching itself and drawing a trickle of energy. In her minds eye she constructed a bridge of green wispy strands of energy, the same as she emitted in life when wielding the powers innate to her people. She would rest, drawing strength from Link's spirit as he recovered the strength that Zelda had spoken of time and time again. In time she would repay this theft borrowing of life force a hundredfold. She could only hope that her loyal guardians would give him the guidance he needed to navigate the Great Sky Island in her stead.

Hopefully, it would not take too much time.

Sensation faded to black…

Time…

Slipped…

Away…

Suddenly, darkness gave way to blinding light.

This time, consciousness returned in a flood – she was standing. Standing? Gone was the pale mote of her spirit, she now wore a perfect copy of her form at the peak of her life. Her surroundings were bright and faded away into mist beyond a few meters. The Temple of Time, a facsimile at least.

Zelda, unmistakably her by both appearance and the aura of light and time radiating from her, floated in front of a Hylian swordsman. Their hands were clasped together, as a torrent of power flowed into Rauru's arm and gauntlet, coalescing into a rune. The Zonai hieroglyphic for Time burned brightly for a moment, before gently fading to a soft glow on the back of his hand.

The Sage of Time had somehow crashed through all of Mineru's best laid plans, and secured her place as the first Sage to pledge their power to the hero. Had she planned this all along? Or was this some emergent aspect of her control over Time that was too slippery and incoherent for a layman to grasp?

A gasp disturbed her rumination and she realized that Zelda had begun to fade away into motes of light, Link stepping forward out of instinct.

"Zelda…" she murmured.

Startlingly quickly, Link spun to face her.

"Who!?" he began, but was interrupted by the collapse of the liminal space around them.

Returned once more to reality, Mineru felt the crushing weakness of her spirit and the darkness of her space within the Purah Pad. And yet, that weakness was already less crippling than it had been the last time she had awoken. She checked the bond tying her soul into his and found it steadily, gently, pulsing with life and light.

Link must have found a way to purify a small portion of the gloom from his body already! Not in the surface level way that sunlight-infused Hylian tinctures and potions could, meant to purge the gloom from an otherwise healthy body, but actually managing a true reversal of the internal damage. This was remarkable, normally the only cure for being crippled by gloom was time and healthy living or acute exposure to pure sources of Light. In the war, Rauru had spent many nights channeling his magic into the soldiers of the kingdom whose bodies had been ravaged by taint. Those who weren't as lucky to gain the personal attention of their King were typically placed in field hospitals built around a Shrine of Light, letting the ambient energies wash over them. This method took months to work though, and it had only been a matter of days – Link must have found a different method.

In any case, she was strong enough now that she wasn't struggling simply to stay conscious. She laid out a plan in her mind; she would meditate and review her resources, biding her time until she passed the threshold where she could expand her senses to at least a few meters and maintain a conversation without collapsing. Jumping ahead of herself would surely serve only to confuse the young Hylian she was parasitically borrowing energy from.

First, her plans.

Obviously her original plan to guide Link from the closest moments of the Upheaval were for naught. However, the contingencies she left with her Stewards had clearly managed to be completed.

Her loyal Soldier and Commander constructs were given the order to descend from their skyward stations once the stasis was breached. Their core instruction was to fan out across the Kingdom of Hyrule to find the swordsman Link and bring him to the Temple of Time. Zelda's reconstruction of the timeline made it clear that Link must (had, would, will?) reach the altar with the shattered Master Sword. Completing this loop was critical, and we determined that it should be the first step. Minimizing disruptions to causality apparently made dealing with Time related magics much easier to organize.

Link was presented with the Purah Pad, so her Commanders must have followed through. Their programming was robust and gave them a wide range of options to complete their missions, so she was quite curious to find out how, specifically, they had found and delivered Link so high into the sky. Several of the blueprints she had left behind were more than capable of providing transport, but Mineru always loved seeing how her creations improvised and adapted. Modular construction led to such wonderful new ideas.

The Steward who was designated to present the Purah Pad was given a most important task; should she fail to awaken, this Steward would lead Zelda's champion to the Shrines of Light that formed the seal she had placed upon the Temple of Time. These three shrines acted as a powerful barrier against the forces of the Demon King, should any try to strike the sacred temple before the loop could be closed. She had included a fourth shrine in the blueprint for the seal for redundancy – redundancy is the true king, no matter how much it annoyed her brother when she said it.

With the seals broken, Link could place the Master Sword on the altar and send it back in time to Zelda so that it could be restored. This had not yet happened, she was sure, because a magical event that tremendous would send (metaphysical) shockwaves through her soul. She hoped that her soul would be recovered by that point, it would be a pleasure to watch such a unique event.

The rest of the plan from that point was largely based on contingencies and improvisation, which in Mineru's humble opinion, were her specialty.

If the signal from the Primary Recovery Signal hadn't been gibberish, her first steps would have been to get Link straight over to her laboratory to retrieve her Guardian and raid the Armory. The greatest tool she had ever built and the finest collection of Zonai arms and armor remaining in this world were currently entirely unaccounted for, and that was terrifying. Those were Future Mineru's problem though, better left for when she and Link (and hopefully a few other sages) were ready for a real fight.

The primary Construct Factory had sent a more encouraging signal at least. The code Inactive, Yellow implied that the local Stewards had confirmed that the site could feasibly be reactivated, but was occupied by a mid-level threat. Whether that was from a family of Frox that had nested inside it or some amount of the Demon King's soldiers having made camp, it was impossible to know. The redundant signaling systems she had installed didn't have the bandwidth to give her more detailed information, so she would work with what she had.

The Tertiary Recovery Point was currently a dead end, a red level threat would be deadly to all but a full military force or the combined might of Rauru and at least three sages.

The Library wasn't useful at this point either. In the future it would be critical to their success, but it required assets that she would need to cultivate.

Lastly… "Blessings of Hylia and the Dragons, I'll have a working refinery," she whispered to herself. This was excellent news, Zonai refineries were the bedrock of their technology and infrastructure. Given a single working refinery (and a small army of technicians and laborers), Mineru could produce wonders of engineering. The legacy of her people, long gone from this world, would live on.

She would protect the people of Hyrule in the memory of her baby brother.

Mineru's meditation was interrupted as she felt another shift in the bond between Link and herself. She felt a pulse of energy, and a quick expansion of her senses showing Link standing in front of a Shrine of Light with his eyes closed and hand outstretched. Curiously, he was alone. There was no sign of the Steward that was meant to be accompanying him. Link was using Rauru's hand to activate the dormant Shrine, tendrils of golden light flowing from the Zonai runes decorating the edifice.

Why was he alone!? Had he declined the Steward's offer of help? Or worse… had the Steward's programming failed with time and not followed through with the plan? With Rauru's arm he wouldn't need the Steward's help to activate the Shrine, but how had he managed to get to the shrines without guidance…

He had clearly realized the importance of the Shrines as a method of unlocking the Temple.

She needed to fix this, and quickly. Zelda had told her countless stories of Link's courage, cleverness, and determination, but in this moment more than anything he needed direction.

With a mighty effort of will, Mineru manifested a voice.

"Link…" His eyes snapped open and scanned around to find the source. "Link… You must bring the Sword to the Temple of Time. Present it to the Altar." The effort of producing even a rasping whisper was mountainous. "Please, hear my voice. Bring the sword the Zelda…"

Exhausted, Mineru's expanded senses collapsed back into nothingness. That would have to be enough, she thought.

A memory crossed her mind and she felt a chuckle play through her soul, "It wouldn't be the first time he's followed mysterious whispers from an old ghost." Zelda had shared the story once, of Link's awakening from the Sheikah Chamber of Resurrection. How the spirit of Zelda's father had played pranks on the amnesiac hero, playing the role of a mischievous old man, while secretly guiding him during his most vulnerable hours. If she remembered correctly, that story had come up during a fairly heated debate over the nature of disembodied souls. Mineru had argued that personality and creativity was a product of a living mind, and that the souls of the departed were fundamentally static. As the Sage of Spirit she thought that she had a monopoly on the knowledge of the soul and what remains after death, but Zelda had a… frankly concerning number of counterfactual examples she had witnessed firsthand.

A melancholy washed over her, thinking of happier days with her truest friend and colleague. Ganondorf, the Demon King, had taken everything from her – her brother, her sister in all but blood, her health, and eventually even her life.

Her reminiscence was cut short by another pulse of light surging through her tether to Link.

"So soon?" she gasped, Link must have flown to get from the shrine to the temple so quickly. There was something different about this time, however, as she felt the presence of something… other. The new light channeling down the tether was not simply being siphoned into her spirit. In her shock she watched the light spread into the bond itself and begin to enforce order upon it. It was as though her flimsy bridge made of ephemeral green strands were suddenly plated in unyielding gold.

Her instincts were conflicted and screaming different directives at her. On one hand the primal, ancestral part of her brain was yelling to break away immediately from the unknown power imposing its will upon her. Another, the mind of a scientist and Sage she had trained herself to become, wanted to watch every moment of this fascinating and unprecedented development. The former lost out, largely because when she yelped in surprise and tried to collapse the bond, she found that she had no control of it whatsoever.

Mineru expanded her senses to try and gain some sort of context for the madness she was experiencing, pulling back to see Link holding his hand on top of the head of an altar to the goddess Hylia. "That must mean that the other being had been…" A pulse of reassurance and gratitude rumbled through the woven gold bridge, with a sense that made her imagine as though some kind of infinitely giant being was trying to whisper to an ant.

Sonia had spoken, before, of her communion with Hylia, in her days as a shrine maiden before her marriage to Rauru. She always described the goddess as a gentle spirit, limited in her power over the world but fiercely proud of the people who lived in it. Perhaps she had been underselling her goddess somewhat, because this display of power didn't feel very "limited." With the new soul-bridge structure flooding her spirit with energy, the hazy sphere of perception Mineru had struggled to maintain suddenly snapped away like a bubble being popped. The Temple of Time in all of its beauty came into view, the whirring of the eternal gears and gentle burbling of fountains entered her mind. As a cool breeze passed over her non-existent skin, she realized that she was receiving her perception of the world through Link, essentially borrowing his senses.

Link pulled his hand from the Goddess Statue and the power of the goddess snapped away into nothingness, leaving only the golden bridge behind as evidence of her interference.

Before she could process what had happened and the consequences of divine intervention, Link strode forward towards the giant white-marble doors that led to the Temple of Time's altar. He pressed his hands into the rune-covered ritual gates and with a mighty push threw them open.

She beheld the open sky for the first time in millennia, and the beauty made her want to weep. Her formless body drifted forward, entranced.

"You are exactly as Zelda said." She whirled her attention back, only to see the impossible before her. Rauru, in spectral form, stood next to Link.

"You haven't fully recovered yet, but that is to be expected – you were almost beyond saving." He was smiling with his eyes, in the way that he always did when Sonia caught him running around avoiding his duties, as though he wanted to grin and laugh but held it in to help him seem "regal."

"Though our time together has been brief, I am so happy that we finally met." His attention turns away from Link, and directly to where Mineru had frozen in shock. "I've done everything I can for her."

He gave her a knowing look, like when he caught her working through the night on a new project that consumed her. Flecks of astral particles began to rise from his form.

He spoke his final words before fading away.

"Now it is up to you, sister."

Mineru took a moment to center herself, she refused to break on the first major step of her journey. Of course Rauru's spirit had survived the ages, only to fade away the moment after she met him again. And obviously, he had taken the role of guiding Link through his journey to the Temple of Time when her own plans (and contingencies… and apparently the contingencies to those contingencies) had failed.

She sighed deeply and smiled, muttered to herself, "Once again, Rauru saves me from myself. Thank you brother."

She refocuses her attention to Link, who had been patiently waiting and watching her with a tense expression. He still looked slightly emaciated, but no longer seemed as though a stiff breeze would knock him over. A heavy tension rested in his shoulders and in his expression. She steeled herself and mentally reviewed her script before speaking.

"Zelda asked me to aid you Link. I am the Sage of Spirit, and one of the Zonai… Mineru. I am glad to meet you, Link. I must apologize, it was my intent to reveal myself when my construct presented you with the Purah Pad. I had not anticipated that the passage of time would leave me so weak that I could not even speak, much less form my true body. Thankfully, my younger brother appears to have helped you in my place…"

Link appeared to be taking all of this quite well, giving her a sharp nod. Then again, after all the stories Zelda had shared, this was probably only in the top ten of strange events the young man had dealt with.

"I will explain everything in time, but first you must know one thing. Zelda is safe, and in no danger whatsoever."

A wave of relief washed over Link's expression as he closed his eyes, tilted his face to the sky, and let his shoulders drop. After a moment, he took a deep breath, appearing to center himself, and suddenly dropped to the ground with a dull thud and flopped onto his back.

Mineru zipped forward with concern and began to circle his fallen body, had he overexerted himself? Gloom had ravaged his body and soul, had the stress been so great that he had fallen unconscious!? She ran through the list of first aid procedures that she should perform, before cursing – every one of them required having hands!

Before she could work herself into too great a panic, she realized Link had cracked one eye open and was watching her spin around him. She came to a quick halt, trying to recover some of her dignity, as he lifted and arm and patted the ground next to him a few times.

Taking the signal, Mineru "sat" on the ground next to him. Rather, as close to sitting as a small blue orb of a soul can get.

"That… makes this easier." Link spoke in a raspy voice.

After a few moments of silence, he gave a little loop of an arm wave in her direction. She took this as a sign to return to her script.

"Yes, well. Ah… How much did Rauru… In any case. Long ago, my people, known as the Zonai, came down from the heavens to the surface of the world. It was said they were descendants of gods… They bore treasures from these same gods – Sacred Stones, capable of amplifying the abilities of those who possessed them.

Using the knowledge of the Zonai, my younger brother, Rauru, became a great leader. He met a young woman named Sonia, and they would wed. Rauru gifted Sonia one of the Sacred Stones. Together they sought to establish their kingdom. This is how the Kingdom of Hyrule, with Rauru and Sonia as its first king and queen, came to be. The future looked bright…

However, tragedy suddenly struck. A man of great evil emerged from the desert, the leader of the Gerudo, Ganondorf. He killed Queen Sonia and stole her Sacred Stone. Using the power of the Stone, Ganondorf transformed into the Demon King. He then created swarms of monsters and attacked.

Hyrule rose up to face these threats, but the evil power driving the monsters forward was staggering. The defenders were on the brink of defeat…

Rauru then came up with a plan to turn the tide of the war. He entrused the Sacred Stones to warriors with exceptional abilities. They became sages and united in an effort to finally defeat the Demon King.

Rauru and the sages outnumbered the Demon King and should have been able to stop him. However… the Demon King's power had grown far beyond anything we could have imagined.

I… was unable to withstand his strength.

Our fight appeared all but lost. And then, Rauru… he committed himself to one final act.

The first King of Hyrule, Rauru, my younger brother, sacrificed his life to stop the Demon King."

Link sat up and his face took on a thoughtful expression.

"One day, not long before the beginning of the war, a young woman calling herself the Princess of Hyrule fell out of the sky before my brother and his wife. Zelda was introduced to the kingdom as Sophia's long lost cousin, as proven by their shared powers over the flow of Time.

Zelda served as advisor to the King, as the Sage of Time. She was also… family. We grew to know her, and love her. She spoke of a dark future to come, and of how a hero and champions of every people worked together to overcome impossible evil.

When our own darkness arrived, she fought against the tide alongside us.

In the end, after the Demon King was sealed by Rauru's sacrifice, Zelda came to me with a request. In the final days of my life, we plotted a path through the future. Contingencies were set into place, pacts were made.

I sent the legacy of the Zonai into the sky.

Everything put into place, all to pave the way for the hero Zelda spoke of so often. Link, we've put our trust into you. We believe that you can destroy the Demon King, and put an end to the cycle."

Link rose to his feet, patting off a layer of dust.

"Well, I can't say I don't have questions. But those can wait. You said that I needed to bring this," he gestured to the broken shard of the Master Sword tied to his belt, "over to that."

The Altar of the Temple of Time, the most holy place of Hylia known to the ancient peoples of Hyrule, stood suspended at the end of a worn and treacherous walkway. Even from this distance, Mineru felt a distortion in Time whirling away atop it.

"No time like the present." He confidently began to jog forward, completely disregarding the sheer drop to either side of the pathway. Tethered to him as she was, Mineru felt herself quickly tugged along behind him.

"Yes, there's a causal loop that we need to close in order to…" she began. Link reached the end of the path they were on and slowed to a halt. "Ah, we've reached a barrier. If I may suggest…" Link raised his arm - a pulse of green light and they were flying through the sky, Ascending at great speed into – then through – then out the top, popping out of solid stone. "…Nevermind. I see that you've inherited my brother's natural abilities."

"You were saying?" Link continued jogging down the path like it was the most natural thing in the world for a Hylian to move like a Zonai.

She decided not to question it, continuing, "There is a causal loop. Zelda received the master sword from a temporal rift in this very spot in the ancient past. She was ever the expert on temporal mechanics, not myself, but my understanding is that not closing the loop will cause problems. She and I agreed that upon my awakening, my first priority was to guide you here."

"Sensible." Link slowed to a walk as he approached the Altar, eyeing the gently swirling golden field hovering above it.

A gentle chime rang in the air. The hilt of the Master Sword began to glow, at the same time as the golden crest on the back of Link's hand began to pulse. Link drew the broken sword and gently raised it to the light, where the otherworldly force lifted it from his grasp. Another chime rang out, then suddenly it was gone.

"I felt her, just now…" Link began, only to be interrupted by a sky-shattering roar.

From the blanket of clouds below them, a great golden form burst upward through the sky and let out a keening cry. A dragon of brilliant scales and beautiful cerulean horns and ridges flew by, releasing a pulse of power that echoed through the air. The clouds blocking the world below dissolved away in a matter of moments, revealing the great expanse of the Kingdom of Hyrule.

In a moment locked in time, Link and Mineru watched the dragon drift across the horizon, bathed in light and wreathed in infinite sky.