Chapter 7
The four identical warriors had been following Navi and her two friends due north through dense forest for almost an hour now. The trees and brush were so thick all through here, it was clear this wasn’t a place that had ever been inhabited. Every step was made with great caution, carefully placing their feet in the tiny spaces between vines and tree roots. A misstep here could mean dealing with a broken ankle.
“Can we really get to Kakariko this way?” Vio asked, shoving a tree branch out of his face. “I know the landscape is supposed to have changed, but isn’t southern Kakariko protected by high walls?”
“Yes, that is still mostly true,” Navi replied, circling his head. “but a particularly nasty earthquake opened a big enough gash in the wall of the graveyard for you to get through.”
Red pushed a branch out of his path, not realizing that this particular branch was keeping another one at bay. Now freed, the second branch whipped out and smacked him right in the head. After some angry cursing, he growled, “I think now I would have preferred to just go out in the open. This is too frustrating to be worth the trouble!”
Green sniffed at the air. “I think we’re almost there. The scent of the forest is getting thinner.”
“I’ll check,” Blue offered. He quickly scanned the surrounding trees. One nearby had a lot of low branches. Blue got a running start and ran a few steps up the trunk, and managed to grab the lowest one. He swung up to the next one, and got a foothold. The others watched as he quickly climbed almost all the way to the top.
Turning his gaze north, he called down, “I can see the graveyard from here!”
Nodding, Green said, “All right, good. We’ll cut through the village and get up the mountain. Hopefully we won’t run into anything before we get to the top.”
“Probably not,” Navi advised. “It’s pretty deserted.”
Blue was already back in the low branches. He jumped for the lowest one, grabbing it in midair, and swung into a little flip before landing softly on the ground.
“Show off,” Red muttered.
After a few more minutes of cutting through the thick forest, a stony wall appeared before them, stretching for as far as they could see in either direction. This was part of the wall that protected Kakariko and the graveyard. And just as Navi had said, part of the wall directly in front of them had crumbled away. There was a hole wide enough for them to fit through one at a time. They proceeded single-file.
They found themselves now in the Kakariko Graveyard. This place used to be tended by a lone grave keeper, but now only his ghost inhabited this place. They wondered if he was still here somewhere, keeping the souls of Kakariko’s dead company.
The graveyard didn’t really look any different. It had been a creepy place even before Hyrule had changed like this. Crows circled overhead, their calls the only sound in this place.
They wasted no time and immediately started heading west and down a pathway that they remembered would open into eastern Kakariko Village.
The village itself clearly didn’t fare as well as the graveyard had. This place had once been a bustling town with many homes, shops, and people. Now it was a ghost town. Most of the buildings had burned to the ground, leaving nothing but ash and bits of iron supports. As they walked through town, they noticed that the short stone walls of the well had collapsed, leaving just the gaping hole. They were curious about what the bottom of the well was like these days, but it was very fleeting. All it took was a quick recollection of their memories of that place to get them to move on.
They paused as the passed by one house in particular. Three of the four walls were standing, and the windows of the remaining walls had been busted out. This was the house where they had stayed with Lydia and Gordon during their adventures. Glancing through the open wall, they could see that most of the furniture had been broken or survived. Only one of the three beds had survived intact, but it was too dirty to look at all inviting.
Even in its rotten state, this house still served as a reminder of better times.
After exchanging nostalgic looks with each other, they moved on again toward the north of the village. The barrier wall opened here and led to the pathway that would take them up Death Mountain. They had been to this mountain many times before, but in this new Hyrule, going anywhere felt like going for the first time. Everything was so different now.
They took the path up in silence, passing a few landmarks they remembered, which reassured them that this was indeed the same place, even if it looked a little different now. The entrance to Dodongo’s Cavern still stood like a monster’s gaping mouth. What kind of creatures occupied that place now? Not wanting to find out, the group continued on.
After turning a couple of corners in the path, they passed the entrance to the Goron’s city, which of course was deserted now. The Gorons were all safe back in the forest.
Green finally broke the silence, asking the fairies, “You said the piece of the Ocarina of Time is all the way up at the peak?”
“Yes, that’s right,” one of Navi’s friends answered.
A rumbling sound came from somewhere deep in the mountain, and the ground beneath their feet started to shake violently. All four struggled to keep their balance, clinging to each other or to a nearby rock wall for support. After about thirty seconds of shaking, the mountain went silent again and the ground stood still.
Pensively straightening his posture, Vio observed, “Looks like the volcano is still as active as ever.”
“I remember when Volvagia was here,” Blue said, “it was going crazy like that all the time. But I suppose even with Volvagia gone now, a volcano is still a volcano.”
Green ran his fingers through his hair. “I know it doesn’t need to be said, but let’s be careful.”
“You’re right,” Red scoffed. “That didn’t need to be said. Let’s just get going and get this over with.”
“Please,” one of the fairies said, starting to fly along the path again, “this way.”
They continued to follow the fairies along the rocky path, eyes darting back and forth, just waiting for something to jump out that them. They unconsciously started to breathe harder as the air got thinner the higher they went.
The path eventually opened up into a small valley that hit a dead end. The wall at the dead end was not smooth rock, rather, it was littered with holes close enough together that they could be used as hand and foot holds.
“It looks like we can climb that,” Vio said.
They all looked down the length of the little valley that led to the climbing wall. It wasn’t a long walk to get through it, maybe fifty yards or so. The walls on the sides of it were much higher than along the path they had taken all the way up here. It was very odd-looking. Vio wondered out loud if maybe it had been carved out of the mountainside by years of volcanic eruption.
“We’ll wait for you here,” Navi said. “The path is clear from here.”
Green started forward first and the others were quick to follow.
Nothing happened at first. They were able to walk about halfway through the valley without incident. Then, the mountain rumbled and the ground began to shake again. As before, they worked to keep their balance, but something was different this time. The air grew hot suddenly…
All four of them looked up at the same time, in time to see dozens of very hot-looking magma rocks tumbling down the mountainside from the peak, right toward them.
They were right in the middle of the length of the valley with nowhere to take cover. It was a choice of either going forward or back and hoping they didn’t get killed on the way there.
“Move!” Green yelled. He yanked his shield from his back, and holding it over his head, sprinted forward at full speed for the end of the valley. Following his example, the other three did the same.
The rocks started hitting the ground all around them. The red glow from the rocks gave the entire valley the look of being red-hot. They dodged around rocks that had already hit the ground, the evasive action not slowing them down the slightest bit. A particularly large rock landed on the shield that Vio held over his head, and the weight of it caused him to stumble, but he recovered quickly and continued on.
After what seemed like a heart-pounding eternity, all four of them reached the climbing wall, spinning around and pressing their backs to it. They stayed glued there as close to the wall as possible, watching the valley they had just passed through continue to get bombarded by the hot rocks.
Finally the rumbling inside the mountain gradually lessened its intensity, until stopping completely. Even after the eruption was over, an additional rock or two tumbled down into the valley every few seconds.
Everyone stood as still as statues until no rocks rolled down from the peaks for a solid minute. Red finally peeled himself from the wall.
“That was fun,” he said matter-of-factly. The others couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not. When it came to things like this, Red was the type that might actually enjoy the challenge.
Blue swallowed, and detached himself from the wall as well. “Since we’re still alive,” he said, “I guess we can keep going.”
Still filled with adrenaline from that run for their lives in addition to their natural dexterity, they scaled the wall quite effortlessly. At the top, the ground flattened out completely. Instead of Death Mountain coming to a single point at the top, it looked as if somebody had taken a knife and cut part of the peak off, leaving a flat plateau behind.
Green absently tapped the toe of his boot on the ground as he looked around. There was nothing up here but the four of them and a lot of dirt. There was no sign of life anywhere. No birds, no insects… and certainly nothing that looked like a monster guardian.
Off to his side, he heard Red sigh angrily. “We better not have wasted our time. Damn fairies.”
“But they seemed so sure,” Blue said. “There’s got to be something up here.”
“I don’t think they would have been mistaken about something like this,” Vio added in agreement. “Maybe if we—“
The ground rumbled again, but not from within the mountain. Something would rumble, then stop. And then rumble, and stop again. It sounded almost as if something was climbing up the far side of the mountain.
A gigantic, clawed hand appeared over the horizon of the far edge of the plateau and slammed into the ground, claws digging far into the dirt. Then came another hand just like it. With a growling sound, a dragon’s head appeared, attached to a long neck. It was climbing up the mountain on all fours, with the wings on its back spread out for balance.
For a moment, it clung there on the edge, staring them down. The four warriors stood together and unsheathed their swords as the dragon continued its climb, hauling its enormous body completely up onto the plateau. Now that they could see it in its entirety, they noticed how much it looked like Volvagia. It was shaped much the same way, but was somewhat smaller. It was clearly something different. Its body was a reddish brown color, like the walls they remembered from within Death Mountain. It looked almost as if his body was made up of the rock and clay from the mountain itself.
Once all the way up, it crouched there on the edge on all fours for a moment, as if accessing the threat of these opponents. With a loud grunt, it pushed up off of its front feet and reared up on its hind legs, then sat there and growled at them with its numerous teeth showing, as if it was inviting them to make the first move.
The four Links quickly scanned the area around them. They were all thinking the same thing – with this gigantic thing taking up so much space, there was not much room to move around up here anymore. There was no higher ground for them to take or anything. Fighting this thing was going to be like mice running around a dog’s feet while the dog was standing inside of a box.
Blue readjusted his stance. “Now I wish we’d waited for the others.”
“Don’t be a wimp,” Red growled at him.
“I’m not a wimp! It’s just that—“
Tired of waiting, the dragon suddenly lunged at them. They had to scatter in all directions to avoid its open jaws. It planted its feet where they had been standing and swung its massive tail around in a circle that encompassed the entire plateau. They all tried to duck and avoid the swinging tail, but it caught Red square in the chest and sent him flying backward. He lost his grip on his sword and was too shocked from the blow to see which way it went. He hit the ground hard, and his momentum kept him going until he slid soundlessly off of the top of the climbing wall and started a stomach-twisting plummet toward the valley below.
With a jerk on his arm that almost dislocated his shoulder, his descent suddenly stopped. Trying to shake the stars away from in front of his eyes, he looked up and saw that Blue was leaning over the side of the cliff and had a solid grip on his wrist, his teeth clenched together tightly with the effort it was taking to keep him from falling. Somewhere back up on the plateau, he could hear Green or Vio – he couldn’t tell which – whistling and yelling at the dragon, keeping its attention turned away from the cliff.
Teeth still clenched, Blue managed to smile. “Good save, huh?”
Despite everything, Red couldn’t help but smile back. “I suppose so,” he said.
“All right, hang on, I’m going to pull you up.”
Red planted his feet on the cliff wall and pushed himself up as Blue pulled on his arm. He gripped the edge of the cliff with his free hand and pulled up on it until he rolled back onto the plateau.
The dragon had its back turned to them. Green and Vio were both dancing around in an effort to avoid its repeatedly stamping feet, swinging their swords at its legs whenever they could do so without getting stepped on.
As Red tested his weight on his legs to make sure they were still intact, Blue reappeared at his side holding the sword he had lost.
“Thanks,” Red said as he took it back.
Blue had dumped his sword at the edge of the cliff in his haste to grab Red. He leaned over and picked it up. “Let’s stay away from the cliff from now on, okay?”
“No kidding.”
A green blur flew past the dragon’s lowered head, and it reared back suddenly, its clawed hands clutching the slash wound on its face. Green landed gracefully, his sword still outstretched, and quickly ran over toward the cliff. Vio was taking advantage of the distraction and got past the struggling dragon to rejoin his allies.
“You all right, Red?” Green asked, not taking his eyes off the dragon.
“Almost had my arm yanked off,” Red replied, “but I’ll live.”
“Let’s keep our focus,” Vio said, balancing his sword in his left hand. “We can do this. Let’s just keep an eye on each other, okay? If we can’t take it down directly, we’ll just have to chip away at it bit by bit!”
The now very angry dragon finally let go of the wound on its face and whirled around to face them again. Its lips were curled back so far that every single one of its teeth were showing, all with massive amounts of saliva dripping from them. It sucked in a breath, then lowered its head and unleashed a powerful roar.
This time, they were the first to move. Moving shoulder-to-shoulder at top speed with their swords at the ready, they charged the dragon head-on. The dragon lowered its head toward the ground and opened its mouth to strike. At the last possible moment, the group split up and ran around its head. They rejoined under its neck in a two-by-two formation and repeatedly stabbed at the dragon’s underbelly as they ran under it toward its tail.
Screaming in fury, the dragon leaned up and to the side, putting all of its weight on its right two legs, trying to reach them. It threw its head under its chest, its mouth open and snarling, but snapped its jaws on nothing but air. Too focused on the pain in its belly, the dragon didn’t notice that its opponents had already moved past that and were running single-file up its winding tail.
The Links climbed up onto the dragon’s back almost as easily as if they were just walking down a road. Green and Red ran forward toward the dragon’s shoulders, while Blue and Vio took positions at its hips. Simultaneously, they stabbed the blades of their swords into the dragon’s shoulder and hip joints.
The dragon shrieked and hit the ground, its legs now unable to support its weight. Its wings extended fully out to either side, and the warriors used them as bridges back to the ground.
Before the dragon could get strength back into its legs and lift itself from the ground, they ran around it, stabbing and slashing at critical points in its flesh. Their movements were nothing short of a dance. Though they were four separate people, they fought with one mind. One of them would think to slash at the dragon’s eye, and someone else would do exactly that. One saw a good spot to attack from, and someone else went right to that spot. They moved in perfect, deadly sync with each other, and the dragon was completely overwhelmed.
The four of them suddenly gathered on both sides of the dragon’s neck and slashed at it in a simultaneous strike. The creature, somehow finding new strength in its front legs, reared up, howling toward the sky. Its chest was now wide open. Charging forward, they put their blades together to form one large weapon, and plunged it deep into the dragon’s heart.
The dragon’s roar stopped suddenly. For a moment, it just stood where it was, with its head pointed up toward the sky.
The Links yanked their swords free and backed away. A gaping hole was left behind in the dragon’s stony underside. As they watched, cracks started to spread from the hole. They spread across the entire underbelly, then continued down its legs and all the way to the tips of its nose and tail.
Tiny pieces started to fall away from the main body. When they hit the ground, they crumbled to dust like dried clay.
Like someone jostling a house of cards, the entire dragon suddenly broke apart all at once, and a blanket of dirt and clay fell all around them, kicking up a twenty-foot-high cloud of dust.
For a moment, all anyone could hear was the others coughing and choking on the dust. Vio was the first to stumble out of the cloud. Still coughing, he started shaking the dirt out of his clothes and hair.
“Argh!” Red growled as he reappeared. He had one hand up to his face. “It’s in my eye! I’ve got dead dragon in my eye! Damn it!”
Waving his hand in front of his face, Green called out, “Everybody okay?”
The dust cloud finally began to settle and the air started to clear. Blue was crouched down on the ground by where the dragon had crumbled, looking intently at the dirt below him.
Vio approached him from behind. “What’s wrong?”
Blue twisted around to look at his companion, and had a triumphant smile on his face. “Look at this.” He held up his hand. Between his index finger and his thumb he held a piece of blue clay.
Smiling from ear-to-ear, Vio took the piece of the Ocarina of time from him and examined it, then held it out for the other two to see. “Success, gentlemen.”
“Hey, all right,” Red said cheerfully, still rubbing dirt out of his eye. “Wait until Lyd sees that. She’ll be sorry she missed the fun.”
Green stood silently for a moment, thinking hard. “Speaking of which,” he said finally, “how did we do that?”
“I know what you mean,” Vio said. “The coordination was so effortless once we were all focused.”
Red started nodding thoughtfully. “It was like we’d practiced that for weeks. Not a single step or move was made that wasn’t precise and on-target. Once we got into a rhythm, the thing didn’t stand a chance.”
“I almost felt sorry for it,” Blue admitted.
“It’s got to be this sword we found,” Vio wondered aloud. “It split us apart, but it looks like our minds are still linked. Truly, the same warrior duplicated into four, with four times the lethal skill.”
“…I guess Lyd was right about not splitting us up,” Red said.
“I wonder though,” Blue said. “If the four of us together are so lethal, why can’t we just fight Ganondorf like this? Why wait?”
It was a good question, but Vio had an answer ready. “I had that thought, too, but remember, he has two Triforce pieces. This monster didn’t even have one. To fight someone like Ganondorf, we need the Master Sword back. It’s one of the only things that is truly a threat to him as he is now.”
“…I guess you’re right.”
Green took the Ocarina of Time piece from Vio, looked at it for a moment, then tucked it safely into his tunic. “So we’ll just have to keep doing what we’re doing. The time to fight Ganondorf will come soon enough.”
“Well, let’s not keep standing around here,” Vio said, turning toward the cliff. “Maybe Gordon and Lyd will be there when we get back.”
He and Green walked toward the cliff. Blue started to follow them, but Red grabbed his arm and pulled him back.
“What?” Blue asked.
Red looked uncomfortable. “Listen, I… I’m sorry I called you a wimp. I mean, you’re kind of an idiot, but definitely not a wimp.”
Blue stared at him for a moment, completely bewildered. Red had been on his case about one thing or another ever since they had been split up by the sword. They seemed to have completely opposite personalities and it ended up being a constant source of conflict between them, mostly in the form of Red making fun of him.
But maybe that was just the way he was, and it was only on the surface. Maybe his aggressiveness was just the only way he knew how to interact with others. Underneath it all… maybe Red didn’t hate him after all.
Blue smiled his understanding and wrapped his arm around Red’s shoulders in a brotherly way. “That’s okay, pal. I understand.”
With a grin, Red shrugged his arm off. “Okay, okay, let’s not make this any weirder than it already is. Come on, they’re leaving without us.”
He jogged off to catch up with the others. Blue followed right behind him with a smile on his face that suggested he had found a new best friend.
------
Am… Am I alive?
Vaati honestly wasn’t sure if he was or not. He felt like he was floating in a dark space somewhere. His head was still spinning. He was fairly sure he still had a body, but he couldn’t feel much of it. He tried to force himself back into the conscious world.
When he wasn’t able to really come around completely, he settled for just reclaiming the feeling in his body first. After several minutes, he started to find his legs again. He couldn’t move them yet, but he could feel them down there. They felt like they weren’t touching the ground, as if they were suspended in something. When he found that he still had an upper body as well, he realized that it didn’t feel like his legs did. It was as if his legs were floating in water, but the rest of him was up on solid ground.
That’s right, he remembered. I fell in the river. Am I ashore somewhere?
Feeling in the rest of his body started to come back. Vaati clenched his teeth and hissed from the pain he could now feel again. His left shoulder felt like it was torn from its socket, and he couldn’t feel the rest of that arm. Unfortunately, he could feel his entire right arm perfectly fine, including the bite wound that zombie thing had inflicted there, which was burning hot.
He could feel his face again. His cheek was pressed into wet dirt.
Except for his destroyed left arm, he could feel everything now. His entire body felt broken. His soaking wet clothes clung to him, and that made him very cold.
He still hadn’t opened his eyes. He lay there in the darkness behind his eyelids, in quite a bit of pain, and some part of him wished he could fall back into unconsciousness to escape it. He lay there for several quiet minutes trying to.
Maybe he would die here. After all he had been through, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. To just quietly slip away and finally be at peace… He was so tired…
He heard a voice then. A young woman’s voice from somewhere in the sky above him. Who was she? Was she an angel? And angel that has come to take him away from here? She said something again, but she was too far away for him to make out her words.
Then he heard a second voice, a male’s this time. Another angel? Did it take more than one angel to take someone to Heaven?
There was a thud in the dirt next to him, and Vaati had an awareness that he was no longer alone. Did angels usually hit the ground that hard when they landed? How strange.
One of the angel’s slim hands gripped Vaati’s body and rolled him onto his back. In doing so, pressure was put on Vaati’s injured left arm. A white-hot jolt of pain surged through his entire body, and he couldn’t keep himself from crying out.
“Oh, God!” It was the female angel, clearly startled. “What did I do?!”
The male spoke then. “Don’t touch that arm. His shoulder is dislocated. See?”
“Ouch,” the first one groaned. “And look at the other one. Something bit him. Ugh, it looks infected…”
One of them touched Vaati’s forehead. “He’s running a fever, too,” the male angel informed the other.
“I’m not surprised. He’s soaking wet, and it’s not exactly warm out here. Not to mention the injuries. How on earth did he get like this?”
“I don’t know, but he won’t last long here like this. Let’s get him out of the wind.”
Vaati felt two pairs of hands wedge themselves under his body and start to lift him off of the cold ground. Pain from his arm shot through his body once again, and he again yelled from the intense pain.
“Sorry, sorry!” the female angel said quickly.
“Let’s use that weird professor’s old building.”
Vaati must have fallen unconscious again, because he lost a little time after that. He was indoors now. Carefully, he opened his eyes just a bit. It was dark in here, save for a little fire someone had built. The warmth he felt from it was so soothing.
There were two people hovering over him. They both had brown hair and wore spectacles over their eyes. Vaati almost laughed. He had always assumed that angels would have perfect vision.
Slowly, he started to come to the realization that these weren’t really angels. They looked just as human as he was. It meant that he was still alive.
He felt sudden pain again, and closed his eyes tightly against it.
He heard the girl’s voice now. “Hey. Hey, can you hear me?”
Vaati forced one eye open, and managed to breathe, “Yes.”
She smiled. Her long hair was flowing down so far that it was brushing on his chest as she leaned over him. “Good. No, no, don’t move. Listen, your shoulder is dislocated. We can’t heal it until we put it back into place.” She put her teeth together and her face looked pained. “…I’m sorry, sweetie, it’s gonna hurt.”
Vaati was too lightheaded to really process what she was saying. He heard her words, but he didn’t understand them.
It all became painfully clear when the boy with her placed his hands on Vaati’s wrecked shoulder, counted to three, and shoved on it as hard as he could.
The pain was unbelievable. It surged through Vaati’s body in white-hot waves, causing his muscles to seize up and his back to arch. His ears were hurting from the sound of somebody’s blood-curdling shrieking. He then had a sick realization that this awful screaming was coming from him.
There was a loud snap in his shoulder, and everything went black again.
------
When Vaati started to come around again, he had no idea how much time had gone by. He waited to open his eyes, and instead spent a few minutes trying to get his bearings.
He could still smell the fire that had been built, so he must still be in the same place. His chest was bare – somebody had taken his shirt off. To his great relief, he could feel his left arm again. The maddening pain in his shoulder was now nothing but a dull ache. How was that possible? Had he been unconscious for weeks? It would take at least that long for something like that to heal this much, wouldn’t it?
Someone touched his forehead, and after holding their hand there for a moment, said, “Feels like his fever has gone way down.” It was the boy.
“Already? Wow, this guy’s a real fighter. Even with our help, he should have been wrecked for days.”
“I wonder what did this to him?”
What, indeed, Vaati thought bitterly. He could remember vividly his flight for his life.
One thing in particular about the whole episode really bothered him. Why had Ganon acted like he didn’t know him? It was true they didn’t know each other well, and mostly had had a working relationship of convenience – for Ganon, anyway – but certainly after all that had happened, he would at least recognize him. On the contrary, he acted like he had never seen him before, and said as much.
What warped Hyrule was this? Mostly devoid of life, the landscape nearly destroyed, a Ganon in human form that didn’t know him…
Vaati then sensed that he was alone in his immediate space. His rescuers had moved away from him at some point while he was lost in his thoughts. He knew he couldn’t just lie here pretending to be unconscious forever. Cautiously, he opened his eyes.
As he had guessed, he hadn’t been moved since the last waking moments he could remember. They were still in the little building they had all taken shelter in. He could hear the wind blowing outside, rattling the glass in the windows.
He could see the two people from before, as well. They were sitting not too far away, closer to the fire, whispering to each other. They were wearing clothes of strange colors and material. Judging by their short ears, it was clear they were not Hylian. The girl was holding what he recognized to be his shirt. She was examining a hole in one of the sleeves.
He shivered, remembering what had caused that tear in the shirt. It was where that zombie thing had bitten him. He raised that arm just high enough to look at the wound, and was astonished by what he saw. The bite wound was gone. New skin had grown over it, and all that was left to indicate that there had been an injury there was a pale half-moon scar in the shape of the creature’s mouth. It looked how it might look after weeks of care and healing. He couldn’t have really been here that long, could he?
Carefully testing his weight on his seemingly miraculously-mended shoulder, he started to push himself up off the floor. Hearing the movement, both of the others turned around to look. The girl jumped to her feet.
“Whoa, whoa, cowboy. Don’t get up just yet.”
Vaati froze in a half-sitting position. As he tried to figure out exactly what she had just called him, since it was something he had never heard of before, she knelt down beside him and started to push him down again.
“No, I’m fine,” Vaati protested.
She stopped and said, “Well, all right, if you’re sure you’re feeling up to it. Take it easy, though.”
Unsure of what he was supposed to say to them first, Vaati looked up into the girl’s green eyes. She gave him a very sweet, motherly smile that caught him off-guard.
“What’s your name?” she asked him.
Vaati hesitated for a moment. Should he really trust these people? He had spent his whole life only trusting himself. Now, he was lost in a strange and hostile place.
He realized he had just answered his own question. Indeed, he was lost in a strange and hostile place, and he had no idea where to turn or what to do. If he was going to survive, he would need help. And these people had come to his aid – somehow – when they could have just left him alone to die quietly.
Trusting someone had always been a leap of faith for a person like Vaati. He only hoped he could manage it.
“Vaati,” he finally answered.
“Vaati, huh? That’s cute.” She smiled that sweet smile again. “My name’s Lydia, and this is my little brother, Gordon.”
The boy gave him a friendly wave from his place over by the fire.
So they were siblings. Looking again, Vaati could see it now. They did look very much alike. They were young, too. The boy called Gordon seemed to be about Vaati’s age, and judging by the look of her, Lydia couldn’t be too much older. Maybe a few years or so.
“I can’t believe you’re sitting up like this already,” Lydia said with another smile. “I mean, the way we found you… yikes.”
Vaati looked around the building they were in. “Where am I?”
“Not far from where we found you. This is a little place on the shore of Lake Hylia. A crotchety old professor used to do some kooky experiments here, but now it’s empty. I’m glad it’s more-or-less intact, though. It has kept the weather out nicely.”
Lake Hylia, Vaati repeated in his head. The name tugged at his memory.
“So what happened?” Lydia asked with no small amount of eagerness in her voice.
“I… I fell in the river.” Though he had decided he would accept their help, he wasn’t sure about telling them every detail just yet. He glanced down at the pale scar on his arm. “How long have I been here?”
She looked back at her brother. He got up and looked out the window. “Well, as usual, I can’t see the sun too well, but I think it’s been about two hours.”
“Two hours?!”
Lydia looked at Vaati, startled by his reaction. “…Um… maybe an hour and a half...”
Vaati looked again at the scar on his arm. “But… but how…?”
“Oh. Oh, I get it.” Once again Lydia wore that wide smile. “That didn’t exactly heal naturally.”
Suddenly Vaati remembered something she had said when he had woken up the first time. He had been lightheaded and feverish, so he hadn’t really processed it at the time, but he could still remember her words. She had said that his shoulder was dislocated and they couldn’t heal it until it as put back into place. Heal it?
As if she was reading his thoughts, Lydia asked, “How’s your shoulder feeling?”
Still lost in his thoughts, he distractedly answered back, “It aches a little.”
Her lip stuck out in a pout. “Oh, really? I thought it would have been as good as new by now. Don’t worry, the kid can take care of it.”
She raised her arm to wave her brother over, but he was already on his way. He crouched down next to Vaati’s sore shoulder and held his hand over it. He didn’t touch it – rather, he just held his hand still about an inch away from it. Then, the palm of his hand and the air between it and Vaati’s shoulder started to glow white.
Vaati stared in surprise as the lingering pain in his shoulder lessened with each passing second. It wasn’t so much the fact that the boy had use of magic that amazed Vaati. He could use magic, too, after all, so it wasn’t unthinkable. What amazed him was the type of magic that he was using. It was healing magic. Nothing of the kind had been known of in Hyrule for many, many years…
That magic… Was it really…? It had to be. He had spent most of his childhood with his nose in books about Hyrule’s history and lore. He had studied this lost magic a long time ago. The art was too far gone from Hyrule for him to learn it himself, but he found the nature of it fascinating and studied it anyway. It had a few different branches, one of them being a white magic healing type. And this was definitely it.
He felt his heart beat faster as he started to put the pieces together. He didn’t think it was possible, but he had no other explanation. Somehow, the seal placed on him by the Four Sword had been broken. He had had the sensation of going through some kind of vortex, and had assumed until now that that’s just how it felt to have the seal broken. But what if that wasn’t the case? What if he hadn’t just gone back to the world he’d been banished from, but —
Vaati’s thoughts derailed momentarily because the sheer impossibility of it. It was like his brain didn’t even want to entertain the idea and was trying to shut down to protect itself. He forced it to keep running.
What if he had somehow traveled to a different time? The different landscape, the fact that Ganon didn’t know who he was and was in a human form that Vaati thought had been corrupted away long ago… This boy was using a type of white magic that had been lost for centuries…
Was he in Hyrule’s ancient past?
“There. How does it feel now?”
Still lost in his epiphany, Vaati didn’t even hear Gordon’s question.
“You okay?”
When Vaati’s mind finally unfroze, he answered, “Y-Yes, sorry. I was lost in thought for a moment.”
“How’s your shoulder feeling now?”
Vaati gently worked his shoulder around like a windmill, testing it from various angles. The pain was completely gone. Not even the faintest of aches remained.
“It seems fine now,” he finally answered. “Thank you.”
Suddenly Vaati had another thought. These two were siblings. If one could do this magic, then…
“Can you do this, too?” he asked Lydia.
She grinned and answered, “Yeah, somewhat. That kind of thing isn’t really my specialty, though. I’m more useful for making things explode. He’s much better with healing than I am.”
As he thought, she could use magic, too. And by “making things explode”, Vaati could only assume she was referring to attack spells. So one used a lost form of white magic, and the other one used a lost form of black magic? What the scholars from his time would give to meet these two…
Lydia picked Vaati’s shirt up off the floor and handed it over to him. “Here, now that you’re all patched up, you can put this back on.” Her face fell a little and she looked apologetic. “Sorry I couldn’t fix the hole. Honestly, I even if I had sewing stuff, I’d probably just damage it further.”
“No kidding,” her brother laughed. “You’d probably even find a way to set it on fire.”
Vaati snickered before he could catch himself. It felt strange to laugh. It wasn’t something he did often.
The girl made a face at her brother, then turned her attention back to Vaati. “Say, that bite wound was pretty nasty. What chewed on you?”
“Actually, I’m not certain. It was like a… a dead person. It let loose this horrible shriek when I came too close, and the sound paralyzed me.”
Lydia shuddered visibly. “Ew, a ReDead. I can’t even tell you how much I hate those things.”
A ReDead. It was another name that rang a bell in Vaati’s mind. He had read about it – it was a kind of monster that had been long extinct. If he still needed more evidence that he was in Hyrule’s past, that was it.
“Hey, wait a minute,” Gordon said. “A ReDead? As far as I know, those things only wander around in Northern Hyrule, like the Market. How far did you go after it bit you?”
“I didn’t get far,” Vaati replied. “I fell in the river right after that.”
“Way up by the Market?” Lydia asked in amazement. “You mean you went all the way down the river from there, including through the waterfalls in Gerudo Valley, and into Lake Hylia, and survived it?!”
Vaati only shrugged.
The girl’s wide grin reappeared and she clapped Vaati on the back. “You’re pretty tough, huh?”
“I— Eh— How far does that mean I went?”
Gordon answered, “Well, the Market is in the north, and Lake Hylia is in the south. You pretty much traversed the entire kingdom.”
“You’re lucky to be alive, buddy,” his sister added.
I wouldn’t be if they hadn’t found me, Vaati thought. He had spent his life as a loner and had never really been indebted to anyone before, but he couldn’t escape the fact that he now owed these strangers his life. He would just have to swallow his pride.
The young man pulled his shirt back on, then reached back to pull all of his pale long hair up and out. His hair was tangled and still slightly damp. It felt cold against the back of his neck. He absently ran his fingers through it as he tried to come up with the right words to say.
“I may have been lucky to survive the trip down the river, as you say,” he began finally. “But as I lay where I ended up, I could feel myself slowly losing my grip to this world. I surely would have died if you hadn’t happened by. I owe you my life, and I intend to repay the debt somehow.”
Lydia waved her hand dismissively. “It’s okay, it’s okay. It was the right thing to do. You don’t owe us anything.”
“Well, thank you just the same.”
“Where are you from?” Gordon asked him. “The two of us have been around Hyrule several times, but I don’t think we’ve ever seen you before.”
“You must be from somewhere around here, right?” Lydia asked. She reached up and held the tip of Vaati’s long ear between her thumb and index finger. “These look pretty Hylian to me.”
Vaati was sure he couldn’t tell them the truth. How could they believe it? Surely they would think him insane. Thinking quickly, he answered, “W-Well, not from here, but I’m from a neighboring kingdom. I wanted to travel and to see the world.” He rubbed the ReDead scar on his arm and added, “It looks like I wandered into something I shouldn’t have.”
“You don’t have anywhere to go then?”
Of course, Vaati knew he didn’t know where he was supposed to go. What chance did he have of getting back to his own time? He didn’t even know how he got here in the first place. And he had had the good fortune of running into magic users. His best option at this point was to stay close to them and learn more about them and their magic. Maybe they would be able to find a way to help them, once he was comfortable with the idea of telling them the truth, of course.
He shook his head.
“Well, I couldn’t live with myself if I just left you here to go your own way. It’s true that your wounds have healed, but that kind of speed-healing takes its toll. You need to rest some more.” She turned her attention to her brother and said, “Why don’t we take him back with us?”
Gordon gave his sister a look that Vaati couldn’t really interpret. “I’m not sure if that’s a good idea to take him back there. We don’t know--”
“I know what you’re thinking, but we can’t leave him here. Come on, you know I’m right.”
The young boy sighed. “Yeah, yeah, I know. We don’t have a choice.” He turned his attention back to Vaati. “I mean no offense, really. We’re just in a pretty dangerous situation, and--”
“And you barely know me,” Vaati cut in, “and don’t feel comfortable trusting me. I understand.” He really did. “If I were you, I probably wouldn’t trust me, either.”
“Nonsense,” Lydia said cheerfully. She gave her brother a reassuring glance. “It’ll be fine. I can’t explain it, but I have a good feeling about this guy. I think we can trust him.”
Vaati felt his heart grow warm. What was with this girl? Based on what her brother said, they had to be careful of something that was threatening them. They probably had a safe place to go back to, and she was completely willing to trust a stranger and let him in, too.
He wondered if this was what it was like to have a friend. He couldn’t help but almost roll his eyes at such a childish thought, but honestly, that was the first thing that came to mind.
Gordon smiled finally. “Well, you’re usually right about things like that, I suppose. I’m probably just being overly paranoid. Though, in my defense, I think I have good reason.” He clapped his hand on Vaati’s back the same way his sister had before. “Sorry to hesitate like that. Welcome to the group.”
“Thank you,” he replied. “And, really, I understand. I’ve done nothing to make you trust me, but I hope to earn it in time.”
Lydia jumped to her feet and walked over to the dusty window. Looking outside, she said, “It looks like things have died down out there. It should be okay for flight.”
Vaati looked confused. “Flight?”
The girl turned around to face him and had a devilish grin on her face, like she knew of a joke Vaati wasn’t clued into. “Like the kid said,” she chuckled, “welcome to the group.”