Hi my name is Link and Welcome to Jackass

The height at the edge of Shatterback point is dizzying. It has to be at least two hundred meters, Link decides, peering cautiously over into Zora’s domain below. The water in the inlet that the domain is built into is a serene, deep blue, waters flowing gently out into the river that the reservoir feeds. There aren’t any rocks right under the surface, though with how high he is right now hitting the water after falling would be like hitting flagstones regardless.

He can hear the other champions talking as the princess drones on through the ceremony. Revali in particular isn’t making any effort to be quiet, and he hears their whole exchange before the memory fades out.

He unbuckles his shield.

Prince Sidon is having a wonderful day.

He’s taking a rare moment of tranquility to himself, submerged and letting the current take him downstream at a sluggish pace. A few moments ago, when he was still on the upper level directly below Zora’s Domain, he could see the repair crews flitting back and forth to assess the damage to the reservoir wall.

He’s in especially high spirits because Link just came through an hour ago to say hello and take care of the Lynel on Shatterback point. He’d turned down a reward of any kind. Sidon’s not a hundred percent certain why, because his Hylian friend is a man of few words, but Link had insisted the act was its own reward somehow. How generous his friend is! He understands now why Mipha chose him, despite the elders’ grousing.

Sidon’s thoughts are interrupted by movement above. He squints to see through the distorted surface and upwards. A dot is moving at the top of - no, off of Shatterback point. And getting bigger. No, getting closer, he realizes with a start. Somebody just jumped off of the cliffs, but no one would have been up there, because the Lynel -

The Lynel.

Link!?

Sidon’s blood runs ice cold.

One powerful pump of his legs shoots Sidon towards the surface.

He’s been injured and thrown off the edge, he thinks, in a panic. There’s something wrong with his paraglider, he’s -

“WhoooooOOOOOOOOF!”

Link hits the water a second after Sidon breaks the surface, long enough for the prince to register a jarringly un-terrified whoop of excitement before Link splashes down shield-first into the water.

He’s able to register several things as Link swerves to try and avoid him. The paraglider is out, though he had to have unfurled it mere moments before hitting the water. Link is, for lack of a better term, surfing on his shield. And lastly, despite the course correction, he’s about to bowl into Sidon.

They do in fact collide. The paraglider takes some of the oomph out of it, but Link’s hurried attempt to miss him results in his shield being pulled out from under him and his side hits the prince right in the chest. The next few seconds is a tangle of limbs and water.

Link eventually finds purchase to tread water, gasping for breath as Sidon holds him up by the shoulders. A wooden round shield of Necludan make bobs in the water nearby.

“Sidon,” he says, by way of greeting. He looks sheepish.

“You just about stopped my heart, Link!” Sidon exclaims. “What in Hyrule were you thinking?”

The Hylian considers for a moment, and Sidon feels his shoulders attempt to lift, despite their awkward position, into a shrug.

“Wanted to get down.”

Sidon stares at him incredulously.

“... Quickly,” Link amends weakly.

“That was quite a way to do it,” Sidon chides. “A fall like that could kill a Hylian. What if you’d mistimed?”

“I’ve got a fairy,” Link responds matter-of-factly, and paddles his way out of Sidon’s grip towards his discarded shield. He turns back to Sidon once he’s grabbed it, using it like a kickboard to keep himself steady in the water. He must note the way Sidon’s browridge is raised, because he shakes his head and flashes the prince a smile. “Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing. Sorry I hit you.”

Sidon hesitates, knowing firsthand the truth of it. His concern evaporates, replaced with a grin.

“Most impressive!” he says, swimming over to clap Link on the back. “You’ll have to show me another time how the trick was supposed to go, yes?”

A bewildered look passes over Link’s face before he grins in return.

“Of course.”

As it turns out, a few days later, the trick was supposed to go like this:

Link jumps off of the top of the cliff and lets himself freefall a good third of the way to the bottom before unfurling his paraglider, which slows his downwards momentum and, because of the way he’s angled it, sends him sharply forward. He closes the glider as he hits the water with his shield at an angle and skims across the surface, just hitting the rocky wall to one side of the cliff as he’s slowed down.

Sidon claps as he approaches and Link laughs, a pleasing sound that Sidon doesn’t believe he’s had the chance to hear before.

A few minutes later they’re up on the cliff sides. Link is squeezing the water out of his bandana as they sit next to each other overlooking Zora’s Domain.

“Wherever did you learn such a skill?” Sidon asks, comfortable in the sunlight.

“Hebra,” Link says, unhooking the Sheikah Slate from his belt.

Sidon leans in to look at the little machine curiously. He’s never seen anything like it in his life. At Link’s touch, its surface moves through different states. He sees a series of pictograms, a map, and a rectangular grid of little images fly by before Link taps one of the latter and it scales up to fit the display. It’s a view from the top of a snowy peak, overlooking a series of cliffs that, when viewed from that exact angle, form the illusion of a giant white bird.

“What a wondrous device,” Sidon breathes, and turns to Link. Link, whose face is a little bit closer than he’d intended, but doesn’t seem overly bothered. “May I…?”

Link nods and hands the slate over. Very carefully, Sidon experiments with the controls and after a few seconds has gotten the hang of swiping through the pictures. There are many of them, from what Sidon can only surmise is all around Hyrule. Pictures of places, often views from high up, people, even monsters and unique landmarks. A few of them have short annotations attached at the top of the picture, like “Eighth Heroine’s Statue”. Thinking back to his diplomatic cultural lessons, that one is particularly startling.

“They’re incredibly lifelike,” he says, and Link huffs out a laugh and gestures for the Slate. Once it’s returned, he holds up the back of the slate at Sidon, leans back a little, and there’s a short sort of whirring click. He examines the result and then hands it back to Sidon.

It’s a picture of him, as he was a moment ago, curiously following Link’s movements.

“Ah! That’s amazing!” he says. “So all of these are captured like that?”

Link nods, and Sidon browses through the gallery, picking out a picture of a huge serpent in the sky over the profile of Mount Lanaryu at night. A campfire burns in the foreground, only enhancing the sense of scale.

“What is this?” he asks.

“Naydra,” Link says, leaning in to point at the dragon, “Over the Spring of Wisdom. Was at the Lanaryu Promenade.”

“It’s a beautiful picture,” he says. He’s a hundred percent sincere. A lot of them are, he thinks. They’re pleasing to look at, captured in such a way that he’s certain Link tried to capture the subject from the best angle.

“Had to take a few,” Link admits, rubbing the back of his neck. “He flies fast. Almost missed it.”

“What about this one?” he asks, paging over to the first page, which is entirely composed of images of scenery.

Link stills, a frown twitching its way onto his face.

“I didn’t take it,” he says, fidgeting with the hem on the bottom of his tunic. “... Was on there when I got it.”

“Ah,” Sidon says. Looking closer, there’s some kind of notation on some of them, as well, but they’re just a mix of standard Hylian and a language he doesn’t understand.

“Here,” Link says, beckoning for the slate back. “Wanna see magnesis?”

It’s not until later that week that Sidon sees Link again. It’s twilight, the reds and golds receding from the parts of the sky visible from the domain. He’s on his way to an evening meeting when he spies the Hylian’s short figure.

He’s in front of Mipha’s statue, looking up, face covered by a hood. Sidon considers leaving him alone for a moment, but something about the way the champion is standing says that he could use the company. He walks up beside him, looking up at his sister’s gentle expression.

“Do you miss her?” Link asks, after a few minutes of silence.

“Yes,” Sidon says, without hesitation. “Not as keenly as father, or the elders. I was very small. But, I do miss her terribly.”

Link doesn’t say anything else. He eventually gives Sidon a nod, and Sidon thinks it’s a grateful one. Then he starts to leave.

Sidon watches him go. He feels a part of himself tugged after him, and feels torn. Link clearly wants to be alone, but…

“Link,” he says, jogging a few steps to catch up with him. Link turns, blinking owlishly. “If you need to talk, I would be glad to listen.”

He sees the conflict roil in Link’s eyes at the offer. He opens his mouth, and then closes it again and shakes his head.

“...’nk you,” Link says quietly, before turning to go again. This time, Sidon doesn’t follow.

Plunk.

Link throws rocks down into the swamp below, perched on the edge of a ruined platform. Until a few days ago, when he solved the shrine’s puzzle, the whole area had been trapped under an unending thunderstorm.

He’s cursing himself. It would have been nice to talk to Sidon. Out of everyone he’s met since he awoke, Sidon is by far the most supportive and friendly. But given the chance to talk to him about this …

Link sighs.

Plunk, plunk, plunk.

He’s going to go and try to make headway up Death Mountain. Maybe it’ll get his mind off of this.

Sidon has never had the good fortune to live in an age where princes are regarded as out of touch aristocrats. He’s busy constantly, either attending meetings regarding matters important to the domain, actually out keeping an overseeing eye on things, or attending lessons with Muzu. He has heard that the less aquatic races of Hyrule call a lot of what he does “putting out fires.” He’s fond of the term, because despite its incompatibility with his lifestyle, the intent resonates loud and clear.

He’s not doing that right now, though. Right now he’s in a lesson, or at least he had been until Muzu had smacked a reed across the table in front of him. He gazes at it, unfocused.

“... Er?” he says, looking up at the elder Zora’s peeved expression.

“You’re not listening again, your highness!” Muzu says. He whips the reed back behind his back and stares Sidon down severely. Sidon isn’t a child anymore, but it takes an effort not to cringe. “You’ve been unfocused. This is important. One day you’ll -”

“One day the throne, and all of its responsibilities, will fall to me, yes.” Sidon straightens, regaining his composure. “My apologies, Muzu. I must have drifted off.”

“You’ve been like this ever since that Hylian returned,” Muzu says. His words drip with disapproval, which Sidon finds odd, since he’d thought the old Zora to have gotten over the bulk of his distaste for Hylians. Largely because of Link, in fact.

“I would hardly say things are worse off for his presence,” Sidon responds good-naturedly.

“Still.” The elder sighs. He pulls out his reed and points to the board. “One might think you’d pay attention to the lesson you requested.”

Sidon can’t do anything but smile sheepishly. It’s true. His gaze settles on the board, which proudly displays an overview of The Seven.

“Perhaps you can tell me what you actually got out of that,” Muzu says.

“Ah.” Sidon clears his throat. “The Seven are known to be a group of seven Gerudo warriors from folklore, each with their own strengths. There is a site with a group of giant, ancient statues of them where Gerudo travel to to this day to receive blessings.”

“Yes, good.” Muzu smiles. “And those strengths are…?”

“Skill, spirit, endurance, knowledge, flight, motion, and gentleness,” Sidon lists off by rote. Truthfully, he hadn’t forgotten much of this particular subject. “But what of the eighth heroine? What was her strength?”

Muzu hums thoughtfully.

“The eighth heroine is a very obscure part of that folklore.” He shakes his head. “A late addition, perhaps. They say that her faithful still make the pilgrimage to receive her blessing, but there are no reliable sources nor any real indication as to where that journey would take them. Most details have been lost to time. Truthfully, if there is an answer to that question, it isn’t in our records.”

And yet there’s a statue of her still standing, according to Link’s travels. Sidon feels a secondhand thrill at his friend’s accomplishment.

“Maybe when diplomatic ties are re-established, after Link stops Calamity Ganon,” he says, “we can arrange some sort of scholarly exchange with the Gerudo.”

Muzu huffs.

“I cannot emphasize enough how far down that is on our list of priorities, my prince,” he says. “Between trading agreements, official treaties that would have to be checked or redrawn, border talks…”

“Will,” Sidon says.

“Eh?”

“Official treaties that will have to be checked or redrawn.”

“Pffhah. Your faith in that Hylian is overblown.” Muzu frowns. “What good did it do our poor Mipha?”

Sidon bristles.

“I believe in Link’s abilities, Muzu,” he says, evenly. “Did he not calm Vah Ruta?”

“Perhaps, but you will be very busy nonetheless,” Muzu says, training Sidon with a stern eye. “And right now, you are ‘drifting off’ in simple lessons of folklore.”

“I am -”

“Your sister was able to balance all of her duties, even when she scheduled around spending time with him.”

That hits Sidon like a slap in the face.

“I am not my sister,” he says. He stands up ramrod straight. “Perhaps you’re right, though. I need to attend to my other duties. You’re dismissed, Muzu.”

Sidon strides out of the room with purpose.

Sidon swims downriver, heedless of his surroundings. There’s some errand to be run in the Wetlands, something to do with the Lizalfos infestation, but it’s an excuse.

It’s not new. The worst part is, it’s not new at all. There has been an uptick lately, ever since Vah Ruta started causing trouble, but Sidon has been compared to Mipha his entire life. Mipha, who had been a legendarily skilled warrior. Mipha, who had commanded a Divine Beast. Mipha, the healer. Mipha, the endlessly patient diplomat.

Sidon had loved her, and would always look up to her, but sometimes she cast a very long shadow. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if she was still here.

Speaking of a shadow…

A gap in the light above the surface of the water catches Sidon’s eye, and he swims up, peeking out of the water. All of his worries seem to wash away as he recognizes the Hylian and his horse on the riverbank. He breaks the surface of the river, waving energetically. In the back of his mind, he registers that they’re not far downstream from the Inogo bridge, where the two of them had first met.

“Link!”

He starts to call out, but as Link turns to him, the words he was going to say die on his throat. He’d love to talk to Link about this - the man is, among his many other virtues, a fine listener. But this is about Mipha. Link has history with Mipha, history that is clearly still bothering him. It would be insensitive to his feelings to bring her up in such a way.

By the time that little fit of introspection is over, Link and his mount have trotted to the riverbank. Link is smiling, pulling back his traveler’s hood. Sidon finds his voice again and pushes on, paddling closer to the banks.

“It is good to see you again, my friend.” He grins, resting his arms on an outcropping of rock.

“You too,” Link says, dismounting. It’s a beautiful charcoal-black steed, and it obediently waits in place while Link sits down cross legged on the rocks. He’s wearing an odd assortment of clothes - the Hylian hood, a traveler's staple, pants and boots of what appear to be Rito make, and of course the iconic blue champion’s tunic that Sidon is by now familiar with.

“I saw the light shine forth from Death Mountain yesterday. I take it you’ve tamed another Divine Beast?” Sidon asks, and he pumps a fist in victory as Link nods the affirmative. “Stunning! You are absolutely inspirational, Link! That’s three out of four!”

Link huffs a laugh, looking away. There’s a flush of what Sidon imagines to be embarrassment rising to his cheeks.

“Not exactly tamed,” he says. “... Freed?”

“Regardless!” Sidon says. “That only leaves Vah Naboris, out in the Gerudo Desert, then?”

The normal colour returns to Link’s cheeks as he straightens, expression growing serious.

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s been causing trouble.”

“You’ve been out there already?” Sidon asks, brow ridges raised.

Link nods, pulling out his Sheikah Slate and fiddling with it for a moment. He leans forward and flips the screen towards Sidon when he’s done, and the map of Hyrule he’d seen before in passing is crisscrossed with bright aquamarine lines.

“It shows where I’ve been,” Link offers by way of an explanation. It takes Sidon a few moments to really wrap his head around the sheer scale of the map. The entire region that is considered within the borders of Zora territory is maybe a tenth of the area of Hyrule, and Link has traveled to every corner of the known world.

“Goodness, you’ve covered more ground in a few months than I have seen in a lifetime,” he says, genuinely awed.

“I’ve got a lot to do.” Link hooks the slate securely back on to his belt before shifting back into a more comfortable position. “I cheat, too. It’ll take me to shrines I’ve been to.”

“Don’t undersell yourself!” Sidon grins, pulling himself up straighter. “It’s amazing what you’ve acco-”

It starts as a tiny tingling in the lower half of his body. Any Zora knows the fear of an electric shock, of course. Sidon has seen many, many good soldiers lost in the aftermath of Lizalfos equipped with lightning arrows. It’s this ingrained fear that saves him as he shoots out of the water, barrelling right into a shocked Link right as a much more literal shock explodes into the water where he’d been just scant moments before.

It takes Link not half a second to regain his footing, shooting up from the casual sitting position he’d been in to standing and facing the threat. He draws his bow halfway through the motion. Sidon turns around as well, a standard issue silver spear at the ready. He falters when he sees the source of the attack.

It’s nothing he’s ever seen before. It could be called a Zora, he supposes, but its eyes are milky white and have no discernable pupils. It’s got webby fins on either side of its face, its hands fan out into claws, and it’s crackling with unspent electricity. Its maw is filled with jagged, uneven fangs. Most notably, however, is that its pearl-white scales and the skin underneath are partially see-through, revealing the blurry outline of its organs and skeleton. Sidon thinks it may be the ugliest thing he’s ever seen, and he’s been face to face with a Hinox.

The creature, whatever it is, is short-lived. A swoosh of air from Sidon’s side and there’s an arrow blooming out from between its eyes, and then when that doesn’t do, another thunks into the socket proper. Link is nothing if not a crack shot. Sidon watches its corpse hit the water and slowly start to sink, along with his stomach.

“What was that? ” Link asks. The question is more disgusted than startled, and Sidon is surprised to turn his head and see Link trying to take a picture of it with the Sheikah Slate. The question on his face must show through, because Link purses his lips and puts it away before explaining. “The slate usually knows. It doesn’t register.”

“I… Have very little idea, my friend,” Sidon says. He opens his mouth to say more, but he’s interrupted by the sight of three more streaks of electricity coming in from the direction of the Wetlands.

Link starts forward, nocking another arrow, but Sidon puts out a hand in front of his chest to stop him.

“Wait! I want to see what they’re doing,” he says. “Perhaps we can retreat for a moment and watch.”

The Hylian narrows his eyes at the incoming monsters, but cedes and steps back, quickly stowing his bow. He motions to Sidon and they both jog back over to his horse, whom Link leads quickly behind the bend of the cliffs at the mouth of the Zora River. It’s not complete cover, but it’s far away enough from the banks and the sun is at the right angle to cast a shadow on their position.

They watch as the creatures form up in a line by the river, look around, and then face out towards the Wetlands.

Link sees it first. He gasps, tugging lightly at Sidon’s arm and pointing out into the water. Sidon sees it and his eyes go wide.

It’s a line of crackling light across the water ensconcing a circle of deep, deep black. It’s hard to see from the angle they’re at, but it looks like there’s a glow coming out from its centre, in contrast to the rest of it.

They pick up the body of their fallen comrade, speaking amongst themselves. It’s at that point that Sidon’s worst fear is confirmed. He can barely pick out a word here or there - slain and maybe report - but they’re definitely speaking some dialect of Old Zora.

“Scouts?” Link hisses from chest level, knocking him out of that horrible line of thought.

“I think so,” Sidon replies. His features are set in a hard line. “We must get back to the domain.”

He sees Link covertly capture an image of the anomaly in the river before nodding.

It takes a good fifteen minutes of waiting in place before the monsters clear out and return to the centre of the river branch. Link notes the landmarks, as he always does, subconsciously. Mercay’s island is across the water, and the weird disturbance seems to have taken over what he remembers as what passes for a fort among the Lizalfos. A quick look through the Slate’s farseeing function confirms that there are no longer any of the original inhabitants walking around on the boardwalks. Dead or run off, with the blood moon rising every so often, it doesn’t really matter.

Sidon is clearly unaccustomed to stakeouts. Maybe it’s just because there’s so much Sidon in him that sitting still causes that essence to try and escape, Link thinks fondly. He’s fidgeting, eyes locked onto the enemy like bores. It was his idea to hide and observe in the first place, wasn’t it?

Link will admit there are benefits to not charging in and rushing everything. For one, his initial instinct hadn’t taken Sidon’s safety overmuch into account. If the Prince were actually struck by one of those bolts, who knows what might have happened? He could have died, he thinks, grimacing. Shock arrows can kill Zora, and there’s not much reason to believe that a concentrated blast of lightning might not do the same. It’s better to avoid a conflict if they can, in this case.

For another, he’s been keeping track of the circle in the water, and he’s discovered something concerning. He’s been taking pictures of the creatures, their comings and goings, and the oddity itself. He has to flip between the earliest picture and the latest one, but he’s almost certain that...

“Link,” Sidon whispers loudly. As the electric creatures retreat, Sidon’s hand comes down on his shoulder. Link fights not to startle. He’s unused to friendly contact. “They’re leaving. We should have a clear shot back home.”

And isn’t it just so very Sidon to assume, correctly, that he’s coming with?

“One second,” Link says, taking one last picture of the water before they leave.

Sidon ends up carrying Link through the water on his back, the same as when they had fought Vah Ruta. Link had offered to send the news ahead by Shrine, which Sidon thinks would have been faster, but in the end a lack of confidence that he could tackle another encounter with these things alone wins out. They make it back to the domain in just under two hours without any further incident, though.

He notifies his father and the elders immediately of what has transpired, and a council is called. Sidon reports the details of the incident with the council, and though Link seems uncomfortable in this kind of setting, seeming to speak only when absolutely necessary, the pictures he’s captured with the slate are invaluable.

An audible gasp arises from the assembled as he flashes a close-up of the creatures, but that’s nothing compared to the bombshell he drops next.

“It’s getting bigger,” Link says, holding out the slate so those in the front seating can see. He flips between two pictures, each of the crackling edge of the dark patch of water. In the first picture, it’s nearing the edge of a support beam for the Lizalfos’ scaffold. In the next, it’s grown several meters and surpassed it. Comparison with the other, larger pictures, taken in order, confirms that the patch is spreading.

Sidon exchanges worried looks with his father.

“How long would it take to reach the domain, should it spread up the river?” he asks. There are a few minutes of terse discussion before Trello speaks up to answer.

“Little more than two weeks, if we’ve measured right,” the elder says. His face is grave. “To make matters worse, if these creatures truly are able to control electricity while in the water…”

“Is there no defense against this incursion?” the king rumbles from the head of the room.

“Arrows,” Link supplies, looking uncomfortable when all eyes swing to him.

“Yes!” Sidon rushes to back him up. “Link was able to dispatch the first one we encountered with ease, using his bow. We have a contingent of archers. That will keep the river clear of their scouts, at least.”

“If it were just the creatures, it would not be as large of a problem,” Muzu muses. “It’s this field. We can’t be sure what is inside it, and if it proves to block trespass, then we will face a food shortage even before it reaches us.”

“Can we not fish in the pools directly surrounding the domain?” another elder speaks up. Muzu shakes his head.

“This is even taking that into account!” he says. “If we ration starting now, however, I believe we can forestall the issue of food until very shortly before it encroaches on the domain itself.”

Sidon’s father hums thoughtfully, though with his massive size and the way his voice tends to carry, it is heard and felt throughout the whole room.

“Let it be so,” he says, finally. “Arrange for rationing and inform Bazz of the required changes to postings and equipment. Muzu, you are to check the archives and see if there is any information we possess on this threat already. You are all dismissed.”

“Their use of the old tongue is telling,” Muzu says in a half-mumble, turning to start towards the door. “I’m certain I will find something.”

The other council members depart urgently, filing out of the throne room with purpose. In a few short moments, Sidon and Link are alone with the king.

“And what shall I do, father?” Sidon asks, running through all of the things he could do in his head already. Lead the archers, perhaps. It wouldn’t be his first time in the field, especially with the problems they’ve had with the Lizalfos as of late. Go with the fishing crews, who will certainly be heading out to try and make a surplus before swathes of the river become unfishable.

“You are to stay here, Sidon.” His father’s voice shocks him out of his train of thought. His jaw drops open.

“What? But father, I-”

“I have no doubt that you wish to help out our people in this time of need,” Dorephan says, “but I need you here, safe. Vah Ruta was one thing, but these foes are powerful, and, most critically, unknown.”

“Father, I can handle myself!” Sidon protests, hands balling into fists. “There must be something I can do.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Sidon sees Link looking between him and his father rapidly. He looks concerned. The old king sighs, adjusting himself on the throne.

“Very well. Go and help Muzu, Sidon. He will doubtless benefit from an extra pair of learned hands.”

It’s a completely legitimate point, but Sidon still feels as though he’s being put aside and given a patronizing pat on the head.

“Fine. I shall,” he says, turning on his heel and stalking out. He hears Link scurry to follow him down the stairs.

“Are you okay?”

Sidon and Link are down to the balcony overlooking the domain before Sidon hears his more diminutive companion speak. Turning to look, he sees Link’s expression. It’s not one he’s accustomed to seeing. Worry is etched on his features, plain to see.

“It’s alright,” Sidon says, and then pauses. Oh, forget it, he thinks, letting out a long sigh. “... No, it’s not. This isn’t the first time I’ve been at odds with father in this way.”

Link makes an odd face before speaking.

“You’re like her,” he says, quietly. If Sidon hadn’t been listening intently, he might not have heard it. More loudly, he adds, “What are you going to do?”

Sidon sighs again and runs a hand down his headfin.

“What father asked of me, at the moment,” he says, and then straightens, eyes flying wide. “Oh! Link, I’m so horribly self centred. You saved my life earlier and I haven’t said a thing to thank you!”

“It’s nothing,” Link says, rubbing the back of his neck and bunching up the fabric of his hood in the process.

“It is most certainly not nothing!” Sidon pushes earnestly. He’s leaning forward, hands gesturing widely. “Thank you so much, my friend. You are amazing beyond words!”

He’s rewarded as Link laughs softly, holding up his hands defensively.

“It’s really…” He trails off with a ponderous face, as if having difficulty choosing his words. His shoulders slump in defeat, though he’s still smiling. “Anytime?”

Somehow, the response is energizing. The sting at his father’s lack of confidence in him seems a lot farther away. Sidon grins.

“I’ll just have to work to be as inspiring as you! And right now, that will mean helping Muzu.” Sidon straightens again, this time with purpose. “Will you be staying the night here?”

Link seems thoughtful, crossing his arms. After a few moments, he shakes his head.

“Want to check something out,” he says. “I’ll be back.”

Helping Muzu, Sidon realizes, really is a job only he could fill at the moment. The two of them trawl through the old historical texts for hours, only pausing at sundown for a meal. Sidon’s royal education means that while the other elders are busy coordinating the defense, he’s stuck deciphering etchings in Old Zora.

It’s depressingly slow going. Muzu is already well acquainted with the more recent history, but they’ve gone back thousands of years and there’s still nothing to be found on strange Zora-like creatures with clear scales and lightning powers.

It’s a welcome sight when Link lets himself into the repository, even as Muzu huffs his displeasure.

“Link! You’ve returned!” Sidon stands up from where he’s been uncomfortably hunched over a mounted magnifying glass. He strides over to meet the Hylian, who smiles and nods his greeting. “Were you able to find what you were looking for?”

“Sort of,” Link replies. He rummages through a pocket and produces a milk bottle - label intact - filled with water. “Dove into the… thing.”

If Sidon were Hylian, he would have paled.

“You… you mean that horrid black water those things were coming from?” He clarifies, taken aback. Quickly, he looks Link up and down for any signs of injury. “What possessed you to do that? You could have gotten hurt!”

Link shrugs dismissively, but before Sidon can chide him further, he thrusts the bottle further in front of him urgently.

“It’s salt water,” he says.

“Salt water!” Sidon hears from behind him, and the prince turns to see the old Zora digging through a particular row of etchings. “Ah, where is it? I know - yes!”

He pulls out an absolutely ancient looking tablet, hurrying it over to the table Sidon had just been sitting at. Sidon walks over and looks over his shoulder, intrigued.

“What have you found, Muzu?” he asks.

“We weren’t looking far back enough!” the elder declares, with the air of excitement that only exists in one whose passion is history. “You see, our race has a history as long as Hyrule. Many times over the ages, different tribes and kingdoms of Zora have been at war with the other races, ourselves, you name it.”

Link has wandered over to Sidon’s side. At a glance, Sidon can see his brows furrowed as he absorbs what Muzu is saying.

“In ages past, we River Zora were at war with both the Hylians and their at-the-time allies, the Sea Zora,” Muzu continues, eyes scanning the tablet as he works the magnifying glass over each line. “This was more than ten thousand years ago, of course. Maybe fifteen, all things accounted for. Ancient history even for us, never mind the Hylians themselves.”

“Sea Zora…” Sidon strokes his chin thoughtfully. “So the salt water, their stature, and the fact that they were speaking Old Zora… It makes sense. You think they are part of this tribe?”

“It’s certainly our best guess,” Muzu says. He turns to face them. “but I cannot fathom how they came to be mutated in such a way, or how they gained the power to control - or be immune to - lightning.”

“So it’s a dead end?” Link speaks up, earning a scornful look from Muzu. Link, Sidon observes, doesn’t seem much affected.

“Let me finish, boy!” Muzu looks between Sidon and Link with narrowed eyes before continuing. “ However, the Sea Zora all suddenly disappeared overnight somewhere during the Sheikah Tribe’s decline. From what little we have here, it seems that the disappearance took place in the era of the Seven Heroines.”

“So the Gerudo might have more information!” Sidon grins, heartened. He swivels to face Link. “You can travel quickly via those shrines, yes? Perhaps you can find the records we need!”

“Hrmph,” Muzu says. “Doubtful. It’s just a theory, and the Gerudos’ records don’t go as far back. But I don’t see any other option.”

“If they truly are turning the river water to salt, our warriors won’t be able to mount a prolonged attack,” Sidon states. His face takes a grim set. “They would take sickness in minutes, never mind the electricity. The fish population will be devastated as well. If this incursion reaches the domain, the only retreat will be to the reservoir. We can figure this out. We must figure this out.”

“I know an archaeologist,” Link says, and both pairs of eyes turn to him. “A Gerudo. I can ask her?”

Sidon absolutely beams.

“Link, that is astounding! Yes, that is exactly, precisely what we need. Am I to be forever in your debt? You seem to have a knack for coming through in difficult situations!” He gestures widely as he speaks, and Link rubs the back of his neck. Muzu sighs.

“Let’s not count our catch before the net is cast,” he says, pulling a piece of paper and a quill from a drawer. “I’ll give you a missive to deliver. In the meantime, we will continue our search of the archives.”

“Ah,” Sidon says, eyes cast to the shelves. The endless, endless shelves. Where he is to continue as an extra pair of hands to Muzu, instead of leading his people.

While Link, out of the generosity of his heart, handles the best hope of saving them. Alone.

Yes.

“Back to it, then,” he says, with false cheer.

“I can’t do it,” Rotana says.

Even in the shade, the heat in Gerudo town while the sun beats down overhead is stifling. Link reaches up to wipe a bead of sweat off his brow as he ponders his response.

“It’s important,” he says. “The Zora -”

“I know.” She cuts him off, hands on her hips. “You explained already. I didn’t say I won’t. I said I can’t.”

Link grunts, hands curling into fists at his sides. He pauses, takes a breath, and lets them relax. The archaeologist gives him a look and sighs.

“Look, it’s not like I don’t WANT to,” she says. “Do you have any idea what I would do to have that on my academic record?”

“Not go there, clearly,” Link snaps. He regrets it immediately; Rodana levels him with a sour look. People who are sour, he’s discovered, are much less likely to do what you want them to.

“As long as Vah Naboris is out there rampaging, it’s not safe. I can’t do anything to help the Zora if I’m dead,” she says. He supposes she’s right. It’s still infuriating.

He mentally catalogues his options. He could go and take pictures of every etched surface of the statues and the ruins around them, but that could take more than the two weeks they have. There could be passages out in the rest of the desert, too, for all he knows. The problem, he thinks, is that he can’t read any of it. He has no knowledge of what might be written where. In short, he needs an expert on ancient languages to scope out the ruins.

He could try and find Yiga Clan’s headquarters, which has evaded him so far. That would just involve... Scouring the highlands for the entrance, finding the way in, infiltrating the heart of an organization of ninjas, finding where they keep the Thunder Helm, using it to enter Naboris, winding his way through what will inevitably be a frustrating round of pointless-seeming machinery and inconveniently-placed terminals, fighting a blighted aspect of a demon, meeting another figure from his past who he would rather not, and then dragging Rotana through the desert to look at some letters that might even, judging by her progress on the texts she does have access to, take longer than his time limit to decipher anyway.

Link groans.

“I’m sorry,” Rotana says, more gently. “I wish you luck. Sav'orq.”

“Sav’orq,” he echoes.

How is he going to explain this to Sidon?

Sidon is not brooding. Princes of the Zora don’t brood, especially not the ever-exuberant Prince Sidon, optimist to the extreme, light to his people and defender of the rivers of Hyrule.

Sidon is not brooding with his shoulders slumped over his favourite balcony, which does not in any way bring him a small comfort as he gazes down upon the statue of his sister that he definitely isn’t avoiding standing in front of because he feels like he can’t face her.

It’s night time, and Zora’s domain is quiet. The elders are convened in council over some logistical matter or another, the children are asleep in their pools, and every able bodied Zora is either out guarding the gates or dealing with the oncoming threat in one way or another. Or perhaps simply sleeping.

They haven’t made any progress since Link left several hours ago. The library simply doesn’t have any more texts on the era they’re looking for, at least not relevant ones. Trade ledgers and surviving literature, yes, and even accounts of the fabled Zora Sapphire, disappeared from the royal family’s possession around that time, and the ensuing need for new marriage traditions. But no more on the Seven Heroines. Muzu had lamented the loss of Hyrule Castle’s library many a time when Sidon was growing up, but never as keenly as this.

It’s only because the Domain is so unnaturally still that Link’s approach breaks him out of his thoughts.

“Link!” He feels a swell of hope in his chest. Link, his dearest friend, Champion of the Hylians, who has surely come with good tidings.

Link, whose face is totally blank and inscrutable.

Oh no.

Sidon tries anyway.

“You’re back. I’m so glad. We’ve made little progress here, I’m afraid,” he says, as the Hylian comes to a stop in front of him and looks up. It’s a little unnerving, if he’s being honest. Has Link ever looked this closed off? “How did the talk with your archaeologist friend go? Well, I hope. I’ve read enough old ledgers that my eyes are starting to cross.”

Link’s face finally cracks into a grimace. He swallows thickly, raising a hand to his throat as he opens his mouth and closes it again without a sound.

“... Link?” Sidon asks, more quietly.

“She… won’t help,” he finally rasps. It sounds like he’s forcing it out, like it hurts to say. “Naboris makes travel… dangerous from Gerudo Town.”

Sidon feels his stomach fall as the words sink in. He looks away, down at Mipha’s statue again. He’s certain that she would have been able to solve this. That if she were still here, she would have found a way. He also knows that his father knows it. That they don’t trust him to lead as she did. That they don’t -

“Wait,” his head jerks back to Link. “Travel where?”

Link seems caught off guard by the question. He frowns, eyes searching Sidon’s face as if he could find his line of thought just by looking hard enough.

“The statues,” he offers, finally. “The Seven Heroines.”

“The statues of - why did she need to travel there?” Sidon asks, and a faint glimmer of hope starts to materialize in his mind’s eye. He leans closer to Link intently.

“Needed to read the engravings,” Link says, slowly. Sidon sees the moment he realizes it, blue eyes going wide.

“I’m a Prince of the Zora.” Sidon straightens, taking on a dignified posture. “I have extensive education on all matters of history, including languages long dead to the other races. If you can get me there, I can decipher the texts and find a way to save my people.”

“Your father -” Link starts.

“My father would try to stop me, but this is our best shot, Link!” He reaches forward and takes Link’s tiny Hyrulian hands into his, as if he could transfer his certainty by touch alone. Link jumps, clearly startled by the contact, but doesn’t make a move to pull away. “The Zora cannot get past the lightning and the tainted waters, and you cannot face down their army alone, but if we can find the link - hah! - the link between the Heroines and these monstrous Zora, we can fix this.”

Link makes a dismayed face.

“Please, my friend. I beg of you,” Sidon says. Beseeches. “I’m not doing any good here, and father won’t allow me to help any other way.”

There’s a moment that stretches into an eternity before Link speaks again, uncertainty tinging his voice.

“... You’d have to come overland for some of it,” he says.

“I can handle some time out of the water. I’m not a child.”

“We’d have to follow the rivers,” Link says, and this time he sounds more thoughtful. Contemplative. He’s biting his lip gently, frowning. “Swimming. Can you keep up with a horse?”

“Of course,” Sidon says, allowing a grin to start to spread over his face. “So long as it’s going at a trot, I should think I could keep up with that pace all day.”

“I… have equipment to keep you cool in the desert…” Link mumbles, almost entirely to himself now. “Rations… not a problem. On horseback… five days each way.”

“Yes, yes! You see?” Sidon pumps a fist. “You’ll do it?”

Link’s eyes meet his, gently bewildered, but he’s smiling.

“... Okay,” he says, and Sidon has to keep himself from whooping in joy.

Plunk.

“Are you certain this is necessary?” Sidon asks, floating in the shade of the bridge. Another rock sails off the top and falls short of the little circular rock formation that is the designated target.

Plunk.

“Almost,” Link grunts as he picks up another one from the litter of stones in front of him, “got it…”

Plunk.

Sidon hears Link utter some Hylian words that, up until now, have been entirely absent from his vocabulary. He can figure out their meaning from context.

The crux of the thing is that they’ve been there for half an hour.

The first leg of their journey had been much easier than Sidon had anticipated. He’d gathered his things for travelling with little fanfare, and, owing to the emptiness of the domain, simply departed down the river. His father’s decree hadn’t been public; the guards hadn’t stopped their prince and the champion who had calmed Vah Ruta. Sidon still feels a pang of guilt over how worried his father will inevitably be when he gets word of this. If he hasn’t already.

The area covered by the black water hadn’t yet reached the mouth of the river up to the domain when they had passed it early that morning, but it had definitely gotten bigger. He’d gone overland until they’d passed Zelo Pond to avoid any unfortunate encounters with the enemy.

It had been during that stretch of the trip that Sidon had begun to realize that Link is an incredibly distractible person.

After picking up Link’s horse, Link had crisscrossed the beach and picked up three crabs, dug up a random wild root vegetable, and shot a duck. He’d stuffed all of this into… Somewhere. After that, he’d stopped their progress and pulled out his slate for an ideal shot of a rainbow in the sky as the light rain of the morning abated.

It’s not that Sidon is having second thoughts.

Plunk.

“Dammit!”

It might just be that the reality of travelling with Link is not quite what he envisioned.

“Ah, wasn’t that the last rock?” Sidon asks, craning his neck to see. “That’s a terrible shame. I’m sorry you weren’t able to…” He pauses, looking again out at the ring of rocks. Words fail him.

Link answers him with a big sigh and mounts his horse. He trots over to the other side of the bridge - the direction they’re travelling - and beckons Sidon.

They’d gone North to hit the bridge, and now Link will ride down the other side of the coast as Sidon glides along easily beside him in the river. Link had been adamant that they bring his horse along, citing sections of the road that they’d have to go on horseback. He’s mapped out an only slightly winding course that follows the roads next to rivers as much as possible, for swift travel and safety from the creatures that roam further out in the wilds.

Sidon swims along, noting Link’s profile against the sky as he rides. He doesn’t have to wonder how much of those wilds Link has visited - he’d been shown. He strikes a lonely figure, eyes straight ahead, expression frank as he rides along the road.

The bridge had been about midday. The sun has moved across the sky, but not by much, when they come upon the Bokoblin camp. They spot the smoke from the fire from far off, and once they draw close enough to see the source, Link gestures Sidon out of the water and behind cover.

They’re off the road at this point, one of the few points that Link had deemed a shortcut necessary to save time. Soon, they’ll be skirting the edge of the Wetlands.

“Bokoblins,” Link says, holding up the Sheikah Slate and pointing it at the camp. “Two reds, a blue, a black.”

Curiously, Sidon pokes his head up to glance over Link’s shoulder at the screen. As the picture zooms in and out, he realizes that Link is using it as a spyglass. Sure enough, four bokoblins are dancing around a firepit with a huge chunk of meat suspended on a spit on top. One of them reaches out at it and gets a whack to the hand from the handle of the black one’s spear. Link snorts.

“What a fascinating device!” Sidon whispers, at more or less the same volume that most people speak. “Is there anything it can’t do?”

“Walk?” Link responds without missing a beat. He breaks his gaze away from the scene at the camp and ducks back down behind the boulder they’re occupying. He attaches the slate back to his belt seamlessly in the same move.

“Haha! Of course not,” Sidon grins. Link smiles back and hums thoughtfully for a second before continuing.

“Fireproof,” he gestures to the slate on his belt, “waterproof,  freezingproof, lightningproof, laserproof.”

Sidon’s brow ridges raise a considerable amount.

“How exactly does one find out a key piece of their gear is lightningproof ?” he asks, with no small amount of alarm. Link has the decency to look embarrassed as he shrugs.

“Hit by lightning?” he offers, and holds up his hands at what must be an absolutely shocked look on Sidon’s face. “It’s fine. I had a fairy.”

Sidon forces his dangling jaw closed with a click.

“Oh my gods, Link,” he says. “How many near-misses have you had?”

Link shrugs.

“Dunno if it’s swordproof,” he says, as if that explains anything. He shifts position and peeks over the boulder again. “They’re in the way. I’ll clear them out.”

Sidon frowns at the dodged question. However, he thinks, it might not be best to push his friend on this right at the moment. He’s right, after all. If they want to continue this way, they’re going to have to either deal with the bokoblins or ride right through the camp. No, that would be risky. One of them could just grab one of their spears and joust Link right off of his horse, and then they’d be engaged in combat anyway. No, the best way to deal with this would probably be some kind of pincer maneuver, with Link coming from the land side and Sidon coming from the water -

Link is running at the camp with sword and shield drawn.

“Link!” Sidon shouts after him, popping up fully out of cover in his haste. He quickly drops back down as an arrow whizzes past his head.

Sidon hastily shuffles around to the side of the boulder, squinting around the side. He’s not entirely prepared for what he sees.

Link is taking all of the bokoblins on at once, shield up and covered by some kind of magic force field. As he watches, one of them strikes at Link’s back and is rebuffed with a flash of light. Still, after that, the field gutters and vanishes. Sidon grits his teeth, grabs his spear from his back, and starts running in to help.

When they fought Vah Ruta, Sidon had watched his friend shoot lightning arrows in midair after swimming up a waterfall, lining up a shot and releasing it in a split second. Link’s swordplay is exactly as legendary as his skill at archery. He takes down the two red bokoblins with as many swift slashes of his knight’s sword, flipping backwards and away from a heavy swing of the black bokoblin’s spiked club. The two prowl around Link looking for an opening.

Sidon enters the fray with a diving jab at the blue monster, catching it in the shoulder as it sees his approach and whips around. It makes a gurgling growling noise as it sizes Sidon up, glowing eyes narrowing. Sidon raises his spear to strike again.

He’s interrupted by Link’s sword running through its chest from behind. Sidon hesitates mid-thrust, which is lucky, because a fraction of a second later the last remaining bokoblin shield-bashes the distracted Link from behind, knocking him right into the space that would have been skewered moments earlier.

Sidon breaks off to the side, giving Link room to maneuver and circling around the bokoblin to flank. He sees Link regain his footing, pulling his sword out of the now-dissipating corpse of the blue bokoblin. He parries a blow from the monster’s club, sending it off-balance, and Sidon takes the window of opportunity. He shoves his trident into its back with considerable force. The barbs catch on its skin, and he disregards the creature’s wails to pull back and slam it down on the ground. It stops moving and evaporates into shadow.

There’s a moment where the two of them just catch their breath, and then they lock eyes. To his dismay, Sidon realizes that Link looks angry.

“I said I’d clear them out!” he says, hands twitching as though he can’t figure out quite how to move them.

“On your own? When you jumped out at them without any elaboration, I just assumed…” Sidon puts away his spear, frowning. “My apologies, Link, but it seems unnecessary to put yourself at extra risk that way.”

“Would’ve been fine,” Link says. He crosses his arms, looking away with a frown.

“Of course!” Sidon says. Link’s head turns back to him with a questioning expression. “I have no doubt that you’d come out victorious, my friend. You’re a formidable warrior.”

A few different expressions cycle over Link’s face before he settles on confusion.

“Then what’s the problem?” he asks.

“You can’t just -” Sidon pauses, and it hits him that Link has been travelling, and fighting, completely alone up until now. He changes course. “I’m not just dead weight, Link. We can fight together as we’ve worked together before, yes?”

Link opens his mouth and then closes it. He frowns thoughtfully, arms unfolding as he reaches up to scratch his chin.

“Sorry,” he says, “didn’t think about it.”

“It’s alright,” Sidon says, feeling a smile return to his face. “If all goes well, we won’t need to worry about it again.”

Link actually laughs, a full belly laugh that leaves him doubled over and wiping his eyes. As Sidon shoots him a questioning look, Link waves him off and makes a beeline for the huge chunk of meat roasting over the fire. He pulls the spit off the fire and hoists it up in Sidon’s direction.

“Lunch?”

When they start to hit the shallow water of the wetlands proper, depths varying into shallows too often for swimming to be convenient, Sidon is forced on foot once again. That slows their progress, but Sidon seems more than happy to walk next to his travelling companion and actually talk as they make their way further southward. It makes sense, Link thinks. Communication from river to horseback is inconvenient at best.

He leads his horse by the reins, reaching over to pat her muzzle and mumble meaningless noises at her every so often. Sidon, who doesn’t seem to mind that Link doesn’t say much in return to his anecdotes, eventually takes notice.

“You’ve got a fine steed,” the prince says, as Link combs his fingers through her sable mane. “What is its name?”

“Midnight,” Link answers. He takes a moment before adding, “Her name.”

“I admit I hadn’t looked,” Sidon chuckles. “Where did you get her?”

“She’s wild,” he says, patting her neck. She leans her head into his hand gently. “North of Tabantha Great Bridge.”

Sidon is silent for a few minutes as they walk, watching him and his horse. Link wonders if that should make him uncomfortable.

“You never bring horses to the domain itself, but now that I think of it, I haven’t seen you without one outside of it,” Sidon observes.

“I like horses,” Link replies simply.

“Horses seem to like you,” Sidon says, with an undercurrent of warmth. Link feels his cheeks burn.

“They’re loyal. If you treat them right, they’ll take you anywhere,” he says, “and they don’t care who you are.”

Link swallows, glancing up to see Sidon eyeing him with an inscrutable expression. He quickly looks away.

“You were talking about Muzu?”

Sidon, mercifully, accepts the change of subject.

“Yes, I do have endless tales where that subject is concerned. There was the time he scolded Dumna so harshly that he brought her to tears…”

They keep walking.

Nearer to nightfall, Sidon sees why Link had found his statement earlier so funny. Once again, they see the trail of smoke winding up into the sky before they see the enemy. They make a slight detour up to higher ground to scope out the scene.

“The landscape is fair crawling with these things, isn’t it?” Sidon says, peering at the crumbling ruins of a stone building below. Even without the aid of Link’s slate, he can count six or seven of them. “That’s why you were laughing?”

“Yep.” Link’s face shows a ghost of a smile before returning to the harder lines of concentration.

“I must seem terribly out of touch,” Sidon sighs.

The Hylian shrugs.

“It’s Ganon,” he says, matter of factly.

“Yes, the Lizalfos problem has become incredibly difficult as of late,” Sidon says. “They’ve grown in number and built closer and closer to Zora territory, the cheeky scoundrels. We’ll all be breathing a sigh of relief when that beast is taken care of.” He blinks before hastily adding, “Not to hurry you along! I am so thankful for your continued favours to the domain, and I know you’re doing your absolute best.”

“It’s alright,” Link huffs a laugh. “And thanks.”

The smile doesn’t last long, though. Link frowns deeply all of a sudden and stows the slate. He turns to Sidon.

“Lightning arrows. Two archers.”

“Ah,” Sidon says. “That may be a problem.”

Link nods, glancing over at the camp and then back to Sidon. Then back to the camp. Then back to Sidon.

“How strong are you?” he asks, straight-faced.

Sidon tilts his head.

“I hardly think that’s going to make a difference in this particular case,” he says, frowning. “As much of a bother as I gave you earlier, I’m afraid there’s not much I can do here but take cover and let you clean house, so to say.”

Link shakes his head, reaching behind his back to pull out his bow. A mischievous grin spreads across his face.

“Can you throw me?” he asks, and Sidon’s mouth forms an ‘o’. Can he throw him… Now that’s a question. Link is small even by Hylian standards, and Sidon is twice his size and athletic. The sword on his back and the bow are only going to add a few pounds, practically negligible.

“Well, yes. I think so. Perhaps not all the way to them, but I can get you some height,” he surmises.

“Glider,” Link reminds him.

“I presume you have a plan?” Sidon asks, although Link’s expression speaks for itself. It’s an expression that has said many things in the past, such as so I’m gonna jump off of the top of this waterfall with a trident and I know you said not to fight the Lynel, but I’m gonna fight the Lynel.

“Trust me,” Link says, and Sidon feels something warm bubble up in his chest.

“Of course! I believe in you.” He flashes Link his best grin and pose, and lifts him up in one smooth motion.

It takes a windup and some minor footwork adjustment to compensate for the slope, but he hurls Link out into the air over the crumbled building with relative ease. At the apex, Link opens his paraglider and glides through the air until he’s dead-centre over the mass of bokoblins.

The glider snaps shut and, in freefall, Link starts loosing arrows. Ice arrows, to be specific. He hits both of the archers, a distinction Sidon is only able to make at this distance because two lightning arrows miss Link from that direction. Link’s follow up does not miss.

The champion - and at times like these, Sidon really is apt to think of him in those terms - manages to get two more shots off before hitting the ground out of Sidon’s sight inside the walls. The sounds of combat start drifting towards Sidon’s position. He has to force himself to stay put, because he can’t see if the archers have truly been taken out of the fray or if they just can’t get a shot because their target is inside the walls.

There’s about another minute of screaming bokoblins before everything goes silent. Then Sidon sees Link’s head crest one of the walls and wave at him, which sends a rush of relief through his system.

By the time he gets down to the building, Link is already eyeing the fire on the top of what Sidon thinks might have been a watchtower at one point. He recognizes it as the prior position of the bokoblin archers.

“That was amazing work!” he says. “Such swiftness with a bow! How do you do it, Link?”

Link, whose gaze at the tower had been nearly clinical, shoots him a bemused look and shrugs.

“Just do,” he says. His expression softens to a smile. “You helped.”

“I’m glad to be of service. After all, you’re going so very far out of your way to help me,” Sidon replies. Link nods, and then points up at the top of the tower.

“We’ll camp here,” Link says, and Sidon defers to his experience in the matter.

Link knows a lot of things without quite knowing how he knows them. He knows how to walk, how to run, what a lake is, what a mountain is. Sometimes his remembered knowledge is a little spotty - he’s never been able to recall specific place names. The slate helps with that. Some things, though… He knows that Zora usually sleep in pools of water. Which is probably why Sidon is tossing and turning a few feet away, trying to get comfortable.

He himself is looking up at the sky and enjoying a pleasant night in temperate middle Hyrule. Sure, he’s laying on bare stone, but it’s better than icy tundra or sand that begins as hot as coals and then turns biting cold in the night. He chastises himself after a moment of that thinking - Sidon isn’t accustomed to travelling, much less in the harsher regions.

“You okay?” he asks, and he hears Sidon once again shift. Link draws himself up to a sitting position against the base of one of the two remaining arches on the structure. He’s gratified to see that Sidon is, indeed, looking at him.

“It will take more than this to conquer a Zora prince,” Sidon says. His voice carries a note of humour. Link finds himself smiling.

“You’re not used to this,” he says, as a statement more than a question. Sidon nods, seeming to give up on sleep for the moment as well. He pulls himself up and leans back against the other arch.

“Not really, no,” he confesses. “You do this all the time, though?”

Link nods. They lapse into a comfortable silence, warmed by the fire and broken only by its hisses and pops until Sidon speaks again.

“Link, if you don’t mind me asking,” he starts, “do you always travel alone?”

“Do horses count?” Link asks, letting his gaze slide back up to the stars.

“For this… no,” Sidon says. There’s a gentleness, a concern to his tone that compels Link to answer.

“Since I woke up,” he says.

“Woke up?”

“In a cave,” Link elaborates. His hands run over the soft fabric of his pants, grasping here and there. He’s fidgeting, he realizes. “There was a voice, then an old man, then a mission.”

“You said you remembered nothing,” Sidon says. “You mean to tell me that you woke up with no memories, were told to save all of Hyrule, and were left to your own devices?”

“I don’t mind,” Link says, a little defensively.

“Truly?” Sidon asks. Link chances a glance over at the prince and finds a face wrought with worry. He takes a deep breath and chooses his words carefully.

“Remembering nothing was... Easier than knowing,” he says. “Knowing who I used to be.”

“I’m rather glad to know you as you are now,” Sidon says.

Link swallows deeply and then he can’t stop a laugh from bubbling up, even as an indescribable feeling works its way up his gut.

“Thank you,” he says, finally, “I’m glad. You’re my… Best friend.”

Sidon’s face lights up like a shooting star.

“And!” He leans over, even in a sitting position towering over Link. “I think it’s just about high time you didn’t have to face this burden alone, my friend. I know that after this trip is over, it’s unlikely father will allow me out of the domain for the next century, but please allow me to be considered your companion on this quest even so! I shall do everything I can to help.”

Link blinks. The night sky has gone blurry all of a sudden.

“... Thank you,” he manages to get out, hoarse.

They both end up sleeping like that, in a sitting position. The next morning, Sidon complains about the aches. Link can’t find it in himself to give him a hard time.

Sidon wakes with a start. That’s not quite right, actually. Sidon wakes with more of a jump, like someone who’s woken up from a nightmare where they’re being systematically eaten by rabid minnows. The reason he wakes up like this is because there’s been an explosion.

It takes him a moment to get his bearings, as quickly as he’s up on his feet with a spear drawn, but all he hears is a splash.

Peering over the edge of the small tower they’d made camp in, Sidon sees Link paddling through a small pocket of deep water and grabbing at something. Several somethings.

“Link?” he calls, voice just a little slurred from drowsiness. Link’s head turns towards him and he treads water, waving back at him. There doesn’t seem to be any danger, so Sidon slowly lowers his weapon.

Every moment with Link brings a new surprise, he thinks, jumping down to meet Link as he returns.

Link is clad in just a surprisingly form-fitting pair of underwear and a pair of amber earrings that make a pleasant little tinkling as he walks, which is a direct juxtaposition to what is probably twenty kilos of shield, weapon and bow that he seems to have strapped on his back at all times. More importantly, he’s carrying an armful of Hyrule Bass. Sidon’s stomach growls its appreciation.

“What was that noise?” he says, as Link holds up half of his catch for Sidon to grab. The Hylian grins.

“Fishing,” he says, obviously smug.

Sidon, who had been lifting the fish up to his mouth, puts two and two together. He stops, giving Link a skeptical look.

“Fishing with explosives?” he clarifies.

Link pauses and lifts the hand that is now free of fish, seesawing it in a ‘so-so’ motion. He taps the Sheikah Slate, because of course he does.

“Bombs without heat,” Link says. “Useful, huh?”

Sidon takes another look at the fish before taking a dainty nibble. It’s true that it’s just like a raw fish, though there’s something different about the texture.

“It certainly seems so,” Sidon says, as Link starts back towards the shore and he follows. “But there’s just something about this that seems like… cheating.”

“Cheating?” Link asks, in between bites of raw fish. Sidon is almost certain that Hylians usually cook their meat. He’s uncertain if it’s a misconception on his part or if Link is just especially Zora-like, a thought that is frankly quite endearing.

“Well, it’s just that they didn’t really stand a chance, you know?” he presses good-naturedly. “Imagine minding your own business, swimming along and living your life, and then, well, boom.”

“I’d be dinner?” Link throws an amused look over his shoulder.

“Breakfast, in this case.”

“Good cause,” he says. Sidon laughs, Link starts laughing too, and they have to stop for a minute because he nearly chokes on a chunk of his breakfast.

They get underway in short order, another stretch overland to hop from the wetlands to the Hylia River. The weather is especially hot and muggy, and Link ends up foregoing his travelling hood for the earrings from earlier, changing from the sturdy pair of Hylian travelling pants and boots into a pair of shorts that cut off at the knees and a pair of oddly-designed shoes that he explains are quite useful for climbing. As ever, he favours the Champion’s garb on top of it all.

“Let me guess,” Sidon says, as they make their way down the winding path, “you store all of the extra garb in the slate.”

Link looks up from where he’d been slipping Midnight an apple.

“How’d you guess?” he asks, tone sardonic. His eyes tell a different story.

“I’m just interested to know just how much you’ve squirreled away in there.” Sidon leans over, still towering over his companion, to get a better look at the device. Link shrugs. “Do you have an outfit for every occasion?”

That question seems to provoke some thought. Link strokes his chin thoughtfully, brow pinched.

“Cold… hot… lava… guess so,” he says.

“Swimming, of course,” Sidon adds, and frowns when Link seems to shift uncomfortably. “Is something the matter?”

“I -” Link starts, but he’s cut off by a loud beeping from the Sheikah Slate. His eyes light up and he hastily grabs for the device, whose display flickers to life in his hands. “Shrine!”

“Shrine?” Sidon catches some of the excitement in the air as Link starts walking erratically. The beeping cuts in and out and eventually Link points sort of forward and to the right of the road.

“There,” he says, in time with another set of chimes. Sidon privately thinks that whoever designed that noise had it in mind to have the user find what they were looking for simply to get rid of the beeping.

“Excellent!” he claps his hands together and clasps them, looking expectantly at Link. Link looks expectantly back at him. He coughs. “... Er, what exactly does one do with a shrine?”

Link doesn’t exactly deflate, but he does seem to grasp that Sidon isn’t aware of the finer points of Shrine hunting and his smile drops off a bit.

“Find it, go in, solve a puzzle,” he gestures widely in the alleged direction of the shrine. Midnight nickers and nudges him with her muzzle, nearly knocking Link down. He catches himself on the reins and awkwardly pulls himself back up. “Whoa, girl.”

Sidon smiles at the exchange and crosses his arms, cupping his chin in thought as he gazes at the hillside that the shrine supposedly lies beyond. He’s unused to navigating by land, but he thinks the river should be on the other side.

“How long will this take?” he asks, reaching over and casually pulling a flustered Link back up after his horse interprets his admonishment as permission to give more affection.

Link dusts himself off as Sidon lets him go, cheeks flushed. He shoots a mock-peeved look at the mare before considering the answer.

“Few hours?” he guesses. “Varies. If it looks long we’ll keep going.”

Sidon purses his lips. It’s true that they have a time limit, but a few hours can always be made up by riding a little bit further into the night if need be. Frankly, he’s curious for a look into Link’s trials. It’s not an opportunity he’s likely to have again, he thinks.

“Very well,” he says, finally. “I should like to see what kind of trials await a hero such as you! They must be grand indeed.”

Link shoots him an indecipherable look - no, not quite indecipherable, this time. Sidon gets the distinct impression he’s laughing again, just not outwardly.

“PUT HIM DOWN!”

“Sidon don’t let go!”

“HE WILL FEEL THE RAGE OF THE FLOWERS!”

“I’m dreadfully sorry, ma’am -”

Link squirms in Sidon’s grasp as Magda makes a jump for it, attempting to scrabble up Sidon’s torso. Sidon has to free a hand from holding Link to stop her, who slides down and clambers to get a hold of Sidon’s shoulders. He ends up pulling on Sidon’s headfin, which isn’t pleasant at all. He winces, pushing the Hylian woman back away to arm’s length where she struggles.

When the two of them had crested the hill and seen a shrine ensconced in a meadow of flowers, Sidon had, to put it lightly, not seen this coming.

Their first mistake had been not to talk to the Hylian woman who tended the flowers before going ahead. Link had not but stepped upon one single flower before she dragged the two of them aside and chided them. Then a chuchu had popped up in the thin flowerless path and knocked Link into an unsuspecting patch of daisies. The last time, they had been right in front of the shrine when they’d looked down and found Link’s feet already planted in the bright fauna. Now they stand on the dais of the sandbar shrine facing down an incredible rage.

Link, who without a moment of hesitation will go and stare down a Lynel, is now gripping Sidon around the head and neck and holding on for dear life.

It’s very bizarre.

“Miss, if you would allow me, I’m very sorry for the destruction of your beautiful flowers,” he tries. The diplomatic tone is somewhat undercut by the fact that he has to bodily hold her back from enacting her revenge upon the hero of Hyrule, the one shining beacon of hope against the coming calamity.

“I’m sorry,” Link agrees hastily.

Magda lets out an inhuman screech and Link holds to him tighter. Sidon sighs.

Sidon feels Link shift and there’s a plink, plink from behind him, and a sound that isn’t quite earthly but sounds a little like the pipe of a wind instrument. As Sidon turns his head, he sees the shrine’s front entrance open. He also spies the Sheikah Slate on the ground. So Link… Threw the Slate at that odd column, activating the shrine, he supposes. He smiles to himself despite everything. What a very Link thing to do.

“Gogogo.” Link breathes from right next to his ear.

“I’m very sorry for this!” Sidon says, giving the woman a gentle shove right into a field of posies. As she pauses to behold the true horror of her situation, he turns and runs, scooping up the Slate in a rush to the shrine’s entrance.

As the lift activates with a soft blue glow and they’re taken belowground, a shriek of malice echoes after them.

“... We’re going to have to deal with her on the way back up, you know.” Sidon says glumly.

“Out of fairies, too.” Link sighs. He grimaces and hops down from his perch.

After an indeterminate amount of time, that must have been no longer than half a minute but somehow drags on, the platform they’re on is gently lowered by some unseen force into the shrine’s inner chambers.

“My word.” Sidon takes a moment just to marvel. The ancient Sheikah architecture is… He’s seen the Divine Beast Vah Ruta, of course. The inside of the Shrine is different. Between massive crisscrossed stone columns, the ceiling itself glows with a light far harsher and more unearthly than the luminous stone used in Zora installments. Besides, he thinks, mentally translating the cost of coating an entire surface with the stone, if that were the case it would have cost somewhere in the order of millions of rupees, given the size of the interior.

That’s the other thing. The full extent of the room they’re in isn’t completely apparent, because there’s a wall blocking their vision, but Sidon wouldn’t be surprised if the surface area matched all of Zora’s Domain. And all of it is in this high-ceilinged, decoratively carved, grand style.

Link isn’t looking up, though. Link is looking in front of them where a wooden panel drifts to the left and disappears, followed by another identical panel a few seconds later.

“Easy,” he concludes, running across its surface to get to the archway in the wall opposite. Sidon just swims across and propels himself up next to Link, who makes a sour face followed by a dawning look of realization.

“You cheated! ” he says. Sidon does not think that his manic smile and tone quite matches his words.

“Well the trial is for the hero, not for me,” Sidon says, drawing a hand to his chest. Link’s face smooths out into that serious look he recognizes from when they fought Vah Ruta, and he puts out a hand to Sidon in a very un-Link-like flourish.

“The hero requests your aid,” he says, in a very high-class accent that tickles Sidon’s memory somehow. He stares at Link’s outstretched hand and very serious expression for a good five seconds before both of them burst into laughter.

“L-link, you could just ask me normally - ” Sidon manages to get out.

“Your face!” Link howls, leaning heavily on the archway and gasping in between gales of merriment.

“Of course I’ll swim you across, it’s the very least I can do!” Sidon insists, taking a deep breath and eyeing the section in front of them. More panels over water. A challenge for a Hylian, but to a Zora…

They conquer the rest of the shrine with a speed that does indeed make Sidon feel as though they have cheated somehow. Sidon can’t take all of the credit, of course, because Link is quick to demolish a group of stone blocks in their path with the casual launching of a bomb arrow.

The path to the final platform is more sombre. Link’s stride slows as they walk across a bridge to a platform with a glowing box… Magical field of some sort... in the middle of the room. A figure dressed in the manner of the Sheikah tribe, nearly a skeleton but with its flesh stretched taut over the bones, sits as if in meditation surrounded by this field.

Sidon chances a glimpse off to the side and is greeted by a depth that stretches down into nothingness, escaping the light and creating the impression of a darkened maw below them. He looks back up and straightens, looking straight ahead.

Link walks up the steps to the box and touches it - it makes another unearthly chime sound and the field shatters into thousands of tiny motes of blue light. Sidon can only stare.

Your resourcefulness in overcoming this shrine speaks to the promise of a hero…

The voice comes from everywhere and nowhere. Sidon hears it, but not with his ears.

In the name of Goddess Hylia, I bestow upon you this Spirit Orb.

As Sidon watches, a purple orb floats from the monk to Link, and disappears ethereally into Link’s chest. Link puts a hand on his chest, but is otherwise stoic as the monk utters their parting words.

May the Goddess smile upon you.

And just like that, the ancient body of the monk dissolves into light. Sidon stares at the spot where it disappeared with such an intensity that he’s startled to find Link looking up at him from a few feet away when he finally averts his gaze.

“You okay?” Link asks, head cocked to the side.

“Yes,” Sidon replies, and then looks back to the now-empty platform thoughtfully. “You’ve conquered many of these shrines, yes?”

“Yeah,” Link says, with a shrug.

“What a thing to become accustomed to,” Sidon murmurs.

“Different this time,” Link says, even as he starts walking back to the entrance and waves Sidon along. “Never had company.”

“Oh?” Sidon follows, feeling a little pang of sympathy for his friend.

“It was nice,” Link says, and that pang is replaced by a blooming… Something that Sidon can’t quite place. He finds himself grinning.

It’s just past noon when the two of them emerge from the shrine, and Link feels a deep dread in his bones as they sneak past Magda and her inevitable wrath. She spots them as they’re swimming away, prompting Link to hold on for dear life as Sidon propels them out of her throwing range. Magda has quite an arm.

He whistles for Midnight as they hit the opposite bank and she comes trotting as he knew she would. He gives her a thorough rubdown and an apple for her trouble.

They decide to sit on the banks for a few minutes while Link’s travelling outfit dries off a little. The humidity isn’t much for it, but the sun beats overhead and that will help things along. Link and Sidon sprawl out on the grass with some mushroom rice balls and raw bass respectively for lunch as Midnight grazes nearby.

“What does it feel like?” Sidon says, breaking a comfortable silence. Link just shoots him a questioning glance over his rice balls, of which he has plowed through three quarters. “That… spirit orb.”

Link pauses eating to bring a hand up to his chest, which seems to be the natural entrypoint for spirit gifts if his wealth of experience is to be believed.

“Weird,” he says, finally.

“What do you mean?” Sidon asks. Link searches for the words to describe it.

“I know it’s there,” he says. “Doesn’t feel like anything. I just… Know.”

“Hm.” Sidon seems to ruminate over that. “How intriguing! You would think that there would be some kind of connection, or a feeling. Many such things are described in the histories.”

But I don’t hear… or feel anything!

The memory springs up unbidden, and Link’s mouth twitches into a frown.

“You’d think,” he says. Sidon seems confused. Link realizes that his posture has gone stiff and forces it back into something resembling the relaxation he’d been feeling a few minutes ago.

“Is something the matter?” the prince asks.

Link shakes his head, and shoves the last rice ball into his mouth. He casts about for something else to talk about and ends up pulling out the Slate. He offers it over to Sidon, who lacks Link’s voracious eating habits and so is still working on his Staminoka.

“Just remembered,” he bluffs badly. “Can take pictures from the front, too.”

Sidon seems to take the bait, an expression that puts Link ill at ease for thinking it due to the obvious implications. He delicately switches to the camera function and holds the Slate at arm’s length, eyes lighting up as he sees himself displayed on the screen.

“Link!” He grins. “This is wonderful! We can take a picture together, and it will be a marvellous memento of our trip!”

Link feels his eyes widen.

“Hadn’t thought of that,” He admits, scooting closer.

Sidon lowers the device so they can both see and, with a little more shuffling around, is able to capture both of their faces at once. It’s a little bit of an awkward fit, with Link practically sitting in Sidon’s lap to look up at the camera, but he can tell Sidon is giving the camera an extra wide grin. He feels his own face crack into a smile too, and before he’s recovered himself, the camera’s distinct click goes off.

“It’s perfect,” Sidon declares, and Link has to agree. The two of them next to each other, smiling up at the camera, framed by the gently swaying grass.

When they’re pressed by time to leave a few minutes later, Link feels as though he’s leaving behind a spot that he wouldn’t much mind coming back to to remember.

They’re riding with the river again now, and Sidon feels much more comfortable, physically speaking, swimming along in the cool waters of the river. But, he thinks, glancing up at Link on horseback on the shore, he’s looking forward to their next trek on land anyway. He’s certainly not used to swimming in solitude, usually flanked by one or more of the guards on journeys outside of the domain and the immediate area.

Sidon is snapped out of his thoughts by a cry from ahead. His head whips upward to note that they’re coming up on a bridge, and a moment later he’s located the source of the sound. Someone is being attacked. Just as he comes to this realization, Link, as if sharing the same mind, kicks Midnight into a full gallop. Sidon pumps his legs and charges forward in the water to match his speed.

When they get closer, the situation becomes clearer: A single black bokoblin assails a lone Gerudo traveler, who is holding her own but is being backed up to the edge of the bridge.

Sidon expects Link to dismount, but instead, just as Sidon makes it to the bridge, he’s crossing it on horseback. He steers Midnight towards the bokoblin and she neighs as the two of them trample the thing underfoot. As Link passes, Sidon sees his chance. With a powerful stroke he shoots up from the water, eliciting a choked scream of surprise from the Gerudo. He arcs over her and lands spear-first in the monster’s middle. It croaks feebly and disappears in a puff of purple smoke.

Sidon turns around and just manages to block an incoming scimitar.

“Whoa! No, I’m not-!” he protests, stepping back. The Gerudo woman’s expression, a grim combative look, doesn’t move. He hears Midnight’s hoofbeats circling back around, and then very shortly after that Link’s hurried footsteps as he runs over.

“He’s with me,” Link says, only a little out of breath.

The woman flicks her eyes between the two of them and withdraws her weapon, sheathing it on her back.

“Apologies,” she says, with a nod to Sidon. “There are all sorts prowling the roads of late. Sarqso! I would have been in a lot of trouble without your help.”

“It is really no trouble at all,” Sidon replies amiably, putting away his spear. He extends his hand. “But where are my manners? I am Prince Sidon of the Zora. It’s good to make your acquaintance.”

“Oh.” The gerudo pales considerably, taking his hand and shaking it. He’s pleased to note that her apparent distress doesn’t keep her from a firm grip.

“Link,” Link supplies, in his truncated way. He’s standing with both hands on his hips, attention focused on the conversation at hand.

“I am Usausi,” she says, and drops her hand to her side. “I suppose it’s a little late to say sav’aaq, so please allow me to make up for my…” She pauses and glances at Sidon, “rudeness. Are you travelling towards the Riverside Stable? I’ll treat you to lunch.”

With the way Link perks up at the mention of food, Sidon is certain that they would have gone even if they hadn’t.

Riverside Stable is an idyllic little place, tucked away from any kind of view of Hyrule Castle by a gentle range of hills. It’s not just bordering the river, but a part of it, with several animal pens built on sandbars. On a day like this one, the sun shines through the river’s clear water and one can see the fish schooling in the chest-deep water between those sandbars. Well, it’s about chest-deep for Link, anyway. Sidon thinks of it as more of a shallow wading pool.

The three of them take their lunch out by said pens, a crab stir fry that takes away some of the weariness of the day’s travels. The recipe had been posted on the inside wall, so Sidon assumes it’s a specialty of the house. Watching Link putter around and talk to people - or at least greet them and let them carry on - had been interesting. Link had clearly recognized a travelling merchant with a huge beetle-shaped backpack that dwarfed his form, and had purchased several arrows from him.

He’d also chatted up a woman who yearned to see some of the royal guard’s old gear, which was rumoured to still be in Hyrule Castle itself. Sidon isn’t certain he likes the look Link had gotten in his eyes at the prospect, but he supposes that Link will have to go to the castle sooner or later anyway, and who’s to say he can’t grab some old weapons while he’s defeating Ganon?

The thing that he’s still thinking about, uncharacteristically quiet as Link fills in Usausi on the reason for their journey, is actually the man Link had talked to after that.

A Hylian who would very comfortably fit the description of rotund had waxed poetic about the lost recipes of the Hyrulean royal family and, unprompted, complimented Link on his looks. Connoisseur of beauty indeed!

Sidon isn’t even sure what puts him off about the interaction. It isn’t as though it isn’t true that Link has fair features for a Hylian. He’s just never really thought about it before like that. He hadn’t even blinked an eye when Link was stripped down to swim, but now that he’s thinking about it, there’s a certain quality to the way his -

“Sidon?” Link’s voice cuts through a line of thought that Sidon is more than happy to let go for now as he refocuses on the conversation at hand.

“Yes!” he says, perhaps a little too enthusiastically. “My sincere apologies, I must have drifted away.”

Link gives him an appraising look before gesturing to their lunch companion.

“The Seven Heroines,” he says.

“Yes, as I was saying, I don’t believe your shrine was the only thing out there. That much is for certain,” Usausi says, between bites of crab. Link’s plate, Sidon notes, is long clean. “Gerudo have been going there to find their blessing for generations, and though they’ve all come back empty handed, there are other legends.”

“Other legends?” Sidon prods.

“There are legends of another statue. The eighth heroine,” she continues. “There are no stories of her deeds among the seven in the official records, but tales persist.”

“Found that,” Link says.

“Pardon?” The gerudo lifts an eyebrow.

“The Zora have records of these rumours as well,” Sidon supplies. “I had quite the shock when Link showed me proof that he had located it! He’s an amazing explorer, is he not?”

Link’s cheeks go pink and he rubs the back of his neck.

The gerudo woman looks between the two of them appraisingly before smiling slyly.

“As it so happens, I’m headed to the highlands to try and obtain the Eighth Heroine’s blessing myself,” she says. Link cocks his head to the side at her in question. “It’s rumoured that it has to do with her strength as a heroine, but no one is quite sure what that was.”

“What a coincidence,” Sidon says, half-uncertain. The vaguely knowing look on her face isn’t lost on him, but he can’t decode what it could mean.

After that they dissolve into much more casual conversation, and the rest of lunch is a pleasant affair. Giving the fellow traveller their farewells, they head out back onto the road.

They only stop once, for another little challenge Link insists on trying his hand at. After shooting down a few balloons, Link proceeds to have a short conversation with… Thin air. But when he’s done, he pockets some kind of seed with a very distinctive smell that somehow reminds Sidon of every wooded area he’s ever been to. When he asks about it, Link just gives him an exaggerated shrug, eyes shining with mischief.

Sidon is quite sure he’s never felt so endeared by someone teasing him.

Closer to the oncoming of dusk, Link clears out a small camp of Bokoblins and they make their own camp there, dining on the seared steaks the monsters had left behind. As Sidon tries to get comfortable on the ground, he looks over at Link.

Link is perched on a rickety platform that the bokoblins use for their watch. He has the Sheikah Slate out, pointed towards the dueling peaks in the distance. Looking out upon the water, Sidon notes the remains of a guardian out on the junction between two rivers.

“Always on the lookout for a pretty sight, aren’t you?” he asks, bemused. He isn’t sure how loudly he’d said it, but Link’s head turns all the same.

He hops down from the top of the platform, plopping down next to the fire cross legged. He’s still got the slate in his hands, and he’s hunched over it oddly, like something is weighing down on him physically. It takes him a moment to speak.

“Want to remember,” he says, finally lifting his gaze to meet Sidon’s. His blue eyes are far more troubled than Sidon expected. Link gestures around broadly.

“This,” he elaborates, and points at Sidon, “You. Us.”

“Ah,” Sidon says. He’s a little taken aback, but his expression settles into a warm smile. “I’m truly touched, Link.”

Link nods, smiling back but not quite meeting Sidon’s eyes, presumably out of embarrassment. He reholsters the slate and stretches, yawning.

Sidon can’t quite wipe the smile off of his face until he finally manages to fall asleep.

Sidon awakens to the most heavenly smell, and someone humming.

Unlike yesterday, he’s thankfully not galvanized to attention, so he takes a little bit of time to stretch his admittedly sore limbs and sit up. It’s morning, and the campfire has burned down to fast-dying embers, the smallest wisps of smoke carried off in haste by the wind. He can hear the crackling of another fire, though, and sizzling. Those smaller sounds are broken up by the intermittent clank of metal.

It’s coming from the same direction as the humming, just over a little rock hillock they hadn’t investigated the night before.

Sidon walks around the rock to find Link humming away happily over a cookpot, stirring something vigorously. He looks up and waves with an easy smile.

“Sidon! I found a cooking pot!” Link says, brightly. “I don’t know if Zora like their fish cooked but I figured you looked like you liked the food at the stable yesterday, so I’m doing a Seafood Meuniere.”

Sidon stands there for a few seconds staring before he remembers to shut his mouth with a click.

“... What?” Link gazes up at him, completely oblivious.

“Forgive me,” Sidon says, running a hand over his headfin. He kneels down closer to the pot, peering into its delicious-smelling contents. “I just don’t think I’ve ever heard you say so much at once.”

“I like food,” Link replies, a little stiffly.

“No, no!” Sidon puts his hands up in front of him, “Goodness, that’s not a bad thing! Quite the opposite! It’s inspiring to see you so passionate!”

“Oh,” Link visibly relaxes, returning his attention to the pot, “okay.”

“... What exactly is a, er, meuniere?” Sidon says, after a few moments of silence. Link perks up immediately.

“I learned it in Rito village,” he says, “It’s a flour-based sauce, so I keep Tabantha wheat from the store on me, and goat butter, too.”

“We don’t stock those at the general store in the Domain…” Sidon leans forward, absolutely taken by his friend’s enthusiasm.

“Right, but you should,” Link says firmly. “Because this way I can make a roux, too, which goes in a lot of dishes.”

“I’ll be sure to let Cleff know,” Sidon laughs.

“Oh, and I threw in a dragon’s scale.”

“Y-you what?!”

After tasting the result, Sidon will never doubt Link’s culinary wisdom again. The Zora don’t usually cook their fish, preferring to work with raw cuts of it in spices or sauces for extra flavour, but he finds the unmistakable flavour of freshly-caught Staminoka Bass enhanced in an intriguing way by the flakier texture and the savoury sauce.

Link inhales his own portion, as Sidon is quickly becoming accustomed to. He’s already busying himself cleaning out the pot and refilling it with some water.

“Did you even taste that?” Sidon ribs gently, taking another forkful from his own plate. For how delicious Link’s cooking is, he doesn’t think he has anything resembling a mess kit. He tends to eat meals with his hands out of a bowl or off of a simple plate, or off of a spit, a notion which clashes with Sidon’s upbringing.

Link wrinkles his nose and nods, looking thoroughly offended. Sidon can’t help but chuckle at the expression, and as he does, Link’s expression softens as he laughs in return.

“I must admit, you’ve done a good job keeping this skill a secret,” Sidon says. “I had no idea you had such passion for the culinary arts!”

“Me either,” Link admits, taking out the Sheikah Slate as he speaks. He fiddles with it a little, and Sidon marvels as ingredients appear in his lap - oats, an apple, honey, and sugar. He puts aside the apple and throws the rest into the pot. “Started remembering things when I found them.”

Sidon tilts his head, watching Link at work. He stirs the pot a bit before starting to cut up the apple, and, in a rare event, continues talking without being prompted.

“Everything in Hyrule that you can eat,” he says, “I know it. Like walking. Or swinging a sword.”

“You said you learned how to make that dish in Rito Village, though,” Sidon says. “Do you…?”

Link shakes his head, and lifts up his half-cut apple to see.

“Know ingredients, know how to cook...” he says, “but no recipes. Not from before.”

“I’m sorry, Link,” Sidon says. Link returns to cutting his apple, brows furrowing.

“Not your fault,” he says, rather forcefully. Then, looking back up to meet Sidon’s eyes with a suddenly intense gaze, he adds, “And… I’ve learned new ones.”

“I’m very glad for that,” Sidon says, with a wide smile. His chest feels warm all of a sudden. “Ah, speaking of, what is it you’re making now?”

“Horse treats,” Link replies, dumping the apple bits into the pot and stirring experimentally. Sidon looks over his shoulder at where Midnight is grazing peacefully and smiles.

The remainder of their travels that day are what Sidon would consider a microcosm of the experience of travelling with Link.

They haven’t gotten over one hill before Link is distracted again.

He spots a shrine - glowing in a conquered shade of blue, thankfully - and some promising looking ore nodes and rushes right off with the insistence that he’ll only be a few minutes. Sidon is well used to this by now, but they’d spent longer on breakfast than usual to allow the horse treats to properly reduce and dry, and he’s feeling a little antsy to make progress.

He gives Link just that, a few minutes, before going after him.

“Link, I think we should make ha-”

He stops.

Link is frozen hunched over a node of ore, trying to pry out a chunk of amber with…

“Is that the sword that seals the darkness? ” Sidon asks, aghast.

“Uh,” Link looks between Sidon and the Master Sword with the look of a man weighing his options, “maybe?”

“You’re using the blade of evil’s bane as a pickaxe?”

Link frowns.

“Thing has a lot of names,” he grouses.

“Oh my gods, Link, don’t you need that in order to defeat Ganon?” Sidon grasps the air as if to magic some sense into his friend.

“It’s fine,” Link grunts, giving a last little stab at the rock. Two things happen. First, the amber chunk comes dislodged, rolling neatly to Link’s feet. Second, the Master Sword’s blade cracks and rusts right through as if by magic.

The two of them stare at the damaged blade for a loaded second before Link speaks up.

“This isn’t as bad as it loo-”

“It looks very bad! ”

They’re just coming up on the Plateau and Sidon is lost in thought when Link grabs his arm and tugs him off the path; Midnight is undergoing a similar treatment, if her quiet whinny of protest is to be believed. He opens his mouth to ask what’s going on, but then he sees it.

It’s a Lynel. Not just that, but it’s a Silver Lynel, a true terror. Lynels like that eat the Lynel on Shatterback Point for breakfast, if what he’s read is to be believed. Sidon swallows. Not only that, but Lynels in general have a nasty habit of carrying around shock arrows. Judging by the fact that Link is pulling them away and behind a ruined wall for cover, he’s thinking the same thing.

“What shall we do?” Sidon asks, hushed. He has to resist craning his neck to try and see over the wall, well aware that his crimson scales aren’t prime camouflage. Link, who’s stroking Midnight’s muzzle to calm her down, shakes his head.

“Fight it,” he says. His head turns in the direction of the path and he frowns. “Weird, though. Never seen one here.”

“Yes, Lynels are generally territorial, aren’t they?” Sidon hums thoughtfully. He perks up. “Well, I’m certain that you’ll prevail!”

Link smiles, then inches forward to peek over the wall at the threat. He hands Midnight’s reins to Sidon. In an instant, he’s shooting up a nearby support beam onto the decrepit second floor of the ruin. He whistles sharply, sending Midnight into a struggle; Sidon manages to keep her behind cover, with some effort.

Once the horse is firmly in hand, Sidon peeks around the side of the wall. Despite his firm belief that Link can handle it, the Lynel is still a fearsome beast. He feels a chill as it spots Link and roars.

Link jumps, and Sidon watches in awe as he whips out his bow.

It’s all over in a second. There’s a glimmer of blue as the bow snaps back, and then it sails towards the Lynel and explodes in a ring of light not unlike one of Link’s rune bombs. Maybe explodes isn’t the right word. It evaporates.

“LINK!” Sidon pops up from cover, running over to where his friend has alighted upon the ground. “That was amazing! Truly marvelous!”

Link just looks disgruntled. He walks forward and crouches to touch the ground that, seconds prior, had been occupied by the fell beast.

“You took it out in one shot! My goodness, I’ve never heard of anything like it!” Sidon carries on excitedly.

“No parts…” Link mutters, drawing himself up.

“Er, pardon?” Sidon finally catches himself, tilting his head at Link in confusion. Link looks… disappointed.

“Used an ancient arrow by mistake,” he explains. “Now there’s no parts. Needed those.”

Sidon takes a moment to process.

“So what you’re saying is…” He clasps his hands together. “You’re quite indifferent to the feat of taking down the most deadly creature imaginable in one stroke because…”

“No parts.” Link gives him the side-eye.

Sidon laughs and claps him on the back. Link is propelled a few inches forward with a muted “oof” and blinks up at him owlishly.

“Only you, my friend.” Sidon grins, and Link rolls his eyes.

“Needed those!” He protests, arms crossed, even as the two of them go back to fetch Midnight before riding on.

The Great Plateau looms up on their left as it has for the last few hours. Link has taken to Midnight’s back, slowing her normal trot to a walk that matches Sidon’s. They’ve been conversing, insofar as Link could be said to converse, quite pleasantly. Sidon is in a good mood; he’s found that Link has a few subjects to which he tends to be a little more enthusiastic in responding to: food, horses, the pictures he takes with the Slate, and, as Sidon is discovering, various athletic pursuits.

“Easier to get around the desert,” Link says, hefting his radiant shield. “Snow, too.”

“I don’t suppose I’d be well-suited to shield surfing,” Sidon laments. “Zora warriors are mostly trained with spears, so I’m unused to handling one.”

“Selmie’d teach you,” Link says, strapping the shield back in place.

“Selmie?” Sidon asks, with great interest.

“She’s up on Hebra.” Link shrugs. “Visit once in a while.”

“Ah, so she’s a friend?” Sidon asks. It comes out a little too hastily and he’s not sure why, just like he’s not sure why he’s so relieved when Link just nods his response without much fanfare.

He’s so absorbed in their conversation that he’s taken a little by surprise when a traveler, a Hylian woman, jogs to catch up with them.

“What was it…” She sighs loudly.

Next to him, Link sits up straighter in the saddle. Sidon takes little notice, though.

“What was what?” he asks, and the woman sighs again, theatrically.

“What’s that word…? It’s on the tip of my tongue, but I just can’t think of it.” She crosses her arms. “It starts with L… and ends with K. What is it, though…”

Link groans.

“That’s certainly a conundrum, miss,” Sidon says, nodding sympathetically. “Do you remember what it meant?”

That earns him a look. From both of them.

“I… no,” she says, a little peevishly.

“That’s no matter! Let’s go through a few. Maybe it will jog your memory,” he says, clapping his hands together. “Lurk, look, like - oh, my mistake, that one ends in an ‘e’, doesn’t it?”

“They sound like the word I’m looking for,” she says. “I’m just not su-”

“Oh, good, we’re on the right track!” Sidon gives her one of his best encouraging grins, and he hears muffled laughter from Link’s direction. He looks over to see Link’s face buried in Midnight’s mane as he seemingly fights back a tide of laughter. “Come, Link, don’t be rude.”

The girl brightens.

“Yes… We meet aga-” she begins, only to be cut off by Link.

“Leek,” he suggests, drawing himself up with a straight face.

“That’s not-”

“Oh, what about lark?” Sidon suggests. Link nods sagely.

“Luck,” he adds.

“Could you please-” the Hylian traveler growls.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure we’ll get it eventually!” Sidon says. “We’ll be travelling all day, after all. We’re going to the Gerudo Desert - Do you know it? Oh, I’m certain you must. It’s in this direction, after all. We’re going to see the seven statues of the heroines, which I have to say I’m excited to see in person after all I’ve rea-”

“AAUGH! ” The traveler throws down her shield onto the ground with a clatter, startling Midnight. She points at Sidon like her finger is a weapon. “You have no respect for espionage, you, you brute!”

“I beg your pardon?” Sidon asks, drawing a hand to his chest. Behind him, he hears Link snort.

“Begone, enemy of my master!”

There’s a poof of smoke, and a strangely-garbed red figure appears in the traveler’s place. Sidon reaches for his spear, but Link is already in motion, jumping past him with a claymore drawn. Two strokes later, the attacker retreats in another puff of smoke, leaving behind only a bunch of bananas and some rupees. Link reaches down to pick them up as Sidon gapes at the absurdity of what just happened.

“What… was that?” he asks.

“Ninja attack,” Link replies, like he’s describing a mild shift in the weather.

“Ninja attack,” Sidon repeats.

“Happens sometimes.” Link shrugs, moving back to leap onto Midnight’s back.

“... You might have said something,” Sidon says, as they begin to move forward again. Link twists around in the saddle and grins.

“Could’ve,” he admits.

Sidon huffs.

The two of them arrive at Outskirts Stable nearer to dusk, after winding through a path between two steep cliff faces that make Sidon feel small against the landscape. He’s beyond tired from a whole day of walking, and the prospect of sleeping under any kind of shelter from the elements, even if it’s not one of the domain’s gentle, warm pools, is welcome. Link has never once shown any indication of fatigue, or maybe he’s just better at keeping it to himself, but Sidon thinks that he notices him perking up as the stable becomes visible around the bend.

Despite the lack of greenery in the canyon leading up to it, the stable itself is situated next to a copse of trees, and is every bit as inviting as the Riverside Stable. There are various stable hands going about their business as well as a few travelers, and, oddly, the merchant with the beetle-shaped backpack again.

While Sidon takes in his surroundings, Link goes over to the front desk and checks Midnight in for the night. He also fills out some kind of paperwork for a horse transfer, the details of which elude Sidon in his mental gymnastics to justify how the beetle merchant could have possibly beaten them there. He’s so involved with the task, in fact, that it isn’t until Link’s interaction turns to the absurd that he tunes back in.

“... Wait, aren’t you the madman who rode in on the Lord of the Mountain?” the man at the desk asks, and Link shoots a very conspicuous glance at Sidon before shrugging noncommittally.

“Might’ve,” he grants.

“The Lord of the Mountain?” Sidon asks, and Link visibly squirms.

“The patron spirit of Mount Satori!” The innkeeper gestures at Link. “This one showed up riding it a few weeks back. He tried to register it!”

“Don’t see the big deal,” Link crosses his arms. Sidon stares.

“Maybe you’re not afraid of being cursed, but I’ll hedge my bets, thank you very much.” The Hylian takes the papers Link had been working on and puts them away under the desk with a crisp and final shuffle.

As Link wanders over towards the cooking pot off to the side of the main building, Sidon graces him with raised eye ridges.

“What?” Link finally asks, as they come to rest and he pulls out the slate to browse through ingredients.

“I just don’t understand how you could see the patron spirit of a mountain and decide…” Sidon pauses. He wants to finish off with “... to ride it.” But he does understand, sort of. He’s spent long enough with Link to follow the chain of logic that must have led to that decision (it’s very straightforward), though he’s not entirely sure how Link hasn’t been smited by the gods several times over.

How in Hyrule does that make him feel fond?

“You too?” Link sighs, and glances over at the main building. He pokes at the slate a few times and summons up some rice, mushrooms, and trout.

“My apologies,” Sidon says. “If it’s any condolence, I don’t think you’re a madman.”

“Don’t think I’m,” Link’s face splits into a grin as his eyes light up, pointing at the building, “unstable? ”

“Oh my gods, Link,” Sidon groans, and then reluctantly joins his friend in laughter.

Link feels good. Great, actually. He only remembers a few months since his awakening at the Shrine of Resurrection, but he’s never had a day where he’s smiled as much as he has today. Digging into dinner, he listens to Sidon talk about this and that and just watches him.

Sidon, who is always welcoming when he visits the domain, seems to have lost even that little bit of formal distance that he’d maintained as a prince. He’s impeccably clean about eating his food, and not for the same reason that Link licks his fingers clean, but he’s laughing and waving his arms about to demonstrate a point, sharp teeth flashing grins in Link’s direction.

He fills in some empty space that Link isn’t entirely sure he even knew was there, the little bumps along the way somehow smoothing out into a companionship that he wishes would go on and on… Forever.

The thought catches in his mind and he frowns.

This isn’t going to go on forever, is it? In not too long, they’ll have concluded their business in the desert, saved Zora’s Domain, and Sidon will, as he puts it, be confined to the domain for the rest of Link’s natural lifespan, even past the defeat of Ganon.

“... Link? Are you okay?” he hears, and jerks his head up. Sidon is looking down at him with a worried frown.

Link blinks, and feels a small stab of guilt. He’s bringing down the mood.

“Forgot something,” he says, pulling himself up to stand. Sidon nods, expression smoothing out, and Link walks over towards the little wooded area across the road from the stable.

He just needs a moment to himself. And there is something he’s been meaning to do here, now that he thinks about it.

The redheaded Hylian woman (Aliza, he remembers) is still sitting under that tree, position more or less unchanged from the last time he saw her. Link idly wonders as he approaches, strapping the master sword across his back, what else she even does with her time. It seems futile to him to just sit around waiting for what you want all day, on top of other concerns.

There’s no reason not to indulge her, though, so he waves as she notices him.

“So did you meet the hero of Hyrule?” she asks, and he casts aside his mood for a moment to have some fun.

“I am he,” he says, poofing out his chest.

“WHAT?!” the girl jumps back a little, hand brought up to her face. Link has to hand it to her; he would need several hours in front of a mirror to achieve a shock so precisely aghast. “So… it WAS you!”

He nods stoically. Heroically, in his opinion.

“That sword is proof enough…” she leans forward to look over Link’s shoulder to look at the hilt. “I’M SO HAPPY RIGHT NOW!”

Link sees movement in the corner of his eye, and sees Sidon crossing the road. Oh, he thinks suddenly, this is probably going to give off entirely the wrong impression the way it’s going. He’s jarred out of that thought process by the glitter of a star fragment as the woman hands it to him.

“This… Is a little something I’ve been saving for you. Please take it,” she says shyly, pressing the valuable object into his arms. Sidon is right within earshot now, and he doesn’t look happy.

“Uh, thanks,” Link says, and it disappears into the slate’s endless storage with a discreet tap.

“Link, a messenger just came in and-” Sidon starts, but he’s cut off mid-sentence.

“Oh, man. It feels SO good to check that off the bucket list!” Aliza stretches her arms like she’s just finished some kind of exercise. She looks between the two of them and puts a hand on her hip, turning back to Link. “But… now that I’ve met you, some of the excitement is gone. I mean, you’re not exactly my type.”

Link opens his mouth to reply, but to his surprise, Sidon beats him to it.

“‘Not your type’?” he asks, as though the very idea offends him. Link feels his cheeks heat up. “I don’t know about Hylian tradition, but to give a gift like that with insincerity… That’s unthinkably hurtful!”

Aliza sniffs.

“Well, he’s just not what I expected from the hero, that’s all,” she says.

“I will have you know that Link is the finest warrior I have ever seen, who possesses the kindest heart among any Hylian I have met,” Sidon says, drawing up to his full height. His voice is dripping with disdain so thick that it seems to pierce even Aliza’s dreamy self-preoccupation. “All this in addition to being an excellent companion and friend. Anyone would be lucky to be close to him. I can only assume you have exceedingly poor taste.”

Aliza looks as though she’s going to cry. This isn’t helped by Sidon’s towering height or the fact that, absent his usual affable expression, he looks terrifying. Before this can escalate any further, or before Link can die from mortification, he steps in.

“Enough,” he says, shooting Sidon a look. “Let’s go.”

Sidon draws back, looking like he wants to say more, but Link frowns deeply and shakes his head, tilting it towards the stable. There’s a tense second, but he gives in, turning on his heel and stalking back across the road. Link follows.

Once they’re out of earshot, he speaks up.

“What was that? ” Link can hear the disbelief in his own voice.

“I simply found the way she was treating you to be unacceptable,” Sidon says. He runs a hand over his headfin and lets out a breath. “I… I suppose I stepped over the line.”

“Uh, yeah,” Link says. “Didn’t know you could sound like that.”

Sidon winces.

“Perhaps ‘stepped’ is too mild, then,” he sighs. “I’ll be sure to apologize to her before we go. And to you as well, Link. I didn’t mean to…”

“It’s okay,” Link says, eyes firmly pointed at the ground, “It was… you said nice things. About me.”

“I’m… sure you don’t need me to jump to your defense,” Sidon says.

“No one ever…”

She cries out, a defiance against fate, and light erupts from her form.

It’s not a full memory, like the other ones; he hasn’t seen a picture to spur on the recollection and so it remains a murky flash in the dark, more of an impression than anything.

He knows with certainty that what he was about to say is a lie.

“No one ever does,” Link finishes, looking up to meet Sidon’s eyes with a sudden intensity. He sees his friend’s eyes widen just a fraction.

“Link…” Sidon says. He seems to chew on Link’s response for a moment. His gait, previously crisp with anger, slows. “I am… truly sorry. Perhaps, then, I haven’t been a very good friend.”

Link shakes his head violently.

“No one except you.” He amends, and then holds out a hand when Sidon opens his mouth to respond. He feels his lips curve into a grimace. “I’m… the hero. Don’t mind, but…”

“There are certain expectations,” Sidon says quietly. “Shoes to fill.”

“Yeah,” Link says.

There’s a certain quiet as they reach the threshold of the stable’s roof, where people are starting to filter in for the night. Murmurs of conversation slip past them. Link turns around and sits upon the wooden steps. Sidon joins him.

“I must confess,” Sidon says, “I have thought often about how things would be if my sister had lived, one hundred years ago.”

Link stiffens, watching Sidon out of the corner of his eye. He’s gazing at the stars over the forest, eyes unfocused.

“I’m sorry. I know it must be a sensitive topic for you…” he continues. “But bear with me for a moment. When I met you, I began to think of it in terms of how nice it would have been, had you wed. I would have been your brother-in-law, yes?”

Sidon turns and puts a hand on Link’s shoulder, a gentle touch despite how large it is in comparison to Link’s frame.

“I feel silly, now, for surely that was just my desire to be closer to you, my dearest friend.” He smiles, a more subdued and soft smile than Link is used to. “If I’ve failed to notice that you needed my help, then… I’m sorry. I’ve betrayed my very own desires. I’ve said it before, but... if you ever need me, if you ever need someone to come to your aid, hero of Hyrule, I swear to provide it.”

“Sidon…” Link’s voice wavers. He feels a wetness on his cheeks, then rolling down his chin, and then he’s hugging the huge Zora with a grip like a vice. Sidon’s arms fold around him, warm and strong, and he struggles to get out the most important words.

“Th-thank you.”

That night, Sidon stares up at the fabric roof of the stable from his makeshift bed of blankets.

He feels silly, now.

His little fantasy about being Link’s brother-in-law doesn’t feel right anymore, and he knows exactly why.

Sidon awakens with a distinct dryness in his mouth and scales, and it takes him a moment to remember where he is - not at home in his private pool, where anyone with any sense would spend the night, but out in a Hylian-run stable further afield than he’s ever been from home. He pushes the negativity out of his head with a grunt and a roll of his shoulders. It’s probably just the soreness from four cumulative nights of sleeping on a hard surface talking. And the news, but... He wonders how Link does it.

Link… The events of last night come flooding back to him. Oh, yes, Sidon remembers with a tinge of embarrassment. He’s going to have to remember to apologize to the Hylian woman before they depart, and, oh, there’s the matter of his newly-realized feelings. Feelings he needs to process, which have made themselves known at an incredibly awkward time.

All of that aside, though, Sidon feels a little buzz of elation thinking about it. Thinking about Link, that way, openly acknowledging what he’s been edging around out of respect.

Sidon runs a hand over his headfin and sighs. A nearby stablehand sideyes him, and he decides to vacate the pile of blankets that they’d arranged in compensation for his inability to fit in a Hylian-sized bed.

He makes his way out the open front of the stables to be greeted by the scent of woodsmoke mingling with the delectable scent of some kind of creamy dish. His face breaks out into a smile as he spots Link at the cooking pot, tending to some kind of soup. Midnight grazes nearby, and Link, who of course had noticed the moment he walked out the stable, is waving at him.

Sidon makes his way over and sits down on the makeshift little stool opposite his friend. He tilts his head at the contents of the pot, which are bubbling merrily.

“How long have you been up?” he asks.

Link graces him with a smirk that says wouldn’t you like to know , and Sidon narrows his eyes suspiciously.

“Come to think of it, you’ve been up before me every day,” he says. “How do you do it?”

“Chowder?” Link offers him a bowl of what appears to be, true to his word, shell chowder. It smells delectable.

“Bribing a prince,” Sidon tuts in disapproval before taking his bowl and sipping at the hot liquid gingerly. Link grins.

Sidon feels his heart flutter. He concentrates very hard on the contents of the soup, which is fortunately very easy because it is every bit as delicious as it smells.

“This is fantastic!” he says, once the soup has cooled down and he’s able to really savour the taste. “I’ve never had blueshell prepared this way. Where did you learn it?”

“Experimented,” Link shrugs, though he’s got the tug of a flattered smile at the edge of his lips.

“I’ve said that you always have a home at the domain, but I think that you may also have a job, if you wanted it.” Sidon laughs. “I don’t think even the staunchest elder’s grudge could hold against the force of your cuisine.”

“Kind of busy,” Link notes with amusement. He starts to fill a bowl of his own.

“I mean after all of this is over, of course.” Sidon waves a dismissal.

Link doesn’t reply right away, filling up his bowl with chowder and blowing over its surface with a frown.

“Haven’t really thought about it,” he says. His face is suddenly more stoic than Sidon has become accustomed to.

“Oh?” He frowns himself, sitting up a little more at attention.

“There’ll be…” Link trails off, taking a sip of chowder. “Zelda. I guess.”

Sidon takes a firm mental hold of the mixed cauldron of emotions that hit him at the mention of the princess. He remembers her, vaguely, from his very earliest youth. She’d been there when…

Should fate ever part us… I’m counting on you to protect our beloved home from harm.

How clearly he remembers those words, when everything else from that time is impressions and colours and simple feelings.

And of course, there’s the actual matter at hand. There’s something odd about it.

“You guess?” Sidon prods gently. Link sighs, setting down his bowl and leaning back. He looks at the sky as if for an answer.

“I’ve been… looking,” he says, rocking back forward and pulling out the Sheikah Slate. He pulls up one of the pictures on the first page, the one that he always skips over when showing Sidon his own captures. Twelve landscapes, about half of them titled in Hylian script. “For memories.”

It takes a moment for it to dawn on Sidon.

“The slate used to be hers,” he guesses. Link nods. “And those pictures… were taken by her, as well?”

“I find them and… remember. A little,” Link says. He withdraws the slate and sets it on his lap, swiping across the screen to view them one after another. His expression is troubled. Sidon feels a stab of sympathy at his plight.

“You said that you almost felt as though it was easier when you didn’t remember.” he says.

“She wanted me to. Arranged it,” Link says, and swallows. “Must not have had a lot of time. Must’ve been important.”

Oh, Sidon thinks. He suddenly feels a little crestfallen.

Then he has a thought.

“You’ve been taking pictures of everywhere we’ve been,” he breathes.

“Yeah,” Link says, face trained on the slate’s screen.

“In case of…”

“Yeah,” he repeats.

“So if…”

“Yeah.”

“You could…”

“Yeah,” Link’s ears are starting to turn red.

“Link…” Sidon is touched and his heart aches on Link’s behalf all at once.

“The messenger!” Link blurts out, returning his gaze to Sidon’s very suddenly.

“Huh?” Sidon almost jumps in surprise. He nearly spills some of his soup.

“Yesterday. When you…” Link elaborates.

“Ah. Yes.” Sidon frowns deeply. He feels a sensation like a dull weight settle in his stomach. “A rider from the Wetland Stable came bearing news last night. They had nearly exhausted their horse, the poor thing, and apparently they switched out to a fresh one on the way.”

“Two days. About.” Link mutters. Sidon’s face is grim as he continues.

“They said that, at the time they had left, the water in the wetlands had been completely overrun by a strange field that electrified the water.”

“That’s…” Link’s eyes widen.

“Faster than anticipated. Yes.”

“Why didn’t you…?”

Sidon sighs.

“Forgive me. I became… Sidetracked. And then I thought it best to wait, since there was little we could do after a full day’s ride in any case.”

Link takes a deep swig of his chowder and wipes his mouth. When he finishes, his mouth is set in a determined line.

“Let’s go.”

As Link waits for the stablehands to bring Midnight over, he snaps a picture of the front steps.

The Gerudo highlands loom in the distance as Sidon and Link start off overland. The terrain is definitively rocky, and the sun has yet to crest the cliffsides at points, casting long pockets of shadow across their path. Despite the fact that there are still pockets of water around, Sidon’s scales are already feeling the drier air, a constant itch. Link promises that there is a pond near the stable at the gateway to Gerudo desert, which is a relief, but this is the longest day of their journey, and all of it is walking, at that.

Sidon doesn’t complain. He’s too focused on other things, which he wishes were limited just to acting normally around an ill-timed crush. The news about the aberration’s spread is deeply concerning, and the part of his mind that is reserved for Domain matters is contemplating how the advanced timescale will affect the elders’ preparations. He doesn’t like the answers he’s coming up with.

“You’re quiet,” Link says, suddenly, breaking the silence. Sidon blinks as he looks up (or, well, not too far down in any case, given that Link’s height while mounted is still short of Sidon’s height) to meet Link’s eyes. His friend looks concerned.

“Ah, it’s just…” Sidon pauses. “I’m worried about the Domain.”

Link nods, but he doesn’t look away, staring expectantly.

“I know, this was my idea,” Sidon sighs, “but it pains me to hear what is going on while I’m absent. And father… He must be… I didn’t tell him where I’d gone, though I’m certain that Muzu can put together the pieces.”

“He seemed upset,” Link hums thoughtfully. “Maybe he knew?”

Sidon shoots Link a questioning glance.

“Muzu,” Link elaborates, “seemed… annoyed?”

Sidon blinks at Link for a few seconds before it hits him. Yes, Muzu had been acting rather tetchy whenever Link showed up of late, despite having seemingly gotten over his prejudice towards Hylians and having made peace with Mipha’s decisions. He’d been acting out of sorts, in fact, since Link had started to come by to see Sidon more often...

“Ah,” Sidon says, burying his face in his hands. He could simply perish of mortification. “No, I don’t think he foresaw our little adventure. It must have been something else.”

“Okay,” Link, gods-blessed Link, says, taking Sidon completely at his word.

“In, in any case, you said we’ll reach the desert by tomorrow morning?” he says, removing his hands from his face and straightening his posture reflexively. It’s a fairly transparent change of subject, but Link either doesn’t notice or is gracious enough to play along. He breaks eye contact with Sidon and gazes ahead at the path.

“Yeah. Long way, though,” he says, and frowns, sniffing the air.

“What is it?” Sidon asks, recognizing the alertness that comes over Link’s face. There’s an enemy somewhere near.

“Fire,” Link says, dismounting. He speaks a few soothing words to Midnight, who already looks somewhat spooked.

Sure enough, Sidon catches the scent of a fire as they approach a bend in the road. Link creeps ahead, and ducks back after peeking over a crest in the road.

“Thought so. Two Moblins, wizzrobe,” he says, in that clinical way of his. He clicks his tongue thoughtfully. Sidon nods his understanding and pulls out his spear.

“Is it going to be difficult?” Sidon asks, because he truly hasn’t seen what he would consider a limit on what kind of threat Link is up to facing. Link shakes his head after stealing another quick look.

“Wizzrobes warp, but go down fast,” he explains, and he stretches out a hand to stroke Midnight’s mane as her ears flick back and forth.

Link takes a moment to regale him with a smile, which Sidon is unable to resist reciprocating. He gestures with his chin at Sidon’s spear.

“Good for fighting Wizzrobes,” he says. “Don’t give it an opening. I’ll get the Moblins. You ready?”

Sidon nods resolutely, as Link saddles back up.

They start out with the element of surprise. Sidon is sure that most travellers don’t, because the clearing, surrounded on most sides by cliffs and on one with a steep drop into water, doesn’t leave much room for hiding. Link’s solution to this conundrum is to ride in like a Keese out of Death Mountain, sword at the ready, rushing the two Moblins and attracting the attention of the Wizzrobe. Sidon doesn’t give it an opportunity to interfere, though, slipping in behind and engaging it in the blasted ruins of several small houses.

As Link specified, the Wizzrobe has a habit of disappearing and reappearing somewhere else. In his haste to avoid becoming grilled seafood, Sidon loses track of Link’s side of the battle, but he soon figures out the blasted creature’s tell and jabs it until it cries out and disappears, leaving behind only its fire rod. Sidon lets out a breath, picking the item up and stowing it in his travel bag.

When he gets to Link, the Moblins are long gone, but something is wrong.

Link is holding Midnight’s head in his hands, running a hand through her mane and speaking softly in indistinct syllables. Sidon jogs over with all due haste, looking between them and feeling concern bubble up in his chest.

“Link?” he says. “Is she alright?”

Link swallows thickly before responding.

“Close call,” he says, pointing to her flank. “Clubbed - almost got her leg.”

Sidon doesn’t know much about horses, but he briefly recalls a factoid about what happens to horses with broken legs. He feels a chill.

“Ah,” he says. “We should count ourselves fortunate, then.”

Absently, he notes that the constant itch in his scales has receded. The air is becoming more humid, and the clouds are gathering overhead. Link just nods.

He’s not looking amazing either, now that Sidon notices. There are some deep scrapes visible along his exposed leg, redness starting to blotch the area in the shape of a club.

“Is she in shape to continue our journey?” Sidon asks. It wouldn’t be too far back to the stable, he thinks, even as another part of him reminds that their timetable has been moved up and they’ve already wasted enough time.

Fortunately for Sidon’s warring priorities, Link nods again.

“Just a bruise,” he says, half to Sidon and half to his steed. It’s punctuated by another stroke of the mane. Midnight makes a soft sound and nuzzles into his chest.

“That’s relieving,” Sidon says. The clouds are really rolling in now, and Sidon looks up to the sky warily. Link follows his gaze, and his eyes narrows.

“Storm’s coming,” he mumbles. “We should hurry.”

“The weather has really been quite berserk since Calamity Ganon showed his face,” Sidon says, even as Link swings himself back up onto the saddle. “To think a thunderstorm could sneak up on us like this. How inconvenient.”

There’s a beat of silence.

“It’s not always like this?” Link asks, eyes wide.

Sidon, in Link’s opinion, is a wonderful person to spend time around, excellent at positive thinking, and all around a great person. This is why Link finds himself yelling at him in the middle of a thunderstorm as lightning strikes around them. Well, that’s not a totally fair summary of the situation.

Their problem is that there’s a Hinox sleeping in their way. Well, no, the problem is that there’s a Hinox sleeping in their only way over a bridge, and there are two of them so they can’t just trust in Midnight’s speed to run them past the danger as Link normally would, and they can’t sneak past it because the thunder has woken it up, and Sidon’s only usable weapon is made of metal, and Link doesn’t see why, exactly, this doesn’t mean that the only solution isn’t to let Sidon stay back while Link engages the enemy with a wooden sword and shield.

“Are you insane?” Sidon says, even as he’s clearly unable to master a flinch as lightning strikes nearby.

He’s being totally unreasonable, in Link’s opinion.

“I’ve got lightningproof gear!” Link has to raise his voice over the torrential rain, which is also probably the only reason the Hinox hasn’t noticed them one wooden bridge over from it.

“That thing is enormous!” Sidon counters. “What exactly is your plan!?”

“Kill it!”

“Link.” Sidon gives him a look. “That isn’t what I would define as a plan.”

Link grunts and taps at the slate, summoning up the required articles of clothing. One full set of rubber gear, which isn’t as protective as his normal set, but it will stop him from being struck by lightning, or maybe…

Come to think of it… It won’t stop the lightning, just what Link might call the downsides of being struck by lightning. He grins.

“I have a plan,” he says, starting to strip down to his shorts in order to change. Sidon looks like he might have had something to say, but he abruptly chokes on it and looks away.

“I do hope,” Sidon says, after Link has managed to get the (uncomfortable) tights on, “that your plan isn’t contingent on fairies.”

“No,” Link replies. He steps a little further away from Sidon before busying himself putting on a full set of metal equipment. Knight’s sword, steel lizal bow, and he doesn’t even bother switching out his customary radiant shield.  “Trust me.”

He can see immediately that that is that. Sidon’s concern ebbs off of his face and is replaced by more characteristic confidence.

“Of course,” he says. “I believe in you. Just do try to be careful! There isn’t much I can do to help.”

Link smiles and takes off toward the Hinox’s hulking form.

He shoots across the bridge, a rickety wooden affair in the best weather and slick with rain now as it comes down in curtains around him. The outcropping that the Hinox resides on is jutting out of the middle of several such earthen spikes, which drive out from the plunge pool of a waterfall off of a river from the Great Plateau. The River of the Dead, Link’s mind supplies in the moment, as lightning strikes and outlines the jagged lips of the canyon against the blackened sky.

He doesn’t waver in his purpose.

With all of the thunder ringing in his ears, it’s no surprise when the Hinox rears up to meet him.

More surprising is that it leads in with its fist, which Link nearly dives off of the cliff’s edge to avoid.

As he scrambles to put some distance between them and pulls out his bow, the effects of poor visibility become suddenly and starkly apparent. Normally, his strategy would be to hit the monster’s eye, which its considerately bright orange sclera and blue iris, to knock it down. But between the oppressive haze and the physical presence of the rain beating down, his shot goes awry, and his mistake is punished with an earth-shaking slam as the Hinox responds with both fists.

He stumbles back, gritting his teeth against the wave of pain from his side where the blow landed. Muffled by the roaring of the rain and the waterfall, he hears Sidon’s voice. It sounds alarmed, or maybe forcefully encouraging, or knowing him possibly both.

They dance like that, exchanging blows, for the duration of a heated exchange. Arrows useless as they are, he’s not able to knock it off-balance, but he’s still limber, and it’s oozing blood from its knuckles as Link starts to feel fatigue setting in. His right leg, where he’d been hurt earlier, is throbbing from exertion.

The hairs on the nape of Link’s neck raise and the tingling sparks of electricity shooting from his gear. Finally. As the Hinox winds up for another strike, its lumbering form drawing back, he darts in between its comparatively spindly legs and draws a knight’s sword, hacking into its one uncovered ankle and biding time -

Wait for it -

His equipment sparks.

Wait for it -

He doesn’t have to wait long.

Lighting crashes down from the sky. Link’s entire body feels the clap of thunder, one short CRACK that resounds throughout his whole body, down to his bones. Even knowing he’s not going to be hurt by it, the protective magic of the suit insulating him, the sound drowns and dazes him and the light blinds him.

It worth it, though, because the Hinox must have taken the full brunt of -

He’s grabbed around the middle.

It takes a moment for his senses to regain themselves, and when they do, he’s staring at a glowing blue iris nested in an orange sclera. It’s hard to tell without eyebrows, but the creature’s face is pulled down into a snarl, so it’s definitely angry.

This conclusion is supported by the fact that it’s beginning to squeeze, and it hurts, oh gods it hurts. He feels its two gigantic fingers and thumb wrapped around his body, pinning down his left arm against his ribs.

So the lightning didn’t work, he thinks, sardonic. His eyes casting about for any sign of damage, he finds none - oh, but wait, even through the rain, he can see a black mark against the blue-grey skin of the Hinox, a bloom of twisting branches that spreads out across its flesh. So it was hit, but it didn’t do anything.

He notices the metal weapons jangling around the Hinox’s neck and feels incredibly stupid.

He hears Sidon’s voice again, and it’s louder this time, closer. He prays silently that the prince has the sense to keep his distance and not pull out a very conductive silver spear in the middle of a lightning storm -

Link’s thoughts come to a screeching halt as one of his ribs cracks under the pressure. Involuntarily, he cries out. Bad idea, he can’t breathe like this - the damned Hinox knows it, too, its single piercing eye drilling into Link’s.

Link would gasp if he could.

Piercing eye.

His sword - on the ground. Out of reach. The bow on his back is bladed and metal and would do the trick, if he could get it in the right place, but what he really needs is -

“Link!” Link’s head whips around in tandem with the Hinox’s and he sees Sidon’s outline, holding his spear, the stupid great idiot, which is already sparking and oh at least he’s clearly winding up to throw it but if it goes over the side…

A plan of action solidifies in Link’s mind, a very unpleasant one, and he would groan had he the air to spare. He doesn’t have the time to spare, either, so he gets to it.

He pulls the lizal bow off of his back with his one free hand and drives it into the skin between its thumb and finger, blade-first. The Hinox roars, and suddenly the crushing pressure becomes a white-hot full-body pain and he’s being swung around like a ragdoll, up in an arc, down -

Something vital snaps as he meets the hard ground and he momentarily blacks out.

But then he’s surrounded in a blue-bubbled aura, and he comes back to in an achingly familiar feeling of safety and warmth as his bones reset themselves and his myriad wounds heal in less than the span of a second.

Sidon is screaming his name.

‘It is my pleasure,’ a phantom presence whispers in his ear, and he willfully ignores the dead for the living as he rolls into a dead run at Sidon, who rears back with wide eyes as though Link himself were a ghost, but not fast enough to stop Link from grabbing his spear and turning on a dime to throw it even as the last warning spark tingles down his arm.

It hits the Hinox squarely in its pupil and the monster throws it head back to bellow, just as the sky opens up and lightning blinds them as it strikes the shaft of the spear buried in its eye.

When the light is no longer searing and the last rumble has passed, Link opens his eyes. The Hinox is slumped, on its knees, shape indistinct and dark as it fades, culminating in a flash of purple smoke as it disappears. It leaves behind a pile of odds and ends and weapons, in the centre of which lies Sidon’s gleaming spear.

The two of them stay there in place for some time longer than is strictly necessary, and once the adrenaline high comes down, Link realizes that he’s being held up at the shoulders by Sidon. His legs feel like chu chu jelly.

“I thought,” Sidon finally rasps, as the lightning strikes above peter out and the dull roar of the rain is all that’s left as it pours down on them, “that you were out of fairies.”

There’s something that Link isn’t saying.

This in and of itself isn’t a surprise, since when all is said and done, Link says very little. As they turn to go and fetch Midnight from the other side of the stretch of bridge they’d left her on, Sidon reformulates that thought into its more accurate, dreadful cousin.

There’s something Link isn’t telling him.

It’s hard to think right now, to be perfectly honest. The adrenaline of the moment, the moment where Sidon thought Link to be dead (and what a death that would have been to live with, to have his best friend die on his watch and to doom all of Hyrule with him) has well and truly receded, leaving behind a mental bog through which the passage of thought is slowed to a trickle.

At least it’s still raining. The dry itch under Sidon’s scales has receded, though he knows once they hit the highlands proper there will be no more relief until the pond at the stable. One look at Link makes him feel a twinge of guilt, because Hylians are not built to find relief in heavy rain. They’re walking in stride, Link’s face nearly blank and turned forward, concentrating on navigating Midnight over the soaked wood surface of the bridge. His golden locks are plastered to his forehead and he looks pale. There’s still blood on his clothes, probably the Hinox’s, though it’s being rinsed out by the deluge.

He can’t help but replay the scene in his head. His vision had been impaired by the rain, Link’s figure a blur, but he’d heard an awful crunch, and seen a blue light in the shape of a person, outline muddled by distance and rain but not a fairy at all, no fairy he’s ever seen, and then the next thing he’d known Link had been up and running at him -

“Did you plan that?” he asks, suddenly desperate to fill the silence. The rain has, luckily, slowed down enough that hearing each other won’t be a chore.

Link’s brow furrows and he side-eyes Sidon, blinking. He tilts his head in question.

Sidon sighs, trying to think of a better way to word the inquiry. He runs into the thought-bog once more and grimaces.

“That is, I had gathered that your initial strategy did not… pan out,” he says. “Which is why I attempted to intercede.”

“Almost got hit by lightning,” Link says, a frown tugging on the edges of his mouth.

“I’m aware,” Sidon says, and then, unable to keep the tetchiness out of his voice, adds, “but chastising me for a close brush with death seems a little hypocritical, right now, Link.”

Link’s mouth opens and then closes, and then his mouth forms a hard line and he looks away.

“I rather thought that you were going to die,” Sidon says. “And after promising to come to your aid I would hardly -”

“M’not mad at you,” Link says, holding one hand up to his throat. His voice comes out in a rasp.

Sidon blinks.

Rain continues to patter down on the planks as they pass. Whatever battle Link is fighting with his vocal cords takes a minute of silence to play out, and Sidon lets it. Eventually his hand relaxes and returns limp to his side opposite the one holding Midnight’s reins.

“I’m mad at me,” he says, and he looks so miserable all of a sudden that Sidon almost can’t stay upset at him.

Almost.

“That wasn’t a fairy,” Sidon says. Link looks over at him and his shoulders slump.

“No,” he says.

Sidon runs a hand over his headfins.

“Link…” he says.

“Can’t,” Link says. “Not now. Please?”

“Very well,” Sidon says. Perhaps, he thinks, it is a little unfair to press so soon after the fact. It’s not as though he’s thinking completely straight himself. Still, the rebuff stings.

“Thank you,” Link says, shaking him out of his thoughts.

“Er?” Sidon says.

“You’re right,” Link continues, fiddling with the reins. “Didn’t pan out.”

“Now that you say it, I feel as though it’s an understatement,” Sidon says. Link’s frown quirks up just a little.

“Yeah,” he says, with a hint of amusement. “Glad you were here.”

This time, ill-advised as it is (and, a part of him that sounds a lot like Muzu informs him, probably driven by some very particular feelings), Sidon really can’t stay upset. He reaches over and gives Link a pat on the back.

“Me too,” he says, with a tired smile.

Link wants to stop and rest, if only for Sidon’s sake. He’s looking tired already, probably half from the continued strain of overland travel and half from the adrenaline crash. Link can relate.

They can’t afford to slow down on this leg of the trip, though. They cross the remainder of the chain of bridges that make up the Digdogg Suspension Bridge, and while they’re doing that, Link’s mind races trying to figure out what in the name of Din, Farore, and Nayru he’s going to tell Sidon.

He can’t tell Sidon. The Zora prince is as forgiving as they come, but he’s not incapable of anger, and he just -

This is about Mipha.

Sidon will be mad.

The very thought of it leaves a heavy feeling in his throat, like there’s something physically blocking it. His hand ghosts up to his adam’s apple and hovers there for a moment before he forces it down.

The mouth of the last bridge spills into the beginning of Gerudo Canyon, the vegetation changing from sparse but healthy green grass to highland scrubs dotting yellowed grass that survives on the less rocky surfaces. The plateau veers away on the left and the view is taken by the orange-tinted bare rock of the Gerudo Highlands which tower into the distance ahead and around. Down the path, Link sees a wooden multi-leveled structure dotted with moving figures and sighs, already mentally working out the risk versus reward of taking the encampment out.

The masking sound of the rain, and Link’s preoccupation, is probably why the Bokoblins get the drop on them.

They come out on horseback from both sides, from hiding behind the jagged rock formations that dot the sides of the pass. They’re preceded by a volley of arrows, one of which finds its mark in Midnight. She lets out a distressed whinny, and in one deft buck Link finds himself flung from the saddle and spilled onto the ground.

There’s a moment of supreme disorientation before he’s dragged to his feet by Sidon, where the hoofbeats of Midnight, who’s galloping away from the fray, and the enemy horses intermingle into one cacophony of noise, but it passes quickly enough and his combat instincts kick in.

He and Sidon dive in opposite directions as one of the bokoblins makes a pass with a club. Link snaps back up from a roll with bow in hand, and with the twang of a bowstring and a thnk, an arrow sprouts from the bokoblin’s back. It lets out a screech and jerks to the left, falling from its place on the back of the wild horse it had claimed as its steed.

A horse which Link knows from observation that bokoblins tend to ride nearly to death, before... his mouth, set in a hard line, curls into a snarl.

It hadn’t fallen far, so it’s quick work to finish the little monster off. Link pulls his blade out of the bokoblin’s form as it dissipates into so much purple smoke and turns around to see Sidon drive his spear into - and clean through - the bowman atop the other horse, who’d clearly made the grave mistake of getting anywhere near someone wielding a polearm. Or maybe Sidon had simply closed this distance with his massive stride. Either way, Link sheaths his sword and stands, dazed, for a moment, before -

Midnight.

He pitches forward in the direction Midnight had taken flight and feels a rush of relief as he finds her behind a rock formation. She’s obviously agitated, ears swiveling wildly and shifting from foot to foot uncomfortably.

“Link -” Sidon jogs up beside him, breathless, and Link puts out an arm to bar him.

Link approaches cautiously, slowly, and from a slight angle, taking care to keep out of her blind spot. Midnight’s eyes are on him, but she doesn’t tense or start looking around or edging away.

Good. She’s not going to spook. He comes up to her side and takes a better look at the wound, hand carding its way through her mane in a soothing motion as he does.

The arrow hit home, alright, a clear shot in the front and straight through the skin over the shoulder. The arrow itself is long gone. It doesn’t look to have gone deep enough to cause major damage, but the expertise isn’t coming back to him to tell how bad it truly is, so it could be anywhere from a flesh wound to…

Link swallows.

Suddenly, he’s overcome with frustration.

I can come back from a broken neck, but Midnight gets shot and there’s nothing I can do.

Mipha’s power, the one she gave him, has yet to recharge after being expended to save him from said broken neck, but all the same he wills it to do something. From the hazy half-visions he’s recalled, she never had any trouble mending minor injuries.

Nothing responds to his call, and he balls up his spare hand into a fist, staring at the ground.

Someone else’s memories, someone else’s power.

“Is it bad?” Sidon asks, gentle tone cutting through Link’s thoughts. His head snaps back up.

I don’t know, he says, and then realizes that he didn’t actually say. His mouth opens again and nothing comes out.

Sidon looks concerned.

Link shrugs and shakes his head, hoping that his worried-yet-befuddled expression will convey what he means adequately enough.

“I’m afraid I don’t know either,” Sidon says, drawing nearer. Luckily, Midnight has calmed down enough and has become used to Sidon enough that she doesn’t bolt. “The bleeding could be worse, I imagine, but...”

Link frowns. It’s the kind of injury that will need medical attention from someone who knows what they’re doing, he knows that much. The bleeding has already slowed some, and the rain is letting up completely.

“Should we take her back to the stable?” Sidon asks, and Link can’t fault him for the note of reluctance he hears in his voice. They’re on a time limit, after all, a time limit which has only tightened since the news from that morning.

He grunts, pulling out the slate. He taps the screen a few times and a warm doublet appears in his grasp. Its use has long been eclipsed by his Snowquill gear, but he’s held onto it and the clothes from the spring of restoration out of a mix of apathy and an intense instinct to packrat everything he finds. Balling up the fabric, he presses it to Midnight’s side to stem the bleeding. She doesn’t jerk away, which is a good sign.

Good horse.

He shakes his head at Sidon and jerks his head towards the waiting pass.

“Very well,” Sidon says.

They continue on foot; Sidon gathers that Link doesn’t wish to strain his steed further than necessary, and on this leg of the journey, Sidon was unlikely to be able to keep up with a full trot for long anyway. Not with the rain leaving and the warm, dry air of Gerudo Canyon coming back with a vengeance. Even this early in the morning, it’s sweltering.

Link is walking next to Midnight, trying what looks like his level best to keep pressure on her wound or at least control the bleeding as well as can be expected. The task of holding the reins and leading her has been left to Sidon. It’s not difficult, even given his relative inexperience with the beasts.

What is difficult is… Link has been completely silent.

They’ve covered a fair distance, and even through Link’s small side-expedition to clear out a wooden watchtower crawling with bokoblins that overlooked the path, through their careful skirting away from a skull-shaped dome filled with more of the same (which, Sidon thinks, merits some kind of explanation, because really? The stonework looks almost natural, but he recalls seeing a near-identical one some ways off their path coming out of the wetlands), and even through the bout of communication necessary to coordinate walking Midnight to the shadows cast by the outcroppings of the canyon, where the heat is less oppressive out of the direct rays of the sun. Link had guided them through it nonverbally, with pointing and grunting and what gestures he could make with his one free hand.

For once, Sidon hasn’t had much to say himself. He’s - well, he’s not brooding. He’s simply not in the mood for light conversation, and isn’t sure how to broach this topic, and is turning it over and over in his head.

‘Are you okay’ is a frankly insulting question given the circumstances, but ‘what’s wrong’, while more specific, doesn’t seem much better. Sidon frowns to himself, worrying at his lower lip gently with his teeth. It’s dry.

He feels a tap around his lower back, and turns to see Link gazing up at him questioningly, head cocked to the side. Are you okay, his face seems to say, brows furrowed and a soft frown on his lips.

Oh, gods, he was definitely brooding.

“I was just thinking,” he says, looking ahead to make sure they’re not about to bump into the rim of the canyon before looking back over his shoulder at Link. “Are you…” He pauses, settling on the obvious question after all. “You’ve been quiet. Ever since the bridge.”

Link’s free hand flies to his throat, and he grimaces. Sidon blinks. He’s seen that gesture before, back in Zora’s domain, and earlier. It always seems to precede a particularly short and forced response.

“Are you… having trouble speaking?” he ventures, and Link’s features give way to a kind of relief. He nods.

Sidon turns that new information over, and some things begin to click into place. Link has always been less verbose when upset, hasn’t he? He’s opening his mouth to put that thought to words when Link beats him to it.

“Happens sometimes,” he says, almost in a mumble. “... Sorry.”

“It’s -” Sidon starts. Fine, he wants to say, but with everything left unsaid, it doesn’t feel fine. “- it’s not your fault. I can’t say I don’t want to talk about it, but if you’re literally unable...”

Link makes a frustrated noise, his nose scrunching up. He reaches up and runs his cloth bracer across his forehead, where sweat has accumulated on his brow in the day’s heat.

“You’ll be mad,” he says, finally. Sidon’s brow arches.

“Why would I be mad?”

“Because.” Link starts, and then his hand flexes over his throat once more, grasping at the air in front of it like he could squeeze the words out. “Shatterback. Diving. Remember?”

“I don’t think I could forget,” Sidon says, recalling that near-heart attack with no shortage of clarity. “What about it?”

“I -” he says, and then squeezes his eyes shut. “Ididn’thaveafairy.”

“What?” Sidon asks, and then his train of thought catches up with the implications of the query. “You said you did.”

Link’s eyes dart off to the side and he worries at his lip, a clear expression of thoughtfulness.

“I lied,” Link says, and he looks appropriately ashamed. “Kind of.”

“Kind of?” Sidon’s brow draws together and he frowns. There’s a stab of hurt that comes at Link admitting to telling him an outright falsehood, but he tries to push it aside for the moment. He needs to figure out the full story before deciding how to feel. He wants to decide how to feel after deciphering what Link is really trying to tell him.

Surely he has a reason for lying.

Unfortunately, his royal authority doesn’t seem to extend to his feelings, and Link’s face, which has gone carefully blank, isn’t making him any less uneasy.

Sidon rubs at his temple with his free hand.

“You didn’t have a fairy then,” he reasons, “but you did have… whatever that was.”

Link nods.

“Some sort of healing magic, though I haven’t the faintest idea where you’d have picked such a skill up,” Sidon says. “But why would I be mad at-?”

Oh, Sidon thinks, blood running cold even in the intense heat of their current locale. He looks away and forward, checking their path again, making a small adjustment.

He shakes his head, dismissing the thought. No, it couldn’t possibly be that. Surely she means more to him than that -

“Mipha,” Link says, and Sidon’s head whips right back around to see him tapping his chest. It takes him a moment to remember, to place the gesture in context - that had been where that odd orb had shot into Link’s body, the spirit’s prize for completing the trial -

Oh, Sidon thinks, again, and this time he doesn’t dismiss anything. His mind races forward without his permission, as does his mouth.

“Mipha - she gave you this power?” he asks. Link nods mutely. “You met her? She was - alive?”

Link is looking at the ground, now. He shakes his head.

“You met her spirit,” he corrects. “And she gifted you her power.”

Another nod.

It’s as painful and unexpected as the shock of being shot with an arrow out of the blue. Of course she did. That’s so entirely Mipha that Sidon is for a moment lost in a wave of emotions, a pain that had long since scarred over and now feels like it’s being torn open again, raw as the day she died, or maybe the day that he had grown up enough to realize what that truly meant.

Then he puts two and two together.

“You’ve been reckless,” Sidon says, and it comes out so sharply that Link straightens as though struck, blue eyes wide and meeting his own for the first time since his admission. “You’ve been reckless because you knew it didn’t matter if you were injured.”

At some point, they’d stopped walking. The canyon is narrow, here, and the walls above are lined with wooden platforms and walkways and flags and all sorts of architecture that under normal circumstances Sidon would be marvelling at. Instead, his world has focused down onto one point: Link, who doesn’t say anything, who doesn’t need to say anything because his guilty expression is speaking volumes.

“You know that Mipha would never have wanted you to use her gift that way,” he hisses.

“I know,” Link says.

Part of Sidon, the boy that loved his sister, would like very much to stand here and yell at him for the rest of the oppressively hot day and perhaps into the night as well.

The part of him that is Prince of Zora’s domain spurs him onwards.

“You were right,” Sidon says, turning and gently pulling at Midnight’s reins. They start moving again, and he doesn’t look back as he adds: “I’m mad.”

Being sullen is hard.

It’s not that Sidon doesn’t have it in him to be angry. If he’s being honest with himself, he can be downright tetchy when the mood strikes him. Difficult, even. His moods tend to be all-or-nothing affairs, occasionally to the detriment of monstrous Octoroks.

It’s just that sullenness is an emotion that has no release. It’s silent. Sullen silence, that’s how it’s called. Sullen silence had suited him for the first ten or so minutes of their continued journey, but now…

They’ve been walking for hours. The sides of the canyon have tapered inwards considerably, creating a sense of claustrophobia as the sky narrows to a broad, jagged line of blue above, crisscrossed with wooden walkways. Who uses those, he wonders. They haven’t seen a soul since arriving on this stretch of the road. Occasionally they pass under an archway of rock, and he hears the crumble and clatter of rocks falling not to far from their present location. It only puts him further on edge.

At least they’re out of the sun, but the dry air has only become drier as they trek on. It’s beyond uncomfortable. His scales are dry and itchy and it’s only with the most careful, princely self control that he resists scratching at them.

Link has been, when he dared to look over, blank-faced, eyes trained forward. When he hasn’t been looking, he sometimes hears him whisper small reassurances into Midnight’s mane. He feels eyes on the back of his head more often than not.

This is awkward. Silence usually isn’t, between them, but sullen silence is unbearable. The problem is that he’s still mad.

I want to go home, Sidon thinks, wearily. But that’s not really an option, is it? Oh, to hells with this.

“What I want to know is how you managed to run out of fairies in the first place,” he says, tilting his head back so as not to grace Link with full eye contact but still gauge his reaction.

Link’s facade is intact, but he does look up at being addressed.

“Used them,” he says, simply.

“All of them?”

“Yeah,” Link says.

The thing about Link’s distinctive style of speech is that it’s rather hard to determine when he’s being tight-lipped on purpose, Sidon reflects with a short flash of annoyance.

“You can use the slate to teleport to any shrine,” Sidon says. “Surely there must be one near a fairy fountain?”

“... Yes,” Link replies, and the pause speaks volumes.

“So it stands to reason that it would be a priority to pop over and retrieve some more, should you find yourself short.”

Link doesn’t say anything right away. From the corner of his eye, Sidon sees him look away.

“It’s,” he starts, and then seems to struggle to find the words. “I do.”

“You do.”

“Yeah.”

“Then -”

“I use them,” Link says, and there’s suddenly an edge to his voice.

“All of them?” Sidon asks. His eyes widen involuntarily and he turns more completely to look at Link.

Link nods.

“Frequently?” Sidon presses.

Link nods again, never breaking eye contact. His face is flat, but there’s something about the set of his eyes, something intense.

Sidon takes a breath.

“You’re implying that you straddle the line between life and death far more often than -”

“Mipha would have wanted,” Link snaps. “I know.”

Sidon rears back as though struck.

Link has never cut him off before. It actually takes him a moment to process the full impact of the words. When he does, he feels a hot flash of anger course through him.

“Than I would like!” he snaps right back, and he has the added effect of a mouth full of sharp teeth in the arena of snapping. “Do you honestly think that everything I feel stands in relation to my sister?!”

It’s Link’s turn to flinch, which he does, with eyes wide as saucers. Sidon realizes he may be looming over him. He can’t bring himself to care, because after all of this silence, now that he’s started talking it’s like a broken dam of words from a reservoir full to bursting.

“Gods know that everyone else does!” he says, throwing his hands in the air. “Yes, I loved her and I miss her, but may the three goddesses forbid that anyone forget for a second that she did this or that and how incredibly impressive and selfless it was! May I express one iota of disapproval for the frankly worryingly reckless behaviour of my best friend separate from my reverence to her memory? Is that permitted? ”

They’re not walking anymore. Link is standing shock still. He makes a half-rasp of a sound that might have been an attempt at a reply, one hand on Midnight’s upper flank.

“I just -” Sidon falters.

He’s literally been struck dumb by his words, Sidon realizes.

He groans, burying his face in his entirely-too-dry hands. Both itch. Everything itches.

“I just...”

He trails off.

He hears footsteps, and looks up to see Link pacing. Link is making an odd face, like he’s concentrating, and he clenches and unclenches his fists, one flying up to his throat and then lowering again. Sidon slowly lowers his hands to sit helplessly at his side as he waits for Link to regain speech. It must be important.

It’s taking a while, though. Sidon can’t bring himself to be mad at Link (more mad, anyway) that they’re being held up, as that is entirely on him, but he finds his gaze drifting as time presses on. Up and down the road, back to Link, up to the sky -

Up to the place where the canyon wall meets the sky, which is moving as a precariously-placed boulder wobbles, shifts, and starts to fall. Sidon’s eyes widen and his eyes follow its trajectory down to where Link is standing, having taken a momentary pause in his footsteps, mouth open as if to speak, finally -

Sidon barrels forward, running bodily into Link, who lets out a stifled cry as they both hit the hard stone of the canyon wall, Sidon’s bulk pinning Link’s smaller Hylian frame in place. At some point during the maneuver he’d landed on his knees, though Link still only comes up to his middle. There’s a single instant where Link’s wide eyes look almost fearfully up at his face before the boulder strikes the dirt behind them with an earth-shaking THUD. Then his eyes whip to it and back to Sidon, expression evening out from fear to simple shock.

“I’m -” Sidon is feeling a little shell-shocked himself. “I’m dreadfully sorry for the fright, there was no time to warn you, I had to -”

Link is hugging him tightly around the middle.

“- Ah,” Sidon says.

“I’m sorry,” Link says, into the space just under the bottom of his cravat. He’s shaking. Or are they both shaking? “You’re more important than Mipha.”

Oh. He hadn’t been aware he’d wanted so badly to hear that.

Sidon opens his mouth to respond, but Link is still talking.

“When I’m upset I just - I do dangerous - stupid - things. Sometimes. It takes my mind off it. It feels good. Like when I get to that edge, something else takes over and it knows what to do and I just don’t have to - to be there anymore,” he says. Sidon can feel his arms trembling, hands splayed out on Sidon’s back. “And I feel better after. Like right now, I almost died. I shouldn’t feel - I shouldn’t be able to talk, right? There’s something seriously wrong with me.”

“You wouldn’t have died,” Sidon says, once his brain catches up with the sudden waterfall of words. “Mipha’s gift -”

“- hasn’t recharged yet,” Link says. “I would’ve been a goner.”

Sidon freezes.

He looks over his shoulder at the debris.

“Oh, dear,” he manages, faintly.

“You still saved me,” Link says, quieter, though there’s still that manic edge to his tone.

“Of course, ” Sidon says. “I didn’t pause to think, oh, it’s fine, perhaps his unique magical spirit gift will save him!”

Link laughs. It starts small and then grows and grows until he’s pulling apart and dropping to sit against the canyon wall and wiping tears from his eyes.

“It’s not really funny,” Sidon crosses his arms.

Link shakes his head and giggles.

Sidon draws out a long, long sigh and slumps down next to him.

“... It’s very hard to stay mad at you when I’m so relieved you’re alive,” he says. “That’s not fair.”

“Sorry,” Link says, in between gasps for air, and oh, he’s in this odd spot where Sidon legitimately can’t tell if he’s laughing or crying. Perhaps both. “I didn’t want to tell you. I knew you’d be,” he sniffs. Oh, definitely crying now, “... Worried. And. Mipha.”

“Well,” Sidon says. “You were correct. This is extremely - it is beyond worrying.”

There’s a pause. Link wipes his entire face on his shoulder’s sleeve messily.

“I thought you’d think I was weird,” Link says, ducking his head.

“I already think you’re weird,” Sidon says, without thinking about it.

There’s another pause as Link’s head shoots up and he stares at Sidon.

“Wait, that sounded -” Sidon puts his hands up, and is immensely relieved when Link starts laughing hysterically again. “Oh, Hylia help me, I meant - stop laughing. Link. Link, I meant to say that -”

Link holds up a hand and Sidon closes his mouth and pouts as he comes down from his fit of mirth. When he’s sufficiently calmed down, he continues.

“I mean to say that you’re the strangest person I have ever met, and I don’t regard that as a bad thing,” he finishes primly. “I’m quite fond of you despite, and perhaps because of, your many, many eccentricities.”

“Bet you say that to all the Hylians,” Link says, and Sidon sputters.

“Yes, good, very good,” he says, feeling that it’s gotten rather warmer out all of a sudden. Which is awful, because it was already sweltering. “... I’m not going to say it’s not alarming to find this out, or that I won’t encourage you to find an alternative outlet, such as oh, talking to a very good friend -”

- or a more-than-friend as the case may be, no, wait, oh goodness he wasn’t really flirting don’t be dense -

“- but I don’t think you’re weird. Having dealt with the guard, I’ve seen my fill of thrill-seekers. You wouldn’t believe what they can get up to in peaceful times.”

Link looks away, towards Midnight, who’s munching on a dry patch of grass some ways ahead. She must have spooked. They’re lucky the bleeding had mostly subsided.

“... Yeah,” he says. “Sorry. I will. It’s what Mipha would have wanted, too, I guess.”

“It’s what I want,” Sidon says.

Link turns back to him and smiles.

“We should get going,” he says, and Sidon nods.

“Yes,” he says, pushing himself up and offering Link a hand. Link takes it easily and pulls himself up. “We should. We’ve lost more time than I’d hoped already.”

“The last leg’ll be after nightfall?” Link offers. “Cooler.”

Sidon’s feet inform him with a twinge that that is in fact little condolence. He grimaces, and then forces himself to smile.

“Yes, best to look on the bright side,” he says. “Onwards!”

They continue down the lonely canyon road.

… But not as lonely, perhaps, as assumed.

Unnoticed, high up above at the lip of the canyon, next to an imprint that looks conspicuously as though it once held a boulder, a figure crouches and watches them go.

As they go around the bend and out of sight, it disappears in a cloud of smoke.

It’s well past nightfall by the time they arrive at the Gerudo Canyon Stable, and Link can see that Sidon has just about hit his limit when he looks like he might actually cry as Link points up a hill to their left when asked where the water is.

Before taking that journey, they stop to drop off Midnight with the sleepy-eyed attendant at the stable. They assure him that her wounds will be looked after, and if her coat is a little damper than before when he pulls away from one last hug around her neck, then it’s very odd that a stable next to the desert is getting freak rain, but after all, the weather has been erratic recently, or so he’s been told.

The pond is shallower than Link remembers, standing a few metres from the shrine he uses as a landing pad for fast-travel to this area. He frowns, for a second, but Sidon just makes a motion Link can only describe as a flop into the water, face-down and limp. He stays that way for a good half a minute before rolling around onto his back and folding his hands neatly on his stomach.

Link snorts.

“Graceful,” he says, sitting down and shucking off his boots to soak his aching feet in the cool water.

“Oh, hush,” Sidon says. It comes out halfway between exasperated and fond. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever been so glad to see water in my entire life.”

“Mmh,” Link agrees, pulling out the slate and thumbing to the camera function. Sidon, who had previously been gazing at the starlit sky, catches the motion and looks over. He squawks in protest.

“No picture evidence, please!” He implores, reaching out an arm to… swat? Grab the slate? It ends up being a lazy wave of dismissal. “This is perhaps the single most undignified thing I’ve ever done.”

“Historic day,” Link says, lips quirking up. He ponders taking the picture anyway, but ultimately settles on swiping through the gallery.

The edges of exhaustion are dragging on him, but his mind refuses to be still. He’s been doing the picture thing - going through and evaluating photos, deleting the ones he doesn’t like - for a little while when Sidon drags himself up out of the pond next to him to watch.

Link’s sure that if anyone else was looking over his shoulder, he might feel self-conscious, but it’s just Sidon.

“You took a picture of the boulder?” Sidon asks, as he passes through the section from that afternoon.

“Wanna remember,” Link says, pausing on the photo in question. Aesthetically, it’s not much to speak of, but he did capture a distinctive arch of rock in the frame. If he had to find it again, it wouldn’t be impossible.

“Even something like that, hm?” Sidon says, and he looks thoughtful.

Link’s brows furrow, and he swipes back to the first page of pictures. Some of them are titled in a language he understands. Most of them aren’t.

“I’d want…” he says, reluctantly, “the whole picture.”

“How wise,” Sidon says. He sounds weary, but then, they’re both tired. “You are just full of untold depths, my friend.”

“That’s me,” Link says, putting the slate away and leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “Speaking of…”

“Hm?” Sidon says, sliding back into the pond and laying out on his back again. It’s at least deep enough that he can be mostly submerged horizontally, though Link knows Zora prefer far deeper.

“Earlier,” Link says. “Didn’t know you felt that way. About Mipha.”

Sidon groans and submerges his head, too, blowing a little stream of bubbles. When he resurfaces, he looks the picture of shame.

“That. Yes, well…” he says. “It’s not about her, really. Sometimes I feel as though I have to live up to her, you know, and there’s an awful lot to live up to. She was, after all, very great.”

He's still frowning like he's holding something back, but Link can hardly focus on that for his relief at common ground.

“I get it,” Link says, immediately.

“Please find it in your heart to forgive m- you do?” Sidon’s head jerks up, browridge raised.

Link gestures at himself.

“Legendary hero,” he says.

And more, he thinks, but he’s already so tired.

Sidon blinks.

“... I hadn’t conceived it that way,” he says. “I thought you didn’t mind, though? Being the hero?”

“Sort of,” Link says. “... long story. But I get it.”

“Well… that’s a relief,” Sidon says. “Perhaps you’ll tell me the whole thing sometime when we’re not both dead in the current, so to speak.”

Link nods.

“And not throw yourself over any cliffs in the meantime, hm?” Sidon adds, and Link snorts and kicks out to splash him.

“Funny,” he says.

“Impeccably,” Sidon says. “Though, there was one thing that I wanted to ask.”

Link tilts his head to the side.

“If your, erm, escapades tend to loosen your tongue, so to say,” he says, “then why were you having trouble after that near-miss on the bridge?”

Link frowns and crosses his arms. It takes him a little bit of thought to grasp the answer.

“You almost died,” he says, finally.

“Ah,” Sidon says.

Silence stretches between them.

“Well,” Sidon says, after a time, voice faint. “Shall we turn in? We have a busy day tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” Link says. “Ready for the desert?”

“As ready as I will ever be,” Sidon says, and despite the late hour, despite what must be a bone-deep exhaustion, he pulls his arm into a trademark flex and gives Link a grin.

Link smiles, and then blinks as he remembers.

The desert!

“Oh!” he says, and pulls out the slate. It takes all of a moment to requisition the item he needs, and a moment later, he’s holding out a sapphire circlet at Sidon’s reclining form.

He’s bewildered when Sidon takes one look at the thing and sits up shock straight in a flash, looking between Link and the offered jewelry with wide, thunderstruck eyes.

The nights in the Hebra mountains are beyond cold, especially at higher elevations. The temperatures descend, inverse with the topography, to frigid.

There are few elevations as high as the spot Selmie had chosen for her cabin, and that had been because it was the flattest, most monster-free spot available. One could always dream higher, or so the saying goes, and Selmie took that literally. The actual peak of the range had for quite some time been the subject of frequent daydreaming and the occasional logistical exercise involving the cost of importing and outfitting Goron workers for the cold, and perhaps a peace accord with the Ice Wizzrobes.

It’s the last point that finds Selmie up at past midnight hunched over her dining table with a well-worn journal. The current page of notes had started as a list of supplies to stock up on and had devolved into guesses as to what an Ice Wizzrobe could possibly want for. Crossed out entries on the page open in front of her include ‘nice scarf’, ‘shield - who doesn’t like shields’, and ‘more ice???’.

Tapping her quill on the page, leaving a growing blotch of ink, Selmie hums.

Goddesses, she’s lonely.

The door slams open, letting in a blast of freezing wind, and Selmie jumps a foot up into the air and yelps.

“Selmie!” Link says, mercifully shutting the door again as quickly - if not as forcefully - as he’d entered.

“Good gods,” Selmie says, clutching her heart. It’s made of sturdy stuff, and has to be, given the number of near-death experiences she courts on a weekly basis while shield-surfing in Hyrule’s harshest environs, but a sudden midnight invasion on her cabin is pushing it. “Link, knock! ”

The one and only friend she has in the whole world who pays her regular visits looks properly chastised.

“Sorry,” he says, and begins pacing in her living space.

Selmie puts aside her quill and leaves the parchment of the journal aside to dry before turning to give him her full attention.

“Did…” she ventures, “something happen?”

Link looks up and meets her eyes, taking a breath.

Earlier:

“I-I didn’t know you felt that way,” Sidon sputters out. His eyes, after their initial dance, are firmly locked on the outstretched piece of jewelry that Link holds in his hand.

Link’s brow furrows in confusion, and he looks down at the offending circlet. He digs in the recesses of his memory for everything he knows about sapphires.

Blue. Jewel. Used in enchantments to ward off the heat.

“Hot?” he asks.

Sidon chokes.

“How forward! ” his hand comes up and starts fiddling with his cravat. “This is - Link, I’m quite fond of you, but I couldn’t possibly accept - erm. Not to mention it’s a little old-fashioned. ”

Link blinks.

“And surely you’re aware,” Sidon continues, “that armour is the much more current practice.”

“Oh,” Link says. “It’s armour, too. Great Fairy blessed it.”

“Oh, that’s,” Sidon says faintly, “... incredibly thoughtful.”

There’s a stretch of silence. Sidon looks uncomfortable.

Okay, Link thinks. I’m missing something.

He pulls the circlet back to examine it. Now that he looks, it is ill-fit for Sidon’s frame. His head is very differently proportioned than a Hylian’s.

“It could fit on your arm?” Link suggests.

Sidon makes that choking sound again.

“No, Link, I - I can’t.”

“Why not?” Link asks, brows furrowing.

“I - oh, gods, we’ve only known each other a short time, and even if that weren’t an issue, Muzu and perhaps father would be furious, among other things.”

“But,” Link says helplessly. “It’s just for the desert. Don’t got anything else that’ll fit you.”

Sidon stills.

“For the desert?” he asks, cautiously.

“Enchanted? For the heat?” Link taps the jewel at the centre of the circlet.

Sidon very slowly cradles his face in his hands.

“Oh,” he says.

“Oh?” Link echoes.

Sidon tips over sideways and lets his face half-submerge. Link follows his progress with a note of concern and a concerto of confusion.

“I thought -” he says, and then turns his head so his face is fully underwater and a little stream of bubbles comes out. It’s kind of funny, Link thinks, seeing his headfin sticking up like that out of the surface.

“You thought…?” Link prompts, when he’s come back up.

Sidon takes a deep breath.

“I accidentally proposed,” Link summarizes.

There’s a beat.

“I’m gonna need more than that,” Selmie says.

Link grunts and throws his arms up in the air.

“Like, for instance, to whom,” she adds. “And, uh, how exactly do you accidentally propose to someone?”

“Sidon,” he provides, returning to wearing a circular rut in her flooring.

“Si- wait,” Selmie jumps up from her chair. “The Zora prince you’re always going on about?”

‘Always going on about’ being a relative thing when it comes to someone who deploys words as sparingly as Link does, of course. Selmie recalls that he’s spoken of him on maybe three separate occasions, which is three times more than literally anyone else.

Link nods, and makes an interesting face that is somewhere between mortified and oh ho that isn’t just the cold flushing those cheeks. He chews at his lip.

“... It’s -” he starts, “- need to take him to the desert. It’s important. Zora don’t do good in dry heat. I’ve got a sapphire circlet...”

“Uh huh,” Selmie says, retaking her seat. She pulls out the chair and sits on it backwards, crossing her arms over the backing. “Makes sense.”

The temperature-resisting properties of certain gems are the reason she’s got enough rubies sewn into her coat to put a flock of Igneo Pebblits to shame.

“Tried to give it to him…” Link says, and then stops in place and abruptly drops down to sit on the floor crosslegged. “Urgh.”

“Take your time, champ,” Selmie says. He takes a minute to continue.

“Turns out giving a Zora a sapphire…” he says.

“Is asking them to tie the knot?” Selmie says, and Link nods. “... So did he say yes?”

Link chokes and then sends her a look that clearly says: betrayer.

“What?” she says. “It’s a valid question.”

Link rolls his eyes and shakes his head.

“‘Course not,” he says. “He’s a prince.”

“That’s rough,” Selmie says, hunching forward.

“Didn’t mean to anyway,” Link says.

Silence stretches out as Selmie considers the precise angle of his head, which is held up by his hand, which is propped up on his knee. His whole figure is slumped.

The wind outside howls.

“What would you have done if he’d said yes?” Selmie tries, and is rewarded when Link’s spine straightens like someone electrocuted him and he gives her a look.

“I,” he says, face reddening. “Why?”

Selmie tries not to look too much like that cat that got the cream as she feels a grin overtake her face.

“So you accidentally proposed to your prince friend, he explained your little, uh, faux pas, and then…?”

“Came here,” Link says.

“What, like right away?”

“Said goodnight first.”

“I bet that was awkward.”

“Yeah.”

“Wow, what a mess.”

“Yeah.”

Selmie leans back and sighs.

“So why did you come to me?” she asks.

“Don’t know,” Link says, leaning back and resting his head against the side of her bed. “Can’t figure it out.”

“Hmm?” She pulls herself back up.

“It’s weird,” he says.

“Try me.”

“I’m…” he seems to struggle for the words. “... disappointed?”

“Oh, buddy,” Selmie says, knowingly. “That’s not weird at all.”

Link casts her a doubtful look.

“Okay,” he says, and then lapses into silence.

They don’t exchange any more words after that, and before a half hour has gone by, he leaves as suddenly - though more respectfully to her door frame - as he came. Selmie tries not to feel too disappointed at the departure of company and takes that as her cue to get some sleep.

Her bed has just warmed enough to get comfortable and she’s just drifting off when she sits up, staring hard at the covered embers of the hearth.

“Wait,” she says, to the precisely no one who shares her cabin. “Didn’t he say that Sidon was twice his size? ”

A good sleep doesn’t completely clean the emotional slate. However, Sidon gets up that morning to find Link sleeping a few feet from the remains of a fire not too far from the pond, that hadn’t been there when he’d fallen asleep, instead of the warm bed he knows to be waiting at the stable. He decides to bear the awkwardness as gracefully as possible.

Not that he hadn’t been committed to pretending it had never happened. Goodness. The worst part is, if he’s being honest with himself, despite that fact that it the whole thing was ludicrous…

He feels just a tiny bit... disappointed.

Moving on to other things, he thinks, mentally shaking himself. A domain to save, for instance. Keep it together, Sidon!

He’s shocked to have woken up first. While still unbearably dry, the air is much cooler than it had been in the daytime on the way over. It’s about what they see at the domain, on any given day. Oh, for it to last.

He lifts himself from the pond - hardly the world’s most luxurious accommodations. It’s stagnant, dirty water. As his scales meet the dryness of the desert air again, he wishes he could stay in it for the next week.

He crouches down next to the fire and reaches out a hand to shake Link. Then, seeing his weapons in their customary place on his back (he’s curled up on his side, which is adorable), thinks better of it.

“Link,” he says, and then when Link only barely stirs, tries again at something closer to his normal speaking volume. “ Link. Wake up.”

“Mmrghf,” Link says, eyes fluttering open. He stares at Sidon blearily, blinking, and his features go through a kaleidoscope of emotion, starting with confusion and ending with a pout.

“Are you feeling quite alright?” Sidon asks, leaning back to sit straight now that his job is done. “You’ve been up before me unfailingly thus far.”

Link scrubs a hand over his face and nods, shifting positions to sit up and stretch. He’s quite limber, Sidon notices, and then tries in short order not to notice.

“Trouble sleeping,” Link says, once he’s gathered himself. “... Thought I was still dreaming for a second.”

“Ah,” Sidon says, and then runs a hand nervously down his headfins. “I’m sorry if it was because of that… misunderstanding I caused, last night.”

“Technically,” Link says, waving it off. “Doesn’t matter. Don’t be sorry.”

“Technically?” Sidon echoes, raising a browridge.

Link stares very hard at the embers of the fire in front of him.

“I’m hungry,” he announces.

Not the most graceful change of subject Sidon has ever encountered, but he’s willing to go along with it.

“I’m famished myself,” he says, and as he does he realizes that his stomach has been waiting for the excuse to assail him with the pangs of hunger that one encounters when a full day of walking catches up with them. “... Why don’t we go down to the stable to eat? We can check on Midnight before we leave.”

Link’s answering smile, bright as the rising sun, makes Sidon think that maybe things are going to be okay between them after all.

The stable is already awake and in the full swing of morning activity when they get down there. Link makes a beeline for the caretaker at the side of the building, and as the two of them converse about Midnight’s treatment (with proper facilities, it seems that it won’t be difficult to treat the wounds given time), Sidon looks around.

There are a couple travelers around. A dark-skinned Hylian with a small mustache lounges in the inside area, leaning against a bedpost. There’s a traveling merchant with a donkey who’s laden with wares, wearing loose travelling robes appropriate to the heat. Around them, the stablehands go about their business.

The beetle-themed merchant is there again, and Sidon distinctly remembers catching a glimpse of his enormous backpack last night when they’d dropped Midnight off. Which is, to say the least, impossible, since there is only one road through the canyon and no one had overtaken them yesterday. The only explanation he can think of is that there is a dynasty of identical brothers who are all merchants and have sworn to abide by their uniform, and even that strikes him as implausible at best. Really, who has ever heard of such a thing?

Naturally, as soon as Link is done checking on his horse, he goes and chats the merchant up the same as he had all the other times they’d seen him. Absolutely baffling. He watches a goodly number of monster parts change hands, appearing out of nowhere via the mysterious mechanisms of the Sheikah Slate. Link takes the rupees so gained and hands them off to the stablemaster.

He’s about to strike up a conversation himself, despite the odd looks he’s getting for the unlikely circumstances of being a Zora in the desert climate and also likely for being three times the mass of any given person present, when Link zips back with an armful of fish and looks between Sidon and the cooking pot eagerly.

Breakfast is delicious.

“We’ll get there today,” Link says, over a serving of honey-glazed seafood. He’s nearly inhaled the whole thing already. So has Sidon, breaking with tradition. He really had been famished. “Midday.”

Sidon grimaces.

“Ah, of course. Must make the most of the light while it’s there, hm?” he says. His scales are already itching again.

“Not like you to be down,” Link observes.

Sidon sighs.

“I am excited to have the moment at hand, don’t get me wrong,” he says. “I’m also… nervous. If what we seek isn’t there, then I don’t know what to do. If the messenger is to be believed, then things have escalated further than we thought in my absence.”

He pauses, staring at the crumbs of his meal. Link had borrowed wooden plates from the inside of the stable. They’re tiny in his hands. Perhaps sensing that he has more to say, Link is silent.

“I suppose I’m worried that there may not be a home to return to,” he says, finally.

“There will be,” Link says, and Sidon looks up again.

“You sound very sure of that,” he says.

Link nods, sets aside his now-bare plate, and stands up abruptly. Sidon’s eyes follow him, confounded.

Link flexes and flashes him a very familiar grin.

“You can do it,” he says, painfully earnest.

Sidon’s stomach gives a little flutter.

“Oh, I see the tide has turned,” he says, unable to keep in a laugh. “Well, if you insist.”

“We’ll do what we can,” Link says, in a much less imitative tone. “Eyes forward.”

“Eyes forward,” Sidon echoes, though he can’t shake the frown tugging at the edge of his lips or the weight on his brow.

Or, for that matter, the weight on his heart.

In the end, he puts on the circlet. When they hit the edge of the canyon, a straight line that divides rock and sand by a hop, Link holds it up with a questioning look and, determined not to make a big deal about it, Sidon accepts. It does, in fact, fit around his bicep, with some fiddling.

The relief is instant. It doesn’t do anything for the lack of humidity, but he’s suddenly awash with a refreshing chill, like jumping into a creek on a hot summer’s day.

They travel along the sands, cliff face perpetually rising to tower above them on the left, not unlike the stretch they’d covered back at the plateau.

One thing that no one told Sidon about sand is that it is awful . He’s familiar with beach sands, and has run over enough of them in his life to be surefooted. Desert sand is nothing like that. It slows them down considerably, shifting endlessly under their feet and making each step as labored as climbing a hill. It’s made worse by the fact that the sand naturally slopes away from the cliff faces, so they are constantly climbing, on top of that, to stay in the shade. A shade which is rapidly disappearing as the sun approaches its zenith.

Distantly, Sidon is aware that if he weren’t wearing the circlet, he might have passed out from heat exhaustion already.

“You don’t suppose the Gerudo could have built the statues a little closer by, do you?” Sidon says, rubbing his eyes in an attempt to get out some particles that had blown into his eyes in the wind.

“People lived here before,” Link says, turning to look at him. He looks vaguely amused.

“I can’t imagine why,” Sidon grumbles, and then pauses, straightening. “Before? You mean as in -”

“Yeah,” Link says, and a half-frown takes over his features. “Dunno how I know. Don’t remember it, really.”

“I thought you might have deduced as much from those old wooden bridges around the canyon,” Sidon says, glancing up at the cliff’s top, hundreds of feet up. He thinks he sees movement for a second, and narrows his eyes, but whatever it might have been has ducked out of sight. Or perhaps it was one of those desert mirages he’s heard so much about. Link is replying, he realizes belatedly, and snaps back to attention.

“- only ones who live there now are the Yiga clan, and they’re hiding. Well. Too well.”

“The Yiga clan?” Sidon says, and then an old lesson snaps back into place and he nods. “Ah, those rapscallions. Come to think of it, that rude ninja was wearing their regalia.”

“The same,” Link says. “They’re with Ganon. Try to kill me all the time. Annoying.”

“That is rather irritating,” Sidon agrees, though he feels like it’s somewhat of an understatement. “... Not to sound like a hatchling, but how far is it, now?”

Link points ahead, where the ground rises into a monumental dune.

“Over that,” he says.

“Ah,” Sidon says.

There’s nothing for it but to press on. It’s not easy - the sand is ever shifting under his feet, making it difficult to maintain purchase, and going uphill is taxing enough to make him start to feel hot even with the aid of the circlet. He has to stop to drink from his packed waterskin several times.

But.

But -

When they crest the top of the dune, and a block of solid, cut sandstone, Sidon has to split his attention between gasping to catch his breath and gasping in awe.

The wall they’re standing on top of is a dizzying drop to the base of a canyon that opens up at some point below into the desert sands. The recess itself is perhaps not much smaller than the gorge that the entire Zora’s domain rests in, which makes the structures even more striking. From their vantage, they can see the statues, each one gargantuan, arranged in a circle. They’re huge, each of them cresting higher than the top of the domain and carved from sandstone. Each of them hefts an equally large sandstone blade in both hands, tip rested at each heroine’s feet as though ready to be drawn up in defense of the realm at a moment’s notice. In the centre, Sidon can make out the telltale blue glow of a conquered shrine.

He’s seen the picture of the Eighth Heroine on the slate, of course, but nothing could convey the sheer scale of the monument like being here to see the others in person.

“By the gods,” he manages, once breath has returned to him.

“Impressive, huh?” Link says, and Sidon diverts his eyes from the scenery long enough to take in Link’s expression. He’s regarding the view with sparkling eyes, a decidedly fond look on his face, and when he meets Sidon’s eye he smiles.

Sidon feels his face splitting into his own grin and, bashful, looks back to the ruins. Even from here, on the contours of the statues and littered on the walls, he can just make out -

“Writing,” he says, eyes widening. He spins to see Link already on the move, dropping to the left where a break in the wall has spilled sand over into the canyon in a steep, but navigable, hill.

“C’mon!” Link says, waving him on. He follows.

It’s not as easy as all that.

Sidon had envisioned, perhaps childishly, that the answer to the domain’s troubles might be conveniently packed in a stone tablet, dead centre, with some ancient arrow-shaped glyphs pointing it out. Or, if not that, that the story might at least be centralized.

The glyphs - which he can at least read - certainly do share the story of the heroines, but they’re written up and down the forms of the statues. Which, standing in the centre of them, are dizzyingly tall, and showing the ravages of time. One of them has dropped her sword.

Some of them have wooden scaffolding surrounding them to aid in getting up close, perhaps a remnant of the peoples that Link is sure once lived here, but most of them are either sparse, in terrible repair, or simply nonexistent. So it transpires that most of the day is spent sending Link to free-climb up each statue to take pictures to collect bits and pieces of the narrative. Sidon had thought to bring the materials for such work, so they do make progress, scrolls filling with text and translation both.

But he can’t quite silence the voice in the back of his head, telling him that the threat is climbing up the wetlands, into the river, into his homeland…

“Need a break?”

He jumps. Link has snuck up on him, and is standing with both hands on his hips.

He’s wearing an eclectic collection of clothes. He’s got on the shorts that Sidon recalls being part of his climbing gear, and the bandanna, as well, but in between those two is a garment that’s only really half a garment. It’s obviously of Gerudo make, which is odd, because it fits Link just fine. It’s a sleeve, and what appears to be polished brass armour pieces inset with sapphires and other decoration in the Gerudo style. There are faulds, gauntlets, and a single pauldron conspicuously arranged around a completely bare chest.

Sidon stops and takes a deep drink of water.

“No.” He shakes his head, once he’s finished. “We can ill afford it. I’m beginning to get the shape of something, here.”

“You’ve been staring at the page for five minutes.”

Sidon blinks. He looks up - the sun is inching towards the horizon now. It’s been most of the afternoon.

“Yes, well…” He coughs. “Perhaps for a few minutes.”

Sidon puts away his notes in a scroll case and nestles it back into his bag among his other things. They move to perch on one of the blocks that surrounds the shrine at the base of the statues that is currently in shade.

Even so, the air around them shimmers. Another one of those desert mirages? Maybe so, because if Link notices, he doesn’t say anything.

“I suppose you’re tired from all of the climbing,” Sidon says, as Link hops up to join him, with considerably more effort on account of the slab’s height clearing the top of his head. “I’m sorry, that wasn’t very considerate of me, was it?”

Link shakes his head and settles in next to him.

“Done it before,” he says, gesturing to the shrine.

“Ah, yes!” Sidon says. “That involved a lot of climbing about, then?”

Link nods, and leans backward to point at a depression behind them. Sidon peers in to see a dull sheen off of a metal ball, inscribed with a pictogram of some sort. It looks familiar, and it takes him a moment to put together where he’s seen it.

“Oh,” he says, “This is part of the legend, isn’t it? Each symbol to its heroine.”

“Huh,” Link says. He points up at the statue’s base, where a similar metal sheet can be seen on its foot. It’s hard to make out, but Sidon thinks he sees a symbol depicted there as well. “I just matched them.”

Sidon huffs out a laugh.

“The ancients certainly devised odd tests of your worth,” he says.

Link shrugs.

“I’m good at puzzles,” he says. “... Maybe they foresaw that? Somehow?”

“Maybe your forebear was similar,” Sidon says, and despite it being blazing hot out, Link’s expression turns the atmosphere chilly. He’d been completely open a moment ago, but something slams shut at the words.

Eyes forward, Sidon thinks, unbidden, and he frowns.

There’s something about the way Link has been speaking and acting that he just can’t put his finger on, but it has to do with the past, doesn’t it?

… He doesn’t want to press this right now. Eventually, yes. Maybe tonight, when there’s more distance and he can approach it from a more gentle angle. That shimmering is getting stronger, more visible around them, as well, and it’s rather distracting. Desert weather is inscrutable.

He requires a change of subject.

“In any case,” he says, shuffling over to take a closer look at the sphere in its pocket. “I wonder which heroine this was meant to be.”

“Dunno,” Link says, and then, as if stirring from sleep, looks around them. “... Sidon?”

“Yes?” Sidon looks up, halfway to reaching to touch the artifact’s surface.

“You feel something weird?” he says, and he sounds uneasy.

“Something weird?” Sidon considers. “Well, come to think of it -”

His hand makes contact with the sphere, and abruptly, the shimmering becomes a blinding and Sidon’s gut wrenches as the ground is pulled out from under him.

Once, when Sidon was a boy, he’d been shown an interesting trick. They’d had Hylian visitors from Lurelin Village. It was, and still is, one of the only settlements that the Zora had maintained any diplomatic relations with after the cataclysm. His father had rolled out a proper banquet to greet them; Sidon remembers Muzu muttering that his father could stand to throw a few less banquets, on the whole, but the important part was what had happened afterwards.

Sidon had volunteered to help Kodah clean up, and the tablecloth had been spilt upon. Unfortunately, they hadn’t finished clearing the many plates, cups, and implements off of the table, and so he had worried it was going to stain before they got to it. He’d said something about it, and, with a twinkle in her eyes, she’d asked him if he’d like to hurry things up.

He’d said, yes, of course, and before he could get any further, she’d grabbed the edge of the cloth and given a mighty tug. He’d nearly flown forward to stop her, but in an instant, he’d realized that she’d miraculously swept the tablecloth out from under all of the dishes with nary a disturbance.

He’d been amazed, of course, and after showering her with the appropriate praise, had asked wherever she had learned such a thing. She’d said that a Hylian who had lived in the domain a long time ago had shown her the secret.

The anecdote comes to mind because Sidon feels, at the moment, like one of those dishes.

The sensation of weightlessness comes and goes in one horrible moment, and his surroundings disappear as though whisked away to reveal what was always underneath.

They’re still in the canyon, sort of. They’re on a great sandstone dais, raised to nearly eye-level with the statues, who stand as whole as the day they’d been carved, unravaged by the passage of time and the wear and tear of the sands. Corresponding with each statue in position, seven symbols are etched into the tiles at the perimeter of the dais, with a break where the eighth statue is absent both here and from whence they’d come. There’s an ethereal quality to the place; above them, the moon hangs, impossibly large and surrounded by a sea of glimmering stars. Below, where the sands should be, mist rolls and coils in gentle waves.

Link is there next to him, thank the goddesses; he’s looking around and looks about as startled as Sidon feels.

“Where…?” Sidon asks, breathless.

“Nowhere,” a voice says, and both Sidon and Link turn to behold a woman.

She stands on the symbol in the very middle of the group, two dots which are reflected on the head of the statue behind her. She’s a Hylian, fair of hair and blue-eyed, and in her bearing Sidon detects the unmistakable confidence of nobility. Her garb, by contrast, is that of an adventurer; she wears a cloak of antiquated but recognizably Hylian design over a purple-and-white patterned tunic and sturdy pants. The only outward sign of what Sidon reads in her posture is in the fine make of the garments and the clasp of the cloak, a golden rendition of the crest of the royal family of Hyrule.

Which is odd, because though his memories are hazy and the broad details are the same, she looks nothing like what he remembers of -

“Zelda,” Link rasps, from beside him.

Sidon glances over at Link, who looks floored. His eyes are wide and he’s actually taken a step back.

“Link,” the woman replies, and she looks… fond. Her voice echoes oddly. “You know me.”

Link shakes his head, hand flying up to his throat. With his other hand, he makes a seesawing motion.

This new Zelda’s smile turns softer with a touch of sadness, and she nods.

“Your heart knows me,” she corrects herself. “As it is, throughout the ages.”

Link frowns.

“I’m terribly sorry to interrupt,” Sidon says, “but may I ask what exactly is going on?”

Zelda’s attention turns to him, and she nods.

“This is a place outside of reality as you know it,” she says. “You stand in the spirit realm, or part of it.”

Sidon and Link exchange a confused glance.

“How did we get here?” he asks.

“You had need,” a new voice says, and they turn as one to meet a new arrival. She stands on the furthest circle to the left, before the break. Sidon recalls that the symbol under her feet, a sort of red inverted droplet, is the one that had been on the metal ball he’d been reaching for.

She’s a Zora, and a royal Zora at that. Sidon recognizes her jewelry instantly. She’s got a blue coat of scales and bright violet eyes, and for a moment Sidon is struck by a passing resemblence to Mipha. Moreso when she flashes him a shy smile and waves.

“The story you seek has passed from living record,” Zelda says.

“Our time is long past, even for a race as long-lived as the Zora,” the Zora adds. “But with your potential, and the weakening of the walls that separate us, we were able to pull you through.”

“Potential? Wait,” Sidon says, looking around once more. “I had rather been under the impression that the Seven Heroines were a group of Gerudo?”

“One of us is,” Zelda says, and then frowns. “Was. I believe there’s been a drift in the record over the years. With the exception of the Goron sage, we were all women, so it’s not surprising that the Gerudo oral tradition interpreted us so.”

As though anticipating Sidon’s next question, the Zora woman speaks.

“There are times when Hyrule is endangered,” she says, “that no hero emerges, or that the hero requires divine assistance. The sages are people of Hyrule that have the potential, through bloodline or fate, to act as a bridge to the power of the sacred realms.”

She smiles.

“The royal family of the Zora have long been one such bloodline,” she says.

“Well!” Sidon says, and feels a rush of giddiness. Whether it’s because of the absurdity of the situation or because he’s standing in front of - “I suppose that makes you my ancestor. Well met!”

She laughs, a pleasant sound that echoes around them and fades out into the mist.

“Your spirit is certainly up to the task,” Zelda says, with a note of faint amusement. “If the role of sagehood ever falls to you, Link will be in good hands.”

“Of course!” Sidon says, drawing himself into one of his customary poses. He’s interrupted by a poke at his middle from the side.

Link is looking up at him, and his brows are drawn together. His posture is pulled in on himself and he looks… trapped. He sends Sidon a tense look and makes a rolling get on with it gesture with one hand.

Sidon frowns.

“But, er, our business here is pressing,” he says, addressing Zelda once more. “You spoke of a story?”

Zelda nods, composure impeccable save for one small, flickering glance at Link.

“As has been established,” she says, “we were the seven sages of our age. The kingdom of Hyrule came under threat more than once under my reign, and Link - my Link - never awakened to his full potential.”

She pauses. It speaks, in Sidon’s opinion, volumes.

“The sages, instead, defended Hyrule. We were there when the Yiga tried to take Gerudo Town in siege, thousands of years ago when they split off from the Sheikah, we were there when the great forest came under threat of blight, and we thwarted the advances of sorcerers and demons alike. And the most powerful of our number was a princess of the Zora, Raruta.”

Sidon turns to the other sage and she shakes her head.

“I am Mura,” she says. “Raruta was my sister.”

“The eighth heroine,” Sidon says, eyeing the empty spot on the dais, the gap where a statue might have been behind it.

“Indeed,” Zelda says. “She was a gifted sorceress and healer, and a dear friend.”

“What happened?” Sidon asks.

“At the time of my reign, the Sea Zora had for a long time been growing distant from the rest of Hyrule,” Zelda says. “Their prince, Zavon, was a warmonger. He dreamed of ruling all of Hyrule from its waterways. The River Zora and the Sea Zora had seen rising tensions all over, and it seemed that war was unavoidable. Raruta, however, thought that he could be reasoned with.”

“She saw the best in everyone,” Mura says, eyes falling to stare at the ground.

“One day, he went too far,” Zelda says. “We cornered him and his forces, and were about to deal the final blow, but Raruta aided him in escape.”

She sighs.

“Many died as a result. It was betrayal, and as such, she was cast out of the sages. Mura was found to be a viable replacement, and we thought it would end there. It did not.”

“She went to try and talk to him one last time,” Mura says. Her voice is thick. “The next thing we knew, she had been slain, the Zora Sapphire had found its way into Zavon’s hands, and he had made a pact with an ancient demon of the deep.”

“The Sea Zora were twisted under its influence, becoming monstrous,” Zelda says. “They gained and exploited an immunity to electricity to dominate the waters and cause havoc. With Mura, the sages battled to the heart of their empire and sealed all of them, and the demon, within the Zora Sapphire using its holy energy. So that it might never be found, it was cast away to the sea.”

Link and Sidon exchange a look. Link’s head is tilted and he’s frowning thoughtfully.

“That sounds familiar,” Sidon says, putting to voice what they’re both thinking. “I have no doubt that this Zavon is behind this incursion, though how the sapphire found its way back to Hyrule…”

“Long time,” Link points out. His words have that same clipped quality that they had when addressing the council, what seems like so long ago.

Zelda nods.

“While I was alive, it seemed a permanent measure,” she says. “From the perspective of the spirit world, though, it seems like all seals are meant to be broken eventually. The timing is… unfortunate, though.”

“Ganon’s return, and his Blood Moon, have weakened the walls between the mundane and the other realms,” Mura says. “The seal must have reached its breaking point.”

“The past is the past,” Sidon says. Beside him, Link nods vigorously. “While it is good to know the nature of the threat, surely there must be something we can do to stop him.”

Zelda smiles (appropriately) a ghost of a smile. She points at Link - or, not quite Link, but just over his shoulder, where the pommel of the Master Sword rests.

“You may not have my successor, but you do bear the sword that seals the darkness,” she says. “If you can reclaim the sapphire and defeat Zavon and the demon, it should be possible to re-establish the seal. It’s far from the most elegant solution, I know - oh!”

She’s cut off by Sidon’s sudden proximity as he steps forward, both fists pumped and a fire in his eyes.

“Not in the least!” He says, gesturing widely. “This is exactly what we came for! I’d been resigned to the idea that we’d have to hunt down some obscure ritual, or piece together clues from old folk tales, but a quest? Why, I can’t think of a quest in the world that Link isn’t equipped to handle. He is exceptionally good at fighting demons, you know.”

Link makes a noise behind him, and he glances back to see his Hylian friend’s face buried in his hands. The tips of his ears are rapidly turning red.

The spirit of Sidon’s great-great-great-great-and-so-on-grandmother is stifling a laugh.

“There’s no need to be bashful, Link,” Sidon says, finding his way back over to Link and patting his friend on the shoulder.

“Sidon…” Link says.

Zelda and Mura exchange a bemused glance.

“I am glad that this incarnation of Link has such a steadfast ally,” Zelda says. She looks, in Sidon’s opinion, a little sad. “In that case… you know what must be done. Hero. Prince. Find the sapphire, slay the demon, and bring peace to Zora’s Domain.”

Sobered, Link and Sidon both nod. As though on cue, the shimmering from before returns, and the mist from below begins to rise, up and up until it pours over the edge of the dais and onto the platform, obscuring everything. No one has moved, but the figures of the sages seem to stretch away from them, further and further until they’re lost in the mist.

Just before that uncomfortable sensation hits again, the voice of Zelda’s spirit says something. Muffled by distance and the ethereal barrier between them, Sidon doesn’t catch it.

He blinks, feels weightless for one long and horrible moment, and when he opens his eyes again, he’s beset by the pale light of the moon, which hangs up in the cloudless desert night sky, and a chill that he feels down to his bones.

Link’s eyes meet his a moment later. He looks shaken.

They swap out clothes for the weather in a hurry, the freezing desert air being the death sentence for exposed travelers as it is. For Sidon, it’s as simple as fishing out the sapphire circlet’s ruby counterpart and attaching it to the opposite arm.

Link is grateful for the immediate need to do something. It occupies his mind, figuring out the adjustable clasp on the leather string that makes up the structure of the circlet.

“Hope this isn’t a proposition,” he mutters, once he’s done fiddling and stepping away to admire his handiwork. He ends up momentarily marvelling at Sidon’s musculature - no wonder he can throw him. He’s just hundreds of pounds of scale, muscles, and positive thinking.

Sidon laughs.

“Nothing of the sort,” he says. “Though I understand your reticence. Goodness, will I ever live that down?”

“I won’t,” Link says. The cold nips at him as he pulls up the slate and reviews his options for cold-fighting attire. The Desert Voe top had seemed like a good idea at the time, but now the gusts of wind coming off of the sands and wisping around the valley are biting at his bare flesh.

In the name of expediency, he puts off a full outfit change and swaps out his climbing shorts and bandanna for his Snowquill pants and amber earrings respectively. He starts pulling off his climbing shorts to make the change and Sidon makes a face at him. He looks down and then up again.

“Is this a -” he begins, and Sidon places his face in his hands.

“No, no,” Sidon says. “I’m just - I was under the impression that Hylians had customs of privacy around changing clothes, but you’ve, er, never been shy about it. I’m beginning to think my diplomatic training has failed me.”

Link shrugs. As he pulls on the pants and fastens the boots, the cold air ceases to bother him. One would think that the sapphires and rubies would cancel each other out, but enchantments are made of cleverer stuff than that, he supposes.

“You just charmed a dead princess,” Link says, after giving it some thought. “Your diplomacy’s fine.”

Sidon’s snout wrinkles.

“Not how I would put it,” he says. “And I think ‘charmed’ is a strong word.”

“She liked you,” Link says, matter-of-factly. He finishes putting in his earrings and hops up, slate back on its place on his belt. “Everyone likes you.”

Sidon rises as well, humming. It’s not an agreement, but it’s not a disagreement, either. Link frowns. Sidon not being certain that he’s likable seems like a great cosmic crime, somehow.

He’s not sure why, but he feels very strongly about it. Every time he tries to put it to words, though, the intent slips through his fingers.

An earnest I like you, while accurate, seems a bit too much when they’re joking around about accidental propositions.

Instead, they start walking. It’s going to be a long few hours back to the stable. Link turns and takes a snap of the statue they’d been sitting at the base of as they leave, and a few minutes go by in companionable silence.

He’s glad Sidon is here. If he weren’t - if he weren’t distracted, worrying about this weird thing between them -

“Speaking of, did you catch what she said at the tail end there?” Sidon asks

Link stops dead in his tracks. So much for being distracted.

He turns to Sidon, who has obviously noticed his reaction and is equally as obviously concerned about it.

He swallows, willing his throat to obey. Luckily, it’s just the two words.

He’d heard it just fine, like it had been spoken right in his ear. The other Zelda had caught his eyes and said -

“She’s waiting,” he echoes.

Sidon seems to get it instantly, his eyes lighting up with understanding.

“Zelda,” he says, and Link nods. “Well. That is the sort of thing you’d expect her to be privy to, isn’t it?”

Link grunts an affirmation, and he can see the gears turning as Sidon regards him. They’ve started walking again, so he has an excuse to look away.

“The thing is - this is going to sound terribly insensitive, I apologize - I’m sensing that this is an upsetting subject for you,” Sidon says. “I feel as though I’m missing something about the whole thing.”

Link nods and squeezes his eyes shut. He’s going to ask -

“Do you want to talk about it?” Sidon asks, because of course he does.

“Do you want to talk about Mipha?” Link responds, voice low and rough and snappish, before he can stop himself.

He brings his hands up and clamps them over his mouth. Sidon’s silence confirms that yes, he’d just taken one look at the line, chrono-frozen a boulder, smashed it with a hammer, and climbed on top to go careening over it.

His heart is starting to race. He can’t look at Sidon. He tries to apologize, but the words die in his throat. Oh, now it kicks in -

“Yes,” Sidon says.

What?

Link’s head whips around.

Sidon doesn’t look mad, per se. He’s not catching Link’s eye, instead looking up at the moon. It’s nearly full, but not quite, an oblong disc casting silvery light over the dunes. They’re out in the open desert, now, so there’s quite a view. Gerudo desert extends as far as the eye can see, an ocean of sand.

He doesn’t look mad, but there is something there that Link isn’t used to. He’s seen him sad, but his eyes are tinged with a hint of bitterness.

Link reaches out and puts a hand on his forearm. Sidon looks back to him. Link tilts his head in question, brows furrowed. He hopes he looks as uneasy as he feels.

“Yes. I feel like we ought to talk about those things,” Sidon says. His voice is subdued. “That’s what friends do, isn’t it?”

Link’s grip on Sidon’s arm tightens.

It’s so big, the thing that he’s carrying. It’s big and selfish and scary.

He wants to say - if his voice were working, he’d say -

Promise you won’t hate me.

Instead, he meets Sidon’s eyes. Even in his more sombre moments, the Zora Prince is guileless. One hundred percent earnest. He flashes Link a hopeful little half-smile.

Something funny happens in Link’s chest, and it washes away his doubts like a flash flood.

As if Sidon would ever hate him.

He nods, and then, afraid that isn’t clear enough, nods again more forcefully.

“Later, when you’re feeling more up to it, then,” Sidon says, tension disappearing from his face and being replaced with a toothy, relieved grin.

Link feels something unwind within him, as well, and he’s debating going in for a hug or something when he hears a distant twang and every muscle in his body reflexively moves. He jerks Sidon forwards and they both hit the sand with a dual ‘oof’ just in time for two arrows to bury themselves into the ground behind them with twin shnk sounds.

Link looks up and spots the archer right away. They’re a lone figure on the cliffs, and even from here he recognizes their silhouette as Yiga. Then, as Link draws his bow, they’re not a lone figure. More of them stand up, a half a score framed against the moonlight, and Link catches a whiff of smoke and hears an all-too-familiar sound as two Yiga enforcers and a whole mob of ninja footsoldiers pop in on either side of them.

As Link and Sidon slide into back-to-back battle stances, one of the enforcers steps forward.

“Death to those who oppose Calamity Ganon,” he sneers.

Link draws the Master Sword, eyes darting around. The archers on the cliffs are drawing their bowstrings back, the enforcers are brandishing huge swords, and the footsoldiers start moving towards them in a wave of masked bodies.

If there is a later, Link thinks, before springing forward into the fray.

There are so many of them.

More than Link has ever fought at once since waking up, though some deeply buried part of his being, the same part that knows how to swing a sword, knows what to do. He weaves in and out of the enemy, staying in the thick of them to confound the archers above. He’s a whirling dervish, every movement a strike at some member of the fray. He’s briefly worried about the condition of the Master Sword, but it’s shining bright the same way that it does around the possessed guardians. That in itself is a portent, but he decides not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Sidon is there, too, and not a few seconds go by before he neatly skewers a ninja that had been about to take a swing at Link’s back through the shoulder. The Yiga yelps in pain and disappears in a cloud of smoke.

The head Yiga, the one who had spoken before, is saying something.

“- foolish hero, we have sought long and hard to end you, but you are elusive -”

Link is mostly tuning him out.

An unspoken agreement passes and Link and Sidon tighten ranks again, covering each others’ blind spots and working their way through the crowd. Link takes a glancing blow from an arrow to the arm and remembers the archers up on the cliff above. If only he could get up there -

“Sidon!” Link shouts, over the clash of metal on metal as a sickle slams into his shield. It leaves a broad scrape over the already-worn gilded surface, and Link is sure that it’s not going to hold up much longer. He hastily taps the slate and dispenses a bow more suited for long distance shooting, leaving his current one on the ground for lack of time to put it away. “Throw me up!”

Sidon doesn’t even pause to ask why, and Link feels something else funny in his chest along with the vertigo as Sidon grabs him with one arm and pitches him with what must be all of his strength. He only spends a split second on that, however, as when he reaches the zenith he lines up the bow and takes a deep breath.

There are nearly ten of them, all in all. Time seems to slow down as Link focuses and draws back the string.

One. Right in the eye, by the looks of it. They go limp.

Two. In the chest. Hands fly up to grasp at the wound.

Three. In the neck. They rear back.

Four. Link doesn’t even bother noting where he hit, because he’s starting to fall again, this moment frozen in time fading at the edges. He lets go of one more arrow.

Five. A scream - several - as his perception of time returns to normal. He stows his bow and takes out his sword as he falls into the crowd, blade first.

“- have prepared for your return for a hundred years. This time we will not fail -”

Is that guy still talking?

Link lands on one of their enforcers, their bulky frame sticking out from the rest of the crowd.

As he leaps from their shoulders, he sees Sidon in action.

He’s seen Sidon in battle before, but here, surrounded in the light of the full moon, he looks ferocious. His jagged teeth are bared and his eyes are drowned in the black of his pupils, giving him a beastial image. He moves with incredible strength, coiling and striking; his spear is flashes and arcs of silver, reflecting the moonlight with every strike.

He’s breathtaking.

Link looks around to get his bearings, pulling out his shield to block a strike - and crack, there goes that one, under the pressure of an enforcer’s windcleaver. He pulls out another one from the slate in a smooth motion - and comes to a horrible realization.

There are too many of them.

Even his stunt a few moments ago only took out half of the archers above, and with all of the progress they’re making against the coming horde, it’s wearing them down. Sidon is bleeding from several smaller wounds, Link feels the wet cling of blood streaming down his left leg, and with a mental inventory, he knows he’s running out of shields.

On top of that, they’re both starting to slow from fatigue.

“- brewed over forty years, potent enough even to slay the legendary hero - ”

He wishes that guy would shut up.

He springs back to Sidon’s side. They form up again, and fight for their lives. He ends up playing defense, mostly, and it isn’t long before his last shield - a knight’s shield - gives way before a mighty blow from a windcleaver that reverberates all the way down his arm and through his bones with a crack.

At least the Master Sword is fine. The glow that cuts through the darkness and lights up the masks of his opponents seems to render it near-indestructible, and it slices through thick cloth and leather armour like butter.

Things are moving too fast for him to question it. He kicks a ninja in the chest and sends them barreling into their companions behind them in a domino effect. Sidon shouts, a choked yelp of pain, and Link spins around to see -

Time seems to slow down again as he takes in the situation.

There are two enforcers in front of Sidon, who’s taken a knee from injury and is lifting up his spear to counter, but it’s going to be too late, too late, and Link doesn’t have any shield left but -

- but it’s been long enough since the last time to recharge it, and he feels the power inside him, ready to use, ready to be expended in a moment of need.

He throws himself forward, and three things happen in quick succession.

First, his already taxed and cut-up body makes the acquaintance of a windcleaver. It cuts right through the magic of the great fairies and wounds him right in the gut, deep, painful, wrenching. He doesn’t want to know what he would see if he looked down. He can hear Sidon crying out. Dazed, the Master Sword slips out of his grasp.

Second, Mipha’s grace flows out of him and through him in the blink of an eye, healing all of his wounds including the mortal one he’d just caught and washing away the fatigue of the battle in one fell swoop.

Third, the second enforcer’s windcleaver is incoming, and Link grabs at the first thing that he can to block - he’s only got the one extra life, after all - and it’s only once he hears a crack that he realizes that he’s made a horrible mistake.

He’s holding the Sheikah Slate.

It is not, in fact, swordproof.

The Yiga enforcer looks as surprised about it as he does, or at least as surprised as one can look while wearing a full face mask, and there’s a moment where no one moves.

Then Sidon’s spear lunges over Link’s shoulder and the enforcer steps back to avoid being skewered.

Link is staring at the Sheikah Slate. It’s still intact, but its screen is cracked and there’s a glowing essence or something leaking out and dispersing into the air. The rest of the screen is black. Inactive. 

Dead.

“Link!"

Sidon’s voice cuts in, and with a start he realizes that this is no time to go into shock. He dives for the Master Sword, but one of the Yiga kicks it out of his reach. He scrambles to grab it as the enemy closes in, a press of bodies on all sides, and he’s grabbed, and he can hear Sidon grunting and yelling as twice as many of them pile onto him.

It’s finished. They’re caught.

It’s taking some effort to keep them down, but Link is being held by five ninjas and Sidon is being restrained - barely - by the remaining enforcers.

The Yiga part like a stream, and the head enforcer steps forward. He’s holding something - a bottle.

Suddenly, Link understands why the Master Sword reacted the way it did.

The bottle is filled with a noxious, thick dark green liquid, and it radiates an aura of what Link can only describe as pure evil. Just being near it feels like something is crawling up his guts and spitting acid. The back of his left hand suddenly burns, a white-hot pain that has him doubling over and gasping.

“Link,” Sidon says, voice strained and alarmed. He peers over to see Sidon struggling, to no avail.

“We learned our lesson,” the head enforcer says, uncapping the bottle. A smell, indescribable, hits Link in the face and he tastes bile in the back of his throat. “You won’t be coming back from this, a hundred years from now or otherwise.”

The bastard takes his time, taking out a sickle and applying the liquid to it with the caution and efficiency of a seasoned poisoner.

“You’ll be dead inside three days,” he says, advancing. Link struggles against the ninjas holding him, but their grips hold fast. “And master Ganon will reward us beyond our wildest dreams.”

“Get real,” Link snarls. He’s getting closer.

Link’s mind is running on overtime, eyes wide.

He has this sinking feeling that whatever this cursed magic is, it isn’t going to play well with his spirit gifts. He feels like part of him is trying to escape his body, pulling away from that awful presence, and Mipha’s Grace is already depleted, weak. If he dies, he can’t defeat Ganon, and all of Hyrule is -

There’s an ear-splitting roar as Sidon throws off his captors and hits the head Yiga from the side like a freight train.

“Sidon!”

The name tears itself from his throat and every nerve ending in his body feels like it’s been struck by lightning as he fights to free himself.

No, not Sidon.

The head Yiga and Sidon are a blur as they struggle; ninjas are coming in from all sides to intervene, but there are too many limbs flying, weapons flashing, and moments later, the growing bounds of the circle around the two of them speak to the fear that the rest of the clan must have for the poison tipping that blade.

He can make it. He can get free before -

In one shudder, the frantic duel halts. Sidon’s spear is sunk into his opponent, pinning the enforcer to the ground through the shoulder. 

But not without cost.

His opponent’s sickle, coated green-black, is dug into his leg, leaving a ribbon of sickly off-red in its wake. The head Yiga’s hand, once tightly gripping it, goes limp and falls. He sees the moment Sidon realizes what’s happened, eyes widening as they flicker downwards, hears the manic chuckle of the Yiga - the sound of a man who knows that whatever happens next, they’ve had the last laugh.

There’s something inside of Link that has always been there. Absent of memory, in the presence of terror that would paralyze, in the face of death, it comes to the surface.

He moves on instinct.

Link breaks free. He twists his arms and body and the weight of the Yiga holding him shift. He rolls, and they’re off of him, a pile of tangled limbs. 

There’s yelling. He ignores it.

The Master Sword is a beacon in the dark, but it’s far, and Link finds another blade in his hands soon enough. He wields a stolen sickle and cuts his way to the shining light. They’re trying to stop him, but he’s a flurry of metal, doling out injury to anyone who dares come close.

There’s smoke. He fights through it.

He picks up the Master Sword and it sings in his hand with purpose. In this moment, it feels more familiar than any memory, than any statue, than anything in all of Hyrule. He pivots on one foot to face the remains of the Yiga clan’s forces.

There are enemies. He cuts through them.

It’s a blur. When it’s over, they’re retreating, in uncoordinated puffs of smoke. Even the archers up on the cliff have disappeared, leaving the two of them alone in red-stained sands under the moonlight. The light of the Master Sword has dimmed back down to nothing. The bottle that contained the poison is shattered on the ground, its contents inert.

Link collapses to his knees next to Sidon.

They exchange a look. Link’s eyes trail down to the poisoned wound and back up again, and he thinks that Sidon looks as shaken as he feels.

He doesn’t even try to put it to voice. He just reaches out and rests a shaking hand on Sidon’s forearm, gingerly avoiding his injuries.

They stay like that for a few minutes.

“We should get back,” Sidon says, eventually. His face is drawn in concern.

Link nods, and forces his leaden limbs to cooperate as he pushes himself to his feet again.

They limp back to the stable. It takes the better part of three hours, slowed by injury. They make a beeline for the pond by the shrine, and Sidon collapses into it and then drifts on the top of the water with a relieved sigh.

He lets the water soak into his dry scales and wash away the sand in his wounds and tries not to let the thoughts of what this means for him and for his quest consume him.

Link takes off as soon as Sidon is settled, without a word, to the direction of the stable. Not the path that curves around the cliff face, but straight off of the cliff face - Sidon hears the unfurling sound of his paraglider and shakes his head. A pang of fondness pierces the haze of doom and gloom, if only for a moment.

He must have drifted off at some point, because it seems like Link returns only moments later. He’s holding two plates of food and clenching the top of a glass bottle in his mouth, a configuration which takes him a few seconds of awkward placement to puzzle out. Sidon pulls himself up from the water in time for Link to shove the bottle at his face.

It’s got a circular bottom and a long neck, and a decorative handle shaped like a butterfly wing off the side. The contents is pink, and sparkles faintly.

“A fairy elixir?” he says, taking it. Link nods, and without any more ado, Sidon quaffs the potion. The relief is immediate - his wounds close up and the background pain, sand-in-wound (another strike against sand, the foul substance), disappears entirely. Except for a lingering pain on his right thigh. He looks down to see that though the sickle wound itself has closed, his scales, or perhaps the flesh under them, are tinted dark green.

He looks up to find that Link’s eyes have followed his. His friend looks, in a word, distraught.

“How fortuitous that you had one squirreled away,” he says, in an effort to lighten the mood.

Link shakes his head, and Sidon tilts his head in question in return. Link’s mouth makes a thin, hard line and he pulls out the Sheikah Slate.

There’s a big crack running through its screen, and it doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together to figure out what had happened.

“Oh,” Sidon says. “Oh, that… isn’t good.”

Link nods in agreement and stows the slate at its customary place on his hip. He chews at his lip and then pushes one of the plates towards Sidon. They eat in silence.

Link ends up curled by a newly-tended fire next to the pond. Sidon thinks he would have been more comfortable on a bed inside, but as he fades into a fitful sleep, he can’t bring himself to feel anything but grateful that Link didn’t leave him alone with his thoughts.

As he stares at Link’s sleeping form and the slowly-crackling spent fire, his heart squeezes in his chest.

The next morning, Sidon is slow to wake. There’s a fogginess in his head that takes a while to clear, and when he finally opens his eyes, he notes by the temperature and brightness of the day that he’s slept in. That’s concerning.

There are voices. One of them, he recognizes. Soft. Short and to the point. Link. The other, it takes him a moment to place, but when he does, he forces himself to sit up and embrace wakefulness. He shuffles out of the water reluctantly to join them.

Link and his companion turn to him from where they’re sitting cross-legged by the fire.

“Usausi,” Sidon greets, with the name retention skills drilled into him since childhood. Being a prince has its perks. He graces the Gerudo with his best smile for the hour and puts out a hand, which she takes and shakes firmly. He fishes around mentally for the right greeting for a moment before continuing. “Sav'otta! It is good to see you again. How have your travels treated you?”

“As well as can be expected, of late,” Usausi says, with a hard-set smile. “I’ve heard your own have not been as kind.”

As if on cue, his leg twinges again, and he winces.

“Yes, well, I suppose things could be going smoother,” he admits. “I’m afraid you’ve caught us at a bad time.”

Link’s mouth twists at the understatement, and he speaks up.

“Told her,” he says. “About the poison.”

Usausi makes a tsk sound, leaning forward to get a better look at the afflicted spot. Link takes the opportunity to slip Sidon a plate of breakfast, which he takes gratefully. It’s some sort of gamey meat - what kind, he daren’t ask. Given the fact that it’s rather bland, and the circumstances with the slate, he assumes Link must have procured it from the stable instead of cooking.

“Do you happen to know of a cure?” Sidon asks, as she leans back.

“The Yiga have long been poisoners,” she says, and then spits off to the side. “A coward’s weapon, poison. Most of them have an antidote, if you know the way, but from what Link tells me, foul, powerful magic was involved.”

“So you don’t,” Link says. His voice sounds strained. His whole body is tense, now that Sidon is more awake and attentive.

“Gerudo town has nobody who can begin to unravel this, and you’ll perish before reaching anywhere else that might,” Usausi says.

Sidon feels an icy sensation travel through his veins as he takes in the gravity of that statement.

“No!” Link shouts, and stands, and balls his fists. “Has to be a way.”

Sidon’s stomach feels heavy.

“Link -” Sidon starts. 

“There might be a way,” Usausi says, quiet, but all the same both of them turn their attention to her. “But it’s a long shot.”

“This whole journey has been a long shot,” Sidon says, drawing up to a proper posture. “We simply cannot afford to stop now. A lot of people are depending on us.”

Link nods, vigorously.

“If it saves Sidon,” he says.

Usausi looks between the two of them, and Sidon catches a tiny smile.

“If anyone could receive her blessing…” she says, under her breath, and then more loudly: “They say that the Eighth Heroine was a healer.”

Link wastes no time making preparations for the journey. He acquires a map from the stable of the highlands, and spends time revising the shaky cartography both from his own memory and from Usausi’s travel plans. The route is planned within the hour.

The loss of the slate is immediately painful; he’s been cut off from his rupees, as well as the majority of his gear. He has no shield, only the Master Sword, two bows (one of which Sidon is carrying with his things, now), a quiverfull of regular arrows, and the clothes on his back. He counts his lucky stars that they’d both been wearing gear for the cold and the heat, because they’re going to need both of them for the upcoming trek. Actually, he’s running into a problem there, because he knows that the temperatures where they’re going are going to get even colder than they can handle.

Thinking about these things is good, because if the simple task of planning were taken away from him, he’d be up on a cliff somewhere away from prying eyes bawling his eyes out.

My slate is gone. Can I even get into the last Divine Beast without it?

Zora’s Domain is counting on us. Everyone is counting on us.

If we don’t pull this off, Sidon is going to die.

The first two points are distressing, but the last one is terrifying. He’s trying not to think about it, but it’s sunk in. It’s really sunk in.

Sidon could die.

“Link?”

Link snaps to attention from his reverie. He’s… standing over the table, hunched over the map. There’s a dotted line over their proposed course, with a stop at Kara Kara Bazaar for supplies. He may have been staring at it intensely.

He looks up now to see Sidon looking down at him with obvious concern on his features.

Link reaches up and pokes him on the chest, frowning. Sidon looks down at his hand and then back at him, perplexed, and Link sighs.

“Don’t worry about me,” he says.

Sidon’s face flashes over a few different emotions before settling on a half-hearted smile.

“That may be easier said than done,” he says. “You’re quite persistently worrying, you know.”

Link arches a brow.

“And,” he adds, “I could use the distraction?”

That, I get, Link thinks, and moves over to reveal the map.

“Two days,” Link says, tracing along the dotted line with his finger. “Can you climb?”

Sidon studies the map’s topography, one hand rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

“It looks like I don’t have much of a choice,” he says. “But, yes, I believe I’m capable. Not to the same degree you are, I think, but proficient enough.”

“Can use Revali’s Gale to skip the steeper ones,” Link mutters, half to himself. He points to a groove in the cliffs, a valley that he’s marked with a little windy scribble. “Big updraft here. We’ll ride it to the top.”

“On your paraglider?” Sidon asks, raising one brow-ridge. “Both of us?”

“It’s fastest,” Link says, with a grimace. “Tick tock.”

“Well, I can’t say I’m looking forward to that,” Sidon says, “but I trust your expertise on the matter.”

Link looks up, turning from the map completely, and really takes in Sidon. He’s not holding himself with his characteristic confidence, posture drooped. He looks almost dour. He doesn’t look like Sidon should.

It’s probably sunk in for him, too.

“Also fun,” Link adds, elbowing him.

The startled laugh he gets in return is like music to his ears.

They gather a bundle of wood from beside the stable before they go; if all goes well, they won’t need another. Something about the statue overlooking some forests, and more talk about paragliders. 

Sidon reflects that he’ll be thrilled to be alive to risk his life again, in the case that this succeeds, and quite suddenly feels that maybe he understands Link’s perspective on things a little better.

It’s less convenient to carry big bundles of wood when one doesn’t have a slate to magically store them in, but with some creative rearrangement, Sidon’s bag is able to fit it. Barely. That’s also when an important discovery is made.

“Fire rod!” Link says, pointing with wide eyes as Sidon pulls the offending item out. Sidon blinks and stares at it.

“Oh, yes. I’d forgotten,” he says, placing it down on the table gingerly. He half expects it to burn the wood surface, and is ready to snatch it back up, but it just sits there and releases a steady warmth as flameless magical heat licks over its surface, stylized to look like a shooting star. “I pocketed it after fighting that dodgy little Wizzrobe fellow.”

“Perfect,” Link says, picking it up and examining it. “It’ll keep us warm up there. Don’t need potions.”

“Ah, but don’t we already…?” Sidon gestures at his ruby circlet-turned-armlet. Link shakes his head.

“Colder than the desert,” he says, reaching out with the rod and placing it right between them. Its heat, which had diminished somewhat, is felt again against Sidon’s scales. At least after his nightly soak, they’re not so dry as to become itchy just from that. “... We’ll need to stick close.”

Sidon stares at the space between them that the rod occupies. It is not an awful lot of space.

“Very close indeed,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck. It’s hard to tell in the shade of the stable, but Link’s cheeks look flushed all of a sudden.

“Yeah,” he says, looking away.

They both avoid each others’ eyes for a moment.

Marvellous, Sidon mentally chastizes himself. Now I’ve gone and made it awkward.

“Perhaps…” Sidon says, “you should go and say goodbye to Midnight before we go?”

Link straightens right away, giving Sidon a grateful nod and darting off right as Usausi walks in the front. Her head turns to follow him, but she doesn’t waver from her course, instead walking over and taking a seat where Link had been looming over the map.

She takes a second to look it over and then nods in approval.

“Vasaaq! Looks like the two of you are about ready to leave,” she says, to Sidon. Sidon bobs his head in a nod and then casts around for a seat that might accommodate his form; finding none, he continues standing.

“Are you positive you don’t want to accompany us?” he says, and she shakes her head.

“No, this journey belongs to the two of you,” she says, and then smiles coyly. “When it comes to her blessing, they say that the journey is as important as the destination. If not moreso. I’ll set off in a few days. Maybe visit home, before leaving.”

“Her blessing?” Sidon raises a brow-ridge. “Actually, that reminds me. If you don’t mind me asking, you said you were on the way to receive her blessing yourself, didn’t you?”

“That’s right,” she says, and leans back in her chair.

“You don’t look ill,” he says. “I thought she was a healer?”

“Not only of the body,” Usausi says. “I require the insight of her strength as a heroine.”

“Her strength as a heroine,” Sidon echoes. “You know, for all that I’ve learned, I was never able to find out what that was supposed to be.”

Usausi opens her mouth to reply, but they’re interrupted.

“Sidon?” Link pops in his head from the entrance closest to the horses outside. His face is redder than it was, and blotchy. “Let’s go?”

It must be hard to leave Midnight behind, Sidon thinks.

His chest aches.

“Something tells me you’ll be finding out, Prince of the Zora,” the Gerudo says, eyes shining as if she’s enjoying a private joke. She rolls up the map and hands it to him. “Sav'orq, for now.”

“Sav'orq,” Sidon says, taking it. He strides out to join Link.

They stop to say goodbye to Beedle, before they go, and Sidon looks oddly guilty when he finds out that the fairy potion that Link had gotten for him the prior evening had been a favour of friendship from the man. He ends up shaking the merchant’s hand so firmly and enthusiastically that he almost overbalances him, promising that if he and his family(?) are ever around the domain, they are more than welcome to visit and trade there.

The road to Kara Kara Bazaar is winding, but not that long. It only takes them an hour and a half or so (Link isn’t totally sure, lacking the timepiece function of the slate) to get there. To their left, in the distance, the huge sandstorm that obfuscates Vah Nabooris rages on.

They banter along the way, and Link feels… better, on the road like this. Travelling feels like progress, even as they race the clock. Some of the terrible anxiety that has been winding its way around his heart bleeds away.

Though, some of it comes right back when Sidon almost misses a step here and there. He says it’s just a momentary dizzy spell, but after the third time, Link isn’t so sure.

In his haste to quicken their journey, on the last leg of the road, he takes a shortcut.

“Link,” Sidon groans, as he crests the dune to the left of the road. “What in heavens’ good graces are you doing?”

“Shortcut?” Link offers, jerking his thumb at a slightly straighter line to the bazaar from where he stands.

“Through the sand?” Sidon makes a face like someone just shoved something unsavoury under his nose. “I’ve been enjoying this lovely road.”

“Get there faster,” Link counters.

“We’ll be there in a matter of minutes either way,” Sidon complains. “It’s not worth it.”

“You’re dying,” Link reminds him, unimpressed.

“Oh, fine,” Sidon says, finally straying from the path.

“There’s an oasis,” Link adds.

“Well why didn’t you say so?” Sidon says, redoubling his pace.

Link feels a little more of that tension ebb away as he grins, and turns to jog ahead to a rocky little outcropping. He’s never come quite from this angle before, he thinks, usually toughing out the few minutes on the road or coming from Gerudo Town. He’s greeted with the sight of the oasis, perfectly captured between a gap in the trees from this angle, the bazaar’s inn rising above the tops of the trees in the background -

and he’s

seen

this picture

before.

The Yiga attack. Running, running, running to meet them. A deadly strike averted at the last moment, his charge safe. The attackers are dispatched in clean strokes.

She looks at him like she’s never truly seen him before.

“Link?”

Sidon’s voice snaps him out of the trance. He spins to face Sidon, who is regarding him with a now-familiar look of concern, his feet subtly shifting on the hot desert sand. The slash of poisoned green on his leg is bigger, or is he just imagining it, the sickly colour spreading in little veiny tendrils away from the point of origin?

All of a sudden Link is so incredibly, helplessly pissed.

“Rubbing it in,” he says, through gritted teeth, glaring back at the picturesque view of the market.

“Pardon?” Sidon says, and Link shakes his head.

“It’s nothing,” he says, and the look Sidon gives him says he’s not even remotely buying it. He shrugs, the motion jerky, and tilts his head towards the oasis. “C’mon.”

“You’re the one who stopped,” Sidon says, frowning softly, but he acquiesces all the same. They cross the remainder of the distance to Kara Kara Bazaar, leaving the rocks behind.

The memory lingers.

Link handles gathering supplies; thankfully, Sidon had brought his own stash of rupees, and they don’t need that much, all told. Sidon spends the half hour or so it takes Link to wrangle everything they need soaking in the oasis and, by virtue of the unlikeliness of his presence and the girth of his stature, drawing attention to himself.

He strikes up a lively conversation with some of the bazaar’s residents, most of them Gerudo. They give off a familiar vibe to some of the women back home, which elicits mixed feelings of comforting familiarity in the attention of many and distinctly un-comforting familiarity in what he knows is probably the ulterior motive (and oh, does his father love to tease him about the eventual production of an heir whenever his fan club becomes too obvious in their activities).

Part of the reason he so adores spending time with Link is the lack of expectations on that front, or, really, on any front, he thinks.

His eyes are drawn to his travelling companion as he haggles with a Gerudo at one of the stalls for some cuts of cooked meat and fish, and it strikes Sidon that after all the time they’ve spent together, he can glean nearly the entirety of the conversation just from Link’s nonverbal responses. He feels himself smiling as something inside his chest swells.

Ah, but there’s still something about the set of his friend’s posture, a steeliness in the eyes, that has been there since they arrived. He’s not sure what to make of it. It could very well be about the poison situation, but it had come on so suddenly.

Sidon realizes he’s been staring when there’s a lull in conversation, and hastily responds to the something-or-other that had been asked of him.

He’s not sure why, but when the conversation resumes, the vibe has shifted away from what it was before, and he’s suddenly fielding a lot of questions about Link.

(He answers them enthusiastically, of course. Link is, after all, more than worthy of any praise he has to give.)

After the bazaar, their real journey begins. The reason they’d gone slightly out of their way to Kara Kara is that it lies close to their ticket up the huge mesa that makes up the Gerudo Highlands. Heading northward, they come to an area of crisscrossing buttes and arches, one of which slopes gently enough southwards towards the bazaar that it serves almost like stairs and a bridge to the higher cliffs above. 

Even with the dizzy spells he’s started to have (worrying, but he’s trying not to think about it), Sidon is able to conquer these smaller sections of cliff with ease. He marvels at the view as they cross the long flat section that overhangs the sands. To their left, pillars rise out of the sands seemingly at random, their origin a mystery to the ages, and to their right lies a maze of pathways atwixt the rocky hills. He sees a shrine, there, on one of the rocks, already conquered. He’d been sure that Link was familiar with the area already, with how quickly he’d planned the route, but this piece of physical evidence is grounding.

Link, by the by, continues to be quieter than usual. That is to say, nearly completely mute. He doesn’t look around, much, aside from to gauge their position in comparison to the map, and Sidon is reminded of what he’d said, not such a long time ago.

He contemplates it even as they ascend another “step”, this one longer than the last, but the footholds plentiful.

Eyes forward.

Something is terribly wrong.

He’s taken out of his thoughts on what to do about it, exactly, when Link comes to a stop in front of him. It takes Sidon a tick to catch up with the present, and when he does, it’s plain to see why. In front of them stretches a much more intimidating cliff face than the ones they’d faced thus far. It’s narrow, and there’s a lip at the top that looks like it would be tricky to surmount. If he managed to fall more than halfway up, it could mean serious injury.

“Well now,” Sidon says, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “I see what you meant by ‘steeper ones’. If only the cliffs here had the decency to have waterfalls.”

Link nods, and pulls out his paraglider.

“Revali’s Gale,” he says, to Sidon’s questioning look, as though that explains anything.

“I don’t believe you ever enlightened me as to what, precisely, that is,” Sidon says.

In response, a smile ghosts over Link’s face, the first glint of his normal mischievous self that Sidon has seen all day. It’s in equal measure relieving and disconcerting.

“Hang on,” Link says, gesturing at his own shoulders. “Tight.”

“Well, alright,” Sidon says, fighting down a flutter of something close to embarrassment as he does as instructed. Link crouches, body tensing as though he’s about to perform a standing jump. “How exactly is this going to w-HUARGH!”

After Link stops laughing, they continue on their way. They pass a chasm deeper than anything Sidon has ever seen, from the unfathomable depths which springs one of the Sheikah Towers, and make their way across the top of the rocky mouth of an enormous cavern. They pass over a natural gap which creates a low note as the wind whips in and around it, sand spilling down into the dark pathway below and the light casting a sunny blotch across it which somehow only highlights the darkness further. 

Sidon is oddly struck by a sense of familiarity, and when he voices it, Link informs him that he’d taken his picture of the dragon Farosh from down there. Sidon recalls it, and thinks perhaps it would be nice to see it again, but his eyes fall on the broken slate and he remembers. Link’s eyes follow his and seem to follow his train of thought, as well, because he falls quiet again after that.

They “skip” a few more tough climbs with another two uses of Revali’s Gale, by which point it’s getting quite late. The temperature has been slowly dropping as they ascend, eventually to below freezing, but with the ruby’s protection, Sidon isn’t overly bothered by that. What is getting to him is the dryness; the frosty air up here, even as it begins to snow, is damnably just as dry as the stretches of sand below.

Snow is preferable to sand, though. He will give it that.

They stop in a glade of trees on a broader flat area, deftly sneaking past a group of bokoblins riding around, of all things, bears, and climb up to a jutting outcrop that overlooks the little inset where the glade sits. There’s a wild berry bush at its base, which Link grabs some fruit from in one smooth motion before swinging himself up to the higher ground.

They set up the fire, an easy task with the fire rod at hand, and settle in for the night. Sidon pulls the rations Link had bargained for from his bag, and they sit close together with their backs to the cliff, looking out at the view. It’s cloudy, so all he can see past the cliff’s edge is dark, rocky forms off in the distance. The desert itself may as well be the endless sea of mist it was in the spirit world, looking at it from here.

Link finishes first, leaning back against the rock behind them. His eyes are unfocused, staring at the horizon but probably unseeing.

Sidon is hit by another spell of lightheadedness out of nowhere, his leg throbbing, and as he turns to Link, he’s struck by a sense of urgency.

“Link,” he says, and Link snaps back to attention, looking at him. “You’ve been acting… strange. I think, perhaps, we should talk.”

Link frowns, his whole face screwing up into a tense expression.

“I know,” Sidon says. “Not the best of times.”

Link huffs out a breath and looks away.

“Never be a good time,” he says.

“I’m worried about you,” Sidon says.

Link bites his lip.

“‘Course you are,” he says, shoulders slumping in defeat. “... You’re the one in danger.”

“Come, now,” Sidon says, resting against the wall himself. “I’ve been worried about you since before that, if you recall. I’m -”

He pauses, closing his eyes.

“I don’t like feeling as though you’re locking me out,” he says. “Something has been weighing on you. I can tell. You said you’d talk about it with me, and, frankly, if not now, you may never get the chance.”

Link inhales sharply from next to him.

“Don’t talk like that,” he says, pushing off the cliff wall to twist towards Sidon.

“I believe you’ll do everything in your power to help, Link,” Sidon says, and some of the exhaustion he feels creeps into his voice despite himself. “And I don’t think it’s hopeless, by any means. But I have to consider the possibility.”

Link’s fists clench and he stares up at Sidon with such a distraught expression that Sidon winces.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I simply - I have a responsibility to my people. If I don’t make it, can you - can you make sure that -”

He’s interrupted by Link embracing him around the middle like a vice.

“Stop,” he says, face buried in Sidon’s side.

Sidon falls silent, and, sighing, reaches out an arm and puts it around Link.

“Sorry,” he says, eventually, when he feels that he has enough self-control to keep his voice level. “That was selfish.”

Link doesn’t say anything for an agonizingly long time. Just as Sidon thinks that perhaps he should fill the silence, with something, anything, Link withdraws just far enough to make eye contact.

“I think…” he starts, and stops again. It’s an obvious struggle. Sidon waits for him to continue, and when he does, it’s in a low, raspy voice.

“I think Zelda was in love with me,” he says, and he sounds miserable.

One could hear a pin drop between the two of them as Link’s words sink in. As if his mind is trying to avoid contemplating the deep implications behind them -

I think Zelda was in love with me.

- Sidon suddenly feels hyper aware of the position they’re in.

Link is clutching his middle more tightly than ever, face buried in Sidon’s side, returned there right after the admission. He’s shaking, just a little, and Sidon’s got one arm around him and one resting on his shoulder.

Like a spark that hasn’t quite caught the kindling, Sidon goes through a few more abortive mental attempts before he finally manages to string a sentence together.

“What makes you think that?” he asks.

(Part of him, a selfish part, says of course she was. The way that the spirit of another Zelda looked at him. The legends always did say they had a special bond. He tries not to pay heed to the sudden kick of jealousy that hits him at the thought.)

Link takes some time to respond, but when he does, it’s in a carefully measured tone that even so doesn’t manage to completely cover up how strained he sounds.

“She left the pictures,” he says. “So I’d remember.”

Sidon recalls their earlier conversation. At the time, he’d chalked it up to Link being embarrassed over his own picture-taking activities, but he’d seemed uncomfortabwait a second.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean that she was in love with you,” Sidon says. “After all, you were cataloguing our own journey for similar reasons, were you not?”

Link pulls back and regards Sidon with a wide-eyed stare. The rest of his expression starts out inscrutable, but, as the seconds tick by, his jaw goes slack and his lips part to allow his mouth to hang just slightly open.

The wind howls around them, the fire flickers, and, in a moment of absurdity, Sidon wonders if one of the snowflakes dancing around them is going to fly right into Link’s mouth.

It clicks shut before that can happen, and Link looks… thoughtful. Not any less upset, but Sidon can see the gears turning.

“It’s…” he shakes his head. “Even if that’s… true. I’m. I’m not him. ‘Mnot her Link.”

“I see,” Sidon says, and as he thinks back, some things that had seemed out of place start to resolve themselves into a clearer picture. “It’s that that’s really bothering you?”

Link turns and leans into Sidon’s side, slumping until all of his weight (which isn’t much to Sidon) is resting on him.

“I get them back,” he says. “But… like they happened to someone else. Don’t feel anything.”

“Oh dear,” Sidon says. “I can see how that would be… distressing.”

“Like…” Link huffs air out of his nose. “Got feelings about them, I guess. But I don’t even…”

He swallows.

“I don’t even know how he felt,” he finishes. “It’s gone. And…”

Sidon considers prompting him, but he reflects that it’s a miracle that Link is able to express this at all given how upset he is, and stays silent.

“And I’m glad! ” he gets out, half-turning into Sidon’s chest.

“Glad?” Sidon echoes, unable to keep the surprise out of his voice.

“I like… me,” Link says, and looks up at Sidon with stormy blue eyes and brows knit together into a picture of defiance. Like the wind around them is carrying away his confidence, however, it crumbles into something much more raw and wounded. “But I’m supposed to be him. Can’t, though.”

Sidon thinks, very hard, about what to say next.

“... I said I would tell you about Mipha, didn’t I?” Sidon says, turning away for a moment to look at the trees, their branches swaying.

“... yeah,” Link mumbles. “I… dunno how he felt about… ‘Msorry...”

Sidon shakes his head as Link trails off.

“I told you that I grew up in her shadow,” he says, and Link nods. “To give you an idea of what that’s like… literally everything I have ever done has been compared to her.”

Link is nodding along, now, more attentive.

“She was so beloved by my father, by Muzu, by the elders. Rightfully so, I think, but…” Sidon sighs. “Father commissioned stone monuments to record her history, put up the statue so we might never forget her sacrifice. Meanwhile, I trained, I learned, I fought… It seemed that no matter what I did, I could not catch up to her legacy. She had always been kinder, stronger, better. More noteworthy. Anything I accomplished was an afterthought.”

Link puts a hand on his forearm, and Sidon looks down to see his friend’s face twisted in distress.

“The Octorok you fought,” he says, “Addendum.”

“I see you’ve read it,” Sidon says, and then sighs. “But the most frustrating thing is that… I want to measure up to her. I loved her. She was truly inspiring. I don’t remember everything, but she always made me feel as though I could do anything, if I tried hard enough. And I remember…”

He trails off, and this time it’s Link’s turn to wait for him to gather himself.

“I remember that she asked me to look after the domain, were something ever to happen to her,” he says. He feels a wetness at the corners of his eyes. “I feel as though she would have wanted me to shine on my own, and to take care of the things that mattered to her, but I can’t - I can’t seem to do either of those things! And every time I try to lead my people, father and Muzu act as though I’m a child and squirrel me away to safety. Father was furious when I came back after defeating the Octorok, you know. I’d been sent just to oversee a scouting mission.”

He’s snarling, he realizes, and his fist is clenched. A lesser man might have flinched, but Link remains unmoved.

“And, had they actually thought I’d come back with a Hylian who could help with Vah Ruta, I don’t even know if they’d have let me search! It was clear they both thought it was a fool’s errand. I wonder if they thought it would get me out of the way, while it was dealt with.”

“Sidon…” Link says.

Sidon takes a deep breath.

“I suppose the point I’m trying to drive at is that… as you so succinctly put it before… I get it.”

Link looks away.

“And, for what it’s worth, I like this you as well. I like you very much,” he adds, more quietly. “Perhaps Mipha would have been disappointed to have whatever feelings you once held for her forgotten, but… she was a very kind person. I believe she would have wanted you to be whatever made you happy. I certainly do.”

Link brings a hand up and rests it on the centre of his chest. Sidon belatedly remembers that it’s the spot where he’d seen the spirit orb from the shrine enter his body.

“Still,” he says. “I’m carrying all of these things. They’re his. Feel like I’m… borrowing. The magic. The slate. The… Zora armour.”

Sidon hums.

That does explain that.

“You tamed the divine beasts,” he says. “I’d say that you’ve more than earned the spirit gifts on your own merit, at the very least.”

Link frowns.

“Not that simple,” he says. “But…”

“But?” Sidon says.

“I guess,” Link says.

“You guess.”

“Still feels wrong.”

“I’m sorry,” Sidon says. “That’s difficult.”

Link sighs.

“Sidon?” he asks.

“Yes?”

“How would you feel if,” he says and then pauses, biting his lip. “I forgot you.”

Sidon sucks in a sharp breath.

I would be devastated.

“It would be difficult,” he says.

Link’s staring at him like he can see through him. Sidon resists the urge to squirm.

“... I won’t,” he says, finally, with a decisive nod.

“Well,” Sidon says, with a weary smile. “That’s the spirit, isn’t it?”

Link nods, and, still leaning on Sidon, returns his gaze outwards to the fire, and beyond it, the snow and the wind.

At some point, the bone-deep exhaustion that’s been gnawing at him all day catches up with him, and Sidon drifts off to sleep.

This close, Link can see the signs. Sidon’s eyes have gone reddish around the edges, something about the way he moves is more sluggish, and most damning of all, he can see the sickly green of the ex-wound spreading clearly, now, almost twice as large as before.

He doesn’t want to lose Sidon.

It’s snuck up on him, this feeling. He wonders when, tries to pin it down, and thinks that maybe he started thinking about it this way after the thing with the sapphire. Could it have been there all along? The full depth and shape of it eludes him.

Desperately, more urgently than ever, he doesn’t want to lose Sidon.

Sidon looks worse in the morning.

They awaken and make a breakfast of some of the smoked meat Link had picked up at the bazaar. Link finishes his cut of red meat and a handful of wild berries on top of it and watches Sidon pick at his fish. It’s not noble-born, polite picking, either; he gives up halfway through the meal and cites poor appetite. Link stashes away the leftovers and tries to keep the frown off of his face.

They resume their journey shortly thereafter. It’s sunny, this morning, and as they walk across the small field, a break between the cliff face above and the sharp drop below, they can see the Gerudo Desert stretch out into the distance, disappearing into the horizon as the yellowed earth meets the deep blue of the sky.

As they move on, the view is swallowed by snowy hills and jutting rocks. There are more trees, here and there, and a small herd of moose lift their heads and skirt around the two of them at their passing.

Link would be more in the mood to appreciate Hyrule’s natural beauty if Sidon weren’t stumbling on the snowbanks. His eyes are unfocused as he apologizes, each time, and presses on with a less-than-reassuring grin.

Link thinks that that is going to be a problem.

The reason that he thinks as much becomes apparent as they approach the keystone of the route he’d planned.

They stand at the edge of a harsh drop, the wind whipping upwards and buffeting the hair on Link’s head even from here. Down at the bottom, some storeys below, a menacing-looking pile of boulders and rocky debris spout forth a great gust of an updraft. From experience, Link knows that it will carry them, if not to the entrance to the Risoka Snowfield, then most of the way up. But...

“I wonder what causes that,” Sidon says, swaying on his feet a little. Link looks from him to the extremely lethal drop between where they want to go and the bottom of the chasm and frowns.

His plan had sort of relied on Sidon being hale enough to hang on to him.

Though belated, Sidon seems to catch on to his train of thought, following Link’s gaze.

“Ah,” Sidon says. “That is… certainly a fall.”

Link looks to their right. A series of cliffs. Tall, but there are some places where they could rest between spurts. Even at his weakest, right after awakening, he thinks he could have made a climb like that.

“We’ll lose time,” Link says, pointing. “But…”

He sees a wave of exhaustion flit over Sidon’s expression, but eventually he nods.

“I can’t be healed if I’ve expired at the hands of a pile of rocks,” he says, mouth quirking up with the attempted humour in his voice.

They lose a lot of time. Link by himself could make the climb in minutes, but it seems to push Sidon to nearly his breaking point. Link is almost glad he doesn’t have the slate to tell him in round numbers how much longer it takes them. They have to take an extended rest at the top before moving on to the mouth of the snowfield.

They pass under a rock archway and struggle up a snowy hill. It’s even colder up here. The Fire Rod is extracted from Sidon’s bag and they stick close together, soaking in the small respite from the frigid air.

He’d been embarrassed when they’d discussed it, for reasons that are clearer now, but that seems so… far away, so petty, now. Link looks up at Sidon, so close together, and thinks that his scales look less vibrant, somehow. Or is that just the snow?

Risoka snowfield stretches between two of the highest points on the mesa, a broad swathe of white between the red stark folds of rock that cradle it. At the end of it, Link knows, on the other side, in a chasm behind a jut of rock that hides it from sight of the ground below, lies the statue of the eighth heroine.

They’re so close. The snow crunches underfoot as they make their way across the field. The cliffs around them narrow, slowly, funneling them to that all-important point -

“You know, I…” Sidon says, voice unsteady. “I’m not sure if I’m going to make it across.”

Link swallows.

“Hold on,” he says. “Almost there.”

“It’s just that,” Sidon continues, an airy, dreamlike quality to his voice that ties Link’s stomach in knots, “I’m feeling quite lightheaded… and the ground is, er, what is it.”

“Snow?”

“Yes,” Sidon says. “That.”

There’s a pause. Sidon stumbles again. He’s heavy; Link just barely manages to right him. He thinks with a jolt that if Sidon were to go entirely to dead weight, he might not be able to carry him.

The thought robs him of his words. He squeezes Sidon’s wrist and coaxes him onwards, with an urgent tug, and the Zora prince limps onwards.

They lose more time to the enemies on the way. Ice Lizalfos lay in wait, camouflaged, Keese bear down on them, and they have to cut a semicircle around a group of bokoblins taking shelter under a rock formation. With their pace slowing the whole way, by the time they arrive at the edge of the snowfield, it’s nearly dark.

“Here,” Link says, looking down. It’s as he remembered it.

The statue is carved out of the same stone as the surrounding rock, reddish-hued, and much more worn than its counterparts in the desert, so far away. Her outstretched arms grasp the pommel of a blade that is no longer there.

They scrabble down the cliffside to an outcropping to the side of her, level with the arms. Sidon nearly slips, which gives Link a heart attack; he manages, though, and spills out ungracefully onto the snowbank. The statue’s face looks forward, impassive.

Link lands next to him and pulls him up to sitting.

“Made it,” he says. Sidon nods, almost imperceptibly.

They look to the statue, both of them, breath caught.

This is it.

Link expects to be whisked away, to feel the same odd pull he’d felt before Zelda and Mura had dragged them into the spirit world. 

Nothing happens. The wind blows around them, whistling a lonely tune on the rocks. Link holds Sidon around the middle, propping him up.

Maybe this will be different, somehow.

It can’t have been for nothing.

Minutes crawl by. The statue remains a statue, the ground remains cold under them, and, trickle by trickle, the hope drains away.

“Link -” Sidon says. Softly. Too softly.

Link shakes his head.

Something has to happen.

“I think… this might be it,” Sidon says.

Link shakes his head harder.

No, no, no.

“You tried your best,” he says, and Link puts his weight into a full-body shake, putting his hand on Sidon’s shoulder and shoving. “... Link.”

It’s cold, so cold, and the tears sting on his cheeks as they meet the frozen air.

“I’ve been… rather foolish…” Sidon says. He’s faint, eyes lidded. “Tell father - I didn’t mean to… and to you, also…”

You can’t, Link wants to say, but the words stick in his throat. It burns. He shakes his head again, hair sticking to the wetness

“I’m so... dreadfully sorry.”

His eyes slide closed.

Link shakes him. He doesn’t wake up.

He shakes him again.

No.

Nothing.

Nonono.

Trembling, he puts his head to Sidon’s chest. He’s cold, colder than he should be. There’s a faint heartbeat, but.

He won’t wake up.

Link sobs, once, and then again, and then again and again and again -

The statue of the eighth heroine looks on.

One can see a lot of things from the Ruto Precipice.

Ironically, the reservoir is not one of those things. The rest of the Zora are there, now, behind the juts of rock that shield the reservoir’s interior from this angle. Also unseen are the numbers which dictate their survival; days before rations run out, numbers of enemy forces, arrows for the archers to deal with the former.

The enemy is, after all, very close.

King Dorephan turns his head.

To the left, Vah Ruta kneels upon the peak at the mouth of the domain, its sights upon Hyrule castle. The red beam from between its massive tusks blazes a bold red line across the sky. Mipha’s spirit resides inside of it. Link had not said as much, but Dorephan knows as a king knows and as a father knows.

Beyond that, a slice of Hyrule can be seen, the most prominent feature of which is the gargantuan, tiered mesa that makes up the Gerudo Highlands.

Somewhere in that direction, his other child…

“Sire,” Muzu says, from somewhere behind him and to his right. “It’s dangerous to stand there.”

Indeed it is. Looking down, the reason why is more than apparent.

Ruto Precipice overlooks Zora’s Domain proper, which means that the enemy has a clear line of sight to his position, because Zora’s Domain now belongs to the enemy.

“Apologies, Muzu,” Dorephan mutters, to the degree that someone of his considerable volume can mutter. He steals one last look at his kingdom, his home, before stepping back to the relative safety of cover.

It does not look like his home. The water beneath it is jet-black, and sparks play across the surface of the waves. Its waterfalls, once sparkling in the light of the sun, seem now to absorb it. The lovely, graceful silver of their architecture, erected by their forefathers’ forefathers and maintained with care, is tinted a sickly yellow-green, cast in a new light as the colour of the luminous stones is overpowered by strange, arcane lights. The mutated Zora have set them up all over, hanging lanterns on bowed stalks of some foreign material; though he hasn’t seen them up close, sometimes he swears he sees them twitch of their own accord.

When he retreats back from the edge of the rocks, Muzu’s face is drawn. He’s looking out past Vah Ruta.

“Foolish boy,” the elder says, eventually. The words are harsh, but his voice is low and heavy with sadness.

Dorephan is all at once caught up by a feeling of helplessness.

“Muzu,” he says, following his old friend’s gaze, “... do you think that this is our fault?”

Muzu huffs sharply through his nose.

“He’s stubborn,” he says.

“So was his sister.”

“Bah!” Muzu says. “And he’ll meet the same fate, at this rate.”

Vah Ruta looms over them.

“... Still,” he says, folding and unfolding his hands behind his back. “There is talk of how he will save us, on his return. The people are clinging to that hope. Especially the young.”

Dorephan sighs a long sigh.

“They don’t remember the cataclysm.” 

Muzu makes a noise of agreement. He’s still staring out there, like he could clear the rocks with his eyes and see across all Hyrule unabated should he stare hard enough.

They stand in silence, until Dorephan voices what he’s certain they’re both thinking.

“I cannot lose another one, Muzu,” he says, and he feels a wetness at the corners of his eyes.

Muzu opens his mouth to reply, but then his eyes flick up.

“Vah Ruta,” he says, and Dorephan follows his gaze.

Something is happening.

Vah Ruta’s sights are still on Hyrule Castle, but atop it, at the very tip of its trunk, a light is gathering. In the shade of twilight, a bright light tinted with soft green gleams, growing and growing in intensity, until -

- it flies off into the night like a shooting star, heading away from them, across Hyrule, towards the cliffs of the Gerudo Highlands with a flaming ethereal trail left in its wake.

He knows what it is as a king knows and as a father knows.

“Mipha?” Dorephan says, and he doesn’t know why, but the utterance is coupled with the most awful feeling of dread.

Link doesn’t know what to do.

Sidon’s lying there in the cold, and he’s sitting over him, numb. The statue of the eight heroine is sitting there uselessly like the hunk of rock it is, and he can’t even voice a prayer to the goddesses to please, please fix this.

I’ve done everything I could. I tried as hard as I could.

He’s holding Sidon’s hand. His scales are mottled with these weird white spots, and he’s checked several times for a heartbeat, which is still there but quiet, oh so quiet, Sidon isn’t supposed to look like this, like there’s barely any life left in him, Sidon is supposed to be overflowing with energy no matter the situation -

He wouldn’t give up even when it seemed impossible, and he was right, we were so close -

Link doesn’t know what to do, and he thinks, in a part of him deep down that the rest of him recoils from, that there might not be anything he can do.

If it had been him, maybe -

If it had been him, Mipha’s Grace might have saved him, and that just makes him mad, a roiling in his gut that has no outlet. 

Please.

He calls for that power, reaches within himself, but nothing answers. Of course. He’s not injured.

She wouldn’t have wanted this to happen either, though!

His face is freezing as the wind whips around him and he can’t see straight anymore through the tears.

Someone else’s memories, someone else’s power.

He closes his eyes, hunched over Sidon’s prone form.

Seconds pass.

It’s not completely dark behind his eyelids.

Something is shifting. He sits straight, shooting up and opening his eyes, greeted by a flash of green, blinding light.

It’s not as smooth as it had been in the desert, where it had been more like a curtain had been opened to reveal a place alongside but unseen. Link is falling, falling, mist surrounding him, and the picture around him stutters and starts, the temperature on his bare skin warm and then bitingly cold as he flickers between places. He’s holding onto Sidon for dear life, the Zora Prince dead weight and he can’t say that he’s in Link’s arms so much as Link is holding onto him for sheer size but they’re tumbling in the air and there’s one last pulse of light and the wind and the air is howling past them and

Everything is quiet.

Link staggers, for a moment, as his mind catches up with the fact that his body is kneeling on flagstones with no memory of the (usually, in his experience, memorable) transition between falling and hard surface. Sidon is on his back, sprawled out next to him, and after a moment of panic he sees his chest move ever so slightly. Still alive.

“Apologies for the rough ride,” a voice says, and he springs to his feet. As he does, he finally manages to get his wits about him and take in of his surroundings.

It’s not cold anymore. That’s the first thing that he notices. And it had seemed quiet at first, but he realizes that it’s not entirely so. There’s the quiet babbling of water, and he realizes that they’re situated in an open stone gazebo surrounded by shallow, tranquil water and stylized fountain heads that look like various forms of marine life. Some ten yards out, the edges of the scene fray a little in his perception and dissolve into mist.

The voice comes from a Zora.

She’s wearing silver jewelry like Sidon. She’s not old, he doesn’t think. Not elderly, at least, though something about her projects it. Despite the fact that she clutches at a cane, and the warrior in him senses that she favours a good leg, she looks not too much older than Mura had looked. She holds herself differently, though, straight-backed and with purpose. That’s not the most striking thing about her, though. It’s her colouring.

Her scales are majority white, though not by too much, and splashed with big, colourful blotches of golden-red. There’s one right around her lips, giving her the impression of wearing an outrageously bold lipstick. It takes Link a moment to place the pattern, and then he thinks that she reminds him of the sanke carp he’d caught some time ago in Kakariko Village.

She must be Raruta.

She’s talking again, already hobbling over towards them from where she’d been standing near the edge of the water.

“Had to get help to pull you in, you know,” she says. “My power isn’t what it used to be, what with sitting out in the middle of nowhere lying forgotten and all.”

Link tenses as she kneels next to Sidon, but she merely looks him over and sucks in a breath.

“Moonfall poison,” she says. “Poor boy. Nasty stuff, very potent, very unholy. They must have made a deal with a powerful demon to get ahold of it. This is what happens when the bad guys have a century to prepare, hm?”

Link opens his mouth to respond, but nothing comes out. He closes it with a click of his teeth and scowls.

The Zora looks up at him and blinks, before something like understanding comes over her face and she draws herself back up with help from her cane. It’s more of a staff, Link notes, now that he’s paying more attention. It’s silver, in the Zora fashion he’s familiar with, and set at its head, encased and held in a graceful silver cage as though the staff was built entirely around them, are three sapphires inset in a triangle, which is golden and in a notably different style.

“Ah, yes, I forgot,” she says. “Sorry about that. You look so different! He had, let’s see, his hair was nearly brown, I think. And he was taller. Might’ve been on account of being older. Not technically. I think you might have every other Link beaten on that front. Just as quiet, though. Never spoke a word. Drove Zel crazy, until they worked out something or other with their hands.”

Link scowls more deeply and points at Sidon, gesturing sharply once, and then twice. Urgent.

She sighs.

“Forgive me,” she says. “It’s been a very long time since I had proper company. You came for healing?”

Link brings a hand up to his throat unconsciously and nods.

Raruta sighs.

“I’m sorry to say, but this is beyond my ability,” she says.

Link’s blood runs cold.

After all of that?

He manages to shake his head, roughly.

“It’s true,” she says. “I’ve nearly been forgotten, separated from the symbol of my power. It’s just the rules. However…”

She reaches out a hand and taps at the hand hovering over Link’s throat, his left hand, then makes a beckoning motion. Link frowns, but lets her take it. She pulls it out so it’s between them, palm-down.

He might not have noticed it before, or maybe it just now became visible, but on the back of his hand, there sit three triangles, stacked so as to make a larger one. The Triforce. Symbol of Hyrule and the goddesses. Two of them are dark, but the one on the bottom right is softly glowing.

“You have a most potent blessing,” she says. “Your birthright, one might say.”

Link snatches his hand back as though it had been burned.

All of a sudden, the landscape around them shifts.

The Spring of Power. A girl stands in its waters, cursing her inability to call that which should be hers -

It lasts only a few moments before the calm waters and the softly-lit gazebo return. Link blinks, and Raruta looks surprised. Her expression turns to a smile, though, a gleam in her eye.

“Looks like you have something to say,” she says, and in response to Link’s confused look, adds: “The spirit realm is… undefined. Malleable. It exists only in memories and metaphor.”

Great, Link thinks, and rolls his eyes. Evidently the spirit realm doesn’t see fit to translate that, and Raruta chuckles.

“I can see you’re a straightforward sort. I’ll cut to the chase, then.” She leans heavily on her staff, leaning forward. “Like I said, I can’t save him. You, though. You have everything you need. It’s just… out of order.”

Link frowns. He points to himself.

The picture around them changes again.

He’s mortally wounded, for that split second in the rain and the thunder and the lightning, before the bubbly blue magic courses through him in a healing salve and sets everything right.

Again.

He’s pressed against Midnight’s side, willing the power that heals him to help his beloved steed. It won’t work.

Raruta tuts.

“In its current form, you’re right,” she says. “That spell was woven with a very specific purpose - to protect you. It can be altered, though you would pay a price.”

She taps her leg, the bad one. It’s smaller than the other, Link can tell. Atrophied by disuse. He can’t tell what injury could have caused it, but he knows in that way that he knows things that it must have happened a long time ago and it must have been crippling, because when she moves, it’s stiff and unruly and she never puts her weight on it.

“Healing magic is very particular like that.”

He looks over at Sidon, who rests on the flagstones. He doesn’t look peaceful - his mouth is curled into a grimace, and his brow ridge is drawn.

The clock is ticking.

He looks back to Raruta, clenches his jaw, and nods.

“Very well,” she says. “Let’s get started, then. You’ll need a few things.”

Link’s eyes flick down to the Slate, which remains cracked and useless.

“Not from there,” the Zora says, and reaches out with the staff to tap his chest. “From here.”

He opens his mouth (for all the good it will do - everything he wants to say is still stuck ) in question, but a blue glow answers him. It flows out of him like water, and coalesces into a familiar orb. In its depths, a sigil of the Divine Beast Vah Ruta is etched in white.

Raruta takes it, carefully.

“Flawless spellwork,” she says. It’s mostly admiration, but there’s an undertone of something more solemn. “Crystal clear intent. It’s going to be difficult to unstick. You’ll have to make a strong claim.”

Link frowns and tilts his head, crossing his arms.

Raruta looks back up to him.

“I guess you don’t have much interest in the nitty-gritty,” she says, “so I’ll keep it short. You’re going to need to find Sidon.”

Link raises an eyebrow.

Find Sidon? But he’s right -

Link turns, and his eyes widen. Sidon’s prone form is gone.

It’s warm, and liquid, and weightless.

As Sidon stirs, he’s greeted by these sensations. They feel like home, and as he reaches out for his other senses, he thinks it smells and sounds like home, too. The sounds of the everyday bustle in the domain are muffled, from air to water to his ears, but he could recognize them no matter what.

Which is good, because his mind is… fuzzy, somehow. He thinks that he was somewhere important, before waking, but trying to remember the details, they flow out of his grasp like water. It was cold, he knows that much. So, so cold. It’s frightening how cold he’d felt, but there’d been someone there, someone important, and so -

- Link.

Sidon breaks the surface of the sleeping pool and takes a great gasp.

“Link!” he says, and something about his voice sounds off to his own hearing, but he can’t quite place it.

“Your highness,” Muzu’s voice cuts in before he can put any further thought to it. “I see you’ve rejoined the living.”

Sidon blinks and turns his head. He’s in his room, back at the domain, but once again, there’s something off about it. The walls and ceiling seem leagues away, untouchable. There are things missing, and others present that shouldn’t be there, but he can’t put together what .

Muzu is sitting on a small stool, likely that he’d dragged in. Sidon’s immediate impulse is to think of how bad that is for the old Zora’s back, but he looks… fine. Straighter-backed than he’s looked in ages. He’s closing a book as Sidon watches, and, tucking it in the crook of his arm, lifts himself to standing in a very particular pose.

Conditioned by a lifetime, Sidon knows in his bones that he’s about to be scolded. He involuntarily lowers himself back into the water, and his intuition proves right when Muzu clears his throat.

“You’ve been very reckless, your highness,” the old Zora says. “You gave your father a terrible scare, you know that?”

I had to, Sidon says. The Domain was in danger. Was I supposed to sit by and do nothing?

That’s not what comes out of his mouth.

“I’m not a baby!” he says, instead, and his own voice sounds petulant to his ears. “I almost made it! I can -”

“Your highness,” Muzu cuts in, and he falls silent. “You’ve been told many times over that you are not to swim up the Mikau Lake falls! Explicitly! You are too young, and it is too high!”

Sidon bristles, pulling himself up past the edge of the sleeping pool.

“But -”

“And now look at what’s happened. You’ve been unconscious for almost a day, you could have been killed, and your father has been worried sick.”

Sidon feels his eyes fill with hot tears. They come easily, much too easily, and his throat is burning.

“I-I want to!” he says, voice cracking. It’s unrecognizable now. “I can do it! Mipha thought I could -”

“Prince Sidon,” Muzu says, harshly, and Sidon falls silent save the big wet sniffles he can’t seem to stop, eyes wide.

The silence stretches out between them as Muzu opens and then closes his mouth. Eventually, he draws himself up and lets out a deep sigh, rubbing the top of his broad head.

“You had better work on an apology to your father,” he says, finally. “Rest, and have it ready for dinner, and perhaps the king will consider the fall punishment enough.”

He leaves, then, the door to Sidon’s room opening and closing. Sidon is left alone.

He sniffles, and fat tears slide down his chubby cheeks.

Link looks around wildly, kneeling down to check the ground where Sidon had laid not moments before. Finding nothing, his head swings around to Raruta and he glares, swinging his arms wide in frantic question.

“He’s not in danger,” the Zora says, hands folded on the top of her staff. “Any more danger, anyway. He’s just hidden.”

Link pushes himself up to standing and the scenery around them changes. A blast of heat, which in real life would have been unbearable but here is only uncomfortably hot, moves in as the gazebo makes way for the unmistakable landscape of Death Mountain, smoke and lava pouring from its maw.

“I take it you’re upset,” Raruta says.

Link nods, slow and pointed.

“That’s understandable,” she says. “But I don’t make the rules - you want to use the power of the Triforce, you pass a trial. Though…”

She trails off, looking at him in a way that feels like she’s looking through him.

“... You certainly are a unique case,” she finishes. “This is going to get interesting, I think.”

Link frowns. He wishes he could talk, so as to ask her to deign to make sense, but that wish is fleeting, put aside by his real priority here.

Sidon.

As though in answer to the thought, the space around them shifts once again. This time, it isn’t a place, or rather, it’s like an idea became a place.

They’re not standing on solid ground, anymore. Below Link’s feet, a shimmering, shifting mass of translucent Sheikah symbols support his and Raruta’s weight, dispersing in solidity as they fan away from the two of them. Below, there’s an endless, yawning cavern of crisscrossing, pulsing bluish lights, streams of symbols carried back and forth, on and on until distance blurs them together into a navy-tinted blackness. Above, there’s more of the same, except there’s a light very high above them, a rectangle. There’s a dark crack right down the middle of it.

It’s then that he notices the lack of a familiar weight on his hip, and his hand ghosts over where the Slate had been a moment ago. Considering this new information, the rest of what he’s seeing suddenly makes sense.

On the same plane as they’re standing, mirroring of what hangs above, there are countless rectangles. They stretch out into the distance, spaced completely evenly, and each rectangle, Link can see, contains a picture. 

Some, he recognizes. A picture he’d taken a few weeks ago of the cannons on top of Fort Hateno, all in a row with a splash of red leaves framing them. The dragon Farosh through the hole in the rocks. His self-portrait of him and Sidon, smiling together on the riverbank. 

Some are Zelda’s. The east gate at Lanaryu Road. Kara Kara Bazaar. The stone platform in Hyrule Field.

Some of them, he’s never seen before. There’s an old man with broad shoulders and a mischievous gleam in his eyes, in one, hand on the shoulders of a girl, younger than Link but with the same dirty blonde hair. She’s holding a cucco. They’re smiling.

Suddenly, he really doesn’t want to be here.

“You’re probably wondering where we are,” Raruta says. Link turns around to see her taking in the sights just as he had been a moment ago. “This is a realm of metaphor, remember.”

Link grunts, looking around. No sign of the Zora Prince, outside of his likeness.

What could this have to do with Sidon?

He reaches down and taps his hip, where the Slate is usually attached, and points up at the window above.

“Inside the Slate, then,” she says. She leans on her staff, face thoughtful. “It’s important, then, what’s in here.”

Link gives her a quizzical look.

“Sorry,” Raruta says. She looks genuinely sympathetic. “I’ll help all I can, but all I know is that my great-so-and-so-grand-nephew is at the end of a trial of courage.”

I really wish trials came with better instructions, Link thinks, pinching his nose. Then again, nothing else ever has.

For lack of any better ideas, he walks over to the picture of himself and Sidon and kneels down, reaching out to touch it.

The world shifts around them, sepia at first, but then fades into the natural greenery of the riverbank. He sees him and Sidon, and is hit with a heavy sense of déjà vu as a familiar scene plays out in front of him.

“What does it feel like?” Sidon says, as they sit on the slope of the riverbank eating together. “That… spirit orb.”

Link pauses eating, and brings a hand up to his chest. It hovers there for a moment.

“Weird,” he says, finally.

“What do you mean?” Sidon asks.

“I know it’s there,” he says. “Doesn’t feel like anything. I just… Know.”

“Hm.” Sidon seems to ruminate over that. “How intriguing! You would think that there would be some kind of connection, or a feeling. Many such things are described in the histories.”

Link’s mouth twitches into a frown.

“You’d think,” he says, noticeably tense.

“Is something the matter?” the prince asks.

The Link in the memory’s eyes dart about and fall on the Sheikah Slate as he works his way through the last of his rice balls. He pulls it out, presenting it to Sidon, who’s still working through his fish.

“Just remembered,” he says, abruptly. “Can take pictures from the front, too.”

Link watches as the two of them agree on and jockey around to set up the perfect self-portrait. He’s more aware now, seeing it from outside eyes, how close they’d been, then. His face is hot, his heart is pounding, and more than anything, he wishes… he was there again.

But he’s not. It’s like seeing it through someone else’s eyes.

“It’s perfect,” Sidon says, when they’re done, and his smile is blinding.

The edges of the memory fade away, leaving them back among the rows and rows of pictures.

The two of them stand there for a moment, lost in thought.

Raruta pokes his side.

“Do you only talk to handsome boys?” she asks, and Link sputters. His ears are burning, now.

He points to his throat and gives a big, exaggerated, frustrated shrug.

“Ah…” she says, mirth dropping from her features. She gestures to her leg. “I understand. It’s alright, I can talk enough for the both of us.”

Link raises an eyebrow.

“Mm, I suppose I already am, yes,” she says. “If only this were a trial of sass.”

Despite himself, Link chortles. It doesn’t take long for that note of amusement to fall away, though, as he looks back down at his feet. The picture of him and Sidon together isn’t where his friend is hiding.

It’s a piece of the puzzle, though, and Link is good at puzzles.

He can figure this out.

They walk in the space between the pictures. Link keeps his pace sedate so that his new spirit companion can keep up with her limp.

They hit the end of them going in one direction, and stare out into an array of blank rectangles stretching endlessly into the distance. Raruta watches him stare at the void for a little while before speaking.

“Pretty, in its own way, isn’t it?” she says, shifting to place both hands on top of her staff.

Link grunts an affirmative.

It could be anything, he wants to say.

She looks back, and he follows her eyes. At their heels is a picture Link doesn’t remember taking but which is familiar nonetheless. The view from the cliff they’d taken rest on, not even a full day ago, a sunken glen of conifers surviving in harsh climes, and beyond it, the clouds and haze hiding the view of Gerudo Desert.

He thinks he knows what memory this picture will trigger.

Link takes a deep breath and reaches down to touch it.

“I think Zelda was in love with me,” his past self says, half-buried in Sidon. He sounds as raw as Link had felt, at the time.

Hearing it said out loud does something funny to his stomach. It’s weighed down by this roiling feeling, and he feels all at once trapped, and guilty -

The memory skips, like a missed step, and then falls away. Raruta is looking at him with a measuring expression.

“That’s a heavy burden to bear,” she says, finally.

Link nods, lips pressing tightly together.

“I take it you don’t feel that way about her,” she says, and he nods again. “If I may ask, how do you feel?”

Link opens his mouth, and after a pause, he thinks that maybe even if he could summon his voice right now it would have been a useless gesture. It clicks shut, and he frowns.

He’d been about to say “nothing”, but that isn’t right at all.

In the back of his head, somewhere that feels like an impression of a flash of light that pierces the darkness, like a voice that had roused him from a hundred year slumber, he knows that “nothing” would be a lie.

Something calls to him, and for a moment it almost feels like a physical pull.

He ends up shrugging sharply, and grunting through clenched teeth. Raruta shifts her weight from left to right, in a sort of thoughtful sway.

“Let me show you something,” she says, and begins to hobble off back from whence they’d come.

He expects her to take him back to the area where Zelda’s pictures for him are clustered, and they do pass by there (the pull from before strengthens, but to where, he can’t see - he’s not drawn by any of them in particular), but they keep going.

And going.

Link watches the pictures go by. Places he recognizes, Hyrule, but in better repair. A ranch, a girl, stables that are bigger and more bustling than mere outposts, Hyrule Castle Town, before the cataclysm, or so he thinks. The forest, the resting place of the Master Sword. So many people, more than Link has ever seen in one place. The man and the girl from before. Zora’s Domain. Mipha. She seems bigger somehow. Swords, practice dummies, the inside of a simple home.

These are all of his memories.

Link doesn’t try to reach out for them.

Even still, they go on. Raruta leads them further and further. The quality of the pictures steadily declines, losing colour until they’re sepia, getting grainy at the edges. Places and people that escape him, except - there, it’s Zelda, not his Zelda but the Zelda they’d met at the statues. She’s younger, and her expression is less hardened. She’s making some kind of gesture at the invisible camera, face split by a smile.

Link stops, but Raruta gestures him on.

“You’re wondering if they loved each other,” she says, as they walk, and Link’s lips purse together at how easily she’d guessed. “Well, I can say confidently that they did -”

Link exhales sharply, gut dropping like lead -

“- just like brother and sister.”

His eyebrows shoot up in surprise, and Raruta shoots him a sly grin.

“Oh, don’t give me that look,” she says, as he shoots her a brows-furrowed, unimpressed look. “I’m dead, let me have my fun where I can.”

Link clears his throat pointedly.

“Yes, in any case… I knew the two of them since they were children,” she says, and gestures off to the side. Link hadn’t noticed, before, but there she is, along with Mura, in a picture of a group of people splashing around in a pond. “They grew up together, and they were very close. Such that she was irrevocably changed by his passing.”

The girl with blonde hair in the picture, that Link knows is Zelda, is beaming in a sopping wet tunic, wet hair clinging to her cheeks. He remembers the face they’d seen in the desert. Closed, distant, regal.

“Here,” Raruta says, and they begin to move again. The pictures continue, and though they’re walking at the same pace, they seem to go by faster. Raruta picks out pictures of Zeldas, the features always different but somehow instantly recognizable. Some of the pictures even have Links in them, similarly varied but striking. She keeps a running commentary. “These ones worked together to rebuild Hyrule. These ones married. Oh, on the high seas, too. How romantic. These ones were friends until the end - old age. These two went their separate ways, but wrote letters.”

The pictures are moving by in a blur, now, and Link can barely keep track. Iteration after iteration, different fates, different relationships start to blur together and he’s having trouble keeping it all in his head and it feels like a light at the end of the darkness, a voice calling him to stir from sleep -

He stops in place and holds his head, closing his eyes shut tight.

When he opens them, Raruta is standing there, fallen silent. Link feels half in and half out, somehow, and when he looks around he realizes why. In front of him, at a place he senses is the beginning, the crumbled temple of time sits, a statue of Hylia ravaged by the elements but still proudly standing in its depths. Behind him, the realm of the slate and pictures fades into it, and behind the statue, there is nothing. A drop into an empty sky that goes down forever.

Link walks up to the statue of Hylia, like he has countless times before, and watches the light bathe it. It’s silent, this time, but he feels a familiar presence.

A light in the darkness.

“It’s lost to the annals of time,” Raruta says, “But this whole thing started when, a very very long time ago, a goddess touched the mortal realm and came to love a very brave boy.”

Is he crying? He thinks his face might be wet, and when he puts a hand up to check, it comes away with the cold touch of moisture.

“That’s not me,” he says, voice a low rasp.

“It’s alright to feel that way,” the Zora says. “But consider for a second - that sword you carry.”

Link reaches up and rests his hand on the hilt of the Master Sword. It feels… right, in his hands. It always has. Even when he’d tried to pull it before regaining his full strength, the failure hadn’t felt like a rejection. More like… disappointment.

“That’s a piece of the legacy you inherited, too,” she says. A ghostly altar flickers in front of the statue of Hylia, like the one that had been concealed in the Deku Tree’s sanctum. He sees, in a flash, the master sword, pulled from its resting place time after time, Link after Link, too many to count. It’s over as soon as it begun, the apparition gone.

But I’m not them, he thinks, and holds his head. I don’t want to be the person that Zelda loved. I want to be me.

Link looks back, and the sea of pictures stretches out far, so far. Images he knows and doesn’t know, so far removed from his own experiences that he can’t even see the rectangle that had hung above them before, the cracked window out into the world. Now that he’s here, where he hadn’t dared look, eyes forward doesn’t work anymore.

He feels trapped.

Trapped in the shadow of a thousand lifetimes, trapped by expectation, trapped in the past, which no matter how hard he tries he just can’t seem to escape -

Oh.

“Sidon,” Link breathes.

I know where he is.

He starts running. Behind him, Raruta smiles and begins walking, slowly, to follow him.

Sound is weird in this place. As Link races past the remnants of forgotten past lives, his heavy footfalls echo in a way that shouldn’t be possible in a space without boundary. He isn’t sure how long he runs, pushing his stamina in a loping sprint that never seems to tire him, before he arrives back where the two of them had arrived.

It’s different, now. Raruta, who has somehow beaten him back, stands at the base of the biggest change. Where once there had been the cluster of photos that Zelda had left him in their place on the ground, they now form a staircase that goes up and up and leads to...

Except that’s not quite right. There were twelve pictures in the Slate, and there are more steps than that.

The last one, his goal, is jet-black. Unlike the other memories, this one…

Link shakes his head sharply, runs a hand through his hair to get his bangs out of his face, and walks to the base of the steps. The run here, covering eons, had felt like minutes. The last twenty feet feel like an eternity.

He looks up.

“It looks like you’ve found the trial,” Raruta says. “Well done, that.”

I kind of thought it would involve fighting something, Link thinks, brows knitting together. Some of these memories, he knows. Others, he hadn’t gotten around to hunting down yet. The one at the top… he doesn’t know how he knows, exactly, but it feels different, somehow. Like it’s been lying in wait. The intangible pull from before leads to it, and…

“Are you alright?” Raruta’s voice snaps him out of it, and he turns his head. She’s regarding him with a sympathetic expression, voice softer than before.

After a pause, not taking his eyes away from the challenge ahead, Link shakes his head.

Raruta hums.

“I wouldn’t expect it,” she says, weary. “It wouldn’t be much of a trial of courage if it was easy to face.”

Terrifying. That’s it.

Link has fought Lynels, flown at death-defying heights, and faced down literal demons, but this -

“Still…” Raruta says. “You think he’s on the other side?”

Link nods.

He takes a deep breath and takes the first step.

It’s familiar.

He can hear the other champions talking as the princess drones on through the ceremony. Revali in particular isn’t making any effort to be quiet, and he hears their whole exchange before the memory fades out.

Zelda seems… unhappy.

His past self’s face is unreadable.

He comes back to himself, grimacing, and Raruta stands next to him on the first step of many. She doesn’t say anything, but she’s frowning, a sympathetic set to her features.

He’d rather go down, right now, down into the reservoir like he’d done that day after blowing off some steam on the Lynel at Shatterback Point. But the ground is a mere foot below, not very exciting, and most importantly, Sidon lies in the opposite direction.

He grits his teeth and keeps going. The next one is new to him.

They’re walking next to a forest, Zelda chattering on as she walks in front, eyes glued to the Slate. Details of the Divine Beasts, their progress, and the knight trailing behind, silent.

Would it have killed him to say something? But, then, maybe he just couldn’t.

And then she stills, and turns, and asks about the sword. Had it spoken to him?

As the memory runs its course, he runs a hand over its hilt.

“An interesting question,” Raruta says. Link frowns, and nods.

Are you like me, she’d really been asking.

He takes the next step.

A shrine refuses to give passage - dimly, Link recalls that inside that one there had been a major test of strength, so maybe it was a good thing Zelda hadn’t managed to get around whatever mechanisms the Sheikah had put in place.

Her protector comes up the pathway with two horses, and she orders him away.

He starts following her anyway.

Link comes out of that one frowning.

The next steps come one after the other.

- a rescue in the desert -

- the monsters lay defeated, everywhere, and she’s telling him off for being reckless -

- a flower that can only grow in the wild -

- she asks if, all he’d ever been told was that he was to be a knight, would he have chosen a different path.

That one gives him pause.

He keeps going.

- the king commands her to stop running away from her duty, and says the most horrible things -

- no matter what she tries, the power to seal away the darkness won’t come -

- she’s treating her horse well, and as she talks about giving it the benefit of the doubt, she’s wearing a sly look that says she’s not just talking about the horse -

- the last spring, and the power still won’t come forth. Mipha is about to say something, something about her healing magic, when the calamity strikes, and her words are forever swallowed by the preparations for the coming battle -

- She did everything she could, and it was all for nothing.

That last one resonates uncomfortably well.

They’re at the top of the steps, now. The last one isn’t a step, but hovers in the air in front. It’s black, as Link had already gathered, but it’s not, at the same time. It’s the absence of anything at all but a feeling, rendered for his eyes. It sort of hurts to look at.

“The poor girl had a lot on her shoulders,” Raruta says.

Link nods. That much is painfully obvious.

“Looking at the whole picture… do you feel any differently than before?” she asks, eyes meeting his. They’re intense, and searching, and he gets the feeling she can see right through him.

He scratches the back of his head and lets himself drop to the ground - the surface of the second-to-last memory - and frowns.

Do I? he thinks.

He feels some thing. He’s always felt something, though, from the very first moment that he’d woken up. If he’d felt nothing, he wouldn’t have been afraid.

Afraid of what?

He looks up again at that blank space.

He shakes his head in answer to Raruta’s question. No, it’s not any different from before.

It’s an impression, more than anything. A murky flash in the dark of something powerful.

But if I go through with this, I might…

He gulps.

… I might feel differently about a lot of things.

And that’s really it, isn’t it?

What if I find out I loved Mipha?

What if I find out I loved Zelda?

What if going through with this makes me feel differently about... Sidon?

He looks up at Raruta and wills the thoughts he can’t find a voice for to reach her.

“I can see this is difficult for you,” she says, and sits down next to him, letting her legs dangle off the side. From here, they can see both sides - the pictures, trailing off into the sepia of the past, and the empty frames where the future has yet to be written. “... It’s funny, isn’t it? All the monsters in the world, and the toughest one of all is right here.”

Raruta reaches up and taps her chest, right over heart.

Link snorts. He draws his knees up and crosses his arms over them, resting his chin and looking out.

“I wonder, if I’d had the courage that you do, and begun walking my path earlier, if things would have gone differently,” she says, and Link glances over to see that she looks… sad.

He unfolds one arm, hesitates for a second, and then pats her on the back. She smiles in return, and he looks up at his destination once more.

From instinct, he knows that it involves Zelda. From context, he knows that this memory must happen during the calamity. From Mipha, he knows that this was when the Divine Beasts failed their mission, when she died.

From Sidon, he knows that this is where his story began. And that’s where he is. Link is sure of it.

Even if I feel different afterwards, he thinks, this is to save him.

He stands up. His companion nods, as though she can sense his resolve. Maybe she can.

He takes a step back, swings forward with his full weight, and dives into the last memory.

He lands in a field aflame. It’s raining, storming, the water coming down in sheets around him. The land below his feet is muddy, but the grass above it is burning, the flames so widespread that the smoke is pouring upwards and the embers are everywhere. The reason why becomes immediately apparent; it’s impossible to miss their distinctive silhouettes, the neon magenta highlights which all centre in a cyan eye, the destructive potential of which Link has felt firsthand many times.

Guardians. Scores of them, crawling over the field. Link thinks he knows the place, a graveyard of them. One hundred years from now it will be a peaceful swamp, the grazing fields of great herds of wild horses. Here and now, it’s a nightmare.

Suddenly he’s on the ground, on one knee, and he’s rocked by a wave of exhaustion and pain, every nerve in his body screaming at him to give up, lay down, there isn’t any more to give, but he can’t, he won’t, because Zelda is behind him and he won’t let it have been for nothing, she tried so hard, they both tried so hard, all of them tried so hard and it can’t have been for nothing!

She’s telling him to run and save himself, but she doesn’t understand, that’s not an option, it was never an option, he was never going to leave. He staggers to his feet, pulling the Master Sword up and even though it’s rusted and weak he feels a weak thrum of something like resolve -

- weak, to the Link of the past, but much stronger, to another, in a far-flung place in the future and set apart from the events that are unfolding -

- the sights of the guardian descend on him, a blinding red that burns his eyes and involuntarily makes his squeeze his eyes shut, it crawls up so fast, much faster than anything that big has a right to move, right over the husks of its compatriots, disabled at great cost, and he thinks no, and no, wait, that’s Zelda’s voice screaming, she’s rushing in front, and he jerks forward to stop her but she reaches out and

there’s a light

in

the darkness

It starts from her hand, and the last thing he sees before a brilliant explosion of light is the symbol of the triforce. It washes over the guardians, excising Ganon’s control, which leaves their sparking chassis to collapse, lifeless, on the ground.

It’s a light he’s felt dozens of times before, in greeting at every statue of Hylia, at the end of the memories, at the very beginning, before he’d awoken.

And, very suddenly, he understands.

He stands apart, now, the same way that he had in any other memory. Watches his old self collapse, watches the Master Sword fall out of his grasp, watches Zelda run over, the exchange with the blade, and watches the plan put itself together as she gives orders to the Sheikah who arrive on the scene.

It’s dark, then, as the memory’s end comes. He’s in a big Nothing, a blank spot of the film, in freefall somewhere between past and present.

He feels…

Himself.

He’s really dead, isn’t he, he thinks, as the last emotions of a dying man fade into vague impressions once more. He reaches back and puts a hand on the Sword That Seals the Darkness. You kept a bit of him, huh?

The Master Sword doesn’t speak in words, not that he can understand, but he thinks he gets the gist. It feels like a sigh in his soul. It says: I keep a bit of all of them.

He pauses, and thinks, Sorry for using you as a pickaxe.

The response is an intense impression of exasperated fondness, and Link finds himself grinning despite everything.

He drops it in a moment, however, as he remembers his goal. Someone else is counting on him, and here, in this time, it’s so much closer than before. All he has to do is reach out with his hand, which is shining with its own piece of the triforce -

- and picture -

Sidon sits in his room for hours, going over and over an apology to his father, adding and subtracting from the words until they become as meaningless as they feel.

It’s not that he isn’t sorry for scaring them! It’s just that he’s not sorry for taking the leap in the first place. And he has a feeling saying that wouldn’t go over well.

He waits, and revises, and waits, but dinner never seems to come. Eventually, he grows bored, and he opens the door to his room, slipping out. He easily passes under the notice of most of the other Zora as he weaves his way out of the royal chambers - he is, after all, not that large yet.

Yet? A thought niggles at the back of his mind, but he dismisses it.

He finds himself in the middle of the lower square in Zora’s domain. Zora stream past him, on some business or another, as he stands in front of a rough cut of stone.

He can see the luminous core of it shining from the inside. When it’s finished, the stonemasons say (and he knows that they’re right), the whole thing will glow softly in the night, shedding light over the whole area. And the tip of her trident, at its base, will shine most brightly of all, and all will be able to gaze upon Mipha’s face once more.

For now, it’s just an idea, but, standing there in front of the unfinished block, Sidon feels as though he’s been struck another loss. He sniffles, once, and then again.

A hand falls upon his shoulder, a firm and familiar grip, and his breath catches.

“I’m sorry,” an achingly familiar voice says, or at least he thinks it does - it’s got a dreamlike quality to it, half in his own head and half out. It’s just as gentle as he remembers.

He doesn’t dare look back.

“Why’d you h-have to go?” he asks, the tears that had been welling up overflowing and rolling down his cheeks. The hand squeezes his shoulder.

“For the same reason that you did,” she says, and Sidon feels a warring sense of confusion and understanding, like there are two of him sitting side-by-side hearing the same words with different ears. His face screws up, and he lifts a hand to wipe the tears away from his cheeks.

“I miss you,” he says.

“My dear Sidon,” Mipha says, and he feels a phantom embrace from behind. “I’ve missed you too.”

The feeling is gone just as suddenly as it came, and Sidon looks back to find nothing at all.

He lingers in front of the statue-to-be for a few minutes longer, until the tears have dried.

He’s about to go back to his quarters, and prepare himself to face his father once more, when he senses another presence, beside him this time. He looks up and to his right to find a Hylian.

He’s wearing the garb of a champion with a travelling hood over it, which is pulled down to reveal blond hair in a short ponytail, bright blue eyes, and a familiar smile. The Hylian kneels down as Sidon stares, open mouthed, and rests a hand on his head.

“... You were a cute kid,” he says, and all at once he’s looking down at - Link, he remembers, horrified to have ever forgotten, and they’re standing side-by-side in front of Mipha’s completed likeness.

“I had the most… awful dream,” Sidon says, somewhat unsteadily. With his returned adult size, so too returns the effect of the poison. Link moves to steady him. “Though, it wasn’t all bad.”

“Not much longer,” Link says, and he urges him away. Sidon lets himself be guided, and as they go, the domain fades into another place. “C’mon.”

He takes one last look at Mipha’s statue before the two of them step into somewhere new.

Maybe it’s just the delirium, but it feels like she’s really there, seeing him off.

Half-leading, half-dragging Sidon, as Link steps out of the memory of Zora’s Domain, the landscape changes around him once more. They’re back where they started, that stone pavilion surrounded by clear water. Raruta is sitting serenely on its edge, leaning up against one of the support beams with her feet dangling into the water, and she smiles and nods at Link’s entrance.

“What a pretty little place,” Sidon mumbles, looking around. It hits Link that the last time they were here, he’d been unconscious. He doesn’t look too far from it now.

There is something new, though, an installation that hadn’t been there before. It’s right in the centre of the flagstones.

“Cooking pot?” he asks of Raruta, as she picks up the staff that had been placed at her side and pulls herself to standing. She nods.

“I would have gone for a cauldron, but to each their own,” she says, making her way over to the fixture. Link guides Sidon most of the way there and lies him down on his back. His eyelids flutter closed, and Link feels a chill wrap itself around his heart.

He lays a hand on Sidon’s chest, takes a shuddering breath in and out, and turns to face Raruta. She nods, and passes the staff over the cooking pot. The flames under it roar to life, and clear water appears.

“To be honest, your innate magical ability is just about nothing,” she says. “But you should be able to make do with something more familiar to you, yes?”

Link stares at the cooking pot, then looks over his shoulder at Sidon.

He steps up to the pot. 

It is familiar, now that he’s there. Tiny bubbles cling to the blackened iron at the bottom of the pot. Soon it will be at a nice rolling boil. There’s a sturdy wooden spoon resting against its side. He can work with this. He just needs… ingredients.

He looks up at Raruta.

“The spell,” he says, reaching out.

“Oh, I never gave that back, did I?” she says, humming. With a flourish, the blue orb appears in her hand, casting a soft teal glow on her face. Where it touches, her bright red-orange spots turn a soft magenta. She goes to hand it to him, but halfway there, her arm stills.

He throws her a questioning, perturbed look.

“I mentioned there would be a price,” Raruta says, and her face is suddenly very serious. Almost grim. “Fair warning: if you do this, this spell will never save you again. Healing magic is one-way only.”

She glances down, and Link follows her eyes to her leg. The bad leg, which she’s not putting any weight on at all. The hand that isn’t outstretched is gripping her staff tightly, using what he can only imagine is some kind of powerful arcane instrument as a walking stick.

“I’ll live,” he says, beckoning her to hand it over. She does, and it hovers just above the palm of his hands as he holds it up above the pot.

On his adventures, Link had spent a lot of time in the Hebra mountain range. It had been forbidding, the cold unforgiving in its constant presence, the monsters plentiful, and the climb rocky, sheer, and deadly in most places. There had been a hot spring up on that mountain, though, and for the surrounding chill, its warm waters had been all the more soothing. That’s what Mipha’s Grace feels like in his hands, and for just a moment, he’s almost loathe to let it go.

But he does let it go, and it drifts downwards and meets the boiling water. It sinks, dissolving in a wave, and the water turns an iridescent blue in a gentle wave from the centre.

Raruta nods her approval, and Link raises his left hand, examining the symbol of the triforce there.

“How do I get it out,” he says, after staring at it doesn’t produce any results.

“It’s a part of you,” she says, barely masking amusement. Link shoots her a look. “Think of it more as… taking water from a well.”

He frowns, but lowers his hand to just above the water, far enough not to scald but close enough that he feels the steam hot on his palm. He closes his eyes and breathes.

When he’d reached out for Sidon, it had been with him. He reaches out again.

When he opens his eyes again, the symbol is glowing, and then the glow expands, like light in liquid form, falling through the spaces between his fingers and thumb and the side of his hand and into the broth. It swirls into the blue and creates a dazzling spiral of blue and gold in the pot.

Link picks up the spoon, from off to the side, and gives the mixture a stir. The spiral stretches and becomes thinner, irregular, and finally snaps, but the two energies are like oil and water, forming up in irregular patterns on the surface.

“They won’t mix,” he says, frowning.

“There are three components to a spell,” Raruta says. The bottom of her face is lit up by the now-shifting light from the concoction.  “All three shape its function. The vessel, the power, and the intent.”

“Intent?” he asks, and she smiles.

“I can help you with this part,” she says, and, quite suddenly, they’re not in a pavilion on the water anymore. They’re on a dais, in the Gerudo Highlands, in front of the statue of the Eighth Heroine. The stone and tilework are worn and eroded at the edges like the statue itself. The winds whip around them, howling, but the cold from before doesn’t seem to reach them, and the distance is clouded in mist. Link, Sidon, and the cooking pot remain unchanged at its centre, but Raruta stands in a circle much like the other heroines had, complete with the symbol at her feet. 

“You’re a cook, so I’m sure you can figure out the secret ingredient,” she says, winking.

It’s a heart.

Link turns.

Sidon is laid out on the ground, and though his chest goes up and down with the slow breath of sleep, it’s shallow. He’s still, and, as before, it seems wrong.

Sidon should be up, awake, marvelling at their surroundings with wide eyes. He should be brimming with life. He should be as excited to meet Raruta as he was to see her sister. He should be there for Link to hold, to cling onto, to soothe the rawness that facing all of his past at once has left in his heart. He should be able to see, in Sidon’s eyes, the sadness that his younger self had borne before it had been clouded again by the poison’s touch.

Link wonders how that sadness can coexist with Sidon’s genuine smile and aches, because the answer is that Sidon is Sidon, and right now he wants him back more than anything else in the entire world.

“Love,” he says, turning back to Raruta and the bubbling pot.

She smiles at that, and, shifting all of her weight to her good leg, lowers the staff to the stonework surface of the dais. She taps the edge of the tiles that make up the perimeter of her space, and a soft pink light spreads from the point it touches outwards until it’s all the way around the circle, and then inwards until the heart-shaped rune is fully lit up, casting her figure in pink from below. For a moment, just a moment, Link thinks she looks sad, or maybe distant, but it passes as she raises the staff once again and he feels a stirring in his chest.

He’s never felt anything quite like it before, but it’s almost like every thing he has ever felt in Sidon’s presence passes through him and collects somewhere over his heart. The ache is there, and so is a bubbly, lifting feeling, and safety, and warmth. Nervousness, trepidation and guilt are there, too, but interwoven and tempered by fondness, laughter, and something he can only describe as awe. There are more feelings, too, fleeting or that he can’t quite find the words to describe.

Oh, he thinks, looking down as a light, the same pink as the one shining under Raruta but somehow brighter, almost blinding, pulls free from his chest. He expects to feel numb, in its absence, but as he catches it and it hovers in his cupped hands, just like Mipha’s Grace had done, he doesn’t feel diminished. The unusual intensity of emotion fades, but more like it’s returned to its rightful place.

He just stares at it, for what must be seconds but feels like an eternity.

“Oh,” he says, and blinks hard as his vision blurs.

Very, very gently, he lowers it into the cooking pot. The three colours, blue, gold, and pink, mingle and churn in the boiling liquid.

Link picks up the spoon again and stirs. They spiral together and the edges between them dissolve, and they form together to make what Link could only describe as pure white light in liquid form.

“Well done,” Raruta says. Her voice is soft, but it carries over the sound of the wind like it’s not even there. Maybe it isn’t.

Link stands, and he’s about to ask how he’s supposed to use it - there isn’t a bowl around, after all - when the light gathers together into an orb, rising from the centre of the pot and hovering in front of him. It’s very much like the other spirit gifts had been, with a rune in the centre. He recognizes it immediately - it’s the camera rune from the Slate, rendered in stark black. Somehow, that doesn’t take away from its shine. Before he can process what that could mean, Raruta raises her staff one last time and, as with the others, the new spell flies into his chest.

It feels like he’d been missing an arm all his life and is just now realizing that it’s there.

He breathes in, and out, and then, like an object in the air is inexorably drawn to the earth, he turns and kneels at Sidon’s side. His hands rest on his friend’s chest. He feels the shallow breaths under his touch, notes the small furrow in his browridge, the frown tugging at his mouth even in his sleep, the fact that his entire leg is a sickly green-brown. He screws his eyes shut.

He pictures it. How Sidon should look. Free of poison. Eager to go forth and save his people. Strong and kind and alive and always, always trying his best.

The back of his eyelids light up, and he opens them to see a now-familiar white light come over Sidon. It starts at his heart, from Link’s hands, and washes over him, gathering at the poisoned leg. Slowly, but surely, the wound fades, not from the edges, but all at once, as though it had never been there at all. When the spell has run its course (Link feels it, knows it; it feels like he’s held something heavy, long enough for muscle fatigue to set in, but in a more abstract way) Sidon’s expression smooths out, and he opens his eyes.

“Link?” he asks, pushing himself up. “Are we - whoof! ”

He doesn’t get any further, because Link falls into him and wraps himself around his friend so tightly that he doubts that the strength of Ganon’s whole army put together could extricate him.

Sidon coughs, probably because his lungs are under a vice’s worth of pressure, and puts an arm around him in return.

“I take it I’m not dead, then,” he says, and Link nods into his chest. “Wonderful. I - I was quite worried, for a little while there.”

Link looks up at him, teary-eyed.

“Me too,” he says.

“Clearly I should have had more faith in you,” Sidon says, and grins in that way of his, and that’s what clinches it, that’s what makes it real, what pushes past the lump in Link’s throat as he lets out a sob, and then another, and buries himself again in Sidon’s embrace.

Sidon puts his other arm around him and hugs him close.

He doesn’t know how long he’s there - technically, it could have been forever or no time at all, with the way this place is, but Sidon holds him fast the whole time, and the tension has bled out of him almost entirely by the time Raruta speaks up.

“I think it’s fair to say the two of you have earned my blessing,” she says, and there’s a smile in her voice.

“I beg your pardon,” Sidon says, as Link finally lets go and rolls off of him. They stand, and as Link looks up at his expression, he sees his own mild embarrassment at having had that display witnessed by another mirrored in Sidon’s face. “You must be - Raruta?”

“The very same,” she says, nodding. “It’s good to see you up and abou- Oh! ”

She’s cut off by Sidon crossing the dais and picking her up in a great, Sidon-sized hug. It lifts her off of her feet, and she wheezes out a delighted peal of laughter.

“I’m dreadfully sorry,” he says, setting her down, “but I simply can’t thank you enough for your assistance! I would be dead without your help, Sage.”

“Oh my,” she says, looking past him to catch Link’s eye. There’s a sparkle in it. She returns her gaze to Sidon, which is mostly a vertical climb. “You’re such a sweet boy. You really did come from my sister.”

“I had the pleasure of meeting her,” Sidon says. Link, still trying to process the meaning of that look, wanders up behind him to stand at his side. “Do you really think so? I rather thought she reminded me of my sister.”

“Ah, well…” Raruta’s smile drops away. “She did outlive me by a few hundred years. It’s possible she changed.”

An awkward pause hangs heavy in the air.

“They said you betrayed them.”

Link is the one to break it, a thought that had been simmering away in the background of other, more important things just now coming to the forefront.

“Yes, come to think of it,” Sidon says, “I’m endlessly thankful for your help, but I must admit that you’re not quite what I expected.”

Raruta sighs.

“Do you recognize this stone?” she asks, tilting her staff towards Sidon. He blinks once, then twice, and his eyes widen with recognition.

“Is that -” he says, taken aback. “- is that the genuine article?”

“It was,” she says, and then, casting a look at Link, elaborates. “The Zora’s Sapphire. The spiritual stone of our people, passed down for countless thousands of years.”

“They sealed Zavon within the stone,” Sidon says, face drawn in thought. “He took it from you?”

“I had intended to give it to him,” Raruta says, softly.

Link watches Sidon’s face light up with understanding, slowly, until his eyes are as wide as saucers.

“Oh,” he breathes. “Oh.”

“I don’t get it,” Link says, looking between the two of them.

Sidon runs a hand over his headfin.

“Do you recall what I said about - sapphires, in the context of gifts?” he says.

Link’s eyes widen.

“Oh,” he says.

“Yes,” Sidon says. “Oh.”

“You’ve gathered correctly,” Raruta says, and though the words are neutral, there’s a profound sadness behind them. “You see, long before this all came to a head, the two of us were in love.”

The dais and the Gerudo Highlands fade away around them, and the pavilion from before returns. Sidon looks startled, but Link reaches up and takes his elbow, steadying him. Raruta remains at their side, still as a statue.

In that spot that Raruta had sat, before, with her feet dangling in the water, there’s another one of her. There’s something different in the way she holds herself - less straight-backed, more carefree. She isn’t alone, either. Sitting next to her is another Zora, a man that towers in stature to match Sidon. He’s jet-black, for the most part, but his front is a solid, thick stripe of white that goes from his upper legs up to his face, and there are two large oval spots on either side of the front of his headfin that gives the uncanny impression that he has another set of eyes.

They’re speaking, though their words don’t quite reach the group of them, and, responding to an unheard joke, the younger version of Raruta throws her head back and laughs, reaching out to shove her companion. He’s grinning, radiating a clear and pure fondness.

The memory stops in its tracks, the two of them frozen together in time. Raruta, the present Raruta, the spirit, slowly lowers her staff. 

“... What happened?” Sidon asks in a low voice.

“Tensions were high, in those days,” she says. Her eyes haven’t left the scene in front of them. “Our tribes were very nearly at war. I used my magic to conceal our meetings, even as he began to come into his own as a leader and continue the warmongering his parents had started.”

“Why?” Link asks, and she sighs deeply.

“I thought I could change his mind, I guess,” she says. “Love is a very powerful thing, but it can blind a person. Time went on, I became a sage, and, right under my nose, he made a deal with a demon.”

“Zelda mentioned that,” Sidon says. “A demon of the deep.”

She nods.

“I don’t know its name,” she says. “No one does, I think. It has the power of electricity, which is formidable, but its true domain is darkness. Deep, true darkness, the unknowable and that which is lost to the depths.”

She stares at the frozen memory once again, a hard set to her jaw.

“Little by little, my Zavon was eaten away by it,” she says. “There were signs, and I overlooked them. My intentions were never for the ill of the kingdom, but I can’t deny that had I acted sooner… well. In any case, you probably know how I was kicked out of the sages.”

Link nods, and he sees Sidon do the same.

“I had come to a point where I could not maintain my double life any longer,” she says. “So, I made a decision. I would ask him to marry me, to end the war and unite our tribes. It seemed like the perfect solution. Sure, there would be resistance on both sides, but it was relieving, you know, the prospect of finally having it all out in the open...”

She trails off.

“Something happened,” Link ventures.

Raruta lifts her head, and their surroundings change again.

The cove where the Sea Zora make their home looks like it would shine in the light of the sun, but the skies are darkened by thunderclouds. It’s backed by a cliff from which three waterfalls pour from the rocks into the waters of the cove, and on the hill that rises behind them, Link can see deposits of raw luminous stone. Zora architecture is everywhere, though not as elaborate or large as the Domain Link remembers.They’re almost a fusion of the elegant design of the River Zora and the style of Lurelin village, their silver platforms lined with hut-like structures all across the stretch of water and lit with luminous stone, but their colour is… off, because there’s another light source, some sort of organic, black growth that webs up and down the lattice of silver and ends in hanging lanterns that cast the whole place in an eerie light.

They’re in the largest hut, and Raruta stands in front of the throne where Zavon sits. For all that the other Zora had been twisted, he remains largely the same from their previous glimpse of him; except for the white parts of him, which are translucent and now show off his insides, down to the bones and murky outlines of his guts.

“We can stop this,” Raruta says. There’s a desperate cant to her voice. She’s leaning heavily on her staff, and she looks exhausted. Lightning strikes, somewhere close, and she flinches. Zavon’s face remains dispassionate. “It took me - too long, to say this, but by the goddesses, please, Zavon.”

She kneels on her good leg and holds the staff out in both hands. The Zora’s Sapphire gleams, even in the darkness.

“Marry me,” she breathes.

The prince of the Sea Zora raises himself from his throne, and steps towards her.

He looks her up, and down, and then frowns, just slightly, his snout crinkling.

“Why would I ever want to do that?” he asks.

Rurata’s head snaps up, eyes wide. He raises a hand, the air becomes charged, and -

Everything goes black.

Link claps his hand to his mouth to stifle a gasp. The one that is still resting on Sidon’s arm feels him go shock-stiff.

“That’s how I died,” Raruta says. Her voice is rough.

“Gods…” Sidon says.

“It lured him in with the promise of power, but it took him, in the end,” she says, turning away. She’s almost hunched over, as though her death were a physical weight. “At least… that’s what I assume must have happened. That’s how those things usually go.”

“I’m sorry,” Link says. She takes a deep breath, straightens, and turns back to them.

“I may be cut off from most things, nowadays, but I am connected to the sapphire through the circumstances of my death. I felt his return. The two of you intend to stop him?”

“Yes,” Sidon says. With that, he seems to shake off the shock of what they’ve seen, and something of his regal bearing returns. “We must. If we do not… it’s unthinkable.”

“Then take my blessing, Prince Sidon of the Zora,” Raruta says, stepping forward. She reaches out and lays a hand on his shoulder. The pink light from before returns, and covers him before fading away. “With what little power of mine remains, I give you protection from the demon’s gift, the lightning that ended my life. Use it wisely. It won’t protect you from his silver.”

Sidon reaches back and runs a hand over his own spear.

“I should think I can handle a little melee,” he says, flashing her his trademark grin and raising his fist confidently.

“Then I won’t keep you any longer,” she says, stepping back. As she does, the blackness retreats, and she stands once again in her circle in front of her statue. “Goodbye, and… good luck. Hylia be with you.”

She says the last part knowingly, and before Link can even think of a response, the ground under them shifts, there’s a sensation of falling, and then the snow is under him as he finds himself splayed out on the cliffside where they’d begun.

He looks over. Sidon is sitting up from his own snowpile, hale and hardy, and their eyes meet.

“We did it,” Sidon says, with a dazed smile.

“You’re okay,” Link says. He feels exactly the same way that Sidon looks. He flops back down into the snow, tired in a way he can’t quantify. He hears a muffled crunch as Sidon does the same, and they lay there in silence for a minute. 

“Have to go,” he says, weary.

“In a moment,” Sidon says. “I think I need to catch my breath.”

Link watches the clouds go by in the sky, thick and billowy and laden with the snow that falls around them. Each snowflake that hits his cheek is a tiny sting. It’s a nice reminder that they’re in the real world, alive.

“You know,” Sidon says, after a time. “I’m a little disappointed.”

“Disappointed?” Link echoes, turning his head.

“After all that we heard, I’d hoped to find out what her strength as a heroine was supposed to be.”

Link breathes in sharply. He chokes on a snowflake, and starts coughing, and then keeps coughing, and by the time that Sidon picks himself up in alarm to help, he’s dissolved into a fit of helpless laughter.

Raruta leans upon the support beam of the pavilion, looking out over the water and the fountains. When she concentrates like this, sometimes the mist pushes back, and she can see just a little further than before. A glimpse of something she once knew.

“I think he would have liked it if you’d shown your face,” she says, not looking back. The presence behind her floats to her side, and the two of them look out to the water together. The mists push back as she approaches, granting that long sought-after vista - the trees and the sky out beyond the still waters of the pond. “You could have. Interfered a little more, that is.”

It will be gone when Mipha leaves, taking the power of the Divine Beast with her, but for now, she savours it.

“I think you’re right,” Mipha says. She’s soft-spoken. The prince had been right; she does resemble Mura. “But…”

“But?”

“But I couldn’t,” she says. Rurata turns her head, and beholds Mipha.

She’s looking out on the water, too, and she looks incredibly fond.

“Not when I was so proud of him, for making it on his own,” she says.

“Hah,” Raruta says, and, despite herself, she smiles.

She stays there, for a while, for which Raruta is grateful. And, when Mipha finally leaves, she watches the mists alone once more.

The sun is just coming up when Link and Sidon make their way down from the perch of the Eight Heroine’s statue, or so Sidon gauges by the light, since it’s still overcast by the time they get going. The way down is a sharp drop (navigated by paraglider) followed by a steep slope, which is a challenge not to tumble down as they traverse it. After a certain elevation, though, the snow clinging to the ground gives way to rough gravel and dirt, and the balancing act becomes easier.

Getting around the cliffs takes most of the morning, and both of them are so focused on avoiding the drop from the often perilously narrow ledges that they don’t exchange more than a few words. Sidon has no idea where they’re headed, though judging by the sun as it peeks out of the clouds and the bearings he remembers from their map, it’s probably back towards the general direction of the Domain. Link, on the other hand, doesn’t show a trace of hesitation as he leads them along the edge of the Gerudo Highlands and the scenery below gives way from rocky beige-yellow to the rolling green of a forested area.

They encounter a lone wolf along the way, and after Link cuts it off mid-howl with a well-placed arrow, Link’s hungry eyes and Sidon’s stomach successfully petitions his sensibilities for a break with royal decorum to sling its carcass over his shoulder until they can find somewhere to stop for lunch.

The poison is gone, and the fog that had crept up in his head well and truly cleared with the cure, but Sidon still feels sluggish in a different way. He’s actually glad for a few hours of companionable silence to process after… all of that. And it is just that - companionable. He’s gotten pretty good at reading his Hylian friend’s mannerisms, and Link’s body language doesn’t seem as tense as it usually is when he’s forced into a quiet spell. If anything, he seems like an invisible weight has been lifted off of his shoulders.

They find it just before the midday sun reaches its peak. On their descent, in a spot where the stark drop softens, Sidon lays eyes on a beautiful little lake that, on the far side, hosts a glen of trees. Him and Link exchange a look - the pique of excitement that shines in Link’s eyes make Sidon’s heart skip a beat, and he smiles back with his biggest, toothiest grin - and they make their way down the cliffside in all due haste.

Sidon discards their lunch-wolf and dives headfirst into the water, and half a week of desert climes hits him all at once as his poor, dry scales feel the caress of a body of water that is not either an oversized, muddy puddle or filled with sand. Under the surface, he lets out what is frankly an embarrassing moan of relief and practically lets himself drift to the other side of the lake. By the time he does, Link has already walked around the side and is hacking away at the branches of a tree with the Master Sword.

“Sorry,” he hears him say (to the sword?), as the wood comes loose, and Sidon pipes up from the shore.

“Sorry?” he echoes, and Link blinks and looks his way. He shrugs, collects the thick branches, and tosses them in a pile next to their lunch-to-be, which he must have picked up and hauled the rest of the way, before heading back into the wooded area to pick up brush and kindling.

“Be nice to have my stuff,” he says once he’s done, sitting down and beginning the gross-but-necessary process of extracting edible chunks of meat from their hunt. It’s made all the more awkward by the fact that he’s trying to do it with a sword. Sidon hums in agreement, looking away so as to preserve his appetite. Then he looks back at Link and something occurs to him.

“Speaking of, when did you get the chance to change?” he says. Link stares at him blankly and then looks down at himself.

He’s still wearing the outfit that he’d appeared to Sidon in in the spirit world, one of his favourite combinations of the snowquill pants, the blue champion’s tunic, and a Hylian-style hood over it. The hood is down, which might be part of why it took Sidon so long to notice the change had persisted.

“... Huh,” Link says, frowning. He looks up at Sidon, worrying at his lip, before coming to some kind of realization. “... Guess I was in the Slate.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Link frowns and continues his work with a neat slice.

“Get the fire?” he asks, tilting his head towards the pile of wood, and Sidon remembers with a jolt that their fire rod is in his bag. He drags himself out of the water to get that started, and as he arranges the wood and Link finishes up his work, they talk.

“What did happen in there?” Sidon asks. “Until you appeared, it felt like I was dreaming.”

Link makes a face that Sidon knows is his gathering-his-words face before replying.

“She pulled us in,” he says. “And then - said she couldn’t heal you. But I could. Had to do a trial. It was in the Slate, and then…”

“In the Slate?”

Link nods. He pulls the broken item in question up to look at it, after wiping his hands on the grass.

“Hard to describe,” he says, and then his voice becomes quieter. “I… learned a lot about Zelda.”

Sidon pauses in his work, looking down at Link. He’s frowning at the Slate, but he doesn’t seem upset. It’s more of a thoughtful expression.

“What exactly did you find out?” Sidon asks, quickly, unable to keep all of the sudden flash of insecurity out of his tone. “Er, that is, about Zelda. Yes.”

Link replaces the Slate on its place on his hip and huffs out a big breath, letting himself fall backwards and landing so that his big blue eyes are looking at Sidon upside-down from the ground between his splayed arms.

There’s something in his face, the way he’s looking up at him, that Sidon can’t quite decipher, but catches his breath in his throat nonetheless.

“She’ll get it,” he says, with such certainty and finality in his tone that even though Sidon has many, many more questions, and that hadn’t really answered any of them, he feels like a bigger question that he’d felt more than conceived has been put to rest.

“Well,” Sidon says, hunching over just long enough to finish arranging their firewood. He’s trying very hard not to read into that look, and maybe not completely succeeding. His chest feels, for lack of a better word, floaty, as he thinks about Link’s eyes. “I’m glad, then. Oh, are you about done? I’m peckish.”

Link nods, pulling himself up from sitting in a graceful sit-up to reach his handiwork.

“Use the spear?” he says, holding up several chunks of fresh meat and eyeing Sidon’s weapon with that specific gleam in his eyes that is relegated to the deployment of the culinary arts.

“If you think it will work,” Sidon says, pulling out his silverscale spear and frowning at the shape of the head. Its crescent tip doesn’t seem well-suited to the task, but he knows better than to underestimate Link.

Link takes it and nods vigorously, getting to work.

Lunch is roasted spit-roasted meat and several eggs cooked in the shell that Link scavenges from a nearby tree while they’re waiting for the meat to be done. The taste of land-based meat isn’t what Sidon is used to, and it’s sort of gamey in that way that apex predators tend to be, but it’s more than edible. In fact, compared to the rations they’d subsisted on on the way to the Eighth Heroine, it’s practically gourmet.

When they hit the chasm, an hour later, Sidon forgets about it completely.

“No,” he hisses, dropping to one knee as he looks down at the water storeys below. “It can’t be.”

It’s black, and a familiar presence lurks over the surface like a film, an electric sort of static in the air that goes right to Sidon’s spine with an unsettling tingle.

Link draws up next to him, sheathing the Master Sword from where it had been drawn to skirmish with a pair of unfortunate Moblins. His brow creases as he looks down over the edge into the water.

“Here?” he says, putting the question that’s racing through Sidon’s mind to voice. “Already?”

“If it’s spread this far, then the Domain…” Sidon says. He trails off, and both of them stare down into the brackish depths. 

Eventually, Link’s hand falls on his shoulder. He looks up to see Link nod, and he nods in return. They keep moving.

Some time past sundown, they reach the Outskirt Stable. Sidon perks up as they re-enter familiar territory, and Link is glad, because no matter how hard Sidon tries to put up a front of being okay, he can tell that the sight earlier had shaken him. It’s the opposite of the effects of the poison; he’s restless, filled with directionless energy that comes out in fidgets and terse bursts of strategizing on what they’ll do when they get there, despite the fact that neither of them really know the details of what they’re up against. Link lets him talk, though. It seems to make him feel better. 

There’s no stockpile of fish, without the Slate, but there is a cooking pot, and Link throws together something with the mushrooms that had been plentiful on the way and some unfortunate bird that had crossed their path to appease their growling stomachs. It doesn’t poison Sidon, fortunately, and as a bonus, he makes the funniest face as he picks at the fowl before ultimately deciding it’s edible.

Link can’t help but smile.

He’s bone-tired, but he finds himself lying awake that night, staring at the canvas roof of the stable, thinking about that face.

He has a word for this feeling, but now that he’s sure about it, it feels big and… real. It’s pulling him towards Sidon like some kind of magnetic force, and it has been for a long time, and he doesn’t know what’s going to happen when they finally collide.

He really wants to find out.

The next morning, when Sidon steps out of the covered portion of the stable and does a triple take at the monstrously large horse (named Tiny) that Link had arranged to be transferred here when they last passed through, and whispers “My, that is a horse,” Link feels that pull so keenly that he has to stand on tiptoes and bury himself in the stallion’s bright orange mane to resist the sudden urge to go over and…

And...

With a horse that is big enough for Sidon to actually ride, they make much faster progress than before. They’d had to spend a few hours jury-rigging a bigger saddle, but now Sidon sits in front and desperately tries not to fall off with assurances and tips from Link, master equestrian, who currently has both arms around his middle from behind and is managing to stay more stable on the back end than Sidon is with the actual reins.

He would be enjoying this a lot more if they weren’t constantly crossing over the blackened waters of Central Hyrule’s river system. He’ll allow himself to be lost in Link’s riding tips, steering the great creature, who seems never to run out of stamina even with the load of both of them on its back, and then they’ll cross a bridge and be confronted with the reality of the situation again.

The land around them fair flies past under the steady, unbroken gallop of their steed. They’re making better time than Sidon had dared to hope for, but that only serves to frame the differences from the ride over.

At around midday, they pass Riverside Stable. It’s abandoned, the fire under the cooking pot that once merrily crackled away unlit, the collection of goats and cuccos that once inhabited the little sandbars behind it gone. The windmills turn on, pinwheeling alone and advertising the wind’s passing to no one. Aside from that, it’s deathly still.

It had been less than a week ago that this place had been teeming with life, Sidon thinks.

Link and Sidon exchange a look and move on.

They pass the sandbar, next, the shrine that they’d conquered together sitting and glowing a serene blue, both a literal and figurative island among the ebony. The flowers, once vivid and beautiful even from the bridge overlooking them, seem faded.

He doesn’t see a familiar figure down there, either.

“Think Magda got out?” Link asks, apparently thinking the same thing.

“She seemed strong,” Sidon says, with more confidence than he feels. “I’m sure she did.”

He holds on to Sidon a little tighter, and Sidon doesn’t comment on it. He continues not commenting on it, or much of anything, until they get to the Moor Garrison Ruins.

Something smells rotten here.

They can see Vah Ruta, clearly, and beyond, the cliffs that surround and cradle Zora’s Domain. Above it...

It’s not exactly like the miasma around Hyrule Castle. It doesn’t have the same aura of power, the same presence. When Sidon sees Hyrule Castle he feels like some great and ancient force is reaching out and grasping at him, a clawed, gnarled hand that is only centimetres from touching his face and held back only by the confines of its deteriorating prison. It goes straight to his animal instinct for fear and presses.

There is something, though. It almost feels like a lack of something. A dark cloud, or is it a cloud, a rolling mass of darkness that starts around where the Domain ought to be by Sidon’s estimation and spreads to the far reaches of their territory. Vah Ruta is the only surface untouched, its sights ever on the castle, ready to perform its duty in the final battle.

Link’s looking at it, too. His eyes are sharp and flinty and there’s a deep frown on his face. When he turns to catch Sidon’s eye, there’s a cold determination in his expression. Sidon nods, slowly, and casts his eyes back out on the water. Only then does he notice, great numbers of something floating out there on top of the waves.

The source of the smell that’s been permeating the area hits Sidon as he realizes that they’re all dead fish.

Of course, he thinks uneasily. The elders said as much. They can’t survive in saltwater.

Unbidden, he recalls that the same principle applies to him.

“Have a bad feeling about this,” Link mutters, and Sidon can’t help but agree.

They run out of steam just as they hit the mouth of the domain, in part because the waterways closer in are patrolled by the monstrous Sea Zoras. They alternate between weaving around them and taking them out as they proceed. Sidon is certain that word is going to get back to their foe regardless, and rides with teeth gritted as Inogo Bridge comes into view.

It’s dark, truly dark, even without the odd presence of Zavon’s patron demon, and as tall and strong as Link’s horse is, they mutually agree that he’ll be unsuited for the terrain they’re about to traverse. They leave him out of direct line of sight of the water and carry on.

A short discussion of the logistics of escaping the notice of the patrols lead to them camping on one of the parapets atop the bridge’s twin towers. They don’t dare light a fire, and so the two of them sit against walls of the central spire that stands in the middle. Link takes first watch.

The feeling from before, that sort of slimy electrifying current running through the air, has intensified, and Sidon finds that though he’s very sore from riding all day, sleep is evading him. He looks up at the cliffside, back and headfin pressed against the cool wall behind him, and lets his mind take him round and round in circles of thought that hadn’t caught up with him until now.

It’s all so much. The Seven Sages, the Eighth Heroine. Raruta, her lover, the Zora’s Sapphire. The betrayal. Sidon’s face curls into a frown. She may have acted rashly, but Raruta had seemed genuinely nice in the short time he’d come to know her. She hadn’t deserved that fate.

And there’s just something about that story that’s bothering him.

“Sidon?” Link’s voice, lowered in deference to their position, brings him back to himself. He looks over to see Link peeking around his side of the pillar, brows pinched together in concern. “You okay?”

He considers, for a beat, and sighs, bringing his legs up to his chest and wrapping his arms around his knees.

“No,” he says. There are a thousand reasons why not, and Sidon sees Link’s mouth open to ask him. He speaks first. “It’s just...”

Link’s mouth snaps closed, and he moves, scuttling over to sit at Sidon’s side.

“Just?” he asks.

“It’s just - it doesn’t add up,” Sidon says, and then looks away. “... Maybe I’m just being fanciful.”

Link reaches up and tugs on his wrist, bringing his attention back to the Hylian’s questioning look. Sidon grimaces.

“It’s just that they loved each other,” he says, and he feels foolish saying it out loud, but he carries on anyway. “The first memory she showed us didn’t look fake, but… to think that he’d be able to strike her down and just - there was nothing there.”

Link nods, and frowns, and then looks away himself, obviously thoughtful.

“Strange,” he agrees, after a beat.

“... I don’t know,” Sidon says, arching his wrist and resting his chin on it.

Silence passes them by, for a time, and Sidon is starting to feel the grasp of slumber pull him down, down, down -

“Is it hard?” Link asks, and he shakes off a coming sleep and looks down at his companion.

Link is looking up at him with the strangest intense look in his eyes.

“What?” Sidon asks, feeling like he’s missed something.

“To… be a prince. In love,” Link says, and then pauses and makes his chewing-on-the-words face again before continuing earnestly. “Do you… have a choice?”

“I,” Sidon says. He feels like he’s been swept away in a riptide without warning, disoriented and far from the stability of the familiar shore. “... Sort of? I don’t doubt that whomever I end up courting is going to get a hard time from Muzu, at the least. And, er, there are always those problems that come with nobility.”

Link is still looking at him intently. He swallows.

“Responsibilities, expectations.” he says, trying to fill the space between them with words, because suddenly it doesn’t feel like there’s an awful lot of said space at all. “... The like.”

“Is there anyone you… can’t court?” Link asks, and oh, Sidon is running double-time not to read into that.

As a result, in an exceedingly rare and embarrassing display, words fail him.

“I, er,” he says. “That. Um. I. Can’t?”

“Like…” Link looks away and bites his lip. “When I… you said that they wouldn’t… like. Us.”

“Well, that is - hypothetically -” Sidon says, voice maybe a bit too loud because it comes out in kind of a squawk.

“Hypothetically,” Link says, already reddened cheeks darkening. Or so Sidon thinks so. It’s very dark. The only thing he can really make out in detail is Link’s eyes, which are sort of blown wide and very, very blue and pretty and - getting closer? “If…”

“If we…” Sidon says, faintly, and he’s not sure if he’s starting to lean down, or Link is approaching, or both. His heart is hammering in his chest. Great Hylia, he thinks they might be about to -

“What was that?” a voice shouts from below in Old Zora, and the two of them spring apart as though burned. “Did you hear something?”

They both freeze as the sounds of a patrol going by snap into focus. Link’s hand creeps towards his bow, and grasps it, and they both sit there in the dark that even the luminous stone lamps don’t seem to pierce, waiting. 

The Sea Zora scouts exchange some more words, that Sidon doesn’t quite catch or perhaps understand, before he hears whom he presumes is their leader step in in the tone of tired guards near the end of their watch everywhere.

“Probably nothing,” they say. “Move along. We’re behind schedule.”

The voices below agree, and retreat slowly upriver, and some time after they’re gone, Sidon and Link both finally relax. 

Link takes his hand off of his bow and looks at Sidon helplessly.

“I think,” Sidon says, head still spinning, “that we ought to get some rest while we can.”

He frowns (disappointed?), and crawls back over to his spot, sitting down hunched over and peeking over the edge of the parapet into the waters.

“I’ll,” he says, and then hesitates, “... wake you for your watch.”

Sidon swallows, makes a noise of affirmation, and sits back against the spire. Despite the fact that his brain is still going a mile a minute, it doesn’t take too long this time before sleep takes him.

The bridge to Zora’s Domain stretches across and along the river, a straight shot as the cliffs around it rise to cradle the Domain, which rests at the mouth of the river proper. It’s a long walk across a relatively narrow space, and Link remembers how he felt the first time he’d walked along it. The gleaming silver and luminous stone insets had grown ever larger and grandiose as he’d approached, a far cry from any other settlement in Hyrule.

The fighter in him thinks: There is a reason for that.

The bridge that leads to the domain from the path is an incredibly effective bottleneck. No land-based force could take the Zora’s home, with mountains on every side. It’s accessible only by river, which it is raised far above, and the bridge, which would be easy picking for archers and could be held by a comparatively small force of soldiers even without support. They have, or had, on the cliffs surrounding the domain, fish aplently in the pools of waterfalls, and they’re hardly likely to run out of water. They’re impervious to siege.

Even if it weren’t for everything else he’s seeing, Link’s skin would be crawling right now. The bridge in front of them is empty, and he’s been looking, but he hasn’t seen the telltale gleam of the silver bows that the Zora use. For that matter, he hasn’t seen any movement except…

Except, well, everything else he’s seeing.

If he’d thought that Zora’s Domain was gradiose the first time he’d saw it, he’d pick a different word now. It looms. As him and Sidon make their way across the bridge, the difference becomes sharply apparent.

It’s organic, the thing that’s growing on Zora’s Domain. It’s this film, clinging to the bones of the beautiful silver spires and covering them with sinew and muscle covered by a milky, translucent skin and mutant scales. They’re connected by webbings of veins, which pulse as though from a phantom heartbeat. From certain points, tendrils sticking out at odd angles cluster into eerie lights on stalks, casting a pale yellow light wherever they shine, but not too brightly, as though to draw one closer to see by them.

It’s dark, of course. They’re well within the supernatural cloud cover, and have been for some time. It had progressively gotten darker and darker as they’d moved on, dodging and taking out mutated Zora patrols, as well as the odd Lizalfos. The only real light to see by now is from those growths and another one, the biggest one, a light that shines and illuminates the whole Domain. It’s growing from a massive stalk from above the mouth of the stylized fish roof, and with its light they can see the ghoulish set of razor teeth where there was once an open entrance to Dorephan’s throne room, and the on and off again taint of the demonic growth over the bones of the silver walkways that make up Sidon’s home.

Sidon…

Link looks to his right to see Sidon’s face screwed up in rage. He looks a lot like he had fighting in the moonlight, rows of sharp teeth visible through a snarl, pupils so large that his eyes are nearly entirely black. He’s gripping the pole of his spear so tightly that Link is almost concerned it will break under the pressure.

“It’s a trap,” Link says, grim. Sidon turns to look at him, and his face loses a notch of that feral edge. It’s replaced by something approaching desperation.

“I know,” he says. “But what else is there to do? My people’s provisions will run out soon, if they haven’t already. And that’s assuming…” He pauses.

“Assuming?” Link frowns.

“Assuming they made it to the reservoir,” Sidon says, looking up and to his right, where the rocky face of the cliffs obfuscate the planned sanctuary of the Domain’s evacuees.

“They did,” Link says, reaching out and resting a hand on Sidon’s forearm. Even hunched, his shoulder is far out of reach.

“... Yes,” Sidon says, after a moment. The rage from earlier, the visceral anger at the violation of his home, has nearly drained from his face. He just looks strained, now. “Of course. They were more than prepared. How silly of me to doubt.”

“Yeah,” Link says, moving to elbow him. Sidon looks down, and he crooks his mouth into a half-smile. “You’re Sidon.”

“Well…” Sidon says, and his eyes return to the Domain. “I can’t say I’m immune to worry, as nice as that would be. If something were to happen to you, or if we should fail here, all of Hyrule will pay the price.”

He pauses, one sharp tooth worrying at his lip.

“Do you feel like this all the time?” he asks.

Link shakes his head.

“Nah,” he says, and when Sidon tilts his head in question, he adds: “Got someone believing in me.”

“Hah,” Sidon says, with a flash of his normal grin. “Fair enough.”

The mood is only temporarily buoyed, though. As they move forward, crossing the rest of the bridge, the atmosphere becomes thicker with that now-familiar electric slick. It courses around them and puts every nerve on edge; by the time they’re at the mouth of the Domain proper, Link has the Master Sword drawn and ready, but still they face no enemies.

It’s a ghost town. The merry fire that once crackled under the cooking pot in the inn is long extinguished, the general store’s shelves are empty of wares, and the usual hustle and bustle of the citizens and guards, the undercurrent of quiet conversation that usually accompanies the gentle roar of the waterfalls all around, is completely absent. The roar is still there, in the background, but it sounds like they’re hearing it muffled through fabric. What water flows through the Domain’s many wet walkways is tinted dark, and reflects the light of the intermittent lamp-growths oddly.

Mipha’s statue is untouched, a ring clear five feet around it.

“He’ll be in the throne room,” Sidon says, through clenched teeth, and Link nods.

They meet no resistance on the way up, and Link’s instincts scream at him that he’s missing something important, but there’s still no one around.

The throne room is at the top of a staircase, and its entrance sits right below the biggest light of them all, as though it’s inviting them in. Each step through the blackened water sends an uncomfortable tingle up Link’s spine. They’re both crouched low and ready for combat as they cross the threshold, but even so, Sidon breaks composure to gasp. Link, after a look around, understands why.

The throne room is normally one of the most impressive features of the domain, lit up from the inside out with gleaming luminous stone. There are two fountains on each side of the throne that act as springs, the water that flows through the pathways and waterfalls emerging as if by magic, and to either side and all around there are arches through which one can observe the whole Domain. The stairway itself leads into a platform that tapers off in front of the throne itself, which is backed by a massive fin-shaped pillar that makes it the clear focal point of the room.

The rest of the domain is patched with the fleshy growths, but the throne room is their epicentre. The fangs that grow from the top of the entrance and shear low, leaving just enough room for Sidon to duck under, are only the beginning. Gone are the windows through which one can see outside. The milky film of flesh and scales covers everything in here, the dark mass under it writhing. It’s like stepping into something’s insides, and Link has to stop himself from gagging as a foul, sulphurous smell hits his nose. It would be pitch black, but for the fact that there are stalks and their dangling, sickly lights everywhere, at odd angles and positions from every part of the wall. They’re all angled towards the throne, though, forming a tunnel of gleaming dots that concentrate on the throne, where a figure stands, his back to them.

He’s just as tall as Sidon, or maybe taller, and they’ve seen him before.

“Zavon,” Sidon snarls, by way of greeting. “You’ll remove yourself from my father’s throne.”

With that, Zavon turns around.

He’s different than he was in Raruta’s memories. Bigger, bulkier, muscles swollen in odd and unnatural ways. His eyes, once not too different from Sidon’s own, are milky white and surrounded by rings and rings of desiccated, rotted flesh, giving his whole face a sunken, withered look. The jet black of most of his skin has paled under the same filmy transparence as the rest of this place, and with horror, Link realizes that he’s connected to the walls with thin tendrils of the stuff.

In his hands, he clutches a silver staff, and as he turns, Link recognizes the triad of jewels at its head. The Zora’s Sapphire.

“Who are you?” Zavon asks, voice a low, animalistic rumble. Despite the fact that he should be blind, with his eyes like that, Link sees the telltale movements of his head as he notes their positions. “You dare stand against me?”

“I am Sidon, prince of the Zora,” Sidon says. “I -”

Zavon raises his hand, and the stalks and points of light suddenly brighten. There isn’t even a warning spark before a force like a punch to the gut sends Link flying backwards. He tumbles back through the arch that serves as the entrance to the throne room, saving himself from a fall down the stairs only by jamming the Master Sword down into the top step and holding on. His nerves are tingling from the shock -

“Sidon! ” His head snaps up, to see Sidon looking back at him in alarm, unaffected by the blast. There’s something between them now, some kind of yellow-tinged magical field. It’s sparking, and when Link reaches out his arm goes numb as he’s repelled by a jolt.

Zavon slowly lowers his hand. It’s hard to tell through his twisted features, but Link thinks he looks perturbed.

“That should have slain you,” he says, to Sidon, in the manner of someone who has just been struck a blow they didn’t expect while in the middle of polite company.

Thank you, Raruta, Link thinks.

“My sincerest apologies,” Sidon says, fingers tightening around his spear. “When I return the favour, I’ll endeavour to do better.”

“Sidon!” Link shouts, again, pulling the Master Sword from the step and righting himself. “The demon! We can’t - without the sword!”

Sidon looks back and his eyes narrow with understanding.

If Link can’t get close, then -

“The sword which seals the darkness…” The words come from Zavon’s mouth, but they’re a different voice altogether. His eyes, whitened as they are, glow a sickly yellow-green, all expression dropping off of his face. More tendrils reach out from the wall behind him, latching onto his form. “It will not be trapped again.”

The platform under Link’s feet begins to rumble. It starts as a deep bass, vibrating against his soles, and then slowly intensifies, stronger and stronger until he’s moving his feet into a wider stance so as not to fall as the Domain quakes.

A moment later, he realizes why. The light above, the one that is hanging off of the roof of the throne room, is pulsing and brightening, and around them, the organic material that had been clinging to the architecture is moving.

It’s sliding, trembling as it moves, and Link steps back and down several steps as a chunk of the stuff moves past him and buries itself in the rest of the converging mass. Teeth spring from the bottom of it, growing up and against the set on the top of the entrance to the throne room, to make a bottom jaw of sorts, and two clusters move up to the stylized eyes, coming together and writhing and glowing.

The shaking hasn’t stopped, though, and neither has the masses. Now that the ghastly visage of the demon has formed (and Link is sure down deep in his bones that’s what it is he’s looking at), the rest of the blight is gathering, just headed somewhere else, their angle of approach changed just slightly.

Towards him, in fact.

“Sidon,” Link says, eyes flitting between his left and his right as the chunks, each headed by a lamp, continue their slide towards him. “If you can beat him in there… The field!”

“I’ll try and get you an opening!” Sidon says, and he moves forward spear-first in a bound. He’s a red blur, and he comes to an abrupt stop with a jerk and a clank as Zavon catches the moon-shaped blade that tips his spear with the staff. The two massive Zora struggle as Sidon strains against him. “Do what you can… out there!”

“Right,” Link says, turning to face the growths. They’re starting to converge, and he needs to move. There won’t be much time before he needs to literally cut his way out.

Sidon will be okay. He needs to focus on surviving until he can get closer.

The lights crackle with electricity.

Sidon will be okay.

“You’ve got this!” he shouts, and then darts across the steps and vaults off of the railing, landing deeper in the belly of the Domain. He hits the ground running.

Somehow, over the clash of silver against silver, Sidon hears the telltale sound of Link hitting the lower levels.

I’ve got this, Sidon thinks, echoing his encouragement as he and the demon-possessed prince go back and forth across the floor of the throne room.

Even so, Zavon is far tougher than he looks. And he looks like a terror.

“You’re a monster,” Sidon says, gritting his teeth as his spear swings around and catches one of the many filmy tendrils connecting his foe to the walls. It catches and pierces a gash into it, and black brackish water pours out. Zavon howls, his great musclebound form barrelling forward and lifting Sidon off of his feet on impact. Sidon tumbles back, rolling and grasping at the slick ground as he does. He rights himself in time to avoid a followup swing as his opponent is suddenly right up in his face, swinging the staff at him like a long, thin metal club.

From outside the throne room, muffled by the oppressive, fleshy walls, Sidon hears Link let out a choked cry from somewhere nearby. His blood runs cold and his head swings around - a critical distraction, which Zavon takes full advantage of. He gets a kick to the gut for lowering his guard, and he doubles over. Zavon towers over him and grins a sharp grin.

“I… am… winning,” he says in a voice somewhere between the demon and the prince, and as his eyes flash, literally flash, Sidon thinks that he can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.

Blackened water splashes underfoot with each step as Link runs and vaults across the myriad pathways of the Domain. The atmosphere is heavy and moist, and the sky is as dark as an overcast twilight, but the rain hasn’t come; it’s a fever that won’t break, an oncoming storm that will never quite arrive.

One thing definitely will arrive, though, if he doesn’t keep moving, and that is a painful death from the affliction currently growing all over Zora’s Domain. They’re following him, and though the Master Sword glows, a beacon in the night, cutting into the translucent flesh does little else but release a spray of more brackish water onto the silvery pathways of the Domain. Sidon may be immune to the electricity coursing through the demon’s followers, but -

- a sharp cry rips its way out of him as he missteps and catches one of the fleshy, scaly patches, one that didn’t have one of those lamps connected to it, and his boot sinks into it. A jolt of electricity shoots up his leg and he cries out, almost falling backwards in his haste ripping it back out.

Adrenaline is coursing through him, and for the first time in a long time, Link realizes abruptly that should he fall, there are no fairies to save him, no Mipha’s Grace to set things right. 

It can be altered, though you would pay a price.

Raruta’s words come to him unbidden. For the first time, as he staggers to a railing and hops to the next pathway below and the oozing things crowd the spot he’d just been standing, he understands the weight of that decision. It sends an electric feeling up his spine that has nothing to do with his current predicament. He steals a glance at the throne room, up above, where light flashes and flickers as the two Zora princes duke it out.

He’s got to hang on. Just until he can get in close with the Master Sword. If anyone can get that field down, it’s Sidon.

Sidon rolls across the hard ground, a sharp pain in his ribs where Zavon’s foot had connected in a vicious kick. He hits the far wall, which is distressingly soft and slimy, before coming to a stop and struggling back to his feet. He coughs - along the way, his gills had picked up some saltwater, and they already sting.

He’s still got a grip on his spear, though, which he brings up to block a followup swing from Zavon’s staff. The impact reverberates down the bones of his arms and he grimaces, staggering to get back upright as the bigger Zora presses the advantage.

He’s immune to harm from it, but the entire space is humming with a low level of electricity, which he’s distantly aware of. It tingles across his skin and heightens his nerves - all Zora fear this feeling, and Sidon’s heart is already racing. 

Dodge, parry, riposte - the two of them go back and forth across the span of the throne room, silver clashing with silver. Sidon gets in with the tip of his spear every so often, but even when he does, Zavon continues as though long gashes along his side are mere scratches, even as black water pours out of him in drips and rivulets.

When Sidon makes a misstep, he gets the butt of the staff to his forehead, narrowly missing his eyes. With Zavon’s absurd strength behind it, stars shoot across his vision in a painful burst. He stumbles back, and Zavon laughs.

“You are a fool,” he says, voice still layered with that unnatural, low undertone. It scratches at the back of Sidon’s mind where fears dwell right next to the static charge around them. “The blade of evil’s bane cannot come close to me now. I will never be sealed in this accursed gem again.”

Sidon grits his teeth, blinking heavily as he regains his bearings. As his vision clears, his eyes slide over to the Zora’s Sapphire, set in the top of the staff, and he narrows them.

That sense that something isn’t right overcomes him once again, but his thoughts are scattered, and so he redoubles his grip on his spear and draws back into a fighting stance again.

“You’ve never met my friend Link,” he says, in a low growl. “Nor have you ever met me, for I am no fool.”

Zavon, to his surprise, seems to genuinely consider his words.

“You’re right,” he says, and the words crawl across him, a whisper of teeth brushing across his scales in the darkness. An unseen predator. It’s the voice of the demon, Sidon thinks. “Enough of this. It is not worth the risk.”

He - it - raises Zavon’s hand, opposite the staff, and all of the little lights that dot the throne room straighten in their stalks, and one by one they get brighter and brighter. There’s a charge building, but that isn’t the only thing that’s happening. It’s something else, some kind of primal energy slithering underneath, hidden behind the light, waiting and building -

Link wavers in his step as the darkness is abruptly cut from above by a greenish-yellow flash as the throne room explodes into a flash of light. The lamp, the giant one, on a stalk above it, becomes searingly intense, and Link has to shield his eyes to avoid being blinded. His left hand burns as a wave of something washes over him, something that feels like evil, and when he blinks his eyes open, squinting, he sees -

- ah.

So that’s where they went.

In front of his eyes, the growths on Zora’s Domain are shifting in shape, rising from the floors and dripping from the walls, making cracking sounds as they shift, gaining bones in jerky motions and growing insides visibly through their skins.

Link faces down scores of Sea Zoras, their twisted, whited-out eyes all swinging to him as one.

He’s in a fighting stance. The Master Sword’s glow spills over his hand and arm and casts the approaching white mass in a blue pallor. His eyes, though, can’t help but look up at the throne room.

Sidon was at the centre of whatever that was, he thinks, and looks back down at the army that stands between him and Sidon.

He narrows his eyes and starts running forward, sword poised to strike.

Sidon’s eyes hurt. He’d shielded them with his arm, but still he finds himself stumbling back and catching himself on one of the fountains that lays to the left of the throne itself.

Actually, come to think of it, everything hurts. He feels like someone just took him out and tried to wring his entire body dry from the inside out.

“No,” Zavon says, more the man than the demon, now. His scarred eyes are wide. “That’s impossible. How did you survive?”

Sidon coughs.

“That’s the second time you’ve said that,” he says, straightening. Ah, he thinks, he managed to hold onto his spear. “I’m starting to believe demonic possession isn’t quite what you were promised.”

That gets a reaction.

“Silence,” Zavon seethes. “Only the hero - or a sage could have resisted that attack.”

He spits out the word sage like he can’t stand having it in his mouth.

Or perhaps a potential sage, Sidon thinks, as he forces himself to stay standing. He’s sure his weakness must be apparent, and he wonders why his opponent hasn’t followed up, but with his wits more about him, he notices that Zavon looks subtly different.

It’s in his voice, that’s for certain, but there’s also something less to him. He’s still physically just as big, but the fleshy tubes that are attached to his back are… wilted, for lack of a better word, the black saltwater that ran strong through them diminished in volume. And his presence, too, is diminished, in a way that Sidon can’t quite quantify.

That attack must have taken a lot out of the demon, he realizes. Emboldened, he speaks up again.

“How would you know,” Sidon snaps. “You certainly didn’t need to try it on Raruta.”

Zavon stares at him blankly.

“How could you do it?” he continues, baring his teeth in a snarl. “How could you kill her without even a moment of hesitation? You loved her, did you not?” 

Belatedly, he thinks, of course, Zavon had fought the other sages, too, but while he expects to be corrected, he’s instead met with -

“Who? ”

- and suddenly, it all makes sense.

“… But its true domain is darkness. Deep, true darkness, the unknowable and that which is lost to the depths.”

The look of impassivity as he killed her.

“Marry me,” she’d said.

“Why would I ever want to do that?” he’d responded, and of course, because -

Sidon’s eyes widen as he beholds the husk of what was once Zavon, prince of the Sea Zora.

“You don’t remember her,” he says, “do you?”

“I don’t -” Zavon starts, and something twinges over his expression, something like confusion, but then that presence returns, and black water begins flowing again, and he pauses, as though listening to a voice that Sidon can’t hear.

His expression smooths out into a cruel sneer.

“- no, I will not fall for your mind games,” he says, holding up the staff to strike. “If I cannot kill you with magic, then I shall take your life with silver.”

Link takes stock of his situation.

There are a lot of Sea Zora.

They emerge from the filmy flesh covering the domain, rising up not one by one but in groups, haphazardous, here and there and further out on the walkways that encircle the main platform of the Domain. They quiver and morph into existence, their bodies see-through and their eyes milky white, all of them, and they wield bony spears that grow out from their hands with little cracks and a groaning, twisting sound.

They are much faster than the protoplasm from which they’d spawned, and they start closing in from all directions.

The Master Sword cuts through them like a hot knife through butter, and Link takes a moment to silently thank the blade at the same time that he twists to avoid being skewered as he goes to his knees to slide across the watery ramp on the way to the throne room.

The Zora says something in the Old Zora language, and Link doesn’t need Sidon there to translate to recognize a curse. He responds by drawing his bow and planting an arrow in its open mouth, which connects with the back of its throat with an audible, squishy thunk.

It falls backwards, but its brethren rise up to take its place. He picks himself up in one smooth motion and keeps running, firing backwards into the legions. Each arrow finds its mark, but as his supply of arrows thins, the crowd… doesn’t. But he’s putting critical distance between them, each arrow stalling them just a few seconds, and it’s adding up. Soon enough, he’s at the bottom of the quiver, just one arrow left, and his feet are pounding against the smooth surface of the platform, throwing up little splashes as he ascends to the jaws of the throne room.

Through the yellowish tint of the impassable electric field, he sees a losing battle in progress.

Zavon must have been toying with him before, Sidon concludes, as his head whips to the side with the blunt force of the staff’s heft as it cracks across his cheek. Dazed, he steps backwards, stilling the hand that wants to fly to his face and check the damage. He’s glad for it, seconds later, as he brings his spear up to block another vicious strike.

Straining his muscles against the mutated Zora’s freakish brute strength, he spits out a tooth and then looks up to meet Zavon’s eyes.

They’re flashing again. His face is far from the arrogant mask that it had been when they arrived; it’s twisted into a snarl of rage, rows and rows of sharp teeth and bloated gums visible and bearing down on Sidon from above.

He abruptly reverses, rolling away to let Zavon’s momentum and weight carry him forward and off-balance, and gets in a stab that barely seems to give his opponent pause as it pierces the thick membrane of one of the tubes. It bursts in a fountain of blackened water, and the room quivers and more membranes shoot out to connect to him and replace it with a sound like squorlch.

Sidon concludes another thing.

He can’t beat Zavon.

He’s simply too strong to take in straight combat, and if severing the tubes doesn’t work, then -

“Sidon!”

- Link. Sidon’s heart skips a beat as he zeroes in on the entrance to the throne room, where Link stands, panting, taking in the situation with wild eyes. He’s got the Master Sword drawn, and he’s soaked through, and his hair is stuck in a damp clump to his forehead and the side of his face, and he’s got bits of gore all over him, and Sidon sees the exact moment that he realizes that Sidon hasn’t lost yet, his face washing over with relief.

Something big swells in Sidon’s chest, like and unlike what he’d felt on the tower of Inogo bridge, as he thinks:

I love him.

Then something big slams into his chest, and he hears Link cry out his name once more. It’s Zavon’s fist, as it turns out, and it pulls him off of his feet and flings him backwards into one of the few exposed pillars in the throne room. He cracks against it and feels something in his headfin give with a bloom of sharp pain as it takes the brunt of the force. He bounces, a pile of limbs, into the shallow water that makes up the floor of the throne room, and coughs.

The ear that isn’t submerged hears Link let out another hoarse cry, and the one that is hears the sound of Zavon’s footsteps plunk, plunk, plunk through the shallow water as he closes in.

Then, suddenly, he’s not in the water anymore. He’s being lifted by the collar, the lattice of silver pushing painfully into the underside of his chin as his entire weight is borne by the one garment. 

“Good-bye, little prince,” Zavon is saying -

From the mouth of the throne room, he hears the clash of blades. The horde has caught up with Link, and he’s fighting, fiercely, backed up against the electric field, jerking forward each time he strays too close and feels the bite of it -

He blinks, and Zavon is in front of him, inches from his face, his milky eyes boring into Sidon’s, grin reaching farther than should be physically possible, cutting into his scarred cheeks like something out of a nightmare. He’s holding the staff back, ready to strike. Knowing his strength, the blow will cave Sidon’s head in.

But, something prods from the back of his mind. That doesn’t make any sense -

Sidon blinks, and in that moment, shielded from the twisted-yellow illumination of the throne room, he sees the light of realization.

“The staff,” Sidon croaks, arms finding the strength to scrabble up and strain against the weight of his collar so he can speak. “You could have slain me - twice over - with a spear.”

Zavon’s twisted grin drops, a fraction. He hesitates, which is all Sidon needs - he lashes out with his legs, catching the larger Zora in the gut. Zavon curses and reels back, and Sidon drops to the ground, clutching at his neck. His jaw throbs.

He staggers to his feet. He’s not done talking.

“Why would you keep the one thing that could seal you here? ” Sidon presses, and Zavon’s eyes widen, looking from his opponent to the staff that holds the Zora’s Sapphire and back. “Why not cast it into the ocean, where no one living could ever find it again?”

“Mind games,” the demon’s voice hisses from Zavon’s mouth, a sudden oppressive presence, and that’s all the confirmation Sidon needs. “Hurry and kill him!”

Sidon has an idea. It’s not a plan, it’s half-baked at best, and it strikes him, absurdly, in that moment, that it’s exactly the kind of thing that Link would do.

“The only reason to keep it,” he says, breathless, “is that she gave it to you.”

Zavon moves to strike.

“Link! ” Sidon calls out, trusting deep in his heart that even in the heat of battle, Link will hear him and react.

The arrow flies true.

It fizzes as it crosses the threshold of the force field, unaffected by the electrified air, and finds its mark in Zavon’s eye, thudding into his sunken socket with a sickening squorlch. He screams, a keening sound that grates into Sidon’s hearing, and Sidon takes the opening, reaching out and grasping -

- his fingers close around the haft of the staff, and he thinks of the feeling of the world being yanked out from under him, pictures the tablecloth from so long ago, and pulls from within.

Power responds, something that feels like a dam breaking, his limbs coursing with it, and he wills it to the staff, because hadn’t she said -

Everything stills, including Zavon’s strike, freezing in midair.

“- That I was connected to it still,” Raruta’s voice, soft like the eye of the storm, says, her voice ringing out not to his ears but almost layered over his own thoughts.

Her apparition stands in front of him, one ghostly hand clutching the staff over his own. She’s smiling, a glimmer in her eyes.

“Clever, clever boy.”

Sidon thinks that if one could bottle a moment, this is what it would look like. The pulsating fleshy walls of the throne room have gone completely still. The water from the two fountains that flank the throne have stilled, as though captured in one of the pictures on Link’s Slate. Where Zavon stepped forward to carry his swing, where his foot plunged into the water, the droplets hang in the air around the splash. The sound of water, which defines the landscape of Zora’s domain, is completely absent. No waterfalls, no flowing river, not even a trickle. Link is bisecting one of the Sea Zora drones, outside the barrier.

The Sea Zora’s terrifying, twisted visage is frozen mid-swing, a warring rage and something else etched onto his face. Raruta is a stark contrast next to him, small and slight and eyes crinkled up in a fond smile.

“I have to say,” she says, “I didn’t expect to see you again in this life.”

“Yes, well,” Sidon says, dazed. “Forgive me, but that’s - rude?”

She throws her head back and laughs. It feels detached, somehow, like he’s perceiving her from the bottom of a lake while she sits on the shore.

“Not what I meant,” she says. “Impressive, though, tapping into your latent potential like that. If the arts weren’t lost to time, you might’ve made a decent mage.”

Sidon imagines himself in the garb of a caster for a moment. It strikes him as absurd, and he shakes his head, which feels kind of fuzzy at the edges.

“Raruta,” he says, voice earnest. “I cannot best him.”

Her smile fades instantly, and she turns her head and he hears her let out a soft “oh” as she beholds Zavon’s new form. Her hand tightens over his. When she looks back to meet Sidon in the eye, her face is grim.

“There’s more demon than Zora, now,” she says.

“The demon took his memories,” Sidon says. “But - I think - he is still in there somewhere.”

“You want me to try and reach him,” Raruta says, and her lips twist into a frown as she looks away. “I tried once. You saw how that went.”

A moment hangs between them, and Sidon lifts a hand and places it on top of where she grips his on the haft of the staff.

“You did reach him,” he says, softly. “Or else I would never have been able to call upon you.”

She looks at him and then lifts her gaze to stare at the Zora’s Sapphire where it rests at the tip, gold and blue gleaming against the pallor of the demon’s light, untouched by its sickly yellow tinge.

“... You are not yet fully awakened,” she says, eyes not moving from it. Her voice is distant. “As impressive as it was to draw on your inner strength, there simply isn’t much of it to go around. Summoning my spirit properly will diminish your resistance to the demon’s power almost completely.”

“So the electricity…” Sidon looks at the charged air around him in alarm, but she shakes her head.

“No, my boon will remain intact,” she says. “Anything else it pulls out, though…”

Sidon thinks back to Zavon’s disbelief at his survival from - whatever the demon had done, the thing that had made him feel like he’d been rended from the inside out, and frowns.

“Surely,” he says, “there is no other way.”

Raruta sighs.

“Heroes,” she huffs. “Be careful about accepting steep prices, boy. They have a tendency to bite you when you least expect it.”

She taps a finger to her leg, the one that she’s keeping her weight off of, and shoots him a meaningful look.

He considers her words. He really does. His eyes flick to Link, to the throne, beset by growth as it is, to the reservoir where the rest of his people hopefully await.

“The price of losing this battle is unacceptable,” he says.

“Very well,” Raruta says, and something is pulled from within him. He feels a heady rush of the same power from before, and something shifts -

The bottled moment is shattered, and time begins flowing once again.

The first thing Sidon does is duck, because he’s not an idiot. The staff sails over his head, carried by the momentum of Zavon’s crushing swing.

Then it freezes. This time, it’s not because time has stopped. Sidon glances up to see a look of shock on Zavon’s features. Whether it be the Zora or the demon or both, it’s obviously because -

“Oh, Zavon,” Raruta says, her spectre floating a few feet to Sidon’s left. She grips an ethereal version of the staff, mirroring the one in Zavon’s grip. Her voice lacks the distant quality from before, and she regards the demon prince with pitying eyes. “Goddesses, look at you.”

Zavon stumbles. In his haste to get away, a dazed Sidon is completely ignored as the great hulking form of the Sea Zora puts space between himself and Raruta. Which is just as well, because Sidon feels so incredibly weak all of a sudden, some reservoir of energy he hadn’t even been aware he had completely tapped. He struggles to his feet, using his spear as an aid.

“Sage!” The voice of the demon grates on his ears, and it’s somehow much louder now. “Impossible! You were slain, banished -”

“I wasn’t talking to you,” Raruta interrupts sharply. There’s a flicker of something across Zavon’s face again, but the tubes in his back swell with sloshing black liquid and he grunts, rearing back to strike at Raruta’s image. Sidon surges up to meet him, and a clang rings out across the throne room as the shaft of his spear takes the hit.

“Are you afraid, demon?” he hisses out between his many, many sharp teeth, which are on full display in a snarl.

Zavon roars in return, and the entire throne room writhes. The rows and rows of stalked lights that cover the walls squirm out of time with the rest, and the fleshy, scaly walls shudder. They become bright, so bright, and the electricity in the air crackles, once, twice -

CRACK! The discharge rings out like a lightning strike, and Sidon falters as his instincts panic, and winces, his eyes opening only to see Zavon with one arm out, aimed at Raruta’s ghostly form.

She’s unharmed.

“Come now,” she says, leaning on her staff. “I’m already dead.”

“It should have worked,” Zavon says, in a voice smaller than his body.

While he’s distracted, Sidon sneaks a glance at Link. He’s still in the fray with the Sea Zora, untouched by the attack. They’re sluggish, though, perhaps because the demon’s attention is split, and Link gives him a wide-eyed glance, pupils flitting over to Raruta and back to Sidon with a question on his face.

It’s a shame he has no time to answer, because the drama unfolding in front of him continues heedless of Link’s confusion.

“It did, once,” Raruta says, and steps forward. Zavon takes an equal step back. “Don’t you remember?”

“I remember nothing -” Zavon’s face twists up into a malicious mask, but then, just as quickly, it drops.

“Mind games,” the demon’s voice comes from his lips, but unlike before, his expression doesn’t change. His grip on the staff tightens, and he pulls it up in front of him, staring at the Zora’s Sapphire.

“I… remember nothing,” he says, softly. “Why don’t I remember anything?”

Monstrous as Zavon is, in that moment, he looks utterly lost.

“The demon,” Sidon says.

“You fool,” Raruta says, and she steps forward. He doesn’t retreat, this time, though his body trembles, the tubes that run from his back tugging and squirming as though to wrench him from the spot. Ironically, his mutated form is far too heavy to be moved from where he stands, rooted, as Raruta clasps his hand over where it clutches the staff. “No... I’m the fool.”

A tear tracks down her cheek, and then another.

“Or perhaps both of us were,” she says, voice cracking. “I’m so sorry.”

The room shudders again, a mighty heave, the light-stalks flashing and strobing. Zavon raises a hand, and every tired muscle in Sidon’s body jumps to alert. He starts forward -

- only to stop, as one huge finger brushes a tear away from Raruta’s cheek.

Zavon looks torn.

“I don’t -” he says, slowly, as though it is a great effort to speak the words. “I don’t know why I’m doing this.”

The force field flickers.

There’s one precious moment where Sidon thinks that maybe, just maybe, the fight is over. 

He’s wrong.

She poisons your mind! The demon shrieks, and this time it comes from everywhere - Zavon, the mob of Sea Zora that Link is still fending off strike-by-strike - and isn’t he looking tired, how much more can he take - the very walls echo with the force of the utterance.

More tubes shoot out from the walls from all angles and connect to Zavon’s body with a squelch, and his eyes fly wide as they all go dark with liquid. His face contorts in agony as they bulge with volumes of black water.

“Run,” he wheezes, breath haggard, and Sidon doesn’t need to be told twice. He spins on his heel and barrels towards the entrance of the throne room, peripherally aware that Raruta is calling out Zavon’s name behind him. Not a moment too soon, either - the jaws with their lines and lines of spiny teeth clamp shut behind him, just barely missing his heels. He bursts out next to Link, spear-first, and Link turns to note his arrival with startled eyes.

“What’s going on?” he asks, and Sidon opens his mouth to answer, but he’s cut off as the crowd in front of them trembles. Just as suddenly as they rose to form, one by one the mob dissolves back into flesh, which wriggles and slithers in little gobs past their feet, joining the mass covering the throne room.

“I don’t know exactly,” Sidon says, turning to behold the gathering mass. It’s pulsating and writhing wildly. “But the demon -”

“Nevermind, move! ” Link says, grabbing Sidon’s arm and tugging him down the stairs. It turns out to be a good idea.

They dash down the steps and onto the balcony that overlooks the Domain, and Sidon has a surreal moment as he realizes that this is where he’d first made the decision to strike out with Link on this, the most foolhardy of quests, before a deep crack rings out in the air and beneath his feet. They look up.

The centrepiece of Zora’s Domain is alive. The once friendly visage of the fish is now completely covered with the demon’s essence, invitingly large eyes replaced with tiny, vestigial sunken yellow points of light. The staircase they were on just a moment ago is struck with a meaty thud as the beast’s lower jaw, disproportionately larger than its upper row of teeth, slams down and the demon lets out an absolutely unearthly sound. Sidon covers his ears, only to feel Link tugging at his elbowfin.

“The sapphire!” he says, urgently. “Did you get -?”

“Blast it,” Sidon says, only now realizing his mistake. “I didn’t think to grab it!”

“You’d need to get back in close anyway,” Raruta’s voice comes from his other side, and he whips his head around in alarm. “Don’t look so surprised. I’m anchored to you right now - just as the demon is to him. You need the sword, the Sapphire, and Zavon to end this.”

The beast is twisting and turning. There are more cracks, and the sounds reverberate through Sidon’s feet. He realizes with horror that the monster is trying to free itself from the Domain’s foundations entirely.

“Still in there,” Link confirms, and Sidon looks sharply to follow his gaze. Inside the creature’s maw, past the yellow-green charged field, where the throne room is now subsumed by living tissue, Zavon has been lifted off the ground in a latticework of veiny tubes. His huge, misshapen body hangs limp.

Save for his hand, which still clutches the staff that holds the Zora’s Sapphire.

“We can still reach him,” Sidon says, setting his jaw.

“There are a lot of teeth,” Link says, eyeing the once-staircase-now-lower-jaw.

“No, I mean - he’s still in there, Link,” Sidon says, turning to Link fully as the words tumble out of his mouth. “The demon has wiped his memories, but something of him remembers.”

The look Link gives him in return contains multitudes.

“Remind him,” he says, after a pause that must have been only a moment but feels like an eternity for all that passed between them.

Sidon takes a deep breath.

“Zavon!” he shouts.

Sidon has a voice fit for royalty - a voice which gets heard. At normal speaking volume, he can be detected from halfway across the Domain. When he shouts, his voice booms.

“Was this really what you wanted?!” Over the din of breaking stonework and demonic wailing, Sidon’s voice carries like the birthright it is, sharp and clear.

“I don’t know! No,” Zavon’s voice doesn’t come from the thing’s mouth, but rather seems to come from its skin, every whisper of noise from a shuddering scale coming together into one buzzing overture of sound. “I - my people… I was supposed to…”

“Your people are gone,” Sidon counters. “Ghosts! Shadows! The demon tricked you.”

The voice dissolves into a cacophony. It’s a scream, and not a scream, a keening note that cuts through the darkness and saturates the air. Sidon resists covering his ears, even as it hooks into the deepest parts of his heart and tugs - the grief of a ruler bereft of his people.

It reassembles itself into something comprehensible, though there’s this crackling, like static electricity, the force field is flickering, and the demon and the prince speak at once, running into each other’s words like they’re following different beats -

“Lies! Your people -”

“- I feel the truth of it, you tricked -”

“- we can rise again, we rule this land -”

“- What are you hiding from me -”

“- lies, lies, lies -”

“- Who am I?!”

The last exclamation rocks the air and the ground with the force of it. Absently, Sidon notes that Raruta’s spectral form has stepped forward. She’s clutching her mouth.

“Throw me,” Link says, from next to him. His voice is dead calm. Sidon turns his head to see Link’s blue eyes flinty with a look he’s intimately familiar with. It’s an expression that has said many things in the past, such as so I’m gonna jump off of the top of this waterfall with a trident and I know you said not to fight the Lynel, but I’m gonna fight the Lynel, but also... something more. “While it’s distracted.”

Sidon sees the field flicker as the struggle continues. The demon and Zavon’s words are running into each other completely now.

“It will still hurt you,” he says, even though Link’s mind is clearly made up. He’s sporting all sorts of injuries, bleeding from a head wound, cut all over, bruised, soaked. It will make no difference, but Sidon has to say it. “You might well die.”

“I know,” Link says. His expression doesn’t change.

“... Okay,” Sidon says.

Sidon throws him.

Even injured and tired out from a fight with someone completely out of his weight class, Sidon’s aim is true - Link sails through the air, over the rows of teeth, which belatedly snap closed behind him, and into the weakened force field, which doesn’t completely arrest his momentum but it does slow him and hurts like every single muscle and pain receptor in his body is on fire. He hits the ground completely un-gracefully and rolls to a stop in ankle-deep water.

He takes one, single solitary moment to groan, then stumbles to his feet. Then falls again, knees hitting the stonework roughly. He hisses and draws himself up for real.

It’s dark. He could have sworn the entire room was lined with lanterns, earlier. The back of his left hand is burning, and he recalls something about the demon’s power and darkness. Gritting his teeth, Link draws his sword.

The pale blue light of the Master Sword falls on a nightmare of twisted flesh and a seemingly endless maze of tubes. The ground shudders under him. He’s vaguely aware that outside, there are still voices, but in here, everything seems insulated. It’s hot and humid inside this giant fish and there’s a tiny part of Link that inexplicably screams not again from his hindbrain .

That’s forgotten entirely when he lays eyes on Zavon. Like before, he’s limp, feet hanging not even a metre off the ground. His eyes are closed and his expression is twitching, tortured and angry and crushed in flashes.

As Link climbs through the tubes, opting against cutting through them for fear of summoning more of the damned things, his pupil-less eyes open, and he just looks… tired.

“The sword,” he rasps.

Link nods.

Zavon’s eyes flutter closed, and then open again. A cough wracks him, which transforms into a dry chuckle.

“You’re here to seal me again,” he says.

Link nods.

Zavon’s head lolls forward.

“Can you tell me… what she was to me?” he asks.

“I can’t,” Link says. It comes out hoarse.

Silence rings out between them. Link raises the sword - and hesitates.

Zavon’s hand still grips the staff tightly. At its tip, the Zora’s Sapphire gleams, as ever.

“What - do you want her to be?” he asks.

Zavon lifts his head.

“I want to find out,” he says, “why I didn’t want her to cry.”

The Master Sword thrusts forward, cutting through the darkness -

- and its tip meets the Zora’s Sapphire with a clink -

- Zavon, who had flinched, meets Link’s eye with an utterly befuddled look, and then -

- Link looks up as the Master Sword’s glow grows and grows, tinged blue as the Sapphire begins to shine along with it.

“What -”

“Power -” Link says, gripping the blade tighter. His eyes flick to the Sapphire. “- a vessel -”

The darkness recoils as holy light blasts out from the twin relics, white and blue in waves like a storm in the ocean. The tubes disintegrate in its wake, and the scratching, grating voice of the demon cries out in agony.

“- Intent,” Link nods to Zavon, who’s dropped to the ground, shaking violently as the light gets brighter, brighter, brighter, slamming against the walls and out the cracks where the demon’s corporeal essence gives way into the darkness outside.

Everything goes white, and there’s movement, and sound, the demon’s cries and Sidon’s shouts, and then Sidon screams, and then -

It’s over.

Link is on the ground. He isn’t sure when he came to be on the ground, but he’s there nonetheless. Water - regular, clear water - flows around him as he sits up. The Master Sword is sitting behind him, rusted and cracked, completely depleted. And above him…

Flickers of greenish will-o-wisps.

Raruta and Zavon stand side-by-side. Compared to a minute ago, Raruta looks less solid, but she holds herself straighter, and she’s smiling, tears running freely down her cheeks. Zavon has changed. He’s back to the size and shape he’d been in Raruta’s memories, free from the demon’s grasp. He’s looking at his free hand, which is slightly see-through, with a dazed expression.

“I’m dead,” he says, and then faces forward to look at Link. They stare at each other.

“Yeah,” Link says. 

Raruta snorts, seemingly despite herself, and then sniffles.

“... Thank you,” Zavon says, eyes softening. “I don’t know how you did it, but the demon is… banished? Slain?”

“Gone,” Raruta says, and gathers herself up to smile crookedly. “I see you remembered my little magic lesson.”

“Simple recipe,” Link says, and makes an abortive attempt to get to his feet. This time, it takes him a few tries. “You. Do you…?”

“Do I remember?” Zavon finishes the sentence for him. Link appreciates it, because between the blood loss and the lingering pain he’ll take any break he can get. “No. But…” he glances at Raruta. “I suppose I have an entire afterlife to find what was taken from me. And - help.”

Raruta smiles, and Link’s lips tug up into a smile too.

“Good,” he says, flopping back down into the water. He’s tired. So tired.

“There’s no time to rest yet,” Raruta’s voice reaches him despite the fact that one or both of his ears is submerged. “He needs you.”

Link shoots up from the water as though electrified.

“Sidon,” he gasps.

The figures of Raruta and Zavon have faded. They’re only barely there, but Link doesn’t care, because he’s racing down the steps, to where Sidon’s prone form lies on the balcony that overlooks the domain, the same place where not so long ago they’d come up with this crazy idea to go on an adventure together -

“Remember -”  Raruta’s voice chases him. “- the price of magic.”

He arrives at Sidon’s side, pulling his head into his lap, wincing as in his haste he jars a broken headfin. Sidon gasps in pain, eyes flying open, disoriented. He takes a moment to even notice Link, who’s shaking.

“What… happened?” Sidon coughs, bringing a hand up to his mouth. “I… I feel as though I’ve been chewed up and spit out by an Octorok.”

“It’s okay,” Link says, relief surging through him. “We did it.”

“Oh,” Sidon says. “We did it. Yes… I’m… I’m certain we did.”

There’s something off, Link’s instincts tell him, and a feeling of dread takes hold somewhere in his spine as Sidon looks more and more confused.

“I feel as though I’m somewhat in the dark here,” Sidon says, and then pauses. 

It strikes Link why it sounds so wrong, it’s formal, too formal, why does he sound like that -  

“Can we begin with… well, who exactly you are?”

- and everything is suddenly falling down around him.

Right now, everything feels distant.

It’s not from his injuries, Link has concluded. Those had been mostly healed hours ago, thanks to the Zora that had come flooding back to the domain as the last wisps of the deep sea demon had dissolved into thin air. They’d offered him food, too, but for the first time in the entire span of his memory, he’d found himself without appetite.

It had evaporated completely when he’d witnessed Dorephan rush in to meet his son, only to reveal that Link hadn’t been the only one Sidon had forgotten.

He’s vaguely aware of his position, seated on a bench in the very same halls he’d burst through to get to the Zora’s archive before this whole thing had begun. He’s hunched over, clutching the Slate, willing it to work so he can just -

Run away? Storm Hyrule Castle? Jump off a cliff just to feel like I’m in danger? Take a swing at a giant camel in the hopes it’ll swing back? 

Like I always do?

He dismisses the notion from his head (Sidon had said that wasn’t good, and he can’t bear to disappoint his memory, not now) with a sharp shake, and becomes dimly aware that something about the sound around him has changed.

It takes him another unfocused moment to remember that, oh yeah, Muzu had been talking to him. He looks up and blinks.

Muzu stares down at him with a distinctly unimpressed face.

“You could at least pretend to listen, after all you’ve put us through,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I know that you care for him, so why are you being so obstinate? ”

Link sends the old Zora his most apologetic look, before his eyes once again trail downwards.

“We saw the demon strike the Prince in its last moments from where we were watching from the bluffs. I’ll ask again: do you have any idea what it did?”

I do, he thinks, but…

Link’s hand ghosts over his throat and he grunts, frustrated.

His voice has abandoned him once again, and at the worst possible time.

He could write something down, he supposes, but what’s the point? Who can possibly fix this? No one living, probably, and Raruta has moved on, taking her damned advice with her.

Remember the price of magic.

Link’s grip on the Slate tightens until his knuckles are white.

How can he forget, with Sidon relegated to his room as they try to figure out what to do with a prince that doesn’t remember himself? Had this been the price he’d paid for Zavon’s happy ending? If so, why would she rub it in like that? He’s had enough of magic and its prices for a lifetime - two, in fact.

This isn’t fair, Link thinks, and tears well up and threaten to spill over as they have so many times in the last few hours. After all of that, after all we went through… this is what we get?

The uncomfortable realization that he understands Zelda a little better now is interrupted by a hand on his shoulder. He startles and follows it up to Muzu’s face, which has softened.

“Perhaps… I’m being too harsh,” he says, with obvious effort. “Rest, for now. We’ll consider solutions in the morning.”

Link nods minutely and Muzu gives him a slow pat - one, two, and his hand is withdrawn. Link doesn’t look up, but he hears Muzu’s footsteps retreating. He leaves behind silence.

Earlier, it had felt like a storm had been building that would never arrive. Now it feels like the storm has come through and ripped the landscape apart in its wake. In a supreme irony, as Link sits there in the halls adjacent the throne room, he slowly becomes aware of the rhythmic pattering of rain filtering in from outside.

He replaces the Slate in its secure position on his belt and pulls his knees up to wrap his arms around them.

If Sidon were here… 

If Sidon were here, he’d believe I could figure out a way to save him, Link thinks, and despite everything, the thought summons a snort.

It’s true, though, he reflects. They hadn’t known about the other Zelda, or Raruta, or the spirit world, or any of this crazy ancient magic when they’d started out. Sidon had seen the slimmest chance to make a difference and blazed ahead to grasp it, because he was Sidon.

Link isn’t sure when he’d started crying, or how much time has passed, but his gauntlets are damp.

He straightens, and his just-healed body protests as he gets to his feet and sways on them in the darkened hallway. Muzu is long gone, and there’s no one else around. Outside, the rain continues to fall.

In his whole life, in waking up in an abandoned ruin, in traversing the endless wilds of Hyrule, in the darkest swamp, in the toughest shrine, Link has never felt so alone.

And in those times, he’d felt very alone indeed.

He’s only peripherally aware of it, but his legs start walking.

If Sidon were here… If their positions were switched… he would try.

He doesn’t know exactly where Sidon’s room is, but he does know Sidon. He walks the halls until he hears the inevitable: the noise of the Zora Prince cooped up in a room while important things are going on around him. It’s a splish-splashing fidgeting noise that fades in and out with a shuffle mixed in here and there.

Link knocks.

“I’ll be right there - oh,” Sidon is there in an instant. There’s a beat as he looks down to see Link, and his expression, which had been hopeful, makes way for mild concern. “You’re that little fellow from before.”

Link opens his mouth to reply, but abruptly remembers he can’t speak. His jaw closes with a click, and he nods.

A moment passes.

“Well, come on in, I suppose,” Sidon says. He sounds uncertain, which is out of place. Link clenches a fist and walks into the Prince’s room. It’s… spartan, compared to what he expected. There’s a sleeping pool in the centre, some spears on a rack on the wall next to a window, and the most outrageous touch is a vanity with various pieces of silver jewelry and adornment laid out in front of a mirror.

There’s a twist in his stomach and a twinge in his chest. This isn’t how he was supposed to find out what was in Sidon’s room.

Before that thought process can spiral any further, Link forces himself to sit down next to the edge of the sleeping pool. Sidon follows him and sits with his legs over the edge, dangling his feet into the water. His gaze is cast downwards at the water, face angled away.

“I’m sorry,” Sidon says, and Link snaps to attention. Sidon turns, and he looks far more subdued than Link is used to.

For what, Link wants to say, but he settles for cocking his head to the side and frowning deeply. Sidon mercifully seems to get the gist.

“I gather that this is all my fault,” he says. “Something about gallivanting and putting myself in danger.”

Link’s jaw drops, just a little, as Sidon continues.

“We knew each other very well, mustn’t we have? You looked so crushed when I didn’t recognize you,” he says, brow-ridge furrowing. “I’m sor-”

Link punches him.

Sidon jumps, and looks down at his side where Link’s light jab had connected and then back up again with wide eyes.

He shakes his head sharply, feeling tears well up, and pulls his hand back to gesture to himself with both hands.

“Hhh-” he exhales, but it’s stuck, it won’t come out.

It’s my fault, he thinks, and then brings his fist down on the floor and his other hand drags down the side of his face, raking the skin.

Sidon is looking at him apprehensively.

“I… you’re Link, right?” he asks.

Link looks up, dropping his hands into his lap limply and nodding. He must look hopeful, because Sidon immediately elaborates.

“That’s what, er, Muzu said,” he says. “Among other things. I don’t think he’s overly fond of you, to be honest.”

Link frowns, looking away.

Sidon shifts, lifting his feet out of the sleeping pool and turning to face Link directly. He’s wearing the ghost of a smile.

“Forgive me if this is insensitive, but the silence is actually a nice change of pace. He went on for… quite some time.”

Sounds like Muzu. Link snorts and rolls his eyes. This elicits a bigger smile from Sidon. It makes Link’s heart ache.

“It’s probably a good thing that you came along, anyway,” Sidon hums, eyeing the window. “Everyone wants me to stay put while they figure this out, and it’s simply torturous.”

Link tilts his head, and Sidon continues.

“The way they speak of me, you’d think I was some sort of invalid! I’m certain there’s something I can do to help,” he huffs, and then lets out a long sigh. “Though, if I got myself into this mess, perhaps they’re right. But… yes, ow, I get it, you disagree.”

Link withdraws his elbow with a petulant expression. It evens out to sullen as he withdraws, though.

“... It’s peculiar,” Sidon says, after a stretch of silence. “I don’t feel like leaving now that you’re here.”

Someone makes a noise, a choked sob, and it takes Link a moment to catch up and realize that it’s him.

No, no, no, he thinks, reaching up to wipe the wetness from his face with jerky movements. He can’t do this to Sidon. This isn’t fair. He knows how that feels, to be looked at with eyes that see someone else, it’s not fair, none of this is fair -

There’s a hand on his shoulder. Link’s head whips up to see Sidon towering over him and looking down with eyes that burn with something familiar.

“It’s okay,” he says, and Link thinks that even if he could speak right now, he’d be at a loss for words. “That’s what you said, isn’t it? When I first awoke.”

Yes, but… Link thinks, and then nods. It’s mechanical and stiff. That was before I knew.

Oblivious to Link’s thoughts, Sidon very slowly raises a fist and pumps it. It’s so Sidon that Link draws in a sharp breath as he speaks -

“I know it doesn’t make any sense, but something about you just makes me believe that. That it’s going to be okay.”

Link pitches forward and hugs him.

It takes a moment, probably because he’d taken him by surprise, but he feels Sidon’s huge arms wrap around him and squeeze.

“I just wish…” Sidon says, and Link feels his voice through his chest, a low vibration that tickles his ear, “that I knew why. ”

I wish that too, Link thinks, the tears spilling over again.

I wish I could tell you. I wish I wasn’t like this, I wish -

He pulls away, reaching for the spot on his belt where the Slate is attached. Even as his hands shake, he retrieves it flawlessly. He’s done it a thousand times before. Its cracked, black screen stares up at him, and his teeth grit together so tightly that his jaw hurts.

- I wish I could just show you.

In the Slate, maybe, if its data had survived... He can still picture the photos, in his mind’s eye, if he tries.

The price of magic, he thinks, bitterly, looking down at the device in his hands. It had been such a simple recipe, in the end, after all that searching, and isn’t it ironic that now, instead of being trapped in that past, that Sidon is completely cut off from it.

He feels like there’s a piece missing, and it’s so important, but...

When Sidon’s hands clasp around his own, holding the Slate in the space between them, he startles, looking up.

The price of magic.

The thought swirls around and around in his head. Sidon looks kind, and sad, and he’s reminded all at once of the looks Raruta had given him, and it doesn’t make sense, why would she say that? Sidon hadn’t even been there in the throne room, why should he be the one to pay the price for Zavon’s spell?

Unless…

Link stares at Sidon’s face, his confusion, and remembers its twin on Zavon.

Zavon, who had died as a result of the spell that had freed him.

The price of magic. His life.

Zavon, who had already been struck by the demon, who had already lost his memories.

“Hh-” A breath escapes Link’s throat as it hits him.

“Link?” Sidon says, but he may as well be a mile away, because the gears are turning.

Sidon can’t have paid the price, because Zavon did. Which means she wasn’t talking about that. She was talking about…

Her leg. Her bad leg. She’d had it for a long time -

"They say that the Eighth Heroine was a healer," Usasi had said -

“If you do this, this spell will never save you again. Healing magic is one-way only.”

Link frees a hand and clutches his chest, the fabric around his chest bunching under his fingers. There, where the gifts of the spirits lie, where the way out still sits, where it had retreated after being used. His power, alone, now.

I’m an idiot, he thinks, and wipes his face on the shoulder of his sleeve. He draws himself to stand, placing the hand he’d withdrawn on top of Sidon’s. Sidon, still sitting, follows his progress with a raised eyebrow.

Like drawing water from a well, Link thinks, and then leans forward, letting his forehead rest against Sidon’s.

It starts small, and through half-lidded eyes, Link sees the screen of the Slate sheen with the beginning of a white glow. He closes his eyes tight and pictures.

All at once, they’re not there in Sidon’s room anymore. They’re somewhere else, in another body, in another time, seeing and hearing double.

They’re messing around with the Shiekah Slate in Zora’s Domain. Sidon’s likeness is captured, curiosity forever preserved as Link captures his candid likeness -

- The only person who doesn’t look at him and see Mipha is Link, and he cherishes learning more about his friend’s strange habits. He just wishes that, at the end of the day, he didn’t always have to leave.

They’re on the banks of the river, dripping wet. They’ve conquered a shrine together, an entirely new and not unwelcome feeling. He doesn’t recognize the giddiness for what it is at the time, but he feels it all the same as they take a picture together -

- what a wonderful device, allowing them to remember this moment. Perhaps when Link looks at this picture of them together in his gallery, someday as he roams Hyrule, he won’t feel quite so alone anymore.

He’s doing it on purpose, now. As he looks down at the landscape he’s taken, a clean view of the Dueling Peaks, with a ruined guardian in the foreground, he thinks of the camping spot behind him, the spot he might be led to if he hunted down the place where he’d taken the picture from. A memory saved for himself, by himself. When Sidon asks about it, he answers honestly -

- “Want to remember,” Link says, and it leaves Sidon’s thoughts racing until the very moment he falls asleep.

He knows that the voice that he’d heard, the girl in the castle, cares about him, and it scares him, because he doesn’t know how to feel in return. He’ll disappoint her, he knows it. Sidon only expects him to be him, and sees him for who he is now, and when he says he’ll always come to his aid, Link believes him, and he takes a picture of the steps to remember -

- He likes Link, he realizes, that way, and he doesn’t know what to do about it. But he knows that he will always keep his promises, and he will always have his friend’s back.

He’s broken, and it’s clear to see now, isn’t it? The near miss with the boulder leaves his mouth babbling things that he really ought not to say. Sidon should be mad at him forever and ever, but he’s not, and he understands -

- Link is more complicated than Sidon ever could have imagined, but he’s still Link. He’s just so glad that he’s alive.

That should be the end of it, the Slate had been broken, after all, during the fight, no more pictures, but the spell is still going, the white light bursting forth and Link can see it in his mind’s eye but he also sees -

A snowy inset, trees forming a small glen underneath the little rocky shelf where they’ve made camp. The Slate is broken, and a weakened Sidon asks about the pictures, the ones he’s been taking this whole time, and Link realizes for the first time that a feeling he hadn’t noticed had grown and grown when he hadn’t been looking -

- He’s dying, or he might be, but if there is anyone in the entire world that can save him, that can defy the odds and achieve the impossible, it’s Link.

They’re in the snow, in the shadow of the Statue of the Eighth Heroine, and Sidon is going to be okay. Link wonders what you’re supposed to do when you realize that you love someone. He thinks that he’ll figure it out -

- As they race home, something has changed, something Sidon can’t put his finger on, an underlying tension, a hope that might someday be fulfilled -

- They’re on Inogo Bridge, hiding, enemy patrols passing them by, the end of the world as they know it at hand, and Link looks up at him - and Sidon looks down at him - and they’re close, so close, and in that moment before being interrupted their thoughts are both narrowed down to the same point -

They’re kissing.

The spell is over, they’re in the present, and Link feels Sidon’s lips on his own. His eyes flutter open and, very slowly, they pull apart, staring at each other -

“Link,” Sidon says, breathes, and the way he’s looking at him, it’s entirely familiar.

“Sidon...?” Link says, beginning to shake. His voice is hoarse and dry from disuse.

He’s swept up into a crushing hug.

“By the goddesses, you did it! ” Sidon exclaims, and Link lets out a startled laugh. He reaches up and cups Sidon’s cheeks, feeling yet another round of tears well up.

“Thought you were gone,” he says. “Was so scared.”

Sidon opens his mouth to reply, but Link pulls him down into another kiss. Sidon tenses, first surprised, but then melts into it. It’s longer and deeper than the first one, and when they pull apart, Link is grinning from ear to ear and Sidon looks, to put it mildly, flustered. He’s smiling all the same, a goofy, fond smile that makes Link feel on top of the world.

“You’re so bold,” Sidon says. “Goodness. You’re going to be the end of me.”

“Too soon,” Link shoots back, and Sidon laughs.

“Oh, right, yes,” he says. “You’re aware of what I mean!”

“Uh huh,” Link says, and tilts his head. “Can’t believe you liked me since the Outskirt Stable and you didn’t say anything.”

“You proposed! I thought I was going to perish on the spot! ”

“That’s way w-worse now -” Link starts, and then falters, and then dissolves into helpless laughter. Sidon isn’t far behind him, and they lean into each other, a pile of tangled limbs and laughing Zora and Hylian.

The door to the Prince’s chamber closes with a click, unnoticed by its newly-reunited inhabitants.

Facing the hallway, Muzu heaves a great sigh.

“Hylia help us,” he says, very quietly, into his hand, where it pinches his snout. “At least this time it’s mutual.”

Sidon is having a busy day.

It’s been nearly a month since the halt of the imminent destruction of the domain, and that’s been more or less a constant fact of life. There have been reconstruction efforts to manage, temporary lodgings to arrange, food supplies to manage…

“I’m just saying that the man strikes me as odd, is all,” Muzu says, from across the table.

“Now, now,” Sidon’s father says, in a low rumble of disapproval. “He is helping to keep us afloat for the moment.”

“Hrah,” Muzu says, eyeing the king with a grimace. “Puns are beneath you, sire.”

… Meetings to attend.

Dorephan laughs. It projects like every other noise Sidon’s father makes - Sidon can almost feel the bass reverberating in his chest.

“My current working theory is that he’s actually in possession of some kind of ancient Sheikah technology,” Sidon pipes in, lifting his gaze from a mind-numbing report on water quality. “Similar to what Link has. It’s the only explanation.”

As his father and Muzu mull this over, Sidon stretches and takes in a deep breath of fresh air.

They’re outside, of course. With the throne room under renovations, there isn’t much else in the way of accommodations for the king of the Domain’s… presence. It’s a nice day. There’s nary a cloud in the sky, and the breeze that blows in and out of the canyon where the Domain sits is nice and cool and carries a hint of mist from the many waterfalls.

“He always comes in on foot,” Muzu says, narrowing his eyes.

“Perhaps it’s a trade secret,” Sidon says, and then shrugs. “I think father has a point, though. Beedle has been more than generous in our time of need. And perhaps it is about time we tried our hand at broader trade.”

“We could use imports from Death Mountain at the moment, that is for certain,” Dorephan sighs, looking over the warped and damaged walkways of the Domain. “Ah, for the days when the kingdom stood. It was so much easier, then.”

Muzu murmurs an assent.

“Well, one good thing that came out of all of this is that the Lizalfos took heavy losses from the Sea Zora as well,” Sidon says, dropping a finger onto a map of the surrounding area. It’s littered with troop positions. “If they should return on the blood moon, we should be able to lead a surprise attack and remove them from several key positions.”

“That’s risky,” Muzu hums. “With our forces spread out as they are -”

“Just one or two key positions, then,” Sidon pushes forward, leaning further in. “I can lead the charge. I’m more than a match for them.”

There’s a pause, and a tension that Sidon is more than familiar with, as Muzu and his father exchange a look. He fights down the disappointment that claws its way up his chest, because of course -

“Very well,” Dorephan says, shattering the atmosphere. “Coordinate with the guard and lay your plans, then run them by me.”

Sidon blinks, his eyes sliding over to Muzu. The elder Zora is making a face like he’s just bitten down on something sour, but he’s not protesting.

“Yes,” Sidon says, leaning back and taking his seat. “Yes, of course. With all due haste.”

There’s a moment, a beat, where the significance of the moment sets in, and then Muzu sighs and picks up a slate tablet bearing Sidon’s handwriting.

“Ah, and then there’s the matter of… scholarly exchange?” he says, and then peers over the top at Sidon. “Expedition to document the location of and look into restorations to the Eighth Heroine’s statue.”

“It will be some time before it’s viable,” Sidon says, “But I believe that it’s the least I can arrange for, given the circumstances.”

“I see,” Muzu says, stroking his chin. “That reminds me. The next time you go gallivanting around the world contacting ancient spirits, at least have the sense to ask them to fill in the gaps in our records -”

“Excuse the lack of archaeological curiosity, but I was busy! ” Sidon says, indignant. His father laughs, bringing a massive hand up to his chest. The table vibrates.

“I suppose so,” Muzu says, in a way that says that he does not, in fact, suppose so, and he puts the slate down and starts sorting though the rest of the pile. Sidon taps a finger on the table, looking up at the sky and noting the position of the sun. It’s starting to get towards afternoon.

“Pardon,” he says, after a few seconds. “But will I be required any longer?”

“Somewhere to be?” Dorephan asks, a knowing twinkle in his eye.

“Link did say it might happen today,” Sidon says, unable to keep the excitement out of his voice. It’s a token effort anyway, because he’s practically twitching with anticipation.

“Perish the thought that you might keep Link waiting,” Muzu mutters, and then sighs, Sidon thinks, a little longer than necessary. “Very well. I believe we can handle the rest…?”

The elder Zora lifts a brow at Dorephan, who nods.

“Have fun,” he says, just a touch too knowingly, and Sidon fights back mortification as he extracts himself from the meeting table and starts off towards the upper bridges.

The height at the edge of Shatterback point is dizzying. It’s more than two hundred metres, all things told. Zora children are told cautionary tales about the dangers of falling into the water from its peak. The thought makes him wonder if Link would have heeded such tales, had he heard them, or if they might have spurred him to try it and see for himself.

Probably the second one. Almost definitely the second one.

But, Sidon isn’t too close to the edge. He’s setting up on the sun-warmed stone, smoothing down a blanket and a satchel with silverware and plates.

Link is on his mind a lot lately, even when the Hylian isn’t at the Domain. Which is more frequently than Sidon would like, but that’s the nature of their lives at the moment. He is a Prince, and Link is, after all, very busy -

A rumbling from the West.

As Sidon watches, the form of Vah Nabooris crests the top of the Gerudo Highlands, and, moments later, a red streak cuts across Hyrule to join the other three in the centre where Hyrule Castle sits in the sights of, finally, all four Divine Beasts.

He turns to the appointed spot and waits.

Sidon isn’t left waiting long; it’s only minutes before the telltale blue particles fall from the sky and coalesce in a whirl into the grinning, haggard form of Link. He hastily stuffs a medallion into his shirt and bounds over.

“Sidon!” he exclaims, running into Sidon’s open arms. “That was insane! I was - seal-sledding and then I had to hit its feet with bomb arrows and then the inside was a bunch of -” he makes a face “- electricity puzzles, and the blight had some nasty tricks but I beat it and now Urbosa is free and I think I can shoot out a lightning wave now?”

Sidon, who had been nodding along with a big grin on his face, falters.

“Please, er, don’t?” he says, and Link laughs.

“I wouldn’t,” he says, and hefts himself up level with Sidon to kiss him.

Their lips meet, and Sidon shifts, holding Link’s much smaller body in a close embrace. He’s noticed several things about Link, during moments like this. He’s warm, for one - his lips and mouth especially. And he’s soft in some places and all lean muscle in others. The feeling of his hair tickles Sidon’s browridge. He takes all of these things in and commits them to memory, so that next time, or over the many other next times, he might add to the list.

He hopes that there are many, many next times indeed.

When they part, Sidon looks over Link’s disheveled appearance and tuts.

“Had a close shave, did you?” he says, and Link instantly affects a look of total innocence.

“Maybe,” he says, all the same. “Had a fairy. No,” he says, as Sidon gives him a look. “Really! I loaded up.”

“Alright, alright,” Sidon says. He releases Link from his embrace, and he clambers down. “Well! Goodness, worry aside, you are absolutely fantastic. That’s the last one! Will it be to the castle now, then?”

“Not before lunch,” Link says, pulling out the Shiekah Slate. Sidon obligingly reaches into his satchel and pulls out the plates and silverware, and on each one Link deposits a meal.

As they eat - or, more accurately, as Sidon eats after watching Link down his own portion in under a minute, they talk.

“How’re the food stocks?” Link asks.

“Naturally that would be the first thing you ask after,” Sidon says, poorly concealing amusement as he looks down pointedly at Link’s plate. It’s been licked clean. Link rolls his eyes and huffs.

“It’s important,” he says, and Sidon chuckles.

“No, you’re right. I’m just teasing,” he says. “Truthfully, if it weren’t for Beedle, we would be having a lot more difficulty. The central waters of Hyrule are still reeling from the damage the saltwater did, and normally I would say this would be a problem that would last years.”

“But?” Link asks.

“... But, we’ve been noticing that the fish tend to replenish themselves after a blood moon, lately,” Sidon says. “Something of a blessing hidden in a curse. So, we’re waiting.”

He takes a dainty bite of his seafood curry.

Link nods, picking up his plate, and, spying an errant crumb, licks it once more. Sidon feels what he can only describe as fond disgust and continues on.

“Any problems with the Slate since the repair job?” he asks, eyeing the item in question in its normal spot on Link’s belt. 

“Nope,” Link says, and then makes a face. “Purah charges steep, though.”

“It is one-of-a-kind technology.”

“Steep,” Link repeats, with no shortage of emphasis, and then perks up. “Oh, speaking of - got Midnight a new saddle.”

“Oh! Wonderful!” Sidon says, clapping his hands together. “She’s doing alright?”

“Yeah,” Link says, smiling. “Just needed time to rest. It’s cool, look -”

Link turns and whistles, a sharp, high string of alternating low and high notes. He looks expectant, and then a few seconds tick by, and then he frowns, and then a few more seconds tick by and he looks dejected.

“... This place is anti-horses,” he says, completely bafflingly.

“It most certainly is not,” Sidon says, minorly affronted.

“She’s supposed to teleport in,” Link says, and he shuffles over and flops onto Sidon’s knee. Sidon reaches over with his free hand and pats his head.

“There, there,” he says, and Link shoots him a dirty look that says don’t patronize me. Sidon laughs and takes another bite of curry, finishing off the bowl and sliding it aside. He cards his fingers through Link’s hair, and that seems to mollify him - he goes practically boneless under Sidon’s attention.

They sit like that for a while, content to enjoy the afternoon sun. Unlike in most of the places they’d travelled, Zora’s Domain is always humid enough thanks to the waterfalls that Sidon never feels his scales get itchy and dry even under the sun’s heat, and that holds true even up as high as they are. Link makes no move to leave Sidon’s lap, and Sidon supposes that he’s probably much more tired than he initially let on.

“Mmm,” Sidon says, fighting a wave of drowsiness himself. “I got word from Usausi… you remember her?”

“Mhm,” Link says, curling up like a cat. How he’s at all comfortable in the hard rock they’re sitting on is a mystery to Sidon.

“She said that she did end up visiting the statue,” he says. “Supposedly, it gave her the strength to tell her family about her wife-to-be.”

Link raises his head to look up at Sidon with lidded eyes.

“Raruta moved on,” he says. “Didn’t she?”

Sidon laughs softly.

“Well, not everyone has a direct connection to the ancient holy powers, Link,” he says. “Most of us simply have the idea that someone is listening. It helps sometimes.”

“Hylia’s nice,” Link says, about the patron deity of the land, in a very matter-of-fact way.

“Yes, I’m sure she is,” Sidon says, trying not to laugh again. “Speaking of…”

His gaze wanders, and, led by the sights of the Divine Beasts that cross the sky, land on Hyrule Castle.

“Now that lunch has concluded,” he says. “When do you plan on making the final leap, as it were? As I understand it, Zelda awaits.”

Link sits up and stretches, and when Sidon looks back at him, he looks pensive.

“Still some things to do,” he says. “But… soon.”

“Are you nervous?” Sidon says. “I’m certain you’ll come out victorious.”

Link shakes his head.

“Not nervous about that. Sort of about Zelda?” He chews on his lips softly, that thoughtful edge not leaving his eyes. “Not… like it was.”

“That’s good,” Sidon says, reaching over and placing his hand on Link’s. Link smiles up at him. “Will you come and visit again, then? Before you go? I want…”

He trails off, looking away furtively.

“You want?” Link echoes.

“I would very much like to see you off,” he says. “You know, a brave knight going to face off with the evil that plagues the land… and his Prince, awaiting his return.”

Link snorts, and Sidon makes an undignified noise somewhere between a gasp and a stammer.

“Don’t laugh!” he beseeches, and Link laughs harder.

“Sorry,” Link manages to get out, and Sidon looks over to see that he’s beet red in the face. “I just - that’s so - cute.”

“Goddesses take me now,” Sidon groans, burying his face in his free arm.

Link shifts beside him, and then there are lips on his cheek as Link plants a brief peck on him. When he looks up, it’s to see Link standing there grinning ear-to-ear.

“Wanna practice?” he says. Sidon sighs and gets to his feet.

“I suppose I’ve filled my pool,” he says. “And now I must sleep in it.”

“My Prince,” Link says in that faux-posh accent of his, taking a knee. He’s still holding onto Sidon’s hand. “I’m to slay the beast, soon, and I must ask…”

He trails off, face going blank.

“... And you must ask?” Sidon prompts. Link frowns.

“... Can’t think of anything good,” he admits, after a long pause.

“It… it happens to the best of us,” Sidon says, trying very hard and failing not to shake with laughter.

“Wait,” Link says, standing up in a swift motion. “Got it.”

“Well, on with it the- mmmph!”

Link reaches up and kisses him.

It’s more than last time, somehow. Deeper, certainly; Sidon kneels to meet Link’s face, and they press against each other, seeking contact at every available surface. Link’s arms wrap around his neck and hold on like he never wants to let go, and even when they both pull back, short of breath, they stay there, vicelike.

Link’s blue eyes bore into him and Sidon thinks that they say more than any words ever could.

He adds that to the list.

“Yes,” he says, somewhat weak at the knees. “I believe - I believe that does get the point across.”

Link grins and lets go, backing up a few feet and glancing over the side of the cliff.

“I’ll be back,” he says.

“I’ll be waiting,” Sidon says, and then pauses. “Are you going to -”

Link grins wider and takes another step.

“Incorrigible,” Sidon says, as Link takes one last step, this time over empty air, and plummets over the edge with a whoop.

Sidon hurries over to the cliff edge of Shatterback Point and watches as Link unfurls his glider at a completely reasonable distance up, sailing over the Reservoir as a splash of red over a shimmering pool of deep blue.