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“It’s mine!” Wild hollers as soon as the portal closes behind them, waving his slate triumphantly in the air.
Everyone groans, Warriors included. They’d only been to Wild’s Hyrule (Wildrule, as nicknamed by Wind and Legend) once, but that one week ranks in Warriors’ top five of most stressful things that have ever happened to him. Between teaching the youngers how to shieldsurf down sheer cliffs to the seven times they had to drop everything and search for Hyrule, to the hinox that batted Time nearly into the horizon with an entire damn tree, Warriors is sure he’s greying entirely at the roots.
Is that how Twilight feels all the time, watching the hellion that is Wild run around and fight things with tree branches? Warriors is gonna have to take that guy drinking some time, because holy fuck.
“Ooooh,” Wild says, going suspiciously quiet as he re-holsters his slate. Warriors exchanges a Look™ with Twilight. “So. Good news, I know where we are and there’s a fairly safe place to camp. Bad news: obviously, we’re in a canyon. The biggest one in my era, actually, and there’s no way out besides up.”
Warriors cranes his head back, back, back, stone walls sliding in his vision. The blue sky calls above, cut into a wide river by the cliffs around them. It’s at least a hundred and fifty feet to the top, maybe more depending on their starting place. The cliffs aren’t sheer, though, thankfully; it looks like there’s a couple outcroppings that can be used to their advantage.
“What threats?” Time asks, because there’s always threats in Wild’s Hyrule.
Wild hums, tilting his head as his ears flick— he’s listening. Something he is scarily good at, Warriors has found. “Nothing immediate. Probably a couple of lizalfos camps scattered around, and I can double check the guardians, but they were all still deactivated last time I was here.”
Guardians. They hadn’t actually run into any last time they were here, which is an overwhelmingly good thing from what Warriors has heard. Wild had described them as “really really fast mechanical spiders with armour and death lasers that can lock on a hundred feet away and take you out in one go”. Then he’d gestured to his scars, and nothing more was said on the subject.
“But yeah, a little bit down is this big-ass temple ruin carved right into the rock,” Wild says, pointing in the assumed general direction. He hesitates. “Uh, actually, the canyon might’ve formed around it, honestly. Zelda said it’s older than the Divine Beasts, so…”
“How old?” Four asks, eyes sheening purple. Warriors wonders if he knows his eyes do that— he’s never asked.
“The Divine Beasts are, like, ten thousand years old, so more than that,” Wild shrugs. “It’s not called the Forgotten Temple for nothing. It really is beautiful, though, and just has this… feeling, I guess. It has this huge Goddess Statue in it, too, called the Mother Statue. It’s like fifty feet tall.”
Twilight whistles lowly, glancing toward where Wild had pointed earlier. “Damn, cub, you’re sellin’ me here.”
Wild grins, wide and just a tad feral. “Race you!”
And then he’s gone, because of course he is. Warriors gives Time a longsuffering look, but his little brother just chuckles at him.
“He’s just like you,” Warriors hisses, playfully kicking at Time’s ankle as he passes. “I don’t think I like your bloodline anymore.”
Time gives him a devilish smile, and if Warriors blinks, he could’ve sworn it was Wild in front of him instead.
“Race you,” Time echoes like the chaotic man he is, because of course.
Even from the outside, the Forgotten Temple is easily the most impressive ruin Warriors has ever seen.
Not that he has much experience with ruins, really— he’s a bit more familiar with the sight of smoking wood and scattered stone. Whoever was around before in his era didn’t leave anything to be remembered by, and it would've been demolished in the war even if they had. It was in Wild’s time that he experienced true ruins for the first time, and he realised just how lonely long-forgotten structures are.
This ruin is no different. As huge and impressive as it is, Warriors can feel its distinctly empty nature as soon as he steps through the first arch. The ages-old stone around them echoes with every step, the ghostly sounds making their group seem oddly silent in comparison.
Wild points out the guardian corpses in a low voice, and the back of Warriors’ neck prickles every time he turns his back to one. They look more like upside down pots than spiders, but Wild’s cheerful reply of, “ just wait ‘til you see the ones with legs!” was certainly… helpful.
Sky lags behind the group as they spread out, steps slow and careful, and his expression even moreso. He looks almost... on edge. Like he's expecting something to come bursting out of a crumbling archway. Warriors pauses by the entrance to a chamber off to the left, watching as Sky gazes past him towards the absolutely colossal tree inside that breaks through the ceiling, letting sunlight stream through and outline the fallen chunks of stone like golden velvet.
Sky's face is something a little too painful to be wistful as he stands impossibly still, eyes faraway. He looks like a man pulled from his own time, which he is, sailcloth a stark, clean white against all the dust surrounding them. Yet he fits, somehow, something in the way he holds himself old enough to live in this temple.
"Cool tree, huh?" Warriors says succinctly, because it is, really.
Sky smiles softly. "It is," he agrees. He glances at Warriors sidelong, evaluating. "My friend Groose planted it."
Warriors feels his mouth drop open and he turns to him, glancing from Sky to the apparently thousands-of-years-old tree. "You're shitting me. This is yours?"
Sky shrugs a shoulder, and Warriors can't quite pinpoint it, but something feels a little off about the action. His smile doesn't reach his eyes. "Well, the original one, I suppose. This is probably a descendant. But yes, this temple is-" he hesitates, eyes flickering with something too fast and convoluted for Warriors to catch. "It's... from my time."
"Not as crumbly, though," he adds after a moment with a quick grin, and the air lightens.
Warriors shoves Sky's shoulder playfully, grinning back. He keeps watching, though, just in case. He doesn't miss the way Sky's face goes tight again as soon as he moves away.
Warriors frowns to himself, quietly following. It's possible Sky doesn't have the greatest memories of this place from his own era; hell, he'd dox that 'possible' with the way Sky seems to be almost bracing himself for something.
He'll keep an eye on him, Warriors decides, trying not to cringe too hard when Wind hollers at him from across the temple to, "Haul ass, Wars!"
Warriors rolls his eyes fondly and jogs to catch up with the others.
He can feel it as soon as he walks into the final chamber. A gentle hand to his face, a tug on his soul. A lost calling on the wind to the Hero's Spirit, originating from the slowly dying statue in the center of the room. A hush takes over his mind as he beholds the huge Goddess Statue, the last remnant of a sky-borne people.
This place is ancient, has seen kings come and ago, ages pass and generations build. Warriors probably can’t even fathom the aeons it’s stood here, quietly wearing away. This place is sacred in a way he's never felt before, not even in the presence of the Triforce. The feeling makes him stop dead in his tracks, because it’s almost like he can feel some holy presence ahead of him, warm but tired, powerful across the span of centuries but now beginning to fade like the temple around him. It strikes him as a sort of nostalgia, almost; a welcoming into a home that doesn’t exist anymore.
The others have fallen just as silent around him, the air of quiet reverence wrapping around them like a blanket. Careful of the dilapidated sections of stone, Warriors moves closer to the closest thing he'll ever see to goddess.
Moss-covered and worn by time, the statue’s features are barely recognisable anymore. The wings stretched out behind her tell of the carvings of individual feathers once upon a time, and the lack of them now gives the impression of something loved and lost. A goddess without her wings.
Warriors stares up at what was once revered, was once holy, and thinks of the statue of himself back in his era. He doesn’t like to on principle, but he can’t help but wonder if this is how he’s going to end up after it all. When centuries pass, will the statue of the Hero of Warriors be left forgotten in the ruins of a castle? How long until his own carved features give in to weathering? How long until the world grows and re-grows over bloodstained battlefields and fortresses left unattended?
It’s a comforting thing, really, Warriors thinks, to know that it’s not a matter of ‘how’, but ‘when’. At some point, his era will move on from the travesty that took sons from their mothers and daughters from their fathers. His people will keep going, and one day, someone will stumble upon a statue too old for recognition and wonder who the supposed Hero of Warriors was.
Warriors thinks he’d like to be forgotten.
He moves in the silent, reverent air, reaching out a careful hand to the stone. He doesn’t know why, in particular, but it feels right.
Sky’s at his shoulder without Warriors realising, his own hand reaching. Except he goes for Warriors’ wrist instead of the statue, grabbing it in a bruising grip and practically tearing Warriors’ hand out of reach of the statue.
Warriors flinches at the sudden touch, fingertips just barely brushing the cool stone as Sky redirects his arm. He turns, ready to rip himself free of Sky’s sudden and iron grip and say “ what the hell, man”, but—
But the world goes fuzzy around him, colours bleaching and spreading like paint in a stream. The only steady thing is Sky, hand wrapped around Warriors’ wrist, staring at him like he’d just sung his own death knell.
Something about his face isn’t right. Warriors doesn't know what it is, but he can tell, in the way that he can tell when a picture doesn’t quite fit the frame.
“Sky,” he starts, careful, taking a step forward.
“You don’t want to know what rests here,” Sky tells Warriors.
Warriors jolts in place, a chill racing up his spine. His feet stop suddenly without his explicit permission, like the earth itself lurched up to swallow his boots and demand his stillness.
Sky is looking at him placidly, soft blue eyes big and unblinking. His left hand is twitching by his thigh, over and over again. When Warriors blinks, he sees the scarring. Big, feathery and fern-like patterns of torn apart skin, creeping up over Sky’s arm and chest and shoulder and neck and face—
The Triforce glows on the back of his brother’s hand, all three pieces soldered into his skin in molten gold. Sky’s eyes are no longer blue, but a milky white, looking through Warriors instead of at him.
“What?” Warriors breathes, horrible, horrible dread pooling in his gut.
Sky doesn’t blink. His hand is still twitching. Around them, a creeping, ethereal blue fades in as if through the cracks in reality. The silence is so stark that Warriors can hear his own blood in his veins, rushing faster and faster with every heartbeat.
“Be careful,” Sky says. There is something deeply unsettling in his lack of a smile. “If you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
There’s something on his forehead, standing out against the fractured white scars. Something dark— a black ‘X’, like someone had grabbed his face and slashed it into his skin.
His white eyes focus on Warriors. A bone-deep chill gathers at the base of Warriors’ spine, spreading outward in a flash that makes his head whirl. He is certain, at that moment, that Sky knows everything there is to know about him, about every scar and every love and every chink in his armour.
“I don’t know how long it was,” Sky’s features twist, dreadful and desperate. His grip tightens, until Warriors can feel Sky’s pulse ricocheting against his, until it starts to hurt. “I don’t know how long it’s been. There is no time. It was forever, and it was a second. Millennia in the blink of an eye. I’m still there. I’m still there. Warriors, I’m still there, she left me there, get me out, get me out get me out—”
He cuts off with a strangled choking noise that feels like a dagger shoved between Warriors’ ribs. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he pleads, reaching but he can’t move no matter how hard he tries, feet stuck to the ground. He can’t see the others anywhere, their forms washed away with the rest of the world.
“Please,” Sky gasps, like the word tears at his being. Warriors can’t breathe through the desperation in his throat. “I’m not what you think. Puppets are all she knows. End it. Look, Link!”
Then he’s normal again like nothing happened in the first place, face unscarred and unmarked, eyes a blue like the reflection of a dark sky. They don’t look quite right. His hand is taught around the clasp of his sailcloth, knuckles white, but he meets Warriors’ gaze and smiles, a slow, creeping thing. He leans forward, tapping a finger against Warriors’ lips.
“Oh, how impudent of him. Whoever fights monsters becomes one, you know,” he whispers, like he’s sharing a deadly secret. “Ruthlessness is mercy, captain, remember?”
Warriors hadn’t realised how cold he was until the heat comes flooding back in a scorching wave, rolling over his skin in searing touches. It steals the breath from his lungs, pulling at his insides in nausea-inducing flames. Sky’s touch is burning and Warriors tries to rip away, muscles spasming as he cries out in pain—
“Wars!” someone yells directly into his ear. There’s a hand on his arm and he grabs at it, and needing the fire to go away—
“Holy shit you’re burning up, what the fuck?” the voice says again, and then the hand’s on his face and Warriors snarls, mind going steely as he lunges. The yelp that follows is familiar, the colourful swearing that follows even more so.
His hand goes for the well-known hilt of his sword, but arms wrap around his chest before he can, tight but gentle. “Easy there,” a different voice rumbles, vibrating through his chest. “Easy, captain, you’re okay.”
Warriors’ chest heaves, heart going too fast and tripping over itself. His head whirls and his stomach whirls and goddess, he’s going to pass out, what is this?
(Sky’s eyes are white and unseeing, skin fractured over and over, black ‘X’ slashed like a claim—)
Warriors vomits instead.
The arms release him, startled, and he’s yanked into oblivion fast enough that he doesn’t remember hitting the ground.
There’s a statue of him in the castle gardens.
Link stares up at his own stone-hewn features, traces the solid folds of his scarf, looks at the heavy sword planted between his feet with his hands resting near-leisurely on the pommel. Stone Link’s expression is one of solemn yet soft distance, eyes focused forever on the horizon— on what’s ahead.
In his humble opinion, Link finds it a little dramatic.
It’s easier to focus on that than the chills skittering on the back of his neck, the cold fingers raising the hair on his arms. The whisper of laughter that hisses in his ears that’s haunted his step since the war ended. If he blinks, he would see himself back in the cursed temple courtyard, surrounded by likenesses of the heroes past. They had followed him with hollow eyes that warned him of the madness that lay inside, and he hadn’t listened.
He doesn’t blink.
‘Captain Link’ , the plague tells him in capital, proclaiming letters. ‘Hero of the War of Ages’.
If only Mask were here. He’d laugh his tiny, bratty little ass off. Tune, too— the pirate would probably try to draw on Stone Link’s face the second Human Link looked away.
Hylia, he misses his brothers. It’s selfish of him to consider them being dragged into a war far too big for them the best moments of Link’s life, but he does. He wonders if they made it in their own times long since past, if Tune rebuilt his drowned kingdom, or if he ever confessed to that strong-headed pirate queen. He wonders how Mask grew up in that too-young body of his, if he ever found someplace to call home— if that heaviness in his big eyes ever got lighter. If he was ever fully and truly happy.
Link holds that little hope tight to his chest as he stares at a face that doesn’t feel like his. The statue marks an era past, but Link thinks the new era forgot to bring him with it. It feels too much like a memorial, this life-size replica of Link the captain, like Link the person is already gone.
In truth, it’s the other way around. In the shadow of Link the captain, Link ‘Hero of the War of Ages’, he faces the fact he’d been burying for the past month: he doesn’t know how to be Link, the person, anymore.
And it hurts. It hurts, sinking into his chest and tearing, the grief of it all ripping through his lungs until he’s gasping for air. It hurts to think of nine year old, bright-eyed and tree-climbing Link trampled under heavy boots. Of twelve year old, bratty and tag-you’re-it Link scored over with bloody hands that he will never be free of, or of sixteen year old, horrendously-bad-at-flirting Link among the lifeless eyes that bore into his back every time he closes his eyes.
Was that really him, all those years ago? It feels fake, like a mirage, something outside of time as a whole. It’s all shadowed, now. Written over by every scream, every drop of blood, every name in a casualty report. Again, and again, and again, until all he is is Link the captain, skin as cold and numb as the stone in front of him.
“Ruthlessness is mercy,” the General’s words, repeated over and over until they were all Link could think when a sword was in his hand. He thinks of them now, though his hands are empty and he is empty and why would anyone say that to a person, why would anyone do that to a person?
(A different face rises in his head, eyes empty and deceiving, a finger to his lips— those words again, always those words)
Except he isn’t. He is a soldier. Soldiers are not people. Until, he thinks, the word ‘hero’ stained into the backs of his eyelids like a brand, you need them to be.
He wishes, right then and there, that he had died in the war. He wishes it more fervently than he has ever wished for anything in his life. Because Link is alone and small, and there is nothing left of him, there is nothing left but the calluses on his hands and the nightmares in his head.
He hates everything he ever was as a hero if all it meant was to be reduced to this— a statue in a garden and the monster at its feet.
Warriors is pulled back to consciousness to what feels like a bucket of ice water dumped over his head. He splutters, lashing out with an arm on instinct, an “oomph!” splitting the air as he catches someone in the chest. That’s quickly followed by a splash, water showing up into Warriors’ face, and he realises he had actually had freezing water over his head.
Reality snaps back around him too quickly, the hand on his shoulder and water around him going constricting. His chest is painfully tight, diaphragm feeling knotted against the base of his ribs as he gasps for air.
Everything is too damn loud.
Hushed voices bleed in and out around him, rustling and footsteps and what sounds almost like wind screaming past his ears. Warriors’ head is pounding, ears ringing like someone had taken a hammer to a gong inside his skull.
Opening his eyes feels like pushing a mountain from his shoulders. He manages to peel them open a sliver, cracks of light flooding in immediately and making his stomach turn upside down. He slams his eyes shut again and groans a little at the wave of nausea, wanting to curl into a ball and presumably die. He feels downright shitty.
“Wars?” someone asks, and then there’s a hand on his face, tapping in a gentle, rhythmic pattern. Their skin is cold, and Warriors whines a bit as he tries to shuffle away.
“He’s still way too warm,” a different voice reports, and wait, wait, he knows who that is and something isn’t right—
Otherworldly blue glows in the backs of his eyelids, and he tears them open again with a gasp that quickly turns into a hacking cough. His chest aches. Someone swears nearby, bitten off in the way Legend commonly does. A hand rubs his back in careful circles. Warriors can feel the outline of rings against his ribs.
“Can you hear me, Wars?” the second voice asks, and Sky is holding onto him and begging.
“S’y,” he croaks out. Was his throat always this dry?
(“I’m still there. I’m still there. Warriors, I’m still there, she left me there, get me out, get me out get me out—”)
In Warriors’ blurry vision, Sky smiles softly just like he always does. Except it doesn’t reach his eyes, and his hand is pressing just a little too hard where it lies on Warriors’ shoulder. Blinking harshly, Warriors looks down at his wrist despite his spinning head. Dark, finger-shaped bruises look back at him, stark against his washed-out pallor.
Slowly, he looks back up at Sky. Fractal lines of colour blur his face, the reflection of the sun of the water casting his features in uncertainty. But there’s something— something about his eyes…
They’re not reflecting light. Even in the slant too-bright sunlight, they look glassy in their unreal shade of blue. Almost like a doll’s.
(“Look, Link!” )
“Puppet,” Warriors breathes.
Legend’s hand stills on his back.
Sky’s smile doesn’t falter. “Oh,” he says, and there’s an inquisitive detachment in his voice that strikes Warriors as lifelessness. “I figured he was going to try something like that, but I still can't believe he actually did. How foolish- there isn't much of a chance you'll trust me again, is there?" he sighs, utterly put-upon. "Now everything is ruined.”
Legend starts to say something, shifting, but Sky is quicker.
His hands move lightning fast, thumbs shoving into Warriors’ windpipe, and his head is dragged back under the water before he can even blink. Bubbles escape his lips when he gasps, head spinning as he latches onto Sky’s wrist. He tries to shove upwards, kicking out his legs to try and at least clear the water, but then Sky’s grip is tightening and then—
Warriors’ lungs scream, vision going spotty as Sky lifts him up and slams him into the lakebed once, twice—
The pressure disappears. And then he’s gasping in sharp, cold air that stings the back of his throat as someone hauls him from the water with a secure arm around his chest. Warriors breaks out in a coughing fit immediately, body crumpling without his express permission as he spits acrid-tasting water from his mouth.
The arm around him belongs to Twilight, Warriors realises, the rancher carefully guiding him to the grassy ground. When his vision finally clears, he sees Legend sitting on Sky’s chest in the shallows of a small pond, knees dug into his biceps and a dagger to his throat.
He’s yelling. They’re all yelling and Warriors’ head hurts and he can’t think through the noise or the pain and, fuck, one of his brothers had just tried to drown him in a pond that’s barely three feet deep. Except that isn’t his brother, and what scares Warriors the most is that he doesn’t know when he stopped being Sky.
(“I’m not what you think.” )
He’s moving before he’s fully aware of what he’s doing, legs shaky as he pushes himself up from the ground. Twilight grabs onto his arm, expression stormy yet unsure, but Warriors shakes him off. Between one breath and the next, he’s standing over Sky-not-Sky, kept prone in Legend’s high guard.
Not-Sky watches him approach without blinking, seemingly content where he lies. He smiles up at Warriors despite Legend’s dagger a hair’s breadth away from his throat. It looks wrong.
“Where is he,” Warriors rasps, that familiar numbness sinking in below his skin. “What have you done?”
Not-Sky blinks slowly, raising his eyebrows in an expression fit for aiming at a misled child. “I thought you understood,” he says. “He was never here in the first place.”
Warriors’ heart twists.
That's not true. It can't be true. They've been travelling together for over three months now, he would've noticed, someone would've noticed.
All those smiles like the sun. All those stupid jokes, all those late nights, all the times he walked with Sky at the back of the group, all the sappy waxing poetic about his girlfriend and falling asleep anywhere and the letters by the fire, everything— wasn’t him?
But Sky was— he was Sky, quiet and soft and Chosen Sky, he was—
“An echo,” Time says quietly. He moves closer, Lens of Truth dropping from his eye. His face is drawn and exhausted, something painfully close to grief written in the lines of his face.
“...what?” Wind asks, and his tiny voice is what nearly breaks Warriors.
“Hylia’s last and ultimate test,” Sky says, eyes drifting to the heavens above. “Could you get past personal feelings to keep your end goal safe? Would you be able to take action against one of your own, one you call brother, if he posed a threat to the quest? How loyal are you truly to your cause, heroes?”
He locks eyes with Warriors. Cold, creeping dread grips the inside of his throat like a phantom hand, squeezing tighter and tighter.
He’d come after Warriors. He’d come after Warriors because he knew.
“I don’t a fuck about whatever bullshit Hylia told you,” Legend snarls, and Warriors can see the pieces of the vet coming loose, hardening and sharpening until his expression is as much of a dagger as the one in his hand. “I want to know what happened to my brother.”
Sky smiles indulgently. “I am your brother.”
“He’s an echo,” Time repeats in no tone at all. “Sky’s soul isn’t there anymore. This is more like a… shade. A remnant, something easily manipulated. It's not him.”
“There’s no point in asking where he’s gone,” Sky informs them placidly. “You never really knew him. His soul was sealed away a long time ago.”
Warriors thinks of milky eyes and twitching hands, of desperation and a warning and a mark like a claim. Something deep in his chest aches.
“He was trying to reach us,” he says softly.
Not-Sky’s expression convulses, hands curling into fists on the ground. “He interfered, ” he hisses, venom dripping from his every word. “His place had already been decided. A worthy end for a hero like him. He had no right!”
“Wars?” Time asks.
And Warriors...
"What'll it be, heroes of courage?" Not-Sky says, not moving his gaze from Warriors for a second. "Are you loyal?"
Not-Sky looks at him, doll eyes glinting, and waits.
In his mind’s eye, Sky stares straight through him, and waits.
(“End it.” )
And, in the end, all there is is this: Warriors has not been Link the hero in a long time. When it comes to his brothers, he will do anything to keep them out of danger, whether it be from a shade or the wrath of a goddess.
Everything is quiet and dim around him. The shing of his sword leaving its sheath feels as loud as his heart beating against his ribs.
Legend stares up at him with wide violet eyes, gone slack from his position on top of Sky. Warriors gives him a gentle shove, moving to stand over Sky himself.
He’ll take it. He’ll take this burden, only if so his brothers won’t have to carry it.
“Don’t look,” he says.
The words are there again, started in a hushed chant in the back of his mind as soon as he touched his sword. He stares down at Sky, at Not-Sky, at the Sky he’s only ever known and the Sky he trusted with his life. The Sky that was only a shade, nothing but an echo of what the real Sky was once. Sky, the dreamer. Sky, the puppet. Sky, his brother.
“I’ll find you,” Warriors whispers. “In this life or the next, Sky, I swear I’ll find you.”
Ruthlessness is mercy.
It’s deceptively easy to slide his blade into Sky’s chest.
And like the coward he is, Warriors doesn’t look.