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When Calamity strikes, Impa is nowhere near Hyrule Castle.

The King had given her leave from her post while Link and the Champions accompanied Zelda to Mount Lanayru. It had stung, at first, being told that she wasn’t going to be there to witness the awakening of the Goddess’s Light within her best friend, and on the long walk home to Kakariko she had come to a bitter understanding. There are no Impas to be seen on the tapestry depicting the Great Calamity ten thousand years ago, after all, meaning there should be no Impas present when the Light comes bursting forth from the Goddess Incarnate’s palms. Only the Hero, his fellow Champions, and the Calamity they are all bound to destroy.

No matter that it was Impa who stood watch over Zelda’s prayers long before Link ever pulled the Master Sword, or that it was Impa who conspired with Urbosa and Daruk to get Link to finally open his mouth and ask Zelda for a dance at last year’s winter ball, or that it was Impa who talked Zelda off the ledge when she was convinced Link didn’t return her feelings. Her station, her sacred place in the footnotes of Hyrule’s long, storied legends, rendered pointless because her predecessor wasn’t featured in the only remnant of ancient history they have aside from the Divine Beasts, the Guardians, and the Slate.

So no, when Calamity strikes Impa is nowhere near Hyrule Castle. When Calamity strikes, she’s sitting at home in Kakariko with her parents, drinking tea and discussing what’s happening at Mount Lanayru.

“She’s should be descending by now,” she says, looking out the window to where the sun has just begun to set, “she won’t be cold, not with the Goddess’s Light warming her from within.”

“Do you feel anything?” her mother asks, pouring her another cup. “Is there a difference in the air now that she’s Awakened?”

There’s a long-held report of Impas feeling something when the Goddess’s blood sings. What that something is, they’ve never been able to describe in their writings, and no matter how many times Impa reads their journal entries she can’t decipher what they mean when they say they felt reality shift. She feels nothing out of the ordinary, just the lingering indignation of being left behind because of a technicality and the anxiousness that always comes when Zelda leaves without her there to protect her from harm. Link is strong, and Impa trusts him with Zelda’s life, but she can never be sure of Zelda’s safety unless she’s with him three steps behind.

“Not yet,” she replies, blowing on her tea to cool it before she drinks, “but perhaps we’re too far from each other.”

“I still cannot believe we get to witness something like this,” her father is excited, riled up like a dog being asked if it wants to play outside, writing down everything he can about this day in a notebook he never lets anyone else touch. His memoir, he says it is, for when his name and notes are copied into the Archive upon his death. “The Awakened Goddess Incarnate! Her mother only visited us a few times before her death, but I was in training and never got to see her up close. Now that I’m the Head Archivist-”

Impa sorely wishes Purah were here instead of in her lab with Robbie. She’d asked her sister if she wanted to come home with her, or at least give her some company on the road, and Purah’s refusal was followed by the sharing of her newest breakthrough regarding Guardian Stalkers, more specifically how their claws can pierce through Eldin’s obsidian.

Sorry, sis, Purah had finished, motioning to where Robbie was elbow deep in a Stalker’s eye, no can do, but tell Mom and Dad ‘Hello’ for me!

“Here, Mother,” Impa leans over the table to help her mother pour the rest of the tea into her father’s empty cup, “let me do it, I know how your hand has been hurting lately.”

“I told Purah not to tell you about that,” her mother grumbles, but digs her right thumb into her left palm all the same, massaging deep circles into the wrinkled skin. “You should only be concerned with the Goddess’s wellbeing.”

“I don’t have to be until she returns to Hyrule Castle at the end of the week,” she rebuts, knowing that she will never stop worrying about Zelda for as long as she’s alive, wondering if she really is cold up on that mountain, if Link remembered to grab the blanket she likes, “and she would be upset with me if she learned I knew of your pain and prioritized her over it.” 

“Careful, heart,” her father warns, shifting his notebook away from where the tea spills into his cup, “I don’t want to get my notes wet, I-”

The floor shakes. The table rattles, the walls wobble, and the stream of tea jerks as Impa fumbles to catch the kettle and splatters all over his papers.

“Impa,” he scolds, but Impa isn’t listening to him, clutching the tea kettle to her chest and staring out the window, because the floor is still shaking and something terrible is rising over the mountains.

In all the texts she’s read about the Great Calamity, translated from the language of the Ancients, it’s described as a creature with the body of a spider, the face of a skull, and the screech of a wild monkey. It is no bigger than the average nobleman’s home, but it has the power to wipe out the kingdom with its laugh.   

This abomination is a mass of dark energy in the form of a snorting, raging boar, charging up into the clouds to blot out the sun from the direction of Hyrule Castle.  

“Impa?” her mother’s voice is weak as the sky dims, blanketing them in black. Pictures that Purah snuck off the Slate fall off the walls from the force of their rattling, the glass shattering on the floor. “What’s happening?”

Her father forgets his ruined notes and staggers to the window, looking up and gasping. Outside, there’s commotion as the whole village gathers in the streets.  

“Calamity,” Impa whispers, unable to tear her eyes from the beast ripping through the sky, how it leaves streaks of deep red in its wake that darken the clouds and turn them heavy with thunder and lightning. 

Zelda and the Champions are all the way at Mount Lanayru, and it looks like it came from directly from the castle. Is the castle even standing? Is the King alive? Purah-

Purah. Purah’s lab is right by the castle, across the moat separating it from the rest of Central Hyrule. If the Calamity’s sprouted from the castle, Purah would be at the epicenter of its first attack, but she’s surrounded by the Guardians she and Robbie programmed to fight the Calamity. Arguably, her sister is one of the safest people in Hyrule.

“What do we do?” her mother stumbles to stand with her father at the window, white-knuckled on the sill as the floor ripples under their feet. Rocks roll off the mountains from the force of the quakes, pebbles raining down on the roof. “Impa, what do we do?”

Impa is still holding the kettle. She blinks down at it, wondering why she’s still holding it, before she places it on the table and checks her belt for her knives. 

“I need to see what’s going on,” she says, breathless and nodding to the rattling door. “Let’s go outside and join the rest of the village!” 

All seven of her kunai, named for the sages that once assisted the legendary Hero of Time in his service to the Goddess, are hidden beneath her robes and secured across her chest like a sash. Rauru’s weathered golden hilt is a welcome weight in her palm, and she runs her thumb over the rough notches on the pommel that mark every Impa that’s ever held it. Her notch is the thirtieth, scratched in right next to her predecessor’s from almost ten thousand years ago.

“Time to go,” she whispers to Rauru, the first knife she ever held as Impa, and follows her parents out the door, taking her hat off the wall and strapping it around her back.     

The streets of Kakariko, the dirt paths she grew up walking, fracture and split beneath their every rapid step as they rush to the Elder’s house, where all of the Sheikah are gathered in front of the steps. Elder Kya stands up on the staircase, her hands raised as she tries to calm them. 

“Please, everyone,” she calls, shouting over the rumbling of the earth, “we must wait for Impa, she will tell us what to-”

“Calamity is here!” Odra, the pumpkin farmer, cries. He points to the boar shrouding the sun with one arm while clutching his infant daughter to his chest with the other. “We must ensure the safety of our crops and evacuate-”

“We must fight!” Reklo, the bowyer, declares. There’s a quiver strapped to her back and a bow in her fists, an arrow hanging loosely from her fingers. “We are the last of the Sheikah tribe, facing the same great darkness our ancestors had a hand in stopping! We cannot run from their-”

It devolves from there, with Odra and others of his opinion demanding a path to safety while Reklo and her supporters reprimand them for their alleged cowardice. Elder Kya’s voice, while strong, is lost in the noise.

Impa swiftly counts down her belt to the fifth kunai, also named Impa, and removes it from its sheath, its black hilt smooth aside from the thirty notches in its pommel. With a flick of her wrist she embeds Impa into the roof of Elder Kya’s house, and with a silent snap of her fingers she disappears from the road and reappears on the roof in a puff of white smoke. 

“No one is going anywhere!” she shouts, capturing the attention of her whole village as she rips Impa from the wood and slips it back onto her belt. Perched on the roof as she is, she can see the storm rolling in as the Calamity drifts, now charging south towards Mount Lanayru. Smoke trails off its tusks, shooting down in hundreds of clouded arrows, and in the back of her head she wonders why there aren’t any bright blue beams of Guardian fire as the Calamity makes its first attack on Hyrule. “No one is evacuating, and no one is fighting! As we speak, the Champions are racing to their Divine Beasts! The Hero and the Goddess are making their way to the castle, but their supplies are low from their journey to the Spring of Wisdom. They may need to stop here, and we can’t be as panicked as the rest of the kingdom when they do. We are their backbone in this fight, and we cannot bend.”

The Calamity, with its current trajectory, will pass right over Kakariko. What will happen when it does? Will it attack them, or will it think them unworthy of its time? Impa, for all of her training, doesn’t know which outcome she wants. Her fellow Sheikah are capable enough warriors when fighting off Yiga spies that wish to steal the village’s secrets or assassinate Elder Kya, but she’s the only one with any real combat experience that involves fighting something inhuman. She’s downed more Lynels than Blademasters, truth be told, and this would be the perfect time for a Yiga assault. She only has so many knives, and even then she doesn’t know what weapons the villagers have on them, if any. 

Hoofbeats echo like the rolling thunder that follows the Calamity in its mad, desperate charge south. It’s so low in the sky that Impa can see its breath when it huffs. 

“Prepare yourselves!” she shouts, going for her belt. “We must watch out for any-”

Like someone blowing out a torch, the sky goes black. Pressure feels the air, so heavy that she’s forced down to her knees on the edge of the roof.  Grown men cry out like they’ve been shot with an arrow, the women wail like they’ve been stabbed in the side, and Impa herself can’t stop a sob from passing her lips as overwhelming despair settles deep in her chest. Her vision blurs as her eyes well with tears, and she lets them fall as she stares up into the Calamity’s burning yellow eyes.

The Impa before you was strong. The voice that speaks to her, echoing in her head, is deep and terrible and dregs up every fear Impa has ever felt. The time she nearly drowned learning to swim in Lake Hylia. The first time she saw a Chuchu. The moment she was selected as the Impa and had to forsake the name her parents gave her, toss it away like it was nothing but trash. Waiting for a six year old Zelda to Approve her as the Impa. You are nothing but a child.

“It is my sacred duty to protect the Goddess from the likes of you,” she manages, her voice shaking as badly as her hands, but she draws Rauru and her seventh knife, Zelda, anyways. The familiarity of Rauru in her right hand and the warm security of Zelda in her left makes her feel invincible in the face of this immortal Evil, even as it plays the memory of the first time a Yiga nearly slit her throat behind her eyes. “I will tear you from the heavens you sunder and make you wish you never set foot on this mortal plane.”

Calamity laughs, and through the fear trying to make her buckle she notes the roughness of its voice, how it sounds like a man that’s swallowed the sands of the Gerudo Desert during a storm. If it is a fight you want, Little Shadow, then it is a fight I will give you. I have eyes everywhere searching for your Goddess, I suppose I can spare a moment to play.    

All at once, the skies open and hard, thick rain drops pelt Kakariko from above. Impa grunts at the sudden weight of it, her face stinging in the unforgiving spray, and she has to dig her fingers into Elder Kya’s gutter so as not to fly off the roof from the strength of the winds, flipping her hat onto her head in an attempt to keep some of the needle-like water out of her eyes. Her coat flies open, her robes quickly drenched and weighing her down, and her knives rattle as they threaten to fly from her belt. She has to cross her arm over her torso to keep them down, gritting her teeth at the strain, and through the downpour she sees something rounding the bend that leads into the mountains towards Central Hyrule, scuttling its way down the main path into the village proper.

It’s a Guardian Stalker, its blue eye shining through the dark as its head spins, searching for something to attack. Impa sighs in relief, happy to see that help has finally arrived, until the red beam lights up and settles on her chest. 

Beepbeepbeepbeepbeep-

Beneath her, the villagers of Kakariko shout in alarm. The body of the Stalker illuminates, but instead of the familiar orange it’s a sickly pink, the same color as the smoke trails streaking off of the Calamity. 

Yes, my Guardians, It encourages, glee dripping from every word, burn it all to the ground! Raze Hyrule until there is nothing left but ash and bone!     

Impa throws herself off the roof to dodge the laser, wincing at the rush of heat on her back from the unnatural fire that ignites on the soaked wood. She lands in the middle of the crowd, readies Rauru and Zelda, and throws them at the Stalker’s legs when it starts to crawl forward. The blades pierce the ancient steel, slicing through two on each side and rendering the mindless machine motionless, but the eye blinks for only a few moments before it aims for her again.

“Scatter!” she orders her fellow Sheikah, drawing Ruto and Nabooru and squeezing their respective blue and red hilts. She remembers the lessons Purah gave her and the Champions about how to take down a Guardian if one ever went haywire, the drills Robbie had them run in Hyrule Field to practice confusing its code. “If we give it multiple targets it it won’t know where to shoot!”

The villagers listen, spreading out among the houses and shops until it’s just Impa in front of Elder Kya’s house, but the Guardian’s aim doesn’t waver from her chest even as its body swivels towards where Elder Kya is attempting to grab its attention from behind the clothing shop, Impa’s parents hollering behind her. 

Beepbeepbeepbeepbeep-

Impa slips in the mud that’s formed in the rain, her ankle enveloped by the muck and twisting when she leaps to dodge the next whining laser. She curses, dropping flat just as the laser fires, and her back stings. The Guardian aims for her again, and she slaps her hands in the mud to shove herself back to her feet, doing her best to ignore the throbbing in her ankle as she switches her grip on Ruto and Nabooru, holding them backwards and pointed at her feet. 

Reklo, the bowyer, pokes out from behind a house and nocks an arrow, taking aim at the Stalker’s eye.

“No!” Impa screams, motioning for her to stand down. “A normal arrow will just stun it and you’ll draw its attention! It’s me it wants, and I know how to take it down!”

Reklo yells back, “But I can-”

“Do not fire!” Elder Kya orders, harsh, from across the road. “Listen to me if you won’t listen to the Impa!”

Impa rolls out of the way of another laser and charges the Stalker, leaping onto its body, rearing her arms back, and jamming Ruto and Nabooru into the thin strip of blue beneath its head, a knife on either side. The blades catch on wiring as she wrenches them towards herself in halting tugs, and the Stalker beepbeepbeeps, clicking and whirring, the red beam stuttering in her face. 

“Come on!” she shouts, spitting mud and rainwater in an effort to blind it, pulling Ruto and Nabooru harder, harder-

The Stalker’s head spins and sends the two knives flying, a shrill alarm blaring. Impa clenches her thighs on the body to keep herself balanced, able to stay perched through nothing but the sheer force of her will and the strength of her muscles, before she goes for her belt and draws the green-hilted Saria and the orange-hilted Darunia.   

BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP-

She ducks and wedges Saria and Darunia into the left side of the blue strip beneath the head, the next laser grazing her shoulder and taking out a decent chunk of her hair. Screaming through the searing burn, tears freely flowing down her cheeks, she begins to pry the head from the body, cranking Darunia like a lever while sawing at the wiring with Saria. The Stalker chirps again in alarm, its red beam aiming over her and searching for a target it can’t see.  

The ancient metal groans, Saria’s blade sparking as it scrapes against the jagged tears either Ruto or Nabooru previously left, but the head starts to tilt and the opening starts to grow as Darunia loosens it from the body. 

“Come on,” she repeats to herself, sobbing, praying to the Goddess for all of this to end, for everything to stop- “Come on come on-”

In the direction of the Dueling Peaks, the sky illuminates gold and everything tilts. Impa’s breathing is too loud, her pulse pounds in her fingertips, and the rain is cold, colder than it was just a second ago, like Hebra’s snow has just begun to melt. She can smell the rot of Calamity’s corruption in the air and she can hear the way Odra’s daughter wails through the roaring thunder, the heartbeats of every Kakariko villager pounding as one.  

A piercing, ringing pain enters her head and she cries out, letting go of her knives to clutch at her temples. She goes tumbling off the corrupted Stalker, landing hard on her back. All the air leaves her lungs in a rush, a strangled, punched noise leaving her lips, and all she can do is gasp up into the rain in an effort to breathe. 

Calamity roars, its eyes swinging in the direction of the golden light. It scrapes its hooves against the clouds before taking off towards it with an enraged screech. 

The Guardian Stalker looming over her, all but defeated, finally goes dark. The Darkness corrupting it pulses, flashing pink, before it dissipates into a cloud of smog that dissolves in the pouring rain. 

“Impa!” People who sound like her parents shout, hands that feel like theirs touching her and moving her robes to check her shoulder and back, cradling her burning head, stroking reassurances into her singed hair. 

The golden light grows brighter and brighter until it completely overtakes her vision, until all she can see is—

Impa sits in a rocking chair on the front porch of a small cottage in a sprawling meadow, watching the clouds pass by. The air is warm, but not too warm, perfect for either short sleeves or long. Birds whistle and call to each other as they fly off towards the trees on the horizon, circling  in the throes of song. The sun is high in the sky, bright and welcoming, and the breeze is light enough that it carries the sent of the flowers in the meadow but not a chill. Daisies, Impa smells, and lilacs. 

The plucking of a harp on her left makes her turn her head and look at the woman sitting in an identical chair, between them a small table with a bowl of wrapped candy. The woman is young and old and middle-aged. Her hair is blonde and brown and red and black and white. Her eyes are brown and blue and green and gold, with clock hands ticking along her pupils. She wears Zelda’s white prayer dress and sandals but also a purple dress and heels but also a pink tunic and riding boots fit for something much larger than a horse.   

“Hello, Padla,” The woman greets, warm. Her voice is a thousand voices layered together in an approximation of someone that sounds like Zelda, but also like Impa herself. “How-”

“My name is Impa,” Impa corrects, immediate. “Who told you my old name?” 

“Oh, darling,” The woman coos, like how an adult speaks to a puppy when it barks at a passing carriage that’s been mistaken for a knock on the door, “I know your old name because I’m the one you gave it to.”

She…doesn’t understand. 

“That’s all right,” The woman continues, playing a song on her harp that’s familiar but also not. It’s slow, lilting, and soothing. Impa’s eyelids flutter the longer she sits. “You don’t need to understand right now. All I’m doing is letting you know that we have you. For as long as we need your dedication, you will be.”

We? Who is this woman, where are they? Wasn’t she doing something? It was raining, she had her knives…

“We will be arriving when you wake,” The woman says, her smile soft as she reaches over to cup Impa’s cheek. Her skin is smooth and rough and wrinkled, but warm all the same. Impa leans into the touch, letting her eyes close. The woman smells of sage and old wood like Impa’s mother, but also melted wax and ancient paper like her father. There’s even a hint of Purah’s favorite motor oil, the one that always smells like charred Lizalfos. “Take care not to look directly into the Light, next time. Those eyes of yours are too important to lose.”

—her house’s ceiling.  

Impa blinks, squinting and blocking her eyes from the torchlight that assaults her vision with a groan. She winces at the tightness in her shoulder, the soreness of her back, and the throbbing of her ankle, and tries to process what, exactly, happened.

She was fighting a Guardian, one that’d been corrupted by Calamity, but how did the Calamity corrupt it in the first place? Are the other Guardians compromised, what about the Divine Beasts? She was fighting a Guardian, and then the sky turned gold, and then…now she’s here, battered but alive.

She’s in her bed, alone in her room, and she doesn’t hear any rain except for the water dripping from the roof outside. There are muffled voices beyond her door, her parents and Elder Kya. She can’t decipher what they’re saying, but it doesn’t sound good.

Impa struggles to rise but manages it, swinging her legs over the edge of her bed and getting to her feet. Her belt hangs over the doorknob, her knives all in their sheathes and washed free of the mud they must have been covered in, and she’s slow in buckling them back across her chest, doing her best not to aggravate her wounds and the tug of the bandages covering her upper body beneath her robes. Her hat sits on her dresser, the rim singed and the string snapped. She leaves it there, opening the door and stepping out into the sitting room.

Her parents and Elder Kya sit at the table she was drinking tea at only hours ago. All three look up at her when she enters, mixtures of concern and relief passing across their faces.

“What is it?” she asks, leaning heavily against the doorway. “What happened?”

“Our scouts returned in a rush,” Elder Kya says, intertwining her fingers on the wood of the table. “It appears that every Guardian we have has been corrupted by Calamity, much like the one that attacked us here.”

“What?” Impa straightens, regretting it the second her back screams in pain. She hisses, her shoulders sagging back down, and asks, “Where is my sister? She was at her lab when Calamity struck-”

“Purah and Robbie were escorted to the Great Plateau,” her father tells her, calm. “They’re preparing the Shrine of Resurrection.”

The Shrine of Resurrection? That was supposed to be a last resort in case a Champion or the Princess fell, they don’t even know if it works properly.

“Who is it?” she manages, voice trembling, thinking of Zelda and the Champions lying dead and gone at her feet, how the last thing she ever said to them before she left the castle was, See you on the other side, nothing of how much she loves them, how much she’s enjoyed the privilege of being their friend, of how she wants to be by their sides until her very last breath. “Who needs to be resurrected?”

“We don’t know,” Impa’s mother shakes her head, sniffling and wiping at her eyes. “The scouts are exhausted, they’ve run all the way here dodging the corrupted Guardians-”

“The Divine Beasts have gone dark,” Elder Kya interrupts, staring hard at the table. “It…It could be any of them.”

Only one person can be placed in the Shrine of Resurrection. The King had told them that in the event of its use being required for more than one individual, it was up to Purah and Robbie to decide who gets to live. They had to unanimously agree on someone, unless one of the persons that required the use of the Shrine was Link or Zelda, who each got precedent over the rest of the Champions.

But what happened if both Link and Zelda needed it? What if the King himself did? Impa had been the one to raise the questions, and she hadn’t liked the way Zelda immediately shut down the conversation or how Link got even quieter, his eyes dipping to the floor. 

Purah and Robbie will make the best choice for the kingdom’s continued survival, King Rhoam had answered, his eyes never straying from his daughter. If it ever comes to that, they will know what they have to do.

The implications were so clear that the rest of the Champions could broker no argument even if they wanted to. Urbosa and Daruk had nodded, resolute, while Mipha reminded the group of her Grace. 

That makes me feel better, actually, Revali had said, his beak clicking from the strength of his determined smile. It means I don’t have to worry about saving energy for the flight home. I can really give my all to killing that monster.

“How long has it been since I fought the Guardian?” Impa demands, swallowing the lump forming in her throat. “How long have the Divine Beasts been compromised?”

“Five hours,” Elder Kya replies, answering both of her questions with one answer. “The Beasts stopped moving towards their target locations just before the Guardian attacked us. We’ve heard nothing of the whereabouts of the Princess and the Hero.”

Her stomach rolls. Five hours since Calamity began, five hours since the Champions might have fallen.

“Nothing?” Impa repeats. “We have people stationed all over the kingdom with the express purpose of escorting them to the castle in case something like this happened and-”

“Our guides were struck down by Yiga assassins posing as civilians asking for help,” Elder Kya cuts her off. “All we had in the field were our scouts, and they’ve returned empty handed. Only the Goddess knows where they are.”

If Mipha, Urbosa, Revali, or Daruk need the Shrine, Impa doesn’t know who her sister would pick. She doesn’t know who she would pick, if she had to. Her mind first jumps to Urbosa, as she’s the most versatile in combat and her Fury strikes fear into the heart of even the Yiga Clan, but Mipha is a healer. She would be most helpful during and after the battle, tending to wounds and keeping people alive, while also cutting down monsters with her spear. Revali’s arrows would be paramount to picking off Guardians from above, especially the Skywatchers, and Daruk’s Protection would be an invaluable shield against any and all attacks.

She already knows the outcome if it were between Link and Zelda, or Zelda and anyone else in the world. Even if it were between herself and Zelda, she knows what her sister would do.

I would choose you, Purah had insisted when they were alone, gripping her hands so tightly that they creaked. I love Zelly, of course I do, but she is not my sister. If it ever came down to between you and her, the Goddess will need to find another girl to Incarnate. 

If you chose me over her I would never forgive you, Impa had responded, gentle. My life has been hers for as long as I’ve been alive. I’ve been willing to give it up for her since before she ever knew I existed.

I don’t care, Purah only squeezed her hands tighter, and it was the most serious Impa had ever seen her older sister. You could be mad at me for the next hundred years, but at least you’d be alive to feel that way.     

Impa thinks of Purah, alone with Robbie on the Great Plateau and waiting for a body to arrive. She thinks of Link or Zelda possibly wandering the kingdom alone, waiting for their other half to resurrect, and the Champions all waiting for backup only to be answered with silence. She imagines—

A harp plays in the distance, its song drifting through the open window. Elder Kya, her mother, and her father don’t react to it.

I have to go outside, she thinks, and doesn’t know why. I have to go outside. 

Her legs move and Elder Kya asks where she’s going and her mother tries to grab her hand but she’s opening the door and she’s walking outside. The sky is a bleeding red and the clouds are black but she’s turning towards Elder Kya’s house like she had only hours ago, to where a woman made of gold stands in front of the wreckage that’s become the roof, strumming a harp that plays a familiar song she’s never heard before.    

“Goddess,” Impa whispers, staggering towards the sight, everything in her screaming for her to be near, to fall to her knees and pray, to protect protect protect.  

The woman turns and there stands Princess Zelda of Hyrule, her face red and splotchy from crying, filthy and shivering and clutching a purple bundle to her chest like a lifeline.

“Impa,” she sobs, golden as a fallen star, “Impa, something’s gone very wrong.”

—

The bundle in Zelda’s arms is the Master Sword, shattered and wrapped in the blue tunic Link was wearing the last time Impa saw him, soaked in so much blood that it’s darkened the cotton to purple.

“We were deciding whether to come here or to Hateno,” Zelda says, so quiet that Impa’s father has to move a little closer. After the initial shock of her arrival, Impa had ushered her back to her house while the rest of the village watched them pass in silent awe. Now, she sits at the head of the table where Elder Kya was sitting, while Elder Kya and Impa’s parents sit around her and Impa stands at her back, keeping watch out the window for Calamity’s eyes. “We knew Calamity was following us, sending Guardians and Lynels on our trail, and Link wanted either the security of the mountains here or the high ground of Hateno. We were in front of Fort Hateno when…when I reminded him that you were here, too, Impa, so he decided we would turn around. In all the chaos, he’d forgotten you weren’t there at Mount Lanayru and that you had no idea what was going on.”

“What happened at Mount Lanayru, Your Grace?” Elder Kya questions. “Clearly you’ve Awakened, but-”

“It didn’t happen there,” Zelda shakes her head, rubbing her thumb over the broken Master Sword’s humming hilt. She burns gold, heat rolling off of her in waves, the ends of her hair floating off her back and three golden triangles lit up in her pupils, illuminating the green of her eyes. “I felt nothing at the Spring of Wisdom.”

“Then how did it happen, Your Grace?” Impa’s father asks, pushing his glasses up his nose. “How did the Goddess find you?”

Zelda bites her trembling bottom lip, her eyes dipping to the bloodied Champion’s tunic spread across her lap like a blanket. Similar stains mark her prayer dress, turned a mixture of brown and gray from the mud and ash she’s waded through in her mad dash across the kingdom.  

“There were so many Guardians on Blatchery Plain,” she manages, her voice breaking. “Link could only fight them off for so long. When he…I couldn’t just stand back and watch. One was aiming for the finishing blow and I stepped in front of it. The next thing I knew I had Awakened, and he was…”

She sniffles, swallowing, and tilts her head to lower her ear to the Master Sword.   

“Yes,” she breathes, nodding. “Yes, I know that now.”

Impa’s mouth drops open. “You can hear the voice inside of the Sword?”

Much of Zelda’s initial resentment towards Link wasn’t really about him, but the silent and stoic Master Sword. Impa remembers the tears an eleven year old Zelda shed after Link and his father brought the Sword before King Rhoam, confirming the omen of impending Calamity his prophecy had provided, how upset she was that she couldn’t hear the voice inside of the legendary blade.

Why does that boy get to hear it and I don’t? she had cried, clinging to Impa in the privacy of her bedroom, where her father couldn’t punish her for making a scene. Why is the Goddess ignoring me?

Impa, thirteen at the time, could only rub her back and offer weak reassurances. You’ll hear it, Princess. It’s just met you, after all, maybe it’s shy. The Hero certainly is.  

“It happened after I Awakened,” Seventeen-year-old Zelda traces a streak of gold along the Sword’s broken blade and it pulses purple in response, chiming. “She’s been helping me since Link was taken to the Shrine of Resurrection. I know what I must do.”

“Which is what, Your Grace?” Impa’s mother prompts. “What can we do to help?”

Zelda’s eyes flick up and she glances at every person in the room. Impa’s knees threaten to buckle under the weight of the golden triangles in her pupils, the air as heavy as it was when Calamity was looming over Kakariko. 

“I need to speak to Impa,” she answers. “Alone, if you all don’t mind.”

“Of course, Your Grace,” Elder Kya bows her head, standing and motioning for Impa’s parents to do the same. They all walk out the door without another word, but Impa’s mother mouths, I love you before it closes. 

Then it’s just Impa and Zelda, alone in Impa’s house while the sky bleeds and Calamity rages. 

“You should sit,” Zelda says, breaking the momentary silence.

“I’m fine,” Impa continues watching the sky.

“I can feel the malice that burned you, Impa,” she slides the chair Elder Kya was occupying out with her foot, the legs scraping against the floor. “You’re lucky it didn’t eat through your skin. Please, sit.”

Impa can’t deny an order from the Goddess. She sits, asking, “Malice? I was grazed by Guardian fire.” 

“The Guardians are corrupted by a secretion of Evil from Calamity’s veins. The Master Sword calls it malice, and their lasers are infused with it.” 

Up this close, Impa can see something else about Zelda’s eyes. Around her irises, ticking along outside of the three golden triangles in her pupils, are clock hands. Impa counts the seconds, finds that it’s almost five in the morning, then drops her gaze to the heat radiating from Zelda’s hands on the table.

She reaches out, hesitant. “Can I…?”

Zelda smiles, blindingly bright, and grabs her hand. At first, her touch is so hot it almost burns, her fingers sizzling against Impa’s palm, but then the scorching heat levels out, dimming down to a comforting warmth reminiscent of hot cocoa in winter, sitting around a fire trading stories, and her mother’s arms after a nightmare. 

Tears well in Impa’s eyes and she lowers her head to hide them, kissing the back of Zelda’s hand and savoring the buzzing heat that meets her lips, the unrestrained divinity of the Goddess’s Light finally flowing through Zelda’s veins. “Oh, Zelda. You don’t know how long I’ve known this would happen, how deeply I’ve believed in you my entire life.”

“I do,” Zelda tugs her fingers free and tilts Impa’s face up, cradling her cheek in the heel of her hand. Golden tears roll down her cheeks like ichor itself, steaming when they drip from her chin onto the table. “I can hear your prayers, now. I can hear the whole kingdom crying out for me to save them.”  

“How are you going to?” Impa motions to the shattered Master Sword. “Isn’t the Sword needed?”

“Yes,” Zelda nods, dropping her hand from her face to turn the Sword so its broken blade rests flat. “I’m going to bring her back to her resting place in Korok Forest so she can heal, and then I’m going to face Calamity.” 

“Alone? What about the Champions? What about me?”

“The Champions are dead, my father is dead, and as we speak Link is being placed in an experimental tomb on the other side of the kingdom. I would take you with me, Impa, but it is the end of the world outside of these walls and you can barely move your arm, much less throw a knife. I cannot afford to lose someone else I care about, especially not now, and I already have another task for you in mind.”

Impa’s knives sit heavy and useless on her belt. She sits heavy and useless in her chair, cursing Calamity for how its rendered her nothing but a bystander. “What would you have me do?”

Zelda lifts the ruined Champion’s tunic from her lap and slides it across the table. 

“I need you to wash this,” she says, “and I need you to give it back to Link when he wakes, along with a message.”

“What message?”

“Free the Divine Beasts.”

Free the Divine Beasts? What does that mean?

“They’ve been corrupted by Calamity just like the Guardians,” Zelda continues, matter-of-fact, sounding more like herself when she gets caught in the throes of an experiment and has to explain the procedure to everyone else. “My Light would purify them, but as long as Calamity roams free it could pollute them right back. There would be no winning, so I need Link to use the Master Sword and free the Beasts of their corruption while I stop Calamity from infecting them again.”

“How are you going to do that?” Impa asks, poking at holes as she finds them. If she’s not allowed to fight, she can help Zelda iron out the kinks in her plan. “You can’t fight it without the Master Sword.” 

“I’m not going to. My role in this fight is to seal it away, so until the Beasts are back online and Link has the Master Sword I’ll keep it chained in the castle where it can’t cause any more destruction.”

“How long will you have to hold out for? If the Shrine of Resurrection works, how long will it take before Link is back on his feet?”

“I don’t know,” Zelda shakes her head. “The Master Sword said she would feel when he’s alive, and that she would tell me. I can’t imagine it would take long after that, but…”

“But?”

“It could be tomorrow, but it could also be six months from now. Until that time comes, I need you to keep the Watch.”

Impa sucks in a breath, leaning back in her chair. “The…The Watch? Are you certain?”

“Yes,” Zelda nods, sure. “I need you to keep the Watch and make sure that Calamity stays sealed in the castle. Will you do it?”

—

The most important order an Impa can ever be given is the Watch.

The story goes that the very first Impa, the woman her station is named after, was told by the very first Goddess Incarnate, Hylia herself in mortal flesh, to watch over her millennia-long slumber. The reason for the slumber is debated by all of Kakariko’s historians, but it was Impa’s father who had suggested that it was because the Goddess was inexplicably linked to an ancient form of Calamity, the Light to its Darkness, and that without her presence on the mortal plane there would be everlasting peace throughout the kingdom until she awoke and the Darkness rose with her. The first Impa, therefore, was meant to ensure that no one would wake her before she was meant to be woken, all to keep Hyrule safe from harm and give the first Hero time to complete the task the Goddess had set out for him.

What the Hero’s task was has been lost to history, as is exactly how the first Impa lived as long her Watch lasted. Sheikah lifespans only extend to around one hundred and fifty years, a drop in the bucket compared to that of the Zora or the mythical Zonai, and there is no record of any spells cast aside from the one keeping the Goddess asleep and encased in a shell of her own divinity. 

“Maybe it’s the sanctity of the Oath,” Purah had theorized, when Impa’s name was not yet Impa and all they knew was their mutual love of sneaking into their father’s study and reading his books late into the night. “What if it binds an Impa to the Goddess, making her just as immortal?”

“This depicts the first Impa as an old woman at the time of her death,” Not-Yet-Impa had refuted, pointing to a weathered portrait sketched by someone only noted as a companion to the first Goddess Incarnate and Hero of Hyrule. It had been copied and transferred into the historical texts, with only the Royal Archivist in Hyrule Castle knowing where the original rested. “She looked to be around thirty when she was issued the Watch.”

“But what if it’s not immortality in the sense of eternal youth, but that it instead extends the lifespan?” Purah had nudged her shoulder. “If you become the Impa, you’ll have to prepare yourself to become a bag of bones in service to the Goddess.”

“Don’t say that!” Not-Yet-Impa had screeched, smacking her sister’s arm and scowling at her laughter. “I’m going to become the Impa, and I’m not going to be some ‘bag of bones’. The Watch is rare, anyways, only one other Impa has ever been issued it.”

“The fifteenth, I know,” Purah had nodded. “But would you, if you were asked? Would you really sit and stare at nothing until the end of time, not even being able to move on your own after two hundred years?”   

—

“Yes,” Impa nods, having never been more certain of anything in her entire life. “Of course. Whatever you need, Your-”

Zelda tilts her head.

“Whatever you need, Zelda,” she amends, so caught up in the importance of it all that she’s forgotten the first ‘order’ Zelda ever gave her: to never refer to her by anything other than her name. “I would…It would be the honor of my lifetime, however long you require it.”

—

Together, they walk to the exit of the village. Kakariko’s citizens line the streets, fallen to their knees in worship as Zelda passes, Impa the customary three steps behind. The carcass of the corrupted Guardian Stalker has been tipped over to clear the path, its last remaining legs hanging over the road in a twisted sort of arch.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here in time,” Zelda apologizes, her sandals slapping in the mud. Impa had offered her boots and a change of clothes but she’d refused, saying she wanted Calamity to see the evidence of her fight, of her determination to win, and of all the lives its taken. “I hate that you’re hurt because of me.”

“It’s not your fault,” Impa assures her. “I goaded Calamity into a fight. I wanted to prove I was useful.”

“Why?”

Her face gets hot, her ears burning with shame. “I was…upset I couldn’t accompany you to Mount Lanayru. I figured it was all I could do to try and delay its pursuit.”  

“I’m sorry about that,” Zelda stops beneath the gates, turning to face her. “My father insisted on it, and you know how there’s no changing his mind once he’s set it on something.”  

“I’m glad for it, now. If I wasn’t here, Calamity still might have sent a Guardian knowing we were coming. It would have wiped out the whole village.” 

She doesn’t know what she would do if she returned home and found it in ruins, discovered her parents dead beneath the wreckage of their house, Elder Kya crushed beneath her collapsed roof, and the people more terrified than she’s ever seen them. She doesn’t know if she’d be able to fight, after, and doesn’t know where Zelda finds the energy to keep standing after all that she’s lost. 

In the Goddess Incarnate’s arms, the Master Sword chimes. Zelda’s ear twitches. The broken blade starts to pulse purple in a rhythmic ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump. 

Zelda gasps, grinning wide. 

“What?” Now Impa wishes she could hear the voice inside of the Sword. “What is it?”

“This is Link’s heartbeat,” Zelda breathes, cradling the sword like it’s the most precious thing in the world as it ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bumps. “He’s alive, the Shrine must have worked. It won’t be long, now.”

This is it, then. Impa has to send the girl she’s spent her life protecting out into the end of the world, trusting she’ll be able to make it without her there to watch her back. She trusts Zelda, of course, and she puts all of her faith into the Goddess’s Light, but it’s been her life’s purpose to keep her safe. How can she possibly sit back and watch her leave?

“You should go, then,” she tells her, wanting to insist that she should accompany her but knowing she’d be nothing but a hindrance with her injuries. “The Master Sword needs all the time you can give it to heal.”

They crush each other into a hug. Impa inhales the scent of her mother’s sage, her father’s books, and Purah’s motor oil. 

“You’ll see me again soon,” Zelda promises. “Remember to give Link my message.”

“I will,” Impa nods, squeezing her even tighter. “Be careful. Calamity is smart, and it knows you’re coming.”

“I will,” she echoes, before pulling away. She seems to glow even brighter in the light of the rising sun. “Tell Purah and Robbie thank you, when you see them. They’ve saved Link’s life and mine, you all have.” 

Impa nods again, fighting back tears, and Zelda turns away, beginning her march towards Korok Forest and her confrontation with Calamity. 

Impa stands there, waiting, watching until the Goddess’s Light disappears around the bend of the mountains and back into Hyrule proper. She takes the Champion’s tunic out of her robes, examining it and noting the rips and tears hiding in the blood, and vows to work fast at mending it and washing it clean. Link doesn’t like to wait, after all, and he’s always had a thing about stains. 

She’d better get started, then, so she can take her post for the Watch. Knowing him, he’s on his way here right now.