Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It wasn't that Wind intended to get split off from the group.

In his defense, Wild's Hyrule was stupidly big for a singular lump of land. Even the other, older times had felt smaller, made of village paths and forest trails; something Wind could pretend was an island, maybe, if he didn't look too closely toward the horizon. Wild's Hyrule, though -- it felt like the Great Sea, vast and undivided, with only the mountains and the curvature of the world to keep the view from stretching into forever.

Getting lost in the jump between worlds was all but a rite of passage, now, too. Nearly everyone else had been cut off from the group in some switch-over or another, whether by surprise monsters, finicky portals, poorly placed geography, or just plain shit luck. It seemed about time Wind had a turn at it, really.

At least they'd been through the Champion's Hyrule before. According to him, those squat little temples (shrines, right) connected to a teleporting system that ran all the way through the countryside; if Wind could just find one, all he'd need to do was call Wild through the pirate's charm to pick him up, assuming he was even that far away. (Between the falling rocks and the flying ambush, there'd been a lot going on, but Time and Warriors liked to take headcount after fights, so they couldn't have gotten too far away.)

Wind picked himself up off the grass, and started up the nearest hill. Might as well get a good look from a higher vantage point. Maybe, if whatever force kept dragging them through dimensions was feeling nice today, he'd find everyone waiting on the other side.

Lore's first words from the far side of the portal were, "Well, that doesn't look right." In hindsight, Wind should have recognized that as a bad sign.

The Hyrule they all tumbled out into looked like nothing so much as an open tract of wilderness, spotted with the foundations of ruined stone buildings all across broad and eerily empty fields. A few reasonably impressive mountains framed the far distance, while happy little trees dotted the landscape in forested clumps.

Wind landed better than last time, at least, and rolled out of the way as Steam, Green, and Red dropped down where he'd just been, all equally scrambling to make way for the rest of the chain. The continuous entrance of Links would carry on for the better part of a minute, by Wind's experience, until Blue or Vio brought up the rear (and landed on someone, usually.)

Dusk stood by Lore's side, sizing up the... whatever exactly it was, in front of them. The portal had dropped them all off at the edge of a collection of crumbling stone walls, sagging with moss, and in the middle of it all sat a lumpy pile of something Wind had never seen before in his life.

Intricate designs decorated the round body of the thing, with loops at the top like ears, and it had a single glassy eye in the top half, glinting blue in the sunlight. The material looked like stone or metal, but Wind didn't have the faintest idea which.

"Alright, whose Hyrule do these things come from? Anyone?" Dusk asked, as Lore made to poke at the mystery thing. Whatever answer he expected got interrupted a second later by a sound too many of the Links knew on instinct -- the sound of something powering up.

Wind braced himself for an attack, but none came. Instead, the mystery thing whirred and hummed, projecting a simple red circle of light that swept over the group, before settling on Lore's chest.

"Oh," said Lore, cheerfully. "I think it's like a Beamos."

A dawning horror fell across the group. Behind them, Blue faceplanted last out of the portal.

"Ohhh," Lore repeated, a little slower, as the charging sound rose in pitch and the circle began to blink. He reached for his bag, and Wind caught Ocarina and Mask whipping out their own mirror shields in anticipation.

Then, as the charging sound reached its peak: "Break!"

Wind had not found a shrine.

For what it was worth, Wind had found a tower, which was basically the same thing for teleporting. He hadn't reached it yet, because Wild's Hyrule was, once again, way too fucking big, least of all for traveling on foot, but he'd found one, which was a start.

The vantage point of the hills hadn't offered anything else, but at least he had a waypoint, now. A ruined stone wall made a nice warm seat to rest on, too, after half an hour of walking on an achey, jarred ankle. Idly, he flipped the wind waker between two fingers, tracing lazy half-patterns in the air to watch the light that trailed after.

A figure caught his eye in the distance -- dark, green, and moving. Wind scrambled to his feet, spyglass instantly in his hands as he balanced himself to stand atop the wall.

Tall, dark green tunic, light brown hair. The fur was missing, but maybe he'd lost it in some chaos Wind had missed. It wasn't like Wind had a monopoly on getting separated from the group. That didn't explain why Twilight would have started wearing his old adventuring hat again, but most of the other heroes liked their secrets a little too much for prying to be anything but a pain in the ass.

"Hey!" Wind yelled, waving his free hand in the air. "Rancher! Over here!"

That got his attention, at least. Twilight waved at him, after a moment, and then gestured for him to... come over? Wind shook his head.

"Over here!" he repeated. "I found a tower!" After a few seconds, he added, "Is the Champion with you?"

Twilight didn't answer, probably too far away to hear, but started making his way up over the hills in his loping, wolfish stride. (One day, Wind was going to be that tall. That, or he was going to challenge the old goddesses to a fistfight. One of the two.)

As he approached, Twilight looked Wind up and down with a curious eye. "You changed your outfit?" he asked, after a moment.

Wind glanced down at his shirt. "... this is just my normal clothes?"

Twilight raised an eyebrow, but didn't comment further. He'd lost his magic tattoos at some point, Wind noticed -- he'd mentioned they faded over time, but they'd still vanished quicker than Wind had expected. Something about his face looked younger, without them. "It's good to find someone, at least. Did you see where the others went?"

"Nope. I got split off earlier. You?"

"We all got scattered when the death lasers started, honestly." Twilight shrugged, and shaded his eyes with a hand as he scanned the field.

Wind nodded. Guardians, then. They honestly weren't so bad when stationary, but the wandering ones were a nightmare to deal with, especially in groups. Their only saving grace was that whatever the black blood came from hadn't worked out how to infect them... yet.

"Do we at least have somewhere to meet up?"

Twilight looked thoughtful for a moment. The expression felt strange on his face -- or maybe it was the lack of markings. "It sounded like the plan was to regroup near that tower, once the fighting was over with. Assuming I was hearing anything correctly at that point." He shrugged again. "It's probably as good a place as any."

Wind followed Twilight's gesture toward the tower, still a twiglike figure in the distance, rising mockingly over the west horizon.

"Oh, yeah, that's where I was going, too." Wind scooted down off the wall, dropping into the grass feet-first with a satisfying thump. He raised his arms overhead, stretching -- he'd been sitting there too long, really.

Twilight hummed in agreement, and started off toward the tower. A few paces later, he stopped and looked back over his shoulder at Wind.

"Let's try not to get split up again," Twilight reminded him. Wind darted over, crossing the distance in a few more steps than he would have liked, but still quick enough.

"It's not like you're leaving me behind," he joked. Twilight shook his head.

"I'd just rather bring up the rear, I guess."

Wind laughed. "You're saying you want me going first so you can hide behind the kid? Man, if only you guys were cowards more often!"

A few seconds passed in silence.

Shit. That was such a dumb thing to say. Why did he say that?

If experience with Time was any lesson, Twilight was already writing the lecture in his head about protection and it's not about you and we know you're a hero, but you need to be careful, and Wind had just signed up as captive audience for the whole walk back. Wind winced, glancing back at Twilight again to find... genuine surprise and concern?

Had he actually taken that to heart? Or had Twilight just not realized how much they all babied him?

"Goddesses, I don't mean anything by it!" Wind tried to reassure him. "You guys just still keep treating me like a kid sometimes, y'know?" He flailed his hands a little, struggling for words. "Ugh, just-- it was just a joke that came out bad. Never mind."

"No." Twilight shook his head. "I know I'm a big brother type, but I hadn't thought any of us were treating you younger heroes any less seriously than the rest of us, so I'm... sorry if we have? It would be pretty unfair, when the rest of us aren't much older." He frowned, clearly thinking again. "I mean, it's not like you're even the y--"

"You know what," Wind decided, frantically cutting him off, "just forget it, okay? We can air out grievances and shit later when the others are here."

Somehow, Twilight being so genuinely apologetic came across weirder and more patronizing than the over-protectiveness Wind expected. The whole thing felt like some kind of elaborate practical joke, and Wind couldn't tell if he was meant to be the butt of it, or the audience. Either way, it made his skin crawl, like he was talking to some kind of bizarre impostor.

Actually, scratch that. The way Twilight had just begun staring at him felt weirder than either of those things.

"What?" Wind asked, continuing on a few paces before realizing Twilight had stopped in his tracks, as well.

"Did... you just...?"

Wind gave him a puzzled look. Twilight shrugged and shook his head, like a dog clearing water from its fur.

"Never mind," he said. "I think I just heard you wrong, is all."

"Okay then," Wind replied, resuming his pace toward the tower. Twilight started again, catching up, and didn't say anything else.

Well, Wind thought to himself as he stumbled uphill, that could have gone better.

The first not-quite-a-Beamos, to be fair, hadn't been the problem. Ocarina's mirror shield had deflected the shot quite nicely (even if the whole thing had a great deal more firepower behind it than the average Beamos had any right to), and it turned out sending a giant death laser directly back at the machine did quite the number on it. Reasonable enough, no surprise there. A solid ninety percent of important bosses were weak to their own overpowered death beams.

The problem had come up when it turned out the not-quite-a-Beamos had friends.

Several friends. With giant tentacle legs. That could run very, very fast.

After that, everything had gotten a bit more complicated.

The field was so large (and the group so scattered) that Wind had honestly lost track of everyone else amid trying not to get hit with the aforementioned giant death lasers. The open field provided next to no cover, and the death lasers had the annoying feature of locking on to their targets, which made dodging an utter pain. The others must have moved in the opposite direction, judging by the lack of literally anyone else nearby, but Wind didn't have the slightest clue where they had ended up after that. And of course, with none of the other Heroes claiming this place as their own, nobody had a map to offer, either.

It wasn't too big a problem to find cardinal directions, at least. Wind raised a hand to shade his eyes, scrutinizing the sky and estimating. The sun looked to have shifted more toward the horizon, which meant it must have been afternoon, and if it was more on that side, that mean north would be...

Well. It didn't tell him where he was, but at least it was something like having a compass. Plus, that weird, tall tower in the distance had looked closer before he started running, so if he really needed to, he could always just walk that way. As it was, he was pretty sure he needed to head... west, now, to get back to where the portal was, assuming the group hadn't already headed off somewhere else.

After another forty minutes of walking, thirty seconds of praying to Farore and/or Hylia for some kind of useful happenstance, another twenty-five minutes of walking, a solid minute of praying again, this time with the stipulation that yes, even running into Realm would be helpful, three minutes of contemplating atheism while walking, five minutes unsuccessfully climbing a scraggly tree to get better bearings, and another near hour minutes of just plain walking again, fortune smiled upon him at the far side of the field, in the form of Dusk emerging from the treeline.

... or, someone who was probably Dusk, anyway.

Wind wasn't sure where Dusk had gotten a wolf pelt to start wearing, but it had been a few hours, and there were a lot of Links to keep track of. Changing up the outfit was a good idea, though, really; Wind had long harbored the quiet notion that more of them should have started doing it. Wind himself probably could have swapped out his green tunic for his old blue shirt from back home, now that he thought about it. The green one may have been traditional, but the fabric had clearly been meant for temperate forests, not the open, sun-soaked sea.

Distracted by the thought, Wind began rummaging around in his spoils bag. He could have sworn he had tucked his old tunic away in there, back before the whole Helmaroc thing -- ah, yes, there it was! Ducking behind a tree for a moment, more for cover in case of another walking Beamos than for modesty, Wind peeled off his sweaty green tunic and undershirt, wadded it up, and shoved it into the bag, before pulling his old tunic over his head and wriggling into it. He had to do up the belt again over it, but his old shirt's fabric breathed so much better than the green one did, and it had all the softness of clothing properly broken in, rather than something freshly starched, soaked in sea-salt, and then worn for three weeks straight without washing.

In hindsight, he really should have done this sooner.

Wind relished the gentle breeze through his looser, far less sweaty sleeves for a moment before stepping back out to greet Dusk, who had now gotten close enough to shout to at ship-board volume, rather than across-a-canyon volume.

"Wind?" Dusk called, slowing to a walking pace as he got near.

"Right here!" Wind called back, with a wave.

Dusk's whole expression relaxed at the sight of him, but Wind's didn't. A smear of blood ran across Dusk's forehead, matting in his hair, though Wind couldn't see a wound beneath it. Had the fight gotten that much worse, or had he just not had time to patch up? At least he was walking, and he didn't look concussed, but Wind couldn't help frowning.

"What hit you?" Wind asked, which wasn't perhaps the best way of putting it, but he wasn't asking anyone to call him eloquent. Leave that to someone else, like Ganondorf. (He had been awfully good with words, now that Wind thought back on it, but this really wasn't the time to be reminiscing, so he dropped that train of thought for the moment.)

Dusk shrugged. "A rock, mostly. Y'know Guardians? The shooty ones? Turns out Wild's version of the castle town is crawling with them."

"Guardians?" It sounded like the others must have found this era's Hero, then. That was a good start, Wind supposed.

Dusk raised a bloody eyebrow. "Why so surprised? They're all over the place here. You've seen them."

"No, just--" Wind paused. "Nevermind. Are the others alright, or are we still scattered? I kind of got split off earlier, so I've been out of the loop..."

"Last I heard, the others were trying to head for the stables across the river," Dusk explained. "Or at least, that's what it sounded like. I was sent out with Wolfie to go see if we could find you. We're planning to try and regroup at the bridge."

"... with 'Wolfie'?" It was Wind's turn for a raised eyebrow, now. Dusk sighed, as if resigned to some regrettable fate.

"Well, dang. Guess that's five," he declared, cryptically. Nobody answered, but Dusk moved on with surveying the horizon like nothing was out of place. Midna must have been talking to him, then.

"Did you really name your wolf form Wolfie, though?" Wind asked.

"No, that was all y'all's idea. Back home he's just 'the wolf' if they call him anything. Or 'Link', if you're..." Dusk trailed off. "If you're certain somebodies."

"Yeah, but he's still you, though, isn't he? It feels weird calling it a nickname." Wind paused. "Also, 'all y'all'?"

Dusk gave him another look, more amused, this time. "Hey, you can take a man out of Ordon, but you can't take the Ordon out of the man."

Dusk's voice had taken on a bit more of an accent, now that Wind was really listening, though it didn't sound new or unfamiliar. He must have been trying to disguise it when they met. Was it because Zelda had been there, maybe? Wind could sort of understand, if Dusk had been trying to sound more proper, to make a good impression when she woke up -- but why bother around the rest of them?

"Huh," Wind said, after a bit. "Well, good on you for loosening up, I guess. Don't feel like you have to hide it around the rest of us."

Dusk, it turned out, had a low, soft sort of laugh. It sounded strange coming from him, but like the accent, not too much so -- after all, Wind hadn't known him long enough to hear much of it. It was a nice laugh, Wind decided.

"Not like I could've for long," Dusk said. "Not surprised to hear you don't mind, though." He paused. "Anyway, we should get going. The others'll be waiting on us."

With that, he scanned the horizon again, turned on his heel, and started walking. Wind dashed forward to close the gap between them. "So, how'd you end up dealing with those um, Guardians?"

Dusk shrugged, and kept walking. "I'm sure the others will have some stories when we get back, but I'm not much for it. It wasn't that bad, really. The Lynel was worse." He looked out into the distance again. "We should pick up the pace, though, if we want to reach the stables before nightfall."

Wind grimaced at his already aching feet, and followed along.

Realm touched the earring, very, very cautiously.

He had been sitting on a log in the middle of the woods for the better part of an hour, he was fairly sure, and so far, no other Heroes had arrived to regroup.

To be fair, he imagined that the middle of the woods was not, in all likelihood, the designated regrouping point. Lore had been a bit hard to understand in the middle of all the explosions, but he had said something about a tower, and Realm had been trying very hard to find one before sitting down on a log to contemplate certain unpredictable poor decisions.

The earrings tempted him again. If he just took one off, and made sure he was holding it the whole time, or put it in his bag, or something, and then just... tried taking a few steps, to see where he ended up... well, his odds weren't spectacular, he was sure, but maybe they would end with him somewhere slightly more convenient than the middle of the woods, walking past the same inviting fallen log for the seventeenth time?

In a fit of resolution, he fumbled at the catch of the earring, and pulled it out. It was easier said than done, since Realm had never worn earrings before in his life, but he worked it out after a few moments, and then sat there, staring at the tiny jewel between his fingers for a long second before standing up.

Right. No letting go of the earring. No losing track of the earring. Just taking a step, and thinking about his destination--

A broad open field flickered into view, stone ruins emerging from nowhere, and a pair of young travelers passing -- wait, was that Wind? And Dusk? Realm turned to shout at them, but turning around became another stumbling step into a riverbank, and the moment his other boot met the ground, he was standing alone again on an island in the middle of a swamp.

Realm tried take another step back, but this time, the swamp became the shore of a muddy pond by a strange round house with a glowing chimney. No! Take me back to the field! he tried, frowning as the next step delivered him to the rocks beside a gloriously picturesque waterfall.

Another step. The swamp returned, but from the vantage point of a different island. Or possibly the same one -- Realm wasn't sure. He hadn't gotten a very good look at it the first time.

Darn it all. He was going to have to take the long way around, again.

Somewhere, Farore let out a long, deep sigh into her hands.

"At least he did something?" Din tried to reassure her.

"I don't know what I expected," said Farore.

Behind them both, Nayru made a sound like a transforming remlit. "Well, I don't know how somebody did such a shoddy job overlaying the timelines! They're incompatible, they barely function in parallel even as they're actively trying to overlap, it's twice the work to keep portal destinations straight, and I can't even merge them without risking further damage to both!"

Both sisters turned around to watch Nayru lift a skein of the foreign timeline between two fingers at arm's length, as if expecting it to twist around like a snake and bite her.

"I'm going to pretend I understood that," Din announced, after a few seconds of tense silence between Nayru and the timeline. "Also, while we're here, I'm going to say fuck now."

Farore jolted in her seat at the reality window, jerking her head around to stare at Din, now. "Din! You can't just--"

"Like Nayru explained to us earlier, we're in a different continuity here. The rules are different, at least for now. And I am going to take full fucking advantage of it."

"Nayru!" Farore gestured between her sisters, flailing. "She can't just say that while they're watching! Back me up on this!"

Nayru looked at the reality window.

Nayru looked back at the timeline.

And then, at the top of her lungs, Nayru declared: "Fuck!"

One minute, Hyrule Field was Hyrule Field. The next, it was absolutely not.

"Did we just teleport?" Wind asked nobody in particular.

"Huh," Twilight observed, staring blankly at the ground. "That's a riverbank."

The river in front of them stretched farther than Wind could wade -- far enough to need a bridge, assuming any real current, unless someone fancied a dance with drowning. The land still looked like Wild's Hyrule, but the geography had clearly changed: the tower had disappeared completely, and they sure was hell weren't anywhere near those ruins.

"I think that might be the river Hylia," Wind hazarded, inching closer to the riverbank to watch the waters below. He couldn't remember half of the place names from the others' Hyrules, but he knew one of the others had said something about the river feeding Lake Hylia, to the south... or east. Somewhere.

Twilight stepped closer to join him. "It does look like it." He raised his head and glanced out to the probable south. "I don't remember those stables, though. That must be new."

"Wait, stables?"

Wind didn't even need a spyglass to spot the now familiar horse-head over the roof of the building in the distance. The smoke of the cooking fire wafted up from the far side, and he could even make out a small crowd of travelers clustered just outside, who looked an awful lot like--

"Twi! We found them!"

Twilight looked over at Wind, then to the sun sitting low in the western sky, and then finally back at the stables. "... y'know, I could have sworn we were going in the exact opposite direction."

"I mean, yeah?" Wind shaded his eyes with his hand for a better look. Yep, definitely the rest of the heroes over there. He'd know Four's patchwork tunic and Warrior's dumb scarf anywhere. The scent of curry wafted over on the breeze, too; Wild must have settled down at the cookpot to make supper by now.

"Not to mention, back in the field--" A look of realization crossed Twilight's face. "Oh. Realm."

Wind tilted his head at Twilight, silently waiting for him to elaborate. Twilight only shook his head.

"You know what? It's probably fine. We'll find him later." The realization melted away into a wry smile. "Maybe they've even figured out what era we're in by now."

"I'm pretty sure we're still in same Hyrule as before," Wind informed him, picking out a path north along the riverbank, still puzzling over Twilight's latest nonsense in his head. "Dunno what that weird shift was, but I haven't seen stables like these in anyone else's times, so..."

"You've seen this time period before?"

Wind stopped short, some thirty paces from the stables, to turn around and look Twilight straight in the face again. "What do you mean, I've seen it before?"

"I mean, I've never been here, but you and Sketch ran into each other before you met the rest of us, didn't you?"

"... what are you talking about? And who the fuck is Sketch?"

Twilight's eyebrows rose higher than Wind had ever seen from him before, and he blinked. "Okay, this time I definitely just heard you say f--"

"Sailor! Goat-boy!" Warriors's voice cut neatly through Twilight's sentence, carrying clear over the short distance between them. "Good to see you back!"

"We got lost!" Wind yelled back, by way of explanation. "Also I think the Rancher's concussed, maybe?"

"I'm not concussed," Twilight objected, sounding more confused by the minute. "And I thought we were going with Dusk, as a nickname." He squinted at the stables. "How many new Links did we pick up while I was gone?"

Okay, so maybe Twilight was less concussed so much as just he'd just lost all his fucking marbles, apparently.

"Bring him over," Legend shouted back, sitting on the fence next to Warriors, "and get your asses over here so we don't have to keep shouting."

Wind grabbed Twilight's hand, and tugged, hoping to catch him by surprise before Twilight put up any actual resistance to being dragged along. Luckily, he didn't bother, keeping easily in step with Wind like his mind hadn't quite caught up to his legs, and moments later, they had reached the outer fence.

Legend hopped off to approach, and shot Wind a look.

I don't know what the hell is going on, Wind did his best to convey in awkward hand gestures. Legend rolled his eyes.

"What happened to your stupid wolf pelt?" Legend demanded, because he had half the tact of Wild on a good day, and didn't care at all on the rest.

"My what," Twilight replied, eyes darting around the stables as if taking it all in for the very first time.

"Oh, goddesses," Wild gasped from over the cookpot, in a voice too loud to count as a whisper. "Rancher has amnesia."

Warriors scoffed. "I'm sure there's a better explanation than that."

"Is he injured?" Four asked, straightening up from leaning against the far fencepost.

Wind twisted his hands around, fidgeting with the hem of his shirt. "I didn't think so earlier, but..."

Twilight closed his eyes, and drew in a deep, slow breath. The others all fell silent to watch as he let it out again, equally slow.

"Okay," Twilight said, in an impressively even tone. "I think I have a guess at what's going on here."

"Spit it out, then," said Legend. Twilight sighed.

"I may be the Hero of Twilight", he said, "but I'm not your Hero of Twilight."

A short pause rolled through, like a passing breeze.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

In the end, Wind and Dusk found the rest of the group before they found the tower. This was probably for the best, since this Hyrule was still absurdly spacious -- according to Dusk, they hadn't even left Hyrule Field, and Wind was already exhausted.

"Wind!" Mask yelled from atop a pile of stone rubble, about two dozen yards away. The ruins had taken on a more building-like shape as they approached, arranging themselves into something like a town or a camp. Some of the structures were still standing, even, though obviously damaged.

"Oh! Mask! I found Dusk!" Wind shouted back, pointing to Dusk behind him. Dusk gave him yet another strange look. He'd been doing that a lot, today. "Do you have anyone else with you?"

"Sailor, what are you--?" Dusk began. Then he froze, fixed on Mask waving in the distance. "Wait, since when did we pick up another kid?"

"Where'd you get that cool wolf pelt?" Ocarina shouted, popping up from behind the Mask's seat in the rubble pile. Dusk started to say something, then closed his mouth, and then open and shut it again for good measure.

"Oh, is Wind here?" another voice asked from the distance. "That's good-- if Dusk's with him, I think that's everyone, actually."

"Everyone except for Realm," the Four's several voices replied.

A sigh. "... everyone except for Realm, yeah."

A moment later, Steam stepped out from behind the pile and neighboring wall to wave them over. "Come on! We figured out how to kill those walking death laser things now! Also, there's food."

Wind darted ahead through the grass, ignoring Dusk's weird fish-mouthed flapping behind him. As he reached the wall, it became clear that the rest of the group had collectively taken cover in the ruins, and in the absence of anywhere else better fortified, had gotten to setting up a campsite.

"You've changed your outfit," Lore observed, turning a skewer of roast something-or-other over a "campfire" of several fire rods. "Is it a holiday?"

Wind shrugged. "I just got tired of wearing my old coming-of-age tunic all the time. I think blue suits me better, anyway."

Somewhere in Wind's peripheral vision, Blue cheered. "I'll drink to that!"

"We're not of age to drink," Vio pointed out.

"That's just by the laws of modern countries! We're in a quirky pseudo-medieval fantasy setting, nobody--mmffgh!"

"Thank you, Green."

"Are either of you injured?" Gen asked, from the bottom of a stone stairway. He had his bag already open, rifling through the bottles.

Wind took a quick mental tally: small burns from a close brush with a death laser, some cuts and bruises from rolling down a hill, an achey ankle from a bad landing out of that tree... rather abruptly, he remembered Dusk, and whirled around to check on him.

Dusk hadn't followed Wind into the campsite, so clearly either he knew exactly how much trouble he was in for not dealing with a bleeding head wound (even sans concussion), or he had run off to take a leak. Even odds, really.

"Uh, I'm mostly fine, but Dusk said he hit his head on a rock in the whole thing with the guardians, and he looked pretty bloody, so--"

"He ran into Guardians?" Gen interrupted, his eyes wide. "I thought those only existed in the Silent Realms!"

"What?" Wind made a face. "No, I mean the death laser Beamos things from earlier."

"Oh, is that what they're called? Who did you ask?"

"Did you bring them with you?!" Lore's eyes sparkled with a manic light.

Wind tilted his head. "I thought the Link from this era told you? Dusk said--"

"Actually, no, back up a bit," said Gen. "Dusk had a bloody head wound and he hasn't come into camp yet?"

"I can go get him?" Wind offered. Gen stood up, instead.

"I thought he was one of the sensible ones, but clearly, I'm going to have to talk some sense into him myself. Excuse me."

With that, Gen stormed out of the camp with all the pent-up rage harbored by all designated medics for egregiously uncooperative patients, and disappeared around the corner. Wind winced.

"So what was this about this era's Link?" Green asked, as Blue peeled Green's hand off his mouth.

Wind frowned. "Haven't you all already met him? Dusk was calling him a nickname and everything."

"No?" It was Green's turn to frown. "We haven't met any new Links yet at all."

"Unless..." Blue proposed, raising a hand to point at the camp entrance, "... you mean that guy? Because I'm pretty sure that's not Dusk."

Lore nodded, with his usual air of utmost confidence. "That's not Dusk at all!"

"But--"

Wind followed Blue's hand, and watched as Gen dragged "Dusk" into the camp. "Dusk" stopped short at the corner, gawking at the fifteen-odd other heroes all scattered around the camp, while most of the camp gawked back, and Gen continued to scold him for neglecting a head injury.

"... how can you be sure?" Wind managed, at last. Surely he couldn't have mistaken an actual total stranger for one of his fellow heroes? A stranger wouldn't have known to call him Wind, after all. And if he wasn't Dusk, who on the Goddesses' green isles was he, and how did they look so much alike?

"I don't know," Sketch deadpanned, eyeing the apparent stranger being unexpectedly mother-henned in their midst. "Maybe the nearly everything except his face?"

"He's not wearing a hat!" said Lore. "Also, he looks about six years older, his outfit's different, he's at least a few inches taller, and I don't think Dusk had time to get face tattoos without anyone noticing between now and that whole bit with the laser death beams. But mostly, he doesn't have a hat."

"He could have lost the hat?" Wind suggested, weakly. "And... wait, what do you mean, face tattoos?"

"Yeah, they're pretty neat," Ocarina chimed in. "I wish I could get a tattoo."

"Don't," Mask warned him. "You will regret it."

Wind turned his attention back to see that Gen's efforts to wipe the blood off of not-Dusk's face had revealed an intricate design of dark, spiraling lines over the new Link's forehead and brow. It look suspiciously like the patterns on Dusk's wolf form's fur, but Gen seemed more interested in fussing than questioning.

An idea sparked across Ocarina's face. "Wait, what if the new Link is future Dusk? Like how Mask is future me?"

"He doesn't look as confident as Mask is," Sketch observed. "I think he's just confused, mostly? He keeps giving us all weird looks."

Wind waited for Lore to pipe in his own two cents before realizing, rather abruptly, that Lore was no longer sitting by the campfire.

"It's absolutely ep'm'frtgik to meet you, mister Wolf Pelt! I assume you've already met Wind; I'm Lore, and that's--"

"By the spirits," said Steam. "Poor guy looks ready to pass out."

"Maybe we should go rescue him?" Red offered.

"Eh, it looks like Gen's already adopted him," said Mask. "He'll be fine." He winced as Lore shook the newcomer's hand, very, very energetically. "Probably."

I'm adopting all of them, something deep in Twilight's brain decided.

You just can't adopt fifteen random children! his more rational brain protested. They all probably have families back home. And you've never even had kids before!

I don't care, said the less rational part of his brain, which had been struggling at the bindings of common sense since the day he first ran into eight strangers with his soul in their chests and the world on their shoulders. They're family now. No exceptions.

"Who are you, and what have you done with the Rancher," Wild demanded, through gritted teeth. Not-Twilight grimaced, seemingly caught between trying to fight back and inviting combat with eight other heroes at once, or weathering Wild's initial rage and letting them question him without further harm.

The second instinct won out, by the looks of it. Not-Twilight's voice stayed placatingly low and level, barely a trace of Ordon accent to be heard. The longer he stayed and the more he spoke, the more Wind wondered how the hell he had ever mistaken this guy for Twilight. (Well, aside from the fact he still looked like Twilight's younger identical twin.)

"I know this will sound weird, but I think the situation I've been in for the last few weeks is very similar to what all of you are going through."

"And that would be?" Time asked, speaking up at last. He'd walked out of the stables half a moment after Not-Twilight's confession, and settled into place as if he'd been following the conversation from the start. Wind wondered if he had been listening from indoors, or if it was just the old man's usual unflappable nature.

"You're all heroes from different eras of Hyrule, brought together by some greater power, traveling together on a quest. Is that wrong?"

Nobody spoke for a moment.

Legend scowled. "I mean, anyone here who knew their history well enough could guess--"

"You've been hopping between different eras by portals or some kind of magic, which is why you're all here in this Hyrule right now. Also, you've been going by nicknames, because all of you are named Link and it gets confusing."

"... well, he isn't wrong," Four pointed out. "That has all happened. And unless we've been spied on the whole time we've been here, I don't think someone living in this era would have the resources to find all that out, either-- no offense, Champion."

Wild shook his head, finally remembering to stir the cookpot. "None taken."

"So, you're doing the same, then?" Time asked.

Not-Twilight nodded. "My group has a lot more people I think might be in yours? Including a second Hero of Twilight who isn't me, apparently." He glanced down at Wind. "And a second Hero of the Winds, too. We've all been traveling through these world-eating holes in reality, basically, created by the demon... Demise, apparently? I admit I haven't gotten the whole explanation of how, but long story short the holes are sort of eating reality itself, and we've been traveling back through the eras to fight him."

"Demise, huh?" Legend made a face. "Didn't Sky say something about a guy called Demise once?"

"He was pretty cagey about it," said Four. "But I do remember him saying he fought a demon king, instead of Ganon."

"He's from the Chosen Hero's era," Not-Twilight confirmed, "but according to Gen -- my group's Chosen Hero, I mean -- most of the villains we fought were incarnations of him, in some form. He's been employing them to try and stop us, after he failed to kill us all the first time."

"Speaking of the Chosen Hero," Warriors butted in, "shouldn't we have him down here to be part of the discussion? Where is he?"

Time gestured to the stable window. "Upstairs, taking the gear to the bedroom."

Legend scoffed. "Probably napping, too."

"I'll go get him," Four volunteered, already disappearing through the stables door.

"If you're going to explain yourself, we'll want everyone here to hear it," Time explained to Not-Twilight. "I'm sure he'll be down in just a minute, and--"

An indecipherable emotion passed over Time's face. A moment later, it had spread to Legend and Warriors and then Wild like a growing shadow. Wind raised an eyebrow at them all, but only for a moment before the realization reached him, too.

"Traveler's wandered off into the swamp, hasn't he." Legend's voice spoke of nothing but plain despair.

"Is that your hero of Hyrule?" Not-Twilight asked. Legend nodded, grimacing, and Not-Twilight sighed a long-suffering sigh. "If it's any consolation, ours is like that too."

Chapter Text

Hyrule waved to the boy in the middle of the swamp. The boy in the middle of the swamp waved back.

"Hello!" the boy called. "This might sound strange, but have you seen a group of boys with green tunics and swords around here?"

At that, Hyrule froze in his tracks.

The last stranger on the road to ask questions that specific had been leading a squadron of treasonous Sheikah hellbent on killing the local Hero. Any friend of the hero's was an enemy of theirs -- or so they'd said, before Wild's horse had reared up and kicked their leader in the face.

"... No," Hyrule answered, when the silence stretched a bit too long. In his defense, most of them didn't wear green tunics, anyway. Now that he thought of it, neither did Wild. "... can you describe them?"

The boy looked thoughtful for a moment. "There should be about..." He paused, and Hyrule could see him counting on his fingers. "... sixteen of them? Might not be all together, though. They've all got swords and stuff. Most of them are around my age, or younger?" Another pause. "Oh, and they're mostly blonde, and look very alike! Should've lead with that, probably."

Well, that... didn't sound like the other heroes at all. Numbers aside, most of them seemed older than Hyrule, with exception of Wind and Four (and in Four's case, Hyrule wasn't so sure if he was actually young, or just short), and while he supposed they had several blondes around, there seemed too many exceptions to call it a rule.

Hyrule shrugged, taking a first probing step past the shoreline. The shallow waters only lapped at his ankles; with enough caution and luck, he had a chance of reaching the far side without even having to get wet. "Sorry, still not ringing any bells," he replied.

"That's all right," the boy assured him. "It was a bit of a long shot anyway."

Another few steps in, and the water hadn't crept past his shins, even as the mud added a few fingers of depth by sinking away underfoot.

"Oh," said the boy, "are you coming over?"

Hyrule nodded, trying to focus on the ground. He'd forgotten to pick up a stick to test the waters with, but his old sword scabbard worked fine, and he could clean it off later.

"It's not a problem, I mean," the boy continued, "there's plenty of room. Some interesting rocks over here, too. And the view is quite nice." A croaking sound. "I even found this frog!"

Whatever Goddesses ruled this era smiled upon him, and the path stayed clear. The muck threatened the lip of his boots, a few times, eventually spilling above and over them, but Hyrule didn't particularly care. Soon enough, he stood only a few steps from the island's shore.

"What was that about a frog?" he asked the boy. Up close, he looked about Wind's age, maybe younger, wearing a forest green tunic and muddy boots that brought to mind Hyrule's own adventures, when he'd been younger and smaller and fumbling with a sword too big for his unpracticed hands. Sort of nostalgic, really, though this boy probably didn't have to worry about a whole kingdom declaring him their national hero and painting a giant target on his back after one stupid quest.

"Over there," the boy said, pointing to a clump of reeds. Sure enough, a smallish frog had made itself at home in the midst of them, sitting patient in wait of prey.

Hyrule crouched down to watch, and the boy, after a moment, settled in near him, loosely imitating his pose. A strange, heavy presence surrounded him, but Hyrule couldn't place the nature of it.

Several long seconds passed. Neither of them moved.

A cricket crept close to the reeds, hopping by. A tongue darted out in the blink of an eye, snatching it into the the frog's waiting mouth. The boy grinned, and Hyrule couldn't help smiling as well.

"It's nice to find little things like this," the boy whispered. "Makes getting lost a bit more worthwhile."

"You're lost, then?" Hyrule asked. The boy laughed.

"You have no idea. I've been told I couldn't tell directions if I had a compass on the top of my boots."

Hyrule's gaze flickered back toward the direction he'd reached the shore from. (Or at least, the direction with the most familiar-looking stretch of shoreline, which should have been the same thing. Presumably.) "I don't have a map, but I can lead you back to the nearest stables, if you'd like? I've just been exploring, but there's a roof and beds and whatnot, back there."

"A roof and bed would be nice," the boy admitted, "but I really ought to get back to my traveling party. They're the ones that know where we're going."

"Do you remember where you last saw them?" Hyrule asked. He couldn't exactly leave the poor boy stuck in the middle of the swamp; not in good conscience. The boy's face twisted awkwardly, and he shook his head.

"Yeah, no," he said, "I have no idea where we were when we got here. I think I saw one of them in a field, somewhere, but we got separated, and it was all a bit chaotic."

"Ah," Hyrule nodded. "Monsters, huh?"

"Big shooty death-beam ones," the boy agreed. "With tentacle legs."

Well, that... didn't bode well for the boy's friends. Hyrule didn't look forward to breaking it to the kid that his traveling party was probably at least half dead by now. Between all the trouble the guardians gave even a band of seasoned heroes, and the history of war Wild had alluded to only in hushed, haunted tones, he couldn't picture civilians, even with swords, standing much of a chance.

Then again, the boy sounded barely ruffled by the whole ordeal. He might have been younger, or at least more naive, than Hyrule first thought -- but just as likely, he'd already come to terms with the tragedy looming ahead. In the Champion's recovering wreck of a kingdom, either seemed plenty possible. Hyrule had seen his fair share of both in his own era.

Maybe if any of the boy's friends were better armed, or had magic, though...

Wait. That strange, heavy presence. Hyrule concentrated.

The boy had an aura of magic around him, well-restrained, but present all the same. It oozed a sense of weight and binding when Hyrule paid attention to it, like a ship's anchor, or a prisoner's shackles, and underneath it, he could almost sense something wilder, trying to escape. It was like nothing he'd felt before, but somehow, the boy didn't look particularly bothered by it.

The boy didn't seem bothered by many things, Hyrule was beginning to notice. Hyrule himself should have probably been more bothered, too, but one of the lesser perils of traveling with other heroes was that between all the charms and secrets, most red flags just started to look like ordinary colored cloth.

Hyrule very nearly asked about the whole anchor thing then and there, if only to talk about something other than Guardians, but the boy changed the subject for him.

"They're probably looking for me right now," he mused, still watching the sitting frog. "The searching part of it's gotten easier now that they know how I am, but I always do feel a bit bad about leading them on such a goose-chase every time we end up somewhere new."

"I know the feeling." Hyrule pictured all the times he or Wild had wandered off-trail, and Wolfie had literally dragged them back to the camp, hours past dark, to a smouldering fire and the nonplussed face of whoever had taken first watch. "My friends don't always like my exploring, either. Most of them prefer to stay on the path. Straight-and-narrow types, y'know?"

The boy nodded. "Sometimes I think they might get tired of having to keep an eye on me, after a while. Goddess knows I hold them up often enough. Though, having someone else to handle directions has cut down my traveling times to a fraction of what they used to be." He laughed. "Some of them can even read maps!"

"I'll admit I was never good with those," Hyrule found himself saying. "Most places I've been didn't have any to spare, anyway."

Both of them fell quiet for a moment, a natural lull that let the sound of the breeze and rustling reeds fill the air.

"Say," the boy started again, "I didn't even remember to ask your name."

"It's Link." No need to offer up a nickname he barely even used at all.

The boy looked at him in surprise. "Link? Y'know, that's actually my name, too."

Hyrule stared at the boy.

Another hero? a small part of him suggested. But that wouldn't make any sense; Wild was the hero in this era -- and besides, Link was far from a rare name. Less common, maybe, in the wake of a hero that nearly hadn't been, but in other times, they came a blue rupee a dozen. (The name could turn half the mens' heads in a small enough village, in some eras. Hyrule had seen it happen before.) And this boy-- the other Link-- he'd said his friends wore green too, didn't he?

It probably meant nothing, Hyrule decided.

"I know enough Links I usually go by a nickname, though," Link added. "So, uh... call me Realm, I guess?"

"... that works," said Hyrule, finding his voice again, only to hesitate a moment later.

"Do you have a nickname of your own, too?" asked Realm, "Or should I just call you Link?"

Hyrule paused, considering. He couldn't exactly introduce himself by his hero title, unless he wanted to sound insane; the newer nickname the rest had offered up wouldn't work either -- nobody in their right mind named themselves after an entire kingdom unless they had an ego the size of the Death Mountain, or, as in Hyrule's own case, a reason so bizarre as to be unbelievable. (Really, what was he supposed to say? I'm a legendary hero from thousands of years ago you've probably never even heard of, and the whole country and also a magic sword decided to give me a title for it I never asked for?)

"'Traveler'," Hyrule managed, after the pause stretched a second too long again. "Or, y'know. Just Link."

"Alright, then, Traveler Or Just Link," said Realm. "It's nice to meet you!"

Realm straightened upright, and the frog in the reeds startled and took a flailing leap into the water, splashing them both.

Hyrule laughed. "Nice to meet you too."

"So," Not-Dusk began. "You're all heroes from different eras. Traveling together, as a group. Through mysterious--"

"They're not actually all that mysterious," Lore corrected. "We know exactly where they came from!"

Not-Dusk sighed. "Through totally not mysterious portals between different versions of Hyrule. On a quest." He took a deep breath, in and out. "And somehow, y'all're a completely different set of heroes from the ones I've been traveling with. But with the same titles, and having gone on literally the same quests."

"Yeah, that's about it," confirmed Green. "Normally Dusk would be explaining this stuff, after me and Lore, but obviously he's, uh. Not here."

"And Dusk's the one you thought was me," Not-Dusk said, a little uncertainly. Lore nodded.

"Exactly! We've been using nicknames based on our titles, mostly because a lot of our titles don't make terribly good names..."

"I almost got called Trains," Steam interjected, "which would have been awful."

"... so I assume you've got one of your own!" Lore finished.

Not-Dusk made a vague so-so gesture with his hand. "The Rancher, or Farm Hand, generally. Or sometimes, 'Ordonian'. I've been called Twilight a couple times, on account of my title, but that's only since the others learned what it was. It's not like it's anything official."

"Twilight does fit better for the kind of nicknames we've been using," Vio commented.

Lore nodded. "Twilight, definitely. And while we're introducing ourselves, I'm Lore! Hero of Legend, savior of four kingdoms -- well, three, but four if you're counting the island, which I do -- and current LiT!"

"He means Leader-in-Training," Gen added. "I think. And I'm Gen. Short for Genesis -- uh, but you don't need to call me that. Hero of the Skies, and apparently the first one in the timeline."

"I'm Green," Green said, "and those are Red, Blue, and Vio. Heroes of the Four Sword... er, the more recent ones, anyway."

"We go by the Four," the Four announced. Twilight all but jumped at the sound of their voices, and gave them all an intense, silent once-over, eyes flicking between the Four and the quartet as if trying to decipher some particularly baffling puzzle before giving up entirely. That was fair. Most people had that reaction to the Four, even with the average Hero's exposure to bizarre magic plot gimmicks. "... it's complicated."

"That's Mask and Ocarina over there," Lore continued, "and together they're the Hero of Time -- same guy, different time periods, long story -- and then this is Sketch, that's Steam, and the quiet one in the corner there is Speck."

"And you've already met me," Wind added in, with a little flourish. "So..."

"...is that really everyone?" A tone crept into Twilight's voice that Wind didn't want to call suspicion, but passed for confusion, at the least.

"Everyone here," Green replied. "Obviously Dusk is still missing. So's Realm -- the Hero of Hyrule -- but we'll probably find him later. He gets lost a lot, so it's just kinda routine now. And Shadow -- uh, Dark Link, that is -- he's probably with Dusk, since he was hanging out with--"

"Dark Link?" In the space of two words, Twilight's tone had slipped into full-blown mistrust.

"It's not like it sounds!" Ocarina cut in. "He's on our side!"

"Basically, he's our collective Dark counterpart, but he hates Ganon more than he hates any of us, so he's teamed up with us to take his grudge out on whatever versions of the guy he personally feels wronged by," Green explained. "Which is several of them."

"I think he's growing on us, too," added Red.

"Oh, definitely," said Lore. "He's on far too friendly terms for all that I'm-just-here-for-revenge nonsense now. And he's been living out of Dusk's shadow this whole time!"

Twilight's gaze stayed skeptical for a moment longer, but he exhaled, and shook his head. "... suppose it's not the weirdest thing I've heard today. But I can't say how well my group'll take it, least of of all without warning. Whatever we've been following has some serious dark magic, and I wouldn't put a misunderstanding past anyone. "

"I mean, Shadow doesn't come out much, but yeah, he can be pretty... intimidating," said Steam. "Hopefully Dusk hasn't run into them yet. You guys sound way more suspicious than us, honestly."

"I'd say it comes with the hero territory, but that was before meeting you all, so..." Twilight shrugged. "Either way, I'd avoid bringing it up, unless there's no other choice. If we're lucky, your friends won't meet mine, and what mine don't know won't hurt them."

"Do you normally keep secrets from your fellow heroes?" asked Sketch, sounding more curious than anything else.

"Half of 'em don't even know I'm the wolf. It's not the first, and it won't be the last."

"Anyway," Lore declared, "now that that's sorted out, I think it's high time we worked out where everyone else's gotten off to! Obviously Realm will take some work, but if we're lucky, Dusk and Shadow might have already found him, and just need to get back to us. And if we're less lucky, we'll just really hope he's staying put." He stopped, giving Twilight a look. "Say, d'you think your group might end up finding him, though?"

"I don't know about yours, but the others from my group probably aren't looking for me," Twilight admitted. Several Links frowned.

"Why not?" asked Vio.

Twilight's expression grew sheepish. "I've got a habit of coming back late," he explained, "especially when I'm scouting as a wolf. And since I was the only one out searching for..."

Lore waited, patiently, as Twilight seemed to hit some revelation.

"Aw, Din's tits," Twilight swore. Mask gasped, covering the ears of one very confused Ocarina. "Sailor's probably still out there."

"Language!" hissed a scandalized Gen.

Twilight winced, as if re-realizing his status as the lone adult in a sea of half-preteen adventurers. "... Ah, yeah. My bad. Anyways, the Hero of the Wind I know's probably still lost out in Hyrule field, so that's one more to be looking out for."

"How many people are in your group, anyway?" asked Wind.

"... eight others," Twilight said, after a pause. "Currently, I mean. We haven't picked up anyone new since we all met up so I'd say that's all."

"Only eight?" Vio asked, voicing the obvious question of most Links present.

"You've got plenty I don't recognize at all, and I'd reckon a few of ours are missing from your group, too. Unless you've got the Hero of the Wild hiding somewhere? And I sure don't see anyone who looks conscription age, either."

Setting the 'conscription age' thing aside, an odd detail swam back into the forefront of Wind's mind. "Hero of the Wild? You mean the Wild guy you were talking about earlier?"

"That'd be him," Twilight confirmed. "This is his era. Or at least, it was last we checked." He frowned. "He said something was off about the place, this time through, though. Hel- heck if I know what."

"When is this era, anyway?" asked Steam, making his and Wind's classic I'm-thinking look. "I thought we started at the end of the timelines, and worked our way back up."

"None of us have records of it, but Champion -- Wild, I mean -- says he's about ten thousand years after everyone else, at least."

"Ten thousand years...?" mouthed Gen, who looked like he would have sat down, quite heavily, had he not already settled again on the foot of the crumbling stone steps.

"... after, huh?" Mask had a look like he'd been handed a particularly tricky puzzle, more than anything; Ocarina's expression did the same. Right. Time-travelers. "If our future's already been eaten by a hole after only a few centuries, it would make sense that the future ten thousand years later wouldn't exist for us. Except half of us are from futures directly after mine and Ocarina's, and our own versions of history weren't changed... unless this point in time didn't have a Demise incarnation, maybe? Ugh... but we came through a hole to get here. And that doesn't even touch on things like what timeline we're in..."

"Yeah! Whose timeline is it, anyway?" Blue agreed.

Red punched him in the shoulder.

"Aw, come on, Red," Blue complained, "it was only a reference!"

"And you're making it worse by saying that!" Vio hissed, elbowing him.

"They do this sometimes," Steam explained to Twilight, with a practiced air of apology. "I don't what it's about, either."

"I'm gonna be honest," said Twilight. "I didn't understand... any of that. And I have no idea what timeline the Champion's in. We only got talking about the time travel thing a couple portals back, and even that was mostly the Sailor and the Old Man -- our Hero of Time -- comparing notes."

"... fair enough." Mask sounded like he was filing away the question to interrogate Twilight's 'Champion' in a dark alleyway somewhere, but Twilight showed no sign of concern.

"Hardly makes sense for the portal to spit us out here, though," said Lore. "I mean, if it wasn't an era we had to worry about, why's there even a hole on this side?"

"The enemy my group's been chasing has some kind of portal magic, we think," Twilight offered. "I'm no spellcaster, but maybe something got mixed up and you somehow stepped through one of our portals instead?"

"What do your portals look like?" Wind asked.

"Tall, dark, and purplish. Sort of door-shaped. There's stuff inside, like a miasma, or a tunnel, almost."

Lore shook his head. "Well, that can't be right, then! Our just look like holes. Big, black, round ones that everything nearby disappears into."

"Maybe this is our world, but it's after we saved everything, so there's no reason for the portals to be eating the world anymore?" Red offered.

"But why would there be a hole here in the first place, then?" said Blue, scowling.

Nayru sat down, very heavily, and stared at the nonexistent walls for a moment.

"They're in the new Hyrule?" Farore asked. It was more of a proposal than a question.

"They're in the new Hyrule," Nayru confirmed. "I cannot believe we seriously fucked this up."

Farore winced. "Language!"

"I thought you said the timeline was someone else's?" asked Din, surveying the carefully scaled map of Kind-Of-Sort-Of-Composite-Hyrule. (New Hyrule was, regrettably, taken.)

"Well, yes, but no--" Nayru shook her head. "Ugh. It's more like something tried to... combine ours with another version of itself, somehow, and this was what came out. Most of those poor mortals probably have two versions of their own memories in their heads now, and that's not counting the three independent histories I was trying to resolve before this all started."

"... at least nothing important has happened in time period yet?" said Farore. A tentative glimmer of hope wove through her words, like a clay pigeon in the split second before its destruction.

"Well, if I'd been able to maintain uninterrupted focus and control over it, sure! But then something decided we needed more problems to fix, and now there's the shreds of another unincorporated Demise incarnation floating around willy-nilly and piloting Sheikah death machines around the countryside!"

"Sheikah death machines?" asked Din.

"Sheikah death machines," Nayru repeated. "I still can't believe this got so out of hand..."

"Do you think it's..." Farore glanced over her shoulder, like she expected something she didn't already know about to be watching. "... Consequences?"

Nayru made a hapless attempt at a shrug. "It would make as much sense as anything else. But if it is, our options to deal with it are limited."

A pause settled between the three, considering the implications. Capital-C Consequences manifested in strange ways, but direct threats to the fabric of reality usually weren't among them.

"Wait," said Farore, realizing something, "did... whatever this is just combine the timelines, or did it combine the actual kingdoms, too?"

Din swore under her breath. (Farore thanked the observers for small mercies.) "I can't tell. The geography seems fine, but the rest might not be."

"I wouldn't know, either, but I suppose you could check the..." Nayru looked up at Farore. "Did you even finish the species disentanglement thing?"

Farore was silent for a second in freshly dawning horror. "Oh my me, I wasn't done." She shot back over to where she'd been working, suddenly fumbling through unsorted species. "Oh, I didn't even figure out what to do with the bomb flowers, and-- I forgot the Minish! And--!"

Din and Nayru decided to leave her to it.

Nayru poked at the edge of the desert -- lightly, so as not to add any new canyons. (Actual Hyrule would be fine -- she wasn't Din, after all -- but the scale model didn't share quite the same integrity.) "There isn't even a cliff on the far side of the desert. The hero could have literally just walked out of Hyrule."

"There was a placeholder sign for the border," said Din. "It's got an invisible wall and everything. And besides, the whole inland border has a mile-deep canyon running through it, and the rest is all coastline."

Nayru sighed. "We left an invisible wall. In open air. On the world map!"

"It wouldn't be the first time. Besides, it's not like the hero wouldn't have just scaled any mountains I gave him anyway. Farore wanted to make this one a climbing type."

"A sheer enough wall would have stopped him, though."

"With the determination she gives them? He would have just drunk a dozen stamina potions and run straight up the cliff. Not that he'd make it, but--"

Leaned over the reality window, Farore interrupted them both with a squeal of delight. "Oh, girls, I found the new Courage! He's--oh." Her tone curdled into dismay. "Oh, no..."

"What?" Din craned over Farore's shoulder for a better look. "Oh. Huh."

Courage's newest Incarnation sat on a log, humming to himself as he fiddled with a strange rectangular block. It took a second to follow Farore's train of thought, but on closer inspection, Din caught the mottling of faint burn scars down the hero's side. He looked awfully similar to the other world's Hero sitting by the cooking pot at the inn, but he couldn't have been, given they were literally miles apart. Not to mention the subtler differences.

"What happened to this one?" Din asked.

"He died," Farore said, her voice wavering.

"... he's sitting right there?" said Din, a little incredulous.

"He got better," Farore clarified, but she'd already gotten teary-eyed, and Din braced herself, remembering her sister's reaction to the Shadow Incarnation.

"What went wrong?" asked Nayru.

Farore sniffed. "I abandoned him! I wasn't even thinking to check for a hero in the new version of Hyrule, but he was right there, and he picked up the sword and everything, and he died! I should have been watching out for him, but instead he's lost all his memories, and he's only alive because that Sheikah thing revived him!"

Ah. That would do it. In the back of her mind, Din started poking around for her own Incarnation's presence, more for curiosity than anything else. If the usual pattern held after the Hero's quest had ended, he was probably dead or sealed away, again. (Thanks a lot, Demise!) Unless...?

Nayru patted Farore's back as she settled behind her to watch. "It's not your fault. None of the rest of us were watching, either." Her eyes glazed into the middle distance for a few long seconds, forcing back a dozen different blaring Time Problem alarms to flip through the Kind-of-Sort-of-Composite-Hyrule's fledgling history, before she sighed. "Looks like Wisdom's been having just as bad a time as her hero. She only just figured out how to draw on her powers before she sealed herself in the castle. Poor girl."

"Would now be a bad time to mention the local Power incarnation Demise would have latched onto is technically still undead and dormant under Hyrule Castle?" asked Din.

Nayru glanced at a second reality window, still showing eighteen-odd heroes discussing time travel, and then back at Farore. "... Let's... table that one for later, maybe."

"This is fascinating and all," Gen said, trying to steer the conversation back on track, "but we should really start searching before it gets dark. Did anyone see which way Dusk might have ended up heading?"

"We thought we saw him split off east, when the Beam-- the Guardians were chasing us," the Four mused.

"Seconding that," said Steam. "I'm like ninety-nine percent sure I saw him headed in the opposite direction of that tall tower."

Twilight sighed. "If he headed east from the tower, that leaves most of central Hyrule field to search. I can try tracking by scent, but I'll be cutting my effort in half to look for him and the Sailor at the same time."

"I don't suppose you could track down Realm that way, could you?" asked Mask. "He's a bit hard to find, but I'm pretty sure he smells as bad as the rest of us."

"Probably," said Twilight. "But that's three people to look for, then."

It was around this point that Wind got an idea.

"Hey, so, if your Wind is basically me, and he did my quests and has my stuff and all that, does he have a necklace with a thing on it like this?" Wind whipped out his pirate's charm pendant, holding it up for Twilight to see.

"I've seen him use it once or twice, back in his Hyrule," said Twilight. "That's a good idea, actually. If you can reach him, you can ask where he is, and save us all some time." He paused. "You're sure it works, though?"

"It's worth a shot!" Wind lowered the charm to eye level, poking at it. Now that he thought about it, he'd never directly called someone with one of these things, but Tetra could call him with her own charm, so clearly it worked both ways. And it was magic, obviously, so if he could just remember the idea of activating a magic thing...

A chime rang out, high and already a little bit nostalgic. Wind opened his eyes, and immediately squeezed them shut again, blinking into the charm's ghostly blue glow.

"Hello?" he asked, into the charm. "Testing, testing. Can anyone hear me?"

A loud, wooden clatter filled the air, followed by the murmur of overlapping voices, a little tinny and muffled by their travel through the ether.

"Who's--?" someone started asking. Other voices, deeper and lower, warped and rippled below them. As Wind's eyes adjusted to the glow of the charm, he could make out his own reflection, bobbing in the charm's round, mirrored surface as if treading water.

Wind's reflection blinked. Wind almost shrieked in surprise, but it came out more as a strangled squeak, as most of his attention had been eaten up by the deja vu of yet another eerily identical stranger staring back at him.

Other-Wind made Wind's own familiar pout of a thinking face, tilting his head to scrutinize the charm, and Wind found his voice again.

"Hello!" Wind reached out to hold the charm at arm's length, and gave a little wave. Other-Wind took his own turn to yelp and fumble with the pendant on his end, righting it a moment later.

"Is it working?" asked Lore, leaning in and joining the image. "Can they see us?"

"Duuusk!" Other-Wind shouted, turning around. "I think your friends are calling us!"

Link was six inches from nabbing a Summerwing butterfly when his slate erupted into crackling, grating noise.

He very nearly fell off the rock he had climbed trying to get it, and the butterfly promptly panicked and spiraled off into the sky, beyond his reach. Fumbling for balance, Link slid the slate out of its pouch, watching as some strange and grainy version of the camera rune splashed itself across the screen.

A voice came through, full of static, but just audible, as a wavering bluish face formed on-screen, distorted like the reflection on a sphere.

"... Wild... Old Man? Can you... we're coming to the stables... yeah, it's a long story... we'll try to be there by..."

A second, lower voice replied as a new and less distorted image tried to overlap the first, giving Link the distinct, growing feeling he was eavesdropping.

"We're at the Wetland... if you can get there by nightfall..."

Wetland Stable? That was in West Lanayru -- probably a couple hours away by horseback, and hardly any time at all, if he teleported by shrine. Zelda would want him to investigate, just to see what all the fuss was about -- that, and what exactly had managed to hijack an ancient artifact like the Sheikah Slate with a stranger's conversation. That idea raised a great number of questions Link wasn't sure he wanted answers to.

The strangers babbled indistinctly over the shaky connection, and Link watched his own hands grow tight and white-knuckled on the frame of the slate.

Zelda would want to know. Zelda wouldn't be afraid, either, not like he got. (She remembered, while he was skittish and stupid and--)

Fortunately, he didn't have to worry about them very long, because a moment later, a shooting star trailed a streak of light across the dimming sky overhead. Link snapped to full attention, watching the star arc across the cloudless sunset sky until it landed somewhere to the west, casting a thin pillar of light over the horizon like a beacon.

Weird. Didn't shooting stars only appear after dark?

He could always use an armor upgrade, though. And star fragments weren't exactly easy to find. And Zelda had been patient enough to wait the better part of six months for Link to get his act together to fight the Calamity the first (well, second) time around, what with all the horse-catching and korok-finding and shrines...

Closing the strange, unlabeled rune the message had opened took only a moment, and then the sound cut out, dropping Link back into the crisp evening silence.

It was only a short warp to the stables, after all.

Farore sighed in relief. "Thank you. I didn't want to have to deal that meeting yet at all."

"I'll be honest, I don't think he's ready for that one, either," said Nayru, watching her sister nudge her rune-wielding incarnation in the general direction of Hebra. "He's skittish."

Farore tapped her chin, contemplatively. "Maybe I should scramble his slate for a while, just to be on the safe side... eighteen incarnations in one place was already pushing it."

"Eighteen? Don't you mean twenty-seven?" Din asked.

"If we're counting that walking timeline snarl of a Four Sword wielder as multiple, it's thirty," mused Nayru. "Or thirty-one? Are we counting a merged individual as one, four, or five?"

"I'm not counting them," Farore explained. "They're from a foreign continuity."

"Weren't you literally just calling the Amnesiac Incarnation your baby?"

"That's different! He's mine. The others are under what I'm pretty sure is a whole second me from another reality," said Farore, firmly. "Not my circus, not my monkeys." She paused, glancing at the window again. "Though, if they were permanently stranded here without her influence, I suppose I'd have no choice but to adopt them..."

Nayru raised an eyebrow.

"Purely hypothetically."

We would not.

You've abandoned mine before.

It's only the cycle. They are temporary. You know as well as I.

This is more than a cycle! Their gathering may not be by my hand, but they stand strong. They will not fail.

The Ancient Tragedy, the Sealing Wars, and the Era Without a Savior say otherwise.

And the War of Eras was nearly without end.

This is different from both, and you know it!

The parallels remain.

The parallels are tenuous.

And yet.

All will be resolved. I swear it.

Don't swear to what you cannot keep, sister.

Tales told by self-declared bards make no such promises, after all.

Such little faith in me! Do you take me for a fool?

...

...

...

... perhaps, very slightly.

"You all just heard that, right?" said Nayru. "Tell me I'm not going insane."

Din groaned. "I think we all heard it."

"They're so loud," Farore mused. "Do you think we must be that loud to mortals?"

"I sure hope not," said Din. "Damn."

In the end, the two groups worked out that the best system to ensure anyone actually made it to the Wetland Stable before the next dawn (let alone early enough for a decent night's sleep) would be teleporting. Twilight and the rest would head to the nearest shrine, and Wild would ferry the group across in twos and threes to another shrine just by the stables. It made a good alternative to walking across the entirety of Hyrule field in a group twice as large as Twilight had ever had to worry about, even more so as nightfall approached.

"Remind me again why we're going in the exact opposite direction to where you said the stables were?" asked the older not-Time (Ocarina?), who sounded like he'd only just tuned in a few minutes ago and was trying to pretend he'd been listening to the whole thing from the start.

"Because that's where the shrine is," explained Wind. "We're teleporting the rest of the distance, remember?"

"It's still pretty far..." Gen commented, looking over the hastily drawn map Lore and Wind had hashed out with Wild over their limited communication by charm.

"Well, it doesn't have to be on foot," said another of the new heroes (this one might have been... Trains? The one that had said something about Trains, anyway. Twilight didn't know what a train was, and had decided not to ask.)

Lore jolted a little more upright from his spot "annotating" the far corner of the map, and pointed an authoritative finger in the air. "You're right! I don't suppose you could magic up another passenger car for all of us?"

"Maybe with a little more leg room next time, if you can manage it?" added the tiny not-Time (Mask, right, Mask.) "Not that I don't enjoy being squashed like a canned fish, but..."

"It'll be as big as it is," said Trains (or was it Fog? Mist? Something like that--), crossing his arms. "And I was on a schedule, okay?! Plus, I can only modify the Spirit Train so much. It's not built for twenty people."

"Taking the train would be an improvement over walking, so long as we aren't planning to do any searching, too," said Sketch, gracefully redirecting the topic.

"I don't think searching will matter much," Vio noted. "The only person unaccounted for is Realm, and he could be halfway across the continent by now, for all we know."

(Twilight was not going to spend time engaging in any way with his thoughts about Vio, because frankly, there were far too many of them. The same applied to the other three of his little subgroup, the hivemind one, and Speck. Given the chance, he might have tried addressing the issue more discreetly, but with only the not-at-all-private communication line of Wild's slate and Wind's charm... well. Four was in for an interesting evening, to say the least.)

Then the rest of Vio's sentence caught up with him, and Twilight did a double take.

"... halfway across the continent?" Twilight asked, at the same moment as Green replied, "I thought the earrings fixed the Wandering thing?"

"It's been hours," replied Vio, ignoring Twilight's disbelieving murmur, "and Dusk said he thought he saw him right before he found himself on the other side of Hyrule field, so I'm not putting it out of the question."

Twilight bit back a sigh. He was about to regret learning something, wasn't he?

"Wandering?"

"Realm teleports sometimes," explained Wind, "accidentally, and he's got all the sense of direction of a compass in a bucket of magnets. It was a whole... thing. He's got anchoring charms for the teleporting, now, but before that, it used to take forever to find him. He'd end up in the middle of a lake, or on an unclimbable mountain peak, or down a pit or something."

"One time he rerouted the Spirit Train to the other side of the country," added Trains (no, Steam, right, Steam.) "It's a good thing it supplies its own tracks, or we would have just driven straight into the ocean."

"He teleports," Twilight repeated, setting Steam's addition aside to review from a safer distance for his sanity. Younger Wind patted his arm sympathetically. "At random. In any Hyrule. And can't navigate." He considered a few choice words, then remembered the ten-year-olds and thought better of it. "Sweet Ordona. And you'd just been... following him?"

"It's not that hard tracking him down, actually," said Lore.

"Speak for yourself," said Green.

"We've been trying to have someone keep an eye on him while we're walking, too," Red added. "It was mostly effective, except for when they got dragged along with him."

"... which shouldn't be a problem anymore, since he's got the charms," said Gen.

"Assuming he hasn't gotten the brilliant idea to take them off," Blue pointed out. Something in his tone told Twilight it wouldn't be a surprise.

Mask waved a hand. "Realm thinks it's reasonable to spend two weeks just trying to find a dungeon -- I think it'll take a little more than four hours lost in the wilderness to tempt him. It's not like he's the only person in the world who can warp places."

Twilight couldn't say he found that reassuring. He chose not to say anything at all.

"So. Spirit Train?" Lore prompted, with an air less of impatience so much as gleeful, unbridled enthusiasm. It was probably for the best he didn't look too much like Legend; the difference in attitude might have given Twilight whiplash by now, otherwise.

"I'm working on it," grumbled Steam. "Just give me a moment."

Steam, as it turned out, shared both Winds' (and maybe Four's) impressive range of facial expressions, because Twilight could read him like a well-thumbed book. That screwed up mouth and the scrunched eyebrows made a memory-perfect I'm concentrating really hard on something face, right before he went and proved that the similarities ran only so deep by jolting up lightning-rod straight, pointing a finger at the open landscape nearby, and yelling:

"I LIKE TRAINS!"

A piercing whistle like a giant's teakettle drowned out Twilight's bewildered reply, filling the air with a bone-rattling shriek. His hand found the hilt of his sword in an instant, ready for whatever fresh new mess of monsters he was about to find the Champion's era harboring, but a second later, he realized none of the others had moved to do the same.

Just past the edges of the Garrison ruins, a trio of joined wood and metal carriages rolled to a stop barely a dozen paces away, steel wheels gleaming in the evening light. An innocent puff of steam drifted lazily from the chimney at the first carriage's front end.

Twilight glanced down at the nearest clusters of the group. Vio raised a bemused eyebrow at him, while Green and Wind were grinning and Mask visibly fighting back laughter, and the rest barely glanced his way.

... maybe he should have asked what a train was, after all.

"You're sure we're all going to fit this time?" asked Ocarina, eyeing the carriages with vague suspicion.

"One way or another," Steam replied. Twilight had some suspicions of his own about the height of the main door relative to his head, but declined to comment. "We might need to get creative if we run out of standing room, but it'll work."

Ten minutes later, with Lore tying himself to the roof of the passenger car and Twilight half-crouching and squashed between the four hiveminded Links at the back, he felt that counted as an understatement.

"Last time we were all crowded inside," Wind informed him, perched on the back of Gen's seat. He gripped the ceiling bar for balance as he leaned closer, one arm still free to gesture. "And it caught fire at one point, because we were fighting a demon train. This is really an improvement."

"All aboard?" yelled Steam from the engine car.

Twilight watched as Wind took a quick headcount. "Yep! All aboard!"

The giant's-teakettle whistle screeched again from the front, forcing Twilight to cover his ears as the car lurched forward with a rising churn of steel and steam. He had only known about trains for a quarter-hour, but if his sailor ever invited him to ride one... well. Twilight was starting to see it as a blessing of the goddesses that only one future had ever been cursed with their invention.

... to his knowledge.

As the train gained speed, Twilight leaned against the wall, trying to look out the east-facing window. It was easier said than done -- he had to turn his neck a few degrees farther than was comfortable and lean over the blue member of the Four's head, bracing himself with the ceiling bar as a handhold, but it gave him a good view of the scenery peeling away into the approaching dusk for the next ten, maybe fifteen minutes. The train went faster than Epona, that was for sure -- faster than his spinner, too. The endless miles of the Champion's Hyrule blurred together in a mass of greenery and shadows, the Dueling Peaks standing tall and nearly still on the horizon.

He forced down the urge to open the window a crack and lean out into the rushing wind. The trees skimmed close enough to earn him a branch to the face if the train had gone at horse-riding speed; it was definitely not at horse-riding speed, and he didn't want to find out how fast it had to go for a branch to break his neck instead.

Somehow, Lore's attempt at a traveling song filtered down from the roof, muffled by wood, steel, and the wind. Despite the sound only trailing behind them, Twilight could still make out the words:

"Nine-hundred-fifty-six bombable walls, nine-hundred-fifty-six walls! Blow one down, go on around, nine-hundred-fifty-five walls left to bomb!"

It was nearly enough to make him miss Wind's sea shanties. (Stranded on an island ten paces across, surrounded by bokoblins and then waiting for the next portal -- now that had been a terrible several hours.)

Then, beneath the clamor of rattling wheels and the engine, he heard it.

The cabin seemed to freeze, tension spilling through the crowd like icewater, and Lore's singing broke off in an instant, shouting something Twilight didn't need to hear to understand.

One encounter, it appeared, had been plenty enough to learn what a guardian sounded like.

Twilight only had a second to duck below the window, pushing two of the Four down beneath him mostly on instinct before the bip-bip-bip turned into a high-pitched whine, and the air flashed bright with heat. The blast hit the side of the carriage with all the impact of a cannonball, jolting everything askew for half a heartbeat as the cabin flooded with the smell of burning wood.

Through ringing ears, Twilight caught Steam's voice -- "AGAIN WITH THE LASERS?!"

The heat gave way to winter cold a second later -- Twilight looked up to see Mask at the front of the carriage shoving an ice arrow at the root of the flames, halting them as quickly as they'd begun. Beside him, Sketch frantically patted out flames on the hem of his tunic with one hand while pressing the end of an ice rod to another burning patch of doorway with the other, and Ocarina raised his mirror shield as though trying to level it to the height of the window.

"Alright, who wants to shoot at it?" proposed Green, but Wind was already one step ahead, wriggling to the scorched front of the cabin to open the door at the end.

"It's cannon time!" announced Wind. Lore cheered from somewhere above them, a few others joining in. Now that Twilight thought about it, it was good to know Lore was still holding on up there. The ropes had seemed secure, but even Twilight could tell the top of the car wasn't exactly built for passengers.

Wind kicked open the door and shimmied over the gap to the smallest carriage of the three -- a mostly open platform on wheels, housing a single cannon turret. Twilight couldn't watch him too closely, though, not with the sounds of the guardian steadily powering up another shot in the distance. Between glances, he spotted Mask following Wind onto the platform, his own mirror shield raised -- cover, then, in case Wind didn't get a shot in before the next blast. Another reassurance, though not for Twilight's confidence in how the cannon car would take the hit.

Someone shouted something from the engine car, and Mask turned and relayed it along. "How long 'till we're out of blasting range?"

Twilight squinted out into the scenery -- the guardian was getting closer, not further away. Not good. If a memory of Wild dodging beams while paragliding served as a reference, it didn't take much mental math to know the guardian would still have another shot before they left its field of view.

Then he caught the glimmer of rippling, very-much-intact legs, and recalculated.

"Depends on how quick it can follow us," he called back, after another second. "The train'll outpace it, but it could shoot twice more, at least." Wind shouted something in the other direction, probably passing the answer back to Steam.

A second beam seared through the windows, inches from the ceiling, and Twilight thanked just about every spirit and goddess he could think of that he'd let go of the handhold about ten seconds ago when he'd dropped to the floor, instead of staying standing. Then he remembered their passenger on the roof and glanced up again.

"I'm not on fire!" Lore assured them all from somewhere overhead. "Just very lightly toasted!"

Twilight brushed broken glass from his wolf pelt as he stole another look out the window, trying to hone in on the guardian's position. It hadn't given up yet, but the train had passed nearest to it during the last beam, and it was starting to lose ground again. Even if it pursued past its usual range, it wouldn't be able to keep up. It was just a matter of how quickly they could lose it.

"Cover your ears!" Wind declared over the rush (and the crackle of Mask's ice arrows.) Twilight obliged, but he didn't so much hear the cannon fire as he felt it, the train carriage shuddering and bouncing from recoil.

"Did you get it?" asked Red, after a moment.

Mask shrugged at them all, then narrowed his eyes at the horizon. "Looks like?"

Several seconds later, the third blast made it clear one cannonball hadn't been enough.

Twilight found himself crouching for balance as the car shook and swung, feeling an awful lot like the rider of a less than willing mount. The shouts of surprise blended into the cacophony of grinding rails beneath them, wheels jerking and spinning as a bright buzz of panic finally kicked in.

It would have all been easier on foot. The train's moving speed and the size of their collective target made trying to reflect a beam back at the source a pain, and with the guardian's long range, return fire might not be an option. But more than that, the carriages might not withstand another hit: even if the car itself survived, getting knocked over at their current speed while tearing through the wilderness... they'd be lucky to only go rolling downhill, and not ram straight into the nearest cliff.

"Are we out of range yet?" someone shouted above the din. (Hah. Din. Was she laughing at them right now? Looking down from above, doing whatever goddesses did when they weren't creating worlds or pulling terrible cosmic pranks?)

"Not sure!" Twilight yelled back. "Wind, Mask, are you both alright?" he added, overlapping with Gen's "Are you two okay?" Gen looked vaguely miffed by that, but didn't comment on it.

"We've got all our limbs and stuff, yeah," replied Mask. "It looks like it hit the engine car."

Twilight bit back a curse. Fortunately, this time, only the violet member of the Four was close enough to hear.

"Is Steam--?" Gen began, before Lore interrupted from the roof.

"Does someone else need to come up front and steer the train?"

Wind grimaced and Mask shrugged. "I'll check?"

A second later, a fresh wave of smoke rushed into the cabin as Wind opened the engine car door, choking the air in bitter charcoal. Twilight held his nose and breath, shielding his eyes as he tried to see anything at all -- the cabin, the guardian, Steam or the others with him -- but the smoke and wood ash covered everything, the air full of cinders and windblown heat.

The blast must have set the front car ablaze. Was there anything to put it out with up there? Probably, but Twilight hadn't thought far ahead enough to plan that out and make sure of it. Mask probably had more ice arrows, at least, but that would only go so far.

Something cold flashed by overhead, and the smoke slowed a bit, ice glinting on the engine car roof. A triumphant cry from Lore explained the rest. Twilight tried to keep his sigh of relief to something subtle, but it wasn't needed; everyone else seemed to have had the same thought by now.

"Does anyone have a bow they can use?" he found himself asking instead. The violet member of the Four raised his own, either in answer or in offering. It was small -- nearly too small to use, really, barely the length of Twilight's forearm. Four had a bow like that, Twilight remembered. His Wind did, too. They didn't use them often, and the range wasn't much, either. Nothing like Wild's bows, that was for sure.

"Does anyone have a bow with a... longer range than that?" Twilight repeated, a little lower. Sketch and Ocarina raised theirs as well, but Gen frowned, shaking his head.

"We're not going to get any long-range hits in like this. Let me do something first."

With that, Gen reached elbow-deep into his traveling bags, trading his bow for an elaborate set of bellows Twilight might have seen Sky with, once. He swung the pipe end around, aimed it into the miasma of smoke, and pumped.

The difference was nearly instant. The bellows pushed the smoke aside like a shockwave, clearing the cabin in seconds -- one of the colors coughed, catching a faceful of fleeing smog -- and the grey haze Twilight had only barely noticed wrapping the scenery of the carriage interior disappeared, leaving all clear through the windows as well. The smoke spun off the west-facing side of the train like the updraft of a campfire, darkening the windows along that side, but it didn't matter so long as they had a clean line of sight to the guardian.

"Well," offered Sketch a moment later, "if nobody else is going to shoot it, I guess I'm up."

"I can handle that," Twilight began, but Sketch shrugged it off.

"I mean, I've got a magic arrow supply, so it might be more efficient...?"

"Will one of you just shoot it already!?" snapped Blue. "We don't exactly have all day before the next bea--"

The beeping rose again, sending most of the cabin diving for cover. Ocarina and Sketch's mirror shields flew up, and this time Twilight was treated to a front-row seat to the rare, surreal split-second display of a guardian's beam blasting through the carriage window, ricocheting off one shield, hitting and ricocheting off the second one, and shooting back out through the next window over.

"We all saw that, right?" murmured the Four in awe beneath him.

"That was so cool," whispered Ocarina, looking down at his own shield as if it had acted all on its own.

"Any damage?" yelled Mask. Twilight looked out to see him standing on the cannon car again, Wind busy behind him with a fistful of arrows. The smog outside the cabin had finally cleared, revealing Speck clutching some kind of pot that spun and vibrated like a peahat taking flight, sucking up smoke as quickly as the lingering flames could produce it .

Red waved a hand in the doorway. "Nope! Deflected it!"

Somewhere in the not-so-far distance, something exploded.

"It's also probably dead now!" reported Green. Another cheer echoed through the group.

"Are you all okay up front?" asked Gen, a moment later.

"We still have a driver, if that's what you're asking," said Vio. "And he's upright and talking, which is a start."

"It burned my hat," Steam lamented, loud enough to be heard. Twilight's position in line with the door gave him a glimpse of Speck consoling him with a pat on the shoulder.

"It also burned the train," Mask pointed out.

"Yes, but I can resummon that!"

The remaining twenty minutes turned out slightly less eventful.

Steam, as the group up front relayed, had been knocked into the wall by the third guardian beam and needed a red potion to resettle his head. They had him drink it at the controls -- partly because, in his concussed stupor, Steam had refused to be parted from his beloved scorched hat and stick shift, and partly because nobody wanted to risk the train running without a driver. The last thing they needed was to get past that guardian only to crash because the sole hero who could operate a train was out of commission.

Trees and countryside rushed past in peace, now, without even monster camps breaking the illusion of the land as something homely and rural more than empty and devastated -- though, Twilight supposed, it really was more rural than empty anymore. Since Ganon's defeat, and maybe for some time before it, Wild's Hyrule had been recovering: new villages had sprung up among the old like seedlings growing from the carcass of a log, green life pushing through to see the sun after a long and unkind winter. No one could say how long the regrowing might take, but it was more than a wasteland; he'd seen that himself. It would be a disservice to Wild and his people's resilience to brush off that healing so quickly, however hazardous his world had remained.

Still, Twilight's heart didn't quite calm until the blue chimney of the shrine came into view over the horizon.

Wild was already waiting for them by the pedestal, a comic picture of toe-tapping impatience. The others must have sent him early, just in case. Twilight caught him opening his mouth to speak, but the train let out another deafening whistle as it pulled to a stop, drowning it out and throwing Wild into a full-body flinch like a startled deer. He recovered well, though, the shudder channeling back into a frantic wave and grin.

"Sorry!" came Steam's no-longer-slurred voice from the engine car. "Force of habit! Also rules and regulations, but I don't think those apply here."

Getting out of the train car was a little easier said than done, given the crowding and the damage to the cars. Wind and Mask hopped off first, still at the front from manning the cannon, while Speck and Vio emerged from the engine car while Steam finished up whatever it was he needed to get the train safely in place. From there, the rest of the smaller heroes would still take a minute or so to exit single-file out the cabin doors, so for the sake of addressing Wild, Twilight opted to lean out the shattered window instead.

"Good to see you're still in one piece," said Wild. His eyes didn't meet Twilight's for more than a second, too busy with the herd of child adventurers piling out of the train. He took to the sight better than Twilight had back at the camp in the ruins, but his curiosity seemed to make up for it, drinking in the chaos of too many half-familiar faces. "... How many of these guys did you say there were again?"

"There's eighteen of us in all, but we're down a few," Lore explained. "Realm's unaccounted for, and you've got Dusk and Shadow."

Wild started a second time, his gaze jerking up to the roof. He opened his mouth as if to say something, and then shut it again.

"You could have mentioned the guardian on our route, cub," Twilight said, not bothering with another greeting. He followed the last few smaller heroes off the train, relishing the moment his feet hit solid ground. He wouldn't have gone so far as to kiss the dirt or anything, but the slight give of grass and real, unmoving earth under his boots still came as a relief.

Wild let out a nervous laugh. "Whoops. Guess it slipped my mind. Looks like you guys had it handled, though?"

Something wasn't right. Wild's fidgeting hands moved too quick and twitchy, like he was waiting for a fight to break out. Between that and the look on his face a few seconds ago, when Lore had mentioned...

"Champion," Twilight began, a little hesitant. "Is there anything... else you'd like to tell us about?"

The fidgeting stopped short, and Wild's hands folded together. The nervous grin stayed.

"Yeah, so... uh." Wild gestured to the shrine's central pedestal, then glanced over his shoulder as if checking for something in the distance. "There's some problems."

Twilight would have sworn, just then, that the northeast horizon carried a wisp of smoke.

Chapter Text

Not too long in the past...

Between the long, dull stretch of travel and the current lack of entertaining strangers to terrorize, Shadow had been more than prepared for boredom. Midna made a difference, of course, but apparently even Twili who did nothing all day but lounge around in other people's luxuriously carpeted shadows needed sleep, and Midna in particular had made it clear interrupting her beauty sleep, much like failing to pay rent, was forbidden on pain of death and subsequent eviction.

So, with no conversation partner and nothing better to do, Shadow had taken to sitting dully on the carpeted floor, arms crossed, listening in on the outside world between Midna's quiet snores.

It wasn't much. In the last hour, all he'd heard had been the crunching of pebbles and grass underfoot, the breeze, the occasional far-off wildlife, and one brief, inane conversation between Dusk and Wind. All in all, nearly as boring as watching Midna sleep, but again: nothing better to do. Even the stupid conversation dried up after a minute, so Shadow fell back into a state of vague oblivion in which all sounds melded into a bland, porridge-like mush of noise -- something not quite sleep, but not quite waking either.

He couldn't technically sleep the way mortals did, but he was near the closest state he could be to dreaming when, as if through a distant tunnel, he heard someone say his name.

He might have ignored it, but some half a minute later, he heard it again, and there went the napping session. The semi-pleasant oblivion faded away to crisp, boring reality in an instant, and Shadow grumbled -- albeit with only half the usual vitriol -- at the loss.

With a few second's consideration, Shadow decided he was, in fact, bored enough to get chatty and/or find something to beat the tar out of with a sword. Perhaps he'd take a fresh peek at the disgustingly sunny scenery, just for kicks. Climbing up into the ceiling of Midna's haven, he stuck his head out into the open air, like a dread sea-creature rising from the depths, and surveyed his surroundings.

Dusk and Wind had found some kind of inn, apparently, and the daylight visible through the open entrance had receded into a promising red-shaded sunset. The stink of hay and horse manure told of a stable nearby, mingling with the much more pleasant aroma of stewed meat and spices. The smell was enticing enough that, had Shadow needed food to sustain his form, he might have indulged in stealing some.

As it was, he had no chance to be discreet. He was already surrounded by the shocked faces of about a dozen well-armed young men, all rapidly taking notice of the figure of pure darkness climbing out of Dusk's shadow.

"Dusk!" one of them shouted, "behind you!"

"Where are we?" said Shadow, crossing his arms and exercising his nascent sense of courtesy by not stabbing any of the annoyances in the face. This proved to be a mistake, because not a full second later, a child ran up and skewered him from behind.

(Perhaps the warning had been misaimed.)

Now, had Shadow been a mortal hylian, and not a being of living darkness, the whole "skewered by an overly stabby child" thing would have been much more of a problem. The blade had run right between his ribs and through the left chamber of his nonexistent heart, which could have made him very dead. As it happened, Shadow was not a mortal hylian, so he simply rotated the top of his torso around to get a look at his attacker, instead.

Beside him, Dusk sighed. "You know, I'm not even surprised. I'm really not."

"Excuse you!" Shadow hissed, already reshaping his torso around the blade. It didn't actually hurt that much, but the intent couldn't have been any less clear. "Do you normally just stab strangers you don't like and ask questions later, then, or is this some kind of special treatment you give just to shadow constructs because you're all a bunch of paranoid dark-fearing nitwits?"

The child's face didn't quite ring a bell, nor the headband and the ridiculous patchwork shirt, but the determined look in the boy's bright blue eyes screamed Hero-type. The sword looked like it had seen better days, though -- it had a bent blade and a rag tied around the hilt, like it had been grabbed blindly from a blacksmith's repair pile.

Rather than reply, the child glanced down at the sword, as if surprised by its appearance (or more likely, Shadow's failure to drop dead.) In a single fluid motion, the child yanked the blade back out of Shadow's imaginary ribs to swing low at his knees, which were still more or less attached to Dusk's shadow. Shadow groaned and summoned a spectral black blade to block, rising smoothly the rest of the way out of the dark until his feet skimmed the floorboards with a flourish of black smoke. This made him look much more dignified, and also slightly taller than Dusk. Unfortunately, half the newcomers were taller.

In Shadow's peripheral vision, a man he assumed to be the innkeeper took cover behind a counter, and another passerby beat a hasty retreat from the doorway. Shadow silently awarded the former the title of Smartest Hylian in the Room, and noted the latter as a solid runner-up.

"Sky?" the child called out, "I think we need one of the better swords for this!"

"You honestly don't," Dusk interrupted, in a tone that might have been accompanied by a sigh and pinched brow if he hadn't given up on it about a dozen Midna shenanigans ago. "Sorry about the introduction-- this is, uh, one of the traveling companions I mentioned earlier. Please ignore him, he's just a nuisance, mostly."

"What the hell are you on about?!" one of the other travelers burst out. "That's literally the Shadow thing we were chasing! Y'know, the thing we were just talking about?"

The newest speaker looked around Wind's age, give or take a year (probably give), with a blue tunic and familiar sword, and-- actually, no, now that Shadow was paying attention, he didn't just look Wind's age so much as his spitting image.

Shadow sized up the travelers again -- the tallest, broad and solid, with half of Oni's blue and red marks across what could have been an older Ocarina's scarred, pointy-nosed face; the pink-haired swordsman with a face Shadow barely recognized between paler skin and a tired, sour scowl; Gen's memorable cupid's bow and soft, fluffed-up hair on a tall body a few pounds more solid than Shadow remembered -- the rest, unrecognizable, but disgustingly familiar.

"I stop paying attention for half an hour, and you've found more heroes already?!" he demanded, glancing over his shoulder at Dusk.

"I'll explain later," said Dusk. With a poorly stifled sigh, he turned back to the others. "Okay, so it's complicated, and I know this looks kind of bad, but--"

"Yeah, no shit it looks bad!" the pink-haired one snapped. "You knew you were traveling with this thing?! Just letting it hide out in your shadow like the world's worst parasite, this whole time?!"

"... yes?" The playful note in Dusk's voice was the only thing keeping all of his blood inside his body -- well, that and Midna, but Midna was a given.

"It's not like I'm the only one in there!" Shadow objected, pointing his sword at Dusk.

"Midna's asleep, she's not part of this." Dusk grimaced suddenly. "Or not. Nevermind."

"Wait, Midna?" asked one of the taller travelers -- one Shadow didn't recognize, whose tidy hair and flowing blue cape gave him the look of some clueless noble.

"We're sharing the space," said Shadow. "How and why is none of your business. Also, Dusk, if the short brat behind me isn't one of us, I am pushing him down a well or something later, and I hope he breaks his neck."

Said short brat took the opportunity to make another valiant attempt on Shadow's life mid-sentence, this time with a running leap and decapitating swing. Shadow ducked, letting Stabby's momentum send him hurtling across the room, but the boy caught himself in a tidy somersault instead of crash-landing, rolling to a disappointing stop at his allies' feet. At least Shadow got a few softly muttered curse words for his troubles.

"I wasn't asking you, shade," Cape Idiot snapped. "And if you so much as lay a hand on anyone here--"

"Am I the only guy here who doesn't get who this is?" asked the stranger near the cooking pot. (Shadow mentally noted him down as "Scars", for the ruined left side of his face peeking out behind his long hair.) "The shadow thing was all goopy and shapeshifted. I've got costumes that look like this guy."

"It literally just shapeshifted in front of us," Pink Hair retorted. "Or did you miss the part where he melted up out of the guy's shadow?"

"I though the shadow only took monster forms?" said the Gen-lookalike, sounding uncertain.

"More importantly," said the Oni-looking one, "Ord-- Dusk? Care to explain what this thing's been doing riding along in your shadow?"

"Being bored out of my skull, mostly," replied Shadow, more to annoy Cape Idiot than anything else.

"He's with me," Dusk explained. "We teamed up after-- well, it's a long story, but he basically showed up and announced he was part of the team, so we decided it was easier to just let him join. And if he knows what's good for him and behaves himself -- Midna's words, not mine--"

"You teamed up with a Dark Link?" shouted Cape Idiot again, living up to his new name with unmatched fervor.

"Yeah, it was a bit awkward at first, but--"

"A Dark Link? What the hell is that supposed to mean?" interrupted Shadow. "I'm the Dark Link, one and only, last I checked, unless someone's been summoning counterfeits!"

"A Dark Link, the Dark Link -- listen, none of us care," said Pink Hair. "Teaming up with a thing like that is a sketchier story than I've seen guys in caves draw on maps. Old Man? Captain? Anyone? Are we kicking his shadowy ass or not?"

"Alright," said Dusk, "I don't think you're listening, but I'm telling you, whatever you think is going on here--"

Shadow growled and rolled his eyes. It was a bit difficult to pull off without pupils, but he managed. "You just watched me take a sword through the heart and live. Are you too stupid to tell I'm impervious to your pathetic little blades, or do I have to spell it out for you?"

("Could you both stop interrupting me?" said Dusk.)

"You're not immune to light magic, are you?" Pink Hair shot back, shortbow already in his hands, as if Dusk hadn't spoken at all.

Pink Hair and Cape Idiot were both rising dangerously high on Shadow's mental hitlist. Nowhere near Ganon, of course, but considering the length of said list, any ranking high enough to note was quite high indeed. (Stabby Kid was also on the hitlist, at a few notches higher, but at least his dogged determination to kill the unkillable almost wrapped back around to endearing, in a stupid sort of way.)

"Okay, seriously, listen," Dusk intervened, a little sterner than before. "This isn't the Shadow you guys know. He's frequently unhelpful and a total menace, yes, but he's actually, technically, on our side."

"He's about to be technically full of silver arrows, if we don't get some really convincing proof in the next few seconds to back that up!" snapped Pink Hair.

"Even if he's not the same Shadow we've been chasing, I have a hard time believing he's friendly," the Oni-looking one agreed.

Shadow hissed. "I'll show you friendly--!"

"Can someone please explain, for the rest of us, who this thing actually is?" Gen's lookalike piped up, suddenly standing. "The Shadow, I understand, but a Dark Link...?"

"A being of dark magic," the Oni-looking one declared. "Meant to destroy whatever it imitates."

"Nah, they're more like puppets. Usually minions of Ganon or something," added Pink Hair, casually. "Saw an evil sorceress summon a couple once, but they were just cheap copies. This guy's worse."

"You met her too?" Cape Idiot asked. "Ugh. She's the worst." He gestured to Shadow with a free hand. "Mine were fairly smart -- they had tactics. Less mouthy than this one, though."

"Why you--" There were definitely words trying to come out of Shadow's mouth, but they were a bit too busy choking each other in a blind rage to resemble a sentence by the time they got there.

"I can second the minion of Ganon part," added Stabby Kid, who had once again learned to use his words. "Mine was, too."

"He's a minion of Ganon?!" The wooden spoon and pot lid in Scars's hands shouldn't have looked so much like weapons, but in the right hands, it appeared, they could. Dusk raised his voice to say something, but Shadow was a bit too far past caring to hear him.

"Didn't he literally just threaten to break someone's neck?" Another doppelganger chimed in.

Shadow growled again, this time in a way no other Link could manage while hylian. It was a low, guttural sound that promised a great deal of agony and death for anything unfortunate enough to hear it, and matched very well with his bared fangs and newly sharp-clawed nails. The doppelgangers snapped to attention, looking almost properly menaced. "Call me a minion of Ganon one more time, and I'll-!"

Pink Hair's arrow hit Shadow square in the chest, burning like sunlight given murderous intent, and Shadow's words strangled into a screech.

"Alright, that does it!"

Back in the present, Wild would say plan "get everyone together and figure out what's going on" had been going better than expected.

He hadn't expected Twilight and the newcomers to show up at the shrine before he'd even started off to look for them, but Wild wasn't going to question the good luck right now, because frankly, there were bigger things to be asking much, much bigger questions about. Questions like "how are we even in the same reality?", and "why are there so many of you?", and "so, quick question, is the Shadow actually with you guys or is your hero of Twilight just lying through his teeth?"

That last one came out as an actual spoken question. It probably could have been phrased a little better, but still got to the point, so he was calling that good enough.

"I knew we should have told them," said the redhead on the roof of the giant metal cart now parked by the shrine. The cart didn't look like Sheikah tech, but Wild didn't have any good guesses for what else it could have been, assuming the newcomers hadn't just brought it to his time period with them. Wild would've liked to see the portal that could fit that through it, though.

The tiny one with Time's bangs gave Twilight a pointed look. "What they don't know won't hurt them, huh?"

Twilight's expression grew tight, but the tension broke a second later into a sigh. "It could have been worse?"

"They're kind of trying to kill each other right now," Wild told him. "I'm not sure it can get much worse from here, unless--"

"Don't say that!" shouted one of the small heroes, dressed in blue. "That's like an invitation to make it worse, it's practically a narrative rule, everyone knows--ngh!" The red one next to him elbowed him in the side, cutting off the complaint. "Oh, come on, that wasn't even--"

"Listen, I just need to get someone over there as fast as I can before anyone else gets stabbed again," Wild continued. A thousand questions bubbled under his skin, but time was of the essence. "Who here is best at... negotiations and people stuff?" He'd be taking Twilight on the first warp run, obviously, but that left two or three slots open -- four, if he could manage the extra mass. Most of the new heroes were smaller than Wild was used to, which helped.

The group exchanged glances among themselves.

"Lore and I are usually the co-leaders with Dusk," began the one that looked like Sky, "but if we both go, and so does Twilight..."

"We can handle ourselves for five minutes," said the tiny maybe-Time, with a huff. "Just go before whatever's going on out there gets worse!"

As if it could hear them, the other Wind's blue charm let out a familiar chime.

At his hip, a split second behind, Wild's slate made a valiant effort to join it, screeching and gurgling through crossed wires and questionable compatibility. It almost sounded like a bell, if a bell had been caught in time and jittered back and forth like rabbit in a giant wolf's teeth while someone whacked it with a stick repeatedly. If the slate had a normal function that made that sound, he'd never found it, and he wasn't sure he wanted to, either.

Smaller Wind held his charm at arm's length, and it took more effort than Wild expected not to flinch, ever so slightly, at just how familiar he looked. This one was even more alike than Dusk was to Twilight -- barely any shorter, probably the same age, even with the same tunic and sword. Wild was starting to understand just what Impa and the rest must have felt, seeing Wild himself wandering into the world a century late like a stranger in their old friend's skin. (And a little guilt nestled in his gut, right after, because it wasn't like the kid could really do anything about it, not any more than Wild could have when he first stumbled into Kakariko.)

The charm glowed blue, retaking Wild's attention, and a hazy impression of his Wind's face appeared, jerking around and clipping in and out of view as scenery stumbled by in a rush. The sound through the charm's connection wasn't as clear as it could have been -- the entropic crackle of background chaos ate every other word -- so the message that came across sounded something like:

"Wild, where the--" (crackling, a loud snap) "-- are you?! You just--" (more crackling, the twang of a bow) "--disappeared! Smith and Captain flipped and Vet's gone all--" (the sound of something tree-sized hitting the ground, more crackling like the person carrying the charm had perhaps had to dash for cover) "--and said he's not to be trusted, but I think-- oh, sh--"

A muffled explosion tore through the end of the sentence, and the world inside the charm spun wildly between grass and sky for several spun seconds before Wind's face reappeared, intact but with a few more scrapes than before. An inhuman screech echoed from somewhere out of view, and the clang of metal resumed. Wind stood steadier now, righting himself, and the group caught a glimpse of flames and smoke as the camera bounced at chest-level with Wind's new sprint away from the chaos. "Anyway, I dunno what you're doing, but I really hope it's something useful, 'cause--"

Wild watched as Wind's head jerked to attention at something unseen, and he swore again, under his breath, but loud enough for the charm to pick up. There was a brief pause. Then the connection fizzled out, and the stone fell dark again.

"Oh boy," said another of the small ones. This one was small, straw-blonde, and wore green; this made him indistinguishable from about three or four others who were also small, straw-blond and wore green. Wild didn't bother trying to nickname him. "You guys should really get going."

"What is that?" Realm wondered aloud, squinting into the distance.

The fading sunset made it hard to tell, but he could make out the glow of something sitting on the horizon, with a shape sitting pretty between 'shaft of moonlight' and 'bonfire'.

"Looks too low to be a star. I'm... not sure?" Link replied. "But speaking of stars -- it's gotten late. My friends will be looking for me soon, if I'm not back." He winced. "I was probably supposed to be back before dark."

It was then that Realm was forced to make a decision.

While he was perfectly capable of sleeping out in the wilderness, since he'd been doing that for the last... two years, on and off? (Had it really been that long?), Realm did honestly appreciate, even prefer, the comforts of an actual bed with an actual blanket, especially one that wasn't soaking wet with muddy swamp water. The squelching grass beneath his boots did not look promising, and thoughts of sleeping curled up on his shield only alerted him to the fact he'd lost said shield. Again.

Putting that all into perspective, and considering that nobody had found him in several hours (which meant they were either nearly as lost as he was, or extremely busy), shelter at a nearby stable sounded quite nice. Who said staying put was the best way to be found, anyway?

"I don't think any of my friends know where I am, and I don't think they're going to figure it out in the next few hours at this point, so... would you mind, if I took you up on that guiding offer?" Realm asked.

"Of course," Link offered, with what Realm suspected was mostly relief. "It'll be no trouble -- well, assuming I can find it."

"You're more likely to than I am," Realm assured him. "So, which way?"

"I came from..." Link paused. "This side of the shore, I think."

He picked up a fallen stick from the ground held it out at arm's length, prodding at the muck, and drew a candle from his bag for better light.

For some reason, Realm found himself staring at the red wax and brassy candle-holder in Link's hands, unable to place the feeling they gave him. Something about them just seemed... familiar? Yes, that had to be it. They had that style of the candle-holders back in his own era -- which, now that he thought about it, he hadn't seen anywhere else.

New era, old customs. Perhaps this time period came after his own? There was a sort of comfort to the idea of having his own successor someday, Realm supposed -- knowing that the world he lived in would carry on, even after he'd finished his quest and hopefully grown old and died.

Link paused at the water's edge, and then suddenly frowned at the water. Realm got a good look at his expression by candlelight, just before Link very deliberately set one foot on the water's surface and cursed under his breath.

"I can't believe I forgot I had these on," said Link, with an already fading scowl. "I got mud in my socks for nothing."

"Do what?" Realm asked. Link tapped his boot against the water's murky surface again, and then stepped forward directly onto it.

The water held Link on its surface like an skater on ice: smooth, reflective, and perfectly solid. Only ripples through the surface and murk below outed it as perfectly ordinary swamp water.

"I was so caught up in wading I forgot I could just walk across," Link lamented to no one in particular, leaving Realm to gawk behind him. Rather suddenly, a number of puzzle pieces began to click together: the green tunic. The name. The sword and shield. A portable source of fire. And now magic boots.

He was beginning to feel a bit stupid.

"So you said your name was Link, right?"

"Yeah?" said Link. "Same as you."

"... you wouldn't happen to be the legendary hero of this era, would you?"

Link startled, and then gave Realm an absolutely baffled look. Alright, so that wasn't the most elegant way of putting it.

"Uhhhhh," said Link.

"You are?"

"Nope. Definitely got the wrong guy." Link shook his head, with a sudden nervous air Realm found he really did not like, because Link was very obviously trying to reach for his sword without looking like he was reaching for his sword, which put things about two wrong sentences away from having to fight him. Realm did not have the utmost confidence (or interest) in the idea of fighting another hero he barely knew, alone, shieldless, in rapidly approaching darkness, in the middle of a swamp, where his opponent could walk on water.

Looking back, personal questions had summoned a skittish evasiveness in the traveler, whenever Realm stumbled upon one -- he'd been willing to give his name, but not his companions' names, or where he'd come from, or much of anything else. Realm could respect him being the private sort, but it had grown just a little tiny bit concerning as the day wore on.

To add to all this: the kingdom, from Realm's extremely short and scattershot tour of it, had also seemed rather... empty, with what looked suspiciously like a mossy, decrepit Hyrule Castle standing ruined in the distance. The landscape had been notably full of abandoned, crumbling buildings. And skeletons. Sometimes even skeletons in abandoned, crumbling buildings. (Not Stalfos, either -- just plain dead people, all piled up in little bony heaps, like they'd been there a long, long time.)

The picture forming wasn't a terribly pleasant one.

"... okay then," said Realm. It seemed like the best idea for the time being. "I guess I just saw the magic and all, and your name is Link, so I thought..."

"The boots?" said Link. "Oh, that's not really-- I mean, they're enchanted, but it's not like spellcasting. I don't use my magic for them."

"You can use magic?" Realm blurted out, before his common sense could caution him.

Link made no effort to deny this tidbit, though, with a small, proud smile on his lips. "Well, I've learned a few spells, here and there."

"What kinds?" Lucky for Realm, Link seemed to relax at the change of topic. "Sorry, I just-- it's really rare to meet anyone who knows any magic, and I've um, I've been curious about it for a while, and..." A few of the other Heroes (Ocarina and Mask, Wind, technically Steam) had spells, but those were basically magical items or boons from the goddesses -- they didn't take much more than a bit of pointing and shouting to figure out the basics. Nobody else seemed to have much information about spell spells... if that made any sense at all.

"Oh, just a few that are useful," said Link, with a shrug that could have been false modesty or genuine bashfulness. "I can summon a shield? And there's one that just lets me jump really high, which is good for mountain climbing, I guess. And some others, too."

Realm fiddled a moment with his belt, gathering up his courage and channeling Lore to the best of his ability, then asked: "Do you, by any chance, offer lessons?"

"... I don't think I'd be able to teach you much in a single evening," Link answered, after a long, uncertain pause. "Speaking of which, I should really be heading back. If you're coming with me to the stables, we should go now, before it gets any darker."

"Oh," said Realm. Now that he was paying attention, it had gotten quite dark. The murky waters of the surrounding swamp loomed all the more treacherous in the dimming twilight, and he couldn't for the life of him remember which way Link had pointed him earlier. "Does it help at all if I wanted to try a specific spell? Like teleporting?"

By the look on Link's face, Realm might as well have just suggested challenging Ganon armed with a nothing but a small twig, or possibly bungee-jumping over lava with no rope. "Teleporting spells really aren't for beginners. I don't know any, either, so I couldn't help even if I wanted to. I'm just a traveler who's learned a few tricks, not a master mage."

"I'm not asking you to teach me the spell," Realm clarified. "I just want to know how to cast spells. Deliberately. And also how to stop casting them."

Link shook his head. "I'm not, in good conscience, helping a novice spellcaster try to teleport. There's far too many ways that can go wrong."

"I'm not exactly a novice," Realm argued, and Link's concern gave way to bafflement and frustration.

"Why are you asking me, then?"

"It's... complicated." Realm rubbed at his ears absentmindedly. "Technically, I can already do the spell -- I just don't have any control. Also, the one time I started trying to do it on purpose, I overdid it so badly I needed special counter-enchantments just to make it stop."

"... the earrings?" Link guessed, after a moment. Realm nodded.

"You can tell, then?"

Link shrugged. "They're really strong. I can feel the force of whatever counterspell you've got on them just by looking." His face grew a contemplative sort of look. "They're like weights or anchors, almost. Like they're trying to hold you down. If I pay enough attention, I can almost sense something trying to wriggle free."

"Oh, yeah, that makes sense," Realm replied. "They're anti-Wandering charms." He stopped, briefly, pulling his hand away from his ears. "That's what the spell was. Wandering, I mean. Or, the princess said I was Wandering, I think? I'm not really sure what the difference is supposed to be, but whatever it is, it means I sort of... accidentally teleport, whenever I try to travel somewhere. Very subtly. And also mostly at random."

"Oh," said Link, who seemed to be thinking to himself, now. "Hm."

"That's actually how I got onto this island," Realm continued, not minding the new one-sidedness. Old Men and dragons weren't much for conversation, so he had long ago learned to make do. "I took off the earrings for a bit to see if I could get somewhere more useful -- I've never even learned how to swim. It used to be I'd just walk places, and sometimes there was water around them. I've visited a lot of islands that way."

"Huh."

"Some of the islands are very nice, but I did keep getting stuck on one -- it was all alone in the middle of a lake, actually, and I have no idea why, but at one point it seemed like every other few steps I took ended on that same tiny little island. The scenery was beautiful, but the mood really started to wear off after the sixteenth or seventeenth time, I think."

"So..." Link proposed, "if the problem is just your aim..." He hummed thoughtfully to himself. "I'm not sure I can help you with stopping, but maybe I could help your targeting? Or at least, if I help you with casting, I could try to to fix your aim, and we could figure it out from there."

"Huh," said Realm. "That sounds like something worth a try."

The earring came off more smoothly, the second time -- with any luck, Realm was getting the hang of it. He winced as the backing pin pulled at the sensitive bits around the piercing. Alright, mostly getting the hang of it.

Link watched intently. "Do you need to take all of them off, or...?"

"One set should be enough," Realm decided, already undoing the second earring. With deliberate care and a chastising mental note, he slipped both earrings into his tunic pocket, then nodded. "Alright. I think I'm ready."

"Great." Link took in a deep, steadying breath, and then let it out again. "So, I've never done this before, but..."

Meanwhile, Farore's wailing could be heard all the way to the Sacred Realm. "No, no, no no no no no! Why are my babies fighting?!"

"I though the other ones weren't your babies?" asked Din, deepening an edge-of-the-world trench for extra Hero-proofing.

"That's not the point!" cried Farore, gesticulating wildly over the Reality Window. "I only took my eyes off them for a moment... Oh, and I was making progress with the shadow one, too! He almost felt appreciated! And loved!!" She paused. "Well, maybe not quite loved yet, but I was getting there!"

"Try giving some kind of sign he's one of yours," Din suggested. "A mark, or a flash of lightning, or something."

Farore shoved her face into her hands. "I would, but light in him is so fragile, I'm scared to try in case I might hurt him instead!"

Din raised an eyebrow. "Isn't he the most durable one you have?"

"Against normal things, yes! Against lightning and holy magic, not so much!"

"... Okay, so not a mark on him directly. Anything else?"

"Ughhh..." Farore groaned, peeking out between her fingers to keep watching the fight. "If I could do something like that trick with the swords again I would, but I don't have power over theirs, so it wouldn't make good proof, since they already don't trust mine..."

"You're sure they can't just fight it out until they're tired or something?" asked Din. She wasn't exactly at a loss, but each veto brought her steadily closer.

"I don't want them to kill each other! And they're too close to lead away from each other, either."

Farore sighed, fidgeting with an abstract set of species variations like a string of worry beads. Din put a hand to her chin, thinking for a moment as she looked over the unfinished, low-polygon landmasses on the far side of a river. "Maybe they could--"

"Wait! Fighting!" Farore straightened like an unfurled paper party kazoo, just barely sans the sound effects. "Din, Din you're a genius!"

"I am?" Din asked, brow furrowed.

Farore dropped the string of species variations and clasped her hands in delight. "If I can give them a fight against something else to bring them all together, I can make them all team up and trust each other long enough to stop fighting themselves, and tire them out enough not to try and kill each other afterward!, Oh, this is a great idea! I just need to figure out which ones to target, and what I can send their way -- oh, there's bystanders, so something a little less explosive maybe, but--" She trailed off into a flurry of muttering.

"Uh, okay then," said Din. "... Glad to be of help?"

Reality wove itself back together in strands of immaterial blue, and the smell of smoke didn't so much fill the air as punch Wild in the face, in the way a bokoblin camp full of suddenly-ignited bomb barrels might assault a lone traveler armed with totally unrelated fire arrows upwind.

"Wow," said the new hero that looked like Sky, stumbling forward off shrine's warp pad. Dusk had called that one... Gen, right? Wild made a mental note to ask him later. "That was almost as bad as getting teleported to the Twilight Realm."

"You've been there?" asked Twilight, sounding only a little surprised.

"With Dusk," the recently named Lore confirmed. "We all got cursed. I was a rabbit again, even. Though at least I wasn't pink!"

An upside of ferrying other experienced heroes: the shrines' warp system needed neither explanation nor careful hand-holding. The first time Zelda had wheedled Wild into taking her along for a test ride, she'd taken one look at the view from the top of Lakeside Tower, walked three wobbly steps, and thrown up over the railing. Twilight, on the other hand, hadn't been bothered at all since he'd first warped along as a wolf, and the newcomers (commentary aside) looked unfazed.

This was a very good thing, because not fifty paces from the shrine's warp pad was utter chaos.

Flames licked merrily at the wooden frame of the stable as the small crowd of regulars milled about outside, reactions ranging from apprehensive to furious. Malanya's effigy on the roof had caught alight from debris, and the blaze spat up through the central shaft like it had learned to breath fire. Beyond the building, a pair of stablehands rushed to the river, bearing buckets for an improvised fire brigade.

An untied mare ran past the shrine, whinnying in a panic; the local guide, Ami, jogged after her on his half-pint legs with a breathful of minced oaths, barely sparing a glance at Wild and the newcomers. The rest of the horses had been lead down to safety down by the river with the goats and cuccos, at least, with Rebonae bridge as the clear next path of escape -- thank Hylia for that.

Beside the local crowd stood a cluster of four heroes. Wild spied the glint of Legend's sword rested level and threatening on not-Twilight's shoulder as he engaged in a heated argument with Wind and Sky too far away to discern -- probably the same argument they'd been having when Wild had left. Not-Twilight's hands were raised in temporary surrender, but he seemed distracted by something Wild couldn't see. Lawdon, the stable owner, stepped forward from the crowd and grabbed Legend's attention, shouting something about damage to the premises; as resident hero, Wild had a sinking feeling he'd be the one paying.

All the ruckus at the stablegrounds seemed downright orderly, though, when compared to the other side of the road.

The neighboring footpath and field around the cliffs had become a battleground swept by wildfire and arrows, three heroes and the shadow fighting it out on the open ground. The flames had spread to several more battered trees (or at least, there were more trees on fire than there had been when he'd left) and scorched the grass around, but it did little to deter the battle raging on. Wild winced as a fresh wave of flames from Warriors' borrowed fire rod swept within arm's length of the stable fences. Maybe, just this once, more fire wasn't the solution.

"Alright, who wants to do what?" asked Lore, striding off the warp pad like he'd been teleporting all his life. (Which could have been true.) "I think either one of me or two of you should be enough to break up the fight, but I could also try charming the crowd, if you'd like!"

"I'd start with the fire," said not-Sky, surprisingly calm. "People will panic less once that's dealt with. Champion, Twilight, can you, uh, help talk to your friends and tell them we're not their enemies? I think they'll take it best from you."

"Of course," said Twilight, answering before Wild got a word in. "Lore, if you go out there, you mind lending one of us your ice rod? I don't have much gear for fire-fighting, and Gen's bellows didn't look like enough for one this big."

"I could lend you some frost arrows, too," Wild added, trying not to be left out. He didn't wait for a reply, already pulling out bundles of arrows from his bags, but not-Sky hummed and nodded, shading his eyes against the afternoon glare and squinting at the flames.

"That would be good," not-Sky said. "We'll probably need everything we can get."

"Well, if that's all settled..." said Lore, fishing an ice rod out of his bag and slapping it into Twilight's open hand.

Wild wasn't sure what he'd expected next, but Lore shouting "Break!" and dashing at full pegasus-boot speed across the road wasn't quite it.

"Alright, then!" Following Lore's cue, Sky's double took off at toward the stables -- at a gentler sprint, Wild would admit, but making good time down the path. Twilight followed apace, and Wild jolted forward out of his inaction to join them.

Lawdon's ranting grew clearer up close, and Wild winced, despite himself. He'd expected the fighting, but somehow, an irate stable owner seemed far more intimidating than a pile of shadows with a sword.

"--three weeks! Three weeks, since we've had this second floor built, and it's already been set on fire!"

The stable owner, as it had grown clear, possessed the voice of a man who worked with horses and with idiots -- one who knew how to hush down to the gentlest whisper, and when to boom like a hunting horn.

Dusk could appreciate that. He really could. It was just that in his current predicament -- stuck in the middle of several different arguments, half of which wouldn't even acknowledge each others' existence -- Dusk appreciated it slightly less. The part where Lawdon kept accidentally shouting straight into Dusk's ear wasn't helping.

I swear, when that little punk get back from his stupid rampage out there I'm going to--!

Midna wasn't helping either. She'd woken up about halfway through the whole mess, and the first thing she'd had to say about it was... not something he'd understood, admittedly, but which Dusk had no doubt was not acceptable in any polite company, particularly any that understood Darkling.

"Midna, as much as I more or less agree with you right now, there are kind of more important things to be dealing with!" hissed Dusk, aiming for a discreet enough volume not to sound like he'd gone insane, and missing the mark by several inches.

The tip of Legend's sword still rested on Dusk's shoulder, just a short flick from his throat, but Legend seemed frankly too preoccupied to make good on any leverage. Dusk wasn't completely convinced he'd had a plan to begin with, but any semblance of one had evaporated under Lawdon's tirade about damage payments, which came interspersed with more tender comments about the poor spooked horses, followed by tirades a few decibels louder about being careless with bombs and the danger of a stable fire to said poor, dear, innocent horses.

(That Legend, specifically, had not been the one throwing bombs did not seem to factor into the equation.)

Lawdon's butting-in had at least paused the previous argument between Legend, Wind, and Sky (Dusk had attempted to participate, but been mostly ignored), over what exactly they planned to do with the friendly doppelganger who'd been carrying their newest enemy in his shadow all day without mentioning it. Salient points had included his Master Sword's failure to respond to the others', his failure of communications, the mysterious teleporting and convenient excuse for such, and The Wolf Thing, which Legend and Sky had apparently both been initiated into, but had not expected Wind to know about.

Sky, who'd been mediating the argument in the way of one suspicious but hesitant to rush any judgement, seemed conflicted on the turn of events. He kept half-raising his hand when Lawdon finished a sentence, then lowering it again, as if he'd thought to intervene and then thought better of it. Wind's attitude, on the other hand, had swung from a vaguely put-out scowl to absolute, schadenfreude-filled glee at watching Legend get bullied by a man armed with nothing but a curry comb, a great deal of nerve, and an equally silly hat.

"Hey, we saw the fire-- can we help?"

At a finally familiar voice, Dusk had to stop himself from whirling around straight into Legend's sword. He instead turned his head as far as it would comfortably go, then turned the rest of the way with steady care, not taking his eye off the blade's edge.

Is that--? Midna began, but she didn't need to finish the question.

Gen, approaching from somewhere uphill, appeared mildly scorched and disheveled as one might from putting out at least two fires already, gust bellows tucked under his arm like a set of bagpipes. Wild followed a few feet behind him, a bundle of frost arrows in one hand and his slate in the other. And then, Dusk looked at the man next to Wild and blinked once, twice, then a third time, as if maybe blinking hard enough would clear his vision of the doppelganger standing in group's midst.

Dusk had understood, on some level, that he would be dealing with his double sooner or later, but -- well, maybe it was because of that awful fever dream at Lake Lanayru, but the sight still unsettled him, ever so slightly. He didn't let it catch him off-guard for more than a fraction of a second, though, at least in part because everything was still happening rather all at once.

"Do I look like I'm in any position to say no?!" squawked Lawdon, still (intentionally or not) at foghorn volume. At least this time, it wasn't in Dusk's ear.

"Champion, what the fuck do you think you're doing?!" said Legend, at approximately the same moment.

"Helping!" answered Wild, in the manic, far too cheerful tone of a man taking frantic refuge in audacity.

"We--" Legend spluttered, and his aborted attempt at a frustrated hand gesture might have taken Dusk's head off had Dusk not stepped slightly out of the way a minute ago. "I'm sorry, did I just hallucinate the bomb-throwing Shadow construct trying to kill us, or--" He cut himself off to stare at Gen, and this time the hand gesture would have definitely decapitated someone with slower reflexes. "Why did you bring another one of them?!"

"I brought the Ordonian with me, too!" Wild protested, gesturing to the doppelganger, who made a strained expression Dusk remembered himself making a lot more often before the Lakebed Temple. Dusk felt a vague pang of sympathy.

"I promise we can explain everything," said Gen, "but we really need to deal with fire and stuff first."

"And you're on board with all this?" Legend asked. Something in his tone made it clear the question was aimed at Dusk's double.

"We've talked about it already. They have their reasons for teaming up with an old enemy," said the doppelganger, whose name Dusk was going to have to use sooner or later: Twilight. Up close, he was a few inches taller, and though his voice sounded nearly identical to Dusk's (only a little lower and with an Ordon accent a touch thicker), it held an air of added maturity Dusk couldn't put his finger on.

(Are you jealous of yourself, little wolf? Midna's voice threatened to break into a full-blown cackle.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Dusk whispered back, gritting his teeth and praying the byplay would be swallowed by the chaos.)

"Hey, speaking of the fire-- you!" said Lawdon, rounding on Wild with such a renewed fervor as though he had never been interrupted. "The hero of Hyrule, they're calling you these days! One of the old knights! The princess's own guard! Of all people!"

Wild sighed the subtle sigh of someone facing down the promise of an arduous task, and possibly wondering why they had bothered getting out bed that morning. It was a sigh most Links knew well, and Dusk was no exception.

"Yeah, they certainly are calling me that." Wild raised the hand not occupied by a bundle of arrows to wave, almost timid. "I-- Listen, I'm really sorry about the mess. I'll have Zelda send you the rupees for repairs when I can, but I can't guarantee when I'll next see her... uh, but if you want wood, I guess I can just--?"

"Wood and manpower, if you please. If her highness's personal knight is going to go around causing this kind of trouble at our humble stables, then at least--!"

"It's not like we were the ones with the giant bomb," snapped Legend, regaining a measure of boldness now that Lawdon was in someone else's face than his own. "We're already doing you a service getting rid of that thing."

"Is this really the time for haggling, you guys?" asked the Wind who still needed a new nickname, throwing his hands in the air. "We're kind of in the middle of something here!"

"And I don't care to know who started it when my home and business are still in shambles!" countered Lawdon. "Make the shadow one help if you need be fair about it!"

"We might not even be here tomorrow!" Wind-in-need-of-a-nickname retorted.

"Then I guess you'll have to be quick about it! There's, what, ten of you?" Lawdon turned an eye back to Wild, and shot him a look along the lines of won't you get your idiots into line, already? Then his voice softened, as he added, "Speaking of, Link, I'm surprised to see you not traveling alone anymore--"

"Oh, would you look at that, I need to go back and grab the others! To, uh, get help and stuff!" Wild blurted, stepping forward and suddenly shoving his bundled arrows into Gen's already burdened arms. "Uhh, here, take these, gotta go, bye!"

And with that, he pressed something on the slate, and the whole crowd of them watched him dissolve into a mass of sparkling blue particles that vanished into the sky, like a stage magician vanishing in a puff of technological smoke.

"For the goddess' sakes', cub," muttered Twilight in the ensuing lull, almost too softly to hear. Louder, he added, "Again, we're really sorry about all this."

Lawdon scoffed. "I'd sure hope so!"

("Vet, we're trying to make nice, put down the sword," hissed Wind-who-needed-a-nickname, elbowing Legend in the ribs.

Legend, still looking less than thrilled at the idea, but finding no justification not to, lowered the golden sword to menace the ground instead. "If he was really one of us, she would have stopped us by now," he muttered back. "Isn't that right, Sky?"

Sky winced. "I don't know," he whispered back, too loudly to be truly stealthy. "I mean, his version of the sword doesn't--"

Wind rolled his eyes at Legend and elbowed him again.

"Sailor! What was that for?!" Legend hissed, trying to grab Wind into a headlock with his off hand.

"You guys are missing the point!" Wind wriggled free, and made a show of glaring at them both. "He's not just one of us. He's from a whole other world. Of course the sword is different!"

"You're missing the point where we're trying not to look like a disorganized pack of fools in front of-"

Dusk's eyes met Sky's over the ensuing mini-wrestling match. A silence passed between them, awkward on one side, and bemused on the other. Sky's eyes flicked back toward Gen, where he made an indecipherably baffled expression, like he'd been handed a horseshoe and told to predict the weather with it.

Dusk shrugged. He didn't have any idea either.)

"So, uh, the roof?" Gen asked again, holding up the arrows to re-orient the conversation around them. "We might be able to put it out faster than a water brigade, but we'll need some space."

Ah, yes. The fire. That was still happening, wasn't it? Funny, really, how easy it was to lose track of one's surroundings while being yelled at. Dusk glanced up at the blaze, where smoke still rolled up through the horse-head decoration like a strange, misshapen chimney.

Unfortunately for Dusk (and almost everyone else involved), the Fire Problem would not be solved before the end of the incoming scene transition.

Dusk would blame the smoke that blew in his eyes right about then for why he didn't see Shadow, just across the road, heft an absolutely massive bomb above his head, tossing it into the air with a wink. The ensuing blast rocked the ground a second later with yet another earshattering boom, the shockwave kicking a haze of dust and debris into everyone's faces, and Dusk wondered, vaguely, if between Lawdon and the bombs he would be half deaf by the end of all this.

"YOU BÕBMO-RAIDGENÕNSQU RAABÕDST!" Lore's voice echoed after it, somehow all the clearer despite the ringing silence chasing the explosion's tail. "WE HAVE TALKED ABOUT PROPER RESPECT FOR INCENDIARIES!"

"ARE YOU SERIOUSLY GETTING ON MY CASE ABOUT THAT RIGHT NOW?!" Shadow seemed determined to 'out-loud' Lore, to little effect but further irritation.

"THAT WAS AN INCREDIBLY WASTEFUL DISPLAY! YOU DIDN'T EVEN--"

Dusk grimaced and covered his ears, which didn't actually allow him the peace of tuning out the conversation, but at least muffled both parties down to an acceptable volume.

"What in Hylia's name is going on over there?" Sky wondered, just loud enough to hear over the ear-covering and ringing.

"That's Lore," said Gen, by way of explanation. Sky opened his mouth, then closed it, and pointedly did not make eye contact with his double. Dusk hoped that wouldn't be a pattern.

"Should we be... worried?" asked Wind, squinting at the pair of shouting figures in the distance. "What's he even trying to do?"

"He's doing what he does best," said Gen, a tired grin growing across his face. "Being the distraction."

Chapter Text

Well, thought Warriors, blinking the smoke from his eyes after a sudden dive out of range of a giant explosion, at least that thing's distracted.

The thing in question, wreathed in pitch-black smoke and an aura of menace not ten paces away, scowled as it parried Time's Biggoron sword and melted a step to the right.

"I can't believe you're getting on my case about this right now!" it shouted at the newcomer to the fight: a teen with a sword, embarrassingly familiar hat, and far too much moxie to explain his continued survival. "In case you haven't noticed, I am ever so slightly in the middle of something here!"

As if in emphasis, it jerked forward, distorting its torso to evade another of Fours' attempts to catch it by surprise, and swirled back together a few paces further away.

"The Subrosian Circle of Incendiary Materials doesn't care if you're in the middle of something, Shadow!" the newcomer retorted. His auburn hair bobbed like a chipmunk's tail as he spoke -- quick, sharp, and confident, brimming with wild energy and an accent Warriors couldn't place. "It cares about the proper honoring, respect and usage of explosives! Which that was absolutely not!"

Time went in for another charging lunge, aiming to drive the Dark Link (the Shadow) toward Warriors and the sacred blade in his hand, but the newcomer wandered right into his path like a fool tripping through a bomb flower field, without so much as a pardon.

Warriors had to give the kid credit -- it took skill to make a move like that look natural. That, or he was actually that much of an idiot, but that answer seemed less likely with each passing second. Mad intent gleamed bright behind the newcomer's eyes, and Warriors only didn't know what for.

"Fireworks are explosives, and last I checked you don't complain about those!" countered the Shadow, looking more irate by the second.

"Fireworks are designed for the spectacle!" the newcomer countered, weaving about to seamlessly block Four's next sneak attack like he didn't even know what he was doing. "Their purpose is still fulfilled without a target, and they fall under an entirely distinct set of bylaws!"

The argument would have been fascinating had Warriors been less concerned for the situation at hand. As it was, antagonizing a monster that could summon bombs the size of octoroks and blow half the roof off a stable sounded like a great way for the newcomer to end up dead, clever confidence and sword on his back or not.

Then again, the Shadow hadn't tried to kill the newcomer yet, which was more than could be said for the rest of them. And for all the hostilities, the teen acted like he knew that thing, the same way the fake Twilight had before--

Wait.

He'd heard that voice before.

The newcomer was one of Dusk's friends -- Lore -- and suddenly, it all made sense. Or didn't, since this was still a Dark Link they were dealing with, and it had still somehow insinuated itself into the other heroes' group as a member despite its nature. But one thing was certain: if Lore considered the Shadow as much an ally as Dusk did, that made him just as much of a threat. More so, if the kind of charisma and gall he'd oozed from his introduction meant anything -- this was one dangerous hero, and the last thing any of them needed was to give their opponent a helping hand.

But why come play the distraction now? As night approached, the Shadow's advantage grew -- were they stalling until the hour gave them the upper hand? Plausible, but that didn't explain Lore's presence. Even now, the Shadow wasn't weak, by any stretch. Their efforts in flanking the thing would have brought down most lesser foes long ago, and only the Shadow's unnatural swordplay, ability to teleport, and resistance to most physical harm had kept it alive this long.

Stalling for time wasn't like their enemy, either. There was a reason Warriors had boxed off the area with a fire rod before anything else, and it wasn't just because he'd missed the mark with bomb soot in his eyes. Their Shadow would have cut its losses and run by now, but this thing had chosen to stay put and on the offensive. Unless Lore was there to cover its retreat? It wasn't exactly retreating, though...

"And the point of my explosion was to--" The Shadow's voice jerked Warriors back to reality, fight-or-flight reengaging. He watched it throw its hands in the air -- exasperation, or an aborted overhead strike. "I can't believe I'm having this argument with you. This is ridiculous. Aren't you at least going to rag on them, too? For, I don't know, trying to kill me?!"

"Did they now?" Lore turned around to survey the rest of them, putting on a very good show of acting like he'd only just noticed all the unsheathed swords and attacks of opportunity. "Well, that's no way to treat a stranger, is it? Can I ask why?"

"I don't know what it's told you--" Warriors began, stepping in before the others could get led astray by Lore's maverick train of persuasion, but the Shadow interrupted.

"They started it!" it spat, crossing its arms like a tattling child. The swords still did not leave its grip, which made it look either faintly ridiculous, or like a deadly ball of living blades. The last few minutes pushed it toward the latter.

"... Yes, we did," said Four, suddenly just beside Warrior's off arm, forcing him to hold himself back from startling. He hadn't even seen him this time. Damned bomb soot.

Warriors scoffed. "What were we supposed to do, not take issue with a dark copy of one of us crawling out of your friend's shadow?"

"I didn't even stab you first!" the Shadow retorted, and jabbed a finger at Four. "You stabbed me first!" It managed to sound indignant about this, like it had deserved the first strike, and found their failure to allow it highly disappointing.

"Alright," said Lore, "so there was some stabbing! But what's a little stabbing between friends?" He gave the Shadow a pointed look. "Especially friends who are nearly indestructable and have a history of murder? And have also committed shameful crimes against explosives before my own two eyes?"

The Shadow gestured to the master sword, hands shaking with almost comical frustration. "They are trying to kill me! It's rude! And they called me a minon of Ganon, even!"

"We also tried to kill you the first time, remember?" Lore countered, as if this made things any better. Was he even trying to help now, or just sow more distractions?

Hell, the Shadow was distracted as well -- was this meant to be an opening? Was he aware of the threat after all, and acting as some kind of double agent? He'd gotten in the way earlier, but if he meant to protect them from it instead of the other way around--

"But fair point on the minion thing," continued Lore. "That is quite rude. What do you all have to say for yourselves?" He put his hands on his hips, staring down all three of them expectantly.

Yeah, Warriors wasn't sure why he'd thought this was going anywhere reasonable.

"So 'world's worst parasite' gets a pass, but calling you what you are is a step too far?"

The Shadow's eyes flashed like embers, and it seemed to loom all of a sudden, taller and thornier than before. Its claws twitched and spasmed. "I. Am. Not. That. Pig's. Minion."

"Fine," Warriors said. "Someone else's minion. Your own minion. We still know what you are, shadow."

"Perfect! You've already introduced yourselves, then," said Lore, now skipping blithely past the attempted murder. "And while your apology was somewhat lacking, you clearly understand the situation! Now we just need to get past the part where we all try to kill each other, and we'll all be eating kumquats around the campfire and singing camping songs together in no time!"

Warriors stared at him. "... You're joking, right?"

Lore gasped, (mock?) affronted. "I would never joke about kumquats."

Goddesses, this was a mess. Warriors gave Time a meaningful look, and whispered, "We're not actually humoring him, are we?"

Time didn't answer him.

"How many of your group know the truth about this?" asked Four, eyes still fixed on the Shadow. "You can't really think we're going to just... keep your secrets for you, after this."

"What?" said Lore, at the same time as the Shadow. The latter let out a sharp, bitter laugh.

"What?" continued Four, almost snarky. "Did you not think this through? Or..." -- his eyes flashed, and Warriors couldn't tell what color, but he could hear the way Four's tone changed mid-word, the sudden strain of panic as he processed his own conclusion -- "... do they all already know?"

"Yes?" said Lore. "Obviously?" He tapped his chin and stared at them all a moment, uncharacteristically nonplussed, then added, "Did you really think we were all trying to keep this a secret?"

Warriors rolled his eyes. "Unless you've somehow convinced a dozen other heroes that this thing is safe to keep around--"

"I mean, nothing is truly safe," said Lore. "Not even bombs." His brow furrowed, an expression Warriors hadn't yet seen on his face. "Wait, is that what you've been doing? Keeping a bunch of important quest-changing things hidden from each other just because you didn't think to share? Is that why you didn't know about Story Time when we talked on the pendant earlier?!"

"It does sound bad when you put it like that, doesn't it?" mused Time.

"How in the world do you get anything done?!"

Apparently Lore could still be thrown for a loop, thank the goddesses. That, or he was simply appalled by their lack of... what, baring their hearts to whatever strangers they befriended around the campfire after a few weeks of travel? Please. Even as a kid back in the war, Time had taken months to properly open up, and probably-future-Wind had kept his secrets for longer. Between nine of them, just thrown together on the trail? Fat chance.

"It does cause us our fair share of troubles," Time admitted, like the hypocrite he was. Was he playing along, or was he actually getting suckered in by all this? "We keep a great many secrets between us. Maybe a few too many."

"You can say that again," muttered the Shadow. Warriors restrained the urge to scream.

"But some things are secret for good reason," Time continued, "and trust like that can't... shouldn't be forced, unless there's no other choice. Those who are ready will tell us in their own time." His lip curled in a hint of a smile, and Warriors had a good idea what he was thinking of. "Even if we sometimes wish they'd get on with it already."

"Like your Twilight not telling anyone he's your friendly traveling wolf?"

... well, at least Warriors had an excuse to know about that, now. Not that he could have missed it. All those wolf statues in Cia's garden...

"... He has his reasons to be shy about it," said Time, more indulgent than defensive.

"Well, I can't imagine needing that, but I suppose if it means that much to you..." Lore shook his head, and any trace of contemplation vanished like sand-writing in the tide. "We'll just have to introduce you all to Story Time later, then! Don't worry, it'll be fun! We can go first so you don't all feel so intimidated, if that helps."

"So you are all in on it," said Four, ignoring them both. "All of you. You all know about the Shadow in your midst."

Ah.

And there was a bombchu shell, hidden in the tangent.

If a creature of darkness had fooled two heroes, bad enough. But all of them?

The Shadow managed to roll its eyes again, despite the lack of pupils. "Congratulations! That is, in fact, how not keeping secrets works! Are you done trying to kill me yet or not?"

Four shook his head. "You have to realize how dangerous this is," he began, addressing Lore directly as panic faded into conviction. "A creature made of dark magic--"

Lore grinned, still playing the fool, rolling his eyes like it was the simplest thing in the world. "Oh, come on now, Patches, we just talked about this! Just because Shadow's dangerous and commits crimes against explosives sometimes doesn't mean he's evil. Plenty of us have done that!"

Obviously, it couldn't be that simple.

Think, think. Lore was on the creature's side, that much Warriors could assume. Dusk, too, of course. Sky and Legend had an eye on Dusk, but Wind had seemed conflicted -- he might be swayed into helping him, given time. Maybe a diversion, then, to keep them from aiding the rest while Dusk escaped? But if the Shadow hadn't appeared, they wouldn't have even been fighting in the first place. Damage control, then; the Shadow didn't follow their orders, and now they had to bail it out.

That sounded plausible, but something was still off. If the plan was to get a loose cannon out of the action, the goal should be to shake off their attackers and retreat, not stopping to chat, distracting enemies and allies alike.

This wasn't a getaway, no. This was a diversion for something bigger. Lore was stalling, but what for? What could he -- what could either of them have to gain from a stalemate? What could--?

No. Of course.

He was an idiot. He was such an idiot.

An hour ago, Lore had been halfway across Hyrule. If he was here, Wild must have gone and picked up the group, the way they'd planned before the Shadow had revealed itself.

Wild, faced with the entire group of sympathizers and limited knowledge of the enemy, would easily accept a 'simple misunderstanding' or whatever lies the Shadow itself had fed them. Wind would be the same, once they arrived, Sky's conviction would be lacking, and Legend would be well outnumbered if he didn't play along.

Lore wasn't a distraction for this battle. This battle was the distraction. Lore had been stalling for backup, and Warriors had let him. By now, the newcomers could have turned half the chain to their side, and all the members of their group who understood the true threat were in one place, losing ground.

"You're all working with it. And now, you're all here," said Four, seeming to reach a similar conclusion.

Lore nodded. "Yep! Wild's ferrying everyone across right now. That part of things actually went to plan -- kind of boring, if you ask me, except for the fight with the -- what do you call them again, guardians? -- but anyway, the train was only about half on fire at most, and we still got here before dark, so that's basically to plan. Once we find what we're here for, we'll be out of your hair before you can say maku teer... but with how late it is now, it looks like we'll be staying the night!"

"... and what are you here for?" asked Warriors, not knowing if he'd regret the answer.

Lore shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine! Usually we defeat the incarnations of Demise from whatever time period we're in, and then just take the portal to the next Hyrule, but this is definitely new."

The what. "You don't even know what you're looking for?"

"Nope!"

Warriors narrowed his eyes. "Then why send your whole group, just to return one man? Just cut the act. What's your real goal here?"

Why should we trust a word you say?

"Wow," said another voice, from just off behind them all. "Twilight was not joking when he called you all 'kind of paranoid'."

Only long and bitter experience kept Warriors from whirling around to face the newcomer. He took a half step back, instead, angling his field of view to catch a glance at the speaker without losing track of the Shadow.

A boy stood behind them, sword undrawn. He had all the looks of a classic child hero: short stature (nearly Four's height), blonde hair with thick bangs and forelocks, wide blue eyes, the tunic, and yet again that goddamn nightsock hat Lana and Zelda had tried to wheedle Warriors into wearing back in the army "for morale". Only the color of his clothes -- purple, of all colors -- marked his departure from the archetype.

One of Dusk and Lore's group. There was no mistaking it.

"Hello," said the boy. "The name's Vio. I'm sure Lore and Shadow have introduced themselves by now."

Four visibly flinched at the new hero's name. Warriors filed away a mental note to follow up on it, but kept his eye on Shadow first and foremost.

"And you are..." Vio continued, glancing between the three of them, eyes skipping right over Lore and the Shadow. "... Huh." His gaze stopped on Time for a moment. "Oni's parallel, maybe? Or Mask's? And..." (he looked to Four now) "... one of us, I guess; you've got all our colors." He waved a hand at Warriors. "No idea who would wear that cape, though."

"It's a perfectly good cape," Warriors found himself saying, and then regretted rising to the bait. (He really should have been used to taking sass from twelve-year-olds by now.)

"Eh, kind of gaudy, if you ask me..."

"It brings out his eyes," countered Lore. Warriors did not know how to feel about this.

"Mine is better," the Shadow added, and Vio rolled his eyes.

"Yours has 'death to cows' written on the back of it."

"Exactly."

Warriors groaned, and fought the urge to mash his face into his palm. He focused his glare on Vio instead. "Are you really going to look us in the eyes," he asked, searching for some sign, any sign of reason or better nature he might appeal to, "and tell us this thing isn't a real threat?"

"... yes?" said Vio.

Forget it. Warriors didn't know what he'd expected. This was insane. None of these heroes could possibly believe that they'd be taken at face value, but they just carried on like they really thought he would believe them.

That thing was blatantly evil, yet here they were, treating it like a local curmudgeon. It could have threatened to gut him head to toe, then and there, and they would have laughed it off like a joke. Had they honestly all lost their damn minds, or were they really so naive?

"Captain. Smithy." Time stepped past Warriors with his sword lowered, gently shouldering him aside. "I hate to say it, you two, but... we might not have made the right call."

What.

"Oooh, we might not have made the right call," the Shadow mocked, still armed and bristling. It manifested another arm from black goop to make a free hand to puppet along with the words. "Goddesses, you people are insufferable even when you aren't trying to kill me."

"Old man -- Time, you can't seriously believe--!" Warriors found himself, for a brief and ignomonious moment, reduced to inarticulate gestures back and forth between the Shadow (still armed to the teeth) and the burning building behind them.

Time at least had the decency to look chagrined. He sighed. "It may be dark magic, but we were first to unsheathe our blades. It would seem our assumptions might have gotten the better of us."

He cast an aside glance at Warriors, then added, like a traitor: "... And calling that thing names didn't help."

"Assumptions or no, we still have no good reason to trust it!" Four countered. Rare for him, to dissent with their de facto leader, but if there ever was a moment, if would be now. "Just because it's won them over for now doesn't mean it's not a threat. Dark magic is deceptive and cunning, and Ganon's not the only evil around. You all realize that, right?"

Time gave Four his 'stern fatherly disapproval' look, just for a moment -- not so long as he might have with the older heroes messing around, but enough that Warriors expected Four to back down, or if nothing else, flinch away. Four did neither, meeting his eyes in silent challenge.

"If you're still worried about him actually trying to kill anyone, he's been with us for weeks and his total non-monster-or-Ganon body count is still zero," Vio informed them. He paused, looking thoughtful. "Well. That we've seen. I suppose he could technically have killed someone and just hidden it really well. But then, anyone has the potential to do that. I could do that. I probably would hide the body better, too. And actually come up with an alibi."

The Shadow scoffed. "What would I need an alibi for? If I kill someone, I think you'll all know about it, thank you very much--."

"And if you're worried about him trying to kill us," Lore declared, gracefully rescuing the pair from an argument about the merits of decoy to-do lists and shallow graves, "I'll have you know he hasn't actually tried to kill any of us since..." (He put a finger to his chin as if thinking it over.) "... You know, I'm not sure he's actually tried to kill us at all since he first joined us! I mean, aside from the collateral damage."

"If I wanted them dead, I've had plenty of opportunities," supplied the Shadow, with a wide, malicious grin.

"Yeah, and he's mostly just done things like buy a ridiculous cape and start feuds with cuccos," said Vio. "He's basically one of us now."

"Hey!" the Shadow objected.

Time raised an eyebrow. "Cuccos?"

"Cucco gang, very serious business." Lore delivered this claim with the same ineffable confidence he had everything else so far. This offered no clues to its veracity.

"Bob is not an enemy to take lightly," the Shadow added with a disdainful sniff, and then it hunched into itself again, still armed and bristling. "Anyway, as flattering as all this talk of deception and cunning is, I've already told you I'm here for revenge on Ganondorf and company's sorry asses. What would be the point of trying to kill the heroes I'm traveling with? I need those portals as much as they do. Also Midna would kill me."

"She is probably going to try and kill you after this," confirmed Vio, and there was not enough time in the day to unpack that.

"Portals?" said Four, which was fair, because anything involving involving the Shadow and portals was a red flag big enough to make the rest look like little handkerchief pennants.

"Yeah, y'know, the holes this lot have been traveling through," the Shadow clarified, waving a hand at Lore. "Some sort of Demise nonsense, ripping up reality and all that. Anyway, since they're fated to run across all the fools on my to-murder-painfully list, and also I live in their reality and would like to keep doing that, I've been hitching a ride."

"It has a to-murder-painfully list," Warriors repeated, giving Time a look of his own. A slightly hysterical part of him was still waiting for sanity to return and the fight to resume, because there was no way anyone should have been taking this seriously, even himself.

"Who doesn't have a to-murder-painfully list?" said Lore.

Four grumbled something generally displeased in Time's direction, paired with an emphatic hand gesture and meaningful, borderline mutinous look.

"Darkness alone is not the same as evil," Time returned, though Warriors could hear the wariness lurking in his tone. "If all of them know exactly what he is, and they're vouching for him regardless... I think we can give our fellow heroes a little credit, here."

"Like you believed any different a minute ago," scoffed Warriors, as much on reflex as for any real dispute.

"Fair," said Time, with half a smile, "but it's still true, isn't it?" His hands offered another story, as he turned and locked eyes with Warriors and Warriors alone.

Hylian military sign didn't carry much room for complexity, but outnumbered; possible trap, caution; stand down, negotiations told him plenty.

Too many to be worth fighting head-on. Trust them for now, but stay wary. See if talking works. Fight as a last resort.

Keep your friends close, and enemies closer. Warriors could, unfortunately, see Time's line of reasoning.

Above them, the twilit sky broke into thick clouds, and a moment later, began to rain. Lore was first to look back across the road to the fire; Warriors followed his eye, and rest followed after.

Not far from the already dying flames, Wild had brought back another group of heroes, mostly Vio's age, or maybe Wind's. In the middle, on twin instruments, two played. The sound reached Warriors' ear just before the rain drowned it out -- a sweet and lively waltz on a pair of ocarinas. He'd heard Time play it before, though he didn't remember the name.

"So? Are we over the 'trying to kill each other' thing, or not?" prompted Lore, tapping his foot in the quickly softening mud of the torn-up field. If he'd had a pocket watch, Warriors was sure he would have been checking it for comic effect. Lore didn't seem to do anything by halves.

"I'd call a cease-fire, if my companions would be so kind as to join me." Time put a hand on Four's shoulder, slowly at first, like a stray cat that might startle, but Four only grimaced and lowered his sword, just as slow.

"Oh, good," said Vio. "I was starting to think you'd be out here all night."

Warriors lowered his own sword, not sheathing it (too dirty, ugh), but pointed to the rapidly soggying grass. "... I'll stop fighting if your Shadow stops trying to kill us."

The thought that an abomination of dark magic like that thing could be counted as one of them... Hylia, it still put a bad taste in his mouth, but he'd have to swallow it for now. Whenever the rest of the newcomers' group showed up, his brothers would be outnumbered, and they weren't making any allies here without it. At least negotiations gave them a safer point to proceed from, and didn't put them on a warpath with their own.

Four glared at the ground for a moment, muttering to himself, and then said, "If this goes wrong, I get to say I told you so."

Warriors sympathized. Lore nodded enthusiastically.

"Well, it's settled, then!" announced Lore. "Welcome to the group! Now let's get back to that stable and see what we can do about fixing the place up, shall we?"

"Ugh, finally." Vio glanced back over his shoulder at the crowd across the road. "At least now that's over and done with. The other group is a mess right now, and we still need to figure out where Realm ended up."

And then, from some distance through the rain, came a terrible, earth-shaking thud.

From the way things had been going so far, the stage had been set for a slow, uphill struggle full of unnecessary tension, misguided right hand against left, soon to settle into an uneasy parley and begrudging, delicate peace. Returning plot threads, however, cared little for such things, and plowed merrily through conflicts as they pleased.

This was to say: Farore had had a plan, and she had executed it to the best of her ability, with the limited tools she had to hand. And of all her incarnations, much to her great chagrin, the one most in tune to her will was still the most directionally challenged adventurer to walk Hyrule since Linkle, and he had just tried to teleport on purpose.

And of course, he was late. All Links frequently were. In this case, he was late for the goal of forcing teamwork upon his stubborn and unnecessarily hostile reincarnation-counterparts, by giving them a boss enemy to unite against and battle side by side.

That was not, however, to say he had failed.

So, while Warriors, Time, and Four begrudgingly began to accept the possibility of a Dark Link that was only half murderous instead of completely (and Shadow moved from enacting his grudges to merely nursing them like a glass in a dimly lit milk bar), and Legend was busy getting complained at by several different people while Wind (the older one) surreptitiously kicked him in the shins, and the other heroes collaborated in the valuable goal of Making The Stables Not Be On Fire--

Enter: Realm and Link, pursued by Hinox.

The Eventide Island Hinox, which had been woken from its nap all of two minutes ago by a pair of very surprised hylians, did not understand why it was suddenly no longer on an island, but it felt very strongly about both of these things -- the island and the nap -- and insisted on making those feelings extremely clear to everyone within a hundred foot radius.

Said radius was veering dangerously close to the edge of the stable's perimeter, and made all the more dangerous by the fact nobody had been expecting a hinox within a thousand feet of the stable without advance warning, let alone a few hundred.

By the smouldering side of the support pillars, still in the middle of directing the lingering fire brigade, Lawdon's eyes went wide, and he fell silent for a moment to stare. A hush swept the crowd next like a sharp breeze, followed by a ripple of panic.

Meanwhile, Realm and his new friend had just teleported in six feet off the ground -- a new literal high and disastrous almost-low for Realm. Both took the landing with as much grace as could be mustered, which was not much, all things considered.

The pair were, by now, a tad worse for wear: one of Realm's boots had parted ways with him in a sand dune shortly before some sort of giant lizard-thing had burst out of the sand and nearly swallowed them both whole, and his hat had a lizalfos arrow caught in it from a gut-dropping near miss, while the hem of Link's tunic had been singed a bit by a brief lava-skirting detour through what might have been Goron City but had been too hot to stick around in and ask.

None of these problems would be fixable for some time yet. The pair had hit the not-so-forgiving ground in a tangled heap; their priorities, in order, were 1) not dying, 2) finding the stables (or another hero -- whichever came first), and 3) anything else.

Realm tried to get his feet under him, but as soon as he did, the world flickered and threatened to disappear from under him, just like it had the last several times. None of them had been particularly helpful. To forestall this, Link grabbed his wrist, quite firmly, and a pulse of magic scolded Realm's own to sit still for a just a moment, which miraculously worked and kept him in place long enough for Link to stagger to his feet, hoist Realm over his shoulder like a sack of rice, and start running.

"How much distance do we need to leave it behind?!" Link asked, putting on a burst of speed that sorely wanted for a pair of pegasus boots. Realm shrugged, then remembered Link couldn't see him.

"At least a few--" Realm considered. "Well, I'm not actually sure! Just keep running, I guess!" Narrowing his eyes through the rain, he added, "I think I see something up ahead!"

It was difficult to make out details by the fading evening light, as the dark and the rain made the stables little more than a murky shadow in the distance, but the group ahead of it was slightly clearer by virtue of being very loud and shiny.

With his new friend over his shoulder and a pissed-off miniboss in hot pursuit, though, Link was a bit too busy putting some meager distance between himself and the Hinox's log-throwing range to do much more than shout "Incoming!" through the rain and hope any poor souls in their path got the message. He tore on past the group gathered in a nearby field, headed for the general direction of the river and smouldering stables, Realm in tow.

"Oh, say, is that Realm over there?!" cried Lore, suddenly distracted. "I knew we'd find him eventually! HI REALM!"

Realm, who was not focusing on running and thus had a somewhat better view of the situation at that moment, leaned over and shouted "HELLO LORE AND ALSO EVERYONE ELSE THERE'S A GIANT BEHIND US SO YOU MIGHT WANT TO RUN TOO" at the top of his lungs as they passed by. The volume shouting right by his ear made Link stumble briefly in surprise, and let the Hinox to gain a few feet on him.

"So, good news and bad news," Realm continued, this time talking to Link. "Good news, my friends are here! ... Also good news, I think this might be the stables!" He frowned. "Bad news is also that this is a stable, and, you know, we're still being chased. It would be really bad if the giant stomped on all the horses."

"Oh, don't worry, the horses were already evacuated!" yelled Lore, who could still hear them, somehow.

"What?!" asked Link, who had quite frankly not processed even half of all that.

"Traveler?" called a voice from nearby. Realm wriggled around in his potato-sack position on Link's shoulder to find one man from the cluster of strangers near Lore staring at them, eyes shaded from the rain with one arm while the other gripped an unsheathed sword.

"We're at the stable," Realm repeated, for Link's benefit. "Or, a stable, anyway, I think. And my friends are here!" He squinted into the rain. "... maybe some of your friends too? And also the giant. Which is bad, because other people might get crushed if we're not careful."

Not far away enough for comfort, the Hinox had slowed to investigate a nearby copse of trees. The shapes of the branches seemed to confuse it, as did the concept of branches in general. It had not left its island since Ganon's return a century ago, and found itself rather out of practice with any trees that did not look like palm trees. Link slowed as well, watching it hover a meaty fist over several trees indecisively.

"This does look about right," confirmed Link. "Smells like woodsmoke, and I think that was the big river back there." Then he spun around to face the group. "Wait, old man?"

("They don't all have to call me that," groused Time, under his breath and unheard. "I don't even look that old.")

"Captain?" Link continued. "Smithy? What are you all doing out here with...?"

"Long story," replied the tallest stranger, a man in heavy armor Link certainly hadn't mentioned before. "Who's your friend?"

"That's Realm, he's one of ours," said-- oh, hey, Vio was here, too. And Shadow.

Realm waved from Link's back, twisting around to get a good look at everyone. "Hello! Is everyone else here, too?"

Two of Link's friends exchanged a look. "They'd better be," snapped Shadow. "You've all been taking long enough to get whatever this is sorted out."

The moment Shadow spoke, silence filled the air. Then several things happened all at once:

Link's eyes went wide as he dropped into a battle stance, reaching for his sword, and shouted, "All of you! Look out!"

Realm, still slung over Link's shoulder, got in the way. Instead of drawing the magic sword in a single clean swipe, Link got it about six inches out of the sheath, and Realm got a face full of gem-studded crossguard.

The armored man raised an arm, calling: "Traveler, wait--!"

"Are we seriously doing this again?!" cried Vio.

Last but not least of all: the Hinox, having finally gotten over its indecision, grabbed a thin elm in its meaty fist and ripped from the earth.

"Ow! Sorry!" yelped Realm. "Should've moved. But, er, why are you--?" His eyes followed Link's line of sight to Shadow. "... Oh. Right, so, funny story..."

"For crying out loud," Vio was still complaining, quieter but just about audible over the rain. "We just established a ceasefire, and now you're already ruining it--"

"Don't worry. I know what that is," said Link to Realm, with surprising calm. "It's a dangerous foe, but we've got it outnumbered."

Link made another move to draw his sword; Realm, realizing the position he was in, clamped his free hand over the crossguard, keeping it sheathed on purpose this time.

"What are you--? Stop that!" hissed Link, reaching both hands now to try and wrestle his sword free of Realm's grip.

"Okay, look," said Realm, "I don't really know how to explain this right now, but Shadow isn't--"

"Realm, trust me, I've faced this thing before," said Link. "It's no common monster, I already know that."

"Well, no, that's not what I meant at all, but-- wait, what do you mean you've faced him before?!"

Link opened his mouth to answer, only to choke on a gasp at the sight of something Realm could not see. He dove aside, nearly dropping them both into the mud.

The Hinox's log hit the ground with a tooth-rattling crash, tearing a gash into the mud-slick earth not three feet from where they'd both stood, and, arrested of perhaps half its momentum, tumbled end-over-end toward the rest of the gathered parties.

Lore, as the nearest, got out half a syllable of what was probably supposed to be "Break!", only to be tragically interrupted by a mouthful of stray elm.

(The others understood what he meant.)

"We need to get it away from the stable!" declared the so-called Old Man, deflecting a flying branch with his bracer.

(In Realm's opinion, he looked nothing like an Old Man -- maybe middle-aged at best -- but regardless, he was clearly some kind of leader to Link's group, already stepping forward with a decisive air. Maybe he was also the Captain? It hadn't been terribly clear.)

"Time to get its attention?" suggested the one in the blue scarf, whipping out what looked suspiciously like Lore's fire rod.

"I'm with you," said the small one. "Toward the shallows?"

"Where else are we going to lure it?" snarked Blue Scarf.

"Riiight. You all have fun with that," said Shadow. "I'll be--"

"Shadow, just participate for once," groaned Vio, putting a hand to his face. "You can complain all you like, but we clearly need a show of goodwill with these people."

Vio gave Blue Scarf and the small one the stink eye. Neither of them responded to the jab, though Blue Scarf rolled his eyes.

Shadow grumbled several things too low to distinguish, and then, with a heavy sigh, settled on, "You'll owe me for this."

"Name your price," said Vio.

"They have to apologize," said the Shadow, "and get me a new cape."

Blue Scarf made a spluttery noise. "We already--!"

The Hinox roared again, as if personally insulted by the way the scene had been ignoring it.

Speaking of: the Hinox. It wasn't a terribly impressive Hinox -- only a simple blue-ranked one, whose only enemies for quite some time had been mostly tropical wildlife, rogue bokoblins, and on one noteworthy occasion before the last blood moon, a screaming naked hylian.

The hylian had, admittedly, won that match. The Hinox would blame the bokoblins and moblins who clearly hadn't picked the fruit trees clean enough or guarded their cookpot properly; otherwise, the hylian should have died in one hit, or maybe two if it was lucky, rather than running around with the sort of maddened vigor that could only come from three straight servings of boiled durian and spite.

The Hinox had been since reinvigorated with new blood, though, so to speak, and had also begun to refresh its memory on non-tropical kinds of trees, although its choices left something to be desired. Wrapping its fist around a somewhat more solid young oak, the Hinox gave a tug and grunt of frustration. Stupid deciduous trees with their thick, uncooperative roots. Palms didn't do this sort of nonsense. What a pain.

"Oh, come on-- We don't have time to argue about this!" snapped Vio.

"How dare you! You ridiculous oversized Eyegore!" Lore shouted, much louder than anyone else. He spat out another chunk of bark in the Hinox's general direction, blood running in a thin line down his chin. It was too far off to tell if he was missing a tooth. "You interrupted me! In the middle of my thing!"

"Apology, cape, and I get the first helping of whatever scar-face was making for dinner," Shadow declared. "And Lore doesn't complain about what I do with my bombs for the rest of the fight."

"I have absolutely no power over that last one," said Vio, "but you can certainly try and see what happens."

"Eh, good enough," said Shadow, and lobbed a fist-sized bomb at the Hinox's face.

The bomb exploded on impact, just barely missing the Hinox's huge, sideways eye. The Hinox grunted in surprise, squinted, and seemed to realize at last that there were several more tiny hylians running around than it had initially observed. A great deal more, in fact. The woods near their strange bonfire was downright teeming with hylians, all locked in some sort of squabble the Hinox suddenly did not care about as much as before, because Lore had just gotten close enough to start swinging at its legs.

Another earthshaking thump rattled the crowd as the Hinox tried to turn Lore into a ginger pancake. Lore dodged, rolled through a bush, and narrowly avoided collision with a still staggering Link and Realm. Link had finally managed to unsheathe his sword, while Realm continued more or less holding on for dear life on Link's back.

"Quite the giant you've picked up here!" said Lore, conversationally.

"Yeah, we found him on an island." Realm ducked as an arrow shot overhead, embedding itself in the Hinox's knee. "Actually landed right on him. He was not happy about us interrupting his nap."

"You!" cried Link -- that was to say, the Link currently giving Realm a piggyback ride. He pointed at Lore.

"Me, yes!" said Lore. "I'm Lore. Did I introduce myself yet? I feel it might have gotten lost a bit in all the fighting. Anyway, you?"

"Who are you?" replied Link. Lore wrinkled his nose.

"Rude," said Lore, "and I just told you, I'm Lore. This is Realm-- he did tell you his name at least, right?"

"I did," confirmed Realm.

"No, I-- who are you all?" demanded Link, gesturing vaguely back at the crowd in the field, who had begun their own advance.

He and Lore both dodged another meat-fisted slam from the Hinox, which roared as an arrow from one of the other heroes hit just inches from its eye. The Hinox turned around and got to stomping towards the newcomers, giving the Lore, Link, and Realm all a bit of breathing room.

"Whatever do you mean?" asked Lore.

"We're heroes," explained Realm. "All traveling together, long story--"

"You're what?!"

"Did he really not tell you about that?" asked Lore.

"Would you believe me if I said it never really came up??" said Realm.

Link moved to put his face in his hands, then regained a sense of situational awareness regarding the whole bombs-and-arrows-still-flying thing, and thought better of it. "Your name wouldn't also happen to be Link, would it?"

"Yep!"

Link very nearly reconsidered the face-in-hands maneuver. Had he been a hero of lesser restraint, he might have gone through with it, situational awareness be damned. "I can't believe it."

"Can't believe what?" asked Realm, tentatively.

"I thought when you first told me your name you might be a Hero, but I guessed you weren't because there's already a hero from this era, and-- ugh." Link shook his head. "Goddesses, this is stupid. How many of you did you say there were again?"

"Sixteen or so," said Realm.

"Sixteen?"

"Or so. The number's a little wobbly because some of us are several people at once."

"..." Link opened his mouth for a second, shut it again, and then said, "Alright, we can talk later. There's too much going on right now, and the Shadow is still on the loose--"

"Shadow is friendly," said Realm. "I thought I literally just tried to explain that."

"Well, last time I saw that thing it stabbed me in the gut, so that's news to me," said Link.

"He's one of us now," Lore explained. "He may be a complete menace and squanderer of sacred combustibles, but now he's our complete menace and squanderer of sacred combustibles, and that means no killing him."

Link very briefly made a very specific face. It was a face Lore had grown used to seeing upon allusion to topics like the Subrosian Circle and Holodese Blockading Laws et al outside of their respective kingdoms, or really just to most of Lore's Lore-ness in general, and one he now took in stride: a sort of vaguely concerned expression silently questioning the regarded's sanity, typically followed by keeping a minimum fifteen foot radius of safe distance from the regardee on all future interactions.

Then he shrugged, nodded, and said, "Okay. Sure."

"Wow, you're taking this way better than your friends did!" shouted Green, running past them. He stopped just long enough to add: "Does one of you mind being a Distraction again for a bit? The others are trying to lead your big monster away from the stables and it's not very interested in doing that. Any mirror shields are a plus!"

"My time comes once again," said Lore, straightening up to his full height (not very tall, given he was a Link.) He stuck two fingers in his mouth and blew a shrill whistle nearly on par with Gen's, then dashed off a few degrees east of the Hinox, which was currently being kept away from the stables by three bows, a boomerang, and whatever explosives Shadow could summon up. "ALL RIGHT, LOOK OVER HERE YOU ENO-DEEY LÕMPU FO DEEMÕLT ABDEESÕX! PERFECTLY SMASHABLE HYLIAN, COMING RIGHT UP!"

Whatever he said after this went unheard and untranslated, lost in the rain, wind, and general level of nearby screaming and roaring.

"So, er," said Realm. "Do you mind helping us out? Normally I'd be running around as the distraction myself, but obviously right now that's kind of..." He nodded his head vaguely in the direction of his boots.

"Of course I'm going to help," said Link. "Why wouldn't I?"

"Well, I mean, not all of us are suited to the role of the Distraction, since it's kind of a--" Link took off toward the Hinox, and Realm yelped, nearly bashing his face into Link's scabbard again. "Right, right, okay, monster now, talk later!"

Up ahead, the combined groups of Links had already made progress diverting the Hinox onto the path of least destruction. Mask, Dusk and another hero Realm didn't recognize rained arrows at every bit of exposed flesh to deter it from the ruined stables, though after Mask's arrow first caught it in the eye, the Hinox had started shielding it with one giant hand as it stomped, which was so unfair.

The others from earlier had gotten to work as well -- the Not-Very-Old Man and a few others had formed a vanguard of sorts, shielding the stragglers from the stables as they fled, while the Captain and the short one ran in and out, striking at the legs. The cuts didn't look deep enough to bleed, least of all when struck through the Hinox's armored leg bracers, but they certainly hurt, and between them and the rotating cast of heroic archers and opportunists, they'd begun harrying it eastward like herding dogs nipping the heels of a massive, singlemindedly violent flock.

With the first free shot at the Hinox's weak point already spent, progress had slowed a bit, but the combined parties of heroes had numbers, and numbers can do a great deal. Especially when they are numbers of arrows. Or the diameters of very large bombs.

Case in point: Shadow, who seemed to have chosen to give his all after all, or at least maybe a quarter of it. Most of the "all" was going into the size of the next bomb arrow he was busy twisting his torso in knots to line up correctly. The ensuing explosion didn't blow the Hinox's fingers off, much to his disappointment, but it did knock its hand aside just enough that another hero's hookshot, of all things, made it through, embedding smack in the pupil of the unlucky Hinox's eye. It howled and raised its other hand to slap the chain aside, swinging the attached and nearly-as-unlucky hero sideways into the trees. The end of the hookshot pulled free with a spray of dark blood.

"Careful, it's infected!" yelled one of the older heroes. Link hissed under his breath.

"Infected?" asked Realm.

Link pointed up at the Hinox's eye, now trailing a sluggish line of something dark and tarry that, on second inspection, looked a great deal less like the stuff that normally bled from Hinoxes. "See the blood? That's not natural. We've been fighting monsters like that for a while now. They're stronger than normal, too. Even with all of your friends here, we shouldn't underestimate this thing."

"I think we'll be alright, but sure!" said Realm. "I mean, we fought Ganon a few times as a group, and we were only mostly losing against Demise, I think-- um, anyway, it's pretty outnumbered right now, isn't it?"

Link opened his mouth, but didn't get time to ask the obvious follow-up question, on account of the Hinox having other ideas. Pained and momentarily blinded, it bellowed and swept its sturdy oak tree trunk through the crowd of would-be attackers, poleaxing a few heroes and knocking green-clad bodies aside like bowling pins. For good measure, it dropped itself butt-first onto the ground like a petulant child, sending ripples through the wet earth and rattling the foundations of every structure within a hundred feet.

Link stumbled, but kept his balance. Others nearer to the source were less lucky. On the far side of the river, the huddling crowd looked at each other, a few wondering if praying would still be helpful.

The next bomb arrow-- arrows? possibly more than one at once-- didn't displace the Hinox, exactly. It had far too much mass, and far too much inertia, and a rather low center of gravity, sitting on its rear in the mud. But the Hinox certainly didn't enjoy another explosion going off right about where its nose should have been, just barely deflected from its poor tortured eye by an increasingly tortured shielding hand.

The Hinox fell on its back into the mud as Shadow rushed it, and the fight came to a sudden, almost awkward pause as an amorphous ball of darkness and sharp things bodily launched itself onto the Hinox's face, blades flashing nearly faster than the eye could see. The poor monster's bellowing screams would have been horrific if the progress weren't so heartening.

Still carrying Realm, Link grimaced. "You're sure he's not an enemy?"

"I definitely wouldn't want him as one!" said Realm. "Wow. That's faster than I thought he could go. I don't think he's been holding back, but I suppose fighting in weather like this, past sunset..."

At some point, in what had briefly stopped being a fight and become more of a one-sided butchery, the Hinox managed to connect a wild swing, knocking Shadow off its face and into the mud at last. After a second of rest, in which darkness-soaked approximations of neurons fired signals like sparks in a combustion engine, some part of its brain latched on to the rather outdated premise that it was still fighting a proper fight by Hinox standards, rather than squinting through black-bloodied tears and lashing out at whatever blurry little shapes happened to be closest, and it staggered to its feet. This turned out to be completely pointless for the Hinox, because a moment later Shadow had gotten up again, this time with twice as many swords.

("If it means harm, it's gone farther than I'd expect to feign otherwise," said Time to Warriors, having stopped harassing the poor monster's legs in favor of watching the carnage with everyone else.

Warriors had nothing to say to that.)

"IS THIS ENOUGH FOR YOU?!" screeched Shadow, still tearing into the Hinox's rubbery hide with swords only a few features removed from being bare, furious claws. "IS THIS ENOUGH?!"

Somehow, Realm didn't think he was listening for answers.

"Do we actually need to do anything at this point, or...?" asked Ocarina, approaching and slowing to a stop near Realm and Link.

Mask, never far away, scoffed. "Would you want to get between Shadow and that Hinox right now?"

It truly was a sight to behold. Shadow had optimal conditions to tear into the poor thing -- the growing cover of almost-night, the clouds blocking out what little remained of the sun, and above all, a highly convenient target onto which he could vent a great deal of unrepressed rage. Suddenly any plans of herding the Hinox one way or another seemed rather outdated next to the possibility that Shadow might just... finish the fight himself.

Then, of course, was the part where the Hinox's flailing landed another hit, and this time, Shadow went crashing into the smouldering wreck of the stablegrounds, disappearing through the entrance like a victim of a particularly rough outdoor bar fight. And then, a moment later, the Hinox got up, still bleeding black and half-blinded, but unfortunately still alive and kicking. Because of course it did.

In a fit of fumbling, the Hinox managed to pick up the same oak tree trunk it had dropped a moment ago, still more or less intact, and began swinging at the nearest blurrier-than-ever little shapes through a swollen, nearly-shut eye, and Realm watched the nearest parts of the field dissolve into a rather deadly and chaotic game of blind man's bluff.

The Hinox was probably on its last legs, truth be told. If it could have been asked, it would have said it had no idea how it was still moving, only that this must have been the gift it was given. Blood rushed in its ears and screamed to keep moving, to keep fighting, to kill those little hero-shaped things by whatever means necessary, which was rather impressive given that the Hinox did not tend to use such fancy words in its own internal monologue. It wasn't even sure what a monologue was, or why it had one, actually. A kind of tree?

Its internal monologue didn't have time to contemplate that. There wasn't enough room, not with all the agony and movement and the frantic urge to kill. Kill them. Kill them now. With everything you've got, kill them. At least one of them. Cripple their numbers. Squash the small ones. Destroy the shapes that hurt. Destroy, destroy, destroy.

This phase of the fight lasted approximately fifteen seconds before everyone remembered what they had been doing before Shadow's one-Dark onslaught, and then the chaos transitioned back into a marginally more controlled form of chaos seen earlier, but with a few minor changes.

For one thing, there were a few injured heroes to drag out of the way, lest the Hinox squash them in passing. The Not-So-Old Man and maybe-Captain Blue Scarf had started on that, though Realm couldn't make out the details of who exactly they were rescuing. Meanwhile, Ocarina, Mask, Lore, and another hero Realm didn't quite recognize had started racing down the hill back into the fray, the strategy of distraction abandoned in favor of a rapid collective beatdown on whatever exposed Hinox parts they could reach. No point in distracting your opponent with a mirror shield if they couldn't even see.

(Shadow, in the stable wreckage, decided he had probably done his part now and was busy grumbling and picking bits of debris out of his cape.)

"Hey, Realm," said Link, casting a speculative eye over the recovering free-for-all. "I've still got some magic left. What do you say we make... an entrance?"

The first thing Wild heard when he came back was the boom. He had arrived slightly too late for the flash, which had been blinding for the unprepared (or at least, the unprepared who still had functional eyes.)

The tang of ozone hit his nose next, and then the conscious recognition of pounding, pouring rain that had already gone well on its way to soaking through his tunic, through everything, and that couldn't have possibly been right, because not five minutes ago he'd seen the Sheikah Slate's weather forecast predicting clear skies all through the evening in Lanayru.

Thunder? Had there been a lightning strike? Or had that been...?

Wild stared through the trees at the rapidly decaying body of the entire goddamn Hinox not fifty yards from the stables, and then at the clumpy, clustering field of mixed Links, all in varying states of disarray. Black blood pooled beneath the Hinox's corpse as it rotted away, malice decaying into wispy smoke only to be beaten back down to earth by the inexplicable downpour.

Somewhere off by the stables, someone was still fussing about the poor, spooked horses.

Also, within shouting distance stood Hyrule, returned from his wetland exploration, giving a piggyback ride to another maybe-hero Wild definitely hadn't ferried across.

"Huh," said Wild, to no one in particular. "... What did I miss?"