More Fancic!
Chapter 1
In the beginning, the world was made by three golden Goddesses; Din, Faore, and Nayru. With her strong, flaming arms, Din cultivated the red earth; Faore filled the world with creatures of all kinds; and Nayru gave the spirit of Law to the world. When they were finished, the three Goddesses returned to the heavens. Where they departed from the world, they left three golden triangles, imbued with their power, the sacred Triforce.
~~~~~~~~~~
Link put down the scroll with a sigh, turning a longing look to the window and the bright autumn day outside. At the sound, Zelda glanced up from her own reading, enthroned as she was in one of the royal library’s most comfortable chairs. “What’s wrong?” she asked, her expression one of gentle concern.
“This. I should be out training,” he answered, his thirteen-year-old voice cracking on the final word, “not sitting in here reading the same stories a hundred times.”
“An arm is only as strong as the mind that guides it,” she reminded him gently, as she had before and likely would again. She would have continued with the words they both knew so well, but one of the royal bodyguards, a Shiekah, chose that moment to arrive. Swift and silent, Zelda rarely knew one of the spies or bodyguards was there until they spoke. This one caught her attention by clearing his throat.
The Shiekah in question was one of the royal spies, clad in tight wrappings of royal blue, a white tunic that bore the Guardian Eye, the sigil of royal spies since time immemorial. His head was wrapped in a loose white turban, a common practice among the shadow-folk. Impa was the only Shiekah whom Zelda had ever seen going without the head-coverings. All that was visible of the young man himself was a pair of pink eyes and the skin around them, peeking out. Zelda took all this in with a glance before her gaze came to rest on the ivory tube tucked under the Shiekah’s arm.
“Link,” the princess began, setting aside her reading as the color drained from her cheeks, “I believe it’s time for your practice. If you will excuse me?” As Link watched in bewilderment, she and the two Shiekah filed out.
Into the empty room, he murmured, “um, alright,” before setting aside his own scroll and going in search of the armsmaster.
~~~~~~~~~~
“How can she trust them?” Link asked, sizing up the wiry armsmaster over the top of his shield, practice-blade held loosely behind him. Armsmaster Durich didn’t look like much of a fighter-little more than whipcord and bone, covered by skin like old leather, lined and tanned with the years, crisscrossed with hundreds of pale scars. A shock of bristling white hair poked up around the sides of the practice helm he wore, and the leather padding he wore as a matter of course was as aged and lined as the man himself.
“How can who trust who, boy?” Durich lashed out with the weighted staff he held, batting aside Link’s shield and swinging the other end around at the boy’s head. Link let his shield fall, swinging his own weapon around and up at his opponent’s unprotected side. Durich took the blow to his ribs with a quiet grunt, carrying through the swing of his staff and knocking Link off his feet. As an afterthought, he added, “watch the backhand.”
Picking himself up with a groan, Link answered, “the shadow-people. They’re-“
“The Shiekah, boy,” Durich’s gravely voice cut him off sharply, the old man’s keen eyes giving him a sharp look. “Show some respect.”
“The Shiekah, then,” he replied sulkily, settling back into a guarding position. “How can she trust them? Jumping out of shadows, throwing those flash-seeds and vanishing, and isn’t all their magic shadow-magic? Isn’t shadow-magic what Ganondorf does?”
“Let me tell you something, boy,” the armsmaster began, circling his student. “The Sheikah’ve been loyal to the kings and queens of Hyrule for as long as there’s been a Hyrule to have kings and queens. Just ‘cause they like the dark don’t make ‘em evil-keep your guard up on the left, boy!” A stinging blow punctuated the rebuke. “And there isn’t a Shiekah born who doesn’t have just as much honor as any Knight of Hyrule.”
Link lunged, tucking and rolling aside when he found his blade parried, narrowly evading a riposte. Falling silent for the exchange, Durich spoke again as Link regained his feet. “And another thing: their language uses the same word for ‘traitor’ and ‘nobody.’ Nobody is a traitor, see? You can trust the Shiekah no matter what.”
“But what about their magic?” Link countered, binding the armsmaster’s staff with his sword long enough to drive the upper edge of his shield into the man’s midriff. “All those stupid scrolls I have to read talk about dark magic being evil, so aren’t they evil?”
“Dark magic doesn’t actually mean it’s dark,” Durich replied, hooking his staff behind Link’s ankle and pulling to send the boy over again. “It means it’s evil. It comes from evil folk, and it does evil, and that’s how you know it’s dark magic.”
Link clambered to his feet again, but chewed his lip a little in doubt.
~~~~~~~~~~
The news was not good. It never was, these days. Zelda paused outside the door to the council chamber, smoothing her skirts and composing herself. The tube that held the spy’s report was held in her hands, which she folded again at her waist before nodding slightly to the men at the door. These guards were Hylian, like most of the palace guards-the royal bodyguards were the only Shiekah in the palace on a regular basis. Nodding in return, they opened the large double-doors just enough to admit the princess and her guardian.
Inside, around a horseshoe-shaped table sat the king, his councilors, and the ambassadors of those nations allied with Hyrule in the coming struggle. Her eyes went first to her father, on whom the last five years had not fallen gently. The lines around his eyes had deepened, and a fine web of smaller wrinkles covered his cheeks and brow, too fine to be seen from a polite distance. A few spots had blossomed, Zelda knew, on his cheeks, but were being carefully hidden with cosmetics. The illusion of strength the king wore was one of the few reasons Ganondorf was still in far lands, gathering allies, and not yet laying siege to Hyrule.
The fact that so much of the king’s strength was illusion, though, was part of the reason Zelda was already an active member of the council, and acted as the head of the royal intelligence network. Put simply, neither king nor princess expected there to be much time before the kingdom would change hands. The less resistance Zelda met, particularly from her own advisors, the better-most especially in a time of crisis such as the war. It wouldn’t be possible to safely arrange the requisite pomp and circumstance for even the barest of coronation ceremonies during the war, and such a ceremony would prove a tremendously tempting target for Ganondorf. As such, they were getting the councilors used to the idea of heeding and obeying Princess Zelda, when a strict reading of the nation’s laws would only compel them to obey Queen Zelda.
“Your majesty,” the princess began, inclining her head to her father from her own position at the mouth of the horseshoe, and the lectern there. “Honored councilors,” she continued, nodding briefly around the room, “news has come of our enemy’s movements. I regret to inform you that the word is not good.” She passed the scroll tube she carried to a page, who hurried it to the hands of the king, where it was unrolled and quietly read while she summarized its contents aloud.
“Ganondorf has succeeded in uniting several of the moblin tribes under his rule, and uses them to bring the rest into his fold. He has hired or coerced a number of mages, necromancers among them, and what bleak Arts they do not teach him, they perform in his service. He has-“ she paused for a moment, and spared a sympathetic glance to the muscular, trollish creature who hulked at one end of the table. “Lastly, our spies have determined that it was Ganondorf who engineered a successful coup within the Goron settlement on Death Mountain, carried out by Goron dissidents.”
More gently, in answer to the shocked, sorrowful expression the burly creature wore, adding, “I’m sorry, ambassador, but you and your embassy are in exile. Your family… I’m sorry.”
The Goron ambassador bowed his head, mourning with an odd sound somewhere between a croon and a groan. The rest at the table were silent for a long moment, before Zelda’s quiet tones resumed their summary. “So far, Ganondorf seems more interest in the Gorons as smiths than soldiers. At this point, we suspect he intends to arm and armor as many of his soldiers as possible with Goron work.” Her eyes swept over the councilors again, taking in the varied reactions to the news. The Goron ambassador in particular was grinding his teeth audibly.
“I see the weight of this development is not lost on you. Good. We must expect that Ganondorf’s armies will have the very best that Goron smiths could make. We should begin planning countermeasures immediately.”
“And I will give you the first,” the Goron announced suddenly, his booming, gravelly voice surprising even Zelda a little. “Your soldiers will have arms and armor to match anything my kinsmen could make. Ganondorf will not stain my people’s honor with his filth, if I must forge every piece myself.” And with that pronouncement, the huge creature lumbered toward chamber doors, shoving the heavy timber panels aside without so much as a break in his stride.
The guards in the hall peeked in, stunned, before hurriedly closing the doors. As the rest of the councilors relaxed after the outburst, the princess caught a glint of light out of the corner of her eye and glanced to better see Impa, her silent guardian, discreetly resheathing a glassy short sword.
With calm restored, Zelda took a steadying breath and spoke again. “Ganondorf is not waiting for us, we cannot afford to wait for him. It is time to send the Hero on his first quest.”
In the beginning, the world was made by three golden Goddesses; Din, Faore, and Nayru. With her strong, flaming arms, Din cultivated the red earth; Faore filled the world with creatures of all kinds; and Nayru gave the spirit of Law to the world. When they were finished, the three Goddesses returned to the heavens. Where they departed from the world, they left three golden triangles, imbued with their power, the sacred Triforce.
~~~~~~~~~~
Link put down the scroll with a sigh, turning a longing look to the window and the bright autumn day outside. At the sound, Zelda glanced up from her own reading, enthroned as she was in one of the royal library’s most comfortable chairs. “What’s wrong?” she asked, her expression one of gentle concern.
“This. I should be out training,” he answered, his thirteen-year-old voice cracking on the final word, “not sitting in here reading the same stories a hundred times.”
“An arm is only as strong as the mind that guides it,” she reminded him gently, as she had before and likely would again. She would have continued with the words they both knew so well, but one of the royal bodyguards, a Shiekah, chose that moment to arrive. Swift and silent, Zelda rarely knew one of the spies or bodyguards was there until they spoke. This one caught her attention by clearing his throat.
The Shiekah in question was one of the royal spies, clad in tight wrappings of royal blue, a white tunic that bore the Guardian Eye, the sigil of royal spies since time immemorial. His head was wrapped in a loose white turban, a common practice among the shadow-folk. Impa was the only Shiekah whom Zelda had ever seen going without the head-coverings. All that was visible of the young man himself was a pair of pink eyes and the skin around them, peeking out. Zelda took all this in with a glance before her gaze came to rest on the ivory tube tucked under the Shiekah’s arm.
“Link,” the princess began, setting aside her reading as the color drained from her cheeks, “I believe it’s time for your practice. If you will excuse me?” As Link watched in bewilderment, she and the two Shiekah filed out.
Into the empty room, he murmured, “um, alright,” before setting aside his own scroll and going in search of the armsmaster.
~~~~~~~~~~
“How can she trust them?” Link asked, sizing up the wiry armsmaster over the top of his shield, practice-blade held loosely behind him. Armsmaster Durich didn’t look like much of a fighter-little more than whipcord and bone, covered by skin like old leather, lined and tanned with the years, crisscrossed with hundreds of pale scars. A shock of bristling white hair poked up around the sides of the practice helm he wore, and the leather padding he wore as a matter of course was as aged and lined as the man himself.
“How can who trust who, boy?” Durich lashed out with the weighted staff he held, batting aside Link’s shield and swinging the other end around at the boy’s head. Link let his shield fall, swinging his own weapon around and up at his opponent’s unprotected side. Durich took the blow to his ribs with a quiet grunt, carrying through the swing of his staff and knocking Link off his feet. As an afterthought, he added, “watch the backhand.”
Picking himself up with a groan, Link answered, “the shadow-people. They’re-“
“The Shiekah, boy,” Durich’s gravely voice cut him off sharply, the old man’s keen eyes giving him a sharp look. “Show some respect.”
“The Shiekah, then,” he replied sulkily, settling back into a guarding position. “How can she trust them? Jumping out of shadows, throwing those flash-seeds and vanishing, and isn’t all their magic shadow-magic? Isn’t shadow-magic what Ganondorf does?”
“Let me tell you something, boy,” the armsmaster began, circling his student. “The Sheikah’ve been loyal to the kings and queens of Hyrule for as long as there’s been a Hyrule to have kings and queens. Just ‘cause they like the dark don’t make ‘em evil-keep your guard up on the left, boy!” A stinging blow punctuated the rebuke. “And there isn’t a Shiekah born who doesn’t have just as much honor as any Knight of Hyrule.”
Link lunged, tucking and rolling aside when he found his blade parried, narrowly evading a riposte. Falling silent for the exchange, Durich spoke again as Link regained his feet. “And another thing: their language uses the same word for ‘traitor’ and ‘nobody.’ Nobody is a traitor, see? You can trust the Shiekah no matter what.”
“But what about their magic?” Link countered, binding the armsmaster’s staff with his sword long enough to drive the upper edge of his shield into the man’s midriff. “All those stupid scrolls I have to read talk about dark magic being evil, so aren’t they evil?”
“Dark magic doesn’t actually mean it’s dark,” Durich replied, hooking his staff behind Link’s ankle and pulling to send the boy over again. “It means it’s evil. It comes from evil folk, and it does evil, and that’s how you know it’s dark magic.”
Link clambered to his feet again, but chewed his lip a little in doubt.
~~~~~~~~~~
The news was not good. It never was, these days. Zelda paused outside the door to the council chamber, smoothing her skirts and composing herself. The tube that held the spy’s report was held in her hands, which she folded again at her waist before nodding slightly to the men at the door. These guards were Hylian, like most of the palace guards-the royal bodyguards were the only Shiekah in the palace on a regular basis. Nodding in return, they opened the large double-doors just enough to admit the princess and her guardian.
Inside, around a horseshoe-shaped table sat the king, his councilors, and the ambassadors of those nations allied with Hyrule in the coming struggle. Her eyes went first to her father, on whom the last five years had not fallen gently. The lines around his eyes had deepened, and a fine web of smaller wrinkles covered his cheeks and brow, too fine to be seen from a polite distance. A few spots had blossomed, Zelda knew, on his cheeks, but were being carefully hidden with cosmetics. The illusion of strength the king wore was one of the few reasons Ganondorf was still in far lands, gathering allies, and not yet laying siege to Hyrule.
The fact that so much of the king’s strength was illusion, though, was part of the reason Zelda was already an active member of the council, and acted as the head of the royal intelligence network. Put simply, neither king nor princess expected there to be much time before the kingdom would change hands. The less resistance Zelda met, particularly from her own advisors, the better-most especially in a time of crisis such as the war. It wouldn’t be possible to safely arrange the requisite pomp and circumstance for even the barest of coronation ceremonies during the war, and such a ceremony would prove a tremendously tempting target for Ganondorf. As such, they were getting the councilors used to the idea of heeding and obeying Princess Zelda, when a strict reading of the nation’s laws would only compel them to obey Queen Zelda.
“Your majesty,” the princess began, inclining her head to her father from her own position at the mouth of the horseshoe, and the lectern there. “Honored councilors,” she continued, nodding briefly around the room, “news has come of our enemy’s movements. I regret to inform you that the word is not good.” She passed the scroll tube she carried to a page, who hurried it to the hands of the king, where it was unrolled and quietly read while she summarized its contents aloud.
“Ganondorf has succeeded in uniting several of the moblin tribes under his rule, and uses them to bring the rest into his fold. He has hired or coerced a number of mages, necromancers among them, and what bleak Arts they do not teach him, they perform in his service. He has-“ she paused for a moment, and spared a sympathetic glance to the muscular, trollish creature who hulked at one end of the table. “Lastly, our spies have determined that it was Ganondorf who engineered a successful coup within the Goron settlement on Death Mountain, carried out by Goron dissidents.”
More gently, in answer to the shocked, sorrowful expression the burly creature wore, adding, “I’m sorry, ambassador, but you and your embassy are in exile. Your family… I’m sorry.”
The Goron ambassador bowed his head, mourning with an odd sound somewhere between a croon and a groan. The rest at the table were silent for a long moment, before Zelda’s quiet tones resumed their summary. “So far, Ganondorf seems more interest in the Gorons as smiths than soldiers. At this point, we suspect he intends to arm and armor as many of his soldiers as possible with Goron work.” Her eyes swept over the councilors again, taking in the varied reactions to the news. The Goron ambassador in particular was grinding his teeth audibly.
“I see the weight of this development is not lost on you. Good. We must expect that Ganondorf’s armies will have the very best that Goron smiths could make. We should begin planning countermeasures immediately.”
“And I will give you the first,” the Goron announced suddenly, his booming, gravelly voice surprising even Zelda a little. “Your soldiers will have arms and armor to match anything my kinsmen could make. Ganondorf will not stain my people’s honor with his filth, if I must forge every piece myself.” And with that pronouncement, the huge creature lumbered toward chamber doors, shoving the heavy timber panels aside without so much as a break in his stride.
The guards in the hall peeked in, stunned, before hurriedly closing the doors. As the rest of the councilors relaxed after the outburst, the princess caught a glint of light out of the corner of her eye and glanced to better see Impa, her silent guardian, discreetly resheathing a glassy short sword.
With calm restored, Zelda took a steadying breath and spoke again. “Ganondorf is not waiting for us, we cannot afford to wait for him. It is time to send the Hero on his first quest.”