10Links AU

I'm quite a bit late responding to this, but thank you so much!

They would not recommend the tree to anyone. Wet, cold, stuffy, service was terrible, do not stay here.

The only good thing about the experience was the sound of hooves thundering harmlessly past. That and actually leaving the tree.

The same hand that had pulled them into the tree pushes them out. Link collapses to the ground, and if they physically could have hugged it they would have. Instead they wind up laying spread-eagle in the grass gasping lung fulls of fresh air.

They’re perfectly content to stay there, but after a few times the bizarre feeling of a ghostly hand poking through their shoulder can’t be ignored.

When they look up at the green wreathed ghost she looks surprisingly relieved.

“Oh good, you’re alive,” she says, “thought you might have been some kind of weird breathing corpse or something.”

“Breathing corpse?” they ask.

The ghost shrugs, “Hey, you never know. So, what brings you to this neck of the woods?”

“Mostly running for my life.” Link replies.

The ghost nods and Link pulls themself back to their feet.

“Who was that you were talking to?”

“No idea, I was a bit too preoccupied with the monster to listen to them.”

“Think you should find them and ask?”

Link wilts, “I don’t know… They seemed pretty irritated with me…”

“Well it can’t hurt to try.” the ghost says, turning to look for the mysterious person, but they’re already long gone.

Link sighs, “I suppose I’ll have to live with the ignorance.”

The ghost shrugs, “Oh well, what’s your name?”

“Link. Yours?”

“Acisha,” she responds, “Where are you headed?”

“No idea.”

“Maybe you can find someone else who knows what that person was trying to tell you.”

“Maybe.” Link says.

Acisha grins, “An adventure, sounds fun.”

“Huh?” Link goes to ask but Acisha is already shoving a small plant into their hand and tugging them off in a random direction.

Thank you, I hope yours is as well!

Yes I have, and I would absolutely die for bunny Legend

I have no particular theories about the 10L characters aside from my own, who can technically take whatever form they want, so I would definitely ask the individual owners of each character.

“So let me get this straight,” Zelda says, rubbing her temples as though to dissuade an oncoming headache, “the goddesses have been corrupted, we need to purify them, and to do that and end the reincarnation cycle we need to save Ganondorf; the literal embodiment of evil, the conqueror king who currently lives in the best defended castle in the world, and you got all of this information from a stranger in the woods and a tired ghost.”

“Basically.” Link replies from their spot on the ground across from her.

“Don’t forget the spooky visions from when the ghost hit them in the face.” Acisha adds.

Zelda’s silent for a moment.

“I’ve heard stranger,” she finally decides, “but if there’s an assassin after us; getting into the castle will be even harder than normal.”

“Do we have any idea who they are?” Links asks.

Acisha stares absently into the distance, “He seemed kind of familiar.”

“What do you mean?” Zelda inquires.

“I don’t know,” she replies, “just felt like I knew them from somewhere. I can’t quite place it.”

There’s a moment of wondering silence before Link speaks up, “How do we even purify him if we do manage to get him from the castle?”

“I’d have to resear-”

“I know someone who can help.” Acisha cuts in.

“Who?” Link asks, ignoring Zelda’s sour look at the nature spirit.

It was hard for him to call the castle “home” even if it was technically where they lived. Where they lived or not; he regularly found himself looking for excuses not to go there.

This time though, Arden thought as he approached the dark castle housing Hyrule’s king, this time is was unavoidable… and, as a consequence, even worse.

None of the guards tried to stop him as he passed; no reason to question the king’s favorite lap dog.

The dread weighing him down didn’t show on their face; they made sure of it.

The guards outside the throne room pulled the heavy doors open for him, and he passed through silently as the doors banged shut behind him. They strode down the red carpet tracing the path towards the large iron throne placed in front of the rounded, stained glass window that Arden had never quite been able to decipher.

Ganondorf sat proudly atop his throne, dimly lit by the glowing rivers of lava tracing the edges of the room.

Arden kept his head down as they approached the throne, and kept it that way as he dropped to one knee at the foot of the dais.

“Well?” the king’s low gravelly voice spoke, “What happened? I don’t see the princess’s head anywhere.”

Arden swallowed around a chunk of ice that had formed in his throat, “She had unexpected help.”

“So you failed me.”

The chunk of ice in their throat turned into a cold slush crawling through their veins, and Arden had to bite back a shiver that wasn’t all from the cold, “I needed to come up with a better plan-”

“I brought you here ten years ago,” Ganondorf interrupted, “and you haven’t failed me in eight.

So tell me, what was different this time?”

“She had help… The hero and a ghost… They surprised me…”

Ganondorf rose from his throne, and Arden was suddenly very grateful for the carpet as he pressed his fist harder into it to hide the shaking. A large hand cupped the side of their head.

“Make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

The the pain started.

A deep, aching burn that filled his chest before snaking out into his limbs while a spider web of bloody cuts traced their way away from Ganondorf’s hand down across Arden’s face and neck.

It only got worse when the burn turned to biting cold. A spattering of light danced across his vision as they swallowed a cry of pain and some deep, unnamable terror.

They thought they might be passing out when the sparks of light turned into shapes; a friendly face with brown hair and brown eyes staring down at them from a tall tree, the same, familiar, face twisted in horror as screams echoed distantly through his mind, running, and then cold, cold and wet, and burning in his lungs.

They couldn’t breathe.

The pain stopped and Arden folded in on himself, coughing and gasping for air.

“Understand?”

What was that?

“Yes Master.”

Yes it is