#calamity!link

So the funny thing about the way this chapter opens is that this is a conversation I meant for Urbosa to have with Link a long time ago. Like, three chapters ago. But I just kept putting it off until the next chapter, and then the next chapter, and, well, Urbosa was leaving for Hateno come sunrise so THEY HAD TO HAVE IT NOW. 😂

I also wanted Zelda to overhear it. So the original concept was she was going to stumble across these two talking in the evening or something. But then it was morning and she was leaving so it had to be morning. So I worked in this weird “Oh I’m waking up and I’m groggy and ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT ME” sort of thing which I don’t really like, but. Kind of the only option.

SO. Wrote the first version of that conversation. Sat on that 1k words or so for like two weeks. Threw it out and rewrote it, because it was disconnected and weird and just a bunch of empty dialogue lines with no input from Zelda’s end. So. Finally got that rewritten, like, three days ago. Struggled with the transition to the next bit (because they’re conversation ends and... then what? Zelda can’t get up and walk away. She’s pretending to be asleep. IT WAS AWKWARD ALL AROUND OK?)

And the middle feels, like... soggy? I don’t know. The beginning conversation was at the beginning out of necessity, and it did NOT end the way I thought it was going to, and pacing this was just a nightmare. I was going to sit on it for a day and think about it some more and post tomorrow, but I just... didn’t want to! 😂

Anyways. I wrote about 2.5k today, which doesn’t sound like a lot, I admit. But it was also all the editing, all the proofreading I could handle, and all the scene reshuffling I had to do to make this work. I started at 8am. And here I am posting it at 5pm. I took a break for lunch, but other than that. Yeah. I pretty much wrote all day.

I kind of feel like an idiot honestly 😂

I think part of the reason this chapter was so hard was because I was still burned out from Whumptober for most of the month.

But now it is DONE. It is PUBLISHED. It is OUT OF MY HANDS and INTO YOUR EYEBALLS! So I’m going to go make myself a hot drink and eat some dinner and watch a comforting TV show BECAUSE I DESERVE IT!! 😂

  Awakening

I breathe deep of familiar air as I reform from the smoke and light pouring out of the fissure. It’s cold and sweet, carried down into the valley from distant plateaus. My blood pounds hotter at the recognition of it, and I steel myself to ignore the allure it holds. I know death will be my only release now.

My heightened senses register four incoming attacks with a thrill, and I regain my focus, choking out the desire to crush them with my bare hands. I rebuff their assaults one at a time, reining my power with some effort. Part of me revels in how easily I cast them aside, how breakable they are—the part of me that I must never feed, but that’s too dangerous to ignore entirely.

Then I see her: power ebbing off her in waves, her body emitting pulses of brilliant light. I want to bask in the splendor of her, so different and yet so familiar. I crush that longing, letting the monster in me react in case I’m not strong enough to do it alone. In an instant I’m facing her, holding her at bay with a power she was never meant to overcome. I can taste her fear as she registers my resistance, heady and intoxicating.

I reach for the source of her light and smother it.

  Applean Woods

I take her to Applean, knowing the others won’t be able to follow for some time, and wait for her to regain her strength. She’s spattered in firelight, her expression placid, and she looks so much like the Zelda I knew—too much like her. I know she isn’t the same woman, but I feel the same draw, the same devotion to her. I know I have to protect her no matter the cost to myself. It almost makes the thought of what’s coming bearable.

I stroke her cheek without thinking, and she surges to life, sending power and light flailing in all directions. The monster in me roars in response, so powerfully I nearly falter. I force myself to tame it first, afraid of what I might do to her if I don’t. She’s strong, but she’s also scared and disoriented. Overpowering her isn’t difficult.

“Don’t do that again,” I growl after I have her pinned to my chest. I can feel her pulse, rapid and bright, rushing beneath her skin, appealing to my two halves for two different reasons. I deny us both, dropping her to her hands and knees and moving to reignite the fire she put out.

“What do you want with me?” she demands, and she reminds me again of a woman who’s been dead for 10,000 years. “I won’t cooperate.”

Definitely too much like her.

“I’ll accomplish what I set out to do alone, if I must,” I insist, but I know the odds of plunging the Sword into my own chest and managing to contain and outlive the Calamity on my own are marginal at best. “Though it would be easier with a second set of hands.”

She’s confused, of course. She obviously has no idea what I am. In a way, that makes it easier; in a way, that makes it harder.

“I don’t—”

“Is the Sword in the Great Hyrule Forest?” I interrupt, suddenly in a hurry to get this over with.

“What?”

“The Sword,” I repeat, trying not to think of everything finding it will mean for me. “The Blade of Evil’s Bane. Does it still rest in the Lost Woods?”

“You wish to destroy it,” she accuses me quietly. Silly girl.

“I don’t know that such a thing is even possible,” I wonder aloud, intrigued by the idea. But that’s beside the point. It has to be in the Woods, because the hero’s spirit could hardly be reborn if it’s still alive in me. “It has no wielder.”

“No. You didn’t leave us a choice.”

I smirk in spite of myself. She’s right about that, more than she knows. “I suppose not.”

“You still haven’t answered me. I demand to know why you’ve brought me here.”

So, so much like her.

“You’re hardly in a position to be making demands, Your Highness,” I point out, and her cheeks flush a bit, betraying that streak of temper I know too well. I leave my seat by the fire and crouch near her, appealing to her love of her kingdom. It’s stronger in her than her love for anything else, as I am painfully aware. “If you do as I say, you will destroy me. With any luck, the pall of the Calamity will never fall over Hyrule again. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

She considers my proposal fleetingly, and even though I know the reply is coming, that it’s deserved, that it’s better this way, it still hurts to hear it out loud. “I can’t trust you.”

“I’m not asking for your trust,” I scoff. How could I ever ask for her trust, when I don’t trust myself? When a single lapse on her part or mine could cost us everything, including her own life? No. Trust is out of the question. “Only your obedience.”

That accursed stubbornness of hers rears its pretty little head, her lip turning down just a bit. “If I don’t trust you—”

I can’t allow her to even suggest that I can earn it, for either of our sakes. I reach out, brushing her soft lips, the smooth line of her jaw, the swell of her cheekbone, knowing what my touch, harboring the evil of the Calamity, must be doing to her. I’ve felt it myself once, countless lifetimes ago, as the Calamity entered my body. I know I feel like that now, because she feels so unnaturally warm on my sensitive fingertips, so full of life and light it nearly burns.

“Does this feel like the touch of someone you can trust?” I ask rhetorically, and I feel her tremble under my hands. “That icy, numbing sensation of evil, trapped in this skin, grating on your nerves and pulling the warmth from your body and putting knots in your stomach, that urge to recoil that you can’t quite obey—that is the warning from the gods.” I can taste her fear growing, tantalizing and seductive, as I sweep the pad of my thumb along her full bottom lip, and I know I’m doing the right thing. She needs to fear me, as I fear myself. “You cannot trust me.”

  The Lost Woods

I could feel the mist, uninhibited, stroking the skin at the nape of my neck, and I bristled. The hallucinations would be quick on its heels. She had already been feeling the effects; a small gasp or a sudden change in her pace betrayed the way the woods were starting to torment her. But it was going to get much worse, and there was nothing I could do to protect either of us.

I’d already seen her—a ghost of who she once was, untouchable, ethereal, drifting through the trees like a specter. She’d been alight in moonglow, wraithlike, hauntingly graceful. But not now. Now she was fleshly, a healthy flush of color in her cheeks, looking so real. So vulnerable. Her eyes met mine, and I saw the recognition in them. Then they widened with fear, and she was pulled away into a distant darkness before she could make a sound.

I closed my eyes, trying to still my galloping heart. I turned slowly to check on Zelda—the real Zelda, the one who was alive right now—but the mist had separated us, and I cursed under my breath.

I heard a scream, and I closed my eyes again reflexively, fear coiling in my throat. I swallowed, trying to wet it. I didn’t want to move. I didn’t want to look, to be plagued by whatever vision the woods had in store for me. I wanted to pray, I wanted to ask the Goddesses to spare me this. But they wouldn’t listen to a prayer from the Calamity.

I couldn’t just stand there with my eyes closed and hope that Zelda would stumble across me. She would lose herself here without me to guide her. So I opened my eyes.

Another scream tore out of her, and I recoiled from the grisly scene, blood and adrenaline pounding through me. The worst part was the way the monster in me reacted—that submerged, suppressed part of me that was enticed by it, that wanted to look closer. That smiled.

It was me. I was crouched over her, animalistic, tearing at the gaping wound I’d opened across her torso with my teeth, too numerous and sharpened to a hundred razor-sharp points.

I was eating her alive.

She screamed again as I ripped into her, her body lurching as I wrenched at the cavity. And she just wouldn’t die. Her clothes were drenched in so much crimson and torn to shreds, and her face was contorted in anguish and terror. I tore into her again and again, her broken figure jerking and lifting as I pulled at her.

My conflicted nature came to the fore. Part of me was in agony. Part of me was laughing. Like a dam, distressed and buckling under the weight of rising floodwaters, something in me broke open.

With a snarl, I let my power pour out of me, giving it free rein in a way that I was too fearful to before. In that moment I didn’t care if the woods burst into flames, or if I drowned Hyrule with my hate. I just reacted.

I was just lost.

The mist barreled away from me in a great dome, letting the sunlight in. The vision was gone. I could breathe. In the clarity that followed I felt for Zelda’s presence and sent my power cascading towards her, opening a canyon through the fog. She spotted me as the sunlight washed over her, and she ran towards me, her expression full of relief. She’s so stupid. So am I.

She fisted her hands in my tunic, catching her breath as the mist encircled us again. I wanted to pull her into my arms. I wanted to hold her close and protect her from this place. I wanted to tell her everything I’ve seen and everything I am and beg her to take pity on me and put an end to this because I just couldn’t go on anymore—Goddesses, I couldn’t do this anymore.

But I was barely in control. My power was still flying through my veins, threatening to burst out of me at any moment and do incomprehensible damage. My heart was still pounding. I cautiously put my hands on her shoulders, hoping the contact would calm me a little. It did; her warmth under my hands grounded me, helping me shunt reality into the forefront of my mind and block the visions out.

“I don’t have as much courage as I thought,” she whispered.

She had no idea what she was saying. She was so, so brave, so young but so capable, standing on the brink of her power with all the potential in the world. She was beautiful and wonderful, and she was going to be an amazing queen someday. She embodied everything I loved about my Zelda.

I almost told her. I was almost that weak. But then I swallowed it and told her the truth instead.

  Drowning

At first, all that registers is the pain, white and hot across my throat, and the numb realization that I’m going to die.

Of course, it’s not that simple for me.

The half of me that I’m always suppressing senses my weakness, slamming frantically against my defenses in the span of a heartbeat. I have to choose between saving myself and containing it. So I pour everything I am into holding him in, dragging him down with me in a white-knuckled grip. But he fights back.

The pain is agony, a thousand heated needles covering my entire body and then being driven down to the bone in nauseating synchrony. He thrashes in my hold, tendrils of his hate whipping out in places, and my vision blotches white. I feel the deathstroke across my throat heal; the earth quaking beneath my feet; the malice seeping out of me like blood oozing out of a wound.

I can hear myself screaming beyond the war, part agony and part fury. Part man and part beast. It’s slowly tearing me in two, ripping ligaments and shredding flesh as it claws deliriously towards escape. I grapple with him, desperately trying to hold on even as he starts pulling my limbs apart. But I know it’s only a matter of time.

Then I see her. Her light cuts through the pain, through the fear and the hate, brilliant and pure as the sun. I can’t speak; I can only stare, imploring her with my eyes to end me quickly.

She takes my face in her hands and I suck a sudden breath. Her glowing touch is warm and soft, comforting, and not the violent end I had been expecting—the touch of a goddess, and for a moment I can breathe.

Then her light engulfs everything—the woods, my body, and soon my mind. The relief from the pain and the peace of it is so indescribably jarring that I don’t resist, falling headlong into it.

And then I’m drowning. Drowning in the sensation of her between my hands, of the softness of her lips under mine, of the closeness of her. Drowning in sensations that are brand new and millennia old at once. I’m drowning, burning from the inside out, and even though it aches I don’t want it to end.

I remember myself, haltingly, and muster the will to let her go. I drop my forehead against hers, grappling with how much I want her—and with how far I’ve let myself fall. There’s no amount of leniency on her part that could possibly excuse this. But I’m not concerned with the consequences for myself; only with how my lack of self-control must have affected her.

“Forgive me,” I breathe. “That was—”

But she silences me, her soft, delicate fingers brushing my mouth with a feather-light touch that sends another pang of want rippling through my middle. Her eyes pierce into me, unendingly blue and so powerful I can’t help but wonder if it’s her magic. Then she exhales, drifting closer, her eyes falling heavy-lidded to my mouth just before they close completely. And the feeling of her lips meeting mine, electric, breathless, so warm, sends me diving under the surge of sensation again.

I draw her close, losing myself in her. There’s nothing even close to this—her touch, her taste, the sound she makes when I angle her head to deepen the kiss.

And I don’t know why I’ve denied myself for so long. I’ve always wanted her. And now that I’ve tasted this, tasted her—even all the armies in Hyrule couldn’t keep me from her now.

I smile against her mouth. Slaughtering them would be easy.

Through the intoxicated cloud swirling in my brain, the thought snags unpleasantly, like a potent flicker of light in a comfortable darkness. It’s enough to slow me down, enough to make me think.

Enough to make me realize this can’t possibly be real.

I stop, pulling away slowly to search her eyes. So familiar. So beautiful it makes my heart ache.

But she’s been dead for 10,000 years.

I want to ignore it, dive headlong into the illusion of her. But I can’t unsee it. I murmur, breaking the spell, “This isn’t real.”

She blinks, and suddenly she’s different. Still familiar. Still beautiful. Still alive. And then the pieces are snapping into place, and the woman in my hands isn’t the one I loved so many millennia ago. It’s the Zelda of this era, the one who only knows me as I am—as the Calamity. And we’re reliving one of her memories—one of my memories—

And it’s agony. All at once the peace is gone, the gentle, tremulous bit of happiness the memory had lent me and I had been nursing in my heart like a single spark in an endless night, and the hatred is flooding in. The anger. Everything the illusion had been strong enough to veil.

And I remember what I am. I feel the evil pouring through my veins like a poison. I feel it making my heart pound stronger. I feel it coloring my vision and filling me with desires I must never obey.

And it’s agony.

I’m quaking on the inside, partly from fury and partly from shock. And then I erupt.

“What are you doing here?”

She looks as lost as I feel, green eyes glittering with shock and fright. “I—I don’t know—”

“Is this some kind of a joke to you? You think that just because you have her memories that they’re yours to do with as you please?”

“No! I didn’t mean to do this—”

Oh, I want to break her. I want to hold her down and force her to taste some of the pain I have. I want to hear her scream. But I push her away instead, unwilling to give the monster the edge.

“Well undo it!”

She stumbles into the mantel, turning back with that pretty face covered in tears. And the satisfaction and the guilt churning together in my stomach makes me feel sick.

“I don’t know how!” she tries to reason. “It was an accident!”

I turn away and try to breathe. That glimmer of humanity, after 10,000 years without—and then to have it just wrested away—

“This how you operate when you don’t get your way, then?” I bite out before I can rein it in. “Prick the Calamity, see if he bleeds?”

“I told you it was an accident,” she says again, more quietly.

She sounds so miserable. A very small part of me wants to comfort her. But I’m so furious I can hardly see straight. Forcing me to relive this moment—with her—

What was she thinking? What in the name of the gods made her think she had the right? Hadn’t I been through enough? Hadn’t I endured enough torture over the last eon? Did she really have to reach down into my most private, most intimate moments and drag them into the daylight, too? The last, precious fragments of who I was, that I hold onto so fiercely, lest I lose myself completely—

Why?

“Magic doesn’t just materialize out of nothing,” I growl, closing the distance again, propelled by a fresh wave of anger. “What did you want to know? If it would hurt me to relive this? If I could even tell the difference between you?”

She winces like my words had been a slap. “No!”

“Then what?” I grab ahold of her, desperate for this to be over. Desperate to just—just feel nothing. “Do you want me to admit that you remind me of her? That I’m in agony every time I look at you? Is that it?”

“I don’t want anything! Let me go!”

“Would it please you to know that I am?” I murmur, my voice dangerously quiet, and she goes still. “Every time.”

And now, I realize numbly, it will be worse.

Because now she doesn’t just remind me of what I had with my Zelda.

Now I’ve tasted her, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to again.

  Frightening

“I’m sorry about what happened with the Champions,” she says quietly, catching me off guard. “I imagine it was… frightening, losing control like that.”

Yes. Yes, it was. I don’t think I’ve ever been so afraid of anything in my life as I was in that moment, so close to rupturing, so close to tearing her apart with a thought, so close to losing myself completely and destroying everything I love in the aftermath. I want so badly to tell her, to unburden myself. I know she’s hoping I will. And that just… makes the temptation worse. She’s staring through me with unseeing eyes, full of the desire to understand, to heal even a little bit of the damage. I want to pull her closer, taste her again, thread my fingers in her hair and indulge in the warmth of her. I want to lose myself in her touch, in her lips, lose myself to her instead of to the monster working to claw its way out of me. I want to—

Gods!

“You were right,” I manage, finally. “They weren’t to know.”

“How have you been since?” she asks. So eager. So earnest. So gentle. It’s infuriating. “Any lingering effects? Urges to explode?”

“I always feel the urge to explode,” I scoff, grateful for the levity. “But no. The seal is as strong as it ever was.”

  The Zora Princess

We stop to rest and I quietly remove myself. So I can breathe. So they can breathe.

The air tastes clearer once I put some distance between us, like grass and wind and the malice in my mouth instead of the honeyed flavor of their adrenaline. The pressure in the back of my mind eases somewhat without the constant temptation, but the hollow gnaw of the hunger is just as strong as it ever was. I lower myself into the prairie grass, beating back a groan.

The Gerudo and that bird creature are arguing about something. It makes Zelda laugh.

That’s good.

Then the wind shifts and the air tastes of sugar and salt, and I turn towards it slowly. It’s the Zora girl. She’s so short the grass is up to her knees, and her trident has become more of a walking stick than a weapon. She’s so quiet it’s easy to forget she’s there—but she’s one of the Champions, and royalty, if the headdress is any indication. I’m sure she’s stronger than she looks. The fact that she’s confronting me on her own is evidence enough.

I tilt my head at her as she draws close, feeling after that gentle spike in her heart rate as I fix her in my stare. It makes my spine burn.

“Princess,” I greet her quietly. “To what do I owe this honor?”

She leans on her staff, remarkably calm, and I can feel the tendrils of power wafting off her.

“You’re in a great deal of pain,” she says.

My lips move towards a frown as I draw the inevitable conclusion. Just my luck. “You’re a healer.”

“Yes.”

And her magic is a peculiar brand. Very strong, almost magnetized in the way it drifts towards injury. It’s what brought her to me. I wouldn’t be surprised if she could bring someone back from the brink of death.

I contemplate her usefulness for a moment; but I need to go much further than the brink, and that’s well beyond even her abilities.

  Dreamcraft

I carry her up to the campsite, lay her near the fire and rouse it a bit so she isn’t freezing, and then grudgingly lift the sleepweb from the Zora girl. Her eyes open and then drift upwards, like she’s watching the spell float away.

Her eyes settle on me, finally, all golden and rippling, and she says, “You seem better.”

She’s a strange one. No demanding what I’d done, or where I’d gone, or what had happened. But she’s also sharp. Sharp enough that her bold-faced concern makes me feel manipulated. But she’s not wrong. I had been caught up in feeling terrified to notice, but the hunger had faded into background noise. Throbbing, like something swollen. I frown, trying to puzzle out how that had happened.

I finally admit, because it’s too easy to admit things when I’m with her, “We shared a dream.”

“And that helps?”

I can’t be sure if it’s the emotional implosion that follows one of her illusions merely drowning the hunger out, or an actual, measurable, residual effect of her dreamcraft. Either way, it’s worth studying. Which is horrifying.

“Maybe.”

We sit by the fire in silence for a while. That’s easy, too. Almost like we had been friends once, in another life. I’m watching the flames, and she’s watching Zelda, and then so am I.

“Could you enter her dreams now? While she sleeps?”

The idea of sauntering into her mind uninvited worms unpleasantly in whatever scrap of my conscience is left, vaguely reminiscent of guilt. But she’s plowed headlong into mine more than once, so it seems only fair. For some reason that reasoning doesn’t make the worming stop. I still haven’t answered, and her eyes glide to the side of my head. I call up the fire more, loosing a taut, tired sigh at her persistence.

“Possibly.”

It’s noncommittal and non-revealing, which I assume will grind her advance to a halt. But she slips around it like water in that infuriating way she does.

“You should try it sometime,” she says.

I tilt my head at her. “You don’t find the idea of trespassing on her mind morally objectionable?”

She shrugs. “Not as objectionable as you tearing a swathe of Hyrule up by the roots.”

And that’s logic I can hardly argue with. Her eyes say she knows. And suddenly I find the image of her pretty crimson skull smashed against the stone and its contents spattered everywhere very appealing.

“You need her,” she adds, too simply, too condemningly, and I have to swallow down fury and terror.

Because she’s right.

Oof. OOF! HOW DID THIS END UP BEING 8000 WORDS LONG? I don’t even know.

So first of all the beginning is a TRAIN WRECK. How do I introduce unimportant Sheikah characters? Should I allude to this whole invisible confrontation Link and Cotera are having as he tries to enter the village? How do I make Zelda explaining the last 11 chapters to our new and uninteresting Sheikah friends not so incredibly boring that people claw their own eyes out trying to read it?

And then her feelings. HER FEELINGS. I’m convinced neither she nor I really know what’s happening inside her head. She’s angry. She feels like an idiot for not figuring it out sooner. She’s devastated and scared that she’s going to have to go through with using the sword anyway and her expectations have been dashed. And there is even more to unpack there which I’m going to try to cover in the next chapter but I feel like there was just SO MUCH there and as a result all of it falls flat. 🤦🏻‍♀️

And there’s a lot of other things I wanted to incorporate, like Cotera was actually super busy during this whole thing, she’s the one who told the Sheikah he was coming, and she confronted him while they were entering, and at the fountain, but I just could not find a way to bring her in. Maybe next chapter. Or maybe not. And Purah’s glasses are literal lenses of truth, so she can see the Calamity and Link coexisting in the one space. Did that come through at all? Because it ended up being such a little blip that I don’t think anyone could possibly have picked up on that. And then Revali just kinda plops in, and Impa shows up and they give Link a scabbard and the Sheikah Slate they’ve kept secreted away all this time and the tunic Zelda made, and it’s all just kind of mildly alluded to in two or three sentences. Those could have been entire scenes. Long scenes. They probably should have been. Oof I’m regretting it already and I haven’t even pushed the publish button yet. 😂

Then of course there’s the hot springs debacle. Woof.

AND THEN this morning when I was writing the last scene, it was supposed to end with Zelda being all soothing and Link finally giving in to her sweet reassurances, and instead it literally ends with her saying I hate you and I’ll always hate you 😬 Sooooo at first I was like wow, should I not do that? THAT wasn’t part of the plan. But apparently that’s how Zelda is feeling right now so! I’m gonna roll with it! 😂

And honestly I feel like as far as meltdown dissertations go this one was pretty short! Which is odd because I feel like this chapter has major issues even more than the others and it’s longer. 🤔 Oh well!