#hfmh

Wait, four?

Where was Shadow?

Panicked now, he forced his eyes open.

Purple walls. Not black from four colors or rainbow spiraled from six, meaning they weren't merged. He was split, and his sword was wedged in a pedestal he recognized, one that lived deep in the Palace of the Four Sword.

But why was his sword alone? They didn't leave the swords alone when one of them was resting in their sword, nor did they often rest in their swords while split. So why were they split now?

Vio didn't know. He shoved against the purple walls, releasing his spirit form to look around the room. His sword's pedestal was the only one in the room, and in spirit form he wouldn't be able to draw his sword. But the only exit door was locked from the outside; he couldn't leave once in his solid form, and his sword would be left behind even if he drew it before he left.

Sighing, he reached for his brothers instead to compare notes, and found them slowly waking up as well. None of them seemed to know why they'd been stabbed by Fi, nor where Shadow was, though they were sure their brother was alive and somewhere nearby. They just had to find him.

But they had to figure out how to get out of their rooms first.

Red remembered first that it had been Legend who stabbed them, though a younger Legend than they remembered. That left a sinking feeling in all of them, knowing their brother had had to fight them (and probably kill them, at least as far as tiny Legend knew) before they'd even properly met him.

Red had elemental fire. While he could wield light, it wasn't in its elemental form -- it was almost a side effect of his fire. Perhaps Red had phrased it right after all: neither fire nor light were his element directly, but the energy that produced them was. Hyrule supposed by that definition, it made much more sense that elemental fire was the closest ring surrounding spirit magic in that one diagram his father had used when explaining it to him.

Earth, Vio's element, ringed around fire and spirit: a vessel given to spirit through the energy of fire, to temper and tame the rawer elements, to channel life through fire into stone and soil, and from soil into growth and strength. It was the most diverse element, as shown in the sheer variety of plants that it called upon and named its own. It didn’t have to be creative -- it had to temper creativity through logic, making life prove it could do what it wanted to do before life could show its strength.

As the outermost element, wind passed in and out of earth, feeding fire, directing water, until its willpower overcame the odds that earth demanded. It would go beyond any limit set upon it if given the smallest of chances -- a single hole was all it needed to bypass an obstacle. Wind could be guided, but it could not be forced. Its creativity was unmatched.

Meanwhile, Shadow’s magic was centered on spirit, on life, on making possible what was otherwise impossible. That was the balance in the light magic and dark magic that built themselves as central to the young mage, the threads that tied his brothers’ rings together. To Shadow had gone the balance point of his brothers. Whether or not they knew it, he was their fulcrum, their sanity, their heart -- more so than even Red, because his magic was central to Red’s own.

Water ran deep, creating its own level where it balanced between earth and air. It was fierce where outer forces worked on it, an echo of fire’s passion, but if left alone it was calm, more so than the earth that shook it below. It took whatever was handed to it and embraced it, easily holding secrets under its waves. Water was alive as long as it was in motion; even when all was calm, water was in motion, spinning gently to the pulse of the fire below the earth that rocked it, or teasing the breeze that brushed along its surface. Elemental water drew from the energy of life echoed in fire, and channeled that energy into a blessing on everything it touched. Where the water was fresh, there was plant life thriving lush and bright; where the water was salt, all the life in its waves were purified. Curses could not handle the salt matched with the living energy in water: nothing that meant harm for harm’s sake could survive. If it was a sword, it was a sword to shield something else.