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Link sat by the side of the river, waiting for the sun to go down.
He was exhausted, but what else was new? When every day is the same, you get used to the pattern of events, to the certain certainties that will always come your way.
He’d once thought that working as a royal engineer and driving his train was a fairly safe, repetitive lifestyle. After the chaos and excitement of his adventure on the Spirit Tracks, he had been content with that: with a quiet life on the rails. Picking up passengers, transporting goods. Okay, maybe the occasional bublin or tektite, but he could take care of that with the train cannon. No sweat off of his back.
It had been a few years since all of that. Link was only a few weeks off of fourteen, and he liked to think that his life was back to normal. Driving his train. Having dinner with the engineers. Laughing at old Niko’s stories. And yes, okay, maybe having regular dinners at the castle as the personal guest of the princess wasn’t terribly normal.
Nor were the picnic lunches. Or shopping days. Or time spent goofing off and hanging out.
Okay okay, maybe he wasn’t having a completely typical life. But Zelda was his best friend, and hanging out with her was fun.
Zelda.
He missed her.
She had told him not to go on this stupid mission.
He should have listened.
It was his own fault, really. Wanting a quiet life, the same thing every day, it was a noble dream, but it was also a lie. He knew that deep inside. Driving the train, going through the same motions over and over again, it was good enough, but something within him wanted more. Wanted action.
He and Zelda had been hanging about the castle when the General had come to speak with her. As princess, she was kept informed whenever there were any more serious monster attacks or any evidence of dark magic. So when some sort of anomaly was detected up by Snowdrift Station, they came to let her know.
It was a rift, they said. A sort of… opening, right across the tracks, leading away into… well. They weren’t sure what. Some sort of magical barrier had appeared around it and no one could get inside to look. Army business, they were sure - they’d send some scouts up to check it out.
And Link? Link had let his mouth run away without him.
He’d said it was fine.
He’d said he was the Hero.
He’d said he’d go for them, no need for them to send people up and away from their homes when it was the week of Solstice.
Never mind that he’d be away from his family during the holiday. It was fine - Niko could hang out with the other engineers and Zelda had the royal celebrations to be getting on with. Something small but significant inside of Link missed the action and excitement of adventure, and one small anomaly wouldn't be exactly taxing. He’d be back before the celebrations ended, he was sure. It would be fine.
It was not fine.
Link drove his train up to Snowdrift and when he got there, the anomaly was just as the General described it. A rift in the tracks, strange and pulsating and clearly magical, and a magical barrier around it. The station was closed to the public - it wouldn’t do to have people just wandering around when there was a potential dangerous anomaly just sitting there - but the station master told Link that it hadn’t changed, it just sat there, still and silent, and stopped anyone who tried from entering.
Link frowned. It didn’t seem to be staying still to him. It seemed to pulse. And he was sure that if he really listened, he could hear it sing.
…maybe it wasn’t an accident, him coming up here. Maybe a hero was needed for this.
Maybe that was what it wanted.
Didn’t matter now.
Link had nodded and thanked the master, and then walked over to inspect the barrier. Up close he could see it thrum, could hear the strange, almost musical tones that sang from it.
He reached out a hand to touch it, and his fingers slipped right through. As if it was empty air.
He stepped through and crouched by the anomaly, peering into it. It swirled with magic, but in what colour, at what depth, he couldn’t tell you. It was like staring into nothing and everything all at once, and it almost hurt to look at.
Link blinked and glanced away.
Well. He’d come this far.
He reached out to touch it, and then it was all over.
There was a flash. A rush.
And then he was somewhere else.
-
The sun was setting over the river. Soon the monster would attack, and then the day would end and then start again.
Link was so tired.
He didn’t know how long ago he’d landed in this wood. It was hard to keep track when every morning time reset, when any and all progress he made was dragged away, when any gains were lost once more. At first he’d not been sure what was happening, had wondered if he was just lost, but there was no mistaking it now.
After touching the anomaly, he had woken up in these woods. He’d done his best, that first day, to be sensible. He’d never really been lost in a wilderness before, not without his train to go back to, but he knew the principles. Find water, find shelter, see if you can climb a tree and get help.
So he tried. He wasn’t very good at it, but he didn’t think he did too badly. He did find a river and he even managed to get a fire started, thanks to his tinderbox. And when a few small monsters that he didn’t recognise attacked, he was able to dispatch them without too much difficulty.
Thank the fates and the Spirits of Good and even the damn Sleeping Goddess he’d brought his sword.
He made it through the day, more or less, although he wasn't as good at fishing as he would have liked to be. He didn’t actually have a fishing rod, and it turned out that it was harder to improvise with a stick and string than he thought.
He missed his train.
It would be alright. So what if he was a little hungry today? He’d read loads of books on survival and had been able to find some berries that were safe to eat, so he wasn’t starving. And he could heat some water on his fire, so that was almost like tea!
By the time it got to sundown on that first day, Link was pretty sure that he was doing alright. Yeah, his shelter was rudimentary and he was kind of hungry, but he had climbed a tree and had seen a building in the distance - like some sort of mansion type place! He could go there tomorrow and see what was going on, and it would be fine!
He was nailing this.
All he had to do was bundle up and try to get some sleep for the night. Then in the morning he could set off.
…
It was fine.
Sure he didn’t exactly have an extensive bedroll set; he didn’t need one when he could normally go and sleep on his train. And… sure. It was… a little lonely.
On his first adventure, Link had never really been on his own. He’d always had Zelda there beside him, a ghost, sure, but there. Talking to him, cracking jokes, keeping him company.
But it was fine.
He was fine.
The sun dipped below the horizon, reflecting a vivid amber on the river, and darkness fell.
And something howled. A lot of somethings.
Link didn’t know where they came from. He’d checked his surroundings, tussled with a few weaker creatures, but this little shelter he’d made by the riverside should have been safe! It was as if the shadows around him had simply lengthened and stretched and the monsters had emerged from nothing!
He fought then like he’d never fought before, using everything he had at his disposal. Okay, so it wasn’t the cannon on his train, but he was decent enough at swordplay and had plenty of other items at his disposal. He threw bombs, whirled his boomerang, and made prodigious use of his snake-headed whip, Mr Bitey.
He won, but only just. When he was done he was sore, tired, and bleeding from a nasty gash across his eyebrow. This sucked - but it was fine.
He was fine.
He just had. To keep. Going.
-
He woke the next morning with a jolt, to find himself - huh.
To find himself standing, not at the riverside, but in the middle of a woodland. With all of his gear on, his sword drawn, and-
And without the stinging of the cut over his eye.
What in the-
Link was not a stupid person. He was, in fact, incredibly clever; skilled in lateral thinking and with a logical, detail-focused brain. He was the youngest person ever to qualify as a royal engineer in all of New Hyrule and he took professional pride in constantly innovating and improving his work.
That his mind did not immediately jump to ‘I am stuck in a time loop’ is no indictment on his intellect. It was simply not the most likely option, and Link did not usually waste his time dwelling on unlikely scenarios.
He probably had been sleepwalking. He had bumped his head, but perhaps not as badly as he had thought. It had all been a strange vision.
It was fine.
He walked on, telling himself that he’d just been granted a rare chance of foresight into his future. He’d keep going, better prepared than he might have been, and thanking the Spirits of Good for their aid.
The rain came at the same time as before, near noon. The river was where he remembered it would be. And at sundown, the monsters attacked. He was better prepared this time but it didn’t feel any easier. By the time the battle was won he felt tired and cold and exhausted and lonely. He didn’t feel victorious.
But it would be fine.
He curled up in his tiny, makeshift shelter, and prayed that this time, he would get some rest.
He woke up once again in the forest, standing upright, with his sword at the ready, back where it all began.
And again.
And again.
And again.
At first he wondered if it was some sort of puzzle. If he simply had done the first two loops wrong, if there was something that he had to find, to do, to uncover, to move forwards. He began searching every inch of the forest around him, at first stopping only to eat and then when his exploration remained fruitless, he started to forgo mealtimes altogether. After all, every morning he woke up with a full enough belly anyway, reset as he always was to the way he had been when he arrived. Food was just… another waste of time.
He explored the forest. He found nothing. At noon it rained. At sundown the monsters came.
Sometimes Link beat them. Sometimes he was too tired and hungry, and he did not.
The new day dawned, the same as before, and Link was back where he began.
Again
And again
And again.
He tried something else. He’d seen the mansion in the woods and he figured if he really pushed it, he could be there by late afternoon. He made it there a few times, but each time it was no good. The walls around the house were too high for him to scale, and there was no door to speak of. The structure almost didn’t look real - like someone who had never seen a house before had just conjured it up based on secondhand stories and hearsay.
Then, at sunset, outside the walls of the house, the monsters attacked as they always did. The forest darkened. Link had been so full of hope that the house would give him some answers, some sort of solution to this puzzle. He had forgone stopping to eat, forgone rest. His feet, unused to trekking through the wilderness were red and blistered, his body exhausted from the exertion and from the unfamiliar, fearsome beasts that he had encountered on the way.
When the sun set, he didn’t bother putting up a fight. He just sat slumped against the wall of the mansion and let them come.
Link began again.
-
To be honest, he wasn’t sure how long he had been in this forest.
Long enough to hate it, that was for sure, but he was fairly certain that some part of him had hated it instantly. He had, at first, tried to keep track of the loops as he went through them. A sort of academic curiosity, desperate to catalogue and interrogate and understand.
Now, though, he didn’t care. He’d been through the same day over and over and over and he had fought and won and lost and died and woken up over and over and he was just so tired.
So he sat there. On the banks of the river. Waiting for the sun to set.
It was still his favourite place in the damn forest. He’d explored every inch of it by now - or at least, every inch that he could during the confines of a single day. There were plenty of places to find, if you looked. The hollowed out tree to the north. The overgrown ruins to the south. The cliff overlooking a vast gorge, impassable to one small boy with only a few hours to spare.
The river was beautiful, even after all this time. Smooth and green, overhung with vines and Abodan moss, dragonflies flitting about its surface, and its view of the sunset was unparalleled. It was as good a place to end his day as any, so more often than not he sought it out.
He was getting pretty good at setting up a shelter too. Nothing he made lasted one loop to the next, so he couldn’t exactly make any real base, but he’d gotten pretty fast at throwing together a shade and a comfortable place to lie down. Now that he knew the lay of the land, he could get to the river before the noon sun, and there were worse ways to pass a time loop than lying at the waters’ edge.
…it was getting late. The monsters would be here soon.
Link sighed. Maybe it was just a trick of the loop, maybe it was his brain just searching for some sort of change to this endless routine, but the past few loops he’d felt… watched. Not all the time, just off and on, and if he hurried he could usually lose the feeling.
But he felt it now.
Probably nothing. Not like anything changed in this horrible place, anyway.
The sun sank.
The shadows lengthened.
The monsters appeared.
Link sighed and stood, drawing his sword.
The first of the monsters, a many-toothed beast from the shadow of the nearest tree lunged towards him and Link got ready to parry when-
There was a roar. A blur of darkness as something slammed into the side of the monster, knocking it from its path towards Link and ripping it apart.
Link staggered back, surprised for the first time in so long, eyes flying wide as he gasped.
“Wh-what?”
The creature - it was shaped almost like a dog, but far, far larger, almost like the drawings of wolves he had seen from the time of Old Hyrule - turned and looked at him, and its eyes were not the glaring red or black of the monsters around them. They were wide and blue and kind, and Link felt a surge of emotion rise in his chest.
Around them, the monsters keened.
Right. No time for feelings. They had a fight to win. Link hadn’t seen a single new thing in so long, he wasn’t going to risk losing the chance to learn more by dying here.
He readied his sword and leapt into battle, side by side with a wolf.
It was. Pretty cool.
For the first time in a long time, Link might even have smiled.
The battle was done in less than half his record time and when it was done, Link slumped to the ground. He knew that he should keep his guard up. After all - the wolf might not be friendly. But he so, so wanted it to be. He needed a friend, he was tired and lonely and just-
He really needed a friend.
There was a rustle as something padded through the thick undergrowth, and a faint jingling - the chain, he had noticed, around the wolf’s forepaw. Link turned to it, trying to look tough and mature and nonchalant and-
The wolf emerged from between two ferns, and its blue eyes were gentle. It padded up to him, nosing at where he’d taken a blow to his cheek.
Link’s lower lip trembled. He tried to fight it, just for a moment.
“Thank yo-hoo-hoooou!” he sobbed and threw his arms around the animal.
Ever since arriving here, Link had not cried. He hadn’t had the time to, hadn’t allowed himself the luxury. He had fought and struggled and screamed and fallen silent but he hadn’t allowed himself a moment to cry.
He did now, though. He sobbed into the wolf’s thick fur, arms thrown around its neck and clinging on as if for dear life. His whole body shook with the effort and his tears flooded thick and fast, like an entire ocean of grief and fear and loneliness and rage and gratitude were trying to escape him.
The Wolf rumbled softly and curled in towards him, and Link was so busy crying that he never was quite sure when the animal shifted. When it ceased to be a wolf and began to be a hylian, holding him close, rocking him gently, whispering assurances into his hair.
Link probably should have been more alarmed by that. But he wasn’t. It was something new and it was something kind. Something soft and gentle in this horrible, cruel forest. He clung to the man as the last of the sun disappeared over the horizon, clung to him until every last one of his tears were cried out.
“There, now,” a thick, honeyed accent said as he finally stopped crying, hiccoughing a little as the tears dried up. Link sniffled and felt a gentle hand wipe the tears from his cheeks. “S’okay. S’okay.”
Link curled into him. There was no point looking up - it was full dark, and the night would reset to morning soon anyway.
“S’not okay.” he whispered, burrowing into the soft tunic, the warm pelt around the man’s shoulders. “It- it keeps starting over. It won’t let us stay.”
“I know.” the man said gently. “I got here a few days ago. Figure I start out a half hour away from you. Jus’ you stay put, alright? When it starts over, I’ll come get you. We’ll figure it out.”
Link sniffled and looked up. In the darkness he couldn’t really make out much of the man’s face, but he could just about see the glimmer of his eyes. Kind eyes.
“Promise?” he whispered.
“Promise.”
-
Link felt kind of silly, waiting there when he woke up again.
Good things did not happen in this place. Whatever he thought had just happened, it must have been his imagination. Maybe he hit his head down by the river or he dozed off and dreamed it. It couldn’t have possibly been real. He should get moving if he wanted to get a shelter up before the rain came, no point dallying around.
He stayed where he was, heart hammering in his throat. The man had said he thought he was half an hour away from where he started, so he found himself almost obsessively checking his pocket watch, waiting for the minutes to tick down. He hardly dared to let himself hope that he really wasn’t alone, that there was someone else there, but with every rustle of the leaves, every crack of a branch, he found himself looking around with wide, eager eyes.
Then, after precisely twenty six minutes, he heard it. A movement in the bushes, the sound of footsteps, the jingle of something metal, and then-
The wolf burst out from between the trees, leaping towards him and transforming in midair. The man could only have been in his early twenties, with tanned skin and a mess of dark hair, and he immediately wrapped his arms around Link, pulling him into a hug.
“I came as soon as I could.” he whispered between panting. He must have run the whole way here, and Link felt a surge of gratitude. “What’s your name, kid?”
Link sniffled, pulling back and looking up at him. He didn’t look like the well groomed, neat soldiers from the royal guard. His hair was a mess and his clothes were made of practical, roughspun cloth. There were dark tattoos across his face, he wore a shaggy wolf’s pelt over his shoulders, and his teeth seemed somehow sharper than they should have been.
Link trusted him instantly.
“Link.” he whispered. “I- my name is Link.”
The man’s smile seemed to change, but it did not vanish. He nodded. “Well, hi there, Link. I’m Link too, but my brothers call me Twilight. I’m guessing you’re here on Hero Business?”
And then as they walked through the woods, he told Link a story. An incredible, unbelievable story about Heroes travelling across time, fighting side by side as they chased down a great evil. They were all called Link, so they went by whatever title they would become known at - Twilight was the Hero of Twilight, which was as grand and solemn a name as Link had ever heard.
“Is-” he asked nervously at one point. He wasn’t sure if he could abide to hear the answer. “Is- Is the Hero of the Wind Waker with you?”
Twilight grinned. “The Wind Wak- oh Wind? Yeah, sure, that little shit is with us. Looks kinda like you, actually. You heard of him, then?”
Link felt like he was going to faint.
The Hero of the Wind Waker. The first King of New Hyrule. And Twilight just called him a little shit? Said that he looked like Link?
“He-” Link managed to say when it became obvious that an answer would be required. “Um. He- he came before me.”
“Aw, nice!” Twilight grinned. “Kid always wanted a successor. He’ll be real pleased.”
The kid. Spirits above, Link couldn’t cope with this.
But still, they chattered on, not walking in any real direction. Just moving and talking, getting to know one another. Twilight asked about his adventure and Link shyly told him about the Spirit Tracks and his train. The man grinned at that. Spirit, then! He’d said. We’ll call you Spirit!
Link - now Spirit - had felt warm at that. A name, like he was part of their group. In fact, Twilight seemed adamant that he was part of the group he called the Chain, that they just hadn’t run into him yet. He said it with such confidence that Spirit couldn’t help but grin back at him, and believe that maybe, yes, someday he would get out of here, and maybe then he’d meet this band of brothers that Twilight spoke about so fondly.
“We’d landed through the portal a few days ago.” Twilight explained as they paused for a moment, the man kneeling in the foliage and setting up a small, neat contraption of sticks and a simple loop of string. He said it was a snare, and it would get them lunch, and Spirit was more than willing to try it if it meant a day away from scavenging berries.
“We - the Chain and I - heard there was some sort of chasm or rift or something opened up. We went to check it out ‘cause that’s kinda our job, and then when we got there the others were like ‘well shit that looks bad, let’s do some investigating before we dive in’. Muggins, of course, thought he was too cool for that, and I walked right up and touched the damn thing and - well. Here I am. Reckon I've been here four or five loops now. Can’t say I like it overmuch.”
Spirit giggled at that. Yeah, he didn’t really like this place either, but it was easier to make light of it when there was someone else around for company.
The two of them retreated into some bushes and sat for a while, and they talked a little more. Spirit told Twilight about the forest, about the patterns he had noticed, about the sights he had seen. They compared the equipment in each others’ packs. Twilight seemed to like Mr Bitey and grinned when he slithered up his arm and snuggled into the crook of his neck.
It was. It was nice.
Spirit looked at his watch. Three minutes past twelve.
“It’s going to rain in one minute.” he said softly. “And it’ll last for eighteen.”
Twilight looked at him appraisingly. “Well then.” he said. “In that case - how about we grab lunch and go find shelter. You said there was a cave near here?”
He had. It was a small one, and good for hunkering down in, but not really Spirit’s favourite. Still, once Twi showed him how his snare had caught them a rabbit for lunch, the cave was an ideal place to seek shelter and set up a small fire to roast it over, the spit and crackle of the logs and the dripping fat almost drowning out the torrent of rain outside.
It was without a doubt, the best lunch that Spirit had ever had.
Sorry, Bunnyland Rescue. He'd make a donation when he got back. If he got back.
“So,” Twilight said as they finished, licking the grease from his fingers where he had been sucking one of the bones clean. “Any ideas on how to escape the nightmare scenario we currently find ourselves in?”
Spirit frowned. Something… something about that felt important, but he couldn’t say what. Hmm. Whatever. Probably nothing.
He shook his head. “I’ve been all over the forest.” he replied “There’s a few… landmarks, I guess, but they don’t have anything to do with each other. Just… random things. I told you about them earlier - there’s some ruins, an old tree, a canyon… just. Just things.”
“Hmm.” Twilight snorted, rifling around in his pack and pulling out some fruit jerky, offering it over to a delighted Spirit. “S’like. Someone wanted to make a mysterious forest and just kind of threw everything they had at it. Like they didn’t really know what they were doing but they just went for it.”
“Yeah!” Spirit said with his mouth full of jerky and not even caring if he was being rude. “That’s what I thought! When I went to the house, it was like. Like someone had maybe seen one from a distance? Or, or had heard of one? But didn’t really know what they were doing?”
Twilight hummed again, looking out to the entrance of the cave. It had stopped raining, though they couldn’t smell the petrichor past the smoke of the fire and the remains of their meal.
“That house…” he murmured. “I noticed it my first day here. Climbed a tree and saw it. It’s… it stands out, doesn’t it? I’ll bet it was the first landmark you went to. I was going to go there too, before I found you.”
Spirit nodded slowly. “...yeah?” he said. “It. I figured there might be people there. Someone who could help.”
“Hmm.” Twi stood, walking over to the mouth of the cave. “All those things you told me about. You can’t see them. When you climb a tree, you can’t see the ruins or the river or the gorge. It’s just trees in every direction. And that house. Isn’t that weird?”
Spirit frowned. It was weird. The river was long and snaking, the gorge wide and gaping. Those at least should have been visible - but Twilight was right. Whenever you climbed a tree, the only thing you could see, other than the miles and miles of trees, was the house.
“...like a dream.” he murmured, going to stand beside his newfound brother. “You said earlier. That this place is like a nightmare. And - and it is. It’s like dream logic. A forest with a house in it - and all these other things that just appear when you get close? Things that sound like you’d see them in a forest in stories? Monsters that appear from nowhere when it gets dark? It’s like- it’s like we’re trapped in some sort of recurring nightmare!” he was starting to sound frantic now and he knew it, his hand raking through his hair, his engineer’s jacket askew.
He looked over at Twilight, who was watching him with narrowed eyes. He felt his shoulders slump.
“Look, I know I sound crazy. But I’ve been here for so long and it- it just feels like this isn’t somewhere real. It feels like we’re trapped in some sort of mind.”
Twilight looked at him for a long moment. Then he nodded.
“...you might be onto something, there.”
“...huh?”
He hummed. “One of my brothers went through something similar. Trapped in a dream. Isn’t completely impossible it’s happening to us too.”
“Wait- what?”
“I mean. It would need to be someone powerful. The Wind Fish was a god, and whatever’s doing this, its nightmares managed to open rifts across eras and called only to Heroes. And- hey, Spirit - what did you say the other landmarks were? Specifically?”
Spirit blinked. “Um. A ruined temple? With like. Triangles like the one on the royal crest? And an old tree that was burned out and’s hollow now? Uh. There’s a weird bird statue out east, out on its own, kinda yay-high?”
Twilight nodded. “...So… that could be the Temple of Time as it is in my era - or Wild’s, I guess… the burned tree - that’s Time’s dad… weird bird statue? WIth a beak like this? And like - a little flounce here? That’s from Sky’s era… and this cave - it could be from Rulie’s time…”
Spirit frowned, shaking his head. Now he was totally lost.
“Twilight? What are you talking about?”
Twilight blinked, looking down at him. And he smiled.
“I think you’re right.” he said by way of explanation. “It- it is like a dream. And everything in it - it’s all different things from different Heroes’ journeys. I don’t think it’s an accident that the only people who could enter this place was Heroes.”
“Well.” Spirit frowned. “It was a trap? Right?”
Twilight shook his head. “No… no I just think- whoever it is dreaming. They have to be a god. They have to know about the cycle of the heroes. They’d need to know our stories. And- and the time loop. Who do we know who is a god, has dominion over time, and is overly invested in our lives?”
Spirit blinked. This felt like a trick question. He felt himself blush.
“Uuuh.” he said. “The… Spirits of Good?”
“Who? No - Hylia!”
Spirit blinked again. He knew the name, of course, it was part of his school history class, but no one ever really talked about Hylia anymore. She was part of the old world, something that had faded along with the ancient kingdom.
“But-” he shook his head. “But she drowned. When Hyrule flooded. All her statues and temples - they’re gone now. I mean - she’s still technically our patron and we’re planning a new temple for her now we’ve re-founded the kingdom but it’s never exactly got off the ground. People call her the sl-”
He broke off, stunned for a moment. Twilight looked down at him.
“They call her what, Spirit?”
He stared up at him. The myths went that when the Old Hyrule was flooded and the temples drowned by the waves, that Hylia, patron of the kingdom, went into a deep slumber. That she was resting beneath the waves until such time as her kingdom rose again and called her from her resting place.
“They-” he whispered. “They call her the Sleeping Goddess.”
Twilight’s smile grew, his expression almost wolfish in his glee.
“Well, then.” he grinned. “I’d say it’s about time we helped the Sleeping Goddess wake up!”
-
The plan was beautiful in its simplicity.
They would never make it to the house today - it was too far away and the loop would reset long before they made it. No, but first thing tomorrow - or this morning? First thing when the loop reset, Twilight would race over to meet Spirit, and the two of them would set off.
It was a long hike to the house, and the terrain wasn’t the easiest, but it would be worth the blisters and the sore feet if it truly set them free. From his previous few journeys to the house, Spirit knew that it would be late afternoon, early evening by the time they got to those great, unreal, imperfect walls. That was okay - it still left them with plenty of time to carry out the final part of the plan.
The house was too conspicuous, too important to be meaningless, after all. That was why they were going to it. Because, Twilight said, if this whole landscape was built of the dreams of a god, then where else would they be sleeping but inside the weird, poorly rendered house?
All they had to do was figure out how to wake her, given that they couldn’t get in. But, Spirit pointed out with a grin, that shouldn’t be too much of a problem. After all, he was an engineer, and when going through his and Twi’s packs, he had found a delightfully large number of explosives.
Even a goddess couldn’t sleep through dozens of bombs going off at once, right?
So they set off, buoyed by their determination and fuelled by the thought that if this worked, it could truly be their final loop. Spirit could hardly believe it. It seemed too good to be true. It was amazing.
They made it there in record time, gasping and out of breath but having been too excited to slow down or rest on their way. The two of them were tired and hungry by the time they got there, but they were too determined to let themselves rest for any longer than a brief flop down to eat some of Twilight’s jerky.
The next part of the plan was easy. Spirit and Twi brought out every last one of their bombs and lined the perimeter of the walls with them. While the engineer may not have had access to his train and the bigger array of tools that he kept within, he did still have a little travel pack with him, and it didn’t take long for him to set up a fuse that would let them light up every last explosive at once.
Then, they got the hell away from the house. Time loop or no, neither of them really fancied being blown up by two hundred and ten bombs all at once. That may have been a mere alarm clock for a god, but it would be not pleasant for them.
“Okay.” Twi said once they got well back into the treeline. “Think we’re far enough away?”
Spirit shrugged. “One way to find out. Do you want to do the others?” he offered his tinderbox to the man.
Twilight grinned. “You’re the engineer, kid. S’all yours.”
Spirit matched his grin and looked down at the end of his fuse. “Well.” he said as he knelt down. “Whatever happens - at least we’re going out with a bang!”
Twilight snorted. “You sure know how to defuse the tension, kid.”
Spirit lowered his tinderbox and lit the fuse. “This plan,” he said as it flared up and began to quickly burn down towards their explosives. “Is the bomb.”
The flare reached the bombs, and in one almighty CRASH, they all detonated as one. All at once the forest was filled with a noise louder than any that Spirit had ever heard before. The entire world seemed to shake, and the explosion was so bright and fierce that even at this distance, even when Twilight grabbed Spirit and covered him, shielding his body with his own, he could still feel his eyebrows singing.
The explosion seemed to last for an eternity, crashing and banging and burning on, but it could really only have been a few seconds.
And then… everything fell silent.
Too silent.
Twilight and Spirit were huddled into one another, eyes squeezed tightly shut against the blast, clinging to each other as if somehow they could give one another protection should the explosion come too close for comfort. They could still hear the bang ringing in their ears and it took a moment for them to catch their breath, to move, to open their eyes-
But, finally, they did.
The forest was gone.
Not burned away and left in ashes or destroyed by the explosion, no. It was simply gone, and the whole world with it. Twilight and Spirit found themselves instead floating in the darkness of a void, surrounded by nothing but silence for thousands of miles, the only sensation of touch being where they still clung to each others’ hands.
They stared, looking around, trying to get their bearings.
…maybe it wasn’t a total void. The more their eyes adjusted, the more they began to see tiny pinpricks of light in the distance. Of stars. More and more winking into existence by the second, until they were surrounded by an entire universe of starlight.
It was beautiful.
Then, all at once, the stars began to ripple and move. As if pulled by an almighty tide, they swept and swirled around, condensing and coalescing into a single, mighty nebula, so vast in its expanse that it was near impossible for them, mere mortals, to take it in with one look.
And then the nebula turned to them, and it had a face. And the face was kind. Loving. Motherly. Made up entirely of light, with stardust as her veil and a crown of stars, Hylia was not just from the heavens, she was made of them. She regarded them calmly, and they stared back at her as she smiled and reached out with a single, mighty hand to gently cup where they floated.
Her lips parted and she spoke, but the words of the gods are not for mortals to comprehend. Her voice sounded to the two Heroes like the song of a temple choir, like the ringing of bells and like birdsong and the crashing of a mountain waterfall. They did not hear her words, but they understood what she was saying all the same.
They had woken the goddess from her slumber. Pulled her from her realm of nightmares. She was grateful. And now she would send them home.
The goddess inclined her many-starred head and gently touched it to the two of them, and the light of the stars increased until it was blinding, almost unbearable in its brilliance-
And then it was over.
Really, truly, over.
-
Spirit sat up with a gasp, frantically looking around as he tried to get his bearings. He had been in the forest - and it had been so long - and then there had been the explosion and the void and the goddess and-
And now he was here. Sitting on the platform of Snowdrift Station, with the station master frowning at him from his office door.
“Y’alright, lad?” he called as he poked his head out to check on him. “Looks like that damn thing disappeared when you touched it! Good job! Y’hurt?”
Spirit blinked, staring at him for a moment.
Right. Of course. He had come to Snowdrift to check on the anomaly, hadn’t he? And… had time really not passed since then? All that he had seen, all that he had been through - had it all really been over in an instant?
Was it really over?
Slowly, Spirit began to smile. He stood, nodding to the station master. It was over. He was home. Just a few platforms away and he could get on his train and go home to Zelda and his family and rest and-
PHWOOSH!
Spirit jumped, turning around as the air around him rippled and contracted, and a vast, dark portal opened only a few metres away.
“Tits of the spirits, it’s back!” he heard the station master curse, but somehow Spirit didn’t think that this portal seemed the same as the rift he had come here to investigate.
Somehow, despite the crackling and the smell of ozone in the air, it felt safe.
The surface of the portal swirled, and Spirit’s assumptions were proved correct when a familiar figure burst from its surface, grinning his sharp toothed grin and holding his arms out for a hug. Twilight laughed and rushed over to Spirit, lifting him up and whirling him around as behind him, eight more figures emerged and the portal closed with a snap..
Spirit laughed, feeling tears come to his eyes. The Chain. It was the Chain that Twi had told him about. They’d come for him after all. The rift was closed, New Hyrule was safe, and he had a whole gaggle of new brothers waiting to meet him, and Twilight holding him in his arms.
It was over.
And, in a way, Spirit thought with a smile, it was all only just beginning.