Ode To Storms, Part 3

[sinnatious]

Title: Ode To Storms

Summary: Linked Universe, 3 parts. Time is a paradox of Hylia’s own making, and this is how she deals with it. Time-centric.

Author’s Note: The final part! The idea I actually wanted to explore. Hope it doesn't disappoint.

Time stands alone in a stone room with a portal, the others already gone. How many times has it been? Once he stopped experimenting, they started to blend, a kind of muscle memory taking the place of conscious thought.

He stares at the portal, thoughts fracturing. He’s frayed and worn and this is it. He is standing on the precipice of madness. He has tried to be patient, tried to cling to hope, and only been rewarded with more suffering. Hylia has not only discovered the limits of the Hero’s Spirit, but has gone well past them.

No more. He refuses.

No more.

He can’t rewind time past a portal normally, but Legend had theorised that magic more powerful than Ganon’s might be able to override that. That brute force could work, when all else fails – an idea abandoned only because they had no means to acquire enough. That idea has sat at the back of his mind ever since. Even at his age now, Time’s magic still falls short of Zelda’s, never mind Ganondorf’s - but there is one being who he thinks might be even stronger.

He reaches into his bag, and pulls out the mask.

It’s never been like his other masks. The other times, he’s been donning a guise, influenced by the spirits housed within, borrowing their form and abilities. The Deity has never felt like a spirit to him though. It’s simply felt like bottled fury and endless anguish. It’s never felt like becoming something else. It’s always felt like becoming something more.

The mask’s power had grown to scare him, yes, but he is far more scared of the fact that the mask feels like it fits too well. How easy it had become, once he was no longer a child, to forget he was even wearing it.

So it has sat in his pouch, carefully stowed beneath all his other masks, ignored since this whole affair started. Things never became quite dire enough to warrant its use – and with his experience and magic reserves only ever growing, the need for it has become less and less. Until now.

It’s a dangerous experiment, but then, Time is trapped in a loop, and dangerous experiments seem to be the only way he’ll ever escape. And he so desperately, desperately needs to escape.

He slides the mask over his face. No painful transformation comes. His magic surges, flooding and bright, but it doesn’t burn his veins or feel unnatural. It’s like wearing a bespoke tunic, or enchanted earrings.

He welcomes it, and the mask dissolves into ash.

When Time looks at his reflection in his shield, the deity’s marks on his face are complete. He doesn’t feel any different. Invigorated, perhaps, but certainly not corrupted into urges of destruction or villainy.

Perhaps the mask has been siphoning power to him all along. Perhaps most of its essence had already been transferred by the time he stopped using it, scared after he lost control only once, after he saw those first marks on his face. Many of his magical masks seem to weaken from excessive use, leaving fragments of their power behind. Mingling magic often has that effect. And time wore down almost everything, in the end – and that mask had been very, very old.

It hardly matters. The mask has fulfilled the one final job he needed it for – a boost in strength and magic, far beyond his normal limits.

Time raises his ocarina to his lips, takes a breath, and begins to play.

He plays and plays and plays, the song of time, the song of double time, the song of storms, the song of time the song of time the song of time. He plays until he is out of breath, then buys that breath back with the inverted song of time and plays some more. Reality smears around him, but he doesn’t stop, desperate, recklessly spending his magic, forcing the song beyond when it should stop, beyond the limits of the portals which trap him here. Let his existence end. Let it be unmade. Let him somehow, somehow, escape the loop. Rewind it back until it never happens if he must. Until he never happens.

Something shatters, magic warping and twisting and lurching around him, and when Time opens his eye, he’s no longer in the stone room. He’s in an empty field, a night sky stretching gloriously above his head, a gentle breeze rustling knee-deep grass in endless waves around him.

He staggers and falls to his knees, breath and magic spent.

He’s done it. He’s gone back. Back and back and back, back before even Sky’s time, back before the Hero’s Spirit was even a thing.

He laughs, and the sound is cracked and broken. He’s free at last, he’s escaped, but he’s alone. Tossed adrift into an era he doesn’t belong in.

The Song of Storms echoes in his heart, and it begins to rain.

…………..

Eventually, Time sets out to explore the new world. It’s mostly from a lack of idea of what else to do, the habit of moving forward even when there seems to be no point.

He is far enough in the past that the land is unrecognisable. There is a volcano that may one day become Death Mountain, a forest bereft of the Great Deku Tree, a desert without any Gerudo. There’s no Kakariko in any form, no sign of what will be Lake Hylia or the Zora River yet, no Hyrule Castle. No hylians.

There’s no sign of Zoras yet, either. Gorons exist at least, in the form of travelling merchants instead of the native settlement expected. No Great Fairies, though – the fairies he does find are young, delicate little things, their magic like crumbs of sweet crystal, and incapable of language. They’re in equal terms nervous of and curious about him, so he teaches them words whenever he stops and stays somewhere for a time, heart aching for his friend he’ll now never find. If Navi is anywhere, she is many centuries away from him. Just like Malon and the child he’ll never meet.

He can’t think about it, can’t let himself dwell, even though in the long nights he can’t do anything else. He tries to simply be grateful that he’s free, that he’d broken out of that temporal loop, but he misses his wife. Misses his boys. Misses Epona and Talon and home.

Never enough to regret it, but it doesn’t make the loneliness any less.

After some months, he learns of great dragons who guard the land, named for the Golden Goddesses, with power reminiscent of the Giants of Termina. One name catches his attention – Lanayru.

It’s not Nayru herself, but anyone bearing her name is bound to be blessed with her powers. And from there, a thin, fragile hope is spun. A way back, perhaps, to his era. To Malon. To home.

He sets out in search. To his surprise, Lanayru lives not in the soothing waters of a lake as expected, but atop a plateau in the vast desert, a small oasis of withered green amidst the dunes, surrounded by what looks like a small army of robots constructing the foundations of a temple. It seems in this era, Faron is considered the patron of water, whereas Lanayru is known for lightning.

The dragon stirs as he approaches. “Oh, a visitor?” His hulking form rises. He is as strange a dragon as Time has ever seen, brown leathery skin instead of scales, top heavy with hands and arms that look almost hylian if not for the hooked, hardened nails poking from the tips. He wears a bright yellow cloak large enough to cover a house, emblazoned with symbols that remind him of the Zora’s Sapphire. Small misty clouds wreath his form, and gather around his mouth in the mimicry of a beard. “This is most unexpected. One of your kind hasn’t been seen on the surface for many years. I am the great dragon Lanayru, tell me, what is your name?” His voice rolls like thunder.

“I am the Hero of Time,” he answers, sidestepping any potential issues he might cause there. “I come from a point far in the future, and I seek a way back.”

“From the future you say?” He rears up, slow even in surprise. “Backwards in time… that is something I’ve been experimenting with, it’s true. Forwards, though, I haven’t a clue where to start. Why ever would anyone want to go forwards? Much better to get there the normal way, I think,” the dragon rumbles.

Time struggles to bite back his irritation. “It’s too long for even a dragon. You don’t exist in my time, after all.”

“A time beyond even me? You are far from home, Hero of Time.” Lanayru leans down to peer at him. His breath mists the air, heedless of the burning sun. “What brings you to this era, then? Why are you here?”

“There is no reason,” Time replies, and can’t stop the bitterness creeping into his voice. He’s here because he had to escape, but as far as he’s concerned, there was no reason for him to have needed to escape in the first place. All Hylia had to do was not summon him on that adventure, not trap him in that mad cycle. He would never have needed to be contained if she didn’t cause whatever unsolvable paradox his summoning led to in the first place. “Hence why I wish to return home.”

“No reason? No, there is always a reason, even if we cannot always see it. We do tend to be blind to the obvious things when it comes to ourselves, after all,” Lanayru mutters, seemingly unaware of Time’s rising ire. He examines him with black, beady eyes. “You are an odd one, Hero of Time. There is a strangeness to your magic, if you will not find me rude for saying so.”

“It’s not so different from yours,” Time replies. It is coloured, he knows, by the Triforce, by his time in Sacred Realm, by a childhood spent with fairies in an enchanted forest. Twisted further by the absurd loop he escaped, and no doubt the mask he used to do so has played a role as well.

“Indeed. You must be far older than you look. I hadn’t thought your kind lived so long.” Lanayru thumps his tail, and the puffs of cloud around it crackle with sparks of lightning. “And yet, it changes not what you seek. Would that I could help you, Hero of Time, but if there is a way to do what you wish, I have no knowledge of it.”

The fragile hope withers. “Never mind, then,” he says shortly, and turns on his heel. It had been a longshot, he knew, but the disappointment is bitter.

“Wait, Hero of Time,” Lanayru chides him. Time stills as robots roll forward to bar his way. The dragon heaves a long, tired sigh. “I cannot help you, but also, knowing your situation, I cannot simply let you roam free. I am a loyal servant to the Goddess, and if you are not here at her bidding, the damage you could wreak to the future is not something I can simply overlook.”

Time takes a deep breath. “I don’t know why I am surprised. The servants of the Goddess are all too keen to help when I’m following her quests,” he remarks coldly, “And yet the first time I seek some small happiness for myself, suddenly I am denied.”

“You are a servant of the Goddess, then,” Lanayru observes.

Pain lances through his chest at the thought– and behind it, a rising wave of resentment, sharpened by a hundred pointless cycles, by a ninth portal that forever led nowhere. “Once,” is all he can bring himself to say in response.

Lanayru’s face creases with sadness. “If you would swear yourself to her still-”

Time cuts his hand in the air with a snarl. “Never again,” he spits. “After what she did – when I did nothing more than everything she wanted for so long!”

The dragon regards him at length. “…You feel quite strongly about this.”

“You have no idea,” Time hisses, barely suppressed fury bubbling beneath his skin.

Neither of them move for a long moment. Then Lanayru lets out a long, rumbling breath.

“I regret this, Hero of Time,” Lanayru says, and motions to the robots penning Time in. Their eyes begin to shine with power – a dozen ancient beamos, focused entirely upon him. “I truly do. I would have liked to talk more with you, but if you feel that way, you leave me no choice.”

The air fills with the whining rise of power as the robots charge, and Time’s temper snaps.

Magic lashes from him, pure and unfiltered and wild. A frenzy of bright white light, sharp and burning energy that crashes around him in a storm of destruction.

The robots are wiped out. Lanayru roars in pain, and lighting cracks towards him as the dragon retaliates in kind. But Time seizes upon Farore’s Wind, teleports away, and then does it again. And again. And again.

………………

Time leaves a trail of destruction out of Lanayru’s desert. At some point, he runs out of enemies to fight, and is left only with the rustle of grass in the wind and the broken remains of Lanayru’s minions scattered around him.

His last hope of returning to where he belongs is gone.

He’s left with nothing. He’ll never get to hold Malon in his arms again, never get to see his child, never have the chance to find Navi again. Never get to see what comes after.

He has nothing more to do but to roam the outskirts of what might one day be Hyrule, lamenting a broken promise and wallowing in regrets.

So that’s what he does.

He expects to waste away, eventually, but as the years pass he soon discovers that the magic he used to break free of Hylia’s loop has indelibly changed him. He doesn’t seem to age anymore, though it takes a decade for that to even register. His hair has turned white – from the stress of the initial jump, he thinks – but none of the expected aches and pains of growing older manifest, despite the fact that he sleeps rough more often than not.

His magic itself has changed too – the event in Lanayru’s desert is not a unique one, though it remains the largest. He spends some years learning to control it, to shape it, and in the end he manages to recreate the Fierce Deity’s blade beam – a spell that is all his, not gifted by a great fairy or an incarnation of Hylia.

For a time, he fends off the minions of the Goddess, but when he does nothing else for years on end, that too drops off – Lanayru either losing interest or giving up. The years roll past with agonising slowness and terrifying speed. He sleeps for much of it. Plays the Song of Double Time occasionally, and watches the sun and moon wheel across the sky for weeks on end. Plays the Song of Storms for hours other times, uncaring of the rain lashing his body or the thunder drowning out the notes.

He loses himself, over time. For all that he is changed, the mortal mind is not made for immortality, Hero’s Spirit or not. He clings to the most precious memories, even as decades of loneliness weather away the details. Soon all that remains are thoughts of children he needs to protect, of sons stolen by Hylia, of a nightmarish cycle he struggled to escape, formless rage left to fester too long, resentment and decades of suffering and the knowledge that all of it is the Goddess’s fault.

The Demon Tribe make overtures of an alliance to him exactly once, and are decimated for the attempt. The Gorons will still trade with him, though always cautiously and with great deference, and the need is so rare and the opportunities so few that even they fall by the wayside eventually.

He ventures back into Hyrule proper only occasionally anyway – mostly for the fairies, who flock to him whenever he’s near their home. Over the period since Time first arrived in this era, they’ve gone from non-verbal creatures to enthused toddlers armed with just enough words to provide endless nonsensical commentary on whatever their interest of the moment is. And given the lack of hylians gracing the surface, and the Gorons’ preference for locales which are unfriendly habitats to most other forms of life, Time is their favourite dumping ground for any new collective discoveries they make.

Otherwise, all he does is fight and sleep and roam. His sword eventually weathers away to nothing, so he fashions a new one, a pair of blades twisted together to better direct his magic. The shape is distantly familiar, to the point where he’s sure he’s been inspired by something he can no longer quite remember, the echo of it reverberating in his soul, and the Song of Storms roars in his skull.

The stories about him start to shift, after that. The years wind past like a lazy river, and the rumours grow, whispers of truth twisting into exaggerated tales. Gorons mutter of him when dark clouds form in the sky. Fairies come out whenever it rains, searching for him. The Demon Tribe shuts their gates whenever thunder cracks in the distance.

Farore is the Goddess of the Wind, Din is the Goddess of Fire and Lightning, Nayru is the Goddess of the Rain, but to the denizens of ancient Hyrule, Time becomes the God of Storms.

Time scarcely notices, simply travelling the land, defeating whatever foes present themselves, paying little attention to anything else. Faron chastises him for his rudeness once, when he wanders into his domain bringing pouring rain and bolts of lightning, but the dragons steer clear of him otherwise – a careful truce after Lanayru’s failures to deal with him, an acknowledgement that it was not a fight they wanted to attempt, and wouldn’t so long as Time didn’t linger overlong in their territory and didn’t cause trouble. Time abides by it easily – his ire reserved far more for Hylia than her loyal minions. After all, he carries some distant, faded recollection of being such a foolish follower once himself.

He’s not a true god, though, and never has been. He’s just terribly old, terribly powerful. At some point, just terrible.

……………

It’s Sky who finally banishes him from Hyrule for good.

Time has spent some decades roaming more distant lands before drifting inevitably back towards what will one day be the heart of Hyrule, where the land is rich with magic and fairies can be found around every corner. Where Hylia has finally left the clouds and graces the surface once more.

His return is heralded by roiling clouds and unceasing rain. Except for once, instead of seeking shelter or fleeing the frightening figure in their midst, someone makes their way determinedly to the centre of the storm.

He stands across from him now, seemingly struck dumb, gaping. “Old Man?”

Time turns his one-eyed gaze upon him, he stops humming, and the storm clears around them, for a moment. A trio of fairies, dancing in the puddles by his feet, disappear into the long grasses, spooked.

“Is… it really you?” the boy – the man – asks.

Time almost doesn’t recognise him. But there’s an echo of a memory, a cherished series of meetings that have worn a groove deep into his soul. So many details are lost, but he remembers the shapes – clings to those memories with a ferocity worthy of a god.

“The Chosen Hero,” he murmurs, the words like sandpaper against his tongue. Sky. He’s older than he remembers – he’s evidently been away from these lands longer than planned, if he’s missed both the hero’s first descent and his absence for that quest, the one which landed Time here.

“It is you,” Sky decides. “It must be. That armour, the eye, the markings – even if the sword is different, and your hair…” He hesitates when Time doesn’t react, and barrels on, “I came here to investigate the rumours. Everyone warned me about it. A vengeful, fierce deity that roams the land in the centre of a violent storm, that will kill anyone who crosses him. But that can’t be… that’s not you, is it?”

He doesn’t respond. The silence itself is damning.

Sky begins to look apprehensive. “Old Man? Say something.”

Time doesn’t. It’s been so long since anyone has conversed with him, beyond the occasional chatty fairy, none of whom seem to need his input anymore to hold conversations all on their own.

Time can’t remember the last time he held a proper conversation. His thoughts wander too much. He’s too old.

Sky bites his lip as the silence lengthens. “I became a good man, I like to think,” he eventually says. “Your words meant a lot to me, you know. Since returning, I’ve tried to live by them.” He shakes his head. “You were acting so strange, though, the days before that final battle. I didn’t think anything of it, but now, finding you here… What happened, after? Did something go wrong with the portals? How are you here? You’ve not even supposed to be born yet!”

Time frowns. Casts his gaze to the horizon, considering the twisted loop of his existence for the first time in years. The words ring true, and yet…

And yet.

“What happened to you?” Sky asks, and the words are like shards of pottery, cracking under grief and regrets he doesn’t understand. For him? Since when has anyone ever mourned him? “Twilight never wanted this for you. I thought you promised him that you’d live a good life. Not – not this!”

Then the spark of light magic catches his attention – the thing that drew him from distant lands back here in the first place.

Hylia.

He draws his Helix blade, focused on her presence. She’s not here, but she’s close. Fury and resentment bubble beneath his skin. For the first time in centuries, she is within reach. “The Goddess,” he breathes, his breath a cloud of frost and lightning.

Except he’s forgotten where he is, for just a moment, and the Chosen Hero has drawn his sword in response.

“If it really is you, you deserved a kinder fate than this,” Sky says, and there are tears in his eyes but his voice is entirely steel. “But I cannot let you hurt her.”

It’s a fight that should be legendary, that should tear the earth and be sung of for centuries to come. But because it’s Sky, and because somewhere in the madness and rage, he recognises a child, a boy that he’d once considered one of his – Time does not raise his blade in defence when the Master Sword strikes at his chest.

The sword shines bright, trying to burn away the years of accumulated fury and resentment and suffering and darkness, the strands of time and probability and fate twisted and barbed around his soul a thousandfold- until it hits something, deep within. The tiny fragment of his original spirit, the precious first few decades of his life, and the sword recoils.

Something snaps, and shatters. His soul, cleaved perfectly in two.

He feels it leave. His bitterness, his sorrow, his regrets, his patience… his love. It splits from him, rotted to the bone, half of his magic, half of his memories suddenly just gone.

It takes his one good eye with him. The last thing he sees with it is the Chosen Hero’s expression, contorted in horror.

He reaches for it, blindly, desperately – because for all else, he’s still mortal enough to instinctively desire to be whole. But then he’s only left with darkness.

Time is halved, and the half that is left is nothing but fury and violence and madness.

He can’t see it, but he can feel it. The moment the Shade turns his back on him, and slips away into the Ghostly Ether, out of reach, into a place he cannot follow. He howls in anguish.

Half of him will have an ending. But the other half is left, here, still tangled helplessly in the threads of time and fate.

“Fi,” Sky whispers in a strangled voice. “What- this isn’t- what have we done?”

………….

He flees, and winds up in another time, another place – a realm Hylia has turned her back upon. A terminus for rejected souls, for the fragments of what-ifs and could-have-beens, where delusions and dreams are given form, twisted into a mad tapestry of history, woven by the unfortunate lost souls who wander into its domain.

And there in the chaos of the lost realm, Time scrabbles in the sands of dreams, feebly trying to put himself back together. At some point, he finds himself in a cave, where he passes another hundred years, killing anything that draws near. He scratches blindly at the walls, humming the song of storms over and over again, his fingers tracing the notes in the rock as a tempest rages outside. His rage lashes the skies for months at a time. Pointless and destructive and blind.

He eventually heals, at least physically. Recovers. Learns to see the world without sight, learns how to fight blind. It gives him a purpose, something to persevere for – the hope that one day he will leave this realm and confront Hylia. He’s lost so much – only whispers remain, enough to let him know that he once loved, that he once mourned. There are gaping voids in his memory, holes he doesn’t know how to fill, so he fills them with violence.

He’s not a true god, though – and now, not even half of one - and eventually, he gets careless.

It’s a shadow who deals the final blow – another lost fragment, a mirror soul tossed into this wretched realm of the in-between, who stands in the path of the storm and doesn’t move. Time can’t see him, not in a traditional manner, but he feels distantly familiar, in a way he can’t quite grasp but knows he should. Something about the shape of his magic, the timbre of his voice. And he’s short, which is an irrelevant point that somehow feels like a defining trait.

The shadow lets out a whistle as he draws close. “And to think I was only playing at being a hero,” he says, “but here I am facing down a demonic god without anyone even telling me to.”

His fingers tighten around the grip of his Helix sword, face cast in a scowl. He’ll cut down this threat as judiciously as any other that has presented himself.

“I know a thing or two about split souls, but you, you’re a mess. I’m not sure how you’re even alive, you must have been terrifying before it happened.” He studies him thoughtfully. “This isn’t the work of the Four Sword, though, this is… savage. You’re all ragged edges. You make me look put together.” He sighs. “This… kind of makes me almost not want to do it, honestly. Out of solidarity, or something. I guess I should ask – what’s your goal, then?”

Goal?

“The Goddess,” he murmurs. She couldn’t be allowed to continue to do this. She stole… something, from him. His son?

The shadow shakes his head. “I was worried about that. The rumours are true after all then, and I can’t just let it pass. Not anymore.” His tone turns wistful. “She was the first one to ever let me think I could be a hero, you know. She was the first one to ever show me kindness.”

“She’s the reason you’re here,” Time says, with certainty. She was always the reason anybody wound up here.

“It was worth it,” the shadow shoots back. “And I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

Like all others that will stand in his way then, this opponent will fall.

It’s a fight the shadow should have lost in an instant – but much like Sky, it’s a fight that never gets to happen. As he steps forward, helix sword brandished, the ground lights up around him, the magic blinding.

“I know I can’t beat you, not in a fair fight,” the shadow admits. “I know a few things about Soul Magic, though, and history.” It’s a trap, lavishly laid, a seal of all-too-familiar magic that snaps shut the moment he steps onto it. He snarls, and moves to break it, but the strands of fate tighten around him, choking him with cruel realisation. He knows this magic, he’s used it, with a song instead of a seal but that means…

The paradox. He never escaped it. He never escaped-

“You poor thing,” the shadow says, voice fading away. “You truly have met with a terrible fate, haven’t you?”

The Mask of the Fierce Deity clatters to the ground.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

It doesn’t disappoint but it makes me very very sad. :’ ( sad for time