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Roots (At The Root Of All Things)

Art by me. See Tumblr for more info.

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root (n):

1. The part of a plant, generally underground, that anchors and supports the plant body, absorbs and stores water and nutrients, and in some plants is able to perform vegetative reproduction

2. something that is an origin or source (as of a condition or quality)

3. the essential core : heart

4. the part of an organ or physical structure by which it is attached to the body

5. the proximal end of a nerve, especially : the initial segment of a spinal nerve where it branches from the spinal cord

root (v):

1. to grow roots or take root

2. to remove altogether by, or as if by, pulling out by the roots

3. to rummage; to search as if by digging in soil

The Root Of All Things:

A Buddhist sutra which states that the root of all suffering is desire born of ignorance, and a misunderstanding of the relationship between the Self and the metaphysical

[The City]

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The Traveler, true to his nickname, hated being stuck in one place. He wanted to be wandering the countryside (from which he took another nickname), roaming the forests and fields and wild places, meeting people and doing things. He didn't want to be cooped up in the huge, bustling, industrialized city that was the Castle Town in Wars' era, not for one more hour.

People looking at him and bumping into him. Eyes on his back, a hand on his wallet. Stone under his feet instead of soft soil, hard surfaces jolting through his heels as he walked. So many smells, and no breezes—the breezes were stifled between the buildings like breath stolen from a corpse.

His skin crawled with the need to get away from it all.

Sunset flamed over the mountains as Hyrule brooded at the window, staring out over the city.

Golden light crawled over the rooftops honey-slow, poured from the spotted clouds in rivulets thick and sweet. Caught between the buildings were teal shadows, sharp as holly leaves, trapped by the creeping light like insects in ice. Cool night bubbled up from the cobblestones and spread its aching fingers along the sides of buildings, clinging to the people going about their lives, darkening their faces to anonymity.

Hyrule startled when the sharp clip-clop of hard-soled boots on flagstones rang out behind him. Warriors approached, absently rewrapping his scarf around his neck, his expression distant. He glanced up and met Hyrule's eyes, and a soft but tired smile spread across his face.

"Time's awake," Warriors said without preamble. "He still needs rest, but he's on the mend. He's going to be okay."

A knot in Hyrule's chest eased a little. It had been a hard few days since the Chain had arrived, bloodied and nearly broken, screaming for help at the gates of the castle.

It had been Zelda herself who pushed open the heavy side door, gesturing them into the courtyard with her face pale as the stars. Zelda who directed them to the castle's hospital, kept fully functional though the war was years since over. Zelda who kept pressure on Time's wounds, her white gloves stained to the elbows with blood, while the doctors were called from their sleep and the rest of the Chain collapsed in exhaustion.

The aid of a fairy or two would have hastened Time's recovery immeasurably and alleviated a great deal of tension and fear from the group. But despite the frantic energy with which the younger Chain members searched the area, they hadn't been able to find even one sprite on the grounds of Hyrule Castle or in the surrounding town.

So the burden had fallen to Hyrule and the royal doctors, laboring long into the nights to keep life in the Hero of Time's body. Hyrule spent his healing powers lavishly, heedless of the strain it put on him.

The others, unable to help in any meaningful way, stewed and fretted. The sounds of their pacing drove Hyrule to distraction until he finally flung the door open and shouted at them to go away and let us work!

After that, Hyrule saw none of his brothers but Warriors, who visited the sickroom with the reliability of clockwork to spell Hyrule and force him to rest.

That he had not been there when Time finally awoke nipped at Hyrule's pride a little, like puppy teeth, but he chose to ignore the jealousy in the wake of the sheer relief he felt.

"That's good to hear," he told Wars with deep sincerity. "Does he need anything? Is he in much pain? Who's with him now?"

Wars held up a hand to forestall the flurry of questions tumbling from Hyrule's lips. "Easy there, one thing at a time," the Captain soothed. "The doctors are still with him. Now that he's woken up, they can give him the stronger pain medicine. He'll probably be out of it for the rest of the evening."

"Oh," was all Hyrule could think to say.

And just like that, he was reprieved of duty. He suddenly felt every ache in his muscles, the tension along the line of his shoulders, the subtle heat behind his brow that warned him of a headache coming on. The wash of relief left him cold and lightheaded, no longer running hot on adrenaline to keep his body in motion while the emergency lasted.

Hyrule's gaze drifted to the window again. Outside, the flaming oranges were giving way to flower-pinks and satin dusk.

"I should go back in," Hyrule heard himself saying. His voice sounded dull to his own ears.

The Captain's next words were firm. "You've used a lot of magic in the last few days," he said. "Take a break."

"He might need me," Hyrule hedged.

"He has all of us," Wars pointed out, and Hyrule bristled, unable to keep a scowl off his face. Wars was quick to backtrack. "I only mean that we can keep an eye on him while you're gone. He's past the danger. Now he just needs rest and potions."

Warriors waited hopefully for a response, watching Hyrule's ruffled feathers settle. "Come back by midnight," he suggested. "Why don't you visit the fairy fountain? It's quiet there, a temple to the Great Fairy, and people around here tend to respect its sanctity."

Hyrule still hesitated, and Wars played his ace. "They leave fairy food as offerings around the steps," he cajoled.

Hyrule had barely eaten while tending to Time, but he wasn't hungry—he was, if anything, queasy from overwork. But fairy food? His magic, thin and sluggish inside him, stirred hopefully at the notion of replenishment. "Yeah," Hyrule said quietly. Then he repeated himself a little more strongly. "Yeah, I think I will. Thanks, Wars."

Before he could think about how tired he felt, he pulled on his magic. Like dragging a heavy quilt over himself, the Fairy spell cloaked his tired spirit and pressed down on him.

Down, down, it compressed him, body and soul. He felt like he was falling towards the floor, or like it was rising to meet him, a dizzy swooping sensation in his gut that swept him up like an ocean wave, catching him and tossing him out of himself.

But then his skin settled into shape, his organs all arranged themselves correctly, and he shivered his goosebumps away.

It felt natural, it felt right to be in fairy form, and he realized he'd forgotten how much he missed it.

Hyrule shook his wings out, shedding magic particles, and lifted off the windowsill with a thoughtless chime. Already impatient, he waved goodbye to Warriors, gratitude barely stalling him. He zipped out the window and down over the city, taking a moment to just breathe.

The world always looked different to him in fairy form. He could no longer see at far distances, his sight limited to blurry and dim shapes beyond a certain range. Movement became harder to recognize, but in its place, bright colors—some that he couldn't even begin to describe in words—filled his vision like flames blossoming and dying in the dark.

The city became a quilt of wild hues, shapes blending into each other like bleeding watercolors. It was lovely, and much more welcoming than the cold, sharp edges of cut stone and dead wood that were the streets to his hylian eyes.

His hearing, too, became duller, though higher tones filtered clearly out of the din of city bustle. He no longer flinched from the sharp sounds of children screaming, of metal striking metal, or of wheels scraping on cobblestones. Instead, the harsh cacophony intermixed into a rumble that reminded him of the sounds of the earth stirring in its veins.

Smells filled the space around and through him, rich and pungent—cooked food and animal scents, charcoal and compost. Incense from the temples and household shrines, tar and ammonia and salt and wine. Bitter thatch hay and baked bread.

And the air, the air—he could feel the currents on his wings, the gusts gripping him, twisting around him and criss-crossing like serpents. His senses extended through the aether, a net of vague impressions that he felt more through his heartstrings than through any physical means. He felt the breeze as it passed lightly over a moving cart, felt it as it narrowed down tight alleyways like a river caught in a canyon, felt it as it gaily twined through the legs of playing children. The drafts brought to him moisture from the streams and wells, the texture of grass from tended parks, the touch of soot from fireplaces and pollen from the flowers people had placed on their windowsills.

And beyond all that, a sense of magic echoed through his bones, deeper than the mountain's feet, singing in his flesh like the rhythm of rivers. The city breathed with him, the earth beneath the city breathed with him, and the pace and pressure of the life around him swelled like a chorus of birdsong, a typhoon fit to drown him in its waters.

He could hear the Great Fairy's fountain calling to him, like the ringing of bells in the distance. Hyrule would have been able to follow that call to its source if he was blind, deaf, and scent-blind.

It took him longer than he wished—nearly longer than his tired wings allowed—to travel over the twisted streets and into the open air of the temple carved to house the Great Fairy and her brood. There was a sanctity to the breezes here, cleansing and pure. It twined through his soul like breathing deep after a rainstorm. A light, even as the shadows lengthened, felt if not truly seen.

The temple stood with columns at its doors, and wide steps of white marble and steel-gray granite. Even here, the marks of war had yet to be erased: bitter chunks of stone had been devoured from the foundations of pillars by hungry siege weapons, and though the rubble had been cleared and the steps swept, and fresh cut flowers laid at the base of every wall in thanks for the Great Fairy's protection, still Hyrule could make out streaks of black bomb powder underneath.

This city would not be allowed to forget the war anytime soon.

Along with flowers, the citizens had left all manner of other gifts. Hyrule imagined them coming here, to these barred and enchanted doors, prayers clinging to their lips. He could almost hear their soft entreaties, echoing in the magic of this place. Unlike a true-born fairy, he could not understand them fully; to him they were as echoes from the mountainsides, twisted by distance, returning quietly, whispers where there once had been shouts.

This one wished for health for a child not yet born.

This one wished for protection for the spirit of one since lost.

A bountiful harvest.

Harm to one's enemies.

Love, love, love—

Hyrule shook himself free before he fell too far into wishes. His brothers had probably come here during the last several days, aching and afraid, and he didn't want to know what pleas they might have spoken. Those were not for him to know.

Bowls of sugared water, and stoppered bottles of the same, had been laid at every level of the temple stairs, from the bottommost step to the very door of the sanctuary. Their sweetness was tempting, though at this hour of the evening Hyrule thought he would have to fight for drinking rights against the last lumbering wasps of the daytime and the black ants that crawled out with the dusk.

But more tempting still were the little plates of food, carefully arranged and lovingly tended.

Hyrule expected to see offerings that had been left behind, rotting and forgotten; no fairy fountain, no matter how well-populated, could possibly absorb the bounty arrayed. He expected fruit turning to pulp wine, vegetables long gone stale, and cheap penny wafers—all that people in his era were willing to spare for a blessing.

The abundance of Warriors' era, despite the deprivations stemming from the war, was on display in the variety and lavishness of the gifts presented. Small, glittering fish, fresh caught that morning—lush mushrooms, the scent of earth clinging to them—tiny clay vessels filled with blue-tinted milk—colorful seeds brimming with natural magic—Hyrule had never seen a fairy feast like this before.

Was it pure generosity that led the people of this era to put so much effort into their oblations?

He hesitated, hovering, torn between choices. Each dish carried a wish with it as well, even if the bearer had not meant to bring one. The hopes that had brushed against these offerings clung to them like embers upon ashes, slowly burning out even as Hyrule watched.

By custom and by geas, it was rude to take a gift without intention to honor the wish that was bound to it. Even a gift in gratitude should not be taken by one who did not earn that thanks.

So Hyrule hesitated. He did not want to take on a wish from one of the dishes on the steps below—not when there were true-born fairies around to take on the wishes, and fulfill them more effectively, with their greater magic abilities and with the power of the Great Fairy to call on. In fact, the Great Fairy here might be willing to listen to all these prayers, if the mortals were so generous with their appreciation.

He floated among the dishes, drawn first to one, then to another, but he restrained himself from landing on any of them.

The sun dipped down behind the buildings, casting long blue shadows over the cobblestones.

Just as he was feeling like giving up, he stumbled across one dish, halfway down the stairs and in the middle of the field of dishes of mixed sizes and colors and shapes. This dish, unlike the clean, fancy dishes to its left and right, was plain terra cotta, cheap and chipped, smelling like the earth and sorrow of the poorer districts in town. The only decoration was a ring of holes pierced around the edge of the dish.

Incongruously, it held a handful of small balls, molded meat or fish patties by the smell and the feeling of life once present shimmering in their aura. They smelled amazing—blended with herbs and the barest hint of corn flour, baked to perfection, and clean—the air around them tasted like brine and morning sunlight over the sea.

Hyrule was pretty sure that "fish bait" would be the least appealing food at this feast if he were in his hylian form. But as a fairy, it made his mouth water and his wings tremble with excitement.

Best of all, this gift carried no wish at all. Unlike the others, its aura was hollow; an empty glass vessel, clear-sided and clouded with old prayers. Like a dingy apothecary jar, the offering had long since lost its magical aura, leaving behind only the faintest memory of mortal thoughts.

This one—this one would be permitted. This one, it would be acceptable for him to take. And he was so very hungry—not in a physical sense, but in the sense that his magic was nearly spent, his heart hurt, and he was at the end of his endurance magically and emotionally.

He deserved this treat, after everything that he had done for Time.

He landed on the lip of the bowl.

He had barely an instant to register the flare of magic that struck him down.

[The Trap]

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The trap closed on him with the finality of the falling night.

It felt like the jaws of a wolfos closing on his soul. Something latched onto his heart, a fishhook digging into his magic and matter, reeling him, drawing his essence painfully and inexorably into line.

His wings were bound. He couldn't fly, couldn't flee.

His legs—arms—his whole body was bound with magical but very tangible ropes that burned cold, like bands of iron that had been left out in the snow.

His…his tongue was bound. He couldn't call for help. He couldn't scream.

The magic that tied his body and soul down bit into him, brambles and fangs.

He was bleeding spirit, he was bleeding, the monsters would smell the curse on his blood and they would come for him—

He tried to breathe into the panic, but every tiny movement caused the trap to wind tighter around him. Even his heart beating heavy in his chest seemed to be enough motion to cause the bonds to constrict ever tighter.

A butterfly in a spider's web.

And like an insect trapped in silk, he felt the vibrations of his own frantic flailing tremble through the aether, sending a message to the lurking hunter somewhere in the gloaming city.

Panic dripped through his soul like ice water. He wanted to stop his own thrashing, but he couldn't breathe, he couldn't be caught like this, he must fight back! But the noose only tightened by the moment, the snare sank its wire into his flesh and spirit and cut him to his core.

He felt the moment when an answering tug came, curious and seeking. When the spider plucked the signal thread, testing, teasing out the line. The spooling silk gently brushed by a delicate touch, graceful as it was insidious, and Hyrule shuddered as the tremors of that touch brushed against his magic, even at such a distance.

Hyrule was panting with fatigue, barely able to draw breath, and darkness crept in from the edges of the temple steps. The sunset darkened into indigo skies above, and he trembled, with cold and fear and exhaustion all at once.

The shadows of the city grew limbs to reach him, claws to drag him down, and fangs to drain him of his vitality.

He found himself pressed against the terra cotta plate beneath him, with no memory of having fallen. His wings ached and shook. His mouth gaped, he tried to take a deeper breath but nothing… Nothing…

This close to the surface of the rough terra cotta, Hyrule could finally feel the subtle buzz of magic hidden so close to his own skin. The entire dish that he lay in was inscribed with a magic circle—but he couldn't see it, so how could it—

Understanding beat against his ribs like the fluttering of a finch's wings against a birdcage. The ring of holes piercing the clay perimeter—the dish was made of two layers of clay. In the subtle gap between the two, in the empty space between air and water, a magic circle had been inlaid.

The magic of the circle fizzed and frothed against his own aura, light against his light. Reflections off of polished silver versus the glow of a warm fire. The sound of someone humming in counterpoint to a xylophone.

He bled magic into it, as surely as a sword drew blood.

He had no idea how long he struggled for, thrashing and wailing in his mind, unable to turn any part of that wildly flailing energy into actual movement.

The shadows around him lengthened. They grew fur and growled at him, snapping their jaws and slavering. At the corners of his vision they prowled, hungry, and he was lost and his light was pale.

His vision grew duller the longer he waited. The darkness grew sharper. The spider drew near.

Tip. Tap. Footsteps on the cobbles, footsteps on the granite stairs. Someone was coming.

Hyrule gasped and struggled harder, his wings trembling like shivering new leaves. He shuddered at the touch of the stinging magic that surrounded him. The tightening noose scratched at his soul, brittle hemp against soft skin.

Would someone save him? His brothers wouldn't—couldn't—be here now. Not as swiftly as he had flown the breezes.

This was a stranger coming, and he was small and he was trapped.

He tried to yank himself around, to see behind himself and discover who was approaching. He couldn't even twitch his fingers.

The person who approached him did not hurry, did not speed their steps at any point. Hyrule noticed a slight hitch to their gait, not quite a limp, but not a truly even tread.

Against his heartstrings he felt the unmistakable aura of a predator.

The person finally appeared at the corner of Hyrule's vision and stopped walking. Hyrule strained his eyes, strained his mind, to keep his watering gaze on that figure, though he could not even move his eyes in their sockets.

The man who stood on the step below was taller than average, and thin—the kind of thinness that Hyrule had only seen rarely in his own era, one of healthy weight wasted away by deprivation later in life. In Hyrule's era, it was so unusual to see someone who had grown up well-provisioned, and the gaunt features of his people were the result of pervasive lack, rather than temporary restriction.

The man carried in one hand a leather or cloth case, too dark in color to make out its features in the shadows.

He had dark brown hair that curled down and brushed against his shoulders, and golden skin a shade lighter than Hyrule's. In the harsh light of the setting sun, his skin turned a warm amber color, reddish and nearly translucent.

The man had a scar across his left cheek, a narrow gouge carved underneath his eye, creating a valley of shadows like a tearstain beneath his dark brown eyes.

He wore plain, thick linen slacks in faded black, and a loose shirt in mouse-fur gray. The clothes were worn soft; the fabric sturdy but inexpensive. Peeking out at his collar and ankles was something shiny, catching the last of the day's light—Hyrule realized after a moment that the man was wearing an underlayer of smooth satin beneath his clothes. An extravagance…except, why would a person spend money like that on clothes that wouldn't be seen?

Then the man shifted, and Hyrule had a flash of inspiration.

He moved stiffly, in a way that Hyrule found was all too familiar—the stiffness, the hesitation, of someone who walked hand-in-hand with pain. Hyrule guessed that beneath his plain clothes, the man bore many scars—whether well or badly healed, the scars would ache, would chafe against wool or cotton or linen, would introduce a tightness to every step and gesture. Silk or satin worn beneath, to mitigate the pain… The scars under Hyrule's bracers throbbed in sympathy, the leather coarse and hot against his own damaged skin.

The man smelled like lampblack and ethanol. He smelled like a dose of healing tincture slightly too strong, and turned to poison. Underneath, the smell of iron oxide, dull and old; blood long since dried under fingernails.

Hyrule was a healer. He knew he smelled like that, too.

Once, Hyrule had met someone who had spent his whole life in ore mines. His body was twisted from crawling through cramped corridors, his bones had been crushed and reset multiple times throughout his life, and more than one fairy's grace had been spent to keep him alive after cave collapses or other catastrophes. His lungs were coated with rock dust, and when Hyrule touched him he could feel the holes that the dust had carved into his lungs, tiny natural apertures opened and stretched and sliced and torn by harsh silicate invaders.

That was what this man's soul felt like.

"Well, well, well," the man said to himself, kneeling down stiffly. "Pink this time, hm? Lovely color on you."

Pink? Ah, the man was referring to Hyrule's fairy light, which was a soft coral color. Hyrule had always liked his color—it made him think of springtime azalea blossoms, early sunrises that stretched across the sky, and the pale bellies of river fish flashing as they leaped.

Hearing a stranger praise its beauty left a peculiar feeling in his stomach, hollow and haunting.

And… 'this time'?

There were people who traded in fairy lives.

In every era they could be found—hunters, trappers, poachers, whatever name they went by, it was always whispered in hushed tones. Always did civilized society express its outrage that such evil found a foothold somewhere in the muck. Always, the punishment for being caught—by whatever authority might lay a claim to power—was brutally harsh and swiftly enacted. But they could not completely be stamped out.

Hyrule had met fairy hunters before, but never when he so resembled one of their targets.

And yet, there was something odd about this man, when Hyrule mentally lined him up with his image of such a poacher. He did not carry himself like a hunter, all coiled energy and patience. Nor did he seem subtle like a thief.

Nevertheless, the man's trade was immaterial. What mattered was that he was here, examining Hyrule as though peeling him apart with his eyes, and Hyrule was immobilized and completely at his mercy.

Whatever mercy there might be.

"Good wings," the man commented, "clear membranes, sharp veining." He oh-so-delicately touched the edges of Hyrule's wings, sending a thrill of fear through the fairy. His wings didn't have nerves, but they were sensitive the way cats' whiskers were sensitive. The slight brush of fingers against the veins made the nerves at the base of his wings tremble, shivering where they connected with Hyrule's shoulders.

The man continued looking him over, and seemed satisfied by what he saw. He opened the case he carried and set it down on the marble step beside him.

"Let's get you home," he said kindly.

The man plucked Hyrule up by his wings.

Hyrule gasped in pain, his shoulders wrenching and twisting as pressure was put on them in ways that his wings were not meant to hold weight. His back stretched uncomfortably, skin and muscle alike pulling farther than they were supposed to. His vision went white and spotty as he was lifted and moved. Then he dropped a short distance onto a hard, smooth surface, and his muscles snapped back into position in a way that was certain to leave bruises all down his back.

He blinked away the colored clouds in his vision and tried to right himself, but he still couldn't move. He lay on his side, unable to shift to even look around, until something appeared above him that cast a shadow over him, turning what sight he had shaded blue and gray and cool as early winter's breath.

The man above him said something that shivered through the air like a note played on a violin, and when the sound struck Hyrule it was like the string snapped. All of a sudden he could suck in a full breath, and he did, gasping and rolling onto his back, relishing in the feeling of having control over his own limbs again.

He looked up, and his heart sank through his ribcage.

He was in a glass bottle, a cork stopper in the mouth.

Though he had only been in a bottle like this a few times before, he could sense the magic in the glass that made it appropriate for holding fairies—little charms to allow respiration, to keep the inside from becoming too hot or cold, to protect the occupant from minor bumps and shakes.

The fact that the man came prepared for fairies—not just with the trap, but the bottle to transport one—frightened Hyrule more than he could say.

Hyrule surged up, shaking off the last of the stiffness from the magic circle trap, and shot to the top of the bottle as fast as his shaking wings would allow. He could practically reach the cork with his feet still touching the bottom, but not quite—he wouldn't be able to get any leverage that way. So he buzzed his wings as hard as he could, never mind how they bumped and slapped against the interior of the glass, trying to push the cork.

Physics denied him any means of egress. As hard as he fluttered, the cork would never be budged. The man didn't even need to place a sealing charm on it; there simply was no way.

"Shh, shh, little one, don't hurt yourself," the man cooed. "Come on, let's not waste time."

Hyrule let out a frustrated chime, dropping to the bottom of the bottle. "Let me out!" he cried, as pointless as it seemed to ask his captor to… what, release him? After all the effort he had gone to, setting up a magical trap with fresh fairy food as bait?

Hyrule might as well save his breath.

Indeed, the man didn't even look at him as he collected his inscribed dish and leather case from the stairs. The man tipped the fish bait into another dish, which confused Hyrule. The trap was sprung; why give away the food? All it would do would be to raise the value of another person's offering.

Then the man was rising to his feet with a groan, slowly and stiffly, the bottle clutched in one hand and the case gripped in the other. He turned down the steps and headed away from the temple, away from the soothing magic of the fountain, away from the tall spires of the castle in the distance.

He turned his back on the setting sun and began his faltering walk through the city, to what end Hyrule could only guess.

Each step into the darkness took him farther from his brothers, farther from rescue, farther from hope.

[The Basement]

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The man who carried him refused to acknowledge any sound Hyrule made or action he took, with a kind of calm detachment that Hyrule suspected came from extensive practice. He answered no questions and made neither threats nor reassurances.

Hyrule didn't even know his name.

This came to frustrate Hyrule as the man marched on, and he knew nothing about his captor except the minimal amount he could observe through the wavery glass of the bottle.

Before long, the man, in Hyrule's mind, became the Man.

The Man's footsteps clung to Hyrule's mind like fleas, reverberating with the echo of things lost and discarded.

Hyrule had no sense of direction on their journey, only impressions of sudden, stomach-flipping turns and blurry, dark shapes speeding by beyond the enclosing glass. The enchanted bottle kept him from feeling every jolt of the Man's tread, but did not prevent the swaying sensation (nor the fear greatly growing) from twisting his guts into knots.

The dying sunset shuttered them close, as though a door closed behind them.

Then the Man stepped into an alcove, and a door truly did close with a snap.

Click, clack. A latch was drawn, a bolt was thrown. The Man moved confidently in the dark, faint lights rising from below like algal blooms floating up from the depths of the sea.

Step

Step

Step

Down. Beneath the streets, beneath the city, inch by inch. The air grew still and warm and close, even the stifled breath of the city choked by cobbles and strangled by loam.

Down, the heartbeat of the city thrumming closer now, pressing in from every side. The intangible burden of it growing, the weight of the buildings above seeming heavier and heavier with the Man's every placid pace. The ceiling seemed to creak with the strain of holding up all that stone and wood—it groaned beneath the load of all the souls it buttressed.

Down, into a tomb walled in dust and darkness. A catacomb. A mausoleum to the depraved. Cobwebs formed chains to bind the living in their insulsity.

At the bottom of the stairs, the space opened out into a cramped basement—cavernous when compared to Hyrule's tiny form, but to a hylian it would be densely packed with furniture, a labyrinth of shelves, cabinets, and workbenches.

Here, there was light, of a sort. Hyrule shrank against the bottle's walls and his heart shriveled in his chest, leaving him breathless.

Here, there were fairies.

Bottled, every one of them, perhaps two dozen delicate sprites in captivity—on shelves, sorted by color, pinks and blues and yellows and many other shades, their tired chimes and faint glows sickly and sorrowful in the gloom.

And there were other things… seen in the corner of the eye, held in the tremor of the heart…

Jars filled with liquid, boxes filled with pins. Glittering, iridescent wings.

Powdered desiccants and spiderwebs. The prickling feeling on his skin of moisture being wicked away by the xeric air.

An odor unfamiliar, sweet but not like sugar water. Hyrule tasted it on the back of his tongue and throat, souring his stomach. Like a strong cleaning solution, but mixed with iron and the smell of meat just on the edge of rotting.

It smelled like the hospital room where Hyrule had spent the last few days at Time's side. The memory was bitter.

And another, subtle scent below that overpowering one, but still enough for Hyrule to catch. Sour and sweet together, like fallen fruit left to putrefy, like over-sugared wine. Haemolymph, the blood of insects.

Fairy blood was similarly sweet.

That revelation brought forth a fear in Hyrule's heart, stirred and sprung by sympathy for his trapped sisters. He wanted out, and he threw himself forward, thinking it was hopeless but at least he would go down fighting!

Twilight couldn't track a fairy through the air. Hyrule knew this. He wasn't due back until midnight.

No rescue was coming for him.

He flung himself against the bottle, against the cork, beating his wings and fists against the curves of his prison, glass as smooth as water and unyielding as steel.

"Whoah, whoah, slowly, pretty thing," the Man said above him, still clutching the bottle closely.

Hyrule screamed and it sounded like the wind whistling through winter branches, like every key being played on a harpsichord at the same time.

"You're feisty indeed," the Man told him, placing the bottle on the main workbench.

Hyrule promptly tried to roll the bottle off the edge.

"Hey now!" The Man snatched the bottle up again before he could do himself harm. On the shelves, his sisters keened, calling for him. The Man ignored them all.

Hyrule snarled and punched the glass again, knuckles splitting and leaving a smear of pearly pink blood on the clear surface.

The Man shook the bottle ever so slightly, not enough to hurt him, but enough to make him stumble and sit down.

"You're trouble, you are," the Man said with a strange fondness, like Hyrule was an adorable kitten who had just barely managed to draw blood. "That's okay. I was going to wait, but if you're this energetic now, I don't want you doing serious damage to yourself. You'll do much better if you're healthy."

What?

Hyrule gaped at him, completely lost. The Man wanted him to be in peak condition, he supposed? But why?

"What are you planning?" he demanded, but the Man was already putting the bottle down again, this time in a wrought-iron stand that held it upright.

The Man turned away from the workbench and collected a few things from around the dingy room, placing each on the bench with casual care. A coal oil lamp, which he lit from a pocket firestarter and turned up bright. A large notebook, pages crinkling and spine broken with heavy use. A tall bottle of liquor, brown glass colored like sweet syrup, and a sharp-cornered glass to drink it from. An inkwell and a bone-handled pen—the pen had a strange shape, and the nib was stained with old ink.

Then the Man pulled up a stool with a scraping sound and settled down. He pulled the book and inkwell towards himself, picked up the pen—holding it in an odd grip, the pen's eccentric shape seemingly fitted to stiff, cramped hands—and began to write.

Hyrule tried his damndest to get out of the bottle. And damned, indeed, he would be, if he was unable to escape. He flitted to the cork again, digging at it with his hands, clawing at the corners of the glass with fingers that tore. Chunks of cork broke off in his hands and he dropped them to the floor of his prison. It was slow going but if he could make a hole, a gap, just big enough to fit a hand through—

The Man glanced up from his writing, then reached over and tapped the cork sharply with a finger.

tap

tap

tap

Each rap shook the bottle, rattled Hyrule inside its walls. He tumbled down again, shaken free like snow shaken from a laden tree limb. He landed amidst the crumbs of cork, barely avoiding tangling his wings underneath himself.

The Man went back to writing, unperturbed.

Hyrule scrambled to his feet, ready to try again, but the Man looked up sharply and fixed him with a piercing stare.

Something heavy filled the air between them, a dark potential energy like a building storm. The weight of magic uncast, perhaps, or perhaps it was only threats left unspoken.

Hyrule sank down, cowed.

Coward.

His sisters were crying all around him, pleading for him, praying for him. He heard them beseeching the monster that held them captive, beseeching the Great Mothers—a cacophony of chimes, drowning out the scratching of the pen on paper and the skittering of mice in the walls, the tink of glass being set down on the wooden table and the slosh of liquid as the Man took a drink of whiskey to steady his hands.

[The Preparation]

⬤ ⬤ ⬤ ⬤ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯

After a time, the Man set his pen down and pushed the stool away from the bench. He paid no mind to any of the fairies as he moved around the space. He moved like a vacancy, a vacuum, a cavity—not like the sharp-toothed fish that hunted in the ocean, but like the wake that such a predator left behind; the empty space before it filled again with water, the gap left in the air as something large and frightening passed by.

He lifted from below the workbench a large clay jug that smelled strongly of rubbing alcohol, astringent and clear. A clean white towel appeared in his off hand. He rubbed the surface of the table with the cleaner, the strokes long and smooth, and the liquid sank into the grain of the wood and left its vacuous scent there.

He collected many objects to adorn the table, placing each with care. A wooden box lined with fabric, he set in the middle, and the rest arrayed around it like ceremonial instruments on an altar.

A beaker with a wide base and a narrow top, half-filled with alcohol from the jug. A stack of white towels. A bottle of potion—it smelled and felt, to Hyrule, like red potion, but this one was colored purple, the shade of wood hyacinths and lilac trees. The liquid slopped thickly in the bottle, almost gelatinous, clinging to the sides of the glass like a lover refusing to leave.

A delicate little brass scale was placed by the open notebook. It was balanced with thin copper slices.

On the other side of the table, another large glass jar. The bottom was filled with sponges. The lid was made of brass, and two brass valves sat atop it. One of the valves had a narrow tube descending from it, and the tube was tipped with a steel shunt, a sharp and hollow reed.

At his right hand, he unwound a canvas roll, like a painter's scroll of brushes. Inside was a collection of steel or silver tools, exquisite and dainty, like the instruments of some fine sculptor… or surgeon.

These he placed in a steel tray, which he wiped down with alcohol as well. The scent of the stuff was filling the cramped basement and making Hyrule queasy.

Or maybe that was the fear.

Finally, the Man placed down a small wooden box with a sliding lid, which he opened to reveal many long, glass-headed pins.

Hyrule felt cold and numb. Adrenaline washed through him to the pace of his breathing. He did not dare try to peer into the darkness beyond the lamplight, for fear of what he might see.

But his sisters understood. And their wails were terrible as the Man finally picked up Hyrule's bottle and brought it within the circle of bright light.

The city above slept on, its breathing quieted to slow snoring. Hyrule could feel in the magic of the land, thin and tired though it was—so deep among the man-made valleys and hills of buildings and streets—the call to all day-walking creatures to rest, to rejuvenate, to pause. Darkness couched all things in its softness, saying to them now is the time of repose, now you are shielded by shadows.

Hyrule's brothers might be—should be—among those bright souls that would be settling down for the evening. Safe in the castle, far away from here. Tears sprang to Hyrule's eyes as he imagined them, perhaps sitting all together by the fireplace in somebody's borrowed room, faces drawn and haggard from worrying about Time.

He was sorry that soon they would bear those same expressions—or worse—worrying about him.

But not soon enough to save him.

Here, the darkness had no kindness except to hide the worst of things. It was warm and close, full of fumes and aching with sadness. Each bright spark of fairy light served only to emphasize the shadows behind bookshelves and cabinet doors, and the lamp on the table burned with an emaciated light, starved and scrawny.

"Don't worry, little one," the Man cooed. "You won't feel a thing. I'm not heartless."

He was right. It didn't hurt. That was the only blessing of the situation.

One large hand wrapped around Hyrule's bottle, steadying it. He couldn't see past scarred fingers, only his own pink light illuminating his glass prison as the lamplight was eclipsed.

Metal suddenly pierced the cork, the thin, sharp-tipped shunt stabbing down from above. Hyrule stared at the aperture of the needle, imagining it as the entrance to a narrow and labyrinthine cave system, or like the gullet of a monster, ready to consume. The sound of metal squeaking indicated that the Man had twisted the valve.

Slowly, a sweet smell like strawberries started to filter into the bottle.

Hyrule took a deep breath and held it, clamped both hands over his mouth and nose as though that would help. As though he had any chance. He wondered how long he could hold out, even though he knew it didn't matter. It couldn't possibly be long enough.

He wondered if the gas would paralyze him or put him to sleep or simply kill him outright. He felt the cold mist seeping into his pores, and he wondered if the drug would affect him through his very skin.

The sweetness swirled around him as more gas crept into the bottle, a barefoot visitor that stole through the doors and rifled through the cupboards, rummaging through his brain until Hyrule was cross-eyed and dizzy but still determined not to take a breath—

The world shrank and tightened to his narrow vision of the inside of the bottle, the grip his hands had on his face, and the hopeless feeling in his chest.

He would not take a breath—

But will cannot overcome need, and with a gasp he inhaled the horrid stuff. It clung to the inside of his throat like the claws of little lizards, crawling inside him, filling the channels and conduits in his lungs from the center to the outermost edges.

He coughed, choking on its sweetness, and tried to clear it from his chest, but each cough only spurred another inhale. In moments he was gagging on the stuff, drowning in it. Suffocating on strawberry-scented clouds.

He felt it start to take effect like the first light of dawn inching over the landscape. From his core outward spread a warmth and a numbness, hollowing his chest and belly. The sensation scooped out his matter and replaced it with a sunken, cottony feeling, lambswool and cadmium yellow.

Every breath of the manmade fog made the feeling spread further. His lungs filled with snow and grew heavy and slow. His limbs became leaden, dragging him down. He tried to fight against the pull of the earth, which crooned to him like a parent to a child, bidding him to lie down, rest easy, come to bed. He fought and fought against the weakness that claimed him, wrapped him in its heavy chains and tried to crush him into the ground.

And then—he broke, an iron bar bending under an unbearable weight.

Hyrule's legs collapsed under him, all strength fleeing him at once. His arms trembled but he couldn't move them. His wings he managed to flutter once, before they, too, were still. It was all he could do, now, to keep breathing, lungs tight and chest feeling like it was weighed down with stones. His rib muscles quickly started to ache with each inhale.

And still, that sweet, cloying scent grew denser around him.

He wondered if his eyes would slip closed and he be left in darkness. But as the numbness crept up his neck and cheeks, he found that he could still feel, just… at a distance. He could feel the fabric of his clothes and the way his arm was pressed into the glass underneath him. He could feel the faint brush of the gas as it flowed and twisted through the bottle around him. And his eyes stayed stubbornly open.

Hyrule didn't know whether to be grateful or terrified that he could still see.

The metal shunt was removed, and with it, the cork top came free of the bottle, letting out a little pop as the gas was freed.

The Man's hand was still gripping the glass, and Hyrule experienced a swoop of nausea as the bottle was moved and tipped. Colors and light swirled in his sight, blurry and gummy—the colors seemed to stick to his vision, lingering longer than they ought to.

The Man tipped Hyrule out of the bottle and into the fabric-lined tray. Limply he rolled and tangled, limbs all askew.

A pair of giant hands came down and gently repositioned him, laying him on his back with his wings beneath him. His legs crossed and tilted, and the Man didn't seem to care, focused instead on getting him centered in the box. Hyrule trembled to be handled and manipulated so, but the shaking in his nerves did not even translate into shivers in his flesh.

The Man produced a pair of gloves from somewhere and pulled them on. Dark kid leather covered scarred skin. He rubbed his hands together, fingers twining as though to test his dexterity.

Then he settled himself in front of Hyrule, all his tools to hand. He took another drink from his liquor glass, set it down again. Took a breath like a cantor about to begin prayers.

He smiled at Hyrule, and Hyrule could see no deception in that smile.

He wondered what it took, to create a person who could smile in a situation like this and mean it.

The Man picked up a pin from the box, long and slender between his fingers. He held it like something beautiful. The glass head glinted in the lamplight, white as bone, white as snowdrops in spring.

The first pin was the easiest.

The pin slipped through the membrane of Hyrule's wing like a waterbird slipping under the surface of a lake. It pierced the delicate tissue with no sound, not even a pop as it pricked through. The pin slid into the fabric beneath him, a fencepost driven into stable ground.

Hyrule couldn't wiggle to free himself, but if he could, he wasn't sure he would want to. Would he be willing to tear his fragile wings to escape this torment? Would he sacrifice them — even if they were his only means of escape?

Staring up into the dark, the night sky replaced with dusty rafters, he thought he would.

The second pin pierced his other wing, a matching point of tension. The two pins together held his upper wings down, spreading them apart as far as they would reach. The muscles in his back shifted to accommodate the position. They pressed him, suspended and unfolded, into the fuzzy fabric beneath him. Like a letter taken from its envelope and unsealed, straightened out on a writing desk, Hyrule was being unfurled in preparation to be read.

The third and fourth pins trapped his hindwings to the bed.

He was lashed to the mat, like a hide tacked for scraping. Stretched like a child's string game from point to point.

The Man leaned back, a fifth pin in his hand, to check his work. The room seemed to grow a little colder as Hyrule waited for his judgment to be rendered.

The fifth pin went back in the box. For the moment.

"Sorry, little one," the Man said, not sounding sorry at all. He was doing something with the tray of tools; Hyrule could hear them clanking, but they were out of his sight. "I wish I didn't have to ruin your darling clothes this way, but if I try to pull them off I risk damaging you."

Tiny silver scissors loomed down out of the darkness, sharp as lightning and rain. Sharp as rain, sharp as ice. They glittered in the lamplight, shining like snow. The scissors leaned down over him like the legs of towering giants, like the shadow of the Thunderbird swooping down on him.

As the scissors descended he imagined them snipping his entire head off. What would that feel like? Would he even feel it? Panic bubbled in his chest but he couldn't move, he couldn't move, he couldn't move!

The scissors were delicately, oh so carefully laid under his belt. They lifted his belt away from his body in a way that pinched uncomfortably against his back, raising him slightly from the box he rested in. With a tiny gesture, they snipped right through the tough leather, with less difficulty than a dog cracking a soup bone in its teeth.

The scissors then slipped under his tunics and the tip came to rest against his navel, and he would have shuddered at the cold sensation — but he couldn't.

The silver glided along his flesh, tracing out the line that bisected him, mirroring the contour of his spine. On either side of that central line, both halves of him were screaming, but here at the center there was only calm and cold and perfectly precise movement.

The blades sliced through the cloth as though it had little more substance than smoke, than cobwebs, than eiderdown. The fabric parted like flower petals opening to the sun, fibers gliding against each other and against cold skin. He felt every thread as it brushed against his belly, but there was no pain.

Snip, snip, snip. The tunics fell free, parting over his chest, sweeping across his skin like leaves drifting along the water's surface.

The remains of his tunics were tugged around him and drawn up, shaken free like shaking nightmares out of sleep. His bare chest immediately felt chilled, even with such paltry warmth as his thin clothing had offered. But he could feel every puff of air as the Man moved his hands through the space above the table, and each subtle breeze made him want to flinch and cry out.

The Man was tender, but not reverent. He handled Hyrule not like a magical being, nor even like an animal, but like a piece of art — something that must be treated delicately, a precious bit of craftsmanship that must be preserved.

Or perhaps like art that was coming into being — something that must be molded, shaped, and changed in order to bring it to perfection.

His boots were pulled free slowly, twisting his ankles and bending them in uncomfortable directions, wiggled over his feet like peeling the husk from corn.

The tiniest cuts were made to remove his bracers, clipping through the ties. Then the leather was carefully (but not gently, there was no way to be gentle with something so small) tugged over his hands, scraping along his gooseflesh.

The mark of the Triforce on his left hand seemed to heat minutely as the leather pulled free and it was exposed to the air. Like a beam of summer sunlight breaking through patches of cooler shade. The feeling of a warm, furry animal pressing up beside you on a chill night.

Twilight, who seemed to run hot, was always willing to share his body heat whether he was in wolf or hylian form—cold nights of camping became more bearable with him around. It was one of the ways Twilight took care of his brothers. Hyrule missed Twilight now.

The Triforce was like a living thing, and its concern trembled through Hyrule, shivers in his heart. If you need a way out, it seemed to whisper, you need only ask.

But Hyrule knew he wouldn't use the Triforce's power. Not like this, never like this—to save only his own skin. Not in another Hero's era—who knew what that might do to the timeline? His duty was to protect the Triforce, to keep it from falling into evil hands. Unless someone tried to take it from him, it was safest where it was: embedded in his own flesh, blood, and magic, part of his pith and marrow.

He would take it to his grave.

The Man paused when the sign on Hyrule's hand was revealed. He examined it closely, turning the hand this way and that, but seemed to have no recognition of the thing, or at least thought it merely decorative. Still, the tap of a pen and the scratch of the nib on paper told Hyrule that the Man was taking meticulous notes about the oddity.

Hyrule wondered, in a terrified, desperate part of his brain, if the Triforce's magic was making it seem uninteresting somehow. A glamour, a bewitchment, an illusory subtlety. He hoped so.

All that was left between his skin and the Man's touch and eyes was his pants, and he was about to lose those too. He felt nervous and exposed even before the silver scissors came forth again.

Hyrule held his breath as those blades snipped the lacings, loosening the fabric around his groin.

He felt the touch of the Man's leather gloves on his sides, then his hips, tracing along his skin like a lover. The delicate kid leather slid smoothly over the fibers of his pants, the fabric rippling under the pressure but never catching on a rough spot. The Man tucked his fingertips between the waistline and Hyrule's skin and tugged lightly. He slid the trousers over Hyrule's hips and buttocks, and Hyrule wished he could shrink away from that contact. He felt the cool, dry touch like snakeskin, smooth and hunter-like, reptilian, patient.

The fabric was slid out from under him, the remains of the waistband briefly catching over his penis, and his body shifted against the pins that trapped his delicate wing membranes. His wings tore. He couldn't scream—and honestly didn't feel much of anything—but the prickly sensation in his wings told him that something was very, very wrong.

Hyrule was no longer wearing any clothes, naked but for his own pink glow. He couldn't think of a time when he had felt more exposed, more vulnerable, more afraid. This was not the flush of panic of a life-or-death battle, the swift rush of terror that swept through the body like a surging river when self or others were in danger. This was the slow-treading horror of a situation spiraled completely out of his control. This was the dread stealing his breath and taking the beats from his heart one by one.

"A male?" the Man mused. "I've never seen one before. This is indeed a special day."

Hyrule wanted to wrap himself up in his wings, his arms, to rub the gooseflesh from his skin. He wanted to roll over onto his belly so he could at least avoid looking at the horrible scene around him. But he couldn't. All he could do was watch in his peripheral vision as the huge figure of the Man moved in and out of sight, dropping his ruined clothes somewhere on the table out of reach.

Bright. The light of the sun, the moon, and the stars was suddenly striking Hyrule's face, slightly warm but nothing like the light of a candle or a flame. He felt the sweet sugar of his sisters streaming through the air, brushing against his senses, rubies and sapphires, the kindness of a kiss and the tenderness of charity.

The bright spots on his vision spattered away like raindrops rolling off a glass window, and he could see the metal lamp suspended over the worktable. In its glass lens, refracting, a fairy of Light slumped despondently, her upright wings the only sign of the fight she had left in her.

Her prison was mirrored on all sides, a trap for light and for Light. The shining quicksilver surfaces behind her caught that which made her up, and threw it back, compounding and confounding the senses until the light found its escape, a focused beam pouring forth through the narrow glass window and bathing the table beneath with clear, yellow-white light.

The lamp was attached to a metal arm and a heavy base that let it sit on the table. Screws and levers along the joints of the stand allowed the head to swing freely into position—a clever design of counterweights and tension. As Hyrule watched, the Man adjusted the arm to bring the blazing light closer to the table's surface, snaring him in its halo like an animal caught under a basket trap. Harsh shadows fell behind him as he was bathed in the concentrated light.

Hyrule heard a soft thunk of metal colliding with wood on his left. The Man had placed something like a hooded lantern there, a box with thin steel sides that sang a song of hammers striking and rust the color of old blood. With a quiet screech of metal-on-metal, the Man lifted the front panel up, revealing a fine steel mesh behind it. The panel caught and tugged at the sides of the lantern on the way up, grating on Hyrule's sensitive ears. It sounded the way that a dead branch falling from a tree felt in his heart.

Behind the steel mesh was another fairy, this one clearly of the Fire element by her carrot-orange hair, ruddy glow, and the palpable heat pouring off her. She had a pale light that indicated she had long been a captive, leaching her magic with no way to replenish it; but when the panel lifted she sprang to her feet, blazing fury, and banged on the walls of her enclosure with tiny, angry fists. Her chimes were full of such vitriol that Hyrule couldn't even interpret them into hylian speech.

The presence of her—warming him with the familiarity of her magic and her physical heat—made Hyrule's body relax slightly, though his mind still spun in circles. His skin no longer crawled with gooseflesh and his muscles eased slightly from their tightness.

The Man hummed, sounding pleased. There was a rattling sound, a clatter, as he picked up a pair of tools from the metal tray and lifted them over the box. There was one long sharp-tipped prod in each of his hands, textured handles aiding his grip. His hands were poised like an orchestra conductor, but Hyrule was put more in mind of a viper lining up a strike.

The prods descended.

Hyrule's arms were delicately lifted with the shafts of the tools and laid out to either side of his body, extended away from his torso. A fresh pin pressed into the skin of his right palm, then through, sliding between the metacarpals and pushing them apart. Slowly, the metal slid through his flesh, not pushing wider but still he could feel it moving, like an eel sliding through muck.

His skewered hand was positioned carefully on the mat, and the pin was pushed deep into the fabric. Even if he could have moved his arm, now he would need to tear his hand free in order to escape.

Then his other hand was treated the same way.

The Triforce in his left hand burned like a brand when the metal pierced it. It seared like acid in his blood, singing, screaming—his soul trembled and flinched and he was burning but he couldn't cry out—

He wished he could clench his muscles. He wished he could fight back. He wished he could do anything.

The drug swirled in his system, mocking his wishes. His lungs ached and his heart thudded in his chest, each beat circulating the stuff further, keeping his limbs half-numbed and fully paralyzed.

If his heart stopped beating, would the poison cease to flow? Not that that would save him.

His bent legs were carefully straightened on the mat, one at a time, and his genitals fully uncovered. He inwardly cringed at how exposed he felt just from that small adjustment.

The Man turned his legs out like a dancer's, and then with smooth motions thrust pins through his calves just above his feet.

Hyrule felt the bones in his shin crunch as the heavy pins crushed his ankles.

Bit by bit, the Man untangled Hyrule's limbs, arranging him upon the fabric mat just so. Blood seeped from the wounds, mostly sealed in by the pins themselves but oozing around the punctures nonetheless. Hyrule could feel the warm liquid dripping down the backs of his hands and legs before being absorbed by the fabric beneath him.

A small metal ruler was pulled out, laid along his arms and legs and torso, and returned to the table. The pen scratched some more. The ruler came back, more measurements. Quantifying him. Summarizing him.

The pins through his limbs didn't hurt, but they did feel weird, and the more he thought about them the more panicked Hyrule became. The Man had pinned him, mounted him, perforated him. He felt the foreign objects interrupting his body like rocks embedded in a stream, breaking the flow of magic and energy that reached from his core to his extremities.

The pen continued to scratch away. Hyrule's breathing picked up pace, even the force of the drug in his system not enough to overcome his fear.

He needed out, he needed to escape. He needed to think of something, anything, to get him out of here!

He tried to pull on his magic, tried to reverse the Fairy spell that kept him in this shape. Even if it hurt him, even if something awful happened, at least he would have tried—

The magic slipped away from his grasp, sand through an hourglass, smoke in the wind.

Hyrule gasped and tried again. He couldn't direct his magic into spells as a fairy—no Thunder, no Fire in this shape—but this, this, THIS—

The magic pulled away from him. It was like trying to stop the tide from going out. The sweet drug sparked and fizzed in his bloodstream, and Hyrule's fear grew deeper, darker. His magic moved sluggishly inside him, drifting vaguely to reach his wounds, sealing blood vessels and then retreating. He couldn't reach it, couldn't control it.

And realizing that, knowing that his last weapon had been taken from him, Hyrule's fear began to turn into despair.

He was trapped.

Alone.

Powerless.

The sound of the pen suddenly stopped.

[The Procedure]

⬤ ⬤ ⬤ ⬤ ⬤ ◯ ◯ ◯

The Man shifted his attention back to Hyrule, taking up another tool from his arsenal. The smell of sanitizer hit Hyrule like a carriage and burned into his nostrils, heady and sour. He felt lightheaded, even more fuzzy than before.

The Man dipped his tool into the astringent liquid—which glistened in the fairy light like silver fish were swimming in it—and swirled it around. He lifted it from the beaker, dripping and brimming with intent to harm.

The tool had a sharp edge, flat and clean, and a rounded tip.

Hyrule watched the steel come closer, shining white and gleaming, hovering over him with the imminence of a lightning bolt.

A spear thrown from the heavens.

The Man placed one massive gloved finger on the edge of Hyrule's right wing, holding it firmly against the fabric. Hyrule felt the veins of his wing bend as it sank into the mat below, like willow branches under a burden of snow. The end of the tool passed beyond his vision, too close to his head for him to see what was happening.

What was being done to him.

A scraping sensation against the surface of his wings, and he felt the delicate membranes tear further against the pins. The Man concentrated with a furrowed brow, his eyes dark and hooded as he worked. After a moment more, he carefully lifted up his tool, delicately slanted to support its load.

The edge of the tool had a fine dusting of scales scraped from Hyrule's wing. It formed a little mound of glitter, like shimmering sand, and the Man held his breath as he carried the tool away from the box. With his free hand, he lifted a glass phial a scarce inch off the table, and tipped the tool so that the airy powder dropped inside.

He tapped the tool a few times against the glass, shaking free as much dust as he could. The precious substance puffed in the jar, dancing and settling again in the light, pink and green and opal flakes.

Then the Man returned for more.

Pixie dust could be sold for a high price at unsavory markets, Hyrule knew. It was one of the many fears that fairies whispered to each other, of fairy hunters and trappers seeking riches from the premium component. Pure, powdered magic dust, essentially, useful in all sorts of ways. Shed naturally by fairies as they flew, but impossible to collect that way—there were other means of getting one's hands on the costly stuff.

The Man was scraping enough powder from Hyrule's wings alone to feed a family, but no matter how deep he looked, Hyrule saw no avarice in his eyes.

The Man finished up his abrasion and capped the phial. He lifted it to the light, turning it this way and that, and the powder caught the Light fairy's gleam like the inside of a kaleidoscope, sending pink, green, and white refractions across the table and the Man's face.

He set the phial aside carefully, then selected another tool. Finally, he addressed Hyrule directly.

"Just hold out for me as long as you can, little one, and I'll make it easy."

Then the work truly began.

The steel tool that descended on him was a delicate blade, thin as paper and sharp as glass. Sharp as the scent of acid on his tongue, sharp as a blizzard wind, sharp as an unkind word.

The scalpel came to rest on his collarbone, in the divot at the base of his throat. His mouth was too dry to swallow, even if he could have activated the muscles to do so. His heart was pounding like a giant's footsteps, slow and steady but each beat seeming to shake his very foundations.

The cut began with a gentle sensation of pressure. Nothing more.

The blade sliced down to bone, splitting fragile skin with hardly any effort. The Man dragged the knife along Hyrule's sternum, following the tree-trunk-straight path down his center, the reverse of the route taken by the scissors only a short time ago.

But the blade carved deep, cutting through muscle tissue as well as skin. Hyrule felt the tip of it trace along the bone of his sternum, scraping the surface of it, like a wood carver's tool marking a shape into soft pine.

Sky would often sit by the campfire with a piece of firewood in his hand, idly whittling it. The knife he used for carving was used for no other purpose, and he kept it well-honed. Beautiful shapes emerged from simple origins, a menagerie of creatures and figures and figments all brought into existence from Sky's imagination and skill. Hyrule wondered if Sky realized how closely he resembled his own works of art.

The pressure on Hyrule's skin eased slightly as the knife reached the bottom of his ribcage. But it did not stop.

The scalpel continued its path down, and the Man was gentle, was careful—he clearly did not want to cut too deep. The slice stretched through the meaty parts of Hyrule's belly to his navel, cleaving his abdomen in half. The muscles pulled away from each other, a curtain drawn, and blood welled up in the gap, torrid and boiling like a hot spring.

A hand delicately wiped the blood from his skin with a small, damp cloth. The edges of the cut fizzed at the touch. The smell of rubbing alcohol wafted over Hyrule, and he thought the wound should be stinging, but the anaesthesia kept him numb to it.

There was less blood than Hyrule expected, less blood than he thought there should be. His blood was flowing slowly due to the drug. It crept in his veins like sludge, like mud. Like lava.

The Man lifted the scalpel away like a painter raising his brush from a canvas. In his left hand he held the alcohol-soaked cloth, stained pink with Hyrule's blood.

He brought the knife down on Hyrule's collarbone again, and Hyrule's breath hitched. That gentle pressure was back, soft as a caress, sweet as a kiss.

The Man drew the blade along the underside of Hyrule's collarbone, out to his right shoulder. The knife skipped a little when it hit the bony intersection of his shoulder joint and the head of his humerus, and the Man hummed, perturbed.

He switched his grip on the knife, adjusted the angle he was standing at, and made an identical cut on Hyrule's left shoulder.

Then the Man started to peel back Hyrule's skin.

He started from the intersection point, where neck and chest and shoulders all aligned. He slid the edge of the scalpel into the canyon he had carved through the muscles of Hyrule's chest, and began to lift—oh so delicately, patiently, drawing the blade along the ribcage, bones singing as it scraped.

It was slow going; he kept the knife close, angled in to saw through any tough spots, any places where tissue caught and clung. He sliced through those latch points easily, cautiously, and where the knife traversed Hyrule's body he felt shivers in its wake, little tracks of lightning zipping along his nerves—not painful, no, but not pleasant either. Like chimney swallows darting through the dusk skies.

The flesh was peeled back, cut away from the ribcage, muscles stretching as they were sliced away. Hyrule was peeled like an orange, and he could almost imagine the scent of Warrior's favorite fruit.

The little fruits released their salt-sweet aroma as the Captain peeled them with a fond, easy smile…

Except the sweetness Hyrule was smelling turned sour in his gut, and it was all along the smell of the preserving liquid around him, and his body rejected the scent and its meaning. He would have gagged if he could, bile churning in his stomach and his head spinning with disgust. But he could only lie there, breathing through his mouth, the scent seeming fouler and more stale with every breath he took.

At last the Man reached the end of his tugging, and Hyrule's flayed skin stretched across an enormous gap. With two fingers the Man pinched the slippery, bloody flesh, and with his other hand he drew forth another long pin.

It took several pins.

Hyrule could feel the pins gliding through his skin from the wrong side out, his inner workings exposed to the warm air. The pins felt like they were coming from inside his own body, and the disorientation made him even more sick.

The pins grew out from the inside of his skin like pine needles emerging from sap-thick branches. Grass piercing through the fallen snow at the cusp of spring, green things growing where only death had laid for weeks. Like an awl piercing canvas as Wind repaired a sail at sea. Like one of Legend's embroidery needles, drawing silver and gold thread through the fabric and hissing as it passed by, pushing the fibers out of the way.

Legend, singing softly to himself at night, by light of a lantern or campfire. Stitching silver and gold into their tunics, sigils of defense, traces of magic following his handiwork. A promise of protection. A sign of love.

Hyrule's skin was pinned to the cloth backing, stretched wide like fabric on a loom. The skin was stretched wide like a smile gone on too long, cracking at the corners. Like patience. Stretched to the edges of endurance, tensioned past reasoning. Pulled and pulled and pulled like salt sweets, taffy and cotton candy. Dragged like a comb through long hair.

Twilight, humming and pulling a comb through Wild's hair. Love.

Stretched like a question, begging infinity.

The pins drove into the padded mat and Hyrule was spread between them, naked and inviting.

The Man took a moment to breathe and wipe his gloves on a cloth. Hyrule felt fuzzy and sick and dizzy, and he watched with half-focused eyes.

"Keep healing yourself, little one," the Man encouraged him. "We don't want you to die of this, of course."

Hyrule didn't want to do as the Man said, but something in him fought to survive. Something in him was scared.

His magic swirled inside him, sluggishly responding to his will. It burned inside him along lines of molten glass, liquid and fragile, sore and stinging. His magic flickered quick then slow, quick then slow, dancing to an off-kilter beat. Like his heart, stuttering. It paced around his edges, uncertain, testing.

Fix this, he asked of it, in whatever way you can.

The magic crawled along the lines of him, the little paths and river-ways that he could not explain. Life chased the shadows before it, and Hyrule could tell, dully, that his soft pink glow was a little brighter than before. His magic spun and spiraled from his core to his limbs, and back again, gravity implacable, sealing and repairing and forestalling.

Only ever forestalling.

The Man's smile glowed in the darkness like a crescent moon.

He took up a little piece of sponge, some sea-creature long bereft of life, and patiently tore it into shreds. The tiny shreds he packed, one by one, into the incision in Hyrule's belly. Hyrule felt gloved fingers push and prod at the slice that split him, at the fringes of him, and things—soft and pliant—were added to his mass. They were cold, but quickly warmed to the same temperature as his blood, and some distant, screaming part of him understood that this was because they were absorbing his fluids, his heat. They were sopping up his insides.

Perhaps the sponge fragments were leaching more from him than just blood, because Hyrule was starting to feel colder and colder. The warmth of his sister beside him was a blessing, one side of his body at least soothed by the heat rolling from her brittle steel cage.

He vaguely wished he could curl up, to nestle into that warmth. To snuggle into that hearth-heat and safety. He almost tried to do so before he remembered why he couldn't.

In his darkening sight, in the hidden murk behind the haloed light, something loomed over him. The silver scissors were back, or something like them, heavy and foreboding. They came close, ever so close, and then—a pinching sensation. At the base of his sternum.

The scissors—acting more like garden clippers now—seemed dull when compared to Hyrule's tiny size. They began to snip, snip, crush the bone that joined his ribs together. The shears slid between his bones and his organs, avoiding damaging his beating heart and lungs pushing air. They ground against his bones, catching like a whetstone against the burrs in the edge of a knife.

Four, sharpening their weapons for them, making sure that every blade was fit for service. It was how Four protected them all. It was how he showed his love.

The scissor blades ground like stones in a mill-wheel, jumping and skipping across the surface of his bones.

They snipped and crushed and smashed, step by step creeping up his sternum like climbing a ladder, one rung after another. Hyrule's lungs fluttered under their acute angle, flaring and flurrying as his panic rose again. As his lungs were slowly unzipped, and exposed to the air.

The scissors reached the top of his sternum and the final cut was made. A moment of release—tension, snapped—and the pressure on his lungs, the iron bands that constricted his breathing, lifted for a moment.

For that moment, Hyrule could breathe more deeply.

The pins through his skin anchored him. He was being held open by fine steel, stainless and immortal. His blood bubbled up rust-red, berry-juice red, red like the cores of coals and sunsets at sea. His heart pumped fire but with every beat the chill of autumn stole into his veins, the season of death-sleep approaching.

Curved forceps entered his field of vision.

Hyrule could feel the tips dig into the space between the two halves of his ribs. They were swimming around in the blood like wriggling fish, pushing aside the muscles as they plunged deeper.

Then they s p r e a d h i m o p e n.

The forceps pushed against his ribs, roots forcing themselves into cracks in stone, splitting the foundations of his being. They pushed and pushed and pushed and the cold air brushed against his denuded heart.

His ribs cracked and everything was open, everything he was… was open.

Hyrule was no longer himself-shaped. His torso was the wrong shape, and he was no longer fully aware of where his body was in space. It was like transformation magic the first time it triggered a change, reshaping a body from the marrow outward. He was left now in a body that didn't feel quite right, dysphoria like an itch at the back of his mind.

Suddenly the scalpel was back, lunging out of the darkness. The Man touched the blade to the inside of Hyrule's left thigh, right at the point where his femur bone socketed into the crest of his hip.

The Man drew a line down the inner thigh with the blade, digging deep. He carved a hollow channel into Hyrule's flesh. He traced the line of the femoral artery, and sliced alongside it, releasing the blood that crawled in the fairy's veins.

Pink, pearly fluid spilled, flowing along the curve of Hyrule's thigh. It poured down the sides of his leg to drip, drip, drip onto the fabric below. The Man didn't bother to wipe this blood away—there was far too much, and it didn't stop flowing.

The Man's delicate knife made a curved incision around the kneecap, and then he sliced through the ligaments holding the thigh muscles in place. Even with the anaesthetic in his system, Hyrule felt the muscles spasm, twitch, react to the pressure and stimulation.

The knife was put away—a slight clatter of steel on glass, a tiny splash as the tool was carefully placed back in the beaker of rubbing alcohol—and two sharp-tipped pin tools were brought forth instead. The Man used the pin tools to pull apart the quad muscles, separating them from each other and lifting them from the bones.

More pins, thin and pliant as new grass. One pin threaded through a quad muscle, then twisted to make a gap. The pin drove into the mat and lodged there, quivering like an arrow striking home. Another pin braced against the underside of his femur bone, behind the knee, and a third pinched his gluteus muscle to the fabric.

The Man allowed Hyrule's blood to bubble freely, watching it with the curiosity of a kitten observing a crawling beetle. He waited patiently, alcohol-soaked rag at the ready, while Hyrule gasped for breath with his ravaged chest and paralyzed lungs.

He was bleeding too much, the monsters would find him, he would bleed himself dry—

Hyrule's magic raced through his body without conscious thought directing it, hurrying to stem the flow of red. Some of it stayed behind to nestle around his heart and lungs, keeping them working, keeping them from breaking down in exposure to the air. His magic stretched and reached to cover every part of him, sealing arteries and blood vessels from releasing more of their precious cargo.

As the flow of blood slowed, the Man swiped away some of what had already been spilled. He peered closely at the minute shifts and changes happening in the tiny body in front of him, and Hyrule felt the weight of his gaze like thick snowfall on a frozen lake.

"Fascinating," he murmured, watching the healing take place. "But where does it come from?"

Hyrule was too long lost to understand the question.

The Man picked up the scalpel again and moved to another part of the body. Instead of the left arm, he aimed for the right.

He made a delicate cut around the shoulder joint, slicing from the top of the collarbone deep into the armpit. Then he used his sharp knife to separate out the ball of the upper arm from the socket. In a single stroke, he cut through the ligaments and tendons that held the bones in the joint. Hyrule felt a tiny scraping sensation as the bone of the humerus ground lightly against the clavicle and scapula.

Hyrule had felt the pop of a dislocated shoulder many times before, but this was the first time it had come without pain.

Then the Man made a fresh cut along the inside of the arm, from shoulder to wrist. To Hyrule, it felt like he was drawing a line down the arm with a soft brush dipped in ink. The touch was as delicate as a feather, a bird's wing cutting through the air, with just enough pressure to make Hyrule aware of the way his skin depressed under the knife.

At the end of his line, the Man changed direction. He made another cut that wrapped around the wrist, nearly taking Hyrule's hand off. The cut felt eerily familiar and foreign at the same time. It felt like watching a fisherman butterfly his catch.

The Man used knife and fingers to open out the arm, expanding its surface area to twice its size. A regiment of pins marched through the flesh to hold it wide, a line of sentry posts parading from wrist to shoulder.

A new tool was brought forth, and Hyrule's dim and blurry eyes had trouble identifying it. It had a hooked end and a sharp point like a pin. The Man handled it like a most delicate painter's brush, wielding it softly and with care.

The Man dug into Hyrule's wrist with the hooked tool and began to lift, bit by bit, a chain of nerves from the surface of the limb.

The nerves were pulled from the muscles like pulling the spine out of a fish. Like peeling a pressed flower off a page. Little snap snap snaps twitched through Hyrule's arm as the smallest fibers broke. The Man moved his hands slowly, glacially, to pry the fibers free. Precious ore from a vein.

He used the fine pins to tack the nerves out like the branches of a tree, like the reaching roots of a tomato plant. Each brush of steel against the nerves felt like little lightning bolts tripping through his veins, little signals, and Hyrule was confused. He no longer had a sense of attachment to his arm, but it must be there, right? He knew it had to be there, though it had been split from him almost entirely.

And it felt almost like his arm was in two places, like he had two arms. Like seeing himself in a mirror and knowing that it was also him, somehow… As though one could exist in two spaces at once, and feel both selves at the same time. Like an echo, half a step to the left and a quarter of a second behind.

The Man finished pinning the nerves out to the mat and wiped his tools clean. Hyrule was no longer able to see him when he stepped back from the table; only dusk and shadows beyond the blazing light above him. Only ringing in his ears and the slow beat of his own pulse. No bell-like screams from his sisters, now; he did not know if they had fallen silent, or if the echoes in his own head had drowned them out.

Hyrule felt dry and sere, the moisture all evaporated from his insides. The flesh around the incision at his center felt tight, dehydrated, parched, and the pins that held him open pulled at that tightness, strained.

He could no longer identify the feeling of the sponges that had been pressed into his cavities and crevices. He thought he should be able to feel them still.

The Man shifted, and Hyrule saw a new tool coming towards him, and he was too tired to be afraid.

The Man reached his fingers into the incision and burrowed deep. He used his hooked tool to scoop the guts up, lifting out the intestines and laying them gently to one side. His gloves were stained silver in the sharp light, the fingers marked with pearl-pink.

He pulled and pulled and pulled the intestines free, yarn yanked from a spool. Hyrule could see his guts departing him, leaving him hollow and empty, caved in. Like a sinkhole—like quicksand—dirt and rock collapsing on itself when no longer supported.

He felt dazed and dizzy from the sight.

The hook fell and rose again. A chain of fatty, lumpy organs—liver, kidneys, spleen—all came out together, strung together like lanterns on a rope. Tangled and knotted, like bedsheets twisted after a nightmare. Little cuts were made to pull them free, slicing through slick tissues and spilling bile.

Hyrule felt a tugging sensation on his esophagus, a tightening of his throat, constricting his windpipe. It was becoming even harder to breathe.

He vaguely heard the Man whisper something—perhaps it was meant to be soothing, but he could only feel horror, and he could understand none of it.

He worried that soon he wouldn't be able to breathe at all. Would he suffocate now?

Please, goddesses, let him suffocate. It would be freedom from this torment.

His magic was singing to him. It limped along, broken and begrudging. It was tired. It was worn thin, like a threadbare coat.

It draped itself around him, soothing him, tenuous and afraid. His magic was running low, a kettle set to boil for too long. It had poured and poured and poured itself into keeping him alive, through shock and blood loss, and it had little more to give.

It was apologizing—it was sorry—but it could not keep him alive much longer.

It was burning low like the cinders of a fire, like the last inch of a candle, like the fading sparks of a firework glittering in the night.

Hyrule knew that he had died.

He was hollow, he was aching, he was empty. Scraped and scoured. His vision was dark, the shadows drawing close around him, and even the light of his sister seemed fainter.

The Man said something, but Hyrule neither heard nor understood it. To him it was simply a remote buzzing, the sound like an avalanche in the distance. Something threatening, but far away.

Hyrule blinked, and the scalpel appeared in the Man's hand again. It dripped with fresh sanitizer, cold and clean. The Man held it tightly, a slight tremor returning to his hands. The faint smell of woody liquor mixed with chemical fumes and turned, in Hyrule's mind, to the scent of wildflowers, lavender and dandelions, earthy and chocolatey.

Time, standing among a field of flowers, showing Hyrule the fairies that danced there… The way the elder felt like a Great Fairy in some ways, blessed and sacred. Protection and a way home…

The Man placed the knife at Hyrule's chin, and with one small cut, opened his throat.

Hyrule could no longer breathe. He gasped, his lungs squeezing and fluttering, his throat compressing uselessly. He was dizzy, he was spinning—the world wasn't spinning, he was—and his muscles flexed and his throat filled with blood.

He was choking, he was drowning.

His magic rushed to fix it, crying out, screaming and scraping the last vestiges of itself from his body. It abandoned the rest of him, drawn to this last bastion, this final defense—

The Man thrust a pin through the base of his neck.

And this… his magic could not heal. There wasn't enough left. The last drops of rain at the end of a storm.

He was smothered, he was stifled. His mind thrashed and panicked in its prison—he was spiraling—he didn't want to die—

—and then—

—he stopped.

He let go.

His brothers wouldn't find him in time and no one would save him—he accepted it.

He had no more strength to give, no more tricks, no more magic—he embraced it.

He had reached the end.

Hyrule slipped into darkness and let the last of his magic take him.

[The World]

⬤ ⬤ ⬤ ⬤ ⬤ ⬤ ◯ ◯

Bones, muscles, nerves, organs. Trees, rivers, lightning.

His bones are stones, stalactites and stalagmites, grown drip by drip. The core of mountains, their paths and valleys, their rigidness and pliancy. Resonant chambers within, caves half-filled with water and half with echoes. Stones like bedrock, granite and shale. Stones like the cobblestones of the city streets above him, broken and chiseled, moved from their quarries, lost children of the peaks.

The knife scrapes across them like a bow across violin strings, tight and singing. The edge of the knife scores the stone that is the core of him, tick tick tick, making his insides vibrate.

His muscles twine around each other like climbing vines. They form a tree of life within him. Each limb a branch, heartwood and sapwood, phalanges as twigs budding and bright.

His muscles have been parted out, untangled. Laid flat and separated, planed and shorn.

His lungs and heart rest inside him, pulsing, liquid sacs that quiver and tremble. The surface of a placid lake stirred by a chill breeze. He can feel the air shift over his organs, cool and dry touching things that should only ever be warm and wet.

The darkness peels back from his insides, harshly illuminated in the cold white light. Light like starfire burning frigid into his veins like ice. It pours through his entrails, coating his organs and filling in his gaps like syrup in sweets.

His nerves are lightning. They spread and split, from the storm in his middle to the furthest ends of his fingertips. They spark and dance, and the storm winds wrestle in his chest.

His magic flickers to his extremities, lightning in a bottle, thunder rumbling along his veins. If only he could snap his fingers…

Veins are tributaries, arteries are rivers, merging and melting and mixing and forming new streams. His blood feels like meltwater in his capillaries, cold and sluggish and clear.

Salt water flows through him, oceans in his limbs, bleeding him and blending him with the sea that gently rocks him, that welcomes him. The waters flow and ebb and combine again and again, blood or water seeping from him, draining onto the fabric beneath him. His heart pulses sluggishly, each beat forcing the salt water to pump through his body but each beat slower than the last, pushing thick water like jelly through his veins.

Breath. He has so little breath left. He breathes the clouds, breathes the cold, breathes the mountains. What he swallows is sunlight, moonlight, what he exhales is smoke and fire and steam. He can't breathe through his nose.

The air recombines and mixes in his lungs and swirls and eddies in his chest. Sparks of gathering lightning twist up inside the storm, feeding into more sparks and coiling in his lungs.

And then he breathes out and the storm dwindles, softens, reduces, tingles across his lips like the buzz of fly wings.

With the storm diminished, and winter settled in his skin, the single solitary source of light left in him becomes visible at last.

A coal settles at the base of his throat, warm and welcome. But it is nearly drowned now. A mere memory of heat.

The storm dies. The coal remains.

"There we are," the Man breathes.

[The Rescue]

⬤ ⬤ ⬤ ⬤ ⬤ ⬤ ⬤ ◯

Midnight had come and gone hours ago.

To his credit, Warriors didn't hesitate for a moment when the bells marked the hour and Hyrule had missed his curfew. Didn't wait for confirmation, brushed aside any notion that maybe he's just late. Tired though he was, as much as his head ached from days of stress and vigils, and regardless of the way his limbs trembled and his mind felt woolly with exhaustion, Warriors was too anxious to be anything less than terrified when Hyrule failed to meet his deadline.

Maybe Hyrule was having a lovely time with the fairies at the fountain and had lost track of the hour. In which case, Wars would apologize for interrupting and wait for him outside the temple. Maybe the poor healer had succumbed to his weariness and nestled somewhere to sleep off the last few days' events. Maybe, maybe, maybe…

Warriors wasn't taking any chances. He rounded up the Chain, impressing upon them how seriously he was taking this and immediately taking command of the situation.

He was aware that some of the others only listened to him now because they knew how stressed he had been, and were humoring him. He didn't care. Something felt wrong.

He sent Four to find Zelda and Sky to watch over Time. The rest followed him down into the city streets, blue-dark and full of shadows in their lantern-lights.

Twilight couldn't track a fairy through the air.

With no other clues as to their missing brother's whereabouts, Warriors took them straight to the fairy fountain temple. That was where Wars himself had directed Hyrule to go, and maybe they would be lucky. Twilight might not have been able to track a fairy, but he had once told Warriors that he could detect a single drop of blood in a whole cask of water.

Wars prayed to the goddesses that it was true.

They arrived at the fountain in the hour after midnight, cobblestones cooling beneath their feet. Wars, Legend, Wild, and Wind spread out along the plaza, looking hopelessly for clues and trying not to get in Twilight's way.

The wolf picked his way up the steps and padded among the dishes of offerings, sniffing each in turn. After a thorough investigation of the stairs, Twilight circled the plaza, pacing up to the tightly-locked doors and around the edges of the space. The others tried not to watch him too closely, giving him room.

At last Twilight resumed his hylian form and gave his report, shoulders tense and back stiff. He detected only one hylian scent trail from the day, and they swiftly decided to seek out the petitioner to ask if they saw anything.

From the scent, Twilight was able to tell them that the petitioner was a man, and that he was on some heavy painkillers. Perhaps he came to the fairy fountain for healing. Perhaps Hyrule had offered it, kind soul that he was.

Perhaps.

Twilight took his lupine shape once more to lead them. All they had to go on was a faint clue and the edge of hope, swiftly fraying.

They hurried through the dark streets, Legend clinging to Twilight's side like a burr, his magic lantern lifted high despite how little use it was. It illuminated their path and nothing more. The others all clung closely to that ring of light, wary of the shapes of shadows that snuck along beside them, slinking like hunting beasts in their wake.

They traipsed through haunted streets into the low part of town, the places with cheap rents and seedy businesses. But there was honest struggle on these streets, too, and care taken to preserve what little people had—signs of fresh but inexpertly-applied weatherproofing, clean-swept stoops, neighbors helping neighbors. People looked out for each other here.

Wars felt comfortable in this neighborhood, though not with the circumstances that brought them here. Legend, too, looked at ease. Wind and Wild did not, and jumped at shadows. The shadows bit back.

Twilight led them to a ramshackle building nonetheless well-tended, with fresh flowers in pots outside the windows, though the windows themselves were boarded and taped because the glass had broken long ago and hadn't been replaced. The sign hanging above the door bore the crossed scissors and blade indicating that it was a doctor's office, a surgeon in fact.

The pips under the medical sign signaled that the house doctor was once military, or still had a commission. Warriors breathed easier for a second, knowing that he was about to speak to a fellow soldier.

He hesitated only a moment to knock at the door. He hated to wake the good doctor in the middle of the night, but Wars soothed himself with the thought that the doctor was probably used to night calls, visitors at all hours. He rapped hard on the door.

No answer. Legend crouched slightly to peer at the door latch, then pointed without speaking. There was a light seeping through the cracks. Someone was inside, and awake.

Warriors felt a chill pass through him. Something felt wrong and he couldn't put his finger on it. He gripped the handle tightly; it was latched from the inside. Wind wouldn't be able to pick the lock because it was dead-bolted. But the frame was weak. With a silent apology to the owner, Wars put his shoulder against the door and shoved hard enough that the dry wood crinkled and cracked. The door opened.

There was a light below, down the rickety stairs. But what wafted up from beneath, the warm air that puffed up from the basement and burst in Warriors' face and sent him careening down the steps into the dark, was the scent.

Alcohol. Antiseptic.

And sugar.

Wars rattled down the stairs and into a nightmare.

~

Now it was hours later, and Warriors was exhausted.

They couldn't have stayed there, in that clinic—that laboratory—that morgue. They absolutely couldn't. Especially when Zelda's troops descended on the place, asking questions and collecting evidence.

Trafficking in fairies was a high crime. The penalty was severe.

The Chain, drained emotionally more than physically, was at the end of their tethers. None of them could bear to linger for a moment longer than they had to. Warriors couldn't stop Legend from snapping at the guards—he was too broken up himself—couldn't stop Wind from getting into arguments with his brothers, couldn't stop Twilight from dropping into sullen anger and clenched fists and threats barely kept between his teeth.

Wars didn't have the heart to stop any of it, and he curled further into himself, like a coward, taking the craven way out and staying silent.

It was everything Wars could do to keep himself from tearing a man to pieces with his own two hands, after what they had seen.

The man surrendered immediately. What else was he to do? A crippled doctor facing down the famous Captain Link and the other heroes? He set his tools down, hands up, calm even when Wild set a sword to his throat.

The room was packed with six hylians in it. Fairies all around the room were crying in their bottles, their chimes overlapping and unintelligible. Wars was barely able to take in the scene when Legend wailed and they all saw what—who—was on the table.

Wild, of all people, was the one who helped them all make it back to the castle. He was the one who got them all out of that stinking basement, who spoke to Zelda's troops at the door, who gave a soft salute to the sergeant but insisted firmly that they all were leaving and they could be found at the castle if they had to be questioned.

Legend kept Hyrule's still form cupped gently between his hands. He hid Hyrule from all eyes, glaring daggers at anyone who even looked too closely at the Chain.

The Chain were almost all stunned with horror. But Wind, clever Wind, wasn't giving up hope. He raced around the room freeing fairies from their bottles, and every sprite who could still fly streaked over to the table. They surrounded Hyrule's tiny form with light, even though each of them was weak and dim.

The Chain could no longer see Hyrule, he was completely occluded by the other fairies. The light practically pulsed in myriad colors. They remained that way for a long, long time, gradually growing paler in the dark.

But the Chain had already seen enough.

Twilight raced ahead to inform Four and Sky of what they had found. They knew—they all knew—the Chain needed to be together now. Time's absence—the bulwark of his spirit—was keenly felt.

In the castle they gathered, crowded into one room, shocked into silence. No one spoke. No one dared to breathe too loudly.

Twilight locked the door and set his back against it defensively. As though that would help, somehow. As though that would stop anything.

Legend laid Hyrule reverently on a pillow and collapsed into voiceless tears. A star imploding into blackness.

It was nearly dawn before any of them said a word.

"I was the one who sent him away," Wars admitted, teeth clenched. He sat in a chair by the bedside, and no one had dared ask him to move from that spot. "I told him to take a break. I sent him to the fairy fountain." With every word, his head dropped further, weighed down by the heaviness of his guilt. "This is all my fault."

Sky moved to stand behind his brother, laying cautious hands on Wars' shoulders.

"You couldn't have known," he insisted. "How could you even have guessed that there were people out there who were capable of doing something like this?"

Warriors didn't answer, head still between his hands.

Hyrule could have been killed.

And maybe that would have been kinder.

Instead his brother was tortured. Violated. Picked apart and put back together.

How could he—how could anyone—possibly recover from this?

~

He was no longer whole.

Hyrule floated in an iron ocean, heavy and weightless at once. He stretched his limbs in every direction and touched nothing. Yet he was rocking, wavering, drifting on the waves that carried him far from shore. Far from safety.

He would never feel safety again.

He could still feel something swimming in his veins, but he couldn't name it. It buzzed through him, swirling like fog and stinging like nettles.

He was cold. His bones were melting icicles, dripping hoarfrost into his tissues. Everything hurt, everything ached. His insides throbbed and twinged in ways he had never experienced before. He hadn't known it was possible for his organs to hurt like this.

His magic greeted him like his own heartbeat. Like a friend at your door who has their own key. It twirled sluggishly in him, and he suddenly remembered the feeling of paralysis, the feeling of his magic sliding away from his grip when he needed it most. And that, he realized, was the sensation he was trying to identify, the feeling of the anaesthetic slowly leaving his system.

Too slowly, he needed to WAKE UP—

He thrashed himself out of the darkness, out of the depths, full of loathing, full of terror. He pulled himself to a half-awake state through sheer grit.

He was still in fairy form, and this was immediately horrifying, appalling, intolerable. He tried to yank himself the rest of the way to alertness, but every limb felt weighed down by stones, and he was too weak to move. Something soft was beneath him and he couldn't tell what it was, couldn't twitch a finger, couldn't see—

With a sudden gasp, he wrenched his eyes open.

Bright light blinded him and tumbled down around him, and he was transfixed with fear.

Someone was holding his hand, and singing softly in a language Hyrule didn't understand.

They were stroking his fingers gently, and with a jolt Hyrule realized that he could feel his fingers. They were no longer numb and tingling, now warm and relaxed and sore.

When Hyrule twitched awake, the person beside him jumped too. His gaze swam over to them, wavering and wobbling, and after a moment of staring he recognized Four. The smith was the same size as Hyrule, Minish magic cloaking him like mouse-soft fur. Seeing him there made Hyrule's fear abate just a little.

"Hyrule," Four breathed, staring at him with a deep pain in his eyes. Then he turned as someone leaned in from Hyrule's other side.

"Hey, is he awake?" Wars murmured, voice quiet.

Hyrule dimly recognized the room he had been assigned with Legend in Hyrule Castle. He had barely seen it, as much time as he had been spending in the hospital. He was lying on a pillow at the head of the bed, his wings spread beneath him, a piece of fabric—which he recognized as one of Legend's handkerchiefs—draped over him like a blanket.

Four sat at his side, still holding one of his hands. Wars leaned in from a chair beside the bed, looking thin and worn without his outer layers on.

This was surely a dream.

Because he remembered darkness and spiderwebs and the smell of preserving fluids. He remembered his fear, his certainty that he was alone. He remembered accepting that his death had come.

A sob lodged in his throat, choking him. And he remembered what it felt like when his throat was cut open…

"Breathe, Rulie, please!" Four said, and it wasn't until that moment that Hyrule realized he was actually choking, lungs stuttering and chest tight. He squeezed Four's hand and tried to suck in a breath, but he felt like he was drowning in thick air again, like he was trying to inhale that dense, sweet gas—

"Don't try to move too fast!" Four warned him, setting a hand on Hyrule's chest. He didn't push, but even that small exertion of control made Hyrule's heart speed up.

Hyrule managed to swallow enough of his fear to speak. "Please," he whispered, "I need… to change back."

Wars and Four exchanged a worried glance.

"Okay, bud," Warriors said. "Whatever you need."

Hyrule concentrated on the spell that would turn him back into his hylian form, on the feeling of his magic inside his skin. It felt warped, it felt twisted, it felt lacking somehow.

His magic was slow to respond to his call. It was busy, it said. It was still trying to fix things.

Fix this first, Hyrule begged.

Slowly, like pushing against a boulder, his magic shifted tasks. It started rolling, willpower overcoming inertia. He felt like he was falling forward, a swooping, dizzying sensation, and he almost threw up, closing his eyes against it.

"Whoah!" Wars said, and suddenly there were hands on Hyrule's bare chest, stopping him from curling up on his side. At the touch, flowers of phantom pain bloomed and burst in his chest. Hyrule gasped in remembered—or imagined?—agony, pressing against the hands on him. His breath hiccuped in his throat, his heart stuttered, and for a moment the world went white. But then his pulse started to gallop, and panic washed through him.

His mind went blank, only fear and pain and the deep void of death yawning like an abyss under him. He tried to curl up again, but he was pressed down into the bed, open, he was gasping for air—the hands were gone, but he was still open—certain that he couldn't breathe, that his ribs were still cracked in two, open and exposed to the air…

"Rulie, Rulie, please, you're okay," Wars was saying, begging him, hands hovering, eyes wide and worried. "It's okay, Link, you're here, you're alive, I promise everything's okay."

Hyrule could barely hear him. There was a roaring in his ears, and a sound like rain pattering on glass windowpanes. His heart was hammering faster and faster, his vision was dark at the corners, and the darkness looked like ash falling but it also looked like cobwebs and smelled like warm steel.

And the darkness rose up from his edges and dragged him under again, saltpeter and cinders.

~

When Hyrule came to again, he had been covered with blankets. Wars had two fingers pressed against his throat, taking his pulse. Legend was sitting on the bed on Hyrule's other side, holding one of Hyrule's hands, their fingers interlaced. One of Legend's gold rings had been slid onto Hyrule's finger, and the unfamiliar magic pulsed and eddied lightly against his own much-diminished aura. Four was back to hylian size and was leaning against the bedframe, arms crossed and eyes dark with worry.

Sky, Wind, and Wild were farther away, cluttering up the room, clearly trying to be quiet and calm and out of the way even though they were practically tripping over each other in the small space.

Hyrule rolled his head on the pillow, lashes fluttering. His neck ached with the movement, and his skull throbbed.

"You with me?" Wars asked, a little strident with concern.

Hyrule nodded, swallowing thickly. His head felt a little buzzy, like bees were nesting in it. He couldn't quite remember what had just happened.

"Take it slow," Legend said, less a demand and more a plea.

Why… What was I… Sluggish memory stumbled its way to the forefront of his mind, and his vision tunneled, glaring light and white steel from unbidden recollection blinding him to the scene around him. His breathing hitched again.

"You're safe, Hyrule, I swear to you," Wars said.

Safe. The fairy fountain was supposed to be safe.

Hyrule tried to speak, and found all he could produce was a whisper. His voice didn't seem to connect right, like there was something misaligned.

"Need my hand back," he whispered to Legend. "Need to know… I need to check."

Legend looked like he had swallowed a whole lime, but he let Hyrule's hand go. Wars and Four and Legend all helped him when he went to sit up, their hands getting in the way of each other.

It took a moment for Hyrule to gather the courage to look down at himself. He expected to see his body still in pieces, split and sundered, or at least see a whole lot of blood. But his chest, his arms, they looked… normal. Clean. Untouched.

If his brothers hadn't all been staring at him like a mirage, he would have doubted his own memory.

Hyrule lifted his hands to feel his own face. He remembered it being numb, not being able to move his lips or eyes. He still felt a bit numb. He smushed his cheeks with his fingers, massaged his jaw, trying to bring them back to life. He brushed fingertips across his own lips, and shuddered when the feather-light touch made his lips tingle.

He remembered how he hadn't been able to scream.

He moved his hands to wrap around his own throat. He thought about how slow his pulse had been, beating heavy in his ears. About how that pulse got slower and slower as he lost blood. Now his pulse flashed under his fingertips, too fast and too thready to possibly consider well, but no longer counting empty seconds between the beats.

His hands drifted from his neck to his shoulders. He wished to grip his shoulders tightly, to hug himself, to curl up in a tight ball and drop through the bed and floor and down to the center of the earth like a cannonball through water. But he didn't. He forced himself to keep his touch light, soft as dandelion fluff, drifting over his bare skin and tapping out syncopated rhythms. The spidery sensation made him shiver.

His fingertips buzzed, lightning zipped through his arms and hands as he traced the veins in his wrists. He remembered his wrists being opened to the air, and the skin felt so thin, thinner than paper, this as a soap bubble. The skin felt like no barrier at all between his blood and the air.

How could he ever have thought that his skin was enough to keep his cursed blood in?

From his shoulders, he moved his hands to his chest. He put his palm against his ribs and remembered the way they cracked under the crushing power of the scissors. His breath stumbled briefly as he thought about the way his ribs were forced open, forced apart, the sensation as his whole chest broke like a dry cracker, ribs snapping like kindling.

The feeling of air against his organs.

The sucking, terrible feeling of trying to breathe with his lungs exposed. The stickiness of his heart trying to beat as its outside dried.

He almost panicked, until Legend took Hyrule's hand and forced it down and away from his heart.

Hyrule pressed his hands against his belly, feeling for any trace of scars or seams. He thought there must be seams. Because he still felt split open. He still felt exposed.

There were no scars, there were no stitches. His organs squished around when he poked them, and there was no pain—but something still felt off, like maybe his organs didn't get put back in the right places. Like maybe there was a little more space in his abdominal cavity, more air, less liquid perhaps.

He felt sick, and his stomach squirmed.

Uncovering the rest of himself was hard. He hated taking the sheets off, hated removing that small barrier between his skin and the world, but he needed to know. Needed to see and feel his body. The others looked like they didn't know whether to stare at him like he was about to disappear, or to look away and spare his dignity. They ended up doing a mix of both, and Hyrule was so unbearably uncomfortable, but he couldn't bring himself to send them out of the room either. Besides, he told himself, he had already been completely exposed to them, to the whole world—his organs had been on display—so this really shouldn't feel like much.

That was what he told himself as he removed the blanket from his lap.

He deliberately did not touch his genitals. His hands skated around them, ghosting past. He didn't know how to think of what the Man had—hadn't—could have done to him. A male, the memory of the Man's voice whispered in the back of his head.

It was so strange, to have been stripped so thoroughly bare, and yet… to be seen as simply a body. Whole, not parts. Until he was rent asunder.

Hyrule shuddered.

He traced the insides of his thighs, arteries like tree trunks, supporting the rest of him. Again the skin over his veins felt so fragile, the touch of his fingers so sensitive. He remembered the skin being split here, too, and the muscles parted out. The nerves zipping and humming to him, singing a sweet song that turned harsh and unmelodic.

He remembered the blood pumping out of those arteries, his heart laboring to push fluid to his legs and instead the hot liquid poured down his skin. The rough touch of the cloth as the Man wiped it away. The sticky, tacky feeling still clung to him, even though there was no visible sign of blood, even though he had been cleaned entirely…

Was that his brothers' doing, or the Man's?

What had his body even looked like, after all that?

What had his brothers seen?

He shivered—cold from blood loss, surely—and Four was quick to drape a blanket around his shoulders, at the same time as Sky was offering the sailcloth from his own back. Hyrule allowed them to nestle him under the covers again, clutching the blankets close and curling up a little to conserve warmth.

"Thanks," Hyrule croaked. He went still, his eyes distant—alarming. The others exchanged helpless looks over his head.

"What do you need, 'Rule?" asked Wars, heartbreak in his eyes and guilt in his voice. "What can we do for you?"

"I…" Hyrule blinked, made himself smaller. "I don't know."

Hyrule was lost. He didn't know how to fix himself. He didn't know how to go back to a time when he was whole.

His magic sang in his veins, in his nerves, in his bones. It was there for him, like it always was. And in the singing he felt the rumble of mountains as they walked across the land. In the thrumming he felt the heat of magma rolling under the crust of the earth. In the singing he felt the rush of rivers through canyons and the crash of waves upon beaches. He felt the growth of trees and plants, their spreading roots and systems and their longing for the sun. He felt the breeze through wide fields and living deserts, and the color of the moon.

His pulse throbbed in his ears. It sounded like the roaring of an empty, hollow abyss, like staring into the spaces between stars in the night sky.

Hyrule curled up smaller, ignoring—unable to respond to—the worried questions his brothers started lobbing over his head.

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