(ZGen)Fate's Mantle[Fan/Act/Mys/Rom]

All rights to Character, Scenario, [official] Story, the Logo above (in its original form), and so on belong to Nintendo 1986-2006.
This fanwork is in no way licensed by or affiliated with Nintendo Co., but is simply made by a fan, for the fans.
Do not reproduce this content with the intent to distribute elsewhere online without citing the author (LexLionHart).


Author's Notes: For those of you intimately familiar with the backstory to OoT, or the manual story of ALttP, I recommend you skip the first half of the "Prelude", since you've heard it all before. I'd hate for you to get bored by it. Yes, I'll stop using the Creation backstory... eventually. Nintendo really ought to start capitalizing on that...

DISCLAIMER: Despite my forgetting to add it to the subject title, this story features some mature elements. You have been warned.



Prelude -- "A Link to the Past"

Long ago, before the world came into being, before sentient life took shape, before magic, and order, and law, the three great goddesses began a spectacular undertaking. Din, the goddess of power, shaped the red earth with strong flaming arms, forming chasm, dale, and flatland. Nayru, the goddess of wisdom, poured her endless and perfect sense of order onto the newly-made earth and gave the world natural law. Farore, the goddess of courage, with her bountiful soul, shaped all life forms—all crawling beasts of the earth, all winged creatures of the sky, and all the mammoths of the sea—to uphold the order.

The three great goddesses, their efforts brought to completion, departed once more for the heavens, and consummated the land with a symbol forged of the essences of their might—golden sacred triangles which remained in the heavens, high above the world, shining without end. Since then, the sacred triangles have become the basis of our world's providence, and the resting place of the triangles has become known as the Sacred Realm. The goddesses bestowed power to all, and, for ages, the people lived in peace, at ease in both body and spirit. But from its resting place, the Triforce—the sacred triangles—beckoned to those living in the world the goddesses created. Word of the Sacred Realm where the Triforce lay spread through Hyrule, and a terrible conflict erupted.

Many aggressively hunted for the entrance to the mystical Sacred Realm in order to find the sacred triangles. Some believed that the entrance was hidden amongst the ruins in the desert, others said it was beneath the cemetery in the shadow of Death Mountain, but none of these rumors ever bore fruit. Craving for the Triforce soon turned to an insatiable lust for power, which in turn led to the spilling of blood, and soon the only motive left among those searching for the Triforce was pure greed. What none of them knew was that the entrance lay hidden inside the Temple of Time.

After many years of bloody conflict, order and unity slowly returned, but it was not long before a band of thieves invaded Hyrule from the desert to the west and stumbled upon the gate to the sacred land of the Triforce. The sacred land was like none they had ever seen, and in the gathering twilight the Triforce shone from its resting place high above the world, beckoning to them with the promise that it would grant whatever their hearts desired. A violent struggle ensued, and the leader of the thieves fought his way past his cohorts in a lust for the golden power, vanquishing many of his own followers in the process. His name was Ganondorf Dragmire, the Gerudo king of thieves. He seized the Triforce from the temple of light, and with its power at his command he became the king of evil. The demonic fiend Ganon, the greatest threat Hyrule has ever known, was born at this time.

The Triforce is a scale that measures the three virtues ruled by the goddesses—Power, Wisdom, and Courage. If the heart of one who holds the sacred triangle carries all three of these forces in balance, that one will acquire the True Force, the divine authority to govern all, but if that one’s heart is not in balance, the Triforce will separate into three parts—Power, Wisdom, and Courage—and only one part will remain for the one who touched the Triforce—that part embodying the force that one most believes in. If an unbalanced heart would seek the True Force, then that one must strive to acquire the two lost parts, which will rest within others chosen by destiny who will hold the crest of the goddesses on the backs of their hands.

When Ganondorf laid hands on the Triforce, the prophecy came to pass—the Triforce split into its three parts, and only the piece of Power remained in Ganondorf’s hand. To gain complete mastery of the world, Ganondorf started hunting for those chosen to hold the other two Triforce parts. His dark malice flowed into Hyrule from the sacred land, and terrible tragedies began to take place all across Hyrule as monsters under his command burned crops, mutilated livestock, and kidnapped and tortured women and children.

The lord of Hyrule called for the seven sages and instructed them to seal the entrance to the sacred land in order to stopper the flow of darkness, but because of the evil power in the temples the sages could not hear the awakening call from the Sacred Realm. Luckily, the ancestors of the Hylians had suspected that evil might seize the power of the gods, and as a precautionary measure the ancient sages built the Temple of Time to protect the Triforce from evil ones and crafted from their wisdom a sacred blade that evil could not touch—the blade of evil's bane, also called the Master Sword—which, as the legends say, only a true hero could wield.

As the people searched for one who was worthy to take up the Master Sword, Ganon's evil army mounted an attack against the royal palace. The knights of Hyrule who serve the royal family took the brunt of the fierce attack, and although they fought courageously, they inevitably perished. Over seven short years Ganondorf’s powers of darkness, enhanced by the Triforce of Power, ran unchecked across Hyrule, transforming the once-pristine light world into a world of monsters.

However, when all hope had died and the hour of doom seemed at hand, a miracle came in the form of a young boy clothed in green, who appeared as if from nowhere. Wielding the blade of evil’s bane, he broke the curses on all of the temples and confronted Ganon in his keep, known as Ganon’s Tower, where a climactic battle unfolded. Without a strong, righteous mind, Ganondorf could not control the power of the gods, and so he fell at the hands of the hero. The sages, their power now awakened, cast the evil incarnation of darkness into the void of the evil realm. Then the seventh sage—the princess of Hyrule, Zelda—sealed the gateway, and, thus, Ganondorf the dark lord vanished from Hyrule. Together with the young hero, the awakened ones had bound the evil and returned the light of peace to the world. All of Hyrule rejoiced at the victory that upheld peace and order over Ganon's evil and chaos.

Princess Zelda of the royal family of Hyrule received a piece of the Triforce when it separated into its three parts—the Triforce of Wisdom—and passed it down through generations to protect it from evil’s grasp. The young hero received the third piece, known as the Triforce of Courage, which he carefully safeguarded, much as Zelda kept hers. The boy, who traveled through time to save the land, they called the Hero of Time.

- - -

Four years have gone by since the defeat of the evil king Ganondorf at the hands of the Hero of Time and the casting of the Sages’ Seals that ended the great war of sealing. With the dark lord gone from Hyrule, the land is finally at peace, and the people are finally able to live whole and happy lives without fear of oppression. Princess Zelda’s rule—the rule of the Triforce of Wisdom—is fair and just, much like her father’s had been before her.

Thanks largely to the guidance of the Triforce of Wisdom, the agrarian sector of the economy now flourishes more than it ever has done before, and the endless Hyrule field is greener than it ever was during or even before Ganondorf’s evil reign. Ranch life prospers, merchant-centers bustle, and life in all its aspects seems to have improved a million times over, and continues to do so with each passing day. Though the scars of darkness may linger, the people have begun to move forward.

The six sages continue to reside in their temples, praying ceaselessly to the gods that their Seal might remain intact and that the power to repel evil might ever remain within the blade of evil’s bane—the Master Sword. They sense activity on the other side of the sealed doorway to the Sacred Realm, and they fear that Ganondorf may be plotting to break the seal and escape into the world to spread darkness once more. If this were to happen, Hyrule would have another war on its hands—one the people might not be able to bear. Most of the knights of Hyrule, the defenders of the kingdom, perished during Ganondorf’s attack on Hyrule Castle, and their ranks have not yet recovered from the losses. Ganondorf had shown them mercy during his last attempt to conquer Hyrule, but if he were to escape and wage a second, more brutal attack on the kingdom, without the ability to mount a substantial defense Hyrule would certainly fall—unless, of course, the hero again rose to save them. But the hero was granted a chance to live a normal life, and departed into the past, so, while the people of Hyrule celebrate their freedom, the sages work constantly to ensure that their newfound freedom is not short-lived.

And what of the Hero of Time?—after searching in vain for his long-lost companion for nearly seven years, Link returned finally to Hyrule, just in time for the defeat of the evil king Ganon at his own hands. His journeys had taken him to the farthest reaches of the Lost Woods of Faron, where he stumbled upon the parallel realm of Termina and rescued its people from destruction at the hands of an ancient demon with a fearsome power. Once he had saved this other world from impending doom, he traveled further, to the lands outside of Hyrule, discovering the human provinces of Ordona and Calatia, among many others. After watching himself fade into the flows of time, he spoke of his voyage to Princess Zelda, who was fascinated with the tales of his travels, recording them forever in the Hyrulean archives. She promptly sent diplomats to these new lands to declare open trade and to draw up a treaty of friendship between them.

Done with his travels, he took up the offer given to him by Talon many years ago—the offer to work as a ranch-hand on Lon Lon Ranch. He and Talon’s stable-girl daughter Malon quickly fell in love. They married the following year and in the year after that they celebrated the birth of their first child—a daughter named Dawn. This tale opens a week before their daughter’s second birthday, when Link again finds himself plagued by prophetic whispers of a final quest he has yet to accept that threatens to shatter his now-peaceful existence with his wife and child, and so he prepares to travel to Hyrule Castle to seek counsel from his old friend, Princess Zelda.

Link has journeyed between the present and the future in his quest to save Hyrule, he has endured the same three days in a vicious looping cycle in his struggle to rescue Termina—now the time has come for him to journey once more into the flows of time. This time, however, he ventures into the past, into Hyrule’s frightening history, into the age of the terrible fierce wars that left him orphaned on the outskirts of Faron Woods, in the forbidden domain of the Kokiri, in hopes of uncovering clues that will help him defeat the evil that now threatens Hyrule. His previous journeys have tested his bravery and wisdom, but this adventure will require the full measure of his courage, as he takes up the ancient sword once more and dashes headlong into the void that separates life and death itself.



Chapter One -- "Hark, the Prospect of Discovery!"

Hero… hero… Hero of Time… Can you hear the spirits whispering…?

“I can hear the spirits whispering…”

Do you remember those dark reminiscences, as in a dream, a reverie, a twisted delusion of the even twisteder grandeurs of the past?—of the past that has not yet passed, the lives you have not been able to save, the death you have not yet dealt out in judgment. You know that you have trekked between present and future, and between future and present—we see the memory in your mind’s eye. But do you remember that you have ventured even into the forbidden folds of history, a history thought to be long buried and even longer dead?—into the world of your forefathers, a land of avarice and cruelty? Do you truly not?

“Dost thou sense it…?—the climate of evil, descending upon this realm? Malevolent forces even now are mustering to attack our land of Hyrule. As the servants of evil gain strength, a vile climate pervades the land and causes nightmares to those sensitive to it. Verily, thou hast felt it. Link, the time has come to test thy courage…”

Allow us, then, to refresh your recollection, Hero of Time…

‘Rest in peace’, the gravestone commands to those murdered and betrayed, to those victims of terrible atrocities never told. The epitaph also speaks of a custodial people—the Sheikah, guardians of the royal family, founders of the ancient village. You have been to this place before, you have seen it with your own two eyes, you, O hero, have transgressed the laws of holy interment in order to trace the path of the evil one and to put an end to his dark reign… Now do you remember?

“Here lie the souls of those who swore fealty to the Royal Family of Hyrule. The Sheikah, guardians of the royal family and founders of Kakariko, watch over these spirits in their eternal slumber…”

Beneath the earth, inscribed on a royal tomb, rests an ‘interesting poem’, dedicated to the memory of the dearly departed. It gives another command—a command to bring repose to the souls of the dead. You have been there before—you have read it with your own two eyes and learned the melody transposed thereupon… Now do you remember?

“The rising sun will eventually set,
A newborn's life will fade.
From sun to moon, moon to sun...
Give peaceful rest to the living dead.

“Restless souls wander
where they don't belong.
Bring them calm
with the Sun's Song…”

Alongside their graves on either side of the tomb, two ghastly ghouls roam forever, forever safeguarding a forbidden secret. They speak of their service to the royal family and of their grand assignment. You have been there before—you have struggled against their mischievous restless spirits and conversed with the remnants of their human souls, having finally freed them from the haunting shadow of a horrendous death… Now do you remember?

“Everyone born in this village serves the Royal Family of Hyrule. We brothers also served the royal family, and we studied the hereditary mystic powers of the family. Though we never could figure out the power of the Triforce, we completed our study of controlling time with the tones of ocarinas. We kept our study extremely secret until we completed it… To tell the truth, we were each studying a different song—one to summon the sun and another to summon the moon. We would have been famous, if that hateful Ganondorf had not tried to steal our results. We could never let him reap the fruits of our research!—that's why we gave our lives to protect the secret…”

Below even the deepest, darkest of the royal sepulchers dwells the shadow temple, the source of the infinite darkness that absorbs even time. Within its walls reside the last standing testaments to a past, a past that all its witnesses long to forget. You have been there before—you rescued an ancient sage from the clutches of an evil specter… Now do you remember?

“Here is gathered Hyrule’s bloody history of greed and hatred… What is hidden in the darkness… tricks full of ill will… you can’t see the way forward…”

And what of you, hero?—what part had you to play in the proceedings? Or do you still not remember…? Ah, ah, ah—the darkness does not tell…

“You remind me of… Princess Zelda… As a messenger of the royal family, show your royal credentials on top of the Triforce mark…”

Are you brave enough to face Death itself? Is your courage strong enough to overcome the desperate will of hundreds upon thousands of greedy and malicious souls? Now do you remember your destiny…? Can you hear the spirits whispering, hero?

“The Shadow will yield only to one with the eye of truth, handed down in Kakariko village. One who gains the eye of truth will be able to see what lies hidden in the darkness. Only one who has sacred feet can cross the valley of the dead… the alternative is descent into deep darkness…”

Be prepared, Hero of Time… for the time draws near…

- - -

Kakariko Village, haven of the Shadow Folk.

It was the only place left in Hyrule—excepting, perhaps, the forbidden forest on the southeastern fringe—where one could find refuge from the hailstorm of arrow-shafts and the flurry of combatants’ swords out on the Hyrulean plain as the fierce wars dragged on. Everywhere else—from the fiery Death Mountain to the near-immaculate Hylia Lake—stank of bloodshed and treachery. Here the only indications of the conflict were the cries of mournful lament for the fallen as the bodies of the dead found rest under the solid earth and their spirits settled into restful repose. This war had claimed many lives, so many lives, during its duration—such was the lust for the golden power that pervaded the hearts of men. Most recently and most tragically, the royal family’s eldest—a strapping young prince of about sixteen years in age—had perished on the battleground nearly a week-and-a-half past, and the clouds had not ceased their weeping since.

Meanwhile, Maestro Flat was alone, as was often the case, staring pensively over the rain-washed landscape of Kakariko from the desk in his study, which faced the largest window in the house. Were it not for the blustery flurries of wind rattling the study window and whistling through the jagged crack that scarred its face, the hammering of raindrop bullets against the aluminum roof, the crackling drumbeats of thunderbolts splitting the sky, and the rap-tapping of his conductor’s baton against the writing-desk, the Maestro would have had himself a pristine silence. Those were the sorts of quiets good for a composer’s work, those utter stillnesses in which one can bask in only the echoes of his own artistic brilliance. No disturbances, no distractions, no wayward, wand’ring thoughts. Naught but whispers of virtuosity and a page and quill with which to record them.

But he had not been able to enjoy any such tranquility for many dismal, overcast days—the itinerant front that had wandered into Hyrule’s skies since the young prince’s passing had bestowed him hardly a notable kindness in its approach, nor any even fleeting interest in departing in the near future. Without a genuinely unspoiled silence to set the ambiance for his work, however, the Maestro turned his attentions to his ledger, his pen intent on authoring something, e’en if it could not be a musical masterwork or an experimental hypothesis.

He had not taken up the ledger in months, and residual sheets of dust had gathered on the cover, caking the otherwise attractive leather binding. The ledger smelled of the oil paper he had packed it with when he and his brother had fled the war-struck city of Hyrule to resume their studies in the more undisturbed Kakariko; he realized then that he had not entered in it since before their departure—he had simply set it on his writing-desk when they arrived at the estate and forgotten its existence since.

But now he wrote, and freely, not concerned for once whether or not any abstract stroke of genius would find its way onto the page.

4th November 1696,

Our task has proved itself to be an abysmally confounding one. My brother and I toil day and night, night and day, to discern the secret to controlling time. For the past two years, we have set everything aside—our families and friends, our wives, our social obligations, our matters of state, our mistresses, and even, as it seems, our very siblinghood—in pursuit of this seemingly-incomprehensible thing, this solution to the most mystifying riddle that envelops this land of Hyrule. And for what!—nothing! We remain as empty-handed as we were when we began!—even more so, in fact, what of the disquieting hollowness that now inundates our pocketbooks! I cannot begin to fathom the rationale that must sponsor our unremitting doggedness, but I envisage that it must have somewhat to do with our incessant quarreling over our father’s favoritism—a squabble that, much though it troubles me to admit it, did not expire at his passing, has not expired since, and shows no indication of coming to any sort of end in the imminent or even indistinct future. So much progress we have yet to make, in every aspect!

The unremitting rain has served ever as a hindrance to our designs, and seems to mock our efforts in so doing. Sharp is even now outdoors, conducting tests of varying sorts in an attempt to trace even the slightest hints of magic in the air, in the earth, and (I find myself almost ashamed to express it, e’en in these pages) in all practical probability in the lightning as well; he has been literally thunderstruck twice since we arrived at Kakariko alone. What a shocking effect these fortuitous occurrences must have on his common sense! And still he beleaguers me that the answer must lie in nature—that there must be some rational phenomena at the root of all this. I admittedly am not entirely confident of where my faith rests on these matters. I do know that I shall continue to toil over volumes and manuscripts in the study, and will continue investing myself in perfecting my compositions; Sharp may continue to do as he will, for as long as he pleases—it is of no consequence to me. In any case, I should not be at all astonished if he again finds himself assailed by a hail of lightning this very night. One can only speculate as to how many lightning strikes a fellow can take before he squanders his sanity.

And what of Sharp?—his elder brother had not ventured inside for several hours, despite the intense downpour and the spectacular lightning show, and he began to worry. But, of course, as Flat recalled instantaneously, Sharp had always had himself a penchant for the outdoors, especially in bad weather, and it had been a considerable enough trait to constrain their parentages to the brink of madness. Flat, on the other hand, had inherited the more refined character traits of his family, the genteelism that typified those of noble birth, and, as such, had in turn inherited his parents’ favor, despite being the younger.

Despite their personality differences, however, the composer brothers did share a few noteworthy commonalities—namely, their unparalleled genius, both in science and in the arts. Curiously enough their superior intellects were not, contrary to popular supposition, prototypical of their kin. Their ancestors descended from a long succession of Hylian aristocrats who, while better educated than the preponderance of the common folk, possessed no congenital scholastic predilection. The two of them made quite the dynamic duo, as their chauffeurs, tutors, and various other attendants never failed to remark.

And what a pair they were!—while their contemporaries hammered out symphony after symphony under the direction of the music instructors, Sharp and Flat were hard at work composing them! Why memorize the numerous varieties of flora and fauna when one could instead be out in the field uncovering new ones? Why scrutinize the politics of the past when they were already a part of the much more pertinent politics of the present? It all seemed such an outrageous waste of time, to youths such as they who already had minds for such things.

Their father had served—as could be anticipated from all gentleman of noble birth during this tumultuous era—as a member of the Legion of Hylian Knights. He had been Captain of the Hylian Royal Cavalry once upon a time, and as such had commanded a great range of respect both among his subordinates and from his family. This unfortunately translated to a significant amount of domestic cruelty, specifically towards his wife, and this translated in turn to a blanketed spite on the brothers’ part towards their father and towards the soldierly upper class in general—which certainly accounts for their abhorrence of and deviance from the customs of the highly classist society of their youth.

For instance, when Sharp reached his sixteenth birthday the captain showered him in the typical pomp and circumstance surrounding the coming of age of a military man’s eldest son—a night on the town, his first round of beers, even a complimentary bed-mistress to keep him occupied afterwards. Any fledged aristocrat would have been more than pleased with the arrangements, but Sharp?—Sharp was hardly the stuck-up courtier that one would expect him to be. While his father badgered him to keep at the gentlemen’s public-house, he instead insisted on going to browse through the glassman’s quarter down at the city piazza. He followed suit by declining every pint offered him (after the first) and outright repudiating—even chastising!—the whore his father had furnished.

Needless to say, his father was furious, but nothing could have incensed the captain more than what would happen next. Instead of taking on the family legacy and entering military service, Sharp decided instead to pursue a higher education at the Hylian Academy of Science & the Arts. This, of course, heightened tensions in the household to an unprecedented intensity. Blunt articles flew, windowpanes shattered (two of them!), and their mother, exasperated in her own way, burst into a torrent of tears. Flat recalled his father’s bellowing voice, echoing from the anterior foyer all the way up to his bedchambers on the far side of the mansion. He remembered those heated words as clearly as he remembered his own name: “Look how you have made your mother weep!—how could the gods have delivered unto me such an ungrateful son? What have I done to deserve such melancholy? What a stain you are upon this family’s name! Get out!—leave my sight at once!”

He remembered hastening onto the mezzanine, frightened that he would never see his brother again, just in time to hear Sharp’s terse reply: “Well then—I suppose I’ll have your blessing after all, won’t I?” before he turned around and walked, his head held high, out through the front entrance and into the rain—pouring just as heavily as it was at the moment. Flat had nearly called out to his brother, but regained his composure not a moment too soon. Sharp must have heard his shallow intake of breath as he stopped himself, though, because as he ambled out he turned his head just enough so that Flat could see him wink. The door shut quietly behind him, quieter, at least, than the hammering of the raindrops against cobblestone.

The captain was never really the same again—but then again he didn’t really display much in the way of change, either. It would be most accurate to say that he wasn’t much of anything at all after that. He became fairly quiet—nay, silent—after Sharp’s curt departure, and he gradually withdrew himself from the Legion and from the veterans’ clubs and gentlemen’s public-houses. He did not live long enough to see his eldest son—disowned though he was—graduate from the most prestigious university in the realm. The war soon claimed him at the point of a Moblin’s lance. He enjoyed a stately burial—one of his fellow soldiers recited the highly impersonal stock eulogy read at every military officer’s interment, the congregation of mourners sang a collection of funeral hymns, and then all in attendance went on with their lives. And that, as they say, was that.

Sharp went on to pursue a graduate degree, and Flat soon followed in his footsteps. Of course, as a result, the two of them were essentially disclaimed from the social aristocracy—not that this mattered to either of them in the slightest, since their primary focus was on their academic pursuits, not the approval of the peers of their youth. As Byrna the Renowned once imparted to his fellow scholars: “Revulsion of common mores is the force that makes mountains move and that molds true merit among men.”

And, truly, without their disgust toward their father and toward everything he stood for, the brothers might have turned out the same as all the other products of their generation—lackluster facsimiles of their patrician predecessors, devoid of novelty and sustenance, chattel slaves bound by the shackles of their or generation, unable to move forward without being hauled along by the bandwagon of the hour. By what seemed an act of Providence they realized early on that what their peers called ‘adolescent rebellion’ was a sham, that though young men pushed the envelope of their upbringing they never pushed hard enough, and in failing to do so never made any honest progress whatsoever.

And that realization was precisely what qualified the brothers for foundation grants from the Academy during their graduate years for the purposes of building their musical studio and scientific laboratory, it was precisely the reason why the royal family selected them to study the magical properties of the world, and it was precisely why they intended to succeed. But this is all detail—consummate detail, memories fluttering ‘cross consciousness like a trick played by mischievous spirits before the kiss of death, but still merely detail nonetheless.

The Maestro set his conductor’s baton on the surface of the desk and approached the window to glance over the flats contiguous to the family estate for any sign of his brother, but the rain came copiously, and it proved difficult to observe anything, much less the dark, robed speck that was his brother through the valance of unsettled showers. He did glimpse, however, something that was altogether peculiar—something he had not been sharp enough to remark in the past when he surveyed the Kakariko countryside.

In the budding twilight he could distinguish, just barely, a trace of light—it reminded him of the flicker of a candlelight-flame—floating in circles around the Kakariko windmill off in the distance. Flat strode briefly to the far side of the room and rummaged through his chest for his binoculars, then promptly revisited the window, gazing this time through the lenses to better determine, with any luck, the origin of the effulgence, dim and imperceptible as it was.

What Flat beheld through the lorgnette astonished him so profoundly that he nearly cried out in sheer consternation. He immediately discarded the lorgnette and returned to his ledger to add a closing line of text, and straightaway he donned his rain-cloak and started for the door in such haste that he left the chronicle ajar on his writing-desk, revealing the single sentence he had scrawled at the bottom of his account.

It seems I may have just stumbled upon a breakthrough.

- - -

What a delightful tune.

The young caretaker of the Kakariko windmill—the aptly-named Guru-guru—played the song often on his musical box, and Sharp, distinguished Maestro and celebrated academic though he was, could not help but revel in it, even as he conducted his research. It was light and fanciful, and it reminded him of the carnivals that he and Flat once stole away from the mansion in order to attend during their youth—in disguise, no less, for t’would be appalling if members of the noble class were seen commingling with the common folk. Oh, but he could perceive the taste of cotton candy bubbling in his mouth at the mere memory of them and the smell of the caramel cauldrons wafting across his senses nonetheless! Ah!—to be a child again!—to look at the world through innocent and carefree eyes once more! But alas, those days were long gone, and nowadays he had no time for carnivals and cotton candies and the purchase of caramel cauldrons, only toil and research followed again by more of the same, day in and day out. He could still entertain the memories, though, and he could still enjoy the windmill man’s tune.

“Soon,” Guru-guru often said, “I shall contrive a musical box that can perform on its own, without need for human intervention, especially not the manual rotating of cranks.” The Maestro had to admire the young fellow’s intentions, and were it not for his already-existing obligations to the royal family he might have offered the windmill man some assistance in his endeavor. Someday, if ever he and his brother ever finished this infernal task of theirs, he could lend the young man a hand so that he could make something of himself. For now, he just continued with his work, and marveled privately at Guru-guru’s uncomplicated standard of living. Complexity was the one persisting trait he maintained from his upbringing—he could take nothing in simplicity.

That may be why he spent so much time in the windmill, he thought, even outside of his work—Guru-guru was everything that his existence had never allowed him to be. Perchance, then, it might be best to let the lad go his own way. After a long while the music stopped and Sharp heard footsteps coming up the stairs of the loft. There came a knock on the door, and before Sharp could answer it, Guru-guru poked his already-balding head into the room, followed by a cascade of light heralding his entrance from the tower proper.

“Good evening, sir,” Guru-guru said meekly. He breathed sharply, as though about to go on, but instead screwed up his eyes and scratched his head. “Gracious, sir—it is rather dim in here! Would you like for me to fetch an oil lamp?—some more wicks?”

It had never occurred to the Maestro how outlandish it must have seemed to the lay masses that he worked in such conditions as he did. He often chose the darkest, dankest corners of the gloomiest buildings in the vicinity to rent for use as research laboratories, and often worked late at night, with only a single candlelight to illuminate his desktop, by which he read, wrote, and even examined earthen material and fiddled with electrical apparatuses of various sorts. But that was how he had always conducted his vocation, and he did not intend to change that.

“No, thank you, my lad,” Sharp replied flatly, “I shall carry on well enough as things are, I think. Was there something else you wished to speak with me about?”

“Ah, yes sir,” Guru-guru said, bowing politely, out of habit. “I was just going to set off for town to procure some fresh fowl, and I was curious as to whether you would care for a morsel or two for yourself as well.”

Sharp was somewhat taken aback by the gesture, and almost even declined it. He was not accustomed to receiving favors from those he hardly knew, much less by someone living so humbly in the lower class—no one had ever exerted even the slightest hint of obligation towards him without expecting something in return, and so he was by nature wary of any charity. But Guru-guru was a fair, kind-hearted young man, and so he could not deny the offer—he was rather famished, to be sure, and he knew that he could hardly expect to fetch something for himself.

“Why, how considerate of you, dear boy!” he answered, pulling his monocle from his face and inserting it into his breast pocket so that he could recline back in his chair. “Yes, please! I would like—let’s see—one order of the Cucoo & Shrimp salad from Aginah’s Seafood Grille, and a loaf of their delicious honey-bread, and a bottle of Torciano Fragolino to wash it all down with. Yes, that will be fine.” He was about to go on with his work, but it took only a brief moment to realize his mistake. “Oh, dear!—I have completely forgotten myself. Please don’t allow me to inconvenience you with my luxurious tastes.”

He reached into his satchel and produced a small purple gem. “There you are, lad—that should cover both our expenses, I think,” he said, presenting the rupee piece to Guru-guru with his outstretched hand.

But Guru-guru proved to be more modest than the Maestro could ever have expected. He shook his head decisively and said, “Oh, no sir—you have been more than generous enough already, sir. I’ll leave you to your research. I know you have important work to attend to, and I have taken up far too much of your time as it is.”

What an honest and giving heart!—ne’er before had Sharp been granted such a kindness! He supposed he knew the cause, of course—when he had applied to rent the loft, Guru-guru had originally offered him rent of only three-hundred seventy-five rupees per month. Of course, Sharp could not see how this could possibly be a fair exchange—three-hundred seventy-five rupees was hardly enough to cover a monthly stock of rations, even for a modest one-man household in which its member did not squander thirty-eight rupees a meal on extravagant tastes. So, naturally, he had counter-offered a more reasonable sum of one-thousand seventy-five per month, a sum which Guru-guru was more than happy to accept (so happy, in fact, that he had nearly collapsed at the mere mention of such a figure). Sharp’s munificent rent rate more than paid for Guru-guru’s monthly expenditures, which, as he noted, had also catalyzed a betterment of the young lad’s disposition.

It was around this time, as Sharp remembered fondly, that the young man had expressed his grand idea for the automatic musical box—which he had appropriately given the sobriquet ‘gramophone’—alongside proposals for a heat-powered carriage and a pictobox that could record moving pictures. The lattermost of these was most intriguing to Sharp, as the inventor of the original pictograph box, which he and his brother improved not long after so that it could snap pictographs in color. In any case, he could understand why the lad might feel indebted to him—he had single-handedly allowed young Guru-guru to enjoy a better standard of living, and had asked for nothing in return, save the services he paid so generously for—the use of the loft—and this only made young Guru-guru’s benevolence all the more appreciable to him.

“I thank you, my lad,” Sharp said simply, too enveloped in stark revelation to call any other, more meaningful words to mind.

“You already have, sir,” said Guru-guru, already bowing and already starting down the stairs for the portico. Sharp watched the door swing shut, then set his monocle back on his face and turned his attentions back to his studies. He suddenly became unnervingly sensitive to how dark it was in the room, and so he rose to his feet and ventured down into the windmill proper, to the storage closet, retrieved one of the oil lamps to better light the room, and carried it back up with him.

Before he could start it, however, he perceived the sound of heavy footfalls pounding up the stairs, followed by a heavy and insistent knock on the loft door. “My word!—he can’t have returned already!” Sharp exclaimed. He made his way swiftly to the far side of the room once more and tugged open the door, only to be faced not with the young Guru-guru but his own brother, panting under his hood, dripping wet from the rain—he had not even bothered to remove his cloak when he entered.

“Ah, Flat—you seem rather excitable!—what brings you to the lab, dear brother?”

Flat rushed quickly to the lab-desk and leaned against it, his face remarkably close to Sharp’s, and lowered his eyes so that he was no longer looking at his brother through his half-moon spectacles but, rather, over them, and replied, “You are not going to believe me, dear Sharp.”

He told him regardless.

- - -

Sharp’s reaction had been more or less what Flat had anticipated it would be—at first, he seemed paralyzed by the sheer shock of the discovery, then that shock turned to the realization that the news might actually be true, and then glee when dear Sharp finally accepted that it was true. Flat had not seen his brother smile so widely in over a fortnight. Then again, this had been one of the signs they had futilely sought for the past several years—the interaction between the spirit realm and the world of the living. They had long suspected such a connection, since the involvement of the spirits of the dead in everyday life would more than explain the strange magical phenomena that surrounded the land and its people, but they had never been able to demonstrate it—until now. Of course, Sharp would still require a lengthy span of time in order to finally get over the initial announcement—at the very least until he caught a glimpse of the little spirit for himself.

“I first saw it just there, floating around the turbines,” he said, pointing up at where the spirit had been. “It carried a small lantern which it had hung around its neck—the same sort of lantern that the stories say houses souls—and it appeared as white as mountaintop snow. But it vanished as I got close, so I was unable to take a quality pictograph.”

“Well, that is certainly unfortunate…” Sharp replied, in that I-almost-don’t-believe-you tone the two of them often employed when they snatched wind of the fact that they were on to something. It would be difficult to attach any greater significance to his brother’s discovery if he could not bear witness to it himself. But something was nagging at the back of his mind—there was some missing piece of the puzzle, some link between the ghost’s disappearance and young Flat’s arrival at the windmill. His mind worked like a machine, methodically concocting a deductive solution to this riddle. He did the most obvious thing that came to mind. “Do you recall the time when it appeared?” His brother kept the time for everything—when the two of them conducted experiments together, Flat was always the scribe, always the timekeeper. Flat was always so very meticulous that Sharp wouldn’t know what he would have done without his brother to keep him straight.

“Of course!” Flat exclaimed. “It was about five thirty.”

“Hmm,” Sharp huffed. Not surprising, since that was the advent of the hour of twilight, which, in legend, was already closely associated with heightened paranormal activity. “And when did it vanish?”

“At five forty-two, only a few minutes ago!” About the same time that Guru-guru had come upstairs to pay a visit, if Sharp remembered correctly. And, of course, being a musician, he remembered keenly that just a minute before climbing to the loft Guru-guru had stopped playing his music box. Could that song have somehow had something to do with the rift between the spirit world and the world of life?—since music and magic were his business, he couldn’t imagine why that could not be the case.

“I have an idea,” he said. “I need to fetch something from inside—wait here until I return.” He ran inside and searched the ground floor of the turret for the music box, he rummaged through every crate he could see, every chest that was not locked, but to no avail. The only other room he could think to search was Guru-guru’s private chambers, and, typically, not even the temptations of discovery would lead him to invade another’s private space, but this case was altogether different. Besides, he was sure the young lad would understand.

There it was, standing on a chair on the far side of the room, the forbidden fruit on the tree of knowledge, beckoning to him as the golden power beckoned to those with greedy hearts from the holy sacred land. The lance of lightning that flickered outside sent a gleam flashing from the cool metal surface of the musical-box’s bell, flooding the room with white light. For a moment, the world seemed to freeze, and he was left alone with the music-box and the natural light of electricity, and with this decision that he had to make. This music-box was young Guru-guru’s life, and while he knew the young lad would have gladly granted it to him, he felt torn in two as to even consider taking it without the lad’s knowledge.

In the end his curiosity persuaded him, though, and time began to flow again, the light that held him frozen in apprehension of the deed he was considering subsided and passed away. He lifted it carefully from the chair and strapped it to him as he had often seen Guru-guru do himself, threw a cloak over the apparatus to protect it from the elements, and started back outside with a start. His brother stared at him quizzically as he stepped out the door and into the rain. “Isn’t that young Master Guru-guru’s musical box?” he asked. “What use could it possibly be to our ends?”

“Well, you reported that the spirit disappeared a few minutes before you arrived, and that it appeared at the dawn of the hour of twilight,” Sharp explained. “The spirit’s appearance at the hour of twilight makes sense enough—that hour of the day has always had a curious connection to magic—but I still could not put my finger on the reason why it would have vanished. I did recall, however, that it was about five forty-two—the point you reported—that Guru-guru stopped playing the music-box to ask if I needed any errands run while he headed into town. This song, I feel, may be the missing link in all of this.”

“Ah, so you believe the secret to the magicks of Hyrule lies in song, just as we suspected!” Flat shouted. “So what are you waiting for?—play the music-box!—the hour of twilight has nearly passed us by!” Sharp did not need to receive the charge twice—he took the crank and rotated it smoothly, listening to the tune issue forth like a siren’s cry. Flat brandished a pictograph box and pointed it to the heavens in anticipation of the spirit’s reappearance. They were not disappointed—within moments, the specter materialized from the ether, just where Flat had said it had been, and Sharp’s mouth fell agape while Flat snapped photo after photo of it.

Sharp took a long, careful look at the ghost, and found it to be exactly as Flat had described it—white and wispy, carrying a small handheld lantern. It also appeared to be wearing a mask, a mask adorned with a single dark eye—an eye similar, but not exactly the same as the symbol of the Sheikah, the eye of truth. It shared the same basic shape, and also had three lashes, but instead of the teardrop extending downward, it had a second set of lashes. What could it mean?—what sort of spirit was this? For the life of him he could not endeavor to tell. He noticed something in addition to the ghost, however, that he had failed to observe prior—that the rain seemed to fall perfectly in tempo with the song. To test this hypothesis, he increased and decreased his cadence, and—lo and behold!—the rain changed its rhythm in tandem. But not just the rain—the spirit itself also moved in time with his tune. “Are you noting this, Flat?” he shouted. “This song seems to command the spirit and control the rain! Could this be the answer, that song, spirit, and magic are all connected?”

“Oh, ho, ho, ho!” The sound of laughter intruded on their discovery and almost caused Sharp to stop cranking the music-box. “So I see, sir, that you have discovered the secret of that song! This is most pleasing, yes, most pleasing to hear, indeed!”

The two of them whirled about, only to find that the laughter and the voice belonged to Guru-guru, who had just returned from his errands, groceries in hand, and who stood chuckling behind them. “Ah!—Guru-guru, my lad!” Sharp greeted him. “So… you knew?”

“Of course I knew, sir,” Guru-guru said calmly. “The legend of that song has been passed down through my family for generations. If its tune echoes in the hour of twilight, it coaxes spirits from the spirit world and causes the skies to pour their lamentations upon the world. Surely it must have seemed rather suspicious to you, sir, that it would always be raining whenever I played the musical box in the evening?”

“No, I’m afraid it did not occur to me,” Sharp admitted. “I always found the song to be soothing, a nice bit of background noise to accompany my work. I never would have thought, until tonight, that it might hold the answer to the questions that have been plaguing me. Confound it!—I have rented out your loft for months searching for an answer to the puzzle of the powers of this land, and all this time the answer has been right under my nose! Why did you leave me to toil all this time?”

“Well, sir,” Guru-guru began, “it would hardly be worth your while if you could not discover the power of the song on your own. As my father once told me—‘wisdom is not gained through word of mouth, but through toil of mind’. However—if you’d like to know the real reason—it is that I knew I would make more of a profit from our contract if I left you to your work and kept the secret to myself.” He chuckled again, grinning a wise, earnest grin. “Either way, my plan seems to have enjoyed much success, wouldn’t you say?”

Sharp smiled back with the same elation and intensity. “There is much more to you than meets the eye, my lad! Why do you resign yourself to such a modest lifestyle?—you would find yourself comfortably at home in the world of intellectuals!”

“I have my duties, sir, and you have yours, and I’m sure both of us are just as committed to fulfilling them. Mine is to guard the secrets of my fathers, until that day when the secrets can be analyzed in full, and the power behind them fully realized. It seems that day has come, but I will continue to reside here, as is the tradition of my kin, and leave the intellectuals to aiming for the lofty prospect of discovery. In any case, good sir, I would highly recommend starting on the honey bread and the shrimp salad—the second most especially—before they get cold.”

He produced the box of salad from beneath his cloak and gave it a quick shake so that Sharp could hear the jangling of romaine, chicken, and shrimp, and then proceeded to start inside. As he reached the door, however, he stopped for a moment and peered back at them, his kind smile still beaming like lamplight from his facade. “I sense that you may have been worried that I might be in arms over the fact that you seem to have intruded upon my private chambers and taken what is most precious to me without my blessing. Do not worry, sir, for this is not the case. If it were, I would hardly have left you alone with it without ensuring that it was left safely secure behind lock and key. Feel free to borrow it at any time, although I admit that I would prefer if you would inform me if you wish to take it from the premises.” He yanked the door open and set one foot inside, then added, “If you will not be joining me for supper, I bid you goodnight, sirs. Your meal, Master Sharp, will be waiting on the dining-table.” And with that, the young Guru-guru entered his haven and shut the door firmly behind him.

The discovery of the ghost seemed almost to pale in comparison to Sharp’s present impression of the young man. Never before had he encountered an individual so remarkable! He wondered to himself whether it was the will of the goddesses that he had stumbled upon the modest Kakariko windmill and taken up residence there—so perfectly mind-breaking was the positive inspiration that had stemmed from doing so! Sharp could not even bring himself to turn his gaze back to the spirit—so compelling was this impact of Guru-guru’s unanticipated communication of such sophisticated wisdom! He was so taken aback, in fact, that he called to Flat, and said, “You know, brother, I think I might actually join the lad for dinner! What say you, dear Flat?”

“Well, I suppose that, now that the secret has been exposed, there would be no harm in asking him whether we knows anything more about that song and about the spirit world…” Flat answered. “And besides, I have taken more than enough pictographs as it is. Why ever not?—let us dine!” Flat pocketed his pictograph box and Sharp stopped cranking the music-box and started inside, but the two of them failed to notice that, despite the fact that the music had ceased, the spirit still lingered, and, after a brief moment, a second spirit joined it, and together they floated off toward the Kakariko graveyard.