underFlorence

Oh shit y’all it’s my birthday today you know what that means! It’s time for an early new chapter!

Link regained consciousness, and the first thing he felt was the bitter taste of stone and iron in his mouth. He opened his eyes and saw sandstone as far as his eyes could see. Granted, that was not actually very far, what with his whole body resting on the ground. He took a deep breath, dusty air filling his lungs. His whole body felt like he had fallen down all the way from the top of Death Mountain, but he couldn’t very well keep lying here until Goddesses-knew-when.

He tried propping himself up with his arms, only to immediately regret it when he went to raise his body up from the floor. A sharp pain flared up in his abdomen. With an agonizing gasp he lost his grip on the ground and unceremoniously dropped onto the hard stone tiles to the sound of something shattering. Gripping his stomach, he noticed a hole in his tunic and beyond that, scarred skin that made him recoil when he touched it. The pain refreshed his memories. Zelda being teleported. The fight at the balcony. And, of course, the terrible injury.

Now that Link had become aware of the wound in his torso, it took up all of his concentration. The pain was too much. It just kept burning and hurting and he just wanted to curl up in a ball and keep lying on the cold stone floor forever. But of course he knew that was not an option. Biting down on his teeth, he did his best to ignore the stinging pain and pull his bag closer so he could see it. He rummaged through it and swallowed a cry of pain when he cut his fingers on something. He carefully grabbed the offending object and moved it closer to his eyes. It was a glass shard. A shard that looked like it belonged to a bottle once. A bottle that might have held his last red potion.

Panicked, he dug deeper, and he exhaled with relief when his fingers brushed against the familiar curvature of a glass bottle. He immediately took it and got excited when he could feel the soft movement of liquid inside. Indeed, the bottle he revealed contained that life-saving red liquid. He pondered the logistics of downing his last potion so soon after the other, but then his wound began aching again and he decided this was better than being immobile for the foreseeable future. Without further hesitation, he gulped down the entire potion, reveling in the feeling of not being in pain as the potion soothed his senses. It still hurt too much to move, but it slowly got better.

While he was lying there, he heard a voice intrude upon his consciousness. At first, it’d felt weird to have someone talk to you from the confines of your head. But Link had soon gotten used to the one-sided conversations that elder Sahasrahla would have with him. It felt nice not having to answer, just listening and following the instructions.

“Young Link,” he began, “I’m currently messaging you from across dimensions.” Link gulped at that. Just what had Agahnim done? “You are presently in the Dark World, a corrupted land. Agahnim has opened the border between them.” The elder went on to explain that Link must save seven maidens that had been abducted to this world—including Zelda. Apparently, the first dungeon to seek out was the Palace of Darkness.

Of course, Link was presently in no condition to go to any palaces of anything. He had no idea how long he’d been out cold for. Long enough for the previous potion’s effect to wear off, at the very least. Before all else, he should treat his wounds. Usually, chillshrooms or cool safflina would work wonders against burns. And if he were in Hyrule, he’d be able to locate them in mere hours. However, if Sahasrahla’s words were any indication, this was decidedly not Hyrule, or at the very least not the Hyrule he was familiar with. He didn’t even know if this world had chillshrooms or safflina. He was going to have to relearn everything he knew about treating wounds, and he shuddered at that thought.

At this point, the potion had numbed his pain enough for it to only be a nasty reminder in the back of his thoughts, a gigantic improvement over the previous situation. He figured now was as good a time as any to try and get up. He’d gotten tired of the taste of stone about ten minutes ago, and the potion wouldn’t last him forever. He once again moved his hands onto the ground to prop himself up into a sitting position before getting up on his feet and finally getting up. His stance was shaky at first, like this was the first time his legs ever had to support that weight. The action of propping himself up felt… weird. Granted, he was still rather out of things because, to be frank, a lot of stuff had happened to him in the past… hours or so. He still didn’t know how long he’d been out cold for.

The first thing he saw as he finally got up from the ground was the amazing view. For just the slightest of moments, he thought he was still in Hyrule—after all, there was this huge mountain range in his view, a forest to its left, and similar river streams flowing throughout. At first glance, this might have passed for Hyrule’s panorama at dusk. And yet it was as different as it was similar. The plains didn’t look as lively, the rivers were tinted a sickly green, and, of course, back in Hyrule the place where he stood would’ve been Hyrule Castle, not whatever this sandstone structure was. Sahasrahla’s explanation about this being a corrupted realm came to Link’s mind. This certainly looked like a bleaker Hyrule.

In either case, the similar layout of this place made Link sigh with relief. He’d feared that his maps would be useless now, but if the worlds were really as similar as they looked, it was probably good to have at least these vague maps. Link turned around on the balls of his feet, eyeing the stairs leading down the structure. In the distance, he could see a grove. If he wanted to find medical herbs or chillshrooms, that seemed like the best course of action.

After stretching his tired arms, he took his first step. Usually an easy task. Something he’d done countless times before. However, this time, everything felt off. His leg applied too much force to the ground. He lost his balance. His center of gravity was off and he couldn’t catch himself, leading to him lying on the ground yet again and the pain in his abdomen flaring up yet again. Thankfully not as bad as it used to be before the potion, but enough for him to clench his teeth. What in the Goddesses’ name had happened? Was he still so out of things that he couldn’t even walk like a normal person?

Grimacing, he went back to his sitting position and took a deep breath. He’d definitely gotten some scrapes on his forearms from covering his face when he’d fallen. He assessed the damage and… those weren’t his arms. Well, they were attached to his torso and he could move them, but they weren’t his. His arms were bulky from years of training. These arms were lithe, yet still muscular. Had Agahnim sapped his strength? Panicked, he took note of the rest of his body. Surprisingly, his legs actually seemed stronger. More defined than they’d been, but not to a point where they looked unpleasant. A cautious jump in place confirmed that—he reached heights he wouldn’t have thought possible, and he wasn’t even really trying. However, the landing was rather rough. Specifically, his wound acted up again but, most of all, his chest was aching. He suddenly became acutely aware of the additional weight there. He tried moving those sensations to the back of his mind, organizing them together with the pain he was still feeling as “should be ignored for now”. Once again, he wondered how in the Goddesses’ name he hadn’t noticed any of this. Even now that he technically knew what was going on, he was still hard-pressed to actually consider any of this to be a change. It was as if he’d always been like this.

He wondered if there were any other changes he’d been oblivious to. Feeling up his body, he tried making sure there wasn’t anything else weird going on, like—a tail. He had a soft, fluffy tail. He filed that away as well. Actually focusing it, it seemed like more things had changed than had stayed the same. He had hips. He had a chest. His face felt softer, although he had trouble pinpointing the exact changes. In some sense, it felt right now. He had no ears. He had no ears? Panicked, he felt all over his head before noticing two growths on top of his head. Long, vertical, curved, sensitive, a little fuzzy, and when he touched them he felt like he could also hear the impact. He had bunny ears.

If he hadn’t already been sitting, he’d have fallen to his knees. Memories that he thought he’d long been over resurfaced. Link coming up to his uncle back when they’d lived closer to the Castle. Complaining about having to wear “boy clothes” and having to do “boy things” and feeling more like a girl. His uncle telling him that they should both think about this for a few days. And then, his uncle approaching him and telling him that while he didn’t understand it, he’d support Link. Link being treated like a daughter. The first dress. Going out. Not being recognized. Being treated like any other girl. Then a friend of his uncle’s, a high-ranking member of the guard. “Is that you, Link?” Being dragged by the arm back to the uncle. “Explain yourself.” Crying. “Why would you do this to your nephew?” The uncle losing his job as a blacksmith. Having to move far away from the castle, an isolated hut. Being trained to be a “true warrior”. Making up for the disappointment that had been the uncle.

It had been so easy after that for Link. Just doing what he’d been told. No objections, no self-expression. Being trained in sword fighting among all the other boys. And now this. He’d rescue Zelda and the other maidens and prove himself because that’s what he’d been told. Sahasrahla had always been there at the back of his consciousness, being his moral compass. If he said to go to Hyrule Castle, Link went to Hyrule Castle. His story had already been written, and all he had to do was act out the scenes. Take some creative liberties, maybe, in scaring away the monsters instead of annihilating them. Not taking lives unless necessary. Link had always been a bad student when he was being taught to kill.

All in all, he’d done well. He’d followed the path laid out to him, tried as well as he could to become a man that the other people would be proud of. And yet, here he was. Looking like… like a woman. At some point, he must have started crying. Salty streaks were flowing down his cheeks. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried. Maybe it’d been back when he’d been dragged back to his uncle, wearing that beautiful dress? He’d been so scared. Scared he would be hurt. Scared his uncle would be hurt. In the end, they’d only hurt his uncle; he’d been seen as a “victim”. His complaints that this was his idea fell on deaf ears. It was a miracle they’d even let him live with his only remaining relative.

Link wondered when he’d gotten so sentimental. When he’d gotten so bad at hiding how sentimental he’d always been. Perhaps it was all the stress he’d gone through. Or maybe it was the fact that he was now far away from all the adults in his life. As far away as he could be. Nobody here even knew him. Nobody could drag him anywhere. Nobody could yell at him or his uncle, asking what was wrong with them. Nobody could punish him for being who he was.

Link balled her fist. Fretting further about her identity could wait. She was going to embrace this, at least while being in the Dark World. If… when she returned, she could go back to pretending and go back to her old life, but this… it felt nice. It felt natural. For the first time in her life, she didn’t have to pretend. In one swift move, she got up on a knee before jumping into a standing position. She grabbed the sword and bag before hopping in place a few times. Breathing in, she took an exploratory step forward, being careful to be as deliberate as possible. This time, she managed to not fall flat on her face, so that was nice. After that step, she took another. And then another. And then another. Soon, she broke out into a run, just running short laps around the center platform of the structure she’d woken up on. She took huge leaps without even really meaning to, and after a few minutes she came skidding to a halt, a big grin on her face.

She’d never felt so free in her life before. She was free of any expectations other people might place on her. Free of anyone telling her what to do. There was Sahasrahla, but it didn’t seem as though he’d actually seen what had happened to her. He’d been utterly oblivious to her wound as well as, more importantly, the way she looked now. Her wound. Her grin disappeared from her face. How long had it been since she’d taken the potion? She looked at the sky, but it was still as dusky as it had been before and there was no sign of the sun to give her an indication of the passage of time. At best, these potions lasted up to four hours, though with a wound as severe as this one, the pain might become unbearable after just three. And she didn’t even know yet what she’d cure the wound with.

She shook her head, feeling her ears wobble around helplessly. Without further hesitation, she made her way down the yellow structure. It had multiple layers arranged on top of each other, getting smaller as they went up. They had smooth, diagonal walls, but there were staircases between them. Link wondered if she could just jump down, layer by layer, but she wasn’t sure how impact-resistant her legs were. So she went for the stairs. At first, she took them one step at a time, but without even really thinking she soon took two and then three steps at once. It simply felt too slow and she had to speed it up. After a few minutes, she stood on firm ground again and looked back up at the pyramid, marveling at its height.

Link kneeled down, investigating the grass. It was more brown-ish than the grass in Hyrule, and a little thicker than the bright green strands all over Hyrule Field. The tree looked as though it should be dead, being grey and crumbly, but even so it had thick purple leaves growing from it. She wondered how it was even alive, looking as it did. But then again, perhaps vegetation here had evolved to become more resilient. Unfortunately, the tree didn’t seem to bear any fruits, and her stomach complained loudly about that.

She took stock of her inventory. An old lamp, the bow on her back, the quiver with just one arrow, the sword in her left hand, a boomerang she rarely used, a net for catching bugs that some kid had given her, an empty bottle and some glass shards from the broken bottle. Then there were some general survival utensils, like a knife, a mortar and pestle, a bowl and a wooden spoon. All in all, not very useful. She set down her bag and carefully combed through it, removing all the glass shards and collecting them in a small sack. They weren’t useful now, but perhaps she could reuse them somehow. There might be a glassblower somewhere in this world.

While rummaging for the shards, she also found a simple mirror she’d overlooked at first. She was eager to finally see what she looked like, but when she looked at it what she saw in the reflection was… her. Not what she looked like now—at least she hoped not—but what she’d looked like before. Almost throwing up in her mouth, she put the mirror at the very bottom of her bag. She did not want to deal with this right now. This was meant to be a release from… that. Her breathing quickened. What if she really still looked like that and she’d just imagined those changes? Her right foot began stomping the ground out of anxiety. She helplessly looked around the small area she was standing in. Then she saw it. Away from the pyramid, there was a stream. She headed towards it, faster than she’d ever done anything in her life. It took her only a dozen leaps and she was at its edge. Even in the murky green water, she could see her reflection.

Link’s heart dropped in relief. She did not look like that anymore. Her usual wild, pink hair framed a beautiful face, singular strands falling down. Big, brown eyes stared back at her; she instinctively smiled, and seeing just how good that looked, her smile grew even bigger. Her ears were a bright pink, just like her hair, growing out from the top of her head. She thought back to her uncle calling her “his little bunny”, back before they had to move out and everything. She had a cute little nose, and she was just enamored with the way she smiled. Perhaps that was narcissism, but she was just glad to feel something positive when looking at her reflection. Usually she’d felt indifferent at best and disgusted at worst.

Now with the confidence that she did not look like a guy anymore, she looked back at her things. She was shocked at just how far away they were. Had she really cleared that distance in so little time? She set off again, and the pyramid grew bigger in the distance at a pace she wouldn’t have thought possible. Not long after, she arrived at her bag and sword again, impressed at her newfound speed. If nothing else, this would make finding something to help with her wound easier.

Link sheathed her sword and threw the bag over her shoulders before looking back up at the pyramid. Even though she hadn’t been in the Dark World for very long, the sickly-yellow sandstone bricks of this structure had already become a familiar sight to her. She turned around and looked at the world ahead of her. The Palace of Darkness, the place Sahasrahla instructed her to head towards, would be to her left. The was where Eastern Palace would’ve been relative to her position, at least, and the elder had explained that it was in the same relative direction. But she remembered the route from the Castle to the Palace back in Hyrule. All wide plains and roads and bridges. And, most importantly, not the area where cool safflina or chillshrooms tended to grow. And she couldn’t imagine this world having more plants growing than Hyrule.

So that direct route was a no-go. She remembered the grove in front of her. Unfortunately, it was on the other side of the river. She headed towards it again, this time taking slower, more deliberate steps. After a few minutes, she arrived at the riverside again. She examined the other side. It was just as featureless as the one she was on right now, but treetops shone through in the distance. The river itself was roughly five times as wide as she was tall. Normally, jumping this would be a foolish endeavor. But considering the leaps she’d automatically taken when just running normally, perhaps this was a possibility worth considering. Worst case, she’d just get wet.

Estimating the distance, Link took a few steps back. Then a few more. Then even more. She wanted to get as much of a running start as she could, and she felt like she’d underestimate how big her leaps would be. When she came to a distance that seemed feasible, she eyed her goal. She imagined herself taking the steps she needed before taking the leap. She imagined how she’d have to run so she could take off with her left foot—she felt more comfortable doing things with that side of her body; always had been. During swords practice, she’d always messed up her opponents with her “unorthodox stance”.

After running the leap through a few times in her mind, she began to sprint towards the river. Step. Step. Step. The leaps got longer as she built up speed. Four steps left. Three. Two. One. Her left foot collided with the ground just a tiny bit before the river. And then, she pushed herself off the ground with all her might and went flying. Not literally, but it absolutely felt like it to her for the first few seconds. She ascended into the air while carrying her forward momentum, and she realized that she shouldn’t have worried so much about this—by the time she thought to look down, she’d already crossed three quarters of the river.

She landed with a thud, and she took a few unsteady steps as she stumbled forwards from her previous momentum. Her heartbeat pounded heavy in her chest from the exertion and the adrenaline, but she’d done it. Even when she’d been at the peak of her class when sword fighting, she hadn’t felt anywhere close to this powerful. This free. Then she felt a pang in her abdomen and she remembered her wound. Gritting her teeth, she decided it was time to get a move on to an area with denser foliage where she’d hopefully find some chillshrooms.

Before taking off, Link turned around and looked back at the pyramid that still loomed large over the horizon. She didn’t know what Agahnim had had in mind when he’d transported her here, but it had likely not been this. Perhaps he’d merely acted out of panic. Or maybe he’d wanted her to perish from the wound he’d inflicted on her, now that she was in a foreign realm. In any case, she was not going to succumb to this now. She might have lost a shield and her hat and a glass bottle and some strength and burned parts of her body, and this was starting to sound less and less positive, but she could do this. She was going to do this. She would find some way to deal with this wound and then she’d probably head for the Palace of Darkness. Or maybe she’d find out some more information about this world first. Were there people here? She hoped there were. She needed a new shield. And rations. And she didn’t want to be all on her own. The soldiers she’d fought had at least mocked her, even if she hadn’t been able to start conversations with them.

But this was future Link’s problem. Right now she should get going and find some chillshrooms or something else applicable. And then she’d think about what to do. If she went to the Palace of Darkness, she’d find one of the abducted women, someone else from Hyrule. Someone else she could talk to. And she’d figure out where to go from there. She hopped in place a few times before setting off towards the grove in the distance, the trees rapidly growing larger.

underFlorence

I’m so in love with writing Link in this I love her and I already feel terrible for anything bad I plan on doing to her.