Chapter Text
Day one.
Celessa groaned as she dragged herself out of the third pond on her way out of the cave, back ringing with pain where she had faltered and let the water slam into her instead of parting it. She'd gotten so used to having wings whenever she pleased with the song of soaring, that she'd let herself get out of practice diving without the control they afforded her. She really didn't want to waste a tonic already, but–
She winced as she rolled over on the stone, back arching in pain even as she rolled back over to push herself up with the strange new arm she found herself with.
She'd need the tonic after all.
Damn it.
She drew a tonic out of her shadow, dark to help the ache in her magic – and oh how even doing that much ached, like forcing a hurt limb to move. Shakily she raised the bottle to her lips, only to scream in pain as it filtered through metaphysical scars left by the strange malice attack. If it helped, it helped like throwing salt on an open wound, agonizing pain that raced through her magic to leave her doubled over and her breathing labored. Hopefully it left her better off than before; she couldn't rightly tell.
She'd need to avoid the dark tonics for now.
Noted.
She really hoped the light tonics didn't have the same effect, but…
Well, no way to find out but to try, really.
She pulled a light tonic out of her shadow, it's fairydust-pink glittering in the cave's darkness; she braced for more pain, hesitantly drank… and let out a ragged sigh of relief as the magics combined, healthy life magic soothing the pain to what it had been before the tonics and healing whatever she'd bruised and broken in the fall.
All in all, it was a good data point with a fairly straightforward conclusion (she'd be teased for talking like a nerd again if Mipha were there, but she needed to figure this out): both tonics together or none at all.And, they did help. Good to know, albeit not sustainable to rely on her already-limited tonics for, given how little improvement she'd gotten out of two combined.
With a groan, she pushed herself to her feet with her hair hand and staggered upright; everything still hurt, but no more than . At the very least she could see what was in the odd chest nearby while she recovered; if she was lucky, there would be some clothes like she'd found in the shrine when she first awoke to fight the Calamity.
She shouldn't have gotten her hopes up.
There were clothes in the chest, yes, but no more than a ratty and worn skirt and sandals. Maybe it had once been more (she hoped it had once been more), but now there was barely enough left to cover what needed covering and absolutely no semblance of a top. The shoes and belt, at least, had fared better, though she would still be finding new ones as soon as she could. That just left finding any kind of shirt or other top.
Wait, didn't she still have her veil in her shadow?
A quick wrapping later with her veil pin to hold it in place, and she was finally covered enough to meet people again. It would do well enough until she could find real clothes, at least. And well, her magic was sore, but she was still able to get the veil out of her shadow in the first place, which was good seeing as that's where her weapons and what few tonics she had were.
With clothes… sort of sorted out, she turned her attention back toward the cave's exit.
She really needed to be more careful.
No sooner had she approached the edge to gague where she was than then ancient stone had given out beneath her, sending her plummeting through the sky toward what looked like a floating island. No way she would survive the landing, not without her wings– and damnit she still hadn't found her ocarina. She tried to veil herself in magic, to reach for the shadowy form her twili mother had shown her so she could float, but trying it grazed against the new scars in her magic and had her doubling over as the world spun around her.
And then she impacted, into a soft bed of thick fur that felt like Flora’s hair instead of into hard earth or water. She didn't bother to question it, instead curling into the fur with a whimper while she waited for the pain to subside.
The next thing she knew she was being dunked in water, blinking to get her bearings as she was wrenched free of whatever had saved her and instinctively swimming for the surface after letting herself float for a moment to get a sense of up and down. She broke the surface with a heavy gasp for air, tiredly treading water toward the shore as a brilliant white dragon breached right in front of her. She stopped to watch it in awe, only remembering after her face resubmerged to keep treading water to stay afloat. Was that dragon what had saved her?
And why did it feel so distinctly like Flora?
The nearby… steward constructs, they called themselves? offered no answers; one merely gave her Flora's Purah Pad and went about its day, and the other only had some basic combat maneuvers to remind her of.
She quickly found herself facing yet another damn drop off, careful this time to test the stone before she stepped. That was far too far to just jump. If only she'd kept her paraglider instead of giving it to Yatir.
Or.
A source of wind magic with a decent surface area.
With a slight wince from the magic use, she pulled out the korok frond she kept in her shadow, inspecting it. Sturdy enough, if she managed not to rip it, and suffused with wind magic as most of them were, so if she could get it to catch the wind as she fell…
Well, there was one way to find out.
She climbed on top of the structure the combat maneuver construct sat in, readied the leaf like she would a paraglider, and with a hesitant breath, jumped.
And it worked.
It caught the wind like she'd hoped. Its innate wind magic made that enough to keep her aloft, slowing her descent to a few seconds. She wasn't sure she could steer it, she'd be at the mercy of the winds, but it would let her survive; she could figure out what to do from wherever she landed on the next island down.
And it's not like she had another way down, anyway.
“Farore, mother of the skies,” she murmured, “and Aura, conductor of the winds… please let this bloody work.”
Courage steeled, she leapt from the edge with a loud whoop, one the wind itself seemed to echo back as it whipped around her. For a second she could almost swear she heard a victorious little rito tune in the whipping winds, a leitmotif the bards loved to work into their ballads, but there was no one else up here. If it was from the gods, it was impossible to tell whether it was interference or just cheering her on – or maybe it was just her imagination to begin with – but that didn't matter; it worked.
That landing went much smoother than the others, with no pain and only a much gentler splash, though when she pulled herself out of the water to inspect the korok frond she found it already beginning to wear around where she'd held it. She couldn't even see the surface from up here, when this larger island finally filled her view, she did not want to trust the already-worn leaf with that jump.
But for now, the forest stretched on before her.
It was time to find her way back home.
Day three.
Celessa was not having a good day. A cloud had rolled through earlier, soaking her to the bone, moisture sticking in her hair and in the fur of her ‐ Rauru’s? - her new arm. There was still no sign of a way off the island she found herself on. Still no sign of her slate – nice as the purah pad was, her gear was all in the slate. Still no sign of the jewelry she'd been wearing to protect her from the elements. Still near-freezing cold, now exacerbated by having been drenched by a cloud. Still too painful to reach for her magic to do anything more than take something out of her shadow. She was still too drained by her recovery to even manifest her tail, which was as disquieting as it was new to her. And to top it all off, she still, after days on the island, had found no sign of actual clothes beyond the sandals and meager skirt she'd found in the cave where she woke and the too-thin top she'd improvised; instead she'd had to ration what spicy peppers she could gather and roast up to stave off the cold, while also saving them up for the snowy area she would reach tomorrow.
But at least she still knew who she was. Still knew what she could do, still remembered her magic though she wasn't yet recovered enough to use it, still had her weapons to defend herself with. And she had some food stocked up now, since the purah pad would preserve it just as well as the slate. And Roam wasn't anywhere in sight this time; her new ghostly companion, Rauru – a zonai, if Flora's archeological hypothesis held true – was much better company, and came with far fewer unwelcome assumptions about her. And her voice was finally working again – for the first time since the demon king's attack – which was always a plus.
That still left her huddling shirtless by a fire in the twilight, though, and looking up from her lamentably under-spiced meat skewers to longingly watch Flora twist through the sky. Because it had to be Flora, never mind the time magic at her disappearance or her lack of transformation magic. Flora and Celessa were aura matched, bound down to their souls, and this distance couldn't diminish the sense they had for each other; that dragon was somehow, Celessa could tell, her and Mipha's wife.
“Something on your mind, Lessa?”
She hummed. Her companion wasn't very talkative when he didn't have musings on the island's constructs, and she wasn't sure if he could understand sign, but he hadn't seemed to mind her rambling at him in sign. “Just… wishing I had answers,” she admitted. “I haven't found any sign of how that's Zelda up there. And if I don't know how she got like that, I can't figure out how to undo it. Or can't tell Purah anything to figure things out from. If I can even find Purah again.” She looked back down, inspecting the ocarina that lay next to her – pockmarked and malice-stained despite the steward constructs's cleaning, even if its sound was unscathed she didn't want it anywhere near her mouth – and sighed. “I'm a rito without my wings, Rauru. And I've no kinstones to heal this with to get my wings back, and reaching for my shadow magic still hurts too much so I can't teleport to somewhere I know. I've got weapons, sure, and my memories, but really I'm right back where I started six years ago, meanwhile one of my wives is a dragon for some reason and the other's gotta be worried sick about us.” She cut herself off, giving a tired sigh, to continue eating.
The goat ghost simply frowned. “I wish I had answers to give you,” he lamented. “Last I knew, Zelda was… well, not well, but managing. And… it would take a gold kinstone to restore that instrument – a kayso's will.” He paused. “Or carrying it with you into the shrines' sacred light might be enough; I'm not sure. ”
She joined him in frowning. “Haven't seen any minish up here.” Something else bothered her about that statement though, something she had to think about to properly notice. A kayso was a great one, but particularly it was a *zonai* great one – or a twili one, rather, since no original zonai remained. Other great ones, like the great fairies, were not called kayso, and vice versa. So for Rauru to refer to minish kayso… Well, it would explain her tail at least. “Can I ask you something?”
“I believe you just did,” he teased, barely hiding his smirk at her rolling eyes and admittedly amused scoff. “But yes.”
“Kayso are great zonai. Or twili, but we used to be zonai, back before even my father's time.” Rauru's eyes narrowed slightly, but he nodded, so she continued. “But that word's only for a zonai or twili great one. And kinstones are minish magic. Not zonai.”
His eyes and posture told her enough.
“I'm right, aren't I? Minish and zonai, they're related somehow. We’re related somehow.”
The ghost winced. “Only because you yourself are zonai… yes. But don't go around revealing that secret. We went into hiding for a reason.”
She hummed, prodding at the fire to rearrange the wood a bit and throwing her now-empty improvised skewer into the flames. “Not gonna hide it from my wives if it comes up. An’ I assume it's fine to talk about with other zonai, if there's no prying ears.”
“That… should be fine,” Rauru acquiesced, after a moment of hesitation.
“Then you've my word.”
“Not lightly given, for a twili.”
She hummed in agreement, pulling her weapons out to check for maintenance. “So it isn’t.”
“And yet?”
“You don't hide your whole species for nothing,” she responded, shrugging. If he wanted to elaborate, he would; if not, she could always ask the plateau's minish elders once she found her way back.
He nodded, but fell quiet, so she turned her attention to her weapons. Her trident, scimitar, and feathered edge were fine, she hadn't used them yet since their last repair, but her zora royal sword and shield were getting banged up against the hostile constructs that patrolled the island and her giant boomerang still had a nasty dent in it from the flux construct she'd defeated on her first day up here. She'd need to take the latter to a smith, once she could find one, and fixing and sharpening the other two would take her evening.
Day five.
Thank the sand-mother for dry days. It was still too bloody cold, but at least she wasn't soaked while trying to navigate it. And with the snowshoes she'd improvised – a pair of thin boards fused to the bottom of her sandals truly did wonders – she'd made good time, managing to get into the shrine by nightfall and rest inside. The shrine itself made for a nice half morning, and now she was exploring the area with the new spell Rauru had shown her, having found enough wild peppers on the way up to risk the cold for a bit longer.
She thought she had seen the light of one of the strange zonai chests in a cave nearby, and she made her way over to it with weary optimism.
“Think this one finally has a shirt? Maybe a nice warm coat.”
With no response from her ghost friend, she sighed and went to open it.
She should've known better than to be optimistic.
Warmish winter trousers. Well-insulated boots. And still no damn shirt.
“Rauru”, she groaned, “do your people know what hypothermia is?”
A sheepish grimace told her all she needed to know.
“Oh for Din's sake, Spill it.”
He sighed. “We had jewelery for managing temperature…”
Well that sounded promising.
“… Which has likely been cannibalized by the constructs for self-repair.”
There it was. She just sighed. “So no hope of a better top.”
“There might be a tunic somewhere that survived?”
That wasn't as promising as he probably hoped. “Are we talking about a tunic in the same way this skirt is legwear?”
Rauru hesitated before answering. “I suppose so.”
Rolling her eyes, she brought a gerudo shield out of her shadow to surf back down and escape the cold.
Day six.
She was, unfortunately, right. The “tunic” fell to her waist on one side, with only a colored sash to compensate. Luckily, though, her scimitar worked fantastically as a knife (no one tell Buliara), and the fusing spell she'd been granted in the first shrine would hold as stitching until she could get back to her own clothes or buy some anew. Hopefully. If not, she could always re-stitch it.
It didn't hurt that the ruin she'd found said “tunic” by afforded her a good view of Flora winding through the twilight sky, or that there were none of the hostile soldier constructs in the vicinity. All in all, not a terrible place to rest, even if she wished that her wife were with her and not flying out of reach.
Day seven.
What. The heck. What the heck? Why was the dragon curled up around the ruin she'd slept in?
No, better question, why was Fi in its forehead? Then again, not that that mattered – she was too weak to draw the blade. She'd felt the recognition there, the bond that had existed between them since she first drew the blade to fight the calamity, it didn't harm her as a test as it once had; but it simply would not move. Just like before, she'd need to first regain her strength.
With a groan, she flopped down on the dragon's face, sliding down its snout a little and running her fingers through its soft fur. Another objective, then… or maybe just a reminder. The dessicated thing the two of them had woken would still be out there somewhere, after all; she surely would need to be stronger than before to face it, and being able to draw Fi again would be just one milestone towards that.
“Here we go again, huh?” she mused. “I'm going to find a way to get you back, àmátta. I don't care how long it takes. I will.” She let out a sigh. “Just need to find a way off this island first. D'you think there's something in the temple of time for that?”
The dragon, being one of the legendary great wyrms, did not respond, and Lessa took a slow breath to wrestle back the sinking feeling in her gut. Surely she would be able to communicate with Flora once she figured this out. She had to at least hope.
“Yeah,” she responded to its silence, “you're right, there's definitely something good in there. Just gotta get p-aaasst?”
The dragon, ever unheeding, simply took off mid-word, after tilting its snout to deposit her on her feet.
Surely it just couldn't even hear her because of the size difference, she wasn't loud enough.
Surely.
She tamped those thoughts down, forcing herself to refocus on the rest of the situation.
One shrine left here. And she had at least some semblance of clothes now, even if her new improvised dress was still too short and too thin for the weather.
Oh she was going to make good use of the spell from that shrine, she could already tell. Sure, it was harder to unfuse than the other fuse variant, but being able to enchant on the fly would be amazing. And it would help with her cooking, too! It was already pretty similar to how she usually enchanted her food, but so much more refined. She would definitely be picking the spell apart.
“Don't you need to sleep?”
She blinked, looking up from the notes and magic formulae she'd been scribbling in the purah pad. “Hm? No, I'm fi-” She yawned. “-ine.” A moment of hesitation followed, and she raised a finger to shush the reply that never came. “Yeah, fair enough.”
Day eight.
It started off as a normal day. She'd headed down to the lake by the shrine to get some archery-fishing done so she could cook food for the day. She was not expecting one of her arrows to graze the head of a goron as he emerged from the water, and they both spent a good minute or so just staring at the other in surprise.
“Are you okay?”
“I'm fine!” he called, “Just very lost! Where am I?”
What even. “Er, great sky island? How'd you even get up here??”
“I have no idea!” he responded with a cheery smile, and then off he went, making his way past her to head southeast.
Slowly she looked to Rauru, incredulity writ large on her face she was sure, but he simply shrugged with the same confusion she was feeling.
Back to fishing, she supposed, and making her way back to the temple of time. She'd already cleared that path of hostile constructs, so hopefully the weird goron would continue to be okay.
Day nine.
It couldn't be her. But, it had to be. As surely as Celessa could tell the dragon was Flora, so too was the apparition that had given her some kind of blessing. But – how?
“Ah, Recall,” Rauru mused, turning toward where the apparition had just been, “the ability to reverse the movement of an object through time. And Zelda has vanished as well…” He hummed in thought, clearly taking a moment to think. “This is a mystery even to me. Perhaps it was a sort of echo – one that reflects her sheer will. However she's managed it, though, she's left you with her vow as a kayso.”
The statement left her reeling, mental gears grinding to a halt as they were wrenched to a new track even as Rauru turned toward her and continued speaking.
“That you've now been given this… No doubt, it will prove important.”
But her mind was still on the last thing he'd said.
Kayso.
Kayso?
How could Flora be a kayso? She wasn't even- Oh. Oh she was zonai, though. That was the whole point of the adoption ceremony, but even without it, between the bond she'd forged trying to contact Lessa during the calamity, and more recently their marriage…
“Twili by law and magic,” she breathed.
“Hm? Oh, yes, we noticed that as soon as we met her. Well, zonai, she didn't seem like one of the banished interlopers.”
“When did she become a kayso?”
Three eyes blinked back at her. “She already possessed her stone when she arrived.”
“What does that have to do with–” she paused and furrowed her brow in surprise as the pieces connected. “The stone. Makes you a kayso?”
“It grants the same sort of power; we didn't differentiate.” He hummed. “Although perhaps the hylian word sage is more accurate, since they do impart some semblance of a domain…”
She hummed her bemused acknowledgement. It made sense, even if it wasn't immediately helpful. Maybe knowing that would help her down the line, somehow. For now, though, she turned her gaze up toward the platform above, activating the new power.
The goddess statue above, at least, was a familiar sight, but the doors beyond it sapped her strength like Fi once had. And just like the first time she'd found the blade, she wasn't strong enough for the task.
Damn it.
But at least Rauru had a solution ready to offer.
Now to just get back to where she awoke.
And well, she hadn't exactly seen a way back up in her time on the island. And her magic *was* aching significantly less.
Nothing for it, really.
She reached for her magic, pulling it around herself, making to sink into it to teleport.
She really should have known better.
It was agonizing, like the dark tonic but without the balm of having at least helped her. She collapsed, but this time she didn't hit the ground, well-tanned hands catching her and helping her stay on her feet as red eyes glared in fond exasperation from beneath sheikah-white bangs.
“Good to see you awake, maybe try to stay that way?” The figure teased, with an undercurrent of worry.
Pain arced through her from the attempted and failed magic use, it had her doubled over in his hold, it was too distracting to think, but so long as she could remember him she would never not recognize one of her oldest friends. “Y-Yatir?”
“Yes'm?”
“Hu-hurts-” Nope, no voice right now, time for sign. ‘Malice poisoning.’
“Kinstone?”
She gave a pained nod.
Quickly a small piece of metal was pressed to her hand and she took it, soothing minish magic washing over the ragged edges of her own soon after. She let out a shaky sigh of relief as Yatir closed her fingers around the completed kinstone, and took a moment to just recover.
‘No… no more trying to teleport,’ she finally signed, as much to herself as to her friend and guard. ‘Not yet.’
“Do you want to try me taking you?”
That offer made her pause to think. To teleport was to wrap oneself in one's own magic. Hers still ached, she guessed from the malice attack, and she didn't have enough healthy dark left to balance herself, and with the last two shrines she could feel the growing balm of healing minish magic in the arm Rauru had given her. Which meant that she was probably dealing with corruption, and that she was lucky to still have her sanity. Healing her to that point was probably what took so much out of Rauru's arm, if it was as diminished as he seemed to think. But it also meant that teleporting meant wrapping herself up in corrupted and borderline-corrupted magic, and oh Mother of Sands no wonder it was so agonizing to try.
But Yatir could help… maybe. It would mean exposing Yatir to that same corrupted magic, but if he could withstand it then it could help her at least heal a bit faster. But it was still a risk.
One which Yatir himself seemed aware of, as he offered her his hand. “I know what I'm offering. I don't have the skill to heal your magic like the minish do, but let me help.”
With a hesitant nod, she took his hand, and he smiled.
“Right, to Lookout Lan–”
“No,” she chirped, slipping into rito for its clicks and whistles that she could enunciate without aggravating her vocal chords.
“Hm?”
She hesitated. It felt stupid, but she just had to know what was behind those doors. Especially if it had to do with Flora. ‘There's something left up here, has to do with Flora I think. And… a shrine of light, in a cave system up there,’ she explained, pointing back up to where she'd first fallen from. ‘The other three have been helping me heal, and there might be a good spell in it like in the others.’
Yatir seemed to stop a moment to consider, but nodded resolutely at her explanation of the shrines helping her heal. “As you like, then. But… I've never been up there, and I can't see it from here. Can't guarantee a safe landing.”
And that, at least, she could deal with. ‘Land us in the sky and glide us in, then. Still got your glider?’
“Obviously. Wait, us? What about your ocarina wings?”
She frowned. ‘Ocarina's got malice in it. The shrines here have been helping, but I haven't got a chance to clean it out yet.’
Yatir winced, and turned to offer his back. “Climb on, then.”
No sooner had she done so than they were up in the open air, gliding too fast but controlled enough toward the island she'd awakened on… in? Who was she kidding, the semantics of that didn't matter. She was finally in the air again, and even if it was by clinging to Yatir's back this time, she'd still missed the feeling of the wind rushing around her and through her hair. And she wouldn't yet mention how the teleport still aggravated the now-everpresent throbbing pain in her everything; it was at least bearable, and got her a step closer to healing it away.
A launch platform for wing devices was not what she was expecting to find at the top. But it was the same island, albeit higher up on it, and with the sun quickly finding the horizon the cave ahead of them looked pretty promising. So, it wasn't long before they had a cozy campfire going to keep warm. And, having access to Hyrule now via Yatir’s help, she felt a little freer to use more of the ingredients she'd foraged at once rather than rationing them. That night's meat and seafood fry might just have been the best she'd ever tasted.
And then, of course, came the questions. On Yatir's end, how long ago she'd woken and about what she'd learned since. On Lessa’s, how long she'd been out for (it couldn't really have been three months, could it? But then, Yatir wouldn't lie to her) and what had been happening in Hyrule.
Day ten.
The door was open.
This was it. This had to be it, there had to be something here about what happened to Flora. Rauru had just confirmed what she already knew about the corruption she was dealing with, and the light at the end of the walkway had to be something significant.
The flash of magic in the bangles as she approached it only made her more sure, and the weak chime from what was left of the master sword confirmed it.
‘She's… calling…’
Lessa's breath hitched. There weren't many whom Fi *could* be talking about, and that was narrowed down even further by the feel of the magic here.
/Flora?/
‘Yes.’
“That feels like Zelda’s magic,” Yatir mused.
“She call sword,” she chirped; she couldn't sign properly without sheathing Fi again and turning back toward Yatir, so what rito she could manage would have to do.
“Zelda's calling Fi?”
She nodded, considering. If all three of them could tell it was Flora, then that had to be right. Which meant that Flora needed the broken master sword for some reason, and–
The dragon.
She took a steady breath, holding Fi into the light and watching as she disappeared into the workings of its magic with the growingly-familiar tick tick tick of Recall.
And then, in the surge of magic, she heard it.
Flora's voice.
“Link… you must find me.”
Lessa couldn't help but scorn the irony of it, as Flora herself broke away the clouds that hid Hyrule below. The land itself was pockmarked now, gaping holes left in its surface and pulsing with sickly black magic, with the castle itself pried out of the earth on a maelstrom of the stuff. Her land, and surely with it her peoples, scarred and under assault again by another evil that she had failed to stop. It wouldn't stand. She wouldn't let it stand.
Taking a deep breath to steady herself, she turned back to Yatir. ‘You said Chaos Scientist is organizing the ZST and MCC to find Z-Mafri?’
Yatir nodded.
‘So, Lookout Landing then. Like you planned to last night.’ She hesitated. Much as she wanted to speed things up, shadowporting still hurt, and she knew better than to assume that just one more shrine's worth of sacred light would drastically improve that. Maybe after her ocarina was fully restored. ‘Think we can make this jump on a glider?’
“Not by teleporting?”
She hesitated again, but… dammit, Mipha would kill her if she kept it from her own guard. ‘Teleporting still hurts. Worth it if I don't see another option, but rather avoid it where I can for now.
“Okay. You can borrow mine then,” he offered, pulling the contraption out for her to take, “I'll see about getting one ready for you.”
She took it with a nod, and looked back out over the edge as Yatir vanished into a swirl of blocky twilight magic.
It was time to deal with a second calamity.
