Linked Through The Ages: A Linked Universe AU

Chapter 6: A New Awakening

He had plenty of dreams before, most of which were fairly unpleasant.  Some consisted of the spirits of those he remembered from his sparse memories.  They would beg him, asking why he had allowed them to be slaughtered, hysteria coating every word and threat.  A woman who called him Linky with gorgeous blue eyes and a little girl that clung to her skirt who would, in turn, call him big brother.  A man that was far taller than Link, lamenting all of the time he had put into training him, asking Link if he had remembered anything he had taught him, or if it was Link's plan all along to bring death and destruction upon the land.  Young boys and teens would shake and crumble before him, sometimes for a friend they had at once called their own and other times wailing for the family they could no longer be with.  Soldiers and strangers alike, would turn their backs to him in anger or threaten to have his head, in this life or the next, for the lives that were left unfulfilled.

Visions of the future followed him like an unwanted puppy; another failure, another world collapsing, another death.  His eyes would tear open with a gasp to whatever landscape he happened to have stumbled into that day.  Still, those nightmares reminded him of the hellscape that hid beneath each and every bush and blade of grass.  The remains of torched cities hidden under ivy and moss, or the unnatural looking hills and divots, covered in lush grasses, something that he had learned formed from explosions and... nutrients quickly being added to the soil.  He chose to believe that it was the charcoal of an old campfire that had done the deed and not...  Realistically, he knew what he was walking on, regardless of his mind's oblivious insistence to remind him of the lifeless eyes and rotted expressions of fear hidden beneath dirt.  Mangled snarls and hellish screams that would burst from the ground and wrap their rotting hands around his legs and pull him down to their fate, the fate he would've met if not for... 

It didn't matter now, did it?  It didn't matter if he saw a little girl's eyes grow lifeless and cold amongst the burns along her face, or her mother sobbing over her before her husband tears her from their child, despite his own glossy eyes. Her ragged screams of mourning filling the night before disappearing before the next horde of monsters and rivers of malice laid further destruction to the home that had once been filled with nursery rhymes, fairy tales, and warm hugs.  It didn't matter if no one came to properly put her to rest besides the hungry wolves and maggots.  It didn't matter that her form turned to dust and ash in the place where Link would wake up with a choked sob by the campfire he accidentally dozed off by.

Now, despite defeating the terror that taunted him in the background of all his nightmares, those old dreams still looped together, entangling him within their web of confusion.  Unluckily for him, his mind was just as creative after defeating the Calamity as before.  His newest nightmares, those which occurred in that horrible black realm, were a new kind of hell he hadn't learned how to ignore yet.  The dreams were always the same, wandering through a blackened version of Ordorac Quarry until he reached the Spring of Power.  There, he would face Zelda.  She, or whatever stood in front of him, would morph grotesquely in front of him, each a different woman of all different ages, garb, and appearances until she would finally settle on the image of Zelda, hair bright like the rays of a hot summer day and eyes that sparkled so green they almost glowed.  Every time, she would repeat the same cursed words, jumbled together and resounded in a chorus of different voices.  "Courage may not need be remembered, for it is never forgotten.  What is courage without the wisdom and the power to bring justice to the afflicted?  What is wisdom without the power and courage to learn from all you encounter and teach it to those that will accept it?  What is true power without the wisdom and courage to bring together what is broken?  Save her. Save her as you did with me."

"Who is she?  Zelda, please!  Who is she?  Is she you?"  He would beg again and again, feet solidified to the platform he stood upon.  Her only reply was that of a soft smile and sad eyes, sending him to the next level of fear and uncertainty his mind forced him to live through.