Chapter Text
resonance
noun
res·o·nance, [ˈre-zə-nən(t)s, ˈrez-nən(t)s]
1 : the quality or state of being resonant
2 : a vibration of large amplitude caused by relatively small stimulus of the same or nearly the same period as the natural vibration period of the system
3 : the state of adjustment that produces resonance
4 : the intensification of a tone
5 : a quality of evoking response
6 : the sound elicited on percussion of the chest
7 : the enhancement of an atomic, nuclear, or particle reaction or a scattering event by excitation of internal motion in the system
8 : see 'magnetism'
9 : a synchronous gravitational relationship of two celestial bodies which can be expressed as a simple ratio of their orbital periods
10 : an extremely short-lived particle
There are moments in life that have the weight of finality. The final lesson that one takes with a master. The last harvest of the season. The hug of an elderly loved one, before heading off on a very long trip. There are moments, heartbeats, that ring out as though they are aware that they will not have anything that follows them of their own ilk.
Link thinks he should feel such a weight, as he enters the ancient ruins to face Ganon, but he does not.
He tries not to think about what that means.
It is easier than he expected it to be, to make his way into the ruins, the broken down refuge of some lost culture, some forgotten way of doing things. There is an emptiness to the halls that unsettles him, even as he approaches where he believes that the great beast is holding Zelda—his nations' future monarch, and besides that, an innocent in this battle.
The forces of the emptiness have had it out for Link since he was nothing but a small child. Since he lived when he should not. Since he walked back out of a moment of finality without so much as a scratch to show for his efforts.
That felt final, that walk home.
This? This feels like any other fight.
Link tries not to let that get to him, tries not to consider it to be an omen of ill tidings yet to come. He is not a very superstitious man, though he was raised by extremely suspicious people. All children disappoint their parents in some way, Link knows. Him more than most.
He knows the feeling of endings.
And that feeling is not here.
He tries to find comfort in that, tries to let it console him in a reassurance that this fight will not be the end of his story. No matter what people have said about this great beast. No matter how quickly it was able to tear through the palace guards and take the princess. No matter how much all that speak of it tremble under the very idea of it, Link knows that he will not fall to this creature today.
Because he does not feel the ending, crawling up his back. Instead all he feels is the familiar shape of the hilt of his sword, the weight of his shield. He feels the stillness of closed air and the press of his boots on the stone.
He feels calm, control, confident.
He takes the fortress slow, but not glacially. He does not hesitate, so much as prowl forward like a cat in the night, confident in its ability to take down its prey.
One after another the monsters fall.
In the last room, at the end of the ornate hall—an echo of importance, of beauty and meaning, reverberating even now when it cannot be understood by anyone alive—Link finds the object of his search. A terrible beast, and encased in a prison of glass-like shine, the princess. Zelda.
They meet eyes, the two of them, for the first time. And he does not know her, he has never met her. But there is something in her expression that hardens his resolve even further. She is not afraid, not like he was expecting her to be. She look the same as he does. Hardened. Ready.
Not willing to back down.
The beast charges.
One quick rolling dodge and Link is out of harm's way—this will only last a second but a second is enough. He draws his bow and fires, aiming straight for the beast's head.
It lands true, and the creature howls, indignant fury shaking the walls. The single strike was not enough to fell it, nor was Link expecting it to be. He is calm. He is in control.
Nothing is ending today.
It is not blood that oozes from the creature's wound from which the arrow protrudes. It is something… else. Something indigo and indignantly iridescent, and Link…
Link remembers.
The monster squeals as it dies, or at least… it makes the motion, goes through the act of squealing.
It makes no sound, like Link himself. Silent in death, like the world in which it lives.
Lived?
Small hands shake as the slain beast does not fall to the ground dead, but rather dissolves, melts. A shimmering iridescence that fades back into the surrounding emptiness, like a drop of water falling back into the sea.
Were it not for the wounds it left behind on Link's own body, he would have no proof it was ever there.
It's strange, how the sight of his own blood, hot and red, can be a comfort.
He shakes himself out of the thought near instantly, but not quite fast enough. A fraction of a second too late, Link jumps backwards, reeling out of the way of a lunging trident, of a blow harsh enough to skewer a charging lynel.
Link isn't nearly so sturdy.
The trident doesn't stab so much as tear through him, ripping open the shoulder of his tunic and rending flesh asunder. Bone cracks, splinters, and he gasps, a scream in all but sound tearing from his throat.
The pain is good. The pain reminds him of the stakes, and stops him from wandering off again. The power of the blow from the creature—not a monster, not quite, but a thing—is ironically enough a good thing, a seemingly contrary blessing that Ganon is as strong as it is. Rather than catching him or pinning him, it skewers Link clear through his shield arm, rips his flesh open, and keeps moving.
And there is concern and calculation, running in the back of Link's mind, about a blow like that, about the knock-down effects of this kind of wound. But it isn't the focus of his attention now. Now there is only one fact deserving of attention.
He isn't pinned, and he can keep fighting.
The beast pauses, satisfaction oozing from it in a way that Link can relate to yet finds unsettling (maybe because of the understanding of the feeling that he has). An opponent has been wounded, things are starting to go to plan. This is exactly how he himself was feeling mere seconds ago.
It is how he will feel again, if he gets his way.
When it comes to combat, Link usually gets his way.
The momentary pleased snarl of the beast becomes Link's opening. Pain not ignored, not forgotten, but pushed back into his lesser awareness, he raises his blade and lunges back. He strikes into the thing's side, into it's poorly armored–not even armored, just adorned–side, and strikes again and again. More of the same iridescent shimmer grows, blooms, and bleeds out like sap, but the creature does not bleed. Not exactly.
Link doesn't let himself get distracted this time.
The creature vanishes, disperses into a puff of magic, into a flash of smoke and a spot of cold, and Link knows that he has to keep his head up now.
There, a moment later, it reappears and lunges once more. This time, Link is ready. He spins out of the way—the motion less akin to a formal combat technique and more of the steps of a dance—and then pivots, swinging back the other way to hack at the beast again.
Again, it vanishes, and now Link smirks, soft, barely there but present all the same.
He is now in complete control.
He is drawing his bow as it reappears, firing the arrow before it is even fully solid once more, notching the second arrow before the first one lands.
The wound in his shoulder screams, but does not slow him. It does not make him waver. He breathes through the pain and releases once more.
The first arrow strikes and the beast screams, rendering back and right into the line of fire for the next arrow to land squarely in its throat.
It vanishes before that can happen.
Link doesn't let the Ganon have a moment of control, does not relinquish his power over the situation for a second. His arrow bounces off the wall, wood clattering upon stone, and there isn't anything that Link can do to attack the beast until it reforms. This does not mean that he plans to waste the time.
One eye on his general surroundings, waiting for the slight shimmer that will come the moment before solidification, if the last time was an indication of a pattern, Link considers the magical construct inside which the Princess Zelda is held.
It's magic, that's for sure. Link isn't the greatest expert on magic himself, but he can tell the difference between things made by hylian—or monster—hands, and something that was Made. And this? This crystalline structure that the crown princess sits inside? It was not crafted by mortal hands.
It does not seem to want to break under the power of mortal hands either. The princess continues to occasionally strike out, to pound her fists and shoes against the glass-like structure. It does not crack, does not splinter, it either cannot be broken without magic or—there, a shimmer, a shine.
The beast Ganon reforms, and Link is ready. Another pulse of magic, and heat and something that feels like power in a way that Link finds hard to describe fills the small chamber. A ball of fire forms, something like lightning bent in on itself. With a roar, the beast launches it in Link's direction.
He has not desire to be hit with that. He dodges, a quick sidestep out of the way of the ball of energy. And the trajectory of the orb shifts, it curves, remaining locked on Link's position.
Alright, then. No running.
Ideally, Link would use a shield for this, would apply a flat surface area and sudden blunt force to the inertia of the manifested spell. Unfortunately, his shield arm is a little out of commission. No matter, he will just have to do this the hard way.
As the sparking ball of flame draws near, Link swings out with his sword, not as though it is the weapon that it is, but as if it is a piece of sporting equipment. Just like in the hyperbolic game, the ball goes flying back, away from him.
What happens next is… kind of fun, actually.
The ball of fire is shot back and forth between him and Ganon. The beast flings it faster and faster, the volleys have less and less time between them. The heat coming off of the ball of flame is scorching, but not painful, not quite. It is just enough to make Link sweat, to make him pant, and the flame comes closer. A few carefully timed swings of his sword later, and the ball of fire strikes into its creator.
Ganon howls, and vanishes into another puff of magic and smoke.
Another ball of flame manifest in nearly the same instant that the beast does in the corner of Link's vision, and he nearly laughs.
Things are easy, when the pattern is understood. He makes sort work of Ganon after that.
And yet…
There is still no sense of finality, when Link lands the killing blow. He knows it is such because he has slain countless foes, and will hopefully slay countless more. It is a morbid desire yes, but a practical one. It fuels to curling satisfaction in his stomach at the sight of the beast's death.
The trident stabs down into the stone upon which Link stands, and the rift in the world pours out of it.
And then it happens, the feeling of finality. The ending of a book about to slam on him. Link has less than a second to think, to get out of the way, to run. He takes a single step back, and Zelda comes into his line of sight again.
No, Link realizes, he cannot leave her to this. He cannot save himself.
The hesitation, however noble, is costly.
It grabs him, the nothing. The rift is less a thing and more of an absence of things. It is the empty air when you are expecting there to be another step at the top of the flight. It is the ache in your chest after a pet climbs off your lap. It is the empty seat, at the table, where someone once sat.
It is the silence that fills his own throat now, with his voice ripped away.
The nothingness is consummate, and it does come for all, sooner or later. Link assumes that this moment, this feeling of finality must mean that the rift has at last come to take the rest of him, come to swallow up what it hadn't managed to chew the last time. He knows that whatever is taken from something into nothingness will not return.
He knows that all likelihood is that he will not return. And try as he might, he cannot find a way out of the trap, cannot see a path forward.
Something—most likely Link himself—is ending, here and now. And there is nothing that he can do about it.
He looks up at the princess in the crystal, at the face that was so stoic and brave, that is finally starting to show fear as he falls into the nothingness. He knows that if he goes now, nothing will come for her. He knows that no one will save her.
All of this will be for nothing.
He cannot save himself.
That does not mean that Link is powerless.
After all, he is not the one that he means to save. He never has been.
His arrow flies true, striking the surface of the crystal and bouncing off, leaving behind fractal cracks. He would have preferred to have released the poor girl outright, but he will settle for this, he must. The surface of the imprisonment charm is broken, it is only a matter of how many times she needs strike her own fists upon the glass afore it shatters under her hand.
She will make it out of here alive. At least, she ought to, if there is any justice in this world that Link has taken upon himself to defend.
The empty draws him into its tender grasp, and terror, icy cold and familiar, oh so familiar, crawls it's way through Link's heart.
Link screams.
High and terrified, he screams.
As the hole in the world catches his foot, he falls, further trapping himself as his knee and hand go into the yawning void.
It's cold, nothingness, colder than he though that anything could be. He sucks in another breath right before his throat seizes up, his muscles all cramping under the shock.
He's going to die.
No, Link reminds himself. He survived the last time, even as just a child, and this time he is in control. This time he knows how to fight.
This time the monsters are expecting one.