I am Legion

[Illidan Stormrage]

"Please don't forget this song. Do you promise?"

The wind stroked the tall grass blades, making them sway to the beautiful, crisp notes that haunted the meadow. The sun beamed down, settling on his skin and warming away the cold bite of the morning. A flock of small birds shot overhead like little blue darts, riding the breeze.

"When you want to hear my voice, play Saria's Song. You can talk with me anytime..."

Link stopped mid-note and lowered the ocarina. "Not anytime, Saria. Not anytime."

He wrapped his lips about the instrument again and blew. Saria's Song was so high spirited and energetic. It made Link reminisce about the tall, mighty oaks that lived in the Lost Woods, and the devilishly twisted path through to the glade. He recalled the Skull Kids in his mind's eye, dancing and puffing on their flutes, the motes of light that flittered about the forest, and the way the sunlight patterns on the ground shifted as the impossibly high canopy shook and rustled in the breeze.

It had been hours. Link played one final, lingering note and pocketed the ocarina. Sitting on a sawn tree trunk, Link lifted the water sack slung around his neck and drank. The water streaked down his throat and offered cool relief, replenishing what he lost in his protracted musical session. He finished his swig and gazed out over the grassy field. He had so much to ponder, but he was doing his best to avoid it for as long as he could. Perhaps it was time. He couldn't ignore it all forever.

The most pressing topic burrowed out into the light. Ganondorf.

What was he to think now? The Gerudo king was his only companion in a death tournament, of which Link didn't even want to enter. Nonetheless, Ganondorf was there every step of the way. Every confrontation, they attacked together with unrestrained ferocity, as if innately trusting the other not to withhold strength to backstab them later. It never came to that; indeed, Link had even found common ground with the great tyrant, the man who killed hundreds, maybe thousands, in another world. Maybe he had manipulated Link, but he didn't think so. Some of it was likely posturing and for show, no doubt, but the Hylian warrior knew that at least a few of their bonding sessions were genuine. No doubt Ganondorf had difficulty processing some of this, too.

So where did that leave them? Did Link retain the duty to slay the evil sorcerer, the man who would take up the Triforce to conquer and enslave? Or should such a concept be discarded in the Omniverse, where the goddesses didn't exist, where a divine law held no weight? Or had it been the holy triumvirate's will to chase the Dark Lord into the Omniverse? Or muddying the waters further, had Ganondorf truly repented from his old ways, and no longer posed a threat?

Or was it all an act to fool Link into taking over the Omniverse from right underneath him?

This is why I didn't want to think about this. Constant, never ending circles. Trains of thought that skirted the same rails over and over again. How could he make a decision when, no matter how much he contemplated, neither choice seemed like the right one? Maybe it wasn't a logical decision he made from pondering on it. Maybe the next time he saw Ganondorf, he would just ... know the right course of action.

How Link wished he had guidance now. He wished he knew what happened to the Hero's Shade. All he remembered was how his skeletal hand rested on him and Link felt a sudden surge of vitality and warmth. Had Shade transferred the omnilium he had siphoned from Link back into him in order to give Link the energy he needed to keep fighting? Was that why he faded away and hadn't returned?

Link had tried playing the Song of Time again, hoping his future ghost would seize upon the enchanted notes again and re-establish himself in the Omniverse, but to no avail. He sighed. Another fruitless topic of consternation.

He still had to reclaim the Triforce of Courage. No matter what, it was given to him. It belonged to the Hero of the era, and no one else. Syla had to be somewhere in Camelot, but she could be hiding up any old tree, and Link couldn't remember where her little canopy village was anyway.

Link hopped off the tree stump and withdrew both of his blades. The Master Sword shone with the reflected light of the sun and some of its own power. The Phantom Sword felt different, as if the light and reflections glossing over its steel blade quivered and slowed. His tenacity and skill helped him secure the full power of his divine weapon again, but the Phantom Sword wasn't even from his own era. He carved it from omnilium while he was Syla's prisoner, spiritually visiting a timeline completely alien to his own.

The Hero of Winds' era, as Shade had put it. A world where the Hyrule he knew had been devoured by a mighty ocean. Link remembered slipping into the skin of his spiritually linked kin, seeing the tumultuous waters churning, thunderclouds spurting jagged bolts of lightning, and the monstrous Bellum rising up before him.

What great reserves of knowledge and skill must be untapped in those other eras. If only Link could travel there on purpose, maybe he'd gain new insight, or at least enough to get him through his tough thoughts. There must be countless evil foes who rose up, both past and future, whom the chosen Heroes had slain with their might and artefacts. Bellum in the Hero of Winds' era, Ganondorf in his own ...

Link knelt down and impaled both blades into the ground, holding onto their hilts. Why was he assuming he was so helpless? Shade helped him the first time, but obviously the power lay dormant in his soul. He just had to figure out a way to coax it out. Surely it couldn't be that difficult.

The Hero of Time closed his eyes and focused. He remembered that painful tingle that coursed through his core during his first trip. That pain that burned into a white hot agony as it multiplied, much like when he was ripped out of the space between time by Omni, when he first made the connections to the Hero's line. He relived the uncanny way that information poured into his mind as if he'd known it all along ...

... and the Phantom Sword quivered.

Link broke his concentration to look at the weapon. What happened? He shrugged and went back to his meditation, digging about his memories for the keys to the doors, and the Phantom Sword shook again. Link was sure he didn't imagine it this time. But why was the weapon vibrating? Was it reacting to his memories?

Anything's possible in this realm. Link ran through the vault of his spiritual journey to the great ocean again, and on queue the blade hummed and tingled in his fingers. Instead of breaking focus, Link buried himself deeper into the sensation. The summoned sword brimmed with a new energy, and inexplicably, the Hylian warrior felt an identical power welling in his chest.

It burned.

This is it! Link reached out with ethereal hands and dug in tightly, pulling himself closer to the blazing energy. It grew hotter and hotter, moving from a warm glass of milk to a cooling stove to a dying fire to a smithy's furnace to a pool of magma to ...

Link clenched his teeth as the pain became white hot agony and pushed further. Flickers of thin white tendrils flashed on the edge of his vision. Tiny milky sparks leapt up and down before him, chewing away at the black behind his eyelids, filling it in until all he saw was white. The ground shook, but whether it was an earthquake or part of the hallucination, he couldn't tell anymore.

Link screamed at the molten fire that consumed his chest and everything went numb.