Chapter Text
Zelda crept on her hands and knees, through the grass behind Link’s house. The warm afternoon sun of another lovely Hateno day played across her golden hair and pale skin as the tree branches swayed in the gentle breeze. Ahead of her, a large blue-and-brown beetle ascended the thick bark of a tree trunk.
She tried to focus on how Link would go about hunting. Of course he would have had the Sheikah Slate - her sheikah slate - to help in tracking these down. A Sheikah slate that was far away somewhere, with Link.
The beetle crept sideways around the trunk to the side of the tree opposite her. She froze, not wanting to scare it away, and listened, hoping to hear when it had stopped moving. She could hear children laughing and running in the town below. The sounds of wheels against stone from wagons carrying goods along the main road carried on the air to her. She perceived the gurgling of water in the nearby stream. And, just faintly at the edge of her hearing, the almost musical sound of Link rematerializing at the nearby Myahm Agana shrine.
Zelda rose to her feet with a measured, silent movement and placed the soles of her feet on already disturbed patches of grass as she moved. With luck, the beetle would still be there when she returned.
She met Link at the narrow bridge that led to the rustic house that she was increasingly thinking of as theirs, though the sign out front still read “Link’s House”. His Snowquill armor was splattered with an impressive variety of monster guts.
“You’re filthy.” she chided him in a soft voice. “Quick, give me the slate, and then follow me quietly. I have a beetle to catch.” Wordlessly, he took the slate off his belt and handed it to her. Zelda held a finger to her lips and then gestured for him to follow as she hurried back around the house again.
Zelda crouched down in the tall grass once more, awkwardly posed with the slate in one hand. The beetle had moved higher up the side of the tree. She aimed the slate at it and pushed the capture button. The slate clicked and showed an image of the beetle, with a small label under the image reading Bladed Rhino Beetle .
“Got it!” Zelda exclaimed, causing the beetle to fly off into the afternoon air. “Oh, there it goes” her triumphant smile vanished. “I would so have liked for us to catch it... that particular species of beetle is said to have some amazing effects when ingested. But at least we can track them now.''
Link watched the beetle leave, with a momentary look of relief on his face. “I usually head down to Faron Woods for elixir ingredients.” He paused for a moment, looking thoughtful. “Should probably do that again soon. I used some up today.”
Zelda gingerly took his arm, avoiding the splatters on his clothes as best as possible, as they walked back towards the front of the house. “I see your monster-hunting trip went well. Lady Riju will be pleased that there aren’t as many monsters threatening the Gerudo trade caravans now.” With her other hand, she flipped through the pages of images on the Sheikah Slate.
“Did you get the pictures I wanted while you were there?” She stopped flipping pages a moment later. “Oh, I see them. They’re mixed in with the ones I just took, though.”
She paused for a moment, her brow furrowing. “It would be nice if the Slate had a way to categorize these pictures, or sort them other than chronologically. Even if we could just separate ones I took from ones you took. I wonder if Purah could work out a way to do that? You said she’s the one who upgraded the runes on this for you.”
Link reached over and tapped his finger on one of the Slate’s pictures to enlarge it. “Here’s the Lynel you wanted.”
The screen showed a towering monster; Hate-filled glowing red eyes, horns the size of a man’s torso, and a great mane of matted white hair, atop a massively muscled torso standing taller than a horse. A gigantic sword was slung across its back, which it hardly needed due to claws that could tear a man in half with a single swipe. The picture also showed Link, standing in front of the beast, wearing a button-eyed cloth mask that was like a child’s caricature of the Lynel’s face. One arm was stretched out towards the camera, holding the Slate out in front of him as he took the picture.
The words White-maned Lynel glowed at the bottom of the screen. Zelda momentarily thought that Reckless Idiot would be a more appropriate label.
“You took a picture of yourself .. standing next to a Lynel?” Zelda’s eyebrows rose. “Where did you get that mask? Does it even work?”
Link rubbed the back of his neck. “Bought it from a guy named Kilton. I’ll have to introduce you sometime. And yeah, it works, although not as well as the Moblin or Lizalfo masks do. Lynels are smart, they figure it out after like a minute.”
“So, this Lynel...”
“Tried to take my head off about five seconds after I took that picture. I think me taking the picture tipped it off.” He shrugged. “I still killed it. Collected the horns and weapons, and now there's one less monster to worry about.”
She shook her head. “I was expecting you to take a picture from a distance, perhaps while hiding behind a rock like a sensible person.”
“Hiding doesn’t work” Link replied. “Lynels can arc their shots.”
“Only if they know you’re there. I thought the Sheikah trained you in stealth?” Zelda quipped.
She flipped to the next picture on the Slate, and was momentarily confused by what she saw. Much of the picture was taken up by the front wheel and mechanical horse-head of the strange two-wheeled vehicle that Link had been calling the “Master Cycle”. The ice and snow covered ground seemed oddly distant, and the picture was blurred, as if taking hastily in the middle of violent motion. “Did .. did you actually jump over a chasm on that thing? And took an image in mid-jump?” she asked unbelievingly.
Link’s head dropped, and his gaze fell to the stone path below. “The slabs of rock on the side looked like they’d make a good ramp. And I wanted to see if I could make the jump.”
Zelda frowned, then signed in resignation. “I would scold you for being reckless, but I know it would do no good. You’ve always been this way. Even before we stopped Ganon. I was watching you the whole time, you know.”
She looked him straight in the eyes, placing a hand on one of the few clean spots on his shoulder. “But, if it at all matters for me asking, do try to be more careful with yourself. I can’t replace you.” She turned and stepped inside the house they shared. “And I think later, after you’ve cleaned up, we should go talk to Purah. See if she can make us another Slate, or improve the camera function on this one.”
Link and Zelda materialized at the travel gate just outside of Purah’s lab, coalescing out of glowing blue strands of light. They were pressed together in a way that was really quite inappropriate for a princess and her guardian knight, half-embracing and pressing their torsos against each other, both touching the Sheikah Slate at the same time. They had determined that this was the best way to trick the Slate into treating them as a single body for transportation, and Zelda had decided that she really didn’t mind the close proximity required. It seemed that Link had decided something similar, as their disentanglement proceeded in a slow, reluctant manner.
Zelda’s breath caught as she viewed out across Necluda from their high vantage point. She moved to the edge of the cliff to see the sprawling village below. Windmills turned lazily in the breeze, and smoke rose from chimneys and cooking fires. Sunlight glinted off the water in the stream that ran through the town. Lanterns burned, some in the colors of conventional fire and some in the strange blue glow of the ancient Sheikah energy. The air was clear enough for her to make out the distinctive shape of the Dueling Peaks far in the distance, and past that the distant, hazy form of the Great Plateau. “Look, there’s where you slept for a hundred years”, she pointed off to the north-west. “And over that way, is where my future lies.” The Castle wasn’t directly visible from Hateno, but they both knew where it lay.
“Our future.” Link replied softly.
Zelda nodded. “Yes, of course. Although once I become Queen, I won’t have as much time for our research trips.” she replied wistfully. “Never mind. Let’s see what Purah can do to help us.”
Behind them stood Purah’s odd, ramshackle laboratory, appearing much as it had been the last time they saw it. The Sheikah furnace glowed a bright blue, and strange yet surprisingly catchy electronic music filtered out from inside.
Link stepped through the door, Zelda just behind him, into the cluttered interior. Papers were still scattered around. Maps and plans covered the singular large table. Zelda knew well many of those were plans for Hyrule’s reconstruction, having spent hours going over them with Purah and the other Sheikah elders.
They could see no sign of the Director herself.
From the bookstacks in the rear of the lab, a grey-haired man in traditional Sheikah garb and thick-rimmed glasses called out to them. “If you’re looking for the Director, she’s out on an errand.” Link and Zelda both recognized the man as Purah’s assistant Symin.
Link frowned. “She never leaves the lab. Especially not since the incident with the age-reversing rune.”
Symin placed the book he had been studying back on the shelf, and walked forward to more properly greet them. “She’s been experimenting with the Travel Rune on her own slate. She used it to take a trip out to the Great Plateau this morning, and said she’d be back tomorrow. Is there anything I can help you with?”
Zelda pulled out the Sheikah Slate. “If she’s that far ahead on hers, we were hoping she could eventually work on making another one for us. Although I suspect that will be a long-term project.”
Symin nodded. “It’s a very complicated piece of technology, and even Purah doesn’t understand how all of the functions actually work There are many aspects of the ancient Sheikah technology that are still impossible for us to reproduce.”
Zelda sighed. “I feared that. Well, the other thing we were hoping she could help us with was better organizing the images taken with the Camera rune. I would just like to be able to separate the images Link took from the ones I took”
Symin smiled. “Ah, well, that I can help you with. If your slate is anything like hers, it should just be a matter of setting up a second user account.” He took the slate from Zelda. “We both have our own accounts on hers, so we can keep our research notes separate.” Symin pointed at an inset circular spot with a glowing blue center. “You just press the activation button and hold it for five seconds to bring up the administrator login screen.” He demonstrated as he spoke.
The slate made a three-tone rising chime, and a grid of glowing blue Sheikah letters appeared on the screen as Symin handed it back to her.
“How did I ever not know about this?” Zelda frowned in annoyance. “Link, did you know about this?” She shot an accusing glance at Link, who shrugged. Zelda then turned to look back at the screen. “So what do I do now?”
“You press these letters, to enter the administrator password.”
“And what is the password?”
Symin’s eyebrows rose, and he shrugged. “I have no idea. Purah didn’t tell it to you?”
“She didn’t even tell me that there was an administrator function at all, let alone what the password was for it.” Zelda replied angrily. “Do you know the password for hers? Perhaps it’s the same one.”
Symin shook his head. “Sorry. She keeps that a secret. Director’s eyes only.”
Zelda frowned, her eyes downcast at the slate in her hands. “Well then. We’ll just have to wait until she returns from her mysterious errand.”
Link puttered merrily in the kitchen of their little house down the hill, humming to himself as he made dinner. Using ingredients gathered on his trip to the Gerudo Highlands, he prepared for them a meal of herb-roasted pigeon, and a dessert of wildberry tarts.
Zelda had yet to get tired of the unexpected gift that was Link’s newfound ability to cook. She had expected him to have to learn to fight to defeat Ganon, but never that he’d somehow also become a skilled chef in the process. Link had even managed to recover the recipe for her favorite fruitcake from the ruins of the castle library, and somehow had prepared it for her the first night after she was freed. How he baked a fruitcake over a campfire better than her father’s finest royal kitchens was still a mystery to her, although she suspected that her relief at finally being free and seeing him alive again might have been coloring her perceptions at the time.
While Link cleaned up after dinner, Zelda pulled out the Sheikah Slate. She pressed the button to bring up the administration screen again, and stared at the grid of letters. “It’s designed to not let anyone but the administrator in, but designs can be worked around. And a password can perhaps be guessed, if you know the person well enough.” she mused.
She tapped on the screen, trying various words and names. Typing purah only yielded a response of Authentication Failed .
She tried other obvious names. Link , zelda , sheikah , impa , hyrule , each time getting the same result.
“Has to be something. What would she pick?” she muttered to herself.
“How about ‘Snap’” Link called from across the room.
“Snap? Why snap?” Zelda replied.
Link shrugged. “She says it a lot. Might be the password.”
Zelda tapped the glowing keypad, typing in snap .
Authentication Valid
“That was it! Oh, Link, you’re a genius.”
Link beamed at her from across the kitchen, and she felt a momentary joy unrelated to the thrill of finding the right password.
A new set of runes appeared on the Slate’s screen, completely unlike the ones normally present.
- Language Options
- Parental Lock
- System Configuration
- Account Management
“And here’s what Symin was talking about. Account Management. I should be able to just set up my own account, and then we can keep my research pictures, and your ... unnecessarily risking-your-life pictures separate.”
A tap on the Account Management rune brought up a new screen. New Account . A prompt asked for her name, which Zelda tapped in on the screen.
“That should do it. I wonder if there’s a feature to transfer pictures from one account to another? Oh, I should make sure my account actually went in properly first.”
After a few moments of looking, Zelda found the Accounts rune. Pressing that took her to another screen. Three names were listed there.
- administrator
- zelda
- link_clone_119
She peered at the third name in confusion. It was obviously Link’s account, but why did it say “Clone”, and why was there a number after it?
“Did you get it?” Link called again, as he was putting the cleaned dishes away.
“Yes .. just something a little strange here.”
She spotted a notification at the bottom of the screen, in smaller letters under the list of names.
- showing active accounts
With a tap of her finger, the notification changed to read showing all accounts. And the list of names suddenly expanded.
- link_clone_119
- link_clone_118
- link_clone_117
- link_clone_116
- ...
She touched the list of names, and discovered that she could scroll through it.
- ...
- link_clone_88
- link_clone_87
- link_clone_86
- ...
Zelda kept scrolling, till she reached the bottom of the list.
- ...
- link_clone_3
- link_clone_2
- link_clone
- link
No further names were listed.
Zelda felt a horrid suspicion building in the back of her head. She pressed her finger against the bottom-most name, link . The list of names shifted left on the screen, and more words and labels appeared to the right. She spotted a note indicating the account creation date, which was less than a year after Ganon returned. The account deactivation date was less than a day after that.
She tapped the next name, link_clone . This showed an account creation date about nine months after the previous account was deactivated. And it also had an account deactivation date only a few days after being created.
“Strange how?” asked Link, who was now leaning over her shoulder, trying to see the Sheikah Slate’s screen.
Zelda startled, nearly dropping the slate as she fumbled, trying to hide the list. “Ah, nothing! I’ll just have to ask Purah about a few things when I see her again.”
Link leaned back. If he noticed anything was wrong, he didn’t say. “Okay. I’m heading off to bed. Been a long day.”
Zelda closed out of the account management screen with shaking fingers, as Link headed up the stairs.