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Impa Iro had a very sensitive task at hand, but it was one she was quite proud of were anyone informed enough to be told of its existence. She was still young for an Elder, but as part of the Council in charge of decisions in Kakariko she had been the one designated to handle the young Deity in their care.
And handling that had been quite the task, but one she had spent a great deal of time perfecting a solution for. It had taken four years after his arrival to set it up. Four years spent on tenterhooks, with a shy and retiring youth slowly shedding his more alien traits and shifting towards a more Sheikah-like (or at least Hylian) appearance, blending in well with his apparent age group. Four years to finish modifications to a bunker in which he could be brought to learn control without a serious risk to everyone around him.
While they could and had kept the young Deity safe and secretly in Kakariko, it was not what the Kingdom nor they had wanted. A youth scared of himself and everyone around him wasn’t useful. What they needed was security and the ability to teach him the kind of control that could make him an asset: to the Kingdom, and—by their contributions—to the Collective as well. He hadn't yet divulged the location to which the Hylian Princess had disappeared, but that would undoubtedly come when every part of the Deity was controlled: out of rage and within.
Impa Iro nodded to the guards flanking the heavy doors half-buried in the red canyonside, and waited for the locks to disengage and open to let her in. She crossed a hanging bridge and entered the delicate lift inside, a deceptively fragile thing that could hold perhaps three people at most. The lift doors closed behind her, and then hissed as the watertight seal settled into place before she was dragged into the water that filled the shaft.
Besides the dim blue and orange lights inside the lift, there was nothing else to see through the single window as she descended. Some of the guards on duty had joked about the place, calling it a well or a pit. Some even spoke of it like an underworld. There were other hidden facilities in Kakariko, of course, most for some experiment or another. Many entrances were as obscure as this one, although strictly speaking this one wasn’t hidden. The high guard towers were fairly conspicuous structures, meant to disguise their living personnel from a casual glance…
And that was the primary design of the facility: obscure the truth at every turn for their protection, because the Deity it was built to contain was an implacable foe. The damage he’d done before arriving in Kakariko had been astronomical, ripping open shuttles and stations with his bare hands. Plasma bolts from his hands had vaporized steel, and his survival of the unthinkable had happened over and over again.
But if he could not isolate a target he could be evaded, and that had been her reasoning. So the bunker had been designed. Calling it the bottom of a well was to name its final defense: if he breached the lift without the proper codes or genetic signature, the whole bunker would flood from the reservoir to which it was connected, but even before that point there were other traps of false walls, false doors, and poisons. The Deity was brought each day into the building blindfolded from before they even left the Conclave and led a different route each time, because many of the doors were only functional until the emergency contingency began. If he never learned the correct way, he could be bottlenecked or blocked…
That had been the plan. But even as Impa Iro repeated the only safe route on her way in to retain her memory of it, she was reassured even more by the far greater success: the contingencies had not been needed. Her design to train him had, in the past five years, worked.
At the center of the facility, behind two layers of space-rated glass (separated by a specially engineered toxic gas in case he tried the glowing wall before him if ever he got free), Impa Iro could unlock the final door with a very specific fingerprint on her littlest finger. The work room had become something of a second office—originally sparse and sterile in the case of an emergency evacuation, now there were mugs and a tea kettle on the desk in the corner, an extra datapad charger in the wall, and a comfortable chair.
Not that she needed it today. She walked into the observation room and stood in front of the window at parade rest to look down at her charge.
For all the maze of corridors she had walked to reach here, the room she looked down into was almost cramped for all its occupant was still small, still almost delicate. She supposed the question of gender had arisen of late: while she did not interact with the Deity much directly, she was kept abreast of news. As his body settled into the Collective, he had changed until now his adult form looked more female and purportedly he sometimes used female pronouns to match… But as all previous documents were in male terms, Impa Iro had felt little need to correct her own thoughts.
And such changes were merely cosmetic for her purposes. Dressed as the Deity was in loose tunic and trousers at the bottom of the well, his body was irrelevant to her. It had it uses: mostly as a restraint on his god-like power.
The Sheikah had a historical record of worshiping the Deities, who showed up at apparent random on whatever planet they chose. Massive, supernatural power led the Sheikah of the past, and the occasional fool of the present, to revere them. According to Sheikah lore, a Deity channeled one of the literal gods while they glowed—some stories went as far as to assign different gods to different Deities throughout history.
Iro had worked closer to a Deity than any other living Sheikah, save the few shrouded Elders that rarely spoke out in Kakariko’s Council. The Deity in her charge had never dispensed wisdom from the heavens, but had destroyed and killed at another's behest. Even with all the power of the supposed gods, the Deity’s body was simply a tool.
That was the one truth that had come down from the disastrous war a half-century before: whatever powers a Deity had were always limited in the end by the constraints of their body. Most could brush off or survive a certain degree of damage, but not all damage was ignorable and many would remain aware of their bodies even in the Depths of Rage. Scalding heat, shocks, sufficient force or blades: all could turn one aside as long as it was outside what their powers engaged.
So she’d arranged to use that against him. The Deity in her care had wanted to be tamed; he wanted control, and feared his own was lacking so she’d explained as gently as she could her plan. She would restrain him somewhere safe, somewhere he could harm no one else and gently urge him into Rage until he became familiar with it and its limits, until he could master it and respond to speech, commands, and other prompts without becoming so lost he was the kind of monster he had sought so hard to destroy.
The restraints were applied while he was still calm. She could see them via the cameras behind his back, but not from the front. From the front, she only saw the top of his head as it bowed, the barest gleam of the readings on his collar and his knees pressed to the hard floor. From the back she could see the cuffs closed over his hands, the weight likely causing him pain all its own.
It was unavoidable. To have restraints that could not be removed without causing severe damage to himself required materials that could not be easily broken. The spikes through his wrists had to be re-done every day by someone trained to avoid the vital anatomy there. The far side was locked in place each time by new material, the blood unavoidable. The collar had to be settled and bolted shut much the same, each node inserted into the skin. Once they were settled, the force of holding the restraints in place was felt through his body against bones not meant to take force.
Lateral force on the first thoracic vertebra. A steel bolt between radius, ulna and carpals.
As a Deity he unquestionably had the power to force the materials to break, but he could not break steel with the parts of his body being forced to bear it. With his wrists bound and bolted to the floor by a steel cable and hook and his neck as well…
There was a certain pleasure for Iro to look down at a being with the power of the Gods forced to kneel before her.
Some days he seemed aware of her presence. He would sometimes look up at the windows when she approached. Some days he would refuse, and it never seemed to match any pattern she could tell. Whether they used drugs or electrical stimulation or other pain to induce a rage mattered little. It had taken some trial and error to determine the most efficient ways to bring his power to bear. Sedatives could work, but he’d become inured to them over time, learning to accept it without protest: a success on one level that caused problems on another.
But she had anticipated that, as the sedatives goal had been urgent. One could not perform medical care on a patient that could not be sedated.
Now, they used a pre-Calamity recipe to prepare fairy dust for the purpose instead. The benefit of that was that the fairy dust concoction by itself was geared towards results of a much more tame Deity response from the start; whether that was true or simply that the long exposure to sedatives had restrained him was impossible to determine. But even today, as she signaled she was in place, she could watch the almost imperceptible flinch as the drugs were administered for her observation.
The needle prick itself was invisible, applied inside the restraints as it was. The result was not: fairy dust worked almost instantly, especially in moderate-low doses with a carrier like it was. The colour ran across his skin, flashing in the depths of his markings—and her Deity had more than most. Thick, heavy bands of red and blue painted his body where others bore almost delicate lines more than half the time, ones that frequently ended at shoulders or torso… but this one was marked down to his feet.
And the colour was vibrant enough to light the shadows on the floor.
In contrast to earlier, the Deity's breathing slowed. He shifted his neck and wrists carefully, obviously aware he continued to be restrained and—today, as she thought, as she'd asked and confirmed he never did were someone other than her there—he raised his blank eyes to stare at her behind the safety of the glass.
Impa Iro stepped up to the cold glass wall and laid one hand on it as she watched.
An agent stepped into the room before her. The door was closed and bolted behind them, as always: there were no doors left unlocked while the Deity was live in the heart of the well. The agent bowed to her as well, knowing only because they would not be asked to do this without her present. Then they stepped up and spoke, words transmitted poorly but mostly legibly by speakers from inside.
"Honoured One, may I touch your face?"
The Deity turned to look at them, but she could see the weight shift as reason asserted itself in spite of the shining light glowing among the structures of his—its—skin.
Was a Deity still the same person, was a long-standing question. It was hard to say, and harder still even in this case. Inert, this Deity—Link of Kokiri Planet—was worlds different from this calm and commanding figure who was rendering her agent so deferential they bowed again before taking the samples as asked. They could handle its face: scanning eyes and the translucent marks. When they gestured, the Deity opened its mouth and let them swab cheek and tongue without protest, still as calm and rigid as a statue.
It was a simple test. They'd done it several times before, first to test if there was any discernable difference in the Deity's body between full possession or not but now mostly because it was demeaning, close contact that was predictable and easy to repeat with terrified agents.
Truthfully, the Deity had been manageable for years at this point. Likely they would graduate from this soon to more complex training and tests but…
Her agent finished their work and packed up the samples. The Deity had returned its flat white gaze to the observation wall. As they approached the door, the Deity spoke.
"Come down. Please."
Impa Iro's breath caught in her throat. She stared at the Deity for several long seconds, meeting its eyes through glass it couldn't see through, with eyes that didn't even have pupils to meet.
"H-honoured One?" the Agent asked, frozen. "What do you mean?"
"The Doppelganger. Impa Iro. Would she come see me. Please."
It was the most complex speech she'd ever heard of from a Deity. Most retained little of their humanity in a full Deity state, often including speech. Even in daily life, her Deity rarely spoke, too shy and reserved to stand up to anything. Here and now, in painful restraints it seemed unthinkable to hear words and yet…
"Honoured One, Impa Iro cannot do that."
"Would you ask?"
Her breath caught in her throat. She licked her lips. If she was going to ask him to enter full Deity unrestrained, she should know how he—it—reacted to her while still restrained. She swallowed a second time, thrilled and terrified at once, and stepped away to touch the intercom.
"I will come, Honoured One," she said. "Please wait for me."
As her words died, the Deity lowered its head again in something like a nod.
Heart racing, she turned to wind her way from the observation deck to the door of the room. It took some time; this path was deliberately difficult, meant to be obscure and nearly impossible to find. She had it memorized but still it was nearly five minutes before she reached the locked door. The Agent who had collected samples was still there, anxiously waiting. Foolishly, this Agent wore some occult symbol on their belt, and fingered it as they addressed her.
"Honoured Elder, you shouldn't do this."
"If we are to use him unrestrained, I must. Deliver your work, as commanded."
Reluctantly, then with haste they retreated and Impa Iro pressed her hand to the lock by the door. This lock, too, required a certain shape of hand from her that would be impossible for most people. But she was hardly most people.
Heavy bolts groaned. Even through the thick walls, she could hear both the water draining and the door slowly, agonizingly unlocking. The small room in the center was surrounded by feet of wet soil, set to collapse upon any inner wall breach. Everything in sight was meant to kill him upon a single failure…
But as Impa Iro walked through the long hallway to her charge, she looked past the second bolted door to that figure with pride.
He was patient. He was obedient.
He was hers.
"Honoured One," she said, and that pale head lifted and turned very slightly. Anything more would be uncomfortable with the collar sealed to his neck and chained to the floor like it was. Even raising his head must be painful, but he—it did it anyways as she walked into view.
She looked down on a slender figure beneath her with deep, satisfied pride even as the Deity looked back.
Her Deity was even more slender in person, a fact she knew from restraint fittings and discussions of progress. She had noted years ago that the experience of seeing him without power in his veins was almost disappointing: small and pale, still far too slender as a side effect of constantly triggered rage burning through body fat. They would have to stop this sort of training for that reason alone soon.
But seeing her Deity with the power present, like now, turned a vanishingly pale figure into an alert, gleaming one. Standing before that power now, she could hardly blame her ancestors for submitting to one like this. But she did not kneel, the Deity did.
The gaunt face glowed; the markings hovered tantalizingly visible down its chest beneath the simple woven shirt. It watched her, intent and alert, and Impa Iro gave in to the urge to touch—unasked, unsolicited—its jaw.
Pale eyes slid shut and let her. Impa Iro caught her breath and rolled her thumb up, over the soft lower lip and then pushed.
Will you let me, she thought. Will you submit.
Its soft mouth opened and Impa Iro set her thumb on its tongue and held it with a thrill of low triumph.
You're mine.
The high took several seconds to fade. Eventually, she had to let go. Eventually, she cradled the Deity's jaw in her hand instead, her wet thumb against that red-marked cheek instead and she cleared her throat.
"If you agree, we can begin work on the limits of your abilities next week," she said, when her voice was once more under her control. "We only need to assure the safety of our agents. Can you do that, Honoured One?"
White eyes opened again, gazing flatly up at her from an impassive face. There was a shiver up her spine, but no more: she was used to handling dangerous things. This was just one more. It could be handled, molded, just as her own flesh.
"I swear," the Deity said, and its head remained loose in her hand.
She didn't want to let go. She wanted to hold this power in her hands all day, to revel in her victory but—there were cameras, and the damage to her project to consider. All other thoughts must wait; must, practically speaking, remain thoughts.
But those were certainly easy to take with her. She stepped back and bowed shallowly to her charge, to that great power before her to acknowledge its submission.
"Rest, then," she said. "You will be released once the day's regimen is complete."
The Deity nodded shallowly back: it could hardly do more. Then those white eyes dropped, going half-lidded and quiet once again, its neck extended to ease the pinch of the barbs inserted into its skin.
Impa Iro took another long look at her charge bowed before her, and finally walked away with a little lift in her step.
Victory was sweet.