Forged in Malice

Chapter 8

Link lets out a groan as his body falls back against the sandy shore of Lanayru Bay, feeling exhausted after clearing the beach of annoying octorocks, lizalfos, and other monsters he found within the area. It wasn't just physical exhaustion, either, but his mind has been rather restless as of late. Unsure of where this entire mess all started to cause Zelda this much stress, to have her snap at him seemingly so quickly, and for her to choose such harsh words on top of it all.

Perhaps it began when he revealed his newest ability almost 3 weeks ago. Everyone was quite shocked and almost horrified to learn that malice was residing in Hylia's Champion. Zelda, most of all, seemed to take the news worse than anyone else as her face paled and she started muttering something underneath her breath. She never repeated herself more clearly when Link questioned it, and due to her shaken reaction, he didn't bother asking again. This was also the time when Purah and Symin explained their lack of progress on their end, their experiments ending in failure one after another as well as Zelda's shift in behavior because of it. Purah speculates that due to possessing Hylia's blood, the princess reacts rather negatively around malice. Her only clear evidence was how angry Zelda became after their latest experiment with mice and malice.

From what the pair of scientists said, Zelda had been running the latest batch of experiments nearly all day, only to continue to come up empty handed in the end. Link was rather familiar with Zelda being frustrated, recalling a few distant memories during his journey that the princess wasn't very fond of him in the beginning of their friendship. Apparently that hatred was only a fraction of the "wrath of the goddess" as Symin puts it lightly when describing the rage Zelda exhibited. The triforce glowing on her hand, her green eyes turning sharp and cold as she stares at malice they carefully collected. The sticky, black substance tries to spread and ooze out of its containment before it suddenly disintegrates into a shower of golden particles with a snap of the princess' fingers. Purah steps in, in complete shock and anger for all their hard work might as well have vanished with that malice. Symin believed that if Purah didn't speak up and snap Zelda out of whatever state she was in, their research papers might have been destroyed along with the malice.

Since then, Zelda has been reduced to extremely limited contact with any malice, which is now kept outside of the lab and away from Hateno as Symin insisted that the children would be nosey if they placed it too close to the village. With this change in her behavior, and the knowledge that his powers were somewhat connected with malice, it would make sense that she would snap at him from that fact more, but her choice of words felt more personal than just blind rage.

After his first visit, Link would return more frequently to help Purah and Symin with collecting data from him, as well as having him handle the malice experiments more frequently since he was already contaminated with the stuff and Symin didn't believe it would make Link's condition any worse if he was exposed to more malice in such small quantities. They also learned after conducting more scans on the knight, the strange readings from before were much stronger now. Once again, Zelda was not fond of this news, but nobody was happy about it to begin with.

Purah suggested letting Link walk through the village in order to test Symin's hypothesis, about Link being some succubus, with the Sheikah man himself accompanying him to observe. Since neither Symin and Purah were able to be affected by him, and it's assumed at this point that Zelda's goddess blood was the only other form of immunity from such effects, they needed outside help for this. Since he had been pretty isolated from other people, and nearly forgotten the incident with Paya, Link didn't think it would be too bad and that people would just notice him a little more than usual when he walked through Hateno. Oh was he so wrong.

Yes, he was right to assume people would notice his presence in town, but he didn't expect to draw in a crowd so quickly. Link would've thought this was just some hero's welcome, but he hadn't done anything so heroic for Hateno since defeating the Calamity. It was only when the crowd of people were getting far too close to him when he realized his mistake. Link only faintly remembers someone trying to wrap their arms around him from behind, other stranger's hands grabbing his own in this moment of vulnerability as a tall man had grabbed his chin and gently lifted it to gaze into Link's eyes as the man said something. At that point, Link wasn't able to focus on much of anything other than the sudden rush of adrenaline. The Hylian snapped out of whatever strange daze he ended up in, freeing one of his hands and blindly tapping away at the slate in order to escape quickly from that situation.