Unravel | Ghiralink

VIER

Hey!
I finally have an idea about the story's direction and it'll be hopefully a long journey.

Enjoy!

He stayed until Sunday evening with his friends on the surface, and honestly he was glad he did so. All the stress crumbled down and he even forgot the crippling anxiety for a moment.

He stayed at the inn since Zelda and Groose didn't have any space for a fourth person inside their small hut but Link didn't care. He spent almost every second in the small village, meeting the people there, admiring that the population even grew since his last visit. The village was thriving.

Merchants were selling items, a potion maker was doing her business, even a local healer has his own small hut. Shops were spread over the land. It wasn't big but it sure wasn't small either, maybe it was as big as Skyloft, Link didn't know. But he liked it. He could almost imagine living down here together with them.

~~~

On Sunday evening, after he bid his goodbyes at Zelda, Groose, and Phoshe, he visited one of the bird statues near the village to return to the city in the sky.

As the blonde-haired boy approached the bird statue, he turned around once again, his gaze lingering on the entrance of the village longingly. He sighed and shook his head before turning back.

And then something in the corner of his eyes caught his attention. He spun around again with a startle in his body, the anxiety suddenly at its peak. He frowned again, shaking his head. He was being paranoid.

He didn't just saw a flash of red in the forest, rushing around the trees.

Hastily he said his prayers and the airflow catapulted him into the sky.

Link swore to himself that he wouldn't visit the surface so soon again.

~~~

Staying busy always helped him to forget his problems.

Maybe that wasn't the healthiest coping mechanism out there but it worked for him at least.

That morning he prepared his next classes in combat. He put the wooden dolls up and prepared some shields as well as practicing swords at the side of the training grounds.

He felt the comfortable weight of his own sword and shield on his back. Still, even after eight years he never went out unarmed.

Suddenly he felt the urge to take out some energy. He only realized that his hand was lifting itself behind his back as he touched the hilt of his sword, unsheathing the legendary blade with ease and instinctiveness.

The first blow at the doll was vertical and he ducked as the doll's arms were swinging around. He used the blade as a shield to still the motion of the wooden dummy.

The next blow was horizontal. Despite the pure force behind the slash, the doll stayed almost still, just some sawdust landed on the grass.

The next two slashes were diagonal and the last was his vertical spin attack, performed with another use of his sword as a shield, grunting at the force of the doll, as the arm made contact with his blade, the shield on his back almost forgotten.

The doll tipped over, laying flat on the ground and Link prepared himself to do the fatal blow as images filled his mind.

His blade dropped to the ground with a thud as his hand shot up to his forehead with a pained hiss.

Screams of petrifying agony rang in his ears, making them twitch as he almost felt the motion in his arms of him piercing his sword through surfaces of diamonds.

He tried to shut the images out, to let them die down, but it was to no avail. Another scream filled his pointed ears, causing him to shut his eyes in fright.

...ch...

...ild...

He shook his head firmly as he opened his eyes again, fixing the wooden doll on the ground.

Distantly he heard the school bell ringing, as the first students stormed out of the building.

Pretending that nothing had happened, he again checked if the spells on the dolls were still intact so that they wouldn't be destroyed at all. He didn't have the money to renew them.

As the chattering behind him grew, he turned around, waited until the students fell silent again before he greeted his class with a smile on his lips.

'Today's class might be a bit different. Do you see the shields on the side? Go into groups of two. Each one of you will take a shield and a sword from the side. The rest will be like last time. Groups of two will get one wooden dummy. Now, start.'

While the students scurried to the side, Link put up the doll he had taken down earlier.

Two of his students were already waiting behind him as every other doll was already occupied. As Link finished preparing the dummy, he signed: 'Here you go', and both of them, he realized it were his best students Elena and Ram, hurried to practice the movements from last time.

Link smiled, taking mental notes as the students warmed themselves up. After a while, he clapped his hands three times loudly to get the class's attention.

'Shield practice is very important when it comes to combat. While it might seem cowardly hiding behind one, if your enemy takes a blow on you or throws something at you, you can parry it with ease. Parrying is important as it gives you time to find an opening in your enemy's defense and take them down easier. Now, let's start by doing the vertical blow as the dummies will move the most when doing so.'

He showed it once to all of them, slashing vertically at the wooden doll. The doll spun around wildly under his force and Link didn't have much time to actually pull up his shield but managed it nonetheless.

'See? This is how you do it.' He moved his hands in a sign that the students were now allowed to start.

Everything went smoothly. He was taking notes as he went from group to group, eyeing their movements, nodding here and there in approval.

He offered assistance where it took some time to get it right but in the end, every one of them managed to parry right at least once.

Link clapped again three times. 'That's enough for today, people. You've done great, next time I might even allow you to fight against each other.' He signed, a proud smile on his face as the students cheered in glee at that. He knew that they were waiting for that.

Suddenly his ears twitched violently as a movement in the corner of his eyes caught his attention. He turned right in time at Ram, who was standing with his back to the doll which was moving to get the sword from the ground to blow a fatal hit at the unknowing boy in front of him.

"Watch out!", Link screamed over the field, instinctively lifted his left hand and sent a blow of some kind of wind out of his palm to shove Ram out of the range of the dummy that suddenly became alive and ready to murder. He briefly noticed the faint glow on the back, but paid no more attention to it.

Instead, Link ran forward, already unsheathing his sword, blocking another blow of the dummy with his blade. The dummy lost its balance and to tip it over furtherly, he did his vertical spin attack. He succeeded, the doll now laying on the ground, strange dusty magic surrounding the shape of the figure, having its origin in its chest.

The blonde did a fatal blow knowing that the remaining bits of the spirit inside his sword would at least absorb some of the strangely familiar magic.

...ld

...ych...

The doll spasmed once, twice before it lost its life, the magic disappearing fully, leaving a wide-eyed Link behind.

'Class is dismissed. What happened was an accident, nothing more. Now leave.'