Uneasy Lies the Chosen of Farore

The Sword that Seals the Darkness

"Someone drew the sword? Today?"

"Today, your highness. His name is Link."

Silence. Then "That's... a common name, isn't it? There are at least two in the royal guard. Which one?"

"Not the guard." Pause. "This one is a lifer, but no longer active duty. He got himself injured a few years ago. Now he teaches."

The queen stared across her desk at the wall. Silence stretched out between the two of them like a cat.

"He is sharing his experience with the recruits," her captain offered.

"So, how old is he, exactly, then?" She asked. She rubbed her temples and closed her eyes, watching the whole situation worsen in front of her.

Nothing.

"Has this blade ever chosen someone over the age of 18? I thought the whole reason we present very young boys to it was because it chooses the very young?"

Her captain drew a breath and stopped whatever he was going to say.

She repeated herself. "How old is he?"

"He is forty-two, your highness."

Forty-two.

"Can I ask what a forty-two year old man was doing when he got his hands on the Master Sword?" She slid her face into her hands, bracing for impact.

"He was leading the group presenting to the sword. He has brought children to the sword annually for the past three or four years."

"Surely he was presented when he was younger- he must tug on that sword every year! Why now?"

"Today, it seems, the blade found him worthy."

*********

It sounded so easy. The sword knew what it wanted, and when that person wrapped a hand around the hilt, it would slide out of the pedestal. That's the moment where all is right. More than right. It's a moment where one touches something sacred.

No living person has ever actually seen this moment, of course. Some theorized that the odd sword in the stone was just a trick and couldn't actually be removed. No one had seen it so much as wiggle in centuries.

It certainly hadn't budged for him when he was sixteen. He remembered the hope he'd felt, the but what if- and then he'd touched the cobalt blue hilt, wrapped his fingers around it and pulled and... nothing. It may as well have been sculpted straight from the stone.

So. Not the chosen hero. But no one else in that group had been. Or any group after that in the 26 years since. Everyone hopes, sure, but in the end it was just a story.

Right?

Two days ago everything was normal. The day was sunny, but not too warm, and the view on the plateau was amazing as always. Camp had been set in a clearing at the foot of the hill top where the Temple of Time stood. Despite the relatively low ground, the outline of Hyrule Castle could be seen in the distance, its delicate towers and spires giving the structure a fairy tale feel from this vantage. The ominously named Death Mountain,apparently once a very active volcano rose high on the horizon, the tallest peak visible.  The southern view was blocked by the rise of the hill where the temple sat, but you could see trees on the terraced landscape of Faron if you squinted a little. The temple itself sat quiet and serene, built in another age and no one was sure what purpose it had served originally.

He had been a teenager the first time he'd been here, with his entire life before him. Things had not gone exactly as he might have planned, but overall, life hadn't been that bad. He had been a soldier in a time of peace and that was fine. He'd seen places in Hyrule and met people he would not have otherwise. Then he'd been called back to central Hyrule to oversee training young recruits. He'd been doing it for the past few years, and that was fine, too.

It had been a good life so far. And then, when he retired, maybe he'd go back to that fishing village on the beach. And maybe, if she was still around and interested, he'd court up that girl, seriously this time. Though he supposed by then she would be a woman, and an old one, at that. That would be ok. More than ok.