Falling Worlds; Zelink, Modern Magic AU (The Legend Of Zelda)

Long Overdue (15)

Zelda couldn't tear her eyes away from the island in front of her. "They're beautiful," she said softly.

"Kae never told you, did he," Tel said as if she already knew the answer.

"Told me what?" she asked as she continued to stare.

"About all this," she said as she gestured to the sky around them.

Zelda turned her eyes to the woman. "He told me about Hyrule. And I believed in it too but... sort of like a kid believes in Santa. I never thought I would see it for myself," Zelda sighed, "I wish my father was here to see this..."

Tel frowned. "Santa?" she murmured, and then shook her head, "He has."

"What?"

"Well, not the view from this exact place, but I first met Kaebora in the sky."

She shook her head. "No that's... he would have told me," Zelda said as she bit her lip. "He taught me about magic and Hyrule... And if he had seen it himself, he would have told me... he... " she frowned. "Why wouldn't he tell me?"

"Kae always had his secrets."

Zelda turned to Tel and folded her arms. "Why am I here? I'm tired of questions; I want answers. I deserve answers."

Tel sighed. "You do," she said and then pressed her hand to her forehead. "They won't be happy if I give you them though."

"Well that's a good place to start," she said, "Who are they? Who are you?"

Tel shook her head and then held up her hands. "Alright, fine, I'll give what you're looking for," she said.

Zelda unfolded her arms, shocked. Wait what? "You're really going to tell me?" she asked.

Tel smiled. "Yes."

"Thank you!"

Tel sat down on the top of the grass covered fortress. "We're... Well we're what Hyrule would want to call traitors," she began.

Zelda sat down beside her and made herself comfortable, ready for the long overdue explanation.

"Hyrule isn't what it used to be. When I was young, the country was everything a country should have been." Tel looked down, sadness transforming her face. "But twenty years ago everything started to change; something within the royal family shifted." Tel bit her lip. "The great kingdom that once was... It became overtaken by greed, racism, and paranoia.

Anyone who even thought to argue with the shifting regime was imprisoned for treason, or killed in secret. It started off with minor changes. Things that most people wouldn't even notice... But year after year it only got worse... I left Hyrule six years ago, and ever since then I've been evading the Guard."

"I could never even imagine..." Zelda said.

Tel nodded slowly. "I was a... higher up, in the organization under the king's rule. I was soft one too many times with those I was supposed to be investigating as traitors. I got marked as one myself and had to flee for my freedom and almost surely my life. After three years of... surviving, I found-" Tel shook her head. "No, it was more like they found me. They called themselves survivors, they knew what I had done while I was in Hyrule, and some of them were the very people that I helped. The group that we make up is called The Remnant, because that's what we are; a remnant of Hyrule that just wants to be free," she sighed and started ripping up blades of grass. "But we ourselves aren't saints. And we sure as heck aren't free. We just have to hope that this place isn't discovered. We're far enough from Hyrule that we shouldn't be found but... Hyrule operates with secrecy, with spies, with people who can disguise themselves into organizations and pick them apart from the inside out. We have to be just as paranoid as the country we've escaped from."

Zelda was biting her tongue to keep herself from interrupting. She listened to the words but she didn't want to believe them. She'd always looked to the sky with the hope that Hyrule existed. That it was a nice place. A dream country floating invisibly in the sky...

Now she knew it existed, but that she had been wrong about it. She had been wrong to trust her father even. What are you doing? You're trusting this stranger over your own father? No way, I believe him until it's proven otherwise.

"So that's who we are. That's why we're here in this old place."

Zelda pulled her arms around herself. "... Can I trust in my father and in you at the same time?" she asked. "I want to be able to believe in your answers but... If it conflicts with what he always taught me, how can I just betray my trust in him?"

Tel smiled sympathetically. "Kae always wanted people to be happy. That was the best thing about him. He probably told you all those things about Hyrule because that was the Hyrule that he remembered, before it turned into a place unfit for a children's story."

"I guess that... makes sense," Zelda conceded. "But you never told me why I'm here."

"Actually..." Tel looked down. "That's because I don't know exactly why you're here," Tel replied, her shoulders giving a chagrined shrug.

"What?"

"I'm not in charge here, and they haven't told me much concerning you. It's not my place to demand information either," she said.

"Well, what do you know?"

Tel just shook her head. "What I do know, I'm not exactly authorized to say. I don't want to get in trouble here. A lot of them here hate me for being so involved in the ratting out of so called 'traitors', while others appreciate that I did what good I could in my bad situation. What I can tell you is that we found you in a motel when your knight was gone and brought you up here."

"How did you get me up here?" Zelda asked. "And what do you mean knight?"

"A few of them flew you up."

"What?"

"What."

Zelda scoffed. "What do you mean they flew me up? They didn't use a vehicle or something?"

"Anything bigger than a few of us would have been spotted by the people of Starfall."

So many questions were dancing around in her mind, and she wasn't sure which to ask first. "I'm lost... How did they fly?"

Tel's expression changed to one that matched Zelda's. "With their wings of course."

"Wings?? What?"

"Kae... Really didn't tell you that much at all," she said.

"He told me a lot!" Zelda argued, even though she felt a sense of betrayal. "It made more sense than what you're saying. You're telling me that people with wings flew my unconscious body up into the sky?" She scoffed again; hoping, more than believing, that Tel was just messing with her.

Tel smiled and nodded as she stood up and brushed the grass off of her legs. "I can show you."

"You can... wait... you have them too?"

"Yes."

Zelda's jaw dropped.

"We all do."