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“This one is Queen Zelda’s Lace, you can tell because the stem isn't purple.” Hyrule pulled the tiny white blooms closer, allowing his companion to see the colorless veins and compare them to another plant.
Four drew in his brow and looked closely at the stems, his hand was twitching and his left pupil dilated ever so slightly for a moment. He could see the understanding dawn on Four’s face. When he bent down to look closer, the afternoon sun peeking under the trees fell on his left eye, making the blue iris glow many colors like topaz in the sun.
“So the purple is the poison, then?” Four murmured half to himself. Somehow, he managed to sound as though he hadn’t almost shoved an entire hemlock plant in his mouth not a minute before. Seriously, Hyrule thought, no matter how cool-headed he appeared, the smith was absolutely insane sometimes.
He nodded. “In this case, yes. Although I wouldn’t eat this plant unless you’re running out of options for food. It’s still easy to mistake for hemlock.”
There was a heavy pause.
“Hypothetically…” Four started, looking up at the yellowing sky and then back to the forest floor. Ah, Hyrule knew that look. The corner of the smith’s mouth twitched up the tiniest amount.
The traveler laughed. “It doesn't take much, even a handful of the leaves are lethal. They hide best in soups because they taste a little like parsnips.”
Four huffed, sheepish that he was that easy to read. “Do I want to know how you know what it tastes like?”
“Probably not.”
“Fair. Do I want to know how you know the correct dosage?”
“There’s an Evil cult after my blood, some of the achemen disguised as people, I caught one putting a few hemlock leaves in my tea and swapped our cups.”
That earned him a concerned glare. “...What did we say about casually revealing distressing information about your life?”
“Sorry.” He scratched the back of his head. “I should also mention that you eat the root of the lace. It’s a wild carrot of sorts.”
He didn’t need to look up to know Four’s cheeks were strikingly red, it was palpable in his tone.“You didn’t think to mention that earlier?” He gritted out.
Hyrule clutched a hand over his heart and stared at Four. “How was I supposed to know you were going to shove a hemlock plant down your throat? Why in the name of Nayru did you do that?”
“Nayru had nothing to do with it, clearly.” Muttered the smithy. He sounded even more exasperated with himself.
O-kay. It was time to change the subject. The traveler looked around the clearing and spotted a small patch of soapweed. Perfect! “Let’s wash our hands, it’ll be supper somewhat soon.” Supper would not be for another half hour and they both knew that. Nonetheless, he yanked the yucca out of the soil and tore out a root. Smelling it, he checked that it was actually soapweed.
Four was looking at him funny. Oh, he probably uses weird merchant’s soap too . “These roots make soap for us.” Hyrule clarified.
The odd look on Four’s face did not leave. “Oh, why do you need soap? We aren’t doing dishes.”
Now hold up, Hyrule thought. “Don’t you wash up before supper?”
“No? I wipe off my hands when I leave the forge for dinner, I guess. Why do you need to wash your hands?”
The next fifteen minutes passed in a blur as Hyrule went on a rant about ‘soap is a luxury you shouldn’t take for granted’ and ‘how do you not have some kind of poisoning from all the metals you use’ and ‘this is why there were so many Din forsaken Plagues’ among other things. Four cycled through looking sheepish, indignant, exasperated, and fascinated about three times. During all of this they had walked to the nearby stream and washed their hands with the Yucca soap.
“How is it that I use soap and you don’t?” Hyrule finally asked, after taking a moment to cool down from his rant. That was a good question, seeing as one of their worlds was a post-apocalyptic wasteland and it wasn’t Smithy’s.
Somewhat certain he was no longer in danger of being dumped in the stream and sanitized, Four put on his trademark ‘cool and collected look™’. Even now it was fascinating to Hyrule how for all his complex mannerisms, none of Four’s moods were any less authentically Four . It showed especially in the confident way held himself, which also happened to drive Legend insane whenever his short jokes were treated like compliments. For these reasons and more, Hyrule never fully shook the sense of awe he felt when he first met the hero. Even now, knowing just how much of a rabid boko he could be, the traveler felt no less reverence for the smithy. Truthfully, each and every member of the group he’d found himself in held an aura of something that he admired so much.
“If I had to guess, it’s because you come centuries after me. Your country has probably seen more plagues than us.” Four said. “I mean, look at how much Cal’s world benefits from having such a long history. If the Calamity hadn’t evolved a hellish amount in 10,000 years they would have burned it to ash before it even thought about world domination.”
Ah, Calamity, the hero none of them had expected to meet after weeks as a group of nine. He and Wild were fundamentally the same, but it was clear to everyone that Cal had been given so much more to work with thanks to more time shenanigans. “That’s true,” Hyrule said. “I wonder if they’ve got a way to handle blood cults in Cal’s future.” Four didn’t even bother reprimanding him for the cult comment this time.
Instead, he whispered, “Actually, I heard Cal mention that their evil blood cult ended up joining forces with the army in the end—” He then interrupted himself with a small fit of laughter. Hyrule joined him.
“What? You’re serious?” He asked, voice still shaking with silent giggles. “I’m jealous! Imagine fighting alongside all those diaras from my world, I’d be unstoppable!” They howled with laughter now.
Once they finally caught their breath a considerable time later and had sat on the grass to watch the sky change color, Four asked a question. “How old were you, when you had to go on the run?”
“It would have been about a month after killing Ganon, so…” He started counting on his fingers, but never finished. “I’m not entirely sure. I think, yeah, today two years ago Impa said I’d come of age. That meant I was sixteen so if I’m eighteen now, I would have been—”
Four held up a hand while he interrupted.“Hold on, It’s your birthday?”
“Uh, I guess? I’m eighteen today so yes. It’s sort of weird, you know? To think that at one point I had to be born to exist.” It was at this moment that Hyrule’s intuition told him he had said the wrong thing.
Turning slowly, he faced an appalled smithy. “It’s your birthday?! You never said anything!” He screeched. His face was a surprisingly good impression of a screaming opossum.
“I didn’t remember until just now!” He defended.
“Unacceptable.” Okay, Four was mad now, time to change the subject again.
“Hey, the evening star is out.” He pointed to the speck of light just under the rising moon. The sky was still lavender, so he knew that was the right star.
“That’s a planet, Hyrule.”
“Oh, I wonder why they call it the evening star then.” Before Four could answer him, he pulled out his sketchbook and began sketching the curves of the crescent moon.
“Woah, you draw?” Four was admiring the landscape sketch on the other page of his book.
“Yeah, I haven’t been able to recently, but Legend bought me a new sketchbook. It’s super nice.” It had white pages, which Hyrule did not understand in the slightest.
Four hummed. “That was awfully nice of him.”
“Sure was, though when he gave it to me he more of chucked it at my head and said ‘here, maybe if you have something to do we won’t spend so much time looking for you in the woods, gremlin’.”
“Typical.”
“Yeah, that's Legend for you.”
Four looked contemplative for a moment. “You know, When we started on this journey, I thought it was a good idea to pack a bunch of colored pencils and learn to draw. It turns out I don’t like drawing that much, so they’ve been sitting in my pouch the whole trip.” They shared a look that was probably supposed to be meaningful, Hyrule couldn’t tell for sure.
“What’s a colored pencil?”
Four leveled him with a stare while he pulled out pencils of every shade from his pouch. He handed them to Hyrule and said nothing.
“Woah, do they actually draw in color? Like paint? That’s so cool smithy!” He tried to hand them back but Four refused.
“Happy birthday, kid.”
“What does that have to do with anything? Take your pencils.”
Four looked like he was going to explode. “I am giving you the pencils. Keep them.” Each word was enunciated like he was speaking a foreign language Hyrule barely understood. To be fair, Hyrule had no idea what Four was trying to explain..
He drew a blank. “Uh, thanks? Er, yeah, thank you so much... But what do birthdays have to do with anything?”
The smithy just sighed. “Come on, let’s head to camp so the others can explain.”
::::::::::
With the death of the sun, he felt the flood of dark force ooze over the forest like a murky fog. His veins practically begged to let loose the building magic within his bones. Not yet , the Shadow reminded himself. Even with the magic relics he now possessed, It was imperative that the natural magic of the land did most of the work to ensure it could not be traced. Instead, the mirrors channelled the flow of energy, allowing him to hold ten times what a typical twili might. His power was palpable now, and by keeping the Spirit of Courage out of his way he almost had the fused shadow in his possession.
When the twilight faded, he began to pour the magic back into the soil, into the bones of fallen creatures, the specters of restless souls, and the blackened flesh of his allies. Frost tore at his watery core as the magic flowed from his hands and chest. A cry of triumph erupted from him when the last of his army stood and saluted. Even now, he felt the reservoirs of his magic overflowing. Forty revived monsters should be enough to distract Courage for far longer than he needed, so he could take his sweet time.
A howl of sorts, many animalistic cries more like, erupted in the distance.
“IT’S YOUR BIRTHDAY?!!!!!???” Rang clear through the forest and over the shuffles and grunts of the Shadow’s new puppets. A cloud of startled birds could be made out in the darkness to the East of his camp, forming a shape like an explosion.
By Oshus, what was that?