003 ⚘ journal entry

[skyglider]

Sender: Link
To: Everyone
Subject: Hello.

[The Story Eater has been vanquished and most of the elements it summoned have disappeared. But caches of Malice that appeared during the event have stubbornly remained around Reverein. Link isn't much of a journal post person, but he decides to say something anyway.

First, an imprint of a picture appears, along with an arrow pointing directly at it and a big, bold X.]

Don't touch the purple stuff.

[... That's it, that's the post.]

Comments

[refantasma]

Not any more. For the moment anyways.

[He tries not to yawn, fails.]

There'll probably be a battle next summer, too. Pretty much there's one every summer since I came out of the Lotus Hotel and Casino.

[skyglider]

Every summer... [Goddess, but that does sound exhausting. Link has spent no small share of time preparing to face his destiny, shoring up defenses for the war to come against Calamity Ganon...but starting that process anew every year?]

That sounds tiring.

[refantasma]

Yeah, it is.

[He sighed and stood, a bit wobbly on his feet.]

Three summers, three battles. This last one nearly killed me.

[skyglider]

[Link watches him quietly, eyes flicking for a moment to where the Malice begins to pool up against the obsidian wall.]

Are there many great evils in your world?

[His frame of reference for conflict is somewhat narrow, in this way. He knows that in ancient times, there were sometimes struggles for power...but with the Calamity shadowing their entire kingdom, the peoples of Hyrule had found ways to unite in many recent times.]

[refantasma]

[Nico takes a moment before answering.]

It depends on how you define evil. It's... mostly anger and pettiness—a cycle of vengeance.

[skyglider]

[A cycle of vengeance. That is something he thinks he can understand -- the rise and fall of ill wills is something with which Hyrule is very familiar, after all. Calamity Ganon may be an ancient evil, but it is not an unfamiliar one.]

I'm sorry. That's no easy thing to deal with.

[refantasma]

It's family. [He shrugs] Family is messy. Especially ours.

[skyglider]

[Family... Link looks a little uncertain, at that. He remembers very little of his own family --he probably remembers Princess Zelda's exacting father much more, at this point-- so he has little frame of reference for it.]

I see.

[refantasma]

Yeah.

[He doubts it, being related to gods is strange.]

My Father and his brothers and sisters raged war against their father and his brothers in vengeance for eating them and ended up ruling the world. Their grandmother didn't like that, so she declared war on them.

And thousands of years later, my father's father came back and tried to reclaim the world.

[skyglider]

[Ah-- that's right. Percy had described something with similar strangeness -- being directly related to gods and the like. He didn't realize there could be so many. Princess Zelda, too, is a direct descendant of the Goddess Hylia...but that sounds different, in some way. Less personal.]

So the family is the war. That's a lot.

[refantasma]

It is. I think we'll be okay. For a few thousand years anyway.

[skyglider]

Hm. Long enough for a little rest, hopefully.

[There's some levity in his tone; a few thousand years certainly would be more than "a little" rest, for most.]

[refantasma]

I'll be long dead by then. I might still be around, helping my father in the Underworld.

But hopefully, it won't happen.

[skyglider]

[A nod.] Hopefully indeed.