The Servant

This is an AU that draws on various different Zelda games. I wrote it because one day I realized that Zora Link wears a collar, and I thought it might be interesting to come up with a story where that meant something. Certain bits of this story are drawn from my own personal experience, but I may not answer if you ask me which ones.

Also, a note that will be slightly relevant later: Link's birthday is on the summer solstice.

The entire story is written, but I'll be posting updates about once a week. Feedback and other comments are very welcome, please don't hesitate to leave them!

One

An Ending and a Beginning

The black tower loomed over the ruined town. Dark clouds gathered around it, making the day into night. Thunder boomed somewhere in the distance, and lightning flickered, though no rain fell. Rain would have been a relief, given the sweltering, muggy heat of the day.

There was no one there, though, to pray to the goddesses for rain. The town was empty, its inhabitants all long since fled. Most of the buildings were shattered, and those that still stood had empty, gaping windows. It had been years since anyone had lived here. In all the desolation, however, there was one single sign of life. A lone form moved through the tumbled rubble. A young man, perhaps fourteen years old, stumbled through the ruins. His clothing was tattered and torn, his body bruised and scraped, and his wide blue eyes were blank and empty, staring at the world he moved through without truly seeing it. He carried nothing with him, neither food nor equipment. There was a sword sheath at his back, but it was empty.

He made his slow way through the town, stumbling frequently. Once he glanced behind him, at the tower there, and a flicker of some dark, haunted emotion showed briefly in his empty eyes. He did not look back again.

The reddish glow of the setting sun showed briefly below the clouds just as the boy finally reached the town wall. It too was shattered and broken, the gate that had once guarded it lying in pieces, and the drawbridge beneath it broken as well. The youngster made the difficult climb across the ruined remains of it with surprising grace, given how much he had stumbled earlier. For a moment something else flickered in his eyes, something of skill and determination, but it too died.

He stood, then, on the far side of the moat, and surveyed the open field beyond. In an instinctive gesture, his hand reached back to touch the hilt of a sword that wasn't there. He gave a little shudder when he touched only the empty sheath. He stood for a moment, uncertain. Then he unbuckled the baldric that held the sheath and let it fall to the dusty ground.

Still not looking back, he began to walk, slowly and painfully, away from the empty sheath, the empty town, and the dark tower that brooded above all. Soon he had vanished into the restless, flickering night.