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There’d been no warning of the danger he'd been in, as usual. If there was ever any warning, Wild was typically able to get out of the way and prevent a tragedy before it ever happened.
This time there had been no warning. Moblins shouldn’t be able to move through a forest silently. It wasn’t natural.
But natural or not, apparently this particular moblin was capable of doing so. Wild hadn’t even heard the crackle of dead leaves under its heavy feet. One moment, it hadn’t been there, the next, it was. One moment, he’d been happily chatting with Sky, the next, he’d had an ax buried in his chest.
“No!”
“Wild!”
“Oh, gods.”
The horrified cries from his brothers were lost on Wild. His entire world narrowed down to the blinding pain that twisted through his chest. Every movement he made caused the searing feeling to rip through his chest, but his body kept twitching, his muscles spasming out of his control. His eyes remained open but they were glassy and unseeing as he was flooded with pain and adrenaline.
Something shifted, and he could feel his back lift off the forest floor. Blinded by the pain, Wild couldn’t tell what was going on. He had barely been able to register the Moblin before it had struck him, leaving him confused.
The other heroes had no such impairments. They could see the scene in front of them in horrifying detail, and just for a moment, they were too shocked to move.
The moblin, taking advantage of their shock, took the opportunity to try and get his ax back. It tried to lift the weapon, but snorted, confused to find extra weight added to its weapon. The ax was still embedded in Wild’s rib cage, and pulled Wild along with it as it was raised, dragging the champion into the air as the moblin hoisted it up.
The moblin shook the ax, trying to dislodge the champion from the end of it. When that didn’t work, it simply slammed the ax back down to the ground.
Wild, who had been horrifyingly silent until then, and limp like a puppet with cut strings, let out a guttural howl as he was slammed back into the ground.
The movement finally pulled the weapon free from his chest. He lay limply where he landed and didn’t move. He didn’t even bring a hand to his chest to feel the wound. To the other heroes, it didn’t even look like he was breathing with how unnaturally still he was.
The sight of Wild’s strange stillness snapped them out of their shock. This was so wrong. The champion was always moving, always fluttering about camp, fiddling with something in his hand, always rocking back and forth or trying to wander off into the woods. He wasn’t supposed to be as still as he was now.
The moblin never stood a chance, not when confronted with six heroes intent on revenge.
Because what else could it be but revenge? Hyrule and Warriors ran to help Wild immediately, but there would be nothing they could do. They all knew it. The champion’s chest was cleaved in two. His rib cage was split wide open, exposing his guts to the chilly evening air. Blood was already pooled around him freely.
Even a fairy wouldn’t help him now. It would take a miracle, an intervention from Hylia or one of her descendants for Wild to survive now. And the goddess had never been that kind to them before.
Wild’s heart was already stuttering and slowing when Hyrule and Warriors reached him. The shouts from around him were muted and quickly fading further. The pain had also mostly faded.
It left him feeling numb and cold. So cold, it nearly burned. If Wild could move he would be shivering violently, but all his muscles had gone slack, and he couldn’t even twitch a finger.
Distantly, Wild could feel the familiar warmth of Hyrule’s magic trying to reach him, but it only felt like a pinprick of warmth in the face of the overwhelming cold. The magic was like a fleck of ash from a distant campfire landing on his skin in the midst of a blizzard. It would never be enough to save him from that deadly freeze, not with how cold he’d gotten
The last thing he processed before he slipped away into the unforgiving darkness was the gruesome gurgling sound of a moblin’s throat being torn apart by a set of vicious wolf teeth.
It was so cold.
Some part of him that was hidden away in the back of his mind knew that this cold was familiar and it was temporary. That part of him knew that everything would be okay, that the cold would pass and he would be fine.
But that part of him was distant and quiet, and all he could focus on was the freezing temperature that stiffened his body and spread ice crystals through his blood.
He couldn’t even feel the speck of warmth that came hand-in-hand with Hyrule’s healing anymore. All that remained was the cold and an empty expanse of darkness. He felt weightless, like he was drifting in the currents of a vast ocean.
Despite this strange weightlessness, the surrounding darkness dragged him. limbs. Even if he had wanted to move, there was no way he would be able to. Every part of him felt heavy, like it would take all his strength to even open his mouth.
The stillness would almost be soothing, if it hadn’t been for the neverending cold.
It seemed like eons before the cold and darkness fell away, but eventually, inevitably, they did. He didn’t notice at first, when the cold eased and the darkness lightened. It took him a while to register the change, but soon there was no denying it. The change came faster after he noticed it. The warmth was almost scorching and the light almost blinding after the eternity he had spent in the quiet darkness.
Just when he thought he could bear it no longer, the warmth and light coalesced onto his chest. It truly burned now, so brightly that it felt like he was crumbling into ashes. Then suddenly, for the first time in what felt like years, he could see something again.
Flames.
Beautiful teal flames surrounded his chest and lapped at his flesh. It reignited forgotten pain as it worked. Slowly, the torturous fire forced flesh and bone to melt back together and coaxed torn skin to crawl across open wounds.
He should panic at the sight of it. But somehow, instinctively, he knew that this was something good. This was what was meant to happen. Everything would be okay, and he would survive this.
The weightless feeling was now gone, and so was the heaviness that had dragged at his limbs. He could move freely now, feeling like he had suddenly regained control of his body after being paralyzed.
The knowledge that this was ultimately a good thing didn’t prevent him from being affected by the agony of it. The unnatural feeling of being stitched back together when he shouldn’t have been was excruciating. He felt his back arch as his body instinctively tried to get away from the flames that devoured him, felt his eyes roll into the back of his head, and felt his mouth open in a keening scream.
He couldn’t hear his screams above the roaring of the flames that ate away at the wound on his chest, but he knew he must be howling in pain. Another eon seemed to pass as his body was slowly repaired, and all he could do was cry out in agony.
Suddenly, the distant feeling of a hand cradling his face came to him. The hand was cold, as cold as the dark void had been. But in the face of the flames, that cold was now welcome. He couldn’t bring himself to open his eyes to see the person who offered him comfort, but he turned his head into the palm of the hand. The cold fingers stroked his cheek lovingly.
He still heard nothing, despite knowing he was still screaming.
Then there was a pop, like a sudden change in air pressure, and it was all gone.
It was all gone. The dark, the light, the cold, the warmth, the pain, the fire, the feeling of the hand cradling his face. It was all gone.
It was replaced by the feelings of cold tears on his face and warm blood pooling beneath him which made him desperately want to take a bath and scrub his skin until it was raw. He realized he could hear again, and with that realization came the horrible sound of a high-pitched wail, like a child in pain, filtered into his comprehension.
He was startled when he realized the sound was coming from him. That was him screaming. He stopped, snapping his mouth shut. His chest heaved as he desperately tried to catch his breath.
Blindly, he rolled onto his side and pushed himself up as far as his aching muscles would allow. He waited for the pain to return with his movements, but, no. There was nothing.
He felt perfectly fine.
He whimpered in confusion. Where was the pain? There had been so much pain not a moment ago, and now it was all gone. Why? What had happened?
Pressure on his shoulder made him yelp instinctively, pulling on his strained vocal cords. It pushed him back down onto his back, and he didn’t have the strength to fight it. It moved from his shoulder to his chest, feeling the area where his pain had been moments before. He whined in protest, despite his strained voice.
Unexpectedly, his whine invoked a response. He was surprised to hear something other than himself. It took him a moment to understand what the voice was saying, but eventually, his scattered mind was able to pull together enough to understand the voice.
“Shhh, it’s okay, I just need to look…” The voice trailed off as the hands prodded around his stomach and ribs. Despite the sensitivity of his newly formed skin, he relaxed slightly, letting the hands feel as much as they’d like. The voice was soothing, making something inside of him curl up and purr contentedly at hearing it. This voice was safe, comforting, family. He was in no danger here.
The hands felt around for a moment, more, dragging through the blood that still coated his skin. When the hands stopped, the same voice spoke again, sounding baffled and not insignificantly upset. “It’s gone.”
Its words cause a ripple of shocked and confused murmurs from around them. A new voice coming from near his head made him jerk in surprise “What?!”
“Shhh!” The first voice came again. ”Not so loud. He still doesn’t look well, no matter what happened.”
There was a pause, before-
“Wild?”
Oh… That was right, wasn’t it?
He was Wild, wasn’t he? He was Wild, and before that, he had been Link. That was who he was. He’d forgotten it in the midst of the pain. But the voice speaking his name pulled those memories back into focus.
The hands returned, but now they cupped his face. These hands weren’t cold, like the hand that had touched him when he had been floating and lost. They were warm. So perfectly warm. “Wild, can you hear me?” Wild didn’t want to move, but the voice sounded so worried that he forced himself to twitch his head up and down ever so slightly.
“Good, that’s good-” The voice trembled before cutting off with a choked gasp. The sound made him frown, his eyebrows drawing together out of concern. That was a bad sound. The voice shouldn't be making that sound. Wild wanted to make whatever was bothering it better. He needed to make it better.
With all of his might, he managed to pry his eyelids open. He braced for any pain that might come from the movement, but none came. In fact, there’d been no pain at all since he woke up. It startled him to realize this. He’d spent so long in pain while he had floated in the void that it was strange to finally be without it.
It was still difficult to move, but it wasn’t painful anymore to try.
When he blinked away the dampness in his eyes- he’d been crying?- a face swam into view above him. Curly brown hair, heavily freckled skin, bright green eyes flecked with gold. He knew this face.
Hyrule. The name came to him easily, and he almost smiled at the sight of the other hero. But then he saw the agony on his brother’s face, and the beginnings of his smile slid off his face.
The sight of tears and blood on Hyrule's face made him try to sit up, try to reach out and offer comfort. Why was Hyrule upset? What happened? Why was he crying?
Despite his tears, Hyrule once again forced Wild to lay flat, thwarting his efforts to push himself up. The traveler gasped out between tears. “Wild, Wild, Wild…” It sounded like a prayer, like a mantra. Wild didn’t know what Hyrule was pleading for. Wild would give it to him in a heartbeat if he could. Anything to stop the tears.
Hyrule doesn’t seem to be able to get anything else out. He ended up simply burying his face in Wild’s chest. The action finally brought to Wild’s attention the fact that his chest was bare, and his tunic was laying in tattered rags around him. He was also soaked in blood, with no obvious source of it on him or Hyrule.
Slowly, things start to come back to him.
The moblin.
The ax.
The feeling of his ribcage being split in two.
Wild shuddered at the memory of the pain, but that at least explained what happened and why he was laying on the ground, covered in blood.
Mipha’s grace must have been activated. He let his head drop back down to the ground. He had only a few experiences with the power Mipha had left behind, but even so, he knew he wasn’t going to be getting up or walking any time soon. Mipha’s grace repaired him, healed his wounds, and replenished his blood, but it also took a great deal of his energy to do so.
Both magically and physically, he was going to be exhausted and weak for at least the next day as he regained the lost energy, and during that time it would be difficult to do anything. Mipha’s grace always left his mind confused for a while. His brain kept trying to search for the source of the pain that was no longer there, and stalling when it realized that there was no pain.
Hyrule made a quiet noise of protest when WIld let his head hit the ground none too gently. Before the traveler could do anything, Wild felt strong callused hands start to lift him.
He flailed for a moment before a second familiar voice filtered through his consciousness. ”It’s just me, cub. Hold on for a second.” Twilight’s hands lifted him out of the bloody mud he’s been laying in and placed him in Twilight’s lap. The rancher’s grip wasn’t gentle. It was firm, not giving Wild an ounce of leeway to wiggle away. (Not that Wild had the energy to do so, or even wanted to.)
The rancher cradled Wild close to him, rocking him like a child and burying his face in Wild’s hair. In any other situation, Wild would protest the treatment, but he was too tired and too sore, and honestly wanted the comfort as much as Twilight did. All he could do in return was tuck his face into the crook of Twilight’s neck.
Wild was certainly ruining Twilight’s tunic, but they were all used to getting blood stains out of clothing. Not that the blood covering Wild made too much of a difference anyways, Wild realized. Twilight was already covered in blood. It wasn’t his though, This was the black blood of a monster. It covered his mouth and jaw, and streaked down the upper half of his tunic.
Wild knew that there would be questions. He couldn’t hear the other heroes, couldn't see them either with his face hidden in Twilight's neck, but he knew they were there. They wouldn’t leave him, not after what they had been made to witness.
(To be fair, Wild didn’t know what they had seen. He’d never used Mipha’s grace in front of anyone before, so he had no way of knowing what it looked like from the outside perspective. But he doubted, based on how sore his throat always was from screaming afterward, it wasn’t a pleasant thing to witness)
He knew that there would be more tears and screaming before this was all settled. There would be accusations and anger and sadness. But for now, he let himself ignore the rest of the world, finding what comfort he could in one of his brother’s arms.