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Time wished that he’d listened to his gut.
A portal had dropped them off in Hyrule’s Hyrule that afternoon. It was a blighted land—wilted grass and trees, a dark sky, riverbeds empty of both fish and water. There wasn’t any civilization nearby, at least none that Hyrule disclosed, so the rest of the boys grumbled underneath the baking heat of the sun and slapped at mosquitos—the only thing that seemed to live in this particular section of the wasteland that was Hyrule—as Hyrule led them on towards “somewhere they could find some shelter until they figured out where they were going.” Time looked over them all, counting heads: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, himself making nine.
It had been a hard day—a hard week. Running from hordes too large and too dangerous to fight, little injuries and little arguments that piled on and on until all of the boys seemed like they’d shatter underneath them. Wild and Twilight walked apart, some spat about dinner the night before driving them away from one another. Legend hung at the back of the group, brooding over something Hyrule had said when they’d been first dropped into this world. Four seemed lost inside his head, so much so that Time had to occasionally prod at his back to keep him from going off of the trail or falling behind. Each time he just mumbled, swiped at his eyes, and corrected his course until he went off it once again. Sky’s near-permanent smile was absent from his face, and his expression was twisted into a tight frown. Even Wind and Warrior were silent, their usual banter absent from the air that seemed to drone and drone in a high-pitched whine. They'd all had a fight earlier that day, one that Time had stepped out just in time to miss, but it left the atmosphere tense and bitter.
As they walked, they were given a reprieve from the sun by dark clouds that rolled in from the south. Some of them seemed relieved; others, Legend particularly, flinched at the first frigid raindrops and the rumble of thunder in the distance. Time noted it.
“We’re close,” Hyrule promised. “Just a few more minutes out, and we can all take it easy for the night.”
“Where are we going, anyways?” Legend snapped from the back of the group. “We’ve been walking forever, and there’s still not a building in sight. Gonna park us under a tree or something? Got nothing better out here?”
“No, no.” Hyrule let out a little strained chuckle, like he was trying to play it off like a joke, but it was clear that the jab had cut him deeply. Time shot a disapproving glare at Legend, but he just rolled his eyes and looked away, crossing his arms over his chest. “There’s a cave ahead we can stay in while we wait for the storm to pass.”
“Cave?” some of the travelers sounded dubious.
“Yeah, just a cave, not some dungeon. I’ve stayed there many times—it’s perfectly safe, unless we run into some rogue Keese.”
Even that sounded like too much to deal with. But the rest of the boys’ protests petered off under the strengthening rain, and they trudged in miserable silence, scarves and sailcloths and cloaks held over their heads, until they reached the cave—a dark opening in a cliffside. As predicted, a few keese flew out to confront them, hissing and flapping their wings so loudly there seemed to be millions of them instead of just a few in an enclosed area. The boys dealt with them, then ducked into the dry cavern, complaining of aching joints and wet clothes as they started a fire and set down their equipment.
It was a convenient cave. Almost too convenient.
“When were you here, Hyrule?” Time asked, standing in the mouth of the cave as he did another headcount. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Good. “You know this place well?”
“Oh, just here and there,” Hyrule answered, looking up from setting out his bedroll. Time couldn’t help but notice that he and Legend had set up on opposite sides of the cave, as had Twilight and Wild, as had Warrior and Wind. Time would have to talk to each pair. But tomorrow. “It’s perfectly safe. There’s even an air draft up that a way, so if something did happen to block the opening, we can all still get out.”
If only that had been true.
That night, they all settled down to sleep, and it was peaceful for the first time in days. Unnaturally so. Time took first watch, and he sat facing the opening of the cave as his boys snored. Some of them, at least. Legend’s eyes shone from the opposite side of the cavern, and he seemed to get smaller with each concurrent flash of lighting, followed by an earth shattering peal of thunder. It was getting rough out there.
With the next rumble of thunder, Time stood and crossed to Legend’s side of the cave. The boy didn’t look up at him, so Time didn’t say anything as he lowered himself down next to him with a groan. Wind or Wild or Hyrule he could’ve broken with a simple “are you all right?” Sky or Warrior or Twilight or Four would’ve cracked under whatever horrible pun he managed to come up with in the moment. But this was Legend, so Time sat, and he waited for him to be the first to speak.
“They’re all just a bunch of kids, you know?” Legend mumbled into his knees at last.
“I know,” Time answered, because there was nothing else to say. They were, to Hylian standards, all still children.
“And I know that, and I still get surprised when they act like it. Wild was picking at Hyrule for not knowing how to read, and Wind joined in, and I just lost it on them. If you want to know what happened earlier,” Legend offered up. “Pissed Twilight off for yelling at his kid, and Warrior scolded the rest, and now everybody is mad at each other, apparently.” He buried his face into his knees, hugging his arms around his shins. “How do you do it? I just seem to treat them like they’re fully functioning human beings when they’re just little shits.”
“It’s an art.” Time said, “Doubt I would have found that balance without Malon. You know you aren’t much older than them yourself, you don’t have to be a leader.”
Legend looked like he was going to scoff and launch into some tirade about responsibility and the number of his quests, but a peal of thunder that seemed to shake the whole world cut him off. Instead he chuckled drily, dragging a hand up through his bangs. “Yeah, I guess… I just... this world and all... I'm supposed to be the hero before Hyrule... but..;”
The thunder was still rumbling, growing louder and louder, shaking the walls and the very air itself. Time and Legend looked at one another with wide eyes, realizing what was happening at the same time—an earthquake.
“Boys, get up!” Time shot to his feet, clapping his hands. Heads raised blearily, some of the travelers reached for their weapons. “We’ve gotta get out of—”
The ceiling exploded. Rocks fell down onto their fire, dust clouded the air, and everything was cast into darkness.
Screams followed Time into the darkness.
When he woke up sometime later, it was quiet, so quiet.
It was dark. For a moment, Time couldn’t tell if he’d opened his eye or not, met with such an inky blackness as he was. He blinked a few times, then, groaning, tried to raise a hand to wipe at his eyes. He couldn’t—it was stuck firmly at his side, weighed down by something pressing against his back.
Time furrowed his brow, closing his eye to think. His thoughts felt sluggish, dragging through molasses to reach him. There had been… a cave in? The boys had been situated towards the center of the cavern, sleeping soundly through even the largest peals of thunder outside. They hadn’t even been able to stand before the ceiling caved in. Legend… Legend had been just to his right, hadn’t he?
Time tried to draw a breath to call out to him, but something in his chest caught painfully, and he choked. He tried to move, but found that he couldn’t—his left side seemed to be pinned down to the floor of the cavern, and he realized then that he could feel nothing, nothing at all, on that side of his body. Not pain, not cold, not even pins and needles. The absence of half of his body unnerved him. He still had feeling in his right arm, though, and he could move it. Gasping shallowly for air, he grasped blindly with it, feeling around his surroundings blindly. Rock below him, rock to his left—had he been hit by a falling boulder? He’d still been wearing his armor, when the cave-in occurred. Had his armor protected him, and he was merely pinned? Or had the weight turned the metal of it into a weapon against him, which was why he couldn’t feel his own body? Finally, his fingers hit the soft texture fabric.
“Legend?” Time managed to draw enough breath to wheeze. There was no response. He gripped onto the fabric and pulled. “Legend!”
A hacking cough—the most blessed sound Time thought he’d ever heard—filled the air, and then that fabric pulled out of his grasp.
“Time?” Legend’s voice asked. “Time, where are you? What happened?”
“Down here.” Time shifted with a breathless groan, testing how trapped he was. Little bits of debris spilled down onto his head, clattering against the stone floor. He stopped moving before he brought whatever was holding up the rest of the cave. “I’m a bit… indisposed, at the moment.”
Legend gave a little inhale. It seemed so loud in the small place they were trapped in. “Is everyone else okay?”
Time… didn’t know. He went back in his mind to where everyone had been positioned, before the ceiling fell. Wild and Wind had been on the far side of the cave, sulking after their respective scoldings, apparently. Hyrule had been curled up near the back of the cave, his back turned to the fire. Twilight and Warrior and Sky each had been around the fire, dealing with their armor and swords. Four… he didn’t remember where Four had been. Why couldn’t he remember where Four had been.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine with himself sitting with Legend on the near side of the cave. Now reduced to two.
“GUYS!” Legend called. The sound reverberated around the tiny space they were in, making Time’s ears ring. “GUYS! Rulie? Warrior! Can anyone hear us? Are you guys okay?”
In the wake of his shout, stifling silence fell. No one called back.
“They… maybe they… got out,” Time managed to gasp out, though he didn’t believe it. It was getting harder to breath, and his side was starting to hurt now, with pins and needles so fierce that they made his teeth chatter. “Do you… do you have… have anything? A light… or… or something.”
“No, no, I don’t.” Legend sounded so small. “It was all on the other side of the cave, with the rest of my stuff. D-do you?”
“Same… same situation here… I’m afraid.” Time swallowed with difficulty. “I think… I think we’re going… going to have to wait for rescue.” The sentence left him completely out of breath, and he struggled to regain it. His own breathing seemed so loud in the small area they were trapped in.
“No, no no no no.” Time heard Legend’s breath speed up as he started to hyperventilate. “We can’t be trapped here, there must be something we can do, we have to make sure that the others are okay, if we just…”
He heard fabric shift as Legend stood, then a curse as he apparently hit the ceiling of their stone prison. Time just focused on nothing other than breathing. He could feel some sort of metallic liquid pooling in the back of his throat, and he determinedly swallowed it back down without giving it another thought.
“What if the others aren’t okay? What if they’re trapped too. What if some of them were killed? Time, we’ve gotta get out of here.” Legend paced and paced around their stone prison, growing more and more frantic. But eventually, he ran out of energy, and he collapsed back down to his starting position by Time’s head. “Are you okay? I-I can't see you.”
“I’m fine, don’t—” a wet cough interrupted him, and his mouth suddenly tasted coppery. He spat out the taste. “Don’t worry about me,” Time finished vaguely. It was a lie, they both knew it. “Just… just pinned.”
“O–okay. Time, I don’t know what to do. There has to be something that we can do, isn’t there?”
Time didn’t answer, and they didn’t speak to one another again. The silence was deafening, the air thin, the darkness all-consuming. Time was suddenly overcome with a feeling of helplessness to help his boys he knew must also be trapped. So Time laid his head down, listening for any sign of life, and he prayed they were all right.