Too much of a good thing, won’t be good for long. Once power gets a taste for freedom it runs rampant, foaming at the mouth, hungry and devouring everything until nothing is left. Moderation and humility is required in taming this beast, though to tame a volcano is impossible. Mother Nature is its own force of wonder and power, and yet, the dragon who lives in the volcano is another matter entirely, and what world with heroes and princesses would be complete without said dragon in its true, though cliché, fiery form. But you can’t put this fire out with more firepower like the lizard king, born from a jet-black shell in damp darkness. Dragons are born of fire and feed on the blood fire burns, the darkness fire brings. Destruction in physical form and you’ve learned not to be so hot headed, and you take your time in preparing, banking on patience and skill to reveal the weakness disguised as strength because dragons are hasty and think highly of themselves and their power so as to ignore the chink in their armor, the spot that compromises the integrity of their supposed strength and invincibility because eternity is too long and immortality is overrated and lonely, and dragons are vain and greedy things, always craving more, and you notice the jewel it has decked itself out in, the way it glows menacingly in the reflection of the flames and heat, searing itself to armored scales, jutting out to indicate the perfect target, and you’ll aim, you’ll wait, you’ll shoot, and it is in fact the perfect point of impact. Disgraced and immobilized beneath your sword, the fire smolders, chars, grows cold and frail and disintegrates from the heat, consumed by its own desire for more. More. More ran itself out till nothing remained.
Inventory
Clothes
- Goron Tunic: The little goron boy admires how powerful you look in red, but that’s not just coincidence. Red is the color of fire the element you enjoy toying and teasing with a sense of weary precaution because you know it is capable of jumping the bounds in a second. Red is the color of war and blood like the war your mother and father died in, that you were saved from. Red is the color of danger and destruction like the destruction you have wrought on the dangerous monsters who have wrought their own form of destruction on the world. Red is the color of energy and power and strength and you have certainly gotten stronger not only physically, but magically, your power is outstanding, and the energy in which you battle and fight for peace and justice is next to none. Red is the color of the determination your jaw is permanently set in, the color of the passion, desire, and love you feel for all those hearts you’ve collected and cared for, as well as those whose hearts you have yet to see fully. When you slip this color over your head, onto your body, you become someone entirely different, the way you hold yourself is more confident, your boldness is brazen, your eyes are alight, and all that matters is that the world knows the extent of your power, the extent of your victories, the extent of your courage.
Weapons
- Megaton Hammer: This is strength in physical form because there is nothing soft about the solid metal, so heavy that it takes both hands, both arms, and all of your body to swing the full force of the weapon that can crack granite and completely annihilate anything softer with one strike. Power against power, but timing is everything and the weight slows you down, so you must be very careful in the way you hold it, swing it, ensuring your energy is well spent rather than wasted because it leaves so much of you open and vulnerable. Sometimes the most powerful weapons have the largest defects.
Special Items
- Fire Medallion: When it comes to brotherhood, honor and loyalty comes before your want to further your own desires and future, but this isn’t new because you have always been putting the needs and safety of others above your own because if one life can save hundreds, your life is then worth the sacrifice, but your sworn brother, a Sage, hasn’t asked you to sacrifice anything, just to hold to your word to help him, help protect the people he loves, and help awaken him to his true potentials, and because you need his help when this all ends, and because you actually do believe in brotherhood, and because that is what you do, you will help him. His power alone, however strong it may be, is not enough, but yours together brings peace back to the mountain and it is together that he knows you will succeed, the both of you, in fulfilling your destinies.
You feel a chill in the air by the river that bites menacingly at your legs and along the ribs of your chest. Bites at the promise you made to her, the water queen and you know you lied when you told her you were hers, but how could that ever be? For a moment you thought that maybe you could have been hers, but in your soul, you knew, you knew that would never be true. But it wasn’t your fault when you asked for the stone, when a past tradition forced you into an impossible situation. You realized you never had time to talk to her after she gave it to you to tell her the stone was for a greater good, that you could never be hers, but now those unspoken explanations and solemn lie are at the bottom of a frozen pond, dried on the shores of a drained lake, and it glares at you with a dead red eye, surrounded by slushed and sluicing tendrils, harboring your lie, pitting you against yourself and you actually believe it now when one says that you are your own worst enemy. And you fall on the side of truth, crying to the blue water that you can never love her, that it just physically cannot be, and how sorry you are even though you know it doesn’t fix things. You see the red lie breaking, its strength diminishing at the power of your honest and sincere words, the waters’ heart defrosting, and you confess of all the broken hearts you’ve taken, that have fallen on your shoulders, and the way you’ve cracked under the weight you bare because it is all such a heavy burden to bare for so long.
Inventory
Clothes
- Zora Tunic: Slipping this on over your head you are floating down the stream of time again, letting your thoughts twist and turn toward the sea of the future, to the first time you beheld the lake in its sun-lit glittering glory. The King of fish is reminded of the serenity that water brings out from its depths when you stare at it long enough, stabilizing even the most chaotic mind for a brief, clear moment. That is what true peace feels like, he tells you, that the water is a kind of wisdom, and the blue you wear shows your trust in water and duty, in blue, your loyalty to your cause reflected in the blue of your eyes. You look confident in blue, and this instills faith and hope in others, and maybe its not strength or courage that you will need when this is all over, maybe it is the blue of clarity and peace that you seek at the end of it all. Maybe this is why you are addicted to blue, need it around you constantly. Maybe this is why you feel so comforted in the blue of this King’s domain and his daughter, in the blue of the other princess, haunted as they are, and in the blue of your own reflection, steadfast and determined to succeed.
Boots
- Iron Boots: So this is what it’s like to live underwater: cool, quiet, slow. Zora’s don’t have that last problem because they are so streamlined, but you, you are clumsy underwater and more vulnerable because you are not a fish, and you are not streamlined, and the water does not feel like air on your skin. There’s a pressure here and it makes you useless in this element, and if there has never been a great validation before, let this be the moment you realize that, as a land based man, you belong above the water, on its shores and surface, not below because there is no place for a man under the water except to end the life he left above.
Miscellaneous Items
- Gold Scale: There is a fish who waits for you in the depths of the lake. It’s hungry. You can tell by the way it follows your bait with its chomping mouth and wide black eyes, and it will take every ounce of strength to real this lunker in once it bites because it’s as big as you are, and when you show the owner, he’ll be so impressed with you that he’ll give you this scale, pulled from the long gone guardian you were accidentally swallowed by and it’s a welcome gift because now you can dive farther and the world below the surface became a whole lot more accessible.
Weapons
- Longshot: As if you weren’t having enough fun pulling yourself across gaps, almost free falling, let’s double the length and see what happens.
Special Items
- Water Medallion: The blue princess will thaw a little at your confession, not ban you from the lake you love so much because she knows this and she cares, and, sadly, she will release you from your bond to her. You will believe her when she says she will be fine in time because she’s always known, as they always do, and she was only holding onto that small hope that you might have a different future, which you would choose yourself, and that you would choose her, but even so, she really only wanted you to be man enough to say just that, that you don’t have a choice, that you never did. In a sad way, that is what they all have ever wanted: the truth, the honest truth.
- Fire Arrows: Shoot the sun and it will drop a flame for you, one that burns far away torches to light your way in the darkest corners of temples and dungeons, one that takes the fire in you, already somewhat unpredictable, and sends it soaring beyond your reach to burn free, one where you must aim carefully and shoot true, because one wrong hit could send the world you love up in flames with a force that even you won’t be able to stop.
There’s a shadow underneath the village, a secret buried and constantly growing the longer it is kept hidden and it will break and burn everything to the ground with a violent silence. You have faced your lies and seen the damage silence can do to the body. A collective silencing haunts and hurts tenfold. Burying things deeper doesn’t change the fact that it is there and it seems that you aren’t facing monsters as much as you are facing moral imbalances. Lies, secrets, gluttony, alter egos. Monsters are easier to fight than our personal faults because they tend to take a form that doesn’t resemble ourselves, but you know that challenge because you’ve faced yourself before, you face yourself every day, and you know that it hurts to acknowledge your shortcomings when everyone holds you in such high regard, but the rise, fall, and pick back up are all part of being human, and it strengthens us in the long run. If we acknowledge our faults, they are no longer our weakness.
Inventory
Boots
- Hover Boots: From heavy footed, to defying gravity, experiencing the wonder that is flying, weightlessness, keeping your head above the water and ground, but you feel unstable, sliding over wind and air you can’t see and this makes you clumsy, and again, you know you are at your best when your feet are firm on the ground, able to hop and jump with a light touch, staying in control of your steps and movements. These boots help you evade the shadows, stay close to the light, because evil feeds off darkness and the good defends the light that remains.
Special Items
- Lens of Truth: Nothing is hidden behind the eye of truth, every disguise exposed, every secret revealed, and you realize how many secrets the world and its inhabitants have kept. Pitiful creatures with an inability to live simply and just, but you cannot judge them too harshly, for you yourself have been guilty of harboring secrets and lies. But now all is revealed and even though the hardest thing to do is admit failure and fault, sometimes it is what allows us to be able to sleep at night with a clean conscious and righteous heart full of good intentions to prevent the soul from turning black. Moral weakness, that is the challenge you face.
- Shadow Medallion: The bodyguard had tried to change the village, erase the evil beneath it, but that was a short term answer, rather than facing the faults of her home, letting her loyalty get the better of her, and she is shamed from her time in the shadows. She will face things, no longer hide behind tricks and quiet footsteps. She simply wanted the best for her home, but you can’t just bury an evil secret hoping it would simply stay hidden. Secrets hidden and kept quiet stew with impending vengeance, but now, she hopes the village will grow true and honest, thanking you for forcing the shadows to retreat in this new honest living.
Weapons
- Biggoron’s Sword: There are rumors of a sword that is unbreakable and heavy with strength, and you think this is a rumor to investigate because a hero must have options in how he fights and what he fights with. And it almost doesn’t seem worth it because of all the other tasks you must complete along the way, though some are less tedious than others, particularly when you find the father of the red headed ranch girl and wake him from his heavy sleep to return home and take back his ranch, but you feel very rushed in the assignments that have been asked of you out of your own good will, particularly in the time limits you’ve been given to go from one corner of the land to the complete opposite corner, which, honestly, stresses you out more than you expected it to, but if that’s what it takes to obtain this supposed indestructible sword, then so be it.
In sandy outlands, in the color of her hair under blue skies, in the color of her eyes, you find yourself getting thirsty and although there’s a romantic side to you in the way you want to drink these colors in as though you were drinking her in, its not enough. A metaphor? If so, for what? For a future of uncomfortable dissatisfaction. You ponder the cliché you are falling into by chasing the princess around the world and lifetimes. It’s tacky, you think. And then you feel this urge in your soul for something darker and stronger, a ruby among sand with eyes of amber whiskey that warms your middle and there’s a rush to abandon your morals and give into pure desire and plump lips that curve like her hips. This desert rose reminds you that you are only flesh and blood after all, a man with the same kind of blood you spill beneath the cloak of courageous valor and virtue. She will push you, manipulate you, taunt you, and all because she can, a queen among the women of her tribe and you know that this is all physical, superficial sex appeal, and what the princess doesn’t know wouldn’t hurt her right? Innocence over experience, or experience to make the innocent turn to the dark side of themselves? It sounds delicious and it makes your mouth water just to taste it, but that courage in your spirit is strong. You wouldn’t be the hero of time if you were so easily swayed and you will not yield to those hips and you will stay pure to your task. Even if that means you never really get the princess in the way that some heroes do when they ride off into the sunset with their loves behind them on horseback, especially since you are an unexpected hero who rides into sunrises.
Inventory
Miscellaneous Items
- Gerudo’s Membership Card: The Gerudo women are a reclusive desert tribe who abhor intruders, especially men, but you can’t be too mad at them for the way they grab you, manhandle you, and throw you into a cell. They are all women after all, treating the only male born every one hundred years as though they were a God, but you are sneaky and skilled, full of guts to slip past the guards to save the carpenters who will fix the bridge that is currently broken between Hyrule and Gerudo Valley, and because you are sneaky and skilled with lots of guys, you must have good thieving abilities, and their minds will be changed about you in that instant, and because you took so much energy in snooping around, you must want to be one of them, thus earning you the honorary title of a Gerudo Member from here on out. So long as it keeps the women at bay, right?
Magic Spells
- Nayru’s Love: Hero, be consumed and enveloped in a loving embrace of protection, let no harm come to you in battle and let this embrace take the brunt of the blows, for a little time at least.
Shields
- Mirror Shield: Reflect the vain witches guiles back, dispel useless magic made of energy on impact, absorb the elementals if only to repel it back, resist the urge of the dark magic and the wanting. It will only lead to heartache and suffering, but now that you can reflect the once un-reflectable, your defenses are unlike any other.
Special Items
- Silver Gauntlets: Feel the strength coursing through your hands and arms, feel the weight of the world becoming lighter, feel the power of your swing strengthen, and know that you are slowly becoming a force to be reckoned with, even by evil kings of power.
- Spirit Medallion: Another heart will break among the sand and be lost forever and that is when her own façade will drop and she will want you more than just a body to break because you have denied her and you’re always what they’re looking for because everyone wants what they can’t have. She has been humbled in her awakening.
- Ice Arrows: A useless item given the trials you had to go through to get them, and so late in the journey too! You don’t know what you would shoot to freeze at this point, especially since now, you’re ready to take on the King of Power himself and these wouldn’t work on him. You regret having expended the energy on obtaining them, just because you hoped the prize at the end of the tunnel would have been a better one.
