4/25/20 - Revision
5/17/20 - Rewrite

Ch. 1 - Prologue: Dreamworld

Ever since he was little, he always found himself looking up at the sky.

Its blue depths had always given him peace and calm. It held everything he called home. It simply held everything he believed in.

However, the sky was awfully empty as the young boy peered into it, squinting. The courtyard around him was quiet as he stood there in the shadow of a great stone statue. His cold fingers fidgeted with the hem of his sleeve, and he sucked in his breath anxiously. He let it out in a small huff.

Waiting was hard.

Though the young boy had stood there in the center of the golden circle for what felt like hours, he continued to stare upward expectantly. He'd been told it would come when the time was right, but it had been so very long, and the others had left with theirs. The boy shivered as he brought his clasped hands to his mouth and puffed a small breath of warmth into them.

Waiting was hard.

Unable to take it anymore, the boy suddenly squeezed his eyes tight, hoping that what he wished for would be there when he opened them, but when he peeked and saw nothing but the thin, wispy white stretches of cloud above, his gaze dropped. The boy bit his lip and looked back over his shoulder, searching for encouragement.

A girl and her father stood at the foot of the great statue, still waiting with him patiently. When his glance connected with the girl's, she brushed her golden bangs from her face and smiled brightly. He smiled back. He turned again and looked back up to the sky worriedly.

Waiting was hard.

He resumed his habit of fingering the fabric of his sleeve. He waited for it to come. He shifted his small weight anxiously. He waited for it to come. He glanced again at the girl. She smiled. He smiled. He waited for it to come. His gaze slid downward from the blue sky. He rubbed his cheek with the back of his hand. All the others had left with their new partners, and the boy considered if he should leave, too. He waited for it to come just a little longer, but the sky remained empty. His hand fell with his gaze, and he turned dejectedly to take a step out of the design engraved on the courtyard stone.

A gasp and a sudden cry from the girl's lips caused him to pause and look up. He followed her pointing finger, and he squinted when his gaze caught the faint shape of a silhouette against the glare of the sun. The boy's heart soared. When it grew closer, the shape revealed itself to be a bird, and the boy instantly wondered how nice it would be to fly with it in the great blue sky.

As the great bird descended, its crimson feathers elicited a gasp from the man and the girl behind him. The young boy's mouth opened in awe as the magnificent red bird touched down and beat its colored wings, causing the boy's sandy locks to fly about with the rushing air. The bird bent its neck and trained an eye curiously on him. The boy's widened in wonder, and he saw himself reflected in their golden depths.

For a moment, the demeanor of the bird suddenly changed, and its gaze grew mighty and fierce as it stared piercingly into the boy's soul with a familiar glint.

As soon as the moment had come, it passed, and the bird let out a soft trill when the young boy brought a hand to its beak. The boy heard the astonished voices of the man and the girl behind him, but in his giddiness, he could only admire the great bird before him. It lowered itself as if to invite him on his back, and the boy hesitated.

The sky was scary. It was the ground that was safe.

He shook his head and grinned wildly. The sky would hold everything he called home.

The world was right.

The world was shaking.

Blinking his eyes, a young man gazed into the world's far-reaching darkness in a moment of uncertainty, unsure whether he hung between dream and reality or dream and nightmare. The silence in his ears was deafening, and the void around him was filled with darkness. Dread gripping his heart, he thought he recognized where he was.

He waited for it to come.

He closed his eyes against the pressing gloom, but when he opened them, the interminable darkness washed over him again and sent chills down his spine. They weren't chills of cold but chills of fear— the same fear he'd felt before with every nightmare that was the same as this.

His eyes widened in fear as he thought it had come, and he tried to move his legs as he perceived the void's smothering darkness bearing down on him until a flashing, blinding light pierced the heavy black. It glowed with a divine brilliance, and its bright rays told of ageless wisdom.

Suspended in its shade of light, he faintly realized that the dreamworld must have deceived him, or else his eyes were dazzled and confused by the glare of the bright light above him. It brought him relief and comfort from the world which once seemed to oppress him with a heavy weight. Even so, the light struck him as being graceful yet unnerving while its unfamiliar rays shone down unremittingly on him.

Looking over his shoulder, he saw that there was only black, and he had no option but to peer hesitantly upward into the blaze above, shielding his eyes against it. The light spoke distortedly through the dark, and though it spoke of a stirring tale which he had heard ever since he was a young boy, its ringing narrative sent sedative waves of calm over him, and its near-musical times rang gently yet faintly in his mind.

"This is a tale that you humans have passed down through uncounted generations... It tells of a war of unmatched scale and ferocity, the likes of which would never be seen again.

"One dark, fateful day, the earth cracked wide and malevolent forces rushed forth from the fissure. They mounted a brutal assault upon the surface people, driving the land into deep despair... They burnt forests to ash, choked the lands' sweet springs, and murdered without hesitation.

"They did all this in their lust to take the Ultimate Power protected by Her Grace, the goddess. The power she guarded was without equal. Handed down by gods of old, this power gave its holder the means to make any desire a reality — such was the might of the ultimate power that the Old Ones placed it in the care of the goddess.

"To prevent this great power from falling into the hands of the evil swarming the lands... The goddess gathered the surviving humans on an outcropping of earth. She sent it skyward, beyond the reach of the demonic hordes… beyond even the clouds.

"With the humans safe, the goddess joined forces with the land dwellers and fought the evil forces, sealing them away. At last, peace was restored to the surface.

"This is a tale that you humans have told for many ages, generation to generation..." Briefly, its foreign voice paused, and the awareness of the pressing darkness returned to his mind. As the alarm began to seep back, the voice renewed itself with a warning tone. "But there are other legends, long hidden away from memory, that are intertwined with this tale." The uncertain panic rose. "Now, a new legend bound to this great story stands ready to be revealed. A legend that will be forged by your own hand."

The last echoes of the light's voice reverberated endlessly in the dark, his vision suddenly fell to the ever-consuming darkness around him.

When he tentatively opened his eyes again, the last wisps of a green fire at the corners of his eyes vanished as viridescent embers dissipated. The back of his hand tingled, but the feeling disappeared when he wildly looked about with his heart sinking. He stood in the exact same darkness, and as his panic rose, he frantically wondered if he would ever escape the imprisoning black void around him. The absence of the light from before was acutely felt, and he knew exactly where he was.

He waited for it to come.

Eyes wide, his heart pounded as the shadows closed in, just as he knew it would. He desperately tried to struggle against it, but it sucked him into a further darkness so total that he couldn't be sure he could see. With dread, he felt the world tremble, and it came.

The pressing darkness violently shook with the swift rising of a menacing dark creature. Its myriads of scales lined the length of its towering body. They glinted maliciously, but most terrifying of all was its massive form that covered every part of the void before him. His muscles froze in place as he gazed up at the monstrous atrocity.

In his panic, his hand flew to his mouth to stifle a rising scream, and his limbs filled with a wild desire to run. But his suspension remained, allowing him only to stare upward in horror at what seemed to him the ascendancy of evil and nightmare. His thoughts clouded as his heart accelerated.

It had come.

Shaking it's flaming black mane, the beast tipped its massive head back and loosed a thunderous roar from the mawing depths behind its rows of massive teeth, rocking the world of black to its core.

He looked wildly for an escape. Until -

That same same piercing light returned to break the darkness with its faded, flushed hue. His eyes stung at its intensity, and his panic pumping through his veins lessened. The dark beast had been pacified by the appearance of the light, and its massive form swayed heavily as its dark aura pulsed with malice.

The light, now a glowing orb above the beast, rang once more with the same distorted voice from before.

"Rise, Link…" it called earnestly. "The time has come for you to awaken… You are fated to have a hand in a great destiny, and it will soon find you… The time has come for you to awaken… Link…"

Each word faded softly into echoes with the light's rays glowing and ebbing. Recovering its faculties, the hideous, menacing creature loosed another trembling roar that drove the light out completely. He - Link sealed his eyes from his terror, and when he opened them, everything had left his vision.

Turning about in confusion, he suddenly found himself face to beak with a great, violet bird. He gaped at it in shock for a split instant before he woke up with a jolt in his body and a pain in his backside. All sense of fear evaporated, and his eyes met the brightness of the morning streaming into his sight; the susurrus of the draft from his open window reached his long ears peacefully; the brightness of the calm waking world flooded his vision.

Blinking his blue eyes into the shining waking world, Link could see no trace of any remaining darkness.

A/N: First of all, I'd like to thank you, reader, for clicking on this story; it brings me a lot of joy to write for other people. Secondly, I'd like you to go to your Wii, boot it up, and play Skyward Sword because it is such an underappreciated game due to the major dislike of its mechanics. No? Then join me as I try to recreate one of the best stories in the Zelda series (motion controls excluded, naturally). The Skyward Sword novelization that no one asked for!

Seeing as I've never really seen any SS retellings out there, I'd always kept this idea in the back of my mind, and now it's making itself manifest due to a substantially lighter schedule during COVID-19 quarantine. This unfortunately means that you, my current readers, are going to be my guinea pigs as I attempt to craft this story with what is at the moment my first draft, so please expect several chapter rewrites as this is a stupendously large undertaking. As of now, what you will be reading is my unrefined, unrevised, unpolished version of what I hope I can turn into an enjoyable novel for anyone in the future. Hah, feel free to check back in a few years for anything that could potentially line up with that wish.

But right now, please do, by all means, point out what you think I'm doing right, what you think I'm doing wrong (perhaps even additive suggestions). I do prefer relying on others' advice rather than my own. This is all so that I can create a faithful retelling of SS that stirs up those memorable moments in future people's minds as they read. Even if you happen to be a reader three years post factum, feel free to drop an opinion or criticism nonetheless; I'll be doing my best to adjust to any possible improvements. I'll probably still be here, working on this massive project ten years from now. In all honesty, I'm super excited to present you with my work, and my hope is for each chapter to get better and better with each revision and rewrite.

My intent is not necessarily for readers to focus on plot additions I may have made but to reminisce in memories of a game via novel form. Similarly, I'll be trying to portray Skyward Sword relatively closely, but I'm seasoning it with a few originalities just to spice up a game many people find lacking in plot. (Zelink at least is inevitable :) ) Drafts, drafts, drafts are my modi operandi, so what my current readers see, again, will not be my finished product. If it's not clear by now, you all are (hopefully) going to help me improve this as best I can. It's a different approach, but I hope you all enjoy because now it's my job to keep you here.

Rewrites of some form are currently in progress, so if any are up, please note that it's possible there may be minor inconsistencies in successive, unrevised chapters. In wake of my lighter schedule at the moment, uploads, whether for a new chapter of for a group of rewrites, will happen every fifth day.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Future chapters will be longer and author's notes shorter. If you really want to see more of this, feel free to follow this story - it really keeps me invigorated, knowing that I'm writing content that viewers are enjoying. Any ideas/constructive criticisms/comments, absolutely review or even PM to help me better my story. Let's journey together! Nunc incipiat!

Cheers,
+ KVeronicaP