Despite the inviting comfort of the bed he slept in, Lance was lifted from his surprisingly peaceful slumber by the strong scent of coffee wafting into his nose. He groaned as his hands reached to rub his eyes, and he lifted himself up into an upright position. Immediately something on his neck felt off during the movement, so he reached to find the source of the difference.
“A bandage?” Lance murmured sleepily under his breath. The more he felt the more obvious it was a piece of gauze taped down on his neck. His eyebrows furrowed in confusion before turning his head around to look for Bael who was sipping his own mug of coffee from the same place he sat last night. Next to him was a partially devoured platter of fruits and vegetables.
“Good morning, sunshine,” Bael called out as he raised his mug in greeting.
“Did you put this on me?”
“It certainly wasn’t going to be anybody else” -Bael popped a few grapes into his mouth before continuing to speak- “your wound came open in the middle of the night. It’s my fault it’s there, the least I could do is stop the bleeding.”
Lance overlooked his lack of manners. “How long did you stay up last night to notice something like that?” As he questioned Bael his hand reached over to lift the mug of hot coffee to his lips. His nose crinkled in displeasure noticing that someone had laced it with a sickening amount of sugar.
“Are you worrying over me?” Bael teased as he slid an orange slice into his mouth.
“Considering I’m supposed to be depending on you to keep me alive, yes I would like you to be well rested.” Bael snorted in response. “Did you make this coffee? It tastes like a ten-year old made it for me.”
“Don’t tell me you’re one of those stuffy people who won’t drink it unless it tastes just as sad as they feel on the inside.
Lance hummed as he dove into the fruit platter while ignoring the other man. He felt oddly at ease falling into this casual banter between the two of them. The more he thought about it Lance felt that despite all his talk and prowess Bael could be a bit immature. It could make dealing with him confusing when Lance expected him to react in a way typical of a person his own age.
“So tell me what I should be expecting today,” Lance spoke after nibbling on an apple.
“Do you know anything about the festival?”
Lance shook his head and Bael heaved a disappointed sigh.
“Their festival, which is called the Festival of Awakening, was created in response to the Carnival of Time you humans hold in Clock Town. It coincided with an old decree by their ancient god Odolwa who demanded a sacrifice every decade. If they didn’t satisfy it he would poison the land and kill everyone,” Bael explained.
“But he’s not around anymore, right?”
“Correct. The sacrifice is staged now in honor of the deku that gave their lives in the past. It’s a total formality, but” -Bael tapped his fingers on the side of his cup with a brief pause- “it does require venturing into the Woodfall Temple.”
“To find some remains of some old god.”
“Odolwa’s remains, specifically,” Bael made a point to clarify.
“Right, because that will tell us-”
“It will tell us if Mr. Shadow is rallying his friends to his cause.”
“And the cause is?”
“That’s the million rupee question isn’t it?” Bael finished off his breakfast and gulped down lukewarm remnants of his coffee. Swiftly he stood himself off the ground and dusted off his clothes. “Hurry and get ready they’ll be coming to get us any moment now.”
Lance, now alert and leaving his plate half-finished, quickly throws on the clothes from the day before. “Why didn’t you wake me up earlier then?” He shouted in annoyance before disappearing behind the folding screen.
Bael only grinned while out of Lance’s sight.
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Lance anxiously tried to smooth down his hair having been given no time to groom himself this morning. Luckily the deku hardly gave him a passing glance as Bael was the only person they would talk to. What little he could pick up from the conversation was that the royal family and citizens of the kingdom were waiting for their arrival as honored guests to take part in the esteemed sacrifice of Prince Juji.
He did admire along their trip the gorgeous natural beauty of the Southern Swamp region. The colors of the natural flora were in vibrant shades of red and orange which complimented the color of the murky purple swamp water. The Woodfall region was in contrast to this loud passionate aesthetic but exuded its own natural muted beauty. The great open spaces surrounded by a mixture of both dead and living plant life caused the area to stand out visually.
Upon arriving at the great stretch of wooden structures raised above the swamp waters Lance took in the underwhelming number of deku citizens who were here in attendance. When he was told of a festival he imagined something to the immense scale of Clock Town’s carnival, but that was not the case here. Each deku in attendance showed familiarity and comfort with one another as if each person they met was a distant family member or a long-lost friend. The community was small but the bonds were very strong because of it.
Standing upon a great daïs Queen Euphorbia stood in her radiant elegance. Her festive attire was of an entirely new robe made of floral materials once again, this time in hues of red and green. Her two children stood alongside her looking stoic, though Lance could see even on a deku that Juji was nervous. His heart twinged with sympathy for what he presumed was just a young child.
The queen’s eyes lit up when she noticed Bael’s approach and lauded their arrival with boisterous appeal. Bael’s back straightened and his grin turned sickening sweet as his pace hurried to arrive at the daïs leaving Lance to scramble after him best he could.
“Citizens of the Deku Kingdom, it is with great honor that I announce the arrival of our honored guest. Master Bael, Lord of the Woods, is here to present our decennial sacrifice to the great god Odolwa,” the queen shouted to an immediately hushed audience. The crowd cheered when Bael’s name was mentioned which caused Lance to contemplate just what exactly he meant to these people.
Bael, ever the crowd pleaser, stood and accepted his applause with the grace of a prince. “I would just like to give thanks to Her Majesty for honoring me with this role in your sacred tradition. To Prince Juji, I promise to serve you well in appeasing Odolwa.” Bael offered the prince a modest bow that he clearly looked uncomfortable to be on the receiving end of. His brother Kuthro appeared on the verge of a laughing fit.
The band of horns picked up and the festivities fell back into full swing. Lance stood back from all of them only remaining within earshot of the group on the daïs. He felt like and probably was considered an unwelcome outsider by the people here. It was like Bael said, he was just here to be kept out of trouble and nothing he did otherwise really held any significance.
Lance watched as the queen turned to press a kiss to her son’s forehead. Reaching up she snapped a branch off of her large floral crown and handed it to Juji. For a moment her face had flashed with pain causing Lance to realize that the decor on her head was not a crown but actually a part of her body. Kuthro stepped around as well and clapped his brother on the back causing the smaller of the two to jolt forward. He repeated his mother’s previous action with one of the leaves on his head. Juji nodded before looking to Bael and nodding to him.
“C’mon Lancelot, it’s time to go,” Bael ordered as he began to follow behind the small prince.
Lance’s chest tightened uncomfortably before looking up to shoot a look towards Bael. He hurriedly jogged after him to catch up. This was not a right Bael had earned with him.
“No nicknames. You asked me for my name and you have it, got it?” Lance glared with a harsh whispered tone next to Bael’s ear.
“Fine, fine. No need to be so sensitive. You really are no fun,” Bael said with a roll of his eyes.
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“I’m not here to have fun nor should you be either. Unless you have already forgotten our situation.”
Bael opened his mouth to say more but instead became eerily still as he turned to face forward. They were walking along the log bridge that led to the Woodfall Temple with the prince leading them across slowly with reluctant steps carrying the pieces of his family clutched in his small arms. Lance was confused to watch as Bael fruitlessly tried to reach forward and grasp the prince to drag him back.
Then time appeared to slow to nearly a halt.
Lance felt a chill wind its way around his neck and down his spine while his vision lit up with pure red. His throat began to tighten as his eyes connected with a pair of golden ones peering from within the darkness inside the temple. A humanoid figure began to lurch out of the doorway and the sound of the horn players completely died away to be replaced with horrendous screams of horror.
This figure was beyond human comprehension. Taller than two grown men combined and the leathery skin bound tightly to its skeleton was covered with vibrant body paint. It clutched a giant blade in one hand with a fearsome mask covering its face. Lance couldn’t bring himself to run away as it began to approach them. Bael was stumbling from trying to reach forward and grasp the prince and as it was would be too late to intervene in whatever this mysterious creature would do.
With legs moving against his will, Lance was propelled forward now diving in front of Prince Juji shielding him with his own body. The monster did not hesitate in its pursuit and Lance watched as the creature raised its great sword into the air.
His perception of reality began to grow disoriented. He remembered the screaming crowd and the look on Juji’s face as he dived in front of him. It was a look of confused terror. He remembered sticky red blood spurting over his clothes drenching him with the hot liquid. Somehow he lost the ability to make noise or even to breathe. More strongly than he remembered anything else was the sound of Bael’s frustrated howling of his name.
He felt and heard a thump, then everything went black.
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Immediately his upper body shot up out of laying in his bed and just as he was about to yell out in anguish a hand with immense strength was around his neck and pushing him back down to his pillow stifling his cries.
“That was incredibly stupid of you,” Bael rasped in a hushed tone only a hair’s breadth away from Lance’s face.
Lance was still in a completely panicked state which only resulted in him expediting his suffocation while trying to rest Bael’s hand from his neck with little avail. Bael only looked down at him with contempt and no sign of strain against Lance’s resistance. Lance began to gasp for air.
“I’ll ease up when you calm down,” he hissed through his teeth.
Lance persisted in flailing his legs around a bit, but he began trying to slow down his breathing. His hands still clung to Bael’s grip on him but had ceased pulling at the other man’s fingers. Gradually his fingers loosened little by little until breathing normally returned. He kept his thumb pressed firmly at the base of Lance’s throat and continued hovering over him startlingly close.
“I told you not to put yourself in unnecessary danger, and what do you do immediately at the first sign of it? You get your bloody fucking head chopped off,” Bael seethed with a level of rage Lance had not yet seen from the man. It made all the blood in his body run cold.
“That- that thing was going to kill him, what was I supposed to do?” Lance stammered under the steely gaze above him.
Bael shook his head and scoffed as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “He was reaching for Juji with his free hand to take him. No one would have had to get hurt.”
“I’m the one who died! I shouldn’t have to take this ridicule from you. All I wanted to do was save someone this time,” Lance began to shout before Bael’s thumb pressed firmly into his throat stifling the volume. This made him send his own unsavory look up at the other man.
“Well you didn’t, and now we’re back here. You think you’ve got the worst of it? All the people who saw what happened to you at the festival won’t remember a thing happened. For you it’s just the foggy remnants of a dream. As for me? I remember it all.” Bael’s thumb pulled up from pressing on his throat as he noticed Lance’s expression shift from anger to confusion and concern.
“Next time you decide to throw away your life like it doesn’t matter, maybe spare a thought to that fact.” He removed himself from hovering over Lance and stood up from the bed to pace around the room. Nyx flew over from her place on the windowsill to follow Bael and speak with him in hushed whispers.
Lance sat himself up in his bed and rested his back against the headboard. Sitting up he now noticed outside his window that it was still the dead of night. The window near his bed was flung open having been the point of entry for Bael. He realized this meant that Bael must have left hours ago to come find him and be here when Lance woke up.
“I’m sorry,” Lance spoke softly.
Bael cut his eyes back in the other’s direction and paced over before resting his hands on the footboard of the bed. “Just because death means something different to you now doesn’t mean you should risk your life.”
“Because it resets everything, I know you already made that abundantly clear,” Lance said while averting his gaze down to his hands resting on his lap.
Before Lance realized what was happening Bael had stepped around the bed once more and grasped him by the shoulders. “Is that truly how little you think of yourself?” He was shocked to find when he looked up that Bael’s face was one of distress. “You’re a human being, that alone means so much more.”
Lance couldn’t bring himself to make eye contact with Bael, the intensity of his pleading eyes was too much for him to bear.
“I think I misjudged you when I met you,” Bael announced as he pulled away from him and backed away.
“What do you mean?”
“I knew about your upper class lifestyle; I could tell just by looking at you. You’re not pompous though, and you don’t have that powerful love for yourself I’ve seen in wealthy people. I get the feeling you kind of just build your self-worth around pleasing other people.”
How dare he? How dare this man he barely knew cut him to the core of his being? Someone who kept himself so isolated from human society, yet he could peer into Lance’s soul. Lance’s eyes squinted as his fists twisted into the bedsheets.
Much to Lance’s surprise he felt a gentle warmth rest on his head but Bael was still nowhere near him. When he looked up he saw a lilac glow radiating from above him.
“It’s okay,” Nyx whispered in the kindest tone he had heard from her yet.
Lance grew still. The presence of the fairy soothed him in a way he was incapable of comprehending. Bael crossed his arms then turned to look out the window into the pitch black of night.
“We need to go back soon. As long as we just repeat today what we did earlier we should be able to recreate the same events. This time, however, I need you to do as I do. I need you to trust me.”
“Are we going to rescue Prince Juji this time?” Lance asked as Nyx had shifted from the top of his head to resting in the palm of his hand.
“What you saw before wasn’t me trying to rescue him, it was a façade. Clearly a convincing one,” Bael added with a small hint of his usual wit resurfacing. “We can’t repel Odolwa, so we may as well let him take what he’s pursuing and follow him into the temple.”
“What’ll we do after that? We can’t just let that monster do whatever he wants with him.”
“Of course not. This time I’ll be armed. Ideally we can catch him unawares as he’s running from us. Now get ready for the road, we’ll be leaving before dawn.”
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Lance prepared Oberon for the same trip as before the reset but a lot more calmly. Surprisingly, as Bael was away making sure Lance’s room was left in pristine condition, Nyx remained with him silently. Lance had attempted to start casual conversation with her having joked about thinking she didn’t like him, but she merely denounced that opinion and said nothing more.
Once Oberon was properly saddled he mounted the horse and waited alongside the stable for Bael’s arrival. The first glow of sunrise was beginning to peek over the horizon and homes began to stir with activity. Bael appeared around the corner running towards them with something under his arm wrapped in cloth. Clumsily he hopped on the back of the horse and seated himself behind Lance facing his backside this time while looping his arms around his waist.
“You might wanna make it quick,” Bael urged while squeezing Lance’s abdomen.
Without sparing a moment to ask Lance spurred Oberon and sped out of his neighborhood in the direction of the southern city gates. Fortunately the town was still sleepy just as he remembered it being before and the guards put up no resistance to his departure.
Once they were several minutes out of town and nearing the swamp Lance slowed the horse’s gait to a pleasant trot. This led Bael to shift his position to be sitting side-saddle as he began unwrapping the bundle in his lap.
“So what was all that about?” Lance finally asked, unable to look back at the other.
“Breakfast. I wanted to dig up something simple for us to eat. I got caught up admiring all the options since you have a fancy kitchen with a refrigerator.” Bael snaked his arm around and placed a sandwich in Lance’s lap. “I think your house servant might have seen me.”
“Great, now Abi is going to think I’ve been kidnapped by a burglar. Thanks for that,” he remarked as he begrudgingly lifted the sandwich to his mouth to begin eating.
“For as much of a worrisome person as I thought you were, you don’t sound awfully bothered by it,” Bael replied with a mouthful of food.
“My dad has a history of not believing the servants when they say anything outlandish. Even if he does believe her it doesn’t really matter; when I eventually reappear he’ll shout at me like usual and that will be the end of it.”
Bael shifted in his seat. “Not a fan of the old man, huh?”
“More like he’s not a fan of me.”
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The rest of the trip played out very similarly as it did before the reset. This time was marginally more pleasant because the reality of the situation was known by now and Lance felt himself a little less irritated by Bael. Upon arrival at the Deku Palace everything played out exactly the same as it did before. It was unsettling to watch life repeat itself and be aware of it unfolding identically.
Everything leading up to that moment of crossing the bridge matched his memory except this time Nyx was still keeping by his side more often when she didn’t need to speak with Bael. Lance’s chest tightened as he anticipated the appearance of Odolwa, but Nyx’s presence eased some of his tension.
The great giant appeared from his temple once more and charged towards Prince Juji. Bael repeated his flailing attempt to snatch up the prince and this time Lance followed suit. Both men fell to the ground and tried to scramble up but the deku prince was already being snatched up by the monster. The cries of the festival goers swelled as Prince Juji disappeared into the temple.
Bael and Lance’s eyes locked with each other when they stood up as neither person questioned what would come next and what they must do. Bounding forward with adrenaline pumping in their veins the trio disappeared into the belly of the best.