Hero of Legend is a series of three original albums honoring the legendary music of Hyrule and its godfather, Koji Kondo.
This is Volume 2 - a 16-bit adventure through the land of Hyroica...
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The castle of the Forgotten King was before her, smelling of a century of neglect and Shadow, but standing all the same. Her feet protested,
not at charging the drawbridge, but at carrying her own weight yet another minute. It had been an evil journey. Backbreaking. Brutalizing.
And worse, it had taken far too long. The time for rest had died long ago, before she ever left home...

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The day was dark, and it had always been so.

Shadow had fallen before her time, before the time of her mother, before even the death of mother-grand herself. Stories of sun’s Light in Hyroica seemed more fantasy than history, as difficult to believe as the tale of the Hero of Legend herself. How could such a one have ever existed? A champion of the weak, a rider through the storm & sea, rescuer to a captive prince and redeemer of an imprisoned people...

Yet there it had been, a howl on the wind as told in the Hero’s tale and sung in her every song. The thunder seemed to carry with it a desperate plea. Surely she was raving - here it was, the first taste of a madness that befell too many Shadow-dwellers.

There was no castle tower to plea from, nor a prince to give voice to the wind. The last trace of royal blood lived a midmorning journey away in Eroan village. Hera was a true testament to her heritage, ‘the last living Light among Shadow’, and a godsend to her villagers. But neither Hera nor her mother before her had ever set foot on castle stone.

She distracted herself all midday with her routine in the rain. The familiar sequence of archery, sword-dancing and forest tumbling had only become swifter since father had left for the Shadow-autumn hunt. Would nothing tune out this voice in the storm? The message was full of lies; there was no Prince Koji, no corruption of souls, no Dark Wizard Asuka…

In truth, Eroan wasn’t really so far away as father complained. At a swift-step she could reach it in an hour. Worth it surely to hear of any word of the hunt, wasn’t it? If she happened to come across Hera, well it couldn’t hurt to ask her for a song - perhaps that ballade about a voice on the wind…
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Moons later she thought back to that storm. How little she knew of storms before faring the seas of Aurelia, where water raged above and below you. Still, she knew her memories of the sailstorms would be surprisingly warm. The pirates were a village all to themselves and deep down, as friendly as they were rough. Besides, they didn’t as much as blush at the sight of Niko. “That’d be a fairy then, travin’ aboard with’ee?”

Niko had guided her this far, out of Sakura woods, into the sacred fountain, and deep within Ruko’s mine. There in the mines, she thought,
had been truly hard men - hard of skin and harder of mind. Obstinate as a Shadow-pest until you got them laughing. Silly Niko and his quick tongue. That last quip nearly started an avalanche.

The earth and the mountains were behind them now, here on the forbidden, rocky seas. Well, all save one mountain - the mountain. Pirate
Bronso screamed out when he first saw it, a demon’s horn cutting through the horizon… Toru. There our fate would be decided; the journey would stretch onward or it would all end forever…
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As she stood, legs quivering before the castle she heard something familiar, as though from another life. Was it the roar of the sea, the laughter
in the mines… Impossibly, it was the voice of a Prince, pleading as it had done all those many storms ago. The time for rest had died.
There was one corner of the world left to turn. “Well…” asked Niko, flittering at her feet. She had only one word to give her, “Onward”.

Onward to face a darkness none could fathom. Onward to the end of shadow, or the end of us all…