((Sorry about the delay))



Chapter IV

Far away, beyond Hyrule, beyond it into the darkness of the Wild Lands, a lock was loosed. A portal was open. A key had been snatched from its latch. A gate that had been shut was now torn asunder.

The demon was free.

-------

Aldorn’s eyes fluttered open, revealing a dark ceiling intricately carved with runes, lit by a dim light from the outside through several stained glass windows.

“Oh, I must be dreaming,” he thought absently. Lazily he glanced about in his field of vision, catching sight of the circle of stone knights surrounding him, and behind them were the stained glass windows, one of which was broken. “I’m thirsty,” he thought to himself before he furrowed his brow. Hm. You weren’t supposed to be hungry or thirsty in dreams. Puzzled, he sat up on first his elbows, then his hands, finding one to be grasping something. Looking down, he saw a blue sword hilt, engraved with a yellow triangular marking. His gaze traveled down to the shiny blade curiously.

There he gasped and jumped away from the sword as a strange face looked up at him from its metallic gaze. In his action he bumped into something. Turning around, he saw what appeared to be a teenaged boy with blond hair, sleeping behind him. He appeared to be, but he was too small. Teenaged boys were twice Aldorn’s size, but this boy was the same size as Aldorn himself; and he looked somewhat familiar, especially around the eyes. As well, something about his long sideburns felt familiar.

He slowly backed away from the stranger, back to where he awoke. There, he poked the sword...the Master Sword! Of course! That’s what it was: in that funny cathedral where Princess Weirdo had left him and Link. Link? Where was he? Aldorn looked around, absently grabbing the sword in case of some attack or something. For some reason, the sword felt unusually light, and everything around him seemed smaller. He looked around for his friend, but all he could find was the stranger. For a moment, he thought the stranger was Link when he saw him out of the corner of his eye, but he knew that couldn’t be.

Just then, a glint of light from the outside hit the blade of the sword just right, and again the strange but eerily familiar face appeared in the metal. In shock, Aldorn dropped the sword, letting it clank to the floor, but the face remained, looking up at him as surprised as he looked down at it. Gingerly, he picked the sword up and held the reflective surface in front of him as one would a mirror. The strange face looked out at him, and as he moved his head, the face did the same.

That face was his. He gasped. But it couldn’t be! That face was the face of one much older than himself, but there it was.

Just then, Princess Zelda’s words came back to him; “It will take you ahead seven years...” Seven years? His glance jerked over to the strange boy next to him, and suddenly he noticed what he had not before: the ocarina hanging about the boy’s neck. Link!

Excitedly, Aldorn walked over to his now grown-up friend and shook his shoulder. Link’s eyes opened slowly before focusing on Aldorn. The moment they did, a look of horror passed over his face before recognition dawned. He pointed his finger at Aldorn and looked at him curiously.

Aldorn grinned and said, “Yeah, I’m-” he cut himself off and held his hand in front of his mouth as Link stared at him. Aldorn looked down at his hand before cautiously saying, “Hi,” and clapping his hand over his mouth again. Link flew into gales of mute laughter, which was more periodic breathing, but you could tell by his face that it was joviality. The younger boy pointed at his friend merrily.

“My voice...” Aldorn thought to himself. What happened to his voice? It was so...deep. “Link, did you do something?!” He accused in his now somewhat baritone pitch.

Link shook his head, grinning.

Aldorn just stared at him a minute as he reached for his throat to see if it felt funny. He pondered a moment before it finally dawned on him. “Oh, yeah...we grew up.”

Link cocked his head and looked at him strangely.

“Remember, the Princess said we would skip ahead seven years. We’re grown up,” he said, till not familiar with his voice. It sounded as if someone was speaking for him. “Just look at yourself,” Aldorn said, handing his friend the Master Sword.

Curiously, Link took the sword and looked in it. He appeared to find the change a bit disturbing, but overall, he seemed pleased as he lifted a hand to touch his new, mature face.

“Well,” Aldorn said, brushing off his green attire. “What do we do now?”

Link shrugged.

“Hm. I guess we could go home on the cart and show Mom and Dad. And your sis,” Aldorn said. Link nodded at the suggestion and stood.

“Aw, nuts,” Aldorn said, a look of annoyance across his face. “The Master Sword-thing didn’t come with a sheath,” Aldorn said, poking out his lower lip. He didn’t look forward to carrying the thing around. He thought a moment...nope...nope, that would not be fun. “Well, maybe we can get one back at Ordon...” just then, Aldorn grinned. “Hey! I’ve got the Master Sword! You know what that means, Link?” He said, turning to his friend. “It means I’m a hero! That’s what the Princess said, isn’t it?”

Link’s eyes widened before he smiled and punched his friend in the arm in support. Aldorn could see the admiration and pride for his friend in Link’s eyes, and it only made him feel a bit more giddy. “I wonder if they’ll tell stories about me - us. That would just be so great,” to which Link nodded. “Um...” Aldorn said, looking around. “Now, which way was out?”

Link pointed, and Aldorn grinned as they began making their way up the short pair of stairways.

“Y’know, Link...” Aldorn said as they neared the door they came in, hoping Princess Loony wasn’t lurking on the other side. “It almost feels like a dream. I hope I don’t ever wake up.”

Little did they know how soon they would.

The boys walked back towards the door they came in, not really looking forward to facing Ilda and the Princess. Too bad it had to be done. Aldorn grabbed the handle for the double doors and pulled, but it wouldn’t give way.

“Looks like it’s stuck, here give me a hand, won’t you?” he said, lifting his hand from off the handle so as to get a better grip and allow room for Link’s now much larger hands. In the process, he noticed how dusty his hands had become from touching the door handle. He looked at his hands in annoyance and shook them off. Link grinned at his predicament before blowing off the handle, making sure that he blew it in Aldorn’s direction. “Cut that out!” Aldorn said, sputtering, before wiping the remaining dust on his hand onto the shoulder of Link’s tunic. The younger boy just brushed it off, smiling, before grasping the door’s handle to help his friend pull it open.

“Come on, here we go...” Aldorn said as they both yanked at the door until there came a cracking noise, and a sound of something fine falling onto stone. The moment the handle was free, the door was slammed open in the wind, nearly squashing Link before he moved out of the way just in time. When they finally caught a glimpse of the outside, the two boys just stared in shock.

No longer was there a neat row of bushes leading to the door, no topiaries of flowers, no little fountains, no decorative trees...not even any grass. All was a sickly blackish-brown, strewn about with the skeletons of what once were shrubs and plants, though their were blown about, and almost seem to disintegrate for dryness. The air was full of dirt and something like smoke, making it difficult to breath, or even keep one’s eyes open if one was facing the wind. You could not tell the horizon - as the walls surrounding them were broken down so once could see the horizon - from the ground, it was all a blotchy grey. Little dust devils, whirls of dead leaves and dirt, twirled every here and there, rustling in the lifeless wind. Thin, writhing black cords of what once were vines spiderwebbed the remaining walls.

As the two boys stared at the lifelessness about them in utter speechlessness, a crunching of dirt and gravel could be heard, and the brown, reptilian head of one of those Lizalfo things peeked around the corner of the cathedral. Catching sight of them, the armored thing immediately leapt at them with a throaty, crackling growl. Terrified, Aldorn swung wildly, forgetting for a moment what Taryn the swordmaster had taught him. Even when his hands remembered these lessons, Aldorn knew that he had to run, the thing was not easily fazed by a blaze of blade, and continued to claw at them with both its own claws and a sword it held in its right claw. Aldorn grabbed Link’s sleeve as they both made a run for it, fueled by adrenaline. Even then, they could hardly believe how fast they were moving - mature bodies were so much faster, they almost seemed to be flying, but they had no time to enjoy it.

The little Lizalfo, now joined by a similar beast, was chasing them, and despite the boy’s newfound speed, the reptilians were faster. Terror mounting as the two creatures grew closer, Aldorn finally gathered the courage to turn around and try to fight.

“Just like a spar...” Aldorn told himself as he tried to focus, parrying and slashing as Link fiddled with his ocarina. “Link what are you doing?!” Aldorn shouted as the second Lizalfo made his way towards the younger boy. Before he could reach him, however, Link had lifted the little instrument to his lips and let loose the highest and loudest F he’d ever done in his life. If Aldorn thought his head was hurting, the Lizalfos looked utterly dazed. “Of course...animals have better hearing!” Aldorn thought before he ran the first reptilian through with the Master Sword. Turning to the next one, Aldorn began to fight it, trying to bring to mind as many techniques as he could. Fortunately, the Lizalfo appeared to be somewhat of a novice, and Aldorn gained the upper hand. He felt so strong in his new form, he found new confidence, and began hacking away at the creature with renewed vigor, until, sweat across his brow, he sliced the slightly taller creature’s head off.

“Hoo...” Aldorn said, weary and gasping. Link was by his side in a moment, forcing Aldorn’s head to look up at his own in an effort to see if anything was wrong. “I’m okay, lizard-boy stunk at fighting. Nice thing you did with your whatsit there,” Aldorn mumbled. Once more he wished that the sword had come with a scabbard. He really didn’t feel like carrying it now, and he couldn’t let Link touch it - only the Hero could, or the person would die. That was what the Princess said, right?

Whatever. He wasn’t about to lose his best friend on a gamble.

“Well, what do we do now?” Aldorn said in despair, looking around. “I... I don’t think we’re going to get help from those lizard back there,” Aldorn said as he looked up at the sky. Up there, he saw the silhouettes of giant birds flit across the sickly looking clouds. “What happened here, Link...? It doesn’t look as if anything’s alive.”

Link just shook his head and look about in sorrow. This dream was quickly turning into a nightmare.

Just then, Aldorn remembered that he had to clean his blade of the blood, or it would ruin the sword. For lack of grass, Aldorn just rubbed the flat ends against the stinking corpses of the dead Lizalfos. Funny, he’d never really thought of heroes having to do something with the bodies. At any rate, he wasn’t going to stick around - the perfume of dead Lizalfo was definitely not pleasant.

“I guess... I guess we walk home...” Aldorn said, quietly, though the same thought was crossing through both boy’s minds, “What if home is like this?”

Aldorn bit his lip before managing to force through his tightened throat, “Um...home is south, so that would be to the right of the sunrise and to the left of the sunset...if we can see it through these dust clouds.” Aldorn thought a moment and look at the scenery around him. Mountains in that direction, plains in that, forests... “South is that way. I remember seeing those twin mountain peaks on the ride up here. At least they haven’t changed,” Aldorn said, beginning to cheer up a bit. Not everything had been trashed by Ganondorf’s goons.

Just then, however, something occurred to Aldorn, and he looked in the direction he was pointing - Castle Town, or what once was it. Castle Town lay between the Time cathedral and Ordon. Aldorn gulped as he caught sight of all sorts of creatures milling about around the city, and he could tell they were evil. Like a caged animal, Aldorn looked around, frightened, as he realized almost all routs were closed to him: to the west and north were mountains, to the south, Castle Town.

“We...we can’t go anywhere but east, Link...what's to the east?” Aldorn said, mostly to himself. The east was a vast plain, and to the southeast were mountains. These mountains had more passes through them, marked by one huge mountain towering above the rest, haloed by a ring of dark smoke. “Death Mountain - Kakariko Village is near there,” Aldorn recalled from the map he’d seen dozens of times on Berdak the potion-maker’s wall. “Maybe they can help us get home. Come on, Link, let’s go,” Aldorn said, motioning as Link looked now eye level with him in hopes that he would come up with something. Link was pretty much willing to follow wherever Aldorn thought was okay, and the idea sounded good. Aldorn could only hope that the town wasn’t overrun with lizards.

-------

No one ever told about this part in the stories.

The Master Sword was only barely being gripped by Aldorn as the end of it trailed in the grass behind him. His head was drooped and his steps were heavy and labored. Link fared no better, but at least he didn’t have to hold on to a silly sword that had no scabbard. Aldorn was tired from walking for a two or so days, with a stop the night before to sleep on the cold dirt. The night, needless to say, was sleepless. They were both hungry and thirsty, having brought no food or water. Fortunately, there were several hardy strawberry bushes here and there, at first very few, but growing slightly more populous the farther southeast they walked. However, a diet of strictly strawberries was not particularly healthful, and neither were feeling terribly well.

That morning, which seemed decades away, they had finally come across Zora River. However, both boys knew not to drink from it, they knew that a couple decades ago it had been poisoned, and they dare not even touch it. Still, it was exasperating, being so thirsty and yet being so close to water - sickly, thick grey though it was. They just followed the river southwards, looking for a way to cross. The river was very wide at this point, so there was no chance of swimming even if the syrupy water were safe to swim in.

Fortunately, they eventually came across a bridge as they followed it south, and though rickety, it still allowed them across and further southwest. Several hours after that, the best development of the journey so far arose.

“Hey!” Aldorn said, pointing ahead and slightly right. It was a small brook right ahead of them, bright and shining, cutting through the dark earth like a knife of light. Despite both boys’ fatigue, the two of them broke out into a run, and were overjoyed to find the brook’s water clean and clear. It was about five or so feet deep, burbling gently over smoothed rocks, and both boys dunked their faces into the water to drink. After a while, instead they were drinking out of cupped hands, though Link couldn’t manage to hold his hands just so to hold it, causing him to give up and just dump his face in again.

They slept that night next to the river, feeling much more satisfied, especially since they had found a few edible mushrooms by the water’s edge. Though it was difficult to sleep on the hard ground and they woke up dreadfully early, it was the best sleep they’d had ever since they left the cathedral.

Aldorn was up before Link, and both were up before dawn broke. Aldorn was still tired, though, so he remained lying down for a while awake. He wasn’t really thinking, he just let his mind go numb. It wasn’t until Link started poking him that he bothered to lift his upper body to an upright position.

“What?” Aldorn said. Link signaled for Aldorn to be quiet and gestured in the direction of the water. Curious, Aldorn leaned over the bank of the river and looked down. “Fish?” he whispered. “What are we going to do with fish? I’m not eating them raw - and we can’t make a fire. The lizard things might see us. Use your head,” Aldorn said, irritably. Link looked sheepish.

“Whatever. Um...” Aldorn said, looking around in the silver predawn light. Spotting Death Mountain, he looked further south to about where Kakariko would be. “Hey! What do you know, the river here is going about that direction. We can follow it down there - hopefully it keeps going,” Aldorn said, hopefully. Link seemed to brighten a bit at the prospect as he eagerly seemed to try to tell Aldorn something, shaking his friend’s shoulder. “What?” Aldorn said in annoyance as Link began pointing to the water, following it with his finger along its southward flow. “I don’t get it - what?” Link repeated the motion with more vigor, this time making a cup with his hands as well. Aldorn waved his hands. “What’s say we skip it?”

However, Link would not give up, and he shook his friend’s shoulder as he tried again, desperately. Aldorn sighed. “Okay, okay, water?” Link nodded his head then made a motion of it going south. “Water...south? Water down? No? Water south? Okay, water south. What about it? Okay, it’s going south, is that it?” Link nodded. It was hard work to communicate in such a way. “Wait, you mean it’s going in the direction we’re going? How is that helping us? We don’t have a boat, and we can’t make a raft, we don’t have rope,” that’s when Link began jumping up and down excitedly as he grabbed Aldorn’s arm. “What now...?” Link dragged Aldorn to what was either a dead bush or a giant tumbleweed, half of which covered a recently uncovered wood canoe. “A boat? Why didn’t you show this to me first?” Aldorn said, excitedly as, with Link’s help, he pulled out the small craft. It was old and worn, but, hey, it was a boat near a river going their way.

Excited, the boys looked at each other and dragged the boat to the water’s edge. “What’ll we use for oars?” Aldorn asked. Though he didn’t think either of them had been on a boat before, he knew enough to know they needed oars. Link looked around a bit before walking over and picking up a longish branch a little smaller in thickness than the boy’s wrists. He motioned to Aldorn cutting one end of the stick so it was flat, something which Aldorn, fortunately, understood. Using the Master Sword, the two soon had themselves a boat and a homemade oar.

“Okay, now, we’re going to have to go in shifts so we make sure that we leave the river or move down the right fork so it doesn’t start taking us away from Kakariko. Okay? You go first,” Aldorn said as he pushed the canoe into the river and held in place to keep it from floating away with the current. Link looked a bit miffed at being chosen for first shift, but he really couldn’t do much about it.

There was some difficulty in mounting the wooden beast without dumping them both in the water, being inexperienced, and by the time they both managed to get in and stay in they were so soaking wet they might just have well had been in the water. Additionally, being the early morning hour it was, the water was roughly the equivalent of liquid ice.

Fortunately the shifts were not long - only until the sun was about at a half-quarter dial, before Link’s was over - though it was still a few boring hours spent trying to discover the mechanics of oaring on a river that was being very merciful in its dealing with them. It proved difficult to make their stops when the need arose, such as to eat, but the two boys managed.

It was during Aldorn’s second shift, in which he was doing his best not to nod away to sleep, that there came their first fork in the river. One little thin sliver of water, barely more than a brook or a small stream, ran off right in the direction they needed to go, while the other side began to veer away from their destination.

“Hey! Hey, Link, help me,” Aldorn said as he tried to lean and splash furiously with his makeshift paddle, but the river was rushing the wrong way. Unfortunately, the rudely awakened Link did little but aggravate the situation. Aldorn soon realized this, as, having no way to help without an oar, Link just added more frenzy. The only thing Link could do was lean, so he did so, but with Aldorn doing the same and paddling in that direction, it culminated into the boat suddenly flipping over.

“Link!” Aldorn shouted in annoyance when his head popped out of the water. He wanted to say a few other things but the water got in the way. “Link! Grab the boat with me and swim for it, kay?” he said, impatiently as he began swimming for their little turnoff, the stubborn boat in tow. Even with Link helping the boat wasn’t really cooperating, and it kept yanking them the wrong way. Finally, they ended up grounding it and walking it to the little brook, wet and muddy.

Aldorn did not really feel like speaking to Link, but he didn’t have the satisfaction of being able to say ‘Don’t talk to me,’ so that drained the point out of his irritability.

-------

The brook didn’t move very quickly, and instead trickled along at a lazy pace. Fortunately, being this slow, they didn’t have to worry about forks in it, so they both fell asleep in the afternoon sun after getting the mud off of them.

The brook got slower and slower as they went on, until the two boys were rudely awakened when they were unceremoniously dumped out of their boat by a miniature punchbowl waterfall into a small, serene lake. At least, it was serene before said dumping. They didn’t need to splash around to keep afloat, the lake only being knee-to-waist deep, but unfortunately it made for a hard landing.

Aldorn spat out water as he stood, once more wet. Fortunately there was still enough sun to perhaps dry out before nightfall. “Where are we now?” he asked himself as he looked around. Despite the fresh-ish lake, it was gloomy as ever here in a canyon between two rock walls formed of mountains. There were abandoned houses in the somber place, unusually dark for this time of day. However, the dirt hadn’t corrupted the water pretty much at all, quite a feat, really.

“Um...let's see...” Aldorn said, looking around for some kind of identification. He wasn’t to aware of the little settlements around or used to be around here, but maybe there was a mapmaker’s house somewhere with old maps. Farfetched, he knew, but they didn’t have much choice. Fortunately, Death Mountain was visible to the north, so they had a reference point.

A wooden sign waving in the wind caught his eye, and he walked over to it, Link shadowing him. Now a bit closer to the main road, Aldorn could see how large the abandoned town was. It wasn’t huge, but it wasn’t just a few houses, either. As he made his way to where he could get a fairly good view of the sign, the reason for the size was made clear.

“Kakariko Village,” he moaned in despair. “This is Kakariko Village.”

-------

Night was falling, so they had made a fire near the side of the lake. Earlier they had gone through some of the houses and had found some salt bins where meat had been preserved, and had thus been eating this and some wild berries which grew near the lake’s edge. Additionally, the search provided for them a small sword for Link; a small one because all the others were in too much a state of disrepair to use.

Aldorn was sitting by the fire, unsure of what to do, throwing small sticks into the blaze just to see them light up for that one second before resuming its ordinary glow. Over to his right, opposite the lake, Link was playing is little orcmina-whatsit to get birds to come to him. It was obviously working, as they were gathered around him. Aldorn sighed in annoyance - that bird thing was just so stupid. Being in the mood he was in, he had to say something.

“Link, you’re sixteen now. Aren’t you a little old for the bird thing?”

Link’s head jerked up to meet Aldorn’s gaze, lips lifting from the instrument and a hurt expression across his face. Aldorn knew that Link’s sister, Kariah, had told him that the birds helped Link think, but that was dumb. Link slowly let go of the little round woodwind and looked ashamedly at the ground as a bird perched on his head.

Great, now Link had to go and make Aldorn feel guilty. It wasn’t fair. With a light groan of annoyance Aldorn looked around in the opposite direction, towards the lake, and, in the firelight, something caught his eye. “Hey, Link, look,” Aldorn said, pointing as he grabbed a larger stick from the fire and held it up as a torch. In the rock on the wall of the lake there were letters carved. Seeing this, the rejected Link managed to forget the recent incident and got up to stand at Aldorn’s side to look at the markings. As Link turned his gaze to him, Aldorn knew he would have to read it out loud. Though Link could read figures and even do some rudimentary math, he was utterly illiterate.

“Um...it's hard to make out some of the letters, but it says something about a bird made of light inhabiting the water, and that that’s the only reason the water and the river is still clean...and it says something about the fact that only Power’s heart and Courage’s blood can heal Zora River or the curse and poison and stuff. Uh, huh...” Aldorn said before bursting out laughing. “Oh, boy! These Kakariko people must have been real doozies. Light birds in the water?” he said with a grin as Link laughed his silent laugh beside him. Turning to him, Aldorn joked, “Look at your boot, maybe we stepped on it on the way in,” Which made Link laugh harder.

As the laughter abated, he looked back up at the words with a large smile on his face. “Next thing you know it’s going to say that the bird is having bug problems.”

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~Proudly exploding combustible coconuts since 1993