(ZGen/Fan/Act) A light in the Dark [T]

Author's Note: This is a short story I started for my English class. So it does some explaining of Ocarina of Time for those in the class who were not familiar with the game.

Contents:
Chapter Two: Unknowable
Chapter Three: Alone
Chapter Four: The Keeper of the Well

Chapter one:
The Temple of Death and Shadow
The darkness and shadows of the Shadow Temple were not natural. These shadows were tainted. Impa had told me that there was nothing evil about shadows or darkness or even the night. Though, many feared it. She said it was because people fear the unknown and that was that the Shadows Temple embodied. It held mystery, the great unknown of what you may find in the darkness of its shadows.

The ancient temple was also the home to the dead and old spirits of the deceased. The wise Sheikah, Impa, had told me that death was not an evil thing either. She said death was a natural part of life, a forever continuing circle of balance. People often viewed it as evil and feared it because death was the greatest mystery. Thus, the Shadow Temple was the energy house of all these things. Not evil, often misunderstood, but these were also things that were easily corrupted. They were elements that were the most often abused and tainted.

As I placed a boot on the edge of the hole-like abyss, leaning over to peer inside and saw only darkness, I found myself a little skeptical of my mentor’s words as well. It wasn’t hard after all these disturbing, cold, and evil things I had encountered in the temple. I tried to remind myself that the taint in these shadows was not natural, just a contamination of its true nature.

My experience with each temple I had braved, thus far, was unique with everyone. No two temples were the same. I found that as I navigated and searched and fought the monsters in each one that I grew to a greater understanding of its elements.

The Forest Temple had brought me back to my roots. That ancient temple embodied the grounding and building power of the earth. The nurturing connection it had to all living things, the balance of creatures and earth, the maternal aspect it had over us—the relationship of mother and child. It had taught me the stubborn courage that came with the instinct to protect those I loved.

The Fire Temple inspired me with passion and gave me the determination and courage to fight. The fiery temple embodied the strength of pure will and power, the intense passion that can inspire, inspiration that leads the fiery determination to complete the task and overcome any obstacle.

The Water Temple taught me the wisdom of when and why to fight. This temple embodied the wisdom in emotions, intuition, and reflecting upon myself. Now, I was venturing into the Shadow Temple.

There were six temples in the land of Hyrule. I had visited four and this was the fifth. The first I had ever been in was the Light Temple. It was also known as the Chamber of Sages. It existed in what was called the Sacred Realm. I wished I could say I had learned about the Light element when I had been there; however, the only reason I went there was when I awoke the Sage for each temple.

The Sages were people. They were seemingly normal and unaware of their connection to the temples or their destinies until I awoke each one by breaking the curse on each temple. The Sacred Realm sends out an awakening call to the each Sage, but they cannot “hear” it when the temples have been suppressed. The temples are their connection to the Realm. The legendary Hero of Time had to go to each temple, break the curse, and awaken the Sage.

That was my job.

The reason for all this, for the Sacred Realm to call out to the Sages, for the curses to be broken, and for them to be awakened was all because of one man. Ganondorf Dragmire had gotten inside the Sacred Realm and made a wish on the most sacred and powerful relic in the land—perhaps the world even: the Triforce.

The Triforce was the power of the three goddesses. They had left it here after they had created the world and parted to the heavens. They were Din, Nayru, and Farore. It grants a single wish to whoever touches it. It also was the mirror of the person’s heart and mind. If a person with a righteous mind and a pure heart makes a wish on it, the Sacred Realm would radiate this positive energy through out the temples and the land, and the world would prosper. If a person with an evil mind and a corrupt heart makes a wish on it, it will radiate evil and corruption, mirroring that person, through out all the temples and the land.

Ganondorf was the person with the evil mind. He wanted power and to rule over everything. As a child, I had tried to stop him from entering the Sacred Realm, where the Triforce rested, but failed. He got the Triforce and made his wish. Now the temples were contaminated with his evil energy and he laid a curse upon each one.

The Sages and the Hero of Time were the “back-up” plan, so to speak. Destiny would choose those to fight against such evil and restore peace to the land. I had been chosen by a holy blade, known as the Master Sword, to be the Legendary Hero of Time, to awaken the Sages and fulfill the prophecy.

Each time I did, the Sage would give me their medallion for each temple. It had the power of the element of the temple to mine. I grew stronger in my magical abilities after conquering each temple.

I wasn’t very sure what would happen after I awakened all six of the Sages. I supposed I would just have to find out when I got there. For now, I was staring down a dark hole in the ground, pondering whether or not I should jump down it.

The Shadow Temple hasn’t been an easy temple to journey through. Every temple had been challenging in its own way. I’ve seen some pretty nasty things in the other temples … but not like this. The other temples had things like man-eating plants, dire wolves, fire slugs, dragons, water-spiders with a taste for flesh, and other strange creatures and beasts. They had been frightening at first, but eventually it became routine to deals with such things. They could no longer frighten me. This temple, however, was a very different story.

The creatures in the Shadow Temple were … sick, wrong, evil. A lot of them were undead. Often they were Redeads, called this by my guardian fairy, Navi. She always came up with nicknames for the beasts we came across.

Maybe they had once been people. Redeads were mummy-like corpses. They had dead flesh that clung to their gaunt and haggard humanoid forms as if they hadn’t eaten for years, and, yet, managed to stay alive—if I could even call it living.

The dead skin was colored an earth-like brown. The skulls of their heads were eyeless with dark gaping sockets that still seemed able to see. Their mouths often sagged open, showing black rotted gums with yellow and gray remains of their teeth. They quivered when they stood alone, giving the impression of weakness. I knew too well by now that these things were not as they seemed. Their grips were tight and strong, leech-like in the way they held on, trying to get a bite of my flesh and blood. I gave a shiver as I remembered the clammy hands, the stench of their rotted breathes, and the paralyzing screams they released from deep inside their throats.

The Redeads were just the beginning of a disturbing list of creatures that called the temple home. Skeletons in armor with shields and weapons were abundant here. I often ran into strange shapeless mounds of flesh with a great sucking hole at the top, threatening to gulp me down should I come too close. There were many others.

Such as Dead Hand, a disgusting sack of discolored flesh with an only vaguely humanoid shape that included a head with nothing but a mouth of razor teeth. It had no eyes, no nose, no face. It was always followed by its five or so strong but stick-like arms that stuck out of the ground to grab on to its prey, so that the mouth may rip a chunk out of them. Those teeth shredded the flesh in animal-like fashion. I would probably revisit the agony in future nightmares, and the scars on my body to prove the realness of its touch.

I never got used to the Redead’s scream or the stench of any of these other disgusting creatures that seemed to always come half-rotted. It wasn’t just the horrid beasts. It was the atmosphere of the temple itself.

The shadows, the pitch-black darkness, the feeling that there was always something watching me, I often felt like I was being slowly smothered by the pressure of it. It made me feel weak and shaky. Sometimes the feeling of claustrophobia filled me with a wild panic. I had to fight down the whimpers of terror that came over me. Wild and frantic thoughts used to spin around my head. Thoughts of death and suicide crept in. Yet, as strange as it sounded and the best that I could explain it … I had a feeling that these were not my own thoughts.

There would be waves of feelings of hopelessness, dread, and sorrow. They left me crippled and pale, shaking and sobbing against the moldy, old stone walls of the temple’s corridors. I vomited several times, at least managing not to puke all over myself.

I would have never had made it without Navi. My little guardian fairy followed me everywhere. She braved the temples with me, gave quick advice, and told me the best ways to defeat my enemies. She was not only my partner, informer, and advisor; she was my friend. When the shadows and dark thoughts began to overcome me, she was there.

“I can’t, I can’t,” I had whimpered, sagging to the floor. My arms wrapped around myself, my back against the wall, curling into a fetal position.

A radiate orb of blue light and wings quickly fluttered down to my bowed head, my face staring down. Her voice was high-pitched, without squeak, and, yet, still managed to hold a tone of authority and bossiness.

“Stop this! Yes, you can. I know you can. Link, you have to keep going!” Navi told me, in a hushed voice of encouragement and concern.

But I had curled my legs up against my chest, trying to bring my body as close to me as possible. My arms tucked tightly against my chest. I let out shaky but quiet sob. “N-no … I—I … can’t. I wanna die … I wanna die. I want it to stop.”

Navi’s wings gave a shiver at my words; she had never seen me act this way before. I had been overcome by sadness and emotion before, but I had never talked of wanting to die because of it. Suicide had never crossed my mind before. Navi knew that.

“No, you don’t!” she exclaimed. “These aren’t your thoughts! They’re not yours!”

I let out inaudible sobs lined with whimpers as I shook harder still. I felt so sick, cold, and shaky. And tired. I was so exhausted. It was the kind of weariness that you can feel deep in your bones and heart. A hopeless exhaustion that made me want to just lie down and die right there.

“Link!” the ball of light demanded as she darted closer to my face. Her light nearly blinded me as she came so close. “It’s the spirits of the temple and this … this atmosphere. It’s trying to break you down. You can’t let it. The spirits are giving you these thoughts—they’re not yours!”

There was a feeling of muffled agreement in the far back spaces of my mind. I stared up at the fairy, raising my eyes.

She was my only light source in this dark place. The corridors often went pitch black, and if she hadn’t been there, I would have been left in total darkness. I started feeling warmer the more I looked at her, trying to understand what she was saying. Her voice seemed far away somehow, even though she was right in my face. It came muffled in my mind. Not mine …

“Link, they’re not yours! Listen to me! The spirits are giving them to you!”

The more I continued to stare at her, her glowing blur of light, the more I seemed able to breathe. I could only make out a slight humanoid figure through all the blue light. It had a curvy, feminine shape, but that was all I could gather from it. Her body gave off too much light for me to ever see what her face looked like. I never needed to know though. Her light was more than enough; her voice was even more than that to me. Spirits … Not mine …

I lifted my head up more and started to uncurl myself, pressing my back against the wall to push myself up. The shakes had left my body. It seemed so silly now. I wiped the cold sweat away from my forehead as I stood to my feet again, regaining my normal breath.

Navi and I had continued to travel along the shadowy corridors once more. She explained along the way what had happened to me. Apparently the deceased spirits were influencing their thoughts into me along with the general aura of the place. It started happening again a few more times, but not as bad as the first. Navi would just start reminding me again, and I would recoup my nerve. Eventually, I grew immune and the atmosphere was nothing but annoying. Like a fly that I constantly had to swat out of my face. I started ignoring the fly. It just got in the way of thinking fast should an enemy pop out of the shadows at me.

It was strange to think back on it, when the shadows got to me. It brought back unwanted memories of unpleasant events in the other temples. Times when I had thought it was hopeless and death closing in fast on my heels. Remembering my failures and old pains.

I remembered the smothering humidity of the Forest Temple. The musty air got down my throat and clung relentlessly to my lungs, making me choke. The way the monster-like plants, vines that came alive, wound about me, squeezing. Like a mother who held too tight before letting go of her child’s hand. Only it didn’t let go. It just keep squeezing, clinging, holding with a desperate strength, its embrace stubborn and dangerous, making it a fight to breathe.

I thought of the overwhelming heat of the Fire Temple. It got so hot; I thought sometimes that I would simply burst into flame with the intensity. It wore me down, sweating without limit. My mouth became roughly parched and dry. It slowed me, making it so difficult to dodge the large, aggressive tongues of flame that would spark and jump out of the lava pits that filled the temple. They were blazing hot, and could have vaporized me if I had been caught in it.

I recalled the encumbering wetness of the Water Temple. The whole temple had been under a lake. Water was everywhere. I was always wet. My clothes became water logged for the majority of it. The water weighed me down, slowing my movements. My skin was constantly damp and soaked to the bone. My hair clung to my head. It was nearly as exhausting as the Fire Temple.

I wasn’t sure why I remembered these things while I traveled the dark cavernous tunnels of the temple. Maybe it was because there was nothing else to do. At times there was simply no one. Not one thing was crawling down the tunnel behind or ahead of me. These were the time I and Navi paused to rest. I wasn’t sure how many days I had spent in the temple. Time seemed non-existent here. It seemed as if he was simply stuck in a black hole. It was like some kind of void or underworld.

It was so silent there; it was a bit unnerving, how still it could be. There were times I couldn’t sleep. It could have been how quiet it was or just that I didn’t feel safe falling asleep. So I would just sit still, with my back to the wall so I could see both ways down the tunnel and nothing could sneak up on me.

And I would think.

I thought about the past mostly. Sometimes I would wonder about the future and if I would ever see the end of this temple. It was huge and seemed to stretch on forever. I yearned for it all to be over with. I couldn’t stand the constant darkness, never knowing what could be leaping out of the shadows to sink its rotted teeth and claws into me. I didn’t want to know what lurked in the shadows, waiting for me. I just didn’t want to be there anymore.

As I pondered the past, I found my own dark thoughts waiting for me. I knew that these were mine. I could tell now, after battling over emotions that were not my own. I knew, now, which ones were.

It was really all my fault I was here. It had been because of me that Ganondorf got into the Sacred Realm. So many suffered because of it. The Gorons, the rock-eating creatures of the mountains, nearly became extinct. The Zoras were gone. The graceful fish people were frozen under thick sheets of ice, for who knows how long. My own race, the Hylians, all lived in constant fear of Ganondorf, who now lorded over Hyrule.

Everyone struggled to survive in this land. Everyone lived in continuous terror. I saw it all in their faces after I awoke in the Chamber of Sages. I felt their weariness and pain in their bodies as I had felt the old emotions of the spirits in this temple.

I had few friends. I never really had been very talkative. Yet, somehow, people seemed attracted to me. I had my childhood friend, Saria. She had been my only friend, before I left Kokiri Forest. She was a Kokiri, an eternal child. Kokiri never grew up. I had first thought I was a Kokiri too. I had been raised with them, after being orphaned in the forest. I found out, after I broke the curse on the Forest temple, that I was truly a Hylian. Though, it had been rather painfully obvious when I woke up to a full-grown body.

Saria became the Forest Sage, and all Sages stay, forever, in the Sacred Realm. We said our good-byes to each other in the Chamber of Sages. I felt as if a part of me had died that day. I didn’t know where I belonged anymore. I didn’t feel like a Hylian, and I knew I could never be a Kokiri. I felt so lost.

And I still felt lost.

I felt it more than ever in this dim tunnel of the cold and dark temple.

It seemed as if all my friends became Sages. Darunia, my sworn brother and leader of the Gorons, was the Fire Sage. Ruto, princess of the Zoras, became the only survivor of her race and the Water Sage. After I awoke all the Sages and purified the Realm, then I would probably never see them again.

I supposed I still had Malon, a Hylian ranch girl, but I hardly ever saw her much. I was busy searching for the temples. I stopped by whenever I found the time, just to see a friendly face.

I didn’t know where Zelda, the princess of Hyrule, was. Impa assured me that she was safe and in hiding. My mentor promised me that I would meet with her again, someday.

Impa had been training me in Kakariko Village, before entering the Shadow Temple. I stayed with her for a couple of months. The old Sheikah taught me things about my sword and weapons that I never realized before. She not only taught me about weapons but how to use my own body more effectively. She was an amazing mentor and friend. Even if she seemed cold and stern at first, Impa was a wise and powerful person. She was the last of her race as well.

I had the horrible sinking feeling, heavy in my gut, as I stared into the shadows of the tunnels that Impa would leave me too. The Sheikahs were also called the people of the shadows. Shadows. They knew everything about the shadows. I knew who the next Sage was.

I had followed Impa into the Shadow Temple, but we had lost each other near the beginning of it. She was supposed to be my guide, but I had the suspicion that she may have done so on purpose. Though, I wasn’t very sure why. Impa was as mysterious as she was wise.

I would think of all these things, sitting in the pool of light that Navi provided. The little blue fairy would perch on me during our resting periods. She would snooze on top of my hat as my heart grew heavy. I felt so alone. Sometimes I would wake her up early, so that I could talk to her.

Navi was … always there. She was the one friend I could always count on to be there. She was the one who companied me through every temple. As I would stare at her, glowing like a little blue light bulb, I would feel my heart lighten. Her commanding voice was a pleasant break of the fragile silence that often surrounded us. Sometimes I wouldn’t need to her say anything; it was enough to just have her by my side. Her presence made me feel not as alone.

So we would continue our way through the dangerous temple. It was such a strange place. It seemed to be some kind of hidden castle, deep behind the graveyard of Kakariko. Yet, at times I found enormous chambers that had ceilings so high that, naturally, I couldn’t see them. Often there were huge gaping abysses with only crumbling old pillars to leap onto.

It was wise not to fall.

It seemed to have no structure at all, sometimes. Just big caverns to climb and hike through. Other times, I found rooms; some of them were half decayed and crumbling stone. Others were in fairly good condition. They were made of gray stone bricks, placed and built by someone: I was told it was the first Sages of Hyrule who built the temples. The stone rooms and passage ways were moldy, always seemed to reek of rot, and stained by many different things. Most of the time it seemed like old dry blood.

They were nearly always covered in booby-traps. These traps were often illusions. An invisible hole in the ground, in which I could fall to my untimely death or perhaps just a chamber I had visited before, and I would have to travel my way back to where I had been. Or invisible spikes on the ground where I could impale myself without knowing it. Sometimes they were blessings in disguise. Where there seemed to be nothing but a black, bottomless pit, there was actually an invisible platform for him to leap onto. Or maybe a door to another chamber. A hole in the wall that lead me out of a dead end.

How these things were invisible, I wasn’t sure. I supposed it was just the magic of the temple. How I knew they were invisible was due to a special looking-glass of mine. It was called the Lens of Truth. It saw through any illusion. I came by the handy little item after exploring the secret chambers at the bottom of the well in Kakariko Village.

The small town seemed to have a number of hidden places unknown to everyone but the Sheikah. The well seemed to have been a preview of the Shadow Temple for me. Impa had led me there as well. She told me it was a test. By the end of it, I found the Lens of Truth, which was probably the real reason she wanted me to go down there.

I didn’t know how long I had been traveling the Shadow Temple, but our provisions were starting to run very low. I wasn’t sure how much longer we could last in here. There was nothing to eat or drink … or at least nothing that wouldn’t make us sick or result in death. Everything was spoiled here.

Though, I thought that maybe this was the end of the temple. So maybe we had nothing to worry about. I had finally come to the last chamber, or what might be the last chamber. It was hard to know in these temples, and especially in this one. There could be something I missed that was invisible or hidden in some other way. I had a good feeling this was it.

I stood in nearly cube-shaped room. The perimeter has even length sides, but the height of the ceiling was rather short. The room seemed like a hollowed out cave in the ground. The ceiling and floor were made of dark brown earth. In the dirt of the walls, skulls were stacked like bricks upon each other. They were old, gray, and dirty. Some were a little crushed here and there. It was dark in the room, for the only light was Navi.

The one thing that truly bothered me about this room was the stench. The whole temple had always filled my nostrils with the scent of damp soil and metallic blood, among other things. This room had the same base smell as the rest of the underground. However, joined with it was the scent of death and rotting flesh, crawling up my nose and down my throat. I had fought back my gag reflex when I first entered.

In the center of the room was a hole. It was five feet wide, and I couldn’t see the bottom, naturally. I had my foot on the edge of the hole, peering down it and frowning. There wasn’t much left to do but drop down it. The smell of death and rot was stronger the closer I got to the hole. I furrowed my eyebrows at it. I wished I could tell how far down it went. I didn’t like the smell or the sight of it.

Unknowable
There was one other thing that disturbed me. I still hadn’t found Impa. My insides tightened sickeningly. It could be that she was still alive and somewhere inside the rest of the temple. Impa had to know this place better than me. She was supposed to be my guide. So if this was the end of the temple then she was probably waiting for me down the hole I was currently staring at. In fact, that made the most sense. My mentor probably wanted me to navigate the entire thing by myself, as some kind of test.

Some test this was. Part of me was almost angry at her for it, leaving me in this kind of a place by myself. I never wanted to see this temple again, once we were finished.

Speaking of completing the temple, I felt even more nervous about this hole. If this was the end … then there was something other than Impa waiting for me there. Each temple housed a type of evil guardian. It seemed they acted as anchors for the curses to the temples. Each time I killed the guardian, the curse would be lifted. These creatures waited at the end of each temple. They were never the same.

I really didn’t want to see this guardian. I really didn’t want to be there at all. I didn’t want to go down that hole and face the unknowable and disturbing thing that guarded the Shadow Temple.

I tried to not let my reluctance show on my face. I didn’t want Navi to know that I was fighting the impulse to turn around and walk away. Maybe even use the Ocarina of Time to warp me out of this dark rotting pit forever. I longed to feel the sun on my skin, the warm caress of the soft breeze and fresh air. It was so cold here. Nothing life-threatening, but it was always cool enough to a barely uncomfortable degree. Like that one itch you can never scratch and rid yourself of. It was there all the time.

The truth was that I was tired. This place had me on edge constantly, even before I stepped foot into it. The energy it had been radiating had brushed roughly against my nerves. That had only been a small taste of the real thing. It had been so hard to sleep and rest, because I was always too afraid to. Even if Navi told me she would keep watch for me, even when I did sleep, it didn’t seem to relieve my exhaustion.

It sank deep into my bones, and soon it seemed like I would wake up each time even more tired than I had been before. The adrenaline in my system kept me wired and shaky after battles, adding to the total of my worn out self.

I didn’t feel brave staring down that dark hole. I was completely intimidated just by staring down at its depth and darkness. I wanted to give up right there. Despite everything I had been through to come this far. This was the second to last temple. My mission was almost complete, and yet …

I wanted to throw down the Master Sword and run … to anywhere, as long as it wasn’t here.

But I wouldn’t.

I didn’t have a choice.

This was never about what I wanted. I was going down that hole whether I wanted to or not. Whether I felt brave or rested enough. Not only to break the curse, but, most of all, to save Impa. If she was down there with the guardian she would need help. And I wasn’t doing it because she was the Sage of Shadow. I was doing it because she was my mentor, my friend, and I couldn’t leave her alone here. And, of course, Navi would kill me on the spot if I tried running. That little fairy possessed a fierce attitude.

I closed my eyes.

Breathed in.

Breathed out.

Pulling together what courage and strength I had left, I opened my eyes and stared at the hole and then to Navi. My fairy had remained silent for the long moment I had paused at the hole. I couldn’t see her face and she didn’t say anything until I finally looked at her.

“Ready when you are,” she said in such a calm voice it amazed me.

Was she afraid at all? Or was the little fairy just hiding it well? Did fairies know fear like mortals did? Did this temple affect her at all? Was she simply immune to this place? Despite the flood of questions, her confidence brought a smile to my face, and I nodded, feeling slightly braver.

I unclipped my two hookshots from my belt. One of them was the longshot, which could reach farther than my regular hookshot, but I still kept my old one. I found having both of them was a very useful thing for tasks like this. Of course, I wasn’t going to simply jump down a hole that’s bottom was questionable. I didn’t know what was down there yet, so it was best to descend as slowly as possible.

That’s where my hookshots came in.

I aimed one of them at the wall of the vertical tunnel. There was a little red dot, created by a little gem inside the point of the hook that generated a laser. I pressed a button on the handle and the hook shot out of it and imbedded itself into the dark earth. I had been preparing myself to be yanked forward, rushing forward with the pull of the chain; I flew down, straight for the wall. I bent my legs and my feet slammed into the wall.

This part was more difficult than usual due to the type of boots I had on. I had discovered the hover boots during my exploration of the temple. I often found ancient treasures from ages passed in the temples, adding them to my arsenal. The hover boots had come in the form of slipper-like boots. They attached to my original shoes, covering the soles of them with wing-like flaps that came out at both sides near my heels. I found it odd that they fit my boots perfectly …

The hover boots did exactly what the title said: they hovered, but only for a few seconds. Yet the extra seconds were often all that I needed to grab onto a near-by ledge, aim my hookshot, things that kept me from falling into bottomless pits.

A side affect of using the boots is that they lacked friction, traction, the ability to grip the ground. It was similar to walking on ice, which made gripping the side of the wall extremely difficult.

I let my boots hover for a moment underneath me and then attempted to jam the toe of my boots into the wall. I grunted a few times, one boot slipping a few times, making my heart leap in my chest and start thumping against my ribs. But I eventually got my boot to stick.

I paused there against the wall, listening to my heartbeat and panting.

Thump-thump, thump-thump.

Navi hovered above me, providing light. When I finally caught my breath, I leaned back, holding with one hand to the hookshot in the wall, and held the other hookshot in my right hand, twisting to aim down at the other side of the tunnel. At that moment my boots slipped against, both of them. I let out a yell as my support fell again, but they stopped for the hover boots provided a replacement for it, hovering for a few moments. I slammed my feet against the force that kept me afloat and shoved my toes into the wall again. They stuck once more.

Thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump.

I huffed against the wall; my forehead pressed against the dirt and sharply inhaled the scent of earth and rot. I coughed on it, but clung to the wall, trembling.

Thump-thump, thump-thump.

I closed my eyes and wished I hadn’t started this climb down. It was already too late to run.

I wanted to stay there. Right in that spot, but my arms and legs were getting tired. They started shaking a little. Instead, I forced myself to twist around again, aiming with the extra hookshot at the lower wall on the other side.

I was about to press the button when I fell. I first had the sickening lurch in my gut. This time I didn’t fall because of my boots. This time I fell almost face forward, and since my boots were not underneath me they could not provide the extra support showed previously. My hookshot had come lose out of the wall because the earth was too soft to hold me.

The adrenaline hit my system so fast it made it seem like I was falling forever. I twisted so slowly to watch Navi disappear into a pin prick of blue light to nothing. The loss of her light plunged me into a darkness that made my fall seem like an eternity. It seemed as if I had lost all of my senses, all sight, taste, touch, smell, and hearing. Everything except for the overwhelming fear that swallowed me whole just as the shadows had when I fell.

It could be that it wasn’t too far of a drop, and perhaps I would survive it. Or it could land me on hard sharp rocks that broke and shredded my body into ragged pieces. I could live or I could die. There was no way to know until I hit the bottom. My fate was left unknowable to me. It was almost torturous. The long wait. The uncertainty of my continued life. Not knowing what was going to happen to me. That’s what I hated the most about this place. It contained so many unknowns, so many uncertainties. So much helplessness. Always trying to be prepared for what came next. Always trying to be on guard. Trying not to die.

Oh gods, I didn’t want to die.

Alone
I had been used to being alone. It had been that way before I found out that I was a Hylian. Saria had been the only Kokiri to truly accept me. The rest of them had not been so compassionate. Perhaps they had always known deep down that I was not one of them. Not of their kind. They were cruel to me in the way that children could be. Often bullied and excluded, but nothing more serious than alienation. Mido had always made that clear to me. That I was not accepted.

Mido was the leader of the Kokiri, appointed along with Saria by the Deku Tree. Mido always called me a “half person.” This was because I did not have a fairy for a very long time. Each Kokiri had a guardian fairy. They were each other’s soul mates. Neither was complete without the other. That had been another obvious sign that I was clearly not one of them.

Yet, I was given a fairy anyway, as a guide from the Deku Tree. And even though I was not a true Kokiri and even though Navi may not truly belong to my soul and mine to hers …

I felt so lost and empty without her presence.

She was my guiding light. My friend. My partner. She was always there. She was a part of me just as much as breathing was. She was the only thing that allowed me to see through the darkness. For once, I thought I would never have to be alone again. But she was gone now. Lost. And for a moment I forgot to breathe.

I never really forgot the terror. The memory would revisit me in my sleep sometimes. Free falling, absolutely helpless to the lack of earth and support under me. A slave to gravity. I couldn’t remember if I screamed or not. Everything seemed to go dead quiet when I fell. I fell too fast and was lost in the darkness. One thing I did remember was the scared little whimpers that had managed to escape me. I had been too shocked and paralyzed by fear to attempt another shot with my hook. I should have tried harder, but the fear seemed to have smothered me, and despair filled me so overwhelmingly that I wondered if this was what it felt like to be dead.

I wondered where people went when they died. Was there an afterlife? If so, what was it like? I had never really thought about it before, which was strange for having almost died a dozen times already. There had never really been time for thinking about it. It seemed like I had all the time in the world now. But it was nothing other than another unknown. Another terror of uncertainty.

The last thing that finally came to me was the horrible sense and disappointment of failure. If I died, there would be no more Hero of Time to awaken the Sages and free Hyrule. Ganondorf would win.

For the first time I wondered why I did it all. Why had I fought so hard? What had been so important? This land and its people? Why did I fight so hard for a land that held no place for me? I was an orphan. I had no true home. I was not a Kokiri, and the Hylians were even more alien to me. I was alone in this world. What the hell had I been struggling so hard for? What had it all been for?

An obligation. A promise. A dying wish.

How could I have denied the Deku Tree its last wish? How could I when I had failed to save its life? I took the spiritual stone and went to the Princess of Hyrule. She asked me to collect the other two. How could I have denied her? It had obviously been what the Deku Tree wanted me to do. But then everything went wrong, and it had been my fault. So I had to make it right. I was obligated to. The guilt drove me. The pain on so many faces. So many that had died and suffered for my mistake. The shame was eating me alive. So I had to save as many people as I could and restore the peace I owed them.

I owed it to them. The people and the places that had no place for me in their little worlds.

I found myself at a loss for how my life had turned out like this. The Deku Tree had entrusted this task to me, but I had failed it.

I wanted it to all end.

Even if it meant dying. My regrets, guilt, despair, and terror were drowning me, rotting away my heart. It all hurt and ached so much, throbbing like gangrene deep within my soul. Like my heart had been turned into the dead rotting flesh of the Redeads.

I had been surprised when I finally hit the ground, for a number of reasons. One was that I had almost been expecting the drop to last forever. The second that the drop had not been high enough to kill me. The third was that when I hit the ground I bounced right up again. I smacked the ground so hard and bounced up so viciously that my head jerked back sending hot painful twinges down my neck. I bounced only two more times before I fell still on the ground. My body ached from the whiplash it was forced to endure. I lied there, having landed on my stomach, aching in the dark for a long few minutes until my brain started working again.

I first realized that normal ground would not have bounced me so high multiple times or been soft enough to let me live. My fingers felt the ground I was lying on. It was cold but did not feel like stone. It felt too smooth and leathery, but hard still.

I lied there for some time, not getting up. I didn’t want to. My body hurt so much. My head pounded viciously along with my neck and bruised limbs. I had already been so tired before attempting to descend slowly. And the drop. The terror of falling into the dark pit seemed to have ripped away all the courage I had managed to muster earlier.

It was so dark. I couldn’t see anything. Not even the hand in front of my face. I was alone. I had lost Navi back at the opening. There was no sound. Everything was perfectly quiet, except for the moans I had let out earlier and my own breathing. I lied there, not knowing if there was anything around me in the darkness that could kill me. Not that it mattered anyway. I wouldn’t be able to see them, so I wouldn’t be able to fight them.

I was powerless. Helpless. Hopeless.

I cried there. In the dark. Quietly.

I didn’t know what to do. Where to go. If I should move or if I should hold still. Navi was probably looking for me. She would find me surely. It would probably be best if I stayed in that spot until she did. But since I could not see, I wasn’t sure if it was a safe spot to stay in.

I managed to pull some effort into rolling over onto my back. My body throbbed still. I finally had stopped crying. I let myself lie there, breathing deeply, trying to take control of myself again. I tried to think through the pain, trying to ignore other thoughts. Ones that wondered why I should even bother trying anymore.

Why? Why struggle so much for them?

If there had been no guilt, no obligation, no promise … would I still be fighting so hard? I wondered if I would still have chosen to do the things I had. Was the guilt and obligations the only reason? Were they the only reasons I was trying to collect myself? To fight against all the pain and hurt both physical and emotional in order to continue.

Through all the agony, I had somehow found solid calmness. It came with all the pain. It seemed like I would not have been able to find this core, this strength, without the pain. I lied there and thought of all the happy faces I had seen when I helped those people. The Gorons, the Zora, the town’s people of Kakariko. Malon’s joy, warm and bright, her face and vibrant blue eyes so alive when she heard that her father was coming back to the ranch. Ruto’s shy appreciation, showing through her bossy princess exterior when she gave me the very prize she had searched so bravely for. Darunia’s large, proud smile when he claimed me as a sworn brother.

I felt the place in my heart, that had once felt like rotting, swell and hum with warmth and happiness as I finally found the answer to my question. My mind was still and my hurt body didn’t seem to bother or hinder me anymore. It still hurt, but it seemed so unimportant now. Just a minor detail.

I pushed myself up to my feet, and reached for the Master Sword’s hilt. I did not need sight to know I could reach it. I gripped the familiar handle with a well practiced motion. It was cold to my exposed fingers like always. My hand drew it steadily. Somehow, I knew what to do without really even thinking about it. It was almost as familiar as breathing. It had always been there. It had simply been left unnoticed by me.

I raised my sword straight into the air and let my warmth and happiness travel through, surging into my sword. Bright golden light burst forth from the blade. Several cords of this golden power wrapped and weaved about the Master Sword’s edge as it embraced and channeled a power that had always been with me.

My Light medallion.

The Sages always gave me their medallion once I had awakened them from their oblivious sleep. It was how they added their might and power to mine. The very first medallion I had ever received had been from the ancient Sage of Light, right after I had woken up in the Chamber of Sages. I had learned to use all the other medallions. Their power had unique qualities differing from each one just as each temple had been different. The one thing they all had in common was their pure holy power, adding to the Master Sword’s ability to banish evil, sharpening it wondrous edges.

However, there was one medallion that I hadn’t learned to use before. I had almost forgotten about it. That one was the Light medallion. I now channeled the Sage of Light’s power through my sword. It burned through the shadows.

A bright and magnificent light in the dark.

The Keeper of the Well
My sword lit up everything around me in a bright bubble of light. However the darkness still hovered outside of my glow, lurking around me, taunting. But I paid no mind to it. I looked up instead, searching for Navi. It would be impossible to miss my light. She would know it was me. After a few moments I looked around myself and down at the ground. It looked strange; pale, perfectly flat, and smooth. It was difficult to tell exactly what it was. It didn’t look like stone.

And then I spotted it. Navi’s blue-white glow. She fluttered quickly over to me, her butterfly wings beating furiously in her urgency. She zipped over to my face more quickly than I thought her tiny little fairy body was capable of. Navi swirled around my head many times all the while squealing,

“Link! By the Three! I thought—I thought—Oh! I thought you were …”

I smiled up at her, showing her that I was fine. Better than fine. I had found my light. I would always be fine.

She stopped swirling around me and finally took notice of the glow coming from my blade. Before she could say anything about it, there was a small moan heard coming from my right. We both whipped about to face that direction, peering into the darkness. I took a cautious step closer, gripping my sword, ready for anything. My light created the shine of pale hair in the shadows and the vague outline of a person lying on the ground nearby.

I heard Navi take in a gasp at the same time I did. We both raced over to the figure. As I approached my light revealed my suspicion to be true. The tall and athletic form of my mentor came into the glow. It was her short white hair, muscular Sheikah build, and her violet blue and silver clothing. It was definitely her.

I slid to a stop and knelt down next to her quickly and checked for wounds. Impa was sprawled on her side; head turned to show me a nasty bruise and bloody cut where she must have bumped it, except for that she was fine. I reached into my pouches and pulled out a bottle with red potion in it. I dubbed some of it onto her cut with my fingers. Impa’s limp expression tensed and she groaned again. I watched as the cut closed itself up and the bruise faded away back to healthy skin. Impa opened her blood red eyes, blinking them up at me.

My mentor slowly sat up. I smiled at her.

She put a hand to where her bruise had been, legs bent up as she took her own inventory of her condition. The Sheikah looked over at me and then took a long stare at my glowing sword, stone-serious face, but then I saw the very small curve at the corner of her lips. A proud smile. I had done well. I had come here and found her on my own. Impa and I never needed many words between us. We were both silent types of people, and in that way we understood each other perfectly.

Then suddenly the ground began to shake and quake beneath us. The emptiness seemed to groan back. Both Impa and I sat up straight, alert, staring around. Was it getting brighter in here? A dim greenish glow began to surround us. It lit up the chamber enough for us to see. We were standing on a large circular platform at the bottom of a deep cavern. The green light surrounding us was coming from some kind of liquidly goop. Perhaps the source of the horrible stench that I had first smelled at the hole in the top of the cavern. The shaking stopped and it was quiet once more. Impa stood to her feet with me.

And then we were abruptly shot up into the air with a loud bong! Like that of a drum only magnified. The noise rang in my sharp Hylian ears, rattling my thoughts. I stayed in the air a moment longer than Impa because of my boots, but then fell to my feet just the same.

“There!” cried my mentor, turning around us to point. I twisted around to see as well.

Drifting just over the edge of the platform were two giant pale and graying hands. They were attached to nothing. In fact, it looks like they had been cut off at the wrist. At the seams it was pale, gray, and rotting. The great nails were short, cracked, and dirty, as if they had dug themselves out of their own grave. One dropped down on the platform, which shot us up in the air again and created another loud bong!

At least I knew what the ground was now.

It was a huge drum.

Without looking over at Impa or Navi for instruction, I ran over to where I had dropped my hookshots. I clipped them back to by belt and pulled out the purple and red Lens of Truth from a pouch. The hands were steadily increasing the speed of their drumming, spending me up, which I simply ignored and continued to race along toward Impa in the air.

Upon reaching her I quickly shrugged off my quiver of arrows, unhooked my bow from under my shield on my back, and handed them to her. She took them without question, as if she had already read my mind.

I turned my attention to the hands, but not completely. I would let Impa handle them for me. However, there had to be something more. Perhaps they were attached to something. Perhaps I simply could not see it. It was interesting how the temple had changed my way of thinking. Instead of just seeing what was there, now I looked for what was not.

I raised the looking glass up to my face and peered through its lens. Between the two gray hands I saw a strange giant form. It seemed like a huge, naked, muscular torso of a man hung down from the ceiling shadows. I couldn’t see past his waist. His body was like his hands, rotting, flesh gray and pale, though slightly darker than his hands. I felt it had a gender. He had no head. Instead he had a great eye embedded deep in his throat, where it was split all around it and peeled back like some twisted kind of flower to reveal the bright red center of his eye. His wrists were rotting stumps, I could see some of his bone exposed at its center, but it seemed he was still able to control his severed hands.

I was still scared. My fear was like a raging river under a calm stone surface. It was there but I couldn’t let it affect me. It was as if he had seen me looking at him, knew that I truly saw him. The huge red eye stared right back.

It was the same terror of a child believing a monster to be under his bed or somehow invisible. Yet how often was that true? How often did they come face-to-face with the thing that went bump in the night? It was straight out of a nightmare.

He then showed himself to Impa and Navi, his hands holding still for that moment. I felt the fairy flutter down close to my neck. I could feel her trembling against me.

“It’s—it’s a phantom shadow beast …” she stuttered into my ear.

No, I felt—I knew he was more than that. As if I knew his presence from somewhere before. Somewhere very similar to this place. Why else would he be so attracted to it? It came back to me almost instantly. He was the thing that escaped the well, attacked Sheik, and damaged the village. He was the thing Impa said had been long sealed away.

The well. It had almost been just as terrifying as the temple if not more. There was something different about the well. Somehow, it felt more corrupted than the temple. While the temple was a place of worship, it seemed the well was a prison, a torture house. Perhaps it had been my fault he had escaped the well. I had gone back in time, the words of Sheik and Impa being true. If I placed the Master Sword back in the Pedestal of Time, I would go back seven years. It was then I had visited the well. I had drained it and went down. Had the water kept him away? Did it keep him from resurfacing?

I realized it then that I had stolen his treasure.

The Lens of Truth.

He remembered me.

I had asked Impa after I came back about the well and an interesting rumor I had heard around the village. One of the old men told me that a man once known to have the Eye of Truth lived in a house where the well stood today. My mentor became very grim, though she was always stern and calm. It seemed as if it brought back bad memories for her. All she told me was that he had been a Sheikah of her tribe. That he had gone mad. They executed him.

We no longer speak his name.

She never gave me more details than that, and I thought it unkind to press the subject farther. But I was certain now, after going down in his personal lair, all the grotesque devices and chambers I’d seen there, and now I stared at the headless spirit with severed hands. I knew he had done many horrible things down there with those hands. The spirits there were so tortured, captured by him still. Still his victims even after death. He bent them to his will, and he did the same to the spirits of the Shadow Temple.

I felt their pain so sharply. I had been them. They had touched me before with their emotions, their terror, their desperation, their wanting of rest. It was just now that I understood it all, and I ached for them.

He wouldn’t let them rest.

His body faded away again and his hands started beating the drum once more. They swirled around the edge of the drum, beating slowly but getting faster. He started singing. It wasn’t really as much of a song as it was a chant. His voice was low, deep, inhuman, and used no real words. It was of another world entirely. The sound of it crept up my spine with a prickly and eerie sensation.

Impa and I followed him around the drum, never turning our backs to him. My mentor had an arrow notched, aimed, and ready. I stood with my sword bright with gold glowing tendrils in my left hand and the vibrantly colored Lens of Truth in the other. The drumming suddenly stopped and the hands came in at us. One great shadow drifted over and I rolled away as one snatched at me. I slipped while trying to stand, the boots tend to do that, and in doing so managed to slip right past another hand that had missed Impa and came at me on its way back.

After failing to snag me with their immense fingers, they went for Impa again. One hand slapped the drum, sending us up, and the other grabbed at the Sheikah as she went into the air. I was knelt on the ground before this happened, trying to attach a chain around my wrist. It was a little gold chain, coming from the end of the lens handle that would keep it within reach without having to drop it entirely to use my other weapons. The slap of the drum sent me up, making it difficult to clip the clasp of the chain through one slender hoop. Thanks to my boots I got my extra second or three to finish the clasp.

I looked up to find Impa caught in one giant thick hand. It had got her when the other hand sent her up in the air. It was so big she had disappeared in it. I grabbed my hookshot from my belt and gave a cry, releasing the trigger. The hook went deep into one of the knuckles and yanked me toward it. I gripped the Master Sword hard in my left hand, and when I got to the fingers, I placed my boots upon the ridge of a finger below me and started slashing at the rest with the blade.

The hand didn’t bleed. It was already lifeless, but my blade affected it in a different way. It burned where I slashed at the fingers, it singed as it cut through the dead, pale, clammy skin, turning it black. It was a holy blade also imbued with Light at the moment. I heard the flesh sizzle under the metal like meat on a frying pan. It made a horrible smell. Something far more foul than before, so bad that I had to gag a little. The hand automatically dropped Impa, and the other came at me, to grab and rip me off. I pressed the second trigger and the hook released, dropping me. This time I made sure I fell backwards so that my boots could not stop my fall. The hand missed and I bounced on my back when I struck the floor again. The hand went in quickly again to get me while I was down. I saw one rise up, palm and fingers flat to smack down on the drum and squish me like a bug.

I rolled, spinning away on the ground. It hit the drum and I was up in the air again, which I used to regain my footing once more. Impa must have been ready with the hands distracted by me. She started firing arrows into them, hitting their flesh with little thwacks. The first that had started receiving arrows twitched and writhed in the air, trying to shake the arrows out like a limb that had fallen asleep and as trying to shake life back into itself.

The other hand zipped after her. Impa waited for it until the very last second and then rolled away from its grasp. She rolled up to her feet, twisted around, dragging an arrow from the quiver, notched it, and fired. The hand slapped down on the drum again, dodging the arrow and throwing Impa up into the air. It rushed up to catch her. However, this time Impa anticipated the move and jumped up with the drum and doing a backwards flip. It missed her, and she landed perfectly on her feet, had drawn an arrow while in the air, had it notched when she hit the ground, raised it and released with perfect aim. It struck home.

I had to admire her. She was my mentor, an expert, and so perfectly trained. I felt so young, so inexperienced in her presence. Yet it was me who was supposed to save Hyrule. I knew that could mean one last battle with Ganondorf. He was probably just as old and experienced as Impa, had the boost of the Triforce on his side, and already a talented magic user before then as well. I was on my second to last temple. So why was it that I still felt so out-classed?

I snapped out of it quickly enough to remember my duty. The second hand was finally twitching and shaking like the first, having enough arrows to irritate it immensely it seemed. I clipped the hookshot away again and grabbed up the Lens of Truth from the chain it daggled. I searched the darkness around the drum for his form.

I found him; torso bent low between his two shaking hands, red eye down on the drum surface. He was starting to move his whole body across it. His hands were now useless so he wanted to sweep us off the drum into the green goop that smelled a little too strongly of rot. I ran forward to meet him in the middle. As I charged, I let all the medallions I had gathered from the other temples join the Light around the Master Sword. Glowing tendrils of several different colors erupted from the base of the hilt and wrapped, twirling around the blade.

The organic green of the Forest Medallion sprouted and grew around it. The hot red of the Fire Medallion danced up and around, sparking, buzzing with energy and heat. The gentle blues of the Water Medallion trickled around like a stream of water being poured from a pitcher, smooth and glassy.

With all of these shimmering around my blade, I ran forward and thrust it into the great red eye of the phantom beast. It went in deep, almost completely to the handle, because we both had been charging one another. The power of the medallions flowed into him with the sword, coursing through his body like electricity in little flashes of all the colors. His hands slapped the drum frantically, as if to express the pain it caused him, for he had no mouth or head to scream with. The rest of his torso convulsed with the energy I had sent into him. I jerked up and down with the thumping of the drum, but did not let go of the Master Sword.

Finally the hands stopped, but slowly, after feeble smacks of the drum. They lay still on the edges and so did the rest of his body. And then his whole form became a strange purple and shadowy substance. It seemed to melt, deflating, particles dispersing back into oblivion. His presence dripped and slid to the ground from my sword. I stood up straight, watching him go.

Then there was a flash of white light, enveloping everything, and soon I was shooting down, up, and around the vortex of blue-white light. I was surprised, not because I didn’t know what was happening. I knew we were going to the Chamber of Sages. It was done. The guardian was slain and the curse was broken. It’s just that I had forgotten about all that. My mind hadn’t been set on that goal when I had killed him.

The one whose name we no longer speak.

Author’s Note: This is not the end of this short story. Stay tuned, peeps.

Hey! I've read this one too...this is amazing as well!

I like how you made it in first person so it was as if Link were talking.

Really cool!

Please do not revive old threads.