Chapter One: All For Her
It was chaos.
Link swung his blade down heavily, felling a barrage of monsters Ganondorf had ordered to storm the castle.
"Run, Zelda! Run!" He grabbed her by the arm and led her down a back hallway. The monsters were closing in. There were so many of them, crowding the corridors in filthy, dark masses. Where had Ganondorf gotten them all?
A window. Link ducked into the room, pulling Zelda behind him, and slammed the door. Without hesitation he shoved furniture to barricade the door, his brain forming an escape plan. Already they were beating at the entrance, and Link moved all the furniture in the room against it. That should hold them for a bit, he thought.
"You have to get out of the castle," he said to Zelda, tearing the sheets off the bed and shredding them into long strips. "We'll have to use the window. How far down is it?"
"A-a couple floors. We'll probably need the whole sheet."
"Alright," Link was thinking fast, handing the strips to Zelda as she tied them together. "Some army that guy got, huh?" he said, trying to break some tension, but Zelda gave him a frightened look.
"It'll be alright Zelda. Don't worry about it," he tried, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder, but that hand was covered in blood. She recoiled in shock, and Link drew into himself again, biting his lip.
The strips tied together into rope, Link pulled out his ocarina as Zelda tied the makeshift rope to the window. He called Epona and hope filled him as she appeared below. "You'll have to go first," Link said, handing the end of the rope to Zelda. I'll help you down. Then you need to get on Epona. We'll make for the mountains."
Zelda nodded as Link lifted her unto the windowsill. "Hold on tight," he said as he began to lower her down. The monsters were making new attempts at the door, and the furniture was clattering, its legs scraping against stone. "Come on…." He whispered urgently, his back straining against the rope. At last Zelda touched down, just as the door broke open in a cascade of cacophony and wood splinters.
"Run Zelda!" he yelled out the window, leaping unto its edge, "Now!" he screamed, "run now! You'll need all the ground you can get!" The thundering of Epona's hooves rang out from behind him as he slid down the rope of sheets, marring their white with the blood on his hands. But ten feet off the ground, the monsters had reached the window and hacked the rope through.
He smashed against the ground, his sword dislocating his shoulder. He tasted blood from a broken tooth, and he gritted his teeth as he popped the fire in his shoulder back into place.
It was raining arrows. Burning they whizzed into the lawn around him and he hefted his shield above his head, and they pecked at the metal futilely. But shredding down the makeshift rope and leaping blindly, the monsters were after him. They cracked to the ground and did not move or stuttered to their feet and lunged maliciously.
Sword raised Link hacked away at them, his back to the sound of a receding Zelda. The monsters pressed forward, their weight that of a stampede, pouring from the gates on the ground level and the window out which they clambered unto a growing pile of crushed. Adrenaline rushed Link's system into hyperdrive, and he felt his mind shift into cold, unbroken focus, an efficient machine fighting for a way out. But the crowd pressed around him and he felt the leaping pulse in his throat falter.
His reflexes began to fire madly and jerk his body in all directions. So many, on every side. And those who couldn't jab at him with spear or dagger were hefting stones, rubble, and bits of armor torn from fallen comrades. He tried to raise his shield to the hail, but the made him twice as vulnerable to the swords.
A chunk hit him in the side of the head. It slammed and the word shivered. He swung madly about, losing touch of reality but mad and desperate for a way out, a cornered animal no longer aware of the lines between anything except life and death. He wheeled in all directions, fighting for a slice of advantage, hacking through the thicket of bodies towards open air.
A large monster, ogre like, heaved an armored body and swung it at him, splaying him face first on bloodslick grass. A javalin blunted off his chain mail, bruising his ribs.
He was down. He was down.
The world became a cave without sky, the walls moving and planning, enemies hailing him with blows, kicks and blades. He was kicked in the teeth and a gruff fist snagged his hair and hauled him up. He stabbed the creature but twice as many fell upon him. His shield was being ripped from his grasp, his arm caught up in the banding that secured it to him, sinews straining and screaming at the torture.
He hit the offending moblin in the face and knocked it out. He raised his sword and sliced at faces and necks, but a maddened moblin with bloody teeth and crazed eye gripped the blade boldly with two hands, pulling it towards himself. Link tried to cut away but another two caught unto the idea, crazed by the frenzy of battle and the scent of blood on Link's breath. They were past monsters now, something else entirely reeling for their kill.
A knife hit Link in the side, throwing him off as another clubbed the sword hilt. He felt his knuckles splinter inside his gloves.
Desperate, Link finally freed his sword from the demonic eyed moblins but was clubbed in the face. Blood spurted from his nose and mouth and he spun his sword to try and evade the ever-pressing crowd. It was claustrophic terror, the monsters at elbow length on every side.
A mace struck Link in the stomach and his sword was ripped from his broken hands as he doubled under shattered ribs. With a tug Link felt something at his previously dislocated shoulder. He pulled back, trying to free himself, but with a yank an imp unsocketed his arm and the Hero let lose one long wailing scream, bloodcurdling like the shrieks of redeads in a nightmare Link practically longed for. He could tell by the torturous pain that he still had an arm, but the world wheeled as he pulled off his feet by the beasts, an ogre tearing at his hair, wolfos cutting at his chest, trying to rid Link's body of the lifesaving chainmail. The Hero jerked his body to and fro, flailing, but he was held on every side, fist clenching into his broken ribs and fingers toying with his dislocated arm socket. He felt a blade at his neck and the sky wheeled in red above him. Was the sunsetting, was he dying, or had he simply gone mad? He pulled his good arm and kicked those holding him, but there were too many. He thrashed and yelled and in the red sea above him, caught sight of a panicked Navi screaming in a high pitched voice and bobbing at Link's attackers. But it did nothing.
To go mad seemed the simplest option of all, Link thought as the blade at his neck drew blood.
"Stop!" a voice boomed across the frenzy, and the hissing, cackling, snarling madness about him was silenced. Link was dropped and with a clamor fell to the ground, his last hopes shattering at the voice of Ganondorf, the man who would not let him die without having his say in the matter, a last smear to his name. Link's body rang with impact to the earth, and he rolled on a broken side and tried to pull himself up, but a monster snarled above him and flattened him to the ground, impaling his already skinned wounds with filthy talons. He shrieked and something kicked the creature off of him. Link closed his eyes to the world, his face a turmoil of blood, and tears which streamed openly from his eyes.
"Leave this filth."
The monsters scattered and Link's breath snarled in his throat, catching and gagging. Fire wreathed his body but through a mask of blood he stared down Ganondorf. He shifted his mangled body in an attempt to stand, and a clawed boot was clamped unto a fragmented ribcage.
"Why waste such a strapping lad as you?" Ganondorf sneered. "My Gerudo get lonely."
Link wanted to scream, to wail. But mostly he wanted to strike down the pig who leered at him above so much armor. He had been sure to knock a pummeled Ganondorf beneath rubble on the top floor of the castle, but, as always, he'd managed some way to evade the death that he now repaid with Link's life.
With a maniac laugh, Ganondorf hauled Link by his dislodged shoulder all the way back up the hill and into the castle.
As a last testimony of will, Link did not scream or cry out. He felt the ligaments and tendons of his shoulder tearing and stretching and snapping but he clenched his teeth and let loose a last hope message, as Zelda had to him in a dream, a plea for her to stay safe, to stay away from this Hell.