It's Luminia Aravis again. I went back and retooled a lot of "Hyrule Destiny" today, and added a prologue. So the old chapter 1 is still chapter 1, it's just chapter 2 now. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 (or 3, 4, and 5, whatever) will just be published as normal. I got this one.

Thanks for sticking with me, criticism is wanted and welcome. Enjoy!

Prologue

I really don't believe in destiny. It's kind of a stupid idea if you ask me. Every man gets to make his own choice, and nobody can do anything to stop him. That's just the way it works. You wanna buy a new cow, you buy a new cow. You wanna have cabbage for dinner, you have cabbage for dinner. You wanna kidnap a princess, you kidnap a princess. Nobody told me that I had to save her. Nobody told me specifically that it had to be done. Nobody came up to me and said, "Sweet Hylia, Link, do something." I just knew that I had to, because nobody else had the guts enough to leave home and face all those monsters out there. It's not an honor, or my destiny, or any of that crap. Just something that someone's gotta do. And soon.

You'd think that after fifteen years, I'd have gotten used to the smell of shit wafting into my bedroom every morning. The village planner insisted that the best place to sift through the town's manure was right outside my window. And who was I to argue?

"Get up, get up, or you'll get a hiding for sure," my dad said. His traditional wake-up call. I wanted so dearly to roll over and go back to sleep. Just once. For the first time in my life, I wanted to sleep in. I mean, it wasn't the first time I wanted to sleep in, I want it every morning. But I never get it is all.

A loud rap came on the door. I knew that it was the butt of a spear against the dented, dried wooden door to our cabin. I knew that because that was normal, too. "Open up," shouted the guard, whose name I knew was Rupert, simply because he was the one who kicked us out of the house every morning, at sunrise, sharp.

I mentally chided myself for not getting up early enough to eat something. The morning would be hellish, a six-hour scene of hard labor with an empty stomach. Rupert entered my bedroom, grabbed my upper arm, and dragged me out of bed, dumping me in the dust in front of my three-room house. My father stood next to me, already at attention. The village planner was walking about with a scroll of paper. The one that was going to tell us all what to do that day.

"These are desperate times," he said, "and desperate times call for desperate measures. Without hard work from everyone, and careful planning provided by the Crown, no-one will survive this drought."

Time to cross one's fingers for an easy assignment.

And it paid off for a change. All I had to do was clean the village stable and groom the two horses that called it home. They were two girls, one named Malon and the other Epona. Malon was pretty, but Epona was secretly my girl. I loved her so much.

The downside of getting the stable job was that I had no-one to blame but myself for there being manure outside my window. I had to sift through that, change the horses' water, and put fresh hay on the floor for them. Then they needed to be brushed and have their hooves cleaned.

I felt ever so sorry for the two most beautiful ladies in town. They were so weak and thin. And once they were dead, we wouldn't have horses anymore. The Crown said that they couldn't manage livestock until the drought was over. It just put too much of a strain on Hyrule's resources.

The Crown, the Crown, the almighty Crown. The Crown giveth and taketh away, all good things come straight from the Crown. The village planner gets letters directly from the palace, and manages everything in town accordingly. Everything from where a new house will be built, to who will build it; how long they will work, how hard; right down to when the workers can take a crap.

The Crown? It used to be a good thing. Once there was a kind, wise king on the throne, and he ruled the land with the justice. But ever since the Hero of Time failed to kill the Beast King, or at least, that's how my pa said it started, Hyrule's gone downhill. A Dark Prince took the throne, using various blood-ties and political puppets to get what he wanted until Hyrule was nothing left but a crippled, empty shadow of what it had once been.

In the village, there lives a boy a little older than me. His name is Mido. Mido's father is the captain of the guard, so he has little to fear but the wrath of the village planner. And the village planner's just a shriveled old guy. He only has as much power as the guards give him.

Anyway, I believe that Mido's favorite pastime is making me unhappy. For example, that afternoon, he was supposed to be working at the mill. But lo and behold, he came strolling down the dirt path to the stables about lunchtime, chomping on a nice, shiny apple. He was strong, handsome, and well-fed. The last bit made me jealous, because I knew that he had been eating all day. He always was.

He had two other boys with him; one a little older, and one a little younger. "Look," he said, "the moblin baby." He pointed at me.

Now, moblins are nasty creatures that live outside the village. They have the bodies of oxen and the heads of ugly dogs, and their painful bites are dwarfed in potency by their marksmanship, which was really rather good. Or so I've heard. It's a tall tale, I think, because you wouldn't expect something so stupid to be able to hold a bow, let alone shoot it.

"Aw, little moblin, when're you gonna leave and go find your poor momma?" Mido cooed. Mido liked to pretend that I was half-moblin, half-human, abandoned at birth. "You gotta go find her, little bastard. She's not gonna be out there forever."

I sighed. "That's okay, Mido. I think she'll hold out for a few more days."

I made the mistake of letting Mido out of my sight for a few seconds. As I turned back to shoveling manure, he kicked me in the small of the back and I landed just short of the pile. I got lucky.

"Aw, does shoveling animal shit remind you of her?"

"Not in the least," I said lamely. I wasn't one for snarky retorts.

"Hey, Mido, is it true that moblins give birth out the ass?"

"Yeah, it is," Mido replied. "That's why I think Link here would find this pile of shit nostalgic. You entered this world covered in shit, and you'll leave it covered in shit. And there's nothing that you can do about it."