Stories tell of a knight in shining armor who slays the dragon and saves the princess highest tower. This could not be further from the truth.
There was once a time when my young mind thought that almost plausible. But what those stories didn't tell were the hardships of the knight.
Did the dragon burn his skin and make him bleed out until he cried out for mercy? Did he lie sleepless nights thinking about all the lives of the monsters that he had taken, the dying looks on their faces fresh on the front of his mind? Did he worry that this morning sunrise might the last he'd ever see?
No.
They say that he went in proudly, bravely, into the dungeons, carrying the damsel out happily in his arms.
They never told of how the dungeon made him shake with fear. They didn't tell how the darkness seemed to close in around him, threatening to swallow him. They didn't tell how the entire fate of the kingdom rested on his poor, weary shoulders.
The stories told of a war-seasoned man.
What they never told was that man was once an innocent seventeen year old boy, thrown into the middle of chaos, never given an option to turn back, simply given a mission and going forth to save a kingdom he had never been part of in his life. A boy whose hand was more fit to hold a pitchfork than a sword. A boy who once had friends and family, only to lose them in the war.
My story is different from the ones you have heard as a child. It is not a story, but a legend. A legend of a boy in green who drives back the evil king every hundred years or so. The Legend of Zelda.
Yes, what I just said to summarize it probably makes it sound like just another fairytale, but this is a load of dragon dung.
This boy did not ask for this fate. This boy was too young to be a hero, and yet he was thrown into it time and time again because those damned goddesses told him to. This boy returned home to his friends who expected him to be happy, to tell them stories of his marvelous adventures.
He did tell them his story, but this boy was anything but happy.
Instead of seeing a boy you would see a tired old man. You would see someone who had lost their purpose in life. Bored of the simple life they had once lived before the war.
Now I will tell you this, my story did in fact have a princess in a tower. My story did have a large scaly dragon. But it was different.
In my story, there were far more dragons. There were two worlds to save, not just a princess. And not only that, but there wasn't just one princess. There were two. Neither one of them were completely helpless either. They were wonderful, strong young women who would've been fully capable of taking the evil in the kingdom down. They would've saved it without me well enough had one not had her kingdom shrouded in darkness, weakening her powers, and the other cursed.
And the one I loved was not the one locked in the tower. She was the one in the other world. The world that no one was supposed to know about. The world that could not remain joined to ours. Her country came before her love. She left us behind, with nothing but a golden gleaming tear and a shattered mirror in her wake.
That is where the story ends.
It is not the happy ending you would expect.
The hero did not get the princess he wished for. He did not live "happily ever after." No. Because of all he had seen, he was broken. He was nothing. He lived his years as a shadow of who he once was.
He was remembered as a hero.
He did not want to be a hero. He wanted to be left alone, to just be a humble goat herder and be done with it. But fate was cruel to him. He could never rest from the endless cycle.
Hundreds of years later, when his story had become one of legend, another innocent life would be scarred by the life of the hero.
There was no rest for him.
For the hero never rests.
And that hero is me.
The heroes of stories always seem to get a happily ever after. I set the book down with a sad smile and a scoff. They had their happily ever after.
I'm still waiting my turn.
Stories tell of a knight in shining armor who slays the dragon and saves the princess in the highest tower. But I tell you this: That story could never be further from the truth.
A/n: Hey. I just thought I would write a quick story on how Link feels about everything that happened. Seeing all that he saw really makes stories look like pure rubbish doesn't it? :(
No song, no question. I am brain dead. Writers block is killing me.