Rumors

Prologue

Zelda awoke to the feeling of a calloused hand patting the side of her face. The hand moved from her face to jostle her shoulder for a bit before returning to pat at her face again. She tried to open her eyes to see who had woke her but found that she couldn't. She reached up with her hands to feel about her eyes, but she couldn't move her hands either. Zelda could tell that her hands weren't bound, because she could feel both of her arms resting at her sides. Holding tightly onto her panic, she called out to whoever had woken her up. But her lips did not form the words and not so much as hum came out.

Feeling her hold on her anxiety slipping, Zelda's mind whirled in terror. Her thoughts, like murky water that had been disturbed, clouded and confused her mind. What happened to me? Why isn't my body responding to me? Am I dead? This has to be a nightmare. If only I could pinch myself to find out for sure.

Zelda had never known anything more terrifying than to be able to feel what was going on with your body, but not be able to make it do what you wanted it to.

She startled out of her swirling thoughts as she again felt a hand patting her face, this time a little rougher than before. "Come on, come on." The voice of a man sounded above her, holding notes of worry, impatience, and hope.

So a man brought me here… Wherever I am.

Zelda heard the man launch himself off of the ground then the sound of hurried footsteps fading as he moved away from her side. The smell of grass and dirt lingered in his wake.

She was outside. But where? Doing what she should have done when she first figured out that she couldn't move, Zelda did a mental scan of her body. Aches and pains that hadn't been apparent in her fog of panic lit up at her direct attention. She began to feel as though she had been drug behind a horse.

Who knows, maybe that's how I got here.

Reining in tightly on her emotions, Zelda focused on trying to remember what had happened.

She remembered, the Twilight. She remembered Zant invading the royal castle two days before her coronation. She remembered being kept in a mouldering tower. They hadn't even bothered locking the door because Zant had something far more effective than keys keeping her there.

She remembered being visited by Midna. The chosen hero in the form of a scraggy black wolf.

Zelda's mind snagged on Midna, and she remembered the day that the black wolf had brought the dying imp to her. That's right. Zelda thought. She had poured her spirit into Midna in order to save her.

The real Twilight Princess.

Thinking of Midna opened up a new store of memories for Zelda. The feeling of the wind rushing past her face as she rode on the back of a large black wolf. Hiding from the light in the lanky shadow of a boy that had over time become a man. The conflicting feelings of joy and despair when evening came. And underneath it all, a righteous anger that colored every thought and action.

Zelda realized that these weren't her memories. But at the same time they were.

Zelda's spirit had remembered being in Midna's body. Midna had returned her spirit it to her.

Maybe that's why I can't move. Zelda thought. I'm used to being in Midna's body.

Before Zelda could think more on the implications her memories had brought to the surface, the sound of something breaking reached her ears, bringing her back into the present moment. The man let out a blistering curse involving goats and was muttering hotly as he jogged back to Zelda's side.

His hands were back again as one slid itself under her back and levered her up into a sitting position. Zelda's body protested at being hoisted up and she yelped in pain, though no sound came out.

It feels like I've been through a battle.

Zelda heard the pop of a cork being released and then felt the smooth glass lip of a bottle being pressed against her mouth. The slightly gelatinous liquid filled her mouth and the man lightly pinched Zelda's nose to get her body to swallow the contents. It was surprisingly spicy but with a vile aftertaste. Zelda flinched mentally at the taste and was surprised when her body trembled with reaction. Her eyelids fluttered then snapped open to the feral blue eyed gaze of her definite rescuer. His teeth were clenched around a bottle stopper and the lines between his eyes were furrowed in an intense emotion that Zelda couldn't name. The fierceness of his gaze faded into a sharp relief, but the feral-ness remained just underneath. Even though she had never personally seen him in his human form before, Zelda recognized him immediately from the memories she had kept from her time in Midna's body.

Link of Ordonia nodded his head towards the bottle to remind Zelda to keep drinking.

He continued to gently hold the bottle to her mouth and shifted his body to better hold her up as she drank the rest of the foul contents. When it had all been drained he took the cork from his mouth and inserted it back into the bottle while he waited for Zelda to get her bearings.

Zelda knew the exact moment the rest of her body responded to the potion. It felt as if she had a thousand bees swarming under her skin. She recognized it for what it was. Her soul trying bind itself back into her body. It had never been this bad. She could feel her spirit writhing within her body, loathe to make contact with what it touched. Like a cup that she had once found forgotten behind the drapes of her room, it seemed as if her body had mildewed from being left alone.

How long was I out of my body? The spells I placed on it before I transferred my soul to Midna should have kept it safe.

Zelda flinched as her soul stopped its fighting and embedded itself on something sharp. Again and again her soul punctured itself on sharp shards left within her soul space. This was no ordinary case of inner mold.

In a flash of clarity she knew why.

Something or someone had been inside her body beside her.

And they had left slivers of themselves behind.

Her spirit finished stitching itself to its rightful place and Zelda became fully immersed in all parts of herself conjoined together. It was overwhelming, amazing and excruciating. As she lay there panting from exertion, Link shifted awkwardly behind her and Zelda became aware that he had been holding her up the whole time her spirit had stitched itself back into her body. She also became aware of the overwhelming need to evacuate her stomach. Zelda pushed herself off of Link but could only crawl a couple of feet before she started heaving a blue colored potion up into the grass.

When her stomach had emptied itself of its contents Zelda delicately wiped her mouth with the back of her gloved hand and made to push herself up from the ground. Link appeared by her side and offered a hand up. Zelda gave him a grateful look and allowed him to pull her up on shaky legs. "Thank you."

Giving herself a moment to get her bearings Zelda scanned the distant horizon to find the landmark all Hylians used to figure out their whereabouts. There it was smoking in the distance; Death Mountain. The craggy mountain range continued into the greater part of Hyrule Field before turning into rocky hills and fields. Having determined her location, Zelda looked around puzzled. Was the battle over with Ganondorf? She glanced over at Link to see him approaching a huge brown horse grazing nearby.

"What happened?" Zelda's voice was rusty with disuse and pain. He paused before pulling two more bottles of potion from his saddlebag. Her eyes met his as he walked back towards her and for the first time she noticed the physical state that he was in. His clothes were ripped and bloody. On his face, a large nasty looking scrape tore across his cheek and he limped favoring his left leg.

Zelda judged from the angle and location of his injuries he had been thrown at great speed and landed hard on the left side of his body. She watched as he pulled the stopper out of another bottle of blue potion and tossed it back. His scrape reversed itself on his face, knitting up and healing at ten times the normal only thing to tell that there had been an injury was the slightly congealed blood left behind on his cheek. He looked to be in perfect health if one didn't notice the blood caked into his clothes and shadows that lay in his eyes.

Link's shoulders tensed and he seemed to be weighing what he was about to say.

"Ganondorf possessed your body and used you to attack us. Your body hurts because I repelled your own light attacks against you to weaken Ganondorf's dark force. Also, because Midna used the fused shadows to grasp the shadow of his presence and tear it from your body." Link rubbed a hand across the light stubble on his face and grimaced.

"We barely defeated his beast form and thought that would be it. Midna returned your spirit back to your body but- you didn't wake up. I was on the verge of reviving you with some potion when Ganondorf's spirit resurrected out of nowhere. Before I could go for my sword, Midna transported us out here with the power of the fused shadows. She-"

Link's fingers whitened on the remaining bottle he held.

"She fights Ganondorf alone. "

The weight of his words settled on Zelda and her heart clenched painfully. She turned around towards the castle, wishing with all her being that her soul still resided with Midna to lend her strength. Link held out another bottle of blue potion. "Drink this. Although you have no memory of it your body has been through a battle. I had already forced one potion in you before I tried the blue potion. You really had us -I mean me- worried."

Zelda schooled her face as she took a nasty sip from the potion. Already, the aches that the first potion hadn't taken care of were fading. She was just about to ask him how long it had taken her to wake up when Hyrule Castle exploded with a deafening crash. Link's horse gave a startled whinny and reared in surprise. Zelda gazed in horror at the decimation before her, her heart beating hard in her chest. Before she could grasp the fullness of the situation, Link had calmed his horse, grabbed her wrist and pulled her toward back towards his mount. Just as his hands closed around her waist to lift her onto the nervous animal's back he paused, as if listening to something and jerked his head around to the castle. His hands tightened painfully on her waist and Zelda peered behind him to see what he was looking at.

A breeze blew past Zelda raising the hairs on the back of her neck. It continued towards the castle disrupting the clouds of dust rolling off the collapsed structure and bringing into view a dark figure sitting on horseback.

Ganondorf.

He held his arm aloft, grasping what appeared to be Midna's helmet of fused shadow. Link's sharp intake of breath mimicked her own as Midna's helmet broke into pieces and Ganondorf tossed it to the ground. A sharp whinny echoed over the hills as Ganondorf unsheathed his sword and spurred his mounts sides. Behind him a ghostly horde of warriors rose up to follow their dark master into battle.

By the time Link had unsheathed his sword and put himself in front of Zelda, Ganondorf was more than three quarters of the way to them. The thunder of hooves grew closer and Zelda, not even conscious of her movements placed one hand on Link's shoulder and the other on the horse behind her and whispered a quick prayer.

The last thing she saw was Ganondorf's sword flashing wickedly down to intercept them.

Then light enveloped them.