-2: House of Cards -
The great stone door to the temple was open, the torches outside already lit and blazing through the all blanketing mist. Beyond the dark gaping mouth of the entrance, the Shadow Temple inspired a cold prickle to prowl up the young man's spine. Just being inside the subterranean shrine was to drown in darkness. It surrounded and closed in like strangling black fingers, held back only a few inches by a burning torch's divine circle of light; a feeble bastion to ward back the suffocating shadow from claiming his limbs, his heart; from flooding his already black thoughts with their own filth and discontent. The humid breath of the great mausoleum wormed beneath the edges of his armor and crawled over his skin, reeking of blood and the dead flesh of sacrifices to the shadow. The yawning entrance and narrow corridors held a familiarity, though his memories of his exploits as the Hero of Time faded with every passing day.
Despite the temple's ever disquieting nature, there were fewer creatures lurking in the dank corners than he'd anticipated, and were no more than a thrust of his blade away from death. Even without the eye of truth or a torch, he navigated his way toward the core of the temple: a great tabernacle feeding the hatred that seemed settled in the walls, guarding the modest gate to the sage's vault. The folded steel of his sword was barely worth wiping clean by the time he'd reached the chamber at the back. He climbed the steps up, each wet footstep of his heavy black boots on the granite brick reverberating across the vast emptiness of the cavernous darkness, the echo seeming to shiver on forever until it shrank into the spatial hiss of the seemingly infinite silence. It was funny how ultimate silence, ultimately was too blaring to bear. He was grateful for the echo.
Far beyond apprehensive, Link stared into the dim sage chamber, which he last recalled being occupied by the phantom beast, that had likely been born from the ill housed in the temple when it was lacking a sage's care. In the event that Impa had died and the temple was without protection, he prepared himself for another battle with such a creature. He had seen it several times before. Such monsters dwelling in desecrated temples always settled where there was the most energy; almost always the former sage's chamber. He pressed against the heavy door, his open fingered gauntlets clicking duly against the weight of the wood. A tallow candle flickered in the velvet darkness, but beyond that and some simple, almost slipshod furnishings, it seemed his brief journey through the temple had been a waste of his time. The sage chamber was vacant. Yet a candle still burned a hole in the blackness, and it had all but shrunk to its end.
"Impa?" He asked the dark room. It didn't reply.
"Impa?" The darkness he'd left behind answered, his own hollow echo.
A quick set of threatening footfalls at his back sent him whirling, with a practiced movement of shoulder and left arm unsheathing the Goron smelted claymore from his back and pulling the blade toward the intended attack. Steel shrieked against steel, sparking blue in the pitch dusk. He brought up his shield with his right, smiting the opponent backward, straining quickly forward with his legs. There was a flash; a crack like an exploding deku nut, and all at once his assailant was behind him, lunging with dual blades toward his back. His mail resisted the slashes, though the impact was still bruising. His cloak had torn under the edges of his opponent's weapons, but the powerful swings demanded recovery time, and had left it, for a fraction of a moment, vulnerable. He spun with the blade, drawing a great arc into the thick dark and landing a insidious strike to the attacker's abdominal armor. With a wheeze, it fell back onto the stone floor, the oily light from the burning candle past the opened chamber door only bright enough to cast a feeble vesper over her features.
The pale Shiekah savant once known as the Great Impa brought an arm up from the ground, mouthing the beginning words of an incantation before the tip of Link's weapon was pointed in the unprotected soft spot created between her clavicles. She stared up defiantly.
"Who are you who has infiltrated this holy place?" She addressed him so formally, and he didn't know whether to blame the darkness for disguising him or the years he'd spent away having transformed him so. The Shiekah gripped her spectral kris at her sides, though she was plainly beaten. It was like the shadow race to have accepted the threat of death as easily as being aware of their life. Her eyes held no fear. But no recognition either.
Link's voice remained suspicious, he kept his tones as brusque as he could manage, holding the relief he felt at seeing her face at arm's length. "Holy place? When did this blood stinking dungeon become sanctioned?"
The sage seemed nonplused, regarding the cloaked figure that had so quickly bettered her in battle. The shade eclipsed the face hidden beyond the draping hood of the hero; but his voice, though metamorphosed and rarely heard in any case, was still the same.
"Link..." She peered up at him a long moment before nudging the sword from her collar slowly and standing, her voice ravaged by the hardships about which he'd come to inquire. She kept a cautious distance, still unsure. "We…thought you'd left us."
"Left you?" The sword whined in protest as he sheathed it. "You mean you thought I'd died?"
The Sage of Shadow was silent a moment, studying what she could discern of his face, before starting up the craggy steps toward the antechamber "Perhaps we did…. You'd just… been gone so long…then when the plagues came, we knew it wasn't impossible you too had been claimed." She motioned toward the orb of amber candlelight and he followed her through the doorframe. "Maybe it was just an excuse we'd made up to explain why you weren't coming back in such a desperate time…"
Bending now to rest on a low wooden stool, Link examined the face of an Impa ten years older than his memory recalled. It seemed everything that he remembered of this place had lost something of its luster. She seemed to think the same of him, though she did not say as much. He swept back his hood, though something in him would have preferred to hold onto the strength of the anonymity it afforded him.
"Link." She repeated his name, as if saying it spilled some sort of antiseptic relief into her doubting heart, then shook her head. "Zelda will be so pleased."
Ah, yes, the princess, so she lived. It was probably too early to find solace in simply the fact that she was alive. In fact, he'd been telling himself for years that he should be furious with her, but he couldn't help the measure of ease that trickled though his chest, like a swig of medicine. He ignored it, nonetheless.
"What happened here, Impa? What happened to this place while I was gone?"
Impa's eyes were tired, and downcast themselves before drawing back up to his face to reply. "You were gone a long time. Many things have happened, not just that which resulted in what you have witnessed beyond the walls of the temple."
The hero's left eyebrow quirked upward slightly. He'd grown up to be a striking young man; tall and lean—but with a look in his eye that she had not expected nor remembered. He was mostly obscured by a heavy looking scarlet cloak with a distinctive pattern of a far away desert down the back and sides of it, but if he had been spending time in the desert, his face didn't look it. He was still alabaster pale; still as unsunkissed as a kokiri child should be.
"You have seen the ruins of Kakariko and Goron City, I presume. Death Mountain erupted almost two years ago during the war, and incinerated the town and those who sought shelter inside its walls."
"What war?"
"Nearly three years after you left, barbarian hordes came from the western desert. The Gerudoes had little chance against them, for their numbers were in the thousands. Most of the Gerudoes were slain in a week or less. They occupied the Colossus and the Valley before waging aggressive sieges on the palace walls. The merchants in the castle market fled to Kakariko and days after the volcano erupted—almost as if it was some factor of the Umbaru Tribe's onslaught."
He considered the savagery of men that would take no mercy on a tribe of women, slaying them all without striking a deal to halt their massacre. Thinking it through further only condemned the helpless Gerudo women to torture and rape of the worst kind; they had probably welcomed death in that fate's stead. "Did this tribe break through the castle's defenses?"
The woman's features washed with guilt. "Indeed. Their footsoldiers torched the market square and assaulted the inner cloister, slaughtering the Hylian Knights and shopkeepers…whoever remained in the plaza. They used a multitude of trebuchets and burning projectiles, sometimes even sending their own men over the walls with the machines. The King D'Harkanian, rest his soul, was killed, yet Princess Zelda escaped by some great miracle of the goddesses and came on horseback to this very place in tears and soaked with blood…asking all the while how to obtain contact with you."
Link was silent, the cavernous quiet screaming in the space that was not taken up by voices. "How long did all this take?"
"Just short of a year, I think. Hyrule's been in a bit of a dark age since. There aren't many remaining Hylians here, Link. The Zoras have dammed the river; the Gorons have fled almost entirely far to the north in Snowhead. A great deal of the forest was decimated by wildfires."
"Was that also their doing?" there was a new note of hostility in his otherwise quiet tone.
The shadow sage folded her arms on the deku wood table and rested her head in the cradle they created. She seemed so tired. "I don't think anyone knows if it was or not. The land itself seemed to rebel after the hordes overthrew the monarchy. It could have been a result of the eruption, or the drought following."
"Do the hordes remain in occupation even now? What else is there here for them?"
"I dare say there aren't many left, but I can't tell you for certain. The Umbaru are like locusts, coming in to devour what they could and leaving a husk in their wake."
"But what did they have to gain by executing the Monarch?"
Impa's eyes peered up at him over the gentle white hills of her forearms. "Eradicating any threat of resistance or rebellion against them as they consumed what the kingdom could offer, I suppose."
His gaze looked suddenly exhausted and unfocused. "What a waste." He looked away from the Shiekah woman to the dark basalt-block floor. "What is keeping the kingdom from rebuilding?"
"Lack of population, for one thing. Lack of faith or spirit, maybe. Lack of forces to take back the land from the remaining Umbaru."
"So some do remain in occupation. Why?"
"You're asking the wrong person. Their actions are beyond my sense of reason. I assume they have other plans for this land, they have some strong leaders that might be their nobles."
"Guys with a lot of ears on their necklaces, huh?"
"You have the right idea."
"And the sages?"
The dark peering eyes set behind the horizon of her arms once again. "Nabooru was killed in the Siege at the Colossus, defending the Spirit Temple. Ruto's main concern became with the survival and well being of the Zoras after the death of King D'Harkanian, though she worked vigilantly during the siege to save what she could. I think she took too much responsibility upon herself for the fate of Hyrule. Darunia left Death Mountain just after the eruption, taking the surviving Gorons on their pilgrimage to Snowhead. His son that bore your name was killed in the eruption…" She shook her head softly, eyes unfocused and peering up at a wall." He was devastated beyond what I can describe. The Fire Temple, as you can guess, was destroyed."
"What about Saria?"
Impa hesitated. "I'm not sure what has become of Saria. We don't hear much of the Kokiri in any case, but after the fall, she returned to the Forest Temple, where I assume she remains with the Kokiri children. The meadow beyond the Lost Woods is safe from intrusion of any but those with untainted vision."
That was right. The so-called untainted vision of the innocent. A "pure heart". He was sure he could no longer set foot in the Sacred Forest Meadow, perhaps even in the forest at all. Link had not forgotten the song she'd taught him, though he did not carry the ocarina with him any longer. But Saria would be safe there, and she could protect what she could. It was a small, bitter comfort in a flood of new tragedy.
"There doesn't seem much that I can do now." Link felt the urge to groan, but kept his voice level. "Where is the princess, Impa? What does she plan on doing to restore her kingdom?"
"There isn't much to restore." The woman whispered. "I'm not sure what the princess is planning, if she is planning anything at all. The Umbaru Warlords that remain wield great power, and there is little to gain from challenging them—especially when all that will be gained is death."
Link glowered. "It is no surprise to me that this land ended up in ruins with a spineless outlook like that."
The Shadow sage sat up in her seat, her eyes suddenly ablaze. "This is easy for you to criticize, Link! You have not been here for nearly four years! You left Hyrule to fend for itself, something you knew right well it could not."
"I'm no soothsayer, I refuse to take responsibility for your failures. I can not be everywhere at once." His jaw clenched. "Hyrule fell apart like a house of cards and now won't even pick itself back up. What happened to the strong citadel guarded by the sages? What about the seventh sage and her link with the Triforce? I regret not being here to aid Hyrule in its times of hardship, but I cannot be expected to remain imprisoned here simply to guard this place and have no freedom of my own. Your placing the blame on me is pitiful and unlike the Impa I knew as a child. It is you that has become weak. I think I'd rather continue this argument with the heir of this land than mediate with you any further. Where can I find her?"
The Impa that Link recalled was made of iron; hardship rolled off of her like beads of water. Her strength was partially what had supported his childhood quest when it was cracking under the weight of fate; it had protected Zelda D'Harkanian into adulthood. The flames in her eyes had smoldered away and her spirit seemed doused. Why? Even now, she would not look at him in the eye, her gaze dragged along the rough tabletop.
"I…no longer know her location. She has come only a few times since the death of her father, yet she never stays long nor has much to tell me. Since the day she rode here, fleeing the massacre at the palace…"
"You take me for a fool, Impa. The princess has only so many allies, no more trusted or powerful than you. Furthermore, her location is part of her safety, something which you have sworn to ensure…"
Impa's hard eyes flickered up toward him, the candlelight casting strange emotions over her face. Never so much had the markings on her face resembled tears as they did now. "I cannot help you find her. My only suggestion is to remain here until she returns to consult me."
"I have no interest in sleeping in this temple."
The ghost of a sad smile tugged at Impa's lips. "My apologies. Of course you wouldn't."
She watched him stand, the small arsenal tucked beneath his shield chattering against itself. His eyes remained on her. "You must have your reasons for not trusting me with the truth…nevertheless…" He paused almost accusingly. "I will find her myself." He disappeared through the door, and the Shiekah launched after him.
"Link! What are you planning to do? Please, don't charge into battle without knowing what you're up against! Hyrule would not fall to something that is easily overcome. The sages failed, and our last bastion of hope lay only in you." Her eyes looked distraught as she regarded him halfway down the stairs, the most expressive face the stoic woman had ever shown him. Her voice trembled. "Where did you go?"
For the first time since seeing him as a child, Link smiled lightly. "The cursed land." At her expression, he turned back to her entirely. "I ended up in Lut Molhoun, beyond Ikana. How else do you think I made it through this place without a light? In your memories, I fought Ganondorf only three years ago and then I vanished. The…" A tremble threatened to edge into his voice, and he tamped it down ruthlessly. "The princess took the Ocarina and sent me back to only a few days after you rode past me at the castle drawbridge, fleeing Ganondorf's attack."
Impa, aghast, was just short of gaping at him. "Why?"
"She said…to regain my lost time. So I was to have the privilege of witnessing the seven years of Hyrule's decay that I knew was to come."
Her voice was weak. She made to question the reasoning of the act again, but instead prompted him. "So you left..."
He didn't bother with a nod, and all at once, she comprehended the fierce and austere look in his eyes that had puzzled her before. She'd seen him briefly three years before, handing over the Shadow Medallion. But that had been a Link that never was; only a shadow of his childhood self. This man here, this was the man Link had grown into after really living those ten years of his life, shaped into a mercenary by a lonely fate that was marked on the back of his hand at birth. And now he was headed down the stairs and into the dark corridor.
"Link..." She stopped him again, trying to call up her internal apologies into words, but instead he spoke for her, not turning.
"Thank you for being alive, Impa."
A watery smile blossomed on her white lips. "I could never leave the princess…or you, alone." Then, as he began to walk away, "The Lost Woods. You may find her there."
The young man didn't respond, the clack of his heavy boots resounding through the black hallways and to her ears, and she watched the space he'd occupied until she could no longer hear his presence in the temple. Then, the sage spoke.
"How long have you been there?"
The darkness behind her replied in a soft voice. "Long enough."
"Why did you do it? You never told me that you'd known all along why he'd disappeared."
"You already know. He was still a child. Despite how it wounded me, I knew…he had to grow up naturally…even if it sent him to a place I could never reach. I could not simply let him skip those years and be denied his right to…" the tremulous voice seized. "You would have done the same! Please don't tell me it was wrong, or I have spent these years of despair in vain." She emerged at Impa's side in her Shiekan cuirass, eyes swimming in denied tears.
Impa was silent, staring into the dark corridor where the hero had stood. "Suddenly I understand everything so much more clearly." She turned to face the girl again, a wounded shame on her downcast countenance. Before the girl could retort, she spoke again. "The years he has lived since have made his eyes cold. You gave him the right to age naturally, and as you thought, he became a different man than the unstained shadow that was created of his childhood heart."
"Men's eyes are dark these days; a man who kills does not often have a gentle expression. It would have been only a danger to him to leave him otherwise."
"Perhaps it would have. Though a talented warrior, he knew nothing of adult life. It is up to you to judge if it was right to deny him to that prolonged innocence."
"Do you believe what you say, Impa? I could not forbid him to live the years that had been taken from him! There was no other choice for me; I had to send him back so he could become who time deemed he was meant to be." In the darkness, Impa spied a glassy tear snake down the young woman's pale cheek, which she batted away angrily.
"Neither choice is without flaws. You chose between his life as the pure-hearted Hero that Destiny had intended, and his life as a man that Time would have created. Did your feelings for him as a man sway you toward your choice? If you'd chosen Destiny, would he have been here to battle the Umbaru when they arrived from the Clouded Valley?"
"How much could he have done against so many? You put too much on his shoulders, Impa! Would someone pure remain so for long, slaying men? How dare you accuse me of such a selfish…" she hiccuped with a sudden rush of emotion. "I was only thinking of him. My feelings are of no consequence. They are simply what one feels toward someone who would risk everything to save so many from misery…"
"In that case, it's strange that my feelings are so different from yours. I think you deceive yourself. Just remember that in return, you bestowed upon him the miseries he'd been denied. Neither of us are correct. There is only what is and what would have been. You heard what I told him. Are you going to find him there?" Impa's arms folded themselves, her fingers tapping slowly on her bare bicep.
Her head dropped in a hesitant nod. "I haven't a choice."
"And will you tell him why the sages could not protect this land?" Impa's eyes turned back to her, tight-lipped but apprehensive. She watched the girl nod silently, brow pinched with the same painful humiliation.
"You are frightened of him."
The former noble straightened her back so quickly it was more a knee-jerk reaction, looking her attendant in the eye. "I am no such thing." She brought her arm down quickly toward the ground, and in a sudden globe of light and smoke, vanished.
Once again, Impa was regarding an empty hall filled with dank air, and now accompanied by no one but a ghost made of sweet smelling smoke, to whom she voiced her thoughts:
"You are afraid of what he will say…when you tell him."
