Notes at end of chapter. Cheers.

It was snowing. The snow was something Link had gotten used to growing up. The collection of white flakes were soft, but quite cold.

But all Link thought about it was camouflage and something to pillow a hard landing.

During his first few years, Link was cared for by a local family. The last name of Sellard if he remembered correctly. They were an average Hylian family, if a bit more devout than the rest. Leric and Malinda were their names.

Leric was an average looking man in his early forties. He was a no nonsense type of man who followed the Words of Hylia with zeal.

Malinda was almost the exact opiset of Leric in terms of personality. In her prime, she would have been a beautiful young woman, but stress and hard work made a flower wither. She did follow the Words, but not as closely as her husband. If it were up to her, she wouldn't of married a man like Leric, but she had always attempted to make the best of the situation.

For the first four years, he didn't have trouble. Link was taught to pray early on and he did so with little question, seeing his age. But things started getting rough at around five.

Small habits started popping up. Link enjoyed taking things. It wasn't like most children's desire for more things, Link just didn't like people having them. He hid various objects from the house, sometimes taken off of one of his foster parent's bodies.

Link was just good at it. He just moved things around mostly, but if he wanted something, he would take it. Through this, he quickly learned that he didn't need to beg his parents for anything, he could just take what he wanted.

Link developed another quirk off of his stealing and moving. One day, during the summer, Link was watching a bird. He decided that he wanted the bird. To just put it in his pocket and take it home.

Link managed to climb the tree the bird was on, and somehow hot ahold of the bird. The bird panicked and started squirming. Link, being a child, didn't know what to do, so he just squeezed it tighter.

The bird stopped moving. Something red was trickling down the boys hands. He opened his hands when he hit to the ground again and was mortified at what he saw. The birdie wasn't pretty anymore...

It's neck has snapped, almost folded clean over, and there was blood leaking from where the paper thin skin had stretched to far and broke. Link had no idea what was going on. The boy panicked and dropped the corpse of the bird. But the red was still on his hands.

The platinum blonde quickly came to the conclusion of licking it off. Milk wasn't an average color, and he could pick that off his hands, what difference could the red stuff be ? They felt the same, if the temperature wasn't changed.

Link licked the red off his hands, making sure to get all of it. It was easy, seeing as how it stood out against his pale skin. The red tasted funny, but the child thought it was a good funny. It tingled on his tongue.

The boy wondered if he could get more red from the bird. He was still young, so he didn't see an issue to shaking a dear decapitated bird to get blood on his hands.

More red came from the birdie. Link was happy.

In the following weeks, the grounds near the Sellard land became covered in the corpses of small birds.

The family didn't know what was the cause of their mission and moved items, nor the small corpses. But they called it the work of Demise. It was a rather simple answer, but it fit their believes.

Things just got harder for the Sellard family. Link, with childlike curiosity, was questioning Hylia's Words. But the child's mother figure realized that almost all of the Words contradict themselves. The father was not happy. At five and a half, Link was witnessing forced worship, and boarderline abuse.

When Link was six, his life as he knew it shattered.

Malinda had told the leader of the small town of her plight. Leric did not like that action one bit.

One evening in the heart of winter of 1499 PSF, Link watched through a small crack in the wall as his father oversaw his mother's prayers. The winter was as usual in the Provence of Ordon. Snow that could get up to two feet deep, and temperatures below freezing. Few trees were bare in this pocket of frozen land, most being evergreens.

The blonde had always wondered about the logic beyond prayers. After being taught to read, Link had read through Hylia's Words. Although Link wasn't a born genius, he could tell that some words just didn't make sense.

In one line it said that destruction and killing of any kind were sins, but in the next, the words praised Hylia for killing thousands of people and destroying a continent. Another line said that powerful magics should be kept from all, while Hylia herself had used magic to create life itself.

Link was almost startled when the woman violently closed the book with an almost echoing boom. "Why do you insist that I pray? Have I not shown myself to be a loyal Hylian?" Malinda asked, a lighthearted tone, dipped lightly in anger.

Leric quickly rose to the unspoken chalange. This had been going on for months now, he was at the end of his wits. His arm raised, and came down on his wife's cheek hard. "I will not have blasphemy in this house!" The man exclaimed. How dare the woman not have faith in Hylia?

Link flinched at the loud reverberating slap. He also instantly smelled salt and iron.

The blow was enough to draw blood. Malinda, usually a calm and optimistic woman had been simmering silently for months, if not years. And in a moment of seething rage, she spat in his face.

Link was surprised at the development. His mother always seemed to take everything in stride, why would she do anything different now?

As the bloody spittle slowly dripped down the man's cheek, a cold look set itself in Leric's eyes. Malinda instantly regretted her rage driven action.

Leric brought a shaking hand up to wipe away the bloody spittle. Without warning, the older man lunged at his wife's throat.

His hands enveloped Malinda's throat and he started shouting. "How dare you defy Hylia," The man was lost to anger and kept ranting. The woman clawed at the hands around her throat, but it only caused his grip to tighten. "I will not tolerate it! You shall not defy the word of our savior!"

The eavesdropping blonde knew where a knife was, and it could cut through skin. And he also knew if something lost enough blood, it would die. But Link was frightened into stillness. Leric was squeezing Malinda like one of Link's birds, he knew he could do something, but he was stuck.

For the first few moments, Malinda had put up a good fight. But it was all four naught. Her movements slowed, and stopped.

Link saw her go slack, and his eyes widened. He couldn't help compare it to the birds. Just as he squeezed the small birds until they broke, Leric had squeezed Malinda until she broke.

While the man kept screaming at his dead wife, Link took the operitunity to flee. Link was luckier than he knew that his chosen hiding spot was closer to an exit than the door than the bedroom that held the murder.

Despite his young age, Link knew how to be stealthy. How else would he get what he wanted without asking? Being a child, he had a light step.

The six year old had built a makeshift exit by moving some of the boards and a loose panel. The couple had forbidden the boy from leaving the house during the winter. Link disagreed with this, so he pulled a wall apart. He got what he wanted.

Link rushed as quietly as he could to the exit. He pulled the panel back and moved it aside, shuddering as the cold air bit into his skin. The blonde moved a few planks aside, and was outside.

The moon shown brightly and snow covered the ground, not a light dusting, but heavy fall. The thick layer of snow was not easy on his feat, but Link started trudging to the edge of the treeline regardless. It wasn't far, but it would provide the cover Link would need to be absolutely sure he was safe. And if worst came to worst, Link could always just duck down into the snow. His pale skin and hair, along with the white shirt he had on made it somewhat easy to hide.

Sometimes not wanting to be found had it's benefits.

As soon as he broke the tree cover, he dropped behind a nearby pine. His first thought was to get away, so that's what he did.

The child just trudged on for what seemed like ages. His legs burned and he could barley feel his fingers or feet. Eventually he say a light in the distance. His thoughts instantly brightened. A house, or maybe the village. He was saved.

As he trudged closer, he realized it was just a campfire. Of course it was better than nothing, so Link kept trudging.

The site was cleared of snow and a bedroll was laid out by the fire. A half cooked rabbit was being cooked on a spitt. The blood had been drained and put aside in a flimsy looking metal cup, close enough for the fire to keep it warm. But there was nobody in the camp.

Link didn't care at this point, and sped up his pace a bit. He needed the warmth. Once he got to the solid, needle covered land, he plopped down, putting his feat close enough to the fire to warm them.

He kept his eyes in the fire, and just kept replaying the same scene over and over in his mind. But soon his stomach grumbled in complaint. Stress and a lack of supper made him perticularly hungry.

A hand passed him the flimsy cup. Link reached up to grab it, before realizing there shouldn't be anybody in the camp. He jerked his head around to the right to see a young man, maybe twenty, holding the cup for him. The older man had pale skin, dark eyes, unkempt brown hair, and an average, if not well kept build. His dress was slightly unusual, being dressed in what looked like a thick leather overcoat with a hood. The man had a knife strapped to his thigh, around an eight inch blade with an average wooden handle wrapped in leather.

"Drink up, youngling," The man spoke in a foreign sounding tone, not unpleasant, but not what he was used to. "It'll warm you up."

Heart still racing, Link relaxed slightly and took the cup. It was warm to the touch and felt wondrous against his frozen hands, the contents . He looked at the man for approval, getting a nod and a smile, before lifting the cup to his lips.

The taste of the blood was overshadowed by the warmth of it. It almost felt like swallowing fire, but without the burning. The heat spread from his stomach all over his body. It was a welcomed release from the cold, so he swallowed another mouthful.

Link could feel his worries melting away into the warm. It made him drowsy, a warm fuzz overtaking his senses.

"Just sleep, little one," The man said softly from beside the boy.

After setting the cup down, he did just that, letting the fuzz overwhelm him.

Link dreamed. Some scenes were happy, but more often sad.

The most frequent was one where Malinda was staring at him, dead eyes, and purple bruises around her neck. She said the same thing every time. "Why didn't you save me?"

That one line haunted him. It scared him. It became him.

On that night, either consciously or unconsciously, Link vowed that he would do whatever it took to stop something like that from happening again.

Link awoke to the hissing of snow on the still active fire. He scrambled to a sitting positing. A blanket that must have been placed on him over the night falling off. It was morning, and the sun was out, giving the snow an ethereal glow. The blonde quickly found the source of the noise. The dark haired man was standing, brushing the snow off his hands. He saw Link looking up at him and gave a warm smile in response.

"My name's Eli," the dark haired man said warmly, offering a gloved hand to help Link up. Link took his hand and was hoisted off the ground easily. "What's yours?"

"Link, mister," The blonde peeped timidly. Eli paused for a moment, but gave a grunt in response and moved to pack up the camp. Kicking a bit of snow onto the fire, and going to roll up the bedroll. As he was doing this, Link asked his question. "What are you doing out in the woods?"

"Living," Eli responded, giving a grin at the small pout Link was giving him. "But the better question is what are you doing out in the woods."

The blonde in question blushed, then looked down. "My papa broke mum," Despite what Eli was, the voice that Link used scared him. It was to casual. If what he assumed was true, the boy's father had killed his mother. Something like that was not to be taken so lightly.

The dark eyed man walked over to Link and kneeled to his height. "Aren't you sad?" Eli was honestly somewhat afraid of the answer.

Link wondered why Eli sounded worried. It was strange to him. Why would the nice man be worried about him? Not many people did. "Yes," he said quietly.

Eli's mind was still working. The child was clearly a born vampire, but who were his parents? He hadn't heard of any vampires living in these parts, and if he didn't hear of them, he would have smelled them when he passed through the village. Sure, the place smelled far to strong of canine, but there was no trace of more than one vampire's scent, and the owner of that scent was sitting beside him.

But then he came to the realization that maybe Link was abandoned. With the influx of non-Elven people in Hyrule, due to deserters in the war, it wouldn't be surprising if a pregnant vampire came across the void. Even a stray rape wouldn't be uncommon in the slightest during wartime.

"How old are you, Link?" Eli asked, trying to shed some light on witch theory might be correct. If he was around six, maybe seven, he was most likely the result of the horrors of war, anything less or more could be chalked as abandonment or the result of hunters.

"Six, why did you ask?" Link responded. Eli's suspicions were all but confirmed. He fought back a grimace. The darker haired man had seen the war, between the ripper that couldn't die and the army of vampires, werewolves, and highly trained soldiers it was a wonder that the nation of Hyrule survived the attack. It was like a black sea, lead by a spec of forest green. He couldn't deny that he was lucky to see a clash between the superpowers and manage to keep his hands clean.

Eli responded to Link's question with, "Just wondering. Six is a good age," He was lying through his teeth and he hated it. Eli hated lying, he wasn't good at it, and it caused nothing but trouble for the world. One of his favorite quotes was 'A world without lies is a world without death'. Eli believed it was true. It made sense.

Eli stopped talking, pulled his coat tighter, and finished packing the camp away, thoughts flying back and fourth across his mind.

The last thing to put in his pack was the blanket he had placed on Link. The fresh blood was fresh enough in the blonde's system to keep his body temperature high enough not to notice the cold, despite not having shoes.

Once the camp was nothing more than a small clearing that would be covered up by the next snowfall, Eli turned to the young blonde boy beside him. He didn't know if it was some sort of guilt, or maybe pity that guided his next words.

Giving a large smile, the young man went ahead and spoke his mind. "How would you like to come with me?" The boy clearly had no parents, and definently had no one to teach him about what he was. Eli would teach him how to survive, to hunt, and to keep well fed. But darker thoughts also came to mind, what if the boy denied his offer? Well he would probably end up murdering someone in hunger before age ten. Vampires can only last so long without flesh and blood without loosing themselves.

Link was slightly in awe. The man had been nicer than most of the villagers, what reason did he have to stay? His mother was broken, and he didn't like his father much. So the blonde nodded with a somewhat exited smile.

The dark eyed man smiled wider at Link, a true warm smile. He was both relieved and exited. He had absolutely no idea how to raise a child, but he would damn well try. For now, keep him fed, use smaller words, and walk slowly.

Eli turned and gave a 'come on' gesture with his hand. Link scrambled to follow.

I feel like I used the same character adressal (is that a word, he'll if I know...). But who knows. I also feel the first part of the chapter is somewhat rushed. I dunno, could be worse. Chapter seems a bit to short as well.

Main plot starts next chapter. It won't really seem like Twilight Princess, but it will have many themes from it.

Updates may or may not be frequent. I am generally writing a half hour a day, but I have been known to drop projects randomly. But who knows.

Please review, but don't even bother if you aren't going to write more than one line. One liners bother me more than they should.