A new chapter! This one's long, because if I broke it up the chapters would be too short individually.

Once again, pacing escapes me. My apologies. Hope it's not too painful to read!


The interrogation room was massive, clearly architecturally and aesthetically designed to be as imposing as humanly possible. Zelda did not immediately remember it, but scars on the wall showed her that Ganondorf had made some major renovations to the castle in seven years. She idly wondered who—or what—he had gotten to work as a construction crew for him. Stalfos, maybe?

This train of thought ended when the tall, dark, and decidedly not handsome man standing at the head of the room spoke. Ganondorf, the physical incarnation of evil, the Gerudo thief who was the fount of all Hyrule's pain and suffering, was being really quite childish. "I know you're hiding him somewhere. This man isn't Link. Where is he?"

Zelda sighed patiently, caught Hamlet's sympathetic glance off to her right, and explained, "This man isn't supposed to be Link. Link is dead, and you know that."

"Of course Link isn't dead!" With every outburst of Ganondorf's immature rage, Zelda could feel the air around her crackle with the same dark energy that was keeping the new couple bound six feet off the ground. She and Hamlet had tried to escape using a teleportation spell, Farore's Wind, but Ganondorf had intercepted them and forced the spell to send them here instead. Now, drained of magic, she had no way to fight back. She could almost feel the arcanely confining bonds tighten as Ganondorf poured out his rage. "Link is NEVER dead. He defeats me every time. He marries YOU every time. I know I killed him, and I know you're bringing him back! How?" He stalked right over to her and floated himself up into the air, his large nose inches from hers. "What's your plan, Princess? There's always a plan."

Hamlet jumped in before Zelda had a chance to act diplomatically. "You idiot! She doesn't have a plan! I broke the…"

That was all he had a chance to say before Ganondorf roared and reached out one claw-like hand toward him. With a single gesture, Hamlet was slammed into the ceiling, then the floor, then into a random flock of keese, bones crunching each time. When he was returned, bruised and bloody, to the midair spot where he he'd been originally, he was too unconscious to defy the Great King of Evil any more.

Nearly every part of Zelda's mind was screaming at her to DO SOMETHING to avenge the man who had confessed his love for her just hours before, but she knew better. Action will only make you just as unconscious as your new lover, the tiny remnants of her diplomacy screamed at her, and grudgingly, her reason won out over blind rage in a completely invisible struggle that took less than a second.

"As he was saying," Zelda continued calmly but with an ounce of precisely balanced loathing in her voice, "He's not from this world. He came, and he broke the chains of causality that bind the three of us together. Link is gone for good, and if you'll let us go…"

Ganondorf cut her off with a lengthy peal of menacing laughter. "If I let you go, you'll just go and make another little army to annoy me with." He floated even closer, to the point where Zelda was seriously tempted to spit right in one of his hate-filled eyes. "Even though we both know that your little rebellion couldn't do any more damage to me than a bucket of like-like slime, you'll keep coming back. I know you, Princess. Now quit your little game and tell me. Where-is-Link?"

Ever since she had been grabbed by the hand and whisked away to this mausoleum, Zelda had been praying to Nayru for the wisdom that she was positive she would need in dealing with the situation. Only now, in a blinding flash of argumentative insight, did she realize that her patron goddess's blessing had come at last. She steeled up her demeanor, tried her level best to put some fire into her eyes, and let the divinely inspired words flow from her.

"What would I have to gain by telling you Link was dead when he clearly isn't? Obviously you wouldn't let your guard down; you're far too paranoid for that. Besides, if you knew every detail of our attack plan, you obviously know if I'm lying or not. So believe me when I repeat: Link. Is. Dead. Let us go now! We have nothing you want."

Ganondorf floated back down to the ground, his greenish-brown forehead wrinkled in deep thought. He paced for a few seconds, briefly looking less menacing than he was dimwitted. Quickly, though, Zelda saw a decision bloom on his face; he leaped up in the air and decisively shouted his judgment. "No! I still don't trust you, Princess. You're the trickiest one out of all of them. I'll NEVER believe you! You always know what I'm thinking! Go away!"

With a single flick of his wrist, Zelda and the unconscious Hamlet were tossed through the air and dragged back to their cell, with Ganondorf's cries of "Get out of my head! GET OUT!" following them the whole way.

Zelda took a second, after landing back in the room that was hers so long ago, to gather her wits and thank Nayru for at least keeping her alive. She was slowly beginning to realize that the red-headed thief could not be bargained with, and would not listen to any amount of logic. They would need to find another way out.

Hamlet soon came to. His clothing was completely tattered, and his face and body were bleeding from several places. However, he was conscious, and Zelda rushed over to take care of him as soon as she heard him groan.

He opened his eyes. One of them was bloodshot from one of the impacts, but they still focused well and Hamlet seemed alert. "Ow," he slurred.

Zelda put a finger to her lips. "Shhhh." She had firmly and irrevocably switched into her caretaker mindset, and very little could bring her out of it.

Hamlet ignored her and continued talking through his injuries. "I don't…I don't think anything's broken. I'm sorry for mouthing…" He paused to check his lip for blood. There was some, so he wiped it on his sleeve. "I'm sorry for mouthing off like that, but I just couldn't let him abuse you like he was. He didn't let us go, I take it?"

She nodded. "At least he didn't try to kill us."

"He didn't try to kill YOU," muttered Hamlet bitterly as he hauled himself up and propped himself up against a wall. "He sure gave it a good go-around with me."

She shook her head sadly. "I'm sorry. As soon as I get my hands on that bastard's neck, goddesses help me…."

"I had my fill of revenge before I died, and that's what got me killed. I'd be satisfied with just killing him because he's a bastard, not just because he's been a bastard to me."

"Are you sure you died?" she asked. "This isn't the afterlife, Hamlet, it's the land where I live. You have to be here for a reason. Maybe that reason is to take Link's place."

He scoffed. "Take his place? This legendary hero, reincarnated a bunch of times though your history? That's not me. I couldn't even kill my incestuous, treacherous uncle before he managed to catch on to what I was doing. I couldn't save the LAST woman I loved from drowning herself. I barely managed to kill that skeleton thing without dying. I'm useless. Completely and totally useless. If your Goddesses brought me here to be courageous, then they've doomed both of us."

She shook her head. "Sweet prince…whatever you were brought here for, you can do it. I know you can. If you can make it though the beating Ganondorf gave you with only a bloody lip and a little bit of self-loathing, you have more courage than you think."

He stared at her. "That sounds like something Horatio would say."

"Who?"

"My oldest friend back home. He was always my voice of reason, always the one who'd caution me not to climb the tall trees and not to poke at spiders. He was great at pep-talks."

Zelda noticed that talking about his home seemed to pierce through the dark clouds over his self-esteem, so she prodded a bit more. "How did the two of you meet?"

A rough, unfamiliar sound escaped his lips, and she realized that he was trying to laugh. "That's a funny story, really…"

Zelda, listening to Hamlet telling stories of his education in Wittenberg and watching them brighten his mood, scooted up next to him by the cold dungeon wall. Eventually, after he had run out of stories to tell and was merely enjoying her company, she laid her head on his shoulder and fell asleep, feeling safe even in the very bowels of uncomfortable unfamiliarity.


Hamlet opened his eyes and saw only blackness.

Where am I? thought Hamlet. Is this another one of Ganondorf's tricks? He knew that the cell had enough chinks in the wall to let in the moonlight; and the moon never seemed to wane in Hyrule. Also, Zelda was no longer in here with him, and…

He realized with maddening certainty where, exactly, he was. He was in a coffin.

Sweeping his hands around confirmed it. He could barely move inside the confining pine box, and the lid, too heavy to lift, had earth seeping in around the edges, pouring onto his face and into his mouth. The dirt and sand seemed to work its way right into his nose and his eyes, choking him, blinding him. He scratched furiously at the lid of the coffin, scrabbling blindly at his last hope, the sound of his fingernails scraping on the unyielding wood drowning out his own screams and becoming the last sound he could ever hear…

Hamlet opened his eyes and saw something less than blackness. The ever present moon was indeed shining through the cracks in the wall, and Zelda was right here beside him, her head on his shoulder, looking as peaceful as anything.

He blinked away the lingering aftereffects of the nightmare and noticed that the scratching, scrabbling sound had not gone away. He looked to his right towards the outward facing wall, where the sound was coming from, and saw a huge armored spider. It seemed not to notice him, spinning merrily around in a little circle, stopping, and pirouetting around the other way. The diffuse moonlight glinted off its golden shell as it turned.

Since this wasn't the strangest thing he'd seen in his brief stay in Hyrule, Hamlet simply snuggled up with the princess and kept one wary eye on it. He had more things to worry about than one very shiny arachnid, and Zelda's embrace was entirely too comfortable to even consider breaking free from.

His mind blanked itself of thought in preparation to get back to resting, if not necessarily sleeping. His eyes were trained on the oddly hypnotizing spider, as it turned back…and forth…and back…and exploded.

Propelled by the blast, the golden armor plate impacted the wall a foot above his head before he had a chance to react. His gesture of throwing himself in front of the blast to shield Zelda, while gallant, was pointless. Like all good explosions, this one was done and over with before anyone had a chance to think about it. Only the effects could be seen.

And the effects were, as Hamlet and the newly awakened Zelda saw, surgical. The outside wall of the room was simply gone; in its place, there was a not-particularly-lovely view of the wasteland that had once been the castle courtyard.

"Wha…" Zelda rubbed the sleep from her eyes and stood, surveying the damage. Groggily, she asked "What was that? Was it Ganon trying to kill us?"

"No." He rubbed his chin, which actually had a little bit of a beard growing on it now. "This looks more like a…"

There was a muffled bang, a whoosh of air, and some scraping sounds coming form below. Then, a gravelly but clear voice shouted, "RESCUE PARTY COMING THROUGH!" The source of the disturbance, a young, bright-eyed Goron, poked his head above the rough bottom lip of the hole, and started hauling himself up into the cell. "Princess, Hamlet, we're here to get you out of here! Did you like the exploding skulltula trick?"

Princess Zelda immediately began to admonish the Goron for being so noisy about the whole affair, while Hamlet, not wanting to ignore his lover but blocking her out for the sake of curiosity, peered down the outer wall through the hole and silently examined the proceedings. Set up right against the base of the wall, the small troop of Gorons (some of whom he thought he had seen before, but he still had trouble telling the difference between them) had set up a semicircular perimeter of spiky metal traps to keep away Ganondorf's monstrous undead guards. Already the hand things and a few other beasts circled the wary Gorons, some of them leaping at the metallic hedge only to be driven back by the pain.

The machinery inside the makeshift fortifications was unlike anything Hamlet had seen before. There was piping everywhere, and something he recognized as a bellows, and a big spherical chamber with fiery light emanating from it, all connected to a big cylinder. Other than the fact that it appeared to be some kind of cannon, he had no idea what it all was for. He made a mental note to ask Horatio someday, if he managed to survive the next few minutes.

He felt stone tap his shoulder, and turned around to see the young Goron looking at him with that goofy expression they always wore. "Hamlet, sir, you're first down the ladder."

The ladder was an actual, rigid stone ladder, leaned up against the castle like it was part of the scenery. Hamlet didn't stop to think about how or why the rescue party had taken the trouble of lugging it all the way down here from Death Mountain; he just descended. The ladder wasn't as long as it had looked from the top, and the trip down was short.

There was one larger Goron, standing on a flat-topped rock, who seemed to be in charge. He beckoned Hamlet over right before the Dane was about to seek his attention.

"Seeing that my son is already explaining what's happening to the princess," the Goron leader began, "I might as well tell you. See, we've got the steam cannon set up, over there." He pointed to the mass of machinery and fire that many of the Gorons were working on and around. "We had it on a low setting when we sent little Golam up to your cell, but we're going to point it straight up, overstoked the boiler, and launch that lava ball straight into the air while the two of you escape down the hatch into the resistance tunnels."

Hamlet only understood what the Goron foreman had said in the abstract, but when he saw the lava ball he suddenly comprehended the plan. Somehow, the rock people had bound molten rock into a transparent sphere. It sat next to the loading hatch of the cannon, silently emitting light with a menacing roiling glow. The Goron machinists seemed not to notice its strange presence.

"So you're hoping that the lava will seal the tunnel and damage the…those things." Hamlet pointed to the thronging evil outside the barrier. "What are you and your men going to do? And, if you don't mind my asking, what's your name?"

"I'm Darga, brother of Darunia, leader of the Gorons. He sent me out here to save you because he knew nobody else could." He smiled a peculiar Goron half-smile of joking pride. "As to your other question, My crew and I are Gorons. Lava is like home to us."

"Boss!"

Darga looked somewhere behind Hamlet's left shoulder. Hamlet turned his head that direction and saw a young Goron holding a wrench. "Something's going on underground. The instruments are going crazy, and we all sense it."

Darga sniffed the air. "You're right. The earth is unhappy."

As if on cue, the ground rumbled. It was a light shake—Hamlet, while a student in Prussia, had felt much worse—but it sent the Goron work crew into a frenzy as they began locking the "steam cannon" to the unstable ground.

Zelda marched right through the middle of them, pushing her way through the sentient stone up to Hamlet. "What the hell was that?"

Darga spoke instead. "Just a tremor, Princess. We're drawing some energy for the Cannon straight from the ground; it would be a surprise if we didn't feel anything."

"No. Ganondorf has something to do with this. Look, his troops have left the perimeter."

Surely enough, the hands and other dead things had mostly vacated their disturbingly vigilant watch. Another short tremor, stronger than the first, and the few stragglers had left as well.

Darga thought for a few seconds. "We can't take the chance that you might be right." He stepped forward into the midst of the machiners. "All right! We need to get our guests out of here, double time!"

But it was too late. Before the Goron engineers could get back to the cannon, the ground heaved violently. Even the mighty castle creaked and groaned, as if the stones themselves wanted out of the situation. Gorons and humans alike were tossed around like playthings.

Hamlet landed on his side, but he had tucked his arm in when he had first felt the ground tremor. He got up, a little bruised but mostly unhurt, and saw part of the metal barrier was gone.

Along with the ground it had once been on. The ground in a ring around the castle had simply vanished, edges still crumbling down into the abyss. A red glow of magma shone from the unseen bottom. All it took was a single seismic glitch, and the castle now had its very own lava moat.

"What happened?" he asked, to nobody in particular, not expecting an answer despite the fact that he got one anyway.

"Ganondorf, of course." Zelda embraced him from behind, and he could feel her warm tears falling onto his shoulder. Her voice was still clear, and calm, and regal, despite being wracked with sobs. "He finally got to us. Seven years spent avoiding him. SEVEN YEARS. Wasted. All those people I led to their deaths, just to save my skin…they died in vain…"

Darga, in the finest Goron tradition of helpful rudeness, had been listening. "He doesn't have us yet, Princess. We can still escape. Look over here!"

Hamlet turned his head to see another cannonball, one he had not yet seen in the masses of Goron equipment around the area. It was large, as tall as if not taller than Hamlet, and it had a door. A sneaking suspicion as to its purpose made Hamlet realize that this would not be a comfortable trip.

Zelda seemed to understand, too, and on her face was the same look of grim determination that he had seen when she was leading her troops. She has more mood swings than me, Hamlet realized. She let him go, strode over to the ball, opened the door, and climbed into the interior.

Hamlet followed her. The hollowed-out chamber in the sphere was literally filled with pillows and cushions, and had two rope harnesses, one on either side. Zelda was busy fitting herself into one, so Hamlet took the other. The rope was surprisingly soft and smooth, and he had no trouble strapping in.

Darga poked his head in the still-open door to the sphere. "This was supposed to be the last resort," he said, "but this is the kind of situation where last resorts are all we have left. My Gorons and I are going to bail out into the lava after we set the cannon to fire. It's probably going to explode right under you, so Din only knows where you'll end up." He smiled. "But I'm sure it'll be fine. Happy journey!"

With that, the door was closed.


Ooh, cliffhanger! However shall our heroes escape this one? (Yes, more cliché!)

Thanks for reading!

-Sir Gimp