That night she decided to move from the shadow of her tree in the square. She liked to think that it was curiosity that drove her to perch just inside the Castle Courtyard, but somehow that didn't sate her. Perhaps her enhanced senses were a little out of whack, but she could have sworn that her legs had moved her of their own free will.
It was even more amusing than the square had been, but in a strikingly different way. Midna found amusement in watching the half-dead guards glide through their routs, most of them noticeably slumping over. She sat and laughed silently at them for the first hours, and when that ceased to amuse her, she found small pebbles to throw at the unsuspecting men. This produced wild reactions from the whole squad.
It was around midnight that the first flash of shadow caught her eye. Wondering if she had simply blinked, she disregarded it. Even with this frail assumption, her eyes still flitted to the area every few seconds.
Once she might have ignored, but when she saw it a second and then a third time she knew something was wrong.
Silently, she crept into the shadows of one of the carved hedges, putting faith in the darkness to hide her from wary eyes. One of the guards passed right past her, his knee barely brushing her arm, but he didn't seem to notice. Midna sighed in relief.
The figure moved again, and she was able to maneuver to where it had previously stood, and from there she caught sight of tracks. They were about twice the size of a human hand, and had six fingers extending in directions that no unbroken hand could reach. Where the palm had been, the tracks were a full inch deeper in the damp ground.
Another flicker of movement caught her eye, and she was able to follow the creature this way. The path led her into the innermost courtyard, and then disappeared. Midna waited for it to show itself yet again, but no tracks, sounds, or movements gave away its current whereabouts.
The pale moon was much farther in its course when she had finally found the subtlest of hints. An ordinary flowering bush had a crease in its roughly spherical form, its branches showing signs of having being bent in ways that were not natural to the plant. Beneath the green, Midna was able to spot a plank of wood and an iron clasp.
She was able to dig and expose more wood, and gleaming in the moonlight, covering the well-hidden trapdoor, was a black, oily substance that stank of mildew and rust. Carved into the middle of the door was an elegant insignia, the black liquid streaked carelessly over the center, masking most of it from her view. At Midna's fearful touch, it glowed, a color like the moon itself, but sickly, pale, and dying.
Slightly unnerved, Midna nonetheless opened the door, shutting it carefully behind her so as not to alert anyone else.
It was dark, but Midna's nature welcomed the shadow wholeheartedly. This was the element in which her people thrived, and it was a relief to get away from the light. The gurgling of water was also present, although not overpowering. She felt the walls and discerned brick and mortar; probably whitewashed, by the slightly waxy feel of it. The ground was stone, but it was cracked and overrun by daring grasses and moss, and the air was thick with scents of a once noble hideaway decaying with time.
A single torch remained lit far into the tunnel, and that was the only beacon of direction she had. Slowly, so as not to intrude on the semi-silence, she trekked forward, ignoring the other paths that branched off into darker unknowns, and followed the light, feeling an odd satisfaction as the size of the torch slowly grew.
When at last she reached the end of the tunnel, she spotted the same symbol that had been on the trapdoor carved roughly in a single brick with a not-so-effective chisel. The hand that carved it had been unsteady, and the lines were blurred and rough, but still distinguishable. Beneath it was the carved the symbol of the triforce in the wings of a phoenix, the insignia of the royal family, with a much gentler hand in fluid, easy strokes.
She made a note to ask Zelda the meaning of the first symbol.
She raised her hand to investigate further, but she heard the distinct noise of something solid meeting the water, and then the steady strokes as they swam away. Jarred by this violent intrusion on the silence, Midna was stunned for several seconds. When her wits returned, a strange sensation crept through her veins, a mix between adrenaline and territoriality. She felt her cheeks grow hot and her fingers tickle with the desire to protect herself, but from what was a mystery.
The light from the single torch did not extend far, but soon she caught sight of ripples distorting the black water. The form swimming in the water was a Twilight Messenger, and in the shadows, she could distinguish many, many more.