The Adventure of Link

Chapter Seven: Parappa Desert

The wind was blowing the loose sand of Parappa Desert so fiercely that each grain felt like a tiny knife slashing across his skin, with Link's clothes and shield barely helping at all. Wiping his eyes again, the Lord Sheriff barely had time to move sideways, mostly out of reflex, before another bouncing rock flew right past his face. He had seen sand storms before, but never anything like this, and if such events were normal in this place, then he was starting to understand why it had been abandoned.

Looking around through the blowing sand, he was unable to see his horse as well, not that he was able to see more than about five meters in any direction, nor did he have much time for searching, with even more rocks incoming. Boom! A flash of light off to the side gave Link a chance to see a little more clearly, spotting Sing with her arm outstretched as one of the rocks coming toward her exploded. Pulling back her arm just as quickly, the Lord Sheriff watched as a large sphere of energy formed in her hand for another strike… the same kind of energy that Ganondorf had been so fond of.

Broken from this flashback to his previous battle, by a rock grazing the back of his leg just enough to drop him to a kneeling position, Link started crawling toward where he had seen the magician, even though she was only visible for a moment when destroying rocks. Somehow the storm was still worsening, making the landscape even darker now, and the amount of rocks increased as if they were nocturnal predators drawn out by the sun's retreat.

"Sing!" He called, screaming above the wind as he got to his feet. "Sing, we can't just stay here! We have to…

His words were interrupted as another rock began its assault, hitting him in the back of the shoulder hard enough to knock the Lord Sheriff flat on his face, but the magician didn't get off so easy. After hitting him, the rock continued on to slam right into the dark haired woman's stomach, knocking the wind out of her as she was launched off her feet. She rolled backwards twice before coming to a stop where the dune started to slope… and the magician was no longer moving.

Without really thinking beyond the fact that someone was in trouble, Link stumbled over to her, dove onto the ground, and pulled her as tightly up against him as he could, while holding out his shield in front of their heads as best he could. Although not as big as Façade's family shield, it offered a small protection from the wind from where they were lying, and when the Lord Sheriff looked up toward the blocked sky, he could see more rocks bouncing overhead.

Every once in a while one of them would glance off his shield, each one hurting Link's arm a little bit more than the last, but he couldn't move it even for a second without risking leaving either himself or Sing unprotected. Still, with only miles of dunes and loose sand having been seen before the storm hit, he couldn't help but wonder where all of those rocks were coming from, but thankfully the storm soon started to let up.

First the rocks decreased in number, and then the landscape started to get slowly brighter as the wind became less harsh. The sand stung less and less until it couldn't even stay floating through the air, and when the clouds vanished completely, there was no sign that there had even been a storm in the first place. Still holding tightly onto the magician, mostly because it hurt incredibly bad to even try moving his shield arm, the Lord Sheriff turned his head as best her could, but there was still no sign of the horse.

"My hero." The dark haired woman said sarcastically. "The storm's over, I don't think you need to hold me like this anymore."

"Hold on… my arm." He groaned, crying out when he tried to move it again. "I think it's broken."

In response to this, she pulled roughly away from him, making Link groan in pain while she got up to a kneeling position. Then Sing grabbed his arm, making him scream out loudly when she pulled it over to her so that she could see. Yes, according to her it was definitely broken, which probably could have been determined without her having to twist it around several times, each one causing Link's screams to echo across the desert.

"Stop screaming like a woman, Link." She said, moving his arm again with the same result. "Now, you saved me from those rocks, and it wouldn't be right to make you face the first challenge like this, so… I will heal your arm good as new… if you tell me that I'm prettier than Princess Zelda."

After saving her life during the sand storm and getting hurt in the process, it was ridiculous that the magician would do anything but immediately heal him out of gratitude, and the Lord Sheriff was starting to tell her this, when his words became a scream as she twisted his arm again. Trying to pull away from her, only to have even more pain while she repeated her demands, there was really no choice but to give in.

"All right, all right, you're prettier than Zelda!" Link yelled after the last twist. "Damn it, you're the most beautiful woman in Hyrule, just stop!"

Sing seemed satisfied, since she stopped twisting his broken arm, and then with the simply chanting of the word Vitalidad, the pain started to go away. There was a light coming out from under where she placed her other hand on top of the break, and after a couple of seconds he could move it again. Even the soreness was gone by the time that the light faded and the dark haired woman let go, so he got up to his knees while moving his arm around; part of him wanting to strike her for putting him through that, and part of him wanting to simply move on.

"Thank you." Link said as they both got up. "But was it really necessary to humiliate me like that?"

"Humiliate you?" The magician laughed, brushing some of the sand from her face. "That was just a bit of fun… you'd never recover from it, if I actually wanted to humiliate you. Now come along, or don't you fancy a stroll across the desert with the most beautiful woman in Hyrule?"

Trying to ignore that last dig, the Lord Sheriff instead turned his attention to locating his horse, but there was no sign of the animal anywhere. So the two of them walked for what was probably an hour, up and down the dunes of Parappa Desert, until scaling the largest dune of them all, and discovering a hard surface underneath his feet. Shifting some of the loose sand with his foot, Link discovered that there was carved stone spread across the surface of this unusually flat plateau.

Other structures were visible as well; parts of broken pillars and walls, some far taller and wider than others, as if there had been either a small town or a large single structure in place before the time Sing had mentioned when the water dried up. However, as fascinating as the discovery of such ruins was, it was trumped by the next thing Link spotted, which was first detected by the sound of a sharp crack under his feet.

It didn't sound like wood or stone, so the Lord Sheriff bent down to brush some more sand out of the way, and what greeted him back was a sun-bleached white skull… or at least most of one. There were more bones scattered nearby, almost a complete set, and after continuing on, there was another sound of crack while they walked… and then another… and then another.

"There are plenty of those down there." Sing explained when he asked about them. "As you know, there have been others chosen to undertake this quest before you, but… for many of them, this place, this once great and now ruined Parappa Palace, was the end of that journey."

Apparently Impa's long dead son was somewhere among them, although the magician couldn't remember where exactly he had fallen, now would she tell him what had caused it. Unfortunately, this was where the dark haired woman could help him no longer… now the Lord Sheriff had to venture off across the ruins on his own in search of the first challenge, and although Sing would give no details, she was more than ready to tell him not to worry, because he would find it.

Content to remain where she was, the magician sat down on a piece of fallen pillar, and Link drew his sword as he carefully started his way across the ruins. The crumbling remains of walls sometimes had features, like windows or parts of carved staircases that now went nowhere, but so far nothing had attacked him, nor had any traps been sprung. Something had killed those previous chosen ones, so the Lord Sheriff remained on his guard until reaching the very center of the ruins, where an intact structure remained.

It was a carved relief, a big one, made of stone like everything else, but set in a plate that was mounted in between two pillars. There were markings all across the plate, but the language was foreign to him, and he was much more interested in the carved figure that adorned the second half of the place. Taller and stockier than he was, this figure carried a weapon similar to a spiked ball morning star, and wore heavy plate armor in every place but its head. Its head, however, did not resemble a man's at all, instead looking almost like that of a horse.

Suddenly there was a burning sensation from the back of his tattooed hand, and when Link brought it up to see that the mark was glowing, he was amazed when the inscriptions on the carved relief began to move. At first they just shook, but then as if worms, they started crawling into different positions, swapping places with each other and bending until the whole language had become one that he could read relatively easily. Once completely rearranged and translated, it read:

Here in the great Parappa Palace, in this chamber far hidden away from its noble guests, sleeps a guardian. If you are a careless adventurer or a thief seeking to discover hidden riches inside these walls, then this is your last chance to turn back.

If you are a prisoner, sentenced to confinement within this chamber, then know that justice will be done. For by reading the words on this inscription, even in silence, is enough to summon your executioner.

Before Link could even begin to think about what he had just read, there was a powerful tremor in the ground, before the carved relief began to move. Its hands and arms pulling free of the stone first, the horse-headed figure began to take on a more lifelike color; white hair with black mane, red armor the color of blood, and a black morning star in its hands as the monster finished pulling itself free of the relief.