Chapter 8: Forces of Darkness, a child's nightmare

Link burst into Dark Link's mirrored room to find him and Cody facing off against each other. He drew his sword, unsure of whether to join in the combat, or to face the weary victor. He chose the latter, knowing he could defeat Dark Link, and feeling he had a better chance at fighting Cody if he were weakened.

"You're making a big mistake if you decide not to join me," Cody said, twirling his daggers in his hands as Dark Link charged at him, sword raised.

Cody crossed his daggers above his head to keep Dark Link's sword from coming down and cleaving him in two.

"You think I would want to go back to being someone's minion, when I have finally regained my corporeal form and now have my freedom? You're dumber then you look," Dark Link retorted.

Cody kicked him in the stomach, knocking him backwards. He charged at Dark Link, a grin of satisfaction on his face. Dark Link put his sword up defensively, hoping to block Cody's attack. Instead of attacking head on, Cody jumped into the air and knocked Dark Link's blade down, and put his hand over Dark Link's face and let him collapse to the ground. A slight snicker escaped from Cody's mouth as he pushed his hand onto Dark Link's forehead. He closed his eyes and concentrated while Dark Link desperately tried to knock his hand away. He picked Dark Link's head up a little bit and slammed it into the ground, letting a charge of electric dark energy loose from his hand and into Dark Link's head. The energy overloaded Dark Link's senses, making his vision blur and his thoughts swim. He lost the ability to concentrate on Cody's face from under his hand and ironically darkness started to cloud his vision.

"I'm not going to kill you, I'm just not going to allow you to have a choice in joining me, now," Cody said, grabbing the front of Dark Link's tunic with his other hand and picking him up off the floor. Tentacles slithered out of Cody's tunic and ran up his arm, making their way towards Dark Link's nearly unconscious form.

"No! Stop, don't do it!" Link yelled, running towards the two of them from his safe watch at the door.

"Too late, Hero," Cody smirked, turning his gaze towards the Hero of Time. The tentacles found their way to Dark Link's face. He gave a slight shake of his head in defiance, but couldn't do anything else as the tentacles made their way into his ears. Dark energies started pulsing through them and directly into Dark Link's brain, rearranging his thoughts and memories. The darkness inside of Dark Link intensified and grew stronger, making Dark Link himself stronger, as his thoughts turned from his old servitude of Ganon to now believing he had started serving Cody for freeing him from Ganon's control.

"That should suffice," Cody said, letting Dark Link drop to the ground; surprisingly he was able to keep his feet, though unsteadily. His eyes immediately snapped open and surveyed his surroundings, seeming to be taking everything in for the first time.

"We have company," Cody said, motioning to Link. Link stood facing the two of them, having stopped once the tentacles had crawled onto Dark Link's face.

"I'll take care of him," Dark Link said, picking his sword up from the ground. Link drew the Master Sword and stood in a defensive stance, waiting for Dark Link's attack.

"No, we have to let him live for now, if we kill him the Triforce of Courage will be drawn to the Triforce of Darkness and with the help from that relic, the fool I have possessed might gain the power to overthrow me," Cody said, venom in his voice about how he might actually be overthrown by a mere child.

Dark Link huffed but slowly sheathed his own sword, his eyes locked on Link the whole time. "You might want to work on your timing a little more, Hero, or else the old man might not make it," Cody said as his and Dark Link's shadow came up and enveloped them and pulled them into the ground.

"Who did he mean by the old man?" Link asked himself as he turned and exited the room. A thought suddenly dawned on him and his eyes widened, "He doesn't mean…"


"Before I show you what happened, I found something in your memory that may shed new light upon your very existence," The creature said its expression suddenly serious. It turned around and put its hand out and turned it as though turning the knob of a door and pulled it back to show a doorway before them. It beckoned for Cody to go through the doorway. A strange sensation came over Cody as though he could trust the creature to not be locking him away in some dark recess of his mind, as though he already knew what the creature was going to show him. In some ways he did since it was one of his own memories.

Cody walked through the doorway, the creature following behind him, and stepped out onto one of the bases of the small waterfalls that surrounded the Chamber of the Sages. A group of people stood before him, all standing where his friends, the real sages, had when he had been sent to this chamber after Link vanquished Ganon. All appeared to have resembling figures to his friends, except they all seemed older, except for the kokiri sage, of course. The only one he recognized was Rauru, though he seemed years younger, some of his white hair still retained the color it once held.


"We can postpone this subject no longer," Rauru's deep rich voice echoed within the chamber, "We can longer hold the creature within the seal by ourselves, if we continue this it will be unleashed upon the world."

"But what can we do about it?" The sage of spirit, a female Gerudo that could have been Nabooru's mother, said, "If we keep holding it then we will be destroyed along with Hyrule."

"Yes, the creature will be unleashed either way, no matter what we do," A Zora, whom Cody suddenly recognized as Ruto's deceased mother, agreed with the Spirit Sage, "The only thing we can do is to find a way to seal it as soon as it is released."


"So, are these the sages from the past?" Cody asked the creature standing behind him.

The creature merely nodded in agreement. Cody found it strange that they were standing on this small platform, yet he felt no need to try to distance himself from the creature, or to even think of a defensive strategy, should it attack.

"They're talking about you, aren't they?" Cody asked. He received a signal to be quiet and to look at the sages.

Cody looked back to see they had missed a small part of the conversation.


"It seems all we can do is to try and seal the creature within something," Rauru said, "or someone."

"It could prove fatal to the one whom we seal the creature in, and if they survive their life will not be an easy one, it will be racked with the torment of people trying to kill them and being under siege from the creature's controlling power," The Shiekah Sage of Shadow said from underneath a constricting hood that also covered his mouth, only a small tuft of blonde hair and his red eyes shown from the opening in the front of the hood. Cody had a strange feeling he had seen him somewhere before but a name eluded him.

"The child will have to be a strong one, one who is destined to deal with the forces of darkness one day," The sage of fire inquired.

"Could it be the young boy, the one of Courage?"

"Or, perhaps, the girl of wisdom?"

"No, it may not be either of the two, and the one of power will already have enough darkness in him," Rauru said to calm the sages, "We must take our chances with the child destined to walk in darkness with the power to undo the light."


"They mean you."

"I guessed that much."

"Do you want to know why they werere talking about me earlier?" The creature said, "Turn around."

Cody turned around to face a gigantic, well, face. It pressed against the dark blue glass, trying to find a crack or a way to free itself, but finding none, the waves of darkness housed within it roiled and churned like the waves of the sea during a storm.

"That's you?"

"Yes, before I gained some of my civility," the creature said, sounding almost like it was remembering a bad memory, "There was no reason to my purpose then, it was a sad existence I lived. But enough of that. We must listen again to the sages; I've skipped to a different memory while you were looking away to show where you come into play."


The scene had indeed changed, though the sages stood where they had before they all looked exhausted, a few were about to collapse from the exhaustion. But there was a boy, appearing to be around the age of one to two years, standing on the central platform where Link had stood when he had awoken from his seven year slumber. Cody already knew who the child was. It didn't take a genius to see that the boy was Cody himself.

"Well, if this doesn't work, it's been nice knowing all of you," The sage of Spirit remarked.

"Don't talk like that," The kokiri sage said; a look of strained hope in her eyes.

The Sages all turned, the creature moved behind its seal, jumping from one side of the room to the other to look at all of the sages.


"This is embarrassing…"


The sages raised their arms towards the creature, multi-colored lights that signified what they were the sage of appearing in their hands. The lights rose into the air, twirling and dancing around eachother, looking like fairies at a celebration. They met above the platform the boy was standing on, "Now, child of darkness, prepare yourself, the fate of Hyrule rests in your strength!" Rauru called out right before the light shot into the boy's chest. The walls of the chamber shattered, revealing the absolute darkness that surrounded it, an insane cackle of freedom ringing throughout the chamber.

A large cloud of darkness swept across the room, moving onto the platform the boy was standing on, reaching up towards him to swallow him whole. The boy appeared to be standing in a trance, his eyes half closed as though his thoughts were no longer within him. The cloud crawled up his body, moving towards the light glowing from where the sage's power had gone into his chest. It reached towards it as though inspecting it, but it started moving into it, covering the boy's entire body except for his eyes. He stared with his calm, emotionless eyes that seemed to see nothing of the darkness that was infecting him, corrupting his heart with darkness.


"No! This isn't true! This isn't happening! Stop it now!" Cody shouted, reaching for the boy, but knowing that he couldn't do anything. It was only a memory after all. "This can't be true, no, it can't be. You weren't inside of me until I got the Triforce of Darkness."

"No, The Triforce of Darkness just gave me a point in which to be released, the sages believed that the Triforce of Darkness could act as a seal in order to hold me in, but they were wrong," The creature said as though he were discussing the weather. His calmness over the subject made an anger which Cody had never felt before begin to boil inside of his heart.

"How could they do that to me? How could they put that darkness inside of me, knowing that it couldn't be sealed in a child?" He asked, looking towards the sages as they slipped away into darkness, the memories changing. His eyes welled up with tears, the pain of his situation, now knowing why the Zoras had been the only race to help him when his family was killed. They did not practice the teachings of the Temple of Time as strongly as the Hylians, so they did not know of the darkness that had been put inside of him.

"Now, for the part that I wanted to show you, I want you to see what happened during the only other time I was able to 'help' you with those knights."