Four by Four

Chapter 2

Fear for the Sun

A hello to those who are reading,

Well, the computer I'm using (or system of them) was updated to remedy some technical issues. I'm not in anyway shape of forum used to these keyboards (flat evil planes where you can't tell where one button starts and another ends) as it is I'm having a few problems adjusting so this update took a little longer than normal. I accidently deleated this chapter (and had to rewrite it per memory) twice. A little exasperated, but here's your newest chapter. Enjoy.

Kasan Soulblade

And, now what?

He felt that statement, gathering on the tip of his tongue. Dipped in scathing tones its brittle state hidden by a façade prone to witticism, it hung behind his lips, patiently unsaid and screaming due being unspoken. Even as Telma applied bandages and red chu-chu gels to the still, battered, and bloody frame of the man Shad had dragged out of the darkness.

It hung, unsaid and setting him to shaking.

Now what?

We who aren't heroes, confronted by a situation that needs mending, a man that clearly needs mending, what can we do?

Well, save the obvious. Running to fetch the doctor. That had been done, right off. Medicines paid for and applied, that had been done too. All were offshoots of natural things, like compassion and caring, and they had been followed through to their conclusions and because of that at least the poor man wasn't going to be pushing up daises and the like.

Still, it was a poor comfort, considering what this man's coming meant.

"I guess Hyrule field isn't as safe as Castle Town these days."

It was snarky, and just a bit mean, alright, a great deal mean and unclothe besides. Still, he said it, and in his sleep deprived born cruelty with muscles aching from unexpected runs and mind racing from unexpected terrors he wasn't going to unsay it for all the Ruppees in the castle's treasury. Despite his resolve he cringed. Expecting Telma to lash out, to tell him to bite his tongue and be a man about things or some other altruistic driven comment that would have been justified and right.

Instead, she sighed, only that.

Then, almost cliché, it came.

"I don't think any part of Hyrule is safe these days."

Looking down at the man clad in forrest greend and earthy browns, Shad grimaced.

"I can't argue with you there."

XXX

He watched, a detached spectator as Telma nursed her guest with impunity. Feeding the wounded man broth and other less wholesome looking things that were "for his own good". A little sickened -he'd never heard chu-chus scream like that as they were slitted and stirred- he watched till weary of watching. Then, without consent of his brain, his feet descided that enogh was enough. The doctor had been here, and Telma clearly didn't need him, she was doing her work find by herself. So, without consenting his wits, his feet took a few steps back, then without a word escorted him out the tavern.

Telma never even noticed, never even looked up, not once.

Telling himself he was not hurt, Shad carried on, or rather his feet went on thier way and the rest of him tagged along.

Closing the door behind him, quiet so not to disturb the woman in her nursing, Shad slipped out from under the familar entrance way of the tavern and into the even more familar gloom of the alley leading out. Startled, he stopped, stopped and stared.

The dark that had once upon a time agone been a thin skin of shad had changed. Darkening and twisting, it clung onto walls and obscured the paving stones that were more familiar to him than the faces of friends and family. The stairway leading up to the market proper was gone, a black blurr that did not exist save in his memory. Shuddering, for this new stuff was daunting, a hundred thousand times more daunting than the mere night that had existed a day agone he steeled himself and stepped right along.

It clung, there was no other word. Letting him in grudginly it didn't part at him coming, rather it snapped up the illuminatioin that danced on the edges of his glasses amd other ghosts of light like a miser would ruppes. He shuddered, trying not to feel it's heavy, slick, texture as it pressed all around. It was like a mad man, not content with stuffing such dark between the stars, had gathered up the dark and shook it out on the earth. Such thoughts bright forth fanciful images, like a man of shade shaking out a stubborn quill pen and with soundless splats setting this cloying gloom about them. Shaking his head, Shad smiled a lean sick smirk and more by touch than memory made his shuffling way up.

Up and out, away and gone, to the Three knew where.

And it seemed the Three didn't even no where, for he founding himself no where, no where at all that mattered.

Leaning against one pole, it's torch flickuring and flaring on the windless night, Shad stared up at the flame and let his glasses be washed in illumination that was was one moment red tinted, the other second it bared a flush of gold. Thinking of nothing at all, he dwelled on the quiet with proper seriousness.

As last, mad maddening decision made, he picked his destination and went on his way.

XXX

"You want to... what?!"

Leaning against the stone building, it's sign proclaiming it to be open "Twenty-Four Sev'n" Shad glared down at the squat man behind the counter. Ironically, the man was named Sevn, hence the pun and the sign. Had the sign been deliberatly been marked as "Sev'n" he'd had scoffled, called it a cheap marketing ploy. As such, considering the grafetee of deliquents had caused the whole street around them it was unlikely that Sven had caused the "Sev'n" to be.

Thus the irony, or rather the surge of humor that was so bitter and dry it tasted metalic and passed as such in his mind.

"I want to withdraw every Rupee stored in my name." Shad reiterated, heaving a tired sigh. This was the fifth time he'd repated himself after all. "Down to the last green gem."

"Repeat that again, son, I'm heard of hearing." Old man Sevn pressed, wanting to be assured that the scholar had been speaking true.

Temper up -a glance at the sky would have told any why his humor was bad and sour as Telma's greenest ale- Shad snorted.

"I'll pen it on your head and gift you a mirror old man, just pull it all out. What kind of bank is this, you holding our money and not giving it out?"

"A honest one." Blue pebbly eyes thin and sure, the scrawny man spoke slowly, careful and quiet. "Son, you in trouble? In some sort of hurry to leave down?"

"No." Shad grunted, fighting to keep civil.

"And this is honest buisness you're pulling?" The old man pressed. Smoothing his worn but well made red tunic just so with long, arthritic, swollen fingers.

"Yes." The Scholar grated, teeth snapped shut so not to scream the profanities he truely, sincerly, wanted to indulge in.

"All of it?" The old man asked again, marking this as the sixth time around.

"Yes!" Shad snarled. "Every last, bloody, Rupee! Now, right now!"

"No need to shout!" The old man squealed like a stuck pig, hands held in a half hearted defense Sevn gruimbled a weary. "I'm getting it, I'm getting it."

With a tired sigh the old man ducked behind the counter, pulled up a familar trap door, and slid down the ladder leading to wherever he stored his client's rupees. Hardly interested in what the old man was up too, Shad let out a bitter sigh. The sound held a ghost of his frusterations and did nothing to set his mind at ease.

As per his habbit -such a small thing that habbit that had descided him, how sickening that a single gesture had taken the whole decision right out of his hands- Shad looked up, considered the night sky.

Blackness stared down at him. Not a star in the whole of heaven, not a cloud striping above.

We've lost the stars. He mused, his thoughts hardly sounding like his own, though thier voice and his were both the same. I fear for the sun.

XXX

Heros wear green, they wear green hats and tunics and have swords and save the world. Daring the wraith of mad man turned Gods, by Power's whim, they storm towers and save princesses. They rush into burning buildings to save those trapped withing. Always at the apex -velocity and compassion it seems run hand in hand in the olden days- they storm and save and fight and win. Those were the stories he was used to. The tales he scoffed at, and though his father had a library of such tales he'd never touched a one.

Well, save to find notes about the Oocoo, but that was different.

Now, with legends and librarys filled with them, he read the tales his father once loved. Two books at a time, one on each end of his desk, the previously presued pages dangling precarriously about the edges. Eyes leaping from book to book till they burned, he feverishly skimmed through illuminations and text, song and praise, trying to unlock that missing link. That no mans land where tale met truth, he sought it and failed in finding.

These were the fairy tales of a childhood agone, and here, at a sceptic ridden age of twenty six he consueled them again. Trying to find that magical phraise, that string of sylables, that would block out this cloying night and banish the all too real monster out from under the bed and out of the sewers.

And out of his town.

This is my land, my Hyrule, my Castle Town. I may not own it, but the roads I've walked are mine, the people I see are mine. My nieghbors, my friends, all mine. Mine and unsafe, mine and in danger...

Such was the slant of his feverish thoughts that blocked him from reading... coherently.

Giving it up as lost, for now, Shad stood and streached and groaned, roughly in that order. He'd been at it for hours, rumaging through the attic he didn't own -rented, the sad truth. The whole of his home, all of the one room and one attic above that room was his by loan and merit of rent and landlord- through books that belonged to his father. Bringing them down a few at a time so not to strain his arms or risk a fall, he'd gathered his father's work. Bared the tatered, rat chewed, and mildewed collection to the candle light, he complained not, even as his closing of his latest efforts set dust and pungiant smells to flying. All about him, piled into blocky shapes, his father's work was squat in form, distinctly blockish, and a tad deteriated... It's shadows however, were stretched and ominous and utterly fresh and ripe to inspire nightmares. Wonderful. Such, Shad supposed in this idle moment, was how darkness worked under the new order of things.

Looking at that familiarly ominous patch of dark, Shad drumbed up a dry witcism, as always. Summing up his situation and that of the world's in a few short, -and since he was alone, why not indulge?- sarcastic, sylables. "Charming."

For a moment he thought he heard the squeak of mice. Seeing dead smiles in his memories eye, and bloated oily rodent corpses, Shad shivered. Then, checking a full blown shudder, he spared a glance at the time candle he'd set to light upon entering. A quick calculation told him the hour near to dawn. Mere moments 'till false dawn actually. Also, if his count was right a half a inch would burn until true dawn would be upon them. Heartened, he turned. Setting the leather bound books aside he turned to the window expectedly.

Thoughts came to him, distint, yet distinct, all cast in a voice that was his own. I fear for the sun, it's golden light is a distant memory after tonight. I fear for it's life, it's heat, and life giving. Can all that be lost? Will we lose it all?

Clenching tight his hand, crumpling the one peice of paper tht made sense -and therefore was allowed to remain on his desk when the books that did not were excised to the floor- Shad waited. Glass shielded eyes strained against the dark, seeking the grey that preceeded dawn.

A long wait awaited him, it's time protracted by hope.