NOTE: Sorry for the unusually long hiatus. A trip to Australia will do that to a man. Things should be back on a more standard schedule by now. Also, I had to split the next chapter into two parts just so I could get this out in time. Enjoy.

Chapter ten

In the inferno

Col opened his eyes, groaning. The first thing he expected to hear was his other half shouting at him, telling him he had done wrong, berating him for all his failures. But, astonishingly, he heard nothing.

"He's gone," Cole said, hardly believing it. "I'm finally free of him!"

"All right, I guess we'll chalk that up under 'good news,'" a familiar voice said.

Cole wheeled around and saw Drake, leaning against the bars of a large cage he was contained within. "The bad news? You're in hell."

Cole looked around at his surroundings. It seemed Drake was right, for all around him there were infernal fires and screams. He, too, was trapped in a cage, as well as two strangers: A young boy in green, and a creepy man in a dark cloak. Cole looked around with amazement. "So this is where you go when you don't respawn," he said, awestruck.

But there were more important matters at hand. He turned to Drake. "Listen, we have to get out of here."

"Oh, really? Should we do that? We were thinking of starting a bridge tournament down here," Drake said sarcastically.

"Would you just shut up?" Ganondorf yelled.

Suddenly, there was a shout, and from above a body fell.

"Oh, boy, another one," Drake said. "This'll make five. We could start a poker game."

"Would you quit it with the cards?" Ganondorf yelled.

They all watched as the new person fell into an open cage, which then sealed itself. A large mechanism then dropped the cage next to the others, and the person inside stood up. He turned to them.

"Zeus?" Cole said, surprised. "Where have you been?"

"I tried to stop him," Zeus said. "He wants to kill us all!"

"Who, Kratos?" asked Drake. "Because that's pretty much normal around here."

Zeus turned to him, thunder in his eyes. "Not him. The Polygon Man."

Ganondorf scratched his head. "Who's the Polygon Man?"

"Nobody truly knows. He seemingly came from nowhere, and everything about him is shrouded in mystery," Cole said.

"And you never figured out he was a villain?" Ganondorf said.

Ignoring him, Zeus continued. "It was he who destroyed the respawn system. He wishes to draw us into darkness. Soon all these cages will be filled with the rest of us, and he will make his move on the world. He is pure evil, and he will not stop until-"

"Cut it out, will you?" Drake interrupted.

"I beg your pardon?"

"We get it. He's evil, that's all you need to say. We don't need a long-winded monologue on his evil-ness, we just have to get out and stop him. That's all you have to say!"

"You are a petulant child," Zeus retorted angrily.

"And you're an old geezer who needs a haircut," Drake shot back.

Link, meanwhile, had stayed silent the whole time, surveying the area around him, looking for a way out. The cage he was in seemed impregnable, at least to his weapons. But now he saw something that could use: A grapple point on a statue nearby, and another, opposite that.

And beyond that, something that could help tremendously.

He grappled to one point, rocking the cage a bit from the pull it provided. As it rocked back, he grappled to the other, increasing the rocking motion. He repeated this process, rocking the cage back and forth, until it finally fell with a crash. The others stopped their bickering and looked at his cage, which was now lying on its side.

The problem was, he didn't really know what to do next. He had been hoping the cylindrical cage would start rolling, but it wasn't, and he didn't have anything that could start it rolling. Not his spinner, his ball & chain, his Goron mask – wait, what?

He pulled out the mask, confused. When had he picked this up, and why? Then, he noticed a note on the back.

You won't find this in the books, but I used this to save the world once. Use it well.

The Hero of Time, perhaps? Link had read the legends, and had personally learned many sword techniques from him, but when had he ever used masks?

Link put the mask on, rather confused. Suddenly, dark colors swirled around his field of vision, and he felt an intense pain in his head. Link screamed, clapping his hands to the side of his head.

Just as suddenly as it came, the pain left. Link looked up and saw the others staring at him, looks of bewilderment on their faces. "When'd you learn to do that?" Ganondorf murmured. Then he looked down at himself, only to find, to his amazement, that he had been transformed into a Goron!

No time to question it, though. He'd found the dungeon item, and he knew exactly what to do with it. Curling into a ball just as he had seen them do so long ago, he began to roll, spinning his body and grinding against the cage bars, trying to get it to move.

And move it did, rolling away from the others and towards what he had seen. The problem was, now he had no way of stopping.

That is, until the spikes came out.

The spikes caught in the cage bars acted like an emergency brake, pulling the cage to a halt just in front of what he had seen.

A giant golem with a hammer in its hand.

Returning to his original form, Link backed to the edge of the cage, pulling out the Dominion Rod as he did so. He then enchanted the statue and raised the rod high above his head. Of course, he had done this exact same thing many times before – but before then, he had not been directly in harm's way. He'd have to be very gentle about this.

Cautiously, carefully, Link brought the Dominion Rod down.

CRASH!

The other four watched silently as the stone hammer smashed through the cage, tearing the bars to smithereens. They stared at the rubble, hoping.

Then Link climbed out of the cage, unharmed. The others cheered. All except for Ganondorf, who simply said, "All right, now the rest of us."

He stopped when he realized what that entailed.

As Link walked towards Ganondorf's cage, giant golem still in tow he realized he'd need to change his tactics a bit. The golem had smashed his cage on the bars, a natural weak point, but these ones would need to be taken from the top, which was much sturdier. He'd need to hit harder.

Ganondorf smiled weakly. "No hard feelings, right?"

Much harder.

(P.S. I've been told I have problems with pacing. Any suggestions as to what I'm doing wrong?)