Fear

"And they say he rose like starlight from the edge of the black forest

that his shine defined the dark and gave shadows their edges…and with them

the want to make use of their sharpness."

- Obscure Odes of Olde Oracles

"I'm sorry."

Howll looked up from the floor, his eyes bright and sanguine red in the shadow of his bone structure. "I don't believe, Princess, that apology is mine to accept."

She smiled a little bitterly and ran her fingers through her flame-ginger hair with a sigh. "No. It's not, is it?"

"No."

"I meant to apologize to them."

"I know."

"All of them." She gestured vaguely to the window and the Twilight beyond.

He laced his fingers together between his knees, looking down. "I know."

"Ah, Howll." She laughed softly. "What have I done?"

He didn't reply.

They were sitting in an empty corridor on a bench beside a window. It was past Sol-set, but that meant little in a world where there was no night. No doubt the entire Realm was awake and talking tonight, so why would its ruler and her confidante be any exception?

The inscriptions curled down Howll's left thigh were glowing red to his ankle, glittering eye-catchingly in agitation. They had been doing so since the Council gathering and indicated to her that he knew perfectly well what he risked remaining at her side. The rest of his House was, no doubt, currently up and discussing what, Midna knew, Sivu was calling heresy, treachery, betrayal. Why Howll, grumpy, pragmatic, rule-abiding Howll was still here, still acting advisor…she could not say. Then again, she could say very little of Howll anyway. He was, with perhaps the sole exception of herself, the strangest Twili of this generation.

"It was at Lanayru," she announced, as if having come to a decision. "That's when."

"When what?"

"I realized for the first time."

"Realized…"

"I might love him."

"The Light Dweller?"

"No, Zant. Of course, you twat. And you can kindly stop calling him 'Light Dweller'. That's entirely too vague. I know you've only got one Light Dweller you've vested any interest in, but I've known several. Be more specific."

"…Lanayru is the lake province?"

"Yes." She turned to him with a perfectly serious look on her face. "If I were ever to suggest anything, it would be fresh Hylian trout. Straight out of the rivers, grilled and salted slightly. There was also this spicy plant to sprinkle on it when we were so fortunate as to happen across a patch. Never could say the name properly." She sighed, wistful, the aroma of herbs and cooking fish in her eyes and she smiled fondly out the window. "Rivers are amazing things, Howll. I never told him we don't have rivers here."

Howll grew dour at her tangent. "You were saying…"

"Hmm?" she inquired, as if waking from a daydream. "Oh yes. Lanayru. We'd gathered the last fused shadow and I'd told him we were squared up. He wasn't paying me much attention of course. Lake Hylia is freezing and he hates cold. You know, he was nearly incinerated on Death Mountain, eaten alive in Ordonna, cut to ribbons a dozen other times, but he was only ever irritable when cold. He was an awful bastard the whole time we were up on Snowpeak. Anyway, he didn't owe me anything more. He'd saved his friends, I had my magic and he was free to go as he pleased."

Midna laughed softly and ironically to herself. She'd taken off the headdress and the robes again, as if the fabric had grown exponentially in weight since she'd last donned them. Without them, she seemed altogether smaller to Howll, less like a queen, more like a woman. Less like adamantine, more like glass. He also knew that was a silly thing to think, because Midna was delicate as folded steel. He surmised she was twice as deadly. Nevertheless, the dangerous princess laid her head on her arms, closed her bright eyes and went silent for a moment, as if gathering her thoughts.

"Zant caught us off guard," she said softly, curled her fingers in and clenched them. "We weren't ready. I remember that. He turned around and Zant was…gods, standing right there. Close enough to touch." The once-imp shook her lovely head, smiling bitterly to herself. "He was scared. That's what I never told anyone in the Courte. Given, I wasn't doing much better, but at least I knew what to expect. Link…he had no idea what he was up against. I don't care what that glowing goat spirit says, he wasn't channeling any hero-phantoms when Zant struck him down. Goddesses know what Zant might have done to him if Lanayru hadn't interfered."

She paused suddenly, thoughtfully, then turned to Howll.

"You know how old he is?"

The male Twili frowned a little. "You…never said…"

"He's eighteen," she said, chewed her lip, corrected herself, "Was eighteen…he'd be nineteen now, wouldn't he?"

Howll frowned. "How do humans measure time? Is that greater or less than our calendar year?"

"Less."

Her advisor's brows shot up. "How much less?"

Her expression was perfectly calm. "Nearly half."

"Then…he's very young."

"Very."

"And that does not affect the way you…feel for him?" He sounded as though he might be talking about a stomach ache she were having recently, not love.

She folded her hands primly.

"When Zant took the fused shadows, mocked my fall, ground my face into the dirt, called me 'my Midna' – all I could think was 'You hurt my wolf! That's my wolf, my farmboy. Mine!'" She frowned. "Which is a bit silly, now that I hear it out loud, but there you have it." Midna turned to the window again, eyes sweeping out over the orbitals and the tenebrous skies, her kingdom suspended on the unknown thermals of the atmosphere. "You know, for all his madness, Zant was right about one thing. He said that the Twili have spent so long banished to this world of half Light, we've forgotten what it means to want."

"Meaning what?"

"We want Light just as much as anyone, but we're too stuck up to admit it," she shrugged.

"Ah," said Howll, as though this confirmed something.

"Don't scoff. Humans don't stagnate like we do, Howll. They change constantly, though they don't seem to recognize it – every day a brand new breathing thing, like the world being reborn every morning." She breathed the alien word like a prayer. "They wake up new. They die but, oh Howll, how they live. Half a year in the world of Light was more real than half a decade in the Twilight, violent and dangerous and evil sometimes…but you felt." Her eyes closed. "You felt that the worlds were singing."

Her hands had come up while she spoke and clasped the air before her like she could snatch the essence of what she spoke from the wind. She blinked and seemed to realize what she was doing suddenly, her sunset eyes bright and startled. She gazed at her princess's hands, soft as butterfly-things, furling and unfurling like pale blossoms. Her expression seemed to indicate she was pleased with their independent ventures.

Howll snorted, startling her out of her reverie.

"Singing?"

"Don't be jealous, Howll. It's not my fault you've the emotional range of a pebble."

"Sivu's desire to see you dethroned is real enough," he said with vague contempt. "Even now he's mustering his followers to turn the people's will against you. He would see you stripped of your powers as ruler. He would see you banished. What I want to know is what you're going to do about that."

If he was moved by her speech he didn't show it. Midna found herself faintly embarrassed for having said anything at all to the dour record-keeper. Nevertheless, she conceded that he did have a point and there was something to be said for action. If Sivu had his way, whether or not she'd fallen in love with the smell of hay and grilled trout would be a moot point.

"This world is constantly on the cusp of darkness," she told Howll curtly, tone expressing that she might like to throw him out the window. "Clinging to the last licks of sunlight as they go, but they never do. We never have a sunset to make us feel as though time is running out or a dawn to give us hope. We don't live like we're going to die and that's why we've diminished. We've not enough to fear."

"Yes." He rolled his eyes ceilingward. "Any ideas that might be useful?"

The princess smiled her imp's knife-cut grin. "Howll, my dear," she said lyrically, her hair beginning to shimmer, "I have such ideas." Her tresses seemed to light up like hot metal, melting, spilling down her collarbones like molten gold, shimmering incandescent green and orange, lighting up the room like sunlight.

-ode-

After the preliminary trial, Zelda had called for a recess until the next day. This gave certain precocious and pugnacious lady-knights a chance to hunt down people more adequately suited for talking than herself. Sadly, having spent the better part of two nights wide awake and aggravated her scarce patience was even less accommodating than usual. Rather than use the recess to clean up, comb her hair, remedy body odor and the like, certain lady-knights used the time to sprint out of the castle, across town and kick his door in. Shad was sympathetic, but understandably put upon.

"Ashei," he said very seriously, "just because I'm a bookworm does not mean I'm qualified to be a lawyer."

She hissed, shaking her fists jarringly with restrained rage. "But you could try at least, yeah. You owe him too."

He was a little sheepish now. "Of course, but that…"

"You're always running out on expeditions with him."

"Yes, however…"

"You're best books are about the stuff he showed you, yeah."

"Yeah, but…"

"You've got that job with the university because of your work on the ruins, yeah."

"I know that, nevertheless…"

"If you don't help me I swear to the Goddesses –!"

"Ashei! Godsdammit, I never said 'no'!"

She blinked up at him and for the first time in a long time Shad saw clearly a young woman, startled and soft with the shock of his agreeable reply. He realized just then that – when she didn't persist in glowering – his friend's eyes were a charming almond shape and the precise color of black coffee. For a strained and lovely moment, she just stared openly at him with that look on her face and he at her with his glasses crooked, trying to appear sincere (which was difficult given his position). Then she seemed to realize the state of her exposure and cleared her throat, embarrassed.

"Oh, well…" She looked flustered, then angry. "Well, why didn't you just say so?"

"It slipped my mind when you tackled me over my breakfast, dear girl," he said dourly.

Indeed, his toes were currently suspended a couple feet off the floor, Ashei's angry fists buried in the collar under his chin, his back pinned against the Hylian pine molding of his study. Because she was Ashei she didn't have the propriety to look properly apologetic, so she just lowered the scholar off the wall and stepped back. Shad shot her a particularly irritable look and straightened his glasses and tunic with all the quiet dignity he could muster (which wasn't much given he just got beat up by a girl…again). Then he pushed past her to the table in his study. His toast and eggs no longer his primary concern, he jabbed a wedge of bread in his mouth and went about clearing the table so they could talk.

"Th'oh," he said through his toast, arms full of books and breakfast, "'r yo' gonna th'ay wha' 'appened?"

"That's just it," Ashei fumed, stomping in her usual circle about his desk. "I don't exactly know what happened."

"Tha's wha' the're th'aying."

"You've heard the gossip, then?"

He extracted the toast from the corner of his mouth. "Link is an evil child killer or Link is a deranged foreign murderer, which one specifically?"

"Godsdammit," she muttered.

Shad dropped into his chair with a grunt, chin in palm, slumped like he never did around anyone else. "Look, it's not as if this was entirely unexpected. Link is even less cut out for the politicking court atmosphere than you – if that were even humanly possible – and now it's coming to the forefront. Fond as I am of the old boy, he insulted a lot of people when he left. City people and aristocrats and scholarly know-it-alls like me and my university colleagues are a rather sensitive lot. When farm boys turn us down on things we get our delicate feelings hurt…then we start gushing invectives about said farm boy. You should hear what they say about him now, dear girl. Dreadful use of adjectives. My ilk are frightful stuck-up elitist bastards, I'm afraid. And we have influence."

"Then use it to help him."

"Let me rephrase that. All of my ilk besides myself have influence. I have piffle."

Ashei's tone was dead of humor. "Are they going to convict Link of murder?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because he's a godsdamned foreigner, that's why."

The mountaineer laid her hand flat on a bookshelf and leveled her hell-gate stare at him. "I don't believe that."

"Oh come off it, Ashei," snapped Shad, irritable. "What was it that you said? That Hyrule was empty of all men of valor? Well, it's true. We have none whatsoever presently or previously. Farore has to pick them out of the trees, m'girl, the trees whenever we need saving." He dropped his elbows on the table and folded his arms, peering as his blurred reflection in the varnish. Ashei was quiet and angry. "Sorry if I'm coming off terribly snobbish again, but he's from Ordonna. This is Hyrule. What did you expect? He turned down a knighting. From the Queen. There's only one of two ways to interpret that: He's arrogant or ignorant. Neither are popular, both are only aggravated by the fact he's not from Hyrule proper."

Ashei slammed a fist into the table by Shad's elbow and put her face in his, so close she could have head butted him over the back of his chair. "Since when does being tired make you a bastard?" she spat, every sinew of her sooty, battered body venting her wrath like heat off a fire. "Since when is common blood equal to ignorance? Since when did the Hero cease to be something to fear?"

If Shad had been a lesser man, he might have quailed under her soul-obliterating stare. As it was, he'd grown accustomed to having his soul endangered on a regular occasion and he merely folded his hands beneath his chin and peered up at her, patient as only a long time friend could be.

"You know, you're actually quite eloquent when you choose it, Ashei."

"Get stuffed you pompous over-educated elitist son of a two-rupee whore."

"See? Poetry."

Ashei, in a fit of exhausted rage, took his toast and chucked it at his head. He didn't bother to dodge it.

"Don't talk down to me, Shad. I'm the first lady-knight in Hyrulian history, yeah. I just let five –" Her voice locked then thawed in her throat. She swallowed. "–five people die under my care. I should be burning in effigy all over Hyrule, I expected it." She narrowed her dark eyes at him. "Why aren't they flaying me? Why are they going after Link? Don't you dare tell me blood, yeah. He doesn't even talk enough to have a godsdamned Ordonian accent, yeah. What is difference does blood make?"

"Plenty," Shad chirped, leaning back in his chair and sitting up smartly. "Tell me, when knights challenge you to duel do they do it because you're a woman or because your mother was a mountain shepherd's whore?"

Ashei's arm snapped forward like a prehensile scorpion tail. Even expecting it Shad missed the fractional second where her blow lashed toward his face. But she didn't hit him. She stopped, mere inches away from the scholar's parchment fine cheekbone, freezing. Her fist hung there like a question. Eventually she lowered it. Shad was no longer looking at her by the time she dropped her arm. Rather, he had turned his attentions to the table, running his thumb along the edge of it.

"This is from Ordon," he told her pointlessly.

"Shad. I will throttle you until you die, yeah."

"No listen," he insisted, straightening his spectacles. "Did you know that in all our history, never once has any ruler of Hyrule tried to extend their territory into Ordonna? Not even during the Great War? Do you know why?"

"Shad…"

"It's not because Hyrule's armies can't effectively control a collection of farmers and goat-herders," he said forcefully. "And a couple monsters and ghoulies has never been a particular deterrent to those in power." He smiled a little, stroking his thumb across the wood, like he could divine something from the grain. "It's that bloody forest."

Ashei narrowed her eyes. "I don't understand."

"You know, when we went there together, to the Sacred Grove, I could feel the magic in that place?" he asked, looking up at her. "Siphoning through every bole and branch? Wild as the day it the world was created? Ashei, I know you won't understand this because you've never been scared of a bloody thing in your life, but people are afraid of what comes out of Ordonna. They're scared of those trees and those rivers and those blue eyed boys that come out of there and you know why?" He went on without waiting for an answer. "It's because we can't grasp it. It's not controllable and safe or expected or knowable."

Ashei regarded him coolly. "Shad? Are you afraid of Link?"

The scholar smiled wanly, a tired, guilty festival mask. "Look at it this way: we've lived to see one man – not even a man, a youth – kill a god. One country bumpkin, from a province no one's provided to care for in decades, rise up and strike down the darkness itself. And, incredibly, this is the second occasion in our history for that to happen. You tell me that they're not afraid?" Shad took his glasses off and looked his friend very seriously in the eye. "My dear girl, we Hylians are simply terrified."

-ode-

The Gerudo Fortress was surprisingly beautiful.

Colorful tents of skin and cloth were set in festival color spectrum around the wells near the gates, sliding out from behind the curve in the stony canyon walls. Link – once again ousted from his comfortable climate preferences – still maintained that he'd seen more beautiful places (strange and fey sights, terrible and awesome worlds) but never some place quite like this. All around, women veiled and red-haired and bronzed were milling and laughing, yelling and bartering, fighting and testing blades against one another in deadly/neighborly combat. The disharmonic sound of desert tongues and desert women made this place sing in a land of barrenness.

The earthy red-orange walls were cut and scraped like warm sandcastle cubes from the valley walls, their color reminded Link powerfully of Kakariko's pepper-crimson stone, but their substance was a softer stuff. Structures were built straight into the walls and upper rooms carved like honey-comb networks into the cliffs, young Gerudo girls leaping from windows on long rope ladders to repel down the rock face to ground level. Three story stone apartments towered high as any in Hyrule Castle Town, the sweeping cliffs – jutted into the sky like bones of the earth laid bare against sky – easily competed for grandeur with Hyrule Castle.

Link had exactly two seconds to appreciate the aesthetic loveliness of the architecture before one of its equally lovely residents hit him in the face with a bucket of water. The icy shock of it knocked any and all admiration straight out of the young Ordonian as every Gerudo in the immediate vicinity began to whoop and cheer.

The girl with the bucket lifted her weapon triumphantly as her sisters loosed strange trilling noises of victory, shaking wrists manacled in trickets and whooping. Dripping wet and confused, the young swordsman couldn't decide if he was being made fun of or honored. The Gerudo crowded Link's horse, chattering and burbling animatedly, trying to push articles of food and clothing into his arms, wrapping his startled hands around strange tokens, clasping small gold bangles on his wrists. All were smiling, all were excited, all for him. For someone used to standing quietly in corners unless required, this was more than a little alarming.

"You are the first male we have seen in nearly a decade," said Djiin, smiling warmly at him. "Our last King was slain while he was still young." There was a tracery of sadness in her tone.

Link found it difficult to be sympathetic.

Only ten feet behind him the other three Gerudo rode with Sheik, riding silently for the last hour or so after a whole day of yelling and arguing with Djiin from horseback and gaining nothing for his efforts but a dry throat. They were flanking him like one guards a leper, riding at glaive length on all sides as if unwilling to touch him or be drawn into the same air as he occupied. As the women finished fawning over the young Ordonian, they withdrew to harass his passing, hissing and buzzing their tongues at the slender, bright-eyed Sheikah. They kicked dust at him, threw sand in his face and pelted him with small pebbles while the Gerudo scouts laughed and maneuvered their horses out of the way. Link burned sharply and began to pull Epona around.

Djiin grabbed his arm, grip firm, stopping him.

Link struck her hand off and she withdrew to a respectable distance, unfazed.

"This is an ancient feud," she explained, her heavy accent forcing her words to slow. She took the reins of his horse from him with a tempered look. "You are not one of the Desert and do not understand."

"He's a friend," Link said at last, tersely

Djiin laughed. "So he speaks! Good, I was afraid you might be mute."

The Ordonian glared.

"Ahhh, a tragedy this," the woman said wistfully. "That a warrior of Hyrule might return to us only be accompanied by a member of the Sheikah." She spat the word as one did poison. "He's the last of his people you know, last full-blood seer. After he dies, there won't be a drop of cursed blood left in the Realm. It will be a glorious day. Maybe even tomorrow."

Link stiffened immediately and knew by the coolness that passed into her face that his own expression had taken on an obviously martial nature. Midna's ghost sighed somewhere overhead.

'Hopeless. You've the political grace of a bellowing bull-goat.'

Djiin tilted her head, frowning. "You would fight us, wouldn't you? For him? Why? How long have you been close? Years? Decades to inspire such loyalty?" Link grimaced and from it the truth was construed. She laughed; her voice riddled with music and anger. "Ah, so he's not your friend. He's but a guide, an acquaintance at best, kade bhal. You'll do him more good if you distance yourself from him. Those untainted by the Cursed People hold more sway; being a pure Hylian you might certainly hold high regard. You may even be able to barter for the life of a Cursed one."

He arched a puzzled brow.

"You don't know our history. Very well, a short version. There will be more time for detail later tonight, my friend." She seemed rather pleased with herself as she said this. Pleased in a way that made Link bristle. She didn't notice his new ruff, however.

"Of all people of Hyrule, Sheikah alone professed to know the nature of Time and Truth," she said softly, reverently, as a woman speaking of things sacred and hushed. "They came from the Deep Desert, wraiths, red-eyed and blessed with strange magicks. They worshiped not the Goddesses Three but their own entity of power and for this the Goddesses stretched out their hand and blotted them from the Realm." She sat forward again, nodding assertively. "This is history, kade bhal. It is the only 'truth' you need know and have none of the Sheikah's trickery. He may be bound by blood to speak only what is true, but don't trust him for that alone. There are ways for a man to speak and never once lie, yet completely obscure the truth."

She looked at him. "Do you understand such a thing?"

Link frowned, gaze falling away toward the dusty earth. For a moment the sand gave way to marble, to polished mirror floors and the scent of perfume to send his head spinning. He understood the nature of words well enough not to trust them anymore.Djiin's keen eyes caught the treacherous shadow that passed Link's face.

"Ah, then you can understand," she concluded, smiling knowingly at him. "Your loyalty is admirable, kade bhal. Nooru will hear your words and if you still wish to help your guide you may. But disclaim him. If you are not under his thrall, you may barter for the Sheikah's life freely. It is simple. Do this."

His attentions wandered back to Sheik. The seer's eyes at this distance held nothing recognizable as emotion, but then again Sheik displayed incredible ability to rage like a psychopath and return in a blinking to utter calm. The discrepancy of his moods made him hard to interpret and whether or not Zelda had sent him to help, Sheik had displayed a remarkable lack of empathy for the entire situation (short of the swearing and the insults, of course. He seemed fairly sincere in his passions about those), naturally implying coercion into service. If anything, the enigmatic blonde didn't even like him so much as put up with him. Djiin's advice was probably sound given that.

But still…

He didn't get any farther though. At that moment Miki appeared from the crowd, shoving her way to Djiin's side. Miki spoke no Hylian and said something rapidly to her leader in Gerudo tongue. The white-clan woman nodded, questioned her briefly then looked to Link again. "We approach the shrine now. Is your loyalty to the Sheikah so great you would turn down room and proper bedding?" she inquired.

Link arched a brow.

"A rogue Sheikah cannot be anywhere but the dungeon while in Gerudo territory. We've had trouble with Sheik before and it's not as though he's unused to it. No reason you should suffer too, kade bhal."

The young man glowered in a way that made it perfectly clear that – bangles or not – he wasn't disclaiming anyone. Djiin seemed saddened by this and shook her lovely head.

"Very well." She said something to Miki in a low tone and the girl nodded and elbowed her way through the thinning throng of females. "I will petition to have your guide brought with you, but I can make no promises. Lady Nooru is our strongest and she's had dealings with Sheik almost as long as I have. She may separate you two." She waved a couple waiting Gerudo forward. "My girls will take your horse and see she is fed and watered. Come. Nooru will have much to discuss with you inside."

"I very much doubt that," said Sheik, smoothly sarcastic as ever.

Djiin attempted to ignore him, addressing Link pointedly. "It might be best if you were introduced separately."

"Unless that's a vernacular these days?" Sheik said loudly. "'Discuss?'" (Link wasn't particularly talented when it came to social faux pas, but he sensed that Sheik was making a titanic effort to create one.) He was inspecting his bandaged fingers with feigned disinterest. "Not very imaginative, cheh."

Djiin shot him a furious look of pure loathing. "You, Sheikah, will do well to hold that tongue. Lest I cut it out."

"Mmm, threats." He rolled his blood-bright eyes expressively. "That's adorable coming from you."

Djiin whirled her horse about, startling a snort from the animal.

"You're in a poor position to test my patience, waif."

"Eh…" He shrugged his skinny shoulders impudently. "I've been in poorer positions."

"Dead is a very poor position. Would you like to visit it?"

He seemed to think it over. Then he said something – probably rude – to her in Gerudo. Mataj and Nilif gasped – okay, certainly rude – and looked to their leader with wide and fearful eyes, round and afraid over the edge of their veils. Djiin had gone deathly still on her stallion, fine cords of muscles binding and trembling disastrously beneath the cinnamon brown of her skin. Link – because he recognized a struck nerve when he saw it – tried furiously to catch Sheik's eyes and convey to him with immediate urgency just how much he needed to shut up. Sheik caught his eye and merely gave a small tilt of the head. It might have been an apology. It might have been another insult. Link would never know.

"Get him off that beast and bind his hands!" Djiin spat to her underlings.

Sheik was forcibly ousted from his saddle blanket and pinned down by three nervous Gerudo girls. Restraining him somewhat unnecessarily, they wound quite an excessive amount of rope around his wrists. By the time they finished, most of Sheik's arms up to his elbows were wrapped in rope. The girls looked a bit embarrassed about it. Sheik didn't comment, however, because Djiin dismounted, making the courtyard shiver with her rage. She crossed the sand between them in four long strides and grabbed the Sheikah's arm, jerking him forward until she was near enough to make Sheik arch his back to lean away from her. Then, with her free hand, she reached up and delicately fisted her hand in the excess folds of his facemask at the neck.

One Gerudo guarding Link gasped and covered her eyes.

Sheik's current red eyes drifted incrementally to the hand near his ear, then back to his assailant. "Djiin," he said very reasonably. "I'm not sure that's a threat you're qualified to make, cheh."

"And that's not a judgment you're qualified to make," she replied stonily. Djiin's expression couldn't have been colder if she'd held a blade to his throat. "Now, you're going to stop acting like you have say in what happens. You're going to respect that you're beaten, Sheikah, and you're going to do it in sweet, sweet silence even if I have to gag you to get that silence. Do you understand me?"

He lowered his chin slightly; ducking into the cloth at his throat so only those blood splash eyes were visible and glaring through thick white-blond bangs. Her precarious grip on his mask persuaded Sheik to hold still, but not to be quiet. "You have no idea what you're doing, Djiin. Really," he told her with a frigid cold that chilled even the desert heat. "You cannot keep us here."

"Unless what?" she sneered.

"You just can't," he said a little arrogantly. And, Link realized, that was significant.

Sheik couldn't lie.

Fire flashed through Djiin's eyes, a knee-jerk fury that lit her irises like furnaces and with a snarl she backhanded the seer to the ground. In the deafening silence there was the sound of ripping cloth and suddenly Sheik was doubled up in the sand at Djiin's feet, his head curled in like a stricken animal. Djiin stood over him with this half frightened, half exhilarated look on her face that could only be described as blood-lust. Link twitched forward reactively and two Gerudo leapt forward to stop him, one grabbing his arm gently and it was her frightened eyes, not her saber, that stopped him from going.

"Sheikah to nan nai za," she begged him. "Doe nan nai."

"You cannot look on his face," Mataj whispered. "It is…forbidden."

Her own honey-colored eyes were fixed fearfully on Link. Almost every other Gerudo had turned her eyes away now but Sheik wasn't unmasked. Djiin must have shifted her grasp at the last moment; it was his tunic she'd torn, ripped the sleeve from the shoulder down to his wrist, laying bare the arm beneath it. Link felt that he was missing something in the significance of that because the seer was breathing sharp and fast, air trembling as he sucked it through his teeth.

Djiin tilted her head, scrutinizing her work. "Hmm…nothing sacred about this flesh," she sneered.

"You're pathetic as you are petty," Sheik told her coldly.

"Oh? This from a spiteful ghost of a Sheikah?" She laughed as she stepped away from him. "You are diminished, Sheik. Your time and usefulness spent utterly. It's at an end."

"Brave words when I'm bound and without magic," the seer spat.

"Be angry all you like, sand scrunt. Your friend comes with us."

Sheik barked with laughter. "You'll regret that more than even this spectacle. Allah'shaa!" His eyes flickered tellingly to Link. "Your Gerudo have no idea what they're trying to harness there."

"We've harnessed you, haven't we?" Djiin squatted down to speak eye-to-eye. Sheik glared as she smiled playfully, flicking a shank of blond hair from his eyes. "The wildest creature ever to crawl out of the bloody fields of the Realm, filthy and alone and disgraced. If we've caught you, what is a Hylian boy-thing? Nothing."

"And that doesn't frighten you?" Sheik hissed. "That there is something out there powerful enough to spend my Power? That what chases us will come straight here?"

"We need not fear what you do," she said scornfully.

"You don't know what to fear!" Sheik spat. "If you did, you'd have never dared lay a hand on me or him and I do mean him, Djiin, him most of all."

Djiin grabbed Sheik by his other arm next and ripped the other sleeve clean off this time. He cried out like she'd struck him a physical blow and froze awkwardly, like a startled cat. He didn't seem to know how to react, he just knelt there, breathing fast, eyes wide and horrified. It was eerie on a man Link knew to be deadly. Djiin just laughed at the seer and climbed to her feet, drawing her saber from her hip and swinging it delicately.

"The rest of your people are waiting, Sheik..." She moved toward him. "It's them you should fear."

Link gasped and tried to bull his way past the girls, but they were as dainty as Gorons, though it took three of them to hold him back. They seemed – absurd as it sounded – protective, all yelling and pleading he remain where he was while their leader butchered his companion. Sheik lifted his head like someone realizing something awful, expression stricken and dark. His eyes swam with something the Ordonian had recognized once in the eyes of an imp.

'Respect old magic!' Midna was shrieking in his head. 'Do you have any idea what he's given?'

"Please," Mataj implored him, panting as she viced his arm with hers. "Please do not."

Link snarled at her.

She was so startled, she recoiled and let go. The split second was more than enough and quicker than a greased fox, he twisted out of his captor's startled hands darted past them. He was at full speed when he slammed into Djiin, hitting her so hard he took her right off her feet, over Sheik's head and into the sand opposite him. She yelled, raging as Link expertly slammed her sword hand over and over until the saber spun out of her grasp. Then he sprang off her like a cat off a viper, darting and snatching the free blade from the ground.

"Get him! Get him!" she was shrieking, but she spoke out of ignorance.

Mataj reached Link first and rushed him head on, not understanding that her executioner side-swing was moving through molasses. Link disarmed her so fast she actually stopped and stared at her empty hand before Link elbowed her to her ground and put the edge of his stolen weapon to her throat. The once-knight smiled politely at the fallen Gerudo and all the others gave a serious second thought to their own ideas of attacking. Djiin seemed to be remembering that a seer – who can't lie, remember – had just told her that it was Link she should have been afraid of.

Sheik's eyes were grinning, flashing wicked, knowing light.

"The ancient hero earned the rite," he reminded him.

Link hadn't forgotten for even an instant.

Author's Note:

Oh God! Look! A new chapter! It's a sign of the apocalypse! But no, seriously, I'm sorry I took so long but I had shit for ideas and now I only have crap instead. Crap is writable at least so bear with me if you can. Hahaha! But I finished and this rather lengthy chapter is my present to you. Merry Christmas and I apologize for the typos I know are hiding in there. Thank you again to Chaotic Serenity. I wasn't lying when I said I was inspired. Also a heartfelt 'thank you' to Hiei17 for being there for forever and Dust Traveler…because you make me feel better about being a hopeless sap. Thanks.