Chapter 12

Midna

[AN: Okay, so anyone who's played the game knows what I mean when I say that Midna is scared of Arbiter's Grounds. For any that haven't, or don't remember, she freaks out when wolf Link is in quick sand or covered in these invisible rats or the little beetles. Just thought I'd mention this so you don't think I'm making stuff up – I'm basing it on true fact here!]

Zelda lay on the ground, unconscious. I stood in front of her, waiting. Link had never been out this long upon entering the Twilight, but Zelda had never been here before. I anxiously awaited something horrible, like her turning into a spirit or something. After all, Link had turned into a wolf. What was to say Zelda wouldn't? I felt guilty, but it wasn't like I didn't warn her.
I sighed and sat on the floor. I could see the Wall of Twilight slowly inching its way further and further down the path, and I wondered how long it would take to reach Zelda's horse. I quickly looked away. Thinking about the spread of the Twilight only made it more of an imperative to hurry, and it took all of my self control not to grab Zelda by the shoulders and shake her awake.
That was when she took a deep breath and began to push herself up. "Zelda, are you okay?" I stood in front of her and took her arm when she sat up. She raised her hand to her head without a word and kept her eyes closed. "Zelda?"
After a moment that lasted a lot longer than it should have, she lifted her head and rested her hand on mine. "I'm alright. I now understand what you meant by unpleasant, but you didn't tell me it'd hurt that much."
I snorted and let myself float into the air, folding my arms and crossing one leg over the other. "How was I supposed to know? I don't experience it like that. All I had to go by was Link's reactions." Zelda was watching me with a slightly exasperated look. "What?"
She shook her head and pulled herself up. "It's nothing. I'm ready if you are."
I floated ahead of her, towards the desert. "Come on! The Twilight may be everlasting, but I'm sure Link's life isn't!"

The desert was obviously taking its toll on Zelda, despite the cooler air of the Twilight. It looked like the sand wasn't that much easier to walk on than snow. It wasn't that she seemed tired, but her pace was definitely slower than when we set out. Then I realised we had set out about five hours before, not a rest or any food since.
"Maybe we should stop for a while." I murmured.
She stopped walking and turned to look at me, but she looked like she was about to turn and continue walking. "We're almost there."
"I know, and don't get me wrong, I want to get there quickly, but you wouldn't be as much use to me if you were worn out, now would you?" I floated to the ground. "As you said, we're almost there. So let's sit and eat."
She looked ready to protest, but common sense won over and she walked back to me. We were just walking down a slope with walls of sand on either side, one of which we leant against. She took her bag off and pulled out from it two rolls of bread, no doubt freshly baked this morning, and two fresh looking apples. Handing one of each to me, she smiled, and then looked at the looming tomb that was the Arbiter's Grounds. "What's it like inside?" She asked.
I looked up at the six pillars that reached up to the sky, each with a symbol of a sage at the top. "It's... Not the worst we'd come across." I muttered. But I knew I was lying, and Zelda did too.
"Midna, I would prefer no surprises..." She replied, her dismay at my withholding of information clear in her voice.
"Look, Arbiter's Grounds is not a place I'd go into again if I had the choice. I hated it." I stood and looked her straight in the face, trying to get my point across. "It's full of animated skeletons, it's dark and it reeks of death. It's full of quick sand, and I was sat there, every moment worried that Link would sink in so far I wouldn't be able to pull him out. Not to mention we were attacked by rats that were invisible and little scarab beetles – not that that'd scare me much – but so many rats and bugs that it was difficult to move!" I drew a deep, shaky breath. "Honestly, it kinda scared me."
Zelda looked across the remaining stretch of desert at the dark structure. "It was where the worst criminals were condemned to spend the rest of their lives in the Twilight Realm, so it makes sense that evil lingers there."
"Evil? That doesn't begin to describe it." I sat back down and took a bite out of the bread she had given me. She followed suit and began to eat as well, and we sat in silence for a while. After so long eating Twili food, the still-warm dough of the bread and the sweet and crunchy flesh of the apple came as a surprise. "I'd forgotten how sweet these apples were..." It was quite a nostalgic memory.
"Don't you have sweet food in the Twilight Realm?" Zelda's question was a bit of a surprise. It hadn't really occurred to me that my world was more interesting to some people than the World of Light was. To me it was dull in comparison.
"We do, but it's not quite the same. It is sweet, but not in the same way." I shook my head. "I can't explain it."
She smiled at me. "Maybe I'll just have to try it some time."
There was a pause. Slowly, I smiled back. "Yeah, I guess you will."
We finished eating and got everything together quickly, without another word. It was almost as if the sense of urgency had returned to us both. It felt like barely a moment before we were walking between the walls of rock that alerted me to where we were.
We continued walking out into the open, where I quickly turned to the Princess. "Careful. This is almost like a bulblin camp." As if my words were a premonition, I heard a bulblin shout. Turning, I caught sight of it on top of the tower just ahead of us. It raised its bow, but it wasn't aiming for me. Time seemed to slow down when I realised it was going to shoot Zelda.
The bulblin drew it's bow, loaded with a flaming arrow and I quickly whipped around. "Zelda, look out!"