Chapter 10: Crossing the Gorge

Using her strange magic, Midna had been able to warp the two of them out of the chamber where the Diababa plant had once dwelled, and they were now back at the spirit spring in Faron Woods. The fresh air gently warmed Link's soul. Now, I think I'll take Coro up on that offer... he thought, tapping his fingers on the lantern's glass.

But just as Link started off, a mystical voice spread out around him, as a soft, lulling tune played across the words. "Heroic Link, do not think that Hyrule is now saved from the spread of twilight. Leave these woods and go to the east. There you will find the land protected by the spirit Eldin. There … you will find those you seek."

Link's faint hope of ever finding his friends was rekindled, and he thanked the Light Spirit.

"But know that these lands lie in twilight," Faron continued. "They are now a dark realm covered by the clouds of dusk. And … if you are to set foot beyond the curtain of twilight, you will revert to your beast form, so … be prepared."

Those words played heavily upon Link. It seemed so short a time when he had finally been released of that form, and he did not relish the thought of returning to four legs. He wondered if prowling about once more would heighten his wolfish characteristics when he again returned to his pale-colored body. The idea of becoming more like his separate half in his true form was like a dagger inching into his thoughts. It seemed that he could not be rid of his nightmare. Every hour that passed he could register how much more he was aware of his surroundings, an awareness that was unusual for any human. Was it his curse to be a beast forever? Was his life bound to the goddesses' desire to force him to become more beast than man?

Faron's voice rang in his ears and awakened him from thought. "Hero chosen by the gods, the hopes of this realm now rest with you."

The singsong melody of the voice died away and left Link to his companion. Midna had sprung up from within his shadow, grinning, as if satisfied with herself. "That's better. Searching should be much easier now. But … of course, you feel the need to help the other light spirits, don't you?" Her laugh jarred him more than it normally did. How could she be so absolutely selfish?

"Well, don't worry. When you turn into a beast again," her eyes twinkled, "I'll take good care of you." Her voice then switched to a frank tone, "Now, the first thing you need to do is find the land covered in twilight. Once you do, I'll help you out." With a drawn out low-hummed laugh, Midna once again returned to the confines of his dark counterpart. "See you later!"

Link had to wonder what had made this tiny imp the way she was, why she felt no remorse for others. Why was it that she could not bring herself to express compassion? Surely some kind of sympathy rested behind those guarded eyes.

What was she keeping from him?

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It had taken only a few hours to retrace the path he had taken to reach the cave entrance where he had first met Coro, the Faron dweller. He remembered coming across the odd man's tiny shack when he had searched for the tears of light. Even through the hazy memories of his time as a wolf, he remembered which way to go. It was odd he had never come across Coro before when hunting or traveling, for he had spent many hours roaming the lands of the Wood, traveling the paths, hunting among the treetops. Coro's hut was not exactly hidden, though, it was out of the way.

He turned right at the cave opening and made his way through the spread of trees, until he came to the small house. Outside, Coro sat at a campfire, roasting his supper over its flame. The puffy-haired man looked up at him. It was in this light that Link could finally take in his full appearance. He had believed Coro had been much older than he, but now he realized it had only been due to the premature growth of a slight beard that made his boyish body seem mature. His small eyes made him appear to be in a constant state of tiredness.

"Hey, Ordonian boy!" said Coro immediately, looking up from the roasting rodent he had slapped on a pointed stick. His smile drew upward in a complete half circle, teeth hidden behind his bulging lips. "What can Coro help you with?"

"I thought I'd take you up on that oil," said Link.

"Ah! Yes. Okay." Coro happily leapt up from his seat and offered his supper to Link, "Hold that for me?"

"Oh. I didn't mean to interrupt-" stammered Link. He had not intended for him to leave his food simply to serve a traveler.

"Oh, not at all!" said Coro, slapping the stick into Link's hands. Falling silent, Link kept it in the flames as he watched Coro trot into his house.

When the little man again appeared, Link lowered the spiked animal into the fire again, having lifted it to see what it was this little man had been cooking. "Here you go!" said Coro, shooting out his arm to Link and taking back his dinner with his free hand.

In return, Link took the small rounded bottle, the yellow oil he needed for his lantern corked inside. The bottle was only as large as two of his fingers, and it fit nicely in one of his belt pouches.

"You can have that one for free, but if you ever run out just come back and I'll refill it for twenty rupees," offered Coro.

"Thanks." Link momentarily thought about politely asking him about his day, but seeing as Coro had returned to roasting his meal, oblivious to Link's lingering presence, he bade him farewell and started down the path past his house, the path that would lead Link out into a world he had never explored.

Hyrule.

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Several hours later when Link came to the clearing beyond the path, he halted immediately. From his vantage point at the height of Faron's entrance, the vast land of Hyrule spread out beneath him. Vibrant color decorated the land, yellow and green dancing of the grass as a breeze swept across the plain. Trees dotted the field sporadically, and a bridge connected the two inclines of northern and southern ends of the field with a shallow lake below. Several paths in the far distance led to other areas of Hyrule.

It was then that Link wished he had a map of his home country, but no one in Ordon had ever had the need for one. They rarely strayed from their village. When they did, it was for the usual selling of their crops in Hyrule Castle Town, and no one needed a map to find the castle that could be seen miles off to the north.

At that memory Link gazed it that direction, but now that he looked away from the immediate surroundings, he could now see the devastating wall of twilight that covered the land at the northern edge of the field. He looked around to find the orange and black obstruction blanketing everything in the distance, the only area untouched being the Faron province he had recently saved from the darkness. Faron had told him how his quest was not yet over, how the lands surrounding his home were plagued by the same black disease, but this was more disturbing than he had realized. His entire homeland, it seemed, had been rendered a dark world, its inhabitants no more than slaves, unknowing spirits walking forlornly in the twilight.

To the north Link could barely recognize the towers that were the kingdom's heart. The dark haze covered its skies like milky glass. Anger surged within Link, fists clenching tightly. Who was this ruler of the twilight that dared to shadow the realm in which he and his people lived? And for what purpose? Sure, this King of Shadows craved power … but why?

But Link could do nothing to stop the spread of darkness by standing there, brooding over the shadow ruler. He looked east and saw the path in the stretching plain that would take him to Eldin's land. It was difficult to see through the dark haze, but far off he could tell that the lay of the land changed, becoming more rock than dirt. The mountains soared high there; he could vaguely see their peaks stretching far across the distance.

Momentarily, the thought of crossing into the twilight and becoming a beast made Link reluctant to continue, but as he had resolved back in the pool of the Diababa's chamber … it was his duty. He was not, however, going to be able to get far without water. He had drained his waterskin on his trek to the field.

Link made his way down into the plain at an even pace, and after a steady twenty minutes, he nestled down at the shoreline of the lake. The breeze kissed his cheeks, and he was glad for its relief. The sun was boiling today with no sign of a rainy cloud. The wind and the water he now restored to his waterskin would keep him cool as he made his way into the mountains.

He plugged the cork back into his waterskin and looked out over the lake. He wanted to imagine that he had come here for a more relaxing reason that the plight of Hyrule. For a moment he lost himself in the pleasure of pretending he was simply hiking, seeing the sights, adventuring for the sake of adventuring. But that was not so, and Midna was kind enough to remind him of that.

"What are you doing?" she spat, popping up and seeking refuge under the shade of the tree beside them.

Had Link been full of energy, he would have leapt up and continued on, but he was glad to have an excuse to anger the imp yet again. He knew he needed to press on, but he had not slept for some time, and the weariness was finally settling in.

"It's called resting," retorted Link, as he flopped down with his back against the tree. He nestled into its bark, shifting until he found a comfortable position, and then he took off his hat, combed his fingers through his matted hair, and closed his eyes.

"Resting!" she barked. "We need to keep moving! Resting now won't get us any closer to the Fused Shadows."

"Neither will passing out from exertion," he returned, eyes still shut. No matter what she said, he was not about to move until he was able to get some sleep.

She growled, baring her single tooth like a rabid animal.

Link opened one eye and saw her frustration boiling. "If you're not going to sleep, why don't you keep watch and wake me in an hour," he said before closing his eye again and turning his head.

Midna gritted her teeth and twirled around to face the lake. When Link heard her body thump to the ground, he turned to look at her. He saw the anger in her rigid body, saw the irritation as her jaw clenched. He watched her for many silent moments, and when he knew she thought him asleep, he saw how her body shifted in the grass and how her head angled slightly toward the darkness in the sky.

Again he wondered of the nature of her secrets. He knew there was more to her troubles than attaining the Fused Shadows, more to the Fused Shadows than the ability to conquer the King of Shadows. There was pain and anger within her, and he thought perhaps he would never find out why.

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Once Link and Midna had resumed their pace in the hour following, they had found the road into the realm of Eldin's province in no time. Link made his way through the small orchard of trees which bordered Faron, trying to stay in the shade as much as possible. For hours, he walked and watched as the veil of twilight came nearer with every step until … he finally came to the image that had become the nightmare of his existence.

He had turned through a patch of trees to come to the barrier of twilight, everything around him becoming increasingly darker, as if night had come early. He approached it, painfully aware that he would have to enter into its black. He could now distinctly see the orange symbols magically embroidered into its expanse. He raised a hand to touch it, trying to render his fear of it meaningless, but he ripped his hand back when Midna giggled.

He had not realized in the darkness that she had risen up from his indistinguishable shadow, hovering next to him. In the blackness he could only see her one, menacing red eye.

Her high laugh seemed to thrash his face. Her mood had clearly improved since his verbal chastising back at the lake. "It's much closer than I thought," said Midna, and Link could hear the glee in her voice in seeing his skin crawl at the sight of the barrier after she had endured his unkind words. "I suppose I don't need to ask if you remember what this is." Link looked at her despite himself, her eye peering into his. "If you set foot in there, you'll likely be a wolf again for quite some time. Well," she giggled, "as long as it takes you to save the light of Eldin from the twilight, anyway." She came closer to him, and he could feel the breath of her mouth even though he could not see it. "So, shall we go then?"

Unwilling to show her his fear, he responded immediately, "Yes."

She separated from his presence, disappearing beyond the doorway of twilight with a ripple. Link watched the spot tentatively, bracing himself for the moment when she would open the twilight to him. After a moment's silent pause, a hand shot out from beyond the veil, and Link was reminded of the tortuous first time he had been forcibly stolen into its darkness. But this hand he recognized as the same that Midna had used to snatch the Fused Shadow from his palms, only the length of it was now completely orange with yellow-tipped fingers and a black ornament decorating what served as a wrist.

The massive hand swallowed him, and he was torn from his position like an unwelcome weed. He felt as though his skin ripped when he crossed the border, pain searing his every limb, as numbness crept into his mind.

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Drowsily, Link became aware of his surroundings. A patch of earth lay against his cheek and his shield pressed against his body. He realized he was lying facedown on the ground. He opened his eyes but still could not see anything, the darkness constricting around him. He shoved himself to his feet, but just as he did so, a sharp pain buckled his knees. His stomach churned with sickness as his bones lit on fire. He held himself round the middle, eyes tightly shut as pain seared across his body. A massive pain then burst through his mind and skull. Clapping his hands to his temples, he screamed out.

The transformation was as agonizing as the first time, perhaps even more so. His knees cracked and bent backward, as his feet elongated into taloned paws. His clothes seemed to stick to his body and become one with his skin, his green cap growing fur as his hair grayed and stretched behind his fracturing skull. He could feel his ears remold themselves underneath his palms, and the feel of their furry presence frightened him so much that he lowered his hands. But wherever his hands rested, they could feel another part of his body changing. Before long his forearms grew hairier and he could not keep himself upright.

He fell to all fours in exhaustion, completely reformed. He panted but managed to keep himself standing. He looked to Midna, who had stood beside him, watching him transform. Link saw that she had returned to her natural colors, but he could not read the expression on her face.

Truthfully, Midna admitted to herself that observing his first conversion had been far easier to bear. She had not known the Ordonian boy then, but now... His alteration had been hard to tolerate for both of them. She had told herself not to become attached … not to trust him completely, or at all. She wanted to hate him, or at least dislike him, but she could not bring herself to truly feel so … unsympathetic. She knew how difficult it must be for Link. She had known suffering. She had known betrayal. She knew not to attach herself.

But watching his body reform … listening to his scream as his brain was given a wider space to breathe … looking into those blue eyes, vision narrowed to slits from the pain...

It was hard to remain indifferent.

The only way she could pull herself from feeling even the slightest pity for him was to laugh at him. "That's a good boy," she said, talking to the wolf, not the human inside it. "Now, you need to listen to what I say from now on." She leapt onto his back, which she convinced herself had healed long enough. She looked up at the sky, and pulled at his ear to make him see, too. "And look. How lovely. The black clouds of twilight are so fetching today! I feel so much more at ease here," she hummed. To make herself feel better, she looked him straight in the eye, and said, with her usual tone of mockery, "And you look so much better like this than in those dusty old clothes anyway."

He shook loose of her gaze and looked at the area about him. He found the evening in the twilight much more fascinating than what she had to say right now … and that said a lot.

"Oh, let's get moving!" ordered Midna.

Glad to put the last few moments behind them, Link pushed onward and before long he saw something poking out of the dirt path. On closer inspection he recognized it as the wooden sword belonging to Talo. An unvoiced shout of glee burst inside him, but it was suffocated when he noticed it had been broken in half. Anger and worry pulled at his heart.

Faron had told him that Eldin's lands contained the ones he sought, but the spirit had made no mention of their health. He sniffed closely at the sword, picking up on the smell of Talo and Malo. It was a combination of two smells: human sweat mixed sweetly with the reek of their family's pampered dog. He moved ahead, still smelling their scent in certain patches of the dirt as he padded along, ignoring Midna's comment of: "See, isn't being a wolf more convenient?"

Link had to agree, but what she did not know was that some of his wolfish qualities had been retained for the short while he had been human.

He marched on, sniffing out the direction that the two boys had gone or had been taken, presuming that wherever they might be, the others surely would be as well. He did not look at anything else around him, concentrating fully on the odor of the boys. And he did not fully become aware of his sudden peril until he had to dig in his heels to stop from skidding of the edge of a cliff. For the first time since he had picked up on the smell, he tossed looks around him. A large chasm lay ahead; thousands of years of erosion-and no doubt a few earthquakes-had created a colossal canyon between the fields of Hyrule and the Eldin Province. Around him, the stretch into the deep continued in a jagged line from southeast to northwest until in the distant north, he saw that his side and the one that taunted him across the abyss connected. There was no way he could traverse the mountain path in his current state, and there was no way around for thousands of miles.

"Look," said Midna impatiently. Link drew his attention back to where he had drawn short to notice what she had obviously been waiting for him to see. A wooden archway had been built on the edge that opened out into the nothingness, three blocks of fencing constructed at each of its sides to hold it straight. He then looked down to notice that he stood on a slight upward slope of wood. Protrusions at the edge suggested that something had once fit snuggly atop them. Link looked across the chasm to discover an identical setup had been assembled on the opposite side.

"Obviously," his partner prodded on, "there used to be a bridge here. But, hmm, where could it have gone?" She smiled at him when he looked up. "Maybe we should go take a look over there." She pointed northwest, at an inclination in their side of the gorge. Link had the distinct feeling that as he had been sniffing out the trail, she had long before noticed that the bridge had been taken out and then taken it upon herself to silently search for the missing component. At her tone, he could reasonably assume that she had already located it.

Sure enough, as he leapt up the slope just beyond a patch of trees, there lay an intact, wooden bridge the exact size that they required. How it had ended up there, Link could only surmise magic had played a role. Thus, he looked to Midna for the solution as to how they would manage to replace such a large device accurately enough for travelers to use again.

Midna only smiled. She jumped from his back to hover high above the planks. After a moment of hard concentration, a bolt of red light shot from the end of her pointing hair and passed over the entirety of the bridge. With a grunt she lifted her arms up, and seconds later, the bridge followed suit, floating higher and higher until it came to hover at her current height. She led it above the gorge then, the wood coming along behind her at a steady pace until it hung overtop the exact spot.

Here, Midna let it fall onto the extensions with a loud, thundering crash that boomed throughout the entire canyon. She refortified the bridge with beams underneath that she created herself and attached. Satisfied with her work, she returned grinning to Link, who again stood at the archway.

"Isn't the power of twilight amazing?" she asked, knowing that Link remained bewildered by the use of her magic. "It should help you find what we're looking for, don't you think?" After a laugh she resettled into her barebacked saddle and commanded him onward.

They crossed the bridge, and not far on the other side, Link saw a barred pathway farther into the mountains. He approached it carefully. Having no way of passing through-for he could smell the Ordonians beyond the barricade-he searched for an alternative means of gaining access to the mountain area. As a human he would have easily climbed it, but as a wolf he would never manage the feat. He recalled the moment where he had escaped from his cell in the Hyrule Castle dungeons. Following that memory he dug his way under with great speed.

By the time he came to the other side-scraping his back on the bottom of the locked metal doors-he was faced with two shadow creatures. They wore fierce looking skull masks that they appeared to have stolen from creatures they had slaughtered themselves, for there was a fresh smell of death coating the air. In their hands they held long white weapons that Link had no doubt were the bones of the same beings from which they had taken the heads. They swung the bones at him-their surfaces still shining with dripping blood-but Link quickly leapt out of the way. Seconds later, the shadow creatures had met the same fate as the animals from which they had stolen bones.

Shaking off the high of small altercation, Link knocked the bodies off the path and headed down the mountain pass.

Minutes ticked by as they strode down the trail of monotonous rock formations. When at last the path became wider and wider, spilling out into a larger area, Link and Midna had no time to look around before they were bombarded by three crest-headed shadow beasts. With quick, effortless speed, Link dispatched two of the trio. After their bodies popped into nothingness, he centered his attention on the last monster.

The shadow being lurched at him, slashing with its spread of lethal fingers. Two of its claws caught Link's snout but dealt no real damage, the only evidence of its attack being two small slits along the top of his nose. Shaking off the sting, Link took advantage of its unguarded stance and launched himself directly at its neck.

This one, too, fell to join its companions after a crack of red and black haze dispersed its being into a world of nonexistence.

It was then that Link heard the ever familiar singsong voice of a spirit nearby. He looked around and found a spring in a recess of the rocks to his right, a dimly glowing light dancing above the collection of water. "To the hero … who was transformed into a blue-eyed beast … in the realm of shadows … in twilight... This way."

Link followed its voice, which sounded more feminine than either Faron or Ordona-which made him wonder if Light Spirits had genders.

He trotted into the water until he came to the foot-tall, wide waterfall that was so common in spirit springs and sat down at water's edge to listen as the disembodied spirit continued. "I am a … spirit of light. Hero … chosen by the gods... Look for … my light." Its voice was incredibly strained, as if each new word brought pain to its dimming flare. "Gather the light stolen by the shadows … into this."

From within its broken orb, a vessel of light bounded forth. Midna caught it gently.

"The insects of darkness … they are the form taken … by the evil that attached itself … to my scattered light," the light informed. "In the twilight … the shadow insects are invisible, much as the people from your light world are. But with your abilities, you will be able to press back their darkness." The light struggled across its next words-words of warning. "But … be careful... The darkness now hunts you..."