Chapter 6: Mortal Terror
The hylian boy wandered back and forth between the tough, brick columns. He thought that he was pretty clever for not only sneaking into the Gerudo Fortress, but for climbing past the gate at the other end, and navigating the desert beyond, to reach their most sacred temple. For a long time, the boy had heard the tales of how the gerudo lived their lives, proving their worth by stealing from others. Surely, among them, his recent feats would have been almost legendary, since he'd stolen five items of power from the gerudo themselves, in order to get where he was, and soon, he'd steal their greatest treasure too.
The boy thought pretty highly of himself at that moment. He thought he'd outwitted the entire gerudo race, taken what he wanted, and been observed by no one.
However, a hylian's youth is the time when they're most expected to make mistakes, and that's what the boy had done. He'd come close to getting away with his numerous triumphs against the gerudo; very close, in fact, but close just wasn't good enough. The boy had made only one mistake. He hadn't studied the gerudo lore of the Spirit Temple nearly enough before entering it, or he would have known that a power beyond sight watched his transgressions carefully; two powers, in fact, and although they were many miles away, they both saw him, and made a decision together.
The boy dove forward, under a beam being fired from a statue, and slid through a doorway. Though only eight years old, the boy was quite nimble and swift, and was ducking in and out of the traps and challenges set in place by the ancient gerudo long ago, as if they meant nothing to him. At last, he came to a large, golden door, with markings all over it, which he recognized as a less strict form of gerudo text. He pulled out the book that he'd taken from the house of the former gerudo king Malor, and looked it over. It was a book called "The Book of Maelo," which could translate gerudo from hylian text. Swiftly, sitting down on the hard clay floor, with the book open on his lap, the boy began to translate the inscriptions on the door.
"Herein lies the mighty gerudo treasure of Agnoo; second king of the gerudo, father of Herano; third gerudo queen, whose efforts built the mighty Spirit Temple to honor the ever-present goddess of the sands."
The boy's hands trembled, as he continued to read the forbidden inscription, "Good fortune may be granted to any who touch the sacred treasure, and so, a terrible curse has been placed upon it, for it may never again be touched by mortal hands. Let now fates both good and ill rest upon any person fool enough to enter through this door and tempt the... the scourges of the desert... by touching the sacred treasure."
"Scourges of the desert?" the boy asked himself in confusion. He hadn't heard anything about that. Could there be, he wondered, some creatures there that he hadn't been aware of? Something he hadn't planned for? No, he insisted. He'd taken every precaution. That sign was a warning to scare off the cowardly, or at best, it referred to some hidden trap, that he could handle, or some threat that had died off a long time ago.
Putting the Book of Maelo back into his bag, the boy retrieved a small nut, which he tossed against the ground after stepping back a few inches. Nothing happened, however, which was a good sign. Swiftly, he removed a large gemstone from his pocket, and clearing away the dust and cobwebs from around the middle of the golden door, he placed the gem into a recess in its center. At once, he heard the sound of gears working, and the door slid up, revealing a beautiful room beyond. It had been enclosed for eighty generations, but it was still beautiful, because every inch of it seemed to shine with gems.
In the center of the room was a huge pedestal, on which rested a pair of glasses with pink lenses. Overcome with joy over his find, the boy rushed forward, and up the steps he found there, when suddenly, he heard one of the steps slide into place, and began to realize how careless he'd been, as it triggered just the sort of trap that he should have been on the lookout for. From the walls surrounding the chamber, there came a razor-sharp arrow, speeding in his direction so swiftly, that dodging it was impossible. The boy closed his eyes in shame and fear, but just then, he heard a sharp, crashing sound, like the sound made when a heavy mallet cracked ice. When he dared to open his eyes again, however, he found that not only had the arrow not struck him, but it was lying in pieces on the floor, in a puddle of water. However, that wasn't the only thing that had changed while his eyes had been closed.
There was someone else in the room with him; someone who'd frozen the arrow in the air, disrupting its path. Franticly, the boy looked around, and when he still couldn't see anyone, he began to fear for his life again. Swiftly, the boy descended the stairs again, and rushed for the door, but before he could leave the chamber, two clouds of smoke erupted in front of him, and he was knocked onto his back by the sudden apparition in front of him. The boy watched in stunned horror, as two shapes emerged from the smoke, and all at once, one of them threw something into his arms.
The boy was absolutely flabbergasted. It was the treasure; the glasses with the pink lenses.
"We suspected you were after that, didn't we?" cackled one voice, high and screechy.
"Yes, that we did." another answered from no more than a yard away from the first.
As the clouds of smoke dissipated, however, the boy could see that the voices had come from two gerudo witches, each shriveled and old beyond any reasonable resemblance to the rest of their race, grinning at him with ancient, rotted teeth, being held together seemingly by willpower alone. They floated in the air, atop broomsticks, and one had a blue gem on her forehead, while the other had a red one.
"What shall we do with him, Koume?" the first asked.
"He'll need to be punished, of course, Kotake." the second replied.
The boy trembled, as he tried to back away from them, while still sitting on the ground. Would they kill him, he wondered, or turn him in to the other gerudo for what he'd done?
"He was rude to come in here without permission, Koume."
"But brave as well, Kotake."
"But stupid, Koume."
"He was trying to rob this temple of its treasure, Kotake."
"We shall have to rob him of something he values, Koume."
At that point, they both turned to face him again, their grins as hideous as ever, as they both said in unison, "His life."
"No!" the boy shouted, "You can't kill me! The king of Hyrule will hear about it, and there'll be a war!"
"I doubt that." one of them remarked cruelly, "Anyway, who said anything about killing you?"
"We only want to take away what you've achieved so far." the other continued a moment later, "All the things you've done in your life will mean nothing."
Then, raising their four hands at once, their entire bodies brimming with a massive enchantment, Koume and Kotake fired at the boy. He screamed, as the enchantment passed through his body, infecting his every cell with foreign matter; transforming his entire body into something that it hadn't been at birth. His skin darkened, the tips of his ears dulled, and he felt his strength nearly triple as he realized what he was becoming, and knew why his family could never see him again. The boy was no longer in pain, but he screamed anyhow. He screamed for a long time, in fact, before realizing that he was no longer in the temple...
Stalflare screamed as he woke up in bed. It wasn't an uncommon nightmare for him. That day, so long ago, had been one of the most terrifying moments of his life; a moment when he felt as if he was truly at the mercy of others. It was horrible for a hylian to feel, and even worse for a gerudo.
"However, it doesn't feel quite as bad, now that I'm a greide zwooda." Stalflare mused, his breathing returning to normal, as he got out of bed and picked up his staff. Recently, he'd gotten into the habit of sleeping on one side, to keep from getting his wings all twisted, and it wasn't, he found, uncomfortable at all, though it did tend to provoke nightmares. In fact, in a way, it even made it easier for him to get up in the morning.
As he stepped out into the hallway between the rooms of the hyrulian team, Stalflare discovered that most of the others were already there. Ruto was there, looking wide awake and ready to begin. Link was just as prepared as he always was, and Zelda seemed to have recovered completely from her last fight. If anything, she looked as though her senses had improved since then, because she'd obviously been expecting Stalflare to arrive for quite some time. Darunia was there, but Stalflare thought, for a moment, that he must have been another goron in disguise, because his face was a mask of sternness and anger, of the sort that Stalflare rarely saw belonging to anyone but Link and himself, and on Link he only saw it in battle. That worried the gerudo warrior quite a bit, but he said nothing, for the moment, about it. Instead, he focused on the one member of their team who still hadn't arrived.
"Where's Byrna run off to?"
Link grimaced when he heard that question, but he replied to it quickly enough.
"She never showed up. She sent me a note this morning asking if we could stall our new enemies for a while, but she didn't give me a reason why."
"Obviously, because she knew how late she'd be." Stalflare grumbled, although Link just ignored his comment completely, and turned his head to the door out, towards the teleport area, because it had just opened, and the evil-looking guard had crept in.
"Only eight teams remain in the contest." the guard said as soon as he was sure that he'd gotten the attention of the hylian champions, "Your fight will begin shortly."
"Wait." Link said, grabbing the man by the shoulder, and causing him to leap a surprising distance, "One of our team members isn't here yet. Can't we stall the fights?"
"N-no." the man stammered, clearly more terrified than ever, "The best you can do is ask your other members to fight first, and hope your last fighter shows up before the last fight. Otherwise, one of you will have to take her place."
Then, the wretched-looking guard scurried from the room, as though the devil himself were at his heels.
"So that's it." Link realized aloud, "We have to fight now, and we have to hope Byrna shows up in time for her battle. If she doesn't, one of us might need to fight twice."
Soon, the five champions of Hyrule walked out into the teleport area once again, and looked across the platform at the opposing team. Sure enough, that team still had all six of their fighters, which meant that they'd have to be particularly nasty opponents. That time, all of them appeared roughly humanoid, though. There were three women and three men among them. One woman wore a helmet with a long fin on top, which obscured the upper part of her face, and a white robe, fastened to her waist by a belt. She wore a pair of sandals on her feet as well.
The second woman had what looked like a long, metal quiver on her back, and a spear in one hand. She also wore a helmet, but hers obscured no part of her face. However, aside from that, it seemed to have been designed for battle protection. She wore a robe, belt and sandals, just like her companion did, but her robe was red, and she was clearly wearing some manner of armor underneath it.
The third woman was positively enormous; at least eight feet tall, and she probably weighed almost as much as Darunia, but it was impossible to tell, because a light blue robe flowed over her body without a belt on it. She also wore sandals on her feet, and around her head was a wreath made of leaves.
The first of the men next to them was young and cocky-looking, appearing to be no more than a teenager, with long, blond hair, which seemed to stick directly out and up like barley in a field. He wore a belted robe and sandals, like the first two women, but his robe shined a bright yellow color, and he had what looked like a bow and a quiver of arrows slung across his torso. His face had an expression, as though he were a child who spent his days tormenting small animals. Obviously, he was a very unruly sort.
Next to him was a tall man with long, red hair and a beard, who, from his expression, looked like a decent sort of person to know. He was dressed, not in robes, like the others, but in light, yet sturdy battle armor, which covered his torso, his arms, legs, feet, and the upper part of his head. A leather belt was strapped across his waist, and attached to it were a pouch that seemed to contain gold, a canteen full of some liquid, and a bag that Link could only suppose contained some kind of rations. What Link found most curious was that that man had no place to put his weapon, which he held in one or both of his hands at all times. It was a curious weapon too; a long, heavy war hammer made of an odd-looking metal that Link had never seen before.
The last of the fighters was a man, just as tall as the red-haired one, wearing a white, belted robe and sandals, similar to the one worn by the first woman, but his muscles were very large and pronounced, like his red-haired ally, and his hair and beard were much larger and bushier, and were colored brown. Whenever he moved, a sound could be heard, as though some liquid were sizzling in a pan.
Link could tell at once that those foes wouldn't be simple to defeat. That was never shocking, of course. What was shocking was what he saw when he looked over at Princess Zelda. She was frozen in absolute terror.
"Zelda! Zelda!" Link exclaimed, grabbing her by the arms and shaking her pretty roughly as he tried to get her attention again, "What is it? What's the matter?"
For a moment, the fear seemed to pass from the princess' face, and Zelda gazed into Link's eyes again, but she looked just as scared a moment later, when she spoke to the hero of her kingdom.
"I tried to read the small one's mind." she said, pointing to the arrogant-looking, blond-haired fighter, "Link, all I can get is a general sense that they're afraid of one another. There's nothing else."
Link looked over the opposite team for a moment. He had to admit that he'd been getting that sense himself. He could tell that the two large men were suspicious of the others, especially the large woman, and that she was suspicious of them, and also that the other three were almost terrified of the larger fighters, though they tried to hide it. He himself could tell all that just from their expressions and posture, but he couldn't figure out anything else about them.
"Are they shielding their minds?" Link asked, trying to understand just why Zelda was having so much trouble.
"It's more than that." Zelda realized aloud, however, "I don't even think they realized I was trying to read their minds. Link, these people have near-impregnable defenses from mind probes. I don't know where they learned to develop disciplines like those. It would take a normal person thousands of years, but these people have the most powerful minds I've ever sensed."
"Oh, great." Link thought to himself, still vividly remembering what it had felt like when the princess had struck him with a mental attack. He'd certainly been hoping to avoid fighting people with powers like those, but from the looks of things, there wasn't much choice for any of them.
Of course, Link's fear still couldn't hold him back. He knew that there was a good chance that none of them would be able to handle more than one of the enemy, and for that reason among others, he had to hope that Byrna was hurrying. However, a moment later, when he straightened up to look at his team, he had something very different that he wanted to say.
"I'm going first this time."
No one was going to argue if the Hero of Time truly wanted to be the first one to fight, of course, so he stepped up to the platform in the center of the teleport area, and was met there by the woman in the red robe.
"My name is Link." he said, looking her carefully in the eyes.
"Artemis." she just replied, seemingly unready to tell him anything else about herself. Swiftly, though, they stepped into their teleport devices, and were somewhere else.
During their past fights, Link and his team had always wound up in quiet places in the wilderness, but as if by some horrible stroke of cruelty, he and his enemy weren't just teleported into the midst of people, but into a place where they were being watched. Link shielded his eyes as he looked around. He was on a raised, square platform, with two rather muscular people in tight outfits standing nearby, gaping open-mouthed at him. The platform was enclosed by a series of thick, flexible, brightly-colored ropes, held up by four sturdy poles, positioned at the platform's edges. Off to one side was a table, where three people were watching him in awe, and beyond that in all directions, some flimsy-looking seats contained many people for quite a ways away. Above them all were many bright lights, and other glass devices like nothing that Link had ever seen before.
For a few seconds, Link and Artemis just stood in the small area, with the two muscular men nearby, apparently wondering what to do next. However, before long, Artemis clamped her spear onto the platform, and began to strike out with it in long swipes, that Link was forced to leap over or duck under to avoid. At last, he began to use his shield to deflect the strikes, and he saw her frustration at being thwarted by him in a moment. Swiftly, she shoved the spear into the metal container on her back, and pulled out a bow and arrow. Link readied his shield as she fired, but soon, he was horrified to see that she'd fired, not at him, but at the roof overhead. Instead of wedging itself in the ceiling, however, as a normal arrow would do, that arrow plunged directly through the ceiling, breaking large chunks of it apart, and causing the people, who'd been seated under that section of the ceiling, to scream and run for the exit. Most of the other people there began to rush for the doors as well, as Artemis fitted another arrow into her bow.
However, before she could make another move, Link snatched the arrow from her hand, and delivered a vicious punch to her chin, sending her flying upwards, where her head became lodged in the ceiling. Link hadn't expected his blow to do so little damage, though. In fact, he'd expected her, at the very least, to have been knocked unconscious by it.
Artemis didn't seem to have suffered even so much as a bruise from Link's last attack. Strapping the bow across one of her shoulders, she yanked a sword from the container on her back, and plunged back down towards Link, with her blade directed downward. Having seen the damage that her arrows were capable of doing, Link quickly decided that it would be best to avoid her blade, and ducked out of the way as fast as he could.
It was a wise move, on his part. When Artemis swung her weapon in a huge, downward slice, she cleaved the platform beneath them like butter, and when she lifted her sword again, the platform shattered like glass, and Link was thrown off-balance, and sent plummeting to the ground.
Like a true warrior born, Artemis pressed her momentary advantage, but as she prepared to drive her sword into Link's chest, his foot shot out and knocked her arm aside, giving him enough time to throw something small at the ground.
There was a blinding flash, and for a moment, Artemis stumbled back, looking disoriented and stunned. However, she seemed to hear it when Link leapt to his feet, and dashed a short distance away. By that point, Link had realized what kinds of powers her weapons possessed, and was trying to plan some kind of counter-attack. In the moments before her eyesight returned, Artemis seemed to be straining to hear his movements, but Link was experienced in keeping his motions silent. Moments later, Link delivered a powerful, double-handed blow to the base of his enemy's spine, and she flew forward, colliding with one of the walls, though again, the attack hadn't done any real damage to her.
By the time Artemis had gotten to her feet, her eyesight was clearly back to normal, and her eyes were immediately fixed on Link; one of his hands on the opening of his equipment bag, and the other on the hilt of his sword. From that position, he could have reached any of his weapons at a moment's notice, and she must have realized that.
Having looked around while Artemis had been blinded, to make sure that there weren't any more innocent people nearby, Link found that he was at liberty to use any of his weapons or powers against his foe at that point. For the moment, he had two plans, but he was also ready to develop more if it came to that. Swiftly, he yanked a bomb from his pack, tossed it into the air, and clubbed it with his sword on the way down, watching it sail horizontally across the room, and into Artemis, where it exploded in her face.
The ash and smoke of the explosion obscured all view of Artemis for a while, but when it cleared, Link could tell that although there was ash all over her, she hadn't been injured by the explosion at all. What was worse, though, was that she seemed to be learning to imitate his weapons. Link watched in horror as she pulled a bomb similar to his from her weapon container, only much larger, and of a different hue. As she hurled it at him, he had only a few moments to set up a defense.
The explosion filled the whole room, engulfing both combatants in fiery destruction, and incinerating the surrounding chairs, lights, and the ropes surrounding the ring. It was a devastating blast, which set fire to the walls, and the ceiling was already starting to cave in, but Link was still alive.
As the blow glow of Nayru's Love protected Link from the blast of the initial explosion, he thought to himself, "She must have underestimated the power of her own weapons. She must not have known how strong the blast would be. She must not... must not..."
However, just then, the ceiling came down with a horrifying crash. Link struggled, using the might of his golden gauntlets to move the debris above him, hoping and praying that the next second, Nayru's Love wouldn't give out and allow the burning debris to crush his still-covered legs, but the noise he made in that effort to get out wasn't the only noise to be heard among the rubble.
"She must not... must not..." Link continued to stammer in disbelief, "She must not have survived that!"
However, just as before, Link saw chunks of masonry nearby shattering like glass, and knew at once that somewhere under the rubble, Artemis was using her sword to dig her way out.
That was when the truth hit Link. He didn't know why he hadn't suspected it before. Maybe he was too used to fighting people who could be beaten by a simple arrow through the chest, but he knew at once that Artemis, and quite possibly her other teammates, weren't like the other fighters they'd faced up to that point. Artemis was immortal; she was, in fact, virtually a goddess.
However, when Link thought about it, he realized that he shouldn't have been surprised. The invitation to the conflict had said nothing about the champions needing to be mortal, but if she really was a goddess, then Link could think of only one possible way to beat her, and only if she truly lived her life by both experiencing and causing fear, as he suspected.
Link drew his sword in a flash. It was such an obvious weapon, that he hadn't thought to use it at first, but the Master Sword had, in the past, cut through many things that couldn't die; mist, fire, raw energy; it made no difference. All that mattered was that the substances was wielded by a heart full of wickedness. Maybe, he thought, the enchantments surrounding the Master Sword weren't as strong as the ones that produced Artemis' immortality, but there was only one way to find out.
Just as Artemis clambered to her feet from under the rubble, without a single scratch on her, Link leapt forward, and delivered a blow with his sword. Windows shattered all across the city they were in, as the titanic power of the Master Sword, wielded by the leader of Hyrule's champions, reinforced by the magic strength of the golden gauntlets, scraped across the invulnerable skin of the goddess. Irresistible force met immovable object, and for a moment, it seemed that they would annihilate each other.
At last, however, Link drew back, and Artemis remained standing. However, Link was satisfied, because he knew that he at least had a chance. There was a cut of about an inch long in Artemis' cheek.
Artemis, however, was far from satisfied with that development. She shrieked and clutched her cheek in both hands, like a person who'd never bled before, dropping her sword to the ground. As Link advanced on her for a second strike, however, her combat instinct returned, and she kicked him in the chin, sending him flying backwards. That gave her time to retrieve her weapon, but Link had never let go of his. He recovered quickly, getting back up, and studying her again, for further signs of weakness.
"I'm still not doing enough damage" Link thought to himself through a busted jaw, "I need some way to use the Master Sword with more force, but what's stronger than the golden gauntlets?"
At once, however, the answer became obvious to the Hero of Time.
"My heart." he realized, and at once, he began to concentrate again, directing the intentions of his body and soul to a single point, and once again, there came a beam from the Master Sword, which tore through the air, and just as Artemis charged forward, it plunged directly through her chest, as if her immortal body was made of nothing more than warm butter. Link watched in dismay, as she fell to the ground, but he could see that as badly as she was injured, she'd live, and probably even walk again, depending on how good the healers of her world were.
In mere moments after the mighty goddess was beaten, Link found himself back in the teleportation area. She was picked up by the red-haired warrior, and laid down near the others a moment later, but Link had soon walked over to her, because there was something that he wanted to say to them before any more of the fighting could continue.
"I thought I'd give you all some advise." Link said, looking down at Artemis first, then around at the others, "There are forces in the universe more powerful than all of you combined. You know that, or you wouldn't be fighting us. Learn to figure out who you need to fear the most; your allies or your enemies."
Artemis, however, replied to Link's warning herself, with a furious cough, before Link had even made it back to his team.
"You know nothing about who my allies are, fool. Don't preach to me."
The others on her team, however, seemed to have decided not to say any more until the time came for their own fights.
Unfortunately, Byrna hadn't returned from whatever she was doing yet, so Stalflare decided that he'd fight next. However, as he stepped up to the platform, he was met by the teenager with the unusual hair, and that made him feel pretty silly, to be fighting someone who looked so young.
"Turn back, boy." Stalflare said darkly, "I'd prefer to fight a true warrior."
As he said that, however, the boy grinned openly, as did the red-haired fighter in the armor behind him, but Stalflare could tell that it was for different reasons.
"Entire armies of true warriors have fallen to my power." the boy remarked with a cruel grin, "Kingdoms have struggled, competed and quested for the merest chance at appeasing my wrath. Show me your warrior's spirit, winged one. You can't possibly be more impressive than what I've tormented before."
Stalflare was truly irritated with him by that point, however, and in a moment, he asked "What did you say your name was?"
"You can call me Apollo." the boy said with an even wider grin than he'd been wearing seconds before, which Stalflare wouldn't have thought him capable of without actually seeing it, "I'm the god of the sun."
Not intimidated by that in the least, however, Stalflare replied "And I'm Stalflare; greide zwooda, skilled sorcerer, and the mightiest warrior of Gerudo Valley. If you think you can overpower me, then let's find out who's really the strongest."
"Yes. Let's." the boy said, with an annoying twinkle in his eye. Moments later, though, they both stepped silently into their teleportation devices, and were elsewhere.
Having spent no more than a few hours among the shiekah, Mark found himself returning to Kakariko Village much sooner than he'd originally planned. Regardless, however, Ramie met with him almost as soon as he'd arrived, and he was pretty eager to talk with her again.
"Ramie, I'm planning to head for the castle town for a couple of days, and I'm wondering if you can put your job on hold for a while to come with me." Mark suggested.
"Why?" she asked, just looking puzzled by the suggestion.
"To be honest," Mark replied with a sheepish smile, "I've never been to a castle before. I'd love to have someone I know there to help me out."
"Ah." Ramie said with a big grin, "You need a guide. If you have any problems navigating the place, I'm sure any of the guards could give you a tour once you make sure to tell them the business you're there on. However, if you just want my company..."
At that, Ramie seized Mark's left arm tightly, before she continued, "...then I'd be happy to come along. Just try to behave yourself, okay?"
Mark smiled very broadly at that point, because it was just as much as he could have hoped for. He was starting to think of Ramie as his new best friend, in the whole strange, different world that he'd wound up in, and he was very happy to have her help, no matter what else he had to do with the rest of his life.
"Okay," Mark replied in delight.
The area where Stalflare found himself was, fortunately, not as crowded as the one that Link had appeared in, but it was just as obviously man-made. They were above a city, with buildings hundreds of feet high. Stalflare and Apollo were standing together on top of one of the skyscrapers, looking around at the air of the city, as though seeing it as the perfect place for their unique abilities to function.
Stalflare took to the air at once, and his opponent did as well, only a moment later, which surprised the gerudo warrior a bit. He hadn't expected Apollo to be able to fly, but it did make some sense. Someone calling themselves "god of the sun" would naturally be able to sail through the air unaided.
Without a word, the fight began, and Stalflare started by flying around behind Apollo, looking for a spot to strike from. However, Apollo was keeping up with him quite well as the two of them flew. Once he realized that he was going to have a hard time finding a weak point, however, Stalflare zipped forward, and with every ounce of his impressive strength and speed, he delivered several dozen punches to Apollo's head, back and midsection. Apollo seemed to feel the blows connect, and was knocked back and forth through the air by their power, but when the attack stopped, he rose back up through the air again, completely unharmed by the assault. He didn't even look as though he'd been bruised at all, and that was when Stalflare started to feel afraid again, just as he had when fighting Kodacho.
"Let me show you why I'm called the sun god." Apollo said aloud, as Stalflare started to back off, and the small immortal raised one hand into the air. Stalflare could feel that the air around him was beginning to change into something different, but he couldn't tell what, how or why. Suddenly, however, Apollo began moving his arms with such speed, that Stalflare could only just barely keep track of his movements, and when he finally stopped, he had both hands outstretched, as though grasping for something. Mere moments later, that something became visible, as two orbs of blazing flame appeared in Apollo's hands.
"They're beautiful, aren't they?" Apollo asked aloud, as he gripped the flames still tighter, causing them to flare up even more; tongues of fire licking through the spaces between his fingers, "Each one maintains a constant heat of ten thousand degrees. They're slivers of the sun's corona; its very center brought into my hand. I've destroyed whole cities with these in the past."
Stalflare had no difficulty believing that, even as he raised his staff in front of him. If they were really as hot as Apollo claimed, even he wouldn't be able to deflect them completely.
Once again, Apollo began to use his vast speed to his advantage, waving his arms back and forth, throwing the orbs of intense flame at Stalflare in volleys. The roofs of the buildings around Stalflare practically exploded, as he tried to sift through as many of the fireballs as he could, using his staff and the palms of his hands, and although his staff wasn't harmed by the intense flames, his hands were badly singed. Worse yet, one of his wings, as well as his left leg were struck by the attacks. Fire surrounded Stalflare in moments, and his so-called immunity to heat was finally proven to have its limits, when his skin began to char, and he was forced to spin the head of his staff again, until it was positioned properly for the casting of cold spells. Stalflare hadn't attempted a cold spell for quite some time, but he knew that if he wanted to defend himself from his fiery enemy, it was ice that he needed.
In a few moments, the aura around Stalflare changed again, and he began to radiate a powerful chill. The fire took only a few moments to go out, but he had no time to heal himself, because his enemy was already preparing another attack.
In the next moment, Apollo was throwing fireballs again, but by that time, Stalflare had a plan. His magic wasn't as powerful as Apollo's, but maybe...
Quickly, Stalflare concentrated all the frosty magic in his body into his hands, then fired out chilling blasts towards the oncoming fireballs. The chill wasn't strong enough to extinguish the white-hot missiles completely, but they weakened when they passed through it. Enough, in fact, that when they hit Stalflare's body, he only felt a little pain. Their heat dropped by nearly eight thousand degrees, and he found that when they struck him as merely ordinary fireballs, they fizzled out, and he could feel their power traveling into his own magic reserves.
Rising up into the air, Stalflare zipped forward, towards Apollo, and gave him many frosty punches, finally bringing both his fists down on his enemy at once. Then, as the small immortal sailed downward, Stalflare formed a massive, glacier-sized slab of ice in his hands, and hurled it down after his enemy. Feeling drained from the battle, the mighty gerudo landed nearby, and was on the ground when he heard the impact of his icy weapon with his foe's body. As he stood and watched the ice settling, however, people began to gather around him. They were city-dwellers, most of whom had never seen anyone wield magic powers before, and they were in awe of his wings, and the feats that he'd just performed, but suddenly, even though he seemed to have gained the upper hand, two more worries occurred to Stalflare. The first was that he hadn't yet returned to the teleportation area, and the second was that the ice he'd dropped on top of his enemy was continuing to settle, cracking, and getting smaller, as though it were being melted by some horrifying source of heat.
In the past, Stalflare would have just dove forward into battle again, but for some reason, that time, he thought, for a moment, about something other than the fight; glancing around at the crowd of people, who were staring at him, and at the massive glacier he'd just used as a weapon.
"Everyone run!" Stalflare exclaimed, in a voice like thunder, "I mean it! Evacuate the area right now!"
Hardly anyone had known who he was, or where he'd come from, but with those orders, the people nearby started to see that he was a heroic figure, with a desire to protect them from a force that didn't care whether they lived or died, and many who'd mistrusted him moments before began to see him as a protector. As the people hurried to obey his command, he even heard one man speak him as he rushed by.
"Good luck, man."
By that point, only ten feet of ice remained; a mere fraction of what it had been minutes before, and Stalflare knew that he had to take action; had to try to contain Apollo somehow, and win the fight, but the next time he saw his enemy, he could tell that it wasn't going to be easy. The sun god was glowing with an aura of flame, much like the one that Stalflare himself possessed, but a dozen times more intense. It was that aura, clearly, that had melted the ice, turned the water to steam, and propelled the steam away. Stalflare knew that trying to punch Apollo at that point would mean burning his hand off, especially since his own magic power was almost entirely spent, and it was obvious that Apollo still had plenty.
Leaping into the air, Stalflare took off, and zipped back and forth between the three or four buildings that he knew had been evacuated, with Apollo in close pursuit. When he realized that his enemy wasn't getting tired, though, he knew that he had to try something else, and flung himself through a window in one of the empty buildings. Landing quickly inside the large structure, Stalflare could see that most of the floors were made of marble, and other stone and metal materials, and the windows were mainly glass, so one final idea occurred to him at that point. Quickly, Stalflare flung open the door at the end of the room, and rushed down the stairs beyond it, into a room underground, with a large, metal, canister-like object along one wall; which was nearly seven feet tall, and after just a moment, he'd hidden in the shadows near it. He could hear a loud crashing and banging noise upstairs, and smell burning furniture a few moments later, however, and from that, he could tell that just as he'd planned, Apollo had followed him into that building, and was tearing it apart with his powers. It was only a matter of time, in fact, before he made his way down to where Stalflare was hiding.
In fact, it was a very short time later. In mere moments, Apollo came floating into the room with a bow in his hands, fitted with a flaming arrow, and Stalflare began to sweat from the intense heat that his opponent was radiating, but he knew that he had to wait for just the right moment before he made his move.
"Where are you hiding, dark angel?" Apollo asked in a mocking voice, "You told me you wanted to fight a real warrior. I'm sorry I couldn't oblige. Maybe you'd have had a chance against a warrior, that you could never have had against a god."
"Only a few more moments." Stalflare thought to himself silently, as the sweat rolled off his wings, "Three, two, one..."
Apollo had reached the center of the basement by that point, and in a swift motion, Stalflare uprooted the water-heater he was hiding behind, and tipped it over onto Apollo. The water was turned to steam almost at once, and Stalflare, in his weakened state, knew that he couldn't take much more of that heat, but refused to give up the attack, so he knew that there was only one more course of action he could take.
Leaping upwards, Stalflare tore a hole in the ceiling, then in three ceilings above that one, and finally emerged through the roof. He could still hear a raging and cursing Apollo down below him, so with every ounce of his strength, he slammed both fists against the roof of the building. At first, that didn't seem to have done anything worth mentioning, and Stalflare contemplated hitting it again, but then, the entire building began to tremble, and the warrior from Hyrule took off into the air, as it collapsed in on itself, floor by floor. The columns designed to hold it up were breaking under the damage done by Apollo, added to the power of Stalflare's attack. When the dust had finally cleared, there was nothing left of the building but a smoking pile of rubble, and when the smoke cleared too, the rubble had become a lava pit of a precisely square shape; embedded in what had previously been the building's foundation.
Stalflare could see the lava waving around, as though it was alive, and recognized that Apollo's aura had melted the building's construction materials all over his body, and worse yet, there was so much of it above him, that without vast, inhuman strength, he couldn't possibly emerge from it, and if he turned off his heat aura, it would only get worse, since the material would harden around him, trapping him in a grave of his own making.
"Maybe I can't kill you," Stalflare thought silently, as he landed near the lava pit, "or even injure you, but all I had to do was incapacitate you to win, and you should have been watching out for that."
Moments later, the two were back at the teleportation area, and Apollo was coughing up molten rock and steel onto the platform.
Just as Stalflare stepped off the platform, heading back to where his team was located, Apollo was back on his feet at once, and rushing at him with the words "I'll kill you!" on his lips.
However, Apollo's intentions were destined to never be fulfilled, because a mere moment later, he felt his strength leaving him, his powers draining away, and his immortality vanishing. Worse yet, his skull felt like it was lined with sandpaper. His lungs felt like he'd inhaled half a dozen switchblades, and his stomach felt like there was a team of elephants playing soccer in it. Every inch of his skin felt like it was being torn to pieces. Apollo felt weak and vulnerable; the same way that an ordinary human would feel when exposed to weapons-grade plutonium, except a hundred times worse, because he was someone who'd hardly ever felt physical pain before.
Apollo keeled over on the platform; his aura gone, his anger redirected, and his burning rage focused on his new, horrible weakness, and then he heard the voice of the master of the conflict, speaking directly to him.
"Apollo of Olympus, you've fought your fight poorly, but you've survived unharmed. Whether you win or lose, you'll abide by the terms of this conflict. No violence is permitted in my teleport areas. Is that clear?"
Apollo cursed again, but it was obvious that he had no choice but to obey that strange being, and as soon as he realized that, and accepted it, he felt the pain leave his body, and all of his powers returning. With very little dignity, the mighty Apollo raised himself to his feet; a god again, but a humbled one, before a power from which even the mighty titans would have retreated. He scrambled awkwardly back to his team a moment later, where he received a look of concern from the one with the brown beard, but one of pity from most of them. However, he got a look of pure shamefulness from the red-bearded one, who was obviously disappointed in the sun god for attempting to break the rules of the conflict at all.
"Where's Byrna?" Stalflare hissed angrily, as he rejoined his team, "I can't fight another like that!"
"I couldn't tell you." Zelda replied sadly, "She was in the lab when we left, but we're too far away to locate her now."
"Then perhaps you should go next," Stalflare muttered, "if you think you'll be able to match these demons."
Zelda was silent for a few seconds before raising her head and speaking aloud, but when she did finally speak, she looked just as determined as ever.
"I don't know if I can win, but I'm back to my full power. As long as I don't try to read their minds again, I should be able to fight them physically, but..."
Zelda paused again at that point, however, clearly trying to think about her situation a bit more deeply before she continued.
"Stalflare. I only hope I'm as lucky as you were in finding a way to defeat them without having to kill."
Then, Zelda stepped up to the platform, and opposite her was the enormous woman. Strangely, she was the only one who seemed to be unafraid of the others, but more suspicious of them than anything, like a person who expects someone to steal their treasure. However, she saw Zelda as nothing more than another life-form, and so, the expression she cast upon Zelda didn't have the slightest trace of suspicion. In fact, it was an expression of almost motherly love and caring.
"I'm Zelda; Princess of Hyrule." Zelda announced to her adversary, trying to look as dignified as possible, next to the large, mighty figure she was facing.
"I am Gaia; titan of the Earth." the woman replied.
For some reason, Zelda felt as if she shouldn't try to smile when she was just about to fight that person, but Gaia seemed to radiate such a perfect feeling of life and generosity, that she couldn't help but feel happier when she looked into the large woman's face. Gaia was clearly a person who wasn't used to battle, and that, of course, gave her a certain level of self-control.
In just a moment, the two stepped into their teleporters and vanished.
Hyrule Castle Town grew many of the vegetables that Mark had delivered in the gardens outside the Castle, so it wasn't a spot for delivery, but nevertheless, it was customary for the deliveryman to return there for a couple of days after he finished making the rounds, or for longer if he lived there.
Mark was something of a popular attraction at the town that day, when he arrived after his trip across Hyrule. He spent most of his time there sitting by the fountain in its center, and telling stories of his world as people approached, listened for a while, then left.
It had only been three hours since his arrival, however, when a hylian guard approached Mark and addressed him, saying, "Are you Mark; the human?"
He looked up at the guard, a little worried at first, though he eventually replied "Yes."
"The king has invited you to the castle for tonight and tomorrow. He wants to speak with you about matters that he says concern the wellbeing of his people."
Mark was a little worried by that at first, but after getting to his feet, he turned to Ramie and asked "Is that good?"
"Probably." Ramie replied, though she shrugged to indicate that she wasn't really sure, "It's rarely bad news when the king wants to talk to you."
When Mark heard that, it definitely made him feel better, and he felt almost like cheering for joy. Matters concerning the wellbeing of Hyrule's people? What could the king want his advise on? Whatever it was, Mark was very pleased to have gotten that chance so quickly. He couldn't wait to teach their king what he needed to know to improve his life and kingdom.
That afternoon, Mark met the king in Hyrule Castle's dinner hall, and they had the chance to talk over lunch. The king seemed to know a surprising amount about Mark and his people already, and asked almost solely for clarification on some points that he found unusual. He asked, for example, what would happen if a person couldn't afford to feed and house themselves, so Mark revealed the nature of starvation, and the existence of people who lived on the streets of cities, foraging for food in the garbage. He described those who were forced into starvation by governments that wanted to keep their people subdued, and the king was absolutely shocked to hear that over two thirds of the world was poor to the point of starving.
"We have enough food in the storehouses of my country alone to solve the problem," Mark explained, "but transporting it to all the people who need it costs too much, and people just aren't willing to pay. Besides, it wouldn't be able to reach some of them anyway. We have charities overseas that try to help those people with food and training, but it's not fast work, especially since many governments fight our charities tooth and nail."
After that, the King spoke up again, saying "You're saying that in your world, every person seems to look out for themselves. Wouldn't starving people do their best to get food on their own?"
"Yes." Mark replied slowly, "But humans own virtually the entire world, so you can't just grab food off a tree. Taking food without paying for it in my world is called stealing."
At that point, however, the King asked, "What about those who choose not to respect your laws of property?"
"They start stealing and become criminals." Mark admitted, "Sometimes that winds up directing the course of their entire lives."
"Criminals?" The king asked, looking stunned for a moment, "They're branded criminals because they'd rather steal than starve?"
At first, Mark was about to make some attempt at responding to that, but just then, he started to realize the truth, and all at once, everything became clear to him; the nature of most common crime, and how the structure of the criminal underworld grew from that. Suddenly, he realized how the human race persecuted and preyed on those people, until they had no choice but to break the rules of mankind or die, and then, they were labeled crooks. At that point, many of them just gave up trying to do the right thing, and accepted the title of a criminal, and everything else that went with it. After all, if that was what people thought of them, then what was the point of trying to do the right thing anymore? By mere, atheistic, secular, human logic, there was no point in helping others, or doing the right thing, or making other people's lives easier. Without a higher calling of some sort, man had no good reason to do anything but evil.
It soon became apparent that the king was a very intelligent and eloquent person, and the longer he talked with Mark, the more Mark began to recognize things about himself and his people that were unfinished. Many of mankind's projects and attempts were flawed from conception; plots and attacks against one another that he'd never seen in quite that way. He and the king talked off and on for most of the rest of that day, taking breaks between discussions when they felt as if they weren't really getting anywhere. They'd had seven separate discussions on different subjects by the time the sun set, and before long, it was time for bed, and Mark and Ramie received rooms in the far eastern castle turret, where the soft bedding brought sleep to each of them quickly, as if by magic.
Zelda had watched Link and Stalflare's fights very carefully, and she knew that both of their enemies had been protected by a very powerful spell of immortality. For the moment, she was going to suppose that the same was true of Gaia, and draw her plans accordingly.
Because of that, the very moment that Zelda re-appeared in her new surroundings, she flung some white dust at the ground, and vanished into the shadows nearby, as it kicked up a smokescreen. It was only then that she felt at liberty to examine her surroundings.
Zelda was in a castle courtyard of sorts, with stone chambers off to the left, a closed and locked gate to the right, and creeper vines lining the walls both in front of and behind her.
"Varying terrain." Zelda observed silently, "That means I have a lot of options if something goes wrong."
However, as she looked around, Zelda smelled the scent of springtime lilies nearby, and knew that something had already gone wrong. Maybe her enemy was near, or maybe she was using a strange power of some kind, but in any case, it would have been best if she could just slip away through the shadows and watch for her enemy's next move. Zelda couldn't use the shadows to disappear completely, however, so instead, she did her best to hide using another common shiekah technique.
Among the shiekah, the skill of how to climb stone walls in silence was a valued and common one. Ropes could often be seen very easily by guards on duty, which was why the shiekah used a combination of wires attached to their wrists, which they protected with stiff armored gauntlets underneath, and spiked knives which could hold over a thousand pounds of weight without bending or breaking. Using those tools, a skilled shiekah could scale most sheer surfaces with little difficulty, and without being noticed.
Zelda climbed carefully along the stone wall to the right, scampering around the frame of the doorway, through the shadows. She could see Gaia in the center of the courtyard from there, and had an unreasoning urge to giggle at the sight, but stifled it. Gaia was surrounded by what looked like a bed of writhing flowers, and as Zelda watched, the big woman began to yell into the shadows.
"Where are you? Why not come out and get this over with?"
"I have my own way of fighting people who can never die, thank you." replied Zelda's voice from the shadows all around Gaia.
Suddenly, a dart came flying out of the shadows nearby, and Gaia made a swift motion with her hand, causing the plants around her to rise up, and not only strike away the dart, but cover the wall that it had come from completely.
"Hey!" Gaia yelled, sounding very confused, for some reason, "Did I get you?"
Her only response was a chuckle from the shadows, as a wire shot out and wrapped itself around one of her legs, tripping her up. She fell to the ground with a crash, but seemed to register no pain, and almost at once, a series of vines emerged from the ground, and lifted her to her feet much faster than even Zelda could have risen if she'd been the one knocked down. At that very same moment, vines sprung up from every corner of the courtyard, and reached up to the very top of the surrounding walls on every side.
"That must have got her" Gaia reasoned aloud.
However, less than a second after those words had escaped her lips, a dark shape interrupted the light of the moon, and there was a blinding flash from the ground at the titan's feet. Gaia stumbled back quickly, rubbing her eyes, as she felt strong, female legs lash out at her face and chest, propelling her backwards, but she couldn't see enough to block the attacks. Soon, she stumbled back over a few small steps, and slid down nine more short stairs into a hallway, where she got to her feet almost at once, clearly wondering where her mysterious attacker had run off to.
Zelda was clearly still nearby, however, because moments later, Gaia heard the words "You're being foolish." come from the shadows.
"What?" Gaia yelled, suddenly looking much more upset, "What are you talking about?"
"I can tell you're an ancient, immortal being," Zelda replied from seemingly all around her, "and I'd expected you to be an intelligent fighter as well. That was my mistake, though. You don't put much stock in warfare or battle, or you'd have been fighting me more carefully."
Gaia clenched her fists tightly, as she looked around through the darkness for any sign of her foe a moment later.
"You fight like a little child," Zelda continued, though for some reason, the words didn't sound as if they were intended to be insulting, "using every power at your disposal all at once, before you're sure it will do you any good. Because of that, I'm now aware of quite a few of your powers. You manifest plants of any sort inside dirt or earth, and control their motions and growth, which you speed up immensely with your magic. Added to your immortality, that makes you very dangerous."
"Yes." Gaia replied quickly, "I'm definitely too much for a mere mortal."
"We'll see." Zelda just remarked, then fell silent again.
Shortly after that, there was another flash from below, but that time, Gaia reacted quickly, covering her eyes before the flash could blind her, and delivering a backhand to her left. She could feel someone's feet make contact with her hand, and heard the sound of someone falling to the floor. Swiftly, she summoned vines to grow up through the floor, and although she didn't catch Zelda with them, she knew that she'd come close. Gaia could see that two of her vines had been sliced apart by a sharp object, and lay writhing on the floor. She stepped back a few feet when she saw that, and as she did, she could hear the sound of footfalls nearby. Her powerful legs working with all their superhuman speed, Gaia dashed in the direction of the footfalls, but she couldn't see where she was going, and after running nonstop for close to seventy yards, she finally found herself at another stairway, which she tripped over, falling on her face on the steps.
At once, Gaia righted herself, and ascended the stairway, but there the footfalls stopped. As she continued onward through the darkness, she felt carefully around with her feet, and discovered that the marble floors of the hallway behind her had become rough stone crags in front of her. She carefully got her balance and looked around, causing plants to rise up around her again, but suddenly, a powerful kick from behind caused her to topple over a stone cliff beneath her, and into a pool of water below. During that last exchange, Gaia had finally caught Zelda, who'd had to pass her foot through the plants to kick her. Zelda was tied up in the plants almost at once, and sent toppling into the water after the titan, where, ironically, she collided sharply with Gaia's chest, knocking the air out of both of them. In mere moments, they must have both realized, one of them would start to drown, and that would decide who won the fight...
Shortly, Zelda began to cough up water, and activated a fire spell, incinerating the plants that were still trying to crush her. Nearby, Gaia was coughing and sputtering as well, her robes absolutely soaked. Zelda's uniform had been mostly fried by the heat of her flames, but she recognized at once that they were back in the teleport area, and her concern began to mount, as she turned to face Link again.
"Link." Zelda asked in fear, "Did I win?"
Link, however, only looked the princess of Hyrule in the eyes for a few moments, before he turned away, and said "I'm sorry."
Zelda knew that Link didn't blame her. Fighting an immortal, after all, was hard; almost impossible, and she'd brought it down to the wire anyway. Still, at least she had her dignity.
In a moment, Zelda had turned to Gaia and helped her up, but although she'd lost, the princess found that she wasn't really thinking about her defeat very much. In just a moment, she asked her recent enemy a question, feeling more confused than bitter.
"Why are they your teammates? I know you're a good person at heart. Why did you lend your power to their cause?"
"None of them are really my teammates." Gaia admitted after a few seconds, looking a bit surprised by Zelda's reaction to her recent defeat, "We're only working together now, because our survival depends on it, but on our home-world, I belong to a different clan than the others."
Zelda didn't understand the meaning of Gaia's words, exactly, but she didn't ask any more about it. Slowly, she turned around, and walked back to be with her team, as Gaia did the same, but with an air of worry around her, as though she was expecting someone to attack her for making it such a close fight.
Link and his team were just trying to decide who'd fight next, when Byrna finally showed up. She was late, but not too late, and she was dressed in the same armor as always, with only one exception. Her arms sported new, cylindrical devices, however, which were about a foot long, and three inches in diameter.
"I'm here!" Byrna exclaimed, clearly out of breath, but eager to begin, "Me next."
"Yes." Stalflare replied somewhat darkly, "You next."
Byrna looked at the others for a moment, many of whom were upset with her tardiness, but she knew that she'd needed the extra time to perfect her device. The machines on her wrists were an incredible accomplishment, even for someone of her genius and intuition, and she hoped that with their powers, she'd be able to meet a force of nature like her last opponent on relatively even terms.
Quickly, Byrna stepped up to the platform, and was met there by the woman in the helmet.
"I'm Byrna." the hylian fighter announced.
"I am Athena; goddess of wisdom." the woman in the helmet announced, "I'm sorry that this battle couldn't be prevented. I never enjoy engaging in war."
Byrna had expected to be fighting some fearsome villain for some reason, or a horrifying foe, who attacked with all their soul, like her last enemy. Finding herself faced with a civilized person among all those warriors was, to her, quite a large surprise.
Nevertheless, though, the fight was destined to happen. The two stepped into their teleportation platforms after only a moment, and disappeared.
Mark was woken up on his first morning in the castle by the sound of a rooster crowing, and a beam of light shining in through the window of his room. In almost no time after that, he was summoned to have breakfast with the king. Discussion at the breakfast table was kept to a minimum, though the king expressed a desire to speak a bit more with Mark after breakfast was finished, and of course, being the king, he got that chance. Before too long, the two were left alone in a conference room, with a series of fifteen chairs around a long table. The king and Mark spoke for a while about fairly trivial human practices, before the ruler of Hyrule started to show an interest in larger issues, like the economy.
"Well, your majesty..." Mark began, but the king stopped him immediately by raising one hand.
"Why do you keep calling me that?" the king asked, sounding genuinely confused.
"Oh." Mark muttered, realizing at once that on that world, the customs were probably different from the middle ages of his own planet, "I'm sorry. That's how we address royalty on Earth."
"Well, in Hyrule," the king explained quickly, smiling again, "people refer to me as King Hyrule, and I'd much prefer if you would as well."
Mark knew that he'd just made a mistake, and wouldn't be looked down upon for what he'd already said, much less punished, but he decided to do what the king had suggested, and just not bring it up anymore after that.
"All right, King Hyrule. You see, on Earth, everything depends on money; food, clothes, shelter, water, electricity, gas, and everything else people depend on for their livelihoods have to be bought. If a person is very rich, they can even hire someone to help them take care of their house or family, or employ a group of people that can work and make money for them, though people in that group don't make as much for themselves."
"Wouldn't a system like that be rather poor for the people being employed?"
"Well, they don't have a choice. You see, everyone needs money, and the only way to get it is to find a job as someone's employee. They could start their own business, of course, but they wouldn't have much money to advertise with, so they wouldn't get much business, and by the time people started to hear about them, some large company would have used its money and influence to drive them out of business, or buy their company out."
"Are you saying that it's impossible to become an independent success in your world?"
"Sort of. Some people manage to be really successful on their own, but most of them are just the kind of folks who are good at tricking people into giving them a wonderful deal, or successors to a former corporate CEO."
"So money is vital to obtain, and yet, almost impossible to get enough of."
"Most people work their entire lives just to make ends meet."
"Your people must be very thrifty."
"Well, no. Not really. In fact, the vast majority of people who walk into a store do so without any idea what they're going to buy. They do exactly what the corporations want them to by walking around and hoping something catches their notice. That way, the chances increase of them buying something they don't really need."
The king was silent for a moment, as he processed that idea, then finally, he replied, "You've said that the wealthy determine who'll succeed them, how your legal system is run, and who'll become sports stars in your world. That means they determine who you're inspired by. Who's responsible for establishing your government?"
"Our government system is run by something called a democracy. There are two parties; democrats and republicans. They tend to have differing views on certain issues and such, but both do a lot of blundering. Each party brings forth one person who they want to see become president, and the people vote on it."
"How do people know who to vote for?"
"Each candidate broadcasts messages to the public that slander their opponent. In the old days, they broadcast what they stood for, but these days, politicians don't really stand for anything."
"It must cost a lot of money to make those broadcasts. Do they get it from their 'parties?'"
"Not most of the time." Mark recalled aloud, "Usually, politicians are subsidized in their campaigns by corporations who agree with their views, so the one who agrees with the wealthiest corporations usually has the loudest public voice during the campaigns."
"What you're saying is that it's corporations who really decide who gets elected."
Mark froze when the king said that. For some reason, he'd never quite connected the dots in that way before. That was one conclusion that had always escaped his notice.
"What if a voter doesn't agree with either politician?" the king asked, clearly noticing how surprised Mark was.
"There are two options, really. You can either not vote at all, or throw your vote away by voting for a candidate represented by what we like to call 'the third party,' but the way the system is set up, every person in the nation would have to be voting for that person, and they still might not win."
"So if both parties were working together, they could get anyone into office?"
"Well..." Mark thought about it for a moment, before coming to a horrifying realization, "Well, yes. I guess it could wind up working that way."
Once the teleportation finished, Byrna and Athena found themselves in a grand hall of some kind, with a long table in the center. Byrna raised her weapons quickly, but Athena merely sat down, almost as though she had no intention of fighting at all.
"So," Athena asked, from her place at that table, "why do you want to win this battle? What makes your world the best one to be defended?"
Byrna was surprised by that unusual tactic, but she responded to the question quickly, not sure whether to hope that she might be able to beat Athena without even fighting her.
"I don't know if my world is the best one or not. I don't really care either, because we were planning on saving all the other worlds as well."
"Why would you save our world when you could have anything you want?" Athena asked very calmly, though she didn't exactly look surprised by her enemy's answer.
"Because" Byrna insisted, "it's the right thing to do. That's all we really want, is to do the right thing, because I know that'll make me stronger if I do."
Athena looked almost surprised for a moment, but after a few seconds, her expression started turning sour.
"Who are you to decide the difference between right and wrong?"
"Well, sure." Byrna replied, "That's why we don't impose our will on other cultures by force. All we know is what works right for us. I'm fairly sure, though, that every world participating in this conflict wants to survive. Therefore, that must be right for everyone."
Athena persisted, however, looking more irritated than ever, "What if our worlds come into contact with one another? What if one of us has the power to destroy you all? Would that have been right for you?"
"You're asking me to make assumptions without any data." Byrna replied, feeling puzzled by Athena's logic, "That kind of thinking leads to all sorts of mistakes. I have no intention of doing that. I couldn't attack someone just because they might one day have the power to destroy me, because I'd only be striking in fear. When fear draws its sword, everyone's damaged, and if we let fear of one another govern our lives, none of us would be alive today. We'd all have killed each other off like a pack of wolves turning on each other. You see, fear's one of the most dangerous enemies of reason. It doesn't matter what you're doing; if you're only acting out of fear, you can't be doing the right thing, and..."
"Shut your mouth!" Athena roared, leaping over the table, and grabbing Byrna by the throat. Reacting swiftly, Byrna grabbed Athena's arms in her own iron grip, and slowly pried the woman's hands from her neck, hurling her backwards, and backing off herself. Byrna knew that she was best at fighting from a long distance away, so she had to get some distance between herself and her enemy.
Swiftly, Athena drew a spear from somewhere nearby, and jabbed forward with it, creating a beam of light, which Byrna was only barely able to dodge, as it blasted a gaping hole in the wall behind her. Swiftly, Byrna armed the devices on her wrists, and began firing concentrated bursts of glowing energy from them. They vaporized the entire table, several chairs, and a large section of the floor, revealing a wine cellar underneath, but for some reason, Athena herself was completely unharmed by them.
Athena dove forward again in the next moment, waving her spear like a mace, and was able to club Byrna in the side with it. Byrna felt her armor in that area denting, and a couple of her ribs broke, but she wasn't about to give up. A crystal dome slid over her head in another second, and she leapt over Athena with the air-launchers on her feet, then dove into the wine cellar. Athena followed quickly, wielding her spear even more carefully than before.
"I don't get it." Byrna thought to herself as she fled from her enemy, "If she's so smart, why's she following me in here?"
Indeed, the question was an apt one. Athena's vast knowledge and experience would normally have alerted her to the danger, but for some reason, her great wisdom was refusing to aid her in that fight. She was struggling with it for dominance, but a part of her was still holding back.
Almost as soon as Athena had landed in the cellar, she was hit with a flying wine cask, and knocked against a nearby wall, shattering the cask, and parts of the wall, even though it did no damage to Athena herself. Two more seemed to be headed in her direction, but she shattered them both with her spear in a single motion, spilling wine all over the floor of the room, until both she and her enemy were ankle-deep in it.
The fight began again at once, with Byrna still wearing her dome-like helmet. She charged in, dodging the blows of the spear, though one such blow dented part of the armor on her right arm. Eventually, she was able to deliver three solid blows to Athena's stomach, but none seemed to do any real damage, except for making her leap back to catch her breath. No matter what Byrna did, Athena just didn't seem to feel it.
By that point in the battle, the boundless wisdom on which Athena usually relied, both as a warrior and as arbiter and judge to her people seemed to be coming only in short bursts, for some reason, despite her best attempts to make it work again. The voice of great wisdom, which almost always resounded in her mind, was becoming unclear and distorted.
"...away...out...back...out...the...now...you...the...of...wine...make...as...as..."
Athena couldn't make sense of it, and that had hardly ever happened to her before. She struggled to think of a time when she'd faced that kind of problem in the past, but her mind was losing its focus even as she did. She began to see the world spinning around her, and before she knew what was happening, Athena was face down in the wine, and the two were back at the teleport area in no time.
Zelda was very puzzled, as she watched Athena being dragged from the teleport platform by her allies. Obviously, something had knocked her out, but she had no idea what it could have been, or why someone calling herself the goddess of wisdom hadn't seen it coming, whatever it was.
"I don't get it." Zelda remarked to Byrna, as the armored warrior returned to the rest of her team, "What happened to her?"
"It would have happened to me too, if not for my helmet." Byrna explained, "The wine fumes caused her to start losing her focus until she passed out. I'm still confused about one thing, though. When we first introduced ourselves, she called herself a goddess of wisdom, but while we were fighting, she didn't exactly seem wise, and she wound up being pretty easy to trick. It's almost like her wisdom just didn't want to help her out, for some reason."
However, as Byrna said that, something occurred to Link, which he hadn't considered when he'd first watched the two of them fighting.
"At the beginning, I think her wisdom did try to help her." Link muttered.
"What?" Byrna asked, starting to notice that Link had a theory of his own about Athena.
"Wisdom isn't like knowledge, precognition, or any other simple 'power' to use." Link explained slowly, "It's the ability to tell the difference between right and wrong. A goddess of wisdom would naturally have an almost unerring ability to do that, and I think it got in her way during your fight. She searched her vast stores of wisdom for a way to beat you, but the only answer she could find was 'Byrna's good. Don't hurt her. That would be wrong.'"
"Wow." Byrna whispered in awe and surprise, as she looked across the teleport area at the passed-out goddess.
"It's kind of a shame," Byrna eventually said aloud, "I think she may turn out to have been our easiest enemy this time."
"At any rate, someone else will have to go next," Darunia interrupted, "so it might as well be me."
Without waiting for a response from his team, Darunia stepped forward, and was met on the platform by the red-haired, armored warrior, only a moment later. It didn't take the goron boss long to introduce himself, but it took him even less time to notice how different the red-haired man was from the rest of his team; more in demeanor than appearance.
"I'm Darunia; boss of the gorons." Darunia announced, though he was already feeling worried.
"I am mighty Thor; aesir god of thunder." the warrior replied, frowning just slightly as he spoke, "Between you and me, I find this entire conflict distasteful, so I think we should finish this quickly."
"We have that much in common." Darunia replied, however. Thor's words had brought a smile to his face for the first time since he'd re-entered the conflict location, because for some reason, Thor actually seemed like he might be a fairly decent person.
Deciding to pause their discussion on that reasonably-pleasant note, the two stepped into the teleportation platforms and disappeared again.
Mark sat on the bed in his room for what felt like forever, but was probably more like fifteen minutes. After their last talk, the king had told him that he had some thinking to do, and then he'd speak with him again about the issue that Mark had really been summoned for.
After the seventeenth minute had passed, however, a young man knocked on the door to Mark's room, and Mark invited him to come in after only a couple of seconds.
"The king would like to see you in his personal chambers now." the young man; who was dressed in a messenger's uniform said, almost the very moment that the door was open, "He needs to talk with you in private."
Mark had never been invited to the king's personal chambers before, so the young messenger had to show him the way, then left him outside the king's door alone; obviously with the intention of getting out of his way. After all, if the king wanted to talk with Mark privately, then no one in that castle was going to argue with him, and certainly not a messenger. That made Mark feel a little intimidated at first, but in the end, he gathered up his courage, and knocked on the door just a moment later. At that point, he heard the word "enter" being spoken patiently from within the room, and as intimidated as he was feeling by that point, he knew that he had to go through with that one last discussion.
Swiftly, Mark opened the door to the king's room, and stepped inside, where the king was seated near the window at the far side of his room, writing at a desk by himself. Bookshelves and other pieces of furniture seemed to almost conceal the walls of that private chamber, so it looked more like a study room, or a library than a private chamber of any kind. However, for some reason, that only made Mark feel more comfortable with speaking to the king of Hyrule a moment later.
"You wanted to see me, King Hyrule?"
"I certainly did. Please have a seat, Mark."
As the king said that, he gestured to a nearby chair with one of his hands, and Mark sat down in it, just a couple yards away from the desk where the king was seated. For some reason, Mark felt as if the situation was growing less and less comfortable, and he couldn't explain why. It was almost like being sent to the principal's office.
However, as Mark sat down, he noticed that the King was staring him right in the eyes, with an expression of deep regret all over his face. For a few moments, neither dared to say a thing, but at last, it was the king who spoke first.
"You were surprised by how many of your stories I already knew when you arrived here." the king observed with a rueful smile.
Mark just nodded, not sure whether it was alright to reply to that or not, but the King continued a moment later.
"Well, the truth is that my subjects from all over the kingdom have been sending me messages, explaining you and your tales for the past couple weeks. I've even gotten messages from the shiekah, gerudo and zora, who don't normally send me letters directly."
By that point, Mark felt as though he was either about to be subjected to some demand, or some tremendous reward, but still, the king continued to speak.
"It's a fantastic story. I've never quite heard anything like it, but if I combine the letters I've been receiving with what you've told me yourself, I think I've gotten a fairly complete picture."
Mark felt like beaming over what the king was saying to him, but something was wrong, because King Hyrule wasn't smiling. After a few moments, the monarch leaned back in his seat, and sighed, as though consumed by terrible guilt.
"In the past few minutes, I've had a very difficult choice to make. I don't think I've had to make this choice before for anyone, but just in case you think it's unduly harsh, let me share some of the observations I've made, based on all the data you've given me."
Worry was growing in his heart again, but regardless, Mark continued to listen, as the King retrieved a list of notes from the desk behind him, and began to read through them, one by one.
"You've told us stories about your people, from a distant town called New York, in a distant land called America, on a distant world called Earth. Your people attack their environment and the education of their young alike, proving that concern for the future of their species has no bearing on their actions. You're a fearful, distrustful people, almost petrified of the very idea that someone might be able to overcome you, yet, you're unable to realize when someone already has. You have no honor or glory in your wars. They produce no heroes or legends which are worth speaking about, and yet, you engage in them readily, even when there's no concrete reason to. You have no respect for honor, little love for the other members of your species, or it seems, for anything at all, including your own wellbeing. You gleefully march into courses of action that are self-destructive to your family line, and you slay one another, citing mere possessions as an excuse. You allow your natural talents and creativities to atrophy, and allow any concept of art or culture to slide from your grasp without even the slightest attempt at a struggle. You subject yourselves to petty addictions and collect useless trinkets, then try to fool yourselves into thinking you're having fun. You're vulnerable to more diseases than we are, have a less cooperative body shape, and starve or die of thirst much easier. You cannot go as long as we can without sleep, and you generate almost no magical aura, as it's defined in Hyrule. On your world, magic is a co-dependence with a supernatural being, which often has your worst intentions at heart. You're a petty people; obsessed enough with appearances to make kings out of paupers, just because they look good. Your entire society seems to be founded on a predator-prey relationship with your human brothers and sisters, in a constant struggle for money, which determines your very survival. Money is awarded, not for intelligence, strength, bravery, valor, virtue, or hard work, but for skill in manipulation, trickery, deceit, and oftentimes, for sheer luck, or merely possessing a pleasing appearance. The rest of your society; your governments, legal systems and public messages are all controlled by the wealthiest, and therefore, the most devilish tricksters. In spite of all that, you take pride in ignoring those problems, and what have you accomplished in exchange for all those sins? You've consumed hundreds of species from the world around you, devastated entire natural wonders, swept over lands to which you had no claim, and even spread your corrupt presence into the stars themselves."
"But you don't understand!" Mark exclaimed, feeling intensely exasperated by that point, mostly because he couldn't really argue with any of what the king had just said, "The whole purpose of it all is to bring to life..."
"To bring to life a single good character trait; which as your species continues to live, is being stomped into the ground." the King finished the sentence for him, looking almost totally emotionless as he recited all of that, "The beautiful dream. Like hylians, your people dream of better things. Both of our species have dreamed of a place named 'heaven,' where the good are rewarded with a better, more fulfilling life. In addition to that, you've dreamed up many wonderful stories of worlds far better than your own, and people far better than yourselves. The children are, at this moment, out in the courtyard, repeating to one another your stories about a 'man of steel.' It's that one ability; the power to dream of something more than you already have, which could one day redeem your species, if only the shroud of apathy could pass from your eyes, and you could to take action to realize your true potential."
"But we have so many fantastic things on my world!" Mark exclaimed desperately, "I mean, it's incredible what we've accomplished, after so many centuries, isn't it?"
The king's only reply to that question, however, was silence. It seemed as if he'd finally decided that the time had come to break some bad news to Mark, because his expression was far from a happy one.
"Mark." the king eventually said, his short, white beard seeming to shift as he frowned more deeply, "Most of my subjects who've heard your stories don't believe them. They think that you've lied to them."
"No way!" Mark exclaimed in even greater exasperation, "Why would I lie about something like that?"
"I know." the King continued with a wave of one hand, signaling for silence again, "I believe your stories are true, and I'm sorry to say that believing you has made me feel a great deal worse."
Mark could barely understand what the king was trying to say, but after a moment, the monarch continued.
"Mark, since you first arrived here, did you ever stop to think that our way of life might be the best one for us? Did you stop to consider that the sins that compound themselves on your world don't exist here? Did you think that we might actually like it that way?"
At once, Mark felt a pang of guilt begin to crawl across his mind, but in spite of that, he answered the king's question honestly.
"I saw your small houses, and compared them to the towering, skyscraper workplaces and apartments of my world. I compared your books to my movies; your toy balls to our action figures; your simple system to our complex one."
"And you thought that yours must be better because of that?"
Mark fell silent the moment that question was asked. He didn't know what to say.
"Mark, when you started telling your stories, people asked to hear them. They were curious about who you were, and where you'd come from. More recently, however, fewer and fewer people have been asking, and you've volunteered to tell those tales more and more often. Is that correct?"
Mark remained silent again, because again, he wasn't sure how to answer. He knew that he'd been talking about his world for quite a while, but he honestly hadn't been keeping track of whether people had asked him to or not, so the King continued after another moment of silence.
"They asked you about your world out of curiosity, which was one of the reasons I asked you to visit the castle as well, but now that the surprise and novelty have worn off, they're beginning to realize how morbid the majority of your tales are."
"Morbid?" Mark asked, feeling both confused and a bit insulted, "Are you trying to tell me that these people see the stories of my home-world as some kind of disgusting horror tale?"
"Yes." the King replied very sincerely, "They do now, and it's for that reason that I feel I should ask you to never volunteer to tell your stories again. I won't try to make it a command, but I urgently request it of you."
"Why?" Mark asked, feeling tired and alone all at once.
"Because for a hundred generations, my people have worked to build a life for their children and grandchildren, which they could be proud of. Depressing them with tales of what might have happened if they hadn't done so will only hurt their morale and vex them. I believe that my people deserve the chance to be happy. Don't you?"
"Yes." Mark muttered after a moment, feeling stunned, "But why can't... I mean... Surely, you yourself... I don't..."
Mark had begun to stutter and lose track of the points that he'd trying to make. He knew all at once that the king had said what needed to be said already, though, so he stood up after only a few more moments of silence, and replied to King Hyrule sadly.
"I'm sorry if I've offended anyone, King Hyrule. I promise; I'll follow your advice."
Then, Mark left that room, and ran back to his own place to pack, his eyes overflowing with of a cascade of tears, over what he'd just been told.
Once again, Darunia found himself fighting on a mountaintop, but that mountain had no snow on its peak. Instead, it was entirely covered in green grass, and beautiful trees. The goron boss took a moment to consider his situation as his opponent began warming up and stretching his large, impressive-looking muscles.
"Let's make a deal." Darunia said at last.
"What sort of deal?" Thor asked him, looking a bit curious, in spite of his displeased frown.
"Since I can't kill you, I want you to agree that this battle won't be to the death."
Thor seemed to think about that for a moment, but it didn't take him long before he was ready to reply to his opponent's offer.
"This fight isn't one that either of us chose. I see no reason to kill you. If, in the heat of battle, I happen to slay you, then that will be that, but if you lapse into unconsciousness at my feet, I won't feel the need to deliver the killing blow."
For a moment, Darunia just fell silent in surprise, but at last, he spoke up again, still not really satisfied over leaving the discussion that way.
"Considering that you're ten times more of a warrior than any of your friends, I didn't expect you to accept my offer."
"They're not my friends." Thor explained a moment later, "Before this conflict started, we were enemies. Many nations of immortals and gods like us existed. The sons of Manitou, the pantheon of Svarog, the forces and armies backing such immortal beings as Nuada, Tezcatlipoca and Itzamna, the lords of the deserts of Ra, the vanir and the olympians. Apollo, Artemis and Athena were all olympians. Gaia was a titan; a race of beings said to predate all our nations of immortals, if you choose to believe in such things. I'm a member of the aesir; the lords of Asgard. We dwell in a realm across the rainbow bridge from Midgard, where we once ruled. However, our peoples have hardly ever worked together. Truthfully, we've been almost constantly at war with one another since the day that Zeus cast his father Cronos into Tartarus, in the heart of Erebus; the underworld."
"In other words, you were at war with the others, but when this threat appeared, you knew you had to put aside your differences and work together." Darunia guessed, but as it turned out, he was only partly right.
"For the time being." Thor replied, "We're still enemies, of course, and the olympians wanted to represent us all at first, but we knew that they just wanted the wish for themselves; to destroy the rest of us. That's why Gaia and I came along."
"You did it out of fear?" Darunia asked, feeling stunned, "You were just afraid of them? It wasn't for some greater good?"
"The greater good is preventing the olympians from destroying the rest of us." Thor replied, looking a bit aggravated by his enemy's reaction, "In battle, my people fear no enemy, but we are afraid of the destruction of our race, and we know that the olympians are afraid, not only of us, but of one another as well. They live their lives by lies and betrayal. Among my people, a person's crimes and slanders would have to be great indeed for them to be struck down by their fellow immortals. The olympians, however, live in constant fear that one of their own may usurp their position, or strike them down for a perceived misdeed. I and my family live our lives differently."
"I don't understand how an entire race of people could live their lives through fear." Darunia just remarked, scratching his head in confusion, and causing Thor to chuckle in response.
"I like you." Thor said, smiling by that point, "if our situations were any different, I'd buy you a drink and we wouldn't fight, but alas, we must."
As he said that, Thor lifted his hammer, and Darunia hefted his two hammers into the air as well, as they both prepared for battle.
Thor rushed forward in a moment, swinging his weapon in a skilled fashion, which might have taken off the head of a lesser foe, but Darunia curled up, effectively ducking under the blow, and vaulted a large amount of dirt into Thor's face with one hammer, as he rose again. Thor swung blindly forward for a moment, as he struggled to remove the dirt from his eyes, then felt the two megaton hammers collide with the sides of his head. A normal enemy's head would have been squashed like a grape by that attack alone.
However, Thor was no mortal enemy to be squashed. He was the god of thunder, and it seemed as if Darunia's attack had not only been useless, but had actually made Thor more eager for combat with his large, stony enemy.
"You're swift at dodging blows, and clever in battle." Thor remarked as the last of the dirt fell from his eyes, "That was a trickster's blow worthy of my half brother Loki, but the mighty Thor will rise to the challenge, regardless."
As he said that, Thor swung his hammer through the air, and shouted what sounded like an incantation into the sky. Almost the very moment that he finished, dark clouds gathered above them, and the rain came down. Thunder and lightning also crashed and flashed through the sky at that moment, and Darunia soon found himself not only dodging bolts of lightning, as he had before, in another of his fights, but he had to continue dodging his enemy as well, and that certainly wasn't made any easier by the fact that the ground was growing muddier with every moment that the rain continued; making it more and more difficult to roll from place to place. At last, however, Darunia knew that he had no choice but to use his greatest powers against his enemy as well.
Moving as fast as he could, Darunia delivered a double-fisted blow to the chin of Thor, as he uncurled and began to sink into the mud. Thor was knocked backwards by the attack, but didn't really seem to have been hurt by it all that much, otherwise.
"A blow that any other stone giant would envy." Thor remarked in wonder, as he got back to his feet quickly, "But the fury of the storm is mine. How long can you continue to deliver such blows while dodging my own?"
Indeed, the answer seemed to be a very short time, because Darunia's feet sank further and further into the mud as the rain rolled off his face and limbs. Worse yet, Thor seemed to be quite accustomed to maneuvering in muddy areas. Darunia knew that he was at an extreme disadvantage on that muddy hillside, and he realized that he only had one option left. At last, the goron fighter began to focus. He'd learned one new trick during his training with Ruto. Most of it had been about focusing on an objective, and how to solve his problems through clever planning, but in the process, he'd grown much stronger and tougher as well, and had picked up one technique that he knew he needed to use against his newest enemy.
In mere moments, Darunia had focused on one desire, and was ready to struggle towards its fulfillment. That was all that was needed in order for him to use his new technique. He felt the limited energy around his body changing shape; forming itself into a reactive ability; which drew out intense heat from within him. At last, Darunia dealt out a fearsome punch toward the ground beneath his own feet, just as Thor charged him again, and an amazing thing occurred.
The moment that Darunia threw his punch, the air around his fist began to change. The change took only a fraction of a second, as around his fist, the air heated up, until there seemed to be a blazing inferno surrounding his hand. Darunia winced from the heat, so intense that it dried the mud at his feet even before making contact with it, but as difficult and painful as the technique was, it had to be used. In less than two seconds, all the mud for three yards around Darunia had been dried up by the heat of his punch, and Thor, not having expected an attack like that, tripped on the freshly-dried earth, and stumbled backwards, beginning to slide down the mountain. Before he could correct that, Darunia was on top of him, and pressing his face hard into the mud. For a moment, Darunia felt Thor's breathing start to shorten, then labor, then, his very heartbeat seemed to slow down.
However, that was when Thor's steel-like muscles tensed up, seeming to grow even stronger than before, and with a mighty backward swing, he shattered open a large section of Darunia's stomach, knocking him clear across the mountain; a distance of over a mile.
Darunia landed hard on the mountain stones, and almost at once, he felt the hand of the thunder god on one of his arms. A hundred thoughts raced through the goron's brain, threatening to drag him back into his old complaints over how unfair the situation was, to the point of making him obstinate about the task at hand. However, he had new things to worry about, and he knew that he couldn't afford to complain anymore. Darunia was injured, he could hardly move, and his strength was leaving him, but that, he slowly realized, wasn't any kind of reason for giving up.
"Excuses! Excuses!" the goron boss heard the voice of Ruto echo through his head, just as she had before, both before and during their training, "Sometimes, life isn't fair, and sometimes it isn't easy, but you have to be big enough to force it back into place when things don't go your way! You can't just roll over and die!"
"I can't just give up..." Darunia thought, and as soon as he started thinking that way, he felt his will supplement what little was left of his physical strength, and Thor dropped him like a hot potato, because indeed, Darunia's hands had once again begun to radiate a terrifying heat; more than ever before.
Lightning struck around Darunia, though it seemed to bend around him as it got close, and Thor's eyes widened as he realized what was going on. That stone giant was on the verge of becoming something else; of summoning magic not of his class. The concentrated heat needed to deflect electricity was literally in the palm of his hand, and somehow, despite his injuries, the giant's body was continuing to grow stronger than ever, due to his sheer will alone.
Thor felt a slight chill run up his spine, as he gazed at the flames around Darunia's fists. His stone body could withstand temperatures of over eight thousand degrees, and yet, his fists seemed to be softening under the intense heat, turning white under the fire.
"I've never seen such an intense fire" Thor realized, "since last I saw dread Surtur himself."
No other member of Hyrule's team could summon the sheer amount of brute force that Darunia wielded, and at that moment, it had been multiplied several-fold. If anyone could vanquish a god with his fists alone, it would be the goron boss.
"You call storms, and soak the land under my feet." Darunia announced angrily, "You strike with a blow that can shatter stone, and a speed that rivals the strongest hylians, but I don't care! I'm not going to let you win this fight, no matter how strong you are!"
Leaping forward in the very next moment, Darunia brandished his flame-coated fists, and Thor readied his hammer. Their blows were almost equal in destructive power, and for the very first time in a long, long time, Thor felt real, mortal terror in the face of a foe whose power might be enough to penetrate his immortal skin...
No one could see the final blows of either combatant. The flames consumed the entire mountain in a blast, which no one had ever expected to see, but when the two reappeared in the teleportation area a while later, a sigh of disappointment rose up from both sides.
Thor held the wounded and unconscious Darunia in his arms, his hammer resting on the floor beside him. It was the first waking moment in many years that he'd allowed the weapon to leave his grasp for more than a few seconds. Darunia, meanwhile; wounded, but alive, was the loser of that fight, but the real shock was in discovering what had happened to Thor.
His armor had practically torn itself apart in the face of the blows of his enemy. He walked with a limp, and with an obvious ache in his side, and on his chin and chest, there could be seen a slight trickle of blood.
"He's not completely invulnerable." Link realized aloud, voicing everyone's combined observations, "What if none of them were? What if any of them could be killed with cataclysmic force like that?"
Slowly, Thor walked over to Link's team, and placed Darunia on the ground in front of Byrna, then moved back to join his team, after having picked up his weapon again. Mjolner had survived the fight completely intact, but the rest of him, which he'd once thought was completely invulnerable, had been damaged somehow. Slowly, Thor was beginning to realize the truth of his own situation in awe and amazement. As mighty as they were over one another, and over other mortals, he and the olympians weren't truly immortal. They possessed everlasting longevity, and bodies that even the weight of mountains couldn't break, but it was still possible for them to be injured; still possible for them to die.
"We are not gods." Thor realized aloud, and suddenly, he felt as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders; as though some terrible fear had had even him in its grasp for most of his life. Suddenly, he was able to see the truth, and he was released from the horrible fear that he and his family needed to decide the fate of their reality. It was a worry that had always been a part of him, until that very day.
Humbled, but a better man for it, Thor walked past his team, and sat a fair distance from them, paying no heed to the stares that most of them were leveling in his direction.
Soon, it was time for the last fighters of each team to do battle. Ruto stepped up to the platform, and was met there by the olympian with the long, bushy beard. Behind her, Darunia had regained some of his strength; just enough to realize the outcome of the fight, but he didn't seem all that angry over having lost.
"Now" Byrna said to her barely-conscious friend with a smile, "you know how freeing it can be to lose. It seems like you and Thor are both starting to realize that you don't have to be invincible."
Darunia was unable to summon enough power to respond, but it was clear that he understood Byrna's comment well enough.
"I am Ruto." Ruto said, meanwhile, as she approached the teleport platform.
"I am Zeus." her opponent replied, just as briefly and informally, and just a moment later, they'd both stepped forth, and were somewhere new.
"Morbid! Morbid! That close-minded aristocrat!" Mark furiously exclaimed, as he finished packing up the few possessions he had. It had been less than half an hour since his meeting with the king, and already, he'd decided that the time had come for him to leave the castle. Somehow, word had spread about what the king had requested of him, and his unexpected response toward that request. The very idea that a person should agree to a request, then spend half an hour shouting to himself about it was almost unheard-of in Hyrule, so nearly everyone who worked in the castle had developed a renewed interest in Mark, for however short a time that was destined to last.
"If you have a problem with the king's request, just talk to him about it." Ramie suggested from the other side of the room, where she was helping Mark pack, looking just as confused by his behavior as always, "He's very reasonable, and he cares about what's best for all of us."
"That's not the point, Ramie." Mark replied angrily, "I could have refused to do what he asked me to, and I didn't. What bothers me is how he views my world and my people. He talked about the human race like some kind of moldy growth or virus, destroying everything. Can't you see how offensive that is to me?"
At first, Ramie's expression was the same as always; a confused, but happy look, but as she thought the thing over in her head, her expression began to change. First, a terrible look of pity crept over her features, then the pity began to fade, and there was only anger and frustration left in her eyes. When she finally spoke up again, it was in the tone of a person who'd lost her patience, but was still millions of miles away from losing her integrity.
"What is the matter with you? Do you just not want to see good prevail over evil? Are you really an enemy of justice, or are you such a poor observer that you can't draw even the simplest conclusions from evident facts? You can't honestly tell me that you didn't expect my people would react like this! You've traveled all over our land, seen all the different peoples of Hyrule firsthand, learned all about our different cultures and policies... How could you have expected us to view your race and society as anything but a nightmare?"
"Because I've done everything I can to explain to all you poor, simple farmers just how glorious my world really was!" Mark replied, tired of being polite over something that was making him so angry, "In my world, a lot of the hard labor is done by machines! Most of the jobs in my country don't require us to move a single arm muscle, and yet, you still have to! Why? Because my society is superior!"
Ramie was looking even more dismayed and disgusted, however, as she replied to Mark's latest claim with total confidence.
"With Hyrule's advances in magic and technology, we could live out our entire lives without moving at all, if we really wanted to, but who would want such a vacant life? Without hard work, we'd lose our focus completely; our purpose and our sense of accomplishment; everything a hylian values. We'd survive, but our spirits would die! We work because we know it's the best thing for us! We work because we choose to!"
"What about our monuments?" Mark demanded insistently, "Our magnificent buildings, programs of exploration and so forth? You can't tell me Hyrule has anything that glorious!"
"They don't sound like anything but petty and showy displays, to boast over what little power your people had." Ramie replied with another shake of her head, "They made no real glory, because they didn't bring anything really good to the world, and just wound up making you all feel very self-important, and wasting a lot of precious resources in the meantime."
"But what about our charities?" stammered Mark, "Our battles to restore peace to other nations?"
"The misguided attempts of a corrupt society to force their brand of corruption on others by the sword," Ramie observed angrily, "and as for those so-called 'charities' to which you refer, most of them try to give people the wrong things. The people you're trying to help suffer the ailment of not being able to support themselves. Your charities won't be able to change that, just by putting them on the equivalent of life support. You give people fish, instead of teaching them to. That's short-sighted, foolish, arrogant, and in the end, it can make the problem worse."
"No!" Mark exclaimed, his eyes full of tears, and his heart filled with doubts, "We stand for freedom and justice! We've saved entire nations from slave-masters and tyrants! We're saviors to all good people!"
However, as Mark shouted, Ramie's expression changed again, as if her anger were suddenly fading away, and she looked at him once again, with a pity that nearly broke his heart as he stared her in the eyes as best he could, through his tears. Bowing her head with disappointment, Ramie just dropped the subject where it lay, and left the room quietly, just a moment later. Mark cringed as soon as the door closed behind her, because he knew that any reply from her would have felt better than that final silence.
The moment that Ramie left the room, Mark spun around to face the mirror on top of the dresser in the room he'd slept in just the night before. His facial expression faded swiftly into shock, but it couldn't erase his reddened eyes, and the mixture of teardrops and cold sweat that rolled down his face. For the first time, the shield of pride that he'd been wearing for most of his life started to crack, and the self-righteous messages, which had been pounded into him since grade school began to lose their meaning. Mark started to see his life as a truly singular event; separate from the city, state, nation, and even the world that he'd lived most of his life in; a world that he'd neither made, nor really helped in any significant way, except by the taxes he'd been forced to pay, and even those frequently went to support horrible atrocities.
He saw how little he'd truly done in his life, saw his wife and children; the people who'd depended on him, and realized that he hadn't done anything for them that really mattered. He'd given them food, water, and a place to live; a place where their souls could continue festering with greed, malice and envy; a place where they were encouraged to prey on their fellow man, and they responded in kind, and yet, although he realized all of that, Mark was still only beginning to understand the whole truth about his past.
However, it was still too much for Mark Fitzgerald to bear, and he cried for hours, until night fell again, and sleep stole him away from his fits of sorrow and shame for a while.
The moment that she came out of her most recent teleportation, Ruto found herself in what looked like a stone temple of some kind, at one end of which was a massive statue of a robed man, holding a trident. He had a long beard, almost totally flat, and a stern expression on his face, but there was something strangely royal about him too.
"Poseidon," Ruto heard Zeus observe from nearby, "god of the sea. He was very disappointed that he wasn't chosen to be one of our champions. If not for the fact that the lords of Asgard demanded we let them send a fighter, he would have been our fifth champion, though. He's my brother."
"You must be in command of some important force yourself." Ruto commented, hoping to learn more about her enemy before their battle began, but fortunately, it seemed that Zeus was confident enough to talk about himself in great depth.
"Several." Zeus replied, "I'm the master of royalty, and I have limited influence over fate itself. I reign over the skies, and my two brothers rule over the seas and the underworld."
"In that case, would you rather we move this fight outdoors?" Ruto asked, gesturing to a small pool of water, just outside the temple, and hoping that Zeus wouldn't notice her real motive for relocating the battle.
"Yes." Zeus replied, much to Ruto's relief, "I would."
The two combatants walked swiftly out of the temple, and examined their surroundings. The pool before them was many yards deep, and was flanked on each side with a row of trees, which led to stone steps beyond, leading downward. The sky above their heads was bright and blue for the most part, but with small clouds, which drifted by from time to time.
Ruto dove into the pool, and Zeus rose up into the air. His power of flight was obvious at once, given how high and slowly he rose, and he seemed to be gathering clouds to his very fingertips as he ascended into the air. Both fighters were clearly in their respective elements.
"I want you to know before I begin this" Zeus said, "that I consider you a most beautiful young siren. Were I not forced into this conflict, I might seek your love."
"If I wasn't forced into this," Ruto replied, in turn, "I might ask for your help in restoring my royal station, but for now, you know that we have to fight."
Zeus nodded a moment later, and just like that, the battle had begun.
The clouds that Zeus had been gathering to his fingertips changed shape in an instant, encircling his wrists like bracelets, and an expression resembling pity came over his face, as he raised one hand into the air.
Zelda stared at the fight, as it was being projected onto the teleport area ceiling. When Zeus had made his cloud bracelets, the structure of his aura had changed considerably, but whatever he was grabbing from the air was changing it even more. Zelda could see his power with her eyes, as his hand tightened around something, and his entire arm seemed to pulse with electricity. As he held his hand out in front of him, Zelda gasped in horror, however. Zeus was holding a very intense force field in his hand, and electricity was packed so tightly into it, that the weapon, whatever it was, shone like a real bolt of lightning.
Reacting quickly, Ruto was able to leap upwards out of the water like a dolphin, just as Zeus' lightning attack struck the pool. Ruto was still in mid-jump when the lightning hit, and she looked downward in mid-air, as the electricity coursed over the water and dissipated. As she landed back in the water, she received a small electric shock from the friction, but she could tell that she'd escaped the worst of a very dangerous attack.
Once again, Zeus reached up into the air, to form another lightning attack, but that time, Ruto knew what she was up against, and had a better chance to prepare for it.
At the celebration to commemorate the defeat of the undead forces, Ruto had used her magic to manipulate small amounts of water, and the force of her magic had grown many times stronger since then. At that point, she brought all the magic she could summon into an attack of that nature.
Ruto dove to the very bottom of the pool she was in, and at once, she began to spin her legs like a tornado, displacing so much water, that a small geyser was created, which emerged from the pool. Applying the remainder of her water magic into the geyser, Ruto caused it to shoot up even higher, where it collided so forcefully with her enemy, that he was literally swept from the air and yanked into the water. At once, Ruto was on top of him, letting loose with punches and kicks, backed up by enough strength to survive even the deepest oceans. She could tell that even an immortal like Zeus was starting to feel some of those powerful blows, especially since many of them were knocking the air from his lungs, but he was a person of powerful muscular control. He'd held his breath against the enemy that could truly damage him; the water, and soon, he'd regained his concentration, and rocketed upward, out of the pool, with Ruto still clinging to his legs until the very moment that they emerged. As soon as they left the water, Ruto let go of her enemy, and landed at the side of the pool, however.
"Yeah." Ruto observed aloud, as Zeus took a deep breath, and wiped off his drenched face and beard, "throwing lightning is pretty impressive, but it's still been done. If that's the only trick you've got, this fight is going to be tedious."
Zeus seemed more amused by Ruto's reaction than worried, however, because a moment later, shaking more drops of water from his hair and beard, he remarked, "Indeed. That's far from the end of my abilities. That was only the first power I discovered, when I was younger. If you prove to be competent enough, you may get the chance to see the full extent of my skills."
Suddenly, the clouds around Zeus' wrists separated into a hundred small vapor clouds, which encircled the air above the two combatants almost instantly.
At first, Ruto had been worried that Zeus might start summoning lightning that behaved in unnatural ways, like traveling sideways, or twisting through the air, but he seemed, fortunately, to not be capable of altering the nature of what electricity was. He continued to toss his lightning at her, watching the force field break open on contact with anything but his hand, releasing the lightning bolt downward, and in addition, each of the small cloud formations circling above the two fighters in the air would occasionally release large jolts of lightning towards the ground as well.
Ruto found dodging the bolts to be a difficult chore, even after she learned to simply avoid the shadows of the clouds, and having to fight her immortal adversary at the same time was a horrifying task, especially out of water.
The zora fighter dodged in and out of the electric bolts as fast as she could, but was only able to deliver one or two solid punches to Zeus' chest and midsection at a time, and she could tell that they weren't doing any good. With every second she spent out of water, Ruto's incredible strength and speed seemed to drain away more and more. She knew that in a very short time, she'd be utterly incapable of harming her enemy at all, and he seemed to be able to keep up his attack indefinitely. It didn't take long before Ruto realized that there was no use trying to wait him out. She only had one choice. Whether or not his lightning could kill her, she needed to get back in the water, to restore her strength as much as possible.
Tossing caution to the wind, Ruto leapt back into the pool and braced herself, as a bolt of lightning struck the water from above.
Ruto had expected horrifying pain, and there certainly was that, but she'd also expected to be dead within moments. That, fortunately, didn't turn out to be the case. In fact, there was a part of her somewhere in her midsection that seemed to crave more. It almost felt like having a second stomach, which had never been fed before.
As that occurred, Ruto thought back to her fight with Alato; the matter-eraser. She'd only managed to win that fight by summoning electricity from within, and for a few moments, she wondered if she could accomplish such a feat again. Concentrating hard, Ruto struggled for control, simultaneously in pain and hunger for a higher voltage, then crossed both arms in front of her face, and her entire body began to glow with the power that surrounded her. The pain began to abate almost as soon as she did that, and she started to feel fuller. Her body was absorbing every watt of electricity from the water around her, turning the aura around her body into one of a more electrical nature. In mere moments, she could tell that she had an organ in her body for absorbing and storing the electricity, because she knew that it was completely full. It was the only explanation for what had happened to her, and the way it had made her feel.
Her electric organ fully-powered, Ruto's body began to repel the electricity, instead of absorbing it, but as before, she felt no further pain. In a moment, she'd risen to the surface of the pool, and sat there on top of a geyser of water; six feet tall, looking Zeus right in the eye again, with more confidence than ever.
"That was a mistake, sky lord." Ruto's voice boomed, as her body glowed all over, "I've been absorbing all of that power, and now, I have enough to strike down even you with pure electricity."
For a few moments, Zeus was silent, but at last, he started to laugh. In fact, he was laughing long and loud, and in spite of her newfound strength, that laugh was starting to make Ruto feel afraid again.
At last, Zeus said, "You can't strike me down with electricity, young siren. We have that one power in common. However, when your body absorbs electricity, you merely channel it into your electric aura directly. It has a more indirect effect on me, and you're the first mortal who's ever earned the right to witness it."
In just a moment, Zeus looked up, into the cloud-filled sky, and once again, he rose from the ground, shouting a series of short words, which Ruto had never heard before, but she recognized them as an incantation all the same.
The sky seemed to almost creak at that moment, as though some cosmic force were tearing it open, and a shining, blue bolt of lightning came crashing down against Zeus' body, so hard that the sheer force of the bolt's descent was enough to throw Ruto off her geyser, and back into the pool. From under the waves of the tiny pool of water, however, she saw Zeus at the core of the lightning bolt, his body sucking up all the electricity around him, until there was nothing left of the bolt, but a golden aura surrounding the god king's skin.
For a few moments, Ruto hoped that the aura would be all for show, but suddenly, Zeus seemed to vanish, and a moment later, a person moving with several times the power and speed of any projectile created by man grabbed Ruto around the waist, and dragged her down to the very bottom of the pool.
When submerged in water, Ruto could feel her own powers rising once again, to nearly invincible levels, but the change in her enemy was obvious. Zeus had somehow increased his own strength, speed, and his ability to react to attacks. It was quickly becoming clear to her that underwater, each of them had distinct advantages. Zeus possessed a slight advantage in strength, and a distinct one in speed, and Ruto had the advantage of being able to breathe underwater, and of being rejuvenated by it.
At last, however, after the two had struggled furiously for a while, with the very walls of the pool around them quaking from the might of their blows, Zeus seemed to have lost his patience, and shot directly upward again, out of the water.
Ruto was scared to leave the water for even a moment by then, because she suspected that once she did, she'd be vulnerable to his blows, and would die very quickly, but she instantly regretted not trying to drag him back under the waves, when she heard him uttering his magic again, and saw the water's surface above her ripple with the resounding noise of yet another lightning strike.
Afraid, but determined, Ruto rose to the surface of the water, and gasped at what she saw there.
The golden glow surrounding Zeus had been replaced with a shining aura, which pulsed in all the colors of the rainbow. Zeus held in his hands two glowing bolts of energy, but those bolts shone brighter than any of the ones he'd used in the past.
"Can you see why I'm the king of all the olympians yet?" Zeus bellowed, "Can you see why all the gods of Olympus fear my power? If my abilities aren't enough to crush a foe, I can simply change them! The strength and speed of the gods weren't enough to completely defeat you, so I'm using the greatest of all my powers! These are the bolts of final imprisonment. They can imprison any immortal being, and kill any mortal creature. I've used them only twice. Once to destroy a large forest, during the days of my father's reign, and once to banish the ancient titans from Olympus. They can destroy anything in their path, and they never, ever miss!"
Ruto, not knowing what else to do, just dove back underwater, and closed her eyes, as Zeus boasted about his ultimate weapon, preparing for the worst, but her enemy had hurled his most powerful weapon in only a second, and for a while, she was blinded; even through her closed eyelids.
Even those watching from the teleport area couldn't look upon the greatest weapon of the god king directly. It was a sight that had never been meant for mortal eyes. The power of those bolts seemed to call down even more lightning, all around them, which struck with the deafening noise of thunder, breaking open the very ground for miles.
Ruto felt as if she'd just been at the center of some massive hurricane, but after the sound of crumbling earth and receding thunder had finally died away, she realized that the remaining sounds didn't make much sense. There were noises, as though Zeus was still struggling against his enemy, but Ruto was definitely still underwater, and Zeus was a long distance away from her. It almost sounded, in fact, as if he was struggling with himself.
As Ruto's vision slowly began to return, she received yet another clue about what had just happened. That clue was that in spite of all that had just taken place around her, she wasn't dead yet.
For a while, Ruto just waited, listening carefully to her foe, as he banged and crashed around, shouting and cursing in an alien tongue. Then, she heard him utter more of his incantations, and heard the booming noise of more lightning, followed by more curses. At last, she ventured to peek above the water's surface for a second, and nearly burst out laughing at what she saw.
Zeus lay on the floor, right beside the pool, surrounded by a cage, which seemed to be made of pulsing lightning bolts. He seemed to struggle against them as hard as he could, but those were bolts that his body couldn't absorb; bolts that stung him whenever he tried to touch them; bolts of the very same sort which he'd used to imprison his father Cronos; titan lord of time many ages ago. They were bolts from which no known force could escape; not even himself. Zeus had been imprisoned in his own attack.
At last, Ruto climbed back out of the water, and walked to within earshot of Zeus, though she was careful to keep far enough away from the glowing bolts, that they couldn't harm her, and after a few moments, she spoke to her enemy with a pleased grin.
"I'd say you're immobilized, which means I've won."
"How?" Zeus yelled from within his prison, "I had everything! I had all the power in the universe! I was lord over all the gods! How could you, a mere mortal, defeat me?"
"Mainly because of what you just said yourself." Ruto replied, never dropping her grin for a moment, "Everyone's always been afraid of you. No one ever challenged you, because they were scared that you'd beat them, so you hardly ever had to use your higher-level powers. Because you didn't have much practice with them, you weren't even aware of what side effects many of your powers had. For example, you didn't know that your imprisonment bolts could be deflected back at the user by certain things. Apparently, water is one of those things."
"No! It isn't!" Zeus yelled angrily, "My bolt should have destroyed the water completely, unless..."
Just then, however, Ruto heard the sound of someone rising up out of the water behind her, and as she turned to look, she saw the very person that she'd expected to see.
Slowly, he stepped forth from the pool, and the water slid easily from his hair and beard, as his trident clanged against the ground.
"You were foolish, brother." said Poseidon with a smile, "You should have kept to your air domain."
Zeus had an expression of horrible hate all over his face at that point, but at the same time, he was clearly afraid.
"You did this." Zeus insisted, "You interfered in our fight."
"As I understand the terms of the conflict," Poseidon replied, "bystanders can interfere in the fight all they want. Environmental hazards are part of the battle."
Ruto chuckled just a little when she heard that. She certainly hadn't expected the sea god to refer to himself as an environmental hazard.
"You know, brother, since the day you first rose to power, I've always wanted to put you in your place." Poseidon continued as he walked closer to the cage, "You went and claimed the sky domain, which could have been mine. I was furious. I felt cheated. I wanted to toss you into Tartarus with our father. When I saw what you did to Hades after the rebellion, it only made me hate you even more, because I knew that I could have ruled just as well as you."
"You're a vindictive god, brother." Zeus replied, much more calmly, but still with obvious fear in his voice, "You'd bring a new age of darkness to our people."
"You're talking as if our people haven't lived in darkness under you." Poseidon spat out, suddenly looking angry, "For ages, we've listened to everything that you've said, and followed you wherever you went, but we'll never be able to be like a real family, because you were always too intent on proving your superiority to build any real relationships. You had to be the mightiest; you had to be the strongest and smartest, and everyone had to follow you or else. Fear has been the mood of our people, brother, since the reign of your father first began, and it continued when you rose to power, whether you want to admit that or not."
Zeus was silent, however. For several seconds, both gods were completely silent, in fact, and it was then that Ruto spoke up, hoping to add something to their conversation, which could hardly be considered private.
"If you rule through fear, no one will be your friend. Despots inspire very little loyalty."
"You should listen to this one." Poseidon noted, though he didn't even glance at Ruto directly, "It was her thoughts that inspired me to intervene. I knew she had every intention of using the wish to save all our worlds, but I couldn't let you get it, brother, or the fear would never end."
At last, however, when he heard those words, Zeus spoke again.
"I admit, I've lorded my power over the other gods. Maybe it was because of Prometheus, or Hades, or Cronos, or the others who've rebelled against what I knew things had to be like for our world. I thought it was the only way to keep the others in line; the only way to keep things running smoothly. Maybe... Maybe... Maybe that was unwise of me. If only I could simply erase that fear, I think I'd rule more fairly."
"Fear like that won't go away all at once," Ruto replied quickly, "just because you decide to change things. I think it'll probably take a while before your people are ready to work on a better means of government; something that'll give your people the chance to live happily, and maybe even start making peace with the other pantheons."
Zeus swallowed again, and for a moment, Ruto could have almost sworn that she saw a tear falling from his eye.
"I've lived for ten thousand lifetimes," the ancient monarch said sadly, "but for the first time, I don't know where to begin. I should feel miserable that I have so little control right now, but..."
At that, he paused and swallowed again, obviously trying to think of something to say next...
"But something about the newness of the experience is enjoyable. Your method may not work for us, Ruto, but I'll do all I can to give it a try; at least for a century or two. I only hope that none of the others decide to view it as a moment of weakness to prey on."
At that, Poseidon turned on his heel, and walked back towards the pool. As he began to sink down into the water again, however, Zeus asked, "Why don't you just strike me down, brother?"
"I suspect that in mere moments, you'll be released, and returned to the teleport area of your conflict." Poseidon replied with a wave of his hand, "What would it accomplish to try to imprison you further?"
"Are you telling me that this entire fight was futile?"
Poseidon smiled, however; the smile of someone who'd just been handed a rather cruel pleasure, and said in a satisfied voice, "You've been taught humility, brother. You've been taught that you're neither invincible nor infallible. I should say that this conflict hasn't been futile for either of us."
At that, he vanished beneath the water's surface, and was gone. Ruto felt something resembling longing, as she watched the sea god leave, but she had her people to worry about, and she knew that she couldn't afford to concern herself too much with the people of other worlds. Those were some of the things she contemplated as she found herself back in the teleport area.
As it turned out, the true test of which team would be the victor lay in a race to the exit between Apollo and Link. The others were moving quite slowly, or in some cases, not really able to move at all, but Link managed to beat the sun god by no more than a hair, and the others were soon to follow. Ruto had to carry Darunia on her back, but the other hylian champions made it without any help at all. The olympians were stunned and exhausted from the hard battles, and the fact that they'd lost the majority of them, so that slowed them down in reaching the exits. When all was said and done, Hyrule's team was advancing, and the gods would return to their own home-world, with their very survival resting on the shoulders of Link and his team. Hardly any of them were happy about that, but they had no choice. They had to accept the result. Link's team had won, and there were only four teams remaining in the conflict. In three days, the matches would continue, but for the moment, Link and his team had some time to rest and prepare for the upcoming battles. They knew they'd have to be at their best if they wanted to win against anyone tougher than gods...
However, the team from Hyrule was starting to wonder just what it meant for an enemy to be as tough as a god, because as enemies, the gods hadn't really seemed that tough. Certainly, they'd lost more matches than in any team battle before that, but was that what really guaged how tough a fight was?
Darunia, for one, didn't think so, and neither did Ruto. He approached Ruto after the fight, as she swam in her small resting-pool, and she told him that he'd gotten off easy, not merely because her enemy had been tougher, but because he probably couldn't have killed Thor, even if his power had been twice or three times what it was.
"We fought enemies today; both mortal and immortal." Ruto explained to her friend after a little while, "But your real enemy was your inability to really focus when there's the chance you may need to take a life. You didn't have to face that enemy today. I only hope you'll defeat it before our next match. They can't all be immortals, after all."
Darunia could tell that Ruto knew what she was talking about. Ruto, Link, Stalflare and the others all knew precisely how to justify the kill. They'd taken the lives of many enemies, who refused to be taken prisoner, and they'd been protecting their people whenever they did, so they hadn't given it much thought, but not killing a living, thinking creature was the very first rule a goron learned as a child, and it was repeated to them regularly as they grew up. It was something so ingrained into them, that many gorons were utter pacifists. Darunia had to wonder if he could truly defeat that. Could he take another life in cold blood?
"I hope I don't have to." Darunia thought to himself, as he retreated back to his quarters. For the moment, he decided that he couldn't afford to think about it anymore.
Ruto sighed as she considered what she was being faced with. Her powers were as great as the zoras of the ancient legends of her people, but they were still being dwarfed by some of the fighters who she was meeting in that conflict. How, she wondered, could she be sure that Hyrule had the team that was best able to claim the wish? She knew that if they could win, Hyrule's forces would use the wish to save everyone, but could they truly claim victory? If not, was there another way to protect everyone?
There was one thing, however, that Ruto no longer doubted. Link's words had cut her to the bone before that conflict had begun, but it was her own desire to be a better person; more worthy of being royalty, which had forced her to accept the terms of the conflict; to join Link and the others, and to fight on behalf of her kingdom. It had taken a great deal of soul-searching before she'd realized that, but she was finally convinced of the truth about her own motives, and that, she realized, had been worth it.
Byrna dwelled on her recent and most simple victory as she worked on her armor in her rooms at the lakeside laboratory. She'd hardly needed to use her new weapons in her last battle, but she could feel that her own wisdom had increased from the fight, and it was even possible that she might have a chance to increase some of her other abilities in preparation for the next fight as well.
However, for some reason, that didn't really motivate Byrna as much as it once had. Having experienced both failure and success, and knowing that she wasn't alone in those experiences, Byrna began to feel parts of her apprehension about her abilities slipping away. There'd been a time when her every moment was spent in fear of not being good enough. She still had those fears sometimes, but the balance in her mind had been righted, and she wasn't being consumed by them anymore.
"I didn't grow up when I was a child." Byrna realized silently, as she started to weld a tiny, metal plate back onto her armor, "I've only just started to do that recently."
Stalflare had very few misgivings about his last fight. He'd acknowledged Apollo as "a powerful person," but said no more on the subject once the fight had finished. Zelda, however, had something troubling her, which she needed to discuss with Link.
Link was reading a book that he'd found in his room, when Zelda opened the door and stepped inside. He immediately noticed that she'd entered, and gave her his full attention at once.
"What's wrong?" Link asked, laying the book down, and seeing the worried look in the eyes of Hyrule's princess.
Zelda had removed the mask from her uniform, and her hair and face were exposed. She closed the door behind her, and sat in a chair nearby, facing Link, looking as concerned as ever.
"The olympians worried me, Link." Zelda said with a look of sorrow in her eyes, "I mean, they pretty much lived their whole lives through fear. The people who trained me as a child; the shiekah, had a lot of fear in their lives too. They used fear to provide encouragement in their traditions; not fear of one another, of course, but fear of failure, and of disappointing the people you love. Hylians don't do things that way. I wonder if the shiekah were wrong to integrate fear into their society like that."
Zelda looked into Link's eyes for a moment after she brought her concerns up, but saw that he was smiling at her in kindness and warmth, as one person who truly cares about the wellbeing of another, and that made her feel pretty relieved when she saw that.
"Your people did what was right for them." Link replied with a shrug, "Hylians do things differently, because hylians and shiekah are different, but every sensible person has to have some element of fear in their lives. Fear isn't just a mortal terror that freezes us in place; it's a reinforcement for our moral center; a voice inside of us that tells us when we're in danger, and helps to guide us away from immoral actions. Fear is a companion, which helps remind us of the things about ourselves that we value most. That's how we know to steer clear of sharp objects as children, and to work for the good of everyone as adults, but neither of our people have been terrorized into slavery because of our own bad decisions, and I couldn't be happier about that. A little fear is a good thing; it's only when it's taken to its furthest extreme that it becomes something to be avoided."
Zelda had to admit that she felt much better since Link had explained the situation to her so well, and in a moment, she rose to her feet, still looking the Hero of Time in the eyes.
"Good night, Link," Zelda said with a pleased smile, as she opened the door to leave, "and thank you."
"Good night, Princess." Link replied, but just then, Zelda paused where she was; in the doorway. Link had used her formal title; "princess," which meant, she realized, that his heart belonged to someone other than Zelda. He couldn't have said that more clearly, and in other times, she might have been saddened to tears by that fact, but for the moment, just having him there; helping to protect her people, and helping her to do the same was comforting, whether the two could have ever found love or not.
A moment later, Zelda returned to her own room to rest and prepare for the next day, when her training would have to continue, and she'd have to do her best to serve as a protector of her people as well. It wasn't all she wanted out of life, but a protector was, she knew, one of the best things that a person could be.
On the following morning, Mark woke up on the floor of his room, with a soaked spot on the rug beneath where his face had rested the night before. As quickly as he could, Mark got to his feet, and saw the light pouring in through the bedroom window. The light seemed almost like a symbol of some event or occurrence. It was only then, when Mark looked into the mirror, that he realized that his old life had been behind him since he'd first appeared in Hyrule, and yet, and he'd never quite accepted that. He'd never really come to grips with the fact that he was living in Hyrule, and he couldn't just go back to the way he'd lived before. He'd never quite believed that his earthly life was over, and he had to ask himself why that was. Had he been unwilling to accept the loss of his wife and children? Had he felt that Earth was still his home, after all that time? Had he simply been unwilling to see what was truly going on around him? Why, he asked himself, hadn't he ever tried to accept his fate?
Maybe, Mark reasoned, it was because he hadn't wanted to take the responsibility of getting used to the ways of a different world. Perhaps he'd felt unable to handle the differences in Hyrule. Perhaps...
A swirl of emotions and doubts swarmed through his mind. His true desires had been concealed, even from him, since long before he'd landed in Hyrule, he gradually realized. At the moment, he didn't know what he wanted out of life, though, and he knew that he needed to tell Ramie the truth about that.
Pushing open the front door, Mark rushed from his room, still dressed in his tear-soaked shirt, and ran through the castle, searching for Ramie. He found many servants, who were very befuddled by his attitude and appearance, but for some reason, Ramie was nowhere to be seen.
At last, Mark decided that his friend had to be in town, so he rushed from the castle, leaving his few possessions there, and not even bothering to change his shirt. Within minutes, Mark had stumbled into town, and looked around, and it was only then, for the very first time, that he began to see things as they were.
In the past, Mark had seen those people and their lives as a surface; a disguise for some dark secret, to keep people from learning the truth. After all, that was the way things had always been on Earth. However, he was starting to look at them with new eyes; eyes open to the emptiness of his past, and where he'd come from. He saw a young woman selling stuffed toys to young boys and girls, which she and two other young ladies had sown in the back of their tiny shop. He saw an older woman playing with her dog in the middle of the square, as young girls raced around them. He saw a husband and wife hugging by the fountain, and an old woman, who could barely even walk without the aid of a cane, dressed in a shawl, watching the people go about their business from one side of town. He saw a man and woman talking, as the woman expressed her interest in the difference between normal woodcutting techniques and the kind used by the gerudo. Mark saw two young men juggling for kicks at the south of town, and an honest store, which sold novelty items, and armor for defense. He saw the Temple of Time off in the distance; a towering symbol of the willingness of hylians to do the necessary hard work, in order to accomplish great things.
Mark saw all of that with his eyes open, and he couldn't see a single frown anywhere in that panoramic vision. As simple as the town was, Mark saw people who were truly happy with their lives, and who lived in perfect peace and brotherhood together. He saw so much, all at once, that his mind couldn't take it all in, and he fell to his hands and knees once more, crying new tears. However, unlike his tears from the night before, his new tears were tears of joy.
Then, through the haze of tears, Mark saw Ramie again, and she saw him. She'd just emerged from the Temple of Time, and noticed him kneeling there, in the street. Quickly, Ramie ran up to him, still visibly concerned for his wellbeing, but just then, she saw the expression on his face, and seemed to have some understanding of what was happening to him almost at once.
As soon as Ramie had fixed her attention on Mark, he did his best to speak to her, choosing his words very carefully.
"Since I first arrived here, I've wanted to return home." Mark said sadly, not even having the courage to look Ramie in the eye, "I wanted it so much, that I refused to believe that your differences from my civilization were anything good. I know I may have seemed like I embraced your lifestyle, but honestly, I never gave you or your people a chance. I opened my eyes, but not my heart. I didn't want to believe that my past life had any flaws or imperfections, or that yours had anything mine lacked. I wanted to fool myself, and as it turned out, I really was a fool."
"What are you saying?" Ramie asked, looking stunned and confused, as her own eyes began to water slightly.
"I... I... I..." Mark stammered, and then paused to take a deep breath, before he dared to even try to continue, "I want to be one of you. I want to be a hylian. I don't want to dwell on my lost past, or on my home-world anymore. I want to fit in here."
Quickly, Ramie helped Mark to his feet, and for a moment, they simply stared at one another through tears of joy, but at last, Ramie said, with a beautiful smile, "Well, it's a start."
Both laughed and cried almost simultaneously, as they walked back to the castle. Mark had traveled all over the land of Hyrule already at that point, but it was only just then that his true journey had begun.