The Legend of Zelda: The Warrior Prince

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Chapter 13: Hera's Tower

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"...From what our spies report, the evil that seized Hyrule not a month before has returned, if slightly more cautious. More beasts, like the moblins you described, sir Link, have begun to appear, but at least the Morihoth have declined." Malle bows to Link in recognition and then turns to Prince Raidon, who steps up to speak next.

"News from Dunlar is equally dour. Morihoth have appeared sporadically in the cities, and swarms of moblins and other strange beasts in Gerudan. We've lost all contact with the siege at Huunta, it's so bad that the army has had to fall back to Dunlar."

Link runs his palm over the pommel of the Master Sword as he thinks. "I remember the Gorons told me there were 'dark energies flowing again.' Since they don't like Dwarves or even Hylians, I'm the only one who can go."

Raidon shrugs. "Then I'll investigate the disturbances in the Royal Valley Palace."

Link puts on his cap, then promptly takes it off again. "Be careful in the entrance, when I went through there were some pretty nasty traps involving magic cannons."

Raidon nods and walks out, his hand dropping to his flute. Handmaiden Malle opens an inner door and disappears into the castle beyond, and Zelda herself enters and calls the knight before he can reach the outer door, "Sir Link."

The Hylian stops, his hand on the door. So close.

"This new adventure is going to be far more difficult than your last. Ganon must be behind this, but just because you defeated him once doesn't guarantee victory this time."

"I know, but if you haven't noticed, your highness," he draws his sword, spinning the golden blade about with a flourished flick of the wrist. "I've got a head start."

"You'll need more than that. I haven't told anybody else yet, but I saw you, I, and another fighter were facing one Army I couldn't see in the darkness. You had stronger equipment than you have now. Even that sword." The princess nods at his weapon.

Link gawks. "This is the golden blade. It can't become any stronger."

"Isn't that what you felt about the first iteration of the Master Sword, before it cracked against Blind?"

The knight scowls. "Fine, I see your point. I'll keep my eyes open. If Ganon's forces are anything like before, they'll have been busy pilfering and spreading out sacred weapons in an attempt to keep them from me."

Zelda nods and smiles. Link pushes his door open and steps out, walking until he reaches the welcoming courtyard. Raidon, Dimitri, and Hylian Royal Guard Captain Impa are talking. "What are you still here for?"

"Captain Impa was telling me that there's been a swarm spotted at the eastern access to the Royal Valley, but there's another way to get into the Royal Valley from a point in the Lost Forest." The prince rocks on his heels, eager to get going.

"You could do that, you might run into some Zora in that one river, and the Deku Tree will have to grant you passage or you'll never make it out of the Lost Forest."

Raidon crosses his arms and reduces his rocking. "Okay, so how do I get his permission?"

Link has no idea for a minute, until he remembers the fairy resting in his magic lamp. "Navi should be able to communicate with him. I don't know how, but something about being a forest fairy..." The knight takes the lantern from the equipment strap over his back and shakes the lantern vigorously. "Wake up!"

A bright blue glow lightens and bounces around inside the lantern for a minute. "Humph. I was just having a very nice nap."

Link holds the lamp up, looking straight into it, dead at the fairy. "Navi, Prince Raidon needs to go through the Lost Forest."

"Ohh... fine," Navi pouts. The fairy centers herself in the lamp, then her glow dims. Short-lived, small concentric circles of blue expand from the forest fairy as she murmurs in a strange language that Link might have recognized if he had the Book of Mudora.

Impatient, Raidon steps forward and reaches up to flick at the glass before thinking the better of it. "Well?"

"He's already expecting you."

There is silence as surprised, curious glances are exchanged between Link, Raidon, and Impa, Navi being left out of the loop due to her amorphous glow not allowing a curious look to be discerned by the others.

Raidon scratches the back of his neck and slowly says, "Well . . . that was easy. Bye." Without a backwards look, he hops onto Dimitri and gallops out. Link draws his ocarina and plays the Wind Sonata, teleporting himself to Eyeglass Peak.

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As the teleport wears off, Link hears the sounds of battle reach his ears. Not a frantic fight, but steel clashes nonetheless. He runs east to the rocky clearing, then stops and growls. He may have the Magic Mirror, but the portal he needs to get to the Dark World is inactive and he doesn't have a Moon Pendant. Fine, I'll take the long way around.

Impatiently, he draws his ocarina again and plays the Bolero of Fire to warp to Fire Mountain, barrow mound of the Gorons and the area's volcano. The teleport whisks him east to the hill where Turtle Rock resides in the Dark World. As soon as the swirl dissipates, Link sprints west, towards the white tower.

A while later, he arrives at the scene of a fight between a group of dwarves and an assortment of monsters, mainly tektites. That's strange, tektites aren't that hard, and these dwarves are good fighters. Then he sees what the trouble is.

The tektites are already dead, animated by some dark magic. Each time a dwarven warrior hews off a limb, the appendage floats up and re-attaches itself before it can even strike the rock.

The Hylian knight draws his sword and shield, gold gleaming in the sun. A pair of tektites disengage from two Dwarves and close on Link. He steps swiftly forward and swings, the leading edge parting a leg. The leg falls and disintegrates, but the rest of the beast continues fighting. Link takes a step back, gently swinging his sword back as the 3-legged tektite advances, waiting until it jumps to use its own momentum against it as he swings the Master Sword, gripping the hilt with both hands to slice the tektite in half.

The exoskeletous beast falls in two, but only the one-legged half disintegrates as he expects, the two-legged half thrashes and continues to swing at the Hylian. He sidesteps and stabs the sacred blade straight down into the blood-oozing mess. The piece splutters and breaks apart, like ashes blowing away on the wind. The other tektite finally reaches Link, the glistening fang mandibles open and twittering.

It charges and Link easily dodges to one side, swinging the Master Sword through its front leg, spinning on the ball of his foot to carry momentum and slash through the back leg. The monster falls and Link stabs straight into its heart. The tektite weakly twitches as it disintegrates like ash blowing away on the wind.

The rest of the tektites suddenly back away, but instead of retreating they only regroup and charge at the divide between Link and the dwarves. Link goes straight for the heart of the next tektite. Stabbing all the time is boring. Another anthropoid creature lurches at him and Link whips out his Ice Rod, freezing the animated creature before drawing his hammer and smashing it.

The combined efforts of Link with his sacred weapons and the determined skill of the dwarves wipe out the tektites. When the last one shatters into ice chunks, the Hylian spots some movement in a window high up in the tower.

A dwarf lifts his steel halberd to the sky and shouts, "The undead have been defeated. Hip hip!"

The others join him in lifting their weapons in cheer. "Hurrah!"

"Hip hip!"

"Hurrah!"

"Hip hip!" The dwarf leader nears as the others finish the cheer and Link recognizes the short, middle-aged man, Captain Kuno, as the same commander he met when he came to help clear Hera's Tower to earn the pendant of Power in his struggle against Agahnim. "Sir Link! It is an honor to fight alongside an elf once again. Dark creatures have invaded our tower, and the Gorons are pressing into our territory again."

Link sighs. The Gorons and dwarves had been at war for years over the mountains, and the elvish Hylians had made the mistake of immediately siding with the dwarves, which made their later attempts to reconcile the two peoples nearly impossible. "The Gorons? I thought you cleared that up with them last time."

"They broke the treaty first!"

Link sheathes his equipment. "All right, stop. I'll deal with that later. Right now I'm after Ganon's minions."

Kuno pokes his finger into his ear and twists, as if a piece of earwax suddenly blocked the Hylian's words. "Ganon, King of Evil? But... didn't you destroy him?"

Link shuffles slightly nervously. "I . . . he returned."

A collective gasp passes through the dwarves. While Ganon may have been a greater menace to Hyrule the last time, the evil figure has made himself an enemy of every free people, even the Gorons. The captain holds out his hands palms-up. "I'm afraid there's nothing we can do right now to help you. All we know is that the Necromancer is in the top of this tower."

The Hylian looks up . . . and up . . . and up. "Why is it always the top? Why can't they just mill around in a convenient place on the ground floor?"

"That would be too dangerous for him," the dwarf answers, unaware that it was a rhetorical question.

Link sighs. "I guess I'll be inside."

Kuno grabs the knight's sleeve to stop him. "Be on your guard. We saw a group of Gorons enter before we returned with reinforcements. The undead may not be your only enemy in there."

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It takes Link a while to recognize the interior as Hera's Tower, for the layout resembles neither the desecrated tower he fought through to face Moldorm, nor what the Dwarves were trying to restore it to. The blocky walls that obstructed him last time are gone, now the vast majority of the flat floor is dotted with a dense grid of small holes, a beamos statue in the center of the dotted floor. Something resembling an emaciated moblin holding a javelin trudges around the beamos.

Link draws his bow and fires a typical arrow into the moblin's head. The shot gets its attention, but doesn't cause significant damage. Link nocks another arrow, but before he can draw back, all hell breaks loose.

Starting from the beamos and radiating outwards, spikes ram up from the floor at all number of angles. He reaches behind to whip out his Magic Cape, only to remember that he doesn't currently have it. The knight dives back onto the platform of ordinary tiles at the entrance, swearing that as soon as he gets out of this lair of evil he'll go home and pick up every last piece of his equipment.

Before he can fully recover his wits, the rotating eye of the beamos spots him and fires a strong beam at him. The knight instinctively whips out his mirror shield, only barely reflecting the beam into a random direction. The moblin, speared by many of the spikes, gets back up and Link realizes that, like the tektites, it is undead. He tries another ordinary arrow, sending this one at the heart.

His enemy flinches at the hit, then throws a javelin. The knight easily dodges, but he has a necromancer to dispatch and he doesn't have time to chop through every zombie he comes across. The moblin lifts another Javelin and Link shoots it with a silver arrow, and when it doesn't drop immediately he sends it another silver arrow. The knight doesn't notice that the second arrow seems to slow momentarily on the way to the moblin. The sacred weapon brings down the undead just as another wave of spikes shoot up.

Since the stairs at the far corner are unobstructed this time, he decides to investigate that first. Shaking his head to try to clear the fog clouding his memory, the Hylian charges his Pegasus Boots and takes off, a beamos blasting the wall behind where he had been but a moment before. He stops at the staircase and something in his gut tells him to duck. He obeys the instinct just in time, a beam shooting above his head and blasting a char into the rock wall beside the stairs.

Link scrambles down the stairs, opening into a blank, tiled room. He almost shouts, Boring, this is the same trap as last time. Surely enough, a tile lifts up, its spin increasing as it rises to 3 feet. This time, however, there is one variation: when it lifted from the floor, 2 reanimated keese flew up from underneath it. Link whips out his recurve bow and sends a wooden arrow into one. The keese looses altitude but regains flight control and continues to flap, a wood arrow still impaled in it.

Oh, forget this. Without a wall blocking the door to his left, the Hylian just runs through, hearing the tile smash into the doorway behind him.

In the next room, the doors slam closed behind and Link is unsurprised to see an undead, this time a moldorm larvae, Master Sword easily dispatching it. What surprises him is that another falls from the ceiling as soon as he vanquishes the first with a stab. The knight looks up at the ceiling to see at least five moldorm larvas, stuck to the ceiling with a dripping slime.

The second he freezes, following up with a smash from his favorite hammer. When the third falls, he decides to try something new. Hookshot? Link briefly remembers trying to use the hookshot against gibdos in Mothula's lair in Skull Woods when his sword was being repaired. Nah, that'll just slowly break 'em apart. Bombs? He shakes his head. As if they weren't bad enough already, the shops had raised the prices. Too expensive. Fire Rod?

A grin slowly spreads over the Hylian's face. Hmmm, haven't tried that. The knight draws his magic weapon and sets the decaying foe on fire. It roars and limply thrashes as it breaks up from the flames. The rest burn to ashes under his fire bolts and the door shutters slide open.

Link proceeds to the next room, filled with weak skeltos. With a sigh, he draws his sword. What a day to leave my medallions behind. The knight holds back his sword, charging it as he walks forward. Practice in the maneuver quickly readies the Hylian and the sword rumbles in his hand, glowing as if to show the altruism flowing through it.

The skeletons amble about the room, a fair-sized cluster starting to near before Link unleashes the power of the golden Master Sword in a brutal spin attack. Eight skeltos disintegrate, and instantaneously, every skeltos slows, stops, and turns to the knight.

The next skeleton nears and Link makes a horizontal swing, the torso falls to the ground and starts dragging itself at the knight, the legs point at him and kick. Link almost laughs as he severs the leg, carrying the sword's momentum in a diagonal downward slash the destroys the skeleton's lower half. A sharp pain in his shin makes Link jump back and take notice of the upper half of the undead.

Blue eyes narrow. That's it, play time's over. The Hylian surges forward, crushing the length of the sacred blade down the spine of the crawling skeleton. The rest of the room's skeltos near and Link lets loose a quick sword-spin, knocking down three more and giving himself room to charge for a more serious blow. The remainder continue to near and Link tightens his grip on the Sword of Evil's Bane. The sword glows...

They take another step.

The sword starts to rumble and the skeletons take another step. The glow brightens and another round of skeleton-steps hits the stone-tile floor. Too close, two lift their claw-like hands in preparation to remove Link's face from his head and the Hylian unleashes a mighty spin with a roar. The blade plows through six skeletons, the initial wash of magic energy radiating out in an expanding circle destroying another three. Instead of stopping, the blade seems to pull itself, the new momentum creating another spin that takes out another five skeletons, with the wash blasting out in another even brighter, taller, bigger expanding circle.

Link stands there, breathing heavily for a moment. Another two skeletons remain at the edges of the room, and the knight notices something glinting jammed in the rib cage of the near one. One swing of the Master Sword shatters the rib cage, allowing the young Hylian to ascertain what the object is: a silvery key.

One of the skeletons starts to rear back for a swing and Link elegantly swishes his blade in a horizontal stroke, knocking the animated undead into pieces so he can retrieve the key. "See ya."

Tiles smash against the wall as he passes, but nothing demands his presence and he flees the room filling with undead keese. The grand entry room opens before him and before his foot hits the floor, he looks back and tries to remember the layout of the rooms he was just in. Whoever is channeling dark magic through this tower is good, the knight's disorientation is as bad as when he infiltrated Ganon's Tower itself.

Spikes rise up and Link takes a quick glance around. Behind him is a set of stairs down, and on his left is a set of wide stairs spiraling up. Since the Dwarves suspected the Necromancer to hide at the top of the tower, Link sprints to the stairs spiraling up after the next spike trap passes.

When he reaches the next floor, he is relieved to see that the holes the Dwarves repaired remain closed. While he's thinking about it, he looks up at the ceiling and doesn't spot any open gaps. A few undead globs, reanimated corpses of something smelling of rotten fish, slither towards him. Ice bolts freeze them before the globs can threaten, a smash of the hammer releasing their mana and restoring Link's acuity.

A brief headache passes when Link tries to remember which door he came through, and finally he guesses. The next room is on the way up, and it has the look of the bloody back of a butcher's shop, the reek of spilt blood is almost overpowering. Hooks hang from chains in the ceiling, skeletons dangling from them. Benches which were probably supposed to be for rest for the Dwarves now hold scythes, scalpels, and all manner of horrifying instruments.

Four butcher's blood-draining tables sit neatly in the center of the room, soaked red. A headless skeleton lies on one and the Hylian hopes it wasn't a Dwarf. The knight hesitates, but this is the only way up, so he tries not to look at the room's ghastly array as he skirts around it to the locked door on his right.

He tries to force open the door, but the reinforced, banded timber won't budge. Reaching to a pouch on his belt, he draws the key he picked up downstairs. "No way. That would be way too coinci—"

Click!

The door swings open and Link is nearly bowed over by the stench of rotting flesh. Pressing his sleeve over his nose doesn't have much effect, but he keeps his arm up anyway. "That reek!" He wavers a moment. The things I do for my country.

The room he enters lacks the holes or partial walls that blocked him last time. Now a revolting-looking mound is the only thing he spots in the empty space. The knight takes a few cautious steps in, and the mound shifts, rising up.

"I hunger."

Link spins around to look behind him as a shutter slams closed in the door. He continues glancing about for the source of whatever it was that spoke, words that touched directly to his mind. Was that the pile of—?

Suddenly, it coalesces into a more 'solid' form like a man yet still a blob.

"Join my body."

Link whips out the Master Sword and begins to charge a sword spin, then notices the sickening mass still rising up and decides not to let it get that close. Oookayyy, I'll try magic. His bow greets his hand with a calming, familiar feel, a trusty tool.

The silver arrow slides into the hunter's recurve bow with a dedicated purpose, the core of the man-blob corpse amalgamation. Link's fingers relax and the string sings as the arrow sails into the air, right on target. The mass twists and makes a sound like the growl of a bear before the sacred weapon strikes it.

The amalgamation draws back momentarily, a quivering screech emanating from its mouth-less body. Despite the knight's expectations, no blood spurts. In fact, the silver arrow disappears into the creature and it continues inexorably forward towards him.

Link tries not to puke in revulsion as his hand dives to his belt for his next weapon, coming up with his Ice Rod. The flame of fear cools as his fingers slide over the enchanted silver-edged steel weapon, used more often in his quest against Agahnim than his bow.

The young Hylian takes aim at the center of the approaching corpse amalgamation. Instead of shooting an ice bolt like it did every time before, the rod explodes with ice magic. Link has to slide his shield onto his back and grip it with both hands, bracing himself to keep from flying back as the rod blasts violent waves upon waves of dagger-like shards and a concentrated swirl of blizzard roars into the blob.

Ice spreads quickly as the beast freezes under the rod's thunderous assault, and Link's eyes widen as he watches the rod transforming in his hands, frost spreading up his sleeves and a painful chill biting into his hands. Fog falls from the rod, but he keeps his hands squeezed on it and pointed at the corpse-blob, only starting to slow.

The scepter extends and he adjusts his right hand's grip, a little skin coming off as he removes the hand. Ice continues to blast and the amalgamation screeches as it rears up. Winter's fury continues to roar out and the man-like blob finally stops, twisting back and around. Having to fight the scepter in his hands for control, Link finally tears it away from his opponent and stops the attack.

The blob shifts like an ameboa, shooting a fat tentacle at the knight. Link dives out of the way, his hands still stuck on the scepter. His left hand is frozen tight, but he manages to rip off his right again. Ice looms ahead of the knight, and an idea pops into his head. He reaches into his bag and tosses a bomb, letting it roll gently so the fuse burns in exactly when it stops at the icy frozen forward edge of the amalgamation.

A loud BAM punctures the quieting atmosphere and a sharp crack begins the forceful shattering of the amalgamation's frozen section. The corpse-blob roars and rears up, smashing through the ceiling and pulling itself through the new hole to the room above. As it rises, the blob slaps down on the floor. Two parallel lines of loose tiles running the length of the room fling up to reveal two narrow grids of holes, just like the spikes downstairs.

Link walks calmly through the gap between them down the center of the room to the next door, which should lead up. Unfortunately, when he arrives he finds a locked door. "Oh, you've got to be kidding me!"

The door looks solid, but that hasn't stopped Link before. Eight blows of the Megaton Hammer later and his obstacle is no less steady. Damn it, this is the only way up.

A voice pipes from the fairy lamp at his waist. "Well, Link, what next?"

The knight sighs and puts away his hammer. "I don't know. It's not like there's another guard around with a keyring..."

The second silver arrow pierces the undead Moblin's chest and it collapses, beginning to disintegrate as another wave of spikes rise. Link murmurs, "I forgot to check the Moblin. He kicks the floor in frustration. "Oh, hell. If I'm going to head back to the entrance, why don't I just warp all the way home?"

"Because you complained the whole hour it took to get from Fire Mountain, because that spot you used to climb collapsed?

I did, didn't I? Link takes his Magic Mirror from its protective pocket on his belt. I might as well just finish off the evil here right now.

When the entry doorway appears around him, an emaciated moblin looks lazily at the new movement. Link is about to walk out towards it when he spots the dense grid of holes where the spikes thrusted up from. Wait a minute, what's that moblin...? "Navi, tell me I'm not seeing things."

Navi flutters around in the lamp. "I see it too, Link. The Necromancer must have revived them."

The knight is about to nock an arrow in his bow when he realizes what she said. "Them? I only see one."

Navi rests in the center of the fairy lamp and pulses, then shines bright light. The concentrated forward cone of light reveals two ghostly forms different than anything Link had ever seen before.

Humanoid, to be sure, they have long, lanky legs with reversed knees. The arms are long, bowing inwards, ending in something that at first appeared to be claws but on closer examination appears to end in whispy tatters of...phantom cloth? The body is tall but hunched far forward, more whispy tatters on the body convincing Link that it must be cloth. Their definition is vague and color a subdued tan, though the young Hylian isn't sure if that's due to their true form, their being ghosts, or the divine light Navi is emitting.

Link reaches to draw his fire rod, but his left hand is still frozen around the Ice Scepter. He draws the Master Sword and shoots a swirl of its purifying energy at the ghost, but the swirl only knocks it back. "Navi..."

Navi's light dims as she shouts with a hint of panic, "I can't commune with the Deku Tree while shining light!"

Link tries to shake the scepter out of his left hand, but to no avail. Cut straight to the chase. "Go check the Moblin, tell me if he's got a keyring."

Navi stops emitting light and Link thinks that for a moment she's cooperating, but then the light shines again. "Do I have to?"

The ghosts press closer and Link could swear he can feel a chill pressing in. The Hylian bellows, "We've been through this! I know it's not the forest! Go!"

Navi zips out of his lamp, swirls around the moblin a few times, then zips back as quickly as she can. "Nothing! All he's got is a vial of mana."

Link sheathes the Master Sword and tosses a bomb. It detonates directly next to a ghost, having absolutely no effect. He shakes his frozen left hand and an edge creeps into his voice. "I could really use some help here!"

"I'm a fairy of light and I talk to spirits, what more do you expect me to do!"

Link growls and spots a set of stairs down. One of the ghosts is beginning to get uncomfortably near. Link throws magic powder at it, causing it to pause. A wave of spikes ripple through the room as the regular trap activates itself, and the rotating eye of the beamos statue spots him.

The knight dodges forward and a laser beam sears through the air where his head had been, blasting a scorch mark in the wall. Navi re-centers herself in the lamp, projecting the cone of divine light and revealing some ghosts again.

Without warning, something strikes his shoulder and it feels as if tendrils of ice slide through the skin above his shoulder blade. All feeling in his left arm instantly numbs and the ice scepter dangles at his side. Link draws the Master Sword and makes a wide swing, the tip catching an unseen wraith ghost behind him. The undead abomination roars and briefly becomes partially visible.

Still unsure of how to combat them, he swings the Master Sword again. Though it roars angrily, he sees absolutely no sign that the Blade of Evil's Bane is having any effect, and they are still nearing. A click reaches his sensitive ears, and he realizes that he's standing on the spiked part of the room and the trap has just activated again. He charges his Pegasus Boots while running from the ghost, heading for the nearest set of stairs down he can spot.

The young Hylian exits the stairwell and a narrow hallway greets him. This isn't anything like last time I was here in Hera's Tower. He looks both ways, the hall ending suspiciously abruptly to his left. A sinking feeling starts to take hold in his stomach and he more states than asks, "Tell me this isn't a maze."

Navi floats back and forth in the Fairy Lamp. She seems not to detect the tone of his voice as she answers, "Do you want the truth? Or 'not maze'?"

Link sighs and holds up his hands, the left still frozen around the scepter. He lets them drop and raise like a balance scale as he quips, "Stupid prince, fairy of light. How'd I end up on the short end of the stick?"

Following the hallway to his right, he turns a corner and a gibdos spots him. Link whips out the golden blade, chopping its left arm off with the exaggerated draw. The skilled knight spins on his heel to keep up momentum and stabs the sword into its heart. The gibdos drops to its knees, disintegrating, and Link impatiently walks around it.

The young Hylian notices that Navi is meditating in the lamp, but she isn't emitting light. "Something wrong, Navi?"

Navi flutters as if just waking up. "Sorry, I'm trying to figure out this maze, I sensed a magic object."

"What's so complicated about—?" The knight's question is interrupted when the entire floor shakes slightly. Every single stone block slides out of its place and the maze shifts around him, blocks flying this way and that as the maze changes itself, re-forming the straight-edged halls and right angles making up the maze.

"That."