**All Standard Disclaimers Apply**
Book One in the Doppelganger Trilogy
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The Hero of Wolves
by The Wolfess
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Chapter Twenty: Temple of Shadows
In the bowels of the Temple of Shadow, darkness itself seemed to whisper from the corners. Standing just inside the entrance, Zelda and Ikal stood side by side and looked around at the entrance room. It was a square room whose main feature was a ring of unlit torches. In the middle of the torches was a small pedestal with a faint marking on it, so fair it was almost gone entirely. Beyond the torches, the only other features of the room were the stairs leading into it—at the base of which the Princess and her Sheikah friend stood—and the large door opposite them. It seemed to be made of a light-colored stone, and carved into the door was the giant eye of the Sheikah. It was obvious that this was an older door—the eye was more angular than normal, and it only had one triangle at the top of the eye rather than three. There was a single tear below it, signaling that it had been made sometime after the Unification Wars, but not that far after. Perhaps this was the very stone they used to seal the temple when their bloody work was done. Zelda stepped closer to Ikal, taking comfort from the warmth of her friend's body in a dark and cold place.
"Welcome to the Shadow Temple, Zel," Ikal said, her voice hushed.
Zelda nodded. She thought back to what she knew about the notorious temple. The Princess of Hyrule had studied it thoroughly in her education at the hands of Forrad and a small army of tutors, but those lessons had not been her favorite. In fact, the Princess had feared the idea of the temple very much, and she hadn't lingered over the material as much as she normally did. Still, she knew a little of its history.
It was originally built to honor Death, or so she had been taught, and was intended to provide a gateway to the underworld for all who passed on to the Fields of Death. The texts indicated that it was used for alternative purposes during the Unification Wars, but was silent on what that use was. It only said that after the wars were over, the temple was sealed by a magical stone door. When studying this place as a younger girl, Zelda's dreams had been plagued by nightmares full of shadows and darkness. They kept her up at night and she began to look tired and gaunt, so her father sent her to the healers to see if there was something wrong. The healers said that they could find nothing wrong with the young Princess and the nightmares were just bad dreams, but Zelda had known different. They were much more than dreams—they were tangible memories, although unformed due to her prophetic powers being unrefined at the time. Now, as she stood at the entrance to this dark place from her lengthy past, all of those restless visions returned to her thoughts. She wondered if it was the idea of the temple that had scared her as a child or the idea of death itself.
Shaking off her memories, the Princess motioned toward the center pedestal. "It's faded, but I believe that it's the Medallion of Fire, said to belong to the safe of fire."
Ikal nodded. "I know," she said. She put a hand on the small of Zelda's back and smiled. "I know more about this place than you think, Zel. I know its secrets. I'll protect you." Ikal raised her hand and snapped. Suddenly, small red fires appeared in each of the unlit torches all at once.
A blue light began to glow on the ground below the torches. The blue light did not seem to be related to the newly-lit fire in the braziers. Rather, Zelda could see that a bright circle of Old Hylian characters had begun to glow around the pedestal, underneath the torches. The circle had been covered with dust, before, but with the torches lit, the character lit up just as brightly. As if in reaction to the ring of blue Hylian characters, the door on the other side of the room shuddered. Dust fell off of it as it shuddered more violently and crept upward.
When it had settled in its rut above the entryway, Zelda could see that there was a hallway beyond it that turned abruptly. From the depths of the now-opened temple, a cold, rotten wind was blowing. Her heart fluttered. Beneath the blue Sheikah uniform, Zelda's skin was covered with goosebumps. She wouldn't show her apprehension outwardly, though. She was a Princess, after all, and royalty do not display fear. Fear should not shake the hands of a Queen; it should not wet her eyes, nor turn her feet, nor shake her voice. A proper Queen was the picture of Strength and Wisdom, a pillar in storms for her country to cling to, even when her heart felt like goose down in a breeze. Zelda set her jaw and stepped forward, walking around the torches and into the Shadow Temple.
Just around the abrupt turn in the hallway, the two girls were met with a small bottomless chasm. Ikal jumped over it easily, being the Sheikah that she was, and Zelda followed. She may not be a Sheikah, but she was Sheikah-trained. On the other side of the chasm was a short hall that ended in a black wall covered with a laughing face—a dead end.
Zelda bit her lip, averting her eyes from the discomforting, maniacal face to the surrounding walls, but Ikal was firm. She smiled a little and touched Zelda's elbow with a light touch. "It's just an illusion," she whispered, her red eyes boring into the Princess's enchanted ones. "Come on, we're going to just walk right through the wall." Zelda let herself be led, and they passed through the laughing wall as if it didn't exist. Zelda sighed. The wall may think that it was a funny joke, but she didn't.
The next room seemed to confirm the dread Zelda had felt since she first entered the temple. Each wall of the room was covered with ancient symbols much older than those carved into the ground in the torch room. These symbols were written in some foreign language that was very different from Hylian. They were scratchy, as if one or a thousand people had carved them into the stone with their own bloody fingernails. Wind moaned through the corridors, wafting a foul rotten odor. It seemed to carry the groans of the dying and the dead evermore through the Shadow Temple. With her heightened spiritual senses Zelda could hear what no one else in the world could. Voices of countless dead whispered, groaned, yelled, screamed from every chasm, every pit. Relatively near to the entrance as they were, she could still hear angry or desperate pleas rising up from the depths of the temple. The voices called for absolution. Zelda closed her eyed and shuddered.
"What really took place in this temple?" she breathed, barely daring to whisper to her friend lest their all-too-alive presence be felt by the angry dead.
"It is a hard history," Ikal whispered in reply, "full of greed and hatred. Hyrule's greed and hatred, might I clarify, and the Sheikah Tribe's regrets. The Shadow Temple is a place of darkness and death now. It used to celebrate the unknown and the peace that lies in death. Impaz once said that there is a ship here that ferries souls to the Field of Eternal Rest. Hyrule, however, used this place for foul, evil purposes. It has been full of tricks and ill will ever since—a temple of illusions and darkness in which it becomes easy to forget one's self. Some have entered the temple and never returned—doomed to wander forever as one of the damned."
How cheery, the Princess thought with more than a little bitterness. She sighed and silently chided herself for her fear-born thoughts. She squared her shoulders, steeling her heart in preparation for the depths of the temple. It could only get worse from here, after all, and she would not be caught Chu-Jelly-Kneed at the entrance. "You speak in riddles my friend," the Princess said as she looked past the marking on the walls to see the rest of the room. There was a single ring of black metal torches in the room. Each torch had a skull atop it lit up with blue fire. The skull torches formed a single circle around the statue of a bird whose long beak pointed across the large chasm on the opposite side of the room.
"Speak plainly now," Zelda said, "for we have a challenge ahead of us that I cannot foresee. What was Teela's purpose in sending me here?" Around them, there were many options. There were doors in every direction around the circle, all with the same laughing face that had been on the shadow wall. On the other side of the chasm ahead of them a face was carved into the stone around a doorway, and its tongue extended almost halfway across the chasm. Zelda pointedly avoided facing her body in that direction, hoping they would not need to tread the ghastly tongue. The spirits near them seemed to laugh, a child-like giggling. Which way to go? Which way, which way? Can you see your way forward in the darkness? Which way? Zelda swallowed, licked her lips, and ignored them. "Ikal?"
"Forgive me, Zel. I felt…a chill along my spine." The Sheikah shook her head to clear it. "Teela does not want to kill you or lose you, I know that. She knows you are strong, but she doesn't know if you understand your weakness, your darkness, and that of your country. This place…this place will bring darkness to light. Your darkness. Your fears."
"Great," the Princess muttered. She rubbed her arms, then reached over and laced her fingers through Ikal's. The Sheikah raised an eyebrow in return. Zelda shrugged. "I am simply glad that I am not alone here. Thank you for coming with me."
Ikal smiled at the Princess. The red tattoos around her eyes wrinkled a little when she smiled, but there was always such kindness in her eyes. She may not be Link, but Zelda was still glad she was there. Perhaps, together, they could conquer this palace of shadows. "Well, which way do we go?" she asked.
Ikal squeezed Zelda's hand a little tighter and shrugged. "There is no way in the Shadow Temple. Where you least want to go, that is where you must go. It is how the temple was built to function."
Zelda frowned, then squared her shoulders and faced the evil face over the chasm with its long stone tongue. The wind coming from the tunnels on the other side was like a foul breath. The stone face seemed to narrow its eyes, it wide grin becoming even wider.
Let the darkness consume you, a voice seemed to hiss in her mind. Consumed by greed you'll be, nothing is ever enough to pass on, consume, be consumed… The Princess closed her red eyes against the tongue, as if not looking at it would stop the spirits' whispers. The mouth of Death itself was always reaching with a hungry tongue for the souls of the living—but this temple was no longer about merely death. The hungry mouth of Evil never satiated its cravings for more power, more dying, and more darkness. No light could exist as far as darkness was concerned. No life could exist as far as death was concerned. Zelda took a breath. Another breath.
She opened her eyes and looked straight into the Mouth of Death and Darkness. "You have no influence over me," she thought. The stone eyes of the face lit up and burned green. Ikal jumped in surprise. Zelda knew the Spirit of the Temple was listening. "You cannot keep my spirit, as you keep the spirits of all," she said out loud. "My spirit belongs to the Goddesses, and they will do with me as they please. My spirit has never been, and will never be Death's dinner. I choose to walk into you, and I will choose to walk out." The glowing green in the eyes began to swirl, then a liquid spurted out of the corners of its eyes and ran bright green down the cheeks of the face. Zelda nodded, set her mouth in a grim line, and took a running leap into the air over the chasm. She landed lightly on the tongue. Ikal smiled, proud of her Princess, and followed right after.
"What did you do?" the Sheikah asked. "I've never heard of it doing that before."
Zelda smiled. "Just talking with an ancient spirit who cannot take no for answer."
Ikal shook her head. "Who's talking in riddles now?" she said. The Princess smiled and patted her friend's shoulder, then moved onward down the stone halls. They came to a steep slope that went deep into the mountain. This opened up to room with three different doors, but Zelda continued to the door straight ahead with a confidence betrayed only by her ragged breathing. The spirits whispered louder the deeper they descended down the ghastly stone halls, and each wall was covered with those strange bloody runes.
The first set of guillotines they came accross, two small ones plopped in the middle of a hallway, made Zelda stop and furrow her brow. There were so many voices she couldn't make out what any one of them was saying except a couple words here and there. Betrayal…torture…the Eye. Ikal waited for the Princess with a confused look on her face, fingering her needles and her wakizashi.
"How can you and you people come into this temple, Ikal?" Zelda asked, partially to distract the nervous Sheikah, and partially to distract herself from the disturbing mutters of the angry spirits.
Ikal and Zelda slid under the guillotines with perfect timing and continued deeper. "We are trained from birth to be one with the shadows," Ikal explained. "It is the Temple of Shadows. It cannot tell the difference between us and its natural inhabitants."
"Natural inhabitants?" Zelda prompted.
"The dead, the spirits of the dead, and the creatures of death."
Zelda shivered a little and rubbed her arms. "That is rather creepy, but also very interesting. Some day when we are not in the depths of a demon temple I will have to ask you to explain that a little more." They rounded a corner and entered a cavern just a little smaller than the one the Sheikahs lived in. Thin platforms were positioned over a large bottomless pit, dotted by large guillotines that pounded into the ground. Various doors were set into far walls, connected by invisible platforms to a main platform on the opposite side of the guillotines from where Zelda and Ikal stood. Blood covered the walkways around the guillotines, but there were no bodies or bones. The roar of voices in this room seemed to rise up from the pit all around them, angry and demanding in the Princess's ears. She tried to ignore them, but the sound pressed on her mind as if it were being squeezed by a pair of large hands. The sound was pain in a pure form. Overcome by it, the Princess covered her ears with her hands, clenched her eyes shut, and whimpered, but she could not shut out the terrible sound.
"What's wrong? Zelda, what's happening?" Ikal said, pulling out her wakizashi, but she could not see anything attacking her Princess. Zelda writhed on the ground, unable to hear her friend's voice past the spirits' screaming. Blankness and darkness tunneled her vision to the row of guillotines before her, and her vision rippled like water. She saw a band of Sheikah in ancient uniforms similar to her own standing there. Their bodies were translucent to her sight, and every detail of what she saw felt like pain in her mind. Lining up in front of the guillotine in two lines were more translucent people. These looked like soldiers, normal citizens, monsters, even a couple Gorons, Zoras, and some of the ancient Gerudo race, all lined up in two lines. The ones nearest to her were an old man on her left shoulder, and a young woman crying at her right.
The front-most Sheikah stood with a large book in his hands, scribing something with a quill. Zelda walked closer to hear what he was asking the people at the front.
"Harnin, you have been accused of conspiring with the enemy. What say you?" The man speaking was wearing a strange white mask with the Sheikah eye in red on the front, the pupil golden. The Mask of Truth, if she remembered her studies through the needles that felt as if they were piercing her brain.
The one being addressed started shaking and crying. He was covered in lacerations, his wrists bruised in a way that suggested he had been manacled to something, and he looked downright worse for wear. "I-I-I-I…I'm sorry! They had m-my—" A Sheikah on the other side of the man shoved him down on the guillotine before he could finish his sentence. Zelda flinched and looked away, but saw a third Sheikah shove the body and its head into the abyss with his foot. The man with the book made a mark in it, then continued with the next person. The vision rippled, and the tunnel of darkness that had formed around her sight moved back. Her pain ebbed to a more manageable pulsation.
When Zelda came to, she was lying in Ikal's arms right next to the guillotine.
"Oh my gosh, Zel!" the Sheikah said, her face screwed up in worry. She cutched Zelda tighter, careful not to hurt her. "I was so worried—what happened?"
"Ika, I am fine," the Princess responded. She sat up slowly, Ikal's arms falling away, and she tried to stand. Her legs were a little shaky and her head swam, but she managed to get to her feet. She held on to Ikal's arms as she swayed, waiting for her head to settle. "I just—how can you not hear the spirits? They just—there are so many of them here, they just showed me…"
Ikal shook her head when Zelda trailed off. "I cannot hear them, Zelda, but I can imagine what they showed you. This room was used as an execution chamber. No living person who was not Sheikah ever came here and left alive."
"But…why?" Zelda asked, shaking her head. "Why would they do that? All those people…there were hundreds."
"And thousands more died before the war was over. Traitors to the crown were not treated well. The Sheikah were enlisted to interrogate, torture, and execute the people on the list given to them by the Royal Family, and…" she stopped, narrowing her eyes and looking around. "Do you hear that?"
Zelda focused, and sure enough there was a strange sound coming from the pit. It was like the scuttling of a million spiders, or the scraping of a rock on another rock. "What in Din's name…?"
The two women moved to the edge of the platforms and peered over. At first they could see nothing but a faint shadow, but then the figures moved a little higher. Countless skeletons scrambled up the walls, some with ragged clothing still hanging from their bones. The scuttling noises were the clicking of their fingers as they dug them into the wall and clawed their way up the platform, and the grinding sounds were the drag of their bodies. Many of them, if not most, were headless, but it did not seem to matter to them.
"Oh, Din! RUN!" Ikal shouted, tugging at the Princess's arm. They bolted, vaulting and rolling over or under the guillotines with the agility only Sheikah possess. A part of the Princess thanked the Goddesses for instincts that weren't hers, though her body—not as trained as it had been in that past life—protested the unfamiliar movements.
The skeletons were closer now than before. A couple hands grasped the ledge. "DOWN THERE!" Zelda yelled, pointing to a fourth, smaller guillotine on its own platform. Ikal dipped down and round kicked a nearby skeleton, sending it flying back into the abyss. She grunted her understanding. Unfortunately they couldn't get there from the main guillotines, so they rolled under the last gargantuan blade, kicking and punching more of the skeletal hosts as they did. They leapt onto the main platform at the end of the run, where Zelda pivoted to the right and jumped on the moving platform as it lowered. Ikal shot needles at the skeletons nearest and followed soon after the Princess, barely missing a skeleton's grab for her legs as she jumped and rolled to a stop by Zelda.
Zelda placed her hand on her friend's back and held her breath. Skeletons leapt after them, but none of them could make it to the moving platform. Their bone bodies fell back into the abyss. Heaving a sigh, the Princess took the respite to double over, panting a little. "What? Why? How?" she said, unable to figure out which question she wanted to know more.
"They're the skeletons of the people murdered here I would guess. You are living, for one, so they already sensed you here, and that vision must have triggered them to the Royal blood flowing in your veins. So they want to kill you."
Zelda shook her head, then jumped as a skeleton who had a particularly good jump made it into the platform and lunged at her. She leapt back just in time to miss the claws of its boney fingers, and kicked it over the side. "Wonderful. Great," she muttered. "They should not even be alive to want to kill me!" Her brow furrowed, the back of her mind tickling with a strange idea. Swallowing her fear, she strode to the middle of the platform. "Ikal, guard me. Their wakefulness is unnatural. I think I know what they need. Do not ask questions," she added when the Sheikah opened her mouth, "just keep me safe!"
Standing in the middle of the platform, the Princess closed her eyes and took a deep breath. It was there, on the edge of her memories, a tool to be used in situations like this. "Zelda, my love, remember this song if ever I am not there to protect you." It was a male voice. "This poem: 'The rising sun will eventually set; a newborn's life will fade. From sun to moon, moon to sun... Give peaceful rest to the living dead.' And now the song…" Peaceful rest to the living dead. Rest…peace…song…
Ikal fought skeletons off all around her, the platform rising and falling in rhythm. Zelda opened her mouth, summoning all the magic within her voice, and sang the song in her memory as loudly as her lungs could manage. The skeletons by them froze. Ikal stopped, weapons ready. The undead looked at the Princess, almost remorseful and listless as their hands drifted down to their sides. They seemed to sigh, and then their bones blew away like so much dust in a gust of wind. The Princess of Hyrule kept singing, until all of the spirits' voices were gone, and when she opened her eyes again the skeletons were gone as well. Ikal was looking at her with a strange expression.
"Where did you hear that, and what did it just do?" she asked.
"I heard it in my memories. It gives rest to the dead." Zelda replied, then motioned that they should continue. They jumped onto the last guillotine platform, rolled underneath it, then jumped across the last couple invisible platforms to reach the door in question. "Something beyond this door makes my skin crawl…so, this is the door we need to go through."
They went through it and started walking through some relatively uneventful halls, walls still covered with those scratched-in runes. "Zelda, that song…the first part of it. My father used to sing that to me as a lullaby."
Zelda smiled. "That doesn't surprise me. That would be the "moon" portion of the song. Some historians speculate that the composer brothers, who made the two parts of the song, were Sheikah. One was working on the "sun" portion, the other on the "moon" portion. Their results were lost with time, and the song faded from knowledge, except for one boy hundreds of years ago who found it and taught it to me."
"He didn't happen to wear green and bear a striking resemblance to Link did he?" Ikal asked with a smirk.
Zelda shook her head, hiding a slight flush in her cheeks. "I could not see his face. Only hear his voice, and it was unfamiliar." Ikal laughed, and the Princess wondered how her friend could be so light hearted in a dire situation such as theirs. Perhaps it was the stoicism her race employed to detach themselves from emotions, although Ikal was usually more emotional than other Sheikah. If only Zelda herself were able to employee such tactics. It would be so much more convenient if every inch of this accursed temple didn't make the Princess's skin crawl, and her heart grow faint. When they got out of this mess, she was going to go lie down in a field of pink flowers and pet talking deer, or some ridiculously sweet thing such as that. Nonetheless, Zelda did not try to run from the darkness. Rather, she walked straight where the fear in her heart told her not to. No one could ever accuse the Princess of Hyrule of being a coward. The more she was around Link, the bolder she felt herself getting. The effects they seemed to have on each other were oddly strong. However, now was not a time or a place to be thinking about her General, so Zelda focused on the task at hand and opened a door on the other side of the dirt room they were in while her stomach did a flip flop.
They were greeted by the sight of a ghastly ship. It appeared to be made of wood with bolted iron strips holding it together and edging the rim of the deck. The figurehead at the front of the ship was the most shocking feature: an emaciated, skeletal corpse made of iron rose vertically from the prow. It wore a ragged red hood that draped over its shoulders and around its arms. Two great strips of bolted iron stretched out from under its chest cavity and extended down over the entire prow of the ship, covering it a with human-like ribcage made of thick, black iron. The hooded corpse had two golden bracelets around each wrist. Its hands hung down to the point where the smaller ribs began to jut outward from the prow, and they were fisted around two iron rings from which two golden bells hung still and silent.
The ship bobbed in a mist that seemed to roll like waves in a bottomless channel. The spirits were loud here as well, but they were not unhappy. These sounded even older than the ones in the guillotine cavern. The voices sighed underneath the mists, as if from a land where the dead found rest. The Princess's heart dropped into her stomach, her mouth went dry, her palms became sweaty. This was the Ferry to the Other World, and Zelda suddenly knew why she was in the temple.
"This is my destination," Zelda said, not looking away from the ghastly ship. "I must travel on this accursed vessel upon which my spirit has never tread, and I must go alone."
Ikal grabbed Zelda's upper arm and spun her around, tattooed red eyes glaring at the Princess. "I will not leave your side, Zelda, even if you go to the realm of the dead. I will not leave you alone at the hands of Darkness. Never. You cannot ask that of me."
Zelda frowned and cupped the Sheikah's cheek in her hand. "Ika, my dear friend, you know that you cannot ride this vessel to its end and live. I need you alive to protect me from the likes of Teela's treachery. More than that...Ika, I cannot bear the thought of losing you. I need you in my life. Please do not ask me to suffer the sorrow of your eternal absence."
The red-haired Sheikah would not budge. She grasped the hand on her cheek in an iron grip and turned her face into Zelda's palm. She sighed, and a single tear traced the path of the tattoos on her cheeks. "If I cannot come with you, then I will jump off at the ledge where the ship plummets to the land of the dead...and you will come with me. You can't go where I cannot protect you, Zel, please..."
"Yes, you will jump off Ika, but I cannot." Ikal made a sound, but Zelda cut her off. "No! There is something bigger going on here than proving something to Teela. I can feel it in the depths of my soul. I cannot explain, but my destiny is beneath the mists. Please do this for me: you remember the song I sang in the cavern?" Ikal nodded, her eyes shining with unshed tears. Zelda continued. "When you jump off, go through that section of the temple and bring peace to the restless souls there with the song. They will not attack you, after all, and I can at least give them one gift as a Princess of the lineage that betrayed them with our unforgiveness."
Ikal nodded. Zelda dropped her hand from the Sheikah's cheeks took a calming breath. She set her jaw and turned toward the ladder. She began to walk toward it, but Ikal suddenly grabbed her wrist. Zelda looked back at her friend with a question in her eyes. The Sheikah swept Zelda up in her arms and held her close, turning her face into the crook of Zelda's neck and breathing in her scent. Zelda hugged her friend back, rubbing her back with an absent hand. With a deep, shaky breath Ikal let Zelda go. They looked at one another without words for a moment, and then walked over to the ladder together. It was slightly off the ground, and they had to leap to grab its bottom rung. They did so, and hoisted themselves up to the platform from which they could board the ghostly vessel.
They jumped onto its wooden deck together and paused. Nothing moved. There was a large Triforce painted on a iron door in the middle of the deck which the Princess recognized, and she stepped forward to sing her family's secret song.
When she opened her mouth to sing the first notes, she paused as Ikal's hands snaked around her waist from behind. Zelda blinked, patting the Sheikah's violet-wrapped hands with confusion on her face. "Ikal? What is all this?"
"You will come back from the land of the dead Zelda. No one has ever returned before…ever…but you will. I know you will. Of all the people in this entire world who could manage a trip to the land of the dead and make it back alive, it's you. You are more than you have ever given yourself credit for."
Zelda felt a lump rise in her throat, the fear that had taken a grip on her easing just a little. She swallowed and turned around to hug the Sheikah back, holding the other girl's lithe form close. "I promise that I will return. Do not be afraid for me," she whispered.
Ikal sniffed a little and nodded. "You'd better, Zelda, or I'm going to kill you when I get there. You're the closest thing I have to family left in this world. You take my sister away doing this 'Princess of Destiny's Spirit' stuff and I'm never going to forgive you. I claim the part of you that's not her...some small part of you must return to me."
Zelda laughed, the sound broken a little by the lump still in her throat, gave Ikal a final tight squeeze, and let go. "No part of me is not her, Ikal. We are one and the same. But my childhood and adolescence in this life did belong to you. They were spent with you, after all."
Two real tears rested on the red tattooed tears on Ikal's cheeks, but she smiled through it and laughed. "Remember the time we snuck ink in your father's food and when he ate it turned his entire mouth black, even his teeth?"
"Then he went to an important meeting with black teeth because he could not get it off," Zelda said, chuckling.
"And you had to tell him you did it the second he got out of the meeting, before he had the cook executed," Ikal's eyes were twinkling with tears and memories.
"I still should not find that so funny," Zelda said through laughter and her own shimmering red eyes. She tugged the barb at end of Ikal's braid, as she had most of her life. "Remember when I started having 'female problems' and my father was so frightened he hired one of the scullery maids he was sleeping with to come give me 'the talk', but the woman was so ashamed to even be in my presence she could not get two words out of her mouth that made sense."
"So my mother convinced your father to allow you to come to our village for a couple weeks, and she taught you everything a woman needs to know about growing up. It was the first time you had worn anything but those hideous royal dresses. Your father flipped his lid when you brought tunics and pants home and started wearing them around the castle." Ikal sighed, reaching over to brush a couple strands of blond-streaked auburn hair away from Zelda's face, hidden as it was beneath the Sheikah wraps. "Okay. I trust you, Zel. You can sing now, oh Siren of Hyrule," she teased.
Zelda winked, stepping back into the center of the Triforce. "You had better believe it, sister—anyone that hears this voice falls to their ruin for want of me."
"Then why haven't you sung to that handsome Hero yet?"
"Oh, shut up."
"Ha!"
Zelda shook her head, then took a deep breath and focused again. The lilting, magical sounds of the royal family's lullaby floated through the air, short and beautiful. At first nothing happened. Zelda began to wonder if she should try again,when the bells on the sides of the ship started ringing. The sound reverberated through the cavern like church bells at a funeral. Zelda stepped back to Ikal's side as the vessel lurched forward. They looked at each other, both getting their long wakizashis ready.
Two skeletons jumped up out of the mist, but these were different from the ones before. They moved in a distinctly feminine way, were about the same size as Ikal and Zelda, and were covered in women's armor with twin scimitars and large jewels on their foreheads. They gave off an aura of darkness, not related at all to the restless spirits. Ikal leapt at them with her hands, feet, and wakizashi flying. Zelda jumped in, accosting the one that Ikal was not fighting, and although she wasn't as fast as the Sheikah-born woman she had some magic up her sleeves for just such an occasion. The Ferry to the Land of the Dead bobbed on its grim journey, the four figures battling on its deck mere blurs of motion.
Ikal's skeleton wore armor with a red tint, against which her latest kick bounced. She cursed under her breath and flipped backward to avoid a swipe from the skeleton's scimitar, then ducked under the swipe from its second scimitar to get a solid hit on its torso with her wakizashi. It staggered backward just enough for her to fit in three more quick jabs before it got its defenses up. Glancing at the Princess from the corner of her eyes, Ikal fell flat to the ground when the skeleton she was fighting went for a high swipe. From her position on the ground, Ikal kicked the creature's feet out from under it. It landed with a sickening crunch and the Sheikah jabbed her wakizashi into the joint where its head was attached to its neck. The joint snapped, the bones crumbling into clouds of darkness and dust.
Zelda seemed to be doing okay against her foe, from what Ikal could tell. Her blasts of Din's Fire and balls of light seemed particularly effective. As the Sheikah sprinted the short length of the deck to the fray, she absently wondered who taught Zelda battle magic, since those arts were almost completely dead. Perhaps it was one of those "Princess of Destiny" things.
"Zelda! Blast her to the ground with your fire!" Ikal yelled, wakizashi ready. The Princess nodded and held her hands in front of her. A ball of fire grew between her palms, growing large enough that the edges of Zelda's Sheikah smock began to singe. Yelling with the effort of controlling the fire, Zelda hurdled it at the skeleton's chest. It flew backward and slammed into the wall, bouncing back onto the ship's deck face down. Ikal leapt on top of it and severed its head from its body the same way as she had the other one.
The Princess reached down through the burst of dust and darkness to grab Ikal's hand and hoist her up. "Good thinking, Ika, and good timing. It is time for us to part ways."
A glance at the front of the ship showed the Princess to be correct, as the hallway was opening to a larger cavern with a shelf on the left side where Ikal would drop down. Panting lightly from the battles, the violet and black clad Sheikah ran over to her white and blue clad Princess-sister and slammed into her, binding her arms around the Princess's shoulders. "Please, Zel, please be careful. No one knows what's down there, and I doubt it has been unaffected by the Darkness in this temple. Zelda, I..." Ikal swallowed, trepidation in her eyes. She knew that she may never see the Princess again, that this moment may be the last chance she ever had. "Zelda, I love you."
The entire ship started shuddering, as if someone were trying to work a rusty bolt out of a tight hole. "I will be careful, Ikal, I have already said so. Now, get off! Hurry!" The Princess practically shoved Ikal off the side as the ship plummeted into the mists. The last sight she saw in the World of the Living was Ikal's red eyes watching her over the edge of the platform until there was nothing left to see but mist. Zelda couldn't wonder now if she made the right choice, to voluntarily die with no plan on how to return to life. For the good of her people, perhaps even for the good of the world, she had leapt and there was no turning back.
~! #$%^&*()
Link was crying and screaming and he didn't know why. All of the sudden it felt as if the sun itself had gone out. Something inside felt as if his life and its purpose were over, as if his heart had been removed and run through with a thousand needles. The reason his soul existed was gone, and he didn't even know what that reason was exactly.
All around him the Bulblin army was surrendering. King Bulblin himself killed any of his own people that tried to lift a weapon against one of the Hylian troops. The Captains organized their men back into ranks, medics rushed in to take care of the sizable number of fallen Hylian soldiers, and the sweet taste of victory buzzed in the air like honey bees on a flower. Link could feel none of it. He felt like he was tumbling into some imprisoning darkness. His sword fell from his hand, his face darkened, his eyes went placid and blank. Volc was there, the medics were there, even King Bulblin was there, but the hero didn't show any signs of acknowledging their efforts to reach him. Link's body may have stood on that battlefield, but it seemed as if it were hollow.
The army said that the General's own ruthlessness finally made him snap. Others said the battle shock from all of his adventures had finally caught up with him, young as he was. Some said he was just testing them again, and that he was really fine. Volc took command of the army, negotiating a truce with the Bulblins and getting help for their men. Link was carried to a rich tent, his armor removed, sword placed by his side. Epona stood with her head inside the tent door watching her master and friend with the worry of a horse.
Link was, for all intents and purposes, gone. Out of commission. He slipped in and out of consciousness or feverish sleep in which he cried and screamed Zelda's name in Ancient Hylian, a language no one understood. Inside of the trap that was his mind, memories of the Princess from countless lifetimes pulsed through him at such a rate his physical systems just shut down to their lowest power to handle it all.
One thing his spirit, old as time itself, knew—the companion for which it was created, the one it was to protect and honor, the one in whose name it was supposed to fight, was gone. Her very spirit had exited life to a place where not even his indomitable hero's spirit had dared to venture. The hero had failed, and he hadn't been at her side to defend her.
~! #$%^&*()
She fell forever. The ship was gone. Her body fell through a void of time and darkness. It was as if she aged and died and was born again in the mists between Life and Death. It may have been a few minutes or a few hundred years before her body's descent slowed. The mists began to clear, the darkness to lighten, and the Princess's artificial red gaze strained to see some definite form. Heavy and raw as her eyes felt, they could not seem to find any solid thing in the space she was drifting through. If only she could at least stand on something solid...
Suddenly there was grass beneath her. Her body righted itself, feet gently touching on the ground. Zelda swayed for a moment, stumbled a little as if taking her first steps again, and dropped to her knees. Determined, she gathered herself and willed her legs to stand firm—they did so, shaky at first but with more confidence each passing moment. "Good," she thought, or said. She couldn't tell whether she was speaking or not. "What now?"
The question seemed to reverberate back to her, as if spoken in a cavern. What now, what now, what now? What do you want, what do you want, what do you WANT?
A cloud of dark mist floated out of the horizon beyond the grass field. The cloud formed an image of Hyrule Castle, dropped; swelled again, formed a little cottage in the mountains she dreamt about as a girl, dropped; swirled and churned there, just beyond sight. What do you want, what do you WANT? The voice sounded both feminine and masculine, both menacing and innocent, impatient and kind, soft and loud. The strange dark mist swelled again, rolling over the grass and stopping right next to her. It rose up and formed an image of herself, but not herself—the woman's face was hard, her eyes fierce and glowing red, her hands scarred and rough. They wore the same Sheikah uniform, but the mist-Zelda stood like Ikal in battle. She paced, moving like a wraith, restless and agitated. "What do I want?" she asked with a voice that commanded questionless obedience, unwavering strength.
Zelda's hands began to tremble, and she shook her head. "I do not know…I just don't…" a clump of mist detached from mist-Zelda's foot, rolled behind her a few yards and swelled up, forming a man in green with a troubled face and a strange white mask. A clump detached from him, rolled to the side, formed a throne made of gold with a ruler's scepter and sword leaning on the plush red seat. Zelda's breath quickened, her eyes widening. The mist-Zelda drifted backwards to stand by the man with a possessive hand pressed to his hard stomach, the other hand clutching the throne. When the Princess looked at the Self formed of Mist she could see countless selves outside of time, past selves and future selves, countless experiences, memories; choices, mistakes; desires, duties; split lives, each of them, never whole. On one hand a normal life, desiring love and freedom, a quiet life where she could be whatever kind of woman she wanted to be; on the other hand a life of authority, desiring power, wisdom, knowledge, responsibility, peace, welfare. She felt herself splitting, as if her very body were trying to break in half.
In shock and pain she looked down at herself. A golden fissure twinkled like tinsel on a holiday tree through the middle of her form, shining with light, jagged like a crack in a mountain face. What do you want, want do you want, what do you want? Who are you, what do you want?
"I-I cannot, I do not, I…"
Who are you? What do you want? They are simple questions, Princess who Lives in Everlasting Light. Who are you? What do you want?
The mist-forms before her fell, churned on the grass like a boiling pond, then swelled up again right in front of her. They became a gigantic, gold-trimmed mirror the size of a wall, stretching a meter above her, and a meter and a half to the left and right of her. Within its depths, darkness swirled.
Slowly an image formed: she could see a battle, herself in the middle of it all commanding troops, commanding respect and power, almost seeming to glow with an ethereal authority. There was something wrong about her though, as if in denying half of herself. She had killed all mercy in her heart. The scene shifted: prisoners and traitors lined up in the Shadow Temple. She stood in what appeared to be a blood-covered torture chamber, overseeing the torture of a man chained to a wooden X in the middle of the room. The Sheikah obeyed her commands, using their strange devices to torture and extract information. She saw countless faces, all who had died and been tortured. The faces shifted. They were Sheikah, but they were all possessed by a darkness, a madness. At least half of the large Sheikah Race lined the walls of the temple, scratching into it—names, names of the dead, names of the offenses, names of the darkness that crawled out of the pits, attracted by the blood and the shadows. They started wielding evil magic and were banned to another realm of eternal shadow, eternal twilight, while she lived and died in peace, in light, with all the world at her fingertips.
A boy in green was born, and a new Princess with a blue ocarina. She chose him, but could not divorce her responsibility—he was cursed to live an unfulfilled life for her, died in regret and loneliness, while she lived in quiet turmoil wielding an authority she hated, and worlds suffered her mistakes.
Scenes of choices—choosing power, choosing quiet—neither worked, ever. There was nothing but darkness and pain no matter what she chose. Wisdom… the voice said. Increasing wisdom increases sorrow. They have cursed you with lives of sorrow and unfulfillment. You bring pain to one or the other, Princess…you hurt what you love, always denying all of you, half reserved for things you cannot have…wisdom, sorrow, decisions, pain. The Way of Wisdom…heir of Wisdom that you are…would not death be welcome? Will you deny the world wholeness for your selfish desires? As long as you live, the world will be torn…forever. Here, in the World of Death, you can have everything you desire…everything.
In the mirror now was her Mist-Self in the arms of the man in green. They held one another and wore crowns upon their heads, the royal scepter in her hand, and the royal sword of justice in his. Happy people stood behind them as far as the eye could see, cheering their names. Look into the mirror at the memories of your lives…you have never had this. You can never have this. Life and its slaves will not allow it…I will. Death will give you rest, wholeness…I will give you everything, if only you will give yourself to me….
It made sense. It looked so good. She could feel the sorrow of all her selves, all the land, all the people she had ever led. Zelda could feel the choices, the indecision, the split nature of her existence…never joined, never whole, unable to commit to one or the other, always bringing pain and death to the very things she longed to bring life to. Perhaps Death was right. Perhaps the solution was to stay here in the Land of the Dead, and let her two eternal loves—Hyrule and the Hero—move on to all they were capable of becoming without her conflicts to hold them back. It made so much sense…felt so right…
Her eyes closed and her fingers drifted forward, touched the surface of the glass. Her mist-self stepped away from the man and their thrones, reaching her fingers to touch Zelda's fingers on the other side of the mirror. The mist-self's eyes were consumed by red—no pupils, no white, just endless glowing pools of red. Their fingers touched. The golden fissure running down real-Zelda's middle began to pulse, then shrink. With her eyes closed, Zelda did not see the mirror fall, or the Mist-People's eyes all change to red glowing pools, or the man's clothes become black, or the field become a dry, cracked desert, or the light turn to darkness.
"This is best…they will find rest, I will find rest…this makes sense…" she thought, her mind heavy, sluggish, and her heart breaking in her breast.
Yes, the strange voice practically hissed. You want wholeness. You are whole. I will give you everything you've ever desired, if only you will give yourself to me…finally, my sweet Lady of Light…finally, you are mine…mine….
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Author's Note:
January 2015: REVISED CHAPTER UPLOADED.
Author's Comment from original upload: Death is a sly trickster with the tongue of a snake. Don't listen to him.
Don't worry, readers, chapter twenty-one is already under construction! As for this chapter, I think Zelda rocks. Not just in this chapter, but in general. She's really the best Princess EVER. Think about it: she kicks butt! For example, hiding out in disguise as a sheikah taping her chest flat and gathering information the hero will need for seven years in OoT while she waited for him to be released. (I know some people think she does it with magic, but I like the idea of doing it manually better. It's so much more dynamic!) She is not some weak-willed princess who needs saving, or weeps all the time, (though I know she did a lot of it in that one chapter…) She's strong and fierce and deadly, and she does all of it without having to dress like a skank, or like a poodle. I LOVE HER!
In other news, for reference reading on the article I drew from on the sheikah history, go to Zelda Informer, the Races and People section of the Bombers articles, and look up an article called "Exposing the Sheikah". Good stuff.
Thanks for reading, and please review! Until the next chapter,
~The Wolfess
EDIT: Hero of Wolves Promotional Posters, artwork courtesy of yours truely! Go to my Deviant Art account (Link found on profile) and check 'em out!