Chapter 28
Dawn came slowly to the vast reaches of the Great Forest, its greyish tendrils slowly fracturing the complete darkness of the night. Stealthily they crept across the blank canvas of the sky like the unfurling of the first leaves in a new spring, hardly noticeable and easy to miss. But the princess, whose preparations and whirling thoughts had hardly let her rest through the long reaches of the night: the princess had already seen them.
Leave at first light, Demon had said, and Zelda intended to obey him. Her surroundings were still mere shadows in a sea of grudging darkness, but at least now the princess could distinguish the path in front of her. Wondering absently how Demon always seemed to be able to navigate perfectly in the pitch dark, the princess continued forward down towards the forest floor below.
She was dressed in the old Shiekan outfit, trusting it to serve her on another journey to an uncertain destination. A light pack adorned her shoulders and her hair was tied back in a tight braid which disappeared inside her cloak. In all, it was a marked change from the glorious extravagance of her former apparel, but Zelda had pushed the niggling regret far away, not letting such foolish trifles cloud her thinking. Even so, the dress had been hard for her to part from, even knowing such a delicate garment could hardly survive the rigours of travel.
The giant trunks of trees adjoining her path loomed into her vision, proud sentinels of a different age, and then disappeared once more into the darkness behind as she moved forward. With some surprise, she realized that it was not only the receding night which impeded her vision, but a liberal blanket of mist which hung over the entire village. Translucent clouds of moisture slipped mysteriously between the pale columns of the trees, hiding the princess from unfriendly eyes and leaving her with a powerful feeling of awe. Aware of the cloaking effects of the fog, the princess thanked the Goddesses for her good luck.
It would be another hour at least, Zelda mused, before the village sprang to life and the Kokiri and fairies awakened from their slumber. At least an hour, Zelda corrected herself, before the immortal children awoke, the fairies themselves did not need sleep, but instead spend the night guarding the Kokiri they were sworn to protect. There were none to mark her passage, Zelda assured herself, but as she continued forward something caught her eye and pulled her head around.
The princess stopped dead, her gaze flicking quickly to her surroundings. She had seen movement, like the lighting of a candle at the edge of her vision, but then it had been gone, snuffed by the twilight around her. The mists which protected her closed in around, betraying no sign of any intruder, but still Zelda searched with the clammy touch of fear caressing her skin. Finally, dismissing the flash as the workings of an overactive imagination, she turned and continued down the narrow path.
Walking onward, she wondered idly on a topic that had hovered at the edge of her mind for almost a day, since the dark phantom had attacked her. Slipping at the outside of her conscience, she had ignored it in the face of more urgent issues, but now it rose to occupy her thoughts. The question of what she had done to her attacker, seconds before Demon's dagger had ended its life.
She had been defenceless, about to be hurled from the platform to the ground far below when she had hurled something at the dark figure, like lightening from her fingertips. Power had filled her, and for the first time in her life the princess had felt the cadence of destructive magic fill her being. Never had she possessed anything beyond a moderate talent for healing and an uncanny foresight in her dreams to predict the future and there had always been times she had wished for more. Like the mages of old, Zelda had dreamed of power, and like them she had found the eventual harnessing of it exhilarating.
Unfortunately, whatever magic she had possessed for that split-second had disappeared immediately afterward, and she could not sense it within herself. Even her healing gift had disappeared, which had provoked serious worry in Zelda's mind. In its place there was a hole, through which Zelda could not see, but she did not doubt that there was something beyond it. Whether the questionable gifts of the formidable legacy attributed to the Princess of Destiny, or some after-effect of the demon phantom's energy upon her body she could not tell.
She was heading downward on a limb which criss-crossed back and forth around the lower reaches of the ancient trunk which formed the heart of the Kokiri Village. Higher up, it ended abruptly in the great platform Zelda had been brought to on her first night with the Kokiri, but it was the winding stair at its foot that drew the princess. It was the only way to reach the forest floor below, unless, Zelda mused idly, she miraculously developed the power of flight.
Shapes emerged from the fog around and then receded like misshapen figures in a grotesque dance. Raising hands to her haunted eyes, Zelda rubbed them defiantly and then peered once again into the dream world which floated around her. They were tired and strained from a nearly sleepless night and the tension of her journey wasn't helping. Zelda could only imagine how she must look, pale and drawn from the trials of the previous days, but looks, she thought grimly, were the least of her worries.
Frustrated with herself for losing focus once again, the blond-haired girl tentatively peered over the side of the path, trying to gauge the distance to the bottom. But the swirling mists refused to reveal their secrets, shading any sign of the ground beneath from Zelda's searching eyes. Only as she straightened to continue, did Zelda finally discern something from the enveloping grey, in the form of another quick flash of soft yellow which dropped immediately out of sight.
Wondering if she was losing her sanity, the princess turned swiftly and strode down the path, refusing to look over her shoulder to where she had caught the glimpse. Just another mist-illusion, she thought, keeping her gaze rigidly ahead, nothing to cause worry. But it was only once she reached the beginnings of the winding stair which led to the forest floor that the tension left the princess's shoulder and the measured defiance from her step.
As she gingerly moved off the last step onto the forest floor below, a shadow flitted across Zelda's vision and she whirled, coming face to face with Demon. He had appeared from nowhere, materializing out of the mist like one of the ghosts which supposedly haunted Hyrule field. Poes they were called, ancient souls which were denied the Sacred Realm because of their sins, and Demon would not have seemed out of place among them.
"Come princess," he whispered, striding forward among the trees. "Soon the Kokiri will awaken, and by then, we must be far from here." His black cloak fluttered behind him as he moved fluidly through the shadowy fog which masked the forest, despite the utter lack of a breeze. The princess followed hurriedly, running through the shifting dream world around her.
They continued in the same fashion for more than hour, Demon slipping ethereally from tree to tree and Zelda striving to follow him. The princess wanted to call out to him, to ask him where he was taking her, but the brooding stillness of the woods stopped her. She felt as if a thousand eyes were watching, sweeping the woods with their unfriendly gaze and only a single word needed to draw their attention to herself. So she remained silent, concentrating on keeping the shifting movements of the black-clad warrior ahead of her in sight.
As time progressed and the fog began to lift, the walls of mist which had blocked the princess's vision receded into the trees. Daylight from the fledgling morning broke through in stippled patterns to the forest floor, but the new-found cheeriness did little to lift Zelda's spirits. More than once already, she had found herself glancing quickly over her shoulder in an attempt to surprise a half-imagined pursuer. The arduous journey and terrors of the night before were playing with her mind, and the princess found it hard to shake their grip upon her.
Abruptly, the princess realized that she could no longer see the Demon ahead of her, despite the departure of the fog. She put on a burst of speed, running forward through the trees in a vain attempt to find the black–clad warrior. Further, she ran, swinging her head from side to side and peering into the surrounding forest. Thoughts raced through her head to the rhythm of her pounding feet, swarming through her head in senseless tangles. Surely he hasn't stopped; she reasoned frantically, I would have seen him by-
A rough grip latched on to Zelda's arm and pulled her sideways, behind one of the sheltering trees. Stiff with the shock, the princess started to scream reflexively, but a black-gloved hand clamped itself over her mouth, stifling it before she could start. Instead, she began to struggle in a desperate bid to escape from her unknown captor.
As her gaze slid down to the gauntleted hand across her mouth, the princess realized who it was that held her, and new and even more unpleasant thoughts rushed through her head. Demon had tried to murder her once before, had killed uncountable others in his past, and judging from his actions, would kill many more to come. What if he hasn't changed, the cold suggestion wormed its way forward, what if he lured me here to finish the job he started back at the castle?
Almost before she could finish the though, Zelda was wrenched around to face her captor, her worst fears confirmed by the flickering red in his eyes. But as he lifted his other hand and put a finger to his lips, her fear turned to more to confusion. As she looked closer, the princess realized that the look in Demon's eyes was more urgency than anger. Something was wrong, but what, she had not yet guessed.
"Wood-wolves." He whispered, more mouthing the word than putting them to voice. Then he gestured to the tree above, pointing to a spot part-way up the ancient trunk of the forest giant. Unlike the rest of the grove around them, this particular tree had not grown straight upward in the smooth column which characterized the Great Forest, but instead divided into two great limbs very early in its growth. It was to the cleft between the limbs that Demon pointed.
Metal flashed in the morning light as the warrior of darkness drew his dagger, and Zelda recoiled from the glittering weapons, wondering whether she had been wrong about his intentions. But Demon only turned back to the tree and drove the blades into the trunk, before grabbing the princess around the waist and lifting her to stand atop the exposed dagger handles. From somewhere amid the trees, a chorus of howls rose to shatter the silence.
The imprint of Demon's hands burning a hole in Zelda's mind, she reached upward and scrambled clumsily into the cleft between the separating trunks. Somehow, her mind could not grasp what he had just done, and yet another part marvelled at the strength in those arms, despite the horrendous crimes committed by the ones who owned them…Quiet! Zelda ordered herself fiercely, as another series of howls sounded nearby.
The first of the wolves broke from the trees and ran toward the black-clad figure standing unarmed beneath the princess. Ravening jaws leaped toward him, covering the intervening distance in great bounds, streaks of brown and iron grey against the green of the forest. They were fast, faster than any of the luckless prey they had ever before pursued, but not nearly fast enough.
The princess had seen Demon's supernatural speed before, but the true beauty of his agility, coupled with the grace of his movements, took her breath away. Spinning to face the tree, the black-clad warrior grasped the hilts of his imbedded daggers and sprung upward, pushing with both hands and feet from the earth below. With the staggering power of his leap, he flew upward into a breath-taking flip which ripped his weapons from the trunk and slammed them in once more, slightly below the lip of the cleft within which Zelda hid. Then he was crouching beside her, daggers sheathed on his thighs and only the swirling of his midnight cape to remember his acrobatics.
Azure blue eyes wide with incredulity, Zelda studied the black-clad form beside here. No man she had ever known, could have completed that stunt, in fact, she hardly believed it to be mortally possible. No wonder the Hero of Time was considered such a mighty warrior in the legends; at least, the princess corrected herself, if the previous Hero had been anything like Demon.
Abruptly, the snarling of the rabid pack around the base of the tree tore Zelda's attention away from the figure beside her. Peering out onto the raging animosity below, she abruptly wished she hadn't and pulled her head back. The wolves were almost frantic in their desire to reach their prey, leaping high into the air to scrabble at the wooden truck mere inches from the cleft. Their howls filled the morning air, turning the blood in the princess's veins to icy slush.
But as she glanced back at her companion, Zelda perceived that Demon was completely unphased. In fact, he shifting around, settling into a more comfortable position in the cramped space between the divided trunks. Noticing the princess's fear Demon grinned, an expression which seemed to emphasize his teeth above all else. Behind his pale blue eyes, flames danced eerily in the darkness, highlighting the shadows which had seeped into his gaze. Without warning, he through back his head and howled to the sky above, joining the horrendous caphecony of the wolves.
The princess shuddered, her sympathy toward the Demon replaced by sudden revulsion. Anger, pain, despair, she could sense them all within the black-clad warrior, but there was something else there as well, a sense of ecstatic enjoyment of the situation, of the danger, of the wild beast and its rage…a sense of complete, gibbering insanity.
As Demon's rage built, the howl rose in volume, masking the sound of the wolves with its transcendent madness. Even the killers beneath the tree faltered, as the Demon voiced his cry, sensing their own death in the ghastly sound. Endless it seemed, in the seconds it shattered the silence of the forest, but then it was cut off by the same being that had created it. Looking over at the terrified princess beside him, Demon managed to holds his shadows at check for a few seconds more before he was swept away.
Zelda had clapped her hands over her eyes to shut out the sound of Demon's terrible cry, but it hadn't helped. The howl seemed to permeate her very bones, rushing seeping evil through her blood-stream and resonating inside her skull. It was as if the black-clad warrior had taken the wolf-sound and multiplied the anger within it until it filled the entire sky above. Terrible and deadly it was, and the princess felt herself flinching before it.
Then it died, and Demon looked over at the princess. Something in her terror made him pause, and a deep sadness flickered across his gaze, battling the shadows. Sparks flickered and died in the bottomless pits which were his eyes, but then the crimson returned and swept all else away. "I'm sorry princess." Demon whispered, finding a last moment of sanity inside the madness. But then his daggers were out and he disappeared over the edge of the cleft into the massed wolves below.
Zelda closed her eyes, as the first wolf uttered a dying scream from the forest floor. She tried to imagine herself somewhere else, anywhere else, instead of a witness to the carnage. But the memory of Demon's face, the sadness which showed his losing struggle against the darkness within, kept her near. Listening to the muffled sounds of the massacre below and fervently praying for the soul a man she dared only hope could be saved.
