TWENTY-SEVEN
Glancing over her shoulder every few seconds revealed nothing new as she continued walking to the entrance to the tunnel; Ganondorf wasn't following her, or if he was he was being quite stealthy. She just kept moving, hoping she could get into the tunnel and deliver the password quickly enough – what was it again? It had something to do with colors and food ….
Her mind veered off course, though, as she once again wondered why her. Why she was so special that apparently Ganondorf's secret master plan couldn't work without her. It probably did involve something nefarious, and she imagined a ritual sacrifice, either because she was the one who brought him back or because she was the child of the man who killed him. There couldn't be any other explanation, because otherwise there just wasn't anything that special about her – in her mind at least. She was an ordinary girl who was content to have been an ordinary girl. How she wished she could return to the days where her biggest problems were the hole in the roof or a nearly empty ice box-
Suddenly she remembered the password. But before she could do anything else, she saw a flash of red in her peripheral vision. She looked to see the source of the flash, and she gasped. Standing in front of the gate back into Castle Town was Zant, with five people kneeling in front of him. Ketura quickly jumped behind the closest tree and stuck her head out to the side just enough to watch what was happening.
Torches posted at the gate illuminated the scene. Zant faced one man, a Hylian soldier, and extended an arm to raise him off the ground and into the air. The soldier hovered, stiff as a board, but pleaded with Zant to "Stop this! Release us!" After a quiet second passed, Zant raised his other arm and created a jagged black crystal in his hand, which glowed with a red aura. He forcefully shoved the crystal into the soldier's chest, and the soldier screamed in agony. The other four people watched, and Ketura could see the horror and dread on their faces. She didn't understand what Zant was doing, but she knew it wasn't good.
The Hylian soldier's screams died down, and his body shriveled into a dense dark ball that Zant allowed to fall from the ground. One woman in the lineup wailed loudly. A moment later, the dark ball that had once been a man expanded, growing arms and legs and a head and elongating until it had become a fully formed shadow beast. The other people gasped and cried out in fear, but with one look in their direction from Zant they fell silent.
"Now, who's next?" he asked, sounding like he was merely playing a game. His question was immediately met with another uproar of shrill protests and begging, the loudest of which came from another man three people down from where the Hylian soldier once stood. Zant walked down the lineup to that man, raised him into the air, and repeated the same process.
Who were these people, Ketura wondered, and why them? She didn't recognize any of their voices. She couldn't pick out any clear connection between them. One by one those people went from scared human beings saying "Please, no! Let me go! I'll give you anything you want! Don't do this!" to silent shadow beasts who stood perfectly still as their numbers in the lineup increased. Ketura had known that Zant had been transforming people into those monsters, but to actually see it happen was something else. It filled her with dread, like someone had grabbed onto her insides and squeezed them as tight as they could. She wanted to look away but at the same time she didn't.
Five shadow beasts soon stood before Zant, who walked up and down the lineup and inspecting his handiwork. He let out a soft, menacing chuckle, and stopped walking when he reached the end of the line, standing next to the shadow beast who had once been the Hylian soldier.
"Go, into the city," he ordered the beasts, "and create chaos."
The beasts broke into a lumbering run, going through the gate one at a time, and into Castle Town. Once the last one had gone in, Zant disintegrated into black squares that floated upwards into one of his jagged portals. Ketura spent a moment staring at the spot where the shadow beasts once stood, then glanced back to where she had met with Ganondorf, then back towards the city gate. She took a deep breath, hoping to calm her furiously pounding heart, and then ran as fast as her feet could carry her into Castle Town.
South Road's major thoroughfare was empty, save for two stray dogs who had gotten into the meat stand and were chowing down on some sausages. Ketura glanced down the nearby side streets and saw nothing but piles of snow and slush … and then she heard the crash of shattering glass behind her. She turned to see one of the beasts smashing the windows of a shop, then reaching its long arm through the window and swatting it to knock over the hats on display before jumping inside the shop and continuing to knock things over and around. Ketura ran up to the shop and ambled in through the window, being careful to avoid broken shards of glass, and shot a large jagged bolt of red light at the beast. After being hit in the back of the head, the beast fell over onto a table, crushing the table under its weight and slamming into the ground. For good measure, Ketura lobbed another attack into the beast's back. It exploded into wisps of black vapor and red sparks. Once all of the vapor had cleared and only a small pile of ash lay where the beast used to stand, she crawled out of the window, being careful to avoid the sharp edges of the broken glass.
One down, four to go. It was going to be a long night, she thought. As she ran through the southern neighborhoods, she recalled the transformation process she had witnessed, and how these creatures had once been human … would she technically be killing people? Was there a way to turn them back, or was the transformation permanent? No matter what, she couldn't let them run around, leaving destruction in their paths.
What felt like an hour passed by before she saw another shadow beasts. After running down side almost every side street in the South Road area, she wound up on the southernmost edges of the West Road neighborhoods. Three houses in a row had been completely wrecked, with smashed windows and giant holes in the walls; one house was on the verge of collapse, as a support beam in one corner lay in splintered pieces on the ground. The families who lived in the houses were still in the process of climbing out of the wreckage. Someone in the next house over screamed as a man flew out through a window, landing hard in the street amidst snow and shards of broken glass.
Ketura ran over and helped that man to his feet. "My son is still in there, with that monster!" he said frantically, pointing at the house. Almost as if it was on cue, a boy screamed from inside the house. "Papa! Papa!"
"I don't know what to do. I can't fight that thing! It's massive!" the man lamented as he clasped his hands to the top of his head.
"I can," said Ketura before charging towards the house. She climbed in through the broken window into a living room with ripped-up furniture, a torn carpet, and ripped-up paintings littering the floor. Before her stood the shadow beast, back turned to her, with one of its massive hands wrapped around the neck of a boy who looked no older than ten. The boy flailed and struggled and kicked his legs in a futile effort to free himself. Seeing that she had a clear shot, Ketura shot a red bolt of light at the beast and hit it in the back. The beast turned its head towards her, dropped the boy, and swung its body around so it could charge right at her. While the boy crawled into a corner and curled into a ball, Ketura jumped to the side to avoid being swatted, but the beast successfully made contact and knocked her into the wall. There was blunt pain in her head where she hit the wall, and stinging pain across her cheek where the beast had struck her. She got back onto her feet, to see the beast only two feet away from her, and she wasted no time in throwing another bolt at it. Her attack missed as the beast bobbed to the side, and it swiped her again, knocking her into a bookshelf. After hitting her temple on the shelf, she dropped to her knees, and a few books on the shelf fell down around her. She got back up and jumped out of the way just in time for the beast to try and attack her again. Now that the beast had left itself vulnerable to attack, she shot another red bolt and hit it in the chest. The beast let out a weak roar, fell to the ground, and exploded like the first one had.
Ketura moved towards the boy in the corner. "Come on," she said, extending out a hand to the boy, who looked up at her with wide anxious eyes. He looked past her to see the pile of ash that had once been the shadow beast, then back to her, and took her hand. She pulled him up and led him to the broken window, lifted him through and onto the street, and hopped out behind him. The boy jumped into his father's arms. "Thank you, thank you, thank you," the man said to Ketura.
"Yeah, of course," said Ketura. She looked from him down the street at the other people standing outside, huddling together for warmth, looking back towards her with mixtures of fear, confusion, and awe.
"And there are more running around," she added before taking off again, doing the best she could to push through the throbbing pains in her head.
She followed a trail of wrecked buildings, debris, crumbled stones, pieces of brick, broken glass, and scared people down West Road to the park where her father had given a speech, and saw the remaining three shadow beasts on all fours, skulking around by the statue of Farore. As she slowly walked closer, she thought of how she had beaten the three last time, specifically that if one was left standing then it would bring the others back for another round. Her heart raced, her chest and feet ached, she was out of breath, her head still hurt from where she had been thrown around that one house, and she racked her brain to think of an easy way to dispatch all three of them at once … there was a spell Ganondorf had taught her, that she hadn't attempted since learning it … but it could work, she thought.
One of the beasts turned itself around, paused, then looked up right at her. It charged right at her, accompanied by its comrades, one of whom growled eerily. Ketura widened her stance, planted her feet firmly on the ground, and held out an open palm. She formed a black sphere in her hand, and once it grew big enough it started crackling with lightning-like bursts of red and purple.
The beast gained on her swiftly, and even though it wasn't quite ready yet Ketura hurled her sphere forward. The sphere broke into three smaller ones, two of which hit one beast each. The third missed narrowly as its intended target leaped forward towards Ketura; however, the beast stopped to let out its roar that raised the other two back to their feet.
"Of course," Ketura muttered under her breath. She jogged backwards to put some distance between herself and the shadow beasts, who moved to converge on her once they got back on their feet. One became uncomfortably close, and she did not hesitate to shoot a red bolt at it, which hit square in the chest. Confident that that one would be down, she turned her attention to the remaining two and formed another crackling black sphere in her hand. This time, her attack split into two upon being cast, and she succeeded in hitting both of them.
The final two shadow beasts she had hit exploded once they hit the ground. She didn't see an explosion in her peripheral vision where the first one had fallen, however, so she looked down at the ground where that beast was, and gasped at what she saw. The black-and-red crystal Zant had used for the transformation lay on the ground, coated in blood and staining the snow around it red. Nearby lay a man with a bushy black beard, a pale face, and a large hole in his chest from which blood oozed out and onto his shirt and the ground around him.
Ketura dropped to her knees at the man's side, and her first instinct was to press both of her hands down hard on the man's wound. She made the connection instantly, and the small optimistic voice in her head told her that maybe there was still a chance to save him.
The man gasped for air, and his eyes opened wide and found Ketura's face. Amidst the raspy attempts a breathing, he let out strained noises and grunts that tried to form words.
"You were, uh … you'll be okay," said Ketura, trying to sound calm and comforting. The man on the ground wheezed desperately, and then gagged. Blood filled his mouth, trickling out from the corners onto his face. Panic struck Ketura, as she realized she didn't have any idea what to do for this man. She couldn't carry him, nobody else was around, and she didn't have any potions to give him, and she didn't know any healing spells. "You'll be fine, you'll be okay," she said to him repeatedly, and she saw the pain and fear in his eyes. She could barely imagine how much he was hurting, or what the experience of being a shadow beast was like.
He made an awful retching sound, coughed out some more blood, made one last final attempt at drawing breath, and then he fell still. His eyes still looked up at Ketura, but instead of expressing how he felt they were blank and unfocused. She took a hand, now wet and covered in his blood, and held it to the veins in his neck to feel for a pulse. Nothing.
Now what, she asked herself as she wiped blood off of herself using the man's shirt. Before she could think or do anything else, though, a hazy mass of blue materialized before her, and she looked up to see Zant's projection of himself.
"Maybe now you will think twice about killing my friends," said Zant.
Ketura scoffed. She looked from the dead man on the ground to Zant. "'Friends?' You did this to them," she responded indignantly. "Why would you? He suffered. They all did."
"To make them better. More perfect. And to get somebody's attention."
"Well, here I am. You have my attention." Ketura's voice shook, as did her hands.
Zant inclined his head towards the dead man. "You didn't know that one, but his death moves you. I find it perplexing when one cares about something that is not their own, yet here you are."
"That's what makes us different. I don't just care about myself," spat Ketura.
"Wrong! If you truly cared about these miserable worms in Castle Town, you would have given yourself to me already. You are willing to let them suffer and die so you can hide yourself. You did this!"
"Shut up! No I didn't!"
"Yes, you did. And you will allow it to continue to happen … until the day comes when you finally decide to surrender yourself to me. How many more will you allow me to hurt before then?"
"Well I'm right here! I'm here, in Castle Town, in a park near West Road! If you want me so bad then come and get me!" Ketura threw her arms out as she spoke.
"No … I'm having fun, truth be told … and you have a lot of fight in you, it seems. I want to wait until you are tired and all of your spirit is spent. Then you will come to me."
Zant's projection vanished. Ketura gazed ahead, at a light in a streetlamp, figuring out how she thought and felt about what he had to say. Maybe he was right – no, he wasn't – or was he?
She looked back at the man on the ground, now cold and pale, lying in a small pool of his blood. Ketura sighed tiredly and gently closed his eyelids. "I'm so sorry," she whispered.
Leaving his body in the park wasn't the best thing, but she didn't know what else to do for him. She didn't know his name, or his family, or where he lived, yet he had all those things at one point. So did all of the people who Zant had turned into those beasts … all of those people she had killed.
Her tired, aching feet carried her back to Telma's, and gave out just in time for her body to hit the couch. She didn't bother to take her shoes off, or check herself for any blood that might still be on her. All she could think about were Zant's words, and the scene of those people being transformed, the man on the ground, and the fear in his eyes as his life slowly bled out of him. Was she to blame? Could she have avoided the deaths of those five people if she had already surrendered herself?
None of this had been what she wanted, and she couldn't think of a future for her life that was happy and peaceful. All she could imagine was running, hiding, being attacked, attacking in return, pain, blood, death. There was also the cloudy, uncertain future of whatever Ganondorf had up his sleeve. If she had stayed with him, she thought, perhaps this could have been avoided. Those people could still be alive, sleeping safely in their beds like Telma was just one room away. Or maybe Zant would have come for them anyway.
It seemed like the simple, easy, noble thing to do to give herself up. Yet she had an idea of what that would entail: meeting a nasty, painful end like that man in the park had. She didn't want to go through that, even though others had and probably would again. Did that make her a terrible person?
Perhaps she wasn't a terrible person, Ketura eventually decided. She wasn't the one killing people in an attempt to force someone to surrender themselves. Even if she did, that wasn't a guarantee that Zant would decide to leave Castle Town alone, so she would not have saved anyone anyway if that were the case. Her response to Zant just then hadn't been exactly noble or heroic, though, but in her mind she imagined herself facing him and destroying him with the most powerful magic she could conjure. It was an elaborate fantasy of hers, but it was one she very much wanted to come true.
When she finally let herself go to sleep, she did not dream.
