"I hate this place."
She shot me an unimpressed glare. "We know. You've told us at least forty-seven times since we entered the Grounds."
I grinned at her with my best, obnoxiously bright smile. "I had no idea you could count that high!" Her glowering look just made me grin wider, but I kept walking, following Link's lead as he wandered along a short, tiled corridor and along broken staircases, up into the Mirror complex. I had been joking all this way in the hopes of drowning out the awful chills racing up and down my spine, and along the very core of my arm. I'd also been using it as a distraction, or a diversion, because upon reconvening after the Cave of Ordeals incident, Zelda revealed that I had witnessed a collection of memories. Back in the City in the Sky, when I'd believed myself to be part of a series of ridiculous hallucinations, I had actually experienced broken bits and pieces of both Zelda's and Midna's memories as an accidental side-effect of the knife and the meshing of magic. I felt like I'd violated their thoughts, and it made everything that much more awkward. But no matter how much I joked and deflected, none of it helped. Until, of course, we came to my favorite place ever, the Mirror Chamber, and the awkwardness took a backseat to the disturbing tingling in my arm.
"Stop loitering," Midna snapped without any real venom. "You're like the annoying kid brother I never had." I shook my head and continued inching along the wall, a thoroughly ominous feeling coiling and recoiling in my stomach so that I neglected the bait. I hadn't noticed it before since the last time I'd been in here, I'd been on the verge of dying, but this place was pretty grand if you ignored the massive piles of sand built up along the encircling ramparts from the relentless winds. This part of the temple appeared more as an arena, probably owing to the structure of the room a few floors down, where Zant had kept his pet skeleton. In the center of the complex, Link stood on a raised stone platform that faced the almost empty frame, and behind that but still within line, the many-times-larger-than-life statue of the cross-legged woman intertwined with the snake. My eyes also traced the heavy chains that ran from the top of the statue into several anchor points deep in the sand of the open courtyard.
He was leaning a little too closely to the Mirror, staring in fascination at the dissolving chains and twisting patterns – close enough for a specific type of accident a little too close to home. I lightly grasped his shoulder and reeled him back and away from the shard, warning quietly, "Might not want to stand so close." When he picked my hand off, I just wriggled my fingers in his face, smirking sardonically. Midna chose the moment to interrupt with more of my favorite things.
"He's waiting for us," she grinned, humorless. As she pointed at the frame, our three prizes emerged immediately to hang suspended for a split second before rushing together and in a flash of magic, recombining. Unsettling waves of twilight emanated from the now-reactivated portal; I felt myself stagger with the sudden blunt impact, neither painful nor pleasant but strange in the truest sense. Link actually growled, but Midna just adopted a disturbing smile, still humorless, her face directed towards the oncoming waves and her eyes closed.
"Like it really needed to be said?" I rolled my eyes, voicing what Link's unimpressed look so clearly implied. He had a point. Zant had already made a cameo up in Oocca-Ville, failed miserably, found out, and now lay in wait like a typical self-absorbed villain. Pointing at the mirror, I stated flatly, "Is it safe to even go through that thing? Is it like warping at all?" We all knew I would follow them – even if there was a ninety-percent chance of being irreversibly transformed into a puppy or something. This is one of your better ideas, like the cannon. Let's follow people into strange vortexes of doom, too. What next, magical rays of light? Bottomless pits?
'Expecting the unexpected?' Zelda put in dryly.
Can't be too careful with you lot.
Midna cut in, hands on her hips, as she tossed her nose in the air. "No. And even if it takes us straight to him, isn't that what you've been waiting for?"
Well, no, I wanted to say, I don't actually want to see him again. I just want to kill him. Zelda snickered at the lack of sense that made when spoken aloud, but I understood what I meant and had every intention of only adopting my cocky and confident persona when the damn bastard had a sword sticking out of his gut. Couldn't count the cuccos before they hatched. Almost as a reminder, my arm twinged with an uncomfortable numbness, and the shrapnel in my chest seemed to grow heavier the longer I stood within range of the Mirror. Despite this, I moved closer to the platform, stupidly hoping for some sort of desensitization – and actually got my wish when I noticed that the numbness receded slightly only in the presence of the pure twilight, or the stuff radiating from the portal rather than the physical Mirror itself.
Seeing this, she grinned, but it had a dreamy quality to it, her eye glowing, her hair still and unthreatening for once. Someone had started humming a simple melody, backed by the sweeping of sand over stone and through rough grass, and the ethereal buzzing of the portal itself, the oddly expansive reflection of the Mirror cast onto what had to be half a mountain made of carved obsidian. "Some call our realm a world of shadows, but that makes it sound unpleasant…" Midna stretched luxuriously in the twilight, her smile still soft and bright. "The twilight holds a serene beauty, like a perpetual sunrise or sunset here. You know, that one fraction of a day when everyone seems pure and gentle and good…." I snorted, and Link elbowed me hard in the ribs. "But things changed as foreign magic polluted the twilight"
"It was all our doing."
The three of us couldn't have whipped around any faster. Standing behind us in a neat row were several monk-looking beings, each donning a creepy white mask and engulfed in an intense glow. Link's hand strayed to his sword with mine following suit, but whereas he eventually dropped his, I held tightly to the hilt like a lifeline. One of the glowing figures spoke, but the words emanated from all five, a disembodied but universally shared voice: "We overestimated our abilities as sages and attempted to put an end to Ganondorf's evil magic... I hope you can find it in yourself to forgive our carelessness."
Sages. What the hell kind of circus was this? I glanced sideways at Midna, but her eye was fixed firmly on the middle figure as if in a brazen warning glare. Somewhere in my memory, I could recall unfamiliar sights and sounds and information, and then some of my own, some vague history lesson back in a sun-dappled kitchen that mentioned sages and temples and a hero – and was this real? I almost took a step back, half in and half out of solidity, a ghost caught in the midst of emerging or dispersing. Link watched the crowd with wide, alert eyes. And then:
"O Twilight Princess."
And they bowed. Oooh, confession-time jackpot. This certainly explained her penchant for ordering people around and pouting. I did take a step back then, just as Link turned to her in one fluid motion that betrayed too many indistinguishable emotions, including something like triumph. Midna ducked her head, shot the middle sage another death glare. Someone had said too much.
"So." she said slowly. Too slowly. I should have known, especially given the experience in the City in the Sky, but in the interest of salvaging respect for the girls, I'd blocked out most of it. I felt like this was so much less and so much more than surprise because this revelation coincided with everything that had happened. How couldn't Midna be the princess of that crazy other world? "So you knew?" That pained grimace spread across her face, slowly like her words. It seemed like she was ripping something open with deliberate care, until she adopted the haughty attitude again. "As a ruler who fled her people, I'm hardly qualified to forgive you."
As a ruler, as a ruler. Oh, Midna. That made two princesses that I had met and befriended. What were the odds of that? First Zelda, and now a foreign dignitary? I could either be a very lucky or a very unlucky individual. …And given the sages' almost-puzzled, mostly-curious glances, I was willing to bet on the latter circumstance. It was like Judgement Day or something, standing in front of these guys. I swallowed thickly in trepidation but couldn't tear my attention from the scene. Link, not quite as shell-shocked, shared my morbid curiosity. He'd taken a step back and his eyes had become unfocused, the trajectory of his gaze aimed somewhere just past her face. Two days ago we had fought in an underground cavern, and now, we were standing in respective piles of sand on a raised stone platform, essentially facing another dimension or something while a bunch of decrepit sages cheerfully spilled the beans about random shit.
Midna abruptly turned to Link, one hand clutching the opposite elbow, eyes sweeping the ground. "In our world, we've long believed that the Hero would appear as a divine beast. I… I don't think I ever told you."
If he had been a wolf, his ears would have perked. Maybe they did, even in this form. I wanted to grin at him, because it felt right, but my own confusion handicapped any action. Now, I thoroughly relished the happy-happy confession time. It was a beautiful thing, the unveiling of secrets – to a point. From Zelda's volunteered backstories, I knew the origins of this adventure and our purpose and what it would mean if we succeeded. I also knew about Midna, now, too, which helped things along when it came to dealing with her. What offended me was the apparent inevitability of all of this. People had known all of this was going to happen, and did nothing to stop it? And then there were the relentless stares. Shouldn't they have known I was with them, since they were obviously keeping tabs on Midna, the, ahem, Twilight Princess? Even Dragmire cared enough to want me dead. Unless, of course, the sages' meddling in Hyrulean affairs came along with a certain checklist that went something like:
- Check in on how the little Hylians are doing, and see if any of them are killing each other.
- Take a long vacation. Frolic in an enchanted meadow. Buy a new mask.
- Pop back into Hyrule, act shocked and self-righteous, decide to become a Justice All-Star and botch an execution, and promptly vanish sans a pat on the back.
- Take another long vacation. Frolic in a new enchanted meadow. Make an insurance claim for that other guy's mask.
- Years later, reappear to greet the poor idiot sent to fix the mistake. Oh, and stare incessantly at the strange companion of said idiot, because pressing matters had prevented proper observation, essentially resulting in a not-so-stowed stowaway on the adventure of several lifetimes.
Yeah. Right.
"I thought I could use you, Link." He shuffled, only slightly and I kept thinking, This is too broadly applicable. "And I only cared about returning my world to normal… I didn't care what happened to you or Zelda or Hyrule." He actually scoffed a little at that and I instantly recalled the bugs. Midna continued unperturbed, though her words came across as a little too practiced and that painful grimace had returned. Considering the audience, this probably wasn't the best setting for a discussion like this. "Link, I-" Surprised at the attention, I materialized in full and nodded in recognition despite her gaze having a little difficulty in finding me. "And after everything went wrong, when you broke Zelda's spell, I thought I could use you too." Laugh. "I used you both. And after witnessing the selfless lengths that you have all taken… Your sacrifices…." The shrill laugh startled me into a grin as she reluctantly turned a shy glance to each of us as she grumbled, "Thank you." And then she ruined it with: "For now. We still have to set things right."
Saving the world. Oh, goddesses. She made it sound like a chore. I'd doubted the idea from the very start, the whole saving the world shit I'd been fed since I was a child, and her attitude towards it now did not exactly encourage feelings of confidence. The name game made acts of heroism seem unavoidable in the village, and the focus on Link being the "divine beast" and a spectacular savior and all of those stories and legends from my childhood being made real – all of that only enforced the permeating expectation, like the entire world awaited our actions with bated breath. And maybe it was because I couldn't imagine an end to this, just this present plodding, this present entrapment between two extremes, like the lighted space in a dark corridor – maybe it was because I felt too caught up right now that this venture assumed such a grey pall. We could, of course, possibly save the world and set things right, whatever right happened to be, now or then. We could also suffer terrible deaths at the hands of Zant or Ganondorf or, if things went wrong, at the bloodied, twisted fingers of each other. I'd thought about this countless times before – grass and leather came to mind – but never had I doubted it as thoroughly as I did now. She sounded painfully fake in her announcements, in her familiar revelations that said everything and nothing at the same time. They meant nothing to me, and yet I knew undoubtedly that I would follow her and Link and Zelda to the ends of the world regardless of the expectations she and the rest of the population held. I guessed that it just came with the territory: Heroes were either spectacularly brave, or terrifyingly stupid, but in all cases disgustingly loyal. Since I wasn't exactly a hero, I had to be a disproportionate mixture of all three, with the emphasis on the latter two qualities.
"I'm sorry for keeping that from you, but I thought it was for the best," she continued passionately. "We're almost there! Will you-will you still help me?" She held out a palm and he clasped it just as I expected him to – meanwhile behind us, the sages vanished with a short moan. I floated off the platform to orbit the Mirror, trying to hide my hurt at being excluded from the little exclamation.
"Well aren't you the peppy princess," I quipped at her.
Midna gave me one short glance that said it all: You just had to ruin the moment, didn't you? Grinning maniacally, Link leapt past and ruffled my hat until it sat crookedly on my head. I mock-glared back at him. "Hah, okay, Divine Beast. Just watch yourself, or everyone's favorite twilit accident might kill you in your sleep."
"Do that, and the Twilight Princess will murder you," she snapped back, a hand rising to readjust her headdress a little too regally. Link had an awful grin on his face.
I narrowed my eyes at him. "I don't even want to know. Can we just go? I kind of want to get around to kicking that bastard's ass before I get a handle on my self-righteous fury."
"Some self-control might do you some good." Her smile revealed a glittering fang. Then it vanished. "I want to talk to the two of you before we go." Glancing around quickly as if to discern the sages' continued presence, she shook her head and sighed quietly. "They'll be here regardless. At any rate-" Midna looked pointedly between us as I floated nearby, Link still poised to step onto the white tiles just beyond the platform that led to an even higher dais completely exposed to the twilight being reflected between the Mirror and the portal. "-we need to set some things straight. Zant must be killed, then we can move onto the castle and hopefully restore Zelda to her proper form. Obviously, I need my form back, because I'm next to useless as an imp."
"I think you'd be next to useless as anything," I interjected. Her ponytail hit me over the head and obligingly I shut my mouth amidst snickers from the resident mute.
"Anyway, I'd prefer it if you didn't joke about it, Link." Ooh, direct glare. "I didn't share that information for a reason, and you're not helping with your sarcasm. We're almost there, so just hold off a little longer, since you're apparently incapable of tactful judgment or any form of patience."
"Said the pot to the kettle." She looked like she was going to say something, but I ploughed right over her. "I understand. And I've got plenty to say, but I'm willing to hold off 'til later, because I'm just so tactful like that. Anyway, congrats on the cute little speech. Now can we please go retaliate the hell out of that guy?"