Writer's block sucks. Enough said.

Chapter 55: Ralis's Sacrifice

Link entered the mourge. It was cold inside, because it had stone walls as opposed to the wooden ones of which the rest of Kakiriko Village was comprised, and it smelled horribly of decaying flesh. Link buried his nose in the crook of his elbow and stepped forward into the dark room, illuminated only by faint candles. To his surprise, he found Saria. "I know you are not a child," Link began, "but I must mention that it is quite unnerving to see such a childlike figure in such a gruesome place."

"I couldn't agree more. I don't belong here. But Ralis is in unbearable pain over the death of his sister, and I had to take him to her body in order to fulfill the offer that I made him."

It disturbed Link how Saria avoided the subject of what exactly the offer entailed. "What offer?"

Saria looked grave. "It is an offer that I would never usually make. But Ralis's love for his sister is so great I felt that to stand idle when he is in such sorrow, and to have the power to end his sorrow, would be a crime."

Link felt an icy feeling enter his entire body, as if the cold of the musty air had seeped inside of him. Looking at Saria's solemn face, he knew exactly what she meant by ending his sorrow. "You mean sacrificing his life to revive Ruto?"

She nodded. With that nod, a thousand thoughts swarmed his mind. Navi…Dark Link…Bindu…even his mother could be revived by the same method, if there was a sacrifice.

"Link, you must keep something in mind," she said, touching his arm lightly, looking up at him with almost pleading eyes. "This is a dangerous act of magic. It is not dangerous in the physical sense, but dangerous because it unravels the fabric of the universe itself and puts it back together again, not always perfectly. The goddesses themselves are afraid to use this kind of magic. Please understand, this cannot use this as a method of bringing back all the loved ones you ever lost."

It was then that something occurred to Link, about him and Zelda and Ganondorf and their continuous reincarnations. "If bringing someone back from the dead is so dangerous, and if we three bearers of the Triforce were revived from death so many times, then how is it that there hasn't been a glitch yet?"

"Oh, Link, if the very stream of space and time were to disappear, how would you know that it had?"

It took a while for Link to process what Saria said. "You mean…"

"Yes, I do."

"How so?"

"It would take too long to explain. We have to get to Ralis, who's waiting for us at Ruto's body. But I will give you a hint. Time is not linear."

With that, Saria turned and walked through a forbidding stone archway, through which Link could see many silhouettes of covered bodies. His mind was swimming with questions. What was it that kept the reincarnations going? Was it the goddesses? The Triforce itself? And even more mysterious than that was the fact that it required a sacrifice to resurrect Ruto, which led Link to believe that there was something being sacrificed with every reincarnation of the Triforce bearers. But what was this? With that disturbing thought, Link made his way into the adjacent room.

There he found Ralis standing, silent and still as a statue, gray in the eerie light, holding the hand of Ruto. He looked majestic, even beautiful, his moist Zora skin glistening, reflecting the aura of the candles. He began to speak.

"I did it for my sister," he began. "I killed Dark Link for her. For vengeance. But, despite my delusions, that did nothing to ease the pain. Vengeance only aggravated it. The only way I can make my sadness subside is by bringing my sister back into this world. And if I must die in the process of doing that, well then, so be it." With that, he nodded to Saria, who closed her eyes.

Nothing happened for a while. Saria stood unmoving. Ralis turned one last time to make eye contact with Link. He mouthed the words, "I'm sorry," but no sound came out.

Link smiled weakly. Slowly, deliberately, kindly, he mouthed the words, "I forgive you." The look of relief on Ralis's face was comforting to Link. At least Ralis will die happy, he thought.

Then, all the candles in the room went out at once. Link felt the ground leave his feet. His stomach churned as he lost all sense of direction and gravity. His ears filled with an unbearable roaring. His head ached, and he felt nauseated as his extremeties went numb. I'm dying, he thought, though he knew Ralis was the only one dying in the room. Just as Link thought the sensations couldn't get any worse, he felt as if he was being stretched thin, thin and tall. It was a strange sensation, feeling his feet so far from his head.

All at once, everything went back to normal. Link felt his feet on the ground and his body parts proportional, though he still felt quite disoriented. "Is it over?" he croaked.

"Yes, it's over," Saria said comfortingly. Link heard a snap and saw a bright spark of light, expanding to a shimmering green flame over Saria's hand. Her face was gostly white in the light, exquisitely smooth and still like porcelain. "Ralis is dead. Ruto is alive."

Link heard a violent rush of air. He snapped his head around to see the vague outline, a mere shadow among shadows, of Ruto jolting upright. There was coughing and sputtering, as well as noises Link had never guessed a human or a Zora could make. Ruto's voice cracked forward from a throat that had been still for weeks. "Where am I?"

Nobody wanted to answer.

"Where am I?"

Link glanced at Saria, who glanced back at him. Link opened his mouth to speak. "You're in a morgue."

"Is that you, Link? Oh, Link, why am I here? Why?"

Saria gave Link a sympathetic look before turning to Ruto. "Everything will be explained to you, in time."

"Explain it to me now! I'm panicking here!"

Link sighed forlornly. "Ruto, what was the last thing you remember?"

She was silent for a moment before answering. "I was guarding the door to the room at the inn, and you were sleeping, and…then the world turned all hazy. I saw myself lying on the ground, and then from somewhere there came this golden light and when I turned around there was this gold mask hovering…with rays of light radiating from it. But they were solid. Like tentacles. After that I don't remember much…I ran away as fast as I could, and hid. Somewhere. I don't remember where. And now I'm here."

Saria whispered to Link, "It seems she only reached the first realm of the afterlife. If she had reached the second, she would have been lost to us forever."

Link had no idea what to make of this. He remembered the words of Dark Link: The only absolutes in the universe are life and death. "You were mistaken, Dark Link," Link said under his breath. Suddenly, Ruto gasped.

"Dark Link! I remember more now! After the mask found my hiding place, which still escapes me, I met a boy who looked like Link, but he had black clothes and red eyes. He looked rather mournful. He had sort of a transluscent black cloak with him, and he beckoned to me, even as I was being chased by this…mask. I went to him and he asked me, 'Are you ready to die?' I said 'No, I have a brother and a…a love waiting for me somewhere."

"And who was this love of which you spoke?" Link asked.

"You," she said softly. Though Link had not been pleased with Ruto's unwanted admiration before, he did find it sweet that she would think of him even beyond the threshold of death. "Do you still reject me?"

Link thought of Zelda. "Ruto, I can't talk about this right now. You must understand."

"It's Zelda, isn't it? You love Zelda, don't you?"

Saria looked irritated. "Stop it, both of you. You're too young to even understand what love is. Even I don't. Even the goddess Nayru, in all her wisdom, may not understand something so great as love. So put your search for love on hold and focus for a moment. Ruto, what did Dark Link do after you told him that you didn't want to die?"

"He shrouded me in his cloak, and the mask seemed to lose me. It couldn't see the cloak. It just searched with its blank eyes, and after a while floated over us and away. After that he introduced himself as Dark Link. I don't remember any more."

"The realm in which you were chased by a mask was the first realm of the afterlife. That mask was an angel. If it had caught you, you would have found yourself in the second realm of the afterlife, a more permanent realm. What dwells there, I don't know."

Ruto let out a short yelp. "I…died?"

"You died."

"Who killed me?"

"The same boy who saved you."

Ruto was silent. Saria said, "Link, you can leave if you like. I need to catch Ruto up on the events since she was killed. Unless you want to explain them."

"No, no, go ahead. If you ask me, there's too much to tell."

"All right. Then go inform the others of what happened here." Link felt the weight of the world fall on his shoulders. That, too, seemed an impossible task. And this led him to think, how would he explain this when the rest of the Zoras arrived?

Even so, he turned and headed toward the exit, trusting his sense of direction in the nearly pitch darkness. He kept walking, slowly, hands outstretched. The door would be there soon. A sliver of light would appear along the bottom of the room, and the top as well, and he would feel for the doorknob, and walk through. However, as he continued forward, he began to realize: he would not reach the door. He was walking along some other corridor. He turned back and walked the other way, this time at a brisker pace. But then he ran into something. "Hello," that particular something said.

"Ahriman," Link whispered, "what are you doing here?"

"I'm here because I'm the goddess of death, and the mourge is a fitting place for me."

"If you want to be accepted by the people of Hyrule, you're going to have to stop dwelling in mourges. Now tell me, why are you really here?"

"You already know. Don't pretend you don't. I'm here because, as the goddess of death, I can feel every life that is snuffed out. And a life was snuffed out just now, just before it was replaced by another. One that, let's say, took leave from the mortal world for a little bit."

"Yes, and do you know who those two souls were?"

"Why, Ralis and Ruto, of course." Suddenly, her tone turned from somewhat bored to mockingly playful. "It looks like Zelda has some competition now, doesn't it?"

"You have a sick sense of humor."

"Maybe I do. But I must honestly say, out of what fragments of a heart I have, that it was a shame Ralis had to die in her stead."

"Would it be better for him to have lived on in utter sorrow and regret? Besides, at least we know there is an afterlife for him. Do you have any control over what goes on in the afterlife?"

"Unfortunately not. I only see death to the extent it reaches in the mortal world. But I do have powers similar to Saria's in revival."

"Oh, really? So you don't only have the power to send people to their death but to bring them back to life as well? I would say to start with all the poor souls whose life energy was sucked out by your necromancers, if sacrifices weren't such a heavy price to pay."

"Sacrifices? When I revive people, I don't require sacrifices."

"You don't?"

"No. I don't see why Saria didn't ask me to do this job. I'm sure she knows of my powers. If she wasn't so reluctant to work with me, Ralis could still be alive right now."

"So, why don't you revive him? If it's so easy, why not bring to life all the people that should never have died in the first place? There has to be a catch. Tell me there's a catch."

"The only catch right now would probably be the sages and the other goddesses, with their firm philosophy of keeping a thick line between life and death. Saria made an exception today, but if we revive any more people and 'risk the unraveling of the fabric of the universe', as she says, she won't be happy with you and even less happy with me. And then you'll be an outcast among all servants of the goddesses. Unless you want the wrath of the deities upon you, I would suggest you not try to talk me into resurrecting anyone else today. Now you may leave the mourge if you like. I don't imagine you enjoy it in here."

"No, I don't." With those final words, Link left to return to the world of the living from the cave of the dead. And this time, he found the door.