Chapter 5 – Reunions
Daniel led Link from where he encountered the scientist to one of the buildings in the city. As he walked behind the white coated Ordonian man he carefully made mental notes of which alleys and avenues he was led down and away from the stairs he had emerged from. No matter in which he looked, he continually felt as if he had seen it before.
Except that wasn't possible. He knew from the other memories which had awakened in his mind that he had lived many, many lifetimes before, and in those lifetimes he had traveled to many fantastic places.
But this wasn't one of them. He knew this for a certainty. And he was just as certain that he recognized this place from somewhere deep in his past. It was not exactly the same, but he had seen it before.
The city was enormous, bigger than anything that his conscious memories could conjure up to compare it to. Castle Town had been the largest city in Hyrule for most of that land's existence. It was home to thousands of people from all across the kingdoms under Hylian rule. But the metropolis around him easily dwarfed the royal capital.
In spite of its size, however, the city around him was nearly silent. At first, the boy had thought it was due to the time of night it appeared to be. But even in the dead of night, most towns and villages had some movement and night life. The silence here made this city feel like a tomb, or a ghost town at the very least. It was nearly as silent as the grave, even with the few people that Link did see scurrying about. As Daniel led him deeper into the heart of the city, there were more people, all adults, in white coats, as well as black clad soldiers with weapons patrolling and standing not far from the white coats.
Another detail Link realized was that the city was also made entirely of stone, or at least what Link could see of it. Even the doors and hinges were carved from stone, and there was no wood built into anything he could see. What furniture there had been in the ruined library he had portaled into had also been intricately carved from polished stone. He had never seen anything like it. It was as if real wood was a luxury this civilization couldn't afford to spend on simple building projects.
His other memories affirmed this. Even the Gorons' village deep within Death Mountain made use of at least some wood harvested from nearby forest or woods. Those other memories conjured up images of the hidden tunnel between their circular, stone carved village and the enchanted and dangerous forest known by most as the "Lost Woods" deep within Faron province which he suspected had something to do with it.
In spite of the heavy use of stonework, the structures and facades of the buildings weren't spartan or austere. Much to the contrary, it was exquisitely carved and shaped so that it flowed like artwork from one building to the next. Even what appeared to be writing which had been carved into doors and what looked like signs made from a deep black, glassy rock was a graceful and flowing cursive.
The building Daniel led Link into was a large, two story structure with many rooms which might have been an inn or maybe even some wealthy person's residence at one time, though as they entered, neither seemed right. Many of the white coats were moving in and out of it with odd looking cases, and boxes with what his memories told him was scientific instrumentation. It did not have the feel of either someone's personal residence, or the welcome feel of a traveler's haven. Instead, it felt more like a barracks or base for the white coats and soldiers.
Daniel led Link up a broad, grand staircase which curved up into the second floor. In spite of the careful sculpting of the walls, when Link reached the second floor landing, he could see no ceiling to speak of. Instead, where the ceiling and roof should have been, it all opened up to the night sky past the terminus of the walls, which itself was still strangely starless. This was disconcerting to him, as he couldn't make out clouds either.
Why would they make a building without a roof? What would they do if it rained? Link asked himself.
Daniel led Link into a room in the building that had several stone chairs, a desk, and some strange equipment scattered about. The man picked up one of these pieces of equipment, a small, black rectangular box, pushed some buttons on it and then spoke into it. Link could hear another voice speaking back to him, and once again, he heard both his own name, and the name "Zelda" mentioned several times.
Daniel then motioned for Link to sit down on one of the sculpted stone seats. It was strangely comfortable and seemed to conform to his body as he sat down regardless of the fact it was made of stone.
The Ordonian man then took another piece of paper and wrote on it. When he was done, he gave it to Link to look at through his amethyst lens.
Link took and read it, "I've talked to my friends, they're going to bring Zelda here. It will take a day or so for her to arrive. I am getting some food for you."
Link nodded. He then motioned for the writing stick and wrote, "Where am I? What city is this? Why are there no stars in the sky here?" And then handed the paper and the Lens to Daniel, who took a seat next to him.
Daniel read it, smiled, and then wrote, "This city is deep underground in a big cave. Its people called it 'D'ni,' but no one has lived here for two hundred years. We are studying it to learn about them."
Link read the paper carefully, and then wrote, "You and your people don't live here?" He passed it to Daniel.
Daniel wrote, "No. I'm only here for a week. The other scientists spend part of the year here, and part of the year living in cities far from here on the surface."
It was then that another man came in with a tray of food for Daniel and Link. It wasn't anything fancy, just some sandwiches, and some bottles of a kind of juice he had never seen before. The man said something to Daniel with a smile, and then left Link and he to their meal.
Link consumed his meal with gusto. He hadn't eaten much on the trail between the village in Ordon and the Temple of Time, his stomach had been upset, but now he felt like he was starving. The sandwiches were good. Maybe not as good as Rusl's wife made, but they were good and filling nonetheless.
While he was eating, Daniel wrote on the paper again, "How did you get from Hyrule to this city?"
Link wiped his hands on his leggings and, with a mouth still full, took the stick and wrote on the paper, "The Sages sent me through a gateway in the Temple of Time. I just appeared in a library below."
Daniel paused, as though the existence of the Library was new information, then wrote, "Who are the Sages? Did they send Zelda to our world?" He passed it back to Link.
Link wrote, "No, they don't know where she is. That's why they came looking for me this time instead of waiting for me to start on my own." Link paused, trying to collect his thoughts. "They awakened the hero before they thought I'd be ready for it. The Sages are the keepers of the temples of Hyrule. They pray and meditate and sing to the gods to keep the seals on the sacred realm so that the Demon King remains imprisoned."
Daniel's expression then took on a more serious expression as he read, and reread Link's response considering it carefully. He then wrote on the paper, "Did the Demon King get free?"
"No," Link wrote back, "they said he didn't. They wouldn't let me take the Master Sword because they didn't want to unbind his spirit."
Daniel looked at the paper, and then became thoughtful for a long time.
The Ordonian man then wrote, "Did you see anything strange or unusual down in the library you emerged in?"
Link looked at it. The question seemed almost absurd when he thought about it. Everything down there? He almost answered. But then that other book which had stood open like the one which had described his own world came back to his mind.
He then wrote, "There was dust everywhere except on one book. It had been standing open, and the window page was clean."
Daniel read it, and then quickly wrote, "Do you know which book?"
Link took the paper and then wrote, "Yes. The name on the book was 'Middle-Earth.' It was the only book that looked clean like someone had touched it." Link avoided telling him that the Book of Hyrule was heavy in the satchel he carried.
Daniel read the paper several times with the Lens mouthing the words he read, his expression skeptical, as though he was trying to make sure he didn't read it wrong.
He then wrote, "It's going to be a while until they can bring Zelda down here. They'll be coming from another city on the surface that's very far away. There's a free bed in the room next door if you want to get some sleep. No one here will harm you here, you have my word."
Link had just finished his meal when he read it. It was then he found himself very drowsy. Seeing that the scientist appeared to mean what he wrote, he then nodded and Daniel led him to a bed which had been set up in a separate room on the other side of the wall from the one he had just been in. Link placed his sword and shield by the side of the bed eyeing the soldiers that had taken positions outside the room. He then laid down keeping one eye on the soldiers and one hand on his sword. He continued this way until he couldn't keep his eyes open any longer and fell asleep.
Daniel turned down the lamp which had been on and left the room giving instructions to the guards not to disturb him or to take his weapons, and asked them to let him know when the boy woke up.
Zelda was zipping through the air faster than she ever imagined she could go in the flying machine that the Earth people called a "puddle-jumper." The pilot, the soldier named Colonel Shepherd, allowed her to come forward so that she could see out the front window. When they first showed the machine to Zelda she didn't understand how it could ever fly without wings. It didn't look like the right shape at all. It was merely a large, fancy cylinder with a door at one end and a window at the other, she thought. But then the scene out of that window moved so fast her mind could hardly keep pace with what her eyes were telling her. Colonel Shepherd took the machine up so high that the sky turned black and all the stars of this world became visible and she could see the outline of Earth like a beautiful, magical blue and green sphere. She wondered if Hyrule looked like this from up on high. She imagined only her gods knew the answer to that.
Zelda still wore the Earth clothes she had been given, leaving her royal dress back in the apartment she had slept in. It was suited for state functions and the appearance of royalty, not for the kinds of things she imagined she would be doing from here on out. They also gave her a jacket, because they told her where she was going could be chilly.
Almost as soon as they had gone up, he pointed the nose of the machine back downward and they began their descent to a large land mass, a continent. The region he was descending to was brown and dry and approaching very quickly. It reminded her a great deal of the Gerudo desert where sat the ancient prison called the Arbiter's Grounds, and further in, the Temple of the Desert Goddess. But the Gerudo desert was hot, she was told, and this desert in front of her looked equally warm.
"I thought it would be chilly where we were going?" Zelda asked Doctor McKay who had accompanied them. Doctor Jennifer said that she had to stay behind and look after her medical center, and so it was Doctor McKay, Colonel Shepherd, and several armed soldiers who had come to escort her.
"Don't worry, we'll only be on the surface for a short time," Doctor McKay answered, smearing a white ointment onto his face and nose. "Where we are going is under the surface," he made a motion with his hand of going underneath something.
"Under the surface?" She asked as a large, inactive volcano came into view. Through the window she could see a great crack in the sidewall of the volcano that the ship was headed towards.
"Yeah, it's another one of our best kept secrets." Colonel Shepherd added as he began to circle the dormant caldera for a landing site.
"What is?" She asked.
"It's an ancient city miles underground. The only entrance to it from the surface is near the cleft in the volcano we're landing next to." Doctor McKay answered.
Colonel Shepherd added, "the really bad part about it is that we can't just fly or transport directly to it. We have to walk most of the way down. Once we're down far enough, we've got some ground cars that can give us some better transportation to the outskirts of the cavern where the city is. I've only been there once before. It takes a day or so to make the journey in."
The jumper landed neatly and softly and everyone, including Zelda, was given a backpack with some supplies and a device they called a "flashlight" which produced light at the push of a button. The heat from the desert overwhelmed her when the door was opened. She could feel her fair skin burning under it's fury.
"Ok, everyone to the tunnel, let's go!" Colonel Shepherd ordered.
The tunnel in question wasn't far from where they landed and as they began filing in it became cooler and cooler the further inward they went. Colonel Shepherd stopped the group at a lit glass office that seemed very out of place against the rock walls. The office was manned by several soldiers carrying more of the strange weapons that all of the earth soldiers carried. After a few minutes, these soldiers waived her group through and they continued through the tunnel which began to gently slope downwards.
The walk was long as the slope increased. Zelda had heard of tunnels, and underground cities like this before in Hyrule. The Goron mines she had been going to visit were similar, although she had heard stories of an ancient Goron city which had been somewhere in Hyrule. Electric lamps were hung on the tunnel walls every so often, through she could tell they had not been a part of the original carvings. Every hour or so there were more guard stations which her party had to stop at and identify themselves. After many of these they came to a great open shaft which plunged straight down. The path they were on turned sharply to the left and began to corkscrew around it down towards a bottom which she couldn't see regardless of the lamps.
"Do we have to walk all the way down?" Zelda asked.
"We used to, but now we get to ride down." Colonel Shepherd said, pointing to a metal cage which she took for an elevator.
"I see. How long does it take to get to the bottom?" She asked.
"A couple of hours. The lift can go faster, but it can make you ill if it doesn't do it slow enough." Doctor McKay answered.
Their party entered the lift, closed the door and began their long descent. One of the other men, a soldier sat on the floor of the lift and brought out a pack of cards asking, "anybody up for some cards?" To which several of the other men, including Colonel Shepherd readily agreed. Zelda sat down to watch the game, and after a time, Colonel Shepherd explained the rules.
As he explained the rules, he went into the strategy, "It's partly about what cards you have, but it's much more about what cards your opponent thinks you have. You see, I could have nothing at all, but if I can make my opponent think that I've got a much better hand than he does, then he'll give up and I'll take the pot. In the same way, I could have a really great hand, but then I might want him to think that my hand isn't as good as his so he bets more money to get me to bet more money that he'll think I'll lose. It's all about trying to bluff your opponent into thinking what you want him to think."
After a while, they dealt Zelda in, although she didn't have anything to wager. Some of the men generously said they'd cover her bets, assuming that she wouldn't play very well. They needn't have worried. By the time they reached the bottom, Zelda had cleaned them all out and left them shaking their heads and mentioning something about her being a "card shark" and taking her to Vegas. She saw no need for their money so she split it evenly and gave equal amounts back to each man, for which they were grateful.
When they reached the bottom and exited the cage she found the air around her much cooler than it had been even in the tunnels far above and she was now grateful for the coat she had been given. The walls of the great shaft were smooth but decorated with some tapestries with designs which she didn't recognize, but felt familiar somehow. There was yet another guard station at the bottom that waived them through to a wheeled carriage of a sort with no horses.
"Now we get to ride a little more comfortably," Colonel Shepherd said.
"How does the carriage move without horses?" Zelda asked. It was probably a silly question, she thought afterward. These people had machines which could fly like birds, why couldn't they have carriages that move on their own?
"It has a motor which runs on electricity. If it ran on anything else, it could make the air down here go bad. It will take us the rest of the way in to the city." Doctor McKay said as he climbed in. Zelda and the rest of the party followed suit. Colonel Shepherd sat behind the control wheel, lamps came on in the front of the vehicle, and the carriage very quietly began to move through the tunnels further downward.
Link was standing in a strange grove of trees. In front of him was a huge temple which, in spite of its ruins, inspired a sense of majesty and awe in him. It was no place he could remember ever having been, and yet he knew it very well. Beneath him was a stone platform with a symbol carved into it. The symbol of forest, he knew somehow. The air was cool and moist and scented with the perfumes from many flowers and trees. He felt at home here somehow.
"I see you've come this far, boy." A menacing, cold voice said.
Link turned around. In front of him was a large, muscled, dark figure with flames for hair and burning eyes. He knew him somehow, and the memory wasn't good.
"You won't stop me this time, boy." The figure taunted.
"I will always stop you, no matter how many times you free yourself." Link found himself saying, much to his surprise.
"Not this time. No, things are different now, aren't they?" The figure started walking in a circle slowly around Link. Link remained silent.
"Yes, that's right. We're not just talking about our worlds anymore, are we? No, my power has gone far beyond just Hyrule. Even now I am building my armies, but Hyrule isn't enough, and neither you nor the gods of Hyrule can reach me." The dark figure laughed.
Link drew his sword and shield. "I'm here right now."
The figure laughed harder. "Do you really think you can challenge me, boy? Here? No, this is only a dream. I thought we'd have a nice little chat before I'm finally rid of you." He then added, "besides, that's not the right sword, is it? Oh, it's not a bad toy by any means. Ordonian make, isn't it? But we both know I can shatter it with ease. No, if we're to do this properly, you'll need the right sword, won't you? Go back and tell that goddess serving she-dog that the little hero needs his big-boy sword now. And," he said on a moment's reflection, "I would suggest a better shield. You won't be fighting spit-balls now will you?" The figure then turned to face him directly. He narrowed his eyes with a menacing glare, "I'm waiting little hero. Come and find me."
Link woke with a start and a cry, sweat glistened on his forehead. It was dark in the room he had been sleeping in. He could hear a voice speaking strange words into the air as he sat up. Daniel's voice answered in reply.
It had only been a dream, and yet more than that. The Demon King had been taunting him, but why? He thought back to his memories which had been awakened within him. The Demon King always taunted Link in whatever form he took. He enjoyed taunting him. It was something that Link didn't understand.
A few minutes later, Daniel appeared in the doorway. He said something, and then took out a pad of paper and wrote some words. Link wiped the sleep away from his eyes and reached for his Lens to read it. It said, "There's someone here to talk to you." Link nodded his head, then stood up and pulled on his sword and shield.
Daniel led him to another room in the building where a group of men, soldiers, waited, and standing in the middle of them was a blond Hylian girl, about his age but wearing the clothes of this world. Her eyes were the deepest blue he had ever seen. She looked at him and held up the back of her left hand. Link's own hand responded almost involuntarily. He could see the Triforce mark imprinted on her hand and as he drew close to her, one triangle within it glowed, as it did on his hand.
Instinctively, Link dropped to one knee, "Your highness." He addressed her in Hylian.
Zelda came closer to him and touched him on the head gently, responding in Hylian, "rise, Sir Link," and he did as he was bidden.
"I am no knight, your highness. Only a few days ago I was just a boy from a village in the province of Ordon..." He started to correct her.
"Thus it has always been when it is time for the Hero to arise." She answered.
"I was sent by the sages of Hyrule to find you and return you to our world." He said.
The other people in the room watched in rapt fascination. One of them asked her something in Daniel's language, and she responded in the same language. Link noticed that she seemed to be able to speak it fluently with no trouble at all.
"Do you have a way of returning us to Hyrule?" Zelda asked him.
"I think so, your highness." Link nodded. "There is a book I think links to our world. If we put our hands on a panel in it then it will return us to the Temple of Time where the sages are waiting for both of us."
Zelda took this information in thoughtfully. She then asked the same question Daniel did, "Has the Demon King escaped?"
Link answered, "I don't know. The sages were convinced that he hadn't. They wouldn't allow me to take the Master Sword for this journey for that reason. But I'm not so sure. I think he might have escaped, but into a different world. It appeared that another book I saw might have been used to link to a different world from either here or Hyrule, but the chamber where the books were kept didn't look like it had been opened for a very long time. Also, he came and taunted me in a dream."
Zelda looked disturbed at this news. She then said, "poker."
"I'm sorry, your highness?" Link responded.
"It's a game my new friends taught me on the way down here. In it, you try and make your opponent place a bet or give up by making him think you have or don't have certain cards. The Demon King is trying to play poker with us." Zelda responded
Again, the same man asked Zelda something, and she replied fluently in the strange language. She seemed to be explaining everything they had just said, and then another man spoke up rather happily, and a bit smugly. Zelda nodded at him.
"What did he say?" Link asked.
"He said we have a card in our possession which the Demon King knows nothing about. It is a jewel that when fixed to a sword should be able to kill the Demon King himself once and for all. It's called a 'sangraal' stone." Zelda replied.
"This 'sangraal' stone can kill an evil god?" Link asked, unbelieving.
Zelda then turned and repeated Link's words to the men behind her. The smug man replied, and Zelda translated, "He said, 'killing evil gods is our specialty.'"
They made their plans on how to proceed throughout the night cycle of the underground city. Finally, Link and Zelda couldn't remain away from Hyrule much longer, they both knew. Both of their Triforce pieces had to be returned to Hyrule. Any further delay might have devastating consequences. After much discussion and communication with more people through their strange black boxes and devices, it was also agreed that Link and Zelda wouldn't be going alone. Colonel Shepherd and Doctor McKay would be accompanying them to ensure that the Demon King was still safely sealed away. They would also be bringing four other soldiers with them. If things were still under control, then they would simply return home. If they weren't, then they would support the princess and the hero in using the "god-killer" jewel.
Early the next morning, they all held hands as Link placed his own on the window panel of the Book of Hyrule and, as Daniel watched, they all shimmered into a golden light as their energy was drawn into the book and they were gone.