Chapter 6
The early morning darkness gave way to the sunrise in the east as the gray, military Humvee reached the resort town of Lake Hylia, and Daniel switched off the vehicle's headlights, heading down the stretch of road which led off into the great bowl shaped depression formed by the surrounding cliffs. The morning sun glinted off the crystal clear waters of the lake. Link rode to his left asleep in the passenger seat while the other three men had been trying to catch naps in the backseat.
"Hey guys, I think we're here." He called out, waking up Shepherd, though Rodney, Bill, and Link still slept soundly.
Shepherd blinked the sleep out of his eyes a few times and looked around through the vehicle's windows at the still sleeping town. "Wow, it's really been built up since the last time I was here. It was barely a village before."
As they reached the bottom, the road took them onto a main street on the edge of the lake, lined with storefronts and brick row houses backed up against the rock cliffs. Towards the lake they could see a line of docks with, presumably, recreational fishing boats moored there. The town extended a bit out into the lake with walkways connecting houses and buildings built on floating foundations. "I can't believe the Zoras permitted all this to be built here." Shepherd said. "Not with their own sacred temple sitting at the bottom of the lake. We had to get their permission for me to just take recruits into the lake for dive and swim survival training. It took a week of negotiating. How'd anyone manage to get permission for all this?"
Link opened his eyes, yawned and looked around at the small town. He'd heard of the Lake Hylia resort before, of course, but he had never been there. A couple of his friends from the fencing team had spent the previous summer here with their parents. Link had been invited and wanted to go, but his uncle needed his help on the ranch, so he stayed behind. Now he finally got to see it. "It's smaller than I imagined it would be." He said. "It always looks so big in the advertisements on TV."
"You can't believe everything you see on TV, buddy." Shepherd said. "I used to have a cabin here. Well, not right here. It was up the Zora river near a great little fishing spot. You and I used to go fishing up there when we got some time off."
"You and I?" Link asked, trying to understand what the older man was saying. Shepherd and the other men had done their best to explain things to him, but he still found the whole thing hard to grasp. "Up the river?" He questioned.
"Yeah. I remember this one time you got a bite on the line, and fought and fought to reel this thing in thinking you had gotten some huge coral fish or something only to pull in an old log. The look on your face was priceless." Shepherd told him. He had been trying to encourage Link's other memories to surface, but it had been slow going at best. They were going to need all of Link's experience and knowledge, Shepherd had a feeling, and not just the teenage fencing champ that rode with them now.
"Yeah... I wish I could remember it." Link said, struggling with something that seemed just out of his reach.
"It must be tough." Daniel said. "I know it was tough when I took mortal form again. I had all the knowledge of an ascended being, as well as my own memories, locked up in my head and I couldn't use any of it except for bare snippets when the need for them surfaced."
"You walked among the gods, Daniel?" Link asked in awe.
"You could say that. The 'gods' of our reality didn't like that I actively tried to help my people, and so they 'cast me out of heaven,' so to speak." Daniel said. "It took me weeks to regain just the memories I had as a mortal before I ascended. The other memories I never fully recovered."
"If I truly am the Hero like everyone seems to think, why would I have been cast out of heaven?" Link asked. It was a question that had troubled him. What had he done that was so wrong that he would have been forced to be mortal and suffer horribly again?
"From what I was told by a very reliable source, no one forced you back down here again." Daniel told him. "You and Zelda have always had the choice to be reborn or not."
"Whatever caused you to take mortal form again must have been something really bad, or else you wouldn't have come back." Shepherd added. "That's why Talon went to go get us."
Link nodded, considering that new information. "So whoever I was in the heavens chose to come back because Hyrule needed me again."
"Yeah, that's how it seems to go." Shepherd said. "I don't know why your other memories haven't come back yet. When I first met you, you were ten years old going on ten thousand. But even if they don't, I've seen you in action, and you already got to the Sacred Grove on your own instincts. You're the same man I got to know before. I have no doubt of that."
"Just be patient, and don't try to think too much about it. You got as far as you did because your subconscious mind has been leading you, right?" Daniel said as he drove through the town.
"Yeah, I guess I did." Link said.
"So trust that. Trust your instincts. The Hero's in there, inside of you. Try and listen to him, and don't fight him." Shepherd said, picking up on Daniel's train of thought.
"Yeah. Trust my instincts, like in my fencing matches." Link understood that; those times when his mind would be 'in the zone,' and would go blank while his reflexes and instincts took over. No one could touch him in a duel as long as he didn't over-think it.
"There you go. Just like in your fencing matches." Shepherd agreed. "Whatever works for you."
A red indicator light came on in front of Daniel that he didn't recognize as he drove. "Hey guys, what does this red light here mean?"
Shepherd leaned over the seat and looked at it. "I'm not sure. It looks like a symbol for a tank of liquid. Maybe we're out of gas."
"I thought it was a steam engine. It doesn't use gas." Daniel replied.
"Right." Shepherd said back to him, and then he began to somewhat roughly shake Rodney awake. "Rodney, wake up!" He shouted at him. After about a minute he began to react. "What?! I'm up, I'm up. Wow, are we there already?"
"Yeah, we're in Lake Hylia. We have a red indicator light on the dash that looks like a tank of liquid of some kind. Any ideas?" Shepherd asked him.
"It's not gas, if that's what you're thinking. It's a steam engine. If they kept going with their previous time-shift crystal heating system, it won't need fuel in that sense, so I'm guessing the boiler is low on water, maybe?" Rodney reasoned out. "We've been running it for about eight hours now since we left Faron."
"Alright, Jackson, pull over into anything that looks like a service station so we can refill the boiler." Shepherd said.
"Yeah, I'll just keep my eyes open for one; assuming it looks like anything I'd recognize." Daniel said, looking from one side of the street to the other.
"It look's like there's a water-fill down on the next corner to the right." Link said, looking down the street a ways. "My uncle's got a steam work truck. He usually fills it at this one particular water-fill in town back in Ordonville because the water's cleaner, and mixed with some additives to make it last longer in the boiler. That's the same company as the one coming up it looks like."
"Okay, good call, Link." Shepherd said. "Pull it in there. We need to figure out how to get up into the desert from here. The map Jovani gave us doesn't show any roads west after Lake Hylia."
Daniel pulled the Humvee into the water-fill station and parked it where Link said should be good for refilling the boiler in the vehicle's engine. All in all, it didn't look that different from the gas stations in his own world, except for the huge water tank that stood next to the small building where the attendant watched them pull in. There were various labels in Hyrule's written language placed on it, some of them with a skull and cross-bones in red directly above them. "So, I guess that means don't drink the water?" Daniel asked.
"I wouldn't." Link confirmed for him. "The additives maximize the efficiency of the steam output, but they make the water poisonous to drink."
"Good to know." Daniel said as he and Link got out of the vehicle to hook up the water hose.
Shepherd also got out of the truck and went to go talk to the attendant, who came out of the building to meet them. "Hey there, how's your morning going?" He asked him.
The man smiled, and said, "It's going pretty good, there general." He offered his hand to Shepherd who took it. He was an Ordonian man, maybe in his mid forties or so, clean shaven with dark hair. He looked at the gray Humvee and said, "Hoo, you don't see too many of those around here much any more, especially not the old steam engine ones. Not since the raids a few years back. Too bad really. Steam always gives you more power than electric, but all the folks around here seem to be buying lately are the new electric cars. I've had to install two new chargers just to keep up with them."
"Yeah, it's gotten us where we needed to go." Shepherd said. "Say listen, we need to get up into the desert, and it's been a long time since I've been out this way. Can you point us in the right direction?"
The man looked at Shepherd's uniform in confusion, "Well, shoot general, you should know there aren't any roads that go up into the desert. You've got to go see the guard captain at the barracks for him to take you and your guys up there. Where are you from?"
"Ordon." Shepherd lied quickly. "Where'd you say the barracks were?"
"Follow this road all the way up to those cliffs there. The barracks are just at the base of the ascent there." He told him.
"Thanks." He turned around to see Link unhooking the water hose. "How much for the water?" He asked, pulling out the roll of rupee notes, Jovani had procured for him before they left the Grove.
"Let's see," The attendant looked over his shoulder at the mechanical gauge, "Thirty gallons of boiler water? Shoot, you must have been almost bone dry. I'm surprised you made it this far. Where'd you drive from?"
"Faron Province, last night." Shepherd said. "How much?"
"That's about sixty rupees." The attendant said. Shepherd pulled out three twenty rupee notes, and handed them to him. The attendant paused for a minute, as though he was thinking about something. "You know, if you're really going into the desert, you may want to take some water with you. There aren't any water-fills out there. I don't know how far you're going, but it's a big desert."
"Good idea. Thanks. Uh, you got any extra water cans for sale?" Shepherd asked.
"Yeah, tell you what. You buy the water, and I'll throw the cans in for free." The attendant told him. "I've got a brother in the guard. Anything I can do to help." An idea then occurred to him, "Hey does this have anything to do with the princess having gone missing? Is that where they think she is, out there?" He asked, pointing in the direction of the far cliffs.
"I couldn't tell you if it was." Shepherd said.
"Yeah, I get it. Well, I don't know if it means anything, but the other night I was out watching the stars with my wife and we saw this huge black bird or something flying out that way. I mean this was the biggest, weirdest looking bird I have ever seen." The man said. "My wife swears she saw something pink and silver in its claws."
"Thanks for the inlet." Shepherd told him.
The man then went to get their extra water cans for the trip. "Well, at least we know we're going in the right direction." Shepherd thought out loud, remembering Zelda's favorite colors of dress.
"You might want to know, my dear," Maleficent began as she entered the little cell in which she kept the princess, "that your rescuers are nothing if not prompt. At this rate, they should be here before nightfall."
"How did they know to come here?" The princess asked.
"Why I invited them of course." Maleficent told her. Zelda looked pensive at this new information. "Oh, don't worry, I gave them plenty of incentive to be here quickly. I told them to be here before midnight, or you would die."
"I thought you needed me alive." Zelda asked, nervously.
"They don't know that, now do they? I don't like to be kept waiting." Maleficent returned.
"So then, you've considered my offer? We could be allies." Zelda said.
"Indeed." Maleficent said thoughtfully. "I have considered it very carefully."
"And?" Zelda asked.
"And, after our little chats, I've been thinking on things that I put out of my mind a long time ago. It has led me to come to a very important decision in my life." Maleficent said.
"And what is that?" Zelda asked hopefully.
"Why, my dear, I need you alive, but not awake trying to fill me with soft ideas of alliances and memories of home." Maleficent said. "So, I shall tell you to sleep." She gestured towards the princess's forehead and Zelda's eyes grew heavy, and just as they were about to close, Maleficent leaned forward and said, "you will sleep dear, but you will not awaken. Not without true love's kiss." She laughed evilly. Pale green energy flowed from Maleficent's hand and wrapped itself around Zelda's body as the princess fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. It then lifted her up off of her feet, and gently placed her on the bed in the cell, where she remained.
When the princess was situated, Maleficent turned to one of the skeleton guards and said, "That's one of my favorite conditions for a spell to be broken. Do you know why? Because it doesn't exist." That was a lesson she had learned at great personal cost, and she had learned it well.
"I don't know of any Ordonians who've made it all the way to general, sir." The Guard Captain said suspiciously as he eyed Shepherd in his gray tactical uniform. "Especially not a man as young as you. And I'm not impressed by the kid in the green costume in the front seat." He pointed through the windshield to where Link sat. "I don't know who you people think you are, or what you think you can get away with, but we don't go for that kind of thing around here. And I'm certainly not letting you or anyone else past the safety walls into a no man's land so you can go stirring up the Bulblins because you want to play hero or some stupid crap like that."
They stood outside the gray brick barracks where the guard captain had come out to meet him after receiving a telephone call from the water-fill attendant down the road. He was a middle-aged Hylian man with a thick white mustache and a once muscular build. He had met Shepherd under a winged Triforce sign with the words in Hylian which read "ROYAL HYRULE MILITARY GUARD – LAKE HYLIA DIVISION."
"Look, I don't really have a lot of time to argue this, captain." He said, pulling out his royal credentials, as well as a letter with the king's personal seal in wax. "We need to get up in the desert right now, and I need you to take us up there."
The guard captain took the letter and put on a set of spectacles to see it properly. "Hmm," he said. His tone of voice changing little. "Looks like you've got the right papers to show me, but I've still never heard of an Ordonian being promoted to general. And I'll be damned before I allow a civilian into the desert. I won't take responsibility for that." He said firmly.
"Oh really?" Shepherd said testily. He had never encountered any prejudice between Hylians and "normal" humans before in any of his encounters in that world. He briefly considered just knocking the man on his butt and throwing him into his own jail cell for insubordination, but then he had a better idea. "Tell you what. Let me introduce you to this kid. You can tell him you won't let him go in." He then turned back to the vehicle and called out, "Hey Link! Come here for a minute. This guy has something to say to you."
Link got out of the Humvee and came up to stand in front of the guard captain. "Yes?" He asked.
"I'm sorry son, but the desert is military personnel only on authorized missions. I can't let you..." The guard captain didn't get a chance to finish his sentence before he had the point of Link's sword held to his throat. It was beginning to make red scratches in the man's skin. Sweat began to pour off of the man's face as terror filled his eyes, "you can't... you can't..." He stammered.
"Let me explain to you who this is, captain." Shepherd told him, speaking slowly so he would understand every word. "To which rank you can be sure to say goodbye once we leave here and I am able to contact the palace upon our return. This is the Hero of legend reborn. His one and only mission in life is to rescue Princess Zelda. Now, Princess Zelda has been abducted and she is being held in the old arbiter's grounds by a nasty piece of work of a fairy. Our mission has been authorized by King Daphnes himself and you have been ordered by him to provide every assistance to us possible. Do I make myself clear? Or do you need Link here to explain it to you his way?"
"N-n-n-no, s-s-sir!" The man responded, his Adam's apple grazing the razor sharp point of the Master Sword, the rest of his throat in Link's right hand.
"Good. Now that we understand each other, I presume we can get going. We have a long journey ahead of us, and we have to be there before midnight." Shepherd addressed Link, "Let him go." And Link withdrew, replacing the sword in his scabbard. "And in the future, captain, if I ever hear of you disparaging anyone because of their race, whether they're Hylian, Zora, Goron, or Ordonian I'll have you scrubbing floors in the palace dungeon with your mustache for the rest of your natural life."
"Yes, sir." The captain said meekly. "I'll go and open the gates and lead you up there." His tone of voice sounded his defeat. "I'll need to radio the gun emplacements before we go up. They'll need to know not to fire on you. The Bulblins have gotten inventive recently. They've started cobbling together trucks to try to ram the gates and break through."
"So noted, is there anything else we should know?" Shepherd asked.
"Uh... Watch out for bombs and explosives. They've mined the desert with stuff they took from us during their raids. It gets worse the farther west you go, towards their camps, but it shouldn't be too bad north towards the ruins. Not the last time we went in and did a sweep anyways." The older man told him.
"And how long ago was that?" Shepherd asked.
"About a month ago. We do it every three months, sir. The flat land towards the Grounds was pretty open then. Of course it could have changed. They're more clever than people give them credit for." He said.
"I'll take that under advisement." Shepherd told him. "Now let's get moving. The sun is getting higher in the sky. We'll also need a few extra rifles and magazines for them from your armory. We ran into some trouble last night and spent a lot of our own ammo."
"I'll get them right away, sir." He said, and then hurried to carry out his orders.
"That's better." Shepherd said as the man scurried away.
The noon sun burned bright overhead as the vehicle drove off road north towards the ancient prison. The five men inside felt the jolt of every uneven surface in spite of the suspension's best efforts to absorb them. They had been driving for a couple of hours, and the massive ruined structure rose up in front of them. "It looks about what, twenty miles away or so now?" Rodney asked.
"Give or take." Shepherd agreed as he drove. "How're you doing, Bill?"
Doctor Lee was a sickly pale shade of green as the constant bouncing, jerking motion of the vehicle sent his stomach into conniptions. With the absence of paper bags, he had been forced to roll down the back window several times, causing a disgusting spray to collect along the left side of the vehicle.
"I'll be better once we stop. Ugh, this is why I don't do a lot of real world off-roading." He said. "I'm more of a living room adventurer type."
"Well, we're almost there, and we're making good time. And we haven't seen or heard from a single Bulblin yet." Shepherd said.
There was a deafening sound like a bomb going off, and the whole vehicle suddenly launched high into the air. The Humvee landed hard and skidded, rolling over onto one side before it came to a halt. The last thing Shepherd saw was a tall, lanky green skinned creature with a bulbous head wrapped in the protective clothes of the desert approaching the felled vehicle, a makeshift crossbow in his hands pointed at him. Then, all was dark.