Chapter 3
Link stood in front of the doorway to the Temple of Time holding an old wooden flute in his hand that had been carved for him decades before by his foster brother, Colin. "I should have phoned you too Colin." He said to the flute. He hoped Malona let him know what was happening since he and his wife lived in the old house Russel left them up the road from Link's property, and not far from his daughter's family's property.
It was late at night by the time he had finally arrived at the temple itself. The king had ordered a single R.H.M.G. vehicle to take him down there, and he had been preoccupied with his thoughts on the drive back south towards the Sacred Grove. He had stayed long enough at the hospital to get the results of Zelda's more thorough testing. That was why he stood in front of the temple doorway now, in the middle of the night.
"It's some kind of white blood cell cancer," Healer Kelli had confirmed. "But I've never seen anything like it before, and neither have any of my colleagues." She had told them. Then things went somewhat sideways from there when she told them, "There's a trace of some kind of magic in the cancerous cells. The red water's keeping it at bay like I suspected, but it's only keeping things under control for the moment. The magic seems to be nourishing and driving the cancer to reproduce faster than it should be." Then came the icing on the cake, "I estimate that in three weeks, it will overwhelm the red water treatment, and then there won't be anything we can do for it. I'm sorry, but magic isn't my specialty. I've called in the best magical minds in Castleton to study it to see if there's any way we can remove it without doing more damage. We'll be working around the clock, I promise you."
So will I, lady. Link had thought to himself. So will I.
The doorway itself hadn't changed in the millennia it had stood where it was. It was essentially the stone outline of what had been a set of double doors which led into a now crumbled temple, at least in the present. Had anyone attempted to step through it without knowing the key, that's all they would find; the very apparent ruins of the temple in question open to the sky, the wind, and the weather.
He put the flute to his lips and blew out a series of six notes in a pattern, the melody resembling a child's lullaby. Symbols lit up around the stone door frame and a blue field of energy appeared across the doorway like a shimmering pool of water.
Link pocketed the flute in his brown denim work pants and stepped through the portal. Inside, the scene was very different from what the ruins would lead one to believe. The temple stood exactly as it had the day it had been completed and the enchantment placed over it, sealing it away forever from the ravages of the passage of time. This was Hylia's temple, Zelda's temple, and he hadn't set foot in it for more than a lifetime, but it hadn't changed one detail since the last time he had been here.
It was still all white marble, with black marble and gold trim. The interior of the temple glowed with a soft golden light, though Link could never discern where the light was coming from. His brown leather work and riding boots tapped a bit against the marble as he walked down the steps and across the floor. Directly opposite the entry steps across the great hall lay the steps to the pedestal where a very old friend with a blue hilt and sharp edges remained embedded, slumbering peacefully.
The Sage should already know I'm here. Link thought to himself as he walked across the hall towards the sword in the pedestal. He walked up the steps to where the sword remained and looked down at it, hands in his leather coat pockets, lost in his own memories. "We've been through a lot together, haven't we, Fi?" He spoke to the sword. "Would you be willing to join me one more time?"He asked, taking his left hand out of its pocket and reaching down for the hilt.
"The true question," came a voice in reply from down at the floor of the hall, "is whether or not the Master Sword is the weapon you need to bring against the true enemy you now face."
Link looked up from the hilt of the sword, and withdrew his hand only slightly, to see a balding, middle aged Hylian man in red robes looking up at him with kind, but stern eyes. "And what do you know of my enemy, Mr. Impaz?" He asked.
"Only that it's not one you've faced before, and it isn't necessarily the one you think." The Sage responded. "His majesty has informed me of the circumstances, and your plan, and we are both deeply concerned for our Lady, as well as for you."
Link looked down at the sword again. "I've never gone on a quest without her eventually accompanying me." He said, gesturing to the blue hilt.
"But this is like no other quest you've faced, Hero." Mr. Impaz responded patiently. "The monsters you seek to slay cannot be defeated with the edge of a blade or the bash of a shield."
"Then what weapon do I need to slay them?" Link asked, though he took his point.
"What is your true enemy here?" Mr. Impaz asked. "Only when you can answer that question honestly will you be able to answer your own."
"My wife is sick. She's going to die if I don't do something." He said in response.
"Everyone dies, Hero. Even you and my Lady." Mr. Impaz responded.
"Everyone dies, but I'm not talking about her life. I'm talking about her soul. If I don't do something, her soul will be lost forever." Link told him, frustrated.
"Ultimately, we must each walk our own path, Hero. This is a journey my Lady must choose to make for herself. You cannot walk it for her." The Sage replied evenly and calmly. "You can only walk your own path."
"How can we walk any path when our road has been blocked?" Link questioned. "It isn't the path which is the problem."
"Do you believe that your divine mother will not come to your aide? Do you believe my Lady's divine mother will not do the same?" Mr. Impaz challenged him.
"I don't know. They haven't talked to us in decades." Link said, his frustration rising again, slowly giving way to anger. "It's like they've abandoned us."
"And have you tried to talk to them in all that time?" Mr. Impaz asked.
"Well, I..." Had he? Link was brought up short by that question. "I've said a few things on occasion." He finally said, remembering those few times when he said "thank you" whenever something went right for them. But that wasn't the point, "I need to find the man who can help me. Will you help me or not?" He finally said.
"You can be certain, great hero, that I will do everything within my power to help you find the man who can help my Lady and yourself in the time you and she have been given. But you can be equally certain that you will not need Fi's assistance to do so." Mr. Impaz told him. "In point of fact, it would be counter-productive for her to join you on your quest this time." He said reassuringly.
Link withdrew his hand and put it back in his pocket. He believed him. "Alright." He said in reply. "What do I need to do?"
"If you are ready, come with me to the library. Your quest will begin there, Hero." Mr. Impaz said, gesturing for the old man to come down from the dais and join him.
Link looked at the Master Sword one last time. It felt so strange just leaving her there in the pedestal. The truth was, he hadn't ever considered not taking Fi with him, even if he didn't ever used the sword in a fight. The Master Sword had been an integral part of who he was every time he had gone on a quest.
"Let her go, Hero." Mr. Impaz called out gently.
"Let her go." He said to himself. "I haven't used this sword or even talked to Fi for forty five years. Yeah, I guess I can do this without her this time." He finally turned around and came back down the steps. "Okay. Lead on, Sage." He said. And Mr. Impaz nodded and turned towards the passage to the right of the dais, moving with sure steps across the white marble floors. Link followed behind him as quiet as his guide.
The Sage led him along a path he had been on a before with another Sage and in another time, though not alone. The faces of his companions from that time and a time more recent flashed through his memory. He knew they were long dead. They would have technically been long dead the last time he had seen them, but that was the confusing reality of the temple's Door of Time. "I suppose I should let them go too. This is my burden to bear." He said to himself under his breath. "Except one."
The two men walked through the ascending hallways of the temple, and up several flights of stairs until they finally reached the familiar doors of the book lined room. Mr. Impaz opened those doors and entered with Link trailing behind.
The balding man went to a particular book case and removed two books from the shelves. He brought them over and handed the smaller one to Link, saying, "I trust you have been here before, and I have no need to explain what this is, or what it does?" Mr. Impaz said"
Link had never actually seen or used these particular leather bound books before, but he knew exactly what they were. "Yes." He answered. "That one will take me to Terra," Link said, pointing at the one the Sage was holding. He then held the other up in his hand and said, "This one will get me back here." He then stuck the smaller book into a pocket on the inside of his coat.
"Exactly. Don't lose them." Mr. Impaz told him. "I don't know what changes have happened on Earth in the two hundred and eighty years since you have been there. I don't even know if there is a functioning portal there now as there was long ago. Don't count on it. Change is a constant there as it is here, Hero. We either adapt to the changes of time, or we get swept away with them."
"I understand." Link told him.
"And this won't be like using the Doorway. Time will flow normally for you on both sides of the books. Find the person you must quickly. My Lady's time, even with the red water, is not infinite. And, if I may be so bold, your place is by her side when that time comes, no matter what the outcome of your quest." The Sage admonished him. "You may use the linking book to return here to this temple at any time and in any place. You need not return to your point of origin there."
Link nodded, chastened inside. "I have a pretty good idea where I'll appear on the other side. I think I can find my way up to the surface if I need to. Daniel Jackson, if he's ascended, should know I'm there from the first moment I set foot in their world. Hopefully, this won't take long at all."
"I sincerely hope you're right, Link." Mr. Impaz told him. "For both your sakes." The shorter, portly man opened the book he still held to its back page where a moving window showed what looked like a video of a library, not too different from the one in which he was standing except for the dust and the ravages which the passage of time brought; something the books in this library never had to experience because of the temple's unique properties.
"May the goddesses go with you." The Sage told him.
Link took his left hand out of the coat pocket it had been buried in and placed it without hesitation on the moving picture panel. In an instant, his masculine, Hylian form was transformed into a shimmering field of golden light which was drawn into the book, and he was gone.
Once the last of Link's energy had left, not needing it any more, Mr. Impaz restored the book to its rightful place on the shelf in the library, and turned to leave the room. As he was about to exit, the voice of a strong woman spoke from behind him. "So, he went after all."
"Yes, your excellency." Mr. Impaz said, without turning around. "As we believed he would. He must search these things out for himself if he is to recover the only man who can help."
"Let us just hope that he discovers who that truly is before it is too late." Said the voice.
"Excellency, if I may be so bold, why not just heal our Lady, and restore the ability to ascend to the both of them yourself?" Mr. Impaz questioned.
"It is not the place of either of us to question the will of the three goddesses." She said. "And he is not the same man he was when he first shed his mortal form, nor she the same woman. The existences they have both led have seen to that. Even if I were to restore the physical ability myself now, there is no guarantee either would yet follow through with their own part to play. There is no one more than I who wants to see the two of them restored to their rightful place. But ultimately, that is their decision, not mine. They both must make it for themselves before their time runs out."
"And while the hero seeks to find his path, who will help the princess do the same?" He asked again.
"Your predecessor is already working with her, and I will not be far from the service of my mistress. Of the two, I believe she will come to the needed wisdom first. It is not she that I am truly concerned for. He has suffered much, and continues to burden himself and so prolong his own suffering. None of us can foresee if he will find the way back, or be lost upon it." The woman's voice turned solemn as the grave. "For now, we watch and wait."
Link materialized in a dimly lit, cavernous library next to a pedestal with a great, leatherbound book laying open on it. The book was ancient and worn, but still intact. "Kind of like me." Link mused. It had been centuries, but he recognized where he was all the same. The columns with the odd shaped number symbols, and the rows and rows of bookshelves left him no doubt.
He waited a few minutes, standing next to the ancient book and its pedestal. Finally, he called out in his own language, "You should know I'm here by now, Daniel Jackson, if you're there. Zelda and I could really use your help right now."
The only response he received was the silence of the ancient library. "Right. I should have known it wouldn't be that easy. You may know I'm here, but you have to actually be here yourself in order to talk to me, and it's a big galaxy. I learned that the last time I was here. The real question is what planet are you on? Well, if you can hear me, I'm going to try and find you. If you could reach me soon I'd appreciate it. I don't have the time to search every planet in this reality, and neither does Zelda."
He had been in the state where he believed Daniel was now. He knew that the second he stepped into this reality his whole life would be an open book to his former acquaintance. Daniel would not only know that he was here, but also why he had come and what the stakes were. The Daniel he had known wouldn't sit on the sidelines and just watch. He hoped he was still that same man.
Ascension to the higher planes of existence brought a kind of near omnipotence, and near omniscience, but not omnipresence. The energy of one's being was still confined within a certain space and time.
He began walking forward towards the entry to the stairs which would take him up and into the main section of the ancient city he had emerged in once upon a time as a ten year old boy. He passed row upon row of ancient stone and metal shelving. The walls and ceiling of the great library had been supported by a hard black stone that seemed to line everything. "Nara." He said, remembering what it was called. "I haven't see that in a long time."
His other memories started coming back to him. He didn't have access to these particular memories when he had visited as a boy to retrieve Zelda from this world centuries ago. They only came back to him after that kiss in the Arbiter's grounds in this lifetime.
As he looked around, everything started coming back to him. It had been ten thousand years ago, and he had stood in this same chamber with a group of about forty or fifty others, including Hylia, his wife, and her mother, Nayru, as well as his own mother
"Isn't this going to be exciting, Copulus?" He remembered her saying. They were standing right about where he was standing now in the library, waiting for their turn to go through the descriptive book he had just come from. They had both been in their mid-thirties or so, and he was on the security team assigned to guard the scientists from any threats which might await them. "Imagine the discoveries we can make on the connection between the mind and reality. The Writers really outdid themselves making a connection to this world!"
"Yeah, I heard from the advance scouts that it was beautiful." Had been his own response. "But some of the indigenous wildlife can be a handful." Boy, I didn't known the half of it way back then, he chuckled at the thought.
It amazed him that the fire marble lights were still dimly burning in the alcoves along the columns. He wondered if they were the same lights, or if the later generations had put in fresh ones. The last time he was here, he had been told by Daniel that, at that time, this city had only been abandoned by its founders because of a plague relatively recently. He did some quick mental math. That meant the descendants of those who remained only abandoned the city about five hundred years before or so. So, it was conceivable these lights were still left from them.
He turned back towards the door to the staircase up, more of his long buried memories coming back to him with every step.
The old underground city was abandoned completely as Link wandered through the ruins. It hadn't been so empty even the last time he had been there. There had been soldiers and scientists studying the old ruins. Now, there was no one as he came to stand at the docks overlooking the great underground lake. It glowed orange from the luminescent algae which grew at the bottom of the lake and gave the cavern its thirty five hour "day" and "night" cycle. If Link remembered right, this looked like it was the middle of the city's "day."
The city had been built on the shore of the lake from the stone of the surrounding caverns and earth, in the hollow of a great underground chamber many miles in length and breadth. His people, upon their expeditionary return to Terra from Atlantis had discovered the cavern deep underground beneath an active volcano. It was decided by those several generations before Link and his family had migrated to Terra from Lantea in the Pegasus galaxy that the cavern would make an excellent place to begin a new city and research center; one which might rival Atlantis itself in time, while remaining out of view of the new emerging human populations which had evolved on Terra in the Lanteans' million year absence. They would keep to their highest principle of non interference in the underground world hidden away in a deep and vast desert where the scattered tribes never ventured; at least that was the original idea.
This view of the great underground sea had been Link's favorite as a boy when they had first come to settle here. It reminded him of his first home back on Lantea and the seemingly infinite ocean on the surface of which the bright and shining city of Atlantis rested. Here he could come in the underground and allow himself to imagine, for just the briefest of times, that he was back home fishing off the piers of the city.
By the time Link... Copulus, he reminded himself of what his name had been then, had migrated there as a boy with his mother from Atlantis, the underground settlement had still been fairly small. The stone metropolis which lay around him had grown up over the ten thousand years of occupation which had followed his own growth from adolescence to adulthood, and then his and Hylia's relocation to the world which would become known as "Hyrule." He barely recognized it except for a very few of the core city buildings, and most of those which he had known were now buried under millennia of settlement, construction, and civilization. But the lake hadn't changed in all that time. It remained as he remembered it.
They had originally called the city "Duo'oni." It was a numerical designation, "2-1," though he couldn't remember what it had originally referred to. He remembered Daniel had told him at one time that the civilization which had survived until its fall had, with the natural evolution of language, shortened it to "D'ni."
Among the other scientific research going on had been the Writing of the Books. This technology had developed as an offshoot of the stargate technologies, but far more refined and complex. It was a relatively simple thing to connect a wormhole between two stargates with a set of six coordinates and a point of origin. But then began the investigation into making links to, not just other places of space within the same universe and reality, but into other realities and possibilities of realities within the space and time of the ever expanding multiverse. It required, not just a few symbols like a telephone number, but a whole language of descriptive symbols pinpointing and describing the exact world and reality you wanted. Instead of just needing a few dozen symbols on a ring, you needed a whole book to contain the description. Creating these links became something of an art form which developed out of the science, even by the time he and Hylia and the other colonists had left for Hyrule. There had been dozens of these descriptive books which had been written by that point, and judging by how many filled the great library he had emerged in, that art form had continued to develop long after they had gone.
The use of the Books had opened up new worlds to explore, investigate, and research without needing to make the trip by gateship to Terra's southernmost continent to revisit and explore the worlds of this galaxy, especially with the limited resources of an isolated outpost or colony. That became reserved for trips back to Atlantis to store and log important research there for future generations of their scientists. Link had made several of those trips himself by the small, cloaked, cylindrical gateships ferrying the project leaders back and forth to Lantea through the astria porta.
"Link." He said his name aloud, looking out at the water. "I've been called just 'the link' or 'the hero' for so long, I've forgotten the sound of my actual name." He mused. "I was Copulus here." It was the difference between the language of his first birth, and the ever evolving language of Hyrule, but still. Even Hylia had been able to keep her name remembered these many millennia, while his had been completely forgotten in the mists of history, reduced to the meaning of the word itself. "Doesn't matter, I suppose, as long as I did what needed to be done."
"The gateships..." He thought out loud. "I wonder if any of them are still here." There was no one down here that he could see, and it looked like there hadn't been anyone in a very long time. He decided that the best place for him to be to find Daniel Jackson was near a stargate. The last time he had come to Terra, or Earth, he had come through the stargate into Atlantis itself when it was run and occupied by Colonel Shepherd's people, having been returned to Earth by them from the Pegasus galaxy. The city was sitting in the middle of a vast ocean on this world then too. He would need a gateship to find it. That meant he had to get to the gateship hanger and see if any of them were still there and intact.
He took one last look at the glowing orange sea and then turned back into the city, and started walking. The gateship hanger had been hollowed out closer to the desert surface, but a distance away from the volcano. The access point to it had been a ring platform in the security building. That had been in the central core of the city then, near the library from which he had so recently emerged. So, that was where he needed to go.
He wandered back through the city to the staircase from which he had emerged. His problem now was locating the remains of the security building. When he had lived here before, they hadn't needed a long staircase down to reach the great library. It had been above the floor of the city along with the other main buildings.
"I'm getting too old for this." He said to no one in particular as he tried to remember in at least what direction the building with the platform had lain. "Of course, it doesn't make sense to make a staircase big enough to fit a horse and rider through comfortably if it's just going to one place." He reasoned. He hadn't paid attention to whether or not there were any side doors or passages off the main corridor.
He tried to imagine the city as it was, and then tried to imagine roughly where the library was in relation to the stairs in front of him. Fairly confident he had a good grasp of it in his mind, he descended the stairwell again, this time trying to pay attention to the walls off to his left, bearing towards what he remembered as the direction of the security building.
The stairwell was also lit by fire marbles still glowing dimly in their own alcoves. As he descended further, and paying more attention, he found that he had been right. There were doors and other passage ways which led off in both directions away from the corridor downwards. When he finally reached the bottom of the stairs near the entrance to the library, he found that he had been right. There was a corridor large enough for two people to walk comfortably side by side together just off to his left as he stood in front of the library's entrance. "How did I miss this?" He wondered.
He took the corridor and continued his search down it. There were stone doors on stone hinges all along this corridor, and, although a few of them had crumbled over time, most of them were very much intact. As he walked, he recognized that the doors inset in the corridor walls were actually part of the fronts of the ancient city's original center, and he had been walking along, not a corridor, but one of the original streets. The gaps between the old stone buildings had been bricked up and smoothed over to produce the corridor, a result of the millennia of growth, construction, and ultimately, the forgetting of this part of the city for something newer.
He finally spied the front of the building in which he had spent the majority of his first adult years. The slate stone door was still closed tight. He walked up to it and put his hand straight out against a certain, unmarked spot on the door and hoped it still had enough power to respond. The outline of his hand glowed blue underneath his skin, and the door opened inwards, still recognizing his particular DNA markers, which in spite of his Hylian incarnations, hadn't changed in ten thousand years. He and his mother had seen to it every time he had been reborn.
He stepped in, and dim lights came on in response to the presence of what his human friend, Colonel Shepherd had called his "ATA" or "Ancient" gene. Good, that meant that there should still be enough power left in the ancient potentia, the zero point energy module which had powered the ancient settlement, to operate the ring platform as well as charge the gateships.
The building had never been overly large to his knowledge as he crossed into it, though it, like the rest of the city, had been abandoned long, long ago. He passed through the hallway leading to the operations control where the platform had been eons before. As he did so, he stopped in front of what had been the armory, unlocked the door with the palm of his hand, and entered.
The room lit up exposing racks of small, energy based weapons, as well as larger rifles. He looked at the charge lights on the rack, and most of them read green for fully charged. He didn't know what awaited him on the surface, but he didn't want to be caught exposed.. "Better I go with some protection than without." He said, grabbing a hand pistol, holster, and a weapons belt to hang it on. "Not quite the old sword and shield, but it'll do for now." Going to a drawer he remembered, he opened it and retrieved a small black broochlike object, and attached it to his forest green shirt under his coat. He focused for a brief minute, and a shimmering field of green energy surrounded him like an invisible wrap. "Personal shield still works. Good." He said with approval, then he focused again and the shield dissipated.
Satisfied that he was in a much better position, he left the armory and continued to the old operations center. This was a large chamber which had held all of the computer and surveillance equipment that had fed the ancient city's security forces with the information they needed to do their job. Many of the ancient monitors and equipment began to whir to life from their millennia old stand-by modes as he passed by them to a circular alcove with a platform large enough for three or four men to stand close together. He stepped up onto the platform and placed his hand against the side of the alcove then quickly drew it back again as the device responded quickly. Three or four large metal rings appeared, shooting up from the platform to surround him completely. There was a hum of energy, and then he disappeared from the room in a shimmer of blue light before the rings returned smoothly to their resting place within the platform.