Chapter 10

The lizalfos turned and charged the opening door before Daphnes had time to process his surroundings. "What the...?!" The Hylian general shouted in surprise as the lizard warrior launched itself into the air bringing its curved sword up and plunging down with it intending to split the man's head in half..

Daphnes' rifle came up out of reflex and short bursts of rapid fire thundered from the weapon, tearing into the lizalfos' chest and shredding the leather armor meant to protect it. The body of the creature was dead before it hit the stone of the bridge Daphnes found himself on. The soldier kept his weapon trained on the creature in the event it moved again, his muscles taught, and his senses heightened from the attack.

"You're not supposed to be here." He said matter of factly as he kicked at the creature with his webbed boot. "You're not supposed to be anywhere. You're not supposed to exist at all." He told the dead body. They were creatures of dark magic from the fairy tales his parents and others had told him. But supposedly none had been seen for centuries as he stared at the body oozing dark fluids from its wounds. A sour, reptilian stench wafted up from it.

Keeping his weapon trained on the body he hazarded a look up towards the rest of his surroundings. He was on a stone bridge in a great cavern. The stone bridge led into a circular tower that ran the center of the cavern. High above him he could see the outlines of other bridges leading off into the four points of the compass. He could hear the sounds of rushing water like rivers or waterfalls all around him, and wet mist filled the air. A faint silvery light bathed the whole cavern, though he couldn't see where the light was coming from. Nothing else was on the bridge with him.

Then beneath the barrel of his rifle, the body of the lizalfos suddenly and without warning exploded into black smoke, leaving nothing but its sword behind on the bridge as the smoke dissipated into the air.

Hundreds of thoughts raced through Daphnes' mind. The temple wasn't supposed to be like this. He had been told that members of the royal family regularly visited them now to check up on the Sages, and the last person to visit didn't report anything out of the ordinary. But his instincts in the entry cavern had been correct. Something was definitely wrong at the bottom of Lake Hylia.

"Nope. This personal trip was just canceled." He decided. "Time to go get reinforcements and do a clean up operation and possibly rescue the Sage."

Daphnes turned around to go back. He placed his palm on the door again, expecting it to slide upwards again. And... nothing. No mechanical sounds came. The door remained firmly where it was. He pulled out the waterproof two way radio he had carried on the belt of his wet suit.

"Zora Guard, General Faroson." He called into the radio. There was a unit of Zora guardsmen waiting for him just outside the entrance to the temple.

All that came through the radio, however, was static.

"Zora Guard, General Faroson, please respond." He tried again. More static.

"Anyone who can hear my transmission, this is General Daphnes Faroson, Royal Hyrule Military Guard Commander, please respond to my call." He said again, his voice raising.

This time, there was no static. There was no nothing. The radio was completely dead.

"Damn." He swore as he put the radio back in his belt. "Okay. I'm on my own." He said, going through his situation. "I'm trapped in an ancient temple. I can only assume that there are an unknown number of more potential hostiles where that lizalfos came from. And if the Sage knows I'm here, she is either unable to respond, or she's unwilling to respond to my presence. Damn." He swore again. "It's a priority two situation."

He hadn't expected to ever face a priority two situation in his lifetime. The R.H.M.G. mandate was organizes according to priority levels depending on what the situation required. When a guardsman was on his own in a crisis, he took an oath to deal with the threats in order of those priorities or give his life in the attempt. This expected, self-sacrificing courage was a part of the agreement they made upon becoming a part of the R.H.M.G.

Priority four was regular, day to day law enforcement. Priority three was defense of the United Kingdom of Hyrule from external threats or state of war. But the top two levels were the stuff of ancient legends no guardsman in that day and age ever thought they'd have to face; rescue of the Sages and members of the royal family from dark magic threats. Daphnes himself had thought they were only in the oath for reasons of tradition and religion..

"But here I am in a priority two situation. Well Dad," he said with certain irony, "I guess I get to walk a mile in your shoes today." He said as he pulled another clip from his belt and reloaded his rifle. Once reloaded, he kept it at the ready in front of him as he moved forward. Wherever he turned, the barrel of the rifle went with him.

There was another door, with another jeweled symbol switch at the other end of the bridge. He kept turning his head and eyes in every direction, keeping his ears trained on every possible sound as he reached the opposite end. He didn't want to be taken by surprise again.

He placed his hand on the symbol, and the door slid quietly open, only the barest whisper of the machinery behind it making any sound.

"So, at least it's not the power being out." He said as it opened. The white and bronzed surfaces beyond were well lit as he scanned it with his rifle before stepping though the doorway. Inside he could hear something moving as he looked around.

Then the door mechanism began to whir again and he had to make a quick decision as he rapidly stepped through the doorway. The door then came down hard right behind his heels, and he didn't bother attempting to open it again. Escape was no longer his priority.

In front of him was another tall, expansive room divided into two levels that he could discern. There was a great staircase that ran through the center of the room between the two levels and he could hear running water cascading down the steps. The staircase was sitting on some kind of a central pillar, and around the pillar was a moat or pool of water.

What concerned Daphnes more than all of this were the several lizalfos which seemed to be guarding the room. He counted two that he could see on the upper level, two on the lower, and it looked like one in the moat around the staircase. None of them acted like they had seen him yet. They all appeared to only be armed with swords and small round shields.

Okay, he thought to himself, at least they don't know what a gun is. So much the better. Immediate threat, the one in the water is closest to me. Once I shoot him, the others will try and get at me unless they're deaf. Assume the two up top can jump down into the water and get to me. Assume the two on either side can power through the water at me. Be prepared for both. Also assume there are more than I can see. Best option, keep my back to the wall next to the door and let them come to me. Drop them before they get close.

He just barely pressed the trigger on his weapon and a thin beam of green light shot out to light up on the head of the creature in the water. A second later, two rounds followed it and the water became stained with the creature's dark blood as it's body began to convulse and thrash in the water helplessly.

The first creature to come at him was from his left side, but it didn't bother with the water. It lept over the grill barricade which had separated the different quarters of the lower level and came at him, claws and fangs bared in a malicious grin as it sought to bring down its own sword on him. Daphnes' own quick reflexes came around and put two rounds into that lazalfos' chest and it landed quivering in front of him.

The other three that he had seen took advantage of their comrade's misfortune to appear on the lower level in front of the general. The next thing Daphnes knew was one of the creature's spiked tails slamming into his hands and his rifle flew out of them and into the water of the moat. His hands were stunned as another of the creatures brought its own tail around, but Daphnes went into a roll away from it, reaching for his sword as he came out of the roll and was back on his feet.

"The old fashioned way then!" He called out, and then charged the three creatures before they had time to react. He launched himself into the air in a spin bringing his sword around to make contact with the necks of all three of them, slashing their throats as he landed in another roll and then came to his feet, leaving the three lizard warriors clutching at their throats and then falling down to the stone floor, their life's blood bleeding out of them as they choked on it.

Within a minute, they too stopped moving. And then they all exploded into black smoke which dissipated into the air. He looked around for the other two he had killed, sword still in hand, but their bodies were nowhere to be found. The only things left of any of them were their swords and small round shields. He replaced his own standard issue combat blade into its scabbard on his back and picked up one of the lizalfos' shields, placing it on his right arm.

He stepped carefully over to the edge of the water surrounding the central structure which the staircase rested on and looked over it into the pool. The water was very clear and was somehow lit well enough to where he could see all the way to the bottom. His rifle was resting on the stone floor at least twenty or thirty feet down, and he could the movement of some kind of nasty looking fish swimming around it.

"Not getting that back any time soon." He said looking at the firearm, now realizing the value of his father's insistence on fencing practice when he was younger. His sword was the only weapon he had against who knew what else.

He then stopped and listened again, but couldn't hear any more sounds of movement in the room. "No more in here at least," he said to himself. He had a few minutes to think.

His priority at that point was to find the Sage and assess her condition. He knew from some memory buried in his mind that each temple had a private residence for the Sages. This was only logical as each Sage had to eat, sleep, and do their business just like everyone else whether they spent most of their time in prayer or not. The residence in the Temple of Light in Castleton was in the south wing of the cathedral-like structure. But the temple at the bottom of Lake Hylia was designed completely differently with a different intelligent species in mind. As a result, he had no idea where a Zora might think it would be logical to put a residence.

"Stupid me not to consult a blueprint of the layout of the temple before I come." He berated himself. Then he thought of the man who talked him into coming. "'Members of the royal family have been making regular visits to the temples for centuries' he said." He began to repeat Gaepora's words. "'It's just a matter of knowing how to get past all of the enchantments,' he said. 'We go in, talk to the sages, and then come back and tell mom,' he said. Right, little brother. Why did I ever let you talk me into this?"

He looked around the room to get his bearings a little better. If he had come into the room from the south, then there was a door facing both the eastern and western sides of the room, but the only one that was immediately accessible to him at the moment was the western door unless he wanted to go for a swim with the unhealthy looking fish in the pool. He looked at them again and swore they were grinning at him with razor sharp fangs.

"Nope." He decided. "Swimming is out for the moment. The western door it is then." He said as he made his way around and over the barriers to the door and, placing his shield hand on the symbol in the center, it slid open as he unsheathed his sword again with his left

The Temple of Nayru was definitely built with Zoras in mind, Daphnes decided as he worked his way from chamber to chamber and room to room There seemed to be channels and rivers of water running everywhere that turned paddlewheels and cogs like some giant water powered machine. He made the assumption that this was what provided the temple's doors with their power, and probably a few other things as well. Then, realizing again that this was all built by the Zoras, he realized that he didn't know as much about the water people the Hylians shared this world with as he thought he did. They had an architecture and technology that was distinctively their own. And this temple had been built many thousands of years before his own time.

"Damned magic." He swore again as he cut down yet another nameless beast that turned into black smoke within seconds of its death. Every room he entered had some kind of dark magic creature lurking in it, and he had no idea what was generating them or how. Daphnes had been the more athletic brother, even in High School following in his father's footsteps on the Ordonville fencing team. Magic had always been more his brother's forte, not his. In that way, Daphnes had always taken after his father, while Gaepora took after their mother who could be a formidible sorceress when she wanted to be.

He knew the reality of magic only too well, and that it was half of the underpinnings of his world's technology along with scientific observation and manipulation of the natural world. But he neither understood nor liked it well at all. It had a way of throwing things at you sideways. These creatures which kept appearing at him out of the shadows were yet another good example of that.

His arms were getting sore as his fencing skills were put to the test again and again by armed lizalfos, the bat-like keese (flying, dark magic rodents from hell, he thought) which flew at him out of the shadows, and a few other monstrosities he had no name for which seemed to infest every new room he entered. It felt like one long fencing match to which there was no end in sight as he searched for the Sage's personal chambers. Small, thin rivulets of blood dribbled down his temple from small cuts to his head. Similar cuts marked tears in his wetsuit along his chest and back where his shield or sword hadn't been quite fast enough.

Finally he came across a hallway that looked a little more promising and he followed it to the end where another door waited with warm water running in a channel through a grate underneath it. He opened it and found himself in what looked like a large indoor swimming pool surrounded by what could loosely be referred to as "furniture" carved from the same stone as the walls and floors. In the waters of the pool, he could see structures that resembled a couch and a bed.

Up on the floor in front of him was a kind of office desk of polished black marble with white spidery lines running through it. Keeping his sword in hand for any more surprises, he went cautiously over to the desk to investigate it for any clue about what might have happened to cause the infestation in the temple.

Looking at the surface of the desk, there was a slate with wax and a kind of stylus with which to write into the wax. "Well, that makes sense," he said to himself, "can't have paper and pens where there's always water around." He picked up the slate and looked at it, but found nothing. It looked like it had been recently cleared of any writing. Next to the slate, however was a device he found much more promising; an archaic, mechanically based black telephone.

He pulled it in front of him. If it still worked, he could call R.H.M.G. Command and have them send reinforcements. It was a simple design connected to a waterproof cord which ran along the walls and out through a hole in the stone ceiling above, presumably continuing up to the surface and on to the phone lines which criss-crossed Hyrule.

He picked up the handset and held it to his ear waiting for a dial tone, but the handset was silent. "Damn." He swore again. "Does nothing work down here?" He said as nearly slammed the handset back down on the dialer base.

One thing was for certain, he was alone in that room as he looked around it. And then it struck him. He was alone in that room. he tensed up as he began scanning the walls and ceiling for any creature he could have missed. Every room and chamber he had been in so far had hidden some kind of monster for him to face. Every one.

"So why is this one an exception?" He asked himself slowly as he looked carefully throughout the Sage's chamber. "What's protecting it?"

He could see nothing obvious, either threatening or magical, but he knew from his elementary magic classes during his school days that meant nothing. A magical object didn't need to stand out from the space around it, and magic could cloak and conceal just about anything.

"Which also means the Sage could still be in this room," he told himself. "Ruta?" He called out. "Your grace? This is General Daphnes Faroson of the Royal Hyrule Military Guard. If you're here, please show yourself."

"Prove it." Came a disembodied voice which had the strange, slightly melodic gurgling quality of a mature female Zora's from somewhere off to his left.

"Prove it?" Well, that answers that question, he thought to himself, assuming it wasn't a monster mimicking the Sage. But that made no sense either, as a monster wouldn't have waited this long to attack. "I don't really have time for these kinds of games, your grace. In case you haven't noticed, this temple's been compromised and is overrun. I've got to find a way to get us out of here and somewhere safe so I can call in a better equipped cleanup team."

He heard a soft, gurgling chuckle moving at a distance behind him. "You think this is funny?" He asked, his voice rising in anger. "I just fought my way through this gods forsaken place with nothing but a sword and borrowed shield looking for you."

The chuckling stopped, and the Sage's voice spoke again. "You carry the name assumed by great kings of the past, as well as the name of the great goddess of courage. Prove to me you are who you say you are, Daphnes Faroson, and I will reveal myself to you."

And how in the shadow am I supposed to do that? He swore in his thoughts. Putting aside that question for the moment, he asked, "What happened here? How was the temple compromised?"

"You brought them." Came the reply.

"I'm sorry?" Daphnes responded. "How in the shadow did I bring these things here?!"

"The temples are places of great power. They serve as nexus points between belief and reality." She explained. "You created them when you entered the temple." Her voice now came from at least six feet to his right.

"Are you saying I believed they would be here, and poof! Here they are?" He asked in disbelief.

"Exactly." She said in a near whisper. "You brought these things to my home." Her voice became accusing.

"Look, I didn't... I mean, I just came to ask you a personal question about my mom and your goddess. I don't know what kind of a person you think I am..." He tried to say when she interrupted and said, "That is what I am trying to determine. Your fear created the creatures which now infest this temple, and only your faith can rid it of them."

"My fear?" He asked. "And what was I afraid of?" He challenged.

"Only you can answer that question, son of Farore." The Sage responded from somewhere in front of him.

Great, she wants me to soul search. He thought. He took a deep breath and let it out trying to think back. "When I was back in the entry cavern, something didn't feel right. I thought something might be wrong inside." He said, trying to work it out.

"Why would you think that?" She asked.

"I don't know. My brother said members of the royal family come and check up on you regularly without incident." He answered honestly.

"And yet you came armed and looking for a fight." She replied. "Why?"

He thought back. Why? Because the king recommended it. Because every story I've ever heard about these places was about how my dad had to go in and turn it into a slaughterhouse for magic monsters once every hundred years or so. Because... He went deeper into his own mind, and then the answer came to him. "Because I've always been afraid of..." He stopped himself.

"Yes?" She asked.

"Because of my father." He said. "For as far back as I can remember, people have nearly worshiped my father as the Hero of legend."

"And so he is." She responded.

"And I'm his son." He continued. "I remember story after story of him having to fight nightmares made real with no one else to help him, and I've heard him cry out in the night from the terrors he still goes through. It scared the shadow out of me when I was a kid that I might... that I might have to do it myself one day. I hated my dad having to go through that, and it scared me I'd have to do the same. That's why I joined the fencing team, and the guard. So that when the day came I'd be able to face it. It's not the monsters that ever scared me. I learned to deal with them in the guard. It's being his son, and everything that goes with it."

"And does it still scare you, son of Farore?" The Sage asked. She hadn't moved. "Now that you have been called upon to fight those same nightmares?"

"Like I said, it's not the creatures." He said quietly. "Look, I don't know how to prove to you what you want. My dad's Link Faroson, and my mom's the former crown Princess, Zelda. I guess that also means that I'm the grandson of both Farore and Nayru as well if all the rest of it is true. I guess I'm also royal family if you want to go that route too." A slight, almost imperceptible tremor went through him at the thought. "My mom named me after her dad, Daphnes."

"Prove to me you are the son of the Princess Zelda." The Sage demanded.

Okay, he thought letting out a sigh as he realized neither of them were in any pressing physical danger. Though I'd prefer the pressing physical danger, he also thought.

"My mom said that someone who asked for proof might recognize this. The only people who know this melody are members of the royal family." He said as he pulled a small flute carved from deku wood. Pressing it to his lips, he played the first six notes of the melody, the lullaby his mother made them learn by heart.

"Indeed, my grandson." The voice changed into something more resembling his mother's as a mature Hylian woman in a blue dress appeared in front of him. "I know that lullaby very well. I sang it to your mother in her crib ten thousand years ago."

"Nayru..." Daphnes whispered in awe at the appearance of the goddess in front of him.