Chapter 11

The aged Hylian man sat motionless in a padded metal chair next to the equally elder woman who lay sitting up in the hospital bed. Both had their eyes closed, their hands resting relaxed on their laps. The shades to the window outside were drawn, and the only light in the room was the artificial lighting overhead. To any casual observer, they both appeared to be in a state of perfect, contemplative meditation.

But the ascended being who watched over them both knew better. She could see into their minds and hearts, and observed the struggle both were undergoing as they attempted to quiet their minds and delve deep into the quiet, unmoving darkness of the mind at perfect peace.

In truth, she hadn't stopped watching over the woman who had been so dear to her heart for millennia since she took ill with the dark blight, the last remnants of an evil power that nearly destroyed their world and everything in it. It had been a final parting shot from an ancient enemy long since defeated. It was by mere chance that her Lady had stumbled into the last remaining fragments of it in the woods near their home in Ordon more than two weeks prior. Quantitatively it had been miniscule, but it was enough to turn the white blood cells in her body cancerous, and it couldn't be removed by any science or magic the Hylians were now capable of.

Impa would have removed it herself, was going to remove it herself, but she was stopped by the Three. These did not always explain their decisions, even to her, or the others. As in her mortal body, so now, it was her duty to serve and obey the will of her gods, even if she was now considered one herself.

She could tell that the Hero was still struggling, even after his earlier conversation with his wife. That proved something of a painful talk for him to have with her.

"It's you." He had come into the room, and said it with almost no warning. It wasn't an accusation. It wasn't a question. It wasn't even a greeting. It was just a statement of fact, and Impa immediately knew to what he had been referring even if her Lady did not.

His wife had, fortunately, been eating a meal at the time and so was not in the middle of her own meditation at the time. Several emotions passed through her Lady as he came into the room. Joy, surprise, fear, hope, and others as he came up to her bed.

"Link!" She had said. "I was so afraid..." She began to say. "I was worried you might not come back this time."

The Hero had said nothing in answer to her Lady's statements, but continued with his own train of thought. "I know what held me back before. What's always held me back from ascending on my own. I remembered, Zelda." He said.

"Me." She had said, nodding in understanding. "I know my love. I've always known."

"I could never let go of you. Even after you had passed on that first time, I couldn't let go. It was the whole reason I sought ascension in the first place." He had told her. He had then shared his other discovery with her. "You weren't supposed to help me then, were you? You helped me ascend when I hadn't let go of everything I was supposed to."

"No. I wasn't." She told him. "I suppose I couldn't let go of you forever either."

"Then how did you ascend the first time?" He asked.

"It was different then, Link. I was old and dying. It's easier to let go of everything when you know it will be taken from you anyways. I let go of you then as I slipped quietly into the peace of death, and that was when I was transformed." She told him, and then she realized, "I just remembered that. I didn't remember it before now."

Indeed she hadn't, Impa had observed. That part of her memory unlocked at only the right time as it was meant to by the Three. The ascended being could see the locks on the rest of her memory were still in place, only to come undone with certain key events triggering them, though Impa had been prohibited from knowing what those key events would be. The "why?" of that was no mystery. She would have been tempted to arrange their circumstances to unlock them faster than was good for them. Everything had to unfold according to the plan of the Three or else all their work would be for nothing and these two would suffer the same fate again.

Another presence entered the hospital room, invisible to the contemplating mortals, but fully known to the former Sage. He was an outsider in this world, but also welcome and familiar to those ascended beings who resided in that reality.

"Greetings, Daniel Jackson." Impa welcomed him. "I see you have already had a hand in these affairs."

"Hello, Impa. It's been a long time." The outsider returned. "They're still struggling, aren't they?" He said, gesturing to the two mortals.

"Yes. But I believe they are making important progress. You made sure you couldn't be followed here from your world?" Impa asked.

"No one on the lower planes can locate and use the linking book, if that's what you mean. It's quite safe, and the stargate was destroyed in the explosion I contained." He confirmed for her. He shared a vision with her of the book being buried in a tiny cavern under thousands of feet of rock and stone. "I know how they perceive what is happening." He said gesturing to the Hero and her Lady. "But why are their mothers putting them through this?"

"The Three do not always share their minds with me, Daniel. But I can speculate." She responded.

Daniel continued to observe the two in front of him. "Zelda has only two and a half weeks left at most, doesn't she?" He asked.

"Not a lot of time." Impa agreed tensely.

"There are some who spend decades in contemplation before they are able to reach ascension." Daniel told her.

"They were given the last forty five years." Impa told him. "Those decades were theirs to use as they wished. They were told to stay out of mortal affairs and not to interfere. They chose to ignore the inescapable."

"And?" He asked.

"And the threat from Demise has been over for hundreds of years. But the Hero's mind is burdened with thousands of years of horror and traumatic images from the responsibility he took upon himself. He only took that burden upon himself because he never released all of his burden before he ascended. He couldn't let go of his wife. If he were to be assisted in ascending again, it would only be a matter of time before he chose to incarnate again and suffer those same traumatic experiences all over again. His mother wishes him to be free of his burdens once and for all."

Daniel contemplated this for some time, and then asked, "And Zelda?"

"Hylia first let go of this world when she lay dying the first time, but developed an attachment to it and its people again shortly afterwards. Her compassion, along with her wisdom, has always been one of her greatest strengths, but this attachment is what has tied her to this world. She has never been able to just let this world stand or fall on its own." Impa surmised for him. "As long as she remains attached to this world, it is only a matter of time before she incarnates again to save it. As your friend, John Shepherd once told the Hero, there is always going to be some new evil arising to threaten the world."

"So you're saying that she cares too much about this world, and Link cares too much about her?" Daniel tried to put it together.

"As you well know, Daniel, compassion is one thing and attachment quite another. I care about this world, and about my Lady very much. But it would not help either if my interference keeps them from following the path of ascension for themselves." She told him.

"So you would allow them to cease to be if they can't do this on their own?" He asked.

"Did you not with your loved ones in your world when their time came?" Impa returned.

"The choice had to be theirs." He said, understanding. "And I knew my wife especially couldn't just let everything go. Even death couldn't change that. It wouldn't have been the right decision for anyone."

"It pains me, as it did you, to remain at the distance we must. But that is the price we pay for this existence." She said.

"Is there no way we can help them without upsetting the plans of the Three?" Daniel asked.

"Not allowing the Hero to stand or fall on his own is what caused his suffering in the first place." Impa said. "You've already unblocked his mind, and no one has undone this since he returned. I must assume then that you have already helped without too much upset."

"What about Zelda? Can we unblock her mind?" He asked.

"Look closely into her mind, Daniel. There are certain events which must occur before those memories are unlocked and the obstruction to ascension is lifted." She responded. "Ultimately, it is her attachments which will be the harder of the two to release."

Daniel continued to observe the two. "I would like to remain and observe with you if that's okay." He said.

"You are always welcome as a friend, Daniel Jackson. But I ask that you respect the wishes of the Three on these matters. One way or the other, the cycle of suffering for the Hero and my Lady will end with this lifetime." Impa told him.

"Of course." He replied letting his sight continue to dwell on the two Hylians, contemplating their situation.

The music which wafted through the trees was light and festive as Gaepora tried to follow its source. It sounded as though it was coming from a flute in the far off distance. The moonlight overhead was bright and silvery as it drifted through the gaps in the canopy of the trees to the forest floor. Over his eyes were goggles which, through a combination of science and Hylian magic, allowed a person to see clearly even in the darkest night.

So far he hadn't been led astray as long as he listened for the music, though it seemed to be taking him in circles along a worn forest trail according to the field compass he carried with him. According to all of his field and survival training he received, he should have come back to the archway of trees he began at several times now, but he hadn't. "Just follow the music." He repeated to himself. His mother had warned him, "If you go in any other direction you'll find you've wasted hours of walking." And he had taken the warning seriously.

So far, with the exception of more random patches of the man-eating Deku Babas, he wondered why he had been encouraged to bring all of the gear he had. For the fearsome reputation the Lost Woods had, it had been a pretty quiet hike for the last two hours except for the lively flute playing growing louder and louder as he hiked closer and closer through the woods to his goal.

"Oof!" Out of nowhere something small and hard slammed into the chest of his magically reinforced flack jacket and knocked him off of his feet and hard onto the ground. It felt like being hit with a sledgehammer as he hit the ground. His flak jacket absorbed most of the piercing impact like it was designed to, but it couldn't stop him from losing his balance.

"Damn." He swore as he hit the ground. "That's what I get for not paying attention." He immediately rolled over onto his sore chest and flattened himself out on the ground. Another small object whizzed over him like it had been shot from a cannon and he turned his goggles in the direction he thought it had come from.

He turned his head and eyes slowly sweeping the forest ahead of him. There, about twenty feet in the direction he had been walking was a relatively short, red "bush" with eyes that glowed yellow in the darkness.

"Well, I'll be damned." He said to himself. "Never thought I'd see one of you little buggers." It was what his dad had affectionately called a "Deku Scrub." They were, like the Great Deku Tree, intelligent, sentient plants. They were rarely seen any more though, preferring to be left alone in their own... what did they call their communities, villages? Patches? He didn't know.

He might have considered the thing just annoying, and maybe kind of endearing in a strange kind of way, except that it was shooting rock hard Deku seeds at him at near bullet speeds. His flak jacket could take it, but his head wasn't protected from them. He slid his R.H.M.G. enchanted shield off of his back and went to his knees with the shield in front of him. Another seed hit the shield and ricocheted off in a different direction as he brought his assault rifle up and lit the space between the Scrub's glowing eyes up with it's green laser site.

Then he hesitated, and lowered the rifle. "Nope." He said. "You're just trying to protect your territory, aren't you, buddy?"

Another seed hit the shield and ricochet off hard into the distance. "But I still can't have you shooting at me, either. Time to take a page from Dad's book."

He had heard the stories about these little guys hundreds of times, and how his father had dealt with them. The trick was in how you angled the ricochet with the shield. If you did it right, the seed would bounce back and hit the Scrub hard enough to scare it and send it running. But he needed to get a little closer.

Staying low, he got to his feet and kept the shield facing the Scrub as he crept forward. Another seed hit the shield and ricocheted to the left to the Scrub. "C'mon." He said in irritation as he continued forward, crouching behind the shield emblazoned with the winged triforce crest of the royal family.

Several more rock like seeds hit the shield as he moved towards the creature slowly, each one ricocheting off to the right or the left as Gaepora tried to get the angle just right. Then, about ten feet from the Scrub another seed hit the shield and ricocheted back hitting the sentient bush in what Gaepora assumed was its face. The creature yelped in surprise, let out a high pitched shriek and ran off into the forest. "Dad was right. It worked." Gaepora said to himself with mild surprise, grinning in amused satisfaction.

"So much for you." He said to himself as he stood up, but he kept his shield on his right arm and his rifle ready. The only reason why he had gotten the sore chest to begin with was because he had gotten careless. Not as easy of a walk as I thought, and there's more than Kokiri in these woods that call it home, he thought to himself.

Then he turned his attention back to the music as he listened for it. It was still there, its carnival like melody wafting through the night time forest. He carefully looked around himself for any more signs of the "bush people," but he didn't see any. Then he continued on, weapons out.

Gaepora could hear the footsteps of large creatures coming from beyond the hedges. He also knew that if he wanted to get to the source of the music, he had to go through the hedge maze. From his dad's stories, he also had a pretty good idea of what creature's footfalls they were.

It had taken him another few hours, five more Deku Scrubs, a few Skull Kids, and more Deku Baba patches than he cared to keep count of to reach the grove in which he now stood. None of them seemed too fond of trespassers in their woods. The Deku Baba plants he turned to man-eating shredded salad, and this cost him most of the ammunition he brought for his assault rifle, though he still had a few clips for his sidearm. The Deku Scrubs he used his shield trick, and it got a little easier with each time. It just didn't feel right to do any real harm to the little guys. The Skull Kids... They liked to play games with his mind and move things around in order to confuse him as to which direction he was going, but they couldn't change the direction of the music, and this became his anchor point as he moved through the shifting forest. They never tried to physically harm him, but by the time he had gotten to the grove, his nerves were at their breaking point. He didn't know how his father had kept his sanity having to deal with them in the ancient past.

With every step the realization had grown that he was retracing the path his father had taken many times before, and he had only done it with his wits and weapons that were virtually medieval. Gaepora's respect for the goat rancher he had known and loved all of his life grew and grew as the music became louder and louder.

Now he stood facing the hedge maze, and the other more or less intelligent species of the Lost Woods, moblins. What Gaepora knew about them was what he mostly remembered from his father's stories. They lived in small family groups in clearly marked regions of the Lost Woods and the other forests of Eastern and Western Hyrule, and most of them stayed as far away from the towns and villages as they could, though his father had met a few individuals on occasion who were more open to trade. They lived in a kind of caste society based on the color of their fur, with the bluish green moblins being the dominant caste, and those with reddish orange fur relegated to menial positions. They were easily eight feet tall on average, muscular, and usually bad tempered. The most distinctive feature about them was their bulldog like heads. Their favorite weapon was a sharpened spear with which they happily gutted trespassers without hesitation. Reasoning with them was out of the question once they were provoked, and moblins always seemed to be provoked about something. Those were the creatures which waited for him among the tall hedge walls.

He checked his clips of ammunition for the rifle and he had only one left. Set to single shot, that should be enough if he could quietly slip through the maze and target them one by one. But that would leave a lot of dead moblins he surmised; dead moblins that might have parents or families of their own.

"Well, Dad, you told us you had to kill more than one moblin to get where you needed to go." He said quietly, out loud. It had sounded exciting and adventurous when his father had told those stories to him and his brother and sister as kids. But as he stepped towards the maze entrance, the less easy he felt about it. "The question is, do I really need to?" The moblins were here because they were guarding the path to the temple. It wasn't right to slaughter them just for doing what they're here for.

Then a thought occurred to him. "How does the royal family get through here to check on the Sage without having to deal with these guys?" He asked himself. The members of the extended royal family who came to check on the Sages regularly weren't soldiers, though they were accompanied by guardsmen, and many were elderly. There was no way they could run this gauntlet safely, and he couldn't quite see the petite, grandmotherly Lady Tala stealthily stalking the moblins like a hardened assassin. There had to be another way through.

He studied the hedge walls intently until he noticed that each had a hard platform at the top, wide enough for a single person to walk comfortably across. "It can't be that easy, can it?" He asked himself, staring at the platforms. "So, how do I get up there?"

He searched all around the entry path to the maze but found nothing. No concealed ladders, no neatly concealed elevator leaves, and no way up from this side that he could see. But entering the maze meant having to deal with its guardians and having their somewhat innocent blood on his hands for no really good reason. "Except for my mother's future, that is." He reminded himself.

"So, is that it?" He asked out loud. "Do I have to choose between my mother's salvation and the lives of these moblins only doing their jobs? There's got to be another way." The woman he knew as his mother would rather die than be saved by slaughtering innocent lives, he knew all too well, no matter what race those innocent lives happened to be.

Then some of the leaves on one of the hedges caught his eye and he came over to inspect them. They appeared to be arranged differently than the others. Not exactly different colors, but as the sun began to break over the eastern horizon hidden from view by the woods there were three patches of leaves that were grouped closely together that caught the new sunlight and reflected it differently than the rest. The pattern the leaves made was so familiar to him that it couldn't be a coincidence. The sunlight reflected off of the leaves put together made the shape of the three triangles of a triforce.

As an experiment, he pulled out the ocarina he had carried with him and played the melody his mother had taught them, and sung to them herself when they were young. The triangles glowed golden and in front of them branches shifted and grew together until they formed a ladder which reached from the ground up to the platform.

"That's more like it." He said as he began his ascent to the top platform about ten or fifteen feet off the ground. When he reached the top, he could see the entire maze laid out in front of him, and the moblins stalking it, separated by small pools of water which looked like they were there to keep the moblins from charging each other. The walls of the maze turned into a fairly straightforward footpath with only a few breaks in between that he saw he was going to have to jump, though the jumps would be fairly easy.

He proceeded along the platforms until he reached the other side of the maze where another, more obvious metal frame ladder stood to let him back down to the floor of the grove. Before he made his descent to the ground he took a good look at what lay in front of him where the music continued to play loudly and happily.

There was one more moblin standing in his way that he could see, and this one made all of the others he had seen moving through the maze look like children in comparison. It carried a massive club and stood on the only path through a corridor formed out of the trunks of trees. There was no way to get to the other side except through the giant moblin. So far it was just standing, silent but wary. Its intelligent, but feral eyes watching the corridor like a hawk.

"Seriously?" Gaepora asked himself. "You've got to be kidding me. How did Lady Tala get past this?" He wondered aloud in frustration as he sized up the giant up the path.

You're not Lady Tala, the thought came quietly but forcefully unbidden to his mind. Could it be possible? He wondered. "It's this place." He reasoned. "The obstacles are shifting depending on who's trying to get to the temple. Here I am, a heavily armed veteran soldier. Why wouldn't it shift to something big and mean?" But that meant he hadn't escaped his main dilemma at all. "And I'm going to have to kill it to get past, aren't I?"

Even though he knew this would allow him to progress, he felt defeated, and sorry for the big guy. From the top of the platform, with a heavy heart Gaepora knelt down on one knee and brought his rifle's laser sight up to rest its green laser dot on the massive forehead of the creature. It was big, but not big enough to where the rounds from his rifle wouldn't do their job.

He hesitated again, and he studied the creature. He wondered if it could see him, and if it knew what he was about to do. Its club looked like it could substitute for a wrecking ball to take down a brick and steel building as it held it against its shoulder like the silent sentinel it was. The big ugly creature had one foot planted on either side of the corridor of trees, effectively blocking the way completely, its legs forming a kind of archway about five or six feet high. Gaepora studied that archway intently, a plan forming in his mind. He took his finger off the trigger and lowered the rifle. "Maybe we can both walk away from this, huh big fella?"

He shouldered his rifle and carefully climbed down the ladder moving into the corridor. As he did so, the giant moblin seemed to come to life, its eyes glaring down at the Hylian general. The club slowly came off its shoulder and the creature held it menacingly in both hands.

Gaepora slowly approached the creature, his hands free of his weapons. "Easy big fella," he said. "If we do this right, we both make it out of here alive."

Then the club hit the ground hard causing a small tremor as the moblin slammed it into the ground in front of itself. It then raised the club and swung it again in front of Gaepora, though it didn't move from its position in the corridor. Again, and again it beat the ground with the club in front of the Hylian general.

"Right." He said, wondering if this was actually going to be a good idea or if he was going to end up fertilizer for the plants as the moblin hit the ground again.

One, two, three, and then a pause. One, two, three, and then a pause. The moblin was beating the ground in a rhythm and never moved from where it stood to try and get a better shot at the Hylian as Gaepora studied the creature. Every once in a while it would shake its head and let out a fierce yell like a challenge, but that was about the extent of it.

He had one shot at this, and if it failed, one of them would die. The rhythm of the moblin started up again, one, two, three, and then Gaepora sprinted like mad towards the creature's legs. The creature raised its club again intending to bring it down hard on Gaepora's head, but Gaepora didn't stop running. He ran and then dove in between the creature's legs into a roll behind it and then got back to his feet and kept running on through the corridor. He hazarded a single look back to find the moblin looking around in confusion not knowing where the little Hylian had gone. Hopefully, Gaepora thought, he'll shortly forget I was even there.

Gaepora emerged from the corridor into a courtyard surrounded by walls made of rough cut stones. At the far end of the courtyard was the entrance to an ancient stone building which, at one time, had looked much like the temple of light in Castleton, and which, at one time, looked as though it had a staircase leading up to the entrance, though he could see that had crumbled away long ago. He wondered why the royal engineers had never made repairs to the entry stairs, but this wasn't the main thing which caught his attention.

Seated on a stone bench in the courtyard was a younger, attractive Hylian woman with forest green hair playing an ocarina. She wore a dress which looked as though it could have been made of the leaves of the nearby trees, and it looked as if sunlight danced in between them. She was barefoot as she sat and played, and there was something strikingly familiar in her appearance. The music he had been following through the woods for hours was coming from the ocarina which she played.

Taking a deep breath, Gaepora pressed on towards the woman whose music filled the woods around him.