Chapter 18
Malona suddenly found herself standing alone in between her parents' house and their barn south of Ordonville. She could see the outline of the woods surrounding the property, the pasture which was strangely empty of livestock, and the road down the driveway just beyond the fence as she turned sround. But it all seemed so wrong. The woods, the grass, and the deku trees which were scattered around the property were all green and leafy. The last time she had seen this place, all of their leaves had fallen to the ground with the onset of winter. Around her, it looked to be a bright, moonlit night, but she looked to the sky and there was nothing there. There was neither moon nor stars to give the place the soft silvery light which seemed to bathe it.
As she looked down, she appeared to be standing on a kind of circular pad or base surrounded by what looked like petals from a flower made of pure, soft light. In the center of the circular pad was the imprint of a single golden triangle.
It felt quiet, completely silent as she looked around herself. She called out for her brothers, "Daphnes?! Gaepora?!" But there was no sign of them.
"There is no one else here with you, Mistress Malona." Came Fi's voice from somewhere, though as Malona turned around and around, she couldn't see her holographic image or the Master Sword itself anywhere. "And I am only present in your mind." Fi explained.
"Where am I?" Malona asked, trying to keep the panic in her voice under control. "Where are my brothers?"
"Based on previous data recorded, there is a ninety percent chance you are experiencing a Silent Realm trial. There is an equal chance your brothers are experiencing the same, though I have no contact with their minds at present, so I have no way to verify this." Fi's voice told her.
"We were supposed to be transported into the Sacred Realm." Malona said. "All of us together. We were supposed to be finding the Triforce to help our mother."
"Based on my previously recorded data from Master Link, one does not casually or easily obtain the Triforce from the Sacred Realm. Master Link suffered through many trials in our many journeys together. The goddesses imposed trials to test the hearts of those who would seek the Triforce to ensure they possessed the three virtues in balance." Fi explained. "Master Link was tried and tested many times. If you and your brothers seek to use the Triforce, then you must be tested. Only when you have proven yourself will you be permitted to reach the Triforce."
"Why aren't we together?" Malona asked, trying to understand her new situation.
"There are three hearts and minds to test. Each person's test is unique to them." Fi responded.
Malona nodded in understanding. "So what do I do now? How am I to be tested?"
"I have no data to formulate an answer, Mistress Malona." Fi told her. "I calculate a seventy eight percent chance that this is highly dependent on the subject being tested. If this information is useful, my records indicate Master Link's test involved avoiding guardians of the Silent Realm and collecting fragments of spirit called 'tears of a goddess' in order to test his courage, wisdom, and power. He was subjected to this test four times by the machinations of the goddesses Farore, Din, Nayru and Hylia. However, I do not detect a similar test being conducted in your case."
"So I go in blind?" Malona asked.
"I wish you the best of luck, Mistress." Fi answered, as though her question had been rhetorical.
"Thanks." She said, not without a bit of irony, which Fi didn't seem to pick up on. "When does the trial begin?" She asked.
"As soon as you step off the pad." Fi responded. "And I must warn you, Mistress. I won't be able to continue to contact you once you do until you complete your trial."
"Great." Malona said under her breath, looking around her. "I'm just a farm girl," she said to herself as she took in all the details of her surroundings that she could see. "What in the shadow am I doing here?"
Nearby she could see ghostly figures wandering along various paths. There were also puddles of what looked like silvery water all over the place, like it had just had a heavy spring rain. It looked as though they might be patrolling. "Fi? Are you still there?" She called out.
"Yes, Mistress Malona." Fi's voice came quickly.
"What are those figures out there?" She asked, pointing to one that was uncomfortably closer to her than she would like. "And what's all the water on the ground?"
"I calculate a sixty seven percent chance those figures are guardians of the Silent Realm, Mistress. I do not recommend that you allow them to catch you, otherwise you will fail your trial." Fi responded.
"And the water?" Malona asked again.
"Pools of awakening. If you touch the water, the guardians which are stationary will awaken and attempt to catch you." Fi responded. "It will alert all the guardians to your presence."
"Right, because we don't want this trial to be easy." She muttered, looking at all of the water which was splashed around her. She didn't know if she could leave the pad without stepping in it.
Studying the ground around the pad she spied a small patch that looked dry that she could just fit her booted foot on. Lifting her right foot she set it gingerly on the patch, and then the pad disappeared out from underneath her and she was alone.
The ghostly figure nearest her solidified somewhat into the familiar shape of a Royal Family Protection guard dressed in a black suit and sunglasses. She had known many of the guardsmen assigned to her family since she was very little. The fuzzy form of this man looked so familiar to her, but she couldn't place who it might be. He seemed to be pacing aimlessly, and had taken no notice of her. He didn't really appear to be taking notice of anything.
"Don't draw attention to yourself, Malona." She told herself as she looked around her surroundings again, trying to figure out where she should go next.
"What're you here for, lady?" She asked herself. "I'm here to help mom." She answered her own question. "So what is here that will lead you in that direction?"
She looked towards the old house which she had grown up in. Her parents had spent years restoring it with their own hard work and sweat, and she had never heard her mother say she wanted to live anywhere else, even the palace where she herself had grown up. Is that where she needed to go? She balanced carefully if somewhat awkwardly, on the dry patches of ground where she stood, her native Hylian sense of balance keeping her upright between them.
She then looked towards the barn and wondered. The door to the barn was slid halfway open. There had been only one other on the property that could have possibly loved her mother as much as her father. Could he be here? Could he lead Malona where she needed to go?
She carefully took her left foot and found another dry patch of ground to stand on. Plotting out her steps, she headed for the barn where she wondered if he too was here in some way. There was a guardian in her path, but like the other, he was patrolling in a kind of half-hearted daze. She timed her steps along her dry path to coincide with the guardians, and at the right moment, she ran for it, her light feet barely touching the ground even in the heavier tactical boots she wore.
The guardian's back was turned as she slipped by him and through the half open barn door. No alarm was raised as she surveyed her new surroundings. A silvery light bathed the inside of the otherwise darkened structure, though she still couldn't tell from where the light came as she moved across the straw laden floor. At least in here she noticed, there was no alarm raising water. The question of the moment, was he somehow here?
She moved through the large structure until she passed in front of Malon's stall, but her father's mount was nowhere to be seen. That didn't give her any hope. Maybe I'm wrong, she thought as she passed over to Big Man's stall.
But there in his stall stood her mother's gelding, and the only other "man" on the property who could have possibly loved her mother as much as her father did. Except, he didn't look quite like Big Man. This horse seemed taller by at least a hand, and more stately somehow. When he saw Malona he came right over to the rail and whinnied in expectation, "where have you been? I've been waiting for weeks!"
"What did you say?" She asked in surprise.
"I've been waiting for weeks!" The horse repeated. "So are you going to saddle me or not?"
"Saddle you?" Malona asked, confused. "Where are we going?"
"Why home of course! It's time we went home to the palace!" The horse responded as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. "We've been mucking around on this ranch long enough."
Malona backed off from the rail, her hands trembling just a little. The ranch life was all she had ever known. It was all she had ever wanted to know. She had only visited the palace where her mother had been raised maybe twice in all of her life, and had wanted to leave as quickly as she could both times. She had never told anyone, but the palace had actually scared her. There were so many rules, and expectations. She didn't know how her mother had survived her youth there doing what she did. They were good people, but she never felt like they were her people, his majesty notwithstanding. Her people wore denim, rode horses, walked in goat manure without caring, and fed their cuccos every morning.
"Well, what are you waiting for?" The horse asked. "Are we going home or not?"
"But, I am home." Malona protested. "This is where I belong."
"You can't be serious," the horse retorted. "Here, in the muck? You were born to greater things than this, my lady. Now please, saddle me so we can get back to who we both really are."
"This is about mom, not me." She told herself. "I'm here to help mom." And the palace is where mom came from, she reasoned.
"Okay, Big Man. I'll get your saddle." Malona told the horse.
"Big Man?" The horse snorted. "My name is Starfire, my lady, or have you forgotten that as well?"
"Starfire." That was the name of her mother's old horse, the one that she had when Malona was little. Had she forgotten him? How often had her mother taken her for rides in the saddle with her on him! This wasn't Big Man, this was her mother's first horse, the one who had come with her from the palace, and he wanted her to go there with him in this strange, silent reflection of the world.
She took a deep breath to steady her shaking hands. "It's about mom." She repeated. "Mom needs this." She then looked back towards the horse and nodded, then went to the side shelf where the saddles and blankets were kept. The only tack there was his.
"Okay Starfire," she told him as she grabbed his tack from the stand nearby, "Let's go to the palace."
"Malona!" Daphnes had shouted into the strange, seemingly endless desert night. "Gaepora!" He tried again, cupping his hands to his mouth to magnify the sound as he stumbled across the dry sands. He recognized the wasted landscape around him in spite of the strange starless sky, and too quiet silence, and knew he was in real trouble. He didn't know how he had gotten there, or where his brother and sister were, but he had spent enough time in the Lanayru desert to know his position almost exactly, and it wasn't good.
"Fi?!" He called out again, hoping the A.I. which governed the Master Sword might somehow hear him and respond, but there was nothing. He was alone, and if he was right about his position, he was deep in bokoblin territory.
All around him was cast a silvery light as though there were a bright, full moon out, but the sky overhead was so empty it was surreal. There weren't the somewhat friendly stars that had kept him guided in the right direction at times during his combat tours in the gods forsaken place. There was just nothing.
He was also weaponless when he found himself standing on that strange pad with the golden triangle in the middle of it. It had been surrounded by large glowing flower petals. It disappeared the minute he set foot off of it, but not much else changed about his situation.
Was this the Sacred Realm? He had asked himself that same question over and over again since he arrived here. If it was, then the Triforce had to be here somewhere. Was this a test of some kind? That was another good question. He had imagined the Sacred Realm to be many things in his imagination over the course of his life. The wasteland had not been on his list.
He felt like he had been walking forever, though he had no idea how long it had actually been. At least it didn't feel like the cold desert night he had grown accustomed to in his service here, but neither was it too warm either. From where he started, he began walking in the direction that he thought the gates to the rest of Lanayru province lie, though for as long as he felt he had been walking, he thought he should have at least seen some hint of the security fence by that point in time, but all he saw ahead of him was still miles and miles of desert.
"I'm getting nowhere." Daphnes finally admitted to himself as he stopped to rest on a more or less flat rock that jutted out from the desert sands. "I'm getting nowhere. There's no one else here. And the truth is that I don't know where I'm going or what I'm supposed to be doing here to begin with." He told himself.
Then his mind went back to his basic soldier's training. "Three priorities," he told himself. "Priority one, follow orders and accomplish your mission. Priority two, the survival of your team, leave no one behind. Priority three, assuming priority one and priority two are no longer in question, survive yourself." He then asked himself, "What is my mission?" The answer wasn't short in coming. "My mission was find the Triforce. I was supposed to do that with Gaepora and Malona but they're not here right now, and I don't know where they are. This brings me back to priority one. Find the Triforce and save mom."
As he looked around him into the desert, he then asked himself, "How to do that? It doesn't seem like whatever brought me here wants me to leave just yet. The question is, where would the Triforce be?"
As he looked around the surreal desert, he noticed a black shape in the distance off to his left which he hadn't seen before. "That's new." He said to no one in particular. It was tall and spiraled, like a finger or a black spike thrust up into the sky. He got an uneasy feeling in his stomach from the sight of it. It reminded him of something... Some place he had seen in a book somewhere, though he couldn't remember what book.
"Come little hero! If you want to rescue the Princess, come see me in my fortress!" A voice boomed into the silence over the desert. It was a deep, menacing voice that Daphnes felt all the way down to his bones. He didn't know the owner of the voice, and something within him told him he didn't want to either.
Beside him appeared a sword embedded in the rock halfway up the blade. It didn't look much different from a standard issue R.H.M.G. sword with the Royal Crest emblazoned on the crossguard. Next to it lay a guardsman's enchanted shield.
"Oh, and say hello to a few of my servants. They're dying to make your acquaintance." Boomed the deep voice again. "You'd better hurry, the Princess can only entertain me for so long." The voice took on a lecherous tone and ended in a worse laugh which raised Daphnes' blood pressure.
In the desert before him, between himself and the black tower, skeletal forms began to emerge from the desert sands. Numerous skeletons, some of the armored, all of them armed with swords, axes, shields and other archaic weaponry. Daphnes recognized them as the stuff of Hylian children's nightmares, including his own, once upon a time: stalfos, undead rotting skeletons of warriors that had fallen on a battlefield. Countless soldiers had died on this desert's battlefields over the millennia, he knew, and it looked like the owner of the voice intended to "introduce" him to every one of them.
"Sir!" Came another voice off to his right, calling out to him. He turned to his right and there was the security fence he had been looking for! With the gun emplacements on stone towers every twenty or thirty feet manned and ready. It was the most beautiful sight he thought he'd ever seen.
"Sir, we'll cover you long enough to make it through the gate!" Called out a guardsman he didn't know who was trying to waive him in the direction of an open security gate. "Get out of harm's way! We'll need to call up at least three more units to deal with them!" The guardsman yelled out again.
"Come little hero!" The voice boomed again from his left. "Your princess won't last much longer I'm afraid, and I'm getting bored." The voice dripped with malice and evil intent.
"Retreat and call for reinforcements, or charge headlong into an army of skeletons." Daphnes weighed his options quickly. He knew what the smart thing to do would be, but if he did that, the Princess was lost. "But saving the Princess is the mission." He told himself, looking at the open security fence. He knew they couldn't keep it open for much longer. Not with this many hostiles. Lake Hylia would be overrun. "Damn. I've got no choice." He told himself. "The mission comes first. Mom comes first."
He took the hilt of the sword lodged in the rock with his left hand and tugged on it. It slid out with a loud noise of metal scraping against stone. He took up the shield with his right and strapped it to his arm. "It's just me. I'm all she's got. So be it." He said quietly. Then he turned to his right and called out to the officer at the gate, "Close the gate! Protect Lake Hylia! Don't open it for anyone until I return with the Princess! Gun emplacements shoot whatever's not me! Light these nightmares up!"
"Sir?!" The confused guardsman called out.
"That's an order guardsman!" Daphnes yelled back.
Behind him he could hear the sliding of the security gate as it closed shut with a thud. Then the desert night lit up with tracer fire as several of the stalfos immediately ahead of him started exploding into fragments of bone. He may have to charge in there alone, but that didn't mean he couldn't use all the resources at his disposal.
"Alright mom, just hang on. I'm coming." Daphnes said into the night air, and then, sword raised high and shield up, he charged the line of stalfos that were still standing.
The streets of Castleton were dark except for the strange silvery light as Gaepora walked through them. No lights came from the business buildings or apartment towers, and for as far as he could see, his was the only presence there. The unnatural, peaceful silence in the metropolis was almost deafening.
Near as he could tell, he appeared downtown near the "new" city center. The construction on it had begun long before he had been born, but less than a century ago. That made it still new in comparison to the millennia in which the ancient Castle Town which Castleton had grown up around had stood. He had been standing in the center of the roundabout at Hyrule Street and Kingdom Boulevard where the new parliament building stood across the roundabout from the Grand Royal Theater north to south. East to west was the Stock Exchange and the main headquarters of the Royal Hyrule Military Guard. Normally this intersection never slept, and the lights of the city never went dark. This was as silent as the grave to him. It was unnerving.
He had stopped trying to find Malona and Daphnes some time before, though he wasn't certain exactly how long it had been. Time seemed to have stopped around him, and only he was in motion as he wandered through the streets. He was working on the assumptions that this wasn't Castleton at all, but the Sacred Realm, and that he was in some kind of test. This was the only thing which made sense. It also stood to reason that if he was being tested, so also were his brother and sister. And if all that were true, it meant that the Triforce was also here. Somewhere. The question was where.
He had started off the pad moving north towards old Castle Town, about five miles from the new city center. Gaepora knew the streets of the city well. He walked them often with his own family on his days off, watching street performers and eating fried cucco from vendors along the street. His own apartment where he lived with his family was in a high rise building two blocks from where he appeared, close to where he worked at R.H.M.G. headquarters. He had considered stopping there first, but logic told him that wasn't where he needed to go to finish his mission. Logic told him he needed to go to a specific place in Old Castle Town, the only place in this city which had ever been the sacred triangle's resting place according to his parents' stories; the Temple of Light.
To be honest, even though the silent, Sacred Realm city felt creepy, it wasn't much of a trial to him. Castleton had been home to him for more than two decades now, from the time he graduated high school in Ordonville and was accepted to Castleton's Royal Military College on his majesty's recommendation. Being the presumed son of the Hero and the Princess with a written recommendation from his majesty didn't leave the deans much option in terms of his acceptance, not that he didn't in any way work hard for his placement there. He spent long nights studying and mastering every subject thrown at him, and learned his father's lessons on swordplay well, almost as well as his brother.
The hustle and bustle of the metropolis had become more his home than the rural farming community his parents reveled in had ever been. He loved his parents, but he had never really felt like the goat ranch or the rural life was where he belonged. In school he had always excelled at magic and the sciences. As new technologies had been developed, he had clung to them and adopted them when the rest of his family were still trying to figure out what they were for. When he arrived in the capital city, as he inhaled the city air and heard the "charming" sounds of the street musicians, peddlers, vehicles, and just all of the different kinds of people, it was the first time he ever felt like he belonged. It was a feeling he couldn't ever understand, and for a while the guilt he carried about it tore at him, though he had come to terms with it long ago. He couldn't ever fully understand why his mother and father had turned down the life they could have had, even if they hadn't stayed at the palace. How herding goats and stepping in horsecrap was preferable to civilization and the power to change things for good was beyond him. But that was the decision his parents had made for their lives, and he had learned to respect that. His life didn't have to be theirs, nor theirs his.
He came upon the ancient drawbridge for Old Castletown. It wasn't technically ancient, as it had been repaired and the wood in it replaced many, many times over the centuries. But, for all intents and purposes it was still the original drawbridge over the ancient moat, built for foot traffic, horses, and horse carts and not motorized vehicles. And normally, it was still manned by castle guardsmen in traditional, medieval Royal Uniforms for the tourists, although the assault rifles they stood fast with were very modern, and always loaded. It was also normally down to allow access into Castle Town, even at night.
The sight which greeted him here was not normal. The bridge was raised. Across the moat, he could see the great solid wood gates were closed, and the solid steel portcullis was down and in the locked position. The bridge crossing over the moat was at least thirty feet, and even if he could jump it, there was nothing for him to land on or grab on to. Not even his dad could have done it in his legendary past without some kind of help.
"Okay, no problem." Gaepora said to himself, reasoning it out. "This is a test. It's a puzzle. I just have to find the right way in." He said as he began to study the problem more closely.
There were only three gates through the ancient fortress wall around the moat into the old capital: west, south and east. The palace itself lay to the north of Old Castle Town, its own gate opening up onto the old marketplace center of town. They all had identical drawbridges, though the other two gates would take him the better part of another day on foot to investigate. Because Hyrule's capital had originally been partially built into space that had been naturally enclosed by rock walls and hillsides, one couldn't just make a direct circuit around the old fortress walls. You had to go way out of your way around the natural walls as well. Breaching them for a more accessible, convenient route had occasionally been discussed, but never carried out.
"Chances are the other two bridges are going to be up as well." He reasoned. "Otherwise, it would be an annoyance, not a test." Then he continued to think. "But maybe that is the test. Only this bridge is up, and one, possibly both of the others are down." His mind continued to work on the problem.
Then came the smell of smoke. "What?" He asked as it crossed his nostrils. That was when he saw the first fire erupt from the other side of the castle town walls. Then came the screaming of children and large caliber, automated gunfire.
Gaepora's heart started to pound at the sound as he tried to repeat to himself, "it's only a test. It's not real."
Then he heard the screams of his wife and their two daughters, "GAEPORA! … DADDY! HELP US!" It was coming from inside the old town as the fires began to spread across the castle wall.
His family's screams echoing in his head, his mind went blank, and before he knew what he was doing or could think about the consequences he had flung himself across the bridge chasm and was just barely gripping on to the spaces in between the boards of the bridge yelling "NOOO! I'M COMING GILLI!"