The last rays of the sun faded and the moon shifted over the horizon. It was a full, perfectly circular moon that cast its light on a forest. The rays penetrated the treetops, occasionally reaching the ground covered by fallen leaves and immersing the forest in a dim, almost eerie light. An owl crawled out of its hiding place, a hollow tree trunk where it had slept all day. When most of the other forest dwellers had settled down, she was just becoming lively. She lifted one wing and plucked some of her brown feathers, which had gotten messed up during her sleep, with her short beak. Finally she spread her wings and pushed herself away from the branch.
Silently she glided through the cool night air, gained height with a few strong flaps of her wings, and broke through the canopy of leaves. Her feathers were bathed in bright moonlight. Her only companion was her shadow, which glided under her over the treetops.
Then she turned her head. Something had caught her attention. An unusual noise.
She listened, but heard nothing but the sound of the leaves in the gentle breeze that had been blowing from the north since nightfall.
The gaze of her large, yellow eyes wandered across the moonlit canopy, its leaves swaying in the breeze like waves of a great sea interrupted only by the clearings that had opened between the trees.
Elegantly she let herself sink down again, back through the treetops and landed gently on a branch.
Here she would wait for food.
She picked up another sound. A hiss followed by cracking twigs, as several shadows were rushing by under her branch. So she hadn't been wrong earlier.
She pondered briefly, then lifted off and followed them, driven by her curiosity. Like ghosts, the figures moved towards the darkest part of the woods, where the forest spirits let their horrible calls be heard at night.
The figures paused and offered the bird time to take a closer look at them. There were five women. There was nothing else to be seen due to the dense treetops, which did not let any moonlight shine through. The owl immediately remembered why she had always avoided this part of the forest. Her eyes were perfectly adapted to the darkness but the magic that lay over this place made it difficult to see, even for her.
The five women started moving again, further north, in the maze of winding paths between dense bushes and narrow trees.
A small light that had appeared in front of them showed them the way. Immediately the owl realized that it was not one of the forest spirits haunting the area. Slowly she got the uncomfortable feeling that something was wrong and suddenly the women seemed suspicious. A shiver ran down her spine. What were such shady figures looking for in the forest at this time?
A soft scream escaped her beak, but the women seemed to take no notice of her.
After a long time spent in this adamant darkness she found the brightness of the clearing a torture for her sensitive eyes. It took a short time for her to get used to it and turn her attention back to what was happening in front of her.
She didn't even know that there was such a huge clearing here neiter had she known about the ruins spreading out before her.
The women scampered across an open space that must have once been a large courtyard. Between the half-decayed walls of a once impressive building, they held out to a small platform that rose out of the damp grass. In its middle was a rectangular stone with a sword in it. Although the building around the pedestal was half dilapidated and overgrown with plants and moss, the pedestal remained untouched by any decay. So was the sword. Its sharp blade glimmered silver in the moonlight. The parry bar resembled a pair of spread wings; their tips pointing towards the night sky about to ascent. Fireflies danced around the sword, casting their small lights onto its surface and making the wings look even more realistic. The owl watched the scene in awe. She had almost forgotten the women until they pushed themselves into her vision.
They remained close to the pedestal but not yet setting a foot onto the untouched surface. They positioned themselves in a circular shape around the sword. For a moment there was complete silence. The womens weren't moving. Then they rose their hands towards the sword and began to mumble quiet words.
Interested in the scene, the bird sat down on one of the demolished walls and watched from a safe distance.
One of the women entered the platform and touched the grip. A small flash of lightning twitched around the blade and the person stumbled back. Nodding to her companions, she returned to her position next to the platform.
The owl came closer and closer to the action, restlessly hunting back and forth on its little wall. What were they up to? And what was this place all about?
The owl was only a few meters away from the women and listened to their murmur. But she could not understand. She only knew that these sounds did not resemble the sounds of the other people she had met in her forest.
Thick clouds rose and covered the moon, lightning flashed across the sky and thunder rumbled from afar.
The women didn't look up, didn't move, just kept mumbling their words.
Then lightning struck directly into the platform. The clearing was bathed in bright light. A scream! Another bolt of lightning struck, closely followed by a third. Disturbed, the women looked up, one of them waving her arms. Her companions looked towards her. They spun round as a loud crash was heard originating from the platform.
A shock wave swept across the clearing, tearing the women from their feet. Screeching, the owl flew up and fluttered away in panic towards the forest. At a safe distance she settled on a branch and turned back to the action, still driven by her curiosity.
Lightning struck the earth and hit the clearing. Chunks of earth were thrown into the air and hit the floor among the dense treetops of the surrounding forest.
It was gone as quickly as it has started. Darkness lay over the destroyed clearing once again until the moon regained its dominance over the clouds and cast its pale light on the ground.
The owl flew up and circled above the scene.
Deep chasms ran through the earth towards the pedestal. The tattered and partly burnt bodies of the five women lay on the scorched earth covered in blood. Their eyes wide open, their skin ghostly white, bleached by the bright light.
In the middle of the pedestal lay an unconscious girl with blue skin, dressed in a short blue dress. A scarf hung from her shoulders, protruding left and right beyond her fingertips. Slowly she regained consciousness and opened her eyes. What had happened? Confused and with an expression of horror in her blue eyes, she noticed the dead bodies scattered all around her.
She clumsily straightened up, but immediately fell back onto her knees. Confused she looked at her hands. Then she lowered her head and seemed to consider before finally pulling herself together again and staggering laboriously from the platform towards the forest.
Hello everyone,
This is an old story I wrote in 2010 and finally decided to translate it into English and publish here as well. The original language is German. Please let me know if something sounds weird. I've a hard time spotting mistakes in my own English writing. I doing my best, though.
The story is already finished and I plan to upload a chapter every other week as long as I have chapters ready for uploading (I still need to finish translating).
Thanks to my friend zelda-freak91 over at deviantart for proof reading the first couple of chapters and her support (can't add a link to her profile but check her out! She's got some great Zelda fanart and fan comics).
Some facts about the story (for people who like to know more about it):
Claimer and Disclaimer: Most of the characters belong to Nintendo and are right out of the Zelda games. The fan fiction takes place about 6 months after Twilight Princess but there'll be characters from other Zelda games, too. I might get some of the names wrong, though, as I'm used to the German names and have to replace them. Eventually one might slip. If so, please let me know.
There are also a few characters that belong to me (Zelda fans will know which ones) and since I had a few fan fiction writing friends, which I said "thank you" by featuring their characters in the fan fiction, there will be two or so characters that are neither from me nor from Nintendo. I will give credit when those characters appear or remove them in case the original creators don't like them to be in the story again. ^^
Warning: I tend to kill lots of secondary characters to show that the main characters are in a really dangerous situation. People sensitive with character death or gore might not like this story. The gore isn't all that detailed but you need to be ready for it (I've added some example all the way down after this list of facts. If you aren't sure you can take the gore in the story, check it out. For everyone else: Small spoilers down there (Edit some time later: I just realized I forgot the reading sample. I added it now, so, here you go :) ).
Length: The story has 80 chapters which can roughly be separated into three parts. I don't know if it will be as many chapters once I've finished the revision. I drew a cover image for every part but fan fiction net let's me upload only one cover image. If you'd like to check out the others, please go to my deviantart account (linked in my profile) and you'll find all the covers and maybe even more fan fiction related art there.
Progress: (this is the state of revision when I upload the first chapter, I won't update this info, it's just here so you know I've already fixed a fair amount of chapters) As of today I've finished revising all chapters up to 23 and started with 24. 24 is the first one that's really challenging as I'm going to remove a whole bunch of it and rewrite it (I didn't really like it and I remember it got a lot of more or less negative critiques.. - or let's say: Not really negative critique, I simply didn't like some of the readers interpretations. Thinking about it, some of the parts were indeed pretty forced. So let's make the characters' decisions a little more natural and relatable without destroying the rest of the story *eyelid twitches*).
Sidenote: The fan fiction was written based on the very first artwork released of Skyward Sword, with a blue skinned girl standing back to back with Link who wasn't wielding the master sword. Back then, no one had any idea who the girl was. Just think about how old this story is.
The story is named after Somewhere from Within Temptation as I was in love with this song back when I wrote the fan fiction and I still think it is kinda fitting.
This fan fiction was translated with deepl .org the probably most awesome translator out there. It makes things a lot easier, even though I still have to proof read every chapter several times to spot any mistakes. :)
Gore reading sample: (It's probably not going to be worse than this) The water of the fountain swabbed in the basin, it's color a deep red. The symbol on top of the fountain was sprinkled with blood. In the water, on the edge of the basin and around the well, there were arms and legs, bloody shreds of skin and tufts of hair. A tattered corpse leaned against the basin. The head hung lifeless to the side and exposed the neck, which lacked a shred of skin. The fibers of the muscles and parts of the spine were clearly visible.