Chapter Four

Nightmare or Vision?

That night in my bunk in the Athena cabin, my sleep took a turn for the weird. I was in a shadowy forest in the dead of night, I was walking towards a very faint light in a cave in the near distance. This light looked purplish from here. I entered the cave's opening and noticed something just visible in the darkness. There was something carved into the stone, but it was too dark to see exactly what. I reached back for my sword to use its light and found…nothing but air. I froze, where was my sword? Or my shield for that matter?

A slight noise drew my attention from deeper in the tunnels. I followed the noise, entering eventually into a larger room. The light now appeared a disturbingly familiar magenta, exactly like malice. I noticed a group of people in this room. There were two standing close by, their backs to me, one of whom was a large man who had two huge swords at his belt. The other was shorter, pudgier man. In front of them were several people who were all kneeling. In front of these people was someone else.

This other person, while obviously affiliated with these uniformed people, was clearly not directly connected to them. He was dressed very differently, covered in a long black cloak. His left hand was extended out to the side, and above it floated some kind of device that looked almost like Sheikah technology, but the light coming from it was malice magenta, like the corrupted guardians.

The figure then turned around, and I noticed his disturbing appearance. His face was pinched, bony, and gaunt. He looked like someone who was very sick with some kind of wasting illness. His cheekbones were high, cheeks sunken, features angular and with definitive edges. Worse were his eyes, they were too white, his irises and pupils too small. In the center of his forehead was a talisman depicting a malice eye. It hit me then, these people and this man specifically were working with or for Ganon. But…if that were true, what was that presence

I felt, I knew it wasn't Ganon or Ganondorf. So, who was it?

I jerked awake, found it was morning, and rubbed my hands across my face. I sat up and tried to recall more of my dream or whatever, I was unable to however. I got dressed for the day and made my down to the pavilion. As I was heading there a hand slipped into my right hand, and I turned my head to see Zelda smiling softly at me.

"Good morning…" she trailed off, noticing the residual scared look on my face. Her next words were immediate and carried a message of comply or face dire consequences, "What happened?"

I grimaced, then said, "I didn't leave my cabin I promise!" She frowned, I knew she was wondering if I was trying to hide something to save her worry. "I swear I stayed in my cabin, it's this vision I had."

She looked a little relieved at that but she still pulled me a stop and placed her hands on my shoulders, "Tell me about it, please. I want to help you Link, goddess knows you have a heavy burden as the hero with the Master Sword. But I can help you carry it, you just have to let me OK?" She begged me softly.

Well I could never say no to those doe eyes, so I told her everything about it. She was visibly frightened again, I felt horrible, if I hadn't let my fear show…" I know what you're thinking and you shouldn't let your thoughts go down that path." Zelda's voice cut in.

"Thanks Zelda." I said.

"No problem, my love." She said sweetly.

We resumed making our way to the pavilion, she kissed me and then made her way to her table. After breakfast as I made my way to the arena to get ready for my cadets, I glanced at the woods and wondered when the next capture the flag game would be. Since my first summer here, I had taken a real joy in it. Admittedly though, as I had gotten older and my sword skills became truly unrivaled (just a year ago I had soundly beaten Percy and he had been the best sword fighter in the camp's history) there had been a few suggestions to bar me from participating entirely because of being too good.

Chiron always turned them down, in part because barring me would mean banning me from something I liked, and in part because legendary hero or not, we couldn't go making rules excluding anyone.

Thinking about it, I remembered how the suggestions only started after I used some of the runes on the slate. I think people were upset mainly from my use of the stasis rune, considering it cheating as it made people frozen in place and time, and therefore, sitting ducks. I had apologized, and trying to make it fair, promised I wouldn't use the slate in games anymore. That seemed to work and people thought that was reasonable enough.

When I entered the arena, and checked the time on the slate, I saw I was little early and decided to do some practice myself. I went through my forms and swings, keeping myself fresh on the techniques. I had been going for about maybe five minutes when something stopped me mid-swing. I felt like I was being watched, but this time by an actual creature rather than a presence.

I whipped around to look behind me, and there I saw it. The creature I hadn't seen since during my first ever quest, during my first summer here. Before I had even realized my identity as Link even.

Crouched on the top of the wall, silhouetted against the sky was the creature that only had one name, the mothman. It stared at me, not moving, those glowing red orbs looking into me. I stared back at it, then it slowly rotated its head, first one way and then the other. After it was done looking around, it returned its gaze to me. Through the dread I felt, there was another fainter sense. It was…almost like it was trying to tell me something.

Spontaneously, a memory from a few years ago surfaced in my mind. It was merely a snippet, "-mothman is believed to have been a harbinger of bad times". I looked at it, stunned, did this thing… do that? To my shock, it nodded slightly. This was unlike any other reported encounter of this…entity. Suddenly a cold trickle of fear went down my spine, an omen of bad times, it was never seen again in Point Pleasant after the silver bridge collapsed. Whenever it appeared, disaster eventually followed. Was Camp Half-Blood in danger?

Looking up, I saw it was gone again. I had no idea that mothman was soon going to be seen all over the world, indicating an event of a magnitude nearly beyond comprehension.

I snapped out of my daze as my cadets entered the arena. I focused my mind on that and prepared for the lesson. Today we would be starting sparring sessions and I could then start seeing how well each of them had learned what they were taught and could use in a fight.

It went about as I expected, they were in need of a fair bit of coaching and instruction. I hadn't expected them to be perfect, so I cut them some slack. After about halfway in, I told them to stop and that we would run through the skills again. That went a lot better and they were happy to perform well.

That evening, as I was getting ready to write my journal entry, one thought kept drifting through my mind. I couldn't remove from my head the thought that in just a few months, I would have to leave my Zelda again for another nine months of toil.

Today before I started my lesson for my cadets, I saw the mothman again. It seemed to be trying to tell me something, but I don't understand what though. It looked around at the camp, then it somehow made me relive a brief snippet of memory from five years ago, when I last saw it. It was where I was telling Lexa and Austin about this being, and how it's said to be a harbinger. Does that mean that Camp Half-Blood is in danger?

I don't know that, even if it does mean that there's no way to know when. Also present in my mind is the passing of days here. Although it is only halfway through June, I dread the ever approaching fall. I don't want summer to end, I don't want to leave my Zelda again. Please, goddesses, tell me there's a way for me to avoid that. With every summer that goes by, it hurts me more and more.

The next morning, after breakfast, a message was delivered from the gods saying that, wouldn't you know it, they needed some demigod to run an errand for them. I was particularly displeased with this as they pretty much specified me to go, but not Zelda. Their logic was that this quest would likely require much fighting that only the hero of legend could achieve. I grumbled about how unfair this was, they really had to go and do this didn't they? They had to tell me to go on a quest, without my Zelda, for something apparently only I could do.

The directive behind this quest was astonishingly simple, the gods had sensed something was amiss in some remote part of North Dakota, but for whatever reasons utterly unfathomable to us mortals, couldn't simply check it out themselves or even better use their supposed god senses to find out all they needed to know.

On top of everything else, the gods made it clear they wanted me to do this alone. I grouched about this, but accepted it because in the end, the gods word was basically law. Scowling unhappily, I prepared Epona for travel making sure her saddle bags were in order. I didn't drop the scowl once until Zelda came up to wish me luck and goodbye with a passionate kiss. Goddess bless this young woman who knew just how to pull me out of whatever unhappy thoughts were racing around in my head.

Setting off, Epona and I flew at high speed toward North Dakota. As soon as we were out of earshot of the camp, I tilted my head back and let out a wordless yell of frustration to the sky, in lieu of swearing into my hands because I needed to keep holding the reigns. It was so unfair! Why? Why did this have to be my job? Surely there was someone else qualified for this, someone who could have gone instead, allowing me to stay with my love. But no, the gods had to throw that out the window, putting me on a quest that would take goddess knows how long.

Epona nickered softly, and I pulled myself together and patted her neck. That night after I set up camp, my thoughts turned back to camp. Goddesses, I'd never hated the passage of time more than I did right now. It was already two weeks into June, soon it would be July and summer would be even closer to ending. Why? I asked myself. WHY must the universe do this to me? My brain focused on those unhappy thoughts.

As the fire crackled, I suspiciously stared at the tree line, remembering the incident five years ago with a wendigo. I was hesitant to sleep, due to the fact that I was alone, and because heaven knows what might be out there right now, waiting for me to let my guard down and become a sitting duck. However, Zelda would want me to rest, so I decided to have a light sleep. I laid down in my tent, aware of almost every little sound as I drifted off after Fi reported that there were no enemies in detection range.

I was standing near the cave I had seen before, but this time it was evening. There was also a huge commotion going on now. I heard a cacophony of shouts, blasts, and sounds of metal clashing against metal. Barely visible in the evening light, a figure appeared at the mouth of the cave and sprinted off into the forest, crouching out of sight of the three figures that appeared a moment later in the cave's mouth.

They were the same ones from before, the short and fat one, the tall muscular one with the two swords, and the cloaked figure with the floating device. They looked around, but didn't see the crouching figure, who I now saw was a man. He began to slip away into the shadows of the forest. When he was maybe about a few hundred feet away, he got up and ran off again. As he did so, a brief flash of light from the setting sun illuminated his hair. It was a deep red, a very familiar red. I also noticed his olive colored skin, also familiar somehow. As this strangely familiar man disappeared into the darkness, I heard the figures at the cave mouth speak.

"Sooga! Muster our underlings and go out there and find him! Find him immediately! He will pay for his treachery to our cause!" The fat one demanded, stomping his feet in a very childish way.

"Yes, Master. Foot soldiers! To me! We have a target to locate!" The large man said to the fat one before turning and calling into the cave.

"You have made a wise decision." The cloaked man spoke for the first time. His face was turned to the other two. "While we did not foresee this, it changes little. We only ever needed the one who resided within him. Whether we locate him or not, he will not escape what is to come!"

"Yes! Quite true, prophet of doom!" The fat one exclaimed, before turning to his henchman, Sooga, who was still standing beside him with the summoned soldiers standing behind him. "Well what are you waiting for? After him! Find him and bring him to me! I demand that you bring him back alive and capable of answering questions, I want to know what made him turn against us!"

Sooga dipped his head and said, "Understood, Master, underlings let us go forth and find that traitor!" As they raced out of the cave I somehow only now noticed that all the people except for the cloaked man were merely outlines.

Just before I woke however, another voice broke in, speaking to the prophet of doom, "You speak truthfully, prophet, when we prevail that miserable little coward will not escape! It disgusts me to even think I used to be a part of him, and even now in his flight, he still kept the power that is rightfully mine!" The voice came from the darkness, where there were two flaming eyes and a strange fire above them. But this fire was almost like some kind of hair, but that didn't make sense…or did it? It seemed vaguely familiar…I just didn't know where.