Three

I don't think I've ever done anything so difficult in my life.

I left Dad behind, sick, with a yellow face, as if he were made of wax. I left Leri and Jannie behind. And I let Zelda go back to the Nest alone, in her sheikah costume. I was really worried, but I had no choice. It was too late to reveal who she really was, if anyone found out who she was it'd be even harder for me to leave her behind, she'd be an easy prey for Kruu and other barbarians.

I left a lot of important things behind to get into the hostile land of Ikana.

I couldn't leave Fridd and Ardren behind. Although the quest was suicide, they set out to come with me.

"Will there be women in Ikana?" Ardren asked. He made me smile, he was the kind of guy who could make the sun come out even in the middle of a storm.

"If there are any, they'll run out when they see you arrive," Fridd mocked, "Captain, my mother has made us some rocky amulets. She says they're good for scaring away the bad omen."

"The bad omen is always brought by you," Ardren said, giving him a push.

"Thank you, Fridd," I said, accepting mine. It was a leather bracelet with the Hebra Mountains' rockstone and Or's axe carved into the surface, probably by Fridd himself, "and this one?"

"That one is for you to give to your wife, Captain."

"Have you made a protective amulet for Zelda?" I arched an eyebrow. He cleared his throat sheepishly.

"Well, yes. It's for her, so what?"

"So what?" Ardren intervened, "Is she no longer the commander of the evil troops that are coming to destroy us?"

"Princess Zelda is not… not that. She came to meet my mother during the Or festival. She was kind to her, my mother's a little old, you know. And... Anyway. She told Mom she felt thankful to me, for taking care of her safety at the Nest and that stuff. That's why my mother wanted to make an amulet for her too. Go to hell, you guys."

"By Or, Captain, this wall is one I never thought your wife would manage to knock down," Ardren laughed, "if she's managed to soften this stone-head, you have nothing to do against her, you're lost!"

"Thank you, Fridd. She'll be very happy that you and your mom made this for her."

"Well, I don't know. It's just a worthless stone. I'm sure at Hyrule she lived covered in diamonds and stuff."

I let out a huge laugh and he reddened to his ears.

"Nonsense. Zelda loves these things, believe me. I'm sure she'll wear it all the time."

"This annoys me a lot," Ardren protested, "I'm going to have to compose several poems for the captain's wife in order to catch up with stone-head."

"We can do all that when we get back. If we come back," I said, crouching down.

We travelled on foot, without horses, with no more baggage than necessary, and hooded, covered with thick cloaks as if we were highwaymen. If I had come across anyone who looked like us in any Western territory, I would have suspected them.

I've never been to the Black Tower before, though we'd all heard of it in the West. It was the fortress of the king of Ikana, the heart of what had once been a kingdom as strong and prosperous as Hyrule. Dad always tells the story of my great-grandfather, Ridgar of Fort Hawk, who once travelled to the Black Tower and signed a peace treaty with the king of Ikana. The tower was not far from the border, all we had to do was to follow the course of the river, which ran through the bare plain south of the forests where we had fought the wraith. So the boys and I turned off towards the river just as we saw Vulture Peak jutting out of the treetops. It was the path that our grandfathers and great-grandfathers had traced years ago, and that curved-looking rock was the sign they had engraved to take the detour. Luckily, the years and erosion had kept it intact.

"My guts are freezing, Captain," Fridd protested. He didn't use to complain about the cold, he was the most accustomed to the cold of the three. Ardren used to make fun of him by saying he'd been raised with ice toys.

I was cold too. An icy blizzard swept across the bare plains of Ikana, turning everything exposed, even if it was only the eyelashes, to ice.

"We have to seek refuge, Link," Ardren murmured.

"No, we have to keep going before it gets dark."

" If the monsters don't kill us, this cold of a thousand hells will."

"We will go on," I insisted, we needed to take advantage of every single ray of light.

We crawled through the blizzard, miles and miles following the course of the frozen river, because the waters were already flowing only under a thick layer of ice.

"A shelter!" Fridd exclaimed.

"We'll pass by." I said.

"There's smoke and therefore a warm fire," Ardren deduced, "those border monsters don't build shelters like this. It looks the same than hut in the barbarian snow plains."

"But we have no idea who can live in a place like this. Do you want to warm up in an enemy's fire? I don't understand anything." I protested.

"I would warm up in the fire of hell itself."

Fridd was shaking and Ardren didn't look any better. I looked at the horizon and the sun, always invisible behind the thick layer of clouds, must have been lower and lower, sinking below the horizon. The smoking hut was somewhat out of the open, perched against the wall of a small rocky rise.

"It doesn't give me a good thorn," I admitted, "but we need shelter. The Black Tower is further away than I thought."

The two set off in the direction of the hut, relieved by my decision.

"Wait a minute," I stopped them, "keep your eyes open, alright?"

It was Ardren who ventured into the hut. There was a slightly unpleasant smell inside, damp and dingy, though we couldn't expect such a remote place to smell much better than that. Inside lived an elderly woman, looking like a druid, she reminded me of Mopai. She invited us in with a politeness that only made me wary.

We shook our cloaks and were able to dry our boots in a huge fire that heated the place and made it pleasant, despite the dirty and careless look that everything had.

"Three strong young men travelling through gloomy lands who come to keep this poor old woman company... the gods have heard my prayers! Come in, come in and take rest. I have a delicious stew on the fire, it will restore your strength."

"Thank you, kind lady,!" Ardren exclaimed, he rose from his gloomy state with the warmth of the hut.

"If you take even one sip of that, you'll be in trouble with me," I whispered.

"Don't be so distrustful, Captain. What could be wrong with this?"

"I don't know. Poison."

"What poison?" The old lady laughed. She had a fox's ear, "I have no reason to poison anyone. I'm just surviving, that's all."

"Who is your master?" I drew my dagger and pointed it at her. It was very rude considering she had given us shelter, but I didn't trust her.

"No one," she growled, "If you think I serve that Sleeping Evil, you're wrong. He's already taken a lot of souls around here, mine doesn't interest him."

"Everyone serves someone," Fridd intervened, showing me support.

"I serve myself, I've already told you. I survive by avoiding the bokoblins, and those ice lizalfos that roam the plain in search of rats to take to their mouths."

"And what are you doing here? How did you get here?" I asked.

"Come on, come on," Ardren intervened, "you're being sullen to the lady. No wonder we barbarians have such a bad reputation."

I snorted and put the dagger away. I would have a word with Ardren later, for now I didn't want the old woman to see me arguing with my friends.

"I was once a citizen of Hyrule," she said, while serving us some stew, "from the shores of the Sea of Dawn. Nobody was interested in us and only the central regions of the country share the grain in times of bad harvest. We fishermen never got anything, if you know what I mean, we were supposed to be rich just because we lived by the sea. But the storms, the shoals of fish, capricious and free... all that brought scarcity to my family, so we became merchants."

"And what did you trade with?" Ardren asked, his mouth full of stew, "if there was no fish…"

"We had some value stuff, shells collected on the beach and other things. It starts small and increases. My feet dragged me all over Hyrule from the time I was a child, to the lands of the West and to Ikana, when it wasn't such a...

"Such a what?" I asked.

"When there was trade in Ikana," the old lady smiled. She had a horrible smile, really.

"It's good that there's someone around here who knows Ikana," Ardren grinned, "we were on our way to the Black Tower."

"The Black Tower? It's a monster nest, you shouldn't go there."

"Is it far away?" I asked.

"Not too much. It's half a day's walk from here, following the course of the icy river. But I do not advise you to go there. A curse has been hanging over the place for years."

The woman kept telling us stories of Ikana, not only of the Black Tower, but of other places I had never heard of before. The southern lagoon, the king's mountain... I knew nothing about the neighbouring country. As a child I had only been taught to fear it and not to get too close. Soon I began to feel drowsy, my eyelids were almost as heavy as my legs. I watched Ardren out of the corner of my eye, he had disobeyed and eaten some of the old woman's food (courtesy, he said), but now he was sleeping peacefully and with a sort of stupid grin on his face. Fridd, too, had fallen into a stupor, and with his mouth half open he was making little snoring noises. The old woman looked at me and said I should sleep, but I resisted as much as I could, someone had to keep watch. Then she retired to a tiny adjoining room, where she must have had her bed, and the hut was silent.

I clung to the dagger I had in my hand for safety and tried not to fall asleep, in case she stole our weapons or the few supplies we had.

I think I closed my eyes a couple of times, but I heard a noise, like when some nocturnal animal rummages through the leftovers of the camp, and I stayed alert. It was really hard to keep my eyes open, the warm atmosphere of the hut became heavy, but when I managed to get awake...

"Zelda!"

It was impossible for her to be there, impossible. She put her hand over my mouth to stop me from making noise and waking the others.

"What are you doing here? Why did you follow me again?"

"Sssh. It's all right, it hasn't been hard to follow you."

"You shouldn't be here, this time you've really pissed me off."

I actually wanted to get mad at her, but I was so exhausted that my mind and my body barely obeyed me.

"I knew you were thinking about me, that's why I've come here."

She sat on my lap, surrounding me with her legs. She leaned towards me and kissed me, it was nice, it was so nice to feel her that my body started reacting.

"We're not alone in here," I said, "we're in the middle of nowhere, in Ikana. Ardren and Fridd are here."

"They're asleep," she smiled, as she brushed my hair away of my forehead and kissed me again.

As I wrapped my hands around her waist, I noticed that she was wearing one of those fine gauzy nightgowns, soft and elegant like a sort of dress. I had never seen them on her before, but I remember putting them in a chest the day we left Hyrule, along with all her belongings.

"What are you wearing? How do you come here like this? You've lost your mind...," I said, trying to slow her down.

"Don't you like it?"

"I huh... yes, I like it, but..."

I felt a pleasant shiver as she plunged her hands between our bodies and unbuckled my belt. Then she took off my robe, and my shirt and... her hands excited me so much, I couldn't believe it was all happening right there. It wasn't normal, she was my wife but she never behaved like this… it was weird.

"No, stop it Zelda."

"What's up?"

"You're being absurd."

She tried to kiss me again and I dodged her. Then her face became very strange, it wasn't normal at all... She twisted the gesture and put both hands around my neck, stroking at first and then squeezing. She squeezed, she squeezed hard.

"Stop it!"

With that crooked gesture she kept cutting my air, with a horrible face that wasn't my wife's at all. There were no green eyes, no smile, nothing of her. Because what was suffocating me wasn't Zelda.

"Enough!"

I opened my eyes and saw that what surrounded my neck was a kind of viscous tentacle. It was squeezing my skin with its suction cups and pulling something out of me, as if it was sucking me in. Fridd and Ardren also had a tentacle around them and were lying asleep, their mouths open. The tentacles were sucking into a dark ball, a kind of slimy, repulsive creature that was filling up with us. I dragged my hand along the ground groping for the dagger. It was hard to lift it as if it weighed a ton, but I managed to move it and plunge it into the tentacle.

The creature let out a horrible shriek and let go of me with a thud. I rolled across the ground to the sword and slashed my tentacle. The creature was hurt so much that it let go of Fridd and Ardren all at once.

"Impa!" Ardren shouted and staggered to his feet.

Fridd grabbed his dagger and threw it at the ball, which twisted and tried to defend itself against us. I slashed another tentacle, and when I wanted to get closer to the thing, I saw Ardren on top of it, plunging his sword into it and slicing it open. It let out a series of pitiful shrieks, and oozed a dark, slimy substance, until it stopped moving.

I walked over and gave it a kick that sent it straight into the remains of that night's fire. As it burned it continued to emit a pitiful sound that died down completely. It also smelled like rotten, it made me want to vomit.

"By all the hells", Fridd said, "what kind of monster was that?"

"A soul-sucker," Ardren murmured, "by Or, I thought they would be a fairy tale thing."

"Soul-suckers don't exist," Fridd replied, still horrified, cleaning the viscous liquid from his dagger.

"Well, that one's about to annihilate you. Thank you, Captain, you saved us. Good thing you woke up in time."

"I told you it wasn't a good idea to come in here. I told you! It almost cost us our ass."

Between the three of us we pulled the tentacles out of the hut. It was still dark and the icy wind howled around us. Once we were sure that there was no trace of the creature, we went back inside. To my surprise, there was no adjoining room, the hut was a single circular space. But I had seen it as clearly in my dream as I had felt my wife's weight on my lap.

"Captain, what are you doing shirtless?" Ardren observed, the three of us sitting in a semicircle around the fire, still a bit shocked.

"I don't know. That thing took it from me, I guess," I looked around for my clothes to get dressed again.

"I don't understand how this happened. I thought I was with my dad, away from here," Fridd intervened, "we had gone hunting in the mountains, it was an amazing day. I was very happy to have hunted a huge boar, with long fangs like blades and my dad hugged me, he was proud of me."

"He gave you a hug you couldn't get rid of," Ardren joked.

"It was as real as life itself, Link, the smell of the mountain in the air, the heat of the sun... everything," Fridd said, polishing his dagger from rubbing it to erase any trace of the spawn.

"I know, it seemed very real," I admitted, remembering the feel of Zelda's lips "but at the same time there was something weird and out of place..."

"Yes, at the same time it was a fantasy," Ardren protested.

"By the way... Impa?" I hinted, arching an eyebrow.

"Impa, what?"

"You shouted: Impa! When you woke up from sleep."

"Nah. You must have imagined it, it would be part of your dream."

" I know what I've dreamt and what I haven't dreamt.."

"Well, you've dreamt this."

"Oh, of course," I teased, letting out a laugh.

"Moreover, I was dreaming that I was at a great banquet, surrounded by ladies and singing songs."

"If you say so..."

"At least I'm not the one who woke up half naked, who knows what you were dreaming about. If this were to reach the ears of the Lady of the Nest..."

I couldn't help but laugh again, all three of us did in fact. Danger had been too close, had played tricks on our minds and had almost got the better of us.

We left the hut at dawn, much more wary, but that was good because the boys would begin to take my orders more seriously. The silhouette of the Black Tower appeared on the horizon after a couple of hours of walking, like a dark finger sprouting from the bowels of the earth. I didn't know what we might find in there, whether it would be the answer to so many questions, whether it would be something very dangerous indeed. Whether what was there was alive or dead.

Note:

I love writing about these three... I hope you enjoyed it :)

Take care,

-Juliet