A Link to the Past
Chapter Thirty: The Master Sword
Even though he could still see and hear everything around him, for Link it was as if the whole world slowed down as soon as his hand tightened around the hilt of the Master Sword, the stuck weapon beginning to vibrate while moving upward out of the stone altar just a little. A short distance away, Agahnim had noticed what was happening, refocusing his attention toward the young man after knocking Maple to the ground, the wizard vanishing and reappearing right next to the young man an instant later, only to be blasted away by a surge of blue lightning when he tried to grab the hilt as well. Agahnim recovered from this pretty quickly, getting to his feet while the Master Sword moved another inch toward freedom, and then flashing orange and blue light began to gather in each of his hands.
"No more games, boy!" The wizard exclaimed as the lights became spheres of flashing energy. "I won't let you have that sword!"
Smacking his hands together, the two spheres merged into a single, large attack of flashing blue and orange light, this oversized sphere of power flying toward Link just as he managed to pull the legendary weapon from its altar. There was no time to get out of the way, so the young man swung the sword out in front of himself in a desperate attempt for survival, and to his surprise the blue blade collided with the energy sphere as if it were a stick hitting a ball. There was enough force to throw Link backwards so that he fell from the altar, hitting the wet ground while the sphere of energy was sent right back toward Agahnim even faster than it first came.
BOOM! For a moment the whole forest was illuminated in a flash of orange and blue light, with enough heat to make the falling rain stop for a second or two, and when the light faded the wizard was no longer standing. He must've not had enough time to react either, because Agahnim was laying face down in the mud with track marks in front of him as if the blast had sent him rolling and bouncing, parts of his robes burned, and bruises beginning to form on the visible parts of his blue skin when he started to get up. Maple was still down, but a good distance away from the wizard, and good thing too, because Link was having just as much trouble getting to his feet. He had to grab onto the altar to steady himself, kind of sliding back around in front of it, and then struggling to hold up the Master Sword.
"It's over, Agahnim." The young man said, trying to sound mor confident than he was. "I have the Master Sword!"
"It's never over, boy, not as long as I'm alive." Agahnim replied, breathing heavily while spitting out some blood. "This is too important… my wife… my family… nothing is going to stop me from getting Ganondorf through to this world."
Nothing that the wizard was saying now made any sense; as far as Link knew, the family that Aghanim had was on Koholint Island, and that place was nothing but a dream that he shared with the young man's uncle decades ago. None of it was real, washed away when the much younger Lord Sheriff woke up the Windfish, so what did any of that have to do with a monster like Ganondorf. That large, warthog creature was obviously powerful, but if he wasn't even capable of freeing himself from the Dark World, then what could he possibly do to help the wizard, someone capable of traveling back and forth at will? The only thing that Link did understand was that apparently more was required to get the warthog creature through even though the ritual was complete.
"No, Agahnim, you're finished." He declared, slowly moving toward him. "I'm going to defeat you, rescue Princess Zelda, and leave Ganondorf trapped in the Dark World forever."
"Terremoto!" Agahnim yelled, raising his fist and punching the ground.
Expecting him to simply get up and attack, Link was startled to the point of crying out when the whole forest started shaking as a result of that punch, the trees, altar, and ground rumbling so hard that the young man fell over sideways. The wizard seemed to be affected by this too, Agahnim struggling to stay on his feet while tossing a ball of flame that missed its target by several feet, all while Link was trying to get up as well. Agahnim vanished, reappearing right next to Link with a punch, but the shaking ground made it miss while they both fell over again, with the same thing happening when the young man tried to slash at him with the Master Sword.
However, the legendary weapon did managed to catch an unburned part of his robes, coming into contact with some kind of necklace, and breaking the thin chain so that the small jewel at the center fell to the ground. The wizard didn't seem to notice this as he punched Link in the face with a ball of flame forming in his hand, the fire disbursing in all directions as the young man crashed onto the shaking ground hard. Agahnim tried to attack again, but a moment of him being off balance was all Link needed to kick the wizard in the stomach, before using the last of his strength to swing the blue blade upward right into Agahnim's face.
This time the wizard screamed in pain as he stumbled backwards, taking a few awkward steps and then falling down onto the still shaking ground, Agahnim's face a bloody mess from the deep cut that went all the way across. Not willing to lose this chance of saving Hyrule, the young man stumbled after him, prepared to finish off the wizard once and for all, but just as he was raising the blue blade for the killing blow, Agahnim's body distorted while glowing with a brilliant white color along with the sound of wind that Link had only ever heard during his trips between Hyrule and the Dark World, and his enemy was just gone a moment later. Was that what happened? Had the wizard escaped back into the Dark World?
A few seconds later the trembling of the ground stopped as quickly as it started, and the young man dropped the Master Sword, collapsing to the ground a second later, and he must've passed out since there was less light in the sky when he opened his eyes again. Instead of laying in the mud, though, the young man was propped up so that he was sitting against the stone altar, with Maple sitting next to him, still asleep… she must've woken up before him and moved him over to the altar. On the muddy ground in front of her was the necklace Agahnim dropped, the thin chain missing, leaving only the reddish colored jewel that when Link took a closer look at it, was actually pretty elaborate on the inside. There were different shapes and colors, with the largest being a white sliver that almost looked like a crescent moon.
"Are you all right?" Maple asked quietly, still seeming worn out from their ordeal. "Is the wizard gone?"
"I'll be fine." The young man replied, still feeling really drained himself. "I hurt him, but he escaped… we have to… we have to get out of here before he recovers."
On that they agreed, and after helping each other up, the two of them began making their way out of the clearing, heading in a generally east direction with the hope of getting out of the Lost Woods before nightfall, and eventually taking shelter in her grandmother's shop. The blue blade fit into the same sheath that Link had used for his uncle's silver sword, so it was easy to transport, and as for the red pearl, well… he had no idea if was just a jewel or if there was something significant about it, or what. The young man hadn't known Agahnim for very long, but he didn't seem like the type to carry around things that weren't useful, so he figured that it was best to hold onto it for now… hey, if Maple's grandmother knew about magic, maybe she could tell him about it.
The sky was even darker by the time they reached the end of the forest, but the rain had let up a little so it wasn't exactly pouring, not that this kept them from getting any less soaked once there was no longer a canopy of leaves overhead. Now there was a long road ahead, but at least the guards were easier to avoid once the sun went down, their torches a dead giveaway for spotting patrols and check points, but not making it any easier to walk past the destroyed temple where Princess Zelda had once taken sanctuary. The rubble and destruction from Agahnim's explosion spell had all just been left there, with no effort to even clean up this sacred sight, not that he imagined the wizard cared about it.
Only thing that did matter to his enemy, besides the revenge he had already taken on the Lord Sheriff, was the dream wife and children that he had on Koholint Island, but that made no sense. What did freeing Ganondorf from the Dark World have to do with any of that? Maybe once of the trapped crystal girls would be able to tell him more once he found some more of them, and… and that meant having to travel back into the Dark World in order to find the rest of them. There were five left, including Princess Zelda, and even if the young man hadn't given his word about returning to save them, he still would've gone.
"Why are there so many guards around everywhere?" Maple asked the next time they had to move off the road to avoid a patrol. "Before I left Hyrule, there was never anyone on the roads at night except for me and grandma when we were collecting mushrooms."
"A lot has changed since Agahnim appeared." Link explained, holding her hand again as they got back on the road. "He's taken total control of the kingdom, the palace, the guards, everything. I just hope that the Master Sword will be enough to help me stop him before Ganondorf can come through into Hyrule, or… I, uh… actually don't know what will happen if he gets through."
Even with as many patrols and check points as there had been before, now there seemed to be twice as many, meaning that the two of them had to get even further off the roads and be even more stealthy to get past the armored men. Their torches provided almost constant light to the darkened landscape, although some of those torches went out each time the rain got heavier, not at all helped by how long the road seemed after… everything they had been through. Off in the distance, the flickering light of Hyrule Castle's windows and the guards patrolling on the roof could be seen across the water, meaning that they were about halfway to the potion shop, according to the young woman.
Hopefully the two of them would be safe there, at least for a while until it was time to enter the Dark World once again.