Crystal Tears
The Question of Ancestry
---
"The winter months are approaching... you'll be glad that we have this wood when we're snowed in with nothing but thin clothes and a few meager blankets to keep the cold out."
"Right," Link muttered, resigning himself to the punishment his escapade in the forest had warranted... his uncle had a problem with him using a sword to defend himself against migrant creatures, but thought it perfectly fitting to give him an axe with which to chop wood. What irony. He was tempted to say something to the effect of "What if the axe head flew off without warning and hit me in the head, Uncle?" But thought better of it... undoubtedly there were more chores to be done... perhaps less desirable than what he was doing now.
Link had thought that when the fairy healed him, she erased any trace of the encounter they'd had in the woods, but unfortunately he had forgotten about the stains on the front of his tunic. His uncle had lectured him for hours about the dangers of going into the Lost Woods, straying from the well worn path, that sort of thing... he didn't bother to mention that he had freed a fairy, who had shown him the easiest ways through the forest. It was something he didn't think his uncle would understand.
Thump... Thump... Thump... chopping wood was such a monotonous job...
---
(Ack... I must have overslept!) Zelda realized, as she opened her eyes to the harsh glare of sunlight. (It must nearly be noon...)
Pulling herself out of her bed, she wandered around her room, gathering clothes to put on. (Why didn't anyone wake me up? I'm never allowed to sleep this late.) When she was finished dressing, she left her room, wandering onto the upper terrace of the castle walls, from which there had always been quite a view. Her mind was troubled about many things; not knowing where the Wizard from yesterday was being one of them. Even so, as she stared across the lightly forested lands south of the castle, she couldn't help smiling. It looked as though the boy from the little house down there was up early, at least. She had first noticed the occupation of that house several years ago, and upon inquiring about it had eventually learned about the residents. The boy, Link, taken from the noble life he could have been raised in to instead grow up in a peasant's shoes... Zelda understood the reasoning, but the thought of such a thing happening to herself was enough to make her nose wrinkle in disgust. (Sometimes I wish he did live here in the castle,) she mused, nearly losing herself in a silly pre-teen daydream.
The shuffling of feet behind her snapped her out of that quickly enough, and she turned her head slightly to greet the guards she assumed were making their daily patrols. Clad in red armor, the man nodded back to the princess, accustomed to seeing her out on her own by now. Still, there was an odd stiffness in his movements... a strange glazed look to his eyes...
"Good morning," Zelda greeted quizzically, wondering what was wrong with him.
"Ah... good morning, Princess Zelda," His reply was stiff, mechanical.
"Something bothering you?" She inquired, turning fully around and staring into his face, trying to think of what could possibly cause that sort of behavior.
"Just making my daily rounds. Doing my business as usual."
"As long as you're feeling all right," Zelda said softly, but she didn't get the impression that the guard had heard her. He continued right by, stopping every few feet to look out over the wall, performing ideally for a look out. The problem with this perfect performance was that the Hylian guards NEVER kept their minds so focused on their work. They were bawdy storytellers, gamblers, jokers... anything but such well trained guards as this man.
Somewhat disturbed, the Princess receded back into the castle to find out where that wizard was... (It is likely that the source of this strange behavior is in some way stemmed from him.)
---
Such a vast store of knowledge had never been open to him in the past, and Aghanim fed upon it like a leech feeds upon the lifeblood of the living. He largely ignored the countless histories and record books, keeping his search streamlined to the darkest books of magic he could find within the library walls. The Royal Family kept their precious books in perfect condition, expertly catalogued and convieniently arranged according to subject and title. The books of the public libraries were child's play compared to the things these volumes had to teach him, and though he had already learned a few impressive tricks, the real spells he sought still eluded him.
How to break the Seven Sages' Seal?
Surely there was a way, and surely it was in here... the closest he had gotten to finding the answer was that only the Sages themselves could disband the seal. That was no good, though, as the Seven Ancient Sages were all long dead, or otherwise departed from the world. He refused to think that there was not some sort of back door... a way to break the seal that had not been guarded against in its creation. Surely no magic was sophisticated enough to be infallible? All schools of mind he had subscribed to in his youth at least agreed on that.
He was ready to abandon the search for the day, when a book with a black-gold cover caught his eye. He absently set the one he had been reading back on the shelf, and pulled that one off, studying it with interest. It seemed to be another History on the outside, with the same markings and indications of a history book on it as any other text of its kind would have, but when the wizard opened it he was surprised to see something much, much different.
A spell book... he had never seen the likes of these incantations in his life. (And that is certainly saying a lot... I thought that this school of magic was mere rumour...) But there, laid out for him, was a book of summoning spells. Many methods were detailed for reviving, calling, releasing, imprisoning... the wizard's greedy eyes drank in the knowledge, looking for the methods that best suited his abilities.
"To bring the murdered back to life, you have but to sacrifice the slayer, sprinkling his blood across... that won't work, the Evil King was only imprisoned, never killed. To summon the wielder of the Triforce of Power, the flames of Sorrow, Destruction and Despair..." Considering he had no idea what those were, he continued on. "The Seal of the Seven Sages can be disbanded in any of three ways..." Here was the chapter he was looking for, now! "The first is by the Sages themselves, each working together willingly to destroy it." Hmph, not a likely scenario. "The second is by harnessing the power of a greater magic -- the only one known to exist is the power of the Triforce. The Seal can not be broken from the Sacred Realm, where it was forged, but only from our world, where its power is somewhat diluted through dimensions." Even if he knew where the Triforce was, this theory sounded far too risky. Last he had heard, the relic still resided in the Temple of Light -- after the demise of the Sages, it was likely Ganondorf had taken it. But because the Seal could not be broken from that side... "The third way to break the seal involved the descendants of the Seven Sages..."
Ah... now here was something he was interested in.
---
Zelda asked about the Wizard all around the castle, noticing a few more guards with the same glazed countenance as the man she had met on the castle wall, though not many. Everyone replied similarly... "I haven't seen him," "I thought he left," or "Who are you talking about, now?"
Growing frustrated, Zelda finally decided to try going to her father. After all, there was never harm in trying to get a few words in with him. She climbed the stairs to the top of the Tower, where her father's room and more lately, his workplace was. She politely asked the two guards outside his door if she could have a word with her father, and they both complied wordlessly. She noticed that both of them had the same dazed expression on their faces as the various guards downstairs all did.
"Father?" She asked softly, walking toward the King, whose body was hunched over his desk, writing furiously, pausing only to draw more ink from the inkwell nearby.
"Daughter?" He replied, without looking up. "You should be taking your lessons right now, should you not?"
"It's the weekend still, father," Zelda gently corrected him. "We only meet for lessons five days a week." (Great, his sense of time is growing even more skewered. Why doesn't he leave this stupid windowless tower more often? It reminds me too much of a prison...)
"Of course, I had forgotten." He finally looked up, his face holding an expectant look. "What brings you up here, daughter?"
"I wanted to ask... do you know where that Wizard who requested a meeting with you yesterday is?"
"How do you know about that?" He snapped suddenly, narrowing his eyes. "Aghanim is a noble man. He'll be studying in our library, no doubt -- what business is it of a little girl's?"
"You gave him access to our library?" She echoed, eyes widening in surprise.
"Again... what business is it of yours? Your constant curiosity will get you in trouble one day, girl. I suggest you take a hint from our visitor and spend your time filling your head with useful things, rather than wasting it with spying and silly exploration fantasies."
"I apologize," She whispered, the look in her father's eyes dropping her heart into her stomach. Whatever that wizard... Aghanim... had done to those guards, he had also done to her father. There was no way he would grant access to those spellbooks to a random stranger if some sort of unsavory magic weren't involved... "I'll be going, then."
Her father made no reply as she turned to exit the room.
---
So... simple in theory, but difficult in execution. The spell to break the Sages' Seal required the collection of the lifeforce of the descendants of the seven original Sages. The problem with this was that the other races of Hyrule had long since been lost or corrupted, not to mention the fact that two of the original Sages couldn't have possibly had children... the Shiekah and the Kokiri women. It was a common fact that Shiekah stopped existing ages ago, and Kokiri were immortal children... how could children bear children? In fact, the only documented Sages with a clearly defined bloodline was the Goron male... he had a son before he was called to the Sacred Realm... and of course the ancient Princess Zelda, whose descendants were obviously the current King of Hyrule and his daughter.
How then, could this riddle be solved?
He searched high and low for some sort of spell that would make the search for the Sages' descendants easier, growing impatient with the knowledge that he was on the brink of attaining his goal, yet still so far from realizing his dreams.
---
(A/N):
Let's face it, we all know there weren't any "Seven Wise Men," all Hylians, from which seven pretty Hylian girls could be descended from. The Seven Wise Men from a Link to the Past were revealed in Ocarina of Time... how ironic that it turns out 5 of the 7 were actually women. ^_^ This next chapter will be quite different than what the game said happened... because in the game, there were 7 Hylian girls... and since this story attempts to reconciliate what is said in OoT with the story of LttP, I feel I should make their descendants a bit more believable. (I don't think a Hylian Girl could descend from Darunia, for instance.)
Although, admittedly, I've sort of written myself into a corner with that decision. *snicker* I'll figure it out shortly, I promise. o_O
The Question of Ancestry
---
"The winter months are approaching... you'll be glad that we have this wood when we're snowed in with nothing but thin clothes and a few meager blankets to keep the cold out."
"Right," Link muttered, resigning himself to the punishment his escapade in the forest had warranted... his uncle had a problem with him using a sword to defend himself against migrant creatures, but thought it perfectly fitting to give him an axe with which to chop wood. What irony. He was tempted to say something to the effect of "What if the axe head flew off without warning and hit me in the head, Uncle?" But thought better of it... undoubtedly there were more chores to be done... perhaps less desirable than what he was doing now.
Link had thought that when the fairy healed him, she erased any trace of the encounter they'd had in the woods, but unfortunately he had forgotten about the stains on the front of his tunic. His uncle had lectured him for hours about the dangers of going into the Lost Woods, straying from the well worn path, that sort of thing... he didn't bother to mention that he had freed a fairy, who had shown him the easiest ways through the forest. It was something he didn't think his uncle would understand.
Thump... Thump... Thump... chopping wood was such a monotonous job...
---
(Ack... I must have overslept!) Zelda realized, as she opened her eyes to the harsh glare of sunlight. (It must nearly be noon...)
Pulling herself out of her bed, she wandered around her room, gathering clothes to put on. (Why didn't anyone wake me up? I'm never allowed to sleep this late.) When she was finished dressing, she left her room, wandering onto the upper terrace of the castle walls, from which there had always been quite a view. Her mind was troubled about many things; not knowing where the Wizard from yesterday was being one of them. Even so, as she stared across the lightly forested lands south of the castle, she couldn't help smiling. It looked as though the boy from the little house down there was up early, at least. She had first noticed the occupation of that house several years ago, and upon inquiring about it had eventually learned about the residents. The boy, Link, taken from the noble life he could have been raised in to instead grow up in a peasant's shoes... Zelda understood the reasoning, but the thought of such a thing happening to herself was enough to make her nose wrinkle in disgust. (Sometimes I wish he did live here in the castle,) she mused, nearly losing herself in a silly pre-teen daydream.
The shuffling of feet behind her snapped her out of that quickly enough, and she turned her head slightly to greet the guards she assumed were making their daily patrols. Clad in red armor, the man nodded back to the princess, accustomed to seeing her out on her own by now. Still, there was an odd stiffness in his movements... a strange glazed look to his eyes...
"Good morning," Zelda greeted quizzically, wondering what was wrong with him.
"Ah... good morning, Princess Zelda," His reply was stiff, mechanical.
"Something bothering you?" She inquired, turning fully around and staring into his face, trying to think of what could possibly cause that sort of behavior.
"Just making my daily rounds. Doing my business as usual."
"As long as you're feeling all right," Zelda said softly, but she didn't get the impression that the guard had heard her. He continued right by, stopping every few feet to look out over the wall, performing ideally for a look out. The problem with this perfect performance was that the Hylian guards NEVER kept their minds so focused on their work. They were bawdy storytellers, gamblers, jokers... anything but such well trained guards as this man.
Somewhat disturbed, the Princess receded back into the castle to find out where that wizard was... (It is likely that the source of this strange behavior is in some way stemmed from him.)
---
Such a vast store of knowledge had never been open to him in the past, and Aghanim fed upon it like a leech feeds upon the lifeblood of the living. He largely ignored the countless histories and record books, keeping his search streamlined to the darkest books of magic he could find within the library walls. The Royal Family kept their precious books in perfect condition, expertly catalogued and convieniently arranged according to subject and title. The books of the public libraries were child's play compared to the things these volumes had to teach him, and though he had already learned a few impressive tricks, the real spells he sought still eluded him.
How to break the Seven Sages' Seal?
Surely there was a way, and surely it was in here... the closest he had gotten to finding the answer was that only the Sages themselves could disband the seal. That was no good, though, as the Seven Ancient Sages were all long dead, or otherwise departed from the world. He refused to think that there was not some sort of back door... a way to break the seal that had not been guarded against in its creation. Surely no magic was sophisticated enough to be infallible? All schools of mind he had subscribed to in his youth at least agreed on that.
He was ready to abandon the search for the day, when a book with a black-gold cover caught his eye. He absently set the one he had been reading back on the shelf, and pulled that one off, studying it with interest. It seemed to be another History on the outside, with the same markings and indications of a history book on it as any other text of its kind would have, but when the wizard opened it he was surprised to see something much, much different.
A spell book... he had never seen the likes of these incantations in his life. (And that is certainly saying a lot... I thought that this school of magic was mere rumour...) But there, laid out for him, was a book of summoning spells. Many methods were detailed for reviving, calling, releasing, imprisoning... the wizard's greedy eyes drank in the knowledge, looking for the methods that best suited his abilities.
"To bring the murdered back to life, you have but to sacrifice the slayer, sprinkling his blood across... that won't work, the Evil King was only imprisoned, never killed. To summon the wielder of the Triforce of Power, the flames of Sorrow, Destruction and Despair..." Considering he had no idea what those were, he continued on. "The Seal of the Seven Sages can be disbanded in any of three ways..." Here was the chapter he was looking for, now! "The first is by the Sages themselves, each working together willingly to destroy it." Hmph, not a likely scenario. "The second is by harnessing the power of a greater magic -- the only one known to exist is the power of the Triforce. The Seal can not be broken from the Sacred Realm, where it was forged, but only from our world, where its power is somewhat diluted through dimensions." Even if he knew where the Triforce was, this theory sounded far too risky. Last he had heard, the relic still resided in the Temple of Light -- after the demise of the Sages, it was likely Ganondorf had taken it. But because the Seal could not be broken from that side... "The third way to break the seal involved the descendants of the Seven Sages..."
Ah... now here was something he was interested in.
---
Zelda asked about the Wizard all around the castle, noticing a few more guards with the same glazed countenance as the man she had met on the castle wall, though not many. Everyone replied similarly... "I haven't seen him," "I thought he left," or "Who are you talking about, now?"
Growing frustrated, Zelda finally decided to try going to her father. After all, there was never harm in trying to get a few words in with him. She climbed the stairs to the top of the Tower, where her father's room and more lately, his workplace was. She politely asked the two guards outside his door if she could have a word with her father, and they both complied wordlessly. She noticed that both of them had the same dazed expression on their faces as the various guards downstairs all did.
"Father?" She asked softly, walking toward the King, whose body was hunched over his desk, writing furiously, pausing only to draw more ink from the inkwell nearby.
"Daughter?" He replied, without looking up. "You should be taking your lessons right now, should you not?"
"It's the weekend still, father," Zelda gently corrected him. "We only meet for lessons five days a week." (Great, his sense of time is growing even more skewered. Why doesn't he leave this stupid windowless tower more often? It reminds me too much of a prison...)
"Of course, I had forgotten." He finally looked up, his face holding an expectant look. "What brings you up here, daughter?"
"I wanted to ask... do you know where that Wizard who requested a meeting with you yesterday is?"
"How do you know about that?" He snapped suddenly, narrowing his eyes. "Aghanim is a noble man. He'll be studying in our library, no doubt -- what business is it of a little girl's?"
"You gave him access to our library?" She echoed, eyes widening in surprise.
"Again... what business is it of yours? Your constant curiosity will get you in trouble one day, girl. I suggest you take a hint from our visitor and spend your time filling your head with useful things, rather than wasting it with spying and silly exploration fantasies."
"I apologize," She whispered, the look in her father's eyes dropping her heart into her stomach. Whatever that wizard... Aghanim... had done to those guards, he had also done to her father. There was no way he would grant access to those spellbooks to a random stranger if some sort of unsavory magic weren't involved... "I'll be going, then."
Her father made no reply as she turned to exit the room.
---
So... simple in theory, but difficult in execution. The spell to break the Sages' Seal required the collection of the lifeforce of the descendants of the seven original Sages. The problem with this was that the other races of Hyrule had long since been lost or corrupted, not to mention the fact that two of the original Sages couldn't have possibly had children... the Shiekah and the Kokiri women. It was a common fact that Shiekah stopped existing ages ago, and Kokiri were immortal children... how could children bear children? In fact, the only documented Sages with a clearly defined bloodline was the Goron male... he had a son before he was called to the Sacred Realm... and of course the ancient Princess Zelda, whose descendants were obviously the current King of Hyrule and his daughter.
How then, could this riddle be solved?
He searched high and low for some sort of spell that would make the search for the Sages' descendants easier, growing impatient with the knowledge that he was on the brink of attaining his goal, yet still so far from realizing his dreams.
---
(A/N):
Let's face it, we all know there weren't any "Seven Wise Men," all Hylians, from which seven pretty Hylian girls could be descended from. The Seven Wise Men from a Link to the Past were revealed in Ocarina of Time... how ironic that it turns out 5 of the 7 were actually women. ^_^ This next chapter will be quite different than what the game said happened... because in the game, there were 7 Hylian girls... and since this story attempts to reconciliate what is said in OoT with the story of LttP, I feel I should make their descendants a bit more believable. (I don't think a Hylian Girl could descend from Darunia, for instance.)
Although, admittedly, I've sort of written myself into a corner with that decision. *snicker* I'll figure it out shortly, I promise. o_O