Aria: I'm glad no one said anything bad about that last chapter. I was
worried!
Darunia: I'd think they'd be more upset with what you told them last time.
Aria: Oh, about my family vacation? Well, here's the deal: try not to get
your hopes up about the next update. I may or may not be able to squeeze
it in tomorrow. And, I won't be able to update until the 13th or 14th of
July. Sorry again! Anyway, about this chapter: I'm finally revealing who
the person is who wants to, well, for lack of a better phrase, kill Tetra
and Link. Also, I'm telling, in a subtle way, what happened to the Hero of
Time. Alright, Darunia, your turn.
Darunia: Aria Zephyr, the owner and authoress of this story, not to mention
my latest employer, does not own the Legend of Zelda games, their
characters, etc. Though, I must say, it would be interesting if she did.
Aria: Uh, thanks, Darunia. I think. Um, here's chapter twenty-four!

Chapter 24: The Introduction of the Witch and her Eternal Prisoner

On another part of the island, far from this scene, someone was watching
this disaster with great delight. "You're such a cruel person, Natalia;
relishing at the pains of that girl. Shame on you!" a voice said.

A young woman with bright orange hair contrasting against her very dark
skin turned in her seat to face the speaker. "Humph! And, you are such a
judge how? Don't forget, my dear, you are still my prisoner and I am still
a witch!" she said. "I am not your dear, Natalia. Nor am I the dear of
your accursed father!" the voice said in ice-laced tones. The voice was
coming from a large slender-necked bottle which was sitting on a dusty
shelf in the dimly lighted room.

The entire place looked like no one had lived there for years, even though
the witch showed no trepidation. "You may say what you wish about me or my
father, but that will change nothing for your situation," She said icily as
she turned to face the mirror through which she had been watching the
argument between Link and Tetra.

"As I have already said, you are a very cruel woman to enjoy watching other
suffer," the voice said obstinately. "I have always enjoyed watching
others suffer," she replied loftily. "My dearest mother taught me how to
hate your kind, my dear. After all, wasn't it you who sent my father to
the Evil Realm?" she said, her voice ringing with malice. The voice was
silent as she continued.

"After you defeated him, my mother took me away from our fortress so that
my mind would not be spoiled by talk of peace with your land and your
people. Mother taught me many spells, as she herself knew magic. She was
even able to reach my father through her magic and have him teach me what I
needed to know so that I could take revenge upon you and the lady," she
said with a terrible gleam in her eyes.

She turned around on her stone seat to face the bottle, which seemed to be
milky colored, but when one looked very closely, they could see something
swirling about inside. "You were such a little fool; thinking you could
stop me. And yet, you knew that your power had waned and that I was many
times stronger. So, little hero, why did you come to this land many years
ago to challenge me?" she demanded. "That is for my knowledge and not
yours," the person within it said.

"Bah! You are a fool! Just as my father said, you are! Tis a pity those
foolish people actually thought that you would save them," the witch said
without mercy. "Fools must live with their foolishness. You are the fool,
Natalia, not me," the voice contended. "And, how do you figure that?"
Natalia asked. "Simple; the people of Hyrule banished you once and their
descendants shall do it again," the voice replied.

At this, the witch raised an eyebrow. Somehow, she smiled evilly and
started to laugh. It was not a happy laugh, nor an amused one. It was a
laugh of pure mockery and spite. "Those pitiful people? Banish me? I
think not! They would need the power of the gods themselves to stop me
now!" She cackled. "I know not what you mean," the voice said.

The witch stopped her laughter and said, "You do really think that I would
spend over a thousand years in captivity without learning new magic?! My
father contacted me through his magic and let me learn spells whose power
you could not even guess. He, too, made new spells and new curses and he
let me know his knowledge before that child stopped him."

"And, with these spells I have reduced those who would aid my enemies to
not much more than tiny nuisances," the witch concluded. "And, who would
that be?" the voice asked defiantly. She jerked her head towards a series
of small, covered objects behind her and said, "They're in those cages.
But, I don't think I shall tell you who they are right now, so that you can
drive yourself mad trying to find out." The voice made a sound rather like
a disgusted snort and the witch rolled her eyes.

She turned and looked into her mirror once more. Strangely, though
everything else was covered with dust and dirt, the mirror was sparklingly
clean and shone with an odd brightness. "I have watched that girl and that
boy," she said, staring into the images on the mirror's surface. "It seems
that the girl does not realize the immense powers within her. If she did,
she most likely would have what she most desires already."

"What powers would a mere girl have?" the voice asked. The witch turned to
face the bottle again. Her eyes showed a look of contempt for the owner of
the voice. "My dear fool, do you not realize who that girl is?" she said.
"No," the voice replied. The witch rolled her eyes and turned to her
mirror. She looked over her shoulder slightly and said, "The girl is the
heiress of Hyrule, Princess Zelda."

The voice seemed almost shocked, because the palpable silence seemed rather
startling. The witch cackled again and said, "How very slow you have
become over the years! To not recognize the girl for whom she really is!
You are the most pathetic fool that has ever lived!"

She looked into her mirror, at an image of a boy walking through a dark
forest, rubbing his eyes as if they hurt or he was trying to rub away
tears. "Still, there is something about this boy that I cannot grasp.
There is a certain quality that seems so familiar, yet so distant. What is
it about him that I, of all people, cannot see?" she said. "He seems so
willing to protect that girl, even though he may get hurt in the process.
What a simple creature." "I don't see how this boy could have possibly
defeated my father, but he did somehow," she muttered.

She swung around to face the bottle again and said, "What about you? What
is your opinion of this-this brat?" "He seems to be a true person who
would rather risk his life trying to help another than to stay in the
shadows and hide," the voice replied. The witch raised a disapproving
eyebrow again and scoffed.

"This from one who is no longer amongst the living? Oh, do act your age!
You could not possibly connect with this boy who has lived his life without
so much as an inkling of his land's past!" she snarled. The voice seemed
to bristle at this remark and retorted, "And, you? Who has spent her
entire life trying to end those of others?!"

"I live a better fate than that of your own!" she said. "You, who was
bound to his fate before you were even born; bound to a fate where you
would die at the hands of the ones whom you defeated!" As she said this,
she stood up from her place and her enraged magic made her long hair whip
around her face and her dark robes flutter around her.

"You, foolish hero, came here, knowing you would die! Didn't you?!" she
demanded. All was silent until the witch spoke again. "Answer me!" she
cried. "I did," the voice said. "I did know that my fate would be sealed
if I came here when I did. But, why I did and for what reason is not for
you to know," the voice said with unerring calmness.

The witch screamed in rage and grabbed the bottle from the shelf. "Do you
know why you were imprisoned within this bottle when my father and I
disposed of you?" she shouted. "We wanted you to suffer! To know how it
feels to be trapped within a world with no escape!"

She seemed to regain her composure and set the bottle on the shelf again.
"But, I imagine how you must have felt when your dear friends came here to
banish me from this world. They forgot you; left you here, to rot! That
must have been quite an experience," she said coldly. "How I felt then is
not of your concern!" the voice cried. But, there was a broken feeling to
that cry and the witch sensed it.

"They betrayed you and left you here until the end of time! What a cliché
that must have been! You, the one who once used time to your devices,
having to wait for its end! What poetic justice!" she cackled. "Stop it."
the voice said weakly. "What was that?" the witch said mockingly. "I say,
I didn't hear that." "I said: stop it!" the voice cried. The witch only
laughed once more and turned on her heel to look about the room.

"Does it not seem strange to you that even though there was a powerful seal
upon my father, he escaped?" she said, picking up an object off another
shelf and dusting it with the edge of her robes. "With the Master Sword in
its place and the seven sages in their temples, that should not have
happened," the voice replied tartly.

She looked up from her polishing job and said, "Do you not realize that
there was more to that seal than you thought?" "No," the voice replied.
"Then, let me explain it to you," the witch said, walking back to her
simple stone seat and sitting down.

"There was a way for my father to return without breaking the seal of the
Master Sword; but in order for this way to work, he had to have an agent in
this world to pull it off. Can you guess who that agent was?" she said,
smiling wickedly. "You," the voice replied wrathfully.

She smiled more broadly, showing her very white teeth, and said, "Indeed; I
was the one who allowed my father to escape. But, surely you have an idea
how I did it?" "Surely not," came the bitter reply. "You have to mix and
spill the blood of those who sealed the imprisoned upon the doorway to the
Evil Realm. I bet you're wondering how I did that without killing all of
you first," the witch said in a voice without mirth. "Indeed." the voice
replied.

"It was very simple really. All I had to do was get a least a drop of
blood from everyone who the spell applied to and then smear all of it on
the gateway," the witch said. "Well.that's not everything I did. I think
I did take somewhat more than what I needed from some of those I needed to
extract blood from, if you know what I mean," she said with her cruel
smile.

"Murderess! You killed the sages, didn't you?!" the voice cried. "How
very right you are." she said, smiling delicately. "It was so very easy.
All I had to do was lure them away from their precious temples and WHAM!
They were gone and their blood was spilling on the ground before me," she
said, throwing out one hand for reference.

"But, then, even when I had the blood of all seven sages, I still needed
that of Hyrule's princess and its hero," she said, a truly terrible look
crossing her face. She held the item she had been polishing out to the dim
light and it turned out to be a knife. However, the blade was as black as
the night sky at midnight.

"Do you know what this is?" she asked. There was no reply, so she
continued. "This is the very knife that I plunged into the hearts of each
and every one of the people I killed. Its blade used to shine as silver as
the moon, but after the many killings it has done, the blade has since
turned black."

"It is also with this knife that I took the blood from the lady herself. I
just snuck in and cut the girl, ever so slightly, and caught the drops as
they fell. You, on the other hand, when you came here, gave me exactly
what I needed. So, in essence, you brought my father back out of your own
accord."

The voice seemed almost defeated as a dreadful silence set into the room.
But, the witch broke that silence. "And now.now that my father has once
again been sealed and I am free once more, I intend to repeat that spell
and stop the royal family's line before it gets another chance to pass on.
As such, that girl and that boy have just walked themselves into my trap,"
she said wickedly.

With that, she threw her head back and laughed the most mirthless, horrible
laugh imaginable. "They're so vulnerable now," the witch said after she
had finally stopped her cackling. "Now is the perfect time to strike."

Aria: AH! Pretty scary, huh? I think that if anyone can't guess who
Natalia really is or who exactly is trapped in that bottle, then I have
completely failed in giving everyone exceedingly obvious hints!
Darunia: I think it's perfectly obvious who they are. The person in the
bottle is-
Aria: *quickly zips his mouth shut with magic* Don't tell them! They have
to guess! I don't want anyone, even you, to give away the secrets! *unzips
his mouth*
Darunia: *rubs back of head with hand* Sorry.
Aria: It's okay. At least, you listen to me. Unlike a certain fairy whom
I've banished from my realm.
Darunia: I listen because I feel compelled to pay attention to what my
employer asks me to do.
Aria: Why, thank you! He is SO much better behaved than Navi! This is
great!
Darunia: When will you change the goddesses back? I heard that you'll have
to in a coming chapter.
Aria: Um, before chapter twenty-seven, I think. I'll have to read over the
latter chapters again.
Darunia: I think we've chatted long enough, don't you?
Aria: Right. Okay, how'd you like this chapter? If you can guess who my
mystery characters are, send in your guess with a review and in chapter
twenty-five, I'll tell you if you were right. You know, Natalia and the
person in the bottle. That's it until next time! Read and review! See
ya!