sxHarsh Reality
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By Zel the Stampede
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Disclaimer: (I hate you, disclaimer! I hate you lots!) I own Zelda! HAHA! Now if you'll excuse me I'm late for my Compulsive Liars help course.
Chapter 7, everybody! The nice reviews are much appreciated. (Send more and I'll type faster!)
R&R!
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Chapter 7: Misery Loves Company
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It was raining again. A misting, depressing shower soaking the streets with its tears. Fat drops slid down Navi's window as she gazed out. Pencil and paper lying dormant beside her.
Armies of storm clouds were massing in the sky, black and sinister, their underbellies lit up with random flashes of bright lightening. The rain came down harder, pellets smashing into the window panels and Navi shivered.
Malon was pissed, filled with blistering rage and black hatred towards her fellow doctor. What the hell was he thinking? Since when had Dragmire decided he could control her through her patient?
The office was very quiet and very empty, Malon's silent fury driving away everyone and anyone who dared to enter the nurses' station.
"Dr. Kit?"
"Yes? What do you want!" Malon growled. The steadfast substitute nurse, Impa, was not fazed. Knitting her brows in a pensive façade, she concentrated placid crimson eyes on the doctor, "Ms. Wicket would like to see you." Malon breathed deep, shoving her anger down into the bottom of her mind, someplace where she could forget it until it surfaced again.
"I'm coming," Malon said, rising from her chair, "Tell Dragmire that-"
"What?" Impa wondered. Malon frowned, something else had been forgotten with her ire. She rapped her temples lightly with a finger, "Ah yes! Riles' medication." Impa smiled, "Don't worry, Dr. Kit, Dragmire already has me on the assignment."
"Good," Malon smiled weakly and headed briskly down the hall.
* * *
"Alright, Mr. Riles," Impa said gently, fitting a newly sterilized needle into the narrow glass vial of medication, "This'll only hurt for a minute." Link winced, the injection thrusting through the veil of flesh, piercing the vein below. Impa plastered on a fake grin, "There! All done! Sleep well, Mr. Riles." Link sighed, the narcotics casting the blurred shroud of sleep about his brain.
* * *
Navi hated thunder. Hated the fire-white flares and the clamor of wind and rain, she hated storms. Especially at night. When the black haze clouded her window, its darkness heavy with the mysteries and evils of the unseen.
It wasn't black yet, just an ashy gray.
Navi's room was very quiet, apart from the radio softly crooning in the background. Its hushed ripples of sound just barely touching Malon's ears.
'None is just where one pretends and won...ders
Counting for a perfect world to mind...us…'
"Navi?" Malon began, mustering up a reassuring smile, "Everything all right?"
"I thought I heard something," Navi murmured, jaded green eyes fixing intently on the sketch slowly unfolding on the parchment. Her pen slowing as the lights flickered and dimmed.
'One can be a word that counts as lonely
Two can be as lonely as each can be-'
The radio died abruptly, dropping off into a desolate silence that perturbed the senses. Malon swallowed hesitantly. Rasping breathes passing her lips as chills trickled down her spine.
Suddenly they weren't alone anymore.
* * *
Anxiety was overwhelming, devouring Navi in its stifling embrace so she quivered all over. Sheik had slunk off into the shadows, lost to her eyes, trailing his way across the enormous room.
All the while doubt hammering away at her confidence with a sledge, what if they were caught? What if they died? What would happen to Link if she couldn't save him? Navi shivered, cradling her face in her hands.
"It's all right," Aife offered, "Mr. Sheik knows what he's doing. Everything will be okay." Navi frowned, crushing silent tears away as she blinked furiously. It was Aife's duty to comfort. Her sole purpose of existing. To close the gashes and patch the scars, smooth all the hurts and weariness away.
"Aren't you ever afraid, Aife?" Navi whispered cautiously. Aife cocked her rose-colored head, curiously eyeing Navi with her huge honey irises.
"I mean-are you ever scared? Worried that everything won't be all right in the end?" Navi asked, wavering.
"No," Aife said merely.
"What-what do you mean?" There was something about Aife. A strong belief and insight that Navi couldn't remember ever seeing in anyone, anyone but him.
"Fairies are supposed to protect people, Ms. Navi," Aife replied, "we have to be brave for them."
Magic is only a third actual skill, the rest is just for show. Or so was the blunt belief of the Sheikiahs who required only themselves and one or two runes too old for names yet still fused with an ancient power to conjure spirits.
But Gerudo priestesses and Hylian witches preferred their brushes with the occult to be as fancy and garish as possible. For example, seizing a dusky temple to perform their mystics when the back room of any potion shop would work just fine and then covering the antique cobble with gaudy hexes and ridiculously huge seven-pointed stars. It was all ludicrous to Sheik, born and raised on the aforementioned rationale. Yet deep down, within their Gerudo stars and voodoo, Twinrova had wisdom in their lunacy, a tact so dangerously sharp and razor keen it cut Sheik's mind.
The billowing haze of perfumed vapor stung his throat, burning all the way down, searing his lungs. Its smoky fumes pricking acid tears in Sheik's eyes as he peered over the lip of the landing. A lifeless Link sprawled over the red flagstones, haggard and deathlike, gazing into space with numbed blue eyes. The witch sisters, just opposite of their prey, mediated. With withered hands they drew the invisible marks of power, passing their knobby fingers through trails of lavender-shaded smoke.
The witches carried an amazing resemblance to vultures, with their huge eyes and beady black pupils, beaked noses, rumpled nut-brown faces, and long-fingered hands crowned with ebon talons. Hunched up in inky cloaks edged in dull, aging silver they were twisted little beings, seemingly too absorbed in their spells to take notice of Sheik crouched at the edge of the platform. Slowly, delicately, he eased a long dagger from the holster buckled around his shoulder.
Koume grunted, cracking her ancient knuckles as she stirred, "Can't throw a good ol' séance without a few mosquitoes slipping in, can we, sister?"
* * *
Malon shivered, silence and the stormy haze weaving a bleak atmosphere riddled with danger and fear. Shadows crept from their corners as the room fell to dusk. Cords of nameless fear strangling Malon's heart as it slammed against her ribs. Somewhere, in a distant corner, Navi whimpered, gathering unshed tears in her tiny hands.
"Ms. Malon, what's happening?"
Malon stiffened, she didn't know, her mind was a gray blank, and she didn't like it.
"I-I'm not-don't worry!" she said suddenly, "Everything's going to be okay, I promise." Navi's eyes gleamed with sincerity, she would have loved to believe her, but something, a dark, evil-feeling something drew her eyes away.
Shadows crawled like black phantoms about the room, touching their fellows with smoky fingers. They condensed, weaving their black silhouettes into a mass of foul darkness. A rotten, bulky thing, horribly solid and terribly real, with skinny arms, a head nestled down on its shoulders, hunchbacked and crooked.
Reality seemed twisted, nightmare and waking twined into a ghastly truth. All that was real, seemed real, was lost, knotted in the ruined folds of their faded world. Malon wanted to cry, wanted desperately to break down and cry, her heart smothered in terror's grip. The grisly black phantasm shuffling behind her, chills breathing down on her neck, frost and ice crawling down her throat.
It dared her; in the core of its dark will it dared her to look, move her face just a fraction of a turn and see. See the pillar of darkness towering over her. Malon was afraid, pale and scared, and Navi was in tears.
Navi shuddered, tendrils of warm breath dying on her frozen lips while icy tears burning her down her face.
"Malon?"
"Quiet, Navi," Malon shivered, her voice shaking along with her teeth.
"I'm cold," Navi murmured. Malon sighed, her breath dispersed in the frosty air, "I'm cold too…" The phantom moaned, long and shaky, rumbling from the depths of its throat, "C…o…l…d…." Navi sniffled; its voice made her quake, it felt like fingers on chalkboards tearing her ears.
"Navi…" Malon began slowly, "I want you to run. Go get Dragmire." Navi jolted, "But Ms. Malon-" Malon frowned darkly, "Please…listen to me." Navi nodded, tentatively easing around to the foot of the bed.
"Good girl," Malon mumbled. Navi trembled, the freezing tiles eating into her bare feet. Malon sighed, hearing the doorknob give and a slender arrow of light spilled across the floor. The shadow shrieked, screaming as the shreds of artificial light clawed its misty bulk. It writhed, screeching, as Malon warded off a blow. She winced as those twitching, buckling fingers latched about her arm, the thumb over her palm and the four fingers around her wrist. Malon gasped. Acid! Acid! Its touch burned like acid, liquid fire was attacking tender flesh. The snowy skin shriveled, running and boiling, flesh-colored domes rising and popping, geysers of blood flowing from the blistered craters. Malon felt weak, the thing's fingers branding dark red bracelets of charred skin on her wrist. The spear of light grew brighter and the shadow withered, fading into nothingness as Malon clutched her wounded forearm. Crimson seeped through her tight fingers; the marred skin shiny and bruised, honeycombed with empty sores and streaked with blood. Dragmire appeared, blurry and vague in Malon's vision.
"Malon, are you hurt?" he gingerly picked her fingers from her forearm, frowning gravely at the sight of the ravaged skin.
"That," Malon started wearily, "was the stupidest question I've heard in a while." Dragmire smirked, "I take it you're all right then?" Malon narrowed her eyes to cold, sapphire slits; "Hell, I'm all right."
* * *
"You have friends with you, don't you?" Kotake hissed, "I can smell them." Her cave-like nostrils flared, "Fairies! Two." Her tongue flicked out, wetting her lips, "Yummy. Sister, may I?"
"Of course!" Koume said, flourishing her wrinkled claw, "Now, how shall I kill you, Sheikiah? Shall I cut you open and tell fortunes with your guts?"
"Oh yes!" Kotake cheered, eyeing the floor for the telltale glimmer of fairies, "If my memory serves me right Sheikiahs are most accurate!" Koume grinned evilly, gathering the mark of fire in her palm, "Or should I flay you alive?"
* * *
Dragmire was skeptic; he was always skeptic. Such a incredulous person that Malon could very easily picture a four-year-old Ganondorf Dragmire lecturing his preschool class on the existence of Santa Claus and the scheme behind it. He would have made an extraordinary investigator.
Despite his skepticism for anything that teetered on the thin red line of fact and fiction, the sole cause of Malon's reluctance to tell him the origin of her wound, Dragmire was trusting and surprisingly gentle person.
"I'm not being crazy, Ganondorf," Malon asserted, hissing as Dragmire delicately smeared a gluey cream over the bumpy, scorched surface.
"I never said you were crazy," Dragmire said, "It's just-your story-is-well-a little-hard to believe." Malon flinched, Dragmire's fingertips grazing a sore spot, "Sorry."
"S'ok," Malon said quietly, she sighed heavily, deeply, the incident with the shadow in Navi's room blurred in her memory and harder to recollect, "Perhaps I will take that holiday…" Dragmire smiled weakly, "It was only a suggestion, Malon."
"I need it though," Malon muttered, drained, "I don't know what I saw…but I want to forget it." Dragmire nodded vaguely, bandaging the burns in lacy gauze. Malon closed her eyes, relaxing into plastic-lined armchair. The pain in her arm had dulled, soothed by the sticky ointment to a dim throb. Dragmire fixed a bit of first-aid tape in place, "Luckily, it's not as bad as it could have been, but you should still get a doctor to look at it." Malon nodded listlessly, "I will. Dragmire?"
"Hmm?"
"I'm afraid I won't be coming in for a few days," Malon said flatly, "And if you would, please have Navi moved, I don't want her in that room, and have a nurse attending to her constantly. She's not to be left alone." Dragmire glanced at her, suddenly verging puzzlement. He rose stiffly from his place on the floor and mustered another grin.
"Of course, Malon," Dragmire assured. He lay a hand on her shoulder, smiling lopsidedly, "I'll take care of everything."
End of Chapter 7Sorry everybody! The Sheik/Navi/Aife VS. Koume/Kotake battle is finally underway but moving extremely slowly. And I'm really sorry! Please review! I love hearing from you!
ZelP.S. TRIGUN 4EVER!
Coming Soon:
Chapter 8: Through the Looking Glass
