((CAN: This is it, folks! The moment of truth, the moment you've all been waiting for—the moment Twinrova's Plan is revealed! As if you didn't already know. Oh yeah. I also warn you, it gets kind of gross in this chapter, what with morbidity and spewing blood and a dead guy and all. In fact, I'm now looking back on this chapter, reading through it as I usually do once finished. And I must say—woah. I did NOT write all of this. I'm reading through it, and openly cringing at some parts, and thinking—"Wow, I seriously typed down this awful stuff?" I think I might have been channeling Edgar Allen Poe or something—he wrote a lot of disgusting things. Still you gotta admit, it IS effective and chilling! Juuust to make sure we're clear on that.))

((To the FF.net-ers, by the way: I'm trying something new with this now, uploading in HTML format. Oooh! Fancy! Let's see if this works like it oughta…))

Spinning Slash, Chapter 15: From The Ashes

Gone. Gone, like the trickles of a breeze on a muggy summer day. Gone, like a fly in the midst of a convention of frogs. Gone, like vivid dream upon the dreamer's waking.

Link did not want to let it be real. He wanted to blink a few times—maybe rub his eyes to free them of any dust and grime that may be clouding them—and open them to find his beautiful blue Ocarina staring him back in the face. He wanted it so badly, but he knew it would not happen. He felt that, if only he could not say it, it would not be so—but had that strategy ever worked before? Very recently, he had said that they were not lost, even though they clearly were. Less recently, he had told himself he was close to finding the answer to Posie's problem in the various books in the library back home, but it he had been nowhere near any such answer. And, such a very long time ago it seemed, and perhaps six years was quite an amount—he had not admitted he loved Saria in her new, more grown-up form when all of that magic had gone awry, but…

Nothing had ever brought him closer to the truth of real, genuine tears. He sunk down on to his knees, not finding the strength left anywhere in either his body or his heart to do much beyond such. His arms flew out toward Posie, clutching her close to his chest. Scratchy, belied with the uncommon age beyond reality many Blades seemed to possess, his voice whispered: "Oh my Goddesses. Baby, I am so, so incredibly sorry."

Posie's shock and sudden grief was deep beyond tears. Deep within the hearts of the five of them gathered there—Link, Posie, Elaine, Naomi and Navi—they all knew that now there was no choice in the matter of where they must go now. They had had much help in moving toward Ipanajou; there was no guarantee that they would find it slowly trudging the return. The must move forward and hope to either reach their destination and return with the prize they sought, or hope along the way some kind soul could guide them back.

If only they knew into what hands the Ocarina had fallen, and to what purpose it was shortly to be put to. Then, the least of their worries would have been on merely their progress toward the mountain.

***************************

They had chosen, for the scene of their devilish rites, a murky moor roughly interspersed with small, almost fen-like patches of wetness that smelled evilly of rotting meat. The few, sporadic trees were stripped early of their leaves in mid-September, while most other deciduous trees in temperate Hyrule were only slightly tinged with yellow. A fog that strove to choke the very earth itself stood twenty feet thick above the ground, obscuring stars and the land too many yards ahead for the low-flying hags as they swooped, stinking, diseased crows, over the blighted stretch.

There were, of course, complications. Hyrule had entered and age of joy, peace and prosperity as had never been previously seen, even with monster infestations barely leaving enough sorrow and destruction to call upon Flames. And, with such flourishing, a Sacrifice was right out. Too suspicious it would be, to have a person suddenly go missing from the upper branches of Hyrule's pecking order. True, they had taken a man in their siege of Shadow Haven, and his carcass bounced sickeningly along as it was bound beneath their brooms. Despite their race's endangerment, one Sheikah man would not be missed. Even if he had once been a servant to the Royal Family, and his daughter the great Sage of Shadow, he was middle-aged for the Sheikah as he evened out around 86, and though his hair had always been white it had been making the long hike back up his scalp for some time before the witch sister has wrought his death out of searing, frozen magic. His flesh was long cold since that incident the afternoon before, and not fitting for the sacrilegious activities they planned to partake in. But his blood would help in their much older, more primitive magics they intended to work.

Because they did not have the cinders of a sacrificial body's burning or the magical fires of death to reap the coals from they had to collect all the ashes—every last one, scattered as they were throughout Hyrule and even a slight few of its surrounding countries—from the body they were attempting to rebuild. The archaic workings they had found located within the Book of Dusk, guarded with—and paid for—in the lives of a few hardy Sheikah brave enough to stand in front of it with swords and glaives polished to a wicked steel shine that had no effect whatsoever on Twinrova. They knew most of it already, naturally—where would be their claim as witches if they didn't? But there were still a few choice words that were left out of their mental scrolls. They did, however, know that the workings required the assistance of an artifact almost as old as the spell and the parchment it was printed on—small and blue; a great magic force trapped and concealed inside an object so inconspicuous that the layman might ignore it, thinking it any ordinary clay ocarina, not expecting it to be the Ocarina with the power to tame and ride the currents of time as it its player willed.

They had spotted Link climbing up Death Mountain a few days after their finagling with the Gorons and near a fortnight after their Zoran tangles, just as cheerful as you please and carting a large pack of supplies on his back. Why he opted for the old-fashioned method and did not simply go for one of his neat little Magic Pouches that shrunk all their contents to palm-sized proportions until they were needed was beyond them. They did not know what he was up to—perhaps he was making a pilgrimage of some kind—but his presence had become both a hindrance and a blessing. On one hand, regardless of whether or not he ever reached his destination, he had to be kept away from Mount Ipanajou. He clearly did not know of the disgustingly evil treasure that was buried in the peak atop there, that long ago some do-gooderly Scholar had locked away inside his tomb so even in death he could assure it could not fall into some villain's hand. If he did, he surely would have been off to destroy it long ago, with the same ideas as the Scholar in mind. And, if he kept going mindlessly in the direction of the hoary old mountain, he likely would hear of it and dash off to destroy that sweet, accursed blade. As long as he was left beating around the pinnacle's bush. Just as long as.

The blessing part of his being near meant that, more likely than not, he was keeping his precious Ocarina with him in case the situation became too hairy for his pleasure. That, and he seemed to be able to keep rapport with the Sages with it, and if they were to be discovered—no. They would not think of that. But if they could send one of their dumb, brutish hoards down to where he rested and burgle him of the miniscule little flute, it saved them the troubles of attempting to find his abode and breaking inside of it. Neither Twinrova nor that "baby" of theirs which they spoke about in such cooing tones had ever bothered keeping much track of Link's personal life. He was just another moronic warrior, after all—true, albeit one with a divine mission and holy aura, but he likely spent his time doing silly, warrior things. Nothing of interest to the three of them.

Koume and Kotake admitted to being a bit puzzled when the Moblin officer had presented the prize to them. He had brought a junior with him on the mission—Link was a sturdy fellow, after all; he might have needed a little extra restraint. Somehow, though, he had not been needed in securing the Hero, but instead a peculiar number of companions they report he had with him. An baffling companions indeed they were—if the Moblin's eyesight had not been too muddled in the dead of night, and his word was to be taken at face value, they were a couple of children and a Gerudo. Initially they believed the Gerudo to have heard of their most noble mission and brought Link to their cause, but she turned out to be an ally of his who went and surrendered herself at their feet. Koume figured that he might have wooed the Gerudo woman over to his side when he had been passing through that land, thanks to her deterrent spell in the Volcano, but the children left her and her sister's minds white. The officer did not elaborate on what they might have been like—ages, heights, appearances, or mannerisms. This did not help them. It left them with an empty file in the drawers they kept on Link's friends. They could not be sure if they were dealing with potential dangers of any sort.

But larger matters were at hand now. And, in their current location, at the current time, with the current of ideas running through their heads at that particular moment, no one was going to stop them.

As had been promised by the various heads of many monster armies, a small contingent of some of their most loyal beasts and a few expendables from their lower ranks greeted them. There were Moblins, with their ragged fur and gorilla-like arms, headed by the really delightful senior officer who had stolen the Ocarina from them. A small cavalry of Stalfos, those warriors who would not give up their bloody profession in life, their stark white, skeletal frames forever reeking of fresh blisters. Dodongos, of every size and stage of development; the ancient lizards of fire and earth, like low-slung dinosaurs who had refused to become extinct. Armor-skinned, snaky Moldorms colored both light and dark ate through the earth in anxiousness, the segments of their caterpillar bodies clacking together loudly as they moved. There were Tektites—blue, red, gold; dozens of dark red eyes all focused on the broom-bound hags soaring above. Octoroks in a similar triumvirate of colors in red, blue, and violet both wallowed in the shallow pools abundant in the moors and skittered insectlike over the cold, grassy lands. And a few other dregs of monsters peppered the crowd here and there, unaccompanied by many or any others of their race but clearly willing to put up a show for their loyalty. Was that Vire, Veran's ugly bat-demon of a former servant, skulking about in the back?

"It looks as if we've got ourselves a good show-out, Koume," Kotake cackled pitchedly under her breath.

Her fiery sister nodded in agreement—a very rare sight indeed. From the way the lights in her eyes trembled, it was clear she took delight in the grim prospect that some of the willing spectators and supporters would show their support for their Lord and King by becoming his first lunch in five long, excruciating years.

The tail ends of their brooms sputtering slightly and expectorating a few variously colored sparks as the fuel the witches were channeling into them began to dry up, the sisters alighted on one of the few patches of truly dry land in sight. The assortment of eyes—some beady, some bloodshot, some jewelike—that had been following their descent bounced delicately in their sockets as they then traced Twinrova's passage on short, scuttling little legs to perch in front of their unruly mass, short but imperial.

"Well?" Koume barked in her harsh voice, glaring darkly at the mob when they simply regarded her and her sibling's presence with a seemingly obedient and respectful silence.

The senior Moblin officer "Ohed" loudly and dug thick sausage fingers into the grimy leather satchel at his belt. Though news of his success in stealing the Ocarina had reached the witches, they would not rest on their laurels until the proof of the deed was being smoothed over between their fingers. The slick surface of the instrument fumbled about a bit in the grease heavy on his digits, but eventually he held it steady and, slogging up through the crowd and marsh on his knees, he dutifully laid the spoils of his mission at the feet of the icen twin.

A disfigured lump of flesh shot out like a dart from the flabby sleeve of Kotake's robe; it was a hand that seemed to be made of nothing but knucklebones. Along the violet veins that creeped like parasites over the outlines of ragged bones, lines of a dark power not known to any of the seven magical Realms flew. Fingers tipped in yellowing, infected claws caressed the Ocarina of Time like it was a cherished pet, and all of its goodness shuddered heavily as drops of that darkness leapt from the vessels to its pearly blue surface.

She passed it to her sister, who went through the same fondling motions of the mystic object to ensure that they had been given the real deal, and not some school-child's pretend-time imitation. Her eyelids came together with something like a heavy click of recognition, and it became clear that they had certainly not been swindled.

"Well, you didn't fail us," fire-twin said in her nefarious caw. Though she would not tell the lackey that he had done a good job—compliments were far too much of a kind thing for the wicked Twinrova to partake in them.

"Nevah fail, mistrusses," her hissed into the slop he had genuflected his head into. "I iz loyal an' truswordy, an' I nevah fails youse."

"Very well, then. You brought us the Ocarina, but you didn't bring us Link. And why is that, Skrash?"

He looked up from his too-deep bow, but only enough so that his eyes, huge with a plea, were on level with Koume's. "'Oh, mistrusses, please fergive me… 'e, 'e weren't alone, an' we wuz afraid 'ed get 'is friends tuh… 'elp 'im…"

"Not alone, huh?" Kotake instantly took interest. "Tell me, my good fellow, who was with him? Other warriors? A mage, perhaps?"

"Jus'… jus' two gidrens, an' a Gerudo, bud shes was wid Lingh, an' I dun know wuh shes doin' wid 'im."

Kotake went briefly ponderous, mulling over the several possible meanings of Link's odd choice of companions and superimposing those meanings over each other in her head, weighing themselves against each other. "Two kids and a Gerudo. Gerudo's a traitor, no doubt; we'll have to deal with her personally if we ever see her. But children… Now that's peculiar… How old did they look, Skrash?"

Skrash blubbered out, "Dey wuz jus' little 'uns, mistruss, coudnta been more den four er five…"

"Hmm," Koume thought a moment, then waved the thought away like a bad dream. "An unpredicted element in our scheme, but hardly an important one. I doubt two little munchkins will be able to do much against us, once things are set in motion." Almost boredly, she yawned at the Moblin, "Dismissed."

Skrash waddled frightenedly back among the tight little cluster of his people somewhere near the rear of the conglomeration. They regarded him with an awe usually reserved for fireworks; Koume ran another leathery finger lovingly over the Ocarina and turned with conspiratorial eyes and voice on her sister. "Well, we've got everything we're gonna need for this little picnic, it seems. The blanket,"—she pulled down the hood of her purple robe and began to fiddle one-handedly with the clasp, "the basket,"—Kotake set down the garish glazed urn she cradled like an infant, "the sunshine,"—Koume reached into what appeared to be a flat pocket in the inside of her cowl as it fell away, pulling out a tome whose wounded surface was enough to inspire nausea, "and the lunchmeat." Kotake gazed, not without some pride, at the Shadow Person's pallid carrion, bleached even more brilliant by death. Koume seemed more charmed to eye the motley infantry that had been their welcome wagon, noting in particular Skrash and Dodongo of wicked, festering reds intermingled with brown—a truly ugly creature to behold, indeed. And all the more powerful for it.

But, there was no time for eye candy—work was required of them by their dead son and master, and if it was not enacted soon, with night still breathing its heavy stench into the air, then all their preparation would be useless. Of course, it would be effective once more once the sun got around to setting again, but they had everything now. They didn't want to wait. Koume spread the square of her opened cloak out of the ground, letting it become half-submerged in the sour old water. "New-wet with the water of the ominous fen," she clearly recalled the book saying. Well, if this place wasn't "ominous," someone had screwed up in setting her internal dictionary. Of course, it was a very old spell, after all, and those were littered with peculiar and often vague factors—nothing clear and concise like eye of newt. (Though Kotake did keep a small jar of powdered newt eyes in her cloak's shrinking pocket—it was very good for migraines, and Goddesses knew those were common where you started to get upwards of 400.) No, it was usually very nebulous stuff, like "odd-bent steel," or "savory stone-dust," or any number of other ingredients with a dash in them somewhere. Those ancient mages must've been rather hyphen happy.

But that was all she could really remember clearly. Plus, the instructions for their spell were as curious as its components, and the two of them were going to need step-by-step guidance to pull it off. And they'd best follow along with their prominent proboscises nearly glued to the book's spine, as they only got one shot at this particular spell. One of the parts required was destroyed in the casting, whether they did it right or not… and as this particular bit couldn't be replenished, that meant their search had to go elsewhere.

Koume set the Ocarina gingerly on the ground, mindful to keep its mouthpiece pointing up, as she was going to have to be playing it later. She didn't want to do that with the bitter taste of stagnant water lingering in her mouth. With that out of her hands, she could better settle the Book of Dusk in them to leaf through, finding the spot they'd bookmarked to work from. To touch each of the pages stung a little, leaving a deep red sheen on her fingertips—each brush sponged a little blood out of what touched it to the surface. She reconsidered touching her nose to it. Finding the paragraphs she sought, she shifted the volume in her hands so that she only came against the cover, then scanned down the list of needed portents in the spell to ensure they had them all.

"A witch's cloak, new-soaked in the waters of an ominous fen." She'd just taken care of that. Check.

"The ashes, each and all, of the body that had housed the soul to be retrieved—"—the part that would get spent regardless, and that they couldn't get back. Koume winced a little, but not because she'd accidentally brushed a page. But because the stakes were so high… She watched as Kotake tilted the urn and laid out the ashes, sketching with them a complex figure with the Möebius symbol for infinity at its heart. It was, after all, immortality—the infinity of a being's life—they were seeking with this. It was a lucky thing for them that demon's souls could not pass on into next lives, or else they might have lost their chance already, finding their son already in a new stage.

"A relic of the slayer of the body." The Ocarina could have been used for this purpose, but they had another, much more specific need for it. Something that could only be obtained with it exactly, unless they wanted to go find a natural zone of ruptured magic that also happened to be right around the corner from an "ominous fen." Their "relics" were a few strands of green thread, unraveled away from one of those tunics Link loved so much—they had torn them away from his clothing during their last encounter, perhaps eight years previously. Kotake had definitely said that they should keep them, perhaps for some sort of voodoo charm later. She had been in the right path of thinking that time, Koume now had to agree.

"That weapon last wielded by the body." That had been a bit of a roadblock for Twinrova. They weren't entirely sure what he'd been fighting with before he'd been killed—they were really chancing it by making a guess, but he'd really only used one or two favorite weapons—plus a slew of spells, but those didn't really have permanent physical form. So essentially, it was an A, B, or C choice. They'd gone with his combination axe/spear, and hoped for the best.

"Blood." At least that one was simple enough to fulfil. Didn't specify where it had to come from, or how much—though a few gallons would probably be best. Just needed some to entire the errant soul, and some to fill its belly when it came back. The dead man's body would likely provide enough to sustain him when he awoke—for a little while. He would soon grow hungry again, until he had drunk enough to replenish what has merely boiled away when he'd been destroyed. That was one of the problems with this spell; it left the returned without blood, and made them slightly vampiric until enough blood flowed in their veins again. But, on the plus side, the returned gained the powers of those whose blood they consumed, and once they caught up with Link…!

"An audience of willing spectators." Done. After all, there were a number of monsters out there more than eager to witness their King's return—and many of them still willing to come, even though their lives were at stake in the fact that they might become the snacks. She guessed they were noble, in their way, like that.

And then the most difficult ingredient of all to obtain…

"An unwilling spectator, stolen from the past in either body or soul to partake of the horrors." And that, of course, was exactly why they needed the Ocarina. They needed to reach back in time with the tentacles of the thing's song and pull someone through who had to sit through the whole ordeal and get scared witless. In order to go on properly, the spell needed two very powerful forces to intermingle—the of sheer delight(from the willing audience) and sheer terror(from the unwilling one), meeting to weave together into the whole spectrum of human emotions. Those would help produce the charge of magic that would call the soul back to its reconstructing body—the sheer primal charge of being able to feel things, instead of a dull monotony in attitude.

On the ground, Koume exchanged the book for the Ocarina. Kotake had arranged the threads on one side of the pattern made of ashes, and laid the spearhead of his weapon on the other side. Now, to call in the final piece, as Kotake performed her arcane dervish and said the words to set the spell into motion…

Koume put the small blue sweet potato to her mouth, and played. It resisted her dirty lips and fingers, naturally—it squawked and screeched and made every discordant sound a little wind instrument could, but, if it had been humanoid, the witch's actions would be the equivalent of boxing its ears(not a funny thing if you're Hylean) so that, through all its harshness, somewhere deep down, it rang true. It didn't like being forced into the somber melody, which was a pretty if somewhat mournful thing when Link played it—but under these foul fingers and moldy gums, it had so many more sinister undertones. Koume's filthy mind focused on the meaning of those notes, and what she needed from the past she probed around it with the mental kin to a hot poker—

Something snapped somewhere in the fabric of space and time—from around a year back, a forlorn little waif of a soul came drifting in, her body at home shivering beneath her nightgown as her essence went somewhere else entirely. Being a soul, it was largely invisible unless you had mage-sight—and out of the corner of her toadlike eye, Koume just barely caught a flicker of the unsteady purple band. It meandered a little, slightly shell-shocked but not too upset.

She took the instrument out of her mouth, feeling nothing even remotely resembling terror emanate from the violet blob of mist. "Dang, don't think that one's scared enough," she harshly growled to Kotake.

"Lemmie try that, then," her sister replied, and the fiery hag passed the instrument over and took command of the dance and chant.

Kotake started a few notes of melody, but stopped short as a little baby trickle of fear, then maddening horror, took hold of the soul. It darted off in the direction of a thorny, bedraggled bush, but she grinned a sickening grin as she felt its gruesome state grow so deep that it had no choice but to remain fixated.

"I think it'll do just fine," she chuckled with a snaggletooth grin.

Koume resumed the instrument, quickly returning to her grim imitation of the Song of Time, rapidly putting the notes in to the air before the soul's own proper time could take hold of it. Its shock and terror permeated like a mist, intermingling above the site of the witch's grim rites with a similar fog of fiendish joy, emanating from the hooting and howling mess of monsters. They became almost visible to peripheral vision above the demon's circle above the cloak—yellow enmeshed amongst blood-red, like wrestling snakes trying to pin each other down. Occasionally an orange flare would strike up from the midst of the stew, singing the song that lightning practiced at choir; leaving the air behind it steaming with the heat of evil. Only twice had this spell ever been performed since its conception, and on that first try, the performer had been magically too weak, and devoured by what he'd tried to call. But Twinrova were stronger. A Wolfos among the crowd bayed to the moon and stars with exhilaration; the soul gave a silent shriek in the night.

The ashes were beginning to reform.

Twinkling now like ill-lit stars, pieces of them set themselves together in the shell of the pattern for a skeleton. Its arms, with big, thick biceps built for bearing the strain of almost a hundred pounds of muscle, were almost three-fourths the lengths of its body, which had a great, wide ribcage that had been filled with lungs fully the size of a grown man. And a great heart, too—for pumping around this creature's many gallons of blood—but for all it was filled with liquid, it was empty of a caring soul. The legs of this beast were not quite as long as its gorilla arms, but like its upper arms, its thighbones were thick as a normal person's (fully-fleshed) arm, and it had sprawling toes ending in deadly-looking black hooks. One of its shoulder blades might easily guard a fair-sized Goron from harm, and its head—almost puny for the mighty body it possessed—had the shape and nose of a pig's, but the jaws of a pug-faced hound. Similar in physique to a Moblin, but infinitely more sinister.

More and more pieces of ash, along with dozens of particles that seemed to be swept up from nowhere, filled the in the spaces left in the frame until a beastly Stalfos, going on some seventeen feet tall, teetered there on unsteady feet. The barely-there fogs fought even more viciously with each other to make a current, and the axe/spear head dissolved and floated up with them. It broke up into infinitesimal chunks that coated the eerie structure, giving it a devious silver sheen, though it was only visible up close. However, the click click click of metal on bone was audible for some distance.

The tiny green wefts of thread were the next to become embroiled in the stream, floating along up with more ash particles and the curious dust through the blank eye sockets in the thing's skull. Though from the outside, it was not visible, inside they wove together for it a brain—a brain more insidiously cunning than a Keaton's and more blood-obsessed than a starved vampire. And the relic of the slayer entwined in the circuit boards of the creature hard-wired it for one task from the start—to seek out and destroy its destroyer.

As devil's hands wrought the mind, its assistant pushed the parts together to form its body. As if they were balloons being inflated, its organs sprouted up from where they would have grown—the man-sized lungs, the red, throbbing heart, and the muscular baggage on its arms and legs. And the rest as well—its dark, slimy liver, its ugly, tangled maze of entrails, and its stomach—so much smaller than one might have expected. But the being had a slow metabolism, and didn't need one that was very large. Skinny, white nerves and crimson veins dashed over and under ever conceivable surface, blood and brain signals already starting to sluggishly pulse along them.

Next, like a crawling fungus, the skin appeared from the very soles of its feet and started to climb its way up with nauseating sounds of growth. But its eye sockets were still black and devoid of sight. But in life, this creature had been far from blind. Koume noticed this, and attempted not to wince as she played along with her sour rhythm—no eyes could potentially mean a big problem in execution, and if they'd messed up, even though their handiwork had come this far… it was all for naught.

It was a pale, thin skin. It accentuated bones and tendons; twisted springs from their re-birth. It gave a lumpy, almost unperceivable chin to the snarling maw, new pink gums punctually ending before too much of skyward fangs were sheathed. It left much of the demon's thorny crown exposed, as well. But it went and covered up those open eye sockets, with paper-thin lids laced with only the very faintest of eyelashes. They sunk deep in to the open holes.

As if being slurped up by a cosmic straw, the mists of the two clashing emotions instantly retreated. Koume stopped playing and stared on in bewilderment; Kotake quit her crazed ballet to stare gape-mouthed and still. Something was wrong. He was still incomplete; his eyes had never been finished. What was going on? Why was the spell coming to a halt? The witches held their breaths, awaiting their handiwork's imminent collapse.

Then, from the very edges of the wet cloak, two ashes—the very last two left on the ground—floated up into the sky, leaving behind them a screaming trail of brilliant white. Fearlessly the two miniscule comets dashed up the mountainous height of the restored demon, occasionally tickling up to his body to caress his brand-new skin. When they reached his face, they melted straight through his eyelids, instantly filling out and expanding to complete his wicked structure.

He opened his eyes.

They were ugly, red orbs; a cauldron of lava whose fueling fires had the wisdom of a thousand libraries—and wasn't afraid to use it for the most terrifying of purposes.

He opened his mouth, and he roared.

***********************

Strange forces seemed to be working on the two members of the Blade family that night as they paced down the cold clam of the Moblins' blister of a fortress.

Posie called a halt to their processions quite suddenly about what they assumed was halfway out—for they had really no idea of where in the façade they had been dragged, and were meandering simply down in the hopes that that was the correct route. Her eyes very suddenly took on a huge, dilated look, and from behind them she was undergoing something like double vision. At least, that was how she described it when Link asked her what the matter was. Still, that wasn't the proper name for it—but did it have a proper name? It was as if someone had lain two film negatives on top of each other, and she was staring at both, held up to the light. She seemed to be seeing glimpses of two places at once; the inside of the solid, tangible fort, and a panning video reproduction of a painful dream. The colors of both were distorted and milky.

Link could clearly recall the nightmare plain and disturbed skeleton from Posie's dream as she belted out its description—after all, it'd taken almost two hours to lure her back to sleep that night! But something about the dream had also, though he'd never admitted it, given him indistinct chills also, and he remembered much of that night with crystal-sharpened clarity. Perhaps that was why he could almost recite Chapter 23 of The Silver Sapphire by heart. A few choice snippets of it floated to the top of his head—mainly, the part where Sir Edrill and his sidekick Lorigo gave a small, reassuring pep talk to the Queen of Derxelholm's elite guard—and he wished he could remember the rest at the moment. Tearing, vague prickles rippled up and down the back of his neck, and it reminded him of stand in the place where lightning almost struck.

This time, there was no almost.

An invisible, immense load that burned with the heat of the Sun suddenly fell square on to Link and Posie's backs. The double scope of the real world and the forlorn dream vanished from Posie's vision, but she shut her eyes anyway, fearing that, if she opened them, inhuman terrors would be the sight that awaited them. Now that her sight had been toyed with, some force began playing with her other senses—a ricocheting howl bounced back and forth between her ears, and she felt the piercing needles of a sinister gaze on her back. Her nostrils and tongue smelt and tasted the perverse aura of beings whose tiniest touch was poison to the earth.

Link, on the other hand, felt as if he was convulsing amidst the claws of some vicious voodoo. Even though he knew his feet were safely rooted to the ground, he felt phantom claws and blades tearing at every available bit of his flesh, and invisible grips, punches, and kicks hurling him across the room. It was like being enmeshed in several battles at once, and he made motions behind him for sword, but he found that his motor skills had suddenly gone haywire on him—it was like trying to swipe at a quickly-bobbing fairy, while dizzy, with one eye closed so as to kill depth perception.

Stunned, Naomi backed up from the two wildly contorting figures, each fighting off their own personal nightmares. Meekly, she asked Elaine, "D-d-d'you know what's wrong with them?"

"It… it kinda looks like what happened back in the forest… only… it looks around a hundred times worse." Elaine felt absolutely pitiful compared to the dark energies she could feel convulsing through them, burying her face in the extra folds of Naomi's pant legs.

"Link never did get into detail about what made him go like that… did Posie elaborate any?"

Elaine shook her head.

"You think there's anything we can do for 'em?"

"I wish there was."

************************

The world fused into being around him. Half-imagined specters became real; nebulous mists came together and solidified. Indistinctly to his ears came a truly ferocious trembling he only barely was able to recognize as his own voice, crowing with some indecipherable emotion. Fear? Joy? Rage? Perhaps simply for the sake of a roar. It was harsher than he remember it. Or was he remembering correctly? Perhaps remembering at all? After his stay in the fuzzy, indistinct Sacred Realm, the physical world just seemed too everything. The sound of his voice too harsh; the dead grass beneath his feet too multifarious; the tongue in his jaw too wet. But he had been here before and tolerated it; surely he could do so again. The wind was cold against his bare and naked skin, but he knew he had felt greater discomfort before. So many murky and unfixed things still swum about in his mind. Perhaps his first collected thoughts, though they would not be happy ones, should be to seek how great that discomfort had gone so the rest he was feeling now would be tame in comparison.

Instantly his head was filled with snatches of fire and light, diving toward his flesh and sinking itself it, cutting his body to rags and filling his blackened soul with the greatest misery a demon could endure. Light, heat and pain… he tried to forge these first images into something more resolute in his head. The flames and sparks drew out and thinned, into a blade… not an extensively long blade, but one flat, sharp, and honed by hands more delicate than any mortal's. Death had been brought to him—not once, but again and again—in the form of an ethereal sword, with a hilt carved of a light, indigo metal no human knew the ore to. Did the sword have a bearer? Indeed it did, and, though he could not see the face, he knew the hand bore a golden mark etched in the shape of three triangles.

Oh, the hatred that bearer wrought in him! He would have liked to break those bearer's bones one by one between his monster's claws. To know the name of that bearer and seek him out; the joy it would instill in him…

Hunger. He felt a raw, primal hunger. He collapsed to his knees and found himself setting eyes on a pair of oddly familiar faces, with grossly exaggerated features that gave them the semblance of insects. He could not quite decode their words as of yet—his full grasp of language was only returning to him a few trickles a second—but he could feel enough that they were cooing over him with maternal compassion. His eyes softened a little when he saw them, and they certainly caught his reaction, becoming even more excited that he had remember their faces. As who, he was not sure yet. But he knew it would return; perhaps if he just had a little bite to eat…

There were a few funny sticks sitting a couple strides away from him, and all tied up with heavy rope to one was a pale, gangly figure, with a big gaping mouth and empty, pink-read eyes. Was that something good to eat? Even from this distance, the faint scents wafting from it seemed tantalizing. Very far back and very deep in the morass seething in his skull, the remnants of something he might have had once—it was called a "conscious," he thought, though he couldn't clearly remember—told him against devouring that body. Instead, it told him, dig a hole in the ground, and put the poor broken thing in there.

But, his logical side argued, where was the sense in that? It didn't serve any purpose down there. It was a dead thing, and the purpose of dead things… did they serve any purpose? But, he remembered, they did die in such funny ways. It prompted a mild, grim smile from the grisly patchwork of his mind and emotions. The motherly beings clapped their hands together delightedly as he waddled over to the corpse, having a surprisingly good recollection of how his legs operated. He carefully reached out a claw, waiting in an unsure fashion to make sure it was truly devoid of life. One second, two seconds, three that it did not move, and on he watched, listening for the faint rumbling of its heart or the rushing of its breath…

And it didn't come. Satisfied, he spread his arm forward to clasp the meager body, finding out it made a very unusual noise when it he squeezed it tightly like that. He let go slightly and crunched again, entranced by the mashing noises of crumbling bones.

Eventually, though, he stopped hearing those sounds, and noticed how rubbery and limp his potential meal had become. He could no longer feel the stiff supports inside of it, keeping it ridged. He rubbed one of the flaccid bits together between his fingers, feeling it rather grainy, though there seemed to be nothing less to crush. He had begun to massacre the legs of the body when one of the creatures, the one with trails of fire behind her, called out, "Eat your food, don't play with it—"—and he understood. Resentfully, that he could not enjoy the cracking sound any longer, he held the lump of flesh the wrong way up and sunk his fangs into one of its lower limbs, tearing it with a sharp ragged noise from its body—

*************************

"Oh, my! How hideous!"

Pirika Magarashthla had usually been one with a particularly strong stomach—she had been, after all, a doctor and surgeon among the Sheikah, and seen to more than one amputation. But she had always been meticulous in her removal of parts, most carefully nicking through flesh and sawing at bones so as to minimize pain, disease, and complications that may later result. To see a leg so unceremoniously and disgustingly ripped from its socket by that wicked pair of jaws… A delicate green hue sprung up in the sides of her moon-white cheeks. It was too much, even for one who had seen every gory aspect of the human body in all its glory, such as her.

"Pirika, if it disturbs you, you're more than welcome to leave," the elderly-looking man beside her calmly offered. His tall nose was pressed almost directly into glossy image, superimposed over a lustrous, ordinary-looking grayish-green tile. His neatly-trimmed little goatee blended in almost perfectly with his face, as pale a white as hers, though while hers was only as wrinkled as a freshly-washed tunic, his was as wrinkled as an unmade bed.

"N… N-No. I… I can't. We must keep monitoring him and his movements… Get an idea of what his plans may be… and, at the very least, find out what fate my husband's body must endure. No matter how gruesome it may be."

"I personally think you're getting a bit silly, Pirika. I know that if it was my husband getting masticated there, I probably couldn't stand it for even a minute… but, I suppose, it is a fairly noble thing if you're willing to sit through it," a tall woman with her silvery locks in a two-foot ponytail said.

"Thank you, Chevance," Pirika replied, fighting to keep her nausea down. "If he was noble enough to fight off those awful witches until they… well, killed him, the least I can do in return for his protection of our Shadow Haven…"

"Ah, and if only he had succeeded," the elderly man sighed, glancing about the small circle of tile observers and ending to fall on Pirika. "Then, I daresay, your daughter Impa's grim predictions might not have come true…"

"Well, we can only be thankful that she was prudent enough to notice the signs beforehand and warn us against them," the tall one said, wincing openly as the doddering pig-like figure in their hazy vision slurped up the dead man's entrails like spaghetti. "We can at least defend ourselves with the knowledge we weren't caught by surprise…"

"Certainly, and speaking of surprises," the elderly one wandered, taking a more cheerful detour. " "Pirika, before she went Mæditori, did your daughter tell you if you're going to have a granddaughter or grandson, and what she's planning on naming them?"

Happy for an excuse to draw her eyes away from the fearful sights above the tile, the Sheikah woman replied, "Yes, a granddaughter… and she's going to name her Keena, she said."

"Keena… that means 'innocence,' doesn't it? I did always like that name… 'twas the name of a late aunt of mine, I do believe. Of course, my father always said, his sister was one of the least innocent people he ever knew, but that's family for you." He made a small, intricate study of the demon in the window sucking the marrow from one of the Pirika's husband's arm bones, tilting his head almost with a professional interest. "And… have you received any sort of feeling or premonition as to what this girl will be like?"

"Only that in the future, she will be great friends with two young girls, each of them apparently coincidentally a half-and-half race mixture like herself… Oh, I'm certainly glad Arouth is dead, can you imagine how that one must've hurt?"

"Shame, shame," the taller Sheikah woman scolded her. "You know as well as I do… no coincidences, no coincidences!"

"Very well, I agree. No coincidences," Pirika sighed at being outdone.

****************************

Not a splinter of bone nor scrap of flesh was left when the voracious demon finished his feeding frenzy. In his stomach his gory meal churned, the muscles and proteins sufficing as his nutrition and the blood magically draining away. It began to course through his own veins with a slurping, sputtering noise only audible if all was silent and one happened to be listening for it. With this return to a modicum of efficiency for his cardiovascular system—his heart no longer convulsing dryly in his chest—so was ushered in a few dewy trails of his memory.

He saw a face. It became solid in his head—young and handsome, with a great untamed wilderness of straw-tone hair on his head, a prominent, flat nose, high cheekbones, a trapezoidal chin, and eyes of a most overwhelming blue that rang with both solemnity and hysterics. Had that been… his face once? Surely that beautiful visage had not been mangled into the hog-like guise he wore now? No… bells chimed deep within his recollection. Their somber tones fluidly connected that head to a body all swathed in green—and out of it swept that accursed hand, wielding tightly in it that wicked spear of angels. Angels and Goddesses! No, he knew that that face belong to one who was perhaps the holiest man in Ebridane, and long had he forsaken holiness. His slayer. His destroyer. His murderer. What had been the wretched beast's name?

Link…

Oh, how that the thought of the name shook him! It was a simple word to heart. A chain, a connection, a pathway, a course. Yet put it to that hair, those clothes, and those noisome eyes and it was a word to cleave the hearts of the impure like himself. And how long had his foul brothers and sisters run from it without his paternal protection? Variations of Link passed through him in flashes—a sweet, unjaded child of ten, a youth bursting out of his infantine ways at twelve, a powerful warrior-to-be at thirteen, a genuine threat at fourteen… and a few miscellaneous drops of him with hair of a deeper, earthier shade, but those crystal-sapphire eyes still as painful as ever. But clearest of all were those pictures of him from their last battle, when he had teetering downward from his twentieth birthday. Something was so different about Link that battle. He still had the knight's fighting spirit, but he had lacked the knight's throwaway attitude. He had something to stay alive for, that fight. Something greater than Hyrule. But what could dear old Link see as more important than protecting his precious kingdom from the grip of Ganon?

Ganon?

Ahh, what a dear old name. He'd forgotten how much he'd missed it. He grinned a little, savoring its mental flavor. It was bitter as the strongest medicine, yet deadly as cyanide. A name that meant oozing, dripping, rending, crushing slow death.

Link would have a high price to pay once Ganon found him—oh yes, did he! And his mothers the Twinrova would have to be rewarded with a great, evil treasure once he had regained his old strength. Through that crackling, staticky mental link with them he possessed, sprinting back to him with a fervor, he saw that he had been gone a great five years, but they had been planning not only his return, but a spectacular plan to initiate his comeback. It was horrid. It was vicious. It was… superb. He hardly could have put together something more dastardly himself.

He turned away from the stains on the ground that he had left, for his awkward dictated that he dribbled terribly as he ate. Bald, limp, crippled, dulled, and more full of revenge than he had ever felt in any of his splintered life, he bellowed, "Hear me, o minions, for your Evil King has returned!"

*************************

Feeling as if his feet had suddenly turned into slippery ball-bearings, Link slowly felt the hellish pain subside. The shadow beatings had left no marks upon his skin, but he still felt as if he'd been turned inside out—and at least one part of him had been. The contents of his stomach had not survived his invisible lashing, though Posie had fared better with whatever had been cutting across her. Sensing their consecutive returns to the mortal realm, Naomi and Elaine rushed over to support them emotionally and physically.

"Link! Goddesses! Are you O.K.?"

"Naomi…"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm right here, Linky-boy. Oh, Ladies of the Heavens, whatever that was, please don't do it again…"

Clutching his now-empty stomach, he replied, "You think I did that by choice?"

Posie, wrapped around Elaine's leg to stop herself from falling over, whimpered, "I wanna go home, Daddy. I'm sick and tired of this… I just wanna go home."

"Oh, my baby…" He waddled away from Naomi, tipping left and right, to scoop his daughter lovingly up in his arms. He stroked her soft pale hair with a few fingers, clutching her close to his heart. "I wanna go home too, kid, but… something happened to my Ocarina! We'd have to retrace all our steps to get home… but who knows how far these Moblins have taken us off our course? We're just gonna have to follow the map until we get to a village and hope someone there will be able to help us get home somehow."

"Pose…" Elaine looked upward at her weeping friend, her face spreading evenly across it her own pain and that of her companion. "C'mon, Pose. Stop crying. Please? You're… you're gonna make me cry!"

"S-s-sorry," Posie sputtered. "I just feel so awful right now. I can't go home, an'…" She sobbed a little. "…And that was the most terrible thing that's ever happened to me! I felt like I was torn in two pieces…"

"I think we all feel torn in two," Navi agreed. "Well… no point in moping about it, though. We've gotta keep moving, you know."

"I'll lift my head my head up high, and carry on, yes carry on…" Posie intoned enigmatically.

"Huh?" wondered Naomi aloud.

"I recognize that," Link sighed, a little life tiptoeing back into his eyes. "That's from that song you love. Some band… real ridiculous name… Later Meaning Yesterday; isn't that it?"

"Yeah…" Posie swallowed the last of her tears. "Daddy, could you please put me down?… …Thanks. C'mon, guys, let's all carry on too."