The Crossing of the Paths
By MMM/AJ
Part III: Of Darkness and Light

A/N: Like Part II, I plan on posting this one in chunks as well. This is Chunk FOUR. Only one chapter this time? Why not just start posting these chapter by chapter? Well since school's about to be out soon it's pointless since I'll be getting back on the proverbial writing ball once I'm free from all these projects and tests to study for. Anyway, I just posted this chapter by itself mainly because it's such a big one and I needed to post SOMETHING to make sure you guys know I'm alive and that my homework has not drawn and quartered me yet, although I'm getting suspicious. Enjoy this chapter folks, because it will probably be the end of May by the time I post something again. Accursed schoolwork. VV

Chapter VI

The stately towers of Hyrule castle stood majestically over the plains of the kingdom, overseeing the lives of its busy and prosperous inhabitants. A cool breeze caressed the lush grass on the fertile pastures and cows listlessly browsed the bounty. Merchants and traders industriously hurried about their business, and children laughed and ran in the warm sun of the Hylian land. Slowly but surely, an ominous cloud gathered in the sky. Darkness rained from the heavens and wrought fire and chaos among the innocents. The Castle itself stood strong in the rain of fire, and waves of invaders washed over its walls, but it could not last forever. In a fiery blast of horrific energy, the Castle was engulfed in flames and the faceless invaders glutted themselves on the bounty of the land. The fields burned, the houses crumbled, and an ominous orange wave of sands crept across the remains of the once proud world.

Mewtwo awoke silently in a jolt, covered in cold sweat. The inside of the blacksmith's cabin was deathly cold, the forge was still cold and the fireplace had burned down to embers and died. Jacob and the smithy were still sound asleep in their beds, and no light existed inside the entire cabin. It was still nighttime, and Mewtwo's nightmare had awoken him in the early morning hours. Despite the tragic nature of his dream, Mewtwo felt relieved. He hadn't had a single nightmare again since the fall of the Empire, and now that he was having them again, he was glad the eyes hadn't returned to torment him. In whatever time period this was, the Empire was still non-existent, and that was good enough to give Mewtwo some relief. But he was still troubled, if this new catastrophe was not the Empire's doing, than what was it that was causing it? He was still incredibly sleepy, and he chalked it off as random dreaming. After living almost six years in this world, he had become familiar with all the artistic portrayals of Hyrule, and after the visions the Medallions had bestowed on him so long ago, he could now easily recognize the sight of Hyrule. This made the dream explainable as his subconscious using the Image of Hyrule castle in his dreams, and the horrible invasion he saw was probably recurring memories of the Empire. He satisfied himself with this explanation and curled back up in his sleeping bag against the unforgiving cold and slept once more.

A different dream came to Mewtwo this time, he saw a panoramic view of Hyrule Castle, not unlike the one in his visions, and as his viewpoint moved, he heard voices. He heard a woman whispering, echoes of an unseen fear, stirring foresight that overshadowed a young dream. Sweeping across his mind, the words repeated and echoed, and yet made no sound, as they were telepathically spoken. And a sharp image suddenly appeared before him, superimposed over the Castle and surrounding landscape. It was the face of a blonde woman, looking in her mid twenties. She had blonde flowing hair and pointed ears, each from which dangled golden Triforce earrings. A golden leaved crown rested on her forehead which contained a great red ruby. A look of slight fear and fascination played upon her face before her image suddenly jerked and fluttered away like vapor in a violent wind. The image of the castle faded away, and as the dream ended, the woman's voice whispered, "Who are you?"

"Good morning sleepyhead!" Jacob's voice rang out in the dense fog of Mewtwo's sleep.

Mewtwo sat up and rubbed his eyes. The cabin was now flooded with golden morning light, and Jacob and the smith were up and aglow with activity. The salty smell of bacon and eggs hung in the air, which was now warm and comforting again. There was the sound of chirping birds outside the windows, and the sizzle of a griddle accompanied them in an almost musical fashion. It was a cheery scene in complete contrast with what Mewtwo felt like he had just fallen asleep from ten minutes ago. He didn't have time to wonder about it, breakfast was ready and Jacob and the smith weren't about to wait for Mewtwo to get up. He crawled out of his sleeping bag and walked over to the counter where the fresh meal was sitting, emitting appealing aromas.

"So, how did you sleep?" Jacob asked.

Mewtwo slowly swallowed a bite of sausage and replied, "No better or worse than usual. You?"

"Yes, same here. Now I wonder though, how can you pay me for your stay here though?" Jacob asked.

Mewtwo stopped chewing his sausage, wondering how to react to this situation. He had no money on him, and he was pretty sure that these people probably didn't have Yen as their currency either. All he had in his possession was the flute and the potions, neither of which he was willing to give up. He swallowed and sighed heavily, knowing that it was coming down to it, so he needed to give up one of the potions. He set his fork down and leaned over his knapsack. Jacob eyed him suspiciously as he set the red filled bottle on the table.

"Will this do?" Mewtwo asked.

"Normally I don't accept stolen goods…" Jacob said, and Mewtwo swallowed hard. "But we're all friends here, so it'll do."

Later, after breakfast, Mewtwo picked up his meager things and prepared to leave the cabin. Outside the blizzard had vanished and the bright sun was melting the snow. As he opened the door to leave, a thought crossed his mind and he turned to face Jacob.

"Hey Jacob, can you tell me how to get to Hyrule from here?"

Jacob looked confused as he spoke; "Hyrule? Never heard of it."

Mewtwo shrugged, trying to look casual, and bid them farewell and closed the door behind him. His mind raced for a moment as he tried to decide where to go, and the strange Northward pull finally made itself fully known to him. He inexplicably began walking North without noticing, suddenly alarmed at the familiarity of this sensation. He hadn't felt this kind of thing in his mind since Darkest had lured him to the tower with it. He almost turned South out of fear, but decided that it was best not to back down after having already gotten so far up into the mountains.

Mewtwo passed hours climbing trails up the side of Snowhead, and the sun began to lose its warmth and the snow's rate of melting slowed down the higher he climbed. It became colder and colder, and he began to shiver as the ground underneath the snow became steeper and rockier. As he neared the peak, he was about ready to turn back, but the top was so tauntingly close that his ego would not let him back down. He sucked in more gumption and continued until he reached a vertical ledge. With great strain and joint pain in his arms he pulled himself up over the ledge and looked in shock at what laid beyond.

As far as the eye could see, the entire landscape further North of Snowhead was a complete void. As he stood there at the edge of the world, Mewtwo's mind raced in fear and confusion. A slow rumble came up from the void below, sparks of green and white energy crackled through the emptiness. Glowing patches filled the air, as if the very dimensional fabric of this world were deteriorating. As he looked farther off into the distance, the holes in reality became too dense and thick to see through, it was like a forest of chaotic multicolored splashes of chaotic energy. He stared intently at this spectacle for minutes on end, trying to understand how it was possible, when a booming crack filled the air and jolted him out of his trance. Not too far away, a bolt of fluorescent orange energy jumped from one of these dimensional tears into another, discharging a large quantity of electrical and plasmatic energy and connecting the two basketball sized rifts together. Another one of these violent discharges occurred a couple miles away, letting only an ominous rumble make it to Mewtwo's ears.

Finally an idea hit Mewtwo that he guess was the explanation. By this point his existence here was creating numerous time paradoxes, including the one where he inadvertently created the grave that lead him to come to this time period in the first place. These paradoxes were extremely unhealthy for the time-space continuum, and these ruptures in the fabric of space were probably the result of his meddling. In a frightened panic, he stumbled backward and began lowering himself back down the mountain. His mind raced about possible solutions and ways to fix the damage he had done to this world, but he was too confused to think straight. The one thought that confounded him the most was that any other dimension would have completely collapsed in a violent time-space singularity from these paradoxes, and yet this world was only slowly decaying. As he climbed down his mind came closer and closer to complete panic, he almost tripped over a rock and went plummeting over a ledge in his haste. He could still practically hear the violent shocks of the dimensional rips growing and expanding.

By the time he made it back down to Jacob's smith, Mewtwo was exhausted beyod any rational thought, and he disliked the prospect of facing the rather unfriendly Jacob again. He passed the cabin by as he continued to walk South, only caring to be as far away from the dimensional rifts as possible. It was almost nightfall when he finally arrived at the edge of Termina field, and the lights from Clock Town were sparkling just as radiantly as the first time he had seen them. He found a secluded spot behind a large boulder and began trying to recall the song he had played on the Blue flute that had brought him here.

And to his horrid dismay, Mewtwo could not remember a single note of the song. The instrument felt alien in his hands, it was built for humans hands with five fingers, not his odd shaped paws. After trying and failing numerous times in disgust, he showed it back into his knapsack and sat to let his mind roil and stagnate with fear. He pondered the upcoming events, trying to guess how long it would take for the paradoxes to consume this world. He had no way of knowing, by this time tomorrow night he could be only a few molecules hovering in an unstable void. He wondered how many people lived on this planet, and how many had already been killed by his action of simply being here.

Mewtwo looked down at his hands and saw them drenched in blood. It was the blood of the scientists he killed, the blood of the young trainer that had drove him to madness, and the blood of the innocent slaves in the Imperial mine. He closed his eyes in horror, willing this vision to go away, but his imagination only showed him more blood that would spill on his behalf if he stayed much longer in this time. He felt sadness and undirected anger at his present situation, and slowly resisted the urge to go into a rage and to weep at the same time. And then, as he held his eyes closed as tightly as he could, he saw Kalana strapped down to the torture table, the black knife protruding from her stomach and tears of blood streaming down her face. He stifled a roar of pain and opened his eyes to let reality replace the horrible image, but as he slowly tried to remove the image from his mind, he saw upon his hands the blood of Kalana and the ghostly after-image of the knife that had killed her in his hands. This was all he could take. His powers came out of his control and burst forth, causing the boulder he was hiding behind to burst into purple flames. The lush grass around him suddenly wilted and the disintegrated into fine ashes. And he didn't notice that the Triforce Piece was not paining him, his mind was roiling in agony as he slowly broke down into pained yells.

And as the rage and sorrow slowly began to ebb in his mind, Mewtwo saw an image form in the back of his head. It was like a panoramic streaming video playing out privately for him. It zoomed around Termina Field and entered one of the gates of clock Town. It moved through the streets to the base of the clock tower to a set of double doors, paused, then entered. Up winding stairs and past giant rotating gears the image proceeded, until it came to stop in from of a glowing doorway. The door opened, revealing a bathing blue light that lead up into an invisible beyond. The image panned upwards to show the light, then slowly faded away into nothingness.

Mewtwo slowly regained his composure and tried to make sense of what he had seen. It was almost like directions, like someone had wanted him to go into Clock Town directly. And immediately he distrusted it. His mind flashed warnings of the remote influences that Darkest had used to lure him into the heart of the Empire, and he was on the verge of tossing this vision aside. Yet something was different this time. Every time Darkest influenced him, it left him with an ill feeling in his mind, a foreboding one might feel on the verge of some great catastrophe. Yet now the only thing he felt was an emotionless direction, almost as if fate were prodding him with a dull stick towards a pot of gold. He was mulling this over when a group of soldiers stepped around the boulder, investigating the blue flames the stone had emitted earlier.

This time Mewtwo had his wits with them, and the second he saw the guards frown with recognition he burst forth in Hylian speech.

"Do not harm me! I am not a demon! I am just a wanderer!" He said as clear as he could in these tense circumstances.

The guards were taken aback, they had never seen a demon that could talk, nor regular folk or creatures who looked such like a demon. The whispered among themselves for a moment, keeping their spears level with Mewtwo before their leader spoke.

"Who are you, wanderer, and what is your business frightening children and stealing from innocent potionmakers?"

Mewtwo fumbled with his Hylian words and replied, "I….thought that they were evil withces….and the child…..it's all a big misunderstanding!"

The guard leader looked unconvinced, but the other soldiers lowered their weapons to a degree. The leader spoke forth again, "Well, we were sent on a monster hunt, and here we find you to be a thinking sentient being. According to the Mayor of Clock Town's laws, you are instead of being caged and slaughtered to be brought in front of him, the child and his parents, and the potion makers. Come with us."

The soldiers then escorted Mewtwo back towards clock town, and as they passed through the towering gates, sparse onlookers collected and gasped in shock. They pointed, shouted, whispered, and some jeered and threw rocks at them as they passed by. By the time the guards had taken Mewtwo halfway through the city, they were followed by a procession of a couple hundred strong. Mewtwo had seen the familiar gates in the base of the clock tower, and for a moment entertained the thought of making a dash for it, but he knew he couldn't outrun the guards with his legs. They took him up to a squat, grey building that looked rather conspicuous amongst the other brightly colored and festively decorated buildings. They put him in a cell, locked it, and began to leave. The leader stayed behind and faced Mewtwo through the bars.

"Your trial will be held tomorrow at noon. You will stay here under supervision until then. If you're hungry, we have a few trays of cold gravy and mouse for you if you want it."

Mewtwo declined as politely as he could and sat back on the cot in the cell and watched as all the soldiers filed out except one, who sat himself on a stool facing away from the cell. The first priority that came to his mind was, 'How am I going to get out of here?' An hour later, his answer soon came.

The guard sitting in the stool slowly began to emit deep and nasal snores that reverberated among the iron bars of the prison cells. If there was ever a chance of escape, this was it. Fortunately for him, the guards had avoided touching him and therefore he still carried his knapsack full of potions. He quietly slipped the green potion out, pulled out the cork, and swallowed a spicy mouthful. With only a limited time and extra amount of energy, Mewtwo concentrated on the lock on his cell and turned the mechanism over. With his power. The Triforce Piece on his left hand throbbed lightly.

Mewtwo managed to creep out of the jail without waking the guard, and he found the streets completely empty in sharp contrast of only around an hour ago. Stealthily he crept around corners, through the shadows until he reached the base of the clock tower. As he approached it, his foot stepped on what felt like a pile of leaves, and suddenly these leaves jumped upward, knocking him off of his balance. What appeared to be a half man, half plant rose out of this leafy spot in the cobblestones and looked him straight in the eye. It was only around two and a half feet tall, but its eyes glowed imposingly behind a featureless wooden face and a protruding snout. It suddenly burst forth in a great yell, calling out wordlessly as if it were being stabbed or raped. Mewtwo hastily collectively struggled up and ducked through the double doors and into the interior of the clock tower.

The rush of water through pipes and channels met his ear as Mewtwo ducked under gears and other unrecognizable constructions. He swiftly followed the stair path as he remembered from his vision, knowing it was now go or get busted by the angry Terminan people. He heard no sounds of pursuers as he climbed level after level of stairs until he finally reached the door he had seen in the vision. It still glowed from under its cracks, but not nearly as intense as he had seen in his head. He reached out and grasped the iron handle, and took a deep breath before opening it.

Before him in the doorway was yet another endless seeming void, yet it was not filled with violent ruptures or discharges of energy. It was uniformly black and empty in all directions, completely beyond compare. Mewtwo balked before the doorway, hesitating to step into the free-fall and possibly into oblivion, but the sound of clanging iron boots ascending the iron stairs behind him convinced him to do or die. He drew another long deep breath, crossed two of his three fingers on one paw, and dove into the emptiness, pulling the door shut behind him.

A/N: Y'know, this chapter alone was six pages, so I guess it's not too bad that I posted it alone. Again, thanks for all your support guys, It's good to know I'm making so many people happy!