The Abyss
...if you gaze for long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
- Freidrich Neitzsche
Bubonic Apple and Strategos
CHAPTER ONE"How did you escape?"
Consciousness ebbed around him in black waves. His vision sharpened, dimmed; awareness of pain slithered through him. He blinked.
"He's not awake."
"He is too, look, he blinked. He moved."
Brief confusion, accompanied with a sting of fear – he remembered water, mist, a tree. Pain. Fighting.
Impatience began to bleed into the sharp voice whispering by his ear. "How did you escape?"
He knew that voice. With it came a fresh wave of loathing. As always, it brought with it an invisible and insidious venom that made his throat close, his mind turn to sludge. He knew where he was. The confusion drifted off into bitter, acrid dissapointment.
He turned his head towards her, beheld the eerie, unnatural green of her eyes for a long moment. They were wide with a kind of voracious thrill, glittering with a wicked excitement. She smiled when he looked at her, a smile that turned her face into something misleadingly sweet and kind, the face of a lie. His stomach churned.
A soft chime came from his left, swallowed by the blackness surrounding. A dim purple light flew behind her, and she never took her eyes from his face. The faerie danced in impatience, wanting so badly to be heeded. It was ignored.
"Tell me," she whispered. Her eyes became slightly wider, and she shifted closer, placing one hand on his cheek. His flesh became instantly cold, it stung – and she knew. She didn't care. "Tell me how."
"Maybe he doesn't even know." Deceit crouched on the other side of him, hardly interested in whether or not he was hurt; more interested in rising Greed's hackles.
She took the bait. Her eyes narrowed at him, and she gave a low hiss that came from her throat. "He's not stupid, thank you very much, and because he knows, he'll damn well tell me." The hand on his cheek began to burn.
"The Water Temple," he said quickly, and the hand was withdrawn – a reward for his good behaviour. She smiled primly, sitting up, and now Deceit was interested. Even the faerie went still.
"How did you get there?" Greed asked, and despite the calm formality of her face, a sharp eagerness lay in her voice.
"A tree." He frowned slightly, unsure if this was even true, if he was even awake – it could be a dream, it could all be. "There was a tree. A dead one. I found it, and I touched it, and then...there was water."
"How did you get back here?" Deceit mused, speaking almost to himself. Greed clenched her fists, her smile gone, angry at the vagueness of his statement. If he didn't hurry, he would be rewarded next with more pain.
"I was beaten, I got in a fight." It all came back in a rush, a rush of despicable clarity. "Link, it was Link! He sent me back!"
Deceit laughed harshly, and he stood up, brushing the dirt off his knees. "Beaten by yourself, so to speak?"
"I hate you." He closed his eyes, rolling onto his side, giving his back to Deceit. "Why don't you go up, see if you fare so well against Ganondorf."
"Having fun up there, Princess?"
Zelda cringed inwardly at the jeering voice, her reaction shifting from the panic of being 'caught' in the throes of a most devious escape to the anger of being insulted. Even if it was a petty one, she didn't like anything that came out of that man's mouth, insult or no. Instead of giving him the pleasure of an argument, she bit her lip in anger and tossed her head like a spirited mare, making as if she hadn't heard him.
"I know you can hear me, little girl."
The gerudo stepped forward, running his fingertips along the pink expanse of crystal that caged Hyrule's only surviving noble. Ganondorf had been watching her for some time now, watching her feel the walls of her prison for some kind of defect, so pretty in her desperation. They both knew that she couldn't escape her jail, but he also knew that she would try to get away from it anyway, so spirited was she, and that he would find her doomed attempts almost erotic in their form and number.
Zelda beheld him with trained arrogancy. "I think you're enjoying this a little too much." She paused only breifly, not giving him much of a chance to reply. "Are you going to kill me?"
"It depends on your hero," he shrugged, looking at her with a feigned, introspective look. He leaned against the side of the crystal, deceitful in its frail impression, looking away from her but still speaking. "If he gets here in time and wins our little squabble I'm sure you'll live..." Ganondorf glanced over his shoulder at her. "I know how you princesses like your fairy tales."
Greed moved with determination befitting her mission, barely turning her head when Ambition called out to her in her sly, hushed voice.
"Where are you rushing to?" It came like a serpent's hiss from beneath a rock, leaking from the darkness and twisting around Greed like a cunning shadow. She paused, though it pained her to do so, and glanced back at Ambition. She rested near the small pool of murky water she was always lurking around, her slanted pupils a penetrating black in her amber eyes. She smiled, no more comforting on her face than it was on Greed's. "Where to, Princess?"
Greed hated her – she hated knowing every bit of information Ambition absorbed became manipulated and twisted for her own gain. But why keep it to herself? If Greed didn't share, Ambition would make her way to Anxiety and find out from him (after he stopped moping over being beaten by Link. Deceit wouldn't leave well enough alone.). "There's a way out of here," Greed said slyly.
Ambition's sharp, gerudo features became tight, and she moved towards Greed with nary a sound: the dust barely stirred with each step. "How." It wasn't a question, oh no, not from her. It was a demand. The knowledge was rightfully hers.
Need came flying up then, straining hard to keep up with Greed's stride. She stopped when she saw the two women staring each other down, and sensing the urgency about Ambition abruptly began to circle her head, speaking in a rushed and gossipy little voice. Ambition's eyes flickered immediately to her, and Greed took the opportunity to vanish back into the curls of darkness that dominated their realm.
"Did you hear?" Need began, without pausing to find out if Ambition had heard or not. "Anxiety got out, he got out into Above and he was in the Water Temple, see, and he met Link there and oh, can you imagine, getting beaten up by your own counterpart? It must have been a horrible thing, and now Anxiety's just sulking all over the place-"
"How?" Ambition demanded fiercely, seizing the fairy out of the air. Need gave a brief cry of surprise and pain before she told all, her words tumbling out of her.
Greed rushed on, running now, her deep desire to escape overruling the burning of her lungs as she ran without pause, as the noxious wind lashed past her. She ran, blindly, the darkness parting just before her eyes, she could feel it thick and cold against her skin. She ran and didn't stop, began to fear she couldn't, when all at once her foot struck an obstacle and down she tumbled into the hard, dead ground. She screamed as she fell, startled and angry and no she couldn't stop she couldn't!
She looked to see the offending rock, root, whatever, and all at once her anger flickered out. There in the dirt, so perfect and surreal she doubted its reality, lay a small harp. Gold and silver and so clean it nearly glowed. Greed slowly pushed herself into a sitting position, staring mesmerized at the harp.
It was so beautiful...she reached for it, touched its smoothness, and then all there was was light.
Both warlord and princess felt it, and both fell silent. Zelda felt it as a cold, invading fear; Ganondorf felt only something wrong. Something that wasn't right.
He turned away from her, confused, and Zelda pressed against the side of her crystal, sinking down to a crouch, holding her knees to her chest. She looked around her, but the world outside (because it was, indeed, all outside her now) was distorted by the walls of her prison.
Ganondorf saw her first.
She stood at the far end of the large chamber, looking as confused as he, staring around her and shielding her eyes from even the dim light. In her hand, she clutched a harp – an old, tarnished thing, and she held it as if it were her lifeline.
She reeled, stumbling as if in a dance, ignoring him. She instead beheld the room, the floor, and even the caged Princess – that sight made her laugh, a wicked and grating laugh of hot glass.
Ganondorf had no idea what to think. He watched this lunatic stagger around, barely sparing a thought as to how she got there. What confused and even worried him was that she looked so damn much like Zelda. She could have been Zelda, were it not for the rags she wore, and that he knew Zelda was in that crystal behind him. Regardless, he checked over his shoulder, and Zelda stared back at him with sky blue eyes from her frightened, child's face.
"It worked!" the lunatic screamed, her voice a harpie's cry. "I'm Above, I'm Above!" She suddenly turned her green hawk's gaze to Ganondorf, and her laughter stopped. She threw down her harp and began to stumble towards him, and he was caught off guard by how damn fast she was. She reached for him with both hands, her fingers hooked like claws, and her mouth fell open and oh God all she had was teeth, wicked sharp teeth and a poison vapour fell from her mouth. "The Triforce!" she shrieked, and Ganondorf found himself stepping away from her. "The Triforce, I want it!"
Zelda closed her eyes and screamed.
to be continued