April: *shoves a sock in her mouth*
SailorZelda: Mpp!!! Awheddfm mmmeepsh pmchsa!! (Translated: HEY!!! Anyways, enjoy the chapter!!)
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One of the main things about this darkness was that it was cold. Cold in an unnatural and deadly sort of way. The most scary thing, however, was the fact that the darkness seemed to be alive, almost like it was creeping up on the two unsuspecting women to claim their souls for its own dark purposes...
'Oh, stop it, April,' she thought to herself. 'It's just dark in here....In this...old....creepy....Temple full of death and tortured spirits!!' She cut off her thoughts again.
"Um, so...Impa..." she said, with no other option to keep her mind from wondering to where she didn't want it to go. "This Temple was built by the Sheikah, huh? What was it used for? Looks kind of dark, and dreary and scary to me..."
"The ancient people who built it didn't want intruders to be constantly barging back and forth through the two dimensions, and they didn't exactly build the Temple itself to be any kind of picnic, either. It was used to house the dead and seal tormented souls and demons away from either of the two." Impa replied.
'Which explains the blood...' April thought, her mind wandering to darker places again.
"But, we're really not in any danger from those things...are we?" April asked tentatively.
"There's always some kind of danger here."
April put her hand over her mouth and whimpered.
The Temple of Shadows was certainly not one of April's favorite places in Hyrule so far. After wandering through many corridors, doors, and chambers, (only once stopping to have to fight one of the "demented Stalfos" April was scared of, which Impa disposed of with skill, April looking on impressed) the two finally came across a set of double doors made of what once could have been fine polished wood and some kind of metal, but now looked so old and rusted that it didn't even represent wood in April's mind. Her mind, though, had had a morbid sense of thought throughout the entire Temple, so she couldn't really count on it for any kind of rational thought. When they approached the doors, however, April noticed that they were locked.
"Oh, perfect..." April muttered. "Just peachy..."
"Not to worry, Princess," Impa said, walked past her up to the doors. She took something from around her neck, a necklace that had been tucked under the armor she wore. There was a strange looking key on the end of it, which Impa used to unlock the doors. She pushed one of them open, gesturing for April to go in first.
Once April was in, she glanced around at her surroundings. It was a plain room, made of stone, and lit with only a few dull torches. There were a few columns at the corners of the room, but nothing else that she could notice out of the ordinary. There didn't seem to be any other way to get out of the room, either. Then, April looked directly in front of her.
What she saw was a mirror. It was like any other old-fashioned mirror April had seen before; it had a gold rim, and carvings of some kind of ancient writing on it. It stood on its own, away from the wall, and had two legs which somewhat resembled dragons' claws.
She looked at her reflection, and it stared nonchalantly back at her. She saw her princess attire, which didn't faze her until she realized that she was wearing a plain dress she had borrowed from Malon. She gave the mirror a confused glance, which it reflected. She walked closer to it, seeing that everything else about her was reflected in perfect detail. Everything else...
She stopped mid thought. One other thing was not perfect. Her normally blue-violet eyes were a dark red; so dark, though, that they could have passed for brown. That's why she had to blink and look a second time to make sure that she had seen it right.
"Impa..." she turned around in alarm. "What's up with my reflection?"
Impa laughed slightly at the Princess's choice of words. "What's 'up' with it is that it's seeing you as a member of the Royal Family, the only Hylians that can pass to Hyrule's Mirror."
"But...what about...?" April stopped asking and pointed at her eyes.
"Oh, that. They say that eyes are the window to the soul...and in this case, it's almost like you're seeing the eyes of your reflection, your other in the Shadow Dimension."
"So, my...other....has eyes like this?" April again glanced at the mirror. "Kind of creepy..."
"I don't think so....Especially when that's almost exactly the same color mine are," Impa said, widening her eyes a bit.
April grinned sheepishly, feeling kind of stupid. "Sorry...."
"Hm...." Impa muttered, walking ahead of the Princess.
"So, um....Do we go through the mirror to go to that other dimension or something?"
"Exactly. Oh, and no need to worry about the eye comment. Most races don't have people with eyes of that color, and most people have never seen them...You're probably too busy daydreaming to notice the color of people's eyes very often."
April felt really small, since she knew half of it was true. She didn't think Impa was trying to make her feel bad, but people often did that without realizing it.
"So," April said. "Are we going to go in?"
"I have to go first," Impa said, stepping right in front of the mirror. She put her hand up to it, muttered something, and the mirror started to glow a faint blue. April gasped. Impa turned her head back to the Princess. "It will be safe to go as soon as I have passed through."
With that, Impa went through the mirror, and was gone. It was surely the most bizarre thing April had ever seen. She almost didn't know what to do for several seconds, but soon found herself putting a hand up the to glass. She watched it with curiosity as it sunk through to the other side... Wherever that happened to be.
When she felt her head slide through, she found her whole body seemed to be emerged in something that she somehow associated with liquid crystal. Although it didn't feel like she was getting wet, she felt as if she were in something that didn't feel right to be air. All at one, as if the liquid decided that it no longer wanted her there, she felt herself being tossed out onto something cold and hard. She landed on her knees, and glancing at the floor, she saw it was wood.
She seemed to be inside some kind of building, a fairly large one, at that. It was dimly lit by what seemed to be candles, and there were odd sorts of decorations on the walls. On of the prominent designs she noticed was an eye with three triangles coming out of the top, and what looked like a teardrop on the bottom of it. She recognized it as the Eye of Truth, the equivalent of the Sheikah coat of arms. There was a bunch of stuff around the room, and April couldn't describe it any other way except to say that it was a bunch of stuff.
That was when she looked slightly to her right. In that direction, she noticed a few people older than herself, some she recognized, a few she didn't, and a door.
Still on her hands and knees, she blurted out, "Monoka!"
The old woman smiled at her. "The one and only," she replied.
"Is the Princess always so graceful?" said an older woman to the left of Impa.
"Always!" April said, smiling. The other people in the room laughed slightly, while April got up to her feet and went over to Impa.
"Fellow Sheikah," Impa said, putting one of her hands on April's shoulder. "I'd like you to meet Zelda, Princess of Hyrule.
"Hi!" April said. "I don't exactly know what's going on here, but nice to meet you!"
Monoka laughed, and moved towards her slightly. "This is the Council of Elders, of the Sheikah."
"Which doesn't necessarily mean that we're old!" said a good-natured looking middle aged woman.
Getting right to the point, Monoka said, "Before you landed in our entrance way, we were discussing the current situation, deciding what would be best for the safety of you as well as Hyrule."
"That's pretty much all anyone can think of now, huh?" April said, still slightly bitter about Malon.
"When we've got the future of Hyrule at stake," Impa said. "It doesn't hurt to be careful."
Monoka further enlightened the girl. "What we've decided is that we're going to do is to keep you here until we know it's safe to do otherwise. As you know, we are a people of prophecy. We've agreed to have you meet with our seer, and see if we can't figure out further what the current situation involves."
April was confused at this. "But, I thought you could see that kind of stuff, too....?"
"Both your ability and mine are outdone when it comes to someone born specifically to the art. Every generation or so, one will be born that will have the Gift to the greatest extent, who will be able to see and piece together visions of the past, present, and future."
"Oh, I get it...." April said.
"So, I think we'll be going now?" Impa asked, although it sounded more like a statement that a question.
She lead April out of the room, through the door to the outside of the building. It was still dark outside, which made sense because this whole ordeal, beginning with the escape from Lon Lon, had only started around dinner time.
In fact, it was only at that time April realized how tired she really was. What time must it have been by then? Midnight, give or take?
"Hey, Impa..." she said, yawning. "Where are we going?"
"To my house," Impa replied.
"Oh," April responded, only halfway paying attention. She was trying to look at her surroundings, but couldn't quite make them out because of the darkness. "You have a house here?"
"Yes. I haven't been here in quite some time, but I did live here."
"Were you born here?"
"No, I was born in Kakariko. But, being a Sheikah, it was practical to live here for at least some time. However, that was before I came to work for your father as your guardian, which was when you were about three. So, it's been about seven years since I've been here..."
"Hmm..." April hear that, and her mind immediately started to drift. 'Seven years...' Something she really didn't need to be further reminded of, especially at this moment.
She looked around further, trying to avoid any sensitive subject. She noticed that the surroundings looked sort of like a small village, and she could very faintly make out forest far away. Further down, in front of them, she could see what looked like a windmill. She guessed that that was where the "reflection" of Kakariko started. This whole dimension idea kind of hurt her brain, especially when it had been deprived of sleep for so long.
With that, she thought of another question. "So, do you have a reflection? You know, like I do?"
Impa seemed to think for a moment. "No. Being a Sheikah, and being born in Hyrule, there was no reflection of me in this dimension. Nobody has every really figured out exactly how it works."
April pushed her hair back behind her ears. "Will I get to see my reflection, here?"
Impa smiled. "Of course. You're bound to...It's inescapable."
April was lost in her own thoughts again. She really wanted to meet this person, this "other" of herself. She wondered what they would be like, and what they would look like. She wondered if they would be like her at all, or a total opposite. She wondered if she could make friends with them, seeing as how hard it was for her to make and keep friends here.
After some time, the two of them approached a house. It wasn't small, but it wasn't huge, either. It seemed to have two stories, and April saw that they were nearing the front door. It must've been Impa's house. And, if so, she knew that it hadn't been used in at least the time Impa had been gone.
Or so she thought. Instead of taking out some key and opening the door, she knocked on it loudly and sharply.
"What are you...?" April started to ask, but soon stopped. She head what sounded like something dropping onto the floor, followed by what sounded like muttering. When whoever was in the house came closer to the door, she heard what she understood through her Triforce piece to be a string of Sheikah curses. That person came closer, the muttering continued, and threw open the door....
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It was totally dark. She didn't know which way she had come from, or even which way she thought she was going. All she knew what that this dark would eat her alive if she were to let it.
Suddenly, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a bright light. It was a golden light, something she knew to only associate with something of great power, or the goddesses. She turned towards it, and it turned out to be a single golden triangle.
Suddenly, the calm of the dark ended, and from all sides she and the triangle was pummeled with tendrils of the darkness. She tried to get to the triangle, knowing that if she didn't something terrible would happen to it, or to her. Or to both of them.
She reached out for it, but it only seemed to stay in the same place, if not move farther away. It was at this point that she started to panic. She didn't know what she was supposed to do if she couldn't save this triangle. The only thing she could think to do was to call it by its name...
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A sharp noise snapped her quickly from her vision. Even in her dreams, the calling of a Seer plagued her. She could never escape them for long, which was sometimes a good and bad thing.
Vaiya had forgotten the force that had woken her from her dream, so when she heard the knocking again, she panicked and fell out of her bed, taking the blankets with her.
She hit her head on the floor, and glared at the ceiling. Why did people have to come to her so early in the morning? Or so late at night? Which ever way one looked at it....
Muttering to herself, she stuffed the blankets back on her bed, and headed for the door that was down the hall and through the big room at the front of the house. She knocked a chair to the side in getting to it, and throwing out an additional string of profanities, wrenched open the door.
What she saw there surprised her completely. A girl that seemed to be a few years younger than here stood there. She was blonde, with eyes of a blue violet. She could tell immediately that she wasn't a Sheikah. She didn't know what to make of her at first, but then she saw the other person at the door.
"Impa...?"
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**Hmm. What do you guys think? *giggles* I wonder if you people are wondering who this chick is. Well, you get to find all of that out in the next chapter! I have a few new plot twists in mind, and something complete (maybe) unexpected planned. I really hope you guys are still enjoying this story. I'm just having so much fun writing on it! You wouldn't believe it....And, I can't wait to see your reactions!!
Please review!
SailorZelda~