A. N. After a two-year hiatus, I'm back (or at least I do hope so) to Please leave your comments on the story as I'm ever trying to improve my style.
A knock came through the doors, and the whole throne room echoed with its sound. The fires that lit the chamber flickered and cast many strange and dancing shadows across the floor. The Prince raised his head and fixed his gaze at the entrance and the Queen stood up from her throne suddenly. The court all did alike her and left their seats, some hands straying to the sword-hilts at their girths. As a cloud that is swept away with the northern wind, silence departed from the air about them and into their thought. The feeling of dread that had been looming above them as a choking mist was raised for a while from their hearts as the wish of the long-awaited news crept back into their mind. Silently, at the Prince's command, two guards stepped forth and stood before the doors, facing them.
A second knock followed by a third came through, and the Prince nodded to the guards and bade them open the chamber entrance. Slowly, the guards unlocked it and remained standing before it. The door swung forth and they pointed their swords at the new-comer; but the stranger rose her hand and cast away the hood over her face. At once the swords were sheathed and the heavy air vanished, if only to give room to yet another cloud of dread. The Prince sat down again and sighed as the strange woman clad in blue and black made her way across the room in hastiness. When she stood before the Queen and her husband the doors were closed and shut; and the fire flickered anew, casting the shadows into unrest all about the chamber. The Queen spoke before the heavy-hearted words of her husband could strike again with despair.
"Have you heard aught from the battle yonder?" she asked.
"Indeed," said the woman. "If it were otherwise, I would have never come."
"And what news bring you?"
The court bent forth to the Shadow woman, but she did not utter a word. Instead, she drew a bundle of clothing that had hung on her back and unfolded it. A broken sword with the mark of the Triforce carved on its hilt fell down, and the noise rang across the silent hall. All sights fell upon the blade as the Shadow-woman bowed her head again and remained in whispering prayers. The Queen needed not see the blood on the hilt to understand the news brought by her bodyguard. She stood from her throne, walked for the Shadow-woman and took her hand. But the Prince stood up as well, and he spoke: "I do not wish to play at riddles, Sheikah; what means this? That out last host was defeated? That the King of Evil is come to the gates of the city? If this be indeed the last stroke of a doom long foreseen then I bid you speak plainer for all those who do not understand the meaning of this notched blade!
"I beg forgiveness from the Lord of Hyrule", said the Shadow-woman with a cold voice; and she whispered in the Queen's ear; and she let go her hand. "Indeed I should have spoken my errand instead of letting the message reach you without the need of words. Know now that the Captain Meninen has fallen at last in battle before the horror of Ganondorf´s army: terrible bones of Hylians, Gerudo and Zora alike to whom He has granted life beyond the soul of theirs, and monsters resembling the lizards and dragons of the Lost Woods, yet they bear swords and spears and are as strong as the hardiest of your people; and armoured beasts that have no face nor body nor spirit of their own, being moved by His power alone: the Iron Knuckles they are, which have proved to be our deadliest foes in battle, save by the Gerudo King himself.
"The Captain was surrounded by these beasts as he tried to lure them away from the retreating host, and the ones who accompanied him were all slain about him. He fought bravely, and his rage was worth many defending soldiers about him, but at last, pierced by many a spear, he fell with a cry of despair. There was great joy among the enemy, and the body of the Captain would have been broken and marred; but the Dragmire' s army continued in pursuit of our host at their lord's command, and at the last moment, ere the gate was lowered, the last battle was fought beneath the walls of the city. The enemy retreated in the end with heavy loss, but not even half of our host came back to the safety of the castle.
"While the din of arms was heard besides the drawbridge, a small company of my kin broke through unaware defenders and retrieved the body and blade of Meninen the Great, who proved most faithful during Ganondorf's first assault many years ago. None of my folk perished in the small fray that followed, but I doubt that even the Dragmire has heard of it; he cares as much for the lives of his soldiers as for those of his foes. So I have returned, as a messenger of my people, to deliver this sword and the evil news."
"But what of the battle beneath the Gates?" asked the Prince. "What news of that?"
"Does it matter now that everything is lost?" said the Queen. "Our host is broken, our captain is dead and a terrible army filled with hatred against our folk awaits us yonder in the field.
"It matters," said the Prince gravely. "It matters, I say; for if everything is now lost, then the time is come for me to go into battle alongside with my folk. But I would never willingly leave your side.
The Queen closed her eyes and slowly she returned to her seat. The Prince sat back as well, and he took her hand and kissed it. Sorrow was about them, yet no tears fell from their eyes.
Impa fell silent for a moment, and the weeping of women filled the silence of the room; but before long the Sheikah said in a low voice: "May the goddesses have mercy upon the Hylia, for their doom seems not unlike the doom of the Sheikah: to dwindle and go into the shadows as an ever shrinking people once known for their glory but seldom remembered in later days."
And as never seen before by the Queen, the Shadow-woman broke into silent but bitter tears.
"Don't you see it? Right over there, beside the Sheikah! I tell you, nothing else I wanted more than to see a shadow-man again, but not quite as much as I wanted to have peace for the rest of my life; I'd said to myself 'now there, old chap; this captain Meninen'll surely make these Gerudo foul women get gone for good, and you can go back to living a happy life like when you were young'. And now these black Hylians bring back the body of the good captain dead? Ho! What are we looking at now? D'you think an old man like myself here's going to pick up a sword and join all of you youngsters in battle? Why can't we have the fine army we had back then when this young chap of the Wood was about? Ah! I'd like to see him in a fight again!
The young soldier was too tired to give any real heed to his grandfather's words. Even the long wound across his bare chest that still bled through the linen could not make any pain stronger than weariness itself. For four days he had been awake and with the constant fear of a cruel death at the hands of an army that would not take any quarter, and to the burden of his body was added the weight of despair into his heart. He sat down besides the old Hylian, who had not yet stopped complaining about their defeat, and gave a sigh of hopelessness. With a will of iron he held back the bitter tears that many others had already shed; he knew that weeping would not aid the dying courage of his fellow warriors if anyone would notice him. He nodded his head instead and closed his eyes; and so much was his exhaustion that sleep crawled into him even as he sat amidst the cries of anguish of the wounded beyond healing.
But his grandfather's voice roused him to awareness once again.
"Hey now, youngster! Don't go a-sleeping in the middle of things! Hear! Your captain has something to say!
"The Captain is dead, grandfather," he said patiently, for he knew the old Hylian was not with the whole of his wits. "I do not think he can say much right now."
"Don't be foolish, lad," said the elder. "I'm talking, of course, of the new captain. By my gaffer's beard! I wish I'd had that captain when I was your age!"
The young soldier rose his head and beheld the new captain. His eyes were opened and his despair turned into utmost surprise.
A Sheikah was rallying all soldiers under his banner; and there stood he, a warrior of old, clad in dark blue and with bright, shinning ring-mail about his forearms. A light was in his eyes that shone like a red flame and the sternness of his face suffered no misjudgement of weakness. In a loud voice he called to all warriors who would listen, come, Soldiers of Hyrule! For our Time is come at last! And the despair which all Hylians carried alike was lifted for a while, and many approached the Shadow-man even as he spoke. But many were still those who wished not any battle for the time being.
Nevertheless, at the urging of his old grandfather, the young soldier rose and slowly made his way through the wounded and stood among the few who would listen to the Sheikah. There, beside a tall captain with dark hair and a sturdy villager from Kakariko with a linen band about his head, he leaned on his spear and hearkened to what the Shadow-man said.
The Queen went into her chamber and out to her balcony. There she stared for a while into the red Sun than slowly sank in the west taking the day with him. For a while, she stood under a red sky.
Why is he gone?
"Because his fate was other than to remain with us".
As silently as she always was, Impa the Sheikah appeared. She walked out into the balcony as the Queen's thoughts became her voice.
"But it has always been my belief that without him we are lost. Who can challenge the King of Evil and best him for the sake of our people?"
"I believe none, my lady."
"That is as to say that all hope is lost now."
Silence. A sigh.
"The sigh of despair" said the Queen.
"Perhaps" said Impa. "But I had not that in mind at the time".
"What, then, did you have?"
"I have heard the news that the last of my closest kin is preparing one last stroke against the Desert King, and that the last of my people are ready to follow his lead, and because of the dread of the Hylia, so is your people."
"That I had heard as well", said the Queen. "But I stray whenever I ponder about it. It is beyond my skill to hold so great a sternness as to lean into any kind of thought. I cannot say whether fate drove us into this day and that we all should rise in arms against the threat in hand and so come to an end, either for him or for us, or the stay this madness and continue to stand like sand castles against a rising tide and so end slowly yet with hope."
"What hope do you speak about? If come is our end, then we should at least welcome it with deeds that may deserve a song, though none should remain to sing about it."
"But yet if we hope…"
"Then we shall fall before aught may be done."
Silence again.
"But I am certain that you are not thinking about him."
"Be not eager to declare that you know my heart like your own then", said the Queen.
"I thought we had discussed this matter long ago."
"And so we did."
"He left us, my lady, he left us and he shall not see the Hylian field again, that is my belief. He must meet his own fate, which is not our own. He must seek his own ending, and I believe he shall find it elsewhere, and he knows so. He is gone.
"If I ever need the shadow to darken my sky, I shall not have to wait for the night ever again," the Queen said turning to her guardian. "You speak as if all were revealed to you, and yet you fall in hopelessness and make your foresight sink in the veil of it. How can you say anything about him as if you had known him as I did? How, indeed?
Silence yet again. The red sky was fading.
"Pray do not come to me with such words of foresight, or as you may call your fading (if no already dead) hope. I do not need a Sheikah to know Shadow.
"But you do!" said Impa sternly. "Alas! You do, my lady, or have you forgotten your days as one? I remember your very own words in telling me about shadow and the death of hope, as you name the truth. You bid me not to speak in hopelessness, I beg you, then, not to speak in vane hope. What comes, comes, what withers, withers, sunlight does not last all day. Now comes the time of the Shadows, and we must face it with the same will with which we faced the Light. Yet Shadows are not evil.
"Only that which hides within them," said the Queen. Was it shame that she felt?
"If you believe that hope there is in awaiting him, then I will ask what might hope do for our aid? It is courage and a blade that will hinder the King at the time, not hope."
"Estel gerim an si" said the Queen in the tongue of old.
"Estel ú veriatha vin" answered the Sheikah turning away. "It will not".
Yet there are always sources for hope. A man will walk under the burning sun and the great lakes which spring before him, fake though they are, will bring him hope; and he will walk under de chill night and the moonlight, cold as it is, will bring him hope. She knew so, and thus she alone remained out of despair's grasp. The red sky now fading, she had long ago forgotten her desire to lie down with him beneath it. But she still dreamt from time to time about the evening's they would spend beneath the oak tree in love. To lie in love. In the arms of love. The time that had passed between the day he had bidden her farewell and the later days were filled with her loneliness. But she had felt for quite a long time now that loneliness (the word) was not enough. Not quite enough. Not for what she felt as the stream in her heart. A stream that flows out of a well, the well of loneliness. Loneliness in her blood. Loneliness in her heart. Loneliness in her mind. And yet, there was no loneliness in her womb.
The cloak of weariness fell over her with all of its weight and she began to wander in the border between the realm of the waken and the realm of those who are not. She sat down and but dared not to take her sight away from the window. Cold as it was, the night, she refused to wear her cloak, the same raiment she had worn many months ago when she first came to the castle as the Queen's guest. She began shivering and, lost in her mind though she was, she became aware of the chill after a short waiting. She took the wine jug the kind maiden of yesterday had brought as a token from the Queen and poured some into a goblet. She took a sip. She had drunk plenty of the best harvest of Kakariko now.
The feeling of loneliness was a weight. She carried it like a stone set upon her heart. She knew he had loved her, and she knew that he would love her still. Yet she had never understood why he had left her in search of another friend. Just a friend. But she was not just a friend. She was her rightful wife.
There was no holding any thought for much; the river of loneliness and memories cannot linger, much less when there is wine in its waters. She saw many of those things that had come to pass in the last few days in few moments, and it brought her regretful thoughts. There is no riddance to memory's pain, not even with the best harvest of Kakariko, yet there is relief of some of its weight; and that alone is what time does to the ones who live beneath the shade of remembering. She had now gotten used to carrying the weight of memory, even as she had gotten used to bearing his child.
Small desire she felt for standing up, but Malon felt the need of speaking with the Queen, her kind host and friend. Well into the sixth month, the lady drained her cup and walked for the door. But before she had opened it, she went back to the bed, where the cloak lay unused, and took it. She pulled it around her tightly and went forth from her chamber.
The Sheikah captain now gazed at the host set before them, just outside bowshot, and frowned. His sight was fixed in the many Iron Knuckles that stood as the vanguard of Ganondorf's army; his mind was fixed in finding their weakness. The Sheikah men-at-arms were not nearly enough to withstand a charge by those monsters, and the Hylians were not as strong as the Shadow-folk. But they were many more, for in number was their main strength. Yet, many Hylians had already fallen to the King of Evil's attack, and the remaining soldiers were all burdened with weariness and despair beyond their reckoning. The air itself seemed heavy of despair.
"There is no escape" said his kinswoman, as she had climbed up the staircases of the turret. "There is no escape from fate's grasp".
"You startled me", said the captain. "In such a way I was lost in thought".
"There is not much to think about", said the woman. "Some volleys, the horns, a charge and the end. It is so that we must expect now."
"Am I hearing hopelessness in your ever-grave voice?"
"What must come to be, comes to be. We can only delay it, and we have already delayed as much as we can. Let us lean into the end now."
"See that young Hylian", said the captain as he pointed down at the wounded. Do you see what he is doing? He is tending his injured folk. Why might he be doing so?"
"He does what he does out of hope", answered Impa. "But that changes nothing. And I seem to be having the same speech over and over with everyone about me."
"I take it you speak of the Queen", said he.
"I estel e ngûr în."
"The hope that we all should have, not only she."
"Will our folk be enough to defeat the enemy?"
"No."
"Will our folk and the Hylians be enough to defeat the enemy?"
"Perhaps."
"And that is were I do not agree."
"Then let us not agree. Let us not speak at all."
And the Sheikah remained in silence for a while. As the crescent moon rose over them, wind began blowing with its cold breath against their faces.
Far out into Hyrule Field, just before Sunrise, within a tent surrounded by his bodyguard, Ganondorf of the Gerudo lay on a blanket, with an empty bottle of wine in one hand and his sword in the other. His mind was empty as the bottle or filled with dreams at the time, but his heart was at ease. His device to conquer the realm was now in its final steps, at the path at his feet, and he was glad; for now there would be no Hero of Time to stop him now, and the Hylians and the Sheikah were no match for his army.
In his dreams he now saw the realm he had once ruled, so long ago, for seven years: the Hylians, his most hated foes, slain, enslaved or turned into creeping beasts yearning for blood; the Gorons put to death as the nourishment of the dragon he would use to rule other kingdoms, or even to raze them; the Zora, forever trapped under the frozen lake, doomed to forsake all binding to the outside in punishment for the allegiance they once had sworn to the Desert Folk and which they had broken when the Hylians had won the War; the Kokiri, the Children of the Forest, all held by evil creatures lurking in the wood and slain eventually, for his own amusement; and even the Gerudo, which had proven unfaithful when the cursed Hero had defeated him, so long ago. They would all dearly pay for their deeds.
When he had risen and had put on his gear for war and when he had rallied his guard about him on the field, when he had given a last sight to the castle that stood before him and his host like the last door before the end, he heard the rising blasts of the Sheikah horns like the thunder ere the storm. He was not pleased. Although he knew that there was no escape from the claws of fate, his hatred once more gripped his heart; for he knew that victory would not be achieved as easily as he had thought, not with the aid of the Shadow-folk. Still, he mounted his steed, a stallion as black as his heart and mind, and rode on into the centre of his host. There he would meet the onslaught, amidst the axes of those terrible creatures known as Iron Knuckles. There he planned also to find that dreaded guard, that Sheikah woman who was most loved by the Queen. He knew that she would fall in battle, but he desired to slay her with his own blade, and when the blade would be stained with her own blood, last of the Lords and Ladies of the Sheikah, he would feel the utmost joy in the depths of his heart. And he thought that he would slay no Sheikah ere he had stained the sword in such way.
"A volley", he thought as the sky was blackened by the arrows. "How jolly"
Even though some of his own guards fell to it, the Dragmire smiled. The Iron Knuckles had taken no wound, and his army was now in full wrath. Horrible yells from the Lizalfos and Stalfos filled the air. Their hatred had been kindled anew as well. And with horrible laughter that numbed the valour of those who listened to it he knew at last that now that Hyrule was forsaken from the goddesses' plan he would be able to take over the realm, thus beginning anew the fulfilment of the wish he had long ago named before the relic of which only a fragment he yet kept.
If thou hast a wish in thy heart, name it…
Only the goddesses would save the land now.
P. D. I had the custom of writing short n' sweet stories and I still think that I handle much more accurately this kind of writing. Therefore, I'll leave the tale here. I would appreciate very much your thoughts on the style and plot of the fic. Thanks in advance.