Chapter Two—Darkness

I didn't sleep that night. I didn't even lie down. I sat on my bed with the Ocarina in my hands, listening to the gentle music in my mind and the penetrating, smothering silence of the world around me. I knew there was a good chance this would be the last night I spent in the castle that had always been my home. My nerves were stretched to the breaking point as I waited for something, anything, to push me over the edge I hovered by. I was shaking.

The dark of the night was complete, uninterrupted and still except by the sound of my breathing. But within me, it was far from peaceful, and I knew this turmoil would soon manifest itself externally.

And then I heard a voice shouting something, from outside the front of the castle. A man's voice; Ganondorf's. And a woman's voice answered him. I couldn't make out the words, but I knew it could be nothing good.

My heart began to pound in my chest, and my head began to spin. No, it couldn't be happening now, it couldn't, it couldn't…

It happened in an explosion—

"MOVE!"

A roar of noise—

"ATTACK!"

—battle cries that shook the castle—

"DIN'S POWER!"

We were under siege.

The castle awoke at once, and in an instant all was chaos. I wanted to curl up in my bed and squeeze my eyes shut and pretend nothing was happening as it all came crashing down around me, but I knew I couldn't.

"ZELDA!"

My bedroom door flew open, and there was Impa, fully dressed but looking perfectly composed—except her eyes. Her eyes always gave her away, and they were filled with terror. She held in her hand the bag she had prepared for me.

"Zelda, we have to move," she told me sternly, crossing the room and taking the Ocarina from me, shoving it into the bag.

"What's happening?" I asked, my voice shaking.

"The Gerudo army is here."

My breath quickened in my lungs. Impa's words disappeared in a sea of screams as the waves of soldiers broke through our defences.

"NO!"

I suddenly found the energy to run bursting inside me, and I did.

Impa pushed me along as I sprinted out of my bedroom and down the hall. She had told me that in the event this happened, I was to simply get out the fastest way possible. There would be soldiers everywhere, so there was no sense in trying to find a safe route. There wasn't one. I had known this would be true, but the reality of it—

I saw people, bodies struggling against each other, running and jumping and manoeuvring and falling. There were cries of rage and cries of pain, and they all assaulted my ears in such a stream that they blended into a cacophony of murder and bloodshed. There were no distinct images, because I wasn't looking at anything. I was just running, pushing my body as hard as I could so that I barely noticed Impa's footsteps and harsh breathing just behind me, or the blood pounding through my veins, my head—

I flew down a set of spiral stairs and came out into a main room, one I referred to as the procession hall. Out of nowhere, I heard one scream rend the air, coming from the balcony directly above my head. I stopped in panic, looked up, and saw a lifeless body tumbling down. It fell before me…one of my mother's attendants, her throat slit, her neck bent at a painful angle, her eyes wide and blank like a deer's. To see the face of someone I knew, suddenly so different… I had never imagined that death could change someone so dramatically… I felt myself grow faint. I had never seen death before.

All this happened in less than a second, and then two Gerudo soldiers dropped down next to the body. The were dressed in the typical clothes of the desert people, wearing pants like men would, their bronze skin shining with the effort of the fight, though they showed no signs of fatigue in their pitiless eyes. Their fiery hair was pulled back in ponytails that swung behind them like the two curved blades they each wielded with such grace that the weapons seemed mere extensions of their arms. They landed lightly, like dancers, and I had no time to react before one of them had swung her deadly gleaming sword at me—

I felt someone's arm around my waist, and barely had time to take in that it was clad in the silver armour of the Sheikah instead of the bright fabric of the Gerudo before it had swung me up from the ground and started running. Impa clutched me tightly to her, holding her riding crop in her other hand. I had never known her to feel so cold before.

"We can't stop for anything, Zelda, not anything," she told me, her words short.

It was all passing me by in a whirl of colours… The men in silver armour, each with a straight blade and a shield, were our soldiers; the women in fiery, desert clothes, each with scimitars they used both to attack and defend, were the enemy. Ganondorf was nowhere. Neither were my mother and father.

My mother and father…

I heard Impa suddenly cry out in anger, and she dropped me. I crumpled to the floor, taken aback by the sudden fall, and rolled onto my back to see her engaged in combat with another desert woman. She was using her riding crop as a shield, catching her opponent's blades and turning them aside with surprising ease, and had drawn a short sword with her other hand.

I watched, transfixed, unaware of the madness surrounding me. It was an unequal fight, I knew, and though Impa was a skilled fighter, I could see her straining.

Then something flew from her hand and caught the other woman in her exposed stomach. The Gerudo gave a short scream of surprise and pain, clutching her side, and I saw blood seeping from between her fingers. Impa took advantage of her vulnerability to strike her a hard blow to the side of the head with the riding crop, with such force that the woman dropped to the ground, bleeding from the temple.

I wanted to ask if she was dead, but Impa was already grabbing me by the hand, pulling me to my feet and shouting at me, "Go, Zelda, keep going, don't stop for anything!"

I had never seen Impa like this. I had never seen her kill anyone.

But she was right; there was no time to stop. She pushed me onwards, and I went, stumbling into a side hallway off the main room, one that led upstairs to some of the bedrooms. There were less people here, but that didn't mean we could relax. I pumped my legs onward, pushing myself with all my strength, feeling tears burn and streak down my face, blurring my vision.

"Zelda!"

A voice on my right that I recognized. I ground to a halt and turned around; it was Dad's voice.

Time stopped when I saw him.

There he was, lying in the middle of the hall in his white silk night clothes and a red silk robe…

There was more redness than just the robe, though, I realized in a heart-stopping instant. And it was spreading over him, over the smooth stone floor from a gaping tear in the fabric that covered his chest. With each breath he took, more pulsed and flooded out. I ran, sobbing, to his side. I knelt in the blood of my father, clutching his hand, my tears mingling with the life that flowed out of him. He touched my face, wiping those tears away.

"Dad…"

"Be strong, Zelda," he managed, his breath ragged.

"Daddy…"

"I know you can… be strong…"

He looked at me a moment longer through weak eyes.

"Dad," I whispered desperately. No other words would come to me. "Daddy?"

Then, slowly, his hand dropped from my face, his eyes rolled back and closed.

"No… No… Please, Daddy, no…"

His other hand was limp in both of mine.

"DAD!" I screamed, my voice bursting so harshly from my throat that it felt and sounded as though it could rip a hole through the air.

The world suddenly dulled to my senses; slower, quieter, thicker, as though I was experiencing it through liquid pain, as though the internal forces of terror and agony and grief were so great that I couldn't register external ones. I was only dimly aware of Impa taking my hand again and telling me softly, "We must hurry." She dragged me away as I cried—sobbing, screaming—soaked in my dad's blood.

The chaos was no longer deafening confusion. It was just a blur, dull white noise under the rushing turmoil within me. I fell quiet, though tears continued to stream down my face. Running was mindless, effortless.

Before I realized what was happening, Impa was pushing me into the arms of my mom, who hugged me tightly. She, too, was covered in blood, but it wasn't her own. She kissed my face all over, knowing that we were about to be parted forever, not trying to hide from the inevitable truth. I tried clumsily to kiss her back, my fingers tangled in her hair, still crying silently.

"Mommy…"

"I love you," she told me clearly, determinedly, handing me back to Impa. "There is nothing in this world of the next or any other that could ever stop me from loving you with my entire heart and soul."

"I love you, too, Mom, I love you…"

I saw two Gerudo women advancing, swords drawn, and I looked away. I wanted to remember my mother holding me and kissing me, not being slaughtered beneath the merciless, sadistic blades of a usurper's troops.

I could think of nothing but the pain I was feeling. I could see nothing. I held on to Impa as tightly as she held on to me, but that was all I could do.

The cold air hit me like a slap in the face when we burst out of the castle doors and outside. It was raining, a thunderous downpour that soaked me to the skin in seconds, but I didn't care. After a moment, I managed to focus enough to realize that we had emerged from a side door by the stables, the door to which Impa was now pulling open. When it closed behind us, we were alone with the horses; the sounds of the ongoing battle and the ongoing storm were distant.

I found my mind more lucid now that I was out of the heart of the struggle, washed clean by the deluge that had erased my own tears as well. I managed to think clearly enough to mount Impa's white mare on my own. Impa followed, swinging herself up behind me and urging the horse on with Sheikah words of motivation. We exploded out of the stable door at a gallop.

The Ocarina, I thought abruptly. It was still in the bag, which Impa had miraculously kept hold of. Holding my balance on the horse with my knees, I reached behind me into the bag lashed to the horse's side and found the musical instrument. Then I clung to the horse's mane, leaning down as close to its neck as I could get, as we charged across the castle grounds.

No sooner had we darted through the gates than I heard another horse galloping behind us. I turned to look—

Ganondorf himself, on a midnight black steed with the bright, terrible eyes of a demon possessed. He was following us. He trusted his minions to kill my mother, but he personally wanted my blood.

"The drawbridge!" I heard Impa bark. Nothing happened. There were no guards to let it down; the Gerudo army had killed them all. We were trapped.

But no, of course not, Impa was too quick for that. As we reached the bridge, I saw her blade swing out next to me, one quick swipe on either side, slashing the ropes that held the bridge up. It crashed down over the river that cut through Hyrule.

On the other side, in a flash of lightning, I saw someone running up—a young boy, dressed in green—

"Link!" I cried.

He skidded to a stop in the muddy grass, apparently too shocked to do anything. I threw the Ocarina desperately behind me, thinking randomly. He jumped for it, but missed, and it soared into the river behind him. Underneath the raging storm and thundering hooves, I'm sure it let out a musical whistle as it flew.

I could do nothing else; we were galloping away, and Ganondorf was after us. Still, it wasn't over. He didn't have the Triforce.

"There's still hope, Impa," I said, to myself as well as to her.

"There's hope as long as the goddesses reign."

That was the end of the reign of King Churo Hyrule and Queen Delia Hyrule…

But it was not—I vowed it would not be—the end of my family's dynasty.