Yogen no Yuyami- Troubled Minds
Chapter- Ni (Two)
By- Shinda Kiokuryoku
The jar of expensive oil hit the stone floor with a crash, shards of pottery scattering everywhere. The novice starred in horror at the empty chamber. The body of her lord was missing. Sacred candles were thrown off the table the Yogensha had been laying upon, some even melted upon the walls and floor.
"My lady niso, what happened?" One of the boys, worried about the expression she now wore, asked her.
At the sound of his voice, the girl snapped out of her stupor. She started to run across the chamber, but slipped in the oil cutting her knees on the broken pieces of pottery. Ignoring the blood dripping down her legs, the girl got up and went to the table. Her shoulders heaved, tears poured down her face, and she fell to her knees. A failure. She had failed. This had been her first duty to her lord and she had failed.
"How," she wondered aloud. "How could have this happened? Only a few chosen know of this place. No Sheikah would betray us. I don't understand."
The door to the stair of ages had been locked. The guards were still in place. A thief could not have gotten in or out of the chambers. Not knowing what to do, the girl started picking up the fragmented candles and placed them on the table. Startled, she noticed blood on the candles.
"This is just great!" she ground her teeth. "Not only have I lost a corpse, but I have defiled the sacred candles with my foul blood!"
Immediately both of her hands flew up to her mouth after she realized her blaspheme. Unfortunately all the energy she had used to cover her foul mouth turned against her. With a hollow, slapping sound, she fell flat on her back.
This of course, made her start to giggle hysterically. "I sound like a wet frog on a hollow log." She hissed to herself between breaths. After rolling on the ground for a few minutes, she remembered where she was.
The girl jumped up to straiten out her robes, acting as if nothing odd had happened. Shuffling her feet, she whistled a song she had heard the farm girl at Lon Lon Ranch sing. She thought it would be best if she took interest in the candles again.
Looking closer, she noticed that the candles were melted. "That's strange. I'm sure we put new candles by the lord's body."
She glanced at all the broken candles. "Hmm. All the candles have been melted. I wonder what that means?"
As she looked at the melted candles, something else caught her eye. The girl lay down on her stomach and slid under the stone table to get a closer look. Using a candle she still had in her hand, she beat at the object- repeatedly.
"Well, if it was a bug, its dead now," was all she said to the boys who were giving her strange looks from the other side of the table. The far side of the table. At the other end of the room.
"Hey, you," she pointed to the taller of the three, "Come and pick this up for me ok?" Getting a nod from the boy, she started to slide out from under the table. To her, he looked a little skittish. "Must be scared of bugs," she shrugged, "Wimp." She didn't notice the boy keeping his distance from her, not the smashed object.
The boy crawled under the table and got the smashed object. He slithered quickly back out, and slammed it on it on the table before she could ask him to hand it to her. His bare feet flapped on the stone as he all but ran from her, taking his place on the far side of the room again.
In total confusion, she looked at the boy. "What's gotten into him?" she wondered out loud. Her shoulders rose and fell in a violent, over exaggerated shrug. "Oh well. Back to the 'thing'."
The girl slid up to the object as if it would spring up and bite her at any second. Bending her back, and ducking her head down, she nearly touched the object with her nose to get a closer look at it.
"Ah-ha!" she screamed. "I know what that is! It is a piece of black linen off of the lord's wrappings!" Excitedly she started to do the 'Goron happy dance'.
"Wait a minute," she stopped her dance suddenly. "How does this help me find out what happened to my lord, the Yogensha?" In front of her there came the sound of a body hitting the floor.
She looked up, hopping to see her lord's body magically appear on the floor. What she saw was not her lord, but the smaller of the three young Sheikah on the floor. He was repeatedly banging his head into the stone. The other two were running out the chamber door.
"Stop right there you two. Come back here this instant!" Quickly she hitched up her tattered, bloody robes and ran after the two.
Looking behind themselves as they ran through the Chamber of Names, the boys did not see the object looming directly in front of them. They ran right into it.
"I told you to stay here!" the girl screamed to the poor boys.
Thus, the bickering began. A novice screaming about how young Sheikah boys becoming so lazy, and the braver of the boys arguing about psychotic priestesses. In the chaos that ensued, none noticed the figure standing ominously above them.
