A Link to the Past
Chapter Forty: Back to Hyrule
As soon as he had caught his breath, and was certain that the strange bulbous monster was dead, Link took the crystal from one of its many short arms. It was wrapped so tightly that he had to use the Master Sword to cut it free, and just like all the other times, the world around him turned to darkness while the beautiful girl trapped inside of the diamond shaped prison began to speak to him. Again, this was not Princess Zelda, making the young man worry that he was never going to find her, that or maybe Ganondorf or Agahnim was wearing her crystal around their neck to make sure that she never got free, but now as far as he knew there were only two girls left to find, including the Princess.
Thank you for saving me… this was not the first place where Ganondorf hid me away, and I was afraid that this monster might have been too much for even you. From what I heard before I was given to it, Hinox and Stalfos weren't the original guardians, either, but rather Ganondorf's most dangerous servants. At first he didn't think you were a threat, but then you defeated Daira and Mothula, so he ordered Agahnim to place the rest of us into the hands of creatures so deadly that they were sure to kill you.
What she was saying made a lot of sense, being that compared to the Village of Outcasts and the Dark Forest, Hinox's Estate, the Frozen Dungeon, and the Dry Cisterns were a real nightmare. Now that Link thought about it, Daira and Mothula had disregarded him and this was probably how he was able to triumph over them so easily, at least compared, but the young man had nearly been blown up in the palace, almost been frozen solid in the dungeon, and without the freezing rod the beast lying at his feet would have surely killed him. He needed to get back to Hyrule, if nothing else just for a solution to why his newest weapon stopped working, and maybe for some rest as well.
"Can you lead me to another crack between worlds?" Link asked. "I need to rest and get some answers before I can keep going… oh, and speaking of answers, can any of you tell me why Agahnim is serving Ganondorf? I understand that he's the strongest monster and he's got the Triforce, but that wizard can come and go as he pleases, so why not just leave Ganondorf here?"
Agahnim knows more magic than anyone in the world, even Ganondorf, even though he cannot match him in strength. The wizard was going to abandon him and everyone else here, and said this to the monster's face after the decades it took to discover a way out, but then Ganondorf made him an offer. The terms were quite simple; If Agahnim breaks the seven Wisemen's seal and frees Ganondorf so that his wish to conquer the world is completed, then the monster's next wish will be to recreate some place called Koholint Island exactly the way it was when the wizard lived there.
From the stories that his uncle used to tell him as a child, Link knew very well what that wish meant, and now Agahnim's reasons for doing everything he did were starting to make sense. Aside from getting revenge on the Lord Sheriff for waking the Wind Fish and thereby causing his home and family to disappear, everything else… kidnapping the Princess and other girls, assassinating the King, all of it had been done to get everything back without the need for the Wind Fish. Was the Triforce really so powerful that it could recreate Koholint Island and all its people from dreams and memories? Well, if it could conquer both the Golden Land and Hyrule, why couldn't it bring a dream into the real world?
Link, you must get the last two crystals before the Wisemen's seal is completely destroyed; there is still time but not very much, and Agahnim must be destroyed as well. We will lead you to the crack between worlds, and then to the nearest one we can find to the next crystal once you have rested. I know this whole ordeal is a terrible burden, but you are the only one who can stop Ganondorf from doing to Hyrule what he did here.
With that, the trapped girl fell silent as the dry cisterns reappeared around him, leaving the young man with a lot to think about while the crystals vibrations led him in a new direction. In order to save Hyrule, he needed to get the crystals and defeat Agahnim, that much he already knew, but if the Triforce really was powerful enough to recreate a place like Koholint Island, then what else could it do? And if it granted the wishes of whoever touched it, did that mean that if Link was somehow able to defeat Ganondorf, would it grant his wishes as well? With something that powerful, the possibilities were endless from what he had seen and heard, but then again there was the whole concept of defeating Ganondorf… the monster who wished himself unable to be killed by the Master Sword.
"Why couldn't my grandfather have just finished him off?" The young man grumbled to himself, turning down another junction. "Why couldn't my uncle have just finished off Agahnim, either?"
There were a lot of legendary heroes back along his family line, but so far the problem was that when each of them had a major enemy, they just let them escape for some reason. Yes, Link knew the stories; his grandfather and the other three great heroes of Hyrule defeated Ganondorf's forces and cornered him inside of Spectacle Rock, but then he cast some strange spell that made him vanish and was never seen again. Same thing with Agahnim; his uncle and the wizard battled inside the Wind Fish's egg, but instead of letting him get killed, the great beast banished Agahnim to as his uncle put it 'a place where he could never harm anyone again', and boy did that work out great in the end. Regardless of how thrilling those stories were when he was a child, now it was up to Link to handle what both of them should've done years ago.
Climbing up another upward slope on the dry stone floor, the young man didn't like feeling bitter toward his family, especially since they were both dead and gone now, and he just… he just hoped that when his own personal quest was over with that… that one of his own descendants didn't have to go through this same thing somewhere down the line. No, that was not going to happen… the young man wasn't exactly sure how he could defeat both Agahnim and Ganondorf, but he wasn't going to burden some little boy with them in thirty years, no matter what it took. He just hoped that once he got back to Hyrule, that Maple's grandmother could help him with the freezing rod… if Agahnim didn't know he had it, maybe that was how this could be done.
After walking through the dimly lit tunnels for a few more hours, Link had to shield his eyes after rounding the next corner to where the drain emptied back into the surface of the Dark World, it's permanently sensetting sky seeming as bright as high noon, at least for a few minutes. Once his eyes adjusted, Link saw that he was surrounded by brown colored tall grass and shallow pools of that same murky standing water, but from the terrain he was able to quite easily tell where he was. In Hyrule, this was nearby one of the entrances where workers had to go down into the cisterns to repair walls or whatever they did, and that wasn't very far away from his own house. It was funny… everything he had gone through after meeting Ganondorf on that bridge had led him to almost exactly where he had been trying to go in the first place.
However, the crystals were leading him away from the path north, over toward the brown tall grass, and it was a good thing, too, since as soon as he stepped out of view another patrol of goat guards came marching down the trail. For a moment the young man wondered if they knew what happened to other guards who failed in their duty, or maybe it was an incentive for them to do a good job? Whatever the answer, Link slowly backed away from them, staying hidden by the ever thickening tall grass, and then he was falling. For a second he thought maybe he had fallen through a hole and was going to crash back down into the cisterns, but once the high winds reached his ears while that unbearable whiteness assaulted his eyes, he realized where he was falling to just in time for the trip to be over.
Landing on his back inside of a lush green thicket of tall grass and shrubs, the young man was surprised by how difficult it was to see, as well as the sensation of cold water soaking through his clothes. Struggling to get to his feet, a flash of lightning lit up the heavily clouded sky for a second, with the following crash of thunder masking all other noises while he made his way out of the tall grass and into what almost looked like the same place where he had come out of the dry cisterns. The rain was falling heavily, coming down in sheets while the fierce wind made every drop of it go right into Link's face so he could barely see without constantly wiping his eyes. No moon was visible at all during this dark night, and the only thing he could see was a distant fire… probably to keep the guards warm at a check point.
And of course, the path north was the way he needed to go in order to reach the shop Maple's grandmother owned, so it was either try to sneak right past the guards or take the long way and swim across Lake Hylia again. No, the young man was too tired for a swim like that even with the glove and flipper, so he slowly made his way toward where the guards were standing around the small fire, hoping that the light they were looking into would mask his movements since it was so dark and the wind basically made him silent. This plan was going well until Link had to pass by right next to them, since their check point was right in between two large rocks that each started a long ridge line that was dangerous to climb in the rain, when a flash of thunder revealed him… and they noticed.
Yes, the young man was aware that they were under Agahnim's spell and this wasn't really their fault, but there was no choice but to draw the Master Sword as the three of them picked up their own blades. The first one made a wild swing that Link easily avoided by stepping to the side, swinging the blue blade upward in response, and neatly severing the armored man's head so that it landed on the wet dirt the same time as the rest of him collapsed. The next one stabbed at him, but the young man deflected it with his new shield, swinging the shield back up right after so that the rounded edge struck the guard in the face. Now that he was staggered, it was easy to kick the armored man's legs out from under him on the slippery grass, before stabbing the Master Sword down into his chest, leaving only one left.
This one had a spear, and he stabbed at Link with enough force to make him stumble back when it struck his shield, but this problem was solved with a pulse of strength from the glove. Waiting until the next time he stabbed, the young man dashed forward right along the side of the speak, slicing the long weapon in half with his blue blade, and then a second backwards slash that tore through his armor as he ran past. As much as he hated doing this to people who had no choice but to attack him, Link couldn't help noticing how easy it was to fight guards like this after dealing with the likes of Stalfos… all right, the danger was over… he had to keep moving before any more of them showed up, and he got too tired to fight.
