Chapter 12: Eye Spy
"Milord Ganon?" The wizard bowed as he entered the room. "You sent for me?"
"Ah, yes. Rise." Agahnim instructed him. "You'll be the current head of the Wizrobe order… Zektal, isn't it?"
"Yes, milord." Zektal nodded.
"And up until her death, you were second to Mothula, one of my Eyes." Agahnim continued. "That's why I've asked you to join me here in my Tower. With my Eyes nearly annihilated, you're the next highest ranking among my minions… and more importantly, with how much time you spent with Mothula, you're the surviving expert in the fields she labored in. I'm really more of a power ruler, you see… I don't like it to get around, but I was never really at home in the book smarts and laboratories business. And thus, I need your advice on a few matters."
"However I can help." Zektal promised.
"Good man." Agahnim clapped him on the shoulder. "Let's take a walk around, shall we?" Zektal nodded, and the two of them left the throne room and began wandering through the halls of the Tower. After a few moments of silence, Agahnim spoke again. "First of all, Zektal… is Project Trinexx still holding together?"
"Perfectly, milord." Zektal assured him. "My mistress's final attempt still looks to be a complete success… there are no signs of deterioration at all. Trinexx will be at Turtle Rock whenever you need him."
"That's right where I want him, actually." Agahnim informed his underling. "I'll be sending something there soon… something important."
"Than Trinexx is the one for the job." Zektal boasted. "He's without question the second most deadly weapon my mistress ever created… the King Helmasaur isn't anywhere near the same level."
"Second?" Agahnim raised an eyebrow, and Zektal coughed.
"Well, there was the matter of… Project Nightmare, milord. A century ago."
"Oh, yes…" Agahnim's eyes lit up. "Nightmare… Mothula's hubris. We never did find out where that thing ran off to… probably for the best. Some should be outcast even from here…" He shook his head. "But enough of that. Nightmare is long gone, and we must focus on the present. Next topic. Before her demise, Mothula was planning a device that could extract my soul from this body. Unfortunately, she was killed right after she completed Trinexx, so the device was never built. Would you have the necessary skill to build it in her stead?"
"I'm afraid I probably do not, milord." Zektal admitted. "Such a device would be beyond the capabilities of any save my departed mistress… an attempt by me would stand an equal chance of catapulting your soul into the sun, or backfiring you into the body of a completely random denizen of this world." Agahim thought about some of the creatures in his employ and shuddered.
"Damnation. Still, Mothula was not born with her skill… in time, you will be able to perfect your art to the same degree as her, correct?" Zektal slowly nodded.
"Perhaps in a few centuries… yes, milord."
"Annoying, but not critical." Agahnim noted. "As long as another matter is taken care of, that is… ah, here we are." He opened a door and led Zektal into a small, dark room… a room containing a blue crystal, large enough to contain a Hylian… which this one did.
"Ganon. It's been a few days." Princess Zelda greeted him coldly. "And a Wizrobe as well… with your last Eye here too, it's getting to be a regular party in this room." She glared over at one of Vitreous' eyes, which was watching silently from a corner.
"Charming as always, Princess." Agahnim nodded back. "How has she been, Vitreous?"
"Weakening, despite this show of bravado." Vitreous reported slowly, sounding strangely emotionless. "The conflict between her crystal and the Tower's force field is reaching the critical level… I'm no expert, but I'd wager we have maybe half a day to get her out of here before she goes bang."
"Fortunately, we do have an expert here." Agahnim nodded at Zektal. "Is he right?" Zektal observed the level of the crystal's glow and slowly nodded.
"Lord Vitreous was right on the mark. In roughly twelve hours, if the Princess remains here, her crystal will violently cease functioning, killing her in the process… rather explosively."
"Well, we can't have that." Agahnim purred to Zelda, who snorted. "That's the real reason I need you here, Zektal…" He raised his forearm, and the symbol of the Triforce appeared on it; in response, it shone on Zelda's arm as well. "I need you to tell me, Zektal… what would happen if I were to attempt to take the Triforce of Wisdom from the Princess." Vitreous' pupil widened, and Zektal took a step back.
"Milord…" He thought for a moment. "I… do not think it would be a good idea." There was a moment of absolute silence, and then Agahnim turned on him, smiling pleasantly. Zektal began shaking as his master spoke two words, slowly and calmly.
"Why not?"
"I… know that the pieces of the Triforce are bonded to their wielders' bodies as well as their souls." Zektal stammered. "Your Triforce of Power remains with your true body… despite how its mark has followed your soul to its current body, you cannot call upon its strength."
"True." Agahnim admitted. "Continue."
"Thus, if you were to take the Triforce of Wisdom in your current state, it would be bonded to THIS body, not your true one." Zektal continued. "And with the body, it would belong to this man's soul, not yours… you would be unable to use its power, and until you had access to your true body once more, unable to transfer it. And if… well…"
"If I was killed? Is that what you're trying to say? If this body was slain?" Agahnim guessed. "An unfortunate possibility, more and more. If that happened, then even if my soul survived and returned to its proper body…"
"Then the Triforce of Wisdom would not accompany it." Zektal confirmed. "It would return to the Princess… after so much time with her bloodline, it has become somewhat acclimated to them."
"Then stealing it now from her… would be pointless. I can't take the Triforce of Wisdom as long as I'm in this mortal shell… which I needed in order to gain access to the Triforce of Wisdom in the first place!" Agahnim growled, turning to glare at the Princess, who was smirking triumphantly. "You knew this, princess… that's why you've been so calm and cool all this time!"
"I guessed it." Zelda corrected mildly. "I DO have the Triforce of Wisdom, after all… I attempted to study these things-" She gasped as Agahnim slammed her crystal into a wall.
"Well, then what would happen if I killed you, here and now?" The wizard snarled angrily.
"Milord… I don't recommend it." Zektal forced himself to interrupt, mentally cursing himself for a martyr. "It would cause the Triforce to go to any remote offshoot branch of the royal family that might have been forgotten in Hyrule… and with her death, her soul would be able to cross back there easily, meaning there would only be one remaining girl for our enemy to free in order to repair the barrier." Slowly, Agahnim nodded.
"And we can't keep her here… so all we can do is send her away, like we did with the others. I have no choice in the matter… I, the Forger of Power, am helpless in this despite everything." He took a deep breath, and then he screamed, howling like a tornado, as whips of lightning blasted out from his hands, raking the walls. Zelda, Vitreous and Zektal all dived to the floor as the Forger of Power took out his fury on the room around him. When the magic died down and the dust cleared, walls and ceiling had all been eradicated, leaving open space to all the rooms beyond and around them. Everything else in the room had been destroyed as well, and only the inhabitants remained, staring at the furious wizard. After a few more moments, he spoke in a near-whisper. "Zektal. Take the Princess to Turtle Rock. Have Trinexx and everything else there guard her with their lives. Afterwards, assemble your order and have them teleport to Misery Mire. You will patrol it and destroy Link when he arrives to confront Vitreous." Zektal saluted.
"As you command, milord!" Murmuring, he created a rope of magical energy that wrapped around Zelda's crystal, and he towed her out of the demolished room and away down the halls. When they were gone, the Forger turned to Vitreous.
"And you… my last surviving Eye… call back all your component parts. All of them. I want you to have every single one of them at your disposal if the worst comes to pass and Link breaks through to you."
"As you wish." Vitreous replied in the same dull tone he had used when speaking before.
"I mean it, Vitreous." Agahnim commanded. "I know your siblings are gone… as are your friends. But don't just roll over and die. Fight him, Vitreous. Kill him. I know you can do it… you have to. You have to live."
"Because I'm a valuable tool for you, right?" Vitreous chuckled as he began floating away.
"Exactly… you're the last one, Vitreous." Agahnim explained, turning away. "My last Eye… the last servant I've truly known well. The others have all left me… don't do the same." Vitreous hovered motionless for a moment, then replied.
"I'll try, master. That's all I can promise." And then he was gone, leaving the Forger of Power alone in his ruins.
"About time that old coot figured out where the portal was here…" Link muttered to himself as the flute bird carried him towards the south-eastern edge of the Hylian Desert. "Oh well, at least he did it at all… otherwise I'd have no way to get in to take out Vitreous." Landing on ledge that jutted out from a cliff face, Link waved goodbye to the bird and unearthed the now-familiar shimmering blue portal. "And there it is. Let's see what the Misery Mire looks like." Passing through, he looked out over the mire, and raised an eyebrow. "Depressing." A massive rain shower covered most of the mire, obscuring its contents from his vision, but what he could see was green sludge covering the ground, with vines, mushrooms and lily pads cluttering it. A blue worm, like a miniature Lanmola, rose from the murk and then sank again. Link grimaced. "Man, I can't see three feet in front of my face… I'll never find Vitreous this way. This place looks lovely."
"You think it LOOKS bad, try living in it for a while." A voice behind Link cracked. Turning, the young warrior found that it was a beetle like creature, hovering a few feet off the ground. "Hey, you didn't transform… neat trick, that. How'd you manage it?"
"Little thing called the Moon Pearl." Link shrugged. "Would you happen to be named Bugoff, by the way?"
"Oho!" The beetle grinned. "You know the Rag? If you've got the Moon Pearl, I suppose it's not that big a leap to guess that you can move back and forth between worlds…"
"You got it." Link nodded. "I'm here to kill Vitreous… and before you tell me he's too tough, you should know. He's the last Eye of Ganon still alive… I've already killed the other four." Bugoff's eyes widened.
"Serious? Sheesh, kid… I don't suppose you can help me get out of here, then?"
"Well…" Link looked up at the storm clouds covering the Mire. "This storm prevents you from flying away, right?"
"Yeah… Ganon has a bunch of magicians working for him, the Wizrobe order." Bugoff explained. "Some spell of theirs has kept it like this over the Mire ever since it was sealed. But if you've got some kind of magic that can counter their weather control…"
"I've got something that's worth a shot." Link explained, drawing out the Ether Medallion. "Let's give this a whirl." A lance of ice energy blasted down through the sky to strike the Medallion, leaving a hole in the storm, and a moment later, the Medallion released clouds of frigid air in all directions. Bugoff ducked and covered as they cut through the storm clouds and left them resembling Swiss cheese. The few remnants disappeared momentarily, and the golden sky of the Dark World was revealed.
"Sheesh, kid… give a guy a little warning next time, huh? Ah well, at least it worked."
"Yeah." Link looked over to the north end of the Mire, where a mass of plant life was massed together to form the shape of a monster's head, with a mouth large enough to enter. "I'm guessing that's the way into Vitreous' actual lair. Go ahead and fly back to the Rag and let them know you're still alive, and that I've got this covered."
"Gotcha." Bugoff nodded. "Good luck, whoever you are!" He buzzed away, and Link crossed the mire to walk into the mass of vegetation. Descending a staircase, he entered a stone tunnel.
"At least it's not all oozy and such down here." The young warrior commented. Turning a corner, he found himself staring down the hall at a line of humanoid figures, clad in green robes and broad-brimmed, pointed straw hats that hit their faces. As one, they raised their arms and fired crescent-shaped blasts of magical energy. Link quickly ducked back around the corner. "Huh… those must be the Wizrobes. Ganon's pet magicians, eh…"
"Surrender or flee, Hero of Time!" One of them called. "There is no way to get past us!"
"Oh, we'll see about that…" Link growled to himself. "I could just Medallion these guys, but that'd use more magic than I'd like… aha, here's something better." Slipping on the Magic Cape, he calmly walked down towards the Wizrobes, who took no notice of him.
"Think he's going to try again?" One of them asked its neighbor.
"Probably." The second Wizrobe snickered. "Looked like your normal sword-slinging oaf, so we'll probably have to blast him a few more times before he gets-ARGH!" He went down, bleeding heavily, along with the three others closest to him as Link unleashed the whirling blade strike. The remaining two stared, stunned, and by the time they had recovered Link was already on them.
"Six Wizrobes down." He grunted, removing the Cape. "Next!" He entered a large room with a multitude of doors, some open, some jammed closed. "Ugh… I hate this kind of setup." Choosing one on the right, he found himself at the south end of a long bridge over a pit. "This looks familiar…" He began running across, and nodded as he heard it start to collapse behind him. "Same trick as in the Palace of Darkness-WHOA!" He dived to the floor barely before a laser beam shot out of the wall right where his head had been. "Okay, maybe not! Damn!" Quickly getting back to his feet, he started off just before the collapse caught him. Several more beams fired, but now that he knew about them, Link was able to duck and keep moving. At the other end of the bridge, he found a large treasure chest. "Oh, good… and I don't have the key yet." He considered trying to smash it, like Tom had done with the one in Blind's lair, but decided against it; he didn't have the smith's massive arm strength. The door on his left opened and then closed behind him once he had gone back into the room with many doors. This time, he took one to the north, then stared at what he found beyond; a field of spikes in the floor with another door far beyond, too far even for his Hookshot to reach. "Bah, flying people only I guess…" Muttering, he took another northern door. This one led him on a circuit of high-railed bridges over other rooms, allowing him to see them without accessing them; in the end, he was returned to the room of many doors.
"Man, Vitreous likes his complicated dungeons…" Link growled, taking a door on the left next. Inside were four brown slugs who immediately began crawling towards him while beginning to spit out bombs. "Right, can't have THIS…" Clearing them out, Link discovered that the only other door in the room was locked. "What is WITH this place?" Turning around AGAIN, he took the last open door in the large room, another one on the left. The floor in the room was filled with square tiles. "Aw, no, not again…" To his dismay, they began launching themselves at him. Once that was fended off, he walked up a staircase to a ground-level floor that was apparently in the cliff behind the Mire.
"It's the Hero! Annihilate him!" Another Wizrobe yelled, and two more joined him in blasting at Link. Diving under the shots, the young warrior pulled out the Fire Rod and returned fire, setting their heads ablaze and then finishing them with the Master Sword. The room was floored with metal grating, and there were several holes large enough for him to drop through; through one, Link could see safe ground to land on, with a large key nearby.
"Well, it's about TIME…" Hopping down, he grabbed the key. The door in the room opened once he did; it was the second door in the large central room that was one-way. "Right, the chest first…" Running the bridge of lasers once more, which had rebuilt itself since he had gone through last, Link opened the chest and pulled out a red wooden cane. "This must be the Cane of Somaria or… what was the other one? Can't remember… I'll just call this one Somaria, then. Hm… the old men never did tell me just what the heck they did…" He waved the Cane in front of him, and blinked as it created a block of some strange, solid matter three feet square. "Well… that's new…" He tapped it with his sword; whatever it was, it was as hard as steel. Maybe even moreso. "Can't see much use in it, though… unless…" He tapped the block with the Cane instead, and with a loud noise, it shattered into four blasts of magic that shot out in an X pattern. "THERE we go. And it takes a lot less magic to use than the Medallions… could be useful if I get surrounded." Placing the Cane of Somaria into his pack with all of his other gear, Link returned to the locked door in the north and opened it. It led to the south side of another huge pit; this one was spanned by a flimsy wood-and-rope bridge. To Link's right was another door which turned out to lead to the north end of the field of spikes. "So Vitreous can have a quick way across without needing to get the key… but not me. Smart." Returning to the wooden bridge, he forced himself to walk across it and sighed in relief when it did not collapse under his weight. The stairs on the other side led down.
"The basement." Link check the map he had received from the Rag. "There's not much down here… and I've been through all the rooms on the upper floors. Which means I'm almost to Vitreous." Unfortunately, the basement turned out to have no light at all; navigating by his lantern allowed Link to stay alive, but it was still difficult. Spiked traps, fireball launchers and more Wizrobes all caused him pain. To make things worse, there were several cases where a button had to be constantly held down or a door would slam shut. Fortunately, the Cane of Somaria turned out to be ideal for THAT little trick. Regardless, it was an exhausted and irritated Hero of Time who finally entered another room that was lit, the last one before Vitreous. "I hate this place… eh?" Something had dropped from the ceiling; it was a blob of slime. With eyes. Blinking, it wriggled towards him, leaving a smoking trail of melted stone behind it. "Acidic? Oh no you don't…" Link sliced it in half, then frowned. "Wait, he dropped from… the… ceiling…" He slowly looked up. Hundreds of the slimes were clinging to the ceiling, looking down at him. And then, as one, they dropped. "OH, COME ON!" Whipping out the Ether Medallion, he froze them all right before they hit him, and they shattered into shards on the floor. "I REALLY hate this place. There goes the last of my magic… good thing I have a green potion." Drinking it, he frowned. "Better take my red too… that still leaves me with two blues for Eyeboy." Doing so, he walked forward.
"About time you got here, hero." Vitreous growled as Link entered. The side of the room he entered by was solid stone, but towards the back green slime covered the floor deeper and deeper, forming a sloping pit filled with the familiar disembodied eyeballs… almost a hundred of them. Link's own eyes narrowed; unlike the acid from the room before, the stuff covering Vitreous' mass looked thick and durable. Doubtless it would be protective against magic at the least.
There goes just blowing them all away with Bombos, he thought. "Vitreous. Last of the Eyes of Ganon. I've been unkind to you, even moreso than the others… taking both your sister and your brother from you…" He grinned angrily. "Why, if you weren't a total scumbag, I might almost feel bad about it."
"How nice of you." Vitreous remarked dryly. "Instead, you plan on sending me to join them. Tempting as that proposition is, I'm afraid I'm going to have to turn it down. Here's a better idea; YOU go and convey my regards to them."
"We seem to have come to terms." Link noted, then pulled out his bow and arrow and began firing. The projectiles shot into the slime and lodged there motionless, the eyes untouched. "Hmph…" He tried the Ice Rod, and it was repelled completely. Looks like I was right… damn.
"Are you quite done?" Vitreous sounded amused. "My turn, then…" An eye rose from the goo and dived at Link, who easily chopped it in half.
"That all you've got?"
"I'm just getting started, lad!" The mass of eyes assured him, five of them coming out, then ten more. They swarmed Link, and he slashed at them, but not fast enough to stop them from slamming him head… well… eye-on. Snarling, Link beat them back with his blade, then screamed as pain shot through his entire body. Through a gap in the eyes, a beam of magic had speared straight into him… a beam emitted from the pupil of a gargantuan eye, ten times as large as the others, that had come halfway out of the slime to fire and was now diving back in again. "What do you think of THAT, hero?"
"So that's what your core is… we all wondered if you had one." Link grinned, unconcerned. "Kill that, and I win, then."
"Easier said than done!" Vitreous laughed, releasing twice as many eyes into the air. Link waited until they were close, then used the Bombos Medallion. Vitreous screamed as the eyes all dropped, flaming wrecks, and Link laughed… until another magic blast hit him.
Damn… this is taking too long. If he keeps nailing me with that move, I'm done for… Link thought wildly. I need some way to get rid of all those eyes, and fast. But he's still keeping most of them in the sludge… how can I hit them there? Maybe… Taking out the Cane of Somaria, he created several blocks. Not sure if this will work, but if I test it, he'll catch on… have to hope I was right about that one time I goofed up on the switch that needed to be held down! Picking up all but one of the blocks, he threw them into the slime, ignoring the slam attacks from the eyes.
"NOW what are you doing?" Vitreous wondered. "Trying to crush me with those things? Ha! Fat chance!" The eyes in the slime easily shifted around the blocks as gravity pulled them down. Link smiled grimly.
Here goes nothing! He brought the Cane down sharply on the remaining block… and simultaneously, ALL the blocks exploded into magic blasts that tore into the eyes of Vitreous surrounding them. Howling, Vitreous pulled his remaining eyes back; a pitifully small number remained.
"You… damn you…"
"So, what now?" Link inquired, drinking a blue potion. "Seems to me that you've got no choice but to bring the real you out to fight… if you try to just blast me, I'll snipe you back with arrows."
"FINE!" Vitreous screamed. "I'll pound you to a pulp!" The giant eyeball flew out and lunged at him. From that point on, the fight was brutally one-sided. When Vitreous tried to smash him, Link would beat him back with the Master Sword; when Vitreous tried to blast him, Link would fire arrows into his pupil. Finally, the core of Vitreous fell to the ground covered in his own blood, and the few eyes remaining in the slime pool exploded violently.
"You're finished, Vitreous." Link stated the obvious, and his enemy groaned.
"I knew… I would be. Knew after… Kholdstare lost… I would have no chance."
"So then why'd you do it?" Link inquired. "Why'd you insist on fighting me if you knew you'd die?"
"Because… Ganon commanded it." Vitreous explained. "And despite everything… he remains… my master."
"Not anymore." Link disagreed, raising the Master Sword. "Your only master now is death, Vitreous… and soon, he'll have mastery of Ganon as well."
"Wait…" Vitreous croaked first. "The mirror… let me see it. You showed it to my family… and friends… before you killed them, right? That's what surviving minions reported… let me see it too. I don't care what it does to me… I just want to see Hyrule one last time before I die…" Link regarded the dying Eye of Ganon with pity, then pulled the Magic Mirror out and held it in front of the pupil… and Vitreous screamed. "GAAAAH! Didn't know it would hurt so much! Now! Please! Finish it, Link!" The Master Sword descended one last time, and he was still, and Link turned away.
"I said it again…" He muttered. "I said I would kill Ganon again. Why do I keep saying that? Agahnim sure… but Ganon… I wouldn't stand a chance. Would I?" He raised his eyes to the ceiling and saw the crystal come down, and enlarge, revealing a teenaged girl in a tunic just like his. "I've rescued all the others, so you must be…"
"Jean." The girl nodded sadly. "Daughter of Agahnim. Link, my father never wanted this… his curiosity and his pride got the better of him, but he never would have intended this to happen."
"I know that… he was a good man, from what I've heard." Link nodded. "But now…"
"Now, he's gone… and a monster inhabits his body." Jean nodded somberly. "I know more than anybody… ever since I saw the man I thought was my father strike me down, and I awakened in this hell as a prisoner of Vitreous. I talked with the other girls through their crystals as they arrived… and discovered what had happened, what they thought my father had done. What Ganon had done. Drawing us to the Dark World, sealing us in these crystals, and giving us to the Eyes… with the seal damaged so much, his victory seemed assured. I'll admit, I despaired…" She smiled. "But Ganon never thought you would get this far… all his Eyes are dead now, thanks to you. And we are saved, but for Princess Zelda… and now she lies within your reach as well."
"She's not at Ganon's Tower any more?" Link's heart leaped.
"The time she could remain there without the reaction between the Tower and her crystal ran out… and Ganon did not succeed in taking the Triforce of Wisdom from her." Jean informed him. "She's at Turtle Rock now… your friends in this world should know where that is."
"Turtle Rock." Link nodded. "Got it."
"Good. Link… thank you again. I have only one more request for you…" Jean closed her eyes. "If it is possible… I would like you to kill my father. It is the only way to free him from Ganon's foul possession now."
"I…" Link thought back to his words to Kholdstare and Vitreous. "I'll… try to think of a way. I can't promise anything… but I'll try."
"Thank you." Jean shrank her crystal, and floated down to him. Link nodded.
"Right… now let's get out of this stinking swamp."
"Wonder how the Rag are doing…" Link muttered as he walked towards the shooting gallery. "Hope Bugoff made it… back… okay…" His voice trailed off as he saw, lying on the ground in front of the Gallery, a huge pile of Blind heads and Vitreous eyes, cheerfully ablaze. "That's… fairly noticeable. What the heck."
"Hey, it's just our way of celebrating, is all." Neosquid informed him, walking out from the other side of the ostentatious bonfire with Handy. "These are all prizes we took from those two mugs over all the years… had 'em taxidermized and everything. But as soon as Bugoff came back to us-that's another one we owe you, by the way-we knew there'd be no point in 'em any more. The Eyes of Ganon are dead."
"So it seems." Link nodded, glancing at Handy, who held a bottle and three mugs. "More of that stuff? Don't you two ever get enough?"
"Nope!" Handy answered cheerfully. "We only had it one night for entertainment anyways. The rest was therapeutic, although I'll admit malpractice may be in order. Anyways, if this isn't an occasion for it, what is?"
"Hmm… maybe after I rescue Zelda. She's still under enemy control, you know." Link shrugged. "But what the hell, we can have a few."
"That's the spirit!" Neosquid poured the drinks and handed them out. "Yeah… that princess is the only one left. Zelda, wasn't it? Like the one in the legend?"
"Yeah…" Link glanced at them. "I forgot, you two were in here long before her time, so you wouldn't have known of her, right?"
"Yeah…" Handy took a drink. "A long time. To be precise… four hundred and fifty years." Link whistled.
"Seriously? So it's not just the bad guys who don't age and die…"
"Nope… another effect of this place. Nobody gets any older than they were when they came… Bomb Boy's been six for eight years now." Neosquid glanced at the bonfire. "We knew those three idiots for a while, you know… Arrghus, Kholdstare and Vitreous, before they fell in with the wrong crowd. Right at first, they were just victims like us… lived up on Spectacle Rock together, and they all fell in the first portal when it opened. We all hung together for a while… then Ganon made them an offer they couldn't refuse, and that was that. For the first century or so, we all just tried to stay out of each others' way… but then we all started changing."
"Changing?" Link raised an eyebrow.
"It's this place… the Dark World." Handy shrugged. "You stay here too long, and one way or another… you'll go crazy. Arrghus became depressed and caught in the past, and Vitreous became paranoid… both to the point where they saw us as enemies. And Kholdstare… no explanation needed there. We figure Blind was already crazy even before he came here… maybe Mothula too. And then there's us." Handy nodded his fingertips.
"You've probably noticed that we're not exactly models of mental stability ourselves. That's one reason we started the Rag; quite literally, we couldn't just stand there and do nothing any more. And that's also one of the reasons we weren't exactly keen to return to Hyrule, by the way… you told us about that Mirror, and to be honest, we're not sure. I mean, where exactly does it draw the line? Like I said, we're kinda nutso too… and we haven't exactly stuck to a strict moral code in sticking it to anybody who serves Ganon. What if the Mirror decided it didn't like us either, even if you do?"
"So I see…" Link murmured. "You said that was one reason… what are the others?"
"…Heh." Neosquid chuckled after a moment. "Don't miss a beat, do you… well, when we first formed the Rag, we kinda made a promise to all of the other guys. Basically, we said that if by some fluke we ever did discover a way out, we vowed not to leave without them… without everybody. And…" He glanced at Handy, who took up the line.
"There was something else. Long before then. Don't laugh, but… well… when it was just the two of us. We, well… promised the same thing, that we'd never leave… without each other. There, you've dragged it out of us. Stupid, isn't it?"
"Not really." Link disagreed. "At least now it makes sense… why you two refused leaving so strongly, even when your lives were in danger. I suppose now I should tell you about me…"
"We were wondering when you'd get to that." Neosquid's eyes narrowed. "But we've got some guesses already. You're not just some ordinary sword-slinger who got lucky, are you? You're not even just a descendant. You're back to finish what you started, aren't you, Hero of Time?"
"…" Link looked north, at Death Mountain. "Yeah, I suppose I am. You have no idea how big a surprise that was to ME… most of my life, I had no idea. Then right before I got zapped here, it all came back to me. And the Princess too… I don't know if she remembers that much, but she's the same as well. And so is Ganon, of course…"
"Then… after you save her, you're not going to just get out of here, are you?" Handy guessed shrewdly. "Saving all the girls isn't enough any more… you're taking a stab at the big man himself."
"…Yeah." Link repeated, remembering his fights with Vitreous and Kholdstare… and Agahnim… once more. "Agahnim's body needs to be freed. I need to kill it… and I need to fight Ganon one more time. Even if it's only a defeat and not a kill, like last time. That's just the way I am… call it destiny or some crap if you believe in that, Idunno. But don't worry… I won't drag you guys into it. If you can point me towards Turtle Rock… that's where Zelda is… I'll send you back to Hyrule right-" He grunted as his two friends jumped up and simultaneously whacked him on the head.
"Didn't you listen to us at all?" Neosquid growled. "We TOLD you, back when we first brought you to RAG HQ, that we weren't leaving until the fight was done. So all the Eyes of Ganon are dead. That's great, and it's more than we ever hoped for by ourselves. But the big man himself is still kicking. At first, taking out the Eyes was the best we thought we could do, even with your help… but if you think you have a serious chance of beating the Forger, even if it's only temporary like you said… then we're in. Period. End of story."
"Big man's still not exactly on his own, you know." Handy reminded him. "He's still got lots of troops left, and some real nasties among them… like the Lionels and the Wizrobe Order. Plus, Turtle Rock's practically on his doorstep… it's on the eastern edge of Death Mountain, and his Tower's on the western edge. So when you go in there, we'll come up too and set up shop in the front hall… hold the door so reinforcements can't get in to hit your back. And then when the time comes, we'll all go knocking on Ganon's door together."
"You guys… thanks." Link smiled. There wasn't really much more that he could say, and so he fell silent, and the three of them watched the fire burn until there was nothing left but ash.