Chapter 41: Wounds That Can't Be Mended

The voices and images were enough to make any man go mad, but the Hermit did not even stammer once as he continued on. Wirlin constantly filled his mind with dark pictures, some with truth, and others congested with lies. He saw and remembered the day the Phantom beat him –the day his arm and his pride were lost. And as quickly as the memory came, it was replaced with something else. He saw himself walking out of the forest, Wirlin defeated, only to see the city falling to the ground, a hoard of Poes swarming through it.

It was difficult to sort out the truth from the falsehood. Both were so painful.

He often used his magic to allow him to travel faster, but Wirlin always caught up to him. This was the spirit's domain, after all. Everywhere Uriel looked, the spirit lurked.

Right in front of him, the Phantom unexpectedly appeared, fabricated in the air. Uriel stopped in place, staring at what he held in his outstretched hand: a severed arm.

To avoid the pain these ruses brought to him, the Hermit often closed his eyes and tried to remember of a time before. He did this here as well.

"Uriel," the Oracle had said, "so after all these years, you've finally come back to the village."

The man nodded. "The war required my service. I could not turn my back on these people."

"But I can see in your eyes that you do not plan to stay forever."

"No," Uriel admitted. "I…I just can't. The memories –they are too painful."

"I understand," the Oracle said. "These emotions that you feel: grief, sadness, guilt –they are what I have had to live with for a thousand years…ever since those rains began…But enough of that! You are here to rectify the world's state –to undo the past." She went over to the table and lifted the chest. "Take this," she said. "The last leg of the journey is about to begin."

Uriel continued walking, refusing to let the voices in his head best him. He strode on for hours and hours, just waiting to see the sparkle of the key. His fingernails dug into the wood of the chest. Doggedly, he refused to let Wirlin take it from him –his one and only weapon against the shape-shifter.

Something glittered in the grass just ahead. The Hermit moved closer, and his vision began to blur. He closed his eyes and fought off Wirlin's trick, stepping towards where he saw the light.

You've lived here for so long, Wirlin said. I embraced you and gave you the right to call this forest home. I pitied you, Uriel. Your defeat brought up memories of my own past. Now you must pity me, Uriel. You must show me the same respect I showed you.

Fumbling on the ground, the Hermit finally clutched something, and opened his eyes. It was a sword, but no ordinary blade: the Four Sword. It all made sense to Uriel now; the sword was the key.

A veil of shadows wrapped around the Hermit, and he was forced to close his eyes once more.

"It was so long ago," Farore said, "and circumstances were so desperate. We started the Great Flood thinking that it would wipe out all of our enemies forever, but later we learned that the stronger the effort, the more they could slip away unnoticed. Ganondorf is an example of our failure to end what we began, but there was more. The Twilight lives, Uriel. Much to our dismay, the Twilight remains in this world. The Great Flood destroyed much, but it did not touch the ends of the earth. A portion lingered."

"I don't understand what this has to do with my quest to end Wirlin," Uriel said.

Farore sighed. "Oh, Uriel, there is so much in this world you people do not understand –could never understand. Wirlin is the Twilight. He is the last of what was once an ever-expanding cloud. It had covered the entire world at one point, and we were forced to take action. Wirlin is the last of the Twilight, a dying spirit that, over the years, has refused to fade away –the last flicker of light from a burning fire that has refused to quench. It has been left to you to lock him away forever –to undo my mistakes. Only then will we be safe from the Twilight's expansion. Only then will we finally be able to rest."

Slowly, the Hermit opened his eyes, and he saw a small boy standing passively before him.

Please, the boy said. Don't do this.

"I have no choice," Uriel said, placing the Four Sword down for a moment. He clutched the chest tightly. "I know you have pitied my loss as you had yours. But sometimes it is best for some creatures to fade away into oblivion. You are one of those creatures."

The Hermit opened the chest and summoned the magic necessary to start the sequence. Like a fuse lit aflame, the reaction began, and soon Farore's spell took into effect.

The world itself seemed to smudge into a colorful rainbow, everything turning surreal. The trees bent low to the ground as if melting, and the grass was ripped from the earth in a colorful haze. Green, red, blue, and purple: everything was drenched in this multicolored smog. Like a swirl of paints, everything melded together. It spun through the air, all of it sucking away into Uriel's chest, leaving behind only what was real and true.

Uriel's eyes remained closed and he did not move, holding the chest in the air. But he could almost picture the boy in front of him, his body stretching and refracting like bended light, spiraling in the chest.

After what seemed an eternity, the Hermit opened his eyes again to see a forest that was not so dark, and not so grey. Quickly he closed the chest, picked up the Four Sword, and shoved it through the slit on top. The power of the blade, fused with the magic of the chest, would keep the last fragment of the Twilight locked inside forever.

"It is over," Uriel said, breathing loudly, gripping the handle to the blade he had once created. "It is over."

Gripping the chest with his one and only hand, the Hermit kicked the ground and rocketed over the trees. Without Wirlin to constrict his movement in the forest, Uriel would make it back to the town within an hour.

Holding the chest tightly, the Hermit gathered the last of his energy, flying off into the day, memories of Wirlin's pleas still fresh in his mind.