"What?!" The two voices that rang out through the throne room nearly deafened every pair of ears in a three-mile radius, including Midna's even when she was one of the people to say it. Her shout was filled with disbelief and utter shock-ridden glee, but Zant's was riddled with hatred and anger.
His eyes were burning a bloody red into Midna's as he stepped forward. "My Lord, are you certain this is a wise decision?" She wasn't surprised in the least to see him so flustered. He did just lose the keys to the kingdom, after all.
King Naito beamed proudly and rested his hands on Midna's shoulders. "I have never been more certain," he said. She stared into his loving orange eyes as her cheeks grew warm.
"My Liege," Zant babbled on, "You yourself said that Midna," he must have taken special care not to spit her name out, "is irresponsible and disrespectful. Surely, that alone is enough to convince you that she is unworthy of the throne. There is also the technicality that states she only truly comes into power by wedding—"
"Be still!" the King commanded, and Midna instinctively flinched under his tone. "Your King speaks. What you say is true, Zant. Midna is irresponsible and disrespectful…" he took a deep pause and made a sideways glance at Zant, "to those who deserve nothing more from her."
"The law indeed states that she must marry in order to properly gain the throne," Queen Yoake interjected. "Given the circumstances, we have spoken with the Council and nearly all have agreed to make an exception this one time. Midna may marry if she chooses, but it will not impede her ascendancy." Both King and Queen turned to glare at Zant with vengeance in their eyes.
Queen Yoake's hair bristled with fury and her voice grew cold as she said, "Also, since you yourself bring up the notion of responsibility…"
Queen Yoake swiftly snapped her fingers, and two armored guards approached. "Zant, your crime one week ago has not gone unnoticed. Miss Burak has been mourning for the loss of her child," she pointed straight into Zant's chest, "whom you are responsible for murdering."
Zant shuddered at her deadly accusation, much to Midna's extreme pleasure. "She should not have put the child above the Royal House; it was simply a way for her to learn her place. I did not intend to harm her child—"
"You dare lie to your King and Queen, inside their own throne room!" Queen Yoake bellowed, more stating than questioning. The two guards grabbed Zant roughly by his arms and lifted him up slightly. The stare the Queen gave him was enough to reduce him to ashes if she so desired.
"P-please! I m-meant no offense! Spare me, please!"
What a pathetic excuse for a man, much less a potential candidate for the crown, Midna thought.
King Naito spun on his heel to face Zant, his gaze seemingly somewhere behind the coward. "In respect towards your ten years of service, the Queen and I will indeed be merciful."
The Twilight Princess' eyes were the size of the Sols. They were going to show him mercy? After what he did to Burak and her daughter?! Midna was about to throttle Zant herself if her father had not continued speaking.
"It is decided, then, that your punishment will be to live in exile, far out in the Nanimo. You have until tonight to gather your belongings and leave." He said the final word with such firmness Midna thought he was going to toss Zant out himself if the guards did not.
Kicking and screaming like a spoiled child, Zant was carried out of the throne room, all other witnesses following, and his cries of anger faded away until there was nothing but silence. King Naito stood tall and with regal solemnity until he turned to face his daughter. His gaze softened slightly but lost none of its seriousness.
"All that I have said is true, daughter. You are stubborn, reckless, and irresponsible." Midna's shoulders sagged slightly at the facts. "You must learn to be a careful, considering, and, above all, level-headed Queen if you are to succeed in your reign."
Midna lifted an eyebrow at the way he said 'level-headed' but remained silent. She was not about to give up her right to the throne because of a few choice words. He turned from her and stepped up to the seat of the throne, placing himself down with majestic grace.
"Your mother and I have decided how best to proceed," he said, sparing a glance to Queen Yoake, though the very slight blush on his cheeks pretty much said that whatever they were planning was her idea.
Said Queen turned to Midna and held her shoulders as only a mother, her mother, could, and escorted her to sit on the steps of the throne. "What do you recall of your visit to the Light Realm?"
Midna's brow furrowed as she stared blankly into her mother's eyes. What did the Light Realm have to do with this? Midna pondered. I already said I wasn't going to invade the Light Realm. Hell, I didn't intend to visit there ever, especially after last time.
"Princess Midna, your Queen has asked you a question," her mother said softly.
She shook herself out of her thoughts and answered, "I was there for around thirty seconds. I stepped onto the platform, which looked like it was made of solid light. The feeling of my skin turning on fire was the first thing I felt, and when I turned to face the sun," she took a deep breath. That event was seven years ago, but she doubted she could ever forget it. "My eyes felt like they were going to explode, and I tried to shield them, but any movement just made me hurt more, like I was…" she trailed off, unable to actually put her feelings into audible words.
"Like you were dying," Yoake finished. Midna nodded and felt her stomach churn at the memory. "Such is the way of the Twili. We have grown so accustomed to our ceaseless Twilight that any contact with pure light is near fatal unless you are hidden in shadow." She held her daughter's hands and whispered a slight prayer that Midna couldn't understand.
She felt woozy then, as if the whole world was spinning, but her mother's firm hands kept her stable. Her skin, normally chalk white like everyone else, turned a creamy pale blue, and several teal-colored patterns of Twili scripture sizzled painlessly into her forearms, over her black shadow silk sleeves. Midna could only stare blankly at her relatively new appearance. As far as she could tell, the only things changed were her skin color and new scriptures on her arms.
"I have cast a spell of protection on you, dearest daughter," Queen Yoake said. "No longer will you be harmed by the light of Hyrule."
"Hyrule? I don't understand. Why did you cast this spell?"
King Naito interjected by clearing his throat and said, "You must speak with the King and Queen of Hyrule and request a special item that only they possess."
"Which is?"
King Naito simply answered, "The Fused Shadow."
The trees and rock walls all moved past me, or did I move past them? I was too disoriented from blood loss and pain to notice anything besides the scenery and Mayor Bo's jiggly chin. Good Goddesses, that thing jiggled with every frantic step he took!
I took a mental step back from my surroundings to process the fact that I was now explicitly saying and thinking Goddess-related idioms instead of my usual arrangement of 'Good Lord!' and the occasional 'God dammit!', but I guess meeting actual deities does that to you.
By the time I focused back on reality, or whatever my insanity decided this was, I was being lowered into a pool of comfortably warm water. The instant my head touched the liquid, my senses blasted back into action and bombarded me with a very bright light somewhere above me, but it was too close and too white to be the sun.
That could only mean…
I lurched up so suddenly that I couldn't stop when I saw Ilia's worried face peering at me. I slammed my head full-force into hers and back down I went, head throbbing and teeth grinding. Once more, the instant my skull hit the water, the pain ceased and was replaced by more bombarding light.
"You seem to have a habit of getting yourself injured, lad," a calm voice said somewhere to my left. I sat up, slowly this time, to find Mayor Bo with his arms crossed, Ilia holding a welt on her forehead, and a man who seemed familiar…
"Are you Rusl?" I asked, since he looked like the guy I locked blades with when I first arrived. He nodded and I smirked inwardly at my genius. I set about standing up, only to wince as my side burned uncomfortably.
I looked down to find that my shirt-dress was gone and so were my bandages, revealing a very ugly puncture hole in my skin. It was rimmed with purple and angry red, with bits of tiny crusty things clinging to the edge of the wound. I began to question it but remembered what I did with the ants and their mandibles.
I felt a hand press into my shoulder and looked up to see Mayor Bo standing over me. He gently lowered me into the water until my wound was under the surface. The buzzing at my side weaned away slowly, and I watched in amazement as the wound closed itself and regained its normal coloring, with only a small circle of pale scar tissue left to let anyone know I got stabbed at all.
On the other hand, the blood stains on my skin and pants would probably be a dead giveaway.
Heh, dead giveaway. Morbid humor.
"I wish I had some of this stuff back home…" I muttered, feeling the scars of my past as if I got them yesterday. The healing water would definitely have been helpful back in 1998…
I felt a light hand on my shoulder and saw that Ilia was using me for support as she dunked her head into the water. When she emerged, the welt on her head was gone, but she seemed dizzy, probably from the same sensory overload I suffered twice.
Mayor Bo cleared his throat and said, "This is Ordon Spring, home of the Light Spirit Ordona. We didn't bring you here at first because the healing abilities of the spring have some… side effects, such as dizziness and overpowered senses. We only use the spring's natural healing for emergencies." He gestured behind me and I turned to see several oval-shaped stones with ancient patterns carved into the surface. The stones sat on a small waterfall cliff and seemed to radiate light from the crevices of their patterns.
I caught a glint of something far above and past the stones, and when I looked, I saw a faint purplish blue orb. Before I could examine it further, it vanished beneath the canopy.
I'm going to have to take a hike soon…
I heard footsteps moving away from me, but when I turned to face the exit to the spring, I was already alone. I still had not had the chance to talk to Rusl, which just annoyed me even more.
"Calm yourself, Zach," said a wispy voice. It sounded as though the wind was whispering to me, but it seemed to come from the stones. I faced the waterfall cliff and was nearly nose-to-nose with a giant ethereal goat made of light. As is natural for someone confronted by an otherworldly spirit, I did what most sensible people would do in that situation.
I smacked it on the nose and scampered away to the gate, but it was locked, trapping me with a spirit I probably just pissed off. I turned back to the spirit to find it wagging its head in shock. I was scared out of my mind of what the spirit goat would do to me, but even that didn't stop me from taking in its appearance.
It looked like a massive goat, with antlers of solid gold that curved up from two points on its head to meet above in a sort of crown-like arrangement. Within the circle inside the antlers was an orb of shining white light rippling with golden power. Along its back and beaver-like tail were golden patterns that swirled and danced in circular designs along its surface, never losing their luster even in the shade. Instead of hooves as I would expect of a goat, its forelimbs ended in two claw-like digits, while its back limbs simply ended.
Ordona's blank white eyes stared into mine, and it was all I could do not to squirm under its gaze. The Light Spirit trotted (on air) towards me and stopped at the border between its springwater and dry land. It sniffed heavily at me and seemed to shudder at my scent. At first, I thought it found me pungent or repulsive, since I did come from another world full of different smells.
I was half-right.
In the middle of its shudders, Ordona reared its head back and took a deep breath through its mouth. Before I could get a word in, its head lurched forward and sent a stream of light and water blasting into my face. If my hair was longer, I'm sure it would have been blown back like some cartoon.
With narrowed eyes and as straight a face as I could manage, I growled out, "Bless you."
Ordona tilted its head inquisitively and nudged my forehead with its snout. It turned to go back to its spring but stopped and looked at me. I sighed and climbed to my feet as it resumed its trot back to the spring.
"Lady Din warned me that you were difficult," said the goat-spirit, "though I knew not how much."
"Oh, thank you so much for that bit of character description," I muttered, none too pleased that I was labeled as 'difficult'.
Ordona floated onto the waterfall cliff and turned to me, its face unreadable, though that was probably because I couldn't decipher a goat's face. For all I knew, Ordona was thinking about hay.
After a few minutes of staring at each other, Ordona held up one of its clawed limbs. In its clutches was a small metallic object, barely the size of my hand. It took me a few moments to realize that Ordona was holding my iPhone, with accompanying headphones. With a raised eyebrow, I carefully took the phone from Ordona and pressed its home button. The phone lit up and I saw my usual screen image, the Green Ranger, but when I unlocked the phone and accessed the main screen, I saw that I had only ten apps compared to my previous thirty-five. Gone were all the apps requiring use of the Internet, which made sense seeing as there was no Internet in Hyrule. All that remained were Music, Videos, Calculator, Flashlight, Clock, Photos, Camera, Notes, Settings, and Calendar.
"What's this doing here?" I asked the spirit. "It made no sense to have my phone with me in Hyrule, which is why I left it behind in the first place."
"You are a foolish one," Ordona replied. "Did you not consider what you would do between battles? Boredom can kill a warrior just as surely as a spear or sword."
"Good point and I did think of that, but there's the issue of its power supply. Sure, it'd be good for a few hours at the most, but once that battery dies, I'll be left with a useless hunk of plastic."
"I have altered the device to draw energy from the Light Springs across Hyrule. As long as at least one Light Spring has power, your 'phone' will maintain its battery indefinitely."
"If you can do all that with just this little piece of plastic, why can't the Goddesses just take care of the main threat?"
"They are bound by ancient laws and are forbidden from directly interfering in the course of history. The Holy Goddesses have already breeched those laws by contacting you."
I sat there for a minute, dumbfounded by what Ordona said. Of course, I lacked the foresight to think about other reasons I was given my phone. "They defied their laws to give me a fighting chance?" I asked, and Ordona nodded. "Why?"
"Call it an act of faith. Something you are sorely lacking."
I stared blankly into Ordona's equally blank eyes before I muttered, "Faith is an illusion."
The Light Spirit tilted its head. "Are you certain?" it asked.