A Link to the Past
Chapter Thirteen: The Old Lord's Castle
It was a restless night of tossing and turning, with Link unable to get comfortable enough for any real sleep, and his brief dreams filled with images of Agahnim killing his uncle over and over again. Before he knew it, the young man was sitting up, feeling some stiffness in his back while looking over at the orange light of sunrise coming in through the thick cloud cover across the sky, and yes… it was still raining. The raging storm from last night had weakened into a light sprinkle that barely disturbed the flowing river underneath the bridge, so Link took this as a good time to come out of hiding and continue on with the challenge of wisdom, and hopefully the soreness in his back and sides would work itself out by the time he reached the old Lord's castle.
Looking up and down the road in both directions before pulling himself back up onto the bridge, the young man saw that the guards off in the distance were just now beginning to move away from their check points, so if he hurried, then maybe Link could reach the old estate before he was forced to start avoiding the roads. Moving quickly across the stone bridge, and rubbing the lingering sleep dust from his eyes while stepping back onto the dirt, it was now only a short distance to the gate and fence that would hopefully keep anyone from spotting him until the challenge was finished… whatever it was this time. The young man doubted that it would be the same as getting the glove, but… but before he did anything else, he needed to find something to eat.
Managing to reach the gate and push it open on rusty hinges that squeaked something horrible, Link got through and pushed it shut again, now waiting quietly against the gate while the first guard patrol passed by. He sighed with relief when the armored men continued on their way without stopping, and now the young man was able to turn around and look at what lay ahead. The old stone pathways of this estate were cracked and overgrown from years of neglect, leading the way through areas of tall grass and large trees whose untended branches hung so low that a few of them touched the ground. However, many of these trees were the kind that grew fruit, providing Link with an easy way to solve his hunger problem.
Even the few branches that he needed to cut down in order to keep moving toward the old Lord's castle were covered in apples, not the largest or best looking mind you, but they sure tasted good on an empty stomach. Who knows, maybe some new trees would grow from the cores he left on the ground, but Link's thoughts on this were stopped after ducking down to pass through the tree line, and then looking up to get his first real look at what had once been the old Lord's castle. The roof, towers, and upper parts of the walls had long ago crumbled down into piles of debris, leaving only parts of the base and a few intact stone barriers standing, and… and this place looked more like the entrance to a hedge maze than a castle… you know… if the hedges were stone and dirt instead.
"Why are places like this just left here?" He asked aloud, circling around to what he guessed was once the front door. "How does nobody do something about it?"
The obvious answer was that everyone else who happened to pass by the ruined castle, and even fewer who ventured into the estate, probably all thought the very same thing only to forget by the time they got home. Honestly, just like the ruins at the dunes, most people probably didn't even know it existed, and this was the first time that Link had been there while his home was actually really close by. Maybe once this whole thing with Agahnim was sorted out and everything in Hyrule was safe again Princess Zelda would be able to do something about such places, because honestly if the old Lord's castle was anything like the dunes, then anyone who wandered inside could easily be killed.
So far nothing jumped out at him as he passed through what was left of the doorway, moving down a short set of stairs to where large pieces of the tile floor were still intact while others were cracked or missing. The remaining walls and the raised parts of the ground formed something that resembled hallways, but at least there was plenty of light from the open sky, and no doors left to trap him if a quick escape was needed. Only a few of the castle's other features remained; a broken frame with rotten canvas that might have once held a family portrait above the mostly intact fireplace, a bookshelf in a side room near a broken chair that was probably a sitting room, and the strangest looking statue that Link had ever seen.
It was a few feet taller than him, twice as stocky, and sort of shaped like a warrior that was holding a shield and a lance straight up, all made from a single piece of stone by the looks of it, and… surprisingly intact. It was exposed to the elements like everything else inside the castle, but none of the elaborate carvings or features had been worn down in the slightest as if this statue were brand new. Other than that, there was nothing else noteworthy in the place, or at least that the young man could see as his exploration continued to include looking up into the fireplace to see that it only went up a few feet before the old chimney broke off, now there was just more of the same no matter how far the young man walked into the ruins.
The maze of stone walls and raised earth created the illusion of several rooms in different directions, some with more walls or intact floor than others, but other than that it was all just the same, and… and that was odd, there was another one of those statues over in the corner of this next room… maybe a kitchen judging from the additional fireplace and a broken object laying nearby that might have been a cauldron? Again, the statue looked like it was brand new, identical in every way to the first one that he saw, but then back to the nothing of room after room until Link finally reached the back of the castle where a small part of the wall was broken out to reveal a long drop into the flowing river below and… not a lot else that could be reached form there.
"I don't get it." The young man said, taking another look around that last part of the room. "What am I supposed to find here?"
Link had expected to find some kind of treasure on display like the glove in the dunes, but aside from those statues… hey, there was another one… there was nothing of value that he could see no matter how many times the young man looked around. He looked along the broken floors for a secret storage compartment, he looked up at the highest parts of the intact walls, and up inside both fireplaces again, but there was just nothing… nothing in this whole ruined place except for those statues and… hey, maybe that was it. Maybe the Knights of Hylia hid this treasure inside of one of these statues. Sure, that made sense, the young man thought as he approached one, maybe there was a hidden compartment or maybe he had to simply knock one over to break it open.
All right, breaking the statue open was harder to do than it looked, since even with the glove's power behind him, Link couldn't get the massive stone object to move even with a running start of kicking and shouldering the thing as hard as he could. So after catching his breath, the young man began to search around the statue for some kind of secret compartment or at least a trigger of some kind to open one, but there was nothing on the back or at the base, nor did the sword or lance move at all when inspected. Even going so far as to climb up onto the thing's back to check around the head, there was just no visible way to open the statue… that is, if there was anything inside in the first place.
"Ugh… this is stupid." He grumbled to himself as he climbed back down onto the broken floor. "If there is something inside the statues, it's not this one, so now I have to go and check out every… single…
Grumbling while walking away, Link's words trailed off when the floor began to vibrate under his feet, and the young man slowly turned around to see that it wasn't the floor itself that was moving, but the statue itself. Vibrating in place as if an earthquake was happening, the brown stone that made up the carved warrior was cracking, breaks in the stone spreading across the whole surface, with pieces falling away to reveal that there was something underneath… a gray colored warrior statue that was identical to the outer covering, but a lot more mobile. The shield and lance remained stationary, but the now glowing yellow eyes tracked him immediately, the whole statue breaking out of its covering as it leapt into the air.
This whole spectacle caught Link so off guard that he just stood there dumbstruck as the massive statue left the floor, flying up and moving slightly forward so that for a moment the carved warrior blocked the sprinkling rain as it came crashing back down. If Link hadn't snapped out of his stupor right then, he would've been crushed flat when the statue slammed down onto the floor, breaking some of the intact tile into pieces that flew in all directions… before jumping up and repeating the whole horrible process. The young man had only just finished rolling out of the way to avoid the first crushing attack by the time the second one started, and he was just barely to avoid the statue when it landed, getting smacked in the back of the legs and neck by broken tile pieces while scrambling for safety.
If there was a hidden treasure in this place, there was no way for him to find it with this statue chasing after him, crashing to the floor just behind him with every leap, so Link turned onto the main hallway and ran for the front door of the old castle. What the young man needed was to get out into the open so that he could lose his pursuer long enough to think of a plan for defeating the carved warrior, since this probably would cause him to get the treasure, and now… suddenly his thoughts came to a screeching halt when the front doorway came into sight, but using it was no longer an option.
Now standing there like a newly formed wall were half a dozen more of those statues, all grey having shed their outer stone covering, and leaping up and down in place as if waiting for him to try getting past him… all the while the one behind him was closing in.