Hi! It's been awhile. It's been a very busy time in my life with a lot of different writing projects going on currently such as that new fanfiction I wrote as well as my book. Well on top of that I'm doing a lot of school work. If there seems to be a weird shift in writing style it's probably just because the first half was written months ago and I honestly could not be bothered to do more than typo edits.
Hopefully it's still enjoyable!
(P.S. Don't expect frequent updates, I have a lot going on, SAT's, AP tests, research papers, precalc work, band, it's a lot but I write this when I'm really missing my favorite fanfiction that is near and dear to my heart.)
Link dropped his arm and turned back to me, "Stay close." he said. I nodded gingerly, unfolding my arms from my chest, feeling slow breaths run through my lungs.
We started down the pathway, plunking onto the staggered pieces of metal drilled into the ground, never looking back at the empty doorway, the only way out now. The pool of lava popped and boiled, with each sudden burst of a geyser there would be a heat wave that surged through the room.
My chest was tight looking at it all, questioning if I really belonged in a place like this, with a guy like that right in front of me. "Link?" I said softly. He glanced back, an intense orange tinting his blue eyes, not responding, waiting. I stopped walking for a moment, "I really…" tears welled up in my eyes, "I want to go home."
There was a look of melancholy on his face, "We all do."
I shook my head, "Sorry, I forgot what I was going to ask."
He nodded and started moving again, closer to the geysers, closer to the jump. I wiped my eyes and jogged back up behind him, slowing to a halt as he did right in front of a break in the rock. Below I could hear a bubbling grow, fuming furiously until an awful blast erupted and shot a column of lava out in front of us.
My hands shot up, tensing as they moved, numbing. They froze there for a moment before a red light enveloped our view, like a window keeping out the bugs of night. Link's jaw fell and his eyebrows knitted themselves together as lava spit and hissed against the red sheen. He reached out to stroke it, but by the time his fingertips were about to touch, the lava fell and the shield dissipated.
I dropped my quivering hands, "Sorry."
"No, no," Link relaxed his composure, "it's okay."
"Maybe I'm not cut out for this." My shoulders drooped and I turned my back to the bubbling lava, to the boy behind me.
His hand slid over my sleeve and he tugged me back to him, his eyes tender on my tears, "I thought the same thing just over a week ago. But then I realized if I didn't keep fighting I'd never get home."
I held it there, like a painter grasping at their subject. For the first time he gave me a genuine smile and my lips mimicked him involuntarily, but it was weaker and softer. The geyser gushed again, throwing heat around us before it fell again and I walked forward.
The jump was terrifying. I practically ran into Link on the other side and although I flinched at the near impact, he merely watched me stumble without a twitch of a muscle.
We weaved through a metal scaffold, dodging jets of scorching lava and a few too many fireballs that landed too close for comfort. When we found a ladder we came to an odd area, there was a stone pathway connected to the scaffold, however, the ceiling was crowded with torch slugs, as Link called them. The moment we walked too close, one dropped from the ceiling and I reeled back in disgust.
Link unsheathed his sword and poked the tip into its burning skin, then turned to me, "You should kill it."
"Me?" my eyebrows wove themselves together as I kept pulling as far away as possible.
"It barely even attacks, just, shoot at it or something." Link gestured down at the slug, the fire enveloping its back diminishing.
I sucked in a breath, raising up my arms and hands to frame the slimy creature. They tensed, tightening each muscle, pleading for my blood to flow out of me, glistening, but nothing ever went numb and when I released the pressure only a small red static filled the air.
Link raised an eyebrow at me, "You can do it, I know you know how." he sheathed his sword and crossed his arms.
My heart beat quick as I pulled my hands back towards my chest, sighing before setting back up, one palm out this time. I imagined the tension flowing like a current, one side of my body to the other, following the blood vessels through my heart. The numb sensation came back, over taking my sense of tension until I pushed through it, throwing it all out. A shutter of green light struck into the ground.
The slug imploded, bits of slimy flesh landing just at my feet or hitting the wall. In a moment each bit shriveled and dried up, becoming a pile of sand in seconds. I felt guilty somehow, disgusted with myself and the power I knew how to use. Link smirked to himself and I caught his eyes without ever drawing them to mine. It wasn't hard to imagine a horror from my hands, a horror that told me I could just as easily strike him through the heart as I did the slug.
To be capable of killing something sat at the front of my mind, poking at my nerves and redirecting my thoughts countless times. It took a few minutes, but Link finally got me to speak, noticing my silence while we trudged on.
"They don't have brains like us." he said.
I took my eyes off the stone to glare at him, "What?"
"The slugs, they're just like bugs." he elbowed me, "Don't be bothered by it."
He failed to convince me, but I got my voice back to respond to his small inquiries and commands. I gladly followed his demand for me to sit down while he tried to figure out a switch issue. I began fiddling with a pouch of water we'd been tossing to each other for much of the off time while we searched around for doors and keys. So far, he took on most of the enemies, however, I had tried and missed a few slugs.
When Link drifted off behind a corner, a small figure jumped from my shadow. I tried to retreat but my back hit a wall and I froze there in the gaze of her one beading eye. She snarled, revealing a small fang at the edge of her smile.
"Let's make a deal, okay?" Midna glided ever so closer.
I nodded.
She relaxed back, as if lounging on an invisible chair, "You tell Link the solution to this puzzle if you're so familiar with everything here. Then maybe I'll believe you."
The whole while he'd been trying to figure things out, I debated telling him what to do because it didn't take long for me to remember. But I hadn't said anything, afraid I would affect something if I did. As Link turned the corner again, beads of sweat running down the back of his neck, I found it even harder to organize the words.
Link immediately noticed Midna and took a step back. "What's going on?" he narrowed his eyes at her, relieving me of any blame. I took a deep breath.
"Planning a truce," she giggled, "As long as Maizy agrees to tell you the solution to this puzzle."
The brief relief left as quickly as it came, his eyes were on me. "Uh," I stumbled over the thoughts rushing through my mind, but managed to grab one, "The switch you keep stepping on triggers the jet to shut off, you just aren't fast enough."
A flash of recognition filled his eyes and dissipated. Midna didn't sneer or remark, she looked back at me, straight-faced and dignified.
Link glanced at the switch, then back to me, "Why would they build it like that?"
I shrugged, "That's just how it is, how I remember it at least."
"In that case," he pondered, "Go over to the jet and I'll meet you on the other side."
Midna slid back into Link's shadow and we split. I came to the corner, staring out into the stream of lava whose heat evaporated the the sweat on my arms. Back where Link was watching for me to get there, I could see Midna back out, talking to him as he fitted his iron boots onto his feet and handed his regular boots over to her.
She went back and Link stepped onto the switch, the moment it clicked he jumped, iron boots phasing into brown as he immediately took to sprinting towards me. The jet shut off. I looked hesitantly at the the rock, red and hot and still slick with lava. Before I could get myself to go, Link was pushing against my back, forcing me to take a step forward. Inside of the pipe, where the lava was being ejected from, I could hear a gurgling noise.
Our feet tangled over themselves, Link's knocking into mine, but still rushing along while I tripped over his back foot still lodged in my path. My balance tipped, body plunging lower and lower, but my hands didn't go to catch myself. I let my foot anchor me, but my knee fell into the fiery stone below, pain surging through my nerves. Although I launched back up a second afterward, I narrowly made it past the restart of the jet and collided with the ground when I got through.
I had my knee in a death grip under my hands. Link kneeled down next to me and pried my fingers away from the burn, patting around him for the water only to realize it was strapped around my chest. He grabbed it from around my neck and unscrewed the lid, pouring all of it out over the burn. The skin was scaly and shiny underneath all the dirt and rocks.
"There's no blood." Link searched his pouch and pulled out a wad of bandages, "I doubt you'll heal like that cut you got. So, might as well cover it up for now."
I leaned back onto my palms, breathing heavily into the thick humid air. "Is it bad?"
He flattened out my leg and started wrapping around the burn site, "It'll be fine, I'm sure." When it was all tied off he went looking again through his pouch before closing it. "If you feel like it's infected or hurts too much, I have a potion that should help but I don't want to waste it."
My leg pulsated waves of pain, but I shook my head and told him it was fine. He helped me up to my unsteady feet and didn't mind my leaning on him until we got to the end of the path to the back gate of the mine. We looked back at the broken bridge that had made us go along this way, cursing it in our minds, and turning forward to the next room just ahead.
Link figured his way around a giant lever and we passed through into the crater of the volcano, the open sky several hundred feet above us. The heat was combated by a draft, but it wasn't much better than the room before. Below our feet was a mixed path of metal plates and metal grates. They weren't thin enough that my boot could slip through, but it was stressful hearing the the clank of the grate shake in under our weight.
When we came to a locked door, we backtracked until we came across a turn we'd neglected, down it being a small area with a chest and five bulblins.
Link's gaze fixed on me, "Would you rather stay here or…" his irises dug into my soul, searching.
"Uh…" I caught their patrols, back and forth, their eyes reflecting the light below, backs slumped forward. They were just giant slugs, huge, giant slugs without brains...if I could only convince myself of that. "Do you think I'd get hurt?"
"Mm…" he shrugged, "Stay close behind me and you should be fine. There's a good many of them but it's nothing I couldn't take on myself."
"I'll go then."
My nerves hit the climb, grappling slowly upward, waiting to reach freefall. I hugged Link's backside like we were riding again, watching his hat swing, his fist clenched over his hilt. The bulblins growled the moment they caught sight of him, raising their weapons and charging towards him in a hoard.
A smooth, metallic ring echoed as Link unsheathed his sword and ran without warning into their swarm. Panicking, I chased after him, only to be swung at by a bulblin. My muscles tensed, numbing, a pulse shooting through my bloodstream like an electric current and manifesting in the air as a flash of red. The club in the monster's hand hit the shield hard and I felt it crack like it was my own skin.
I clung to the shield, the numb traveling further up my arms and into my chest, but before the cracks could seal themselves back up, the bulblin went back in, putting all of its weight into the next swing, utterly shattering the shield and hitting me hard in the side. I lost my balance, tumbling down into the grate which gave way under me, bending and snapping.
Link turned on his foot, all too late. If I had just cried out the first time, he could've taken this one bulblin out before this happened, but all of a sudden my hands were shooting out and gripping onto the grate as I dangled over open lava. "Oh my god! OH MY GOD!"
He stabbed through the last bulblin, its body tumbling into the growing hole and down into the pit below. By the time he got to me, I was several feet below him and the grate was ripping off. Before he sunk the grate around the hole, he ran to the platform the chest was situated on. "Midna!"
"HOLY CRAP HURRY UP!"
My fingers were sweaty and growing tired. I watched helplessly as Midna jumped out and listened to Link yell her orders I could barely comprehend. Before I could give up, the limp ponytail on the back of her head grew into a massive fist that spiraled towards me. Its fingers wrapped around my torso, squeezing the air out of my lungs while I was wrenched back up to the platform and released onto steady ground.
Legs wobbling, I fell to my hands and knees and breathed heavily into the sturdy metal floor.
"You okay?"
"Hell no!"
Link squatted down to my level and patted my back firmly. In a fit, I sat up and threw his hand off my back. "Get me out of here! I can't freaking do this! God!"
"Calm down," he reached out to rub my bruised side, however, I quickly realized it didn't hurt anymore and shrugged him off again. "It's just a messy start, it'll get easier…" The cool nature of his voice was strained, he was visibly damp from sweat and panting from the energy it took to take all of the bulblin down, all now piles of dust filtered through the grate.
I slowed my breathing down, then swore one more time. "Why haven't I woken up?!"
"This isn't a dream." Midna slid into my side view, but I didn't have the energy to dismiss her. "You're going to face a threat no matter what, so get yourself up already and deal with this. Even if you aren't with us, those Vinderendetta can sense each other. During the attack...they just kept coming…"
There was a look of sympathy in her one eye. I held onto it.
"Fine, but I'm not fighting anything else near lava." I sighed, trying to cast away the pressure in my head, but the tears came anyway.
Link fished out the key from the chest and we gingerly made our way back to the door. I got through the next room haphazardly, lead along like a dog in training by him. The chamber after that was cool and we almost stopped there for the day if it wasn't for my memory crashing around my skull in a tired haze.
"One of the elders is in the next room, we should make it over there first."
The loudest groan I had ever heard came out of his lips.
There was water below and a switch on the other side of a wall made of a metal grate, broken through at the bottom. My skin tingled and my hair stood up with the electricity in the air. This was compromised as Link and I dove into the water, me grabbing him as he sunk lower in his iron boots. I held onto his torso, but his hand was firmly around my waist, leaving me flustered.
The last time someone held me like that it didn't mean anything, we were just in a hype circle before competition and even now I knew it meant nothing but just to get me across. Still, I couldn't help but flinch every time he slightly adjusted his hold or looked at me. He was tangible, not the kind of unreachable thing on the other side of a screen, of a picture.
I was hurtled out of my head the moment his foot connect with the switch and a current connected with his boots. We were flipped upside down and the arm around me became two. In a flicker of a second, I was pressed against him, but he wasted no time getting to right side up. When I looked down I recognized the blue surface from the game, pulsing with static.
Link released me and I met the ground thankfully, drawing away from him into my own sphere. As he looked away towards the door, I felt the spot on my side tenderly, shaking my head.
Through the door, a small hot chamber exposed a stout Goron leaning heavily on his cane. His feet were firmly planted in an arena similar to the one at the entrance to the mines, behind him a statue with a red gem outlining his figure. There was a second level, but all of the furniture was spread around, a table here, a bed there, only on the lower floor.
The Goron's eyes lit up as we approached and stopped in front of him, towering over the old man's rocky body. "Ah…" he sang, "I heard you'd be coming." His eyes were narrow pools of blue, his age marked by wrinkles around them and a long stone beard that hang from his lower lip.
"My name's Link." Link stuck his hand out for the elder to shake which the Goron took feebly.
"They call me Gor Amoto. You must be here for the key shard." he shuffled towards a small ornate chest behind him, "It's in this box. Please, act quickly."
"About that…"
Link negotiated staying the night there which we ended up doing on the upper level.
I looked down at the wooden floor solemnly, "Do you have anything to sleep on?"
He was fishing food out of his pouch but stopped to make eye contact with me, "My bed roll doesn't fit in my pouch."
"Oh but a giant heavy ball does?" I mumbled to myself as he went back to arranging three meals in front of him. Three…
"How old are you?"
"Hm?" My mind barely registered what he'd asked but after a moment I realized, "Oh! Fifteen. I'll be sixteen in a month."
Link smiled, offering me a wooden plate of food, "I turned seventeen two months ago."
"I know," I sat down next to him, accepting the plate hesitantly, staring blankly at the strange assortment of things on it, the only thing recognizable being a small piece of bread.
"Oh right...what do you not know then?" he asked, stuffing his face immediately after speaking.
"Uh…" I frowned.
Midna slid out of Link's shadow, reaching for a plate and plopping herself across from me. "Mmm?"
With an audience, I stuttered even more, anxiously grappling for a question until one popped into my head. "What was your childhood like?"
He shook his head, "Not talking about that."
I went back to the drawing board and settled on the first thing that came to mind, "What do you like to do?"
"Art," he said simply, but it seemed to excite him because he put down his dinner and began picking through his pouch until he had a journal in his hand and tossed it to me. "You can look through that if you want. It's just full of sketches."
I turned over the cover and was met with a detailed drawing of Epona. Flipping further I found one of Ilia and then they finally began turning into sketches the moment Midna's face bore out from the page. Although they were just swift drawings, they were still highly complex. "These are amazing."
"I can do them pretty quickly." he stuffed another piece in his mouth, still talking, "Here, I'll do one of you."
"Oh no, that's okay!" I pleaded, my cheeks turning pink.
Midna giggled, her one fang hissing at me from her mouth. Link reached back for the journal, taking out a pencil and then looking up at me, a smile creeping up his face as he noticed my rosey cheeks, "Aw, it's just a sketch."
I ignored his gaze and tried to start eating, but every time I glanced his way we would make eye contact and he would just start laughing. It was a social form of torture, I was sure, I couldn't get him to look away, it was the sketchbook or me. He wasn't done by the time I finished eating and he wouldn't let me see it.
"This can't be a sketch at this rate." I marveled.
"Mhm," he muttered, "Exactly."
Midna was starting to doze off, curled up on the floor with her eye closed. Nonetheless, she spoke, "He did the same thing to me."
"You don't have to sit there silently you know." Link made a long stroke, smirking. "What else do you want to know?"
"The Vinderendetta."
Midna stirred, opening her eyes at the sound of the word as if it was a wake up call. She gritted her teeth and spat, "I don't know what they are exactly, but they used the same type of magic as you. I have a feeling one had to have brought you here. Why? I don't know. I don't…" Instead of curling up facing me, she rolled over and went to sleep, unbothered by the voices that floated in the air.
Link and I talked about how I could improve my fighting until I could barely keep my eyelids from falling down. I wanted to rest my head somewhere, but I ended up sinking into the palm of my hand and drifting off until he prodded me awake.
"What?"
In the dim light of the cavern, he laid out the sketch in my lap, shoving his pencil in his pouch as I helplessly tried to decipher what I saw. He successfully captured an expression from me I didn't remember pulling, my eyebrows were drawn, my lips still. The sketch of me gazed into my eyes like it was about to kill. My heart started beating faster, thudding hard in my ears.
Link's fingers reached over and turned the page to another, softer image, a smile. My hair fell in front of my face elegantly, looking nothing like the actual mess on top of my head. I frowned.
"What's wrong?" he cocked his head.
"They're beautiful, but they aren't me." I shut the journal, stopping the feeling of dread from reaching my heart, "I'm shy."
He took it back, flipping to the two pages and sighing, "I mean, I guess so, but I've seen these looks in your eyes. Granted maybe I just thought they were something more than fear but was wrong."
"It was sweet of you…" I admitted, "I'm sorry."
"Why don't you get some sleep."
I nodded and moved away from him before lying down for the night, restlessly whisked away to a world governed beyond my control.
