Princess Zelda excused herself from the merriment and noise to use the castle latrine. As soon as she left the banquet space and entered the heightened hallway, she turned right, away from the nearest outhouse. With her heels on, a loud click erupted from every step of the foot and resonated throughout the empty space. Once she removed them from her feet, the soundscape sounded dramatically different.
There were no servants. No courtiers. No knights. Only silence and the occasional flicker of the torches bothered her. Her destination laid on the opposite side of the Castle Red Lion, so she picked up her pace as she climbed steps and crossed empty tunnels and hallways. The route she took through the kitchen, servant's quarters, and the armory was a bit of a detour, but the Princess knew that no castle guards were posted along this path. Enduring the coldness of the smooth stone underneath her feet was worth the drawback in favor of quietness.
She had known about this route since the beginning of her twenty years of growing up in the castle, and she kept it secret from her father. Through forgotten stairwells and rooms, a nice aspect of living in a large castle was its many different routes one could possibly take to reach any one given destination. Once she entered the main foyer, she had to remember that there were two guards posted at the door and two on the passway above. All it took was patiently waiting for the two at the door to look away for one split heartbeat and slipping up the stairs quietly. The two guards on the passway were too busy chatting about gladiator fights to notice anything going on in front of them, so sneaking past them into the hallway leading to the dungeons was easy.
Luckily, that was the most difficult part of sneaking by undetected. Instead of going straight to the door leading to the dungeons, which was locked and guarded by two heavy armored sentries, the Princess entered the a door on the opposite end of the hallway, which led to the castle warehouse. If there was one thing the Nohansen brothers shared in common, it was their love of flaunting their wealth. As wide and as cluttered as the storage space was, the last part of her trip was tucked away in the corner underneath a crate, though navigating through the boxes and barrels of materials proved to be a bit more of a maze this time. Once she reached the corner, she saw the heavy barrel tucked away in amongst a stack of crates. The barrel's only contents were sand filled to the brim.
If anyone wanted to see Impa Dragmire in her quarters using the back entrance, this was the test. Princess gripped the top rim of the barrel by the metal head loop with a single hand and then took a deep breath. All at once, the grip on the barrel's head tightened and the muscles of her arm, shoulder, and back and slid the heavy barrel a few palms away, revealing the circular trap door underneath. Zelda had come a long way to finally being able to achieve this feat. Not even Impa could do what she had just done.
The trapdoor led to a ladder down to a dark tunnel with two torches quietly beckoning the visitor who had just moved a heavy barrel full of sand. Just up ahead was the backdoor to Impa's quarters. She knocked forcefully on the thick, ash door, for that was the only way to make an audible introduction. Without opening the metal slide to check who it was, Impa began unlocking the door.
The inside of the cozy room felt warm, not from the candles and the summer heat, but from the love of the person who resided in the room. Tapestries draped all along the tall walls to give the room a Gerudo feeling, and to compliment the artwork was a collection of some of the most beautiful Gerudo polearms, glaives, scimitars, and bows. Despite her foreign taste, her foreign looks, and her foreign accent, the kinship between the Princess and her teacher was anything but.
"Mother," said the Princess as she tenderly embraced the only person in all of Hyrule she could trust, who knew Zelda even better than Father or her stupid brother did because she had molded Zelda into the woman she was today.
Impas's face crept into the familiar, motherly smile as she wrapped her arms around the Princess in return, "What are you doing here? You should get back to the dinner."
Zelda made a disgusting face and shared her feelings, "I hate everyone there!" She angrily broke away from the embrace and sat down on Impa's made bed, "Everyone there is so, so… so so stupid! And everyone hates me!"
"That is not true, okay?" her Gerudo teacher sat down next to the Princess and wrapped her arm around her, "Your father, he loves you so very much. And the other princesses of the realm look up to you greatly! They all want to be strong like you."
"None of those witches care about all that!" she scowled, emotions welling inside her chest. Her breathing picked up. "They judge me and whisper that cursed name behind my back! And if that wasn't bad enough, they smear their sons and daughters in my face. And yet, nobody in the realm knows about my abilities…"
Impa, sensing the increased rate of respiration, rubbed her hand up and down her shoulder to remind the Princess that there was no need to get angry, "You will show your true powers to the whole realm of Hyrule tonight! You will be the envy of everyone, man and woman alike!"
As if she wasn't already the most important person in Hyrule already. It was said that when her mark was first discovered, Father forced all the lords and ladies in the duchy to bow before Princess Zelda in fealty. However, was Father powerful enough to make the rest of the Lords and Ladies bow before Zelda? "I don't feel that way. And nothing is certain yet."
The skepticism tickled Impa, "Your father thinks otherwise." Of course Father thought so.
The Princess scoffed, "I don't care what my Father thinks anymore!" Suddenly, she remembered why she needed to come here: to unburden her mind. "First, he has made no mention of my birthday! Second, he's letting my bastard brother parade around MY banquet like he owns the castle! And even though it's my birthday, I don't know half the people there-"
A raised finger from Impa silenced the compliant Princess. "Hold that thought," interrupted her mother. Zelda, surprised her mother would and could stop her emotional rant so abruptly like that, had a suspicion of what Impa was going to do as soon as her mother stood up. The huge woman walked over by the door and picked up a pair of padded, leather gloves hanging on the wall, then she threw the pair onto Zelda's lap, "Come, it looks like you need to work off your anger."
The Princess grinned. Mother knew best. Impa opened the front door, located just on the inside of the dungeon's entrance, into the dark tunnels where she led the Princess to the training rooms.
Once the unoccupied room was lit up, the Princess immediately began to put on her gloves. Two brown leather punching gloves, with enough wear and tear that she could see the stuffed with cloth poking out from the holes, with a string to strap around the wrist once belonged to her mother. She took a deep breath to intake that sentiment. On one end of the room was a rectangular ring marked by four, waist height posts and a long rope connecting the posts. Impa stepped into the ring with two padded training mitts, gloves that had a flat surface for the palm and provided a target for the puncher, and began to lightly bounce on the tip of her feet.
The Princess began to do the same with her bare feet. Though uncouth at a formal setting, Zelda refused to wear a dress that reached further below her ankles solely so that she could fight comfortably at any moment's notice. Even Impa had suggested enforcing dressing standards for the Princess alone to a very agreeable Father. The Duke of Red Lions may have had his very own candidate for the heir to the throne, but he had every intention of sending the Queen forth into battle to conquer, a break from tradition.
That was why he chose Impa, a master of Gerudo war, to mentor his daughter in the ways of combat. "JAB!" she screamed as she lifted her left hand.
"HYAA!" Zelda responded with an extension of her left arm, her closed fist reaching forth and then corkscrewing into the padded mitt. The impact of leather against leather made a slapping noise that rang inside the room, even though she hardly used any strength. She took a deep breath and searched for tension in her body. A warrior can only fight at her pinnacle when she stays relaxed.
"Cross!" This time, Zelda's right hand extended across her body and delivered a long but deadly strike into Impa's mitt. She then ducked underneath the incoming left hand from the side and reset herself. "Again!" Impa held out her right hand again, but this time at an angle. There was no thought needed. This attack had been drilled into her head since their first lesson together.
Years upon years of training in hand to hand combat guided the right hand into a slightly curved punch, optimized to connect the feet, hips, torso, and shoulder to the driving force behind the fist. And just as she connected with the pad, she twisted her fist and pulled back. Using the rotational force of the withdrawal of her hand, she fired her other hand into the vertically held pad.
Impa no longer needed to yell the combinations. The positioning and angling of the mitts gave Zelda all the clues for which strike to throw. The Princess doubled down on a jab before throwing an uppercut into the mitt, which caught her upward punch perfectly with an echoing slap.
"Excellent work!" Impa hop stepped around the Princess, who dutifully stalked her teacher. "Now tell me Zelda, what is ailing you?"
"Father is!" she threw a jab followed by a quick cross, "He is celebrating!" she slipped past a right hand and ducked underneath the left before countering with an uppercut and then a left hook of her own, "LINK'S!" The sound of his name summoned a contemptuous anger from hidden depths of her soul into her body punch, then an uppercut with the same hand, then a killing blow to finish the combo, shrieking upon exertion, "Homecoming!" Zelda knew better than to stay in place after finishing a combo, so she pivoted backwards off her front foot while keeping her left hand extended to redirect an incoming Impa safely out of the way. That single, sneaky hand had caught the Princess one hundred times too many for her to fall for the same trick again.
As the Princess reset her stance, Impa use this chance to respond, "It is unfortunate that this dinner is not how you wanted to celebrate your twentieth birthday," before queuing another combination of punches for the Princess to execute, "But, you must also understand, your father is happy your brother is safe at home. His heart is restless everytime he sends your brother on campaign."
"HA!" exerted the Princess as she threw a power punch into the pad, "Why is my father worried?" she fired two quick straight punches, "My bastard brother sits in a cozy tent!" threw another combination of punches, "drinks wine!" ducked underneath the two hooked punches, "and fathers bastards of his own!" then launched an uppercut into the mitt, "and then is too busy!" Impa's right mitt shot forth, but Zelda's trained instincts guided her beautiful face off of the mitt's path in time and then pulled her face back when the second mitt shot forth, "ordering other men to die for him!" before delivering her final kill shot, "to acknowledge his own children!"
Impa caught the curved punch and immediately released a counter hook to the left side of Zelda's face, "Don't be angry at your brother's behavior. You are not responsible for how he acts, no?"
Zelda ducked underneath the punch and repeated the curved kill shot into the mitt, "But Father!" then she fired the uppercut, "Treats Link!" then finished with a flurry of eight punches into the mitts, "Better than he treats me!"
Zelda's anger formed a glowing, red energy around her right fist momentarily prior to impact upon leather. All the stuffing inside could not absorb the entirety of the punch's force, sending Impa back a few steps. It was at that moment that she realized that she had gotten carried away. Gasping in response, "Mother, I'm sorry…" her heavy breaths of rage quieted immediately.
A chuckle escaped from Impa's mouth, "Do not worry, I am unharmed." Of course Zelda's teacher, the former master of arms of the Gerudo Fortress, was unharmed, but the mitt had suffered a giant tear down the center. "But you have learned your lesson this time, yes?"
Zelda closed her eyes and inhaled a deep breath, "Temperance." She hated it when Father said it because he simply stole the saying from Mother's lessons. But when Mother uttered the word, temperance, all of Zelda's training, lessons, and lectures under her strenuous tutelage were condensed into a mantra that fueled the fundamentals of her unmatched fighting prowess. The voice of her mother eased Zelda's heavy breathing, restraining against her lung's hungry cries for air.
She lifted her eyes and met Impa's, and they shared a nod. With broken mitt in hand, they went back at it. This time, there was no talking, only a continuous, uninterrupted stream of rapid, successive punches flowing in all different directions. Temperance, she branded her mind with her mantra as the fatigue began to build. And after about another five minutes of straights, hooks, and uppercuts into the mitts, Impa signaled for the final kill shot with her left mitt held outward vertically, to which the Princess responded with an unwind from her twisted hip, followed by her her chest and shoulder. All her curved punch had to do was guide the natural power from her body mechanics into Impa's mitt.
The subsequent, slap of the mitt and Zelda's last exertion quickly filled the room and left echoes before the stony walls killed the noise altogether. Impa and Zelda both looked at the mitt and spotted the slight rip, looked back at each other, and then shared a loving laughter only recognizable to a mother and daughter.
The Princess threaded her arm around her Gerudo Mother's elbow as they walked back through the dimly lit tunnels of the dungeon. For the first time this evening, Zelda put a smile on her face. No matter what political drama occurred in the world above them at that very moment, nothing could break the bond that formed between a mother, whose one simple wish in Hyrule was for her daughter to be as strong as mother, and her daughter, whose one true wish in Hyrule was to be as strong as her mother.
But the night was still young, and the Princess knew it too. As thoughts of returning to her brother's homecoming began to poison her happy calm, a frown began to seep into her grin, which her mother detected swiftly, "My child, don't be upset."
"I have every reason to be upset!" moaned the Princess. "I've been stuck inside Castle Nohansen for twenty years, never once stepping foot outside the county, for this one day. Father has kept me locked away from the seeing eyes of the nobility so he could unveil my mark on this day. Only to have that stupid bastard parading around my party like a fool!"
"Your Father loves both you and Link." Zelda huffed and pouted. "He is celebrating his son's homecoming in a way that Link would like. But, he has also prepared a separate occasion for you, just as he promised."
"With the way the dinner is going, I'd say you're full of dung," said Zelda without thinking.
Impa stopped Zelda instantly and raised a finger, "Is that any way to talk to your mother? You are twenty years old now, which means you are an adult now! You must grow past your hatred for your brother! He is your family!" Damn… the only other person who could put Zelda in her place was the ruler of Eldin.
The Princess frowned, "I'm sorry, Mother…" embracing the regret for her outburst.
But her mother hugged her with forgiveness. Moments like these reminded Zelda how foolish and how weak she still was, but that was why Mother was there to guide her. "Tonight, after the banquet, your father has prepared someone, special, for you."
"Hmph," Zelda scoffed, "Father said I could pick one of his knights, after I finish delivering my speech."
"And someone new…"
Zelda's head perked up like a puppy, "Is it a new warrior?"
Impa tried her best to avoid her student's prying eyes, but the Princess pressed on. Finally, Impa's succulent smile could no longer keep the juicy secret from her, "Said to be the very best in the Confederation."
"Tell me more!" Zelda salivated at the chance to dominate another champion, especially one she had never encountered previously, "Where is he from?"
This time, Impa looked determined to say no more, "If I told you any more, that would ruin the surprise!" The excitement behind her blue eyes grew so much that it spilled into a chuckle, and then a full blown laugh at the excitement. A new fighter to play with? Suddenly, she could not stop beaming. "Now take that beautiful smile of yours back to dinner!"
"Yes, mother!"