Hello! Okay so I had some issues with pacing and chapter length but I don't want to postpone this one any longer, so the last three (including this one) will be really short. Like, 2-3 thousand words. Anyways I hope you enjoy!
The lack of pursuit was . . . weird.
They made it all the way to the end of the land bridge, in the dead of night, racing against an invisible clock. It was only when they reached the canyon that they realized they were being followed.
"Where should we go first?" Sunset gasped, her arm firmly in Trouble's grasp as he led them through hidden paths that somehow, they trusted him to lead them through safely. Link didn't link it, but he didn't want to waste time. And, well, if trouble was going to kill them, he supposed he could just join the club.
. . . That was sad to think about.
Link shook his head. "I don't know. I can't tell where they'll go first--"
"Did you see how many seeds they had?" Spitfire said, holding Mania back as Trouble checked the road ahead for safety. "They won't need to go one at a time, they could just hit all the tribes at once."
"So what do we do?" Mania snarled, following behind the group as they climbed up a slope.
"Nothing," Trouble said, pulling Sunset to her feet. "You're not going to any of the tribes. If anything, those seeds won't even be planted until a certain event happens."
"What event?" Link pushed through the group till he was nose-to-nose with Trouble. He jabbed a finger in the jaguar's chest. "You're obviously holding out on information, so I want it all out in the open, now. What's going on?"
Trouble glared at him. "Ganondorf has a plan. He needs your blood to make the seeds powerful enough. He'll enact a spell once he's killed you four, and that will spread over Hyrule and make the seeds poisonous."
"What kind of spell?" Sunset demanded. "Is it like kitsune magic?"
Trouble smiled at her. "Kind of. It's more powerful than kitsune magic, and it doesn't deal with illusions." He met Link's gaze. "It's real."
"So then why do you want us to go to wherever Ganondorf is?" Spitfire asked, a hand on Link's arm. "Isn't that just playing into his hands?"
"No." Trouble shook his head. "Ganondorf will hunt you down no matter what. It's better to chase him and stop him from even casting the spell than allow him to wander Hyrule and let him kill more anima. Besides, I know where he's going, and I can get you there faster."
"Where is he?" Mania demanded.
"At the temple he spoke about in his speech," Trouble said gravely, turning northward. "The foot of the Dragon Bone Mountains, at Hyrule's oldest sacrificial site. The Shadow Temple."
"So let's go, then," Spitfire said, pulling on Link's arm. He ground his teeth, hating everything about the plan and left with a thousand questions besides, but--there was no time. They had to move fast.
The way to the Shadow Temple bore signs of Ganondorf's passing. Death followed in the wake of deep bootprints, flowers wilting, grass deadened. The sky overhead was a dull gray, as was the terrain of the canyon. Ahead, the mountains were a slate gray, devoid of all color.
The group passed over a cluster of rocks as they exited the canyon, and then they saw it.
Across a wide plain, filled with naught but rocks, sat the Temple. It looked like an abandoned ruin, with two unlit torches at its entrance, and one of its pillars was broken. The ground before it had been disturbed, though not recently. Behind the Temple, the mountains spread out to either side.
The five of them crossed the field cautiously, keeping watch for any sign of Ganondorf. When Sunset posed a question about the archer from the other attacks, Trouble simply held up a bow and smirked at her. She'd rolled her eyes.
Link kept his gaze on the temple ahead, his shoulders hunched, body ready to shift. He felt vaguely ill, like a sort of anxiety. He attributed it to nerves about the fight that would determine if they all survived, but somehow that didn't feel adequate. He couldn't put a finger on it, and that made it worse.
He swallowed it down as they reached the ground in front of the temple, and he watched Spitfire like a hawk as she crouched to examine the dirt and stone. She ran a finger along it, following some pattern that only she could see, and her lips parted.
"I recognize this."
Sunset was at her side in an instant, with Mania and Trouble keeping a lookout. "What is it?"
Spitfire traced the ground. "It looks like something I saw in one of my mother's books, the ones she brought from her home. Some of them had designs like this one, used in powerful spells. Usually for dark magic." She looked up, her face shadowed.
"What does it do?" Link asked, with a sinking feeling he knew what she was about to say.
"It's a binding circle."
Sunset shared a look with Link. "What does that mean, Spitfire?" she asked softly.
"It means Ganondorf is going to use this circle to bind the virus to the seeds," Trouble broke in. "He said this was where the original burial grounds for the first wave was, right? So he's going to use the latent virus in the air, the ground, to bind to the seeds to make it even more potent. It's a long distance spell, so--"
A dark laugh cut him off, and the five of them whirled to see Ganondorf emerge from the darkness of the temple. Trouble raised his bow, Link hefted his knives, Sunset gathered a few stones from the ground--
--but then more screeches joined Ganondorf's laugh, and the temple was sudden;y surrounded by Yiga monkeys and Thieves. The monkeys corralled the group much as they had in the jungle while the Thieves lined the outside of the circle.
"It's time for a game, my subjects," Ganondorf called over the noise, as Spitfire lashed out at one of the monkeys and Mania roared, already in his lion form. Ganondorf's face split into a grin, and he narrowed his eyes at the group. "Let's play fetch."
Link shifted into a wolf just as the Thieves entered the fray with a battle cry, and then it was pandemonium.
Three of them assaulted him, knives slicing for any part of him they could reach. He barely avoided them even as Trouble's voice rose, "Don't let them get your blood!"
Right. Because if they got his blood, even a little, then the spell would be ready, and the seeds--
Link backflipped as a flash of silver shot towards his jugular. Landing on his feet, and jumped immediately to avoid a swipe from a monkey's wicked sharp claws, and snarled. He tackled the monkey and ripped out its throat in one movement before leaping up and avoiding another dagger. As he spun, he shredded the arm carrying the blade.
A scream rewarded his actions, but another snarl from his left made his heart stop. Whirling, he found Sunset clutching her arm, her lips pulled back from her teeth. A few stones fell from her hand, useless.
Snarling, Link lunged for her attacker, but the thief slipped through the crowd like smoke, reaching her master's side before Link could catch her. She offered the bloody knife to Ganondorf reverently, who took it and promptly snapped her neck.
The body fell to the ground with a thump, and Link snarled in fear, in anger. He whirled and dashed through the crowd, searching for a flash of white--there!
He ducked under a reaching arm and made it to Spitfire's side, just as she shifted and hissed before tackling a group of Thieves. A Yiga tried to bite her leg, but she'd already danced out of the way.
The searing flame on Link's bond faded a little, but then spiked when she let out a sharp chirp, blinking against the red above her eye. The Yiga who'd scratched her screeched in triumph and danced back to Ganondorf, who killed the monkey without a second thought.
Link snarled at the group Spitfire had tackled as they surged towards her, knocking her legs out from under her and biting her all over. Spitfire let out a chirp and fell, allowing Trouble to leap over her out of nowhere, screeching. He'd shifted into his anima form, as had the rest of Link's pack, and the black fur of his jaguar anima shimmered in the cold dawn light. He let loose a furious attack on the Thieves, while Link stalked the Yiga that crowded Spitfire, lips pulled back from his teeth, a guttural snarl rising from his throat.
The Yiga retreated, but not far, shifting and jockeying for room to launch an attack. Link didn't give them to come at him all at once, surging forward to bite an arm, swat a pair of claws, sweep a leg out from under its body. Behind him, Spitfire rose to her feet with Sunset's help, the fox's fur a darker orange than usual.
They stood, panting for breath, and just in time for Trouble to be thrown back, covered in writhing Yiga bodies. He shook them off with a screech and snarled at the oncoming wave of anima, but it was too late--his side was drenched in blood, and every one of his attackers went to Ganondorf to meet their fate.
Six more bodies fell at his feet, and by now Mania and Link were the only ones left standing--
The crowd parted and a red-gold anima was thrown through. Two vicious slashes rent his side, and he breathed heavily as he stood, watching the Thieves present his blood to their master, and die for it.
Link was the last one, then. He panted, his eyes darting between the entire crowd of Ganondorf's subjects, and with a single breath, a single movement, as he hunched his shoulders and growled his challenge, his pack took up positions around him--their last stand before the end.
Link lost track of how many anima they fended off. They moved too fast and agile to be killed, and even if Link had pinned one down, there was always another to fend off. So the same enemies came at him, again and again, bolstered by their numbers and manic devotion.
Link's group was tiring, though. Mania had more wounds than anyone, his fur curated in bright red blood, and Spitfire suffered several wounds to her legs. Sunset hadn't fared so badly, but her energy was waning. Beside her Trouble was just as badly off as Mania, both covered in wounds.
They were running out of time. He could hardly feel his body anymore, exhaustion pulling at him like lead weights. He couldn't do this forever.
Link gazed at Spitfire, at her golden eyes, narrowed in fury, at her spots, and felt his eyes begin to close. He searched out their bond within himself, felt the warmth, and remembered how she felt against him in that ballroom. He committed it all to memory, wanting it to be the last thing he remembered, and not the sound of screeching, the smell of blood, the sight of golden light--
Golden light?
Link's eyes flew open to see Sunset bathed in a bright golden light, searing the eyes of the Yiga and Thieves. He squinted hard, his heart slamming a beat of disbelief in his chest, as the light faded and she grew, literally getting bigger before his eyes, until she was at least his size, and instead of one tail, she now had--
Link's jaws dropped open, staring at that second tail, waving in tandem with her first. She did it. Here, at the end of it all, she really did it.
If he'd been human and not on the brink of destruction, he'd have laughed. But, the circumstances being what they were, he went with the flow and shifted just long enough to shout, "Sunset, do it!"
She knew what he meant, even if his pack didn't, even if the Yiga and Thieves snarled at him, even if Ganonarof just laughed like a psychopath--
Sunset grew in brilliance and her tails flared out, and on her sides her Marks glowed a bright golden, just as shots of light flew out of her halo, embedding themselves in the crowd of anima around them. They screeched and then disappeared, vaporized by the pure kitsune magic, and Link began to pant, thinking they'd make it after all--
But of course, things never went their way.
A wave of pure black magic bent the next batch of kitsune magic backwards, sending them clattering into the rocks behind the group. Sunset suddenly collapsed, unable to hold the spell for long, and the golden glow faded from her body. Spitfire covered her body protectively as Ganondorf laughed, and the Yiga and Thieves surged back towards him.
Link was so distracted by the speed with which things had happened that he hardly noticed the silver flash before it had sliced his cheek, and he gasped as a flare of pain broke through the fog in his head.
Dread followed soon after.
They'd failed. The monkey who'd cut him danced erratically back to its master, and their noise grew in volume until it rang in Link's ears. He shifted back to his human form, clutching his ears, unable to watch the monkey's blood spill over the stones, mixing with the others' until the ground was red with it. And as he raised his head, he saw the monkeys gather in a loose circle, and the Thieves cluster in a ring around Ganondorf, who stood in the very center of the binding circle, and he felt the air grow heavy, thick with the spell of death.
Gnaondorf raised his hands as the Thieves lowered their jars, and Link heard Trouble gasp. The jaguar pushed his way to the front, supporting a barely-conscious Sunset. "You lied!" he roared, as Ganondorf laughed. "You said the Yiga would bring the seeds to the tribes--!"
He grunted, holding his ribs. Red leaked between his fingers. He glared at Ganondorf, panting through his teeth.
The madman just grinned wide. "Yes, I lied! And now that I have the blood of the four, we can begin!"
He began chanting, raising his hands to the sky, and the Thieves bowed their foreheads to the stones. Golden eyes met Link's for a split second, a flash of brightness in a dull landscape.
In the dirt, the carved lines of the binding circle began glowing. Link threw his dagger at Ganondorf, but one of the Yiga leapt forward and took it. He died with a screech, and it seemed the circle glowed brighter as the blood seeped across the stones.
Spitfire grabbed his arm. "We can't kill them," she shouted over Ganondorf. "It'll just speed it up!"
"Then what are we supposed to do?" Link demanded, his eyes on hers, golden and wide, fearful and helpless.
She just shook her head. She didn't know. Link tore his eyes away, grinding his teeth.
The jars were now glowing, a sickly red-purple. The color of the virus. Trouble handed off Sunset to Mania and nocked an arrow, aiming for one of the jars, but one of the Thieves leapt up at the last second and snapped it in two with a dagger.
The wind was howling. Trouble hissed through his teeth and aimed again, firing off arrow after arrow, and Link threw his knives with him, trying something, anything, to stop the ritual.
But it was too late.
A blast of hot, stale air blew them back. When Link raised onto his elbows, blood leaking from his forehead, he saw through blurry vision Ganondorf lift his head from its reverent bow, and smile. The Thieves raised onto their knees, holding the jars aloft, and Ganondorf shouted, "Go, my Thieves! Destroy the tribes!"
Link struggled to his feet, but he was too slow--the Thieves and the Yiga flew past him. One of the anima, one with narrow, searing golden eyes, flashed past Link, and he was dizzy enough that he didn't notice her slice her knife through his hair, cutting off a lock. Then she was gone, dancing through his pack, her blade a blink of quicksilver.
Link stood, fighting a wave of dizziness and the overwhelming feeling they'd lost, and pulled Spitfire to her feet. Her pupils were blown out; she must have hit her head when she fell. Trouble rose on her side with Sunset propped between him and Mania, both of whom were covered with blood and dust.
Sunset was awake. Link rushed to her side, cupping her face. She blinked slowly at him, murmuring, "'M fine. They covered me."
Mania spoke. "We have to get to the tribes. They don't know about the seeds--"
He broke off in a coughing fit. "I'll go," Trouble said. "I'm the fastest of us, and the least injured."
"They don't know you," Spitfire argued. "They won't trust you."
Her eyes widened, and Link spun just a second too slow. Then a fist slammed into her temple, and she crumpled. Link ducked under the second swing and went for the gut, but Ganondorf slipped away. Trouble lowered Sunset to the ground gently and joined Link as they went on the offensive. Ganondorf watched them come, grinning, and backed up a few paces.
He began glowing with a red aura, illuminating the crazed golden of his eyes. "Impressive that you've lasted so long," he said, his voice rumbling in the ground. "Let's see how well you fare against this."
The aura flared brightly, and once Link and Trouble lowered their arms, they looked up . . . and up . . . and up.
He . . . "He's a monster," Link breathed, taking in the manic golden eyes, the deadly tusks, the hoofs pawing the ground. Readying a charge.
Trouble stepped up. "We knew that already. All we need to do now is kill him."
Link shifted, shaking his pelt, and felt Trouble do the same beside him. The monstrous boar, easily twice their height, huffed out a breath.
And then Ganondorf charged.
Two chapters left!
Review replies.
To StJames1: of course! I don't really know where dampe came from honestly. It seemed like a good idea haha.
"Can't they get a break?"
Lol. Anyway, yeah Ganny sucks.
Okay. See you guys on Thursday where I will def not be late again. I swear. Pinky promise.