COUNTING STARS

Chapter 21: Captive

Thursday, December 13th

My eyes open. I'm in a dark room. A single light bulb dangles above, unlit. Spaces between wooden planks that cover the nearest window allow faint beams of moonlight to spill inside in jagged figures.

A dull throb surfaces in my Triforce hand, and I go to rub it in attempts for appeasement. My hand jerks against a cool surface; my wrists are restrained by metal half-cuffs that are attached to the arms of the heavy seat I'm stuck to. I peer to my left; a long wire runs down the cuff and up to a control panel that stands just a few feet away. I try to twist my body to tinker around with some buttons with my feet, but my movements are halted by leg restrains. I am a captive. My chest begins to feel compressed, waves of anxiety threatening to crash upon me.

But it is then that I notice the pair of eyes that have been staring at me.

My heart skips a beat at the sudden realization; I find myself transfixed on the pair. Golden irises, so hard in what they've seen, yet so intriguingly emotionless. Their owner, the rest of the man, is shrouded in the shadows of the night. The more I stare into his eyes, the more my hand hurts. And the more my hand hurts, the more the faint golden light begins to shine from it.

It takes me awhile to notice that the same golden light is coming from the other person, too. Slowly, bit by bit, the light from both sources gradually brightens. The pair of golden eyes is soon graced by the man's gray skin, strong cheekbones and creased forehead—and soon thereafter, his taut lips, thinly stretched into a mirthless line. The light continues to brighten, revealing more and more of this golden set of eyes' owner, his orange hair and similarly-colored beard accenting a tough jawline now visible. His whole face is now illuminated by our ethereal light. I blink repeatedly, ensuring that the darkness is not deceiving me, before concluding that this is, indeed, Ganondorf Dragmire standing in heavy shackles before me.

Words do not enter my mind to describe the forthcoming feelings and emotions. This is everything I've worked towards since moving to Castle Town. All the late nights spent hunting down gangsters, the times I ditched my friends, and my failures with Zelda—all lead to right now. Rusl's murder will not go unpunished. Tonight is the night to prove that. Yet, oddly, in spite of every rushing memory, I feel no anger. My lips curl into a feral, maniacal smile. Satisfaction. Eagerness. That is what I feel.

Ganondorf doesn't react. His lips remain pressed into the same thin line. This lowers my spirits, just slightly; I want to see him fearful. How weak this man before me now looks, shackled like a prisoner! All intimidation, foreboding, and respect he once commanded—gone. This powerful man was reduced to a lowly prisoner by my doing. I shredded his gang to pieces, and now look where we are.

Yet—I realize again—I'm restrained. I blink through my sudden confusion, leading me to wonder how Ganondorf got here in the first place. Did I do that? Did Cia's plan work? I certainly don't remember much after going to that dinner with her. What's even going on?

"You seriously thought we would just give him to you," a feminine voice cuts through my stampeding thoughts. I crank my head to the side as the light switch is flicked on, and the Triforces' heavenly light is no longer needed to see. My gaze falls upon Cia, who leans leisurely against the wooden door frame, a sly grin on her round face. "You idiot," she continues icily. "You had no idea who you were dealing with this whole time."

I glare at her, face still contorted with confoundment. "What—"

"You were just a pawn," she spits, straightening up before slowly walking closer, "that led us to Dragmire."

I stare at her with subdued bewilderment, utterly blindsided but doing my best not to show it. Betrayal. How had I not possibly anticipated this?

"You were just bait, Hero." Cia stops once she is directly in front of me, standing between me and Ganondorf. "We knew he'd take it, too. That power you've got there—it's a real treasure." Her lips twist into a grin of false-sweetness.

"A real treasure, indeed!" agrees an enthusiastic, unfamiliar voice. All three sets of eyes snap over to the same doorway, where this time, a man slowly saunters through.

"Your majesty," Cia utters, dipping into a respectful bow.

What?

"Cia," addresses the man with a small nod, and the woman backs slowly out to another doorway, exiting our presence. The man stops in the room once the light reveals his whole body, a hand placed on his hip. Bright red lips stretched into a wry smile, he fixes his beady eyes on mine. A long, pointy nose stands firmly between the high cheekbones of his pale-gray face. Red dreadlocks flow back from the top of his scalp, highlighted by a golden circlet around the forehead with a large ruby in the middle. Two prismatic blue earrings dangle from his large ears. His outfit consists of a black robe with the upside-down Triforce emblem, a haggard purple cape draped over it, and strange yellow shoes. With a quick glance from me to Ganondorf, the man chuckles. "I can't believe how easy it was to get the both of you here."

Ganondorf, still visibly unbothered, shifts his gaze from me to the strange-looking man, but still remains silent—as if this whole situation is just a waste of his time.

"Mr. Dragmire, always a pleasure," the man cooes with a condescending bow, before proceeding to turn to me. "Allow me to formally introduce myself to you, Hero! I," he begins, pausing for another bow, "am Yuga, ruler of the dark world."

Yuga… Y.U.G.A.… YUGA! He's been hiding in plain sight this whole time!

"You appear to be surprised," he comments appropriately, scrutinizing my reaction. "What—you thought Cia was in control this whole time? And that we'd just give you the most powerful man in the city?"

"It was a deal," I grunt, glaring.

Yuga frowns, then rolls his eyes with a huff. "You're just a kid."

The truth of his statement makes my blood boil with growing rage. I am just a kid. A stupid kid, who couldn't reason that a gang could possibly exploit his services.

Satisfied with my change in disposition, Yuga emphatically whirls around to meet Ganondorf's steady gaze. "Silent treatment, I assume?" Predictably, his tease evokes no response from the shackled Gerudo. Yuga's unctuous smirk soon fades, his voice taking on a more serious tone. "Oh, King of Evil... you forever belong in the world of light. You had no business to dabble in the dark arts." Yuga raises his arms outward for emphasis. "Look around—your gang was torn apart by this mere puppet!" he yells, pointing at me. He pauses, turning to meet my gaze. "Speaking of which—what was your motive, Hero? Why did you attack the Men of Demise?"

I raise my chin ardently, breathing in through clenched teeth as I stare into Ganondorf's golden eyes. A moment passes before I speak. "He is a murderer who deserves to die."

Tilting his head curiously, Yuga presses, "Such passion. I presume... a loved one was killed?"

My throat tightens. I don't offer any response. This man doesn't deserve to know of Rusl.

But he seems to understand my silence. "Ah." Turning back to Ganondorf, he continues, "I've hated you for a long time, you know. Apparently I'm not the only one who wanted you dead. It really pushed my buttons when you started stealing my monsters from me. But, I guess you had to, considering this child single-handedly dismantled your light world forces." He laughs wickedly, his evil smile returning. "Now you are all by yourself. Alone."

I watch as Yuga's hand slips under his robe and proceeds to withdraw a dark object.

"In our worlds, it's dangerous to go alone."

A gun. He's holding a gun! What is he—

"So take this."

Before I can act Yuga pulls the trigger and an ear-splitting shot rings out, echoing across the tiny walls and ringing my ears. I watch in horror as Ganondorf's body goes slack.

"NO!" I scream, all hope, all motivation, all will to keep pushing forward—shattered, once again, by a gunshot. I stare, crushed, at the limp body of the man I've worked so hard to get to kill. The smoky hole in his forehead oozes no blood. The sign of a heartless killer.

Yuga turns to me with a sneer. "The good news is a high level position has just been vacated."

Now, I'm too shocked, too devastated to mask my feelings.

Yuga smiles depravedly. "You didn't expect this, did you, Hero? Deranged lunatic swoops in out of nowhere and steals your reward for doing us a favor?" He withdraws a decorative handkerchief from his pocket, cleaning the barrel of his chrome pistol as he speaks. "Well. I happen to like being called a deranged lunatic. It will add to the fear I plan to bring to these puny people of this city." Yuga meets my eyes again, a crazed twinkle within his thin, scarlet irises. "It isn't about taking over the world. Well, not yet. That will come. But first, I'm making a name for myself, right here in Castle Town."

I grit my teeth out of pure rage. He aims to be a terrorist. He will hurt innocent people. People I love. Ganondorf is dead, but this guy could easily be just as bad. Worse, even.

"I bet you're wondering why I'm telling you all this," he chimes after a brief pause. "Frankly, so am I. But you're next to die, and all super-villains expose their plans to their victims before killing them. It's the first lesson in Super-Villain 101."

"What do you want from me?!" I spit, clenching white-knuckled fists.

"I want what Ganondorf wanted!" he roars, causing me to flinch as he rushes toward me and stops merely inches away, his protruding nose nearly touching mine. "Domination!" Yuga narrows his eyes, then stands up abruptly, moving toward Ganondorf's still body. "And that will come with the three Triforce pieces. To get one, you kill the bearer. And you're next, bearer of Courage. But first—" He lifts up Ganondorf's right hand, where the Triforce of Power… used to be. "—I shall possess Power!"

Strange, I muse, how the emblem completely disappeared from his hand. Shouldn't it have stayed long enough for someone to snatch it up?

Yuga looks skyward, bellowing toward the ceiling, "Din, in all your holy majesty, I beckon your Power!"

Silence ensues.

Yuga looks down at the back of his hand, then the other one, a deep frown wrinkling his features. "…I feel no different."

Although I don't know what could have happened right then, I consider it lucky that nothing notable has.

From the doorway to my left, a distant female yelp is heard, followed by a crude shout of "Go back to Hooters, friggin' thot!" from an all-too-familiar voice. My chest is swelled with hope. Could it be…?

Dark bursts into the room, brandishing a bent selfie stick as a makeshift weapon. "Link! I've come to save y—" He freezes, eyes falling on Yuga, who gazes at him coolly.

"Dark, thank gods!" I breathe with relief.

"…Your majesty," says my doppelganger, ignoring me. He lowers his arms and drops the useless weapon, letting it clatter on the floor.

"Dark," I prod, but he doesn't turn his head.

"How interesting," says Yuga with an intrigued raise of the brows. His eyes shift from Dark to me, then back to him, red lips twisting into a bemused smile. "One of my shadows has taken on your image... Astounding!"

"Dark!" I yell, somehow managing to snap him out of his transfixed stupor.

He turns his head, starting toward me, his expression softening. "Link, I—"

"Not so fast," Yuga cuts in, holding up a pale hand. Dark's body grows rigid, glassy eyes looking nowhere. After another wicked grin, Yuga says icily, "I am your king." With a snap of Yuga's fingers, Dark's whole body transforms into an ink-black reflection of me, his eyes shifting to a piercing red.

I stare, wide-eyed and in horror, at the shadowed boy in front of me. "What the hell did you do?!" I shout, thrashing against my restraints. "Dark! Dark, answer me!"

Dark meets my gaze coolly, and I stare into the red eyes of a foreign creature. This, I conclude with heartbreak, is no longer my best friend, my sidekick. This isn't Dark.

Yuga steps in between us, lowering his head so he and I are eye-to-eye. "Was that your friend?" he questions. "Too bad. He belongs to me."

I can't tame the brewing rage inside me. If there's one thing I want to do now, now that Ganondorf is dead, it's to kill this guy.

"Now," he says, beady eyes glaring pointedly. "Time to claim Courage."

He's going to kill me. What do I do? How do I escape? I've got to buy some more time! I pull with all my strength against the restraints, but they don't budge.

Yuga stands upright, turning to Dark. He raises a steady arm, pointing my way. "Kill him."

Dark turns his head, and he looks. Our gazes lock, and I telepathically plead for him to snap out of this trance. A brief moment passes. Please, I beg.

But he remains under Yuga's control. Dark steps toward me slowly, fingers curling into fists. I sink back into my chair as he mindlessly approaches, trying my hardest to summon any strength left to break these steel cuffs around my legs and wrists.

Is this how it ends? I've come all this way for vengeance, only to have it stripped away by my ally—and only to be killed by my greatest friend? No, I tell myself adamantly, not today. This lunatic's not getting what he wants.

I pull with all my might as Dark steps forward blindly. They still refuse to budge. From deep within my chest, nearest to my heart, I again feel the familiar, otherworldly tingle. My heart leaps; I focus on the feeling, harnessing it.

Dark reaches up, red eyes devoid of emotion, and latches his hands around my neck. I thrash against his grip as it tightens with pressure, threatening to restrict my airflow. The energy is now at my fingertips, but I feel it begin to fade. It's now or never.

I stop struggling, then meet Yuga's smug gaze. That'll change.

I quickly angle my fingers and send the bolt of energy straight into the side of Dark's head, and he is thrown to the back wall in a heap of flailing limbs. Yuga's eyes widen as he looks from Dark to me. "No!" he shouts, raising his pistol. I send another bolt his way, and it connects with his hand. Dropping the gun, Yuga shrieks as his hand is sent into a fit of spasms.

Looking toward the control panel at my left, I touch the metal restraints with my fingers, summoning yet another burst of energy. The electricity runs through the metal, all the way down the wire, before hitting the panel and sending sparks up out of it. It's working! I focus, sending more and more of my power down to the panel. Overpowered, the panel lifts up all my restraints, and I leap up in freedom.

Dark is trying to recover, staggering awkwardly, while Yuga, on hands and knees, shuffles around for the gun and picks it up. I dash to the exit, no time to stage a battle. He fires twice, but I duck, hearing the bullets whizz by overhead. As I dart through the door, I notice over my shoulder that Yuga has brought up some sort of purple ring from the ground.

No time to watch and observe. I keep running down the dark corridor, before I bank left into another. I hear footsteps behind me, feeling heavy thuds of pursuit. Glancing quickly over my shoulder, I notice with dread that a massive hoard of bokoblins are sprinting my way. Yuga summoned monsters!

Nearing the end of this hallway, I sense the whining creatures are gaining on me. Faint moonlight spills in through the cracks in the crudely-boarded-up windows; I've arrived at a dead end. The bokoblins are closing in, innumerable as they squeal with delight in having cornered me. I take a breath, then run toward the nearest window and bust through the wooden planks.

Now I'm free falling through the night sky, and it feels like this moment is moving in slow motion. The broken planks and splinters fling outward; snowflakes trickle down slowly all around. I pump my arms and legs in a circular range as if I'm running in midair. The ground below, about five stories down, is covered in thick snowbanks.

Reality hits me—and the ground will too at this rate of descent. I'm flailing through the sky, mortified by the quickly-approaching pavement, and briefly notice a sign of movement to my left. But that's weird. What could be moving in the sky—

SCREECH!

My body is snatched out of the air by sharp claws that dig into my body. I yelp, recovering from the whiplash of the abrupt direction change. Looking up, I meet the beady eyes of a flying lizard. An aeralfos!

I shout my disapproval when the scaly beast flaps its wings, seeming to ascend back to the window I'd just leapt out of. Back to Yuga. Back to my possessed friend.

Prying the reptile's claws out of my shoulder, I struggle out of its grip and spin around to hang onto its back. It shrieks as I tighten my arms around its neck in a chokehold, dipping sharply into a spiraling dive. I hold on, my legs flying about, and yank the arealfos' neck upward. It banks up, hissing, and I level out my mount with a slightly-downward trajectory. The arealfos struggles and thrashes under my grip the whole time, but the strength offered by my Triforce allows me to keep the monster at bay.

Upon reaching a safe distance from the ground, I twist my hands, audibly snapping the reptile's long neck, and leap down off its back. I land on my hands and knees, the monster hitting the snow-covered road in a limp heap behind me. Blood leaks out of my stinging wounds where the aeralfos had clung to me with its talons, and I stagger to my feet in the slippery snow.

I look over my shoulder at the building I'd just escaped. It's a warehouse, standing five stories tall; they'd held me captive on the top floor, it seems. An upside-down triangle, the symbol of the Y.U.G.A., is spray-painted in black on a heavy steel door. I take note of the surroundings—industrial buildings, a billboard advertising a casino, a fenced-in power plant across the street that spews smoke out of long chimneys—because I conclude with certainty that I will have to return here one day.

But I have no idea where I am. I've heard once that the industrial area of Castle Town is on the eastern border. If that's where I am, then Hyrule Academy is all the way across the city. I don't have much time to complain about the long trek, though; Yuga and his goons are surely in hot pursuit.

So, without much of a choice, I look up to find the north star, one of the only visible ones on this cloudy and snowy night. Then I turn left, and I run west.

"Where to?" asks the taxi driver.

"Westcastle area," I tell him from the back seat, looking out the back window for any pursuers. The coast appears to be clear, but I'm not willing to take any chances. "And I'm in a hurry."

The driver nods, and I lean back into the seat in relief. I'm safe—for now. The weird part about this whole awful situation is that, even though both wanted to kill me for the same purpose and with the same amount of passion, Yuga puts me more ill at ease than Ganondorf did. Probably because Ganondorf didn't have a whole world full of beasts at his disposal. Also, it could be due to the fact that while Ganondorf wanted to kill me, I wanted to kill Ganondorf just as much, if not more. Doesn't that cancel out the fear? Isn't that PEMDAS or something?

And Dark... This, this very instance, is what he feared most. Losing his free will. Yuga, since he's the "king of the dark world" or some shit, was able to control him, unlike Ganondorf. It broke my heart to see him try to kill me. It broke it again when I had to attack him.

I have never experienced such anger, such fury. It's so much to the point where I don't even show it. I just let it boil within.

It is very, very understandable that somebody else hated Ganondorf and wanted to see him dead. The betrayal, however, is inexcusable. Yuga, Cia, Volga, Wizzro, even Vaati—gods, I even trusted him!—they will be punished. I will spare none of them in my quest for my indirect vengeance.

This rage is tearing me apart inside. It feels unhealthy. How brittle the human mind can be.

Following a twenty-minute taxi ride, I pay the driver with a generous tip for having sped through the city, then step out into the cold world. The cab drives off, and I'm left alone in the Westcastle neighborhood, a block away from the academy. I begin the walk.

I need to get away from my own thoughts, my own anger. I don't want to take it out on myself, or worse, someone innocent.

Picking up my pace, I arrive at the academy grounds, walking up the sidewalk to the frozen fountain in the middle of the courtyard. It is there that I see a large, cloaked man carrying a briefcase as he heads toward the academy building. He stops upon sight of me, as well.

"Link?"

It's Rauru, I confirm, as he takes off his hood to reveal his shiny balding head.

"It is five AM," he says. "Were you out all night? You're lucky we are on winter break."

I'd not even been told we were on winter break. Here I was thinking I had school tomorrow.

Rauru gazes at my beaten and bloodied form with a bewildered look. "Goddesses, Link. Are you alright?"

After biting my lip tentatively, I sigh in defeat, stammering in a weak voice, "…I—I need help."

Rauru waves his arm in a beckoning motion. "Come," he orders softly. "Let me take you out of the cold."