Link's Awakening

Chapter Fifteen: The Prisoner of Kanalet

As a town guard, I had put a number of people in prison before, but as Prince Richard's guards roughly tossed me into a cell in the dungeon underneath Kanalet Castle, I realized that this was the first time I was seeing it from the other side. Like it was only yesterday, I remember the sound of the door being slammed shut and locked behind me, and then lying on the stone floor for the longest time before being able to get up… and then the reality of my situation hit me… I was a prisoner, accused of some very serious crimes, and I didn't know how I was going to get myself out of it.

There were no windows down in the dungeon, leaving only the flickering orange light of the torches on the wall, not that there was much to see anyway. Link was the only prisoner in more than a dozen stone cells, locked behind iron bars, with only a pile of straw to sleep on. Everything was so quiet, too, with the young man's slightest noise echoing throughout the whole chamber, and not even the guards coming down to check on him for… it was funny, without seeing the sun, he had no idea how much time had passed… could have been hours or days for all he knew.

Eventually, Link needed to sleep, so he laid down on the pile of straw and closed his eyes while trying to ignore the rumbles of hunger in his stomach. These people were planning to feed him at some point, right? Even with the flickering light of the torches, it was so dark and quiet in the dungeon that the young man thought he was going to lose his mind, especially when he opened his eyes after a restless sleep to discover that there was a shadowy figure that looked like it was wearing a hood, standing at the door to his cell.

"Who's that?" Link asked groggily. "Who's there?"

Sitting up and rubbing his eyes, the young man thought he could smell smoke that was coming from where the figure was standing with its gloved hand on the door's lock, and then they just vanished. In the blink of an eye the figure was gone, so Link pulled himself up to his feet and moved over to the door so that he could look down the corridor… only to hiss and pull his hand back from a sudden feeling of pain. Looking down at the lock, the young man's eyes widened when he saw that he had been burned from where the metal had been melted off.

At first he thought that he had hallucinated the figure standing there in the first place, but as the reddened metal slowly turned black again, Link realized both that he hadn't been dreaming, and that thanks to the mysterious person, he was now able to leave the cell at any time. Of course, that information only helped if he could figure out a way to sneak back up through the castle undetected, and then escape back out into the island. But then where would he go? Once it was found that he escaped, the Prince was sure to have the guards searching for him, and…

"Hurry up with that door, man!" A familiar voice ordered from the other side of the chamber. "I swear, if I am not speaking with the prisoner in the next two minutes, you will have the cell next to his."

There was a jingling of keys, followed by the sound of a heavy door opening while a second voice repeatedly apologized to his Prince for the delay, but then Richard told him to just be quiet and be ready to open the door again as soon as he was finished. It surprised Link when the Prince came walking down the stairs all by himself, torch in hand as he confidently strode his way toward the only occupied cell. Once there, he placed his torch in an empty mount to give them more light, and then he just stared at the young man while folding his arms.

"So, tell me, boy." Richard said, moving right up to the barred door. "Why do you wish to bring doom onto my people, hmm? Are you the agent of some dark force, or are you simply a lunatic who thrives on destruction?"

"Your Highness, there's been a huge misunderstanding." Link replied, repeating what he had heard so many criminals say back in Hyrule. "I'm not here to hurt anyone, and I certainly don't want to bring doom of any kind to your people."

Clearly not believing a word he was saying, the Prince suddenly drew his sword, causing the young man to gasp in surprise and pain when he stabbed it through the bars. Only the tip of the blade caught his skin, forcing Link to back away, only for Richard to yell that he was a liar, grabbing the torch from its mount, and tossing it into the cell… where it landed on the pile of straw. Since his makeshift bed was just about as dry as it could get, the straw was set ablaze almost instantly, forcing the young man to have to choose between getting burned and getting stabbed by the sword.

"I may have to wait for the Great One to arrive before killing you." The Prince continued, aiming the blade at him again. "But for a coward such as you… you, who would so easily throw away the lives of my people… you will suffer at my hand until he arrives."

Crying out again when the tip of the sword poked him, Link decided to make his move, waiting until Richard's arm was fully extended, and then kicking the door with all his strength. Since the lock had been melted, the Prince was caught completely by surprise when the iron bars slammed into his face, causing him to stumble backwards and fall down, but the young man had no intention of letting him recover. Reaching down and grabbing the wooden torch from where it had landed on the floor, Link ran out of his cell and swung it like a club, bringing the improvised weapon across Richard's head with a satisfying whack!

The Prince was unconscious on the floor now, and the fire inside of the cell was almost out, since there was nothing left to burn, meaning that Richard wouldn't die if he was simply left there. With his first instinct being to escape, the young man started toward the stairs, but only got a couple steps before turning back around… after all, if he simply ran up the stairs and attacked the guards, the whole castle would be put on alert, but maybe there was another way for him to go about this.

Taking a moment to think about exactly what he was going to do, the only plan that came to mind was so ridiculous that Link couldn't help but laugh, but you know… maybe it was just crazy enough to work. The first thing he had to do was switch clothes with the Prince, and the young man soon discovered that the only thing harder than undressing an unconscious person was putting new clothes again, but after that came the easy part of dragging Richard into the cell and closing the door. Hopefully he would stay asleep for a while, at least until Link got outside the castle, so after taking the Prince's sword and that bell he was wearing around his neck, it was time to leave.

It was a stroke of luck that the white cape had a hood, and hopefully none of the guards or servants upstairs would question why he was wearing it… but you know what, if the Prince wanted to wear his hood, then who was qualified to tell him otherwise? Trying to stay calm as he strode across the dungeon and up the stairs, the young man had to remind himself that he wasn't sneaking, he had to act like he owned the place, and hopefully it wasn't going to be that hard to mimic Richard's voice… oh well, worst case he was still carrying the sword.

"Open this door right this instant!" Link yelled, trying to talk like the Prince while banging on the door. "How dare you not know what I want before… I… tell you?!"

"Forgive me, Your Highness." The guard quickly replied, fumbling with his keys once again. "It won't happen again, I swear."

A moment later the heavy wooden door was pulled open, and when the guard tried to continue apologizing, the young man simply put up his hand for him to be quiet while walking down the corridor without a word. So far no one stopped to question him, and most people quietly bowed, but Link was more concerned with the face that there was no sunlight coming in through the castle's small windows. He must've been down in the cell for the whole day, but it was still raining outside, which just gave him even more of an excuse to keep the hood on once he got outside.

Trying to remember the way back to the front door, the young man turned down another hallway, not sure if he was going the right way or not, since on the way in he had been distracted with the pain from being whipped, but all these corridors and rooms looked the same. Even with being able to do a halfway decent impression of Richard, it wasn't like he could just ask one of the nobles or servants for directions in what was supposed to be his own castle, without raising suspicion, so Link turned another corner… only to walk right into a guard.

"Deeply sorry, my Prince." He said as him and his companion bowed. "Please forgive… wait a moment… you're not the…

Interrupting the guard's words by pulling back his leg and kicking him in the groin, Link shoved him into the second guard so that his companion was forced to catch him instead of sounding the alarm right away, and then the young man drew his sword. Pointing it at the second guard's neck and warning him to be quiet if he knew what was good for him, Link turned and ran down the corridor, with the guard yelling that the prisoner had escaped a couple seconds later. This was fine, he thought, since the Prince's clothes would still confuse everyone he encountered until word of the disguise was spread, so all Link had to do was keep moving until he reached the front door and… suddenly there was nothing but an upward staircase in front of him.

Now the alarm bells were starting to ring throughout the castle, and there was no way to go back without risking running into those same guards again, so there was no choice but to head up the stairs, where hopefully a way out would present itself before the guards were able to find him and close in.