Link's Awakening

Chapter Twenty Four: The Sixth Grave Robber

Agahnim's father had once told me a frightening story about his own encounter with such a creature; how he had been pursued by several of the boney fiends while searching for a fragment of the Triforce of Wisdom in the depths of Lizard Mine. Like his son, Agahnim Senior possessed magic that easily allowed him to fight off the skeletons long enough to escape the mine, but unlike both of them, I had no such advantage. At least it was alone, so the upcoming fight was going to be fair… or so I thought.

Backing away from the approaching skeleton with his sword ready, Link watched as his enemy stepped into the chamber, its movements ridged and jerky, and bones rattling with each step like the whole thing were about to fall apart. Empty eye sockets remained focused on the young man as if it could see him just fine as he side stepped a little to avoid one of the pillars, but its boney hands held no weapons. The skeleton was completely unarmed, once Link saw it clearly in the torch light, so as long as he was quick with the blade, maybe this wouldn't be as bad as he thought.

"I warned you, grave robber." The hollow voice spoke as its jaw moved up and down. "So many warnings… ignored by so many fools… all are here now… say hello to your peers, grave robber."

As the skeleton spoke those words, it pointed toward the rotting corpses that were shackled around the chamber, with a knot forming in the young man's stomach when it referred to them as his peers. Had all of them once traveled there to get the marimba, only to… only to end up shackled like that? Had this monster done that to all of them? If so, then it was pretty obvious what was about to happen, so Link decided to strike first, swinging his sword and catching his enemy across the still pointing arm, severing it at the elbow.

The skeleton grunted a bit in reaction to its arm falling off, but made no other moves as the young man brought his sword back in the other direction, catching a couple of its ribs, both of which detached just as easily. Not backing off, his enemy finally was forced to react after the blade caught its hip, throwing the skeleton off balance, and the next hit was so powerful that it severed its backbone. This caused the whole top half of the monster to fall over, shattering into a hundred individual bones upon hitting the floor, and then Link kicked over the bottom half before making a run for the door.

But he had only taken a couple steps, when something grabbed his ankle, causing the young man to drop the marimba when he fell on his face. Reflexively looking back, Link gasped when he saw that it was the reformed arm of the skeleton that had him in a surprisingly tight grip while the rest of the bones… oh no, the rest of the bones were rolling across the floor, and reassembling themselves just as quickly as the arm had done. Swinging his blade and severing the arm that was holding him, the young man started to get up, but he had only gotten to his knees when the reformed skeleton grabbed him by the back of the shirt, pulling him back while forcing Link to stand.

"Where do you run to, grave robber?" It asked as its other arm reformed. "Home is where you are… and home is where you shall stay… a guest of Master Stalfos like the others, and…

No, the young man was not going to be a guest of this Master Stalfos, so he hooked his foot behind the skeleton's leg while rushing toward it, causing his enemy to smash into pieces again when tackled to the floor. Trying not to waste time, he got to his knees and started bringing the blade down hard on the bones before they could roll back together, or at least he tried to. Even faster than he was capable of attacking them, the bones reassembled themselves so that Master Stalfos was standing behind him, and then Link looked back just in time to see a bony fist coming at him.

Whack! The punch caught him right in the nose, making the young man taste blood as he fell backwards, scrambling away from the approaching skeleton and then pulling himself to his feet, Link swung the sword so that Stalfos's skull was sent flying across the chamber. However, this action left him wide open to attack, and since such an enemy was not affected by the loss of its head, the skeleton was able to grab his wrist with one hand, and knee him in the stomach, before punching him in the side of the head with the other.

Link started to brace himself for another fall, but instead his enemy kept a hold of his wrist, pulling the young man back in for another hit, and then another… and then another… and then another, before finally letting go while kicking him in the chest. At some point, Link wasn't sure when, Stalfos' head had rolled itself back into place, leaving the skeleton whole while the young man was starting to get tired. He had never faced an opponent that could just rebuild itself after taking hits that would have killed almost anything else, and on top of all that, the whole ordeal didn't even seem to wear out the skeleton, leaving it fresh and full of energy.

"Do you see these restraints, grave robber?" It asked, pointing to an empty set on a pillar. "These shall be yours… I am going to put you in them like I did with the others… and then you will slowly die here… like the others."

Gathering up the last of his strength, Link pulled himself up to his feet with the support of a pillar, and then he swung his sword one last time. His plan was to knock Stalfos over, and then grab the marimba from the floor, before running away like a frightened child. However, the skeleton had a different plan, beginning with catching the blade in its bony hand, and then bringing its foot up into the young man's groin hard. Losing his grip on the sword as the pain wracked his whole body, Link was unable to defend himself as his enemy tossed the weapon across the chamber, before giving him an uppercut to the chin that sent him reeling backwards.

Crashing into the same pillar that helped him get up last time, the young man instead slid down it so that he was sitting on the floor, and his vision hadn't even come back into focus yet, when Stalfos struck him again. The skeleton was standing right over Link, bringing its fist down onto the young man's forehead every time that he tried to move, hitting him again and again until he was barely conscious… and then his enemy grabbed both of his wrists in order to bring them up into the open restraints that were above his head.

"No!" Link exclaimed weakly, trying to struggle against it, but failing. "No! Don't do this! Let me go!"

"You did this to yourself, grave robber." Stalfos replied, forcing his wrists into the restraints and then slamming them shut. "But fear not, you shall have your prize… in fact, it shall be the last thing you ever see."

There was no actual lock on the restraints, like with a key or anything, it was just a lever that locked into place, but without someone else to open it, the young man was hopelessly stuck. Try as he might, the young man just couldn't even come close to reaching the latch with his hands, and because of how he was positioned, it was impossible to get it with his feet, either. Link still tried a couple times, kicking upward as high as he could, but not getting anywhere… all while Master Stalfos walked over to reclaim the fallen marimba.

"All this fuss over a shiny thing." The skeleton commented, looking at it as the creature walked to the center of the room. "Do you see where greed has gotten you, grave robber? Imagine everything you wanted to accomplish with your life… what you could have done… who you could have loved… where you could have gone. All that is behind you now… you gave it up in order to be here… with them… and me."

"Help!" Link screamed at the top of his lungs, after realizing that he really was trapped. "Somebody help me! I'm down here, somebody help me, please! Help! I'm down here!"

His enemy made no effort to stop this, in fact the skeleton just remained where it was, as if enjoying the spectacle. Eventually the young man ran out of breath, forced to stop yelling in order to breathe heavily, and Stalfos took this opportunity to slowly walk around the chamber, stopping at the oldest looking corpse, and describing how the first grave robber had screamed for help in the same way. Then the skeleton walked over to the second one, explaining how this one had attempted to bribe it for his release, without success, and how in less than a day the third one was literally crying for his mother.

"To tell you the truth, the fourth one was my favorite." His enemy continued, patting the next corpse on the head. "For a graverobber, he was fast… not strong, but faster than me… and he could have gotten away, if not deciding to return for the prize… fool. The fifth one was booooring; he fainted upon seeing me, and woke up right there… and the sixth… well… you know all about number six, don't you, grave robber?"

"Look, you have to let me go." Link replied, trying to pull himself free again. "I'm on an important quest to wake the Wind Fish, so I can free all of us from this nightmare… even you."

Stalfos just looked at him with those dark, empty eye sockets for a moment, before walking back toward the center of the chamber. It muttered to itself that the sixth grave robber tried to lie and deceive his way out of it after proving incompetent with a sword, and then all of the bones started to collapse right where they had been originally. Once this process was done, Stalfos was gone, reduced to a pile of bones that just happened to have a shimmering marimba on top, and now Link was alone… alone just as all five of the other Grave Robbers had been after their confrontation with the skeleton.

No, the young man wasn't going to give up, so he tried to hit the latch with his hands and feet, only to fail again, and then he considered trying to grab one of Stalfos's bones in order to pick it up with his feet and hit the latch, but they were too far away, so that didn't work. Looking over at the corpses, Link saw that they had been left in different positions, such as hands bent while another had a leg twisted, as if they had been trying the same things that he was now. One of them even had their leg stretched out as if trying to grab one of the bones, without any success, but there had to be a way out… there just had to… there had to be…

"Help!" He screamed again, struggling against the restraints as panic took over. "Help! I'm down here! Somebody! Anybody! Help me!"