Prompt No.6
Word count: ~700
Universe: Ocarina of Time
Pairings: None
Rating: T for blood
Themes: Injury, fear, being eaten alive
Dragged Away
Link gripped his thigh with both hands, trying to stave off the bleeding. He was alone, for now. The deep, dark quiet of the Forest Temple, the cool dampness of it, reminded him of home in a way. If home was more like the castle, and full of hungry spirits and horrors.
The wound oozed red and black, and he tipped his head back against the wall as the room spun. He knew he shouldn't scream. He knew he shouldn't cry.
He had been an adult for all of three days, after all, and adults did neither of those things.
His closed his eyes and just tried to breathe. Two ghosts down. That meant he was halfway to finding Saria. Hyrule was so vast, and the prospect of braving another four temples after this place almost too horrifying to contemplate, but Saria was his friend, and she needed him. He focused on that, drank a little solace from it. And then a chill ran down his neck, the stirring of a cool wind passing over clammy skin, and his eyes split open.
He wasn't alone.
With trembling breath, he braced himself on the wall and hobbled to his feet, still holding his leaking wound with one hand, and started to move. Every step was a hot poker shunting up his leg.
And whatever was in the room with him was getting closer.
He couldn't see it, couldn't smell a wet pelt or an old flame or rotting flesh; but he could hear it, feel the disturbance in the air as it moved, rustling the creeping ivy and breathing on him from somewhere, and the dread of it was sitting like a stone in the pit of his stomach.
He hobbled faster, panting after the door. The air around him moaned, breathed, until he could feel the vibrations passing through him, until he felt he was already in the maw. A shadow spilled over his feet, dogging his every step, pulsing, growing in tandem with the sound rattling his bones. It veiled his face like a dark hand: blotting out light, closing around his mouth until he couldn't breathe, couldn't scream. And then it finally descended on him.
Four massive claws punctured him from shoulder to thigh, the last digging into his open wound, and the fist closed around him before he could draw breath to scream. He could hardly see what it was that had him—something dark, a spindly hand formed of shadow, lingering in shadow, dragging him toward shadow.
He managed to pry an arm free, grasping frantically at the floor tiles for a nonexistent hold, tormented by the sickening drag and thump of the hand lurching him backward. He couldn't reach his sword. His bones felt crushed. He forced out a pathetic cry, hoping someone might hear—the gods, maybe—and the hand squealed in morbid delight.
Then all at once the floor was gone, pulled out of his reach and shrinking as he tumbled towards darkness. The hand pulsed and squeezed around him, and he was vaguely aware of something leaving him, of a guttural, whispering slurp as it drank from him. When its hold eased enough for him to breathe he would scream, and cry, and do all the things adults weren't supposed to do, and it would gurgle another squeal through its mouthful. He didn't know how long it went on, only that he was awake for all of it and that fear and pain of his earlier wound paled next to the horror and agony of being eaten alive. Then, when he felt spent and boneless and hardly human, it dropped him, and he fell through darkness, into darkness.
He woke at the temple's entrance, whole and corporeal. He made a quick assessment of his limbs and organs, and when he was finally convinced they were all still present, he let his head collapse on the soft cushion of the forest floor.
Tears leaked, fresh and globular, out of the corners of his eyes as he stared at the tranquil blue sky. He missed Saria. He missed the seven years the gods had stolen.
He missed whatever the Wallmaster had taken from him.