Chapter 2.

Link awoke in utter darkness. His head throbbed where the guards struck him. The floor felt like stone. A putrid smell invaded his nostrils, like the rot of decaying flesh. It took effort to keep from vomiting.

He sat up and began to grope around for anything at all. Crawling on his knees with his hands held out in front of him, Link made it about four feet before grasping the cool metal of jail cell bars. An empty hopelessness rose in his chest, but he chided himself for it. What else had he expected? The guards finally got him. Likely the next time he saw the sun would be his last.

He rose to his feet, and began walking himself along the walls. He was creating a perimeter in his mind. It was not a large cell: About eight feet wide by ten feet long, shaped like a rectangle, with one wall of metal bars and three of solid stone. On the barred wall, Link found a door, secured tight with a lock which felt sturdy and heavy. The bars were spaced enough that Link could thrust his arm between them, but when he reached into the darkness it was empty.

"Hey! Hey, anyone there?!"

He had no choice but to sit and wait. The prospect was simultaneously frustrating and horrifying. How could he just lay there and wait to be killed? His mind was racing desperately for some alternative. He paced back and forth, pulled vainly at the bars, pried his fingers in the cracks between the stones. Finally, he let out a hoarse and pitiful scream of heartbreak, and collapsed to the floor.

For a long while he lay in the darkness, listening to his own ragged breaths. Thin streams of tears rolled down the sides of his face. It wasn't fair. He never wanted to die alone in such a miserable place.

He couldn't tell minutes from hours. A sound broke the deep, dark silence. Metallic scraping; the clink of tumblers locking into place, and the whine of unoiled hinges swinging.

"Who's there?"

Link sat up and peered into the darkness. The pitch was absolute. He couldn't see his own hands let alone anyone who might be coming into his cell. He waited, his heart racing, images of stalking, nightmare creatures swirling in the blackness. Several minutes passed. He drew up all his courage to face the very worst… but nothing happened.

Fed up with waiting, Link got to his feet and stumbled through the darkness with his hands held out in front of him like a re-dead groping for a victim. He caught the bars of his cell. Hand over hand, he sidled along them until he came to the place the door should have been.

Link fell forward into the darkness. He scraped his knee as he hit the floor, but he didn't care. He was out. Someone or something had let him out. He had no clue where he was or how to find his way back outside, but anything beat being stuck in that cell. He got back to his feet and began to probe the darkness, feeling his way along the walls.

He was in a hallway. Directly across from his cell was a stone wall, but to the left and right the darkness gaped on for indeterminate distances. He would have to pick.

Link recalled hearing somewhere that caves and dungeons had a kind of breath to them, a way to keep the air fresh and pure. The rule was, as he recalled it, if the interior of the cave was cooler than the air outside, the change in temperature would force air to flow out of the cave. Link felt the moisture soaked into his tunic and the chill of the sunless dungeon. He decided that, even if it were night outside, the summer air of Hyrule Castle Town must be warmer than the air in the prison. He licked the tip of his finger and stuck it into the air like a weathervane.

The faintest of breezes touched his hand. He felt reasonably certain that it was flowing down the right hand passage. It was as good a plan as any. He furrowed his brow and trudged into the unknown darkness.

It was a long and anxious journey through the blind dungeon; his only ally his sense of touch. His mind found fantastic horrors to replace the all-consuming silence. Had he imagined the skittering of a rat across the ground? Was that someone else's breathing, or his own? He feared he might go mad before he ever found an exit. Sometimes the path would turn ninety degrees, and sometimes he'd come to places where the maze of darkness split off in four directions. Then he'd have to lick his finger and hope he'd remembered right the old Goron trick of breathing caves.

Occasionally, the stones in the floor were skewed or damaged. His foot would catch one wrong and he would fall. Link was a determined boy though. Despite being bruised and battered and tired and cold and hungry, he kept on. It might have been hours of stumbling through the darkness. Finally he came to a place where in the distance the light of a flame flickered.

At first he was sure it was just a trick of the shadows, a hallucination to accompany the horrible imagined sounds which had plagued him. As he neared it something in the way the fire danced made it seem real. He quickened his pace, fighting the urge to laugh with joy at the sight of warmth and light. Eventually, the fire was bright enough that he could see the blue-gray stones of the walls. Ahead, the iron brazier that held his beacon of salvation, the winking flame of an oil fire. He slackened in his pace again.

A new sound came to him. He stopped to listen.

It was the sound of whimpering, like a child crying further down the hall. The sobs were slight, and pitiful. Something about their absolute sadness made him soften in his wariness. Entranced, Link stepped into the room.

This was a larger room, its ceiling several feet higher than the hall. In it were several objects which seemed out-of-place. A table of hand carved Deku wood, luxurious and well varnished, paired with a finely crafted chair with velveteen cushion sat nearby the brazier, looking like they had been dragged from the office of some factory owner in Castle Town. Upon the table was a large, leather-bound book and raven quill pen resting in an ink well. Beyond the table, a massive iron statue dominated the center of the room, shaped like a pyramid made of three triangles, one stacked atop the other two. At the base of the statue, huddled into a fetal ball on the cold stone floor, a girl in a satin pink dress was sobbing into her own braided blond hair.

Link approached her in awe. He knew right away; this was the princess Zelda who awaited her execution the coming morning.

Link was so surprised, he did not notice the chink in the floor. He stumbled, knocking the wooden table with his knee.

"Ow, ow, ow!"

The princess gasped. Her attention snapped to Link. Her deep blue eyes met his.

"Who are you?"

"Uh…" Link was still shaking the pain off of his knee as he struggled for an answer, "Uh… I'm Link. I'm a prisoner… I was a prisoner… the guards brought me here. I'm looking for a way out."

"How did you get out of your cell?"

"I… um… don't really know?" said the boy, realizing how stupid he must sound, "The door just kind of… opened. It was dark, so I couldn't see if anyone did it. Were you crying?"

"No!" snapped the princess, "I was not crying. I just… its awful… Nyarlath, has me trapped here. He seeks to usurp the throne from my father, and kill me to ensure that none but he have a claim."

"So it is you then. Princess Zelda?"

"Of course it is me! Who else would I be?" said Zelda. Then her eyes welled up with tears again. She hid her face to keep him from seeing her cry, "Anyway, it is hopeless now. There is no escaping Nyarlath, and with his rise to the throne any hope of a peaceful Hyrule is lost."

"There must be something we can do," said Link, stepping closer, "I knew it couldn't be true that you tried to kill your father. I won't just leave you here! I'll set you free!"

"You believe me?" said Zelda, the edge in her voice softening, "That is very kind, but there is no way that you can save me. I am chained here, and unless you have the key or some other means of breaking locks there is little you can do. It would be best for you to find a way out, get as far away from Hyrule as possible, and save yourself. Dark times are coming to this land."

"No way! I can't just abandon you. You've done nothing wrong, you don't deserve to die!" Link went to her and took her hand in his. There were chains tied around her ankles, securing her to the massive statue. The princess looked him in the eye.

"You are very brave, but you must listen to me," said Zelda, "You cannot possibly stand against Nyarlath. You must leave me behind, or you will die too, and I will have that guilt to take with me to the chopping block as well."

"I don't care about that filthy old warlock! I'm getting you out of here. Wait right there, I'll go find something to break your chains!" Link released the girl's hand and turned to go find something to set her free, but he collided straight into something big and sturdy, and fell hard on his backside on the stone floor.

"Filthy old warlock, is it?" the High Wizard towered over the boy, even more menacing by the flicker of the torchlight. His black eyes glowed eldritch purple in the firelight. The gems on his neck gleamed like the eyes of demons. "Sleep, boy."

The Wizard raised his hand, palm held out flat. The tips of his fingers seethed with purple light. Link gasped as the dark magic went flowing into him. The bolt of evil sorcery struck the boy full in the face. He fell in a heap at Zelda's feet.

"You shall never get away with this."

He chuckled at her, "You must see it, young princess. I have already gotten away with it. Your father is my puppet now, and your throne is within my grasp. You will die, and with you goes the whole line of your family. Don't worry though; Hyrule is quite safe in my care."

"You are a monster!"

"Yes, Princess," he hissed, "I am a monster. And I am here to devour you."

"Lord Nyarlath, sir!" a moblin toting a massive spear clomped into the room with panic on his porcine face. "Sir! The castle is under siege. You are needed at once to command the defense forces."

"I will be there presently," said Nyarlath, then he turned to Zelda, "Make no mistake princess. Whatever happens next, I will see you dead."

With that, he swept away, Nyarlath's purple cloak billowing behind him. Zelda was alone in the silence, with Link, fallen at her knee.

She rolled the boy on his back, and propped him up with his head in her lap. Her silken-gloved hand caressed his cherubic face. Leaning close to him, she could feel his warm, shallow breath upon her cheek. She sighed with relief: he was alive. However, there was little to celebrate. The fitful twitching of his eyes quickly gave it away. She recognized the same sleeping curse which had been laid upon her father.

"Poor, brave, stupid boy!" cried Zelda, rocking Link gently in her arms, "Why didn't you listen to me?"

She sank down on him, burying her face in his chest. She hugged him, felt his heart beating faintly against her.

"Psst!"

Zelda perked up at the sound. She glanced around, but no one seemed to be there.

"Who is it?"

"Shhhh!"

A hand came to rest upon her shoulder. She squeaked with fright, but another hand clasped itself over her mouth to muffle her scream. From atop the iron statue, three figures crept, crawling on their hands, so silent as mice. Each of the newcomers was lithe and tall, and shrouded in a crimson, skin-tight garb, wrapped at the hands and ankles with white gauze. Their heads were wrapped around in the same way, covering their mouths and hair, and all Zelda could see of them were their dark eyes twinkling in the firelight.

"It's her alright. Kef, head up and let the captain know we're on our way. We'll need to get out of here in a hurry."

One of the trio gave a nod of acknowledgement before darting silently off into the darkness. The one who had spoken the order, the one who held Zelda's mouth to stifle her scream, leaned in close by her ear and whispered.

"Princess, you must be silent and do exactly as I say. I'm going to take my hand off your mouth now. Don't do anything to attract more Moblins."

Zelda nodded. The hand left her mouth. The figure stood up.

"Ok, Zig, the chains."

"Right."

The third of her rescuers knelt at her side. With a metallic click a skinny blade slid out from a hidden compartment at his wrist. The unknown jail-breaker inserted the tip of the blade into the lock of Zelda's shackles and twisted it. A second metal clicking announced the princess's release. Zelda immediately began to rub her ankle, which had become itchy and sore.

"Thank you!"

"The least we could do, Princess," said the leader, "Now don't say a word until we're back on the surface. Zig, carry her, we can't afford to have anyone hearing us leave."

The one called Zig grabbed her unceremoniously around the waist and hefted her on his shoulder. Despite his slender form, the masked rescuer was deceptively strong. He raised her into the air as if she weighed no more than a feather. Immediately they made to leave, but Zelda saw Link still lying on the stone floor, sound asleep.

"Wait!"

"Tssst!" hissed the leader, "Princess, if you get us caught yelling like that then we're all dead meat. What is your problem?"

"That boy there- he tried to help me! I can't leave him. If you mean to take me away from this dungeon, you must bring that boy with me," said Zelda.

"No can do, Princess," said the leader, "We've got enough on our hands dragging you around, I don't even wanna think about how it's gonna be tryin' a sneak out of here with two pint-sized paper weights to carry."

"I will not leave without that boy!"

"I'm sorry, princess, but you don't have a choice," the masked leader replied, "Come on, Zig, we gotta move."

"I will scream!"

"Augh!" sighed the leader, "You really care so much about this little green beggar that you're willing to let us all die?"

The twinkling, dark eyes of the jail-breaker met Zelda's. For a moment they held each other's gaze. Finally, the masked figure threw its arms up in defeat, "Ok, fine. Just fine. Let's just save every damn body. Jeeze! Sometimes I wonder why I'm so nice. You owe me, princess."

The leader went dashing back, hefted Link on their back, and came back down the hall on silent feet.

"Oh, thank you!" cried Zelda.

"You can thank me by keeping your mouth shut. Now let's move!"

They went quickly and quietly down the hall into the silent darkness of the Castle dungeon. Link and Zelda, carried along on the shoulders of their rescuers to adventures strange and unforeseen... against her better instinct Zelda felt a flicker of hope kindling in her weary heart.