Ch. 4 Summer Camp

Disclaimer: I do not own LoZ. I do not own Link, Zelda, Ganondorf, Vaati, or Dark Link. I do not own Hyrule. I don't own a DS. My brother does. If you want to borrow it, ask him. I do however, own all the original characters in this fic.

Special thanks to: Fax, Zeldaisthebest, BluSakura, Greki, and adrian-air-fire for the reviews! Please keep reading, and wish me luck!

A group of around sixty pages was gathered in the front courtyard of Hyrule Castle, all going into their second, third, or fourth and final years as pages. They stood by their mounts, some excited, some nervous, and some just plain bored, all anxiously awaiting the announcement of their travel destination. Three people in particular seemed to stand out from the rest of the crowd. A boy, thirteen just two days ago, with wild blond hair and blue eyes, dressed for comfort in a green tunic, brown leather boots, and a cap, stood holding the reins to his horse, a liver chestnut filly, who in this case had a reddish-brown body, a dark brown, almost black mane and tail with a shock of white at the tips, and black legs, with white socks on all four.

A girl, who had been eleven for almost a month, with longer-than-necessary blonde hair and rose-colored eyes that in some lights appeared red, this time differed from her usual pages' tunic and wore a white shirt under a brown leather jerkin, and brown pants tucked into her thigh-high leather boots. Her horse was a blue roan stallion, kept at some distance away from the other horses in case he decided to bite.

The third person was a boy, still twelve until the winter, whose silver hair was kept much too long for a boy or man. His clothes were a pale blue tunic over puffy white pants, along with brown leather combat-style boots. He had orange eyes with a very mischievous glint to them, and led a pinto gelding.

Link, Lorelei, and Pasco were part of the first group.

"Wherever we're going this year, it can't be worse than when we went to that area on the edge of the forest, you know, the time with the Bloodvines."

"Uggh," Lorelei, called Lor by her close friends, shivered, remembering the vines that grew like lightning and tried to strangle all the pages, until someone had the good sense to try and burn them. "There's nothing worse than Bloodvines."

"Except for the Bloodoak, of course!" came a cheerful voice behind her. Lor jumped to the side as Pasco led his horse up.

"Aahh! Pasco!"

"Hey, Pasco!" Link greeted his friend with a firm handshake, and after getting over the shock of not knowing someone was behind her, Lor did, as well.

"The Bloodoak is a vicious tree with five rings of teeth at the top of its trunk. Its sleeper vines knock out anyone they grab, so it's prey can't struggle. They say Blood Vines grow around it and feed on the remains! That is, if there are any…"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Lor said, rolling her eyes. Pasco liked to talk long and hard about the things he found in ancient books. She brightened up and said, "I hope there will be some neat ruins to explore!"

"What's up with you and exploring ruins, anyway?" Link asked. Lorelei was known for her love of ancient ruins and things like that. If there was a ruin in the east, she was there. If there was one in the west, she was there, too.

"It's the discovering of unclaimed artifacts of a valuable nature!" Lor said, stroking the mane of her horse, Double Take, aptly named for his almost unnatural speed.

"Translation: junk," Pasco said. He dodged Lor's roundhouse kick and hid behind his horse.

"It's not junk!"

The training master stepped onto the walkway on the wall. Silence dropped around the cluster of pages like a blanket; the anticipation crackled like electricity.

"This year's trip will be to Death Mountain," the training master announced. There were cheers from the most adventurous and moans from the most superstitious.

"Mount up!" Everyone obeyed the order, climbing onto their horses, and in one large wave, they left the castle grounds with the training master at the head and some teachers as a rearguard for the supply ponies. They trotted double file down the main street and broke into a slow gallop at the city gates.

By evening, they had passed through Kakariko City, picking up what supplies they didn't already have, and began their ascent up the only paved road on the mountain, which led to the Highreach estate.

That night, they reached the campsite, a small flat area on the edge of a cliff, void of all but the stoutest plant life, only accessible from below by a single, thin trail. The training master had each page demonstrate he could pitch a tent quickly, no matter if he or she would use one or not. Then, they picketed their horses and demonstrated they could light a fire. A hunting party of mostly junior pages, with some senior pages to assist, was sent to see what they could find. The rest of the pages ate part of their rations. The more experienced pages ate only a small amount, considering the trip was a month long and the area was not known for a thriving game population.

Link, Pasco, and Lor shared a campfire to conserve wood, and so that they could talk in peace. Link was content with only a bedroll, only partly because it took him ten times to reach a satisfactory speed for pitching tents. Lor also slept outside, as she nearly strangled herself with the rope, then accidentally tied it around her legs so that she almost took a dive off the cliff. Pasco, being the one who always thought ahead, pitched a tent so his friends could come in case of rain. Lor got very angry when he demonstrated the ease at which he set up, and nearly threw him into open space.

Small talk shortly commenced, drifting from one subject to another, and finally ending at old battles they had fought. After all, their years as pages had not been idle, and almost every night had been spent searching out and destroying monsters before they could do any real harm. More than one person out for a midnight stroll had narrowly avoided a gruesome death because of the efforts of Link and Lor, assisted by Pasco during the past week.

"Is it just me, or are the attacks getting more frequent? At first, it was a few Keese, then after a month or so, they got harder to beat with every fight," Link said, stirring the campfire and looking at the ground. Lor felt another pang of guilt and regret, a feeling that instead of going away, had intensified over the past week, since a fiasco of a party ended up with her bound to a pact with an evil body-stealing sorcerer of unknown name and origin, a pact that would most likely end in her friend's death. And the worst thing was that she had no way to give any warnings, because if she tried to tell about anything that happened, she would immediately fall unconscious.

"Perhaps someone realized we were opposing them, and sent more monsters out to try to overpower us," she suggested.

"Something's definitely going down," Pasco said bluntly, "Something big. Like, war-big. Story-big."

Link muttered something to himself.

"What?" Lor asked.

"N-nothing, it's nothing," Link replied.

"You know, I wonder if we'll ever be put into songs or tales, and told about around the fire," Pasco said, gazing dreamily into the fire. One by one, all the other teachers and students had doused their fires with gravel and gone to sleep while the small group had been talking. "Sort of like, 'I want to hear about the big adventure of Pasco and Link and Lorelei! That's one of my favorite stories. Pasco was so brave, wasn't he, dad?'"

"If you consider someone who runs at the first sight of something larger than himself as brave," Lor replied.

"Details, details. My favorite character, of course, is the cutie Lorelei, who slays her enemies with the strength of a guinea pig!" Pasco taunted, blocking a halfhearted punch from Lor that certainly had more strength than a guinea pig could ever hope to muster. Link rolled his eyes and pulled the thick, coarse blanket over his body. Pasco went into his tent and doused the lamp. Soon, both boys were asleep, leaving only Lor awake, staring into the dancing flames, filled with her painful guilt, which only grew worse as she stared. Finally, she threw a bucket of sand over the fire and pulled her own blanket all the way over her head.

#Fire#

That morning, the teachers divided the students up into five groups. One group climbed into trees and practiced mapping out the terrain. Another went to gather firewood, though they were rather out of luck in that area. A two more groups were put to work hunting, and the final group was sent to scout the area and report their findings.

Lor walked at the back of the scouting group, a bow in her hand. She knew the public opinion, no matter how good of a tracker she was, and knew that nobody would welcome The Girl as a leader. That's the problem with the world, Lor thought, trudging along at the rear, everybody underestimates us girls. Suddenly, she stopped.

Come to me.

"What?" Lor looked around, but couldn't see anyone. She moved towards the group.

Come to me, Lorelei. There was an all-too-familiar voice in her head.

The group was moving farther ahead. Lor was going to have to run to catch up.

COME TO ME OR I WILL KILL THEM ALL!

#Fire#

"Okay, I'm here! What do you want with me this time!" Lor cried into the cavern that surrounded her. She had snuck away from the group, saying she had heard something, and followed the sorcerer's telepathic directions into a small opening on a cliff, only to realize that it was actually a labyrinthine cave sealed by boulders.

"Only to give you your first assignment," the voice echoed around her. She knew that evil body-stealing man was around here somewhere, unwilling to show his face. Probably because he knows I'll run him through or shoot him the first chance I get, she thought, glaring suspiciously at all the dark passageways. Her night vision was better than most, but in this pitch dark, only a cat or a keese could find its way around.

"Why don't you show your face this time?" Lor tried, her hand straying to her quiver.

"And let you catch me off guard? I think not," the voice chuckled, "I only had to last time to put the curse on you, or I wouldn't have risked it even then."

"So you're scared of me?" Lor taunted.

"Only in my weakened state, dear. In my true body, I would not have thought twice of killing you and all your little friends at that pompous party."

"So, why don't you use your original body, then? You don't like it?"

"It, too, is sealed away by that sword I need your friend to find," the voice replied.

"And why aren't you just telling me to find this stupid sword for you?" Lor asked. Hey, it wasn't much, but it was worth a shot. Anything to keep from dragging her friends into this dumb mess.

"Because you, my dear, have the absolutely weakest soul I have ever laid eyes on. I'm surprised it wasn't eaten by a ReDead or Wight ages ago. Your friend, on the other hand…" Okay. So the attempt was a flop. Maybe she could come up with some… Wait just a darn minute. WEAK SOUL! What the heck is that supposed to mean! Lor fumed internally, not allowing her anger and confusion to register on her face, even if it was pitch black.

"Your assignment," the sorcerer continued from his yet-to-be-revealed hiding place, "is to find one of the three keys that lies somewhere in this cavern. Bring your friend here on any free time you get, or at night, if necessary. Don't let on about this meeting or the last, or… well, you know the consequences. Make it seem like you've found another of your precious ruins. And Lorlelei, please make it within twenty-four hours. You are dismissed."

Grumbling about sorcerers who put curses on innocent bystanders when they were ill, Lor scrambled her way back to the rest of the party, only one of whom seemed to miss her.

"Lor! Where the heck were you?" Link hissed in her ear as she finally reached the rest of the group again.

"Exploring," she lied, "I found a really cool ruin, and I want to go back and check it out some more tonight. It might get a little dangerous, but probably no more than a trap or too. Easy stuff."

"Well, I'm coming with you. Ruins are often home to monsters, Lor, and you can't go in unprepared," Link whispered back, moving to resume his position at the head of the group. Lor's head hurt almost as much as her heart. She knew exactly what to say to get him to come with her, and it was starting to scare her. A lot. She was going to have to break this curse soon.

#Fire#

In the pocket of one page on map duty, a mirror grew hot. He cursed silently and pulled it out, holding it with his shirt until it cooled again. A girl's face appeared, short brown hair, forest green eyes.

"Vaati, we have a code red alert. Ganondork is after stone number one. Or, rather, his unwilling lackey and her clueless friend are."

"So the Black Rose is going to see its first real action in a century?" Vaati, disguised as a page, asked hopefully.

Dala giggled on the other mirror. "We'll give them the trouncing of a lifetime. Get Dark Link on the line. He'd better come, too. Because, it also concerns…" all levity was gone from the Kokiri's voice as she trailed off. Vaati knew exactly what she was talking about.

"I will."

Dala's picture faded as Vaati whispered another name. A different face appeared shortly, with unkempt dark brown hair and orange-red eyes. His usually brooding face now reflected mild surprise. Vaati as of yet had not done any contacting himself, leaving that to technical expert Dala.

"… Vaati."

"Long time no see, huh?" Vaati asked good-naturedly, a vain attempt to get Dark Link to smile, or show any emotion whatsoever.

"… Yes. Dala told me about her."

"We've got a little problem on our hands. You-know-who is after you-know-what number-one. And he's using … you know… to do it."

"… Where are you?"

"Death Mountain. Dala's been doing her little thing with the plants, and that's how we know. Though, it's still been hard for her, because not much grows around here, despite all the volcanic ash."

"We could use this to an advantage."

Vaati was silent for a moment, dumbstruck. This was the most words he had ever heard Dark Link say in one sentence since… Vaati stopped himself. It hurt too much to think about that.

"H-how so?"

"The Fire is on Death Mountain."

The Fire. Phase One was already beginning to form in Vaati's mind. A very unbecoming giggle welled up in his throat. "Ganondork's got an ice creature trying to break through the magic shield in the sky. He might think it's a good thing for him, but man, he's in for one heckuva surprise!"

Dark Link was silent for a moment. He's probably talking it over with all his multiple personalities, Vaati thought, his head resting on one fist as he waited. Dark Link looked up again. Was that…? Could it be! There was a hint of a smile on his face. A not-very-nice smile.

"I'll be there tonight. Then we'll officially start planning." The mirror went blank. Vaati pulled a face at Dark Link's last transmission, all full of authority, and found himself wishing for the gazillionth time that he had been named second-in-command instead. Then they would just get a big army and awaken the Leader and go get rid of Ganondorf all in one blow. Then he realized for the gazillionth time that that was exactly the reason he wasn't second-in-command. Good leaders had cool, level heads on their shoulders. Good leaders didn't get mad easily.

Good leaders were people like Orielle-sensei.

Vaati huffed and returned to the task at hand: mapping out the surrounding area from the top of a stunted tree.

#Fire#

Around evening, Lor and Link were sent out for the first nighttime watch. The watches were done by the senior pages as a sort of training exercise. Stationed watching the pathway leading downwards along the mountain slope, they quietly discussed plans for their excursion to Lor's "ruin".

"We should leave when it's fully dark, and pack a little food, and bandages," Link said, staring down at the reddening landscape.

"Food?"

"We'll need to keep our strength up, Lor. And most of the other places we've been have been purely to fight monsters, places where we know the surrounding area well. We don't know how big this ruin of yours is, or how strong the monsters are, or what we need to look out for. We're practically blind." Lor nodded. Why hadn't she thought of that?

"Torches," Lor added, "It's really dark, so we'll need torches."

Link nodded, eyes darting towards a shadow moving along the path. It was accompanied by the staccato of shod hooves in an urgent but careful trot up the narrow walkway. Slowly the shadow became more defined, and the sounds too. A heavily armored rider on a swift riding horse, with strange decorations like sticks pointing out from his right shoulder. Lor tightly gripped her spear, issued by the teachers to those on watch and hunting duty, and saw Link do the same.

"Be you friend or foe?" Link called the customary words of the Hyrulian watch down at the figure, who slowed his trot a little to round a turn.

"Friend," came the reply, sounding weak, "with urgent news for Lord Bryant!"

"The training master is in his tent. I will tend to your mount," Lor replied. As the man got closer, she recognized him as a knight, and the things that she originally thought as outlandish decoration were actually arrows, stuck deep into his shoulder, wounds bleeding sluggishly. His armor was splashed with drying blood, both his own red and the black of monsters'. His shield, with a large cleft in it, left most likely by some axe or broadsword, told her that he was from the house of Lakemere, which overlooked the place where Lake Hylia joined the Silvermere river.

"Sir, you're hurt!"

"A small ambush by monsters on the way. I need to see Lord Bryant immediately," the knight insisted as he half dismounted, half fell off of his horse. Link rushed to steady him, using all of his strength just to keep the knight from crushing him flat with all that heavy armor.

"What you need is a healer!" Lor said, moving to help Link. A couple of other pages noticed the commotion and rushed over to take his mount and relieve them of watch duty. The knight seemed to gain more strength as they walked, and his wounds had stopped bleeding.

When they reached the training master's tent, the knight thanked them both and remarked to Lor, "By the stars, you sound just like a girl!" Then he pushed open the flap and walked in. The second watch took the place of the first. The call floated down from the cliff above, "ten o'clock, and all's well."

#Fire#

Link and Lor shouldered their packs and hid behind a rock fall. The pages on duty there looked up at the moon and down at the shadows below. Soon, their shoulders were tapped by those of the third watch and a whispered conversation ensued. The two pages hiding in the shadows took the opportunity to creep away up the slope, past their conversing year-mates, and assume a brisk jog towards the entrance of the cave.

"Here it is," Lor said, gesturing at a large pile of boulders. There was just enough room for one child-size person to squeeze through at the base. Lor pulled off her pack and shoved it between the hole, then moved in herself, sucking in her stomach so as to have more room. Link did the same, and soon they had reached a large open, pitch-dark cavern.

"Torch," Link called, his hand reaching out to touch Lor's shoulder as she fumbled through her pack for a torch and her tinderbox. Although Lor was a terrible cleaner, a disaster with a hammer, saw, or axe, and her cooking could only be called destructive, she was very good at playing with fire. If it had to do with starters, fuses, lamp oil, or tinder, Lor was your girl.

Soon a cheery glow lifted some of the gloom, and they both saw where they were for the first time. Even guilt-riddled Lor was impressed, her archaeologists' spirit overcoming her almost immediately. The cavern not only went up, it went down, too. Spiraling pathways sloped to the cavern floor hundreds of feet below, their walls covered in passages that probably once had doors covering them. On the ceiling, rusted chains dangled, whatever they once held broken off. There were no bones, only broken bits of pottery and rusted metal to show that people once lived here.

"Well, let us begin the excavation at once!" Lor cried, her voice echoing around the ruin.

"I'm not excavating anything!" Link cried, shouldering his pack and running after Lor.

"This is sooo cool! Look at all the markings on the walls! And the workmanship of these hinges! Marvelous!" Link finally caught up with his friend, who was about to walk into one of the passages, which had a rotten wooden door hanging by one rusted hinge.

"Wait, Lor, there might be…!"

"No fear!" Lor cried, walking right in, and was instantly bombarded by Keese in their rush to escape the intruder. "Yeeeeek!"

"…Monsters. This isn't a field trip, Lor!" Link, sword and shield in hand, moved toward his friend lying face-up on the ground.

"Sowwy," Lor said, getting up and dusting herself off. She took up the torch again; she had dropped it when she fell. As the light lifted once more into the air, both pages saw a glint below.

"What was that?" Link asked, lifting the torch, still in Lor's hand, higher. Yep, there was definitely something down there.

Yes, Lorelei. Now go down there and get it, the sorcerer's voice echoed in Lor's head.

#Fire#

"What in the world…?" Link and Lor stared down at the object in question, having reached the bottom of the ruin. The shiny thing was a red crystal set in gold, a craftsman's dream masterpiece of a lifetime. "Lor, you know about this kind of thing. What is it?"

"… I can't believe it," she breathed, "Marvelous. Simply marvelous." Despite guilt and anger, directed toward herself and that darned sorcerer, Lor couldn't help but be amamzed. Hundereds of years of history, sitting right in front of her! Lor reached out for the half-buried red stone.

"Stop where you are!"

"Wha-? Aaahh!" Lor cried as a vine grew out of nowhere and snaked up her outstretched arm, forcing her onto all fours. She dropped the torch, so Link barely saw that the same sort of vine was winding around his legs.

"Lor, it's Bloodvine!"

"Ahahaha! I warned you!" a child's voice laughed from the shadows. Suddenly, a shadow directly in front of them grew and morphed into the form of a girl of around ten or so, with short brown hair and large, green eyes. She wore a green dress edged in brown, and red and black armor. Not that they could see much, though, with the torch lying on the ground. She bent over and picked up the red stone, then took to tossing it in one hand.

"Who are you?" Lor gasped. The vines were quickly turning into a rock-solid cocoon around her body. Link tried to rip off the ones growing around his waist, only to find that they were so strong that not even his sword could cut more than one or two at a time.

"You seriously don't remember a thing?" the girl asked, kneeling to look Lor in the eyes.

"What are you… talking about!" Lor cried, struggling futilely with her soon-to-be coffin of vines. Remember? Remember… what?

"Lor, have you two met?" Link asked, puzzled.

"Not… that I'm aware… of…!" A vine wrapped itself tighter around her neck. Lor gasped for breath, her lungs already aching. To her horror, she felt a sharp prickling on her one still outstretched arm, the first to be grabbed. The vines were growing thorns.

"Lor, hang on!" Link slashed harder at the vines.

"Heheheh! I see you're familiar with my favorite pet," the girl giggled. Lor watched with only one open eye as Link made a grab for the torch on the ground, but the girl was faster. She kicked it away. It bounced and skidded along the ground and flickered, but miraculously stayed lit. The vines crept around Link's chest and had already pinned his sword arm behind his back.

I have to… do something… Lor thought foggily. She felt, rather than saw, the vines spread across the dimly lit stony ground, growing darker from lack of air. The prickling had spread to her legs and the pain in her arm intensified. A vine closed her eye and everything went dark.

A strange warm feeling washed over her body. The pain of the thorns and the iron grip on her throat crumbled away with it. She opened her eyes again. The vines had crept over the torch and burned up! The girl cursed and made another gesture. The plants started to grow again, but Lor had already moved away. She glanced towards Link. His patch of vines wasn't connected to hers; the fire didn't reach it.

Reaching out, Lor unthinkingly grabbed the torch on its burning end. Instead of the sharp pain she had expected, she was met with that warm feeling again. Thank goodness for shock, Lor thought, believing completely that she was dying and couldn't feel her own hand burn. She threw the torch at Link so forcefully that it bounced off the vines without lighting them. However, the ones on the ground caught.

"Darn it!" Something round flew past Lor's shoulder. The girl in green had a Kendama and was using the strange weapon with the skill of an experienced fighter.

Lor dodged the ball on a string again, then diving in close with her epee. It came disgracefully short of the girl, mostly because she had to guess everything exclusively by sound. Another shot from the Kendama across the face sent Lor staggering back. The girl shrieked as Link unexpectedly came up from behind. A tree shot up in front of her, blocking most of the stroke, but the shortsword crashed against the red jewel on her wrist guard with a loud clack. She dropped the shiny stone. At the same time, Lor jumped close and managed to score a shallow cut across her leg.

"Grrr! I won't let any of you live! You'll all die!" the girl shrieked. Plants started shooting up all over the place, twining around her legs and arms. Her green eyes glowed with an eerie light.

"Dala! Dala!" called another, deeper voice from next to the glowing eyes.

"Link, take that red stone and run!" called Lor, cutting down the plants around her.

"But…!"

"Dala, you're losing control! Dala, wake up!" the eyes seemed to vibrate, as if someone was violently shaking their owner. They blinked and there was a loud crack, followed by a thud and a moan. Whoever the person doing the shaking was, they weren't going to feel very good in the morning.

"Just do it! That shiny rock is the ancient artifact, the Spiritual Stone of Fire! It's got powers you can't even imagine, and these guys want it badly enough to kill! Get it back to the training master! Raise the alarm!"

"Lor, this is stupid! It's crazy!" Link yelled at her, tugging one arm. Stones started to fall from the ceiling, jarred loose by giant roots.

Lorelei, don't be an idiot!

Shut up, stupid sorcerer, Lor replied silently, jerking her arm from Link's grasp.

"Darn it, Link, can't you just take a gift for once! Someone's gotta keep her busy and it certainly shouldn't be you! Get moving before I change my mind!" She shoved him as hard as she could and tripped over a tangle of vines. As she lay there, she watched him run as fast as he could toward a light source: a way out had opened from the cave-in. She saw his silhouette grow smaller. With a loud grating sound, the path was blocked by more boulders.

Run, Link. Raise the alarm. Don't look back.

Hiya! It's me, Kendansa, your crazy author! Ta-da!

Long time no see, eh? I hope you like the chapter. It's got a bit of a cliffhanger at the end, huh? Makes you wanna read more, huh?

I don't have any news to report, really, except that the plot for all three "books" as I refer to the parts, are now down on paper. All I have to do is write them. Please cheer me on. I'll do my best! …I really want some reviews. If I get any, I'll post them on the next chapter!

Until then, Chow!