Link's fist clenched in anger as she recalled the night before. What cowards they were to have ganged up on her like that. She briefly wondered to herself if she could have taken them all on in a more fair fight, with a weapon in her hand or something, but quickly dismissed the idea. There had been a half dozen of them. She could have taken on at most three of them, but they used more than enough to ensure they could capture her. Judging by the fact that the butler-looking man was familiar with her birthmark, they might have been watching her for some time, spying on her. A brief shiver of disgust went through her as she wondered how much of her life they may have spied on.

A thought suddenly occurred to her though. That man at the bar who grabbed her wrist and looked at her mark, was he one of these guys? If he was, did they only learn about the mark then, and kidnapped her that night off of just that?

Craning her neck, Link looked at her bound hand, twisting it in its bonds to look at it. Yeah, it was a dark triangle, with two barely visible triangles next to it. As a child she once compared it to a small part of the Royal Family's Crest on the Knights' Shields. She pretended that this was proof that she was related to the royal family and Zelda's long lost sister, though that did not last long once her parents died and she had to take care of herself.

At the thought of her parents, he mind drifted to her uncle, the one who took care of her. Her parents had been taken by a sickness that swept through Hyrule about ten years ago. While children, like Link at the time, merely had cold-like symptoms, adults who caught the disease fell deathly sick, coughing up a bit of blood before dying. It was still unknown why certain adults didn't catch the disease despite obvious exposure like Link's uncle, but there were some ideas that the ones who were immune had caught a similar disease in the past and had resistance to it.

Link just knew that her uncle Rusl would be distraught with worry over Link's disappearance. He once told her that he swore to his sister on her deathbed to protect their daughter, and had always worried about every little thing Link did. Link's desire to be a warrior and generally tomboyish attitude had always worried Rusl endlessly. Link wondered how long she had been unconscious, and whether anyone had noticed her disappearance yet. After thinking for a moment, she figured that if less than a day had passed then probably not yet. She had her own apartment, though she normally had breakfast with Rusl. She skipped breakfast often enough though that he likely wouldn't notice anything wrong. She had quit the swordsmanship school, so Lance wouldn't notice her absence until much later, if at all. She had planned on seeing him just before the academy would open for the day, but hadn't actually mentioned that to him the previous night.

The ones who would likely notice first would be Malon and Talon, when she didn't show up for work. Malon would likely be hysterical by the time Link was an hour late and would charge out the door and over to Link's house to find out what was wrong. She would find the apartment empty, with no signs that Link made it home. She'd go straight to the guards and an investigation would ensue. The murder of that one guard would likely be related to Link's disappearance and hopefully evidence of her kidnapping would be found.

But Link had no false hopes that she would ever be found by her friends and family. She didn't have any idea where she even was at the moment. For some reason she felt sure she wasn't in the capital of Hyrule anymore, though she had no explanation for this intuition.

Pulling lightly at her chains again, she sighed sadly. She wasn't going to break these chains through raw strength. She could see no way to escape. It had been just short of an hour since the butler had left and the fat guard outside the cell had already fallen asleep on his chair. Though she was trying to resist, she could feel despair slowly creeping in. Tears were just starting to well up in her eyes when she spotted something that stopped her.

A hand was reaching out of a ventilation grate. Just outside the cell, above the guard, a hand with a wrench was slipping through the grate and loosening the nuts holding it in place. Even as Link gaped at the hand, wondering what was happening, a spark of excitement was growing inside her. For whatever reason, someone was sneaking into the area. Maybe whoever this person was, he or she was going to save her. Ignoring a thought in the back of her mind that the timing was a bit convenient, she watched in anticipation.

As the first nut came off and the hand carefully pulled it inside before starting on the next one Link mentally noted that despite the extreme rust on the grate, she could hear no noise. Her expression turned quizzical as she wondered how there was no noise. Of course, magic. Whoever this was could use magic and was suppressing sound. Even the once loud snoring of the guard seemed diminished.

Suddenly the second nut fell.

Link gasped and held her breath as she watched the hand from the grate desperately grab for the nut and failing. The rusty metal thing hit the ground outside the apparent spell suppressing sound and made a loud ringing noise that echoed through the area. Seeing the guard stir, Link quickly slumped, pretending to be asleep. Her last sight before doing so was of the hand retracting into the vent.

As she looked at her knees, she saw the nut that had just fallen next to her, having apparently bounced in her direction. Hearing the grumbling of the guard, she quickly shuffled her leg to cover the nut.

The wooden chair the guard sat on creaked as he stood up.

"Wha…What was that noise?" He asked groggily, rubbing his eyes. Since Link was still feigning sleep, the guard banged his fist against the bars as he said more loudly. "You heard me wench. What was that noise, I saw you move just now."

Slowly Link raised her head, glaring defiantly at the guard. She could see golden eyes watching from the vent behind the guard. Good, whoever that was hadn't abandoned her.

"Don't call me that." Link said, her voice cold and haughty.

The guard seemed to finally wake up at that, looking at Link with a bit of surprise.

"What?"

"Don't call me a wench. I'm a thousand times more of a warrior than you could ever hope to be."

"Ha! Really?" The Guard asked, sounding incredulous. He couldn't believe that his prisoner was suddenly so arrogant.

Glancing her eyes slightly to the side, Link saw that the person in the vents had apparently understood her intent. The hand had returned and the wrench was working again.

"And what are you gonna do exactly, Wench?"

"I'm going to escape from these chains, very soon you pig-headed freak, and then I'm gonna gut you like the swine you are!" Link declared, trying not to glance at the vent too much.

"Hah! You're lucky Lord Fangor took the key with him or I'd open this cell and teach you a lesson you bratty wench."

Link clucked her tongue, remembering when that man had pocketed the key. She was just in the middle of trying to figure out how her friend could help her escape when something clicked.

"Did you say Fangor? That man was Lord Fangor?!" Link asked, her voice much louder than she intended.

"That's right lassie, the mighty Warlock Fangor, ruler of New Hylia, is the one who locked you in here. So don't get any bright ideas about escap-AGH!"

Link had been so shocked by the revelation of that butler guy being Fangor (which didn't match her mental image of the man) that she hadn't noticed the man in the vent finish his job, slip down to the ground, and stab the guard in the back with a dagger.

Because he had been facing her, Link saw with detail as the pig-man's beady eyes bulged in pain, his mouth gaped open in horror as he started to comprehend what had happened to him. His eyes never left Link's as he collapsed to the ground, twitched a couple times, and stopped moving.

It took a couple seconds for it to dawn on her that Link had just witnessed someone die. She'd heard stories of war, fantasized about being a Royal Knight, and even knew that a guard had died just the night before. But seeing the fear in the guard's eyes as he died was somehow horrifying to her. Even as her mind tried to justify his death, that he was a bad man, that he was complicit in the kidnapping and imprisonment of a girl, and even that she had boasted mere moments ago about doing it herself. She still felt a sick feeling in her stomach.

Link sat there, too stunned to realize what was happening. She didn't notice the man magically unlock the cell, didn't hear him introduce himself, and didn't notice him freeing her bindings. It wasn't until he shook her that she came back to reality.

"Hey, are you alright?"

Link looked up at the man who freed her. It suddenly registered that the man was a Gerudo. Red hair and dark skin, he was definitely a Gerudo, just like Naboora, the woman from the other day. Link recalled that once upon a time, male Gerudo were incredibly rare, only occurring once every century, with that Gerudo being king (a story that annoyed Link, as it pissed her off that by default of being a man, a person was made ruler of an entire race).

300 years ago, the Gerudo had a male born, just like they had expected. This boy had immediately begun to be raised to be the king, when just a year later, another boy had been born. The Gerudo were in turmoil for a while, with a war almost flaring up over two males existing. Over the next decade, several more males were born to the Gerudo. It was soon realized that something had changed, something critical. The Gerudo were no longer a purely female race. And since there were more than one male in a generation, the previous tradition could not be kept anymore.

Up until the present, the Gerudo had changed because of this. Though men made up less than 3 percent of the total Gerudo population, virtually none of them had any power in society. Without men being arbitrarily put in charge, the Gerudo were definitively ruled by a woman. According to the Gerudo, if one of their few men worked hard enough, he could technically rise to be a King, but they generally weren't given the opportunity. Men were second-class citizens among the Gerudo, and most of them could hope for little more than to become house-husbands. Link loved the irony.

"Are you okay?" The man asked again, gently shaking Link's shoulder.

"Ah, yeah. Thank you." Link said, looking away from the man as she rubbed her wrists. Her eyes fell on the dead guard and again she felt sick, especially when she saw the blood pooling under him.

"That…was the first time you saw someone die, wasn't it?" The man asked, seeming worried.

"Y-yeah. I've never seen someone die before."

"I'm sorry, but I couldn't help it." The man helped Link stand up.

"No, I figure that a couple more guards are going to die before we escape. If I can't handle this, I can't call myself a warrior, can I?"

"Yeah, more guards are definitely going to die during our escape, but that shouldn't make their deaths easy. I don't like the fact that killing is easy for me now."

Link looked again into the golden eyes of this man. She could see now that they were hard, that he had seen a fair bit of death. She also thought she could see kindness in his eyes.

"I'm Link. Thanks for saving me." Link said, introducing herself.

"I guess you were too stunned the first time, but I'm Don."

Standing straight up, Link noticed that the man was about an inch shorter than her. Her eyes quickly looked him over, taking in his stature. He was a man of slight build, with shoulder length red hair. He was garbed in tight-fitting leather armor, and she saw bits of tape holding certain bits down. She realized that his outfit helped prevent from making noise.

"Like what you see?" Don asked with a smirk, noticing her looking him over.

Link's cheeks turned red as she shook her head.

"I wasn't-"

"I know what you were doing. You were sizing me up, seeing how good of a comrade I was going to make."

"Er…" Link wasn't going to put it that way exactly, but couldn't respond because Don had interrupted her by handing her the guard's sword.

"Here, you need to be armed. This guard's shortsword should do you fine."

Link moved the sword to her left hand and hefted the blade. It was a crude broadsword that was almost the length of her arm. It was heavy in the blade and the edge was chipped and dull. The critical part of her recognized that the guard was essentially a noncombatant, always doing little more than babysitting prisoners. He likely didn't bother to maintain his weapons because he never thought he'd use them. Then her boast earlier about being a warrior many times better was likely more true than she realized.

And for taking down other guards as incompetent as this one, this sword would do fine. Walking out of her cell, Link looked around. She was in a hallway filled with cells on one side and doors exiting at the far ends. Quickly Link checked out her neighboring cells and found no other prisoners.

"You had an entire ward devoted to you." Don commented, smirking as he walked past her towards one end of the hallway.

"But why me? What does this mark mean?" Link asked, holding up her hand and showing the mark.

Stopping, Don turned and gently grabbed Link's hand, looking at the mark closely.

"It means that you're someone very special. That you're a direct danger to Fangor's plans." Don said, a grin on his face. "You're gonna be a genuine fairy tale hero!"

"Right…" Link said dubiously. She still didn't believe that her mark was anything more than an ugly birthmark. "And I'm Princess Zelda's long lost sister."

"Close." Don said with a chuckle, "But I'll explain that bit later."

Link blinked in surprise. Wondering wildly what Don had meant by that, she followed him. Before she could ask, he made a shushing motion as he got to the door and crouched next to it. Link did the same, trying to be quiet as Don pressed his ear against the door.

"Two guards, at the end of the hall to the right. They're chatting about going to the pub tonight."

Link's eyebrows rose in amazement. Pressing her own ear against the door she could hear little more than a quiet mumbling sound. This man's ears were amazing. Whispering back to him, Link asked, "What's the plan?"

"I think…" Don was quiet for a moment as he contemplated the options. He glanced at Link and her sword, which she gripped tightly, as if to tell him she was ready to do whatever was necessary. Nodding, Don said, "I'm going to throw the door open and cast a spell at the guards, it's called Flashbang, and will blind and daze them for a couple seconds. They're just a couple seconds' sprint down the hall. After I've casted the spell you'll follow me down the hall and we'll take them down. If they're conveniently positioned as such, you go for the right, I'll go for the left one."

Link swallowed and nodded. She understood what the plan was, and after a moment of mental preparation, was ready to move.

Don held up three fingers, then two, then one.

Don shouldered the door open and thrust a hand down the hallway. From her position she couldn't see anything but Don, and watched as he covered his own eyes and a flash of bright light flung from his fingers. The guards had barely had time to grunt in response to Don's appearance when the spell apparently went off. Link saw Don turn away as blinding light splashed against him. The guards she couldn't yet see screamed in pain, yelling about their eyes.

"Now!" Don yelled as he started to sprint down the hall.

Link hopped through the door and quickly sprinted after him. Though Don had a second and a half head start, Link quickly sped past him and got the guards first. The closer guard was to the right and Link tackled him to the ground while he was still rubbing his eyes. Rolling off of him Link quickly raised her sword and plunged it into the guard's chest. She heard and felt the sickening noise of the blade piercing leather and flesh. Link averted her eyes from the guard's face, not wanting to see the same thing she saw earlier on the other guard's face. She felt the guard's hand grab her arm weakly, as if to pull her off of him, but the grip went slack and fell to the ground. After a moment, Link would realize she was shaking.

She opened her eyes slowly to look at her handiwork. The blade was plunged into the center of the guard's chest, right into his heart. She took solace in the fact that his death was, if not painless, at least it was quick. She looked up and saw Don standing up from his kill, wiping his dagger on the guard's cloak. Don turned then to look at her and realized she was in shock.

"H-hey, let me help you." He said quickly, moving to pull her blade out of the guard. He quickly wiped it clean and helped her stand again. The look on his face said that he was somewhat bemused by Link's reluctance to kill people in cold-blood. Yet at the same time, he seemed to understand. He gave Link a moment to compose herself. Eventually she would get used to this kind of work, he thought to himself.

"Why do they look like pigs?" Link asked suddenly. Don realized she had been glancing at the face of her kill.

"Oh, that's a bit complicated." Don said rubbing his chin for a moment. "Lord Fangor is a powerful warlock, right?"

Link nodded.

"Well, magic is in a person's blood, so Fangor has many experiments going on related to that. His soldiers are part of a project of implanting his blood into people to see if they can gain a fraction of his power, or something like that. For some reason, a majority of these people turn into these pig-men, or goblins as they're coming to be called. While they don't have any increase in magical ability, they are undeniably stronger physically. Which is why we need to use stealth tactics, at least until you're more of a hero and can face them head-on."

Link briefly pondered on this. Putting that Fangor guy's blood into these people turned them into monsters? She wondered what horrible reason there could be for such a thing.

"Where are we going from here?" Link asked next, trying to divert her mind from the pig-men, or goblins as Don called them. "And why can't we use the vent like you did earlier."

"From here we need to find our way to the prison courtyard and then to the warden's office. From there we'll escape through a garbage chute."

"There's a garbage chute in the Warden's office?" Link asked with a chuckle.

"No, but it's just around the corner from there, getting to the office is simply a landmark, so to speak."

"Ah. And why no vents?"

"I could only use the vents for a short distance while sneaking in. They won't do us any good for actually escaping. None of them are on any useful paths."

"Damn. By the way, once we're out of here, I have a couple questions about you, why you're helping me."

"Of course, and I'll be happy to answer them. Long story short though, I'm helping you because Fangor's afraid of you."

"I still don't understand why. Just because of my birthmark I'm some hero?"

"Not yet, but that mark makes you destined to be one. Now shush for a second."

Don made a friendly shushing motion as he crouched next to the door and listened like before. This time he didn't say anything as he slowly opened it and peeked around. Link peeked through as well and saw another hallway. It looked the same as the one they were already in.

"This way, stay quiet." Don said as he slowly started walking.

Link nodded and followed close behind him. She was slightly annoyed though, since her sword had been taken off that guard, she didn't have a sheath or anything to hold it. She had to keep it in her hand and try not to let it bump against anything.

They ended up going through several hallways before they spotted the next guard. He was patrolling over the prison courtyard Don had mentioned earlier. Don had motioned for Link to stay still while he slid forward like a shadow, sneaking up behind the guard and slitting his throat. With a grunt he heaved the heavy corpse into a shadow and motioned for Link to catch up. As Link moved forward, she passed several cells that actually had people in them. They were finally in the part of the prison where the majority of people were kept. She saw all of them were sleeping and didn't notice her passing, which tugged at her mind for a moment.

She realized why after a moment as she passed a window. Seeing the moon she realized her sense of time was off. She had been knocked out at around midnight, and taken to New Hylia and this prison. When she woke up, she thought it was morning, but such a trip had to have taken a much longer time than that. From what she knew, it would take almost a full day of riding horseback at full speed, meaning she woke up to that slap in the face probably just as night began to fall. She wondered why she had been out for so long.

A hissing noise of Don trying to get her attention brought her back to reality and she hurried to catch up with him. Following close behind again, they sneaked through the shadows past several more guards around the courtyard before diving back into the winding hallways and cells. Feeling like they were going in circles, Link trusted Don to find their way, and soon enough, he apparently did.

"Here, that's the warden's office." Don whispered, making Link stop and pointing to an iron door. Link could see light flickering along the bottom edge of the door. "Damn, he's inside."

"Why is that a problem? I thought we weren't going through there."

"We're not, but I am." Don said, biting a nail for a moment.

"Why?!" Link hissed her exclamation, trying not to be loud while still getting her seriousness across.

"I gotta leave my sign, so they know who broke you out of prison."

"Y-your sign?! Couldn't you have just done that back in my cell?" Link's voice was filled with exasperation.

"No, that'd be too easy. It has to be the warden's office for the message to have weight."

"I can already feel the heavy hand of Fangor coming after us, that's weight enough!"

"Just wait a moment. Look, the chute is down that hall there, on your right. You can't miss it, go and wait by it. If you hear a ruckus and think I've been noticed, just go down yourself, get out of the garbage area, and find a pub called Lanaryu's Beard. If I don't make it, my friends there will be able to assist you instead."

Frowning for a moment, Link nodded. This was insanely stupid, but Don seemed confident. Shaking her head she quickly snuck down the hallway and found the garbage chute. She opened it for a moment before the smell made her close it. She found herself praying that there was another way to escape. She had only been sitting there for a couple minutes when Don reappeared, a smug grin on his face.

"Message delivered." He said with a haughty laugh. "Now quick, down the garbage chute."

"About that, do you thi-"

"No, there are no other options."

"But how di-"

"I snuck in by letting myself get arrested drunken behavior and sneaking out of my cell later. Now down the chute."

"But!"

"Now!"

Link frowned again, looking at her supposed friend.

Don rolled his eyes in annoyance for a second before an idea struck him.

"Oh I'm sorry. I forgot you were a girl, going down the garbage chute is obviously too icky for someone like you."

Link knew full well he had said that just to play against her dislike of girl stereotypes. And after a moment of fuming, knew that he won the argument purely because of it.

"Damn you…"

She grumbled as she opened the chute, pinched her nose, glared at Don one last time, and then slid down to the stinky hell below.

Author's Commentary

Hello! I'm DaemonSol, aka Vincent, the author of this story. Sorry for the delay getting the third chapter out, but this is my first story EVER and I suffer from something called laziness. So far I've generally done each chapter in a day once I got around to working on it.

Anywho, I want to start hearing some comments! It was immensely satisfying when I got the notice less than an hour after publishing the first chapter that I already had TWO followers, TWO! So, I want to hear what my fans think. I would love constructive criticism as I write my story and would love simply praise as well! (no flaming or insults without justification)

Now I suppose I should comment a bit about the story I'm writing and why. As you may have noticed by now, LINK'S A GIRL! WHAT THE HELL!? Yeah...this whole story with a girl Link sprang from an idea I got after I finished Skyward Sword and started thinking about the whole "Spirit of the Hero" business. Strictly speaking, Link is a Soul that keeps getting reincarnated, along with Ganon and Zelda. Ganon is Demise's Hatred (making him kinda weird) and Zelda has the "Blood of the Goddess", which is why she's only reincarnated into the Royal Family that the first Zelda made. But the only technical requirement for Link is that he have the Spirit of the Hero. Yeah, he was originally a guy, and would probably choose to come back each time as a guy, but where does it say he can't be a girl for a lifetime? Thus, my insane idea. It festered and grew like cancer until I realized I had a whole storyline forming in my mind, including many plot devices related to Link being a girl (Spoilers: Zelda will not be pleased).

Now, as you may have noticed, gender roles are playing a large part in the story, what with this being a semi-medieval setting and all. Link will meet a fair number of outright chauvinistic pigs (who will increasingly LOOK like pigs), who she'll bump heads with. Even some people who aren't outright chauvinistic, but simply traditional in mindset, will become troublesome. Link is a woman in a setting that only thinks Men can be heroes, and many people will struggle with dealing with her.

To comment on this for a bit, I am a male, yes. I do think highly of women (who don't play to stereotypes). I'm a bit of a feminist, and take a lot of inspiration for this from Hiyao Miyazaki. His regular use of girls as heroines is part of the reason I want to write this story. If you don't know who Miyazaki is, I feel sad for you. Quick, go google him and watch his movies.