-1It was a rather long path, giving Link a little more time to think. The only explanation as to what had happened was that someone had intentionally brought him back with very advanced, possibly dark magic. The spell would have been used either to bring him back to help with a situation, or to extract revenge and assassinate him. Whether it was meant to make him young or not wasn't clear. But who could be capable of such magic?

Very few of the Hyleans were capable of spells that transcended time itself. The Gerudos of the desert had no such intention, and might be against something that could endanger there king, Ganondorf. The zoras, gorons, and especially the kokiri didn't dabble that much in magic anyway, and the sages had intended to not interfere to much less it be truly necessary. The evils of the world had also become quite dormant, as far as Link was concerned. That left only other one plausible answer. The Shiekah.

If the Shiekah did have something to do with after all, then the entire situation was serious. The Shiekah, a tribe that was almost completely wiped out by the time he was born, were extremely secretive. In fact, the only two members he had ever known were Impa and Shiek, Shiek, an old friend who helped greatly while Link was searching for the sages, and Impa, the Sage of Shadows. Secretly working for the good of Hyrule, they were everywhere disguised or hiding. People were aware of their existence, how they supposedly had a great position with the royal family. The symbol on the Gossip Stones implied that they were happy, but the symbol they wore on there chests said something very different. It spoke of betrayal or sorrow, but then why would the royal family go to such lengths to cover it up, with their version of the mark on the Gossip Stones, flags, and masks?

On that thought, the path ran out to an even bigger clearing, with a large dark tree in the middle. It's leaves were falling out, rather rapidly Link noticed, and if he looked very closely, he could see small but slowly growing dark spots on the bark. He recognized the gigantic plant to be the Great Deku Tree, the spirit that created and took care of the Kokiri. The old original died when Link was still young and just beginning his quest, but another one sprouted after he left the forest temple. It's size was massive compared to it's original sprout, especially considering it seemed only a small number of years since it had started growing.

As he was approaching the large tree, a deku baba lunged out at him from the ground, snapping wildly. Link jumped back just in time, but it wasn't over yet. He suddenly remembered why passage near the Great Deku Tree was forbidden. Suddenly, he was almost completely surrounded by snapping vines, all lunging towards him. He side rolled through a small space between two babas and ran towards the trunk of the Deku Tree. He jumped on to a massive emerging root. All of a sudden, the babas were driven into the ground, as if something had pulled them under by the roots.

Link slowly stepped down off the root, and to his surprise, the evil vines didn't reemerge. He heard a loud voice, that was seemingly everywhere around him at once; it sounded like it could be the surrounding trees, each no one tree being louder than the other. It was a loud, deep voice, but it was strangely comforting, and it gave reassuring strength to the now young hero.