A/N: Hi everyone! A few have asked me as to the point of last week's chapter since it seemed to get them nowhere. I actually think that's rather a compliment, since this is the first time I have ever gotten a question like that, it might mean that purpose and drive is usually clear in my writing (I hope XP) But yes, there was indeed a point to last week's chapter, all I can say now is that I was giving someone a reason to actually start to look into their heart, and giving another person a reason to start to lose theirs. It will be clear later. I can honestly say that I was never a fan of pointless details or actions in a tale, and so swore that I would never do the same. There was a point, I promise, and you will all be able to see it later. I do give my deepest apologies if that chapter seemed bad or unsatisfactory, I know it was not my best work, and if you have any constructive criticism or advice I am always open to listen, feel free to PM me. Interesting races that you all chose, though I am surprised that nobody felt inclined to chose bokoblins and bulblins, I mean those are such great and enlightened races XP (just kidding)

Scarlet Curls: A Zora, eh? Nice choice. Ruto and Fannie, together? I do not think that will end well. I think I shall just hide until the coast is clear, and I'll take Link with me. XP I answered your question above in my A/N. No, I actually did not, whenever my characters change location I feel inclined to give a description of where they are. Also Link's response to nature was the reason the horse started to listen. I rode a horse like that once, it only listened when I was calm-like. Thanks for the help and the review! I hope you have an amazing week!

CupcakePride101: I thought it would be something he would do if so presented with an opportunity XP Thanks!

xXx skytale xXx: Link will never run out of ideas :D He is Link after all. Thanks!

Gojira Geek: No, I didn't know that, that's quite cool actually. Thank you!

Yami no Nokutan : Why? Because I have something planned that has to happen in order for me to get the climax that I have planned, the sad thing is that if he was alone he probably would be free by now :D but on the other hand Aveil is quite important. You have my gratitude.

Storm Dragon Wolf Princess: You shall find out in this chapter actually. Thank you!

silverheartlugia2000: Those are awesome choices! Thanks for the review!

Fortress of Slaves

Something was wrong. Zelda could almost sense it in the air. It was a feeling she knew well for she had experianced it before. It was what she had felt when the land of Hyrule had been nearly merged with the realm of twilight. It was as if the world was on the brink of shifting out of balance because the darkness was gaining strength. It almost as if it were a tangible force instead of a mere impression. It was an ominous hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach. Jade suddenly did a sparrow dive and landed hard on her shoulders. Zelda jumped.

"Jade," she scolded, "you started me. Don't do that."

"Why you act so nervous all sudden?" Jade queried as she leaped down off her shoulders.

"It's just that I've got this awful feeling in my stomach-"

"Not worry. It most likely you just hungry," Jade said hopping about.

"I am not hungry!" She started, "…Well actually I am hungry but that is not what I am feeling."

Jade snickered her chittering laughter, and scampered up a nearby ponderosa. They had been in this lush beautiful pine forest ever since they had made it through the mountain pass. 'How in Hyrule did that dragon have so much energy?' she wondered to herself. Every night she practically dropped with exhaustion. It was better now that the terrain was no longer as steep uphill as it had been on the way up the mountain, but it was still tiring to hike all day without much rest. It was fortunate that she was trailing a cavalry because the soldiers, for the sake of their horses, had stayed on fairly easy to traverse paths. So far, she had not been forced to do any bushwhacking. She glanced at the darkening sky and decided she should start to find a spot to camp. All of the sudden, Jade flapped down from the tree she had been climbing to land directly in front of Zelda.

"I hear noise up that way. Sound like many people," she nodded her head to the right.

"Go scout it out," Zelda said and Jade flapped excitedly off.

The small dragon came back about ten minutes later, "There is big, um…." She searched for the word, "Shelter," she finally said after a moment of concentration. "It is made with much, um… firewood. Many men, they walk on top of it with metal pointy sticks. Many people inside."

Zelda's eyes widened with understanding –she meant a fortress surrounded by a wooden battlemented wall. The tracks she was following did not actually go in that direction, they continued straight ahead while the strange noses were to the right. 'It could be where they had taken Link,' Zelda thought, and that was enough to decided her next move. She was incurably curious and had to investigate on her own, this was the first sign of colonization she had seen or, rather, heard of in these parts. It would be of hardly any use to send Jade alone again for she knew far too few words. 'How would be the best way to approach this situation?' She wondered to herself. Her face lit up as she thought of something.

"Jade, are there trees near the fortress- I mean, large shelter? If there are, I could use them as a way in."

"Yes there be trees, but they too far for you to jump. Wait, if you jump as nasty hiss hiss you make it."

"That was my thoughts exactly," she said with a smile. 'Nasty hiss hiss,' was Jade's word for cat.

~x~X~x~

As darkness fell, Zelda, in the form of a mountain lion, skillfully and covertly scampered up a thick ponderosa that bordered a huge fort. Her transformation had not hurt as much this time and for that she was very grateful. She had told Jade, who seemed to understand her just as easily when she was an animal, to wait hidden in the tree with the master sword and her other weapons in case she needed them. Mountain lions had a very piercing screaming sort of cry, and that would be the signal if she ran in to trouble. The fort's outer walls were made from logs stuck endwise into the ground, their tips sharpened into points. Behind the battlemented wall lay a very small battered village, and behind the huts of the village, in the center of all, stood a fortress.

Her mind focused upon the shade's hints about other people, she peered into the night. Her sharp cat eyes could see well in the dark and she could make out a sickening sight. In between the fortress and the small huts there stood what was obviously a slave compound. Near this solid metal and wood enclosure, stood several whipping posts, stocks, a pillory, and, she shuddered, a gallows, and an execution block. She had to get a closer look.

Once the wall century, a stocky bulblin, had passed, she leaped from the tree to the wall. Her stealthy paws hardly made a sound. She moved, leaping gracefully down from the battlements to the stairway and then to the ground. She slipped silently through the shadows towards the slave compound. As she passed the stocks she laid her ears back in disapproval. Her eyes were wide with pity. A poor slave was chained to a pole looking half alive. Her shirt was off and her back had the marks of a whip on it. Though when in the form of a cat colors were not as clear as usual, she could see the woman had tanned skin and orange-red hair. Zelda's thoughts instantly flew towards the Gerudo. She reluctantly passed by the woman and headed straight for the compound but not so close that those inside could see her. The building was almost like a huge well fortified prison cell with the front wall made of iron bars so she could see inside.

They were a miserable looking lot. Most of them were honey dark in skin color with hair the same red huge as the prisoner outside. The majority of all the people were women, but there were a few people who had the pointed ears and more fair skin of Hylians with them, their hair ranging from blond to black. Zelda remembered the Shade's memory about the Hylain people who had fled with the Gerudo. Most of the captives sat or lay down in the filthy straw and sad excuses for bunks. Zelda looked on at their miserable state in horror her anger rising.

There was a group of people standing in a tight wary circle near the back of the giant cell-like room. They were comprised half of Gerudo women and half of Hylians and had the look of conspirators and leaders, she noted. Zelda moved her sensitive feline ears forward to try and hear their conversation. She could not hear much, only the name Ganondorf spoken as if it was a curse word, and a few complains about hard labor and even harder treatment.

'So,' she thought, 'Ganondorf is, in fact, the one responsible for these people's suffering.'

She crept a bit closer to the enclosure, scanning the faces of all the prisoners. Link was not among them. Perhaps they were holding him somewhere else or perhaps he was not even here. She looked at the deplorable conditions and decided that something had to be done about these people. She had never seen anyone in such detestable environment before in her life. She was aware that slavery existed, for some of the neighboring kingdoms still practiced this barbaric custom. Slavery was outlawed in Hyrule, and for good reason. Unfortunately; she did not know what she could do to help them.

She silently left the slave compound and headed for the fortress-like center building. She was able to slip past a dosing guard and head around its perimeter. It was an enormous wooded edifice, like a huge log cabin. As she made her way around the back, she encountered a metal grating low to the wall and partially buried.

'It could very well be a window of a dungeon cell,' she thought to herself. She assumed this because the fort was made of wood the dungeon or whatever it was had probably been hollowed out of the dirt. In her form as a mountain lion she might be able to dig into it. Perhaps there were more prisoners, perhaps Link was among them. Extending her claws, she began to dig.

The earth was not hard packed so it was not too difficult. After a couple of minutes, she had broken through the dirt wall of the room. The hole she had made was not very large but she had often found that cats had an odd knack of fitting into very tight spaces. Now that she was one, she instinctively knew how it worked. Anything her whiskers could fit through without bending, she could fit through. As she entered the damp underground room, she stared around in disappointment. It was not a dungeon after all. It was a storehouse.

All around her lay crates, boxes and barrels of food, water, wine, and supplies. The wooden roof- and probably the entire building- were held up by massive wooden supports that looked like they had been made of tree trunks. This store house looked like it was long enough to run the buildings entire length, and there was nothing further below. There was no dungeon, and Link was not here, unless he was in some room of the upper fortress. She could not search all the rooms of this fort. There was no way that she could slip past all the guards. 'Perhaps,' she though with a hint of hope, 'perhaps Jade might be able to do that for her.'

Even if Link was not here she wanted to do something to help these poor people. She headed back to her hole so that she could call Jade out in the open. While she was leaving, she caught sight of several barrels of olive oil. It was a bit of an odd thing to see, for olive oil, in Hyrule, was rather an expensive commodity. Either the masters of this fort were really rich or were quite handy at pillaging. 'It was probably the later,' she though with disgust. She wormed her way back through the earthen opening her claws had carved. Link, by now, would have probably thought of a way to free all the slaves and destroy the fortress, while she was still wandering aimlessly about, unless… She felt a mischievous smirk spread across her feline face. She had an idea, a rather destructive and reckless idea. She called for Jade.

When her dragon arrived with her weapons and the master sword, she touched the blade and gratefully shifted back into her normal form. Shouldering her weapons, she gave Jade instructions.

"You are small and you can fly, I want you to search this entire building for prisoners and be quick about it." Jade leapt up do her task with a wild excitement, thinking it to be some sort of game. "Carefully and quietly," Zelda warned, calling as loud as she dared after the flapping dragon.

Forty five minutes later Jade came flapping back to tell Zelda that she had found no one except for, "Stinky ugly yucky bad-guys."

"Alright then." Zelda smiled. "Time for phase two of my plan."

She reentered the store room by the hole she had enlarged while Jade was scouting. Once she was inside, she headed towards the barrels of wine and olive oil. Jade followed her as she carefully placed one of these by every support beam. She opened the barrels and rubbed a bit of their contents on each post.

"Alright Jade, I want you to use your spark and light every single one of them on fire. Also, while I try to free the prisoners, I want you to try and start a fire in the upper rooms as well, preferably in the ones that are empty. We don't want our enemies to find out about the fire until it's too late to do anything about it."

"Okeey!" Jade said excitedly, "I do it," and went into action, starting with the furthest to the escape hole she began to work her way inward.

The first barrel went up in a whoosh of flame as the post caught and quickly spread upwards. Zelda crawled out of the hole and ran stealthily towards the slave compound and waited. Soon the fire was visible and there was a shout from the wall guard. Most of the guards and soldiers headed for the fortress shouting. Only two Bulblin sentries were left to guard the slaves and Zelda made short work of them with her well aimed daggers. Taking the key she ran to the locked iron door. Most of the slaves were awake and worriedly whispering among themselves. The conspiring group that she had listened in on earlier headed towards her.

"Who are you, and what is going on?" a tall redhead man with spiky hair and a sharp featured face asked. His skin was of a darker color any of the other few males in the room and his baring was different too. It was obvious that his body had once been of a powerful, yet not bulky, build. He stood tall despite his weakened condition and his light golden eyes were proud and defiant almost regal in their scrutiny of her. Their odd light color seemed almost out of place with his nut-brown skin and this, combined with the glare they held, was nearly unnerving. They seemed to gain in mistrust when he could discern nothing just by looking at her because of her disguise and face-paint. As Zelda looked passed his intimidating eyes, she became suddenly aware of the fact that he was very young, not much older than she, and she could see the fear he tried so hard to mask, dimming the brightness of those golden-wheat colored eyes.

"Call me a freedom fighter. I am here to take out Ganondorf and free prisoners," she said finally as she opened the door.

For a moment the people just stood there staring, probably wondering whether they should trust this odd woman whose face was hidden.

"You are with the rebels?" a dark haired Hylian asked, and Zelda nodded.

"Yes, I am," she lied, trying to get the people to trust her.

There was a moment of hesitation in which the Gerudo woman looked to the golden eyed man, and the Hylains looked towards another older man with pointed ears and graying hair, who gave Zelda a fleeting impression of Auru. The two men considered each other and then her before coming to an agreement and stepping forward, leading the others in their wake. The spiky haired man walked out of the prison first and looked at the fire that had, by now, spread to nearly half the building.

"Clever diversion," he said with the first smile Zelda had seen of his face, it was angry and spiteful. Zelda was not quite sure that she liked it, but when he turned back to her it softened in its harshness. His hatred was obviously not directed at her.

"Come on! In all the confusion we can slip out of the gate," Zelda said quietly.

"No," the red haired man said suddenly with a growl, all the pride and dignity flooding back into his baring "I have spent too much time under the whip of a tyrant. I sneak away from no one. You have created the perfect opportunity for an attack. The enemy will not be expecting it and they are already occupied. Not to mention the fact that their numbers have probably been thinned by that fire, there is no way all of them could have gotten out in time. We will never get better chance. To the armory!" he shouted. "Find anything you can use as weapons!"

His proposal was instantly greeted with a roar of ascent from the others and as he charged forward.

"Wait!" Zelda called after them but it was no use. Muttering to herself, she ran after the angry mob, which had armed itself with various makeshift weapons and farming implements.

The red-haired man called a charge and the slaves rushed forward with a shout, straight for the guards and soldiers that were desperately trying to put out the flames of their fortress. It was a completely useless task because, by then, the flames had spread to nearly every inch of the building.

The light from the fire illuminated emanate battle field almost as brightly as if the sun were shining. The soldiers and guards turned at the sound of an attack and tried to organize and collect themselves. The shadows of both armies shifted with the light from the twisted flames as they ran at each other.

Zelda had only time for her to wonder what in Hyrule she had just gotten herself into before she was caught in the charge and found herself facing a Darknut in his light armor. He swung his razor sharp rapier at her head and she barely put up her own blade in time to parry. Darknuts were masters with their rapiers and Zelda found herself in a fast paced death dance. The sky had started to lighten with the pastel light of morning, but Zelda did not notice. Everything, aside from the enemy, her sword, and her footwork, were temporarily wiped from her mind as she fought to keep her life.

A/N: No, this is not the same fortress that Ganondorf was heading to, as this one is off the main track and still in the woods a fair distance. Yes, the bit about cats and their whiskers is a truthful fact. I am aware that although cats have the ability to see color it is different from the way humans do. I did not feel like going into that, and in Zelda Link only became color blind when he used his senses so I have some fantasy world freedom I think XD Next week I shall go back to Hyrule for a bit I think and then it's back to Link for the rest. If all goes as plan, this tale is about two chapters over halfway through just so you know, since you do not have the privilege of holding this book and being able to physically see where you are in the scope of things exactly. :D

Question: I was thinking that since a Gerudo king is born every hundred years to their race, that there had to be more than Ganondorf, which means that I can then infer that not every king has his exact power hungry mentality, do you think that is accurate? How would you picture a Gerudo king who was not Ganondorf?