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Soundtrack choice: Digital Daggers—Close Your Eyes
Shadow had no choice. He held Zelly's hand tightly to him as they were surrounded by Ikanan soldiers and forced to march across the plateau. He was aware of the Garo prisoners, including Sashira, their chains clanking together as they walked in the dark.
He felt a strong hand on his shoulder. "Mazatl, if you need to be carried, we have—"
"I can walk." Shadow refused to look at the speaker. His face hurt his head. All of this hurt his head . . . but he was NOT about to start crawling!
Cualli laughed. "You always were stubborn! No wonder you rose the ranks from a baker's boy."
Shadow chaffed. And what is wrong with a baker's boy?!
Zelly skipped along next to him, utterly carefree. "Daddy, is this where your mommy and daddy live?"
Those words smacked him like bricks. He halted in his tracks and took in the air of the canyon. Was this . . . was he . . .? Were there parents here who . . . what?!
"No," he answered, picking her up and picking up the pace. "I don't have parents, Zelly."
Cualli kept up with him easily. "You're not wrong. Your parents died when you were young. You really have lost your memory."
He couldn't help but feel sad at that. But was it a new pain . . . or an old one? It felt like a pain he'd had for a long time. Longer than he'd been alive. "How . . . how long have I been missing?"
"Three years!"
Shadow shook his head. That's impossible. Then again, Link had told him Ikana was completely abandoned. Was it possible he'd gone back in time?
The eastern sky was just barely beginning to lighten, and the cliffs were painted an odd greenish color by the moon, which was still high. "How much longer?"
"Not long," Cualli promised.
Fifteen minutes later, there was enough light for Shadow to see the castle ahead. It was built into the cliff itself, large and intimidating. The grounds around it reminded him of the training grounds in Hyrule Castle. It was painted in brilliant reds and yellows and blues. Two giant pillars stood on either side of the sharply arched entry.
Something about the sight, the smells, even the way the pre-dawn light hit the stones. Shadow's eyes rolled back into his head, and he felt like he was falling.
The chunky little lad cut his play spear through the air. "HIYAAAAA!" The straw doll was no match for him, and he stabbed it through its little wheat heart.
His fair-haired friend clapped his hands and hollered in a high-pitched voice. "You smashed it, Mazzy!"
Mazzy began picking the remains of the doll from the end of his spear. "Just wait, Impa, I'm going to win the contest and become a great captain!"
Impa jumped up from his seat on the small cot and rubbed one eye with a fist. "But Mazzy, if you become a knight . . . I won't be able to talk to you anymore." The sadness in the blue eyes made Mazzy uncomfortable.
He quickly rejoined, "Don't worry! I'll always talk to you, Impa!"
The blue eyes lit up like stars. "Really?"
"Always."
Shadow felt sad. He wanted to know why the boys couldn't talk to each other if one became a captain. He wasn't sure why he cared, the dream just made him feel a desperate longing he couldn't displace.
He opened his eyes. Morning sunlight came in through a square stone window. Pushing himself onto his elbows, he saw that he was in a bedroom, on a . . . very dusty bed.
Seriously, it seemed like nobody had slept on it in centuries. The blanket, what was left of it anyway, was moth eaten, the pillows non-existent. The floor was no better. Stone brick, and dustier than the Gerudo desert. He carefully placed his feet on the ground. He was still wearing his same clothes and boots from before, though the Garo outfit was nowhere to be seen.
An aged wardrobe sat in one end of the room, carvings worn off by wind and time. Sun-bleached, ragged banners lined the walls, but he couldn't make out the design of the insignia. A basin sat on a small table, broken and cracked at the base. He eyes finally examined the door.
It wasn't so much a door as a hanging piece of driftwood kept in place by a single, rusted hinge. He gave it a small push, and it opened with the sound of nails on a chalkboard. The hall outside was as bare and dusty as the room, the same old banners lining the walls. The torches were unlit. It was deathly silent.
He ran back into the room and peeked out the window, listening hard.
Nothing. Just wind. And birds.
"What's . . . going on?"
Was he still dreaming? He patted the windowsill. Seemed real enough. He went back into the hallway and glanced in both directions, suddenly realizing that as he'd been unconscious, he had no idea where Zelly had wandered off to. "Zelly?!" He called loudly. The whole castle seemed to shiver, as if by a simple puff of his breath the whole structure would come tumbling down.
He didn't trust it.
A gurgling laugh reached his ear. "Zelly? Zelda Nohanna Dafini Hyrule," he added playfully, simply happy she was okay. "Where are you?"
The laugh seemed to come from everywhere, all directions at once and then nowhere. Shadow spun in circles. "Zelly?" he called again.
Just more laughter. Shadow stopped to see if he could pinpoint where, exactly, it came from. It was definitely Zelly's laugh. Something caught the corner of his eye, and he looked into the long shadow than ran along the corridor.
Yes, there it was. It was . . . two little eyes. Two red dots, floating in space in the shadows. The laugh followed the eyes as they traveled along the hallway, staring at him curiously.
Shadow could not believe his eyes. "Zelly?!"
The eyes brightened in laughter and zipped away. "Catch me, Daddy! Watch what I can do!"
"ZELLY!" Shadow ran after the voice through one corridor after another, occasionally seeing the eyes, otherwise just following the voice. "Are you—are you shadow-melding?!"
Another laugh, and the little girl appeared ahead, in front of a large, metal gate. She brought a finger to her lips and said, "Shh." Then she became shadow again, and flitted through the metal bars like butter through a fork. She appeared on the other side, grinning proudly at her little trick, while Shadow just gaped. Then she ran from the gate and into the dark.
Shadow approached the gate, trying to remember what it would feel like to do what Zelly just had. He shook his head. No. Never again. He found the gate wasn't locked, so he shoved it out of the way and followed after Zelly.
It became pitch black, and he put a hand on the wall to help him navigate.
He heard Zelly whining ahead, apparently forgetting she meant to be quiet. "Come ooooon, Daddy! Can't you see in the dark?!"
Shadow stopped. Then he shut his eyes, focusing on what he could hear. When he opened his eyes, he no longer needed to hold onto the wall. He could see clearly, not as clearly as in the light, but clear enough to find details in the cracked bricks of the walls and ceiling. Traveling much quicker now, his boot steps echoing in his ears, he soon reached a semi-large room. Manacles hung on chains on the wall. Boards tied together in an ex decorated the center, and Shadow didn't want to know what the oppressive smell was. It wasn't a physical smell, but one he knew meant a lot of death had happened here.
"Zelly, where are you?" he asked, a little more nervously.
"Who's there?! I won't break! I swear! Do what you will!"
Shadow followed the new voice and found none other than Sashira, sitting with her back to the wall on the other end of the room, hands chained above her head in a way that would make it very uncomfortable if not impossible to stand up. "Sashira?!"
In his night vision, he saw that she recognized his voice. She spat at his feet, or where she thought they were. "Ikanan scum. I tried to help you, and yet here you are, with them!"
"It's okay!" Shadow reassured her, making hand motions before realizing she couldn't see them. "There's . . . no one in the castle! I don't know where they went." So he hadn't been dreaming.
Sashira's brow furrowed. "They'll probably come for me at nightfall."
"Why night? Sashira, did you not hear me? No one's here! Let me look for the keys, I'll get you out of those chains." Of all places, the keys were simply lying on the floor, and when he walked to let Sashira go, he inspected the manacles around her wrists. They were heavily damaged, rusted, worn . . . and Shadow wondered if they could keep anybody locked up for long. "Why didn't you just break out?"
"Huh? Don't you think I tried?" She shook her hands to demonstrate—and the manacles came off on their own. "Oh! Hey, thanks."
"I didn't—"
"Where are the others?"
"The others?"
"Yes, the two Garo that were with me."
"I haven't seen them."
She looked around blindly. "They're not here? . . . Well we have to find them!"
Shadow took both her shoulders and stared at her. "Sashira, I don't know when they are coming back. I'll do what I can for your friends, but you have to go, NOW."
Confusion crossed her face, for a second Shadow wondered if she was fully conscious. What had . . . happened to her down here? How long had she been in the dark and silence? "M-maybe they got out before me," she suddenly suggested.
"Yes, maybe that," Shadow said. She allowed him to lead her through the dark, and Shadow heard Zelly following, singing a happy little tune.
"What IS that?" Sashira asked.
"It's Zelly. She's never been afraid of the dark."
"How are you seeing anything? How is SHE seeing anything?"
"Magic!"
They reached the gate and the much better lit corridor from before, but they didn't stop. The three continued through the castle, wandering door to door, hallway to hallway until they finally reached a huge, open chamber, and Shadow recognized the archway that led out of this place.
Unfortunately, between them and that gate were four redead. "Okay . . ." Shadow said. "I'll catch their screams, YOU strike them down."
"With what?"
"Your sword!"
"They took my-"
"It's on your hip!"
She looked down. "Oh. Uh . . . r-right." She drew the blade, the sound drawing the attention of the redead, whose faces turned to gape at them. One let out a curious moan.
"Zelly, you stay in the shadows until Daddy says it's okay, okay?"
"Okay!"
"D-did your daughter just disappear?!"
"Yeah."
"But—but-"
"Later."
Sashira nodded and composed herself. "Right," she managed to squeak out. She ran in a wide half circle around the room and hid behind a pillar. Shadow walked straight at the redeads, slowly. He didn't exactly fancy risking having one of those things biting his neck, so he chose to only get as close as he needed to be noticed.
Closer . . . closer . . . and yet the one redead just stared, and the others seemed completely uninterested. Shadow thought this was terribly unusual. He was already only five feet from the staring one. "Well? Come on, aren't you hungry?"
The redead tilted its head, and then spread its arms wide, and lowered down at the waist before rising back up. Suddenly he had swept around and was spinning in circles. One, two, four, seven, more. If he hadn't been scared and shocked out of his mind, Shadow might be impressed. When the redead came out of the spin, the other redeads stood at attention. Suddenly all four were leaping across the room like acrobats, and Shadow stayed glued to the ground as they twirled and spun, leapt and rolled. They moaned, mouths gaping, but their steps were perfectly in sync. The one who had stared did a series of back handsprings and one back flip. Then they gathered in a circle and began to spin around a tiny figure, who happened to be Zelly, who materialized right in the middle of their circle. She danced and spun with them, laughing like it was her birthday. "Look! Pretty dancers!"
They danced around her, and Shadow sprinted.
Sashira got there first. Slash! Slash! With two swipes of her sword, she took care of the first two. Then onto the third with a stab. The final redead backed up faster than a redead ought to be able to. Sashira took Zelly's hand and pulled her away. The last redead, the one who had apparently been the leader, hunched down to Sashira's height, his mouth gaping wider than seemed possible, eyes glaring bright, bright blue. "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIK!"
Sashira froze at the shriek, her sword dropping from suddenly slack fingers. Shadow reached them, grabbed her sword and stabbed it through the final redead's chest. It fell back and disintegrated into green smoke.
Shadow knelt down. "Zelly, are you alright?"
The little girl had tears streaming down her cheeks. She threw her arms around his neck, turned a mean face on Sashira, and stated, "I HATE you!"
Sashira seemed shocked.
"Don't feel bad," Shadow told her. "They say that at this age. Zelly, why didn't you stay hidden like I asked? You could have been hurt."
Zelly 'hmphed!' "They just wanted to dance for you! And she killed them! Poor pretty dancers . . ." she snuggled against him as closely as she could.
Shadow unwrapped her arms and set her firmly on the ground. "Zelly, you should listen to me. We are in a dangerous place. Those things could have hurt you!"
She frowned at him, then pointed accusingly at him. "LI-AR!" and she disappeared.
Ooooh no you don't! Not this time! He felt the floor give way as he morphed into shadow. He easily found the little wisp of his daughter and forced her to rematerialize with him.
"Heeeeeeey," she said, seemingly offended.
"What? Did you forget Daddy could do that, too? Sashira, let's go."
Sashira didn't move. "What are you?"
Shadow paused. "I don't know. Is that a good enough answer?"
"The Ikanan captain . . . he said he knew you. Are you . . . some sort of secret weapon?"
Shadow turned on her, his eyes flashing. "I am not a weapon, Sashira." Not anymore. Without seeing if the Garo was following, he strode out of the castle.