K'ger: Yay! I'm back again! I updated! WOO!
Ok, first, I'd like to thank Link'sLily for the last review, which, even though you call it vague, was really encouraging! I think it got me through the rough patch I was having.
So here I'd like to shout out to you! Check out her AWESOME story, According to Legend. It really doesn't get the attention it needs, and she's really just an amazing friend!
Btw, the bottom A/N is REALLY IMPORTANT! READ IT!
A Terrible Fate
Darkness. He was surrounded by it. Although he was obviously in a spacious chamber, where he was completely bewildered him. The lack of light caused him to squint, hurting his eyes as he tried to see more clearly. For some reason, he was barefoot, and the floor was cold beneath him, freezing actually.
He moved his weight from foot to foot as his mind raced. How had he gotten here? Why was he here? His mind was utterly blank, clouded by a strange feeling, a lingering fear that had started small, a few nervous twitches, and had grown and grown until it was now an all encompassing terror. Why? Did was he afraid?
He clamped his eyes shut, breathing deep through his nose, pushing the fear away, or at least trying to.
A cold hand touched his shoulder, slender, icy fingers grabbing the collar of the olive green tunic he was wearing. Long, pointed nails scratched gently against his the now drum-tight skin of his neck, as his head whipped toward the stranger. He was met with two glowing amber eyes, edged in green and pupils occasionally flickering crimson. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could see that it was a woman, her face slightly resembling the shape of a heart, with a pointed chin and eyes too large in proportion.
Underneath her eyes, red, swirling, tribal tattoos rested atop her prominent cheekbones, and when she smiled arrogantly at him, revealed the yellow, fang-like teeth that lay hidden behind her ruby-red lips.
He stiffened underneath her touch, and glared at the woman.
He tried to pull away from her, and gain his personal space yet again, but her grip remained firm on the collar, fingernails scratching a little harder when he tried to escape.
"What's the matter, boy?" she hissed, leaning in so close that her lips brushed against his ear. "Are you afraid?"
He set his eyes straight ahead of him, refusing to meet her gaze as she curled around him, trying to force him. When she stopped to stand directly in front of him, he closed his eyes, yet again refusing. He could hear her striding carefully around him, and flinched when her hand came to rest on the nape of his neck.
"Did you really think you could defeat me this easily? Did you think me a fool?"
An eerie silence followed, and a shiver involuntarily ran up his spine as he felt the woman's hand trail up the side of his neck, and she began to run her fingers along the edge of his notched ear.
A faint sound slowly worked its way into his mind. It was a strange sound, familiar, but too far away for him to recognize.
"Do you hear that?" the woman cooed mockingly in his ear, reaching up and playing with a few strands of his hair. He ignored her, keeping his eyes closed, trying to let his mind wander away. "Don't you want to see?"
The sound grew louder, and all of his weight suddenly dropped into his stomach, unknowingly sinking down a few inches. The color drained completely from his face as the sound became as clear as a bell and as familiar as the song of a bird.
Children.
His children. They were crying.
His eyes snapped open without a second thought, his heart jumping into his throat. Light blinded him, not having expected the brightness that flooded his unadjusted eyes. He blinked heavily, trying to regain his vision.
They were somehow, suddenly standing at the lowest point of a deep ravine. Rust colored walls boxed them in on either side, and the ground beneath them was dry and cracked, like it hadn't rained in years. The sky was a dull shade of gray, and yet there was not a cloud in the sky, puzzling him.
He wasn't allowed the time to ponder this though, for the entire world became unimportant as his sapphire blue eyes locked onto the two crumpled shapes about thirty feet away.
Kara and Rinku were sitting on the ground, the little girl hiding her face against her knees, and sobbing as if her heart had literally been shattered. Rinku still had his face visible, and slowly, tears dripping from his cheeks as well, he rubbed Kara's back.
Then he noticed why they were both crying, and he felt like he was going to collapse. A few feet past them, Jack, McKenna, Malon and a dark haired man he did not recognize were lying, dead, on the ground.
"Did you not see this coming? How foolish!" The woman laughed, loudly into his ear. Completely out of instinct, and a bit startled, Link spun around, reaching toward his belt. A few seconds later he realized there was no sword strapped there, as his hands grabbed repeatedly at thin air.
Giving a slight, inhuman snarl, teeth flashing, the woman leapt at him, pushing him to the ground and slamming her knee forcefully into his gut. He gasped as her knee threatened to crush his organs, and his head was knocked painfully against the hard, parched ground.
The woman withdrew her knee, and instead knelt on his chest, sneering at his startled face.
She drew a long, jagged-edged dagger from a sheath attached to her lower calf, and pressed it firm against the skin of his neck.
"Now, what should I do with you? Maybe I'll just slit your throat, that's probably the simplest way," she mused, moving the dagger away from his neck, and instead resting it on his chest, sharpened tip pressing vertical over his heart. "But certainly not the most painful."
She looked straight out over him, amber, green and red eyes clouding over in thought. Slowly, her lips curled into a malicious, insane grin as an idea seemed to strike her.
"I know! How about I cut your heart clean out?"
She jabbed her dagger down, plunging it directly into his heart…
"Boy! Wake up! You've overslept!"
Link woke suddenly, letting out a surprised growl when a steel-toed boot connected with his ribs. He sidled away from the looming figure of Zepora, and rose with a shuddering sigh, his ribs protesting quite loudly in the his ears. It had all been a dream...right?
'That's going to leave a mark.' He thought ruefully, absently rubbing a hand to the injured side as Zepora scoffed impatiently.
"You overslept, and if you don't hurry, we're all going to be late!" he growled exasperatedly, making extravagant, exaggerated motions with his calloused hands. "Go saddle those damned horses! And be snappy about it!"
He jumped quickly away before the angered little man could take another swipe, and strode away from the skimpy pile of straw he had been allowed to sleep on. His bones creaked softly as he walked the first few steps. It had been a long time since he hadn't had a bed to sleep on, over six years if his timekeeping was accurate. And the fact that he was quickly nearing thirty didn't help either.
Down the stable isle, three horses groggily swung their heads over their stall doors at the ruckus, two of them being the horses that had pulled the carriage. The other was obviously a stallion, gray in color, with a rich black mane that hung well down to his chest and an expressive, angular face, on which his shocking, electric blue eyes peered toward him, as if daring him to make a move.
"Have fun with that one! Might want to count your fingers after you saddle him!" Zepora barked, leaving the barn with a quick jerk to his step.
Watching the shorter man leave, he took a breath before moving down the isle, remaining completely silent as he approached the stallion. The gray stallion gave a warning toss of his head as he approached, and when Link reached for the stall door, the stallion lunged, teeth snapping.
The horse's teeth snapped down on the skin of his arm, and clamped down, painfully threatening to crush his bones. But he stood completely still, looking into the stallion's aggressive blue eyes.
"Calm down," he whispered. "I'm not going to hurt you."
The stallion's jaw loosened slightly, before pulling away, backing deep into the stall. He unlatched the door, swinging it quietly open and stepping inside.
"Easy now, everything's alright." He reached out, making sure not to flinch as the stallion half-heartedly snapped again, but did not actually bite. Moments later, his fingers brushed against the stallion's smooth, silkily furred muzzle.
"You're alright."
Fifteen minutes later, he exited the stable with a smooth smirk on his face as the three horses followed behind. He struggled desperately to hold in a laugh when Zepora yelped, not expecting him to saddle the horses so easily, or to escape with all of his fingers, and Mistress Eshana's angular features for the first time curled into a look that almost resembled respect, as the stallion's reins were silently passed to her hand.
Zepora forcefully ripped the reins of the two older mares' out of his hands, eliciting startled snorts from the horses as the were drug away from the calmer, friendlier man. He watched, slightly sad for the horses, as the short, and short-tempered man swung onto one, immediately striking it with a crop, and the gargantuan brute of Gepora swung onto the other.
"Boy, get a move on! You're going to make us get behind schedule!" Zepora snapped, urging his horse into a shaky trot.
With a roll of his eyes, Link started out at a run, catching up quickly with the three horses as they trotted away from the mountain Smithy, and down the grassy hillside that served as the main flow of travel back toward the heart of Termina.
The path wound through a thick mountain forest, the trees being so tall one had to crane one's head back to see the tops. It was a dark forest, thick bows clouding out most of the sun, only the brightest rays breaking through the thickly needled branches and dappling the mossy ground beneath their feet. The horses hooves made very little sound on the soft ground, and left large round indentions in the moss as they walked.
To the left side, Link suddenly threw his head to the side when a strange sound caught his interest. It sounded like the rustling of a bush, and then a mumbling, a curse uttered under someone's breath.
In this moment of inattention, the horses had abruptly stopped, and it was the best he could to swing his arms wide in an attempt to stop himself before he bumped into one of their haunches.
Mistress Eshana was sitting perfectly still atop her stallion, looking at the forked road ahead as if she could see everything, and yet nothing at all, while Zepora had his nose buried in a map. Gepora just sat there, useless, with his hulking arms limp at his sides.
He looked at the path behind him, the open field still faintly visible if he looked at the right angle. He glanced back toward the group, now Zepora and Gepora were arguing over which path to take, Zepora's voice cutting through the air like a knife, while Gepora's voice smothered that of the smaller man.
They were completely ignoring him.
He could make a run for it.
The very thought sent his heart rate spiraling. He could get away. He could be free again. But what pushed his heart rate even higher was the thought that he'd actually see Malon and the kids again.
He stole a final glance at the group, and then started quietly back up path they had just come down.
"Psst-!"
He stopped short, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. He whipped his head again toward the left. The roadside brambles rustled, and then a hand appeared, making a beckoning motion again and again.
"Psst-! Boy! Over here!"
Link looked toward the group again, and then made his way over to the bush. He choked back a cry when another hand shot out from the brambles, and both hands grabbed him by the shirt. He was dragged into the bushes.
The hands belonged to a shorter man, with a comical, narrowed eyed look on his otherwise bony face. His honey-brown hair was combed carefully to one side, and his eyes seldom opened, as his grip remained firm on Link's shirt.
Finally letting go, the strange little man began to wring his hands, rubbing his palms together in an obsessive manner. He was back was hunched over, nearly bent in half by the humongous pack on his back, strewn across the back of the pack, a wide array of strange, tribe-like masks hung.
Some resembled those of animals, like pigs, or frogs, or rabbits. And yet others resembled nothing he had ever seen, like one of the masks, red, with black, spiraling marks underneath where one would peer through.
He stood there awkwardly as the shorter man looked him over from head to toe.
"Uh-?" He said softly, reaching up with one hand and rubbing the back of his neck. The strange little man, who waved a finger at him, shaking his head vigorously, quickly shushed him, preventing him from speaking any further.
"No, no, don't pollute the air with meaningless jabber," he chirped in a singsong kind of voice, high and slightly feminine. His face quickly fell to be more somber and slightly grim, however, as his barely-open eyes came to rest on the swirling black tattoo that stood, dominant on the skin of his neck. "You've met with a terrible fate, haven't you?"
K'ger: Welp, there you go, the last single digit chapter! Next one is #10! So to celebrate that I've made it that far, and that it was around this time in SIG that I did this, I"M HAVING ANOTHER CONTEST!
Yet again, its going to be a Zelda Trivia contest, and whoever gets it right gets to design an OC.
Here are the rules.
Answer in a review or PM, either way works for me.
Find the answer in any way works for you, after all, I can't see you!
If you enter, you must be open to PM-ing, that's how I'm going to get the info I need!
This contest ends on Monday February 1st.
First place: Design an OC for Stay With Me.
Second place: A shout out!
Here's the question:
In Twilight Princess, what Sage did Ganondorf kill before he was banished to the Twilight Realm?
Have fun!