Link struggled through the Lost Wood. The dizzyingly similar paths made his head spin and the Skull Kid with his puppets that kept attacking him was driving him crazy. With a ferocious snarl, Link lunged at the nearest puppet and sank his teeth into its wooden throat. He tore uselessly at it. HE could do little against the wooden puppets other than score the wood with his teeth and claws. These were not creatures of flesh and blood and couldn't simply be killed.
With another snarl, Link spun to bite into the arm of another puppet and was satisfied when he heard the wood crunch under his powerful jaws. The puppet withdrew, its splintered arm hung uselessly at its side.
The five puppets had surrounded Link on all sides. He crouched and, glancing at the ones in front of him, lunged. He stuck the one on the right, raking his teeth across its wooden chest and turned midair to bite down on the leg of another. His jaws splintered the wood of the puppet's leg, but battle seemed to drag on forever. Landing, he panted, blood welling up from the wounds the puppets had managed to inflict, slicing through his thick grey fur.
He looked back at Midna as the puppets closed around them again. He crouched and readied to spring. Midna screwed up her face and used her powers to reach out with the darkness, forming a ring that surrounded the enemies. Blackness crackled across the puppets' wooden bodies. Link lunged, his attack enhanced by Midna's control over the darkness that she used to hold the puppets in place. Link's teeth sliced through wood, splintering and shattering the wood of the puppets' bodies.
Link stood panting, his breath rasped in his throat. He shook himself stalked through the trees. The sound of the Skull Kid's flute rose on the air and Link snarled with frustration. He couldn't take it anymore. He took off running and blindly followed the sound of the flute, his paws striking the ground. He heard it in the tree above his head and came up short. He glared up at the Skull Kid and bared his teeth in anger.
The Skull Kid's echoing laughter set Link's nerves on fire and he swiftly calculated his jump. The skull Kid was only about ten feet of the ground and with Link's growing anger, burning bright in his blood, he easily made the jump. A snarl raging in his throat, Link slammed into the Skull Kid and pinned it to the ground. He glared down at it with fierce blue eyes and saw its twisted smile and was sickeningly reminded of something he'd never seen before. He struck the Skull Kid sharply and turned away from it, stalking into the trees, the growing darkness in the forest swallowing him.
Link stood at the entrance to the ruins of an old temple. It seemed to whisper to him as he moved slowly forwards, the two great stone golems back in their rightful place. He'd pressed through the Lost Wood with difficulty, but he'd made it this far. The stone golems had refused to let him pass until he'd gotten them into their proper positions. It hadn't taken long, but his patience was wearing thin, something he'd never had to deal with before. Link had always been an endless wellspring of patience, but that was slowly changing.
Link padded slowly towards the archway. The whispering it Link's ear became more insistent as he moved forwards. He only stopped when he saw the Master Sword driven into the pedestal in the center of the room. It looked untouched by time and seemed to call to him. Everything around the sword was crumbled and aged, but the sword looked as if it had never been used, but it whispered of being an ancient and powerful weapon. Awed, Link walked slowly towards it.
Midna rose from his back to float by the entrance as he climbed up to stand in from of the sword. A sword made by the goddesses, there was no doubt in his mind that this was the case. As he drew closer, he could feel the tug from the sword to his very soul. He closed his eyes as he took one last step. He felt the changes immediately, the pain that always came when he transformed, but also a feeling of strength came to him. He clasped the sword in his gauntleted hand and pulled it from its pedestal. He felt a ripple of power as he pulled the sword out and raised it above his head, his blue eyes fierce and his body strong, the wounds from the Lost Wood vanishing.
The glowing staircase appeared before Link and Midna drifted over to him. She looked him over approvingly, the way she had the first time he been turned from a wolf into a human. She said nothing but followed him up the stairs to the Temple of Time.
Void crossed the desert in the darkness of night. The tunneling monsters had leaped at him from the moment he touched foot on the sand, but he dispatched of them quickly. He kept his sword drawn and kept walking. He refused to slow as he felt the tug from the shadows of the temple even from this distance.
The night air was cold and the sands that had been burning from the day were already freezing. Void glared ahead as he walked, the desert stretching out before him. He remembered when the desert had been home to the Gerudo people, but now nothing remained of them. The desert had long since erased any remnants of their existence on the ever shifting sands. Void had spied the great bored with their riders, but felt no need to engage them in combat and had skirted around them. It seemed that in the centuries the bulblins had taken over the desert after the disappearance of the Gerudo.
Void saw the Arbiter's Grounds rising up before him in the distance. The cold shadows lured him and drew him to the temple. If he was correct this was where the Mirror of twilight was. Six pillars rose high in the sky above the temple. It was with the utmost care that Void stalked past the bulblins and climbed up to the entrance of the temple. He felt there was no need to enter the temple itself for a guardian would block the way to the Mirror of Twilight, but the shadows from within called enticingly to him.
The entrance to the temple gave way to Void and he entered with surprising care. Usually he would have walked as though he ruled the shadows, but now Void took care where he went and, avoiding the traps and enemies, prowled to the Mirror chamber. He used and twisted the shadows to take paths that no one else could, but it wore strangle on him as it never had before.
Void found himself standing at the foot of a staircase that wound around the outside of the temple. His feet carried him easily up the steps, but he moved cautiously. He knew not what he was going to find, but it certainly wasn't what awaited him. In the center of the chamber, bound by chains, was a great black slab of stone. It rose several times the height of a man and shone of the darkest blackness. Set in a half-cradle was the circular Mirror of Twilight, only the Mirror of Twilight was no longer only a fragment of it remained.
Void climbed the steps to the Mirror and gazed into it. He saw his reflection, fractured and twisted. His red eyes stared back at him in the darkness. He heard the low murmur and raised his head sharply to look up at the six pillars that the chains around the black rock were attacked. Glowing faintly high above his head stood the six sages, seemingly only ghosts of what they'd once been. They gazed down at him, their voices echoing quietly around him. He wanted to shy away from them, to vanish into the darkness, but he gazed defiantly up at them.
"Void," one of them whispered, the others echoing his chosen name. He gazed at them with hatred and anger, but the one who had first said his name seemed to gaze at him with an impassive expression that burned into his vary soul.
He spun to face the fragment of the Mirror of Twilight and raised his hand, summoning the darkness to him. The darkness he summoned twisted around his hand seemed to reach for the mirror fragment, but also to shy away from it. Shakily, a portal began to form, wavering and terribly weak. The Shadow moved quickly to the portal. He could feel it tug weakly at him. He was born of the darkness though and could walk the weaker paths of darkness that no other could.
The first sage gazed at him breathing a warning. He swung around, refusing to look up at her, the Sage of Shadows. Her warning meant nothing to him. Though, the sages seemed to struggle and sty to surge upon him, trying to stop him from accessing the darkness on the other side of the portal, the Sage of Shadows breathed a word and the others fell back, letting him go.
It was without thanks to the Sage of Shadow that Void stepped forwards and was swallowed by the portal. The feeble portal flickered and vanished. It would not reopen until the Mirror of Twilight was whole again. The sages gazed silently at one another, imploring the Sage of Shadow to explain herself.
Void stepped out into the darkness. It wasn't true darkness though, it was somewhere between darkness and light, Twilight. He stood gazing at the sky that swam between golden and fading to blackness. He was greeted however by a blade swinging at his throat, only to turn it aside with his sword. Before him stood a man dawned in dark blue with burning red eyes and cowl covering his tanned face, Void knew who this man was. Sheik, Link's lover from centuries past.
"Dark Link," Sheik spat coldly, holding his blade at Void's throat.