The Legend of Link: The Wolf Howls At Midnight

By Alius111

Chapter Two

Link's Darkest Hour

It was early in the morning, just moments after daybreak. The sun was a blazing orange disk in the eastern sky, the horizon colored a shade of light pink, the clouds dark blue wisps. A cold wind blew in from the north, rustling the trees. Faron woods were unnaturally quiet. The wildlife hardly stirred. The birds didn't sing, the squirrels hid in branches. As the sun banished the darkness; black storm clouds rolled in from Hyrule Field, bringing with them thunder and the humid stench of rain. The sounds of a shrill dog-like cry could be heard coming from a glade near the edge of the province. Link tossed and turned in his sleep, whining loudly, his hind legs violently kicked. In the rundown shake nearby, Coro slept peacefully in his bed, completely oblivious to the penetrating cries coming from just outside his home. To anyone else, it would have sounded like an animal were being murdered.

Link whimpered, running from restless tears. He could feel it—The heat—The fire. It would burn him alive. The desperate screams of women and children surrounded him, filled him. Cottages smoldered around his writhing body, consumed by the walls of a hellish inferno. The skies were scorched black with clouds of rolling smoke. The waterwheel collapsed into a glowing pile of red cinders. The acrid stench of sulfur and burning wood assaulted Link's sensitive nose, singing the fur on his snout. Madly rolling around in the charred grass, Link howled in pain. He could hear them: the disembodied screams of the villagers as they were burned alive. If he were human he would have clamped his hands down on his ears, but he couldn't. All Link could do was shiver and whine as the screams ripped apart his mind with their cold steely fingers.

Link forced his eyes open. The pungent fumes burned his eyes, made them water. As he honed his senses, trying to see past the wall of the inferno, Link's gaze was cast over the entire area. Things were seen in sharper contrast, smells were not blended as one but were separated as individual signals. He was in Ordon Village, and it was burning. He found himself lying next to the pumpkin patch, whining and shying away from the advancing flames. Tongues of fire licked at the air, infecting the village with an agonizing heat severe enough to make Link's skin blister. The smell of burning wood blotted out every other smell, consumed them in its smoky black veil. But Link's powerful nose could smell something else, another scent festering under the stench of charred timber and sweltering hay . . .

It was blood.

He realized with growing terror that the villagers screams had faded away. Link's eyes, nose, and ears searched them out, but there was nothing to be seen or heard but the roaring of the fire which now consumed his home. He could hear them, moments ago—their screams—almost like they were lying right next to him. He imagined if had had reached out he might of been able to touch one of them, maybe graze an arm with his paw. But now there was nothing. As Link's blue eyes stared into the blaze the village began to melt away, the tongues of the flames faded, mixing in with the darkness like black water swirling down an empty drain. For a brief moment there was nothing but sweet oblivion, but then the world came back and it came with a vengeance.

Link found himself standing on the edge of a tiny island, starring out at the vast lake located behind Ordon Village. The island was a nothing but a small stretch of sand and plants. The grasses were lush and green and the flowers bloomed. This was the one place untouched by the fire. Link's trembling paws sank into the mud. The cold felt good. The lake's black waters were still and placid, like a sheet of glass. The stars and moon were blotted out by a shroud of smog, but for once Link felt that fear leave him. The village burned but he was safe. In the center of the lake a rounded pillar of rock jutted upwards like a piece of broken bone. Link remembered the day he sent a hawk to attack a monkey who had been dancing on that pillar, a flower in her hair and a basket in hand. It seemed so long ago. Never had Link wished he could stand on two legs more. Then it came again, that stench. Link felt his insides coil. The stench of blood. It was everywhere, all around him, on him, combing through his fur.

Link stared down at the mossy shore and his eyes widened in horror. His blue earrings jumped as he leaped back. The lake had become red with blood. His paws were soaked in it. A dark scarlet liquid. It felt slimy and warm on his fur. He couldn't even bring himself to try and clean it off his paws. He didn't want his tongue to touch it, didn't want to taste the saltiness of it. He had tasted blood before, seen it thousands of times; now the very sight of it, the feeling of it on him, were enough to make his stomach turn.

What was that floating out there in the center of the lake? Link's head snapped up, his eyes focusing. Something white floated by in the water, bobbing like a cork. Link whimpered. It was an arm—a human arm. Suddenly more of them appeared all over the face of the blood red lake. Not just arms—but torsos and legs too. Hands and toes and ears and . . . and faces. All dead.

The faces scared him the most—made him tremble. Link realized these were the corpses of the slaughtered villagers. They weren't scorched or burned, no. They had been killed long before the fire had started. There were no blisters or charred skin; only the disgusting look of a thing that has decayed in water. There was the body of the old woman who once owned Sarah's Sundries. Her eyes were white and clouded, as if stuffed with cobwebs. Link spotted Rusl's body floating next to hers. The Black Smith had such a look of terror on his face Link felt his breath stop. When Ilia's corpse drifted by Link thought he might cry. Her dark eyes and pallid face stared up at him, accusing him. In her arms she clutched the body of a newborn child. It was wrapped in a blood soaked cloth, it's tiny head pushed up against her heart. When Link reached out with his paw and padded the water, almost reaching out for her. Her corpse suddenly came alive and let out a blood curdling scream.

Pressing his head against the ground, Link yowled and barked. It was a terrible sound. He thought it might drive him insane. Beneath his paws the shore began to tremor. Looking around frantically, Link whined as the earth started to shake. What was happening? Before him the bloodied lake came alive with bubbles. It boiled and churned as if some sort of giant creature were coming to life and were letting out its first rattling breath. The quakes increased, the shore began to crack. Link feared the ground might give out from beneath him.

From deep below there came a loud roar—but not of an animal. To Link it sounded wretchedly human. He wanted to run, but where to run to? Where could he go? He was trapped. As Link whined one last time, his tail tucked between his hind legs. The churning waters exploded and something leaped out at him from their blood red depths—

The wolfish cried came to a sudden halt. Link jumped up from his bed, searching the glade, his heart hammering inside his ribcage. There was nothing. The clearing was still. Huffing through his nose, Link let himself lie back in bed, his snout on his paws, his tongue hanging limply from under his lips.

His territory always had a serene beauty in the morning. If you blocked out the fire pit and Coro's flimsy little shack: there was nothing but trees and nature. The morning sun shone its ray through the treetops. Link's sharp eyes could see little bunches of insects flying around in the light. Dawn. It was always at Dawn that Link felt the most human. It was a warm, comforting feeling, and he welcomed it. At night he felt more like a wild animal, but at least he always had his memories to remind him that he was once human.

He remembered waking up at sunrise in his house, hearing Ilia calling up at his window, yelling for him to come outside. His mind became filled with images of his home, and with them, and sense of dread and nostalgia came. Link remembered climbing down the ladder and into the dark, moldy cellar to get a jar of dried peaches. Nothing tasted quite like Ordanian peaches.

After he vanished his house was left abandoned and un-lived in. Over the past eight years nature had reclaimed it. The last time Link set eyes on his house; it was nothing more than a jumble of rotting wood wrapped in vines and splintered with tree branches. (In the end, everything returns to the earth.) None of the villagers had ever bothered to buy it or to keep it clean. They avoided it almost like it might be haunted. Who knows, maybe they were hoping he might come back one day. . .

"The history of light and shadow will be written in blood!"

Link shivered. Above he heard a bird caw before flying off into the sky. No amount of pleasant memories could make him forget what he had dreamed. Even when awake, the images were so sharp and vivid Link swore he could almost smell the smoke on the air . . .

That dream. Link had had that dream before, many times before. For the past month each night he saw Ordon Village burned to the ground in his sleep, and as always it would end with him standing on the edge of a blood red lake, staring hopelessly at the corpses of dead villagers; every time he would reach out for Ilia, and every time he would wake up just as whatever lived at the bottom of the lake jumped out to grab him.

Link had no idea what these dreams were supposed to mean. Perhaps they were premonitions of things to come . . . or maybe they were nothing but fantasies dreamed up by his strained mind. Link had faced armored dragons and colossal resurrected skeletons; he had battled and killed giant spiders and a creature made of fire and darkness. It was no wonder he was having nightmares. After everything he had seen in his life: it was only natural that he were dreaming of calamity and death.

No matter what these nightmares were—fantasies of prophecies—they terrified him. They made him dread going to sleep. He longed for the nights where he dreamed he were human again. Link could scarcely remember the last he took human form in his dreams. Now the idea almost seemed absurd.

It was funny . . . he never thought he would miss it so much.

Still shaken from his nightmare, he tried to force in a few more hours of sleep, but sleep wouldn't come. He got up once to urinate in the bushes and a second time to mark a tree after the scent of another male invaded his territory. After that he had no hope of getting rest. Link yawned and scratched himself behind the ear. His hearing was as sharp as ever. On the other side of the glade, hiding in the tress, a wild rabbit had its eyes on him, too terrified to move or squeak. Link felt his stomach growl. He was hungry, and to a wolf in the morning there is only one thing on its mind:

Food.

Link considered chasing down the little rabbit—his instincts screamed for him to. Flaring his nostrils, he took in the rabbit's scent, memorized it. What would the point be? Coro would feed him . . . but there was no sport in that—no thrill. Link had never been much of a hunter but this rabbit was lame. That's why it wouldn't run. He ran his tongue along his snout. Bunny meat had always been a little stringy, but who was he to complain?

He lunged and so did the rabbit. Barking, Link darted across the clearing and into the bushes before the rabbit even had a chance to make it to his hole. The rabbit squealed as Link sank his fangs into its neck. Warm blood filled the wolf's mouth. The hunger to consume raw flesh burned inside of him. Holding the rabbit down with his paws, he savagely ripped into its throat. The rabbit writhed and bled. With a hard and decisive crunch, Link delivered the coup-de-grâce and snapped the rabbit's spine between his powerful jaw. The animal fell limp in his mouth and Link proceeded to tear strings of muscle from the small white bones, happily lapping up the blood and fluids that came pouring out. Once he had his fill, he licked his lips, stretched his back, his neck stuck upwards, and sniffed his way back into the glade.

His hunger satisfied, Link rolled up in his spot and started giving himself a bath. When he went to clean his left paw he saw something which made him stop, and stare. He could see the symbol of the Goddesses clearly for the first time in years. It was there, as clear as day, a small black pyramid made up of three small triangles connected by the points.

Link gawked at it in stupefied disbelief. The symbol had always been there, but over the years the triangles had progressively faded from the back of is paw—almost as if it were confirming Link's feelings of being completely worthless. But now, for the first time in a long time, he could see them. As he continued to stare, his initial confusion gave away to curiosity. Why was it suddenly appearing now? What could it possibly mean? Was it a sign? Where Link once drew comfort from the symbol—it now filled him with dread and uncertainty.

His journey . . . he had almost forgotten. Link raised his snout to the sky. The clouds were murky and grey. His nose could smell the stench of rain on the air. There was a storm coming. Humans can't tell but animals always have a way of sensing bad weather before humans do. In the distance thunder rumbled, it was approaching thunder, the kind that lurks on the brink of the horizon, waiting for the lightning to strike. Not exactly the best weather for traveling, but it would be fine as long as he stuck to the trees.

Seeds of doubt began to seep their way into his head. What if he didn't reach castle town in time? Would this all be for nothing? What if he didn't make it? What if he was destined to die old and fat, no one caring what became of him, stuck in this body until the day he died? An image suddenly appeared in his mind. A wide open plane, a circular barrier of shimmering orange prisms, storm clouds, thunder and lightning. Link could see himself facing down the Dark Lord Ganondorf. He remembered it vividly. He remembered how the wind blew clouds of dust over the battlefield, he remembered how the thunder roared, he remembered Ganondorf's shinning white blade as it struck out for his heart. But most of all he remembered his eyes—Ganondorf's burning yellow eyes.

Link had survived his encounter with the Dark Lord—he had plunged his sword into the glowing wound across his chest. He stood before him as the setting sun cast an eerie white light over the battlefield, and watched Ganondorf die. After all that, would he really let a few doubts stop him?

"Shadow has been moved by light, it seems . . . How amusing."

No. He wouldn't let that happen—he had lost too much already. With new found resolve, Link stood and began walking towards the end of the clearing with his head held high. He decided if he was going to leave it would have to be now. But just as he neared the dip in the land where the trees opened to a winding path; he stopped and stared back at the flimsy little shack. Link whined. Inside Coro slept, completely unaware that his only friend in the world was about to abandon him. Link felt guilty. How could he just walk away after everything Coro did for him? He was his best friend . . . his only friend. But what was he supposed to do? Rap on the front door with his paws, wake him up and somehow tell him how much he meant to him? He was an animal—he couldn't say goodbye.

Link looked round at the glade that had been his home for the past six years. With each passing moment the will to leave grew weaker and weaker. He knew he would have to run out of there or end up staying. He was sad to leave Coro and his home behind . . . he would miss them both, but there was nothing for him here now.

Just haunts and bad memories.

Determined, Link jumped around and ran out of the clearing, starting down the long path which would take him to Hyrule Field.

It was mere hours after he left the glade behind that Link felt the first few drops of rain fall on the tip of his snout. Link barked and ran faster, taking shelter beneath the canopy of trees. Thunder rumbled in the sky. When he was a child Link could tell how far away a storm was from the village by counting the seconds between each time the clouds thundered. Now as Link padded through dried leaves and tangled roots, his instincts told him to run for shelter. He couldn't. He had to keep running.

Lightning forked across the darkened sky in burning white tridents of jagged light. Soon the rain began to fall. It came at Link in a curtain of falling water. Link ran into to it head on. In a matter of seconds his fur was soaked through. Thunder rumbled again, fallowed quickly by a dazzling sheet of lighting. Before the light vanished the shadows of the trees seemed in dark contrast, like dead limbs reaching out for him with clawed hands. It was just a trick of the light, what he saw hadn't been real. But the fear, the fear he felt sucking the air from his lungs.

That was certainly real.

As he ran through the storm, Link was reminded of the time he carried Midna to Princess Zelda as she lay dying on his back. It had been storming then too, just as it was now. Link remembered with chilling clarity how desperate he felt as he ran from Lake Hylia. As Link padded through the muddy puddles, he swore he could almost feel Midna's dead weight on his back. Never had he felt so helpless and at the same time, terrified—terrified that Midna was going to die, terrified he would have to watch her die, unable to help her, unable to do nothing but stand there on his four paws and watch as the light faded from her eye.

But things were different now. The fear he felt creeping up his spine was familiar but there weren't any lives depending on him this time. And for that, he was grateful. Above in the dark clouds the storm raged. Torrential winds tore at the trees, ripping branches from their trunks where they collapsed into the mud in dead heaps.

The wind felt horribly bitter on his fur. Link could feel the strength in his legs wavering, his heart rate increasing. His paws ached and sang each time they struck ground.

Finally after hours of running through the storm, Link collapsed, falling into a shallow puddle, covering himself with mud and dead leaves. Breathing heavily, Link stuck out his tongue and greedily lapped up the water he was laying in. It tasted salty but the cold felt good running down his dried throat.

A few hours of running and his energy had already been spent.

He was too old for this, he realized. Eight years was a very long time for a wolf. Traveling had always been so much easier when he had Midna. The thought crept into his mind from some dark, lonely place. Link pushed it away, but still it kept repeating itself, chanting and hammering itself a place in his head.

Traveling had been easier with Midna. If only he were younger—if only Midna were there. She could just teleport him to Castle Town . . .

But she wasn't—and she never would. People like her only helped others when it was in their best interest—which she had already proven to him with a knife in his back.

Legs trembling, Link stood and sought shelter underneath the branches of a nearby tree. Once under the refuge of the branches, Link shook his entire body to dry himself in a pure dog-like fashion. Locating a dry patch of earth, he huffed and collapsed in a rising cloud of dust, filled with pity and hatred for himself.

Link hated himself, he hated how weak he had become—he hated how he had become so dependent on Minda to travel.

Midna . . . just thinking her name sent Link's upper lip trembling as he growled.

This was all her fault. Hers and everyone else's.

Even if blaming Midna and every other human for his plight did nothing but feed his hatred and self-loathing; at least he would get some satisfaction out of it. Again the sound of thunder exploded above head and the rain came down even harder. Looking around, Link knew he wouldn't be able to move through this. Even if he tried he probably wouldn't even make a mile. He would just have to lay here and wait the storm out.

His stomach growled and Link whined. He was starving. If he were home Coro would of dropped a thick juicy steak at his feet by now. Just thinking about it made Link drool. Listening to the soothing sound of the rain hitting the ground. Link soon found it getting hard to keep his eyes open.

He tried to stay awake but his eyes kept drooping. The truth of the matter was: Link was exhausted. He had been running for so long. He could feel himself slipping to the steady drumming of the rain. The air was humid and warm, the atmosphere so relaxing. His muscles sang in throbbing pain. The sun was blocked by the black storm clouds; time wasn't an issue. Link figured he could just rest his eyes and wait the storm out. Yawning wide, Link flashed a set of pearly white canines. Fatigue and tiredness taking him, Link fell into a deep sleep.

The Fire—the heat, it would burn him alive. The screams ripped away his sanity and Link howled in terror. The dream, it was back. The inferno consumed the village, burning people who weren't really there. The images were horrifyingly familiar, the licking flames, the glowing red wood, the black stinking smell of smoldering hay. Even to Link while in the grip of the nightmare; it all seemed terribly lucid. Link desperately gasped for air, smothering beneath a blanket of smoke. He could taste the sulfur on his tongue. The screams were as clear as a bell. Link's animal mind barely grasped the fact that he was dreaming, but the fire and the heat felt so real. He counted the steps in his head: the burning village, the screams, then came the . . .

And just as before the village melted away to be replaced by the tiny island with its pitiful stretch of sand and grass. As Link expected, the lake ran red with blood—even though he knew it was coming the sensation still managed to inspire fresh terror in his heart. Then came the bodies, floating by in lines like little toy soldiers flowing down a stream. Link knew what was coming next as soon as Ilia's corpse drifted by with the new born child clutched in her arms. The anticipation was almost as bad as looking into her cold, blank stare. In fact Link probably would of dove in after her if he hadn't know what was waiting for him at the bottom of the red lake, about to let out its first rattling breath.

The waters began to bubble and churn. It was like a movie playing in his head, Link counted each step as it came at him as if he were floating out of his body. Any moment now and the waters would explode, something would reach out for him but he would wake up before it had a chance to get its claws around him. Then he would wake up under the safe refuge of the tree branches, safe and stiff from sleeping on the hard earth. But something else happened. Something that grabbed Link and forced him back into his body, making him feel like his heart were being wrabbed in glowing red wire. The water exploded and something leaped out at him, but he didn't wake up as expected. The second was gone, that momentary pause where he woke up. Whatever slumbered at the bottom of the lake had reached out and pulled him back.

A powerful skeletal hand possessing a wiry strength shout out of the water and clutched his throat, squeezing as if it were trying to choke him to death. The hand wore a thick steel gauntlet made of black armor. Blood ran down its massive fingers, collecting in thick drops where they dripped down in long, slimy strings. Its razor sharp claws, lethal and made of iron, plunged themselves into the tender flesh of Link's neck. Trails of fresh blood seeped from the wounds, dripping onto the armored hand. As if feeding on it, the hand began to rise from the lake, lifting Link along with it. Link's cobalt blue eyes fallowed the hand down its arm and up to its shoulder as more of the creatures' body emerged from the lake. As it rose it took Link with it, lifting him off the ground and into the air.

The creature holding him was a massive suit of very elaborate and decorated black armor; easily eight feet tall it looked built for a real giant of a man. It looked to be some sort of sinister knight. Although the suite was empty it seemed horribly alive, almost like some dark writhing thing were living inside of it, giving it life. It wore a long black cape, shredded and soaked with blood. Link whimpered, tucking his tail between his legs. If he were still human he would have screamed until he bled from the eyes.

There was an insignia inscribed on the Knight's colossal chest plate. It was the symbol of the Goddesses. Three golden triangles combined to make a whole. Only, in the dead center of the symbol, where the three shapes left a hollow in the shape of an inverted triangle; there was a black void, an empty space colored in—as if it had been filled by the darkness. Black tendrils snacked from the center of the symbol, spreading to the other triangles, almost like it were infecting them with its evil. Deep in the Knight's suite of armor, Link could hear something breathing . . . Something dark . . .

Something alive.

Tightening its grip on Link's neck, the Knight pulled him closer. It had no head, just a large black helmet filled with an endless darkness. From the side of the helmet were two large, twisted horns, curved and elongated like a goat or a Ram's might be. Staring back at Link from deep within the helmet were two burning red eyes. These weren't its eyes, Link knew, they were its windows. What haunted this armor lived deeper in the Knight, it looked at the wolf from far below, lower inside the Knight, festering in his hallow chest. Those burning red eyes were hungry and insane. It leaned closer to Link and let out a long, rattling breath. The wolf could hear it coming from inside, echoing from that impenetrable darkness. The Knight pulled Link's snout closer until it and the eyes were almost touching, washing its putrid breath over his face. The stink—the stink of death, was enough to make the struggling wolf gag. Suddenly the Knight reached out and clenched Link left paw in its steely grip.

"I Found You," It whispered—that death stick was so warm against his skin.

Link awoke howling in fear, his heart jackhammering in his chest. Unfamiliar pictures flashed before his mind, driving him deeper in wild panic: strange trees, a long winding trail . . .

It took a moment for Link to realize where he was. Never had the dream still feel so real.

Link shivered from the cold. He could still feel the Knight's icy, steel hand around his neck.

Taking a deep breath, Link steadied himself. He didn't want his heart to give out.

The rain had stopped at last. Link didn't trust what he saw. The weather was treacherous. They sky was still covered in black storm clouds. The storm didn't seem gone to him . . . more like it were sleeping.

Suddenly he felt a sharp pain jolt in his left paw. Link howled.

Cringing, he looked down at his paw. There was nothing, not even the tiniest cut. As quickly as it had come, the pain ebbed away like the tide pulling back into sea but promising to return. Link pushed it from his mind. He didn't want to think that his paw hurt because the Knight had grabbed it in his dream. He figured he'd stepped on something sharp when he was running so recklessly down the trail and didn't feel the pain until he was asleep . . . dreams were like that. Things from the real world often carried over into sleep . . .

Link ran faster than he ever had before. All of his troubles and nightmares and anger couldn't bother him as long as he could out run them. With thoughts of what he would do once he was human again motivating him, he kept running. He ran swiftly down the trail, taking short cuts through the trees and running through empty glades, feeling more vigorous than he had in years. Despite his dream being haunted by burning villages and sinister knights, it still left him feeling refreshed and full of vitality. Judging by the position of the sun, Link knew he would arrive at Hyrule Field soon a matter of hours.

By the time noon rolled by, Link cleared the trail and ran from Faron Woods, leaving Coro, his home, and his old life behind.

Hours later, standing before one of the largest bodies of land in the province, Link couldn't help but feel for once in his otherwise unbearable life, a sense of accomplishment. He made it to Hyrule Field. Now he would just have to cross it into the Lanayru Province, then pass another field and he would soon find himself standing in front of the gates of Castle Town. The field was vast though; an endless expanse of grassy fields and rolling hill. Halfway there was a small wooden bridge which stretched over a narrow stream. That was his marker. He wanted to reach the bridge before sundown.

As Link began his journey into the field, above, hiding in the trees; a pair of watchful eyes stared after him before vanishing into the Twilight.