Hi, decided to do some classciv stuff and picked up ODAHG. Re-wrote everything with actual description. Need to work on my book as well and my Professor Layton duet. Well, I'm not the only one with lots on my plate. All shall be revealed in due course.

EDIT- noticed the weird programming thingy on my work. Sorry about that.

Chapter 21

Silent Tears

The storm still raged outside. The horses were sheltering in the stable behind Link's house. Now the two wolves, Link and Rusl sat around the table in Bo's house. Their cloaks had been hung on the chimney, drying slowly. Tea had been supplied. Link paced the room, his tea forgotten on the table. Rusl sat in a chair, gripping his mug, his eyes belaying his frantic search for a solution. Bo himself lay slumped in a chair, staring despondently into his tea. Silver and Dal lay by the fire, drying off, but they weren't bickering. Dal's head lay on his paws, mourning for Ilia. Silver watched Link pace, hoping he might offer a solution. Inside she was so angry, it wasn't fair. All she wanted to do was shout and scream but Bo looked ready to break down in tears, and Silver understood what it felt like to have someone dear missing. She could remember when Link was abducted by the bounty hunter, she had been so afraid, searching Snow Peak long after the trail had gone cold. That was how Bo felt now.

"When did she disappear?"

"Last anyone saw her was when Link was leaving. We all saw her go to the clearing. But no-one saw her leave. If she didn't follow you…" His voice broke.

"Link? Wasn't that around the time Fi started acting all weird?" Silver asked.

The hylian nodded, though he was oblivious as to the connection between the two.

"But why Ilia? Its Link they all want." Bo muttered.

"Which is precisely why they took Ilia." Rusl said. "No doubt whatever evil took her, is using her as bait to get their hands Link."

There was a clunk as Link put down his tea and went to the door.

"And where do you think you're going?" Rusl's voice was angry and strained. "Don't give me any of that" he said, cutting off Link as he began to sign. "One day you're going to charge in to save someone and not be strong enough to do it. Leave Ilia's situation to me. In the morning you can to the Lost Woods and find the forest sage."

Once again, Link refused to back down. He held Rusl's gaze, a silent battle raging behind their eyes. Finally, Link dropped his gaze.

"Now the three of you go home, get some hot food in your bellies and get a good night's rest. I'll see you in the morning."

In the house, Link quickly made some soup. As he did so, Fi appeared from the hilt of his sword.

"Master?"

Link didn't turn around, but a silent message was conveyed between the two.

"My database has very little on the matter. However, you are right if Ilia disappeared the last time you were here, it coincides with the darkness that infested the sword. Unfortunately Master, I have no records of the moment Ilia left."

Link sat down in one of the chairs, thinking hard. He had noticed some strange lights outside, but he'd just put that down to the light filtering through the trees and catching his eye or the like. Also, it was after seeing those lights that he noticed Ilia was gone. If Ilia never left his clearing and he didn't see her on his way out of the province, then surely…those lights, Fi's memories and Ilia's disappearance were all connected. But what exactly had the power to alter the memories of an ancient sword spirit.

"Master, if I may interject?" Link nodded. "I have no record of the light spirit Phaira entering the clearing, yet according to my database she left. Therefore there is 60% probability that the abduction took place then."

"More than half? That's good enough for me. So we ask Phaira and we find Ilia!" Silver said.

"Unfortunately, according to my records, neither I nor Phaira had any recollection of how we came to be there."

"So they wiped your memory? That's some power…" Silver muttered.

Link was thinking hard, trawling through his memory. The lights had been magenta, and only one thing in his memory had magenta lights. One thing…something that had nearly killed him back in the city of slaves.

"My scans have come to the same conclusion." Fi said.

"The darkness that lives inside the Song of Healing." Silver whispered.

Dinner was a silent and subdued affair. Dal and Silver retired to their respective baskets, minds whirling with the new revelation. Fi returned to the sword to run some background scans to ensure no darkness remained in her system. Link however, could not sit.

Now he sat at the window, watching the rain fall down. He could feel the pressure of the task ahead weighing down upon him. All the loss that had plagued him now returned, suffocating his heart in its lonely embrace. He hugged his knees to his chest.

The same crushing fear he had felt when he had woken up in the spring after the moblins had attacked now haunted him. Ilia had always looked out for him. Even though he was bigger and stronger, she always acted like the older sister. When Link was little and fell in the creek, Ilia had picked him up and taken him to Uli. True she had scolded him for his carelessness but she still led him by the hand and made him a cup of tea while Uli worked her magic.

When they went to Hyrule for the first time, it was Ilia who stood up for him when the children tried to bully him. He remembered the way she just stood in front of him, hands on her hips and yelling at the bullies.

She hadn't changed much, except that nowadays more often than not it was Link who was on the receiving end. He could remember when they decided to go exploring in the woods and got lost. It was Ilia who had had the courage to shimmy up a tree and look for the way home.

Horrible things began to worm their way into his head. The terrible moment when Ilia had looked at him, eyes blank, not knowing who he was felt as fresh as a weeping wound. What if that happened again, only she never regained her memory? What if they'd killed her when he hadn't shown up? It had happened over a week, so it was entirely plausible, wasn't it? What if? What if?

Link buried his head in his hands, silent tears running down his face. He didn't ask for any of this. Everything he'd done was to save his friends, saving Hyrule had just been a extra bonus. Why him? Why did he have to be the one with the triforce? All he had ever wanted in life was to herd goats with Epona and look after the people to whom he owed so much.

It felt as if someone had enclosed his heart in a tomb of ice and despair.

It was near morning when Link finally managed to fall asleep,

lulled by his silent tears.

That morning, Silver awoke to find Link on the windowsill. Seeing him there, she wondered at the amount of time he must've spent there during his struggle against Zant. When he was alone, the children missing, Ilia also, knowing he had been there yet unable to protect them. Had Midna comforted him, shared his pain? Or had she done what Silver did now, stand by and watch, knowing there was no way to alleviate his pain.

He twitched in his sleep. Silver turned to go and wake up Dal as Link returned to reality.

Breakfast was nothing special; a few oats and goat's milk for Link and cured meat for the wolves. That done; Link donned his armour and weaponry, wrapping the scarf Ilia had given him round his neck. Gesturing to Dal and Silver, he left the house.

Outside, Epona was waiting.

"Go to the Lost Woods, I'll help with the search parties." She said in a voice that left no room for argument.

"But we found out who took Ilia." Silver replied, ever the thick-skinned.

"Yes, Fi told me. I've informed the light spirits and their storm is on the move to intercept it. I'll follow with Rusl and destroy what's left of it."

Link looked at Epona imploringly, the memory of the last time they separated fresh in his mind.

"I know, but I can still sense Nubia coming. As long as she doesn't get her paws on you and Fi then all will be fine."

"Epona…" Dal whimpered.

"Now off you go, the more we dilly-dally the more we make Ilia wait." That was the end of it, Epona would take no more arguments.

Reluctantly, Link shifted into wolf form. Rubbing his head against her leg, he ran off down the pass. Silver and Dal followed, exchanging goodbyes with the mare.

Link moved quickly through the forest, following old trails and ancient pathways long run by the animals that inhabited it. The purple fog had long since dispersed, leaving the way clear for the wolves to run between the trunks of trees. Running past Trill's shop, with insults ringing in their ears, they began to leap across the deep gorge, jumping from ledge to ledge, root to shoot, until they eventually landed at the edge of the Lost Woods.

Here the forest began to change. A confusing wayward melody drifted on the still wind.

"You come to play again?"

Link shook his head.

"Oh, you here to find Forest Sage? She hiding in the graveyard."

The skull kid's voice swirled around them, coming from no single source. One of the archways opened.

"Have fun!"

Then the voice was silent.

"That's as much help as we get?" Silver muttered darkly.

Link nodded, padding forwards. He knew exactly where the skull kid meant. There was only one graveyard in the Lost Woods. He knew the path, even if he had only traversed it once in his life. It was a path, every child of the mist knew.

The road home.

"Link where are you?" Silver called as the wolf suddenly raced off.

She and Dal exchanged glances before racing after him.

As he ran, the music began to grow louder. The mist curled around his fur, sensing his excitement. As he ran , the trees changed from deciduous to coniferous. Tall pines watched the wolves run beneath evergreen boughs, their needles whispering to each other. The air smelt of pine, and leaves carpeted the floor in a thick winter blanket.

But…

The more the wolves ran on, the more the landscape began to change. The wind died. The trees began to blacken, no new shoots peeped from beneath the carpet of leaves. The needles cracked and crumbled to ash around the pack. They began to have to jump across fallen trees. Great wooden corpses, ravaged and mauled, filling the air with the scent of death and decay.

Link stopped dead. Silver skidded to a stop beside him. Dal, not paying attention, crashed into Silver, sending them rolling across the ground.

"Sorry." He said as Silver picked herself up and shook ash from her fur.

"Link?" She said.

But the wolf didn't answer. His wide blue eyes were staring at the scene of a fierce battle. It was a terrible scene. Skeletons of humans and animals littered the ground. Dens had been smashed to pieces. The skeleton of a bear lay over the small form of her cub. Their bones bleached white and cracked. The song of the forest was quieter now, as if quietly lamenting the death of the village. There was no mist here. It felt quiet.

"A graveyard in the forest…" Dal said.

Link padded forward, as if in a daze, tail low. In the centre of the clearing stood a tall pine. It was grey and warped with age. Yet it was the only tree that had withstood the onslaught. At its roots lay the broken skeleton of a wolf.

Link whimpered.

He nosed the skull, the tip of his tail wagging. No mist, no voice, nothing.

Link's own mist rose from his fur, pooling around the tree. He recognised the bones. But he remembered them when they had flesh. A pale golden wolf, with whom he would play fight, who would always let him chase his tail. Not too far from the clearing the skeletons of two horses lay where they had fallen. Around the neck of one was a little amber necklace.

Link put his muzzle to the sky and howled. It was a howl of despair and pain and loss. Silver too howled. Dal joined in, lamenting the loss of his own family.

The mist curled around the wolves, spreading out among the clearing. In its depths, the life the clearing once held was revived. The bear and her cub stood up and began to play. The two horses got to their feet and trotted through the clearing, deep in conversation. Birds flew through the branches. To the lament of the wolves, the world was transformed. A dragon padded through the trees that once again stood tall. Three friends, girls all hylian in appearance save for one who was twili played in the shadow of the great tree. A black wolf lay in the mouth of a repaired den. Humans too walked through the forest. A goron played chess with a zora. A river, that now had run dry but in this dream world flowed anew, burst with fish and serpents and zoras and kelpies. An oocca chatted to an owl. Two hylian children played with toy swords, sometimes becoming boar piglets, before becoming hylian again. A hylian girl hung from the branch of a tree before transforming herself into a robin and flying over the heads of the wolves. This was the power of the mist.

Silver and Dal stopped howling to look at Link had created. Their mouths were open in fascination as a weasel ran between their legs, chasing a guinea fowl.

Then at Link's feet, the wolf rose to his feet. He looked like the hero spirit, but was at the same time different. He had the same markings as Link yet his pale golden fur juxtaposed to Link's own dark fur. The wolf padded off to the den, lying down beside the dark wolf with some meat in his jaws.

"Look." Silver said to Dal.

The tree itself began to glow green. The bark retreated at the bottom to reveal a little girl with green hair, curled up asleep. Beside her, a golden wolf lay as if guarding her. The wolf lifted his head, pricking his ears forward. This was not part of the same illusion Link's mist had created. The girl's eyes opened. She sat up stiffly, the wolf helped her up. While the girl looked around ten years old, her skin was like birch bark, thin and crackling. Her fingers had become long and spindly like the branches of the tree.

The wolf helped her to her feet. But even then, she was barely taller than Link. She looked like a strange hybrid of girl and tree.

"You finally came." She said, her voice like the rustle of the wind through the leaves of a tree.

Link stopped howling, looking at the girl with wide eyes.

"I knew you would find this place eventually. You always knew where to find me."

Even though Link's song had ended, the song of the Lost Woods took its place, keeping the illusion alive. But now, there were Kokiri greys amongst the others. A fawn changed into a small boy with hair the colour of the bark of a yew tree. A hedgehog became a little girl with spiky brown hair.

"You have come to find me so that I might pass on my sageship to an heir. Yet even now, the heir is engulfed in darkness. A girl of the forest, with a heart of oak and a spirit of pine."

Dal cocked his head to one side, confused. But Link knew, he had always known.

"I am ready to leave this horrible forsaken place."

The wolf spirit nodded and lay down to allow her to climb on his back.

"I shall take her to Faron's Spring, when you have found the heir bring her there and sageship can be passed."

Link nodded and the wolf bounded away through the forest.

The spell no long contained, the mist returned to Link. The spirits returned to their bones. The music faded and the place once more became a sorrowful place of carnage.

Link padded to the skeletons of the horses. Becoming hylian, he undid the necklace and slipped it into his pouch. Finally, he walked to the tree and placed one hand on its bark. It almost felt as if the tree was sighing. Its source of power gone, the bark crumbled and a fine soil fell to the ground, covering the bones and laying them to rest. The tree disintegrated completely and the soil covered the entire building, leaving a fertile clearing that would one day give birth to a new forest.

This turned out more depressing than I had hoped.