A Link to the Past
Chapter Four: Hyrule Castle
As nice as it was to be out of the storm for a while, Link also became much more nervous the moment he stepped inside the castle. The thick stone walls muffled the rain and thunder, while the closed shutters on the windows prevented most of the flashes of lightning, and the torches along the walls illuminated every square inch of the place in flickering, orange light. Now there was nothing to conceal the young man's movements nor even his presence, nothing except the stolen armor that was slightly too big for him, just enough that wearing it was starting to get pretty uncomfortable, and his movements were just a bit more awkward than someone who it was made for.
The face shield on the helmet was his salvation, as was standing against the wall and not moving when any of the patrolling guards passed, thankfully not noticing the water that was dripping on the floor around him. Link was slowly able to move around toward the entrance to the castle store rooms, still following the voice in his dream while getting farther away from the entrance to the throne room and the stairwell leading upward to places like the royal family's private chambers. The young man figured that this was where most, if any intruders would try to go if they were thieves or trying to hurt the King, and if not for the dream he would have done the same thing.
Something here was different, though, namely the guards themselves, and continuing as he moved down another long hallway, getting closer to the downward stairwell. Outside, the guards had seemed almost normal in the way they talked and behaved, although a little on edge, and out in the entrance hall it was pretty much the same, but now the armored men were starting to get a lot more aggressive. They didn't talk to each other, nor did they complain about the weather or being tired, not even looking around as they marched down the hallway in step with each other. Everything about them suggested that they were ready for a fight, keeping a gloved hand on their sheathed swords as if expecting to draw them at any time, and this got worse when the young man reached the stairwell, trying not to fall down while just happening to pass another guard coming up the stairs.
Nothing was said as they passed each other, with Link holding his breath the whole time, and just starting to let out a sigh of relief, when a knot formed in the young man's stomach once he heard the other guard's footsteps stop. Not only did they stop, but now they were coming back down the stairs toward him, giving Link no choice but to quicken his own movements, exiting the doorway at the bottom of the stairs and trying to find a way to lose his pursuer. There was another stairwell right there which would continue down toward the dungeons, but it wouldn't do any good if a guard followed him all the way down, so instead Link turned down the hallway on this floor, turning and entering the first door he came to, hopefully without being noticed by the following guard.
The storm outside couldn't be heard at all down there in the castle's first basement, so the young man decided to try hiding himself among everything else inside this room. There were barrels of wine, sacks of grain, plenty of things for him to hide behind, so Link moved around behind one of the barrels as quietly as he could with the loud clanking armor, and simply waited. For a few moments nothing happened, with the young man starting to hope that the pursuing guard had simply walked by, but then of course the door slowly opened. Through a small space between the barrels, he could see the guard just standing there as the door slowly closed behind him, but now the armored man wasn't moving.
"I followed the water, I know you're in here." The guard said calmly while slowly drawing his sword. "If you really are one of us, you would know that Agahnim has made entering the lower levels of the castle punishable by death… and if you are an intruder, well… it all ends the same, doesn't it?"
For a moment Link wondered why the armored man wasn't still coming after him, but then the young man realized that the light was dimmer in this store room, making the guard have trouble following the ever shrinking amount of water dropping down from the stolen armor. The room was also too big for the guard to simply guess where he was hiding, so Link stayed right where he was for what felt like more than a minute before the armored man ran out of patience. With a frustrated growl, the guard stomped his way into the room to begin a search, several steps in before the young man realized that nothing else could be heard over the stomping boots and clanking armor. Was this his only chance?
Briefly considering attacking the guard from behind, Link stopped and realized that he still didn't want to attack the guards, not until he knew for sure if there was really something going on in the dungeons. So instead of using the noise as cover to sneak up on his pursuer, the young man used it to creep his way out of the room, and the armored man must not have seen because there was still loud stomping going on well after the door was closed again. Now that he was alone again, Link headed right for the next stairwell, this one heading down deeper than the storage basement, deeper, darker, and colder, with the torches seeming like they were less effective against this kind of darkness.
The air was stale, smelling of dust and dirt, cold enough to make the young man shiver as he reached the bottom of the stairs, passing through an open entranceway into one large chamber with barely enough torchlight to see the basics of the dungeon's features. The whole place stretched into a long rectangle, rows of jail cells with metal bars on each side, just a couple torches on the room's center columns, not nearly enough light, and… and only a single guard moving around at the far end, only visible because he was the only thing in the room moving. No, wait… there was something else…
Trying to be quiet as he walked farther into the dungeon in the suit of stolen armor, Link noticed that not all of the cells were empty, in fact two of them were occupied, and not by the kind of people that one would expect to find locked up. Each was a girl, locked in cells across from one another, the first one a redhead in a very fancy dress that the young man didn't recognize, and the other… the other was a long haired blonde that it took all of his willpower not to gasp upon seeing. Unless it was some strange trick of the light, or maybe he was still dreaming, it was none other than Princess Zelda locked up like a common prisoner… but why… and who was that other girl?
With that other guard still moving around at the other end of the dungeon, there was no time to get any of these questions answered, or to even let the Princess know that he was there to rescue her. No, now that he knew there was something really wrong happening in Hyrule Castle, the young man no longer had a problem with doing what needed to be done… but this was crazy, he thought while walking down the center of the room like nothing was wrong… not only was Zelda a prisoner inside her own castle, but somehow he had dreamed it up, or… or had she reached out to him on purpose with some kind of magic?
That kind of power was more common than most people believed, in fact Link's own family had more than a few magic users back along the line, some of them said to be quite powerful, not that he had ever been able to do much. Sure, a little trick here and there, but nothing actually useful, and… and now the young man was closing in on the guard. This one didn't seem as aware as the one upstairs, simply passing by with an angry look in his eyes through the slot on his helmet, and not noticing when Link bent down to pick up a heavy stone that was just lying there loose and partially broken as if it had fallen from the ceiling.
Wherever it came from, the thing was heavy, making the young man thankful for all the noise the guard's armor was making, since it masked the groan from effort that it took to lift the thing. Once he had the stone over his head it was now or never, especially since he could barely walk at all while holding the thing, and with a loud whump the guard was down, the stone denting the back of his helmet inward and now he wasn't moving. Oh well, anyone who would lock the Princess up in the dungeon was a traitor and deserved what they got, and… and yes, the downed guard had a key ring.
By this time Zelda and the other prisoner had noticed the commotion, standing up with their hands gripping the bars by the time he was able to get back to them, but they also shrank away from him when he got there as if they were afraid. In fact, it wasn't until Link removed his helmet, mostly because he couldn't see the keys properly with it on, that the Princess approached again. There were so many keys on this ring, and no way of knowing when another guard would come down the stairs, that the young man was only half listening to what she was saying until the Princess mentioned how worried she was that he wouldn't be able to hear her calling for help.
"Wait, that was real?!" Link exclaimed, losing his place on the key ring to look up at her. "The dream and all of it, that was really you calling to me?!"
"There's no time, you have to get us out of here." Zelda urged, shaking the bars a little to get him back on task. "No one has seen my father for days, and I don't know what Agahnim has been doing to the other girls, but she and I are the only ones left."
Struggling to find the right key, but none of them working no matter how many he tried, the young man couldn't help noticing how dirty and tired the two prisoners looked as if they had been locked down there for at least several days, if not a week. The Princess wasn't able to explain much more about what happened, either, just that she had been grabbed from her bed one night by the guards and thrown in this cell, and soon after that Agahnim had begun bringing the other girls in from around the kingdom, all members of noble families, just like the guards out in the storm suggested.
"Don't worry, Your Highness, I'll have you out of there in a minute." Link continued, trying key after key. "But I'm not sure what we're going to…
Suddenly there was commotion from behind, a lot of groaning and quick movement from back up the stairs as if a fight was going on. Unable to continue his efforts to free the prisoners, the young man knew that his only hope right now was to impersonate the guard he had just killed, hanging the keys on his belt and then backing up so that he was standing up against one of the columns like… well, like a guard. As the sound got closer Link expected for a dozen of them to come running down in search of the imposter, trying to think of something to tell them, but only to have his thoughts freeze in place when he saw who was coming down the stairs.
It was only one man, older and without armor, struggling to keep balance as he stumbled down the stairs, finally falling on his face at the bottom. The young man knew that it was his uncle even before seeing the silver sword fall from his hand, bruises starting to form on the visible parts of his body while he coughed on the floor, groaning in effort to get to his feet again. Link's first instinct was to rush over and help the Lord Sheriff, but the sound of more footsteps came from the stairs before he could even move. Red robes and blue skin were visible next as the wizard Agahnim walked calmly to the bottom, a ball of flame forming in his hand, which leapt at the older man.
The Lord Sheriff managed to get his shield up in time, but the collision of the disbursing flame still knocked him backwards, although at least now he was within reach of his sword again. With muscled tightening in preparation to grab his own borrowed sword and join the fight, Link was stopped by Zelda's subtle yet urgent gestures for him to stay where he was, and now… and now the Lord Sheriff was just getting up to his knees while the wizard closed in.