A Link to the Past

Chapter Five: The Wizard Agahnim

Link wanted to help his uncle, but the Princess kept signaling urgently, and almost fearfully, for him to stay still and be quiet as if she knew something he didn't. All the young man knew, however, was that the Lord Sheriff was struggling to face this enemy, groaning loudly with the effort of getting to his feet before swinging his sword at Agahnim's head. The wizard simply leaned back to avoid the blade, gracefully twisting his body around and throwing his leg out in a kick that struck the older man in the stomach, making him stumble back against the door of one of the holding cells, and there was coughing with a few deep breaths before Link's uncle was able to raise his weapon again.

"Ironic, isn't it?" Agahnim asked during the short break in combat. "On Koholint island, it was you who had the benefit of unnatural youth, and now… now I'm easily twenty years your junior. Frustrating isn't it, my old friend? Spending so many years building a life and a family, only to have someone show up out of nowhere and take it all away… what kind of monster would do such a thing?"

"Agahnim, it wasn't real." The older man replied, struggling to keep his shield raised. "Tracy wasn't real, and neither was Marin, it was just… it was all just a dream. We were cursed right along with the Wind Fish, and if I hadn't woken it up, we would have been trapped there for the rest of…

Not waiting for the Lord Sheriff to finish, the wizard vanished, reappearing right in front of him an instant later, and giving the older man a hard punch that passed right through his defenses and landed on his jaw. Link's uncle almost fell back down this time, dropping his sword as he caught himself on one of the rooms columns after stumbling several steps, but then Agahnim closed the distance between them by vanishing again, this time reappearing with a kick to the back that made the Lord Sheriff fall on his face. The older man tried to get up, but the wizard punched him in the back to make him fall back down, before grabbing Link's uncle by the graying hair and pulling him back to his feet anyway.

Slowly the fight was moving itself closer to where Link was hiding in plain sight, thanks to his stolen armor, and with each passing second the desire to help his uncle was getting harder to resist, especially since the Lord Sheriff was clearly no match for Agahnim. The only good thing about Zelda telling the young man to stay put was that now Link was aware of some of the things this wizard was capable of, but it was so hard to watch each time Agahnim struck his aging uncle. The Lord Sheriff tried to swing the shield on his arm as an attack, but the wizard simply caught his wrist and slugged the older man in the stomach with a fist full of fire that left a small burn mark on his uncle's tattered shirt.

"Don't tell me about what's real, boy!" Agahnim growled, holding the older man against the stone wall and squeezing his throat. "You were on the island for two weeks, but I was there for twelve years! Tracy was the love of my life, and you could've had the same thing with Marin, but instead… instead you tossed it all away for a talking fish, and Hyrule."

"Stop!" Zelda yelled desperately just as the wizard was about to start hitting him again. "I know it hurts, but please… please don't."

Agahnim scoffed at her before giving the Lord Sheriff another hard punch to the stomach, but only Link knew that her pleas were actually for him… coming just as the young man could stand this no longer, slowly reaching for the sheathed sword on his belt in order to protect his uncle. If not for the tears starting to run down the Princess's cheeks, which the wizard also had a few less than nice things to say about whole pummeling the older man, Link would have attacked Agahnim, damn the consequences. But then the wizard shoved his uncle away, before giving everyone present a real show of his powers by holding out his blue hands and shouting the word Trueno.

In a flash the whole dungeon was brightly illuminated as crackling, forking bolts of lightning erupted from Agahnim's hands, striking the Lord Sheriff along with everything around him, and sending the older man flying backwards into one of the open holding cells, where he crashed into the wall, fell to the floor and didn't move, a small amount of smoke seen rising from his body before the light faded. The wizard's hands still crackled a bit with the last of that spell's power as he walked toward his fallen opponent, but instead of attacking again, the wizard simply shut the holding cell door so that it locked with an echoing clang.

"Here lies a deluded moron who destroyed paradise just to come back here." Agahnim scoffed, folding his arms while looking down at the motionless older man. "But Hyrule is doomed, my old friend, and perhaps… perhaps I will keep you alive long enough to see the darkness that is to come."

Suddenly turning his attention away from the Lord Sheriff, the wizard walked back toward where Zelda was being held, and then turned toward the opposite cell where that other noble girl was backing away in fear. Taking out a shiny set of keys that could have only belonged to the King, Agahnim unlocked the girl's cell and ordered her to go with him, only to angrily step forward and grab her roughly by the hair when she refused. Now screaming and grabbing onto the bars to keep herself from being taken to… whatever was going on, the girl's struggles were stopped when the wizard balled up his fist and slugged her in the stomach.

She collapsed, coughing and gasping for breath while Agahnim picked her up and tossed her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and then the wizard took her away. A few seconds later his footsteps could no longer be heard, and now Link could no longer keep himself from doing anything, struggling to remove the stolen armor so that he wouldn't be hindered, and then running over to his uncle's cell. The older man was still smoldering when he got there, but the Lord Sheriff was breathing, barely, coughing in response to the young man calling out to him, and then gasping when he saw who it was that was now trying to unlock the cell door.

"Link?!" He rasped, coughing and groaning. "I told you… I told you to stay home!"

"I'm getting you out of there, uncle." Link replied, his hands trembling as he fumbled through key after key. "You're going to be…

Instead of letting him finish, the older man interrupted his words by unlocking the small shield from his forearm, groaning as he sent the small barrier rolling and bouncing right through the bars so that it came to rest against the young man's leg. Struggling to talk through the pain, his uncle told him not to waste his time, instead to free Zelda and get her out of there, not let himself be slowed down by a dying old man. Part of him knew that it was only a matter of time before more guards entered the dungeon, either to relieve the ones on shift or just to check on the prisoners, and there was still that other girl that needed to be rescued from Agahnim… oh, that wizard was going to pay for this.

"Forget about everything else!" The Lord Sheriff struggled to say. "Take my sword, and… and get Zelda out of here! He needs her for… for… Marin?"

Then the older man fell silent, and Link just stood there as if he were frozen in place, his mind knowing what happened but unable to accept it. His uncle was no longer moving or breathing, but there was another sound somewhere… it was muffled at first but slowly cleared until he realized that it was Zelda who was calling out to him. It took effort to move away from the cell where his uncle was lying, as if the young man's feet were stuck in deep mud, and each step toward the Princess's cell felt like he was doing something wrong. Link wanted to go after Agahnim and stab him in the back, but his uncle's last orders allowed him to focus, at least a little, on freeing Zelda.

"Link, you can't fight Agahnim." The Princess warned, putting her hand on his shoulder while he fumbled with the keys. "Whatever he's been doing to the other girls, they're already gone, and he needs me to finish it. That's the best way to hurt him right now, by us getting out of here."

Yes, he knew she was right, and also that the magic the wizard had used to defeat the Lord Sheriff was probably not everything he could do, and then… and then the lock clicked open. The cell door opened, and Zelda was free, the Princess rushing out of the cell and hugging him, and this gesture was actually enough to break the young man's thoughts away from Agahnim. The King was gone, making Zelda the rightful ruler of Hyrule, and Link needed to get her out of the castle… but then what? Where could one hide a Princess now that Agahnim had taken over and the guards were all traitors? No, thinking that far ahead right now was dangerous… getting the Princess out of the castle was the only thing that mattered right now, or else nothing beyond meant anything.

"I don't think I can sneak both of us through the gate, not on foot." The young man said, walking over to pick up his uncle's sword. "I remember seeing a carriage come in and out, maybe I can put that armor back on and we can steal it. We would be miles away before anyone realized what happened."

"No, I can't risk anyone seeing us on the road, Agahnim has spies everywhere." The Princess replied. "But he doesn't know this castle like I do; come on, we need to get to the throne room."

Obviously Zelda planned to use one of the castle's secret exits, but wouldn't that just leave the two of them on foot in the storm even if it worked? The Princess was already walking toward the stairs, giving Link only enough time to take one last sorrowed look at where his uncle fell, silently swearing revenge against the wizard, and then going with the Princess. He briefly considered putting the stolen armor back on, but now that Zelda was with him it was more important to move silently, since no disguise would matter if the guards realized that their last remaining prisoner had escaped.

So far there were no more guards waiting on the stairs, nor in sight on the floor where the store rooms were located, so they started up the next stairwell, only to stop when the thumping of armored boots came from above. Was it a patrol? The next shift in the dungeon? Whatever the case, Link motioned for her to go back, the two of them silently retracing their steps, and then ducking into the same store room where he had first hidden from that slowly pursuing guard. Silently closing the door, the young man was confident that after a few minutes the way upstairs would be clear again… until a sound came from behind.

"There you are." A familiar voice said as they turned around to see another guard standing toward the back of the room. "I knew you were in here somewhere… I just had to keep looking."