In the land of Hyrule, there echoes a legend. A legend held dearly by the Royal Family that tells of a boy...
A boy who, after battling evil and saving Hyrule, lived a quiet life in the land that had made him a legend...
Done with the battles he once waged across time, he retired to live his life as a man while the land he saved was filled with a long-lived peace.
As that boy's journey ended, another journey began...
A journey by another young man in search of meaning after the loss of his family...
A young man whose heroic exploits, much like those of the savior of the Kingdom of Hyrule, would nevertheless place him among legends.
That legend, however, would not be within Hyrule...
Dull...
That was all that Henry felt these days. The morning began in typical fashion, with him waking up in bed, and getting on with the early hours in an empty house. Weeks ago, it was the home of his mother and father. Now, he had inherited it: a respectable brick house with a dark roof, large, dry basement, and no mortgage to pay off.
If Henry had his way, he would rather have to live out his days in his dinged up Ford Explorer if it meant his parents were still alive.
They had been on vacation down in Florida, as they had done previously. He was tasked with watching the house for them while they were away. The house sitting went well enough until the day they were due back. As Henry was not one to focus much on the news, he did not hear of any tragedy whatsoever. Then the evening came and went without his parents walking in the door to briefly regale him with their exploits before bidding him farewell as he drove to his cramped apartment closer to the town they lived in.
He gave a call to his dad's cellphone, only for it to be answered by a stranger. It was a police officer stationed in the county where he parents were staying at. The officer had the unenviable position of informing Henry that a shooting had taken place. Four people had been killed and seven injured. His parents had not survived.
What transpired was largely a blur for Henry. He had not the faintest idea of how to organize a funeral, though the director he had contacted had been more than cordial and patient with him. The funeral was a relatively inexpensive affair where Henry wept in the arms of his old high school and college friends who came to console him in his grief. His inheritance was generous enough, and gaining his childhood home gave him some comfort, but to say that Henry was in a state of grief was to understate the misery that had consumed his heart.
He spent hours at the cemetery staring at the sacred place where his parents ashes were buried, fat tears streaming down his face. Looking too long at the old family photos that decorated the furniture left him feeling excessively lonely. Worst of all, for weeks after the funeral in August, he was tormented with dreams of his bloodied parents complaining that he was a failure and a disappointment. Henry should have gotten professional help at the time, but he wanted nothing except for his parents to come back from death.
That wish, of course, could never be granted.
It was not always like this. Henry was a bright student throughout the majority of his time in school, including higher education. He had a passion for science, history, and music especially, to the point where he joined the marching band programs at both his high school and the liberal arts college he attended years before. Quiet, but affable, he had a good many friends, and had developed many hobbies, from camping, hiking, fishing, and the playing of numerous musical instruments.
After graduating from college, Henry earned a job at the front desk of a private clinic, and was working on gaining more fruitful employment as time passed. The passing of his family derailed much of it. Work became a dreary experience where he struggled to maintain the professional, welcoming mask expected of him by his employer. He resigned from his position without any explanation, and tried to rejuvenate himself as a ticket seller at the local zoo, where he had many of his fondest memories. It did little to help.
His friendships had gone to the wayside. Despite the best efforts of his friends to get him out and about in the world, he was often a damp towel whenever his old school friends or work colleagues went out for lunch and movies. Henry, already a quiet man by nature rarely talked in anything except grunts and hums of acknowledgment. The closest person he ever had to a girlfriend, Caroline, had openly confronted him about his reclusive behavior, imploring him to either get counseling for his grief or anything to get his life back on track. The words that Henry exchanged in turn were not worth repeating over, as they burned whatever was left of the bridge between them.
Everything was but a downward spiral that came crashing down during Thanksgiving.
It was the first major holiday Henry had experienced without his parents alive. There was no feast, no frivolity, not even the living room television was on as a distraction. Instead, the day was spent sitting in a dark, lonely house where a now disheveled and depressed Henry sat, idly playing with a ceramic, twelve-hole ocarina that he had played with since his childhood.
The little flute looked like it was made of wood, but it was actually a glossy coating over a specially painted acrylic that betrayed the care that he had for the instrument. It had a few stray nicks from a rare drop or two, but it was still perfectly functional. However, instead of a light hearted melody, Henry played a series of melancholic, half hearted notes that had no rhythm behind them. Even when he indulged in something that used to bring nostalgic joy, all he felt was the emptiness of a life now alone.
Henry had not had a girlfriend in three years, and he had no other living relatives. The twenty seven year old was just a sad, listless man with hardly anything worth doing.
'Maybe I should go out and buy some kind of turkey sandwich.' He thought dourly. 'It's a shit imitation of an actual cooked turkey meal, but hey, it's the season for it...'
He did not really feel hungry. His appetite had been shrinking since the fateful day his parents died back in mid July. The loss of some twenty five pounds would have been a point of pride given Henry's struggle with his weight for the past six years of his life, but his mother was no longer around to celebrate the accomplishment. Inevitably, his thoughts turned to his parents: his mom and dad splitting responsibilities for a great feast to serve as both lunch and dinner, and the general warmth in the house despite the late November chill.
Henry's lip began to tremble, and he began to cry. There was nothing that could hurt him more than what his parents' deaths had done to him. 'Perhaps there's nothing left for me now...' He thought darkly.
There was a knock at the door, an unexpected sound given Henry had not expected any company. He would have been an unprepared host otherwise, given he had limited himself to a shoe string budget in terms of groceries for several weeks. With a tired sigh, he got off of the couch and walked towards the French styled door where the knocking originated. Without another thought, he opened the door, giving way to a standard fall breeze that swept through leafless trees and over the hills near his house. As for what he saw, Henry came face to face with a stranger.
Before him stood a tall, beautiful woman with long, azure hair. Her eyes were clear pools of blue akin to a placid stretch of endless sea, and her heart shaped jaw framed a serene, and very pretty face. Her dress was composed of various lengths of cloth, each of which was its own shade of blue, including sky blue false sleeves which matched the gown-like portion of her attire. She bore numerous golden accessories, including a headdress, a ringed choker, her false sleeves, a pair of gold hoops on her left wrist, and a trio of golden bands that made a corset around her waist. Another subtle, yet significant characteristic was her ears, which were pointed, elf-like, and peering out behind flowing bangs. The woman glanced up and down Henry expectantly, much to his bewilderment.
"Uh, can I help you?" He asked, his tone unsure.
"That's what I'm trying to find out." The woman replied, her voice equal to her body in terms of beauty. "I've searched for quite a while to find a candidate for the quest I hope to entrust them to. It has been a struggle to find a worthy one."
Henry's lips pressed into a fine line behind his uneven facial hair and his brow furrowed. "Worthy one for what?"
"To save the world." She replied as if it were an obvious answer. Her lips dipped a little when they met his eyes directly, as if she saw a pitiable sight. To be blunt, that description was perfectly accurate.
"What?"
"Well, it is a world. Not quite like this mundane reality." She elaborated cryptically.
At this point, Henry was becoming convinced that this woman was either pranking him or that she was an escapee from an insane asylum. "Okay, I don't know who you are, but whatever it is you're selling, I'm not buying it." He raised his hands in a gesture of wanting to put some distance between himself and the pointy eared stranger, his ocarina still clenched in his left hand.
Initially, there was a tired disappointment in the woman's eyes, but then there was a gleam of recognition in her face as she spotted the instrument. A relieved grin spread across her lips. "You're the one. You'll do just fine."
"What?" Henry's question went unanswered. The woman stretched out a sculpted hand and placed a finger directly onto his temple. His body froze as if suddenly trapped in place, and then he remembered no more.
When Henry regained consciousness, he did not feel quite the same. The air around him was not cool and windy as the doorway to his house. It was remarkably still, as if inside an insulated closet. Yet it was not a room that he woke up in.
Henry was lying on his back, though he was mercifully spared any soreness from lying on anything short of a sofa's cushions. The area around him was dark, but not overwhelmingly so, and Henry quickly realized that he was in the wilderness. However, his surrounding were were quite unlike the backyard of his house.
He was in a small clearing within a great forest of very tall trees. They were easily thrice as tall as the tallest oak tree to ever stand by his house in his youth. They were dense with branches and were standing so near to each other that only the smallest haze of light illuminated the forest floor. Haze was the accurate word, for a fog hung over a foot off of the ground, leaving every distant object in Henry's sight in a mesmerizing sea of green and blue and silver. The ground was remarkably soft but dry, for it was carpeted with leaf litter and mosses that proved to be more comfortable than they had any right to be.
There was no time frame that Henry had any hope of gleaming from his senses. After all, he had no chance of knowing how long he was asleep and at what time he finally woke up. All he remembered was the strange, beautiful woman who, somehow, had incapacitated him and transported him to this strange place.
"Damn it." He growled. "She probably scoped out my home and knocked me out with a drug or something." His surprise was now replaced with indignation and anger. If he ever got out of the forest and found civilization, Henry swore he would find out who that woman was and see her prosecuted and thrown in jail.
Before he could continue on with his thoughts of escape and legally avenging himself, Henry realized he was not in his old clothes. An extra large sleep shirt and gym shorts had given way to a plain, short sleeved tunic, tan trousers, and a sturdy pair of boots. A dark belt wrapped around his waist, and three pouches, each one no bigger than an orange in size were attached to it, but there was nothing else immediately on his person.
As he examined himself, Henry realized something else that was odd: he was slimmer than he was before meeting the strange blue-haired woman. In addition, the messy facial hair he one had was gone, replaced by a bit of stubble that he had not seen in nine years. It was after he graduated high school that he grew out his facial hair to, in his own words: 'look more his age.'
Somehow, Henry looked and felt like his high school graduate self. The sudden, inexplicable loss of weight and the regression of his facial hair could not be explained otherwise. "What the hell happened to me?"
He had no rational answer; all he could do was reorient himself and focus on surviving whatever challenge he was being subjected to.
Henry sat up with some effort but no difficulty, and glanced around. He was mere feet away from one of the many large trees that populated the woods. But there was more than that, for lying propped up against the trunk was a wooden shield and a sword.
The shield was round, with a leather strap and leather wrapped grip in the center. The outside of the disc had a metal rim and a domed boss stood in the center of the shield's front. Upon the front of the disc on either side of the boss, two segmented serpents with spine-like protrusions and forked tongues faced outwards, their backs to each other.
Conversely, the sword was relatively non-descript, with two edges, a simple, round pommel, and a straight blade guard no longer than five inches in total. The blade was kept within a plain sheath made of dark wood and brass fittings and it's length was just short of three feet.
Henry was very pleased to see that his ocarina was lying just underneath his shield, and he quickly placed it into one of his pockets while he fumbled about with his newfound equipment. It took some finagling to learn how to wield the shield comfortably on his off arm, much less strap it to his back, but something told him that the simple defense tool would prove necessary in this unusual situation. As for the sword, Henry knew about as much about proper sword combat as he did about carpentry: keep the bladed edge away from your hands. The weapon proved weighty and alien in the grip of his right hand; Henry wished that either he had something more practical or that he had greater arm strength to make the sword easier to wield.
"What a way to spend Thanksgiving..." He muttered tiredly. After some practice swings and adjusting his grip to maximize comfort while maintaining some leverage, he sheathed the blade and managed to strap it to his left hilt, affixed to his belt.
"Okay. I got equipment. Now what? He reexamined the various pouches on hand, hoping for a compass, a map, or even food to sustain himself. One pouch was empty, though it strangely felt larger in capacity that it appeared. The second one contained his ocarina, bringing a moment of joy and warmth to Henry's heart. The third, he discovered, was filled with a sizable quantity of hexagonal gems that were no bigger than a digit on his pinkie. There were two red gems, four blue gems, and twenty green gems in total.
"Whoa!" Henry knew nothing about the value of gems with relation to carats or cuts, but he had to guess they were worth perhaps a few hundred dollars. It was a shame there was no store of any kind to even so much as barter them off. With a hum of appreciation, he returned the gems and his ocarina to the pouch and decided to get his bearings as best he could.
That was no easy task. Henry could discern no easy way to find where the Sun's limited rays were coming from. Likewise there were no landmarks to break up the looming army of trees surrounding him. Henry was well and truly lost, and the realization sat heavy on his heart.
"Just my luck to get placed in this crazy place by that manipulative, blue-haired-" His readied insult was interrupted by the sound of footballs. They were soft as a result of the mossy landscape, but the plodding was still recognizable to Henry's ears. He hastily glanced around as the steps approached from his left. All there existed for potential cover was the tree upon which his new combative gear came from. Without another word, Henry scrambled behind, silently cursing himself as his shield and scabbard collided somewhat noisily and uncomfortably against his body.
From behind the tree, Henry watched as the owner of the footsteps made themselves known. Out from the haze stepped a horse. It was a plain beast, with a brown body and black hair for its mane and tail. The only distinctive features were the horses' nose and front two legs, which had white patches above the nose and ankles, the latter of which almost looked like socks sitting atop hoof-like shoes.
Henry was relieved that it was no predator or armed stranger, but he knew horses were skittish animals, and could be dangerous with their hooves and respectable strength and weight. He slowly let himself move out from behind cover, making sure not to scare the creature. Indeed, the beast did not act frightened or even so much as wary. Its ears erect and facing forward, the horse closed the distance, his nose matching up with Henry's face.
"Woah..." he warned. Just as with wielding a sword, he knew very little about horsemanship, aside from the fact that luckily, this horse was not aggressive. "Where did you come from?"
It was a question with no easy answer. A wild horse would almost certainly turn tail and put as much distance between itself and a random human. If it was tamed, where was its saddle, or any indication that it had any amount of experience with humans?
The horse simply stood in place, almost expectant at its new acquaintance. Henry, meanwhile, inspected the friendly creature. He discovered the horse was female, and that she was in very good health, at least if her smooth coat and lack of protruding ribs or hip bones were any indication.
Henry quickly realized the opportunity that he had on hand. 'This horse could be my ticket out of here!' If it was a wild, naturally occurring horse, it might have a good idea of local resources and geography, including a natural way to leave the dark forest he was currently trapped in. In any case, if the horse was so tolerant of humans that it could potentially bear his weight, Henry could use it to conserve energy as he traveled to leave the forest. He had no bridle whatsoever, and the last time he rode a horse was roughly a decade ago at an outdoor festival with horseback riding through a nearby, path-laden wood.
But Henry was not going to let that inconvenience him.
"Hey girl..." Soothed Henry somewhat nervously. "You mind letting me on your back?"
The horse let out a soft snort in response.
Very much out of practice, Henry, despite his loss of weight and more limber, de-aged body, could not raise his right leg atop the mare's back. It was a lack of confidence combined with fear of being on the receiving end of a back kick or a stomp from the horse he was hoping to mount. The hoofed beast buzzed nervously, doubtless sensing its acquaintance's anxiety. Henry thankfully ceased his paltry efforts to ride it.
"I need a bit more height." Without the stirrups of a saddle to step on, he needed a makeshift step to get atop the horse's back. After calming down and soothing the nameless mare, he noticed a gnarled bump of a tree root nearby. It was just over half a foot tall, but its arc above the ground looked to be flat enough and just tall enough to suffice.
Henry gently placed a hand behind the horse's head and guided it a short distance to the tree root in question. After lining the mare up to the left of the root, he tested putting his right foot atop the rough surface of the rise. It was thankfully dry, so there was little chance of slipping, but the top of the root was not wide enough to accommodate two boot-covered feet at once. Henry would need to maintain his balance on one foot and pivot his left leg to get atop the horse.
"Here's hoping this first try is the only one I'll need." He muttered, trying not to focus on the painful possibility of failure. After mentally going over everything he had on his person, he went through with his revised mounting attempt.
First he planted the sole of his right boot atop the root, then he placed both hands on the horse's back. The mare stirred a little, but did little more than glance back in apparent curiosity at her newfound "owner" and his efforts. With a great heave, Henry lifted his left leg, trusting in his right leg to maintain balance on the wooden step beneath him. The leg just managed to clear the horse's hip, and Henry had to contain a yelp of fright when the momentum of his maneuver moved him off of the root in one swoop. Thankfully, he landed firmly on the horse's back, though the mare herself stamped a bit in place, apparently not entirely used to having a weight on her back that was not associated with a predator.
"Whoa, whoa!" Henry cried, hastily stroking the horse's neck. After several moments of tense fretting and soothing, the horse ceased its panic, and Henry could briefly sigh in both relief and comfort that his plan had worked.
"Okay then, let's get a move on." The next step was much more simple. He gently brought the both of his heels up to the under belly of the horse. She nickered briefly before moving forward, going forth in a steady walk. Henry and his animal companion proceeded to travel deeper into the darkness of the forest.
Time had passed by without incident, though Henry had no hope of contextualizing how much time had passed. His smart watch was gone, as was his smart phone, and as was still the case, the sun did not shine through enough to give a reference to the passing of the day. All that he could tell was that it was technically daylight, at least if the modest amount of ambient light was any indication. He feared spending the night with nothing but a semi tame horse as company.
He spent the ride glancing to and fro for any break in the canopy, or a water source, or sign of a path that might indicate a human presence. The air was deathly silent, with only the stray buzz or flutter of an insect or the rhythmic sound of his horse's hooves beneath him. It was an uncanny experience, and to make matters more unsettling, Henry could have sworn that something, or someone, was watching him.
"Wonderful, the bog-standard, 'I'm being watched' sensation." He whispered to himself. Henry worried that speaking any louder might draw unwanted attention, and besides that, conserving his voice until he came across another sentient being seemed paramount.
His musing was briefly stopped as he heard what sounded like a pair of high pitched shimmers on the air. It was high up, and Henry stared up, his dark eyes looking everywhere for the source of the unnatural sound. Despite his efforts, the young man could find nothing.
Eventually, after passing another, indistinguishable tree, Henry let out a sigh, twisting his neck and head all around him at the depressing sight. The forest was so endless and uniform that he worried he would lose his mind. "Damn this forest. Where's a break in the tree line when you need one?"
The mare he was riding had stopped, sniffing at a patch of grass that seemed fresher than most. As she considered eating the food before her, she raised her head and came face to face with two shining orbs with insect-like wings: one was white and shone the color of golden sunlight, and the other a strangely bright orb of dark, tyrian purple.
The two orbs lunged at the horse's face in midair, and the skittish beast reared up as she shrieked in fright. Henry, not at all expecting the maneuver, tried to lean forward to wrap his arms around the mare's neck, but the lack of a saddle left him sliding off of her back. His leaning position left his head exposed to bumping hard against the top of the horse's back hip, and the subsequent fall to the forest floor left him in a starve of near-unconsciousness.
Just as suddenly as the horse had panicked, she had ceased her rearing, noticing that the strange little creatures accosting her had given her some distance. She stared warily, but did not back away; it was a small blessing to Henry, who could not react if her hooves trampled over him in her moment of fright.
"Hey, that went pretty well!" Said the purple orb in a boyish voice, turning to his companion. "Great job, sis!"
"Of course it was a great job," Replied the bright yellow orb, her voice plainly feminine. "Horses aren't exactly the bravest of beasts, and we've pulled this stunt on all kinds of suckers on the roads and paths back home."
These two flying creatures were not bugs, or even mere balls of light. They were fairies: small people that could fly and possessed an innate magic that allowed them to glow, endure the elements, and live for incalculable years as long as they were not grievously injured. As for the stunt they pulled against Henry, it was not a mere prank, but a simple plan to incapacitate the young man by a third party.
Several yards away, as if coming out of the foggy ether, a face appeared. At least, it looked to be a face, but in truth, it was a wood carved mask. It was heart shaped in the most literal sense, but the mask did not bear a warm or funny complexion. Its face was one which inspired fear.
The mask bore ten spikes; two, yellow spikes stood above the curves of the shape. They stood upon orange "eyebrows" that were block shaped and contained six black, vertical dashes within their perimeters. The remaining spikes ran along the downward angle of the heart's point, with each successive spike sporting tips of yellow, red, green, and blue.
The main body was primarily violet and red. The latter color framed the cheeks and the spaces between the eyes and the brow. Conversely, the red region stretched from the "chin" of the mask up past a lipless mouth and the space where a nose might have been before branching out and wrapping around the eyes like a demented clown's makeup. There were lesser details such as a trio of misshaped, faded yellow spots not unlike those of a leopard above the eyes, as well as flowing, white lines on the cheeks, mouth, and brow regions. Upon closer inspection, one could observe pairs of tiny indentations right in the middle of the mask to allow some semblance of breathing.
What stood out most were the mask's eyes, and what terrible eyes they were. They gleamed with a color like the fires of a burning world, red on the outer edge of the sclera and turning yellow closer to the pupil. The irises were a maddened, bright green, belying a malice that could seldom be seen in any ordinary mask.
This mask did not float in midair, for it was being worn by a strange creature. Appearing from the fog behind the mask like a ghost, was an imp: a short, somewhat misshaped person no taller than perhaps four feet and some inches. Its skin was dark like the bark of a tree, and the frayed, almost straw-like clothes it bore were eerily reminiscent of a scarecrow on Hallow's Eve.
It bore an orange hat with its wide brim divided into several long, divided branches, akin to a flower's petals, and its tunic and poulaines were the same color. Other accessories, such as the prominent ruff around the imp's collar, its fingerless gloves, shorts, and the buckles of its shoes were a dusty, yellowish green. Around its waist and the base of the hat's crown were belts of wooden hoops that were tied together with grass ties.
The imp shook its head briefly like a dog, the mask and band of its hat rattling with the action. When it took the time to get a proper look of the fairies' trickery, it let out a high-pitched cackle that shattered the relative silence of the forest. It lifted the evil mask it wore to reveal two orange eyes as the dichotomous fae joined its side.
"Hee hee hee! You two did great!" The imp praised in its boyish tone. "I wonder if this guy has anything good on him..."
The imp lowered the mask and began to waddle towards Henry's prone form. He paused as the mare nickered at his approach and put a bit of distance between itself and him. Sure that the beast would not actively defend its fallen rider, the imp closed the distance and took an up close gander at his quarry.
It was a young man barely entering his prime, not quite two feet taller than him. A pale face sat underneath a short cut of black hair that was thick and course. The tunic he wore was a dull brown, and the tan pants and dark boots he wore were just as boring to look at. He was armed with a sword and shield, which would have given the imp pause as far as robbing the unconscious man.
Fortunately, a sword was of no danger if its wielder was unconscious.
Immediately, the imp realized that his victim had fallen belly down, on top of the pouches where the potential for money and other prizes would be located. He gave an experimental push with one of his feet on Henry's right side. He barely budged.
"Great." The imp commented sarcastically. "Just what I need: more work to check out somebody's stuff."
"Not our fault." The white fairy responded. "We scared the horse and got this guy knocked out in one blow. That's all we could do."
The imp growled with mild irritation at having to get his hands dirty. After some clumsy efforts, he lifted the torso of Henry just enough to roll him onto his back. It was a difficult task given the additional weight and presence of the sword at his hip and the shield on his back, but the little imp was finally free to poke about and strip the body of any valuables he deemed worthy of his attention.
The first pouch he picked through was empty, leaving the imp to hum in frustration. Then he opened the second pouch and spotted the ocarina inside.
"Aha! What's this?" The imp canted his head left and right, his mind full of curiosity. "I think I've seen this before among the other forest spirits..."
"Ooh! Ooh!" Cried the dark purple fairy. "What a pretty ocarina... Hey Skull Kid, lemme touch it! I wanna see it!"
The Skull kid ignored his fairy friend. Instead, he lifted the ocarina under the mask and blew some air into the mouthpiece. It let out a quiet "A" note that the Skull Kid found amusing. He cackled at the sound as if he had been told a rather funny joke. Afterwards, he proceeded to experiment with this new plaything, covering any number of the holes on the ocarina's body before blowing into the mouthpiece again, making a discordant composition only he found entertaining.
The purple fairy was close to approaching the ocarina when he was bumped by his pale sister. "You can't, Tael! What would we do if you dropped it and it broke on the ground? No way! You can't touch it!" She scolded.
"...Aw, but sis..." Tael whined. "W-why can't I try it out too?"
As the Skull Kid continued to play notes at random, and the two fairy siblings argued, the ocarina's proper owner began to recuperate. Henry's head and face were sore from the two collisions he suffered from the fairies' trick. Pushing up off of the mossy ground, he groaned aloud, wondering what could have set off his equestrian companion like that.
Now on his hands and knees, Henry glanced around, but it was what he heard that claimed his attention first. It was the playing of individual notes on a small flute, followed by the amused cackle of a what sounded like a young boy. He looked in the direction of the racket and saw the back of the Skull Kid, and he could not help but stare at the peculiar figure, not entirely believing that such an unusual person could exist.
At last, Henry rose to his feet, and his height advantage of almost two feet allowed him to clearly see that his beloved heirloom was in the gloved hands of the immature little troglodyte. Unfortunately, his height meant that the fairies accompanying the Skull Kid could plainly see him behind them. The two fae let out twinkles of alarm, and their mask-wearing compatriot was taken out of his merry making. When the Skull Kid turned around, his masked gaze glanced up to see that the very man he had robbed was awake, and he was much larger than he thought.
"Aah!" The imp squeaked in fright, before hiding the ocarina behind his back. It was a childish attempt to conceal his thievery, but it was all he could think of in his panic.
Henry loomed over the Skull Kid, his mind filling with rage. At least, that was what he was feeling before he saw the mask on the imp's face. 'Jesus Christ... What the hell is this kid wearing?' The mask was not some mere costume a child might wear while trick-or-treating; something about the mask was off-putting, even frightening to look at. Yet Henry could not just focus on the mask.
The two glowing bugs that he could see flanking the child-like being were unlike anything he had ever seen. Except they were not bugs. Indeed, beneath the orbs of glowing light, he could just perceive the outlines of humanoid forms. They were lithe and naked beneath the light: one of a young woman and another of a young man that was slightly younger than he was in his de-aged form. Henry did not know what to say at the sight of them, and his mind was initially blank as to what they were.
His thoughts were not nearly so vague with regards to the imp currently obstructing his view of the instrument that was taken from him.
This kid, this brat was not just playing with his favorite instrument, a token from his home, a reminder of his childhood and his family. Even if the strangely clothed child did not mean anything by it, being so careless with the ocarina might risk damaging it. Then again, this was the first sentient being he had met since waking up in the vast, dark forest. 'Maybe I could ask this kid to help me.' He thought, trying to keep his emotions under control.
"Can... you help me?" Henry asked, trying to not frighten the imp away. "I've lost my way and I could use some help in getting out of this forest. If you could help me, I'd be very grateful."
The Skull Kid said nothing. Neither did the fairies, though Tael's form turned as he glanced between his impish friend and the stranger, probably wondering whether the Skull Kid would take the stranger up on his offer.
Henry was becoming impatient with the lack of a verbal response. "If you help me, I'll pay you."
Still, the imp did not reply. Behind the malicious face of the mask, his bright orange eyes were darting left and right, looking for an escape.
At last, Henry was certain that the imp had no intention of helping him, and he was too determined to get his ocarina back at any rate. 'I guess I'll have to shanghai this guy. My sword could be a good means of "convincing" him to help me, but he could just as easily run away while I'm fumbling with it, and I don't know how fast this guy is compared to me.'
Henry decided a quick grab to prevent the imp's escape was the best option. 'It may be cruel of me, but I'm not in the mood to be diplomatic anymore. Especially when it comes to taking back what belongs to me...'
Without betraying his intentions, Henry lunged at the Skull Kid, his arms trying to wrap around him tightly. Astonishingly, the imp leapt into the air with inhuman agility, the air whistling with the speed of his ascent. The two fairies followed suit by rushing into the air after him. When the imp came back down, he landed squarely on the back of the brown mare, causing the horse to rear up in surprise. Without a care, the Skull Kid chuckled in pride at his trick, looking like a diminutive cowboy as he prepared to ride away from the flabbergasted human.
However, Henry came out of his stupor and reacted on a whim, diving at the horse as she began to gallop away. His hands wrapped around the left leg of the Skull Kid, causing the imp to partially slide off the horse's back. The weight of Henry and his equipment should have been more than enough to dismount the Skull Kid. Yet it did not.
Somehow the imp possessed strength far beyond what his thin, gangly frame might suggest, and he hugged tightly to the panicked horse with Henry clinging defiantly to his leg. The Skull Kid groaned and winced as his leg was being pulled down by one hundred and eighty five pounds of human. Henry groaned and yelped as his body was dragged over uneven ground, twigs, and the occasional tree root, the last of which being the most uncomfortable. Meanwhile, the two fairies were flying in parallel, clearly perturbed by the turn of events.
"Skull Kid, hang on!" Cried Tael.
"Let go you creep!" Ordered his sister, who buzzed over Henry's form, trying everything she could to harass him into letting go.
This chaotic scene ran headlong deeper into the woods: a nigh comical and perilous situation that beggared belief. Skull Kid continued to cling to his ill-gotten mount like a tick, while Henry did the same to his leg.
It might have continued on until the horse ran herself half to death or Henry dislocated the Skull Kid's leg in his stubborn effort to hang on. Instead, after many minutes of anarchy, the horse rounded a large tree stump that stood within another break in the monotonous landscape. The turn proved too much for the aching and exhausted Henry, who was flung off of the Skull Kid's leg and rolled to a heap in the clearing.
Assured of his escape, the Skull Kid let out a triumphant cackle, leading the horse into a massive, hollow opening off to the right of the great stump.
Henry hissed in pain as bruises formed on his torso. His arms were aching fiercely from holding on to the limb of the imp who had cruelly stolen from him. He could not move for a time as the physical pain was more intense than anything he had recently suffered. It was a small blessing that most of the ground was soft and that he wore trousers which, while grass stained, prevented him from suffering anything worse than a few manageable scrapes.
After enough of the pain subsided, Henry gingerly got up off of the forest floor. Agony still lingered in his limbs, but he knew remaining idle would throw away any hope of finding out the direction his transgressors left in. Tears pricked up and threatened to fall down his cheeks; the crime committed against him, the pain of his failed attempt to stop the perpetrator's escape, losing the one reminder of home he had on hand, it all burned in his throat. Through watery eyes, he observed the clearing around him.
Besides the great stump, he noticed that the clearing was home to what looked like fireflies, which danced in graceful maneuvers, trailing their bioluminescence behind them in a whimsical manner. There were clumps of long, curved grass in between the larger patches of moss. Most prominent was the hollow opening of an even greater tree stump. Everything to the left of the massive trunk was a wall of earth which would funnel just about any creature towards the cavernous entrance. It certainly looked big enough for a horse to gallop through.
It meant there was either an escape route through, or the imp, in his self assurance, had gotten himself trapped. Either way, Henry reckoned there was only one direction to go.
"Forward." He growled.
His first steps were pained and uncoordinated, but a growing fire of anger was intensifying in his chest. This anger allowed Henry to grit past his injuries and make their way to the cave-like entrance. It was over twice his height and almost just as wide: more than enough for a runaway horse to go through. There was surely no other path the imp could have taken that horse through.
As he passed through the hollow, he found himself on the other side of the massive stump in a natural gorge. It was flanked by natural, earthen walls that were far too tall for any horse to naturally jump out of. Just past a pair of small trees, there was a series of stumps leading to a cave entrance that stood above the gorge. The cave was not as tall as the stump hollow, but still tall enough for the horse to run through, if Henry's estimation was accurate. The stumps ahead of him, seven in total, became sequentially taller as they reached the back side of the gorge. It almost looked artificial in its setup, but Henry did not care to dwell on the details of his path.
With a few grunts of pain and exertion, he began jumping from one stump to another. Although Henry was far from pristine in condition, his eighteen year old body was lean and limber, and he had little trouble crossing the gaps between the elevating stumps. It was not long before he stood before the doorway like entrance to the cave, flanked as it was by giant blooms of shelf fungus which might have peaked Henry's interest had he not been in a hurry. He rushed inside the dark pathway, hellbent on continuing the chase.
It became clear that this pathway was intensely dark, without any source of light to see by. Henry was soon straining his eyes to see ahead of him, but all he saw was empty shadows. He could sense that he was within a narrowing corridor, but none of his other sense could make sense of where his pursuit would lead him.
"Son of a bitch..." Henry breathed out. He was becoming more and more tired as his adrenaline began to run out. "Where the hell did they go?"
He considered slowing down, the burning of his lungs and the aggravation of his injuries wearing down on his stamina. Then he saw a slight change in the darkness ahead of him. There seemed to be a bit of light showing a stony gray room ahead. With a final burst of speed, Henry closed the distance and came upon the end of the cave's path.
For a brief moment, all Henry could see was a stone shaft similar to that which an elevator would be situated in. The source of the small ambient light which kept the space from being pitch black could not be seen. All that could be observed was a monotonous stony enclosure and a chasm with a bottom that could not be seen.
It was then that Henry found himself wishing that he had slowed down well before he had reached the passageway's end.
Terrifyingly, the tip of his right foot strode onto thin air, rather than the stony floor of the path behind him. Even if Henry had the reflexes necessary to lean back and avoid a descent, his momentum doomed him to gravity's indiscriminate pull. With a great scream of fright, Henry Rockwell fell down and down, to a fate not even he could have imagined.