I'm really glad you're both enjoying Zelda's perspective! I've been quite enjoying figuring out what she must be going through while we can't see her. Thanks as always for your reviews, they're really lovely to get - there's nothing as rewarding as knowing my readers are enjoying my writing! Many hearts to you all. =D

Chapter 33: Chains of Metal

Her head hurt. Something cold and hard pressed against her face. As her senses reasserted themselves, she realised she could hear squealing and grunting. Something was grasping her wrist-

Zelda gasped, forcing her eyes open, head spinning as she twitched in sudden wakefulness. It was dark, lit only by flickering torchlight; the shadows danced over the slavering face of a bokoblin bent over her, gripping her arm. Brutishly malicious piggy eyes turned to her, and it chittered, spraying hot saliva over her. She shrank back, but there were more of the creatures everywhere she looked; doubtless they were behind her too, though she couldn't get her hands underneath her to push herself up while it still gripped her wrist. A peremptory squeal cut through the noise, and another pair of pudgy hands grabbed her other arm.

Before Zelda quite realised what they intended, they were moving, lifting her with frightening ease and dragging her painfully across the cold stone floor. For a moment she could only think that they were taking her away to cook and eat, and she struggled against their grip, reaching helplessly for powers she didn't understand, powers that weren't her own and that she only half-remembered she'd had past the spinning in her skull. There was nothing there, it was out of her reach, and the bokoblin holding her right wrist screeched at her threateningly. She subsided, letting them drag her, knees scraping across the rock through her dress. She had to look for a chance, any chance. Her sword – where was it? It had fallen from her hand, had they-?

Zelda forced herself not to twist in her captors' grip, to turn her head only slightly and look around herself through the hair that fell about her face. Some of the bokoblins had crude, chipped blades, others rough, heavy clubs, the torchlight flickering across them all rendering them even more grotesque than they already were. A shrill squeal rang out, and they shambled to a stop; Zelda abandoned her search for her missing sword to raise her head, peering forwards.

The bokoblins had halted over a wingspan from the end wall, its centre filled with a piecemeal barricade of metal and wood. One, standing slightly in front of the others, held out a horn, spat on the floor, then blew into it, the slightly off-key note setting Zelda's teeth on edge. It paused, then blew again, a long sour note followed by a short blurt and then silence.

Somewhere, a sound like a squeaking wheel began, and the entire barricade shuddered before slowly, slowly lowering down, suspended on two ropes. The bokoblin with the horn danced backwards a couple of paces shortly before it thumped heavily into the ground where the creature had been standing, and a taller figure began to advance along it from the other side.

Zelda had managed to get her knees under her as the drawbridge-like barricade had descended, the bokoblins' attention largely on it. For a moment she thought of trying to pull herself away from their hateful grip, of launching herself forward into the open space and trying to run, but she spent a breath longer than she should have trying to work out if she would stand a chance if she did and the moment was lost.

The creature that prowled up to her was a kind of twisted lizard, nothing she recognised, standing taller than either she or the bokoblins. It bent down, bonelessly flexible, and lifted the hair from her face with a scaled, taloned hand.

"Get off me!" Zelda spat, throwing herself backwards in fear and panic. She could feel the evil of the lizard-thing, just as she could feel it in the bokoblins holding her; could feel it filling the temple, its sickening taint overwhelming enough that she hadn't noticed the bokoblins waiting in ambush until it was too late. The bokoblins grunted as she fought against them, but held, bracing their feet against the stone floor, and the lizard ahead of her opened its mouth and shuddered in what looked like a silent parody of a laugh. Something prodded her in the ribs, hard and uncomfortable; she flinched away, twisting in her struggle to see what it was, and realised it was one of those dulled, notched blades, streaked with rust and some dried fluid. Zelda froze, panting with exertion, the naked threat chilling her into stillness.

The lizard and the bokoblin that had blown the horn were hissing and squealing at one another, posturing, confrontational but not murderously so. Zelda looked back at them, helpless as her fate was decided, listening to the indecipherable noises until one sound in particular caught her ear, halfway through the lizard's hisses and half-squawks.

"Ghiiraheem"

The sound of that name while she was captured and helpless turned her legs to water. She barely noticed the lizard advancing on her again – Ghirahim's name seemed to have been part of whatever sounds concluded their confrontation – until it was too late, sickening horror yawning wide at the bottom of her mind. Ghirahim, something that though she couldn't remember the details she associated with an evil blacker than any nightmare.

Only the cold of rough-forged iron locking around her wrist broke her from the grip of terror, and then it was to face a reality little better. The bokoblins released her as the lizard-creature locked its other manacle around her other wrist, a few short links of chain connecting the two and a third, longer chain branching from the middle. The lizard held the chain's other end wrapped in a lazy loop about its right forearm, the left one all but invisible behind a heavy metal shield. It stepped back from her, then tugged the chain in unmistakeable command; when Zelda resisted, it raised its heavy-gauntleted left hand as if to slap her – a blow that, with all the weight it was carrying, would be more likely to split her head open. Slowly, shaking in fear, she rose to her feet, and stumbled a few paces forwards when it tugged again. The motion seemed to satisfy the lizard, and it lowered its armoured hand, snapping something fast over its shoulder with lashing tail. Another lizard scurried out of the inner hall, approaching the bokoblins and taking something – slim gleaming metal; her sword – from one's filthy hand, casually flourishing its spike-tipped tail in threat when the bokoblin shrieked in protest, cowing it into grunting subservience.

The lizard holding her chain turned its back and started towards the door, and Zelda could only stagger despairingly after it.

. . .

The lizards had dragged her through the side rooms of the temple, passing others of their kind twice, her captor leaving her no space to pause even when its companion had slowed down to place her sword on a crude shelf, or to exchange hisses with other lizards. Only when they reached a room that had had high bars emplaced in it from floor to ceiling to make a crude but effective cage did it stop, looking behind itself once at Zelda – her eyes wide with horrified realisation – and turning back to the cage to open a barred door. Utter panic seized her, and despite the chain she tried to flee, getting several steps further than she'd expected and for an insane giddy moment thinking that perhaps it had dropped the chain, only to be brought up brutally short: the lizard had let the loop of chain play out from its arm before yanking it viciously back, spinning her from her feet and into the air for an instant before she crashed to the floor, winded and dazed. She lay there for several moments before desperation drove her to force herself up onto her elbows, and only then did the lizard move again, tugging the chain to yank her arms out from under her and drag her face-down into the cell. Zelda lay limp as the chain rattled through something, as metal clunked heavily into place. The lizard hissed, then padded out on its bare scaly feet, and the door slammed shut.

Defeated and in pain, Zelda lay still for a while before dully opening her eyes. Her own arms blocked her view, and she took a slow, careful breath before gingerly trying to sit up, wincing as the ache of her bruises and scrapes stabbed through her. The chain had been passed through a sturdy loop of metal, and its end ran to another loop on the back wall, where it had been secured by the simple expedient of a metal peg thrust through its links. It would be simplicity itself to unhook it… if only the chain had been long enough for her to reach it at all. There was barely a foot of chain between her wrists and the metal loop in the floor: not even enough to let her stand up, only crawl a few hobbled steps like a captive animal; certainly not enough for her to reach the back wall. Outside the cage, a lizard stood guard, perhaps the same one or perhaps another, since two more loitered more casually on the far side of the room. Zelda looked away from them, feeling sick with fear and despair.

She'd had… powers. Couldn't she use them? She was grasping at straws: with every moment it had seemed that something of whatever had happened at the spring had slipped away from her, and since the first blow to her head she'd lost it all, only dizzy spinning fragments left to her, none with any knowledge or sense to them. She'd flown, but she didn't know how.

It's your duty… you promised...

Tears trickled down her cheeks, unheeded. She was lost and confused, a child of Skyloft alone below the clouds' shield, in a mythical land of demons, captured and defenceless and waiting to die. If she had ever been something else, she no longer remembered what it was.

. . .

Time had passed. Zelda didn't know how much. Several times she had shaken herself out of her stupor, trying with all her might to think of some way to escape. If she lay flat with her arms at full stretch, she could reach the wall with her feet, but with the lizards standing menacing guard outside that was all she dared to do. For the most part, she sat or knelt, her head bowed.

Then something happened, something changed on the edge of her senses. Zelda looked up, reflexively drawing her hands closer, the clink of chain drawing the guarding lizard's attention again. It looked at her, opened its mouth in a hiss – and the hiss became a gurgle as it fell, and Zelda stared stupidly at the discoloured blood spilling from its throat past a glint of metal. Beyond it, the other two leapt up with sharp surprised cries, raising their armoured arms protectively as they darted their heads from side to side in a search for the sudden, impossible danger. They put their backs to the wall just as Zelda herself might have, though they stayed apart from one another where she would have drawn together, tails lashing and striking sparks from the rock with their metal tips. The shadows in the room seemed denser, thicker, the light weaker, and Zelda felt danger, yet strangely no evil. A blur of motion wreathed in shadow, and another of the lizards fell, hands vainly reaching to its eye where something metal had embedded itself, and as the last one looked at its writhing ally, the motion in the shadows resolved at last into a tall, hard-faced woman who lashed out at it with incomparable speed while it was still turning back to face her. It began to block, began to whip its tail around at her, but she was simply too fast, too agile, hand on its armoured arm to vault up it and all but turning on her fingertips as she passed over its shoulder, a short but deadly sharp sword flashing down to cut deep into the side of its neck and end its life.

Just like that, the lizards were dead, and the hard-faced woman was standing tall outside the cell, looking in at Zelda. Like the old woman back at the temple she'd landed beside, Mahra Impa, she bore a tattoo of a weeping eye in red upon her forehead, another tear drawn in white beneath her left eye. Most of her white-blonde hair was cut short, only a single section left long and bound mercilessly into a tail that fell down the right side of her face. Her clothes were a dark shadow-blue, paler trim and subtle changes of colour breaking up the lines of her form, making her easy to lose in the shadows.

"You are the one called Zelda, are you not?" Her voice was gentle, a little deeper than Zelda had expected. Wordless, Zelda nodded.

"I am Impa of the Sheikah, and I am your servant." The tall woman bowed deeply, hand over her heart. On her back, a pack came into view, its squarish bulk incongruous against the whipcord-thin lines of her body. "I have sought you since you fell, since Mahra Impa at the Temple of the Great Seal told me of your coming. I am sworn to aid you." Her expression had softened as she spoke, and she stepped forwards, inspecting the cage door, then drawing back its bolt and pushing it open. Zelda watched, still stunned, as she crossed to her and knelt.

"You followed me all the way here?" Zelda finally whispered. "I'm so sorry." Though she was thinking of the woman before her, another part of her mind thought of someone else just as undeserving who she had led into the same terrible danger. She was so, so sorry…

"It is an honour to be one who can serve you," Impa said, her quiet voice soft. "I am owed no apology." Thin, strong fingers closed on Zelda's hand, lifting her wrist so that Impa could inspect the manacles. She took some bent metal rods from one of the several small, flat pouches she carried, and worked the lock for only a few seconds before it sprang open. Zelda let her do the same for her other hand before rubbing her wrists, almost crying in relief.

"Thank you…"

Impa smiled, standing and offering Zelda her hand. "You are most welcome, honoured Zelda."

Zelda took the proffered hand, letting Impa help her to her feet. "I was… trying to reach a spring…" Words failed her. How could she explain what she no longer exactly knew herself? It felt like an imagining, some flight of fancy, except she knew it was not – and Impa merely nodded.

"I know. That is why I came to this place, because your path leads to the sacred waters." Her severe face softened again, reassuring. "I know the way. We must move quickly, however. Danger will be descending on us as we speak."

Zelda nodded, jerkily. "The lizards said – I heard one of them say Ghirahim."

Impa's face hardened to stone, not in anger but in iron resolve. "He will be seeking you. I have foiled him before, but we must be swift. Can you run behind me?"

She gave another nod, because nothing could be more important than escaping Ghirahim, and she would do anything she still knew how to get away from all the jagged darkness she could not quite remember that came with that name.

"Then stay close," Impa bade her, and led her out of the cell.

. . .

It was clear that the Sheikah woman knew exactly where she was going. She led the way without pause or error, sticking to shadows that darkened around them both in magic so subtle Zelda doubted she could have sensed it at all before her fall. Twice some lizards crossed their path; both times the creatures were slain almost before they even knew they were being attacked. Impa moved like a dagger through silk, like silence and shadow, a knife on the wind, and almost before Zelda knew it they were out in the open again, crossing a stone bridge across a deep ravine to a small peak on the mountain's shoulder. She could feel the spring calling to her, drawing her in, and as Impa slowed at last before the golden door, she reached out to it, brushing her dirty, bloodied fingertips across it and bidding it to open.

Just as the one before it had, it dissolved into golden light. With Impa at her shoulder, Zelda stepped through, and into the sanctity of the spring beyond.

This was originally going to be a single chapter called "Chains", but it got a little long…

Patch Notes:
- Lizalfos and bokoblins now interact like separate groups.
- Reason provided for Zelda not simply using divine powers to escape.