Link walked fast around the hideout, keeping Gramps' warning about the hills being dangerous in mind and therefore, staying alert and not just running as fast as he could.

He found the stairs behind the so-called house, as promised. There was a weird looking statue next to them, a tall knight that appeared to be made of aged copper or brass. Link shrugged it off as a dilapidated old decoration and climbed the stairs.

Just a bit further on the path was another statue, basically identical to the one at the bottom of the stairs. This one was right ON the path, for some reason.

It seemed really impractical, but Link wasn't a gardener or a decorator or anything like that, what did he know? Maybe statues in the middle of the path were normal in royal gardens and the kind of people invited to come to these gardens were used to walking around them. Maybe there was a whole set of specific protocols around them, like you had to go around them on a certain side, or touch it, or NOT touch it, and maybe you did something different if you were noble than if you were not... he'd have to ask the Princess about it sometime. In his mind, he could picture her elegantly side stepping the statue in a sort of pretty dance that took her around it in a semi circle. Her skirt billowing slightly and her hair swishing, a little smile on her face... he shook his head. Focus. He needed to focus.

Presumably, the brambles on the side of the path hadn't been so overgrown as they were now and walking past the statue had been easy before the palace was corrupted and people stopped coming here. As it was, Link had to choose between stepping right in the mess of brambles or squeeze by the statue. He chose to squeeze by.

The fit wasn't that tight, really. He ended up brushing the thing a bit with his shoulder, but he could really see how the statue would not have been a problem if the garden had been maintained. Just the same, if he wasn't supposed to touch it, well, he'd just done it wrong. At least there was nobody to see him.

He stopped dead in his tracks when the statue started violently vibrating. He turned around to face it again, wondering if he had somehow unbalanced it, but no, it wasn't tipping over: it was just shaking.

He backed up a few steps, eyes still locked on the statue, cautiously fascinated. Was that a feature? Maybe it used to play music too if you touched it and that shaking was the dance? Like an automaton? He'd really have to find out how this stuff worked, the various theories he was building up in his head were fascinating. Maybe if you were a noble, you were allowed to touch it and activate it? Or maybe you were only supposed to do it on certain special occasions. He wondered if Zelda had ever done it, and whether there was a dance you did with the statues...

The shaking briefly intensified, and the statue suddenly shed a layer of dirt or polish or Link didn't know what, revealing a much brighter gold under the dull dirty copper or brass. It then stopped shaking as such and moved.

Link's eyebrows shot up and he hastily backed up another few steps, raising his shield. What had he been thinking with all those fanciful imaginings about automatons that nobles could make dance? This statue wasn't anything so endearing, it was a Din blasted armos!

The armos's arms pivoted in their joints to raise the sculpted sword it carried, and it started hopping towards Link with a continuous loud hum.

Link stood his ground and slashed with his own sword. It clanged against the metal monster, sending vibrations all the way up his arm. The hit didn't seem to do much otherwise, but Link remembered his training, they'd covered how to handle these things.

Armos fact number 1: If you ran, they chased faster. They didn't waste too much power on speed UNLESS their target was moving away from them.

Armos fact number 2: They were not invincible. They had no blood, and they were solid all the way through, so it looked like hitting them did nothing, but you just had to keep hitting and eventually, they crumbled.

Armos fact number 3: They hit hard.

With fact number 3 in mind, Link threw himself to the ground to avoid a swipe of the golden sword and slashed the armos near its base – resulting in another clang - before jumping up again and back to avoid another hit.

The armos moved with him, pivoting to face him again, and swung its sword again. Link dove again, rolling behind the monster and jumping back up to hit it in the back. It seemed to do nothing but make noise again, and the repeated return shock was starting to be uncomfortable in Link's arm.

He ignored the discomfort, trusting his instructor's words: just keep hitting, it will work eventually. The shock of the sword on the hard shell of the monster was not enough to actually injure his arm, it wasn't worth worrying about.

The armos started pivoting again, but Link managed another hit before the monster raised his sword again and just like that, the armos started vibrating harder than ever and crumbled into dust that quickly went from gold to the usual black monster dust.

Link exhaled through his nose, sheathed his sword and rubbed his sore arm as he resumed walking, turning South.

He wondered if the armos was what Sahasrahla had been warning him against. Now that he'd fought one, Link wasn't too worried about them: they were rough on his sword arm, but all in all, relatively easy to defeat.

Link felt pretty differently about how much of a problem armos were by the time he dispatched the third one in his way: his sword arm was screaming and he honestly wasn't sure he could take down another one.

He was at least close to the Palace now, just a couple of set of stairs to climb. He sat down with his back to a low wall, rubbing his arm. He should have brought more milk – this wasn't an actual injury or anything, and it'd be fine soon, but Gramps had warned him the Eastern Palace was still consumed by evil. There was no telling what he'd run into in there.

Well, there was nothing for it: he was obviously not going to go all the way back to Karakiro to go get some milk now. Instead, he contented himself with massaging his sore arm.

The thought occurred to him that he should give the Princess an update: it was a better use of time than just resting.

"Princess Zelda?" he called out with his mind.

"Link!" came the immediate response.

Link's eyes widened and his heart thumped. She sounded like she was whispering in his ear again – no, not in his ear, straight to his mind - and she sounded really happy, like she'd been waiting for him to talk to her. His arm massage briefly turned to a painful grip: he shouldn't have made her worry like that.

"Did you find Sahasrahla?" she asked.

"I did!" Link replied. "Sorry I didn't check in for a while. I'm on my way to get the pendant of courage."

"No, no, don't worry about not checking in!" she exclaimed, the soft imagined whisper still perfectly conveying her every inflection. "I'm just glad to hear from you. Where is the pendant?"

"In the Eastern Palace," Link replied. "The gardens don't look like anyone's been here in a while, and Gramps… sorry, Sahasrahla, says the Palace was not actually restored after all."

"I'm afraid he's right about that," Zelda said. "We… haven't been there since Agahnim claimed to have chased the darkness from it. I believe a spell may have been involved to make sure we simply didn't think of going there again." She sighed. "I was hoping the test for the pendant would no longer be there if it was still under the grip of evil. You will need to be very careful, Link."

Link nodded and then, remembering the Princess would not see that, verbalized his answer. "I will, Princess," he said. "Do you know what the test used to be? Maybe it's still similar."

The answer took a moment to come.

"I have no idea," the Princess admitted. "The only thing I remember is that it is consistently described as a test of courage, not combat."

She sounded like she was really sorry about that. Link got up and drew his sword in a battle stance. "Don't worry, Princess!" he boasted theatrically. "I'll tell you all about it when I'm done!"

He was rewarded by a giggle that lit up his whole body. "Is that a promise?" Zelda asked.

"Yes!" Link said emphatically.

"Thank you," the Princess said. "Then since you promised, you have no choice but to succeed."

Link chuckled. "Why of course, Princess!" he exclaimed.

She giggled again, and cut the contact.

Link just stood there for a while, eyes wide and breathing hard. He'd felt her laugh in every bit of his body, and he honestly had no idea whether his arm was still hurting at all or not, he was too tingly and warm all over to feel anything else.

He still didn't know what to expect in the Eastern Palace: he didn't know what the test was meant to be like, he didn't know how corrupted it would be, and he didn't know what else may lurk in the Palace.

He did know, now, that it didn't matter. He would get through whatever it was, because he had just promised the Princess that he would.

Link saw his next problem when he was halfway up the set of stairs that would take him to the Palace's lower courtyard: there was a Royal Guard there, planted right on the top step.

Link froze. The stairs weren't wide enough for there to be any hope he'd be able to just run by the guard without getting himself impaled.

Link remembered the map showed two sets of stairs to the same lower courtyard: he was on the westernmost one right now, but if he could find his way to the easternmost one, maybe there'd be no guard on top of THOSE and he could sneak by this one.

He hurriedly turned around in the stairs, intent on going back down and trying his luck with the second staircase. Unfortunately, the shield on his arm scraped against the half wall that enclosed the staircase in lieu of a ramp, and...

"CAPTURE THE TRAITOR LINK!"

The guard at the top of the stairs came charging down.

Link ran for it, but another guard appeared at the bottom of the stairs, charging up towards him, and he found himself boxed in.

There was no time to hesitate. Link swung himself over the half wall of the stairs just in time not to get skewered by the two guards' blades, hanging on by the tip of his fingers and intent on letting go if the guards looked like they were going to slash at them. There was a small chance they wouldn't see the fingers and stop looking for their missing quarry altogether.

From where he was, Link could just make out the top of the guards' heads. It was enough to see that they never got a chance to slow down properly. There was a loud bang, followed by a series of bangs and thuds as the two guards tumbled down the stairs in a heap.

Link winced: he really hoped they hadn't managed to break their necks, or even any limbs since if they did, those limbs may well just disappear. Unsurprisingly since he didn't have much contact with guards stationed elsewhere than at the castle, he hadn't recognized either of his two attackers. Just because he didn't personally know these two, however, didn't mean he wanted to hurt them.

He heaved himself back over the wall and onto the stairs and sprinted up the remaining steps, sped across the lower courtyard, and ran up the final stairs leading to the Eastern Palace. He wanted to go check on the guards, but he knew that would be insane: if he got close enough and they were relatively ok, they would absolutely attack him. He couldn't risk it.

There were two armos flanking the entrance door to the palace. Link had zero desire to hurt his sword arm again on them, so he barely slowed down long enough to open the door to the Palace and to dash inside, slamming the door shut again behind him, cutting off the two armos who were still in the process of vibrating their statue disguises off before they could actually charge him.

Elsewhere…

Dyemo was well used to the dark. He lived underground, after all, and spent a lot of time digging tunnels. He remembered one time when the tunnel he was in had collapsed, trapping him in the dirt… that was the first time he'd used his power. It hadn't been on purpose, but he'd panicked and light had flared out of him in response, growing brighter and brighter until his friends had found him and dug him out. They'd made jokes about his being a very unusual treasure, and he'd become pretty popular at parties because he could shine light on jewels and make them glow nice and bright.

All had ended well. But while he was buried, it had been like his mind had been buried too, he hadn't been able to think of anything else than the fact he was scared.

He felt the same panic now as he had back then. Just like then, he couldn't move and he couldn't see anything at all.

He'd tried to use his power again, he'd tried to create light, and nothing had happened. He couldn't even feel the place inside of him where the light usually came from.

He focused on his nose, trying to smell something since he couldn't see anything and couldn't hear anything, and couldn't move to feel around himself. Mogmas relied on smell a lot, and he was no exception. He couldn't sniff, but he was breathing, so air was coming through his nose. He focused on it as hard as he could, trying to read every bit of information he could out of it.

He smelled himself, and that was it.

If he'd been able to, he would have screamed for help. He would have flared ridiculously bright, and he would have screamed, until someone came. He could do neither of those things.

His heart was beating fast, and his breath was short, and he thought he might have soiled himself, and he couldn't do ANYTHING.

Except, as it turned out, sink deeper into helpless panic.

Author's Notes

Not sure if you noticed I've been calling the people Agahnim is using to break the seal on the Dark World and allow Ganon into Hyrule descendants rather than maidens.

One of the reasons is that my version of them are not all young girls... Dyemo here is a guy, he's an adult, and because I adore them, he's a Mogma. :D