Chapter 2
Welcome to the Monster Wilds
The great Kingdom of Hyrule was vast (that much Zelda already knew from all the books and maps she had spent her days staring into in the Hyrule Castle Town library to alleviate her boredom), encompassing many towns, villages, rivers, lakes, mountains, forests and even deserts, making it one of the biggest and most diverse lands in the world.
...but it wouldn't be until she had to trek through the expansive fields on foot with no other human beings in sight that she realised just how vast it actually was.
With thousands of years of history, Hyrule has had plenty of time to expand and grow across most of the continent it was on (and a few places beyond it), either by peaceful negotiations, simply settling on uncharted land, or through ruthless conquest. It had gone on for so long that, at this point, it was hard for anyone to decisively point out where Hyrule began and where it ended...especially since there were very few real borders.
That said, Zelda could be reasonably sure that wherever on the planet she currently was, it was somewhere outside of her kingdom.
While she was occasionally allowed to leave the safety of Hyrule Castle, and even the town around it...she had always done so while seated comfortably in a carriage pulled by horses, or with at least half-a-dozen guards accompanying her for her personal protection.
Not once had she been needing to use her own two legs to walk through the untamed wilds while being completely on her own until today.
...and she hated it.
While she had started the journey from Ganon's Tower while running to avoid catching the attention of the mysterious one-eyed demon that had attacked it, she had only managed to endure running at that speed for a short while until she was ultimately forced to take a break and rest her tired legs.
She found refuge in a forest out of the beast's sight, and waited there for a few minutes until she felt strong enough to keep moving, albeit at a slower pace than before. While she knew she shouldn't push herself too hard, especially after how much her recent use of magic had drained her, and just how generally bad stamina she had overall, Zelda knew that the further away she got from Ganon's defiled land of darkness and despair, the better.
Though the dark calamitous clouds surrounding the dreaded tower might make one think otherwise, the harrowing events at the tower, which ultimately lead to its destruction, happened only as late as early afternoon...which became evident when the sun started to shine more brightly when she left that darkness behind.
This would not last, Zelda was painfully aware of though. In just a few hours, the sun would set for real, and then the dreaded Stal-creatures would rise from their graves to feast upon the living.
...and those were not her only problem. As could be expected from being so close to Ganondorf's dark tower, there were no homes or settlements anywhere in the vicinity. There were no Hylians, no Sheikah, no Gorons, no Zora, no Rito, not even any Gerudo despite Ganondorf himself being one.
No, instead, this dark corner of Hyrule was home only to dangerous and savage monster tribes like Bokoblins, Moblins, Lizalfos, Bulblins, Hinoxes, Lynels, Darknuts, Poes and Wizzrobes, all of which would be perfectly happy to attack a lone Hylian girl on sight if given the chance.
Even then...it wouldn't take any monster for this wilderness to already be making Zelda's life miserable. The terrain alone was more than sufficient for that.
Had she known beforehand that she would have ended up being kidnapped and stranded in the middle of the wilderness, she would never have put on such an impractical and cumbersome dress as the one she was currently wearing.
While making her way through the thick, pathless forest that she had ended up in, she cursed her outfit every single time the flashy fabric got caught in a bush or a thicket.
"Din's flaming tits!" she cursed, taking the opportunity of her solitude to utter vulgarities that she wouldn't dare speak in the presence of her royal court. "Come on, you useless piece of fabric! Stop making...my life...miserable!"
It was fair to say Zelda was not having a particularly nice day. Not only was the long fabric of her dress making it hard to travel through dense vegetation, but her golden princess boots, complete with high heels, were also made for elegance, not functionality, and were decidedly not the best footwear for this kind of terrain...or any kind of real terrain for that matter.
Hell, even her evening gown or her sleep wear would have been better than this. Given that she was attending a ceremonial event at the time of Ganon's assault on the castle, and subsequently her kidnapping, Zelda had been wearing the most extravagant, royal, and impractical outfit she had in her wardrobe, the one where she needed to merely look pretty as she exchanged platitudes with dignitaries and whatnot. It was not made for adventuring, it wasn't even made for going for a walk on the town.
In short: it was the worst possible outfit she could have possibly been wearing in this situation.
As she climbed over a particularly large log, her dress got caught up in a thorned branch and made her lose her footing. With a distinct 'Rip!' sound that she very much heard, Zelda tumbled down to the ground and fell face-first into the thick underbrush.
Let's just say that the long pained groan she let out after that was very much justified.
After almost a full minute of her just...lying there...and cursing her amazingly bad luck, the princess eventually managed to muster up enough strength to pull herself back up on her feet. However, now she looked awful.
Dirt and grime were littered all over her once beautiful outfit, her braided golden hair was likewise frazzled and messy, and as she looked down, she could only cringe as she saw a giant tear in the lower part of her dress where it caught the branch, almost reaching up to her hips and exposing the tiniest part of her lower undergarments.
At this point, even a woman as serene, wise and dignified as Princess Zelda of Hyrule had reached her limit.
She screamed.
Not a panicked or pained scream either, but one of desperate, burning rage. Hours, if not days or weeks of frustrations were unleashed in that one primal roar. She screamed loud and long enough to nearly tear her voice out, leaving her with a sore throat by the time she finally finished.
It was very unbecoming of a princess, as her etiquette teacher would say, but right now, Zelda simply couldn't bring herself to care. She was angry, frustrated, tired, thirsty and hungry, all at the same time, so as far as she was concerned, she could act as unladylike as she pleased!
Seeing as her fancy dress was pretty much ruined anyway, as well as a massive hindrance in this environment, she angrily tore parts of the lower fabric off with her bare hands, freeing her stocking-clad legs from their confinement. Next came several pieces of golden jewellery which only served to weigh her down. Gold was heavy, and without anyone around to impress or sell them to, there really was no point in lugging it around. Her shoulder pads didn't even provide adequate armour, so those were the first to go, then came the extravagant necklace...which felt like it was trying to choke her to death...and lastly the golden headband keeping her braid in check, which she straight up ripped off and threw into a nearby bush to rust, freeing her hair from its confinement.
In truth, the only reason she still wore any remnants of the limiting outfit at all, including the high-heeled golden boots, was because she had nothing else to change into, and getting caught out here naked would not be fun when the cold night air set in.
"By Hylia, spare me this accursed place," she grumbled as she started moving again.
After another long agonising hour of just...walking, Zelda left the forest edge for an open field, hoping to find any kind of recognisable landmark, or well...anything useful really.
She was breathing loudly as she just made it up on a ridge, her face drenched in sweat, and soon found herself falling over on her knees out of sheer exhaustion immediately after.
This was impossible, she realised.
For every step she took in this endless wilderness, she wished she had trained herself more for this. She wished she had exercised more, learned more survival training, had spent at least a single day in the wild before this...but no, apparently a princess didn't need to learn such things. Instead, all she had to learn was how to speak in front of people with a proper Hyrulean accent, how to look needlessly pampered, and of course...politics.
Well, to be fair, she did learn how to fence in organised duels and shoot an arrow at a non-moving target...which could be useful in a situation such as this, but it was far from enough for a sheltered girl like her to survive out here all by herself. Also, she didn't have a sword or a bow and arrow on her at the moment.
Growling in anger, Zelda silently cursed her pretentious family for their arrogance and naivete, she cursed Ganon for taking her from her home and all the way out here, and most of all, she cursed this blasted wilderness for being so infuriatingly big!
In truth, she didn't even know if she was going the right way. Her general idea was just to go in the opposite direction of Ganon's Tower, but after that...no clue.
She had never been to this part of the world, not even with an escort, and since humans almost never went this far away from the heart of Hyrule, there were very few maps detailing the geography of this place in her books either, and on top of that, she didn't even have a map or a compass.
The best Zelda could surmise would be that she was somewhere in an area marked on a map she once saw labeled 'The Monster Wilds'.
Charming implications from that name indeed...
...And as if things couldn't get any worse, when she eventually did get her bearings together enough to at least stand up straight and get a look over the tall grass and observe her surrounding a bit more thoroughly, she spotted something very troubling in the distance.
Just downhill from where she was standing were a group of big and intimidating pig-like creatures, Bulbos to be precise, which given how aggressive they looked, could potentially be dangerous on their own if provoked. After all, regular-sized wild boars were dangerous enough as they were...and these were twice as large. However, it was not them that made the princess freeze up in alarm...it was the creatures riding them.
Bulblins.
Small, vicious, and greedy goblin-looking creatures, often employed by powerful evildoers to serve as mercenaries or raiders, and were known to take on the role of bandits when left to their own devices. Either way, if they spotted her alone and defenceless in the middle of the field while being dressed in expensive clothing, she would be in big trouble, to say the least. From what she's heard about them, they wouldn't hesitate to kill her to get their greedy little green hands on her golden boots alone.
Immediately upon spotting them, Zelda ducked down, hoping that the tall grass would keep herself hidden from their small red eyes. Then, she began to slowly crawl away from them, keeping herself low and as silent as possible to keep them from noticing her, even though her heart was starting to beat very fast as fear and adrenaline set in.
While she simply wasn't built for this kind of movement, she manage to get quite far away from them in not too long of a time, choosing to head back for the forest she just came from where their war boars wouldn't be able to follow quite as easily.
She did learn some valuable things about battle tactics from her books after all.
The problem was that such knowledge did not in any way prepared her for the completely unexpected...such as a slimy Chuchu morphing into shape right in front of her face, staring right at her with its big googly eyes as it prepared to launch its poisonous and corrosive gooey body at her.
Acting purely on reflex with no rationale behind it, Zelda let out a shrill scream and jumped back to avoid the monster's attack, only realising that doing so was the worst thing she possibly could have done the second after she did it.
"You hear something?" one of the Bublins asked in its raspy voice, making Zelda put both hands over her mouth while her eyes opened wide with fear.
"Sounded like a human. Must be close," another one responded.
"Then what are we waiting for? Find it!" a third declared, followed not long after by the very loud and very alarming sound of a war horn blaring across the field, signalling the whole pack to mobilise and hunt her down.
Seeing as her cover was already blown, Zelda simply panicked and shot up to her feet and bolted straight for the forest, despite her tired body screaming at her not to.
The Chuchu tried to pursue her, but was way too slow to get very far...the same could not be said for the Bulblins though, as they easily caught sight of the lone human woman trying to flee into the forest and sent their boar mounts charging at her while the Bulblins themselves readied their bows and clubs for when they got close enough to use them.
The Chuchu was in fact trampled into a puddle by one of the boars as it ran over the grassy field the slime monster was slowly crawling through.
Princess Zelda was a bit more lucky than that though, but not by much. Her body working almost entirely on adrenaline and fear, she ran as fast as she physically could towards the forest. Unfortunately though, the boars were much, much faster than her, and she could hear the sound of their heavy hooves coming closer and closer...while her own strength was waning.
Before she knew what was happening, Zelda felt a massive hand grab her arm so tightly that she nearly dislocated it, stopping her dead in her tracks. Then, with strength far beyond any that she herself could muster, she was lifted up into the air as if she weighed nothing.
As Zelda struggled and wriggled to free herself from the powerful grip, she soon found herself eye to eye with a face horrifying enough to give her nightmares.
It was a massive Bulblin, especially compared to the others of his kind; taller and...well, heavier, than not only other Bulbins, but humans as well, with a pair of massive horns sticking out of his head, where a nasty sneer of gnarled teeth festered.
Yet, his appearance alone wasn't what frightened her so much...as terrifying as the sight of an armoured goblin-monster in armour the size of a full grown hippo with the physique of a sumo wrestler would be. It was the fact that this monster was one that Zelda actually recognised, and no, not the type of monster he was, but the actual individual who was holding her in the air atop his giant boar.
It was King Bulblin, also known as the 'Lord of Bandits' and 'Scourge of the Fields', Ganondorf's top general who personally lead the army that stormed Hyrule Castle, mowing down the crown guard like bowling pins under the hooves of his blue Bulbo as he ruthlessly destroyed everything in his path...all while Ganondorf himself invaded the castle with a second, smaller, army from behind, using the bandit lord as a distraction while he claimed his prize...that prize of course being Princess Zelda herself.
She remembered the sight of the horned beast riding on his boar quite well from the castle's balcony, and she knew full well that it was the same exact beast she was looking at right now.
The recognition turned out to be far more mutual than she would have liked when King Bulbin looked at her face and said one single word in a deep, rumbling voice, "...Zelda?"
Hearing her own name in the beast's voice made Zelda's blood run cold with fear.
He knew who she was!
Not really knowing what to do, only that she needed to do something, no matter what, or face a potentially grizzly fate at the hands of the monster who massacred many of Hyrule's bravest soldiers, Zelda reached out her arm and called upon the power of the Triforce to save her, the mark at the back of her hand, as well as her eyes, lighting up with sacred power.
Both Zelda and King Bulblin gasped in surprise when the seemingly harmless young woman unleashed a ball of fire from the tips of her fingers and set the grass beneath them ablaze.
If she had even the slightest clue what she was doing, she might have tried to aim at his face, but alas...she didn't.
The boar King Bulblin was riding on, a blue and unusually large one he'd named 'Lord Bulbo', panicked, rearing up on her hind legs to avoid the flames springing up beneath her, the action making the bandit lord lose his grip on Zelda and toss her into the grass several metres away from him.
It was far from a pleasant landing, a sharp pain running through her body as soon as her shoulder hit the dirt, causing her to groan and spit on the ground while trying to push her exhausted body back on her feet.
King Bulblin and his gang froze up at the sight of magic being used against them, and halted whatever attack they would have otherwise launched by now, with the fire Zelda had unleashed spreading rapidly through the tall grass.
Magic was the one thing the monsters of the world feared. Most of them didn't understand it, didn't know how to handle it, couldn't fight against it. It was a bad omen for them.
While Ganondorf was undoubtedly a physically imposing foe, it wasn't his strength or his weapons that made the most dangerous monsters of the world bow at his feet, it was his dark and terrible magic.
The Bulblins had no way of knowing how powerful Zelda's magic was, and what else she could do to them if they provoked her wrath: turn them to stone, turn them into frogs or just reduce them to dust.
Anything was possible.
That fear and uncertainty however only lasted until Zelda made a mad dash for the forest edge while they were distracted, showing all the signs of a frightened person fleeing for her life instead of someone who could properly fight back. After all, how could these ruthless bandits, who had fought the knights of Hyrule and other monster tribes, be afraid of something that was afraid of them?
King Bulblin blew his horn and made a move to pursue, but found himself cut off by a wall of fire that sprung up rapidly, with Zelda being on the other side of it. He growled, and led his pack around the flames, determined to catch the princess before they lost sight of her.
Zelda naturally took that brief moment of reprieve from her pursuers to run straight into the forest, pushing her way through the dense trees and bushes, not daring to look back or slow down, even for a moment.
Soon enough though, she tripped over a root and was sent tumbling down a small hill where she landed face first onto the hard forest floor.
It was painful...to say the least.
Her whole body was in pain, she was completely and utterly drained from sheer overexertion, and she was hungry, thirsty and terrified for her own life. Her heart was still racing, but she couldn't bring herself to move, it was simply too much for her weak teenage body to handle.
The Bublins were not hot on her tail anymore though, so...there's that at least. Most likely they couldn't ride after her through the dense foliage and had given up...or they might possibly try to find an alternate route, which meant that she was still very much in danger from them.
Yet, even with that in mind, she still couldn't bring herself to get up, not unless she got just a minute of rest first.
"I...hate...all...of...this..." she muttered quietly as she gasped for breath.
This was truly the worst day Princess Zelda have experienced in her life. Yes, and by that, that means she considered it even worse than the day she was kidnapped by Ganon, as traumatising as that was. At least then she didn't have to physically exert herself nearly as much. The dark lord had been 'kind' enough to even give her a ride back to his tower in the back of a wagon pulled by his trusty black steed, because apparently not even the king of evil was heartless enough to make the princess walk across the endless fields and forests of Hyrule with her own two feet.
In the throes of exhaustion and nearly to the brink of losing her mind, a sudden chill ran through her body, making the hair on her arms stand up straight as she shivered in response to a cold, but familiar, feeling.
"Having a bad day, your majesty?" whispered a voice in Zelda's ear, a hint of playfulness colouring its words.
Zelda's eyes shot open, but she didn't move. She recognised the voice. She knew it quite well...even if it had been a long time since he showed up to speak to her.
"I...I thought I had forgotten you," she said to the open air, as the owner of the mysterious voice was not visible, not even to Zelda. She would have come across as crazy if anyone had been around to witness her.
"In our darkest moments...sometimes the wee ghosts of our childhood comes back to haunt us..."
Zelda curled up around herself, bringing her legs up and wrapping her arms around them. At this point, she couldn't stop herself. She started to whimper and cry, tears pouring from her eyes as she silently cursed whatever cruel god that had put her through so much hardship.
"I...I can't do this...I just can't!" she sobbed, the emotions she'd long buried under 'proper royal etiquette' boiling to the surface without anyone forcing her to bury them even deeper. "Why do I have to be here? In this stupid forest, with these stupid monsters, with my stupid useless body?!"
The slightest sensation of a cold hand grasped her shoulder...and then the voice said, "I understand, my princess, it truly isn't fair, isn't it? To have all this suffering and hopelessness fall on you and you alone? I wish I could help, but that's not what I do."
"Why not?!" Zelda snapped, looking around for any glimpse of her 'old friend', but seeing no sign of him, not even a shadow or a pair of green eyes fading into the darkness. "Sometimes a princess just needs a little help! Is that too much to ask in a situation like this!?"
"Perhaps...perhaps not. However, you...ehhh...you really shouldn't yell like that in a place like this though...might bring the wrong kind of attention...if you catch my drift, lassie."
"So what? It's not like things could get any worse, can they?!"
"Hear that!?" an alarmingly non-human sounding voice called out from the other side of the forest's undergrowth, making Zelda freeze up in fear.
Turns out, irony truly was a cruel mistress, and that yes, things could very much get worse than they already were...much worse.
While the Bulblins seemed to have lost track of her for the time being, she heard movement nearby of something else...or rather, a lot of somethings, moving through the bushes.
"Smell! Smell...fresh meat! Human meat!"
The ear-grating voice was very close, dangerously close, and Zelda very much doubted they had picked up the scent of another human just wandering around in a place known as the 'Monster Wilds'. More likely, whatever they were, they were hunting her!
The one good thing about the situation that Zelda could deduce was that they hadn't seen her yet, nor had she seen them...so she did her best to get close to the ground and crawl away into the dense underbrush of the forest as silently as she could. Basically same plan she tried to do before with the bulbins...and hope that this time there weren't any hidden surprises like Chuchus waiting in the ground ready to assemble and attack her at any moment.
She made good distance, longer than she did with the Bulblins in the field at least, and so far, no Chuchus...but the footsteps and rustling in the bushes of her pursuers were coming closer and closer at an alarming speed.
Zelda had never felt this kind of nerve-tingling fear before, and she was only hanging on by a thread. She was fighting the impulse to panic and scream with every ounce of willpower she had, but the closer they got, the harder it was.
Then, she stopped still as a statue when she caught the first glimpse of the creatures hunting her through the a nearby bush, a four-toed and digitrade foot covered in green scales and ending in a sharp claw at each end...followed by a long reptilian tail with an axe strapped to its end.
She set her gaze just a little higher and saw the rest of the creature, a human-sized bipedal lizard carrying basic tribal clothing and bladed weapons, moving swiftly but sneakily through the forest, a forked tongue sticking in and out of its mouth every five seconds as it tried to track her scent.
A Lizalfos.
Zelda had heard many nightmarish tales of these creatures...tales of them raiding defenceless villages and ambushing travellers with not the slightest bit of mercy shown to their victims, as unlike the more greedy, bandit-like Bulbins, Lizalfos hunted humans not for their possessions, but for their meat.
While they mostly sustained themselves on wild game, humans and other sapient races like Rito and Zora were apparently extra delicious for them, and killing a human (or Rito, Zora or Goron) is seen as a sort of rite of passage even, allowing that specific Lizalfos to gain greater status in the pack.
Even experienced knights knew not to underestimate them, especially in large numbers, as they often carried some nasty surprises, such as venom in some cases, or the ability to breathe fire...and sometimes even the ability to hex their opponents with nasty curses.
Apparently, their tails were useful for making some kind of medicine however, but that really wasn't Zelda's top priority right now. All she cared about at the moment was to avoid getting eaten.
She didn't dare move as long as the Lizalfos was that close to her. She had no idea how good hearing they had, but she didn't wanna risk making even the slightest noise right now.
"Human...close!" the creature announced to its kin, knowing not just how right it was when it said so.
Its tongue stuck out one more time, and now, it seemed to have picked up something, and slowly began to turn its head towards Zelda...
...only for it to stand up straight and look utterly surprised when the blaring sound of a Bulblin war horn echoed across the forest.
"Bulbin sound! Ready weapons!" another Lizalfos further away ordered, prompting the one closest to Zelda to forget all about her and run away towards its alpha.
Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, especially not at a time like this, the princess used the distraction to silently scurry away from...whatever was about to go down, which she wanted to take absolutely no part of.
Not far away, King Bulblin and his entourage of bandits were riding through the forest, stomping bushes and ferns under the hooves of the massive boars they were riding, determined to capture the runaway princess before they lost her trail. The fire had given them a hefty setback and they had to take a detour to avoid it, but now they were not about to let Zelda's little parlour tricks scare them further.
The first time was humiliating enough for a proud mercenary ruler like King Bulblin. If his quarry escaped him now, he'd be a laughing stock among all of Blin-kind.
Not on his watch!
However, his bullheaded determination to hunt down Zelda as quickly as possible gave him a serious case of tunnel vision, and left him completely unprepared for a Lizalfos suddenly leaping out of the bushes without warning, biting into his shoulder and knocking him right off of his trusty pig companion.
The bandit lord's armour and sheer bulk made him take the fall and the sharp teeth of the Lizalfos without any major injuries, but it did leave him rather dazed and disoriented.
It leapt up on his, admittedly massive, belly and tried to bite his face off, but he reacted quickly and caught it by the neck with his hand, using his superior strength to keep the monster's jaws away...while also grasping its throat so tight that it couldn't summon enough air to breathe fire in his face.
He knew full well what this creature could do. This wasn't the first of their kind he'd fought.
Desperate to escape his grip, the Lizalfos swung its tail, equipped with an axe at its end, around in order to crack King Bulbin's helmet open, but instead hit one of his horns, chopping it off at the middle. The impact made him scream out in pain, and in retaliation, he used his helmeted head to headbutt the Lizalfos so hard to he dazed it, then threw the annoying reptile off of him.
It landed a few metres away, and as it tried to wriggle its way back on its feet, it was hit in the torso by two arrows, ending its life as it fell down to the forest floor in a bloody heap, making a hissing sound as it died.
King Bulblin looked to his fellow Bulbins, seeing as they were the ones who killed the Lizalfos, and gave them a glare. "Took you long enough," he remarked, and pulled himself back up, giving a quick sorrowful look at the broken half of his left horn lying on the ground.
Three more Lizalfos leapt out of the bushes all around them, snarling with rage. "WE AVENGE FALLEN BRETHREN!" one of them screamed.
The Bulbins all prepared for battle, some drawing their bows while others pulled out spiked clubs...while King Bulbin himself pulled out a massive war axe so great that no human would ever be strong enough to lift it without magic.
"Time to play!" he said with a grin, showing off his gnarled teeth to his enemies as he charged at them with a mighty war cry, eager for battle.
Princess Zelda could hear the ensuing battle from a distance: lots of screams, roars, hisses, metal weapons colliding with other metal weapons, as well as the breaking of bones and flesh being torn apart...though she very poignantly made no effort to stick around and see which group of monsters ended up on top, as interesting as that could be. Instead, she was running in the opposite direction in case the winner chose to pursue her next.
She was honestly a bit surprised by how quickly the Lizalfos had been to attack the Bulbins. Last time she saw the two types of monsters in the same place was during Ganon's attack on Hyrule Castle, and back then, they had fought alongside each other.
Perhaps without Ganondorf around to keep the monsters in line, they're just as likely to attack each other as they would be to attack her? Even in her panicked state, Zelda mentally took note of that idea. At the very least, the beasts' infighting had given her a chance to slip away in the chaos. If they had worked together, she would undoubtedly be dead or captured by now.
Lucky her, she supposed.
After getting far enough to where she couldn't even hear the fight anymore, Zelda nearly collapsed to her knees in exhaustion, her body covered in sweat as she panted loudly. Her lungs stinged from how much air she had forced into them in her panic, and her throat was so dry she could barely speak...even if she had someone around to talk to.
Yet, even so, in her hazy tired state, she still muttered one word...a word she had never spoken in a public setting in her entire life...
"Fuck..."
If a Princess of Hyrule had a breaking point...this was probably it.
She stumbled further through the forest, seeking any place that might offer any of the things she currently needed: that being a safe place to rest, food, water, and no more monsters...preferably all four.
After a while of aimless searching, Zelda found what seemed like the answer to her prayers: a pond.
A single small blue pond of crystal clear water sitting in the middle of the forest. It looked clean: no algae, no fish or bugs as far as she could see, and no Bulbins or Lizalfos anywhere in sight either. She actually had to pinch herself to make sure she wasn't hallucinating. This all seemed too good to be true...
Desperate to quench her thirst, Zelda ran towards the pond and dipped her hands into the clear reflective liquid...only to realise as soon as she did so that whatever she had stuck her fingers into...it was not water.
"What the..?" she muttered as she felt not something running as clear and smooth as water, but something slimy and thick like jelly or jam.
Then, her eyes snapped wide open in surprise when the 'water' began to ripple with movement, forming several long tentacles out of its surface that slithered and moved like the arms of an octopus.
A single orange orb floated through the gooey liquid and up into one of its tentacles, and Zelda immediately realised what kind of madness she had foolishly stumbled into.
What she had mistaken for a pond of water was no pond at all, but an absolutely massive single-celled organism, an amoeba that could reshape and stretch its body to catch unsuspecting prey that got too close...and that orange orb that floated around inside it, which was about the size of a beach ball...was its nucleus.
This was a Morpha, a rare but very dangerous creature to run into...and also the main reason why experienced adventures were vary of any suspiciously clear ponds of water just sitting in the middle of nowhere.
Princess Zelda, being as desperate, tired and thirsty as she was, had not been nearly as cautious as she should have been, and now did not even have the strength or energy to flee from the monster before it lunged at her.
The slimy tentacle picked her up and wrapped around her body like a boa constrictor, swaying her back and forth in the air as the thick mucus-like organism began to squeeze the life out of her. She saw stars as her vision began to fade, pain ringing throughout her as her blood flow was halted all over her body and her ribs felt close to breaking...and her thoughts lingered on all the choices she had made in her life that lead her to this fate.
Was this truly how she, Princess Zelda of Hyrule, first daughter of King Rheadon of Hyrule and second daughter of Lady Alena of Snowpeak, was going to meet her end? To survive Ganondorf, the greatest evil in all of Hyrule, to survive a surprise attack by a mysterious one-eyed demon of a bygone age, to survive King Bulbin and a pack of man-eating Lizalfos...only to die to the slime of an oversized amoeba?
In her mind, Zelda prayed to Din, Farore and Nayru, she prayed to Hylia, to the first Zelda, to the first King of Hyrule, to all the heroes of legend, to survive this ghastly and humiliating fate. Hell, she'd even pray to Demise or Majora to survive it, blasphemy be damned!
No matter who she prayed to however...that someone must have listened.
Just as she was about to lose consciousness...a spear flew through the air with the power of a javelin, impaling the Morpha's nucleus right through the middle, sending it, stuck to the end of the spear, straight into a tree so hard that it broke right though the bark and lodged itself there.
Having sliced through its membrane from one end of the orb to the other, the disgusting insides of it leaked out down the trunk of the tree...and without its nucleus around to control the rest of the creature, the arms of the Morpha lost all its form and became just a big puddle of slime and muck.
Zelda, who was too delirious to comprehend what was going on, fell into the slime as the Morpha tentacle that was holding her dissolved, and, being as exhausted and discombobulated as she was, she didn't even resist as she slowly began to sink into the gooey liquid that remained of the dead amoeba.
Someone grabbed her before her face breached the surface though and pulled her out of it, but she was too tired to focus on them...too tired to focus on anything...
...she just needed to...
...needed to...
...to relax...
As Zelda's eyelids began to feel heavy...too heavy to keep open...she caught a glimpse of someone...someone with fierce red eyes and white hair...
...she was beautiful...
...and then everything went dark.
Author Notes:
Random fact: despite the fact that this is a Zelda fanfic, I spent the majority of the time writing this chapter listening to 'Halo' music. It was very helpful actually.