Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Link ran until he was out of the village and stopped. If he charged ahead blindly, he was going to miss the trail.
Unfortunately, there was not much, although Saria had trained him well in tracking, and Moblins were well-known for being clumsy. That was part of the problem; there were so many Moblin tracks in that part of the island that to find Marin’s tracks among them was extraordinarily difficult.
He headed in the direction of the mountains when the trail grew so hard to find that there was basically nothing.
And all the time his heart was full of fear.

He came to the mountains and paused. If he was a fat lumbering Moblin, burdened with a light, slim girl, how would he get up?
That posed a problem for him, as there was only one way to go up into the mountains, but many ways to go after that. Link wrinkled his forehead in frustration and anxiety and ran again. There was a tower on the eastern horizon.
Through tunnels, not forsaking the darkest corner, and to the most remote plateaus, he jogged along. Already he was getting tired, and the day was almost gone. The caves were dark enough, and he had no lantern.
He came to the tower and sprang in. Continue reading →

Chapter 5     Chapter 7

Chapter 6

The next day, Link went to the shop and bought a bow. It wasn’t as good as his old one, but it would do until he could find or make a better one. Thus armed, he went exploring to the east past Kanelet Castle, scouting out the land to see if he could get to the mysterious village Marin had hinted about. The river flowed deep and fast, and he hesitated to dive in.
He found a cave, and it didn’t smell like monsters, and no monster noises came out of it, so he went in with a makeshift torch he had fashioned out of wood and old cloth and magic powder. The tunnel got very tight at one point, and he could hear water trickling all around him, but it was not a dead end. The exit put him on the other side of the river, and Link smiled.
“I wonder if I could make an easier way for Marin to cross,” he wondered out loud. “Well, at least there is one safe-ish way.”
He set off on the well-travelled path south, and it soon bent to the left. There was a large sign overhanging the road that said ‘Animal Village’.
Link blinked at the sign and stepped forward.
Five white rabbits, a blue baby bear, and a small raven rushed up to him, and stopped, their faces showing disappointment.
“…” Link stared at them. He had met talking monkeys, but never talking rabbits… if they could talk. “…Hello?”
Two rabbits turned back to him and smiled politely. “I’m sorry, stranger. We thought Little Marin had come.”
“Oh. I’m a friend of Marin. I just arrived on the island. She was going to come, but the bridge is gone.”
“Yes, monsters got it. I don’t know where they came from! Anyway, what’s your name?”
“I’m Link.”
“Pleased to meet you. Are you a swordfighter?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Wow! We’ve never met a swordfighter before.” Continue reading →

Chapter 4     Chapter 6

Chapter 5

Link stirred groggily. His mind was made of fuzz, it seemed. He could feel it. An arm twitched, feeling for a missing rudder.
What? Rudder?
Where was Navi?
He tried to remember…
Memories were flitting in front of his mind’s eye. Sending Epona home… building a ship… Not very big, only big enough for himself and… Demon… yes.
Setting sail, visiting different islands, having hectic times and good times… just he couldn’t remember them yet…
Two years had passed since he had set out from Termina’s Great Bay, and he’d had many adventures… so how was it that he was in a comfortable bed that wasn’t rocking? The blankets were warm and soft…
Not like that storm… right. A hurricane had hit. “I’m going to reef!” Link had yelled to Demon, giving him the tiller and clambering to the mast, clinging like a monkey to anything he could. He grabbed a rope and wrapped it around his right arm for safety. The rest of his memory was a blank…
“Ah! Are you waking up, sir?”
“Uhn?” Who was the girl? Malon? His eyelids cracked open, showing him brownish red hair and a blue dress. “Uhn?” he mumbled again.
He flung himself upright into a sitting position, his pulse going about a hundred kilometres an hour. “Where’s Navi? Where am I? Who are you? Are you Malon? You look different. Where am I?” Continue reading →

Chapter 3     Chapter 5

Chapter 4

Link awoke on the third day and journeyed to Ikana Canyon. He discovered an ancient civilization had been there before him, and had covered the desert land in gibdos, redead, and ninja assassins. The assassins were especially annoying, because they would pop out of nowhere with a ring of fire and then he would have to fight them, and they weren’t particularly difficult to defeat, either.
He rescued a small girl’s father, the girl named Pamela. Her father had hidden himself in a closet, and was turning into a Gibdo, ostensibly in the name of research, but he attacked Link, who managed to duck the inexperienced monster and play the Song of Healing. Pamela came back from an errand she had to do, and was relieved to see her father again – apparently, she had only known that her father was hiding, but not that he was turning into a monster.
Tatl hid from the man in order to avoid being ‘studied’.
“Monsters inside, monsters outside… what a terrible place for a child. The Kokiri Forest…”
“Was really horrible also and you know it!” Tatl told him.
“…Was safe and welcoming to us.”
“Well, nyah, nyah.”
Link, armed with the gibdo mask the man had left behind from his transformation, ventured around Ikana, regarded as a mini-gibdo by his enemies. Some larger gibdos sent him on shopping missions, all of which he completed in about a day. His collected reward was a mirror-like shield, round with a face on it, that was the right size for his current height.
He finally found the way into Ikana Castle, the main gate of which had been sealed, and hunted around for signs of life. When he found none, except for some gracefully dancing redead, he began to cleanse it of monsters. Continue reading →

Chapter 2     Chapter 4

Chapter 3

Link dashed, using all the speed of his magical new hood to get there in time. Swords wouldn’t work – he’d tried it already once, so he carried a notched arrow and fired wildly.
He barely punctured it.
The aliens all vanished.
“What?” Link gasped, breathing heavily.
“We did it!” Romani yelled happily. “We saved the cows!”
“It’s five in the morning,” Tatl said. “I’m tired. Let’s crash.”
“Oh, yeah.” Romani looked rather chagrined, but not tired at all. Suddenly her eyelids drooped and she fell over.
Link caught her and carried her calmly into the house and up to her room. Then he went down and fell asleep in front of the fireplace.

The next day he rode Epona on Termina field. They headed to the ocean.
The Great Sea was a beautiful sight. Link had never seen it before, and gazed with all his might. It smelled fascinating. A seagull called just over his head and he ducked reflexively. Melancholy overtook him again.
“Hey!” Tatl yelled from over his head, and he looked up. “Look out there, there’re seagulls hovering over something! I wonder what it is.”
“We can go see,” said Link, nudging Epona onwards.
When he got to the waterline, he sprang off his horse and dove headlong into the water. His hat came off, but he paid no attention to it. Someone was calling weakly.
“Help… please, help me… anyone…”
“Hang on! I’m –“ Link swallowed seawater and coughed. It was bitter, and Link had only swum in freshwater before.
He got to the person, floating face down except when they gained the strength to raise their head and call.
“Hang on,” Link repeated, pulling them towards shore.
“You idiot!” Tatl scolded, as a gull swooped down and met Link’s right arm, protected by his shield.
After what seemed like ages, Link and his burden came to sand. The person tried to help his rescuer, and half stood with an arm around the short Hylian’s shoulders. The person was very tall. He was a Zora. Continue reading →

Chapter 1     Chapter 3

Chapter 2

Link headed for the market and bought some fruit; enough for two or three days’ breakfast. He gave most of it to Tatl to carry. She protested until he reminded her that her magical carrying capacity was far greater and less inconvenient than his.
“We should go to the swamp first,” she said after that.
“Why?”
“It’s the first one Tael said. You see, there’s a legend that says that there are four protector giants. We need to get their attention, and one of them lives at each of the cardinal points, so we need to go in those directions! I guessed that was what Tael meant.”
“I suppose I understand.”
“You’re just a kid, but you have a sword, and you look competent, so I’ll let you through,” said the guard at the gate. “Be careful, now!”
“Hm,” grunted Link, jogging through.

He headed south for the line of trees at the edge of the circular Field of Termina.
As they passed a huge old dead tree, Tatl veered aside to look at it. There was a rough drawing of a Skull Kid and two fairies.
“He was lonely when we found him,” she said. “He just wanted to play, but everyone was afraid of his strange face, even the Deku people, who look kinda similar if you ask me. He was cold. So were we. We knew we weren’t supposed to talk to strangers, but we felt sorry for him.”
“We got to be good friends. We had lots of fun playing in the long grass. That’s when we made this picture.”
Tatl shut up and wouldn’t say any more.
“I know something like that,” Link said quietly.
They carried on south.
They came to a swamp, but the water looked bad, and smelt bad… more than bad, poisonous.
“Um, this would be not normal,” Tatl said. “It shouldn’t be acidic.” Continue reading →

As it says, from Termina to Koholint, perhaps the best story I’ve written yet, though that doesn’t say much…
7 Chapters.

Chapter 2

The Legend of Zelda: Mask of Darkness to Island of Dreams

Chapter 1

Zelda touched his shoulder gently.
“We ought to go now…”
Link sobbed still into Rana’s cold shoulder, but at Zelda’s insistence, gently laid the still girl on the stony ground and stood. Zelda looked in his eyes and felt her insides tremble: they were eyes that did not see. The deep blue was grey and dull.
“Link…” With a simple call on the power of the Triforce, they shifted to the Sacred Realm.
“Link, you must now go back.”
“Where?” he asked dully, not really caring about the answer.
“Go back to when you were supposed to be… to live the years you missed.”
“Oh. Right. Rauru said so once.”
“Give me the Ocarina. I’ll send you.”
“I shouldn’t stay in Hyrule then. It will interfere with history.”
“That is correct.”
Link passed the princess the blue ocarina. “You will… bury her?”
“Yes,” whispered Zelda gently. She raised the Ocarina to her lips and blew.
Link felt the weightlessness and forgetfulness of warp travel surround him, and let himself go.
He saw himself flying over Hyrule, for a brief instant. Everyone in Hyrule was gathered in Lon Lon Ranch. Epona was safe there, along with several people Link assumed Rana had rescued from the dungeons of Ganondorf’s Tower. Mido and the Kokiri, Darunia, and the Gorons, including the two most massive, King Zora and the Zorans… Shoza and Bitu were there. Even the Gerudo were there, dancing in their sinuous, hypnotising style. Ingo was thoroughly drunk, and shouting the praises of Talon as the two danced with an arm about each other’s shoulders. Malon’s pretty voice sang to an accompaniment played by people in all four races.
His gaze turned towards Death Mountain. There were the six Sages. Saria was sitting on Darunia’s head. The Sages turned themselves into coloured flashes of light and sped over Hyrule Field. Some at the party pointed upward, clapping and cheering. A white flash sped to join them, and Link knew it was Zelda.
Again his vision blacked out and he slept in the embrace of time. Continue reading →