FicWad


Chapter 29: Inheritance

Chaos reigned in Kakariko.

Screams of terror flew through the village. Women holding their babies took flight from the ravaging monsters. Brave citizens battled with the meager weapons they had, but the javelins being hurled at them from afar were no match for them. They took the same path as the women and children. Palace soldiers fought them off as best they could with their swords, but the moblins could pick them off at a distance with their spears. Their brute strength and sheer numbers had the royal guard in a futile vice grip. It took three soldiers to bring down one moblin and only after they had backed it into a corner.

Most of the monsters chased after the humans, others destroyed buildings. With a roar, a moblin used his torch to set one of the houses ablaze. Several others overturned a nearby cart filled with wine caskets. Red liquid poured onto the dirt like a waterfall, seeping into the earth. Another bashed a house with his iron club, thunderous booming sounded as the cracks in the wall grew deeper and deeper. They were driving the humans out.

One moblin pulled a gigantic gray rock up from the ground, uprooting clumps of dirt and grass. He hoisted it above his head and plodded menacingly toward a house. Eyeing the thatched roof he leaned back, getting ready to throw it.

An arrow flung threw the air and implanted in his back. The moblin screamed in pain and lost his grip on the boulder, which came crashing down in his head. The unconscious pig-dog slumped forward as Link sprang into the air and stabbed downward with his sword. The monster vanished.

"Let's get it on," Link said. He rushed into the fray and began swiping at moblins left and right as he made a beeline for the center of the village. Some monsters cleared away and others ended up at the tip of his blade. A huge moblin suddenly jumped out at him, startling Link. The beast shoved him to the ground and raised up his spear to stab into Link's heart.

Yellow blobs of energy rained down from above, penetrating through the moblin's flesh, poking him with holes like a pencil through paper. The assailant vanished.

Link looked up to the roof of the house. Mega Man was standing perched on a corner of the roof, his Mega Buster aimed carefully. He looked to Link, smirked, and gave him a 'thumbs-up'.

Link turned down the village street while Mega Man sniped two more moblins from a distance. One of the monsters uttered a guttural noise to the air, something like a howl and a repeated call. The monster pulled a pink crystal out of his armor and held it up to the sky. Uttering the magic words, the crystal exploded and showered Kakariko with a sparkling red rain. The moblins absorbed the powder of the crystal and continued fighting. Mega Man tried to fire his plasma cannon again, but met with the same results as last time - the shots impacted harmlessly on their armor.

"So it's this game again?" Mega Man commented. Several moblins clamored around the corner of the building Mega Man was looking down on them from, bashing the sides the building and shaking it's support structure to tumble him down. "Fine," he said. He tucked into a ball and flipped end over end down into the group, uncoiling and kicking the center one in the head. Landing on his face he flipped onto his hands and spun around, kicking his feet out into the monster's faces. The two beasts recoiled back into the wall as Mega Man turned upright and straight punched both of them in the face. They fell over unconscious.

"Some people learn from their mistakes," he commented.

Meanwhile, Link engaged in battle with several moblins at the same time, slashing his sword up and down. He broke one of their spears in two, and raised his shield just as another came hurling at him. The polearm's thrust knocked Link off balance as he tumbled into another's waiting grasp. Skillfully, he turned into his inertia, spinning around the moblin's body to his back and stabbing his sword into his armor, reducing him to vapor.

He pulled out his magic boomerang and chucked it at a moblin coming towards him. The boomerang flew forward as Link crossed diagonally, getting as much distance between him and a string of moblins as possible. The weapon banged against the monster's head, stunning him, and began flying back to Link. As the line of monsters starting gunning for him, the boomerang knocked each one of them in the head, coming towards Link like a skipping stone. Each of the monsters swayed and grasped their heads in pain as Link caught the curved stick.

Link shuffled his feet and held his sword out in front of him. Barreling forward with a scream he took off like a shot, ramming into the moblins and making them disappear with the point of his sword, like a human spear. The beasts vanished one by one, and Link skidded to a stop at the end of his run.

The moblins were now beginning to see the tides were turning. The two warriors used their wits to outclass the vile monsters. The palace guards saw the amazing battles of Link and Mega Man and became inspired themselves, fighting with renewed vigor. The fiends began falling back, taking the defensive stance, instead of the offensive.

One of the moblins grunted a call that sounded throughout the village. Mega Man and Link knew what it was even before they took action - a retreat.

Mega Man pummeled one of the monsters, throwing him across the street, into another running group of them, heading for the forest. Or so he thought, until he saw them jumping in a well. Possibly another Zora waterway, Mega Man thought, but it seemed unusual when the forest was close by. Another group of them moved into a nearby house on a hill. He started wandering through the square paths of the village until he found Link.

"The moblins are retreating, but they're going into the wells and houses," he said.

"A hidden lair," Link said resolutely. "Let's go." He and Mega Man headed into the direction of the house. Link stopped at one of the wandering palace guards, running after the moblins as well. "Take care of the village, we'll go after the moblins," he shouted as he flew past.

They climbed up the hill and entered the house. It was constructed with metal, so it was not burned or tumbled down. It was empty, though, and ransacked. The tables and chairs were overturned. The cauldron on the fire had been spilled on the floor, leaving some sort of strong-smelling vegetable stew to rot. No sign of moblins though.

"The basement?" Mega Man said.

Link pulled up an obvious cellar door and the two headed down the stairs. The underground room was also made of metal, unusual for a house in this day and age. Various barrels and boxes were stored in the room, cluttering up the walls. No moblins here either.

"Damn, where'd they go?" Link said. "They didn't just disappear."

Mega Man scanned the room with his optical sensors, particularly x-ray. There was a dark blotch against one wall. "There," Mega Man pointed. "Should be some sort of entrance there." He approached the wall and began feeling around it for a seam or crack to push in. Link meanwhile was checking the barrels in the room. One that was placed a little away from the others seemed suspicious. He pushed it back against the other barrels and the door opened, much to Mega Man's surprise.

"How'd you do that?" he asked.

"Simple logic. Pushing the barrel opens the door," he smiled.

The two treaded into the door and found themselves in a long tunnel, lined with hieroglyphics and pictures. "It's a dungeon," Link said. "Very dangerous. Watch yourself." Link was worried about Mega Man's ability in a temple. He didn't have the know-how he took for granted of how these things worked. A mechanical man might take a straightforward approach and fall to his death.

"Up ahead," Mega Man pointed out, using his keen eyesight. "Moblins are running down there."

Link took out his sword. "After them."

The two made tracks down the corridor, sloping downward deeper into the underground. The portly moblins were easily overtaken, as they huffed down, looking behind them at the warriors pursuing.

Just as they reached the exit of the corridor, Link pulled out his ice rod and fired a streaming blast of icy energy. One of the monsters froze in his tracks, encased in ice. Mega Man jump-kicked him in the torso, shattering him into a million pieces. The other Link aimed at with his bow and fired two shots at the same time. The arrows hit their marks true and the fiend disappeared in a blast of magic energy.

"We got the tools, we got the talent," he said.

"More." Mega Man pointed at other moblins escaping. There was a large uncrossable canal in the middle of the room, flowing from and into two sewer grates. A large crate which the monsters had been using to cross floated in the middle of the canal. One of the moblins lagging behind saw the heroes at the other end of the room, picked up his spear and tossed it through the crate. The polearm penetrated and the crate began sinking to the bottom, bubbling up air.

The walls were too steep to climb out from if they jumped in. Thinking quickly, Mega Man jumped into the water, sinking faster than the box. Making short hops he slid under it as its shadowed form fell on him, and held it up. With the buoyancy of the water, the container weighed practically nothing as he sprang up from the ground.

Link saw the crate rise back up. Gathering a running start he leapt into the air and landed squarely on the box as Mega Man reached the apex of his climb. Rapidly he coursed a few steps across it and jumped to the other side of the canal, catching the edge of the wall and pulling himself up the rest of the way.

Mega Man shoved the crate away, once he had seen Link's wavering form climb up the wall from his underwater vantage point. He bounced off the canal floor and burst out of the surface. Not enough to grab the wall though. Before he began sinking, Link reached out and grabbed Mega Man's arm. Using all his strength he pulled him up enough so he could grab the ledge with one hand, groaning all the time. Mega Man hoisted himself up and climbed to solid ground.

"Whew," Link uttered. "Almost threw out my arm."

"Nice job," Mega Man said. "Let's keep going."

The two kept on the same path the moblins took, through a darkened doorway. A wall blocked off the next room they found, one that didn't reach the stone ceiling.

"It appears to be some sort of maze," Mega Man said. "My x-ray's not penetrating the stone, must be lead in the rocks."

They looked left and right, the two paths they could go. Link said, "Let's try left first."

They began running through the various corridors and paths that met up with them. Few enemies were hiding around corners, all were easily dispatched with Mega Man's long range weapon. They came across many dead ends and alternate paths which also led to dead ends. Mega Man kept a constantly updating picture in his head of the paths they had taken and those they skipped, so they never repeated paths, taking a systematic approach to exploration. Still they were doing a lot of back tracking and crossing through paths they had been through before.

"Are we going around in circles?" Link asked

"No, I'm sure of it, we're still exploring the maze."

"This seems to go on forever. It seems like they're changing the maze on us."

"We're still on the same path. Nothing's run into each other. Nothing's in error with the map," Mega Man reassured them. If the maze was changing, some data would have come into conflict.

They continued down the corridors and hallways, losing more and more time. This was truly an excellent hindrance to those trying to find the center of the moblin's hideout. Obviously, the moblins knew what route they had to take. But the maze was so vast, a wandering human would easily be trapped in this labyrinth.

As they turned a corner they reached yet another dead end. Link started to turn around again, but Mega Man stopped him.

"Wait, there's something different about this. The wall is slightly discolored."

Link turned back around and saw that he was right. This wall was part of the large cavern, not one of the maze walls. It wasn't apparent to someone not paying attention, but the rock was a slightly grayer shade of brown than the rest of it. The staining only reached as far as the height of the maze, not above to the domed cavern ceiling. Mega Man and Link moved closer to it.

"There's nothing else very unusual about the wall," Mega Man said.

"Here," Link pointed down to a small corner near the floor. There was an etching carved into the stone of dots with straight horizontal lines running through them. The dots were placed along the different lines in an indiscernible pattern.

"What is it? It must mean something," Link said.

Mega Man analyzed the picture as well as he could. Link touched the carving as if he could receive some sort of message from contact. The picture could have been some sort of writing, something like Hylian script, but he had no idea how anyone could make any sense out of a language with dots and lines.

"I've got it," Mega Man declared. "It's music. It's written music. A, D, B, A, D, B."

Link looked at Mega Man and blinked.

"I guess you might read music differently here. It's three notes repeated. Try playing it."

Link pulled out his flute from his backpack and looked at the notes. Clumsily trying to find the right finger-holes, Mega Man guided him, telling him which notes were which. Link then played what he saw on the wall. The brief song sounded firm, but a little forlorn, almost mystical.

Link heard a telepathic voice in his head. You have proven your connection to the royal family of Hyrule. Enter.

The wall began to rumble at the markings, and shifted upwards. It revealed a hidden passage into a room left forgotten in time, dark and foreboding, lighted by one standing torch near the door. Other unlit ones were placed sporadically throughout the room against the wall. In fact, each torch was near a tapestry and in front of each tapestry was a lengthy tome resting on a podium. The two walked in, not thinking that this could be the way into the moblin's lair. They hadn't the capability to speak, let alone create a musical passcode, so this was some sort of secret room, probably unknown to the moblins as well.

Link approached the wall lighted by the torch, and the illuminated picture was a painted outline of a great castle with rays of light shining from it, along with a village down below with cows, houses, and farm equipment. Below this was a silver tile with a downward triangle on it. Link touched it.

"Hello. If you are hearing this message, then you must be the Hero of Destiny."

"It's a telepathic tile," Link said.

"No," Mega Man said as he came up to Link. "I hear it too. It's some sort of recording."

The disembodied voice continued. "This also means you've found the last legacy I can leave behind. The gift of truth. These tomes describe the adventures of the hero and the carriers of his legacy. The land you exist on currently was once called Hyrule, who knows what it may be now. It existed as a beacon of all that was light and good until a dark man found the Triforce of Power and his evil covered the land. The prophecies of old came true - a hero emerged from the unlikeliest of places and sealed the evil in the Sacred Realm. However in order to defeat the evil, the hero needed to manipulate the threads of time, and this created a disruption in the flow of prophecy, a flaw in the strands. As a result of the disruption and the power of the Triforce, the dark man was allowed to exist beyond the span of normal time and space, perhaps being able to exist forever. There was little that could be done about it except this: two people chosen by fate would take up the opposing roles of the Triforce. These people would be known by their names and the crests of the Triforce on their hands. Every time the force of evil would rise again to unbalance the furies, the legendary hero would appear and return the world to order. The dark man, the keeper of the Triforce of Power, was known as Ganondorf. The keeper of the Triforce of Wisdom, whose blood would always be part of the royal line, was known as Zelda. And the keeper of the Triforce of Courage was..."

The torch in front of the picture blinked out and the one across the way sparked to life, illuminating the next picture. The two shuffled over and found a picture of a young boy clad in green, one that looked exactly like...

"You, Link."

Link felt a strange sensation on the back of his left hand and held it up. The symbol of the Triforce glowed dimly with the bottom left triangle shining over the others.

Next Chapter: The Triforce of Unity