((CAN: I think someone up there needs to improve on the celestial scaffolding, because I think Heaven just fell to Earth in the form of screenshots of the Zelda E3 footage. dies a happy, happy girl It's supposed to be BLOODY! And DARK! And MATURE! I suppose Link finally told ol' Shig that he's through with the kiddy stuff. But seriously… Have you SEEN the screenshots/footage? Every nanosecond of it is pure bliss… TuT))

((OK, back to normal. Whatever that is. Look, guys, I'm so uber-sorry it's been so long since I last updated. I had serious writer's block that not even six-hour sessions of OoT could cure. You can thank the new Zelda game stuff if you wanted me back to badly. ;P)

Spinning Slash, Chapter 16: Arachnophobia

Posie had no idea when, exactly, or where, she'd fallen asleep. Nor had she any recollection, once she'd woken up, on how exactly she'd managed to do such and still maintain the pace that kept her in step with the others of her group. But, she supposed, the task of placing one foot in front of the other had become so autonomous, and her weariness so overwhelming, that her mind had slotted walking into a lower level of concentration and she fell into a kind of trance. Not surprisingly, she found herself jilted into a dream where she was pacing through the corridors of a castle whose twists and curves were identical to that of the interior of the Moblin fortress her physical self tread, though her dreamscape was abound with cheer and mystery begging of curiosity, not gloom and enigma crying to be feared.

It was a palace made of pure purple crystal, whose workings and designs were so fine and yet so erratic that it didn't seem like anyone, even one of the Goddesses, could simply have carved it. It was as if a tremendous block of amethyst had formed within the earth that way, and slowly been eroded to the surface until it stood in its present-day position. Even the veins of silver, gold, and other precious metals threading through the crystal in intricate patterns had an incredible sense of wholeness; of a part in a being who had always been as it was and always would be. Though beautiful, Posie found it trying on her eyes, since, except for the occasional plays of the omnipresent light, rarely was it easy to distinguish the castle's decorations from their landscape.

Where am I, and why did I come here? she asked herself, knowing that surely she had some purpose in being in this brilliant violet façade, though it was choosing to remain veiled in a part of her subconscious so deep even dreams could not touch it. And how she knew she was dreaming; well; there was another thing she was unsure about. So many questions, and no one to ask—

Well, perhaps not no one. All through her gradual exploration of these bejeweled halls, she had been accompanied by two other children. Certainly, judging by their faces and their height, they had to be older than her. Perhaps nine or ten, she guessed on them. The little boy bore a soft, silent smile that belied nothing of his motives or his identity, with facial features and a great mop of untamable hair that reminded her of her dear friend, Atahl the fairy. The girl beside him had peaks of hair hewn from pearls, skin only barely touched with peach and gentle pink eyes that marked her as either an albino or a Sheikah. She moved with such stillness—even her arms were held in a prayer-like pose in front of her—that she appeared to me merely gliding across the slick purple floor. They had said nothing and had never once turned to look at her, as she had with them.

They did, however, seem to know she was there. If she suddenly stood still, they would as well, and not pick up their feet again until she picked up hers. She had not thought to ask them for help, however, because she had the slightly sickening suspicion that they were only following her. If she didn't know their destination, and they were just playing follow-the-leader behind her, how would they have any sort of clue?

Posie sighed a little to herself. Figuring that it was best to simply follow the straight turn of the corridors here and hope that they lead to the exit, she mumbled to no one in particular: "I wish I knew where we were going."

Much to her surprise, the children behind her answered obligingly. However, it was in the same airy, just-talking-to-myself-don't-mind-me voice she had mused her question with. "Oh, we are going to get Posie's warning, yes, aren't we?" said the girl, in a gentle voice that was high but without a trill.

"Yes, we are going to see our Lady and get the warning from her," the boy replied. His voice was lightly nasal, but the degree was no less than to that of a mild cold.

"Yes, that Posie mustn't go to Ipanajou, oh no," the girl chirped. "That it would be very, very dangerous, yes."

"No, not to Ipanajou," the boy said. "Yes, she must turn back and go home, yes? Back to her mummy with her daddy close behind her."

"She doesn't know what evil, evil things are there, no."

"No, no she doesn't! Yes, there are most horrible things there."

Posie was almost sorry she asked. She rolled her eyes and tried to discreetly put her hands to her ears. Though at first, the two older children had a way of talking which was droll and endearing, but after a few—very few—sentences became irritating in the way it was laced with superfluous affirmatives and negatives. Their banter had proved mildly helpful, though—she knew now, at least, that they were looking for the Lady of her companions. Who, as the girl had said, was going to give her a warning of some sort—but the girl had so quickly elaborated on its nature that she needn't now bother. So, she was to stay away from Ipanajou, was she? Turn around and go home. Well, those two ridiculous little twits! That was what she had wanted to do earlier! But, of course, she couldn't. So, this warning she was going to be given was completely useless, as it made no statements of fact or advisories that hadn't already been considered.

But… she couldn't help wondering… what sort of horrible things were waiting on the mountain? She removed her palms from the side of her head. Evidently, however, she'd missed it, for the girl was now saying, in her roundabout way, "Oh, of course, yes, if she were to be so silly as to go up Ipanajou, yes, and get to the Scholar's Tomb, she would be even sillier to approach the door."

A door, huh? She hadn't heard anything about any doors inside the Scholar's Tomb, but she supposed it made sense. Most true tombs possessed multiple chambers, and having doors between them was a logical enough thing. She deftly sidestepped to avoid smashing into a large crystal potted plant that seemed to have suddenly appeared out of nowhere, stepping into a little rectangle of light falling on the floor from one of the thin, slitted windows.

Posie stopped for a moment inside that rectangle. This light fell on her arms and legs in a way that light in the real world didn't—it was almost like a liquid, warm and creamy like the lather of a fine soap. It lit the highlights in her hair on fire, and regardless of its original tint, it turned all of the colors on her body into yellows varying in brightness. She looked up out of the window, where a brilliant golden sky—

Golden sky! Golden sky? Golden sky.

Instantly into her head came flooding memories of a nursery rhyme familiar to all Hylean children, a one-verse ditty that she could never remember not knowing.

"Deep inside the Sacred Realm

The sky shines gold not blue

There the Triforce's might

Makes mortal dreams come true."

The Sacred Realm. Deep within the Sacred Realm shone a golden sky. And oh, the wonders she had been told awaited there, and did it not make sense that this wonderful castle, made of a solid stone yet seemingly never having met a chisel, was one of them? The Sacred Realm. It was said that that was where the dead were dearly departed to, yet she was, as far as she knew, still alive. But the children behind her… Posie gulped, wondering what horrible fate those two had met so young in life. Perhaps… they, too, had gone to the Scholar's Tomb, and been taken by the wraiths there. Why they escorted her to receive her "warning" about that place from their Lady.

And, given her location, that Lady could only be—

"Hey, Mom, I think Posie's fallen asleep," Elaine said to Naomi as their feet wore on mercilessly along the sludge-encrusted walls of the Moblin Fortress.

Naomi looked quizzically past her daughter at the little girl nodding along beside her. Posie's eyes did not seem to be all the way open, but her little boot soles kept up in a tiny slap-slap rhythm on the cold stones beneath them. Somnambulists Naomi were no stranger to, but falling asleep while actually in the process of walking was something she'd certainly never heard of. She watched interestedly as Posie swerved to avoid an imagined object—Well, no sense in not being careful while walking with your eyes closed, she thought to herself. Posie asked aloud, in a quite conscious way, where the lot of them were headed. Link replied that they were, of course, trying to find the exit, but Posie didn't seem to care about his response—in fact, after a few seconds, Posie put her fingers in her ears. Her hands moved in an agitated manner, but her face was a perfect, sleepy blank.

Elaine tapped Posie on the shoulder. "Pose…?"

"Mmmfg," Posie replied.

"Posie…?"

"Glnd Skke?" the girl mumbled deafly. She pulled her fingers out of her ears and stopped, turning her head to stare reverently at a perfectly blank piece of wall.

"Oooookay," Elaine said, give Posie a peculiar look. "Uh, perhaps you didn't hear me—which I'm guessing you didn't since your fingers were in yours ears—are you awake? Asleep? Half and half? What!?"

"Dpn sde th' Scrd Rlm… Skke shns glnd n' blu…"

"Sounds kinda like she's reciting that old nursery rhyme about the Sacred Realm," Naomi advised. "Maybe she's dreaming about the Triforce or something, if she's really asleep. Try saying something; I dunno, worldly. Something you probably wouldn't hear from the Goddesses or whatever."

Elaine returned a blank look, totally unsure of how one would go about such a thing. How exactly did you phrase a sentence so that it was definitively secular? She thought something scientific-sounding would be good, as one did not usually lump faith and physics into the same category. Unfortunately, science was one of her worse topics, and all she could remember at the moment were a few factoids about the average walking speed of a human, which was something like 3.5 miles an hour.

Eerily in sync with her train of thought, Link's incoherent grumbling to himself pitched to a fast tempo and more audible volume. "…And if Moblins run at about 20 miles and hour, and we were carried along by them for, Goddesses, how long was it, Navi? I think I fell asleep again after that and I can't remember!"

"I think it was around 3 hours… I watched the stars and moon and tracked them across the sky. We all settled down at about 22:00, the Moblins came at roughly 1:00… Three hours to 4:00, and another that we've spent in here to make it about 5:00! The sun'll be up shortly, and if my calculations are correct…"

"Then," he snapped his fingers, "those ugly brutes actually lent us a hand by shaving the distance we'd have to cover by about 60 miles!"

"Huuurrh!" Posie's eyes suddenly snapped open with a nearly-perceptible cracking noise, head whipping about in a seriously displaced fashion. "Huh? Hey, what's going on? How'd I get back here?"

Elaine breathed a sigh a relief that she would not be saddled with the task of jarring Posie from her meandering slumber, and laughed at th absurdity of it all. "I think you woke up," she teased gently.

"But… but I was in a Goddess's castle! And I was being followed… by… two… other… I was dreaming, wasn't I?"

"As far as we can tell," Naomi shrugged. "It was weird. You didn't stop walking, even though you had you eyes closed and sort of nodded off. You kept in such perfect step with us we really didn't notice anything until Elaine had a closer look and saw that you weren't exactly with us. Now, what were you saying about a Goddess's castle…?"

"Oh! Well, I was walking along inside of it, and everything was purple. It was made of some sort of crystal, but it was all too… perfect to have been carved. It looked kinda like it grew like that. And there were two funny kids walking behind me, and when I asked them a question, they started rambling on to each other about going to see their Lady, who was going to warn me not to go to Ipanajou. And then I saw a window, and the sky outside was gold! And I remembered that old rhyme, about the sky being golden in the Sacred Realm, and I figured out I must be there! And that the Lady those kids were talking about had to have been a Goddess! Who else'd have a castle like that?"

"I don't know of any Goddess that likes purple quite that much," Naomi replied. "I know Din is associated with red, Nayru with blue, and Farore with green, but purple? That's a new one."

"Maybe Din and Nayru were sharing it," Elaine offered. When Posie smirked at her, she defended herself with, "Hey, who knows? It's not really any of our business what they get up to up there." Both of them subsequently had giggle fits.

"…OK, OK, north-westerly; I give in," Link jabbed as he prodded fingers at Navi. "Does it really matter that much? North is north. It's all one direction in the end."

"No, it's not," Navi corrected. "It's not due north, which was our original direction. If we veered off to the left or the right, we'd have to contend with a slightly different path than if we'd go straight or went the other direction. As it was, if those Moblins had taken us as the Guay flies, we'd actually had saved something more like 70 miles, but they didn't. They took us to the left." Mentally, Link could feel something akin to a psychic nyeh nyeh tacked on to the end of the last few words.

"Well, Miss Walking Compass, what should we do about this grievous disaster of being 10 or so miles off course? The map gets really fuzzy 'round these parts, you know. All it shows is a lot of big rocks and empty space."

"Well, we're starting to get into more mountainous territory, silly!" Navi said. "What do you expect?"

"More precise information out of you," he half-heartedly snarled.

Naomi took a few loping strides backwards, sliding into a comfortable position to read over Link's shoulder while Posie and Elaine lead the way. Not like it really mattered much who was in front, since the Moblin's Fortress was remarkably devoid of variation—it was one continuous spiral of architecture; there were angles here and there along one fairly simple stone walkway that sloped gently downward. The cells they passed were all empty and the metal brackets on the wall had torches only sporadically enough to keep the fort from falling into total darkness, though outside the sky was beginning to progress from Midnight's black to the navy of a slowly-approaching sun.

"It looks to me like there's a cataract over here and a river that cut some kind of canyon," Naomi suggested, jabbing her finger at a trail of thin blue ink across the map. "It's not far from here, and everywhere else is all rocky. I think the fastest way would be to follow the river downstream and pull out right about here—"—she indicated a place on the map where the ground was labeled as falling into a shallow, quarry-like bowl—"—and go across this pit here. That should put us right back on the trail."

"No WAY am I going near another river," Elaine protested, overhearing. "I've nearly drowned enough times on this little journey."

Naomi's faced twisted up a little; she didn't want to take a path that would make her daughter ill at ease. "Well, we could climb around this way, but the going would be exceedingly difficult. If the map speaks true, it's all boulders and little pebbles. How d'you think you'd climb over all that while missing a shoe?"

Elaine looked at her little unshod foot, the white wool of her sock all smeared over with mud, slime, and prickly cockleburs from the less savory plants she'd had to trod through and upon. She'd paced on nearly effortlessly without it; why did it matter now? Her foot was uninjured, and felt no more tired than the one with proper protection. "I don't need it. I've survived those big tree roots back in the forest, and the cold ground in the Fountain Cavern, and even the prickly grass fields we were sleeping in—a few rocks aren't gonna hurt now."

"Well, if you'd rather go that way than down the river, I'd still feel better if you had a proper shoe or something."

"Hey, what about me and Daddy? Don't we get a say in this?"

"And what about my needs and wants?" asked Navi. "What about what's convenient for me?"

"Calm down, everyone," Link broke in, "everybody can voice their opinions about which way we're gonna go. Now, it seems to me like the only two ways to really get back on track are by going over through the boulders or down the river, so we'll limit our choices to those two. Let's go about this democratically, people," and he came to a standstill in the hall. Everyone else automatically halted up as well, and gathered in close to be a part of the convention. "Now. Naomi, you go first. Tell us which way you'd rather go and your reasons."

"They both seem pretty good to me," she said. "I think the river would be faster. We could just walk along its edge, or we could build a raft and sail down it. However, I don't know what the water would be like, so that may not be wise." Pausing to collect her thoughts and to give Elaine a quick look to quell her anxious eyes, Naomi went on: "However, Elaine clearly doesn't like being around all that running water, and for her sake, I'd be willing to take the rocks. However, I'd feel guilty watching her clamber over them without real covering on her feet."

Seeing that she was finished, Link gestured to Elaine. "Elaine? What are your thoughts?"

"Rocks schmocks," she replied. "My foot can take it. Just keep me away from the river, that's all I ask!"

"Posie?"

"I do think the river would be the quicker way. I hate climbing. I'm so—"—she shuddered at having to be the one to say it about herself—"—small that it's awful for me. But it's not hard for someone to carry me or give me a boost up, and I'd try my hardest to get over those boulders. I'll make sacrifices since Elaine is so afraid of water and drowning. 'All for one, and one for all.' I've heard that a lot, but I don't know where it's from. It makes a lot of sense though, if you're on a team, and I'll do it!"

"You next, Navi," Link said, pointing him thumb backwards at the fairy.

"Firstly, it's from The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas. Senior. Not to be confused with his son, Alexander Dumas Jr., who wrote The Count Of Monte Cristo. But to more pressing matters. I can fly, so it doesn't matter to me a whit."

"But you made all that fuss about not being able to have a chance to say anything!" Posie accused.

"Yeah, well, even if my opinion is indifference, it still matters, doesn't it?" Navi asked philosophically of Posie. "Even if it counts toward nothing, at least it has been said and people know what I think."

Posie had no good reply.

"I suppose that leaves me last, then," Link announced himself. He cleared his throat. "Personally, I hate rock climbing, too. The head of my Hookshot can't get a hold in stone, and without it anchored into something ahead or behind of me… well, I get a touch of vertigo. I won't deny it! But we're not going high up, it doesn't look like, just sort of… riding the waves of a sea frozen in stone. If I had it my way, we'd be browsing up and down the riverbank, but it looks like I'd be outvoted. So, come on, guys, let's go tackle a couple of rocks…"

Tuesday morning. The stars were slowly melting away into the growing indigo brightness that was sweetening the sky. The moon lingered, however, looking as if it planned to stick until its age-old mortal enemy, the sun, threatened it out of its perch in its entirety. Only then would it reluctantly slink back, becoming little more than a milk-white blotch on the sky until it finally dipped out of sight around noon. Until then, it haughtily shed its beams over the plains of Hyrule, night's monarch reigning over all the creatures that lived and breathed the nocturnal air.

One of the moon's most loyal denizens was the owl. Although not a particularly wise bird, as many caricatures liked to envision them, it was painfully faithful, skittering towards its nests just as the sun came over the cusp of the mountains. Silently drifting on a warm updraft was one of their sort, his pinions spread wide as he thrilled at the feel of the wind through his feathers. He might have been any other owl looking to find one last field mouse for his dinner before retreating back to bed, were it not for the fact that he was steering clear of the forest where his home ought to have been. Sol was fast approaching the finish line in his race for the horizon, and he paid it no heed. He was no normal, simple-minded bird, and he flew with a purpose beyond that of hunting for his sustenance. That, and he was positively huge—larger than a barn owl, larger than a snowy owl, larger than an eagle owl, larger than even an eagle itself! If he stood, he was tall as a full-grown man, and his wings stretched out to at least a magnificent ten feet each. His talons were strong and muscled; he could carry a large package or small child with no difficulty. Hyleans called him Kaepora Gaebora, and unlike true owls, he was very wise indeed.

He sailed over the great steppes of the land effortlessly. He would dip his wings together, and suddenly, he sailed over Lon Lon Ranch, where already its three residents were beginning to stir. Life began early in ranches. He would bank to the left a little, and find himself circling around Kakariko Village. He peeked in particular into the house of one Impa, Sage of Shadow, but the curtains were drawn. Even if he could look inside, the house itself was under the arrest of the time-speeding spell known as Tima Mœditori. Everything inside would appear as if frozen in the instant the chant began to work its magic, and such picture would not break until the spell had run its course. Being able to at least say he was free of the guilt of not having checked, Kaepora pulled upward, and glided serenely over toward the Castle Town. For humans, the distance between the two was small enough that it was but a scant forty-five minute walk. For him, he could breeze the distance between them in five minutes flat.

He sailed low over the multicolored rooftops of the town's shops and houses, peering down into chimney stacks and occasionally seeing the glow of a fire left to burn through the smoke. He skimmed low over one house in particular, and his fine nose picked up the smell of hot coffee and the polish many guards used on their armor. That was the house of Randy Parkerstine, though he didn't know such. For the past few nights, Randy had gotten little sleep in worrying about his daughter, and tried to console himself with copious amounts of caffeine and by tending to his armor. But what news Kaepora bore weighed in him as much more than a gentle, nagging concern.

The giant owl made for the tall-roofed Temple of Time, high windows reflecting the glint of the few persevering stars and the adamant moon. One of them was forever held open as a courtesy to Kaepora, who was a frequent visitor to this temple. Because he was so often seen beside it, and because of his great wisdom, it had been rumored once that he was one of the great Sages reincarnated. Preposterous, of course. But he knew Rauru. And he must speak with Rauru. He fluttered through the perpetually ajar window, claws clattering on tile as he landed on the floor. Much more gracefully than Posie had done some days before. Nipping the corner of one of the pews for luck, he ran as fast as his bird's feet would allow him toward the cloisters. As high as the roof of the Temple was, it was too dangerous to fly inside.

He skipped down the long hallways at a sprightly pace, though his face was stormed with a severe expression that was anything but nimble. Fear motivated his urgency. His talons clacked against the bare tiles of the empty cloister. A door, a door… where was Rauru's door? He could remember the look of it, but not its placement! In the wood was engraved a picture of the Medallion of Light… he ardently scanned the walls for any sign of that inverted Triforce.

Ah, now, there it was. He had been skipping so fast that he had nearly missed the thing. Delicately, so as not to scratch the finely polished paneling, Kaepora lifted a claw and rapped trice on the door. He also hooted, a single low and saddened note. It was the trill of an emergency that required Rauru's immediate attention. Kaepora knew that his friend liked to wake early, and only hoped that something, anything before dawn was part of his usual regimen.

"Rauru…" he cooed softly, in a slightly desperate attempt to make sure the Sage was awake.

"Blast it, Kaepora," a slightly grouchy voice groaned from behind the door. The owl's sharp ears could hear the creaking of the priest's cot as he tried to extricate himself from its folds. The giant owl sighed with a very temporary relief at this fact. "Good old Rauru," he mumbled, while Rauru grumbled, "Hold your horses! I'm coming to get it, but I'm tired and old. Give me a moment. Even if it is an emergency."

The door swung ajar. The dishelved Light Sage adjusted his flannel night robe as he peered down at the owl, his eyes saying enough about his state of mind. "Don't use any words longer than seven letters, condense ideas to a few choice sentences, and do hurry it up a bit. I need my beauty sleep!" Vocally, Rauru's crinkled voice conveyed the same ideas in a more polite fashion: "Whatever it is, my old friend, please say it with brevity. I'd like to return to my dreams—they were quite pleasant. Much to the contrast of all the nonsense Impa has been spouting lately."

"Hmm?" In that unnerving owl way of his, Kaepora turned his head around a full 360 degrees to give an inquisitive look. "What sort of 'nonsense' would that be? From my experience, whatever Impa says is typically true. I heard a few of my nightingale friends talking about the Sage of Forest, and how she was mumbling to herself about a meeting of the Sages held yesterday afternoon and Impa's current state. Despite such a fact, I doubt she'd be one to let hormones cloud her judgement, regardless of what she's judging on."

"Ahh, yes, but it's not so simple with time around, Kaepora," Rauru sniffed through his mustache. "Even if she's telling the truth, the rest of us Sages are prepared to lie through our teeth about it and deny it vehemently as possible… the last thing we'd want is for it to be true."

"Even if the wisest man says something is false, that does not make it so," Kaepora intelligently nodded.

"Indeed, no," Rauru agreed, against his will. He offered an arm to the gigantic bird, who was light of body and spirit despite his size. Like an obedient falconer's pet, the owl climbed aboard and let himself be hefted on the man's limb, clutching delicately so as not to cause him discomfort. And even though he was aged, Rauru could still heft Kaepora up and bear him to the writing desk that crouched in one corner of Rauru's room.

Kaepora settled himself comfortably near a small pile of books, and puffed up his feathers for warmth in the small stone alcove. "Since I fear that Impa's purported 'nonsense' is at the heart of the matters I have uncovered, it would probably do you best to explain it to me. Even though it is usually I who gives the advice around here!"

"You use that word, 'nonsense,' more effectively than a sword against me," Rauru clucked. "I wish I had not said it. Fine, very well—Shadow Haven was attacked by Twinrova, and they stole the Book of Dusk from the last Sheikah. Impa believes the two of them may be plotting to revive Ganon."

Kaepora took this exceedingly well, though he dreaded the prospect. It was merely the case that he was not surprised. "That explains a great deal, then. The things I have seen, both at the hands of man and in the grip of destiny."

"Don't talk in riddles," Rauru chided. "Tell me straight what is you've seen."

"Be patient, old buddy," Kaepora's beak clacked at the Sage. "On the first bit of news, of what the Hyleans have done to themselves… ahem. I was passing by Hyrule Castle yesterday and decided to have a chat with my friends Zelda and Mercutioe. I found them, and all their servants, to be very… odd."

"The King and his daughter have always teased the boarder between 'eccentric' and 'genius;' this is hardly news. Unless you means to say they were more peculiar than usual."

"About an IQ of 70 unusual," Kaepora grimly replied. "Everyone in the castle was acting… well, stupid, to put it bluntly. Like children, they seemed to be incapable of properly comprehending anything but the simplest of matters! They would giggle at the slightest little thing, talking in an aloof manner and babyish language."

"Oh." Rauru nervously put his fingers to his mouth and began to chew his nails. "Oh. My. That's… highly abnormal. Especially when it is, after all, Zelda that we talking about. She is one of the most brilliant minds in all Hyrule; I remember that she was very precocious as a child. And she was quite normal this past Friday; I visited her! She was a little annoyed at her friend Link, who seemed to be wrestling with some childish problem of his own, but aside from that…"

"I wondered about that," Kaepora said half to himself. "Apparently this change is very abrupt, then. Though, having been told of Impa's suspicions about Ganon… I do wonder…"

"Don't keep it to yourself," the Sage clamored. "Any piece of information you might have could be vital if what Impa says is true!"

"Perhaps," the old owl hooted, "Zelda has prophesied this second coming of Ganon and so sent away her Piece of Wisdom, back to the Sacred Realm from whence it came in order to protect it. Now, the pieces have not been taken from their holders since they were bestowed upon them, but suppose, just suppose… the Piece had gotten the trait of that person and all close to them wrapped up in it, and by sending away the piece it took that trait with it? Since this has never happened before, it's entirely possible, and even Zelda could not have foreseen such a thing… don't you think, Rauru?"

"It makes a terrible sense," the Sage of Light shuddered. "I don't wonder that you've hit the nail on the head!"

Kaepora sighed, feeling deep in his stomachs that he had theorized correctly. And with Zelda in the state she was, there was no way to ask her…! Darkness dawned, indeed. "In that case, something must be done to protect the Princess. As per usual, she will be in grave danger from Ganon's marauding hoards, and seeing as I have recently finished sending off a few parcels that I was asked to deliver for him, I shall go and ask Link to rise to the mantle of her champion again."

"No use," Rauru sighed while stroking his mustache. "He's gone. Off gallivanting around Hyrule, freeing Gerudos from imprisonment by their peers."

"Hrm?"

"Well, apparently a Gerudo managed to escape from the Fortress, and Link was somehow at fault. Or, so I heard some of the other Sages gossiping at the meeting yesterday. He had his daughter with him; whatsername, I can never remember…"

"Really? He did? Astounding. I can't remember her name either, it's Violet or Petunia or Rose or some other such flower, but… that's reckless even for our buddy Link. The girl's barely more than five years old… Some would even go so far as to say she's still a toddler."

"But if Saria's word is to be taken at face value, she's about as precocious as Zelda was," Rauru somehow managed to recall. "Sharply intelligent, and with a greater understanding of morals and logic than any of her peers. Not to mention that, in emulating her blessed father in his handling of swords, she has managed to steady her arm motions and doesn't usually wobble all over the place like other children. Physically and mentally advanced! Or so our Forest Sage says."

"From what I've seen, it's not a lie," Kaepora confirmed. "Of course, I've never seen her up close or listened very carefully to what she sounds like from afar, but I've heard her use words like 'abstract' and 'pristine' and 'foliage.' She's either very smart or has some very lucky nonsense vocabulary."

Rauru massaged his chin in meditation, the heaviness in his heart weighing down his breathing. His old blue eyes were solidly fixated on the slit of a window above Kaepora's head, where they drank in the slowly expanding dawn of bloodstained gold.

But for "their buddy" Link, his "precocious" daughter, the "imprisoned" Gerudo, and unmentioned crew of Elaine and Navi, it was a dawn like a ripe summer peach, swelling with the nectar of life. They could start to smell the smooth rocks outside the fortress; earthy and comforting. Their despair at having lost the Ocarina of Time was being replaced by the excitement of the rising sun, and a bit by the sleepiness that came from having not gotten much rest the night before. Link was hungry, as well, since he had lost his dinner in the throws of a phantom pain.

"Is there gonna be anywhere to sleep out on those rocks?" Elaine loudly queried and lodged this complaint at once. "I want a nap. I didn't get to sleep long last night…"

"I got to sleep a little, but I'm still tired," Posie said as she rubbed her eyes. Lack of rejuvenating rest had eroded her usually eloquent nature. "I… wanna… go… to… bed…"

"We all want a little shut-eye—"—his words were punctuated by a yawn as if to emphasize a point—"—kid, but it wouldn't be wise to go nodding off with Moblins about. They'd probably go throwing us back in the jails."

"…Which has proven highly ineffective," Naomi added. "The girls could spring us free in an instant. Besides, I haven't seen hide nor hair of those walking sludge factories since we escaped our cell."

"Yeah, but who's to say the Moblins wouldn't have wised up to that trick?" When everyone looked at Link skeptically, he shrugged and offered up a "Hey, you never know."

Despite not being believed by his friends that Moblins were capable of "wising up," he remained insistent in his urgings that not all was safe. "Something still doesn't seem right," Link sighed, shaking his head from side to side. "I get the feeling that the Moblins still have one last trick up their sleeves for us. I mean, no guards? I mean, those big pigs are dumb, but they're not that dumb. Even they post sentries."

"Maybe we're just lucky, and this particular batch forgot to read the book on 'How To Be Semi-Stupid,'" Naomi dryly observed. "Or rather, they did, but they skipped the 'semi' part. They've certainly shown enough lapses in good judgement that I could begin to mistake one of them for you, Linky-boy."

"Oooh," Link's voice reeled. "Hey, no hitting beneath the belt. I thought we agreed, no more—"

"We agreed to be friends, not to stop arguing," Naomi interrupted him. She smugly wore her correction on her face. "The two by no means go hand-in-hand. Ain't that right, Elaine? I'm sure you and Posie argue all the time."

"Err, well, occasionally, really, no," Elaine stuttered. "Not much, anyway. About the only time we ever do anything we have to apologize to each other for is if one of us accidentally makes a mean joke about the other—stuff about Posie's height for me, or her saying something about the fact that I don't—well, didn't—have a mom. Like, right before we came to Gerudo Valley, and were in this volcano…"

"Alright, I get it," Naomi sighed. "Darn. I was hoping you'd give me some argument fodder."

"…Argument horse food?"

"It can mean something like evidence too, or support, Elaine," Posie told her. "Do I still get a point, even though your mommy used it, and you knew part of what it meant?"

"Eh, take half a point." Elaine held up the traditional fist and raised a bent-over finger into the air. "And no fair trying to get more by reciting random words and asking me what they mean. You have to use it fair and square in a sentence, and it has to be relevant."

Naomi silently raised and eyebrow, not having yet figured out the strange game Posie and Elaine played with their vocabularies. She wondered if they were actually keeping score, or just making a show of stumping each other with large words and then pretending to earn and deduct points for the fun of it. She wondered what would happen if she asked one of them what the score was. She wondered how it had gotten started in the first place, or if it was something they'd always played. She wondered… it was frustrating, wondering and not knowing. She wished she could just touch a finger to Elaine's forehead and learn all the vital things about her—favorite color, favorite animal, favorite song, where the best place to fly kites or sail paper boats was in her opinion. And what made her so willing to persevere against a world that kept attempting to kill her? She was so like RJ—RJ, oh, RJ, I can't wait to see you again, but it'll be soon, because we're so close to Ipanajou, and then we can go home, I really want to be home, where my two dearest hearts lie…

Something was making scratching noises against the stone of fortress.

Link jumped and tensed; his left hand leapt back almost automatically to pull out his sword. Naomi reached for her twin blades, yanking them out of their scabbards and unconsciously fueling them with a little bit of magic. They pulsed slightly with the extra power—smoky Fire and shimmeringly-clear Ice. Posie groaned, "Oh no, not now!" out loud, and decided that she was too tired to swing a long metal bar around. Instead she opted to pull out her bow and an arrow to be ready, silver feathers trembling under torchlight mingling with dawn. Elaine decided that her new hammer needed a workout, and pulled it from her pocket. It rapidly expanded into a full-sized, feather-light weapon, ready to knock back assailants.

A bit too late to be of any help, Navi said, "We've got company…"

Shuffling eerily, "company" scooted in uninvited. The first thing noticeable on it in the pre-dawn gloom was the stark whiteness of their "faces—"—gaping holes unfit for the eyes, nose, and mouth they were meant for. Disgustingly elongated human skulls, mounted on the backs of bloated, scaly brown spiders. Naomi was reminded of a nightmare she had had once, of being trapped in a room with one exit, from which cockroaches poured in. But this, oh, this was infinitely worse, this army of marching Skulltulas…

Posie whimpered audibly. Link shifted his weight to be properly between her and the creatures, though this prompted no sign of relief from her. "It's OK, kid," he told her softly. "Daddy's not gonna let those things hurt you."

"Too many legs!" she managed to blurt out.

"Are those skull things part of them, or are they just for decoration?" Elaine asked Link, who knew more about monsters than she. If they were removable, she quickly formulated, then she'd try to tug them off to expose their soft bodies. It was just like hunting a regular bug that had hidden under something sturdy—pry its shelter away, and it's open for the squishing.

"Err, never really checked that out," Link replied quickly; he scraped his sword along the wall. Three of the smallest and quickest-advancing Skulltulas fell flat on their skull-sides, drawn to it due to its heavy weight. He stabbed them each in quick succession, staining the tip of the sword with blue arachnid blood. "I know they don't fall off when they're dropped, but they might just be stuck there with spider silk."

Posie nudged a dead one tentatively with her foot. Its bleached bone face made scraping sounds along the stone floor, which made Elaine grimace. But the skull didn't bother Posie at all—it was, indeed, the multifarious many-sectioned legs. She had no idea why, but anything with more than four legs and segmented legs that could be seen easily scared her like few other things did.

Naomi leapt like a frog past Link into a stern stance, protectively raising her blades before her. Although it would take a greater blow than she had the energy for to shatter the bony shields of the Skulltula, she could easily set one on fire. She sent a plume of white flame arching off her sword into the thick of the steady stream of monsters, turning their skulls to ash and charring their soft, unprotected bodies. But one big burst was all she really had strength left for; she concentrated then on setting fire to smaller Skulltula with cooler and easier to form crimson bolts. She used the power of ice more as a shield than anything else.

Link decided to take a hint from Naomi on that one. If heat was an effective weapon against the creatures, heat he would use! Of course, his own magical skills were far from being able to summon raging fire from the tip of his sword, but he had his own special brand of trump card play.

Although he wasn't feeling his best, he still thought he had enough strength left to use this particular brand of sword trickery. He started to funnel his power along the blade as he usually did when powering up for his spinning slash, but instead of letting it change and accumulating more strength, he forced it off the weapon with a quick mental shove. The blade recoiled a little as the spell was fired; the magical beam rammed into a large Skulltula's forehead and drilled through the bone armor, leaving a scorching hole. The monster's legs drew in, and it died.

Surprisingly, Posie had never seen that technique before. Why, that looks like the precursor to a spinning slash! Maybe, if I could just figure out how to do that, I'd be halfway there…

So she held out her sword in front of her with two hands, concentrating on it and flicking it—she had seen Link's Master Sword bounce a little after he'd made his shot, and figured that that was the method of firing. Her right side felt slightly numb for some reason, but she kept on thinking, and flicking, and thinking, and flicking, and…

The tiniest purple glow flew around Posie's sword!

"Daddy!" she cried out ecstatically.

"Wha?"

Link turned around precisely as a Skulltula on the ceiling reached its apex above him, preparing itself for an ambush. Posie looked upward with the intention of getting a good look at his face, but when she saw the thing hanging above him, loosening its legs, her motive instantly switched to warning. "Look out!"

"Huh?" Link spun back around again, slightly dizzy now. He spied the monster lurking on the ceiling out of the corner of his eye—just in time, he ducked out of its way, and it fell to the ground without hitting a soul—though it now stood as a barrier between Link and Posie.

In her distraction, the little purple dot of power quietly evaporated back into non-existence. Despite the slightly electrocuted feeling in that arm, she quickly transferred her sword to her right hand only. Without thinking very much, she smacked the flat side of it against the jawbone of the Skulltula between her and her father. Angrily, it made a noise that was a cross between a roar and a chirrup, lifting itself up on its back legs and propelling himself forward with a hop.

Posie kept waiting for the adrenaline to kick in, but she saw that she couldn't wait any longer or else she'd be smothered by a giant spider with a death's-head façade. Swallowing a mouthful of saliva that tasted like fear, she made a jump with her sword help high above her head. It sliced along the underbelly of the beast, showering her with its azure blood. She made candid sounds of disgust and pirouetted away before it could land on her.

"It's dead, and it still has too many legs."

Link laughed and kicked the corpse of the monster aside. "Thanks for the warning, love. You took care of it pretty nicely, I'd say. If it were three times bigger than me and had been charging at me like that, I probably would've thought of that. I'd say that was an excellent use of…"

"Enough idle chitchat!" Navi dived in Link's face, startling him. "Your partner over there is getting a little swarmed, if ya know what I mean? Get over there at help her out!"

"Outta my face, Navi," Link spat back at her. "I have priorities. Blood is thicker than water…"

"She lived up to her name and killed the bug. There's no more back there. Now get up there and live up to yours!"

Link snarled. He gave Posie a hasty apology for not being able to finish congratulating her, and wiped a blue smear off her forehead before kissing her lightly and running off to beat his way deeper into the hoard of bugs.

Elaine, who had been largely standing there the whole time, turned to look at Posie curiously. "Can you live up to the name of Blade by just slaying one Skulltula, even if it was huge?"

"Err, maybe… but I think she was talking about middle names. You know, his is Hiro… be a hero, she's saying."

"But then what does Cassandra have to do anything."

"Err, well, Mommy told me it means 'shining down on mankind…' but since I warned Daddy about the Skulltula about to ambush him, maybe she meant the Greek legend part."

"Greek legend part?"

"Yeah. Cassandra was a prophet of doom."

Elaine "Ahhhh"-ed that statement. As if to prove a point, Posie pointed behind Elaine and made sudden frantic little noises—Elaine turned around and casually cleaved the skull of a Skulltula in half.

Navi saw this and sighed to herself. "If you ever wanted proof that violence was desensitizing…" She flew off towards Link's side, to play her perennial part of waving her arms and yelling out the monsters that still needed to be killed.

"Yanno…" Posie mused aloud to herself, "despite the fact that they're nasty monsters, I do kinda feel a little sorry for them."

Posie wasn't sure what Elaine's reply was(It sounded like "Kay lassie-ma"), but her tone was agreeable.

"I mean, they're victims of whoever commands them. They have to follow their boss."

"Well, they ARE bugs… they can't be too smart, can they? Maybe they're just mindlessly attacking us because we're in their territory. Like… how'd they say it in that nature magazine…? 'Instinct.'"

"Like mosquitoes seek us out and bite us."

"Oh." Posie thought a moment. "Guilt trip's over, then. I always swat mosquitoes."

Elaine grinned mischievously. "Then let's go bag us some Skulltulas!