One
Elbow bumping against the side of the narrow passage, Link bit back a curse as the edge of the torch knocked higher up on the rock, sending down a shower of pebbles and dust that threatened to extinguish the flame altogether. Zelda's hand was tight in his, he turned to see her other hand trailing against the side of the wall, breaking off bits of the ashen material that seemed to stain her pale skin. She saw him watching, and smiled, brave and bright, even now.
In another moment, the dust had cleared, the flame coming through unscathed, though it offered precious little light here, so deep in the labyrinths beneath Spectacle Rock.
A screech in the darkness, and before Link could even think to draw a weapon, or let go of Zelda's hand, he saw a flash of silver fly past. The screech turned into a wail that quickly dulled to silence. It took a few more steps to find the bat, crumpled between the rocks, and Link nudged the furry ball with his foot, making sure it was dead before Zelda retrieved her dagger. He wasn't exactly sure how many she could carry, the Sheikah robes designed to conceal a great many weapons invisibly.
"I still miss seeing you in a dress." Mostly because it would mean they'd found an end to the fighting, than that he really cared for her clothing. Zelda could wear anything and leave him breathless.
"I liked you better in green, too," she teased back, tugging at the corner of his dark shirt. All of his clothing was black now. He'd dyed it, just before the battle at the Water Temple, to hide better in the dark waters. Ruto had helped him, making some comment about getting to hold his clothing that had made him blush.
The last he'd seen, she had been roaring a war cry, spear out and ready to avenge her father, swimming as fast as she could toward the twisted leviathan Ganon had called down on the Zoras. Everyone else had been forced to flee, Zelda grabbing his arm, pulling him back as he watched Ruto disappear in the mass of twisting coils, churning water and falling rock, the temple collapsing around them. Had she lived? Could she have survived?
//You would know it, if she'd died. You felt it, when Saria-//
Link didn't even let himself think the end of it, pushing ahead even more quickly, what lay at the center of this maze the key to making sure no one's sacrifice had been in vain.
"What did the map say?"
"Take the left fork." Zelda didn't even have to look, the map fixed in her memory - and he couldn't be so jealous of her for that, not in times like these, and what else she must have remembered with such clarity.
Link rounded the corner only to stop short, Zelda coming to a stop behind him, not having to ask what was wrong, as the ground shook slightly beneath their feet, and a few more pebbles came down from above. Ganon had finally arrived - and with no small segment of his army, from the way the ground was shaking. More would come, more always came, and they were so close to Death Mountain, too close...
Link squeezed her hand, and they took off again, moving through the underground passages like two silent shadows, the only sign of their passing the trail of torchlight, and once the ground got hot, lava bubbling up from below, Link quickly extinguished that as well, the earth providing enough illumination.
It wasn't a true temple, and the monsters they came across were few and far between, no traps, no puzzles, and for that Link was thankful, though he would have liked the chance to push at least a few obstacles in Ganon's way. He let go of Zelda's hand, as they made their way across a wobbly path of floating stones, barely lighter than the molten rock they sat atop. Link never looked back to see if she was safe, knew he didn't need to, and Zelda was at his side before he'd had a chance to take his first steady breath. He reached down, lifting the only heavy rock nearby, tossing it on to the rock in the middle of the path, smiling as it split in half, creating a gap too big to jump across. Not that Ganon wouldn't find a way, he always did.
Saria's last words as a sage had led them here. Trying to impart the vital information even as her eyes desperately locked with his, trying to speak to him, of things that words could not describe.
"Spectacle rock... key to a great power... don't know... change the world..."
Her eyes had gone wide and terrified then, searching for the breath that was no longer there, hands fluttering against his arms until Link just lifted her, held her slim body close as he felt her life bleeding out over his tunic. In that moment, he didn't care at all about prophesized words.
"It's all right. I know. I know. We'll see each other again." he murmured in her ear, hearing the small gasp behind him, Zelda crying silently into Impa's shoulder. It should have been a crowd of thousands, to wail and mourn for one so brave, but there had only been three, and he had been the only one to hold her, at the end. "I love you too, Saria."
The great circle of life and death and rebirth, nothing ever truly went away. It still broke his heart, when her body finally went limp in his arms, hand falling away from his tunic. It left a bloody print that was so precise it made his throat close up, when he finally could take it off to see, and cry himself to sleep in Zelda's arms.
It had been a long time since then, too long, and too difficult, but there had been successes as well as the losses, the constant, small attacks finally yielding a map, stolen from the very center of Death Mountain itself, providing illumination on Saria's words. The location of a secret entrance, to an underground chamber below Spectacle Rock, and hopefully, the location of a weapon capable of stopping the man who now held the Triforce of Power.
//I just wish anyone could tell me what it was we were going to find down here.// Link also wished he knew just how far Ganon was behind them, how many Gerudo were with him, and whether he'd be able to use this new weapon without bringing down all of Death Mountain down on top of them.
"I think the Goron lived here once." Zelda murmured, glancing about, Link relighting the torch as the cavern widened abruptly and the pools of lava disappeared. He could not see the ceiling in the circle of light, or anything that suggested anyone had lived here, ever. Zelda was probably right, though. One of the things he'd come to take for granted, she was almost always right.
The wide steps twisted down, though they were strangely uneven, a few even rising before the next one would drop suddenly. It wasn't so long before they reached the bottom, and at the bottom they found themselves faced with a massive stone door, too large to consider trying to push out of the way.
"I could try to blow a hole in it." Link preferred saving his bombs for emergencies, but if they couldn't get the door open, it would certainly count as one. Zelda frowned for a moment, taking the torch from him, kneeling down to peer at something he didn't see, leaning back to study the stairs, returning a keen eye to the door.
"Zelda?"
"Will your arrows stick in the rock, here?"
Link had his bow in his hand immediately, saw her smile slightly at the thought, that he didn't even need to ask what the plan was.
"Give me enough illumination for the room. I just want to look at something."
He lit his arrows off the torch she held, firing three above the staircase, watching her step back to study it for a moment.
"The stairs are different colors."
She was right - some were a lighter blue-gray, contrasting against the regular color of the dark stone, though he didn't see what difference it made. Leaving him to puzzle it out, Zelda moved back toward the door, pulling the Ocarina from a hidden pocket, playing a melody as light and quiet as she could manage.
Just as the illumination from the arrows went out, Link realized why the stairs had been so strangely uneven - musical notes, each blue-gray stair in a different place on the scale, Zelda easily picking them out into a simple melody - and he heard the sound of stone sliding on stone, turned to see the door opening, the princess making a pleased little sound, returning the ocarina to its hidden pocket.
The room inside was vast and long, more ornate than any they had seen so far, the floor inlaid with a smooth, checkerboard pattern. Link's head jerked up, point of the Master Sword rising as Zelda gasped - and he stared, and heard himself snicker. Hard not to, staring at the gaping maw of the one-eyed creature, or what was left of it, really, only the head and a pile of bones suggesting what a monster it must have been, once.
//Finally, one I /don't/ have to fight.//
A gleam caught his eye, and Link moved forward quickly, pulling a silver arrow out from between the bones. A rare find, quickly added to his quiver, and he turned back to see Zelda examining the pillar at the center of the room, cracked in half, the top torn from the base, laying upside-down near the wall. A body lay between the two, curled against the broken lid. Link paused just long enough to peer inside the hollow pillar - empty, though with an indentation in the stone that suggested something had been there, once.
"I think there must have been more than one of them. One person to take it away, another to draw a new map... I wonder why?"
Link winced, pushing back the irrational surge of anger, coming all this way only to find another quest awaited them. Certainly, whatever these long-dead adventurers had done, they likely had their reasons - but why did it always make their job so much more difficult?
"His leg was broken," she gestured to the shattered bone, "he must have stayed behind on purpose, then." The thought of dying here alone, in pain and in the dark wasn't a pleasant one, and he saw Zelda shiver. Link knelt down next to her as she gently pushed the skeleton a little further to the side, revealing a rough map carved into the soft stone.
"Do you have a piece of paper? I'll make an etching."
//For want of a horse...// Link thought grimly, certain he didn't, but checking the pack beneath his shield returned a well-wrinkled flyer, the print so worn he could barely make it out, with no idea where it had come from. Likely pressed into his hands by one shopkeeper or another, anyone who had lived in the towns surrounding Hyrule packing up, selling, moving away from the oncoming war as fast as they could. He handed it to Zelda, and she quickly rubbed over the carving with a small piece of graphite - no surprise, she would have kept something like that. He knew it was hard for her, always fighting, always on the road. Books a terribly rare commodity these days, and conversation about anything but the war even more so.
Glancing around the room, Link breathed a small sigh of relief, at the sight of another door carved into the wall, much as the one they'd entered had been. It seemed to be a way out, not nearly as difficult as the way in - too bad they hadn't found it before - though it seemed blocked, only half open. No problem, once they were through Zelda could simply shut both doors again, and they would be safe. As safe as anyone was these days, at least.
"I think I know where this is," she pointed, and Link recognized the tiny crown symbol - that must have meant Hyrule - and the halo-ringed spike of Death Mountain, with an arrow pointing up around both, very high to the north. The wobbly semicircle at the top must have been a lake. Link nodded.
"I don't remember the name, but Ruto thought about moving her people there." No way to tell if she had or not, and Link grimaced at the idea, the Zoras thinking they'd found safety only for it to all be torn apart again, when they arrived. "Does it say anything about what it is, exactly? The weapon?"
Zelda nodded, finally finished with the copy, and ran her hands over the stone inscription. "Let all who seek the Chaos Glass... beware."
"Do you think there's an artifact in this entire country without some sort of warning attached?"
Ganon's voice rang out loudly in the silent chamber, false cheer grating along the stones - too fast, he'd gotten here much too fast, and too silently.
Link had turned, the arrow drawn and aimed and loosed before Zelda had even seen their foe, and Ganon had caught it before she could gasp, a small, pleased smile on his rough-hewn features.
He twisted the arrow in his hand, snapping it easily in half and letting the pieces fall to the floor. The pale gold mark of the Triforce gleamed against that hand, and Link knew if he looked down, he would see the Triforce of Courage shining bright on his own. Zelda was hiding her mark, though he could see the faint light between her clenched fingers.
"I never thought I would finally capture my enemies right at my feet. How interesting."
"Zelda, run."
Link took a few steps in front of her, drawing the Master sword, several larger creatures in thick plate armor immediately fanning out behind Ganon. Difficult to defeat them, but he had done it before and would do so again. As many times as it took, until there was nothing separating him from the man in the red cloak, Ganon watching him through the line of soldiers, the satisfied grin still on his face.
"Link!"
Zelda grabbed at him, pulling him back, past the empty pillar, as far away from Ganon as they could go. He could guess her desperation, she had been there, to heal him from his last ugly encounter with the evil Gerudo - more cuts and bruises than she had ever wanted to see on him, for certain.
//I do it gladly, in your name.//
He startled slightly, when she suddenly let go, and felt the piece of paper pressed into his free hand - the map - and her lips brushed his cheek, before she murmured into his ear.
"Remember what the Sages said - there will always be a tomorrow."
Hope, it was a message of hope, but Link only felt a sudden dawning horror, as Zelda rushed forward, knocking him into the passageway. He'd forgotten how strong she was, still the princess but a fully-trained Sheikah just the same, and though he tried to stop, tried to catch his balance, he stumbled forward, wind knocked out of him by a outcrop he never saw.
Link gasped, blinking away the stars in his vision - and heard a few clear, beautiful notes sing out in the silence, the shock of hearing the ocarina pushing past the ringing in his ears as he heard a grating sound, the door behind him closing.
Zelda, locking herself in the cavern, to give him a chance to escape.
"No! No no no! Zelda!" He turned and dove at the rock, catching it a moment too late, and could only hear his own panicked cries, fingers digging uselessly at the cracks in the rock, scrabbling at the surface and finally picking up the Master sword, frantically trying to hack his way back through. He had the bomb out of his pack and nearly lit before he realized he would only cause a cave in, this tunnel even narrower than the ones they had come down. He probably wouldn't be able to escape the blast in time, even if the ceiling didn't come down on him.
Link couldn't think, couldn't breathe, still clawing at the stone and straining to hear the sounds he didn't want to hear. The thought that Ganon would take her prisoner was only slightly less horrifying than the thought that he wouldn't bother, just take the Triforce and...
//No!//
Link panted against the unmoving door for only a heartbeat more, turning and snatching the Master Sword where he had thrown it down in a panic, running as fast as he could up the dark and narrow path. The Triforce was glowing brightly against his skin, brought to life as it had grown close to being reunited with its counterparts. Link willed the glow to stay, the only light he had in this darkness, refusing to stumble or slow, even as his breath hitched painfully in his chest and the path rose at an even steeper angle.
Ganon would take her prisoner, he had to, but Link would reach them before they even got out of Spectacle Rock. He would free Zelda and finally destroy Ganon and this Chaos Glass, whatever it was, wouldn't matter at all.
//Faster. Move faster!//
A patch of brightness finally appeared, high above him, but it was a goal to work toward. With the steepness of the path, Link doubted he'd have to cut around the entirety of the Rock to get back to the path they'd taken - ready to do it, though, if that was what it took to save Zelda.
His legs were screaming by the time he pushed up the last few stairs, taking a sharp breath of morning air, so cold he could feel his lungs contract against it, had to fight not to cough. He didn't, and so immediately heard the soft jingle of metal-on-metal, a horse's reins lightly shaking.
Several pairs, in fact.
Link froze, the dawn rising, illuminating row after row of Ganon's troops, ready and waiting for him along the hilltop. So much armor, so many weapons the sunlight hit them like a sea, an ocean of steel ready to crash down on him. He heard a soft chuckle, and the sliding rasp of a sword being drawn, and another, and another. Link slowly lifted the edge of his own blade, and prepared to meet them all.