Fan Fiction Friday: The Era Without A Hero – Part 19

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Kalia stared down at the shimmering blue water around his talons. Something about the dark edges of the ethereal plane he alone was privileged to visit disturbed him. However, when he was called, he came.

“Spirits of Light, why have I been summoned?” he asked the void beyond the edges of the floating platform.

A golden mist floated into the form of a stout man. His distinguishing features were obscured and undecipherable, but the shape of his body gave indication to Kalia that this was an ancient spirit that he had encountered before. Kalia bowed his head.

“Lord Kalia, a foul wind has begun to stir up.”

Another golden mist figure floated in alongside the first and picked up where the previous spirit had finished.

“I sense much anger and malice resonating from beyond these walls.”

“Take heed, young Sage.” said a third misty being, this one in the shape of a dragon. “There is a weakness within the seal.”

As several more golden spirits materialized, Kalia looked to the first one.

“What weakness do you warn me of?”

“A darkness,” the first spirit said.

“A power,” said the dragon.

“A deceiver,” whispered another.

“A serpent.”

“A boar.”

Each spirit in their own voice echoed some terrible adjective or noun for this warning. The echo became so loud, it shook the walls of the spiritual hall, until only one voice called out.

“Evil.”

A spirit, whose featureless appearance resembled only a child, stepped through the throng of ghostly golden beings.

Kalia knelt down.

“What evil could threaten this holy place?”

“Him.”

The spirits flashed away like dust and Kalia was left in darkness. He felt a searing pain upon his back. He spun around and drew his sword before stumbling backwards.

A great and blasphemous face made out of fire and smoke, roared and opened its mouth wide. As it soared through the space between them, Kalia watched as his blade melted and his feathers burst into ash. Searing pain electrified his body.

He screamed a howl worse than death.

And then, awoke in his study, with Sagesse grabbing at his shoulders.

“Kalia! Lord Kalia!”

The owl Sage of Light grabbed the side of his desk and breathed heavily. He looked around quickly, then let out one long sigh as he leaned back on his perch.

“Lord Kalia, are you alright?” Sagesse asked.

“Yes… No, I don’t believe I am. Please, I must speak with Queen Zelda.”

---

It was a short hike to the secondary cave entrance however, the plume of smoke rising from Death Mountain’s peak blotted out the moonlight. Once the trio found the small hole, Fado dropped a rope that was anchored nearby.

“Take your time coming down,” Fado said, “the last thing we need is for either of you to fall and get hurt.”

The small Sage of Wind looped the rope around his waist and disappeared down the hole. After a few minutes, the rope shook and Fado called up for the next one of them to come down. Zelda took the rope and gave a small smile before she joined Fado. Just before Osmond descended, he took a deep breath of the mountain air and stared out over Hyrule.

The tunnel down wasn’t very long, nor was it very wide. It was more a vent for the air above to find its way to the mines below than an emergency entrance. It wasn’t very likely a Goron could fit through it.

The cave itself though, was quite the opposite. The great sub-terrainian dome stretched in every direction for hundreds of feet. The entirety of Hyrule Coliseum could have fit inside it, and in fact parts of it once had. The ground showed evidence of where rivers of lava had once flowed, and now played host to a few pools of hot clear water. Several tunnels led off deeper into the mines and vanished into a blanket of darkness that rested where the blue-green light of the luminous stones couldn’t reach.

Osmond’s boots touched the ground, and Fado slammed an ordinary stone into one of the nearby glowing rocks. He picked up the shimmering rock, and jammed it into the end of an unlit torch.

“Right, just need to find a few bombs and we can open that entrance,” Fado said. “There should be a storeroom just over here.”

Zelda and Osmond followed behind as Fado knowingly walked towards one of the nearby tunnels.

“Been here before?” Osmond asked.

“Once,” Fado smiled over his shoulder, “not long after I awoke and met Huron, he took me here to celebrate. He took Lady Saria’s passing very hard and was overjoyed to have another Kokiri sitting on the counsel. He insisted that we-!”

A sudden cacophony of noise exploded as the floor below them gave way.

Osmond’s hand shot to Zelda’s wrist and he managed to catch her while his other hand caught the part of the floor that miraculously remained.

“Hang on!” he shouted. “Fado? Are you okay?”

A small cough floated through the sounds of rocks settling and gray dust, “never better.”

Osmond groaned loudly as he lifted Zelda as much as he could. Her feet caught hold of some of the rubble and she was able to hold herself up along the side of newly opened pit.

“Just stay there,” Fado coughed, “this passage might have a ladder in it that I can prop up for you.”

The sounds of small rocks that clicked through the cavern were soon joined by the quiet taps and shuffles of Fado’s feet. While they waited, Osmond lowered himself to the same ledge that Zelda was on and they caught their breath.

“Are you okay?”

Zelda nodded, her eyes closed, and lips pressed firmly together.

Osmond was about to press the matter further, when the blue-green glow appeared at the base of a newly found ladder.

Fado carefully placed it at their side, and Osmond and Zelda climbed down to the lower level with Fado.

“Not likely we’ll be able to climb back up that way,” Fado frowned, his hands on his hips as he stared up at the hole in the ceiling.

“Surely there’s another way out,” Zelda said, failing to hide her nervousness.

“Of course! We just need to find it. Come on!”

Despite the obvious limp he was now sporting, Fado led the way down a dark corridor of stone. He insisted that he was fine, but Osmond could notice the limp was getting worse with every step.

Veins of glowing rock illuminated the corridor as they ventured down. The stones almost seemed to react to their presence as they passed them. The faint blue-green aura, coupled with the chilling silence and deep darkness beyond the glow, gave an eerie and ominous vibe to the place.

After short while, they came to an area that had been cleared out and seemed to be the floors central hub. There was a large pile of luminous stone in the center, along with a few benches and some abandoned mine carts. There was a rail path that ran over to a powered lift, however it seemed as though it had been some time since it had been operational.

Fado finally took a seat on one of the benches and said, “Osmond, I believe that elevator will work if we can get power to it. Think you could go find the generator?”

Osmond looked down at Fado’s badly bleeding leg and nodded. Then he looked at Zelda, who winced as she started to help the sage.

“Will you be okay?”

She nodded.

“Try down the hallway with the lightning bolt above it,” Fado pointed to his right.

Osmond set off down the hallway with the glowing torch. The light from the central pile of stones disappeared around the first bend in the path and he soon came into another massive cleared out area. Pillars of stone held up the ceiling, but this had been home to a serious amount of digging in the past century. At the far end of the room, Osmond spotted a small alcove with another lightning bolt carved into the wall next to it.

He was about halfway across the room, when he heard the sound of stone cracking, bringing his feet to a frozen stop. His eyes darted all along the floor and ceiling, looking for the place that was about to give way, but there was nothing.

After a few heavy breaths, he relaxed a bit and continued moving, with a bit more trepidation and urgency.

The generator room, if that’s what the small hallow with a giant iron machine could be called, was unexpectedly hot. When the machine was running, it could be assumed that it would get extremely hot. However, the generator looked as though it hadn’t been touched in weeks. As Osmond inspected the machine, looking at where the pipes and such went, he realized the brilliance of placing the unit where it was.

The generator served two purposes. It provided energy for the mine below, but also allowed the springs’ temperatures to be regulated for different types of visitors.

Osmond reached up to pull the switch when something caught his eye.

To the side of the generator was a crack in the wall. Not a fissure that would cause concern about the structure of the room, though that was very much in his mind, but wide enough that he could see into the room on the other side of the wall.

The mysterious room was lit like the rest of the mines had been, a cluster of luminous stone. The difference here though, was that it appeared to have been covered by some sheets or blankets. In the center of the room was what appeared to be a statue, but it too was obscured by something.

As Osmond strained his eyes to look, he stumbled backward.

It moved.

Slowly, the body of whatever had been wrapped around the statue, oozed off and began to glow a fiery red color.

Osmond got back to his feet and quickly pulled the switch to start the generator.

As it roared to life with suffocating burst of black smoke, the fiery figure slammed against the crack in the wall like an earth-shaking drum.

Osmond spun around and began racing through the large room towards the hallway. He peeked over his shoulder just in time to see the thing force its way through the wall, molding its body to fit through without breaking it more.

The faceless monster then formed itself to resemble a person, but with arms that dragged on the floor like waterfalls of magma. Each step it took, melted the stone below it into fresh magma, leaving a trail of molten stone and fire.

It flung its arms forward, destroying every pillar it passed through en route to the entrance to the room. Osmond dove for the hallway but was cut off by the collapsing of some timber that formed the entrance. The ceiling began to crack, and Osmond rolled away as the dust from the new cave in stirred.

He got to his feet and saw the magma demon approaching quickly.

Osmond knew his sword would be useless, as would most any weapon that he could think of. That’s when he remembered the springs above. If he could make the monster cause enough destruction, there was a chance the ceiling would give way and the water above could pour down onto it.

He dashed towards one of the pillars and narrowly avoided the molten arm of the creature as he rolled onto the floor. When he looked back, the pillar had been melted instantly. Osmond smiled and repeated the trick, moving to the next pillar and sliding under the attack.

He had nearly completed a circle around the monster, when something changed. Instead of striking the pillar, the monster actually separated its arm and it flowed up to replace one of the broken pillars.

It knew what Osmond was trying to do.

The dust from the initial attack that had cut off his path out of the room had cleared by now, and Osmond could see a small hole big enough for him to make it through.

He ran as hard as he could and leapt into the hole, coming out on the other side with a fairly significant cut on his arm.

He scrambled to his feet and took off up the hallway to where Zelda and Fado would be. The monster, he could hear, was following closely behind.

As Osmond rounded the corner, he found Fado seated alone, looking confused and concerned.

“What’s with the hustle lad?”

Osmond paused only a second to catch his breath, before scooping Fado up and running him into the elevator.

The blazing red and orange glow of the monster began to fill the hallway.

“Where’s Zelda?”

“Off looking for bombs. She wrapped my leg and I told her where to find-“

“Where?”

Fado pointed to a hallway just beside the lift.

Osmond spun around and hit the button to send the elevator up, before hopping out of it, “Get as much water as you can into those springs. Move it all to the middle!”

The magma monster came around the corner and lurched forward. It pulled an arm back and launched a heap of molten rock towards Osmond but was saved by the luminous stone. He caught a glimpse of Fado’s eyes as the small Sage realized the danger just before he rose out of sight.

Osmond leapt up and charged down the next hallway.

The monster roared, causing the cavern to rumble. Dust and small rocks broke free from above, but Osmond pressed on as quickly as he could. As he flew past rooms that had been build off the main path, he glanced inside for any sight of the princess. As he rounded a curve in the hall, he saw the blue-green glow of the luminous stone torch just as it vanished through a doorway.

“Osmond-?!”

Osmond threw his hand over Zelda’s mouth and pulled her against the wall. He peered over his shoulder and could see the glow of the magma monster. He slid himself and Zelda closer to the wall, remaining as hidden as could be expected.

Zelda, who had initially been fighting against Osmond, now tensed up as she could sense the danger.

It slowly lumbered closer to the doorway, groaning. Each step it took caused the room to rattle and the ground to shake.

The room began to glow from the monster’s presence as it stood in the doorway.

Osmond pressed closer to Zelda. They both held their breath. Their hearts pounded.

 

David Wayne Nystrom is a Staff Writer for Zelda Dungeon. This story is an imagining of the final days in Hyrule prior to the Great Flood talked about in the opening cinematic of The Wind Waker. His top three Zelda games are Ocarina of Time, The Wind Waker, and Link’s Awakening. He’s also an avid Smash Bros. fan. Every Era Has Heroes…

Author’s Note: It’s been sometime since TEWAH was featured, so if you’re new to the series, know it’s still only just beginning. I highly recommend heading to the prologue and reading through the whole series. The first six chapters are available in audio podcast form and there’s a complete soundtrack for the first volume here. For more information regarding TEWAH, head over to erawithoutahero.wordpress.com where information regarding the future of the podcast, soundtrack, and more will be coming soon!