Fan Fiction Friday: Within the Darkness – Chapter Three
Posted on July 15 2022 by Kat Vadam
Chapter Three: One Last Desperate Hope
We see you. Through that mask, we know who you are, and we remember everything we’ve suffered at the hands of your family. Your ancestors found their worries comforted in our pain, their woes shed with the falling of our blood. They feared us, feared that we would steal the power they believed they were owed by Goddesses who have forsaken this land. Power they would not share, and would go to war to keep others from challenging it.
We died so they could keep it.
We had families. Children, brothers, sisters, friends. Did your family tell them what they had done? Or did they take the lives of the innocent to prove a point?
And now, here you stand within these desecrated halls, seeing all that your bloodline has done, hoping you can make this all right?
We are damned. And soon, Child of the White Goddess, you will be trapped here with us. That will be our revenge.
I step outside the prison cell and do my best to blend with the shadows as I get my bearings. I must have seen half of this horrid temple already, and it’s all I can do to not lose hope that you are still alive. But I can’t stop here. Hope is the only glimmer of light I hold anymore. Hope that I will find you. Hope that the hero will wake from his long slumber, grown strong enough to fulfill the ancient texts, claiming victory over the demon king who stole my father’s life and throne.
Hope that I can somehow return this land, my kingdom, back to a time of peace, where people mingled in the streets and monsters were simply creatures of childhood nightmares, gone as soon as the daylight dawned. I hope I can turn back time.
Every day that passes, my hope grows fainter.
I glance around, taking in the wicked stone faces that mock me from the walls. Twisted smiles and empty eyes are lit by flickering torches, making them seem alive. Somewhere in an unknown room below me, a scream fades into a doleful moan, cries of creatures that lurk these halls. Here, though, thankfully, the hall is empty, and I find myself sighing in a moment of reprieve. I can’t let my guard down, but at least I can actually move outside of the shadows for the briefest time.
My footsteps leave small prints in the dust and rocks that have gathered over the years of these barren halls. The only prints here. I hiss softly through my teeth.
“There has to be another path around here.” I don’t want to retreat, though. That beamos in the last room had given me enough trouble; my shoulder twinges as I recall the searing light from its eye as it grazed me and hit the wall. I do not care to relive that.
I have to go deeper. This temple is massive, so there should have been more than one way through.
Another hope.
I come to the end of the hall, and am met with another wall. A dead end. My fist clenches, and, despite myself, I cannot help the growl that escapes me. My father would have called such a reaction unladylike, were he here to see it.
Focus…
There’s something different about this wall. I cannot explain it, but as I stand here and contemplate this maze of corridors and caverns I am traversing, I realize that this wall…seems…I can’t describe it adequately, but I know that this was just not normal.
I touch it, and gasp as my fingers slip into the stone. No resistance, no feeling, nothing left behind on my fingers as I snap them back. Like it was not even there.
It’s…an illusion.
I reach out to touch it again, and this time, my entire arm goes through. I feel no ill effects, no tingles or sensations. This time, I follow my hand and step through what my eyes tell me is very, very solid stone. My stomach lurches, and I groan as my whole body passes through.
With a curse, I stumble back, falling through the not-wall once more. It feels as though all air has escaped my lungs as my brain fumbles over what I had just seen. Slowly, I crawl back through the stone on all fours.
A ledge, barely wide enough to stand. Had I not stumbled back, had I not panicked the moment I came through, I would have fallen right off into an endless pit of black. I stare from my prone position into a void, following the ledge as it circles down, down, down, until it, too, joins the oblivion below.
Cell doors line the walls, too, some with lit torches hanging beside them, their flames dancing weakly. Prison after prison after prison, and many with bones still trapped inside. Hands dropped to the ground outside the bars as though whoever was trapped inside had been reaching in desperation for the ledge, their last hope for escape as they died.
Hundreds of them.
And from below, a voice calls to me. A faint whisper from the darkness.
“Come…come…”
Featured image by さだぢ.
Kat Vadam is a mother of one, proud cat mom, and wife to someone far nerdier than she could ever hope to be. She also works by day as an analyst, writer, and editor. Here at Zelda Dungeon, she is the Head of Social Media and a copy editor, though she still enjoys occasionally writing things. Someday, she plans on giving up all her worldly possessions to move to the forest and become best friends with a korok. Were it so easy.
