Fan Fiction Friday: Within the Darkness – Chapter Two
Posted on July 01 2022 by Kat Vadam
Chapter Two: The Buried and the Damned
“We will hide here for now.”
“Impa, we have to go back! We can’t just-”
“No, Highness, we will hide here.”
“But Link might need help, and my father is still in the castle! We can’t just leave them!”
“Highness, please understand-”
“Take me back, Impa! I can’t just hide here! What about my father, my people?”
“We will stay here.”
“You want me to just hide as everything in my kingdom burns? Hide as my father remains-”
“Zelda…”
“…What about my father, Impa?”
“…”
“Impa…?”
“Zelda, I’m…I’m sorry…”
I think that was the first time I ever saw you truly scared. You had faced battles, shed blood in the war of my infancy, looked enemies in the eye as they faced you with hate. You had seen death, and were scribed in our history as a fierce leader of my father’s troops. I had seen you hesitate, I had seen you cry for your fallen soldiers when you thought I was sleeping. I had seen you laugh and roll your eyes and show a compassion reserved only for me.
But until that day, huddled in the shadows of Death Mountain, I had never seen you fear. It’s a vision that remains burned into my memory, sometimes waking me from slumber, sometimes keeping me up at night. Your voice was so small as you knelt before me and took my hands. My mind begged you not to tell me the truth.
“No, no, no, please…”
My body shook as you took me in your arms.
I sobbed. I think I sobbed for hours, and you held me, shushing me to keep the wails from echoing against the stone and alerting this new horror to our position. When my voice finally broke and I could no longer speak, I cried in silence, watching the storm that grew and grew over my castle, as it began to peak over the roofs of Kakariko. With every tear, more and more of that little princess fell to the dirt below, sinking into the grains to die.
She had to die. She had to be put to rest if I really wanted to keep my kingdom safe. We had to fall to rise again. She could do nothing as a princess.
I could do nothing as Zelda.
I have not heard that name spoken to me since. Now, as I sit in a small, hidden cranny of the Shadow Temple, taking a moment to nurse a burn from a beamos’ eye, I test the name on my lips once more, and…it’s so foreign. So strange. I know there will come a time when I must bring her back to life, but I don’t know her anymore. I have a new name, a new history, and the only person in my life who knows who I once was is…
You.
That frightens me more than I know it should, but I know that this temple is doing its part to make me relive every terror I have suppressed. I think the spirits here sense who I am beneath the masked eyes and wrapped face, and it angers them that a member of the royal family has come into their cursed tomb. They stir within me every fear I have known.
I scan the walls around me as I catch my breath. Shallow scratches that have faded on the stone nearly cover this small room, some overlapping older marks, some that end with stains of brown, some that seem to spell out letters that cannot be read anymore.
This was a cell, I realize as my stomach drops. This is where prisoners had once been held, to cry and wail until the day their life had run out. This small room, barely enough for me to stretch my legs, once held the damned.
I wonder, for a moment, if any of the marks are names of prisoners, of their families, of torturers. Forgotten names of the souls that still haunt this place. As I trace the remains with my finger, I try to guess what they once said.
The spirits are at my back now, watching as I try to find meaning within the messages they left behind. I can hear their voices whispering stories of their deaths at the hands of my ancestors. With every sound that comes from my lips as I trace, I feel them clawing at me.
Slowly, I remove the shawl that covers my face. I blink, and I know the crystalline blue of my youth has returned to my eyes as I stand to face them.
Horrid, distorted bodies, bloodied, sunken eyes and decay. Stripped of their humanity, Hylians, Sheikah, Gerudo, Zora, all thrashing out at me with hands that are nothing now but bones and dust. Nothing but memories trapped here for eternity everlasting.
Just for a moment, I see them with eyes of the dead and buried of my own past. I feel their hate fueling my fear. They are everywhere.
But I do not see you.
I sigh, unsure if this revelation should bring me hope, and return the shawl to my face. They vanish once more, fading back to follow me as I continue my quest. I can still feel them, every breath I take in defiance of their desires, but I cannot submit. I have to find you. I have to carry on deeper into this place.
When Zelda returns, when I once more become that princess I buried on Death Mountain, I will come back here. I will face them all, and I will put them to rest.
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.
