Into the Legend of Zelda

For those of you who have never been in a desert: don't go there, it's not fun.

Well, maybe it would have been better if we'd had a car with air conditioning and tons of water in the trunk. But, alas, we didn't. We were stuck with the heat and our water skins (Link had bought them in Kakariko), which got lighter with every swallow. And it's not even pretty. The desert, I mean. It's just a bunch of sand and rocks everywhere. Sometimes we'd come across a cactus, but not very often.

We had tried to travel at night but found that the moon was only a sliver in the sky, so we didn't have enough light to see by. And of course, we hadn't gotten more oil for the lantern after the incident in the trench. Go us. We are so well prepared. Please note my sarcasm.

At least we didn't have to worry about the horses. We had left them at the edge of the desert. They wouldn't have objected to coming with us, but it was easier for both them and us if we left them behind. If we had brought them, they'd be taking up a lot of our supplies, not to mention probably getting stuck in the sand.

Now Link and I mostly traveled in the mornings and evenings, using the afternoons to lounge around in whatever shade we could find and the nights to sleep. We didn't do much talking - both of us were cranky from the heat and lack of water and would end up arguing no matter what was said anyway. Besides, my mouth would dry out faster if I talked.

It was our third day in the desert when Link spotted the building that was our destination. He pointed it out to me, but I couldn't see it. Of course, his eyes were much better than mine, so that could be expected.

After resting near a fairly large boulder most of the afternoon (and moving our way slowly around it as the sun moved), we took up walking again. This time, I saw it. From this far away, the heat made it look like water - a liquid image on the desert sand. But Link insisted that it was a building. An old building (he said), but still a building.

As we made our way closer and closer to the building, more and more monsters popped up. All of them had the disease, naturally, but they were no harder to defeat than keese and Link and I disposed of them easily.

By sunset, the building was what I judged to be about a mile away. My stomach did a flip-flop. I didn't like the idea of going into that building. All my Zelda instincts told me that this was going to be a very bad temple, not only because Ganondorf told us (indirectly) to go there, but because I knew the end was coming. I counted the temples on my fingers: forest, snow, water. That was only three, but it seemed like it had been a lot more. A lot more.

I knew that there had to be some major boss in this upcoming temple if Ganondorf wanted us to go there. Why else would he get Zelda to send us there? He believed we would die in this next temple, and though all Zelda games before had proved him wrong, I still wasn't confident. This game was different. Ganondorf wasn't pulling the strings in this one. He was the puppet.

In the world outside the game, a full twenty-four hours after Heidi had entered it, Rich watched her thoughts drift across the screen in letters. This had never happened before - all they had ever been able to read was what had been said, not thoughts.

Heidi must be thinking very hard about this. And why wouldn't she? Rich knew even more than she that this temple was going to be a major ordeal, in more ways than one.

Yet he didn't wake those sleeping around him. Let them get through the temple a little way. Maybe even most of the way.

None of the other three boys in the room so much as stirred when Rich whispered "Here it comes."

~

Link and I stood in front of the large, stone building. The sand had built up around the walls and worn the rock down, but the building still stood.

"We shouldn't go in there," I said nervously. "We really shouldn't."

"Why not?" Link asked, watching me carefully.

"Ganondorf wanted us to come here," I stated, knowing that I couldn't give him my real reason: past experience with Zelda games.

"Then what would we do?"

"Go back to castle town and kick Ganondorf's ass."

"We have come all this way. We may as well go in."

"Please Link. Let's go back."

The stony look he gave me said it all. We were going in and there was nothing I could do about it.

Link pushed the barely existent wooden door open and I followed him in. No going back now.

The first thing I noticed were the four large pedestals that made a square in the center of the room. The next thing I noticed were the four poes that scattered through different doors when Link and I came in. Great. It's just like the forest temple from Ocarina of Time. Now we get to chase some ghosts and catch their SOULzuh.

Link shouted after the disappearing poes, whose lanterns were the only things remaining visible to us, but to no avail. We'd have to chase them down the corridors and probably fight a whole bunch of stuff just to get to them. All well. So it goes in the Zelda world.

I sighed. "Well, at least there's only four. Let's get started."

Link didn't say anything. I think he's mad.

We went to the only unlocked door in the place and ran down the hallway, checking each room for the ghostlike apparition. Most of the time, all we found were keese or bubbles, but every once in a while we found things that were harder to fight, like the hulking, paralyzing, brain-sucking redeads. They were always the creepiest monsters in any of the games to me, but seeing them in life was worse. The feeling of being unable to move was horrific, even worse than when I was just playing the game. Not only were the redeads creepy, but they smelled incredibly bad as well.

We finally came to the second-to-last door. It was on the right side of the hall. When we entered, it seemed like a normal room. At first glance, there was nothing to fight. Still, we entered with caution, eyes moving everywhere, looking for something dangerous, waiting for something to jump out at us.

I heard a haunted giggle and my head whipped in that direction just in time to see a poe disappear from a mirror.

I glanced at Link and he nodded at me. He had seen it too.

He pulled out his bow and nocked an arrow, but didn't draw yet. We both waited with bated breath for the poe to make another appearance.

It appeared in a different mirror and Link immediately pulled back the bowstring and then let the arrow fly. It hit the mirror right where the poe was, but the poe had already disappeared.

Quick as a flash, Link nocked another arrow. This time, he drew the bow. When the poe appeared again, he let go of the string, sending the arrow straight at the ghostly apparition. It shrieked when the arrow hit its mirror, but still refused to come out.

"Two more hits," I said, more to myself than to Link. But he heard me and I could see him tense up.

Nevertheless, he managed to hit the poe two more times. It came physically into the room now; you could practically feel the anger it was emanating. The ghastly creature lunged at Link, its lantern swinging wildly as it rushed over the ground.

Link drew his sword and swung, neatly cutting the phantom in half. Its dying (or not dying... I mean, can it die?) screech echoed in the room long after its body had departed. All that was left was a purplish soul, which Link deftly scooped into a bottle.

"One down, three to go," I said.

Link made no comment, but left the room without looking at me. Oh yeah, he was really mad. This wasn't going to be good.

We checked the last room (where we found a heart piece) and then headed back to the main hall.

-

So eventually we caught all the poe souls. Right now, we were standing in the center of the four pillars and Link was just about to open the bottle and let the souls out.

I took a deep breath, preparing myself for whatever might be next in this dungeon. This was probably the easiest part about the whole thing. For all I knew, there was some gigantic monster waiting for us once all the poe souls were released.

But Link let them go. They flew out of the bottle in speedy, graceful spirals, going quickly to their respective pedestals, which they hovered over.

I looked around, expecting something to happen. There wasn't that nice little jingle to let you know you had done something right (and there hadn't been since I got here), so I couldn't be sure we had done all we were supposed to. I looked around wildly for an opened door or any other sort of sign, but found none. Link looked just as dumbfounded as I was.

And then the floor opened up underneath us and we fell.

Luckily, it wasn't too far of a fall - probably six or seven feet. Link landed on his feet (of course), while I ended up face first on the floor.

I got myself up off the ground before he could offer (or not) to help me. I looked up just in time to see the floor (now our ceiling) closing over us.

"NO!" I yelled. How could they do this to us? "What do you think you're doing you bastards?! Leave it open!"

But my yelling didn't help. The floor closed completely over Link and I and we were powerless to do anything about it.

But, of course, it was obviously meant to be this way because once the floor was completely closed over, torches lit on the walls. A long, stone corridor ran ahead of us, disappearing into a blackness that seemed very far away.

"Well, this is a death sentence if I've ever seen one," I grumbled. "Come on pretty boy, let's get going."

I waited for a reaction - either "Pretty boy?" or something mildly sarcastic - but Link said nothing as we walked down the long stone hallway. He stayed like that until we reached a fork, and then all Hell broke loose.

"Stop," Link ordered when we came upon this fork. It was the first fork we had encountered, so I was sure he was stopping us to talk about strategy.

He wasn't.

"We are not moving on until you tell me what is going on," Link stated. He made his point clearer by sitting on the ground, Indian style, and crossing his arms.

"But Link, this isn't-"

The look on his face was enough to shut me up. I sat down so that I was facing him, and so that I was about five feet away.

"It's not important," I insisted once I was sitting down.

He only stared.

"You really don't need to know, Link! Really! There's no point in you knowing! All it gives you is knowledge that'll be a burden to you for the rest of your life anyway! It's not going to help on our quest or anything!"

He still stared at me stonily. I had never seen his blue eyes so hard and distant. I was down to begging now.

"Please Link. It won't make any difference if you know or not. Please."

"If it will not make a difference, then why won't you tell me?" he asked sharply. I actually flinched this time. I had never heard him use that tone before. He was furious.

I counted to ten to gain my composure. I didn't want to get mad, or worse, start crying.

"Okay," I said, once I was in control of myself again. "Are you sure you want to know? Because you can't un-hear things."

He nodded.

"Alright. You already know that I come from a different world."

Link nodded.

"Okay, well, in my world, most people don't believe in other worlds." Unless you count Heaven and Hell as other worlds, but I'm not going to be that specific with him. "And even the ones that do believe in other worlds don't believe that you can actually go to these other worlds whenever you want. Do you follow?"

Link nodded. He looked like he understood what I was saying but couldn't quite understand why people in my world were that way.

"So, in my world, we don't believe your world is real."

"That makes sense," Link said with a nod. "But I can see in your eyes that there is more."

Curses! I thought I'd be able to leave it at that!

"Yeah, there's more. See, um, people in my world know about yours, they just don't think it's real."

"Stop beating around the bush."

I gulped. Here it goes. Off the deep end now.

"Somebody in my world created yours and everything in it. We play it as a game. It's kind of like a book, or a play, or a puppet show - completely imaginary. Somebody created it for the entertainment of others."

There was a silence that seemed to go on for eternity as Link took in the information. I was beginning to think that he would do fine with his new knowledge.

"No," Link stated firmly.

"What?"

"No. You're wrong. This cannot have been created by someone in another world. I am not some puppet. This is not a game. This is reality."

"Link, I-"

"No!" he shouted as he jumped into a standing position.

My eyes widened. I got up immediately, not liking how sitting on the floor made me feel small and vulnerable. My hand moved to the hilt of my sword. If he went into a rage and attacked me, I might survive... for about three seconds.

In the meantime, Link was still shouting. Mostly about how this went against everything he had learned and been taught. He was talking to the three goddesses now, asking them for guidance, wondering what he should do. I hate to say I told him so, but I totally told him so. If anything, this little revelation had caused unneeded turmoil. He would have been happier not knowing. Ignorance is bliss.

"I refuse to believe it!" he shouted. "This cannot be fake! It has to be real! This is not some fairytale!"

He was clutching his head now, his fingers knotted in his hair. He rocked back and forth, murmuring reassurances to himself.

But this place was real. If I had come to realize anything else, it was that. I knew immediately after I had my panic attack in the woods and injured my hands on the tree. It had to be real. I had been bleeding. I had felt the pain. The tree had been solid under my hands.

Everything here was real. We had come close to dying countless times, had ridden horses, had interacted with people who were obviously not on scripts. Maybe Shigeru Miyamoto had created the concept for Hyrule and had made it into a game, but he had inadvertently created another world as well - or maybe he had just opened our eyes to it.

But those were the big questions, ones that I would never know the answer to. It was better to just focus on the situation at hand - Link was freaking out.

I hadn't realized until now how tightly I had been clutching the hilt of my new sword. My hand was sore and my knuckles were white. I forced myself to let go and walk over to Link. I knelt in front of him and put my hands on his shoulders.

"Link. Link."

He didn't say anything. I was just about to try his name again when he looked up, right at me, and then shoved me away. I staggered back (as best as you can when you're kneeling) and ended up on my butt about three feet away.

I didn't try to go back. Instead, I scooted away, as far away as I could get.

All I could do was sit and watch him. There was really nothing else.

The next time Link looked at me, he was outright glaring. I desperately wanted to look away, but I was afraid to. Afraid to look, afraid to look away.

"You are a liar," Link said venomously.

I swallowed. "I thought you would say that," I whispered. "That's why I didn't want to tell you."

His gaze was still icy. He needed no words to express how he was feeling now - angry. I was both afraid and sad at the same time.

Link had just started to tell me that he never wanted to see my face again when the whole world seemed to shake.

This distracted us both from the biggest fight that we'd ever had. I looked around wildly, catching Link doing the same out of the corner of my eye. Was this an earthquake?

I had just started running toward Link (who cares if he hates me? If I'm gonna die, I'm not gonna be by myself when it happens!) when the rocks came crashing down. Link was completely obscured from my view as the boulders tumbled down, creating an immovable rock wall between us.

.:.

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