Who We Are; Zelink, Modern (The Legend Of Zelda)

A New Reality (26)

Darkness.

Darkness.

Darkness.

A void filled with shadows.

Where was the light?

Where did all hope go?

There was nothing.

It was all gone.

"Sa kasaysayan sa kahayag ug landong nga nahisulat sa dugo!"

"I don't understand!" she yelled across the nothingness, but she didn't even hear her own voice. Couldn't even feel her own body.

There was nothing.

It was all gone.

Except... there was still that deep voice, and it slowly shifted from the unknown to a recognizable tongue.

"The history of light and shadow will be written in blood!"

Zelda groaned as she opened her eyes, yet even with them open she couldn't see a thing. The darkness was still there; it was all around her. It had followed her from her dream; her creepy dream filled with language she didn't recognize most of the time. She sat up and hit her head against something; she hissed in pain and curled up with her hands on her head. Now she saw the light as it flashed everywhere in her vision.

After she recovered she groaned again and sat up slowly; reaching out in the dark. "Link?" she called, looking around in the darkness frantically. "Link where are you!?" She was beginning to remember what had happened after Link had kissed her, and it did nothing to alleviate her fears.

A light popped on in the corner of the small room. Was it a room? How could she be in a room when they had just been in a forest? Where had they been taken? She looked around frantically and she noticed that there wasn't anything sinister about the room at all.

"He is fine, princess, relax," a woman's voice came in reply from somewhere below her. "Well, mostly fine."

Zelda slid off of the top bunk of a bed and landed on the floor; there hadn't been enough room to sit up, let alone jump off. She stared at the women sitting in the corner. Her face was hidden except for her eyes and her grey bangs; her eyes being an unnerving shade of red.

"Mostly fine?" she questioned urgently. "Who are you? Where is he!?" she asked as she stepped towards the woman, raising her hands to use magic if she had to.

"Relax princess, relax," the woman repeated. "There is no need for violence. He is right there behind you."

Zelda turned around and saw Link unconscious on the bottom bunk of the bed. She ran over to the side of the bed and leaned over his body. "What did you do to him?"

"He was over effected by our magic. We apologize for such drastic measures of kidnapping you in the night, but when we realized who you were we had to get you undercover as quickly as possible."

You interrupted something important! "You know who I am?"

"Yes, we know who both of you are. You were so kind as to run a conversation that revealed pretty much everything about you."

Zelda's cheeks flushed in embarrassment. "Well, we thought we were alone. We didn't even know there were people out here at all."

"Few in Hyrule do."

Confused by the woman's words, she simply turned back to Link and examined him again. "What's wrong with him?"

"Like I said earlier, he is mostly fine. He's just asleep."

"But he's not waking up."

"A side effect. He just needs to work it off."

She turned to look at the woman. "Who are you?" Zelda asked again.

The woman looked down at her barely visible hands. Almost her entire body was covered in draping clothing of earth shades. The head covering was blue which contrasted heavily with her red eyes. "My name is Aamina," she replied. "It means peaceful."

"...What... what race are you? You aren't Hylian."

"No, I am not." The woman raised her red eyes to meet Zelda's. "I am..." she paused. "I'm sorry your grace, this is difficult to talk about. It is just... we have kept ourselves secret for so long it is hard to break from our tradition."

"Your grace?" She echoed.

Aamina sighed and pulled off her head covering. Grey hair fell down her shoulders and her face was revealed. She was old, but she wasn't that old, maybe late fifties to early sixties judging by the hair color and the wrinkles on her face. 

"We are the Sheikah, an ancient tribe tasked with protecting the goddess Hylia, and the Triforce, before and after she shed her immortal form to be reborn among the Hylians. We have failed in this task for many... many years. We have kept to the shadows, which is what we now do best."

"But I thought that the Sheikah were entirely gone!" Zelda said with wide eyes. "All the old stories say so." The Sheikah were tasked with protecting the royal family... or so the stories said. Not just her. Not just Hylia reborn.

"Who gave you those old stories? The school? Your parents? Undoubtedly they have nothing to tell you about the war that happened outside of your borders."

She hesitated but then shook her head. "I had no idea Hyrule was even surrounded by wilderness until Link and I crossed the border..."

"The stories have been told to keep all of Hyrule in the dark. Even the Princess."

"My parents wouldn-"

"Ahh, but they have. Unless they themselves do not know... which would be grave news indeed. Maldus certainly knows, he is first and foremost of the deceivers who keep the Hylians in the dark about all of us."

"You know of Maldus?"

"Yes... he has caused us much trouble... Even more so than we have faced for hundreds of years."

Zelda considered her words carefully. "...When you said all of us... did you mean the Sheikah? Or are there other races out here?"

"Not just the Sheikah, no. We are but the smallest faction of the survivors, though we are still numerous. In the north there are the Fire Mountains, where the Goron find their refuge. Just to the west of us, in the heart of the Land of the Lakes, lies the Zora stronghold; under the waters."

When Aamina paused Zelda found her chance to intercede. "There are Goron and Zora still alive? How in Din's name did they manage to keep that hidden from us?"

The old woman looked down again. "The people of Hyrule are content in their ignorance. No one wants to know what's happening outside. They simply want to live their lives thinking everything is at peace."

"You're saying we'd rather be oblivious than know the truth?"

"Yes."

"I want to know more. I've never once wanted to be oblivious. Please... explain to me what I do not know."

"I'm glad to hear that your grace... You truly are the Goddess in the flesh." She slid off of her chair and bowed on one knee before her.

Zelda stared down at her in surprise. "Yeah, still a little hard to wrap my head around."

Aamina smiled. "You wish to know more about the world as it currently is, your grace? I will tell you."