The Great Dooku Tree (A Legend of Zelda Fanfic/Star Wars Fanfic)

Chapter 1; Unmappable

Any stranger who lived outside of Kokiri Forest was bound to easily lose themselves in the beautiful green expanse. Very few people knew their way around it, other than the Kokiri and any other who had lived in the forest for years. It was a maze of massive trees and hills intermixing with one another and dotted with the occasional dangerous plant life. Traveling through it would not be easy if you hadn't known the place very well.

The Lost Woods, however, were very aptly named, as literally anyone and everyone could get lost in them. Whether you were a Hylian, Kokiri, Deku Scrub, Skull Kid, Stalfos, or whatever else might stumble into the vast forested regions deep within Hyrule, you were guaranteed to lose your way in the Lost Woods. Dark, mysterious things dwelt within them, and every route you could imagine taking would lead you somewhere you'd already been.

But where Link, the Hero of Time, and his fairy companion Navi were currently wandering, it only got darker. They were journeying through uncharted territory, a deep, dark forest even more complex and dangerous than the Lost Woods. They had both been wandering for days, after hearing the reports about a dark power that people could just somehow feel permeating the world around them. It seemed to be sourced somewhere in these uncharted woods that Navi had decided to call the "Unmappable End". Link wasn't sure "unmappable" was even a word, but had let it slide when she suggested the name.

They had gotten as far as they had through the impossible mess of trees that eclipsed any they had wandered through before. And that was saying something, considering the places Link had wandered into in all the times he had been in the Lost Woods. First a tunnel to the mountainous Goron City, then a passage to the head of Zora's River, and then an alternate world he'd needed to rescue from a demon moon and an evil spirit. And now the Unmappable End. It was like he'd wandered into another world. Again.

They had made their way mostly through walking forward, constantly going in the direction they felt the evil presence was coming from. Link could almost sense it... calling to him. It was a sensation he couldn't really explain when compared to other times he'd felt himself being invisibly pulled into something.

"How many days do you think it's been?" Link asked Navi as he walked up the twisting path as it wound around a close clumping of gnarled willows. Neither of the two companions had spoken in quite a while.

"Oh, I dunno," replied Navi as she flitted around nearby his head. "Maybe... two thousand, one hundred eighty-seven days?"

Link raised an eyebrow at her.

"Okay, maybe twenty," Navi said with a slight giggle.

"That wasn't funny," Link said. "What if we really had been wandering that long?"

"Hey!" Navi said. "I do my best to bring levity to a situation! It couples well with my analyses of them! You really need to lighten up."

"Navi," Link sighed, "we've been wandering for 'maybe twenty' days in a place no one has ever heard of, on a mission that somehow requires the need to bring the Master Sword even though we don't know what could be causing it! I'm getting a little worn out by all of it. If it weren't for the fact that this... feeling, this... power was badly affecting people, I would have just ignored it."

The feeling of an evil presence permeating the world wasn't anything new, and if no real danger had been presented, Link would have left the problem to other people. But once this power had started to cause dangerous thunderstorms of slithering blue lightning over random areas of Hyrule and somehow made it hard for some people to breathe at times, Link had been given no choice but to take up the Master Sword again and seek it out.

He just hadn't expected it to take so long.

"Oh, don't get too discouraged!" Navi said. "I mean, we've been feeling the dark power push out to us even more every day, which I think is a good thing because it means we're about to find its source!"

Link couldn't argue with that, and nodded to Navi with a small smile. But he was just so tired from all the walking. He had drunk his last half a bottle of Lon Lon Milk days ago, and was now relying on little sips of red potion and muddy water from assorted puddles to keep himself going.

It was also hard to find his way around, considering how dark it was in the Unmappable End. He was almost glad for the sudden blue thunderstorms when they lit up the sky, because they lit his way when Navi's natural brightness wasn't enough.

After some more silence, Link trudged ever forward, making his way through cramped spaces where trees were clumped close together, squelching piles of muddy, spongy grass, and bumpy patches of ground where tree roots jutted up unexpectedly.

It was like this for hours, before Navi called to him, "Hey! Look!"

Those were words Link had heard all too many times from Navi in his life, so his head shot up to look in the direction she was floating instantly. And where he looked, he saw a tree through the trees in the middle of a small clearing of grass. One bigger than any he had seen in the Unmappable End yet. One nearly the size of the Great Deku Tree himself. Its bark was a deep red, its leaves jet black. It hung menacingly over all the other trees in its surrounding area. The only way Link hadn't noticed it at first was because he'd been looking down for so long.

And when he looked directly at it, he felt a pull from that strange dark power stronger than any pull he'd felt yet. And in that moment he knew that this tree, whatever it was, was the source of the mysterious darkness. Link ran toward it with a sudden vigor he hadn't felt in days, despite being weighed down by the pressing force of the darkness. Even now, he felt it to be a little harder to breathe than before.

He kept running until he noticed something else he wouldn't have noticed before. A man was standing in front of the enormous tree, his back to Link. He was only visible now because he stood in the small clearing that separated the large red tree from the rest. All the Hero of Time could see of him was a brown cloak and a head of white hair.

Link stopped abruptly, standing just at the entrance to the small clearing. He hadn't expected to see another person here. Why would another person be here in the middle of nowhere in the Unmappable End? How would they have gotten here?

As Link stood there in confusion, the man turned around and smiled at Link with a cold, arrogant sneer. He had a head of short grey-white hair and a neatly-trimmed beard to go with it. His eyes were brown, and his teeth were a yellowish off-white. He was dressed in a neatly pressed, full-body black tunic that had a light brown belt at the waist and knee-length black boots. His cloak turned out to really be a simple brown cape, tied onto his shoulders with a chain connecting the shoulders of the cape together.

"I have been waiting for you, boy," the man said in a clipped, terse accent. "Your presence in the Force is very strong. You have been wandering here for days, I reckon? Wondering what all the fuss may be about on this planet?"

"Wha-- wh-- who are you?" Link asked the man, then looked to Navi. She bobbed up in the air as if to shrug.

The man gave a slight, stiff bow. "You may call me Count Dooku."