Tears of a Broken Kingdom

Chapter Two ~ I'm scared

Zelda didn't think she could stand to watch anymore.

Tears soaked her face and her heart ached.

The dim room seemed to close in around her, the shadows of the flames flickering off the stone walls.

She had lost track of time since they'd been taken here, to somewhere in the Spirit Temple she would have guessed, but she almost certain it was nighttime.
The stone floor was chilled to the touch and the air had lost most of its stifling dry heat.

She noticed splatters of blood on the walls, wincing when she remembered Link's blood spraying out of his cuts.

His face had been twisted in silent concentration, and Zelda knew he was trying to not show any pain.
He was so strong compared to her, and the thought of him withholding all that pain made her heart ache.

He was slumped against the wall, his eyes barely opened, cuts and blood all over his face, back, and chest.

His fingers and toes were being slowly dismembered, Gerudo guards periodically coming in to hack a bit more off. They let the cuts bleed, and his fingers and toes were misshapen and grotesque, bits of bone sticking out.

It made Zelda sick.

She knew they were just doing this to get to her. If they just wanted to kill him he would've been dead days ago. They just wanted to watch him suffer, and make Zelda watch it too. They wanted her to hurt. They'd even kidnapped their son so he could "join in on the fun," as the Gerudo called it, and watch his father slowly be murdered.

He had his face against Zelda's shoulder, huddled next to her, his knees up against his chin, as if making himself small would make him nonexistent. His mouth quivered with silent sobs.

She let him lean into her, her arms around his shoulders.

He was trembling, and she didn't know what she could do to help. Even though he was ten, and mature for his age, nothing in his life had prepared him for this. She remembered that he'd been gagged and tied up when they threw him in here, a morbid family reunion. His eyes had been wide with shock, and fear.

The door on the other side of the room opened, and Zelda's heart began to beat violently in her chest. It was time for the knife again.

>*<

Link wasn't ready for it.

He looked at his fingers, disgusted by how messed up they were.

They never had any time to even begin to heal, they were left to bleed and get infected.

Blood soaked what remained of his fingertips, the skin around the cuts becoming discolored with gangrene.
The sharp pain of getting his fingers dismembered at first, slowly fading into a dull throb. By that time, a Gerudo would be back in to cut some more off, leaving him in a constant cycle of pain.

He stayed in his position with his back against the wall, the slightest feeling of the shackles they had put on his wrists.

The Gerudo went over to him and roughly pulled his hand up by a finger making him bite his lip to try and distract from the pain.

The Gerudo didn't say anything, unlike the last one that had come in only awhile before. She pulled out her knife, and he could tell the blade was dull.