A Shed of Hope

Prologue: Link

I hear the crack of the whip just seconds before I feel its sting. I grit my teeth as to keep from crying out, lest Zara think of me as weak.  She raises the whip again and I feel it cut into my back, drawing blood. I let out a grunt of pain, but say nothing. She may think that she can torture me into giving her what she wants, but she doesn’t know the kind of strength I have. I can keep quiet through the most painful tortures, or at least, I hope so. I've experienced pain before, but I've never been tortured. This is a whole new sort of pain for me.

            “Cry out,” Zara cries. “Cry out in pain and beg me to stop!”

            “If you think this is enough to break me, then we’re going to be sitting here a while,” I say, my voice hoarse from lack of food and water. I tug unconsciously at the chains holding me, knowing that there is no getting out of this.

            “Well, I'm getting bored of this anyway,” she says. She walks to the front of the room, the wall right in front of me. From the assortment of weapons lined along the wall, she picks up a gold knife and turns towards me. She walks back over to me and holds the knife up to my wrist and starts digging its blade into my skin slowly, making me feels every ounce of pain. I cry out at the sharp pain of the blade entering my skin, but other than that, I don’t feel the pain. All I can think of is keeping Zelda and the Triforce safe.  I move my gaze to the ground as she starts bring the knife down to my shoulder, moving it slowly and making sure it cuts through all the skin it touches. I cringe at the pain, but don’t cry out this time. I'm getting used to the pain, so that works in my favor. 

The pain stops at my shoulder and I hear Zara’s footsteps as she walks in front of me. I see her purple slippers as she stops, the knife dangling from her hand, covered in crimson blood, my blood. She grabs a lock of my hair and yanks, hard. I'm forced to look up at her, look into her crimson eyes. Her eyes are like ice, cold and full of hatred. With my neck now exposed, she places her gold knife up against my skin. I feel the cold blade start to cut through my skin. I feel a trail of warm blood start making its way down my neck, but I know I can't move or resist in any way. I'm completely at Zara’s mercy.

            “I’ll give you a choice,” she says, her voice making a shiver run down my spine. “You can either tell me where the Triforce is, tell me where Princess Zelda is, or you can die.” And I look at her, knowing I don’t have a choice. I stay silent, but feel the pain of the knife as it starts to make a gash in my neck.

Well, that’s just the middle of the story. It would be rude to start in the middle though, wouldn’t it? But I bet that that got your attention. I think you should hear the story from the beginning and, well, it began long before this. Let’s just say that this is a long, and I mean long, story. But where did it all begin? Well, it started when I was just a normal boy living in a village on the outskirts of Hyrule. It started the night my life changed forever.