Ganondorf laughed, holding a silvery orb in his hands. Switching from left to right he kept his fiery amber eyes on it, a small translucent cloud in the center revealed the Chamber of Sages.

"Pitiable. They still don’t see whom I’ve sent there... " He cackled to himself under his breath as he watched.

The view seemed to be from someone’s head, a few strands of red hair over the cloud. The person faced Rauru as he spoke. Rauru finished and Ganon set the orb down, it going entirely silver.

"Another sage... I see... Dark Link." He snapped, turning to the left.

Dark Link was leaning against the black stone wall, arms crossed. His eyes opened at the sound of his name.

"A change of plan...," Ganon stood. "You’ll just need to do some reconnaissance. Find out more about this... ‘Sage of Oblivion’. Books. Scrolls. Anything you can find bring back here."

Without a response, the black fire engulfed Dark Link once more and he disappeared.

"Good little puppet... With each order, he fights back less and less... Grand."

~~

"Where should we start?" Nabooru asked enthusiastically, cracking all joints possible as she readied herself for the trip. Zelda cringed.

"Well, Rauru said it was north," Link looked over at the castle. "But the castle is north..."

"There must be something farther north than the castle, brother." Darunia said, hand over his face as he shook his head.

"We’ll find it, we’ll find it. Who knows how long we’ll have to walk for, though... so we should bring horses!" Suggested Nabooru.

"She has a point, but..." Impa looked over at Darunia.

Zelda chuckled sheepishly. "On foot, then..."

"Wait," Link looked over at the castle. There was something behind it. Far behind it. Was it a mountain? "Maybe a few of us should stay here, incase Ganon tries to attack the castle... Plus, Zelda...,"

He stopped to look away for a second, recollecting the revelation about them from the night before.

"Uh...," He shook his head, putting him back in the present. "Ganon captured you before, so... he might try again. If you come, that’s just putting you right where he wants."

"He has a point." Impa looked over at Zelda, head tilted slightly.

"Well... alright. But some one else must stay with me. If I cannot do anything to help out against Ganon, then we must try and find something out about that other sage and goddess."

After some debating, it was decided that Darunia be the one to stay and study up with Zelda. Before all else, now that they could, they would need to get horses. Nabooru took them to the Fortress where they borrowed some horses for free.

"These horses can’t die, or I’m gonna owe Shizuna a lot of money." Nabooru told them as she waved behind her to the horse dealer, Shizuna.

"I saw something earlier." Link looked in the direction of the castle again, once they were out of Gerudo Valley. "It was just behind the castle, it looked like a mountain but it was pretty far off, so I couldn’t really tell. That might be it, though..."

"Very possible... Good job, Link." Impa commended him with a grip on his shoulder before allowing him to pull ahead.

"It’s been a few hours... maybe we should check on Zelda?" Link asked, playing with the horses reins feverishly.

"Link. I know you are worried about your sister, but Darunia is with her. He will protect her."

Link nodded, watching the ground pass under him as he sat on the horse. "Right... Sorry, it’s just..."

"I understand." She smiled.

Nabooru was ignoring the conversation at hand and going through a small pouch at her side. Talking to herself as she looked for something with in its confines. "That blasted little... oh there- no... mrrrr.... I know you’re there..."

Link laughed under his breath and Impa shook her head, sighing heavily.

~~

Zelda flipped through a large volume of old hylian prophecies. Perhaps something would be listed there. Darunia was slowly skimming through a much smaller book as he set some of the other books Zelda had already gone through- front to back - on their respective shelves.

"Nothing. None of these books say anything about this goddess or the sage..." She put her arms on the desk and hid her face in them, exhausted.

"Perhaps it’s just not as conspicuous as you’d like it to be." Darunia suggested, flipping some pages himself.

Zelda smiled weakly, sitting back up and continuing her search through the prophecy record.

...Sage of Oblivion...

...Books... Scrolls... Anything you can find bring back here...

...Reconnaissance...

The orders repeated over and over again in his psyche.

Dark Link looked at the door to the castle library. Two people were in it. Both sages. Pulling the cloak closer to him he ascended the steps once more, scouting for another entrance to the large basement library. Surely there wasn’t just the one door...

He found another entrance, it seemed like an escape route, fairly well hidden. The door was sealed shut as though it hadn’t been used in quite a long time. Dark Link smirked and melted the door handle it, swung open silently. He heard the two sages murmuring to each other about useless books. Because the study was so big he was able to get in undetected.

Skimming the books lining the walls, a section completely hidden caught his eye. He moved towards it stealthily, and began to skim the titles of the large volumes. They were so covered in dust, if he was to cough, it would give away their cover. Dark Link placed a gloved hand over his mouth so no dust would cause him to be detected. Wiping some dust off the spine of one particularly large book, he tilted his head, trying to read the faded title.

Olinsita Oblivon

"Oblivion Records..." Dark Link mouthed silently and pulled it from the shelf, and put it under his arm. He thumbed through a few more books, but found nothing else. He left the room before he teleported in an uproar of silent black flames.

"All I have to show is an old rendition of what the goddess and sage may have looked like. Very, very old... " Zelda turned the large book over to face Darunia, who set his current book on the shelf.

Two women stood next to each other in a dark crimson space. One was blonde with short hair, a more detailed interpretation of the makings on the hylian shield adorned her front. Half lidded blue eyes looked up at a darkening spot on the corner of the painting. The other had long black hair and green eyes. Her skin was tanned while the others was pale. The latter woman looked down at a much lighter corner of the picture.

"Well... We’re bringing this to the next meeting." Darunia commented, looking the picture up and down.

"This is the old them, though...and it may be wrong. Rauru must see if it is accurate enough or not, and who knows what the new sage looks like... even if the new sage is attainable by either us or Ganondorf."

."We will know once Rauru confirms at the next meeting." He tried to reassure her.

"Alright... but there isn’t much more to look through. Only one more section." Zelda got up and walked towards the hidden section Dark Link had recently raided. She gasped at the lines through the dust. "Darunia... some one was here and we did not notice..."

"What?" He squeezed through the bookshelf rows to meet her in the more closed in section. "How could we not have noticed?"

"I do not know, but look here... no finger prints, but there were definitely hands on these books." She ran her pink gloved hands along the fingers lines, depicting to Darunia how the intruder would have done so.

"Was a book taken?"

"I believe so..."

~~

Link, Impa and Nabooru rode over the new terrain awkwardly. There were a lot of hills, bumps, and some ponds none of them had ever had any knowledge of before this day. As far as they knew, no one had ever gone behind the castles boundaries.

"This is taking a while, isn’t it...?" Nabooru complained, slouching as she directed her horse.

"Better to be aware of the areas around you then to rush into a new area blindly." Impa rode between her and Link.

"She’s got point, Nabooru. We can’t rush this... " Link turned to look back at her.

"Well you can’t blame me for wanting this done with as soon as possible." Nabooru turned and pouted childishly at Link. She reached her arms up and stretched again, putting them behind her head once finished. "No fun..."

Link laughed under his breath. Reaching the top of a steep incline, Link stopped abruptly causing Impa and Nabooru’s horses to skid and nearly ram into his own.

"What’s wrong with- ...oh." Nabooru started before she finally looked across the valley. The grass stopped just after a long line of small white flowers that seemed to go on forever in either direction. The charred, blackened dead earth flowing all the way down a hill, reaching the steps of a large black building resembling the Temple of Time.

"What in the hell..." Nabooru dismounted and took a step forward, stopping at the flowers. "Why does it just.. Stop like that?"

"I don’t know," Link dismounted as well. "But it’s definitely not good..."

"It is just as well. We found Ganons stronghold. Our forces are limited and he is probably awaiting an attack." Impa spoke last, but didn’t dismount.

"What should we do?" Nabooru glanced over at Link. She knelt down, amusing herself with the soft pedals of the bloom.

"...I don’t know..."