They made their way past the rubble, sometimes having to dig through, to the stairs.
“Damn,” Elm brushed off dirt from his cloak.
Zelda spoke for the first time in a while “We must see Link, he could be in danger.”
Elm nodded, a grim look on his face. He pulled a sword out of it’s sheath, and ran up the steps before the princess. The kept running silently, for a long ways, about ten or so flights.. It was eerily quiet, enough to really creep a person out. Not that it worried Elm. No, he’d come to like silence. Then it was broken. Just like that an echoing scream pierced the air, vibrating in their eardrums, and causing them to flinch in pain. Emotional pain, that is. It only made them run faster. As they neared the hospital ward the air got colder, until it was so chilly that Elm shivered. He stopped in front of the door. There was a coating of red ice under and in front of it.
“Oh Goddesses.” he whispered, his breath curling before him. Zelda shivered. Elm tried to open the door, but it was locked. So he lifted his leg, his cloak fell to his side, revealing his body and limbs. With tremendous strength he kicked the door open, and at the same time the force caused his leg to slip out from under him, falling flat on his backside, and snapping his head back, which hit the ice. This gave him a dizzying headache. But he quickly got up, and saw something he didn’t want to see. A massacre. With Link smack-dab in the middle, breathing heavily. His skin was pale white, he had dark circles under his eyes, and eyes of pure black. Elm couldn’t see his past friend in this man. If you could call it that. Zelda screamed, although it was more of a high pitched wail. The former Link covered his ears, when the castle started to crumble. Zelda stopped screaming. Elm grabbed the princess and started to run for the stairs, when he realized they would never make it down so many flights before the building came down and crushed them. So he ran for a window instead. The moat would save them.
“What are you doing!?” Zelda’s eyes widened.
“Pushing you out a window!” he yelled over the thunder of a falling palace.
“What!?”
“You heard me!” A brick caught him on the shoulder as he flung her out a casement.
He winced in pain and threw himself out too, after sheathing his sword. The wind rushed by him, and falling debris seemed to hang at his side. He yelled at Zelda as loud as he could to go into the moat feet first, but he wasn’t sure she could hear him. She put her feet in front of her though, so she might’ve. Zelda hit the water first, then Elm, they managed to go under quite a ways. Brick splashed around them when the two got to the surface, making it just that much harder to get to shore. They managed though, and crawled onto land coughing and spluttering. Zelda plopped onto her stomach, and stayed there. Elm however, stood up after a moment and watched the castle disintegrate. Suddenly, it let out a great roar and fell down all at once, producing a humongous dust cloud and an even larger pile of rubble.
Elm sighed, and hung his head. After a moment, villagers piled in to see what the large rumble was. Horrified gasps of stunned men and women passed through the crowd like a wave through the ocean. Elm turned to them and spoke.
“It is probably best to search for survivors.”
It took the whole day, but with a force of 60 they managed to get down pretty far and rescue many people. However as they got deeper the work became grueling, and near impossible. Soon the rescue team gave up. Anyone buried in that can’t possibly be alive.
Late that night, Zelda and Elm checked into a hotel. It was a long and tedious day, and they needed their rest. They walked into the room. Elm said he’d sleep in the bed nearest the door, in case anything happened. He turned to the wall as Zelda undressed. He heard her say “Okay.”, then turned around and undressed himself. He slipped into bed, listening to Zelda cry herself to sleep, and then he too drifted into unconsciousness