The sky was a dark black, only to be lighted up by the constant lightning. Thunder rang in my ears, and the rain hit my face. Every drop was felt, each one hurting and stinging more than the last. A thunderbolt flashed into my eyes with the path etched into my retinas soon after, but that was not all that filled my eyes. A stonewall, once grand, was now sitting in front of me. The beautiful designs that were once carved into the stone more than a few centuries ago lay either in the mote as rubble, or no longer exist. The city beyond is still hidden by the remains of the wall but the fires that ravage the buildings are clearly visible even in this thickest of rainstorms.
I walk through the gate, which beyond odds still stands proud without a scratch to boot, and through what could pass as a seen from hell. The screams of the dieing fill my ears, thrice the sound of the defining thunder, and louder as I head to the center. It is then that I realize that what I walk on is not a stone walkway, but the corpses of those that lived here in the past and present, perhaps even of the future. A huge shadow falls on me suddenly, I turn around to face that of the maker of the shadow, and a monster with bright glowing eyes that made the fires around me to feel like that of a match. Its clawed arm moved back and struck me faster than I imagined, my world went dark.
~*~
Jake slowly opened his eyes only to look upon the face of a sleeping Kotake; somewhat surprised he brought up his head to look around his surroundings. It appeared that he was in a tent with nothing else but two people, a few sheets, and a pile of clothes. Upon noticing the clothes Jake bolted up, uncovering the top halves of him and Kotake. Kotake was on her side facing away from Jake, apparently she had moved sometime between when he woke up and when he bolted up, clutching something. Jake moved closer and peered over her to get a look at what she was holding. Fitting snuggly between her breasts was a large green bottle, Jake couldn’t see the label but he new what it was from the smell.
Gerudo Brandy, he thought while walking over to dig out his clothes, she cons me into on sip and I become the first drunk of the party. I am sooooooo going to kill her when she wakes up. Hopefully she is sober by then. Jake was able to get fully dressed and leave the tent before the sleeping Gerudo had the chance to wake up as the brandy was known to leave a Gerudo drunk until they had breakfast if they had too much, as most Gerudo tend to do after a battle gone right.
Apparently the tent was set up in the area that he slept at two nights ago, one hint was the sleeping guard that had not moved position since he fell asleep after noticing Jake walk by. Jake walked up to the soldier and reached out his hand aiming to shake him awake. As he was about to grab a hold of the shoulder the guard awoke with a jump and the sound of metal being drawn from its resting place in its sheath. He had drawn his sword and placed it on a neck, something that happened to belong to Jake. The guards’ expression turned from one of seriousness to one of surprise. The guard put his sword back into his sheath and stated some apologies.
“No worries friend, but I was wondering, did you know you slept for about two days now?”
“I did? Oh, yes I did. I can sleep through the loudest of storms but I wake easily when someone is close to touching me. So, what happened?”
“Well, nothing important. But an army of monsters attacked at some point.”
“I take it we won.”
“I guess. Heavy casualties but we did obliterate the monster army, none survived, not even prisoners.” Jake talked to the guard about a few other things then left to wondering around the busy camp and watched as tents were taken down and packed. He soon came across the blood soaked field of battle, which filled him with images of blood flying and spilling from both men and monsters alike. So much blood, even for mere monsters. A hand on his shoulder interrupted his thoughts; he glimpsed over his shoulder at the person then and continued with his survey of the red field.
“So, where did you run off to after Kotake announced herself?” Yes it was true, right after she said her name Jake was running like a bat out of hell, that he was curtain of. But the reason why fleeted him at the moment, no thanks to the throbbing headache that comes with a hangover.
With the shake of his head he turned around and spoke slowly. “Why did I leave? I needed time to think for one. I also was in search of a place to relieve myself.”
“Well, I think you were hiding and making sure your prized possession was in tact.” Impa said almost slyly.
Jake hung his head and spoke slightly lower, “Well, that too.” His head than shot up and a smile formed on his face, with a much louder voice he asked, “What’s to eat?” But before Impa could answer a new voice rang over the camp.
“Ooooooh Jaakeeeey, where are yooooou? Come out come out where ever you are!” By now Jake’s face was pale, staggering in front of him was none other than Kotake wearing nothing but one of his shirts that conveniently almost went down to her knees and, a bottle in hand that she would take a swig from every so often. “Oh there you are, you just ran off so sudden, and you never said good by. Oh it’s too far from the tent, come darling we shall have to do it here. As she said this she had walked over to Jake and started leaning on him, as her feet couldn’t carry her anymore.
“Jake, please explain.”
“Um, well you see, that-um…it’s sorta like this…um, gotta go. See ya!” Jake immediately took off for the mess tent leaving a drunk Gerudo and a bewildered Shiekah. The Gerudo had faltered in her steps to chase after Jake and landed on Impa.
“Hey, your not my Jakey. Oh well, I always wondered what it would be like to have a Shiekah. Heh.” Kotake started tracing imaginary figures on Impa’s face, then she started to move the finger lower. Before it could get any lower Impa snatched the offending hand and grabbed a hold of the back of Kotake’s neck and started walking to the tent the Gerudo had previously staggered out of to get her some decent clothes on.
On the walk Impa ran into Kotake’s twin sister, Koume, and handed off her prisoner, but not before Kotake started going for another swig from her bottle. Impa, seeing this, snatched the bottle out of her hand and threw it aside yet she continued on as if there was still a bottle in her hand.
Impa then decided to head for the mess tent, hopefully to find Jake and interrogate him about what was going on between him and that Gerudo, and to get something for her own empty stomach.
~*~
After eating a filling breakfast and dodging the prying Shiekah, Jake was now in front of the Royal Family of Hyrule, and unfortunately the boring eyes of Impa. “As the king of Hyrule I thank you for your service in helping to fend off those that threaten the livelihood of this fair kingdom. How might I reword you for your brave efforts of yesterday?”
“Do not concern yourself with rewording me, your majesty. The thought of you and your family is enough.”
“Surly a man such as yourself might need something, name it and it is yours.”
“Well, if you must insist. Alright, I require more food as my supplies have been less than favorable in the past couple weeks.”
“Does this mean that you will not be traveling back to the city with us?” Impa asked.
“You are correct, I will be heading in the direction I was going before I stopped here. Perhaps sometime in the near future, if time would permit it.”
“Perhaps. Is there anything else you would like? Rupees perhaps?” Jake started digging in his pockets, soon to reveal a sole green rupee.
“My lucky rupee, the first one I ever found. This is all I have, so it looks like I will have to take you up on your offer.”
“How much would you like?”
“How much can you spare?”
“How about one thousand rupees.”
“Wow, steep. Hmm, I’ll take seven hundred of that.”
“Is that all? Surely you must take more. But if you want seven hundred, you get seven hundred.” The king then turned to Impa. “Have his supplies ready before we start back to the castle. Dismissed.”
“If I may ask,” Jake said, “is there anything else you need of me at the present time?”
“At the present time? No, not at all. You may come and go as you wish at this moment.” Jake bowed curtly, turned on his heel, and left the presence of the king. He headed back over to the field of battle and sat down on an overlooking hill. Soon after his loneliness was broken as two figures sat on either side of him.
“Sorry for what happened earlier, I was not my self. I was wondering, do you remember what ever happened last night?”
“No, not really. And don’t worry about it, alcohol can do that to a person.”
Kotake grinned and stated, “So you are a person after all. The only thing I thought you could do was walk and fight, I guess I was wrong.”
“Ha ha, very funny. Pick on the useless man why don’t ya.”
“Oh come now, men have their uses.” Koume added.
Kotake glared at her sister and said, “Oh yeah, name one.”
“I’ll have to get back to you on that. So Jake where you headed now?”
“I think was headed west.”
“You think?”
“I was never good at pointing out that stuff without a compass.”
“If memory serves me right, you should be headed to lake Hylia. The Zoras like to hang out there.”
“It’s also connected to Gerudo Canyon by way of waterfall.” Koume added.
“So, what brings the both of you here?” Jake asked.
“We came to escort the king home, along with discussing the treaty between our races and a few other legal issues.”
“Sounds interesting.”
“Not really, at least until all the formality crap is over with. It is then we get to pig out on all the food we can eat and relax with a full body treatment fit for the queen herself.”
“Wish I could be with you, but I have other things to do. Well, it’s about time for us to go our separate ways once again. I hope the next time we meet up again will be under better circumstances, and not a repeat of what happened yesterday.”
~*~
Two days past and still no sign of anything, Jake thought to himself as he stopped to take a sip from his canteen. To think, I could have been whining and dinning with the best of them with Kotake at this moment. He was also wishing he was back home in his car and driving it down the highway with no destination in mind. Now he was walking up and down hills with no destination in mind. What fun his life turned out to be.
The next hill he walked up turned out to not be a hill after all. It appeared to be a steep incline that leveled off in to a flat terrain that was scattered with trees and rocks as far as his eyes could go. “Ooooooh boy. This will take awhile.” With that said Jake started walking. After what seemed like an eternity, not even two hours in reality, Jake felt the ground beneath his feet shake. He looked around but couldn’t see anything, and then Jake turned around. It was there that he saw a large dust cloud that appeared to be heading his way, growing bigger by the second.
Jake decided to turn around and run as fast as he could, or as fast as the equipment he was carrying would allow him. After twenty minutes of running nonstop, he had slowed considerably and stopped and bent down with his hands on his knees trying to catch his breath. He then decided to turn around to see how much closer the stampede was to him. He then turned back around but kept his eyes behind him. After a minute of standing there, with the ground shaking more and more, he started running. Soon the first stampeding animal started to pass by him and Jake started to move closer, when he got close enough he grabbed a hold of an area around its neck and propelled himself onto what looked like a buffalo.
“If I can’t outrun them, then I’ll ride them.” He rode for four hours straight until he noticed that they were turning to the right and away from the way he wanted to go. He stood up shakily on the large animal and turned to his left and started to jump from beast to beast until there was nowhere else to jump but the ground, he threw off his pack and jumped.
~*~
All was quiet on this moonlit night as nothing was stirring, no thanks to the painful cries, cursing, and muttering of course. “Damn rock. Ouch! I swear it wasn’t there when I J-ouch! When I get my arm set properly and this headache gone I’m going to- OUCH!” When Jake jumped, he was unfortunate to land on a large rock that happened to break his right arm and knocking him unconscious. He was now currently sitting under a tree trying to bandage what he could, but he was largely unsuccessful as he could only use one arm. “I’m glad it was my right arm, at least I can still defend myself to an extent. Guess I’ll sleep here tonight.” And that he did.
~*~
Morning had finally come for Jake, as his night was long with sleeping only some of it away. He was able to retrieve his stuff and set off toward the natural wall that had a gate in a natural opening. Jake was able to pass the gate with no problems only thirty minutes after walking, and ten minutes later he was standing in front of a large laboratory at the side of the large lake. Behind him lay a small fishing village that was filled with Hylians, Zoras, and Gerudo alike. The ones he talked to had told him to come to this place to heal his injuries before he did anything, some even laughed at him when he tried to explain the cause of his injury and called him crazy for doing a stunt like what he did.
Jake walked up to the door slowly and knocked lightly on the door, but was slightly surprised as the door creaked open as he knocked. He continued forward slowly and called out ‘hello?’ and ‘anyone home?’ but had no answer. The first room he entered was plain in detail, a few paintings, a mirror above a desk, a few chairs, some flowers, and an area rug filled the room. Three other doors were also visible with one on each wall and each one had a sign on it. The one farthest of him read ‘Lab’, the one to his right said ‘living quarters’, and the one to his left read ‘dinning room’.
Jake then noticed a sweet smell coming from the door marked ‘lab’, when he opened the door the smell changed from sweet to rancid. His hand went straight to his neck and he pulled up a black facemask that covered only up to his nose. With the smell out of his nose, he continued walking around the large area that was covered with lab tables that sported several chemicals, some bubbling over burners, others traveling through long tubes that lead out of sight. Jake was immediately lost in the maze of tables and desks, everything was starting to look the same to him and his headache was getting worse, perhaps some stray fumes that happened to reach his nose. His steps started to falter and his vision was getting blurry, his left hand instinctively reached out and grabbed a hold of a table trying not to knock down any chemicals. He was able to take two more steps right before he passed out.
