HOME | DD

Description
The relationship between the two had always been a strange one.  Each time in the past their predecessors would face in the effort to prove who was the better and leave only one standing.  This was different though or perhaps they were different from their forebears.
It is commonly held that darkness is the opposite of light, but that is wrong.  Darkness is merely the absence of light.  After all, we don’t measure the light in a room by how dark it is.  So then as Link considered the almost mirrored image of himself standing before him he wondered what then could this man be?  If not his opposite then, what?
“What’s the matter “hero”?  Afraid to get your hands dirty?”  The man asked as he drew the shadowy sword from his back, taking shield into hand.  “That’s the problem with your type.  You just can’t handle having to put your vaunted morals on hold.”  He laughed without humor but much contempt.
Link opted to remain quiet despite how much his foe had been grating on his nerves.  Someone had once told him when he was young that people reveal more of themselves when you keep your mouth shut.  Link had taken the passing observation seriously and thus spoke rarely to the point that outsiders thought him a mute.  So in reply he simply drew his own sword, grasping firmly the old blade of evil’s bane and slipped his arm into the straps of the shield that bore the symbol of his heritage.  He struck a ready stance; shield held in front of him, sword by his side and waited for this other to make the first move.
The man smirked.  “That’s more like it.  Finally a hero who knows the means to his methods.”  He laughed and made a quick swipe at the air with his sword, taking a few steps closer to Link, getting almost within range of each other.  “You see, I’ve been thinking lately.”  He suddenly made a lunge with his sword.  Link batted it aside with his shield and slashed the Master sword at the man’s leg but he had already danced out of reach.  He laughed.
“I’ve been thinking that you and all the other green heroes before you are just tools, mere pawns in this game,” he paused for a moment, seeming to grimace.  “And so am I.”  He smirked again and shrugged, hefting the sword.  “But here we are despite your supposed free will and my utter lack of faith in my ‘master’s’ cause, both of us doomed to repeat this meaningless dance that has come about countless times before.”  With a smile on his face and self-mocking sadness in his eyes he stepped forward to do battle and Link was suddenly unsure of himself deep within the crypts of champions…

It was a bright sunny day as most days were out on this particular farm in the open fields of Hyrule.  She straightened and peered up at the sky, wiping the sweat off her forehead.  She hummed a tune quietly to herself and rebound her long red hair with a blue handkerchief that matched her eyes.  She bent and grabbed the pail of freshly squeezed milk, patted the cow on the side and set off for the shed.  After pouring the milk in a cold container she stepped outside and heard a familiar whinny and so with a smile she walked over to the horse stables and looked into the friendly eyes of her big, red friend.
“Hello Epona.  How are you feeling today,” she asked as she gently rubbed the horse’s nose and ran her other hand through its white mane.  The horse whickered and shook her great head and pawed the ground.  The girl laughed.  “Yes, I know you miss him.  I do too, girl.”  She glanced over her shoulder in the direction that Link had walked off to with promises of his return.  She shook her head wondering in what state he would come back in.  She shrugged such thoughts away.  It wouldn’t do to worry about him.  After all, if he couldn’t take care of himself it wasn’t likely that anyone else could.  A hero of the goddesses was a hard act to follow. She smiled a sad smile and caressed the horse’s head.  “I miss him too.”

Link dodged back, barely avoiding the slash at this face, but his foot caught a lip of stone and he lost his balance.  He fell back and turned into a roll, narrowly avoiding another slice to his back and just brought his shield up as a stroke to his head came down.  He made a thrust at his foe’s belly but it was swept aside with the man’s shield and Link rolled to the side to get out of reach of that impossibly fast sword, slamming his shoulder into the stone coffin of a long forgotten king in the process.  He grimaced and heard the man laughing.
“You know, for a hero you are truly pathetic.  Oh if only the others who had wielded that blade could see how it’s being used now.”  He laughed again and watched Link slowly rise to his feet and resume his stance.  He smirked when he recognized the sarcophagus Link was standing next to.  “Do you know whose coffin that is,” he asked, pointing his sword in its direction.   When the answer was made plain by the puzzled expression that came in reply he went on.  “That is the resting place of the first hero I came upon.”  He laughed at the pained, almost worried expression that Link made.  “Don’t worry, I didn’t get the chance to kill him.  No, no.  He met his end at someone else’s hands,” he finished, speaking softly at the end.  He shook his head and smirked again.  “But speaking of history.”  He held his sword out.  “Let’s finish this,” he said and charged.
Link blocked the slashed to his side with his shield and then barely managed to get his sword in the way of a cut to his thigh, sparks flying as metal struck metal.  He stepped back, felt his heel hit stone and brought his sword up quickly in an attempt to slice at the man’s chin.  The attack was almost lazily batted away and Link realized that he was either backing up into a wall or into another coffin.  He sidestepped and cut at the man’s shoulder, the blade striking into the other’s shield that seemed to be everywhere at once.  Damn it, he needed to gain an edge somehow.  This man was very fast and seemed very strong to so easily shrug off his most potent attacks.  He grimaced.  He had fought others of skill before but even then he was still able to get a sword in edgewise but here, he couldn’t lay a blade on the guy.  Everything he did was countered with such ease and with little apparent effort on his foe’s part.  Perhaps he was telling the truth.  Perhaps he had fought his predecessors.  Link wondered if his foe had ever killed any of them and for the first time felt a sense of dread as the man laughed, tossing his shield aside.  He adjusted his gauntlets and twirled his dark sword.
“I have to say that you are the worst I’ve fought.  Your moves are so slow and easy to read.  At least the others knew how to change things up a bit but you, you aren’t ready for this fight.”  The man shrugged and pointed his shadowed sword at Link his expression losing all of its humor and gaining a more sinister edge.  “You are going to fall to my blade and as my sword drinks your blood I will finally break this horrible cycle.” He laughed pitilessly and let the point of his sword rest on the ground.  “As for me, if I were you I’d blame those who brought you into this.”  He brought his sword up into both hands, his expression becoming blank.  “They clearly guided you into dire straits,” he said hollowly and stepped towards Link.
Tired and sore Link lifted his shield and felt his body shudder.  In all of his fights he knew that death waited at every misstep.  But this was the first time that he felt that death wasn’t waiting anymore and as he looked into those dark, callous eyes advancing relentlessly towards him he was besot with woe.

The girl finished rubbing down Epona and was leading her back to the stables when a chill crept up her spine.  She shuddered and looked behind her in the direction that Link had taken to the ancient crypts.  She wondered if this feeling of dread was an omen sent by the goddesses.  She shook her head and forced herself to smile.  No, she would never believe that Link could ever fail at any task that was laid before him.  Even if that task were to face down the goddesses themselves.  So rather than worry she stabled Epona, looked at the setting sun and began to sing, softly at first the song her mother had taught her.  She sang with her heart and it desperately wanted her hero to come home safely to her.

Strike after strike after strike came down on him like lightning and each time he only just blocked or dodged them, each blow resounding like a peal of thunder.  Link was on the defensive and he didn’t know how much longer he would last.  For several minutes this onslaught had been going on but to Link it felt like hours, days, a whole lifetime was keeping pace with the beating he was taking.  His eyes went wide as he jerked back and avoided a slash at his face, the tip of the sword a mere inch away from his nose.  Link tripped and lost his balance his arms going wide, but the darkly dressed man laughed and suddenly the sword was thrusting towards his heart.  Link rolled and felt the blade slice his sword arm.  Wincing he quickly swirled into a standing position and saw that this whirlwind of death was trying to pull his sword out of the stone floor.  Quickly he stepped forward performed an overhand cut towards his enemy’s head, the man’s eyes going wide and Link finally felt victory within his grasp.  The man smirked.  A blur of motion the man seemed to flow out of the way of Link’s sword, grasp his wrist and with a quick twist of his body, both disarmed and threw Link to the ground, knocking the wind from his lungs.
“Well, well.  It seems that even a hero knows how to take advantage of a foe in distress.  A commendable trait.” He laughed tossed the Master sword from hand to hand seeming to admire it as he did so as Link gasped from breath.  “So this is the sword of evil’s bane, eh?”  He pointed it at Link and looked down its length, taking in the edge and balance.  “I’ll give it this, it certainly is well balanced seems to have a very fine edge.  I daresay I could shave with it,” he said as he ran his fingers lightly over the edge of the blade with a smirk.  He went through a few motions with the sword and watched as Link slowly picked himself up into a kneeling position.  The man laughed and rested the point of the sword on the ground and leaned on the pommel. “Now wouldn’t it be an amazing twist of irony if the hero blessed by the goddesses was slain by the Master sword itself?”  He smiled evilly.  “Come then, lets test its edge on chosen flesh.”  And with that he straightened and flipped the sword up, taking the grip in two hands.
Link had up to that point been getting his breath back and thinking furiously of a way to get on top of the situation.  He couldn’t help but grimace.  He’d been having a hard time with a sword in hand much less now that he was disarmed.  He glanced briefly at his foe’s sword imbedded in the rock but felt that it was too far away for him to get to it before he was cut down.  Then, watching the man take his sword in a two handed grip Link felt he was out of time.  He felt it true in every term of the phrase.  The sword of heroes came slashing down at Link and he put his shield up to block it.  The Master sword cut into the edge of the shield and Link felt his arm jolt from the impact and impossibly the sword kept going, pushing the shield down, tip of the blade slicing into his face, cutting him from forehead to cheek at an angle.  Link fell back as the sword withdrew and the man laughed while Link put a hand to the cut.  He briefly looked at the blood in his hand.  He then looked at the dread figure before him as his blood seeped down his face into his eye.
“My this is an amazing sword.” He smiled widely and admired the way the hero’s blood looked on the shiny surface of the blade.  He then looked at Link and his eyes narrowed. “I can see that now you know you are indeed my inferior and that your life is now held in my uncaring hands.”  He idly tapped the flat of the sword into his other hand seeming to consider the fallen hero’s fate as Link wiped the rapidly flowing blood from his eyes and face.  He smirked.  Wounds to the face always bled profusely.  He thought the look rather suited the ‘hero’.
“And I imagine you know that I have every right and in fact am ordered to kill you.”  He smiled sadly.  “Good bye hero.”  Then with that he took the sword back into a two handed grip, brought it up over his head.  Bringing it down in an incredibly fast arc he laughed as Link winced, realizing that he would never get the shield up in time to fully block it.
The sound of metal cutting into metal and the unmistakable sound of flesh striking stone resounded through out the ancient burial place of past heroes and kings.  Slowly, so very slowly the echo of dark laughter faded away into the shadows…

Description
The relationship between the two had always been a strange one.  Each time in the past their predecessors would face in the effort to prove who was the better and leave only one standing.  This was different though or perhaps they were different from their forebears.
It is commonly held that darkness is the opposite of light, but that is wrong.  Darkness is merely the absence of light.  After all, we don’t measure the light in a room by how dark it is.  So then as Link considered the almost mirrored image of himself standing before him he wondered what then could this man be?  If not his opposite then, what?
“What’s the matter “hero”?  Afraid to get your hands dirty?”  The man asked as he drew the shadowy sword from his back, taking shield into hand.  “That’s the problem with your type.  You just can’t handle having to put your vaunted morals on hold.”  He laughed without humor but much contempt.
Link opted to remain quiet despite how much his foe had been grating on his nerves.  Someone had once told him when he was young that people reveal more of themselves when you keep your mouth shut.  Link had taken the passing observation seriously and thus spoke rarely to the point that outsiders thought him a mute.  So in reply he simply drew his own sword, grasping firmly the old blade of evil’s bane and slipped his arm into the straps of the shield that bore the symbol of his heritage.  He struck a ready stance; shield held in front of him, sword by his side and waited for this other to make the first move.
The man smirked.  “That’s more like it.  Finally a hero who knows the means to his methods.”  He laughed and made a quick swipe at the air with his sword, taking a few steps closer to Link, getting almost within range of each other.  “You see, I’ve been thinking lately.”  He suddenly made a lunge with his sword.  Link batted it aside with his shield and slashed the Master sword at the man’s leg but he had already danced out of reach.  He laughed.
“I’ve been thinking that you and all the other green heroes before you are just tools, mere pawns in this game,” he paused for a moment, seeming to grimace.  “And so am I.”  He smirked again and shrugged, hefting the sword.  “But here we are despite your supposed free will and my utter lack of faith in my ‘master’s’ cause, both of us doomed to repeat this meaningless dance that has come about countless times before.”  With a smile on his face and self-mocking sadness in his eyes he stepped forward to do battle and Link was suddenly unsure of himself deep within the crypts of champions…

It was a bright sunny day as most days were out on this particular farm in the open fields of Hyrule.  She straightened and peered up at the sky, wiping the sweat off her forehead.  She hummed a tune quietly to herself and rebound her long red hair with a blue handkerchief that matched her eyes.  She bent and grabbed the pail of freshly squeezed milk, patted the cow on the side and set off for the shed.  After pouring the milk in a cold container she stepped outside and heard a familiar whinny and so with a smile she walked over to the horse stables and looked into the friendly eyes of her big, red friend.
“Hello Epona.  How are you feeling today,” she asked as she gently rubbed the horse’s nose and ran her other hand through its white mane.  The horse whickered and shook her great head and pawed the ground.  The girl laughed.  “Yes, I know you miss him.  I do too, girl.”  She glanced over her shoulder in the direction that Link had walked off to with promises of his return.  She shook her head wondering in what state he would come back in.  She shrugged such thoughts away.  It wouldn’t do to worry about him.  After all, if he couldn’t take care of himself it wasn’t likely that anyone else could.  A hero of the goddesses was a hard act to follow. She smiled a sad smile and caressed the horse’s head.  “I miss him too.”

Link dodged back, barely avoiding the slash at this face, but his foot caught a lip of stone and he lost his balance.  He fell back and turned into a roll, narrowly avoiding another slice to his back and just brought his shield up as a stroke to his head came down.  He made a thrust at his foe’s belly but it was swept aside with the man’s shield and Link rolled to the side to get out of reach of that impossibly fast sword, slamming his shoulder into the stone coffin of a long forgotten king in the process.  He grimaced and heard the man laughing.
“You know, for a hero you are truly pathetic.  Oh if only the others who had wielded that blade could see how it’s being used now.”  He laughed again and watched Link slowly rise to his feet and resume his stance.  He smirked when he recognized the sarcophagus Link was standing next to.  “Do you know whose coffin that is,” he asked, pointing his sword in its direction.   When the answer was made plain by the puzzled expression that came in reply he went on.  “That is the resting place of the first hero I came upon.”  He laughed at the pained, almost worried expression that Link made.  “Don’t worry, I didn’t get the chance to kill him.  No, no.  He met his end at someone else’s hands,” he finished, speaking softly at the end.  He shook his head and smirked again.  “But speaking of history.”  He held his sword out.  “Let’s finish this,” he said and charged.
Link blocked the slashed to his side with his shield and then barely managed to get his sword in the way of a cut to his thigh, sparks flying as metal struck metal.  He stepped back, felt his heel hit stone and brought his sword up quickly in an attempt to slice at the man’s chin.  The attack was almost lazily batted away and Link realized that he was either backing up into a wall or into another coffin.  He sidestepped and cut at the man’s shoulder, the blade striking into the other’s shield that seemed to be everywhere at once.  Damn it, he needed to gain an edge somehow.  This man was very fast and seemed very strong to so easily shrug off his most potent attacks.  He grimaced.  He had fought others of skill before but even then he was still able to get a sword in edgewise but here, he couldn’t lay a blade on the guy.  Everything he did was countered with such ease and with little apparent effort on his foe’s part.  Perhaps he was telling the truth.  Perhaps he had fought his predecessors.  Link wondered if his foe had ever killed any of them and for the first time felt a sense of dread as the man laughed, tossing his shield aside.  He adjusted his gauntlets and twirled his dark sword.
“I have to say that you are the worst I’ve fought.  Your moves are so slow and easy to read.  At least the others knew how to change things up a bit but you, you aren’t ready for this fight.”  The man shrugged and pointed his shadowed sword at Link his expression losing all of its humor and gaining a more sinister edge.  “You are going to fall to my blade and as my sword drinks your blood I will finally break this horrible cycle.” He laughed pitilessly and let the point of his sword rest on the ground.  “As for me, if I were you I’d blame those who brought you into this.”  He brought his sword up into both hands, his expression becoming blank.  “They clearly guided you into dire straits,” he said hollowly and stepped towards Link.
Tired and sore Link lifted his shield and felt his body shudder.  In all of his fights he knew that death waited at every misstep.  But this was the first time that he felt that death wasn’t waiting anymore and as he looked into those dark, callous eyes advancing relentlessly towards him he was besot with woe.

The girl finished rubbing down Epona and was leading her back to the stables when a chill crept up her spine.  She shuddered and looked behind her in the direction that Link had taken to the ancient crypts.  She wondered if this feeling of dread was an omen sent by the goddesses.  She shook her head and forced herself to smile.  No, she would never believe that Link could ever fail at any task that was laid before him.  Even if that task were to face down the goddesses themselves.  So rather than worry she stabled Epona, looked at the setting sun and began to sing, softly at first the song her mother had taught her.  She sang with her heart and it desperately wanted her hero to come home safely to her.

Strike after strike after strike came down on him like lightning and each time he only just blocked or dodged them, each blow resounding like a peal of thunder.  Link was on the defensive and he didn’t know how much longer he would last.  For several minutes this onslaught had been going on but to Link it felt like hours, days, a whole lifetime was keeping pace with the beating he was taking.  His eyes went wide as he jerked back and avoided a slash at his face, the tip of the sword a mere inch away from his nose.  Link tripped and lost his balance his arms going wide, but the darkly dressed man laughed and suddenly the sword was thrusting towards his heart.  Link rolled and felt the blade slice his sword arm.  Wincing he quickly swirled into a standing position and saw that this whirlwind of death was trying to pull his sword out of the stone floor.  Quickly he stepped forward performed an overhand cut towards his enemy’s head, the man’s eyes going wide and Link finally felt victory within his grasp.  The man smirked.  A blur of motion the man seemed to flow out of the way of Link’s sword, grasp his wrist and with a quick twist of his body, both disarmed and threw Link to the ground, knocking the wind from his lungs.
“Well, well.  It seems that even a hero knows how to take advantage of a foe in distress.  A commendable trait.” He laughed tossed the Master sword from hand to hand seeming to admire it as he did so as Link gasped from breath.  “So this is the sword of evil’s bane, eh?”  He pointed it at Link and looked down its length, taking in the edge and balance.  “I’ll give it this, it certainly is well balanced seems to have a very fine edge.  I daresay I could shave with it,” he said as he ran his fingers lightly over the edge of the blade with a smirk.  He went through a few motions with the sword and watched as Link slowly picked himself up into a kneeling position.  The man laughed and rested the point of the sword on the ground and leaned on the pommel. “Now wouldn’t it be an amazing twist of irony if the hero blessed by the goddesses was slain by the Master sword itself?”  He smiled evilly.  “Come then, lets test its edge on chosen flesh.”  And with that he straightened and flipped the sword up, taking the grip in two hands.
Link had up to that point been getting his breath back and thinking furiously of a way to get on top of the situation.  He couldn’t help but grimace.  He’d been having a hard time with a sword in hand much less now that he was disarmed.  He glanced briefly at his foe’s sword imbedded in the rock but felt that it was too far away for him to get to it before he was cut down.  Then, watching the man take his sword in a two handed grip Link felt he was out of time.  He felt it true in every term of the phrase.  The sword of heroes came slashing down at Link and he put his shield up to block it.  The Master sword cut into the edge of the shield and Link felt his arm jolt from the impact and impossibly the sword kept going, pushing the shield down, tip of the blade slicing into his face, cutting him from forehead to cheek at an angle.  Link fell back as the sword withdrew and the man laughed while Link put a hand to the cut.  He briefly looked at the blood in his hand.  He then looked at the dread figure before him as his blood seeped down his face into his eye.
“My this is an amazing sword.” He smiled widely and admired the way the hero’s blood looked on the shiny surface of the blade.  He then looked at Link and his eyes narrowed. “I can see that now you know you are indeed my inferior and that your life is now held in my uncaring hands.”  He idly tapped the flat of the sword into his other hand seeming to consider the fallen hero’s fate as Link wiped the rapidly flowing blood from his eyes and face.  He smirked.  Wounds to the face always bled profusely.  He thought the look rather suited the ‘hero’.
“And I imagine you know that I have every right and in fact am ordered to kill you.”  He smiled sadly.  “Good bye hero.”  Then with that he took the sword back into a two handed grip, brought it up over his head.  Bringing it down in an incredibly fast arc he laughed as Link winced, realizing that he would never get the shield up in time to fully block it.
The sound of metal cutting into metal and the unmistakable sound of flesh striking stone resounded through out the ancient burial place of past heroes and kings.  Slowly, so very slowly the echo of dark laughter faded away into the shadows…