The Legend of Zelda: The Conquerer
Prologue: On the Moon
Prologue: On the Moon
A masked jungle warrior.
A masked mechanical monster.
A gargantuan masked fish.
A giant masked insect.
All of them defeated by my hand.
My sword.
My power.
And each in turn fed my lust for freedom, my desire to finally escape.
Escape, finally, from this wooden Hell allotted to me at the beginning of time.
The beginning of any time that matters, at least.
I destroyed them. The warrior, the monster, the fish, the insect—all contributing to the final realization of my escape. One more kill, perhaps two, and the fool that thinks to use my power will find that he is the one being used.
And one more kill is exactly what I’ll get, isn’t it? And what a kill. The only thing, perhaps, that I want more than freedom. The destruction of that warmongering, senseless brute Majora. He probably hasn’t fared much better than I these many eons—after all, he was also allotted his own private wooden Hell, and has resided there for as long as I.
Well, perhaps not quite so long. Majora seems lately to have been quite enamoured of seeing the world through the eyes of a forest child… A Skull Kid. He has been gallivanting about and wreaking havoc for three days’ time. I have only seen glimpses of the world that was denied me, and small glimpses at that—four small glimpses. A glimpse of a jungle warrior, one of a mechanical monster, one of a gargantuan fish, and one of a giant insect, to be precise.
I suppose I oughtn’t complain about Majora’s freedom. After all, if Majora hadn’t brought about such chaos, I would still lie dormant, imprisoned. This forest-raised idiot would never have found me, would never have used me, would never have infused me with the power of those four…
Those vital masks. I believe Majora seeks to use those masks against this boy, this Link, in their final confrontation. Majora does not know that I stand against him, however. Those four masks are already under my control. Oh, yes, they will be subject to Majora’s influence, but it will not matter. He will not have had time to extend his influence into them. The masks are bonded to me now. They obey my will. And soon—very soon—Majora will fall at the hand of the Fierce Deity. As will the mind and body of this boy, Link. And before long, all of Termina—and perhaps further.
Soon, all the world will know and fear my name, the name of the Fierce Deity, the name of the Conqueror.
I am Riend.
- - -
The wide-eyed mask hovered in the air before Link as I watched silently. Link fingered my mask, and I silently willed him to don it, but his hand slid instead back to his sword. He pulled it over his shoulder and brandished it at the mask, which issued an eerie laughter.
Even as a familiar cachinnation penetrated my prison, I felt the searing energy coursing through me, saw the masks spinning away, cursed without a sound as they grew stationary on the walls around us.
Put on the mask, damn you! I thought adamantly, wishing, not for the first time, that I could communicate directly with Link. Instead of donning my mask, though, he shouted and ran at Majora. The evil mask plastered itself across the floor, and I finally realized that Majora had gained much more power than I had thought.
Red tentacles, wet and glistening with what looked like blood, emerged from beneath and propelled the mask as it spun, the once-decorative spikes that lined the thing now becoming deadly weapons. Link dove out of the way when he realized that it was spinning toward him, then got in a quick jab with his sword. The mask grunted noncommittally at the attack, then shrieked when Link struck again, this time thrusting the sword deep into the soft underbelly of the mask. Another thrust, and again I felt that searing power within. The masks on the walls shuddered, and then burst from the walls, soaring toward Link.
Put on the mask! I thought again, and I finally felt Link’s hand on the wooden mask.
An instant later, the surroundings darkened and I felt myself flowing from the mask into Link’s body, as if my very essence were filling him from the bottom up, until the mask itself was but a symbol, and I was truly alive again. The sword warped itself as the transition occurred—peripherally, I noticed that the blade split in two, then twined about itself, coming together at the point. Link was gone by this point—his mind meant nothing to me, though I knew it must be somewhere, lost within the endlessly deep reaches of my own consciousness.
Majora’s mask had stopped moving, those wide eyes staring unflinchingly at me. I smiled as I realized it was the first time Majora had seen me. The other four masks had also stopped, perhaps due to Majora’s astonishment.
“I had thought it curious that such a child might rival my minions,” Majora said finally, his voice a high-pitched, evil wail.
I could not but widen my smile. “Is this truly the first you have learned of my presence? We both have our ways of getting around our immurements, Majora.” I spread my arms, sheathing my sword for the moment. “And now we have both broken free of those restraints—utterly and completely.”
It was true. I knew it—I was free. The previous four times Link had donned my mask, I had felt almost the same—but always with a cobwebby feeling, as if I were still entwined in that damnable mask. Now, though, it was gone, and I felt as I had felt in all the days before I had ever been imprisoned.
Majora, too, was operating without a medium save his own mask. True, I was using the body of the boy Link, but only because I was not aesthetically impressed by the appearance of this slavering, tentacled thing before me—and, without a human body, I would not appear much different.
“So you have come to kill me?” Majora’s voice was one of caution and aggression, trepidation and bloodlust.
“Killing you would do nothing,” I said. “I have come to destroy you, Majora.” The sword was in my hand in a trice, though I could have unleashed the sparkling energy at him without it. He shrieked as the light smashed into him, sending him backward into the wall. The four masks redoubled their assault, but they all shattered at a whispered command from my lips. Majora rose up and growled.
“You will pay for that,” Majora hissed. I smiled.
“Perhaps someday,” I said.
With a sound like that of human limbs being forcibly removed, two bizarrely long arms and two identical legs sprouted from the mask’s soft underside. He emitted a shrill cry, and came at me, swinging those arms and simultaneously unleashing a volley of dark energy at me. I raised the sword and easily deflected the energy, but one of his arms caught me on the side of the head and sent me sprawling. With a snarl, I hit the ground, rolled, and was on my feet fast enough to spin around and send another burst of sparkling energy in his direction. It hit the arm with which he had struck me, still extended, and instantly vaporized the limb. He shrieked yet again, and sprang backward. More dark energy, blasts so small and so numerous that it was like a swarm of bees coming at me. As if in a dance, I managed to spin and move my sword so as to deflect all but the smallest and fastest bolts, which caused little or no damage anyway. But the energy kept coming. My dance grew faster and faster, more and more exotic, until I was forced to unleash the bulk of my own power to neutralize everything he was throwing at me. Before he could recover from the blast, I ran at him and, with my sword, severed his other arm. He issued another shriek, and in the same fluid movement, I twisted the sword around the other way and severed both of his legs in one sweep of the blade. The mask clattered to the floor, wailing and shrieking in a voice that threatened to burst my eardrums. I kicked the mask, and it spun across the floor, leaving a trail of streaked blood behind it. All along, the terrible howl never ceased. For a moment—but just a moment—I believed it was over. Suddenly, though, the cacophony stopped, and the mask snapped to an upright position. Again, those eyes fixed upon me.
“You,” Majora enunciated once more, “will pay for that.” And I was thrown backward by the force of the released power as an entire body egressed from the mask, just as the arms and legs had done before. The body bade me think of a skinless animated corpse, save the two ridiculously long tentacles that writhed about on the ground beneath it. I raised my sword instinctively, but one of the tentacles snapped out like a whip, twined about the blade, and wrenched it from my hands. The other tentacle, as the first was withdrawing, snapped out in a similar fashion and bound my wrist. Then the first took hold of my other wrist. I could not move, and the grip was tightening. I tried to draw upon the reserves of my power, but they were drained because I had released it all just moments ago. Desperately I cast about for something, anything—Ah,I thought to myself. Yes, that’ll about do it.
“’Maybe someday,’” Majora screeched sneeringly, and I stared as the lumbering form, mask covering its chest, approached me. The strength of the tentacles holding me by my wrists never faltered. “‘Maybe someday.’ No! You die today, Riend.” The tentacles tightened again. “Even in the beginning, you plagued me. Your time is up, Riend.”
“My time is far from up,” I laughed suddenly, and Majora looked mildly surprised.
“You hide your fear,” Majora said. “Or you are an idiot.”
“You’ll never know,” I said, and prepared to strike even as I spoke. “I’ll never tell. But I promise you, my time is far from up. It’s a matter of comparing our advantages. You see, right now, your strength more than matches mine. One for one. We have both temporarily exhausted our magical energy stores. Two for two. The fact that I appear incapacitated is causing you to let down your guard. Disadvantage for you. So we are three for two, in my favour. To tip the scales completely, I would like to inform you that telekinesis requires virtually no expenditure of energy.”
Majora shrieked as my sword plunged into the back of the body’s head. The tentacles tightened so rapidly I thought my wrists might shatter, but I wrenched away, and he released me with little fuss. I wasn’t sure of the most effective point to attack with the sword, so I withdrew the sword with a hasty thought, then replaced it, lower, just behind where the left eye of the mask was. He shrieked again. His tentacles flailed about wildly, but it took little effort to avoid them—there were only two, after all. I called the sword to me and backed away from the screaming mask. I knew he was not finished, and my sword was flying even as the idea came to me. The sword flew out to the base of the left tentacle, and pierced the shoulder area. Another shriek came, but the tentacle did not fall, nor did it stop moving. So I resorted to my second plan. The sword began to hack arbitrarily at the shoulder area. Crude, but effective. Before long, The tentacle fell to the ground. It continued to writhe for a moment, and the second tentacle was already falling by the time it stopped. The sword returned to my hand and I stared at the shrieking, wailing, armless thing that had once been a terrifying monster, but was now just a hideous abomination.
I took a small amount of the ambient power around us and absorbed it into myself—a dangerous thing that I did not do often, but which I deemed appropriate for the current situation—and released it, raw and unadulterated, at Majora. He was blasted backward into the wall at an odd angle. Colliding with the wall, he bounced back and hit the floor, sliding briefly toward me before he stopped and lay still. After a moment, the remains of the body—the parts that were still connected, that is—retracted within the mask and vanished. The severed tentacles, as well as the arms and legs, burst into flame and vanished in seconds. The mask itself was still and silent, facedown on the floor.
I stared down at it. Even without invoking any sort of magic, I could see that the mask was empty, both physically and magically. There was only one thing I had to do in order to assure myself that Majora was truly dead. I walked forward and placed my foot on the mask. When I exerted a subtle pressure, the mask snapped in half with the clean crack of thin wood. I removed my foot and stared down at the broken mask. Like my own mask, as long as its denizen existed, the mask was all but indestructible. The fact that my foot had broken it meant that it had no prisoner. It had no denizen.
Majora was dead.
I turned and surveyed the room—all traces of Majora were gone save the wooden mask. The only blood left on the floor and walls was my own. All traces of the confrontation were gone. I turned back to the mask.
Majora was dead.
“Here’s to sibling rivalry,” I said dryly, and ground the mask to dust with my foot.
El apunte de escritor
"The Note of the Writer!" (Dun dun dunnnnnnnnn, dramatic reverrrrrrrb!)
"The Note of the Writer!" (Dun dun dunnnnnnnnn, dramatic reverrrrrrrb!)
Ikken Isshu here, just going through this story and adding my own little commentary to each of the chapters. For some unfathomable reason, I actually wrote the author's note on chapter three first... Bah, I'll do these in whatever order I bloody please. I'm also going through and correcting Bard's spelling errors on the chapter intros. razz Have fun reading, all, and enjoy the story. If you don't, I'll kill you in your sleep.
Ahahahahaha. I'm just kidding.
...right?
...No, voice... Bad voice... I don't want to kill my readers... Don't make me, voice... Please...
Just read the bloody story! .>
Note of the Man Behind the Curtain
Just to make things clear, I the Unsung Bard, am the man who comes up with the majority of the characters and plot points. Ikken is the one who slaps the meat on the bones. I provide outlines and content, he dresses it up and makes it look pretty. That is all, adieu.
