Part 4
The road was a lonely, silent river of packed earth flowing through a sleeping world. Link walked until the moon had completed its long, silver arc and the stars began to fade into the bruised, pre-dawn sky. The familiar shapes of the Ordona Province, the rolling hills and gentle copses of trees, looked alien and vast without the comforting anchor of his village. The silence here was different from the silence of his own heart. It was an empty, hollow thing, a silence that did not listen, but simply ignored. For the first time in his life, he felt truly alone.
As the eastern horizon softened to a pale, hopeful grey, he knew he could not risk traveling in the open. He slipped off the road and found a small, hidden hollow, sheltered by a cluster of rocks and overgrown with ferns. Here, he made his first camp. It was a shepherd's camp, small and practical, leaving almost no trace. He ate a piece of his mother's journey bread. Its dense, sweet flavor was the taste of home, a painful, wonderful ache in his chest. He drank from his waterskin, and as the world awoke to the song of birds, he wrapped himself in the cloak she had packed for him and fell into an exhausted, dreamless sleep.
He awoke in the late afternoon, the sun already beginning its descent. The fear and loneliness of the night had receded, replaced by the quiet, focused purpose that had set him on this path. He was not just a lost boy anymore. He was a hunter.
He did not walk the road itself. He moved along its edge, in the shadow of the trees, his eyes not on the horizon, but on the ground. He was reading the story the road had to tell, a story written in mud and crushed leaves. He used the skills the forest and the pastures had taught him. A normal traveler would have seen only a dirt track. Link saw the faint, day-old tracks of a merchant's cart, the delicate prints of a doe and fawn, and then, something else.
They were ugly tracks, clumsy and heavy. Not the clean print of a wolf or the deep score of a bear, but a shuffling, dragging mark, as if made by something that walked upright but unnaturally. He had seen tracks like them once before, in a dusty illustration in one of Impa's old books. Bokoblins. But these were subtly different. There was an occasional, unnerving drag mark, as if one of the creature's feet were malformed, and the prints themselves seemed to radiate a faint, almost imperceptible wrongness, the same scent of decay he remembered from the blighted grove.
He followed the trail of unnatural tracks, which sometimes veered onto the road and then away from it again. He found other signs. A patch of grass, trampled and dark with a stain he knew was dried blood. Further on, half-hidden in a ditch and splintered, was a single wheel from a cart, its axle broken. The story was becoming clearer, its chapters written in violence and despair.
As dusk fell, he knew he was getting close. The feeling of wrongness in the air grew stronger, a dissonant hum beneath the chirping of the crickets. The road ahead narrowed, passing through a rocky cutting, a natural place for an ambush. Link slowed his pace, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword. He moved from shadow to shadow, his passing as silent as a thought.
He found the mail cart. It was just beyond the cutting, dragged off the road and concealed in a thicket of thorny bushes. It was overturned, its contents—parcels and letters—spilled onto the ground like fallen leaves. This was it. This was the place where his friend Elwin's laughter had been silenced.
A twig snapped behind him.
Link spun around, drawing his sword in a single, fluid motion. The training in the pre-dawn gloom with his father was no longer a drill; it was a desperate reality. Two figures shambled out from behind the rocks. They were Bokoblins, as the tracks had suggested, but they were twisted, corrupted things. Their skin was a sickly, mottled green, and their movements were jerky, their limbs seeming to bend at odd angles. Their eyes, usually a dull, stupid yellow, glowed with the same faint, malevolent red light as the shadow-wolves.
The first one let out a guttural roar and charged, its crude club raised high. Link did not retreat. He stood his ground, just as his father had taught him. Let the mountain break itself upon the stone. He raised his shield.
The club came down with a sickening crunch. The impact was immense, a shockwave that ran up Link's arm. But the shield held. And as the crude weapon struck the wood, the red birds his father had painted flared with a brilliant, holy light. The Bokoblin shrieked, stumbling back, its glowing eyes blinded by the flash, its club arm hanging limp and stunned.
This was the moment. The opening. Link lunged forward. He was not a killer. The thought was still a cold, alien thing in his mind. He did not aim for the creature's throat or heart. He swept the sword in a low, clean arc, its freshly sharpened edge biting deep into the Bokoblin's knee. The creature screamed and collapsed, clutching its ruined leg.
The second Bokoblin, seeing its companion fall, was more cautious. It circled him, its glowing eyes darting about, looking for an opening. It was smarter. Link knew he might not win a direct exchange. He dropped low, his left hand snatching his slingshot from his belt. In one smooth motion, he loaded a stone and fired. The small projectile struck the Bokoblin square in the snout. It wasn't a damaging blow, but the surprise of it, the sharp, stinging pain, made the creature roar in frustration and rear its head back.
That was all the time Link needed. He darted to the side, towards the rocky wall of the cutting. He used his staff for what it was meant for: leverage. He jammed the end of it behind a loose, precariously balanced scree of rocks on the ledge above and pushed with all his might. The rocks tumbled down, creating a small landslide that cascaded onto the startled Bokoblin, burying its legs and pinning it to the ground.
It was over. One Bokoblin was wounded and trying to crawl away. The other was trapped and screeching in rage. Link stood between them, his chest heaving, the sword feeling impossibly heavy in his hand. The adrenaline of his first real fight coursed through him, a terrifying, electric feeling. He had won. He had faced the monsters of the road and survived.
When his breathing had returned to normal, he turned his attention back to the ruined mail cart. He could not save all the scattered letters, but he felt a duty to his lost friend to see if anything important remained. He righted a leather mailbag, its side torn open. Most of the contents were ruined. But one letter, protected by a sturdy oilcloth pouch, was miraculously intact.
He slid it out. It was not addressed to anyone in Ordon. It was written in a fine, elegant script on thick parchment, sealed with the Royal Crest of Hyrule. The address read: For the hands of Zelda, at the Iris Sanctuary, by the headwaters of the Lanayru Spring. It was not addressed to a princess in a castle, but to someone in a secluded estate. Tucked into the pouch with the letter was a small, flat, hexagonal token of dark, polished wood. Etched into its surface was a symbol that made Link's breath catch in his throat: a single, open eye with a single, falling tear. The ancient sigil of the Sheikah.
This was no ordinary delivery. Elwin had been on a secret mission of vital importance. And these creatures had been waiting for him.
Link looked from the letter to the moaning Bokoblins. He could hear more of them, their guttural calls echoing from deeper in the wilderness. He knew, with a sudden, chilling clarity, that they hadn't killed Elwin. They had taken him. And their tracks, the same ugly, dragging prints from before, led away from the road, away from the direction of Hyrule Castle, and deep into the wild, untamed lands to the east. Towards Lanayru.
His quest had just changed. It was no longer about following a road. It was about following monsters. He carefully secured the mysterious letter and the Sheikah token in his own satchel. He gave one last look at the familiar, safe road that led towards the capital, the path of ordinary travelers. Then he turned his back on it.
He took a deep breath, the cold night air filling his lungs, and followed the monstrous tracks off the road and into the wilderness. He was no longer just searching for a missing friend. He was now the sole guardian of a secret Royal dispatch, on a path that was leading him deeper into the heart of the very shadow he had set out to investigate.