Finding a Princess

There was a small matter of locating the princess, and her attendant, who managed to escape me on the big day. In the first few weeks after conquering Hyrule I kept to my promise of hunting her down with all of my energy, while Ganondorf did his best to diplomatically handle the angered Goron and Zora. They would have made great allies. Let's just say the diplomacy didn't last long.

No matter how many people Rayne and I interrogated, mentally and physically, no one knew Zelda's location. I burst into Impa's home in Kakariko Village to find some trace of a hidden room or forbidden information that might lead to some sacred building they ran to for shelter. I found nothing. Either all the information was already burned and the hidden room sealed, or it never existed. It was as if they had utterly vanished from Hyrule.

I do not handle failure well. All my free time was devoted to maps, sending out teams or a couple scouts to different locations for reports. If any small detail seemed promising, even if it was in the middle of the night, I rushed out to investigate it myself.

Nothing. Nothing at all.

Out of moral support, Rayne accompanied me to a new clue to investigate. A stalfos had reported a suspicious pair lurking around the Gerudo Valley's outskirts. I had to wonder if they decided hiding near my home was the safest choice, that it would be the last placed I'd look. The trouble with catching someone who didn't want to be found, was that you had to travel faster than they could learn you were aware of their location. This is why I usually left the castle without hesitation, with or without a team.

Our destination was a small cave discovered on one of the cliffs of the Gerudo Valley plateaus on the edge of our territory. There was one entrance, and it was at our feet. Rayne dropped inside with a torch, while I tied a rope securely to a boulder so we could make our way back out. It disturbed me that no one had bothered to try to cover the entrance. Either it was a trap, or another dead end. I couldn't take too much more disappointment. I lowered the rope, and she held it while I descended to the cave's floor. I accepted the torch from her and extended my arm to try and see what was directly in front of us.

A camp had certainly been set in that cave. We traveled down a short slope and discovered two beds of grass and straw that had definitely been slept in. Just a few steps beyond that were two rocks set to the sides of what was once a campfire.

"Still warm," Rayne confirmed by holding her hand near the burnt wood.

"They left only recently. I'm too late!" I yelled, but my voice was deafening in the confined area. I kicked the remains of the fire and scattered it across the floor. Rayne turned and hugged me. I wrapped my free arm around her back. "We will find her," she reassured. It was good to know she supported my ridiculous search.

"I wish I felt that way," I admitted. "I feel like I'm doomed, and I'll never right this wrong." I sighed, knowing such thoughts were negative and I needed to avoid thinking that way. I had to stay determined. "Let's see if we can find any clue to what they are doing, or where they've gone."

We headed toward the back of the cave to see if it led out anywhere. Rayne stumbled for no apparent reason, so I swung the torch toward the floor to see what might have tripped her. When I found nothing, I became even more concerned.

Suddenly. I heard sizzling behind me, like raw meat sat on a fire hot pan. I spun around and saw the tips of bomb flowers glowing orange and burning fast. I snatched Rayne's hand and pulled her with me toward the entrance. "Run!"

We triggered Impa's trap. I was convinced it was intended just for me. We rushed back to the rope. The precious seconds we had to escape just slipped through our fingers. Rayne jumped on to the rope and used the momentum of her swinging legs to ascend quickly. I was directly behind her, my heart racing in a panic and pounding in my ears.

The explosion of the bomb flowers left me heavily disoriented, worse than my hardest night of drinking. At first I heard nothing, then a shrill ringing pained my ears. It blurred my vision so fiercely I saw double, which made gripping the real rope above me difficult. I was buffeted by rocks and stones, but I felt only the impact because the adrenaline pumping through my veins was thick. I forced myself not to freeze. I needed to keep moving to survive. I could only live by climbing the rope. My vision steadied, but the rising dust from the explosion and falling rocks made it impossible to see above me. I reached and suddenly I didn't grasp at rope, I found a hand. Rayne held on tight. I groped for her other hand and she helped me out of the hole.

I crawled out on my hands and knees, coughing to fill my lungs with fresh air. I fell and rolled to my back. As my coughing subsided, I glared up at the dusk sky. Rayne's face appeared suddenly. "That was close."

"Damn her!" I yelled, and smashed my fists off the ground. "I can't wait to get my hands around her neck. I won't stop squeezing until I see the life fade from her eyes!" My chest tightened again but with anger. I closed my eyes. There was no point in being angry. I turned away from Rayne and groaned as I rose to my feet and stretched my back. The lumps and bruises slowly became obvious."They have grown too bold now to set traps to kill me."

Rayne and I slowly approached our horses tied to trees at the bottom of the plateau. We walked around the edges, until we were low enough to jump to the ground without being harmed. On the way, she said, "I can't believe they would do that. It seems too risky. They could hurt someone innocent."

"They don't want to be found. They know I am searching for them, but killing me will be the last thing they do."

"Yeah, Ganondorf will make sure of that."

"What do you mean? I figured you would try to take revenge first," I remarked, painfully climbing into the saddle of my horse.

Rayne did the same, and then explained, "Oh, trust me, I would take part in avenging my best friend, but Ganondorf would beat me to it. If you think your search for Zelda is frantic, his search would be crazed. All of us, the Gerudo, the monsters, we'd all be redirected to search for Zelda and Impa, just to get revenge, and he wouldn't rest until he claimed it."

I smiled fondly, turning toward her. "You really think so?"

"I know it for a fact, and that you would do the same for him."

"With my bare hands," I confirmed.

We returned home, beaten and still without the princess, or the Triforce of Wisdom. I dreamed vividly of galloping home to deliver this piece of the Triforce to Ganondorf, to have the bragging rights to say I did it, that I directly contributed to his success, but I only continued to fall short.

Defeated, I returned my horse to the stables out by the market, and walked toward the castle. Rayne and I parted ways to head to our rooms. I had a report to make, if he was still awake.