Song of the Dead (Link, open)

[Xaro]

[Third Person]

Nighttime. A time of hour where the ghosts can sing and the ghouls can play.

Xaro wasn't playing.

He sat on a headstone, watching the large blue lanterns of the Wraith Drakes move back and forth carelessly, as if drifting to another realm. They gave this place a more haunted look. It scared the townsfolk from arriving to the graveyard at night, so it was a perfect place to think. They wouldn't hurt him, but if someone else was in the area, they would get the Wraiths' attentions real quick. They would occasionally sing a haunting song, giving him chills up and down his spine.

He then got the feeling that someone was coming to check out the noise...

[Link]

Link doesn't visit the graveyard too offend, but tonight seemed different than others; the winds have changed direction in an instant and the day light died quicker than what he likes.

As Link lead Epona through the graveyard, a person sat on a headstone caught his eye. Around him danced a blue lantern. Link tried to ignore it because he knew without his wolf sense given by Minda, he could do nothing. So he approached the headstone with his steed, but as he drew closer, a bad sense stormed Link.

[Xaro]

The giant blue lanterns, only two of them, crossed themselves in front of Link, then moved up to get a better look. The light faintly illuminated the transparent owners of the lanterns. They looked like skeletal, legless dragons. They had no hips either. They were completely fleshless, no organs either. Link had come face to face with two of them.

They stared at him with their empty, eyeless gazes, then moved aside, the angle making them vanish. The man sitting on the headstone looked up at Link with red, glowing eyes, "Hello."

[Link]

Link showed no emotion as the lanterns glared at him. He seemed to show not much interest in them anyway. He focus is attention toward to gentleman on the stone.

"Hello. These your's?" Link asked as he points at the creatures holding the lanterns.

[Xaro]

"No. They are off duty. Were they on duty, you would have been dead by now."

He said it plainly, as if it were an everyday thing. The hylian stood up, clearly much taller than the one before him. He was finally illuminated by a passing lantern. His short hair was purple, his eyes were a bloody scarlet...

Fierce Deity? No, the color of the hair was all wrong, the markings, and the eyes. Plus he didn't have a hat. Other than that, it was eerie to look at him. His skin was just as ivory as his, though. Plus he was wearing a battle harness.

"They belong to my Mistress."

[Link]

Link could clearly see the mysterious man was studying him very carefully. He tried to study the man as well, but nothing came to him except a bad sense tickled Link bad.

Epona jerked the other direction of the man in an attempt to escape.

"Epona!" Link yelled and jerked back. Obviously Epona knew, too, something was wrong and the fact this man was in a graveyard creeped him out even more.

"What brings who to this graveyard?" Link couldn't help but ask himself that, too. He completely forgot after the sighting of this Hylian.

[Xaro]

Xaro's shadow grew longer, and came up against the wall, although the shadow wasn't his. It was shaped like a bat, but it was humanoid. Well, more bat than humanoid. When the hylian spun around, the extended shadow was gone.

"So...she is toying with us..."

A gold flash, then Xaro's weapon appeared in his hands. It was a huge great axe, completely gold in color. The butt of the weapon was shaped like the Triforce Phoenix. White runes were all over the axe head, and ancient hylian letters spelled out "Devastation" on the shaft.

[Link]

As soon as the tall man drew out his weapon, Link does the same without knowing who this man is talking about.

"What's wrong?" The frightened escapes from Link's grip and takes off.

[Xaro]

The lanterns around them started to shake, then take off into the Shadow Temple nearby. Something must've spooked them. Now it was completely dark, save for the moonlight. Even that started to dance along the ground...shadows creeping about without owners along the floor...

Something backhanded Xaro across the face, easily sending him into a wall. By closer look, it was a wing, and what smacked him was the huge clawed hand on the wing-arm. More shadows began to stick together, and they rose, forming the shape of the attacker. He...actually she, because of the upper body structure, was huge! Taller than Xaro, that was certain. Clawed hands, feet, and scaly body revealed that she wasn't human. The head though...was a whole other story. It was a vampire bat head, with huge ears, and upper fangs the size of daggers. Both the normal hands and the ones on the wings were two clawed fingers, and a clawed thumb. She had one bright red metal eye in her right socket, the left one was just a normal, dully glowing red eye. The red glow in her mouth silhouetted those evil teeth as well as her mouth shape.

She was writhing in evil...bathing it it, oozing it, practically darkness itself. It was nauseating to even be around her. Her tail swished idly as she approached the hylian with the axe, picking him up by the neck.

In a screechy, commanding, vicious, and eerie-to-the-core voice, she snarled, "Welcome back, failure. It's the body chains for you, tonight."

Xaro couldn't answer, her grip was just too strong.

[Link]

Link studied the sitation and found a time to attack. He leaped with great forcce in an attempt to strike the evil creature!

[Xaro]

Dreadwing was too quick. She immediately lashed out in the middle of his attack, and practically stopped it just by grabbing him. Her scaly skin felt icy...as if touching a corpse...

The shadows around her made it worse, like an empty, endless void that could never be filled. She couldn't be touched when the Hero of Time was at this state.

It wasn't like this with Ganon...who was she?!

[Link]

The grasp of this deadly creature paralyzed me. I was gasping for air and I couldn't feel the sword or shield in my hands. This creature seemed a lot more quick-witted than a henchmen under Ganon's control.

I saw at the corner of my eye a shine glowing brighter and brighter within each second. The monster caught a glimpse of whatever is was and dropped me and wailed an ear shattering screech. I got my balance as I landed and stood my stance.

[Xaro]

She snarled, the flash disappearing as quick as it came. The evil monster swiveled around back at Link, and roared, vanishing into the floor as she did so. Shadows along the ground were now grabbing upward out of the earth itself, making an attempt to grab Link's boots. There were so many of them, and just by getting near them the temperature seemed to drop considerably!

[Link]

Link saw the monster vanish into the ground not knowing what she was up to. But then, seeing the shadow below his feet, he jumped back as far as his feet could take him. But They only followed in a faster pace. Link jumped in all directions; left, right, back, left again, back once more. Nothing could stop the shadows! They just kept coming.

Finally, a shadow in a form of a hand grips Link's boot tight! As he struggles to break free, another one jumps and grabbed the other. He cut them off and once more, the cried the screech related to the one he heard recently. They quivered and slowly returned to the shadow from the earth.

[Xaro]

She came back up, an impressed look on her face. Her wings spread open wide, seeming to be an endless expanse of darkness within the membrane of the wings. From within that darkness, emerged thousands of eyes, opening up one by one to stare at Link with a piercing gaze. So...many...eyes!

It was like looking into the gaze of self-failures face to face.