Part VI

      "Link! Zelda!" Adam screemed from across the darkness on top of the rumbling of the bunker. It had been ten minutes since the last of the Golden Land had decayed, and now the only thing left was the spiralling center, the new sun for the dead world and the only thing lighting the cavern. When Link had first applied the power of the Triforces to the rocket, the whirlpool of fire looked as if it would be plenty to light the area. But when Adam saw it in the dark he saw that it was like some glow-in-the-dark objectshe had seen before, execpt this was a red glow. One could see the light quite clear in the dark, but the light that radiated from it didn't carry too far unless you were right up next to it.

"Hey! Guys! Come on!" this was starting to get a little bit on the annoying side. The two of them were still kissing each other, and the weirdest thing was, they weren't moving. They were completely frozen, Zelda still in Link's arms, her arms around his broad neck, and lips locked. He remembered from the Legend of Zelda cartoons, how in almost every other scene the Link and Zelda characters would try to kiss one another but never did get to throughout the entire series. Again, he saw how different things were for this Link and this Zelda than those of the cartoon. First off, their personalities were very different, they didn't joke around with each other, no, here they were serious as they could be (and they obviously had no fear of heights). If he had heard right, the two were engaged to be married and Link would become King of Hyrule when it happened. Adam didn't even have to guess that the current king of Hyrule wouldn't be named Harkinian as he had in the cartoons.

The other thing that got to Adam about them was their appearences. In the cartoons, Link had been short, skinny and had long brown hair. Not this one, not by a long shot. This Link was six feet tall, obviously was very muscular without an ounce of fat on his body, and his hair was blond and cut short, hardly even going down to his shoudlers and combed over to the side. What was really amazing to Adam was what he was wearing. Most Zelda fans he had met back home always thought of Link wearing his green tunic and hat. This was completely different. Link looked as if he had just come from a dance! He wore what could have been a tuxedo on Earth had it not been for the purple shirt he wore underneath and no tie. Not to mention the fact that the outer shirt stopped at the hips and there weren't any tailings on the back like on a normal tuxedo. Link very well may have had it tailored just for him so that he could dance in it and still be able to fight.

Zelda had to be one of the most beautiful women Adam had ever seen. He had been able to tell she was royalty from the beginning from the grace in her actions, the kindness in her voice and how she had mentioned Link being her fiance and the future king of Hyrule. Once more the way she looked was completely different than the way the had pictured her in the cartoon series. Some of her looks weren't different, blond hair, but that was about it. Once he read that the cartoon Zelda was five foot five inches tall, but that wasn't anywhere near this one. Zelda wasn't that much shorter than Link, definetly 5'11", her hair trailed down to her waist in a simple pony tail, though the way it had been done made Adam realize that only the royalty of Hyrule wore their hair that way. Her eyes (though now closed) were a type of blue that seemed to put you at ease when she looked at you. The dress she wore didn't seem to resemble anything on earth. First there were the shining colours of blue, gold and red (he figured out that those were the colours of the Hyrulian flag). Then it wasn't revealing at all, but he could see every aspect of her body in it. The neck didn't go down even an inch from the throat (probably just to give her room to breath), her arms were covered all the way down to the wrists, and the dress's bottom didn't even let you see her ankles. However it fit over her tight enough over her to see that she was fairly thin (not skinny but athletic, one could see it in the arms and legs), her hips showing she had yet to give birth to a child being as thin as they were, and other porportions of her body were well developed but not ridulously looking like other women of earth he had seen.

Adam took a moment to notice how they were kissing (a moment because who likes to be watched all the time when they kiss?) and he saw that they weren't even moving, not even their heads, as if they had stumbled upon some wonderful pose that they didn't want to have to break. That's how you know you've found the right woman! he thought.

Just as Adam was about to call out to them again, he was stopped short in his words when the entire bunker's back began to tip up. From what he could see in the dull light from the dead Golden Land, the rocket pushing the bunker had slid up from its resting position. Not only that but the building had stopped moving altogether and pieces of rock were falling down from the top of the cavern.

Either the stopped motion or the silence was enough to get Link and Zelda out of their frozen posistions and look around.

"What happened?" Zelda asked.

"I think that the majority of the bunker has now hung outside of the mountain and tilted over.

"Well what now?"

"Link, can you reposition the rocket?"

"Yes, I believe so. One moment." Obviously trying to concentrate, Link was able to move the rocket, now attached to the fire of Power that Link had put on it and make it fly down to the near bottom of the bunker.

"Now move!" he said. Adam was begging to hear a tone in Link's voice that seemed to show whoever heard it that the speaker was all knowing, and that they should, no, would obey. Immediately the entire bunker was straightened out again and began to rumble along once more. Adam guessed that it went on for about thirty more feet before it happened. In a blaze of light, the bunker was finally free of its imprisionment. The site was unlike Adam had yet to see, and after witnessing the Golden Land's death, it was hard to amaze him. He was right about the demensions of the bunker's main corridor. In fact the entire building wasn't that much over 1.6 miles long, but it had to of been at least a half mile high and wide! Then there was the sight of it falling down the mountain side. It was too big to flip over, but it kept destorying everything in its path. For some reason Adam had been wrong when he said that the mountain was only a half mile tall. I must have been at least three miles high!

The most amazing thing about it all was that Link, Zelda and Adam were still hanging on to their Hookshots. The feeling was so exhilerating that they just couldn't move, the wind was rushing past them, the sun was over them again in midday posistion, and they could see the desert for miles around. But then a new threat came to them that made them all let go. The front of the bunker must have hit a rock that wouldn't break, because the entire back side went from sloping down the mountain to flying up to stand on its front.

"Whoa! Let go! Let go, let go!" Link shouted out releasing the handle. Adam followed his lead. Using the Triforce that had never left him, Link was able to control the HoverBoots and make them stop in there paths.

"Link, look!" Zelda wispered to him and pointing to the sky. Before they had not been able to see it, but now they were able to note that all around the mountain there was an orange hue. At first it looked as if the sky was just made that way, but now the bunker was outside the bubble, and frozen still in midair and ready to flip over.

"Of course!" Adam screemed to them. "This mountain is encased in a time warp. Anything that goes in side will remerge the exact same time that it went in. But if something is moving on the outside, then anyone on the inside will see it as just locked in the air."

"But Adam," Zelda started, "whether or not time passes normally, have we removed the gaudians?"

"Well, if we had then something would be happening to take us to the Test- oh look!" he said motioning to the botton of the moutain. The bubble that had enveloped the moutain begun to move, or wave, like a pebble had been dropped in the centre of a pond and the ripples had began at the edge of the water. As they continued on the way up to the top of the moutain, their wavelengths became more intense, and the waves themselves were starting to flow up farther as they got closer to the top.

All three of them were still speechless, not commenting, not moving, just waiting to see what would happen when the ripples would meet in the top. The look of the collision was like seeing a pebble dropped into the water in reverse and upside down.. First there was an orange column shooting down from the bubble, and then when it went back up it left behind a sphere of orange matter, which "hovered" in the air for a moment, then seemed to want to fly back to the sky, but didn't. Instead it slowly floated down to the high peak of the moutain and changed colour completing. Going from the orange it had been at the bottom, the sphere's inside showed a centre of blue. This centre seemed to reach out to the outside, and then surround the mass. Finally, before it stopped morphing and remained still, the sphere began to glow, giving off a blue light that shown over the entire mountain.

"Well, shall we?" Adam asked, gesturing towards the blue glow.

"Yes, Adam, let us go, hopefully there won't be more Gaurdians up in there." Link said, hoping for the best. Directing the HoverBoots, Adam, still holding he Triforce of Wisdom, and Link, still holding Zelda in his arms, floated up to see what would await them at the Test.

* * *

Meanwhile, about 16,000 feet above the ground, a little boy who could not sleep was on his way to America for the first time from South Africa. This boy was the only one of his family never to have flown in a plane before. All he could do during the flight was look down at the earth from the sky. As they were going over the Sahara Desert, this young man of twelve was stunned as he saw a large dark object jump out of the moutain they were flying over. If that wasn't enough, the moutain itself seemed to vanish at the same time. It all happened on the side of the plane, so the pilots couldn't have seen it. The boy was so amazed by this he decided to wake up his mother, who only mumbled back to him in Afrikaan telling him to go back to sleep. He wondered if anyone would ever believe him.

* * *

When the three of them made it up to the top, they were to find that the peak was really a plateau of some sort, leaving just enough room for the sphere to rest and them to stand. To Link Zelda it looked like it was twice as tall as the "elufant" creature that they had seen before meeting Adam.

"What do you suppose this is for?" Zelda asked after they had landed and Link put her down. "Is this supposed to be a doorway to the Test?"

"Princess, there's only one way to find out!" Adam said. Turning to the sphere, he began to trot off to it.

"Wait!" Zelda yelped running over and grabbing Adam's arm. "How do you know what's in there?"

"I know that we just escaped the Golden Land and Ganondorf, that the Gaurdians are finally gone, and that according to what you two tell me, the Test is the only thing that awaits us."

"Zelda, do you remember what Simidora said to us?"

"Who?" Adam asked puzzled.

"The man from Calatia that told us of the Uniforce." Zelda answered. "He said that once the Gaudians were gone, we would have to complete the Test, for this, I would need the Triforce of Wisdom."

"Well, then I suppose that you'll be asking it of me." he said. Zelda could see something in his eyes just then, something that told her he didn't want to have to give it up again, that he didn't want to go back to being the stupid boy he used to be. "Of course, I don't need it right now, there's nothing saying that this is the Test, like you said, it may just be a doorway to the Test."

"Yes, and it is. I know it to be." he said, nodding at her to her know that it was, that she would not be needing the Triforce of Wisdom for a while yet.

"Then can we go on and talk later?" Link said behind them. "While time does not pass here, I think that we should at least get going for our own sakes."

"Yes, handsome," Zelda said teasingly, not because she was in a good mood, but because she wanted to put aside any possibilities of a fight breaking out. The last thing she needed was for Link to embarass himself by using the Triforce of Power on Adam and failing in the process. And if that happened, Adam still would be able to use the Triforce of Wisdom on them. Luckily enough, this little comment seemed to get a smile from Link.

"Yes, come on Adam, let's get going in there."

"Well, like I said, it is an entrance to the Test." Now it was his voice that let Zelda know how much he didn't want to have to give it up.

Standing side by side, the three walked into the blue glow that hopefully would take them to the Test.

As they walked into it, the light was almost enough to partialy blind them. But as their bodies entered it the light diminished, and they found themselves in a dark chamber, with only the floor as their way of knowing that the entire world was not space. The only light in the area was a beam of white light that went straight up from somewhere out in the vast area. The dim way it was outlined let them know that it was indeed a great distance off.

"Here, allow me to light the place," Adam said, holding up the Triforce and letting its golden light shine over them, though it was a little hard for him to do that since he was a few inches shorter than both Link and Zelda. From the light that they did have, they could see that behing them was a wall with no door that went on left, right and up for longer than the light would go, which was only about a hundred feet. Infront of them a legde extended out for at leat forty feet and then stopped. This too went out left and right farther than they could see. From all this, it seemed that they had no where to go but left or right, and the legde and wall seemed to curve a little as they went both ways, so they would only be going in circles.

However none of them had time to comment on this situation, for a second after Adam held the Triforce up, the light out in the deep chasm stopped pointing straight up and instead slowly began to move down, tilting downward until it was focused directly on the three of them.

"Ahh!" Zelda said, shielding her eyes from this sudden change in lighting.

"Hey, what's this?" Link asked no one inparticular. Walking over to the edge of the platform, he gazed into the light's source. Zelda could see it too after he eyes adjusted. In the very centre, which was where this source was at in relation to the chasm, there was, something, standing there. They could tell the exact distance, but it would take too long for either of them to walk out to it on the HoverBoots.

"Well, maybe that's were the Test is supposed to be, what do you say my love?" he asked holding his hand out to her. "Here, I'll pick you up when I get out there." Walking out to the edge with Zelda's hand in his, he stepped over the platform.

The only problem was, when he put his foot out into the empty space, nothing happened. His foot didn't meet solid founding like they were supposed to, instead he lost his balance and fell down over the ledge.

"LINK!!!" Zelda screemed. Luckily enough, she still had his right hand. But for some reason, like he normally would be able to with the Triforce of Power, he could not pull himself up with its strength! No, now he was just dangling there, now aware that the Triforces' powers had been cancled out. All he could do was to hang on to Zelda with all the strength he had naturally.

"Adam! Help!" he yelled out to their new found friend. Adam had been ready to follow Link out to the centre, but now he was stunned by the sudden developement. He rushed over and hunched down by Zelda, and then hesitated. For a split second he looked at Link, then at the Triforce, which showed just how much he hated to have to go back to what he had been before. But there was only a split second before he threw away the Triforce back behing him, and then reached out to Link. First he grabbed his hand, then pulled up on his wrist, then elbow, shoulder, and then Link was able to pull himself over the ledge.

Zelda still had her grip on him so hard that when Link got up she fell back, which caused her to fall back on the Triforce of Wisdom.

Confess.

"What the-?" Link said. The voice seemed to come from everywhere.

"It started when I laid my hands on the Triforce," Zelda said picking up the magical relic.

"Well, what does it mean by confess?"

Inside her mind, Zelda was beginning to see something that she should have seen a long time ago. It was more than just luck that they had met Adam, this was fate that had brought him to them. It was like they had seen on that wall after Link killed the elephant. Sometimes the Triforce would not work on certain things. In this place, she could not, even with the Triforce, understand how to get past the Test. She would need to give it to Adam, and he would know what to do.

"Adam?" she said walking over to him. Now that he didn't have the Triforce, he had chosen to just stay over by the legde, sitting down with his face in his hands. "I need for you to take this." At first he seemed to refuse, shaking her hand off his shoulder. Then she gave up the kind approach and just shoved the Triforce into his hands.

* * *

Now that was more like it! Adam's mind came to a clear point again. He was glad to of helped Link just then, but he had to drop the Triforce to do it. Doing so was so much a quick change it left him totally disoriented. But now he was ready to do whatever it was that they needed for him to do.

"All right, what just happened? I was a bit out of it."

"When I touched the Triforce, a great voice came from the chasm and said 'confess.'"

That word confess went straight to Adam's memory. When he had been in basic training, one of the men he shared a tent with had an enormous book. Adam asked him what it was for. The man had said it was to kill time with. Adam had said that it wouldn't take him anytime at all to finish it. One gift that Adam possessed was the ability to read through a book with uncanny speed. The only problem was that within three hours he would completely forget what was in it. But before that three hours was up he could answer any question that someone would ask about it.

"What, you think you can get through this before basic trainings over with?" the man had asked, not believing Adam one bit.

"Oh yeah, easily. Heck, I'll read that thing tonight."

"No way! You could't do that! It's impossilble!"

"No it ain't! Here, let me have it."

Taking the book, Adam prepared himself. To do it, he had to rub his temples on his head to get his mind cleared. When he was ready, he began. Opening the first page, he starting flipping page by page. He went through each page in about a half second. The whole process went on for about thirty minutes until he came to the last page. When he closed it, he looked up to his roomate to see him staring at him dumbfounded.

"You just read that?"

"Yeah, sure." Adam replied tossing the book back to the man who almost dropped it.

"Well, how do I know that you didn't just thumb through the whole thing?"

"Ask me about a certain phrase from the book, but we have to do this now cause I won't remember anything tommorow."

"Uh, okay," he began to flip through the book looking for something. "All right, what does it say on page 757, line, uh 11,12, yeah! Line twelve."

"That was, uhm... ahh!" To see the exact phrase, Adam would go back throught the memory of flying through the pages, then slow down the picture to a stop and read what was on that page. "'...and established the law in Israel.'"

"Hey! Thats right! Okay, how about this?" More searching, "Page 493, the fifth paragraph?"

"Easy! 'Miraim was the father of the Ludites, Anamites, Lehabites, Naphtuhites, Pathrusites, Casluhites (from whom the Philistines came) and the Caphtorites.'"

"Whoa! That's amazing! How do yah do it?"

"I'm not so sure. For some reason I've always had this ability to read through all of a book but after a few hours I won't be able to remember a thing."

"Your long term memory isn't that great huh?"

"I guess not, but I get along."

"Do you have A.D.D. or something?"

"What's that?"

"Okay, I suppose not. Well has anyone ever told you what your condition is? A doctor or something?"

"No, my mom never took me to one of those. Said they was too expensive."

"Well, maybe one of these days your memory will get better."

One would think he could tell the future. Adam thought, bringing himself back to the present. Now that he held the Triforce of Wisdom, every word he had read in that book had come back to him. The only thing he had over looked that night was the title. If only he could remember that then things would be so much clearer for him.

"Now Link, I may or may not know what it wants for confession. This may seem a little strange and intruding, but I want you to tell it what you have done wrong in life."

"What?!" he asked bewildered.

"Not like mistakes you've made concerning simple questions, I'm talking about things like lying, pride, murder, cheating, that kind of thing."

"Why should I have to do that? Why not Zelda?"

"In all reality, I don't know, but then I do. It has to be you that confesses your sins Link."

"My what?"

"I once read a book, a very large book, and it told of how to enter a kingdom you must first confess what you had done wrong in life. If this thing goes by the same rules, then if you do confess it might let us go on. Sins are described as the acts you perform when you break the commandments. There were ten described that were rathter simple. Four of them wouldn't apply to you guys, however six would be possible to break. Honor your father and mother, do not kill, do not cheat on your lover, do not steal, do not lie, and do not be envious. Have you ever broken any of those rules Link?"

Link stared at Adam, his jaw gaping. "Those are the rules? That's ridiclous! How could you expect me to follow that? Lying, no, I chose to be honest, there never was reason to lie. I would never have an affiar with some body against Zelda, I never stole from someone who needed it, and what did I have to be envious of? After being so fortunate in life I was on top of the world. And as for honoring my father and mother, I never had any to know, let alone honor!"

"But have you ever killed someone?"

"Well, yes, but just moblins, and they were just monsters."

"Still, they were creatures capable of thought, and maybe feelings as well. You need to confess that to the light."

"So what do you propose that I do? Look at it and say I have killed moblins."

Yes Link, but there is more.

"Dwahh! You again! Is that truely what your confession is? Telling what I have done wrong?"

Correct. Now continue.

"But I just told you the only one of your rules I have broken. Adam said there were more, but they did not apply to us."

Yes, this is true, but there is one rule that you have broken, one that you must confess.

"But what?! I have told you all that there is so far! I never lied, I never cheated on Zelda, I never envied, I never stole, and I never had parents to disrespect!"

There. Your parents are the key.

"My parents? But I never even knew them. I wouldn't be able to recognize them if they were standing here infront of me."

"Wait a moment, Link, what if they were?" Adam asked. "What would you do if they were here?"

"What are you talking about?" he said, beginning to lose his patience.

"I know it's a long shot, but maybe it wants you to say how you have always felt about your parents. All these years, when someone brought up the subject of family history, with what kind of mind did you tell them about it with?"

"What do you mean, 'what kind of mind?'"

"When you told them how your mother had left you in the forest and you knew nothing about your father, were you sorrowful or angry?"

"Well, I, what is it to worry about? Why would it matter how I felt aobut hem? They were never there! Why would my parents care how I felt about them when they never even cared about me?"

"Wait a moment, Link," Zelda started, "is that what you've thought all these years? You thing that they didn't care about you?"

"What makes you think that they did? I was left in a forest for the sake of the Spirits!"

"But you told me that the Deku Sprout said that your mother was in danger so she left you in there for protection." There was a look in the eyes of Zelda that told Adam that she had never seen Link like this before, and it was starting to scare her

"Well, well," Link had started to speak, but it came out in the one emotion that hardly anyone had ever seen him in: tears. "And what if she was? Couldn't she have left me something?" he sobbed, "NO! Instead she left me there bare naked for a tree to take care of me! No note, no clothing, no piece of jewelry telling something of he origin, nothing! And what about my father? How do I know that the man didn't leave my mother the day he found out she was pregnant? By the Spirits, how am I supposed to know that I wasn't an accident, that they never even wanted a child?" At this point Adam could see that Link was going hysterical.

"How do I know?! They left me nothing to know them by, and nothing to love them for!"

Link of Hyrule, do you love your parents?

"NO! NO! I never loved them! They were cowards! I knes that, and it was why they abandoned me! I vowed as a child that I would never fear anything, and that I would never leave the ones I loved! YES! I HATE MY MOTHER AND FATHER!" he screemed out with a voice that cut through the darkest corners of the cavern and rang for several seconds afterwards.

Is this the truth?

"Yes!"

Then recite your sins to me once more.

Link seemed to struggle, breathing deeply between sobs and sniffings. "These are my sins: I have murdered... hundreds of Moblins.... in the defense of the Hyrulian borders,.... and for my entire life...I... have...despised... MY PARENTS!!"

Then proceed on, you are forgiven.

Quicker than one could blink, a walkway had appeared infront of them, extending from the ledge out to the light source. To Adam it looked somewhat like a catwalk, but the handrails were just floating there, supported by nothing.

"Well, very well then." Link said, trying to compose himself. "While I don't know what your forgivence is supposed to mean to me, thank you."

No answer.

"Hello?" he said. Once more, still nothing.

"Agghhh! Why do these voices keep disapearing when we want to talk to them?"

"Wait a second Link. Adam, let me touch the Triforce." Zelda said. Adam let her do so, relieved that he didn't have to give it up again. He understood what she meant to do. The voice had not started until she had touched the Triforce in its presence. "Test!" she yelled out to the light, knowing now that was its name, "You have caused my love to confess to you what he would never need to tell me! Because of this you have protruded deep within his heart and taken out some of his most painful feelings. If you can do that, then answer me this one simple question: why did you choose to have him confess and not someone else?"

The response first came in a wave of a kind. It was like the feeling Link had described to Zelda, the feeling he had when the Door of Time had opened that day and the Master Sword was revealed to him. The feeling that what was about to happen would one day change the course of history for eons to come. And that answer was in a phrase, that seemed to define everything for her, even though she had no idea what it was, she knew that it was what had brought them all here, the reason Simidora had given that speech at the feast that seemed like weeks ago now. It was even what had brought Adam to them, without him they never would have been able to get this far. And somehow she knew that very soon she would learn what this strange power was. Then the phrase came to answer her.

The Binding Force of Link.

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