Zelda looked at Link with a pained but surprised expression on her face. "Did you have to say it like that?" she asked in annoyance as she flitted to and fro amongst the boulders.

"Like what?" Link replied. He was busy with his own things and didn't need any new distractions. He was in the middle of things!

"You know what I mean. You just did it." She wiped a sweat ball off her cheek and flicked it at an oncoming moblin, which promptly exploded in a burst of fear. Interesting, she thought, I'll have file that away.

"File what away?" Link shouted just too loudly in the quiet forest. His Red Ring glistened brightly in the morning light. It burned from within, its own internal source of fire flickering like a dragon's eye when it catches sight of a cache of gold. The Ring had come to Link through his uncle who had robbed a traveler high in the Eastern Reaches, a perilous territory known for robberies and treachery. "It's mine now, you clumsy fool!" his uncle had screamed at his victim underneath the pale moon pulsing weakly from above in the cold air. The Eastern Reaches were seldom traveled but his uncle was not one of those who traveled it with such seldomness. There was nothing his uncle could not do, thought his uncle as he slipped the stolen Red Ring onto his thin, skeletal finger.

But that was his uncle, Link thought gruesomely as he brought his fading mind back to the present. I am not him!!! "I AM NOT!!!"

Zelda jumped in surprise. "Leave this place," she commanded with her royal princess tone that she had learned in princess school for the Gifted Of Those Among Them. "You shall not sully this sacred ground with your words!!" 

Link backed away, confused as any. But that was okay, he would have time to work this out tomorrow, on the Eastern Reaches.