Princess Zelda: Royal Magic by Jade Gretz

https://www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai/art/Princess-Zelda-Royal-Magic-1196291858

Echoes Beneath the Gloomglass Caverns

The first breath inside the Gloomglass Caverns never felt like air. It pressed against the lungs, coating them with a strange dampness, as though the cavern itself wished to seep into the intruder’s body and keep her there forever. Princess Zelda stopped on the threshold, the torch in her hand trembling just slightly. The light caught the pale shimmer of the cavern walls—veins of crystal that glowed faintly with an eerie, sickly luminance.

“Still time to turn back,” murmured a voice behind her.

Zelda glanced over her shoulder at Kaelen, the scholarly knight who had insisted on accompanying her. He was older than she, though the streaks of silver in his hair came more from ink-stained nights than battlefields. His spectacles were fogging from the cavern’s mist.

“If I turned back now,” Zelda said, lifting her torch, “Hyrule’s history would lose another page. We came to find what these caverns hide. And someone must face what waits below.”

Kaelen swallowed. “Right. Of course. Lead on.”

As they descended, the cavern swallowed the sound of their boots, as though each step was taken into a dream. Zelda had been told that the Gloomglass Caverns once held a treasury older than any kingdom—a treasury that refused to die with time. Cursekeepers, the legends said, dwelled below, creatures bound to protect relics by the very curses that destroyed them. But legends had their price for truth-seekers.

Zelda’s torch sputtered, dimming in the strange air.

“Do you feel that?” she whispered.

A soft vibration trembled through the stone beneath their feet.

Kaelen’s hand slid to his belt knife. “Something’s awake.”

Zelda nodded. “And it knows we’re here.”

The first chamber opened like the inside of a gigantic geode—crystal fangs jutting from floor and ceiling. Pools of dark water reflected the distorted shapes above, rippling as if breathing.

Zelda stepped closer. “These crystals—look at the striations. They were shaped by magic. Old magic.”

Kaelen crouched beside a pool. “If these caverns were shaped by magic, maybe—”

He froze.

A shape swam beneath the surface—thin, spindly, moving with unnatural grace. Then another. Then three.

Zelda grabbed Kaelen’s collar and pulled him back just as a thing erupted from the pool. Its body was skeletal but not bone—more like petrified wood carved into the shape of a forgotten creature. Its eyes were pits of black, unreflective and endless.

Others rose silently behind it. Seven in all.

“Cursekeepers,” Kaelen whispered.

The first one tilted its head. When it spoke, the voice sounded like crystal grinding against crystal.

“Seeker of treasures… why do you descend?”

Zelda raised her chin. “To understand what was lost. And to restore what should never have been forgotten.”

The creature’s jaw creaked, its voice cold as stagnant water.
“Many descend. None return.”

Zelda stepped forward despite Kaelen grabbing her arm. “Perhaps none returned because no one treated you as anything but monsters.”

A strange hush filled the cavern.

The creature leaned closer, its mouth inches away from her torch.
“We are guardians, bound to suffering. But suffering does not make us merciful.”

A silence pulsed between them like a heartbeat.

Kaelen whispered, “Zelda, I don’t think diplomacy is—”

The creatures lunged.

The torch guttered. Zelda swung it wide, fire tracing a desperate arc. Kaelen slashed at one with his knife, sparks flying where metal struck hardened bark-bone.

Zelda ducked under a claw and thrust her palm outward. A burst of golden magic flared, sending one Cursekeeper sprawling into a crystal pillar. It cracked but did not fall.

Kaelen gasped, “Your magic won’t hold them long—look!”

Already the creatures were rising, wounds knitting like time reversing.

“We run,” Zelda commanded.

They sprinted through a narrow passage, the sound of clattering limbs echoing behind them. Zelda’s pulse thundered. The caverns twisted in impossible paths, as though changing themselves to confuse the intruders. Finally, they burst into a smaller chamber where glowing fungi painted the walls in blue hues.

Kaelen leaned against a boulder, gasping. “We aren’t ready for this.”

“No one ever is,” Zelda said. “But that doesn’t mean we turn back.”

Something shifted near the wall—soft, sl
...(more at https://www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai).
For more supergirl, chun li, batgirl, tifa, lara croft, wonder woman, rogue and much more, please visit my page at www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai - Thanks for your support :)