The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords/Prologue

The following is the prologue of The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords, taken verbatim from the game's manual.

Prologue
Long ago, in the kingdom of Hyrule, there appeared a Wind Sorcerer named Vaati. Vaati could bend the wind to his will and used this awful power to terrorize many villages in Hyrule. In his assault on the villages, Vaati would kidnap any beautiful girls who caught his fancy.

Many knights from the castle and other brave men set out to subdue the sorcerer and rescue the girls, but each one fell in turn to Vaati’s awesome power. Just as the people had begun to lose hope, a lone young boy traveling with little but a sword at his side appeared.

When this boy heard what was happening, he said only, “I will defeat this sorcerer.” He boldly entered Vaati’s palace, mystically trapped the evil sorcerer inside the blade of his sword, and returned the young girls to their villages. The boy then went deep into the forest and disappeared.

The villagers asked the girls how a boy so young could have saved them all and defeated the sorcerer when no one else could. The young girls told a story of how with just a wave of his sword, the boy’s body shattered into four pieces, each of which then formed a complete copy of the boy. These four young boys then worked together to defeat the sorcerer. The people did not believe the story, but they called it the Four Sword nonetheless. As rumors of the blade’s power to divide a person into four entities spread, the people built a shrine to protect it.

Princess Zelda of the land of Hyrule was a beautiful young girl born with the mysterious power to sense approaching forces of evil. For this reason, she was assigned with the sacred duty of protecting the shrine of the Four Sword and the blade itself. One day, Zelda was in Hyrule Castle when she sensed that something unusual was occurring at the Four Sword Shrine. She asked a boy named Link, whom she trusted above anyone else, to accompany her to investigate the happenings at the shrine…

Other prologues

 * The Legend of Zelda
 * Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
 * The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
 * The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
 * The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
 * The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
 * The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages
 * The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons
 * The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
 * The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap
 * The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
 * The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
 * The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks