Flesh and blood did not equate to sand and leather.
For a ten-year-old, Prince Raaling's knuckles, elbows and knees were plenty hardened and calloused. One day he would lead the Gerudo people of the desert as their king. In a region with days as punishing as its nights, livid and boiling when the sun was high but cold and unforgiving when it vanished, dunes populated by gigantic arachnids and venomous serpents, Raaling could not afford to be soft and pampered like so many of the other kings he'd heard of. No knights to fight his battles. No lavish feasts when there was every chance another well would dry up and plunge his people into thirst and illness. Raaling would be the warrior king of the warrior people.
He saw the hesitation in his opponent's eyes, the only thing that allowed his own hesitation to linger without costing him his life. He ducked under the Gerudo woman's swinging arm, using his considerably smaller size to his advantage, then rammed his shoulder into her sternum and swept his leg into the back of her calf. She stumbled, flaming red hair swaying around her face, but remained upright. His attempt to zip by her in her moment of weakness faltered as she easily resumed her footing and hooked an arm around him, lifting him from the floor.
Raaling could strike a leather bag filled with sand until it nearly threatened to explode from its chain hanging from the ceiling, but the flesh and blood of his own people was different. It moved and pulsed and bled, rising and falling with his enemy's breathing, each strike accompanied by a puff of released air or a cry of pain. From the woman his station said he was supposed to be protecting. He'd trained with plenty of his fellow Gerudo, thrown people around and been thrown around, but they'd always stood up, brushed themselves off, and bowed as a sign of common respect.
There was no common respect in this fight. Raaling wanted the woman out of his way. She wanted him caught and imprisoned. Or worse.
He took a deep breath as the woman locked her arms around him, pinning him to her torso. She had his arms trapped, and there was little his comparatively small legs could do. He had only one recourse, a trick he was still figuring out. He'd only learned it less than an hour ago.
Their grunts of pain and exertion reverberated through the amber stone hall, oddly luminescent despite the lack of ambient light. Statues of beautiful women were built into the walls, slightly eroded from time, but the architecture was still remarkable. Beautiful, skillful and terrifying. Everywhere he looked, Raaling saw someone else who looked like she might want to kill him.
The Spirit Temple was as haunting as it was alluring.
He closed his eyes, willing himself to forget about the eroded faces, the war with his own people in the Spirit Temple, and the strong arms trapping him. He tried to remember what the witches had told him, something about picturing three circles in the dark and watching them grow, then linking them into the shape of a clover...three leaf or four leaf? Did it matter?
He went with three leaf. Raaling opened his eyes, and something like tiny plumes of black smoke, thick and billowing, flared over his fingers. He pressed his fingers against his assailant's abdomen, and she yelped and immediately loosened her grip, causing him to tumble to the stone floor. He chanced a look back and noticed a black mark expanding on her bronzed stomach, like fire blackening paper.
He swallowed, backing up in case she overcame her fear and charged him again. The witches had said it was like giving someone a temporary tattoo, enough to burn and encumber but not enough to seriously wound. The Gerudo woman clutched at the growing mark, her yelp turning into a scream through her teeth.
Raaling didn't stop to see what the end result would have been. His mother was the fiercest Gerudo alive and Avera was a strong soldier, but on their own they couldn't survive for long. He didn't have time to tie a pretty, peaceable bow on every confrontation. He took off back down the hall, sweat beading on his boyish face.
He had to find the witches. Without them Avera and his mother were dead women, and if these particular Gerudo didn't decide they were all better off without a Boy of Prophecy, Raaling could only look forward to a life of being a political pawn constantly looking over his shoulder. At best.
Feminine screams echoed throughout the Spirit Temple, some choked in pain, others in anger. None of the horrible screams of agony came from his mother or Avera, but they became trapped in his mind, like the endless statues he passed by were filling his head with madness.
He rounded the corner, seeing a staircase. He needed to go up. The Inner Statue of the Goddess was up. Somewhere. Glancing back to make sure he wasn't being followed, he rushed to the stairs.
And then immediately screeched to a halt as another figure came down the stairs, this one brandishing a polearm. Raaling didn't recognize her, and therefore she was an enemy. Her yellow eyes widened the same way all the other Gerudo's had, the expression reflecting the unfamiliarity and surprise they no doubt felt inside at seeing the only male Gerudo in the entire race.
She bore many of the same characteristics Raaling himself did, common elements of their people: bronzed skin forged in the desert sun, fiery red hair, yellow eyes, a slightly elongated nose, ears rounded rather than pointed like the Hylians in the east. Her loose, baggy purple attire and an open midriff would serve her better in the heat, not as much in combat.
However, she and the sorceress who now seemed to run this temple doubtless hadn't been expecting a soldier, as well as a mercenary and her ten-year-old son, to step in and say hello.
At first glance, Raaling didn't look too different from any other ten-year-old Gerudo girl, but word had already gotten around that the five-foot monkey running around the temple was the Boy of Prophecy, and everyone had a reaction to a living legend. His face was the shape of a heart, his eyes the shape of almonds, irises golden and hair the color of the setting sun, long enough to be tied into a tiny ponytail at the nape of his neck but long since pulled free in all the chaos. The sleeveless red tank top and loose white pants had once been fresh, clean and whole, but were now ripped, stained with sand and blood. The blood wasn't his.
Raaling stared at the Gerudo warrior in fear. The paltry magic the witches had taught him had little use if his target wasn't standing right beside him without moving. If only he hadn't lost his scimitar in that monster's belly.
To his surprise, the warrior loosened her stance a little, her polearm gravitating closer to the floor. She never dropped her guard, but the killer instinct he'd briefly seen in her eyes before they'd found his had vanished. To raise arms against the Boy of Prophecy wasn't a feat to be ignored.
"Are you unarmed?" the warrior asked.
Raaling's response caught in his throat. Would he keep her guessing? Try to win her over?
It hardly mattered. Something hard collided with the back of her head, ricocheting and lodging between the shoulder and back wall of one of the statues. It looked like a cooking pot. The warrior grunted, twitched, and collapsed to the floor, her polearm clattering loudly on the stone.
A different Gerudo stood in her spot, glistening with sweat, chest heaving in exhaustion. Her face was soft and rounded, her hair cut short and sticking to her face. A fresh cut dripped from her left cheek. Raaling felt a weight lift from his shoulders. They weren't out of the proverbial snake pit yet, but two stood a better chance than one.
Avera leaned against the right wall, exhaling in relief, a bloody scimitar hanging by her side. "Thank goodness. With that thing slithering around here, I thought you might have..."
Raaling shook his head, trotting to her side. His heart continued to slam against his ribcage, but seeing Avera's comforting face, flecked with blood though it was, brought some measure of control back to his nerves. "I'm okay. I haven't seen it."
Avera pried herself from the wall and briefly wrapped him into a tight embrace, muttering something into his hair he didn't make sense of, though he swore he heard the terms "your mother" and "kill me." She turned and headed back up the stairs, blade poised to strike if anything surprised them. Raaling knelt to pick up the warrior's spear, but finding it a solid foot taller than him and heavier than his little arms could carry, he gave up on the attempt and settled for a knife from her belt. He ignored the warrior's pained groans as he followed Avera up the stairs.
"Where's mom?" Raaling asked, trying his best to stay in Avera's shadow.
Avera paused before responding, reaching the final step and checking their surroundings for attackers. "Last I saw, still throwing down with the sorceress."
"Who has the upper hand?"
Avera swallowed. "I don't know."
They'd emerged into a larger hallway, the ceiling stretching twenty feet into the air. More light filtered in here, indicating they'd reached the ground floor with more windows to the outside world. Something rumbled throughout the temple, like a roaring fireball or a clap of thunder, shaking the foundations and knocking the dust from the ceiling.
If things were still exploding in the temple, that meant they hadn't killed Raaling's mother yet. It wasn't too late.
Raaling was thoroughly turned around. He looked nervously up at Avera. "Which way to the statue?"
Avera scanned the hall, eyes raking over the torches and murals adorning the walls. She gestured to a wide opening on their left with her blade. "That way. Hopefully. Follow the booms, right?"
The last Raaling had seen of his mother, she'd been battling the sorceress on a platform near the top of the Inner Statue of the Goddess. If they followed the sounds of war, they would surely find her.
They started forward, only for the sound of something heavy and leathery sliding across the floor to stop them.
It was barely perceptible to untrained ears, but Raaling and Avera knew better. He'd heard the same kind of sound every time a snake charmer had wowed spectators with her control over a cobra, watching it slither around and perform various tricks, utterly silent save for the hiss of its scales rubbing against the ground.
This was that same sound, only from something far, far bigger. It was hunting Raaling, and now it had found him.
Avera's eyes analyzed every inch of the hall within seconds. She spotted a hole near the base of the wall on their left, likely once used to transport some form of goods, now in disrepair. Too big for the famously tall Gerudo to enter, small enough for a child. Pointing to it, she hissed, "In there! Now!"
Raaling started toward it, but his legs wouldn't carry him all the way, his eyes transfixed on Avera. "What about you?"
Her mouth narrowed into a hard line as the sound of sliding scales on stone drew closer. She inclined her head further to the right, where the wall stopped and led into a series of stone columns. "I'll be all right. Go!"
His mother could perhaps fight it. Raaling and Avera, never, not even working together, not even with the special tricks the witches had shown him. Trying to suppress the hammering of his heart and the lump in his throat, he scurried into the hole in the wall, promptly disappearing from prying eyes. Before he went far, he shimmied onto his back and angled himself just well enough to see back out.
Avera ducked behind one of the pillars, scimitar held tightly in hand. She leaned back out just enough to stare Raaling in the eyes. Her eyebrows turned up in the middle, the desperation solidifying in her face as she mouthed, "Go!"
Raaling's breath caught. How could she survive? Snakes didn't rely on their eyes. They tasted their prey on the air.
A dark, winding shadow fell over the floor between them. The sound of scales on stone grew louder.
For a few breath-stealing seconds, the light from the hall ceased to be as something black, scaly and shiny blocked Raaling's view. He needed only kick his leg out and his foot would connect with the beast. He couldn't see Avera or the ornate murals along the walls. Just the moving lump of black.
The massive form stopped. Raaling held his breath, waiting for it to continue, or for Avera's scream to herald her death. Several seconds of this hell passed.
Then the form shifted, and something new entered the opening Raaling had squeezed himself into. Its head was shaped like a triangle, the glowing yellow lines like runes around its red, slit eyes indicating its otherworldly origins. The gigantic viper inched closer to his boot, a purple tongue the length of his arm flicking the walls of the small tunnel. It pulled away slightly, its maw opening grotesquely to hiss and spray him with saliva, revealing four fangs dripping with venom and capable of piercing all the way to the other side of his body.
Raaling clumsily tried to push himself back, holding his knife at length in case it could chase him into the passage. Its head looked too big, but if he was wrong...
The giant serpent buckled as Avera leaped onto it from behind, grabbing onto its flaring nostrils with her left hand, scimitar raised to strike downward in her right. The snake thrashed, causing her blade to miss its eye and glance off a fang harmlessly.
"Run!" she shouted, pressing herself against the triangular head to avoid being thrown. "Save the witches!"
Raaling couldn't leave her. Neither could he save her.
"Go!"
Desperation fueling his limbs, he flipped back over and crawled through the passage as quickly as the tight surroundings would allow. The snake continued to screech and writhe behind him, Avera clinging to its thick, tough hide.
Raaling scraped his elbows along the floors, drawing blood, barely paying any attention to his wounds. Wasted seconds could spell death for any of them.
He pulled himself out the other side and flung himself back onto his feet, stumbling into a run. This room was the largest by far, nearly a hundred feet to the ceiling and two hundred from one end of the room to the other. There were stairways leading upward from all four corners of the room, all ending in observation platforms of the room's main attraction: the Inner Statue of the Goddess, a recreation of the fabled Goddess of the Sand once so revered by the ancient Gerudo, stretching nearly to the ceiling. The goddess's face was benign, eyes either closed or eroded over time, the crown of her head that of a cobra, her massive stone hands open and spread wide as if receiving an offering. Her legs allegedly were underground, a being rising from the sand, the ruler of the desert. Before her was a pedestal surrounded by lit torches, the ceremonial place of offering.
Something else exploded high above him, bathing the upper half of the gargantuan room in fiery light, causing him to stumble once more. He couldn't save his mother on his own, but the witches...
He spotted something glowing on the base of the goddess statue across the room – a rune, shining like the lines on the serpent, yet all different colors. A seal to temporarily hold magical beings, transporting them to some unknown space for an indeterminate time.
Raaling dashed across the room, crossing the pedestal in two bounds and slamming into the huge statue. He ran a hand over the rune, feeling it hum and vibrate at his touch.
A voice echoed in his mind, high-pitched, shriveled and older than Raaling dared guess. "Cute boy! I knew you would return!"
A second voice echoed, identical to the first yet from a different source. "Yes indeed! And I knew it more!"
"You certainly did not," the first voice sneered, "and you owe me five sapphires as soon as the boy springs us!"
"Five?! You said three!"
"Inflation's a devil, isn't it?"
"You're a devil!"
Raaling tapped his palm anxiously against the rune, his body humming with unspent energy. "Please stop. How do I free you?"
The two voices stopped bickering and easily fell back into sobriety. "Oh, well that's easy," one of them said, though Raaling found it impossible to tell which witch was which. "The trite runes of silly girls playing with sparks and embers can't hold us for long. We've been weakening the seal ever since we got blindsided."
"Should only take another hour or so," the other witch added.
Raaling blanched. Avera was wrestling a giant snake, and despite the witch's casual dismissal, his mother was not merely confronting a silly girl playing with sparks and embers.
"But luckily," one of them continued, "you can expedite our freedom. You remember the redirection trick we showed you, yes?"
Raaling glanced over his shoulder. No one was coming for him, but he didn't know how much time he had left. "Yeah. I use that?"
"Well, reign in your trusty steed, prince," a witch corrected, seemingly unconcerned with the war threatening the whole desert. "You can't just redirect any old energy you want, or we could all explode. The goddess might be unhappy with the hole we leave in her statue."
"If you disperse the right colors in the right order," the other explained as if teaching a small child math and not how to save his people from certain death, "you can weaken the seal until it snaps, and then we pop out and we...get serious. But if you do it wrong, the seal will come back stronger, and we'll probably explode anyway."
Raaling backed up and wiped the sweat off his upper lip, hands trembling. One small mistake was all it would take. He barely knew how to use any of their magic, and now they effectively wanted him to defuse a bomb with it. He eyed the colorful rune, a glowing prism of interconnected lines and letters. "Okay. Okay. Which one do I redirect?"
"The red one," a witch said without pause. "It's always the red one."
"My sister is a moron," the other witch cut in a little too calmly. "Red would only work if it's a waning moon on a warm desert night and your name starts with an S. You want the yellow one."
Raaling touched two fingers to a circular yellow line slipping beneath a complex red symbol and a blue curve, his breathing shallow and ragged. "So this one?"
"No!" the first witch howled. "My idiot sister has forgotten to factor in the planet's rotation again!"
"So red?" Raaling squeaked, his fingers sliding to the symbol on top.
"Don't be ridiculous!"
"Stop," another voice ordered.
Raaling whirled on the source, standing a short distance away. The sorceress was almost as tall as his mother, six feet and some change, though not as built, draped in a flowing purple robe that had once been silky and beautiful but was now torn and burned. She was bleeding from her left shoulder and right calf, her long red hair cascading freely down her back. Raaling's mother was nowhere to be seen.
The boy extended the knife toward her, though he knew she could easily turn him into charcoal from across the room. "You're not going to bring the goddess back," he threatened, though his threat held no weight.
He would have handled her outrage better. He would have been far more understanding if she'd extended a hand to burn him in flames or cursed his supposed altruism. What hit him far harder was the pain and betrayal he saw in her eyes. She shook her head so subtly he almost missed it. "You're young," she began, her voice little more than a whisper.
Raaling's temper flared as she struck a nerve. "Don't you sell me that too."
She continued regardless. "One day we'll be your people as well. I don't want to raise my hand against the Boy of Prophecy. I don't. But you want what's best for the Gerudo, don't you?"
His mother and Avera had already told him all about why harnessing the Goddess of the Sand's power was a horrifying notion, especially for the Gerudo. This sorceress wasn't about to get inside his mind.
"Stand down," the sorceress commanded, eyes filled with pleading. "Please."
"Red line," one of the witches whispered behind him.
Raaling didn't move. He was out of options.
It was either a trick of the light, or the sorceress had tears in her eyes. She inhaled deeply, steeling herself, and raised a hand toward him. "I'm sorry, child. Goodbye."
Sparks flared from the sorceress's fingertips, and Raaling's world lit up with lightning.