Two
Raiha woke slowly, hissing a little in pain. That shade had not been kind when responding to her cautious probing, and her neck hurt from the whiplash. It was a small ache compared to the throbbing of her head, though.
"About time," Ganon grumbled a little, using the complaint to hide a vague sense of relief. "I though you were going to sleep for a week."
She responded with a rude gesture that made him grin a little. Hells, she couldn't see him, and it was good to know that whatever had happened, she was still inclined to be snippy at him. He wouldn't have known how to react any other way.
"How long was I out?" she groaned, sitting up carefully.
"Day and a half," he shrugged a little. "Maybe a bit more. It's been pouring rain for most of it."
Raiha nodded a little; she could hear it coming down outside. Not quite a waterfall of white noise, but definitely no little drizzle either.
"Thunder and lightning?"
"Cut out about an hour ago," he nodded. "Tell tale signs of trouble."
"No kidding..."
He watched as she carefully got to her feet, rubbing her head. She still looked pale and shaky, but he remembered all too well the stubborn pluck she had, and the fierce desire to keep going. He'd seen it often enough in the many incarnations of 'life' he'd had.
"I'm not saving you if you fall in," he said as she approached the glimmering pool of the Light Spirit.
"Please," she scoffed. "As if my children would let me drown."
She didn't fall either; she jumped. Ganon swore an oath and scrambled forward; had she really just done that?
Raiha smirked at him from the water, easily buoyed up by the invisible coils of Lanayru.
"See~?"
He scowled at her, annoyed to have revealed that he actually sort of cared about her well being. At the same time, it was fascinating to see; she had looked rather terrible prior to jumping into that water. Now though, she looked more like herself. Ganon moved quickly back as something lifted her out of the water, and deposited her gently back onto the dry land, and had to hastily avert his gaze as she started stripping out of her soaked clothes.
"S'a matter," she teased, "embarrassed?"
"Y-No!" he shot back, flushing a little. "I just don't feel like getting clobbered for staring!"
She blinked at him, standing with his back to her, then grinned.
"So you do have a working brain in there! I was wondering."
He grumbled under his breath and glared at the ground; aggravating woman.
Raiha just snickered at his expense, and dug into her pack, pulling out not only dry clothes, but armor as well. She had never liked plate—it was too noisy and cumbersome—but chain-mail and leather were comfortable enough, and fairly easy to keep in repair at that. She pulled on the undertunic, the chainmail, and then her blue Zora's tunic over the top, just in case. Better to be prepared in this sort of situation.
"All right tough guy, it's safe to look."
He waited an extra five minutes, just to be safe, before turning around. Then blinked repeatedly.
Raiha had taken her hair down, unbraiding it to brush out the worst of the water and redo it. And he couldn't help but be a little in awe. He was used to the fiery red of Gerudo hair, not the gilded reddish-gold that she had. It made her look deceptively feminine. Not amazingly beautiful, but definitely more feminine than he was used to.
Raiha just rolled her eyes as she wrung out her hair.
"Put your eyes back in your head, twit," she said dryly. "I'm not keeping it like this."
"You're not what? Why?"
She snorted at his clear confusion, and shook her head.
"I mean I'm not leaving it loose," she clarified. "And you can use your own brain for the why of that."
Yes, she had considered cutting it, but it had taken her a long time to grow, and she was rather proud of it. It was, perhaps, her biggest vanity, for all that it had taken her years to learn to like herself. Ganon kept his relieved sigh to himself; cutting hair that pretty would have been such a waste.
Raiha made quick work of rebraiding and pinning up her hair into the coronet style she favored, then buckled on her quiver and bow.
"...I think I'm jealous," Ganon said a little dourly. "You're better armed than I am."
"If I had armor for you, I'd let you have it, but it'll take me a while to make any, so we may just have to scrounge you up some. As for weapons, you're going to have to make do," she said shortly as she dug into her pack. "Fortunately for you, I do have two sets of boiled and oiled cloaks that will repel the rain."
She came up with one and tossed it at him before pulling on her own. He caught it reflexively and blinked at it, then at her. Again Raiha shook her head, setting the pack aside as she picked up her sword and dagger belt and hocked it on as well.
"I believe you, but I sure as hell don't trust you," she said shortly. "I can track you down if I have to, but I'd rather just drag you along to make things easier. Besides, you haven't run off yet either, so I'm guessing you're trying to figure out some way of getting revenge on the shade for what happened to the Gerudo. Yeah?"
Slowly he nodded; that had been plaguing his mind while she'd been unconscious. They hadn't exactly been a grand people before, but now they weren't a people at all. And maybe some of that was on her shoulders with the creation of the Mirror, but most of it was on the shade for starting that descent in the first place.
It was aggravating to hear her admit she could track him though. He had been a thief! And not a terrible one either! How the hell would she track him if he decided to leave?!
Raiha watched the subtle play of emotions over his face and had to snicker. He might've had some practice at hiding what he felt, but she had over five centuries of learning how to read people. To her, he was an open book.
"Yes, I can track you. I held the Triforce too, y'know. I held it together. I know how it feels, both apart and together. It's something I'll always know."
Ganon blinked, then grimaced. It was true, she had held the Triforce. It hadn't split apart at her touch, and she'd tried to save it from the shade. From him. It had almost gotten her killed on multiple occasions.
"How could you hold it?" he demanded finally, pulling the cloak on. It was cold, and he wished he had some armor of his own, or at the least, a shirt.
"Because I understand it." She shrugged lightly, and held up three fingers, ticking off points. "Power. Wisdom. Courage. They're a balance. Power requires courage to wield it, and wisdom to know when it's better to not. Wisdom requires power to be effective, and courage to be heard. Courage requires power to back it up, and wisdom to know the difference between being brave, and being a dumbass. Your shade, and you, by extent, only believed in the power. Zelda understood the wisdom side of it, but lacked the courage to do anything with the power. Link was built into courage, and theoretically he could have come into wisdom and power over his grand adventures, but never quite believed."
"But you got it from the start," he said, puzzled more than hostile now. "Why didn't you use it then?"
She laughed bitterly, golden eyes darkening with the memory.
"I was ten. I didn't know the whole of the legend, and I barely understood the principles the way I do now. All I could think of was keeping it out of your reach. Which, if you'll notice, I failed miserably at, and have spent the past five centuries paying for.
"Besides which, while I may understand it, I'm not exactly the hero type. I'm the guide."
Ganon shook his head, baffled.
"You always show the kid what to do," he said. "Why don't you just do it?"
"Because, dimbrain, I can't wield the Master Sword. I'm not the hero of the story. I never have been. I never will be. I'm the ending of it, and that's it. Now if you're done asking stupid questions, it's time to go up and see what the hell happened to the market."
He still had more questions, but the closed expression on her face suggested he wasn't likely to get any more answers. So he nodded a little, and followed her out into the rain.
The thunder and lightning might have stopped, but the rain was anything but played out. The water was rising in the lake itself, and the rain was falling hard enough that it was difficult to see more than a few feet ahead. Finding the path up was not easy. It didn't help that it was a narrow path, and the water was turning it into a muddy sort of waterfall. Both Ganon and Raiha fell more than once, and were rather muddy by the time they reached the top.
Raiha froze, causing Ganon to run into her and knock her forehead. He was about to curse at her when the words died on his tongue.
The walls around the Market were broken. Some had fallen completely. Whatever dust there might have been at the start was mud, and there were people milling about. Some were wearing a guard's uniform, and poking morosely through the rubble, while others were ordinary people, crying and carrying on. Ganon took a reflexive step back; these were not his people.
Raiha scowled at him over her shoulder.
"If I have to chase your ass down, I swear, I will cut your legs off at the knees," she growled.
He believed her, and wanting to or not, he followed her into the wreckage of the town. And it was a wreck. Very few buildings were left standing. The streets were cracked. People cried out for help, for food, for water, for the goddesses...
The castle, when they reached the center of town, was entirely blocked off from them by a magical shield of some type. Ganon vaguely recognized it as one the shade had used on a previous escape; Raiha's cursing suggested that she recognized it as well.
"All right. Well. If that thing is actually in there, then we're going to have to go in another way," she grumbled. "Fine. Plan B."
"What's, plan B, and what was plan A even going to be?" he demanded, grabbing her by one arm.
"Plan B is finding the old house that connected to the sewers and getting to the palace that way," she said irritably, pulling her arm out of his grip. "And plan A is a moot point."
He grabbed her arm again, harder this time, doing his level best to stop her in her tracks. The icy look she gave him reminded him all too well that she didn't actually like him, and only hesitated to kill him because of his triforce piece. But, shaken or not, he was not going to let her do this without having his say.
"If you go in there, you're going to get killed," he snapped, shaking her arm a little to emphasize his point. "That's probably what the thing wants you to do! And there's no way in the hells that you're getting me to go with you."
"Fine. You can stay here and look for the kid," she shot back, twisting her arm free this time. He winced a little at the maneuver, as it bent his fingers briefly in uncomfortable directions, then glared at her.
"You are going to get yourself killed. Or possessed."
She snorted.
"Please. You seem to be forgetting a couple of things. One, I'm half the reason magic still live in this world. And two, I know the palace better than anyone. All the old secret passages that have been forgotten, I know them. Besides," she turned away then, looking over the drenched and damaged city, "I don't really have a choice. There are some things in the palace that require retrieval, or we will be in trouble much worse than this."
He gritted his teeth, but pulled hard on his temper; shouting about her reckless idiocy in the middle of town wasn't going to do much except maybe get people to blame them for this mess.
"Like what?" he ground out.
"You don't want me to answer that. You really don't."
Her voice was flat, cold. A warning against pressing further. A small part of him relished the idea of her going off to the palace and getting herself killed. Or captured. Then she'd be out of his hair for good, and he could take his triforce piece somewhere else. A larger part of him though, the part that was a mix of conscience and avarice, balked at the notion of letting her go it alone. Into the palace, where both danger and treasure waited? How could a thief of his caliber not want to break in?
"Fine," he muttered irritably. "Where's this stupid house then?"
Raiha blinked, and turned to look at him, surprised and suspicious all at once. After a moment she just snorted and motioned for him to follow, leading the way down one of the ruined side streets. He watched as she looked from side to side, catching sounds that his own hearing actually couldn't make out; it was plain from her body language that she wanted to help, to dig people out. He wasn't sure if he was annoyed or pleased by the fact that she was cold enough to keep walking.
She wasn't pleased, however. While the mission definitely came first, and she had to get those journals out of the library, it hurt badly to hear people suffering and to not be able to do anything about it. She could feel Link as well, somewhere in this mess, constantly moving about. At least he was unharmed... She would have to find him after, however, and prayed hard to the goddesses that there was an after.
The house was, as she'd thought, a complete ruin. And with the rain, there was no point in using Din's Fire, or any of the variants to try and clear the debris. Magical fire or not, it still obeyed the laws of nature at the most inconvenient of times. The hard way it was, then.
"Help me move some of this crap," she said, reaching out and snagging a beam to push against, hard. "The sewer entrance is underneath it all."
Ganon grumbled a little, but did as instructed, helping to shove back the roof, and move several large wooden beams. They ended up scaring several cats out from under the wreckage, all of them alive, and none of them injured, much to Raiha's relief. She loved cats; they were just like her.
The chest, when finally revealed, had a very flattened lid, and Raiha had to put her sword between the edges to get it pried up properly. Below, the water in the sewers was rushing by. Ganon made a face.
"You're not seriously going to jump into that, are you?" he asked.
"Why not? I can swim."
"With all that gear?"
She actually grinned at him, but her smile was more teeth than humor.
"I'm wearing my Zora tunic. I will be fine. Can you swim?"
Ganon glared. Her grin took on an edge of genuine humor, albeit at his expense.
"Like I said, you can always find Link."
"I'm coming, I'm coming," he grumbled. "Besides, knowing that idiot, he'd try to kill me too."
"You really don't know a damn thing about rebirth, do you?" She shook her head slightly, and carefully eased down into the sewers. "Never mind. Ask me later."
She dropped in with a splash that made him shudder a little. He considered, heavily, not following after. Running was becoming more and more appealing.
"Gods damnit," her grumbled, swinging his legs over the side. "Why does she get to have all the damn answers?"
He dropped down with a splash and let the disgusting water carry him away.
Raiha had not expected him to come along. Either he would have stayed as a guard, or gone to find Link. Or there was the off-chance that he would actually scarper, which would be annoying but she could track him, so she would have let him get away with it. So she was already a quarter of the way up the interior of the cistern when he cam spluttering and flailing his way in. It was, quite honestly, surprising. And, after a bit, highly amusing. It was plain that Ganon was no great shakes at swimming.
She let him flail about for a few minutes, if only because she was not feeling particularly helpful, before she deigned to go back down the crumbling steps—how many times had she told Zelda to fix it?-grab him by the arm and pull him out of the muck. He spat, repeatedly, and she snickered unmercifully.
"Good job keeping your head above the water. Next time, keep your mouth shut. Here."
And she passed him a sealed water bottle. He took it with a glare, and used it to clean out his mouth, before drinking what little remained, then handed it back. She hooked it to her belt again, and ignored his muttered curses.
"We need to get up there," and she pointed to the top of the cistern. "Come on."
She led the way, inching carefully across ropes and climbing up crumbling stairs, doing her best to not look down at any point in time. Ganon only deliberately shook a rope once; despite almost falling, when she reached the other side, pale and shaking, she was also furious, and held up a hand that quickly became wreathed in flames. Halfway across the rope, the smugness drained from Ganon as she gave him an icy glare.
"Do that again, and next time, I'll drown you," she hissed.
And then she stomped on the end of the rope, nearly knocking him off. Given that they were halfway up, the fall would have been painful at best, fatal at worst, and it was more luck than skill that allowed him to grab the rope and inch the rest of the way across upside-down. She had already made her way up to the next landing, and he decided to give her the lead, both to avoid temptation to tweak her again, and somewhat worried about the genuine threatening aura she gave off when she was that angry.
By the time they reached the top she was calmer, though she had elected to not speak with him unless necessary. The silent treatment was probably petty, she knew, but better the silent treatment then losing her temper with him.
There was always scaffolding on the roof. It used to be that soldiers had actively patrolled the roof, alongside the workmen who were affecting repairs, replacements, or just checking the roof over for leaks. But that had been several decades ago; now the scaffolding was in disrepair, wood rotten in a couple of places, making for tricky foot. It almost made Raiha wish for Midna and the damaging Twilight that had descended a hundred years back. At least then she would have had a form that lay closer to the roof, with claws for digging into the wood.
Still hearing Ganon swear as the wind tried to shove them around like kites was actually rather cathartic. She was smiling with perhaps a little bit of malicious amusement, by the time they reached the princess's tower. It seemed odd, though; the barrier could keep people out, but not weather? Raiha considered the question for a moment, then thought about the shielding spell known as Nayru's Love, which, admittedly, worked on a similar principle. After a moment she deiced to set the thought aside for the moment; she didn't have time to do tests and research. She needed to get her journals, and her notes, out of the palace library before that shade found them.
"So," Ganon growled a little as they moved into the tower. "Where are we going?"
"Palace library," she said, her tone quiet, but deliberately off-hand. She smirked at the sound of him stumbling.
Ganon stared at her back as he caught his balance. The palace library had never, as far as he'd heard, been open and available to anyone outside the royal family. The shade had never been interestedin it either, to busy focusing on how to bring about control of the worldto look into ancient histories and stories of old battles.
"Put your tongue back in your head, twit, we're looking for some very specific books," she said dryly as they padded up the stairs. The princess's room, as Raiha had expected, was abandoned, and the fire was cold; Zelda had not been here for at least a day, maybe more. "Because, yes, I was an idiot, and never thought I'd have to fight against Zelda."
"...well, if you're going to take all the fun out of the insult," he grumbled. "All right. What?"
"A bundle of journals about this big," and she had her hands roughly a foot apart. "I made the rookie mistake of writing personal memoirs about the worst of the messes. If your shade gets its hand on those, we'll be in for some trouble. But the big one is a grimoire."
"You. Made a grimoire?"
She shot him an irritated look, and stepped into the fireplace.
"I don't have an eidetic memory. And some of the spells and things I've made..." she shook her head a little. "I didn't want them in my Spirits. But I didn't want them forgotten either. So. Yes. I made a grimoire. I left it here for safekeeping, because you were never terribly perceptive about things like that."
"Hey!" He paused, then sighed reluctantly. "Okay, point for you. The shade was always more... interested in causing damage and isolating people than anything else. Why it never fully pegged you as a threat..."
She snorted a little, found the trigger, and pushed it. The back half of the fireplace grated and crunched downward, into the floor.
"Pegged me enough," she grumbled, absently rubbing her hand across her chest. "The damage to my children hurt like a wicked bitch, and screwed with me for weeks until Link and Midna managed to fix things."
He snickered a little, which earned him another glare.
"It's dark leather, about this big," this time she held her hands around half a foot apart, "with a bronze binding. We get those things only."
"What about going down t-"
"No. It's only a matter of time before she figures out I'm here, and nothing in the vault is magical anyways. In case I haven't made the point clear, magic is dying in this world. All my efforts can't stop it. Now shut up, and let's get moving before things start happening!"
He subsided, feeling a bit sulky, and followed her down the dark and dusty tunnel in silence. He couldn't understand her. She snipped and snapped, and demanded his help, then told him to leave if he was going to leave. He understood that she was nipping at his pride, to make him stay, but he didn't quite understand they why of it.
Raiha silently counted the stairs, taking careful turns where they were warranted, and tuned Ganon out to the best of her abilities. He didn't need to know that she was scared. She had a plan, a vague one, and it all hinged on being able to play along with whatever Princess Zelda was now. If she could just beat Zelda into the archives, and find the things that needed to be found, there would be one advantage of them.
It was finding things within the short span of time, and having someone at he back she didn't trust farther than she could throw, that was worrying her the most.
"Look." she said abruptly, cunting the turns. They were getting lower down now, closer. "I don't like you. I don't trust you. No doubt the same is true about you concerning me. Unfortunately, right now, I'm going to need to you to do exactly what I tell you to do. If I tell you to run, you get the hell out."
"...no arguments here," he muttered. "I haven't been myself long enough to want to give it back up."
He didn't see the smile that flashed across her face, for which she was grateful.
"All right. Through here. Silent as possible."
The hollow she led him into had an exit into a tall, darkly shadowed room. Light came from shielded lanterns, both magical and mundane in wall sconces. No open flames allowed here, and Ganon stifled a whistle when he saw why. As far as he could see were shelves of books. Some were ancient and would not doubt crumble if taken out from between the preserving glass covers, while others at the opposite end of the room, looked newer, ready to be read at will.
Raiha hissed, a thread of sound that snapped his attention back to her. Her attention was focused farther back, in the dimmer section of the library, and she was quick to jump to the floor and hurry back there. Ganon slid down a nearby ladder, carefully avoiding the dead body of what looked to be a scribe as he did so.
So, the shade had already started going through the archives. Or at least, that was how it looked to the former king. He snorted a little; for a creature that had inhabited the wielder of the Triforce of Wisdom, it was still going about things as though it was Power incarnate.
He slowed, wanting to look more at the ancient script, and jerked a little at Raiha's sharp hiss. He turned to see her waving him irritably over to a spot that was surprisingly clear of both books and extra tables. It was one of the rare spots along the stone walls that featured a hanging, though it was so faded he couldn't make out what the design had once been. One of the scones seemed to be faulty; it was dark, and seemed almost broken, though he couldn't quite make out how. Reluctantly he moved towards her.
"Search these shelves," she said her voice soft. "We don't have a lot of time."
He forewent grumbling, noticing something flickering through her gold eyes; he blinked a little, considered the idea, then dismissed it. This was a woman who didn't know what fear was, let alone how to give it a hold on her. Instead he turned towards the shelves and started looking for things that would match the descriptions she'd given.
They found the books at around the same time, she found the grimoire and he picked up the bundle of journals from the shelf nearest to the wall. He handled them gingerly, she, more reverently. Then her head snapped up, and she half-turned in the direction of what he assumed was the front of the room, listening hard. He froze too, then just about jumped out of his skin when she shoved the grimoire into his arms, stripped off her bow and quiver, and her tunic, then dove for the broken sconce.
Raiha gave it a sharp yank and turn; the nearby bookshelf popped open with only the slightest of creaks, making Ganon jump. He jumped a third time as she shoved her removed items into his arms, and pushed him towards the opening. She was far stronger than any woman of her size and stature had any right to be, damnit, and he resisted reflexively, wondering if she was actively trying to kill him now.
"Go, go, idiot." she snapped, voice still low. "She's coming!"
He needed no further incentive, he moved through, then turned, waiting for her to come. Raiha just shook her head, and jabbed a glowing finger against his skull before shoving the bookcase closed and leaving him in darkness.
Ganon reeled a little; whatever she'd done felt like someone had squeezed his head in a vice then let go abruptly. Had she shoved a map into his brain?
No, more than a map. He concentrated, despite the dizzy feeling, and heard her voice echoing in his ears.
"Take the tunnel down, all the way, just keep going straight. You'll come out in the undercroft. Put on the tunic; it's magic. One size fits all. You break it, you fix it, got it? It'll let you breathe underwater, and you're going to need that. Once you get to the undercroft, you'll need to go all the way to the end of it. The wall's not really a wall. It'll get you to an underground river. Don't worry about the books, the preservation spells on them are good for decades yet. Just get into the water and swim as fast as you can. It should dump you into the lake.
"Grab my pack and get to Faron Wood, go all the way to the giant tree. Wait there. Do not come back into the Market. Or... what's left of it. The shade can't possess you with my magic on you, but it can definitely track your Triforce piece. I'll get out as quick as I can, grab the kid, and catch up.
"I don't like this any more than you do. But I'm trusting you to do exactly what I say. Please, for the love of the goddesses, and my own exhausted sanity, please do what I say."
He thought about ignoring her, as he pulled the tunic on. As promised, it fit, though he felt a bit stupid in it. He thought about breaking open her grimoire and reading right there in the tunnel. But he couldn't deny the urgency in her words... or, rather, her thoughts. The genuine fear that tinged them. This was not the Raiha he was used to observing.
Then again, this was not a situation he was an observer in. After a minute more, he slung the quiver over one shoulder, swept up the books, and ran lightly down the tunnel. It was a long tunnel, leading out into what she had called the undercroft, something he would have called a crypt. It was definitely creepy, but all the bodies were dead, and there were no signs of ReDead or Gibidous. Small favors.
The smooth stone wall at the end didn't give way as she had suggested it would, but then, he was no stranger to strength. He put his shoulder against the wall and shoved, hard. The stone grated reluctantly, then flipped so abruptly that Ganon fell headlong into the water, almost losing his grip on the two bundles of books.
The river swept him further downstream, an outrush of water that left him dumped into the river that fed directly into the lake, knocking the breath out of him in a cloud of bubbles. This time he did lose his grip, and the collection of journals was swept rapidly downstream, out of reach. He clung grimly to the grimoire, however, and was soon deposited in the calmer waters of Lake Hylia.
