Two days into our arrangement and we had not yet had another outburst like the one that occurred after our first spar.
True to my word, I had explained the purpose behind every attack I launched at the Hero. Every time I countered his own attacks, I would tell him how I had done so and how to prevent it from happening the next time. So long as I gave a reason for it, he never once complained no matter how many times I smashed his face into the dirt. If nothing else, he passed in determination and enthusiasm.
The fairy, too, learned day by day. Her magic was often the only thing that allowed the Hero to get back up for another round. She began taking to hovering around me and shouting out advice to the Hero. Most of it was useless. I quickly learned that she had no more actual combat experience than the Hero. The tricks I used to fool him worked on her more often than not. As these were training exercises meant to improve their combat capabilities, I felt no hesitation in flicking needles, Deku nuts, rocks, and occasionally one of my knives at her.
And no, this was not breaking the agreement with the Hero. He had told me to never hit her. Letting her know with near misses that not all enemies would stand passively for her to analyze them was for her own good.
I had to explain that to him the first time, of course.
Blade work was the most important. If for any reason he lost his grip on the Master Sword, Hyrule may lose any chance of a future. If for any reason his attack failed to end a threat, the counter attack could destroy a country. Therefore, he must never grow weak; must never miss; must never hesitate.
I flicked rocks at his shoulders, his stomach, his knees, and his face; anywhere I felt like. His job was to bring the blade up and swat them away before they connected. If he failed, the next rock would be even smaller. The first day that passed, the exercise ended with my flinging pebbles at him. The second was only slightly better, and I owned it up to chance. However, to my surprise, it was not a fluke. Although progress was slow, the fact remained that he always improved during each session. Some days it was so faint I barely noticed, but he never even once did worse than he had the day before. Amazing, really.
Beyond coordination, these assaults were among those meant to teach him to strike reflexively. He needed to move without stopping to think about it, to let his eyes guide his hand without the brain interfering. Maybe he had been able to do so effectively before his seven year sleep, but that ability was no longer his. I knew how frantic a fight could be and I knew how valuable the ability to react accurately without needing time to consider was. Without this, he had no hope of success.
When the rock left my hand, a knife took its place. Some days it was just the one. On those days I would grapple with my free hand, pretended I had a shield he had to counter, slipped needles for throwing between my fingers, and introduced his eyes to the dirt I had grabbed when I bent low. I never gave him an easy opening and some days I did not give him one at all. The way he fought told me that he was used to circling his opponents, waiting for them to rush him or grow tired. Not a terrible strategy, but not one that he should use every single time, either. Sometimes you had to cut yourself a path.
Some days I held two knives. I would get in close, jabbing my blades into his skin when he was too slow to block or dodge (which was often) and telling him what he did wrong, how to fix it, and why it was a bad idea. I showed him why a blade such as the Master Sword was better suited to keeping opponents at a pace's distance than up close, and how to kick and punch and smash with his shield to make the enemy retreat back to that distance.
There were times I made him leave the shield behind. With nothing to hide behind, he learned to use his blade as a guard. Then I made him pick the shield back up and learn to use it properly. If he ever even for a moment returned to his previous habit of simply hiding behind it, I went immediately for his knees and showed no mercy.
It was slow, painful work, but as the days passed, I felt my hope begin to return.
Perhaps he was not a lost cause.
"Have you ever used a bow?"
The Hero looked up at me from his work. No one had ever given him instruction on how to care for his gear and his previous maintenance had begun with sewing up rips and ended with brushing off any visible dirt. Now he knew to oil the leather, wipe the moisture off of the metal to prevent rust and sand down any rust that had begun to form. Anything else would have to wait until we had more tools to use.
"A bow? Naw, don't think so," the Hero said. "Arrowheads are really hard to make and they kill things easy besides. Great Deku Tree didn't really like us playing with them."
Great Deku…? Oh yes, the guardian spirit of the forest. It was supposed to look after the Kokiri.
"What about a throwing spear? A sling?"
"You mean, 'do I have anything that I can use to fight from far away?'" he asked for me. "I had my slingshot and my boomerang, and that was about it. I'm down to my bombs now and, well, they explode. I don't like using them in a fight if I can help it. Almost lost my face one time."
Why did that not surprise me?
"…You're getting a bow when we arrive at Kakariko," I said after a moment. "Before that, I'm going to show exactly how to safely use explosives in and out of combat, which you should have learned before you ever picked a bomb up. Who exactly gave you your bombs?"
"Found 'em," the Hero said.
…What?
"What?"
"I found 'em," he said, blissfully unaware of my distress. "I'd gone into Dodongo's Cavern to clear it out for the Gorons and I found a bag full of bombs in a storage chest. There were a lot of tunnels that had been blocked off with rocks and I needed to clear them, so I decided to take the bombs with me. The bomb flowers weren't growing everywhere, so I needed another option and why are you staring at me like that?"
I had crouched down in front of the Hero. He stopped the circular motion of his hand over the shield to fully focus on me. I stared at his face, trying to see any evidence of the mind that I knew to be there and yet had so much trouble understanding.
"Hero, you simply found a bag of what you knew to be dangerous explosives and took it with you?"
"Well, yeah," he said.
"Without any more idea of how to use them than what the bomb flowers had taught you, over a period of what I am guessing to be one or two days?"
"I knew how to –"
"You then proceeded to use them in a mine with no supervision."
"Why would –"
"On tunnels that had collapsed previously and could very easily do so again."
"They didn't fall –"
"And without any idea that maybe you were liable to kill yourself before the monsters could."
"I knew they were dangerous!" he shouted. I was lucky the fairy had stepped outside to stretch her wings. She would have joined in with him.
Glaring at me heavily, the Hero kept on with his shouting. "I knew they were dangerous! I'm not that stupid! I saw them shatter boulders to little pieces, you think I didn't know what they could do to me?! I always kept them away from fire, I put them down before I fought Dodongos, I tried my best to never knock them around; I did everything I could to keep safe! I always take everything I can find, because I never know if I'll need it or not and it's worked out fine till now! I check things before I use them and the bombs, they weren't cracked or crushed or anything! So yeah, I took them with me! And good thing I did, because that King Dodongo would have eaten me if I hadn't made him eat the bombs!"
He finished his rant breathing heavily, but not as heavily as the last one. The week of training had begun improving his body's strength already. Good.
"That was luck," I said quietly. "You say you gather everything you can when you can? Fair enough, when you know how to check it over. But those bombs can be dangerous even if the casing is intact. Did you ever find out why they had been left behind in that chest? Maybe the Gorons did not have time to grab them and they were simply left sitting there. Or maybe the powder had been mixed incorrectly and they were awaiting proper disposal. Maybe they would have refused to burst when you needed them. Maybe the fuses were too short. Maybe they were incomplete and filled with nothing at all. How could you tell?"
"I couldn't," he said angrily. "And they still worked fine."
He gathered his things and stomped off to continue his maintenance outside the cavern. I watched him go thoughtfully. Scavenging supplies was something I was very familiar with, but I knew how to inspect my finds. Only in the direst of need would I keep something I was not sure I could trust my mission to. The Hero had been a rupeeless wild child with no friends or family to supply him, so his habits could be explained as practicality in his eyes. But in mine? The Hero would need to know what he was grabbing before he grabbed it while I was around.
It was one thing to lose him to a stray arrow. It would be quite another to see his own finds do him in.
I had pleasantly little to teach him in regards to tracking and concealment. Apparently the Kokiri had made games out of following rabbits and deer, seeing who could go unnoticed the longest. The only problem was taking what he knew and adapting it to an environment that was outside of the forest. We had to leave the bolt hole to venture deeper into the canyon where there was more room to work with. Soon he knew how to look for the cracks in the rock walls that led to hiding places and how to erase any sign of his presence from the dust and rock.
In regards to urban camouflage, he had nothing to show. As we were confined to the canyon for the foreseeable future by our circumstances, I had no decent way to instruct him. I could only tell him what was most obvious about his appearance and character, and tell him what a proper Hylian would do or wear in place of that. Until we arrived in Kakariko, it would have to do. I could instruct him better when we had an urban landscape to practice in.
Code words and phrases were easy enough to pass on. The trouble came in having him repeat them later. I would have to remind him over and over that 'we need cold water now' actually meant we are about to be ambushed, 'harp' meant Zelda, 'wise men' meant the Sages, and 'criminal' meant Ganondorf.
I would like to extend credit to Impa for having the wisdom to apply that codename to the Black King even before the coup.
There were others. Over a hundred, and bear in mind that these were only the ones I needed him to know. I myself learned the full range of Sheik'ah code speak, more than one thousand instances of applying one word or phrase to another meaning, before I was fourteen. He hardly needed to act as though it was torture. I even allowed him to learn it in Hylian and not Sheik'ah.
And, of course, I had to teach him history.
"So, what happened after I left?"
I stopped my stirring of the ladle. The soup would have to wait, it seemed.
"I assume you mean after you were locked away in the Sacred Realm?"
The Hero nodded. "When Ganondorf grabbed the Triforce and came back, what happened then?"
I wondered how much of it he needed to hear. I could have spent all night simply going over the slaughter in the market, but that would have only incited him or caused him to feel guilt. Best to skip the gory details and give the bare minimum, I decided. I turned back to the soup. I had no desire to ruin a good meal through inattention.
"We still are not sure precisely sure when Ganondorf entered the Sacred Realm, so we have no way of knowing how long it took him to obtain the Triforce of Power and return. I suppose it does not matter whether he needed time to use its power or if he simply knew how to use it once he touched it. In either case, he returned from the Temple of Time with a weapon of unbelievable destruction that he immediately set out using against the civilian populace and military of Hyrule.
"Hyrule Castle and the town below were the first targets. People by the gate managed to evacuate in time, but everyone deeper into the area was not so lucky. Most of the survivors fled to Kakariko and established new homes there. Of the soldiers, a few rejoined the garrisons stationed in and around Hyrule Field, but most decided it was better to give up the sword.
"Over the next few weeks, the Gerudo tribe and the remains of the Hylian forces clashed several times, with the Hylians coming out worse for the most part. However, with the promise of reinforcement from the Gorons, they were managing to hold on. While this was happening, Ganondorf, for whatever reason, had yet to emerge from the old castle. He was converting it to what you saw upon leaving the temple. After it was finished, he decided to take to the field.
"The last official battle of the armed forces occurred some three months after the opening of the Door of Time. It began with Goron troops joining up with Hylian cavalry in an attempt to strike from the east and west of the Gerudo main camp, which succeeded, and ended with Ganondorf calling down the wrath of Din upon all of the field. Nothing survived.
"After that, there were a few more fights. Some mages attempted to confront him at the castle, there were lightning raids against the Gerudo war parties, and more events of the like. They have stopped since. The only real organized resistance that remains is strictly an underground movement. They take only covert action.
"After crushing the last of the army, Ganondorf sent word throughout all of Hyrule that he was now sovereign lord by right of conquest. If any wished to challenge him for the throne, they were of course welcome to do so. Few took up the offer.
"Beyond that, his declarations were few. He said in no uncertain terms that he expected the Gorons and Zora to come to heel as well. King Darunia refused and shut the doors of Death Mountain to any Gerudo. Unless the policy has changed since I found you, any of Ganondorf's ilk who trespass there are subject to immediate execution. I have also heard of famine again, as Dodongos are once again beneath the mountain. Aside from that, the Gorons have been quiet.
"The Zora were much the same. Their King did not refuse to continue purifying Hyrule's waters, as that would have harmed those who were innocent, but the gateway of Zora's Domain has been sealed for a long time against any who are not of water. There is no way for them to tell who is a friend or who is seeking to do them harm in Ganondorf's name.
"In a broader sense, evil things had begun to stir. Perhaps it is due to the Sacred Realm being opened, or perhaps is it an effect of a holy relic being sullied by the hands of a madman, or perhaps it is something he does deliberately. I do not know. What I do know is that old legends that should not be seen in this age are living again. The dead were ripping themselves from Hyrule Field seven years ago. A terrible thing, but the war was only ten years past and not all of the fallen had received funeral rites. It could be imagined. Now even the spirits of those whose bodies have long since rotted away are finding reason to appear.
"Monsters breed like rabbits and wander down to towns and villages in broad daylight. In the graveyard of Kakariko there is always a watch on the old tombstones, because nearly every night something tries to claw free from its grave. Old curses thought banished are beginning to show their effects.
"Sickness is becoming a problem for everyone and we have few left who can treat it. Any old soldier or mercenary hides or sells their weapons, because they fear being sold as a troublemaker to the Gerudo who pass through. Contact between villages is dying down, because so many are afraid to travel."
I stopped. I had wandered from the past to the present, and become melancholy. It would do no good.
"My apologies. This has no –"
"Why are you apologizing?"
I looked at him.
His face was curiously blank. I had known the Hero for only a little over ten days by then, but he had never been hard to read until that moment. This new uncertainty was not welcome to me.
"I was the one who let him do all of this."
Ah.
There was the guilt I had feared.
(I made a reminder to myself to never tell him about the details of oppression.)
"It was not your fault through malice," I responded, turning back to the pot. "You had what appeared to be a quick and simple solution to a terrible problem, and you chose to take it. Given that you were about ten years old and had little to no help, it was likely the best thing you could have done at the time."
"That makes it better?!" he asked incredulously.
"No," I answered honestly. "You did something that had catastrophic results for more people than anyone cares to count. However, few people know that and you are also part of the solution for that catastrophe."
I pulled the soup off of the fire.
"And if the solution works out, I doubt anyone will remember you as anything but what you must be."
I poured the steaming liquid into a bowl and handed it to him.
"A hero of legend."
Another day, another test.
(Except not quite the same.)
Begin.
Let him come to me. Sword is raised, shield is raised, fewer openings than before. Good.
Dodge. Be liquid, avoid the strike before it descends.
Circle around him and –
!
Duck!
The sword passes overhead.
Grab the arm, pull, turn, heave!
He flies and something grabs my collar.
He falls. A tug. I fall.
We land in the dirt. My knife is at his neck. His shield at my forehead.
He smiles.
"One for me."
