Chapter 6:
Fore-note:
Hi there Austin.
XD I do indeed loveth thou.
(Link's POV)
"I'm finally feeling fine." I say to Heirii. She ended up on the floor, and I have no clue why. She's a crazy girl; weird, abnormal. Beautifully artistically different than anyone else. Special, in her own little ways.
Why the hell am I thinking like this? I don't get romantic. I'm a warrior, a hero; not a romantic.
"Does it still hurt at all? Are you sure you're okay?" She sits up and looks at me with bright, big eyes.
"It hurts a little, but I'm okay. I've felt way worse and still kept going on. This is nothing. Don't worry about me." Actually, that's one thing I like about her. She does worry about me. She cares so much. I look at her and finally noticed her hair is all over the place. It looks so funny, yet cute.
"Why are you two up already?" Navi says groggily, looking out from under my hat. She obviously didn't sleep enough.
"We need training, I believe. Unless you want us to go into battle and be instantly slaughtered." Her face slowly turned pale and she climbed back under my hat, probably to sleep again. She needs to be awake more. She just can't do it.
"We do need to get you trained up. You're a bit rusty with a sword, and your injury probably didn't help that. Come on, I'll take it easy on you today. But I need some more practice as well, so we might as well find a white for me to challenge." She smiles at me sweetly, a smile that makes me think she could never handle a sword. An innocent smile, a pure light hidden within it.
"Okay, I vote for having you challenge the white first!" I smile cockily back at her. She laughs quietly and helps me get up. My leg is still sore, but it's mostly healed up. We race over to the Elite Hall, Heirii dragging me along by my hand. We walked in and all of them suddenly stopped what they were doing and looked at us.
"I wish to challenge one of you!" She yelled, although she could have said it normally. It was deathly quiet in the room. I have the theory that she did it to seem courageous. One Elite suddenly stepped forward and looked Heirii in the eyes.
"I will go against you, foolish Sheikah. I am the best Gerudo fighter in the whole fortress. You must be kidding if you believe you can win against me." She laughed heartily, but Heirii kept her stare going.
"Let's go. Where shall we fight?" Heirii asked, sounding more of a demand than a question. The Gerudo eyed her warily, still thinking she was just a weak little girl.
"We shall go into the desert, there's a fighting circle that some friends and I use occasionally. It's large, and no penalty for stepping out. By the way, my name is Ariandrue, but people call me Aria." (Her name is pronounced Are-E-on-drew.) We all raced into the desert and to their ring. I stood in the sidelines and watched their nice little battle.
(Heirii's POV)
This girl, Aria, was very different than other Gerudo. She moved different ways, talked different; she rubbed her skill in my face differently than others.
We stood in the ring, about five feet apart, staring at each other. I slowly reached for my sword and she swiped out double scimitars. I'm starting to regret this, just slightly. She's the best in the Fortress, as she says. I rip my sword out of its sheath and hear a satisfying shiiing. I look at Aria and smile maliciously.
"Are you ready for this, Sheikah?" She asks.
"I'm better than you expect me to be. Anyways, I have a name." I stare at her, feeling upset. My sword starts to glow bright green.
"Names are not always important." She eyed me stubbornly. I quickly take the opportunity to attack her. I run up in front of her and take a swipe towards her arm, and I swear I was going insanely quickly. She blocked my attack as if I were going a mile an hour instead of about fifty. I stare and her in disbelief and she tries to stab my stomach. I move out of the way and jump on her still extended scimitar. As I jump off, her blade gets forced downward and I use that as a way to get out of her range. She gets her sword back up from getting stuck in a rock and looks at me evilly.
"I forged this sword…" She looks to me and her face gets extremely red. She runs to me and attempts to slit my throat, but I dodge and punch her stomach.
"I can make another for you, if you want." I say sourly at her, and I stab her in the foot. She yells and looks at me like I am the devil himself.
"You're such a stupid little Sheikah girl. And you're cheating with that glowing sword…" She spits on the ground near my feet and swipes at me wherever she can. I continue dodging and blocking her attacks.
"My sword started glowing on its own; it used to be a generic blade." She stops her attacks for a second and I try to slash her arm, and I went through some hair as well. That is not taken lightly in the Gerudo Desert.
"HOW DARE YOU SLICE MY HAIR, MAGGOT!" She screamed at me. I didn't even mean to! She throws a whole bunch of attacks at me; towards my head, my heart, my stomach, my arms, my legs, and I block them all. They're coming at me quickly and there's one that I just didn't expect…
She threw her sword, into the air next to me. Assuming she missed, I keep blocking her attacks. Then, I feel a sharp pain in my back. I try to just ignore it, but that gets hard as I feel the blood draining out of me.
"You're a cheater…" I mumble, trying to not pass out. If I did, I swear she'd kill me. I use all the power I can to stab at her stomach. I didn't think that I would actually hit her. My sword quickly tore through her intestines, red dripping from her center. She stared at me in horror and blood started to drip from her mouth. She smiled slightly.
"I never… thought that I'd live… to see someone beat me." She coughs up some more blood and I stare at her, scared. Without thinking, I pick her up and run back into the Fortress. I didn't think I'd see the infirmary so many times. Link is running behind me, trying to keep up. That's a little weird, since he's the hero and I'm the 'little girl' and I'm carrying a person with me! Seriously, what about me makes it so I can do this? Plus, I have a gaping slash in my back that needs to be tended to.
I rushed into the infirmary and quickly put Aria down on an empty bed. She seemed to relax.
"I NEED A NURSE! ARIA IS HURT!" I screamed. Instantly, a few purple rushed into the room and started taking care of her. One noticed my back and rushed me into another room. I got a normal sized bed with already stained sheets. She had me lay on my stomach so she could stitch my wound.
"Are you feeling okay?" She asked me sweetly.
"Yeah, I'm just bleeding. You aren't like most Gerudo, are you?" I asked her.
"No. Most of the others say I should toughen up. I'm usually used for taking care of guests; they don't like the harshness of other Gerudo nurses." She got out her needle and threaded it. "This might hurt, I'm sorry if it does, miss." She starts putting the needle through my skin. It doesn't feel nice, but it isn't intolerable. Link walked in my room and sat down next to me.
"Hey there, chick." He says coolly. How come he gets to be cool in this situation?
"Hey, Link. Can I chew on your arm a little?" He glances at me weird but hands over his arm. I lightly nibble on it, and then the nurse sends her needle back into my skin.
"OH MOTHER FUCKING ASS HOLE CUNT DICK WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!" He starts screaming. I look at him sadly and he looks back, still fuming that I accidentally bit his arm hard. I take his arm out of my mouth.
"I'm sorry… I thought she might send her needle straight into a tender part of the wound." I smile at him weakly.
"I'm horribly sorry, miss." The nurse calls to me.
My wound got all stitched up and I couldn't lie on my back on my bed. Link had been staying right here with me the whole time, telling me stories.
"When I got to the Kokiri forest, the first friend I made was Saria. No one else would take me in. I had a lot of enemies in the beginning. No one would accept me to be Kokiri. In time, people started to get used to me, all except for Mido. He always held a grudge against me. It always made me mad, so I would have to take frequent breaks when talking to him so I wouldn't rip his head off. He also probably think's I've died by now. He probably wishes I'm dead. And I don't know why I'm not. If I was a Kokiri, I would definitely not have survived out of the forest. Plus, I can age. Kokiri can't get older than ten." He smiled at me.
"Then how in Nayru's name do they reproduce?" I ask, looking him straight in the eyes. He probably thinks I'm kidding and laughs, then realizes I'm being serious.
"I don't exactly know. I have a theory that the Great Deku Tree lets seeds fall in spring, and those end up hatching into tiny little Kokiri, and those are taken into custody by other ten-year-old Kokiri." He looks at me and starts laughing quietly. "I know it's a little odd. It's the only thing I have been able to come up with, though. There's no other real explanation. Plus, Kokiri don't have any sort of 'crush' or 'love interest'. They can't get old enough to even think of love as anything other than 'icky' and 'gross'." He smiles at me and lies down next to me.
"They're a different kind of people than you and I. Do you ever wish you could go back to the day you were left at the Forest and see who your parents were?" I look at his eyes and he suddenly seems a little depressed.
"I think about it all the time. It's like I was raised without any sort of family. Saria was the closest thing to family I had. And now, Sheik is the closest thing I have to a father. And I like it a lot, I feel like I belong. I've never felt that before, and now I can always feel the joy of family, even if it's just one person. And I don't really feel the need to know my real parents anymore, because I'm finding my own family." His breathing started to slow down, and he must have fallen asleep.
My back healed and Bradden was actually feeling better. We headed down the hallways in search of 'Sheik'. We were just looking around when I heard someone calling behind me. I turned around, and Aria was running towards me.
"Hey, you fierce fighter!" She called at me. She smiled lightly and skidded to a stop in front of me. "Introduce me to these characters. I know Link. Who are the other two?"
"This fine male figure is Bradden, and the other fine male figure is Sheik." I looked at her, and she seemed to be enjoying meeting them. "Hey, how come you're all nice all of a sudden?"
"I thought it was nice to have a fight like that. Yeah, you ripped up my stomach, but I ripped up your back. And you won fair and square."
"Thank you! And so you know, that's the biggest scar I've ever gotten, especially from fighting!" I smile at her, and she looks happy as well. Sheik looked at me weird, and then settled down again.
"We need to set off, Heirii." Sheik mumbled.
"Where are you guys headed off to?" Aria asked.
"Yeah, Sheik?" Bradden looked at me slightly aggravated.
"Well, for right now, we are going to head to Zora's Domain. I have a lot of friends from there and they can give us good protection and a good place to stay with food that you guys are used to." She nodded slightly to Aria. "These kids aren't used to the conditions of the desert. If you want to come with us, I guess you can. But, there'll be a lot more water than you're used to." At the sound of water, Aria flinched.
"I am not afraid of a little bit of water. I am strong and powerful. I have nothing to be afraid of. Well, maybe except for a swarm of Heirii flying at me. If one can rip a hole through me, twenty could rip my head off in a minute." She smiled at me.
"How long until we face Neiyata?" Bradden asked.
"I don't know. We all need to get suited up for battle, though. Our blade level must increase exponentially in order to even search for her." Sheik replied.
"Aria and I could coach you and teach all of you how to effectively control a sword." I volunteered. Aria nodded her head silently.
And with that, my new best friend waved her home goodbye and we set on a path towards her worst fear. Funny what friends go through to help other friends out. Even when they don't know what the purpose of the whole journey is about. Seriously, Aria has no clue that two people from our group happen to be Night Demons, especially not me.
I just hope we end up okay. Neiyata has to have some weakness, and when we find it, she's going to be destroyed. Maybe the cloaked man from my other dream has something to do with this whole thing. Maybe he's symbolic of something.
Maybe he's of hate.
Maybe he's of regret.
Maybe he's of pain.
Maybe he's of death.
I don't even want to think about it anymore. I just want all of this madness to stop. But I know wishes don't come true if you can't control the conditions. I just want to go home, back to the caverns, back to the boring life with Dad working late and Mom going to the market and socializing with her friends. I wish it could all just go back to normal.