In response to reviews: Freefan1412 - Thanks again for the review!
Actual fireproofing is always fun, especially since this can get Link into hot water later.
Oh, yes, while this fic can get dark at times (as can be expected from, you know, the cataclysm of the Calamity), I hope that I spend sufficient time just having fun and adventuring across Hyrule. With any luck, the fic should have enough humour to sustain it. But Link is really a curious and fun-loving kind of gal, and I personally found the puzzles and challenges of the shrines to be quite fun, "blessing" shrines notwithstanding.
Link won't be in denial forever. She'll have to come to terms eventually...hmm! I forgot that these earlier chapters go by so slowly because I was still trying to maintain a relatively short chapter length, though I hope that the slow burn of character development is worth it.
Thank you for the compliment on characterisation! I'm glad that what I had hoped for is getting across. You'll see more combat sequences in the future, some fun, some gory, and some both. Action's always fun to write with a character as open to hare-brained schemes as Link is.
The gorons aren't the type to get lost in the details...but there's only so much that Link can deny, and there's a certain goron she'll soon meet that will make that denial veeeery difficult indeed.
Chapter Eleven: Curry Rice
As Link sets the slate into the face of the pedestal, her mouth already salivates at the prospect of a meal atop the Tower of Eldin with Death Mountain as her companion.
Cooking in temperatures so high that the air itself combusts does not come easily. If she had paid attention to Blaryd's recipe of curry, she would have already fixed herself some food, instead of sitting in the approximate shade of the cliff—though being in the sun or in the shadows makes no difference when the very ground beneath her feet threatens to melt her into a puddle of flesh—tapping her middle and forefingers against her chin.
Her iron pot and its accompanying pot lid hold no match to the boiling heat around her. Yet somehow non-gorons live in Eldin, and with living comes eating.
Gently she opens the carved jar of rice Blaryd presented to her. Almost immediately she catches the scent of burning rice and closes the container just as speedily, sealing the rim so that no air can flow in or out.
Link unties the fireproofed band that holds her ponytail in place. She runs her hands idly through her hair.
She dare not check her map, which remains safe from combustion, furled in the fireproofed cylinder. Instead she stands at the edge of the tower. Shading her eyes with a lifted hand, Link gazes out onto the world. The spire juts into the sky, and yet the mountains of Eldin—the spine of the world—rise even further, culminating at Death Mountain that towers over half of the heavens.
Lava flows down channels along the sides of the mountain. Pools and lakes of liquid fire and molten rock sear her vision, and she looks upwards to the sky. To the peak of the mountain. She squints. Something seems to move along its surface. Not a plume of lava, but brown and gold, shifting horizontally.
She leans out.
The whatever-it-is moves again, blurred by the heat rising from the land and the sparks of fire that cascade through the air. She can just make out what look like projectiles of some sort spewing forth from the brown and gold mass.
Link follows the downwards arc of the projectiles. They disappear behind the other mountains of Eldin. Her gaze snaps back up to the whatever-it-is, which continues its horizontal path winding about Death Mountain.
She leans out further.
Her boots, waxed with fireproofing paste, slip.
She hurtles through the air towards solid rock. With great effort she manage to snap open the paraglider. Link spirals around the tower until she lands on one of the platforms dotting the sides of the spire. She tumbles forward. Spreading her limbs out on solid ground, she takes a moment to laugh at herself.
And then she climbs back up the entire tower to retrieve the slate.
When she kicks off of the tower for the second time, she glides over uneven cliffs and mountains. She aims for the highest structures that she can reach to walk across plateaus or climb up to a higher hill before launching herself into the wind again. Down below she can make out ruins of villages and camps of monsters. Fire-breathing lizalfos. Strange brownish seals with blue bulbs upon their heads. Hunched crocodilians—not the lizalfos, but scurrying about on four legs—with armour of stone covering their bodies. Toad-like creatures that rear up from the rivers of fire to spew rocks into the sky at her. Spinning turtles that carry crawling maggots of flame upon their backs. Hard-shelled centipedes with long jaws and singular beady eyes ringed i blue and violet. Great birds her own size that loop through the air above the camps and breathe out flame. She avoids the monster camps whenever she can, but one of the flame-birds pursues. Link looks back at the beast: gold and scarlet with four wings that flare out in vibrant feathers of tyrian and blue, and a tail that blooms like a blossom of fire.
If not for the flames that burst from its throat—flames that not even her fireproofing paste may withstand—she would stare in wonder at the bird's iridescent beauty. But as the bird gains on her, she notices the sharp blades of its outer wings, the talons tipped in serrated steel, the whip-like undulations of its tail whose hollowed end could serve as a noose.
Not a natural thing. Not a natural creature that could heave magma from its belly, but a monstrous thing animated by an ancient power. In its glazed eyes lurks the violent violet of malice.
She shuts the paraglider and whips out her bow in a single motion. As she falls, she pulls the bowstring back.
The paraglider opens again at the same time as the arrow pierces the bird's breast, just below the juncture of its body and its wing.
Link watches the monster long enough to see the bird dropping through the air. It flaps wildly to slow its ascent, but with its wing disabled, the monster swiftly approaches the ground.
She twists her body northwards. Taking out the bird caused her to fall further down than expected, and she nearly crashes into a cliff. As she climbs up, the skin of her hands starts to sting, as if she had plunged them into scalding water. The effect spreads over her flesh. The stinging grows worse by each passing second.
Link pulls herself up to the top of the cliff. She downs another fireproof elixir, and the blessed cool showers her from her stomach outwards. She wipes her mouth.
From the precipice of the tall cliff, she surveys the land about her. The river of lava below her flows smoothly south, though she knows not the river's name without the map she cannot check. Far along the river she spots villages and towns, most of them set next to great tunnels or caverns bored into the earth, the caves' mouths large enough that she can make out their innards from where she stands. Massive quarries dug up from the ground lie down below the cliffs. For every mine on the surface, she can count three or four entrances to underground tunnels. Stone bridges cross the river of lava. She observes movement along one bridge. Gorons? She squints. The beings scurry too quickly and too jerkily for gorons.
Lizalfos, on the move.
Link continues north. She follows the river from the relative safety of the high clifftops. Occasionally the scree of a fiery bird or the cry of a lone lizalfos draws out her halberd, the head of which shatters halfway through the day, embedded in a lizalfos's shoulder. She takes its weapon—a forked metal spear—and walks on.
At least she will have plenty of monster parts to sell in the future, if ever her horse Ilia needs anything.
When she notices a village on the next hill, she glides towards the settlement for the possibility of cooking a meal that will not instantly erupt in fire. Link looks up at the homes carved into the mountainside and down at the quarry hewn from the base. Gemstones glitter blue and red, white and yellow in the eye-searing brightness of the lava. Link lands on the terraced hillside below the crag on which the village sits. Eagerly she starts the trek up the vertical cliff.
When her head clears the rocky edge of the cliff, she looks out at the village, at the people, at the potential warm-yet-not-ablaze meal.
A lizalfos squatting in the middle of an empty village square greets her.
First its left eye turns its pupil towards her, and then its right eye follows. Chirruping, the lizalfos stands on its tiptoes. Other lizalfos crawl out of the broken doors of the village houses, chirping at one another, their eyes cold despite the heat.
Link ducks her head back and climbs a half-metre down the cliff. Flattening herself against the rock, she feels her chest rising and falling, her skin broken into cuccoflesh, her mouth drier than the volcanic stone around her.
A village in ruins. Run over by monsters. And whoever once lived there—
Link drops to the lower level of the crag. She walks around the summit of the cliff to avoid the lizalfos. The ground litters with small bones, discarded weapons, broken pottery, misshapen metal pieces she cannot identify, and here and there half a larger skeleton, the bones charred to black, partly smashed from the impact of having fallen from the village on the cliff.
The bile rises in her throat. She swallows down and the acrid stench of her stomach contents exhumes her mouth. Link removes her water-skin. She makes a seal of her lips around the throat of the water-skin before she takes off the cap.
The hot sulphurous water from the lake only churns her stomach further. She chokes for breath. Her knees hit rock. Her spine hunches over until her shoulder blades threaten to rip through her skin.
She gasps. Her tongue feels too swollen, her lungs too shallow, her throat constricting in on itself.
She vomits over the ground. The taste of curry smokes up her tongue, twisted from a pleasant spice to an inferno of disgust that keeps her heaving. The vomit sizzles upon contact with the too-hot rock. The stench of its vapour miasmas from the stone. She stares at her hands. The edges blur; her fingers double. Under the protective gloves she can picture the scars that rake across a stranger's flesh, a stranger's body, a stranger that once had the sword—
Link covers her face with her hands. She trembles. She has nothing left to throw up and so she rocks back and forth in the fog of the scent of her own vomit.
She kneels there for a very long time.
The ache in her knees and the aridity in her throat lift up onto her feet. She rivets her gaze onto the peak of Death Mountain. She trudges forward.
She does not look down.
Link hikes up an arch of stone that crosses half of the river of lava. From her perch she spies another village on the waterfront of a hot spring. The hunched homes excavated from stone drops her to her hands and knees again. Like the village overrun by monsters. Like the village the hero could have protected. Like the village from which she could only turn away.
She dry heaves.
When her limbs cease fluttering, Link claps her palms against her own cheeks. At the very least she can refill her water-skin in the spring.
Her stomach grumbles but, despite her desire to try every meal that the great wide world has to offer, she does not have the physical capability of consuming literal fire. Although, if she chips off the fireproofing seal from one of the apples she still carries in her satchel and shoves it into her mouth with sufficient deftness, she could choke the fruit down before it catches too much on fire. Link dips her hand into the satchel to feel around for one such apple.
Focusing on anything but the village.
Her fingers close around something spherical. She picks out the apple. With the knife taken from the cabin on the Great Plateau, she peels off the fireproofing paste.
The fruit blazes. The apple burns to ash in her hand.
Link stares at the pile of grey dust in her palm. She pokes her tongue out and licks the tip against the ash.
Dust.
Paraglider in hand, Link pushes herself off of the arch of stone. She glides towards the village under the indigo sky of the coming night. The darkness of the sky does little to lessen the blinding glare of the molten rock.
She lands near the hot spring on the far side of the village. Something large and dark moves in the water and she whips out her fireproofed bow faster than she can even process the whatever-it-is waiting in the spring.
"Who's there?" grunts out a voice with the rolling pace of a goron. Link lowers her bow. "I said, who's there, 'less you want my fist in your skull." Link kneels down on the side of the hot spring. The goron strides through the water towards her. A fire sparks to life in his hand—a lantern, she realises—and his silhouette melts into the sight of a goron in a coiled-rope loincloth. "Who're you?"
"Just a girl," Link answers honestly, her brow furrowed at the goron's odd question. She lifts up her water-skin. "I stopped to get some water, and also maybe food."
The goron scratches the crown of his head. "What're you doing in Gabora, Justagirl?"
Link tilts her head to one side. "I'm here for water." She crouches beside the water and fills the water-skin. Quitting her gloves and cupping her hands together, she drinks from the spring until the parchedness of her throat has lubricated with the oily water.
The goron shrugs his broad shoulders. "Don't do any funny business, and don't creep 'round Gabora at night. We've been up swimming up our necks in furnixesandyiga as is, and I don't like that look on your face."
Link nods. The word furnixesandyiga means nothing to her. He grunts and splashes back into the hot spring. She scoots away to keep her fireproofed clothing dry. A sudden sound—a chirp—to her right sends Link's head in the direction of the noise.
Something thin, red, and swiftly bobbing its head up and down from the hot spring.
The spear finds its way into Link's hands. The goron in the hot spring yells something at her, yet her world has narrowed down into the red thing, the lizalfos, the whatever-it-is.
She grips the spear tightly. Her arms bunch together in preparation for a thrust.
The whatever-it-is raises its head, too fast for her to process in the darkness. It twitters at her. It lunges.
She stabs forward but the whatever-it-is speeds off away from her. As it runs in panicked circles around the periphery of the spring, she lowers her spear.
"You got a stone loose in your head, Justagirl?" the goron roars. "Don't scare me like that! Nearly jumped outta my shell. You've never seen an ostrich before?"
She stares at the bird that abruptly shoves its head downwards, flaps its stubby wings, and continues to sprint in circles.
An ostrich.
The goron approaches her again with the lit lantern. "What's wrong with you? Look, I don't know who you are or what you're doing, but if it's up to me to chase some loony away from Gabora then by Din I'll gladly take things into my own fists." He punches his other forearm for emphasis.
"It's been a long day." Link's gaze sweeps from the ostrich to the village across the water. "Is there a place I could rest at...the village?"
"Don't think we got an inn. And if you think you're gonna go tunnel to tunnel you got another thing coming." The goron frowns at her. He punts his fist onto his hip. "What're you doing out here? And if you say getting water one more time..." He makes a crunching noise in his throat.
"I don't know what you're asking." Link pauses. She touches her chin. "I'm hungry. I wanted water. I'm going to Darunia on a task for Lady Impa of Kakariko."
"To Daru-darunia?" The goron pats the crown of his head. "I dunno who this Impa-impa, is but if you know what's good for you, you'll want to stay outta Daru-darunia. That blasted lizard's been driving them outta here."
Link blinks.
The goron sighs. "Fine. Doesn't take a scholar to see you got no clue what's going on around here. Enjoy getting mauled by the first lizalfos you come across, Justagirl." He extinguishes the lantern and wades back into the hot spring. "Hylians. The whole lot of them, thinking they can go anywhere. Former royalty my foot."
Link tucks her gloves into her satchel and removes her shirt. She rubs her face clean with the water of the hot spring, careful not to let the water drip onto her trousers. She slips the undershirt and tunic back on. The surface of the water reflects lights from above; someone at the village must have lit torches against the dark. Her fingers slide into the gloves. She flexes her hands to settle them back in.
The goron yells again and she looks up. This time, however, he runs not ath her but towards the village. The village. Gabora. Aflame.
Screams from the village. The goron breaks into a roll. Link can just see dark figures crawling in the pandemonium of the blaze.
Gripping the spear she took from the lizalfos, Link sprints forward around the hot spring. The village: far, too far. As she draws near, the scene unfolds before her, of lizalfos against goron in the streets, the fire-breath of the monsters hot enough to melt the very mountainside rock into lava. Overhead, birds soar to spit molten globs down below. The denizens of the village—gorons and not-gorons in barrel-shaped armour alike—have formed a barricade in front of the entrances to the tunnels. To the homes. They tear through the lizalfos with axes and blades, lances and gauntlets, drillshafts and hammers meant for breaking rock, but for every lizalfos that falls, two take their place. Burning insects—no, slugs, oozing burning oil as they go—crawl forward between the legs of the villagers. One villager notices and shouts out an alarm. Everyone dashes madly away.
The slugs explode into an inferno.
Link skids to a halt a distance away from Gabora. She notches her bow.
Her first arrow misses. Her second hits one of the flaming birds. She looses an arrow at a third monster only for someone else's arrow to shoot the bird from the sky in a burst of lightning that makes Link stop and stare for a second. She focuses again. Together with the other archer's arrows—theirs somehow ringed with lightning—the arrows she filched from the bokoblin camp make quick work of the birds.
Just as she scans the heavens for any birds she might have missed, a trio of lizalfos terrorising the village notice her with a war-cry of screes. They rush towards her. One lizalfos falls to an arrow through its throat. The next arrow rips through the lizalfos's thigh but does little to slow its run. Its untouched companion reaches her first and she flips backwards as she fumbles for the spear. It thrusts its own spear at her but the point merely grazes her left arm. She rolls forward under the next jab to slam her spearpoint up between the segments of the lizalfos's armour. The spear pierces its belly. The lizalfos leaps back; the motion tears the spear from her hands. The shaft sticks out of the monster's stomach, the point embedded in its innards. Link hastens to notch another arrow.
An abrupt pain in her left shoulder knocks the arrow astray. She feels warmth soak into the fabric of her arm. The lizalfos with the arrow in its thigh catches its boomerang and throws it again. This time Link ducks the first sweep. She swivels about to track its arc and catches the boomerang on the return. She turns back at the arrow-thigh-lizalfos and grins at the monster while it jumps up and down shrieking at her and thrashing its limbs. She chucks the boomerang at its head.
The arrow-thigh-lizalfos catches it.
Link squints at it. Before she can respond, she hears the spear-lizalfos charging her and leaps forward. The whistle of the boomerang brings her to roll forward thrice. Her head spins but she comes out unscathed as she springs back to her feet. The arrow-thigh-lizalfos has just thrown the boomerang again, while its companion strains to pull out the spear embedded in its stomach. The spear-lizalfos succeeds only in snapping off the handle. Link pelts behind it and grabs the still-together spear the monster holds in its other hand. The spear-lizalfos pulls back. They engage in a pulling contest over the spear until Link dips her head at the approach of the incoming boomerang. The forked edge slices through the spear-lizalfos's face at the level of its eye sockets. The monster releases the spear. She stumbles backwards yet catches herself and jumps forward to drive the spear down into the spear-lizalfos, clawing at its ruined eyes. The point of the weapon deflects off of the spear-lizalfos's armour and slams into the rock. She rips the spear from the ground. The lizalfos writhes beneath her. She straddles the lizalfos while its arrow-thigh-companion races for the boomerang that has skidded off the cliff. Wedging her fingers under the lizalfos's helmet she rips it off. The spear-lizalfos meets its end under the sharpened spear-point.
She flips backwards off of the spear-lizalfos. The arrow-thigh-lizalfos grabs the boomerang at last and does an impromptu dance with the weapon. She sprints towards the distracted lizalfos. It turns towards her with a questioning chirrup and she punctures the spear into its lower jaw. The spearhead sinks through its flesh. She meets the resistance of bone.
The arrow-thigh-lizalfos flails the spear around in its jaw. Its talons rake furrows into her chest. She senses it lifting a leg. The kick to her chest knocks the breath from her lungs but she stays firmly upright. She twists the spear around to drive it deeper. Bringing up her knee she slams the lizalfos in the stomach. The impact lifts up its spine. She knees it again. A crunch emanates from its upper back. The lizalfos droops.
Link throws the lizalfos to the ground. She braces her boot against its chest and pulls out the spear. For good measure she takes the monster's boomerang as well.
When she looks back up at Gabora, the villagers seem to be winning. The forces of lizalfos have thinned out, and the bloated corpses of already exploded fire slugs dot the ground. She hefts up her spear as she approaches the village square. She watches a pair of gorons physically tear a lizalfos in two. One of the strange seal-like monsters inhales to spew lava, but Link stabs the spear through the top of its nose down to its lower jaw, effectively clamping its mouth shut. It breathes fire into its closed maw and writhes until she hacks through its head with the boomerang—silencing the monster—and joins the fray with the villagers.
The monsters do not flee but continue to fight until the villagers and Link have driven every last one into the dirt. The victory rings hollow: Link can see the still-molten surfaces of houses reduced to lava. Other homes have cooled down into misshapen blobs.
She exhales and drinks another fireproof elixir.
She stays out of the way of the villagers as they begin the process of accounting for the damage done by the attack. Instead she sits down on a spread-out glob of stone in the middle of the square that might have been a statue or bench before the monsters' rampage.
Her stomach rumbles. Link tries the trick with the apple once more, except this time she pops the fruit into her mouth to remove the fireproofing paste with her teeth. The saliva washes the paste off. The wax fills her mouth with an acrid taste and she grimaces, but at least she can eat something to quell the storm in her belly. As long as the fireproofing paste does not contain poison, the sweetness of the fruit makes the bitterness worth the swallow.
A goron seats himself next to her. Link glances at him. A dribble of juice runs out of the corner of her mouth and evaporates against her skin. The goron slaps his knee. Link scoots a centimetre away.
"Name's Fernok." The goron grins at her. The hair-like white crystals cap his head in a small pyramid. A tattoo of a lizard stretches across his chest. She swallows another chunk of the whole apple in her mouth, her cheeks bulging. The goron pats her knee. "Figured someone oughta thank you for taking out those furnixes." He gestures to one of the downed corpses of the flaming birds. A furnix. "Nasty little buggers, they are."
Link notes the quiver at his hip and the metal bow gleaming on his back. "Were you the other archer...?" she signs, still crunching on the apple. "The one with the—" She does not know the word for lightning in Eldin. "—yellow light and the boom boom?"
"What's that?" She repeats the question, more slowly this time. Fernok pounds his palm against his chest. "Me, the lightning archer? Nah. I'm an archer, but you can't get topaz arrows easy 'round here. But I do know who the lightning was. And, you know, speaking archer to archer, you're not a bad shot yourself." Link smiles sheepishly at him and he claps her on the back. She chokes on the apple. "So what's a lone ranger like you doing out here, swooping in to protect this little ole village of ours?"
She says what she has always said: of going to Darunia for Lady Impa's request.
Fernok nods, his chin in his hand. "I might know someone who can help you out there, lass." Link can't help but smile slightly at him calling her lass. "You did some first-rate arrowing. Hey, I know things look bad, but Gabora's been through worse."
Link looks out at the destruction of the village, at those kneeling in the street, at those weeping, at those digging through rubble. She could offer to help, yet she only passes through. A traveller. A lone ranger with barely a name.
What would she have to offer the mourners who have had their livelihoods destroyed while she sits by and struggles to eat an apple?
Fernok drums his fingers on his chest. He rests a hand on Link's shoulder. She can feel the pressure on her right collarbone.
"I'll be straight with you then, lass. Donte asked me to keep an eye on you, said that there was some hylian mucking around the hot spring who didn't seem all there in the head."
His hand tightens. The pressure hardens to a sharp pain for just a moment. Link inhales.
"So, I figured I would check in on you. Say, lass, you're not yiga—" Link does not know the word, but she does know the feeling of pain. The bones of her collarbone grind against those of her shoulder. Tears well up in the corners of her eyes. "—are you?"
He releases her. Gingerly she runs her index finger over her collarbone to sense the outline of the already forming bruise. When she moves her arms to sign, her shoulder stings. "I don't know what that word means. I promise I'm not lying." She explains briefly about her amnesia, about not even knowing what the word Hyrule meant. Fernok hums in response.
"You say you don't know who the yiga are. Yiga. They're murderers, is what they are, and serve as the leaders of vile armies of monsters." Link cocks her head. Fernok goes on: "I'll be straight with you: We've seen some evidence of Yiga activity 'round these parts the last few days. Now I'm not saying it was you. But I'll ask you to leave, lass. Nice and sweet. Say, you wanted to meet that other archer, right? I got some folks who would be willing to leave with you and take you to Daru-darunia. Some jewel merchants that arrived a couple'a days ago and should be off'n the morning." He hums again. "And if you stir up trouble in Darunia, there'll be plenty of people to take care of you."
"I really didn't do anything." She tries to give Fernok something of a smile, yet her mouth feels frozen in a thin line, her gaze dull and vacant.
"I'm sure you didn't, lass, but we can't ever be too safe nowadays. I trust you understand." He raises his hand and she flinches, which prompts him to chuckle. "Long as you leave town, lass, it'll be right. Thanks again for taking care of the furnixes. So. How about you follow me, lass?"
Link stands up to do so. She stretches her arm behind her back to rest her hand on the iron pot. She lowers her gaze to the ground.
The apple churns in her stomach. She winces but swallows herself down, down again, down again, down to lie in the bowels of the earth.
"We're here. You see," Fernok says, while Link continues to stare at the stone with the silent prayer that the ground open up and swallow her whole, "there's some merchants passing through down. They're headed up to Daru-darunia. Lass. Yo, lass." He slaps his palm against her shoulder and she raises her head.
A particular home, not carved into the mountain, but sitting by itself on the periphery of the village. On metal wheels, she realises, staring at the sloped wagon.
Fernok knocks on the door with the back of his knuckles. From within Link hears: "Coming right away." A shuffle and a banging. A hiss of air. Another loud bang. A second hiss of air, and the door slides open to reveal a tall figure in barrel armour with a helmet obscuring their face. The person wears a metal bow on their back, the limbs glimmering with polish, a sight affixed to the front. "Yes?"
"Evening, Glepp. Thanks for helping us wrestle off those buggers. Dunno what we would've done without those topaz arrows of yours. All the way from Parapa, weren't they? Wew lass, must be expensive." Glepp says nothing. Fernok thumbs at Link. "Lass, this is Glepp. Glepp, this is..."
"Link," she signs.
Glepp signs back: "Hello." Then she returns to speaking audibly, her voice low and almost careful. "Yes?"
"The lass here needs a ride to Daru-darunia."
Glepp makes a sound in her throat.
"She's a sellsword. Just took out some furnixes and a pack of lizalfos without breaking a sweat. Says that she doesn't have anything to do and that she's been sent by someone from Kakariko."
The door behind Glepp opens. A second barrel-armoured character steps out. "What's going on here?" the second person asks.
Link crouches down on the ground while the three talk to apparently decide her fate. Fernok does not seem to know how to speak in Eldic sign, and so Glepp translates for her companion who, Link gathers, is deaf. The companion introduces the inhabitants of the wagon: Glepp and Misan, travelling merchants who run the circuit of the sapphire trade, loading up in the frigid tundras of Hebra and shipping the ice-infused sapphire out to Darunia and the rest of Eldin. However, the sightings of monsters have grown significantly worse of late, making the road that much more dangerous. "Aw, and our previous guard," Misan bursts out, "left us stranded in Gabora. Said that it was too much for him! Even after I promised to up his commission!"
Glepp pats her on the shoulder.
"So, Link, come on in. Make yourself at home and we can hash out a plan."
"I leave 'er in your care." Fernok glances at Link while Glepp translates for Misan's benefit. "You make sure to get on out of here, lass." Fernok's eyes narrow slightly. "And you merchants should get goin' too now that you've got a guard and no reason to hang around."
Link dips her head in acknowledgment and thanks. Misan extends a hand to her, still crouched on the ground, and pulls her up. Glepp opens the door to the wagon.
The blue from the inside of wagon—coated in sapphire—shines directly into her eyes. The sudden chill from the wagon's bowels washes over her at once if she had suddenly run onto a bank of ice. She takes a step backwards but Misan hurries her forward. The cold.
The cold.
The cold.
The floor, the walls, the ceiling—cold, cold, icy cold. She drops herself to the ground to hug it. The glittering rock cools her cheek. She rubs her face over it affectionately.
Cold.
Something nudges her shoulder. She opens her left eye. Misan, who has removed her helmet and armour, stands over her: a black-haired sheikah woman in a green and gold tunic. She winks at Link. "Nice, isn't it? The sapphire here exudes cold. We run a trade circuit from here to Hebra. It's a long trek but mighty worth the profit, eh? The sapphires absorb the power of ice in Hebra and then—badda bing badda boom—exhale the cold out here, where it's way too hot! With spring just ending and everyone thinking about how active the volcanoes get in the summer, business is booming! Then in Darunia we load up the exhausted sapphires and ship 'em all the way back to Hebra to get nice and cold over the winter again." She flashes a thumbs-up. "And all you have to do is fend off the monsters that could try to attack us on the trip up and back. You'll only have to take us back to Medigo or about there. Nice and—"
Link's stomach rumbles. Loudly. Misan's hands freeze and Link's face reddens even against the icy chill of the sapphire.
"Aw, you want some food, there, Link?"
Link sits up. The pot on her back clangs against her other belongings. "Do you mind if I cook in here?"
Misan claps her hands together. "Ooh, no need to talk so formal. We're all friends here." Link rubs the back of her head for her century-old style of speech while Misan shows Link to the galley in the back of the wagon, similarly inlaid with sapphires. Link takes the pot from her back to set it onto the counter. At last she can open the container of hylian rice without the grain erupting in flames. At last she regards the little red jar of goron spice in her satchel. At last, at last she realises that she has no poultry of any sort.
If only she speared the ostrich earlier.
She might not have poultry, yet she does have acorns. And rice. And spice. And all those things are really nice.
With Misan's assistance and Glepp's silent watchfulness—the latter a purple zora with some resemblance to a koi fish—Link heats milk in a saucepan. She sprinkles in goron spice and stirs. Misan has little in the way of vegetables, but she produces what she can: ginger, red pepper, onion, garlic, and Hyrule herb. Link fries them lightly in oil and adds them to the curry alongside crushed and roasted acorns.
She steams the rice as she stirs the curry to a thick consistency, until the very fragrance makes her stomach pound against her innards in its desperation to have some of that. When the rice finishes steaming, she divides it into three bowls provided by Misan. Link pours a generous portion of curry for herself; Misan takes some as well, though Glepp declines the offer of curry and has her rice with a sprinkle of seeds from her own pack.
Link sits on a mat on the floor; Misan and Glepp kneel. The cramped space in the wagon, Misan explains cheerily, means that they set up and put away the beds every morning and have as little furniture as possible. Link nods throughout Misan's words, although she focuses more on the welcome weight of the spoon in her left hand and the bowl in her right.
"Have a good meal," Glepp says.
Link practically shoves her face into the bowl to shovel the curry rice into her mouth and swallow the meal down. The first mouthful of rice goes down easily, but a second later a fireball follows it down. The mixture of goron spices burst over her tongue as though she holds a literal flame in her mouth, the warmth sliding down her throat to heat her belly. Her nose clears. Her eyes water. The tensions in her temples and the ache of her head relax and ease like the morning sun clearing away the fog gathered over the night.
Curry and rice.
Rice and curry.
Not with these exact ingredients, but the weight of the bowl and the spoon remind her. She closes her eyes: a party of four. First, the goron from her memories, the one who called her li'l buddy. Second, the older girl with the green hairband she remembers arguing at the base of the stairs, for whom Link made a bowl of carrot cream soup, with the red hair tied back with a band of green and gold, a dark blue dress garbing her well-toned body the golden earrings framing her sharp features. Third, the girl her own age, also with red hair, in the sky-blue dress with the violet sash. And fourth, herself. On a horse, the brown horse with the white mane—Ilia? Ilia. Her horse, Ilia, after whom she has named the black horse currently resting at the stable in Medigo.
She remembers sitting behind the girl with the violet sash atop the horse with the white mane, her cheeks slightly flushed at the rocky road that bumped Link against the girl with the violet sash. The goron walked next to her, and the older girl with scarlet hair tied back by a green hairband rode astride a blue horse beside Ilia, a bowl in her grip. Ilia's reins in hand, the girl with the violet sash led the horse forward. Link cupped a bowl in her right hand, a spoon in her left. A bowl of curry rice.
The goron and the older girl with the green hairband laughed alongside the girl with the violet sash while they ate. The girl with the violet sash opened her mouth for Link to feed her, and Link took turns giving herself and the girl spoonfuls of rice. She cannot recall the trail they followed, but the horses walked slowly. The party of four spoke of life, of raising horses, of a woman—who lived in the village of the girl with the violet sash—determined to raise cucco despite her own allergy to them.
They came to the edge of a village golden with fields of—of something. Not rice. Something else. Link could see a pond atop a hill below the boughs of a tree. The girl with the violet sash hugged Link good-bye and then did something else—something that Link cannot quite recall—that prompted Link to bury her face in her hands.
Link watched the girl with the violet sash's back recede into the distance of the village. One of her other companions—the older girl with the green hairband—ruffled Link's hair. "You have good taste in friends, Link," she said, a mischievous quirk to her lips.
"Yeah, li'l buddy," boomed the goron. "Thanks for letting us meet Marin."
Marin.
Link does not know whether to cling to that name like a life-line or to banish it away. Marin, who must have known the previous occupant of Link's body. Marin, who would not recognise Link as she is now. Marin, who must have...meant...something...to...
Movement startles Link from her thoughts. Misan has stood up to gesture to her. Link blinks. "So what do you say? You protect us on the way up and down, and we get you into Darunia." Misan cocks her hip. "Or Daru-darunia, like the Eldic call it. While in Eldin do as the Eldic do, eh? And if you can cook like this for us the way there, I'll throw in enough fireproof elixirs for you to last a year."
Glepp crosses her arms over her chest. The zora's red-membraned third eyelid slides horizontally over her eyes. Misan pouts at her companion, who sighs and shrugs, acquiescing. Clapping her hands together, Misan grins at Link.
"So, whaddaya say, eh?"
Despite the slang not making a lick of sense to her, Link attempts to nod and spoon another mouthful of rice into her mouth at the same time, which lodges the spoon into the roof of her mouth. She chokes on the curry. Glepp slaps her webbed hand onto Link's back and the spoon flies from her mouth to land in the bowl.
"Aw, no need to get that excited." Misan winks at her.
Link rubs her throat. She bobs her head.
"So you'll do it?"
She nods again and picks up the spoon.
Misan claps her hands. "Great. How much do you charge?"
Link swallows more rice. She lowers the spoon. "How...much do I...charge?"
Glepp and Misan turn their heads towards one another and back to her.
"You're not going to do it for free, are you?" Misan signs, and Glepp rubs her temples with her hands.
"I just want passage to Darunia. Or is it Daru-darunia?" Link tilts her head to one side. "I don't mind doing it for free."
Misan looks at Glepp, who shakes her head. "Can't say I'm comfortable with you doing it for free," Misan signs. "Gotta make sure you'll have some incentive to bring us out there in one piece, eh? Better to rest in peace and not in pieces." Misan scuffs her boot on the floor. She claps her hands together. "We'll give you a two-point-five percent commission on all the sapphire we sell. That's zero-point-one-nine above average for a job of this calibre, you know! How's that?" Link does not know the meaning of two-point-five or zero-point-one-nine but nods anyway. "I promise it'll be more than worth your time."
Link inclines her head in gratitude. She polishes off the curry rice and prepares herself a second bowl, just as creamy and spicy and sweet as the first. The coolness of the sapphire house washes over her like a spring shower. When Glepp rolls out a bed for her, the blankets interwoven with sapphires, Link crawls into the cocoon of coolness.
For the first time in her very, very long day, Link rests.
—
Curry Rice (three hearts) - acorn, goron spice, hylian rice
Chapter Eleven. First written: 11 June 2017. Last edited: 04 September 2017.
Author's notes: A thank-you to my most wonderful beta reader, Emma, for assisting me with figuring out the costs of living in Hyrule! And thank you to you, the reader, for continuing to read. I hope that you're enjoying yourself as much as I am.
So here we see Link feeling sick from seeing the remains of the destroyed village, and also guilty. To some extent she feels responsible for "stealing" away the hero, since she herself is not, well, a hero.
The village of Gabora is named after the other blacksmith from the Mountain Smithy of Majora's Mask.
Breath of the Wild has limited enemy variety, so I decided to expand upon that. Enemies seen in this chapter include: dodongo, furnix, heatoise, magtail, pyrup, spume, torch slug, and winder.
Here's our first mention of the Yiga! Rumour has it that the Yiga have magical powers and can actually lead around monsters, which isn't true at all (though the Yiga are certainly capable of baiting attacks).
Misan is deaf. Glepp is capable of speech but signs when Misan is around. Glepp is capable of archery, but topaz arrows are expensive and life on the road is dangerous; hiring a sellsword or two is what most merchants do.
In Breath of the Wild, the description for topaz reads, "This precious yellow gem contains the power of electricity." That for sapphire reads, "A precious blue gem mined from natural rock formations. Sapphires contain the very essence of ice." I took this concept and ran with it for Delicious in Wilds. Basically, gems are capable of absorbing and then giving off certain elements. Sapphires stored in the cold of Hebra slowly absorb the essence of ice; they can then be transported to the rest of Hyrule, where they function as a coolant to slowly release cold until they're exhausted, at which point they're transported back to Hebra (or other cold regions) to absorb cold again. Ice arrows use a shard of sapphire that, when broken, rapidly freezes whatever it touches. For people in Eldin, this is vital, because homes lined with sapphire are cold enough that non-gorons don't need to don protective armour or rely on fireproof elixirs. Misan and Glepp can hang around in their regular clothing in the cold wagon. Similarly, topaz can absorb lightning and electricity from thunderstorms common to Parapa (the Gerudo Desert in-game) and Lanayru, which are then used in the crafting of shock arrows and can even be utilised as batteries. For the curious, rubies are indeed used to make fire arrows as well to warm and heat homes.
Marin is someone else that Link knew from before the Great Calamity and was originally from Link's Awakening. Because Marin has red hair in Link's Awakening, Marin is of gerudo descent in Delicious in Wilds.
Now, regarding Link's commission and being a sellsword. Staying at an average inn costs about twenty rupees a night and an average meal of about three non-specialty ingredients costs around thirty to forty rupees. Three meals a day at forty rupees plus twenty rupees a night comes out to 140 rupees. I factor in another twenty to sixty a day for living expenses and round up to 200 a day as the cost of living as a sellsword in reasonable comfort. A job of this calibre (the trip across Darunia takes around a month and a half) should be able to keep a sellsword for about a month, so we can expect around 6000 rupees. Sapphires are worth 260 rupees a piece, and Misan and Glepp expect for 1000 units of sapphire to make it to Darunia. 1000 * 260 * 2.31% = 6000 rupees, so the average market wage for a sellsword is 2.31% of what makes it to the destination. Misan and Glepp are offering Link a hefty 2.5% commission, which is a shiny 6500 rupees. For perspective, a keese wing is worth just two rupees, so Link would have to slaughter 3250 keese to get the same amount. Lynel guts are worth 200: 32.5 lynel right there. Of course, this doesn't take into account gathering and hunting and so forth; that commission could well keep a sellsword capable of doing such things alive for several months stretching out.
A bigger issue is where Link is going to keep all of that money, if she gets it.
As always, thank you for your support. Next time: to Darunia!
midna's ass. 04 September 2017.
Beta reader's comments: Misan and Glepp get introduced here! I love them a lot, especially Misan. They're adorable and really fun to be around. The chapters involving them and their road trips are really really comfy. Especially now, with their wagon full of sapphire.
This chapter's memory is my third (probably?) favourite individual memory in the whole series. It has an amazing atmosphere to it, and I love how scrambled and vague it is with regards to its place in the timeline. Plus it's cute as heck. Marin and Link are really really cute.
Emma. 04 September 2017.