Rajo stumbled on the last of the Dragon Stairs, but at least the climb was over. They ached from toe to crown, inside and out. The night wind picked up her pace, howling in warning and triumph as she so often did this winter. Rajo hauled themselves back to their tired feet again, leaning shamefully against the warm stone wall for balance.
Their left leg still didn't want to work quite right, and their shoe pinched terribly. Probably from swelling - but a dose of the leftover stolen red potion should fix that. It hadn't fixed anything important, but at least it would be good for something.
The amber crystals in their secret cave woke in greeting, flickering and pulsing as their light increased. A wayward spider scuttled away into a crack between carvings on the gray-green walls, but aside from its half-finished web, everything remained exactly as they'd left it a week before. The second batch of useless pickled stinkhorn manashroom still sat in neat rows beside their makeshift table of broken target board and stolen bricks.
Well. Maybe not useless, but still an abysmal failure. Nothing lifted the cursed red cough.
Rajo drank off the bitter healing potion at once, clenching their jaw as their heart raced and heat bloomed under their bruised ribs. That was good. Red potion stirred heat when it was working. It would have been hard to run the spirit roads into the sands if they were still laboring to breathe.
That thought brought them dangerous memories of Angnu, who would never run the spirit roads. The red cough fell over everyone in the fortress but Rajo, stealing hundreds of ilmaha and dozens each of warriors and weavers and smiths and servants. Even the Rova blamed them for the plague, adding nine more lashes to the healers' sentence.
They should know better. Of all the avadha of the desert, the Rova should have known they were telling the truth. Or rather - they should have cared that it wasn't true. They had to know. They'd punished Rajo all season for a constant failures in their lessons. Rajo hadn't been able to cast even the smallest cantrip inside the walls in weeks, and no conjuration, enchantment, nor ward all winter without touching the demon gem.
And why would they ever hurt Angnu? Angnu was good at being who they were expected to be. They had always been kind, and honest, and kept their promises.
Except their last one.
No - stay. I'm still listening, I promise. It's just my eyes are tired from coughing so much. Tell me what happened next. Did Tevi solve the equation first, or did Mae?
Rajo howled their frustration at the cave, refusing to even look upon the taunting, distant beauty of the wandering fire dancing its mysterious patterns above the great glass eye in the ceiling.
"Why this one," answered a voice like the black wind. "Why do you care about this one when there are a hundred thousand million other people who will suffer?"
Rajo drew their shortblade, turning wildly, looking for the voice. A blue sort of glitter seemed to fill the narrow fissure leading out to the Dragon Stair, but otherwise, they were alone.
"Why should I care more about strangers than my friend?" Rajo asked the blue light.
"Ah," said the terrible voice from the light. "So that is the seat of your anger after all. The loss of a friend."
"I don't have friends," said Rajo, letting their anger call sparks to dance around them and sizzle along their little blade, eager to be given a target. "If you were any kind of spirit worth anything, you would know that - and you would know better than to cross the Rovas' apprentice."
"I know more than you could ever imagine," said the voice in the blue light as it stretched and twisted and made Rajo sick. "Except the answer to this riddle, which only the child of prophecy can answer. Why does the King of Evil weep?"
"That's a stupid riddle," said Rajo between dry heaves. One thin advantage to going hungry in atonement for stealing from the storehouse. Not that the candied fruit and King's Honey had done Angnu any good anyway. The wandering fire started to skitter away again, and they couldn't find the focus to draw it back under control yet. "Not much of a king if he's weak enough to get caught crying."
"Even so, it is a rock which disturbs the river of Time," said the terrible noon-bright spirit from the blue light. "You break the rules. You do bad things. Terrible things. Yet you weep for this one insignificant soul returned to the gods young. You aid a stranger. You spare an enemy. And still you embrace the darkness. Why?"
"Maybe I like the darkness," said Rajo, wiping the bitterness of bile from their lips. At least it was only a little, and the red potion had already absorbed into their flesh. "The shadows like me just fine. And I have magic, and don't think you can scare me just because your stupid blue spell made me throw up. I will have the secrets of the stars and the reins of the wind and the power of a god, just you watch."
"Already you are willing to destroy the world in a fit of rage," said the bright warrior spirit, looming in the middle of the square cave. His armor shone painfully, and the spiral ricasso of the rainbow sword peeking over his shoulder screamed like discordant bells. A strange blue rune marked his perfect brow, and red war paint defined the arch of his smooth cheeks. The only thing about him that wasn't made of light and noise was the strange little coil of red plaited rope hanging from his silver belt. "But I know someone who will be your friend, even so."
Rajo frowned, letting their other hand drop away from the hilt of their little knife. It wouldn't do much good against a normal grownup with a sword. What use could it be against a magical one? "I've never heard of a spirit like you."
"There is no other spirit like me," said the warrior spirit, his expressionless eyes glowing with a steady white light.
"Who are you? What are you? Where did you come from? How do you know me?" Rajo demanded.
"I was a hero once, in a long ago tomorrow," said the warrior, lowering his voice so the cave only shivered a little bit. "I have known your spirit through a hundred hundred lives. I dance the sun, and I dance the moon, and I am always with you, until it is right in the end and the end and the end."
"You have a strange way of speaking," said Rajo, crossing their arms on their chest. However powerful a spirit he was, they would not allow him to think he held any power over them. They knew the old laws, and they had found riddles in the ancient texts which promised to lead to the resting places of great powers sealed against immortal hands. "You take a Hylian shape, but speak the words of the People with a strange accent. Why? And what is your sword made of that makes it so loud?"
"It is forged from the tears and the dreams of a thousand thousand lives who balance on its edge," said the warrior, drawing the terrible blade with the screech of a hungry gibdo. He held it in guard, and wove it slowly through the air in the first pattern of the sword-courts, making the strange rainbow metal ring.
"But the edge isn't even straight," said Rajo. "How can anything balance on it?
"That riddle, child of prophecy, is yet another reason why I have come for you," said the warrior, returning his awful blade to its place upon his back.
"Well you're too late. I'm busy," said Rajo, turning their back and pulling the battered chest out from its hiding place under a pile of carefully balanced stolen trash. Whatever the crazy spirit wanted didn't matter. They needed to have everything ready before dawn.
"Those provisions will carry you no farther than the third flag in the sand sea," said the warrior. "Down that road lies a terrible fate - choose it freely, and I cannot protect you."
"I don't need help from you or anyone," snapped Rajo over their shoulder, adding another packet of warrior's rations to their satchel. "I can find my Name on my own."
"The only Name that waits for you there is the one your mothers chose for you," said the warrior, planting himself in front of the fissure that led back to the Dragon Stairs. "Angnu's death is but one drop in the ocean of tears which flow from the hands of Ganondorf. The miasma of death over the fortress grows with every wicked, selfish, hateful act you let them drive you towards. You've been marked for a terrible fate - but I can change that."
"You're lying," said Rajo, refusing to acknowledge the ice crawling into their empty stomach.
"Take my hand and know the truth for yourself," said the warrior, extending his left hand. His shining white gloves with sparkling steel plates sewn onto them proved on closer inspection to be terribly bloodstained under all that light. "That Name carved into your heart marks you as a vessel for the evil they serve. From the day you were born they have shaped you towards that design."
"Then maybe you should have come sooner," said Rajo, settling the satchel across their body. They tried not to look at the warrior's outstretched hand, but studied his strange bright armor instead, made of shining plates marked with hidden runes.
"I tried," said the warrior, and all the sorrow of the defeated filled his terrible voice. "But I can only move the heavens. Choose to walk in the light, and I will change your stars. Embrace hatred instead, and the power you covet will destroy you."
"No it won't," said Rajo, balling their hands into fists. "I already have more power than any other ilmaha ever has, and the spirit trials are my birthright. I will conquer them earlier than anyone and become the greatest Rova ever known - and then! I will ride the very wind into Hyrule and steal away their magic princess for myself and then everyone will bow to me."
"And in this dream, you believe no one will ever hurt you again, because you will be the strongest," said the warrior spirit, sinking down to one knee, his arms open. "I know a place where you don't have to be a monster to be safe. Where you can live in the Light forever, away from the small-minded hatred of cowards and the blasphemy of the ignorant."
"Why should I believe you?" Rajo demanded.
"Come with me," said the kneeling warrior spirit. "See for yourself how the temple has been desecrated, the Trials corrupted."
"And then-?" Rajo asked.
"And then I will take you to meet a new friend," said the warrior spirit with a terrifying smile.
