Chapter 11: coming to terms with magic
Zero slowly woke up 'What is it with me and passing out in deserts?' he thought. He was in a cave it seemed, and he could hear the sounds of a fire crackling and a sandstorm. "It seems you have awakened." Zero turned his head to look at who spoke and for a moment thought it was Sahasrahla but quickly scratched that thought when he noticed the man sitting in the cave with him was not the same as the old man, his face was slightly different.
"Who are you?" Zero asked.
"My name is Aginah. Who might you be?"
"Zero."
"Zero huh? What were you doing in the Gerudo Desert all alone anyways?"
"Why should I tell you?"
"With an answer like that I can only guess your after the treasure in the old temple."
"What treasure?" Zero asked. He wasn't after any treasure, just an old pendant.
"What treasure? What treasure!? The Pendant of course! But I must say that trying to retrieve it is pointless, the temple is sealed quite solidly." Aginah said. Zero sighed in annoyance, of course this man knew he was after the pendants, and even more annoyingly the temple was locked, not really a problem, but still a nuisance.
He stood up and moved to the entrance of the cave before Aginah spoke again "I don't recommend going out in this weather you know!" Zero grunted in frustration before sitting back down, the old man was right, walking about in a sandstorm was a bad idea, and he didn't have a cloak to cover his head with to keep the sand out of his optic and respiration systems. "Since your going to be here a while care to chat?" Aginah asked?
"No." Aginah didn't seem to care about his answer and started babbling anyways, he rambled for awhile whilst Zero thought about his situation. Magic, absolutely ridiculous and yet, the only answer that made since. He was aware that there are things inexplicable by science, yet he never really thought about such things before. Sure a seemingly sixth sense and the ghosts of reploids was strange, yet those could be explained by science, but magic? He didn't understand it. He thought about the different possibilities and ruled them out, broken sensors? Nope, technology too advanced to pick up on? Maybe, but the odds of that were less than being struck by lightning underground while being eaten by a pink shark, so that could be ruled out too. Other equally impossible answers were also ruled out until the only one left was magic. In his life he had dealt with the strange, the weird, and the just plain messed up, but this was definitely the strangest thing he had ever dealt with in his almost four centuries of operation.
The realization that magic was possibly real shook him for a minute as his mind raced to understand what it meant and the ways it could affect him before deciding it didn't matter. He had battled for almost his entire existence against everything from mavericks to falling space colonies, sentient computer viruses and even come back from the dead on multiple occasions. Magic would not stop him from doing what he set out to do, no matter what was flung at him he would not stop. When the enemy stands before him, be it be flesh, steel, or magic he will destroy it.
Eventually the sandstorm began to settle and Zero got up to leave the cave when Aginah spoke up again. "Be careful out in the desert young man! The sands hold old magic and angry souls that have swallowed up even the most powerful of warriors." Zero nodded his acknowledgment, paused at the entrance of the cave to thank the old man for pulling him out of the sandstorm earlier, and headed out into the desert once more.