Legend of Zelda: Reconciliation

by Rose Zemlya

Sequel to The Legend of Zelda: The Return. Based loosely on A Link to the Past.

24. Chapter 23 and Interludes

Legend of Zelda: Reconciliations

Hello, hello!

Right, so…I give up trying to reread this. I wrote it in so many small chunks I can no longer objectively assess how good or not good the flow is, so apologies for any roughness, but I suppose the good news is, at least it's up!

For those who aren't aware, Mudora has kindly started a Return/Reconciliations fan art blog here: fromworsetolink dot blogspot dot com. It has some lovely art so far from herself and from Antionette721. It's open to fan art and small drabbles, as I understand it, so if you'd like to contribute please head over there!

There's also been several pieces added to my favourites collection on Deviant Art (username: KA-Rose) that you should check out if you are so inclined.

I really want to thank everyone who's done fan art for these stories and let me know – the pictures are, in fact, a huge source of inspiration when I'm running low and are a big part of what helped me finish this chapter despite all the IRL stuff going on at the moment.

Quick note for this chapter: for those who don't remember, "Avatar" is the Gerudo word for Sentinels/Makani/Angels.

As always, I hope you enjoy the read and that it was worth the wait! Thank you for your continued patience!

Rose Zemlya

"Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell."

- Shakespeare

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Chapter 23

The morning dawns as all mornings seem to do these days – an unfortunate smelling burlap sac is covering my head, and I sneeze myself awake off the stray pink fur left inside it. I make a face and pull the bag off roughly, wincing when a loose thread gets stuck in my earring. As I attempt to untangle it without tearing off my whole ear, I briefly consider the various surprising and creative ways my life finds to go downhill sometimes.

I'm getting really, really tired of waking up in this bag.

I can hear the distinctive thwok of an arrow striking a target somewhere outside the tent and I pull in a big breath and let it out again slowly. Has to be Hunter. None of the Gerudo would be caught dead practicing the morning of a Blood Challenge. They'd all rather pretend they were born sucking on an arrowhead. Not far from the truth I suppose.

Mr. Perfectionist doesn't care for pretending he's awesome, of course. He will settle for nothing less than actually being awesome.

Which he's not.

At least not with a bow.

Which is probably why he's out there practicing right now instead of sleeping like any normal person would be at this time of the morning. I mean…look at Apheri. She's practically unconscious, curled up in the corner of the tent, in a ball so tight it takes me a moment to realize she's even there.

Another thwok from outside. There's a long time between them, which means he's pausing after every shot to analyze how close he is to his mark, how far he shot it, the angle and trajectory…basically attempting to perfect a skill he never cared about – and trying to perfect it in a matter of hours, when it typically takes most people months, if not years to really develop. Bruiser tried to lecture him into learning archery better, but as much as the two of them can pretend they're somehow more agreeable with each other than Dad and I, Bruiser's louder with his disapproval than Dad is, and Hunter's just quieter with his defiance than I am. Bet he regrets getting all it's-my-life with Bruiser now.

Thwok. And then again: thwok. Twice in a row, no pause to analyze. He's getting frustrated.

I'd better go out there.

I push myself to my feet, unable to stifle a groan as my stiff limbs resist the effort, and step over Apheri on my way out of the tent. Goddess, I think hopelessly to myself. Apheri's hung over, Hunter's angsty, and we somehow have to win a Blood Challenge today. We're so screwed.

As expected, off the side of our tent a stone-faced Hunter is nocking another arrow to his bow and taking aim at a target a ways off. If you didn't know him really well, you'd assume he's just being a Sheikah, all grim and dour and smiling-is-for-children-and-traitors-to-the-throne. But I've spent enough time with the Sheikah by now – Hunter in particular – that I'm starting to get some of the nuances and subtleties. His mouth is pressed too tightly, it's practically disappeared into his face; there's a tension at the corners of his eyes that make him look older than he is; his eyebrows are drawn down just a bit too far for it to be truly neutral. He looks like he's facing down a firing squad.

I imagine the Gerudo lounging languidly not far away, loudly critiquing his technique and laughing acidly when he shoots are not helping his mood. I show them my teeth as I approach – this is quickly becoming my standard greeting around here. I don't think I remember how to smile normally – one of them responds in kind, one of them waves unexpectedly, and the other one winks slyly at me.

I pause mid-step and stare blankly at her, prompting another wave of acid laughter.

The whole lycanthropy thing took care of my own hang-over and any other negative effects of whatever it was I was drinking last night…

But it didn't necessarily fix just how fuzzy my memory is around the whole night…

And there's still enough rabbit left in my brain that that wink is causing me to panic just a little bit…

"You were shirtless by the time we left," Hunter informs me dully, nocking another arrow to his bow. "She was wearing your tunic half the night. When you offered her your hat I figured it was time to go and dragged you back to the tent." There's an unspoken 'you owe me' hanging on the end of the sentence. I consider reminding him about that one bar across the mountains and how my dear, sweet cousin who is normally so strait-laced you just want to kill him almost found himself at the heart of an international incident…but this isn't really the time.

Shame.

He's too smart to give me another good chance to hold that over him.

"So," I say, watching him narrow his eyes at the target and release the arrow. Thwok. A good shot. Nice power, good arc, just shy of the centre. Hunter's mouth presses almost imperceptibly tighter and I can see him fighting a scowl. "I'm guessing the plan is to continue pumping arrows into that target and pretending the Gerudo don't exist?"

One of the wolf-women calls something about Hunter's parentage that is simultaneously the most offensive and most awesome thing I have ever heard. I store it away for future reference and throw her a death glare at the same time. She winks at me again and I decide I'm definitely creeped out.

"What Gerudo?" Hunter asks bluntly, pulling another arrow from the quiver on the ground.

I raise an eyebrow at him and lean back against the rough fence that delineates the target practice area from the rest of the camp. I say nothing, just watch him nock the arrow and raise the bow again. He looses the arrow. Another decent shot, but not as good as the last one. The women don't say anything this time. They just laugh.

Hunter doesn't reach for another arrow. He glares quietly at the punctured target in the distance and lets the bow rest at his side for a moment. "Dad could have—he used to be able to…." He pauses, frustrated. I remain silent, waiting. "You know what he was like. He could thread the eye of a needle at a hundred paces with a bow. He was…he was the Archery Shop guy. I told him I'd never need it. That there wasn't anything I couldn't handle with my throwing knives and a sword. Nayru." The oath is vicious, angry. "He must be laughing it up right now." There's another unspoken idea hanging on the end of his sentence – if he wasn't a ghost bleeding to death eternally on a cold dungeon floor somewhere in this Hell – but neither of us is willing to acknowledge it. Hunter looks listlessly down at the bow in his hands and shakes his head. "I'm going to get us killed," he says softly. "Because I was too afraid to compete with my father."

I give him a dull look. "First off," I say, "you don't really compete with Bruiser. You just sort of…flail ineffectually at him in one medium or another until he crushes you, without mercy or remorse and still tells you you have to do the dishes." This prompts a reluctant half-smile. "And secondly, you're not actually bad with a bow, you know. You're better than Malon and you don't want to know how many hours of practice she put in to still suck that bad."

Hunter's smile fades and he looks back over at the target. "Not bad's not good enough," he says darkly. "Not for this. You, Apheri, Lierana and Ciardi have all been shooting your whole lives. The Gerudo archers are the best there are. They…decimated us in the Great War. It's part of why Dad obsessed over archery so much, I think."

"Maybe…Nobernal doesn't know how to use a bow," I try. It's weak and I know it. Hunter doesn't even bother to respond – just gives me an unimpressed look. "All right, fine," I say, a bald streak of impatience flaring unexpectedly in my chest. "Realistically, you'll probably be the first one out of the competition. At worst, you will cost us more points than Apheri and I can make up for and we lose this round. One of us gets stabbed. Boo hoo, we'll live."

"I don't…think I could live with myself if we lose this and it's my fault," he says.

"Well, then I guess it's a good thing we're all dead if we lose anyway," I say with a loose shrug.

"Link, I'm being serious," he says, irritated.

"Yeah, me too," I respond, equally irritated. "Sorry, but I don't really think it's a big deal. Personally? I'm looking forward to it. Bring on the damn competition. Either we win and we get Neesha back and we're on our way to rescuing the others, or we're dead and it's not our problem anymore. And no matter what the outcome is, I get to hit Ciardi as many times as I can before Nobernal kills us all anyway, so honestly? I'll die happy." There's an eagerness in my voice all of a sudden that startles me as much as it startles Hunter.

"What's gotten into you?" he demands, looking at me oddly. "You're typically blissfully unaware of odds or consequences, but that whole rant there? Above and beyond."

I shift my weight uncomfortably. "I don't know," I say. "I just…I'm restless all of a sudden." Behind Hunter the Gerudo have given up trying to aggravate him and have apparently decided it's a good idea to aggravate me instead. I don't catch the whole comment but there's something about my mother, and something about my hat. "Hey," I say, holding out my hand. "Gimme the bow for a sec." Hunter, who has returned to staring in frustration at his target, does so without question. I pull one of my own arrows from my quiver.

The woman who scowled at me earlier – a red, wolf arms and ears – laughs and feels the need to wonder out loud whether a make-believe-King can shoot any better than a Sheikah. Actually, that's not entirely true. She wonders out loud whether a make-believe-King can shoot any better than a "Sheik—!" and then my arrow slices right across her cheek and leaves a thick trail of red to ooze down her face.

I nock a second and raise the bow again. "Maybe you girls had better just stick those tails between your legs and take a damn hike," I tell them angrily, "before I decide I'm done warming up."

"Link," Hunter says quietly, and there's a note of caution in his voice. He can see something in my face that I can only feel unfurling in my chest – feral rage and primal instincts; it's like the Beast, it is the Beast, but different. My heart is pounding in my ears, and there is a part of me that is hoping they'll challenge me, that they'll call my bluff and I can make it clear that I wasn't bluffing.

A part of me that knows me grazing her cheek like that…that wasn't a display of accuracy. I was aiming for the spot between her eyes.

Whatever it is Hunter can see in my face, apparently they can as well. They tense and bare their teeth at me, predatory, dancing between submission and violence. Hunter's hand is resting on his sword. "Link," he says again, sharper. The women don't even notice. They're staring at me and I stare back, my expression growing more feral by the second, the Beast growing angrier and angrier the longer they stare, the longer they refuse to back down – because neither it, nor I intend to back down.

Just as I am about to loose the second arrow, they turn as a group and walk away. I continue to hold the arrow up, aimed at the scowling woman's back, struggling with the urge to just open my hand and let it fly, until Hunter puts a hand on my arm and pushes the bow downward.

It takes everything I have to let him do it.

I let out a long, slow breath, unable, at first to look at him.

"Wow," I say softly, unhappily. "I haven't felt that in a while now."

"Link," Hunter says a third time, worried now. "What was that?"

I swallow and turn to meet his gaze, unable to mask my own concern. "The Beast," I say and shake my head. "I didn't even…it doesn't normally sneak up on me so quickly. That was…." I hand the bow back over to him and turn back toward the tent. I suddenly feel ill. Hunter lets me go, watching me retreat with an uncertain expression on his face.

Apheri comes out as I move in. Her eyes are bloodshot, her mouth is twisted into a scowl, and she looks like the diluted light is stabbing her brain right through her eyes.

What a team we make.

We're so dead.

xxx

The scowling red is waiting for me when Hunter, Apheri and I make our way back out to the target practice area for the start of the much anticipated Blood Challenge. She's cleaned up her face, but there's a long, thin strip of bright red sitting smartly on her cheek. Interestingly, she is no longer scowling.

"Hey," she calls as we move forward and points at her cheek. "You hit where you were aiming?"

Already I can feel the Beast stirring again in my breast and I can't quite keep it down. "Nope," I tell her carelessly. "I was actually trying to kill you. I typically use a custom bow; not used to these ones."

"You miss like that now and there's no way you'll win," she informs me bluntly. There's something expectant in her face I can't identify.

I show her my teeth. "Then I guess it's a good thing I'll be using my own bow," I tell her. "Keep harassing me and I'll be happy to give you a demonstration before we start."

She peels her lips upward, displaying sharp, prominent canines, and narrows her mostly-golden eyes. "You know they're taking bets, right?"

"I would be surprised if they weren't," I respond with a roll of my eyes. The Gerudo love to bet. It's one of their primary forms of entertainment. I have bilked so much money out of Amplissa over the years it's not even funny. Typically Aliza will just bilk it right back out of me, but hey.

"Want to know your odds?" she asks, a cruel twist to her lips.

"Lady, I've never been one to care about odds," I tell her impatiently, and gesture to take in the whole shebang around me – half-wolf Gerudo setting up an archery competition with our lives as the prize, a raging typhoon walling us in on all sides, unfriendly stares and eager, bloodthirsty howls echoed somewhere unpleasant in my own chest.

"A hundred to one at least," she says, still with that expectant look. "Against you," she adds, in case that wasn't painfully obvious in the first place.

I glance over at Hunter who shrugs nonchalantly. "Better than we usually get," he confirms, an air of insufferable superiority in his face and voice that I could kiss him for. "We tend to run somewhere in the thousand to one range." He glances over at the woman and gives her the most condescending look I've ever seen him give anyone. "Against us," he clarifies acidly for her benefit.

I offer her a broad, unfriendly smile. "We don't tend to play unless they are."

She laughs crudely as we turn and move to take our places – Ciardi and her team of Dark World rejects is already in position. "Hey, boy," she calls, and I turn to glance at her. Her expression is positively animalistic and she runs a finger absent mindedly down the cut on her cheek. "I bet on you."

The Beast grins back at her.

xxx

"The first stage of the Blood Challenge is Archery – stationary targets," announces a woman in a green uniform, who appears to be entirely wolf with the exception of her face and a single arm. She gestures broadly at the six targets laid out before us. "One shot per round. Each round we move the targets back another ten yards. First one out is three points. Second one out is two points. Every team member out after that is an additional point. Last one standing is minus two points. Choose your weapon." She points at a rack of wicked looking long-bows with her lupine hand. The others all move over to select a bow, and the announcer raises an eyebrow at me when I don't follow suit.

I point at the bow strapped over my back. "I've got one, thanks."

"No magic bows," she says suspiciously. "You pass this based on your own merits."

"It's not magic," I say with a frown. "It's probably the only weapon I own that's not." She scowls darkly at me and holds out her hand expectantly. I give her a dull look but pull it off my back and hand it over. I swear to all three Goddesses she scours that bow looking for some reason to accuse me of trying to cheat.

I see Ciardi has stacked the arbiters in her favour.

Whatever. Entirely predictable and it won't help her much in the long run anyway.

The crowd of gathered Gerudo – everyone, I expect, except the women unlucky enough to draw short straw on the patrol shifts for today – whoops and cheers and barks as we take our places in front of the targets. Ciardi smiles indulgently at them. Nobernal bounces almost uncertainly from one foot to the other. She's holding her bow the wrong way and every now and then scratches at her arm compulsively. She stares either at the crowd of Gerudo, at Ciardi, or at me. Lierana is doing nothing short of swaggering as she paces back and forth in front of her target, every now and then shooting a superior look at Apheri.

In a stark contrast to Team Awesome over there, I apparently got stuck with Team We're-Gonna-Die. Hunter's face is set in a particularly hard shade of Sheikan Neutral. As before, no one here knows him well enough to know the expression is any different from his typical I-am-a-Sheikah-and-therefore-above-you face, but I do. He's terrified. Between using one of his weak weapons, the camp of hostile Gerudo and the corrupted Makani, he's in what I assume is the perfect example of a Sheikan hell. But his hands are steady and his eyes are determined.

Apheri is as grim as she was when I first met her. Except for the occasional flicker of pain behind her lashes at a particularly loud howl or scream you'd never know she's got a hangover. A big one, I expect. She doesn't remember much from last night, which is probably good, but she remembers swearing the Covenant and she remembers who I am. Her attitude toward me has been noticeably different since she swore her oaths. Nothing on the surface, but all the hostility, the unspoken hatred and mistrust, is gone. There's no resistance between us now. An ally in truth, and I'm grateful for it.

"Archers!" calls the arbiter to a great cheer from the crowd. "Ready your arrows."

We turn as a group toward our targets and nock our arrows to our bows. Nobernal stares at her bow for a long moment, a searching expression on her face. At last she nods in satisfaction, flips the bow around the right way, and raises and nocks it in a single, fluid motion. She stands with a sudden confidence as she faces the target – every inch the immortal warrior she's supposed to be – and I bite back a deep, frustrated sigh.

I was really hoping she'd be bad at archery.

"Didn't I cut her hand off?" I mutter under my breath. "I'm sure I did."

"She put it back," Apheri notes with a creeped out face. "She does that."

"Take aim," calls the arbiter, and I am grateful for the excuse not to have to contemplate that. There's a collective groan of bow strings as we stretch them taut. "Fire!"

Six arrows arc gracefully through the air, and each finds its target. The Gerudo in the crowd throw Hunter and me appraising looks, evidently upgrading their opinion of our archery skills. I catch Hunter's gaze and roll my eyes at him.

The targets are practically in our laps – how bad did they think we were?

Several Gerudo move in off the sidelines and shift the targets back.

"Take aim. Fire!"

Again and again and again the targets are moved back, we take aim, and we fire. Each time all six arrows find their way home. But it's getting harder and harder, and you can see it on the faces around me.

The targets are moved farther back again. I'm still good. Apheri looks considering, but I think she's still good. A bead of sweat runs down the side of Hunter's face and he twitches as though he wants to brush it away but doesn't.

"Hey," I say, and nudge him. "Take it easy." He doesn't look at me, and doesn't acknowledge me.

"Take aim. Fire!"

The shots are more varied in accuracy now, but we're all still in the centre circle. They're moved back again.

"Take aim. Fire!"

A shout goes up from the gathered Gerudo. Two arrows are outside the centre circle – Lierana and Hunter. Lierana goes pale. Hunter goes stiff. The arbiter jogs up to the targets to judge which arrow is farther from the centre, and which competitor is out. She takes her time making her judgment, then turns and at points at Hunter. The crowd reacts harshly, pleased that the mighty Sheikah gets the dishonour of being the first one out and giving his team a hefty three points. Hunter, to his credit, doesn't react. He bows apologetically to me and Apheri – falling back on formality as a self-defence mechanism – and returns his bow to the weapon rack and takes his place on the sidelines. I want very terribly to go talk to him, but I can't right now.

Farore.

He's going to obsess over this for months. Perfectionist bastard.

"How many more yards are you good for?" I ask Apheri as the arbiter gestures for the targets to be moved back again.

"Twenty more," she says. "After that, I don't know."

"What about Ciardi and Lierana?"

"Lierana's out of her depth already," she says, not without spite. "Ciardi's good for another thirty at least. What about you?"

I consider it carefully. "I think I can do the forty," I say, and make a face at her when she raises an eyebrow. "I told you. Archery is my thing. It's my thing that I do. I've been shooting this bow since I was a kid. I grew up in an archery shop. I've spent the last three years being mercilessly trained by Gerudo convinced I'm going to embarrass them horribly someday. I can do the forty."

"All right," she says, in a tone that clearly says she doesn't believe me. "Let's hope you're right."

"Take aim," says the arbiter. "Fire!" Five arrows, five arcs, five direct hits – but Lierana's is close enough to the edge of the centre circle that the arbiter is called over to check it.

"Take aim – fire!"

Again two arrows go wide – Lierana's and Apheri's. The arbiter runs back down to compare and points at Lierana. The woman in question takes it far less gracefully than Hunter. She colours deeply, then pales when she catches Ciardi's unimpressed glare. She throws the Gerudo equivalent of a hissy fit, which consists of throwing her weapon negligently down on the ground and storming over toward the targets to see for herself which arrow is closer. As she approaches the arbiter's face grows more and more offended – one does not question the judgment of a green without also incurring her considerable wrath.

The crowd, unexpectedly, erupts in a chorus of angry boos and derisive barks. These Lierana ignores as she fights with the arbiter. Ciardi shouts for Lierana to stop, but she can't be heard over the crowd. Angry, she turns to Nobernal and snaps something. The Sentinel eagerly leaps to obey, taking to the air and flying down to the end in a flash, landing between the arbiter and Lierana. Both women back-pedal hastily, their argument forgotten. Nobernal stares at Lierana and cocks her head to the side. Again, Lierana colours, then pales, then turns stiffly and takes her place on the sidelines, to a great cheer from the crowd.

I watch Ciardi as she narrows her eyes at the rowdy women and wolves, considering their reaction and its many implications. I get the impression the strength of it was unexpected, especially against someone on Ciardi's team.

They're not here to watch a rigged show, or a hollow display. They're here for a Blood Challenge – a real, honest Blood Challenge – and that probably complicates things for Ciardi. Highlights for her just how close to the edge she is. Whoever the arbiter may prefer, the crowd – the real arbiter of a Blood Challenge – is undecided. She could lose this thing in an instant, and it'll have nothing to do with who shoots better.

Apheri, me, and even angsty-man Hunter exchange a suddenly hopeful glance.

Score one for Team We're-Gonna-Die.

The arbiter gestures and the targets are moved back again.

"I'm not going to make this one," says Apheri, shaking her head and tuning out Ciardi and the crowd.

"Take aim!" calls the arbiter.

"Yes you are," I tell her flatly, raising my bow.

"Fire!"

Turns out I'm a liar – Apheri's shot goes wide, landing far enough from the centre that I can tell even from this distance. Apheri hisses and I swear. The arbiter points at Apheri and she bows deeply to me in abject apology – an innocent gesture ultimately, a display of apology as opposed to deference, but the gesture does not go unnoticed. More than a few eyes go wide in the crowd. Ciardi sneers as she pounces on what she no doubt sees as ammo.

Ha ha ha, oh how I laugh.

"A Sheikah and a traitor to her own King," she says loud enough for everyone to hear. "Quite the team you've assembled, boy."

"The Sheikah's worth his weight in gold," I respond hotly, "and so is Apheri. Besides, from where I'm sitting your team's not looking that great either. I count one sycophantic backstabber with no respect for the arbiter or this Challenge, and a crazy angel your King twisted and corrupted. Tell me," I say, raising my voice for the benefit of the crowd and point at Nobernal, who is scratching fiercely at her leg, oblivious to the bright red tracks her talons are leaving on it, "does that look like the Avatars from the stories? The ones who fought side by side with Geru in the first wars?"

Nobernal's wings rustle as the Gerudo turn to consider her. She forces her hand away from her leg and straightens, intensely uncomfortable under their stares. Her face twists angrily. "I'm not crazy," she says. "I'm not."

Ciardi lays a hand on her arm and glares coldly at me. "How do you know that name? The name of the prophet?"

This isn't quite how I wanted to go about this…

But…

I gesture at Apheri and she steps forward resolutely. "He is a Son of the Wind," she says grimly. "He knows the story of the Covenant. I have re-sworn my oaths and he has taken them on behalf of the Desert Wind." She raises her head high and despite the pride, despite the determination, I can still see the Dark World doing its thing behind her lashes. This is going to cost her and she knows it. "This man is my King – and all of yours."

It's like someone set off a bomb in the crowd. They explode with noise and motion – it's practically a riot. Ciardi is staring at Apheri as though she is having extreme difficulty remembering that this a Blood Challenge and Apheri is protected under its rules.

"Have I been struck down?" Apheri is shouting angrily, barely audible over the crowd. "Has the Goddess seen fit to punish me in any way for bowing to another? No and no! He knows the Covenant! He knows Rue and the children and the Fortress! He knows our ways!"

The arbiter has come over and is screaming at us about how we shouldn't be talking about Geru and Sons of the Wind in front of the Sheikah, and this is a Blood Challenge, and we need to be shooting not screaming, and everybody shut up! But, of course, no one does. She turns – livid as only a green facing a massive protocol breach can be – to stare expectantly at Ciardi. The defacto leader turns to her people and raises a hand authoritatively, fully expecting them to quiet themselves.

But they don't.

The Beast cackles deep in my chest and I feel the corner of my lips twist upward in an insufferably superior smirk (insufferable enough to put Hunter's earlier display to shame) as I watch her stare, dumbfounded, at the unresponsive crowd. I walk up beside her and turn the grin on her.

"What's the matter?" I ask sweetly. "Losing your grip?"

She turns savagely toward me and I see the same sudden fire in her eyes as when I cut her hair. She hates me so much. It's awesome. I revel in it.

Nothing in my gaze so much as wavers – if anything, it grows more feral. Her stare is challenging and threatening and predatory and suddenly mine is too. The Beast growls deep in my chest and I pull an arrow smoothly from my quiver.

"Watch," I tell her, "and learn."

I raise the bow to the clouds and release the arrow – the light arrow. It explodes in the sky with a burst that cuts across the noise and unites the angry Gerudo voices into a single alarmed cry. "Hey!" I shout into the sudden silence that follows the cry. "Farore, Nayru and Din, ladies. Believe her or don't, but shut the Hell up for a second so I can finish grinding your fearless leader's face into the dirt. I've got a Blood Challenge to win, here." They stare at me – a few corners of the group laugh uncertainly – and I take the opportunity to pat Ciardi's shoulder in a distinctly sympathetic manner, which she recoils from as though burned. "Oh, and I think she wanted your attention or something," I tell them with a conspiratorial wink. "You guys should listen better. You know how she gets if she thinks you're not paying attention."

Ciardi's face is a remarkable shade of purple and only the presence of the arbiter keeps her from going for my throat right now.

I'm cackling along with the Beast as I take up my position in front of my target.

"Are you afraid of anything?" Apheri asks, looking impressed despite herself.

I grin wildly at her. "Yes," I answer honestly. "Just not Ciardi."

I hadn't actually meant for the answer to carry, but apparently Ciardi's still choking on her own rage and the Gerudo are still waiting intently for her to say whatever it was she had wanted to say, and the question and the answer are quite plainly heard by all.

This actually prompts a laugh from more than a few in the crowd. The lovely purple in Ciardi's face crosses the line over into white – I feel bad for her. The rage that makes your face go white is the worst kind I think. She can probably barely think right now.

"It's because he's an idiot," Hunter explains to Apheri as she sits beside him on the side – the affection in his voice dulls the annoyance the barb would otherwise evoke. "Don't give him too much credit."

I ignore them and turn back to Ciardi with a broad, antagonistic grin. "Well?" I demand. "Are we going to shoot, or what? Let's go."

She turns jerkily back to the target, unable to even respond. Nobernal gives me a deep, hate-filled stare and it takes everything I have to maintain my grin beneath it.

"Take aim!" calls the arbiter and I'm grateful for the excuse to look away. "Fire!"

The white-rage costs Ciardi. Her shot is just this side of perfect – and also just this side of the centre. There's a surprised groan from the crowd as they contemplate Ciardi getting beaten by me. The arbiter points at her, and she turns stiffly – for a moment she looks like she wants to fight the call but the arbiter's eyes flare and instead she just starts to walk away.

"Hey," I call after her, all good-natured deference and humble winner. "It was a good shot, you know? Don't beat yourself up over it. Just keep practicing. I'm sure you'll get better."

There's a low, eager "oooohhhhh!" from the crowd as they watch her reaction. Ciardi, by this point, has completely forgotten the crowd even exists. It is merely background noise, like the annoying buzzing of an insect too close to your ear, trying to distract you from your actual goal, which is to murder the Hero of Time. This is, in fact, more or less what I wanted. As long as she forgets it's not just the two of us sitting here trying to destroy each other, she'll make mistakes. Mistakes like turning around and walking over to me and grabbing the front of my tunic and pulling me close despite the angry shouting of the hastily approaching arbiter.

"I'm going to crush you," she hisses at me. "Crush you until there's nothing left for your Sheikah to mourn."

"Well," I tell her, smiling with all my teeth, "I'm not going to crush you. You're not really worth my time to be honest with you. And, truthfully, you're doing a good enough job of that yourself. What I am going to do is ask the arbiter whether this counts as you putting your hands on my person in an aggressive and threatening manner—," I look over at the extremely irritated arbiter who throws her hands up in the air and nods because, duh, "—and then I'm going to hit you. Really hard."

True to my word I throw a right hook at her head, which she is ready for because I talk too much. She blocks it with her left, but leaves her right wrapped in my tunic, which is fine by me because my left fist has already found its way into her stomach, doubling her over and forcing her to stumble back.

The crowd says nothing, just stares, wide-eyed.

Ciardi straightens and glares at the arbiter who shrugs helplessly. I'm allowed to defend myself if someone comes after me first. The white-clad woman turns a burning stare back on me.

"I'm going to enjoy stabbing you when Nobernal wins this round," she says.

"Ah, ah," I correct her softly. "Nobernal may outshoot me, but I think we both know who won this round."

She turns without another word and moves to join Lierana on the sidelines.

"Ready your bows," the arbiter calls. I retrieve my bow from the ground and take my place again. "Take aim – fire!"

My shot goes wide.

Nobernal's is perfect, dead centre on the target.

I turn to the crowd and raise a hand to them, offering them another gratuitous wink and a florid bow as the arbiter pronounces Nobernal the winner, leaving Team Awesome with a score of one, and Team We're-Gonna-Die with a score of five.

The crowd, for once, is quiet – peering either at me or at Ciardi and considering.

xxx

A Brief Interlude

Mules, Mido had learned fairly early on his trek across the frozen wastes that had been Hyrule once upon a season ago, were intensely stubborn, but determined creatures. Saria had once called him mule-headed, and at the time he had taken it as a compliment, assuming that a mule was like a horse, and therefore a favourable thing to be compared to. Now, as he stood waist deep in the snow, one more problem away from tears, and hauled as hard as he could on the beast's reins, he was more than a little offended.

Once Link comes home with Saria, he told himself to make himself feel better, I am going to stick a frog down her tunic. And then he imagined himself in the Lost Woods, with Saria and Link and how impressed they'd be at how brave he had been while they were gone. The thought was a much happier one than the reality of his situation, so he stopped pulling on the mule's reins and indulged in it for a moment, letting the image warm his spirit, if not his extremities.

Ultimately, however, a particularly unfriendly burst of winter wind sliced across his face and he closed his eyes against it. The mule grunted unhappily and Mido gave him a grouchy look. "I don't know what you're complaining about," he grumbled through the scarf wrapped four times around his face by one of the identical women before he'd left. "You have fur and a big fat blanket. I bet you're not as cold as me." The mule brayed angrily at him and he threw his hands into the air, the gesture comically stiff for all the layers he was wearing. "Well they don't make coats for mules! I asked, okay?"

The mule snorted and dropped to its knees in the snow. Mido stared at it for a moment, then puffed his chest out. "Fine," he said. "I've decided to set up camp. You better hope the Stalchildren don't come out in the winter."

He stormed over to the mule and started to pull out the pieces he needed to build a shelter. Link's father had shown him how to do it, making him practice it over and over and over again until he could do it off-by-heart. It was a lot like building a fort, except you had to think about things like where is the wind coming from and is it snowing or not. Brayden had told him a hundred times that if he didn't build his shelter right, either he or the mule could die. He said it very seriously and Mido believed him.

The worst you got if you built your fort wrong was bugs shoved down your pants.

He paused for a moment, the tarp in his hands flapping in the wind, and struggled desperately to keep his tears in.

"I want to go home," he said in a voice so small the wind took the words away before even he could hear them.

xxx

"So," said Rue, her face drawn and pinched and older even than usual, "I cannot decide which of the only two possibilities are more unlikely – that your shield failed before the appointed hour, or that the Moblins have somehow found access to magic."

"I assure you," said Sahasrahla, huffy and irritated as he limped into the room behind her, "my shield would not have failed before the appointed hour. If I've told you once, old woman, I've told you a thousand times, shields are my specialty. I may be old but it's my hair I lost, not my wits or my magic."

"Indeed," said Rue, without further comment.

"I can't feel my leg," Thomas moaned, unable to contribute anything useful to the discussion. He fell bonelessly into a chair and tried futilely to trace back the series of events that had led him here, in the most unlikely of places to find a Sheikah.

"That's probably for the best," Rue noted clinically. "We'll have someone look at it as soon as they're done with the more seriously wounded."

"Sorry," Thomas said, shamefaced suddenly. "I didn't mean—I was just whining."

"It reflects poorly on you," Rue noted without emotion. Thomas waited until she looked away and then winced. Something of Sahasrahla's usual good mood crinkled briefly at the corners of his eyes as he watched the exchange, but even he lacked the energy to sustain it.

Rue turned to look out the window at the smoke-filled night. The Gerudo had turned the Moblins back, but at great cost. They were working outside to pile the corpses out of the way of the fighting until they could be cremated properly; an entire wing of the Fortress was destroyed, still burning away in the night as the remaining Gerudo fought to get the fire under control; and the Gerudo who lived to fight again were dealing with the blow to morale caused by the first breach of their walls and their gate in their history. For the first time since their race had been created the enemy had – however briefly – penetrated their sanctum. Thomas wouldn't pretend to understand their reactions, but he knew it would not be pretty.

"I have known Moblins," Rue said softly, her face troubled. "I have fought with them and against them. I have lived side by side with them, in these very walls. Even the first generation Moblins lack the required intelligence to wield magic. The degree of skill required…it is beyond them."

"And yet wield magic they have," said Sahasrahla gravely. "And complex magic at that. That shield was no pretty piece of prestidigitation. A Sentinel taught me that spell. There are a handful of mages in this world with a deep enough understanding of the arcane arts to have unwound it so quickly, and last I checked none of them moblins."

"Maybe Aghanim wasn't Ganondorf's only pet mage," Thomas suggested cautiously.

"Perhaps," said Sahasrahla, considering, "but I like to think I would have known. We mages are not so populous that we lose track of each other easily."

"Then something else is coming through that portal," Rue said darkly.

Sahasrahla's face was grim. "There is little beyond that portal that bodes well for any of us, and too much of it poorly understood." There was something deep and heavy and, if Thomas didn't know better, frightened in his eyes. "There are worse things, beyond the veil, than Moblins," he said.

He did not elaborate, and for that, Thomas was grateful.

xxx

Hunter stood as still as the statues in the entrance to the Quisrol, and twice as grim. He could have been one of them, but for the way his eyes swept across the scene playing out before him – over the gathered crowd, onto the latest in what was turning into a long line of cranky Gerudo companions, and finally settling on the man who may as well have been his brother. Link wasn't even looking at him. He was pacing back and forth in the centre of the ring, surrounded by Gerudo at once more hostile than was useful, and more friendly than expected. His pacing wasn't nervous or anxious, neither anticipatory nor expectant. Just idle. Movement for the sake of movement.

There was a restlessness to the motion that Hunter didn't like. Something that had nothing to do with Link's typical over-abundance of energy.

But if the Sheikah was concerned, he didn't show it. He swept his eyes away from Link and back to the crowd once more. Observing, assessing, analyzing, keeping a constant stream of information flowing through his brain to ensure it stayed busy. Too busy to acknowledge his ongoing internal battle.

This is WRONG, sang his blood, and he pretended he couldn't hear it over the observation that Apheri was wearing a reluctantly curious, appraising expression when she looked at Link, similar to the one Jinni used to wear before she died. As though she didn't believe he would pass this test, but she actually kind of hoped he would.

This is VILE, cried his bones. But they were drowned out for now by him noting that for all the noise coming from the gathered, riotous mob – howling and screaming and laughing – sounded like it always had, something had changed in the cacophony. The voices were no longer harmonious. What had once been an undercurrent of dissent had grown into something else, found a voice of its own. The crowd howled two notes, now, discordant and angry within itself.

Why won't you DO SOMETHING? screamed his heart, and it took everything he had to keep the words from cracking through to the surface. To keep impulse from becoming thought and thought from becoming action. Instead, he weighed the implications of the change in the crowd's reaction and mood. Link was turning them. It was happening faster than any of them expected, and Hunter wondered whether it was because he was the son of their wind, or because he was the Hero of Time, or just because he was Link and that's all he ever seemed to need.

A ripple ran through the crowd as they turned to look toward Ciardi's tent. The white-clad Gerudo reappeared suddenly, throwing back the black flaps with uncharacteristic vigour, one might almost say flair. Her motions, her expressions were grander than before, dramatic in a way they hadn't been. She was no longer pretending that this was not an open war, that the hearts of the people she had led for the last seventeen years were not a battleground, growing more bloody by the minute. She had accepted, as any Gerudo would, the reality of the conflict and thrown herself into it with weapons bald and gleaning, and a will like the edge of a knife.

She raised her hand to the crowd to show the object she had gone to retrieve – a serrated blade, large and ugly, far too ornate to be anything but ceremonial. The crowd howled at the sight of it – angry, delighted, divided in their reactions in every way possible except for the eagerness in every voice.

The non-light of the Mire shone briefly on its edge, and the glint may as well have been a blade of ice, slicing across Hunter's heart, turning his stomach and sapping his strength. For a moment his will faltered and impulse became thought – . The flow of information stopped and his mind recoiled in horror at the way this event had to play out and every inch of him was momentarily in agreement. He couldn't let this happen. He had to do something.

But he didn't. He didn't move. Didn't twitch. Just watched Ciardi carry the blade toward the centre of the ring where Link stood laughing at her, watching her approach with a grin on his face. Not the usual courageous, defiant, just-this-side-of-giddy grin Hunter would have expected, but something darker, more dangerous. Something bestial.

It's your fault, Hunter's heart whispered. You missed the target. You lost the first round. And now Link will pay. Because of you. Because you failed.

Truth, Hunter thought, because it was.

Do something! his heart insisted.

I can't, he thought, because he couldn't.

, his heart continued, and he shut it out once more, closed his eyes long enough to force his mind to go blank, and then turned his attention back to the scene at hand.

The ring of Gerudo parted to allow Ciardi through. She played with the knife in her hand, frivolous displays of dexterity and eagerness.

How many times will you stand and do nothing while someone you care about pays for your mistakes? his heart hissed and despite himself, despite his best effort not to, his lips parted and he hissed in a quick, pained breath between his teeth. In front of him, Link threw his arms open wide and his grin became a threatening leer.

"Wherever you want," he all but barked at Ciardi. "Gimme your best shot!" His blue eyes were wild and eager with an array of emotions Hunter didn't typically associate with him.

Your father died because you weren't strong enough to stop Thomas from killing him. Thomas killed him because you weren't smart enough to stop Aghanim before it became an issue. And you just stood there and watched it happen.

"The wound must be non-fatal," explained the arbiter, struggling to be heard over the crowd. "Bandages will be provided immediately after it's done, but no healing potions are to be consumed. You must finish the Challenge with whatever wound the victor of the first round chooses to inflict."

Jinni died because you weren't strong enough to defend yourself. Ketari died because you weren't strong enough to defend yourself. If you had been faster, better than you are, maybe they'd still be here. Maybe it would be Jinni instead of Apheri in this Challenge. Maybe Thomas wouldn't have ever gone to train with Aghanim. But you'll never know. Because you stood there and did nothing.

"One strike, that's it," the arbiter told Ciardi. "If you miss, that's it. No working the blade. No sawing or twisting."

"What if he dodges?" Ciardi demanded, and Link scoffed openly.

"Dodge what?" he cried. "You? What a joke. I'll take whatever you care to dish out and I'll laugh in your face afterward."

"Is that so?" Ciardi snapped, eyes flaring.

"That's about as so as so can be," he returned. His pupils were wide, his voice eager. The conflict was going to his head, making him behave strangely. Like himself, but not like himself. However reckless he could be, Link's primary concern had always been outcomes. His recklessness stemmed from the fact that once he had a goal he didn't really care about how he accomplished it, just that it got done. But right now…Hunter didn't think he was thinking at all about outcomes. He wasn't thinking about the Challenge, or Neesha, or the other Maidens, or going home or even beating Ganondorf.

He was thinking about Ciardi. And how she was right in his face. And how he wanted to kill her. And there was no more thought behind it than that.

It chilled Hunter.

Ciardi raised the knife.

Do something! Hunter's heart begged him. Don't let it happen again! You have to do something!

She won't kill him, he told himself angrily. It's just a wound. It'll be healed by morning.

And you're okay with him taking that wound for you? A wound that could wind up killing him before the Challenge is over.

I don't have a choice. He's the Challenger, not me. I can't take it for him. I would if I could, he added desperately.

She drove the knife into Link's shoulder, deep. Deep enough Hunter was sure it struck bone. Pain flared in Link's eyes but if he'd hoped it would bring his cousin back to reality, he was wrong. The wildness in them only flared up higher. His face tensed and he grunted, his smile turning into a snarl. He lurched forward as she stepped away, murder on his face and in his eyes, but Hunter had finally given into the insistent that hadn't stopped since Ciardi had stepped out of her tent.

He slipped between Link and Ciardi, bracing his hand on Link's shoulder to stop his movement, mindful of the bloody knife still buried in it. Unexpectedly, Apheri took Link's other side. It took both of them to hold him back.

Link didn't look at either of them, just stared at Ciardi, his face a mask of rage and hate. "Ha," he said. "Ha. Ha."

He reached up to his shoulder and tore the knife out carelessly, throwing it negligently to the ground at her feet. Blood gushed freely from the wound, over Hunter's hand, staining the bandages wrapped tightly around his fingers.

How long, asked his heart, until a wound becomes a killing blow. Will you let him take that for you as well? Will you still stand by and do nothing?

The imagery was too much. He closed his eyes and turned his face away.

xxx

Chapter 23 (continued)

"The second stage of the Challenge is Mounted Combat," calls the arbiter, to a raucous cheer from the audience. I don't hear them, deaf, for once, to their howls.

"Seriously?" I say, staring incredulously at the…things that are apparently going to make up the second part of the Challenge. Huge, hulking beasts, corralled into a large enclosure, cordoned off into six sections – one for each of the creatures. One of them – the big mean one in the centre – raises its head and screams angrily at the injustice of the universe or something equally rage-inducing, displaying horrendous tusks and insane little eyes. It looks at me – right at me – as though I'm the one that locked it in there and I can tell it already hates me. "Seriously?"

"Six mounts, six riders," continues the arbiter.

Apheri is giving me an impatient look that I recognize. It means she's hit Phase 2 of Accepting That Your King is The Worst Gerudo Ever, which is to say getting irritated every time I display ignorance of anything any real Gerudo would know off by heart. "What did you expect?" she demands. "Horses?"

"Yes," I reply, irate. "I really did." The arbiter shoots me a dirty look and I hastily look away from her and lower my voice. "Blind's men had horses. Insane, nightmarish, Dark World horses, but still horses. These are…I mean they're…Hunter. Tell her what they are."

"Pigs," he supplies helpfully, peering at them with an odd sort of curiosity on his face. "Boars, actually, I think. Are they animals?"

"First to mount is worth 2 points, last to mount minus 2. First to break their mount is worth 5, second 4, third 3, fourth 2, fifth 1, and last to break their mount is minus 5. If anyone dies before breaking their mount, it's -5 points to their team."

"I like how the loss of the unique and amazing being that is a person is not enough of a penalty," I say. "I like how you have to lose points on top of it."

"They're animals," Apheri says, abruptly moving from Phase 2 to Phase 3 – pretendingyour King doesn't exist, and therefore it is impossible that he could be the worst Gerudo ever. "Spawned like the Moblins when Ganondorf touched the Triforce. A gift to him from it."

"Like the points are worth more than the person."

"The Triforce is just a hunk of gold," Hunter corrects her automatically. "It didn't make these, he did. It just gave him the power to do so. Are they hard to break?"

"Drawing first blood in the combat earns your team 5 points. Losing first blood minus 3. Each successful strike thereafter awards one point to the striker, and removes the stricken from combat. Killing blows or deliberate incapacitating wounds are considered cheating and will result in the traditional punishment. All combatants must be able to participate in the final round of the Challenge unless the Goddess – not the Gerudo – wills it otherwise."

"Or the Sheikah!" calls one of the women – the no-longer-scowling red, no less – from the audience. The crowd laughs and the arbiter blinked as though she had forgotten – or been trying to forget – the massive indignity that is a Sheikah being part of a Blood Challenge.

Hunter, wisely, does not respond.

As the arbiter gestures for the Challengers to approach her, Apheri brings our side-conversation back around to its original topic by bleakly pointing out: "they are monsters meant to be ridden by monsters. They are extremely hard to break."

Hunter nods as thought that's the most natural thing in the world, then throws me a sidelong glance. "Are you going to be okay?"

I give him a baldly incredulous expression. "No," I respond acidly. "I'm going to get trampled by a six hundred pound pile of bacon with teeth as long as my leg."

"I mean with…," and he gestures at my shoulder.

I move my hand unconsciously up and lay it on the thick bandages hiding beneath my tunic. "I'm honestly more worried about the bacon."

He nods and starts to turn away but I reach out and grab him, turning him to look at me as I narrow my eyes. "Hunter, this wasn't you."

He brushes my hand off his shoulder and turns back to the arbiter. "Yes it was," he mutters, and the arbiter starts talking before I can flail inarticulately at his overwhelming sense of responsibility for everything that is wrong with the world.

Great. Now I'm worried about more than bacon.

"…pull scraps of coloured cloth from this bag," the arbiter is saying when I finally stop trying to bore a hole in the back of Hunter's head and pay attention. "The helboars are painted with corresponding colours. The cloth you pull is your mount. The breaking will begin once your mounts are selected."

I cast a sidelong look at the giant, murderous boar in the middle – the one that hates me on a deep, personal level – and note that the colour painted on its side is green.

Farore, Nayru and Din. Like I can't see where this is going.

Not funny, ladies. Not funny at all.

Ciardi reaches into the bag and pulls out a white cloth. Apheri follows, drawing blue. When the arbiter holds the bag out for Nobernal, the corrupted sentinel stares at it nervously and hops from one foot to the other. She looks up at Ciardi and Ciardi frowns at her and jerks her chin impatiently at the bag. Nobernal reaches a taloned hand in and fishes around for an extended period of time. Her face is a study in torture.

"It's just to pick a boar," Hunter says gently, if cautiously, seeing the same thing in her face as I do. She's stressed to an extreme degree. "You can't do it wrong." His pity earns him a blood-freezing hiss from Nobernal, but she finally closes her sharp fingers around a cloth and pulls it out – red. She stares at it for a moment, then looks up at the boars, trying to pick hers out. Hunter's lips purse tightly into a considering frown as he watches her, and I can see his brain working as he tries to line up the image of a sight so simultaneously terrifying and pathetic with the image he has in his head of what a Makani should be.

Lierana reaches in and pulls out a purple slip, then she turns to me and Hunter with a smug grin that makes me want to light her on fire. "Looks like one of you gets the big one."

"Probably for the best," I respond immediately. "I doubt you could have handled it."

Her eyes flare as Apheri snickers and Ciardi gives her an unimpressed expression, but the arbiter steps forward before she can do anything about it. Hunter reaches into the bag and I add under my breath, for his benefit, "Would you hate me if I said I hope you get the green one?"

"Yes," he replies, and pulls an orange cloth out of the bag.

I stare at that little slip of cloth like it's killed me. The arbiter reaches into the bag for me and pulls out the green slip, holding it out to me.

I take it dismally and look up at the helboar, who is starting to pace in angry circles in his pen.

"What about if I cost us five points? Would you hate me then?"

"Yes," Hunter and Apheri reply at the same time, completely devoid of pity and not quite able to mask the relief they feel at not having drawn green.

"Riders!" the arbiter calls loudly, drawing a cheer from the crowd who have been chatting amongst themselves and no doubt taking bets on who would get which boar. "Take your positions!"

I hold up my green cloth for them to see as I work my way around the pen towards the Big Pig. "Anyone who bet against me getting Gigantor is an idiot!" I call out to them. They laugh and howl at me and despite everything the overwhelming sense of dread I felt not more than seconds ago – completely justifiable dread, I might add – falls away from me, like snow off a slanted roof on a warm day. The sudden sliding of one corner of my mouth up into a grin startles me. "And whoever doesn't bet on me beating the living Hell out of him is a bigger one!" This earns me the expected cheers and jeers.

Their reactions, their energy feeds me in a way I'm not entirely comfortable with. A sudden eagerness blossoms in my chest and I climb the fence to Gigantor's little corner of the enclosure with a grin that's too wide and a nonchalance that even I can recognize is dangerous. But I can't deny it either; can't push it back.

Looking down into Gigantor's hate-filled eyes I'm not sure I want to.

"You remind me of someone," I tell it in a growl, not releasing its stare. "Someone as huge and ugly and porcine as you."

It grunts and snorts and paws at the ground and screams in rage, drowning out the sound of the arbiter as she yells for us to begin the Challenge.

I don't even let it finish its little display. I leap into the pen and rush it, adrenaline pumping, heart thumping. The world outside this filthy pen – the world beyond me and my challenger – slips away, like it never existed. All I can smell is the stench of blood hunger and fear and primal rage and I honestly can't tell what's me and what's the helboar. It sets its head down, nostrils flared, eyes wild, and meets my charge with its own. The ground shakes beneath me as it pounds at the dirt with unforgiving hooves. I don't break its gaze – not for a second – as I run at it, twisting to the side only at the last instant to avoid getting gorged. The wind as it passes me is foul with the smell of animal sweat and rotten breath and I laugh at the simplicity of this fight.

There is no Blood Challenge. There are no Gerudo, no crowd. There's just me and this monster. Or maybe I have that backwards. Maybe we're both monsters. This Beast versus that one.

It does even bother trying to stop itself. It crashes into the fence and sets the whole apparatus quaking with the impact, even as I skid to a stop in the opposite corner and turn to face it, stance wide, arms out, hands open and curved to display talons I don't actually have. I grin a jackal's grin as Gigantor turns to face me again, angrier than ever, but slow, stunned by its impact with the fence.

I could jump on it now, mount it quick and earn my team some points.

But I don't.

I meet its defiant stare with my own and snarl at it with a rage that is instinctive and undeniable. I don't care about points right now. I don't care about anything except proving to this idiot pig that it can't defy me. Nothing defies me. It will submit. I will make it.

In a distant, helpless way I realize that the rage and hunger I can smell are mine. The fear is its.

Inexplicably from somewhere outside my pen, the irresistible scent of warm blood mingles with everything else and it may as well be a metaphysical oil slick in my soul, because I suddenly find myself sliding deeper inward.

Despair snakes its way around my heart as the Beast roars to the forefront and I leap to meet the boar's charge head on.

xxx

A Brief Interlude

Hunter was not in the Dark World. He was not in a swamp, surrounded by feral Gerudo cheering for a monster trying to tear him apart. His life, and the lives of people very important to him were not on the line, and nothing in the world was particularly urgent.

He was standing in the field at Lon Lon Ranch, watching a horse pace back and forth in front of him. The ugliest, smelliest horse he'd ever seen, but still a horse on the inside.

"That's right," he said slowly, calmly, "I'm not going to hurt you. And you're not going to hurt me either. You want this. You were made for this."

Ganon's army had needed mounts when they were created – beasts as fierce and violent as their masters, but beasts made for riding nonetheless. They had no other purpose. This would work.

This had to.

All around him the sounds of the others battling with their helboars faded away, the crowd faded away, he put them all aside because right now they didn't matter. They couldn't matter. Not if he was going to do this.

"They didn't give me a rope," he told the 'horse'. It grunted at him, flashed its tusks in a threatening gesture. "And I don't have a few days to do this properly." It narrowed its eyes and lowered its head, prepping for the charge. Hunter resisted the urge to tense, kept his stance loose and fluid. "This is going to be rough on both of us," he told it.

The boar squealed its vicious agreement and charged, closing the gap between them at alarming speed.

Hunter waited until he could have reached out and touched its froth-riddled snout before making his move. He leapt backward onto the fence at the last possible minute, and pushed himself off it and through the air over the helboar and its furious charge before it could strike him. The animal screamed at him in rage and scrambled to twist, mid-charge, before it could strike the fence. Hunter did not give it the chance to complete its turn. The instant his feet touched down he twisted and leapt again, landing roughly on the monster's back.

A great, angry cry went up from the crowd, but he toned it out along with everything else, unable to spend any focus on interpreting what it meant. The sudden weight had startled the helboar and drove its rage to even greater heights. It took off at a run again and it was suddenly all Hunter could do to bury his hands in the thick bristles and clamp his legs around its middle. It drove itself into one fence, and then another.

As it spun and leapt and screamed, Hunter closed his eyes, tightened his grip, and prayed.

xxx

"The Sheikah is first to mount! Two points!"

The no-longer-scowling Red offered the young man – currently with his eyes closed and hanging on for dear life as his helboar tried its best to shake him off – a whoop and a harsh cackle; a counterpoint to the angry cry from the Gerudo audience.

The dog-eared purple to her right snorted and raised an eyebrow at her. "Cheering for the enemy, Anahti?" she demanded, drawing the attention of a few others.

The smile dropped from the Red's face and her lips twisted back into their customary scowl as she leveled a burning glare on the younger woman. "Cheering for something exciting finally happening in this Goddess forsaken place," she snapped. "When was the last time we had a show like this, huh?"

Another woman, seated in the row below hers, scoffed in disbelief. "You should be cheering for Ciardi's team! For the real Gerudo!" she said. A full-wolf near her growled in agreement.

"Apheri is mounted!" called the Arbiter from far below, and almost immediately thereafter, "Apheri is thrown!"

"I tell you what," snarled Anahti angrily, getting to her feet, "when our 'real' Gerudo stop getting their rear ends handed to them by the Toothless Wonder and her two little boys, I'll start cheering for them again."

"They won the first stage!" cried the purple angrily, glaring up at her, ears twitching.

Anahti's ears flicked back to lay flat against her head and her lips pulled back even further from her teeth. "Nobernal won the first stage," she corrected her as several of the women around them got to their feet, watching the exchange with interest. "Lierana threw a child's tantrum and Ciardi nearly violated the terms of the Challenge. I expect better from any I would call Sister."

"Ciardi is mounted! Apheri is mounted!"

"She has a point," noted a white nearby, leaning lazily back in her seat and looking intrigued by the growing tension. "I'm with her."

"Apheri is thrown! Lierana is mounted!"

"Traitors, both of you!" cried the purple. "How can you—?"

But Anahti had done a tally of the woman in the immediate vicinity that she expected would side with her and had decided it was more than enough. She raised a lupine hand and struck the purple across the face with the back of it, sending her spinning and tripping down a level to land on the woman in front of her. The wolf beside them turned and snapped at one of them, but a woman a level further down than that turned to jump up and tackle the wolf.

Someone from behind Anahti leapt onto her back, and they toppled down to the ground, sending the nearby women scattering into each other. Anahti threw an elbow into her attacker's face and twisted to drive a knee into her gut, which was more than enough to send the other woman tumbling down over the bleachers, striking several others on her way down.

And as simply as that, an entire section of the audience turned in on itself with a vicious snarl and explosive force.

"Oops," said Anahti, picking herself up with a malicious smile, "I seem to have started a riot."

And the Arbiter's startled call of: "The Sheikah is first to break! Five points!" went unheard by the crowd.

xxx

Hunter stayed where he was for a long moment after his mount had stopped racing frantically around the ring. He was panting as hard as it was, more than a little dizzy, and lacking any real confidence in the strength of his stomach.

"Good boy," he managed breathlessly, patting the beast's thick neck weakly. "Knew you'd give in eventually."

Which was perhaps the most complete lie he'd ever told himself.

When he was able to uncrimp his hands from where they'd been locked in a death grip in the helboar's fur, he straightened on its back and stared around, intending to take stock of the situation. Before he could register who was on their mounts and who wasn't, however, his eyes fell on the stands where the crowd was sitting.

It occurred to him, blinking several times to make sure he was seeing what he was, in fact, seeing, that 'sitting' was not an appropriate word for what the crowd was doing. One of the stands arranged for the women to sit in to watch had dissolved into a mass melee worthy of the roughest, toughest taverns in Hyrule. And several women from the other stands were jumping down and rushing over – whether to try to stop it or to join in he couldn't tell.

"Lierana is the third to break! And someone break up that fight!" screamed the Arbiter, doing her best to ignore the growing riot and keep her eyes on the Challenge.

He turned quickly to peer around at the other Challengers. Ciardi and Lierana both sat – panting as bad as he was – atop their mounts. Half of Lierana's face was already swelling badly and Ciardi was gripping her own shoulder and appeared to be trying to push it back into place. He could see Apheri on her mount, hands buried deep in its fur, a look of intense concentration on her face as it spun her around. Its movements were slower than he would have expected, however. More sluggish. She was wearing it down.

He caught only a flash of green from Link's pen, as the Hero of Time danced with the giant boar he'd had the ill fortune to draw from the hat. Hunter frowned. Something strange was happening there – it didn't look like Link was even trying to mount the creature.

But then his eyes fell on Nobernal's pen and he forgot completely about Link.

xxx

The Hero of Time was lost deep within the rage in his own heart. He was completely unaware of the world around him. Completely unaware of anything except the pain in his shoulder and his ribs and his leg. Except the rapidly shrinking defiance in the only good eye the monstrous boar had left. Except the blood on his hands, sticky and sour smelling and beautiful, and the overpowering smell of it all around him. More than he had spilled. More than he could spill in his current form, no claws to tear, no teeth to rend. Nothing but soft flesh and weak bone.

He was not aware of the fact that the Arbiter had not called it when Apheri's mount broke and the wolf-legged Gerudo was finally able to straighten tiredly on its back. Not aware of the Arbiter's assistants, coming to stand beside her and stare as well in the direction of her stunned gaze. He was not aware of the creeping growth of the silence as the crowd slowly began to realize that something else was happening and the riot came to a slow, struggling stop as they all turned to stare as well.

Even the helboar seemed to realize there was a world beyond its current conflict. It threw a dazed look around, then huffed, blood flecked spittle dusting its lips, and finally closed its eyes. Its knees buckled and it collapsed to the ground, panting with pain-filled wheezes, all signs of defiance gone.

For a brief moment, the thing that had once been the Hero exulted in its triumph. Its opponent was done, had submitted. The fight was over, and he had won, but it was not enough. Not enough that it had realized its place. Not enough that it had shown him its throat. It wouldn't be enough – couldn't be enough – until he had ended it for having ever thought it stood a chance. A lesson to any others, to all others.

He started forward, but something – not him – screamed from beyond the pen. A scream of rage and pain. A tortured scream that spoke of impossible burdens and a load beyond bearing. The sound of it ricocheted through him, like lightning. It shook him to his heart, it splintered the grip of his rage.

He came back to himself as suddenly as a drowning man breaks the surface of the ocean, muscles burning, lungs afire, gasping and shaking and disoriented.

A shadow fell over him, then, and only instincts and muscle memory, honed through too many years fighting for survival, saved him. He leapt back as something fell hard into the spot where he'd been, landing square between himself and the defeated boar. Something large and heavy and wet.

It was a head, or had been. Gore spilling from every gouge and wound and gaping hole. Half its jaw missing, only a single, broken tusk to stand as testament to what it had been. Its eyes were empty sockets, blood pooling in the space where its angry, porcine orbs should have been.

Sick to his stomach at the sight – too close to what he, himself, had been about to do – the Hero of Time turned to stare with everyone else.

xxx

Chapter 23 (cont.)

Nobernal's scream ends in a ragged fit of coughing, sending droplets of blood flying from the ends of her unkempt hair. None of it hers. She's covered in it – blood and other gore – and surrounded by a collection of pieces of what was supposed to have been her mount. She's torn it to shreds and thrown it all around the pen. In one hand she grips the boar's missing tusk.

"Stop," she hisses hoarsely, turning her face away from the horrified crowd. Her thin lips part to show her blood-covered fangs behind the curtain of thin hair. "Stop looking at me! Stop! Stop!" Her voice is twisted and cracked. Something in the sound of it, some note of legitimate pain, causes a stab of unexpected sympathy to pierce through the fear and revulsion. I turn my face away.

"Nobernal." Ciardi's voice is like a whip, cold and hard and barbed – no sympathy there. Nobernal flinches and whimpers softly. "Go to my tent and stay there until I come for you."

Face twisted with dread, Nobernal does what she's told. She spreads her tattered wings and takes off, soaring over the bleachers toward Ciardi's tent. The audience makes a startled sound and scatters out of her path.

One of the Arbiter's assistants bravely clears her throat in the silence that follows. She takes the opportunity to turn away from Nobernal's handiwork. "How many points would that be?" she asks weakly.

The Arbiter continues to blink after Nobernal and appears at a loss. "I…I don't know. Nobody's ever…killed their own mount before. It's not covered under the rules…." Her face grows resolute and she gestures for her assistants to join her. They crowd around each other in a huddle and immediately begin arguing over how to interpret this recent turn of events in terms of points because that is obviously the only sensible reaction possible.

Ciardi throws a dark look around at the crowd – who are stirring unhappily and beginning to murmur in unfriendly ways – and the huddle of arbiters, heatedly discussing how many points that should or should not cost Ciardi's team. The golden-eyed woman scowls and climbs down off her mount to approach the Arbiter. The Green looks up as she nears and gestures for her assistants to continue without her. She turns and meets Ciardi half-way. They exchange a few, short words, and the Arbiter nods. Ciardi raises her voice to address the crowd.

"We will take an hour's break," she shouts. "The Arbiters need time to come to a decision."

"And Ciardi needs time to manipulate them," I hear a bitter voice note from behind me. I turn away from Ciardi as the crowd begins to disperse and blink more than a little blindly at Apheri and Hunter who have come up to the other side of the fence. Apheri is frowning after her ex-leader. "The death of the rider would have cost her five points – the only logical interpretation is that the death of a mount should also cost five points."

"Ah," says Hunter, climbing the fence to lean down to offer me a hand up, "but if she lost five points now there'd be no point in continuing, as there wouldn't be enough points left for her to win this round anyway. Her team would have to forfeit."

I take Hunter's hand, tired beyond words suddenly, and let him help me up the fence and over to the other side. "Link, are you okay?" he asks, frowning darkly. "You're white as a sheet."

"Yeah," I say, waving him off. "No, I'm fine. I just…had a moment, but I'm fine now."

Hunter purses his lips and I can see in his face he doesn't believe me. "I caught the tail end of your fight. The look on your face…wasn't you." He waits for me to state the obvious. When instead my expression tightens and I look away, he states it for me, because he's helpful like that. "You lost yourself."

"I did," I admit, pushing past him and moving after the crowd, "but I'm back now and it's fine, Hunter." I can feel his eyes boring into the back of my head so I stop and heave a heavy sigh. "We only have an hour's break," I say without looking at him. "And I feel like I've been run over by, oh, I don't know, a giant pig. Like, a hundred times. Which, you know, I have." I turn and give him a pleading look. "So if we could not spend this hard-earned break reliving the last ten minutes that would be great, okay? Can you do that for me?"

Hunter purses his lips, because of course he can't. "Link, this is serious. It's only noon. The sun's at its zenith and the moon's about as far away as it can be. If you're losing control this early—"

"I am not losing control," I snarl harshly. A sudden surge of anger gives me an unexpected shot of energy. For a brief moment the various aches and pains echoing throughout my entire frame fade into the background. Hunter stops in surprise, taken aback. "I lost control. Past tense. I got it back. It's fine. Let it go – nobody was hurt."

He stares at me for a moment, his face darkening by degrees. "Is that so?" he asks sharply. "Your mount looks pretty roughed up to me, Link. In an hour you're going to have to get on it and try to fight other people – and just in case you've forgotten, all of our lives are at stake in that. How well do you think that poor beast is going to hold up after the beating you gave it? Couple that with the completely unnecessary injuries you sustained fighting it, and something tells me you're going to cost us more than points."

"I didn't cost us any points," I snap. "Nobernal didn't even mount her damn pig."

"Luck," he says, and there's something hard and unforgiving in his voice. "And you'll forgive me if I don't want anything even remotely like Nobernal on my team."

"What are you saying?" I snarl. "That I'm like her? Don't be a—"

His arm snaps out to grab my shoulder and wrench me around to stare back at the pens. Gigantor is a shadow of his former glory, curled in a corner of his pen, as far away from the grotesque head as he can be. The giant beast licks at its wounds and bruises with a black tongue, still wheezing and huffing. The only eye it's got that isn't swollen shut is angry and confused as only a wounded animal's can be. One of its legs looks suspiciously limp. Hunter wasn't joking – poor bastard's going to have a hard time in the next phase of this round.

My eyes go against my will to the eyeless husk in the middle of the pen and I'm suddenly aware of the dark, sticky stains on my hands. My stomach turns and I feel sick again.

Hunter's right.

It was only luck I didn't take it that far.

The sprains, strains, bruises and cuts I earned against Gigantor reassert themselves viciously and whatever energy I had leaves me as suddenly as it came. "All right," I concede hoarsely, turning away. "Point taken."

I continue on toward the common tent, painfully aware of the look Hunter and Apheri exchange behind my back.

xxx

Everyone else is already in the common tent when we arrive, most of them not having had to stop back at their own tents to salve and bandage various wounds (though I can't help but notice several swollen eyes, dark bruises and limps around the room – must have been a Hell of a brawl. I'm a little put out I wasn't at the centre of it). There is the expected, momentary hush when we walk in, but the stares that greet us bear almost none of their former viciousness. In fact, in more than a few faces I see a grudging respect and reluctant curiosity.

Hunter, being Hunter, pretends he is completely unaware of the crowd, but his eyes very subtly roam around the room, taking in the expressions and atmosphere. Apheri appears simultaneously annoyed and confused by the attention. Yesterday morning she was the second highest ranking woman in here. By yesterday afternoon, she was stripped of that and basically dropped down to low woman on the totem pole, no matter the colour of her uniform. And now she finds herself once again somewhere between the two. If you throw in the whole Son of the Wind thing, she's had a rough couple days. I can't really blame her.

For my part, I pause in the doorway to flash my teeth at the lot of them, then turn and proudly display the stained bandages on my shoulder from where Ciardi stabbed me – reopened during my wrestling with Gigantor and burning like Hell right now. "It'll scar nicely, I think, if I keep popping the stitches open," I call loud enough to be heard by all and sundry. They laugh, and I get several raised glasses. If nothing else, they appreciate the show.

I wish I wasn't enjoying it so much myself. Fifteen minutes ago I was sick to my stomach over how easily I'd lost myself to the Beast during the fight with the Helboar. That recognition of the dangerous game I'm playing now has already faded, shoved to the back of my mind where it can't get in the way of me baring my teeth and flashing my muscles and generally being more aggressive than I have a right to be. It just makes Hunter's concern more legitimate, but at the same time I'm having trouble caring for more than five minutes at a time.

I'm trying to care. I really am. I just don't.

It's like I'm drunk or something.

I wish I had more space to focus on it, to work it through, but I've only got some 45 minutes left until I have to face the possibility of my own death for something like the third time today. And that's not even the finale.

And you know what? I don't even care about that as much as I should.

I follow Hunter and Apheri through the tent and continue futilely trying to drum up some concern over the potential consequences of our current situation. As we're moving past the table where Lierana's sitting with her usual assortment of women – most of them red or white – she raises her voice to say with entirely more volume than is required: "I'd be worried if she had any teeth, but we all know she doesn't – metaphorically or otherwise."

Apheri goes stiff and whirls on her heel, jaw locked and eyes blazing. I clench my fists at my side, teeth bared at Lierana's blatant challenge, but – to my surprise – before either Apheri or I can make up for being left out of the earlier riot by starting a new one, Hunter leans across the table, interrupting us both and startling Lierana enough that the latter pulls back. He ignores her and addresses the now-familiar red seated beside her. "I'm sorry," he says to her politely, as though she hadn't spent the morning mocking him for practicing his archery, "I freely admit I'm not entirely familiar with the intricate rules involved in this Challenge, but say, hypothetically, the score was something like…oh, I don't know…ten to nothing," he pauses for dramatic effect, "the team with ten points is the one that's winning, right?"

The red's lips twist up into one of the meanest smirks I've ever seen in my life. "Ooo," she coos and plays along as naturally as though the two had practiced this, "and he's smarter than he looks. That is correct, Sheikah. Hypothetically speaking, if the score were ten to nothing, the team with ten points would be winning."

"Oh good," he says, and smiles in a relieved fashion. "I'm glad I've understood. Could you do me a huge favour? Could you tally our points for us? I would hate to count it wrong. How many points does Apheri's team have?"

The red holds out her hand with a flourish and begins a dramatic show of counting on her fingers. I am forced to give her a second look – she is enjoying this. "Well…there's two points for first to mount, five points for first to break, then…two more points for fourth to break and one point for fifth. I believe that puts Apheri's team at…oh, well, would you look at that! Ten points!" She widens her eyes and covers her mouth in a grossly overstated show of mock surprise.

"Oh," says Hunter with his typical subtlety, as though this is genuinely surprising and he's legitimately humble, "I imagine it's probably a very close race then. What with our opponents being so…hmmm," he makes a show of searching for the right word, then turns a hard look on Lierana. "Toothy." He does not remove his gaze when he next addresses the red beside her. "How many points does Lierana's team have, currently?"

"Well, I don't know…give me a moment to calculate it…if you add up all the negatives and take them away from the points they managed to gain…well, what do you know." She offers Lierana a sickly sweet smile that causes the latter's face to flush impressively. "Zero."

Hunter straightens and gives the red a perfunctory nod. "Thank you, ma'am. I appreciate the clarification."

Lierana is on her feet suddenly; face as purple as a young girl's uniform. "The Sheikah was first to mount and first to break," she snarls in a fury. "That has nothing to do with Apheri. And it's hardly a reflection on me if Nobernal is insane and incapable of completing the most basic of challenges."

Hunter doesn't even blink. "Funny," he notes, nonplussed in the face of her rage or the fact that the entire room has gone silent and every pair of eyes is on us, "I thought I heard someone saying the honour of one is the honour of all. I assumed the same went for shame. But, as I've said, I'm not familiar with the nuances of the Challenge. If it will satisfy your curiosity – and I'm sure it will satisfy mine – let's look at it from a purely mechanical standpoint." He turned to the red again. "Would you say it's fair to count any points from the first round of archery as negative points, given that the highest score was the loser that round? And any points gained in this second round so far would count as positives?"

The red, intrigued, leans back in her seat and says, "I would."

"If we are to look solely at the points gained by Apheri and Lierana as individuals – independent of the honour or shame garnered by the rest of their teams – how many points would each have?"

The red is silent for a moment, doing the actual calculations in her head, forgetting, for a moment, her previous show. Eventually a slow, wicked smile tugs her lips across her face. "Well," she says, "I believe they would both be sitting at one point each." A surprised murmur works its way around the room. No one had looked at it from that angle before.

"Ah," says Hunter without emotion. "A tie." He turns back to Lierana and arches a dark eyebrow at her. "Nothing metaphorical about that."

Her burning stare follows us all the way across the now silent common room.

"See?" Hunter says quietly as we take our seats at an empty table at the back of the room. "Not every problem needs to be solved with a Blood Challenge or a punch in the face."

"What makes you think I was going to solve it by punching her?" I demand. Behind us the room returns to its previous noise level, now with the addition of heated conversations and arguments all throughout.

"Past experience," he responds, giving me a dull look. "The look on your face specifically said: 'I am going to punch you. I am going to punch you very hard.' I didn't just go through what I went through with that Helboar for you to violate the terms of the Challenge and get us killed on a technicality."

"She would have deserved it!" I attempt to defend myself, but he raises a finger to cut me off.

"Technicality," he repeats.

"Thank you," Apheri says, if grudgingly, before I can get louder about defending myself.

"No problem," Hunter says gracefully. "Shared honour and all that. By your own rules she insulted me along with you. I happen to think I have very lovely teeth."

She stares blankly at him for a moment, then offers him a wide grin. "I thought you didn't get the nuances."

"It was noted not more than thirty seconds ago that I am smarter than I look," he points out dryly. "On top of that, I happen to be a very nuanced fellow. It helps that I have spent enough time with your lovely people over the last few, ill-spent years that I think I am actually starting to be able to warp my mind enough to understand them. Or at least predict them. Exhibit A: Mr. Punchy."

"She would have deserved it!"

"Technicality!"

"We should probably—" Apheri starts to say but she's cut off by an offended cry from behind us.

"Anahti!"

The score-counting red – on her feet and moving away from Lierana's table – pauses and turns back to face Lierana. "What?" she demands.

"I was talking," Lierana snaps. "Where are you going?"

Anahti does not even bother answering the question. Instead she runs an idle finger down the cut on her cheek. "So talk," she says with an uncaring shrug. "Plenty of ears left to hear you." Then turns her back on Lierana and continues on her way.

I turn back to my own table. "Wonder what that was about," I say.

Apheri straightens suddenly. "She's coming here." I blink and turn just as Anahti comes to a stop behind us. Her grin is wide and feral.

"Is this seat taken?" she asks.

xxx

A Brief Interlude

It didn't take long for the previously empty table to fill up. In fact, the entire process took far less time than Anahti had predicted it would, and netted some bigger leevers than she'd thought. Lierana's little lap dogs stayed right where they were, of course, but a few of Ciardi's – emboldened by their illustrious leader's absence and their general distaste of Lierana – wandered over to congratulate Apheri and her team on their performance so far before wandering away again. Short enough interactions to avoid being seen as betraying Ciardi, but significant enough to make clear their opinion of Lierana.

The others that came over, though – unaligned and unafraid – took their seats and stayed there, chatting animatedly with each other, and with Apheri and her unusual teammates. Apheri had chosen the wisest route, and was currently pretending that the previous day had never happened, that she had never fallen out of grace, and everything was exactly as it should be. For the time being, those at the table with her had made the same choice.

The Sheikah appeared to have found himself in the centre of a swirling mass of arguments, nettling, and grudging admiration of how quickly he had broken the boar. He handled the conversation better than one would expect of a Sheikah, but never once dropped the formality that she suspected was his shield. This only served to embolden the lupine women harassing him and she was sure it wouldn't be long before bets started getting laid on who would be the first to crack his face into something that wasn't a calculated, cultivated balance of polite disinterest and nonchalant detachment.

By contrast, there was nothing disinterested or detached in the blonde man's face. In fact, he could not have seemed more at home. He coasted on the conversation, easily moving from one topic to the next with a grace born of practice – nothing the women threw at him phased him; he knew the answers to all their riddles, could finish their stories, knew when to rise to the bait and when to let it wash over and past him as though it was nothing. He ceded to all the right women, challenged all the right women, spoke softly where expected and harshly when appropriate. He looked at each of them and his unnaturally blue eyes weighed, judged, and reacted to each woman as an individual, and each woman as what she was.

This man had eaten with Gerudo before – King or not, there was no denying that. He had sat at their tables and won their respect. He was doing it right in front of her. He had been here less than a week, the Challenge had been on for less than a day, and there wasn't a woman at that table – hardened veterans, all – that wasn't eating out of his hand. Loyalties were shifting as she watched, and Anahti was fascinated by the entire process.

But not so fascinated as to forget her own game.

And her game was afoot.

Lierana – with angry, jealous eyes that continued to slide back over to the rowdy table at the back – finally cracked. Something hard and ugly settled into the centre of her face and she leaned over to say something to the woman beside her, then got to her feet and began working her way through the room toward the door.

No one except Anahti noticed her leave, which, Anahti was sure, must have burned the petty woman more than Apheri's sudden resurgence in popularity, or the fact that some of the women would rather speak to a Sheikah and a Fake King than her.

Grinning widely, Anahti allowed the conversation around her to continue on minus her contributions, then got up and slipped away from the table with a quick excuse. None of the others at the table seemed to care, but the Sheikah caught her eye on the way out. His face was as neutral as it had been all day, but in his blue-green gaze she caught some inkling of suspicion.

She couldn't help herself. She winked at him.

Trust a Sheikah to sniff out a trouble maker.

She slid out of the common tent and into the ample shadows beyond. Lierana wasn't hard to find – true to her usual lack of subtlety, she had taken the most direct route back to her own tent. Anahti spotted her just as she threw back the flaps angrily and strode in. Eyes bright and ears alert, the red dropped into a crouch in the dark, glittering eyes never leaving the tent. A lamp was lit within, and she could hear the muffled sounds of shuffling. Lierana was looking for something.

Anahti was unable to stop grinning. She felt energized in a way she had not in ages. Like one waking from a long night's sleep, fully rested and ready for the day. That, in and of itself, was not unusual. The Blood Challenge had stirred up chaos and tension in all corners of their dreary little never-changing camp, and however dim her memories of her life before the Mire were, Anahti knew deep in her heart that she had always been a child of bedlam. She thrived on it, lived for it, and the Dark World had only heightened her hunger for it.

But it went beyond that. She could smell a sudden energy in the others that hadn't been there before. It made them sharp, it made them angry, it had given them all an edge that had been lacking. It was like lightning, arcing from one woman to the next and shifting everything so subtly it was unnoticeable unless you knew where to look.

And Anahti knew where to look. She had noticed it first in Apheri. Apheri who had struggled every day of her life to prove herself. Apheri who had barely won her place on the King's mission to the dark world. Apheri who had clawed and scraped her way to the White, who had earned it long before they gave it to her, because she didn't know how to fight outside the ring. She had always been weak, politically. Unable to rally supporters, unable to hold them long when she had them. Instead she struggled to arrange her circumstances such that supporting her was a logical choice. Her tenuous grip had started to crumble months ago, and Ciardi choosing Lierana as second had ruined her completely, or so they all thought.

Outside the ring, Apheri was weak. But as a woman she was strong. She stood well, she fought well, and – most importantly – when they had all thought her done and finished, she found fire from somewhere else to light her own candle again. Anahti had seen it in her the moment the blonde man had chosen her as his third. It lit her flame again from the inside out, returned her fighting spirit to her. She had been discarded by the woman she had fought so hard to prove herself to, but she stood there when he called her name, and her back had straightened and her face had hardened and for the briefest of moments all watching could see her as she had been, when they had all been younger women, when they had first crossed over into the Sacred Realm.

The whole event had whispered in Anahti's heart, spoke to things long buried, memories too far gone to be remembered but for vague recollections of a smell, a sound, every now and then a face.

And Anahti wasn't sure that that fire hadn't been lit within her as well. For the first time in a long time, she was looking around her and seeing things. Seeing them for what they were. There were cracks in Ciardi's team, cracks in the camp as a whole. Cracks so large she could not believe she hadn't seen them before – she who was drawn to cracks in any system like a moth to a flame!

Just yesterday Ciardi had seemed untouchable – secure in the King's favour, able to command an Avatar as though it was nothing more than a beast. A sullen animal that needed nothing more than a sharp word and a good kick to learn its place.

But today Anahti was not so sure. Apheri had been weak, certainly, and Lierana stronger in support, stronger politically speaking. But as a woman? Lierana was weak and Anahti had never held much but contempt for her. Not strong enough to stand on her own, Lierana had supporters because Lierana needed supporters. Without them, she would fall. Just the thought of it was enough to curl Anahti's lip into a sneer.

Just how strong could Ciardi be, if that was the woman she chose as her second?

And Nobernal? The corrupted Sentinel was no more an Avatar these days than Anahti was a leever. Whatever glory the wretched creature had once known was gone now. In the end, what difference was there, between Nobernal and a beast?

And what of Apheri's team? A Sheikah and a boy who appeared little more than a Hylian with more bravado than brains. A Sheikah who had neither cracked nor flinched beneath the vitriol Anahti and her sisters had leveled at him since his appearance. A Sheikah who accepted a Gerudo as a teammate as though that was the most natural thing in the world. A Sheikah who had, in the middle of a crowded tent filled to the brim with his ancient enemies, called out Ciardi's second and soundly trounced her without throwing so much as a single blow. In defense of a Gerudo, no less.

And as for the other boy…if what Apheri said was true…

If he was a Son of the Wind…

But her train of thought was broken as Lierana reappeared, slipping out of her tent with a furtive glance around. In her hands she held a small green vial, which she slipped uneasily into her belt before moving in the direction of the tent currently being used by the two men. Anahti's lips slid up into a derisive grin and she gave a low chuckle as she moved out of the shadows and toward Lierana's tent.

The woman wasn't even clever enough to be subtle about her intentions. She was as easy to read as the sky on a clear day.

"Oh Lierana," she cooed to herself as she slipped through the flaps and into the elaborate tent. She peered around until she spotted the small chest set on a table near the weapon rack. The lid still lay open from when Lierana had dug around within, a small vial of clear liquid laying next to an indent designed for a matching vial. Anahti reached in and lifted the tiny glass bottle, grinning broadly. "How I look forward to watching you hang yourself."

xxx

"The current score is ten to zero for the Challenger," called the Arbiter over the raucous noise of the gathered crowd. "Moving forward, first blood won will award five points. First blood lost costs three. Dismounting an opponent is worth one. For destroying her mount, Nobernal will not be permitted to take part in the mounted combat. This disadvantage is deemed appropriate punishment for her failure. In the event of a tie, Nobernal's shame will be judged to be a negative point for her team."
Nobernal scowled. She snapped her wings and struggled with the sudden itch crawling up her legs and into her spine as the crowd – largely unhappy with the ruling – turned to look at her. She wanted to yell and scream at them. She wanted to shout that it wasn't her fault. That their silly mortal games were stupid anyway. That the beast had brought it on itself by cowering in a corner and refusing to allow her to approach it.

She saw again, for a brief moment, herself through its eyes. A pile of rotting flesh and broken bone, knit together with magic instead of thread, held tight by the Master's will. A terrible, unnatural creature; a predator and a threat; a cancer on the world. She cried out in rage and struck the ground in a fury to drive the image away.

She should not have taken its eyes. She should have known better. Animal eyes were not good. Too true. To clear. Only mortal eyes. Hooded and blinded. Only mortal eyes should be consumed. Only those.

The itching went away and she drew in a deep breath. When she looked up the combat had started, drawing the crowd's attention as the mortals and the monster launched themselves forward, their mounts' great hooves tearing up the ground with the force of their charges. The clash of metal and flesh, the roar of battle, and smell of chaos pulled her to her feet.

She remembered other battles, other fights – even other Blood Challenges! But none of them her own. They were stolen memories, dancing like ghosts in her mind. She knew she had fought her own battles, the music of the combat sang to her in a way that had nothing to do with pilfered eyes, but she could not bring them to mind. Could not remember the times she must have fought as they did now. The times before the chains and cages.

And she knew from past experience that trying to would only hurt. Would cut her to the quick, would set the dark things in her mind scrambling and slashing. The thought was enough to cause her to flinch away from the memories she didn't have anymore. She stepped nervously to the side, as though she could put physical distance between herself and them.

She turned her empty sockets toward Ciardi and made a small, unhappy noise. She hoped Ciardi would win. The mortal woman had been very angry – very, very angry – over what Nobernal had done. She had said Nobernal had ruined everything. She said that Nobernal had made them lose the round. She had said that the Master would not be happy when she told him what Nobernal had done, and Nobernal had sobbed and thrown herself on the ground and begged her not to tell him. Ciardi told her he would put her back in the cages and she would never see the light of day again and Nobernal had only cried harder and hid her face and trembled like a leaf at the thought.

And then Ciardi had sighed heavily and patted her head and told her that she would try to make it better, even though Nobernal had made that very difficult. That she would talk to the Arbiter and make sure they still had a chance to right things. That she would not tell the Master what Nobernal had done yet, that she would protect her from his wrath for now. As long as she did what she was told and didn't ruin anything else.

And so she had to sit on the sidelines and watch the combat instead of helping because that stupid animal was too pure-sighted to let her ride it like it was supposed to do. But that was what Ciardi had told her to do, so that's what she would do.

A great roar rose up from the crowd – excited, angry, happy, disappointed all at once – and the sharp scent of fresh blood mingled with everything else. One of the ghosts in Nobernal's head mused critically: Clean charges from both Ciardi and Apheri, but Apheri's defence wavered oddly at the last second, allowing Ciardi's blade to cut her shoulder. Something else happened there, but it's not clear what.

"First blood to Ciardi! Plus five points for Ciardi! Minus three for Apheri!"

"Something is wrong with her blood," Nobernal told the ghost, hopping from foot to foot and searching for the scent of it on the air again. "It doesn't smell right."

Apheri's face was a mask of rage as a thick line of blood began to ooze down her arm, but beneath the anger and frustration was something else. Her eyes were glassy in a way they shouldn't have been, her face paler than such a minor wound could have caused. When she raised a hand to her bloodied shoulder it was shaking.

The Sheikah seemed to have noticed something, because he called out to her, but the sound was drowned out beneath the thundering of his mount's hooves as he drove it to intercept Lierana. The latter had taken advantage of Apheri's distraction and tried to charge into her before she could turn her mount to meet the charge properly. Lierana barely had time to turn her own to meet the Sheikah's charge, and the sound of their clash seemed to rouse Apheri from her stupour. She turned her mount back to the battle.

Behind them, Ciardi and the Bearer of Courage were circling each other – Ciardi's boar was proud and strong, practically strutting beneath her as she prodded it with her heels. The Bearer's boar, on the other hand, was dragging its feet and panting in a tortured way. Its only good eye shot from side to side, as though seeking escape, but when the monster on its back drove his heels in, it leapt forward obediently, more than a little off-target. Swearing furiously, the Bearer raised his shield to fend off Ciardi's mighty blow as they crossed paths, but, thanks to the awkward angle of his half-blind mount, was unable to return her swing.

The Leader of the Gerudo pulled her boar around in a neat, tight circle and charged once more at the Bearer of Courage. He was snarling, more beast than the beast beneath him, as he drove his heels cruelly into its sides, trying to turn it, but the foul creature had nothing left to give. It squealed in protest as it tried to obey, but it wasn't in time. The monster riding it raised his shield futilely as Ciardi's boar crashed headfirst into his.

The mighty tusks of Ciardi's boar tore through its wounded compatriot, lifted it off its feet and hurled it backward. The motion, combined with Ciardi's vicious strike against the man's shield sent him flying from his saddle. He hit the ground with impressive force, and half skidded half rolled away from his mount. He did not get up again.

Both the Sheikah and Apheri cried out in alarm, but they – and the arbiter, announcing that Ciardi had earned another point by dismounting the monster – were drowned out by the angry roar of the crowd as Ciardi did not bother trying to rout her mount's furious charge, even though she was headed directly for her prone, unmoving opponent. The crowd went riotous with boos and angry calls and a strange, animal fury.

The Sheikah moved liked lightning, urging his boar into a frantic charge, ignoring everything around him. His face was stone, unmoving and unforgiving, as he cut directly in front of Ciardi, forcing her to rein in her mount or be cut down by the Sheikah's blade, to a great cheer from the crowd.

A cheer that strangled itself half-way through as Lierana, hot on the Sheikah's heels, slammed the pommel of her sword into his back on her way by him – a vicious, dishonourable blow – sending him toppling from his saddle to land on the ground in the midst of a deadly flurry of pounding hooves.

"One point to Lierana!" called the Arbiter over the crowd's chanting of the word "coward" over and over. "The score is seven to seven. Next point wins!" Several of the arbiter's assistants moved in to pull the two men from the arena as Ciardi and Lierana separated again.

The chanting paused long enough for the crowd to cheer inexplicably at the Sheikah as he miraculously managed to limp away under his own power. He approached his unmoving friend as the latter was dragged backward by the green-uniformed women.

The pause lasted only a moment, however, and then the chanting resumed: "Coward! Coward! Coward!" Lierana scowled furiously at the crowd, but they only chanted louder. Her face turned bright red and she began to yell justifications for the from-behind attack at them, but the crowd grew louder still. So incensed was she by their reactions she almost failed to notice Apheri's mount, bearing down on her now that the field had been cleared of Apheri's unfortunate team mates. Only an angry shout from Ciardi alerted Lierana to the approaching danger, and she brought her shield up in time to block Apheri's blow.

The crowd broke off their chanting, murmuring in surprise. The charge had been clean, and Apheri's prowess was well known. Even if she managed to block it, Lierana should have been sent flying, and yet she remained in her saddle. Apheri had somehow fumbled the blow.

Cursing softly, aware that something was seriously wrong and growing worse every second, Apheri brought her mount to a stop in the centre of the arena. She was having trouble breathing and her vision kept swimming in and out. The crowd watched, perplexed, as she swayed unsteadily in her seat.

Lierana and Ciardi slowed their own beasts to flank their only remaining opponent and the crowd quieted as the tension in the camp ratcheted itself up to an almost unbearable degree. Even Nobernal stopped her restless pacing, standing straight as a board, her empty sockets trained on the conflict before her.

"Next point wins," the arbiter reminded everyone needlessly as the three Challengers stared each other down.

Apheri's face was alarmingly pale, and a sheen of sweat stood out brightly on her forehead. Her arm was covered in blood and the shaking in her hands appeared to have moved to the rest of her. She struggled valiantly against a fierce tremble attempting to shake her body. Ignoring all of this, she watched her opponents like a hawk, eyes hard, back unbowed.

Ciardi moved first, urging her beast forward with a sharp cry. Lierana was slower to react, but followed suit. Apheri did not charge to meet either of them.

Instead, she stayed where she was and threw her shield to the ground, earning a startled gasp from the crowd. She wrapped her forearm hastily in the reins, tangling it tightly to compensate for her inexplicably weak grip, and tensed as her Sisters closed in.

At the last possible second she threw herself sideways in the saddle, slipping under Ciardi's blade as the latter passed by her from behind. This whistle of it slicing through the air was close enough to cause a shiver to run down Apheri's spine that had nothing to do with her sudden trembling.

The move left her hanging sideways from her mount's saddle, lupine legs clenched with all their considerable strength to keep herself off the ground, her injured arm gripping the tangled reins in a death-clasp.

Lierana realized what was happening too late. Seconds after Ciardi had passed on the left, she arrived on the right– the same side Apheri hung from. She brought her blade down, hoping to strike before Apheri, but was not nearly fast enough. Apheri swung her sword with a furious cry at the charging boar's legs. The razor-sharp blade bit deep – the beast's momentum doing most of the work for her – and sent the boar screaming and stumbling. Lierana was forced to abandon her blow in the futile hopes of keeping her seat.

Shrieking in pain the boar staggered away, each step making its wounds worse, until finally it stumbled and fell heavily, throwing Lierana from the saddle and into the muddy ground.

"No!" Ciardi shrieked as the crowd threw itself to its feet with a tumultuous cheer.

"One point to Apheri!" screamed the Arbiter, attempting to swallow her own excitement and remain unbiased. "The score is eight to seven! Apheri's team wins the second round!"

"NO!" Ciardi shrieked again.

The sound brought a weak smile to Apheri's lips as she let go of her mount's reins and toppled to the ground. She tried to lift herself to her feet again, but her arms shook at the effort and gave out. She rolled over onto her back and watched the sky blur in an increasingly dramatic fashion, until finally she closed her eyes and allowed herself to pass out.

xxx

Liam rolled his shoulders and shifted his weight uncomfortably.

"Everything all right?" asked the young, dark-haired nobleman behind the whole situation.

Liam met his curious gaze and looked away again shyly. He couldn't get used to camaraderie from the higher-born. Certainly there had always been a degree of friendship, or at least a token effort, made by those in power, but that was only because of his former position as the Captain of the Castletown Guard – a position he recognized he had been pushed into far too young and early in his career, specifically because those that put him there hoped he would be more malleable as a result than his predecessor had been. He recognized the tokens of friendship for what they were, returned the efforts with token acceptance, and continued to politely refuse to bend the rules for whoever was offering, much to everyone's consternation.

But it was different with Eldrick – at least since Aghanim had died and Link had disappeared. It had been Eldrick that spoke on Liam's behalf when others had sought to sully his reputation and keep him from revealing Aghanim's true nature. It had been Eldrick that allowed him to speak the truth to the people of Castletown, and had defended him from them when the truth cut deeper than they'd been ready for. And, though he would have thought it impossible, it had been Eldrick that had defended Link in the end, set right the lies that had been spread about the Hero. Despite everything that lay between the two, Eldrick had put that aside to do the right thing at the right moment. Noble in the truest sense of the word.

Eldrick was still peering at him expectantly and he shrugged nonchalantly. "Strange to be breaking in," he explained, braving the young man's intense gaze.

The Head of the House of Eldrick fixed him with a broad smile, bristling with charisma the way some men bristle with weaponry. "Nothing so intoxicating as irony," he said with a soft chuckle. "You break no oaths here, friend. It's a family, not a building or a city that you're sworn to serve. A Kingdom, not a Palace."

"Long live Queen Zelda," said Liam with a stiff nod.

"Long live Queen Zelda," returned Eldrick, clapping him on the shoulder with a strong hand. Seeing on the other man's honest face that the ethics of the mission continued to plague him, however, the young lord sighed. He squeezed Liam's shoulder until the latter looked up at him again. "Liam," he said seriously, "we are doing nothing wrong."

"We're stealing," Liam responded awkwardly. His eyes slipped nervously to the side. "From the Palace."

Eldrick appeared affronted. He shook the ex-Captain gently. "They stole from us," he insisted. "They have stolen the Golden Palace. Filled it with traitors. With Moblins. We are taking back the weapons we need to rout them."

Liam met his earnest gaze and nodded once, stronger in his resolve. "Okay," he said. "You're right."

"Of course I am," Eldrick responded with a disarming grin. He released Liam's shoulder and threw an impatient look up at the roof above them. The tiled stones that made up the Castletown sewers wove themselves in intricate patterns that would have been beautiful were they not lined with centuries' worth of grime and waste, but directly above the young men the pattern was broken by a flat square of stone that appeared far too utilitarian to be anything other than a trap door. "What's taking them?" Eldrick muttered.

"They're Sheikah," said Liam, as though that answered everything.

Eldrick, for his part, simply smiled back at him and tried not to hate him even more than he already did.

There are times, his father used to say, when a man has to put aside luxury and comfort and make do. Eldrick, for his part, had always assumed this meant that perhaps he would have to give up one of his favourite horses, or settle for a wife less attractive than his previous (and inevitable future) dalliances had been.

He had not thought it meant he would ever find himself crawling around filthy sewers with a ragged band of simpleton commoners and a useless old Sheikah for support. A man of his stature was meant to lead glorious armies, not a collection of unwashed rabble barely fit to lick his boots. There was hardly a man or woman among them that he would not have set the dogs on had they dared to approach him just days ago.

But his father's baritone still rumbled through his mind, echoed painfully in the sudden new hole in his heart. It cut through the disgust, through the arrogance, through the guilt at what his actions had wrought. These things, Eldrick now understood, were the luxuries his father had meant. These were the things he would have to set aside if he was to make do. If he was to do more than make do. He had cost his father his life already – he would not cost him his mission as well.

He turned so Liam could not see his face and closed his eyes against a sudden heat.

Grief, too, was a luxury.

"So," he said after the moment had passed and he was in control of his own expression again, "when all of this is over what awaits you? A handsome young man like you must have a pretty little something pining for him? If not, I'm sure they'll be beating down your door by the time we're through."

Liam blushed so brightly it was clear even in the dim light of the sewers. "No, no," he stammered quickly, displaying a disgusting degree of humility. "I don't…think there's anyone pining."

Eldrick's sharp mouth twisted wickedly. "Come now," he said, "a blush that red and you're telling me there's no one? That your mind didn't immediately jump to a specific pair of lips and a nice set of curves?"

Liam blushed deeper still and Eldrick hated him for the honesty of the emotion. "I…maybe," he admitted. "Yes. She's…there's this one girl, but I…I think I might have screwed it up." His expression turned forlorn. "When Aghanim had me, I…I didn't get the chance to explain. She's not in Castletown anymore, though," he pointed out. "I don't know where she is. She's probably…I probably won't get the chance to explain."

Eldrick made a derisive noise. "Liam, my friend, there is no pursuit so noble as the pursuit of a woman. When this is over you have my solemn vow that I will help you find your lady friend and I will personally vouch for you if she doesn't believe you."

Liam looked startled. "You…really?" he asked, hope brightening his eyes. "She…Marni's very taken with the nobility. She would believe you, I'm sure she would."

"Then consider it done!" said Eldrick firmly. "The least I can do, after all."

"Thank you, my lord," said Liam with genuine warmth. He leaned against the sewer wall and worked up the courage to shoot Eldrick a curious glance. "What about you?"

Eldrick's wicked grin turned positively devilish. "Nothing so specific as to have a name," he said lasciviously. "There are a few women at the Palace that I had my eye on before this whole thing blew up on us, I might pursue one or two of them for a while. Or perhaps not. To be honest, now that I'm thinking about it they all seem a bit boring. They're all brunettes, but so were my last few."

Liam appeared torn between incredulity and amusement. "Perhaps a blonde, then?" he suggested tentatively, unsure of how serious the young lord was being.

"I was thinking a red-head, actually," Eldrick answered without thinking, distracted by a sudden grinding sound from above them. He was saved from Liam's inevitably tedious response as the trap door in the roof was pulled back. When they looked up he met the tired green eyes of the useless old Shiekah.

"We're in," said Brayden. "Signal the others."

xxx

Chapter 23 (cont.)

When I come to, I make a noise that sounds kind of like: "urgllugheh?" when, in fact, what I mean to say is: "what happened?" I still hurt in my everywhere, so I know it's still the same day I remember it being before I woke up back in my blankets in my tent. The last thing I remember seeing is tusks the size of my arm, then the sky, then the ground. Then the sky, then the ground, then the sky, then the ground, then the sky, then a long stretch of ground, then nothing.

Just once I'd like to be able to follow the thought 'the last thing I remember is…' with a pleasant memory. Just once.

Hunter, luckily, is fluent in Link and understands what I mean without requiring me to clarify.

"Ciardi's mount totaled yours and sent you flying. You hit your head. Probably a few times. She tried to run you over, but I stopped her. Then Lierana hit me from behind and sent me flying. I hit everything but my head. Then Apheri literally cut the legs out from under Lierana's mount and dismounted Lierana and we won Round 2." I open my mouth to comment on this positive news, but I'm finally alert enough to pick up a strange tension around his eyes and mouth. I frown instead.

"You don't look happy," I note. "What else happened?"

He doesn't say anything for a moment, throwing a hard look back at the tent door before shaking his head and turning back to me. "Apheri lost consciousness for no conceivable reason and Lierana said: 'I guess she wasn't strong enough for all this excitement,' which basically earned her the universal hatred of everything in a fifty mile radius, given that she'd just lost to Apheri. Then, over all the booing, Anahti shouted: 'Blackwood Sap will do that to a person. Way to get dismounted by a woman dying of poison, by the way.' Everyone went kind of quiet, then Lierana turned this peculiarly pale shade of purple and I was sad you couldn't see it, because I know you like it when people's faces change colour." I nodded to acknowledge this fact, as Hunter barreled on. "Then Apheri held up this little white vial of what – I found out later – was the antidote to Blackwood Sap, which she had taken from Lierana's tent after watching Lierana take one of only three vials in existence of this Sap and run off towards our tent, where Apheri stopped before the combat started to pick up her gloves. Which Lierana apparently coated in Sap, which is apparently some kind of Dark World contact poison. Then everything got very loud and I had trouble picking out the details." He stops to allow all of this to sink in.

When it does, I sit up with a sharp groan, the implications unfolding unpleasantly in my mind. "Hunter, you're saying Lierana poisoned Apheri?"

"Yes," he says tersely.

I feel my stomach twist. "She cheated."

"Yes," he says again.

"Did they prove—?"

"The three vials are owned by Ciardi, Lierana and Apheri. Ciardi still had hers, and so did Apheri. Lierana tried to say she was being framed, that someone had taken it from her tent and Anahti was lying, but Anahti swore some kind of formal oath and cut her hand and everyone basically believed her. And what I really can't get over is that she knew that before it happened, and she just sat there and let it happen. When I asked her why she didn't say something earlier she just grinned at me – like this freaky, psycho grin – and said that that wouldn't have been any fun at all. To be punished, Lierana had to be allowed to cheat. To prove beyond the shadow of a doubt it was her, Lierana had to be allowed to do it."

"How long ago was this?" I ask hoarsely.

"Four hours since they confirmed she cheated. It's nearly seven."

I would ask him what they did about it, but I can tell from the stiffness in his face and the barely contained sneer twitching at the corner of his lips. I frown unhappily. "Hunter—."

"It's barbaric," he cuts me off with a scowl.

"Which is why we don't do it anymore," I respond sharply. "Should I judge the Sheikah by their history?"

"We're not talking history here, Link. We're talking right now, a hundred feet away from our tent."

"It's not—."

"They tied her to a wooden frame," he says, his voice too cold for him to be anything but deeply upset. "Ciardi let them. Didn't even try to stop them. And they were all smiling while they did it. The Arbiter took that knife – the one Ciardi stabbed you with. And she just started cutting. Nothing too deep, nothing fatal, but all of them bleeding. Her arms, her legs, her back and chest and stomach. And the crowd cheered every time the knife came down. Like this is a thing to be celebrated. Like this is exciting. Every now and then she walks over to check the wounds and make sure they're not closing up." His face is a little grey, his expression more disgusted than I've ever seen it. "It will probably take her all night to die." He meets my gaze and his blue-green eyes are dark with anger. "I understand violence, Link, and I understand the need for it, the instinct for it, I do. I understand hard rules, and harder punishments. But I don't – I can't – understand this."

I break his gaze and shake my head. "We don't do it anymore," I say again. "This is…the Dark World preying on them. If we were actually in the desert—."

"We're not."

I hesitate, then my shoulders sag. "I know," I say.

He's right. Even the Gerudo – my Gerudo, back home – recognize the Blood Challenges as barbaric. While the ritual doesn't violate the Covenant specifically, it sure as Hell violates just about every other oath and vow the Gerudo swear to each other. We have enough enemies without cutting each other to pieces over every single slight and insult. The fact of the matter is that at some point, long before I came along, the Gerudo realized they're better than this. But these women have forgotten that along with everything else.

When I look back at Hunter my face is hard, my resolve set. Game's over. No more messing around. "Where's Apheri?" I ask him.

"Sitting in the bleachers, last I saw her, watching Lierana die. She's not cheering, just watching. What are you doing?" he demands, alarmed as I get unsteadily to my feet.

"What I have to," I respond, grabbing my bow on the way out. He follows me reluctantly, obviously not wanting to observe any more of the gruesome spectacle than he has to.

"Which is what, exactly?" he asks, but I ignore the question.

The crowd has thinned out, I'm guessing, since the last time Hunter was out here. If the Arbiter knows what she's doing, and I assume she does, Hunter is correct and it will take Lierana a long time to bleed to death. Watching it happen gets boring once the violator gets tired of struggling and runs out of energy. I'm unsurprised to see Anahti still among the few stragglers, chatting with a group of women in the stands as though there isn't anything at all unusual about the day, and one of their sisters is not being slowly murdered fifty feet away. Apheri sits alone on the bottom bench, her eyes fixed on Lierana's form, her face unreadable.

Lierana stands as Hunter described, sagging against her bonds, tied to a large wooden X erected not far from the bleachers. Her normally white uniform is as red as Anahti's, soaked through with blood that still oozes from the shallow cuts – the smell of it, even from here, forces me to close my eyes and beat back the Beast; we're getting late in the day and it's getting stronger. Her breathing is laboured and rattles in her chest, but her eyes are open and at least semi-alert. Every now and then she finds the strength to throw a listless look around, searching, I'm sure, for Ciardi. The latter, angry over the damage Lierana's cheating has done to her reputation, is nowhere to be seen.

Yesterday I had thought Apheri's abandonment was complete when Ciardi chose Lierana as her second.

Today I can see I was wrong. Ciardi is capable of much worse than simply choosing another.

Despair and sorrow crosses Lierana's face – she no longer has the energy to mask her emotions – and she lets her head sag again as a rough fit of dry coughing shakes her. Something stirs in Apheri's expression – pity? Remorse? – and she gets to her feet and goes to speak to the Arbiter. She points at Lierana and says something I can't hear. The Arbiter looks recalcitrant, but Apheri insists and the green eventually gives in. She says something to one of her assistants, and the woman runs off and comes back with a drink for Lierana. Hunter and I exchange a surprised glance.

Apheri looks up at us as we rejoin her at her seat. "Oh," she says. "You're awake." She looks no worse for the wear, outside of the bandages on her shoulder, but her eyes are veiled and her face is stonier than usual. "We won."

"Hunter filled me in," I say. "Listen, I need to ask you something." She looks at me expectantly, and I point at Lierana. "If you could spare her this, would you?"

She blinks in surprise at the question, and immediately returns her gaze to Lierana. "She cheated," she says automatically. "She poisoned me rather than face me directly in combat. She tried to kill me. She violated the Challenge in the worst way possible."

"That's not what I asked you," I say, my voice suddenly harsh even to my own ears. The Beast is wearing away at my patience. This isn't helped by how little time I have to mess around. Hunter frowns at me, eyes rebuking my roughness under the circumstances. Apheri just narrows her eyes at Lierana's suffering form. I repeat my question: "would you spare her this?"

"I can't. It's a pointless question."

"Answer it," I snap, and there's no question that it's a command. "Truthfully."

She tightens her jaw for a moment, her eyes distant, but she has no choice. "We were friends, once," she says finally, heavily. "Before the Dark World changed us all. Whatever she's done since, I would spare her this."

I turn without acknowledging her response and approach Lierana. Anahti straightens in the stands when she sees me move and says something to one of the wolves near her. The canine wags its tail once in acknowledgement and leaves the bleachers, no doubt to spread the word that something's happening. I'll have a crowd again before I'm through with Lierana, but I couldn't care less.

For once, this isn't about the Challenge.

I stop ten feet from her – the closest I trust myself; the scent of blood is overpowering – and study her for a long moment. "Lierana," I say. She doesn't respond. The Arbiter, noting the bow in my hands, tries to move over to me, but she's intercepted by Anahti, who, judging by what Hunter told me, is looking forward to whatever comes next. I ignore them both. "Lierana," I bark, louder, harder.

She struggles to muster the energy to raise her head, but she does it. "What?" she demands, her voice hoarse and weak. "Come…to gloat?"

For a moment, I debate the wisdom of this. I have no reason to believe that she's going to accept the truth of who and what I am just because she's lost her honour, her dignity, whatever respect she once enjoyed, and a pint or two of blood. But she needs to if I'm going to be able to help her.

I'm not Ciardi. And I'm not Ganondorf.

I have to try.

"Look at me," I say. She scoffs and starts to let her head drop, but I move forward before she can – despite the hungry growling of the Beast. It takes everything I have to beat it back; I can't afford to let it interfere, not now – and grab her chin firmly, forcing her face up to look at me. She tries to avoid my gaze, but she's not strong enough to fight it. Her golden eyes finally settle on my own icy ones and she freezes, like a startled rabbit, like so many Gerudo before her have.

You can tell a lot about a person by their eyes – or at least, I can. In Lierana's I see her immediate, considerable pain, and a surprising amount of guilt. I see fear and I see anger and I see a resolve I would expect in any true Gerudo to face her death anyway, shameful and honourless though it is. I see a sense of entitlement out of place among my mother's people, coupled with a more familiar pride and arrogance. But I also see scars. Scars from living under Ganondorf. Scars from serving him so closely. Scars from the Dark World and surviving it for decades by whatever means necessary. These things have shaped her into what she is and it's nearly impossible to see what she was beneath them; to see what lies at her core. There's a glimpse, maybe; a hint of a woman brighter and stronger than this, but nothing more than that. It's been too long, the scars too deep.

Ordinarily, it wouldn't be enough, but coupled with Apheri's confession that she would spare her if she could….

"Lierana," I say again, putting as much authority and command into my voice as I can muster. She stirs, her eyes focusing on something in mine that only she can see. "Seeker of the Desert, will you swear your life to me, the Son of the Wind?"

A startled hush falls over the growing crowd behind me. All conversation, all chatter stops – half the newcomers freeze, mid-step, unable to believe that they just heard what they did. All eyes are on me, intense, incredulous. Apheri and Hunter both stare at me, as startled as the rest.

Lierana struggles for a moment in my grip. The familiar words speak to something buried deep insider her, I can see it. They stir whatever piece of the old her still exists in there. "What?" she manages. "I don't…."

"Seeker of the Desert," I repeat insistently, "will you swear your life to me, the Son of the Wind?"

In a way, the hundreds of cuts, the bruises from the day, are a blessing. She's too tired to fall back on her old, misplaced loyalties. Too close to death to allow pride or folly to deny whatever it is she sees in my eyes. She recognizes her choice, understands what she needs to do. She straightens stiffly, pulls her chin from my hand to hold her head up under her own power. She holds my gaze, confused and frightened and just a little hopeful. Behind me, gathered crowd holds its collective breath.

"I will," she says at last. Her voice is hoarse, the words barely a croak, but the wind carries them to the others. The Gerudo behind me sink slowly into their seats, faces dumbfounded.

"Seeker of the Wind," I continue, "will you swear your spirit to me, the Son of the Wind?"

"I will," she says again, struggling to draw the breath she needs for the words.

"Seeker of the Sands, will you swear your sons to me, the Son of the Wind?"

"I will," she says, then, louder. "I will!"

"Seeker of the Sun, will you stand forever guard over these lands, and bow to none but me, the Son of the Wind?"

"I will."

I raise my voice for the benefit of those gathered, though it's entirely unnecessary. But for the low moan of the permanent storm surrounding us, the camp is silent, stunned by the incomprehensibility of what they're seeing. "Then I accept your oaths, on behalf of the Goddess in the Sands. As the Son of the Wind, I name you Geru'do. Now bow, and seal the covenant."

With a shuddering breath, Lierana drops her head to me, the closest approximation of a bow she can manage against her bonds.

It is more than good enough for me.

I pull an arrow from my quiver and nock it to the bow, aiming it straight at her heart. "You have violated the terms of the Blood Challenge," I tell her. "You have betrayed your Sisters for the sake of your damnable pride, and that is unforgivable." She flinches at my words, grief and remorse written all over her pain-filled face. My expression softens. "But your oaths are renewed and the Wind will welcome her Daughter regardless. Stand, Lierana. Stand and face your death as a Geru'do."

Lierana draws in a shuddering breath and strains weakly against the ropes binding her. It takes her two tries, but she gets her head back up and straightens against the wooden frame.

"Lierana!" I hear Apheri call from behind me. Lierana's breaks my gaze at last, and her eyes wander to the wolf-legged Gerudo. Something unnamed passes between them and I loose my arrow. It slices through her heart – a quick, clean kill – and she does not break the gaze of the Sister she betrayed mere hours ago until her eyes flutter up into her head and she sags with a final gasp against her bonds.

I turn away from her body, struggling with too many emotions to name and none of them positive. The Beast paces restlessly in my chest, fanning the flames eagerly, raking its claws across my heart. The Gerudo are staring at me with uniformly wide eyes. "She remembered, at the end, who she was," I tell them coldly. "She died a Gerudo's death and I'll kill anyone who says otherwise from this point forward."

They believe me. To a woman, they believe me.

"She violated the Blood Challenge," says the Arbiter, a crazed, off-kilter look in her eyes. She has obviously settled on addressing the less impossible aspect of what just played out, which is the possibility that I might have violated the Challenge myself – easier to deal with than the possibility that a King of the Gerudo might actually be blonde. "You can't just—."

"It's my Challenge," I interrupt her flatly. "Her life was mine to take."

"You know the Covenant," Anahti says before the Arbiter can argue further. There is a sort of disbelieving belief in her face that I am all too familiar with. "You actually know the Covenant."

"I am the Covenant," I correct her, then turn to the still-gaping crowd. "Someone go get your fearless leader. This ends tonight."

xxx

"This is a bad idea, Link."

"All of my ideas are bad ideas."

"Granted," Hunter says, "but this one is particularly bad. You're beat up, Apheri's recently been poisoned, and we've got less than an hour before the sun goes down and you turn ten times more insane than you've been all day, which, for the record, is pretty freaking insane."

"The Sheikah has a point," Apheri notes uneasily. "The Arbiter would let us wait a day under the circumstances. Lierana's cheating threw off the whole schedule."

"I've already talked to the Arbiter," I respond shortly. "If we get too close to sun down she'll call the whole thing so I can go stuff myself into that stupid bag for yet another night. But it's not going to take that long. This fight will be over before that point no matter what happens, so it's moot. Either I'm dead, or I'm a rabbit, but we'll know which before the sun goes down."

"And the multitude of injuries we have all sustained and the fact that we could all use a good night's sleep before we jump into life or death combat with a Makani?" Hunter demands sourly.

I frown and loosen the Master Sword in its sheath with useless, nervous energy. "It's not just a good night's sleep for me," I say. "I'll heal in full."

"And that would definitely be bad," Hunter agrees in that tone that means he's not agreeing at all.

"Yes," I reply. "It wouldn't be fair. You're supposed to do each round of the Challenge with whatever wounds you sustained in the last round. At the very least I'd have to let Ciardi stab me again – that's an official wound – but the fact that I got to have the rest of it healed up? It would call into question the whole Challenge. It would sully our victory and give Ciardi grounds to dispute it."

"Except she'll be dead if we win," Hunter points out.

"But the others won't be," I tell him. "Someone could take it up on her behalf, and I'll have lost whatever ground I gained with these people. How you fight is just as important as winning or losing in a Blood Challenge."

"No," Hunter corrects me, "I'm pretty sure winning and therefore living is more important than everything else."

"Link's right," Apheri says. "The win doesn't count for anything if it's not won fairly."

"You think that," Hunter says in an exasperated tone that means he's giving up, "because you're a Gerudo, and therefore as crazy as he is. When winning means living and losing means dying, everything else becomes sort of relative."

"You think that," Apheri responds, annoyed, "because you're a Sheikah. And therefore as short-sighted and hypocritical as the rest of your people."

"Hypo—!" starts Hunter.

"Same team, guys," I cut him off. "We're on the same team here."

"I didn't even want to be on the team," Hunter says mournfully. "You volunteered me for it."

"And as a result you have stayed alive for forty-eight hours longer than you would have otherwise."

"They wouldn't have killed me," he points out dully. "They would have put me in a nice warm crystal where I could just sleep forever, completely free of any Gerudo entanglements."

"You can thank me later," I say generously. "Now shut up, the Arbiter's talking."

"The final round of the Blood Challenge is Melee Combat, to the death," the Arbiter shouts. She's standing on the blood-stained patch of ground where Lierana had been tied a quarter of an hour ago. I'm given to understand that the body's been wrapped and will be taken out with the next patrol to somewhere a little dryer than here for the standard cremation – an honour she would not have been afforded had I not granted her a Gerudo's death. I didn't ask for them to give her this, but they did it anyway. Probably a good sign. "The Challengers are tied at one win each. No points will be awarded this round, no restrictions placed on weapons except that they cannot be magical – last team breathing wins. Challengers, take your places."

"You sure about taking Nobernal alone?" Hunter asks for the thousandth time since we laid out our strategy.

"If you are asking me whether I want to do it," I tell him as we take up our spots, "the answer is a resounding no. If you are asking me whether I think it's our best shot, the answer is yes. Just…kill Ciardi quickly and come back me up."

"I still don't think it's a good idea," Apheri says with a tight frown.

"That's because you don't understand the difference between when I'm being King, and when I'm being the Hero of Time yet," I tell her. "Don't worry. You'll learn the distinction soon enough."

"The fact that he's a Triforce Carrier buys him some time," Hunter says, reminding himself along with her. "Nobernal needs to get through a lot of ancient, magical mumbo jumbo to really kill him, but I don't think it'll take her that long. We just need to be quick. It's two on one, we've got better odds."

"Challengers, draw your weapons!"

As badly as I want to draw the Master Sword right now, I'm pretty sure it's basically made entirely of magic and would violate the rules. I pull a scimitar from my waist and tighten my grip on my shield, forcing myself to lock eye (sockets) with Nobernal across the arena.

Her face is awash in hatred and eagerness, and I don't think I have to worry about her getting distracted trying to kill Hunter or Apheri. But from far too close to the surface, both the Beast and the rabbit look back at her, remembers the taste of the last Makani I fought, remembers the feeling of its claws around my throat. The Beast returns her look tenfold, the Rabbit sets my heart pounding.

This is not going to be fun.

"And…begin!" cries the Arbiter.

Ciardi, Hunter and Apheri do the sensible thing and start purposefully, but slowly toward each other, taking the time to size up their opponent(s) and the situation as a whole. Nobernal decides that sensibility is overrated and throws herself through the air and at me with such blinding speed I barely have time to jump to the side. The sword in her hand slices through the air far too close to me for comfort, and she's already spinning around to attack me again before I'm even done dodging.

I drag my shield up to take the hit, and the next three rapid-fire blows after that, back-peddling the entire time. My arm is numb, my shoulder tingles unpleasantly, and I suspect the whole apparatus is on the verge of breaking.

Farore! She's not even leaving me time to counter.

The Rabbit lurches up into my chest and throat and my resolve wavers dangerously. I can see Nobernal's face over my shield – she's in a frenzy, practically wielding her blade like cudgel, just trying to beat me into the ground with it. There's no finesse, no art. It's all just mindless pounding. Her face is a mask of rage and hatred and grief; beauty incarnate, sure, but tortured and twisted and contorted into something else entirely. It's like looking your own death in the face and realizing it hates you more than anything else in the world.

I feel a tremble start in my arms having nothing to do with the pounding I'm taking and my sword hand starts to shake. Nobernal brings her sword up again and I start to fall over the edge, into panic. I'm ready to break, ready to run for it. I tense my muscles, almost turn to bolt.

But a great howl tears itself loose from the crowd. They are once again united in one voice, no longer discordant. They sing out, whether wolf or woman, and the song is anger and hunger and loss. It's bitter and hard and painful, but they sing it anyway, and the sound of it ilicits an echoing howl from within my chest. The Beast breaks through, tramples the rabbit, and instead of turning, I leap.

Nobernal brings her sword down, and I rise up to meet it. I take the blow on my shield – as hard, as bone-shattering as the rest of them – but with a speed that is not my own I bring my scimitar around to counter. The blade bites, but doesn't go deep, despite the power behind the swing. Beneath her skin the flesh is black, but I haven't got time to notice more than that before I'm spinning away from her, putting distance between us as I snarl inwardly at myself.

No! I snap. Go away! I don't need you!

The women are still howling and the Beast is still answering them. Nobernal's taloned hand is on the wound I've just given her. Her face is a mask of surprise and, unexpectedly, fear. The sight of the emotion whips the Beast into a frenzy and it's all I can do to stop myself from lunging after her again.

Nobernal turns to face me, chest heaving, face like a distorted reflection in a twisted mirror. The fear in her face crystallizes, hardens. It turns into desperation. It flares into hatred. And all around its edges I can see confusion, anger, and a strange loneliness so deep I'll never be able to understand it, except to say that I've seen it before, in Anduriel's milky eyes.

Nobernal throws her weapon to the side and spreads her taloned hands wide, snaps her wings open, and screams at me and the sky and the universe.

The sound of it silences the women at last – even the other Blood Challengers, locked in mortal combat with each other, turn to look. They stare at Nobernal and the scent of fear worms its greedy way into the brittle quiet. Nobernal's scream dies off and she turns to look at me again, nostrils flared, expression one of primal fury, of absolute rage.

The sudden silence of these Gerudo is worse than all their howling before it combined.

I think of Lierana, as warped and twisted as Nobernal by this vile reflection of Ganon's heart. A woman ruined by her King's greed, destroyed for the sake of his pride. A life wasted on ashes and dust, by a man too weak to build, only willing to take.

I think of Rue and Nabooru, of everything they've seen in their lives. Of everything they've been put through at the hands of Ganondorf and his followers. Of everything they endured at the hands of a coward too small and greedy on the inside to live up to his end of the Covenant.

Despite myself, I think of my mother. Proud, strong Natalia. Who believed in the Covenant above all else. Who served Ganon more loyally than any other, no matter what he had done, because she had sworn to do so. Who, in the end, was destroyed by him because the Wind sent another to take his place and she was its harbinger.

I can smell them all now. I can smell their fear, their disgust. I can smell their hope and their anticipation. They're waiting for something, some cue. To bow down and submit once more, or to rise up and fight it. To tear the silence to shreds and any that would stop them along with it.

They're waiting for a sign…and I'm it.

Into the silence that shouldn't exist, into the silence that has no right to be here, I scream back. Echo Nobernal's rage with my own. I loose the Beast with my voice, I loose the Wind. All around me the Mire answers the call, and then, so do the Gerudo.

My Gerudo.

Nobernal twitches at the noise, then snarls and leaps into the air, talons out and ready as she dives toward me.

The Arbiter is screaming something at me I can't hear over the din, but I don't need to. Hunter and I discussed this possibility as part of our strategy and confirmed the rules with the Arbiter beforehand.

Nobernal's claws count as magical weapons. If she tries to use them, I'm allowed to defend myself in kind.

I've got the Master Sword out before my scimitar hits the ground and I have just enough time to see the horror and untempered fear in Nobernal's face through the blue flame before she lands. She tries, too late, to correct her trajectory, and the ancient blade cuts through her like butter.

She screams again, but it's a very different scream this time. She grabs the blade in her hands and tears it out of her chest, then sends it, and me, flying. I slam hard into the bleachers, but barely have time to wave the stars away from vision before the women around me are pulling me to my feet again. Below us, Nobernal has not stopped screaming.
The Master Sword's fire is still burning her, even though the weapon's in my hand. Bright blue flames lick at her from the wound, catching and burning and covering her as she screams and beats futilely at them.

"No!" she's shrieking. "No! Stop! Stop talking, stop! I won't look! I won't! Stop!"

Everyone's eyes are on the spectacle, even Hunter, Apheri and Ciardi. Ciardi's expression is nothing short of horrified as her trump card burns.

"Please!" Nobernal cries, and I realize with a start that she's sobbing. "Please stop! I don't want to see it! Don't do it! Don't! You'll let them out, don't!"

She falls to her knees and the fire's everywhere now. She raises her hands to her face, trying to cover her eyes. "No! Don't let them out!"

"Something's happening," says Anahti, one of the women who helped me up. "Her eyes…"

She's right. Something falls on the ground beneath the violated Avatar's face, and then something else. They're a sickly off-white colour, shiny, round and wet in the flickering blue light. I can't help but watch with morbid fascination as several more fall out. Nobernal's words lose coherence, but she doesn't stop sobbing and babbling, pressing her hands tighter over her face. Despite her efforts, the small orbs continue to come out, squeezing between her fingers and popping out from around the sides of her hands.

"Are those…eyes?" manages someone in a choked, horrified voice.

"Nayru, Farore and Din," I swear.

They are. There must be hundreds of them.

I look down at the Master's Sword, still burning grimly in my hand. "What did you do?" I demand of it, then start down the bleachers without waiting for an answer I know I'll never get.

Just as I reach the ground, Nobernal's frantic, incoherent pleading ends abruptly in a final pain-wracked, blood-curdling, heart-breaking scream. The sound of it hangs for a moment on the air after it ends, punctuated by the flickering and dying of the blue fire that's consumed her.

Her charred corpse – smaller than I would have expected, and infinitely more frail looking – falls forward, landing on the large pile of dismembered eyes.

I swallow thickly and turn to Ciardi, whose eyes are incredulous little beads of stone-cold hate. "Last call," I tell her. "Your second and third are both dead. Submit and end the Challenge."

Her face gives me her answer without her needing to say a word. She turns and charges at me.

"Leave her!" I snap as Hunter and Apheri move to follow her. "She's mine!"

But before Ciardi gets to me, there's a sound like wet meat tearing, and the pile of eyes – now an amorphous blob of eyes – lurches forward as Ciardi runs by it. It lashes out with a tentacle and grabs her ankle, sending her pitching face-first into the ground.

"Ciardi!" I gasp and immediately run toward her – to do what, I don't know.

She swears viciously and scrabbles in the dirt for her sword, but the thing lurches up – at least 20 feet high – and pulls her with it, weaponless.

I slam my sword back into its sheathe and tear my bow from my back. I've got an arrow nocked and loosed in half a second. It tears through the air and shreds an eyeball on its way through the oozy tentacle. The eyeball explodes with surprising force, and the thing makes a strange, squelching shriek as the tentacle around Ciardi is throw from its body to land in a hissing puddle on the ground. Hunter darts forward to catch the Gerudo woman, but he isn't fast enough. Before she can land, the thing lurches forward again, catching her in its mass. She barely has time to scream before she's consumed by it.

For a moment it does nothing, just stands there and undulates, the eyes within the greenish liquid twitching this way and that, looking at all of us, taking us all in. When it starts jerkily forward again, moving toward me, I start backing up. As it shifts it leaves behind a steaming, smoking skeleton, approximately Ciardi's size.

For a moment, the crowd stares at the skeleton, and then Apheri begins screaming. "To arms! All women to arms!" The crowd gives a start, jarred from the vacation that has been the Blood Challenge and reminded that they are, in fact, supposed to be some kind of army. "Elite to the King! Reds and Purples take up your bows! Fire at will!"

Nobody questions her. The crowd is on its feet instantly, women scrambling this way and that to find weapons and organizing themselves into their units. The Elite – a ragged combination of women and wolves – are around me as quickly and efficiently as though they were my own bodyguards from back home. If Rue were here she would offer them a curt nod of approval – practically a medal of honour coming from her.

Of course, I ignore them as stubbornly as I would if they were my own bodyguards from back home, and these particular Elite don't know any of my tricks.

Baptism by fire, ladies. Keep up or burn.

I bolt to the side and fire another arrow as I move, searching for a weak point. It sails into the vitreous mass and doesn't come out the other end, no doubt dissolved into nothing within. One of the Elite wolves darts too close to the mass, trying to find a short cut to catch up to me, and it lashes out with a blobby tentatcle and drags her, whining and snarling, into itself.

"Keep back!" I shout. "Don't get near it!" Several of the women are now armed with their bows and have begun firing at it. Most of the arrows do like my first one and have no appreciable effect, but at least two of them cause little explosions, sending acidic goo flying from the thing.

"The eyes," I say, realization dawning on me. I feel like an idiot.

First rule of Dungeoneering 101 – when in doubt, go for the eyes.

I skid to a stop and raise my bow, firing another arrow, this time aiming straight at a baby blue peering directly at me from the blob. As I'd hoped the eye explodes, expelling green fluid from the mass. A tentacle lashes out at me in retaliation and it's only the flying tackle of one of the elite that keeps it from catching me. "The eyes!" I cry as she hauls me to my feet and we start running again. "Aim for the eyes!"

"I think the puddles are still acidic!" the Arbiter yells.

"Confirmed!" Hunter calls back, tearing one of his boots off his feet before the smoking leather starts melting flesh. "Stay out of the puddles!"

"Keep moving!" I order them all sharply. "It has a harder time locking on!" As though to prove my point, one of the purples stops running in order to take aim with her bow, much as I did earlier, only there's no Elite handy nearby to save her. A tentacle lashes out and grabs her and she's gone before any of us can do anything about it.

More arrows start flying, and there are more than a few explosions from within the creature, sending us all dashing this way and that to avoid the resulting splashes. A couple women start screaming, not fast enough to avoid it.

"Purples!" Apheri snarls over the din. "Get the wounded out of here! Keep the battlefield clear!"

"Someone get explosives!" I hear Anahti call.

"Are you crazy?" Hunter demands shrilly, hurling several knives into the amorphous mass then rushing to avoid getting hit by the burst of acid. "You'll kill us all if you blow that thing up! It'll be everywhere!"

"If you'd prefer to let it keep picking us off one by one…" Anahti retorts.

We've taken out enough of its eyes now that it's about as mad as a partially congealed conglomerate of acid and eyes can be. Its shape shudders and twists, changing shape madly as the eyes search the frantically moving crowd for a target.

I see several of them stop moving abruptly, coming to rest on the same spot – a full-wolf struggling to drag one of her unconscious or dead sisters from the field, not moving fast enough to avoid the blob's gaze. It ripples near her and I feel a sudden, violent surge of rage that propels me forward before I quite know what I'm doing.

I wish I could say it's that good old Heroic instinct, but it's not.

That woman, wolf or not, is mine, and there's no way I'm letting that thing have her. I'm going to make it pay for thinking it can invade my territory, or threaten my power.

I arrive just as it stabs at her with a tentacle and I shove her roughly out of the way, nearly sending her into an acid puddle.

"Link!" Hunter cries in horror as the tentacle wraps around my waist and drags me toward it as jealously as I defended that wolf.

I maintain the presence of mind to scream "Nayru's love!" just before I'm pulled into the acidic slime.

The sounds from outside grow muffled and dull, the light gets dim and heavy. Outside the clear blue light of my shield I can see eyes floating peacefully past, spinning to look at me. I can hear a steady hissing that I know is the acid eating away at the shield, and once it's through that it'll start eating through me. I need to think but it's hard. We're too close to nightfall, my thoughts are frantic and haywire, my emotions a bubbling cauldron of rage and pain and pride. Each eye that looks at me sends a jolt of anger through me and makes me want to reach outside the shield to tear the offending orb to pieces.

I move to draw my sword, but no that won't work. Even if I managed to slice a couple eyes before the acid ate me away completely it wouldn't make a difference.

I could use my bow, but once the shield goes down it's not like I can fire it in the liquid.

I could use Din's fire but that'll just burn the acid and I'll choke to death on what will no doubt be poisonous smoke – to say nothing of the damage I would cause to the people outside when a dozen eyes all burst at once.

I snarl as the acid eats a whole in my shield and begins to pour in, splashing on my shoulder and searing the skin. I throw myself against the side of the shield as it starts unraveling rapidly.

The imminent approach of my death sets the Beast to snarling savagely, but it allows me to focus at last.

One chance.

I have one chance.

I drive my hand into my quiver and rip out an arrow. I don't even bother nocking it, I just close my eyes and unleash its magic as Nayru's love gives out at last and the acid rushes in to take me.

xxx

A Brief Interlude

"Link!"

"No!" Apheri snarled. "Get him out of there!"

"It's too late!" Anahti responded, firing an arrow at the spot where he vanished anyway. "He's dead!"

"No he's not!" Hunter snapped, wracking his brain for a solution. "Not yet – he shielded himself! We have a few seconds, still!"

"To do what?" Apheri cried. "I'm open to ideas here, Sheikah!"

"Do we have any mages?" Hunter demanded. "Or magic items? Anything that could stop it or slow it down?"

"No! Our only mage was killed years ago, and we used up all our magic items just getting into the Sacred Realm!"

"Goddess dammit!" Hunter snarled. "We need to do something! Block it off or snare it or…or…freeze it!" This last was a triumphant shout as he pointed at the monster, which had begun to writhe violently, no doubt as a result of the sudden burst of icy blue light from within it. The motion of the liquid slowed, tentacles mid grab grew sluggish and stopped. "Blunt weapons!" Hunter cried, watching the creature literally freeze in its tracks. Frost appeared on its surface and it came to a complete stop. The eyes within trembled, but were unable to turn and move. "Smash it to pieces! Quick, before he suffocates!"

"Do as he says!" Apheri barked. "Go, go, go!"

The women responded immediately, picking up hammers, using the hilts of their swords, or smashing it with shields. A couple women descended on it with rocks, and one with a piece of wood torn from the bleachers. The full-wolves threw their own bodies at it, slamming into it over and over again with ferocious snarls and savage barks.

Those with no blunt weapons ran after the pieces that broke off, stomping on the eyes that came free, their "explosions" little more than puffs of air now that they were apart from the larger mass. It didn't take long for them to chip away enough of its base that it began to teeter dangerously. "Topple it!" Apheri cried. "All women to me! Topple it from this side! Go!"

As one they threw themselves at it, over and over, until with a thunderous groan, and a deafening crack, it fell ponderously backward, smashing the bleachers to splinters and shattering into a thousand pieces.

"Link!" Hunter called, darting forward while most of the women were still brushing the frozen acid from their ponytails before it could melt and become problematic. "Link, answer me! Where are you?"

"Hunt-t-ter," he heard a hoarse voice call weakly from near the centre of the field of icy rubble. "Hunter g-g-g-get away."

"Link!" Hunter gasped, feeling momentarily limp with relief. "Thank the Goddesses. I thought for sure you'd bought it that time." He clambered over the rubble to where his cousin was struggling to sit. Link sported a few bad looking burns and his lips were blue with the cold, but it was nothing a night in the bag wouldn't fix.

The thought, combined with the look on the Hero of Time's face, stopped Hunter mid-step.

Link's shaking was not entirely due to the cold. His expression oscillated between fear and rage and with each second that passed, the rage appeared to be winning. "Hunt-t-t-ter," he chattered desperately, pulling himself unsteadily to his feet on a nearby chunk of ice. "M-m-m-m-m-ove!"

Hunter looked up, past the towering hurricane that spun endlessly around the camp, and through the eye of the storm saw a sky too dark to contain a sun.

"G-g-g-g-g-go!" Link snarled, and lunged clumsily for him. For a moment his eyes appeared a sickly green instead of their usual brilliant blue. "G-g-g-GO!"

Knowing he had no other choice, Hunter turned and went.

"Apheri!" he screamed as he leapt over the rubble and scrambled away. "Apheri!" Behind him, Link started screaming.

"What's happening?" Apheri demanded. "Did you find him?"

"He's fine," Hunter said, grabbing her hand and pulling her away. "We have to go."

"What? Why—?" Before she could finish her question an unearthly howl tore free from the maw of the Hero of Time. Her face went pale as all the women froze in what they were doing and turned toward the sound.

The Beast rose from the ice and rubble, rage and hate and hunger etched in every line of his lupine silhouette. He surveyed the gathered Gerudo, then dropped to all fours, raised his face to the sky and howled again. This time, the Gerudo answered. The full-wolves were the first to start forward, leaping through the rubble eagerly. He howled again and the half-wolves started forward as well, answering his call. Apheri shuddered and started forward but Hunter grabbed her arm and wrenched her back. She turned and snarled at him, raised her hand as though to strike him, but he was faster. One sharp blow to the head and she went down like a pile of rocks. Wasting no time, he hooked his arms beneath her shoulders and started dragging her backwards as the rest of the women leapt forward.

"Sorry," he muttered as he searched the camp for a decent hiding place, "but he'd never forgive me if I let him eat you." His eyes fell on the small tent that had once hidden the crystal holding Neesha from close inspection. It had been splashed with acid, and though the crystal within appeared fine, the tent was a smoking ruin, only half of it still standing. Hunter cast an uneasy look over his shoulder at the gathering of wolves and started dragging Apheri toward it.

It would have to do.

It wasn't ideal, but nowhere was, and he hoped the burning acid smell would keep the Beast from sniffing them out.

He pulled Apheri in with him and lay her down against the non-burned section of tent, curling her up to keep her from being visible through the ruined half, then positioned himself behind the crystal and attempted to calm his breathing.

"It's a shame you weren't awake for this whole escapade," he told her quietly, peering around the edge of the crystal to watch the women and wolves gathering around Link. They were growling and barking at him, and he was growling and barking back. One of the full-wolves lunged at him and he caught her mid-air and ruthlessly slammed her into the ground. Another tried it and was similarly put down. The third took a chunk from his shoulder, but ultimately found herself thrown into the ground with a high-pitched whine and slinked to the back of the group with her tail between her legs. The Beast snarled at all of them, growling fiercely until they all reacted similarly. The full-wolves tucked their tails between their legs and lowered their heads. The half-women got to one knee and did the same. "A Blood Challenge, a Gerudo King being all…Gerudo-y, a giant acid monster made of eyes…this is the kind of BS you try to feed me all the time. Also, we kind of could have used you, so…congratulations for being all asleep and useless. Your timing is great, as always."

Their submission assured, the Beast raised its massive head to the sky once more and let loose a triumphant howl. His new pack joined him, voices twining eerily and sending shivers down Hunter's spine. They turned as one, ignoring the camp entirely, and ran toward the storm and the hunt beyond.

They disappeared into the rain, but still Hunter did not allow himself to relax, sweeping the squall with his eyes, searching for the shape of wolves in the night, listening for the howls that meant they were returning.

It wasn't until he saw something shudder and move in the dim light of the battlefield just beyond his hiding place that he turned his attention elsewhere. There were still Gerudo wounded, and it occurred to him that there was no one left behind to tend them. He wondered how strenuously they might object to first aid from a Sheikah, and he stepped out from behind the crystal.

Then he froze. The shape that had caught his eye wasn't quite right. She pulled herself shakily to her feet and lurched toward him unsteadily, the steps halting and clumsy, as though the legs no longer worked quite right. It wasn't until she passed through a pool of light thrown by a nearby brazier that he realized it wasn't a Gerudo.

Nobernal's charred corpse – one wing dragging limply on the ground behind her, throwing her off balance, the other completely burned away – was stumbling toward him, and despite all of his training, the sight of it froze him in place, like a startled cat.

When she was close enough for him to touch she stopped and raised her blackened hands in a strangely peaceful gesture. He realized, with a start, that a pair of the most beautiful eyes he'd ever seen were staring back out from her burnt face.

"Tell Anduriel," she rasped, the voice painful and hoarse, "that I am sorry. For what we did, and what we have become."

Still tensed and ready to attack or run, Hunter nodded uncertainly.

"Tell the Hero," Nobernal added, "thank you. For freeing me from the prison of my flesh." A violent shudder shook her frame, sending ash tumbling from her body. "I will set this right because it is within what power I have left. The rest is up to you."

She reached out with her hands and set them on Neesha's crystal.

"Wait!" said Hunter and reached out for her, unsure of what she was doing. But the next instant there was a sound, like thin ice breaking, and the crystal shattered violently, forcing Hunter to turn and duck or catch a face full of shards. When the sound of falling crystal had faded he risked a peek out from between his arms. An ancient looking skeleton lay on the ground where Nobernal's burnt corpse had stood. The bones were yellow with age, as though it had been lying there for some time, having died several ages ago. Hunter swallowed a sudden surge of sorrow for the pitiful creature that Nobernal had been reduced to, and turned to look at where Neesha's crystal had been.

Standing with a sleepy, bewildered expression on her face, stood the teenaged Gerudo, staring around with uncomprehending eyes and an expression of utmost confusion on her face.

Behind her Apheri groaned and sat up, one hand on her head. "What happened?" she demanded, then blinked when she saw Neesha, standing in a pile of broken crystal. A small frown turned the corners of her mouth downward as she studied her, obviously trying – and failing – to see the supposed Gerudo in this silly young thing with the pretty green dress, delicate curls, and lost expression.

Neesha's eyes fell on Hunter's, latching on to the only familiar thing in the area, and despite the grimness of the situation and the fact that every piece of him told him it was a bad idea, one side of his mouth twitched into an amused smile. "Nice dress," he said.

"Oh," said Apheri as the younger woman's face contorted with rage and she lunged for the Sheikah, "I see it now."