Why the fuck was a desert allowed to be cold?
Link let out another breath into his hands to try and warm himself, but it did almost nothing; his hands stopped shaking for only a few seconds.
"Come now, little Voe, it's only about eight more miles to Gerudo village," Urbosa said.
Link would have made many obscene hand gestures at her for that statement, but his hands were shaking too much.
They got to the top of a mountain so that they could oversee the desert, on top of which was a Bokoblin with dark blue skin.
The Bokoblin's head snapped to them and it screeched before charging. Link went to grab his Zora sword, but Urbosa held out her arm in front of him.
With her other hand, Urbosa outstretched her middle finger, index finger, and thumb, waited for the Bokoblin to get just a little bit closer, and then jerked her wrist up. In response, a bolt of green lightning crashed down onto the Bokoblin, all but turning the beast to a pile of ash.
'There isn't even a cloud in the sky,' Link signed.
Before Urbosa could respond, a massive crack of thunder stopped her. They looked out upon the desert and saw the figure of Vah Naboris stomping against the sand.
Vah Naboris took the form of a camel, with long segmented legs that kicked up a large sand storm around it, which was occasionally lit up by the same green lightning Urbosa had just called down.
"There she is," Urbosa sighed. "We need a safe way for both of us to get down to the dunes, then it's not far to Gerudo Town. Any idea—Whoa!"
Link moved between Urbosa's legs and brought her up on his shoulders, which was impressive considering she was basically twice his height. He handed her his glider and smirked at her. It was a mischievous smirk that gave her bad vibes, but before she could tell him to hold for just a second, he sprinted forward and jumped off of the cliff face.
Urbosa pulled open the glider and it took them about ten minutes to get their feet into the dust, but they managed to cover a mile, maybe two in that time.
The Gerudo queen would be lying if she said she didn't take the opportunity to squeeze Link's head between her thighs, just a little bit.
Link appreciated being out of the cold of the Gerudo Highlands immensely, but going from one extreme to another was a bit jarring.
After about four more miles, the sun was starting to get to him. Objects would blur or warp around him, and the sound of Vah Naboris's stomping was getting louder and louder, but the Divine beast wasn't getting any closer.
The Hylian let his sweat-soaked forehead rest against a stone pillar and closed his eyes for just a few seconds. He knew Urbosa was calling to him but he couldn't hear her.
When he opened up his eyes once more, he was no longer in the sands of the Gerudo desert. He was standing in a grand marble room, with droves of Hylians and Zora and other races mingling and feasting with one another.
On top of a stage, playing a fast and energetic song, were the Champions. At least, he thought they were, but their faces were shrouded in a blurry white glow. He could only really make out Mipha, who was playing a violin.
Suddenly, all the bodies parted to reveal a woman standing in the center of the ball room. She wore a pale white dress that reflected the moonlight shining in through a hole in the ceiling, with gold accents and a piece of royal blue cloth tied around her waist.
Link couldn't stop his feet as they forced him to move towards her. He took notice of her long blonde hair, braided behind her back, but her face, too, was all blurry and white. However, while he could at least make out a few details of the others, like Daruk's eyes or Revail's beak, with her he couldn't see anything.
Link took up the woman's left hand with his right and the other went to her waist, and he was forced to slow dance with her. Not much shook the Hylian warrior; he had stared down a Hinox without an ounce of fear, but staring into this woman's white void of a face was spooky, to say the least.
After a few minutes of slow dancing and getting progressively more freaked out, Link heard a crack, and two seconds after thousands of gallons of blood began to spray from the walls.
Link blinked once and suddenly the whole room was filled with crimson liquid. Anyone who had been standing was now floating face down. He was drowning, and no matter how much he flailed, he couldn't swim up.
A figure of a large, broad-shouldered man stared down at him before morphing into that of a boar and roaring up at the moon.
Link took a deep breath of air as he emerged from the pond he had been thrown into, shaking the water out of his hair like a wet dog.
"There is no time for dawdling; we're not far from the town now," Urbosa said.
'What happened?' Link signed, before coughing out some water.
"My guess is that the heat was messing with your head. So frail, you Hylians," Urbosa sighed.
Link just grumbled as he trudged out of the lake.
"As you may know, Gerudo Town is a female-only society. So in order to get you in, we will need a disguise for you," Urbosa explained.
'Aren't you their queen? Just let me in,' Link signed.
"I am no longer queen, at least not technically, so I can't get away with sneaking you in. Don't worry, little Voe; I have the perfect plan," Urbosa said with a smirk.
'This feels degrading,' Link signed.
"Oh come on, you look perfect," Urbosa said in a teasing tone.
Link once again fiddled with the cloth hanging in front of his face. In order to even have a hope of getting into Gerudo Town, he was forced to wear a blue and green gypsy outfit.
Gerudo Town itself was rather impressive, a small oasis in the vast, beige-colored nothingness. Houses of stone and hardened mud were surrounded by a large stone wall, and near the back was a towering and extravagant clay castle.
"Now that we're in, we must find Riju, the new Queen." Urbosa weaved through the bustling market place and simply walked up the Palace steps like she owned the place. Which, technically, she did, since she had never really stepped down as queen, more so she just got put to sleep.
Riju sat on a throne of gold, her legs dangling off the armrest and an amused expression on her face. Her red hair went down to the small of her back, although that wasn't that impressive considering she wasn't even five feet tall without her elegant gold headdress. It flowed freely for the most part but was braided just a little bit near the bottom.
Riju wore the same shade of blue lipstick as Urbosa. Her eyes were the color of emeralds, and she wore vast amounts of gold jewelry across her body.
"Tell me, your majesty, did you really think you could fool me by placing that Voe in the outfit of a hooker?" Riju chuckled.
'You said that this was normal attire!' Link angrily signed.
Ignoring Link, Urbosa stepped forward, "No, I didn't. I just needed to get him in front of you. Riju, this is Link, and he's here to help with Vah Naboris."
"We should throw this Voe from our great city with extreme prejudice!" the guard to Riju's right growled.
Riju raised her hand, and the guard fell back into her place. "And tell me what you plan to do with her once you gain control again?"
'We're gonna take her and point that big ass light cannon she has right at Hyrule castle,' Link signed.
"Hmm, in order to take down Vah Naboris, we will need Sandseals to move through the sandstorm around it, bomb arrows to take out its legs, and the Thunder helm to repel the lightning. We already have two of these things," Riju said.
"Hmm, excellent, bomb arrows are a bit tricky to aquire, but we can do it."
"Um, no, we have the bomb arrows."
"Oh? Then getting Sandseals is much easier."
"We uh….we also have Sandseals prepared."
Urbosa's eye twitched. "You lost the THUNDER HELM?"
"No, we didn't lose it! Master Kohga of the Yiga clan stole it from out under our noses. Killed three of my best women as he did," Riju explained.
"Ugh, gods help us. You will stay here and prepare everything we need; Link, we will venture to the Yiga domain and take back the Thunder helm," Urbosa groaned. She truly detested acknowledging Master Kohga's existence.
Link bent down and sprung back up again, but this time with a Gerudo glaive in hand, he bashed the end against the floor and grinned at her to signify that he was ready.
"Where did you even get that?"
Link held up his fist, and Urbosa immediately stopped and pulled her sword and shield. Link eyed the canyon up and down suspiciously as he grabbed the glaive he had stolen.
"So you feel it too?" Urbosa asked.
The two were silent for a bit, they stood back to back and walked around in a circle with their eyes slanted and constantly shifting.
"At nine o'clock!" Urbosa yelled suddenly.
Link thrust his glaive to his left and impaled a Yiga clan member that had appeared in a flash of red smoke. Urbosa spun on her toes and smacked a Yiga soldier in the head with her shield before taking his head clean off with her scimitar.
"Now above us!"
Two of the more brutish members of the Yiga clan poofed in and swung their massive katanas down on them, or at least tried to, seeing as Link split them from groin to gullet with one long upwards slash.
In the blink of an eye, about ten more Yiga clan members appeared and surrounded them, but Urbosa just chuckled and snapped her fingers, and they were all reduced to ash.
Link quickly went about looting the intact corpses, not finding much other than rupees and mighty bananas. It was a tad barbaric in Urbosa's opinion, but it had just always been a part of Link's hobo-ish ways.
"Now, as much as I like knocking around the Yiga clan, I do suggest we take a more quiet approach here," Urbosa said.
Link nodded and put away his glaive, only to replace it with a short sword.
"No, Link, not what I had in mind. Look, almost all of the Yiga clan members are holed up in that fort right there. We are heading into a beehive, and what's the fastest way to deal with a beehive?" Urbosa asked.
'Kill the Queen,' Link signed after he had sheathed his sword.
"Exactly. Master Kohga is their queen; if we kill him, the rest of the Yiga clan will be so scattered that they won't know what to do, and we can simply leave with the Thunder Helm," she explained.
Link hmphed and pouted for a few seconds before stepping to the side and motioning for her to lead the way.
As it turned out, sneaking around the Yiga hideout was incredibly easy. They might have been skilled fighters, but they were also notoriously uncoordinated and vaguely stupid. They had a strange love for bananas, to the point that if they saw one, they would drop everything they were doing in order to sit down and eat it. If two Yiga clan members set their sights on the same banana, they would end up fighting each other to the death for it.
Naturally, Urbosa and Link exploited this fact by tossing bananas out to where enough Yiga clan could see them, and then simply sneaking past the two or three that weren't fighting.
Eventually, they got out of the fort and into the sand of a large circular clearing in the canyon with a hole in the dead center.
Once again, another poof of red smoke signified a Yiga member appearing. He wore a tight red bodysuit that stretched thin over his rotund body, had long black hair that was stuck high into the air and was held there by a bunch of white hair ties, and the upside down sheikha symbol on his mask was crimson instead of red.
"I've been expecting you," he chuckled.
"Master Kohga! As queen of the Gerudos I hereby demand that you hand over the Thunder Helm," Urbosa yelled.
"Oh? But I stole it fair and square," Kohga flipped back and floated above the pit lazily.
"It's in your best interest to hand it over. The Thunder Helm is imperative to stopping Vah Naboris's rampage," Urbosa explained.
"Hmmm, I think not." Kohga summoned a massive metal spiked ball above his head, and it began to spin round and round.
Kohga grunted and raised his arms back as if he was gonna throw it, but an arrow struck the ball and dropped it down on Kohga's head.
He fell to his knees and landed on the edge of the circle. Before he could collect himself, a second arrow cut through the air and stabbed through his neck.
Link walked up and laid Master Kohga out with a simple right hook, and then bent down to snatch the Thunder Helm. After throwing it back to Urbosa, Link kicked Kohga down the pit without remorse. He then took the Sheikah Slate and produced a bomb from thin air that fell down with him.
They heard one splash after a minute, and a few seconds later another one was heard, giving Link the signal to set off the bomb.
"Do you think you killed him?" Urbosa sarcastically asked.
Link shrugged and looked down the hole again. He almost dropped another, but Urbosa smacked him in the shoulder.
The Thunder Helm was made of pure gold and was in the shape of a half-cylinder. It had six blue gems embedded in the front, and a golden band that held three golden lightning bolts going across the top.
Riju placed it over her head—it almost dropped down past her chin—and turned to them before striking a pose.
"How do I look?" she asked, her voice echoing slightly due to the helm over her head.
"Stunning. Now, we have to move as quickly as possible. Link, aim for Naboris' legs; that's the fastest way to take it down," Urbosa said.
Link nodded and tightened the strap on his quiver before grabbing the reins of the blue-furred sandseal. Urbosa grabbed the orange one, and Riju grabbed the sandseal with the pink fur.
It felt like in seconds they were upon Vah Naboris, skirting the edge of the sandstorm. The Divine beast's stomping was so loud that they could barely hear each other even when shouting.
"Stay close to me! If you stray for even ten seconds, you'll get zapped!" Riju shouted.
The three of them hooked right and their vision was instantly restricted, the sand was moving so fast that Naboris was barely visible anymore.
Suddenly, a green lightning bolt fell from the sky, aimed directly at Link. It got a couple feet too close for his liking but it eventually hit some unseen force and bounced off to the side.
Link tied the reigns around his waist, took up a duo bow from his back, and grabbed a bomb arrow.
"Keep going; we need a clear shot on Naboris!" Urbosa ordered.
Link had already drawn his bow back and fired. They heard two distinct explosions and a groan of metal, before the front of Vah Naboris's feet came crashing down in front of them.
They weaved between the beast's legs and Link loaded up another bomb arrow. Once he was able to see the Divine beast's hind legs, he pulled back the string and brought down the beast completely.
The sandstorm dispelled and a ramp shot down from the Divine beast. The Gerudos and Hylian roughly pulled their Sandseals to a stop and the champions unhooked from them.
"You must go quickly; she'll be awake soon!" Riju yelled before snapping her reins and taking off.
"...You ready?" Link asked.
As the two quite literally walked into the belly of the beast, Urbosa chuckled, "I didn't know you could still speak."
'I speak when I feel it's necessary. But it hurts my throat.'
Four terminals left.
"Let me ask you something: the old Link was brutal in his methods, but compared to you now, he was down right merciful. So what changed?"
'And you think I should know?'
Three terminals left.
'Maybe he didn't want you finding out and judging him, or being afraid of him. But not me. Look, you can call me a monster, a brute, a freak, a savage—'
Link grabbed his Zora sword and slashed a Moblin skull.
"—But that doesn't change the amount of people that I've saved, or the fact that I'm gonna put down whatever the hell is in Hyrule castle."
Two terminals left.
'I'm not the man I used to be, but I'll protect people like he did,' Link finished.
Urbosa smiled, "You're far more like him than you think."
Link smiled back before he slammed his Sheikah Slate against the last terminal, turning it from orange to a sapphire blue color.
Vah Naboris's torso was segmented into three rings capable of rotating, and as soon as that last terminal turned blue, the one they were standing on suddenly did a sharp one hundred and eighty degree turn, throwing him and Urbosa off of the platform they stood on.
Urbosa grabbed around his waist and Link pulled out the Paraglider and then landed safely in front of the master terminal.
Remembering what had happened with Waterblight, Link waited for a few seconds, but nothing came. Shrugging, he walked up to place the Sheikah Slate against the terminal, only to be blown back by a massive explosion of Malice.
Link skidded to a stop by digging his sword into the ground and growled at the forming Malice monster.
"Finally, I've been waiting a century for this rematch."
The beast began to take form, with long and raggedy red hair that almost covered its entire body. Its mask grew wider from the bottom and eventually split off in two, one part bigger than the other.
"Link, allow me to introduce you to the bastard creature that nearly killed me—"
The Blight formed a hooked sword in its right arm and a massive shield in its left before letting out an ear-shattering screech.
"Thunderblight Ganon."
Thunderblight screeched once more before vanishing from their view, reappearing a second later to swing his sword at them. Link and Urbosa blocked together, but they were just barely holding him back.
"Watch him; he's fast. The only reason he got one over on me is because he got me with a sneak attack," Urbosa growled.
Thunderblight pulled away and disappeared again, allowing the two Champions a moment of respite in order to stand back to back, much like they had in front of the Yiga hideout. Link managed to block a quick strike from the Blight and then it went for Urbosa. Thunderblight was clearly trying to wear them out because he kept pulling quick hit-and-run maneuvers on them.
It was only after fifteen strikes that Thunderblight finally realized that Urbosa had gone missing.
The Gerudo queen jumped out from her hiding spot and stabbed her scimitar through Thunderblight's back. With the beast stunned, Link slashed his chest open, even taking off some of its ratty hair.
Thunderblight pushed the both of them back, then flew up into the air and pointed its sword at the ground. About a dozen metal spikes came up from the ground, almost impaling them. Then, Thunderblight slammed its sword against its shield, and one by one, each spike was blown to bits with a lightning strike.
Noticing that they had dodged it, Thunderblight screeched again and called forth more of the metal spikes, but Link used the magnesis function on the Sheikah Slate to grab one and throw it at the Blight.
The lightning instead struck Thunderblight, and Link began to grab and throw the spikes into the air, Urbosa bouncing off of each one until she got on Thunderblight's level, and sliced straight through it.
The Malice dispelled in a grand manner of purple and black ribbons of poison, the Master terminal turned blue and the beast powered down and came to a complete halt again.
"Good riddance," Urbosa chuckled before noticing the confused expression on Link's face. "Are you ok? I expected you to be more excited."
'I'm fine, it's just that when I beat Waterblight, I got some of my memories back. But that didn't happen this time,' Link dejectedly signed.
"Hmm, that's unfortunate. I'm sure you'll get more of your memories back soon. Oh yes, I've been meaning to give this back to you for a while now," Urbosa fished around in a pouch on her hip before tossing him a small, light blue object.
Link peeked at the earring and was suddenly overcome with another massive headache, he dropped to his knees and looked up at Urbosa with a pained smile.
"You gave these to me the first time I visited Gerudo town," Link said.
"Yes, yes! Why did I give them to you?" Urbosa asked, trying her best to help him remember.
'I didn't have a disguise, so we had to pretend like I was your husband. You gave me the earrings so that people would know…' Link began to trail off and let his hands flop to his sides in embarrassment.
"They let people know that you were mine." Urbosa bent down and forced Link to look at her by tilting his head up with a single finger. "And don't you forget it."
With a light blush, Link stood up. 'We'll need to find someone to pilot Vah Naboris and fire the laser.'
"Don't worry; I'll put her into position and then get Riju ready to fire," Urbosa said, "You just need to keep moving through the Divine beasts as fast as you can."
Link groaned. 'I guess I'll be finding some winter gear then. Dear Hylia, I hate the cold.'