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Author's note: Slight mistake to report on my part – sorry. Last time I accidentally put summarised some of what was going to happen in the chapter and put in the 'Story so far'. It should be changed now, but I apologise and hope that it won't happen again. There was also some slight mistakes in the story (which I've now corrected) – don't worry, they were so minor that the odds are that you almost certainly didn't spot them.
Story so far: -
Tai, a gerudo, summoned the power of her god Nura and used the power to free Ganondorf Dragmire. Ganon captured Nura's power and used it to destroy Hyrule. However, Zelda and Link awake in the alternate dimension of Nurai, the land that Nura created, and also the homeland of the gerudos.
Tai also wakes up in Nurai, but discovers that Ganon who she always supposed to be her king, is actually not that role any more. He has not been for the last 17 years. Instead she decides to join a group of incredibly skilled warriors called the Xi, who may be able to tell her where the real gerudo king is. However, instead she finds that she no longer cares about the Gerudo king and just wants to learn about the Xi ways from her teacher Bren. While completing her second task she finds that for a brief moment that her body seems to control itself without her input.
Zelda is given the new name of Hail as a joke when she is forced to become a pirate. But gradually she finds that she can no longer remember her old life, and her old thoughts and emotions seem invalid. She takes over as the pirate captain and soon her name reverberates around the country as one to be feared. For Hail is the prophesised figure who will appear shortly before the Distile, the end of the world. This new 'Hail' seems to live up to the legacy that had been told of – not even a fleet fifty times bigger than hers can defeated her.
Link is awakened by a priest of the Nuran church who is called Nala. However, while Link is still confined to bed a Kalen (a mysterious group who all the Nuran people seem to hate) breaks in a gives Link a mysterious broach.
Nala reveals that Link's coming is also foretold of in the stories of the Distile. The only chance Link has to stop it is to find the six sages who are somewhere in Nura. Hoping to recruit more help Link and Nala travel to Nurai's capital Asreal where they are due to meet in the Glass Temple. Here Link meets Tai (although he does not know who she is) and the two become uneasy friends.
Nurai's history is revealed to Link in a meeting inside the Glass Temple, however half way through an earthquake (one of the prophesied signs of the Distile) strikes. While trying to evacuate the building a huge D'Ran knife that long ago had been used in sacrifices falls to the floor. To the horror of Nala and Tanya it falls on Link and kills him. Link finds himself in a place beyond death, where those that call themselves gods live. He learns here that his infinite chances have run out, and he has only one left. Here all knowledge is stored and much of it flows into his head. He learns of an old man called Rein who was struck by lightning while being attacked by a wolf, and also of Hail's plans to defend herself against Black.
When Link returns once again into the real world he has lost all his memories, although a witch manages to restore them through Nala at least far back as the two met. He continues to dream of Rein, who became after he was struck by the lightning, a wondering spirit who inhabited people's bodies until they died. He later realises that Rein's spirit is actually now inhabiting Tai. He manages to set it free, but instead it travels into Bren, one of its old companions. It will be impossible to ever split them again.
But there is worse, much worse coming. There is another earthquake and in this one Nurai's worse enemy – the Sadia – is set free. A mysterious metallic people, they can change their shape at will. Within a few seconds they have travelled several miles from what was their mountain prison to Asreal.
Link battles one, but is easily defeated. In the last moment before what would be his death he unconsciously calls on the power of the Triforce and the Sadia are banished back into their mountain prison.
Deciding that the time has come to rescue the sages the church organises two groups to scout out likely areas for where they may be imprisoned. Nala and a small army are lucky, and quickly manage to find and rescue Impa and Rauru. Link, Tai and Bren manage to defeat the temple guardian they are assigned to and rescue Saria and Darunia. Bren gives a potion to Link and Saria which puts them into a strange sleep. Here Link enters Saria's mind and regains his memories. But the temple guardian awakes later, and as a last revenge, he releases the Sadia again.
Hail is met by Ganondorf who tells her of her ultimate destiny – to first clean the Gerudo blood by killing all the man and then to kill Nura herself. She gathers a group of followers and quests around the countryside, killing any men can get hold of. Eventually she also collides with Nala's army. She kidnaps Impa and Rauru and among the others only Nala is able to escape.
Bren gives a potion to Link and Saria which puts them into a strange sleep. Here Link enters Saria's mind and manages to regain his memories. But the Sadia attack their camp, and in the ensuing battle Saria is killed. In the aftermath Link and Tai argue, and end up running away from Darunia and Bren. Later that night they accidentally bump into each other and meet up again.
The next morning Raymus, a priest from the Nuran church, finds Darunia and Bren. Meanwhile, Tai tells Link that his mother was a Gerudo, and encourages him to put on the broach given by the mysterious Kalen when he first woke up in Nurai. When he does so he finds that he can see before him a fortress that was previously invisible. The conclusion is obvious – this must be the long hidden Kalen fortress. As they walk towards it they are confronted by a Kalen named Kaze. He shows them the powers that the fortress holds – to shoot powerful light beams out at a Kalen's command. Accidentally Link says for the beams to stop, and they do.
Tai reveals why – Link is the Kalen's king.
Nineteen
For a second the two men stared at each other, both of their mouths open in shock. And then, slowly at first, Kaze kneeled down. The surprise was still evident in his face, but a new emotion was there too - respect.
"What do you command?" he asked.
"You sure about this?" Link asked Tai.
She nodded. "Excuse me if I don't do the kneeling thing too, but you're his - my king."
Link turned back to the Kalen. "There are two people trapped in a dungeon. They're called Sages. We're looking for them. If you have any way of finding them..."
"Easily," Kaze answered, "we have many informants. We have already heard of these Sages. If they are in the country, we can have them here within three days."
"That...that would be good," said Link, "and there's one other thing."
"Anything."
"There are two people in this forest," Tai explained, "An Xi Master and a Goron named Darunia. If you could have them escorted to here."
"They're at the edge of the forest - we have had two people watching them since a few hours ago. They can easily be got here."
"Wow... you are good," said an impressed Link.
The pleasure that swept over Kaze's face at the complement slightly took Link back.
"And could we have some rooms and new clothes please?" asked Tai, "We kind of... slept rough last night."
That order slightly surprised Link, wasn't Tai going a bit far?
Kaze noticed Link's look and hesitated.
"Anything I say can be taken as an order from Link," Tai reprimanded him.
"What? I mean... Yes, what she said," Link agreed, slightly flustered.
Kaze made a signal and the gate swung open. They went down a short corridor, and then through another gigantic door. Here they found themselves in the main entrance hall. It was still made out of stone, yet a gigantic wooden fire was burning in one corner, and so the place was comfortably warm. Two elegant marble steps led up to an upper balcony, and above that the ceiling sloped into a dome. Doors seemed to be everywhere, and through the few that were open he could see long corridors stretching back. Already there was around fifty Kalen lined up, all bowing down to them. No, to him. Embarrassed, Link quickly followed Kaze down one of the many hall.
Thankfully, inside the fortress everything could be seen without the broach, and in fact there was a lot to see. They were many portraits and sculptures to be seen everywhere, and from what Link knew of art (admittedly little) they seemed to be worthy of the rest of the building. Occasionally he would look into a room and see a picture that covered an entire wall, and seemed to be roughly the size of his old room. Even when they were that size they still seemed to be filled with detail. From the glimpses Link got he could tell that the place was enormous – more often that not doors simply led to yet another corridor.
Tai was even more surprised than Link by the place. She wasn't exactly sure what she had expected, but not this. A wreck perhaps, or a primitive hiding place. Deserted but for old behind the times men. She hadn't expected to children sometimes running past in the middle of play, and never, never had she expected anything on this scale. The Xi Headquarters did not have so expensive carpets or furniture as this. The Xi Headquarters had nothing like this. She was getting a quick lesson about the real strength of the Kalen.
Finally, Kaze stopped at two rooms and indicated the one on the left for Link and the other for Tai.
"If you want anything, just knock at that door," he told them, pointing to the relevant door across the hall before he left.
Link's room was enormous. On the left was a sink and huge wardrobe, which Link soon found out was full of several dozen clothes. Beyond a curtained arch was a square pool to bathe in, which unless he was mistaken seemed to be filled by some naturally hot water from a spring. A volcano or magic perhaps? Directly in front was a balcony and on his right was a huge king size bed. Stunned for a moment, he dropped the belt on which he hung his weapons and went over to the bed.
For a minute he lay on the enormous covers, trying to tell himself that all this was only temporary. It was just so different to what the orphaned Kokiri boy had been used to. For the majority of his life he had lived in a tiny tree house. He had had to look after himself, well apart from when he was helped by...
No. He couldn't think of her yet. It was still too painful. Lying on the bed didn't feel right any more, so he decided to go and change. A huge mirror showed exactly how dirty that his face was, so he quickly splashed some cold water onto it. The water woke and refreshed him and so he went back over to the wardrobe. To his surprise, most of them were more or less the right size, if too elegant to be feel right. He tried one on and just felt stupid, although the silk in the garment seemed to fit him better than anything he had previous worn. It was not too tight, yet not too loose, and seemed to let a slight refreshing breeze through so that he would never be too hot. After a minute of searching he eventually managed to find a relatively plain garment without the Kalen symbol on (Tai would give a fit otherwise) and he rapidly changed into it.
When he was finished he reattached his weapons belt. Somehow he didn't feel right without it, which was perhaps a worrying sign. Had he really become so used to being a warrior? He walked out to Tai's door and knocked on it. She called for him to wait and after a minute let him in. Her room was more or less the same as his, except it was smaller and slightly less grand. He noticed with a slight grin that it didn't contain a pool either.
"Being a king has some benefits," he remarked.
"Yeah, well being the friend of a King is better," she retorted. "You get most of the luxury, and none of the responsibility."
He smiled. "But you don't get to order people around..."
"If you dare order me..." she warned.
"You'll obey," he joked. "Come on, I want to see this fortress of mine."
She gave him a sharp glance. There was something behind that light–heartedness, something not quite right. She wasn't sure that he was finding it easy to change so suddenly from sleeping unprotected in the wild to owning a palace. Let alone the extra responsibilities the second gave.
Link knocked on the door that Kaze had pointed out, and was slightly disconcerted to find the Kalen appearing what seemed almost instantaneously. The efficiency of this place was almost unreal. Kaze was only too eager to take them on a tour, and soon the two of them began to travel over the castle. After a few minutes it seemed like an endless procession of rooms, wealth and servants waiting around every corner to prostrate themselves before him. Link lost count of the number staircases they climbed or the number of important rooms they were shown.
The one that he could relate to was the armoury, where he found himself suitably impressed. If the place had enough soldiers to go with the amount of swords that were stored here it could easily defend itself three times over. The library was similarly large, an unending storehouse of books, most of which looked ridiculously boring to Link. Who wanted to read 'A Study of the Natural Habitats of Foreign Aquatic Creatures' anyway? How long had it taken that lunatic to write twenty enormous volumes of "Theology and Philosophy : The History of Knowledge"?
It was just as they were leaving that their tour was interrupted by a seemingly star struck servant who couldn't take his eyes off Link. But his message was a reassuring one – Darunia, Bren and some other stranger had been found and already bought to the fortress.
"That was quick," remarked Link, and almost wished he hadn't when he saw the effect on the Kalen.
Strangely even with the place's massive size, within thirty seconds Kaze had managed to guide Link and Tai back to the entrance hall in time to see Bren, Darunia and Raymus strode in. However, there was a worried look on Darunia's face in particular.
"What's wrong?" Link asked.
"Someone..." Bren paused, as if afraid of the effect it might have, "someone has stolen Saria's body."
*-*
As far as the eye could see the crowds of people were coming. Driven on by sheer desperation they had marched for days without stopping, desperate to get to the border out of this seemingly doomed country. Now they had found it they were pouring over it in their thousands, knowing that their life in this country had finished. And almost half of them were men.
Unknown to these men one reason for their flight was watching them from above a nearby hill. Hail knew that she could not kill them all these people, and trying to attempt to cross into the next country and track them down would be worse. But she was not concerned. To her mind she had succeeded at her destiny. By combining with the double threats of the Sadia and the catastrophic weather she had driven nearly everybody in the land to absolute terror. The men were all fleeing like the disgrace they were.
With just her gaze she had converted hundreds of women to the cause and set them loose on the countryside. An army, her army, dedicated to cleansing the land. It was hard for some of them to leave the clean and easy lies of their former life and to embrace the death that was the only way. But as Hail had told them, for life to be there had to be death. Even the cutest herbivore survived on killing nature's greenery and in the same just way the predators survived on them. Death was the ultimate glory; the final paying back of what the land had given you. To give it to these men was almost too great a gift for them, but then again, they had taken so much from this place that it was time that they repaid the debts.
It was the non Gerudo men who had first tried to tame this land and thus to steal the heart from it. They had turned the church into a giant bureaucracy, the Xi into a decaying set of guards and the fierce seas into one mainly for pleasant ships and merchants.
At least they had been since she had turned up. She had already managed to virtually conquer the seas around Nurai and no civilian would dream of touching. None of the other pirates survived and hardly any island colony. She had shown the church to be a powerless wreck, and along with the Sadia she was rapidly depleting the Xi forces.
Yes, her job had been done. The men were going and gone and her disciples could finish any others off. But if her first job had been completed then it only meant that she would have to turn her focus to her second. The second was going to be slightly more complicated. For days she had thought over Ganondorf and what he had said. She had a huge hint in her mind now that she needed to find him again. Everything seemed to lead back to him.
But where would she find him now? She had already knew that the island he had been on was deserted, so where would he go next? In the end she decided to try another lead and she went to interview the prisoners again. She had not enjoyed it that much – the look the old women gave always shook her and she felt weak for not having already killed the man. At her first demanded question ("Do you know of a tall man with greenish skin?") she had seen recognition in their eyes. She hadn't even had to encourage them any further, for the ridiculous (and yet too familiar) man had blurted out that the thought that "Link had defeated Ganon"?
From then they had refused to say any more, but what they had said had been enough. Link – the boy in green who had been in every dream in every night. Surely they must be the same person. Ordinarily of course finding the right 'boy with green clothes' would be next to impossible without more help, but she was already remembering a report of an incident in the capital Asreal. If she had not been so determined to ignore the dreams she would have realised the connection earlier. The tale spoke of a strange boy dressed in green who had been seen actually assisting a Xi a week or two ago in Asreal. Considering the Xi's stubborn pride that was no small thing. And then hadn't her same spies reported that he had been killed in the first earthquake in Asreal later?
Maybe he had survived after all, or maybe the death had been faked so that the Xi could cover him up. Whatever – if there was one place he would be with now, it was with the Xi. He was more than likely in their base now. Except she knew that their traditional Xi Mountain had been nearly abandoned with only a small force situated there. Where would the Xi run to from there?
Except there someone else who could find the Xi for her. The Sadia. They hated the Xi more than anything else in existence (well, maybe that was apart from the Kalen if the histories were true). The Sadia would chase them until they had killed every last one of the church's annoying force. Which suddenly made her task an awful lot easier.
"Regi," she said quietly to the woman on her right, "get the prisoners and four horses. Tell them that we're handing them back over, but that they'd better remain quite and assist us."
The woman nodded. Hail wished she had found her earlier; she was so much more useful than Tarn.
"Oh... and don't let the others know," Hail grimaced. She didn't like this part. "Tonight we leave to follow the Sadia."
Regi stared at her in amazement, her face half full with terror.
Hail just smiled. "Don't worry, they won't hurt us. And it won't be as hard as you think to follow them. We'll just follow the trail of destruction."
*-*
For over a thousand years the mountain had stood as an impenetrable fortress. Only once before had a group even got close to conquering it. And that had cost the Kalen not only the war, but very nearly their existence. It was the stuff of legend, catacombed by hundreds of tunnels and dungeons, all of which contained more magic than every other place in the kingdom put together. At the top of it was the 'astronomy building', really the oldest man-made structure in the country. Some even said that this was where the ancient prophecies had been collected.
Even the Sadia had so far never been able to get into the heart of the place, always imprisoned first by the long ago heroes. To them, like many people, it was the ultimate symbol of the Xi's strength. Some even said that it supplied the Xi with their strength.
And so the Sadia had learned to absolutely hate the place. It was their dream to destroy it, to crush every last piece of it into dust. And now they finally had the chance to do just that. Their was perhaps twelve Xis left in the place. There were five hundred Sadia attacking it.
Wave after wave of them flew at the building, their great weapons smashing the place into pieces. Huge floods of fire attacked them, lightning, hail and whatever other weapons the Xi's power could muster. The Sadia did not halt; to halt was to be weak. If a Sadia was destroyed when he could have dodged out of the way; so what? There was ten waiting to take his place.
Finally the great rock hulk that had surrounded and protected the Xi was destroyed. The shell was gone; the inside was helplessly exposed. Together the Xi tore down the corridors and through the chambers, each longing to find an Xi to kill themselves.
Twenty of them were lucky, and attacked with such force that the Xi left could do almost nothing to protect themselves. The Sadia swung out their swords, and never before had they fought so viciously or so recklessly. For three minutes one Xi Master and his apprentice managed to hold back a swarm, their swords never stopping as they cut through the air. Parry, attack, defend. Parry and then attack. Lose a sword and continue fighting with bare hands. Not to save anything, but for dignity. The Xi would not go down undefended.
A miracle could have saved them maybe. A fierce battalion of supernatural warriors with powers undreamed of. Such a thing Nura could have done, in the same way perhaps as she had long ago created the Sadia as a test. Probably she had not expected the test to be so successful. But there was nothing she could do now, nothing as long as she was trapped in Ganondorf's sceptre. She had paid a terrible price for mistaken trust, and ironically the one who had been guilt was now part of the Xi herself.
Such ironies of life were lost on that hopelessly resigned Xi Master and his partner. To the old pupil the man gave a nod, a simple way of telling her that her training was complete. She did not deserve to go to the grave without at least that honour. The gratitude on her face lasted to her death, an event which would happen in a few minutes. But to the two of them working together it was an eternity, a moment when finally all life's luggage could be forgotten. They had chosen their form of life, and now they were living it at its highest.
At last the Sadia achieved what they had came for and the blood of the Xi ran until it was dry. Steadily Nurai's worst foe began to destroy the rest of the building. With their bare hands if necessary they scraped away at the rock until it no longer remained. Twelve hours later they left, and true to their word nothing remained but a collection of loose stone behind them. To a casual onlooker it seemed like a cairn for the Xi and for the old order, a memorial of the dead.
And in that case the presumably new order of the Sadia flew on. They could sense where the rest of the Xi were heading. And they knew that it would be a pleasure for them to destroy their other ancient enemy at the same time.
They headed to the secret home of the Kalen.
And Hail followed them.