Legends of the Waker: Remnants of Old
Chapter LI: Song
(Link)
I stood before the door, ready. I didn't know what would be on the other side. I expected a hive, but I couldn't be sure. I held up the Triforce and tapped into the power it held. Instead of a beam of light, however, I spoke.
"T'ira nown no' naw tolo'vek." The words escaped as an angry, guttural, scream. The intricate doors blew open slamming, and I charged forward, swords drawn.
Into an empty cave.
I stood on the lip of an oval shaped walkway, that dipped down to another, jutting from the stone of this one. After, this, the ground simply opened up. Through the darkness far below, I thought I could see flashes of fire, but it was too far for me to see. In the center of this opening, a dome shaped building stood atop a pillar, with a rope bridge stretching from the stone walkway out to it.
I turned away from it and looked around my area. The walls were covered in pictures of rounded, brown creatures that had to be Gorons. One wall was covered in carvings, each one about two feet wide and one foot tall, telling a story with tiled images. I could see some about the Hero and about the Rain.
A clawing pain hit me and I new Zelda had been hurt.
I had to find her.
I wished I could be there for her. Frustration at her pain clouded my thoughts for a moment, and out of nowhere came another memory. But this one seemed pushed, bubbling up. I tried to ignore it to think of a plan, but couldn't. One of the few good memories I had of my father, he was singing about my mother an old song. After she'd died when I was thirteen, he'd stopped singing it, but I could still remember the first verse, and without thinking, began to sing.
"My love is captured, caught, held,
by the one with oceans of blue in her eyes,"
I sang calmly, and hoped the calm would reach her. I decided to check out the dome, and flew down to the bridge.
"With her live and mine together to meld
forever I'll rest forever under any skies,"
I landed on the bridge and swerved immediately. A scratching noise against the rock had been behind me. Hand on my sword, I stepped into the dome quietly. A giant statue stood against the far wall, a Goron holding a spear, it seemed. The Gorons had lived near the surface, hadn't they? What could have caused such a massive shift? Trisyrt's red eyes blazed into my mind. Perhaps 'Darunia' had something to do with it.
More pain from Zelda. Enough looking around! I had to find her. I rushed from the room a single whisper escaped my throat.
"Be patient, my love."
For in front of me were hundreds of red spiders. Pulling both swords and spinning them vertically a few times, I charged.
i Tektites /i
I leapt, spun in midair and struck.
Fly, fall, attack. A Tektite would drop. I was a moving whirlwind edged with steel. Every once in awhile my boots would strike the wooden planks, out of 'flight breath,' I would fight from the ground. A belly cleaved open, a leg removed, still they came, seemingly eager to taste death, because I would not be stopped.
Zelda was gone from me, in pain, and imprisoned.
I would not be stopped.
"Is that all there is?" I screamed as I drove through the last Tektite and it burst open. "Is that all you've got?" I dropped to my knees from exhaustion.
"No. There's me." I looked up. Standing on the edge of the bridge, sword in hand, was Trisyrt. His eyes were normal again
"Alright," I said, "I'll kill you too. I hope everyone learns something from all this."
Without speaking, Trisyrt pointed his sword at me. A jagged blast of lighting struck into my body and knocked me over the rope and down to the blackness below.
(Trisyrt)
I was dropped like a puppet.
Darunia didn't need me anymore, and left my body. I hated being used so, but with Griman killed by the girl, it was left up to me. He'd been manipulating Kiro again. He was a weak, flawed man. Flawed by compassion, and some thought him slightly mad as well. His family had been in charge of Kakarikan affairs since his distant ancestor had led our people in the time of confusion when the rain came.
Now the boy we'd buried had survived somehow. I'd been following Griman's lead then, since Darunia always used him. I couldn't figure out why the two from Above were so important, but we'd been instructed to watch out for them. Rost, who had been the third member of our group, had died trying to stop him.
Griman inflamed the crowd against the boy, making it easy to get rid of him.
But he'd come back. The Bellen-Der, a fell race made slave to the Gorons, had already taken the girl. The boy was fast on her trail. He was dangerous. I sensed a wild unpredictability about him. I never learned their names, and so I came to call them Hero and Princess, as the air about them suggested.
I ran through the streets of the city and into the open area between it and the door. The bodies of Bellen-Der were everywhere, a few still twitching.
The Gorons kept a seal on the entry to keep away from the rest of us. They had their secrets. They hated for anyone to see what their caves were like. Whenever communication had been necessary, armed legions of Gorons would line either side of the door, which was impenetrable to all means except magic.
I knew it wasn't a good sign that the doorway was open. Hero was already inside. I spoke the closing words and raced for the bridge, a central location where I might be able to spot him.
"Kla'rin ya wl'u chak." i Make these doors to shut. /i I let the ancient Goron tongue howl out the words and turned to see a massacre in movement.
Tektites, known as rock-spiders to the Gorons, had attacked Hero, but he was a study beating odds. It didn't matter how many charged him. As I watched, he sliced one apart, dove at another, leapt beneath the bridge, grabbed a rope on the other side, and flung himself into a crowd of them, taking out a dozen at once.
It wasn't long before he'd taken them all. No wonder so many had died bringing in Princess. As he dropped to his knees I knew now was my only chance. There was only one thing I could do. I'd been saving it, and now was the time.
I attached a lighting stick to my sword. There were only a few in existence, as they came from Above. I'd stolen mine from Kiro.
He was yelling something when I stepped forward. "Is that all you've got?"
"No. There's me."
Chapter LII: The Way of Pain
(Fado)
Muffled dread clutched my body as I thrashed in the chair, the cold leather pressing into my bare lower legs. Wind blasted around futilely, Orbs blasted holes into the floor, but my hands were at no good angle for me to free myself. Every trick I knew, every ability, I drug up as I struggled to free myself. All useless.
I was at their mercy.
The whole while, the ghost continued to polish away at his knife, seemingly oblivious to my cries and struggles. Finally I looked up at him. "What are you going to do to me?" I wasn't afraid, really. That was something that happened to other people. I just wanted to know what was going to happen to me.
"Jam this 'ere knife inta yer eye. Then when the pain settles down a bit I'll go and stick the other one. The Cap'n has something special 'e does after that, but don't ask me what. He don' let us pirates see it."
And then, without pausing any further to see if I had any objections, he stabbed my right eye.
(Mako)
I forced my hand out of Faceless's grip and she stopped to yell angrily, but her words were cut off by a howling call that that picked me up from the purple grass and threw me into a sea of ice.
"Marauders," Faceless whispered, as though uttering a curse under breath.
Over a rolling hill came dozens of raggedly dressed men with strange gray skin that was no less tattered. The fact that they had faces was such a relief I had to struggle to see them as a threat. They wore fur that matched that of the dogs running beside them, roughly one to a man.
Grimly I picked up my staff. A sage's work was never over. "You're going to fight them?" Faceless asked incredulously.
"Heck no." I said, turning and running into the floating forest.
I climbed up one of the trees with the practiced grace of a Kokiri. Faceless leapt beside me and spoke worriedly. "I don't know if this is a good idea. It's almost time for Migration Seven."
It wasn't long before I found out what she meant. The trees began to move.
Towards the Marauders.
Arrows thudded the trees around us as the ragged band sought out our position while trying to hold on for themselves. The scenery flashed by with increasing speed, and I began to wonder if I would ever be home again.
Suddenly our tree wrenched and I went out of the tree. My stomach lurched as I saw the bizarre landscape twist and then I snatched the dirt ring around the tree. Dogs leapt at my feet, snarling and snapping, and I saw that the creatures were really an odd sort of furry reptile.
Dirt crumbled beneath my fingers and I fell to the ground. I'd left my staff in the dirt and snatched it as I went down, but I couldn't see it doing any good.
Before I could think, they were on me. I tried to remember something, anything, he had taught me, but I hated this. I wasn't a warrior like he was. I didn't want to fight. I had begun jabbing out with my weapon when a tree came right overhead. When the reptile-dogs pounced, I was gone.
My heart was already trying to leap from my throat, and I wasn't free yet. Half the trees were crawling the raiders. Faceless could already be dead.
An arrow buzzed past my face and I looked around, trying to spot the man, but now I could see them everywhere. I was about to become a pine fruit, stabbed full of needles.
The upper boughs of the tree provided some safety, but I knew this couldn't go on.
I felt the trees slowing down and clutched to a branch. They stopped abruptly and I could hear screams and shouts as the trees lost many of their passengers.
"Hey you!" I called out. "Still around?" I didn't want anything to do with Faceless, but she was the only friendly face around. . .so to speak. She called back and I made my way over to her tree as the Marauders got their bearings.
I stopped, curious. Where were we? I climbed to the top of the tree I was in and looked around.
We were at the foot of the rounded mountains. I only had a vague idea of what mountains were, but I knew they didn't look like this. They were snowcapped and made of rock as these were, but the perfectly smooth slope didn't seem fitting. A cloud burst into existence while I watched. There were no foothills, either, just handful of them jutting into the sky.
And then as I watched, one of them began to crack.
Chapter LIII: Aftermath
(Laruto)
I came awake slowly, with morning sunlight drifting over my face. Yesterday had been very long. Funerals, with the dead placed in boats made from rubble and cast into the wind, working at building makeshift houses, caring for survivors. Medli and I had been given the first doses of soup available, and soon after the work had begun.
It had been Medli who spotted Burt. A buzzing cloud of flies had given his position away, and now I had two Deku, Shiek, and Medli planning to come. But they were all going to be disappointed.
I had decided to go alone from here.
Medli needed to fix things with her mother and go home. Shiek belonged here. As soon as possible, I planned to slip away. I didn't need a boat. It wasn't to far, and as soon as I could, I would swim away to the temple.
i "Make wisdom yours." /i
The strange dream came back to me in perfect clarity. I needed the Triforce of Wisdom. I would have to get it before I snuck out. I was sure Zelda would understand, all I had to do was explain.
I had curled in the sand near an outcropping of rock by the shore. I soon saw Medli wondering along the beach. She spotted me and her features lit up in a grin. She had been strangely cheerful lately. The normally timid girl wasn't acting like herself.
"Hey Laruto! Good morning! Sleep well?"
"I slept alright," I said, omitting mention of the dream. "How about you? Where'd you sleep?"
"Up in the tower. Shiek, Knoll, Zelda and I worked on it last night and slept in it when we were finished. It's pretty sturdy. I'll bet that thing will stand for another hundred years!" She lowered her voice. "When are we leaving? Shiek and Knoll are set on coming, and I'm sure you don't want them to get involved in this."
It twisted me to lie to her, but she would never agree to stay, and I didn't know what else to do. I guess I'll never know whether I was right or not.
"I think we should rest up for a few days, and then head out."
I told Medli I needed to speak with Zelda and rushed off before she could ask what for. I found the pirate captain eating breakfast with her crew further down the beach. A few of them were telling Shiek and three village children an outrageous story about a battle with a squid.
I took her aside when a few of the kids gasped and we spoke in private in the shadow of the ship. I told Zelda about the dream, and my need to go alone from here on my quest. I was sure she'd identify with what I was saying, give me the Triforce, and let me go.
I was wrong.
"I can't send you out all by yourself. What about poor Medli? Hasn't she been traveling with you from the begging? Here's the deal. The Triforce can come with you, but it stays with me. I'll give it to you on arrival. My ship will make the journey with ease."
She grinned and slapped a nearby plank. The figurehead, three boards, and the steering wheel fell off. Something crashed loudly deep within the bowels of the ship, and it settled slightly in the sand towards us.
"She's seen a bit of action, eh? We might have to make a few minor running repairs."
Chapter LI: Song
(Link)
I stood before the door, ready. I didn't know what would be on the other side. I expected a hive, but I couldn't be sure. I held up the Triforce and tapped into the power it held. Instead of a beam of light, however, I spoke.
"T'ira nown no' naw tolo'vek." The words escaped as an angry, guttural, scream. The intricate doors blew open slamming, and I charged forward, swords drawn.
Into an empty cave.
I stood on the lip of an oval shaped walkway, that dipped down to another, jutting from the stone of this one. After, this, the ground simply opened up. Through the darkness far below, I thought I could see flashes of fire, but it was too far for me to see. In the center of this opening, a dome shaped building stood atop a pillar, with a rope bridge stretching from the stone walkway out to it.
I turned away from it and looked around my area. The walls were covered in pictures of rounded, brown creatures that had to be Gorons. One wall was covered in carvings, each one about two feet wide and one foot tall, telling a story with tiled images. I could see some about the Hero and about the Rain.
A clawing pain hit me and I new Zelda had been hurt.
I had to find her.
I wished I could be there for her. Frustration at her pain clouded my thoughts for a moment, and out of nowhere came another memory. But this one seemed pushed, bubbling up. I tried to ignore it to think of a plan, but couldn't. One of the few good memories I had of my father, he was singing about my mother an old song. After she'd died when I was thirteen, he'd stopped singing it, but I could still remember the first verse, and without thinking, began to sing.
"My love is captured, caught, held,
by the one with oceans of blue in her eyes,"
I sang calmly, and hoped the calm would reach her. I decided to check out the dome, and flew down to the bridge.
"With her live and mine together to meld
forever I'll rest forever under any skies,"
I landed on the bridge and swerved immediately. A scratching noise against the rock had been behind me. Hand on my sword, I stepped into the dome quietly. A giant statue stood against the far wall, a Goron holding a spear, it seemed. The Gorons had lived near the surface, hadn't they? What could have caused such a massive shift? Trisyrt's red eyes blazed into my mind. Perhaps 'Darunia' had something to do with it.
More pain from Zelda. Enough looking around! I had to find her. I rushed from the room a single whisper escaped my throat.
"Be patient, my love."
For in front of me were hundreds of red spiders. Pulling both swords and spinning them vertically a few times, I charged.
i Tektites /i
I leapt, spun in midair and struck.
Fly, fall, attack. A Tektite would drop. I was a moving whirlwind edged with steel. Every once in awhile my boots would strike the wooden planks, out of 'flight breath,' I would fight from the ground. A belly cleaved open, a leg removed, still they came, seemingly eager to taste death, because I would not be stopped.
Zelda was gone from me, in pain, and imprisoned.
I would not be stopped.
"Is that all there is?" I screamed as I drove through the last Tektite and it burst open. "Is that all you've got?" I dropped to my knees from exhaustion.
"No. There's me." I looked up. Standing on the edge of the bridge, sword in hand, was Trisyrt. His eyes were normal again
"Alright," I said, "I'll kill you too. I hope everyone learns something from all this."
Without speaking, Trisyrt pointed his sword at me. A jagged blast of lighting struck into my body and knocked me over the rope and down to the blackness below.
(Trisyrt)
I was dropped like a puppet.
Darunia didn't need me anymore, and left my body. I hated being used so, but with Griman killed by the girl, it was left up to me. He'd been manipulating Kiro again. He was a weak, flawed man. Flawed by compassion, and some thought him slightly mad as well. His family had been in charge of Kakarikan affairs since his distant ancestor had led our people in the time of confusion when the rain came.
Now the boy we'd buried had survived somehow. I'd been following Griman's lead then, since Darunia always used him. I couldn't figure out why the two from Above were so important, but we'd been instructed to watch out for them. Rost, who had been the third member of our group, had died trying to stop him.
Griman inflamed the crowd against the boy, making it easy to get rid of him.
But he'd come back. The Bellen-Der, a fell race made slave to the Gorons, had already taken the girl. The boy was fast on her trail. He was dangerous. I sensed a wild unpredictability about him. I never learned their names, and so I came to call them Hero and Princess, as the air about them suggested.
I ran through the streets of the city and into the open area between it and the door. The bodies of Bellen-Der were everywhere, a few still twitching.
The Gorons kept a seal on the entry to keep away from the rest of us. They had their secrets. They hated for anyone to see what their caves were like. Whenever communication had been necessary, armed legions of Gorons would line either side of the door, which was impenetrable to all means except magic.
I knew it wasn't a good sign that the doorway was open. Hero was already inside. I spoke the closing words and raced for the bridge, a central location where I might be able to spot him.
"Kla'rin ya wl'u chak." i Make these doors to shut. /i I let the ancient Goron tongue howl out the words and turned to see a massacre in movement.
Tektites, known as rock-spiders to the Gorons, had attacked Hero, but he was a study beating odds. It didn't matter how many charged him. As I watched, he sliced one apart, dove at another, leapt beneath the bridge, grabbed a rope on the other side, and flung himself into a crowd of them, taking out a dozen at once.
It wasn't long before he'd taken them all. No wonder so many had died bringing in Princess. As he dropped to his knees I knew now was my only chance. There was only one thing I could do. I'd been saving it, and now was the time.
I attached a lighting stick to my sword. There were only a few in existence, as they came from Above. I'd stolen mine from Kiro.
He was yelling something when I stepped forward. "Is that all you've got?"
"No. There's me."
Chapter LII: The Way of Pain
(Fado)
Muffled dread clutched my body as I thrashed in the chair, the cold leather pressing into my bare lower legs. Wind blasted around futilely, Orbs blasted holes into the floor, but my hands were at no good angle for me to free myself. Every trick I knew, every ability, I drug up as I struggled to free myself. All useless.
I was at their mercy.
The whole while, the ghost continued to polish away at his knife, seemingly oblivious to my cries and struggles. Finally I looked up at him. "What are you going to do to me?" I wasn't afraid, really. That was something that happened to other people. I just wanted to know what was going to happen to me.
"Jam this 'ere knife inta yer eye. Then when the pain settles down a bit I'll go and stick the other one. The Cap'n has something special 'e does after that, but don't ask me what. He don' let us pirates see it."
And then, without pausing any further to see if I had any objections, he stabbed my right eye.
(Mako)
I forced my hand out of Faceless's grip and she stopped to yell angrily, but her words were cut off by a howling call that that picked me up from the purple grass and threw me into a sea of ice.
"Marauders," Faceless whispered, as though uttering a curse under breath.
Over a rolling hill came dozens of raggedly dressed men with strange gray skin that was no less tattered. The fact that they had faces was such a relief I had to struggle to see them as a threat. They wore fur that matched that of the dogs running beside them, roughly one to a man.
Grimly I picked up my staff. A sage's work was never over. "You're going to fight them?" Faceless asked incredulously.
"Heck no." I said, turning and running into the floating forest.
I climbed up one of the trees with the practiced grace of a Kokiri. Faceless leapt beside me and spoke worriedly. "I don't know if this is a good idea. It's almost time for Migration Seven."
It wasn't long before I found out what she meant. The trees began to move.
Towards the Marauders.
Arrows thudded the trees around us as the ragged band sought out our position while trying to hold on for themselves. The scenery flashed by with increasing speed, and I began to wonder if I would ever be home again.
Suddenly our tree wrenched and I went out of the tree. My stomach lurched as I saw the bizarre landscape twist and then I snatched the dirt ring around the tree. Dogs leapt at my feet, snarling and snapping, and I saw that the creatures were really an odd sort of furry reptile.
Dirt crumbled beneath my fingers and I fell to the ground. I'd left my staff in the dirt and snatched it as I went down, but I couldn't see it doing any good.
Before I could think, they were on me. I tried to remember something, anything, he had taught me, but I hated this. I wasn't a warrior like he was. I didn't want to fight. I had begun jabbing out with my weapon when a tree came right overhead. When the reptile-dogs pounced, I was gone.
My heart was already trying to leap from my throat, and I wasn't free yet. Half the trees were crawling the raiders. Faceless could already be dead.
An arrow buzzed past my face and I looked around, trying to spot the man, but now I could see them everywhere. I was about to become a pine fruit, stabbed full of needles.
The upper boughs of the tree provided some safety, but I knew this couldn't go on.
I felt the trees slowing down and clutched to a branch. They stopped abruptly and I could hear screams and shouts as the trees lost many of their passengers.
"Hey you!" I called out. "Still around?" I didn't want anything to do with Faceless, but she was the only friendly face around. . .so to speak. She called back and I made my way over to her tree as the Marauders got their bearings.
I stopped, curious. Where were we? I climbed to the top of the tree I was in and looked around.
We were at the foot of the rounded mountains. I only had a vague idea of what mountains were, but I knew they didn't look like this. They were snowcapped and made of rock as these were, but the perfectly smooth slope didn't seem fitting. A cloud burst into existence while I watched. There were no foothills, either, just handful of them jutting into the sky.
And then as I watched, one of them began to crack.
Chapter LIII: Aftermath
(Laruto)
I came awake slowly, with morning sunlight drifting over my face. Yesterday had been very long. Funerals, with the dead placed in boats made from rubble and cast into the wind, working at building makeshift houses, caring for survivors. Medli and I had been given the first doses of soup available, and soon after the work had begun.
It had been Medli who spotted Burt. A buzzing cloud of flies had given his position away, and now I had two Deku, Shiek, and Medli planning to come. But they were all going to be disappointed.
I had decided to go alone from here.
Medli needed to fix things with her mother and go home. Shiek belonged here. As soon as possible, I planned to slip away. I didn't need a boat. It wasn't to far, and as soon as I could, I would swim away to the temple.
i "Make wisdom yours." /i
The strange dream came back to me in perfect clarity. I needed the Triforce of Wisdom. I would have to get it before I snuck out. I was sure Zelda would understand, all I had to do was explain.
I had curled in the sand near an outcropping of rock by the shore. I soon saw Medli wondering along the beach. She spotted me and her features lit up in a grin. She had been strangely cheerful lately. The normally timid girl wasn't acting like herself.
"Hey Laruto! Good morning! Sleep well?"
"I slept alright," I said, omitting mention of the dream. "How about you? Where'd you sleep?"
"Up in the tower. Shiek, Knoll, Zelda and I worked on it last night and slept in it when we were finished. It's pretty sturdy. I'll bet that thing will stand for another hundred years!" She lowered her voice. "When are we leaving? Shiek and Knoll are set on coming, and I'm sure you don't want them to get involved in this."
It twisted me to lie to her, but she would never agree to stay, and I didn't know what else to do. I guess I'll never know whether I was right or not.
"I think we should rest up for a few days, and then head out."
I told Medli I needed to speak with Zelda and rushed off before she could ask what for. I found the pirate captain eating breakfast with her crew further down the beach. A few of them were telling Shiek and three village children an outrageous story about a battle with a squid.
I took her aside when a few of the kids gasped and we spoke in private in the shadow of the ship. I told Zelda about the dream, and my need to go alone from here on my quest. I was sure she'd identify with what I was saying, give me the Triforce, and let me go.
I was wrong.
"I can't send you out all by yourself. What about poor Medli? Hasn't she been traveling with you from the begging? Here's the deal. The Triforce can come with you, but it stays with me. I'll give it to you on arrival. My ship will make the journey with ease."
She grinned and slapped a nearby plank. The figurehead, three boards, and the steering wheel fell off. Something crashed loudly deep within the bowels of the ship, and it settled slightly in the sand towards us.
"She's seen a bit of action, eh? We might have to make a few minor running repairs."