Link is staring blankly at the large, dark stain which has soaked into the earth when Paya finds him. The rage that consumed him in the fight has left him numb and slow in its absence. He's aware, dimly, of the Gerudo bustling around him - dragging the bodies of defeated Yiga to one side of the arena, bringing anything worth salvaging out from the hideout into a second pile - but he feels separated from them by more than the few yards of sand.
She stands silently next to him for a minute before speaking, her tone gentle.
"You're hurt." She gestures to his nose. The sleeve of her costume is torn where a sickle caught her on the forearm. The fabric sticks to the drying blood. Link nods vaguely; he picked up a lot more injuries in the fight and the subsequent rout than he'd realised at the time, and they all need tending to. The burn on his arm where he rolled over the hot coals is throbbing steadily. It feels strangely unimportant, right now.
"You saved my life, coming here," she continues eventually. "I wanted to thank you."
"I'm pretty sure you returned the favour already." There had been at least one point in the brawl where he'd spotted her blood-smeared face, frightened but determined, as she intercepted a cultist about to stab him. "You don't need to thank me."
"You deserve recognition when you do something good," she tells him, frowning slightly. There's blood on her face still, rubbed ineffectively away. "I know people expect a lot of of you because of the prophecy. But when you risked your life to save us, that was a choice you made. Granté and I have nothing to do with your quest, but you came for us anyway, even though you knew you could die."
He looks away again. The pricking at the corners of his eyes is definitely from the smoke, coming off the pyre the Gerudo are lighting for all the fallen Yiga.
"If I stand by when there are people who need me, just because I have a larger mission... then what's the point? I might as well just let Ganon win."
Paya pulls herself up straighter, the stern expression on her face foretelling a lecture, but she's cut off by Barta striding over to them. The Gerudo has her helmet tucked under the other arm and a livid bruise spreading over one cheekbone.
"Champion," she nods in greeting. Link stares blankly at her, and she shrugs before continuing. "I wanted to ask if you will be returning South with us. Captain Teake would be keen to speak with you again, I think."
"You're leaving?" Link asks. "You're not going to try hunt down the Yiga who managed to flee?"
Barta huffs. "There are a thousand corners to hide in, in these mountains, and we have already outstayed our welcome. Many of the villages would harbour the rats just to spite us."
"I thought the highlands were still part of Gerudo territory?" Paya asks. "Why would they aid your enemies?"
"This has always been a tense area," Barta shrugs. "The clan who live here are - hm. I do not know the word in Hylian." She looks over to Link. Heretics?
Link shakes his head. "I think I've heard the word before, but I don't know what it means, sorry."
"It means - they disagree with the rest of us, on some aspects of history and religion. Don't ask me for more detail than that, I don't really pay attention to this stuff to be honest. The ruling clan would have stamped it out long ago, but this is a key trade route. So, Gerudo Town keeps patrols here minimal and pretends it does not hear the whispers of insurrection, and in return the mountain clan limit themselves to whispers. They know that starting a fight would gain them nothing but pain. But Teake won't risk an incident by leaving large numbers of lowland troops in the area."
"I see," Paya says. "I didn't even realise there were different clans of Gerudo. You must think us terribly ignorant."
Barta laughs. "We know just as little of you. Come, you should both see the medic."
Once Link's had his various injuries cleaned, splinted or dressed, he wanders over to join Dorian, who is surveying the funeral pyre for the Yiga with a grim expression.
"I bet you're eager to be away," Link says, watching the flames lick up the wood alongside him. "This has been a trip and a half."
Dorian looks over, smiling weakly. "I am grateful for the technology which will make the journey back take hours instead of weeks. All I want right now is to hold my girls."
"I'm sure Impa is itching to see that Paya is alright, too," Link says. It's sort of ironic, really, that without the messages from the slate, she would never have even known Paya was in trouble. They would have just returned triumphant, and danger after the fact is never quite so frightening.
"This was all such a waste," Dorian sighs, interrupting Link's thoughts. "How many of these were merely young men and women led astray as I was? How many could have turned away from this path, if given the chance I was given? It is hard enough to fight against unfathomable evil, but for our brothers and sisters to fight us too feels like mockery."
Link grimaces. It's a thought that's occurred to him too, but then what options did they have? "Kohga paid for his treachery," he reminds Dorian. It's a drop in this particular ocean, but it's something.
"Indeed. If there is a Sacred Realm, I hope some of these lost souls find their way there," Dorian replies as they turn away to assist with the clear-up.
He bids an emotional goodbye to the trio of Sheikah - emotional on Paya's part, at least; Link's mostly just glad to be done with the Yiga for a while. They dissolve into blue light as they warp home, and Link shoulders his pack to go join the Gerudo. He's going to head back to the city with Barta and her friends, and if Teake still has no news about Vah Naboris then he'll just have to set off into the desert to go find the damn thing himself.
In contrast to the journey out - when he was alone and sick with worry - the journey back to Gerudo Town is a cheerful affair. The troops teach him Gerudo jokes and songs as they ride, and question him about the Princess. He does his best to keep his responses professional, but his feelings must bleed through because the women seem to find it the most romantic thing they've ever heard. He catches Leena sighing wistfully more than once, which makes Lukan tease her that she needs to head to Kara-Kara soon to pick up a voe of her own, instead of living vicariously through strange Hylians.
At the city, they surprise him by bringing him right up to one of the side gates and telling him to wrap his cloak around himself.
"We sent word ahead to the captain," Liana explains. "She authorised us to bring you in, but it is better to avoid openly flouting the law regardless."
He hurries through the city after them, the Gerudos' longer strides making it awkward to keep pace. Once they're in the cool palace interior, he drops the hood and follows them to the Captain's office where Teake is writing up a report of some kind.
"Champion," she greets him. It's a warmer welcome than he received last time. "I thank you for returning my right-hand woman to me. Your services to the Gerudo -"
Just then an underling rushes into the room, bowing and apologising for the interruption as she hands over a message tube to the Captain. Teake unrolls it, her face going from mild concern to a frown as she reads.
"We cannot have even a moment of good news without some bad to ruin it, it seems. Vah Naboris has woken from its century of slumber." She crumples the paper in her fist, hissing. "Perhaps this is judgement on me from the Goddess of the Sands. I should not have allowed you into the City."
"Naboris been sighted?" Link asks, hoping to steer Teake away from the idea of having him thrown back in prison. "Where?"
"The Beast itself has not," Teake says with a dismissive flick of her fingers. "But a sandstorm, like none we have ever seen before, has raged now for three days and made the Western Approach impassable. What else could it be?"
"Is it coming towards the City?" Link asks.
"Slowly, but yes. And with the storm we have lost contact with Chief Riju and Buliara, who did not check in at their last stop on schedule. If they became caught in it..."
That would definitely be bad news.
"Will you send people to search for them?"
Teake levels a look at him. "Send more people to become lost in it, you mean? No. We must wait it out, and hope that it moves on or dies down soon."
Link taps his fingers idly against the slate, thinking. Based on what he saw in Zora's Domain, Vah Naboris can and will keep up this storm indefinitely. He's seen how even a minor storm sends Kara-Kara into chaos, merchants battening down their shutters and dragging tarpaulins over their carts to stop everything getting scattered to the winds. How everyone piles into the few buildings with proper walls and doors, to wait until it's safe to emerge.
"I'm not sure that's going to be possible," he ventures. Teake raises an eyebrow. He understands how it must seem from her perspective, this upstart little Hylian trying to tell her how to handle the desert.
"And what would you suggest?" she asks archly. "The troops already with the Chief know the desert as well as any I could send in after them, and it is impossible to search for anything within a sandstorm, especially one such as this. I will not send more of my people into the teeth of it to die pointless deaths. "
"I understand. But you can send me."
Teake flings her hands up in exasperation. "Voe, I don't care if you are Farore herself in mortal form, you cannot search within a sandstorm either."
"No," Link agrees. "But that's not what I'm going to do."
Teake might be annoyed that Link has brought the Calamity to their door once more, but she still pulls out all the stops in getting him set up for a journey into the deep desert. First he's sent off - alone and cloaked, in the dead of night, while Barta's squad coincidentally guards the route - to visit a mysterious armourer, with strict instructions not to mention who sent him when he gets there. When he gets back, the Gerudo have assembled supplies for him - salves, ointments, precious vials of healing potions made from rare plants of the mountain region. There is long-lasting food, and a set of strange goggles that make everything slightly orange when he looks through them.
Then Teake leads him further below the palace than the cells, down into the cool of the rock where they follow natural caves to a large underground pool. The torchlight glints off the rippling surface, but that's not all Link can see reflected there - there's the orange glow of Sheikah tech too. Tucked around the corner is a shrine. He looks towards Teake with surprise.
"Leena and Liana told me about your handy little Sheikah gadget," she says. "If I am going to trust you to bring the Chief safely home, then it makes little sense not to give you every tool possible. If she is injured, you can warp her straight back here. Do not even think of sneaking in this way uninvited," she adds while he activates the warp point. "This chamber is always guarded, to ensure the city's supply of drinking water is not contaminated."
Finally, she hands over a cloth bundle with something hard inside. Link looks towards her with genuine shock as he unwraps the cloth to reveal shining metal. The last time he saw this helmet, it had been on Urbosa's head. He takes it reverently, turning it over in his hands as memories of Urbosa swirl up from the depths of his mind.
"This is the heirloom of the Gerudo chieftains," Teake says heavily. "I give it to you only because you helped to retrieve it from the Yiga, and because Lady Riju may need its protection against the Divine Beast. Do not lose it."
Link rides out to the Western Watchtower with a squad of Gerudo, but beyond that he's once more alone in the wilds of Hyrule. He's never been further than the Sacred City before, and until Teake showed him a map of the region he hadn't appreciated just how much more of it there is. No wonder it was going to take the Chief a month to tour the outlying settlements. From the watchtower, the desert slopes down imperceptibly to the sea: an endless stretch of deep drifting dunes.
Seal caravans follow the trail of watering holes to the port towns and back bringing spices and saltfish, just as their mothers and grandmothers did before them. Urbosa told Link once that Gerudo had no written form until the first Desert City was founded; the nomadic tribes pass their knowledge to their daughters as story and song, in an unbroken chain stretching from their ancestors. There is no Great Library of the Gerudo to rival Hyrule Castle's, because there is no need for one.
The Gerudo have lent him one of the army's sand seals to take, which are better-trained than the ones from the public stables and settles quickly into a good rhythm. They skim through the sand, the seal's powerful flippers eating up the vast distances of the desert. Link learns to lean into the bounding motion just as he learned, once upon a time, to sway with the motion of a horse. The sandstorm, which had been the barest hint of disturbance at the horizon at the beginning of their journey, becomes a threatening wall that inches ever closer, occupying the whole of Link's sight. It draws the eye like a magnet, his gaze trying in vain to find the edge of it.
He's not sure, afterwards, whether paying more attention would have made any difference.
To their right, there's a sudden swell to the sand, as if the sand-sea were a sea in truth. Then it explodes outward. The shadow of a gigantic beast, all teeth and bulk, falls over them. The molduga crashes down right on top of the seal, jaws clamping shut over the squealing beast and dragging it under the sand in one powerful movement. Link is thrown loose from the sled, rolling to a stop in the loose sand. He lands on his front, the reins clenched uselessly in his hand, attached to nothing. The only thing left of the seal is blood on the churned-up sand. Link scrambles to his feet, frozen on the spot as he scans for sign of the beast.
There - looping back again. A bulge below the sand is heading right for him at speed. Link rolls to the side, and the molduga grabs his backpack instead. It realises its mistake quickly, re-emerging to spit the offending item out before honing back in on Link. He swipes a hand down the slate and lobs a bomb as far to one side as he can manage without moving, and the molduga turns towards the explosion. He throws another, and the molduga crests again to swallow the glowing orb whole. Heart thumping, he detonates the bomb. The molduga screeches in pain and anger, thrashing around on the soft ground. Link sends a third bomb towards it, and this explosion sends it burrowing, bony fins sinking beneath the surface as it surges away. He waits long moments before he dares to go pick over the tattered remains of his backpack.
Despite its apparent closeness Link has to walk for over an hour to reach the edge of the storm. The sky darkens as he's enveloped in it, even as he knows the sun continues to shine brightly above. The entire world narrows to an arm's-width circle around him. Beyond that is only the howling beige of swirling sand grains that scour across his skin and batter against his goggles. Every step is a fight against the wind.
After a while walking in what he thinks is a straight line, he takes the slate out and curses. The storm has somehow rendered the map useless. All it displays is static fuzz; he has no compass, and the map pin he placed on Chief Riju's intended destination is nowhere to be seen. Still, he doesn't want to admit defeat just yet. He may yet be able to salvage this. If he just heads inwards, he should eventually either come out of the other side, or reach Vah Naboris. He trudges on. Time becomes meaningless, measured only by his worsening thirst. Thrice-damned molduga, taking his transport and almost all of his water. At least it missed all his limbs...
After a minute, or an hour, or a day, Link realises the wind has relented slightly, back down to a dull roar in his ears instead of a deafening rush. Is he moving out of the storm, or reaching the eye? There's an odd hum to the air, that he feels in his teeth as though they might vibrate out of his head. And then out of the storm comes the massive winding form of a dragon, so close to the ground it could reach out with one talon to skim through the sand. Link almost ducks as it passes over his head, and it just keeps going - miles and miles of scaled, serpentine body filling his sight. Electricity crackles along its hide, sending random discharges off onto the dunes. The soft yellow glow of its aura brightens the dust clouds nearby.
Link follows the bursts of shed plasma which shimmer in midair like fairies. They lead him through the night, stumbling in knee-deep drifts and skidding down the lee of the dunes. Eventually, as dawn lightens the sky just a fraction, he discerns a shape ahead in the waning sandstorm. Rib bones curve into the sky like grasping fingers, twice as tall as a man and worn smooth by time. He passes through the macabre gateway, down into a hollow where the noise of the wind is finally quietened. He rests in the shelter of the skull which leans against the rocky outcrop, and sleeps.
When he wakes the sky is brighter, blue and vast above him. Naboris must have moved further away in the night. Now that visibility is better than the hand in front of his face, he gets a good look at the skeleton curved around the rock formation. He can't tell whether this was a creature of sea or sky. Zelda might be able to work it out, perhaps - her enthusiasm for digging around in the remains of the past was always such a joy to behold. He takes a picture for her, and gasps as he moves beyond the great skull.
Sheltered in the curve of the rock and caged by bones is a tiny hollow of life. A tangle of hydromelons sprawls across the sand, bursts of Silent Princess and Safflina poking their determined heads out of the drifts nearby. In the centre of it all - almost choking in sand - is a spring. Did the dragon lead him here deliberately? He kneels down to gently brush the sand off the closest plants. Seeing the blue-white flowers blooming even here fills his heart with warmth and hope. Perhaps Zelda's hand is in their thriving, somehow.
After he's eaten half of a melon and drunk a handful of silty water, he searches for something to clear the pond with. There's a dragon scale half-buried in the sand nearby, and that does perfectly well for a scoop. He uses his tentcloth as a filter, tying it to the bones overhead; in a place like this, wasting any fresh water would be an insult. Once the water is largely silt-free, he digs some rupees out of his pack and places them gently on the edge of the pool next to the other half of the melon.
"Can you hear me?" he calls. "I've done what I can for your fountain. I'm sorry it isn't more."
The fairy who emerges from the depths has kind eyes almost obscured by great waves of hair the colour of succulent leaves. Dragonfly wings glimmer iridescently behind her ears. As she opens her mouth to speak to him, she's racked by a coughing fit. Link offers his waterskin, but she waves it away.
"I'm - ack - I'm fine, but thank you dear. Oh, I can't believe you found my spring! I thought when the village nearby was abandoned that would be it. You have no idea how boring it is whiling away the centuries in the desert on your own. What were you doing all the way out here?" she asks him. "Did you come for a boon?"
"I stumbled here in the storm, believe it or not. This place was a much-needed respite."
"Well, I'm glad to be of service. And haven't you been doing a marvelous job of helping us? Only Kayasa left now!"
"If you can tell me where she is, I'll try get to her," Link says, passing over the slate with the map open for her to look at. Though given how things have been going, he wouldn't be surprised if the Lord of the Mountain himself appeared to physically cart him to the right place. This is all feeling unpleasantly preordained, much like the location of the Shrines matching up so well with his journey. Destiny can go take a hike.
Tera passes the slate back to him with the fourth fountain pinned. "There you go dearie; I suppose we can't expect a little thing like you to remember where things are after such a long time."
"...Sure. Thanks. I'll mark this spot on my map too," he tells her, "and I'll see if I can get this spot put on a patrol route for the Gerudo. They maintain a lot of other watering holes, I can't imagine they'd have a problem doing this one too and leaving a gift now and then."
The great fairy grabs him and pulls him in close for a hug, face smushed into her bosom as she swings him from side to side. Her skin has an odd texture to it, like the slight fuzziness of plant leaves, and she smells like flowers.
"You're such a darling!" she squeals. "You always were so polite and helpful. You stay safe now, alright? Come back to visit me again!"
With the sandstorm moving slowly away and his thirst quenched, Link's glad he resisted the urge to warp away. That sense only increases when he climbs up to the highest point on the leviathan bones, intending to get his bearings. It takes him a moment to understand what he's seeing on the horizon, and then he laughs. It's a cluster of low-pitched brown tents, huddled together on the flat expanse of sand. The central tent has a flag flying from it. Unless he's very much mistaken, he's found Chief Riju.