Author´s note:

We´re getting there...


Chapter XI

Rova

Link´s hand was almost on the handle when he remembered that he was bare-chested. He decided to buy himself some time, instead.

"Who is it?", he watched as the shadow on the other side of the rim between the door and the floor shifted from one feet to the other.

"It´s me. Dehneru", called a voice with a deep tone and a heavy accent.

He fumbled around the room, searching for anything that could cover his chest. The princess´ white cape was back in her room by now. He frantically looked for his gerudo top and veil. When he found them he looked down and he started second-guessing himself about the sand boots. He decided to take them off and hastily put on his gerudo pants. Dehneru knocked again.

"Link is everything alright?", she sounded concerned.

"Yeah, sorry! I wasn´t dressed!". Dehneru laughed quietly on the other side.

He finally opened the door, only to find the gerudo woman smiling down on him. Her hair was a bit messy from the feast, but she looked otherwise, like her usual self. He cleared his throat. Link was not stupid, he knew why she was there.

"I forget you hylians are so concerned about showing your body, I will never understand that", she said mischevously. She stepped inside his room without another word.

"Was there anything I could help you with?", he said. Innocently.

"A little vure told me a rumor about you and Lady Riju", she said vaguely as she sat on the bed, or rather almost laid on her back, only propping herself up with her elbows. "I only wish to warn you. It is not wise to bed a Gerudo Matriarch, even less for a hylian voe". The tips of his ears burned furiously, but he kept his cool nonetheless.

"So you know too", he said. "It seems that everyone knows, then", he said. Dehneru laughed at his remark, nodding slowly. She leant on her back, looking at the ceiling, her eyes darted from one place to the next. "So, what´s it like to pretend you haven´t got the most desirable Sahj in miles?", she asked, looking down to his pants. Goddess, help me.

"I wouldn´t know", he said awkwardly. Dehneru burst out in laughter.

"I´m just messing around, you´re not that lucky", she said in a voice that told him quite the opposite. "I´m engaged to a voe already. I have been since a very young age", she said, sitting up again. "I´m also in an open relationship with two of my friends, here. It´s not easy, that no-voe policy, you know?", she said playfully. He stood there, not knowing what was going on. His arms felt like a nuisance, he didn´t know where to put them.

"Please take that thing off, I want to see who Im talking to!", she demanded.

Could he trust this woman? He didn´t recall seeing her in any of his visits to Gerudo town...

"When did you arrive to the city? I don´t remember you", he retorted. Her smile wavered if only for just a second, a certain saddness reached her eyes, though.

"About six months ago. I came here with my sister, Kaheru. I´ve not seen her in quite some time.", she was looking at something behind his shoulders.

"Kaheru and I come from a very ancient and proud town named Alessa, to the west of here. About one week in sand seal it s beyond the Gerudo Wastelands, so you wouldn´t know of it. Sadly, our matriarch passed away leaving a void of power, and so we had to escape.", her eyes began to look hazy. Link had leant on the door to listen to her.

"We´re supposed to be unified under one rule, Makeela Riju´s rule. But things are very different away from the capital. There´s skirmishes and fights for power every other day. The day we escaped we saw elders and children beheaded, burnt or raped. We only made it after faking our own deaths. I had to lay still beside a child that had only seen five summers.", She wiped off a single tear from her left cheek.

"We had lost everything, our mother had also been killed, our house burnt to ashes and my younger sisters were raped and later impaled outside town. We only had one another, and so we walked for days until by grace of our Serpent Mother, we found the city and Lady Riju took us in. Lady Byrta and her warriors were sent to my town to quell the rebellion, but they only found burnt homes and shattered families. Since then whoever was alive was brought back to the city. We were welcomed with open arms, a roof under our heads and a new purpose."

He felt for her, as he and Zelda had been in a fight or flight situation before (he almost died, he recalled).

"Dehneru, I´m sorry. I didn´t mean to-", he said almost in a whisper. The gerudo waved his apology off.

"Don´t be stupid. Of course you don´t trust me.", he looked at him square in the eye for a long time. The silence was killing him, oddly. "I guess that´s fair", she said, standing up.

"Would it be overstepping the line if I invited you for a drink tonight? You know, I get to know you, and you get to know me. Or is that against hylian tradition?", she teased. He smiled saddly at her.

"I´ll be there at sunset". Dehneru smiled broadly as she made for the door. Link stepped aside.

"Imagine if I told my friends that I had my hand on your knob!", and without waiting for a reply, she closed the door behing her.

"For Hylia´s sake!", he exclaimed before jumping to his bed, falling asleep almost instantly.


"Now about that blade... ", Riju whispered. Link and her had to lean in to listen to her.

"This is all but speculation, but I´ve found an ancient codex that depicts Ganondorf wielding a trident on one hand and a curved blade on the other. It could very well be a sword, a scimitar or something else entirely. But what´s curious about it is this." She took a frail and ancient looking piece of paper, folded in four.

She put the paper in front of her. As she had said, in the middle of what seemed a war scene, a tall figure, very much like a huge man stood taller than any other figures in the codex. He was swinging a colossal trident in front of him, and on the other hand, behind him, a curved weapon was spitting out what looked like fire, or smoke. The tip of the weapon forked in two. Two figures clouded in smoke apeared from one of the tips respectively and appeared to be talking, or smiling. They had been painted in black, or a very dark brown, the only visible aspects of them were their long white-haired manes, and their faces, adorned with blue and red stones, presumably a ruby and a sapphire, respectively. Around the three figures, a numerous army of redheaded Gerudo fought against what appeared to be the zora, goron and hylians. In one corner Zelda saw about a dozen gerudo warriors pointing their spears and swords towards Ganondorf and the misterious figures. These rebels were also being attacked by hylian forces.

What caught her attention was that the margins of the scene were illustrated with a pattern very much like the one on the dagger. The paint had peeled off in numerous parts, but she could still make out the squared shapes that the lines described.

"What does it mean?", Link asked. He looked at them both, she mirrored his expression.

"This codex describes the events of a civil war that took place in the Era of Myth. We cannot be sure how much of this is truth and how much of it is just folklore. But we can make some sense of it. Or at least that´s what I was hoping for, Princess", she stated. Her features suddenly weren´t so child-like anymore.

Zelda racked her brains, she had read something about the Gerudo Rebellion back in the castle library...

"I read about some of it back home", she started. Her Knight and the Matriarch were now leaning in to listen to her. "According to one book I found on gerudo history, the gerudo were almost a dozen tribes spread across the desert, the realm only knew them as a band of thieves (Riju shuffled uncomofortably), though they all shared a common religion and -again this is just acording to the books at Hyrule Castle, this religion had it´s base upon a prophecy that said that a male child would be born out of ashes and blood. This male child would be the sole ruler of all the Gerudo until his last breath. There are quite some centuries of history lost after that, but according to another book, the Gerudo King sought nothing but peace with the young Kingdom of Hyrule. In this book, it is stated that the King of Hyrule betrayed the Gerudo and sought to rule over the desert as well. The Gerudo king, Ganondorf having unified all the tribes unto one, and being a powerful warlock, unleashed his might upon the realm, unleashing his revenge over the Realm, the King and his family. He is said to have ruled over Hyrule for only a Hasj, which I think roughly translates as 7 or 8 years.

"Of course that is not all true, as we all know, Ganondorf had always sought to take Hyrule for himself since he was a child. According to Hyrule Historia, Ganondorf deceived the King into agreeing to a peace treaty, only to betray him a short while later. His rule was later known as the Seven, or The Seven Years of Darkness. In between all this, we know a little of his personal life:

"He never knew his parents, he lived alone in the desert for almost all his infancy, discovering his power in the wild, killing and hunting whatever he could. By the time he was a young man, there were legends of a 'phantom' that roamed the desert at night. When he was found by the joint leaders of the most powerful tribe, he was almost twenty years old. The ancient leaders of the tirbe were two powerful witches that were said to be able to bring forth the night with a flick of their wrists, and could also burn entire cities to the ground with one lazy breath. Sadly, the only thing we know about them is the name they were known as: Rova. I think this is a very early form of Gerudo, because I couldn´t find a translation for this word.

"The Rova raised Ganondorf, teaching him the ways of dark magic and death, darkness and power.. They proclaimed themselves their mothers and crowned him King of Thieves. It was shortly after this that the Gerudo war erupted, with their King in the vanguard."

Zelda paused for breath, Riju was shaking, either from the cold or the fear. Link´s jaw was clenched and his gaze determined.

"The Seven also aludes to a group of people from all across Hyrule, that swore to protect the realm from the Evil that was prophesized to rise from the west. After some sort of event, shortly before or during Ganondorf´s rule, the sages were slain or remained dormant, with no hopes of defeating him, Hyrule decayed slowly until it was nothing but a shell of it´s former self. Near the end of the seven years, a hero in green took the Master Sword and awoke the sages one by one, overcoming the magic and obstacles the Evil King put forth against him."

"The orphaned princess and the hero, who was said to travel across the ages to aquire powers unknown, fought against the King and finally sealed him in the Sacred Realm.

"Sadly, Hyrule´s history is plagued with darkness, as Ganondorf rose again some centuries after that, and after that and so on... Until... our beloved Kingdom started to know peace, and joy for the first time in eons. There was of course the prophecy of his return, but our people soon forgot about him. That is, until the Calamity. The rest... well, we´re here, aren´t we?", she had to gasp for air after that, she knew the whole thing by heart. As Princess of Hyrule it was one of her many duties.

Riju looked at her for the longest time. She took a couple of breaths before speaking again.

"Did any of those books mention the Gerudo in any other way than thieves and traitors?", Link looked at her, and then at Zelda. The princess sighed heavily before shaking her head. "I figured as much", Riju whispered..

"The story you just told us is more or less the same I learned from my mother, and my mother learnt it from her mother, and her mother from Urbosa. Not many of the gerudo know this story now, they think that we hate all the voe because of that stupid story Buliara and Aoane told you, Link. When in reality, my people built their future on shame and resentment. Ganondorf is the source of it all. My mother used to tell me that Urbosa would often go and take walks to the desert. Shortly after her departure, our people could hear thunderstorms that would last for days."

"My people have only known fury and hatred towards a ghost." Her voice broke and she had to wipe some tears from her face. She laughed sourly and sighed heavily, ending the sigh with a faint raspberry.

"I guess, what I´m trying to say is... that we, the Gerudo, are done with that. We are not our past, and if you allow me -allow us, we will all fight at your side, Princess". She could only guess what Riju must have been feeling. She placed her hand over her leg and smiled at her.

"I will be honored", was her reply. Link still looked tense and he had frowned deeper with each word she had spoken.

"Link are you alright?", she asked. He seemed to have been very deep in thought.

He looked up and pierced her very soul with his blue eyes. "The dagger is split in two".

She felt the hairs of her neck stand on end and a cold shiver went down her spine. What if... ?

"Are you saying what I think you´re saying?", asked Riju. Link merely glanced at her, returning his gaze to her.

"I think the Rova were sealed inside it", Zelda said. She was certain.

"How can you be so sure?", Riju asked. Her eyes wide as plates.

" 'Your death will be nothing more then the stepping stone upon which he will rulle all' ", she recited. She could feel fear take over her. Riju looked at them confused.

"I don´t understand", she finally said.

"The gerudo assassin said that before stabbing me.", she recalled vividly the blade slithering inside her skin. "She also seemed to welcome death as an old friend", her smile still haunted her in her dreams. "Death is my master", she whispered.

"I think the assassin was an old and dark desire that took some sort of physical form". Link and Riju exchanged looks.

"When we fought, she was aiming at my sword, she was barely putting up a fight, she just kept riling me up. It was as if she knew I would break it... But nothing happened after that!" he implored to no one in particular. "It just broke!" He sighed, his head hung from his shoulders like a dying flower. "It´s my fault".

She stretched her hand to where he was, but before she could reach him, Buliara had stepped inside.

"I´m sorry, my Lady. But we should go, we´ve been hearing strange noises, we might have been followed after all". Riju nodded, not without looking at her still stretched hand. She smiled at her pitifully.

When Zelda woke up she could feel the tears running down her face, she sat up and watched a far off sandstorm cross the desert. She wondered if Link was feeling the same weight upon his shoulders.


If this was how much an average gerudo drank, then he was not even half a gerudo, Link thought after the seventh or eighth glass of Noble Pursuit. He guessed it was named that way because it made you feel all-important but also... paranoid? He didn´t know.

He looked at Dehneru, who was rooting for him, and then back to the enormous woman in front of him. It was the first time he saw such a huge person. Her hips were twice as wide as his back, she was at least two heads taller than him, and her arms were as thick as his legs. She was shouting something to her friends, or to Furosa, he didn´t know very well.

"So, little vai. Do you give up?", she asked after downing the ninth glass in one gulp. She wiped her lips with the back of her hand.

"I´m sure you wish I did. But I´m not a Gerudon´t", he said to everyone´s amusement and howling. The colossal woman smiled at him.

"Two more! I guess there´s a bottomless pit underneath that veil of yours, little one!". Furosa served them another drink and his competitor drank, again in one go. He was having trouble with keeping the last drink inside, but still managed to drink as well.

When he woke up the next morning, his head was splitting in half with the noise of the outside, and his mouth was as dry as the desert. He was stark naked and his clothes laid on the floor, beside his bed. He found a glass of water waiting for him on his nightstand, along with a folded piece of paper adressed to him

You´re something else. Drink the water, you will need it.

I had fun.

D.

He downed the contents of the glass almost in one gulp, with two streaks of water running to each side of his chin. It tasted delicious.

His head was still killing him, but he at least managed to get out of bed, feeling sore and stupid. All he remembered was that last drink and then... nothing. He searched for his shoes and veil, he found them at the feet of the bed, and close to the door, a closed envelope laid on the floor. Some one had slid it through. He recognized the handwriting.

Link,

I went with Riju to see if we could find something useful inside Naboris. According to her it´s quite safe, since it actually stopped moving altogether when Ganon was defeated. I waited for you, but your friend told us you were exhausted, she said something about a competition. I figured you overdid it, as always, so I let you sleep. If you read this before midday I think you could still meet us there. We´ll return for dinner.

Hopefully there will be bacon.

Zelda

The last line made him laugh, but it quickly turned into a groan as his head began to pound mercilessly again.

He peeked outside of the window and couldn´t see the sun in the sky, so he guessed it was around midday or early in the afternoon. He took Zelda´s letter, his sand boots, sword and ruby circlet and made a bundle around the scabbard. He closed the door behind him.


As she passed the counter, Serta called out on the blonde vai. Something had fallen out from the bundle she was carrying.

"Hey! You dropped something!". But she had not heard her.

Serta picked up what the little vai had dropped. It was a small piece of paper, the names of Buliara, Aoane, the princess and the Matriarch were there. Odd

She folded the small piece of information and slid it inside her top.


Dehneru had been riding all night, her seal was exhausted, but they had managed to reach the fortress, she dreaded coming back, but her master had called her shortly after Link had fallen unconscious. No one knew the ancient ruins were there, because Vawatai had concealed it behind an everlasting sandstorm.

Her master was not known for her mercy, nor was she an understanding person. So naturally she wasn´t looking forward to bring her no news at all. The only developement worth noting was that Link trusted her enough to drink to his hearts desire. She had looked everywhere for a sign, a letter, a map or even some sort of code, but she couldn´t find anything. She had even toyed with the idea of spending the night with him, but it had been obvious since day one that he only had eyes for that whore princess. Any other voe would have jumped on an opportunity to fuck a Gerudo woman, but he was not any other voe.

"I´m here to see our Mother", she announced to the guard outside her chamber. The white maid turned around without a word and entered her master´s chamber. After a short moment the maid bowed to her and held the door open.

"Dehneru", she said in a silky voice. Her master made no effort to hide the fact that the biggest woman she had ever seen had her head between her legs.

"What news, then?", she asked while running her hands across the other woman´s hair.

The gerudo did not speak at once, for Dehneru knew her master did not take failiure lightly. Her sister had been proof of that, and many others before her.

She remembered the people of the town of Alessa, which she and her warriors had burnt to the ground. By Vawatai´s orders, not a soul was to be allowed to live. Her soldiers had enjoyed the slaughter and some of them had even treated themselves, she had called them out when she saw her most trusted warrior carrying an old woman to an alley. The warrior had merely shrugged at her "They are nothing but toys for us to use and dispose of", the warrior had said.

Six months later, she had gone to an expedition near the west end of Toruna dunes. Mother had told them there was a cave underneath the sand, and that inside of that cave they would finally find their King. They traversed the cave for the longest time, after which they found an enormous chamber with runes and gerudo scriptures all over the walls. At the center of the chamber was a golden trident. from it an invisible energy seemed to pulse outwards and pushed out anyone who approached it. Two warriors had lost their arms trying to take the trident out of the ground.

When they came out of the cave, two children were standing near the entrance. They were apparently lost. The warrior that had raped the old woman in Alessa made for her scimitar, but Dehneru stopped her and instead helped the children find their way back home.

"They were an easy prey, Dehneru. You´re getting soft", she spat.

"I´m being smart about it, Siyse. What if someone is waiting for them and whoever they are, know the children come here to play or anything like that?" she said losing her temper.

"I would have loved watching the fire of their lives escape was I ran my blade across their tender throats", Siyse said. Dehneru spat on the sand.

Siyse´s head had rolled four times, before a mound of sand stopped it. She had done as her Mother had told her. She knew she had kept the severed head of that stupid vai somewhere. But as it turned out, the only trophies Vawatai liked to show off, were her slaves.

"Serpent Mother, I apologize. I have not found our Lord, yet. But the boy trusts me. As does the matriarch". She bowed to the floor, she noticed half a chicken and a glass of water lay to her right. The chicken seemed to be cold, for a white something had began to form over it. Fungi.

For a moment all she could hear was the sound the slave made as she sucked and slurped, feasting on her master.

"And the princess? Does she trust you as well?", she asked in between moans.

"I... don´t know, Mother", she admitted.

She heard her click her tongue. And she saw the bed shift it´s weight. She had gotten out of it. Her footsteps came to a halt in front of her.

"You know what happens to the ones that fail me, Dehneru", she said coldly. Dehneru dared not look up. She focused on her toes. Her skin always had a pale green glow about it. She always thought it was a divine trait of her Mother.

"You must bring them all, or it will all have been for nothing. The princess and her knight will die".

"Stand up". Vawatai ordered.

"Do you see this vai here?", she extended her arm back to her bed, the enormous vai lay motionless on the matress, her eyes were open, but she was not blinking. Dehneru nodded.

"She failed me, and I turned her into a tool, a toy, if you will". She caressed Dehneru´s face, finally forcibly grabbing her by the mouth with her long fingers, her nails dug deep inside the flesh, she was forced to look at her directly. A pair of big yellow eyes pierced into her very soul.

"I will do the same with you if you fail me again, sekkessai". Vawatai had never been this close to her before. She could even smell her scent. It was intoxicating.

"I will not , Mother", she said, looking down. The Serpent Mother merely scoffed and pushed her face to the side. She bowed again, this time her forehead even touched the floor. She heard her master getting inside the matress again. The clicking, sucking and slurping resumed. As she was about to turn around she felt a searing pain across her chest. It was as if her heart were on fire, the heat crept all the way from her chest to her fingers and toes, she had to blink a couple of times as his eyes began to water and her screams filled the room. It was a macabre symphony of screaming and moaning that ended on the highest of notes, when the colossal vai flew across the room and smashed against the wall something cracked as the limp body fell to the ground. At the same time Dehneru felt her head was about to split open and her eyes were about to burst out of their sockets, she had gone sore, but had one last scream in her that would have made the bravest warrior piss herself. Her Mother had let out a loud moan that quickly transformed into a loud maniacal cackle.

When she finally recovered from the pain, she stood up. Coughing and gagging she bowed again. Vawatai waved a hand in a lazy motion and Dehneru was hurled out of the room with a the force of ten warriors.

She landed on the floor, a good ten steps from the chamber door. As she stood up, she wondered if that big vai was still alive.


Author´s note II:

Woah, okay. That... just happened. I was gonna end this chapter earlier, but I really want to flesh out the villains as well. That Vawatai sure is a piece of work. (by the way and just to make sure of it, Vawatai is pronounced "favatai".

The next chapter will be a lighter and hopefully a longer one, I promise!