Since the Blin invasion, the children had ultimately ended up at the Deku capital city of Deko-Ra, where King Debibaba was named rightful king of all Deku and all of the Lost Woods. By being assigned to follow the palace's steward, Topah picked up on all sorts of information about the history of the realm just from eavesdropping. King Debibaba, however, had become incapable due to illness as of recently, so his younger brother, the very one who received the children many years ago, had been appointed regent to rule in the king's stead until his eldest son became old enough to handle the responsibility of rulership at age five. Wherever one relative of the king went, so too did a score of personal guards follow.
Over the course of eight years, Topah truly learned what the word "slave" meant. Back in the village, there were many things Topah was free to do, so long as he did not do anything that broke a rule. In the palace where he was forced to serve, there he was forced to do one thing to do, and all else was not permitted. In the village, he was free to wake up whenever he wanted. In the palace, he was woken with a crack of a whip before the sun even rose. In the village, the other Kokiri laid out plenty of different kinds of foods for Topah to choose from. In the palace, there was only boiled oatmeal and a roasted Deku nut twice a day. But perhaps the worst adjustment to make was breaking the rules. In the village, Miro Miro would forbid Topah from exiting his room for that day, maybe more depending on the infraction. In the palace, Lord Deko-Babarey had appointed a guard to whip Topah whenever the master saw fit.
Assigned to attend to every need of the Lord, the boy followed the palace steward, which meant he was allowed to order around other people, but he did not have the power to whip them because they were not slaves. Compared to the tasks the Lord gave to his other subordinates, the types of tasks given to the boy were comparatively menial: put this here, put that there, clean this, clean that, carry this, carry that. It was the master's way of expressing his frequently espoused belief that a person's status in society should reflect in the work they did. Everyday, he ensured every person working underneath him had a color coded uniform to symbolize their status and role in the palace. Anyone who did not wear the pink petals of the Deku flower on their breast was forbidden to even cultivate their hair larger than the steward's own; meanwhile every guard in the city groomed their hair uniformly.
Throughout the changing seasons, Topah's life followed this routine. Every day he awoke two hours before the master did and donned his slave tunic, a brown, ragged piece of fabric that extended down to his knees. Though it did not have a single embellishment, it shared a uniform color with the tunic of every slave in the palace. Every day Topah woke up in a cage only big enough to contain a dog and went to sleep inside that cage next to the many other slaves of the lord steward; everyday, Topah was slowly forgetting his name and began replacing his identity with the name the Lord called him day in and day out: eemteebah.
What saved his sanity from total decay was the several times a day, he would walk past one of his brothers and sisters. Every time he made eye contact with Saiyu, he would quietly mutter her name, barely loud enough for her to hear so as not to invite a flaying by his master, and she would do the same. Lord Deko-Babarey worked all over the castle ordering and managing the subjects of the palace, so Topah had many chances throughout the day to catch the name of Curry who worked in the stables, or the name of Myreekah who worked in the east wing kitchen, or even the nod of Fado who worked in the palace foyer.
Of course, what gave Topah and all the other children hope for a better tomorrow was catching a glimpse of the Protector, who was put to work washing and cleaning the palace with all the other servants. She had changed jobs many times due to her rambunctious behavior. It was hard to imagine the Protector, the authority that prevented children from fighting one another, being the cause of every fight between master and slave there ever was in the palace. While no Kokiri was as brave as her, they quietly rallied behind her resilience. The Deku King's regent, the one who received the Bulblin King and the slaves, subsequently ordered two guards to watch her scrub the floors from when she awoke from her cage until she retired into her cramped sleeping space.
Either the Deku regent could not spare more guards to watch her or was just too stupid to learn, there was always at most two guardsmen watching the Protector. When she had beaten the first pair to a bloody pulp, the Deku guard replaced her watch with guards wearing wooden plated armor. However, all their protection served no purpose against the Protector's superior grappling skills. Once she outwrestled both, they tried arming the guards with staffs, and when that failed, they were given tranquilizing poison. Once that failed, they resorted to whipping her regularly to keep her in line, but that only enraged her more and caused more problems.
As Topah followed behind the steward's oversized cape, no doubt fitted for a Hylian twice his size, he was able to catch a glimpse of the Protector scrubbing away at the walkway of the palace's garden. She sensed his eyes and raised hers to meet his. Immediately, Topah felt his heart lifted, like how waking up back in the village made him feel, but his seven heartbeats of bliss were cut short as soon as the guard behind Topah rudely interrupted the boy's happy moment with a painful whip across the back of his head.
"Dumb as a donkey," remarked one of the steward's bodyguards. The palace guards followed his brother's example and raised his whip to strike the Protector; however, he did not anticipate her hand stopping his whip from completing the motion, though by then he really ought to have given her history of conflict.
The Protector pushed back against her watcher with one hand, while the other guard moved in with his wooden knife. Anticipating the guard's desire to tranquilize her immediately, she then timed her own technique so that by the time she reversed her momentum, dropped to her knees, and spun around, the incoming knife blade drove straight into his back. His armor thankfully stopped the blade from piercing into his flesh, but his body knocked the other guard right into ground. Her well timed technique was executed beautifully, but she did not stop there, for they were still armed, and she was not.
The Protector athletically scrambled on top of the Deku guard slowly recovering from the impact, holding him down with her entire weight. She pulled off his wooden helmet and began beating his poor wooden face in, leaving splinters and breaking his mouth. While the other guard was slowly recovering back up to his feet, Topah's guard stepped in to intervene. "No! Stay back! She's too dangerous for you!" warned the palace guard, "Go get help!"
"She's just a slave!" remarked Topah's supervisor as he withdrew his own whip and ignored the warning.
No. The Protector was not just some slave. She was the protector of all the Kokiri. She became the symbol of strength for all the children, and Topah was not going to let someone say something like that and get away with it. He channeled all the courage inspired by his best friend, his sister, his protector, and charged at the unsuspecting guard.
"No! Bad slave! Someone get help!" Lord Deko-Babarey panicked and pointed at one of his personal servants, "Go get more help!"
Topah's tackle connected perfectly with wooden flesh, and his shoulder drove the Deku guard straight into the ground. Now that Topah was on top as well, he beheld a strange sense of power that felt foreign. Following the Protector's example, he began to punch the wooden face, but his hands striking the hard wooden helmet seemed to hurt his knuckles more than it did to the guard underneath. The boy then tried rip the helmet off, but then the guard was able to slip his stubby legs out from underneath Topha's mount, and then he was able to kick Topah in the sternum.
Stunned from the unsuspecting attack, Topah then felt the palace guard hold Topah down as he instructed the other, "Take care of her! I got this one!" All it took was one prick of the skin…
And Topah's entire world went into nothingness. Was this death? His consciousness flashed awake for a heartbeat. His eyes opened and saw a cage and a body next to him. His neck felt cold metal wrapped around. His ears heard metal chains ringing. And after that brief heartbeat of consciousness, everything was nothing once again. And then asked again. Am I dead? And then there was an answer. It must be. There is nothing. I have no control over my body anymore. And then there was another question.
Was his body ever his to control?
And when Topah reflected on the only memories he was able to retain over the past year, he could never remember a single moment when he did ever have control. And if he ever did before he was brought here, then those moments and sentiments had been long forgotten. This was what it meant to have no control over the realities in which his body inhabited: death.
When he did finally wake up fully, he found himself inside a cage again, but this time, there was much more space, even enough to stand and walk around in, than previously before. And even better, there was a familiar, smiling face waiting for him to regain consciousness. But before he could experience the happiness sparked by the visage of the Protector, much less inhabiting the same space as hers, his body had to regain functionality after being in paralysis for quite some time.
The first thing Topah felt was something come up his throat. "Hold on, I gotcha," the Protector guided him to the corner where there was a small chamberpot meant for the two to share. "I felt it too when I first got poisoned. Just heave." And heave he did. At first, whatever remnants from his last meal were expelled all over the chamberpot, but his stomach would not stop churning even if there was nothing left to churn. "That's right, let it all out," she patted him on the back and then grabbed a small pail of water left for them to share. "Here, drink."
Topah was so weak that the Protector had to scoop the first few handfuls of water into his mouth, and swallowing even felt weird. But gradually, his body began to relax and ease into his new surroundings; eventually, his shock and anxiety washed away and left only a ripping nausea in his stomach. "How long was I out?" he asked her.
"Almost three days now," she answered cheerfully. "That poison knocked me out for two nights in a row the first time."
The Protector triggered the hidden memory Topah retained of he and all the Kokiri shouting and begging for the Protector to wake up nonstop many years ago. "Somehow, I never forgot that," remarked Topah sullenly.
"You get used to it. This last time I only felt dazed for less than half a day," she said with a smile,
Topah took a moment to absorb his surroundings, but he could only see that which the wall mounted torches revealed, and only a single torchlight brought light to their area in the dark room. "What's going on? Where are we?" He then felt the cold steel ring around his neck and discovered a long chain connecting his collar to the side of the cage.
Normally, Topah would have had another panic attack trying to adjust to his new enclosure. However, with the Protector by his side suffering the same fate as him, he knew deep down to his very core that they were going to be okay. "We're in the throne room. They locked us up here right behind the throne to 'exercise control'," she explained mocking their uptight Deku accents, "but I bet it's really because we cause too much trouble."
Topah laughed, "Ha! I hope our other brothers and sisters are doing the same thing so that they lock us all up together."
The Protector giggled as well, lifting Topah's heart once again. He felt at home once again, protected by someone with a resolute head on two strong shoulders. "Oy," she changed subjects, "I noticed your form with your mount."
"Oh," Topah immediately blushed, "I-I'm not good at wrestling, you know." Though the Protector used to teach both sword mastery and ground fighting classes, he only attended the former ritually.
"It's okay," replied the Protector, "you just haven't been shown how. Here, let me show you." She beckoned him to lay on his back. Throwing her leg over Topah's stomach, the Protector sat on his belly yet did not put her full weight behind his rear. "Feel that? In case you try to buck me off, I won't lose my balance. Now, you let him push against your knees and slip out, right?"
"Yeah," Topah conceded.
"That's all right! Here, this is what you could do next time. I'm going to pull against your arm," the Protector leaned over and grabbed the back of his upper arm, and when she pulled, she slid her entire body forward onto his chest, "and then press my knees up to your armpits. Now try to escape." Try as he might, the Protector's simple change in positioning eliminated Topah's ability to buck her off with his hips and his escape route underneath her.
When she dismounted Topah, he complained, "Yeah, but you're a lot stronger than I am."
"Not at all. When I traveled North to Zora's domain, I studied their way of fighting opponents with hard skin like the Gorons or armor like the Hylian soldiers."
"Whoa, when did Father allow you to leave the village?"
"All the time, so long as I announced my sabbatical to Father and I returned on time."
"So those seasons when you couldn't teach…"
"That's right. I was on leave to study fighting. I didn't start off knowing how to sword fight from the beginning, though I apologize for intentionally making you all think that."
"Ohh! So that's why you always had new tricks up your sleeve even though you said you had taught us everything you learned in class!"
"Yep!" she replied innocently at her confession. "How about this? When nobody's around, I'll show you everything I've ever learned. No holding back. I mean everything. Since, you know, I'm not in any position to take leave, haha," her chuckle at the end allowed Topah to see a bright side behind his enslavement for the first time.
And that's how the nights went. After the day's business was concluded and the regent retired to his chambers for the evening, Topah and the Protector were given the peace and privacy to conduct their "flow" lessons. She started off with the basic positions that gave her the most control with minimal effort and then began to expose him to all sorts of deadly chokes and arm bends that could cripple the strongest with the littlest of force. "If the Zora did not have the strength nor the weaponry to pierce metal armor or even Goron skin," explained the Protector during one lesson, "then they had to resort to their minds to solve their problem. However, this style of flow fighting is only useful against one opponent. If you are facing multiple, then that's where a sword becomes handy."
During the day, their activity was limited to sitting in dumb silence as people passed by to gawk at them. The Dekus' persona behind their beady orange eyes seemed to hold no compassion, only judgement and gratitude that they were not slaves.
Only one did care, the Temple of Hylia priestess and eldest daughter of the incapable King. The Deku and the Kokiri were supposedly once friends because they shared an ancestry, the Great Deku Tree. However, the Lord regent believed that the Kokiri to be descended from a different, specific tree, thus justifying his use of power to invade the village. Whenever the uncle and the niece met, inevitably she brought up the cruel treatment of the two children chained in the cage behind him. "You condemn our people with your heresy!" Oddly, she did not defend any of the other slaves.
"Our soldiers' failures is not the fault of bad favor from the Goddesses. If you want to blame someone, blame our commanders for allowing our soldiers run like cowards against the barbarians we should be beating!" the regent Lord Deboka-Kara yelled the same, routine excuse to his niece as he did to all his other advisors. If Topah and the Protector laughed every time they heard that same line, they could compile an entire evening's worth of laughter at the end of every tendo.
So long as the sun hovered over the palace, all Lord Deboka-Kara heard was bad news coming in from across the Deku held lands. "My liege! Blins have overrun our strongholds in the east!" "My lord! Our peasants are restless at night and gathering in mobs!" "Sire! Our coffers have been depleted!" "Your majesty! Two villages have been razed and burnt to the ground last night!" Every day, the news only got worse and more grim.
The regent lord threw every solution he could to deal with one problem at a time. "Send a score of our palace to garrison Deko-Faro!" "Bring the ring leaders to me and then burn them!" "Send a message to Duke Faron. Arrange a sale of our merchandise!" "Use the money from the sale to purchase weapons from all merchants!" But the bad news stubbornly continued rolling into the throne room despite all of Lord Deboka-Kara's efforts. It was as if the Deku people truly had been cursed.
In the end, there was only one solution left for the regent lord. As soon as he received word back from this Duke Faron fellow, he ordered the palace guards to transfer Topah and the Protector back to the warehouse where the children were initially received. They were escorted into a giant cage meant to fit everyone, which meant that for the first time in almost eight years, the children were reunited one more time. Instead of the green tunic and pants they traditionally wore back home, they all equally matched in their drab, slave tunic. It mattered not. All children, all one hundred eighty four made it through, and were all held in the same cell once again.
However, while all the Kokiri were happy to see and talk to each other once again, Topah was overcome with sadness when he almost failed to recognize some of his siblings. Curry used to have baby fat on his face, but all that was left after eating the same small portions every day for almost eight years was nothing but skin and bones. Onolla used to stand uprightly, now she had a permanent bend in her back from all that time spent working in that posture. When he looked at the Protector after noticing the differences in appearances in all the Kokiri, he noticed that her hair no longer kempt nor luscious as it had once been. The collective smell of everyone's many years without bathing stung his nose.
Of course, who cared how anybody looked at this point? Everyone was all miraculously alive. It was not the appearance of each child before the enslavement that defined who they were, it was their very life, and what little control they still had over their thoughts and body, that defined their existence. Topah felt the warmth from being together with everyone once again and did not hide from their strong musk, until the Deku guards opened the cage and begin corralling the children out into four separate cages with wheels.
The Protector followed behind Topah closely as he stepped into the wooden cell. When forty six children were equally split between the holding wagons, a pair of lizalfos pulled the cage out the warehouse and into the forest beyond.
After traveling half a day through the browning forest, the Deku finally reached their destination, marked by the people they were anticipating. Topah saw two armies of armed men, Deku on one side and Hylian on the other, facing off in the middle of a small clearing in the thick forest.
The leader of the small, Hylian army wore a metal shirt like Topah had never seen before. So this was what Mido called armor. A single, curved sheet of metal that fit over his torso, a metal skirt that parted ways in the middle over metal pants that protected everything in between, a frightening long sword that was bigger than Topah had ever seen, and a round, wooden circlet that sat on top of his curly, graying hair altogether made the Hylian noble look liked he was the actual ruler of the forest. If his regal appearance was not powerful enough, then his even better armored guards with helmets that shielded the face riding on horseback surely unnerved all the Deku soldiers at least the slightest. The Hylian Duke only needed a dozen of his riders to accompany him, for each weapon they wielded in their massive arsenal looked like they were worth twenty of the Dekus' spears. And if they didn't have enough armor for themselves, they had armor for their horses. All the shiny steel glimmering from just twelve men and their horses made the tiny Deku bow and miniature arrows look useless.
"Duke Faron of House Springbock!" The regent Lord Deboka-Kara greeted the Hylian leader with even more caution and humility than he did the Blin leader. Wearing his fanciest leaf petal dress, he did not have any protection underneath his primary strategy of diplomacy. Topah had a bad feeling that if things went sour, not a single Deku guard in the regent lord's army could save the incompetent ruler from death. "It is my greatest and humblest pleasure to receive you on a fine day!"
From behind Duke Faron on horseback, an elderly Deku woman, evidenced by the wilt of her magenta petals on her hair, climbed onto the Duke's shoulder and translated the message. He spit on the ground in response, "I was expecting abled bodied men to pick my fields for the upcoming harvest. Why am I looking at a bunch of ragged Links stuffed inside a cage like animals?"
The messenger translated the message to the regent, "My liege was expecting full grown men to reap the fields for harvest, not children."
Lord Deboka-Kara laughed off the Duke's displeasure, "Lord Springbock if only you knew what capabilities these children have!" This was Topah's first time witnessing and recognizing insincerity, for the regent had not once spoken a positive word about the Kokiri, refused to call them by name even. "These children never age at all! In fact, they stay forever young and able bodied, making them the perfect gift to pass down your next in line!"
When the translator finished whispering into his ear, he laughed out, "Ha! How do you think enslaving children will make me look?"
"My liege is concerned with the negative impacts of his reputation."
The regent maintained his cheeky expression, "I apologize, I was under the presumption that the Duke of Faron was interested in able bodies to harvest the fields for this autumn and many more to come."
Duke Faron let out a long hum to consider the proposal, "How many did you bring?"
Lord Deboka-Kara bowed in response, "One hundred and eighty four in total of very capable slaves. I give you my word as a Deku!"
"Hmph," responded the Duke, "your word is as cheap as a merchant's tongue, but so be it. How much for the whole lot?"
"Fifty for each one."
"You expect me to believe that each one of these children is worth one mercenary's yearly wage? I won't pay a green rupee more than thirty."
"Forty five, then."
"Thirty five."
"Forty."
"Forty." Duke Faron rubbed his chin to mull over the price and then whispered to his translator. "Seven thousand for all of them."
"Seven thousand," the big number, too high for Topah to even imagine, made the regent salivate. "Yes, yes! Now, did you bring the down payment?"
When the Duke received the question, he answered with a nod to one of his fully armored guards, who then whistled sharply out to someone hiding within the trees behind the leader. After some rustling, a rider wearing slightly less metal than the rest steered a horse carrying a cart twice the width of the horse full of shiny jewels. Topah had seen these semi-opaque stones being passed around as if they were bargaining tools, but he could not understand what they were being traded for, or why. However, he had never seen so many of those shiny gems together in one place. That was seven however-many rupees in that cart?
"Five thousand down payment as we promised," reassured Duke Faron.
The regent hopped giddily and sang like a child, as if he too had never seen so many jewels in one place before either. As the rider dismounted and disconnected the horse from the cart full of jewels, the Lizalfos slaves pulled the cage of children to the Hylian lord, who then ordered his men to connect one horse to each of their cages. As his soldiers drove the carts with their horses, he remarked, "You won't be serving at Castle Springbock, but you will make good slaves for my other estates."
Topah suddenly felt a hand grab his own, and when looked to see who it was, the Protector had leaned in and whispered, "No matter what, we're not separating."