Chapter 13
The growth of industry effects many different people, places, and things in many different ways. A parallel can be made between this and the growth of living things. Just as grass grows, cows eat grass, and people eat cows, so too does production grow, demand grows, and the factories eat people. Where exists such oppressive consumption, however, there tends to be a benefactor or two standing by to reap the spoils of other's suffering. Perhaps this wasn't a conscious decision by the Gorons of the Eastern Mountains, but it was nonetheless the reality of the part they had to play in the ever evolving economic state of Hyrule, due to one simple fact:
It was the Gorons who owned the quarries.
From their deep halls of stone far below the peaks of the mountains came all the raw materials, all the precious resources which the rich dignitaries and business men of Castle Town used to keep their monstrous pets, the factories, producing product. So incredible was the demand, and so steep was the price of the Goron stone and metal that in less than a hundred years the whole of Death Mountain had been hollowed out and hewn to rubble. The crater of the ancient volcano, once a sacred place of great importance to the tribes of old, had been drained through a natural gulch on the mountain's eastern slope, and the cooling magma became a source of sturdy obsidian which the Gorons were quick to mine and chip away.
Unlike the Zora, children of Nayru and first of the Golden Races, the Gorons were of the hardened stock of Din. Power was what commanded their respect, more sacred than any god or temple. It was the mountains that Gorons made their place of worship, and their prayers were answered in the form of gems and ore which kept the miners happy and the Gorons rich.
There were problems for the Gorons too. Being so unlike their brother race, the Zora, the Gorons had less respect for the natural world. They felt they owned the rocks and the mountains, rather than being the gentle stewards of nature which the Zora sought to be. Twofold was their greed, for the same stones they traded were the stones which nourished them and saw their children reared to hearty size so that they too could become miners and dig and eat. Yet, nature is not boundless. The hard-headed Gorons had forgotten how easy the balance of nature could be broken, and too excessive was their consumption and too greedy their mining.
So the Gorons moved from mountain to mountain and quarry to quarry, leaving no stone unturned in an unusually literal sense, eating and trading away, and always getting farther from the Castle to which they offered up the bulk of their wealth.
With the Gorons went the town of Kakariko, clinging to its hosts like a hungry parasite. It had become apparent quickly after the hollowing of Death Mountain and the relocation of the Gorons to more plentiful peaks that the little village could not survive without the steady flow of merchants and miners which the Goron quarries provided. Soon, the village had grown used to uplifting its entire populace every couple of decades and following the mine in its slithering procession across the Eastern ranges. It became normality, old and expected, and no one thought on it any farther than that.
What the Gorons did not realize in their lust for wealth and their pursuit of the power they respected was that they had forgotten the roots of their mother Din which had given them the strength and knowledge to harvest the stones in the first place. They lost sight of the boundaries, they grew arrogant and decadent, and before long they delved too deep. Down in the low, low depths of the darkest Goron mines something had awoken, and the Gorons would soon see the grim reality of the power that had been their foolish wish.
"Dad, tell us a story!"
Doro was a baby Goron. Or, at least a young Goron. Young Gorons were somewhat of an enigma to most other races. Most Hylians tended not to think about the implications of the Goron reproductive cycle, but every so often the awkward question would come up, and then everyone suddenly became aware of the rock monster in the room. Where did baby Gorons come from? For all the rich and detailed history available in the form of books and carvings and sacred relics all around Hyrule, that was a bit of information that was conveniently omitted from every known source.
The truth was, even the Gorons themselves weren't exactly sure.
Since the beginning of time, since the awakening of the three Golden races who were the stewards of the still budding world which would become Hylia, the Gorons had known that it was their purpose in life to mine. They did not learn this behavior, they were this behavior. Just as an animal does not need to be told how to find a mate, a Goron does not need to be told how to find a cave to dig in. It just so happened that, on occasion when a Goron was mining away as all Gorons do, sometimes another Goron would just sort of pop out.
They would be small, alive, and crying in the manner of a child, and it would appear to the Goron who had unearthed the little bundle of stony joy that it must have been sealed up there in the solid rock from the word go.
It was the alarming belief of some Gorons that every Goron that ever was and ever would be already existed somewhere, a screaming babe encased in a womb of solid rock, waiting indefinitely for fate to find a hand to dig him out. Yet Goron babies were only ever found by Goron miners, and not a one among the rocky race could figure that one out.
So it was that on one fateful day old Boro, foreman of one of the many Goron quarries, swung his pick at a wall of rock and found beyond that barrier of stone not the diamonds which he sought but rather a pair of crying faces. On that day Doro and his brother Toro were born, and as is keeping with the Goron tradition Boro found himself unexpectedly a single father juggling two kids and a full-time job.
"Yeah, Dad! Tell us a story!"
Toro ran up to take his place beside his brother, kneeling on the old floor mat before the foreman's smelting hearth. The little cavern chamber where the three of them made their home was sparsely furnished, since Gorons didn't require much. In one corner a wooden chest stood open, filled to the brim with gemstones of every shape and variety, kept as a pantry which held the children's snacks. Wrought iron braziers burned oil from three separate spots on the wall, brightly lighting the little room. The walls were painted with angular, geometric tribal designs of Goron culture. There were no beds, because Gorons liked to sleep on their bellies, curled up on the ground like a resting boulder.
"Okay, okay," said Boro, scooping the little ones up and resting one on each knee. Boro was a large Goron. Large, even for a Goron, that is. He stood a full nine feet, and had a bristling 'beard' of solid quartz. His arms were powerful chunks of granite, and his chest was an armored plate of tarnished corundum, harder than steel and barely less than diamond in its durability. Toro and Doro were about the size of bowling balls by comparison, and looked comically tiny sitting in their father's lap.
"So what'll it be today then?" asked Boro, smiling lovingly on his offspring.
"Tell us about the dragon again, Dad!" shouted Doro.
"Yeah, Dad!" agreed Toro, "Tell us about Volvaga again!"
"That's Volvagia, Toro," Boro corrected the child, gently, "You boys sure you want to hear that one again? Seems like I tell you that one all the time."
"Please Dad!"
"Yeah, Dad, please? We wanna hear about the dragon!"
"Alright, alright," said Boro, "Once upon a time, when the belly of Death Mountain still burned with fire, and the Kingdom of Hyrule was many thousands of years younger than it is now, the Legendary Sage Darunia was the patriarch of the Gorons. Now Darunia was as tough as Gorons get. He was strong, and fierce, and courageous, and the very mountains would shake when he danced to the lofty forest flutes in his proud hall down under Death Mountain Crater.
"Well, one day the Evil King who once ruled in Hyrule for a time came to Darunia, and he said, 'Lord of the Gorons, give me all your treasures and all your gold or I will come into your proud hall and I will take your people away from you and feed them to the terrible dragon, Volvagia.' Well, Darunia was a proud Goron, and though he knew that the Evil King was a mighty wizard he would not bow to the man's corrupt will. 'Try and take my people, if that is your wish. I will not give over what belongs to the Gorons to a man such as you.'
"Now, the Evil King did not like that one bit. He was very angry with Darunia for not giving over the gems and gold he wanted so much. So, with an army of evil soldiers at his command, the Evil King came back to Death Mountain and he took all the Gorons. He forced them down into the ancient temple far below Death Mountain Crater and locked them away, and he told Darunia that until he gave up all the treasure of Death Mountain that he would feed one of the Gorons to the hungry dragon every day.
"Darunia had a diamond heart, they say, for he was not the slightest bit tarnished by this. He had a plan to deal with the Evil King. He would go down to the temple and free the Gorons and he would slay the dragon and bring its head to lie at the feet of the Evil King. 'There', Darunia would say, 'See your dragon? What will you feed my people to now!'
"There was a problem with Darunia's plan though. Volvagia had lived before, long before Darunia's own time. Back then another Goron had defeated the mighty dragon using an ancient, magical hammer which could break anything, even dragon scales. That powerful weapon was called the Megaton Hammer, and some said that Din herself had forged it in the fires of creation long ago. Darunia did not have the Megaton Hammer though. It had been lost hundreds of years before, and no one knew just where the hammer might be.
"Darunia remained determined nonetheless. 'I cannot waste time looking for the magic hammer,' said Darunia to himself, 'Each day another Goron becomes a snack for that dragon. I have to protect the Gorons, so I will go down and fight the dragon anyway.'
"About this time, an old friend of Darunia's whom he had sworn as his brother, the highest regard a Goron can bestow upon any other race, came to visit Death Mountain…"
"The Legendary Hero!" cried Toro, excitedly, "Oh man, he was the coolest!"
"Super coolest!"
"Mega coolest!"
"Do you want me to tell the story or not?" said Boro, and his chuckle sounded like a distant landslide, "Yes, Darunia's brother was the Legendary Hero, and he had come back after seven long years away to visit his brothers once again. However, when the Hero arrived at Death Mountain, he was surprised to see that all the Gorons had disappeared! Only Darunia's son remained. He had hidden from the Evil King, and seen as all the Gorons had been taken away. He pleaded with the Hero for him to go down into the temple and help his father fight the mighty dragon.
"The Hero, being a hero, agreed immediately to find Darunia and help him defeat Volvagia once and for all. Equipped with one of the special magic tunics which only Gorons know how to make, the Hero went right into Death Mountain Crater, and he found the Temple's secret entrance and went down, down deep under the ground to find his brother."
"Those tunics aren't so special," said Doro, "They're just dumb old dodongo scales. Anyone can make them."
"That's not true, Doro!" said Boro, "Only Gorons know the trick of heating the dodongo scales at just the right temperature to bring out the special magic that makes Goron tunics so resistant to heat and fire. Go ahead and ask any Hylian, and see if they know how many degrees a dodongo scale crackles at. I'd wager my favorite diamond that they don't have an answer for you."
"Now, where was I? Ah, of course, the temple under the mountain. All mountains have a Goron temple somewhere deep underneath, or so the legend goes. The Mountains were the world to the Gorons long ago, and in the early dawn of Goron life most Gorons didn't even know there was a sky! It seemed to Gorons in those days that the whole world was just tunnels and rock to dig, and that suited them just fine. Well, this particular Goron temple had long housed the bones of Volvagia, and was built to commemorate the defeat of that monstrous dragon so long ago by the ancient Goron hero. It was the magic of the Evil King which had brought the dragon back to life, but where the Evil King went, the Legendary Hero was never far behind.
"The Hero found Darunia just as he was about to face the dragon. There stood the mighty Goron, just outside the door to the Dragon's lair, but the hero said, 'Wait, Darunia! You cannot fight the dragon alone. I am here to help you!'
"Darunia was very pleased to see his brother had returned to help him save the Gorons, but he wasn't willing to let his brother fight the dragon and die. He knew that it would be nearly impossible to stop the dragon without the hammer, but he thought that maybe he could distract the monster long enough for the Legendary Hero to free all of the Gorons who had been captured by the Evil King. 'While I'm trying to deal with the dragon, please save my people!' said Darunia."
"Dad, you gotta make it believable," whined Toro, "A great Goron leader like Darunia wouldn't talk like that. He'd say something way cooler."
"You think so?" laughed Boro, "Well, I'm only telling you the story the way I heard it. If you think you can tell it better I can just stop here."
"No, no!" cried Toro and Doro, "Please, Dad, finish it!"
"Ok, but no more interruptions," said Boro. He cleared his throat, which sounded like a cave in, and went on, "Well, true to his word, the Hero searched every corner of the temple, and freed many Gorons along the way. Of course, the Gorons recognized him as their sworn brother and did much to help him accomplish this task. Eventually, the Hero came to a chamber in the temple which had remained hidden for too many years to count. He found a beautiful golden treasure chest in this room, and when he opened it to see what was inside, he found…"
"The Megaton Hammer!" shouted Toro, standing up on his father's lap and throwing one rocky fist up to the sky in triumph.
"Hey, settle down there. I thought I said no more interruptions."
"Sorry, Dad," said Toro sitting down again, "I promise I won't do it again."
"That's alright Toro," said Boro, patting Toro on the head with his own rocky hand, which made Toro's small fists look like mere pebbles.
"Yes, it was the Megaton Hammer inside the treasure chest," said Boro, getting back to the story, "The Hero was very happy to find the Megaton Hammer! 'I must get to Darunia,' thought the Hero, 'With this hammer we can slay that dragon together!'
"The Hero went to the dragon's lair as quickly as he could, but when he got there there was no sign of poor Darunia. Only the dragon remained. Its body was like a long ribbon of fire, and it had horns like a goat, and legs like a hawk. It flew up high over the Hero, and rained down fire on him from its glowing magma scales, but the Hero was too fast to let that attack hit! Then, the dragon tried diving low and going under the magma where the Hero could not follow. The dragon would pop its head up out of the Magma, and try to breathe its fire on the Hero, but still the Hero was too quick! Finally, the dragon popped its head out one more time, and –SMASH! The Legendary Hero hit the dragon so hard on its head that it cracked the armor of its scales there, and the dragon clutched at its head and wailed and cried about the pain. The magic hammer was too powerful for the dragon! It struggled and cried as its fire burned out, and it crumbled away to nothing but ashes right before the Hero's eyes! He had defeated the dragon and saved the Gorons, for which our people will forever be in his debt."
"But what happened to Darunia, Dad?" said Doro.
"Well, Doro, Darunia became the Sage of Fire, and went to go live with the other sages in the Sacred Realm," replied Boro.
"I heard Gorbu say that the Sacred Realm is where people go when they die," said Doro.
"Yeah, duh!" blurted Toro, "That dragon gobbled Darunia up. That's why he went to the sacred realm."
"You don't know that!" cried Doro, unmistakable horror in his voice.
"Do so!" jeered Toro.
"Now that's enough!" scolded Boro, setting both children back on the floor, "There, I've told you your story. Now it's time to go to sleep. I'd hate to have to tell Biggoron that you boys were fighting again."
"No, Dad, don't!" shouted Toro.
"Yeah, Dad, we'll be good!" promised Doro.
Suddenly, there was a thunderous boom outside, like an explosion reverberating off the echoing walls of the quarry.
"Dad, what was that?" said Toro.
"I don't know, son," the old Goron was on his feet with surprising swiftness. He went to the door to their sleeping chamber and threw it open, casting his gaze all around the multi-tiered, open hall of the quarry. Across on the other side of the quarry he could see many Goron's running about as in a panic. Suddenly, a group of Gorons went rolling right past Boro's door, heading in the same direction as the others.
Boro stuck his foot out, and one of the rollers came to a crashing halt.
"Hey!" said the Goron, "What did you do that for?"
"What's going on out here?"
"Some kind of an attack!" replied the Goron, "No one knows who just yet, but they say the entire bombflower warehouse has gone up!"
"That's impossible! The rockslide would be devastating!"
"It was," replied the Goron, "Many people are dead. You should hurry and get out of here before whoever is attacking shows up. I'm on my way out right now, so if you'll excuse me, good luck to you brother!"
The Goron curled up into a ball and went rolling away.
"Dad?" cried Doro, "What's happening?"
"Listen, you two," said Boro, closing the door and proceeding to scoop the two little children back into his arms, "You have to hide. Daddy has to go see what's wrong outside, so I'm going to put you in the food bin and I want you to curl up and hide at the bottom and don't come out till I get back no matter what. You understand?"
"No, Dad!" whined Doro, "Don't leave us here, we're scared!"
"Doro, I'm serious," said Boro. The children saw the stern look on their father's face and knew they should not argue. Boro took each child and stuffed them down deep in the chest of gems, scooping up handfuls of the rocks and piling them on the huddled forms of his children. He gave them one last worried glance before heading out to find what the matter was outside.
The children huddled for long minutes at the bottom of the chest, trembling in fear at the sounds of distant explosions.
"What is going on, Toro?"
"It's the dragon! Its Volvagia, it must be! Can't you hear his fire booming outside? He's come back to gobble us all up!"
"Toro, don't say that!"
"But what else could it be?"
The children silenced at once as they heard the door come open once more. They listened in horror as two pairs of footsteps entered the little room, and they knew by the odd patter of the steps that they did not belong to their father.
There was a clatter as one of the iron braziers was thrown to the ground.
"None in here," hissed a serpentine voice, "Let's move on to the next one. Lord Nyarlath wants the lot of these rock eating slobs locked up."
"The Evil King!" whispered Doro.
"Shhhh!" hissed Toro.
"Did you hear that?" said another raspy, leathery voice.
"Hear what?"
"Hmmm…" both Goron's held their breath as they heard the footsteps coming closer. A scaly hand came groping through the rocks and gems above them, several times brushing their backs with rough and horrible skin. "Just rocks. Guess it was my imagination. Let's go."
The pattering footsteps left, slamming the door behind them. The two young Goron's exhaled together.
"That settles it, its Volvagia for sure!" said Toro.
"Toro, I'm scared. What do we do if Dad doesn't come back?"
"Gosh, I dunno Doro," said Toro, thoughtfully, "I guess we'll just have to wait here like he said, and hope that the Legendary Hero comes to rescue us."
There was another resounding boom somewhere outside in the quarry. The two curled balls of rock huddled closer together.
"I really hope he hurries," said Doro, pathetically.
"Me too," said Toro, sidling up as close to his brother as he could, "Me too."
The fires from the quarry raged long into the night, and the two young Gorons remained there, trembling in the dark below the rocks and gems, waiting.
The Crimson Stalfos hovered low over the foothills, far to the East of Hyrule field where the Eastern Mountains sloped down and gave way to the plains of distant, foreign lands. Down below the ship, on the sparsely vegetated, rocky ground, Link was watching the Pirates saddle up a group of horses and tie supply bags to their backs. They were headed for the village of Kakariko, which lay at the base of the mountain where the Gorons harvested their ore and gems both day and night. It was there they would begin their search for the location of the Temple of the Heart, which legends said resided somewhere at the center of the mighty mountain range.
They could not just fly the Stalfos into the village though, seeing as how they were all wanted thieves. They would have to depart the ship a ways away from Kakariko and go in on foot and wearing disguises so that they would not be caught.
Link had only ever seen Gorons in Castle Town, and he had never had the chance to talk to one face to face. He was quite excited by the idea. No one knew more about making swords and other things out of metal than the Gorons. Link was fascinated by the secrets of the forge fire, and couldn't wait to see them in action.
Suddenly, the boy became aware of a presence behind him.
"I've never been to Kakariko before," said a muffled voice, "I'm quite excited to see what it's like."
Link turned to see who was speaking to him, and was surprised to find a Shiekah boy only slightly older than himself, lithe and skinny, with a white turban and scarf wrapped around his head so that only his eyes and a few tufts of blond hair were visible. Behind him, a long braid of golden hair was wrapped tightly in a strip of white cloth.
"Oh, hey," said Link, "I've never seen you before. I didn't know there were any kids aboard the Stalfos besides me and Zelda. I'm Link, by the way. It's nice to meetcha!"
"Link," said the Shiekah boy, "It's me! Zelda!"
She pulled the muffling scarf away from her face, and Link was shocked to see Zelda's soft, feminine features smiling from beneath.
"Pretty neat disguise, huh?"
"Oh, yeah, wow!" said Link, his eyes wide, "That's really something. I thought you were a boy for sure!"
"Thanks, I think," said Zelda, replacing the scarf over her face, "What did they give you to wear?"
"Oh," said Link, reaching into his travel pack, "Kef gave me this mask."
He put the thing on and looked at Zelda. It was like a kind of yellow fox with no mouth, black tips on its elongated ears, wispy slashes for eyes, and a dotted black nose. Link tilted his head to the side at Zelda's bewildered expression.
"Like it?"
"That thing is ridiculous," said Zelda.
"Hey!"
"Come on, little bugs!" called Gwen, already astride her horse, "There's no time to lose. We need to reach Kakariko by nightfall."
The two kids went running, Link and Zelda, side by side, their minds full of the wonder of a new adventure. Gwendolin watched them, running and laughing, and mused about how wonderful it would be to be a child again, if only for a day.