The Waters of Nayru
Chapter 38: The Ritual
By, Frank Hunter
Returning to the Arbiter's Grounds was like reopening an old wound. Rigo saw it all, again at night, and was reminded of the time before when he had almost died and had been forced to flee into the hands of his enemies. He remembered his hallucination in the desert as he left the ruins, and as he closed the distance back to them, he glanced into the distance to see if, by some hellish chance, Ganondorf again stood there, still mocking him.
"The world will be shaped by the actions of the King," the apparition had told him. "And the King shall rule it all beneath his heel."
And by the Sand Goddess, if Amili had her way, such a future would come to pass. Rigo would become the eventual King of Gerudo, and rule over Hyrule as the lord and master of all the land. Yes, Amili's intentions were pure for the moment, but power has a tendency to corrupt, and if the Fountain was as powerful as it was reputed to be, then the Gerudo wouldn't be satisfied to just live on the outskirts if they came to control it. It might take years or decades, but the people would push to move in on the fertile lands of the Hylians, to claim what was due to them. And much as Amili was forced to follow the desires of the people in her station as Stewardess, so Rigo would be slave to their will as King. The crown was still too delicate. He would have to rule his people lightly, and would likely never have the sheer power or influence to tell the Gerudo, "No." To tell them, "I know what you all want, and you cannot have it." They would fight him just as they did Sooru.
And if that didn't happen, then what? Tydus would claim the Fountain and challenge Zelda. And if he won, he would become a dictator the like of which Hyrule has never seen. Given enough time, he would come after the Gerudo again, and war would be at their doorstep once more. War with a foe more powerful than they could hope to defeat.
There was no way to win in this situation. As the hallucination had predicted, regardless of the outcome, Rigo was to blame. So, shouldn't he push for the future where he could be in control? Regardless of what might then happen, regardless of what he'd have to do, he'd at least have Amili. And surely he'd be a better ruler than Tydus, wouldn't he?
He didn't know.
The shapes of ruins began to appear beside him and that familiar feeling of coldness began to run up and down his spine. It was more eerie even than before, now that he knew specifically what the feeling meant. He tried to picture legions of dead eyes watching him out of the dark from all directions, but couldn't come to terms with the thousands of them that must have been there. Too many to count.
After a time, Nabooru said, You can stop here. Another few minutes, and he'd have been in the twisted, craggy paths leading to the Temple's doorstep.
"Are they watching me?" Rigo asked her, quietly.
They're aware of you, she said. But there are some things you'll need to do now to get their full attention.
Rigo dry swallowed. There was no sense stalling. "What kind of things?"
You need to find something you can use as a channel, to focus the energy, Nabooru said. A sorcerer would have a staff. You need something similar.
"A staff…" Rigo said, and began to search about, pawing through the ruins. He came up with a broken piece of two-by-four that looked like it had once been part of the architecture. It was the length of his forearm and splintered on one end.
"Eh?" he asked.
That'll do, Nabooru told him. But you'll need to make it more suitable to hold power. Wait a second. Just keep your eye on it.
Rigo held the piece of wood out in front of him and watched it. He had forgotten that, besides being able to communicate with spirits, Nabooru had, in life, dabbled in sorcery. Though it may have been at least partly against her will, she still knew enough to get by in the art. Maybe she really did know enough to pull something like this off.
As he watched, images began to appear before his eyes on the chunk of wood. Two symbols, specifically. He could only assume Nabooru was showing those to him. "What're those?"
You need to carve those runes on the wood, she said. It will help the flow of power through the channel.
Rigo looked them over. Both were circular patterns that looked like they fed into one another. They weren't overly elaborate, but they weren't simple shapes either. "Is this really necessary?"
What'd I say? Nabooru asked him. You follow all my instructions, all of them, and we get out of this alive. So start following.
"Alright alright, keep your pants on," Rigo said. "It's just gonna take some time. We're in something of a rush, you remember?"
Rigo gave the task the twenty minutes it took to chip at the wood and carve the symbols roughly with his newly acquired short sword. When it was done, Nabooru deemed it acceptable and went on.
Kneel down and draw a circle in the sand around you, she said. Big enough so your foot won't slip out of it by accident.
Rigo did so with his finger. "Good?"
No. Scratch it out, do it again, she said.
"Why?"
One of the sides is flatter than the other. It needs to be perfect.
Rigo scowled and did it again. And when he was done, Nabooru told him to redo it again. He lost count at twelve, but bit back his retorts and comments, knowing that Nabooru wouldn't insist on this if it weren't necessary. Eventually, one of his efforts seemed to sate her.
Now cut a lock of your hair and scatter it along the circle. Be careful not to break the design.
Rigo put his short sword to a gathered strand of hair and sliced it cleanly off. "What's that do?" he asked as he began distributing the strands of hair gently within the curve around him.
It imbues your own aura into the circle, she said. It will help the spirits identify the energy of the spell as your own.
"Great," Rigo said, not sure he really wanted a big arrow over his head in case the ghosts decided they didn't like what he was about to do.
I think we're about ready to start, Nabooru said. There are several steps of progression on a complicated spell like this, and you're gonna have to hit them just right or the power you're building up could scatter, or explode. Understand kid, I normally wouldn't recommend anyone inexperienced try something like this.
"Yeah, I get that," he said.
The first thing you're gonna need to do is drop into a meditative state. Once you have, you'll begin with the chant 'Eksfjast Dumhrahrke' over and over again in rhythm.
"Eksevast dumarky?" Rigo asked.
'Eksfjast Dumhrahrke', Nabooru repeated.
"Esefejest dumb…crap. What language is that?"
Ancient Hylian, Nabooru said.
"Can't you just translate that for me?" Rigo asked.
The words won't hold the same power, Nabooru said.
Rigo tried several more times to pronounce the chant, but was unable to do it sufficiently for Nabooru. It felt like his tongue didn't know how to move the right way to produce the sound as she was. And this was only the first part of the ritual.
You need to get this right, Nabooru said to him.
"Ugh," Rigo groaned. "We're wasting time here. Why can't you just do it?"
I'd need to take full control of your body, she answered.
"Fine," Rigo said. "Do it."
Nabooru fell silent for a moment. Giving up control was something Rigo had sworn he would never do, not after the first time he'd ignorantly allowed the spirit to take his body and was unable to get it back without her allowing it. She'd never pushed the issue, either. There had been a number of times when this would have made sense, but Nabooru understood that the idea was a violation on some level, understood why Rigo wouldn't allow it. His permission now was something of a surprise.
Are you sure? she asked.
"Nabooru, if I can't trust you with my life at this point, then I'm dead tonight anyway. You're the one that can get this done, and better than me in every way. So do it."
There was another brief moment of silence before Rigo felt that strange sensation he'd felt once before as a child, the sense of the otherworldly cold washing over him, causing him to go numb from head to toe. When the feeling had fully engulfed him, he felt his limbs start to move on their own. He felt his brain start to issue commands and develop thoughts independent of him. All of it was weird, albeit something he had felt before. However, there was something new, too. Something was pulling at him, drawing him backwards, out of his body. It wasn't an overwhelming force, but a nagging sensation, like someone tugging on his cloak. Like someone wanted him to go somewhere. When he took a peek out of the eyes that were not, at the moment, his, he thought he understood what the magnetism was.
Now that his body belonged to Nabooru, he was essentially a spirit. And, as a spirit, he was granted the ability to see and communicate with other spirits. And see them he did. They were scattered around him, all throughout the ruins, and glowing in a bright shade of blue. And there were too many to count. Thousands of them wandered about, looking aimless and forlorn. Haunting this place as they did. Rigo stared at them in wonder; never in the deepest recesses of his imagination did he ever dare to believe that there could be so many ghosts in the world, living in the fabric between life and death. It was sobering.
Rigo ignored the spectral pull and heard his voice begin to chant as Nabooru touched the rim of his circle and pronounced the worlds of the Ancient Hylian spell perfectly in his voice. He sat back in his own head and watched her work.
As she held the carved piece of wood before her in one hand and went through several repetitions of the chant, Rigo noticed an obvious difference in the poise of the spirits around them. Several of them stopped ambling and fell still. These ghosts slowly turned, looking at Nabooru, regarding her with empty eyes. Listening, Rigo though. Listening to her words.
He wondered what they meant.
As more of the spirits began shifting their attention onto her, Nabooru altered the chant, shifting into more words that were grossly unfamiliar to Rigo but seemed to strike a chord with the ghosts. She thrust the wooden channel out before her, and Rigo saw that the runes he had carved in their surface were glowing lightly blue, the same blue color as the spirits. They began walking toward her, congregating before her in a crowd that started with only a few but, as time went on, grew into hundreds and hundreds. Nabooru kept projecting her spell as the ghosts kept coming, pulling ever closer together. They didn't seem to mind that they overlapped one another in a strange, muddled conglomeration.
Many of them looked like prisoners: large, angry, heavily muscled men. But, there were others, too. Scrawny ghosts, elderly ghosts. There were women, some of them Gerudo. Prisoners, he assumed, of the Ganondorf War. And right in front was one small Hylian child who, in life, had had straight black hair and bangs that came down to her eyebrows. Her vacant eyes bored a hole straight into Rigo as she listened to Nabooru's words, and Rigo could only wonder what she had done in life to deserve spending her death in this place.
As Nabooru shifted the chant again, it became clear that she now had the attention of the vast majority of the ghosts, and they were gathered in front of her. Still though, Rigo felt the magnetic pull drawing him the other way, backward, out of his body. And…where? If it wasn't the ghosts causing this, what was it?
He wanted to ask Nabooru about it, but was afraid to interrupt her spell. He instead decided to occupy himself. He'd follow it himself. Nabooru would be at this for a little longer at least, and his curiosity needed to be sated.
Figuring the pull would carry him wherever it wanted him to go, he relaxed himself, put his "feet" up, and let the force at his back tug him. There was a strange sensation as he was plucked from his body and saw it for an instant as he slipped out the back. He was a fearsome sight in that moment, the wind lashing about his cloak and hair and his arms outstretched, but just as quickly as it came, the sight was gone, and Rigo was being whipped through the air at a speed faster than recognition allowed for. He could see nothing for an instant before the motion stopped and he materialized again, and suddenly he was somewhere else.
A sudden explosion boomed before him as blasting powder erupted on the ground, disorienting and terrifying. So stunned, and through no drive of his own, Rigo ducked back behind a rock. To his side, in the midst of the blast, he could see the body of a Hylian soldier that had been badly burned and battered by the bomb collapse to the ground.
Another soldier sprinted over to him through the smoke of the explosion and ducked down at the rock by his knees. "Sir," the soldier said. "Raiding parties are in position. Go ahead?"
Rigo was about to ask what the soldier was talking about, when another voice resounded from over his shoulder. A familiar voice. "Shift Squad B out to the left so they hook up by that brig. We'll close the animals in the middle."
Rigo turned and, if he'd had legs, would have stumbled backward at the sight of Tydus, not two feet away from him. You! he shouted.
Tydus scowled and shouted at the soldier. "Get moving!"
"Sir!" the soldier said, and scurried away, presumably back to do what he'd been ordered to do. Rigo's heart clenched in a moment of fear, but Tydus didn't respond to him at all. Did not seem to see him even as Rigo stood before him. It took Rigo a moment to remind himself that he was a spirit, and that the rules of visibility and tangibility didn't apply to him just then. But still, what was this? What was he looking at?
Tydus pulled back to issue orders to additional groups of soldiers. Several got moving in the same direction the last soldier had. Another resounding explosion went off, but not close enough to hit anyone he could see. Rigo looked over the soldiers and the scenery, tried to reconcile the rocks and paths he was seeing here lit by torchlight. And as he did, he began to put it together. He realized where he was. What he was seeing.
He was at the pueblo. And Tydus had already marched his troops out. The battle against the Gerudo had begun.
No! Rigo cried. He tried to sprint away from Tydus, to dart out into the opening and see just how much damage had been done, what the Hylians were doing to the Gerudo already, but couldn't manage it. It was like he was tethered to the Colonel by invisible ropes.
"What did you say to me!?" Tydus demanded of one of the soldiers.
"Uh, nothing, sir!" the soldier.
"It'd better be! Now fall out!"
"Sir!"
Well that was odd. Tydus had thought Rigo's scream had come from the soldier? Why had he even heard it? Rigo tried to assemble the puzzle pieces of the situation. He was obviously attached to the Colonel in the way that Nabooru was usually attached to him. Well, maybe not exactly. The experience was different than when he was in his own body. Here he was outside watching over things, not stuck in the Colonel's head, and he counted his blessings for small favors. But why was this different, and how did he get here?
The answer, when he found it, was obvious.
The Silver Gauntlets. A quick glance at the Colonel's hands confirmed it. He had seen the man wearing them in the Stockade, and so Tydus was still. When Rigo'd first met Nabooru, she'd been bound to the Gauntlets and the Gauntlets alone. Rigo had inadvertently given her another choice, a place to take refuge inside his own mind, but he'd known she always had the option to return to the Gauntlets if she wanted to. Now that he'd switched places with her, that ability seemed to have passed to him.
Rigo was careful not to say anything more. He didn't want to give anything away, didn't want Tydus to wise up and realize whose voice he was hearing. This could be a tremendous advantage to him if he played it right. He'd be able to see anything that Tydus was doing at any time, so long as the Colonel wore the Gauntlets. But it would be useless if Rigo wasn't able to do anything with the information. He had to get back to his body now and get things moving.
Relaxing himself, he felt for that magnetic pull that had brought him here and sure enough, when he focused on it, he could still feel it there. Letting himself again go limp, he latched onto the pull and was tugged away from Tydus as quickly as he had come. An instant later, he was back at the Arbiter's Grounds.
Nabooru! he shouted at the spirit. We've gotta go now!
Busy, she responded to him silently.
They've started the war! Rigo shouted at her.
Kid. Shut. Up. I know. Will go. Need time.
Rigo bit his eagerness and looked out at the scene around them. Nabooru's chanting continued, but now all of the ghosts were standing before her. If there were any that had not come to listen, they had left this place. It had become hers. What's more, each of the ghosts now held something in their hands. They were armed with spectral axes, knives, chains, and all matter of blunt instruments. They looked horrifying. Ready to kill something.
Rigo forced himself to wait, knowing that Nabooru was not deliberately wasting time but fighting the incessant need to hurry her along anyway. This weirdness was getting to be too much for him, and the only thing keeping him from losing it was the continuing need to hold it together for Amili's sake, to save her life before it was too late.
After what felt like an eternity, Nabooru finally stopped the chant and spoke to him. We're ready, she said.
About freakin' time, Rigo answered. How's this work? We gotta move quick. Are they gonna just follow us?
Not exactly, Nabooru said, and she barked a string of strange words out at the spirits verbally.
Before Rigo could ask her to elaborate, he saw them take action. Several of the spiritual forms began to levitate, their feet floating off the ground. One by one, slowly, they each took off, sliding up into the air as though attached to the wings of giant, invisible birds.
Nabooru struck her hand out against the sand and broke the line of the circle in front of her. There was a palpable whoosh as air and power rushed out of her immediate proximity, and the ghosts seemed to respond to it, becoming even brighter and livelier than before. it was as though they had been energized. They began to rise up more quickly now and all of them turned to the horizon. The first several even began floating away, out in the direction of the pueblo.
Rigo was about to prompt Nabooru to get moving herself, when suddenly he felt his own body begin to lift up into the air, off of his feet, free of gravity and any of the other more sensible laws of physics. Nabooru held his hands out to the sides and the wind blew around and under him. Slowly, steadily, his body crept up into the sky alongside hundreds and hundreds of ghosts, now glowing and pulsing more brightly than before. They all began picking up speed, moving east.
You have got to be kidding me! Rigo cried, trying hard to be terrified but mostly just feeling elated. In spite of everything, he was flying! The sensation was unreal.
Fastest way to travel, Nabooru told him.
Will the Hylians even see them, though? he asked.
Of course. What would be the point otherwise? Nabooru asked. When I broke the circle, I gave them some power. They'll be seen, don't worry about that.
But they won't be able to do anything for real? Rigo confirmed.
They're gonna scare the pants off of a lot of people, no doubt about it. Other than that, I might be able to help a few of them cause some damage. But this isn't exactly easy, kid. If I lose control, break the spell, they'll be gone and we'll be on the one-way gravity train back to the ground. And this has already got me pretty tired. Be prepared to be hurting by the time this is over.
That's fine, Rigo said. We'll deal with it. Let's just survive until this is over.
In the distance, the lights and sounds of small explosions lit up the sky, and Rigo knew that there, over the rocks and in the crevasse, his people were being assaulted by an enemy who wanted nothing short of their complete destruction. He'd be damned if he could have it. They were going to stop this madness tonight, and when it was over, Tydus would be made to pay for his schemes and his crimes.
They swept onward into the battle.