The Waters of Nayru
Chapter 39: The Battle of Gerudo Valley
By, Frank Hunter
Nabooru's army of the damned came upon the battlefield like a storm.
The floating spirits amassed in the skies above the pueblo, spiraling around like the clouds of some unnatural tornado above the world. Though Nabooru still controlled Rigo's body, he watched out the window of his eyes at everything he could. The scene below him was genuinely terrible.
The first thing he noticed were the bodies. There were dozens of them already, Hylian and Gerudo alike, scattered about on the sand and the adobe of the pueblo. The Hylians had attached rope ladders to sharp grappling hooks and lodged them on both sides of the pueblo, granting them access to the roof, where the Gerudo archers had been holding their line, using the distance to their advantage. The Hylians, with their armor and heavy blades, would have the advantage against the Gerudo in close quarters, so once the roof was breached, the Gerudo retreated back inside and raised the heavy wooden gates, barring the entrance. There were no Gerudo that Rigo could see outside the pueblo anymore, and the Hylians were pressed up against the doorways on all levels of the pueblo working with their blades to break apart the wooden gates. Solid as they were, they were only wood and they wouldn't last very long under this kind of concentrated pressure. Rigo could also see occasional arrows, their tips lit by orange fire, pierce through the gates and sail out into the night. The Gerudo were still trying to hold the Hylians off from inside.
All in all, this wasn't looking good for his people.
The spiral of ghosts began to spin faster and faster in the sky. The Hylians below were distracted, but before long, the motion and the light began to attract the attention of some, who called it to the attention of others. The soldiers couldn't see the forms of the individual ghosts from where they stood, and instead just became entranced, nervous at the display of unexpected power, wondering what the source was.
Nabooru waited until she felt her distraction had gained enough momentum, become distracting enough, before barking her next order to the spirits.
At her command, the ghosts used the speed they built up in the sky to come swarming down over the pueblo. Those just ahead of Nabooru began a swan dive down onto the battlefield, and the rest followed, drawing the image of a giant waterfall, ready to spill over everything.
The Hylian soldiers faltered, but to their credit, did not outright run at the sight of it. They braced themselves, prepared to challenge some new enemy that they did not know was untouchable.
Rigo saw their faces when they realized what was falling upong them, when they recognized the new foes as ghosts. Nabooru pulled back further so she was deep in the cloud of phantoms, invisibly hidden behind them, but even through it all Rigo could see the fear spreading across their faces. The lead ghosts began taking swipes at the Hylians as they passed at high speed, swinging swords and chains with all the power they could muster. The soldiers ducked and dived out of the way, but although some weren't that quick, none of it made a difference. The spectral weapons, though it appeared as thought the force of them should have shattered bone and cut flesh, did nothing. When they did land a hit, they just passed through the soldiers leaving nothing but, Rigo expected, a cold chill behind.
Nabooru, they're gonna wise up quick if we're not doing any damage! Rigo shouted at the spirit.
"Hold your horses!" she cried back out loud. "I've got it."
Nabooru gripped her magical channel in one hand and looked out upon the ghosts, scanning for one that would suit her purposes. She spotted one, a big man devoid of hair and with a dark complexion, wielding a sledgehammer almost as long as he was. The ghost was winding the hammer back, and preparing to land a blow on a soldier who didn't see him coming. The setup couldn't be more perfect.
Timing it perfectly, Nabooru thrust the channel out toward the spirit and shouted an incantation, "Pjuran!" The runes on the channel glowed more brightly for an instant, and then that light shot out to the big ghost. His blue glow wavered, and for an instant he seemed to fill in with more color, to look more like what he must have in life. And in that instant, the hammer connected with the Hylian guard.
The force of it sent the man rocketing off of his feet, spinning in the air limply, head over foot. He hit the wall of the pueblo as though he'd been launched from a catapult, falling to the ground broken. The soldiers who had been near him ducked for cover.
Yeah! Rigo shouted in his head. Nabooru grinned.
As the river of spirits looped around for another pass, Nabooru found another ghost, a Gerudo woman who carried a torch with her and was making for one of the crowds of soldiers pressed against a pueblo entrance on the roof. The sorceress repeated the gesture, shouting the spell "Blazet!" at the spirit. Much as the big man had come to life, so did the Gerudo woman now, and as she lashed her torch out at the group of soldiers, an explosion of blue fire erupted within them, igniting their armor and burning them alive. They scattered from the doorway, most jumping from the roof to the sands below, rolling and trying to put the flames out.
Nabooru, more comfortable with this now, began to work a bit faster, trying hard to make this look like random chaos, imbuing ghosts with power in different places, making it seem as though nowhere was safe. As they took a dive past one of the pueblo gates, Rigo could make out the faces of Gerudo soldiers on the inside, pressed up against the wood. Looking out with wonder and awe at the utter insanity going on outside.
Nabooru brought a swordsman to life. A head rolled. She brought a bomber to life. A boulder was blown to rubble, scattering the men behind it. She empowered a chain-wielding delinquent. A soldier was caught by the neck and dragged up into the night. All of it was absolutely horrific, and as the acts began to build up on each other, the Hylians began to flee, to get back from the walls of the pueblo, ducking their heads and trying to find cover from the storm.
"I'm losing it here, kid," Nabooru wheezed, after a time. "Not much time left."
What can I do? Rigo asked.
"Wanna hit. The big man. Right?" she asked.
Rigo bared his metaphysical teeth Yeah, he said.
"Understand how…the soulbind works? Can you find him?" Nabooru huffed in tired breaths.
I'll find him, Rigo said. Just hang on, just for a minute.
Nabooru nodded. She pointed her channel at another torchbearer and brought him to life, spilling ghostly fire across the desert floor in an effort to push the Hylians back further. As she did, Rigo again let go and allowed himself to slip out the back of his body. As Nabooru shot off into the night, Rigo as again pulled back into range of the Gauntlets, and the man who wore them.
Tydus was directing the battle from the rear lines. The coward of course wouldn't enter the battlefield himself.
"Sir!" a soldier before him addressed him.
"What the hell is all of that?" Tydus asked the man, gesturing up at the blue light in the distance.
"Sir, the Gerudo are using some kind of magic against us! It…it's like ghosts!"
Tydus scowled. He began issuing the man some curt, direct orders. Though it sounded something like, "Grow a pair and keep fighting," Rigo stopped paying attention. He looked around at Tydus's surroundings, got a sense of where the man was hiding, and then allowed himself to be pulled back into his own body, which was soaring back up into the air for another drop.
He's in the chasm, he told Nabooru. The path between the two camps. He's giving orders from there.
"Let's pay him a visit," Nabooru said. She raised the channel and the nearest swarm of ghosts formed up before her, dropped back toward the pueblo, and drew her own sword. As Nabooru turned for the chasm, they seemed to mirror her actions and turned exactly as she did, preceding her in her descent.
The small squadron of spirits shot along the pathway, Nabooru guiding them through twists and turns for a few short seconds before they came upon Tydus and his small contingent of rear commanders, lit by torchlight. The look on his face as they approached, Rigo thought, was priceless. His eyes went wide in disbelief and fear. Rigo remembered that Tydus was not a superstitious man. He'd had trouble even believing that the Chalice of Nayru was something real. He may have been the type not to believe in ghosts.
Well, now he was faced with dozens of angry ones.
The Colonel's reflexes were good, and he drew his sword and shield the instant he saw trouble, even as Nabooru gestured toward another ghost. This one was the child, the small girl that Rigo had seen at the front of the pack with the long, dark hair. Nabooru gathered her power and spoke the incantation, "Kanaj," as the girl, again at the front, reached the Hylians.
The young girl held no weapons. Instead, at Nabooru's spell, her long hair shot out every which way, filling the canyon with a network of what looked like spiderweb cracks in the air itself. And, Rigo saw, the end of each strand became tipped with a silver blade, wickedly curved and razor sharp. As she hit the group of soldiers, the separate strands of hair whipped around at lightning speed, filling the chasm with the clinging echoes of steel on steel. The sight of it was fearsome, and though the Hylians' armor deflected most of the glancing attacks, several blades got through, causing lacerations on the faces, necks, and joints of several of the commanders, though if any had hit Tydus, he didn't show it. The big man had kept his shield raised in an effort at further protection, but the strike from the ghost had at least pushed him back, forced him to stumble. His shield had been knocked over to one side, which was good. Because Nabooru wasn't done.
Flying in at full speed, Nabooru twisted Rigo's body in a barrel roll, and plummeted straight at Tydus. She'd hoped that the unfamiliarity of a flying enemy combined with the spin would throw Tydus off guard, but he saw Rigo's solid body coming with enough time to spare. He dropped his shield, grabbed his sword with two hands, and braced himself.
As the two collided with a resounding clang, Nabooru was slowed to a near stop for only an instant. Her drawn sword connected straight on with Tydus's blade, and for that instant the two were face-to-face. Recognition dawned in Tydus's eyes, and the fear that had taken residence there multiplied tenfold, giving birth to new anger and rage. The scowl on his face practically bled murder. At the same time, Rigo could feel that Nabooru had turned his mouth up in an impish smirk. The irreverence of the expression suited him just fine. Of course, he was sure none of this would do anything to improve the impression Tydus had of him, that of him being a dangerous, sorcerous, traitorous freak. But, he was also well beyond caring what the Colonel thought of him. And at the same time, Tydus would have to come to another realization. He had no way of fighting against Rigo or his army in this moment. And he had no way of knowing that Nabooru wouldn't be able to keep this up forever.
As quickly as the encounter came, so it passed. Nabooru's momentum pushed her off of Tydus's side and back up into the night. The Colonel took a slash at Rigo's retreating ankle, but Nabooru's flight speed was too great and the sword fell short. She and her squadron soared back off into the night.
"How'd…we do?" Nabooru asked. She sounded like she was about to pass out.
Rigo wasted no time. He dropped back, fell from his body and returned to Tydus to survey the damage.
Already, there were three men on the ground, trying to prevent blood loss from their wounds. Tydus was standing frozen in place, staring off in the direction Nabooru had flown. The glow from her small party was still visible, disappearing over the lip of the canyon.
"Sir!" one of the men shouted, sounding as though he were repeating himself. "What are your orders? What should we do!?"
Tydus grimaced a while longer before glaring down at the subordinate and, with obvious reluctance, giving the only instruction he could under the circumstances. "Order the retreat. Fall back and regroup at camp."
"Sir!" the soldier said, and ran off toward the battle. In the distance, Rigo could already hear him yelling, "Retreat! Retreat! Fall back to camp!"
Tydus looked back up into the air, evidently trying to come to terms with what he'd just seen. Rigo decided to take advantage of it.
Thinking of the apparition he'd seen in the desert, of everything he knew to be true or even rumored about Ganondorf, he dropped his voice into the lowest, raspiest hiss he could manage, and spoke to Tydus.
"I'm coming for you, Hylian," he said. He wished he could come up with something more original, more menacing, but in the moment it was the best he could do. The effect from Tydus was all he could hope for though. Color drained from the man's face and he whipped around, left then right, looking for the source of the voice, eliciting a few nervous glances from the men nearby.
Rigo, chipper as possible, didn't bother sticking around to see what happened next. He fell back to rejoin Nabooru, and told her that the retreat had been ordered.
"Good," Nabooru said. "Good."
With a gesture of the channel, she began to draw the spirits' attention to herself again, as, from her birds' eye vantage point, she could see the Hylian soldiers pulling back toward the chasm and leaving the pueblo. They never managed to get inside.
Nabooru lowered herself down onto the roof, slowly settling Rigo's body down before one of the entryways. As she did, she came within eyesight of the horde of Gerudo inside, all straining to get a look at what was going on outside. They of course recognized Rigo on sight, and nervous, excited whispers of "Prince Rigo," began rippling through the crowd. As he looked on, they began working to undo the locks on the chiseled and battered gate, so that they could come out and join him.
Nabooru whispered one final incantation to the prisoners' spirits, and the words emanated from her with a whoosh and a gust of wind. When she spoke them, power was expelled from her body and released upward, into the ghosts themselves. The channel erupted in light and splintered down the middle, breaking into small, worthless wooden shards, and the ghosts themselves regained their former expressions of sorrow and apathy. Their hands fell limply to their sides once more, dropping their weapons, which fell away into wisps of smoke and nothingness. All together, they began to drift upward, presumably back toward their sanctuary at the Arbiter's Grounds.
The gates opened and Gerudo began streaming out, tentatively drawing closer to Rigo, trying to get a glimpse of him and come to terms with what he had done. How he had saved them. Nabooru stood tall before them as they did, the shining image of a leader and savior. Rigo thought he could see the white and golden garb of Amili somewhere in the back of the crowd, inside the pueblo, but Nabooru wasn't focused on it, and he had a hard time making her out.
Ugh, Nabooru thought at him silently. Sorry, kid.
Sorry? Rigo asked, puzzled. What fo-
Before he could finish his thought, he felt his physical legs give out. Nabooru, exhausted, collapsed and slipped into unconsciousness, dragging Rigo down into rest with her.