A/N: To the anonymous reviewer who was confused about POV: It shifts chapter by chapter (and rarely, within a chapter). Feel free to PM me and I'd be happy to answer any questions you have, or resolve anything you think is unclear.

Few who dare journey beyond the Barrens have returned. Some speak of huge oases, grand cities, new magic, and bizarre peoples. Others say there is nothing but darkness, wind, and sand. Yet no traveler is immune to the pull of the unknown.

Makure the Intrepid, Desert Explorations

The man had cast the spell of warmth every day since he was eight years old. He could not have lived comfortably without it, considering that he had never left the Highland mountains. There had been snow underfoot for his entire life, and the comforting weight of cloak and fur upon his shoulders. Both his forage and his hunting ground had been steps from his bed and the comfort of shelter. He missed it already. The desert, he was learning, was not his home.

Mount Agaat was inhospitable. The barrier was a pale haze that flared into solidity at his touch. Probes of magic told him nothing, and his peevish discharge of electricity had been silently absorbed into the golden latticework. The first thing the man had done was to trace its perimeter atop the plateau. He found no gaps or weaknesses anywhere along this mysterious barrier, which indeed seemed to go on forever. It was magic on an insane scale. It put him in the mind of a cage. He knew that he had been devilishly lucky to escape it.

But there had been nothing else of note on this far plateau. He had seen no wildlife and there was no shelter from the blizzard. So he had continued west, descending the cliffside as it emptied into an unknown and uncharted canyon. He was again amazed at his good fortune to see in the distance a small oasis. This watering hole is where he set up his first camp. Access to water was of singular importance, he knew, and for the first time he would not be able to trust in and rely on the frequent snows of a mountain climate. He would be able to get a sense for the area while minimizing the impact on his resources. The man was glad that he had brought his glass bottles in his traveling pack. This was another precious inheritance from what his mother had picked up for them in town. Bones and wood always leaked, making them poor materials for carrying liquids. Finding this source of water meant that he could hike in spokes, as it were, going far enough in one direction to get a sense for its promise before returning back, refreshing his supplies, and embarking on the next direction over.

The man's first guess was north. His camp was in a deep narrow canyon and he was not sure that even his strength would be equal to the task of climbing west, which dwarfed anything he had attempted previously. The walls of the canyon rose perpendicular to the floor, in an unbroken line nearly to the height of the Gerudo Summit. Unlike in that climb, where he could start from the Risoka Snowfield, the route of escape would not let him start with ninety percent of the elevation already underfoot. He hoped that the canyon would either widen into a milder climate, or else that a path for climbing its far wall would reveal itself as he explored.

The canyon was arid, with both flora and fauna distressingly rare. The man had always kept indifferent track of the passing days in his former life alone in the comfort of the mountains. Here it would be essential. He guessed he could carry enough water to travel five days before he would have to turn back and replenish. He had a small store of food in his pack, but was already long habituated to economy in consumption and the use of magic to suppress his appetite and restrict his metabolism. The heat and sun were, however, excruciatingly different from his past experience. He had immediately stored the Rito-down cloak at the bottom of his possessions. It had almost never left his shoulders from the day of his mother's death, but in the current environment he would begin to sweat at the mere thought of the garment. He used his magic to cool his body with none of the expertise or control that he had with the spell of warmth. He would learn or die trying, he supposed, the great Gerudo King of Sweat, defeated by the desert.

Travel north had not proved especially fruitful. The canyon had made a few bends, but its walls stayed just as tight and towering as they had been near the oasis campsite. He had found practically no vegetation either and his only hunting had been a single fox. By the fifth day, he had made it far enough north to spot the Hebra Mountains on the Hyrule side of the canyon. That eastern cliff wall was in this area much less elevated, and the man decided that it was worth checking to see if the barrier on Mount Agaat extended into these regions. This climb was the most difficult of his life. Still, he had much practice and a few tricks of magic, and these together were enough to see him to the summit and thus the edge of Hyrule. He was not surprised to find an identical barrier waiting steps from the edge of the face. Quick diagnostics similar to those he had performed in the Highlands returned the expected results. It was clear to him that he could do nothing about this golden dome with his current magical resources. The possibility that he could have cut back into Hyrule, perhaps into a region with less Malice, or (he supposed, although it was unlikely) to find the Calamity already defeated, was worth the strenuous climb. He loosened the suppressive spells and took a substantial lunch. The descent would again require his full physical and magical attention in order to safely return to the canyon floor, where he could begin his return trip south.

After a brief period of recovery at the oasis, the man decided he should try his luck to the south. From his recollections of Gerudo geography, he had a fair guess that the canyon's path would open out into the desert in this direction, and he hoped that the sands would provide better for the needs of survival. Although he had not, of course, ever actually touched the sand, the man had read many Gerudo books describing life in the desert, and attended with due consideration all of his mother's descriptions of her younger life in Gerudo society. There were witches who managed the trick of sustenance in these conditions, so he knew that it was possible. It would be essential for him to find a patch of wild hydromelon. No desert flora better alleviate the thirst of travelers and hermits, and combined with voltfruit they provide excellent coverage of the body's nutritional requirements. Animals could be found and hunted in the desert as well. It would, however, be blisteringly hot. He was not acclimated to the sun at all.

The man's guess about the desert proved correct on the fourth day of his second journey. The eastern canyon wall had been sloping downward for miles, and when it finally disappeared into the sand, the man cut over in its direction. He could see only one thing through the whirling sandstorm, which was of course the barrier that sealed Hyrule. He would have to press onward into the far desert, into the lands beyond his home. It was time, he realized, to resume his deeper practices of meditation. The magics of connection and attunement that he had so heavily emphasized in the Highlands would be crucial for survival in this new desert wilderness. He needed the approval of the land—not that he was certain he would receive it, having ventured from the borders of his birthright kingdom. In the mountains, he had received intuitions to guide his foraging, his hunting, and his planting. Roots sink into the earth and the steps of animals fall upon it. The land has a deep old knowledge that it loves to share. The man had trained to hear its whispered breath.

And in this way, he traveled. The promptings of his meditation taught him how to read the tracks of desert animals, and how to read their habits of movement as a map of fruit and water. It was impossible for him to settle in one place. No place that he had found offered sufficient provision for settling down, much less for trying his hand at organized agriculture, so he was forced to migrate from one isolated group of wild plants to the next miniature oasis, and from there perhaps to follow a pack of wasteland coyote. He found no sign of any other desert dweller, neither of hermit witches nor of hidden villages.

So the years passed. These desert travels bore him away from the land of his birth, and in so doing, this unseen journey of an unknown man would eventually lead him to a beloved and invaluable friend. Only after their eventual parting would the man turn to pursue his own great destiny. This new stage of the man's odyssey was joined when he emerged quite suddenly from a terrible sandstorm, finding himself in the middle of a forest. What had happened was obviously magic. The way behind him was thick with trees, and ahead lay a tunnel. He passed through the tunnel into a narrow clearing. An odd grouping of tree stumps formed a sort of staircase—though the man had to leap across a few of the gaps—leading to an opening cut into the trunk of a great tree. There was no path past the threshold of this opening: the man's step caught air and he tumbled into a seeming endless darkness. Various occult symbols, crude faces perhaps, streamed past him in a rush of color. The man landed heavily on his rear.