Author's note: I'm taking this time to edit Kakariko's chapter and moving it up a little in the timeline, so that once Link makes it there it will give the illusion that more time has passed. Furthermore, writing in a different POV for a while is not just refreshing for the reader but also acts like a reset button for the writer and gives new energy to write in the main focus again.

As with every old chapter, it was entirely rewritten, the plot developed, cringe-worthy dialogue removed, new characters added, and the overall feel and pacing improved. One of my mistakes back then was seemingly to stick to clichés and one-sided characters, especially with Barnes who was mean just because. Now his character, albeit rather insignificant in the story, has been made a little more believable and his reasoning (if he has one) better justified, and was given a genuine voice despite his rather cold and selfish personality. We don't always enjoy listening to the unfeeling and logical side, but it is just as important than the emotional/empathic one and deserves to be heard.

Hope you enjoy the changes, and I'll see you next month!

DR

Chapter 10

In Eldin, people had a saying. "As long as there is one flame burning, there is still Light shining upon the world."

In Renado's and Luana's bedroom, however, the great Flame of the sky had not shone for several weeks. Often they overslept and woke up exhausted, which left the industrious shaman of Kakariko in a perpetual grumpy mood. Not much could be achieved; with the sun blocked by the constant dimness of dusk, nothing grew anymore. His medicinal herbs shrivelled and hung their leaves listlessly, the vast fields of corn in the mountains stayed a hesitant hue of yellow, and even the chief of the village, once a lively man with a fondness for wine and wrestling, had become a hunched, wrinkled shadow of himself. It was as if Din herself had left their world to wither and die.

With a start Renado awoke, burning eyes instantly lured to the open window; the same unchanging, en light trickled through the shutter slits. "Sweet golden goddesses, is this ever going to end?" he mumbled.

Next to him, his wife stirred drowsily. "What are you grumbling about again?"

She drew herself up on her elbows, and Renado felt her warm gaze resting on him, assessing with her usual analytical smile his countenance. He dropped his chin and let the curtain of long black hair whisper forth to frame his angular, tanned face; anything to hide the listlessness in it he had found so hard to shake off lately. But his half-hearted attempt at shielding her of his grief found no success; she parted the knotted shroud effortlessly with a hand that sought his cheek and fondled the wrinkles out of it.

His deep brown eyes settled on her. "The poppies aren't growing, Lu. They simply won't rise taller than my knees and their buds are all but unusable. Same with the yarrow, the valerian, and the lavender. Even the garlic refuses to poke its head through the soil."

He lay back on their mattress and folded his arms with a huff. Luana snuggled up beside him and stroked gently over his upper arm. He could feel her smile warming his cheek, her lashes strumming his night stubble as she exhaled a plosive wisp of cool breath on his neck. "Last week you worried about the spirit spring looking soiled, two days ago it was the cuckos losing their feathers, and yesterday Etu's hammer broke which is always—"

"Always," he emphasised.

"—a bad omen. And now it's your plants."

"I'm nothing without my plants," he retorted. "Nothing but an eccentric waving a big stick about. My forefathers wrapped their sleeve ribbons around marigold petals and chamomile roots long before they were passed down to me, Lu. Never, never, has my garden forsaken me, come drought or flood or ash rain. Your minerals don't need sunlight to thrive. What am I going to do?"

"The markets in Faron and Lanayru will overflow with herbs, I'm sure."

He frowned at her darkly. "You know we can't afford their prices. And I'd have to borrow the mule again to make the trip. That animal is tainted with Evil, I tell you. You have no idea what malice I've seen in those shrewd little eyes."

"You were kicked by it once, Renado. Once." Luana's laugh ran like church bells and gave him goosebumps of delight. "Give it another chance."

"And I still have that hoof mark on my—"

"I may have a solution for your plants," she said, hastily pressing her slender index finger on his lips. With her perched beside him on her elbows, her raven hair framed her delicate face like a wreath. "I've been running some experiments with our sulphur salts and potash to enrich a soil sample in the manner of… What's the word?"

"Artificially?"

"Yes, that's it. Since the manure we collected last week seems to have done nothing?"

"Well, it hasn't worked on my poppies." Renado was intrigued; what Luana concocted in her laboratory was usually none of his business unless she needed a clipping of his herbs or a cluster of roots. She was the mastermind behind most of their remedies, while his strengths lay in the more practical aspects of healing; his precise stitching work was renowned across the province, as well as his delicate but precise handling of broken bones.

"Do you think you could enrich my garden soil with that?"

"If I had more sulphur, then perhaps. It has made a small difference on a potato plant already."

"I'll ask the chief later if it is safe to go to the sulphur deposits."

A rap on their bedroom door made them look up. The young girl rushing in was neatly dressed in Eldin attire of earthy colours, matched by her coal black hair cropped above the shoulders for the upcoming summer season. Although Renado doubted the unchanging, excruciatingly average temperature would allow for warmer days any time soon. No summer this year, it seemed.

"Luda, what did we say about barging into Mama and Papa's bedroom uninvited?" Luana warned. "Fourteen is old enough to know and practice respect."

"Didn't you hear the sanctuary bell?" Luda asked, ignoring her mother's frown as only a teenager could. "The chief is calling everyone in to discuss the plague."

People had begun calling this lack of sun a plague, sparking Renado's inner conflict anew; as a man of medicine, he was compelled to disagree using that term unless a recurring, deadly illness had been recorded. But then he thought of the chain-reaction such a prolonged absence of sunlight brought along: no sun, no growth of vegetation, no important nutrients, no health, trapping the victims within their own bodies that would wither them slowly, ruthlessly, until there was no life left to nurture. A plague, all right. He decided to curb the instinct to correct his daughter.

"What time is it, anyway?" he grunted and peeled himself from his blanket, acknowledging Luda's exclamation of disgust at his state of undress with a retaliating brow-wag. "We did not say you could enter, sparrow. Reap the consequences."

"Papa, put some clothes on!" Luda cried and threw him a towel from the chair.

"Disrespect meets the fire of vengeance," Luana laughed, snatching up her daughter and pulling her onto her bed. "Will you learn respect now, little sparrow?"

"Ew! Ew! Mama, don't touch me!" the girl giggled as she was made to squirm with tickles.

Smiling, Renado wrapped the towel around his waist and opened the shuttered window, looking outside into the everlasting orange shade of Twilight.

The village of Kakariko was comparatively small to the many towns and cities sprinkling Eldin's infinite fields and mountain ranges. Little more than ten families of farmers and craftsmen lived in timber-clay houses strung like sycamores along the single main road that traversed the high-walled Kakarikan canyon, with smaller alleys branching off like tributaries and carving into the ochre walls. Eldin's spirit spring was set into a comfortable niche by the entrance and commonly attracted a steady flow of pilgrims that found room and board within the stately inn run by Renado's good friend Hosa; the Elde Inn, a staple among visitors for its spicy stew and safflina brews.

In front of the sacred spring, just visible from the shaman's bedroom window, lay Kakariko's sanctuary, a large domed clay building outfitted with a single bronze bell and, set above its arched door like a diadem, a magnificent sundial. Its centre pole and clock face had been oriented by the dial keeper as usual that morning, but the shadow cast onto the significant carved line, and its corresponding numeral, remained ever unseen.

"No idea. It's like time's standing still," he grumbled and turned back to his wrestling wife and daughter. "All right, let's hurry, my warblers. Best not keep the chief waiting. He's got enough on his plate without us being late."

He traded Luda's towel for his linen underdress and long leather apron showing, bevelled and stitched with thick wool thread, his family's winged candle insignia. Helpful as his virtues had taught him, he reached into the closet and handed Luana her ribbon belt with its arsenal of tools dangling from it; her working knife, pouch, spoon, and the small hammer and pickaxe combo, the latter of which had been his wedding gift to her. She never took them off of her belt lest she used them, a habit Luda was proudly picking up already.

They stepped out of their small house just as the sanctuary bell started its latecomer chime. People walked past them with haste; clearly, Renado and his family were not the only ones whose inner clocks had been cast awry.

"We should probably keep the artificial fertiliser unmentioned, darling," Luana muttered to him. "I don't want to raise false hope among the others."

"Agreed."

"Morning, Renado," a man spoke behind him, and Renado turned to smile at Etu the blacksmith. Everything was in some way black about Etu; black hair, black beard, black-stained hands, black-dyed apron, black-whacked thumbs; even his skin was several shades darker than the already browned Eldinian folk. His wife had attached herself to his black-powdered elbow and dragged their twelve-year-old son behind her, chattering at him like a chipmunk.

"Good morning, Etu. Though I'm not sure it is morning," Renado answered and laced his arm with Etu's in a greeting gesture, inheriting a faint layer of soot from the latter's skin.

"Din knows how right you are. I've lost track of time myself." The big man turned to Luana and gave her his pinkie to shake, the only somewhat unsoiled part of his body. Len, his skinny son, nodded shyly at Luda, who was more than a head taller than him. She smiled back brightly, a response Renado eyed with mild suspicion. This is new; have to keep an eye on that one, he thought grimly.

"How's work?" Renado asked as the six of them stood before the sanctuary doors within the long queue, awaiting their turn to enter.

Etu sighed. "No steel, Renado. I've lost hope at this point that my shipment will ever arrive. What are the Gorons doing up on that blasted mountain? I think you're onto something about that hammer; I cut myself shaving this morning, and the wife broke a vase."

"A bad omen, when the smith's hammer breaks," Renado reiterated. "It foretells great hardships." Both men nodded and hummed thoughtfully.

"It does not," Luana chuckled. "The breaking of a tool has no impact on our fortunes."

"On mine, it has," Etu protested.

They approached the doorway in silence, watching the other residents file into the sanctuary through the large double doors. A torch was blazing on either side, their flames small, sooty, and useless.

"What do you think it is this time?" Renado asked.

"Chitto said it's because of the Gorons," Etu's son answered him, which made everyone turn to him in surprise. As their gazes lingered on him, Len ducked his head and added shyly, "We play together, me and Chitto. He overheard, that's all."

"You haven't been up the mountains, have you?" Etu's anger drew a deep red from Len's cheeks that betrayed him instantly. "Have you? Len, I told you a million times, don't leave the village! There are monsters up there!"

"We've just been to the mountain pond, Papa—"

"There are plenty of places you can play at in the village, Len. I don't want you going up there!"

"Len, remember what happened to Hosa's cat?" Renado asked kindly; he abhorred conflicts, and his instinct urged him to intervene.

"One of those huge bugs got it," Len answered quietly. "It was all gutted and mutilated."

"Yes, and Huritt has seen them flocking close to the mountain pond. One insect might be harmless, but multiple can overwhelm two young boys easily. Listen to your father."

"But, Chitto's got a real bow, I'm sure he can shoot them from far away—"

"Enough, Len, no more about it," Etu growled, bringing the matter to an end.

They found their seats at the sanctuary walls, cushioned on flax coverlets dusted with cinders from the wall sconces. In the centre of the large circular room, Eldin's statue, a giant human-faced bird with folded wings, stood tall and imposing among the gathered people.

Helaku, great chief of Kakariko fabled to have bested a Goron in a wrestling match that had lasted for a whole day, stood with folded arms on a wooden podium before them all. His bushy brows scaled his forehead in two meandering lines of unrest. Chitto, his burly red-headed son, stood beside him and waved excitedly at Len when he spotted them.

Renado watched how the two boys exchanged grimaces, each sillier than the last, and sighed. How long would the children's high spirits last until even they plunged into this prolonged state of listlessness and gloom, like the adults? All around him, he saw the dark, sunken faces of his neighbours and friends, looking pallid, unhappy, sick. He surmised with another sigh that he likely didn't look much better. Shameful, to succumb to melancholy when people depended on him to keep a level head. His better half, sitting beside him chatting quietly with Etu's wife, never once let their predicament soil her good humour. How he envied Luana for her resilience.

He felt a bony nudge on his left arm, and turned to an elderly woman sitting on the ground next to him. "Renado, it's bad, veeeery, veeeery bad…"

She was the owner of the only shop in Kakariko, and he remembered having once treated her rather serious case of lumbago a few years back. His healer's eyes instantly picked up her hunched shoulders and the deep creases framing her pointy nose, indicating serious discomfort.

"Is your lumbago back, Abequa?" the shaman asked in his calm doctor's voice. "I can have a look at it later if you like."

Old Abequa's eyes widened a little. "I feel it… Veeeery bad, Renado… Veeeery bad… It's coming…"

Her eyes unfocused, and the shaman gently touched her shoulder reassuringly, turning back to the podium; Abequa was ageing, and poorly. "Don't worry, Abequa. I'll have a look at it later."

With raised hands, the chief silenced all muttering.

"I have bad news to deliver to you all," his gruff voice echoed through the hall, but Renado noticed it held little of the power that commonly swept with the chief's words. Helaku's broad chest and beefy arms looked like moist parchment, saggy and blotched with dirt. The braided russet beard he usually groomed like a spoiled cat hung in greasy unkempt strands from his bony chin.

"We have not heard from our Goron friends up on Death Mountain ever since the black demon appeared near our spring and the sun vanished. No boulder carts have passed our checkpoints despite our many messages. And our iron reserves are depleted."

Renado admired him for his bluntness; a lesser chief would have traded honesty for false security, protecting his reputation at the cost of credibility. Helaku was lucky his followers were used to that, otherwise, Renado was sure, he would have had a mutiny on his hands.

"Yesterday, I decided to journey up to the mine and meet with the patriarch and the elders. You cannot imagine the state of their keep, my friends. Chunks of cooled lava scattered about the ground, and more were falling from the sky by the minute."

"Chief! Is Death Mountain active?" a villager Renado knew as Barnes the bomb maker shouted out in shock, and more worried murmuring rose from the crowd around him. Barnes was a non-native living in the village, a fair-skinned alchemist from western Hyrule too educated for his own good, and one of few people prone to answer Helaku's trust-seeking honesty with outrage instead of loyalty. Renado had never liked Barnes; the alchemist's crude, impolite, tactless manner rubbed him the wrong way.

Helaku made the mistake of delaying his response. "Death Mountain does not pose an immediate—"

"If it is active and the Gorons have turned traitors, we need to evacuate!" Barnes called, pointing a crooked finger out the narrow window at the mountainous wall towering at the horizon. "Or do you want us all to burn to death in a pyroclastic flow?"

"What's a pirolastic flow?" someone called out.

Barnes, his thin, unappealing face scrunched in disgust, set his two small spectacle lenses on the speaker. "An ash wave that'll boil the skin right off of your bones, mate. And if Death Mountain erupts, that'll be the first and last you'll ever know of it."

Voices around him rose all at once, people scrambling over chairs and each other to reach the exit. A child started crying. Renado was forced to shield Luda from a passing leg that almost knocked his daughter over. Helaku protested and gestured at everyone to sit down, but no one paid him heed. Finally, the chief was forced out of his despondency through sheer necessity; therefore, it was not Death Mountain that exploded that day, but the chief of Kakariko Village.

"Enough!" he roared, and Renado could almost see the sanctuary walls rattle and shake. Everyone relapsed to silence, looking up at their chief with widened eyes.

"Sit back down, all of you!" Helaku commanded, and they, even Barnes, obeyed without preamble. From his spot in the back, Renado watched Barnes scowling behind his stained little glasses.

"To make it clear, the volcano is not going to erupt as long as the Gorons are stationed there. They are working hard to keep it under control. That is the smaller issue. What matters more is what Gor Coron said to me when I met with him. He treated me like a stranger and an intruder. When I tried to explain our plight, he sent his guards after me."

New murmurs rose from the gathering as he let this sink in. Etu's voice peeled itself from the din and addressed the er.

"I know Gor Coron personally, Chief. He'd never just turn his back on us. Why would he attack you?"

Helaku returned Etu's astonished gaze with grimness. "Because the Gorons have declared us their enemies. Gor Coron's very words."

This time, he did not try to quench their rising shouts of surprise. He slowly walked backwards and let himself plummet into his wooden armchair standing like a silent sentinel on the podium.

"That's impossible!" Hosa the innkeeper called, brandishing one of his many soiled towels like a banner of forfeiture. "What have we done that warrants such a response? They're not that simple!"

"I cannot believe it myself, Hosa," the er said quietly, hushing even the loudest protesting. "I'm as shocked by this as you are, and nothing grieves me more than to lose such good friends."

He cast his sweeping gaze at the crowd before letting it rest on his son Chitto, who stood by his side staring at his toes. Renado was not sure if it was every countenance of despair on the villagers' faces or his boy's despondent demeanour that did it, but the fire in Helaku's eyes burned hotter, brightening even the listless sheen of his skin, lifting his carroty hair like an unfolding flower petal. He stood, puffing his chest and balling his hands.

"Our alliance with the Gorons does not matter right now," he stated, silencing any surfacing dissent with his burning frown. "They cannot put food on our plates. Our crops are wilting and our groves are barren; these are our biggest problems. Huritt and Chogan returned last week from their surveillance and reported that the dusk cloud covers the entirety of the kingdom. Hyrule will not be faring much better than we are, which is why we cannot rely on them to help us. We have to fend for ourselves."

He cut through the murmurs with a raised hand. His voice, too, sounded stronger again, as if the terror in his people's eyes had inflamed his inner fire once more and fuelled his spur to action. Renado was glad for this; as much as he hated to admit it, they needed a good er more than the raw strength of rock-eating Gorons, who were—despite their power—a rather dim-witted folk. If one had to move a rock, one called a Goron. But not if one had a famine problem to solve.

"We'll leave our plantations alone and concentrate our strength on livestock. Keep your cattle healthy instead and let it feed on anything that's left. Paco and Shasta, I want you and your farmers to cut up any sprouts and grass you find to be processed into feed for the cattle. Halona will organise hunting parties to bring back as much game as we can before it perishes. All the others will be tasked with salting the meat and compiling any and all preserves we have in the cellars, and I shall start rationing everything come tomorrow. Eat only as much as you need, and give more to children and elders. Be selfless, folks, and the goddesses will reward us."

Acknowledging murmurs could be heard from the crowd, but they were quiet and uneasy.

"Friends, the sun is gone, but our fire persists, even without our Goron allies," Helaku continued, his voice gaining strength and volume with every word. "We are Eldin people. If no one helps us, we help ourselves. Every plague has a beginning and an end, and we shall brave it with strength and resilience that'll make our forefathers proud. Whatever comes, we'll endure."

Calls and whistles flared up here and there like flint sparks, echoing his resolve. Helaku caught those sparks and inflamed them with a raised fist, bellowing out, "Whatever comes, we'll ENDURE, I said!"

This time it was enough to set the crowd on fire. Cheers and shouts erupted in the sanctuary, calling out again and again, "Endure! Endure!" Someone climbed up the staircase to the rooftop and began chiming the bell frantically, adding Din's voice to the hollering crowd. Helaku roared and smashed his fist on his chest, riling more and more people to mirror him. Chitto brayed in his own interpretation of a Goron's voice, drawing a shrieking cheer from Len that spurred Etu and his wife to join in.

Renado couldn't hold back the wide grin that spread with the infectious mirth of his neighbours. His vitality, formerly drowned in gloom, was bolstered and nourished until he heard himself join his baritone growl of defiance to the clamour. Luana turned to him with a surprised grin. He looked at her, took her in his arms, and bellowed out with a fist shooting skyward, "Endure!" His cry was instantly echoed by the other villagers in a wallowing pulse of Eldinian power.

Endure! Endure! Endure!

0

When Renado finally found an opening to approach Chief Helaku after assignments had been given and folks divided into teams, he did so making sure that Luana, whose voice was naturally softer, was given full attention.

"Ah, the shamans," Helaku boomed, hopping from his chair to lace his arms with them in turns. To Renado's surprise, he drew them both to the side away from the other villagers and addressed Luana conspiratorially. "How's our little experiment going, Lu?"

"I may have managed to counter some of the negative effects this Dusklight has wreaked on our crops."

"By Din, you have? That is good news, very good news. Let's take a look, then. Chitto!" Helaku's bellow drew his son closer. "Round up your friends and go help Lonato at the warehouse. I'll be back shortly. And don't leave the village."

Luana was not renowned for her tidiness, as Renado once more remarked upon entering her laboratory behind their small residence. This was likely the reason he wasn't allowed in there most of the time since he was well-known for the opposite. His cheeks glowed red with embarrassment as he watched the chief gaze at the countless beakers, retorts, and copper pipes strewn messily upon the counter, the open bags of powders, dried herb stalks, spoons, upturned mortars and pestles heaped around them, and wrinkled his nose at the stinging acidic smell that wafted from every piece of furniture in the room.

But Luana drew them away from the chaos and to the large window where, sitting within a bed of spilled soil, three clay pots cradled delicate infant seedlings.

"This last one seems to hold the right percentage," Luana explained quietly, lovingly caressing the plant's oblong leaf. "It sprouted even in this dimness, which gives me hope it will pull through. At this point, it is too early to tell, though."

"It certainly looks healthy, much more so than those on the field," Helaku said excitedly. "Does it grow any faster?"

"Slightly, by a small margin."

"And all you need is sulphur to do this?"

"Various ingredients including sulphur, of which I have run out by now."

Helaku straightened with his arms akimbo. "Not a problem. Barnes will have plenty of it in his workshop."

On their way out, Renado drew closer to his wife, seeking her hand and placing an inconspicuous kiss on her knuckles. "That's amazing, Lu. How did you figure this out?"

"Like every renowned scientist does, my love: by accident and laziness. I spilt some in the potash solution and didn't want to restart the whole thing. Turns out the potatoes liked my mistake." She drew closer. "Did you see how he beamed?" she giggled under her breath and pointed at Helaku who walked ahead of them in light conversation with Luda.

"You just made his day a whole lot brighter," Renado chuckled. "The brightest since the Dusklight hit, no doubt."

"Come on, now, it's not that revolutionary."

"For our village's survival, it just might be. And afterwards, all of Hyrule should be made aware of this. Be sure to keep your notes safe."

"And you be sure to refrain from unnecessary praise. I don't like so much attention."

"Even though you deserve it, I shall do my best to resist."

The bomb-maker's workshop drew closer, a dirty house at the end of the road partly patched with sheets of rusty metal where stray bombs had provided a little more destructive force than intended. The inside was just as untidy as Luana's lab, the corners littered with scraps of metal, black powder, and dust. But the mess, instead of making Renado smile good-naturedly, showcased the crude and shady business that was bomb-making, according to the shaman, who looked with displeasure at the sharp instruments, the dirty tools, the small anvil, and the soot-covered venting pipes in the ceiling.

Renado would, much later, question whether the goddesses had had a hand in the whole matter; as it turned out, the bomb maker had also run out of sulphur that same morning, making Renado once more think of Etu's broken hammer and how the fates had certainly not taken kindly to that.

"Have you been to the deposits lately? How safe are they to travel to?" Helaku, who was, by necessity, on much better terms with the bespectacled scientist due to his proficiency with advanced firepower, slung an arm around the man's shoulder.

"The main one is home to those critters that ate the cat the other day, but I have a private deposit I go to near the geysers which is safe to visit," Barnes said, smiling crookedly. "I'd be delighted to escort the lady there, hehe."

His lopsided grin made all his alarm bells ring in Renado's mind, who moved closer to Luana with a predatory fire in his eyes. He could sense Luana's reluctance as she hesitated, too polite and insecure to refuse, too insecure to accept without qualm.

"I will go," Renado said firmly. "Six eyes see more monsters than four, eh?"

Helaku didn't catch on, but Luana elbowed her husband harshly and smiled with an apology in her eyes as Barnes coughed and adjusted his small glasses with a grunt. Muttering to himself he shuffled into the back of his workshop.

"Papa, can I come too?" Luda asked, fiddling nervously with her tool belt. "There are some things I need from the mountain as well."

"Luda's been making her own paint," Luana said proudly to the chief.

"Has she? A true alchemist in the making, I see. What do you use those paints for, Luda?"

"Er… Painting?" The perplexity on his little girl's face made Renado smile.

"And an artist!" the chief exclaimed. "Eldin's light shines upon you, little bird. Before long I'll have to consider hiring you! Those murals down in the sanctuary cellar need some dire touching up. What do you say to ten rupees a day for making good ol' Darunia look sharp again, hm?"

Luda glowed with joy, and Renado felt a twinge of envy lining the pride in his heart; that was more than Luana and he made in a week. Shaman-work was not exactly fruitful business. Ever since the school of Medicine in Nayrunis had first opened its doors to the public, the old ways of healing had been brutally pushed to the wayside. Science was the prevailing force of the future; another reason to dislike the shady bomb-maker.

"I'd rather not let you come along, little sparrow," Renado said, placing a placating hand on his daughter's shoulder. "Go help Mama in the lab." And to Luana he added, "Abequa's been complaining about her back again, Lu. Would you mind?"

"But, Papa! I won't stray from your side!"

"That's my final word, sparrow."

"I can spare Huritt or Chogan to go with you," Helaku smiled, winking at Luda surreptitiously.

"I'm sure they have more important business to attend to, Chief."

"Hmm, no, they don't. This takes precedence, Renado." The chief folded his arms and frowned at the shaman. Both being exceptionally tall men, neither could quite overshadow the other. But Renado would be damned before he disobeyed a direct order from his chief, and sighed.

"Fair enough. We'll take Huritt with us, then."

The ranger was already waiting for them at the shamans' house and greeted Renado cordially. He had his bow-hand attached and held the unwieldy arm aside to make room for Luana to pass as she fetched a large pannier for Renado.

"Do be careful where she roams, she likes to look for lapis stones when she gets bored." Luana, watching their daughter saunter down the Kakarikan main road with her smaller basket strapped to her back, sighed good-heartedly as she secured Renado's pannier.

"I'll keep an eye on her, Lu," Huritt said. He was Renado's uncle-in-law, one of the few men in the village he trusted with Luda's life.

"And steer right clear of the cart roads. If a Goron sees you, who knows what they'll do."

"They won't harm us with Luda there," Renado assured. "We'll be fine." He gave her a chaste kiss on her cheek. "I love you."

"Love you too. Be careful."

Halfway down the road he turned and smiled at her again. He thought she might smile back, but she didn't.

Endure… Endure…

0

Luda was happy; every one of her movements spelled this as Renado trekked along the lonely trail moving in serpentine through the scarred and powdered landscape. Around him, ochre walls rose like tapered, carved mounds of baked earth topped with wigs of grey bushes and the occasional spindly pine. Streaks of the rusted earth soon turned en, carved instead by a spillage of molten rock long since solidified into trails of fossilised mud. Death Mountain's bulky slope was at hand, and with it the looming, red glow of its churning gullet shining ominously in the dark clouds overhead. Renado glanced at it periodically, thinking he saw smears of red sliding down its craw like spittle; spittle that would incinerate them if it ever reached them.

"The wind is in our favour today," Huritt muttered beside him, holding his bow hand close. "But that smoke column is higher than it was yesterday. I hope the chief is right."

"Despite us being enemies now, I doubt the Gorons would let it erupt knowing we're in range," Renado answered, but as he watched another of the volcano's spewed rock bombs fly in a long arc across the pewter sky, his hope grew brittle.

His tried and tested method to ensnare calmness was to turn to matters of medicine. Tapping his uncle-in-law's arm, he asked, "Any recent phantom pains?"

Huritt smiled and lifted the odd contraption that had, for three years, replaced his right hand below the wrist; a wooden stump with a hole for several custom fittings Etu and Renado had spent weeks refining. "When it rains, yes. And sometimes I dream of flexing that ghost hand even though I know it's just an illusion. You know, I've been thinking; how hard would it be to make a grappling hook hand?"

Renado's scoff was challenged by the ranger's good-natured indignation. "No, no, hear me out. A spring-coil winding mechanism with a rope or chain and a hook at the end."

"What would you even use it for?"

"To reach high vantage points? You're not a fighter so you don't understand, but having the high ground, especially for an archer, is half the money."

"Even if we could pull that off, the strain of your own bodyweight would be too much for that arm to handle. You'd be torn apart."

"But if we added a handle on the left for my other hand to grab hold of? It could—"

"The stump would not hold the strain. We'd have to use straps around your shoulders to keep it attached to your arm. Or do you fancy ripping out what's left of your radius and cubitus?"

Up ahead, the stark incline echoed with a sudden watery rush, prompting Renado to scan the area for his daughter, who crouched a distance away. "Luda, stay close."

"Look, Papa, I found one!" she called and sauntered over from behind a tower of rock spatters long cooled and eroded, holding in her palm a milky blue stone.

"Ah, lapis. Good find, sparrow," Huritt said. "What're you going do with it?"

"Another necklace?" Renado teased, drawing a snort from his teenage girl.

"Why not? I only have, like—"

"Fifteen, twenty of them?"

"A few! Besides, Chasa told me lapis has magical powers."

"Your extraordinary powers of discombobulation are certainly magical. Almost enough to rival Mama's."

"I'm gonna tell her you said that!"

"Oh please, is that a threat? She knows she's chaos reincarnated."

Huritt chortled, but it died down when a shadow approached from the side accompanied by the rattle of belted tools. Renado turned and scowled at their unwanted escort huffing and puffing on his short, stubby legs.

"It's just up ahead," Barnes, knowing he was neither well-liked nor a part of their familial banter, pressed past them with the massive basket on his back making him look like he was a walking tree trunk. "Tell the girl not to get close to the geysers."

"She knows their danger," Renado answered coldly. "Let Huritt go first."

Barnes eyed the one-handed ranger distrustfully as Huritt lifted his right arm, outfitted with a custom-made bow that was attached like a staff to his stump, and walked up the incline at a crouch. The deafening rush of another silvery water column made him pause at the cusp, listening for movement, an arrow nocked and ready.

He gave the all-clear a moment later, and Renado ushered his daughter up the hill. She exclaimed in delight when the vast geyser plateau came into view. Everywhere, steam wafted out of vents in the rock that spewed steady gusts, some only thin lines of white, others as thick as the geysers themselves. The air was filled with the sound of hissing steam, bubbling water, and the occasional deafening rush as yet another column of white shot into the sky.

"Masks on," Renado commanded, handing Luda a thick pad of linen and leather gloves before seeing to his own protection. Huritt and Barnes followed suit. The smell of rotten eggs was nauseating. Never had he fathomed how Luana could withstand it. His wife had always seen in Death Mountain a heap of potential; the ash for enriching their soil, the minerals for alchemical wonders, and the beauty of the hot azure springs, the clouds of noxious gases, and expanses of razor-sharp, jagged rock displaying Din's Power on earth like no other place in the world could. All Renado ever saw when he gazed up at their fiery neighbour was a massive, unpredictable giant always on the brink of losing its temper.

He didn't much enjoy seeing his daughter so close to the toxic fumaroles that cultivated the bright yellow sulphur crystals, but he could see that she was far from careless. Holding her head aside to avoid the direct fumes she began hacking at the starchy deposit, breaking off large crumbs which she threw into her basket. Renado knelt beside her and took out his own pickaxe, mimicking her technique. Behind them, they heard the spraying explosion of another geyser and Huritt patrolling at a steady pace around the area. Barnes worked in grumpy silence on his own fumarole, hacking at the sulphur as if it had personally offended him.

Resting in the clearer air for a moment, Renado watched the bomb-maker with a frown of indecision before, exchanging a nonplussed shrug with Huritt, he walked over to the man whose spectacles were crusted yellow already.

"Thank you for showing us this place, Barnes. We appreciate it."

The fair-skinned scientist looked up sharply. "Wasn't doin' it for you, Renado. The chief asked, and I answered. What I wonder," he paused, chucking another large sulphur rock into his basket. "What I wonder is why a shaman needs so much sulphur. Your woman isn't thinking about opening a bomb-shop in town, is she? I'd be forced to take legal action against that."

Bristling, Renado instantly lost hold of his initial decision to be friendly. "What?" he drawled. "Entering your disreputable business of uncontrolled, wanton destruction? Hardly."

"Then what does she need so much sulphur for, eh? Apart from treating skin diseases or creating oil of vitriol, which both of us know is highly dangerous, it's not worth much to the medicinal alchemist."

"What my wife needs it for is none of your business."

Barnes stood and pointed his pickaxe at Renado's darkened face. "Listen here, man, if it has something to do with our welfare, I have a right to know. You're the damn shaman, and you've an obligation to share your medicine with all of us."

"That was never in question."

"I have a feeling you're gonna leave me out of it."

"It never even crossed my mind."

"Stop the nonsense, man, I know it has. I… I feel like I'm under duress whenever I speak to you."

Renado, pinching the bridge of his nose, sighed and twitched when another geyser made a noisy appearance behind him. "I'm not going to lie, I dislike your business, and I think you are rude and unpleasant. But I took a holy oath that I would help every living being in this world if they need it, and that includes you." Cocking an eyebrow at the sudden hopefulness on the red-headed little man's face, Renado felt a very unprofessional smirk forming on his full lips. "Is there something you need my help with?"

"Well, I mean…" Shuffling, Barnes promptly turned and knelt back next to his fumarole, hacking fiercely at it. "No!"

"Shall we make an appointment? Say, tomorrow afternoon? Or, rather, an approximation of afternoon?"

"You're just going to blab to your woman about it, anyway."

"That's not how this works, Barnes. My oath is one thing, but Hyrulean law forbids me to speak about my patients' ailments to anyone else, including my own family, unless you give your consent. Does that," Renado knelt and chased with his warm brown eyes the sulphuric lenses. "Does that reassure you?"

"Hmpf, maybe. But 's far 's this looks, Hyrulean law has all but turned null around here. Aren't we s'pposed to get help from the army when monsters infiltrate our borders?"

Renado had never been much interested in outside news about the never-ending warfare against the monster scourge, but even he knew that the army, and almost all of its sixty thousand troops, had been deployed and moved last autumn to the Eldinian city of Forgaru far north of Kakariko within a mountain range that spanned the top part of Eldin Province and reached all the way west into Lanayru. A massive Moblin invasion from the northeastern mountains had been the cause of it. Why they had attacked that rather unimportant region was still undecided, but Helaku had had several theories, none of which made much sense to Renado. Against the bulk of the Hyrulean army, no monster horde, however big, stood a chance when compared to the sheer discipline and tactical refinement of those highly trained soldiers who had taken with them heavy artillery, cavalry, and most all foot soldiers the land had to offer.

But ever since the Duskcloud had brightened the sky with its listless light, no more reports from the army had made it across Eldin's hills and tundras. It was as if all sixty thousand, and their horses and trebuchets, had simply disappeared between the mountain crags.

"Helaku's pleas have yet to be answered, but I'm sure someone received them and is trying to find help for us," Renado answered, surprised that, of all people, it was Barnes he was comforting. "In the meantime, we'll do what we can to get by."

"With sulphur? That can't feed us, 's far 's I know."

It just might, Renado thought but held his tongue, giving Barnes a light tap on his shoulder instead. "Shall we say tomorrow afternoon, then?"

Renado's goodwill lasted long that day and sufficed even to add his and Luda's manpower to Barnes', whose basket was the largest and only half full when the shamans had depleted their fumarole. Luda soon extracted herself from the neighbourly duty to find her own resources, coerced by the prospect of Helakus' payment for her artistic prowess, and was scraping absently at a salt deposit and a deep red ochre column when her head lifted and turned to the side, cocked westward, unmoving. Renado saw it only because a geyser close to her had broken him out of his concentration and made him lose his grip on a sulphur clump, which fell with gritty scraping down into the volcanic vent at his knees.

"You're not very good at this," Barnes grumbled as he looked after the lost crystals, but when Huritt walked towards Luda and stiffened also, they all silenced.

"What was that?" she asked, glancing back at him.

"Probably just a rock breaking from the mountainside, but I'll take a look," her great-uncle assured her, holding his stump high.

He didn't go far before, with the geysers stilled behind them, another boom echoed faintly across the porous, black walls and rolled to silence like distant thunder.

"There. Did you hear it?" Luda asked.

Huritt waved Renado closer, and the shaman got to his feet with a laborious grunt and unfastened his cloth mask. "A storm?"

"Not the right clouds for it."

"Din, let it not be Death Mountain!"

"No, I think we would feel that more acutely. It may have come from the village."

"That was a bomb," Barnes said behind them, his nasal voice laced with confusion and anger. "I hold the only stock in town. Have they truly broken into my workshop while I'm gone?"

"That's ridiculous, man," Huritt chided, but stopped himself when he took out his spyglass. "Smoke, more than usual. I think something's on fire down there."

The anxiety blooming in Renado's gut was accompanied by remembrance, utterly misplaced, but strangely foreboding. It's coming, Old Abequa had said to him in the sanctuary. His superstition briefly made his rational mind concede to hysteria, before he calmed himself for his daughter's sake.

"Luda, gather your things," he urged. "Barnes, we've got enough. Let's go."

He let Huritt them back down the mountain but found it hard to keep himself from running the rest of the way, his legs entangling in his robes as they moved faster than intended. Luda undoubtedly sensed his disquiet, her countenance grim as she concentrated hard on the moving ground beneath her feet. Occasionally, she asked if they could see past the high ochre walls and down into Kakariko, but there weren't enough vantage points easily accessible to alleviate their worries. Huritt's grappling hook suddenly didn't sound like a terrible idea, and Renado occupied his mind with a first mental draft.

The Twilight's opaque, orange haze finally uncovered the thick cloud of smoke billowing up from the high canyon walls as they drew closer. Absently gesturing at Luda to stay back, Renado and Huritt broke into a run. The silence bearing down on them was laden with misery as fire smoke and charcoal made their nostrils sting. Huritt crouched by the side of a building, pressing Renado against the panels, and glanced around. A long shiver went through him.

"What do you see?"

The ranger stood and started walking, moving sluggishly as if through water. Renado's heart drummed in his chest with painful force, and for the first few seconds, he refrained to glance past the house into the centre of town, too afraid of what he might see. When he finally did, he wished dearly that he hadn't.

Kakariko was in ashes.

Houses bulged with whirls of heat that obscured their bony silhouettes behind cloaks of fire. Cattle, untethered and bleeding, ran wild through the streets and fell over upturned carts, smashed barrels, blazing hay bales, and crumpled crates. A large wagon with a scorched cage lay on its side near the sanctuary. Debris, charred and splintered as if torn apart, littered the ground and heaped around mounds of clothes spattered with dark moisture, some of which showed, bared, what almost looked like—

Renado yelped and ran forward, past a goat bleating its heart out, and fell to a crouch beside the body that was, in almost every way, black; black skin, black clothes, black hair, black beard…

"Etu!" he gasped and shook the blacksmith until, whimpering, he realised that the eyes, unseeing and empty, were frozen open. "No…"

"Bulblins," Huritt spat, and Renado heard a fleshy strike as the crippled archer kicked at a fallen body somewhere behind him. "And Bullbo mounts. And Lizalfos. They must have attacked not too long ago. Goddesses, everyone's…"

Renado looked up and finally, truly, took in the display of death that lay before him; the corpses of his neighbours, his patients, his friends, lay strewn across the ground everywhere he looked. There was Etu's wife near the spirit spring, and Chogan, and Hosa the innkeeper still holding his towel like a flag of surrender. Helaku, his large belly and carrot-coloured hair half-submerged in the spring water, did not move as Renado called for him. Feeling his breath whistle through his lips, Renado looked across the street at the warehouse where most people had gathered to help with the compiling of resources. It was in ruins. The shaman's eyes, brimming with unshed tears, searched the house for bodies that were too young to accept death; Chitto, and Len, and Chasa, his daughter's best friend, as well as all the other children he personally had helped deliver, who had been rounded up by the chief's son to help with the sorting. He saw none yet. His ears rang with numb sound and he felt as if he was walking through fog, walking, stumbling, staggering towards his home slowly crumbling to ashes before him.

"Luana…" he muttered, unable to hear his voice.

The low growl coming from the shop behind him froze him in place. He turned mechanically, watching as Huritt ran towards him trailing Death itself behind him. He was screaming, but Renado couldn't hear it. The massive beast, black as night, seemed to suck in what little light fell from the dusky sky and the houses gleaming like torches as it lumbered on long, spindly arms and legs towards him, tentacle hair wiggling like eels on its masked head. Huritt shot at it and fell backwards over Etu's sprawled corpse. The monster fell on top of him. Gesturing wildly at Renado to go, to flee, the older man disappeared behind the curtain of snake hair.

Renado did not see what happened next. All he knew was a blur of motion and the rushing of air as he fled to the town's eastern exit and the canyon, where Luda sat motionless beside Barnes. She attempted to call out to him but he muffled her voice with his large hand, scooped her up, and ran for the mountains as fast as he could.

He was—had been—part of the village council and thus had a key to the trapdoor by the cemetery that led into the tunnels. His hands shook the keys on his belt like rattles and drew an angry screech from the nightmarish beast in the town centre. When he ushered Luda and Barnes through the latch, sought with his sandals the first rung of the ladder, and made to close the trapdoor, the beast appeared behind the first headstone.

There were now two. The other, slightly smaller and lumbering crookedly towards him, was missing its right hand. The iron latch he closed above his head clonked like a dissonant bell as they pounded on it, but Etu's steel would hold; Renado had no doubt about it. He sat for a short moment at the ladder base, listening until the clonking stopped, picturing that beast and its missing hand, the right hand, and how it could only have been—

Huritt… Goddesses, I'm so sorry…

The underground corridors were dark and dusty, but Barnes, white with shock, found a torch and lit it with the help of a small brass tube he carried on his belt. Renado had seen them before but had never known what they were for. A small piece of glimmering coal fell out as the bomb-maker's trembling hands spilled half of its content on the sandstone ground.

Before them, the tunnel, tight and rectangular, led into blackness.

"Papa, where is Mama?" Luda whispered. She was clutching her miniature pickaxe to her chest like a holy artefact.

"I'll find her, sparrow. I'll find her. Go with Barnes to the common room. Close all the doors behind you and bar them. I'll knock four times to enter. Barnes!"

The four-eyed little man turned back, his spectacles alive with yellow flashes from his torch.

"Please, keep my daughter safe," Renado said. "I have to search for survivors."

"What happened out there, man? What did you see?"

Renado could not describe it, not in front of his little girl. "The village was attacked, probably by monsters. I have to see who else made it to safety. Stay here, don't go out. The common room is just down the hall and to your left."

Kakariko's safety tunnel had two exits: the one in the cemetery, and a latch that opened up into the sanctuary before the spirit spring. Renado activated the pulley that cranked the large statue of Eldin aside, praying to the light spirit and all four goddesses that the nightmares outside would not hear it. Miraculously, the sanctuary had been spared of the arson outside, but he found no one hiding within. Resting just below a window he took a deep breath, steeling himself for the sight, and peered out.

The beasts had gone down the road, lumbering like marionettes without strings across the lifeless street. Before him, large and abandoned, was Elde Inn, also exempt from destruction, and Old Abequa's shop to the right of it by the inn stables.

Muttering a quiet prayer to his protector spirit, he gathered up his robe, crouched low, and ran.

Ran, ducking past debris and rubble, to each corpse he could see, checking for life signs. He found only vacant stares, horror defacing the browned Eldinian faces dusted with ochre and smeared with blood. Each dress and skirt he saw made him quicken his steps anew, but none of the lifeless faces he found had shared his bed and filled his dreams. He scanned the burning houses next and stood before his former residence, now gently crumbling to dust; Lu's beakers and retorts, her copper distilling pipes, lay like small glistening treasures in the street next to Luda's many lapis necklaces and his own singed medicine books. Their house had been the victim of an explosion, likely her many alchemical salts and tinctures gone up in flames.

His last option was Abequa's shop, not yet burning but close enough to the adjacent flaming house that it would catch fire next.

"Luana!" he hissed as he pushed the half-blocked door open, and tripped over a fallen counter which sent him sprawling headlong to the floor. The inside of the shop was a complete mess, trinkets, preserves, and baskets of clay crockery scattered everywhere. The door to the first floor, where Old Abequa lived, stood wide open, and he sprinted for it without paying attention to what he was crushing beneath his feet.

"Luana?" he whispered.

The bedroom door stood ajar, its wood smeared with blood, red streaks that could only have been made by long, drenched fingers; nightmare fingers, wide and inhuman, from the shadowy beasts patrolling outside. More splatters coated the walls of the room as well as the sheets on the bed. It looked like a slaughterhouse.

"Lu—" he started, and then he saw her.

She lay on the ground amidst broken medicine bottles and towels, her body coated in red stains and scratches. The wonderful raven hair that had tickled him awake that morning was messy, clumped with blood, tucked around her sleeping face like a black veil.

He fell to his knees next to her and brought her into his embrace.

"Lu…" he stammered, but his searching eyes found only indifference in her countenance. "Luana, please… Say something… Tell me you're alright…"

She was as still as a doll.

His heart's thumping slowed in one quick flush. He became quiet and thoughtful, holding her delicate form in his arms, staring at the blood-covered wall in front of him.

Time seemed to stand still. The only thing he heard was his pulse pumping through his veins as if in slow motion. It was his only indicator that things were still running. The wheel of time was turning, and strangely enough, the words his chief, now dead among the roadside weeds, had spoken to them in the sanctuary that morning, now echoed in his ears.

Endure… Endure…

In Eldin, people had a saying. "As long as there is one flame burning, there is still Light shining upon the world."

Kakariko was destroyed, but he was still breathing. His family was broken, but his heart, and his daughter's heart, were still beating. The monsters who had done this, the ruthless and murderous attackers that had killed without mercy, had not been able to destroy all of them. And that, as small a consolation as it was, brought a tiny spark back to his heart that kept the glimmer within it alive.

He did not know yet if he wanted it, if he was worthy of it, but he used that little energy to stand up, to pick up the still body nestled in his arms, and carry it to the sanctuary. The two Shadow Beasts, one of them his former uncle-in-law, had vanished down the road. He did not expect them to be gone for long.

Turning back one final time to the street sprinkled with the deaths of his former friends, he saw movement next to the collapsed wagon. At first he mistook it for a goat or a stray cuckoo, but the limb that appeared around the wooden cage's shattered base was small, chubby, and human.

"Din, let them be alive," he muttered and hurried forward, crouching by the wagon bed.

Wide blue eyes, set within a sooty, full-cheeked face, stared back at him, filled with fright and despair.

000