Chapter 21
The road to Laurelin Village drew Link and Ravi south. There were fewer detours on this last stretch of the journey. Link kept to the road as it turned east into Faron Woods. He pushed their pace, traveling quickly between breaks in the rain, resting in caves and under broad palms when the heavens opened.
Ravi had never been in a jungle. He slapped constantly at mosquitos, and Link showed him how to rub his skin with citronella leaves. Ravi felt like he was suffocating each time the clouds darkened with a thunderstorm. Jumping in Floria River didn't help—he felt just as wet outside the water as in. And this river didn't sparkle like Lake Hylia. The frothy water churned brown, swollen with the daily storms.
Link kept glancing at a giant, swirling maelstrom in the sky. Each time they passed through a gap in the trees, he frowned up at the gray clouds as though inspecting them for a weakness. But he stayed on the ground. At Lakeside Stable, he spent the evening teaching Ravi to cook fish and tomato soup, while the rain beat down on the awning over the stable's cooking fire. Their ready-made meals were almost depleted.
"When we reach Laurelin," Link said over dinner, "we'll resupply and take some time off." He yawned. "I could use a day in a hammock. Or three."
"What will I do for three days?" Ravi asked.
"Swim. Explore. Fish. I don't care, as long as you let me sleep." Link yawned again.
The beach.
Ravi had the horses saddled before breakfast, and on the morning of the fifth day since leaving the Great Plateau, they hit the road for the last time. The forest sparkled with raindrops. Birds screeched and warbled in the canopy and monkeys screamed as they hung from vines, eating clusters of red and orange fruit.
This is where Mother was from. Where I'm from.
As they crossed Floria Bridge and turned east into Atun Valley, he sniffed at the air, but all he could smell was mud and wet leaves.
You'll smell the sea before you get there, Mother used to say. It smells like sunlight. And freedom.
At midday, they came upon a camp of refugees. A cluster of rain-soaked tents sat on the side of the road. Women clustered around smoldering fires, spoon-feeding watery porridge to babies. Men sat under moldy canvas awnings, staring at nothing. The refugees wore seashell ornaments, and what belongings they had spilled from brightly woven baskets.
"What are you staring at?" An old man sat on a straw mat, stitching a patch on a blanket. He squinted at Link's yellow hair and blue eyes, then spat into the fire. "Took your sweet time, didn't you, Hero? Bigger things to do?"
A muscle twitched in Link's jaw. "Are the pirates still in the village?"
"Where else would they be?"
Link frowned and nudged Aurora into a trot.
Ravi brought Sadee up to his shoulder. "Pirates?"
Link glared at the road. "I was hoping, for once, that a problem in Hyrule might have fixed itself. Just once." He prodded Aurora into a canter.
The valley narrowed and rose to a bluff. The wind swept through the valley, carrying the scent of salt and sand. Ravi leaned forward. He left the road, urging Sadee into the grass, and pulled her to a halt at the top of the bluff.
The sea spread out below him. He drew in a breath. The horizon was dark blue, perfectly straight, like a sheet of paper folded in half. So much water. Vaster than the desert. Where did it end? Did it keep going on, water and water and water, forever? The smell of salt wound into his senses and dug like a fishhook into his soul.
My ocean. My village. Pride lifted his chest.
And then he saw the smoke.
The remains of a village smoldered around a crescent-shaped bay. Burned palm trees wept over the charred foundations of huts. An enormous ship sat anchored in the center of the bay, decorated with skulls and bones. The black sail furled sloppily to the mast, and fire flickered in the eyes of a skull mounted on the bow spit.
Link up beside Ravi. He gazed down at the bokoblins and lizalfos patrolling the ruins of the village, and he shaded his eyes, peering at the ship. "Maybe thirty," he said. "There could be more in the hold." His shoulders sank, and he wearily gripped his forehead.
A lone tent stood at the crown of the bluff. The flap pushed aside, and a man ducked out. A cord encircled his bald head and his beard was shaved close to his chin.
"It's you!" The man waved enthusiastically. "Helloooo!"
Link winced at the call, then swung himself down from the saddle. "Hello, Bolson."
The man grabbed his hand and shook vigorously. "Come to save the village, have you? Just like Link. Brave soul. A couple bokoblins are nothing to you. And who's this?"
Ravi dismounted, hopping smoothly to the ground. He flipped his bangs out of his eyes. "I'm Ravi. His squire."
An older man stepped out of the tent. He clasped his hands behind his back. His face seemed etched with a permanent smile, but grief tightened the corners of his eyes. "Welcome, Link. It's a sorry sight, I'm afraid."
"Where are your spearmen, Rozel?" Link said.
"Lost. Wounded. Scattered to the winds. The pirates invaded on the night of a blood moon. We repelled the first wave at a heavy cost, then all the monsters came back to life. I ordered the evacuation. Our warriors are still down there—they haven't even had a proper burial."
Dread ached in Ravi's stomach. "Was a woman with them, named Kira?"
His eyes widened. "Kira? It's been a long time since I've heard that name."
"I'm her son."
"Oh, my." Rozel stared at him, taking in the boy from his muddy boots to his windswept, black hair. "Dear me. You are. I see her in you."
"You remember her?"
Rozel chuckled lightly. "She broke my son's heart, once upon a time."
"She led me here," Ravi said. "We're searching for her."
The old man squinted into his memory. "Kira stopped here, briefly, several years ago. Then she left with her mother on a journey."
"My grandmother. Do you know her?"
"Yes, I've known Myra for many years. I'm afraid she vanished after the raid. If the monsters were driven away and the village restored, I believe she would come back."
Ravi exhaled slowly. "Did she tell you what happened to my mother?"
"Myra came back alone from their journey. She never spoke of it. The subject seemed to pain her. I'm sorry."
Ravi glanced at Link. The swordsman's face hardened, veiling his thoughts under the mask of duty. He stood taller, smoothing out the fatigue, and nodded.
"We'll drive out the pirates," Ravi said.
"Splendid!" Bolson pumped his fist.
"Thank you. Bless you." Rozel clasped his hands together.
Link pulled Ravi aside. Leading their horses, they returned to the bluff. Link glanced at the sun directly overhead. He crossed his arms and Ravi joined him, studying the village.
The boy counted twelve monsters patrolling the beachfront and several clusters in the ruins of houses. Smoke rose from a fire burning on the deck of the ship.
"How would you approach this?" Link asked.
Ravi tapped his fingers on his arm. "That's a lot of monsters. They're alert, too. We could wait until they're sleeping and pick them off one-by-one. But if we miss, and they raise an alarm. Are there cannons on the ship?"
The swordsman squinted at the vessel. "No. But there are likely archers." He pointed to a tall platform by the water where two lizalfos stood.
He glanced at the stubble on Link's chin, the greasy hair behind his ear. The shadows under his eyes. Ravi lifted his own arm, sniffed, and wrinkled his nose. We're one and a half men, worn down by two weeks of travel.
"I think," Ravi said, "we should work smarter, not harder." A grin spread across his face. "How many Zonai devices do you have?"
"Quite a few."
Ravi beckoned Link over, further from the camp by the cliff. He lowered his voice, and the swordsman leaned in. "We could build a machine to take the monsters out for us."
A light sparked in the swordsman's eyes: the first energy Ravi had seen all day.
Ravi glanced around and snatched a stick from the grass. He ran to a patch of dirt, kicked out a clump of grass, and smoothed the dirt with his boot. "I had this idea while I was in the Depths. There wasn't much else to do down there. I read Yiga schematics for machines designed to take you out, and I thought of my own."
He sketched, starting with a box, and added four wheels. Then he drew a cannon on the top. "See, the box acts like armor. It shields you from attack. But if you mount a cannon to a construct head, the ones that seek out enemies, I think the head would target anything in its path. All you'd have to do is drive the box."
"We could add beam emitters." Link took the stick and drew a construct head with a beam emitter behind the cannon.
"And spikes in the front for ramming." Ravi snatched the stick, scratching in spikes.
"I don't have spikes, but I have lightning horns."
Ravi threw down the stick. "Let's do it!"
Link grinned. He stood, dusting off his hands, and glanced down at the village. His face fell. "It could cause a lot of damage."
"The monsters already wrecked the village."
"But we shouldn't wreck it more." He thought for a moment, then pointed to a stretch of empty beach beyond the village. "We'll lure the enemies to the beach. And blast them." He whipped out his Purah Pad. "Let's build it."
By late afternoon, after an argument over big or small wheels, a rushed lunch, and two trips to device dispensers in the sky, the machine was finished.
Glued together with green plasma, the machine of death stood beside a pile of discarded parts. Six small wheels, three on each side, supported a central box made from sleds and carts. A cannon on a construct head crowned the box, and two beam emitters glued to a second construct head sat on the back right corner. Link had decided against the lightning rams, concerned about energy consumption. Two large batteries glowed within the box, illuminating the tight control chamber. With the batteries, there was only enough room for one person.
Link and Ravi stood side-by-side, surveying the machine, which gleamed golden in the light of the waning sun. "What should we call it?" Link said.
"'The Destroyer.'"
The swordsman smiled. He raised his arm, glowing purple, and scanned the machine. "I've memorized it. Now I can build it again, if it works."
"It'll work."
"We should take a picture, to show Zelda. Bolson!"
The man in the pink pants came running, and Link handed him the Purah Pad.
"Marvelous construction," the man muttered as he backed up. "Smile!"
Ravi crossed his arms. Link poked him in the side, and as Ravi grinned, Bolson snapped the picture. When he took the pad back, Link smiled at the picture on the screen.
Ravi leaned over. I'm tall. He stared at himself, an image clearer than looking in water or a glass window. He hadn't seen himself since he was eight. His face was halfway between a child and an adult, thinner than he'd last seen it, guarded. He combed his messy bangs. I look like my father. And her. I look… happy.
Link hooked the pad on his belt. "Time to drive."
He climbed to the top of the box and sat on the roof, feet hanging in the steering chamber. Ravi began climbing up after him.
"No."
Ravi paused halfway up the wheel, and Link shook his head.
"But I built it," Ravi said. "It was my idea."
"This is a real battle. We don't know how long the glue will hold up. If it falls apart—"
"Then I'll vanish. I'll retreat. I won't get in your way." Ravi stood on the wheel and planted his hands on his hips. "You don't have to protect me."
"I do," Link said. "I'm protecting your innocence."
"What innocence? I was raised by assassins."
"You still have some left," Link said. "One day you'll give it away. Not today. Cannons are brutal weapons."
"I know. But I can—"
"Ravi." Link's voice deepened. He held the boy's eyes.
Slowly, Ravi dropped his gaze. He slid backward off the wheel and dropped to the ground. His jaw twitched.
Link ate a skewer of mushrooms. His face took on a leathery texture as his skin thickened. The swordsman wore his traveling tunic over his usual chain-mail shirt, thin pants, and his customary brown boots. His plate armor was still being repaired.
He rolled his neck and shoulders, then sealed the opening with a metal plate they'd deconstructed from a sled. Ravi clenched his fists as Link started up the machine. The batteries illuminated, and the Destroyer rumbled down the road.
My Destroyer.
His feet edged into the road, but hesitated. He remembered the Plateau, Link's command to stay with the horses.
The Destroyer bumped and clattered down the road, towards Ravi's home. My village.
He broke into a run. His boots flew down the road, and he sneezed on the dust thrown up in the machine's wake. The construct head swiveled toward him, but didn't fire: it was the last sign Ravi needed. As the Destroyer rolled into the village, Ravi struck his palms with the Yiga symbols. He vanished and reappeared inside Link's cockpit.
As Ravi fell out of the air, his hip struck the edge of a battery. He tumbled into Link's legs and scrambled up, finding his feet in the tight space.
The swordsman gripped the rattling control stick. Anger flashed across his eyes.
Ravi raised his voice above the noise of the machine. "I choose this." He planted his feet wide, bracing himself, and met Link's eyes, calm.
Link glanced from Ravi, then to the beach, growing larger through the slit in the cab's wall. He shook his head, then smiled helplessly to himself and pulled a skewer of mushrooms from his pouch. "Eat these."
Ravi grabbed the skewer and perched on a battery. If he was any taller, the space would have been too small for both of them. The vibration of the wheels rattled up his feet and into his shins. His teeth clacked, and the battery hummed, pressed against his calves.
I'm riding into battle.
He ate the mushrooms, and as they settled in his stomach, he pinched his skin and found it dense, less elastic. Like monster skin.
A real battle. His heart flipped a somersault, and his leg ached around its healed break. His skin tingled with the memory of his burns. Why was he was going back to the pain?
The construct head whirred above them, swiveling left to right. As the Destroyer rumbled into the village, it spotted its first enemy: a silver bokoblin on patrol by the water. The bokoblin screeched as it spotted the machine, and the cannon fired. An orange fireball exploded on the beach, throwing up a spray of sand, hurling the bokoblin into the deep water.
Link grinned, wide. He pushed the machine faster. Screeches and howls sounded from every direction. "Here they come."
Ravi held onto the battery as the swordsman swerved the machine to the left, bumping over a fallen log and the uneven sand. He flinched as arrows and rocks dinged against the walls, bouncing off the armor. A brown bokoblin rushed the front of the machine; there was a thump, a rolling squish, and Link drove on with that wild grin.
Fire burst in the view field, the flash of blue lasers. Exploding sand and earth and bokoblins.
"I thought we were trying to save the village!" Ravi cried. He couldn't hear his own words.
"Almost there!"
A palm tree cracked and fell, aiming for their path. Link pushed the machine to its full speed, trying to outrun the tree, but it crashed onto the top of the box, and Ravi covered his head. It scraped along the metal, bounced, and rolled off as the machine kept moving. But the cannon was silent.
Link peered through the slit. "We lost it."
Blue lasers still fired behind them, lighting up the beach with their beam. A fresh troupe of enemies rushed the front, and Ravi wished they'd added the electrical horns. The enemies scattered as Link ran the first bokoblin over, and he broke through the mob to the sand on the other side of the village.
As he drove, Link touched his pouch, withdrew a Zonai capsule, and smashed it on the floor. Out popped a fresh cannon. Link's arm glowed green, and he shook the door panel, detaching it from the roof. Then he handed Ravi a steel soldier's helmet.
Ravi picked up the cannon, the same size as the weapon he'd shot Link with in the Depths. He put on the helmet and climbed onto the battery, which was almost depleted. His head and shoulders stuck out of the cab and he drew up the cannon. There was no time to think, only to act. He aimed at a black bokoblin chasing them, and fired.
The explosion burst in his ears, a raw, punching sound, much louder than from inside the box. He fired again, and again, swiveling as bokoblins and lizalfos converged on the beach. Each blast sent them spinning, tumbling into the air, across the ground, and some into the water. Arrows whizzed past his head. One struck his helmet and bounced off. The monsters kept coming.
Link drove the machine in a circle, herding the monsters into a tighter cluster. Ravi's ears rang. His hands shook, tingling from the repeating blasts. His arms went numb to the shoulders.
This is for Mama.
BOOM!
All those years.
BOOM, BOOM!
All those nights in the Depths, shivering on my cot, listening to your howling. He fired at a monster writhing in fire. This is for Karta. He blasted a blue lizalfos into the air. This is for my father. He aimed high, fired, and the ball came down on a palm tree. The tree exploded, splinters flying into the last cluster of monsters, and the laser finished them off.
The laser head swiveled, searching for enemies, but found none. Smoke poured into the sky from pockets of burning rubble in the sand. The fragments of monster bodies curled with red malice as they dissolved, and several skeletons already floated on the water.
A hand tugged Ravi's leg, and he glanced down. Link's lips moved, speaking, but Ravi couldn't hear over the ringing in his ears. The swordsman released the control stick and the Destroyer powered down. He gestured for the cannon. Ravi's hands locked around the hot metal, but he couldn't let go. Link peeled back Ravi's fingers and took the cannon, tossing it aside. He drew an ice chu jelly from his pouch and dabbed it lightly to Ravi's neck.
The boy jumped with the shock. He shook his head and sucked in a gasp of breath, then he shook out his stiff hands. Ravi pulled himself out of the box. He sat on the roof, numb, deaf. Fire still flashed in his eyes. His body still trembled with the blast.
Link pulled himself out and jumped down. Ravi scrambled after him, and once his feet hit the sand, he doubled over and fell to his knees. Sound was coming back: the crackle of flames, the steady crash of waves on the beach.
"Stay here," Link said. "I have to finish the ship."
Ravi stood. He pulled his bow off his back. "I can fight."
"It's my turn. I haven't tasted blood yet." Link grinned. "You did it all for me." He laid his hand on Ravi's shoulder and squeezed. "You did well."
He pulled out a spring, set it on the sand, and climbed on top. He struck the edge with his sword and vaulted into the air. The glider whipped out, and he flew over the water until he collided with the railing on the top deck of the ship.
Ravi sat in the sand. As the effects of the mushrooms wore off, his skin slowly softened and returned to normal. The sound of battle rang across the water, metal clashing, monsters howling. The deck was too high to see, but flashes of fire and green magic lit up the sail.
You did well.
Warmth spread through him. A small smile spread across his face. He removed his helmet and came away with a smear of blood on his wrist. Gingerly, he touched a cut on his chin.
My first scar I can be proud of.
After several minutes, the sound of battle faded from the ship. Link climbed onto the bow spit, weapons sheathed. He stood tall—a straight, black silhouette against the glow of the bonfire—and a thrill shot through Ravi's heart. Link jumped off the ship and glided back to the beach. Ravi ran to meet him.