This is a side blog/project where two nerds want to collaborate with their writing and art and play in the world of Hyrule. This might become a role-play blog, or maybe a character ask blog, or both! We'll see how things develop as we continue to post. We'll certainly have fun along the way! If you're passing by, we hope you enjoy the works to come.
If you're interested in writing/drawing with us, we're always happy to collab with others! 🤝 Whether short or long term, the ask box is open, or feel free to drop a line to either @semirampant-dwickery or @tides-that-bind-us to discuss and share ideas.
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CURRENT STORIES
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✨ Great Busts and Nonplussed Fairy Dust
This story is inspired by the shenanigans of @axidentshappen, @gargoylesister, and @inali-of-winterfell We have a rough outline on where this story is going, but if you'd like to join along please let us know! 😁
Featuring @gargoylesister! Thank you for joining us! C:
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“Wah?!--”
Danmalaak’s eye snapped open as he sprang to his feet, trying to figure out who or what had just bellowed in his ear. So far as he could tell, no one was about. The drenched things as thickly as ever, rendering the building’s glow-lamps nearly useless, and everyone in their right minds were still curled up in bedrolls inside.
So what in Hyrule was that ROAR?
The goron turned as the door to the sky tower shot open. Cironus splayed across it, arms grabbing either side of the door jamb, his knee bent as though crouching for a racer’s start. He glanced from side to side, eyeballing the same as Danmalaak, before looking down to the goron himself.
“Take it you heard that?”
“Yeah. What was that?”
“Not sure,” said Cironus, scanning the encampment again. “Let’s just say I hope it’s not what I think it is.”
Danmalaak grimaced. “That bad?”
“Yeah–Dad, wait–OW–”
Fat Fin strode out of the tower, pushing Cironus’ arm out of the way like it was made of so much tissue paper. He looked about, acting as yet another sentinel, and sniffed, wiping already-drenched hair from his eyes.
“Dad, NO!” spluttered Cironus. “You’re six feet and maybe three-twenty soaking wet! If you go charging for that and it’s what I think it is, I don’t think my healing magic can–”
“We’ll talk about it after we’ve found your brother.”
Danmalaak could see Cironus blanch even in the rain-drenched twilight.
“Din’s balls - Sona, too! Let me get my guitar–”
Cironus dashed inside to do so. His hands had barely closed about the instrument’s neck before another ROAR bellowed through the station. By the time he’d darted outside, Fat Fin was nowhere to be found - but Danmalaak was already pointing eastward–
“He went that way!”
–guiding the two of them forward as they ran.
Sardon stared at the monster as it roared, doing his best to ignore his bowels turning to water while looking for weaknesses that he could bring to bear. It was a daunting task: hinox war cries often carried a resonant frequency that made the average Hylian’s skeleton rattle. Sardon’s mind had just enough processing capacity to bemoan that this never seemed to affect stalnoxes, even with all their own bones exposed in their undeath.
Still.
Skeleton.
Moving, sure, but skeleton…one which had been buried before now, which meant–
YES.
“...Sona,” said Sardon, his plan forming as the stalnox stomped forward, “when that thing comes swinging, I want you to run and find my dad and brother. I’ll keep him distracted in the meantime. Okay?”
Sona, nearly petrified with fear, squeaked out an “okay” and braced herself to run.
Sardon rolled his neck, cracking his knuckles and relishing the pop as they gave way. The stalnox paused, looming above him, arms wide, its single eye blinking in what Sardon assumed was confusion. After all, most Hylians did flee before advancing giants if they weren’t wielding both a blade and a solid inch of plate mail. This half-dressed Hylian, armed only with his fists, standing before it without voiding his bowels must have been a novelty, even in the creature’s simpleminded undeath.
Of course, when that novelty wore off, the stalnox spared no time stretching into an exaggerated arc with its hands. It reached up high, then slammed them down, flattening him with open-palms.
At least, it tried to.
Sardon sprang the moment the skeleton launched its attack, moving for a brash football-style tackle against its fibula. Six and a half feet of Lurelin-fed Hylian shoulder-checked the stalnox as its hands hit the earth, and the momentum between its hands and the Hylian’s shoulder sent its foot skidding along the mud by nearly a foot.
It wasn’t much, and it felt as though a firework had gone off in his shoulder a split-second after contact. The creature was three times taller than him, after all, and who knew how much heavier. The fact that there was any give was a surprise, though - one he celebrated with a hearty guffaw.
“HAH! Got you now, you ugly sack of–”
Several hundred pounds of bones then collapsed on top of him.
“OW!”
They didn’t brain him, at least. Chessica had done a great job with his outfit, too: his vest, comically small as it was, nevertheless covered his vitals enough that he was only mildly pummeled by the stalnox avalanche instead of being stabbed or sliced by its ribs. He had only to endure a coconut cavalcade as they piled around him, and not get distracted by the ridiculous xylophone noises that came as a result of prying himself free. He’d have to thank Chessica the next time they passed through Lurelin, if only because that vest’s material seemed tougher than lynel hide.
“Oh, you think you’re funny, do you,” he snarled. He grabbed one of the stalnox’s ribs before the skeleton had a chance to reform. “Well, let’s see what you make of–THIS!”
Sardon wrenched the bone from its joints and hefted it above him. Pausing only to glance at the pile at his feet, he drove the rib down, slamming the sharp end towards the pile as though planting a giant croquet wicket. The impact jammed his wrists, making his eyes water, and the bone quickly skidded and squelched into the mud, but the resulting CRACK and spiderwebbing along the undead’s femur was enough to make him grin.
“YEAH! That’s what I THOUGHT!” he bellowed, ripping it out of the ground and stabbing again. “Stop–hitting–yourself–stop–hitting–yourself–”
Those taunts turned to indignant surprise as the rib wrenched itself out of his hands. It dealt a glancing blow to his chest as it twisted, trying to reconnect with the stalnox’s sternum and spine. The bone seemed possessed of its own motivating force, only temporarily disabled by the skeleton’s abrupt collapse - and now that it was reassembling itself, that was back in full force as the skeleton rose once more above him.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING, BOY?!”
Sardon started at Fat Fin’s shout, wrenching about to see his father tearing into the clearing behind him. The reaction got him cold-cocked by the stalnox’s fist for his troubles, and the zorca-turned-Hylian flew a good ten yards before sliding into a mud-caked heap at his father’s feet.
“H-h-hi, Dad,” he said, eyes slightly crossed as he stared up at his father’s gut. “I’m stabbin’ skeletons, how’re you?”
“SARDON!” Fat Fin bellowed, wrenching his son out of the mud. “What’d I tell you about fighting stals, boy?!”
Sardon hugged himself for a moment. The full-body lift had snapped him out of his stupefaction, but he still winced from the stalnox’s blow even as his father set him back on his feet.
“Um…don’t?”
Sardon’s apex wrester of a father just looked at him. He suddenly felt very self-conscious in ways completely unrelated to the approaching bone beast.
“Oh…uh…no. Duh,” he said, trying to shake off the embarrassment. “Don’t…try…to stab them?”
His father grabbed him by the shoulder, wheeling him about by way of reply. The two of them dove out of the way as the giant skeleton made for another sweeping blow with its arms.
“SKELETON! RIBS!” Fat Fin roared, using his own momentum to roll through the muck. He then vaulted for the lowest set on the stalnox’s ribcage. “SKELETON RIBS!”
Sardon blinked, as much as in confusion as to wipe the muck from his eyes. What…
And then it struck him.
Of course he was shouting about ribs! The first thing Fat Fin saw arriving on scene had been Sardon trying to stab a pile of bones with another bone. He might as well have been trying to cut a fishing net by stabbing it with a sword. Sure, he might hit a single strand, but unless he swung it laterally…
All right, fine. I need something heavy , he thought, scanning the wrecked lab equipment around them. Like the rib, only not connected to this thing…
He spotted the cucco-shaped weather vane on the ground and paused, considering. The cupolas ordinarily indicating wind direction had shattered, being nothing but a fragmented brass ring at the top, but the vane itself had been a tethering post for table canopies. That centerpiece had been a thick steel pole, too. Maybe if he wielded it like a quarterstaff, he could…
His eyes lingered on the cucco-shaped silhouette at the pole’s top...and on the beak’s sharp hook shape.
What was it Sona had said?
Oh, right – those animals were “dangerous in real life though…”
He grinned.
========
As Sardon dashed for that weapon of choice, Fat Fin launched his own attack, using his grip on the skeleton’s lowest rib as leverage to land some vicious stomps on the creature’s pelvis. The creature recoiled, stumbling once more in the muck. Cracks formed in the bone where the ball of Fat Fin’s foot smashed into it.
The creature did not take this well, based on its screech (or, perhaps, the one its bones made). It reached for its groin, looking to grab the wrestler before he could do any further damage (and, perhaps, break him in half along the way). Fat Fin had already vaulted to the creature’s spine, however. Another jump later, he was on its sternum, scrambling up the interior of the stalnox’s ribcage as quickly as his limbs would take him.
In the midst of this, Cironus and Danmalaak finally reached the clearing. The two of them stared, baffled at the creature punching its own ribs in a macabre imitation of heartburn.
“What is your dad doing?!” asked Danmalaak.
“I, uh–” started Cironus.
Fat Fin answered the goron’s question far better than he ever could, though, pausing between each ladder-step on the creature’s ribs to land a punch on the joints holding said ribs to their sternum. Each callus-fisted hammer blow twisted the bone holding the ribcage together back and forth, looking increasingly likely to tear free at any moment. It gave the creature’s own chest-beating a new meaning; each thump was clearly an attempt to straighten the damage as much as it was to rip Fat Fin from its insides.
“I think…he’s trying to kill it from the inside,” Cironus finally said.
“HE’S MAKING A SLOW JOB OF IT!” bellowed Sardon - and a moment later, the family’s second professional fighter was charging in, swinging the weather vane in a heavy arc that smashed into the creature’s femur. The steel cucco beak struck square into the bone, biting into a crack he’d already made with the stalnox rib. Both bone and beak ripped away, leaving a massive gash in the creature’s leg.
Though he’d never seen the vane himself, Cironus would have sworn that the sound it made was a deranged, high-pitched, “BUG-GAWWWWK?”
“HAH-HAAAHHHHH!” Sardon bellowed, hacking again and again at the splinter point. “Take THAT, you ugly pile of bones!”
The stalnox was not taking this lying down, though. Sardon’s blows fractured the creature’s femur, but whatever motivating force kept it together was not about to let up just because of a few splinters to its form. The figure remained upright, a little worse for wear, and it responded to Sardon’s attack by leaping backward in a vicious butt-stomp.
Sardon jumped aside, catching a glancing blow leaving him spinning. Fat Fin was not so lucky: the lurch caught him by surprise, and the creature’s rear landing had finally dislodged him from its sternum. Fat Fin smashed against the back of its ribcage, rolling into the bowl of its pelvis. It was only by a chance grab along its rim that he avoided falling out of the creature altogether.
“DAD!” cried Cironus, crouching to join the battle, but his father held up his other hand.
“I’m FINE!” he yelled back. “Keep us in the fight, all right?!”
“Er–yeah! You got it!”
Cironus raised his guitar, slid his fingers across the strings, and licked his lower lip, considering his options. A pang of fear lanced through his innards - the guitar felt so different, so much taller and broader with him in his current form, that he was finding it difficult to balance across his hands. Making it worse was his inner thoughts: would his abilities even register with him in his current form? Was it something that would only work for him in his original zorca body? Would this Hylian transformation mess it up? What if he fouled it up - what would a misfire from those strings do under these circumstances?
His fingers slipped on the unfamiliar surface, playing a discordant jolt. Back at the fight, Sardon winced, missing his next blow - but a bright blue electrical arc lanced from Cironus’ guitar, narrowly missing his father as it struck the stalnox in the toe.
“GET YOUR HEAD IN THE GAME, CIR!” bellowed Sardon.
“Sorry! Just a sec!” Cironus shouted back.
Well, that answers that.
He fought to center the instrument, fumbling again at a power chord as the creature got back on his feet. It just felt so off - the distance between the frets was so strange, the strings so thick, that it was throwing off his rhythm. Nothing was going right! His brother and father jumped into the fray without a second thought, his dad acted without missing a beat - why was he, Cironus, failing so hard at getting a single phrase out?
He preoccupied himself so furiously that he nearly jumped out of his skin when Danmalaak tapped him on the shoulder.
“AAAAHHH–”
“Sorry!” Danmalaak yelled, holding up his hands. “Just–I saw you were having some trouble there, and–”
He mimed holding the instrument upright.
“Try playing it like a bass?”
Cironus blinked.
“That…could work.”
It did make sense. The frets were wider, the instrument that tall, compared to himself. He looked at the junk scattered around them. If he just had a flat spot to balance it on…
Danmalaak grabbed one of the nearby tables, shoving the instruments into a pile, and flipped it upside-down, sliding it across the mud to Cironus.
“I gotcha, man,” he said, grinning.
“Thanks!”
The Hylian set his guitar on the table’s underside, grasping the neck and feeling it out. It wasn’t bad, now that he had a proper grasp. He’d still have to consider the change in positions and improvise accordingly, but if he could work around that…
Cironus grasped the instrument tightly.
He considered the battle - his father wreaking havoc within the stalnox, his brother wailing on it from without.
Flexed his fingers.
Took a breath.
Then his eyes lit up and he grabbed the frets, slamming a power cord that illuminated his father and brother in the same blazing-green energy that sent Danmalaak cartwheeling over the landscape just a day ago. Sardon and Fat Fin both jolted with energy burst, and a wide, manic grin spread across both their faces as they sprang upright - Fat Fin with an upward leap, Sardon with a mad forward dash.
“FARORE’S GAMS!” bellowed Sardon, leaping and slashing at the stalnox’s backside. “THAT THING PACKS A WHALLOP!”
“TOO MUCH?” yelled Cironus.
“YOU CRAZY?! KICK IT UP A NOTCH!”
Cironus didn’t question it. The moment he recognized Sardon’s approving response, the music took over. His fingers worked of their own accord, fretwork and string-slides adjusting on the fly, and he slapped his guitar’s neck and body with a frenetic percussion whose addition colored the magic infused in his family.
The magic worked, softening bruises, knitting wounds, and above all, filling the two of them with wild vigors demanding expression in the wildest, most over-the-top pummeling ever. As Sardon leapt into a quarterstaff-swinging frenzy, Fat Fin leapt back into action, scaling the stalnox’s spine with the speed and mania of a pinball in a bumper cluster, striking bone and joint with wild, gleeful abandon.
“DAD!”
“WHAT?!”
Fat Fin glanced at Sardon, leaping away just in time to prevent being caught in the increasingly furious Stalnox’s grip.
“THE CRACKS, DAD! HIT ‘IM IN THE CRACKS!”
Sardon dodged a leg sweep, finally swinging at the points he’d seen so early on: a series of deep, spiderwebbed fracture lines in the creature’s spine and clavicle where scavengers had clawed and natural rot had festered during its entombment. Each swing of the vane left it a little more brittle, a little more bent - but they were also accompanied by bright blue FLASHes of light where that motivating stalnox energy worked double-time to to keep its body intact.
Fat Fin didn’t question it. He leapt to a battered vertebra on the lower spine, wrung his fingers in windup…and in one magically-enhanced frenzy, let loose callused, hardened Hylian knuckle-dusters against the splintered, softened bone. Enamel fragments and marrow popped apart, and in a brilliant blue FLASH the entire vertebra exploded, leaving only a flickering turquoise haze holding those bones together.
“HE’S ON THE ROPES!” Fat Fin bellowed. “KEEP IT UP AND–”
That was when the stalnox finally grabbed him.
“DAD!”
Sardon and Cironus screamed in near unison as a hand wrapped itself around the big man’s torso, putting the squeeze on in such force that it wrenched the air from his lungs. Fat Fin’s spineward grip was no match for the giant’s own strength, and he found himself torn at last from the creature’s interior. One lurching pull later, Fat Fin met the creature face to face, eyes-to-eye, its knuckles digging so deep into his flesh that he could feel those striations threatening to break his spine in half.
“SARDON!” screamed Cironus. “DON’T STOP–”
“DAAAAAAAD!”
Sardon lunged for the skeleton’s legs, swinging for their weak points in a wild frenzy. The vane snapped after the first swing, finally splintering in a jagged line along its center, but this did not stop him. Indeed, he grabbed half of the instrument in each hand and stabbed their jagged edges into the creature’s marrow, wrenching them apart in a scissor thrust that shattered each fault line along its edges. Each point popped with a brilliant flash, causing the creature to stumble just a little bit more - but the stubborn monster would not fall, would not collapse, would not release Cironus’ and Sardon’s father.
Its grip squeezed all the harder. Fat Fin gasped, spots erupting in his vision, and he hammered at the creature’s knuckles, knitting his hands together in great sledgehammer blows against its claws.
But the creature would not relent.
Would not stop.
Would not relinquish that vicegrip on his chest.
Cironus flinched as one of his father’s ribs cracked, feeling the break as a jolt of magical feedback between his fingers even as Fat Fin could only wheeze in response. Cironus jammed all the harder, pushing against the pain and the fear, lunging forward step by step, pushing through the deluge as though it were a physical force. His healing shifted in response, forming of a wall of force around Fat Fin’s body, providing him additional resistance against the stalnox’s claws - but the creature’s grip was inexorable, using every last fiber of its strength to take down at least one of the zorca before its own strength failed it.
“Hang on…Dad…” Cironus wheezed, feeling his father’s pain as though it were his own. “You gotta–hang on–we can…do it…”
And then, a great, dazzling font of light struck the creature in the eyeball.
The creature howled, dropping Fat Fin in a desperate attempt to shield its face from the blinding assault. Cironus gaped, whipping his head from the brilliant blast to trace its source - and found it at the top of the Necluda sky tower, where a lone figure, cast in silhouette, was holding something too brilliant to see behind an enormous focusing lens.
He almost forgot to keep playing as he realized who it was.
“...Sona?!”
It was. Sona’s blast caught the stalnox completely unawares, and, having dropped Fat Fin to the ground, was now writhing in pain, completely vulnerable to Sardon’s furious, borderline rabid attacks. Blow after blow rained upon the creature, splintering bone and marrow alike, and before long–
CRASHHHHHH
The magic holding it together finally disintegrated, collapsing into a pile of inert bone.
=========
Fat Fin wheezed as the hand released its grip, individual bones slowly shedding from him as he fought to breathe through crushed lungs. He made no attempt to hurry the process or to get up, and for a moment, Cironus was certain he’d been knocked unconscious.
“DAD!”
Cironus beat feet the moment the skeleton collapsed, bearing his guitar as though it were a greataxe. Danmalaak followed, raising Cironus’ table as an improvised weapon - but upon there being no immediate danger, he instead tossed it to his friend’s feet.
“Keep playing,” he said, pointing to Fat Fin. “I’ll go check on your brother.”
“Got it.”
The guitar slid into bass formation again as Cironus played, changing from a hard-rock stance to a classical pizzicato as he concentrated on his father’s wounds. The blue haze formed around Fat Fin’s body again, magical tendrils poking at his back and shoulders like acupuncture needles as they probed the points where the stalnox’s bone had creased against his skin. Everywhere they touched, the skin tightened, his inflamed flesh beneath flattening and cooling, and his father winced, jerking his neck with each hiss and pop.
“I thought your healing wasn’t supposed to hurt,” Fat Fin muttered, his voice a low rasp.
Cironus exhaled a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.
“You’re awake!” he exclaimed, wiping his forehead sweat against the guitar neck. “Sorry - I thought you wouldn’t be able to feel that, I can make some adjustments–”
“No, no. Pain’s good,” Fat Fin grunted, squeezing his fists experimentally. “It means it didn’t snap my neck.”
Cironus’ gut roiled at the thought.
“Anything else, well, that’s Easy Street for you. Right?” his father continued.
“Er–yeah,” Cironus stammered, surreptitiously adding a few blues licks to his song to help stifle his father’s pain.
It did look like Fat Fin had lucked out. The tug and twist of his spirit playing on Cironus’ fingers certainly informed him that Sona’s attack had hit in the nick of time. Had she been even a few seconds late, Cironus’ wall would have come undone, and the stalnox would have probably crushed Fat Fin like an egg. As it was, there were a number of miniature fractures lining the wrestler’s ribcage, something that the wreckage about them reminded him of unpleasantly. He doubled down, rebuilding those fractures with a series of sliding fourths.
Sardon bounded back a short time later, looking a little wall-eyed at his brother’s playing. He was still holding the shattered vane in his hands; the cucco was nowhere to be seen, having been the first thing to go during their attack. It was probably just as well: with all the blunt-force trauma he’d inflicted on the stalnox, it was probably gnarled into some horrific abomination.
“How’s Dad?” he asked. “I was, uh, trying to do some cleanup, but– “
“Try asking directly,” Fat Fin intoned from his spot in the mud, making Sardon flinch in surprise. “Let the healer do his job.”
“Ganon’s pits!” Sardon muttered. “I’d’ve asked if I knew you were awake! You ever try sitting up, old man?!”
“Who’re you calling old-AUGH!”
Fat Fin’s complaint turned to a yelp as Sardon wrenched him into a sitting position. Cironus made a face at his brother, who shrugged in response.
“If he can whine, he can sit,” Sardon said.
“Take it easy on an old man!”
“Well, you’re feeling better,” Cironus said, finally allowing himself a relieved grin. If they were carping at each other already, it meant that the worst was mostly likely past. He could probably patch up his dad with a bit more work, then check out his brother’s bruising before Sona even made her way back to them.
Something was niggling at the back of Cironus’ head, though. He’d helped Link out in a few battles against the Stals during the Upheaval, and those had always been mad scrambles towards the end. Wasn’t there something they were forgetting?
“...Say,” he said, doing his best to be nonchalant. “You guys are positive this thing’s not going to spring back to life, right? Like, it is down for the count, right?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Sardon - at the same time Fat Fin said “Sure.”
“Abs-”
“Absolutely.”
“Totally.”
“Yeah.”
“Even double-tapped its butt-bone and skull,,” said Sardon, twirling the weather vane splinters in his hands. “You know, while you were with Dad.”
“Can’t come back without its eye, either,” replied Fat Fin. “And obviously you got the eye, right?”
Sardon paused.
“I mean, without a skull to attach to–”
Sardon yelped as Fat Fin grabbed his vest, wrenching him down to eye level.
“You did get the eye, right?” Fat Fin hissed.
“...Um.”
As if in response, the three of them jolted in surprise as the skeleton scattered about them pulsed once more with an electric blue haze. Bones lurched up, popping free from the mud of their own accord, and slowly began to drift towards one another, their joints popping together like molybdenum magnets as they reached critical ranges with one another.
Blood drained from Sardon’s face as the stalnox reformed itself above them.
“You have got to be KIDDING me–”
“The eye!” yelled Cironus, ceasing his play and wielding his guitar like an axe again. “Where did it go?!”
“I don’t know! I lost track of it after the light attack”
“UP THERE!”
Fat Fin pointed. Eighteen feet above them and two body lengths out of reach, the stalnox’s eye drifted forward, spinning madly in one direction before glancing in another. It hummed of its own accord, spilling a green miasma from its glowing, slitted pupil, and arcs of energy lanced out, connecting it to the various cranial shards Sardon had left in his wake. They rose as well, moving to connect with the monster’s vertebrae, and as the miasma flowed from the creature’s eye to those fragments, they flashed with an electric blue as they began to reform.
“Hit it with something!” Cironus cried.
“With what?!” yelled Sardon.
“With your stick - that spear thing–”
Sardon chucked both weather vane splinters in the eye’s direction. Despite its clear trajectory, both shots went wide; in response, it swiveled down to look at him, the skull it was seeking opening its splintered jaw in a wide, mocking leer.
“OH COME ON!” shrieked Sardon.
“I do not want to fight this thing again,” said Fat Fin, moving to unfold his limbs–
“HYAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!”
The sound of whipcracks were the only warning the trio got before Danmalaak made his presence known. The goron sped through the ruined observatory annex, rolling with such speed that his salt-rock dreadlocks lifted up and out, popping his body out of the mud like a spinning sawblade. He sped madly for the Hylian trio, racing for the stalnox - and just as he was about to collide with them, he jerked his head forward, slapping those dreadlocks down earlier and using the force of the collision to rocket his lightweight body into the air.
Danmalaak sailed forth, spiking skyward like some furious volleyball of doom, and connected with the eyeball with the force of a missile. The impact tore the eye from its skeleton-borne trajectory, snapping the tendrils of energy that connected it with the skeleton, causing the construct to sag. Before it could resume its path, Danmalaak snatched it out of the air, flying ever higher, and the Hylians watched the red-and-gray pinwheel sail another thirty feet before he reached his terminus.
After a moment that felt like an eternity, both goron and eyeball fell from the sky, still spinning, still screaming. Danmalaak clung to the eyeball with his arms and legs, the world lost to him in a blur of centrifugal force, his comparatively slight frame still providing more than enough force to counteract the eyeball’s magical levitation. Both spheres hurtled to the ground - and just before connecting, the goron shoved the eyeball down, pinning it underneath his feet even as it began to bulge from impact.
There was a brilliant flash of light–
BOOOOOOM.
–and after a magnificent green explosion, the skeleton once more fell from the sky, this time never to rise again.
Danmalaak stumbled drunkenly towards the trio, limbs splaying every which way, his eyes crossing every which way but the right one. He gave the table next to them a jerky thumbs-up, grinning like an absolute idiot–
PART VIII
Featuring @gargoylesister! Thanks for joining us! :D
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“So, you’re…their father? And who’s the goron?”
“The pet.”
“HEY!”
The encampment bathed in darkness as the group settled inside the sky tower, the sun having given up its battle with the encroaching clouds. A curtain of rain fell over the mountain path, the resulting hiss echoing across Rabella’s rock formations, strange and disjointed as those riblike curves deflected the sound in all directions.
They soon found that closing the doors to the sky tower barely muted the sound. Princess Zelda’s contractors hadn’t built the structure as a shelter, after all; while the local meteorologists had done their best to paper over the ground floor’s bare-slat walls, it would take much more than a thin canvas to block out the rushing storms and mating-crazed cicadas.
True to Darol’s word, a great deal of fragile items were stockpiled along the tower’s inner walls: delicate weather vanes, carefully organized water samples, at least three complicated contraptions of questionably Zonai construction, a confusing and intimidating map of some arcane superstructure, some plates of unattended rice balls, and piles of crowded, untidy notes.
Of note was how all this was carefully crammed against the ground floor walls; not a single scrap of paper or bottle of ink came anywhere near the plinth at the center. In fact, the plinth itself had been painted over with a giant red X, and a poster reading “DO NOT STAND NEAR THE THRESHOLD WHILE THE CONSOLE IS ACTIVE” had been haphazardly affixed to one of the tower’s central columns. The poster was appended with a crude sketch of the sky tower itself. Crude stick figures could be seen coming out of the tower’s chimney-like roof.
Each stick figure had an outsized frowny-face stamped across them. Someone in the camp clearly fancied themself an artist.
The group had spent most of the evening re-litigating the past 24 hours’ events to Sona, with Cironus and Danmalaak taking up the bulk of the exposition while Fat Fin lounged against a nearby chair. Sardon had yet to emerge from his panicked stupor. Evidently, Sona’s demands for him to divulge the exact means by which he once planned to rock her world just to verify his identity had done quite the number on his psyche.
“So, Cir is Cironus, and…peety is Sardon,” Sona said, winking at her paramour as he slumped against a nearby chair. “And Finn is…?”
“Fat Fin.” The elder zorca Hylian nodded towards Cironus and Sardon. “One 'n'. Their father.”
“So what in the world brings you all out here?”
Cironus and Danmalaak glanced at one another.
“...Well, honestly, we didn’t expect to see you here,” said Cironus, taking up the thread. “We’d mostly planned to use the tower as a rest stop on our way to Cotera. We figured it'd be abandoned after the whole Ganon thing - the fact there were people here was kind of a surprise!”
Sona blinked.
“...Cotera?”
“Great Fairy,” supplied Fat Finn.
“Yeah, what he said,” said Danmalaak. “We figured - I mean, if there’s going to be anyone who knows their way around transformation magic, you can’t do better than one of the Great Fairies, right?"
“Ah! Right!” said Sona. “I totally forgot there was a fairy around here! I’m still trying to learn the layout of this region.” She broke out into a huge grin. “You guys are on an epic quest! That’s so cool!”
“...Hopefully one that bears fruit.”
Cironus paused, glancing at Sardon. His brother's expression darkened at that flippant comment.
“I mean, if nothing else, she’ll be able to point us in the right direction!” he hastily added.
“I bet she will!” said Sona. “If she’s a Great Fairy, then I think she’ll help you out a lot. Hopefully it’s an easy journey there?”
“We’re hoping!” said Danmalaak, who was already fishing out the map. He grabbed a nearby end table, gently trying to drag it over without jostling the notes on top of it, though a small sheaf slid off at the barest tug.
“Oop, sorry about that,” he muttered, piling them back in a haphazard stack. “Anyway…”
He went over the map with the group, tracing out their intended route with his index finger as he described it to Sona.
“...after which, it should be a simple jaunt to the bridge by her fountain,” he concluded, tapping their destination. He glanced at the others. “Anything we missed?”
Cironus and Fat Fin shook their heads. He’d been thorough.
“That’s so far,” said Sona, perusing the map before flashing Sardon a mischievous grin. “Wow - you’re going on your own epic quest and you didn’t even invite me!”
Sardon pouted as she laughed, joining his fingertips together in remorseful salute.
“Sorry,” he said in a small voice. “I didn’t want you to get turned, too…”
Sona waved her hand and gave him another tinkling laugh. “I’m just teasing you, that’s all!”
As she looked around the room, though, her expression softened. They did look fatigued; maybe her good-natured jabs weren’t coming across right.
“Oh you all must be so tired,” she said. “You’ve had a really intense day, haven’t you?”
Fat Fin shrugged, stifling a yawn. “Iiiiit happens.”
“Thanks, Dad,” deadpanned Cironus.
“Hey. Gotta roll with the punches, you know? Or else you’ll end up like your brother.”
Sardon grimaced. “Ow.”
“Relax, Sardon. Doing better than I thought you would. And some rest will do us some good.”
“Maybe you guys want to lie down for the night?” asked Sona, looking over the map again. “I mean, how early are you setting out in the morning? Are you sure you don’t want to stay here for a little bit and rest up? I don’t think there are any towns, or stables, or anything on your route…”
She looked at Sardon again, biting her lip.
“...I wouldn’t mind you staying.”
Danmalaak glanced at the rest of the group, noting Sardon’s listlessness, Cironus’ forced cheeriness, and Fat Fin’s general blase attitude. Everyone was coping, but the past two days’ events were affecting them in ways he didn’t think they wanted to admit yet.
“...Don’t take this the wrong way, but maybe let’s discuss that in the morning?” he asked. “Let the boys get their bearings again, and we can discuss it with some clear heads.”
Fat Fin's nonplussed mouthing of the word “boys?!” went unnoticed by the group.
“Of course!” said Sona, embarrassed. “Okay! Right. You guys look exhausted. You know what?”
She stood up.
“I should really let you sleep!”
“Yeah, let’s leave them to it.” Danmalaak winked, nodding towards the sky tower’s exit.
“Though, ah, I’m not quite as tired as they are, for some strange reason I can’t lay a finger on,” he said, hinting with a gesture that the two of them exit together. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to fill you in on how I fit into all this…”
==========
The rain picked up over the next several hours as the black clouds made good on its promise. It was a heavy overnight shower, with sheets of water raining down on the encampment. While it was a heavy rain, the lack of wind or lightning merely ensured that anyone caught outside found themselves soaked and miserable in the humid clime. As a result, most of the lights were extinguished, with all but a few night owls (literally, in once case) choosing a nice pillowcase to pore over instead of flickering candles and fogged-over glass instruments.
Danmalaak had joined that majority, rolling into a ball in the musty rain. Were it not for his own garments, he would have looked like just one more blocky salt geode, hissing and sizzling slightly in the warm waters. As it was, he looked as though someone took the concept of a “pet rock” far too seriously, leaving floral-decorated shorts on a boulder.
Some deep snoring muffled in the rain. It seemed even gorons couldn’t escape that habit.
With all the ambient noise, it was no surprise that the door to the sky tower slid open. Sardon glanced about at the downpour, grimacing at how the rain just made this sweaty new body of his even harder to cool off. He then shrugged, trying to compartmentalize his discomfort, and trudged onto the muddy path leading away.
He spotted Sona on his trudge; he'd long learned how to recognize her from behind, even in the dark. While he couldn’t quite make out what she was doing, whatever it was appeared to be linked to her love of the rain.
If only I could do the same, he thought bitterly. Or at least be able to ignore it.
As Sardon got closer, he realized Sona was writing something. She’d look up at the sky, then write something down. Look up, write down. Look up, write down.
The pattern continued until he came up beside her, coming up almost close enough to read her notes behind his back. She paused, turning away from them, looked instead to one side…and jolted in surprise, dropping her stylus at the sight of him next to her.
“Ah! Sardon!”
Sona stooped to rescue the tool from the mud, waving the wax tablet she held in her other hand.
“You’re awake!” she said. “Is everything okay?”
“S-sorry.” Sardon hated himself for the lame apology. “I didn’t mean to scare you, it’s just…”
He sighed.
“Okay, Zorca don’t really sleep like most zora do,” he said, fighting the urge to go mute again and gesturing to himself. “We...usually keep at least one eye open? So…could be a holdover from that. Might just be me.”
“Ooof, I get you.” She gave him an awkward smile, nodding her head towards the encampment in some degree of empathy. “The Hylians gave me a tent to sleep in, which is nice and everything, but…”
She shook her head.
“Not exactly comfortable when you’re someone who sleeps in water! I understand.”
There was a pause as Sona looked Sardon over, giving him the brief impression that she was mentally dissecting him. Were anyone else, it would be more disconcerting, but it simply wouldn’t be the Sona that Sardon knew if she wasn’t reacting to something so odd with anything less than surprise and curiosity.
“I can’t lie,” she said after a moment “It’s just fascinating seeing you like this. I know you’re stressed, but I wish you’d stay here for a while. I'd love to study you!”
Sardon’s face flushed, thinking of the midges he’d seen pinned to a display box heaped in a pile in the sky tower, their wings and legs spread wide to broadcast various modes of insect anatomy. “H…h…how???” he asked.
Sona pointed at his face with the stylus, waving it in a circle to gesture towards his ever-growing blush.
“Like that!” she said. “Like...testing what’s happening to your face! I see it happen to the Hylians when they get embarrassed. What makes you embarrassed? What physiological and biological reactions do you have as a result of being embarrassed? Is it any different between if you were just a zorca, or just a Hylian?”
She peered at him a little more closely, growing mischievous.
“...Nnnnot to mention how I can make you do that more?”
Thank Hylia Dad’s not here, Sardon thought, trying to resist the urge to immediately probe his own face for whatever horrible thing was happening. He’d have WAY too many ideas on that subject.
“I’m…embarrased to look like this in front of you,” he finally said.
Sona nodded, sympathetic, though she couldn’t hide that quirked eyebrow of hers.
“...You know, Sardon,” she said, tilting her head, “you get embarrassed a lot when you’re with me.”
“I-I mean, it wasn’t like I–”
She raised her hands to stop him.
“Listen! Listen. It’s okay!” She laughed. “I won’t ever tell you not to be embarrassed. I get it.”
Sona closed the distance, placing a hand to squeeze Sardon’s shoulder. “I just want to tell you that you don’t have to be. I like you a ton, you know? Even as a Hylian, because you’re you.
“But it might take a while longer for you to be comfortable, and, well, I know…”
She trailed off, wincing. It wasn't more than a few seconds, though, before she was laughing and reiterating her point with another shoulder squeeze.
“I know I make a lot of jokes, and I like to make you a little embarrassed, on purpose. But! It’s because I love you. Okay?”
Sardon swallowed. Licked his lips. Swallowed again.
For some reason that had nothing to do with the weather, there was a lot of water making it difficult for him to see Sona.
For a few seconds (which, for Sardon, felt far longer) he found himself unable to speak or do anything. The wheels in his head spun freely as he tried to process what Sona had said.
Then he shot forward, wrapping his arms around Sona, giving such a squeeze that she was reminded just how strong her lover was. All the breath was forced out of her lungs, and she gripped him back.
When he pulled back, he felt, if possible, even hotter.
“What…is with all this rain?!” he gasped. “H-how can it be so wet and so hot at the same time?!”
Sona looked a little breathless herself.
“Um– well, it’s a tropical storm system coming from the south, that’s colliding with the cooler air..."
She interrupted herself with a snort. "Oh, who cares about that?!”
She gently pressed her forehead to his, sighing.
“You know, if you can’t sleep…” Her eyes closed in contentment, “I could show you what we’re studying. There’s a clearing ahead with my equipment.”
Sardon closed his eyes and returned the forehead press. A bit of steam puffed from his nose as he finally smiled.
“I’d like that.”
==========
From the tower, peeking from a slat in the door:
“...Yeah, he’ll be fine.”
“Dad, go to SLEEP.”
==========
From just outside the tower:
“SNXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.”
==========
The station annex Sona guided Sardon to was a simple row of tables with a canopy spread across them, a thin strip of oilskin cloth which helped deflect the rain but gave easy access to those who needed to be out in it. At the top of one point, a Cucco-shaped weather vane creaked, there being no air to give it life. Lying out below it were instruments, tablets, papers, oddly-formed glass vases, and more that Sardon couldn’t recognize. These tables and instruments stood in a small clearing where several trees had recently been felled. They often took advantage of the short, flat, roundish rocks that dotted the region, using them to avoid sinking into the rapidly-loosening mud below.
“So! Here’s the annex.” Sona said, gesturing to the equipment. “Not very impressive, but it is where all the magic happens.”
She picked up a few items, briefly describing each one’s purpose in turn.
“This measures how much rain has fallen, and this thing tells you how hot or cold the air is. And this measures how fast the wind is blowing!”
Each item seemed a little more comprehensible as described their function to him.
“And check out these things!” She waved the wax tablet and stylus she’d been holding. “Wait - no, those aren't really equipment. Ooh, my mistake, they’re writing tools! They’re way better than the stone tablets the folks in Zora’s Domain use. No need to chisel anything – and they’re waterproof! Don’t leave them out in the sun, though. I wish I could get my hands on one of those slates some of the Hylians have, but they tell me it’s no good in water…” Her voice drifted into a warbling ramble.
It’s nice to hear the ramble, though, thought Sardon. It was like a soothing balm against his brain, a pillow he could just sink into and let his cares melt away. It made him more tired than he cared to admit…but it was a good kind of tired, the kind of fatigue that invited him to relax instead of dragging tired joints into the next nonsensical part of his life.
Sardon took advantage of their standing together, edging himself closer to her side and sharing some of the warmth that had been building up inside him since leaving the sky tower.
“And what’s this do?” he asked, pointing to the weather vane.
“It shows which way the wind is blowing,” Sona said, waving her arms in a caricature of the air swirling around her and adding a few shwoooosh sounds for effect. “I think it’s cute! They tell me those animals are dangerous in real life, though.”
“Funny, they look appetizing to me.”
“Smartass.”
Sardon grinned.
Aan open case with a roll of paper soon caught his eye. He tilted his head, watching a pen draw sharp lines on it.
“This looks fancy. What’s that?”
Sona looked over the mysterious machine with him. “Ooh, that’s a seismograph!” she said. “I’m not as familiar with this one, but one of the Hylians uses it to record how much the ground shakes.”
She braced herself as if she were about to dash forward—
“Watch the pen!”
–and leapt into the air, landing with a stomp and a dramatic flail of her arms. “Did it do anything?”
Sardon stared at the pen as Sona had jumped. There was, in fact, a barely perceptible change in the line.
“Was that you?” he asked Sona, pointing it out.
Sona looked at the paper. “Aw it barely did anything!” she said, chuckling. “But yeah, that’s the idea - the ground shakes, the pen moves! And the stronger the ground shakes, the…stronger…the pen…”
Sona’s words trailed off as the paper continued to wind about. The pen jittered again - barely perceptible at first, but growing in intensity with each passing second.
Sardon tilted his head at the jagged scribble, glancing back to Sona’s increasingly worried expression with a frown.
“Is it supposed to be doing that?”
"N--"
Her response was preempted by a rumble that knocked the two of them together, and which made the pen jab so deeply into the paper that it gouged a hole in it. This was followed by a short, sharp shock, one so severe it knocked over the table and sent the seismograph (not to mention multiple other instruments) flying. Several hundred rupees’ worth of weather tech shattered, delicate instruments of bamboo and glass splitting as they smashed into the rock.
Sardon couldn’t hear Sona over the shattering glass and shaking– but he could feel her clutching him.
That was when the rock erupted, freeing itself from the mud as though yanked away. Muck and rain cascaded from its sides as it laid waste to this section of the annex, revealing a spindly underside in either direction and a spline which rose like a pole underneath. More rocks popped out beside it…and with a thrill, Sardon realized that these things weren’t rocks at all.
They were bone.
Vertebrae, even.
“Oh, no.”
The vertebrae spun about of their own accord, reorienting to face each other even as more bone formations erupted from the muck. With a rhythmic clack, striking him as the cross of a xylophone slide and the cracking of his own knuckles, the bones then popped together, connecting into a coherent spine easily twice as long as he was tall. Ribs popped into place after that, followed by a pelvis, arms, and legs.
Tarsals and phalanges scraped across another another as they formed a foundation for this giant floating monstrosity. A skull, wider than it was tall, snaked itself across the amalgamation, scrabbling up the foot as it connected with the skeleton's leg, the orbital of its single socket clacking loudly as it fumbled over every bone preceding it. It somersaulted over its pelvis, ribs, and clavicle, spinning about as it reached the tip of the spine, and it rotated a full 360 degrees before massive, bony hands rose to clasp it in place.
As Sona and Sardon backed away from the grotesquerie, they nearly tripped on its final component: a glowing, squishing, partially deflated eyeball, its black humors swirling inside, only partially lit by the blazing emerald masquerading as its iris. The ball spun madly as it rolled up to the skeleton, ricocheting off it at first - then fell upward, bouncing against back and forth across the bone as though magnetically attracted to its own skull.
As eyeball and socket met, the emerald FLASHED, nearly blinding the two of them. With a thud, the entire atrocity settled, standing of its own Calamity-fueled accord as it took control of itself.
The stalnox looked left, then right, surveying the scene.
PART VII
Featuring @gargoylesister! Thanks for joining us! :D
Previous <--> Next
“You didn’t even listen to the other route!”
Danmalaak was sulking.
“Oh, come on, Dan,” said Cironus. “It’s not like we didn’t consider the pros and cons–”
“You didn’t even wait six seconds! I make the mistake of even mentioning the word ‘hinox’ and the three of you are practically dashing out of the village–”
“So?” asked Fat Fin.
Cironus rolled his eyes. “Dad, I’ll take care of this. Go stand over there and look pretty.”
“On it.”
Fat Fin sidled over to the side of the road, swinging his hair about as if he were the star of some beachfront-obsessed serial. Once he became preoccupied with his new mission (that is, provocative bends made in service of looking for interesting rocks), Cironus turned to Danmalaak and crossed his arms.
“All right, Danmalaak. First off: we’re barely twenty feet out of the village. We didn’t run, we weighed the pros and cons and took a vote on the matter.”
“In, like, six seconds!”
“We like to be itinerant. Trust me, when it came to that vote, it felt like the longest six seconds of our lives.”
Danmalaak looked from Cironus to Fat Fin, then back to Cironus again.
“Uh huh.”
“When it comes to the important stuff!” Cironus said, waving away the goron’s askance glance to his father. “Look, if it happened to you, wouldn’t you want your old body back?”
Danmalaak retained his skeptical glare, but only for a few seconds. Then he shook his head.
“I…guess,” he sighed, adjusting his pack. “I don’t know, I just…could your dad have made it any less obvious he just wanted to go punch a hinox?”
Cironus considered the question, though it didn’t really faze him much. “Dan…look at it this way. Dad’s a wrestler,” he said. “Big hammy fistfights are kind of his thing. Like, sure, maybe he’s not as beefy as he’d normally be, but my old man makes a living getting the krill knocked out of him. He’s not about to let being Hylian stop him from plying his trade, okay?
“Yeah, but at his current height, one punch is–”
“--Not going to happen. Trust me, getting hit for a living also means knowing which hits you can and can’t take,” Cironus insisted. “I get it. Dad can be a little…I dunno, cavalier at times? But I’m telling you, he knows how to avoid getting hit when he wants to.”
He smirked, recalling an old memory.
“We’ll have to introduce you to Big Blue at some point. Trust me, he’ll have stories about trying to pin my dad.”
“Not for lack of trying!”
“NOT HELPING, DAD.”
Danmalaak was having a hard time processing this. Cironus was building up his father as some sort of badass fighter, yet in the short time he’d been traveling with the zorca, Fat Fin had spent most of his time lumbering about behind the group, cracking crass jokes, only playing at mediation between his sons when they finally got too rowdy. As such, Danmalaak was increasingly of the impression that Fat Fin got by mostly from being the largest goon in the room. The idea that the zorca would remember his Hylian limitations and avoid getting himself flattened in the first ten seconds of combat was something the goron harbored some serious skepticism about.
Still, though, the little goron was the one least familiar with his new brethren. At the very least, Cironus seemed to have a level head on his shoulders; If he said his father could handle himself, who was Danmalaak to say otherwise?
“...All right,” he conceded. “I’m…I dunno, still not used to traveling around with a bunch of fighters.”
“Hey, no bigs, Bro-malaak!” said Cironus, clapping him on the shoulder (and wincing at slapping solid rock). “Think of it this way: yours truly palled around with the craziest fighters in Hyrule! And I was armed just with my fists, this holy apparatus–” he tapped the head on his guitar “--and the truth.”
He tossed his head, glancing back at a throng that had started ogling his showboating father.
“You’re in good hands! Right, Da–”
Cironus’ brain caught up with what he was seeing.
“DAD!”
“YOU SAID–”
=========
Hours later…
“All right, fish break.”
Danmalaak reached about, grabbed his pack, passed out boxes of sushi to the others, who gratefully started wolfing them down. The four of them had been moving at a brisk pace, having separated Fat Fin from his adoring crowd, and the other three had already begun showing various degrees of dishevelment from slogging through muggy swamp weather. Fat Fin was looking particularly musky, his shirtless chest having nothing to absorb those rivulets of sweat pouring from his matted hair. If the grime covering his body was bothering him, though, he gave no indication.
Unwrapping one of the salt licks he’d pried from the canyon wall, Danmalaak glanced at Sardon.
“How’s the leg?” he asked, gesturing at the rough scab on the bigger brother's leg.
“Eh, it’s fine,” Sardon said through a mouthful of rice, then swallowed. “Feels a little weird without the blubber, but otherwise? I forgot it was even there.”
“Dang. And that was…what, a ten, fifteen-foot drop?”
“I’ve had worse. I’m feeling it more in the arms. You’d think, with all this moisture, those rock walls wouldn’t be so rough on the hands.”
The goron considered as he chewed. Those walls had been deceptively smooth during their climb, giving even Danmalaak pause. All those outcroppings and recesses had been far too small for the goron’s outsized hands, and it took some irritable fist-taps to gouge out something he could grab.
He’d not even realized that Sardon had lost his footing until Cironus’ gleeful whooping called out from below. Apparently, the larger brother had just managed to catch some gnarled branch growing from the wall and used it to swing back to the path.
“Well, at least we don’t have to go back down that way,” he said, licking his lips as they continued to walk. “Imagine pulling that branch trick in reverse!”
The four of them laughed.
As the sun began to creep over the horizon, Sardon raised a different subject.
“So…yeah, since we’re on fish-break, we really ought to find a place to crash,” he said, waving half an onigiri at the shadows extending in dusklight. “I don’t know about you, but I’d rather avoid being eaten alive by the insect life around here.”
Danmalaak paused chewing, eyes wide. “Is…is that a thing?” he asked.
“Well…for us, at least. Not sure about you. Rocks and whatnot.”
“Oh, right. Right. Well, Cir, you’re the tour guide here - which way should we go?”
Now it was Cironus’ turn to pause. He squinted through the foggy marshland, mid-munch, peering past the low treelines for any particular landmarks he could recognize. At first, he couldn’t see anything besides the clearing they’d been plodding through. As the sun continued to set, though, he recognized a faint pair of skylights broadcasting from a foothill in the distance.
“Oh, of course!” he exclaimed, slapping his forehead. “Necluda’s sky tower!”
“Necluda sky what.”
“Sky Tower,” Cironus said, answering his father’s skeptical question. “It’s one of the cartographer’s stations. You know, one of the ones Zelda commissioned for mapping out Hyrule?”
Blank looks from the rest of the group.
“...Right. My family lives in the ocean.” Cironus sighed, searching his mind for some way to provide an analogue - then, realizing none would work, he changed tack.
“Let’s put it this way,” he said. “It’s a station that’s got regular upkeep from the Hyrule Carpenter’s Guild. They’ve got people coming in to make sure the local wildlife doesn’t destroy it. Even if nobody’s there, well…it’s a sturdy structure, and we’d have a roof over our heads.”
“If it’s open, of course,” said Sardon.
“...I mean, didn’t stop us when we needed in,” Cironus muttered.
“What?”
Cironus feigned ignorance with another sushi roll. “I didn’t say nuffin’.”
“Uh-huh.” Sardon gave him a hard look.
“Okay, okay!” Some of them did need breaking into when I was at ‘em last, okay?” said Cironus. “But that was during the Upheaval - what didn’t need a fixer-upper, right? It’s not like we trashed the place. Sometimes we even did the Guild’s job for them!”
“Hope you got paid for it,” Fat Fin said.
“...Ehhhhhhhhhhhn.” Cironus see-sawed with his hand.
“...Anyway,” said Danmalaak, trying to bring the conversation back around, “sounds like a good place to pack in for the night. Anyone got any objections?”
There was a pause.
“...Just one,” said Sardon.
He pointed to a well-trod path crossing the clearing they were passing through, one that appeared to have been there for several years, if the weathering stones were any suggestion. Along the path was a sign, constructed from a set of rickety planks, rocks, and some iron rails with no attention to rhyme, reason, or basic design.
It read:
THIS WAY TO LURELIN VILLAGE
DANGER! DO NOT ATTEMPT TO SCALE CANYON OVERLOOK
SERIOUS INJURY OF DEATH MAY OCCUR
GUARD RAILS TO BE INSTALLED NEXT SUMMER
COURTESY OF HUDSON CONSTRUCTION
“Know anything about that?” he asked, maintaining an absolutely straight face.
Cironus blanched.
“I, uh,” he stuttered. “I-I mean, Link was always in a hurry, and–”
Sardon broke composure.
“Let me get this straight,” he said, faint incredulity creeping into his voice. “Your… friend… was in SUCH a hurry he’d go catapulting down a canyon wall just to shave a few hours off his commute?!”
“He had a parachute–”
“HE HAD A PARACHUTE?! And you had us go UP IT?! With NOTHING?!”
“...He called it the Hero’s Climb!” Cironus squeaked.
“What, was he possessed by a mountain goat?!”
“Or by someone who didn’t allot any time on his itinerary.”
“NOT HELPING, DAD!”
==========
It was early evening as the group scaled the foothill leading to Necluda’s sky tower facility. The building stood as it had during the Upheaval incident: a strange, hollow wooden structure with a fluted base, sitting on a narrow platform that seemed oddly flimsy for the robust structure it had to support. It looked to them all like an outsized chimney.
The skylights illuminated the tower against the evening fog, bathing it and the surrounding region in a soft, pale yellow light. It also shone atop some new rooftops in the vicinity; evidently, some new maintenance buildings had been constructed in the intervening years. Of note was a distinct lack of thorn bushes in the nearby area; evidently, someone had finally had enough of the brambles surrounding the tower and had either burned, cut, or bombed them away. In their place were a number of flower beds, which someone had been suspiciously meticulous about separating from the wetland’s endemic vines.
Cironus, thoroughly emasculated by his lack of signpost awareness, took some heart in the image. Here, like in so many other parts of Hyrule, people were reclaiming the Wilds from Ganon’s gloom. The towers were now a permanent station - a far cry from Cironus' fears of decrepit ruins, with people milling from hut to hut talking about something in the distance.
“Nice! Looks like we’ll be camping in style tonight!” said Danmalaak, clapping Cironus on the back.
“No –ACK–kidding,” Cironus said, grinning through a wince. “I thought we’d have to shut ourselves in the tower. Could rent a room instead!”
Danmalaak coughed, shifting his pack. His coin purse inside was noticeably silent, suggesting a little too much about their finances.
“Well…maybe not that...But hey, nothing wrong busking outside a tent!”
Fat Fin rolled his shoulders. “Maybe even give ‘em a show..”
“No, Dad–” Sardon began.
“Hang on a sec,” said Cironus, interrupting him. “I think he’s on to something.”
He pointed. Further up the hill, a zora was crouching to emerge from one of the buildings. While not completely unexpected, it was definitely unusual: it was a Hylian encampment, after all. More interesting was that she didn’t look like a local from Zora’s Domain. She was missing fins, she was a duller color than most, and yet...she was, strangely enough, somehow familiar to him.
…Why was she so familiar?
“Looks like there’s people of all types showing up here,” Cironus said. “Maybe if we cozy up with the local zora, play some music, do a little show? They might speak on our behalf. Get us a room for free, you know?”
“And why would the zora care about us?,” replied Fat Fin, tapping his chest pointedly. “Hylian, remember?...though I do like your thinking.”
The mystery Zora was speaking with zeal to one such Hylian: a squat, stout figure with heavily-framed spectacles who could have posed as a stunt actor for Fat Fin, had he only been a head taller. She waved at the sky, pointing out something behind the party that (based on how excited she seemed) must have been the discovery of the century.
As they approached, her conversation became more clear.
“...I can feel it in my bones! A low-pressure system’s moving in–another storm is coming soon! Oh, ooh, I’m hoping for lightning! Maybe then I can test my little apparatus?--But wait, for the last two storm cycles it’s only been rain, right?”
The Zora was practically bouncing up and down in excitement.
The Hylian nodded. “ Yeah. Can’t say we’ve had anything but lightning. Just rain, rain, and more rain. But that’s not all bad! We’ve been able to test the acid content to see how the nearby towns are affected by this weather.”
The conversationalists continued, not even pausing to look at the party as they approached.
Cironus scratched his head. “Okay…yeah, that’s way more science talk than I was expecting here. Kind of reminds me of someone!”
He shot a mischievous look at Sardon, then paused.
“Actually, wow! She really does look like…”
Cironus trailed off.
Now it was Sardon’s turn to blanch.
“...Oh, no.”
Danmalaak blinked. “Is she someone you–”
“No,” Sardon said, his eyes darting between his three compatriots. “In fact, we don’t know anybody over here. That means you, Cir. Okay?”
He planted a finger directly in Cironus' chest.
“I…okay?”
Cironus glanced at his father, but the old man had already drawn a hand over his face, revealing an expression of polite ignorance in place of his usual joviality once removed. Fat Fin’s eyes flicked over to Cironus, hardening in a glare as he nodded towards Sardon, then softened back to base incuriosity as he walked forward.
“...I am so lost,” said Danmalaak.
“...We’ll talk about it later,” Cironus said out of the corner of his mouth as they approached. “For now, let’s just get some information. Hi there!”
He punctuated that last bit with a jovial wave, which finally caught the attention of their mystery zora.
“Oh hi!” The zora stepped away from her cohort, looking over the quartet (and their clothing) with interest. “How can I help you? Are you with the survey team?”
“Surv–Oh! Uh, no!” said Cironus. “We’re, ah, actually just passing through from Lurelin! We happened to see this place as it was getting dark.”
He pointed at the tower.
“That’s not an inn, by chance, is it?”
Danmalaak squinted at him. Cironus responded by stepping directly between him and their host.
The zora laughed. “Oh, that’s what I thought! I was afraid you guys might be here to work. I was going to say, you’re a little underdressed! It’s been storming here pretty badly so you’d need more clothes–”
“Trust me, we don’t,” interjected Fat Fin.
She blinked, surprised, then flashed a big grin in response. “...Well, in that case, it sounds like you’re good to go!”
Cironus gave her a sheepish grin, scratching the back of his neck. “Sorry,” he said, “Dad’s a bit…assertive about his fashion sense.”
“Oh my goodness, are you all family?”
She turned briefly to look up at the tower. “Well, sorry to say, but that’s not an inn! But I bet Darol knows where the next closest one is. Right?”
The other Hylian licked his lips, pulling off his glasses to polish them on his shoulder. Cloudy lenses were clearly a regular issue in muggy Necluda.
“Hmm…I would have said Lurelin would be the closest place, but you just came from there,” he said, squinting off towards the south. “If that’s the case, your next best bet is probably…oh, say, Hateno.”
He flagged the path leading east with his glasses before putting them back on. “You might want to get a move on, you’ve got a bit of a march in front of you.”
“YEAH MAYBE WE SHOULD GO YOU GUYS,” said Sardon, a little too loudly - and, surprisingly, several feet further from the group than he’d been only seconds earlier.
“Ooh, no, no, no.” The zora waved her hands, stepping closer. “Oh that’s way too far! And you might get caught in this storm that’s heading our way. Hmmm…”
She looked over the party again. Sardon felt his cheeks flushing.
“You know what? You guys probably wouldn’t take up too much space. I’m not planning on sleeping too much tonight…so if I move my stuff out of my tent, would you like to stay overnight in there?” She smiled at them again. “I have to take some night notes for my studies, so it’s no problem by me!”
Cironus brightened.
“Hey, that’s p–”
“--a TERRIBLE idea!”
Cironus looked at Sardon, confused and more than a little irked. “What are you talking about? We wouldn’t be taking up that much room!”
“And I won't even be in there!" chimed in Danmalaak. “Water doesn't bother me, so I’ll just stick around outside!”
“Yeah! I mean, no accounting for your dad, but with me outside, you three would have plenty of room in the–”
“We are not leaving this…lovely lady outside in the rain, okay?” Sardon gritted his teeth as he addressed the zora. “It’s not polite.”
“She said it was okay–”
“NOT THE POINT!”
“I’m gonna tell Mom.”
“DAD’S RIGHT HERE!”
Fat Fin sighed. Sardon was taking “playing dumb” to a whole new dimension.
“I’m gonna tell Mom on you,” Sardon said, leveling a finger at Fat Fin and Cironus. “Telling a nice young lady to sleep out in the rain! What would Yon–youuuuuuur mom have to say about that?!”
Cironus glared at him. He knew exactly who Sardon was about to implicate.
“Low Blow, Sa–IRRRRRR.”
The two scientists glanced at each other.
“They remind me of my siblings…” The Zora stage-whispered to Darol. “They sure seem like family to me!”
“I’m not so sure,” said Darol. “I think the goron’s a dead giveaway.”
“He’s a pet,” said Fat Fin.
“HEY!”
“Oooooohhhhhhkay guys," said the zora, clearly wanting this interaction to end. "You know what, why don’t you just stay in the tower! We have people coming in and out at all hours, so it’s not really comfortable but, at least you’ll be sheltered!”
“Okay, see, that was what we were hoping to do in the first place.” Cironus locked eyes with his brother. “You can’t possibly argue with that.”
“I totally can! I thought of that idea first–”
“No you DIDN’T!”
Sardon stuck his tongue out at Cironus. Cironus shot his back.
“Why are you making this so difficult–”
“I am NOT–”
“SHUT UP!”
Fat Fin had had enough. He grabbed his two sons by the shoulders, yanking them in, and knocked their heads together.
“NO! ONE! CARES!” he bellowed - and then, spinning on a dime, he offered his most charming, disarming smile to the zora.
“We’ll take the tower, if you’re still offering,” he said, still holding his sons by the scruffs of their necks.
Darol gave them a hard squint.
“Just…don’t break anything. Actually, Sona, if they do break anything, it’s on you.”
He turned on his heel and started walking away.
Sona (for they now knew who the zora was) winced.
“Oh, boy.”
Sardon stared at the ground.
“That’s not gonna happen,” he said, under his breath.
“Agreed.”
Fat Fin sidestepped the two of them, smiling genially.
“Thank you…Sona, was it?”
Sona nodded tersely. Her sunshiney friendliness was replaced with a new air of concern and possibly regret.
“Why don’t I show you to the tower now?”
She jerked her head as if to say, “let’s go!” and started walking.
Sardon’s heart sank - just as Sona asked something that derailed his thoughts altogether.
“What were your names?”
Oh no.
Sardon froze. He'd been trying to avoid this moment instant he’d realized who Sona was. He’d been trying so hard, in fact, that he completely neglected the possibility they’d reach this moment. He needed an alias: something plausible, something that a normal Hylian would have. Something that didn’t sound asinine, something that didn't sound like something an idiot zorca would make up–
“Finn,” Fat Fin said. “With two ‘n’s’.”
“I’m, uh…Cir.”
Cironus grinned at Sardon.
Sardon stared straight ahead, wracking his brain. Nothing came to him. The nickname the Lurelin children gave him came to mind, but–no, too fake - AND Cironus had already stolen it. Cir?! REALLY?!
The milliseconds ticked by like lifetimes. He felt ten thousand years old in an instant, and just as stupid. Come on, Sardon! It’s just a stupid NAME! A stupid, stupid NAME!
“I’m…”
His mouth clamped shut. He was sweating buckets.
“I’m...peety.”
Cironus nearly tripped over his feet staring at him.
“...Peety?!” he mouthed.
Sona whipped her head around. “Wh- what was that?”
Oh, NO. OH, NO!
His brains were soup. His legs were noodles. If the mystery fog that turn him Hylian were to show up again, it couldn’t have done a better job turning his spine to jello. Sardon fell to his knees, eyes blank, a strange, wobbling smile swimming its way across his face as he went from kneeling to face-planting the dirt.
Sona gasped, dashing towards the now-prostrate man. “Ohmygoddess!?” She knelt and moved to roll him over.
Sardon mumbled something inaudibly through a mouthful of dirt.
Danmalaak stared, flabbergasted, gesturing towards Cironus, then at the brain-dead Hylian on the ground. He pleaded, wordless, for something, anything that could make sense of this.
Cironus leaned in sideways towards him, eyes firmly looking towards his brother.
“Girlfriend,” he whispered.
Dawning realization played across Danmalaak’s face.
“Ohhhhhhhh.”
Sardon tried again.
“Ibb beeeee.” A gob of dirt fell out of his mouth with the confession.
“Oh my gosh, honey, c’mon–” Sona shifted her arms under Sardon, and with a bit of effort, lifted him up in a carry. “Is he sick? Is he okay? We need to go to the infirmary!”
“Ibb’s beeeee,” he said again. “I’b Bar-bon.”
“He’s delirious!” She speed-walked, huffing and puffing a little - Sona may have been taller than Sardon as a Hylian, but he was still an incredibly stocky man for her to carry. Fat Fin pushed forward, meeting her steps with his own, and gestured to take his son in his arms.
“I can take him,” he said. “Lead the way.”
Sardon switched hands as Sona led them towards a building which must have been the infirmary. She chuckled nervously - who would have imagined this crazy Hylian would share her boyfriend’s silly nickname? Truth was stranger than fiction.
Fat Fin stared up at the sky, mentally taking the goddesses’ names in vain, then looked down at his son, who was burbling like an idiot under the pressure.
“Want one more shot at it?” he asked.
Sardon nodded. Fat Fin sighed.
“Hang on,” he said, rocking his son’s body so that the last of the mud would clear his lips. “He’s got something to say.”
“This is a medical emergency!” Sona sounded stressed.
“Yeahhhh, no. It’s not.”
Fat Fin shifted Sardon in his grip, grabbing the boy’s head by the chin, and raised it up so he could look at her. His cheeks spilled slightly over his father’s fingers, giving him the unfortunate appearance of a half-drowned trout.
“Ready to hear this?” he asked Sona.
“No? Yes? I don’t know??” Sona was absolutely exasperated.
“That’s a yes,” said Fat Fin. “Go ahead, son.”
Sardon whimpered.
He felt like a limp fish.
Funny, considering.
FOCUS.
He closed his eyes.
Opened his mouth.
“...It’s…meeeeee,” he said, his voice filled with anguish. “I’m Sardon.”
Sona stared at Sardon. She very slowly lifted her head to look at the others, an expression of confusion and fear suffusing her face.
Cironus and Fat Fin nodded. Danmalaak shrugged, looked at the other two, then nodded as well.
“What is going on.”
Sona looked like she was debating on whether or not to run.
“Sardon? What’s going on?”
“Magic cloud.”
Sardon looked up at Fat Fin.
“That’s Dad.”
Then at Cironus.
“That’s Cironus.”
And then at Danmalaak.
“That’s just a goron.”
“HEY!”
Sona peered at Sardon intensely.
“...What did you say to me behind the seaweed rock by the tidepools at our first Turning the Wheel?”
Sardon looked at Sona, then at Fat Fin and Cironus. His face turned beet red.
“Please,” he gasped. “Not in front of them.”
“Ohhhhh no,” said Cironus, suddenly grinning. “Now you GOTTA answer.”
Sona whipped around on Cironus and pointed a finger at him. “What was the first song you and I played together?”
Cironus blanched as she brandished her finger at him. “Uhhhhh–Song of Storms! SONG OF STORMS!” he blurted, wanting out of Sona’s glare as quickly as possible.
Sona spun back to Sardon as though Cironus had never existed.
“Ohmygoddess I cannot believe it! Sardon? What is happening?” Wrenching him out of his father’s grasp, she put her hands on Sardon’s shoulder and chest and put her face close to his. “It really IS you guys!”
Then she paused.
“Wait.”
She pulled a half-amused, half-embarrassed grin and pushed her face in even closer.
“You did say ‘peety!’ You used your little nickname!”
Cironus, Fat Fin, Sardon, and Danmalaak need YOUR help in deciding which route to take in getting to Cotera. They’ve come up with two possible routes, each with their own risks and benefits - and we’d love some input on which way to go.
Please choose one of the following paths below. Chicanery will happen along either route - but we want to know which flavor you’d prefer!
This poll will be up for 1 week. We look forward to the results!
Route A: Into the Wetlands, with higher odds of monster encounters and Hinox shenanigans
Route B: Into the Jungle, with more lightning and horse-based skulduggery
Kinov and Zuta’s delighted shrieks punctuated the early afternoon as they hung from Sardon’s wrist, the rest of their bodies catching some serious air time as the bigger Hylian tore across the Lurelin sand with his arms outstretched. Sardon had been playing with them for the past fifteen minutes or so, having realized that, well, Cironus and Danmalaak had most of the planning locked down. It had happened mostly by accident: one moment, he’d been skipping rocks on the beach out of boredom; the next, the kids had popped up beside him, asking if he could throw them instead.
Not that it had taken much persuasion. Sardon had spent years roughhousing with the other kids in his pod. And these kids were sturdy! Zuta had already hurtled a good twelve feet into the water, and he’d just popped back like a cork, demanding to be thrown again so soon Sardon had to adjust Kinov’s own trajectory into the water. The delighted screams had called enough children, including a pair of suspiciously Gerudo-featured local girls, that he’d switched tactics and was taking turns racing up and down the beach with them all in tow.
“Kiiiiinooooov, it’s my turn to be on Sar-sar’s shoulders!” yelled one of the Gerudo girls who was chasing them.
“Nuh-uh!” Kinov shot back. “I get an extra turn! Sar-sar said so!”
Sardon skidded to a halt, kicking up sand all around them.
“Uh-oh!” he called out. “We got a fibber on our hands!”
Kinov’s eyes widened. “Huh?”
“And you know what we do with fibbers!”
With a slick twist, Sardon swung one laden arm outward. Kinov let out a squealing giggle as he flew into the air, sailing a good three to four seconds before crashing into the seafoam. The kids laughed in delight, and Sardon winked, crouching down to offer the Gerudo kids his hands.
“Ready to go, Utoko? Urali?”
They pounced on him instead.
“HEY!”
“The molduga’s escaped!” yelled Utoko, changing the game’s rules in an instant. “Get him back in the sand so he can’t get anyone!”
“Yeah! Up to his face!” called out her sister, completely forgetting her turn on Sardon’s shoulders in favor of this new game. She shoved hard against his hips - and while Sardon was easily three times her height, he played along, falling into the sand with a wet thud.
“No! Noooo! RAWWWR!” he yelled, batting feebly at them with arms and legs he’d decided were tentacles for the purposes of this game as they, Zuta, and Kinov (who was not to be excluded from this game) raced to bury his body under the sand. “I’mma eat you up! I’mma eat’choo up–”
“Utoko! Urali!”
The two of them paused, clearly not wanting to stop their game. At the second call of their names, though, Utoko glanced around and sighed, pouting.
“Yes, Iforaaaaa!”
Sardon twisted around, trying to get a glimpse of who was calling them. He caught her at the edge of his vision: an older Gerudo, her vibrant red hair done up in a thick braid over her shoulders and a jagged, chipped tooth on a chain necklace draped across her Lurelin-clad chest. She waved at her sisters while she walked across the beach, skirting the trench Sardon had created in his running while still homing in on the Hylian dogpile.
“Mom says it’s time to go back,” the girl said as she stopped just short of Sardon, lest she get sucked into the sandy struggles. “It’s lunchtime, and you know how she is about sand in the stew–”
“We’re having stew tonight?!” asked Urali, her games with Sardon forgotten in a split second.
“Yep! And the rest of you are invited if you clean up,” she said with a wink.
“Heck yeah!”
It was as if Sardon had never existed. Completely abandoning their task, they scrambled for the village - in Zuta’s case, scrambling over Sardon’s chest in his excitement to beat them all there. Sardon, for his part, blinked; the play-to-eat turn had moved so fast he had to wonder if the kids were part zorca themselves.
“Need a hand?” the Gerudo woman asked.
“Uh…I might?”
She grabbed Sardon by the hand and pulled back, surprising the newly-made Hylian as she easily lifted his heft with one arm. Sardon clapped at his chest and thighs, brushing the grit off his new clothes as best he could, before raking his hair with his hands in a futile attempt to remove it from his ponytail.
“Thanks, Miss…?
“Ifora,” she said, offering a hand. “You know, you’re really good with kids.”
“Ah, yeah,” he said, shaking it (and accidentally transferring some of the grit to her). “Comes with living in a pod–er, uh, family.”
Ifora waved off the correction. “Don’t worry about it. The zorca are our neighbors. We get a dozen of them who swim by every year - about this time, in fact. Would you three be a part of that pod?”
“Er…no?” he said, a little surprised. “I mean, we do come by here, but we’re usually in the fall/winter migration. You’re taking this surprisingly easily, by the way.”
“What, the three of you showing up?”
“Uh, no. The whole–” he gestured at his body, clearing his throat uncomfortably.
“Ah. The…transformation.” She smiled, then started ticking off events on her fingers. “Well, before you showed up, we were attacked by pirate moblins. Not to mention having our village rebuilt by a feral Hylian who’s supposedly a century older than he looks. And the exploding demon dragon a little while after. After a while? You just learn to go with the flow.”
She winked.
“...Well, I guess when you put it like that…”
Ifora’s smile faded. “I’m sorry. I’m making light of your condition. Are you all right?”
“I…”
Sardon’s voice faded as he massaged his still-unfamiliar wrists, working his lips against strange blocky teeth that had none of the flesh-stripping serration he was used to. His hair had plastered itself across his back, matting and dragging across his skin in ways his headpiece had never done. As much as he was trying to play it off with all the nonchalance he could muster, it all just felt so…strange.
“I wish I could be so easygoing about this,” he finally said, trying to move his head in a way that would pull his hair off his back. “I just keep going back to, well…what if this is permanent? We still don’t know what even happened, and we’re making plans and journeys based on some basic suggestion our friend made.”
He gestured out towards Danmalaak, whom the two of them could vaguely see haggling aggressively with a passing trader.
“Two of us aren’t even supposed to be here,” he continued. “Dad and I are supposed to be at the Turning of the Wheel right now. That’s the, uh, thing most of the other zorca this time are supposed to be going to, by the way? - but my brother’s been going through a lot lately and we didn’t want to leave him where he was.”
“Girl troubles?”
“Exile.”
Ifora winced. “Ooof.”
“Yeah. We don’t even know what for. I don’t think even he knows. One minute, the moms are just fine with him. The next, he’s out on his butt, told to keep swimming and never stop.”
“That’s a lot…and, might I say, a poor way to make an example of him.” Ifora frowned. “I mean, how do you know what to avoid if you can’t even know the crime?”
“Right?! Well, Dad and I couldn’t just leave him at that. I’m not leaving my brother like that, not…you know, all alone. Angry. Confused.” He shuddered at the thought. “So, we get this idea that we’ll pass on the Turning this year, keep him company over the summer, and then…well…”
Again, the gesture at his face and chest.
“As bad as this is? I can’t have Cir thinking it’s his fault we’re stuck like he is. He’s already bitter at everything that’s happened, I don’t need him taking even more responsibility for us just having some lousy luck.”
Ifora nodded. “We older siblings have to look after the rest, am I right?”
“Yeah…we do.”
Ifora licked her lower lip as she considered Sardon’s dour mood, a deep plunge given how gleeful he’d been only minutes before. This was a boy who felt things, and felt them hard. Sure, that came in handy when someone needed that surge of adrenaline in a fight (and judging from that scar on his pectorals, he’d been in at least a few), but the insecurity writ ‘cross his face simply would not do.
“For what it’s worth…I can’t believe this would be permanent,” she ventured, picking a piece of grit off her hand with a fingernail. “For one, I imagine it would take some considerable magic to affect that kind of change with any degree of permanence. Something on, say, the Demon King’s level…and I don’t think that would have been wielded on three isolated zorca on some beachside jaunt.”
Sardon’s response was a noncommittal grunt. “Cir would just say he’s got that kind of luck.”
“Well, that’s the other thing,” Ifora continued. “You three don’t strike me as the type to just lay down and accept it.”
That earned a crack of a smile from Sardon. “You got me there,” he said, cracking his knuckles. “Pretty sure Cir could call down the goddesses on that guitar on his. And Dad would wrestle them into submission given half the chance.”
“And you?”
His hesitation made Ifora’s decision for her.
“Do you mind if I give you a gift?” she asked, reaching behind her neck to undo the clasp of her necklace. “This is something my grandmother gave me for my first Gerudo Town pilgrimage. I was a child at the time, already so much taller and stronger than the local children, but I was terrified at the idea of leaving. You can probably guess all the usual reasons why - the monsters on the journey, of traveling through that vast, scorching desert…but, really, most of all, I was terrified of leaving my family, living in a city of nothing but strangers.”
“...Strangers?” Sardon asked. “What, didn’t you have a family to go back to there?”
“Of a sort,” Ifora replied, winding the necklace chain around her palm. “Gerudo are required to live part of our lives in the Gerudo homeland. It is a way for us to recognize one another, to ingrain our culture and engender community in a people whose very biology requires that we live amongst others. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that our own families are there. Just about everyone in mine lives in that house, in fact.”
She rocked her head towards one of the villages’ signature palm-based huts. Indeed, Sardon could see Utoku and Urali there, virtually bouncing in anticipation for an apparently mythical beachside stew.
“When it was my turn to go, my grandmother was the only relative waiting for me. No mother, no sisters, aunts, or cousins, just one elderly woman caring for a girl just barely into her teens.”
Sardon made a face. “If you told me a pod had only one grandmother for its children, I’d tell you that pod’s’ days were numbered.”
Ifora laughed. “I thought the same thing! Surrounded by family here, and nothing there but a decrepit old lady I’d never met before. But, you know, she knew exactly what it was like, and she had a gift ready for me when I arrived.”
She pressed the wound-up necklace into Sardon’s palm, flicking up the jagged tooth fragment with her thumb.
“Molduga tooth, that,” she said, looking him in the eyes. “Only the very tip, of course. They were still harvesting the carcass when I came into town, so I got to find out how big they got - and I think even you’d have trouble wearing a tooth the size of your head on your neck. Of course, Grandmother wasted no time telling you who landed the final blow.”
Sardon glanced between the necklace and the woman offering it, his eyes wide.
“I–Miss Ifora, I can’t possibly–”
“It’s just Ifora, and you can, too,” she sad, a tad forcefully. “Think of it as a gift of courage, from one crotchety old grandma to her stubborn granddaughter - and from one big sibling to another. You three make sure to get back to your big oafish selves, all right?”
“Oafish?!”
Sardon’s surprised indignance fell quickly away to a feral grin as he used Ifora’s grip to pull her in for a big zorca-style bearhug.
“You got it,” he breathed in her ear.
The two of them shuddered, grinning. As they parted, though, Sardon unwound the chain, pinching the ends between massive fingers in preparation to put it on himself as he nodded to Ifora.
“I’ll be sure to bring it back,” he promised.
“You better,” she said. “I’m going to need that courage to keep my sisters in check!”
=========
=========
The sun hung low in the sky as three Hylians and one goron grouped up in front of Lurelin’s modest archway. Cironus and Danmalaak were both wearing a pair of bulky hiking packs, each filled with a number of provisions that would hopefully keep them sated on the way to their next stop.
“You packed the extra spices, right?” asked Cironus. “Eating salted fish is going to be such a downgrade after that paella.”
“I told you, that’s in case we can’t catch anything!” said Danmalaak. “And you’d better - those spices were expensive. We could have bought three times as much fish if you hadn’t–”
“Relax, kid,” cut in Fat Fin. “We’ll find something. I can taste it.”
“You can trust Dad to hunt anything,” said Sardon. “Anyway, did you ever figure out which way we were going?”
“Uh, well…weeee thought we’d put it to a vote,” muttered Cironus.
“Couldn’t choose, could ya.”
“Mind your BUSINESS, Fin!”
“All right, then, let’s vote,” said Danmalaak. “Route A, with the cliffsides and hinoxes–”
Fin’s eyes lit up.
“The WHAT–”
“--WAIT ON THE CHOICES, FIN!--or Route B, with the horses and lightning?”
Cironus leaned over his plate of paella, an expression of bliss plastered across his face. Sardon was right: the combination of dill, saffron, garlic, tuna, and shrimp was an absolute feast for the senses.
“Why, thank you!” said their waitress. “I mean, we couldn’t let that tuna go to waste, now, could we?”
The tuna Cironus had dragged with them had worked dividends for Danmalaak’s wallet. The village’s local restaurant owner, Kiana, had positively flipped when she discovered they were willing to part with it, even more so when she’d seen the salt goron work his preservation techniques on the meat itself. The rupees she’d offloaded in exchange had paid for an impromptu tailor session for the three newly-christened Hylians who’d wandered into town - something at least three of the four were desperate for by that point (and for whom the local tailor, Chessica, wasn’t exactly hesitant servicing). The poses they’d made while getting their new duds fitted had certainly attracted the attention of a fair share of passing travelers, and there had been a collective sigh of resignation once they’d had a chance to don a decent pair of pants.
Of course, “fitting” had been a relative term. The former zorca, even as Hylians, were easily as tall as the Gerudo and three times more massive. The only one who’d received a full vest and pants had been Cironus - and that was because he’d been the smallest one to start with. Sardon had opted for something that barely looped around the arms; Fat Fin, meanwhile, outright refused to wear anything above the belt. Even with that, Chessica found it necessary to improvise: it was only because she’d recently outfitted one of the village’s largest residents that she’d had enough material handy.
In any case, kitting out the group had left them with just enough rupees to afford the three of them a sumptuous meal (and for Danmalaak, a delicious salt lick Kiana had thoughtfully placed under the tuna as it roasted over the fire). The smell alone had their mouths watering, and it took all the self-control Cironus had to not simply start shoveling the bowl into his mouth. Fat Fin had no such compunction; indeed, Kiana had to step back quickly to avoid being snapped up along with his bowl.
“Okay, I’ll give the Hylians this,” Sardon said, before ladling up a hefty spoonful of tuna and rice and holding it just in front of his nose. “If I’d known what we were missing up ‘till this point, I might have charged right on into that cloud. Am I right?”
“No kidding,” said Cironus.
The world of smell was totally unknown to Cironus, Sardon, and Fat Fin, seeing as the three of them didn’t exactly have noses before their transformation. Sure, they had blowholes, but those were just for breathing. This array of sensory phenomena colored their world with every breath they took, and while they had tried not to notice it on their way in, it was impossible to ignore how all these alluring scents made their eyes roll back and their mouths water.
Nayru’s love, it even affected taste! Sardon was right, Cironus seriously had to wonder if he’d ever be able to enjoy raw fish once they got their old bodies back. Who knew what else they’d been missing this whole time!
“Well, always glad to see people enjoying my cooking,” said Kiana, playfully touching Cironus on the shoulder as she backed out of the way of the gorging Hylians. “You just let me know if you need anything more, all right?”
Cironus gave her as much of an appreciative nod as he could as he chowed down, but he could not resist making some very undignified noises as his teeth tore through tuna and shellfish alike. The aroma cast by the dill, garlic, paella, and saffron was like an explosion of flavor, and the bard could swear he could even see new colors. Twice in a row, he found himself nearly choking from eating so fast, and it took a few painful backblows from Sardon before he could breathe normally again.
“Slow down, Bro, it ain’t goin’ anywhere!” the elder brother chided. “I know you’re starving, but rein it in!?”
“All right, yeesh!”
He forced himself to slow down, even as his father grabbed a nearby loaf of bread and attacked it with gusto. Sardon had a point - they weren’t going to get anywhere if they couldn’t handle a simple meal without choking to death. Still, it was hard not to go full bore - given the size they normally were, it was a rare thing indeed when they had an opportunity to truly stuff themselves.
As their pace fell back to approaching sanity, Danmalaak took the opportunity to break from his own salt-crunching to clear his throat.
“So,” he said, addressing Cironus. “Cotera. What’s she like?”
“Hm?” said Cironus between mouthfuls. “Oh, she’s fabulous. Great personality, flirty as heck - and oh, who am I kidding, she is voluptuous! Sweet Hylia, the curves, the shape, the beauty, the jewels, the eyes–”
He actually stopped eating long enough to look directly at Danmalaak.
“...Yo, she is pretty!”
Sardon snorted.
“What?! She is!” Cironus insisted.
“Just laughing at the way you put it.”
“Oh, you just wait.” Cironus shoveled more paella onto his spoon, then gestured at Sardon with it. “When you see her? I got forty rupees that say you’ll fall to your knees crying.”
“You’re on!”
Neither of them even has forty rupees, thought Danmalaak to himself. I’m the one spending everything.
“But she’s not, you know, impossible to talk to, right?” he said aloud. “Like, you don’t have to go through some kind of procession or beg for her audience or something, right?”
“Nahhh,” said Cironus. “She’s pretty outgoing. Like I said: real flirty. I get the impression she really likes talking to people, you know? Like, it’s part of the whole faerie thing? She wants to be adored, and she’ll totally chat you up if you’ll let her.”
“...Among other things, I’m sure,” said Sardon, his eyebrow raised.
Cironus turned red.
“A-HA!” crowed Sardon. “I knew it! She’s another one of your girlfriends, isn’t she!”
“She is not!” Cironus said hotly. “She is a very nice lady who likes to help people! She fixed up Link’s armor, she enchanted my guitar–”
He crossed his arms across his chest, an indignant look on his face.
“--So what if she gave us a few smooches along the way?!”
Sardon crowed with laughter.
“Din’s balls, Cir!” he said between gales. “What number is she in your Little Pink Book?! Seventeen? Twenty-three?!”
“It wasn’t anything like that!...plus I never had all the items to go all the way.”
Danmalaak spat out the rock he’d been chewing.
“You WHAT?!” he spluttered.
Cironus covered his face in a futile attempt to hide his embarrassment.
“It’s part of her whole thing,” he muttered into his hands.”You give her materials…she enchants your armor…gives you a smooch…then maybe more than a smooch…”
“What kind of fairy is she?!” demanded Danmalaak.
“...A really good one.” It was impressive just how small this big man could get in his seat. “I…never could find everything she needed for the big one.”
Sardon smirked. “Wellllllll, that seems about par for the course for you–”
“SHUT UP!"
Of course this was the point where his father finally stopped eating long enough to speak.
“Well…now you’ve got another chance.”
“DAD!”
Sardon just kept laughing.
“I hope you choke,” Cironus grumbled.
This was too much for Danmalaak. He had not expected such a simple question about fairies to go hurtling so wildly into left field. He’d thought he’d hear stories about strange deals and tricksy contracts, not some bizarre foray into his friend’s romantic life!
As such, he got one more chance to be baffled as Fat Fin abruptly rose from his seat. Patting his stomach with a light belch, the massive man tossed his bowl to the table (emptied and sponged clean with the bread he’d attacked it with) and made to move away from his sons. Passing by Sardon, though, he placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder and lowered his head to the boy’s ear.
“Maybe instead of focusing on your brother, you should worry about Sona.”
It was finally Cironus’ turn to howl with laughter as Sardon turned red. Without missing a beat, Fat Fin left the table.
“...IF we’re all finished poking fun at each other’s personal lives–” Sardon tried, after a full twenty seconds of his brother's unbridled glee.
“Brave words, there,” murmured Danmalaak.
Cironus laughed all the harder.
“Oh, hush,” Sardon said, turning all the redder. “If we can get back to the topic at hand, we still have to get to Cotera. I don’t suppose you have ideas on which way to go?”
That finally got Cironus to stop laughing for a moment. “I…think…?” he said, scratching his chin. “Hey Danni, get the map out real quick.”
“Sure thing,” Danmalaak said, pausing on his salt rocks long enough to retrieve it. Licking his fingers, he moistened them just enough so that he could smooth the map cloth out over the table.
“...So, here’s where we are,” he said, poking and dragging a circle in the cloth indicating Lurelin. “And you said Cotera waaaaaaas…”
“Right over here,” Cironus confirmed, dragging a line from Danmalaak’s finger to the point in question. “Juuuust east of the Dueling Peaks.”
“Oooof. That’s a bit of a walk,” Sardon said.
“True…though we do have a couple of routes we could take. For example–”
Returning to Lurelin (and Danmalaaks’ finger), he traced a path following a road leading towards the Atun valley - then broke off, heading north into the nearby marshlands.
“I remember that when LInk wanted to take the most direct path from Hateno to Lurelin, he’d save some time cutting through the Rabella wetlands. We could head that way, cut through the ponds, follow the road around Quince, and once we’re past Fort Hateno it’s just a leisurely swim along the Fir and Squabble Rivers to her fountain.”
Danmalaak cleared his throat. “Um. Hylians?“
“...Oh. Right,” muttered Cironus, grimacing at his flesh-toned hands. “Well. It’d be a walk to the Twin Bridges. Then the Fountain.”
Danmalaak was still making a face. “Iiiiii’m not so sure about this path,” he said, eyeing the map’s thick contours just north of the village. “Isn’t this just a bit steep? I get the feeling your friend took this path going north to south, not the other way around. Lot easier to slide than to climb, you know?”
Cironus snorted. “You didn’t know Link. Even I had trouble keeping up with him.”
“Okay. Point still stands. Besides, aren’t there supposed to be hinoxes in those marshlands?” Danmalaak remembered someone from some town southeast showing him a monograph of the things - massive, one-eyed giants who could give even Fat Fin a run for his money when he wasn’t a quarter his normal size. “I mean, if we can sneak past them, sure, but - and I really don’t mean any offense - you guys don’t strike me as the type to pass up a good fight.”
“Oh, heck no,” said Sardon, giving him a toothy grin. “C’mon, Danmalaak, any one of us could go to-to-toe with one, no problem.”
“One of you,” Danmalaak shot back. “And again - Hylian, remember?”
“Now you’re just selling us short.”
“You are short.”
“Not the point!”
“He’s right, though,” Cironus said to Sardon. “We’re not at our best at the moment, and I don’t know how extensive my magic works. I don’t want you and dad getting smashed up in a fight, only to find out I can’t fix broken bones, okay?”
“Yeah, okay,” he moped. “...Dad could absolutely take one, though.”
“Don’t. Tell. Dad. If he found out, he’d make us go, just to test his limits.”
“Look, we’ll call that ‘Route A’ for now,” said Danmalaak, trying to keep them on task. “What’s Route B?”
Cironus pored over the map. “Well, we could take that route through the Atun Valley to Floria Bridge. If I recall, there’s a lakeside stable there where we could stock up, maybe rent some horses…”
“Do you even know how to ride a horse?”
“I saw Link catch a few. Can’t be that hard.”
“So that’s a ‘no.’”
“ANYWAY.” Cironus continued tracing the path. “We go northwest following Floria River, cut through Pagos and Faron Woods, cross both Hylia and Proxim Bridge - then it’s a straight shot to the Dueling Peaks. Cotera’s right across the bridge.”
Sardon winced, looking at the map. “That’s…a longer route.”
“Mmhmm. And Faron storms are no joke. I remember LInk getting blasted halfway down a mountainside because he just had to raise a spear against some moblin or other. Obviously, I didn’t have any problem with it, but…”
He gestured down his front. The refrain was getting old.
“Wait,” said Danmalaak, his eyes widening. “You guys are immune to lightning?”
“We were.” Cironus sighed. “All that zorca blubber isn’t just for show, you know. Kept us warm. Kept us immune.”
“Man. This is a downgrade for you in every way, isn’t it.” He ate another rock.
“Way to rub it in,” Cirnous grumbled. “Anyway, glad Link took out the gleeok that used to perch on that bridge, or this would be a total no-show.”
“There was a gleeok–”
“WAS. Operative word there. Not any longer.”
“Okay,” said Sardon. “So, we got two routes. Route A, we climb the canyon wall, cut through the wetlands, fight a few hinoxes–”
“SARDON!”
“Okay, maybe fight a few hinoxes,” he amended. “Route B, take a few horses, take a big long route through stormy territory. Longer route, fewer monsters, strong chance of getting zapped if Farosh’s feeling sassy. Right?”
“Sounds about right.”
“All right,” he said, setting his empty bowl down. “Sounds like we got a plan. Danmalaak, you good getting everything we’ll need for the trip?”
“Sure thing! I think I can squeeze a few more items out of these rupees...”
“All right! Then I suggest we get whatever else we need, and we’ll meet up at the village entrance to decide which way we’re going.”
“...Just after I finish up here,” Cironus said, eyeing the last of his paella.
“‘Am womf I’b dobe wif’ ‘eese,” said Danmalaak, speaking around a mouthful of granite.
Sardon smirked as he got up. “‘Till then! Danmalaak…bro.”
Dear Miss Inali (SORRY)
I should have paid more attention after what happened to you.
My dad, brother, and I got caught in some kind of dust cloud and we're hylians now. Tides, that sentence should make NO sense!
We are going to see one of the Great Faries maybe they might know something. I'll do my best to keep you inf updated
That's similar to how it happened to me, though it was from a letter from an individual named Marina. I'll try and join you at the Fairy Fountain; I should have an idea of which one it will be.
I do hope there is a way to reverse this, though I may have to use some of my newfound skills to capture this Marina first. I would quite like my left eye back, though. Have there been any changes in your skillset?
Oh so a person is the cause behind all this! We didn't get a chance to see who it was. That's interesting.
I haven't been able to test out the full extent of my own magic but from what I did...it worked so yeah, maybe it's the same? Here's hoping! I dont' want to run into any trouble and find out the hard way!
We're gonna head out soon. So I don't cause you any mix up, our destination is Dueling Peaks to see the Great Fairy Cotera!
Cironus
Becquerel - points at Fat fin "who are yo- WAIT A MINUTE!" pulls out ruler and measures his pecs, i know you! You're fat fin! Could recognize those pecs in any form!
"HAH! Seems like I can't fool you. Anything else you wanna measure?"
I've heard rumors of Zorca turned into Hylians from Lurelin Village. I'm sending this letter in hopes of reaching you. I am a victim of much the same thing, though I know I'll be like this for another 2 months or so. I remained a Rito, but I'm a different person now... it's hard to explain. I have a vague idea of who is responsible, though no way to tell how I can find her.
If you require assistance or have information, please send a letter to Inali Summerborn in Rito Village. I'll be sure to get back as quickly as I can. I also have some extra place in my roost if you need a place to stay.
Rozel: Hmm...Cironus, it looks like someone might be aware of what you're dealing with
Cironus: Really!? Lemme see!
Chessica: Cironus! Hold still! I haven't gotten your measurements yet!
Cironus: Sorry! Ohhh this is from Miss Vanal-err Inali! I should write her back, let her know what's going on
The dust cloud fell upon them as a cat upon its prey, leaping hundreds of feet into the air from its strange origins, then splitting into three swirling cascades as it plunged back down. Cironus’ yelp of surprise slipped into coughing and sputtering as the plume smashed into him, great rolling gusts of the stuff crashing into the beach and kicking sand and grit into the air. Sardon and Fat Fin were no better; while he couldn’t see either of them, Cironus could hear at least one of them smashing into the sand themselves.
“AUGH–Bro! Dad–what–”
Cries for Sardon and Fat Fin went unnoticed in the magical haze - at least, so far as he could tell. Cironus was, after all, suddenly distracted from listening for them as a sudden bout of vertigo slammed into him. It felt as if someone had grabbed the back of his head and lifted partly into the sky - or, perhaps, that said back of his head no longer seemed to exist. In its place was some strange, airy void: indeed, when he tried to turn his head to check behind him, his neck brutally overcompensated, snapping his head about far more than intended and causing him to fight a wave of nausea. Cironus shut his eyes, grimacing against the roiling in his gut: if the rest of his family was going through half of what was going on, it was all too clear why at least one of them had fallen over.
Crouching low, Cironus shuffled through the blinding cloud and choking dust, kicking up sand as he tried to find the other two by feel. A sudden impact and a pained “OOF” stopped him in his tracks; his foot had made contact with someone’s fleshy middle, and they were pawing at the air, trying to grab whatever had just hit them.
“Sardon?”
“Cir?”
Cironus scrabbled at the sand, still half-blinded by the cloud, and grabbed his brother by the forearm. Something scrabbled at the back of his mind as he struggled to pull his larger sibling upright: his brother’s skin didn’t feel right. It didn’t have that slick rubber-like texture he usually associated with his family, nor did it have the appropriate suppleness as he tightened his grip around it. Cironus could actually feel bone beneath his brother’s wrists, a thought that was a shock to him: while it still had plenty of muscle surrounding it, there was usually so much meat encased around it that one would have to grasp fairly hard to feel anything like that. In a brief flash of irrationality, Cironus thought he’d somehow grabbed a gibdo that had stumbled a hundred leagues east of the desert, and he immediately let go.
“OW! Cironus, what the HECK–”
“Sorry!”
Still blinking silt and grit from his eyes, Cironus grabbed at his brother again, this time grabbing him under the armpits and yanking him upward. He grimaced at the texture, making a note to beg his brother to take a swim and clear whatever that was out from underneath - and the moment his brother found purchase, he let go of him to call out again.
“Dad?!”
“DAD!”
“Dad, where are you?”
“I’m right HERE.”
“Oh.”
“...Though I can’t see worth a damn in this cloud. Son - can’t you, I don’t know, play something to blow this shit away?”
“I…yeah? Maybe? Hang on–”
None of them had moved too far from where he’d been standing previously, so it didn’t take long for Cironus to find his guitar. For some reason, though, it felt strange in his hands - like he had somehow picked up an instrument a size and a half bigger than it should have been. Cironus shook his head, trying to clear the confusion from his head (it had to be the surreality of the situation at hand, right?) and worked the frets. The muscle memory took over, thankfully, and some degree of agency felt like it returned to Cironus as he warmed up a few practice licks. A moment later, a power chord blasted out from Cironus’ guitar, and sand, dust, and grit whipped away, rolling over the shoreline’s water almost as though looking for new prey to hunt.
“Good goin’, kid.” Fat Fin nodded appreciatively at Cironus, even if none of them could see it. To his brother, he said, “Sardon, point me at the water. I think that dust devil emptied half the beach in my eye.”
“Yes, sir.”
It was Sardon’s turn to blink in surprise as he wrapped his arm around his father’s torso to guide him seaward. He still couldn’t see worth a damn, but–
“Cripes, Dad, did someone tape a carpet onto your back? You feel like you’re covered in hair–”
His snark earned him a seaward plunge of his own.
========
Danmalaak sauntered over the beach’s lip, feeling even lighter than he normally did. Sardon had done the right thing, there, turning him loose like that; zooming over the countryside had helped him expend a ton of energy that had built up as he’d come back to shore. HIs brain no longer flying high in the clouds, he looked forward to getting a proper fish fry going on with that marlin. Sure, fish weren’t necessarily his thing, being the resident rock-biter in their group, but there was just that certain something that fish drippings added to a chunk of salt that set off all the happy signals in his belly. Plus, Fat Fin had complimented his cooking, so clearly he had some idea what he was doing!
As he reached the campsite, however, Danmalaak was surprised to see his friends gone and the fire put out. Everything was covered in a fine layer of sand, in fact; it was as if the entire campsite had been neglected for a solid day or two.
“I haven’t been gone that long, have I?” he murmured to himself. “...No, that can’t be right.”
So where were his friends?
Danmalaak’s thoughts were interrupted as something erupted from the waters: a massive figure, tall and broad, with great tan shoulders rolling as they came out of the sea. Water arced into the sky as the figure’s head whipped back, trailing in a great circle as it launched from its great, roping locks.
“PHEW!” cried the figure, wiping the water from his eyes as he stood and turned around. “Can finally see again. Oh hey, Dan, back already?”
Danmalaak blinked.
“Uh, yeah, but–”
He was interrupted as another pair of figures erupted from the water: equally graceful, both slightly taller and even wider than the first. The way the water arced off their hair was uncannily identical, and Danmalaak was struck dumb the sheer synchronicity in which they moved.
“Phew. Can finally see again,” they both said, slightly out of step with one another as they turned in opposite directions.
“Hey Dan.”
“Danmalaak.”
“Uh…hi?”
“What’s up, Dannum?” asked the first, concern starting to creep onto his face. “You look like you’ve seen a poe.”
“Oh, uh, it’s…not that?” said Danmalaak. “It’s just, uh…”
“Probably wondering why we’re in the water,” said the tallest one.
“I mean, it’s us. Can’t be that surprised.”
Danmalaak gave a nervous cough.
“You’re, uh…naked.”
The tallest one looked at the goron like he’d grown another head, which was fair given that the goron was giving them the exact same look.
“...Danmalaak. Look at me,” he said, gesturing at his (admittedly glorious) chest. “Have you ever seen me wear anything.”
“Yeah,” said the one who’d come out of the water with him. “And you’re one to talk!”
“I’m wearing swim trunks!”
“Yeah, and you’re like the only one who does that! Every goron I’ve ever seen goes rolling around naked–”
“No they don’t,” said the first, “they wear those little loincloths–”
“FOCUS!” yelled Danmalaak. “WHY ARE YOU NAKED?! YOU’RE HYLIAN!”
There was a pause as all three of them stared at Danmalaak.
“None of those words make any sense–” ventured the middle one.
“MMMMMMM!”
Flabbergasted beyond all capacity of speech, the goron pointed at the three of them, crossing and uncrossing his arms wildly. They stared at him for a moment, completely unable to guess at his meaning…then slowly turned their heads towards one another…
…and saw zero zorca but three tall, heavyset and extremely naked Hylians between the three of them.
There was a momentary pause. Then–
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!”
“...”
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!”
==========
“They just had to be loincloths, didn’t they.”
Sardon stared sourly into the fire. The three zorca humans were warming themselves around a newly-furnished campfire, unpleasantly reminded of the lack of proper zorca blubber to keep themselves warm. True to Sardon’s moping, they were no longer naked; their extremities were now carefully tucked away behind the finest of Eldin goron finery.
“They’re mawashis,” Danmalaak said, stoking the fire, “and you’re lucky I had them. You’re not exactly my size.”
“True,” said Cironus, idly yanking at the side of his own in a futile attempt to get some more give. “Can you imagine one of us trying to stick our thighs in one of his swimtrunks?”
“It’s riding up my ass,” said Fat Fin.
“That’s why I wear the trunks.”
“Yeah?
Fin eyed the goron. Danmalaak, in turn, glanced at him.
“Well, that and I wouldn’t be caught dead in those.”
The look Fin gave him was priceless.
“I mean…they were spares!” he continued, defending himself (if only after a brief shit-eating grin). ”Honestly, I’m surprised I still had ‘em in my pack to begin with. It’s not like I had my entire wardrobe on me when my boat sank, you know? Heck, I think I grabbed those off the back shelf of some Eldin caravan in case these–” he flicked the band on his own shorts– “ever gave out.”
“So we’re wearing your back-up undies?” asked Sardon.
“Well, when you put it that way, it sounds terrible!” Danmalaak said. “...aaaand technically, you’re wearing the backup to my backups. Cironus is wearing the backups. Fat Fin’s wearing…well, my fat pants.”
Fat Fin shrugged. “Not fat enough.”
“Mind your business, Fin! And–look, let’s get back to the crux of the matter,” shot back Danmalaak, increasingly less willing to discuss his own personal undergarment hierarchy. “How in Hylia did you end up, well, Hylians?!”
“I mean, that’s the thing,” said Sardon. “We don’t know.”
“Yeah,” said Cironus. “One minute, we’re watching you burn off the excess energy from my song, the next…” He picked up a handful of sand from beside him and blew it towards the fire.
“Right, the, uh, magic cloud,” said Danmalaak. “You didn’t see where it came from?”
“Well, it wasn’t coming from your direction…so, there’s that?”
“Yeah,” said Sardon. “It wasn’t like we were looking in any other direction. And when the cloud hit, we couldn’t see anything until Cir played it off.”
“Nice,” said Fat Fin, offering his son a fist. He pounded it.
“Guys!” yelled Cironus. “FOCUS!”
“Yes, please!” said Danmalaak. “Magic cloud. Hit from nowhere. Blinded you. And you didn’t even notice you were human ‘till I pointed it out?”
“Well, it was hard to see–”
“I’m just keeping the facts straight,” he cut in. “The fact you didn’t notice is weird, yeah - but not because you’re, I dunno, unobservant, it’s because you guys are like half your height, lost your head…piece…things?”
“Tail fins?” ventured Fat Fin.
“You know what I mean. And it was like so second nature you didn’t even notice it. Like, I know there are some transformation spells out there? But the ones I’ve usually heard about are on the ‘OH DIN MY LIMBS ARE RIPPING THEMSELVES IN TWO’ side of effects, right? Like, you would notice being compacted into, well, half your height.”
“Hey, that’s right!” said Cironus. “Like, I felt really lightheaded when it happened? But I thought it was because I couldn't see anything.”
“Yeah, some serious vertigo,” agreed Sardon, rubbing the back of his head, grimacing at the hair sticking out where his massive mantle used to be. “That, and feeling really cold all of a sudden.”
“Lack of insulation, son,” said Fin, slapping his own middle. “Gotta eat up, get it back on.”
“Or, you know, wear a shirt,” muttered Danmalaak.
“Nah.”
“Anyways. My guess? You three got hit with a blast of fairy dust. You only need a pinch, it acts fast, and the effects are pretty random.”
“...and temporary, I hope?” asked Sardon.
Danmalaak paused. “I…don’t know?” he replied. “I mean…if it were just temporary, I’d imagine it’d wash off, and, well, seeing as I first found you guys in the water…”
There was a long, unpleasant pause as the four of them considered the ramifications.
“...Guys? I really don’t want to spend the rest of my life as a Hylian,” said Sardon.
“Me neither,” said Cironus. “Things were bad enough as is. I don’t need this on top of it.”
“Like, can you imagine trying to fit in with the other Hylians?”
“Heck, how‘ll you explain this to the rest of the pod?!”
Sardon gasped.
“Oh NO!” he exclaimed. “What am I going to say to Sona?! She can’t see me like this–not when I’m like half her size!”
“You always were half her size.”
“Not the point! Do you even think she’d go for a smaller guy?!”
“Speak for yourself,” said Fin - who was gazing into the fire, a grin playing on his lips as he spread his arms wide. “I, for one, can’t wait to dip your mom with these things.”
“DAD!”
“What, you’re telling me you’ve never wanted to be the little spoon?”
“DAD!”
Danmalaak closed his eyes. The conversation was quickly spiraling away from him, a theme that was rapidly becoming the norm with anything involving these three. No wonder their matriarchs are in charge, he thought. One brain between the three of them.
“Is. There. A great fairy. Nearby?” he asked through gritted teeth.
“Huh?”
“A great fairy,” he repeated. “Or even just a regular one? Someone you could, I don’t know, consult with. I mean, the operative word here is fairy dust. If that’s what we’re working with, they’d be the ones to talk to, right?”
Danmalaak had to admit, he was speaking faster than his own brain would allow. He was still a little uncertain of his conclusions, after all. His information on the subject was secondhand, coming as it did from the trade caravans he’d met on his travels, so it was all hypothetical to him. So far as he knew, there weren’t any Great Fairies out in the Alae islands he considered home. As he understood it, they loved receiving tributes of rupees from their adoring followers, and while Alae had a bustling port, nobody outside the local gorons stayed long enough to develop that kind of attachment.
Still, it was the best theory they had, and if it kept Sardon and Cironus moving, it might keep them from despairing about their current predicament. At the very least, a Great Fairy would have some idea how to get them back to their old bodies, right?
“...You know what?” said Cironus, scratching his forehead and interrupting Danmalaak’s thoughts. “Now that you mention it, I’m fairly sure there’s a Great Fairy just north of us!”
“Oh! Really?”
“Yeah! Gimme a sec while I look over the map–”
The zorca-turned-human reached into his pack, once more trying to shake off the unsettling feeling of everything just feeling bigger than usual, and spread out the map of Hyrule he’d copied from Link before parting ways. Tracking his finger along the peninsula, he found Rimba beach, dismissed some intrusive thoughts relitigating whether it was shaped like a foot or a knife, and traced a few routes leading north until he found what he was looking for.
“There she is!” he exclaimed, planting a finger on the mark. “Great Fairy Cotera. Okay, my bad, her fountain’s northwest of here - but hey! It shouldn’t take more than a few days’ walk to get there!”
“Well, then!” said Danmalaak with a clap. “Sounds like we’ve got a plan - head up to this…Cotera, you said?”
“Yeah!”
“--and ask her to turn you back! Sound like a plan?”
He looked expectantly at Sardon and Fat Fin, both of whom nodded.
“Sounds good to me,” said Sardon, rubbing one of his shoulders as he stood up. “I miss my frills, you know?” Feels…I don’t know, weird not having something to wick the water off here.”
“Get used to it,” his father said. “‘Till we find that fairy, that’s the body you’re stuck with.”
“All the more reason to find her, and fast.”
“...Uh, speaking of - you guys don’t mind if we stop by Lurelin for some pants, would you?” asked Cironus, hefting the tuna (which, even as a dead marlin, had not escaped the magic cloud’s curse) over his shoulders. “I don’t know what it is, but I’m feeling really self-conscious just wearing the loincloth.”
Danmalaak rode the waves to the cheering shore party with his prize catch, feeling weirdly dazed yet rejuvenated.
He’d been punching severely above his weight class (both metaphorically and physically) with that marlin. Sure, his species excelled in hand-to-hand combat, generally; and sure, he’d taken a few brawling classes with his rockmates once upon a time. The problem was, being able to bob like a cork in the open ocean came with its own tradeoffs. By stature alone, Danmalaak wouldn’t be fistfighting a hinox any time soon (unlike some of his current party could brag), and his pumice fists couldn’t exactly deliver the sledgehammer force that an Eldin goron’s could. By all accounts, it was frankly surprising the fish hadn’t torn away from him at its earliest opportunity.
Yet when he emerged from the waters, towing this lance-nosed fish easily twice as long as he was tall, it was all he could do not to go charging up and down the shoreline, crowing like a loon. Cironus’ magic packed a punch, and that punch came in the form of boundless energy. Boundless, boundless energy.
Speaking of…
“ALL RIGHT!”
Cironus cheered as Danmalaak towed the fish in, going for a low five to match the goron’s high one before running his finger along the fish’s scales. “Holy Farore-y, Dan, this fish is choice. How’d you get close enough to catch it in the first place?”
Danmalaak gave a nervous, squeaky giggle.
“Oh-you-know-just-a-little-trick-I-learned-sailing-around,” he said, speaking at a surprisingly rapid clip as he jostled his rock-braids. “Just-you know, uh- just-dangle-the-dreads-a-bit, jerk-your-head-around, perfect-fishing-lure! Just-gotta-know-when-to-twist-so-you-catch-’em-and-they-don’t-go-dragging-you-off-by-the-neck, you-know, hahahahahahaha?”
Cironus blinked. Danmalaak looked incredibly wound up for some reason. His eyes were flicking around, his head was bobbing, even his rock braids were jangling as though he were running at time-and-a-half compared to everyone else. The nervous laughter wasn’t helping things; for someone who’d bagged one heck of a catch, the little goron looked more ready to scream than cheer.
Someone smacked their lips behind him. Cironus felt his stomach plummet, wincing in advance. He knew that sound of disapproval.
“Might have packed more of a punch than you meant there,” Sardon said, giving him a light jab on the shoulder. “What was that - a seven, eight on the Jam Scale?”
“...Three and a half,” he mumbled.
That earned a low whistle from his brother. “That is some wallop! Shame Dan-mal’s about to explode.”
There was a brief beat as Sardon looked from the jittery goron to his brother, then back again.
“...Might want to scale it back a bit next time.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Cironus fumed. His hand tightened on his guitar.
Oh, sure. That was easy for Sardon to say. He wasn’t the one literally learning this by ear. He didn’t have to figure this magic out alone. He wasn’t the one who had to take secret trips to Eventide just to avoid terrifying his own pod, didn’t have to practice in raging thunderstorms just to drown out his own voice, didn’t have to listen to his own grandmother--
“Bro. Relax.”
Sardon’s hand was at his shoulder again - not a punch, this time, more just a firm hand guiding him back to solid ground.
“Just a little heavy-handed, Cir. Besides, I know just the thing to help him out. Watch this.”
Sardon winked, let go of Cironus’ shoulder, and plopped to his knee to better face Danmaaak eye-to-eye (or at least, closer to it). The goron had stopped reacting to either of them, trembling - no, buzzing (was that a hum?) - with an energy reserve that demanded to be released. He really did look fit to burst, like a good tap to the forehead was all it would take to make him go off like a bomb in Death Mountain.
So, naturally, Sardon tapped him on the head..
It was just a quick love tap. A jab with his index finger, just enough to make his neck and knees bend. The effect was like tripping the catch on a leaf switch, though: the moment his finger broke contact with Danmalaak’s head, the goron sprung forward - first as a dash, then, as he stumbled, rolling tight into a ball and shooting down the beach like a bolt from an arrow.
“WHOA!”
Cironus spun around, barely catching sight of Danmalaak before he peeled over the horizon. The goron could definitely still be heard; his scream had quickly turned into peals of deranged laughter, and Cironus could hear the distant thwipthwipthwipthwipthwip of Danmalaak’s hair as it ripped through the sand like some rabid dust devil.
Sardon chuckled as he stood up, squinting into the sunlight as he tried to catch Danmalaak’s distant ping-pong actions. It certainly sounded like he was working it off; judging by his whooping, he was having one merry old time.
“Yeah, he’ll be like that for a bit.”
“...Yeah. I know.”
Sardon nodded, catching the miserable tone in his brother’s voice. He gave Cironus a fixed look.
“Bro. Cir. You’re allowed to enjoy the moment.”
“Mm.”
“Relax. You just gave him the goron equivalent of a sugar high. He’ll be fine.”
Cironus heard his brother’s words, but a petulant side of him just didn’t want to listen. He wanted to simmer on Sardon’s earlier barb. Dwell on it. Ignore all later comments, imagine he was back at the pod when they first reprimanded him.
It wasn’t fair, of course. He knew that. If anything, Sardon was giving him the gentlest of criticisms. Like he said, Danmalaak was fine. Heck, it sounded like he was singing now.
But it stung, dammit!
“Look, I’m just tired of people biting my head off,” he said, lowering his guitar so its base could sit on the sand. “You remember that gig I wanted to do for the pod? Like, right before the whole Upheaval thing went down?”
“Yeah?”
“Well…you weren’t there so you didn’t see it. I had this whole piece ready to go, though. A big ol’ sound odyssey. Twelve songs, three dances, big riffs, this crazy bit in the middle where I go from 4/4 to 3/4 to 12/16 to 17/8…”
“Seventeen…eight?”
“Okay, so I got a little carried away with it. Bite me.”
Sardon shoved him instead.
“HEY!”
Cironus, caught off guard, sprawled wildly. He scrambled, windmilling his arms to avoid smashing his guitar into splinters, then face-planted straight into the beach. Sardon roared with laughter as he spat out mouthfuls of sand - and despite himself, Cironus found himself laughing with him.
The tension broke. The two of them sat there snorting guffaws at one other, the sounds of which caused their father to roll his eyes and pick himself up from the campfire. Sardon offered Cironus a hand, and with a few grunts he was back on his feet and shaking the sand from his own keister, still chuckling at the frankly stupid turn of events.
As he considered what he’d just said, though, some of the mood came back, and he looked over his guitar, sighing.
“Yeah. So…Had this big composition all ready to go. I’m pumped, I’m raring to show it off. I show the opening number to the moms - you know, give ‘em a tease, something to get everyone excited? I play the heck out of it…and you know their reaction?”
Sardon shrugged.
“I mean, I can guess, but–”
He stopped at Cironus’ expression - a big, empty, surreal smile, his mouth half-open, the corners of his mouth straining to a grotesquerie that threatened to pop the veins out of his throat. What little Sardon could see of the whites of his eyes, beyond the grimacing slits they had become, conveyed a glassy thousand-yard stare, and his hands had drawn to his chest, gnarling together as though clutching an invisible strand of pearls.
The Expression held for several seconds. Even Fat Fin, who’d started trudging their way, paused with revulsion.
“I know that look,” he said. “That’s the look your grandmother gave me when your mom announced I was Sardon’s father.”
“DAD.”
“This. Face,” Cironus said, refusing to bend (at least for the moment) to his father’s levity. “On every single one of them. Just a crowd of mothers, grandmothers, and Kaso looking at me like this. Kaso probably because he was nursing. So he gets a pass. But you know what they said to me?”
He huffed.
“That it was awful. That it was dangerous. You know what they told me? They told me my music - my music! Was so bad it was a danger to the entire pod!
“And it’s been like that ever since! Like, I like to think Link liked my stuff, but I was only ever getting to play when we were fighting, or when I was healing, or when we were dealing with those monsters Ganon created with the Upheaval? Like, it drained me constantly. I never got the chance to just…play.
“And when I came back and got the chance to finally show off what I’d learned?”
Cironus sighed, rolling his head back to stare into the sky. They knew what had happened. They all knew.
“...For once I’d like to have people just listen to my music and enjoy it, you know?”
There was an uncomfortable silence, punctuated only by the sounds of someone singing from far off.
Sardon was uncomfortable. He had not expected this sudden outpouring from Cironus, hadn’t expected his simple admonishment to cut him so deeply. It had simply meant to be some gentle ribbing, something akin to the goofball fisticuffs they had been engaging in only a few minutes ago. Besides, nobody was hurt, so how could he have known Cironus would respond so strongly?
He straightened, resigning himself to be The Big Brother providing some creature comforts to Cironus, but he had barely inhaled to speak some words of wisdom before being cut off by the pointed look and a shake of the finger from Fat Fin. He paused, nonplussed, then shrugged, handing responsibility to Fix The Problem to his father.
Fat Fin, for his part, crossed his arms, looking down at Cironus with no small amount of skepticism.
“So. That’s what the Matriarchs cast you out for, hmm?” he asked. “All that caterwauling and that stuff with your banjo?”
Cironus gulped. “Ye–”
“That’s stupid. They’re stupid.”
He poked Cironus in the chest.
“And you’re stupid for not correcting me.”
He pointed at the instrument.
“That’s a guitar. Not a banjo.”
That finally got through to him. Cironus snorted, waving off the finger, unable to keep a straight face.
“Din’s balls, Dad–”
“She’s a goddess.”
“DAAAAAD!”
“Got you laughing, didn’t I?”
Cironus hated that he was right. The tension was gone completely, now. Sardon’s jab was a thing of the past, and his desire to just sit there and stew now felt like a dopey exercise in futility. If anything Cironus was just feeling mildly embarrassed that commentary on divine anatomy was what finally brought him out of that funk.
“All right, okay, fine, you win,” he said laughing. “And yeah. It’s dumb.”
“They’re dumb.”
“They ARE dumb!”
“Now are you dumb enough to let them live in your head?”
“They don’t even pay rent, Cironus!” laughed Sardon.
“All right, all right!” Cironus laughed, returning fire with a punch to his elder brother’s shoulder - and had it not been for their father clasping each of them firmly on the shoulder, they would have been right back on the beach, wrestling each other into submission once again.
“Ah-ah. We’ve a fish to filet, remember? And one of you has a zorca-in-training to fetch,” he said, jerking his head somewhere in Danmalaak’s direction.
They both nodded, a little disappointed that they had things to do besides beating each other up.
“Fiiiine, I’ll get him,” Sardon said. “I did send him flying. Kinda surprised he hasn’t stopped…singing…”
He paused. So did Cironus, who shook his head, listening intently to the song.
“..That’s…not Danny.”
=================
Marina belongs to @axidentshappen
Suddenly, Marina.
A pint-sized zora skips across Rimba’s hillside, carrying a heart full of song and a pack full of murder. Chasing behind her? A cursing coterie, clamoring to catch her. Each of them stumbles on limbs unfamiliar to their own: gorons trapped as Hylians, rito trapped as Gerudo, and more than a few barnyard animals trapped as every species under the sun.
They hate her so much. And they hate that they cannot catch her. The unfamiliar limbs, you see.
But that does not stop them from trying. One rito (or is it a zora?) leaps from the crowd, using a “goron’s” face as a springboard.They sail through the air, flapping what had been wings only moments beforehand - but with a squawk and a crash, they crash back to earth with two fewer legs and many, many more scales than they had started with. A gleeok’s head snaps forth, making up for miniature size with serpentine precision, and before it can shift into something else, it RAMs into the girl’s arm, jostling the pack- and sending a cloud of something billowing over everything in sight.
“Ohhhh NOOOO!” bellows the crowd - but just like that, the changes begin again.
===============
It was, perhaps, a good thing Cironus, Sardon, and Fat Fin were looking in the wrong direction as a cloud of magic dust fell over them. Had they done so, one of them could have had the bright idea to leap into the sea. Who knows what terrible fate would have befallen them otherwise?
Fat Fin watched as their pint-size goron friend toddled into the shores, still somewhat marveling at how the little one seemed so utterly unafraid of the water. The zorca had no such compunction, of course. They’d been diving in and out of Hyrule’s oceans since time immemorial. They were frankly at their best barreling into giant squid a thousand meters past what any Hylian was capable of diving to. Even the Great Swordsman of Legend could only skim the surfaces of Hyrule’s great bodies of water.
The gorons, though? Aside from the Eldin Hot Springs, most of them refused to enter water any higher than their necks. It probably had to do with the fact that they sank like, well, stone - and while Fin wasn’t entirely sure whether they even breathed air like most Hylians, it was probably a pain in the neck trying to scale continental shelves with stubby legs shorter than their own forearm. He wondered whether there were communities of gorons in Hyrule’s murkiest depths - victims of mudslides, or boating accidents, or just trying to prove their errant manliness with games of chicken out where the riptides could pull even the recently-abdicated Prince Dorephan to sea.
He honestly wasn’t sure which was worse - drowning, or living in total blindness, cut off from everyone on the surface.
Not so with the little one, though. Danmalaak took to the water like some spherical eel, bobbing like a cork as he cut through the water with those chunky arms of his. Cironus had explained his deal to Fin at one point (something about being “born” from some other kind of rock, way out to sea?), but Fin’s eyes had glazed halfway through his son’s lecture. What was important, he remembered, was that Danmalaak was made from much lighter stuff than your typical Hyrulian goron. That made him only slightly heavier than those fleshy Hylians on average, and much more buoyant. Fin suppressed a snort as he watched Danmalaak yelp, getting rolled by an incoming wave, then shook his head as the same Goron popped straight through the same wave, a pair of trout flapping madly between his teeth.
Kid knew how to catch fish, that was for sure.
“Hey. BOYS,” he said, flinging a fistful of sand in his sons’ direction. “Are you done making each other’s faces purple yet?”
Cironus and Sardon paused in their fight, both glancing at Fin through eyes that were indeed beginning to swell from the punches they’d been throwing. Sardon had to crane his neck a bit; Cironus had managed for once to get him pinned - though given where his knee was placed, Fin had spared his younger son from quite the painful groin shot.
They slid off one another, muttering a sheepish “yes sir,” then began climbing steadily back to their feet.
“Good,” he said, grabbing another trout skewer from the bundle racked on the campfire and giving it a turn, making sure the drippings fell on the salt lick carefully positioned below it. “Do the kid a favor, find some more rock salt on the shorelines. He’s catching your dinner, after all.”
“Wait, really?”
Fat Fin pointed at the goron in the sea with his skewer, smirking as Danmalaak breached the water again - this time hastily punching a marlin he’d managed to pin against his armpit.The marlin was not going down without a fight: it had already finned him twice, and was doing its best to twist out of his clutches before those fists could render it senseless.
“Sure looks that way.”
Cironus cocked his head, surprised. Finally, finally seeing Danmalaak through his swollen eyes, he pumped his fists with glee.
“Aw, YEAH!” he crowed. “You GO, little dude!--hey, wait - I got something for this--”
The younger zorca ran for the campfire, kicking up clouds of sand behind him, and dug through the group’s pile of belongings until he found what he was looking for: a beautifully strung guitar, its base hewn from a singularly massive whale tooth. Slinging it around his shoulders, Cironus leapt back to his feet, pouncing into the shallows as he aimed the instrument’s neck at Danmalaak and the madly-thrashing marlin.
Lining his fingers on the frets, the zorca took aim…and shredded.
From the first note he played, a sea-green aura blazed from Cironus’ guitar, gathering in intensity and volume as his fingers danced along the strings. It enveloped the zorca, coalescing like a thick, electrically-charged fog, then arced straight for Danmalaak, splitting the water in its wake until it slammed into his dull-red belly.
Danmalaak wasn’t even aware of the assist. One moment, he was just trying to keep his bearings as the marlin corkscrewed wildly through the water, his brain scrambling to keep up with his eyes as it threatened to overwhelm him with the endless spiraling input. The next, though, his grip had locked fast around the marlin’s body, and he bellowed through mouthfuls of both water and fish as his arm whirled through the water, canceling the massive fishs’ momentum with his own caterwauling. As Cironus gathered his musical energies, so, too, did the goron’s focus - and with an exasperated “MFPHHHHH,” he whirled his fist into a savage uppercut that caught the fish across its needle-nose snout.
With a crash and a smash, Danmalaak found he was no longer fighting a fish longer than he was tall. Instead, he had acquired a rather limp, slowly sinking surfboard.
__________
As music played, and zorca cheered, and goron surfed, no one noticed the incoming cloud of magic sailing their way.
Three massive zorca stared quizzically at the fourth member of their party, clearly confused. It was a bizarre comparison to make in the first place, especially this far east of the Gerudo homelands, and at least two of them were starting to wonder whether the fourth member of their party was letting the beachside sun bake his rocks.
The odd one out, a shortish-looking goron with gray-and-red features betraying his relative foreignness, wasn’t backing down. Indeed, he popped up from the fish fry the four of them had put over the campfire, snatched a nearby discarded palm frond and began busily swishing it like a broom as he traced out a shape in the sand. Dark gray feet pattered ahead of the palm trace, cutting a small trench in the sand for the vegetation to smooth out, and the emerald glaze covering his back’s dirty-red salt scales sparkled in the tropical sun, causing the largest of the zorca to shake his head as he shielded his eyes with a meaty hand.
The goron paused, eyeballing something on a tattered-looking map in his spare hand. He glanced down at the shape he’d carved out, then grimaced slightly, clearly beginning to regret his hasty demonstration.
“...Okay, fine, it’s missing the heel. But you see what I mean, right? Rimba totally looks like a Gerudo’s foot!”
One of the others, a zorca with slightly stronger muscle definition and a lot more battle scars than the others, looked skeptically at the shape on the ground.
“...IIIII’m still not seeing it,” he said. “Too flat, for one thing. And the curl at the end - you ever see someone’s toes go up like that?”
“Hang on, Sardon, Dan’s got a point,” said the last - who even a casual observer could guess was the second zorca’s brother. “It’s an etiquette thing, right? Link mentioned seeing something like that one on a mural at one of those Voe and You classes he saw. Kind of like how when you’re holding a cup, you’re supposed to keep your pinky out?”
“What, so when you’re at some Gerudo sort of shindig, you’re supposed to curl your toes like that?” Sardon asked, smirking. “Cironus, please. They live on sand. How long do you think you could stand around like that without falling flat on your face?”
“Well, I’m not practiced at it, for one thing--”
“And that’s before the heels. Gerudo feet have heels, Cironus. Remember what Danmalaak said? Heels.”
“Well, I mean, I think they do,” Danmalaak said, shrugging. “I’m not from here, you tell me. Do they have heels?”
There was a pause as the three of them considered this. Only one of them, Cironus, had ever really spent time in Gerudo, and due to certain anatomical characteristics of his, he’d never set foot in the all-woman hometown. Between that, the sand, and the fact that three out of four of them towered at more than double the average Gerudo's height, none of them could really say they’d really paid attention to their feet.
Also, they were, to a man, zorca and goron. Wearing things like shoes wasn't exactly a thing in either society.
“I…don’t know,” Cironus said, crossing his arms in contemplation. “Maybe they’re removable?”
“What, removable feet?”
“Nah, more like clothing. Like our armbands? And Danny’s swimtrunks?”
“You can take feet off?!”
“NO!”
That one got Sardon a dope-slap from his brother. This was perhaps unwise - Sardon was the bigger brother, which meant that when he returned fire, Cironus got the wind knocked out of him. Before long, the siblings were wrestling each other on the sand - and Danmalaak had to hop out of the way to avoid being drawn into the maelstrom.
“They go! On! Your FOOT!”
“No! They DONT!”
“I’m not TALKING about swim trunks, I’m talking about--”
“KNIVES.”
Cironus and Sardon paused their fighting, glancing at the zorca still lounging by the campfire. Their father hadn’t so much as glanced at Danmalaak’s crude map, and had instead grabbed one of the skewered voltfins roasting over the fire as his sons made idiots of themselves on the sand. It wasn’t until he’d pulled the skewer from his lips, swallowing the massive roast trout whole, that he deigned to interrupt their fight.
“Looks like a knife,” he repeated, tossing the skewer into the middle of Danmalaak’s outline for emphasis before grabbing another. “One of the Gerudo’s. Sharp curvy ones.”
There was a pause as the other three contemplated this (well, two, anyway - Cironus’ contemplation was interrupted by Sardon dropping him mid-hold). Danmalaak trudged closer to the outline, scratching his chin. After a moment, though, he then ran over to his pack, sifting through its contents before pulling out an old caravan manifest with the Gerudo tribe’s crest on it. He flipped through it, thumbing through descriptions of various sundry goods, before tapping his thumb on a hastily-drawn image of a cartoon scimitar.
“Ah! One of these, Mr. Fin?” he asked, turning the manifest to show the old man at the fire.
“Sure.”
The elder zorca was too busy licking another empty skewer to look. He glanced at the goron out the corner of his eye, though, if only to admonish him.
“...And it’s Fat Fin.”
“Uuuuuoooof course, FF!” Danmalaak gave a sheepish grin as he closed the manifest. “Sorry - right - Fat Fin. I just thought, you know, since your boys are here--”
“Hey! We’re not boys!” yelled Sardon - though he was shoved aside by Cironus, who was getting back to his feet.
“Yeah! We’re men!”
“MANLY men!”
Within seconds, they were flexing, striking poses to accentuate their pecs - only to be back to brawling with one another as Sardon accidentally elbowed Cironus in the eye.
“OW!”
“HEY!”
“LEGGO OF ME!”
There was an uncomfortable silence between Danmalaak and Fat Fin as the two of them watched the latter’s sons duke it out on the sand. As the seconds passed, the two of them sloooowly began to look at one another, and the goron scratched at his neck in a way that would have been a perfect one-to-one with someone nervously pulling at their collar..
Were one wearing a shirt, that is.
“I’m, uh. Going to see if I can rustle up some more fish,” he finally mumbled.
*That's…"After Calamity," I think? Not sure, to be honest. I mean, it's 6726 where I'm from!
So…this is the start of a new ledger! My old one got lost in that big expl--wait, no, I'm I'm getting ahead of myself.
First thing's first. This NEW ledger's the property of Danmalaak. Hi! I'm a merchant goron from the Alae Isles. You can probably tell from the photo (that is, if you find this and it hasn't been ripped out of the inside cover) that I'm a bit far from home. All you locals are HUGE - I mean, I didn't exactly think of myself as a small fry before coming, but I haven't seen a single goron around here that isn't at LEAST a head taller than me!
TO SAY NOTHING OF THE LOCAL ZORCA
But yeah! Like I said, I'm new around these parts. See, I'm a tradesman, usually, but my boat got knocked silly by something EXPLODING somewhere over Hyrule. Still not really sure what it was. I thought it was a dragon or something? But this guy I've been traveling with, Cironus? He says it was, like, this guy who took over the local kingdom a century ago or something. I think that's what the "AC" thing's referring to.
Man or dragon, I don't think ANYTHING's supposed to explode like that!
But yeah…Boat's toast. SOMETHING from that explosion hit it - don't know if it was like a claw, or a fang, or maybe the guy himself? All I remember is the whole sky going off like a firecracker, some big…crazy eyeball? thing?…screaming towards me? and then…well, you saw me waking up!
If you saw the cover pictures, that is. SOMEBODY decided to use the last two shots on MY camera to make them. ISN'T THAT RIGHT, CIRONUS!
(Cironus says hi, by the way. Turns out he's a natural photographer!)
Anyway, like I said, this ledger belongs to me, Danmalaak, of the Alae Islands. If found…well, I imagine it'll be hard to get this back there.
If you happen to know where the zorca are this time of year, though, can you get it to get it sent to a diplomat by the name of "Kaska?" Cironus says she'll probably have the best chance of getting it back to me.
You'll be properly rewarded!
P.S. Boy oh boy, am I glad that I float. The locals sink like GRANITE. Imagine having to walk home on the OCEAN FLOOR after all that!
