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When the darkness of the portal gave way to shimmering sands, sweltering heat, and a wide-open sky, their first clue for what lay ahead of them came in the form of a long, tortured groan.
Heads, of course, turned immediately.
Sky- the source of the groan- paid them no mind, opting instead to scowl uncharacteristically out over the landscape.
“Well, that’s an auspicious start,” Four murmured, not quite quiet enough to keep it under his breath.
There was the distant cry of some kind of bird- followed swiftly by the noise of something impacting solid stone. There was a constant, low shifting kind of sound that told of constantly moving sand, somewhere nearby. Wild and Hyrule were both eyeing up the walls around them with a concerning level of eagerness.
“So I’m going to take a wild guess- yours?” Legend cocked an eyebrow Sky’s way,
Sky’s head dropped into his hands.
That’s a yes, then.
“Oh, is it dangerous here?” Wind said, far more eager than wary. He hopped a little in place, hand shading his eyes. “I see stuff moving over there- what is it?”
“I think those are some kind of… actually, what are those?” Four squinted at the distant, moving shape of something lurking by the far side of one of the drop-offs ahead. Twilight pulled out a mask that looked distinctly bird-like, bringing it up to his face.
“Looks kinda like a crab, but… not,” Wild contributed, slate up to his face and scope pulled up. “That’s neat, wonder- whoa!”
“Ooh, that looked like it hurt,” Hyrule said, fascinated, looking around Wild’s shoulder to also get a look at whatever it was that had so far caught the attention of half of their group.
“Oh, I do not want to get hit by that.”
“It cracked the wall!”
“Hey, Twi, think you could throw that like one of your goats?”
“This could be rough, depending on what kind of monsters we run into,” Legend said to Time and Warriors, kicking lightly at the sand under his foot. “Especially if we’ve got some strays where they shouldn’t be. I don’t know about the rest of you, but in my experience, sand can be a bitch to fight on, and it’s almost just as bad for travel.”
Time had a slight grimace on his face as he went through the process of stripping off his armor. A wise move, for all he clearly disliked having to make it- the desert and full plate were, after all, hardly bosom friends. “I’ll have to agree with our veteran for this one. I’m not entirely certain we’ve prepared for this- we may have to go back through the portal and bulk up our supplies first, depending on how large, or how hostile, this desert is.”
“Well, if someone has anything to contribute that would help us determine such a thing...?” Warriors trailed off leadingly, pointedly staring at a certain Skyloftian, who was, yes, not even slightly displaced from his corner of despair.
“I hate this place,” Sky said, still not lifting his head.
“... Enlightening.”
“Great, good to know,” Legend said, brisk and businesslike. “What kind of things are we going to hate here? You got Geldmen? Leevers? Eyegores? Pokeys? Quicksand pits? C’mon, spill, if the ground’s about to try and kill me, I better get some kind of warning.”
Sky finally lifted his head, just to stare at Legend. “I know what absolutely none of those are other than quicksand. Do I want to know what those are?”
“Great. And no. Live in bliss while you can.”
Time was also looking at Legend, breastplate still in his hands. His expression, despite the desert heat, was frozen into something strange and unreadable. “You’ve encountered Eyegore?”
Legend grimaced. “Have I.”
“So pretty much everything here has some form of electricity and we’re all going to get fried,” Sky told Warriors, which pretty neatly derailed that impending discussion before it could go much further.
“Electricity?” Legend was saying, scowling deeply, as Wild perked up, attention caught.
“Oh, yours too?” Wild said, interested, and immediately started fumbling with his ears- no, actually, his earrings. He was taking his earrings out. “Wonder if this is around the same place as my Gerudo Desert, then? Any electric Lizalfos around here?”
“My Lizalfos aren’t anything like yours,” Sky told him, apparently now resigned to his fate in full. “And they’re more over towards Eldin, anyway. Ampilus, though, there’s plenty of those. Some Spumes, Hroks…” Then his mouth twisted. “Bokoblins that figured out how to make electrical weapons…”
Time sighed, tucking away the last of his armor. “Well, it’s not as though deserts are the best places to wear heavy armor, in the first place. We’re rather fortunate that the heat isn’t at its height, yet.” He still sounded a bit rueful.
A pair of boots dropped to the ground, and Wild, two new earrings, all yellow gems and silver metal, dangling from his ears, went about switching out his shoes. “Fun. Anyone else got stuff to help them deal with all that, or do I need to do some more brewing?”
Legend had a box out and was digging through it. “I’m covered,” he said distractedly, hooking rings around his pinky. “... And I’ve got a couple extra rings against electricity, if we need it. But I also thought- I swear, I should have a few for quicksand somewhere in here…”
“Since this is your time, I assume we’re not about to find a town or any such thing around here?” Warriors asked Sky, as everyone went rifling through bags or poking at the others, equipment surfacing from bags and a few weapons and items piling up.
Sky grimaced. “Sorry.”
“No, no, we should be fine,” Warriors clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Cheer up! Sounds like we’ve got enough gear between us all to make quick work of this place. I’m sure we’ll be out of here before you know it.”
Sky sighed, his thumb rubbing over the palm of his sword hand through his gloves. “I hope so.” Then he seemed to shake himself, and offered Warriors a self-conscious sort of smile, scratching at the back of his neck. “Sorry, again, I just… don’t like this place very much.” He laughed a little, clearly at himself, before going on, more light-hearted. “I didn’t know what electricity was when I came here, so you can imagine how well the first, well, couple of days went.”
Warriors cringed in sympathy. “... ah.”
Sky snorted. “Yeah.”
“Well,” Warriors rallied, and turned towards the desert sands, shimmering out in a vast stretch ahead. “All the more reason to wrap this up quickly, then, yes?”
“Sounds good to me,” Sky agreed, falling in at his side, hooking his thumbs through his belt as he joined Warriors in surveying the vast land before them.
“I know we just got here- but I’m already ready to be done with the desert.”
“Oh, Ordona’s blasted hooves, ” Twilight said, scowling at the towering, sand-scoured, vaguely roundish structure glowing orange against the sunset off in the distance. The heat-flush on his face, sweaty and grimy with sand, looked no less vivid under the new lighting.
A snort from behind his shoulder. Time, running a hand through sweat-soaked hair to try and get it out of his face. “Well, I suppose that answers the question I didn’t get to ask.”
“Another desert?” Legend’s incredulous voice sounded out, as he staggered out the portal with a light limp, courtesy of a mostly-healed broken leg. The leg in question was not, in fact, received in the heat of battle, but rather during a highly ill-advised, heat-addled attempt on the group’s part at corralling an Ampilus to go charging into a pile of stones to get them out of the way when there had been a shortage of bombs.
It was after the injuries had been treated and water had been distributed during the next break that they collectively remembered that a) hammers existed, and b) - Wild was not actually physically capable of running out of bombs.
“We’re not just in a different place in Sky’s time, right?” Legend asked, frowning around, face pink from a burgeoning sunburn, sweat sticking little flyaways of his hair to his face. He was flapping his hat in his hand towards his face like a lady’s fan, with less than effective results.
“No, no, it’s mine,” Twilight groaned, still projecting ire and displeasure towards the completely innocent lump of… something off in the distance. “Ugh.”
That appeared to be all he was willing to offer on the topic.
“Oh, yay, more desert,” Wild said, crouching down to poke at the sand the second he was clear of the portal. The tips of his ears had been painfully red for a while now, but he’d handled the heat with a cheerful sort of casualness that told of long practice- and good equipment. There had been many attempts at stealing his sandshoes, several times directly off his feet. All of them had failed. “Huh. Totally different from the sand in Sky’s time. Neat.”
“Guess we’re not done with the desert yet,” Hyrule said, shading his eyes with his hand as he squinted to try and follow where Twilight’s eyes were busy glaring death. “Feeling up for another week of walking on sand?”
“No,” Sky said in despair, having just emerged in time to hear this, and turned directly on his heel to try walking right back through the portal.
Warriors caught him via an arm around the neck and pulled him away. “Look, it’s not yours, isn’t that better?”
“That depends, is anything here going to shove an electrical sword in my back?”
Wind, still a little shaky after his run-in with a direct hit from a Spume, nevertheless was busily fiddling with his telescope, hands only fumbling with the faded red tool a little as he surveyed the desert around them. “Mmm-hm. Looks like… sand. Sand, sand, more sand… and can’t forget, sand.”
“What about that thing?” Wild asked curiously, waving towards the lump Twilight so clearly had strong feelings about off on the horizon.
“Looks like an old colosseum.”
“That,” Twilight said, finally turning around, “is Arbiter’s Grounds, and I cannot emphasize enough how much I want to avoid going there at all costs.”
“That’s what I said about Lanayru Mining Faculty,” Sky said, shoving Warriors away in the last movements of freeing himself from his dragging grip. Warriors let it happen- it was far too hot for contact to be bearable for long. “And yet.”
“Why, what’s there?” Four asked, headband missing and an unstoppered bottle of water in his hands. “It might not be as bad as you think- you had to go at things alone, right? Teamwork might make things more bearable.”
“What are your feelings on the undead?”
“... I don’t like that question.”
“And I don’t like ancient haunted execution grounds. Funny how that works.”
“Lovely,” Legend said. “Alright, Rancher, where’s the map, hand it over. Don’t give me that look, I don’t care if you don’t want to go there, we’re not lucky like that, have you completely forgotten how we got here?”
“How far off’s the nearest town?” Warriors asked, as Twilight, rolling his eyes, handed over his map to Legend’s grabby hands. “I know supplies are scant in deserts, but we’re starting to get a little lower than I’d like.”
“Also, we really all need to do a good laundry round,” Wild added, tugging at his tunic- which, at this point, had been sweated through more than once, and smelled like it. “I’m pretty sure those last two groups of monsters found us through following us by scent. I could follow us by scent, at this point.”
“... So here’s the thing.”
“Nobody lives here.”
“Yeah.”
“No towns.”
“I said that already, yes.”
“No way to get out of here on foot that doesn’t involve going through a solid month of nigh-on-impossible mountain travel. On hazardous paths you’ve been told about, but haven’t actually been on, know the locations of, or even have a map of. Because you didn’t take them on your journey.”
“Where are you going with this.”
“So how the fuck did you get in here?”
Twilight, sweating perhaps just a bit too much even for the current heat, said, brightly, “Oh look, that’s the dungeon where the Great Fairy lives, we should all go drop in for a visit! Get some Fairy Tears! C’mon, Wild, Hyrule, let’s go-”
Legend made a strangled noise and chased after him, but Twilight had a longer stride and a conveniently not-recently-broken leg and was clearly outpacing him as he all but ran to his chosen refuge. Wild and Hyrule exchanged glances- and then took off after them.
“Well,” Time said, watching them run off as the world slowly started to dim, night coming steadily on. “That was a poor choice.”
“Legend’s never going to let it go, now,” Sky noted, wiping sweat off his face. “And really, Wild and Hyrule?”
Wind was now using his telescope to track the action. “He really didn’t think that through,” he reported gleefully. “They’re cornering him. Hey, what do you think he did?”
“Something he clearly didn’t want to admit to doing in front of the Old Man,” Warriors said dryly, starting to trudge after the little knot now holding Twilight captive. “Did you see that little side-glance?”
Time hummed, eye gleaming, even as he braced Wind- whose still-shaky legs were giving him a bit of trouble- as he got back on his feet.
“Well, we’ll find out soon enough,” Four noted, getting to his feet with an air of reluctance. A light shower of sand tumbled from his tunic as he half-heartedly dusted his hands along it.
“You think so?”
Four’s look was just as dry as the sand under their feet. “It’s open desert in all directions, and we’re not getting out of here until we find the next portal,” he said. “Nowhere to run until the next portal- assuming we have the good luck to actually end up in a forest, or something similar, and that we don’t end up in another desert.”
“No,” Wind insisted, “no more deserts. We don’t need more deserts! This is more than enough deserts!”
Time hummed. “Well. Let’s hold out hope, shall we?”
“Why is it still more desert?!”
“Well,” Four said, ignoring Sky’s despair entirely in favor of inspecting the wide, flat expanse of sand dominating the landscape. “I’d say this is officially becoming a thing.”
“I don’t want it to be a thing,” said a very grumpy Twilight, who was still irate over having been, in fact, forced to go back through part of Arbiter’s Grounds again.
Twice.
There had been a significant amount of backtracking involved, which absolutely nobody had been happy about.
The sheer number of bone bits and fragments everyone was finding in their things was almost on level with the omnipresent, eternally refilling sands that kept creeping into every bag, pouch, sheath and quiver they owned. Ringing ears were a group-wide ailment after the third group of ReDeads.
Wild was still picking fingerbones out of the tangles of his hair, and most of them were still wiggling. Every one he’d fished out, Time went and helpfully crushed for him, still with that rather fixed expression he’d gotten one ReDead in, and had proceeded to continue to wear all throughout every following wave of undead that had done their best to make their group join their numbers to follow.
Nobody had enjoyed Arbiter’s Grounds.
“Oh, this is just Tantari Desert,” Hyrule said cheerfully, almost as soon as he tripped out the portal. “That’s not too bad, then.”
Doubtful stares all around.
“No, really!” Hyrule insisted. “Nothing to worry about, really, other than the Geldarms. We might run into a few Bots, but they’re really not much more threatening than a ChuChu.”
Legend paused where he was somewhat resentfully smacking some last clinging tatters of ReDead bandages off the sides of his boots, instead beginning to scrutinize the sands with a sudden sharp intensity. “... Geld arm. Those have anything in common with Geld men?”
Hyrule tilted his head consideringly. “Maybe? Sounds similar. Tall, caterpillar things? Head’s the only weak point, and you’ve gotta whack them down to reach it?”
“Nope,” Legend said instantly, relaxing a bit. “Geldmen are sand creatures, long arms, travel underground, and they’re fuckin’ fast . Nasty penchant for dragging travelers under the sands.”
“Oh, I hate those things,” Four grimaced, halfway through readjusting his headband. “They’re all over the Desert of Doubt.”
“Oh, goody, something else to look forwards to,” murmured Sky, who had apparently decided that he was done with lamenting his fate, and was instead just laying flat on the sand in defeated acceptance of his lot in life.
Legend nudged him in the ribs with the tip of his boot. “You’re going to cook yourself like that. And who says they’re not here, anyway?”
“Considering the way monsters have been mixing as of late, they very well could be,” said Time, who had taken one look in a room at Arbiter’s Grounds- a particularly odd one, as it seemed to consist of nothing more than a single long, thin, bone-pale arm sticking out a gentle heaping of the sands- and had all but physically thrown the rest of them back before anyone could get further than a step in.
He had then proceeded to get Hyrule and Legend to assist him in throwing enough magical firepower through the door to essentially half-melt, half-collapse the room, in such a deafening, roaringly hot conflagration that it was honestly an outright miracle that nobody got even slightly toasty from where they were hiding behind their shields from the, quite frankly, absolutely obscene show of magical might, let alone hit with flying half-glassed sand or violently exploding blocks of sandstone.
It had taken about five seconds of silence afterwards, melted, glowing ooze slowly rolling out from between the cracks of the broken and toppled stone blocks filling what was once the doorframe, before a chest had dropped from the ceiling with a key in it.
Time had taken it with that still-fixed expression, and had not bothered to offer a single explanation for his actions whatsoever.
Nobody asked him for one.
Again. Nobody had enjoyed Arbiter’s Grounds.
“We’ll find out sooner rather than later, like as not,” Warriors muttered, scowling off into the shimmering heat, half-heartedly flapping his shirt collar. “Alright, Traveler, you know how this goes. Your desert, what kind of dungeon are we going through this time?”
Hyrule hummed, rocking a bit on his heels, eyes skimming over the rolling expanse of dunes. “Well… there aren’t actually any dungeons here,” he says, thoughtfully. “We can check the cave up in the north? But that’s about the only real place I can think of to look here, unless there’s something hiding in the desert itself.”
“... That might be worse, actually. And I don’t suppose our chances of coming across a town…?”
Hyrule pursed his lips. “Well.”
And did not continue.
Warriors grimaced. “Alright,” he said, “That’s… great. Okay.”
“Not to alarm anyone, but that’s really about to be a problem,” Wild noted, words a bit mumbled around the edges until he took his hair tie out of his mouth, shaking his hair out one last time- no lingering bones revealed themselves- before tying it back. “Not saying we’re about to starve, but if we don’t have something to hunt or forage soon…”
“Oh, there’s plenty to eat here,” Hyrule said, perking up visibly. “It’s the reason I like it better in Tantari. Much easier to get food and water here than in somewhere like Parapa Desert. Actually, right near here, I can show you-”
Time caught him by the edge of his tunic sleeve as he turned. “In a moment, maybe. First, how far away is the cave?”
Hyrule sighed, clearly put-out at his unwilling containment, but gave in.“It’s not too far,” he said, glancing up at the sky, then off to the sands, in a roughly northern direction. “I’d say… we’re maybe about a day or so away?”
Legend looked up from where he was adjusting his rings- the sand kept causing issues and irritating skin where it slipped between his finger and the rings- and side-eyed Hyrule.“I don’t suppose,” Legend started, with an audible lack of hope, “that you have a map for this area. Any map at all.”
Hyrule blinked at him. “Well.”
And he pulled out a tattered, folded piece of paper. “I do have this?”
Legend grabbed it immediately, as though it would vanish if he didn’t snatch it right away. He flipped the paper open, holding it out in front of his face. He contemplated it for a moment.
“... Hyrule?”
“Hm?”
“Where did you buy this map from?”
“Oh, I didn’t buy it. I drew it!”
Legend exhaled a very long, very drawn out breath. “Alright,” he said, a bit grimly, and lowered the map. “What’s your map scale here?”
“My what?”
“...”
Time laid a bracing hand on Legend’s shoulder. “We have Hyrule to lead us to the cave,” Time said. Slightly pleaded, perhaps, even. “Hyrule said it’s the only thing of interest here. And he’s very knowledgeable of the lands in his own time.”
“It’s going to be a week before we see that cave,” Legend said.
“Hey!” Hyrule cried, offended.
“I say two weeks,” Twilight muttered, shrugging to resettle his baldric. Hyrule huffed at him, crossing his arms.
“I could just leave you here,” Hyrule informed him. “I don’t have to guide you, I could just sit back and let you figure it out by yourself. Maybe I should.”
Warriors clapped a hand over both Twilight’s and Legend’s mouths, and in the scant seconds he had before their resistance became violent, smiled winningly at Hyrule.
“I’m sure you know every step of this desert,” Warriors said, earnestly, and absolutely not lying, of course not, to Hyrule’s unimpressed face. “We trust you, of course, and we’re all ready to set out when you are-” and then he cut off with a yelp, as Twilight and Legend expressed their displeasure.
“We’re never going to see anything but sand ever again.” Wind said mournfully, watching the tumbling three-man tangle of chaos falling to the sands. Then he squeaked, tripping into movement, as Wild caught him behind the shoulders and gave him a cheerful shove, nodding at Hyrule as the Traveler hid a snort and a grin behind one hand.
“Follow Hyrule,” Wild suggested, still shooing Wind along. “Maybe then you’ll have a chance to at least see some rocks instead.”
“More sand,” Wind whispered, with wide, moon-blank eyes.
“Okay, did someone get cursed? Is that what’s happening here?” Legend demanded, turning on his heel to scowl at everyone as they exited the portal with equal suspicion. The budding freckles forming under his healing sunburn did not make his glare less menacing. “If someone got cursed, speak up now.”
“I don’t think this is a curse,” Four said, unenthusiastically rubbing at a charred spot on his leggings. “If it was, we’d be able to do something about it.”
“I don’t like this,” Hyrule said, as though coming to a realization. “I don’t like this? I don’t want to be in the desert any more. Can we leave?”
“Depends. Can you break curses?”
“Or, since it’s probably not a curse,” Four said, “as these are portals leading to set locations, how’s your ability to teleport?”
Legend rounded on Four. “Who’s to say that the portals can’t be affected by a curse?” he demanded. “You don’t have any proof of that-”
“What’s your evidence for them being cursed, huh?” Four shot back, eyes narrowing.
“Well-”
“So that’s a temple right there,” Twilight observed, completely ignoring the budding debate sparking up behind him, staring up at the rocks of the cliff above their heads.
“That’s almost as big as the statues of the Seven Heroines,” Wild said, audibly fascinated, slate held up and the click of a captured image going off. “But she doesn’t look like any of them. What era is this?”
“What are you- whoa! She’s big!” Wind’s enthusiasm sparked back up as easy as a campfire coal. He rocked back on his heels, hand shading eyes, to stare up at the face of the towering statue carved into the face of the cliff.
“Not mine,” Sky breathed out, clearly grateful. “It’s still desert, but not in my era. Thank Hylia.”
“Not mine, either.” “Nope,” came the two quick denials from Legend and Four, before they went right back to waving their arms at each other in heated discussion.
“We just came from mine,” from Hyrule, who was, in fact, also admiring the statue, but also was casting curious eyes towards the sandstorm blowing further out.
Time sighed, near-silently, through his nose. Not silently enough, however, to dodge the sharp ears and attention of Twilight.
“You know it?” Twilight asked, head tilted.
“Yes,” Time’s mouth skewed to the side. He did not appear to be holding any enthusiasm within the bounds of his being. “I’ve been here before.”
“Map?” Legend asked immediately, turning away from Four in order to turn on Time. “I know you have good ones, I saw you showing the Rancher before.”
“Who’s to say I ever went inside?”
That got the flat look it deserved.
Time relented.
“Okay, it’s your era,” Warriors said, as Legend snatched away the maps with a sort of barely-restrained glee that he would deny to the death if pointed out, “Is there any chance of us reaching civilization. Any chance- there isn’t, is there.”
“If you felt like braving that sandstorm,” Time said mildly, “then you might wander in the right direction to encounter Gerudo Fortress.”
Warriors squinted. “... Fortress.”
“Mmm.”
“... And what would happen after this hypothetical ‘you’ reached that fortress?”
“Well,” Time said, now thoughtful. “It depends on if you get caught or not.”
“Hang on, this is a Gerudo dungeon?” Wild said, delighted.
“Are you saying that we’re going to get stabbed?” Warriors demanded.
“Hey, there’s flying pots in here!” came a yell from beyond the door.
“These things,” Wild said, thoughtfully inspecting a bowstring, standing over the burnt husk of what was once a very fire-happy foe. “The flying things. Floating. Something like that.”
“Anubis,” Time said, pulling his sword from the body of Wallmaster, and pretending not to see as Four gave one of its fingers a subtle, vindictive kick as he set about retrieving his headband from where it was trapped under one of the monster’s nails.
“Them,” Wild said agreeably. “I like them. Why aren’t the enemies we have to fight more like them?”
“You only like them because you got to spend the fight shooting fire arrows at them from a distance,” grumbled a very cranky, lightly scorched Twilight, still smoking around the pelt. Twilight had tried throwing a bomb at his particular Anubis after the third time he swung his sword and then had to dodge a stream of fire coming for his face.
Regret had been swift.
“I like them,” said Wind, who had also spent the fight firing off fire arrows from a distance. He bounced back and forth on his heels, bow held in both hands with a wide, chip-toothed grin, and then ducked with a squawk as Twilight swiped out an arm to scrub soot in his hair in revenge.
“I would have liked it better if there was a portal here,” Sky said, from where he sat on a fallen pillar, Master Sword across his knees. He was a bit pink in the face, both from the lingering sunburn and from having to cross the room at a sprint to avoid a set of Blade Traps and a particularly long-ranged Beamos. “Did anyone catch any out-of-place monsters here, yet? I haven’t seen any of mine.”
The denials and shaking heads went around the room.
“All the monsters we’ve encountered here are ones I know to be of my era,” Time said. He slung his sword back to rest against his back once more. “Though I don’t recall encountering Dinolfos inside the Temple, but they do tend to be found nearby. If it weren’t for the portals, I’d not even consider them being here worth wondering about.”
“No black blood,” Four, carefully adjusting his headband back around his forehead, pointed out.
“Might not be a portal here, if that’s the case,” Legend noted, poking suspiciously at one of those aforementioned Dinolfos. “Still more of the dungeon to go, though.”
“I think-” Hyrule interrupted himself to make a quiet noise of triumph where he was sifting through shattered Beamos remains- a glint of purple that quickly vanished into his bag gave away just what he found, before he dusted his hands off and hopped back up on his feet. “There’s still a chance. We didn’t see anything out of the ordinary in my time until we reached the cave, remember?”
Legend made a face.
Hyrule was not wrong. Getting to the cave had been fine. There had been no surprises, no displaced monsters leaping out from dunes, nothing but a few Geldarms and couple of Bots that had swiftly been dispatched without any trouble.
And that was because all the trouble was being saved for the cave.
Apparently, Leevers can swarm.
Apparently, black-blooded Leevers can tunnel through solid rock.
That cave might no longer be standing, if Hyrule ends up coming back to it later. Legend, for his part, had been at least apologetic about the amount of destruction the spell he’d pulled out of the necklace he’d called a ‘Bombos medallion’ had inflicted on the already weakened rock.
Hyrule hadn’t minded much, if the casual shrug and Hey, it’s one less place for the Goriyas to hide, had been any indicator.
“That doesn’t bode well for what we might end up finding at the end of this place,” Warriors sighed, raking a hand through his hair, heedless of the blood that streaked along from the slow-mending cut on his temple.
“I’m still waiting on Electric Lizalfos,” Wild said.
“I’m waiting on Geldmen,” Legend said, and then an oomph of effort as he tossed a fallen rock aside to prod at a half-crushed Armos.
“Those explode,” Time warned, and Legend jerked back immediately, shield coming up to cover his face and chest. When no explosion was forthcoming, he peeked around the edge, then crept back in to poke at it again.
Legend gave Time a narrow-eyed stare. “How did you explode it?”
“They exploded themselves.”
“But how?”
“I can explode it,” Wild offered, holding up a bomb arrow.
“NO,” came a multitude of shouts, and wild scrambling as nearby bodies hastened to remove themselves from the potential blast radius just in case.
Legend, on the other hand, lunged and swiped the bomb arrow right out of Wild’s loose grip, and then pointed it right in Wild’s face. “I don’t want it exploded, I just want to know how not to trigger it!”
Wild held up his hands in surrender with a crooked grin, bow still in one hand.
“I’m hoping for no Geldmen,” Four said, taking a seat on another broken pillar, all the better to watch the unfolding comedy act from. “Maybe all this mixing-up between times means we won’t have to deal with them.”
“We’re not lucky like that.” Twilight said immediately, releasing Wind, who tumbled away and darted well out of arm reach- all the way over to where Time was currently- and loudly- confiscating the bomb arrow.
“If anyone gets to blow things up in this Temple, it will be me.” came back to the group collected by the fallen pillar. Warriors paused where he was doing one last cleaning swipe along his sword- after a clear moment of internal debate, he blew out a gust of air and headed purposefully for the growing group around the bomb arrow Time was holding straight up in the air.
The rest of them ignored this. Four was far too busy giving Twilight a flat look.
“Just because you had to go back to Arbiter’s Grounds-”
“We all had to go through Arbiter’s Grounds,” Twilight countered. “And Legend said it first, we all know it. We’re not lucky like that. And Sky didn’t want to go through his dungeon, but we still had to. And Hyrule-”
“Hyrule’s desert wasn’t that bad,” Four said defensively.
“The cave, though.”
A tilt of the head. Humming.
“... Actually, yeah, I’ll give you that one.”
“They’re desert foes, right?” Sky asked, with a tilt of the head. At Four’s nod, he continued. “So it’s only if the next portal leads to another desert. It might go to a forest, or a volcano, or something.” There was a faint hope in his voice, but it was just that- faint. Faded. Optimism, offered through habit, not true belief.
Four and Twilight exchanged glances.
“We’re not that lucky,” they chorused together.
And as if on cue, from over the remains of the Armos, there was a loud KA-BOOM.
Heads swiveled.
Triumphant, Wind slapped his hands free of stone grit, and stood in front of the rubble of what was, once, an Armos, power-bracelet decked wrists gleaming in the light from the window slit. “Was that right?”
Time clapped him on the shoulder with the hand that wasn’t holding a bomb arrow. “Perfect,” he said, with absolute sincerity.
The round of cursing Warriors spun into was both uncharacteristic and impressive. Sky openly started praying.
“Here we go again,” Wild said- a little wry, slapping ashes off of his sandshoes- which still remained upon his feet, despite the continued ongoing efforts to remove them having almost reached feverish heights. Pinning him down remained utterly impossible, and his smugness about the matter was utterly infuriating. “I don’t recognize anything here. Anyone else?”
“Din scorch it,” Legend grumbled, voice crackling a bit- he coughed to clear it, the lingering smoke from the room they’d just left behind through the portal still swirling emptily in the air beside them haunting his lungs. “Nothing familiar to me. Hyrule, this isn’t your Parapa Desert, right?”
“No, Parapa’s flatter than this,” Hyrule said, thumbs hooked through his belt. “If this was Parapa, we’d be able to see the Palace from here. Maybe-”
And then there wasn’t any need to wonder any more, because Four came through the portal, and then stopped short.
“Oh. Here.”
Legend wasted no time in pouncing. “Yours, then?”
Four sighed. “Desert of Doubt,” he confirmed, wearily. He eyed the ground with clear antipathy. “Watch your feet.”
“For those Geldmen you and Legend keep talking about?” Hyrule asked curiously, shifting his own feet to look down at the sands underneath him.
“You’ll probably feel them before you see them, if they’re anything like mine,” Legend told him, glancing at Four for confirmation. At Four’s nod, he turned back to elaborate. “They solidify a bit, first, before they can form up enough to go for you. It’s subtle, but the ground pushes up a little under your feet when they pass by.”
“And that’s all the warning you get,” Four added. “And then you have a sand monster in your face. And trying to choke you. Or crush you. Or drag you under the sands. That one only works near quicksand pits. They like quicksand pits.”
“Huh,” Hyrule said, tapping the ground lightly with his toe. Neither he nor Wild seemed concerned- Wild wasn’t paying attention to the ground at all, in fact, and rather was actively eyeing up the rocky cliffs with the shifty sort of look that said that taking eyes off of him for five seconds was likely to end with him halfway up one.
“I’m getting really tired of all these deserts,” Twilight complained, leaning back in a stretch with his hands braced at the small of his back. His spine cracked in a way that immediately made Sky, standing next to him, cringe. “That’s all we’ve been getting. Just sand, sand, and sand.”
Four blew out a sigh. “There’s only so many deserts in the world,” he said, half-heartedly. “And through time, too, I suppose. It shouldn’t be too long of a wait until we’re somewhere else again.”
“It’s already been too long of a wait,” Warriors muttered, swiping sweat off his face, still a bit wild around the eyes. There was a drifting line of spider silk still caught in his hair. Nobody pointed it out to him.
Of all the possible things to find in Time’s era, a nest of Skulltulas woven in among a room of Beamos with one single Guardian from Wild’s time perched right in the middle of it all? Not even remotely what anyone was expecting.
That the Guardian’s shots set the web-swathed room on fire was just insult on top of injury, at that point.
Black-blooded Skulltulas, incidentally, do not react to getting set on fire by dying. No, of course it wouldn’t be that easy.
Rather, what happens when a black-blooded Skulltula gets set on fire, is that now you have a furious, on-fire Skulltula trying to bite your head off.
(“That,” Wind had all but whispered in the aftermath, wide-eyed and hoarse-voiced where he’d gotten a face full of web smoke, “was like if Bubbles were worse.”
“Imagine if these were what we had to deal with instead of those fire bubbles in Twilight’s time,” Wild had mused, part-way through prying open the shell of the dead Guardian with his sword. That Four had not descended on him in a haze of professional wrath was only due to their Smithy not being in the room, having been pulled to the next one holding the portal by Time. “Arbiter’s Grounds, but instead of flaming skulls, it’s full of flaming spiders.”
Twilight had looked horrified at the very idea.)
“Just wait until we end up in a swamp, Rancher,” Wild called, from where- yes, he was on the next level of the cliffs, perched above everyone else’s heads. Hyrule was beside him, with Wind midway through scrabbling up to join them.“You’ll be wishing for the desert back in no time!”
Twilight wrinkled his nose up at him. “At this point, I’d take the swamp. And you should too- I can see your sunburn peeling from here!”
Legend made a face. “At this point, I’m just expecting us to cycle through all our deserts over the next few weeks. And maybe a few from in-between our times mixed in too- we’d been in just forests before this for, what, four months?” He elbowed Sky, who had stopped entreating the heavens, instead looking down mournfully at his ash-smeared boots. “Hope you like that sunburn, I wouldn’t bet on it going away anytime soon.”
“I have never hoped that you’re wrong so hard in my life-”
Wind’s telescope was out and pointing around, his face scrunched in concentration. “Hey, I see something green!”
“Trees!” Wild’s excitement was clear, even with his face half-blocked by his slate. “Those are trees! And I think I see tents?”
It was as though a second wind blew through, gusting them all back up on their feet with renewed vigor. Within a minute, everyone had gotten up on the ledge, Wild climbing even higher above, to all peer over in the same direction.
“An oasis!” Wild called down. “And those are definitely tents.”
“That’s Zuna Village!” Four, eye pressed to Wind’s borrowed telescope, was perched on top of Twilight’s shoulders for added height. It was a mark of how excited everyone was that Twilight wasn’t even complaining about the heat or sweat involved with being in contact with another Hylian body. “We’re closer to the Desert Temple right now than we are them, so it’ll be extra walking, but they are based around an oasis. I’m on good terms with the Zuna, so they’ll probably be willing to let us refill our water, maybe even stay the night.”
The ragged cheer that rose up from their group said it all.
“So,” Twilight said, as the straggling line of their shadows started to creep along the sands with the setting of the sun, the shhhf of shifting sands a low, constant sound. “All of our deserts, then, huh?”
“I’d bet on it,” Legend said, shoving his hair back out of his face. Wild’s spare sapphire circlet gleamed where it was taking a turn on his head. “We’ve been to five so far, and not one of them was an in-between era, not that we’ve been able to find a town yet to really tell-”
“-Yet.”
“Yet,” Legend allowed.
“Might still not,” Wild observed, dropping back a pace to join the conversation. He scratched idly at the peeling edge of his sunburn. “Could run into a portal out here before we meet Four’s Zuna.”
“Don’t you speak that into existence,” Warriors warned, catching up with a few quick, large steps just to tug at one of the dangling ends of Wild’s pulled-up hair, a sort of twisted-up bun held in place with a hairstick in an attempt to get the heavy weight off the back of his neck. Wild squawked at the tug, and scrambled to rescue his falling hairstick as the whole thing unraveled. “-Oh, whoops.”
Four looked back over his shoulder. “I don’t think we will,” he called back, slowing his pace a bit. “Run into a portal out here, I mean. There is a pattern. Our shadowy foe seems to like setting their portals in dungeons, at least now that they’ve lost the forest to hide in.”
“There a dungeon out here, then?”
“The Pyramid,” Four confirmed. “Dark. Full of Gibdos and Ropes.”
“ Nooo. Why does it have to be Gibdos?” Wind complained, pink-flushed face pouting. Wild’s other sapphire circlet was a little crooked across his forehead, where it had been more shoved on than placed when, half an hour ago, it was deemed that Wind was getting too hot, much to Wind’s vocal displeasure and unconvincing denials. “They’re like stronger ReDeads! I don’t like them!”
“Undead monsters are the worst,” Twilight agreed fervently.
“My time only has Stals,” Wild observed, hairstick properly restored and the culprit (insufficiently) shamed with a huff and a scowl. “So, you know, if we end up there like Legend thinks we will, at least there won’t be any of that.” That being said with the appropriate amount of residual, remembered disgust for someone who hadn’t realized that he’d strayed into the danger zone of a ReDead’s scream and had almost lost a chunk of his ear when he’d been grabbed. “I don’t have dungeons though, so no ideas there- unless, maybe the Divine Beast? But Naboris never had monsters inside, not really…”
“Well, with where we’ve been… it’s a one-in-four chance that that’s next, right?” Sky looked back over his shoulder, peering out from the shelter of his sailcloth. “Wild, Wind, Warriors, and Legend. We’ve been to everyone else’s eras.”
“If I’m right,” Legend cautions. “But no in-between eras so far, so. If we can know what to expect from the others-”
“The only desert my time ever had was magically spliced onto ours by an evil witch and we made her put it back five years ago,” Warriors said. “I think it actually might have been part of Twilight’s? I don’t actually remember it that well.”
“Ocean,” Wind just said. This was accepted without further question.
“Okay, so two more deserts.” Four slowed down more, turning to face the clustered-up group that had formed out of their straggling line. “If that’s the case, maybe we’ll be able to get out of the desert sooner.”
“Green Farore, may you bless our path,” Time said, from where he was following just beside Four, a weary drag to his voice. “That it would be so.”
“Might have better luck praying to Din,” Warriors noted, “considering where we are.”
“I’ll beg favor of all the Three at once, if it means getting to see a tree again in the next week.”
“No need to pray for that,” Wild pointed. The direction he was pointing in was nothing but sand and rock as far as the eye could behold- which was not far, because Four’s time’s desert was mostly rocky canyons interspersed with sporadic flat areas. “Just keep walking this way for another hour.”
“That being said,” Legend interrupted, hands clapping together briskly. “By my count, then, we’ve got three more to go, counting here and my own. So.”
His eyes gained a gleam. Somehow, it was suddenly very strikingly apparent how many of his facial features he shared with Ravio.
“Hand over the map, Smithy.”
“Ah,” said Time, as he exited the portal. “As expected, then?”
The faint light of a just-budding dawn showed as a peeking line of gold along the distant edge of the sky, far-away mountains and the shape of something large and too round not to be a construct made by intentional hands standing out on the horizon against the slow-growing light.
“It’s Legend’s,” Wild said, from where he was perched atop a squat pillar about twice his height. He knocked his boots together idly, sand falling off the soles. Sky, sitting on the lip of that same pillar beside him, was leaning back on his hands to watch the sunrise. As Time stepped away from the portal, making way for Wind and Twilight to come through, Hyrule circled around from where he’d been behind the chosen pillar, fingers gently tracing the seams in old mortar.
“Desert of Mystery,” Legend confirmed, somewhat distractedly, much more occupied with eyeing the ground like it was about to come alive under his feet.
Which it promptly did.
The rough-shaped arms of sand that erupted from the ground grabbed wildly at the air, heedless of the startled shouts and the shiiiing of swords being pulled. An arrow landed in the palm, snapping in half at the crushing force of the hand as it closed and opened-
And with a PHWO-SHHH a great tower of sand shoved up from the ground, flinging something large and bulky up from where it was hidden underground.
“Behold,” Legend announced, wiggling his fingers on the hand that was not currently holding aloft a rod humming with active magic Wind’s way. “A Geldman.”
Wind looked at him with big cat eyes. “You can control sand?!”
Legend narrowed his own eyes right back at him in turn, pulling his arm back to clutch the Sand Rod to his chest. “You don’t get to use it.”
“Aw, you’re no fun!”
“That’s what a Geldman looks like?” Sky was standing, now, of a level to see the Geldman from above. “You didn’t say they were that big!”
The Geldman thrashed atop its pillar of sand, and it was with an almost thoughtless ease that Legend’s hand flicked out, and the monster jolted before it collapsed, smoke poofing up in a dark cloud.
The boomerang landed neatly in Legend’s hand, and with the other, he waved the Sand Rod, the sand pillar dropping back down to merge smoothly with the desert once more.
“Oh,” Wild said, bow still in hand, leaning precariously on his pillar perch. “That’s weird.”
“You know, I had been so happy that we didn’t actually run into any Geldmen when we were in my time,” Four observed, delicately setting his feet down in a suspicious sort of mincing. “And I know it was probably just because we didn’t actually go near any of the quicksand pits they live near. But I’m feeling like that’s not going to be the case, here?”
“Geldmen are everywhere, not just near quicksand pits,” Legend said. “What kind of Geldmen only live near quicksand pits?”
“Mine.”
“Well yeah, I got that-”
While a day’s stay in Zuna Village had done wonders for everyone’s mood, cleanliness, and hydration, even that was not enough to prevent Four and Legend from… well, being Four and Legend.
Before the budding debate about sand monster ecological behavior could fully get off the ground, Twilight took one for the team and physically stepped in between the two source points.
“So,” Twilight said, brightly, and only partially faked- he’d been very heartened by the realization that Four’s Gibdoes didn’t have paralyzing screams in their arsenals, and he’d been downright giddy when he realized that they were much easier to take down with just a few good hits, as opposed to the ones from both his own era and Time’s. “Your time, right, Legend?”
“As best as I can tell. I left that mark on that pillar, so it’s at least after I’d already been through here once,” Legend begrudgingly let himself be dragged back on track, pointing at the side of the pillar that Sky was no longer on- he was poking the tip of the Master Sword into the sand pile that was once a Geldman- but Wild still remained atop.
The mark wasn’t that deep, but it did deform the pillar on one side. Hyrule ran light fingertips around the edge of it, before pressing his palm in the center. “Looks like bomb damage.”
Wild peered over the edge. “Oh, is that what that normally looks like? Neat.”
“At least we have an idea of where we need to go,” Warriors waved at the shapes becoming ever-clearing in the brightening light off in the distance. “Almost completely flat around here, huh?”
“But Geldmen, maybe,” Sky pointed out.
“Geldmen, definitely,” Legend corrected. He was idly passing the Sand Rod from hand-to-hand. Wind was watching the movement much as a cat would watch a twitching string. “There’s not much else you’ll even find out here but Geldmen.”
“... I don’t like that,” Four said, edging closer to the pillar, still eyeing the ground. Legend snorted at him, shaking his head.
“Well, on the bright side,” Legend offered, very deliberately, “We’re at least in Hyrule.”
“... That was ever in question?” Time asked, delicately. If one looked, very closely, then perhaps one would be able to notice the strained cast to his face.
Legend just shrugged. “The portals haven’t lead to somewhere not in one of our Hyrules yet.”
“That was not an answer.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Time very visibly worried about it.
“Desert full of sand monsters and a dungeon on the horizon,” Wild said, hopping down from the pillar, going oomf as he landed. He slapped sand off of the seat of his trousers. A futile effort- the sand was everywhere. Removing it now only meant having to remove it again later. “Feels like that’s all we’ve been doing, lately.”
“Just one more to go, though,” Hyrule offered, “Maybe. And then we might be done, right?”
“Hope and pray,” Warriors said, eyeing the ground with clear mistrust. “And if it doesn’t work, then prepare yourself for up to a week’s march. I don’t care how long it takes- if we cycle through all our eras without a chance to leave the desert, I am going to make one.”
From behind his back, there was a yelp and then the sounds of scuffle as Wind finally pounced, the taunting movement too much to bear; very shortly, the sounds shifted to be Wind , crowing in clear victorious retreat, Legend cursing and running after him- only to yelp again at a PHWO-SHHH as another tower of sand shot up from underneath his feet.
“You little ship rat-” Legend spat out with a mouthful of sand.
“I want one of these!” Wind enthusiasm was unbroken by the Hero of Legend flailing his way free of his sand entrapment with the intent of violence. “Hey, what if-”
And he cut off with a yelp, as another set of wildly grabbing, monstrous hands erupted from the sands beside him.
PHWO-SHHH
T-T-THUD
Four separate boomerangs landed back in the hands that threw them.
Wind spat out a mouthful of sand. “Okay. Who had the windy one?”
Twilight sheepishly raised the hand holding said boomerang.
Wind, wind-swept and sand-coated, pointed at him. “If I can’t use the Wind Waker here because I might make a sandstorm, I don’t think you should be allowed to use something that flings sand everywhere either- hey!”
Legend bonked Wind with the end of the sand rod before retreating with it. “Mine. And you-” he turned on Time, who blinked, calm and placid in the face of a magic rod being pointed at his nose.
“I saw you helping him. You don’t get sand rod privileges either.”
Time hummed, tucking his boomerang in his belt. “As you say,” he said, unruffled.
Legend squinted at him. “I don’t trust that,” he said, as though just coming to the realization. “I don’t trust that at all. What are you planning.”
Time hummed again. His eye flickered, just for a moment, to look over Legend’s shoulder.
Legend caught it. He stiffened, whipped around-
Sky put his hands behind his back and whistled innocently, as though he wasn’t just a scant six inches from Legend with a hand maybe half an inch away from a certain magical rod’s handle.
Legend made a strangled noise, and clutched his sand rod to his chest protectively. His accusing glare swept through the group impartially, all held to equal levels of suspicion.
“Okay, you know what? I was going to let there be turns, but no. No turns now. Only my sand rod. Get your own if you want to use one!”
The outcry this was met with attracted several more Geldmen.
And of course, during this fight, Legend flaunted the forbidden as hard as he possibly could. How many sand pillars can erupt on a battlefield in four and a half minutes?
Well, when the sand rod is in the hands of the Hero of Legend with a point to make, the answer is: more than you’re thinking right now.
“It’s good to share,” Wind grumbled, haunting Legend’s steps in the aftermath, by no means alone- Four had also attempted to get his hands on the rod and was caught so thoroughly he ended up slinking to the back of the group, grumbling under his breath. “My Grandma says sharing’s good for the soul.”
“Wild’s not sharing his sand boots, either,” Legend sniffed right back, holding the sand rod tightly. “Go tell him that sharing’s good for the soul.”
“Most of you couldn’t even wear them!” Wild called up.
“I could,” Hyrule mused, looking down at Wild’s walking feet. He sidled closer to Wild, who side-eyed him and, in turn, started drifting to the side to maintain distance. “Legend could. Four and Wind could if they wore a few extra pairs of socks-”
Wild gave up on escape, and instead swung to shove his shoulder into Hyrule’s. Hyrule snickered, swaying with the force, and let himself fall back a step.
“Wild, Legend said you need to share your shoes!” Wind hollered back, at an unnecessary volume, hands cupped around mouth and impish little grin barely hidden behind them. “It’ll be good for your soul!”
“What does my soul get out of it?!” Wild yells back, also unnecessarily loud.
“Goodness!”
“I can’t use that to upgrade my armor, so no thanks- ack-”
“If you two keep yelling we’re going to have to fight more Geldmen,” Four said, exasperated, waving his freshly soaked spare headband, which he had interrupted the switching-out of for the one currently on his head in order to steal up and flick Wild in the face. “I don’t want to fight more Geldmen. Stop yelling.”
Wild wiped water drops off his face, and since they were in the desert, licked them off his hand. Twilight made a disgusted noise.
“You’re licking sweat,” Twilight informed him, as though Wild might be unaware of what he’s doing.
“It’s my sweat, I can lick it if I want,” promptly came the retort. “And that was good water, anyway. Don’t waste water in the desert.”
PHWO-SHHH
“Whoa, watch it!”
The little knot formed by Wild, Twilight, and Four scattered as Warriors hit the ground in a roll, coming to his feet smoothly, still in a ready stance, though considerably more sand-covered than he was just a minute ago.
The new pillar of sand that almost caught Warriors fell in a soft husshhh of falling sand, Legend pointed the rod at him, smug and not shy about showing it. Warriors tensed.
“That was a terrible try,” Legend taunted. “You thought you could get the rod off of me like that? I was with you when we tried that with Wild’s sandshoes and you didn’t think I’d remember it?”
“Clearly,” Warriors muttered, straightening slowly and dusting himself off once it became evident that there were no new pillars about to form under his feet.
Four patted Warriors on the arm. “It was worth a shot.”
“One day,” Twilight said, veering back in, squinting up at Legend’s back- which, despite being a back, was projecting an air that made it very clear that Legend was both pleased and satisfied with himself. “One day, one of us is actually going to manage to snag something off of him when he challenges us like this, and that will be a wonderful day.”
Hyrule laughed quietly from behind them. The way Warriors and Twilight jumped was a thing of beauty- Four and Wild snickered at them.
“Maybe think of something a bit more reasonable,” he suggested, grinning at the quiet swearing and Warriors’ hissed how do you keep doing that, you little bokoblin- “Like maybe one day, you could get a tear from the moon.”
“I had one of those, once,” Time hummed, as he walked by in the sort of casual amble that meant he was Up To Something, and also quite clearly and deliberately on course to collide with Legend if he kept on going as he was. “It was a beautiful thing. A pity I couldn’t keep it.”
Bewildered blinking, as brains took a moment to realize what was just said.
“Wait, hang on,” Wild began, swinging his full attention around onto Time, who was already well past their group and still headed on a collision course for Legend.
“Did he just imply-” Warriors asked, turning to Hyrule in search of answers, and was met with baffled blinking.
“Is this another moon thing?” Twilight demanded to Time’s back. “Is it? Did you actually fight the moon, Old Man? Did he really fight the moon?” He switched to demanding of his companions that were still there. “Did he fight the moon so hard that it cried?”
“That man is not real,” Four decided, as a boomerang spun out ahead, from the man in question’s hand, and sent another Geldman crumbling down to become silent sand. “I don’t care that he’s married and has a ranch. He’s not real to me until he explains himself.”
“When we’re in my time, I could try and see if I can get Zelda on him,” Wild offered. “I’m sure she’d love to run experiments on if he’s real or just a walking fairytale.”
“We’re all walking fairytales by your time,” Hyrule observed. A little glimmer of mischief lit up in his eye. “Maybe she should be researching instead on how to make the moon cry.”
Wild snorted. “Oh, Hylia.” he laughed. “I can hear her questions now.”
“Maybe even for real, when we end up in your era,” Four added dryly, picking up the pace to catch up to where- yes, Time just failed his own attempt to snatch the sand rod, Legend just barely dancing out the way of both his and Sky’s coordinated grabs.
“Nah,” Wild shook his head. “If we end up in my era’s Gerudo Desert, she won’t be there- last I heard she’d gone up over Akkala way, with Purah and Robbie, checking out something weird Robbie said he’d dug up.” Fondness was clear in his voice.
“Oh. Too bad, I would have liked to meet her.”
“Mm.”
Shhf, shhf. Walking in the silence, as those who failed their attempted thievery slink back in line once more to plot anew.
“It sounds like it would have been really funny to see her going after Time, though,” Four added.
“Oh, it would have been hilarious,” Wild replied immediately. “I can’t wait until I can throw him at her.”
“Okay, it’s a desert!” Hyrule declared, fists propped on hips. “Again!”
“And is this…” Legend- the ultimate winner of the sand rod scuffle in the end and in a very good mood about it- said leadingly, turning expectantly to Wild.
“Gerudo Desert,” Wild said promptly. “And I have good news and bad news.”
“That is a horrible way to start off this portal,” Legend said. “Go on.”
“So the good news,” Wild said, as the group gathered up, slate in hand and screen lit up, “Well, two bits of good news- first off, it’s not sandstorming, so we can actually see, which is great. The other bit of good news is that I know exactly where we are.”
“You usually know exactly where we are in your Hyrule,” Twilight said, visibly suspicious. “Why is that the good news.”
“Because the bad news,” Wild said, flourishing his map face-out, part of the desert now made to be much closer, so that the little skull-shaped golden stamp on it could be seen, “is that there’s at least one Molduga between us and the nearest town- possibly two depending on if that one other Molduga ever ended up changing up its territory like we thought it was going to- aaaaaand that town is Gerudo Town.”
A pause, as this information was digested.
“Aren’t Moldugas those big sand worm things that you showed me a pictograph of?” Wind finally ventured, face scrunched up as he thought.
“Aren’t those the monsters that you said are bigger than the average house?” Twilight said, more sharply, suddenly looking very attentively over the landscape as though he was expecting one to crest over the horizon as he spoke.
“Gerudo Town,” Time said, and something about the way he said it cut through the growing buzz of anticipation. He frowned, looking up from the middle distance, back to Wild. “I don’t suppose the Gerudo have relaxed their rules when it comes to allowing entry to travelers in the centuries since my time…?”
“Oh, sure,” Wild said, and then smashed the relief before it could get fully off the ground with: “You’re welcome in, as long as you’re a woman. And only if you’re a woman. Or a Goron, for some reason? I haven’t figured that one out yet.”
“Women only.”
“Mmhm.”
“Exclusively.”
“Yup.”
“...”
“...”
“...”
“...”
“He’s waiting for you to tell him how you got in anyway,” Wind ‘whispered’ ‘helpfully’ with his hands cupped around his mouth at Wild.
Wild froze. It was subtle- but the way his face smoothed out, about as readable as a stone, was not.. “... Who’s saying I ever went in?”
“Um… you did?” Hyrule looked around as though someone was about to correct him, express confusion in his certainty. None did. “Remember, when the Old Man was telling us about how he got a pass in his era?”
“So, about that Molduga!” Wild said brightly, flipping his slate back to himself and switching tabs over to his Runes.
Legend squinted at him. “Actually, how about how did you get into Gerudo Town-”
“We’re not going to get a chance to visit anyway,” Warriors cut in, being the sole source of mercy, and the way Wild immediately retreated over to him while nervously laughing just showed that he knew it. The eyes of the other wolves he called brothers were watching him like he was a treed squirrel. “Unless whatever dungeon we’re going to need to visit is beyond it, like in Four’s time, that is. I’ll just be happy with knowing if they’ll be hostile or not if we have to walk by. Wild?”
Silence.
Then a groan, as Wild mashed his slate into his face.
“... Um.”
“Vah Naboris is up over on the high ground of the Gerudo Canyon Pass,” Wild mumbled into his slate. He stared over it with the sudden exhaustion and pain of someone his actual chronological age. “We’re going to have to go right past Gerudo Town to get there. And that’s the only place I know to look, other than the Lomei Labyrinth. And that barely even counts as part of the desert over there.”
“... Okay?”
Another groan.
Then Wild perked up, dropping his face from his slate.
“Actually,” he said, brightened up just like that. “Just beyond Gerudo Town, there’s an oasis that’s basically a small trading post. And they have beds and merchants and water and everything, so we don’t need to bother anyone over at Gerudo Town. And then from there we can get to the Highlands!”
He beamed, his relief at finding a solution as clear as the sun in the sky.
Legend squinted at him even harder. “What are you hiding?”
“I’ll take it to my grave,” Wild said, looking him dead in the eye.
Warriors looked helplessly between the two of them and their rising tension, which appeared to be expressing itself as a staring contest.
He turned to Time.
“Okay?” Warriors sounded more questioning than he’d prefer from himself.
Time looked at Warriors. Looked at the staring competition, along with its riveted spectators.
He shrugged.
They were roughly half an hour into their walk when Legend stopped short, staring into space.
“Legend?” Sky ducked a bit forward, peeking at Legend’s face. The lack of moment slowly caught the attention of the others. “Are you alright? Did you get too hot?”
Legend didn’t reply, eyes snapping up instead to-
-look at Wild, with an expression of pure realization.
Wild froze like a startled deer in return, dread creeping onto his own face.
“Wait,” Legend said.
“Listen,” Wild started, a little frantic.
“WAIT,” Legend said, gleefully, a grin starting to curl around the corners of his mouth.
Wild made a strangled noise, and lunged down the line of Links, grabbing Legend by the sleeve. “Hey we’re going to talk over here now nobody listen to us okay bye,” he said, all in one breath, and dragged Legend off.
There were no places for them to hide behind, other than a distant cactus. All open desert, which is why Wild appeared to settle for just attaining distance, and the hissing whispers started up.
“Nobody has any way to hear things from a distance, right?” Four checked.
A series of “Nope.” “No,” and “Sadly, no”s went through the group.
“Too bad,” Twilight said, eyeing up Legend and Wild’s talk- now including vigorous arm movements- longingly, and also as though he was wondering if maybe they wouldn’t notice if a wolf crept up behind them just close enough to listen in.
“Any bets on how he got in?” Hyrule mused.
“I bet he committed a crime,” Wind said immediately.
Agreeing nods, all around the circle.
“So did you commit a crime to get into Gerudo Town? Is that it?” Wind asked, just about as soon as Wild and Legend rejoined the group.
Wild’s face flushed pink under the sunburn. Legend made a strangled little noise.
“I mean,” Legend said, still strangling the sounds that clearly wanted to escape his mouth, corners of his mouth twitching. “Technically-”
“Shut up, shut up, I told you it’s allowed, they know about it, I have a pass now!” Wild snapped, face still pink.
“Oh, so that’s how it is,” Hyrule said, in the tones of realization. He patted Wild on the shoulder when Wild dropped his face in his hands.
“I don’t know what you just realized, but if you can forget it now please that’d be great,” Wild said, muffled into his hands.
“We can talk about it later,” Hyrule offered peaceably. Wild’s look communicated a gratitude so great that he would now be willing to walk through fire in Hyrule’s name.
“Alright, enough,” Time took mercy this time- or, perhaps, by the way his skin was once again starting to visibly flush under the rising force of the sun, was simply getting tired of being out in the heat. “I’d like us to make it to that oasis as soon as possible. Wild, if you’ll lea-”
And it was then that there was an odd sound.
Like tons of sand, shifting. Like a low, constant grumble of something huge.
Wild’s head shot up.
“Oh,” he said, looking out- out at a quick-moving, raised lump of sand, which was growing in size and nearing in distance by the second. “The Molduga did move.”
The sands erupted, close enough that the flung grains could be felt bouncing against exposed skin as they fell- and the Molduga breached the surface of the sands in a great leap for the sky, the flailing form of a Lizalfos knocked in the air with it seen for only a scant moment before that huge, gaping mouth snapped shut.
“Solid stone, solid stone, fast, while it’s distracted,” Wild chanted, backing away and blue flaring in his hand as a bomb formed.
“There’s no stone-” Sky started, copying Wild and pulling out his own bomb bag, far from the only one to be doing so.
“Straight ahead!” Sand gouted up again as the Molduga hit ground and started burrowing back under. “Go go go go go!”
“This was so much quicker with more people,” Wild sounded like he was experiencing a revelation. Down below, figures dwarfed by the great bulk of the Molduga’s body poked and pulled and pondered embedded weapons, the great fins- even one halfway in its mouth, inspecting the huge creature’s teeth. “I barely had to use any bomb arrows. I didn’t even break a single bow.”
“Don’t let Four hear you say that,” Twilight warned, inspecting his own bow. The string was visibly about to go. “You’re lucky enough he didn’t catch you with that Guardian earlier.”
Wild sniffed. “I can take the Smithy.”
“Oh, sure,” Twilight agreed, then mercilessly continued with, “all you have to do is hit your sword against a rock in front of him a few times and he’ll be so distracted that- oof!”
Wild planted a punishing elbow in Twilight’s ribs, putting just enough of his weight into it to try and make Twilight stagger as he would for Hyrule. Alas for all who have tried, but the Hero of Twilight has a stance like an ox: staggering him would, in fact, require Wild’s full bodyweight to be behind the leading elbow.
Of course, as retaliation, he ended up getting a shoving hand on the shoulder, which did stagger Wild. Things quickly proceeded to devolve from there, and so it was that when Sky popped his head up over the side of the tall island of rock, he found two tangled figures, one trying- and failing- to pin down a body that squirmed about as slippery as a greased fish in a headlock, while the other appeared to be being half-strangled by their own loose hair- which was likely the only reason as to why there hadn’t yet been an escape.
Sky contemplated his choices.
Then, very wisely, he dropped down, and, to those who had sent him to investigate, said, “They’re busy.”
Wrestling is a very well-respected method of bonding and conflict resolution among a group of young men with a lot of excessive energy and remarkable combat skills.
It took a few minutes before Twilight and Wild got worn out enough to stop- and even then it was more the unpleasantness of continued physical contact under the unrelenting heat of the midday summer sun, even muffled under layers of cooling elixirs and enchanted jewelry, that had them roll apart, each panting to catch their breath.
Wild blew out one last heavy breath before heaving himself upright, running his hands through his hair to pull it back.
With a groan reminiscent of a big dog getting to its feet, Twilight rolled over himself, pulling himself up to remove his body from contact with the roastingly hot rock beneath.
A moment of peace, just breathing and watching the others milling about below.
“... So about what you and Legend were talking about earlier-”
“To my grave, Twilight.”
“So this should be it, right?” Sky checked, standing before the portal swirling in the heart of Vah Naboris. “Everyone who’s got a desert, we’ve gone through them, right?”
“Wild’s, mine, Four’s, Time’s, Hyrule’s, Twilight’s, yours-” Legend counted them off on his fingers, rings flashing in the sunset. “That’s everyone’s? That’s everyone.”
“So hopefully,” Four said, wiping blood off his blade- nothing quite like the surprise of walking into a dormant Divine Beast and immediately being met by not only a horde of glowing, Electric Lizalfos eyes, but also a pack of very out-of-place Dinolfos- before sheathing it once more. “When we go through that portal, hopefully, we shouldn’t be in the desert any more. Hopefully.”
“Twenty rupees say we end up in another desert,” Hyrule said, sotto voce. Warriors turned smoothly on his heel from where he was marching for the portal, and clamped a hand on Hyrule’s shoulder.
“Don’t speak it into existence.”
“There shouldn’t be any more deserts,” Legend said, with a sort of finality to his voice. “Not if we’re following on-pattern. Warriors or Wind, no matter where it goes- for now, unless we’re missing something, we should, finally, be freed from constantly wading through sand.”
“Oh, this is my time,” Warriors said, turning a circle, fresh out of the portal, a little bit of suppressed excitement in his voice. “It’s been a while since we’ve been to mine!”
A hand tapped him on the arm. “Hey.” Legend said, no particular emotion discernable in his tone or expression.
Warriors glanced down to meet his eyes. “Mm?”
“Warriors.”
“Yes? What is it?” The small smile that had appeared on Warriors’ face began to look a bit tense around the edges.
“Do you want to explain,” Legend said, very pleasantly, and very dangerously, “Exactly. Where we are?”
Warriors blinked.
Looked up, at the rest of the group, who were inspecting the landscape with varying levels of appraisal and enthusiasm.
“Rocks,” Wild noted, gently butting the toe of his boot against one. “I’ll take rocks. It’s not sand.”
“Reminds me of the ground around Kakariko,” Twilight said, thumbs hooked in his belt. He squinted up at the sky. “Not as hot here, either.”
A tug to the scarf alerted Warriors to the body standing on his other side. He turned away, glad for an excuse to escape Legend’s unblinking stare.
He was, instead, met with Wind’s unblinking stare.
“Warriors,” Wind said. “This is a desert. You said you didn’t have a desert.”
Warriors blinked again.
“... I don’t have a desert?”
“Okay,” Legend said from behind him. “So please explain as to why it looks like you do.”
“This was a battlefield!” Warriors defended himself, throwing his hands in the air, turning back to Legend. “These are rocks! Not sand!”
“Empty,” Wild slid into the conversation. “No enemies.”
“Flat,” Twilight said helpfully.
“No trees,” Time sighed, a little mournfully.
“Hot,” Hyrule added.
Heads turned.
Sky looked back down from where he’d been looking up at the clouds, and blinked back. “... Is this a desert? I thought it looked more like a flatter version of the Eldin region.”
“It’s not a desert,” Warriors said, exasperated. “Just a part of the land that fell victim to too many curses and battle magics being worked over its surface to have recovered yet. Look, we’re out of the desert, isn’t that a good thing?”
“From a desert to a wasteland, then,” Four observed, crouching down to pick up a stone, turning it over in his hands. “Is that really an upgrade?”
“At least it’s not a desert,” Warriors pointed out, even more exasperated.
Legend flailed an arm wildly out at the vast expanse of scorched, stony nothing. “It may as well be!”
It should be no surprise that very little progress proceeded to be made as the sun slowly moved along the sky, as heated debate fell into bickering, the exhaustion of unrelenting desert travel and weeks of heat and carefully restricted water doing a number on tempers and personal restraint.
It should also be no surprise that the noise ended up attracting a number of nearby monsters- nor that, in the manner of these sort of things, that following the trail of these monsters ended up leading back to a hidden cave.
And so as it goes, that leads one to expect- and similarly, not be surprised- by the fact that the cave was full to the brim with even more monsters.
And of course, behind those monsters, there was, as one could expect, that towering, swirling, dark portal, tucked in among the shadows of the cave.
“This one,” the decisive voice of Legend said, their Veteran turning on Wind to pin him in place. Their Sailor looked back, impatience setting him to just about rocking where he stood, shifting his weight back and forth on his heels. “We’ve gone through everyone else’s so far, so that means, probably, most likely, this is going to lead to Wind’s time.”
“There is no desert in your time. Right, Wind?” The intensity of the stares, boring into the very soul they beheld, may have been considered intimidating to someone who hadn’t been previously stared down by both The King of Evil and also a giant evil bird. The giant evil bird had had the scarier stare.
“There’s no wastelands in your time,” Legend added in, somehow staring even more intensely. This was a man truly brought to the edge. “Right, Wind?”
“There’s not enough land to have wastelands,” Wind pointed out. “And Wild said deserts need mountains ranges to form. I don’t think we even have mountains? Other than Dragon Roost Island, but Wild said volcanoes don’t count.”
“Mountain ranges?” Legend said, a bit blankly, then shook it off. “Wait, no, not the point.”
“The point,” Four jumped in, helpfully pushing things back on track, “is- Wind. Wind’s time. We’re going to Wind’s time, right? We all agree we’re probably going to Wind’s time? Which is almost entirely ocean?”
Sounds of agreement make the course through the nodding heads.
“Which means that this,” full-arm gesturing, “should be the portal that lets us, finally, leave behind the desert- and every bit of land that resembles it even wasteland yes Legend,” Four finished in a rush as Legend started to open his mouth.
“Right?”
“Oh, hey! I know this place! It really is my time!”
Nothing but silence followed Wind’s proclamation for a long moment.
“... Wind.” Legend said, very calmly. Very casually.
“Mmmm?”
“You live in the middle of the ocean.”
“Yup.”
“A vast expanse of water. Almost landless.”
“... Uh-huh.”
“A humid land, you’d call it? One where, as a general rule, things are much more wet than dry?”
“Sounds right, yeah.”
“Then what the fuck,” Legend exploded, swinging an arm out in violent indicator of the sandy pit they were all sitting in, “do you call this??”
“Boss arena,” Wind proclaimed, hopping to his feet and slapping at his tunic, wiggling a bit in place with his face scrunched up as sand trickled down his undershirt. “It shouldn’t be here, but it’s a boss arena! Not a desert!”
“It sure does seem like a slice of one! And what do you mean, it ‘shouldn’t be here’?!”
“Well, all the sands went away after I defeated the Molgera-”
“What Molgera?!”
As if on cue, a faint tremble rolled through the sands underneath them.
That their collective group all scrambled to their feet and started edging away from the center of the room says quite a bit about their shared past experiences, and the instincts those experiences have, through time and lived-legend alike, left them with.
And just as well, for about two seconds later, the sands erupted in a great geyser: shouting, bodies scattered through the room, catching up against the walls, slipping on loose sand, swords coming free from scabbards.
The roar vibrated through the air, loud enough to shiver in the bones.
“That Molgera!” Wind yelped.
“Okay,” Legend said, with an air of finality. His hair was escaping the short little tail he’d pulled it back in earlier, straggling bits sticking out, some to his face, thanks to the ocean spray. “This is, inarguably, not a desert. We had to sail, over the ocean, to get here. This portal is not in the middle of a dungeon. This is a very green island, and of the enemies we just fought, none of them we know to regularly frequent deserts.” He took a deep breath.
Seven and a half sets of eyes looked back at him attentively.
“... I’m not going to say it,” Legend decided. “Let’s just go through the portal.”
“TREES!” Wind’s giddy cry was the first thing to come through, even before vision, for the last group of Links exiting the portal.
“Oh thank Ordona,” the sheer relief in Twilight’s voice suggested that he was almost on the edge of tears. “Oh, woods, I missed you.”
Hyrule was, almost lovingly, stroking the bark of a tree. Wind had flopped to lay face-down and spread-eagled on the grass, as though trying to become one with it. Time was leaning against a different tree, a mossy one, eyes closed, forehead pressed against the moss.
Wild had vanished entirely. Probably up a tree, judging by the scuffling sounds and occasional falling bit of twig and leaf.
“I thought I would never see a leaf ever again,” Sky just about whispered, almost half-cuddling a bush. “Look. Look at all the leaves.”
“I will never complain about woodland ambushes ever again,” Warriors’ voice was almost reverential, and he sat a bit too heavily on a rock covered with patches of moss and lichen. “I will take woodland ambushes. I will take endless bokoblins spilling from between the trees. I do not want to see a Bokoblin with a stun baton or a ReDead ever again.”
“If we end up in a desert again,” Legend said, voice distant, body language that of one who is deeply exhausted finally, finally having found a moment of respite. “I’m leaving. I’m just leaving. I don’t need portals to travel through time, I just need to go to Labrynna and talk to maybe two people. Who needs portals leading to infinite deserts? Nobody, that’s who.”
“If we end up in a desert again,” Hyrule said, a bit dreamily, “I will set it on fire.”
That the only response that statement elicited was nothing but enthusiastic, whole-hearted agreement said more than any words could ever hope to achieve.