A Grain of Gold in a Sea of Sand

The Tantari Desert. Some might call it as much of an enemy as the Armies of Darkness that Ganon commanded. The desert surely claims many lives, but there are those who become something more out of it—survivors. In the years following Ganon’s immense destruction, shattering the lands of the south, to be a survivor was more valuable than a house full of riches. Ganon’s fires left the remnants of the Hylian and Gerudo people crushed to bits and then blown into the wind. But sometimes amidst a desert, there is a grain of golden sand, vanishing if not protected, but a thing of great value to anyone who would keep it safe.

In the southernmost regions of the Tantari Desert, built into the impassible rocky crags of the mountains, a rare band of survivors existed. For the last fifteen years they had hidden themselves in a small outpost of their creation, separated from the rest of the world for survival, be it friend or foe. Perhaps they were not the only band who had fled from Ganon, when the darkness fell, but they had proven themselves against the storm. They had survived even in a desert where death seemed to now permanently make its home.

Mostly Gerudo made up the outpost, for they are most at home in that wasteland, but also too some Hylians, remnants of Rauru and even the rare survivor from the ploy to rebuild Ruto. Numbering in only the low hundreds, these men and women stood as some of the bravest and most resilient survivors to withstand the blanket of darkness that Ganon unfolded over the land. While not without resolve, the Gerudo people had long since given up digging for gold in the sand, buried by the fires of Ganon fifteen years ago.

Sometimes, though, you find a possession has not been lost but rather hidden.

Atop a jutting rock that they used for a lookout perch, two Gerudo women sat next to each other, their eyes keen on the horizon, especially now that the sun was setting. Ganon had never found their small outpost, nestled in the mountains to the south of the desert, but their eyes never fell asleep. The Gerudo were a proud people, but they kept mostly to themselves. Some said no goal was worthy of their passion, others claimed they simply waited for one to lead them, and others still claimed it was merely their way. One thing was certain, though. Despite their seclusion, they put their first and their best foot forward. Those two women would die before let something slip by their notice.

As smooth as a soft wind touching down on your skin, though, one of them stirred, touching the other Gerudo’s arm lightly, whispering as if she did not want to hear her own voice, “Aveil, look there, to the north.”

The one called Aveil shifted as well, changing her position to see what her fellow lookout had spotted. Three dots had breached the top of a sand dune, perhaps a mile away, and appeared to indeed be headed toward their outpost. Aveil’s breath caught in her mouth at the sight—the outpost was not a known location to anyone who did not already live there. All foragers and scouts had already returned in for the day, yet these three clearly had a direction in mind. Fumbling for her looking glass, she quickly leveled it to the horizon, shading the lens as best she could to stop the sun from glinting off it.

Two were women, Gerudo by the looks of their clothing and skin color. Aveil couldn’t distinguish all of their features, but that much was clear. But the other one—the other one must have been a man. He stood easily a head taller than each of the women with shoulders twice as broad. Despite the heat, the man wore a cloak that disguised all features beyond just his figure. The Gerudo held a strange relationship with men, and that cloak made Aveil’s stomach quiver. What was curious, though, or maybe just disturbing, was that he took the lead. What sort of Hylian would two Gerudo follow so obediently?

“We need to alert the outpost,” Aveil breathed, trying to suppress fear from reaching her voice. Hylians sometimes followed Ganon, and they could turn into worse monsters than even the most disgusting moblins. She had wasted too much time already. By the time she could tell every fighting woman to grab a saber those three would likely already be at the gates, and it might be too late. Trying to keep her nerves calmed, the woman bolted from the lookout to warn the rest of the outpost.

Breathe. She felt like such a child, having to remind herself to keep a steady breath. Not even twenty minutes had passed since the first sighting, and now every woman in the outpost fingered a weapon anxiously, standing just inside the crude stone wall that had been constructed for some measure of protection. Those three shapes were figures now, no more than two hundred feet away from where Aveil stood at the entrance. Not only was the man still hooded, he still led! She resisted the urge to grasp the comforting hilts of her own weapons. One hundred feet now, and they had not so much as announced themselves.

Aveil cleared her throat, her mouth suddenly feeling drier than the Tantari Desert itself. If these people would not announce themselves, then she would demand they do so.

“Who do you call yourself, travelers—friend or foe? If you’re with us, unmask and name yourself!” Her voice was loud, but the desert wind swallowed the echo, and her words seemed to fall flat. With great effort now, she kept her composure as solid as the most powerful Gerudo woman could. She was the leader of this outpost—she had survived countless battles! When Ganon’s arm had struck down on these lands, she had survived when others had not. Her blades and her mind were sharp, and her posture allowed no room to assume little of her. And yet… this trio acted as if every ounce of confidence was theirs to command, and Aveil felt her own slipping away.

Silence invaded. She would not show so much as a drop of cowardice to these strangers, even if two were Gerudo. No, she would serve her duty to protect this outpost if the approaching group would not communicate. As she began reaching for her weapons, though, one of the two women raised her hands above her head, forming a triangle between her thumbs and index fingers—a sign of peace, in some cultures of the Gerudo. It would keep weapons sheathed for now, but little more. Aveil felt relief flood into her at the gesture, and she angrily stomped out that emotion too. She needed to gain control of herself if she would control this situation!

Twenty feet, now, and they seemed to make no motion to slow down even with her standing in the way. One of the Gerudo women traveling with the man jerked her head to the side, though, looking directly at Aveil, as if to tell her to stand aside. Indignation swelled up in the woman’s chest, but before she could even think to lash out with it, the man was practically on top of her. Aveil maneuvered as gracefully as she could, but it was more like scrambling to get out of the way. As they passed, though, one of the Gerudo women held back for a moment, and Aveil stopped as well.

This woman couldn’t be more than a handful of years older than Aveil, but she seemed almost motherly in her attitude. As she put a hand on Aveil’s shoulder, the leader of the outpost caught a flicker of a smile from a stranger. Not a gloating smile—no, a jubilant one. If she wasn’t so composed, Aveil would’ve said the woman might be about to jump up and down with glee. However, she spoke quietly and quickly, before hurrying to catch up with the man again, “He will not unveil out in the open, right now. Please, follow us.”

Who were they?

It was all Aveil could do to simply follow them like a sheep. She hoped it wouldn’t be to the slaughter. Why was she so unnerved by three strangers? Two of them seemingly friendly. She delivered a sharp motion to her other sisters, calling them to follow too. The tension was nearly palpable in the outpost now, but no sister dared stand in the stranger’s path. It took all her will to keep her confidence, but regardless of what her face would show, it was obvious she had just lost control of the situation.

With a prayer to the goddesses that she was not about to bring death on her outpost for inaction, the woman followed those three travelers. She wanted to give a signal, to tell some of the sisters to climb to perches with their bows, but her hands remained impotently at her sides. There wasn’t far to walk in the outpost, anyway, given that it was quite small and nestled into the rocks at the foot of mountains. Before a minute had passed, the three strangers, leading the rest of the fighting Gerudo force, had arrived into central portion of the outpost; a ‘square’ if you could call it that.

Most of the important buildings surrounded this area, and already the elderly and those who could not fight had come out to see what was going on. A number of buildings stretched two or even three stories above the ground, built into the stone as the Gerudo were skilled at. But the space itself was still small, and with every woman in the outpost present, it felt increasingly smaller. As the last of them filed into the space, Aveil realized no one, save those who had come with him, stood within twenty feet of the strange man; all the warriors were clustered at the entrance to the square in an odd-shaped semi-circle.

The wind rustled that man’s cloak, and she felt the stillness sink in. Everyone’s nerves seemed taut enough to play a tune off of, but she found she could not act in the strength she was so accustomed to. What was going on? Usually they just locked up trespassers the first chance they got and asked questions later. She knew she was not the only one who felt strangely powerless, though. Hardly any of the sisters even touched the hilts of their weapons, and no one carried a look of menace on their face.

One of the traveling women spoke sharply and suddenly, though, and both of them stepped away from the man. Her voice carried the maturity of leadership, but the words bent all reason until it seemed to snap.

“Gerudo and Hylians alike, kneel, for you are in the presence of a king!”

Aveil’s heart stopped beating for a moment. A king? Treason! The Gerudo had but one king, and only then was he birthed every hundred years. All had rejoiced at the birth of Mahirid, eighteen ago, and all had wept when Ganon’s wave of darkness had murdered him when he was hardly ten years old. The women, though, seemed to think otherwise. Both had turned their backs on the warriors that clogged up in the entrance to the square, and in a moment they were on their knees, a position only reserved for Gerudo royalty.

In that instance of pure confusion, the Gerudo of the outpost looked at each other, unsure what to do next. Some of them looked like their knees were going to collapse, but so far no one had actually knelt yet besides those who came with him. Aveil felt a tinge of pride that her own warriors would submit so easily to an imposter. Her heart quivered, though, as the man raised his hands to grasp at the cloak. Aveil gripped her weapons now, and the man threw the garment off his back. As it fell onto the sandstones that covered the square, Aveil’s heart seized in her chest.

He looked even taller now, without the cloak covering his entire frame. There could be no mistaking that red hair and sun-blackened skin, darker than most women of the Gerudo. His shoulders were broad, and all that confidence he had siphoned from the rest of the outpost seemed to glow around the man. Even when she couldn’t see him, Aveil had been intimidated by him, but now that her eyes could touch his face, she felt like a leaf in a raging river. There was no hope to resist this man—obedience was his birthright.

Aveil had no notion as to how he survived, when all else had claimed he was dead. The Gerudo as people were survivors, but this? The woman had no choice but to fall to her knees; her king demanded her homage. From her posture on one knee, she dared to look at the man’s face, blushing slightly when she realized that he had already been looking at her. As leader of this small Gerudo outpost, she was honored to let his addressing words wash over her.

“I am Mahirid, and I am your Lost King. Hidden under a cloud of darkness but emerging now that my time has come,” he began, and her world seemed to fall apart into pieces as surely as they had done when Ganon invaded. Only this time there was hope in that shattering. Booming off the rock walls around the outpost, the bass of the man’s voice seemed to knock down any defenses in a person’s mind. You could almost live off the confidence that came off the man just from speaking.

There could be no mistaking that accent, even if you had spent hardly any time around the Gerudo people. Already to Aveil, her world hung on his next word, “On this day I reclaim my birthright as King of the Gerudo people. On this ground I make my pledge to my people, that while I still live, I will not cease fighting Ganon until he loosens his grip on Southern Hyrule! For too long has that monster cradled these lands in his dark grasp. The Hylians have had their day and failed to reclaim this land they would call theirs. Does it take more than fifteen years to recover from what Ganon did in just one? On this day I begin to build my army. I will free my own people from this oppression; the desert will be theirs again. It will be my force, not the Hylian’s, that will route the monster out of Death Mountain, and the Gerudo will be the tip of the spear.”

Hope after so long? Aveil had to remind herself to breathe yet again. She wanted to cheer at his words, she was sure all of them did, but the voice to do it exploded like butterflies in her stomach. She could only stare in awe at her king. His eyes caught hers once more, though, and he motioned her to rise. On legs as solid as ChuChu jelly, Aveil rose, meeting his eyes all the while. His voice threatened to bring her to her knees again, but she found stability as he spoke, “I will use this outpost to prepare, and when I am ready all those who can fight will journey with me to begin the reclaiming of Hyrule.”

It was all the woman could do but to nod dumbly at the man. Give him her outpost? She had never imagined such honor as that, to serve her king. She worked her tongue furiously though, to ask a question, refusing to go dumbfounded in his presence forever. Perhaps it would come across as rude or disrespectful, but the questioned as heavily on her mind as it did on anyone else’s. The words were not as courageous or powerful as she would have liked, but at least she did not stammer, “But why here? Why now?”

Her outpost was resilient, a survivor if there ever was one, but their numbers were no army. If this man wanted to defeat Ganon, then why not rally all the Gerudo to the Eastern Caves and destroy the monster’s entrenchments in Rauru. They had had little word from the outside in years, but she was sure… She was sure it could not be as bad as this implied. The man’s voice threatened to bring her to her knees again just by the sheer ecstasy of being acknowledged—she had never been this owned by a man. Never! But his words remolded her world again in an instance, even with simplicity, “Ganon’s grasp on the desert is much worse than you fear. Your outpost represents the last standing Gerudo establishment on this side of Rauru.

“But the eyes of darkness are shifting. Many have hoped to believe that the monster himself is dead, slain by this Hylian Hero, but this land is certainly ruled, and these moblins do not answer to the King of Hyrule. As Ganon’s attention shifts, I will lead my people to greatness once more. This land will prosper!” The Gerudo, finally recovering their nerves it seemed, roared in approval, and Aveil felt a smile creep onto her face. There was hope at last.

One thing still unsettled her, though, and she dared to ask it. “We will not be going to the Eastern Caves then immediately, will we? To the Gerudo Fortress? We have thousands of blades there, savage for victory.” The option was enticing, but she doubted Mahirid would do it now, if he had not already. What was more important was the alternative. What did the man have in mind?

The Gerudo King shook his head, a slight look of regret passing over his face for only a moment before he responded, “Not with these numbers—I will not pass so close to the town of Rauru before I have even begun building this army. No, we journey to the south, to the dead lands of Ikana.”