Another Kind of Star in Another Kind of Night

It was curious, sometimes, how if you turned your back onto the rugged grass of the fields and looked up into the night sky, the world could seem so peaceful. The stars, uncountable by mortal measure, would wink at you merrily, and the moon dazzled across mile upon mile of unoccupied field lands. The ground was tough, the grass coarse, and lying down usually meant finding a rock between your shoulder-blades, but if you looked into the starry night sky on one of those perfectly clear nights… you might be able to forget it all.

You might be able to forget that pockmarked across that grasslands were often large swathes of burned territory. You might forget that corpses, long since buried, burned, or turned to dust, had littered these fields less than twenty years ago. You might not even remember that time that you lost everything that you owned, and by no good reason you escaped a moblin’s spear when your brother, friend, or neighbor did not. For the Hylians of the South, they had grown rugged in their resolve. Few now could look into that night’s sky and be numbed into peace. No, you didn’t even look at that wonderful moon for too long, because it might dim your vision, blinding you from an attack. That was how these men and women functioned, now.

Oh, the South had always declared themselves more durable than their pampered siblings to the north, safely hidden behind walls and mountains with hardly a worry in the world. What if Ganon had attacked the north? Many scoffed at the thought, doubting there would be anything but ash left. They were not survivors; they did not have it in them to face a torrent of darkness and stand to recount the tale. Among the Hylians in the South, luck, courage, and resolve were what kept you living. Anyone unfit for the challenge had been winnowed out by darkness, the chaff tossed into fiery winds.

But even with their resolve, their numbers had been reduced so far that to spot one now was a rare occurrence. Once their people had roamed these lands freely, spreading trade and good word across the entirety of it, establishing a world in a brand new venue. But now? Gremar nearly snarled aloud at the thought. Now they had nothing but what they fought for. The Hylian looked around the empty fields of Southern Hyrule. With the emptiness now, part of him wanted to slip into relaxation, to wonder at the stars and marvel at the vast amount of space stretching out before him. He knew better, though.

Once, in a life long since past, old Gremar had fancied himself a bit of a philosopher. He had dabbled with his intellect, even supposing once that Hylians, to become better, would have to rid themselves of the weak. The thought sounded repulsive now. The weak had been removed, and where were they? What was he now? He was just a Hylian man, stocky by most accounts and aging quicker than he would’ve liked. He’d been a young man before Ganon had come, free in his thoughts and ways, but now he felt inexorably older, and he could not count all that age simply to each sunrise and sunset; he’d become something different now.

The man scratched at his beard, unkempt since he had left on this journey northward from his home. He had a daughter back there, but she was becoming tough as nails, and it made the man proud. When you were out on the fields, though, it didn’t do to think about those things. Idly, his hand dropped from his beard to his neckline, fingering instead a necklace of accolades. Eleven moblins tusks, all punctured and strung up around his neck. They called him a veteran for that, but if anything that just made the man all that much more aware of his own mortality. Every one of those kills had threatened to end his own life, and he would not forget them. What he did now, though, wasn’t to spill blood but to prevent it. A strange thing—sometimes it was hard to remember there was any blood left to spill.

He glanced at the night sky again only briefly, clambering to his feet and keeping an eye on his surroundings all the while. The last two nights the moblins had taken to traveling under starlight instead of the sun. At first he had wondered if they suspected him tracking, but they still had yet to find him, and Death Mountain loomed ominously ahead of him. Over the last several weeks the Southern Fields had become abuzz with talk of Ganon’s forces moving. No one really knew why or where to, but patterns were changing. Sometimes they attacked more aggressively in locations, but other times they seemed warily uninterested in a fight, instead traveling, often northward.

About seven or eight days prior, Gremar couldn’t remember which, he had taken off on an expedition to get to the bottom of this. He had his kills, but most at range with his bow. At his heart, the man was a ranger and a tracker, and, for what felt like the first time in years, Ganon’s armies needed to be watched closely, because something had changed. Could they survive against this change, like they had against the last? Gremar wasn’t sure. Confident the coast was clear as it could be, the ranger took off into the night, following in the wake of the group of moblins here a couple hours earlier.

Tracking on the fields could be difficult, given how much open space there was. Getting too close to who you were following usually got you spotted and killed, but you didn’t want to let the beasts get too far either. He had succeeded, so far, but every step he took toward Death Mountain made that little knot in his stomach get tighter. It was night-time, and by the goddesses he knew it, but even during the day it felt bleak and dark. He knew the sun would rise in the morning, in his head he did, but sometimes it felt so difficult to believe it, especially this close to the mount of disaster itself.

Gremar wasted no time, though, despite those worries that crept up. Those were unavoidable, this far north. The man was a little older than forty, but these fields were still home, and he could still move quickly enough through them. Maps of the area had indicated a few more rises and falls, too high for him to see over, before reaching a large flat ground that extended all the way to what could be called the foot of the mountain range. As he approached, though, the man had to pause for a moment, not sure if he was hearing his own heart thudding or something different.

“Drums,” the man whispered to himself. He knew he had at least another mile to go, so if he could hear them from here…? Every step he took now beat them louder into his ears, but Gremar pressed on, pausing only long enough to be sure he wasn’t being reckless. In the end, though, this close to Death Mountain, nothing was safe unless it had a pig’s face, it seemed. His heart beat in his chest rhythmically, still under control but no longer comfortable. He ignored it and pressed on; only one hill remained.

Many had said Hylians were a race of great courage, but Gremar didn’t know if that was true anymore. Even as he faced that last hill, the man slowed down his pace. The dry, rocky dirt compressed beneath his feet, and those drums beat louder than ever. For the first time in his entire journey, the man wondered if he actually wanted to know why these moblins had been moving—why they had been heading north. He was scared of those drums, like any man in their right mind would be, but he plunged himself further into the darkness.

On his belly, Gremar crested the hill, and those war drums became almost deafening. Thousands upon thousands of monsters covered the expanse as far as the eye could see in the night, and every one of them carried a torch in their hand, lighting up the area as if it were daylight. The stars in the night sky became indistinguishable and the moon became faint as Gremar witnessed the hordes of monsters stirring, an innumerable quantity of beasts forming a line that spiraled all the way up the visible path into Death Mountain.

The columns of monsters seemed to stretch on endlessly, most of them bipedals organized by the scariest creatures Gremar had ever encountered. Darknuts and Stalfos kept the hordes in line, and in groups by the hundreds each of them began to depart for the mountain. The man watched in horror as the largest organization of Ganon’s minions mobilized in front of his very eyes. He didn’t know what they were planning, and he thanked the goddesses it would be impossible for him to find out. Ganon’s darkness was blacker than midnight here, and these torch bearing monsters were his stars. The night would continue long after the sun had risen.