#yeah. making it way deeper than it actually is. bellum meeting linebeck in the middle in some form before just yknow. fucking with him

[waywardsalt]

>:3

[wandering-chronicler-blog]

The Wolf of Farore - Chapter 35

An Ongoing Zelda/Witcher Fusion Fic - Updates Wednesdays/Thursdays

War has come to The Kingdom of Hyrule.  The people cry for a savior as monsters and spirits stalk the once green fields of the provinces.  Famine grips the populace as the Gerudo Tribes and their blin allies strike along the borders.  Hope for peace begins to drown in the blood spilled in No Man’s Land.  But Hyrule doesn’t need another hero.  It needs a professional.

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CHAPTER 35:  AN ANCIENT EVIL

A couple hours had passed since the attack.  Link sat in the office of Chieftain Komali along with Medli and Linebeck.  Aveil, a couple guards, two of the pirates and the hylian girl with her hair braded in a pair of pigtails sat on the other side of the room.  They all stayed in their groups along the walls and cahirs that were there, keeping quiet as they waited.  Behind the chieftain’s desk was a pair of rito guards with their arms folded.  The chieftain himself was out the door in the back of the room on a balcony, speaking with a far older rito.  The chieftain wore a burgundy tunic with white slacks under it while the elder had a long red robe that dragged on the ground. It also bore stylized markings of runes along its hem.

 Link glanced over to the others there.  The guards who had fought at the docks were exhausted.  One used his spear to prop himself up while a zora sat on a crate that had been dragged in bent over.  He heard snips of their conversation, worry in the voices that this was just the start of something worse.  He couldn’t hear what the pirates were saying, but the girl caught his eye for a moment as she removed bolts from one of her crossbow’s hoppers.  Looking up, Aveil was leaned against the wall.  Her left leg was propped up against it and she was watching the pirates.  

 To Link’s immediate right though was Medli, head in her hands.  She rubbed her eyes a little, but made no effort to sit up.  Next to her was Linebeck, who had seemingly fallen asleep against the wall in his chair.  Link gently put a hand on Medli’s shoulder and gave a sympathetic pat.  She looked up slightly, deep red eyes still watered with tears.

 “He did it to protect everyone,” Link said.  “Getting hurt like that was a real possibility.”

 “I know,” she said with a sniff.  “And I know he’ll recover, Valoo isn’t an ordinary dragon.  But I still saw my patron mangled by a monster.  And they attacked us in broad daylight.”

 “They attacked us like that in the seas too,” Aveil said, not looking away from the pirates. “Middle of the day.  Sun out.”

 “We only had a few of them though to deal with.  And… And that massive-eyed beast was with them!  I’ve never seen anything like it!”

 “We crippled the creature,” Link said.  He pulled his canteen from his back and offered it to Medli.  “If we hadn’t have done that, they both could’ve died.”

 The rito handmaiden looked at the canteen for a second before taking it, unscrewing the lid. “Still…  I wish we could’ve done more.”  She took a drink then.  “We’re going to need some extra help too if we’re going to the Tower of The Gods. Unless we leave quickly and are able to avoid another attack like this.”

 “I’m still waiting on my armor to be repaired,” Link said.  “And we’ll need to get some more silver and other tools to deal with the geozards.”

 “I’m sure Komali would be willing to supply you.”

 “Hoping so.  But there was a lot of damage down there.  They’re going to need supplies.”

 “Gonna have to repair the piers too,” Aveil added.  She watched as the girl came over to them.  She herself looked a little beat up from the fight with a bandage over her arm and dirt on her face.

 Link glanced up at her, seeing she held two crossbow bolts.  They were his silver ones.  “Here,” she said.  “I didn’t need all of them when help came.”  She glanced at Aveil for a moment.

 “Keep them,” he said. “Just in case.”

 “Silver’s expensive though.”

 “I can handle myself. And they might be coming back.”

 “She can handle herself pretty well too,” Aveil said.  “Took down nine of those things while we were holding the path up there with the other two guards here.”  She motioned to the zora and rito guards who were also in the room.  “If you could pull those sort of shots with a recurve, you’d be a heartseeker in The Tribes, Aryll.”

Link’s jaw fell open as he looked the young woman over.  “I…” He smiled a little.  “Do you have a telescope?  With a pair of seagulls drawn into the top?”  Medli had said she was there, but the last time he’d seen her was before he’d gone through The Change.  Looking closer now though he saw the girl who’d hidden behind him so long ago.

 “Yeah, but…”  She glanced down and then back at him.  “What does-  Wait.”  She tilted her head.  “Link?”

 He looked up at her. “You get my letters?”

 She dropped bolts.  She laughed, a massive smile across her face as the bolts clattered on the floor.  The sister he hadn’t seen in over a decade threw her arms around him.  “Nayru’s Love!  It’s you!  What are you doing here?!”

 He hugged back with a grin on his face.  “Helping a friend.”  Link took a deep breath.  “I’m glad you’re okay.  When the war started it stopped any correspondence.”

 “Did you get mine?” She pulled away, letting go, but still smiling.

 “I didn’t.  I was deployed to the Castor Wilds. Until…”  He cleared his throat.  “I’ll tell you later.  It’s a long story.”

 “Against the blins?”

 He nodded and looked back at Medli.  “Aryll, this is Medli.”

 “Hi.”  Aryll offered a hand.

 The rito sniffed once and composed herself before shaking Aryll’s hand.  “Good to finally meet you,” she said with a sad smile.

 “Oh, he mentioned you in the letters!  You helped him on a job for Hyrule out here.”

 “More than one, but yes. Your brother has always been a friend to us.  I’m glad to see wanting to help people runs in the family too.”

 “Yeah.  I heard something was going on with the couriers so I found a way to get up here to try and get letters to people.  At least in the islands.”  Aryll looked back to her brother.  “So, what’re you helping them with?”

 “Getting to the bottom of where the couriers are,” he said.

 “The Crown wants you to do that?”

 “I’m…”  He let out a sigh and shook his head.  Link was about to tell her that he was no longer with The Crown when two more pirates entered.  One looked fairly ordinary with a striped shirt and bandana on his head. The other though, made him go silent. “I’ll tell you later.  Meet me when we’re done.”

  “Are we ready to actually talk about what happened out there?” the second new arrival asked. Link watched her very closely as Aryll walked to the woman’s side.  “And what in Demise’s name those things were?”  She wore a blue vest over her shirt and pants that looked they had once been white if not for the black blood staining them.  She’d wrapped a bandana around her arm, blood staining it from a wound, and put her hair up in a messy bun.

 “I heard one of the handmaidens call them geozards,” the zora said.  He rubbed his nose and cleared his throat.

 “Never heard of ‘em before.”

 “Not surprised,” Medli said. “They’re supposed to myths.”

 She turned to look at Medli, stopping briefly to look at Link.  Their eyes met and he focused.  He couldn’t let her know.  He did see the captain’s jaw fall open slightly though before another voice interrupted them.

 “Every myth has a grain of truth, dear Medli,” someone said.  It was the older rito.  He walked into the room followed by the chieftain.  “They are primal zoras.  Beings that live far deeper than their more amiable cousins.”  He motioned slowly to the guard in the room.  “They have had no need to change for they are content roaming the Abyssal Plains.  The ones who attacked us however…  Are unnatural.  Altered by magic to the point they are tainted.”

 “We figured that,” one of the pirates said.  “So we got some witch out there making these things.”

 “It’s too powerful,” Link said.  “The skill needed to make something like that is intense.  I don’t know of any mages who would be capable of it.”  That was a lie and the pirate captain raised an eyebrow slightly when he’d said it.

 “I’ve met a couple who could,” Aveil said.  “I can count on one hand how many witches might be able to alter a creature to make it that dangerous and full of magic.  Two of them are with The Tribes, one is dead and the third was last seen decades ago in the Castor Wilds.”

 “You can never trust a gerudo though,” the pirate grumbled.  He shook his head as he leaned back in his chair.  “They’re just thieves, murderers and whores.”

 Link saw the viper’s glare lock with the pirate.  He caught Aveil’s hand twitch slightly and turn.  If she had wanted to, she could’ve grabbed her hookshot and pulled them onto her sword.  He was sure it’d all be in one fluid action as well.

 “Hey, you wanna try pissing off one of the people who helped keep the island from being overrun?” the captain snapped at her companion.  

  “Captain Tetra,” Chieftain Komali said as he pulled the chair out from his desk.  “If your crew cannot be civil, I’m going to have to ask you all to wait in the commons room.”  She elbowed the man who’d made the remark.  He looked to the elder rito, who thanked him and took a seat. “Besides, one of your crew fought right beside her without an issue to keep the geozards from reaching the caverns. Aveil has given us no reason so far to question her words.”

 The elder cleared his throat.  “If we may continue?”

 “Please do,” Tetra said after glaring at her subordinate.  Link fought the urge to smirk slightly, knowing the look the pirate was getting too well.  She turned a little then to face the elder, looking relaxed, but he caught the tenseness and alert gaze.  

 Medli nudged Linebeck then to wake him up.  He snorted and shook his head violently as he sat up.  “That’s my treasure!” he said.  “I found it!”  He blinked a couple times, seemingly realizing where he was and cleared his throat.

 “As I was saying…” the elder said.   “The culprit is the grain of truth in the old myths.  From the evidence we’ve gathered we can reason it is Bellum.”

 “Bellum?!” Medli nearly shouted.  “With respect High Priest Zepps, Bellum’s been dead for thousands of years!”

 “What is a Bellum?” the zora asked.

 “An ancient demon,” Medli said.

 “More than that,” Zepps said.  “He was an old god; a being that predated the creation of the world by The Golden Goddesses. He had a place in the depths of the ocean and a place in the natural order of things.  Because of the laws of nature though, he came into conflict with others.  Namely the Ocean King and Sky Spirit.”

 “I’d assume then that Bellum was defeated,” Tetra said.

 “At great cost,” Komali said.  “The old stories passed down by The High Priest of Valoo to his attendants are the closest record we have.  They say that Bellum had a following on a great continent.   And his servants crafted suits of armor that would harvest the living for sacrifice.  The conflict grew.  Lives were lost.  The Ocean King and Sky Spirit had to do something as Bellum’s influence spread through the continent.”

 “If I recall the stories right, it was not just his influence that spread,” Medli said.

 “You’d be right, child,” the elder said.

 “What happened?” Link asked. He leaned forward a little and picked up the bolts his sister had dropped on the floor earlier, but did not leave his chair.

 “Well…” Medli began, “if I recall right, Nayru wept for the loss of life and her tears flooded the continent.  Washed away all the blood so that there could be a fresh start.”

 “That’s one of the Hyrulean retellings actually,” the elder replied.  “What happened was his phantoms nearly cleansed the entire continent of life, absorbing it.  In the end, the only thing the Ocean King and Sky Spirit could do was undermine Bellum. The Sky Spirit taunted and distracted him, while the Ocean King dove under the continent.  Bellum had wrapped his many tentacles into the continent so better to feed off of the life there.  And thus, with just a little trickery, the entire continent was brought down upon the god.  All that remains of it are the scattered mountain tops and some of the islands. Outset, Mercay, Gust…  Most of the larger islands in the trade circle are the edges of the continent’s mountain range.”

 Link saw his sister gasp and look shocked at the tale.  “An entire continent?” she asked.

 “Yes.”

 “How?  And if Bellum is under it all?”  She shook her head and looked at the floor.

 “What she means to say is how could this thing survive an entire continent being dropped on top of it?” Tetra asked.  She bowed her head slightly at the question.  Link caught it and remembered another time she’d done that.  “Even if it did, it’d be buried under goddess-only-knows how many tons of rock.”

 “A dead god can still dream, captain,” Aveil said.  “Some of The Tribes believe that Demise’s tomb is in the heart of the Haunted Wasteland. It is his hate that makes the sands shift and why there are so many monsters in the region if you believe local legend.”

 “Anyone actually been out to see it?”

 “One or two witches have made it there.”

 “Mmm…”  Tetra looked back to the elder.  “So why use the geozards then?”

 “Simple, I’d assume,” Komali said.  “He’s not at full strength.  But strong enough to influence the things in the depths.  He can’t make his servants yet so has to utilize the local resources as it were.”

 “Meaning twisting the geozards,” Link answered.  “Be simple for something like Bellum then.”

 “Indeed,” the elder said.

 “I had a feeling this was all connected,” Aveil muttered.  “So… Bellum is in The Abyssal Plains in the center of the islands.”

 “Looking that way,” Link said.  “If not for the attack on the island, I’d say we’d need proof, but it looks like he’s trying to remove potential threats to his return.  Logically, we can reason Valoo is a descendant of the Sky Spirit.”

 “That’d be right,” the elder said.

 “This is way out of my pay grade,” Aveil said.

 “No one’s asked you to go after an old god,” Tetra said.

 “Yet,” Linebeck added with a yawn.

 “Actually, that is what myself and High Priest Zepps are asking,” Komali said.  He walked in front of the desk, hands behind his back.  “Before you arrived from the docks and cleanup below, we spoke at length with Ambassarod Tolec.  We’ve agreed this is not something we can wait on.  Bellum represents a threat to the entire South Seas. Regardless of what else is going on, he needs to be dealt with.”  He looked at the collected group.  “He is on his way back to the Craetor Depths and Labrynna to campaign for assistance. Before he left, we quickly drew up some contracts.  I am willing to hire each of you to find a way to find the zora who was captured by the pirates in the region.  Get information from him and then, if possible, find a way to stop Bellum’s raids from continuing.”

 “You’re what?” Tetra asked. She had a look of disbelief on her face. “You’re asking us to go after a goddess-damned demon god at the bottom of the ocean.”  Tetra looked to the rest of the group there.  “A group of pirates, a couple sellswords and a disgraced Labrynnan privateer after a dead god?”  In spite of her tone, he caught the look in her eyes.  There was a sparkle and a plan already forming in.  He wondered if what Komali said had given her the idea or not.

 “How much are we talking?” Linebeck asked.  Link could already see some of the greed in his eyes.  He shook his head at the smuggler. “What?  I’ve said it before.  There’s nothing that says we can’t do some good and get paid well doing it!”

 Aveil began to laugh a little.  “He’s got a point,” she said.  “And if Bellum regains its power, we wouldn’t be around long enough to enjoy it anyways.” She looked back at the chieftain. “I’ll take a look.  I make no promises until I’ve seen those contracts.”

 “Medli brought me in hoping I could help,” Link said.  “And you guys have always helped me.  So you can count on me.”

 “If the price is right, me too,” Linebeck said.

 “You really thinking about your wallet after hearing all this?” Medli asked him.

 Linebeck pulled his flask out of his coat and opened it.  “You two are going to need a boat to travel still.  And I have a contract too with Aveil.”  He pointed at her.  “Though we both agreed on ‘escape clauses’ in case we needed to make ourselves scarce…” He took a drink then.

 “We did,” she answered. “Which is more than I can say for the one with Remor.”

  The chieftain looked to the other side of the room.  “What about you, captain?” he asked.  “Can we count on your crew?”

 Link watched her as she looked at the floor for a minute.  He then saw her shake her head and look back up.  For a moment, he caught a sorrow in her eyes.  It was replaced with a mostly emotionless look. The same one he’d seen a couple times since the war had started, but he wasn’t going to let on.  “We’re just pirates,” Tetra said.  “It’s out of our paygrade and we’ve no interest in going after dreaming gods at the bottom of the sea.”

 “So you’re not going to?” Ayrll asked.

 “Look, Aryll, you might’ve come here to do some work for the rito and we’d give you passage as you played mailwoman on the islands we passed, but this is not what we do.”  She looked back at Komali.  “Even if we wanted to help, our main mast got destroyed in the fight!  We can’t go anywhere at any reasonable speed until it’s fixed.  We also lost six people to those things.”

 “I’d like a little payback, captain,” the larger of the pirates said.  “Those bastards whipped us.  Nobody gets away with that shit.”

 She looked back at him. “I’d like to as well, but this sounds like a really fast way to die.”  Tetra looked back at the chieftain.  Link saw her expression slightly change and how she shifted her weight. She’d figured something but wasn’t about to say it in front of an audience.  For a moment, she glanced over at him.  Link tried his best to keep a neutral expression.  “You really want our help, you’re gonna have to give us some incentive.”

 Aryll spoke up before anyone else could.  “The fact that if Bellum gets out and threatens everything isn’t incentive enough?!”

 “Like our gerudo friend said.  This is out of our pay grade.”

 “You said you needed incentive,” Zepps said.  “So how about you sit down and we discuss it?”  He shook his head a little and rubbed his left side a little as he shifted his weight.  The old rito looked the pirate captain in the eye.

 There was a moment of silence as the group was quiet.  “Well… No harm in discussing it at least,” she said.  “I need to talk to you about getting some letters into Hyrule anyways.”  Link smiled slightly at her words.  He knew exactly what she was doing now.  He held his tongue though as a small, sad smile came across his lips.  

 “When will we need to have a yes or no on those contracts?” Aveil asked.

 “By tonight,” Komali said. “Time’s of the essence.  We don’t know what some of his plans are or where he is.”

 “What makes you think the zora’s still alive too?”

 “We don’t know.”  He looked down.  “We need to find out.  From what Tolec said though, he’s a tough one.  Out of Termina’s Great Bay.”

 “Well, we’re already heading into the area and the Tower of the Gods as part of our plan,” Medli said. “So we’ll be able to check there. If not, there’s Mercay.  They’d probably be able to point us in the right direction.”

 “You know how dangerous it is there,” Zepps said.  “But be careful.”

 “Of course.”

 Komali looked to the rest of the group.  “If there is nothing else, we must discuss things with Captain Tetra and see if we can come to an agreement.”