Chapter Text
A/N: Hello! I welcome you all to the second installment in The Bonds that Break Us series, Child of the Mountain. This story was actually outlined before Gem of the Desert, fun fact. You do not need to read GotD to understand or enjoy CotM. They exist in parallel universes. As you may later see, Hylia is nice in this story, and not so nice in GotD. Either way, I love exploring the cultures and races of Breath of the Wild, and this is my view on the Gorons! I hope you enjoy, because Dadruk is amazing.
Massive thanks to Quasar Crew for drawing the artwork for this story! And I'd also like to extend a thanks to ShadowSylph for all the help in coming up with this concept and helping me worldbuild.
Daruk was a simple goron. He ate his gravel, helped out in the mines, and occasionally skived off work to relax in the hot springs. He had a fully grown son and was generally well-liked and respected among his people.
He also had the tendency to explore Hyrule. Unlike many of his brothers, he wasn’t too bothered by cooler temperatures. He stayed away from Hebra, but the other regions were pretty okay, as far as he was concerned, although Akkala could be a little wet at times. Sometimes he found some good rocks that the other gorons hadn’t gotten to yet, so that was always a bonus.
It was on one of these trips into Hyrule when he found something that would change his entire life. Or rather, some one .
He’d been exploring the area around the Lost Woods when he heard something that tugged at his heart—a child’s cry. He followed the sound dangerously close to the mists until he found a young hylian pebble, roughed up and covered in bruises, sitting in the grass.
“Hey, there Little Guy.” The kid startled badly, teary blue eyes locking onto the massive Goron with a tinge of fear.
Daruk sat himself on the ground as he wondered what could’ve happened. Children were precious—they were something to protect at all costs. Why would a hylian parent let their child walk around unprotected? And then not even answer their cries?
“Wh-who are you?” He asked timidly, glancing up at Daruk through wet thick lashes.
“I’m Daruk. I’m a goron.” He smiled, and the kid relaxed a bit.
“My name is Link. I’m five.” He held up his hand proudly, all five little fingers splayed out to proclaim his age for the world to see.
Five was awfully young for a hylian. He felt a frown tugging at his lips. “What’re you doin’ all alone out here, Link? It’s awfully cold and lonely. Where’s your parent?”
“Mother and father... aren’t here.” He answered slowly, carefully. His deliberate choice of words didn’t seem like something a child his age should do, and Daruk felt like something was going on that he couldn’t see. Was his parent dead? Oh, Daruk certainly hoped not. Maybe he had a second or third one that could take care of him?
“How many parents do you have?” He asked, and the pebble gave him a funny look.
“Hylians have two parents.” He answered after a moment.
Daruk laughed a bit. “I forgot about hylian traditions of pairs.” He admitted. “Gorons can have many or just one.” He explained, and Link shrugged and accepted the answer. What a cute kid. He needed to eat his gravel though, he was looking a tad soft. “Do you know where your village is? Or what it’s called?”
“Yeah. It’s Rayju Village.” Well, that made things easier. That was still a good day or two of travel though. Why was he so far from home? Surely, somebody was looking for this child?
“Well, don’t worry! Daruk here will get ya back home safe and sound!” He promised, standing up. The boy’s bright cerulean blue eyes brightened as a small smile graced the youthful face.
“Really? You will?”
“Course I will!” He laughed, and the boy leapt to his feet eagerly. “Careful, there.” He steadied the child when he swayed on his feet. “When was the last time you ate? Actually, how long have you been out here?”
“Four days.” He answered simply, leaning into Daruk’s giant hand with a grin.
Daruk winced. What was going on? How did he get out here—two days from his home—with no parental supervision? And why hadn’t anyone found him yet? “Think I’ve got somethin’ here.” He reached into his pouch and pulled out a rare rock roast. Hylians liked softer foods, and this was the softest goron food he had on him.
The kid pulled a face. “That’s a rock.” He poked at it, making Daruk chuckle.
“Gorons eat rocks.” He explained, taking a small bite to show him it was okay. “Go on.”
The kid eyed the bite mark and the rest of the roast with uncertainty, but took a small taste regardless. It took him a few tries to actually take a bite, and Daruk wondered if all the soft foods made hylian teeth weaker than goron teeth.
He chewed for a moment, the familiar crunching of a good roast filling the air. “It… doesn’t taste like rock.” He eyed the meal suspiciously as he carefully took another bite, a small smile of satisfaction on the boy’s face. Daruk felt a bit of pride swelling up within him. The pebble’s first rock roast.
“Well, yeah.” Daruk smiled as they started walking. “It’s my family’s recipe, we take some of the spices from the lava pits on Death Mountain—my home.”
“I’ve heard stories of Death Mountain.” Link perked up as he licked some pebbles from his lip. “Father says it’s so hot that people can burst into flame! Is that true?”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “But we gorons like that kind of heat.” He was pleased to note that the boy had finished most of the roast. It was a good amount of food that should tide the tyke over until they could make camp.
“What’s it like?” He tilted his head.
“My village?” Daruk hummed. “Well, everyone’s really close. We all know each other and look out for one another. Every goron is a brother, so we’re all family.”
“ Everyone is a brother? What about girls?”
He laughed. “Well, I don’t know what makes a girl a girl to the other races, but I’m pretty sure we don’t have that.”
“Girls wear dresses and have long hair. When they get older they become mothers. That’s what my mother told me.” He answered simply, and Daruk took a moment to mull that over.
“I’ve got some brothers with long hair.” The goron scratched his head. “But gorons don’t have dresses… so dresses and long hair makes someone a girl?”
Link shrugged helplessly, and Daruk decided that hylian genders were just too confusing. Gorons were gorons—people were people. Why did they need to label it? Some races were just too complicated.
“Lizard!” Link shrieked suddenly, chasing off after some Hearty Lizard that darted by. Daruk laughed as he watched the kid catch it and cackle gleefully. He then stared at it like he was unsure of what to do with it.
“Let it go.” Daruk encouraged.
“But I wanna keep it.” Link pouted.
“Well, what’re you gonna do with it? It’s gotta eat. Can you feed it?”
“No…” Link shuffled his feet.
“Can you give it a home?”
“Not really.” He looked down.
“Then isn’t it better to let it go? It’s fine to catch it, but if you aren’t going to be able to take good care of it, then that’s cruel.”
“Okay.” Link nodded and set the lizard down on a rock. “Bye bye Lizzy!” Daruk grinned. This kid was just so dang cute. Why, he wouldn’t mind having him around on Death Mountain.
“So, Little Guy, what’dya like to do for fun?”
“Fun?” Link tilted his head. “Well, Father trains me in swordsmanship. He’s a knight for Hyrule!”
“And you enjoy training?”
“Yeah! But… Father is a bit harsh sometimes.” He rubbed a particularly nasty bruise on his cheek. One that Daruk only just realized was shaped suspiciously like a hylian’s hand. An adult Hylian hand.
His stomach clenched uncomfortably. He’d heard that sometimes hylian parents could be harsh, and that sometimes the parents just weren’t ready for the kid and that kid had to be taken and raised elsewhere. But he’d never seen anything like it before.
Was little Link being hurt at home? Was that why he was out in the woods? He didn’t like that thought. The thought of hurting a child was blasphemy to a goron. There were some things that were considered unforgivable sins among each of the races, and hurting a child was the unforgivable sin to a Goron. In fact, the absolute worst curse you can spit at a Goron—one that would anger even the most timid among them—was pebblecrusher. It was their term for a child killer.
Daruk took a deep breath, letting his anger sink to his feet and out into the earth. He hid his frown as best he could, hoping he was wrong. “You’re kinda roughed up. What happened?”
Link’s smile froze for a moment as he gave a half-hearted shrug. “Oh, I’ve got a baby sister now! Mother was so happy!”
He avoided the topic. Daruk really wasn’t liking this. He was going to have to make sure that this kid was safe before he left that village. He’d be damned if he left this pebble somewhere unsafe. And if that meant finding a new home for him, then so be it. For now, he would enjoy the two day trip to Rayju Village.
Link giggled as he splashed about in the water, and Daruk couldn’t help but smile at the cute scene. It’d only been a day since he’d met the little tyke, and the child was already worming his way deeply into the Goron’s stone heart. There was something so lovable and innocent about the child—a light that glowed brighter than the lava of Death Mountain.
He was energetic, curious, very smart and willing to try anything Daruk could vouch for. Of course, food was now becoming a problem. For a Goron, finding food on the road was fairly easy. They could eat almost any rock, but that didn’t necessarily mean that those tasted good. Sometimes you’d find a good rock laying about, but most were questionable. Even Gorons could have allergies and preferences.
Some rocks were sweeter than others, and then some were horrifically rotten. Spicy rocks tended to be popular (though those were only found around Death Mountain), but Daruk liked some of the snowy rocks found in Hebra (they tended to be sweet and cool, like how he’d heard Hylians describe ‘ice cream’, whatever that was). Daruk’s problem was that Link was just a tiny pebble. He should still be on a gravel diet—what they fed newcarves and very young gorons. Though he’d managed to eat some of the rare rock roasts Daruk had brought with him, the child had complained later on about his teeth aching.
He didn’t want to test the rumor that hylains could regrow teeth should they break, so he was hesitant to give him anything firmer. That meant he had to figure out what a hylian child Link’s age would normally consume—something Daruk had never bothered to look into before.
“Daruk! Look! I caught a fish!” The boy grinned as he held up one of the many salmon that were making their way upstream for their yearly migration.
A thought suddenly popped into his head. Didn’t hylians eat fish? They… liked them warm, right? He’d spotted several hylians who visited Death Mountain cooking their fish on the sweltering surface of the mountain. If he could build a fire to replicate that heat, then they could cook the fish and Link would have softer food!
“Great job, Little Guy!” Daruk beamed. “Why don’t we cook that up for some lunch?”
“Really?!” Link perked up. “Yay! Fish! Fish! Fish! Can I help build the fire?!”
“Of course!” He privately hoped that Link knew how to build a fire, because Daruk was more than a little clueless. He knew they needed sticks… and something hot. Did he have anything that could actually start a fire?
The two of them made a game out of gathering the needed dry sticks. Link kept popping up out of the foliage with leafy twigs on his head claiming to be a lynel. Daruk thought it was adorable.
Once they had the fire set up, Daruk produced a couple of rocks from his satchel. He didn’t really know how it worked, but he’d seen hylians mash rocks together to make sparks before. After a few moments of clicking the stones together without a trace of sparks, Link giggled.
“Father says that you need special kinds of rocks to do that. I don’t think those are it.” He grinned. “But my friend Zack—he lives down the road—he showed me something really neat! Watch!” Link held out his hand and twisted up his face in concentration. After a moment of Daruk being utterly confused, a small flame lazily drifted from Link’s palm and lit the campfire.
He blinked. He knew some hylians were capable of magic, but their numbers had dropped drastically in the last few centuries. They used to be a lot more common, according to a few legends among the Gorons. But to see someone capable of even a tiny bit of magic these days was quite rare. “Wow, great job!” He complimented, and Link glowed under the praise.
“I showed Father once, but he said it was nothing worth getting excited over.”
“Nothing worth getting excited over?!” Daruk reeled back. The more he heard about Link’s parents, the more he doubted if he should bring the tyke back at all. “Magic is quite rare. Even this is amazing! You should be very proud of yourself.” He carefully skewered the fish on a stick and set it over the flames. It looked like many of the other hylian campfires he’d seen, now.
“Can you do magic?” Link stared up at him in wonder.
“In a sense.” Daruk hummed. “I have a special power. I can’t do magic like you.” He stepped back for a moment before calling up his shield. The familiar amber dome of magic covered him entirely, and Link’s face split into an enormous grin. The child started flitting about the shield, pressing a hand to it and knocking his fists against it in awe.
“SO COOL!!” He was practically jumping up and down in excitement. “Can I learn how to do that?!”
Daruk laughed as he dispelled the shield, causing Link—who’d been leaning against it—to stumble. “I don’t know.” Daruk admitted as he steadied the child. “It’s not something I learned how to do, I just… do it .”
Link tilted his head. “You mean like the floaty thing?”
Daruk puzzled over his wording for a moment. “Floaty thing?”
“Yeah! When I move out of the way of something and everyone else moves really slow! Or like when I jump from a tree branch with my bow! Everything gets all floaty and slow and I can move really really fast .” Link grinned.
“Sounds like you might have an innate magic, too.” Daruk hummed.
“In ate?”
“ Innate .” He corrected, poking the fish on the stick, realizing it was probably done. “It means you can do it naturally. You didn’t have to learn.” He carefully removed the fish from over the fire and handed it to Link, who brightened.
Gorons didn’t really consume living things like the other races, but Link seemed to enjoy the fish more than the Rare Rock Roasts he’d been living off of for the last few days. Perhaps he needed softer foods after all.
“Hey, Daruk?” Link looked up after he’d finished his fish. The Goron turned his attention towards the small child beside him. “If… If mother and father don’t want me… do you think I could come live with you on the mountain?”
The question caught him severely off guard. Never should a child feel the need to question if their parents wanted them or not. Once again, he felt that something was severely wrong with Link’s home life. He had to see it for himself—make sure the tyke was okay at home. And if he wasn’t… “Yeah. No matter what, Little Guy, you’ll always be welcome with me.”
Link’s grin was brighter than the fire.