Chapter Text
It's four in the morning.
That's all I can really think about when I'm woken up by Pearle, shaking my arm and squeaking into my ear like a little bird.
"Tophi! Tophi, come on! You'll never guess what Isha told me! Come on, Tophi, wake up!" She grabs me by the sides of my head and yells into my closed eyes, so I open them and scowl at her. In an endearing way, of course.
"Alright, alright. What is it?" I rub the backs of my knuckles against my eyes, and gently push her away as I do so. She's bouncing around all over the place, so excited that I think she might explode in a minute.
"Basic- Basically, um, umm, she said that the hero and the princess went missing." She shares this, and I notice that her eyes are wide with anticipation. I wonder if she's waiting for my reaction, or-
Hold on, what?
I sit up, alarmed by the news. The heavy scent of burnt-out cinnamon incense is far too thick to aid with that.
"Pearle, you're not joking around, are you? This is serious." I grab her shoulders and I stare directly into her eyes, because if the hero and the princess are no longer here then we do not have any leaders.
It is bad enough that the rest of Hyrule is still largely in ruin, we have only just gotten our monarch back after a century without her! She cannot have gone missing.
"No, no! No way. They're seriously gone, no one knows where they are, and the castle is floating and apparently people are getting sick from this weird jam-like stuff!" Pearle explains, gesturing wildly as she speaks. She might be pulling my leg, but she doesn't look like she's joking...
"Oh, Heroines! This is terrible, terrible news, Pearle, Pearle take me to Isha." I stand up, pushing through the whirling headache that takes me over the moment I do so, to rush out of the door and find whoever told Pearle all of this dire gossip.
I run my fingers through my hair as I lean against the doorframe, and Pearle clings on to my leg. I have not gotten dressed. I have not even had time to look into the mirror, but here I am, looking at all of this commotion.
Even Sumati, Yaido and Deltan are up and about, running and swinging weapons at unseen enemies - the laziest, drunkest idiots are using swords.
For the Heroines' sake, even Calyban is fighting! What the hell is happening?
I look to the left, at the northern entrance to the town, only to see swarthes of gangly, bony monsters crawling all over the ground.
I can't see them too well - I have since pulled Pearle and myself back into my house and shut the door - but from what I can see through the window they have long, sinewy arms with claws that scrape the floor, visible ribs and hollow eyes with a strange beak-like mouth below them.
They are disgusting, and terrible, and I want to hide under my bed and hyperventilate until they are all gone.
I cradle myself, taking several staggering steps backward as I do so, my eyes fixed on the window. The war cries of our fighters fill the air, along with the unperturbed shrieks of the monsters they are fighting.
To no prevail, it seems. I watch Babi fall to the ground, clutching her waist as one of the monsters swings its freakish arms at her, clawing ruthlessly at her chest, shoulders and stomach.
Their spears make no dents in the creatures' muscle, their swords simply bounce back off of their bones with an almighty shudder, and their arrows... well, their arrows sink into their skin, but they remain standing.
"Tophi, it wasn't like this earlier! Tophi, Tophi, what do we do? What can we do?" Pearle's voice filters back into my head, returning alongside a crack of lightning. It seems chief Riju has joined the perilous scene, so we will be safe.
"We wait for the chief to clear them out, but until then we hide. I cannot let you get near the danger." I know Pearle is not my daughter, or related to me in any way, but she is still a child. She is far too young to go anywhere near those things.
"Okay. Okay." Pearle breathes, and runs her palms over her cheeks, stretching out her skin. She grimaces, and starts to cry when a scream is heard.
"It's okay. It'll be okay, just breathe. In and out, just like I taught you, alright? Jus-"
"Everyone into the shelter! Now!" An almighty shout bounds through the town, coursing through the walls and wrenching into our heads. That must be Teake. I look down at Pearle, to see if she's in any state to run. "We cannot hold them back, get into the shelter!"
"We need to go, come on!" I scoop Pearle up into my arms and kick the door open, before I sprint into the small crowd of Gerudo women pouring into the shelter, flanked by our guards.
Arrows soar overhead, and shoulders jostle against shoulders as Reeza and Ploka haul the boulder aside to open up the shelter.
A small plume of dust rises up against the gentle sheet of silt released from the boulder's new absence, and the shelter is exposed to us. We rush in without checking for possible hazards, and thank the Heroines that there aren't many of us, as we would not fit if there were any more.
I set Pearle down on the ground, as Calyban collapses by an unlit campfire in the center, and Spera, Lorn and Estan panic by a cooking area. I show Pearle over to Rotana, her older sister and guardian, before I join the three in their babbling.
"Lorn! Hey, Lorn, do you know what's happening? Pearle woke me up and told me about the hero and- and the princess, and then- I don't even know, everything just happened." I stumble up to the trio and vomit up words without any sort of warning, actually startling Estan a little bit. She is holding a bottle of Wild Green, so I gently take it from her and take a long, shaky sip.
"I don't know either, we've been cut off from everyone in Kara Kara, and nobody can see past the gates." Lorn shares her side of the story, exchanging wary glances with the guards as they perform a headcount of the shelter-dwellers.
"Apparently there's a sandstorm going on outside, and it's been going on since last night." Estan rubs her temples and squeezes her eyes shut tight, either working through a hangover or trying to sort through the events.
"Does anyone know where the princess is?" I feel that we should be worrying about Zelda, as she is probably the only soul in Hyrule who would know what to do right now.
"That's none of our concern right now, Tophi." Spera eyes me with tired scorn as I take another drink, and I know that she is just looking at me that way because she is stressed.
"Those monsters are running rampant and all you can think about is the princess?" Estan laughs at me - a loud, roaring, hearty laugh - and it makes my cheeks flush with embarrassment. It is humiliating enough that I am still wearing my bed-clothes, I don't need her laughing at me.
"Yes, but her disappearance might be linked to this! Think about it!" I can't stop thinking that perhaps the lifting of Hyrule Castle is tied to the sudden appearance of these monsters, it's only probably given the timing.
"There's no way that's possible." Spera says this with a scrunch to the long bridge of her nose, letting me know that she thinks I'm joking.
"Well, I think so." I am going to stand by this theory, that somehow those things are linked.
"Maybe Traysi will stop by and tell us more, she's been gone for quite a while." Lorn is as hopeful as ever, but part of me wonders if she should really wish that fate upon the nationally loved journalist.
"I do suppose it's time for her to return." Estan is extremely drunk. I'm not going to take any offense if she says anything rude to me, I've decided.
"What a sight to return to." Spera's biting sarcasm is best served with a large glass of absinthe to soothe the blows.
"Heroines, yes. A deserted town populated by... I don't know what by. Those monsters, I guess." Estan sways as the group shifts to accomodate Rotana (along with Pearle hanging on to her hand), who is clutching a history book. She always loved history, I suppose that's why she became an architect.
"I read something about an old foe that looked very similar to ours, although I don't think it could be them." Lorn also enjoys history books, but I don't think she loves them half as much as Rotana does.
"I know what you're talking about, the, um, the Gibdos." Rotana perks up, bracing Lorn's arm with a hand at the sudden mention of a topic well-studied.
"Gibdos, hm? A cute name for a monster." Spera glances over to the - now closed - shelter entrance, and when I follow her gaze I feel a sickening swell of dread course through my chest.
The door is fastened by planks of wood and protected by our strongest guards, and it's just a reminder that we are, technically, refugees. In a matter of minutes we have been driven out of our home into a dusty sandpit full of tapestries and strange carvings in the wall.
I look around and I see disheartened women everywhere. Hopelessly writing drafts of letters to their husbands in other parts of the land, frantically checking to see if loved ones have made it down or not and silently pacing in small circles as the same information is relayed over and over again.
Now it is hitting me that we are backing down, but this cannot be all we plan on doing, right? We haven't truly been reduced to fleeing, have we?
We cannot let ourselves be forced down into the depths of our town because of some hapless monsters that never should have shown their faces near the proud Gerudo. It's almost shameful how we have hidden so quickly.
The women I know would have fought until the very end, no matter how impossible the task.
However, I suppose that as long as this shelter predicament is temporary, then I can (very begrudgingly) accept it. Oh, but how can I let this proud race slip into submission and hiding? That goes against our very nature!
What can I do? I could go out and slaughter every monster that crosses me, but I am not a very good fighter. I could send a letter to the merchants and travelers at Kara Kara Bazaar, but Lorn said that nobody can reach the Bazaar through the sandstorm. Oh! Maybe I could find a way out of the shelter through the water system underground!
But then how would all of us get out? Would we just be left astray in the sandstorm with those monsters lurking around every corner?
If only the hero with his legendary sword wasn't missing, then he could come in and save the day just like he did a few years ago.
I remember that day, when he ran in wearing that disguise. He didn't speak to me - in fact, I heard that he didn't speak at all - but Heroines, almost every vai for miles around sang his praises when he cleansed Naboris of its scourge.
They said he was charming, and strong, and practically the perfect voe, but none of them ever made a move on him.
Calyban had the most to say about him. She said that he was generous and charitable, and he was a great listener. Everyone has to be a great listener around Calyban, she doesn't shut up, so her comments have little to no credibility.
It does not matter if he is nice, it just matters if he is heroic, I suppose. Well, it also matters if he even bothers to return to Hyrule.
He may not. Almost everyone has heard of his and Zelda's... strangely intimate relationship, if the two of them happened to go missing together why should they return?
So, I am stuck sitting beside a clay pot and humming in accord to my thoughts and the level to which they please me, as I can't do anything else.
That won't do.
If we are not freed within a week, I am going out and finding that missing hero, and I am dragging him back to Gerudo Town by the scruff of his neck so he can kill these blasted Gibdos.
There we go, that is a plan I can stand by.