Chapter Text
One hundred and fourteen years. It had been one hundred and fourteen years since a son had been born unto the Gerudo tribe.
Of course, this was only a minor inconvenience. After all, no male heir meant no threat of Ganondorf rising again. And in terms of reproduction, the women of the tribe could intermingle with the other races. And so, for a while, everything was at peace… or so it seemed.
With the dearth of sons, there came the fear that the great king of evil would return twice as strong, twice as ruthless. No one knew for certain if this would be true, but it very well could be…
***
The Tomb of Kings stood solemn and proud in the furthest reaches of the desert. Generations of past kings and chieftains lay here in eternal slumber, untroubled by any so-called “heroes” sent to slay them.
In the crimson hours of sunset, a traveler came wandering across the dunes. She had passed by this tomb before in her travels, yes, but never had she dared to enter. Never yet, until tonight.
The doors to the tomb lay open, as if some careless grave robber had slipped in and forgotten to conceal the evidence that he had been here. Hesitant, silent, she walked towards the awaiting entrance, then adjusted the hood of her cloak and took her first steps beyond the doorway. No sooner had she turned to look back than the great stone doors shut on their own, leaving her enrobed in pitch-darkness. But as she ventured further, light began to spill across the sandstone surfaces, flickering to life. Torches, she’d discovered, torches on the walls. Who was lighting them? She knew not.
In the newly ignited light she could make out carvings on the sandstone walls. Warriors and rulers, castles and mountains, monsters and gods and swirling clouds of darkness were depicted here, frozen in chiseled stone for as long as the winds did not touch them. Every wall, every fresco and carving and sconce, shared one thing in common: the emblem of the Triforce, the relic imbued with the essence of the goddesses. Some were small, cleverly hidden in borders or patterns; others much larger and more proudly displayed.
First came Hylia, mother of all; soon after came her lover, Finis, bestower of all. From the primordial chaos that would soon become the world, she bore three daughters— Din, Nayru and Farore. These three golden goddesses shaped the world under their mother’s watchful eye…
She’d known the stories told by these forms and glyphs by heart; these were the stories of the thief-king Ganondorf, avatar of Demise, bearer of the Triforce of Power. She’d heard tales of all the evil he’d done, all the princesses he’d kidnapped, all the times he’d been reborn and reincarnated to face off against a new generation’s hero, only to fall each time.
… but the world was left unfinished. There was the earth, and the life that grew from it, and the water that nourished it, but it was all still wild and simple. When Finis fled, Hylia bestowed the task of finishing the world onto her youngest children, the Bearers of the Flames…
The air was still here, carrying with it the dry scent of dust and decay and burnt-out incense. The kind of air that brought with it Redeads and Gibdos, perhaps even Garos. The traveler kept one hand on the wall, the other gripping her torch, and her eyes and ears alert. Nothing seemed to attack her; no traps were sprung, no undead summoned. But one could never be too certain.
Each god gave the people of this new world a different gift. The Flamebringer brought order. The Huntress, the hunt. The Thunderblade brought war. The Prince of Thieves, travel. The Scholarking harnessed Nayru’s wisdom. The Trader, commerce. The Lady of Grace brought dance. The Charitable brought balance, and to support that balance, their elder sisters left behind a sacred relic: the Triforce.
And for generations upon generations, there would always be a hero, a princess and an evil king to uphold its power. Why was it that the hero and princess were always Hylians, and the villain always a Gerudo, if not a monstrous beast with the face of a boar? The question ate at her from the inside, squirming in her stomach like the freshly-shed tail of a Lizalfos. Her unspoken quandary still unanswered, she took one of the torches from the wall and continued through the hallowed chambers and corridors of the tomb. She dared not stop to take any treasures from the dead here, for she knew full well that would only anger them. And so she wandered, down and down, through passageways of pictograms and pillars in a labyrinth built by those who slumbered beneath the sand.
At the end of it all (or what she thought was the end) was the final room. Or rather, half a room. Indeed, the back and side walls were there, and the rows of stone statues that stretched away and away. But these walls and statues seemed to fade into open air, into night-chilled sand and sky. There, in the moonlit sands, stood a massive buckskin stallion, his rider clad in silks of scarlet and amber. In reverent silence, the traveler lowered her torch and let the wind snuff it out. This woman, who carried herself so tall and straight, who radiated an aura of flickering fire-orange that spilled out onto the blue of the darkened dunes like the embers that fell from a blacksmith’s hammer— this could only be the goddess of fire and power herself, Din.
Do you know why you have come here? The goddess beckoned to her with one bejeweled hand.
“No… not really…” came the traveler’s reply.
Come forth, the rider commanded, and her steed nickered and pawed at the ground. As the stone statues faded out of view, the visages of spirits faded in. Spirits of Gerudo voe, each one no older than his mid-teens— the ghosts of the previous kings, she assumed, before they fell into darkness. They regarded her not with pride nor scorn, only with an unwavering calm.
At last, she fell to her knees at the feet of the silk-clad stranger’s steed.
Remove your hood. Let me gaze upon you.
Again the mortal did as she was instructed, lowering her hood and revealing herself— a young vai, in her fourteenth year, with her hair cut into short, choppy waves of deep red as if she couldn’t decide if she were a vai or a voe. She felt so small, so insignificant in the presence of Din; a tiny shadow, kneeling in the sand before something far more ineffably... powerful.
Din dismounted her steed and slowly strode up to the mortal, before crouching down to her eye level and taking her sun-browned hands. When at last the goddess spoke, the princes who had stood vigil each dropped to one knee and bowed their heads, in reverence either for the goddess or for someone else. For their new incarnation.
Rise, son of Bifelgan, steward of Din. Claim thy crown and thy destiny.
The traveler returned homeward, the mark of the Triforce branded onto the back of his left hand.