Fan Fiction Friday: The Era Without A Hero – Part 45

||  Part Forty-Four  ||  Part Forty-Six  ||

Part Forty-Five

They followed Sagesse out of his office and through the library, heading towards the main hall, and eventually into the Chamber of Sages.

As they walked, Zelda looked around, remembering Osmond’s enthusiasm about the library in the Temple of Time.

“Of all the places I’ve been able to see or go,” he had said one evening, “there is nowhere as grand as the places the library can take us.”

“Is that you speaking, or the ghost of your mentor?” Zelda giggled.

“I suppose it’s a bit of both. Aldwin taught me a lot. I wouldn’t be here if not for him.”

“How did you two come across one another? It seems unlikely that a former knight and scholar such as he and the nephew of a carpenter some fifteen years younger would have forged such a companionship.”

Osmond smiled and recounted the tale of their meeting when he was younger. He had been helping his uncle with measurements and Aldwin had commissioned some shelves to be built. While Henry and Aldwin had been talking, the young Osmond slipped away and found Aldwin’s cache of weapons.

The consummate teacher that he was, when Aldwin found Osmond a few moments later, he saw the desire to be a knight and offered the young boy a chance to train under him. Henry, not wanting to see the same future that he had seen with Osmond’s father, forbid it. Osmond, however, proceeded to work out a way to gain the tutelage by going under the guise of seeing Aldwin as a scholar and academic tutor. So long as he did well with the academic side, he would be allowed to have sparring lessons. As Osmond excelled in his studies, so too did his talent for combat.

“Caught you daydreaming?” Rassa asked suddenly.

Zelda was ripped back to the present.

They were standing in Kalia’s office now. Notes and papers were strewn about in the most untidy and haphazard manner. To say it was disorganized chaos would have been insulting to the very idea that was chaos.

“I almost wish I could tell you that this had been ransacked,” Sagesse chuckled, “but the Old Bird is not one for the neat and tidy lifestyle.”

“So it would appear,” Lindsey murmured.

“What is it that you wanted to show us?” Yoon asked.

“Well, you see we’ve been studying and researching Adok ever since that day at the festival. At first there didn’t seem to be much, but then we started finding documents that seemed to be about him, were loosely connected to events which we traced him to, and then finally, we had a much bigger picture of a timeline that seemed to give a little light to his actions.”

The women turned their attention to a wall near the back of the Sage of Light’s office. On it were several documents in chronological order ending with the Swordsman Festival. They began sometime during the previous King’s reign, Daphnes’s father.

“There was an order put forth sometime before then, that all Gerudo children were to be inspected by a Hylian physician. If there was a male born, he and the family would be brought to Castletown and raised in an environment more friendly to our customs. A sort of preventative measure to ensure another Ganondorf wouldn’t rise from their ranks.”

“Of course, this raised all sorts of outrage in the Gerudo community,” Rassa chimed in. “I remember seeing many Gerudo women come through in that time.”

Sagesse nodded and continued, “one of those women at least, we believe to have been Adok’s mother. She would have been sympathetic to the Dragmire Clan’s claim, and even more so once she was pregnant. One of the lies that was unfortunately turned into commonplace rumor was that if any males were born that they would be put to death. This wasn’t helped though due to the former king’s declining mental state in his elder years.”

“I remember hearing stories about my grandfather. He seemed to harbor a lot of… anger.”

“There were many rumors around him. Even though his reign was short, he did his best to leave a mark on history.”

“Forgive me, Master Sagesse, but how was he able to reign as king when his mother, the Princess of Destiny, was still alive?” Lindsey asked.

“A good question. The Princess of Destiny relinquished her crown and hoped that her son would make a fine leader. However, about six years into his rule, he fell ill and the Princess of Destiny took the crown back. He passed away another two years later, and she retained the crown until Daphnes assumed it upon her passing.”

“That would mean Adok’s birth falls into that six-year window,” Rassa said, examining the board. “Almost exactly a hundred years after the suspected birthdate of Ganondorf.”

Sagesse grunted his approval of her conclusion.

“Which would make Adok the rightful King of the Gerudo,” Zelda finished the line of thought aloud.

Their attention turned to the board again. Zelda approached it and read over the notes carefully.

Massacre at Dragmire Clan Hideout, Prisoner Admits to Dark Magic Use, Sages Commission Probe Into Prisoner.

“You were on this commission, weren’t you?” Rassa asked.

“Yes,” Sagesse nodded. “Kalia and I both were. We were on our way out to the prison just south of Medina when a tremendous sandstorm hit. We had to hunker down and wait it out. By the time it had blown over, word reached us that the caravan transporting the prisoner had also been stuck in the storm and that the prisoner had escaped.”

“How could such a dangerous person escape? How could there have even been a chance?”

“Because Lady Ruto had just died and so there was no Sage to assist in the strengthening of the bonds that would hold him. As it turns out, Lady Rutela would have had that duty.”

A chill went down Zelda’s spine. “Adok escaped because of Rutela’s murder of Lady Ruto. It was planned. Orchestrated.”

Sagesse nodded solemnly.

Just when they turned back to the board, the room shook violently.

The smell of burning rubble and explosives stung their noses.

Yoon rushed to a window and looked outside to see a plume of black smoke rising from the city wall.

Another explosion erupted amid the tower of smoke.

The city was under attack.

 

David Wayne Nystrom is a Staff Writer for Zelda Dungeon. This story is an imagining of the final days in Hyrule prior to the Great Flood talked about in the opening cinematic of The Wind Waker. The story is getting an audio version in podcast form set to begin releasing in early 2022 and there’s a complete soundtrack for the first volume here. Head over to erawithoutahero.wordpress.com or follow the story account on Twitter @ZeldaTEWAH where you can keep up on information regarding the future of the podcast, soundtrack, and other TEWAH news that will be coming soon! David’s top three Zelda games are Ocarina of Time, The Wind Waker, and Skyward Sword. He’s also an avid Smash Bros. fan. Every Era Has Heroes…