The Legend of Zelda: Link's Desperation

Chapter 19: A Battle Against the Goddesses

As they expected, they were both jolted awake in a cold sweat. To get their minds off of it, they both jumped up and got their belongings together to begin the last leg of the journey. As they approached the edge of the desert, there was a strange blur in the distance. It was dark and foreboding. They both noticed it, but only took true note of it when they realized that it was in the direction of the Arbiter's Grounds.

"What are we gonna do?" Zelda asked. Link stopped Epona and shrugged.

"I don't know. But what is it, even?" Link trotted towards it.

"What are you doing?" Zelda yelled.

"What?"

"Why are you riding towards it?"

"Well, let's at least see what it is," Link persuaded.

"Just... don't get too close."

Link began to urge the horse forward when horror came upon them. The blackness traveled towards them in what felt like a blink of an eye and was upon them. It was a sandstorm, so dense and terrifying that it was black.

Zelda whipped a piece of her shirt over her face, wishing she had water to dampen it, and Link did the same. He turned Epona around but to no avail. They were already enshrouded in a bitter, sharp, loud blackness.

He made the horse keep going forward, even though he couldn't see a thing and he knew the horse couldn't either. It was almost the final act of valiance in the face of shameful and foolish death, even if they had no control over it.

The horse lost her ability to breathe in the thick cloud, stopped, and collapsed. Link and Zelda bounced off of her and lay still, their breath hindered also. Their eyes were already swollen shut from the sand scratching them, and they lay still on the whirling ground, wherever they may be.

~~~

Sputtering, Zelda opened her eyes to feel a stinging pain. She hacked up dry dust and felt it caked on her clothing and her face, and a sudden stream of cool water rushed down her face. As her eyes came into a focus, she saw a battered Link pouring water on her, trying to get some dirt off of her skin. She sat still, letting the liquid flush out her eyes to an extent and drench her throat. She sat up, still hacking.

She looked around to see a thick layer of sand over what once looked like a thriving grassy field. AS her eyes focused more, she noticed the faint blur of Castle Town in the near distance. She couldn't believe what was around her.

The sandstorm had coated Hyrule Field.

"That's impossible!" Zelda shouted, more thinking aloud than anything, her voice catching and her doubling over coughing. Link patted her back.

She looked back at him after she caught her breath and took full note of his appearance. His clothes were caked and tattered as hers were, and his eyes red and puffy. His lips were chapped and he kept wiping his mouth, not wanting to spit out all of the grit in his teeth, because his voice would catch like Zelda's. She assumed that she looked similar.

She then gazed in confusion and disgust at the field. It was coated in a brownish-yellow dust up to the tips of the blades of grass. The trees were weighed down and she could see the same color reflecting on Castle Town itself. She looked around her and spotted Epona, alive, but on the ground.

"What's impossible? It happened," Link asked and answered.

"Hyrule and the Gerudo made a pact a long, long time ago of peace, even after Ganondorf made one and broke it, but the Goddesses upkept their end, prohibiting any natural disaster from either realm exiting one and entering the other..."