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~Chapter Nineteen- Kuro II~

Kuro’s clothes were folded neatly on the grass as she bathed behind the comfort of a tree, in Lake Hylia. She heard a rustle from behind her. She swiftly turned to reach for her clothes, but it was too late.

What is that little—why is he still following me? she wondered, turning red and covering up. Standing before her was Warro. “Go away!” she yelled, extending a foot out and kicking him, unknowingly striking the very spot she had stabbed him.

“B-but there was no door!” Warro gasped, clutching his side and falling to his knees.

“This is a lake, dumbass! There is no door!” She turned away, her face was flushed. “Now, go home; stop following me! I don’t want you traveling with me!” Warro’s ears drooped as he walked away with his head down. He was making his way across the bridge, leading away from the central island of the lake, when Kuro turned around with a sigh and sat back down. “Vaati,” she muttered with contempt in her voice. A tear rolled down the side of her face as she looked up to the sky with a sigh. I promised I’d rescue him, she thought to herself. “It’s been six years, now. I hope you’re alright. Once I learn where you are, I’m killing Vaati… then we can finally be together again.” As she thought about this boy, Kuro’s heart began to beat faster.



“Run, Kuro!” A young boy yelled as a younger Kuro ran across the deck of a ship. “Jump!” Kuro turned around and saw a pair of moblins gaining on hem and the boy standing in front of them. “We’re the last two left, right? You go! We’ll meet again, I promise!”

“What are you--” Kuro turned around and stopped just as her heart skipped several beats. The moblin hit the boy off the back of his head with the haft of the makeshift spear it held. “DRATHI!”


“I promised to rescue him,” Kuro muttered as she stood up. She put her clothes back on and then noticed something on the ground: a small bag. She opened it up and saw that inside were the suppression pills that Cyrano had prescribed her. She clenched it in her fist and looked across the bridge. That little—“Agh!” she stomped off to the bridge, where Warro was sitting on the edge, looking into the water. She stomped right over to him and gently tipped him over the edge.

“Kuro!” Warro said, his eyes slightly lit up.

“Go home! You’re weak; a liability! You can’t come with me!” Warro tried to say something to her, but she simply walked away popping a pill into her mouth. She turned around and looked at him with cold eyes. “Thanks.” She held up the bag and shook it. “Now, you can go.” She had to be mean to him. It was also a good way to teach him a lesson for playing games, when she was in dire need of medicine. “Because of you, I…” Her half-lidded eyes looked away from Warro as he treaded in the water.

“Kuro, what does ‘love’ mean?” Warro asked. “It felt important.”

“It is important,” Kuro muttered. “If you don’t know what it means, just forget that you even heard it. I don’t love you, Warro. It was meant for somebody else.”

“Vaati?”

“No!” Kuro wanted to jump off the bridge and pummel Warro into the depths of the lake for even thinking she’d love that cruel wind mage. “Just go home!” She raced away, rubbing her eyes. It was true, she never meant for Warro to be the receiver of her confession, but why did she tell him? All the other times, she had kept it bottled up inside of her. Why? she thought. Why, why, why? Then she stopped. The sun was setting and the night was on the horizon. She felt a great tremor. As it subsided, she noticed a gigantic tower of smoke. The source was not visible, but it clearly was in the direction of Castle Town. “It’s too late for me to return. I gotta go forward…”

She returned to the lake and followed the river upstream, where the bottom of Gerudo Valley was. She had heard of ways that many had tried breaking in before. She hoped that the ruminants of those who died still remained—one of which being a way to scale the great sides of the valley. As she entered the Gerudo province, she noticed that the bridge far above her was still intact. She groaned, as she felt the need to make things easier and go around. However, she was too far, now. She had to climb. Instead of focusing on reaching the top, Kuro simply kept on thinking of what she will say before she cuts that smug head of Vaati off. She found manmade footholds in the wall that she could climb on. And she began her ascent.

Vaati was a wind mage, who appeared out of nowhere, one day. He was the apprentice of another mage named Veran. Kuro remembered how she and nine other children, her best friend included, were orphaned, when Vaati killed their families and kidnapped them. He shoved them onto a ship and took them out to sea, where all of them were locked up. She recalled how the ten of them were strapped to tables as Vaati touched each of them with a black orb. It was a painful experience; Kuro felt as if her whole body was being burned and ripped apart at the limbs. Then, one by one, as the days turned into months, Kuro could smell blood on the ship and saw as each child’s lifeless body was thrown into the sea.

Then, it came to be only her and her best friend left. The boy was known as Drathi. For a ten year old, he understood magic very well and studied to become a mage just like his parents. Kuro, a human, will never be able to use magic and so, they two of them formed a partnership. Kuro helped Drathi, where he lacked in the strength department, while he helped Kuro with his magic, when they trained together back home. However, today one of them was going to die. Kuro’s strength apparently was boosted by the dark matter that had touched her, while Drathi’s magical power increased along with his strength. Then it happened: Drathi hatched a plan for them to escape, but what Kuro did not realize was that he was planning something else.

“DRATHI!” Kuro yelled as the boy fell to the ground. Tears welled up in her eyes as the moblin lifted up his limp body. “No, he’s not dead… he can’t be…” Tears rolled down her cheeks as the other began to rush over to her. “You better be alive! I’ll come back for you, I promise! I’ll be stronger than ever, you’ll see!” She rushed to the port of the ship and jumped overboard. As the water splashed up, all went black.
Kuro washed up on the shore of Hyrule the next day. It was there she met Talon, the man who delivered milk to all of Hyrule. He took Kuro home and raised her alongside Malon. A year later, she saw that the Royal Guard was seeking volunteers.

“You want to be in the Royal Guard, eh?” a tall, lanky man asked. “Just why would you want to have such a hard life? Hard work does not mean a hard life. I, the hardworking Ingo, know this well.”

“I want to get stronger,” Kuro said. “It’s been many months since I last fought, but…”

“You know how to fight?”

“Yeah, and I’ll tell you my reason for wanting to join, if you can keep a secret,” Kuro said, turning pink.

“Sure.”

“I want to impress a boy. We got separated and I promised that I’d return stronger than he was.”

“An adorable motive,” Ingo chuckled. “Don’t let blind ambition be your downfall. You need to find a master.”

“I know,” Kuro said. “That’s what I hope to find in the Royal Guard.”

Kuro managed to find a teacher in the Royal Guard and as the years passed, she grew competent enough to be able to use a halberd and go on assignments. However, after killing stalchildren in the fields to protect important guests, she fell ill three years after she began her apprenticeship. Her teacher took her to the apothecary, Cyrano, to diagnose her illness.

“She has been touched by darkness, it seems. It was not much, but it has corrupted her and will encroach on her soul as she fights,” Cyrano said. “Keep her here for the night. I will gather the ingredients for a way to help her deal with this.”

“Thank you, Cyrano,” a man said. He was a Hylian Knight. He was tall; wearing his shining armor. He was Kuro’s mentor and ever since that day, she had never seen him. She felt it was because she was forced to be put on guard duty, to reduce the violence she witnesses.

“You’ve been living in the barracks of the castle for awhile, haven’t you?” Cyrano asked her. “Well, for now on, I’ll take care of you. You’re a very special case and this is all free of charge. You are part of the Royal Guard, after all.”

“But I’m human… and a girl,” Kuro muttered.

“Still part of the Royal Guard.”

Cyrano had taken care of Kuro from that day onward. On the day Kuro was ordered to travel with Warro, Cyrano was surprised, but nonetheless prepared.

“I had a feeling such a day would come,” he told her. “These pills are a concentrated form of the potion I gave you, when you got sick. They will suppress the dark power inside of you. However, for some reason, these only last a day. So, if you run out, try to endure it. Take them out of sight, alright?”

“Yes, thank you,” Kuro replied with a smile. She took the small bag full of pills and headed out the door.

It was from there, she would catch Warro and save him from his fall from the clock tower and their journey together began. Kuro sighed as she reached the top of the valley, at last. She admitted, she was mad at Warro, but now he was her best friend. She was not going to let Vaati take another friend away from her. Who knows? Maybe Drathi will find him amusing as well, when they reunite. Drathi always had a pet peeve for ignorance and stupidity. Putting those thoughts aside, Kuro now focused on what she would do in the morning: sneak past the Gerudo and find Vaati inside the fortress.