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The currents of magic chattered and whispered, tugging and tempting him to leave the comfortable shadows.

Not yet, not yet, he murmured back.

The aspiring hero was not interested in nuance. He was young, and brash, and reckless. He charged into battle without hesitation, and often acquitted himself surprisingly well, considering he was a nobody of little sense and less education from a pitiful little island of subsistence farmers in the south seas. He was not ready to bear the weight of Farore’s Sanction yet, but anyone could see the meddling old tyrant was grooming him for the role.

It would be interesting to see what kind of man he might become, after all of this was over. He’d made some little progress learning to use the blessed sword, but not yet to hear the spirit housed in it. Which might be for the best. The sword spirit hated him as much as her nature allowed her to hate anything, and no doubt she would happily teach her bearer how to unlock the true deadly potential her maker had forged into the ancient adamantine and bluestone.

Daphnes Nohansen failed to notice anything beyond the circle of his own pride, as usual. His enchanted wood creaked and cracked as he used the old gossip stone to urge the gods-touched children into the ancient castle.

Ganondorf waited.

Patient.

As he should have been the first time.

He let Daphnes challenge his curse, allowing him to project an image of himself into the tiny sanctuary under the heart of the castle. He let the dusty old tyrant blather unchallenged, and he held his tongue as the godsbothering old fool took the Triforce shard from the little waverat and fused it with the shard he’d hidden in his own pathetic soul.

The children stared in wonder as the golden light shone and sparkled and generally shed bits of impressive but useless glitter everywhere.

The waverat doubted.

Quick, clever, stubborn.

A true heir to her foremothers’ talents.

Daphnes leveraged the relic to throw a glamourie over the girl.

Ganondorf looked away.

He could not afford to lose his temper.

Not now. Not here.

Hearing Daphnes’ smooth baritone again after centuries was irritating enough as it was, but he could bear it. He was no longer the young and reckless fool.

Looking upon her face veiling a stranger, seeing her grief and confusion in eyes that looked so much like hers — he would have to learn to bear it, and soon.

But not yet, not yet.

“Now that it is known that Tetra is indeed Princess Zelda, Ganon will be searching frantically for this child in an attempt to get the power of the gods that she possesses, “ said Daphnes smoothly. “He will not rest until he has found her.”

Oh, I won’t.

“If he succeeds, my ancient kingdom under the sea will be turned into a land of shadow and despair — and so will the world you know above the waves.”

They already are, by your own folly. Not that you can see it, not that you ever could.

“Link, I need you to lend me your strength in this dark hour.”

“But,” began the waverat in the gentle golden alto that broke his heart and put it back together again a hundred thousand times, centuries ago.

“It is far too dangerous for you to join us in this task.”

“No,” cried the girl. “I can help you, I can! Even princesses can hold maps, yeah? I can navigate for you — I… I can watch your back. I’ll take the older shield, I won’t be in the way, I promise.”

The boy hero sighed. “Tet— I mean Princess, you can’t go where we’re going. You heard him. That wretched old sorcerer broke the sword of evil’s bane in the past, so I gotta go to the sages of the past to un-break it. Only a hero can go through those kind of gates.”

“I can mind your ship—”

Daphnes laughed. “I can mind myself well enough. I have done so for ages. Truly, this is the safest place for you, at the heart of the strength of Hyrule.”

“How can you say that? This entire pile of rocks is full of invading monsters — and! And! Hyrule sank! Hyrule was defeated and sank to the bottom of the ocean— this is the least safe place in the whole world—”

“It is the one place he won’t look for you,” said Link with a patently absurd confidence he was in no position to appreciate. “The only important thing down here was the sword, and I’ve got it already. It’s a perfect plan.”

“Fortunately, this sacred chamber is not yet known to Ganon,” added Daphnes in beautifully ironic ignorance. “It is my wish that you wait here in hiding until we return.”

“How long will you be gone? When will you be back? What am I supposed to even do with myself down here—”

“Quickly, if we stay here much longer we will draw our enemy’s attention to Princess Zelda’s whereabouts,” urged Daphnes, no doubt all the more anxious because his spirit felt the presence his feeble mind would not admit.

The boy hero saluted the ghostly apparition.

The waverat in ancient regalia reached for the boy as he turned to leave. “Link… Everything that’s happened to you and your sister has been my fault. I’m so sorry.”

The boy laughed. “Naw, it’s fine. Not your fault the old sorcerer wriggled out of jail to run amok. We got Aryll back safe and sound, and that’s all that matters. Now you just gotta sit tight in the safest place in the world while we shine this blade up and take him down for you. Okay?”

“I… please be careful,” she said, sorrow tarnishing those golden notes.

“Always,” said the boy hero with a winning smile.

The girl fretted, tripping over the long hem of her archaic dress and fighting back tears. She rubbed at the back of her right hand where the shard of wisdom had settled in to pulse and glow, resonating with his own shard.

Footsteps retreating.

Stone scraping.

“Maybe I don’t want to be safe,” cried the girl to the towering knightly statues and the indifferent stone.

Granite screamed and rumbled above them, shaking dust from the ceiling.

“No,” cried the girl as realization settled in. “No, don’t leave me alone!”

The statue base shuddered and thumped into place, sealing out the more-or-less natural light from the basilica hall above.

The girl hiked up her skirts and sprinted across the round chamber, shouting and cursing and stumbling on half the steps in terror and grief.

Ganondorf waited.

His withered heart shuddered in resonance with her terror, urging him to go to her. The Triforce hummed and pulled and urged him also to go to her. The currents of magic spun and chattered and gathered so tight against his spirit he felt covered in morth fuzz.

Broken sobs echoed down the stairs as the grieving girl vainly flung herself at the underside of the stone door, desperate to escape.

At last, when he felt certain he would fly into a million pieces to hear another wail of grief and do nothing, her howling subsided into muffled sobs.

Ganondorf unraveled the shadows under the ogive arch enshrining the beastly form of his namesake, and waited.

She would exhaust her grief, and reason would return. She would remember that where there is good air, where there is light, there is a path for those with the wit to look for it. She would return to the sacred chamber. Seeing him waiting there would upset her less than the other options.

Her screech of terror startled him out of his wollgathering, even though he was expecting it.

“You—! You-you-you cannot be here! How did you get in here?”

“Same as you. I walked,” he rumbled, amused that her fury cut through the glamourie to blend her own voice with the artful tones of her ancestor.

She howled at him, hands balled into fists, her charming features distorted with rage.

“You must remember to breathe deep into your belly for proper resonance. Too many shallow beats will make you lightheaded.”

“Fuck you,” she snarled, circling around the statues to hurl her venom from a closer range. “You’re behind all of this. Horrible creature, have you no shame? The fuck is wrong with you, kidnapping children and upending everything good and right and sensible for — for what? Why are you back from the bowels of hell itself to ruin everything?”

Ganondorf dug in his sleeve pocket for a clean handkerchief and held it out for her to take.

She scowled at it, and him, spluttering and speechless.

“It’s not poison. Take it, Princess.”

“I’m not a princess,” she snapped.

“Technically, by old Hylian law, any daughter of the motherline of Hylia is a princess of Hyrule. Whether she knows it or not,” he countered, gesturing with the handkerchief impatiently.

“And how do you know anything about anything?”

“The same way I know a great many things about almost everything,” he said with a crooked grin. “Not that an illiterate waverat would be equipped to appreciate the virtues of an orderly education.”

“I’m not illiterate. My mother taught me to read the ship’s abstract before I was six. Shows how much you know.”

“I stand corrected,” he said equitably. “Now, which of your questions would you prefer answered first?”

“How did you get in here?”

“As I said, I walked. Is it so astounding that a witch might choose a mundane form of locomotion on occasion?”

“Impossible. This whole place was empty when we got here and they just sealed the only way in.”

“Amazing that both of the things you just asserted are wildly incorrect and your own blood isn’t rebuking you for it. Now are you going to clean your face or shall I do it for you?”

“Don’t touch me,” she snapped, tearing the handkerchief from his fingers in pique. “I haven’t forgiven you for trying to strangle me yesterday.”

He shrugged. “I was trying to pick you up by the scruff before you did something we’d both regret, but you wiggled too much. Maybe next time try cooperating.”

“Never,” she spat.

But.

She scrubbed the clean linen over her fair face.

“Take a moment to look around you, and ask yourself if this is the kind of holy sanctum built by a peaceful country,” he said mildly.

She glared up at him.

“The power you hold will guide you to the Truth, if you let it.”

“So, what, you expect me to believe you’re the one with a righteous claim when I saw the girls in lockup in your fortress with my own two eyes?”

“The pursuit of a righteous end does not always allow one room for righteous means,” he said with a shrug. “Jikoru was better at finding highborn Hylian girls than telling me where he got them from — and as with any bird of prey, if I gave back to him what he brought me, he would have understood that as permission to eat.”

“Oh, fuck,” said the girl.

“Girls with the wit to tell me where the hell they lived got themselves shipped back to their pathetic little lives with a fat sack of rupee and a few strange dreams. Those too proud or stupid to talk… well. As you saw.”

“Why should I believe you?”

He raised a brow. “Does your very blood not boil when you hear a lie?”

“Just answer the question old man.”

“I do not need you to believe me, though it will make both of our lives far easier for the foreseeable future if we can negotiate some manner of truce. We need not be enemies, you and I, just because you have what I seek.”

“Yeah well, you don’t need to be a fuckhead just because hell spat you back out.”

“Hn. Shall I recite an abbreviated list of Hyrule’s sins for you to judge by the same measure?”

She growled a curse and scrubbed at her face again. She glared at the stained glass windows enshrining the sacrifice of the sages, and she glared at the colossal knightly statues which evoked the courage of heroes of vanished eras. “Why have you been tearing the world apart to find me? You have me. Now what?”

“Hn. Now, we wait. The shards in your posession and mine are not the whole of the treasure, but the Triforce wants to be whole again. It will move to help the boy in his task the more of the Spirit of the Hero he invokes into himself.”

“But why?”

“To understand my answer, you will need to learn rather more history than I think you’ve patience for after your long journey and difficult revelations today. For now, let it be enough that there are Patterns in the world that can be corrected no other way. Once my purpose is achieved, you may go wherever you please.”

“That’s it? You just want the magic for one thing, and then I’m free to go? This whole time, everything we’ve suffered, and it could have been over and done with in five minutes if you’d just bothered to ask?”

“Think, child. I had first to find you to ask, and there is still the matter of the shards of the third piece.”

“Fine, whatever,” she grumbled. “So since you got in here, I assume you can get us both out of here?”

“Of course. If you are not interested in learning the true purpose of this room.”

“It’s where the ancients kept the sword,” she said with a frown.

“Yes and no. The sword of evil’s bane is older than Hyrule itself, and though Hylia herself forged it as a weapon against her greatest enemy, gods do not engage anything with singular purpose. The blade houses an immortal spirit created to be a companion and guide to her chosen mortal bearers, and her spirit contains the keys to manifesting incredible powers — and to opening thousands of arcane gates to worlds beyond this one. The room where we now stand is one such gate, and not only did I know of its existence and where it existed and what it led to before Daphnes was an itch in his sire’s crotch, Ganon Himself was imprisoned here for ages, along with an unfortunate degree of my own power until the boy took the holy blade and broke the seal dividing us.”

“Ganon,” she repeated softly, frowning up at him, and the stained glass window above him. “Ganon dorf.”

“Be grateful I have rather more experience dealing with Him than the last few times we found ourselves at cross purposes, princess of destiny.”

“Ugh. I’m not—”

“You are,” he cut in. “Though you clearly lack the training to recognize or use the powers granted by your divine bloodline and the spark of spirit you share with your foremothers, and as much as it annoys me to agree with anything that tyrannical old fart has to say, you are The Bearer of Wisdom for this generation in every way that matters.”

She stared at the pulsing glow on the back of her right hand, shimmering through the beglamoured white silk gloves. “What does that even mean though? Mother said it was a piece of treasure, part of a vast cache hidden somewhere under the sea. She told me that if we could only find it, we’d be richer than our wildest dreams, never wanting for anything ever again.”

“She wasn’t entirely wrong, but the Triforce whole is much, much more than treasure. Forged by the oldest of gods, the golden three in harmony: sublime Nayru, bright-burning Din, bountiful Farore. It is capable of manifesting anything and everything that the one who holds it is bold enough to desire, and because it can only be used by a mortal hand it elevates us to match their power, thereby freeing us all from obedience to any and all gods.”

“You have tried to seize it before,” she said quietly, her eyes roving about the ornate little room with renewed focus.

“I have,” he admitted equitably. “Three lifetimes I have pursued the divine relic, and truly, nothing else in any world matters half so much as attaining it. Much of what you see adorning this once-plain cella in the heart of a vast arcane clockwork stabilizing time itself with the sword as its keystone records the result of my first attempt to right the imbalance of the world.”

“Wickedness encircled the land due to the hand of the evil one who had obtained the power of the gods,” she recited softly, covering the glow on the back of her right hand.

“Part of it,” he said quietly. “I too was once young and proud like you, heedless of the advice of my elders. I knew my desire to be pure and my cause just, whatever anyone else said of me. I believed the judgment of mortals didn’t matter, that the gods would hear the true cry of my spirit when I laid my hand on the golden power. And perhaps, in a sense, they did — though that is a philosophical digression you may perhaps not have any interest in.”

“Maybe later,” she said, her voice shaded with doubt and suspicion. And yet even this was progress several orders of magnitude beyond what he achieved with the first Zelda he faced, oh so many ages ago.

“In any case, the result was this: the relic divided in three parts according to the virtues each of the Golden Ones invested in it. The portion which settled with me, and which I bear still, is the gift of Din, She of the bright flaming arms who shaped the red earth in the dance of Her passion.” He held up his own right fist, letting the pulsing golden glow wash through him.

“And the shard passed down by my ancestors… wisdom?”

“Gift and sanction of Nayru, She who divides Light from Dark, She whose radiant order forms the bones of all the many worlds and weaves the paths between them, She who created every facet of knowledge that ever was or will be, divine mother of Blessed Hylia Herself, who was charged to guard the eternal Light and the river of Time which sprang from it,” he said softly.

“Hylia. Hylian. Hyrule,” she murmured, frowning at the little room and the symbolism dripping from every carved stone.

“The divine right by which your people claimed a mandate to rule over others is, in essence, nothing but the favor of your patron goddess, who loved your long-eared people better than anyone else, and in turn they adored Her above all other gods, supporting a disgusting and self-sustaining cycle of sycophants and tyrants. Look at these windows — each is a memorial portrait honoring the sacrifice of not just one life but every potential rebirth of that unique spirit, each of them a sage and guardian in their own right, charged by their own gods and the spirits of the land they lived on to guard and balance the element they hold. Only the priest who channeled the power of Light shared your bloodline, but he and the corrupt crown he served were not satisfied with securing mere mortal dominion, nor would they yield when other nations refused to bow to the imperial yoke or render unto Hyrule extortionate tribute and every good thing. Hyrule was losing the war. Badly. The gods themselves wept for the atrocities woven and the blood and greed drenching fair green Hyrule, but the same relic which freed mortal hearts from eternal subjugation also barred them from interfering. The Zelda of that time sought to end the civil war in favor of Hylian supremacy through metaphysical unification — that is, by seizing control of the spiritual realm, she would in turn shape the mortal worlds to reflect her desire. But she could no more control the full power of the gods than I.”

“You used her to get to the Triforce, just as you have hunted me,” she said softly. “But there was a third. A hero. Clad in green.”

“So there was,” he agreed. “The courage of the Hero of Time is rightly lauded, and he did a great many good deeds for the people of many lands beyond this one while he lived. We did not often agree on the correct path forward, much less the method by which to advance, but the core of our purpose has long been the same: restoring balance to not just Hyrule but the world. I respected his spirit, and in my second life we even managed somewhat of an accord. But that is a story for another time, perhaps.”

“I mean if we’re stuck down here for long enough,” she grumbled, her own unique spirit shining through the glamourie as she pulled a sardonic face at him.

“Hn,” he said, allowing a wry grin in return. “What is important to know in this moment is the sages of the five other elements were persuaded to stand with him in the end of that… let us call it a battle. They gave their eternal spirits unto the Great Work of binding The Calamitous One, the Great Evil, the Source of All Monsters here, at the threshold of two worlds, under the watchful spirit of the godkilling sword of evil’s bane, thus to rot for all time. Or so they hoped.”

She turned, looking up at the three sages honored by the windows on that side.

He let her, holding the silence as her spirit pulled her sunwise around the edge of the room to absorb the masterful iconography.

“This one looks like you,” she said at last, her fair face bathed in the warm light of hundreds of faceted orange glass shards surrounding the proud visage of the sage of Spirit.

“Onchali Sravoe Nabooru Chalut avadha Kesh Saiev,” he said reverently. “In your language, her title means Exalted Sun, and her Name means she who ascends. Right hand of the Great King, the highest general in the Golden Legion, and the strongest warrior among all the Geld’o, undefeated in single combat with any bladed weapon you care to name, Awakened to the mantle of the Sage of Spirit in a troubled era.”

“She sounds like a legend herself,” she said in awe.

“She was my sister,” he confessed quietly.

She turned sharply, her blue eyes full of questions — and excruciating compassion.

“Nabooru fullfilled her duty. She chose the path that she felt was right for our people at the time,” he said simply.

“I’m sorry,” said the girl.

Worse, she meant it.

Ganondorf swallowed to ancient pain and nodded to the window behind him, letting her piece together the story herself. “To be perfectly honest, by the time it came to that I… was not entirely myself, either.”

“That sounds terrible.”

He shrugged. “Of all the torments the gods have hurled at me over the ages, that one I think I mind least. I was so certain I understood Patterns greater than any mortal was ever meant to, so certain I had nothing to lose. I was young and stupid.”

“Oh,” said the girl oh-so-softly in the golden voice that threatened to break his heart afresh, her hands folded as though she would offer a compassionate prayer.

“Though perhaps not quite as stupid as you,” he teased in a gruff tone to mask the sorrow threatening to close his throat.

“Feh,” she said, rolling her eyes, the wry censure of the ruthless waverat breaking through the benevolent beauty of the princess once more. “You got out.”

“And thus though the people prayed for salvation, the great beast arose to lay waste to the fair green country I believe is how the current version is sung.”

“They sacrificed so much and it still didn’t work. That was you in the era without a hero.”

“Something of a misnomer, that. True courage doesn’t always look like picking up a sword,” he said mildly, nodding to the bombastic knightly sculptures joining their great bronze blades above the sword pedestal.

“The legends say there was a whole war though, fire and famine and monsters roaming everywhere,” she said, wringing her hands fretfully.

“And so there was.”

“How could the hero refuse to help?”

“He didn’t refuse. He stood with us,” he said quietly. “We disagreed on many things, but both the Hero and the Zelda agreed the injustices must be stopped, and my tactics were effective. The ‘beast’ of your fairy tales was a revolution of common folk and otherfolk rising up against the longeared Hylian tyrants to break your theocratic imperial regime for good. And we did.”

“But at what cost? Look at the destruction, the senseless deaths — how can you look at the rubble of this world and crow victory?”

“My methods were not always gentle — but neither I nor our allies called the flood. Daphnes did. In the eleventh hour, surrounded, rather than surrender to me, he invoked the absolute power of the gods to destroy Hyrule rather than yield to our superior force and righteous cause. The gods abandoned us all that day.”

“Fuck.”

“I did cast the transformation spell,” he confessed with a shrug.

She raised a brow. “You turned the king of Hyrule into a boat?”

“I did,” he said with a wry grin. “Do you not approve of my artistry? Do you not find the likeness fitting? Should I have weighed down his prow with a vast carved ruff after those starched monstrosities he favored and made him dunk his ugly face in every wave he crossed?”

“Seems a bit narrow in the keel if his ghost is anything to go by,” she said with a snicker. “But I guess even he would look small to a mountain like you.”

“Hn. I suppose I expected a few centuries tossing around the empty seas would teach him a lesson, but it seems he’s persuaded himself the refugees were Divenely Chosen Elect, destined to preserve Hylian tradition in exile and one day be summoned by mysteriously and selectively benevolent gods revive the misbegotten glory of his era. In truth our Zelda foresaw her father’s disastrous idiocy and together with the Hero labored for years in secret, arranging escape routes and evacuating civilians — loyalists and the Rebellion — to higher ground while I fought to prevent the necessity of their use. All who escaped drowning in the goddamned flood were divinely favored only in the sense that her compassion was a blessing none of them deserved.”

“Okay,” she said, expelling a tight breath and straightening her shoulders. “So. I grant you’ve every cause to be bitter, but that doesn’t give you the right to go around ruining other people’s lives either. Can your magic get us back to the surface?”

“Technically.”

She frowned up at him. “I don’t like the way you say that.”

“Hn,” said Ganondorf, turning to free the hidden catch in the frame of the stained glass window beside him. “It will be some time before your aspiring hero returns. His journey needs to be his own for a time. His courage will remain in its shell while in your shadow.”

She groaned in transparant annoyance, but drifted closer even so, intrigued by his efforts to pry the window open from the wrong side.

At last, the ancient iron and lead moved just enough that a solid thump of his fist against the frame finally jostled the panel free, revealing the somewhat significantly less grand staircase rising behind the enchanted lightcrystals arrayed in the window frame.

“Oh,” she said softly, rising up on her toes to peer at the hidden passage.

“Come,” he said, offering his hand to help her climb up to the first hidden step. “Let us go have tea like civilized creatures and I will tell you more of who you are than that old fart bothered to.”

“Let’s not and say we did,” she grumbled, setting her gloved hands on the masonry and trying vainly to pull herself up on her own. “I don’t — ugh this skirt — know what Zelda is or who she is and I don’t feel — damnit, these slippers have no grab whatsoever.”

He coughed and cleared his throat, pointedly averting his gaze as again he offered his hand for leverage, or a step, however she chose to take it.

She huffed and swore and gave up trying to scramble into the window passage alone. She brushed dirt from her dress and stomped her golden slipper in childish pique. “Look. Even if I am the heir to all of this… it’s not me. This dress, the makeup…”

“Hn. Daphnes did go a little heavy on the powder. It was the fashion, in our day, for young ladies.”

“Ew,” she said, pulling a grotesque face from the depths of her true spirit.

“Eh,” he said with a shrug. “Fashion is always like that. Come on, there will be climbing enough to reach the throne room without picking a fight with gravity here at the beginning.”

She groaned and swore and clawed her long fair hair out of her face — and finally relented, placing her fragile little hand in his to accept the boost into the passage. She inspected the hinges of the window, and the enchanted crystals set into the frame, siding around the narrow corridor to confirm the sages’ windows were built much the same, except for the hidden hinge and latch.

Ganondorf waited for her to satisfy her curiosity, and he waited for her to ascend the first handful of narrow steps before calling a pinch of magic to aid his own climb. He pulled the window shut behind them, and lofted a little ball of magelight to follow at her shoulder and ease the darkness for her.

“Why are you doing all this?”

“As I said, balance—”

“No, I mean this. Right now. The talking, the tea, the magic. Though honestly tea sounds like a lot of work right now. I’d rather curl up in a hammock and forget about all of it for a few hours.”

“Again. We need not be enemies, just because that old fart can’t admit he was wrong, even to mourn our Zelda.”

“Can’t imagine how annoying that must be,” she cast over her shoulder with a wink.

“Brat,” he rumbled without heat.

“Demon.”

“I do not know about any tenuous hammock, but if you are still tired when we reach the throne room, I can summon a proper bed for you in the retiring chamber there.”

“Proper bed for a proper princess,” she grumbled.

“Would you rather I summon an improper article then and give you further support for your ill opinions?”

“You’re deliberately misunderstanding me.”

“I believe even in your time there is a proverb about pots and kettles.”

She turned about on the stair to pull an amazingly grotesque face at him.

He laughed.

She giggled in turn, eyes sparkling with triumph.

“In any case, so long as we do abide here within the bubble, you should mind the tides of your body, howsoever subtle. Powerful magics such as this have a habit of unmooring the mind from physical realities the longer you are exposed to them, and you can do yourself a great deal of harm with neglecting those mortal requirements. When you feel hunger at all, you must eat. So also with rest. The tea will keep.”

“And where will you be?”

“Near enough,” he said, avoiding her eye. “Are you accustomed to a hearty breakfast or light?”

“Depends on the work that day,” she said with a shrug, turning to resume her climb. “As long as the coffee is strong.”

“I’ll see what I can manage.”