one: faithless fool

Again, I am floating in the dark. Or perhaps I am floating in light; light that is so intense that my eyes cannot register it and so all I see is darkness.

There was pain, a moment ago, pain that stole my breath and stopped my heart, but now there is nothing. I am not glad of it.

The Triforce of Power has failed me.

And in failing me, it has caused my death.

Din must think this situation is supremely funny. She is still linked to me; the power of the heavens still throbs in my bones. It is the first time I have known my patron goddess to withhold Her power from me. Perhaps She is tired of me. The feeling is mutual at this point; I have chased my dream for hundreds of years with the Triforce of Power under my command and I am still lacking. A lesser man would have given up by now.

But I am by no means a lesser man. I don't even think I am a mere 'man' any longer. Indeed, I am the King of Evil, Ganondorf Dragmire, scourge of Hyrule and all of those other wonderfully wicked names that are the stigma of ambitious people like me.

I am also dead, it seems. Impaled again upon that cursed sword wielded by the cursed boy that heaven sees fit to send after me as soon as I rise to any semblance of power. How strange, to be reborn and see the same faces over and over. They change like leaves with the passing of time but they grow new again and face me and the cycle continues, and it will continue, until the clocks wind down those final hours when today catches up with tomorrow and now meets with never. I will see their faces, the other parts of our triangular whole, again and again until the Triforce is ripped from our hands.

And until I am able to open my eyes and see again, I will have to wait. I am used to it. Floating in Limbo like a leaf in the river is very conducive to organizing one's thoughts and planning one's next motions. For now I will rest and grow strong, and then I will escape somehow, and then I will return to my business as usual. The world will grow old, but I am already ageless. I have time.

But something is different this time. The vacuum of air around me feels different. Heavier. Occupied with a being other than myself. It seems to be murmuring to itself in a tongue that I cannot understand, at a volume level that is almost too low for me to hear. But this is my empty space, and the other entity is an intruder, and I become suddenly heated. I'm about to shout out in anger at whomever or whatever is defiling my personal emptiness when a voice cuts through the silence as rudely as a sunbeam through shadows.

"It seems you have met with a terrible fate." The voice speaks in many tones, breathy and light as air, but with an underlying heaviness and solemnity that rather makes me think of my own accent. I turn my head, seeing nothing. I am a spirit in this dimension; I have no bodily form, but I still think of myself as being human in shape.

Total darkness swims all around me as I fall endlessly to nowhere. The voices have stopped muttering; they seem to be waiting for me to answer them.

"Who are you?" I ask.

"I can make you breathe."

"That doesn't tell me who or what you are."

"I have been lost to the ages," the voices say, "and some would have me destroyed. They could not erase my existence, though; I am too strong for Death."

"Congratulations. Now tell me who you are and what you're doing here."

The voices pitch up. "I wish to free you. To let you live once more. To send you back to Hyrule."

"And what powers do you boast that you can so readily claim to be able to restore me to the world of the living?" I scoff, my voice growing louder. I am not used to others invading the quiet solitude of my limbo. It's quite distracting, and rather irritating.

Two white pinpricks appear in the darkness in front of me. I watch, mildly curious, as they grow like seeds into two orange-rimmed eyes, their colour darkening to red towards the green-rimmed irises. Their gaze holds me in an intense and unnervingly familiar stare. I've seen such eyes before.

"Long ago, I was alive," it says, whispering like it had a secret to tell. "I danced and granted wishes. When I died, they took my body and carved me to pieces. They didn't know what power they were dealing with. What fools." The laughter that echoes around me sounds like a child's, but the voices telling the tale carry echoes of eternity. This creature has old magic in it. Not as old as mine, of course, but it is of a different category, a different vein of sorcery. I cannot identify it.

"They thought they gave me the power to hex, not knowing I could do so much more. Slaughter was my forte. I was called cursed and sealed away. I have known freedom but once since then." The eyes shiver before me like I'm looking at them through a sheet of falling water.

"The echoes of letting the Land of Shadow clash with the Land of Light were felt unto the very depths of even the Gap Between Dimensions, but I was awakened from my slumber in the Twilight Realm, it seems, by your death, Ganondorf Dragmire."

Ah. So this is indeed a Twili. "I did not know that Twili were capable of intruding into…." I pause. For as many times as I have been in this place, I do not know if this is heaven or hell. It is what I have been given, time and again, known only in the secret places of my heart. "…Into here," I finish shortly.

"I am not of the Twilight Ones," the voices correct me, and suddenly a purple line wisps out of the space in front of me, curving around the eyes, forming a heart-shaped face; spikes grow out of its cheeks and the crown of its curved brow. "Their ancestors were my makers, but I was sealed away long before the Dark Interlopers were punished."

The face fills in with greens and purples and tawny yellows, all flashing like a fish's scales in sunlight. Its hue, indeed, is not the muted white and black of the Twili. The eyes had fooled me. They were the eyes of Zant, of Midna, and they spoke of the same sadness. And power.

"Where did you come from?"

"From the End, to make your Beginning."

"I'm sorry, but my understanding of cryptic riddles is limited."

The eyes float closer. It takes me but a moment to realize that the thing I've been talking to isn't a who at all. It's a what. A mask.

"I am giving you the key," it says in its voice of a thousand tones, "to unlock this prison and pursue what you most desire."

"I am not so much of a fool as to believe that you can actually accomplish that feat."

"But if I can?"

I don't know if I can grin, but my voice carries hints of humor when I speak again. "What animal does not dream of leaving its cage?"

The mask spins upside down in front of me. The voices seem to be talking amongst themselves, and suddenly they collect into one, single, booming tone.

"You are dead because you chased a dream. Your wishes are unfulfilled. I am cursed; I am a wish-granter. I was once called Majora and I will free you from this timeless void."

It says its name with more than a little hatred, but the gears in my head are beginning to turn.

"You can grant wishes."

"You wish for the Triforce."

Who doesn't? "The extent of your magic transcends Death?"

"I told you that it has no dominion over me."

Din, your selfish protection of your precious Power didn't work this time.

I can taste freedom on my tongue. I would be a fool to refuse this offer. There are hazards to rushing into this situation so quickly, but repercussions can be dealt with afterwards, when I can feel the wind on my face and solid ground underneath my feet. Power is tangible in Hyrule; not here. Somehow, the thought of spending decades here, contemplating a return, seems stifling, when mere moments ago I was resigned to the idea. Liberty does that to a soul. Open the door to a birdcage and its inmate will flutter into the wild, even though it knows there are predators and wintery conditions waiting. But still, a question lingers in my mind. This creature is too similar to me, and I seldom go to great lengths for others without deriving some benefit for myself. Call me selfish. The word suits me. "What's in it for you?"

The mask's eyes flash. "You have the power of the goddesses in your hand. When you gather the other two fragments of the Land of Light's glorious deities, I want you to open a door for me."

"Why can't you get out of here by yourself?"

"There are no cracks in the walls here," the mask whispers cryptically. "Not yet. Not yet."

"So I must return to Hyrule and break the seal between dimensions to set you free?"

"If you agree to the task."

"And if I don't fling open that particular threshold?"

The mask wags back and forth. "You are indebted to me for this offer." It floats closer. "You will be living on my borrowed power until the time you regain the favour of your goddess."

Its voices are hissing now. Warning me. I know the tone well.

"If what you are saying is true, then I will play your game with you," I say good-naturedly. "If you leave me to my business you will find that I am a very agreeable partner. I do not take orders well, but that is your difficulty to sort out."

There is a sound like laughter in the darkness; the mask flickers out and then reappears further away. I feel prickling in my weightless body when there should be no feeling at all. Surprise, I think. This thing wasn't bluffing after all.

"So be it, Ganondorf the Demon King. I shall release you into life once more." The voices are growing fainter; I feel like I'm being pulled up, up, up out of the deepest darkness anyone has ever known, and then everything grows intensely painful, and there is a strange sensation in my chest—oh, my heart is beating—and I am called back by the sound of birdsong.

"Rebirth is a beautiful thing," Majora's voice calls back to me like a memory, and then all is quiet. I sleep.

There is grass behind my body, dry and hard, baked by the sun that's blasting overhead in a cloudless sky. Suddenly I open my mouth and take in my first huge gulp of air, gagging on the action as the midmorning taste of grass in summertime goes down my throat like acid. I groan, rolling onto my side, coughing through my pain and trying to open my eyes to see where I am.

That was…easy.

From my prone position on the ground, I look around the space I've just landed on. The land stretches away from me in a wide swath of grasslands that sweeps towards the horizon in patchy waves. It takes me a while to remember the name of the white stone bridge that glimmers in the distance—Eldin, I think it is—but when I see the blue spires of Hyrule Castle challenging the sky, I grunt with satisfaction. I've landed in east Hyrule Field. Less than a day's walk to the Castle.

Then I stop.

That noise I just made.

Did that noise come out of…my throat?

I clear my throat again, and my blood runs cold.

I sound…very different. I feel...even more different.

I sit up with a start and very hurriedly look down at my body.

Two. There are two of them. Small and round. Too small for my tastes, but they're there.

Narrow waist, nipped in. Full hips, curved out. Skin bleached white in some places and black in others. Small hands, long fingers. Hair the color of sunset, bound together with a stone ornament in front of my collarbone.

And breasts. Two of them.

I've seen this body once before, when I first shared my power with Zant. He had marched into the throne room in the Palace of Twilight and apprehended a tall, robed figure with a shock of orange hair and the widest eyes I'd ever seen. Princess Midna, Zant had said, and her face had turned hard as stone.

I am the King of Evil.

And I have been ressurected as a woman. A Twili woman.

If Din wasn't laughing before, She must be having a fit now.

(A.N.)

I wanted to make this a serious fiction but I'm so tired of death and destruction after the last piece I wrote that I think this'll be more lighthearted at first. I'll try to keep Ganondorf as in-character as I possibly can because there is nothing sexier than badass Ganondorf acting like a badass.

I'm tempted to call this a crack fic because the idea came completely out of nowhere. Ganondorf, King of Evil, reborn as…Midna, of all people? And Majora popping out of nowhere?

Okay, so I'm one of the people who shares the idea that the Mask was made by the Twili's ancestors. You can't deny the similarities.

I'm in the process of writing a book but I'll try to update as fast as I can. Also I'm in college so hush I have no time to be doing these things. Please tell me what you think--review, PM, or be one of those silly lurkers that reads a story and doesn't review. :3

Have a wonderful day!