Spiraling down awash in a hot sulfuric light and racked with pain in every place pain might live. Eyes open but unseeing, blinded against the fury of failure, absolute in its resolve. Shards of icy fire standing at attention up and down his body, reminders of every holy kiss from every holy arrow launched true and which sought to steal his power. Power. The word reminds him to stay alive, to fight. He braces for impact and then he crashes through the plains of existence, slipping in and out of real and not real, dead and undead. Lust or love or both plants seeds of strength in barren scorched lands where no strength was thought to ever grow again and then he is fighting, swimming upwards, muscled arms strained against the tide. His hands cut trenches in the torrential downfall of the underworld until even the waters bow and break to his will and he knows then that there is something worthy still left of him. They have not defeated him wholly. They have not ended his calamitous reign. They have only postponed its tyranny and when it rises again its vengeance will be mighty and swift and the dark grip of his iron fingers will close around Hyrule like shadow swallowing light. He will return. He will rise.

He will cheat death or he will die trying.

Collision. Lying still in a suffocating void. Time passes at intervals impossible to chart. Moons rise, fall. They are silver and swollen and lack a certain crimson wound in which he knows he can provide. There are long bouts of pain and misery and only the ragged scraping of his own desperate breaths to accompany him in the endeavor of survival. He can see again. Only light and vague shapes in its sullen glow, but definition slowly begins to etch itself back into the world. He can taste air on his tongue, feel cool grass beneath his bare flesh. Insects sing in the night like otherworldly sirens guiding him back to the land of the living. He can watch now the interminable arch of the moon as it passes across his eyes many times more and many times again, scratching silver trails in the black emptiness above. His strength returns in fits and starts with every cosmic turn.

Before he even knew what his body was doing, he was sitting, crouching, standing. Your name, his thoughts asked. "Ganondorf," his mouth answered and with reply came a grin. He padded forth on large bare feet, testing each step to ensure the world was still there. Grass bowed beneath his soles and poked up between his toes, and then he was laughing a bellowing, cackling fit of joy for he knew he had wholly returned, had truly slipped the reaper's noose.

Somewhere in the forest to the West a concession of Keese took flight into the sky upon hearing that laugh, beating wings in a symphony of horror as they fled, and the shadowed places at the gnarled feet of trees came alight with the myriad yellow glow of two dozen wolf eyes staring in the laugher's direction. The beasts came to rest upon their haunches and lowered their snouts to the dirt, listening.

Ganondorf found a perfect sheet of unmolested glass cut into the earth beside the flat patch of grass where he'd laid for an eternity. It was a lake, and when he stepped to its edge and leaned forth to glimpse himself, it rippled as if in tribute to his might. His twin down below the cool water was nude. His swarthy skin glistened beneath the moon's pale kiss, and Ganondorf found with a great sense of pride that his flesh had not been bastardized by the attempt on his life. It was pristine, in fact the towering man beneath the lake looked quite healthy all over. His chest was broad and defined, a thin trail of red hair cutting down his flat belly, splitting the muscular abdomen in halves. His legs were dark stone pillars rooting his strength to the earth beneath his feet. His face was long and handsome and unshaven, allowing a blood-red forest of wild hair to travel unabated across his cheeks and jawline as it stood as well all around his head in fiery tangles. Hands came up and touched delicately at that face framed in red, and Ganondorf knew then that not only had he returned in tact, but he had returned beautiful.

And yet he had not returned strong. His physical strength was there, that much he felt with every twist of his arms or stride of his mighty legs, but the other strength, the fire he carried inside himself, the one that had the power to swallow worlds whole, was missing. He sneered at his water twin below and the handsome sorcerer sneered right back. Ganondorf marched nude and enraged to a tree standing erect at the lake's northern shore and drove his fist into the thing's wooden belly. It creaked and swayed but stood yet still in defiance. He grit his teeth and punched again and this time he followed through and the night filled with the shrill breaking of wooden limbs and when the song of destruction ended the tree lay in submission at his feet. He lifted a leg and planted his foot atop it, daring the conquered thing to splinter his sole. When it only lay quiet and still his grin resurfaced, for he knew in time Hyrule itself would be as the tree was then.

But not until he'd regained what he'd lost, until the emptiness inside him was filled again with fire and glory. There was some of the flames left, but when Ganondorf reached within for them he found only embers and ash. It was enough for small tricks, perhaps, but he'd need time before he sailed the dark skies as a calamitous deity once again.

And so it was with that thought that Ganondorf fell to his knees in the grass beside the fallen tree and laid his palms flat to the earth and closed his eyes so as to focus and hear all of Hyrule's little dark secrets that were left in the looming shadow of his fall from power. He could hear the wolves padding through the forests and mountains to his position, eager to serve, but it was not the wolves he needed. He heard simple creatures of leathery skin and sharpened claws, but those things never had mind for true treachery. They were only barbarous, wanton, and stupid. They would neither hear nor heed his call, but he would never beckon to such lowly beings in the first place. No, the servants he needed were of a different nature, and it was a long time before the winds carried him their scent and when it had he could see them and their home as clear as the lake he'd first come across upon awakening.

"My kin. Come to me."

The words left his lips in a hushed whisper and merged with the shifting winds. They would carry it to the desert girls in the South, but his strength was still only so much and Ganondorf knew few would hear the call and half as many still would bother obeying it. But someone would come, perhaps a few. They would bring him food and water and weaponry and that was all a man needed to conquer a world when he carried the might of a King within him.

The great void of death had made him impatient to rule, but patient he knew he must be then. Ganondorf found himself an alcove set into a stony rise beside the wooded lands near the lake and stood in the long shadows cast from great stone fingers reaching overhead to blot the sky. It was a dark place, a secret place. He liked it right away. There was a cairn of sorts near the back of the alcove and it was there Ganondorf seated himself, setting his bare ass upon the cold rock and thinking it a poor stand-in for the throne of Hyrule that he would soon take in the coming days.

It wasn't long after he'd been seated that some mangy mongrel came limping through the stand of lakeside trees beyond his alcove with tribute clutched in its jaws. Ganondorf was still, allowing the cautious beast to approach and drop the dead fish it carried at his feet. He picked up his tribute, sniffed at it, then tore into its raw belly with his teeth to get at the good meat within. The wolf watched closely, tongue lashing at its snout and jowls hungrily.

Ganondorf stared back at the beast with flat, indifferent eyes. "Mine," he said through a mouthful of fish and the mutt whimpered and not long after trailed off with its tail between its legs. He watched it go and finished off the fish till he could see the thin bones of its ribcage poking through the carnage to which he smiled upon and laughed and tossed aside.

A calmness took him, a content feeling of coming victory. He pressed his back to the rock wall behind him and laid his palms flat atop his thighs. His eyes fell closed and every sound of the wild played in his pointed ears like a song and he grew tired and saw no reason not to rest and so he did.

He slept a dreamless sleep and when next he opened his eyes a great amount of time must have passed. Around the perimeter of his alcove, waiting patient and obedient just at the line of trees was a pack of wolves, or perhaps several packs. They watched him with loyal eyes, guarding over him as he woke. They were brown and grey and tan and stood in wait for order or command. Ganondorf's lips peeled back from his teeth in a malicious grin to show the beasts he was one of them and the wolves all bowed reverently to their King.

A different sort of beast strode through the trees then. A long and supple beast with skin smooth and the color of fresh olives. Two of them, slinking forth in their jewelry and silks and sandals, doe eyes on each, big and filled with excitement and fear. The Gerudo girls looked to each other, as if testing to make sure what they'd shared in seeing was real, then fixed their pretty eyes back upon him. They stared and he returned it and the wolves watched with their queer tails patting eagerly at the dirt below them.

Ganondorf smiled and raised a hand and curled his fingers in a beckoning motion. "Come, ladies. Your King is here now."

"It's true then, really true…" One of the girls said in a hushed voice filled with wonder. "We heard your name on the wind and we… we didn't believe it at first." She put her hand against her chest perhaps to still her beating heart. "We heard you'd been killed, or… well…"

"That the spirt known as Ganon had been," the other girl finished for her friend. "That an ancient hero, a hundred years dead, returned and smote the calamity right out of the skies!"

His smile faltered. A darkness stirred in him, cold concentrated rage. "I am Ganon. He is me. We are one spirit joined in the same, and we are both the 'calamity'. Do I look 'smitten' to you girls? Do I look defeated!?"

When he raised his voice both Gerudo women shrunk away fearfully and every one of the dozen or so wolves seated in congregation around the perimeter rose to a stand and leaned into their haunches ready for action. They snarled and growled at the girls, encasing them in a trap should they make to run.

"No! No, you weren't defeated!" One of the girls begged.

"We didn't mean anything by it, my lord. Honestly! We just heard it is all!"

"Please don't have the wolves hurt us, King Ganondorf!"

The name 'King Ganondorf' had a nice sound to it and Ganondorf decided as quickly as that to forgive his servants. He snarled at the wolves and they understood it as sign to stand down, returning to lie flat on the earth and watch him closely for their next command. He beckoned the women closer again, using the return of his smile to disarm their trepidation. They inched forth one sandaled foot at a time, shrewd eyes watching cautiously down the tan slopes of their long noses. When they entered the alcove, he could feel the heat emanating from their bodies and knew they could feel his own in return. The shapes of those two curved beauties roused his interest in ways he hadn't considered in a century or more and when they were within range he set his hands out to find their shapely hips and pull them close. They came without struggle.

"Girls," he whispered, letting them look upon him and to revel in his beauty. They watched with bated breath. "Touch me," he commanded, and without hesitation the women's slender fingers were in his long red hair and sliding down his cheek and caressing the hard muscle of his chest and arms.

"We heard you call us in the wind," one said, her hand sliding up and down his sides running over the bumps of his ribs beneath the hot flesh there. "Heard your Kingly voice commanding us."

"It took us right here," the other whispered. "Right to our master."

"It was rumored since I was a young girl that a Gerudo King, the one man in a hundred years time to be born amongst our numbers, would return."

"And he would return with power."

"Great power."

"And he would wield this great power to rise the Gerudo up again as rulers of Hyrule instead of outcasts."

"Instead of desert-dwellers scrapping by on what little resources our fickle land provides."

"Baking always under the endless bastard heat of the sun."

"Show us some of your power, my lord."

"King Ganondorf. Show us. Please."

As the girls spoke their hands continued rubbing and caressing him and Ganondorf knew then it had been too long since he'd felt the delicate touch of a woman. He was experiencing an 'awakening' of sorts in parts of him that needed relief.

"Show us your power, my lord."

"Show us why you are King of the Gerudo."

Tiring of their mouths, he asked, "How many days since you heard my words in the wind?"

"Three days, my lord."

Three days. He had slept for three turns of the sky and yet a profound tiredness still pervaded every inch of him and he knew he'd need another long rest soon to stave off the fatigue. Dying, it seemed, had taken much from him. His powers were not returning as quickly as he'd thought they might, and trying to display them now would only make him look weak before his servants. It troubled him enough to ruin the mood, and with a great sweep of one hand he thrust the girls back away from him.

"I need arms and armor. Shelter. I'll need food and water. A horse, preferably a big black steed, wild as the night." His eyes moved between his two servants watching him. "Has that desert sun baked your ears? I require those things, all of them. Bring them to me."

The girls faced one another and in that moment Ganondorf thought them not unlike the twin versions of himself in and out of the lake water. Their visages bore matching expressions of a shrewd nature, eyes narrowed and some tacit conversation passing between them heard only by the wind. It angered him immensely.

"Did you not hear your King? I said-"

"You have no power," one of the bronze statues towering before him uttered, a faint smile curling her full lips.

"It was as Chief Riju said," the other added. "When we told everyone what we'd heard. We were told you'd be powerless. Not the calamity itself but merely a shell, an imposter."

The insolence rolling so cavalier from their serpent tongues filled his belly with a hot rage and Ganondorf growled not unlike the feral beasts standing guard all around them. He rose from his stone throne on legs laced with muscle and vein and barred his teeth and shook out his mane of fiery red hair.

"You've made a mistake coming here if you think that, girls. My sorcerer's powers may yet elude me, but they grow stronger with every passing moment. Until they've returned fully, I see I'll have to make an example of what I can do with the two of you."

He curled his mighty hands into fists and stalked forth from the shadows of the alcove. The wolves raised from the ground and began inching towards the Gerudo heathens, a noose cinching around their pretty necks with every pad of the beast's paws. It wasn't until Ganondorf was nearly upon them when one tucked her fingers between her lips and filled the woods with a shrill whistle. The world came alive in the thunder of horse hooves beating earth and a great dust seemed to clear the path for the flanking attack to come. Then in a great din of noise and dust, ten more Gerudo women emerged from the chaos mounted horseback and driving the wolves off with wild yells and long leather-banded spears. Some wolves skittered off, some stood their ground but those that had were surrounded and conquered until they had no choice but to flee themselves, and when the pandemonium of the flank settled it was only ten golden warriors that stood the perimeter.

Ganondorf snarled and made to lash out at them when the whip cracked across his shoulder and arm. He roared and winced backwards holding the wound and found the two girls he'd been making to pounce upon had unsheathed their weapons. One kept a long spear angled up at his chest to keep him from rushing, the other clutched the thick handle of the braided whip that had beaten him. In a rage he tried grabbing at the woman's spear but her twin lashed him again, harder, and he had no choice but to retreat from that biting leather serpent less it snap at him again.

"To your knees," his whipper commanded, raising her weapon balefully skywards.

"I am your King!" He bellowed, but his royal mouth was shut when the pointed end of the whip came lashing at his jaw. He stumbled back, hissing hot hair through barred teeth as his fingers traced the delicate line of blood beneath his lip.

"Silence, Ganondorf," a new woman said, freshly unmounted and joining the assault. "We don't know how your cruelty survived the Calamity's destruction but we will not allow you to ever regain your powers. You and your monster tormented this land with cold tyranny for a century. Never again shall you do so."

"And you will never besmirch the name of the Gerudo again either," another woman demanded, approaching the alcove dragging behind her a heavy set of iron shackles and fetters. "Now on your knees to be set in bondage for the rest of your days."

He'd hardly moved for attack when the whip came cracking down across his arm again. He snarled and cursed and was beaten again and by then another Gerudo bearing a whip had joined the ever tightening circle around him and whipped at him from the opposite side. They lashed him into submission until he gave up on attack. He was forced to retreat into the very back of the alcove until no ground remained left to retreat upon and then stood hissing through his barred teeth like a cornered beast.

"You desert whores have made a grave mistake here today," he growled, setting hateful red eyes burning upon each of them in turn. "My powers will return and when they have I'll see every one of your treacherous coward heads adorned upon a spike. Every one of you!"

"Silence his mouth," one girl commanded, and a whip-bearer was more than happy to oblige with a lash right across his lips.

Ganondorf cradled his wound and was ready to make a leap for the nearest girl to tear her whore's throat out when four Gerudo all descended upon him in a flurry of lashings and jabbings with the blunt end of their spears. He was driven against the wall and then whipped down until he fell to his knees and the girls descended upon him like vultures. If he had his full strength he might've had an easy time crushing them, but in the infancy of his power still he was able to be tamed by their many strong hands. They forced him still and locked his wrists in heavy iron cuffs that adjoined his hands behind his back and kept them there. Fetters clasped over his ankles, binding his feet up tight against one another. A last iron claw was fastened around his throat, collaring him and pinching tight at the flesh beneath. He was whipped once more to steady his writhing then knelt immobile atop the stone glaring up at the half dozen captors who'd bound and conquered him.

"My captivity won't last," he snarled, fidgeting in the heavy irons that made up his binds. "You think to keep me in bondage? What will you whores do when my powers resurface and-"

One of the Gerduo leaned down and clamped her hand tight over his mouth. "He is in desperate need of a gag to keep this big mouth of his shut."

"And a gag he shall wear," another added as she circled behind him and shoved the padding of a thick leather muzzle hard across his mouth and joined the leather straps of it around the back of his head where they fastened together and sealed the gag firmly in place.

"You will talk no more," one of the girls informed him.

"We demand your silence and obedience and before this day is through we will have both."

"Or you will be lashed till your flesh is as striped as a Lynel's fur."

Ganondorf grunted a protest from his tightly muzzled mouth that offered little sound nor comprehension but the women lashed him for it anyway. His hands morphed to fists and pulled at his chains but they were infuriatingly tight and remained locked behind his back. He glared fuming up at the women encircling him but then they took his glare away as well when a thick cloth was tied around his eyes to submerge him in a black void not unlike the one of his escaped death.

It was that way he was lifted and carried off, blinded and muzzled and collard and chained hand and foot, naked as his birth day, his manhood flopping about uselessly between his legs and the myriad of little welts the whore had left on his flesh with their whips crying in agony. He was loaded into what must've been a wagon and then strapped in place with more locks and chains and ropes till he was one with the wooden floor entirely. As the wagon rumbled into motion, the Gerudo women's feet came to rest upon his chest and thighs stepping hard down on him, though he doubted it was to hold him in place after the heavy work of bondage they'd put him through. No, it was to assert their dominance over him, to callously remind him that this was his place in the new world he'd returned to, beneath the heels of their filthy peasant feet.

And for the time it was, but the time would not last. The blood moon was on the rise and his powers tantamount beside it. When they returned in full he would cast aside the bondage of his kin and then cruelty and wickedness would need be redefined by mortal words for what he would do to the heathens that had captured him and the world would know evil beyond any earthly measures of evil that'd come before.

For now, though, he lay still in wait.