Streams of Consciousness
By The Wolfess
This is a first person narrative from the point of view of Ganondorf. One shot. I'm playing around with his character and the ideas of "justice" and "evil". Perhaps justice and evil is all in the point of view of different people. Though there are definite rights and wrongs in the world, even the most "evil" people have some form of good, or good intensions, deep inside of them. They are people as well, with hearts and emotions, desiring to do what is "right" in their eyes. Anyway, just musing. A little Ganondorf x Nabooru thrown in for good measure.
Enjoy. Standard disclaimers apply.
I know what they say about me in their legends. Evil… a beast… incarnation of darkness… insane. I am but a story they tell their children to scare them into being safe. Here in this accursed place of darkness I am doomed to float for all eternity, never to exit in body. My spirit can exit, and by manipulating some blind fool with an infant longing for power I can create a temporary physical form. My real body, however, never escapes. Never.
I did not always long for power. There was a time when all I wanted to do was be a good king for my people. They trained me in ruthlessness, thievery, and survival, because, confined to a desert where we had no water or usable resources, this was the only way my people could obtain basic needs. There were times when the thieving was providing no food and we were forced to eat the green-skinned monsters that rose up out of the sand dunes. They are called Leevers in the currant age, where they rise up out of East Hyrule Field instead of the desert. My people wore their teeth for jewelry and used their hide for shelter, but their meat made us sick unless prepared just right. Many children died from Leever poisoning... We had no choice. Only the strongest survive.
Even water was scarce. My people made large jars from the clay, hearty jars that could withstand windstorms without breaking. They loaded these jars onto the backs of horses and into wagons and traveled to the Zora's river, bringing back as much water as possible, but it never lasted long. What wasn't consumed right away evaporated in the noon sun.
The Hylians…they lived in a land rich with resources. Their life expectancy was longer and their death rate was smaller. They were healthy and lazy, growing fat on their dripping cow meat, platters of cuckoo eggs, and jugs of wine and milk. They horded their land like the triforce itself and cursed my people to the shifting sand dunes where we could barely survive, and yet they scorned us for stealing what we lacked. Green things do not grow in the desert, and without those plants, herbivores can not be raised. Without herbivores to feed off of, the few predators that lived there had only my people's corpses to hunt.
As a young lad I was given the greatest care from the Gerudo women and taught by their finest teachers. I was shown everything, schooled on Gerudo history, customs, traditions, laws, religious festivals, and more. Once they taught me everything I could learn of our people, I was to go through a Rite of Passage, and then sent to the other lands of Hyrule for schooling from the other races. For most Gerudo, the age where they experienced this was between sixteen and eighteen, but more was expected of the lone male born to my people every one hundred years. To be worthy of being king was to be the best of them all, weather you are or not, and if you died in the desert you were not worthy of them.
The day of my thirteenth birthday I was sent into the desert with a single satchel of basic necessities, a cloak, a dagger, and a scimitar. I would have to find my way through the shifting sands without navigation to the temple at the far side of the desert. Once there, I was to survive alone for four months and then return to my people, where I would be refreshed, declared a man in the sight of my people, and sent out into Hyrule to learn.
Those four months changed me forever. Scraping through the desert, my lips cracked and bled for lack of moisture. My skin, still soft like a child's, became hard and thick from the relentless pounding of the sand in my face. My eyes developed an odd strength spoken of in the writings of the greatest Gerudo women and men: an ability to see through the sand to what is unseen by normal eyes, into an alternate reality where spirits and invisible evil roamed.
A spirit beckoned to me in the sandstorm, and I followed it to a haven in the desert, where I found rest and safety from the sand. It seemed to be an abandoned military post. The Gerudo Army existed two hundred years ago, according to Gerudo history, when one of my male predecessors decided to become as great as Hyrule and created a castle, temples, an army, trade systems, a hierarchy, and more. The movement failed miserably, and upon his death, the army was immediately disbanded and my people went back to their original ways.
Inside the outpost I found a pile of large tapestries. Thinking of my return journey, I remembered the row of wooden beams I found sticking out of the sand that led a trail back to our city. Unfortunately, they were impossible to see in the sandstorm even to my enhanced eyes. I ripped the tapestries into long shreds and went back out into the storm, tying one to each post where normal eyes, even those of the Hylians, could see them flapping in the wind and be guided to safety in the storm. This was the last semi-selfless deed I ever performed, to my recollection, and later served to aid the boy who would ever be my downfall.
I eventually made my way to the temple spoken of by my people, guided by the same spirit who led me to the outpost. I killed a Leever and made a fire within the temple to cook it. The green flesh had to be almost completely blackened to be safely eaten, and while it cooked I found some small, round stones and hunted the birds with them. Stringy though the bird meat would be, it would be a nice addition to putrid Leever flesh. A small, polluted spring provided me with much-needed water.
Inside the temple was more than beautiful artwork and dangerous traps. Inside of it, I found the greatest treasure of all: a sorcerer's library, hidden for thousands of years. Each male Gerudo who found his way to the desert had added his own manuscript, records of their lives and their knowledge, their power. Each of them spoke of a dark power, called "evil" by the Hylians. With it they gained power…and with power, they kept their people alive, and stayed the strongest of all Gerudo. It was not to be feared, they argued…rather, it was to be embraced and cultivated.
I read ravenously, learning the dark arts from them with a hot hunger in my gut. I could call rain from the heavens to fill the pond with clean water to refresh me. I could summon monsters from the abyss, such as skeletal warriors and man-eating wolfos, and I could cast spells upon the statues of the temple that would cause them to obey me.
The skeletal warriors, Stalfos, traveled through the desert to find me the provisions I sought, and the wolfos were easy to kill and their meat, though gamey, was satisfying. Even the birds obeyed me and brought me fruit to eat from far-off forests. Within the temple I practiced my dark arts, and grew strong in every way. I grew tall and muscular there, and I learned how satisfying power could be. When one had power, one lacked nothing.
I returned to my people a new man. With my learned power, I gained their trust. In one hand I could summon a raging flame, and in the other a ball of ice, then encase a man in ice and melt it from around him at the same time. It pleased most of them, but not the woman who would have been leader of Gerudo were it not for my birth: Nabooru. She found my shows of power to be "big headed" and "selfish". She was the best fighter in our group, and only I could best her, but that didn't matter to her.
I became…captivated by her I would say, but she would have none of me. The fact that I could not have her made me want her all the more. "When I am king" I thought, "she will think better of me." And so I was declared a man and traveled to all the various realms of Hyrule to learn. For the first time, I gazed upon the richness of the land. The green. The life… And the selfish, high-mindedness of its people appalled me. They looked at me as if I was filth, scum, because I come from the race that steals their food, their water, and their men. They taught me out of obligation, and got rid of me as fast as possible.
Years of study later, I returned to my people as their King. I spoke to them of the riches of Hyrule, and their waste of it. There was so much potential in the land, and yet they did not use it to its fullest. In the desert we scramble for the basics, while they, in their warm houses with their bowls of fruit and waterfalls of fresh water, complained about a little dust on their floors. We would take it from them, and we would eat fruit, fresh meat, clean water. We would have resources for medicine to heal our sick. Each of our children would live past their fourth month of life, at which point 4 out of every 5 Gerudo babies died.
All but Nabooru rallied behind me and took up their arms. She retreated to the Spirit Temple, and I let her go. We moved into Hyrule diplomatically, and I gained prestige amongst the Hylians. I had magic power, I had the power of a Gerudo king, and power in Hyrule…it was not enough for me. Inside of me, a hunger for more burned. Nothing we received was ever good enough, because we returned home every night to a desolate wasteland.
Only once did I visit Nabooru. We talked late into the night, and I tried to persuade her to join me as my queen. We would rule the entire land of Hyrule together, I promised her…she turned her back on me. If I would turn from this insatiable hunger for power she saw in my spirit, then she would agree to be my queen, but not until. I would not agree to those terms. I exiled her to the outer desert, forbidden to return to Gerudo Valley.
A few weeks later, I heard a legend in a diplomatic meeting about a magical relic called the Triforce. With its power, I could do anything I desired… even hypnotize Nabooru and force her to bend to my will. What was ambition turned to obsession, greed, murder. And once I started, I could not stop. Everything and everyone I touched has died…the land I sought to rule because of its riches, the people I never meant to really harm… even Nabooru. I never held her in my arms. I could not lay down my pursuit of power for her. I could not stop, even if I wanted to. My soul was lost to the darkness of my ancestors' ancient art long, long ago.
I still cannot stop myself…the search for something better, more powerful, is all I have left.