A thick thread of saliva dropped from the boar's mouth and pooled into a gluey mass on the red clay of the ground next to the campfire. Zelda watched it fall before looking away in disgust. There was no doubt in her mind that the creature was only pretending to sleep.
The boar grunted, jerking Zelda's attention back to its grisly face. It squinted at her with gummy eyes, its irises an unnatural shade of gold. Zelda reached forward to poke the embers of the fire with a stick, and the boar flinched. She tightened her fist around the chain connected to its silver bridle, which glittered in the light of the flames.
Zelda was exhausted, and she wondered why she had insisted on allowing the monster to live. Its resurrection had been fueled by the misery of the people in Holodrum and Labrynna, and she herself had almost been sacrificed in the process. Something so evil should not be allowed to exist, but it served as the host of the Triforce of Power. It was her duty to return with it to Hyrule.
As long as the magical silver bridle did what it was supposed to do, the creature presented no danger to her, but Zelda still couldn't bring herself to relax. It was shaped like a boar, but it was gigantic, almost as large as a destrier. Its black fur was tinged with a deep midnight blue, and matted auburn hair sprouted in tufts around its misshapen head and along the ridge of its spine. From between its blubbery lips jutted tusks larger and sharper than those of any animal she had ever encountered. If the monstrosity managed to break free of her control, she had only her sword to defend herself, and she understood that her death would be swift and painful.
The boar's pelt was crossed with the scarred lines left behind by Link's sword. He could have killed it and put it out of its misery, but she'd begged him to stop. She hoped the Triforce of Power could save Hyrule, and save her. Now that she and Link had parted ways, there was no undoing what she had done. She was alone with a demon, and there was nothing more than a small campfire holding off the darkness surrounding them.
"It's not easy being a princess, you know."
In the absence of a travel partner to keep her company, Zelda had begun to talk to the boar. She knew that it didn't understand her. So much the better.
"Everyone acts like it's a privilege, and that I should be grateful, but – " the boar had stopped to sniff at something on the edge of the path, and Zelda paused to jerk it forward. "Come on, you brute. There'll be plenty of food for you when we get where we're going." The demon grunted and shook its head, and Zelda continued walking.
"I should be grateful," she continued after a few yards, "but it's not like I have a choice about anything in my life. This is the first thing I've done on my own in years, and look where it got me. A pair of nasty old witches want to sacrifice my soul to a giant pig monster, just because I'm a princess, curse the goddesses. I'm special because I'm 'pure hearted,' whatever that means."
Zelda glanced behind her at the boar, but it was looking off into the forest underbrush as it trotted along.
"Is it like extra-virgin olive oil?" she asked herself, thinking of the delicacy imported from the seaside kingdom of Labrynna. "Am I 'extra-virgin' because I'm a princess? Great Din, it's not like I even have a choice in that matter. I must have had at least a dozen suitors in the past three years, and none of them had anything substantial to offer Hyrule. It would be one thing if they were at least attractive, but..."
Zelda sighed. "I just feel so trapped sometimes," she said, twining the silver chain around her knuckles.
"Let... me... go."
A shiver ran down Zelda's spine as a guttural voice emerged from behind her. She stopped dead in her tracks and slowly turned to face the boar, which was staring straight at her.
"Did you just...?" Zelda couldn't quite bring herself to voice the question. The idea that the boar had talked to her was preposterous.
And yet it met her eyes as it opened its mouth.
"I... am... trapped... too. Let... me... go." Each utterance was garbled but distinct.
Zelda shook her head. "Fine, so you can talk," she addressed the demon, "but there's no chance I'm setting you free." She felt a brief pang of guilt and began to reconsider. "Unless you can explain why I should," she offered.
The boar made a gurgling sound and began sniffing at the dirt.
"All right then." Zelda shrugged. They hadn't covered near enough ground, and she couldn't afford to waste more time before nightfall. She pulled at the boar's chain as she turned toward the path in front of her.
"This would be so much easier if I had a horse," Zelda grumbled as she attempted to kick the mud off her boots. She'd have to clean them later, and she wasn't looking forward to stripping down to her stocking feet in front of the demon. It hadn't made the slightest move out of line since she had begun leading it forward along the long road to Hyrule, but she hesitated to render herself vulnerable in its presence. Relieving herself was torture, and sleep was out of the question. She had walked through the night, and she was nearing the end of her endurance.
"And I'd prefer not to have to go in such a roundabout way," she continued, taking on an argumentative tone. "But it's not as if I can parade you through town, either. Some hero would get it into his mind to slay you, and then where would we be? You'd get loose, and then there really would be trouble."
"...Kill...him..." the boar mumbled behind her.
"Yes, of course you'd kill him," Zelda agreed, "which is only natural. You'd be acting in self-defense, and it's not as if he'd show mercy to you. That's not what I'm worried about, though."
"The... chain," the boar grunted.
"Right," Zelda nodded. "The problem is the chain. If someone else gained control over you, they could use you against me. Or..."
Zelda paused to rub sweat out of her eyes.
"Oth... oth... thers," the boar slobbered, its thick tongue unable to form the word.
"That's the idea," Zelda replied. As horrible as it was to imagine the prospect of facing down the incarnation of a mythical demon, the idea of someone else using it as a weapon was even more frightening.
She had been conversing with the boar for hours. At first it said nothing intelligible, and Zelda could only understand one word out of every five. As the sun set on her second day on the road with the creature, however, its speech began to make more sense. Zelda suspected she would fall asleep if she stopped to rest, and so she continued walking, talking with the boar to keep herself awake.
"So... let.. me... go," it grumbled.
"Nope," Zelda said, shaking her head. "It's nice that you can talk, but there's a reason I'm keeping you on a leash. If you really are Ganon, then you're my enemy. You destroyed Hyrule in the past, and you'll do it again if you're not stopped. You almost destroyed Holodrum, and Labrynna was on the verge of collapse when I got there."
"Not... me..."
"I don't buy that for a second. One of the poems I had to memorize as a girl called Ganon 'the prince of deceit, a liar and a thief.' And I could feel the evil energy in the air as soon as I crossed the border into Labrynna. Magic may have faded away in Hyrule, but..."
Zelda cut herself off. She had been taught not to talk about magic, and the force of habit was strong, even so far away from the castle. Still, she could feel waves of powerful magic emanating from the creature, its energy transmitted to her through the conduit of the silver bridle. She suspected that this power had been keeping her going as she walked without rest through dangerous territory, the fierce aura of the boar ensuring that lesser monsters remained at bay.
And then there was the strange stone that had been left on the battlefield in a pool of the boar's blood. Although no one else noticed it, it glowed like a star in Zelda's eyes, and now it burned like a coal in an inner pocket of her cloak.
She withdrew the stone on a sudden whim. It made the nerves in her fingers tingle uncomfortably. "If you weren't a demon, what would you be doing with something like this?" she asked, turning to show it to the boar.
Its eyes flashed, and it grew violently agitated, restrained only by the magic of the bridle.
"GIVE THAT TO ME," it roared, no longer stumbling over its words.
Zelda stared. The boar's body shook, and its hooves kicked at the ground. Its eyes were desperate. Demon or not, the creature was clearly in the grip of some terrible emotion, and Zelda found that she could not ignore its distress.
"What do you want me to do?" she whispered.
"On my forehead," it said, its voice choking but its words as clear as glass. "Against the scar."
Zelda had not spent any length of time studying the boar's face, but now that she looked closely she noticed a cross-shaped indentation at the top of its snout. She tried to turn away from the intensity of its gaze, but she felt compelled to step forward, the magical stone still in her hand. There was an almost magnetic force drawing her to the demon, and she could not deny it. It was as if she had stepped out of herself, out of her role as the firstborn and only princess of Hyrule, and become something much larger, something closer to the pulsing heart of the world.
"So be it," she declared. Zelda touched the glowing amber stone against the pale scarred flesh between the boar's eyes. Her head was suddenly filled with a blinding white light, and then everything went black.
