The Legend of Zelda ---
Because he was the king, his decision reigned. Because he was the king he said nothing. He did not go to his daughter, Zelda, and comfort her, as the instinct of fatherhood dictated he should. Instead, he merely watched; a stone by her side. Few were present in the tower room – the Tower of Wisdom, the highest building built upwards from the walls of Hyrule Castle. It overlooked the land with a vernacular eye and regal indifference – so that its green fields flowed out from their city in knolls, that the five cities Darunia, Rauru, Ruto, Nabooru, Saria thrived across the two northern continents, so that the overarching silhouette of Death Mountain to the south was kept under... watch. There were three walls to the room – the floor was triangular and bore chiselled into its tiles the frescoes and mosaics depicting ancient history, the myth of creation, the legendary Triforce whole where it would never have been dreamed so.
The windows built into its walls were positioned to so that regardless of its location in the sky the sun – the Eye of Din – shone into the middle of the chamber, and at night that the moonlight did likewise. All around them dust tossed about like golden sand, but none paid it heed. Their attention was rapt drawn to the artefact on the pedestal – hovering, an emerald pyramid of glass which opalesced and weaved its light about so there was no geometry to its surface – only solid, blinding white-green fire.
The Triforce of Wisdom.
There was no choice, not any more. It could not fall into His hands, and thus must be hidden away. Must be lost, like the Triforce of Courage before it.
Because he was the king he had ordered his daughter to go through with it, and because she was his daughter she did so without disobedience, without visible grief. She held herself with Tyrian nobility, her golden hair spilled curled from her shoulders over a silky gown of white and green and gold. On the back of her hand, the mark, the triangle, seemed to pull her arm forward to touch the blazing jewel's solid face. She did not draw back.
Because he was the king, he did not weep.
He had written his final orders – his will – and sealed the letter in the sacred blood of his lineage. The Triforce would be broken, by his daughter, into eight pieces. The three popes – of Farore, Din, and Nayru – and their vicars would send the pieces south, by sea, into the wilderness of the ancient continent. And there, following what existed of the maps, the fragments would be buried in the bowels of the underworlds, the sunken continents. There, with them, they would be entombed. The price of their knowledge hung heavy.
Though He uproot the earth entire and spread his desert to both continents, He would never find them.
Zelda, too, would go south, through the uncharted wilderness of Olde Hyrule, seek Catina, Holodrum, Labrynna; the neighbour lands. She would be safe, goddesses.
But because he was the king, he would stay. His armour did not rust, neither did his sword. He would wait in Hyrule, for Him, the gerudo king. Mandrag Ganon. Wait, by the point of spear. Din help the madman. Din help his black army. Because he was the king, by last breath and blood he would defend the kingdom.
He watched as the jewel fractured – not violently, but in gorgeous silence – watched the pieces hang disembodied over their pedestal beneath his daughter's touch. He closed his eyes.
Because he was the king, he alone would die for Hyrule.
Ex. Circa XXVVXX HYRULE
Beneath the Hebra mountain chain in Olde Hyrule, which has always been known as 'Death Mountain', the desert of the gerudo lies toiling beneath the great Eye of Din, a molten coin swung high into the blameless emptiness of the sky. Its sands spill and swirl in nimbuses, sweep the land clean of life. Beneath its philistine heat the earth cracks, bleeds dust, the scabrous boulders and lurid dunes which carpet the landscape splinter, home only to the terrible denizens which crave their shade. When the sun rises, a great wind breathes from the lungs of the earth, carrying with it the mountain chain's terrible namesake, and when it sets, the night brings no solace – the sand... fractures with cold, the rock whitens with a necrosis of frost, and the bones of the beasts subject to the desert's terrible will, freeze.
Death... has always been the way of life for that part of Hyrule.
It is the irony of our creation that Din, the goddess of fire who forged this land tempered from the void which flourishes so beautifully so that it is the envy of all others, has chosen the shadow of that mountain as her place of worship. Power. In the absence of life, in the absence of beauty, of luxury, only power remains – in the rock, the sand, the mountain, in death. The gerudo have always been her people, the woman-tribe of thieves and warrioresses and bandits under their dark kings. The gerudo... the darkness... Din smiles on them. Nihilistic, ruthless bitch-goddess. We worship her beauty but her will is dark. She smiles on them and has always smiled on them and even now, in Hyrule's anguish, she smiles on her child – the bandit king, the thief-prince, Mandrag Ganon. Hyrule dies.
Hyrule dies, and now, so do we. We, immortal children of the forest, the kokiri, know the agony of mortality. My flesh; wrinkled, rugose, like tattered parchment from the creaking knobs of bone which make my skeleton, my hair; grey and white and dead. My mind; soft... blank... spaces where once I could remember all the names given to the beasts and birds and stones... blank... spaces where there should be the pictures of my youth. I remember... playing... running... the forest. It pains me. I have wept, it seems, all that I can. Now I can only wander through my forests. They are beautiful – sunlight, gold, dusty, falls in aureate streams of ochre from savage breaks in the canopies. Motes of leaves and flowers and pollen light up like match-heads and dance before my eyes. Curtains of moss and creepers cradle in my hands. I can smell the flowers. I smell... the soil. I feel the knotted trunks of the oaks and firs and pines, they groan beneath my palms and where my flesh meets their flesh life springs anew – buds and roots take seed in the bark, tiny flowers bloom. I listen to them, the trees. They creak and whisper and I know another of my line has passed into the earth. The leafs flutter and sigh, and another. Soon, my time will come. But here, in my sanctuaries, I am powerful again. My flesh, not wrinkled, I am a man. I am not a child... but neither am I... a wretch.
What faith have I in the goddesses?
What faith is there left to have, that the third Piece is still lost to the world? Courage has fled the land, and our hearts. Wisdom... lost. All that remains is Power. Power, nestled in the bowels of Death Mountain. Power remains. Din remains. This is her land, now. And it rots in her care. The popes and vicars of Din rule in the North. Farore and Nayru have turned away. The fae fountains are drying... the earth rots from within, the wind tastes fell on my tongue. The forests lavish in unknown pain.
My thoughts... grow dull.
My memories are full of light. They are the only candles I have, in this darkness. The memories of my childhood dance vibrant, still images, so full of light. It is ironic that though scarce these ancient images hold precedence. My recent memories... My... adulthood; hot, shadowed things – images seen through fire. I sleep for long periods at a time. In a grotto, in the earth, a womb of the earth. The smell of roots and soil is powerful here. There are crystals, and when I whisper I see myself running, carefree, I see the forest in their facets.
That is the first spell I ever learned.
It is the last to be forgotten.
But today... tonight... the crystals show me nothing. Is this it? Is this where I die? I am ready to die. The world is not a place I enjoy living in, anymore. I wonder always whether I am the last of the kokiri, but always another dies on the wind and I hear.
No.
The crystals... speak.
Not my childhood.
The images are hot, and shadows. Like... pictures seen through fire.
But... bright. Ever so.
A man? A boy?
Whom?