Zelda's answers came in the form of a vision. Scales. Weight. Balance. Time. Space.
The Triforce was of three for a reason. One would forever be alone. Two would be an eternal duality: ever in conflict. With three, the majority ruled. There was ambivalence, but balance could be brought to the world with three where perpetual chaos would come of two, and stagnation of one. Any more than three would split the world too far. The only things that came in even numbers had no opposition. The Light Spirits, each for one point of the compass, for instance. Or the Sages, which were three plus three again, balancing themselves out. And even the Sages had a fabled seventh number.
Just when she thought she could pick up the pieces of her kingdom, Zelda received her vision.
Link would someday die beyond the borders of Hyrule. He would leave, and take Courage with him. Not a dire circumstance, for the Triforce always found its way back. But while he was gone, two pieces needed to remain to serve as majority, to equalize the loss of Courage in the land. One was gone, so two had to remain. In the same way the legends turned one piece against the world and led two more to balance the disaster, Power and Wisdom needed to remain behind while Courage was lost for a time.
Ganondorf could not die. His Triforce was still needed, lest Hyrule fall into an age of despair.
A mere day later, Midna departed Hyrule, shattering the Mirror of Twilight in the process.
The next morning, Link was gone, too. Presumably, to seek his dearest friend and possible interest. Zelda knew he would not return before he had found Midna, if he returned at all. She heard word that he had replaced the Master Sword, that he had said good-bye to Ilia and the Ordon children.
And with that he vanished, and Zelda was sure that she was all alone again.
Maybe not. Deep in the dungeons she could feel the vast magic of the surviving Evil King tremble and war. Asleep, he could not hide himself as his own divine power recovered him, Though she did wonder at the time elapsed. The stab wound itself was long healed clean; whatever else Power soothed it was unknown to her.
She visited every day: Ganondorf's only jailor. The irony was exquisite. The captive imprisoned her captor. But then again, because he still lived she really was in a gaol herself: one of her own making, created to keep him secret and her country safe. He had to live, and that was the trouble. But every day became the same to her. Fearing that the truth would get out. Covering her movements. Playing the political game and repairing her broken kingdom. Waiting for yet another catastrophe.
And so she wondered about it all. She considered removing his share of the Triforce, but that would kill him, and it was doubtful Power could persist without him: it was too deeply meshed into his soul.
A hundred years ago, how had he claimed Power at all? Old interpretations of sheikah lore stated that a corrupted, impure heart that touched the Triforce would sunder it and take nothing. Evil that would seek the Triforce wouldn't get an aspect at all; it was imbalanced souls that would take only one shard of three to protect it. Evil was cowardly, caring only for itself out of weakness, without heeding any law or real quality. It had not true Power, Wisdom, or Courage to it. It had nothing. To claim a piece, one had to have at least a scrap of the pure virtue within already.
And yet the King of Evil had Power. It made little sense. By that point of view, the most ancient secrets of the gods could almost be taken to imply that somewhere in there, there was something true enough to house divine might.
But that was absurd. Nothing like that could exist in him. Not in that madness she saw in his stare, that cold frenzy that only thinly cloaked itself behind complex words. The face and the mind were only a shroud for it-- the way the man himself bubbled up to the surface of the malignant depths.
She was thinking about all of this when she felt a huge tremor run through the castle's bones; a scintillating nova of raw sorcerous power. Its wake brought dark spots wavering before her inner eye. And then it vanished as he hid himself, no longer screaming for her to hear.
Down below, he had awoken.
–
The first thing he tried to do was kill her when she appeared before his cage. He roared and gathered hellfire to throw at her, but halfway through he realized that the cell was antimagic. So instead he flung himself at her, growling.
"No! Don't-"
He met the border of the cell with a violent discharge of restraining energy. He cried out and recoiled, having found a solid barrier that could have been made out of Light Arrows for its affect.
"You!" he hissed, staring at the wide bars that he could have snapped in an instant without the hissing field. And then, with frenzied eyes he slammed a fist against the wards and began to force it through, an attempt to sunder the spell. He bellowed in agony, but still he labored on even despite the extreme pain the wall struck to him.
"Stop!" Zelda said, fearful. "Don't do this!"
He gave no heed of her but for the agonized tears streaming from his eyes, so desperate was he to reach the outside.
"You'll kill yourself again!"
And she laid a hand on where he began to break through. He looked up from his efforts and faced her eye to eye, and for a moment she could see a primal fear in him. A cage. Unable to escape. Mostly omnipotent as he was, a prison he could not rend apart must have broken him.
And Zelda was horrified to feel that she could, in some way, relate.
He withdrew his fist, and collapsed to the floor, shaking. The pain leaked into his normally strong voice, cracking it even more than usual.
"Leave me," he ordered. "Leave now. Go."
Zelda left as he requested, but returned the next day. He paid her no mind, only furiously tried to find some way out of the cell. There was none. And after a few minutes, Zelda would leave: satisfied that he was still alive and coldly apathetic of the varied threats he would make to her.
And so the time passed: every day the same as the one before it.
–
