Chapter 2 - Waiting
It was the waiting. That was what drove Ghirahim mad.
Maybe he had already been mad beforehand, he did not know, but as the first lonely days turned to weeks, to months, and lonely years began piling on and on behind him, Ghirahim was certain he was somewhere in the realm of insanity.
He had seen the Lanayru Sea fill steadily with sand over time, the whole land transforming into a vast desert. He had watched Eldin Volcano erupt, observed the scorched land forcing Mogmas underground many a time. He had been there when the Kikwis of Faron woods brought life back to the skeletal forest after great chunks of rock had been unearthed and cast upward toward the heavens.
And still the years wore on.
His thoughts turned often to that fateful battle, seeming so long ago now and yet so sharp in his mind. The Temple of Hylia, detatching itself almost completely from the ground and taking her soldiers with it, up into the sky. Having to lie inanimate as demons he had trained, fought alongside, swallowed up by the ground he now stood upon, their cries fresh in his ears as if it were still happening. His master…
He had tried countless times to propel himself into the skies somehow, but to no avail. The closest he had come was still a pitiful attempt in itself. It seemed as if the clouds had formed their own barrier, repelling his kind. Ghirahim had been sent whirling reluctantly to the surface again and again, back to his new home.
The Sealed Grounds, the land was now called.
He had paced the base of this enormous, open space created by the radiant goddess herself, a testimony to her most hard-fought of victories. Ghirahim had walked the entire length of the spiraled path, up and down and up and down, over and over again, counting steps, noting ridges or cracks. It was largely empty aside from Ghirahim, and even he was but a shadow of the past, a living artefact of that war. Small holes had been blown into the ground at intervals from times where he'd lost himself entirely and repeatedly jammed his onyx blade deep into the earth out of sheer anger and unending boredom.
Sometimes he sat with his hands on either side of his head and screamed at the markings on the ground or at the sealing spike, or up at the Sheikah, beyond them to the sky.
He thought quite a bit about the hero, Link. Not only in relation to the battle that had nearly killed them both, though that was a fond memory. He remembered the hero when the war had begun, when Link was aware that he was being used and abused by the goddess he had pledged allegiance to. The hero fought in Hylia's name, with the weapon she'd had crafted for him. As her weapon. Just like Ghirahim. The difference had been that while Link was faithful to the land he loved, Ghirahim's loyalty lay in the demon king who had made him into a weapon in the first place.
He missed Demise.
Oh, how he missed him. And what use was he to his master now, unable to do anything for him and left to wander around growing more and more frustrated with every passing day?
He had traced the markings left by the goddess upon her sealing, knew his way around them better than any other area on the surface. He'd run his fingers along the crevices of the sealing spike left by Hylia, trying to find a way to activate it somehow.
To bring his master back.
But Hylia was smarter, much smarter than that. Though she had sacrificed her immortal form to enact her masterplan, it was worth it in the end, because this seal was not weakening in the slightest.
And when it did begin to weaken, the spirit of her best soldier, Link, would be reborn in some unfortunate soul that would be tasked with strengthening the seal and ultimately vanquishing Demise. The goddess' masterplan. Or rather, a part of it. Hylia, though disembodied, was setting things in motion up on that island of hers, Ghirahim was sure. He could still feel faint glimmers of power now and then as she set some other part of her grand scheme into action.
Ghirahim was both apprehensive and anxious for the day things would really begin again. Anxious for another battle with the hero, for a challenge of some sort. Apprehensive because it was another obstacle for him; maybe this hero would beat him by some miracle, and Ghirahim would fail in his mission.
Nevermind that, anyways. Besides, Ghirahim could worry about the new hero when the time came for him to. For now, he had visitors to deal with.
Ghirahim had cast a domed protective field of orange and red diamond shapes around himself and the sealing spike, as he sat cross-legged in contemplation, for days on end at times. Thinking about his master. Eternally loyal. Thinking about avenging Demise… someday.
The remains of the Temple of Hylia had been occupied and haphazardly restored by what was left of the Sheikah. Impa was their leader, and though she grew older with time's passage, she remained with young spirit, still as devoted to Hylia as Ghirahim was to Demise.
It became clear after about two or three years that Impa was opting to remain completely secluded -and completely safe; Ghirahim had been repelled many a time by the Sheikah's own protective barrier - defended from within the crumbling temple. However, some of her younger, inexperienced underlings proved too headstrong, and made frequent visits into the Sealed Grounds.
Some remained high above Ghirahim, staring down at the demon and gaping in awe. While Ghirahim did appreciate the attention, he occasionally took the time to eliminate them with a neatly-aimed handful of sharp daggers. The stragglers dwindled after the deaths of two tiny young ones.
But some, bolder in earlier times, had simply elected to drop down from ledge to ledge, falling below to where the demon waited for them to engage in an all-too-brief scuffle.
Though Ghirahim did emerge with some slices here and there, the Sheikah were usually picked off easily enough. They had no forested areas to hide themselves with here in the barren land, trapped in the massive spiral with a demon who could teleport at will.
And so, while he did end up somewhat bloodied on occasion, Ghirahim had dealt much more than he had lost.
But the one wound that never healed properly was the messy area where his right ear should have been. Whatever Link had done was long-standing, and it served to fuel his motivation at his lowest points, to keep him pushing onward to the day he would meet the hero and the goddess once again.
And as a result, he put up with the awful boredom, with the odd wanderer he came across.
Ardaia and Rynae, those bumbling idiots having avoided the sealing, sometimes passed by and stopped to inspect Ghirahim out of curiosity. They came sharing a body now and then, but mostly Ghirahim spotted them walking close by one another, chattering contentedly - though Ardaia did most of the talking, with a flushed face and alighted eyes.
They approached him amiably in their coloured layers of robes, Rynae in red and black and Ardaia in all mismatches of colour, his long hair trailing far behind him. The pair would come to a stop at the sealing spike where Ghirahim was always found staring blankly at a wall or one particular symbol on the ground.
"Ghirahim, come and walk with us," they frequently invited him, in the earlier days of the long wait, offering him their most endearing smiles.
"Go away," was always Ghirahim's sour reply. Ardaia and Rynae never seemed to be bothered by his annoyance. Ghirahim was not going to kill them - it violated strict rules - and Ardaia and Rynae knew they were useful.
After the first year or so of their visits, they became more scarce. They arrived with the passing of seasons, before it became more of an annual meet-up, and then it was simply whenever they chose to make time for him.
"Have you been sitting in that same spot all this time?" one of them would ask with raised eyebrows upon arriving. Ghirahim rarely responded; he might glance over at them, sit up a little straighter. Nothing more.
Ardaia and Rynae were well aware that Ghirahim appreciated the affection they showed him in generous amounts, and so they would draw intimately close to him despite protest. Once they had him resting reluctantly between them, they would launch into stories of the discoveries they had made while travelling, of all the new species in Lanayru or Faron, the amazing places and ancient findings to be seen. Trying to entice him to leave, to do something other than wander around this eerily hollow place like a lost child.
And though Ghirahim was sick of remaining next to the accursed seal, hoping without much conviction for some slight weakening, he refused any offer the two demons presented. Mostly out of loyalty to Demise, and partly to spite his inferiors.
Eventually they'd stopped trying to get him up and about. When they visited every decade or so, it was not uncommon for the hours to be spent in plaintive silence.
They gave him nicknames of all kinds - replacement was a common one, and Ghirahim knew exactly why - made irritating clicking noises, tapped their feet against the earth, anything that might garner a reaction. The most they'd gotten in about one hundred years of attempts was a simple, "How did I come to be in the company of rejects, anyways?"
Impa was growing steadily older, Ghirahim was well aware. He could feel her power diminishing slowly,em style="cursor: url(' bf7223c16afa599d7200784e4de26954/gdo3rfu/Yi7niozgm/tumblr_static_ '), auto; color: #11261c; text-shadow: transparent 0px 0px 0px; -webkit-transition: 0.6s; transition: 0.6s; background-color: transparent;"tantalisingly/em slowly. One day, her seal on the temple would break, and then Ghirahim would rid himself of the presence of that old woman. What good was she to the goddess now, fragile, aged beyond measure, the last left of her kind? Either she would fade out after a while longer, or he would finish her himself. Only time would tell.
There were times Ghirahim wished that he, too, was mortal, that he could grow old and weak and die here in the Sealed Grounds next to the seal. Just like Impa, holed up in her decrepid temple. While he was grateful, on some level, for his inability to physically become old, he still wished to be able to experience that process. Sometimes he wished he could put himself out of the misery that was boredom.
Those thoughts were quickly chased away by vague ideas of the punishment that would be delivered to him by Demise if he were to find out Ghirahim felt this way.
"Eternally loyal," Ghirahim would repeat to himself as he paced, recalling happier times to lighten his almost permanently dismal, frustrated moods. Sometimes Ardaia and Rynae found him pointing at nothing and laughing near-hysterically.
And then, after years, decades, centuries, it happened.
The hero was born.
It hit Ghirahim like a blow to the gut, waking him from a daze and sending him stumbling to his feet. His dark eyes snapped open, flickering toward the blue skies. He was almost giddy with excitement, a huge, genuine grin breaking out on his pallid face.
He was here. After so long, the world had its hero once more. Hylia's chosen pawn, the one Ghirahim was fated to meet in battle. At last, his long-awaited hero was here.
"Finally," he breathed. One hand went to the not-quite-healed stump at his ear, the other to his shoulder where Demise had last touched him. He would have his revenge. And he would bring his master back.
"He could feel the hero, alive, conscious, ever so faintly; he was just present enough for Ghirahim to know he was breathing. If he focused himself completely, Ghirahim suspected he could sense the hero well enough. The possibilities were astounding. Their minds, inextricably connected, and Ghirahim did not care for an explanation. He wasn't bothered in the least about the hero taking up residence in a certain part of his already depraved mind, because it was company on another level entirely.
He could wait another eighteen years.
And for now, since he most definitely had the time, why not make good use of it?
The land had become known to all as Skyloft, after years of changing titles and minor disputes over whether the other floating chunks of rocks were to be included as part of the mainland or not. The population was somewhat sparse, enough to sustain life on the island, but there would never be a surplus of people.
They were matched in number by their Loftwings, one for each denizen of the city in the sky. A parting gift from the goddess, so it was said, received by every child on their tenth birthday. Over the years, Loftwing racing became a source of entertainment, and the more daring would head out on long journeys with their birds, seeking new islands not yet found, or trying to enter the seemingly-permanent thunderhead that loomed close by Skyloft.
The children of the island were commonly orphans or living without a mother, aside from some rare cases. Women had an unfortunate tendency not to survive for very long after childbirth, if they even survived that process.
Link cried for hours upon being born, after his young mother, Gale, endured fourteen hours of tormented labour. One of the longest labours witnessed on their floating island; the excruciating pain was what killed the already delicate Gale despite efforts by Luv and her husband to keep her healthy with potions. Her pregnancy as a whole had been a long, arduous strain from almost the very first day.
With the sudden passing of her husband, Finch, Gale had fallen into a deep depression; it was not surprising, missing her beloved husband and not even having a body to bury after he fell far below the clouds. Gale idled aimlessly about with a completely neutral expression and one hand over her abdomen, refusing invitations to tea in her neighbours' homes and turning down suggestions to take up new hobbies. Many residents of Skyloft concluded that the only consoling thought the woman held onto was that of having a son to call her own.
She'd only gotten one brief look at her newborn son's face, and then Gale's eyes closed for the last time as she died with a smile on her exhausted face. The last request she'd made was for her son to be named after the hero of legend.
Gaepora was head of the Knight Academy in Skyloft, where young children trained for years to eventually become protectors of their homeland. He had been the first to offer to take Link in when it came to deciding who he should stay with. His daughter, Zelda came just a few months after that, and Gaepora's loving wife had passed away a few weeks after delivering her child due to her severe blood loss.
Link and Zelda were both looked after well by Gaepora, and while Zelda rarely had problems, Link sometimes proved difficult to keep watch over as he became a target of Groose, a fierce redhead with a grudge against Link. His constant teasing about Zelda, and his pushing and shoving meant that Link, with his father's wide blue eyes, nearly always had his fair head darting over his shoulder, on lookout.
After a while, Link appeared to resort to simply sliding his gaze away from Groose, focused on a corner of the room or some distant object. Then, on some days when Groose took it too far, Link opted simply to walk away from his bully, without a word to anyone else about where he was off to.
Daydreaming, Gaepora had initially suspected, but Link's odd behaviour was endagering him more than any mere daydream could.
There were times when Zelda found him standing precariously at the edge of the island, his eyes on nothing but the clouds below him. He jumped in alarm when she tapped on his shoulder to snap him out of his reveries, and his feet often dragged as Zelda turned him back toward the plaza or the academy.
Gaepora had, naturally, been extremely worried when Link finally revealed to him what exactly it was that preoccupied him, after he'd gone missing for an entire day, only to be discovered sitting with his legs dangling over one of the narrow strips of land connected to the Statue of the Goddess.
He could hear, sometimes, a person with a nice voice.
And no other eight year old on the island was hearing voices, that was without doubt.
Gaepora had taken Link around the entirety of Skyloft, asking the boy to identify this mystery person. Of course, no one was responsible for Link's disappearances, and for a time Gaepora had grown angry with the boy for what looked like casting blame on unsuspecting villagers so that he could sneak off on his own.
The headmaster learned, though, that it was when Link was left alone in his room feeling upset at being ridiculed or unfairly punished that he was particularly susceptible to lapsing into a total trance. Most alarming was the fac that it seemed Link didn't bother putting up a fight, in Gaepora's view; like he wanted to listen.
Link had no description to offer of whoever it was he heard. When he was aware of himself, his eyes were constantly shifting from place to place, restless. People watched him turn around to stare, perplexed, at nothing, or right through the person staring back at him. On edge.
Zelda had heard her father describe her friend as being paranoid, haunted. She wasn't quite sure what he meant, but she did her best to try and focus Link on simpler things, asking him to braid her straw-blond hair or simply play a game and chase each other around the plaza.
She'd asked him once or twice about the issue, knowing it was a sensitive topic but allowing curiosity to get the better of her all the same. Link never wanted to divulge anything about it, however. But Zelda was persistent. The day before Link was to receive his Loftwing, on the eve of his tenth birthday, she decided to inquire again, and finally got her answer.
"He says the same kind of thing to me a lot, really," Link explained, sitting with Zelda under a tree growing near the Knight Academy and tracing circles in the dirt with his finger. He seemed reluctant to speak up, but Zelda had already mastered a motherly expression at the young age of nine.
"When Groose picks on me, that's when I hear him most of the time," Link told her. "It's like he's trying to comfort me, but he usually just talks about running away. 'Hurry up, hero, down, down, I've been waiting.'"
Link thought Zelda seemed quite impressed, with the way her eyebrows lifted almost to her hairline. He continued quoting, trying his best to imitate the voice. "'Downward, hero. Down here.' I can hear him so clearly one day, and then the next day I maybe can't hear him at all."
Even as he said it, he turned to look at the diving platform for Loftwing-riders positioned behind them. He waited a moment before returning his attention to Zelda, who was listening intently.
"He calls you a hero?" she asked.
Link nodded, and a touch of pride actually entered his voice when he spoke. "Yeah, a hero… I don't know why, but he does anyways."
Link shook his head in puzzlement, as confused as his friend was. His face grew wary as he spoke up again, talking more to himself than to Zelda.
"He says nice things, about where he is; better than up here with Groose, I guess. He talks about all these exciting thing you wouldn't even think up. It's like he's talking to himself, but he knows I might be listening in maybe, and he starts talking like that…"
After receiving his Crimson Loftwing at the Statue of the Goddess, Link spent the next week or so with his new companion, learning how to care for her before taking her for a flight. He still wandered off once in a while or started staring blankly at nothing, and this earned him ridiculing from Groose as a result, but that was nothing new.
Having a Loftwing helped to keep Link more on track, since he had to learn to steer the bird along and control its altitude himself. Focus was the key, and so flying quickly became a favourite hobby of Link's. He'd grown quite close to his Crimson Loftwing much faster than the other children thanks to his love of her company and frequent tours around the various islands scattered close to Skyloft.
One day, after an unexpected return from that long-absent voice, Link decided to try and see what, if anything at all, was beyond those clouds, what the voice he heard was talking about. If that voice even meant something, or if it was all make-believe, just a coping mechanism.
He flew steadily along with the rest of his small class in their usual formation. He and Zelda were at the back of the group of five, Groose leading them at the forefront while Cawlin and Stritch took the middle.
Link ignored the concerned gaze Zelda sent his way as he dipped a little closer to the clouds. He had a few years of experience; this was nothing. The others paid him no mind, and as soon as he knew Zelda's attention was elsewhere, he plunged downward.
He cleared his mind as best as he could, keeping his Loftwing moving in a straight line. Boring, certainly, but he needed to be completely disengaged to be able to hear him. Or else chance a teasing from Groose, which he was not up to.
While Link assumed it was a male, felt that it was, the voice was surprisingly soft, lilting almost. Regardless of what he said, Link couldn't help thinking that it was vaguely familiar. In what way, he had no idea, but he got the ominous feeling that this person was familiar with him too.
It astounded Link and frightened him at the same time. It was quite amazing, he supposed; no one else in Skyloft had someone else talking inside their head, as far as he knew
But it scared him, terrified him more than anything, even if in the moment he didn't realise it. It was only after he snapped out of his daze, and blinked into awareness to realise he was walking along the edge of a diving platform, or leaning over the edge of an already-crumbling ledge with his arms swaying in the breeze. That was when he was most afraid.
He didn't go to these dangerous places willingly; most sensible Skyloftians wouldn't either. But that sly, persuasive voice would invade his thoughts and start talking about how boring it was 'down below' without company, how he had been waiting for a 'hero' all this time. If Link would only arrive sooner.
Where was he supposed to be going, though? That was the real question. And at fifteen, Link was more than ready to see if there was anything beyond the clouds and floating rocks that comprised his home. And more than ready to get rid of a voice he didn't always want to hear.
So when he heard it this time, he let it guide him. Downward, downward, down…
Link felt his eyes sting, felt the wind racing against him and his bird.
The Loftwing strained against Link's steering, and Link strained against the Loftwing's struggling.
"He didn't hear Zelda's scream, didn't hear his Loftwing's cries, the wind, nothing.
Only that voice, and Link knew it was trying to lure him in some way, push him to fall below the clouds, and yet it was all he heard.
'Closer, closer, closer, skychild…'
Closer, closer, Link could almost reach out and touch the clouds, he was almost there./p
'Finally, skychild, I've been waiting…'
And then, just a few metres away, and-
Hands, pulling at him, pulling him off of his bird and…
"LINK!"
Zelda's frantic face in front of his, her hands on his arms, seated on the back of her blue Loftwing.
Groose's voice, Cawlin, Stritch, Zelda…
"You could have died, Link!"
"What were you thinking?"
All Link saw were the clouds, already far out of reach.