Dark by S. Park
Part two Fire Burning in Darkness
"You have failed me!"
"Please, my Master, if you give me another chance I won't fail again!" I cringed away from the expected blow, but it fell all the same, flinging me across the room. Why had I come here? What madness had convinced me to obey and report to Ganondorf? How could I have thought he would respond to my news with anything but punishment?
"You've had your chance! You hardly slowed him down. He needs to die, and quickly. I will have to set something stronger to stop him now, and I am running out of resources. You were supposed to be his equal! You were supposed to be able to match him!"
"But Master, I only had a sword, he had the hammer!"
Ganondorf's dark face twisted with rage, and crackling energy leapt from his outstretched hand. I screamed when it hit me, it brought agony worse than the pain of dying. "Give me no excuses! You should have succeeded!" Another bolt shot out at me.
"Ahh! Please Master!"
But Ganondorf knew no mercy, his torturous magic struck me again and again, until I was near death. And even then he was not kind enough to kill me and free me from pain. He merely turned away and left me lying in agony. Eventually one of his servants came and dragged me off. I didn't care to where. All I wanted was a release from pain, but there was no blue-eyed hero with a jar of fairies here. Instead what I got was a dark cell beneath Ganondorf's tower. It had no bed, nothing but a bare stone floor, where I was left lying. The cold of it seeped into my very bones.
I could remember warmth... The gray room in the Water Temple had been cold, but I could remember warmth... Camp fires, sunny summer days, the heat of the Fire Temple... I could remember them, even though I'd never known them. Would never know them. I knew darkness. The darkness in Ganondorf's heart lay in my heart as well, enough of it for me to know that he would never let me free. He might bring me out to toy with, from time to time, but I would live here in the cell until I died. Until he killed me. Better that Link, the hero, had killed me. It would have been clean and easy compared to this.
And were it not for him I would have no summer days to miss, no camp fires to dream of. He had given me his past, and that too brought only pain.
"Why didn't you kill me, Link? Why?" I cried. My weak voice echoed off the cold stones. There was no one to hear. But someday there would be. I vowed it to myself. Someday, somehow, I would be free of this cell, and when I was I would hunt him down and demand an answer of him. And when I got it, then he would die.
