Chapter 3: Hyrule Post Ganon

The President, Link and Zelda met up with the visitor just outside the library.

"Mister Lakey," the President greeted with a wide smile, "allow me to introduce our brave hero Link and the wise Zelda."

Link and Zelda smiled and nodded, playing the parts they knew by heart by now and hiding any reaction to the man before them. This was much easier than it had once been.

Now that the borders were no longer guarded by a variety of monsters, visitors from outside coming to see the mystic land of Hyrule with their own eyes had become commonplace. Link and Zelda had been just as shocked as the rest of the population when the tourists had first started showing up: they looked like the people of Hyrule, but their garbs, vehicles and whatever possessions they carried with them were beyond what anyone had ever imagined could exist.

The clothes worn by the visitors were brightly coloured, stretched to fit the body perfectly, sometimes had intricate patterns and, all in all, looked like they cost a fortune right until you realized everyone from outside was wearing similar quality fabrics.

Yet, the clothing was the least of the wonders people brought with them to Hyrule. Some of the tourists travelled in what Link though of as mechanical chariots that moved without horses and reminded him of the trains of legends without the inconvenience of the need for rails. Others arrived by boats that used neither sails nor oars and sped along the water faster than anything he had ever seen. As another sign of how wonders could be mass produced, children routinely used wheeled shoes or devices they could sit on and guide with their hands while their feet effortlessly caused the wheels to turn and to propel them forward much faster than anyone could walk.

Those same children had toys their parents allowed them to toss around like they were worth nothing and that looked like finely crafted treasures to Link. Many of the tourists, of all ages, wore jewels that seemed fit for royalty, and many wore a special kind of jewel that was actually a decorative mechanical device and that could tell the time of day without using the sun's shadow or any other of the usual clues. As if that weren't enough, they had objects that acted like flat, very clear crystal balls, playing miniature stories and concerts just as if you were watching them in person, or displaying pages from books or pictographs. The tourists were even able to store whatever they wanted in the little devices, from text and pictographs to moving pictures with sounds.

It was all shocking and wondrous at first, but in three years, the Hyrulians had become accustomed to the fact that in 15 centuries of Ganon's reign, the World had moved on without them. On one hand, it was a wonderful opportunity: all the wonders you could dream of, available from their neighbours. On the other hand, the neighbours were not giving it away for free and Hyrule had very little they could trade for it - even the tourism money barely covered the more immediate expenses and didn't begin to allow them the kind of purchasing power they'd need to really make a difference.

"A pleasure," Lakey said in response to the introductions, looking Link and Zelda up and down. "I dare assume these ornate garments are costumes, not everyday clothes? Disguising yourself was quite unnecessary, I'm far more interested in the Hyrule of today than that of the distant past."

The President laughed the remark off and invited the three of them to take place in the cart that was to take them to the castle.

"Ah, see?" the man said. "This is more like it: an actual horse-drawn carriage!"

They started on their merry way, and the President started detailing the state Hyrule had been in three years ago as his usual prologue to the progresses that had been made since.

"I'm sorry," the tourist interrupted at one point. "Did you say the life expectancy was of twenty-five years?"

The President nodded, affecting the usual horrified air that tourists seemed unable to handle not seeing when told this particular fact. Generations of Hyrulians had always considered thirty years old to be extreme old age, but it had turned out that in the rest of the World, people lived three times as long.

"Ganon really maintained absolute power, didn't he?" Lakey asked, his eyes wide. "Such living conditions, and not a single uprising in centuries!"

"We thought he had already been defeated, and new leaders were elected every five years," the President explained. "I'm happy to say that we've made amazing leaps in health and longevity, even in just three years."

Zelda bit the inside of her lip, abstaining from comments. They had indeed, thanks to the blue potion, but better health had come with a price higher for some than for others.

"So I've heard," Lakey said. "Although I have also heard that the main reason for this is at the heart of a crime wave. Link, you must be aware of it, since you are the one who blessed Hyrule with this panacea?"

Link paled. He had no clue what the last word the tourist had said was, but the man's meaning was still clear.

"Some people have indeed become addicted to the blue potion," Zelda admitted, "and we are working towards preventing profit-seekers from selling facsimiles for exorbitant prices. It would be terribly unfair of anyone to blame Link for these activities: all he did was unearth the recipe to help anyone with severe injuries or debilitating illnesses."

"And as a matter of fact, we don't blame him at all," the President said, his tone somewhere between light and strict as he tried to make their guest understand his comment had been in poor taste without offending the man with the wallet-full of money.

"Of course," Lakey said. "Oh, is that the palace?" he asked, pointing out the window of the carriage. Despite the blatant change of subject, there was not a hint of embarrassment in his voice.

"Yes, it is!" the President exclaimed, happy to go along with the change of subject. "We have a nice model of Hyrule I'd like to show you, and several paintings of each region. Travelling to Lake Hylia would take far too long, but I think you will get an idea of the vista from the exhibit."

"Ah, so you employ artists?" the tourist asked. "I thought everyone worked on the farms. Link?"

Link blinked helplessly for a second, taken aback by both the question and the fact it had been directed at him. "Err… the paintings are really old, aren't they, Sir?"

"Most are," the President answered. "Any new art is done by people on their free time… labour is too precious at the moment to lose any of it to frivolities."

"We don't want to rely on magic alone to keep people healthy, and a big part of accomplishing that is a reasonable work schedule and plenty of healthy food," Zelda elaborated. "To achieve this, most people do indeed need to work on the farms. It's not everyone, however: we have teachers educating the children, guards to keep us safe…"

"And of course, Link and yourself are doing mostly PR," the visitor said as they got out of the carriage and started walking from the courtyard to the exhibit.

"Pea what?" Link asked.

"Public Relations," Lakey translated. "Just like you're doing now."

Link felt himself turn a bit red in embarrassment: Lakey's tone mirrored his own feeling that chatting up the tourists was a rather easy job.

"You already know a lot about Hyrule, don't you, Mr. Lakey?" Zelda asked.

"I did my research," the man answered lightly, "just like you'd expect from an investor. I do like to hear things from the point of view of the land's two saviours, however."

The conversation veered to more geographical concerns once they arrived at the exhibit, but in a short hour, Lakey still managed to make Link and Zelda extremely uncomfortable by bringing up such issues as inadequate housing and clothing, personal freedom and even child rearing and the increasingly popular argument for strict birth control as a mean to economize sparse resources.

"Well," he said after hearing the latest details on law enforcement and criminal activities, "at least you're TRYING to prevent murders now. That's a huge progress, isn't it? I understand Ganon encouraged monsters to kill regularly, not to mention the lives he took himself. Wasn't he particularly active shortly before your battle with him, Link?"

Link's eyes lowered and he bit his lips. Ganon had indeed killed a lot of people during that period, and for the most part, had done so because of him: first out of frustration when the Demon had been fooled into thinking the pointy eared worker Link was not his quarry, and afterwards while trying to draw him out. Meanwhile, Link had been hiding, safe and sound in the Lost Woods even as dozens of innocents were being slaughtered. All these people had died at the monster's hand because the person who was supposed to be courage made flesh was hiding like a rat in his hole, because Hyrule's legendary Hero was too scared of the Big Bad Pig to face him like a man.

He heard Zelda answer, but his brains did not quite register exactly what she was saying. She looked angry at Lakey, so chances were she was defending him again. Link would have been hard pressed to explain why, but she was constantly telling everyone who seemed to think differently, including himself, that he'd had no choice and that Ganon would have killed him and won again if he'd acted any differently.

"I'm sorry, I see this is a touchy subject," Lakey said. "Let's get back to the subject of my visit. I'd like to organize visits inside the Tower of Hera."

The suggestion brought Link right back to reality. His eyes widened and he gaped at the man.

"I'm sorry, but the inside of the Tower is off-limit to everyone," the President answered. "We can arrange for tours of Death Mountain that include seeing the outside of the structure," he offered.

"But Mr. President," their guest insisted, "people would absolutely love to be able to see the site of Ganon's final defeat."

"There's still stuff in it," Link said, not correcting the man's impression that Ganon had been defeated for good simply to avoid getting into a lengthy debate and history lesson.

Zelda nodded. "We've been working on restoring the Three Wonders, but when we visited what we thought would be an empty Tower of Hera… it wasn't."

Link shuddered at the memory.


Link sighed in relief upon stepping out of the Cavern-City that had once been the home of the Gorons. Even with all the torches in the place lit using Din's Fire, and even knowing precisely where the exit was, walking through the place was never fun: the light was nice in the sense it allowed Zelda and him to see where they were stepping, but it also served to confirm that they were walled in an age-old structure that was already in the process of collapsing.

"Tell you what," Zelda said with a shaky voice, "we'll take the long way down."

"Works for me," Link answered. His voice did not sound any steadier than hers. "It's too bad we can't just make new Lost Doors."

"I told you I was looking into that, right?" she asked. She sounded much better already, now that they were walking away from the cave. "I can't find a thing, though."

"I don't think you're going to. My guess is that the Great Deku Tree's ancestors made them a really, really long time ago."

They were walking as they talked, kicking tektites out of the way as necessary.

"I don't know, it seems odd that the Great Deku Tree has no recollection of it at all," Zelda said.

Link shrugged without answering, his attention mostly diverted to the building that now loomed before them.

"I know it's stupid, but I wish we didn't have to go back in there," he said.

"You're still worried that the monsters are back?"

"I… I don't know. Maybe." He glanced at the sword attached to his belt and at the old Moblin wallet next to it, which currently held several bottles of blue potion - the moblin money he had found in this very tower was long gone, but the leather pouch had not lost its capacity to hold more than its size should allow. "I don't know why. We can just run if we see one, right? And that sword is pretty good, and you got a bow, and we got lots of potions..." he trailed off, unable to explain how he felt.

Zelda bit her lips. She shared her companion's misgivings about going back into the Tower and, like him, she could not quite explain why. She certainly hoped the monsters weren't back, but the idea that they might be did not frighten her all that much. Their plan was for Link to cast Din's Fire as soon as they were inside, quickly followed by Nayru's Love, so if there was anything on the first floor of the Tower, it would be either incinerated or visible and unable to reach them.

"Ganon killed us both in there," she said. "Maybe we just fear the memory."

Link turned to her, his eyes wide. "You too?"

She nodded.

"Well, there's nothing for it," he sighed. "We're never going to be able to get it ready for the next Hero without going in. If the monsters are back, I say it's ready enough. What do you think?"

She nodded again, the knot in her throat making it difficult to talk. The two took the last few steps to the door of the Tower and stood in the doorway for a fraction of a second, bracing themselves, before stepping inside.

Link immediately followed the plan, drawing Zelda next to him and casting Din's Fire and Nayru's Love in rapid succession. All the torches on the floor lit, revealing a few keeses and a few piles of bones, some of which could be safely assumed to be Stalfos.

"Well, we knew this room wasn't empty," Zelda said. "It would have been nice if they had all died off or left, but their presence doesn't mean anything, we need to go in dee…"

"Come to gloat, have we?"

The voice interrupted Zelda mid-word and its owner appeared right in front of them at the moment he spoke. Link's brain froze: before them stood Ganon, or more precisely, his ghost. He would have been frightened of any ghost, and of course Ganon in any shape or form petrified him, so Ganon as a ghost was simply more than the coherent part of him could handle.

His instincts took over, and his instincts told him to flee. He grabbed Zelda's arm and ran back to the door, dragging her along. They were outside after a mere few steps, but he kept running, Zelda eventually managing to sort of run along rather than being dragged outright.

"You can stop, he's not following!" she panted after a while. "Wait… he can't! Link, you can stop!"

He slowed down enough to look back: she was right, there was nothing behind them. He slowed down to a fast walk.

"Are you sure? Why not? Why can't he?" he asked, ready to take off again should her answers prove unsatisfactory.

"I should have expected it," Zelda said, still panting and bent in two as she tried to catch her breath back. "He wanted to trap your soul again." She stopped, out of breath and saliva, and inhaled deeply a few times before continuing. "He was going to use a bottle, but he forgot to bring one so he put a spell on the building, to make it trap spirits." She stopped to catch her breath again. "I can't believe I didn't clue in earlier, he TOLD me!" she finished, scowling at herself.

"You mean while he was torturing you?"Link asked, his tone incredulous. "Zelda…" he groaned, palming his forehead, "you can't expect to remember everything he was ranting about back then!"

Zelda sighed and shook her head: she DID remember, she was just set on not thinking about it, and her childish evasion had almost given Ganon a chance to attack them again.

"Let's head back," she sighed. "We have our answer on the Tower: it's too dangerous for future heroes to face before they acquire the Master Sword. We'll have to figure out something."


They had realized on the way down the mountain, once their nerves had settled a little, that they had no idea just how much harm the spirit could do. They had further realized that their first step in getting the Tower of Hera to be a test and training ground again would be to find out whether Ganon's Ghost was dangerous by confronting him. It was now almost three years later and that confrontation had still not taken place, Link and Zelda busying themselves with the other two Wonders first, reasoning things wouldn't go any faster if they spread their energy between all three. In the meantime, they were not taking any chances and consistently represented the Tower as full of monsters rather than risk some people deciding that taking a look at Ganon's ghost was worth the risk. Only the President had been told about the haunting, and he had forbidden anyone go anywhere near the cursed building.

"What's in there?" the tourist asked.

"The point is, it's dangerous," the President cut in. "I can't allow any visitors there, not for all the money in the World."

The tourist seemed to ponder a moment, and finally shrugged. "A shame it's not safe," he said. "It would have been a very popular attraction."


Several hours later, in the deep of night, Lakey whistled tunelessly as he peered out the windows of his personal helicopter with his night vision glasses. He would have preferred to be guided to the Tower and thus save himself this search, but it was somewhat amusing that the President and his tourist attractions hero and princess honestly thought they could keep him away from where he wanted to go by simply refusing to take him there. He chuckled as he pictured the faces they'd make if they knew he had the means to fly right to the Tower and the ability to see in the dark.

He spotted the Tower near the summit of the mountain and guided his helicopter down towards it. The narrowness of the plateau on which the tower sat forced him to land a few minutes walk away from it, just west of a rock formation that he recognized from the exhibit the President had shown him as Spectacle Rock.

He shut the engine and jumped out of the cockpit, heart pounding and grinning like a maniac: he had been looking forward to this night for a very long time.

He snickered at the memory. He had been headed for a life of mediocrity, the same kind of life as everyone else, but it had all changed when he'd wandered into that haunted house on a bet, as a teenager. Although the place was decidedly scary, and part of him had indeed believed it to be inhabited by spirits, he had gone in because reason dictated that if ghosts existed at all, they were immaterial and could not harm you.

The assumption had nearly cost him his life: the house was the haunting ground of three Poes. The malevolent ghostly monsters had tortured his mind as well as his body for most of the night before he'd finally managed to escape while they argued over who would get to kill him.

He had learned two important lessons that night: one, old legends were in fact sometimes based on truth; two, he needed to be more powerful than anything that might want to hurt him. Tonight was the culmination of the journey started all those years ago. Tonight, he would finally have the power of a God.

He turned on his flashlight and walked to the Tower of Hera, not even pausing when he reached the doorway.


The inside of the Tower looked pretty much like the outside: threatening in a way that had nothing to do with the possibility of structural collapse. Lakey had studied magic for most of his life, and could feel its presence permeating the place: it was in the walls, in the floors, in the piles of bones that he intended to avoid just in case they were really Stallfos, and in the very air he was breathing.

He walked to the closest staircase and climbed down the narrow stairs, more to get away from the sleeping Stalfos than anything else. He found himself in a small basement room with another pile of bones and groaned: the Hero hadn't done a very thorough job cleaning this place up. He climbed back up the stairs to the main room and from there, found another staircase, this one going up. He took it and found himself in a small room. He wrinkled is nose in distaste at the smell that seemed to come from the many brown stains on the floor – a mix of rotten meat and mouldy dust.

As stinky as it was, however, the room was empty and therefore suited his purposes: no amount of noise he made here would wake up a sleeping Stalfos. He closed the door, walked to the center of the room – kicking an empty treasure chest out of the way – and called out.

"Ganondorf Dragmire! I have a proposal I believe you will find most interesting!"


Author's Notes:

Sorry for the delayed update, I've been mostly concentrating on my GI Joe stories lately… I just finished one but still have three more underway, and then there are all those pesky plot bunnies… anyway, I do apologize.

Thank you for reading, and please review! I have no other way to tell how you feel about the story and besides, it's win-win if you do like it, since reviews typically motivate me and therefore make me spend more time writing.