Somewhere ahead of them, a colorful streak against the white grass, jutted a gnarled tree. It was a stark beacon against the endless, empty landscape, leaves glittering like jewels under the unbearable light of the sky. As they approached, Midna could make out the fronds curling from its center; she could see how each clump of leaves hung from its branch like a crystalline burden.

"Is that tree growing rupees?" she muttered to herself.

"Yes," Ganondorf answered anyway. "Though I wouldn't suggest touching it. Clearly it's a fable waiting to be written. Nayru is fond of such tales—I suspect she put it here because she knows we're coming. But she is a passive god, she rarely resorts to recourse beyond the vices of mortals."

Midna looked over the tree, at its glittering leaves and gold-brown trunk. "It's not growing very worthwhile ones," she said. "Just green? What a waste of a tree."

"Perhaps Nayru is unaware of the concept of inflation. Even when I was a poor thief, my sisters and I would not even bother with them. They are not worth their own weight."

Midna laughed bitterly. "If I found ten thousand green rupees I would not celebrate my sudden fortune—I would cry that I now had ten thousand rocks to lug around." Link had not shared her sentiment. But he had grown up poor—perhaps he settled for what money he could find. Even if he dug up the smallest green or blue jewel from the cracks in Castletown's cobblestone streets, he would take a small moment to celebrate. Midna had thought those moments terribly annoying, but thinking of them now, thinking of the smile on his face, beaming at the stupidest of accomplishments, made her stomach turn inside her. She shook off the feeling, raising her eye again to the absurd tree. "Go red or go home, is my motto."

"I would've thought a princess more ambitious than that," Ganondorf said. "Purple, at least."

Midna's hand remained on her stomach as they passed under the tree's glinting branches without giving it a second glance. "Better for me if it just grew fruit," she muttered.

Beyond the roots of the tree, a shallow pond glinted. It seemed harmless, moving in the white wind with the uncanny grasses, and it could not have been deeper than her ankles. "Are you hungry?" Ganondorf asked, stopping at the edge of the water.

"A little."

"The deeper you venture into this place, the less hunger you will feel. You will likely forget to need sleep, either."

She bit her lip, hand still resting on her exposed stomach. "Well, let's go, then. Nobody likes me when I'm hungry." She strode up to Ganondorf, stopping by him at the edge of the pool.

Instead of finding a way around it, as any other traveler might (if they could; the more she stared at it, the more it gave the impression that it actually had no edge), he stepped into it, sinking up to his ankles. Steam billowed from the ripples as the water hissed around his feet. Midna gulped, extending one bare toe and flicking the surface, but she found it pleasantly cool. When she sank her feet into the pond, the edges of her robe floating behind her, it didn't burn or pain her. It felt like any other water.

As she slogged after him, a cool, opaque mist descended. She looked behind her, searching for the glint of the bejeweled tree, but she saw only steam and fog, billowing over the dull grey water. The mist had come between her and the infernal sky, which was a mercy, but she couldn't help but feel a tug of worry at her heart. She trotted after Ganondorf, falling into the steaming ripples of his large stride.

"She definitely knows we're here," Midna whispered. It was obvious enough to her now—they had entered Nayru's watery realm and she would be there to greet them.

"She does. If you see anything in the mist, do not follow it."

A shiver ran up her spine, and she followed him closely, comforting herself in the absurd heat radiating from his body. She wondered when he had started to burn like that—maybe after entering the Sacred Realm, maybe before, but she knew better than to question it. Like the other things she'd seen so far in this weird world, she doubted it would ever make sense to her.

The water around her feet seemed freezing in comparison. Her bluish toes curled each time they sank among the round stones on the bottom, and the long-stemmed plants that grew from the water resembled ice more than living buds. The water reminded her of the particular coldness of her dream the night before—though it was heavier, denser, than the familiar chill of her sleep. She wondered if her brain had sprung a leak of some sort. But whether her mind was pouring out into this water, or the wet chill of Nayru's land had dripped its way into her dreams, she didn't know. All she knew was that something was muddling her brain, and she'd have to carry on despite it.

"Hey," she started. Ganondorf grunted in acknowledgment but didn't turn. She didn't know if it was fear or curiosity that compelled her to continue. "If… the gods' existence created the world, won't their deaths end it?"

He stopped, steam billowing up past his wide shoulders. "Do you think the clouds wait for commands from Nayru to rain, do you think rivers would lose their course and get lost if she were not there to guide them? Do you think the earth would forget how to shake, the trees would forget to grow and the dunes would forget to move in the wind?" He glanced over at her before continuing his long stride into the water. "The world will do what it's always done. The cycles of life and death will continue as always."

She hesitated. "You seem a little too sure about that for me to believe you."

"What else is there for a world to do? It's not in its own interest to lay down and die when left to its own devices."

She wondered if the Triforce had told him as much, or if either of them could trust what could be seen in its smooth, golden glow. She wondered where it was now, if it was tucked away in his hand, in the same place where Link's and Zelda's had slept, if he kept it in his blood, or if it was in a different realm entirely, resting, waiting for him to command it. It still baffled her how he had not used it yet—or if he had, he had done so subtly, and probably to do things he could've done on his own. She figured it likely had a role to play in his ability to use the Mirror of Twilight to overstep her homeland and soar into this bizarre place, but for all she knew, it may have been a simple spell woven from his own mysterious Gerudo magic.

She just kept her silence, following him through the now shin-deep swamp, wrapping her robes tighter around her and steeling herself against the cold water. The unnatural heat radiating from Ganondorf's back provided her with some warmth, but the chill of the mist seemed to sink into her every bone, creeping through her hair and hood and making its way down the back of her neck to the base of her spine. She lifted her eyes to the mist, wondering if it indeed had some sort of mind, some ill intentions against her. She found her mouth open, almost insisting to the fog that she was on its side, that she would, if she could, protect its creator from the man before her. But grey shapes in the near distance caught her eye and killed her words in her throat. She stopped, staring at the flat shapes, the tall obelisks, the crumbling markers made of stone and wood. Letters decorated their sides and tops—the wings of the Hyrulean royal family's crest, symbols of devotion to the goddesses, crescent moons, the glowing moss of Zora monuments, an unnerving, teary eye, lashes spiking up from its lid like knives.

Ganondorf appeared beside her, heat radiating from him in unsettling waves. "What do you see?" he asked.

"Graves," she answered. "At least I think they are." She squinted at the slabs of stone jutting from the water, enveloped in mist. "They're sinking into the swamp."

He stared at them, narrowing his yellow eyes. "Stay away from them," he said, before turning and resuming his trek through the water.

Midna made to follow him, but in the tiny, unavoidable moment when she looked away from them, the graves seemed to shudder forward. When she glanced again, they were only a few paces from her, sinking and crumbling into the water. They suddenly flanked their path, forming an eerie wall to her left and right, and she could not help herself from releasing a surprised cry.

"Moved in on you too, have they?" Ganondorf asked. He ignored the lines of graves to his sides, and just continued on, slogging a little faster through the water. "Don't look at them."

"You… you aren't seeing what I am, are you?" she asked. She crept closer in his shadow, her arms retreating to her sides. She knew out of instinct that if she accidentally brushed one of these objects, it would be over for her. Goddesses, do not do this to me. I mean you no harm, she pleaded in her head. But the graves did not listen—they just sank loudly into the water, faces alert and watching.

"No," he answered. "It is a property of this place. What you see and what I see will not necessarily coincide."

She shuddered, focusing her eyes on the golden markings on his cape. "What do you see?" she asked.

"In its barest essence, the same thing as you. I see the fruits of the Civil War." Midna could almost feel the grimace that must've crossed his face. "You are seeing the graves of these men and women because you did not know them, but I did. I see my sisters, my lovers, my daughters. I see my allies and enemies, men and women who I've watched die or who I've killed myself. Do not look, but closing in behind us are my mothers, and they are calling out to me. They are reaching for me, whispering to me to sink into the swamp with them and rest—" He stopped abruptly and Midna nearly bumped into him. The heat of his anger rolled off him in waves of steam. "See the depths to which Nayru will sink to intimidate me. What a lowly creature—not fit to call herself a goddess." He took a deep, loud breath and continued walking, fists at his side. "They are watching us closely. Do not stare at a grave too long, princess, or you will follow it into the water."

They were up to their knees now—the steam rolled up Ganondorf's legs thicker than the fog around them, and Midna stayed in its billowing mass. She waved her hands, guiding the steam around her, shielding her body and eyes from the infinite line of graves that flanked them. She thought she could hear muffled voices in the fog, the hoarse crying of old women, praying, begging for their child. She raised her hands to her ears and lowered her head, focusing on dragging herself through the thick water.

One foot. Okay, good. Then the other. Keep the voices out. One foot. Ignore the voices. Then the other... She repeated the mantra in her head for hours, praying with each step that her legs would find the strength to continue. It seemed a mountainous task, walking through this water, knowing just beyond the thick mantle of steam waited the eager casualties of a great war she had no part of.

I had nothing to do with it, she told the graves, the whispering voices around her. He's the one you want, not me. She knew they would not give into such a feeble plea, she knew they would not cease their eerie shuddering, their wails of crumbling rock. In a fit of doubt, she wondered why she had vowed in her sleep to protect a goddess that tortured her like this. She was not innocent, she knew this: she had come here with Ganondorf, she had given into his threats and demands, she now followed him through the swamp and into the belly of Nayru's domain. It would not impress the gods to know there was a sleeping boy under a barrier waiting for her back in Hyrule—for what did the life of an Ordish peasant mean, compared to the lives of the gods themselves? She just held her head, pleading, trying to strike a deal with whoever would listen—If I save you, goddesses, save him. Please, save him. But she had no answer from them, she had practically nothing with which to bargain with them, and no way of knowing they would even listen. They had said nothing, promised her nothing. She did not have their word like she had Ganondorf's, not that it meant anything. He was just as likely to backtrack on his promises as the gods, perhaps even more so. Midna just lowered her head and plodded onward, hands tight to her ears, eyes focused on the bubbling water in Ganondorf's wake.

She tried to think of all the possibilities where she might come out on top. Where she dissuaded him from his mission, where she defeated him by some unexpected turn of fate, where she returned victorious to Hyrule to find Link waiting for her, unscathed, a little confused, and with no memory of his defeat. Hell, if she played her cards right, she might find Zelda too, sitting on her throne with a curious look on her face. When Midna would stride up to her (both Hylians, of course, would be rendered speechless at the imp's regained beauty), and ask her what had become of Ganondorf, the princess would tilt her lovely, decorated head and whisper in that soft voice of hers: "Who?"

Midna barely noticed the water rising. She barely noticed the cover of fog disappear and the first light of the sunless sky peer through the shadows. She did not notice the graves shrink as the water deepened, sinking into the bed of rock and white dirt before disappearing entirely. It was not until she was up to her waist in glowing, cerulean water, body lit by the bright sky, that she noticed they had passed safely through the ghostly swamp. She raised her eyes and saw no end to the water around her, a deep, healthy blue and smelling of salt.

It appeared that somehow, by some trick of the Realm's irrational topography, they had walked into the ocean. Midna looked behind her for any sign of the swamp, any indication of the colorless reeds and stunted trees that had grown gnarled and ugly beyond the graves, but she could only see the surface of a vast ocean, endless in its blue glow. She glanced at her feet—the rocks and dirt had turned to flawless white sand, and darts of distorted light flitted around her ankles.

She'd never seen the ocean before—she'd seen her ocean, the one that covered the lowlands of the Twilight Realm in eerie, poisonous darkness, but she had never seen such blue, such a massive body of clear, shining water. Even the grand Lake Hylia seemed a puddle compared to this. But how they were supposed to go anywhere from here, that remained a mystery to her.

Ganondorf seemed unconcerned with the change in scenery. He just strode deeper into the water, away from the sand bar on which she now stood. Steam rose from his hips as he descended the steepening slope into the water. She followed him up to her elbows, coughing when the salty water splashed to her lips. She could not swim, but that wasn't a problem for her—if need be she could waste some magic and let it carry her across the surface. But Ganondorf seemed eager to plunge beneath it. She watched the water rise from his waist to his shoulders, and when the first part of his head disappeared under its shining surface, she called out to him. It was her luck the calm water had not covered his ears. He turned, mouth submerged, bubbles rising where the water boiled around him.

"I can't—" she started. The ripples in the water lapped at her forearms and ribs, and she knew she could not follow him past her shoulders. "Why…" She was about to ask him why don't I just wait here, but the cold voice in her head told her she had to go with him.

He turned and slowly made his way back to her, walking through that thick water as if in a dream. His shoulders emerged from the surface in a cloud of steam, rising impossibly dry from its surface, and reached out a hand. Midna stared at the dark palm, hovering below the surface, distorted by its ripples. She glanced from the palm to the impassive face of its owner, at the steam and sizzling bubbles where his armor met the water.

"I need you to see what I'm going to do," he said.

She took a deep breath, suppressing her fears, and lay her palm in his. She had expected his skin to be scalding hot, but as his fingers wrapped around hers, they were nothing but pleasantly warm. They coaxed her deeper into the water, tugging her down as she lifted her face for her last breath, robe and hair billowing in the water. He walked on, heavy, determined, and his hand kept her from floating back to the surface, kept her feet on the sandy ocean bottom as she strode, cautious and breathless, behind him.

"Breathe," he told her. His voice came to her fast and deep through the water. She opened her mouth, gagging at the rush of salt down her throat. Her lungs burned and swelled at the thickness of the new medium, but when she exhaled, pushing out a burst of bubbles and saltwater, she discovered she had, miraculously, taken a breath.

She steadied herself and her own lungs as he led her deeper into the sea, down the long, sandy slope. The water did not seem to darken the further they descended—against all logic, it stayed clear and sunlit, and apart from a few bubbles of heat that boiled off of Ganondorf, completely still. There were no breezes of current to speak of, no life apart from the occasional sickly seaweed that poked motionless from the bottom.

Somewhere far above her, a tiny shadow bobbed on the surface, distorted by the sourceless, infinite light of the sky. It appeared to be a small boat, red edges glowing in the light. It did not move along the water, but floated aimlessly in the windless day. An object like that in this world might mean…

"Are there people who live here?" she asked. Her watery voice emerged thick and high from her mouth, surprising her with its intensity.

Ganondorf looked above him, spied the tiny fleck at the surface and smiled. "No. There aren't."

"Then what—"

"A flicker of a possibility, that's all." As if in response to his answer, the shadow of the boat disappeared in a puff of red smoke, and the surface of the water regained its limitless blue glow. "Look before you."

She lowered her eyes and nearly floated away. She gripped his hand to keep herself steady as the undersea landscape rose before them, just beyond the drop of the sandy ledge. Midna saw green fields, vast orchards, lakes and rivers, distant mountains—and most bewildering, the shape of a stone castle, rising above the streets and roofs of the town that surrounded it. It looked alarmingly like—

"This is the drowned world," Ganondorf said. He strode along the sandy shelf, toward its abrupt edge. "This is what Nayru has done to Hyrule."

"But… Hyrule is…"

"It does not matter what Hyrule is now. This is what it may be—what it will be. This is what the gods will do to their land when things do not go to their satisfaction." He pulled her to the edge of the shelf, where the downward slope steepened abruptly. "They drowned every citizen too slow to make it to the mountaintops—nobles, peasants, devout worshippers begging for mercy as the waves came crashing down on them."

"You saw it happen?" Midna whispered. A stray bubble emerged from the corner of her mouth and gyrated its way upward.

"I did. And you're seeing it now." He surveyed the slope and the landscape below. "Beyond these plains is a trench. And at its bottom Nayru lies in wait. No doubt she is watching us as we speak."

Ganondorf tugged her closer to him and stepped from the ridge, pulling her from its semi-solid shelf and into empty water. She half expected to fall as she might fall through air—she supposed the sight of grass and trees beneath her may have triggered that thought—but they floated downward at an almost leisurely pace. Their cloaks billowed about them in the water like flags, waving their silent descent to the landscape below.

When Midna touched ground, the grass felt soft and dry beneath her feet. The trees around her stood tall and still, fruit hanging from their thick branches, and when she raised her eyes to the castle in the distance, she could hardly tell she was sitting at the bottom of an ocean.

No matter how her mind might insist otherwise, this was Hyrule, though perhaps in a different time. Her heart ached to see the stillness of it all—there was no wind through the leaves of the orchards, no movement of clouds in the distance, no sign of animals or people. The castle itself appeared an eerie shadow of what it had once been, empty and lifeless, almost sterile under the distant, water-stained sky. She decided she did not like this place.

"Will we have to go through it?" she asked.

"We will have to traverse the fields. We need not go to the town."

"Good. This place gives me the creeps."

"As it should. Who's to tell how many drowned ghosts are wandering here."

The landscape was perfectly preserved. No signs of underwater life anywhere, no indication of decay. The trees and grass and stone fences of the fields lay untouched by creeping seaweed or any other creature—the lush prairies seemed to Midna to be eerily barren, disturbingly perfect in their stillness.

The journey through the drowned country was almost worse than their trek through the swamp. She could not see graves, couldn't hear the crying souls of those lives lost, but she could feel them, hovering around her, floating in the silent water. She just kept her eyes on the ground, following Ganondorf's footsteps, wondering if praying to Nayru to spare Link was a good idea or not. If she could kill nearly every citizen of her own country, what would the life of a single young man mean to her? That is, if what Ganondorf told her was true, and this flooded world was not some trick, not some evil facade he conjured to deceive her. Midna clenched her fists at her sides and lowered her head in helplessness. She did not know what to make of it, but if she had to walk through this landscape to ensure Link's survival, she would.

They traversed the fields in silence, and before she knew it, before her usually quick-witted mind could come up with a plan to save her own life, save the gods and save Link, she found herself staring at the wide mouth of a black trench. The grass died abruptly at its edge, and its sides plunged into darkness, too steep to walk down. She looked to her left, then right, and saw no break in the massive depression—it seemed one eternal black strip of shadow. She gulped and dug her toes into the grass. It appeared as if they would have to jump.

"Are you ready?" Ganondorf asked.

"No," she answered.

"Of course you're not." He smiled and offered his hand to her once more. Reluctantly, she took it, and before she could prepare herself, they both stepped out into the dark water.