Unlike most stationed in the garrison they'd chosen to store him in, his duties began early and persisted throughout the day, whereas the others merely relieved the second-shift night guards sometime in mid-morning. As a result, he rose at dawn.
He took the time to see to his own body in that blessed period of solitude. It had been three weeks since the damned King had rapped him on the knuckles, and Ganondorf did not intend to lose in any possible rematch. It was too easy to neglect himself, he realized, when he had limited use of his arms. He had spent quite a long time dying and dead; any body at all, even a maimed one, was an advantage he did not mean to waste.
Even the simplest drills and exercises were drastically altered for him. The wad of rags he had pushed under his bad arm to even its length with his good one slipped. Ganondorf paused, adjusted it, and returned to pushing himself the ground down. Under his own bulk, it could have been either. Try as he might to convince himself that isolation befitted the Great King of Evil, in reality the image of himself, a crippled man pushing up for soldiers' exercises was more comical than Ganondorf was comfortable with and the laughter of ignorant men was not something he was prepared to endure.
He finished and stood, rubbing the sore pressure where the new metal cap for his arm met his skin, and marched quietly into the washroom. He up-ended a full basin over himself, washing at least a little grime down through the metal grating of the floor. He did not bother to wipe his hair out of his face, and instead set to trimming his beard. Whether he liked it or not, there were appearances that had to be kept.
His own face accused him as he looked into the polished steel mirror, as it did every morning now. Tame. You are becoming tame. Ganondorf regarded such thoughts as he would regard a passing noisy dog: with disdain and occasional irritation. He scolded himself for forgetting how to work. Long, long ago, Ganondorf once had to work for his first great victory: enduring close to a year of annoyance and insult at the hands of an ancient Hylian king, only to find his plans accelerated by the foolish actions of a girl. After seizing the gift of the Gods, he no longer needed persistence to gain prizes, and merely plucked them from the hands of whoever happened to be in his way.
He was back to the beginning again, he reasoned. He had not lost, really— he was alive and he was capable of acting— but had simply been forced to start over. Which was not a bad thing in of itself, he thought; Ganondorf had seen more second chances than most had seen sunsets and he had taken advantage of every one. Let her have her petty enchantment. Every day she keeps it, he thought, is a day I have to discover how to break it.
However, that morning was unlike many others, because it was at that moment, he did think of a way to break it. He turned the honed-razor over in his hand, and thought: the spell that binds me, it binds a mortal man. Not my spirit, which the Gods have restored to life a hundred times.
It would be so easy, he thought, to exit the world, and return when things were more fruitful for him. He tested the blade, and found it still sufficient. Zelda is a fool, he laughed somewhere inside his head. She laid a trap for an immortal. I will eventually die, and be out of her power. I could even escape at this very moment.
He was halfway to slitting his own throat when that conclusion sunk into his mind. It stopped his hand immediately, but for an instant he didn't know why. Then, like the muffled rattle of a desert snake, the idea began to buzz around in his thoughts.
I will eventually die. His hand shook.
This should not frighten me as much as it does, he scolded himself. I have died many times, in agony and in torment. I have come out no worse for any of it.
And yet, I will eventually die.
His face in the mirror already seemed to leer at him: skull-like, corpse-eyed. He became acutely aware of the air on his skin, the hiss of his breathing, the tiniest pricks of discomfort where his bare feet met the rough steel grate. His own heartbeat thundered in his ears, and he swore the flow of blood in him had friction.
Ganondorf put down the blade, disarmed. He could even see himself pale, as much as he could with his complexion. A bead of sweat crawled down his foggy, dull reflection. It was just a man.
A mortal man, who feared death. Ganondorf felt he could have been sick, and realized that he was. Death, he thought, was a terminal illness. One he had thought he had overcome: so far back on his list of priorities for centuries of the earth that just then it finally added up. It was like a barrage of tiny expenses, wages he paid to some dark idol. He had stung his knuckles and bloodied his own hands. He had been winded and bruised. He had been hungry and exhausted. He knew thirst. He hardly could fathom experiencing differently before. It was, after all, his natural state.
He had not noticed, but he was already too far gone: infected once again with all of the bodily fears and worries that came with a heart that ticked the moments away, approaching a distant death.
And he didn't know what to do about it. He dressed, and did not wait for the squires to come with his armor. He left the barracks. He was not tame, but he was also no creature to be penned in. The time had come, he thought, to break his fences.
He had such a limited time now, after all.
–
Zelda's private quarters were far out of the way of the castle's normal activities: far enough that the reeds and rushes sat undisturbed and clear: soiled only with dust. Ganondorf could almost see footprints in it, and the light feathering where the hem of a well-tailored gown had long brushed the ground. The walls were as bare as the rest of the castle: featureless cobbles punctuated every few horse-lengths by oil-soaked lamps. Like so many other identical halls, it reeked of smoke.
A guard, one of the loathsome men from the garrison where they housed him, stood at attention.
"I have come to relieve you," Ganondorf said.
"You most certainly have not," replied the guard. "My shift is not yet over, and you are not properly equipped for watch detail. Please be along."
"Such trivial details," Ganondorf said, boring his eyes into the guard's. Ganondorf's spell of domination was not so subtle or intricate as the ancient bindings that had been left as a trap in the deep basement vault, but it would do as a temporary measure. "I order you to leave your post. Your duty is done."
"My duty is done, my Lord."
"Now be off."
"I will be off."
And he was, setting away in a dazed stagger at first, but soon gathered himself and strode with purpose away from Zelda's door. He would hardly remember why he left or that Ganondorf had been there at all, but Ganondorf had made certain the guard would be far away when the confusion hit.
Ganondorf stood awhile, breath held, straining his senses for any evidence of life or movement. The hammer of his pulse interfered, but after a moment, he could discern soft breathing. He recognized the pattern: sleep. Perfect.
There was only one simple ward on the door: placed quite recently by someone with relatively little experience. Ganondorf broke it easily; a thousand years of skill made anything but deep, ancient magics as fragile as gauze to his dark arts. A simple alarm spell was woven into the enchantment; that was as easy to foil as anything else. A curse of silence upon the room served his needs quite well.
Soundlessly, the door opened. Ganondorf's muffled boots could not wake Zelda as she lay, deeply asleep in the early morning. Her quarters were fine, but unexpectedly simple: a large bed, a soft carpet, a bookshelf, and a dressing-stage with a mirror. Ganondorf supposed her maids entered and clothed her every morning.
His lips curled back, teeth baring a feral grin as he thought; this morning, they ought to bring a shroud.
Ganondorf approached her bedside in the unnatural stillness he had cast over the room. Sure enough, she lay there asleep: oblivious. Without an expression, her fine-boned face was more crystalline than hawkish: delicate and pale, like frosted glass glazed too brittle to bear any weight. Her long hair tangled over the pillow, dulled in disorder. Ganondorf's eyes traveled up the heavy quilt, finding her shape beneath it, and setting a single deadly fingertip over where her breast surely was. Her sleep was hardly serene; Ganondorf could see her shake and twitch, eyes fluttering behind paper-frail lids. Perhaps she knew in her dreams, thought Ganondorf, that she will not wake to see the sun.
If it is to her presence as Queen of Hyrule I am bound, he thought, better that she never sits upon the throne again.
Flames licked his finger, and the woolen quilt hissed and smoked. As he prepared to lance her through with a bolt of fire, she recoiled; doubling over in her sleep. She grasped the edge of her sheets desperately, a single white hand slipping out from under the cover.
It was bare, and that was enough to make Ganondorf stop.
She was indeed Zelda, THE Zelda, that much Ganondorf was absolutely sure. There was always a familiarity between them, as nemesis. He knew a Zelda when he saw one, and this girl was certainly the correct member of the royal family. Sometimes there had been more than one: the spirit split amongst a mother and a daughter, perhaps. But no less, and no more: always, when he came to bear, there was a Zelda waiting to oppose him. And when he reigned supreme, Zelda always managed to be born to challenge him. Where, then, was her piece of the Triforce? Where was Wisdom?
That had been half the point, he cried out in fury, yet his voice was hushed in the silenced room. That had been the ultimate, rather than immediate goal; yes, by slaying Zelda he could nullify her curse... but what then? What then with Power fled, and what then with Wisdom missing? What was he to do? There was no way to locate either without at least one of the three, and there was an army greater than even his had ever been standing by all around him. There was nowhere to go, and nothing to do.
Ganondorf did not like the idea of impossibility. His philosophy was to simply do what could not be done: be it forbidden or futile. But at that moment, his shrieking brain concluded that there was no other explanation but that this had been purposeful: a strike against him. An esoteric, unthinkable move in an ancient game of war he had been playing with several Zeldas, some long-dead. One of them had hidden Wisdom far away from him, in preparation to make their descendant Ganondorf's jailer. Perhaps the same that had placed the irresistible lure of his missing Power so close in a simple vault with a set trap. What warden would put the keys in the prisoner's reach? No, he thought, it would be their game to make the prisoner think it was so easy...to make that man run into his cage willingly and eagerly, only to have the door slam shut behind him.
But if it was a game of war, Ganondorf became for a moment a general. And no matter how his good fist screamed for her blood, he retreated. Even as thoughts of snapping her neck came to bear, thoughts of burning her alive, consuming her seethed in his skin, he forced himself back through her door and removed his spell of silence. His flesh felt to bubble upon his bones: molten in protest.
There had to be another way.
–
And so for days and into a week later, Ganondorf, Master of Thieves, Lord of the Desert and King-Father of the long-forgotten Gerudo people, found himself in the library. Despite himself, he rather liked the library, and books in general. Even after the long corrosion of time, his memory of the first books he had ever chosen for himself and read was still painted clearly in his mind. It was all his caretakers could to to keep his young hands off of them, or at least control what entered his mind. They were not successful.
Even so, books were one of the few things, he had long discovered, that were able to order his mind. In their presence, the static in his blood grew frustrated, baffled, and eventually gave up: leaving him a creature of banked ashes: mind free to pursue the ideas written in ink on vellum and leafs of paper without burning them to cinders.
For all that he was considered barbarian somewhere in the deep past, Ganondorf did not doubt that he was well-read by the standards of Hylian nobility. At least, in the portions of his memory where he could recall having the patience for books at all.
Briefly he wondered if it was books at all, or some other unknown combination of formula that was so kind at the moment to give him such gracious clarity of thought. Life was not always so easy... he returned soon to study.
Ganondorf shut the heavy tome and pushed it aside, his candle growing short beside him. He rubbed his temples, ignored that he was to play at having 'duties' in the morning, and opened the next manuscript in the stack he had piled high next to him. There had to be something, he thought, of what the dead Zelda did. Intricate curse-circles, binding runes, ancient Hylian dialects, did not come from nowhere. Somewhere in the expansive library of Hyrule Castle, there had to be at least a hint or a clue as to the structure of the curse that held him in check. If the terms of the enchantment were not to be broken, Ganondorf supposed the only way was to delve into the structure of it all and unravel it there: he was not a great sorcerer for nothing, though the mode of magic was unfamiliar and strange to him.
"You are an impressive wizard, soldier."
The voice was not one Ganondorf had any wish to hear, and he did not look up from his studies. "King General. I suggest you leave my presence. I have no patience for you at the moment."
"And an impertinent whelp, if you presume to order a King," the grey-haired man scowled, pulling himself out from behind the corner of an oaken shelf. He looked up and down the thick stack of books, but his eyes did not linger on the titles for long. His lip curled in contempt."There are few magicians left in Hyrule, these days. Much less ones with the power to slay sound within an entire room. I learned much from the guard you removed, after he regained his senses. What, I wonder, did you mean to do in there?"
The king bared his own teeth by the candle's light. With the Queen long, long asleep, they were for the moment equals. "As King of Hyrule-"
"King consort," Ganondorf corrected, mouth twisting as he lashed out with words. "As a king, you are my lesser: a stock-sire and nothing more. And I see no brat children by your doing. You are beneath my attention."
King Calas Hyrule XI's eyes went wide with rage, though his tone was even. "My blood is as pure as hers. I am a descendant of the heavens and rightful King of Hyrule. My title is an artifact of desperate days. Days that contained the Evil One, that are long-dead and forgotten."
Finally, Ganondorf rose. As he stood, he could see the unsaid threat on the other man's face. If there was not an army of thousands waiting at the ready, Ganondorf would never have tolerated it. "If you knew anything of the Evil One, you would not be so sure in naming him a relic. No, I don't believe you know anything."
A smile split his face when he saw that familiar, intimate, so usable note of jealousy in the King's eyes. So usable, so hungry and jealous. His prior thought rung in his head: how could one remove Zelda? Death, yes. But that escape was no longer an option.
A new escape stood in front of him, Ganondorf realized. The books were meaningless; his first approach had not been entirely foiled. Zelda need not leave the throne, he thought. Merely someone else ought to claim it. And if not himself, what better avatar than a greedy, easily-bridled fool?
"She keeps all knowledge and importance for herself," Ganondorf began thoughtfully. "Along with your glory, and your victory. You once showed me your army, and it is hollow. It is a force on lease. You have nothing more than what this Queen allows you to have. Even as her elder, you are nothing more than her decrepit pet."
And the man stood, dumbfounded.
"You are not even permitted to strike me for this insult," Ganondorf sneered. "As her guard, I am of greater note and merit than you, King General. After all, you do not even know the purpose of your blighted kingdom. Why it shambles on, and even why you yourself exist."
"And you are private to such secrets of the universe?"
Ganondorf straightened, head and shoulders above the king, and seemed to tower over even the ancient shelves with his height. "Your entire lurching, undead land exists for a single purpose: to keep your monarch alive and well. She has taken your power and built a great keep around herself. Like a mother of insects, she has colonized and harvested all surrounding lands until no competition remains. All so that she may breed, and beget another Queen. And that that Queen may beget a Queen of her own. Unto eternity, feeding until she has sucked you dry of nectar and promise."
All waiting, Ganondorf added within his mind, as sentinels to my return. Each leaving behind a husk, their very best plans, their most artfully contrived prisons for me. And yet as all women, they die. And their machinations are left orphans: with each next generation having an imperfect understanding of their use. The tower had not been a perfect prison, and this curse depended on the life of one family line remaining on the throne.
And as Ganondorf knew so very well, no regime was ever permanent.
"You are blasphemous," said the King, though Ganondorf could see the ideas putrefy in the man's eyes. Like a noxious bite, his words infected, and to Ganondorf's great satisfaction he could see the contagious anxiety of a very power-sick man.
He would not have to wait much longer.
"When the truth is considered blasphemy," Ganondorf said, "examine your idols."
–
Yet more days crept by. Yet more days Ganondorf tested her, each time trying to elicit a harmless command, each time testing if the curse had been broken, or if the King required further... encouragement.
"Your ill-matched mate is threatened by my presence," reported Ganondorf as he sat uncomfortably in the parlor. The chair was not made for a man as large as he. Perched upon it, he felt like a large bird seated tenuously on too small a twig. Zelda sat before him in one of her more modest gowns with a needle in hand, painting a minute line in thread across the even-weave of a half-finished sampler. Each stitch's creep was tiny: no longer than a seed of grass. Ganondorf felt his patience strain even watching another person work at completing the intricate needlework; he could not imagine sitting still long enough to do so himself.
Zelda almost seemed to ignore him, the fine point of her needle poking up through the white linen's weave. Her glove surfaced over the cloth and plucked it through, drawing the black thread up and back into the pattern. But after a moment of mouthed, quiet counting, she set the work upon her lap and regarded him seriously. "Perhaps you should take it as a compliment," she said dryly. "His claim to my hand is his might at arms, and now he is confronted with a man that I vouch as more formidable than his greatest lieutenants. None of them have raised mountains, or frozen rivers."
"You flatter yourself. I have no interest in your frailty," Ganondorf sneered, lip curling in revulsion.
"Nor I your wickedness," Zelda said. "Nor Calas his appetite. As you have noticed, we stagnate. It is difficult to satisfy a man when there is no more accomplishment to be had, and the only battles to be fought are with the dry ground."
"The sun is as bright as ever," Ganondorf dismissed. "Your poor harvest will pass, ungrateful fool. You know nothing of hunger."
The comment was ignored, and Zelda took up her needle again and began inching her line of embroidery up, a perfect mirror of the pattern she had already begun. To her, it suddenly seemed far more interesting than the King of Evil.
"Enough!" he thundered, causing the curtains to quiver. "Do you mean to train me like an animal? To reward me with attention and punish me with neglect? How simple your mind is!"
Zelda's attention did not waver. She pulled taught her line of stitches, the curl of a graphed leaf in a geometric garden coming to bear.
"Look at me when I speak!"
He seized perhaps hundreds of hours of her work and between his good hand and his teeth, ripped it to a few rags, throwing it back at her in disgust. He spit the metal needle. It landed in her tea. For a few seconds, Queen Zelda stared at him, as if she was struggling to comprehend what had happened. Then she bit her lip. A shade of facade seemed to fall around her, and she crossed her arms tiredly as she sat back in the chair, hands now idle.
"You do know why I wish to speak to you tonight, Ganondorf," said Zelda quite suddenly, tone almost brusque. "You must know."
If she had lost patience or gained nerve, Ganondorf did not know, nor did he care. "I do not," he said. "Why should I know the mind of a little girl?"
"Tell me what you have done with the piece of the Triforce that was hidden under the castle," commanded Zelda.
There was no unbidden words, no involuntary confessions from Ganondorf. "Nothing," he replied truthfully. "Why in all hells do you think I would know?"
"You must be evading," Zelda said, eyes fixed upon Ganondorf. Her voice cracked: startling and hawkish. "Don't be ridiculous. You are the King of Darkness, and have held that share for untold centuries. It was imprisoned within one of your own limbs. You detected and sought it out the instant you were able. You even managed to reach it before the protective wards ensnared you."
The Queen Zelda stood, the pulled shreds of her needlework entirely forgotten. It slid off of her lap in tangles, soon trodden underfoot. She leered at him over the table, all pretense lost and all stone gone from her face. Her nose wrinkled: snarl-crunched.
"Do you seriously expect me to believe that you did nothing with it?"
Ganondorf's laughter rattled the poor glass of spirits that had been set in front of him. "Zelda the wise, indeed! I wonder if you are even the correct one, or if your worthiness has withered away with time!"
"Do not mock me!"
Ganondorf was unsure if it was a command, for his throat did not close in on itself.
"Damn you!" She yelled now, angry tears leaking from her eyes. They drew spidery lines in the white powder that dusted her face."My land rots in the sun and my people starve! I need it!"
"You should have taken it when it sat in the dungeons, far below your idleness," Ganondorf spat. "An age ago, your kin denied my people mercy and aid. Instead they slaughtered us until none remained. I owe you the same courtesy."
"King of Evil, I order you now," Zelda hissed, breath choking in her throat. "Tell me what you have done with the Triforce of Power."
Ganondorf rose now, towering over her. "You cannot order me to say what I do not know. Ask your damned heavens to save your filthy country."
"Then leave! Go back to your barracks, and harass me no more!"
When his limbs did not freeze, Ganondorf immediately knew what had happened elsewhere in the castle. He could almost feel the actions he imagined were happening floors below: noble families swearing fealty down in the bailey, an eager king crowning himself, soon to oust his competition. As Zelda's words faded from the air, it was quiet in the castle. Unnaturally so. Ganondorf's smile stretched wide, and as Zelda realized his movements were free, it swallowed her courage.
"Your curse is broken. Your words mean nothing to me."
In an instant, his nails dug into her small throat, but she did not gasp for air. His eyes locked with hers, and he found them white-ringed in terror. She had forgotten to breathe.
"I only regret it took me so long to wrench your throne away. Your greedy king will be next."
Ganondorf cast her aside, and she crashed through the glass of the parlor, plummeting to the balcony below. He turned on his heel, cape whipping behind him in the sudden draft.
Now, he thought, it was his time once again.
