Silent Echoes Epilogue

"Lift that blade, keep the tip up! That's it!" Link smiled, hearing Impa's voice echo through the gym as he stepped through the doors with his gear bag in hand. Life was back to normal at last.

It was fall term, and classes were once again being held at Castle University. Spring term had never been finished. Too many professors had resisted the aliens and been killed. Indeed classes were resuming this soon only because so many had been off campus and thus less heavily targeted by the alien invasion. The political processes of Hyrule were still in disarray, the president and much of the senate had perished when the aliens took the capital. Yet elections had been held only a few weeks ago and that too was beginning to return to something like normal. The rest of Hyrule had been recovering as well. People had died, and many of those enslaved by the Masters had suffered psychological and physical problems, some of which were still being treated. But by and large life looked much as it had before the invasion.

Including, Link saw to his surprise, Ganondorf's presence in the class. He was warming up in one corner, as he usually did. He grinned when he saw Link staring at him. "Why if it isn't the hero! Still being a good little boy and going to school, hmm?"

Link frowned, but didn't bother to reply, since Ganondorf wouldn't understand it anyway. Ganondorf laughed and walked over to Link. "I'm sure you're wondering why I'm here. I'll let you in on my plans, hero, mostly because then I can watch your frustration when you can't do anything to stop me. Oh, I'm sure you still have your pretty sword, and your little triangle, and your 'friend' Vaati, and you think you've won. But what are you going to do when the connections I'm making here bear fruit? What will you do when, on the strength of the little story I'm building about a man down on his luck, who went back to school, got into politics, and rose to power, reaches its conclusion? When I took Hyrule's throne by blood it was easy enough for you to take it back the same way, little hero, but what are you going to do when Hyrule's own people choose me? What will you do when I'm their beloved president? What then?"

His eyes glittered with dark pleasure. But Link only smiled. He knew a few things that Ganondorf didn't. One was that Vaati had dropped his engineering courses in favor of majoring in political science. Ganondorf wouldn't be unopposed when he reached for political power in Hyrule.

And another was that Link was looking forward to the future in an all new way now. In the wake of the invasion Hyrule's space program had been given an unprecedented budget, and with the equipment the aliens had left behind and the knowledge the enslaved had gathered while in captivity the program had made huge strides forward just in the past few months. Already scientists were talking about real interstellar travel. Plans, real, practical plans and not just wishful science fiction, to expand humanity's reach throughout the solar system and beyond over the next few years were being drawn up.

Link fully intended to be part of those efforts. He would be graduating at the end of this year and had already gotten offered a potential place in the newly expanded Hyrule Air and Space Agency.

So even if Ganondorf managed to gain power over Hyrule, Hyrule was no longer the sum total of humanity's interests. Soon the human race, and no doubt their ally races as well, would be established on other worlds.

Not that Link would let Ganondorf rule this world without opposition. The battle might be a different sort than those he had fought in the past, but he would fight it all the same. Yet win or lose this time, no matter what tyranny Ganondorf brought to Hyrule, the day would come when he could not threaten Hyrule at all. For Hyrule was no longer one single, lonely world, locked in an eternal cycle of conflict. Hyrule would soon reach to the stars. Generations hence the people of Hyrule would be living lives that Link probably couldn't even imagine, scattered to places that he would never see. How could the petty cycle of power and vengeance that he and Ganondorf were trapped in affect that broad, grand future?

He grinned and gestured to the practice strip, his challenge to Ganondorf clear enough. Ganondorf scowled, but nodded and took up his position. They would try their blades again, and the outcome could swing either way. But Link still grinned all the same, for the outcome of the longer battle was certain. Ganondorf had already lost, and he didn't even know how or why. His narrow pursuit of power had blinded him to the power of humanity that was beyond his grasp.

Link could remember how long ago, during his very first life, a goddess had raised humanity up above the clouds to protect it. Darkness had reached that haven eventually, and darkness might perhaps reach whatever havens humanity built hereafter, on whatever worlds they visited. But the human spirit would yet prevail. He, an ordinary mortal then, had known the power of the human spirit when he lifted a sword to oppose a god. That same power would soon carry humanity beyond even the reach of the gods, out to the stars, and whatever they might find there. And whatever that might be, Link was determined to be there when humanity began that grand journey into the future, away from the silent echoes of the past.