Chapter 8:

The Corruption Begins

Ganondorf was levitating high above the center of Hyrule Field. He could see every one of the temples that he would corrupt. But these temples were not in Hyrule. As any Hylian geographer would know, Hyrule was in a huge roughly circular valley that was surrounded by mountains. Surrounding the mountains was the Great Ocean, across from which were other countries, such as Calatia. Ganondorf was carrying the particular geographer who had given him this valuable information with him. He was dangling by his ankles, which were tied to a rope, which Ganondorf was holding up effortlessly between his thumb and forefinger.

"Please, my lord, let me down somewhere", the terrified young man squealed, "If I fell from this height, well, it would be a long way down! I could get hurt. Or worse! Or WORSE than 'or worse'!"

"None of my concern", said Ganondorf passively.

"But!—"

"Shut your bleeding trap or I'll let you go right NOW!" Ganondorf threw the man into the air and punched him in the mouth, knocking out most of his teeth, breaking his jaw, and causing his mouth to bleed horribly. He flew over to where the man's body was heading and caught the rope, once again holding in by his thumb and forefinger.

"Well, that is interesting!" he said cruelly, "You really do have bleeding trap!"

The man, who was carefully clutching his jaw, found this less than amusing.

Ganondorf held the man up and punched the man in the gut, enjoying the weak cries of agony coming from him. He waited for the man to stop swinging in circles from the force of the punch.

"'Lea le' 'e go!" the man begged as well as he could with his broken jaw.

"Oh, very well."

The geographer got a horrifying feeling that he knew exactly how he was going to be let go of. That horror was the last feeling he would ever know.

Ganondorf moved his thumb slightly so that the rope would just barely slip between his fingers. The man screamed, regardless of the pain in his mouth, and Ganondorf cackled as he saw the receding figure falling towards the streets of castle town.

The last thing the geographer heard were his own screams being caught by the wind. The last thing he felt was the back-splitting pressure of his body crashing through the wooden roof of a building in castle town. He was spared the pain of his corpse smashing down through two more floors.


Link, Saria, and Zelda stared in confusion at the man who was standing in their room. Actually, it was not so much a man, as a thing. It stood upright like a humanoid, but it had the body and facial features of some strange sort of spiky blue lizard. It was wearing a cape over its back. The window on the direct opposite side of the room was open suggesting that it had gotten into the room by climbing up the side of the inn.

"So you're the so-called Hero of Time?" the thing that, judging by the voice, was a man, "I was expecting more of someone with such a title. You're nothing but a boy at most!"

"I beg to disagree, my scaly friend", responded Link, "Let's avoid any unnecessary violence. I need my energy for tomorrow."

"Oh, what a pity, I guess you'll have to postpone your plans", the lizardman said grimly. He reached behind his back, and pulled out a pair of vicious looking scimitars and pointed them at Link threateningly.

"This isn't good Link!" said Navi, who had flown out of Link's pocket, Isn't your sword broken!"

"Use this!" Zelda drew a slim, elegant sword from a secret pocket conveniently hidden in her dress, "Don't be surprised. I'm wearing armor under the royal clothing." She lobbed the sword to Link who caught it easily in his left hand.

"I'll float around at a safe distance and see if I can find a weakness", Navi whispered in Link's ear.

"Good. Thanks Navi", said Link, who turned to face his attacker, "Okay, freak, you were saying?"

This seemed to strike a nerve with the lizardman. His eye began to twitch and a vein pulsed in his head.

"NEVER. CALL. ME. A. FREAK!!"

The creature lunged at Link, swinging his two blades in vicious attacks. Link easily dodged and parried most of the attacks but several met their mark, leaving gashes in multiple places on his body. Then, the lizardman jumped into the air, flipped over Link's head, and before he had a chance to react, stabbed him in the shoulder, making him drop Zelda's sword.

"You aren't doing your best 'hero'," jeered the lizardman, "So sad that now you can't even hold your sword."

"Wanna bet!" growled Link, picking up the sword with his right hand, "I'm ambidextrous!"

"Oh no", the creature mocked, "What ever will I do?"

"Nothing I haven't seen already", said Link, jumping out of the creature's way as it lunged at him, "From what I can see, you are too."

"Very insightful", said the lizardman, "But you'll find I have a lot of tricks up my sleeve."

"What sleeve? It looks like you broke them off!"

"True. I did", growled the lizardman, crossing his scimitars in an X to defend against a horizontal slice from Link, "But you appear to have missed the fact that my arms are weapons in themselves".

The creature raised his sword to make a vertical slice attack and Link noticed that jagged spikes jutted from the back of his arm.

Link blocked the subsequent attack with his shield and backed away to the door of the room. He lowered his shield and held his sword behind his back, so that his scaly opponent couldn't see the glow of his charged spin attack.

"You fool!" the creature shouted in shock, "Lowering all of your defenses!"

The reptilian swordsman charged towards Link.

Link released a greatly energized spin attack moments before his opponent's blade sliced through him, launching the lizardman out the open window. He ran to go look to see what the result of his attack was and was shocked to see what it was. The lizardman flipped backward in the air like an acrobat and somehow managed to land perfectly after the 12-meter fall. He looked up at Link in what looked like disappointment, saluted him, and ran off into the night.


"Who was that guy?" asked Saria.

"I don't have a clue", said Navi, "But I have a strange feeling that we haven't seen the last of him.

Skull Kid and Volvagia suddenly threw open the door and ran into the room.

"We heard a scuffle coming from up here", Said Skull Kid worriedly.

"Yeah", Volvagia cut in, "Is something wrong?"

"Don't worry, everything's fine", Said Zelda, unsuccessfully trying to hide the damaged furniture from his view, "Don't worry yourselves".

"Uh huh..." said Skull Kid in a very disbelieving tone.

"What about Link's arm?!" cried Volvagia, looking in shock at the deep gash going straight through Link's shoulder.

"Just don't worry", said Link. Taking a blue potion out of his pack, he drained the whole bottle in one gulp, and the wound rapidly healed along with the rest of the cuts and bruises that Link had gotten in the fight with the lizardman.

"Okay, but if we hear anything else, we're going to be very suspicious", said Skull Kid.

"Don't worry, you won't", said Link, as Skull Kid left the room with Volvagia floating close behind.

Link closed the door. Then something that Link wasn't expecting happened. Saria opened it up again almost immediately. Before Link knew what hit him Zelda had pushed him out of the room and locked the door.

"Hey! Let me in!" called Link.

"HEY! Let me out!" cried Navi from the other side of the door.

"I'm sorry Link", Saria called back in a singsong voice.

"Why not?!"

"Can't you just let us get changed for bed in peace?!" hollered Zelda.

"OH! Uh... sorry. Why didn't you just say so in the first place? I would have left."

Suddenly he heard something crash through the roof of the inn from the other side of the door, and two shrieks subsequent to it. Link took an arrow from his quiver and jammed it into the lock. Successfully picking the lock, he flung the door open to find a hole in the ceiling and another in the floor directly below the first. Zelda was in a corner of the room holding a blanket over herself to cover herself up while Saria hadn't even started getting out of her clothes and was just pressing her back against the wall, staring at the holes in the floor and ceiling.

"What happened?!"

"Something fell through the roof and kept going through the floor!" gasped Zelda, stating the obvious.

Link peered through the hole in the floor. His eyes widened.

"It's a... I have to be sure! It broke through the other two floors as well!" gasped Link. He jumped through the holes in the floor and landed beside the object that was drawing attention from a growing crowd of people from the ground floor.

He turned around to see what it was. What he saw made his dinner rise in his gut. A bloody corpse was lying on the floor of the inn. He looked up through the roof and though it was dark outside he could swear that he saw a tiny speck of reddish purple shooting away. Link glared.

"...Ganondorf..." Link snarled under his breath.


Ganondorf flew back to his original location above the center of Hyrule Field. He turned three-hundred-sixty degrees to look at each of the Mountain Temples in turn. They were all in different locations on the outskirts of Hyrule. Two ancient-looking hags flew up to his location on brooms.

"Koume, Kotake." he spoke the names of the two insane Gerudo sorceresses, "You're late."

"Our apologies, Lord", they said in unison, "We are finally ready to curse the Border Temples however. That is what you called us here for was it not."

"That is correct", Ganondorf said impatiently, "Let us begin, shall we." He raised his hand above his head and the old crones began to fly in circles above the Dark Lord, chanting some mad unintelligible incantation. Twelve orbs of darkness appeared and eleven of them shot in a different direction. They kept spinning around the last one for almost five minutes chanting a new incantation. It grew to an enormous size, visible to anyone on the ground, miles below. Ganondorf spun around and hurled the colossal orb past the mountain ranges surrounding Hyrule. Outside the boundaries of the mountains there was a vast desert that stretched towards the ocean. That was where the orb was heading. It stopped at its designated location, and sank into the ground, destroying everything that was below it. There wasn't very much there that was destroyed, to Ganondorf's disappointment, but the end result was still the only thing that mattered. The orb began to dissipate. Where there had been a desert, there was now a barren, scorched wasteland of blackened rock. A huge lake of lava appeared from the impenetrable darkness. Pitch black storm clouds billowed in a circular formation. Ganondorf finally reached the area and leered. Floating in the center of it all, was a massive black castle.

Ganon's Tower had been created.