The sky outside the window was overcast. It hadn't rained in days. The air crackled with electricity, and a hot easterly wind blew down from the mountains. There had been fires in the city below. Smoke still rose from one of the districts that had fallen in a recent earthquake.
Zelda tapped her fingers against the windowpane. The king had confirmed something she suspected since she arrived in Castle City, and she could not bear to look at him.
"Father, you have to let him go," she said, addressing her reflection in the glass.
"You fail to understand the situation," the king responded.
His words grated at her. She understood the situation perfectly. Her orders, as delivered to her by his Sheikah advisor Kaepora on the morning of her departure, had been to ascertain whether the Gerudo lord held the Triforce – and whether he was a threat to Hyrule.
"Perhaps, if you had allowed me to remain in Fort Lanayru, I might have understood the situation better."
"That was a risk I was not willing to take."
"I was never in any danger."
"You stopped delivering information to our informants and allowed that man to monopolize your time. You rode alone with him into the desert, Zelda."
"What are you suggesting?"
"I'm suggesting that your ability to act as an agent of the crown had been compromised."
Zelda could see the face of her reflection twisting. She forced herself to remain calm. "Were not my orders to charm him? To persuade him to invite me into his intimate trust?"
"The invitation you accepted may have been too intimate."
Zelda spun around to face him. "You are overstepping your bounds as my king and as my father. The intimacies I may have shared with him are none of your concern."
Gustaf met her glare, his eyes as cold as hers. "And if you happened to become pregnant? Would you marry the man? And risk bringing two pieces of the Triforce into this castle?"
"You have brought two pieces of the Triforce into this castle yourself. The wind storms, the fires, the earthquakes – you must send him back to the desert. The Triforce of Power has begun to manifest itself, and he is already powerful. I have told your officers of the magic he commands, and now I will tell you as well: You cannot hope to fight him. He will destroy our soldiers as easily as if he were shearing grass."
Gustaf sighed. "He has already proven himself more than capable of destroying our soldiers."
Zelda blinked, startled. "What do you mean?"
"It's best not to dwell on the details. Suffice it to say that he remains in our care of his own volition. He seems to be waiting for something."
"My lord father, he is doubtlessly waiting for you to come to your senses."
"I suspect that it's not me he's waiting for, my dear. Nevertheless, he seems to be an honorable man."
Zelda grimaced. "As are we all, all of us honorable, having chained the king of a tribe ostensibly under our protection for a crime he did not commit. Think of our treaties with Fort Lanayru!"
"The Gerudo would have declared war on us if we had not beaten them to it. We have barely been able to contain them from invading our borders."
"Then they are not attacking in earnest."
"They will not move until word comes from their king."
"So let their king give his word."
Gustaf rose from the chair behind his desk and walked to the fireplace, where a small brazier had been left burning. He removed a tin of tobacco from the pocket of his greatcoat and rolled a cigarette, lighting it on the coals. The room filled with fragrant smoke.
"I was young once too," he said, still facing the fireplace. "I wish you had gotten the chance to know your mother. She was a remarkable woman, and not a day goes by that I don't wish she were still with us. I am thankful to have you, my daughter, because the burden of this kingdom is more than I can bear alone."
He tapped the ashes of his cigarette onto the stone hearth and looked up at her. "Will you share this burden with me?"
Zelda shook her head. "Is the burden not already mine?"
"You are more than a member of the royal family; you have been chosen to bear the Triforce of Wisdom. As the mother of a Zelda, my wife was doomed to die, and so too are you doomed to kill, if not by your action then by your inaction."
"You cannot blame me for my mother's death."
"And I never have. It was her fate, just as it was yours to be born with the Triforce that killed her. Wisdom must ever walk alone, or some such nonsense."
"The Triforce killed my mother? Father, you are unwell."
"I have asked that it never come to your attention that all the Zeldas in your line have lost one or both of their parents early in their lives. As much as I've enjoyed seeing you become the woman you are now, I dearly wish you had lost me instead of your mother; I am ill equipped for this role. I have done my best to prepare you for what you must do, but I cannot guide your hand. It took everything I had to prevent the pieces of the legend from fitting together for as long as I was able."
"The pieces of the legend? Legend is nothing more than history as seen through an occluded lens. The Gerudo have the same legend. In their stories the bearer of Triforce of Power is the hero, and we of Hyrule are the demons who fight him. There are no gods on this earth, and legends are shaped by mortal tongues. We don't need to fight the Gerudo. I don't need to kill their king. The situation you've created is preposterous."
He didn't answer her, so she continued.
"You must realize how ridiculous this all sounds. We have constructs of clockwork that carry our burdens, and rails of iron that carry our trains. Our fields have more grain than there are mouths to consume it, and our cities grow ever larger. This is the modern age, not some medieval fantasy. We have moved beyond legends."
"I had hoped so too, once," Gustaf said, speaking softly. "As soon as I saw the Triforce on your tiny hand, I vowed that it would mean nothing to me. I was an architect before I was a king. What use had I for legends? I swore to your mother that I would place my trust in the steel of bridges instead of the steel of swords, and that there would be no war to mar your reign."
"But not even a king can defy the Goddesses. Your mother fell ill and died. A male child was crowned prince of the Gerudo. The Kokiri withdrew to their forest. The very landscape of Hyrule is changing before my eyes, with each day heralding a new invention. Technology beyond our wildest dreams has been lifted into the sunlight from beneath the sands of the desert, and it has been channeled through the Zora, who have sent it south and east beyond our borders. Civil war erupted in Ordon, which has closed its roads to us. A blight emerged from Lake Hylia, and now there are fires, earthquakes, floods. Monsters roam the fields, and the clouds have not lifted from our city in days. You tell me that the Gerudo have flying machines."
"Father," Zelda interrupted, "I don't understand. What does innovation have to do with disaster?"
"Forgive me, I'm getting ahead of myself. My dear Zelda, do you know what the Triforce of Power does?"
"I assume it bestows augmented physical and magical strength on its bearer, and apparently it grants political power among the Gerudo, but if you mean to suggest it has rendered Ganondorf a tyrant you are wrong."
"It is as you say. The man has always been a capable ruler, and therein lies the problem. If he or any of his predecessors were wicked or cruel or merely incompetent, the Triforce of Power would not be so frightening. It is because its bearer is able to inspire intense loyalty that wars are started."
"But how can loyalty alone bring about war?"
"Because that is the purpose of the Triforce of Power – to create and mold a person with such strength of character and skill in the magical and martial arts that women and men would gladly give their lives for the honor of following him into battle. He is always an outsider to Hyrule, Zelda. His soldiers are always the disenfranchised, and they always support a noble cause. He is always born to the women of the desert, but his influence always extends much farther. He never wins, however, because that is not what the Triforce wants."
"You speak as if the Triforce has a will."
"I assure you it does."
"What does the Triforce want from the bearer of Power, then?"
"Nothing more and nothing less than that he cleanse Hyrule and return it to a pure and primordial state."
"But what is there in Hyrule that must be washed away?"
"Our progress as a civilization, Zelda. The Goddesses will not allow mortals to infringe on their territory. They will not suffer us to usurp their position, either by magic or by machines."
Zelda frowned. "So you're saying that, whenever Hyrule grows too great, the Goddesses send Ganondorf – or someone like him – to cut us back down to size."
Gustaf dropped the smoking end of his cigarette and snuffed its flame with the toe of his boot.
"Exactly. But – "
Zelda began to speak, but he motioned for her silence. "But," he continued, "as you are exactly like myself in that you refuse to believe the seemingly irrational until you have sufficient proof, I have asked Kaepora to give Impa permission to provide you with the evidence you need to make your decision."
"What decision?"
"If you use the magic of the Triforce of Wisdom to kill the desert lord, there will most certainly be a war, but it will be short, and both sides will recover in due time."
"And if I refuse to kill him?"
"You may choose to do so, and there may even be peace for a few years. But you must know that the Triforce of Power works in ways we cannot predict, and its will cannot be thwarted. If it is allowed to remain intact, it will demand bloodshed on a scale this land has not witnessed in centuries. Everything we have worked for as a kingdom – the safety and comfort of our people, our defenses against the old magic of Hyrule, the dignity and cooperation of the tribes under our care – all of this will be destroyed. Even if you and that man manage to achieve an impossible balance, the proximity of the two Triforce pieces will summon the third, and we cannot risk opening the gate to the Sacred Realm."
"Is there no way to prevent the appearance of the hero?"
"No." Gustaf lit another cigarette. "If we are unlucky, it may already be too late."
A small earthquake hit as Zelda and Impa descended a staircase into the dungeons. Zelda knew they were safe in the ancient stone passage, but she couldn't help but flinch. Impa laughed.
"It looks like your boyfriend's got his panties in a wad again," she said, brushing away the dust that had fallen onto the shoulders of her suit jacket.
"Don't be petty," Zelda responded as she continued climbing.
"He always struck me as temperamental. You're better off without him."
"He's not that bad once you get to know him."
"Did the king tell you what he did to the soldier who tried to put him in manacles?"
"I'd rather not know," Zelda answered dryly.
"He keeps asking after you, you know. He seems to be afraid that you're being imprisoned as well."
"How sweet of him to worry."
"Oh? You don't sound convinced."
Impa poked Zelda with the tip of her cane from several steps above, and Zelda swatted it away.
"If he truly cared for my welfare, he'd end this charade and leave the castle."
"You think he's sulking?"
"I don't know what he's doing."
"Do you think he's waiting for you to kidnap him?"
Zelda laughed. "That's not going to happen."
"But you are going to see him."
"I suppose I must. He seems to think he needs my permission to leave."
"That's so romantic."
"He's being histrionic, him and my father both."
Zelda paused on a landing, and Impa jumped down to her.
"I don't remember the dungeon being this deep. How much farther do these stairs go on?"
Impa offered her hand. "Is my lady growing tired? Would you like me to carry you?"
Zelda took Impa's hand and squeezed it, digging in her nails. "Stop it, Impa. I'm already on my last nerve."
"But what if they're right?"
"They? My father, and...?"
"And Kaepora. He's much older than he looks, you know. He's been around the block a few times. He probably knows what he's talking about."
"Honestly, Impa. You don't believe any of this, do you?"
"It doesn't matter what I believe. All I know is what I see with my own eyes, and all I can do is to show you what I've seen. Kaepora tried to explain it to me once, but it was all high-minded mumbo jumbo to me."
"Gods, I hear you. If one more man tries to explain something to me I'm going to scream."
They arrived at the bottom of the staircase. Ahead of them was a long-abandoned section of the castle dungeons, lower than the cellars, lower than even the sewer. Zelda had been brought here to undergo the trials of royalty when she came of age, and the earth floor still exuded the same stench of blood and rot.
Zelda sang a few bars of a dirge-like melody, and the torches around the room sputtered to life, their fires an eerie, toneless green. She considered extinguishing the torches on the steps, but she decided not to bother. The more light they got in this wretched place, the better. The pale flames cast a slimy glow on the rusted chains emerging from the black walls. The corners were littered with bones.
"Be careful what you sing down here," Impa said, knocking a skull out of her way with her cane. "You don't know what might hear you and decide to start dancing."
Impa cut a dashing figure in her immaculately tailored suit and rakish bowler hat as she extended her hands before her. The contrails of a path began to glow on the floor, leading directly to a crucifix mounted against a far wall.
"Duly noted," Zelda said, stepping through the wall, which shimmered around her.
Albino keese stirred on the other side. Zelda hoped they wouldn't be foolish enough to attack her. They were. She muttered a few dark words, and they dropped dead around her. In this hellish place Sheikah magic was especially potent.
"You couldn't leave any for me?" Impa teased, twirling her cane.
"I saved you the spiders."
As soon as the words left her mouth, several sets of compound eyes emerged from the gloom. Just as Zelda remembered, the lower dungeons were infested with skulltulas. These weren't as large as the specimens that spun their webs in the forest of the Kokiri, but their aggressively raised abdomens still stood almost as tall as she did.
Impa sighed playfully. "What did I tell you about singing?
"My apologies, brave knight. Am I not supposed to do this?"
Zelda whistled the chorus of one of the songs common in the northern villages, feeling a frigid wind swirl around her as ice encased dozens of chitinous legs. Mandibles clicked furiously in the darkness.
"Showoff."
Impa clicked her tongue before beginning to chant. A cyan circle appeared at her feet as she came to the climax of her spell. Zelda hummed a ward of protection and felt Impa's familiar magic pass over and through her. The air was filled with crunches and thumps as various creatures fell dead to the floor.
Zelda took the final word of Impa's chant and spun it into a song that lit the torches in this room. A flicker of shadows caught her eye, and she turned her head to see a gaggle of mummified corpses stirring in a far corner.
"Twin of my heart, can we get a move on? No offense, but this place gives me the creeps."
Impa laughed. "Look at you, trying to be brave. Do you remember when we first came down here? You were so scared you almost wet yourself."
"Lord it over me, why don't you?"
"You were crying so hard I thought you were going to drown in your own snot."
"That reminds me of the first banquet you attended with me outside the castle. I seem to recall you blowing your nose into your napkin after our host told you that you held your butter knife like a butcher."
"I hate to interrupt, but over your right shoulder, please."
Zelda could already hear the corpse shambling towards her. She sang, and her bow was in her hands. She fired a bolt of pure light at its pathetic form. It crumpled to the ground, its crude wooden mask clanking against the floor.
"Your ancestors had some gross hobbies, Impa."
"You don't even want to know what sort of hobbies your ancestors had, Princess. We know all your secrets."
"All of them?"
"All of them."
"Did they like to watch?"
"Of course they did."
"Did they take a few turns on the rack themselves?"
"Great Nayru, you know it."
"This is the weirdest fetish, I swear. Kings and their silly games of dominance. They make up excuses about 'the greater good' and 'for the benefit of the realm,' but really they just get off on this sort of thing."
"You don't have to tell me. You could say I wrack my brains to understand it."
"Stop."
"I would kill for a good explanation."
"Impa."
"Do you have a bone to pick with me?"
"Oh, for Din's sake."
"Because I'm dying to – "
Zelda whacked the shaft of one of her arrows against Impa's butt.
"Your stupid sense of humor will be the end of me. I'm trying to say something important here. Just be quiet for a minute."
The floor had grown damp, and a thin layer of mud squelched under their boots. Zelda was relieved that she had changed out of her ceremonial dress before agreeing to accompany Impa. The castle had been short of staff ever since disasters began befalling Castle City, and the last thing she needed was dirt caked onto her hem. They had progressed deeper than the temple where she had undergone her initiation ceremony, but the dank air of this place brought the memories of the experience into her mind as vividly as if it had just occurred.
"You were going to say something important?" Impa prompted.
"On my twentieth birthday, I had to undertake a set of trials to determine whether I was fit to rule, and which of the Goddesses would be my patron. I was instructed not to tell anyone about them, and I never have, but I don't see how it matters."
"Perhaps, if the Goddesses told you not to say anything, you should stay silent."
"The Goddesses didn't tell me anything; my father did. As he's fond of reminding me, he married into this family. He takes tradition very seriously. I get the feeling he always has to work to convince himself that he's actually royalty."
"It doesn't come as easily to most people as it does to you."
"What I mean to say is that the primary purpose of keeping secrets is to make it seem as if you have power over others, that you deserve something they're not important enough to receive. Forbidding the circulation of knowledge about the trials is meaningless. Not like I'd wish them on anyone..."
Once she had made up her mind to talk about what had happened to her, Zelda was surprised to find that the exact nature of the ordeals she had suffered was difficult to describe. She walked in silence, which was briefly broken by the words Impa used to maintain the illumination at their feet.
"I had to make choices," she finally said. "People came before me, people from the past. It was like I was actually there. I had to choose what to do, who to save, and who to condemn. I can't remember many of the details, but I remember my shame. I chose as I thought a princess should, always prioritizing the safety of the kingdom over what I wanted and what I felt was just and fair. The nobility of my cause justified the means. But I wonder if that's the only way?"
"The Skeikah used to help my family conduct blood sacrifices. The magic involved was undeniably powerful, but what good can possibly come of wetting the foundation stones of a castle with blood to keep its walls strong? Even if the walls protect the people inside, you have shadowed their lives with a guilt that they have no way of understanding..."
Zelda trailed off, and Impa did not respond to her immediately.
"That's a pretty speech," she eventually said. "Still thinking about your boyfriend?"
Zelda exhaled. "I'm not going to kill anyone."
"Is he really that good in bed?"
"I didn't... We didn't..."
"Sure you didn't."
"No, I mean, we didn't get that far."
"In that case, why don't you have your way with him and then kill him?"
"Impa! This isn't a joke."
Impa stopped and looked at her curiously.
"You love him, don't you?"
"That's not – "
Impa stepped forward and hugged her. "I'm so sorry," she whispered.
Zelda rested her head against Impa's shoulder. She had tried to be brave, but this was all too much. Beneath the rooms of state, beneath the underground stores of arms and gold, and beneath even the ever-flowing waste of the living were the bones of the unhappy creatures who had been tortured and left to die so that the fiction of a virtuous monarchy could be maintained. She had already begun to weave her own threads into this narrative; and, even if her hands were not yet stained with blood, she could not keep them clean forever. She had traveled with Ganon for the express purpose of spying on him, but she couldn't help but hope that he would give her something to believe in, some alternative to terrible decisions that would lead her forward into her reign just as Impa's terrible glowing path led them deeper into the dungeons.
Impa stroked Zelda's hair, comforting her amidst the broken artifacts of a buried and forsaken monument to pain.
"Sister of my soul, light of my heart," Impa said. "You have seen things I cannot comprehend, and you are yoked to a weight I could never carry. I must guide you forward to worse sights and an even heavier burden. I do it not because I love you, but because I am weak, and afraid. If the Sheikah are called to aid Hyrule, I fear what I will be forced to do; I fear these dungeons will once again become the home of my tribe. I am afraid of becoming someone else, someone like Kaepora. Please forgive me. In order to save myself, and to save my brothers and sisters and cousins, I must show you something that no one should see. When you witness it and understand, it will change you, and you may no longer view me in the same way."
Zelda hugged Impa tighter.
"No, I promise you," she said. "I will always be your Zelda."
Zelda continued to follow Impa along the ley lines that stretched through the darkness. Finally Impa came to a halt. In front of her feet, the glowing patterns spun around themselves into an intricate circle. Impa raised her hands and spoke a few words, and a mirror image of the circle was cast into the air in front of her. Although Zelda couldn't see what was on the other side, she could feel a faint wind. The breeze smelled of dust and age.
Impa withdrew two ribbons of white cloth from the pocket of her suit jacket. She passed one to Zelda and tied the other behind her ears so that it covered her mouth and nose. Zelda did the same.
"It's going to be difficult to breathe where we're going," Impa explained. She touched her fingers to the cloth, which instantly became stained with the eye-and-teardrop emblem of the Sheikah. Impa then pressed her palm to the cloth over Zelda's lips. She could feel tendrils of cool oxygen winding their way into her nose and lungs.
Impa removed her bowler hat and set it down onto the glowing circle on the floor.
"Ready when you are," she said, running a hand through her hair, which seemed even whiter in the eldritch shine of the gate.
Zelda braced herself and stepped through the portal.
She was immediately hit in the face by a blast of grit. Humming the spell for a small shield, she blinked rapidly to clear her eyes, but it took a few moments before she was able to see again.
She was surrounded on all sides by pale towers that rose through a haze of rust-colored sand into an ominous maroon sky. The wind tore at her hair, and her ears felt as if they were being pricked with dozens of tiny needles. Impa appeared at her side and immediately began running over the rocky ground, leaping across a series of large stones improbably suspended over a rift in the earth.
Zelda had no choice but to follow. She made the mistake of looking down halfway over the crumbling bridge and was struck with an intense sensation of vertigo when she saw clouds passing across an azure expanse under her feet.
Impa waved her arm, the indigo of her suit standing out against the swirling storm. Zelda rushed to her, and together they scaled the wall of one of the towers, entering what must have once been a window. Visibility was limited, and the interior of the building seemed to spiral up infinitely in strange mess of twists and whorls. Blocks of masonry had fallen onto the tiled floor, which gaped open alarmingly in several places. Remnants of ledges and staircases clung to the walls. Something was wrong with the layout; the geometry of it hurt Zelda's head.
Zelda was thankful for the cloth over her nose, but despite its magic she could barely draw breath. She feared Impa meant to scale the structure, and she steeled herself for a difficult climb.
Impa paced briskly into the center of the area, motioning for Zelda to stay close. Gusts of wind howled through the vertical tunnel, threatening to blow them into the dark holes in the floor, but they anchored each other until they came to a raised platform. Impa knelt and touched her hand to its base, and suddenly the air was filled with Sheikah glyphs. Zelda gasped and grabbed Impa's arm as the platform began to rise, slowly at first, but then with more speed.
Zelda's stomach sank and her ears popped, but she resisted the urge to cling to the surface of the platform. Whatever Impa wanted to show her, she would see it standing on her own two feet.
After what seemed like an eternity, they came to a stop at the balcony of an upper floor. The air was much calmer at this height, but neither of them attempted to speak. Impa led her away from the central area and through a series of small rooms filled with rubble before wresting open a circular stone door that rolled along its track with a low shriek. Beyond the door was the deep burgundy of the sky.
Zelda stepped from the interior of the tower into the uncanny stillness of the open air and walked to the edge of the balustrade. She did not understand what she saw.
An incomprehensibly large gray dome rose from beneath the surface of the storm. Its surface was pitted and barren. There was nothing else.
Zelda turned to Impa, who stood behind her.
"What is this place?"
"This is the world once ruled by the Sheikah. We now call it Termina, for it has ended."
"What happened?"
"The moon fell. Everything died."
The moon fell? That was impossible, and yet...
"How could this happen?"
"We built our towers to the heavens and challenged the very gods who created this world. We harnessed the energy of the Triforce for our own selfish ends, and we were punished. The Goddesses of your world were merciful, and some of our people were allowed to escape into Hyrule. The gateway between worlds remained open to serve as a reminder of our sins. This is the legend that has been passed down through my tribe."
Zelda felt an icy spike of anger pierce her heart. She swept her arm across the ruined landscape.
"This is because you came too close to the gods? How could you possibly know that?"
Impa closed her eyes and shook her head. "There are other gateways below the castle. There are other kingdoms that failed. There are worlds beyond worlds, all crumbling into nothing. Hyrule is the exception, precious and fragile."
Zelda once again looked down onto the moon. She thought of Ganon standing on the terrace outside her room and watching the sun rise over the desert. She wished she could show him this place, majestic in all its terrible beauty. She remembered his hands on her face and in her hair.
"I have to kill him," she said, her words ringing out across an otherwise dead world.
