A century. Had she warred with the Calamity in the Hero's place she would have lasted a century and in that century kept its evil confined. Its influence would have spread, yes, and many would have been the evils that grew from it—but she would have kept it contained. By marshalling her strength, she would have been able to deny Ganon its dominion for a hundred years and more, until the Hero returned. She would have exhausted herself. She would have broken, in the end. But she would have succeeded.
She did not have a century, now. The Calamity had grown in strength. The Hero would not be joining the battle.
She did not need a century, now. There was nothing to hold for. Everything that could be arranged—all help that could be called—every step she could have taken had been taken.
So, Hylia unleashed a century of fury all at once. For the first time since Demise walked free and coveted the power of the gods, Hylia brought her burning sword to bear.
She lunged, crossing the distance between them. She swung. Ganon's abyssal steel caught the blow, the Malice roared against the flames of her power, and the sky groaned above them. There was no runoff—the earth did not shake beneath them, the scorched ground was not disturbed. No energy was wasted, and every shred of power that the combatants wielded was invested in the motion of their violence.
She saw as Paya ran towards Link, arms up to cover her eyes against the blinding war as it unfolded. Link lay prone, the broken hilt in his hand, and the air whirled around him. He clung so fiercely to the world, even in death, even with the Master Sword broken.
Hylia swung again, and Ganon countered with both of its blades, and the two fell into a rhythm that recalled the first war, the war that had written the order of the world. Ganon did not know that rhythm, had never seen it even in its dreams, but the goddess knew, and in this moment she was comfortable. She was fleet. She whirled and struck and the air around her burned like the sun, and the air around Ganon reached with long thick fingers that would pull her down into oblivion.
She swung her sword in a searing overhead arc. Ganon shoved back with the blade in its right hand, sending her blade bouncing up. With its left sword it swung for her midriff, and she flipped backward, and the sun dawned in her hand. She flung that dawn into Ganon's face.
Ganon's sword disappeared and the beast struck with a motion mirroring hers. The world shuddered as Malice and the celestial power ate at each other, fractal sparks and cinders peeling off from the point of contact as the fabric of reality began to burn. Hylia and Ganon's eyes met across the conflagration. Who could read a goddess's expression?
But Ganon smiled. A goddess's century of fury unleashed in moments—but the Calamity had spent that century growing more terrible, not less. It reached within itself, drawing on some deeper well, and it shoved.
The goddess staggered. She could have deflected the blow—but shoving aside the full power of Ganon's hatred would have unleashed it upon the land, and the land would have broken. Instead she took that devastation into herself, and it echoed and rolled across the vastness of her being. She quaked. Staggered again. Then brought her sword up and jammed it hard into Ganon's chest.
The Calamity bellowed as blood and fire and Malice exploded from its mouth. It would have gladly turned aside that power, letting the land shatter—but the goddess's attacks gave it no such opportunity. Perhaps it knew that she never would.
So they clashed, the first god of Hyrule and the greatest evil to ever walk its face, while a girl stood watch over a broken spirit.
Ganon is stronger.
It was absurd. It was blasphemous. To even think the words in that order was heretical in a way that laughed at the very idea of taboo, but in that second Paya understood that it was true. Zelda was gone, replaced by the fullness of the goddess Hylia, and with all of the love and fury of the goddess unleashed the Calamity was still more terrible. She could not see their battle; it was like watching two suns wrestle for supremacy, but through her connection to Zelda—to Hylia—she understood that the shape of that battle was growing more and more desperate, even in these early exchanges.
What can I do? I have to help her.
She looked down. Link was at her feet, lying on his back. His body was gone; she was looking at his soul, as plainly as she had when he had rescued her from the Calamity. The Master Sword was broken in his hand; she did not know where the shards of the blade had gone. Perhaps they had been obliterated.
I promised him. I promised him we would come for him. That we would save him.
I promised.
She knelt next to him. Reached out with her hand, which shook at the audacity of what she was about to do. Brushed her fingers against his face. She could feel him, not as if he were flesh but still solid, there, real. He was here.
"Master Link?" How easily she fell into the safety of formal address. How badly she needed it. "Master Link? Can you hear me?"
The Hero did not stir. His eyes did not open. As she watched, the light that was him faded, by degrees.
She held her hands over her mouth. Reminded herself to breathe. She couldn't help him if she wasn't calm.
I can't help him at all. I can't focus on helping him. I have to help Hy—I have to help Zelda.
Her eyes wandered to the sword. Had it been whole, she would have grabbed it. In her heart of hearts she believed, she knew that the blasphemy of hoisting the sword would kill her, but she would accept that death if it meant there was a chance, even the barest sliver of hope that she might join in battle against the Calamity. But the sword was broken, and its light was out. Like the Hero.
Hylia brought her sword up, toward the Calamity's stomach, and Ganon caught the blade with its hand. It looked past the goddess. She turned her head to follow its line of sight.
Paya was facing away from them, bent over Link, trying to rouse the Hero. Looking to the sword. To hope.
"Do you see them?" Ganon said. "How long the line of loving souls who have offered themselves up on the altar of your folly."
"Speak not of the courageous," she replied, and her anger fed the radiance of her power; she raised the blade higher. Ganon's arm quivered with the effort of holding back the blow.
"Speak? Not I. Not I. I am but the knife; their blood flows for you."
Then Ganon's stone mouth split, the teeth of its armor parting. It should have opened into the same void of Malice out of which its eyes stared, but it did not: when Ganon opened its mouth there was only a yawning pit of darkness, reaching, swallowing the light in the air around it. That darkness gathered until it took on a color, blue-black then purple then red, and when it shifted to a searing fuchsia light Hylia saw what the beast had planned.
She released her blade, which vanished.
The fuchsia light became yellow, then white, as Ganon's power gathered.
Hylia ran, her steps lengthened by the beating of mighty wings.
Ganon screamed triumph and unleashed a bolt of power from its very heart. The bolt spun as it sailed through the air, and the air was pulled in by its gravity. Paya looked up just in time to see it coming.
Paya had no means by which to understand the light that was screaming toward her. She understood that she would die; she understood that she would have failed to protect the Hero once more.
One more broken promise—
Then Hylia was before her, wings spread, facing down oblivion in her servant's stead. The goddess held high her fist, which shone with power, and Paya could only stare as Hylia brought that power down in a blow to meet Ganon's attack.
The shockwave of force that rolled off of that impact blew back the feathers of Hylia's wings and nearly knocked Paya to the floor—and then the projectile was screaming back toward Ganon, traveling faster than before. That bolt of hate, of hunger, sailed toward its master with the same destructive potential.
Ganon swung with one arm, and with its hand deflected the projectile again. Then, in that moment, Paya understood.
The dead man's volley.
Hylia struck the projectile, and then it was deflected once more by Ganon, each time gaining in speed. They were locked in this contest; whoever slipped would bear the full force of an attack that grew stronger, more virulent, more powerful with every blow. The goddess and the beast hurled devastation at one another, back and forth.
And in Paya's mind her grandmother clapped to the rhythm.
Faster. Faster. Follow it. It grows swifter, but the rate at which it grows swifter is fixed. Feel it. See it.
Hylia deflected. Then Ganon. Hylia. Ganon.
See the moment. It will come. Be ready.
Paya drew the eight-fold blade from her belt as she exploded to her feet. She ducked under the radiance of Hylia's wings. She felt celestial purity brushing against her back, and she had not understood rapture until that moment. Yes, her love was answered. Yes, that was everything she had ever wanted.
"Paya!" Hylia's voice in panic, then the impact of celestial power, and the projectile roared past Paya, so close that she felt it searing her clothing.
She ran low, eyes on Ganon. She held her blade in a position to strike. She saw as the Calamity spotted her, as its golden eyes lit up with amusement and hunger and hate and anticipation. She met it with the coldness of her training, with all the pure focused intent to kill she could muster.
I am coming for you, she thought at it. Let's see you deflect with my sword in your eye.
Ganon batted the projectile, which screamed past her again. The beast's focus was on her.
Half the distance crossed. She did not even feel it as she ran. Was she breathing? It didn't matter.
Hylia screamed her name again, echoing down into the bedrock of her consciousness, and Paya ignored the very call of her soul. Her grandmother's hands clapped. Once more the projectile sailed past her.
Ganon swung with its right arm. Its fist collided with the orb of destruction. Her grandmother clapped. The orb was sent flying. Ganon's swing carried its body forward, creating an opening on its right side. Its left arm was prepared, though. Prepared to catch her in the attack that it knew was coming.
Her grandmother clapped.
Paya swung for the orb.
The impact lasted for only an instant. The shockwave it sent through her would have broken every bone in her body, burned her flesh to cinders, shattered her mind so totally that her ghost would never haunt those lands—but she held. Beneath her skin there flared the reflected light of day. The world teetered.
Her sword shattered. The light under her skin went out. Paya was sent flying backward, spinning through the air. The orb bounced back toward Ganon, too quickly for it to swing in defense.
Paya landed on her back beside the Hero as light exploded from Ganon's body. As the Calamity screamed in real, sheer agony.
Go, my goddess. My princess.
Darkness enveloped her.
Ganon's voice shook the leveled ground of the late Hyrule Castle as its own evil, fed over and over by the repeated exchanges of blows, was unleashed against it. Light shone from within the yawning shadow of its mouth, gouts of Malice and flame burst from its eyes, and every joint of its body surged with corrosive energies. It staggered, its voice strangled by its own hate.
Hylia smashed into it with all of her power.
A comet of light and dark traced a burning arc, beginning in the heart of the place where the castle had once stood and stretching toward the south, the emptiest and flattest area of Hyrule Field. The comet flashed gold and purple as Hylia unleashed her radiance against the Calamity, over and over, through the channel of her fists. She wrapped her hands around its face and screamed an eternity of pain and love and fury and devotion and hope and poured herself into it, the light eating at the darkness.
They struck the field and the warring energies exploded outward, an expanding dome of light and Malice. The grass grew and died and burned to cinders, creating a perfect circle of roiling devastation reaching five hundred meters from the point of impact.
Ganon's hands wrapped around the goddess's, wrenching the killing light away from its face, and hurled her bodily away from it. She turned in the air, landing deftly on her feet as Ganon regained its own footing, and with a shout it cast off the last remnants of its deflected power. It did not draw darkness and light into its mouth; it would not make the same mistake twice, even if Paya had been left far behind.
Know that Zelda, the woman who had lived a life without her mother and grown beside the Hero and traveled with Paya, was not the one fighting. She was a conduit for Hylia, who had manifested in her fullness. Zelda might be described as sleeping, insofar as she existed at all.
But echoes remained. Plans had been made. Plans that would come to fruition. Hylia knew these plans, as surely as Zelda did. With her power—the smallest part—she reached out along familiar channels, sending a single impulse.
The large, clunky, reverse-engineered but very much functional Sheikah Slate flashed from its place on the crowded table in Hateno. Its owner looked over, smoothed her skirt, and hopped onto the table to look at it more squarely. To be sure.
"Is it time?" her assistant asked.
"Looks like it," she said. "Hit the switch."
He did.
An answering signal went out, boosted by the power of the guidance stone.
Ganon recovered and Hylia was in its face again, sword in hand, swinging.
The beast's swords flashed back to existence as it intercepted the blow—and then the ones that followed, falling like rain, the size of the goddess's weapon having no relation to how she swung it. So fast did she swing, using the impact of Ganon's deflections to make her next blow fall even faster and with greater force, that the Calamity was locked in place, using both arms to defend itself. But as Hylia grew faster, so did her opponent.
The goddess swung to decapitate. Ganon ducked beneath it, raised its right arm, and brought its sword down for the goddess's shoulder. The goddess weaved around the blow, moving like a dancer, like the origin of all swordplay, and her weapon flashed toward Ganon's throat. Ganon caught the blow, answered with its own, and Hylia deflected and struck again. And again, and again, and they fell into the rhythm once more, the rhythm that had felled Demise, the rhythm that had seen the blood of the goddess through wars reaching back before recorded time—and which could not work against Ganon.
It answered the rhythm. Grew swifter. Learned appallingly quickly, bringing to bear uncounted millennia of uninterrupted experience. The goddess's motions were planned out six moves at a time, or eight, or ten—and no matter how deep her planning went, no matter how perfect her form, Ganon seemed able to answer it, anticipating the openings in its own technique, guarding itself where it should have been vulnerable.
Faster they went, and faster, until they could not perfectly contain their power, until liquid light and boiling Malice peeled off from the impact of their blades, until the sound of their weapons clashing was a roar fit to silence Death Mountain itself.
The pattern broke. Ganon shifted an extra degree, catching Hylia's sword, blowing wide her guard. She was prepared for the follow-up swing, would drive her sword into its eye.
But it didn't swing. Its fist smashed into her chest, and she was sent careening. She bounced, the earth torn in her wake, and flared her wings to steady herself. Blood the color of molten gold ran from her mouth, painting her lips with sunlight. She landed on her feet. Sank into a defensive stance, both hands on her blade.
Ganon did not run; it walked forward, almost relaxed. Why would it hurry? She would not flee, after all. The earth shook under its footsteps as it let some small sliver of its power tell in the world around it. It delighted in the expression of its mightiness, apparently.
The earth kept shaking even as it was not taking a step. The ground quaked even when it stopped and looked down at its feet.
Ganon raised its head, staring at Hylia. Hylia was a goddess, ergo she did not allow herself to quirk a smile, but if she had been there then Zelda would have.
The first explosion that erupted on the Calamity's back did not stagger it. The wave of heat and light blasted the ground beneath it and sent up plumes of smoke and dust, but Ganon was not affected. Nor by the second, or the fourth, or the eighth.
But they kept coming.
The quaking grew heavier, and the explosions came faster.
In the distance, from the east and the north and the south and the west, the quaking of the earth gave way to the beating of heavy feet, the thunder of stampede. The first and closest unleashed lances of light from their eyes as hundreds more six-legged figures dashed across Hyrule Field, cresting hills and stones and ruined buildings with equal ease, equal alacrity, their shining red eyes all focused on their ancient enemy.
Ganon unleashed its power—and that power was met, obliterated, by the light of Hylia. It bellowed in frustration, in mounting rage, as its corruption was blunted and destroyed.
And the Guardians, in their hundreds, converged on the Calamity.
Paya came to with a gasp. Instantly she was on her feet—and regretting it as her vision darkened, forcing her to grab at her own knees to keep from falling.
Where am I? Where is Hylia? Where is Ganon?
Her vision was dark, still, and her ears were filled by the dull roar of the beating of her own heart. She willed herself calm, willed herself to breathe deeply, and slowly, slowly did she regain the clarity of her senses.
She remembered the dead man's volley. Remembered interfering. Remembered pain, so intense and so sudden and so deep that it had been the equal of Zelda's blessing, burning out her protection in a moment. But it had worked. It had destroyed her sword and nearly killed her, but it had worked. She remembered Ganon's scream as its own power was unleashed against it. She thought she had seen Hylia's power, bright and shining, and—
And at her feet lay the Hero's soul, in perfect repose.
Perhaps it was only the bare light of day that created the illusion that he was fading. The shadows of the castle had been deep, and certainly now there was nothing to block the sun; the entire foundation of the castle had been scoured clean by Hylia's awakening. Perhaps that was why the Hero was so much harder to see now.
But, no. That wasn't true, was it? It had never been true.
She reached for something to say to him, some prayer that might reach him. She found nothing.
The earth shook. In the distance—perhaps two kilometers away—Ganon's voice was raised in indignity and fury.
Paya turned. Saw the light of Hylia and the Malice crashing against each other. But more, she saw the air beyond filled with lances of blue light. She heard the Guardians firing, saw dozens and dozens of eruptions as their killing blasts peppered Ganon's back.
Above her, a halo of green drifted across the sky, seeking the battle.
Dozens of blasts struck the Calamity's back and sides every second, explosions layered on top of and beneath each other with growing ferocity. The shockwave of the detonations would have killed any person standing near Ganon, but Hylia was not a person, and for as much punishment as the secondary eruptions laid on her divine body many more times were laid on Ganon by the actual impact.
She grappled with the beast. It spewed its power from its mouth and eyes, seeking to infect some or all of the Guardians with the Malice, but she met those eruptions with controlled bursts of her own, burning away the deadly potential. The Calamity roared in frustration, using its greater strength to swing her into the path of the Guardians' assault, but the machines aimed exactly and precisely, and every shot slipped past the goddess and struck home against the monster.
After thousands of blows Ganon staggered, falling to one knee. Hylia struck it in the face with her fist, with her elbow, drove her knee into its throat, and every blow was punctuated by an eruption of light that dimmed the sun by contrast. Again and again she struck, and the Guardians who stood on top of buildings and hills and each other to gain unique firing angles kept up their assault, and Hylia's voice was raised in a warrior's scream as she laid her fury against the Calamity.
But it wouldn't fall. And if it wasn't falling, it was winning. She understood this. That understanding did not blunt her indignation, her frustration, as Ganon reached out with one stone hand and grabbed her by the head. There were two suns in her hands, and she jammed the suns against the joint of the Calamity's elbow, searing the stone, eating away at the lever. Malice boiled at her touch; she could feel it as the Calamity's power was being broiled inside of it.
Then it slammed her into the earth. Then again. And again.
The moat surrounding Hyrule Castle spewed water into the sky, where it hung suspended before crashing back down. Every impact merited a new jump, a new furious roiling, until all of the water in that river-fed barrier leapt and arced as if seeking the shore, the heavens—anywhere but the bed where it lay.
And again.
In Kakariko Village, the ornaments on the brim of Impa's hat jangled. She wondered if it was only her nerves, the protestations of an aging body. She slammed her palm against her thigh to quiet their shaking. When the ornaments still danced, she stared in confusion.
And again.
Sidon watched ripples spreading across the surface of the great reservoir. There was no wind. He turned, looking up to Vah Ruta, and wondered. Mipha would know, he thought. For the many thousandth time he wished that she might advise him, that she might quell the anxiety crawling up his spine.
And again.
Death Mountain groaned, and Yunobo looked up from his perch above Goron City. That rumbling… he hadn't heard the like since Vah Rudania had been calmed. Was something wrong with the Divine Beast? Was something wrong with the mountain? Oh, man, what would they do if Death Mountain just… became active again? Was that possible?
And again.
Lightning danced between Riju's fingertips. An arc traced a current from the pad of her thumb to her forefinger, her middle, then ring, then pinky. Back again. When it got back to her thumb the bolt fizzled, and she couldn't summon it again. She snapped her fingers, to no avail. She wiped the sweat from her brow, swearing at a level that Buliara couldn't hear. Something was wrong. Something was happening.
And again.
Tulin whooped and laughed a shrieking child's laugh as he ducked and soared and banked around the high stone pillars of the flight range. Saki circled above, ever watchful. Teba, who would be grounded for many more weeks, watched from below. There was no need to introduce Tulin to the more strenuous exercises yet, but—and then Teba, through his feet, felt something moving in the earth. Or beneath it. Over it. The earth shook, as if under the tread of a beast, and Teba tried not to let his son and his wife see as he looked about him for the danger.
And again. And again. And again.
Every impact was punctuated by an eruption of Malice, an outpouring of devastation, and as the light ate at Ganon so too did Ganon eat at the light. Hylia fought in its grip with an explosion of force and carefully aimed blows, and hundreds more blasts from the Guardians fell on the beast in an unceasing torrent, but the Calamity was single-minded in its devotion to the task of beating the goddess into nonexistence against the land she stewarded.
The golden light was guttering. Hylia's head was slammed into the ground, and the Malice burned at her face, her neck, her chest. The Calamity lifted her.
As she was lifted she summoned her sword to her hand. It hissed with golden flames. Ganon reared back to drive her into the earth once more. She thrust the point of the blade directly into the beast's face, right between its eyes.
Ganon did not even scream; it convulsed, and in its agony it hurled her across the firmament before clutching at the place where her weapon had struck home. It no longer seemed to notice the attacks of the Guardians. It no longer seemed to notice anything, save for its target.
Hylia landed on her feet. Light suffused the wounds on her face, repairing the body that hosted her, but the balance of the battle was wrong.
She was the goddess who presided over Hyrule, its guide from outside of time since before its naming. Long her vision, precise the events that her blood presaged. She wiped sunlight from her mouth and sent her sword away once more. She had known the course of the battle before ever it started; surely that was true. She was a god. She was the god. Who would know, if not she?
So it must have been according to her design when she receded within herself, seeking that vast place where souls might meet.
He could not rise. The sword was in his hand. Her voice had died.
He had not been alone, moments before. Then the rhythm of sandals beating against the ground. Silence. The distant rumble of war.
He tried to rise. He had no strength. He tried to rise. He had no strength.
How long had he been like this?
Then: the sound of footsteps. Hard-soled boots.
He tried to rise.
Zelda awoke, regaining consciousness she had never expected to experience again.
She floated in the infinite dark, only it was not dark—before her was the sun, was every star that had ever shone in the sky. The vastness of Hylia was the light of all the universe, and beneath that there was a light more terrible still.
"You said we wouldn't speak again." A child's words, born from her delirium, but they were true.
Hylia's smile was bitter and laughing and sad and full of a thousand other emotions that Zelda could not know, the result of a life and perspective so long that everything the goddess felt had transformed into something different from what mortals knew. "I am sorry, my daughter. Consider that another of my failings."
The pain in Hylia's voice, the wound that lurked behind every word, grabbed hold of Zelda's soul and shook her, and then she was awake, truly awake, and she came to full awareness with a blast of cold and fear.
She was before Hylia, yes—but it might be better to say that Hylia was before her. Through a trick of perspective she saw herself as vaster than the goddess, as if the universe had laid all its weight upon the shoulders of the divine and she had been crushed beneath its enormity. Hylia bled from a hundred wounds, and Zelda could not clearly see the divine face but she could see that the goddess had been burned, that the burn was spreading.
"What happened?" she asked.
"I fought as well as I am able," replied the source of all the power of the royal family. "It has been so long since I joined the war myself… I had almost forgotten. He—it—is so much worse than anything that preceded it. If we had fought it a century ago, then perhaps, but now…"
"I don't understand," Zelda said. Everything she thought she had understood was unraveling, as if she had been told of the folly of gravity. "You—you are the goddess. Aren't you the guardian of the light? How can one creature's hatred be greater than you?
"Not hatred," Hylia said. "Ganon's is not the fiercest hatred that I have encountered. It is the Calamity's hunger that drives it. Its desire. It will not be satisfied until its ambition has devoured the cosmos." Hylia closed her vast eyes, as if reflecting, and something in that expression made her look serene, almost child-like. Zelda had to fight the urge to take the goddess into her arms. "It is just like before. When the first Demon King's war ended, I could not defeat him. It fell to mortality. To the Hero. To a long-treasured plan."
"Do we have a plan?"
Without opening her eyes: "No. The plans I'd made had been for another contingency. Another possibility. What Ganon said—that it should have been us—is truer than it knows. If I continue to fight it, then Ganon will be triumphant."
The void was wide, and cold, and Zelda did not experience any sensation to break that impression. The universe seemed to recede even further from that infinite expanse. Oh, she was afraid, yes, but there was something worse than fear, wasn't there? She had never felt it, but she saw it in Hylia, as plainly as if she was looking through the goddess's eyes.
Ganon will win. And Link—everything he's done, everything he's suffered, all those years, and he—it—
Across distance bridged by a thread of the power she felt Paya's determination. Fear, yes, and resignation, but stronger than both of these was surety of action. That determination echoed in Zelda' heart.
It will not be for nothing.
"Then I will end this."
There, sorrow—again in the goddess's face, sorrow so deep it could drown the world. A smile, and Hylia offered her hands.
"That is the way of things."
The Guardians attacked and Ganon turned on them. Its mouth yawned, and from within the darkness of its chest shone a beam of light the color of blood. It swept that beam across the nearest Guardians, painting them with its power, and that color clung to them. They ceased to fire. They hissed.
Then the power exploded and the Guardians nearest to Ganon were shattered by a rising wall of fire that sank down into the earth and rose into the sky, burning away ancient armor like paper. The Guardians behind the first line fired through the devastation, but the curtain of Ganon's fury dulled their aim, their weapons, and from an entire quarter the attack effectively ceased.
Ganon swept its head toward the horizon, vomiting obliteration even as its body was rocked by the explosions of the Guardians' assault. A moment, a flash, and then the molten corpses of the affected Guardians disappeared in a burning aurora of hate and hunger and fury. By half the attack had been reduced, and the Guardians behind the front line scrambled away as the Malice spread toward them, reaching, pulling, not corrupting but eating. Those units that were caught by it were torn to shreds as if by a billion billion yawning mouths, and even the blue light lances of their fellows could not do more than hold the expanding power at bay.
Another sweep, another, and Ganon's power burned an impassable ring all around it, cutting off the Guardians from participating in the battle. The flyers sought to climb above the high walls, but that would take time. The conflict would end before they arrived.
Ganon panted—it had no lungs, but the exhaustion of its soul told in the simulacrum of its body. It tired, and its body should reflect that, and so its body did. That body was covered in burning cracks pried open by the power of Hylia, and Malice leaked from its joints, from its mouth, from its neck. It was not wounded so terribly as the goddess, but its body was wearing down.
Still. There was time. Time was only the ally of Ganon, now. And the Guardians who couldn't fly blasted at the burning barrier of its power, and those who could fly climbed, too slow—
Roots exploded from the ground, roots that glowed green with insistent life, indefatigable life, and they wrapped themselves around the arms and legs and torso of the Calamity. Ganon's limbs were pulled down, taut, and it roared in confusion and frustration and then recognition.
And then a call came from on high, in the voices of hundreds of children.
"Miss Princess!" "We have to help Miss Princess!" "Hold it down! Hold it!" "Sing!"
The Koroks landed like apples falling from a mighty tree, and as soon as their stubby limbs touched the ground they whirled and shouted and danced. With sticks they traced patterns in the air, with leaves they formed dancing shield walls, and they sang and whirled and their song was a children's song, the anthem of those who had decided, once more, for the final time, to count themselves among the courageous.
Ganon bellowed its hate. Heaved against the roots, which seemed to tear from the earth before yanking the beast back in place again. Opened its mouth, where gathered a terrible light.
Far, far away, the oldest spirit in Hyrule wielded all the vastness of his power. It was everything he had; it was everything he would ever have. There was a wave of life, of green.
In Hyrule Field that green shone in the roots, and dug into Ganon's body, and the gathered light in its mouth was displaced by green. It howled its fury and struggled more fiercely against its restraints.
And the Koroks danced, and sang, and hoped.
Hylia said, "It has always fallen to our blood to defend the world against the hate that would end it. Not to me—never to me. This isn't a battle that can be won by gods. It never was."
Zelda understood that there was truth here, not just in the fact of the statement but in the investment, in the confession. The goddess was making herself vulnerable, sharing some deep secret, outlining the course of events that had dictated the rise and fall of the world since the dawn of time. And Zelda did not care.
"Then I will fight!"
"Daughter. Are you prepared to lose everything?"
She held out her hand. "I will lose everything anyway!"
"No, my Zelda. Even if you win, you will sacrifice a great deal. Seek within yourself. Do you feel your blood pulsing within you? Do you feel memory—not just yours, but the memory of your line?"
She had been asleep for so long that she had never turned that awareness inward, but she did not have to in order to realize, now, that the goddess spoke the truth. She remembered—not just the woman who had woken in the Chamber of Resurrection, nor even just the girl who had failed for years to gain the power of the gods, but everything. She recalled the lives and battles that had been the duty of her blood since before the founding of Hyrule. She remembered every life that had blossomed inside of her when she stood in the Lost Woods surrounded by the souls of the Heroes—every princess. Every queen. Her ancestors. Her mother.
She quailed. Despite herself, despite her determination, she quailed. She contained a vastness beyond multitudes. Knowledge on a scale that no other person, even the gods, had ever possessed. Ancestral awareness dating back to the first kingdom, to the old kingdom, to before the cataclysm that had spewed demons out of the earth. In that moment she understood how the Guardians worked; she understood the course of the stars in the sky; she saw the course of nations; she knew the loves and sorrows and hearts of every woman who had preceded her.
All of this. All of this is inside of me. I have to risk this?
"Are you ready to sacrifice the past—to sacrifice your connection to your foremothers—for a thin, ragged hope?"
Before, she would have said yes without hesitation. She would have screamed it, would have stamped out her surety on the ground. But now—now—
She heard children singing. Felt green rushing beneath her feet.
The Koroks are holding back Ganon.
I have to stop this.
No matter what I lose. No matter what we all lose. I have to stop this.
Within her, her foremothers—her mother—murmured their assent. Voices uncounted, calling together: yes.
Zelda held out her hand to the goddess. "I am ready. We are all ready!"
Hylia did not answer. She closed her eyes, spread her arms, and waited.
Zelda dove into the goddess's embrace.
The ancient power's strength ran thin. Ganon heaved with its body, tearing itself free of the roots that had constrained it.
The Koroks' singing turned to panicked shouts as their magic failed, and they scrambled away from the Calamity in every direction. "Run!" "It's coming!" "Hurry, hurry!" They sailed into the air, carried by the wind and by the leaves in their hands, soaring up like birds in flight.
But not all escaped so cleanly.
One—their face a maple leaf—tripped in their panic and fell. They scrambled, could not right themselves.
A second stood over them, leaf in one hand, stick in the other, as if holding a sword and shield. This one knew that it wouldn't work—but ideas mattered. Maybe the idea would be enough.
It spoke to the Calamity's fury, its hate, that when it tore itself completely free and the burning roots were brushed from its body, that it saw those two Koroks and, instead of lunging for the goddess, it stalked toward them. Malice wreathed its hands in flames as it crooked its fingers into claws.
The first Korok struggled upright, and the second stood stolidly between their companion and the death that reached for both.
"GANON!"
Not Hylia's voice. Zelda's. Then a light, golden, that spread across the field like a wildfire, and the Calamity turned to face it. The Koroks retreated together, one clinging to the other's body.
And then the Calamity saw, and for the first time in ten thousand years and more it was stilled.
Zelda stood before it, the light resplendent under her skin, the power stirring her hair like a wind. Beside her stood another woman, much her image, though older. And next to her another, older still. And behind her more. And more. And more.
A pirate captain who had become a pirate queen. A princess who had given herself to shadow to protect the light. A woman who had sent her heart into the past, to right a terrible wrong. A girl who had dreamed of a hero and seen the artistry of courage. A diplomat who had sought to protect the scions of the gods from the reach of evil. An orphan who had wrested back control of her own body from an ancient grudge. And more. And more, on back through history, back to the one who had walked with the first Hero in the days when legends were written.
They stood arranged in their hundreds, in their thousands, every generation who had ever carried the blood of the goddess, and in their skin there was gold, in their hands were swords and knives and bows, and in their eyes was a single, terrible, focused purpose.
Zelda stood at their front, and when she looked at Ganon it took a step back from her.
She held out her hand, gesturing at the ancient enemy of her family.
"Together," she said.
The explosion of golden light blew apart the barrier of Ganon's power and sent the Calamity reeling. Then they were upon it, all of them, together—save one.
A pirate queen's cutlass cut open the armor of its stomach. The Calamity swung, and its arm was caught by an armored figure even larger than itself whose eyes burned with pink fire. The princess who had drifted in twilight drove her thin, straight blade directly into its throat. Ganon reached, and its grasp was rebuked, its fingers shattered by the Sheikah-trained hands of one who had fought against a terrible power across the streams of time. It recoiled, and the progenitor laid hands on it, burning it with an echo of the goddess she had once been. It screamed, and a mother who had died before she could teach her beloved daughter the secret of their blood smashed it into the earth with the weight of gold and long-withheld rage.
From every direction, by thousands of hands, it was dissembled. There was no darkness to stand up to the radiance of that light; there was no evil that would protect Ganon from their righteousness. Every blow was a chip in its armor, a spurt of Malice and fire and blood and pain, and slowly it began to unravel. To shatter. Its armor flaked and then chipped and then broke, revealing the burning Malice that was inside of it, and the illusion of its humanity was lost as the storm fought more and more desperately to hold itself together.
Zelda now stood at the rear. There was a weapon that had been carried by her family since the age when they had openly held the True Force, a weapon forged from the radiance of the very engine of creation. She reached within herself, seeking it. When she found it, its familiarity—its warmth—steadied the tremble in her body. She had thought she was comfortable holding a sword, but only because she had never found the weapon her hands had been made for.
Zelda drew taut the Bow of Light. An arrow of incomparable radiance, brighter than the light of the gods, hummed with promise between her fingers.
Ganon screamed its indignation, and its armor fell away.
Zelda let fly.
The arrow of light struck Ganon's heart.
The gathered thousands, the princesses who carried the blood of the goddess, looked on as the Calamity's scream became an ear-splitting howl of incomparable pain. None of them missed that, beneath that pain, there was still anger. Still hunger.
Light shone from within Ganon's body, shafts of radiance bursting from inside of it like the fingers of dawn. It howled, and writhed, and its body seemed to bubble, to heave. It threw its head back. And then it exploded, in light and fire and Malice and a great rushing wind.
Malice spewed outward in geysers that rose into the air, flaming and boiling as if the fluid hate itself was in agony. Ganon's body dissolved utterly into noxious purples and reds, and those swirled together, and quivered as if their edges were growing frailer. They hovered on the edge of oblivion.
And then Ganon clawed its way back.
The cloud shifted, and its head rose from within the storm, the nightmare parody of a boar's expression. It bellowed at the gathered legacy of the royal family, and they stared up at it with calm eyes as they regathered around the one living princess.
Ganon reared back, and the storm pulled into itself. It grew darker as purple lightning screamed across its surface, as a burning rain of red fell beneath it. The cloud swelled, growing thicker and darker and thicker and darker until it was more real, more solid, than the ground it hovered over.
Then the cloud fell to the earth, and the impact of its landing would have toppled Hyrule Castle, had Hyrule Castle still stood. There was a shifting, a yawning, and from that enormous cloud sprang four legs terminating in cloven hooves. The storm resolved into a body far larger than any single Divine Beast, thickly muscled on a scale that would have been absurd on a terrestrial creature. When the head pushed its way out from between the heavy shoulders, when the golden eyes opened and the mouth split to show colossal teeth aflame with destructive power, there was an almost familiar air to it.
Deny Ganon its body, and it mattered not. It abandoned such pretences. It took its true shape; its body was hate, its heart was desire. It was the grudge of thousands of generations, seeking, always seeking to satiate a bottomless hunger.
The Dark Beast roared, and the light of the royal family was small before it.
Hard-soled boots. Footsteps stopping.
He tried to rise.
He had no strength. The sword was broken in his hand.
A presence by him. More than one. Many. He couldn't tell. Couldn't open his eyes.
He heaved against the weight of his body, against the weight of the mountain that had been placed on his limbs, against reality, against pain, against death. He was so tired, and he heaved against that too. Did it shift? Did it budge, even one inch? He couldn't do it. He couldn't. It was over. Why had he been fighting at all? How much had he forgotten? What was he forgetting?
He tried to rise.