Ollen70: I haven't really decided if I want to do another chapter from Din's perspective or not. Let me know what you think about the idea, okay? I really appreciate reviews.

Disclaimer: Yeah, none of these characters belong to me. If they did, I'd have more money for med school and more free time.

Chapter Three - - The Chains that Bind us.

Din's descent was much more calculated than that of either Nayru or Farore. It was not in her nature to do anything in a manner that might be described as inconspicuous,' but after all it was not for nothing that she was often called the goddess of Power. Because of that fact, it was more difficult for her to facilitate an arrival on the surface of their world without alarming a great many of the inhabitants, and while the three of them might interfere a bit more quietly in the lives of one or two of the mortals they felt were dear to them, it had been agreed upon when they left the world and created the golden power that they would not do anything to directly alter the eventual course of their world.

Waiting until the right moment, when the sun was just beginning to break across the mountains and force away the darkness of night, Din fell. Any who might have been awake at that moment would later swear they'd seen a great fiery creature tumbling like a meteor into the crater of the great volcano in Hyrule, plummeting downward and vanishing within it's depth. What they saw was of little consequence; Din had come, and she was more than a little proud of her mode of arrival.

Traveling to any part of the world now was a very simple matter. She merely stayed submerged in the glorious heat of the melting rock and flowed along without incident, all the while searching for the one she'd come to observe. In a far corner of the land she found him and turned within the blazing essence all around her. He was sleeping quietly through the night in a stone room afforded him by the red-haired people known as the Gerudo. Discovering this, Din smiled faintly to herself. Her charge was a Gerudo, but he was in every way different from the almost exclusively female thieves that inhabited the desert.

Her black king was a paradox indeed. She tended to spend most of her time watching him and gazing into his future, saddened to a small degree by what she saw. Sadness in the mortal sense wasn't exactly something she could feel. The king held power, which was of great interest to her, but unlike the others, she was not totally bound to her one quality in quite the same way they were. There were other things that could appeal to her, and anything that involved power - including the loss of it - was intriguing.

Nayru, valuing wisdom, had little use for those who did not strive for knowledge. Farore had no business with those who could not hold or understand at least some degree of courage. She, on the other hand, found all aspects of power to be totally enrapturing. Even powerlessness. In this way, she found her interests often shifting. Farore's charge, to whom both Farore and Nayru had recently visited, best fit the description of powerless' when compared to her king. Now, hovering above the sleeping boy, she marveled at how utterly vulnerable he was to her. Any who came by would have more power than he, to harm or rend him. And though she herself could exert power over him if she truly wished to, that thought did not linger in her mind for long.

Only Din's interests were fleeting. Wisdom and courage, once gained, were difficult to lose unless their holder used them so infrequently that they forgot how. The very nature of power was transient. One could be infinitely powerful for one moment and then horribly weak the next with no warning and no pity. Her king had great power now - more than any other living creature, in fact - but his days were waning. For all his strength he could never build, only destroy. Even though she already knew the outcome of this worldly struggle, it wasn't difficult for one without her foresight to guess at what might be. The black king would eventually lose power entirely, because he would either destroy all that was living and find himself with dominion over nothing, or he would be thrown down by the rising force of the world itself. After all, destruction and death were an end, not a means.

Din found it a little sad that the one she loved had chosen such a path, though her sadness was unlike the sadness of mortals and carried little with it. She'd hoped that he might use his power with a bit more wisdom and so last longer. When he fell, she would find herself another. She knew that he would; she had watched his eventual failure before. Nayru was interested in things as they were. Farore enjoyed looking into the things that had been. Din concerned herself in things as they would be, no matter what that might entail.

Some days she wondered if Nayru's calm demeanor might be solely attributed to the fact that she favored the present. The past and the future could be troubling, given their unalterable nature. The present as well was as unalterable as it was brief, but because of this it seemed full of possibility. It carried only the emotion of the moment, which was always bound to chance. It was well known to her that each of them held within themselves traits that were stationary along with traits that were not. Each were the same and yet also different, mirroring each other but always showing a different reflection. Looking again at the boy, Din marveled.

He was a precious child, much more appealing to the eye than her king, and in many ways almost as beautiful as Nayru's princess. It was a different kind of beauty, but then beauty in general rarely involved her. It was infrequent for overly powerful things to have beauty. She would not harm him, as much as a threat as he presented to her king, not simply because he was beautiful. Farore and Nayru had not destroyed her king and she owed them the courtesy to watch over their charges with equal consideration.

The flicker of the oil-standard lantern appealed to her. More than anything else in this barren room, it presented her with a way of incorporating herself into the surroundings without compromising her customary brilliance. Taking her place in the heart of the flame, she felt it change from orange to a blood-red. From here she could peer out at the young boy comfortably. Growing accustomed to the gloom, she watched him as he slept, his tunic off and rolled up under his head to serve as a pillow of sorts. The Gerudo might have made him an honorary member after he infiltrated their fortress (she had enjoyed watching that particular exchange) but they still mistrusted men in general and did not afford him any luxury in his accommodations.

She noticed in the lambent beams of her own luminescence that the drawn lines in his flesh were more than mere shadows. Some of this knowledge came from her bond with Nayru and Farore, but the scars on this boy's body wouldn't have escaped her attention. It was good that he slept. Farore might hide in the winds and Nayru could take refuge in the living veins of the earth, but the fire and the rock belonged to Din. And those two mediums, as well as her preference for appearing in a manner that was fitting with her favorite attribute, it was not surprising that her arrival to any mortal could be...unsettling, to say the least.

This man wasn't really a man at all. He could have seen no more than eighteen years of this world, and that endearing youth made him vulnerable. Her hand removed his cap and found the tousled burned-gold hair beneath it. With her other, she very gently stroked the lines of his face. She could understand why Farore had such pride in him, and took a more active role in this particular mortal's existence than she had in any since the building of their earth. He had awakened the sages alone. In days he would face her king at last.

Giving the hero a small embrace, she returned into the warmth of the earth and drifted away again, preparing to flow toward the pooling fire under the citadel of her king. While she was on this world, she might as well look at him closely again while she could. The boy would come and the first of the king's many defeats would come to pass.




Ollen70: Wow. This chapter was so much harder to write than the first two. I apologize if it's really bad. Since I don't have a beta reader for this, it's entirely possible that I babble and repeat myself a whole bunch. If you spot any horrible errors, please let me know and I'll fix them. Right now I'm too tired to proof-read.

This probably isn't the end yet. I'm considering doing a few more chapters, but if you have any ideas on what you think they should be about, feel free to throw them in my direction. I really appreciate input, and I want to say thank you to H7, Anna-Elena, and 1. You guys are great. =)