NOTE: This story was originally submitted to the site a while go, taken down due to reasons listed on the main page, and is now being resubmitted. If you've read it before, there are only very slight changes, if any. Thanks.

Around mid-morning, he came to a town. The sign far back along the road read, Burgis Batal, 30 Wheels, and it surprised him that it took such an appreciably short time to get there. No matter. Time was not was it once was, nor distance.

At first, Burgis Batal seemed deserted. The sun hung high in a cloudless sky and pooled shallow shadows around the feet of the old wooden buildings lining the main street. None was more than two stories high, and all had broken windows peering from their weathered brown faces. Dead eyes - this town is blind, he thought, as he strode boldly into the main square. Darkness inside the stores and houses - glass and splinters grinding under his boot-heels. The sound of the wind throwing desert sand against these sad remnants. Like a cruelty, like a taunting child - No one left, Link, no one but you.

A bird disturbed the perfect blue overhead, to far to seem more than a gliding fleck of ash. Link watched it swoop and circle, getting ever lower, and held his hand against the knife in his belt. He would not kill it unless he had to, but suspected he would - as it grew in his field of vision, he saw it was not a simple blackbird. It's neck extended to snap some insect out of the air, and it's over-wing flashed bright yellow and red on the downstroke. He unsheathed his blade but held it against his thigh. He hunkered a bit, like any animal waiting to spring.

It was now more than a few dozen feet away, and it's cold, calculating eyes had found the heat radiating off of him that made him distinct from the baked and parched surroundings, the dead and empty buildings, the bones now covered by dust and taken back to where they began. It let out a foul, noisome cry that sounded like glass shattering. He held his breath. He waited.

When it was no more than a bodies length away, Link sprang; he hefted the blade up using himself as a coiled spring; it travelled in a sure arc from his hand to the heart of the bird. The cry cut off in mid-wail; bird and knife fell like a stone and landed with a puff of dust a few yards from his booted feet.

One foot on the warm, bloodied body of the bird, he removed his blade and saved himself from kicking the animal. No, not now. Not here, in this place of dead things. He wiped his dagger on the dirt and put it back in it's place by his side.

He went in search of supplies - for though the town was dead he suspected its stores were not. He proved himself right on the first try. A squat building in comparatively better shape than it's cousins, with few broken windows and siding that look almost new, if un-cared for. The door was open, and his footfalls echoed like the voices of dreams as he walked inside.

After a few seconds his eyes adjusted to the dark. Rows of shelves stood before him like soldiers at attention. Some were bereft of all that they held save a few cans and oddments - he picked through carefully, and recognized the words on some of the labels. Hylian Chutney. Lon-Lon Condensed Milk. Like the ghosts of friends passed. He would ever be haunted by memory - haunted and hunted, and would find no rest until he was done - with the quest and with his life. He wondered now as he often did, tightly gripping a can of Lon-Lon, if the two would be one and the same. He himself did not wager an opinion on the matter, one way or another.

From outside there came a faint noise - the tinkle of a spurred boot as it's owner took am incautious step forward and stopped suddenly, as if by fingers. Link ducked under the nearest window and had his two daggers in his hands without thinking. He peaked over the window sil and held his breath.

There, in front of the store, stood a tall, tanned man in a long black cloak. His crimson hair and beard gave him the look of a lion - fierce and proud, and twice as dangerous when he smiled and betrayed his sharp and shining teeth. In one hand he held the reigns of a great shadowed horse. For a moment Link marvelled at how silent the beast had been - surely he would have heard it had it been a normal breed, but the white star-shaped marking on it's muzzle betrayed it's true identity, and that of it's master, for though he had never seen the man himself, not once in all his long years of wandering, the figure outside fit the picture he'd painted behind his eyes to a T.

Him. The Thief King. Ganondorf.

Even though he would have sworn it impossible, Ganondorf looked up from his boots and directly into Link's peeping eyes. Surely he couldn't see Link, even if his bewitched senses knew his foe was there.

But Ganondorf's deep voice cut him cold from his speculation.

"No need to hide, child, not here. Even if I couldn't see you I can smell your fear and rage. I can smell the ghosts of the dead you carry. You will face me, or you will parish in this human outpost, never to reach your destination."

Link thought he was bluffing. He had bested dark magicians many times before - the short speech rang of bravado, nothing more.

This is the reason Link convinced himself of - this is why he stood up so confidently and sheathed his daggers before coming out of the derelict store. For all that came after, this is the reason he repeated, night and again, for the rest of his life. The man is brazen. I am no fool. I am righteous, and I will succeed in my goal of capturing the Triforce, in the last lands of Hyrule. He will not bar the way. No one has, and no one will.

This is the moment he later wished he'd been wrong.