A soft wind was sighing that early morning. The red sun, which should have been spilling her faint light over the ranch's gates, wept in a small white glow behind a gray veil. The clouds drifted across the sky, threatening rain but not yet releasing it. Shadows fell into the tangled branches of the farm's only tree, a young, delicate oak of green wood. Link's eyes were empty, his blond locks drifting across his fallen face. The gray surface of the tombstone laughed up at him, cackling cruelly in the face of his anguish.
Her lies
Ingo Ramerez
Beloved friend and worker
of Lon Lon Ranch, and the Realm of Hyrule
Lost to the Evil Hand of Ganon
The words were laughing at him, laughing like Leun laughed, like Ingo laughed, insane, crazed...terrible...
He felt a hand on his shoulder and paused. But even in the deep recesses of his guilty heart, he recognized the touch that was Aloarn's.
He did not turn to her, but let her stand beside him, both emerald and azure eyes locked on gray laughter. There was nothing she could do, nothing to ease his torture; he had let another life, among countless others, slip through his fingers. As much as he had despised Ingo, for all his sourness and blubbering and silent irritation, the farmhand had tried with all his might to tell Link, to explain something, something about...about Aloarn.
"Link..."
"I could've saved him."
"It was a Gerudo Curse, Link," she whispered desperately, her hand trembling slightly as she held his shoulder. "One of Me'lkmar. If you had touched him you...you would've died as well..."
"I could've called on Nayru, I could've used magic..."
"Link, it would have done nothing, the curse was too great, and Link - Link, look at me when I speak to you -"
Link ran his tongue over his teeth in sudden anger and turned to glare at her. How could she know? How could she feel? A Gerudo soldier was taught to kill, not to feel or care or love or hate. How could she know-
He froze. Something was glittering, faintly, on those tan cheeks...beneath those beautiful green eyes...something...so familiar...something that looked exactly like -
Aloarn realized what he saw and turned away, closing her eyes, hiding behind her sheet of red hair. She raised her hand to brush them away, but found her fingers entwined with Link's leather-wrapped hand. She gazed at him, terrified of how weak she must look, how she must be betraying the Gerudo - and waited, numb and anxious, as his eyes roamed over the length of her face.
"...you're not like them."
Aloarn couldn't move, couldn't breathe, not with him so close, with the tears betraying her. He was raising his other hand, but she didn't notice.
"My mother was Gerudo, and her mother before her, all Gerudo have some Hylain blood in them but my father's features came out more in me, he was a soldier at the castle -"
She froze as she felt his fingers brush across her face. He stepped closer.
"No..." he whispered. His heart was pounding wildly, his body gone numb. "It's something else..." his fingers glided across her cheek again and she trembled. With a sudden tug her hand slipped from his grip and she turned away.
"Nabooru is waiting. We must ride. Your - your mare is ready, and - Navi is impatient. We must...we must leave."
She glanced back at him, but his gaze was still piercing, haunting. She shook her head and turned, making her way the gate. Slowly but surely, Link followed in her wake, weighing the incident in his mind.
Hooves thundered, half a mile from the gate, the towers of Hyrule stretching out into the clouded sky, smoke drifting from the ashes of burning buildings...Link raised his shield slightly, defending himself from the embers as Epona galloped ahead of the Gerudo Warriors. Nabooru's voice was still ringing in his head.
The Seal has broken...Ramil will use the magic of Me'lkmar to restore Ganon to his former state...there are more than seven score with her, against the single score that we possess...
He did not pause as the drawbridge was being closed. Epona did not start and rear at the moat's edge. The mare leapt, her brilliant white mane glittering in the half-shadows as she skidded down the other side of the drawbridge into the Hylain alley. Link did not pause, did not hesitate. The Gerudo working the drawbridge drew her blade but her throat was slit before she raised it; her fellow gatekeeper tried to run but an arrow found her neck. The drawbridge fell with a deafening slam and the score of Gerudo thundered into the burning city of Hyrule.
Talon prayed for rain as he led the riderless horses through burning streets. Thunder was booming in the sky, faint but proud. Aloarn's steed reared up beside Epona as the mare mounted broken steps, the Temple of Time glittering just on the city's horizon. The Gerudo women fell back as arrows descended on them, cold and bitter and poisoned. Three fell dead and one wounded; Nabooru chorused something in the Gerudo Tongue and she and three others galloped after the Hero and the Advisor.
The Temple gate was guarded with at least a hundred scarlet-haired warriors, the door bolted shut with a thick, wooden plank. As Aloarn saw the impossible odds she slowed on her horse - but Link, still racing astride Epona, grabbed her reins and pulled the mare after him.
"Don't stop, keep next to me!" he shouted.
"We'll be killed!" screamed Aloarn, but the two horses were now neck-and-neck, and there was no going back. As the opposing army charged them Aloarn heard Link mutter something under his breathe. Seconds before colliding with their spears, Link threw something from his belt.
"Din's FIRE!"
The flaming red crystal exploded in a hellish inferno. Gerudo women screamed and fell back, either burned or burning. Horses reared as both saddle and rider caught fire. Aloarn did not stop, did not look back. Link tossed her what she thought, between the screams and flames and smoke, to be a bomb. She lit it off the side of the wall of fire they were now encased in and tossed it, headlong, at the Temple's doors.
The plank shattered, but the stone surface was hardly damaged. Gerudo were screaming and falling back as they saw their comrades burn alive in the city streets. With a crash, Link and Aloarn thundered through the giant doors. The fire faded around Link as he dismounted, slipped on the Golden Gauntlets, and bolted the door shut.
Ramil, the sole other person in the room, hissed in their direction. She was standing before the Doors of Time, blood dripping from cuts on her palms. Before her was a bowl of blood and sand.
"Step down Ramil!" shouted Aloarn. Linkhad an arrow already pointed to her throat. Ramil hissed again and spat onto the white-washed Temple floors.
"Step down? Step down?" she laughed in the Advisor's face. "When I am all too close to gaining the glory, the respect, the power? Ganondorf will know who his faithful ones are, he will know who has betrayed the Code of the Gerudo!"
She spun, picked up the bowl, dodged Link's arrow and poured it over the Three Spiritual Stones.
There was a scream as Ramil slipped to the floor, the blood on her palms sizzling. The Stones grew white-hot and shattered beneath the Desert mixture. Aloarn, furious, leapt up the steps and drew her blade to slay the wretched woman - but her swing came up short as Link grabbed her and pulled her under him, his shield above their heads. The Doors of Time exploded.
"Get Navi, she's in Epona's saddlebag," whispered Link quietly as he drew his blade. Aloarn glared.
"I am no serving maid -"
A terrible, high-pitched scream filled the room. From the empty gates of the broken doors, darkness seeped. In her saddlebag, Navi shuddered and struggled to escape.
Ramil's eyes went wide, and a smile lit up on her lips as she gazed into the vacant darkness. She raised her bloody, sandy hands to the doorway.
"My...my King...you have returned..."
Aloarn grit her teeth, her hands clenched on curved blades. But something was wrong. Link saw it from the corner of his eye - she was shaking, her eyes wider than normal, like she was having an internal conflict of which he was not aware.
"Who has given Gerudo blood?"
It was cold, deep, evil. Link knew that voice, knew that darkness, knew all too well...
"It is I, King Ganondorf, Lord of all Gerudo!" shouted Ramil, her eyes glittering. "Ramil, Hka'tie Senior of the Calling, humble thief of Me'lkmar -"
"Ah, Ramil," hissed the voice quietly. He was still a shadow, still darker than starless night, deeper than the tombs of the ancient dead. His voice was cracked, his form shapeless and blacker than the pits of the Hylain Tombs.His eyes were red, unfocused, his pupils rolled to the back of his head. Aloarn was trembling more now, shadows were running through his eyes, terrified, screaming...
"Hka'tie, a humble thief of Me'lkmar," he hissed. Ramil's hopeful face began to fade as the terrible eyes gazed down at her bloody hands.
"Come now, my dear Ramil," he said so quietly that Link strained to hear. "You cannot come before your King as such...and want nothing in return." Ramil's face was falling.
"I - I came to free you, to - to protect the Code of the Gerudo -"
"Ah yes, the Code," he whispered. "But you forsook the Code Ramil...long ago, on the heights of the red rocks...you have bowed to a traitor, Ramil..."
"My- my King! It was necessary to bring about your -your return -"
A giant clawed hand, made of shadow and ash, reached out and grabbed the woman's neck. Ramil's breathe caught and she grabbed Ganon's wrist with both bloody hands. She choked as she felt her blood seep slowly into him. The red eyes were inched from her face as the darkness began to enclose her.
"There are many ways to die, Ramil..."
"STOP!"
Link's arrow flew. It passed straight through the shadow that was Ganon, but it accomplished its goal. Distracted momentarily, Ganon's eyes spun to meet fierce, bright, blue.
"YOU!"
He dropped Ramil and sped forth, but it was Aloarn's turn now. She held up a blade and threw a fistful fo sand into the air.
"Esai m'eah C'as!"
Ganon stopped short, snarling terribly in the face of her spell. His shadowed hands clenched.
"Treacherous wench -"
Then he paused, seeing the faint way her shoulders still shook as she held the sword in midair, keeping the spell between them. His fierce eyes pierced her, evil, haunting. He could see it, beneath the emerald surface of her eyes. Fear.
He looked at her closer. Blond bangs, green eyes...Aloarn's grip on the blade loosened as he began t recognize her, to remember. Link stepped forward, almost near enough to touch her, wondering why - and with a single, glittering fang a smile curled on Ganon's lips.
"I remember you."
Aloarn shook violently and dropped her blades. Link, barely a foot behind her, caught her as she fell back and held her against him. She clawed at his shirt, unable to tear her eyes from the horror of a bloody gaze, the terror that was Ganon's smile; she buried herself into the Hero's arms as the shadows of Ganon seeped onto the Pedestal, over the marble floors, across the ancient ceiling. The mare had gone insane, while Epona reared as the darkness came closer to her feet, and both horses backed up to the door. Aloarn tried to stammer a prayer as Link raised the Master Sword, shimmering white in the darkness, prepared to fight, to defend her till his last breathe...
With a high-pitched battle cry, Navi burst from Epona's saddlebag.
Her light was blinding in her anger. Ganon roared at the sight as his shadows flung themselves back into the doorway. With a furious screech the darkness swirled, thundered and disappeared. Ramil and Ganon were gone.
And so was Navi.
Outside, it began to rain.
