Before the Game Begins...
The Death of the Queen
Chapter 11: The Black Gauntlets
Ganondorf woke up in the Gerudo Hideout. The only source of light emanated from a high small opening. He could hear nothing of outside activity. Maybe there was none.
The pain hit him all at once. His arm, his leg, his entire left side experienced the most excruciating sensation he could ever remember. He tried not to move. He tried to suppress the moan that came unbidden to his lips. He tried to see what was wrong, but couldn't even turn his head. He searched for the ugly power that he had been able to summon before, but he felt empty inside. He felt...clean.
An old woman entered the room and silently came to stand beside him. She checked his bandages, laid a hand on his forehead, nodded in satisfaction, but said nothing. He tried to speak, but his throat felt as if it had been welded together. By Nayru, he was thirsty! He tried to suppress another moan when the throbbing of his entire side did not abate, but became worse. His eyes became watery from the pain. He couldn't help it.
He heard her pour some water. He saw her hands holding a mug. He felt her lift his head...she was very careful and gentle, but still...the tears rolled away from his eyes, and he couldn't stop the agonizing cry that came ripping from the bottom of his being.
Nabooru stood outside, listening as the nurse administered a simple drink of water to the desert king. She cringed to hear his pain, and nearly had some sympathy for him. The battle waged infront of the stronghold had gone on for days. Every single Gerudo man but Ganondorf had been slaughtered. Many who were still alive were systematically put out of their misery by order of the King of Hyrule. When the Gerudo women came to the battle field to recover the bodies, there were very few left alive. Ganondorf was one of them. All other survivors, however, had died.
The King of Hyrule had then ordered each and every Gerudo male child be removed from the hideout. Even newborn babes were taken from their mothers. Their tears of sorrow did not move any single Hyrulian to mercy. The war between the desert people and the plains people had gone on for too long. Ganondorf's assassination attempts on the royal family and the loss of 1/2 the King's family had driven the normally reasonable King to use draconian measures.
After the Hyrulians had left, Nabooru had ordered the bridge be locked and a guard set in place. No Hyrulian would ever get inside their hideout again. She stood outside of Ganandorf's room and formulated a plan. She would help train the women to defend themselves. She would help organize raids to acquire the necessities they all needed.
She closed her eyes and cringed when she heard him cry out again. Wasn't there anything the nurse could give him to stop the pain? He had been lying senseless for two weeks now. Even when he was unconscious, he had moaned a great deal...well, it was amazing that he had survived after all. He had been found, pinned beneath a boulder. If it hadn't been for the black gauntlets, he would probably be dead by now.
Nabooru shuddered to think of it...when they had removed the gauntlets, a sight met their eyes that would never leave their memories. Was he even human? she wondered. His arms were green and scaled like a reptile's. Spikes protruded from both his elbows. His fingers were talons...he had touched her with those hands before, and his last words to her had reverbrated throughout her being: "I am a monster, Nabooru..." But when the gauntlets were removed, his skin color returned to normal, and the scales melted into his skin. What happened to him? she wondered. How did he get this way?
When they had removed the gauntlets, something evil and smokey had come pouring out of his mouth and nostrils. It had dispersed in the wind, but the women had been astonished to see this.
All the men that they found alive they hid within their training grounds. No one could penetrate to the heart of this mini-fortress within the hideout, not even the King of Hyrule was skilled enough. If only they had had enough warning to hide the boys in the same way...She tried to stop thinking about it, so she entered the room and watched as the nurse gently laid the desert king's head back down. Ganondorf's right hand was tightened into a fist, the bedsheets crumpled in his hand as he tried to control his moans.
She consulted in low tones with the nurse regarding his pain. The nurse replied that she had added poppyseed juice to the water, and he had taken most of it. Nabooru went to kneel beside the low bed, and placed her hand over his fist. Startled, he opened his eyes and looked to see who it was that had touched him. He said nothing, not trusting that words could yet be spoken without alot of groaning and moaning. The smallest movement was agony. Neither did she say anything, but only stayed beside him until the poppyseed took effect. She debated silently whether to tell him what had happened since they had found him, and she decided to find out, first, how much he remembered. She bit her lip and bowed her head for a moment.
He noticed her agonized look. On her face, it was a mere flicker. There was something she wanted to tell him, he realized. A strange feeling of numbness washed slowly over his whole body. It was a welcome change from the pain, but he noticed that all his senses were becoming dull, and he didn't care anymore what Nabooru was thinking. It used to be a challenge...
He fell asleep.
Although Nabooru was busy organizing and training the women, she had time to visit Ganondorf every day. Most times, it was only for a few minutes, but as he grew stronger, she stayed with him longer. He never said too much. Sometimes he only looked at her the whole time she was there. Finally, he said: "Am I some kind of obligation to you, Nabooru?"
She was silent for a while, but he waited for her answer. They had been walking down the hallway toward the outdoors. She was supporting him from one side, and she didn't answer him until she had settled him into a chair in the shade, and she took a chair beside him. They gazed out into the desert, where, far off, one could see the Desert Colossus.
"I need to know what you remember." she finally said. "What was the last thing you remember?"
He turned his head to examine her expression, but she had closed her eyes and leaned her head back.
It was the first time he had been outside, and as he gazed around he noticed that there weren't as many people about as there usually was at this time of day. Then he, too, leaned back and closed his eyes, allowing the warmth of the day to penetrate to his bones. "I remember looking for the silver gauntlets." he said after a while. "That stupid sage flew off with them. The cage door was open..."
"Sage?" she interjected.
"The owl." Ganondorf sighed. "He used to be the Sage of Hyrule Field. I tried changing him into a Stalfos, but he ended up becoming an owl. I caged him up and kept him as a pet." He smiled thinly at the memory.
Nabooru gave him a startled glance. No wonder I thought that bird was creepy. He had once been human. She swallowed at the thought of Ganondorf's cruelty and audacity. How on earth had he overcome a powerful sage?
"I probably didn't latch his cage door properly before I went to visit you in your tent that night."
Nabooru remembered that night...the moment before all hell broke loose, the sound of Ganondorf's maniacal laughter outside her tent, and his unashamed cursing of the goddesses into the charged night air. He had even cursed Nayru..
"I couldn't find the silver gauntlets anywhere." He continued, not noticing her reaction to the reference of that night. "I looked everywhere. Then I noticed that he was gone, and I knew it was futile to look for them any longer. I had just told you that I was going to withdraw.." here, he paused, and laughed a little insanely, and cursed again, although quietly. "So I used the black gauntlets."
There was a long pause, then Nabooru asked: "What are the black gauntlets?"
He glanced at her sharply, but her face was unchanged, exept for a slight tightening of her lips. "Why do you want to know?" he countered quietly.
Hearing his tone, she opened her eyes to look at him. She met his gaze calmly. "Because when we found you, you had them on. You were...changed." she said for lack of a better word. "When we removed the gauntlets, you returned to normal."
He laughed softly and relaxed. So they had seen him.
He sat, lost in thought for a long time. In fact, Nabooru thought that the dark lord had fallen asleep, so when he spoke, even though it was only a murmur, she was startled. "Do you see the ruins in the desert?" he asked. When she nodded and gazed toward where he had indicated, he continued: "When I was nine years old, I decided that I was going to go there." He made a sound that seemed derisive of his younger self. "I thought that it would be an interesting adventure." He shifted position in his chair. "It was. It was." he seemed to become lost in thought once again. "That was when I found the Silver Gauntlets. They were in a place that only a child could reach, how stupid is that?" He added softly to himself: "What would a child do with such a thing?"
"What did you do with them?" Nabooru asked. It was odd to imagine Ganondorf as an adventurous boy. She tried to remember what he had looked like, but when he was nine, she had only been two. She only remembered him as being so much more bigger and more powerful than anyone else.
Ganondorf shrugged. "I tried them on, of course and of course, they didn't fit. So I kept them in my room for years and years. I actually forgot about them. When I was around 18 or so...about 5 years ago, I guess, I was cleaning out my room and found them in a box. I tried them on, and..." here, he paused remembering the power that coursed up into his body. There had been no other feeling quite like it. "I became powerful." he said simply. "The war with Hyrule hadn't started yet, and there was nothing else to do. I wanted to recreate the adventure I had had when I was a kid, so off I went back to the Colossus." Again, he trailed away and did not speak for a long while.
She glanced over at his face, trying to read his expression and saw there a look of pure hatred. "That's when I met those witches." he growled softly, in such a dangerous tone, that Nabooru felt goosebumps. "I wish that I had never gone." He stopped talking again.
The nurse came out, having tracked her patient down, and put a stop to the conversation. She gave him something to drink, which was laced with poppyseed juice. He knocked it out of her hand. "Enough of that crap!" he told her. The nurse scurried away, and Nabooru laughed out loud. "You're back to your old self already."
Ganondorf muttered something about addictions haunting a person's life forever, and they ususally began when doctors and nurses perscribed it to them. He began a rant and Nabooru realized that the story of the Black Gauntlets would have to wait for another day. She tuned him out while she busily thought about how to tell him the bad news of the Gerudo's utter defeat. She had put it off for a whole month now. She knew he wouldn't take it well.
"Nabooru!" he said again, more loudly this time.
She was startled from her thoughts and turned her pale face to his. His eyes regarded her intently, and he said: "You've been wanting to tell me something for a long time now, haven't you." It was more a statement than a question. "I can guess that it must be pretty bad news. You better let me know before someon else blabs it and I go on a rampage." He smiled with a glint of humor in his eyes. "It would be your fault then, you know."
"Ganondorf, don't joke about it." she pleaded softly. "We lost the war. It's been over for a month now. We lost very badly."
He waited for more, feeling a weird sort of distortion in his chest. He guessed as much, except for the "very badly" part.
"What do you mean?" he asked quietly.
She told him what the King of Hyrule had ordered done to the Gerudos and she could see his lips become white with anger. He realized now, why there weren't as many of his people out and about right now. The ones who weren't here were either dead or abducted. A cold rage settled into his being, and it doubled because his body was wrecked. There was nothing he could do. At best outlook he would always have a limp. He'd never have use of his left arm again. At worst, he'd always be dragging himself around, dependant on others to serve him.
Nabooru felt chills go down her back when he coldly said: "I will never forget this." and said nothing more, but only stared out into the desert where the Colossus was now hidden by a cloud of dust and sand. The desert wind was rising.