Before the Game Begins...

The Death of the Queen

Chapter 12: The Golden Gauntlets

The King of Hyrule sat on the throne with his head in his hands. His body was wracked with shudders he couldn't control. The memories of the final battle coursed through his brain like a herd of wild horses...there had been so much blood. There had been so much loss of life. He winced, remembering the cold voice he had used when he had given the orders to kill the fallen Gerudo. Their cries for mercy haunted him. He couldn't believe that he had been capable of such, such...He shuddered again.

Voices around him gently explained to those present, that the King was having another relapse. He felt himself being led away from the throne room and laid down onto a small couch in the ante-chamber behind the throne. This quiet only made the memories crowd into his head even harder. He remembered ordering that all the male children in the Gerudo Hideout be removed from there and given homes in Hyrule town. He had kidnapped an entire village's children. What had he been thinking?

The shuddering stopped when he thought of his beloved Queen, who had never returned, and his son, whose quiet adoring smile he would never see again. For months afterward, he had sent scouts everywhere. He had found out from the gravedigger that the Queen had told him she was alright, and would do as they had planned, although Impo had not returned from reconnaisance, and he was not to worry.

This news kind of threw him for a loop, until he found that this was before she had hiked up Death Mountain seeking Darunia's aid. He then sent Impa back to Kakariko Village to seek out any news of her brother, and she came back, reporting that not only was he missing, but his entire family was gone. She nearly held back the story of giant spiders, since it seemed rather ludicrous, but she faithfully repeated what she had been told by the Village elder. All manner of monster had graced the battlefield on the last day, so it probably wasn't as far-fetched as she might have thought.

Then he set out to the Kokiri forest and spoke to the green-haired girl, who had said there had been many refugees from the battle that had come into the forest. Most had gotten lost or killed within the Lost Woods, but none of them had been the Queen or his son. It never crossed her mind that the woman who had died could possibly be so royal. Her clothing had been so rude, and she had had no escort. Even incognito, a Queen would have an escort. The King had returned to Hyrule disappointed. His wife and son had vanished off the face of the earth.

And when he talked to Darunia, he had actually become angry with his friend and pounded his fist on the table. Well he remembered the day he had the musicians summon the Goron to Hyrule Castle. He consulted with him for a mere 1/2 hour on what to do with the ruby during times of strife. After that, Darunia had prolonged his visit trying to help the King endure the seige, reinforcing the walls and ramparts...He could have gone back earlier, had he known. The King winced inside, imagining his wife patiently waiting for Darunia's return. Oh, why hadn't she stayed another day or two? he agonized.

After that, he lost all trace of her and the Prince.

Then, like a sudden plunge down a cliff, his mind shifted again to the last day of the battle. At his advisor's suggestion, he had donned the golden gauntlets, a treasure not often used by the past Kings of Hyrule. He had never put them on before, thinking that they were more like valuable antiques for display purposes only, and he had never been an ostentatious king, showing off his treasures in public. So when he donned the gauntlets, he did so more as a symbolic guesture. Ganondorf and his army of Gerudos and monsters were taking a toll on the Hyrulians, and everyone was loosing momentum. The King was sure that defeat was near, and he'd rather go out in a blast of glory as a true King should.

Imagine his surprise, then, when incredible power coursed through his body the moment he donned the golden gauntlets.

He leapt onto the battlefield with renewed vigor and hope, tossing huge boulders into the air, crushing many enemies with one blow. The Gerudo army, expecting victory that very day instead tasted a very bitter defeat. But it was thanks to the golden gauntlets that the battle was won, and infact, the war was ended.

Afterward, he had scoured the battlefield for Ganondorf (dead or alive), but the light had been getting dim. He had met the black-garbed king on the battlefield once, and had suffered a terrible defeat. He knew that the Gerudo women were collecting the bodies from the battlefield at night, because every morning, there were fewer and fewer bodies. Amoung the debris at the site of the trampled encampment, he did recover the ruby and the sapphire. At that moment, he breathed a sigh of relief. He could unseal the Sage now, and that monster would not be fooling with any unmanagable powers any more. No one should be able to grab that enormous power all for themselves anyway. What sort of fool could think he could possibly handle such power?

He discussed these things with the Sage of Time, and they decided that the sword should stay in the pedastal, and the remaining spiritual stones be given in safekeeping to Zora and Darunia.

Even for the King of Hyrule, the taste for power that the gauntlets had given him was probably what had caused him to order all surviving Gerudos slaughtered, and all male children removed from the Hideout. It was when he removed the gauntlets that sanity had returned, and the horror of war had set in. They cleaned up the battle field for the next few weeks. He had busied himself trying to locate his Queen, but the days and the weeks and the months passed by, and on bad days, he became useless with his entire body trembling with delayed shock.

These bad days becamed fewer and farther apart as time went on, and finally, they were celebrating 2 years of the anniversary of the Battle of Hyrule, and he still had no word as to the fate of his only son and his Queen. Zelda was 2 and 1/2, and a welcome joy in the castle. Impa constantly guarded her, but there had been no more threats on the royal family.

As soon as Zelda had learned to make sentences, however, she would speak of forests, and fairies and a boy. The King was amused by her strong imagination, and encouraged her to tell him more. The idea of a forest boy with a fairy who constantly accompanied him made the King feel better inside somehow, but as she grew, she would mention dark clouds covering the land, and something frightening in the future. After a while, not wanting to stir up his own distasteful memories of the battle, he became more and more distant from his daughter, and felt more and more alone. He immersed himself in his work.

His eyesight was failing him, a direct result of his clash with the evil Ganondorf. As the two Kings battled one another, the dark lord would throw brilliant balls of electricity directly at him. The King was able to dodge them, but as the attacks came faster and faster, he found that he could no longer see what was going on around him. His aides, noticing him in some distress, and in danger of being overcome by Ganondorf, sounded the retreat, and withdrew back into the town. It took him sometime to recover. By the next day, he was able to see shapes and colors. When he had donned the gauntlets, he had had his aides guide him. They had won the day, and the price for Hyrule freedom was one he gladly paid.

The people of Hyrule were astonished to hear how the King had suffered so many personal losses because of the power hungry Gerudo. They told the story over and over about how his heroism had saved them all. No one minded that he trembled with delayed shock. A lot of soldiers did. They loved him all the more. And the peace earned by this sacrifice was indeed a true peace. However, everyone knew that Ganondorf's body had never been recovered...