The usual notes:

1. This story is rated T due to some very violent content.

2. I intend to update weekly. I don't write that fast, but the writing is all done. I don't like when a story I'm interested in dies without an ending, so I figured I would make sure this story was finished before I posted any part of it.

3. I don't own any Legend of Zelda character or setting. I'm just borrowing them and I hope Nintendo won't mind too much.

4. Thank you so much for reading!

More Notes:

A word of warning: this chapter is one of the main reasons "Hero" is rated T and classified as a horror story.

A couple of people asked me when the story was taking place, in terms of the games. This made me realize that it may not be as obvious as I thought, at least at this point in the story. So, for all who are wondering, even the prologue takes place after any of the released games.

Chapter 4: Ganon's Victory

"That sword was too big anyway!" Link shouted defiantly. He hit his right palm with his left fist in a challenging gesture. He had no idea what to do next, but he wasn't about to let Ganon know that.

Ganon laughed.

"Your game face needs work, kid." He growled merrily.

Link frowned.

"Awwhhh!" Ganon mocked. "The wittle hero is all angwy and tough looking!"

Link snarled and launched at him, or rather, at the pieces of the sword on the floor. He had a plan: he was going to get one of the pieces and attack Ganon with it.

He had barely moved an inch forward when Ganon's magic hit him: some kind of lightning, black instead of white. The force of the attack threw him backward and he screamed in pain.

He stayed as he landed for a while, unable to move, unable to see anything else than dancing light spots even when he forced his eyes open, barely able to breathe. He had never even imagined anything could hurt that much. The pain faded slowly, and eventually became more of a sting. He could see again and breathe almost normally. He got up, surprised his body was still working at all.

He was immediately hit by the same attack again. He heard himself scream and was thrown all the way to the wall, on which he rebounded like a rag doll.

It seemed to hurt even more this time, and it was taking even longer to fade away. Link suddenly wanted to sleep. He forced himself back on his feet as soon as he could move, despite the pain.

He was hit by a third attack, just like the previous two. He screamed as he hit the wall again, and was held against it by the attack for a second. He collapsed on the floor and for what seemed like an eternity, he fought the urge to sleep. The pain helped a bit to keep him awake. This time, it didn't seem to be going away at all. He reached for one of his potions, shaking so badly it was very hard to grab the little bottle and then bring it to his mouth. He managed anyway, but spilled a bit.

He felt like new the moment he swallowed the blue liquid, and jumped back to his feet. He wiped his eyes, which were full of tears, although he hadn't realized he had been crying. He flashed Ganon a cocky grin.

"Is that all you've got?" He asked mockingly.

His smile faded quickly. Ganon was grinning. Link frowned and started towards the pieces of sword again.

Ganon laughed and picked him up by the throat, lifting him so that they were face to face. Link struggled to keep an eye open: Ganon was not quite strangling him, but being held like that really hurt, and made it hard to breathe.

"So nice of you to bring some blue potion, boy." Ganon said. "I was holding back so you would last longer, and I was so disappointed to see you almost dead after only three weak little attacks! Do you have any more of it? "

Link poked his tongue out at him in answer, all the while struggling to get free and back to ground level where the shards of the Master Sword were. Ganon laughed and hovered his free hand over Link's body, revealing another serving of blue potion and four bottled fairy spirits. The monster laughed harder, truly delighted.

He tightened his grip on the boy's throat, just a bit. Link's struggle became frantic. Ganon resisted closing his fist and crushing his enemy's neck: it was an unexpected treat that he'd be able to kill him five times, and he intended to enjoy it as much as he could.

Link didn't seem to be getting weaker, so Ganon tightened his hold a little bit more. The boy's movement became chaotic with panic, and quickly grew weaker, until he was no longer moving. Ganon released him and the body fell to the floor with a satisfying thud.

Zelda had stopped shaking Link and had started slapping him. Sadly, this tactic worked no better and Link refused to wake up.

She nearly jumped for joy when his hands finally moved, but they went to his throat and Link started strangling himself. It took all her strength to force them away. Link muttered something about shards, but still did not wake up.

Ganon had always hated fairies: in fact, he had every intention to eventually hunt them down and destroy the whole lot of them, and the sooner the better. How often had he thought that he had won, that he had outlasted the Hero in one of their battles, just to see a little winged, pink, glowing pest fly circles around his fallen nemesis until he jumped back to his feet, as good as new? He had tried to stop it, or at the very least to have his sword on the Hero's throat, ready to kill him again as soon as the fairy's work was done. However, the blasted things, in addition to healing the boy, always created some kind of barrier that kept him safe while they worked and for a few seconds afterward.

This time, however, the familiar sight of the fairy healing the boy gave him more joy than he had felt in a long time. This time was, after all, completely different: the Hero did not stand a chance, and was nothing more than a toy at his mercy. The sight of the fairy did not mean that the Hero was fresh again while Ganon was still worn out from the battle: it merely meant the Hero was ready for more punishment.

Ganon waited until the fairy disappeared. Link's eyes flew open and he got up. Once again, he tried to get to the shards of the Master Sword, completely unaware that even if he did manage to get one, it would do him no good whatsoever: without the silver or light arrows to weaken him, even the Master Sword could not harm Ganon's flesh.

Link was grinning. Dying and coming back had felt really, really weird, but it had been worth it: Ganon was not moving, just standing there, stunned by his recovery. Obviously, the monster hadn't expected him to come back to life. He darted to the side, intent on going around Ganon and recuperating a shard from the Master Sword. Then, he'd jump and stab Ganon with it, right in the chest if he could jump high enough.

He was stopped by a kick in his chest, which winded him and sent him to the floor on his back. Before he could get up, he felt Ganon's boot on his chest again, holding him against the floor.

"No fair!" Link yelled. "Let me up, you... you pig!"

Ganon laughed and, without moving his foot, shot a fireball at the boy's left arm, igniting it. Ganon did not move his foot: he was immune to fire and keeping the boy unable to put out the small, but spreading fire would be so much more satisfying than burning him in one second with a more powerful spell.

The boy screamed and squirmed, and tried to blow on his shoulder to put it out. Ganon laughed, ecstatic. The fire spread, and the boy started trying to move Ganon's foot with his remaining good arm. Ganon lifted his foot a bit under the weak push before pushing it back down, teasing his enemy. The boy might have moaned, it was hard to tell with all the screaming he was doing. The fire eventually spread to the neck and Ganon suddenly realized that it would be over too soon. He stopped the fire with a wave of his hand and started a new one on the boy's leg.

Ganon kept laughing even when the screams finally died. The boy's second fairy set to work right away, and Ganon was pushed away. He stumbled and fell, but could not stop laughing. He got up and waited for the child to live again.

Zelda had to let go of Link: his body was suddenly scorching hot, as if he were taken by the worse fever in history. His right hand was clasping at the air right above his chest and pushing up, as if he had a weight there. She unhooked her water pouch from her belt and poured it on his face, but there was hardly any water left: they had both been sipping at it a lot since the morning, especially on the walk here. It evaporated almost as soon as it touched him. Zelda started crying, panic settling in. At this rate, reliving this battle wouldn't scare Link, it would kill him. She started shaking and slapping him again, ignoring the pain in her hands, dimly wondering if Link was hot enough for her skin to blister.

Link's temperature finally went back to normal after a few minutes, and other than the fact he could still not wake up, he looked no worse for the wear.

Link got back up to his feet and immediately backed a few steps away from Ganon. He did not care to be burnt again: he had thought the black lightning was painful... this had been much, much worse. He glanced at the shards of the Master Sword: Ganon was still standing in front of them, and the pig was laughing his head off.

Link clenched his jaw and started running around Ganon, trying to circle him to get to the shards and hoping the monster would keep laughing and not notice him.

It didn't work. Ganon heard Link running, stopped laughing and unsheathed his sword. Link saw the blade from out of the corner of his eyes and stumbled, his legs momentarily forgetting to keep running: the sword was quite a bit bigger than he was. He got back up, facing Ganon, and tried to think of a spell that might help. He concentrated and chanted Nayru's name, causing a blue shield to form around him. Ganon, with the hand that was not holding his sword, threw a ball of magic at him, and although the attack did not reach him, the shield collapsed, leaving Link defenceless. Link tried to cast the spell again, but Ganon was on him before he had a chance.

Ganon aimed for Link's left hand, and slashed most of it off, leaving only part of the thumb and the palm. Link screamed, and stared at his hand, in shock. Ganon seized the opportunity to slash at the other hand, severing that one at the wrist. Link screamed, brought back to reality by the new injury. With what was left of his left hand, he tried to grasp his remaining bottle of potion, with no success: he was trying to squeeze it between his thumb and his palm, but he couldn't get a decent angle and his hand was so numb he couldn't feel whether he was even touching the bottle or not.

Ganon grinned broadly. He debated the relative merits of letting Link bleed to death from these two wounds or of giving him a few more. On one hand, letting him bleed would keep him alive, and suffering, a bit longer, but on the other hand, he wouldn't last long anyway and it was always fun to inflict injuries to his enemy.

He slashed at the boy, getting as many hits in as he could. The boy was running away, and Ganon realised with a mixture of amusement and irritation that the Hero was still trying to get the sword shards. Ganon wished Link would stop running: it's not that it was difficult to keep up, but the motion and the fact his heart was beating harder from the effort was accelerating the flow of blood. Sure enough, Link collapsed in less than a minute, falling face down.

Link tried to turn on his back, but he had no energy left. He tried to get at his potion again, but he couldn't even move his arms. He was very sleepy, and although he knew he had to stay awake, he simply couldn't. He drifted off.

Ganon sighed in disappointment as Link's third fairy appeared and started circling around the small body: that had been too fast. The cuts disappeared, and the Hero's hands where made whole again. Ganon glanced at where the boy's previous hands had fallen, curious as to whether or not they would still be there: they were not.

Zelda's eyes widened and she stopped shaking Link when the scars appeared on his hands: the one on his left hand cut across the middle of his palm; the one on his right hand was actually more on his wrist and went around it. She examined his left hand and found that the scar on that side, like the one on his right wrist, went all the way around. More scars appeared on his arms and his face, and, she suspected, under his clothes. Zelda stared at Link, trying to think of a way to wake him up other than those she had already tried, and coming up with nothing. After a couple of minutes, the scars disappeared. She resumed her attempts at waking him up, now yelling at him as well, no longer caring that she might be overheard.

Ganon put his sword back in its sheath, determined for the fun to last longer this time. Link was up, circling around him and staring at what was left of the Master Sword. Ganon gestured for him to come closer, but Link backed away a step instead. Ganon teleported next to him, causing him to stumble and fall in surprise.

Link scrambled back to his feet and darted for the Master Sword, seizing the opportunity Ganon had just given him by moving away from the shards. Ganon teleported again, this time reappearing between Link and the sword. He was laughing. Link tried to pass between his legs, but he closed them, painfully trapping him.

Ganon bent down and grabbed him by the hair, lifting him to his eye level before throwing him away. Link landed badly and hurt his right arm. Before he could really get up, Ganon was on him.

Ganon worked hard to resist the urge to just rip Link's head off his body, or to do anything else that would kill his toy instantly: he limited himself to kicks, punches and shoves, all of which too close together to give Link a chance to reach for his remaining potion: each time he tried, Ganon kicked his arm away from his body, or otherwise stopped him. Eventually, Ganon tired of the boy's attempts: he seized Link's hands in his and crushed them. His enemy's scream was like sweet music, and Ganon was overwhelmed by the desire for more of it. He gave up on the relatively soft blows that were only getting grunts and yelps, and started putting a bit more strength into each blow.

He found the result satisfactorily loud. Most of the blows were now breaking something, and each of them generated tears and cries from the boy, who was now just trying to get away, without any success. Ganon was trying to aim for the limbs, but missed a few times, hitting Link's chest or abdomen. After a few of those misses, the boy started coughing up blood.

Ganon knew that this meant the end was near, and he knew that he should relax his attack if he wanted the boy to last. Knowing changed nothing, though. As it had when he had cut the boy's hands, the smell of blood drove all rational thoughts from his mind and Ganon picked the boy up by his feet. He started swinging him in circles, fast enough for the Hero's body to be horizontal, and he released him as he was pointing to one of the nearest walls. Link's head crashed into the wall and burst opened.

It was all Zelda could do not to run for help when blood started flowing out of Link's ears and nose. She redoubled her efforts to wake him, more afraid than ever that this revival of his last battle would kill him. Nothing she could do had the slightest effect, but at least, the bleeding quickly stopped.

The boy's last fairy started circling him as he slipped to the ground. Everything that had been left on the wall when his head had impacted it disappeared and Link got to his feet and immediately tried to back away from Ganon, only to find himself with his back to the wall.

Link knew this was his last chance, and although it was a shock to realize it, he was very, very afraid. He didn't want to die again, and he didn't want to stay dead. He didn't want to hurt anymore, either. Most of all, he didn't want Ganon to win. He had to kill the monster, so he had to get a shard. He thought he'd tried to trick Ganon away from the shards and then run for them. He'd get Ganon just as he was jumping on him to get the shards back.

He was trying to think of a way to trick Ganon, and wondering why the Monster was just looking at him and doing nothing, when Ganon waved his hand and all the lights went out.

Ganon smiled in the darkness. He looked as the boy looked frantically around, his eyes wide but unseeing. He had thought carefully on what to do with the boy's last life, while enjoying looking at the Hero with his back against the wall, looking scared and desperate, and he liked what he had come up with. The darkness was the first step: the boy was blind, although Ganon could see just as well, if not better, than in full daylight. The darkness spell was draining him, but it wasn't as though he needed much strength to finish the boy off.

He conjured the keeses as the second step: hundreds of them, and they all went for Link. Ganon leaned back against a wall and enjoyed the show.

Link cried out when he felt something biting him and tried to bat at it, but his arm was stopped by something floating in the air in front of him. The something bit his arm and Link cried out again. Those two bites were followed by several more, along with scratches, all within a few seconds. Link started flinging his arms around and running blindly. The bites and scratches followed him wherever he went, and although he managed to hit several of the things attacking him, it didn't make any noticeable difference in their number.

Ganon watched, and had to admit he was only mildly amused. The keeses formed a cloud around Link, and he could only catch glimpses of his nemesis. He ordered two thirds of the keeses away, and got a better view. He grinned: just as he cleared up some of the keeses, one of the remaining ones clawed at the boy's right eye and punctured it. Link fell to his knees, clutching his eye and crying in pain. The keeses kept attacking, and the boy started feeling for his remaining potion. Ganon made the remaining keeses disappear and lit up the room again. Link got his bottle out and uncorked it.

"Are you certain you want to do that?" Ganon asked. "Think about it. You DO realize you don't stand a chance, don't you?"

Link stopped, confused, and looked back and forth from the bottle to Ganon. He didn't understand what Ganon meant: he had a better chance with the potion than without, he knew that much.

"Let me spell it out for you, 'hero'. You are near death. None of your injuries are serious, except for your eye, but you have hundreds of them. You have lost a lot of blood, and the keeses possess weak venom. That venom would barely make you a bit queasy if you had received one dose, but you must have been bitten a hundred times at least. If you do not drink that potion, all the pain will go away in a few minutes. This fight will be done."

Link frowned.

"Only because I'll be dead!" He yelled at Ganon.

He brought the potion to his mouth and drank it. Ganon sighed. He had hoped to tempt the hero into choosing the easy way out: he had hoped he had not only defeated this child, but also the Hero's courage. He didn't know which was more disappointing: the fact that Link had drunk the potion, or the fact that he hadn't even understood why it would be wiser not to.

After the bleeding from his ears and nose, the tiny cuts appearing everywhere were almost a relief at first. They kept appearing, however, until not an inch of skin was bare. Zelda forced herself to stay calm, even when blood started pouring out from under Link's closed right eyelid. She waited it out, gently stroking Link's hair, hoping it would help soothe Link. The cuts disappeared after a few minutes, and Link's eye stopped bleeding. She kept stroking, and started whispering reassuring words.

The once again intact Hero was trying to get at the useless shards again. Ganon was about to stop him but decided otherwise.

Link let out a cry of triumph when his hand closed on the handle of the Master sword, to which a bit of sharp metal was still attached. He whirled around to face Ganon, a big grin on his face. His grin changed into a puzzled expression when he saw that Ganon was also grinning, a cruel smile that looked a lot like a snarl. Link shook off the confusion and charged at the pig, holding what was left of the Master Sword in his left hand, high above his head, like a knife.

Ganon did nothing to stop him, and Link jumped and managed to stab him as high as in the lower abdomen. The sword rebounded strongly, as if repelled. The rebound made Link fall on his back. Ganon laughed harder than he had yet.

Link stayed on the floor, in shock, looking back and forth between Ganon and the piece of the Sword of Evil's bane.

"What's the matter, boy?" Ganon asked in mocked concern, laugher in every syllable. "Oh, don't tell me... you didn't know the Master Sword cannot harm my body?"

Link's eyes widened even more. He uttered an interrogative sound, which Ganon answered with renewed laughter before he managed to calm down enough to talk.

"That's right, 'Hero'. The Sword of Evil's bane cannot hurt me. Dear, dear. So much for your only hope, hmm?"

Ganon burst out laughing again.

Link got up and walked slowly towards him, still in shock. He tried to stab his leg with the piece of sword half heartedly, and the blade, once again, rebounded on the monster's skin. Link dropped it and fell to his knees, his eyes vacant. Tears started dripping from them. Ganon thought he had never, and would never again, feel such pleasure.

He picked up the boy by the throat with his left hand. Link didn't react. Ganon slammed him against the nearest wall, still holding him by the throat. Link flinched a bit, but didn't make a move to try to escape. Ganon was grinning in triumph and in pure joy. He unsheathed his sword with his free hand and drove it through the hero's middle section and into the wall, pinning Link to the wall. The boy was so small that the sword width extended from just below his neck to below his waist.

Link gasped, shuddered, and sagged, lifeless. Ganon took out his sword and the hero's body fell to the floor in a heap. Ganon grinned at it.

"And now, let's make sure you STAY out of my way." He said.

The numerous little cuts had barely healed when the front of Link's tunic suddenly stained with blood. Zelda's eyes widened and she was about to tear the tunic open to survey the damages when the blood evaporated and Link jerked awake.