Part I: Power

--

Waking was like being born. I did not know what it felt like when I woke that first time. The sensation of being awake seemed new to me in a way I could not explain. It should have felt mundane, I knew. I knew I had experienced it hundreds of times before. But I could not directly recall those times, and so I accepted it as a new experience. As I woke, I became aware that I was not a sleeping thing, but a man. And I had a body. And that the body rested in a very uncomfortable bed, or so I felt. There was that feeling of rough sheets, of clean cloth, and the smell of a sharp, sweet musk. Was that my scent?

I pulled up sharply in the bed and then made to stand, only to bash my head against the low roof. I was in a very small house made of a massive hollowed-out oak. Light streamed in through a whittled-clear knothole window and onto my face. It was warm, and I decided I liked the feeling of the sun. I did not know how I knew that the light was sunlight, but I accepted it. What I had thought was one bed was in fact several small beds pushed together: my body was much bigger than the room was meant for. From head to feet, I filled it almost clearly from one wall to the other side. Armor lay in a heap in the corner-- my armor. Mine. I had things; that sword and the armor were some of my things.

Having things was satisfying. Being able to call them mine-- my armor, my sword...

"Oh! Please! Don't try to get up! We don't know what's wrong with you yet."

A voice, very young. A girl, with words light like... a songbird, yes. I had heard songbirds before, but they were not native in my mind. I turned to look. It was a tiny girl, hardly older than eleven or twelve. She wore sensible clothes dyed with plant juices and her hair was just as emerald as her pretty eyes.

What was my age, then?

Twenty-eight. Yes, twenty-eight years. Not yet old, even. Funny, I could not recall exactly what I had done for such a long time.

"Who are you?" I asked. Was that my voice? I coughed-- it sounded raspy, and so I tried again. "What is this place?" That was much better: smoother, less jagged. I had a very deep, full voice, and that was good. Powerful. I liked it.

It startled her. Perhaps I had been too loud.

"Forgive me," I tried to reassure her. "I did not mean to frighten you. Please, tell me who you are."

Please. The word felt unfamiliar in my mouth and alien to my tongue, as if I did not say it often. I wondered what that meant as I wrapped my lips around the syllable, trying to liken it to myself. It had an interesting taste that felt weak, soft. Too weak for my liking, but the flavor was sweet.

"I'm Saria," she said shyly, setting a water jug down by the tiny table that had been pushed into the opposite corner. It took two hands for her to carry it at all.

"That is quite a pretty name," I admitted, though I couldn't for the life of me understand why admitting that felt so strange to me. "My name is..."

I could feel my face frown. "Is..."

I could not remember my name. It was not completely gone from my mind, not as if it had evaporated. I groped for it, but it simply danced out of my grasp: just out of reach, somewhere I couldn't touch. I was important, a great and powerful man, I knew. Only, why? Who was I?

"I can't recall," I said. It frustrated me, and I could feel anger. I should have known! My name was important! It was on the tip of my tongue, I could feel it, but every time it recoiled away from retrieval.

"Don't make that mad face, mister. It makes you look scary," Saria said to me. "Really, it's okay. You'll just have to figure it out. It can't be too hard, can it?"

I doubted it, but the wisdom in her words was obvious. There was no point in becoming upset about things I could not change. She was right. If I could not remember my name, I would have to do without for the time being. No matter who I happened to be, I was myself. That was good enough for the moment.

"May I get up, Saria? This is uncomfortable."

"Sorry," she apologized. "We don't have any beds big enough for you... okay, I guess you can sit up."

She fetched a seat from the mess of things by the far wall and sat with me. I had to hunch over in the tight room, but the knot in my back slowly began to relax. "I thank you for your hospitality, little one," I said, for she truly was very small in my eyes. "Where am I?"

"You're in our village," she explained. I was mesmerized with the russet fairy that had taken flight from underneath her hair. "We're the kokiri, and we live in the forest with the Great Deku Tree..."

Her words trailed off, warbling until they faded away entirely. And she looked... sad. Immediately, my own thoughts confused me. A very large part of me did not care in the least how she felt or if she frowned. But there was a new part... I cannot explain it. As if I was budding a fresh branch, there was life thriving in me, young and full of vitality. Something sown in me had germinated, like my insides were a plant and I had turned to face the sun. This green, growing part of me, it did think of frowns and cares.

"What?" I asked, careful to master my own voice. "What troubles you?"

"The Deku Tree. He's... dead," she said. I could tell she was losing control of her emotions. "The Deku Tree died..."

"I'm sorry."

I said it far too quickly for a man who barely knew what this Deku Tree was. Did I mean it? The oldest part of me did not, callous and cruel. The new part did not know what had happened at all. But in the bottom of me, for some reason, I was sorry. Guilty.

I didn't understand at the time. The idea of being sorry for anything was so foreign I didn't know what it even felt like until that moment. And the idea of apologizing was even more outlandish, even so much as to monetarily anger me. My core had forced the words up through my lips before I had even thought to restrain them. They were like a released breath.

When my thoughts returned to the waking world, Saria was crying. I didn't know what to think of the sound. The dichotomy raged in me, apathy predominant. But I knew an urge: strange and powerfully compelling. Magnetic. I did not even know what I was doing. My arms moved clumsily without me, had reached out; in an instant she was against my breast and she did not scream or struggle. She only wept and seized my doublet to sob into it.

"The Deku Tree was a father to me," she whispered. "To all of my friends."

Father. The word struck me very suddenly. For a moment I thought I remembered but then it was all gone again. But that word...?

Was I a father?

Yes. That was part of who I was. Somewhere, somewhere in the world, my daughters were waiting for me. And my sisters-- I had those, too.

I could almost scream, for that was all I was able to remember for the moment. Instead, I just grasped the young girl closer and held her there. The act was almost spiritual, indulging some visceral part of my design: deeply masculine. She was so small. It did not matter if she was not mine. She had lost her own, and the remnants of my base nature ached to express themselves. I was a father. That was who I was.

"Thank you, mister," she said to me. "I don't know what's the matter with me... I shouldn't be such a baby..."

I let her go, somehow intensely satisfied except for the huge apathetic blight in me, which was merely disgusted. She wiped the tears away, mumbling apologies and sniffling until she could speak surely again.

"We found you lying there by his roots," she said quietly. "He had been dead all night. Do you remember..."

I couldn't. "No."

"Oh." She fidgeted. "Okay then. Well, how do you feel?"

I thought.

"Well," I said. "Odd. But very well."

I couldn't remember what I was comparing myself to, but what I said felt very true. The more I thought, the better I felt. A weight had been removed from my shoulders. I breathed easily, my chest swelled with air, I felt it to be deep. Blood ran like fire-oil through me, my pulse drummed steady and slow. And I had strong flesh, all wire and muscle. I realized just what sort of body I had. If I wanted to I could have cracked a hole in the wall effortlessly. And the green, fresh bud in my soul only channeled life.

Saria smiled. "That's good! You were asleep for a long time. We were worried you were really hurt," she said. "When you get hungry, you can go outside and ask somebody to find me. I'm going to tell everybody the good news."

I did not tell her that I also felt hollow, in a way. As if I was only half-there, although the remaining parts of me were working surely to patch the gaping rent and that I was quickly feeling less so. My mind was oddly empty, with only a dull ache left where a massive something used to be. I cannot decide if it felt like a hole had been blown in my breast with blasting-powder, or if a cancer had been forcibly sliced out of me. It was fascinating how quickly the soul works, though. Rapid-fire thoughts filled the void, echoing across blank space, and I could feel the pressure of new growth pushing against the edges of the hollow, roots snaking across and bridging some bizarre spiritual gap. Growing in it, filling it, quickly building me whole again.

I can hardly describe it, so I will not attempt to any longer. Saria got up from where she sat cross-legged on the floor, and gathered a small bag as if she expected to forage herbs or retrieve trapped game.

"Who is everybody?" I asked.

"All of my friends, the kokiri," she said. "We all carried you to my house."

"Oh. Thank you."

"There's a mirror I found on the wall over there, and there's water if you need a drink. When you're up to it, I can introduce you to everybody."

She opened the sheet that was the door and left, leaving me alone. Slowly, I got up from the bed, waiting for any sudden pain or ache from a wound. There was none, which was strange because I distinctly could recall a sharp puncture in my back not long ago. And a transcendental experience, a passing of strength, from something else into me-- an ancient presence reaving my own, injecting something like a wasp's poison sting. Only not poison, something wooly and soothing that enriched... and then as if I had sheared apart under stress or exploded from pressure.

I came back to bear and found I could not remember what had happened at all. I had to stoop low to move in the very small house, but I managed well enough to maneuver over to the wall with the big jagged shard of plate mirror.

Because I knew mirrors reflected only what they saw, the face I met was surely my own. I reached and felt the shape, the line of the jaw. Not bad. My skin was sun-dark and smooth, and I wore a diadem on my brow. My hair was thick and very red, but had receded prematurely. Curiously, there were places where it was beginning to creep forward again.

Hm. I had a rather large nose. There was no accounting for small flaws, I supposed.

My eyes were very sharp and yellow like an eagle's. I made an ugly face and found it to be quite terrible. Several minutes passed as I stood in front of the mirror, trying different faces one after another. I could not find one I liked.

Stooping down was giving me a massive crick in my spine. I had to stand up straight, which meant going outside. I made to leave, but stopped.

I felt naked. My sword. I needed my sword. I took it from where it leaned against the wall and belted it on. The weight comforted me. I was a warrior, I learned. The sword was one of my greatest strengths.

I left my armor behind. Surely, I did not need it amongst children.

–

I had been wrong.

The kokiri children had been thrown into a panic; monsters appeared within their borders, driving all but the bravest to the safety of their homes. The monsters should not have been attacking me. I knew that without knowing why. Their feeble efforts were easy to ignore, however-- I did not have to draw my sword at all to simply scare them away from the fleeing children.

I searched house after house for Saria. No luck. She was gone.

This was how I met Link.

Standing at my full height, I knew how much bigger I was compared to the kokiri children. Link barely reached my waist. He was a hardy lad, with determined blue eyes and yellow hair stuffed into a cap. For protection he carried a wooden shield and a bright silver shortsword that was only a dagger to me. If he had not been so serious about playing soldier I would have mocked him. But as it was he cared only to keep safe his best and only friend. He traveled with a bright white fairy that he said had been given to him the night before the Deku Tree died. If it was true or not, the fairy did not speak to me. He shot down keese with a slingshot-- at the very least, he was brave for a lad and had ingenuity on his side.

I had no sons, but I decided he was tolerable. Perhaps likeable.

"Saria went to the forest temple to calm the spirits," he said to me. "I've got to help her-- she has all these magic tricks but she's not any good against monsters. She needs a sword; she'll be hurt if she's all alone."

He sounded unnaturally mature to me. It was in a way refreshing; for some reason all I could recall of most other people I had known in my lifetime was that many of them were fools.

We were stopped by one such little idiot by the name of Mido. He accused me of murder and attempted to stand in my way, to deny me entrance to the Lost Woods. I was completely prepared to sweep him aside, but to my surprise Link defended me as a friend of Saria.

That touched me. It was amusing to see someone else kick the idiot in the shins for me.

Finally, after following the boy through a labyrinth of trees, we entered the Sacred Grove. I should not have been so surprised at Link's prowess: more formidable than most grown men. There were no adults among the kokiri, thus the responsibility for the tribe's safety fell upon children. In a sense, that was distinctly disturbing.

"Saria!"

Saria did hear him; she stood on the top of the broken stairs resolutely, just about to turn inside to enter. She snapped about to look at Link and at me and she smiled, waved to us in relief.

I yelled at her, tried to warn her of the shadow behind her in the door. Link shouted as well. But it was too late. Phantom limbs snatched her and sucked her, screaming, inside. The temple looked hungry and she was the prey.

My heart seized up like it had been myself that had been taken; the blood rushed through my ears with a deafening sound. Strong instincts burned in my limbs: an overpowering paternal response written into me. "Quickly!" I heard myself boom and I tossed the boy, for he had no way to climb the broken stairs. He landed, shouting, but safely and vanished after his friend in an instant.

I grasped something reflexively, complex patterns and figures exploding behind my eyelids as my mind sped to harness them. I didn't know what spell I cast, only that it was so practiced that I channeled it automatically. I did not blink, but I was on the ledge even though I hadn't moved a step.

I was a master of magic.

The wide-open doors were no obstacle for me. I blew through them and entered the main foyer without a second thought. Link was there, stabbing his short blade again and again into a black mass-- his tenacity was amazing, but I hardly thought of it.

Saria was struggling against the dark flames, wildly clinging to a balcony. There was a great vortex, a mass of crushing consumption that threatened to pull her in.

I would have none of it. I blasted it with my own intuitive magic (practice or brilliance, I could not say at the time) and it let go of Saria, but not in pain. In surprise, I felt. The scene was a blur to me- I caught her, held her, and placed her out of the way by the boy.

"Defend her," I said. And I drew my sword for the first time that day.

The weight of it in my hand was intimate, whispering of memories and long hours with it by my side. My muscles knew the blade well, my limbs knew the movement. Combined with the desperate protective drive and a strong lust for revenge, the appeal of battle was intoxicating. Nothing would have pleased me more than the sound of bones cracking, the high pitch of a death scream, to feel the resistance of my blade through the flesh it shred apart.

I met none of these as I swung, but a sick oily clamminess like trickling sour sweat and slimy decay.

Worst of all, it felt like me. As it slithered formlessly, I could feel that it fit into the hollow in my heart, the empty void in my mind. Well, not entirely. The edges had shrank and changed shape as I felt myself repair, rework, and it no longer could compress itself into the space anymore.

"What is your business here?!" I demanded of it. "What are you?!"

To my complete horror, it spoke. Not in a voice, nothing so organized as words-- merely scattered thoughts, a direct contact with my mind that felt as if it was not separate from me at all. If it had a voice, the voice would have been my own.

I am me the you that is this hatred spread by a curse and forced out by a blessing the you that must exist and does exist an aspect of the whole separate but the same you the inner you from your black soul the monster you will become your madness one day you will be consumed with the beast that you truly are in this lifetime in all lifetimes the echo of your fate changed I am the you that you avoided your destiny disturbed and yet still I must exist for it is fate the cycle begins now you must start it even if I must not be you to do so

Memory stung my inner eye. It (I?) did not speak of evil exactly, but of might and want and dominance and everything that was sinister when viewed at a distance. I was... an evil man?

The bloodthirst made sense. The startling apathy for the well-being of others. The streak of pleasure at dark thoughts, the hungry satisfaction in owning, in having, in mine.

I struck at it (me?) again and again. No, I protested. In the short experience I had tasted thus far in oblivion, I could not have been so terrible. It had not yet been a full day, and I did not wish to lose the peace I felt. For the first time in an eternity I felt truly free, felt clean. I was a father, I did feel deeply, and in my life I had taken the time to master the arts of war and sorcery not entirely for vicious ends. I knew unfamiliar guilt-- if this grossness was all I was, remorse should not have been possible.

The tree, I remembered. I was recalling quickly. The tree infected me with... cursed me as I cursed it, no, not cursed. I blighted it... it did the opposite to me, and made me forget pain. As I fought I could feel memories in my head speeding, connecting, bursting into constellations of thought. Clarity was returning to me profoundly. The new growth in my soul was a direct action of the tree. It had done... something. It had taken its remaining goodness, the wholesomeness it yet harbored, and had given it to me freely. Sowed me with what grace it had left in death.

If I had wanted to reject it, it was too late to wither it. The once-vestigial sprouting had exploded into overgrowth, burgeoned forth: prolific and unstoppable. It was a part of me now. This final gift of valor and compassion had driven this sinister black presence out of me. In return for my curse, the tree had changed my fate. My actions, my motivations and my compulsions, had been altered.

And, strangely, I did not feel manipulated. But again, that crushing ruefulness that I so hated. I hated it. I hated me.

For I was the murderer of the Deku Tree. Saria's tears flashed through my mind and the reason for my guilt became plain to me. And I found there was a murderous rage that still dwelt in my soul. It filled my sword and I thrust it deep into the snarl that was me.

Because I remembered everything, my life spiraling before my eyes in reverse. Of course there was hate in me. My people suffered and I had become so desperate as to seek the King's favor in wake of the unifying war. I had fallen out of approval with my own people; although they still obeyed me my cruelty insulted their honor as noble thieves. I knew of the Triforce, the blessing of Hyrule that I could not touch. And I craved it; wanted it for my own. Ever desiring more. My people were only an excuse. It was not out of need I sought power. It was pure, unrefined lust. The Triforce was irresistible.

This...thing was but a manifestation of the lengths I would go to seize it-- the depths of atrocity that lay dormant inside me, waiting for a time to wake and consume me. And I found I no longer had an appetite for such dishonor, such foulness.

My name was-- is Ganondorf. And I would have ruled the world.

It did shriek this time, but in amusement. My blow barely scratched it, though it recoiled.

I am irredeemable yet I persist I must take it it should be mine it will be mine this world will be mine and if this host no longer serves me I will find another, it said. And the dark smoke it was-I was--- rose into the air, seeped through the cracks and was gone.

Loosed upon the world. I was free to wreak havoc as I pleased. It should not have terrified me as much as it did. I did not like losing control. I never have liked to lose control. And what this was... it was a vital loss of control. I could no longer control myself. This part of me that was free was, dubbed by the regrowth in my heart, evil.

No longer was it serving purpose. No longer did it care for my people, even if only in name as an excuse. It did not wish to give my Gerudo what prosperity they deserved. It simply desired. Wanted. Hungered.

I decided I would not let myself do this.

"A... amazing."

Saria was speaking behind me.

"That was... wow! You're really strong!"

Considering I had been the one to take her father away, the words were hardly as sweet as they could have been. It was only when I went to sheathe my sword did I realize that in my hands I held something else.

A stone, mounted in lustrous gold. It sparkled green in the dim light-- the Forest's Emerald. The presence, the me, had curled around it and had been using it to corrupt the forest. It had been ripped from the Deku Tree. One of the keys to the Sacred Realm, entrusted to the greatest guardian of living things. I needed it to reach the Triforce.

I could feel the thirst for the golden power rise within me. But I recognized it now, and pushed it away with all of my mental strength. I would not let the demon-shade claim what was rightfully mine. Acting with greed and selfishness would only play into its (my own?) hands.

"Boy! You must take this!" I ordered, giving the stone to him. "Listen closely. Both of you. This is very important."

Link, the youth, accepted it in confusion. "You remember, don't you?"

"Yes," I said. "You must pay attention now. Forget nothing. I am Ganondorf, and I am the King of the Gerudo."

And I told him of the darkness, how it had slain the Deku Tree, and how it had been born from my anger and how it once had seized me as its host. That way, Saria did needed not resent me: she could resent the interloping shadow instead. I ordered Link to take the sacred stone to the castle to the north, where he would meet me again to further act. I would have taken it myself, I told him, but the spirit once had been me and could predict my path and actions to the letter. It did not know his mind in the way it knew mine.

Saria, I ordered, would stay and care for the forest. The Deku Tree was gone and the kokiri needed a competent leader in the stead of that Mido idiot, and a good healer besides. I suggested she take up marksmanship or stave-work, for the world would become unsafe for practically everyone very quickly, if I knew myself.

Link refuted me and told me that outside the forest kokiri would die. I told him that the Deku Tree's blessing of immortality was gone anyways and that he was a special case.

I hadn't the mind to tell him he was not a kokiri. It was obvious to everybody but himself. Perhaps he also knew, but denied it. It would have been too much for him, too quickly. I was placing my faith in children as it was. There was no sense in over-complicating a simple plan.

I would have to counsel the King of Hyrule as soon as I could. Within two days. Time was wasting, and once I saw that Link understood and was resolute, and that Saria was sure of her part to play, I departed.

In less than a minute, I was outside the forest and off to the castle as fast as my horse could take me. My people were safe for the moment. The me-fiend was not interested in them; it was only interested in the Golden Power and would stay close to it until the Sacred Realm could finally be reached. It was no living being-- the barriers and keys to keep mortals away would do little to deter it once it could pass from host to host. All I could hope was to somehow stall it while gathering the keys myself, reach the Triforce before it did.

I don't know when it first came to be. There was a time where I could recall an original peace in my heart, instead of this troubled resurrected one. The Fierce War changed that, so perhaps Hyrule's own unification started it in me. I had been even younger then, and the conflict was not deemed 'fierce' without reason. But for all of the decay rent from me my mind was, and is, still the tactical mastermind of the Fierce War. Shame that I would have to foil myself, after all the forces I faced already in my still-young life.

However it had been born, I decided that the perversion was not me-- I was me. I was Ganondorf. And while I had once been one with it, committed terrible crimes I could not undo, I could yet repair things even if a little. Warn the Gorons against an entity bearing my face (though too late) and lend Gerudo aid to the dodongo infestation. Usher the Zora to exercise caution and to be wary of the infection in their river god. I could not retake any of the curses I had placed, but I could clear the way for one who could.

Link was an extraordinary boy, I realized. I wondered if I had known him before but of course I did not. What mattered was the air of destiny about him. Surely the tree had given him the fairy companion because it had seen the future, as it had told me. His presence in the forest when he was no kokiri could not be coincidence. And if the tree had faith in the boy's power to break my curses then I would abide by the final wish.

For when all was said and done all that mattered was that he would follow my lead. I was leading children, but I had their faith. And I had started this mess, so I had ought to finish it.

Because although I could remember every scheme I had made, every burning ambition in me, I was a new man. Those ambitions had not died but simply reversed, the drive trained in a new direction by the tree's final strategy. I could feel my transformation deepening by the moment. The Deku Tree had sacrificed both of our lives to change fate-- He had not succeeded, for he did not kill the old me. It lived on both within my heart as a memory and as the shaping of my mind, and in the black madness I had released. But perhaps I could triumph in altering destiny where the wood-guardian had not.

Hooves clattered upon the long road before me. Everything was going to change in Hyrule. And soon.