Chapter 21: Aftermath
How she sits alone,
the city once crowded with people!
She who was great among the nations
has become like a widow.
~Lamentations 1:1
By unspoken consent, Link and Navi left the Temple of Time without discussing what they had learned. That would come later. Something in Sheik's words—or in Rauru's tone of voice, perhaps—had struck them both with a sense of urgency. They had to get out of there to find out what had happened for themselves.
"Oh…" Link stopped before he reached the town square, unable to go further without absorbing the sight before him.
The ruins of Hyrule Castle Town spread for miles. Bricks, beams, and the burned-out frames of buildings made up the greater part of it. Scorch marks, broken swords and arrows, and even streaks of blood gave evidence of what had passed before the city fell.
Ganondorf. Link bowed his head, mourning the death of thousands. Why? What threat did these people pose to you?
"Captain."
Arswaine turned to the Knight beside him. "What is it?"
"Permission to fire, sir."
Arswaine shook his head. "It is what they expect."
The Gerudo army had come to a halt less than a hundred meters from the city. Some had drawn their swords, but most remained unarmed. The stalemate had already lasted an hour, and now the bravery of the Knights of Hyrule began to give way to impatience. It was said the King had been felled by Ganondorf himself, and that was enough to kindle old fears and hatreds.
Muttered curses rippled along the battlements when Ganon himself finally appeared at the head of his army. Arswaine waved the archers back, but the men moved reluctantly, their desire for vengeance clearly stronger than their good sense.
From the plain below the city, Ganondorf Dragmire smiled and raised his voice so that all could hear. "Men of Hyrule. You believe your King is dead. This was never true. A traitor lies in his own blood, slain for pretending to the crown. Your true King has come to accept his throne and your allegiance!"
This created some confusion, but only for a moment. When Ganondorf raised the golden crown of Hyrule—still crusted with the King's blood—to his own head, the murmur on the walls became a roar.
"Stand down!" Arswaine shouted over the twang of bowstrings, but the men had already lost control.
Arrows rained down by the hundreds, all aimed at a single target. Any one of those shafts might have torn a lung, pierced a chamber in the heart, or nailed Ganondorf's windpipe to his spine, but any shaft that came close simply vanished as if it had never existed. In a single fit of passion, the Knights had spent a third of their supply of arrows, making their defeat that much more inevitable.
Once more, Ganondorf smiled. Beckoning for his mount, he climbed into the saddle and raised the back of his hand towards the drawbridge. His skin began to glow with a strange gold light.
Arswaine was almost certain he could make out a familiar shape in that light, the shape of a sacred relic whose image the Knights bore on their shields: the Triforce. Indeed, the three triangles appeared to be embedded in Ganondorf's hand.
Yet before any could wonder at the miracle of this newfound power, another light sprang from Ganondorf's body, snapping the drawbridge in two large pieces that collapsed in the moat.
The black horse reared and charged the gate, leaping over the moat beneath the gaze of the Knights and into the unwary city, where the evening rush at market had just begun to wind down.
Time crept by as Link tearfully explored the ruins of Hyrule Castle Town seven years later. The ghosts of the dead assailed him at every corner. Though they never appeared visibly or spoke in a literal voice, their memory remained as true as the long-gone reality.
He longed to return to the past, to fight beside the Knights of Hyrule in defense of the innocent whose blood still colored the silent streets. But nothing could change what had passed here. Going back would only endanger his life and betray what he and Zelda had fought for.
"Navi?"
The fairy moved in closer, her tiny body glowing amidst the wreckage, defying the gloom.
"I know I should have said this a long time ago." He turned his head away to hide the expression on his face. "I don't know how or why the Great Deku Tree chose you as my partner, but I'm glad you're here with me."
"Thanks, Link."
"You're the only real comfort I have," he said.
The little girl held her father's hand as he moved through the crowded market and talked with the other adults. She loved coming here to see all the people, especially the merchants with their colorful wares. She felt safe here, as long as her daddy was with her.
But today was different. Today, her father had wanted to leave her at home. "There are other people who live outside our city," he had said, "people who don't like us, and they want to hurt us. You'll be safer at home with your mother."
She had cried until he gave in, but now she wanted to go home. She was afraid, even though he was with her.
"It's okay," he said to her now. "Here. I bought this for you."
He gave her a blanket with something warm inside it. She let go of his hand to take it, and when she unfolded the sheets, she forgot how afraid she was.
It was a puppy.
Bodies. Bodies everywhere. Even after seven years of decay.
They had no flesh, of course. Only bones. But even the bones could speak.
"So many." Link stepped over a pair of skulls, brushing aside a cobweb with the toe of his boot. "Did any escape?"
Navi flew low to the ground, her wings moving sluggishly as if weighed down by the atmosphere of the place. "It looks like they decided to leave the market open, even after they found out the Gerudos were coming. I guess they thought they were safe."
Link started to reply, but a skull slouched in the debris by Navi distracted him. He bent to one knee and gently picked it up. The empty sockets peered back at him, their eternal gaze a burden on his memory forever.
"So small," he said. "Could he find no mercy, even for a child?"
Ganondorf blurred past the guardhouse, mad in his search for the vein where Hyrule's innocence flowed. His first target had to be perfect: something pure and undefiled. Something that would kindle his hatred of the Hylians to greater heights.
He found her in the market square. The little girl with the puppy, still holding her father's hand. Something in him recognized her, for she was the same child he would have trampled the day he came to close his treaty with the King of Hyrule, had the boy from the forest not intervened.
Ignoring all else, he spurred his horse forward, scattering the panicked townsfolk.
The father turned just in time to watch Ganon's sword come down. His little girl's hand went limp, and she fell without a sound. The puppy dropped from her arms with a whimper, curling up on the pitiless cobblestone.
"No!" The father's heart refused to believe his eyes. He felt his mouth open, and he heard the primal scream that left it, but nothing his senses could tell him would convince him his daughter lay bleeding her life out here, on the streets.
"Daddy," she said, her voice a ragged whisper above the rage of battle.
"What is it, sweetheart?" He nearly choked on the words.
"Daddy…" she said again, the whisper growing fainter. "Thank you for the puppy." Her last words.
The father closed his eyes. He knew other children would die that day, anyway, but if he could have traded their lives for his daughter's, he would have done so in a heartbeat.
"You're welcome, sweetheart."
A low moan snapped Link from his daydream of the child whose skull he had found in the debris. He put the skull down as gingerly as possible and drew the Master Sword.
"What was that?" The sound had lifted the hairs on his arm and neck. Another moan, deeper than the first, followed from the same general direction.
He brought out his shield. The gloom made it difficult to be certain, but he thought he saw something lumbering at him through the haze at the south edge of the square.
At first glance, it appeared to be a man, but the similarities ended quickly the more he saw of it.
It had once been a man, he realized, but where its face should have been, a mask carved from rotten oak glared down at him, its eye sockets black like a moonless night. Below that, its body was a nightmare of exposed muscle and bone, all of it tinted brown like the air.
Link dared to step closer. Who were you? You must have had a family. Did you have a wife, maybe? A child? Anger colored his vision red. Did Ganon do this to you?
The zombie held his gaze for several minutes as if deciding how to react. And then it attacked, so swiftly that Link barely had time to deflect its teeth with his shield. When it tried to grab his head, he ducked below its waist and stabbed upward with the Master Sword.
The sword tore through the zombie's ribcage and out through its back, but not a single drop of blood had stained the blade. Stunned, Link tried to withdraw the blade, but the zombie bit his arm. He flinched, kicked out at its chest to remove the sword, and swung at its neck. The head flew free of the zombie's shoulders.
Bile rose in Link's throat, along with sorrow for the man that had once been. He swallowed both and fled from the hellish city, praying he had seen the worst of the damage inflicted on Hyrule by Ganon and his armies, though fearing he had only seen the beginning.
As promised in the postscript to Chapters 18 and 19, things are beginning to take a darker turn here. I'm sorry to say that we won't see Link swimming in the digestive juices of giant whale gods for a while.
Expect to see some of the plot threads coming full circle over the next several chapters. As much as I enjoyed writing the adventures of Link's childhood, seeing his relationships with friends and enemies mature and reach fruition is even more satisfying, to me at least, than those initial steps.
I hope you'll agree!