I was going to say this finally passed Majora's Mask in reviews, but the two have been battling back and forth all week and MM went back to the top. Weird.
For the record, this chapter amazed me. I don't think I've ever had a non-combat scene last as long as this one does, it's a miracle. Also, since I've found that many people who read this haven't actually played Twilight Princess yet, there are more spoilers than usual in this chapter. Kinda the game's first big reveal. though if you are reading this, you should know I'll be revealing everything over the course of the story, heh.
Published June 25, 2012
To the Mirror of Twilight
Everyone, now with Stallord included, emerged from the depths of the Arbiter's Grounds. They ascended the staircase toward the top, finally reaching fresh air after being in that dusty, corpse-riddled tomb for so long.
"What's your loosely veiled excuse for tagging along?" Midna asked the giant head.
"First of all, this sounds like so much fun. Travelling the lands, defeating an evil king, it's just like back in my glory days... Second, I've gauged everyone based on one line of dialogue. Your leader's a dirty coward, the plant's a ditz, the giant's stupid, the ball's got an ego bigger than his body, the ghost's temporary, the mask's the physical embodiment of evil, and you need other people to accomplish things for you. Which means you need someone with experience to take control of a situation. Third, you're all such nice people, and I love you guys already~" Stallord nuzzled against Diababa, smiling happily.
"And you're a super nice skull too!" She planted an acidic kiss on his teeth.
"Aw, thanks! Just don't do that again, I lost some of my enamel..."
"Mirror of Twilight, focus," Link grunted, climbing the 3103rd step. He had a nice sweat worked up.
"Try to order me around too much and I may have to kill you," the skull said playfully.
"Oh shut up..."
Stallord floated in close, silently hovering as near to Link's head as he could. Taking a second to inhale, the dragon let out an eardrum piercing roar that shook the building around them. Link screamed like a little girl and fell flat on his face. "Mm... no. Also, sorry about breaking your, erm, bridge."
Fyrus shrugged, carrying half of the bridge on each shoulder. "Fyrus fine. Fyrus make a lethal weapon out of the two giant stone bits."
"All right then, good luck getting that to work."
After another two hundred steps, they reached the top of the Arbiter's Grounds. "The Mirror of Twilight should be around here," Midna said, scanning the area. Columns spread around the summit, rising high into the night sky. In the middle was a thin pillar with a spinner track spiralling up it, begging for Link to ride it.
"Well this is boring," Stallord said. "C'mon, let's get something to kill! I haven't had any blood in my mouth in ages!"
As the boy in green approached it, a barrier spread around their goal. From the sky came five Shadow Beasts, landing before them. "There's your something to kill," Midna said, waving her hand. "Go nuts."
"KILLEMALL!" As the others were still getting into position, Stallord rushed forward with his jaw wide. He snapped down on two beasts at once, shaking them rapidly, blood and flesh spewing all over the sandstone.
"I like him," Majora declared with delight.
Link didn't bother drawing his sword, letting Stallord and Fyrus take care of the enemies. Once they were done, the floating skull tossing the last monster in a bloody pile with the others, he hopped on his spinner and started ascending the structure.
Morpheel rolled to the giants, making sure to avoid the puddle of gore. "Didn't know you had it in you, Spews. Took you more as the 'time to play' type, like Green back there."
"Look, a plant!" Green shouted, pointing at a small blade of grass that stuck out from two stones. "How are you doing, little guy?"
Stallord chose to ignore that. "What can I say, I live to kill 'em all," he said cheerfully. "If it bears ill will I'm gonna rip it in half and bathe in the guts. I know I'll have to wash up afterwards, but hey, gotta have some sacrifices. You like baths?"
"I am the Leviathan of the Seas! I do not bathe, I-"
"Smelly."
"YOU... SHOW SOME RESPECT! I don't even get respect from the one I defeat, GAH!"
The spinner clicked into a slot on top. Link pressed down, and as the pillar began to descend the giant chains connected to it began to rise. "Things are starting to look up. I know I got horribly hurt in the last fight, but we've got quite the team going when we dangle some string to keep them focused."
"Next one will still cause you trouble," Majora told him. "In fact, let's place a bet. If you still struggle on whatever monster's next, I get a hundred rupees. If you pass without a scratch, other way around."
"You don't have any money... And isn't Zant next?"
Majora cackled, saying nothing else.
Once the pillar sunk fully into the floor, the Mirror of Twilight was revealed. It sat on a pedestal, held high above Link and Morpheel... though only a quarter of the thing was there. "Is it supposed to look like that?"
"NO!" Midna shrieked, pulling at her hair. "Where is it? Where's the rest? What did he do?"
"A dark entity lurks in the twilight..." said a voice.
Looking up, Link and the others quickly noticed five beings made of light, standing atop the pillars above them. They were old, robed men whose faces hovered a half foot in front of their heads.
"Why are your faces like that?" Morpheel immediately asked. "It's stupid! Fix it!"
"It is a... sensitive topic... We are the sages who guarded the Mirror of Twilight at the behest of the goddesses since ancient times," what was likely the Sage of Fire said.
"And we can see what a wonderful job you did!" Midna snapped, floating to the broken device.
"No, no, back to the faces!" Morpheel shouted, bouncing in indignation. "You do not look anything like the sages I remember, because they looked like real people! Explain!"
The Sage of Light waved his arm in an arc. "It is truly a long, dull tale-"
"EXPLAIN!"
"Mirror of Twilight!" Midna punted the eye, bouncing him off Link's face. "Learn about priorities!"
"I'm losing hope with every second," the Sage of Shadow said with a sigh. "Will you all please calm down and allow us to tell you this tale?"
"The Mirror of Twilight has been fragmented by mighty magic," the Sage of Forest said, turning to the Sage of Spirit.
The Sage of Spirit stared at him.
"The rest of the tale, please."
"No."
"I've said I'm sorry countless times! Please, now is not a good time for this."
"...Fine. It is a magic that only he possesses," the sage said with no enthusiasm.
The Sage of Light raised both arms. "His name is... Ganondorf."
-Out in the desert-
Zant's master didn't flinch for a second as the sandstorm battered at his exposed face, the small grains smashing into his eyes and blowing up his nose. Instead, he took a deep breath, exhaling contently. "It's good to be back in a familiar environment. I knew coming here would calm me down..." He spread his arms, eyes closing slowly. "I can almost hear the memories..."
"Koume, look! Look who it is, eh heh heh!"
"Those are not good memories..."
"It is, Kotake, it's him! And you thought he was dead, how shameful!"
His eyelids burst open, pupils shrinking. "Shit."
The two witches flew out from behind him, tiny, wrinkled women who sat on their broomsticks, a blue gem on one's head and a red on the other. "Ganondorf, it's been too long," Koume said, cackling. "Why didn't you write?"
"I was sealed in an alternate dimension up until a month ago," the Gerudo King said, scowling.
"Excuses! Don't try to get out of not cleaning your room for over a hundred years!" Kotake formed a hammer out of ice magic and smacked him over the head. "We taught you better!"
"Ow, dammit mom! First of all, I moved out. Second, I left my room barren. Third, that's your junk filling it, I saw. Fourth, the whole place is buried under twenty feet of sand by now, so it doesn't matter and you can drop it before I get a headache!"
His valid reasoning was met with a flick to the nose from Koume. "Don't try to weasel your way out now! You're also very far behind on your chores. Not only did you not feed the giant scorpion, but you didn't feed any of his six hundred replacements and they all died one after the other."
Ganondorf groaned into his hands, shoulders twitching violently. "The worst part about this is that I know you're serious, ugh... where's that damn owl when you need him? I want him back."
-Arbiter's Grounds-
"But as we chained him in this very location and carried out judgment, we learned that by some divine prank, he was blessed with the chosen power of the gods." The Sage of Light turned his strange head to the empty space, the pillar where the Sage of Water should have been. "He escaped our confines, though we were able to lock him away in the Realm of Twilight before too much damage was dealt. Such a mighty, blind man... Perhaps his evil power has been passed on to Zant."
"Wait, he's blind?" Diababa interrupted. "Then can't we just put a rope at ankle height and trip him?"
"Er, no, I didn't mean blind in a literal sense."
"Ah, metaphorical, got it..." She winked, which was just a standard blink as she only had one eye.
Phantom crossed his arms, looking down at the floor. "Ganondorf is a player here as well then. If he's teamed up with that Zant, we have a more serious problem than I thought."
"He's about to leave," Majora whispered.
"I need to go-"
"Called it!"
"This isn't a game," Link grunted.
"I fervently disagree."
Having no idea what the mask was shouting about, the ghost continued. "...I need to go tell the others about Ganondorf. Your team should stay focused on the Mirror of Twilight in the meantime."
"If it hasn't been blown to kingdom come," Link said, shoulders drooping. "I wouldn't be surprised if that nutjob just left this here to taunt us."
"Zant is not the true leader of the Twili," the sage continued. "Only they can destroy the mirror. Zant could merely break it into pieces and scatter them across the land."
"Where he would have placed his strongest monsters to guard them, correct?" Stallord's perpetual grin was looking fairly bloodthirsty again. The blood helped.
"That's not outside the realm of possibility. One is in a land of snowy-"
"Let's not ruin the surprise!" Stallord quickly interrupted. "We've gotta make this whole thing interesting. Mm, I can already imagine the density of their flesh, the bliss of ripping into that soft tissue and stretching it away... Who's ready for an adventure?"
Link's knees felt weak. His strength fled, leaving him unable to raise an arm or even close his jaw. "But I was so close to the end... Go in the mirror, kill Zant, we're done. But... but now there's a Ganondorf..." His temple developed a twitch. "We need to collect a shattered mirror too! We... RAH! LET ME GO HOME ALREADY!"
"Zant split the mirror into three other pieces," the Sage of Forest said.
A second wind hit him. Link threw his arms into the air, turning on his heel. "Oh, fantastic! Three shards, and I know they'll be at the end of really long, dangerous locations like everything else we've had to get. Then there's Zant, he won't make it easy, and Ganondorf's probably holed up in Hyrule Castle, meaning another place to fight through! Four down, five to go, we're not even halfway done!"
His mask cackled. "Someone's about to have a meltdown..."
"For a damn good reason! I've been beaten, thrown, burned, drowned, blown up, crushed, and all sorts of other horrible things, and just when I think I'm about to go home like I want to, since I haven't wanted a single other thing for this god forsaken adventure that I never wanted to come on, it turns out there's even more to do than we've completed!" He stopped, collecting his breath.
"Wanna hug?"
"No Dia, I do not want a hug right now, I want my nice, comfy bed in my nice, safe house, where I can live the rest of my days herding goats and not being on the brink of death!"
"It'll be a comfy, safe hug."
His neck convulsed. "That is- I want HOME!"
"You're free to go back to the home that's stuck in twilight," Midna said while inspecting her nails.
His strength flowed away yet again. "That fact is the main reason that I am still here," Link said, falling back onto his rear.
"That and the fact that you'll probably get killed by the big bad Zant as soon as you leave," Majora added, sounding completely content with this fact.
He placed his head on his hands. "...And that."
"And fix your faces!" Morpheel roared, wobbling in rage.
"Come back once you have a face," the Sage of Shadow snapped.
"Oh hardy har har, such an amazingly brilliant retort. You have nothing on the shit I've put up with, now fix your ugly mug before I bash a giant gear into it!"
The Sage of Shadow held his hands up, mockingly shrinking back. "Ooo, threatening me with the spinner, so afraid. Please don't mildly irritate my knees, I might crumple like Spirit over there when his arthritis kicks in."
The Sage of Spirit glared at him.
"Why did you have to bring that up again?" the Sage of Forest groaned, pushing his floating face into his hands like our not-hero.
Link had no more sighs to give. "Where were those mirror shards again?" he asked just loudly enough to be heard.
"Mountains, grove, heavens," the Sage of Light told him. "Get going."
Wordlessly, the teenager pushed himself to his feet. "Let's go..."
"And kill!" Stallord let out an insane laugh, bloody teeth still dripping.
"Sure."
-Hyrule Castle-
Ganondorf appeared in the majestic throne room, his mom and mother orbiting his head like satellites. "What a nice place, but it's far too large, isn't that right Koume?"
"Yes it is, Kotake. Your old place was so much better. It had that golden shine!"
Ganondorf started walking, ignoring the old women and searching for Zant. He stopped just as he passed a window, sniffing the air. "Why do I smell smoke?"
"You shouldn't allow smoking on the premises," Kotake helpfully told him.
"Be quiet for just one minute, will you?" He opened the window, recoiling in horror at the sight. "What the...!"
Fires were alight across the grounds, many buildings both in and outside of the barrier damaged or destroyed. Bokoblins lay scattered amongst the ruination of this mighty palace, their state of life unknown to the tyrant. Catching sight of a certain underling, Ganondorf jumped out and floated down to the man.
"Zant, the fuck happened while I was gone?"
The King of Twilight met his master's eyes through that metal helm, panting weakly. He used the Megaton Hammer for support and hobbled out of a crater. "The bird... it wouldn't die..."
"...Are you fucking kidding me."
"He really wanted that woodpecker dead," Kaepora Gaebora said, fluttering down on top of a bent flag post. "I may have egged him on. Apparently, analyzing what he's doing wrong is a trigger to the guy. Who knew?"
"Shut up or we're having a trip to the coal mines." The Gerudo helped support Zant, guiding him back to the castle. "Okay, seriously this time. What did you do, why did you do it, and why is everything blasted to hell and back?"
"That bird," Zant groaned. Ganondorf's stomach sunk. "It was a small target. I tried my Lord, I truly did, but it simply flew around the grounds, and everything and everyone I used against it was ineffective."
"You... tried to attack a bird. Outside."
"Yes my Lord. I merely tired myself."
Ganondorf's shoulders shuddered, a rant of epic proportions barely contained by his iron will. "That's... Zant, there is nothing I can say about this that won't lead to my mental destruction. So we'll have some Bokoblins fix this up, and pretend it never happened."
"Hey Ganondorf, remember the time Zant, trashed the place trying to kill a woodpecker?"
The king's head snapped back to Kaepora, veiny eyes bulging.
"Just practicing, carry on."