Then she spoke in a clear voice saying: A King shall arrive from the lands beyond time. His shall be the power of the goddess. His ancestor shall be his servant. He shall raise the earth to heaven. And they shall call him Ganondorf.
Emri of Taafei, The Prophecies of the Foreigner Aveil
There was perfect stillness. The space was so saturated with magic that it seemed the air itself had frozen in place, as if it were too heavy even to transmit sound. Then a sharp noise split the silence. A crack formed down the middle of the Eye, the two cloven sides slipped off the man's face, and the mask shattered upon the floor.
The man had chanted the formula of ritual in all its infinite variety for years and years. He had built up a store of magic, and darkness, and plumbed the depths of possibility that had been opened through the goddess' favor. His mother's teachings had been correct. To rule was his birthright, just as greatness was his destiny. He was the culmination of his ancestry and the lineage of power. The undefeated Eighth had been a willing exile; the last warlord had failed in his revolution. He would redeem them both, with Malice as his agent, and his revived ancestor the agent of his agent.
The assault was come. The lands, he believed, had always been his. They were tainted by usurpers, ignorant though they were of the crime, and they would be cleansed. The golden barrier had fallen and the kingdom he would remake in his image lay undefended before him and his magic. He could descry the breadth of his wilds now. The connections he had forged with the land since his boyhood in the forgotten highlands now ranged his perception all over. Malice was at his command, and the ancestor he had raised was already making war.
It was the time of the end. Only those who managed to grasp that fact, what it implied for their ways of living, would survive to experience his new kingdom. It would be won through blood and magic—indeed literally, for the second instrument of his conquest was the map drawn in the mixed blood of Hyrule and Termina and infused with the magic of his beloved's devotion. Nothing he owned was more precious, more dear, or more essential than this last unfinished masterpiece. It would be no less effective because incomplete, for love can work fabulous magic, as he had understood even in his solitude. The progress of his partner's art had been remarkable. And he had the perfect setting in which to work its magic. The ritual space in the Astral Observatory had a rhyming complement in Hyrule—it was a link of linguistic identity and physical analogy—and they were both places of maps and sight and stars. The man knew that his ancestor had already begun to recreate an army of domestic monsters. He would enhance them, and then add a few of the more exotic species that he had seen in the visions of the mad poet and her unknown country. With a sculptor's knife he sliced open the palm of his hand and let it bleed freely into an empty bottle. (He had always treasured these heirlooms of his mother.) He filled the elegant pen (his beloved's favorite) from this well and began to draw in the fantasies of his predecessor. Great keeselike things with muscular bodies, a forked tail, and unnatural protrusions from their heads would patrol his skies and also transport his men and goods. Ravening creatures halfway between flesh and Stal, with pincered jaw and cataracted eye, were brought in to join the masses of Moblin and Bokoblin. An enormous three headed dragon spitting fire was sat heavily upon the Bridge of Hylia.
Then he turned to the next stage of his planned conquest. He would remake the very land. He would restore his birthright. He would rule above everything. These comprised the triple goal of his campaign. It would be done in fell strokes, and by obscene excess of Malice. He re-inked the pen with his blood, steeping it with his magic, then brought its nib to the center of the map. Hyrule Castle was already infested with a bed of Malice. Now, as the pen encircled the perimeter of the castle grounds, writing in minute script the privy formula, his power flowed into the depiction on the map—whence it was transmitted instantly into the depicted landscape of Hyrule itself. Malice roiled into being and followed the command of power. The earth shook. And the castle was lifted into the skies.
The man repeated this process in Kakariko, in Kara Kara and Gerudo Town, across the whole of the Domain. The mountains and the desert were riven; Malice gushed forth from the cracks in rock and sand. He would steal their homes as recompense for everything they had stolen from him. So these cities, or sections of cities, or else sometimes bare random plain, were cast likewise into the air under the influence of novel magic. Out of the distant Toruma Dunes the lost castle of the Gerudo kings was raised from beneath the sands. This was the last act of the man's beloved: for the paper burned at the touch of the wrong ink, and he had used his undiluted own. But the necessary mixture of their lifeblood could never be made again.
He watched the map fade into embers and gathered every shred for permanent safekeeping. The surviving fragments and flakes of ash he deposited into one of his heirloom bottles, which treasure he would hold forever at his breast. The master watched this last tender moment of his apprentice before making himself known. He would provide the gateway of return. They went to the clocktower together. They were teacher and student, Hylian and Gerudo, seekers of magic both, and perhaps also even friends. Together, they descended to the very bottom of the tower, crossed the stream of water, and approached the heavy door. This door had always been locked. The master now gave an inconspicuous signal and, with an earsplitting groan, the passage was opened. The man stepped through, out of his home, through time and space, and back to his homeland. Already the corruptions of darkness were settling upon him, his crimson hair now animated with its magic, his impressive stature grown just enough to make one uncomfortable. Power, after all, was not mastery. Thus ended the sojourn of the second foreigner.
The man walked the twisted corridor, passing the threshold of worlds, and strode directly into the Sanctum of his enemies. The blood moon hung huge among the stars. The wreckage of conquest was everywhere already to be seen. Malice flowed about him in a torrent, raining destruction from the heavens. He could sense the presence of the woman and her beloved soldier. The latter's miraculous survival, it seemed, had been complete. Their defeat of the Calamity was unquestionably a supreme achievement. He would have liked to witness it, to get a better feel for the ability of his rivals—but he knew enough to know he could never underestimate them.
They were all three connected, had always been connected, and that connection grew stronger and stronger. He would chase the soldier across the land, wherever he rode, and across the sky, no matter how he managed to ascend. He would chase the woman out of the stronghold in which she had somehow found refuge, and he would show her no mercy when he did. Those two were his mortal enemies now, fled into hunted exile. The man knew exile, knew what it was to be hunted, for he had spent many years as a hunter and as an exile. His new kingdom was born from the tears of his perdition. He would not rest until that fated pair had also learned such boundless grief.
Against all this a hero who had not yet forgiven himself the deaths of his friends again took up his sword. Its magic sung through his very being, as it had when he stood against the Calamity. His purpose was set and unshakable.
Against all this a princess who had not yet assumed her crown again took up her blessed magic. Its harmony with her beloved's resounded through their forsaken kingdom. Her mind was clear and certain.
They would fight—with wisdom, and with courage—for justice and for their people and, most of all, for their love of each other. They would fight with their lives for the wild lands upon which that love had grown.
The bloody moon would be eclipsed. And their victory would be writ in future legend.
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