Thanks as always for your reviews! Glad to see you all approve of the changes to the last scene. =D I've been waiting for ages to do that one.

Now here we go with a scene that isn't even in the game, but some variant of it must have happened…!

Chapter 35: Stratagems

Perched atop the rim of the crater, jagged red cape blowing in the gusts of ashen wind that plumed ceaselessly from its depths, the demon who had once, long ago, been a spirit of swordcraft studied his fingertips ostentatiously. He'd worked on them well, worked on his entire form well over the long centuries, and he took pride in it, but despite his self-indulgently self-absorbed pose, he wasn't paying it any real attention. His mind was focused elsewhere – further down the mountain, and far away.

The goddess. It had taken him centuries to pry their plan out of her Sheikah dogs, one screamed word at a time. The sheer steel stubbornness of their resistance had been almost as impressive as it was infuriating, but he'd grown bored of that, too, in the end. They fought well, but not well enough, and when he chose to take one alive, not only would they almost never tell him anything useful, but they were so frustratingly dull.

It had been a millennium since he'd faced a real challenge. A millennium he'd spent here, wasting his time around the dead goddess' former lands, around the seal that kept him from his master, from the glorious hunger that would consume all the world in one final, incredible, unrivalled war, Demise wielding his perfect, peerless sword to slay all before them. Even a demon can dream; many demons dream more than most; and Ghirahim dreamt of that day, the day when their conquest would begin again and he would once more exult in his true purpose. If he could kill the goddess and unravel her power, it would happen.

He'd had to admit her plan was clever, in its way. In Demise's great hand, he'd wondered briefly why the goddess had chosen to hide herself in some mortal's body for her final stand. Demise had not cared, and neither had he, then. When at last he extracted the vital clue from one of her servants, centuries later, he almost hadn't believed it. The goddess had used a quirk of fate to escape destruction and hide herself, binding herself into the cycles of reincarnation as a human. She'd expected, no doubt, to grow strong again in secret and reclaim her old territory at the height of her power. She had reckoned without Ghirahim. He'd resolved to be ready, to find and capture and end her before she could, and so, forewarned, he'd waited for her.

It would have been better to await her with his master free, but that thrice-cursed seal still held abominably well. That, Ghirahim supposed, had been his first clue: the goddess was supposedly dead, but her power wasn't fading as it should have. Even for a guardian, seals an integral part of her nature, her works should have come undone by now, unless there was still something somehow maintaining them. Some reservoir of power. And oh, there was.

He'd felt the first stirring in that power years ago. When she was reborn, perhaps? He'd searched the land below, hoping to find it amongst her Sheikah dogs, but never had he crossed her path. A decade had passed, and he'd felt it again, in almost imperceptible pulses, now there, now gone, strengthening slowly. He'd felt it start to grow faster, knew by then it was above him, beyond her second accursed seal that kept him from the weak and foolish mortals she'd flung into the sky at her last.

He'd hoped to break Demise free then, but not even the blood rite, conducted with the lives of every one of her servants he'd managed to capture since she had been reborn, had broken the seal entirely, and it would take an age to gather up enough of those irritating, evasive Sheikah to try again. It was close enough: the seal would break on its own if she even once drew power from it, and of course, if he could catch her…

So he'd been ready, just days ago. He'd waited for the perfect moment: when he sensed her centre out in the empty sky, and felt the flickering of unstable power trying again to manifest. He'd spun the winds beneath the barrier into a vortex that dragged the winds above into its train even as he struck, a needle-sharp lance of power until that point untested, piercing a momentary hole in the barrier for just long enough to launch it at her. He doubted it would kill the goddess; in fact, he'd rather hoped it wouldn't. If he didn't kill her himself, she would just escape again, and that would be far too frustrating to be borne. He'd planned to catch her, but her power had flickered and flared into a moment's bright life and something had snatched her away in the same instant it faded back into undetectability.

He'd raged about it, taking solace in the emotion. The bloody heights of war denied him for a millennium, he'd cultivated the emotions as a lesser replacement, seeking what fulfilment he could in anger, and in others' anguish, and in the black joy of inflicting pain, dragging out the moments before the final sweet satisfaction of death. And when his anger had run its course, he'd appeared to his army – still his army, even after all the long years, dim greedy bokoblins and moblins still whipped into discipline by the lash of his blade through generation after generation; the smarter, craftier lizalfos of his own design obeying with no less reluctance but at least seeing something more of the greater strategy than his master's old drooling creations. He'd appeared to them in place after place, and given his orders: they were to hunt for the spirit maiden, and they were to bring her before him alive.

And so it would have been even now, below him upon the mountain, if it hadn't been for that wretched Sheikah woman. He recognised her: she'd foiled him before, though never dared face him directly, and the subtle traces of her spirit had been all over the attempts to stop the blood rite, attempts that had weakened it but could not fully stop him. Just thinking about her made Ghirahim's hand close into a fist; made his perfect teeth grind together with a rage the humans would have found quite unbecoming. The next time he encountered that dog would be her last, as he would exact bloody retribution for daring to intervene when he was this close: first his blade would-

Ghirahim's hand uncurled in surprise and his head lifted as he felt something unmistakeable. The second light, the weaker but purer one, burned brightly for a few instants, and he felt the fiend Scaldera's demise ripple through the aether like the faintest taste of burnt blood.

How positively astonishing, he thought to himself, white lips curving in a surprised but pleased and predatory smile. The sword has won with her little human boy. Well, well… I do hope that we meet again. Perhaps, he thought, half-hoped, his fellow sword would challenge him again, seeking to keep him from the goddess. Perhaps he would face her again in the perfection of his art, in a battle that would have been his apotheosis if he hadn't already been divine. But only if that unfortunate mortal could withstand all the training he so desperately needed… No, it probably wouldn't happen.

Of all the things Ghirahim had considered over the long years, that one truly was a pity.

He refocused his attention on the goddess' shield over her sacred spring, hard and bright while her power animated it from within, flared at last to a brightness at least vaguely befitting her divinity. He'd been so close behind her, but the cursed shield had blocked his way, and as he arrived he'd felt it shine with a radiance he hadn't fully felt in a thousand years. Hylia, it seemed, was truly reborn, her power reawakened. Annoying, but not insurmountable: as he'd inspected it from this safer distance, he'd come to realise it still wasn't the shining force it had once been, even now.

Even as Ghirahim watched with the senses of the divine, Hylia's power wavered, dimming and brightening, the currents of it that ran through her shield tinged with regret and resolve and self-recrimination. The goddess doubted her course, did she? It was a weakness Ghirahim instantly resolved to exploit. The human body would grant her all the usual mortal fallibilities and frailties, and Hylia had always been an overly sentimental goddess.

Let him only get close, and he would cut out her radiant heart.

The cruel smile that lent its faint curve to his lips vanished in the next instant as he leapt to his white-shod feet, perfectly balanced even on the rim of the volcano. Hylia had- the blasted goddess had- once again she had teleported out of his reach!

The volcano erupted behind Ghirahim, utterly ignored, as he cursed, the crackling fury of his aura lashing the ragged magics of earth and fire to raging fury to burn the land and blacken the sky as they rebelled against the wrongness of his demonic anger. Lava spewed past him; a crack opened where he stamped a slim foot, such was the force of his rage. He whipped his sword from the air and sliced through it, cutting ash and smoke to ribbons, cutting swathes through the choking cloud that were darker still.

At last he stilled, his head bowed, drawing himself up with a cold and disdainful superior smile.

Let the goddess run, let her try to hide. He would find her. He was a commander fit to lead at Demise's right hand, and his army would find her. Her sword followed her, so he would follow her sword, and he would find her trail, and whether by her sword or his own army, he would find her.

And then, at last, the goddess would truly die.

It's Ghirahim! Where does he run off to while you're fighting Scaldera, and why? And what's he been up to all this time, anyway? All these long years, it's no wonder he's so frustrated.

Patch Notes:
- Disappearing Ghirahim rediscovered.
- Reason provided for Ghirahim to disappear in the first place.
- Relevant plot threads from the backstory illuminated for continuation.

If you are following the ORO, now is the time to return to A Hunger to Swallow the World Ch. 4 and finish the story of Demise and Ghirahim!