He did not see any other Deku Scrubs as he passed through the small village (though he did see some conspicuous leaves and bushes sprouting from the ground), except for one. This Deku Scrub was taller, with a large leaf mustache and unlike the other scrubs he'd seen, actual hands. In one of them he held a jar out towards Ganon.

"Hello, Mr. Monster!" he called, bowing. "Would you like to buy a smoothie?"

Ganon narrowed his eyes.

"My business has become sparse lately," the Scrub complained, "Since everyone has started eating this cotton candy. So now I must expand my customer base!"

Ganon said, "Do you have mango?"

"Ah, no, sir! You must bring your own ingredients, you see."

Ganon sighed and moved on.

The biggest problem with Faron, he thought as he made him way north to find this building the Deku Scrubs had mentioned, was that it was humid. He was warm and sticky, and the air was thick as he breathed it in. He was getting tired of it.

If Zelda were here, she would tell him to stop complaining. He could almost hear her voice.

First Lanayru is too cold. Then the Gerudo Desert is too hot. You really must make up your mind, Ganon.

She would say it with a smile, so he would know she was just teasing. He would mutter something about not wanting water to condense on and rust his armor. She would laugh, and promise that they would find the rift soon, and then they could get out of here, and –

Was he really fantasizing about Zelda making fun of him?

Beyond pathetic.

And yet he couldn't deny it any longer.

He missed her.

He wished she were still here. He felt more human when he was with her. And despite the fact that he was the Demon King, and most definitely did not need friends… he was lonely without her.

He should not feel like this. She had hidden things from him, then strung him along with no intention of actually restoring his memories. He should despise her. Though, could he really blame her when a literal goddess had warned her against him? (He could, and he did, but he was not sure what he'd have done in her situation.)

It doesn't matter, he told himself. He needed to get the Prime Energy. He could not risk letting her destroy him.

He began to walk faster as he continued through the forest.

The building containing the rift turned out to be a temple. For the goddess Farore, he assumed. It made sense – the rift in Lanayru had been in a temple of Nayru. Farore, he remembered, was the Goddess of Courage, the creator of life.

The temple's entrance was guarded by two Deku Scrubs. They cowered as he approached.

"Open the door," Ganon ordered.

"Y-you need a m-membership card!" stammered one of the Deku Scrubs.

Ganon snarled.

The door opened.

"Don't eat all the cotton candy," the other Deku Scrub said weakly as he entered.

He was unable to get very far into the temple, because the rift had consumed anything past the entryway. Finally, he thought.

Several Deku Scrubs stood at the edge of the rift, licking spider webs (Ganon felt slightly ill watching it). One of them turned when he entered, then shrieked, and all the Scrubs made a mad dash for the exit. Ganon laughed as he watched them flee, before turning his attention back to the rift.

He realized very quickly that there was a minor flaw in his perfect plan. This rift did not have an entrance, like the other rifts he had visited. And there would not be an entrance, because Tri was not around to create one. Idiot! he chastised himself. How had he not thought of this?

Maybe he could get around it. He had magic – perhaps he could create an entrance himself. He peered over the rift's edge, wondering how to begin. He was hesitant to touch the rift before an opening was created; he could still remember that white horse suspended in air and did not want to suffer the same fate again. Hesitantly he poked at the rift with his trident but beyond a rippling over its surface, nothing happened. Should he try to jump in without an opening? Just as he had nearly decided to do it, he heard voices from outside the temple's doors – the Deku Scrubs who had tried to deny him entry.

"Sure are a lot of weird people interested in our cotton candy these days," said one Deku Scrub.

"It's so popular they've heard of it even outside of the forest," the other said dreamily.

"That monster better not eat all of it. At least we kept the Hylian out."

Hylian? Ganon crept closer to listen.

"Did you hear she took away the cotton candy from Blossu's house? I heard she got thrown in jail!"

"Good! How dare she take our cotton candy! I hope she rots!"

Ganon blinked. Violent little things, aren't they? It was almost admirable.

A Hylian had taken their cotton candy? If he understood what was going on here, that meant someone had sealed a rift in Faron.

Zelda.

She'd gotten imprisoned?

Whatever. That just meant he'd be certain to repair this rift before her. He turned back towards it.

But then he thought of her, trapped in a cell meant for someone much smaller than a Hylian, scared and alone. Or worse, scared and surrounded by Deku Scrubs.

He shuddered.

He had to go.

Now that he knew the way, getting back to the Deku Village was quick. He raced through the forest, thinking only of getting Zelda out of the Deku's prison. She'd already been captured twice before by Null, hadn't she? First by Ganon's copy, then by her father's. She was probably terrified.

He found out the location of the jail by asking (okay, threatening) the first Deku Scrub that he saw in the village. Then he marched up its stairs and through the front doors, ignoring the trembling guards that tried to protest. He entered the prison, down a long hallway that had multiple other hallways branching from it. He'd have to search for her.

He walked briskly through the prison, poking his head into every room and checking every cell. He was so engrossed in his search that he was not looking in front of him. So he did not see the figure running towards him until they had collided with him.

"Wh – Ganon?!"

He looked down at the person who had just ran into him, and saw a familiar golden head of hair and a purple dress, and floating behind her, a small yellow creature.

"Why are you here?" Zelda asked incredulously.

"To get you, obviously." He frowned at her, any daydream he'd have of some dashing rescue vanished from his mind. "But you seem to be doing perfectly fine by yourself," he added sullenly.

Her mouth opened slightly. To his horror, her eyes filled with tears. "Ganon," she said. "You came to rescue me?"

"Er – I suppose."

She looked at him wondrously. Then she threw her arms around him in a tight hug.

He stiffened immediately. He wanted to shove her away. He wanted to remove his armor so he could hold her close.

Gingerly he placed a hand on her back (he thought, for the first time, that maybe wearing spiked collars around his wrists was not entirely practical). Zelda sniffled and pressed herself closer to him.

"I'm sorry, Ganon," she whispered. "I shouldn't have hidden things from you. I just – I didn't know what to do. I was scared."

"You shouldn't have," Ganon said. He should push her away, tell her to leave. Instead he said, "But I understand… why you did. Nayru –"

"I don't care what Nayru said! I won't destroy you when you haven't done anything; it would be wrong!"

"I believe Nayru would say that I have done something."

She shook her head. "If restoring your memories causes you to do something horrible, I'll stop you. But I refuse to… You deserve…" She trailed off, shaking her head again. She still seemed quite distraught, and Ganon was filled with a sudden urge to stop her tears.

"Bold of you to think you could stop me," he said lightly.

She chuckled softly (he felt a flash of triumph). "I'm quite tough, you know," she said, pulling back from him.

"Clearly – how did you escape your cell?"

"Ah – the Deku Scrub who locked me up dropped the key while they were leaving. I had Tri get it for me."

"That… does not surprise me at all, actually."

They both laughed. Zelda wiped at her eyes, then cleared her throat. "I suppose we should get out of here before someone finds us."

Ganon said slowly, "If I am to help you again… you will not hide anything else from me."

She nodded.

"Then let's go."

"I overheard one of the guards talking about an underground exit," Zelda said. "We could try to find it."

Ganon smiled viciously. "There's no need for that."

He took her by the hand and led her out the front doors.

"Y-you can't do that!" a Deku Scrub cried. "She's our prisoner!"

"She is mine," Ganon snarled.

There were no more objections.

"I know where the rift is," Zelda said once they were out of the village. (She had let go of his hand, he thought with some regret.) "But you need a membership card to get in. I heard there's someone at a place called Heart Lake who has one."

Ganon smiled again. "There's no need for that, either."

While they walked back to the temple, Tri floated up beside Ganon's head.

"Ganon," they said, "Why did you leave?"

"I…"

"Zelda said that you were angry, because she hurt you."

"I guess so," he grunted.

"Then… why did you come back?"

Ganon's face heated. "I don't know," he said shortly. "I wanted to."

Tri thought for a moment. "Zelda was really sad when you left," they said. "So, even though Nayru doesn't like you, I am glad that you are back. I think." Having said that, they floated back to trail Zelda like usual.

Nayru… He wondered whether Farore would also be hostile towards him.

Well, he would find out soon enough, because the temple had come into sight once again. One of the Deku Scrubs standing at the entrance saw him and jumped.

"It's back!" they shrieked, then both of the Scrubs hid themselves in the ground.

"See?" Ganon muttered to Zelda. "No membership required."

She giggled.

They walked through the temple doors with no arguments. Ganon growled at the hiding Scrubs, for good measure.

Tri floated over to the rift.

"Zelda… I can make an entrance here."

"Thank you, Tri," she said, then looked to Ganon. "Ready?"

He nodded, and they entered the rift, together.

"I tried to come here without you," he confessed to her once they were in the Still World, this one a broken recreation of the jungle. In the distance, he saw some songbirds suspended in the air, trapped midflight, and shuddered.

"You did?"

Ganon nodded. "But then I realized I had no way of opening an entrance in the rift. I overheard the Deku Scrubs outside saying you'd be captured."

Zelda gave him a soft smile. "Thank you, Ganon," she said. "For coming back."

He swallowed. He wanted to tell her why he had come back, that she was so bright and full of life that the thought of her locked away was unbearable to him. That he never wanted her to feel scared or alone. That she had started to mean something to him, even if he didn't know what that something was. He could not find the words for any of this, so he said nothing.

They made their way through the Still World copy of Farore's temple. It appeared the place had been invaded by spider monsters, and there were webs everywhere, covering the floors and climbing up the walls. Ganon found it to be rather disgusting. The temple was also humid, even more so than the air outside. This disgusted him as well, and he voiced it aloud.

"You really are sensitive about the weather, aren't you?" Zelda said with a slight smirk. "The desert is too hot, the mountains are too cold… Is there anything that would please you?"

He snorted. Zelda frowned.

"What's so funny?"

He shook his head, still snickering. He decided that he was also glad that he had returned.

Deep within the temple, they found the source of the spiders: a giant arachnid monster with a yellow eye on its back that stared directly at him. It was also, Ganon assumed, the source of the Deku Scrub's cotton candy. This thought made him feel somewhat nauseous.

He swallowed his disgust, then threw his trident directly at the monster's massive eye. It did not like that.

He threw balls of magic towards it as it scurried up the wall with its eye firmly closed. They slid over its carapace painlessly.

"Get it to open its eye again," he muttered to Zelda.

She nodded, then with a wave her of staff, summoned a wizzrobe. It put its hands out in front of it, then shot a bolt of lightning directly at the monster. Ganon nearly felt bad for the spider as it fell to the ground, twitching.

"Electrocution?" he murmured to Zelda. "You're vicious."

"It worked, didn't it?" She blushed. "Just – kill it please!"

He did. It didn't put up much of a fight. Normally Ganon would have been disappointed by this, but felt that he had seen enough spiders for a long time. The monster – the Echo – disappeared in a puff of smoke, and Tri's friends emerged, free. Zelda asked them politely to repair the rift. Then she turned to him and gestured at him to bend down.

"You have some spider silk on your head." She reached to brush it off.

"Gross," he said, liking the feeling of her fingers running through his fur (he really was becoming pathetic, wasn't he?).

"I can't believe the Deku Scrubs were eating this."

"I would have thought you'd be adding it to your smoothies by now."

She scrunched her face in disgust, but before she could retort, the room filled with an emerald light. As a female figure emerged, bathed in light, Zelda lowered herself into a bow. Ganon straightened.

"Lady Farore," Zelda said.

"Priestess of Wisdom," the goddess spoke. If Nayru's voice had been twinkling snow and ice, then Farore's was that of a songbird. She nodded to Zelda, then to Ganon, though as before, he was unable to clearly see the goddess' face. "And the Demon King." This was said not with disgust, as Ganon had anticipated, but what seemed to be curiosity more than anything.

"Lady Farore," Zelda repeated. "I humbly request that anything you have to say to me, you say to Ganon as well."

Ganon blinked, surprised. Farore tilted her head, pondering him.

"Very well," she said. "There is little for me to tell you, Priestess – you have heard of Null from my sisters."

"That's right," said Zelda.

"Then you know what you must do now. You have proven yourself worthy to wield the Prime Energy. This is the only way to permanently end Null's destruction. You must go to the ancient forest guarded by a sacred tree, claim the Prime Energy's power, and end this."

"Yes, Goddess," Zelda murmured.

"And me?" Ganon demanded. "Would you also have me destroyed, or is that just your sister?" It occurred to him that mouthing off to a goddess may not be the wisest thing to do, but the words had already escaped him. He sensed Farore's attention turn to him.

"My sister can be… cruel, in her desire to uphold order," she said. "Perhaps she is correct that destroying you is the wisest course of action. But I see another option." She looked again to Zelda. "The Prime Energy grants you near unlimited power. You do not need to kill the Demon King, Priestess. Only that which makes him a danger."

Ganon narrowed his eyes in confusion, but Zelda seemed to understand immediately.

"His memories," she whispered. "You would have me erase them."

Farore tilted her head again; it struck him as a rather animal-like gesture. "Is that what would safeguard the most life? I am not certain. But it would please me to see you spare him."

"Why would you care?" Ganon hissed.

"All life is precious to me. Though you both are favourites of my sisters, you are still my children."

Ganon opened his mouth to demand how Farore could want to erase his memories if she considered him her child, but before he could do so, the goddess whipped her head to the side.

"You must go!" she cried. "Null approaches!"

The still world around him began to fade.

"Remember, Priestess" Farore said, the words echoing around them. "Go to the ancient forest and speak with the sacred tree."

When he and Zelda emerged from the Still World, back at the entrance to Farore's temple, the sky was not the bright blue he was anticipating, but remained a sickly purple. That was when he heard it.

Long have I awaited this moment.

The rasping words seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, reverberating around Ganon's skull. It did not sound like any human voice, but like the grinding of stones against each other, or the sharpening of a blade on a whetstone. It sounded ancient and wrong.

He saw a crack in the ground forming under Zelda's feet.

"Zelda, move!" he yelled. Not a moment after she ran, a cloud of swirling, purple magic poured from the crack, filling the space where Zelda had just been standing.

You will not escape.

Cracks opened on both sides of him, and monsters began to emerge from the ground. They had the same taint to them as those found in the rifts. Ganon raised his trident. In the corner of his eye he saw Zelda, staff held in front of her. She was unable to summon any echoes, however, as she was so busy dodging Null's attempts to engulf her. I need to get to her, Ganon thought.

He was surrounded by monsters of all kinds. Ganon let out a savage roar, then threw his trident so it spun in a circle around him. It cut down several of Null's monsters, and Ganon laughed before grabbing the trident out of the air as it spun. Unfortunately, the monsters he had defeated were swiftly replaced by just as many more.

Ganon growled in frustration. He glanced at Zelda again as he fought. She had managed to evade Null thus far, but looked like she was tiring. Ganon let out another roar, then threw himself into the air, leaping over the monsters surrounding him. He landed hard on the ground next to Zelda.

He grabbed her and ran. She held tightly to his shoulder with one hand. With her other, she summoned her own monsters to hold back the monsters that chased them.

I am everywhere and everything. You can not defeat –

Ganon twisted to throw a ball of dark magic directly at Null's cloudlike body. It dissipated in a puff of smoke.

Being in this realm… taxes me. You will not win in the end. I will erase this world.

In an instant, the monsters chasing them disappeared and the sky returned to a beautiful blue.

Ganon placed Zelda down, hoping that the spikes on his wrist had not poked her while he was carrying her.

"That was Null," Ganon said.

She nodded. "Yes… that is our enemy." She let out an uneven breath before giving him a crooked smile. "And I find myself once again very glad that you came back, Ganon."

He grunted, thinking over what they had just seen and heard.

"Do you know what this ancient forest is?" he asked.

Zelda wrapped her arms around herself. "I'm not certain… perhaps Father would know."

Ganon nodded slowly. He thought too of the other thing the goddess had said, the thing that had disturbed him as much if not more than the encounter they had had with Null.

You need not kill the Demon King, Priestess. Only that which makes him a danger.

He looked to Zelda with suspicion. Would she actually consider erasing his memories?

She is the Princess of Hyrule. If she thinks it will protect her people, of course she would.

He could not let that happen.

His plan was unchanged, then. He would accompany her to this ancient forest, and help her fight Null. But when the time came…

The Prime Energy would be his.