Chapter Text
For ten thousand years, in a sleep like death, Ganondorf had wondered who the chosen hero would be. He had imagined a great warrior, no doubt as strong and unyielding as was Zelda: a Hylian with fiery eyes, gold hair, a strong arm. He had, of course, assumed the chosen hero would be a woman, for who else would be strong enough to defeat him?
Instead, the Link he saw in the moment his eyes opened and life once more filled his veins, free of Rauru’s endless, burning, sacred sleep, was a Hylian voe. A voe, a man, a little weak-limbed thing, no higher than Ganondorf’s elbow, with a face that burned hot with rage and no greater force than the sum of his bones. It had been ease itself to cut him down, unprepared and practically unarmored, with no magic or means beyond that of mortal men.
And yet, he had not died.
Link had survived, outlived not only malice and madness incarnate but all of Ganondorf’s greatest remaining monsters, those he could summon without risking more of himself than he could afford, and crawled through blood and sand and dirt and gloom to find him, at the heart of the world.
One little voe.
One little voe and that cursed sword.
They had clashed once already, ending in something not unlike a draw that no doubt appeared to be victory for the little voe, standing there with his shield raised and the cursed sword in hand, the blade a faint, shuddering blue in the low dark of Ganondorf’s would-be tomb. Not once had the little bastard spoken beyond grunts of pain and frustration.
However much Ganondorf hated to think it even within the bounds of his own mind, there was no denying that the little bastard was the finest swordsman he had ever met. In a clash of blade alone, Link would outmatch him every time.
He could not remember, even from his mortal life, when such a thing had ever before been true.
It was perfect, the way he was placed—his back and right arm near to a wall so there was no way for Ganondorf to swing on his unshielded side, close to the lowest overhang in the ancient chamber, just low enough Ganondorf couldn’t jump over him. If Link moved even a step further forward, he would be in striking range for Ganondorf’s greater reach—if Ganondorf moved even a step forward, he wold be in striking range for Link’s greater speed.
A stalemate.
Ganondorf reached to wipe sweat from his eyes. Link rolled his right wrist, the Zonai arm, just slightly too long for the rest of his proportions, moving with no difficulty. It had been a perfect switch, although how Rauru had done it was impossible to know. The Zonai had always been jealous with their powers; that they should have the ability to do such a thing seemed only inevitable. How it had, too, imparted some degree of Rauru’s own magic to the voe was a question that only the ancients themselves could answer, and there were none of them left to answer it.
“I had almost forgotten the thrill of battle,” Ganondorf said at last. It was hard not to revel in it—in this momentary ascendence, the instant of combat, of matching blades with someone who could, perhaps, defeat him. How rich and perilous an indulgence!
If he had still been mortal, he would have been defeated long ago. Their contest would have been over before it even started.
“The feeling as blood surges in my veins... surely you know it, Link?” Link only blinked, neither confirming nor denying. Ganondorf sneered back. “Stoic until the end, are you? You must know I am not even nearing the limits of my power!”
And Ganondorf
raised
his
right
hand.
Link moved.
It was an instant, a single moment, the split-second that Ganondorf’s hand was too far from his blade, the heartbeat his powers were growing and not yet unleashed, Link moved, Link jumped, Link struck.
Without even a shout of triumph, Link struck, bringing that cursed blade down with all the force he could muster, point-first not in a thrust to Ganondorf’s heart but to the top of his forehead, above the cut of his blade.
Through the secret stone.
The Master Sword buried itself straight down into Ganondorf’s skull, driven by force and weight and momentum. It sliced clean through the stone like a hot knife through butter, plunging deeper, through metal and magic and skin and muscle and bone to brain.
“Fuck you,” Link whispered in a strangely low voice; a husky, unused whisper. He crouched a moment longer, balanced with one knee on Ganondorf’s shoulder, toes of his other foot dug into the sash of his belt, and then yanked the sword free with a gout of shadow and malice and gloom and blood, backflipping away to land, eyes glittering in a drawn-tight face, and this time when he darted forward it was to run Ganondorf through, thrusting up and back between two of his lower ribs with the practice of a lifetime spent dealing in death and blood, and kept penetrating until the hilt of the blade hit home, cold metal flush to Ganondorf’s bare skin.
Into the monumental quietude, hands still wrapped tight around the hilt of the blade, Link whispered again, with nothing but hate in his voice, “Fuck you.”
Ganondorf hit his knees.
They were at eye level.
Ganondorf smiled.
“You cannot kill,” he whispered, blood between his teeth, “what cannot die.”
And the stone burned.
In the rotten wound that festered at the heart of Hyrule, a long-dead heart beat, and in all the far environs, from the cold peaks of Hebra to the humid jungle of Faron, a woman could be heard to scream.