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It wasn’t a pleasant feeling, being bound to a sword in stone. There was a constant state of darkness, of all-consuming shadows, forming a barrier that was seemingly impenetrable. And there he floated, bound to no one and to no thing. Burning gaze focused on nothing in particular, the mage’s thoughts - much like himself - were scattered into bits that he couldn’t seem to fully grasp. A shred of rage here, a thread of loneliness there, but nothing truly comprehensible.
Who was he, truly? He couldn’t even recall his own name.
What he could remember clearly, though, was the vividness of spring buds: a greeness that burned the back of his eyelids. Occasionally other colours would pass his mind’s eye: blue, red, purple. Sharp eyes, four pairs of them, scalding him wherever they dared to look. The telltale aching of his wounds, slashes rending his skin in all the places that truly hurt. Then, without warning, came the blackness that currently enshrouded him.
There it was: another seed of emotion. Yet, unlike the others that he had experienced until now, it coursed through his veins like fire. It was a true feeling, not the tatters of something long gone.
Rage.
The body of his imprisoned self curled in on itself, lips upturning and features contorting into a snarl. His eyes burned brighter, vermillion almost, casting a hazy glow onto his nonexistent surroundings. Hands upturned so that he could stare at the delicate lines that traced their way across his palms, delicate veins rich against his pale skin. Was this all he was? A soul, a ghost, reduced to nothing but a huskless creature?
The rage shook him once more. Faint recollections of power, so great that it had crackled at his fingertips, began to seep back. He had been someone once, someone who had commanded the attention of all those plebeians who dared to look upon his mortal form. Fear, reverence, despair, all inspired by him. There hadn’t been a single creature in the entirety of the land who had even the faintest thought of facing him.
Hadn’t been - then, suddenly there was. Similar to how he couldn’t remember his own name, the question of “who” remained: who had dared to oppose him? Who had it been that shoved him into this eternal misery, this blackness which caged him?
Reminiscing would get him nowhere. As soon as the thoughts came, they left, as all had before them. They slipped away, as if the void had sought to reclaim them. His memory was no good in this state, asides from the vindication that lingered, weighing heavy on his soul.
That was when the crack appeared. For however long he had been subject to staring off into the void, he had come to know the shadows as if they were an extension of himself. This - this was different. Aimlessly the being drifted closer, hand reaching out to tentatively brush against the blemish. Much to his surprise, the black seemed to flake beneath his probing fingers, especially as one of his nails nicked the very edge of the fissure. Beyond laid stark white, more than he had seen since being sucked into this suffocating prison.
Perhaps, perhaps.
Black beginning the crust under his nails, he scratched further, fingers curling desperately as further white rose to the surface. It felt as if he was digging his way up from his grave, and this crumbling darkness was the layer of soil between him and freedom.
His movements became more agitated, more hectic, when familiar words were whispered somewhere deep within his consciousness. They were titles, names that had been forgotten during his confinement, and now the shackles on these memories were beginning to break.
He was a mage, a sorcerer of wind. He was a demon, immortal in all senses of the word, preying on the darkness that lay in the hearts of all men.
He was Vaati.
Following that one word, the name he had been seeking for so long and had never been able to keep grasp of, came the memories. The recollection that he had been defeated, and by mere children, no less. Surging forth through his core came Vaati’s powers, welling up from the spring that had been long untouched. Electric blue sparked at his fingertips, and from the hole that he had made, a powerful gale came swooping in as if drawn to the mage’s presence. At first gentle the wind swelled about Vaati, welcoming him back from his imprisonment, for it had missed its master for ages. However, fueled by his enmity, his anger, the wind swelled, whirling and whirling until it had become a cyclone.
With his old friend circling about him, gusting and howling like ancient beasts let loose, Vaati’s head tipped upwards, mouth parting to reveal shining fangs. Amidst the din, the mage could vaguely make out that he too was howling, voice twining with the wind into an eerie resonance. He was screaming - screaming to fate for daring to defy what should have been his ultimate authority.
It was inevitable, anyways. Did they expect a meager seal to keep him, a demon who had transcended mortal form, contained?
In a thundering crack, the sizable hole that Vaati had made exploded into light. White-hot fissures crawled their way around his twilight surroundings, the space around him rumbling with the implication of what was happening. Arm raised to shield his eyes, the maddened mage didn’t catch sight of the walls that crumbled around him, but he knew.
All at once, the prison around him collapsed.
Beneath his bare feet, stone. The sensation was cold, foreign. Much of his energy had been put into destroying the seal, and though Vaati loathed to admit it, his powers had become expended. The wind that had propelled him forward was now reduced to a gentle breeze, and as the sorcerer stumbled forward, it did little to break his fall.
Hands curling into fists, Vaati collided with the stone pedestal, curling to avoid smashing his head off of the ground. The darkness that had crusted under his fingernails had dissipated when the seal had shattered, and was now replaced with a healthy dose of moss. Drawn away from the fury that attempted to wrack his body, Vaati’s attention was drawn instead to the moss. Though not at all a cushion, it was something.
Shifting into a proper sitting position, he leaned over to further examine the strange plant growth. Vaati was no expert in plant life, but having been a forest inhabitant during his mortal existence, there had been plenty of plants to see within the Minish Woods. This type of moss had been special in that it took years, even decades, to cultivate this much of it.
Just how long had the Four Sword held him captive?
“Long enough.” Vaati found himself growling aloud, nails digging down and into the moss, uprooting it from where it had grown in the cracks of stone. With a snap of his arm he flung it out into the sanctuary, completely and utterly fed up. Before, he may have stayed his anger, instead choosing to admire the superior structural integrity that was the sanctuary. The fact that it had stood so long against the tests of time was a feat in itself. However, in his current state, the sanctuary’s architecture mattered very little to Vaati.
His reserves of magic remained depleted, and there was little he could do to instill terror into the hearts of the Hyrulians. But he had important evil plans to enact, you know.
Rising on unsteady feet, Vaati turned his ire towards the Four Sword. There is sat, encased in stone much like the pedestal he was standing on, taunting him in all its grandeur. Slowly did he approach it, eyeing the sword as if it would come shrieking from the stone, seeking to imprison him once more. He wouldn’t put it past whoever had placed the seal in the first place.
Could he destroy the sword, perchance? It would certainly lift a great weight off his shoulders. With no Four Sword, those who sought to seal him away would have to come up with an alternate solution, and Vaati would be left with extra opportunity to bring them under his control. They could come after him as much as they wished, but when he was restored to his full potential, there was nothing they could do without the sealing sword.
The hairs that had stood on the back of Vaati’s neck should’ve warned him. In the moment that his fingers closed over the grip, a debilitating pain shot up and through his arms. It took a considerable amount of force to pull himself away, and even still the mage’s hands shook.
It appeared that beings of evil, demons such as himself, couldn’t even hope to hold the sword. Figures that it would repel the corrupted.
Vaati soon resorted to pacing along the pedestal, handing folded neatly behind him. It wouldn’t do well to go touching anything else in the sanctuary, lest his magic become further drained. The most sensible thing to do was to stay in the vicinity to recover what he had lost. To face his foes in this near powerless state would only spell another round of repression.
In his tizzy, the wind drifted up, as if to whisper something into his ear. A smile twitched at the very edges of his lips, and for the first time thus far, Vaati could feel himself being reassured. The winds of change spoke to him in a way they did to no other, and now they spoke of the potential to gain the upper hand.
So the hero and the princess were making their way here in but a few days time. That gave him quite enough time to recover - retreating to his fortress in the sky wasn’t necessary yet. It was better to return with the spoils of his own clever genius, rather than nothing at all.
Seating himself at the very edge of the pedestal, feet planted firmly on the steps, Vaati found that he was no longer chilled by the stone. No, the fires of victory had been stoked, and he could nearly taste it.
And so he would wait.