Work Text:
They may not speak the tales of old anymore, boy, but you must feel in your bones a sense of déjà vu.
Am I wrong?
Hyrule is an ancient land, more ancient than you can likely comprehend. In distant times and past places, our meeting has already come to pass thousands of times: drowned in vast oceans, steeped in twilight, touched by time. And it will come again, long after both of us are gone. Does it not feel familiar, boy? We have never met, and yet I know you. You know me.
You, me, your Princess. We are entwined in an unending destiny, a curse no weapon can break. Not even your sword that seals the darkness, a steadfast companion though she may be.
But you have only been told fractions of an ancient story, twisted by mouths and time. Heartbeats, breaths. Dragon’s tears. They are only eye blinks in a story far greater and longer and more cosmic in its scale than your geoglyphs can possibly convey.
At one time, the Hylians revered the Zonai as gods. The Goron, Zora, and Rito followed in suit, swearing their fealty to a ruler whose powers were complex beyond understanding. To the others, the Zonai were like a magic show, a spectacle. Divine saviors of we simple surface dwellers whose most advanced materials were tempered steel swords and feathered arrows.
We Gerudo were not so quick to trust. We are a people forged by the unyielding heat of desert sun, the bitter cold of tundra nights. We know what it means to have power, to lack it. In Rauru’s abilities and tools we saw first and foremost a dangerous weapon that could reduce our very livelihoods to ashes. While he took a Hylian wife and awed the masses with his machines and impossible magic tricks, we saw his power for its deadly potential, should his resolve waver or his mood sour.
My hatred of the Zonai, of the ancient Hylians, is not entirely unfounded. If you will listen, boy, and I am very much afraid you have little choice in the matter, I will explain, if for no reason better than to have told someone after all these many years of silence to which I have been entreated.
“King Ganondorf, a moment of your time?”
“Of course, Captain.”
“Rauru has requested the Gerudo presence in Hyrule Castle once again. Shall I send the messenger back with the same reply as last?”
When Rauru requested my people’s loyalty, my council and I immediately refused. Why should I give up our independence to join his ranks? When it became clear he would not yield in his requests, I wondered if humoring him might have its advantages, and it did.
“No. Tell him we will be there. Mobilize the guards. We may as well give him a show of force.”
The Zonai, as I am sure you know now, derived and enhanced their powers from Secret Stones, powerful artifacts that could, if unchecked, level entire civilizations, eradicate entire peoples.
While I worried what Rauru might do to Hyrule’s people with his Secret Stone, I…
I coveted that stone, I suppose.
You are a soldier, Link. One of Hyrule’s finest, yes, but you were trained first in chivalry and servitude. You were born to a family of service. Your life belongs to the Kingdom.
Tell me, boy. Did you never once kneel before the king, before your precious Princess Zelda, and wonder why? Did you doubt the divine right of your rulers? Did you ever think perhaps… you might do it better?
“They had a girl with them, my King.”
“They did.”
“But Rauru and So–”
“You are forbidden from saying her name, Captain. Was I not clear before?”
“Forgive me, my King. But Rauru and his…his wife… haven’t been married even two years. She could not possibly be their daughter.”
“Correct, though she certainly looks the part. I was told she–the girl–is a traveler.”
Your king and your princess are damned. There is a vacuum of power in Hyrule that not even the Goddess Hylia reincarnate can fill. The people doubt her abilities and convictions; they think she is of an old world gone by. I must say I agree with them. I died and was reborn again and even through my own prolonged slumber, through my laborious resurrection, I must admit I feel much the same now as I did then.
“A traveler? From where? She appears to be Hylian.”
“I am afraid I know very little.”
“Ah. Well, perhaps you can learn more at the castle dinner.”
You are young, but you must know by now the Gerudo are treated differently than the other races of Hyrule. Even one as single-minded as you could not be blind to this. But before the Zonai descended upon our great land, we five peoples lived among each other in relative peace and harmony.
“I was… not invited.”
The Zonai came to Hyrule under benevolent circumstances in spite of their robust power. But they had conceptions of the world and its people that were alien to us. Among the Rito, Gerudo, Zora, Hylians and Gorons, we once believed ourselves to be a singular people, denizens of a larger world; different, but united by a singular, encompassing thread.
To the Zonai, the world was much different. They marveled at our non-uniformity, specified the strengths and weaknesses they thought inherent to each race, used this as evidence of distinctness, separation, and most importantly to them, hierarchy. Many were fascinated by these categorizations, surprised, and even pleased.
We Gerudo were lauded and praised by the ethereal Zonai for our height and strength, our supposedly magnificent bones and flesh and muscle. But soon the Zonai were critical of our practices: they disliked our culture and traditions, thought it odd our women fought with swords instead of magic. They encouraged our children to speak a uniform Hylian instead of in Gerudo tongue, insisting a global language would create a more peaceful, understanding world.
“The Gerudo…intrigue me, Ganondorf. The other races of Hyrule have accepted our technology with open arms. Why will you not do the same?”
“Tradition keeps us grateful. Humble. Proud, even. These seemingly opposite emotions may exist simultaneously in states of devotion to times gone by.”
“When great machines overwhelm the Gerudo homeland, will you attack them with steel? Will you negotiate in your ancient tongue? Will you still only allow women, barring you, into your home?”
“...’When’, Rauru?”
“I speak in hypotheticals, my friend. To have peace, you must first prepare for war.”
In response, we closed the gates to the Gerudo Desert for the first time in centuries, fearful of the influence outsiders might have on our youth.
And, there is something more… Rauru scrubbed this from the texts, no doubt, leaving it lost to time. Before the Zonai came to Hyrule, before they took our practices and language and our love for our fellow man, I was to be married to Sonia, the Princess of the Hylians. This marriage was to symbolize a union between our peoples, yes, but so too was it a symbol of our love.
“We must talk about where we will live when the wedding comes. Surely, you don’t wish to leave the desert. Your people.”
“I have thought of this, Sonia. We can split our time between our respective lands. If the travel becomes too much, I will build you a fine palace on the shores of Lake Hylia, or in the lowlands of the Tabantha Frontier. I would never expect you to spend the rest of our days in the sand.”
“Why not? Do you doubt my loyalty to you?”
“No, my dear. But you are a flower, and flowers don’t grow in the desert.”
It is possible even you know this kind of love, boy. The feelings of self-sacrifice it stirs in you, the impossibly enormous scope of your dedication. Sonia surprised many by accepting the proposition of the Gerudo King, when so many were vying for her hand in marriage, and yet no one doubted the convictions of a young woman so headstrong as she.
But I loved her. I loved her the way drops of cave water become stalactites over millennia. Slowly, steadily. Deep within the canals of my heart; eternally increasing.
When the Hylians made Rauru their king, he said no kingdom could be complete without a queen, and announced he would take a wife. And when a god-king makes his selection, not even a Gerudo leader can stand up to his will. Perhaps Sonia was frightened. Perhaps she was enraged; perhaps even they came to love each other in time. I do not know. But the woman I loved became, overnight, the wife of someone else and the co-ruler of the lands we were intended to rule together.
I was compelled to go to war for this reason alone. My guards and council attempted to assuage my fury.
“ We are already suffering from poor food reserves and diminished forces. Zonai mining operations in the Gerudo Desert have stunted our ability to manufacture weapons and machinery.”
Their reasons only gave me further cause.
“I will not allow the Gerudo to vanish into history without marring its pages with a despot’s blood.”
But my councilors were correct in their warnings. The Zonai had been in Hyrule for nearly four years now, and in that time, they had transformed the landscape into something nigh on unrecognizable. Huge, yawning mines stretched the canvas of our once-beautiful desert. Their machines consumed our resources like a starving army. They took our food as was allowed in our contract of fealty; they banned our books, they slandered our names.
My people grew restless, destroying themselves, begging me to do something while the desert grew ever more violent. We were alone, without allies. My people were spit on when they traveled outside the desert.
We–I–had to do something. You and I share very little, boy. But we do share something unteachable: desperate conviction. History would have you forget that.
As I pored over our dwindling numbers, our starving children, our tin swords, I knew standard warfare would never suffice against the Zonai and their formidable weaponry. So I considered well into the nights the shape my plans would take, how I might seize a stone for myself and face Rauru on even grounds.
Though I weighed many options, one came to mind several times; I dismissed it at first, but it was only on the twentieth night of contemplation, while the stench of the mines and the moans of my starving people wafted into the throne room that I finally conceded it was the only way.
I could not be seen in Hyrule Castle again without arousing suspicion, certainly not in the vicinity of Sonia. So I elected to pursue an ancient Gerudo magic, one that is forbidden even to the king. It is a magic of possession and puppetry, considered by all cruel, unjust, inhumane. I considered the inhumanity of Rauru by comparison. The slow work of destroying my people, our culture. The torturous, snail’s-pace genocide.
And I recalled the girl I had once seen among Rauru and Sonia. It would be, I realized, looking out over the blue-stained horizon, easy.
The next and last time I saw Sonia, I had already made up my mind about the Secret Stone, using your blasted Zelda as an easy trick to fool her, to con my once-beloved into speaking with me once again.
I would try to make her see reason, I decided. And if she did not, I would take her stone and face Rauru myself. It was the only way.
“You don’t see Rauru for who he is, Sonia. He has changed Hyrule for the worst, pitted our people against each other.”
“My husband, my king, has a gift for leadership. He will bring this land to a glory the likes of which we have never seen.”
“He has a stone! A stone which would do far better in the hands of someone who will not smite an entire race for failing to show proper fealty to him! That is magic, not leadership!”
“You hypocrite! Is magic not exactly how you found your way into this castle?”
“That is different! My people are starving, they are loathed by the rest of Hyrule. If I do nothing, we will not last another five years.”
“The Gerudo–you wicked things–they have done this to themselves, Ganondorf!”
You will not believe me when I say I didn't mean to kill her. But once I had… once I had…
I knew there was nothing left for me. So I took the stone and graciously let it feed on the ambition I had once touted as my best quality.
But the stone changes you, boy. It speaks to you through its eternal life, forces upon you divine ambition on top of the power it grants. No one knows where the stones originate; perhaps they are from beings more powerful than even the Zonai, gifts from gods more ancient than we can comprehend.
I often wonder if the stone spoke to Sonia just as it does to me, and if it is for that reason she never thought to reject or leave Rauru. Even now, I can still hear her across space and time, beckoning me to another side. It compels me to fulfill a cycle I fought all my life to break for myself, my people, for Sonia.
So battle me, hero. You were chosen by the same wretched divine hand I was, who sought to torture Zelda with a power she could not find, who gave you courage without foresight, who granted me ambition without restraint.
Battle me, Link. Because either outcome will put me to rest until this cycle begins again.