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She landed so abruptly it took a second for her body to process she is now on solid ground. When it did, the nausea rose up from her stomach to her throat and she gagged, unable to care whether she puked or not.
She’d barely been able to eat at dinner, too nervous for what’d come after. Ganondorf had finally approached Sonia, just as she’d said he would. They had a plan, a plan that required Zelda to have a mastery of a power she’d awoken only two weeks earlier, and that alone was enough to make her panic. Imagine if she tried to explain this to her younger self — oh yes, you are once again staking the fate of Hyrule on control of your powers, surely that’ll go better this time.
“It will be alright,” Sonia had reassured her with that serene smile of hers, speaking quietly so only Zelda could hear. But she didn’t know. Zelda had been unable to tell her, to explain that her incompetence had already been Hyrule’s doom once, to watch that smile sink into disappointment.
She’d been so anxious, so terribly anxious hiding behind a screen in Sonia’s sitting room as they waited for Ganondorf to arrive. He never had.
The source of all her problems was strangely quiet. Wherever they’d landed was pitch black, the kind of black you only got on a moonless night far away from any village, so she could not see him. For all she knew he’d burned up sometime during the fall. That’d be perfect, really.
Then the lights turned on and dashed that hope. Ganondorf held a floating ball of light in the palm of his hand which exuded a calm and steady glow, perfectly balanced and controlled. Zelda’d seen that spell before, performed by Impa when they’d lost track of time and had to make their way back to the castle after sundown, but Impa’s light was like a firefly compared to Ganondorf’s. It lit the cave — it must be a cave, rock and stone surrounding them, no sky to be seen — for as far as she could see, stretching past the horizon. Talented as Impa was, Ganondorf outshone her a thousand fold. Literally. It was exceptionally irritating.
Zelda heaved, not quite retching but certainly making the effort, and glared at him. “You killed him,” she snarled.
Ganondorf did not answer. He didn’t even look at her, studying their surroundings instead, as if she wasn’t even worthy of his notice.
She pushed herself upright, ignoring her body’s protests. “Answer me!” she snapped.
Finally, Ganondorf turned to her. “You didn’t ask me a question,” he replied, infuriatingly calm, in a polite politician’s tone that made her want to rip his head off.
“You killed him!” she nearly screamed, nails digging into her palms as she balled her fists, gravel digging into her feet, her knees bruised and hurting. It was cold and she was wearing far too little, having dressed for the hot climate at the desert’s edge. She was hungry and had no idea when she’d eat her next meal. Rauru — kind, patient Rauru who let Sonia decorate his ears with bells and laughed with her at how silly he looked, who’d taken her in without a moment’s hesitation and believed her tale just as quick, who’d founded her country and was supposed to be her ancestor — Rauru was dead, he was dead.
Rauru was dead and Zelda had rescued his murderer.
“What do you want me to say?” said the evil man, “I’m sorry for your loss?”
She spit at him. It landed well before his feet and Zelda stared at it, angry, wondering how pathetic it’d be to move closer before she spat at him again.
“Fighting is of no use to us right now,” said Ganondorf, as if he were the reasonable one. “Despise me as you please, but we need to find an exit.”
She looked up at him, ready to scream again, then paused. There was no trace of arrogance in his expression, not a hint of that ever-present smug smile he wore like a crown, walking through their halls as if he already owned them. Instead there was the slightest crease in his eyebrows, visible tension in his jaw. He pursed his lips and seemed almost... worried.
Zelda looked around. Surrounding them was stone, stone, and more stone, a grey kind in a hue she’d never seen before. Whatever cave they’d landed in was enormous; the light did not touch the walls and barely scraped the ceiling, so high above them she had to crane her neck to look at it. It was quiet; there was no dripping water, no skittering extremophiles clinging to life. The smell too was strange. Strange, because it didn’t smell like anything. No guano, no wet rock, no stagnant water; at most, it smelled a bit like dust.
“Where are we?” Zelda asked without thinking about it.
“The Depths,” Ganondorf answered.
“The Depths?”
Rauru had vaguely mentioned something about them, about mining deep under the ground for zonaite. He’d looked to Sonia as he said that, as if expecting her to add something, but she’d only smiled. The topic had changed after.
“I’m assuming you did not bring us here on purpose.”
It wasn’t a question, but she answered anyway, shaking her head. She hadn’t done anything on purpose, really. She hadn’t been thinking at all. She’d just seen Sonia — Sonia —
“What are the Depths?” she asked, to avoid having to think about that. She’d have to, she knew, but she — not now.
Have you ever gotten anything by pleading?
Ganondorf was staring at her. “What?” she asked.
“Where are you from?”
It was less a question and more an order, and it raised her hackles. “Why should I tell you?”
“There is not a child on this earth that does not know about the Depths.”
It was said with a sense of finality, with the surety of a conclusion reached after months of testing. What tests had he been conducting? What hypothesis had she just confirmed for him?
“That’s not an answer to my question,” she replied, stubborn.
Ganondorf studied her. She crossed her arms and glared up at him, unblinking.
“Your only option is to work with me,” he said with annoyance, the way you explained something stupid to a small child.
She bristled. “I do not need you.”
“What is your plan then?” Ganondorf gestured at her, at her clothes. “You have made an enemy of the queen, so you have made an enemy of the Heavenly Kingdom of Hyrule, which has so graciously embraced all the rest of our lands. I am their last opponent. You have no options other than me.”
Despite everything, the sheer disdain in his voice as he spoke of Hyrule startled her. The very name of her kingdom was poison between his teeth, and he spat it out just as she’d tried to spit on him. “Hyrule protects its people,” she snapped.
“From what?”
“You!” she gestured at him. “From evil men who’d conquer the whole world if they could!”
Ganondorf threw his head back and laughed. It was loud and genuine, mean and happy at the same time, a bully’s laugh. “Dear Zelda,” he sneered, “what do you think your precious King Rauru was?”
Anger rose in her the way it had only done once before, when Link had fallen before her pet Guardians protecting a useless princess. Her hand burned. Ganondorf caught her punch, only to scream as she scorched his hand, stumbling backwards. His light spell broke, but the Depths remained illuminated. If anything, it was brighter than before.
“Keep his name out of your mouth,” she snarled. “You’re alive only by my mercy.”
For just a moment, with his shoulders hunched, his hand clutched to his chest, his eyes wide with shock, Ganondorf looked small. Then a switch was flipped. His eyes narrowed, his back straightened, his hand was dropped as if it’d never been hurt in the first place.
“How easy it is to make threats with the power of the gods in your hand,” he said, icy and regal. “You’d be nothing without it.”
It’s a strike straight to the heart. She howled like a wounded animal and lunged, only to hit a barrier, thick and dark and smoking with malice. It took but a second to rip apart, to claw her way through, but she met another barrier, and another and another, never able to burn the smoke away no matter how hard she tried. A hundred years she’d tried, a hundred years she’d torn and clawed and burned, a hundred years she’d been no more than a shield, waiting for the sword to finish the job. Link had done in months what she’d failed to do in a century.
Have you ever gotten anything by pleading?
Yes.
She reigned herself in. She took a deep breath and sealed the anger inside her, where it could burn her guts for all she cared. It didn’t matter. She had a duty.
“How do we get out of here?”
It was an order. From behind his smoking shield, Ganondorf glared at her.
“You want to save your kingdom, I want to save mine,” she snapped, impatient. “We can have our war after we deal with —”
With Sonia.
Zelda wished Sonia had gone mad, but she hadn’t. She’d been perfectly calm, perfectly reasonable, perfectly in control of herself as she’d discarded Zelda, stole her husband’s sacred stone, and prepared to torture a man. Murder, Zelda would’ve understood. Not all criminals deserved the luxury of a trial or a cell. But Sonia had smiled around Rauru’s sacred stone and Ganondorf’s blood and her eyes had held more malice than anything she’d seen before, more malice than the Yiga who had tried to kill her, more malice than Ganondorf’s living corpse as he’d tried to kill Link, more malice than Calamity Ganon as it had scourged Hyrule.
Whatever she planned to do, it would be evil. Zelda could not bear it.
Sonia had combed her hair after she first arrived in the past, had a warm bath drawn for her, had shared perfumed soap and calming incense. When she’d gotten out of the bath a cup of tea had waited for her, warm and rejuvenating. “My own blend,” Sonia had smiled, pouring her another cup. “Sundelions can extract even the meanest poisons.”
Zelda simply could not bear it. Evil had taken too much from her already.
Ganondorf lowered his shield, but did not dismiss it. “There are caverns in the surface that lead to the Depths,” he said, clipped. “We find one.”
She nodded. She let him lead, and he insisted she walk beside him, refused to have her follow. As if she’d kill him from the back. He would die looking at her. She’d make it quick, as becoming of a monarch. Urbosa had been the one to teach her that, accepting the surrender of a Yiga assassin. When you have power, you must have mercy too.
If he surrendered, she might even accept.