Vernamor’s soil bore obvious signs of a hard and demanding battle. The vastness in it became clearer and scars, prints and deep marks sailed across the land that was deserted for life and joy. The scent of burned grass mixed with stained blood created a dense vapour that covered the battlefields. The grass was flattened out by heavy exhausted steps and painful screams echoed in the straws on the muddy land. Torn bodies lay over eachother with perforated and slashed up armors and uniforms. Not one main artery was pounding. Rags flew with the silently trembling wind and the wind whispered caughs and heavy breath. It spread into the mountains at the border of the land. The grass rattled because of the urgency of the masses in the air and the roaming echoes in the earth below. A solitary hole with no bottom.

The ashes on the castle walls disintegrated, fell down and blew gently away with the wind. The whole fortress was slowly evaporating and flakes of stone were ripped off it and cast away like leaves on a mapletree. It disappeared into a minor black hole in the sky. The black hole tracted the stone flakes with a murmuring magnetic vibration. Its roams and thunders were distant like furious waves far out on the ocean. Rays were being sucked inwards flashing and at the same time the black hole spew out red waves towards the centre of the sky.

There it created a transparent wave ellipse where parallell lines of vague rays were emanating from a roughened motion in its core. A black cape of dust was sucked up into the ellipse. An ocean of furious colours were absorbed into the black hole and those who were alive could feel its exceeding powerful magnetism and see the volatile fluids vanishing into no-man’s land. The rest of an intense battle had just disappeared in a mere gloomy vacuum beyond the clouds. A moaning of the blue sky sank down over the land of Vernamor and Ganon’s Castle.

The portal to the castle had been broken down and burned. Grey haze lay inside and one solitary torch blazed in the hall providing light to only few shapes. The torch’s poor flame expanded, minimized and expanded again untill it went out. The moon’s blue glow was frequently disturbed by the black hole ,that now had diminished, and flashed now and then through the castle entrance. Through the windows with the coloured glasses. Through the sprinkles in the castlewalls outside. And it stilled every movement of existence.

Like the silence of death had made its final territorial demanding, the black hole decreased and vanished. The glow of the moon climbed up the spiky towers of Ganon’s Castle and threw light on a bridge at the side of the main tower. The bridge was calcificating and corroding into narrow splints and the tower made crackling sounds like breaking ice. Shadows from the heavy breath of dying men made the fortress sink into darkness. Deadly silence wiped away the echoes of painful moaning and angry screeching.

There he stood. Ganondorf. In the midst of the dim wing. A shadow rested on his pan as he stood there emptied for breath and bones glaring out the crooked balcony. His face was hackled with nothingness, pale and discomfitted. Vacant and absent as a clouded mountain in the winterstorm. He flutteed his eyelashes slowly. Totally immobile and felt somehow disable to do anything at all.

The drapes before the balcony were lifted up by the heavy wind and flapped making inaudible whipping-noises. Ganondorf sighed. His hands were cold and his legs tired. His cape was torn and it flared in the wind and. His feet were cemented to the floor like heavy tombs. The air was dense and sultry and matted his hair untill drops of warm water dripped down his chin. Sweat and blood. Water and acid. Calm breathing with a touch of fright.

He watched the red flaming clouds that circulated around his tower. It was reflected in his tired eyes and started folding onto the castlewalls and melting down on the balcony, relfecting the moon’s light and the pale stars. Tiny particles of hardened sulphur mixed with pure air made his view diffuse. It drifted around sinking to the bottom of the castle. One single caugh from somewhere out on the fields disappeared into the dissonant soundwave that covered the area. The high volts that surrounded the land in the beginning of the battle started lifting off and Ganondorf’s glare faded with it. The pressure form the air faded and he felt like following.

The helplessness made him silent. His eyes were drowsy. Full. He sighed again with a deep hidden mourning. His fists squeezed hard around the dagger on his thigh and dropped it on the floor. He measured the pain.

Link slipped through the door into the wing. Right behind Ganondorf. He had searched the whole castle before he came up there. A blast of agony strifed Ganondorf’s cheek as the room felt like an endless vacuum for him. A vacuum of pain. A vacuum of loss. He swallowed soundlessly trying to hide that he was frightened. And shivered. Gravity lent on his shoulders and squeezed his heart. The throat was slitting up, his head ached and bonds hung around his heart.

Link narrowed his eyes and his arms quivered as he kept his watch on the enemy in front of him. His boots were scratchy and he had several rifts in his thigh from the thorns in the castlegarden. Link straightened up, frowned and drew his rein up tight picking up an arrow from his quiever. He raised the bow without hesitation and shut his right eye. He breathed with a nervous twitch. Ready to put an end to his kill. He flexed his arm muscles and aimed at Ganondorf’s neck.

"I see you have kept well armored," Ganondorf uttered. Link opened his eyes wide. The words banged into Link’s face. He lowered his aim to see if Ganondorf did anything. Then he frowned again and crept onto Ganondorf looking bewildered and at his possum-like enemy. Long time before this Link had hit him with his Master Sword on his thighs and in his stomach, and one could clearly see the blood-dripping scars. His clothes were stained in blood and mire and his hair was dishevelled. An old die-hard warrior that had come to an end where he stood facing his loss with the look stiffened like a wall. His face features remained unchanged as he turned against Link in slow motion. There were indistinct question marks in his hollow eyes. His look fainted into thin air as he descended onto the floor in exhaustion. His great body toppled over and Link stepped back. Ganondorf bowed in pain.

Link scattered his bow and arrow to the floor and pulled out his sword. He stretched out his arm, raised the sword and pointed it at Ganondorf’s head. His eyes were dusty porcelain against the dampy air. He looked through everything to another side of the universe.

He bowed his head in awe as he said stammeringly, "White flag, Link. You have certainly conquered me this time…" Link pointed the sword on his neck. Ganondorf felt the acute tip of the Master Sword on his skin between the shoulderblade and the midst of his throat. He was excoriated and waited for the powerful blade to immerse deep into his artery. Longing for it.

He watched the sword and a strike of a hammer hit him inside. Anguish made him nausious and he withdrew gradually from physical existence. His face was cut from a stone.

His arms were emptied for power and his heart lacked of will. Will to open his eyes once more or to attempt making peace with Link. The exhaustion had catched him, led him down to the deep darkness and it held him there. Just like he wanted. Like he had always wanted it.

Deep down where the feeling of existence was gone, where his eyes were shut and would not let him see what was around and where weakness was a blessing. He longed to recede this world and forever stay away. In a land of nothingness. Suddenly reality embraced his throat again and forced his eyelashes to open. A coat of dolorousness was painted on his face.

"You subdue to me?" frequented Link even more puzzled. "You are overwhelming, Link," Ganondorf stuttered lifting his head to look him in the eye. Damp ran down his pan as their eyes met. A pale fright hid in his eyes. As his face featured changed. He saw the mere profile of Link’s figure standing above him. The rest of the fragmentary pieces fused into eachother and became a fractured picture.

"Please, spare my life. Do not obey your or any one else’s desire to take vengeance on me. I have got nothing to defend myself with. I am totally unarmed. I have lost everything. My body is sore and…" A short break and he continued,"This dagger is the thinnest leaf compared to your mighty sword!," Ganondorf prayed mournfully. The fragmentary view of Link changed to become distinct again as he was awakened by tasting his own dripping sweat.

"How can you verify your surrender?," Link spoke vocatively and sarcasticly, "Your statements are far beyond reality. It is unreasonable!" Link raised his vioce. "I cannot lower my sword for I do not find your words trustworthy…" Ganondorf bend his head again mesmerized. His look fell to the floor again as a heavy plate of metal. His face stinged. Sweat and water purled down his pan and into the small slashes on his cheeks. "Why should I spare your life? Why temper justice with mercy? You, Ganondorf – The Great King of Evil…would never speak the truth! Your surrender is fake!"

Ganondorf sighed. His heart pounded no longer as it had turned to stone. It was frozen in time and his mind was out of reach. "People have winced in pain because of you.

You stole their dear ones, you brought people to subjection and made yourself superior with lies and pure evil!," Link shouted in anger and sweat kept purling down Ganondorf’s pan as he measured the increasing pain..Years of wailing and sorrow passed through his mind. He was tired of the lamentable state he had found himself in the past years. After a moment of silence Ganondorf got on his feet and the sword followed his massive body with subtlety. His face was distant and unfamiliar. He was losing himself. In dismay he felt a striking burning in his neck and his mouth fell open as he spoke calmly, "You have grown wise. You have an incisive accuracy and not even death would bring you to discouragement or steal away your mettle and your boldness. I assume fighting me has been a vital source of wisdom to you."

Link’s look midlened as he glanced at Ganondorf’s calm appearance. "I have done nothing but chasing time…chasing my desires." He spoke at long intervals. Almost peacefully.

The stillness between the two of them made Link decide to lower his sword. His face mildened even more – he now saw an open land. A clear view. A secluded and forgotten desert in need of pure rain. "I have teached you how to conquere evil with my own folly…," Ganondorf said unobtrusively, "Here I stand confronting the Hero of Time. The great one.. Oh, I desire to be like you…" Link observed him thoroughly. His tone was echoing autumn as when trees gave up and dressed off their leaf-uniforms and prepared to freeze in the snow. His glare radiated distress and a touch of disheartenment and dejectedness appeared like small flickers of light in his eyes.

"A fool is wise to discover his folly…and to do something with it…," Link speeched solemnly and he was unconsciously trying to comfort, "I believe you have changed King Ganondorf." He smiled neutrally. Uncertainly. "One cannot change, but one can evolve. I failed evolving…because I did not want to see…,"Ganondorf replied. Their eyecontact broke and Ganondorf went out on the balcony. There was a velvet surrounding him. Leaves had fallen off and he tried to hide his shame though he knew he had nothing to conceal it with. And the autumn breeze got heavier against his cold skin. Link followed.

Ganondorf’s eyes wandered over the land. Silence had stilled it and the clouds lightened. Raindrops touched their cheeks. His shoulders lost its fieriness and his hands became tame. Something heavy and invisible had fallen off his shoulders. A quick breeze passed them drying the small rifts and wounds in Ganondorf’s face. He shivered from the pain and closed his eyes. Pictures and words passed before him and he knit his brows.

The atmosphere was endless. Full of randomness. He felt threatened by the uncertainty of what was coming. What was not coming. And he staggered out to the edge of the crooked balcony in hope of breathing fresh air to clear his mind.

"I surely have underestimated you, Link. You are made of unbreakable steel. I believed I could succeed and I obeyed Evil," Ganondorf turned towards Link and kneeled down before him. Loss and disguise ran down his face and entered his mind and choked him. He longed for the high volts that had covered the area before. He longed to fly with it. Follow it to the nothingness. To the land where he belonged.

"My master," he spoke low-voiced and the tone of his voice droned, faded gradually, softly, almost weeping. "I have ended…at a point where my own hatred..scares me…Please…Show me your mercy, my lord." "You are certainly no fool!," Link said relaxed, "Stand up!" he demanded and a loving smile appeared on his face. Welcoming him.

Something lingered in the air between them and behind translucent glass, Ganondorf’s eyes smiled. Like a distant white garden.