Ganondorf found the sword in the rotting remains of a trader's wagon.

How fitting of such a noble blade, to be picked up by some clueless peon and then abandoned.

Millennia had robbed the sword of its light as the Goddesses forgot it - like everything else they ever 'blessed'. But the blade was still sharp without a single scratch or dent, so he chose to take it. Eventually all swords broke, or, more often, rusted away like the centuries. But this slim sword was enchanted, and even if it was no longer blessed it would at least serve him longer than the other blades he'd taken up. Maybe he could even pretend that civilizations weren't falling and being rebuilt while he walked long, lonely roads, because he measured time by how chipped his sword was.

And, he knew for a fact the slim sword wasn't as pure as the white would let some believe.

((RB))

He found the child much in the same way. Presented to him like some sort of prank. It was even wrapped.

"Please…! Protect my child! I'll do anything, give you anything so long as you-Ah…?"

The woman who'd been begging him jerked, an arrow protruding from her throat. Gurgling on red, she somehow managed to still fumble the soft blanket into his arms. Ganondorf was in little more than rags, but he was strong and armed and the only other around who wasn't a monster. To her he must have seemed like a savior sent from the Goddesses, only a moment too late for her, but there for her child. He didn't bother stopping her body's slide to the ground, and he nearly didn't even bother to not drop the crying child. But pure curiosity won him over, and he tore away the cloth obscuring the infant and used the rag to wipe the blood away.

The monsters circled and jeered, gestured from the dead woman by his feet and then back up to him. Threat ignored, Ganondorf shot one with magic and looked over the infant he'd just had dropped in his lap. Plump and pink like a pig, it screamed defiantly at the jostling and cold, and Ganondorf nearly threw it at the recovering monsters. But, the child's crying lessened as a golden glow slowly grew from the top of its- his - left hand. With a soft coo, the infant grabbed at the Gerudo's hand, as he could peel away the light and hold it.

Ganondorf stared at the glowing brand on the chubby and so, so, so, tiny hand that pulsed weakly in time with his own. Stared at his fated enemy - a tiny and fat dough-child who couldn't even see properly and would splatter if he just flexed his hand the tiniest bit. It would be so easy, just a simple clench of his hand around any part of the so-called hero and he'd die. If the cycle was starting once more then that meant that the princess would be alive as well; just as young and weak/ Even after all these years, these millennium, the number of people who could actually stop him could be counted on one hand. And none of them were any threat to him if he decided to storm the castle.

Ah, he saw what this was.

He hadn't adopted his predetermined role of villain for almost a thousand years now. Or had it already been a more than a millennium? He couldn't remember. His sword was still white and sharp and strong so one week, one month, one year, one decade, one century, one -was the same as the next. When everything was the same in the end, what difference did it make if he became a nameless vagabond doing nothing significant? And what was less significant than the storybook villain being a melancholic fool who moped around, as if he had something as precious as a heart? Ha! Hearts were for those who deserved them, and what would he want with a heart? With happiness or hope or, Goddesses forbid, empathy? His heart was so rotted he could never be happy until he overthrew the Goddesses themselves. In fact, a monster like himself probably never had a heart in the first place!

Hearts could break, afterall.

And if he was being uncooperative, then just drop the impossibly-tantalizing opportunity right in his lap. What was it this time? Kill the hero, kill the princess, take their pieces, and finally win. Win and rule until some upstart found a new 'mysterious' source of power and killed or sealed him once again?

The infant cooed and reached up to try and grab a lock of unkempt and uncut red hair even as the monsters worked up their nerve, cried out, and charged. An arrow was whizzing Ganondorf and the tiny child just kept being idiotically ignorant of the situation, that his mother was dead and that he was held clumsily in the arms of the dark lord he'd have grown up hearing stories about. Nameless, forgotten in all but superficial children stories, despite all the live he'd taken and history he'd shaped.

He was so, so, tired of these games.

Yes this is going exactly where you think it is.

Random idea that'll be continued as snippets, both in and out of order.