Zelda only spoke to Link, and Link only spoke to Zelda, and Ganondorf didn't say a word. There was an unspoken truce between them- not one of them knew when it had come into effect, but Ganondorf had said nothing in the days the three of them traveled. There were too many questions, Link thought. Questions that needed answers. Answers that they couldn't get if their squabbles got in the way. That was how it was while they moved. And they had to move, because Morrigan was traveling fast and they didn't know their way around the streets and everything was screeching to a stop around them. Trains and ferries were failing throughout the countryside quickly, and asking strangers for rides was a ridiculous idea because half the people were in a blind panic.

Eclipse, the corporation that supported nearly half of Vesper's commerce, had completely failed. Nobody could be reached for comment, none of the people who worked there had any idea what was going on. No one aspect of the operation knew what the others did at all, and at there was no way to receive any information from an outside source.

For everybody in Ciel worked for Eclipse in one way or another, and when Eclipse stopped feeding power and running things nothing worked anymore. Eclipse devices began to inexplicably fail in the same way that firearms were failing, throwing the traffic indicators and the communication lines into chaos.

The three of them could see society collapse around them as they ran as fast as they possibly could after Morrigan's trail. Government devolved into gangs. Towns turned against one another. People hoarded electric power for their own use, for no more was being given to anybody. Law fizzled away like steam in the sun.

And still Morrigan ran, with Dizene as her load. It was much easier when they figured out she was traveling in a straight line, directly to the border between Ciel and Central Vesper. Not that Central Vesper was any better-- it, too, ran off of Eclipse and had dissolved into a mess of chaos. At least the individual towns there had the semblance of organization: farther away from the governing head of Irien City. There were rumors of establishing a new Capital there, but only in the mouths of dissonants and renegades.

On the third day of travel, it was Ganondorf finally realized what game was in play, and he spoke for the first time in over seventy two hours.

"She wishes to be found," he said suddenly, as he observed the latest camp where she had stopped for perhaps two hours behind an old building to sleep. "But only by us."

"What?" answered Zelda, keeping a lookout at the mouth of the alleyway; there were riots in the neighborhood. "What do you mean?"

"This path she's taking. It's not the shortest line to the border," he said incredulously. "It passes through the worst of the confusion on purpose. She's on the top of every wanted list in Ciel, or was until the bounty office collapsed. Ciel can't follow her where the people get in the way. But we can."

He ground his nails into his palms. "In fact, she's leading us in a safe route. She knows something we don't, so she's keeping us away from people who will slow us down."

"Wherever she's taking us, her passenger's not going willingly," Link said, bending down and examining some scrapings into the ground and a fresh dent in a metal refuse container. "Somebody tied up lay here yesterday."

They all shared the same thought. Dizene.

None of them understood what had happened on the tower, but this they knew: perhaps the only guides they had in this world were fugitives. Or at least one was. The other was probably a victim. It begged the question why one of a pair of best friends would have to kidnap the other one.

Something was very wrong in Vesper. But it didn't take a holy power to figure that out.

"We're gaining. There's no time to lose."

-

On the fifth day, the three finally caught up to Morrigan just as she rested after passing the border. But it wasn't Morrigan they encountered. It was Dizene.

She appeared out of the darkness in a massive abandoned building, something that once served as a center of commerce. They had tracked the two fugitives down to that spot, but that was hardly a challenge. As soon as she was over the border, Morrigan did not seem too ardent on making a good pace, and slowed down.

Still, it was a shock when Dizene came walking out of the gray grime, hands bound, hair filthy and face streaked with ash, as if it was totally normal. She froze when she saw them, as if she didn't know what to do, and nobody said anything. It was as if none of them really believed they were meeting.

"Oh, hello," Dizene finally said in a faraway, dreamy voice. "Have you come to take me back to my father?"

"No," Link said slowly. "Dizene?"

"I think that's my name. Everybody seems to be calling me that."

That was not right. Even Ganondorf could feel the skin crawl over the back of the neck.

"Dizene," said Zelda, "don't you recognize us?"

"No. Should I?"

"I'm Link," said Link. "She's Zelda. And that is Ganondorf. Do you know those names?"

"No. You have funny ears. Did my father send you?"

It was an innocent question, but all it put into the air was a sick horror. Whatever was wearing Dizene's green eyes wasn't Dizene on the inside. It spoke like her, looked liked her, but didn't act like her and certainly think like her. The not-Dizene's face began to fall with a disappointed sadness.

"Daddy didn't send you, did he?" she gave a small frown. "I thought not."

"Dizene!"

The voice called out from behind a collapsed series of crates, and before long Morrigan almost vaulted over the hazard. "Dizene! Don't run off like that!"

"I'm sorry."

"Stop saying that!" Morrigan cursed, muttering a few things in a language that none of them understood under her breath. As if she didn't even care, she looked up at Link. "You guys are so slow," she said. "Why didn't you just take a taxi?"

Zelda blinked. "We don't have any of your money."

"Oh. Stupid." she slapped her face tiredly. She looked a mess-- with torn pants and sunken eyes and dull hair tied into her braids lopsided. She gripped her black knife with white knuckles. "Nevermind. Get over here, Dizene."

Dizene shuffled over without complaint, eyes childish and blank.

"Okay, everybody. It's safe here for now-- I'm going to be moving in a few hours, but we'll be all right here for a while. This place has already been passed over, and they don't double check when the houses of the people in their search parties are going to hell."

She motioned for them to follow her, and before long they were sitting on some boxes arranged as seats, at a table made of crates. Morrigan had somehow managed to boil some water with a kettle straight out of a forlorn, unsold box and a burst steam pipe. And, in this dark place of ruin, they all sat and were treated to tea.

"There isn't any better way to mock people who want to kill you than to sit and drink tea while they can't find you," Morrigan said sourly. "Anyway, I need to bring all of you up to speed with exactly what's gone on since Eclipse snagged me."

She sipped her bitter tea to disguise the tightening of her hands. "It's really, really good to see you. So you go first. What got you guys to the top of the Eclipse building? And... Ganondorf, you've changed colors."

Ganondorf grunted and said nothing, only drank his tea with a biting stare that Morrigan avoided. "He was afflicted by magical backlash, and before he recovered his blood was purged," Zelda explained as succinctly as she could. "For whatever reason, something in him was affecting the color of the flesh beneath the skin."

"It hardly matters," Ganondorf bit. "We trailed you to the building-- you stand out like a magic bonfire in the darkness since that spire released it's energy. Unfortunately, by the time we arrived you had already broken your prison. Which I am interested to hear about, seeing as all we saw on you was that dueling-knife at the time."

"That's later," Morrigan said bitingly. "There's a lot of stuff I need to tell you first that's really important."

Link looked at her tired face and didn't doubt it. "I have a feeling it's going to be long."

"If it was short, I wouldn't feel so completely awful."

–

"There's a lot of things I didn't know about the world, things I don't think anybody knew. They didn't mean to tell me, either. They thought I knew when they took me away, but I didn't. So when they asked me about everything, I found it all out.

For one, Eclipse isn't a real corporation at all. It's a cult. All the high-ranking people in it serve this thing that they won't talk about. I don't know what it is-- they didn't say. But the people everybody thinks run Eclipse don't run Eclipse.

Eclipse hasn't just gone through a failure, it's completely gone. All high-ranking people have vanished, and all of it's devices are failing, but you probably noticed that. But it has something to do with magic and the Spires you're looking for. I don't know much else other than what they asked me about: something about how their power and the spires don't mix.

They took me because they found me with Dizene, and they used that as an excuse to try and get rid of me. They put me in a restraining jacket for a week while they took Dizene and... something happened. They wiped Dizene out of Dizene's head. I don't know what they did. Whatever they did, they're going to pay.

But I know why they did it. Dizene is the daughter of Malek Mayson-- one of the biggest people in the Eclipse cult. I didn't even know-- I don't think she even knew. She never met her father, ever. The cult's passed down from parent to child, see. I don't know why Dizene was with her mother and not with her father, but once the slime got a hold of her the Dizene I know wouldn't have given up herself. They must have done it to make her compliant, and to keep her away from me.

I don't know how I got out. It was dark and I was so angry at Mayson when he told me about Dizene... I don't know. I just sat there, festering, until it was too much and I... exploded.

I don't even know, okay? It felt like you when I did. I screamed and the next thing I remember was that I had torn the jacket off and the metal hands were in shreds and the door to the holding cell was clawed into three smoking pieces.

I blame you.

So I killed their machines, broke them wherever I found them with whatever made me explode. The machines everywhere began to fail, until it was just too much and it all screeched down to a stop. That's right. I broke Eclipse. I took down the biggest power on Vesper all by myself. Just by smashing their machines.

My plan was to get Dizene and get out of there. And I did find her, but I found her like this and I didn't know what else to do. So that's how I kidnapped her. I look like a monster to everybody who doesn't know the truth, but there it is. I had to kidnap my best friend. Overnight, I just went from being due to be executed to the most infamous criminal in a hundred years.

And I took off for the border, hoping you'd follow me and you did, so that's enough on that. And here we are."

–

Ganondorf slammed a fist upon the rickety boxes piled as a table, rattling the mismatched cups and bowls that Morrigan had filled with weak tea. "Are you trying to make a fool of me?" he demanded, voice snarling an echo through the building. "Don't pretend your stunt on top of that tower was just some sort of fluke. What are you hiding, girl?"

"I'm not hiding anything," she said mechanically.

"Lies!" he roared. "You will tell me now or face consequences, Rengard!"

As the sound faded from muffling stone and concrete, Morrigan closed her eyes with halting dignity. But as soon as she seemed to be calm she tore something from a twine cord on her neck and slammed it to the table, biting her lip in an angry frown.

"Fine." She looked as if she would die, but upturned her face haughtily.

Zelda looked at the object with a furrowed brow, It was thin, metallic, but not an entirely organic shape. At the narrow end it was jagged and broken as if it had been snapped off a larger body.

"What is it?" Link asked in confusion.

Zelda inspected it closely. "It's magic. But well done-- if I didn't have it in my hand I'd never be able to sense it." She gasped. "It's the same. The same thing that the angry spirit that we fought on top of the Ocean Spire, that the sun-fire ghost dropped when we slew it."

The object's broken end did look like it had once fit into one of the machines that ran Hope, Link noticed. Only, she has snapped it off.

"I took it from the creature that was rampaging under Halifax. Remember when this oaf threw me?" she pointed to Ganondorf sourly. "I was clinging to its head up there and this was lodged there. As soon as I yanked it out, the thing's invulnerability collapsed-- I used the last of the invulnerability on you three on top of Eclipse Tower. Don't bother fiddling with it-- it's broken. Used it to get through Hope to get out of Irien City, but after that Hope went down. Could have been trapped inside if I hadn't been fast enough."

"And why keep it a secret?" Zelda questioned sharply.

Morrigan smiled tightly. "Only children reveal everything they have when nobody asks."

The angry uncomfortable silence stretched out as Morrigan smugly drank her tea, displaying a kind of conviction the knowingly guilty could only envy. Zelda stared, slightly horrified while Link tried to hide his irritated tic with his own cup of tea. It wasn't clear if Ganondorf was simply fuming or angrily impressed.

"You didn't trust us," Link said bitterly.

"Of course not," Morrigan retorted. "Three beings of terrible and mysterious power fall out of the sky and immediately begin to change the course of history? What if you had turned on us? I'm not willing to risk my life on the off-chance that you're really the returned saviors of our world," she finished her tea. "I'm not that naive. Running into a knife-fight without a dagger up my sleeve is just stupid."

"I can't believe it," Zelda cursed. "All this time, I was sure you were genuine. Was all of that just some sort of safety scheme?"

"Oh, I like you people," Morrigan. "Unfortunately whether I like you and whether you are a threat or not really have nothing to do with each other," she said.

"You!"

It was not Zelda or Link or Ganondorf who yelled, but Dizene. As if she had suddenly woken up from a dreamlike state, her eyes were wide and she dropped her cup, spilling tea everywhere.

"You! Get away from—no! I won't go! No--!"

Morrigan silenced her friend without a single word, simply stabbing a small needle-like object into the other girl's arm sharply and then pulling it out. Her face was grim as Dizene's words died, the syringe discarded on the floor like so much garbage.

"I wish it didn't have to be this way, Dizene," she said flatly. "It's only for a little longer."

The other girl adjusted her glasses with confused eyes. "Was I saying something?" she looked at the growing stares of the company in the room. "Oh, hello. Have we met?"

Morrigan left to gather her things to move camp. For once, Link, Zelda, and Ganondorf met each other's eyes and saw the exact same thing. Horror.

–

"This is the Monument of the Unknown Soldier," Morrigan said neutrally. Two more days on foot, and they had reached Old Capital: a massive sprawl of a ruined city that stood as a testament to the war's end in Vesper a hundred years ago. Morrigan had led them here, claiming that this place was where dissonants gathered, a mobilization of underground groups and societies that had long stood against the Eclipse corporation.

As she so claimed, her father had been part of one for a very long time. It made them think about exactly what he was doing working for Eclipse itself.

"This is where the war ended, almost exactly one hundred years ago this month," she said, half to her company and half to the cold stone monument itself. She touched it tentatively. "I've never been here before, for all the times I've had to write essays about the war."

Link looked at the black, smooth inscription and wished he was able to read Vesper script. "What happened here?"

"The assault on Central Vesper's old capital was the last great battle in the Blood War," Morrigan said with the voice of one who had repeated lessons for hours on end. "It was here where the Unknown Soldier engaged Mabrine the General, leader of the Karai strike. Mabrine survived, but sustained horrid injuries in the process. Afterward, nobody knows the exact negotiations but eventually Mabrine made peace between Ciel, its territories, and Karai on Peace Point to the far south of here-- still not yet recovered from her wounds. She was slain in the end not by a blade or a Ciel firearm but by disease, infection, and open bleeding."

"And this Soldier?" Zelda asked. "Who was he?"

"Nobody knows. Hence, the Unknown Soldier," Morrigan smiled ironically. "The battle was said to be a spectacular one-- warriors and soldiers stopped to watch in the midst of open war. Otherworldly. Pity that soldier's body was taken by fire, or we'd have a name for the books."

She paused.

"If that one soldier had not stood against Highlady Mabrine, this world would be a very different place," she said darkly.

"Your great-grandmother wouldn't have become a tyrant, Morri."

Morrigan whirled around, hope and surprise in her eyes. "What was that?!"

But Dizene's eyes were still cloudy-- if she had had a burst of lucidity it had been swallowed up. Only a strangled mumble of words had escaped her, so short that only Zelda and Morrigan who stood close caught the whole phrase. "What was who?" Dizene asked, the sedative heavy in her eyes.

"Nobody," muttered Morrigan, and she clenched her fists with a frustrated frown. Zelda summoned words, staring at the monument and back at Morrigan.

"This Mabrine was your...?"

"Titles and sins aren't inherited in my city," Morrigan snapped. "Whatever baggage she had when she was alive, it died with her. But, yeah. By her surviving son."

Ganondorf was intriegued. "Surviving...?"

"Will you drop it?" hissed the girl. "I never meant to bring it up in the first place. It doesn't matter in Karai, it doesn't matter here, and it's not something I'm exactly proud of."

"Your father is standing over there," Link said. Sure enough, it was true. Amid the grown-over wreckage in the shadow of a blackened overhang stood a sturdy pale man in a dark coat, staring at them with an impatient, irritated expression in his single eye. As more of their number noticed him, he held his hat while he stepped out into the drafty abandoned square.

"You're late," he said tersely.

"So were they," Morrigan said, and for the first time she looked as if she wanted to crawl out of her skin and melt into the ground. "Running through a war zone does that."

"You can be cute later, Morrigan," her father cut in, but then adjusted the brim of his hat slightly to suggest tipping it politely save that he did not do much more than bow it over his eyes to shade them. "Lords and Lady, next time be sure to keep my daughter from being executed in the future."

"I will bear it in mind," Ganondorf replied, similarly brusque.

"Come on, then. We're wasting time." He turned on his heel and motioned for the group to follow. "Morrigan! With speed!" And Morrigan hurried as much as she could, frowning all the way.

"You have explaining to do," said Lancar Rengard Ti'Sinclair.

"I figured," said Morrigan.

–

The next few hours proceeded efficiently and without complication. They related to the man Lancar all the facts necessary for him to know, and he related to them the situation for most of the world that they had missed in their blind chase across the countryside and through conflict zones.

Eclipse had fallen and had left most of the world in disarray. The former Island Nation found itself without occupation for the first time in a century. Central Vesper and Ciel were left without any sort of technology at all. Bizarre phenomenon had been occurring across the world. Volcanoes in the eastern mountains south of Karai were suddenly heating. Rivers were changing route, destroying everything in their paths to converge and gather in a growing marshland in the middle of Central Vesper . Forests and trees from the western woodlands were withering, only to have regrowth in the southeast, all the way into Ciel.

Amid the rash of natural disasters, the monsters were no longer pointed strikes against specific places. The apparent army that had besieged Halifax was scattered and rampaging across the countryside, but that was not the horrific part of the matter. The monsters had seemingly given up pretending to be monsters and now gallivanted about with only one arm, or as only half a creature floating in space. It was reminiscent of the rare errors that occurred within the simulated world of Hope, save that the situation was entirely too real.

Zelda did not have the conviction to lecture Morrigan's father on magic principle and how the magic was leaking out of Hope and back into the world, and that the monsters were just echoes used by a greater power. Now that control of Hope, the remnants of magic Hyrule, was lost, so were the imitation images of the monsters. They looked like all they were: facsimile.

For the evening they were shown to bare rooms in a converted ruin that served as a headquarters for an underground anti-Eclipse movement referred to simply as The Group. Mostly comprised of militiamen and prepared populous, nominally its goal was to act against Eclipse and set down individual local government. Overnight it had transformed into one part guerrilla militia, one part border guard, and another part mercy corps. They were separatists-- rebels who wished to secede from the empire Eclipse had built. Finding Eclipse had been brought down for them left them in an awkward position that turned them into unofficial police and peacekeepers.

Lancar was a high-ranking separatist leader. And had been for years.

Morrigan claimed she had not known, but the truth could be seen in her eyes.

At Lancar's side was Dizene's mother Sofia, putting her skills in relations and diplomacy to the test, attempting to rally the broken nation to their cause. Her face was more fragile than last they had seen her, her eyes more businesslike and serious. But the testament to her strength of heart was that she did not weep when she found that Dizene did not recognize her own mother.

All the same, Dizene could not be kept sedated forever. One way or another, she had to be cured of whatever had wiped her clean. If possible. Leaving her would be unwise-- too long in the presence of the Triforce and both she and Morrigan had become like signal beacons. Anything that seeked magic, if it could not find the three of them from the deep past, would hunt them down instead.

It was time to find the nature of their foe.

Zelda, stone faced, faced Dizene. The girl had been tied to a chair-- not too tightly as to be painful, but tight enough to forbid movement. Dizene looked at her with wide, fearful eyes. Her glasses had been removed, for Zelda was afraid to break them should an accident happen. Only, this heightened the fear of the young woman for she could not clearly see her surroundings.

Link stood nearby, solemn as a statue, should anything arise. "What are you going to do, Zelda?" He looked at the chalked lines etched out on the floor. "It looks like the entrance to the Shadow Temple."

"Sheikah magic," she said grimly. "Nothing binding or horrid. Only to reveal the true form of what afflicts her."

Link could almost forget that Zelda knew more than the high holy arts and the complex arcane school of spells, but also the secret shadow arts-- some of which was dark and terrible. Perhaps even more macabre than the King of Evil's craft-- just as old, worked in the shadows of Hyrule's greed for generations.

There were times where he could almost forget everything he had gone through, as well. He didn't carry half of his equipment with him anymore-- he carried only what he had been buried with at the end of his first lifetime. The Megaton Hammer had been given back to the Gorons, the Lens of Truth enshrined in the castle treasury with the Winged Boots. The mirror shield had been given back to the Gerudo, but to what end he could not say.

The adventure seemed so long ago in his mind. Had it really been a whole lifetime since he had defeated Ganondorf and sealed Majora? If his thoughts had not been perpetually stuck at this stage of mental youth, he would say he was pondering like an old man.

After a few whimpers of confusion, Dizene calmed enough in blind terror to submit. And Zelda began, feeling pained over the fact that Dizene would not listen no matter how reasonable. The bruises discovered on the girl's arms brought to mind what exactly Morrigan had been forced to do before she had appropriated a supply of medical sedative.

But that could wait for later. Zelda spoke in tongues, invoking the power within her to channel the shadow and secret arts of truth-telling. Link shivered involuntarily, for the magic was cold and clammy and felt like the void and death. Not evil. Just better left undisturbed.

Dizene stared. "What are you doing?"

"Hush."

And she invoked the ritual. Dizene screamed, but no sound came out. There was no such thing as sound anymore: the magic brought them to a place that seemed seperate from the rest of the world. Self-enclosed. And it was in that area that Zelda Saw.

Only flashes. The sky crumbling, the earth rumbling, the stars shattered and splintered amongst the earthly divide. Running, fleeing over the sky, over the ground. A high-pitched shriek, and unearthly luminous blood. Being siezed, engulfed in fire. Something recoiled, and there were claws: great talons that rent.

Zelda didn't know what it all meant. From what grasp? What was this vision? It was not Hyrule, it was not Vesper, it was seemingly random and complex. Meaning nothing, as if she simply didn't know the context.

Zelda Saw then the foe itself. Or rather, did not see. Wisdom hissed and burned, and she whimpered under the intense writhing wrongness in the vision. She had to cut it, she could feel it writhing, reaching out to see her-- had it seen her? No, it could not, for it was blind and cold and massive and--

"Zelda!"

Link pulled her out of the wrenching abyss by grasping her shoulder. The spell was broken, and she and Dizene were back in the spare room. The lines of the magic circle were smudged where Link had ran to her side, streaking the blackened stone with pale chalk. "Zelda, are you all right?"

She nodded weakly, gathering her composure. "Yes. Yes, I'm... fine."

"What is it you saw?"

"Nonsense, at first," said Zelda, willing herself steady. "Then... a No Thing."

"Nothing?"

Zelda wrinkled her nose at her own diction. "No, no. No thing. It..." she gulped. "An entity. I've never felt anything like it. It eclipses Ganondorf as if he was one star in a great black sky."

"Evil?"

"No." Zelda shook her head. "A man can be evil, a thing can be evil. This was not a thing. A No Thing. In the same way I can't call the sky or the earth evil. But... it has a sort of unfeeling intelligence to it. Not immoral, but... amoral. I don't know what else to say."

Link steeled his eyes. "We will just have to overcome it then. We'll get Hyrule back. You'll see."

"I hope you're right."

Dizene murmurred in the midst of it. "It's real," she said in a tiny voice. "That was real magic. Magic isn't supposed to exist."

She regurgitated words. "Well, the Karai have heatstones, but those are just science they won't let people touch, not magic..." she looked blindly at them, green eyes unfocused. "Who are you?"

"I am Z--"

"I know your names. Just because she kept stabbing me with that stuff doesn't mean I really forgot," she said quietly. "You're... real?"

"I think so," said Link."

Dizene looked dumbfounded. "Father's lessons say that magic isn't real, but you did magic."

"Your lessons lied."

"Father wouldn't do that. He loves me."

She said this with such automatic certainty that she surprised herself. Scared herself. Gazing around the room, she tried to avoid their eyes until it was impossible.

"What do you know of your life?" Zelda asked gently. "What do you remember?"

"My room," she said blankly. "And father. And my lessons."

She seemed distressed.

"That can't be all of it," she said in frustration. "I thought there was more, but..."

There was a broken look in her eyes, the eyes of someone who realized their own foolishness. Shame, fear, confusion. A bit of panic.

"If father lied about the magic, did he lie about the other things, too?" She paused. "Is she... Morrigan, the Karai, really my friend?"

Zelda sighed. "So you're feeling civil now?"

"I just want to know."

"You'll have to wait a while. From what I hear, her father wishes to speak with her."

–

Morrigan punched the tree. It hurt her knuckles, but she did it anyway. Ganondorf did not need to know exactly why-- the general reason he could guess. Not that Morrigan knew he had seen her strike the tree as hard as she was able to. For all of her haughty attitude, she was rather easy to outmaneuver with the simplest invisibility spells. Many a time he had watched her when she thought nobody was looking, slink off to communicate with her father through message-posts, smuggle a bottle of ale but then discard it as if she didn't have the heart to drink it.

"You know that won't help."

Her father must have known a more specific reason behind her frustration. Morrigan turned around under the abandoned veranda. She didn't frown or scowl as she usually did. Her face was impassive, resolute.

"You're really very good at this, aren't you?" she said, working hard to keep her own voice under control. "At this using people and keeping secrets."

Ganondorf winced at the irony.

"Morrigan. There's no need for drama," he said coldly. "You throw fits like a child."

"You have to have known!" she yelled. "Sofia! Dizene! All of it!"

Lancar sighed heavily. "I--"

"How much of it was real? How much of it did you mean to happen all along?"

"Morrigan!"

He did not yell, but barked like a wolf and walked to her, silver eye flashing. His daughter froze, stubborn and resolute. And quieter, she continued.

"You didn't meet Sofia by chance, did you?"

"Sofia came to us," he admitted tersely. "Seeking asylum. She had brought her daughter, who was not old enough yet to speak. You may have met as infants. It's impossible to know."

He stared her down. "We listened to her, and we protected her. When The Group called me forward and out of Karai I settled close by her. We were on friendly terms. She knows your mother."

"And I just so happened to tag along."

"I never asked for your presence here," Lancar interrupted. "The time would have been better spent in Orkusk, under your mother. It was chance you met Dizene, but not unwelcome. We could watch her through you."

Morrigan snarled at that, eyes aflare. "You used me!" she cried. And in an instant, an irrational flight of rage, she reached out to strike her own father.

It was not to be. Although the complete action took only a moment, the reversal was stark and separated into distinct parts. He grabbed her wrist. He flipped it. He twisted her arm. She cried out and was forced to one knee as if she had lost control of her body. He moved every single one of her joints through her arm, and she bowed to him. His skill was vastly superior to her own, honed by years and repetition. The truth of it all was laid plainly: she was competent, but in the face of one with true skill, artfulness, she was nothing with only her fists to strike with.

"You like being the user, not the one being used," he hissed. "This never happens to you. You're never forced to submit. Just like the spoiled child you always have been. Despite our efforts."

He jolted her hand again and she screamed.

"You came with me claiming you needed to learn," he said icily, angrily. "I don't see what you accomplished. You would do this to ten of the city children if it meant winning."

Morrigan looked up at him through snarling eyes. "That was then, not now."

"We don't live for now," said Lancar. "There is a world outside you and now. But you don't think on that much, do you? I don't love your mother for now. I did not spend half my life guarding Sofia for my own gain. I did not lose my eye for the sake of the moment."

He let go of her, and she collapsed to the dirt in a heap.

"Victory is a measure of sacrifice. The completeness depends on what you are willing to give up," he said harshly. "You have no idea what the burden of the leader is. In this world, to lead is to manipulate, to guide, to watch. You can't hold the world in a clenched fist."

He put on his hat again and looked back down at her. "Get up, and cut your theatrics. You look like a pile of shit sitting down there."

And just like that, he left. Ganondorf stood, careful not to cast a shadow in the evening, wondering what in the gods' names he had just witnessed. Morrigan lay there, staring back at the doorway her father had vanished into, unwilling to give chase. Ganondorf knew a slight prickling in his instincts; he half wanted to gather her up himself and perhaps take her to his side completely.

But no.

She was not his, he concluded. She would never be his, not entirely. She had her own father, was played upon by her own troubles. She was somebody else's pawn long before she had even met him, and she certainly could never be his own.

Morrigan struck the ground with a strangled cry. Even from where he was standing, Ganondorf could see the tears she shed.

For all she had suffered, had a lot to learn. Her father was right. She was self-centered, and still a child.

He thought on that grimly. The next focus of magic was not far off, within a few hours travel. And once that one was free, the disasters would amplify as the magic increased in the world. If Morrigan, or anyone, though that things were difficult at the present time they were soon to be proven very wrong.

It was unclear if freeing magic would even resurrect Hyrule in the first place.

And, although nobody would have believed him, Ganondorf did not want to find himself in a world of chaos and despair again. He had enough of that in one lifetime. Or infinite lifetimes. He wasn't quite sure anymore.