Less than half of a mile of desert separated them, but it felt as if the two armies were insulated by worlds. One stood in the shadow of an ancient fortress, so sacred that they would not occupy it even now, in the very extremity of peril. Their front line bristled with soldiers too large to be human, mountains of armor and axes the size of a man's torso. Archers, each of them women and each of them beautiful, tended to their bows and checked their arrows, knowing that they would probably die in the name of their god. The two witches soared in the air above the fortress, working some nameless spell. They would do something grand and terrible in their last moments, to be sure, but few had any real hope of survival. The crones swept down, flying along the battle lines, and a roar rose to meet them. Their presence swept aside fear, fed the flames of their devotion, called to mind the face of their god. The armored titans raised their axes, clashed them together, and the archers raised their voices in a hellish scream that echoed across the sands for miles.

The other army was headed by the General, who was astride his horse, patrolling the lines of his troops. When he passed, the nervous air and bawdy chatter fell away, replaced by an awed hush. He was not a big man, nor did he ride a big horse, but when he looked over his troops it was with eyes like chips of ice. His approval was meted out silently, in short nods and gestures of his hands. His captains stood at the head of every regiment, waiting for his orders, and when he delivered them they went to work immediately. Every once in a while he would look out over the dunes, and the soldiers would follow his eye. The sands obscured the enemy army, but the fortress loomed large and the witches were visible from time to time.

The General lifted his right hand, fist closed, and the captains ran from their regiments to gather around him. Every eye was on that gathering; camp had been broken hours ago. The soldiers knew that the General spoke only rarely, preferring to communicate orders through the gestures of his hands. Those gestures were faster than words, more honest, and easier to understand. That spoke to the entire character of the General: some of the more wizened soldiers had watched him enter their ranks as little more than a boy, clawing his way up the chain of command by virtue of courage and doggedness and an unwillingness to leave a man behind. The war with the Gerudo had been going on for five years, was rumored to have been delayed by his actions as a young man. The King had died years ago, and the kingdom had united under the banner of the Princess, but the General was the one who made sure that the alliance held in the face of Ganondorf's invasion.

He had been the one to drive the shadow beasts out of the Kokiri Forest, back when he was a sergeant.

He had taken a hundred men and half as many Gorons and cleared Death Mountain of its occupational forces.

His forces were the ones that had made it so that the Zora never needed to enter the war at all, who had relieved the Gorons of their need to protect their home, who had driven the Gerudo back into the desert. He carried a banner for each of the peoples populating Hyrule, wore the Royal Family's crest as a cloak.

When the time came to bury the bodies, he had never delegated the duty to someone else. In those times he was just another soldier.

In secret he was called the Hero.

They - each of them, all of them - loved him, would have followed him into the mouth of the Sacred Realm, stormed the very halls of the gods so long as they could fight in his shadow.

The captains backed away from the General, and every soldier held his or her breath.

The sound of the Gerudo women marching to war washed over the dunes.

The General drew his sword, its metal a shifting green and purple inlaid with black roses on the blade, and held it high.

The soldiers cried out with one voice. "FOR HYRULE!"

He swung the blade forward, pointed beyond the dunes to the rising cloud of dust.

"FOR ZELDA!"

Men and women roared as one, and the line surged forward. Their voices rose as one, and the screams of the Gerudo were drowned out by the battle hymn of the Hylians as they marched to war.

This would be the end.