-Elder Fae, Royal Palace-

The Elder of the Fae watched the huma as they toiled. Their craft and hands were barbaric and crude influence on nature compared to his own. They worked against nature to tame it and force dominion, while he worked with it, influencing it, so that it might work with him in turn. Compared to him, they might as well be sowing fine silk with a sledgehammer.

"It will not grow as you wish if you insistently break its roots." Elder spoke up.

Zelda sat nearby, watching and relaxing. A few servants were trying to help in the garden of the Fae. The keyword being: trying. Zelda found the craft of gardening a curiosity and took a break to watch.

Elder couldn't figure why, it was disgusting.

The servants bowed and stepped away as Elder approached. He reached a wooden hand towards the soil. He could just leave his wooden construct and become one with the soil directly, but they would learn nothing. He gave himself a substantial handicap to hopefully let them be a smidgen better. He dug up around the plant much further around then they were, and he lifted it.

"See the roots? They spread far and wide. You must also dig far and wide as well."

"But, Master Fae, then we would interfere with the other plants." They argued.

"If you wish to force your will on a garden, then you must go through with it. The earth does not feel pain, so it is pointless to treat it like it does. If you wish to plant them in such a way that they do not interfere with one another, then establish that plan from the beginning. You have already failed in this, so either uproot them all and start over, or go through with what you have started. You do not have the tools or skill to weave each root, so sacrifice should be made to do it your way."

Elder placed it before them and walked off.

Zelda smiled. "You seem irked."

"I cannot understand your people's pension for gardening. You have no skill in it."

"Our gardens are not as beautiful or harmonious as yours, but they are a beauty all their own."

"You cage beauty and call it yours. The flowers in your pots are corpses. It is not life. Your gardeners have all the skill and grace of a clumsy dragon trying to be a wood smith with head cold."

"I agree, but it is what we have." Zelda shrugged.

After a time, Zelda flinched and looked at her hand. She started to sway. She leaned back against the chair and closed her eyes.

"Something the matter?" The Fae asked.

"I... I don't know. I am feeling drained. Weary. I know it is past time to sleep, the sun is long gone, but I had not felt tired till now..." She sighed. Her head swayed wearily and her eye lids fluttered.

The Fae approached and looked at her hand. The mark on her hand was unusually dim, but another triangle on it was lit, one not usually lit except in the presence of Ganondorf.

Then the triangles disappeared entirely and Zelda collapsed, unconscious.

"Princess? Daughter of Naryu?" Elder asked. He held her limp body delicately. Fae in the garden rose and flew around them worriedly. A few fluttered close enough to almost touch, but Elder brushed his wooden hand up to move them away. No Fae should touch a mortal. "Go. Find the mortal doctors."

As the Fae flew to alert the doctors, Elder returned his attention to the Princess. A root brushed her neck, and from it Elder felt her heartbeat was erratic.

-Link-

Link fell to his knees and panted. The moment Ganon yelled out, Link felt most of his stamina be cast to the winds. It was like he had run for miles and carried great weights. A thick liquid fell on his neck and Link tpuched it to find blood dripping from his head. Also cuts appeared on his arms, legs, face, back, and chest that were not there before. The worst ones opened and blood dripped from his open wounds.

"Wha?" Link wondered. Exhausted and in pain, he fell to his hands. It was then he saw that his triangle mark was gone. Nor could he feel Ganon's heartbeat in his hand anymore.

The Gift was gone.

Kagami had obeyed his master and staying back once again, but hearing Ganondorf in pain snapped the wolf. He lunged on Harken in a bid to knock him back. He failed, but he latched on and bit down furiously on him. Harken grabbed his jaw to stop him, and throwing the wolf to the ground before kicking him. The wolf yelped. His leg and ribs were broken by the man's boot.

At this time, reinforcements arrived. Horsemen flew down the hill towards them. They aimed their spears down at Harken. Harken was forced to taken his sword back to fight them. He pulled his blade-whip, and Ganondorf spun with it before crashing to the ground. Somehow he had not been cut into pieces by the action, whether Harken was careful or Ganondorf was strong. Ganondorf was cut up as it was, but this paled into comparison to the agony he was going thorugh. He shook on the ground and threw himself like a madman.

The reinforcements were a boon, but they quickly came to learn Harken was not a mere man. He cut down horse and rider. It was not as easy as others, as these men were strong veterans of many wars, but they proved no match for him.

"Solitare!" Link struggled to his feet and grabbed the boy's attention. "We have to do something! Think you can handle another go?"

Seeing Ganon writhe and shake, and how the reinforcements from Matsubi were quickly dwindling, the boy could only nod. They would most likely die, but this wasn't the time to think about that.

"Good... now, your trick to divert people's attention away from you... are you able to reverse it?"

"What?"

"Rather than make people look away from you, can you draw their attention to you!"

Solitare nodded. He knew how, though he disliked it. He had never done it before. "I can." Solitare said.

"Good." Link murmured. He paused and looked to his unit that had collected nearby. They had stayed out of the way, as Ganon had instructed. But now without him... They would have to do. "I have a plan."

Quickly Link explained it, as the need was urgent. Ganon's voice had not quieted, but had become louder with pain. The veins in his body had filled with bright light, with Twilight filling his veins on his left side, and Divinity filling his veins on the right. The veins reached and filled into his head so that even his eyes were changed. The redness of his eyes disappeared and in their place was shadow on the left and fire on the right. The middle of his body where the two opposing forces touched tore as if he was cut with a fine knife, and out of the wound erupted shadow and fire and blood. This wound started from his waist and rose up to his collar, across his neck, and up his face to his forehead. His red hair burst into open flame and a great slit appeared on his forehead.

Link wanted to save Ganon, but could not go near with Harken standing guard over his prize. The Qin reinforcements of Matsubi engaged Harken on all sides and tried to pierce him with spears or to reach Ganon to save him, as he was openly alive and wounded.

Their spears could not reach him. Their strength could not save them. They tried to pierce him from behind, and he was too skilled a warrior to be fooled, and too quick to be caught. His sword extended into a whip when they tried to pierce him with arrows.

While fighting the Qin elite, Harken noticed that there was some movement. Out of the crowd that surrounded him, Link's unit rushed in and stopped at a fair distance. In their hands was anything and everything they could get their hands on. Swords, axes, spears, knives, anything sharp they could find, and even with the strong men was lifted furniture.

And they threw it at him without command or discipline.

"That's just distracting." Harken scoffed.

He deflected the projectiles. At first hand it should have been an easy task, but Harken found them to lack any synergy, making the projectiles entirely chaotic as they were thrown. Some things missed, some would not. They did not throw as one, but as each man could. So Harken could discern no pattern in their throwing, as there was none.

Finally the strong men stepped up and threw chairs, barricades, rubble, broken fences, and large pots at him. Harken cut it all down with ease. Then his eyes widened briefly when two of them hefted a giant table at him.

"And that's just annoyingly distracting!" Harken barked.

He lifted his blade and cut the heavy table in two. As he did so, his eyes widened. The Sheikah had appeared again. Solitare used the table as a brief cover to distract Harken, allowing him to appear in his face. Solitare did not strike at him, but jumped into the air to an equal height as him and stared into his eyes with wide, still eyes. Harken stared back. It lasted only a moment, while the Sheikah was still in the air, but it was enough. Harken heard a step behind him.

Harken turned to strike at whoever was rushing at him from behind, but found he could not. His body would not listen. His eyes could not leave the eyes of the Sheikah boy. Harken, for the first time in this battle, feared. Somehow the boy was using a trick to demand his attention, rather than divert it.

It lasted only a moment.

Gravity took hold of the Sheikah, the Sheikah fell back down, and the spell was broken. Harken kicked the thin, fragile boy in the chest. With a furious swipe, Harken turned and struck wide at Link. Link knew the man was fast, even expecting it. He saw the attack coming, and lowered himself as he lunged. Lower. Lower! Lower still, Link threw himself to the ground until his nose touched the ground as he lunged forward and he had to extend a hand to keep from falling. Link felt the cold metal touch the back of his head, cutting his hair, and knew he had escaped death by mere millimeters.

Throwing himself up, Link thrust Midna into Harken's side.

Midna had barely touched Harken before the large man had turned. The blade transformed from a whip into a staff as its hilt extended, and Harken struck Link with the staff. Link managed to pull back Midna to block the blow. The strike hit him much harder than the previous one, so that Link felt his stomach pierced, and he was thrown into the air and into the mass of men like a ball shot from a cannon. Matsubi and those near him saw Link be struck and thrown towards them, and even with most of them braced to catch him, they too were knocked to the ground.

Link's unit had used the brief distraction to grab Ganon and pull him away. Kagami ran in and grabbed his master with his teeth to pull back as well. With Ganon among them again, Kagami collapsed by his side, wounded still.

Harken put his hand to his side and was struck silent. There was blood. The wound was not deep, barely piercing his skin, but it was the first wound he had been given in years. Harken looked at Link, not furiously, but with recognition. This was a boy worth killing. He stepped forward and raised his blade. The men rushed at him, and he returned to cutting them down.

Hei and Tou rushed around the mass to Matsubi and fell to their knees at Link's side. Link was heavily wounded. Blood covered his stomach where he had been struck. Actually most of his body was bloody. His body was seemingly splitting open before his eyes from hundreds of cuts. "Link!" Hei yelled desperately. "Wake up!"

"He is knocked out!" Tou said.

"No, he is only half-concious." Matsubi corrected. "He mumbles and his eyes flutter." The open forced open Link's eyes. "His eyes dilate and he is too wounded to fight. Take him! Harken comes for him!"

Matsubi lifted up Link and thrust him in Tou's arms. Seeing Harken drawing nearer, there was no argument. Tou ran with Link on his back to the unit. With Ganon, Solitare, and Link between them, the group ran a small distance to check on them.

Ganon was visibly being torn apart and powerful forces were exploding from his body. With each second it grew worse. Solitare had a broken arm and was limping and was too tired to move well. He feared he would faint at any moment. Link was already half-way there, with his incoherent mumbling being any clue. Blood seeped from his body, most of all his stomach, so that it poured from him onto the ground.

"What do we do?" Tou asked the group. "Our captains are wounded!"

"That leaves me in command..." Kyo Gai muttered fearfully. He gulped and looked among them. "Any of you a doctor or physican?" None of them were. "Then we will have to do what we can! Someone rip a shirt and try to stop Link's blood from flowing out. One among Matsubi's unit hopefully can do more."

"What of Ganon!?" A man exclaimed. They tried to brace Ganon down as the man writhed in pain. Three triangles on his hand were flaring brightly as stars.

"I don't know what to do of him!" Kyo yelled. "I've never seen such magics!"

In the distance, men were thrown into the air as Harken appeared again, walking towards them.

"One disaster at a time, please!" Hei yelled to the world.

At this moment, the slit in Ganon's forehead opened wide to reveal an eye. The eye was black with a red iris. It moved between them frantically before locking on Link.

"What the-" A man said.

The area around Ganon exploded into a pillar of fire and darkness. The men nearest him were instantly consumed by it. The men scattered and were knocked down by the powerful forces, and even Matsubi and his men stopped to gape and stare. The pillar shot into the sky.

Harken grinned. "After all these years. Now they will see. Now they will fear."

-Ouki-

In the distance, Ouki stopped to stare as fire shot into the sky. The same could be said for the Zhao hidden in the forest. The fire acted like a beacon declaring openly that something was there, and something was happening.

"Bring me twenty thousand!" Ouki barked. "Something is happening!"

"What is? Is that the Zhao?"

Ouki could not say. He was lost for words. That position was where twenty thousand men had been stationed. He expected a lot of things, but a pillar of fire in the middle of the night was not something one would normally expect. "I don't know. One thing is for certain, men will either be drawn there as a moth, or men will flee from there. Be prepared for anything."

-Link's unit-

The pillar of fire and shadow descended. Its wrath waned. In its place was a mountain of a man. Where before had been Ganon and several others, now was a twenty-foot behemoth. Its body was black, with skin thick as a rhino. It stood as a hunch backed man, with broad shoulders and thick arms and legs, but the resemblence ended in the details. Its feet were hooved and sharp. Its chest and shoulders were plated in metal akin to an exoskeleton, around the back of its head pointing towards the front were horns, its nose was slitted as a pig without a snout, its eyes were of fire and shadow, in its hands were two massive blades from which fire and shadow only extended them further until they were both ten feet long and a foot wide, from its mouth and nose came smoke as if of a dormant fire. The ground beneath its hooves burnt to ash and the wind picked up and stirred it, so that the air was choked with ash and fire from its skin and the ground. Darkness seeped out of the ground from which it walked like the earth was poisoned and the sparse grass ignited into flame. The dark night illuminated brightly with the redness of the flame from so many sources.

Everyone and everything stilled in horror at the sight of this thing. The fear they held for Harken was great, terrible even, but as if it was possible, this thing was even more terrifying and terrible. It was purely inhumane and filled the air with despair.

Perhaps inhuman strength and terror was accurate. No man could inspire such terror.

It was a demon.

Link continued to mumble in whispers. Like a predator it loomed over them, perceiving its prey. In its eyes was recognition. It knew what Link was, as if it had met him before.

Harken mused to himself, "Fate and cycle of destiny is a truly cruel irony."

"Oh... shit." Tou stepped back. Link was on his back as a dead weight, as defenseless and delicate as a newborn. Tou was careful not to jostle him, but he had other concerns right now. "Guys! We might have a problem here!"

"Tou..." Hei whispered fearfully to his brother.

"Don't move!" One yelled. "It might not see you if you hold still! Just play dead!"

"Yeah, that's all kinds of bullshit!" Tou shot back.

"We are Link's unit!" Kyo Gai yelled. "If Link was to give us an order, think to yourselves, what would it be?"

The demon roared. From its mouth they saw only fire within. Fire and shadow billowed from its very skin so as to cover it and all the air around it. Fire exploded from its back like a long mane of hair and wings of a flame demon spread out before them.

"RUN!" They decided as one.

They ran as fast their legs could carry them into the woods. The demon gave chase.