Archive of Our Own ^beta

"Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice."

-Robert Frost

 Though he would never admit as much aloud, Ganondorf could not help but take a certain pride in his two warriors.

Summoned from the deeps of time and space, the demon and the Twili were complete and utter opposites. They were devoted minions to a fault, but their allegiance to their master was their only commonality. In all of his muddled lifetimes and incarnations, the Gerudo had never seen such different beings.

 How many times was it that he had been sent spiraling down into the void? Not once or twice, but three times the boy's Light-cursed sword had been his end. Now while Ghirahim is clearly above such petty and human emotions as hate, he cannot deny a certain... resentment towards the Goddesses' chosen.

His beloved master calls to him from the darkness. The demon answers that sweet siren song. Instinctively he reaches for that power and uses it to pull himself into consciousness. The first sight that greets his eyes upon awakening is the smirking visage of his master, and there are no words for the black joy that thrills through his being. No words.

 Constant and unbending as the steel from which he was forged, Ghirahim was the cool duelist of their group. It was true enough that he was unstable in the extreme and acted the overconfident diva all too often. Yet beneath his flippant exterior was a frigid, lethal core that always remained untouched.

 He tastes the dark bitterness of bokoblin gore. The rapier in his hand has been drenched the same scarlet of his master's hair. Pressing his lips to the flat of the blade, his tongue laps lazily at the still-warm surface and stains his pristine pale face.

The iron flavor of the metal and blood are indistinguishable from one another. Ah, but it is intoxicating all the same. Arching a brow at the oncoming enemy hordes, a soft chuckle escapes him. His blade thirsts for more, and he can do not other but oblige it.

 He possessed a single-minded determination that served his master well. Once given a mission, nothing short of death kept the demon from achieving his desired end. Even in the throes of his manic rages, he never lost sight of the ultimate goal.

Zant, on the other hand... Well, Zant was a different beast altogether.

 Slamming the stalfos general into the wall, the skeletal fiend shatters against the ancient masonry. He turns on his heel, sharp and cruel as a whip. The Twili keens his battle cry to the clouded heavens above before turning on his next target.

The charging moblin that attempts to run him through with a pike is no match for the usurper king. Tightly gripping the twin scimitars in his hands, he lays into the fleshy monster with all the fury of the scorned Twilight. He butchers the porcine beast and takes an unholdy pleasure in the slaughter. Another foe runs forward, and he once again pirouettes into the next move. The dance of battle begins once more.

The fallen ruler was, in a way, Ghirahim's inverse. Zant could pull off a calm facade for a while, but it was laughably easy to goad him into hysterical fits. Like a shark, one spilled drop of blood was enough to turn him. He was quick to lose himself in the melee. He would even turn on his own allies if plunged to deep into that madness.

It is so easy to just give in to the voices in his head. When he listens and obeys, the buzzing and stinging ceases and it is finally   quiet . So blessedly silent, so wonderfully calm.

He forgets who he is as the world drowns in bright red. There are no real memories from those times he goes under, only vague impressions and phantasmal sensations. The sweet iron of blood, the gritty sand beneath his soles, the fluid stroke of cutting through his enemy...

A well-placed slap from Ghirahim is his typical wake up call.

The two of them, while superb and unmatched fighters in their own right, could scarcely work together for more than five minutes. Any longer and the demon and Twili would to rip each other's throats out in a very literal sense. A stern glare or a barked order from Ganondorf would usually set them to rights again, and the Gerudo was careful not to ignore them for long.

He wondered if they would, ultimately, meet their deaths by each other's blades.

"Your constant jabbering fits will be the ruin of us all." He all but hisses at the mewling worm, for the Twili is little more than that in his estimate.

Ghirahim knows better than to question the wisdom of his master, but in the weeks since he was summoned he has yet to see the use of this so-called "usurper king." The thrice-damned idiot's form in battle is shoddy at best, all useless screaming and flailing. Zant ended up swinging at Ghirahim more so than their quarry when he had one of his frequent conniptions.

He is not moved to pity by the pathetically wounded look in those orange eyes. He is not moved to empathy by the ache of separation they both felt in the eons they were separated from their beloved master. He is not moved to regret by the Twili's renewed wailing. He is not.

Were it not for the essence of his soul locked within them, Ganondorf would have disposed of them long ago. Yet to intentionally bring them harm - these strange, living extensions of himself - was tantamount to suicide. He was somewhat bold and overconfident in his own abilities to be sure, but he was no fool.

The affection he held for them was an odd and distant one. He cared for them insomuch as they were aspects of his being. Indeed, Ganondorf looked after them only to preserve himself. He praised them when praise was due, and carried out punishment in the same fashion. On the whole he kept aloof and left his warriors to their own devices, trusting them to act as ordered.

They served him well enough in their limited capacity, and in return kept them them from recklessly playing with their lives - his life.

He bares his needle-like teeth to the white garbed demon. By the shadows, he would sink his fangs into that porcelain neck if he did not know the steel beneath the skin would break his jaws. Instead, the Twili settles for twining the prehensile tassels of his sleeves about Ghirahim's forearms.

"Do not speak to me of loyalty," he shrills. "He may be our master, but he is so much more. He is my lord, my god. You could not begin to understand, you de- Kyaaa!"

There is a black sword held against the leather of his gorget, angled under his chin. The demon looks coolly upon him with just the barest hint of a snarl curling at his painted lips. "Your ignorance is showing, o king," Ghirahim says in a tone cold as ice. "For he is my lord and god, too. That much we do have in common.

"But there is one thing the master and I share, something that you will never have privilege to experience for yourself." Leaning in closely to whisper, his fangs and tongue ghost along the Twili's neck. "I am his creation, a child born of himself. And what are you? Naught but a willing waif and harlot who suited his needs before being tossed aside like the trash you are."

His fragile mind is not breaking from the harsh truth of the fiend's words. His molten eyes are not bubbling over with bitter tears. His heart is not sinking at the complete lack of regard Ghirahim holds for him.

 Only their master is able to break up the ensuing bloodbath.

Koume and Kotake, his mentors in a bygone age, taught him many lessons as a young man. Among them: how to read the past and the future in the wind and the shifting desert sands; how to summon monsters to his aid; how to rule his vagabond people and keep them from the brink extinction.

One subject which they discussed at particular length, however, was the primordial elements.The praised the flexible nature of water, lauded the steady cast of earth, and glorified the arcane nature of aether. Yet ice and fire they held in the highest esteem.

"Ice has all the stubbornness of earth and the cunning of water," Koume had rasped. "Nothing rivals its bite in the dead of winter or the deep of night. It can work its way into the tiniest of cracks and reduce mountains to dusty if given time."

"Fire is the very essence of wrath, and it is as free as the air," Kotake had cackled. "It burns and scars and ravages. Entire cities and forests it can consume in the course of mere hours."

"When working against one another, it can only mean mutual destruction," the witches had cried in unison. "But together, in tandem... there is no harmony in all the world so beautiful or so deadly."

Heaving with effort, his entire ensemble and appearance is shamefully disheveled. Checkered cloth hands from his body in tatters, the pristine white marred by dirt and all manner of filth. The wolfos pack lies fallen and slain about him.

Ghirahim crouches over the unconscious body of the Twili. He sees just the faintest rise and fall of his chest, a flutter of a pulse beneath his ripped neck piece. Sighing in exasperation, he is slightly disappointed that dancing idiot is not dead.

He does not care for that pretend monarch. If his master did not require that Zant remain alive and more-or-less whole, the demon would have gladly let the wolfos make doggie chow out of the fool. As it is, he can only keep watch over the body until his lord returns.

Ganondorf was not sure when the change happened. Once the most bitter of enemies united only their loyalty to their dark liege, they no longer actively tried to murder one another. And, wonder of wonders, the two began to actually fight side by side on the field.

It started with turning enemy attacks away from one another, deflecting poisoned arrows here and slitting the throats of assassins there. Then Zant actually began to fight with a focus, conforming to his demon counterpart's maneuvering strategies. Ghirahim even took a point or two from the Twili and learned that sometimes a mindless offense made a most effective defense indeed.

As the Gerudo always knew would happen, they began to fight side-by-side as true partners. It was only natural, he concluded, seeing as they were in essence a part of him. The smaller pieces apart simply could not compare to what the united whole could achieve.

The sword spirit regards him with his usual frown of disgust. "What is so amusing?" he asks, arching a brow condescendingly. "Impossible though it might be, you just become uglier when you smile."

Zant merely tilts his head to one side, the glow of his eyes childlike and mischievous. The whispers of his mind to which he is so accustomed are notably absent. Within, the Twili is at peace for the first time in ages, and he has the feeling that the demon has a great deal to do with it.

"Are you suddenly mute, too?" sneered Ghirahim. "You have spent too long about the corpses; their stench is addling your brain. I had to save that empty little head twice today from being dislodged from its shoulders. Honestly, Twili, I do not think I shall ever know what our master sees in you."

Still with a grin on his face, Zant kneels down to pick up the rather battered sword spirit from where he lays on the ground. A tramping by a herd of bulbos would test the mettle of even his steel. Twining his tassels around the Ghirahim's torso so as to keep the shorter warrior from falling over, the Twili begins the long walk towards base camp.

"I can walk on my own, you know," the demon scoffs even though it is quite clear to everyone present that he could not. "Why do you insist on treating me an invalid, as your friend, when I am neither?"

Merely shrugging, the Twili keeps his supportive hold on Ghirahim. He is careful to move his steps in time with the demon so that they do not stumble upon the rocky ground. "What is precious to the master is precious to me," he replies simply. "And you are most beloved."

And then Ghirahim falls silent, for there is no real rebuttal or refusal to that.

He smirked, his face cast into sharp angles by the light of the brazier coals.

His minions slept, exhausted and spent, at their master's side. Ghirhim was curled against the Gerudo's side, his hair all mussed and unkempt where he lay his head against the dark lord's ribs. Positioned so that the sword spirit was between himself and Ganondorf, Zant leaned back against the wall with his one of his great sleeves covering his reluctant companion like a blanket.

Their master chuckled quietly to himself. It struck him as ironic that these two should slumber together so agreeably and peacefully when neither agreeablness nor peace was in their nature. Briefly, for but a moment, he brought his arm about to surround them both and draw them closer. 

Though he would never admit as much aloud, Ganondorf could not help but take a certain pride in his two warriors. Ghirahim and Zant were dissimilar in every way, and yet the battled together with a rhythm and ferocity he had not scarcely seen in any fighter save himself.

They were ice and fire, the greatest of opposites and yet the most powerful of allies, and Ganondorf would have them no other way.