Setting now, in the dark overcast sky, the sun, glowing a deep red, seemed to be bleeding out over the clouds, mortally wounded and barely alive; a reflection of what the world had become. The end had come and gone yet still a few survivors remained, lost in a dead land, haunted, stalked, and ultimately devoured by the darkness that was left to ruin the land, stripped of all goodness and light.
I was alone again and after watching them die in the same way as my son, who died in my arms, I once again no longer felt the need to live. I wanted nothing more than to kill off every last one of those damn beasts but I knew that wouldn't bring them back to me. So, I lost all sense of self preservation. There were so many things that had changed about this world since it's end, even the air, once crisp and light, had begun to carry with it the stagnancy of death.
I looked across the land with a chilling disdain embedded deep in my heart. So many had died on the Fields of Hyrule by the fists and blades of Ganon's beasts, and by the Angel of Death that haunted the lands. And being unable to pass from this world to the next, their spirits continued to linger, lost in the absents of the goddesses. Without emotion, I spoke these words to the haunted land, "There is no hope, there is sorrow, there is no love, there is distrust, there is no life, there is fear, and there is no rest, not even in death."
I stood amongst the shadows of the dead trees taking one last look at the sky. If this was to be my final day, I wished to see my fill of it before I died. Night would fall soon, though the stars never shown anymore.
Dae, I remembered bitterly as I headed into a dead forest. My father had named me Dae, in his hopes that there would be a day when our land would free itself from Ganon. That even though the Hero of Time had been defeated and the goddesses had been destroyed, one day our world would right itself and everything would be as it should. One day the sun would shine again, in another, better life. Perhaps in another life, there would always be a tomorrow, there would always be a new day to come. But not here, there was no hope to be found.
But we Shiekah, known as the shadow of the Hylian race, were slaughtered along with the rest of the world, and I thought my father a fool for believing such things. The last thing this world needed was for it's survivors to start lying to themselves and allowing themselves to believe that there would be a better day! In this land, dreaming may have kept you sane, but it would not keep you alive! Everything was dead! There was no HOPE!
Nothing, nothing was left untouched by the Darkness of the hand of Ganon. Not even Ganon himself. His rein over Hyrule lasted a century after the final Hero had fallen, with the Princess Zelda and the goddesses following shortly after. The power of the Triforce had given him an unnaturally long life. But the Triforce slowly fell into corruption by the hate and greed within Ganon, and became aware of its existence as a tool of a weak and powerless being. Upon its discontent, it turned on Ganon. The Triforce overwhelmed him and destroyed him by tearing itself from his soul, which had grown so dependent on the Triforce that in it's absence there was simply nothing left of it. And so, Ganon died along with Triforce and it's death echoed destruction through the world.
The magic of the Triforce was what sustained this world as a whole. Without it, there was an absents of life and those who continued on even after the death of magic, had become so much less than they had been before. Just as I was. And fighting back seemed useless as the beasts of Ganon, didn't seem to have been affected at the loss of the Triforce. Their connection to it was minimal for they had been conceived through Ganon's magic even before he had contracted all three pieces of the Triforce.
I wished for death, as I stared at the ground, walking onward. I heard a scattering of rocks to my right, and a frail branch snapping beneath a foot. Only moblins were ever as clumsy as this, I was being stalked. More rocks scattered behind me and to my left, and I knew there were many. Their heavy, thudding steps suggested there were too many to count. I did not wish to look, I didn't want to see death approach, I simply wanted it to come. If I was to die I wanted it to be quick but with moblins, I knew it would be anything but. Death had haunted me for so long and now, it seemed, it had finally caught up with me. One charged up from behind closely followed by all the others. I turned and felt a crude, dull blade penetrate my skin, I looked down and saw the sword, but felt no pain. Then another, and another and still I felt nothing.
As if it were off in the distance, I heard the beast's gargled cries. Through my fading vision I saw their gnarled faces contorted into what were suppose to be smiles, before my sight was lost. They were happy I was dieing, and so was I.
My son had been taken by the Angel of Death many years before and I'd been wandering ever since. Upon his loss I felt myself die along with him. Only I continued to move and breath, though my mind was as blank as if I were dead myself. For some reason, that I could not understand, I had clung to the edge of life, gasping for air. But I have breathed my last. I had known I would not live though it all, and that had not made me fearful. Because I wasn't afraid to die.
I laid torpor after falling to the ground, my head laid awkwardly against the blood drenched rocks. They hadn't even been so kind as to remove their blunt swords from my brokenness, and they propped my twisted body up from the ground as the swelling held the swords in their places. My eyes were overflowing with the emptiness that my life had held. There was nothing for my body to give up in memory, in life, or in death. My soul bore the curse of nothingness in life, so, nothing is what I lost in death.
I released my final breath and let my life slip from my clenched hand and fall into the abyss. This was my choice and so, I followed it to its long awaited conclusion.
A still and silent darkness befell me, as if I had fallen asleep. Until I felt a sudden rush of air wash over me, as if I were coming from underneath and breaking the surface of a vast body of water, surrounded. It felt as though the sun had risen, and the feeling consumed my senses of being wholly alive again. I opened my eyes once more and looked upon the scene, oddly discontented. I wanted death, but again it seemed it had failed to find me even after I had passed. My curse in life was to be my curse in the after life. Wandering, never resting, I was to become another soul lost to this land, awaiting my day of freedom, if it was ever to come.
“Why do wandering souls wander?” I said to myself as I watched every ounce of blood slowly drain from my lifeless body and seep into the scorched and thirsty ground.
I felt a hand take a hold of mine. I turned my gaze to the young boy standing next to me. He looked about the age of thirteen. His hair was black and unruly and his eyes shone a deep, penetrating, red just like me. His long pointed ears that curved backward, had a strong shape just as his father's. And with his half-smiling face, he looked up at me.
“Because, Mom,” he said starting to lead me away. “it is the way of the lost, to wander.”
Smiling at the sight of my child, within my reach once again, I followed him. Perhaps I had been wrong about death, perhaps it was not a curse that we were meant to wander, but an extension of the life that should have been. Perhaps a cursed death was our godless salvation.
