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“Why the organ?”

From his place at the instrument in question, Ganondorf looks up at the crystal hanging above him and the girl imprisoned in it.

“That’s what you want to ask?” he replies idly, hands never leaving the keyboard. “I would have thought the Chosen of Wisdom capable of more incisive questions.”

“And what would you prefer me ask,” she snaps, exasperated cutting through her fear, “why after seven years you’ve never once let your own people out into the lands you’ve conquered? Usurpers can be bought a dozen per rupee, yet I don’t think anyone’s heard of a competent one who let his conquest go to hell the way you have-”

Now <i>that</i> gets a reaction. The king of the Gerudo looks up at her, and for a moment it seems her crystalline prison is the only thing keeping her from melting under his furious gaze.

“That will come,” her captor says, already putting his cooler mask back in place. “The land is not so fit as you think, daughter of Hylia. Not yet. But when I have the Triforce….”

He pauses, looks out through one of the stained-glass windows which surround them; for a moment, even his song falls silent.

“That is the least of it,” he says, “What your people did to mine, what the gods did to this world… but when I have the power of the gods, I shall fix it. There will be freedom, true freedom from fate, at last.”

He looks back at her, and there is something terrible in the eyes of Ganondorf the Gerudo, something old and not quite human. The pit of her stomach plummets, though she doesn’t break eye contact.

(She wonders if he’d noticed yet.)

“My people love their guitars and marimbas, and I can play them if I like- but I first came to these lands as a child, barely older than you, and when I first heard an organ the sound haunted me for years. Why should I be confined to what is expected, the paths the gods have planned for us? Why should I not play the organ instead? Because one of <i>your</i> people created it?”

His eyes glint. “You walked the paths of your ancestors, and all they have brought you to is this: a princess in a tower, trapped in crystal. But you could have been something else- you know that! Tell me, Zelda of Hyrule, would you rather be here, another maiden of legend like the princess trapped in stone or the earthbound goddess whose name you carry? You, who learned of the paths of the Shadow, the poisoned blade and the healer’s cup? You should be my greatest ally in burning this world to the ground!”

“And how many will pay the price for that freedom?

The Usurper King laughs. “Oh, there will be rivers of blood- your precious hero first among them, if he insists on standing in my way.. But think about it, girl. What has obedience to the gods gotten you so far?”

It takes too long to be comfortable with before she finds an answer, but by then the point is moot; Wisdom resonates in her hand and soul, and Power in his. Their third is coming, and there shall be an end to this at last.