Legend Of Zelda Fan Fiction ❯ Who By Fire ❯ Envy ( Chapter 4 )

"Spite is never lonely; envy always tags along." - Mignon MgLaughin

There is blood on her dress.

It darkens the hem of it, staining the cloth a bright fuchsia-red. She stands before him cloaked in the blood of her own people, but she has never looked more radiant, nor more deadly. Her skin and hair glow with holy power, igniting the air between them. She is luminous, shining from within, the light punching through her eyes.

This comes as no surprise to him, this radiance of hers, because she is a Goddess, and he a Demon.

Her arms are tense, knuckles white where she grips the Master Sword. She stands before him, regal and tall and beautiful. The very breath she exhales lingers as fluorescent sparks before her lips. He watches them glitter, before being swept away by the wind.

They stand in a field littered with the dead, the land blackened and wasted. He belongs here. She does not.

He raises his blade toward her, and her eyes burn bloody-fierce before she hurls herself toward him.

They battle once more.

What did he see in her?

The Goddess was beautiful and powerful, a brilliant light amongst the smoke-screen decay. Her voice shook the skies. She could bring legions of men to their knees, bend galaxies to her will. Shape them like playthings in her hands. Hylia was a Goddess straight from the empyrean cosmos itself.

She burned.

Ghirahim now stands outside the doors to Zelda's room, the human Hylia has reduced herself to. He doubts even she realizes it, not fully, that she was once the very Goddess that saved her people from destruction. She is a wilted flower with the will to grow. A faintly gleaming star in the night. But Zelda is no Goddess.

Ghirahim smirks, laughs to himself, an unhurried chuckle. She's a little girl, really, when all is said and done. He finds it so hard to believe that such a small, pretty thing could house the soul of a celestial being. He could vaporize her into smoke and dust with the snap of two fingers.

Then, a voice from the other side of the door; "I know you're out there."

She opens the door for him, just enough to peer up at him. It creates a neat slat of light on her face, straight up her mouth and lighting up her eyes. Her gaze is lined with dark circles, and her cheeks have been bled of their color. It reminds him of the pale, thinned-out hue of a sunset in winter. Her golden hair rests limply along her shoulders.

Ghirahim smiles and jerks the door wider, forcing her deeper within the room. She backs away from him, rigid, defiant, but not frightened. A part of him detests it.

He regards her bedroom with the air of someone admiring their handiwork.

The room is spacious and filled with rich fabrics, fine furniture, bursts of red, gold and silver. Her bed, large enough to fit three people without trouble, is adorned with hanging veils of lace, the thick blankets neatly made.

Ghirahim stops before the bare window. "I see you took down the drapes."

She presses herself to the wall farthest away from him. "I wanted to see the sky."

Ghirahim shrugs. "As expected. Feeling homesick, then?" His voice drips inky venom.

She purses her lips. He watches her do it, the soft pink flesh pressing together, and how much he wants to see those lips splashed in blood. He imagines it for a moment, her pale cheek dyed red, mouth parted slightly, beseechingly, those blue eyes losing their brightness.

Yes, he affirms; how radiant she would look.

When he walks nearer, Ghirahim can feel her pulse quicken. It fills him with a shivery thrill. Though he comes near enough to bend his head and kiss her – more a kiss of death than anything else – he stands, still and waiting.

Her hands tremble as she clutches her gown. The very same she had worn in battle, all those eons ago, soaked in crimson.

Slowly, with the patience and grace of any lover, Ghirahim brings the tips of his fingers beneath her chin, tipping her face up toward his own. They stare at each other in the twilight, their breath stirring together.

He wonders, for a flash of an instant, so brief as to be nothing – how it would feel to kiss her, smear her own blood on her cheek.

Ghirahim smiles instead, snakelike, words shuddering ice-pale and long. "I saw him just a while ago."

Her gasp lights flames on his skin. There's finally life in her, eyes candle-soft and shining. "Where? What-" She stops, drops her golden head, shoulders coiling up.

Ghirahim rolls his eyes, sneering. "I didn't kill him. The little slug managed to squirm away from me again. He actually wounded me. You may have a chance yet." He cackles.

There's a sliver of the Goddess in her when she raises her head. It glimmers beneath the wind in her voice. "I have more of a chance than you imagine."

His laughter is a shout. "Really? You have that much faith in him? He can barely hold that sword upright. Don't mistake the wound he gave me for skill. It was luck. See for yourself," he steps away to gesture grandly down his front, grinning. "Not a mark lingers."

She glares.

His grin vanishes. His hand is at her throat, thumb pressing flush against her pulse. Ghirahim leans his face so near their breath mingles, charged with equal parts fury and fear.

There's fury in the way his fingers clutch her throat, so softly as to be intimate, deadly enough to keep her eyes trained on his. Her reflection inside them is warped. Zelda breathes in, a fearful staccato of shivering air in her lungs. It feels like the whole world (or what she knows of it) is thrashing beneath her feet.

She's slammed against the wall, once, twice, each blow thumping hard and deep within her ribs.

His whisper is tightly-wound, ready to snap. "They destroyed the Gate of Time."

Zelda's voice is blank. "I don't know what that is."

The demon snarls, baring each pointed tooth, finally living flesh now that he's so close. "You lie."

Her voice stumbles, "I'm not."

Ghirahim's clutch intensifies, and ugly black dots whorl before her gaze, distorting his face before her. Zelda chokes, can't even yell or scream, because it seems the best thing to do despite its uselessness, even though he's the only one that will hear her do it.

Her attempts to claw his hand away seems to amuse him, and Ghirahim laughs as if he enjoys her weak attempts of escape.

His breath swarms against her cheeks like fire-ants borrowing beneath her skin. She squirms away from him and the leer he presses into her ear.

"What is it, girl?" His lips are close enough – but not quite close, not quite – that she could tilt her head and kiss him, run her mouth across those dry, pale lips, just to see how he tastes.

Zelda spits in his face instead.

Ghirahim screams like she's injured him, jerking away to angrily swipe the spittle away. He draws his hand back, slowly, fingertips glimmering, and he flings the mess away with a grunt. A few slips of silvery-white hair fall before the darkness of his eyes as he raises his head, looking to her.

Zelda pushes herself into the wall as hard as she can, arms drawn up, but her steady gaze is haughty, triumphant, the same way it was all those years ago when she was a Goddess. It's almost the same, just enough to remind him, just enough to capture him in it once more.

Ghirahim stills. A single beam of light twists its way through the clouds and into the room, illuminating her face and those horribly blue eyes, looking at him from inside the small girl trembling before him. It feels like he's gazing through time, stuck in that fire-wrought world of blood and war.

"I never understood what he saw in you," he says, plainly, and Zelda can't name the emotion on his face, doesn't have time to. He turns, swiftly, before exiting the room and closing the door with a final, muted thud behind him.

Zelda sinks down to the floor, the sunlight diving her bedroom into two halves; she's cast in shadow.

Then, she looks up, able to name that one singular emotion, so foreign on a face built only for rage -

"Envy."

"What? I think it's a great name!"

Link feels a migraine beginning to form, just above the bridge of his nose. His head still aches from the fall, his landing less than comfortable with Groose clinging to him and screaming. He never thought someone so large could scream so shrilly.

He had returned to Skyloft for potions to heal his broken nose and blackened eyes, only to return to The Surface once more – but with an unwarranted and unwanted surprise.

If Groose was still amazed at The Surface before, he shows no tracery of it. He's as loud and obnoxious and Link remembers him being in Skyloft.

His eyes follow a small bluebird as it perches on Groose's shoulder, without care or concern. Groose yelps and swats it away, as if the tiny animal could somehow do him harm by sitting there. Link turns away to hide his satisfied grin.

Groose bellows after, "why aren't you listening, squirt? 'Grooseland' is a wonderful name for this place. Don't deny it!"

Link pointedly ignores him, hiking his tunic farther up in preparation for climbing, wrapping one hand and foot into the vines scaling the wall just outside the Sealed Grounds. The Surface is unchanged, the woods especially so, as if it doesn't care of his troubles or worries, or that everything has gone horribly wrong.

There is one thing, however. It's the air – Link breathes it in again – the air is different. It's almost noxious, and if darkness had a smell, this would be it. Piceous and heavy, the stink of hot oil about to boil over.

Link shudders, heaving himself up the wall, Groose following after.

Groose is unperturbed, and this calmness of his makes Link irritated, envious, even, that he can be so unworried, so confidant that all will be right in the world if only by Zelda's return.

Link no longer has the luxury of calm, the very notion of being unworried more foreign than anything in this place. Worry stoops on his shoulder, a constant and unwanted companion, curled lecherously around his throat.

He stops just before the doors to the Sealed Grounds, (even this feels different, he thinks, suddenly), stealing a moment before he must enter and tell the old woman of his failure. The word is an awful one, stinging deep within. He tips his head back and closes his eyes.

Link croaks, "you go ahead. I'll be there soon."

Groose grins, thundering past him and into the Sealed Grounds.

Link stays behind.

It doesn't particularly alarm him that she knows.

He had sensed her watching him, back in the dark, deep mines. Link had long since dismissed the feeling as superstition – foggy nightmares and little sleep will do that – but now, there is only relief, and a little awe.

The old woman chuckles, the sound of grating sand. Even her voice is old, older than, perhaps, the very place they preside in.

In his hands, Link holds the lyre, the magic of it still buzzing up his arms, clinging close to his skin and setting every fine hair on end. The Ballad still sings through him, past even his soul, buried someplace deeper than anything, fresh and waiting.

Behind them, the second Gate of Time looms, pulsating runics burning warm aquamarine.

"I don't know what to say," Link confesses, demurely.

Her wrinkled lips press into a smile. "No need, child. Don't apologize. In all these years of guarding this place, I've come to learn that destiny has its turns. You are the Goddesses own Hero; she would not have set her faith in you without reason."

The boy sets his jaw so hard the enamel of his teeth squeak. "But I lost her."

She tilts her head then, vaguely reminding him of a child. "You may have lost her, but lost things can be found again. She has a role in all this, too, Link. You discredit her by putting too much blame on yourself."

Link looks at the golden lyre clutched in his hands, strings glistening. He plucks one, absently, the chord humming straight past his flesh, a silvery-shiver.

"Do you know where she is?"

A pause.

"No," she sighs, sadly. "I can see many things, Hero, but her whereabouts are shaded to me. Ghirahim is a demon as well as a sorcerer. His magic is different from my own."

Some part of him wants to be disappointed, but he isn't, not the way he's supposed to be.

That smile of hers is back. "Don't look so troubled. The Gate behind you is the key to all this. It's the only thing you need – you need only awaken it. Doing so will be difficult, I won't lie, but you must. It is your fate as the chosen Hero."

Link tries to reply, but the ground says otherwise, roiling beneath his feet, knocking him off balance.

The rumbling shakes through the very jelly of his eyeballs, a fierce and monstrous quake, and the stink like hot oil is suffocating now. Link turns to the old woman, and her wavering voice offers little reassurance.

She's up and beside him, gracefully although the world trembles beneath them. There's something familiar about this, something like a backlit memory in the pits of his mind as she looks up at him, eyes veiled.

"Link, there's no time to explain. You must hurry to the pit outside. The seal is broken."