As Link and Ganondorf stared each other down, the Deku Tree spoke. "I believe you two know each other."

"You could say that."

"So that dream..."

"No dream." Ganondorf motioned for Link to come join him. "I seriously summoned you to the Sacred Realm and begged you to help me. You weren't high."

"I think I need to be..." Link took a seat a few feet away from Ganondorf. The Deku Tree began to speak.

"Listen to me...Link, the evil this man speaketh of...do not take it lightly. There is a very serious dark power at work. I do not know what it is or where it will strike. But it will strike. Today."

"Today? Thanks for the forewarning."

"Yeah, no shit."

"Link, if this force were to defeat you, nothing could stop it. Not even the goddesses. Hyrule would cease to be. Other countries would feel its effects. This could possibly destroy every known world."

"What do we know about this?"

"I am not priveledged enough to know who is behind it. I can only tell you to find the princess of destiny once again, and travel to the graveyard. I do not know what you will find, only that you will find it. This power...whatever it is...it is strong. Very strong. It seems to be tied into everything. Nothing would be safe from its wrath...not even this forest."

Link and Ganondorf have listened close to the words of this diety of the Kokiri.

"The princess will be here soon. Without knowing it, using the powers of the Triforce you have already summoned her. Go to the graveyard once you meet her. Find whatever is there to find. Defeat this final assault on the land of the goddesses." The Deku Tree became silent. Link and Ganondorf stood to their feet. As they turned, Princess Zelda was standing in the enterance to the meadow.

"This better be good, you two."

---

Somehow, Link managed to sneak the two into his house without anybody noticing. Suprisingly, the entire forest was empty. No Kokiri were in sight. Link did notice, and thought to himself how strange it was. However, that also made it easier to get these two into a place where they could figure everything out. Jolting up the ladder, he almost pushed Zelda up and in.

"Damn, Link. I can only climb so fast."

"Just go." Immediately Link closed the think curtain in front of his door. All three were inside.

"Okay, here's what's going on..." Link started to talk but Ganondorf stupped him.

"Let me explain this." Ganondorf turned to Zelda. "Forget that alternate future shit for a second. Listen to me. When the Triforce is seperated, its power is weakened. Eventually it must be reunited. After Ganon's death, I wanted to know more. How I could have ever became that monster. How anything could even come out of me at all, much less a demon like that. I started looking for something. I thought I had found it. If you remember, when you had destroyed me in my human form the Triforce of Power brought me back to life. I soon learned of the gift of immortality. It isn't flawless. I can be killed, but it would take a Triforce holder to do it."

"So how can you be sure Ganon is dead?"

"Wait a minute, you two. Explain this." Zelda was lost. Link brought her around quickly.

"Ganon was seperated from Ganondorf when they entered the Sacred Realm. Ganondorf killed Ganon and now he's a human."

Zelda turned to Ganondorf. "Ohhhh....okay. Go ahead. "

"Because when I left him for dead, his Triforce turned black. It glowed with a dull color, a dark blue of midnight or the thick grey fog. It came from his hand and evaporated. That's when I began to grow very weak, looking the way I did when you saw me. The time you grabbed the Master Sword. Now do you understand why I was not hostile towards you?"

"No. I really don't."

"Because I found out what Ganon really was. Ganon was all of my worst qualities; all of my greatest fears. My anger, my rage, the thirst for more power, more wealth. If that could have happened to me, it could happen to the two of you. Not could happen. Will happen."

Zelda and Link were cooperative up to this point. Not anymore.

"Wait a minute." Link was the first to talk. "You're saying we're going to turn evil too?"

"No. I'm saying we all have our dark side, and..." Ganondorf stopped. "Tell you what. I know where the tree wants us to go. I found some sort of aura of dark magic being cast from there during my time in the Realm. I couldn't pinpoint where exactly here it is, but Kakariko Graveyard sounds just about right."

Zelda immediately looks down. "That's going to take a while to get there..."

Ganondorf smirks. "Don't you kids know anything about magic?" Ganondorf began to summon up a crystal. Zelda jumped back.

"Oh, no. NO, no, no, fuck you, fuck YOU, I've seen this before! I am not getting in th-" Zelda was cut off when Link jumped in with her, and Ganondorf enclosed the three. Immediately they were shipped off.

---

At the foot of the monument to the fallen soldiers and citizens of Hyrule, three travelers land. Zelda almost falls down after escaping the crystal. Link tries to calm her down, but she runs off. leaning against a fence, she elbows Link hard in the stomach. Link groans and doubles over.

"What the hell was that, Link? Huh?"

Ganondorf stands still, watching from a distance. Zelda looks back at him.

"Just because I can feel you through the Triforce doesn't mean I trust you."

"You trust me because you can feel me."

Zelda stops, and checks on Link. "I'm sorry...it's just that I don't like being trapped in crystals."

"I under...stan..d." Link catches his balance and gets to his feet. Ganondorf walks up to the two. "So, here we are..wouldn't you think we'd know where to go next?"

"Yeah...you're the one who said it was here."

"It is..." Ganondorf looked over at a row of graves. There were several new tombs and graves, with a handful of older ones. Long rows, more rows, short rows...rows of graves littered the plce for what felt like miles. Link remembered a few: the one that led him into the xrypt of the Royal Family, the one where he chased down Dante for the Hookshot. But one caught him. One that he shouldn't have even recognized but he did anyway. The stone was old and weathered, it had to be at least three or four hundred years old. The name on the grave was in ancient Hylian, which Zelda just so happened to know.

"Lych."

Ganondorf and Lych turned over and looked at the grave.

"That's been here for a long time. Lych died six months ago. Not that we'd have given him a proper burial..."

"A different Lych?"

"What Hylian in their right fucking mind names their kid Lych? That's a Lachian name."

All three nodded. This was not the Lych that Link had defeated. Link goes behind the tombstone.

"Hey, there's something written back here..." Zelda crouches down beside of Link and looks. "That's ancient Hylian. I can't make it out...it's so old..." Zelda shrieks when she hears Link and Ganondorf yanking at the heavy stone.

"What are you doing?" This is someone's grave..." The stone is removed to reveal a small narrow set of steps leading underground.

"Well, if it's somebody's grave then they got a split level casket." Ganondorf leads the way down, with Zelda and Link in tow. The area where a casket should have been buried was instead a small vestibule. The walls were sandstone, but dull brown opposed to tan. Link found a torch on the wall and lights it. As Ganondorf finds another one, the room lights up.

"Whoa..."

Against a wall, about nine feet high and fifteen feet long, was an ancient mural. Blocks of ancient Hylian text littered various drawings. Link and Ganondorf could only understand the pictures, as Zelda worked on translating the text. The first image was of the complete Triforce. The second image was the Triforce splitting into three pieces.

"It is inevitable this secret shall come to pass. On this day, the sacred treasure must divide among three owners." Zelda worked quickly.

"Yeah, we know that part." Link and Ganondorf moved on. The third image showed the complete Triforce being sorrounded by a thick black outline, but the black outline is not complete. It shows the black outline fading away. The fourth image is the broken up Triforce. The three pieces individually are coated in the black outline: and are dulled.

"When divided, so is the power of the goddesses. Complete, the power is too great. When seperate, true evil begins to overtake the sacred triangles."

The fifth image is the largest. The divided Triforce is shown twice: once in its normal state and once an extremely dark blue and purple mix. A feint grey glow hazes around it. The two Triforces are shown again overlapping one another.

"The Triforce will become two as will its holders. Dark forces will have their own holders of the sacred triangles. If these dark impostors shadow over the light, all will be lost." Zelda stepped back. "What the hell?"

Ganondorf sat down on a large rock. "What it means, sister, is that I fucked up. By splitting up the Triforce, I allowed the Triforce to copy itself and turn evil. The three holders will morph into alternate beings, who have all the powers that we do."

Zelda looked up from the writings. "So Ganon was..."

"Ganon was my copy. I admit that I'm not the most righteous guy in the world. But I definetely didn't plan on overtaking the world just to destroy it. I wanted to make a world fair for Gerudos. Where Gerudos could socialize with any other race. I guess it was how I did it."

"Yeah, storming the castle and chasing me out just to sneak up on Link probably wasn't the best idea."

"What did you want me to do, have a fuckin' town meeting? Write you a letter of emplorement or some shit? You wouldn't just hand over the Triforce to me."

"Did it ever occour to you that maybe we would have listened to you if you had just been a little bit more diplomatic and a little less creepy?"

"Well, excuuuuuse me princess!"

Link jumped up. "That's my line. Don't you ever use my line again."

"Look, I'm trying to save our lives here. Listen, damnit!" Ganondorf began to shout. Zelda didn't change her mean scowl but was more apt to listen. Link shrugged and calmed down.

"Thank you. Now listen. The only reason I was able to kill Ganon was because you two did a number on him. Problem was, I shouldn't have been able to because you hurt me pretty bad too. Thankfully, you sent us both to the Sacred Realm still alive. I learned everything there. Rauru explained a lot to me when he saw me after I killed Ganon. He told me that there is darkness in all of us, some kind of negative energy. The Triforce feeds off of all energy in a person, both good and bad. This copy, it uses our negative energy and creates an alter-ego, a dark copy. I've faced mine. You two will have to face yours. The only comfort I can give you is that each Triforce has a built-in safeguard, a specific power that helps us battle the copy. Mine allowed me to deliver the death blow to Ganon at the cost of all the power I had gained. I have to relearn all of my powers as a Triforce holder now. Zelda, yours should be coming to you right about now. You will know yours immediately now that you are aware of its presence."

Zelda's eyes shot wide open. "Sheik."

"Yes. Yours is unique: it wasn't created with evil intent, merely posessed by evil. It is still you. So it's possible for you to posess it with the Triforce of Wisdom as long as evil has not infected one of the other two Triforce pieces. That leaves one copy left." Ganondorf turned to Link.

"Yeah?" Link looked up. "And what power do I have?"

"You're going to love this one Link. You can't kill it. But it can't kill you. You can't posess it, and it can't posess you. You can control it, but it can cantrol you. That is all Rauru told me. I'm sorry I can't be of more help, Link. I can only tell you that you must go to the Sacred Realm for your copy to materialize." Ganondorf scratches his temples for a second. "Okay, let's get out of here. I know it's not really a grave, but it still creeps me out."