Blighted Memories

Chapter 37. Breath of the Wild

The targeting coordinates were set. Divine Beast Vah Naboris had locked on to the Sanctum of Hyrule Castle. There, Calamity Ganon festered and grew like a thriving deadly virus, ready to be unleashed and decimate all of Hyrule at any given moment. It kept the only thing capable of staving it off nearby, imprisoned with it, the two powers locked in a temporary stalemate of light and dark—with the light slowly faltering. The light needed backup against the darkness before it went out—backup from the hero that had stood with the light for generations.

Dark Link gazed at Hyrule Castle from atop Vah Naboris's head. Zelda's light from the castle cut through the darkness—both Calamity Ganon's and the pitch blackness that Dark Link had plunged the world into. She was still fighting against the beast within, all alone, in yet another battle, a battle that had happened again and again and again across the ages, with this instance having lasted a century.

She needed to be saved. Dark Link wouldn't let her suffer anymore because of Ganon. It was his duty as the hero, after all.

And finally, after so long, Dark Link could finally save all of Hyrule once and for all. No more suffering. No more ghosts to haunt him. No more blighted memories. No more failures. Everyone would be safe and at peace, just like they once were before Demise appeared and transformed the goddess's land into the scarred and lifeless shell of its former self.

The land used to be so much more prosperous. Plentiful resources, easygoing lives, minimal strife between people, everything desirable in any society. Technology was even far more advanced than it was today, particularly in the Lanayru region that had several robots built for a mining operation led by the dragon that eventually became the land's namesake—now revered as an ancient deity rather than another ordinary denizen of the time. Even the Guardians and other Sheikah technology known today were less advanced than how it was back then, though it was remarkably close, but it was only in terms of weaponry. Dark Link even had warm memories of riding a vehicle—known as a Master Cycle, back in the day—in his earliest life, with a beautiful young woman with a radiant smile clinging to him from behind as they rode down a busy street, joking and talking all the way to their destination, with their lives being fairly humdrum and ordinary compared to most other people. It was truly a wonderful, peaceful life. A utopian existence, one might say, blessed by the gods.

And then Demise rose. That's when it was all over. Cities were destroyed, millions of people were killed, resources were destroyed, countless pieces of knowledge were lost forever, forcing the surviving people to regress to a simpler form of life all over the world. It was only supposed to be temporary until Demise was slain.

An eternity later, there had been little recovery from his attack—with each attempt to heal undone by the darkness left behind by the Demon King that still poisoned the land. The same darkness in that desolated castle, the same darkness that brought Dark Link's anger to its zenith.

Ganon. The reincarnation of Demise. The manifestation of evil itself.

The monster that still insisted on destroying everything, after it had already taken so much! After it had trapped them in this cycle of destruction with no end in sight! After it had caused so much needless suffering to the undeserving people of the land!

Dark Link pressed a button on the Sheikah Slate in his boiling anger. He had linked it to the Divine Beast's main weapon controls as part of the plan to defeat Ganon. Vah Naboris's main cannon opened, and it fired a streak of bright blue light at Hyrule Castle.

However, the energy it fired hadn't been charged up and concentrated like it was supposed to. The blast exploded somewhere within the Sanctum, but it was so weak that it didn't even leave a dent anywhere in the structure that hadn't been maintained in one hundred years.