LOZ:Twilight Princess: Ch.39 Rev

----Chapter 39:  The Usurper's Last Stand


The throne room, dark and gritty, gleamed with a strange kind of brilliance.  Before them, hundreds of small stones lined the railings of a staircase leading upward.  The stones were almost like the scales of elegant serpents that stretched all the way to the far wall, coiling up and around spheres to form pillars on either side of the throne.  The gaping maws of these serpents faced the royal chair.  Though a usurper sat in the simple yet tall and ornate seat, the cerulean lines and shapes that embellished the wall behind it brought out what beauty was left in the chamber.

Link stood close to Midna's side.  The rage boiling in her eye should have melted Zant where he sat.  

The Hylian stretched out his arm, raising his light sword threateningly.  Then he offered the very same ultimatum the usurper had once forced upon his Hyrulean princess.  There was a fire to his words, but they were not said with vengeance; it was meant more as a reminder to the false king of the events he had set in motion which had brought about this fateful hour.  "Surrender … or die."  

Link's words promised mercy … or execution.  It was for Zant to decide.

After a moment the mouthpiece of Zant's mask lifted free, clicking up into the helmet.  Link could see only a smirk lining his crooked blue lips.  "I see Midna has filled your mind with the same lies of her forefathers," his sticky, nasal voice replied.  "Did she tell you then that our ancestors were evil and power hungry?  Did she tell you how our magic is dangerous, a thing to be feared … forgotten … locked away?"

"The magic--"

Zant stood at Midna's words, cutting through her voice as if his growl were a knife.  "Still your tongue, whelp, and I will tell you of both magic and the oppression of ages."  His bronze boots clanked mercilessly against the stones as he crept to the edge of the top stair.  He took his steps so slowly and with such precision that Link expected an attack at any moment, the promise of the story a simple pretense to approach unharmed.  As Zant came to a stop, a metallic click pulled at his helmet, jerking his mask up partway as the discs behind slid backward.  Link could see his face only partially, yellow pupils against orange sockets dominating the king's features.  With a scraping noise, the rest of the helmet receded into the spine of his armor, exposing a bronze coif that held Zant's sleek red hair prisoner.  

After all this time, Link had finally met the man behind the mask.  His face was triangularly shaped, his features like that of a squished serpent; his mouth was thin but proud and hooked strangely at its edges and his nostrils were small as his nose grew flatter and wider farther up his face.  Royal symbols had been painted upon the smooth surface of his forehead and nose, and his small catlike eyes glared down at his unwelcome guests, black slits painted underneath each eye.  "The people of our tribe … a tribe that mastered the arts of magic … were locked away in this world like insects in a cage."  As he spoke Link could see even at this distance how the purple insides of his mouth stuck slimily at the sides of his lips with putrid saliva.  

"It was all because they could use a power the goddesses thought beyond our capabilities, beyond our might and understanding.  These gods did not wish to share power with mere mortals.  And so, they were banished, for the crime of intelligence."  Zant spoke with fluid yet strained motions, lifting his hands in gestures that punctuated the gravity of his words.  He lifted his arms high and looked into the ceiling.  His eyes were unfocused, as if staring into the depths of his own pain.  "In the shadows we regressed, so much so that we soon knew neither anger nor hatred … nor even the faintest bloom of desire."  His body wilted into a twisted mess of rage, his nerves twitching, bending.  His feet stood rooted as his body turned and curved, impossibly limber, as if his body were not constructed by bone.  In his agony he let loose a terrible growl that reverberated against the walls as his pitch altered into a hiss and moan.  "And all of it was the fault of a useless, do-nothing royal family that had resigned itself to this miserable half-existence!"  

When the king then unfurled his body and stamped his feet against the stone, his roars of anger and moans of displeasure reminded Link of an undisciplined child suffering a tantrum.  Was this what Zant was?  A childlike man who thought power a mere toy?  Or had the combination of his lust and Ganondorf's magicks turned his mind from the grasp of sanity?

Zant's nonexistent brows drew tight as he glowered at Midna.  "I had served and endured in your depraved household for far too long, my impudent princess."  He began his descent from the throne, falling into each footfall in a kind of dance, twisting his body, flapping his arms this way and that.  "And why, you ask?  Because I believed I would be the next to rule our people!  That is why!"  He stopped midway down the steps, catching his breath from his screaming rage.  His panting warned Link that this usurper was something much more dangerous than he had realized.  A man with a cool exterior and a sense of calm would have been a great threat, but Zant had lost all sense, lost himself to the power of Ganondorf.  

"I alone would abolish this shadow forced upon us," continued Zant with a suddenly even breath.  "I would welcome the Twili into a new era, one befitting our power."  

Link and Midna took a cautious step backward, for as he looked at his companion he realized that even Midna had not known the full extent of Ganondorf's hold over Zant.  He stood there entrapped in the embers of insanity, a spell that would never--could never--be broken by anything other than death itself.

Zant's eyes eased and his face turned into one of sadness.  His features betrayed the passionate fury within his eyes, eyes that still scowled.  His back arched as he let out another moan.  His high-pitched shriek hurt Link's keen ears.  Zant's arms sprawled behind him, and his body would have been lying against the cold, jagged edges of the stairs if not for his knees holding up his careening frame.  "But would they acknowledge me as their king?"  His torso popped up only to scream-- "No!" --and then his body retook its pitiful stature.  "And as such, I was denied the magic powers befitting our ruler."

Midna finally interceded.  "You want to know why none would call you king?"  She had had enough of his tantrum.  "It was your eyes, Zant."  In that moment, the usurper regained a straight pose and looked at her with those horrid eyes.  It was as if the child within him had stripped itself away in an instant to resume the adult's conversation.  He listened intently and with absolute hate.  "All saw it, a lust for power burning in your pupils….  Did you think we'd forget our ancestors lost their king to such greed?"

Midna's voice had almost pleaded with him, but Link knew better.  Though she tried to reason with him, she knew there was no use.  Perhaps she said these things for her own good, to justify her actions, for they knew it would not be much longer before the unpredictable moods of Zant would shift into one of imminent silence, turning conversation to confrontation.

Zant's eyes glazed over, as if his insanity had chucked her comment out the door of his frail understanding.  His yellow orbs looked far, far into the distance, and again his sight turned skyward.  "In the thrall of hatred and despair, it was then that I turned my eyes to the heavens … and found a god."

His eyes closed and his mouth opened in a smiling moan that ached through his bones, an ache that reached Link and Midna's veins, boiling them in Zant's memories.  They felt a sickness wash over them, but they held their ground and waited.

In his mind Zant revisited the day of his awakening, a day that he had run from the palace after Princess Midna had been named successor to her father's Twilit throne.  How he had fallen to his knees and wept that day, thrown a fit of envious rage, screamed curses upon Midna's family to all the blackness that would lend him ear.  He had banged his fists and forehead into the ground as he sobbed.  The betrayal he had felt back then was tantamount to the murderous blood flowing within him.  How he had loathed Midna.  How he had wished to wring the life from her bones.  How he had embraced the hatred within and wished for nothing more than to teach the royal family everything of treachery.

In that moment of his fitful sorrow a being had come to him, encased him in its bodiless world, empty of feeling, empty of all sensation.  Empty of everything but the hunger, the deep lust, to claim what should have been his.  "I shall house my power in you…" a voice had said, one that boomed across time and threatened to rip the soul from every living thing with just the force of its whisper.  "If there is anything you desire, then I shall desire it, too…."

"He is no god!"  Midna's shrill voice crashed his memories into pieces, and the silence that came over the usurper--his eyes nonchalantly turning a lethal stare onto her cursed figure--told Link that the moment of Zant's final reckoning had come.

Link stepped between the usurper and his companion, placing himself directly in the middle of their battle of wills.  "This is your last chance, Zant," declared the light dweller.  "Give up your master, and I will let you live."

His ghoulish yellow eyes, reflective of the might of Ganondorf, snapped to the young Hylian.  He studied his scrawny prey only for a moment before replying.  "My god had only one wish."  The king's helmet promptly clacked back into place, housing him within its protection once more.  The mask deepened his voice anew and it thundered throughout the throne room as he rose into the air by the power of his magicks.  "To merge shadow and light…" he breathed as he hung above his usurped seat "and create darkness!"

In a flash Zant cast his arms wide with a booming roar.  The pattern of his crimson magic splattered every inch of the walls, consuming and feeding off its light until nothing was left but an empty blackness.  When color returned to the room, everything changed.  It was as if they had gone back in time, the clock reversing to a point early in Link's journey when he had only first met Midna.

There they stood, somehow, in the very chamber that Link had once battled a boomerang-wielding, parasite-infested baboon.  All nine pillars still rose up from the cavernous room, and it was atop the farthest that Zant now balanced, hopping from one to the next swiftly as blasts of red magic soared toward Link and Midna.  The imp deflected the first wave of his power with the strength of her own, as Link adjusted to the change of atmosphere.  He did not have time to comprehend how it had happened, however, for another barrage of magic was soon upon them.

Shield raised, Link's mind worked as dull pings resounded at each hit of the magic.  He thought back on the strategy he had used against the primate and decided that it was his best option at defeating his new foe as well.  When the magic stopped momentarily, Link looked beyond his defense to see Zant moving again, jumping around to try to gain a better angle on his target.  Link left behind all his curiosity at how they had come to such a battlefield and embraced the reality of his circumstance.  Whatever Zant's intention, the change to familiar ground had only strengthened Link, for now the Hylian had gained an advantage.

As Link hastily approached, Zant flung his magic in all directions, but the small and nimble youth was able to stay one step ahead of the king's last projectile.  Before Zant could leap away safely, Link plowed the full weight of his body into the pole upon which he stood.  He wavered at the top of the beam in an attempt to regain control, but his balance had been broken and he fell.

Zant caught himself on the ground behind Link but with Midna opposite him, he had been caught directly between the two.  Midna was already in the motion of casting a spell, and the usurper arched his back to avoid her attack--which crashed explosively into a pillar.  His dodge had shifted him dangerously close to Link's swinging blade, however, and just as the blade would have cut through his neck, Zant vanished.

Link and Midna stepped back-to-back, searching.  Then they heard the false king's determined growl.  He had teleported above them, and in an eyeblink the crimson magic made the room come alive again, its veins stretching the length of everything and disintegrating it into atoms.  In their rebirth, the lifeblood of Zant's magic became hot with the smell of magma and fresh with the scent of it.  The sensation burned at Link's eyes, trying to dry every inch of the wetness that tried so desperately to cling to his membranes, but Link and Midna's eyes watered at the touch of the ash-filled battleground.  Sweat immediately poured from their skin.  At once, Link's tunic stuck to his flesh and he could barely breathe against the pain of the heat.

He tried to move and realized that his feet were glued to the floor.  What magic--?  Link's unfinished question was answered as he looked to the floor.  His vision was met with the sparks of green vitality that he would never forget.  Looking around, really taking in his surroundings, he realized that this was where he had fought off the enormous goron named Dangoro within the tribe's mines.  Here, on this magnetic surface was where Zant would make his next stand.

At the thought of the usurper, the ground began to quake and the orange liquid bubbled and sucked at the edges as they dipped this way and that.  They heard a mad screeching, like a thousand hyenas cackling in the night trying to sing like a human.  Turning, they saw Zant bouncing up and down on the rim of the large circular field, his bronze boots allowing him to cling to the arena in the same fashion as Link's modified pair.  The way he flailed his arms and shrieked looked and sounded as if he were a laughing child, treating the ring like his own personal playground.

Once Link moved forward--Midna flying ahead since she could avoid the obstacle of the ground altogether--Zant teleported from the spot and reappeared on the opposite side.  A salvo of crimson spheres attacked Link, and he just barely had enough time to reassess Zant's whereabouts in order to raise his defense.  Behind him, Midna created a shield of emerald magic; each red droplet that slammed into it only served to absorb into and reinforce her magic.  

Link stomped toward the king during his quick-handed assault.  He marched closer and closer until the bombardment ended, and Link feared that, just as he was getting so close to his target, Zant would teleport once more, suspending them in this cycle for an eternity.  

The king did not dissipate, however, and again switched tactics to resume his insane bouncing.  Link knew that the only reason that he could have been acting this way was to try to dislodge his opponent from the soles that protected him against falling.  This was the very method that would prove to be his downfall, though; Link knew that he had to do exactly as Zant wanted.  When next the king sprung and struck the unstable surface, Link timed his fall precisely so that Zant would think that he had succeeded.

Midna called out to Link, but Zant held her at bay with a volley of his red magic as he continued to jump up and down on the edge.  This forced the imp to stay within her shelter, each attack hitting with such force that they were like flaming arrows striking a wooden shield about to burst.

Link, mindful of how he held his metallic weapons, let himself slip and he slid closer and closer still with each rocking of the arena.  Since Zant held Midna at bay, Link understood that the usurper wanted to cleave the life from Link with his bare hands, or … he wanted to watch as the light dweller churned in screaming, searing pain in the vat of hot magma boiling below them.

The Hylian did nothing to disappoint the king, but just as he was within inches of toppling over the side, within breaths of being nothing more than ash….

Zant halted his attack on Midna and, either aiming a magical attack or readying to grapple Link by the neck, he stretched out a skeletal hand with joints as twisted as his soul.  In that moment Link took action.  He slammed his right arm down onto the humming surface of the clinging magnets, and his shield jerked him to a stop, its metal stapling him to the surface as it had done all those many weeks ago.  Gravity and the shield dually yanked on Link's body, and though the heat was quickly draining him of strength, his gripped the straps tighter than anything else in his entire life.  His body safe from the pull of gravity, he launched his shoulder out and swung wide with his elbow, his wrist finishing the motion as he screamed.

Due to Zant's outstretched arm, Link's horizontal blow was left wide open to slice his exposed midsection, and the attack cut him deeply.  Zant let out a shrill cry and clutched at his side, but the wound did not end in the king's demise.  Instead, Zant zapped away, reappearing at the center of the platform.  Midna had been racing toward Link, but at the sudden change of position of their foe, she was thwarted.  She stopped just inches from Zant, and he backhanded her to the ground.

She fell hard against the surface, gripping her cheek where his hand had struck her.  She passed an evil, hateful look at Zant, but then refocused her attention on Link when she heard the deafening noise of metal scrapping against metal.  The momentum of Link's lunge had shifted the weight of his body as his shield remained in place, but it slipped partly as his feet swayed precariously over the edge.  He could not pull himself back up, for his hands were tied down with clutching his only safety and his sword.  He could have tossed the saber away, but he could not risk losing the one weapon in all the world that could slay evil.

A sane man would have let things lie--would have let Link die this way--but Zant was one infested with power beyond his control; he only understood the desire to cause more pain before allowing either of his victims to fall to death.  Zant cast his spell again, a tide of red creating a new void, one that sent Midna and Link spiraling into the air.  Link thought that surely he would melt to cinders, but in the sudden darkness the heat evaporated and filled him with an abominable cold.

Link could not fill his lungs with air, as he soon realized that water crushed him from all sides.  He wished with everything that was within him that he had the veil of his Zoran armor, but wishing would not make it come to pass.  He dashed the thought from his mind and focused on keeping what air he had left.  

He felt a tug on his cloak and found Midna latched onto its flowing mane as it rippled gently through the dark waters.  He found the same fear in her eyes, the fear that they would drown here.  Link grasped her wrist in that moment and as their eyes met, he fed her his strength, a reassurance that they would escape this predicament as surely as they had escaped all else that had been set before them.

A few bubbles eased out of Link's lips as he turned his attention back to the waters.  There was nothing in the darkness.  He wanted to unite his cloak from his body, for it weighed him down and choked him within the water just as it had within the intense heat of their last arena, but he still was unsure if these scenes were the true locations--Zant having teleported them into the light world--or if they were complex conjurations based on what the king could glean from the hero's memories.  For that uncertainty, Link retained his cloak for fear that its removal would give the twilight power over him … turning him once more into a wolf.  A wolf in the water would have much less a chance at survival than a human weighed down and unable to breathe.

Link felt the ripple of the red magic before he saw its might, the water slamming into him a warning of what was to come next.  Link released Midna's wrist and pulled up his shield, a hard thing to accomplish in time since the pressure of the water slowed every action save for the muscles in his mind.  For this reason alone, everything seemed to progress in slow motion.

They saw Zant at the bottom of the pit, one in which Link had once battled a gigantic eel in order to gain the last of the Fused Shadows.  Link and Midna swam toward him, but by the time they even closed half the distance, the king had teleported himself to an adjacent spot at the middle of the underwater sand dunes.  Another salvo of red missiles launched themselves at the pair, and Link and Midna hid behind his shield.

Link's lungs were heaving, begging for air, and he could see that Midna, too, struggled against the absence of fresh air.  This had to end.

After the last dull crack sounded against his shield, he cast it to rest against his scabbard.  With his hand once again free, he stretched out his arm, bubbles multiplying before his purpling lips.  He released the mechanism on his clawshot and it sped through the waters, cutting a path straight for the usurper.

The hook latched onto his leg and Link pressed the next button, reeling him in like a fish.  Though their mass was relatively the same, with Midna clutching onto his cape at his shoulder as to not be left behind, they each were pulled to the other by the force of the chain.  Zant could not comprehend what was happening, could not understand what magic the boy had applied.

Link readied his sword for the plunge into his heart.

Midna gathered her magic for the ending blow.

As their combined attack sailed sluggishly through the resistance of the waters, Zant had time to catch up.  In the instant their attack would have impaled him, his body popped and rematerialized behind them.

But they had no more time; their breath could no longer sustain them.

Just as Link and Midna thought, as their lungs forced the toxic air from their bodies, that they would surely die….

Blinding red lights flickered through the water in every direction, and Link involuntarily closed his eyes against their brightness.

Then suddenly the already chill waters became unbearably more frigid.  Link and Midna could breathe again, but the air came in painful, dry heaves, as if the sun itself had withered and died and left only cold in the world.  Their lungs burned from the freezing air, and Link's lashes cracked as he reopened them to a world of white.

Zant had used his magic again, displacing the waters and returning them to the room in which Link had nearly killed an innocent girl.

The bedroom of the yetis stared back at them, impossibly still frozen over in thick sheets of frost.  Link's wet clothes sucked tight to his body and made movement difficult.  Though the companions were once again filled with oxygen, the biting cold of the room threatened to freeze them instantly.  With the ice still blanketing the room, Link came closer to understanding these worlds as a mere illusion, as the phantom Zant had been.

Zant hung in the air before them, and Midna took the opportunity to hurl her energy toward him.  With a wave of his ornate sleeve, the magic was redirected, and Link and Midna ducked to dodge it as it then exploded into the ice behind them.  The force of the hit sent white powder to snow down upon the pair.

Then right before their eyes the king's figure swelled larger and larger.  He was like a genie slowly escaping from his bottle in a vapor that expanded him to his true and mighty size.  Except, he would only grant one wish: Death.

Link had the awful feeling that this giant among giants would crash down upon him, and he ran from under the beast.  Or … he would have.  As soon as he tried to move, his knees quaked and he looked down to realized that the metal of his wet boots had cemented him to the ice.  He could not move.  As he heard Zant's deep and booming jovial growl, Link knew that it would only be a matter of time before the king descended.  Midna tried to free him with her magic, but the spell only rebounded and was sent flying to impact another section of the wall.

With the Master Sword, link stabbed at the ice, quickly chipping away the folds of ice that held him stationary.  He watched the reflection of Zant below him in the ice.  Just as Link had wrestled one boot free, he could hear the echoing roar of Zant.  In that moment the king plunged, and Link stabbed and yanked with all his might.

But it was not enough.  Link braced himself for the coming of the end but did not relent in his attempts to free his foot.

As had been the case with many of his near-scrapes with death, if he did not have a companion, he would not be alive.  

With everything that was in her, Midna concentrated hard and gathered all the strength she had within one fist.  She unleashed her courage in an orb of rage and heaved it at Zant.  The magic caught him just meters away from Link and crashed into the side of his leg.  A great bellow reverberated the walls, shattered the frost from the windows.  Ice sprinkled down upon Link as he shielded his eyes.  From behind his arm he saw that Midna's power had cast a pall of crimson light over the chamber for a split second, one that disoriented Zant and seemed to sap him of energy.  He landed hard against the ice floor, and the room rattled against his mass.  Cracks webbed along the floor, breaking apart, creating fissures along every wall.  

Zant dwindled, smaller and smaller, as his body flopped about the chamber in a wicked dance.  He grew even more crazed as his body returned to normal size, squealing in anguish either at Midna's hit or his diminishing strength … or both.

The splits in the ice that had emerged from Zant's landing freed Link from his icy restraints, and he propelled himself forward, skating along the ice like a deadly spear.  His metallic soles grinded against the frozen floor as he picked up speed.  And in an instant Link was at Zant's side.  Link wheeled his body about to create the correct momentum for his sword arm.  With a full body spin, a leg extended to adjust his balance, Link swung his sword at Zant's throat like a deadly axe.

His blade landed with a hard vibration in the icy wall.  Zant had again saved himself from death by teleporting from its path.

Link's breath fogged.  His muscles screamed.  His spine creaked.  Snot cascaded from his nostrils.  In a huff of both exhaustion and frustration at having nearly died three times now in a matter of minutes, Link's jaw clenched as he jerked his blade free.  He turned to find Zant already in the motions of rinsing the frozen room from existence.

As the atoms shifted once more and reorganized themselves, Link found himself deposited on what looked to be the stairs of the south side entrance to Castle Town.  He remembered sitting on one of these steps when meeting a curious young Princess Agitha.  

Link and Zant faced one another on the topmost tier of stairs, surrounded by the pillars and flowerbeds that made up a once peaceful area.  Now, however, the yellow of twilight had inked over its radiance and the looming figure of a sealed Hyrule Castle rose behind Zant.

Link wanted with all his being to attack first, but each time Zant had reshaped their arena he had brought a new flair to his technique, a new tool from his arsenal of tricks.  Zant, however, seemed stunned by the environment--frantically looking this way and that--as if he had not intended to bring forth the image of Hyrule Castle.

Zant recovered quickly, though, and stood tall once more.  Against all of Link's expectations, the folds of the usurper's helm clanked and rolled away to expose his face once more.  Link and Midna looked into his eyes and found true and unyielding rage within the yellow orbs, as unforgiving as the heat of any broiling star.  He lifted a bony hand to his forehead and pushed back the veil that entrapped his head.  Tendrils of greasy red hair bounced down and gathered at his cheeks.  Having been captured under the coif for so long, the usurper's hair stuck out at odd angles, tangled locks jutting out sporadically.

He looked truly demented, his wild eyes flaring as he cast both arms into the sky.  With a jarring roar, he flung his arms down, each sleeve producing a wicked, curved saber.  He waved the black blades about, slashing through the air theatrically, their red-hilted and white-edged steel singing a melody of death through the air.

Link's knuckles turned white as he gripped the Master Sword, humming with the life of the Sols.

Zant charged.

He moved slowly at first, and if he stepped with his right foot, he slashed with his right hand, and vice versa.  The movements were grand and wide, leaving himself open to attack, but Link thought that perhaps he had grown too mad and so tired of the nuisance Link and Midna had become that all he could think about was killing them.

As they fought, the cut on Zant's side pained him and drained him of energy.  It was all he could do to maintain his energy.  He thought that if he could remain the aggressor, keep his victims on the defensive, then he could land a killing blow to each.  He had watched them as he had fought them, studied them close.  He knew how dependent of each other they had become.  If he was successful in eliminating one, the other would fall soon after.  It was the stronger of the two onto whom he focused all his efforts.

Link.  The light dweller.  The meddler.

Each time Link broke through the king's offensive, Zant teleported and continued his barrage.  This routine kept Link on his toes.  Midna remained at a close distance, sending her magic in to help Link at every opportunity, but Zant flicked a wrist each time and cut her spheres asunder.  

His attacks only quickened as the battle raged on, and Link could not understand where and how he was getting the strength to fight so vigorously.  There was only one answer: the power of his god, the power of Ganondorf.  The power had totally consumed Zant now, and it was the only thing keeping the usurper on his feet.  Link knew that without such power, no mortal could have possibly continued on with such brutal endurance.

Finally, Link landed a strike, cutting Zant along the forearm.  The usurper stopped only momentarily to let out one of his nasal and shrill screams.  He panted, boiled, with rage.  In one sweeping motion, the king turned into a blur of speed, a blur of death.  Thankful that he had again issued the protection of his shield, Link raised its defense against Zant's spinning body.  His arms swung in wild arcs, blades slicing through the air.  He spun so furiously that Link was sure that his fury would tear holes in the sky itself.

The twilit steel crashed again and again into Link's shield, scratching and denting it deeply in the unstoppable onslaught.  Midna was forced to remain out of the fight while Zant attacked her partner in such a fashion.  With the whirl of motion, she was not sure if an attack would hit Link or if it would bounce off the swords of the crazed Zant.

After long moments of straining his muscles to maintain his defense, Link noticed Zant's speed waning.  At last, the king had exhausted himself.  Link cast the Master Sword in a deep thrust, and its blade caught Zant in the stomach.

All at once the usurper stopped, and he stared wide-eyed at the pain creeping through him.  His stupefied gasp hung on the air as his swords fell to clank against the stones.  His body felt numb suddenly, drained of power, drained of life.  He looked up at Link with those horrible serpentine eyes … and blinked.  Link removed the blade from his body, and the usurper staggered as he held his stomach.

"You … TRAITORS!"  Zant's screech echoed throughout every reality, and then, with a resounding thud, he crashed to the ground, as did every grain of their environment.  The world he had crafted died with him.

Once more, they were within the throne room of the Twilight.

Relief flooded Link as he collapsed partway to prop his hands against his thighs.  He steadied himself just as he looked over to Midna.  She hovered there, looking in expectation at her hands, hands that were still of impish quality.

Midna did not understand it.  She rubbed her fingers over the black of her hands as if trying to wipe away the falsehood of a mirage.  Her breath caught in her throat.  An overwhelming disbelief climbed into her.  She thought herself about to cry in a furious rage, to scream curses to every god she knew.  She turned about to scan the rest of her body, expecting to see her former self.  She gazed at herself from every possible angle, blinking several times as if trying to will her body to transform.  She had every right to believe that once Link had cast the deathblow she would again be what she had once been.

"Midna … foolish Twilight Princess…."  Zant's breaths came in painful and soft gasps.  "The curse on you cannot be broken."  He let those words sink in, and that they did.  Rage like nothing else Midna had ever felt boiled her blood.  In his weak state, Midna reached out with her magicks and stole back the power of the Fused Shadows, reaching into the realm of his dark, evil power and sapping him of their strength.  They melded into her again, the power slipping back into the dimension of her magic and empowering her once more.

"The curse was placed on you … by the magic of my god!"  Zant coughed, as he sat drooping in the royal seat.  He clung to the arms of the throne as if grasping it would hold him that much longer to his life.  "The power you held as leader of the Twili will never return!"  Fury built within Midna, and combined with her reacquired ancestral power, the bottle of her emotions no longer held its cork.  

Zant ignored her rage.  "Already he has descended and been reborn in this world…."

Those words caught the companions off guard.  Deep anger and a sense of fear flashed in their eyes.  They had come all this way to face Zant and his master, to end it all here and now … but Ganondorf was no longer within this dark realm.  He had crept back into the world of light and was surely now preparing for a final assault against its people.  

"As long as my master, Ganon, survives, he will resurrect me without cease!"  

The gasp that escaped Zant's lips then was not one in fear of death, it was one uttered in the awe of his master, the mastermind behind everything, the god that would give new life to Zant.

Midna could no longer contain the fury of her emotions, and in an instant, the gleaming orange tresses at the back of her head enlarged and elongated into three white-tipped, blood red tendrils that speared Zant in the heart.  The pulsating essence within her power bent and cracked Zant's body until he exploded in a cascade of magic.

Once the usurper was no more, Midna's locks of hair returned to their natural state dangling around her nape.  Within those seconds, Link did not know how to react.  He had leapt back at the sight of Midna's attack, and his mouth still hung loose as she held herself within her arms, trembling from the shock of what she had just done.  Link could not compare the fear within her face to anything else he had ever seen.

"I … I used just a fraction of the power that's in me now…" squeaked Midna's soft voice.  She could not comprehend what had just come over her.  Never had she felt so empowered by rage, so tangled in its web.  The power of her ancestors overwhelmed her, and she was suddenly very afraid.  She realized now how true the warnings of the light spirits had proven.  "I did … that … using only a fraction of my ancestor's magic?"  

She looked at the empty chair where Zant had just been sitting … where she had once sat.  The throne that her father had passed on to her.  The memory of him and her duty to her people reminded her of her purpose, the course she had to follow to the end.  She could not afford to fear the magic.  She did not have the luxury of heeding the spirits' warnings.  She had to use this power against the evil tyrants that had enslaved their worlds, and if anything happened, if she were to misuse the power … she knew that she had Link.

"Link!  Now is the time!"  She turned to him, beseeching him.  "We must save Zelda!"

Link had just steadied his heart from seeing the power she was now capable of wielding with the recovery of the Fused Shadows.  It frightened him, but he knew that she was stronger than Zant had been.  She was the ruler of the Twili, and if anyone could wield the power that the Interlopers had once controlled, it was Midna.  She had been through so much, seen so much, and he knew--without any further doubt--that her heart was true.

"The evil power Zant was wielding … I couldn't take it from him."  She meant the power Ganondorf had passed on to him, of course, and Link had known somehow that such power would have been impossible to break from the usurper.  It was the power of the Triforce, imparted in some fashion to the false Twili king.  Its terrifying power had not been meant for Zant.  It was the reason he had gone mad, Link told himself.  

At that, Link could not help thinking what effect the Triforce part within himself would have done to him if he were not meant to have it.  

Midna again caressed her hands as she continued, "But at least I still have the magic of my ancestors…. With it, I can return the cherished power Zelda bestowed upon me…."

She started for the door and turned back to look at Link.  The emotion within her eye, the pure selflessness, the caring, the devotion she had to Link as her partner, it gave Link all the reassurance he would need.  The battle with Zant had told him much; it had shown him what lengths Midna would go to in order to remain at his side.  And this look in her eye … it said everything that she would never have to.

She held up a hand to wave him on.  "Let's go!  Princess Zelda is waiting!"