Living With Myself

Chapter 40

Dark was dragged back to consciousness by pain. Excruciating pain throughout his body.

He screamed.

What a ridiculous creature you turned out to be," said Ganondorf's voice, and the sharp, cutting pain over his skin ceased, letting Dark breathe deeply.

He looked at the towering figure of Ganondorf in front of him, standing tall and more powerful than he had ever been in any of Dark's nightmares.

"I thought you had turned out to be just a hollow shell, but look at you. Running all over Hyrule hand in hand with the hero of time," said Ganondorf.

Dark's eyes swept all around him, looking for an exit. Looking for an escape. They seemed to be in some room in the castle. Burnt marks and scratches and blood, all decorated the walls around them. And on the farther wall, something hung. Something white and yellow and red.

Sheik.

Tied to the wall, his blood dripping down into a black bowl.

Dark felt the beating, heartlike thing in his chest twist painfully. Was this terror? It stabbed hard at him from the inside, almost enough to make him scream again. But he was petrified. Frozen in place, crumpled like a useless doll on the floor. This was who he really was. A poor shadow, as weak as Link was strong. As fearful as Link was courageous.

Something choked him. Inside.

Ganondorf grabbed him by his long black hair, forcing him to look at the Dark King's face.

"How cute. He never looks that scared. If only you could cry. I could keep you as a pet, after I've killed him," said Ganondorf.

After I've killed him.

So Link was alive.

Dark hissed, clawing at Ganondorf's face with his nails that had turned into black claws. Dark blood flowed across Ganondorf's face, and he roared, letting go of him.

Dark could feel his form escaping his control. Tearing at the edges, turning monstrous. He was nothing more than a shadow. But he was the hero's shadow.

Dark looked back into his mindspace, searching for a way to contact link, but as soon as he closed his eyes he met with a wall of green fire roaring at the edges of his mind. It burned with a freezing cold that seemed to ravage everything in its path. Approaching. Purifying.

"Link!" cried Dark, opening his eyes, blocking the green fire from his mind.

Ganondorf punched him in the face, and he fell to the ground, the world spinning around him.

"You have been nothing but an annoyance," he said, kicking him in the stomach.

Dark tried to melt into the grown, lose the physical form that hurt him so much, but something held him in place, confining him to the boundaries of this form.

Ganondorf pulled him up by the hair. "The most annoying and useless of my pets. Don't think you can escape me so easily this time," he said, and a dark shock of electricity ran all over Dark's body, forcing his claws back into fingers, forcing his fangs back into perfect teeth, and shortening his black hair. "I can almost tolerate you when you look like him. I might, in fact, get to enjoy you."

And his touch was hot. Too hot. And he could feel his breath against his face.

Just like last time.

He screamed, trashing to get away from him. But Ganondorf held him in an iron grip. Dark hissed, roared like a beast. He would tear off his own arms if he could.