He drifted in Nowhere, feeling free and cleansed. For how long didn’t concern him, he no longer needed time. Why he was in this no-place he had long forgotten.

Things skittered and swayed just past the edge of awareness, servants of dark and forgotten gods, but he knew not what they were about—only that they watched him. The non-man had not learned this, rather it was innate knowledge granted to all things that be and have ever been. He was afraid that if he were to focus his attention and try to see one, that in his endless weakened state he would begin to scream like a foppish nobleman glimpsing something large, black, and hairy crawl underneath the furniture. In this eternal place, he might never stop screaming.

Within his formless state there remained no memory of what he had been, no time, just being; the past, present, future falling into a single point with him at the center.

So there was no way to say when the seam opened, only that a white tear appeared in the uniform nothing about him.

I am here.

It was a voice that spoke into ears that hadn’t existed for eons. It was beautiful, and yet set him aflame, sparks of a desire that knew no limit smoldered holes into his spirit. To be closer to the speaker, to become intimate with the source. He needed that now.

Follow me. And he obeyed.

The thing that had once been a man found it easy to move into the opened seam, flew straight to its epicenter with the single-minded determination of an insect diving into a camp fire, eager to be consumed and knowing nothing else. Light came over him as it grew close, though it had no surfaces to reflect off of; it suffused his being. Behind, the minions of The Old Ones that dwelled within the eternal void jumped and howled and screeched and cavorted. They were agitated, or perhaps excited. He didn’t care, the edges of the seams passed by on both sides.

Seek me out.

And then he was on the beach.

+++

The man lay still until he had learned the act of breathing. His head filled with crashing and a loud scraping rasp. It was a while before his ears calmed to the point where they recognized the sound of small waves sloshing against a sandy shore, and the whisper of the sea breeze as it swirled overhead. Daylight’s warmth seeped into his weather beaten skin.

Sitting up naturally came next. Third try was the charm. The gray disk of the sun behind its blanket of clouds had shifted from one hemisphere of the sky to the other by the time he managed to stand and take a few stumbling steps. This soon left him exhausted, and so he sank to his knees. Needing something else to do, the man bent over and stuck out his tongue to place if flush against the ground. He almost tasted the earth, but decided against it as the first glimmer of intelligence emerged within. He settled for clutching a fistful of sand from the white shores underfoot. He watched each ivory grain fall from between his long brown fingers, the sight of it entrancing beyond belief.

Dusting off his hands he turned his million-year-old stare to the land around him. There was nothing and no one in view. The endless white line of the beach crooked away to the horizons. Before him colorless waters stretched out until they became the whole world, behind him lay a flat vastness of barren soil broken only by the occasional tuft of yellowed weeds too stubborn to die.

A dry wind swooped off the land. Something about the way it tousled his wild hair and made his throat feel like cracked leather as he breathed it in stirred the first of his returning memories.

Of his home, and his people, and the harsh desert wind that had taken life. And then everything came back at once. Memories of a lifetime that spanned ages stabbed into his brain, as if, having trailed behind him for so long, had now crashed into his mind like a runaway carriage. There was so much of it—the tribe that had raised him, the armies he had formed. He saw again the military campaigns he had lead, his enemies dead and broken beneath his warhorse, their screaming infants tossed upon the points of his men’s spears for sport. He smelled his own blood spilt, recalled imprisonment in the All-Light of the Sacred Realm at the hands of the boy—that horrible boy, always reincarnated, always there. Again he held the savor of a goddess’s power in his very hand, the vacuum of its loss. And last, there was the memory of the silver arrow piercing his heart, and of all the nothing that had followed.

The pain of it was too great, even for one such as him. He held his head between his knees, rocking back and forth and gibbering to himself, spittle and mucus pooling in the sand. When it was over, when the storm of experience had sorted itself out, he crawled to the water, and with a mumbled enchantment that turned salt water to fresh, he drank.

There he rested until the night came. The day’s passing was like a candle dimming, for there was no more color in the world for the darkness to drain away. Though he remembered his life, in this place it would have no real meaning. There were no vassals waiting for him here, his armies had failed to sprinkle the blood of his fallen slayer over his ashes and summon him to life once more. This was not the land he had sought to conquer. The only thing that drove him now was what had revived him, to obey the Voice’s command and seek its owner. There would be others here too, birthed or summoned to this place, and they would want the Voice, he was sure of it. He could feel them out there even now, as a tree felt the coming of winter in its living core. He looked down and with a thought summoned a mass of violet energy to writhe and accumulate over one broad hand. It was destructive magic, more than powerful enough to boil a man’s brain within his skull. It would make a fine greeting for any who stood in his way. And yet, would it be enough?

One thing he did know. This world had seen him on his knees for the only and last time.

With a hard set expression, Ganon wrapped the tattered rags of his once regal cloak about him and began to march down the beach, determined to follow its line until he found…what he could not imagine.