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They lunge, and he barely gets the chance to reel back before their hand, still cloaked in that teal energy, plunges into his chest, claw-like nails puncturing his bare flesh with ease.
His scream of agony echoes through the cavern, guttural and animalistic in its raw desperation, before it is abruptly cut off, as if something has tightened around his throat, choking out his cries before they could truly begin.
And suddenly Ganondorf can’t move, mouth still contorted in a now silent scream. The rest of his body is swift to follow suit, limbs locking up, until he is left completely and utterly powerless, only remaining vaguely standing thanks to the hold the other has on his chest.
It hurts. It hurts more than anything ever has before, like his every nerve ending had been set alight by an unforgiving teal fire, burning through and leaving nothing but seared ashes in its wake.
A warm trickle of something liquid makes its way from their fingers down his skin, tracing his ribs gently before dripping to the cold stone below.
Vaguely, beneath all the pain, Ganondorf wants desperately to fight back, to tear their hand and that terrifying, invasive magic from his flesh, and defend himself. He wants to move, but his body won’t listen to his frantic commands, fingers not so much as twitching, no matter how hard he tries.
All he can do is hang from their clutch, trapped in his own body. They dig their fingers in further, gripping his skin tightly as they hold his body up, as if he were the result of a trophy hunt, and a fresh wave of agony washes through him.
He wants anything but to die here, in this cold, dark underground, far from the sun and sand of his home.
The figure hums, tone sickeningly satisfied, and they give his body a slight shake. His vision whites out briefly, and something akin to a gasp somehow manages to make its way past the vice around his throat, before it too is forcibly cut off.
They hum again, pleased.
Then they lean in close, practically breathing in his ear, and Ganondorf can’t do anything to move away, his entire being paralysed by pain, greater than he had ever thought was possible.
He can’t even track their movements, gaze trapped staring up at the strange structure hanging from the ceiling, as they begin to speak, voice silky sweet in a vicious mockery of comfort.
“Feel that? Feel that pain, that anger, that rage?” they coo.
Another trickle of warmth joins the first.
“Feel how it builds, how it burns, until it is nearly overflowing? Until you are on the verge of choking on it?”
Some of the teal energy peels off from their arm, spiraling languidly upwards. The twisting lines of light look almost like Gerudo writing, fading before Ganondorf can even hope to claw some meaning out of the nonsensical symbols.
He wants to go home. He wants to let his mothers fuss over him, to apologise to his sister for that old fight both of them had long forgotten about.
“Let it sit. Let it fester, until you are nothing more than a vessel for the undying hatred of a dying god."
This isn’t fair.
“Then let that hatred, that malice, spill over. Let it infect everything it touches, leave the world barren, until nothing remains.”
Suddenly, Ganondorf finds something somehow more viscerally terrifying than the idea of dying here, in the dark; being trapped, forced to remain in this pain for all of eternity, with nothing but the teal energy coiling around his paralysed limbs and the whisperings of a twisted shadow in his ear.
“Nothing but you.”
Something burning cold joins the warmth seeping from his wounds, steadily engulfing his chest, and Ganondorf would think it one last dying hallucination were it not for the wisps of red he can see curl in the corners of his vision, like congealed blood.
And the figure, grip still unyielding as the desert sun, laughs.