Fanfic / The Myth of Link & Zelda: Breath of the Wild

"But courage need not be remembered...For it is never forgotten."

— Princess Zelda

The Myth of Link and Zelda: Breath of the Wild is the first installment of The Myth of Link & Zelda and the first in the Survivors of the Calamity subseries. It covers the entire namesake game with some liberties taken to keep the story fresh for new readers. It was completed on September 13, 2021, and is available on Archive of Our Own here. The "handwritten" version is available on a PDF link on the site and can be found here.

It was followed up in production order by its prequel The Myth of Link & Zelda: Age of Calamity.

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Tropes:

• 11th-Hour Superpower: Three examples, all with female characters.
  • Just like the original game, Zelda only unlocks her sealing power right when it's already too late to turn the tide of battle, and all she can do is mitigate the damage already caused.
  • Paya. She Took a Level in Badass to become a fighter, but eventually is chosen by the newly freed Sheikah Orb, originally called the Malice Orb, and becomes a seeress with immense powers to summon creatures from across time.
  • Not long after the previous character became powerful, Impa eventually learns of a fourth animal spirit in the Frog Spirit, and she quickly works to earn it and its powers. She succeeds, and becomes just as powerful as Link, Zelda, and Ganon.
• Action Girl: The Gerudo, Urbosa, Lochlia, Mipha, Impa, and several minor female characters are all shown in various combat scenes, and they kick some serious ass. Even Zelda becomes one in the flashback sequences, and in the spirit realm, the souls of Sheikah warriors collectively adopt the form of Sheik. Paya even gets in on the action.
• Actionized Adaptation: The original story is a video game centered on surviving in a sparsely populated post-apocalyptic Hyrule, and the drama presented by Link's amnesia. This fanfic features far more extensive fight sequences, with the New Champions, and other characters very much getting in on the action. Especially with the Yiga War Arc, which features entire chapters dedicated to showing the characters getting into massive battles with the Yiga Clan.
• Adaptational Badass: Link, Zelda, Impa, Paya, and Ganon who all carry the story are far more active in combat than they were in the game, showing more durability and power. Also, thanks to Adaptation Expansion being used, numerous supporting characters that either didn't fight at all or only had a few fights in the game get an opportunity to show off far more of their combat skills.
• Adaptational Heroism: Ganondorf in this story is said to be as much a victim of Demise as Link, Zelda, and all of Hyrule, because it's not actually Ganondorf who's been committing the atrocities over the years. It was the curse Demise left behind that took over his soul and enslaved him and his power for its own purposes.
• Adaptational Superpower Change:
  • Zelda now has the powers of Nayru's Love, Din's Fire, and Farore's Wind. She's said to have had these powers for years before the start of the story, and are treated as a Hyrulean Princess's natural powers.
  • Instead of expanding Link's inventory, Hestu now has the power to mark places on Link's map. He does this to mark Link's map with the locations in the various pictures on the Sheikah Slate's album, letting Link easily find each one.
• Adaptational Villainy: The Yiga are far worse in this fanfic than in the canon game. To boot, they're actually shown murdering victims, and the aftermath of several of their torture sessions are witnessed by Link. And they're given incredibly graphic and gory detail.
• Adaptation Distillation: Most of the Sheikah Shrines away from the Great Plateau are removed from the story, and the ones that are present are all Blessing Shrines, since adding them and their trials to the story would have unnecessarily extended the already doorstop-long work with scenes that would have no real plot impact. Hylia also immediately activates all the Sheikah towers and downloads their waypoints, which keeps Link from spending enormous amounts of time traveling around and activating them himself.
• Adaptation Expansion: Since the story is no longer solely from Link and/or Zelda's perspectives, numerous scenes flesh out the other characters in the story, from allies to enemies alike. There are also a few different additions to the cast and to the story in general, especially a huge War Arc with the Yiga Clan, and Impa getting her own Day in the Limelight where she obtains her own spirit animal.
• Adaptation Origin Connection: Ganondorf is the reincarnation of Groose from the Era of the Skies.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: Unlike the games, Mipha and Link were romantically involved and even have a kid together.
• Adapted Out: This work exists in the author's greater scope crossover series, the Marvel Fanfiction Universe, but the PDF excludes The Stinger that confirms the crossover existence.
• After the End: Just as in the original game, the entire atmosphere of this story is largely apocalyptic, with numerous long descriptions given to decaying structures around Hyrule.
• Age Lift: Link went from being roughly 17 years old in the game to being twice that age in this fanfic.
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us: The Yiga set off a massive cohesive attack against every major settlement still remaining in Hyrule, determined to wipe out the remaining opposition to Calamity Ganon. The settlements all fight back and kick them out, but only because they managed to get warning of the attack right before it was set to happen.
• All Your Powers Combined: Link collects the powers of the Champions as he frees each Divine Beast. The only one who doesn't grant him powers is Monk Maz Koshia.
• Alpha Strike: All of the Divine Beasts fire a massive beam at Calamity Ganon. All of them, including a fifth Divine Beast, Eponia.
• Alternate Timeline: Link realizes that the curse of Demise has plagued not just his own history, but across multiple different histories of Hyrule. At one point, a Sheikah Monk references "various histories of Hyrule". The "official" history that the people remember is the "Child Timeline", involving the Twilight Era and the Ocarina of Time.
• And I Must Scream:
  • Fi describes the curse of Demise as doing such to Ganondorf's soul. She says that the curse of Demise has enslaved Ganondorf's soul for its own purposes. Zelda finally frees him after she and Link defeat Dark Beast Ganon.
  • The Malice Orb that Astor wields actually has a conscious mind of its own that was overridden by the power of Malice. Once freed, it chooses a new worthy warrior in Paya.
• And the Adventure Continues: Just like the original game, but this time, there's a different reason for it. They freed Ganondorf from Demise's curse, but now, they have to make sure they annihilate the curse itself to end the cycle of destruction plaguing Hyrule.
• Animal Motifs: Four characters are heavily associated with animals (not counting the animalistic races like the Zora and Rito)
  • Link is associated with wolves.
  • Zelda is associated with owls.
  • Ganondorf is associated with boars.
  • Impa is associated with frogs ^note A motif she shares with the rest of the Sheikah, as they worship frogs.
• Anti-Climax: Chapter 15 ends with one. The chapter recreates the Lakna Rokee quest from the game, and follows it scene for scene. When the Yiga Blademaster gets ready to attack Link, he has none of it and simply shoots him with an ancient arrow, instantly killing him without any fanfare.
• Area of Effect: The Bridle of the Seven that Patricia wears is a magic artifact that turns the area around her into sand, allowing her and Riju to traverse other landscapes without struggle. The area returns to normal when Patricia passes by.
• Arc Number: Four.
  • There are four Divine Beasts. At least until there's revealed to be a fifth one that wasn't used in the first fight with Calamity Ganon.
  • There are four Divine Beast pilots that must be chosen. Monk Maz Koshia doesn't qualify, as he was always meant to pilot Divine Beast Vah Eponia.
  • There are four chosen heroes. Link and Zelda are two of them. Ganondorf and Impa are the others. The former is corrupted by the curse of Demise, and the latter is chosen by Hylia in the same way Link, Zelda, and Ganondorf are chosen by Farore, Nayru, and Din, respectively.
  • There are four non-Hylian races.
  • Chapter 36 and 37 are each divided into four major scene pieces.
• Ascended Extra: Impa, Paya, Purah, the New Champions, and Hestu are all given much more to do in this story than in the original video game. In fact, there's a whole chapter dedicated to each separate race as they fight the Yiga Clan's massive attacks.
  • In fact, Impa really ascends to a main protagonist. She even gets her own arc where she gets her own powerful spirit animal, and fights alongside Link to take down Ganon in Hyrule Castle.
• Auto-Revive: Fairies aren't present in the story, but Mipha's Grace is. It comes in handy numerous times when Link is badly wounded, and even takes advantage of it to fake his death a couple times to catch his foes off guard. Unlike the game, Link is able to use it himself on other people by drawing on the love he feels for Zelda, Mipha, and his daughter.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Ancient arrows can instantly kill any foe that Link is facing. While this is quite amazing, Link decides that it's not practical to waste ancient arrows on low-level enemies and prefers to save them for the more dangerous Guardians, the Blights, and Calamity Ganon.
• Backstab: Link's a Combat Pragmatist, and has no issue striking enemies from behind. He eventually inherits his past incarnation's fighting prowess, and is capable of doing the Hero of Twilight's Back Slice.
• Badass Family: Just like the original game, the royal family of the Zora are all quite well-versed in a fight.
  • King Dorephan is huge enough to take out Guardians himself, and possesses an axe that can manipulate water.
  • Princess Mipha was the greatest combatant among the Zora, a given since she's their Champion.
  • Sidon took out an Octorok on his own, one the size of a mountain.
  • Princess Lochlia took out the Lynel plaguing Ploymus Mountain. Thanks to the Blood Moon, she's had to do this many times, mostly on her own. This is because her mother is Mipha, and her father is Link, and she inherited both of their natural powers of healing and bullet time speed, making her that much more proficient in combat.
• Bad Moon Rising: The Blood Moon, naturally. But instead of just reviving monsters, it also makes them stronger every time it does, causing them to go from red to blue to black to silver and finally gold if a monster has been killed enough times. When it starts creating Stal monsters, that means that Ganon is close to breaking free from Hyrule Castle, as they hadn't been around since that time 100 years ago. When Calamity Ganon starts breaking free, he literally turns a previously normal moon into a Blood Moon.
• Bag of Holding: The Sheikah Slate, which is explicitly given an "inventory menu", allowing Link to hold practically anything. It holds all of Link's weapons and clothes, and it can instantly change his clothes when he needs it. It also automatically feeds arrows into his quiver as he uses them.
• Bait-and-Switch: At one point, a young woman travelling the Blatchery Plain near the Dueling Peaks offers Link some Mighty Bananas for sale. He accepts them. She is then killed by a Yiga Footsoldier. This situation in the game always results in the seller (named Traveler) suddenly transforming into a Yiga clan member and attacking Link.
• BFS: The Goron weapons are effectively this to Hylians. The only reason Link can use any of them is because the Sheikah Slate automatically sizes weapons so that Link can use them.
• Big Bad Duumvirate:
  • Calamity Ganon is the Big Bad, but the Yiga Clan that worship him provide the more immediate threat to the heroes at several points, to the point where Calamity Ganon at times is more of a background threat than anything else.
  • After Kogha's unceremonious death at his own hands, which the Yiga blame Link for, Sooga takes up after him, with his Co-Dragons Kolana and Astor, in leading the Clan and the three of them serve as the primary threat after the Blights are defeated before Calamity Ganon is finally destroyed.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • In the flashback near Kara Kara Bazaar, Link saves Zelda's life when she tries and fails to fight back against Yiga Footsoldiers who are seconds away from killing her.
  • A couple of Red Shirts, named Holden and Mara, are on their way to Hateno Village, and are barely rescued from a red shirt's usual fate when Link saves them from a Bokoblin ambush.
  • The spirits of the four Champions use their Divine Beasts' most powerful non-laser attacks to save their people from certain destruction when monsters attack them at the same time the Yiga Clan attacks them in Chapter 36. For the spoileriffic details on how...
    • Mipha saves Zora's Domain by using Ruta's ice barrage attack to destroy Malice Guardians about to open fire.
    • Urbosa saves Gerudo Town by using Naboris's purple lighting to kill the Moldugas and Molduking about to reduce the town to rubble.
    • Revali saves Rito Village by using Medoh's light blade attack to shred an armada of Malice Skywatchers.
    • Daruk saves Goron City by using Rudania to trigger and aim an eruption of magma bombs on the Igneo Talus Titan marching towards the Gorons.
• Bittersweet Ending: Leaning more towards sweet because of the great amounts of hope present in the ending. The king and the Champions of old are dead, but Hyrule still has its new Champions, Link, Zelda, Impa, and even the newly freed Ganondorf and the now calm monsters of Hyrule to help rebuild the kingdom to its former glory.
• Bloodier and Gorier: The fights in the story are described much more violently than the Bloodless Carnage traditional to the games. Wounds are described in graphic detail, between Hylians and monsters alike.
• Blow You Away: Revali's Gale is given more offensive applications, being used by Teba to blow enemies back, not just to lift people in the air.
• Blue Is Heroic: Just like the original game. The Champions, Link, and Zelda wear blue as part of their default attire. The Sheikah technology meant to help the heroes glows blue, and every time a Divine Beast is freed from Ganon's influence, it turns from magenta to blue. The Wolf Spirit that empowers Link is also bright blue in appearance.
• Bodyguard Crush: Played Straight between Link and Zelda. As they bond through the different times presented in the memories, Link and Zelda grow closer and closer until they enter a romantic sexual relationship with each other. The true love she feels is enough to help her powers of Nayru's Love, Din's Fire, and Farore's Wind grow strong and useful in combat.
• Bookends: The very beginning has Link wake up in the Shrine of Resurrection and leave it to look out over Hyrule from the Great Plateau. He does the same at the end, right before going to face Calamity Ganon, which is after he earns Monk Maz Koshia's respect and unlocks Divine Beast Vah Eponia. Only the second time, he's standing with Kass.
• Boom, Headshot!: Link is very fond of this. If given the chance, he'll usually behead his foes. When using a bow, he has enough skill to, and typically does, strike them in the eye, and if not, then he'll at least hit them in the head.
• Breakable Weapons: Downplayed compared to the game. Link's weapons consistently break early on, but as the game continues, he takes measures to take care of his weapons, especially his favored swords. This is then discarded entirely when he recovers the Master Sword and the Hylian Shield.
• Breather Episode:
  • Chapter 15 is a very low-stakes chapter with a calmer plot focused entirely on a single town's mystery, which serves as a nice little respite from the intensely emotional 14 chapters that preceded it. It even ends with an Anti-Climax.
  • Chapters 20, 25, 30, and 35 each end off an arc featuring the taming of a Divine Beast. They each consist of gentle cooldowns showing Character Development for the New Champions, Link being awarded the gear of the respective Champion, and a chance for Link to rest and recover. Chapters 30 and 35 subvert it at the end. The former ends with a violent encounter with a Yiga member, and the latter ends with a cliffhanger with the Yiga Clan's massive attack imminent.
• Bridge Logic: Link uses a Remote Bomb a couple of times to knock over a tree to create a bridge. He's not good enough to do this by cutting a tree down himself in a specific direction, so he makes do with the more powerful but not as controllable bombs.
• Broken Bridge: Just like the game, the Great Plateau is this at the beginning. Link could theoretically climb down and out of the Great Plateau, but he's so weakened from the slumber of restoration that he has no ability to do so. Especially since unlike the cliffside leading up to one of the shrines, there's nowhere for him to stop or rest as he climbs.
• Bullet Time: This is specifically stated to be Link's natural power as a Champion. It's specifically triggered when he dodges an attack with perfect precision. His daughter Lochlia inherited it from him.
• Bullying a Dragon: While the monsters of Hyrule mostly fall under Mugging the Monster, the Yiga Clan are this trope instead. Many of them openly try to fight and kill Link. Every fight is pretty much a major curb stomp ending in the death of the Yiga Footsoldier who was trying to kill Link.
• Calling Your Attacks: Purah creates a Sheikah Plate that allows other characters to use the Sheikah Slate's runes. In order to do so, you have to verbally call out the rune you want to use.
• Came Back Strong: Each time a monster is revived by a Blood Moon, it gets stronger and stronger. As it gets stronger, it changes colors, and eventually, if killed enough times, will become a deadly silver enemy. After that, they don't get stronger unless they're struck by lightning, which turns to the even deadlier gold enemies.
• Canon Character All Along: Kali the pink sand seal is revealed to be the reincarnation of Epona. She adopts her true horse form for the battle against Dark Beast Ganon, evermore the loyal steed to Link.
• Chainsaw Good: The Ancient Bladesaw from the game appears in this fanfic. It's the weapon of choice for Greyson (the Goron from Tarrey Town) in the final battle against Calamity Ganon and his dark forces.
• Cheerful Child: The children of Hateno Village are quite playful and curious. In Rito Village, Link outright admits who he is to a little Rito girl, and the girl is in awe and amazed to meet him. Young Sidon and baby Lochlia were just as cheerful when they were little kids.
• Chromatic Arrangement: All over the place, just like in the game.
  • The four Champion's powers are coded as follows: Mipha's Grace is turquoise, Urbosa's Fury is yellow, Revali's Gale is green, and Daruk's Protection is red. Mipha's Grace is the only one to change a little bit from the normal blue in the canon game to turquoise in this fic. That's because blue is already taken by something else...
  • The three spirits of the ancient heroes. The Wolf Spirit of Courage is bright blue, the Owl Spirit of Wisdom is gold, and the Boar Spirit of Power is magenta. The Frog Spirit of Kindness is white.
  • Fire, ice, and shock arrows are red, blue, yellow respectively. Blue is the color for ancient arrows as well, but it's a more solid blue than the icy blue for ice arrows.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Zelda delivers one in the scene recreating the "Despair" memory. The normally well-spoken Zelda drops three back-to-back F-bombs as she cries and dwells over the agony of her failure to awaken her power, and the subsequent loss of her family, friends, and kingdom.
• Cold Open: Chapter 48 begins with one. It shows all the various places of Hyrule doing things to prepare for the final battle against Calamity Ganon when all of them see this enormous object floating in the sky with a huge white-haired entity hovering near it. It's them witnessing Link's fight with Monk Maz Koshia from a great distance.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience:
  • The story retains the chromatic differentiation of monster strengths. Red is the weakest, blue is stronger, black is even stronger (black Lynels are called White-Maned Lynels), and silver is the deadliest natural enemy. These are created by the Blood Moon making individual monsters stronger with each successive resurrection. When struck by lightning, silver enemies turn into the most dangerous monsters of all, gold enemies, but this is not part of the Blood Moon cycle of resurrection.
  • There is great attention given to the color of Sheikah technology. Inactive technology is orange, active technology is blue, and anything corrupted by Malice is magenta. On the topic of corruption, the blue eyes present on corrupted Guardians is described as being a darker shade of blue than the uncorrupted ones.
  • Hestu's powers change depending on the color of his bubbles. Purple bubbles are used for levitation, light red ones produce raw magic force, yellow bubbles channel electricity, blue bubbles produce snow, orange ones produce fire, white bubbles are used for defense, and plain red bubbles are used for other magic effects.
• Combat Clairvoyance: This is one of Link's abilities. He can sense where attacks are coming from, and it's part of what made him so effective as a warrior.
• Comic-Book Fantasy Casting: To go with the Hypothetical Casting, some of the characters are described with features matching their actors, but this most notable occurs with Link himself. He's described as having a white streak in his hair several times, matching the hypothetical casting of Richard Madden who has it in real life.
• Completed Fic: This fic was officially finished on September 13, 2021, though still receives some edits after the fact.
• Continuity Nod: The fanfic retains most of the game's continuity nods to prior games, such as Zelda's speech during Link's knight coronation ceremony, and the description of the Goddess Statues matching the one from Skyward Sword. However, there's a new one added:
  • Link dreams of the Hero's Shade, and he sees several different wolves with different features, including a grey one with a chain on its foreleg and a red one that has a collar of red feathers. He's dreaming of all his past incarnations, with whom he shares a soul. They adopt their humans forms when Link draws the Master Sword, and they all tell him that he's the last and strongest of them all, and a few even recount their own battles against Ganon.
  • At the end of the story, during the final battle, Paya uses her newfound powers over time to summon Argoroks (the wyverns), Gohmas (giant armored arachnids), and Moldarachs (giant scorpions).
• Contrived Coincidence:
  • As in the game, Tarrey Town. There just happens to be residents in all the major areas of the world who are unhappy with their lives, and just happen to have skill sets that Tarrey Town needs. Link outright lampshades the unlikelihood of this.
  • Barta just so happens to eavesdrop on the Yiga just as they're discussing their battle plans for wiping out the major communities with just enough time to get warnings out to each area. Also, the Yiga happen to have the map opened in a room where Barta could hide but still clearly see it.
• Convection, Schmonvection: Averted by default just like in the main game. A minor plot point for Link is trying to find a way to get to Goron City without burning alive. Thankfully, there are the magical fireproof elixirs that allow non-Goron characters to temporarily play this straight, as well as the Flamebreaker set that shields him from the heat.
• Cool Airship: Divine Beast Vah Medoh is a flying fortress in the shape of a bird. Of course, given that it's corrupted by Malice and threatening Rito Village, it's not so cool for the Rito residents, at least before Link liberates it.
• Cool, Clear Water: A passing line in the narration averts this. Link describes how someone recommend that he boil water and filter it through sand to purify it, lest he get viciously and likely fatally sick from the stuff that lives in water.
• Crossover: The story itself doesn't cross with other fandoms, but it's part of the author's Marvel Fanfiction Universe, meaning that DC characters, MCU characters, and as The Stinger reveals, Mario characters, also exist in this universe. This reference is removed in the "handwritten" PDF format.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • As in the main game, Calamity Ganon was in the middle of dealing this out in the Great Calamity. Link finds numerous ruins everywhere, and the destruction still apparent on them makes it clear just how much the kingdom suffered from the effects and really haven't recovered from it.
  • Most of Link's fights end up becoming this, especially after he gets a strength boost from Spirit Orbs. Monsters that used to give him a hard time were little more than Cannon Fodder to him afterwards. It helps that Link is pragmatic enough to just do the simple solution. He even singlehandedly takes down the Yiga Clan in a violent rampage that the Yiga are powerless to really fight back against.
  • During the war against the Yiga, most of the fights against the Yiga go swiftly in the heroes' favor thanks to last minute warnings allowing for some limited preparations. This especially applies to the New Champions, who fight with great power and almost easily take out the Yiga.
• Cyborg: Calamity Ganon and the Blights all retain this feature. And the descriptions of how horrendous it makes them all appear are quite in-depth and detailed, capturing every detail present in the original game.
• Darker and Edgier: Than even the original game, which was already far more mature than the franchise had been by that point. In addition to the somber atmosphere of the ruined world, and Link's clinical death, there's also much more graphically depicted violence. This includes a scene where an innocent girl's throat is slashed by a Yiga member, and extended sequence where Link sees just how much more horrible the Yiga Clan is when he sees the remains of several of their tortured victims. One victim is a Rito whose feathers were plucked from their body alive, and another was a pregnant Sheikah woman whose belly was torn open by hand to take out her baby.
• The Darkness Gazes Back: Link's first conflict with Bokoblins and Lizalfos after leaving the Great Plateau is immediately preceded by him noticing their eyes shining in the darkness.
• A Day in the Limelight:
  • Chapters 36-41 serve as one for all of the major supporting characters, including the New Champions, Impa, Paya, Purah, and even Hestu. While Link still gets a lot of focus, much more attention is given to supporting characters as they each fight back against the Yiga with everything that they have.
  • Chapters 42-45 serve as one for Impa, Paya, and Purah, but mostly Impa as they work together to help her unlock access to the Frog Spirit that Impa is meant to master.
  • Chapter 48 is a long chapter detailing Link going through the trials of the Champions' Ballad. Link remains front and center, but much focus is given to the four Champions, enough that more of their characters are fleshed out. It also serves as one for Kass, who gets a central role in detailing Link, and features more of his backstory with his relationship to his music teacher.
• Dead Guy Junior: Lochlia named two of her four children, Link and Mipha, after her parents. Link is actually an aversion because Lochlia always knew that he was still alive in the slumber of restoration, but she didn't reveal this to anyone in her domain.
• Death Mountain: It's a Zelda story, so naturally, the trope namer is featured in all its glory. It retains all the threats present in canon, from the deadly heat, to the Igneo rock monsters lurking in the region. Not to mention the wild Divine Beast that still wandered around the volcano.
• Death by Genre Savviness: Averted, unlike in the original game. They fit almost all the checks. They were Properly Paranoid that they couldn't fight Ganon themselves, so they dug up the old Guardians and Divine Beasts and did their best to prepare them for the fight with Ganon, only for Ganon to hijack them for his own purposes. What makes it an aversion? The Great Calamity was always meant to happen, apparently as part of some long game meant to destroy the curse once and for all, as revealed by a Sheikah Monk.
• Decomposite Character: Sidon's main role of being Link's companion in combatting Ruta is now divided between both him and Lochlia, who both share equally important roles in helping Link do so.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Link and Mipha both deconstruct their romance, and the different halves of a Mayfly–December Romance, especially since they have a daughter.
  • On Link's side, knowing that he will inevitably die before Lochlia reaches maturity has weighed down on him significantly for multiple reasons. The first is that he will die before Lochlia reaches many of her big milestones, and that he will miss so much since he'll die while she's still a child. It especially doesn't help that she likely won't understand for a long time why her father got old so fast while she was still a child.
  • On Mipha's side, many of her struggles come from having a daughter who will inevitably lose her father-figure at an age where she's still very young. It certainly doesn't help that she has to keep Lochlia's parentage a secret lest they face even more scrutiny than she already is thanks to bigotry against Hylians, even if no one had the guts to say it to her face.
  • Thanks to this, even though Mipha and Link dearly love each other and would love to be together, they ultimately come to the mutual conclusion that their relationship isn't healthy, and it's better to end it while they still love and care for each other. However, Mipha did hope that they would one day find their way back together, until she realized that she can still love him, and find someone else with whom to share her life.
• Dem Bones: The Stal variants of enemies. In this story, weren't around before Link awakened. The fact that they start to appear at night at all is a dangerous sign, as it means Ganon's influence over the world is growing enough that he can animate undead bones. It means his escape is truly imminent.
• Description Porn: At several points in the story, the narration trails off with incredible descriptions. These are usually about landscapes, locations, clothing, weapons, and people's physiques, but it also is used to describe in-depth various action and battle scenes, and also to give incredibly specific details about gore and violence.
• Disappears into Light: Every scene that features a Sheikah Monk will end with a description of the Sheikah Monk disintegrating into pieces of light. It doubles as them giving their power to Hylia to help her construct the Frog Spirit that would act as Impa's powerful spirit animal.
• Disintegrator Ray: Ancient arrows. Link doesn't normally use them this way, seeing it as a waste. He makes an exception for the Yiga Blademaster who blackmailed Dorian to do his bidding.
• Disguised in Drag: Link, and all men, have to dress up as a woman in order to infiltrate the all-female Gerudo Town, from which men are forbidden to enter. Riju decides to begin the process of changing this by amending the law so that all Gerudo may bring back their husbands to Gerudo Town.
• Divine Birds: Aside from the royal family's bird insignia and the avian Divine Beast Vah Medoh, there are also the Sheikah Monk's Spirit Orbs which bear the avian symbol of Goddess Hylia. Zelda's spectral form upon unlocking her powers resembles a giant golden owl.
• Doing in the Scientist: The nature of multishot bows is different from the game. Bows like the Savage Lynel Bow are imbued with magic that can split a single arrow into several arrows that scatter everywhere. However, one who is skilled enough, like Revali, can pull this off themselves, but it's incredibly difficult.
• Doorstopper: The fic is on the shorter end, but it clocks in at 285,043 words. The PDF version reaches 752 pages, including a title page and a contents page.
• Downer Beginning: Link awakens into a destroyed decaying Hyrule, where there's hardly anything left of the original place. The abomination that is Calamity Ganon suddenly starts to break free from Hyrule Castle, getting ready to destroy the building, and this is just the first few chapters of this story. The heroes are mostly dead, with the hero himself being put in a slumber to heal for 100 years. A very bleak beginning for a story that would get even bleaker at some points.
• Draconic Abomination: Farosh, Dinraal, and Naydra aren't seen in this story, but a conversation that Link happens to overhear implies that they are this, since they're said to be "the physical manifestations" of the elements of lightning, fire, and ice.
• The Dreaded: The moment a Guardian gets close to a horse stable, everyone starts panicking and screaming, and with good reason. They can easily destroy an entire town on their own let alone a measly little horse stable.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Unlike the game, it's averted. After Link saves Gerudo Town from the threat of Naboris, Riju thanks him by permitting him to be the sole man not married to a Gerudo to be allowed into Gerudo Town again. Not one of the Gerudo women opposed that.
• Eldritch Abomination:
  • Calamity Ganon is once again a spectral boar that almost seems like a force of nature, losing nearly all traces that he was once a Gerudo. This time around, it's not actually Ganon who is the abomination, it's the curse of Demise that has corrupted to him to this point. The true Eldritch Abomination is the manifestation of Demise's hatred, and once that curse is separated from Ganondorf's soul by Zelda, Ganondorf returns to normal.
  • But as it turns out, he's just one of four of these. The others are Link, Zelda, and Impa. They, along with Ganon, can adopt powerful spectral animal forms, capable of doing incredible destruction. They're the most powerful beings aside from the Goddesses. The only saving grace is that the three of them are chosen heroes of the Goddesses. They actually aren't this...but Paya's vision of them shows them all adopting a dark cloudy form similar to Calamity Ganon.
• Eldritch Location:
  • The Lost Woods are filled with a fog that will consume anyone who wanders off the path that brings you to Korok Forest. The sound of childlike laughing accompanies this fog as it gathers around. Thankfully, it just throws you back to the entrance of the woods, and Link has a guide in Fi to help him get through the woods.
• Elite Mooks: Gold enemies. They are the strongest enemies around, blessed by Calamity Ganon's Malice and empowered by lightning, making them resistant to almost all forms of electrical attacks. The first gold enemy Link encounters is a Gold Lynel on Ploymus Mountain.
• Emotional Powers: Zelda's three natural powers respond to her emotional stability and mental health. Nayru's Love is the main indicator, as the crystal is left in a state of "perpetual shatter" early on, and only becomes a solid translucent crystal after Zelda's emotions and mental health stabilize.
• Enchanted Forest: They're an Eldritch Location, and they work pretty much exactly as they do in canon. The fog will consume you if you wander off the official path and force you back to the entrance to the woods. Thankfully, Link has Fi to guide him through the woods.
• Enemy Scan: The Hyrule Compendium is implied to be this, as once Link unlocks it, every monster he's encountered is already in it with only a few empty slots. It's never specified if it is, but it's the only explanation for how Link knows the titles of the different Blights, and even at one point says the word "blight" in reference to the Blights.
• Energy Absorption: Urbosa's Daybreaker shield is given this supernatural power in this fanfic. It can absorb kinetic energy and magical energy alike. It also has the power to redirect the energy it's absorbed. This power is also given to the Daybreaker Bracelets, which are granted to Link, who uses them to great effect.
• Energy Bow: The Bow of Light makes a grand return. Zelda entrusts the weapon to Link to combat Dark Beast Ganon, and it fires arrows made of light.
• Escort Mission:
  • Link has to help Yunobo get across Death Mountain so that they can attack Rudania and annoy it until they get it so that Link can get inside and free it. Unlike the game, he's not alone in this. The little diminutive Guardian Skywatcher Cerako helps them out and does most of the heavy lifting for both of them.
  • Riju does the same for Link, as she has to use the power of the Thunder Helm to shield him from Naboris. Link and Riju have to stay close together until he can disable Naboris's feet and keep it from drawing energy from the ground.
• Eternal Engine: The Divine Beasts are all enormous mechanical dungeons that have a unique feature that allows Link to manipulated their bodies for various effects. The final trial is literally in the shape of an engine, but it's not the interior of Divine Beast Vah Eponia, which is never actually seen.
• Even Evil Has Standards: The monsters of Hyrule may be ravenous, but even they aren't fond of the Yiga Clan. Link and Paya encounter what they think is a woman who was falling victim to Bokoblins who were going to kill her slowly and torturously. In truth, the Bokoblins were attacking a Yiga Footsoldier in disguise as a Hylian traveler who had just murdered a man, and they were being extra cautious. The trope is the subverted by these monsters when it's revealed that they're not evil at all, just victims of a Face–Monster Turn along with their master Ganondorf by Demise's curse. Ganondorf isn't fond of the Yiga for willingly worshipping the curse, and this influence extends to his monster subordinates.
• Excalibur in the Rust: The Master Sword ends up like this after Link uses it to its limit while fighting Guardians. Zelda leaves it in the Korok Forest to repair itself. By the time Link gets to it, it's fully repaired and ready to be used. Unlike the game, the Master Sword doesn't "run out of energy", and Link uses it for the rest of the story.
• Eye Scream: Link has a tendency of targeting the heads of his foes, especially when using his bows. Inevitably, there are a few times when he ends up hitting his foes in the eyes.
• Fantastic Race Weapon Affinity: The story retains the natural affinity that the various races have with weapons.
  • The human Hylians prefer swords and shields.
  • The Sheikah Tribe favor curved weapons that can create Razor Wind. The Yiga are just the same with their Windcleavers.
  • The Zoras favor polearms and spears, very effective hydrodynamic weapons.
  • The Gerudo, the race most similar to Hylians, use scimitars and shields, both typically ornate and well-decorated with gems and gold. Some of them use only large swords, and others use spears.
  • The Rito like bows, befitting the fact that they usually fight from the air. The greatest archers come from the Rito.
  • Bokoblins, Moblins, and Lizalfos respectively prefer small clubs and shields, two-handed clubs and spears, and bows.
  • Lynels are the Master of All. They wield all the weapons with great proficiency, which is part of what makes them so dangerous. While fighting the Gold Lynel on Ploymus Mountain, Cerako makes sure that the Lynel can't retrieve its bow once Link and Lochlia disarm it.
• Fantastic Racism: Once more, the Zoras are prejudiced against Hylians. In fact, Lochlia suffered from it for having Hylian ancestry, and committed the dangerous task of vanquishing the Lynel on Ploymus Mountain to earn their genuine respepct.
• Fantastic Romance: Link and Mipha had one when they were younger. The relationship produced a daughter, Lochlia.
• Fantasy Gun Control: 10,000 Years ago, Sheikah technology was key to defeating Calamity Ganon. And then the Royal Family of Hyrule became afraid of the power of this technology, and had it all buried and sealed away, and it was eventually forgotten by the rest of Hyrule.
• The Farmer and the Viper: Paya and Link come across a couple of Hylian travelers being attacked by a group of Bokoblins, including a Gold Bokoblin and Silver Bokoblins. They're too late to save one of them, but they manage to save the woman. She's a Yiga Footsoldier and tries to kill Link right after they save her. She's Impaled with Extreme Prejudice by Link.
• Feed It a Bomb: Remote Bombs are necessary to defeat Fireblight Ganon, since Fireblight gathers up power and heat by sucking in the air all around. Rock Octoroks also use suction, which makes them vulnerable to Link's Remote Bombs.
• Female Gaze: While Link and Zelda are exploring the grassy plain near Hyrule Castle, Link relaxes without a shirt. Zelda can't help herself but steal glances and even take a few pictures of him while she's at it. And Link is fully aware of it, and lets her do so.
• Fetch Quest: Bolson gives Link a large-scale version of this, asking him to go out into Hyrule to find the necessary people whose names end in -son, and have the skill sets the town needs. In exchange, he pays Link very generously, and eventually awards Link with a trove of incredibly valuable gems, worth millions of rupees.
• Fiction 500: Bolson must be incredibly wealthy. He has enough rupees that can afford to just shell out half a million rupees like it's nothing as a reward for Link helping to build the town. Even better is that the town becomes this trop collectively because the area where they built the town was the last remains of a gemstone mine, and there were dozens of gems collectively worth hundreds of millions of rupees at least. They award Link these gems, but Link chooses to give them to Purah and her tech lab to help them further their research.
• Fighting from the Inside: Calamity Ganon is truly Ganondorf Dragmire's soul corrupted by Demise's curse. However, he has enough mental strength to fight back enough to project a dream to Link, and to influence the monsters of Hyrule to attack the Yiga Clan on sight.
• Finale Title Drop: A double case of this occurs in Chapter 50, which serves as the finale to this story aside from The Stinger.
  • While Kass's Title Drop from "The Champions' Ballad" DLC is retained, the second-to-last set of words is the title of the work itself.
  • The very last words in Chapter 50 are "The Silent Princess", which is identical to the title of the chapter itself.
• Fire, Ice, Lightning: The story retains the game's fire, ice, and shock weapons, mostly in the form of arrows for Link's bows. The three dragons of Hyrule are also referenced though unseen, but are said to be the physical manifestations of the spirits of fire, ice, and lightning.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: The old man addresses Link by name without being told his name only moments before he reveals his identity as King Rhoam.
• Flaming Sword: Link once again has access to these. However, he doesn't use them for much more than just to help himself stay warm in incredibly cold environments.
• Flechette Storm: Various characters use these.
  • Zelda can shatter the crystal of Nayru's Love to create a storm of sharp crystals to shred her opponents.
  • Link is able to do this after getting full access to the Wolf. He uses the power a few times to create a magical energy constructs shaped like the Master Sword, and makes them rain down on his foes.
  • The Sheikah are able to do this because they're all skilled with magic kunai blades that they can throw in large numbers with great precision. Impa's the only one shown doing so. She also uses a storm of mystical shurikens after gaining the power of the Frog Spirit.
  • Lochlia uses her powers over water to create various weapons, primarily aquatic shurikens, which she usually summons en masse to overwhelm her enemies.
• Flower Motif: The Silent Princess is symbolic for Zelda. It personifies Zelda's character just like in the game. Zelda says that the flower can't be grown domestically, and can only thrive in the wild, just like Zelda wasn't able to thrive being so contained and forced into a role that really wasn't her. It contrasts Link, who was allowed to thrive on his own a bit more and thus blossomed into his own in the way that Zelda wished she could have.
• Foreshadowing:
  • When Link is in the Trial of the Wolf, he notes that the monsters there have different features to that of the ones in the overworld, in that their eye colors aren't the same. This is the first hint that the monsters would Heel–Face Turn after the defeat of Dark Beast Ganon purged them of the Malice that had infected them and turned them aggressive...which has the ripple effect of changing their eye colors.
  • Link consistently has dreams of the Hero's Shade, who adopts the form of a wolf alongside with numerous other wolves with unique features. This is because wolves are the Hero of Hyrule's animal motif, as he was always destined to wield the Wolf Spirit of Courage.
  • A pink sand seal named Kali shows incredible affection towards Link right off the bat, and another character in their mind compares the loyalty to the kind a horse shows its master. It's the first hint that Kali is actually the reincarnation of Epona who remembers her past lives and thus recognizes Link as her true master.
• Four Lines, All Waiting: Chapters 35 and 36 depict the Yiga's all-out attack on Hyrule's settlements, and each one juggles four different settlements fighting back against the Yiga. Instead of jumping between the different fights, each chapter depicts each conflict in its entirety before switching to the next one.
• A Form You Are Comfortable With: Warriors in the Sheikah Tribe train in the spiritual realm, learning directly from their ancestors. Said ancestors collectively adopt the form of Sheik, choosing to do so to honor the form that the Princess of Time adopted to protect herself. It gives their trainees a face and a person from whom to learn.
• Fountain of Youth: Purah's anti-aging rune, lifted straight from the videogame. It's why she looks like a six-year-old, even though she's actually older than her sister Impa. A more advanced version is used on Impa to return her to her twenty-year-old body. The very ending shows that Purah was able to create a rune to reverse the effects of the anti-aging rune, and that the elderly Muava from the Gerudo decided to be de-aged, too.
• Four Is Death:
  • The Champions have four members (not counting Link and Zelda), and pilot the four excavated Divine Beasts. Their plan is foiled when Ganon takes over the Divine Beasts and kills all of them with the Blights. 100 years later when they put their plan to fruition, there are now five Divine Beasts and pilots, and the plan goes off without a hitch.
  • There are four kinds of Guardian models. The Guardian Stalker (the ones that are called Guardians), Guardian Skywatcher, Guardian Turrent, and Guardian Scout.
    • The Guardian Scouts have four individual models of their own from I to IV just like in the original game.
• Full-Boar Action: Calamity Ganon adopts the form of a spectral boar for most of the times he's seen around Hyrule Castle, and his final form of Dark Beast Ganon is a giant boar made of Malice. Both are perversions of the Boar Spirit, the spirit of power granted to Ganondorf Dragmire that was corrupted by Demise's curse when it latched onto them to use for its own purposes.
• Giant's Knife; Human's Greatsword: Goron weapons are so huge that Hylians can't actually use them. Link even mentions how it's nearly impossible to wield their weapons, and the only reason Link can is because he has Super-Strength thanks to Hylia's blessings.
• Glass Cannon: Most of the fighters are incredibly powerful attackers, but cannot take nearly as much damage. The most notable instances of this are...
  • Link downplays this. After finding all the Sheikah Shrines and granting their Spirit Orbs to Hylia, he becomes incredibly strong and powerful, and is more durable against attacks. He even gains bracelets that allow him to use powerful magical attacks by clashing the bracelets, creating beams and explosions of whatever power they absorbed. However, Link is still vulnerable to injury just like most other Hylians, and suffers lethal injuries from which he is saved only by Mipha's Grace.
  • Lochlia is a master spear user and can manipulate water to an incredible degree, enough that she can fight a Gold Lynel by herself and win. However, she is still a petite Zora woman, and she still can be injured just as easily as any other Zora, especially by electricity. Also, her combat prowess can't stop a much bigger Lynel from grabbing and throwing her around like a doll.
  • Zelda is also this in the flashbacks. No matter how strong or weak her powers of Nayru's Love, Farore's Wind, and Din's Fire are, she is still as vulnerable to attacks as anyone else. The only reason she wasn't in as dire straits as Link during their Last Stand is because her magic allowed her to instantly get out of the way of attacks and to deflect them.
• Go for the Eye: When Link is Guardian enemies, he goes for their eyes, as their glowing eyes are their primary weak point. If he doesn't shoot a Guardian foe in the eye, he will impale it with the Master Sword. Impa has no choice but to do this when fighting the Stalnox in Hyrule Castle.
• Gold-Colored Superiority: Gold enemies are the strongest, just like in the canon game's Master Mode. They become the strongest allies to Hyrule after Demise's curse is purged from Ganondorf's soul, and they lose their aggression as a result.
• Goldfish Poop Gang: The Yiga downplay this trope in this version. While they have virtually no chance in a fight against Link, they are very dangerous to common folk. And they even came very close to enacting a sneak attack that would have wiped out most of the remaining settlements of Hyrule that only failed because one Gerudo warrior managed to get word out to the entire kingdom in the nick of time.
• Good Colors, Evil Colors:
  • The four Champions, Link, Zelda, Impa, Paya, and numerous heroic characters tend to be associated with blues and purples and whites. Ganondorf is revealed to be a hero possessed by Demise's curse. Were he not, he would have been a straight case of Red Is Heroic (actually magenta).
  • Calamity Ganon, the Blights, the corrupted Guardians, the Yiga Clan, and Astor are associated with dark magenta and red and black colors.
• Good Morning, Crono: As it adapts events from a Zelda game, the very beginning consists of Link waking. In this case, since it adapts Breath of the Wild, he wakes up from a deep sleep in the Shrine of Resurrection.
• The Greatest Story Never Told: Link is amused a few times by characters referring to the hero from 100 years ago and the Master Sword with the utmost awe and curiosity, completely unaware that Link is that knight. This is averted with the residents of Zora's Domain, Kakariko Village, and Korok Forest. While the other races all come to realize Link is the knight from 100 years ago, only the Zora and Koroks personally remember Link and know what happened to him, and the Sheikah have always known Link's fate and have been waiting for him.
• Group Picture Ending: The last Story Arc before Ganon's defeat adapts the Champions' Ballad DLC, and at the end of it, Link receives the picture of himself, Zelda, and the four Champions of Hyrule. It leaves him emotional, because it really brings back the fond memories he had of all of them.
• Guest-Star Party Member: Lochlia and Sidon, Riju, Teba, and Yunobo all join Link to help him infiltrate the Divine Beasts. Minor Gerudo character Barta helps Link fight through the Yiga Clan hideout, but is separated from right before Master Kohga appears. The Diminutive Guardian Skywatcher Cerako accompanies Link throughout his whole Divine Beast quests, giving him assistance in combat and surveillance.
• Half-Human Hybrid: These exist throughout Hyrule, though they aren't common. According to Paya, the offspring will mostly resemble their mother while having features from their father's side. It's unknown why this is, but Paya says that it may have something to do with the fact that Hylian, Sheikah, and Gerudo women carry pregnancies while the Rito and Zora lay eggs. The only one seen is Princess Lochlia of the Zora, who looks like her mother Mipha, but has Non-Mammalian Hair instead of a head tail, features she didn't start developing until she started to mature.
• Hard Light: Ancient Sheikah technology usually produces light that interacts with the world. Guardian Shields and Swords are really just projectors that create light that makes up the weapon itself. Remote Bombs seem to be literally made of light energy, and their explosions is this light blasting out with concussive force.
• Healing Hands: Mipha's Grace allows its namesake wielder to heal any injuries. She grants it to Link after he frees Ruta from Ganon's control. Their daughter Lochlia, and her daughter Mipha, inherited this power, too.
• Heal It with Water: Mipha's Grace is an aquatic power. Whenever used, it produces aquatic turquoise light and little bubbles of mystical water.
• Heart Container: Every time Link defeats a Blight, Hylia awards him with one of these along with a Stamina Vessel.
• Heel–Face Turn: The monsters of Hyrule lose their aggressiveness and propensity for violence after the defeat of Dark Beast Ganon. This is because they were never actually products of Malice, they were enslaved by it. Once Ganondorf is freed from the Malice and Demise's curse, so are they, and they become much more peaceful. Riju is even shown approaching their new home in what was once the Yiga Clan's hideout, and they greet her peacefully.
• Hellish Horse: A skeletal Stalhorse appears during the Trial of the One-Hit Obliterator.
• Heroes Act, Villains Hinder:
  • Counting the story arching from 100 years before the Calamity, the heroes were the ones who took the initiative to try and combat Calamity Ganon, using their ancestors' powerful technology to get the job done. Unfortunately, Calamity Ganon was very good at hindering them.
  • In the present day, though the entire story is a reaction to Calamity Ganon's victory 100 years prior, it still centers more on Link journeying around to gather the resources to fight Calamity Ganon, gathering the help of the various races across Hyrule, and the villainous Yiga Clan's attempts to stop them.
• Heroic Lineage: Link's biologically descends from the Hero of the Skies. Among the other members of this direct lineage are the Heroes of Time and Twilight.
• Heroic Mime: Averted with Link. Unlike the games, Link has a full character arc, and engages in dialogue with numerous characters, and shows much more of a personality. He also tends to write in a journal where he unloads his thoughts and stress whenever he's alone.
• Hitodama Light: They always accompany spirits like Mipha, King Rhoam, Urbosa, and Revali. The narration even calls them a few different times "ethereal flames".
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Hyrule was completely destroyed by the various Divine Beast and Guardians that they had originally unearthed specifically to combat Calamity Ganon. Conversely, his attempt to kill Zelda only ensured his imprisonment in Hyrule Castle, preventing his victory.
• Hollywood Chameleons: It only comes up once that Lizalfos changes color to blend in with its background.
• Hope Spot: For King Dorephan. Just like in the original game, when King Dorephan sees Link is alive and learns Zelda is too, he hopes that maybe they weren't too late to save Mipha. When he asks Link if they were, Link agonizingly tells him that they were. The news crushes the king.
• Hopeless War: Averted. While the Blood Moon does resurrect monsters, it doesn't revive Yiga Clan members. Even though the monsters can never be wiped out, they usually keep to themselves and have no desire to go to war against the remains of Hyrule. The Yiga are the only ones that would, and they can't afford to lose too many of their people.
• Horse Archer: Link and Bokoblins can fire arrows while riding horses. Lynels take this to the logical extreme where they are centaurs that use the strongest bows in existence. Link rides a horse, Epona, no less, into battle against Dark Beast Ganon.
• Horse of a Different Color: This story removes the "riding a deer" and "riding a bear" aspects of the original game. However, sand seals are treated as horses of the desert, and skeletal stalhorses are shown in the story. Also, Link mounts Lynels to get in good hits on them, and they always attempt to throw him off.
• Humongous Mecha: The Divine Beasts are giant constructs of Sheikah technology with enough power to reshape the landscape of Hyrule. They are Ruta, the elephant; Naboris, the camel; Medoh, the raptor; Rudania, the lizard; and Eponia, the horse.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: Thanks to the inventory feature of the Sheikah Slate, Link can carry as many weapons, arrows, and objects as he wants.
• Iconic Outfit: In-Universe. Link's blue tunic is seen as his default tunic, and once he regains it, Impa comments that he really looks like the hero he was 100 years prior. Link gets to see his predecessor's iconic green outfits when they address him after he reclaims the Master Sword.
• I Just Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Mipha quietly hoped that she and Link would find their way back together after they ended their Mayfly–December Romance, even constructing Zora Armor for him. However, when Link entered a relationship with Zelda, Mipha decides that she can live with it, and that she can still love Link while finding another person with whom to share her life.
• Immune to Fire: Gorons are naturally immune to fire and even lava and magma. The Flamebreaker set and fireproof elixirs allow people who aren't Gorons to resist the burning heat of Death Mountain, though there's nothing that will allow non-Gorons to survive contact with lava.
• Implied Love Interest: Averted, as all the implications in the source material are made clear in this fanfic. Paya does have a crush that Link doesn't reciprocate, but it doesn't go anywhere further than that on Paya's side. Mipha and Link had an explicitly romantic relationship when he was a teenager, and Link and Zelda entered a relationship not long before the Great Calamity struck.
• Important Haircut: Link starts out with long hair as a result of sleeping for 100 years. He cuts his hair off after regaining most of his memories, symbolizing that he now fully is the person he was 100 years ago.
• I Never Told You My Name:
  • The old man on the Great Plateau calls Link by name, even though Link never introduced himself.
  • Kass calls Link by name at the end of their first conversation. It's because Kass knew who he was, because he was close with a Sheikah teacher who wanted him to help Link. Link himself lampshades it, mentioning that he noticed Kass already knew his name. Kass even said that he hoped Link wouldn't notice.
• In Which a Trope Is Described: Each chapter's name is significant to the plot of the chapter. For some, it's a major symbolic item. For others, it's what literally happens in the chapter. Others have titles referencing a Macguffin for either the chapter or the story arc. In the PDF, this is doubled with each chapter bearing a symbol that indicates the race which is the primary focus of each chapter.
• Journey to the Sky: A journey retained from the source material. Medoh is the only Divine Beast that Link cannot physically reach on his own, as he's incapable of flight. As a result, Teba is one of the only companions that Link absolutely needs in order to infiltrate Divine Beast Vah Medoh. Thankfully, he quickly earns Teba's trust, partly because they bond as fathers who are determined to create a better world for their children.
• Katanas Are Just Better: Averted. Link at a couple points has a chance to use Sheikah weaponry, but he decides that he prefers his own sword and shield. The only thing better about Sheikah weapons is their Razor Wind power, which is not a power that Link needs, since he's already so powerful with his natural powers as the hero of Hyrule.
• Kill It with Fire: Ice foes are instantly killed by fire attacks.
• Kill It with Ice: Fire foes are instantly killed by ice attacks.
• Kleptomaniac Hero: Link is more than willing to help himself to anything that no one else has any claim on if it will help him on his quest. The only time he steals is when he steals from monster camps, usually after he wipes out the entire camp.
• Lady and Knight: As always, Zelda is the scholarly, well-spoken Bright Lady to Link's Master Swordsman White Knight. He was appointed to be her personal protector because he was so good with a blade, and especially because said blade is the Master Sword. This becomes Bodyguarding a Badass when Zelda gains control of her three natural powers of Nayru's Love, Farore's Wind, and Din's Fire, allowing her to become an Action Girl.
• Laser Blade: Swords made of ancient Sheikah technology create blades made of pure blue light. Unlike other blades of light, these ones produce no heat or any special effects. Though the fact that the primary body of the weapon is just a projector does mean that these weapons tend to be easier to carry around than a full metal sword.
• Last Stand:
  • The soldiers that retreated to Akkala Citadel made one final stand against the relentless onslaught of Guardians. After losing their king, and many believed Zelda to have shared his fate, the army retreated to the last bastion of military power in the citadel and tried to strike back. Unfortunately, they were overwhelmed and every soldier that retreated to the citadel was killed.
  • Link and Zelda have one of their own in the Blatchery Plain, where they're desperately fighting for their lives against an onslaught of Guardians attacking them. They end up separated, and while Zelda holds her own thanks to her defensive and teleportation magic, Link lacks these powers and ends up suffering lethal injuries and succumbs to extreme exhaustion. The only thing that saves them is Zelda awakening her true sealing power.
• Law of Chromatic Superiority: Red foes are the weakest. Blue ones are stronger, black ones are even stronger, silver are the strongest ones that Calamity Ganon can summon. If silver foes are struck by lightning, they become the strongest ones of all, gold foes. With each level up, the monster can endure more and more damage and become stronger and faster.
• Law of Conservation of Detail: Link's trek through the Lake and Faron regions is entirely offscreen and told through Link's journal entry in Chapter 10, as there were no memory pictures taken in those regions, but there were still some shrines that Link needed to acquire.
• Leaking Can of Evil: Hyrule Castle is the can that's leaking evil.
  • As the Great Calamity approached, more and more and stronger kinds of monsters started appearing, and it was enough to influence the geology of Death Mountain, causing quakes that sent enormous boulder tumbling down. Zelda knew that these were signs of Ganon's return.
  • In the present, as Ganon's power rises and he comes closer and closer to breaking free, the Guardians he corrupted and the Divine Beasts activate and threaten their immediate vicinities. Also, the Blood Moon allows him to resurrect his monster lackeys and make them stronger.
• Legendary Weapon:
  • The Master Sword is the legendary weapon. After Link retrieves it, numerous different characters are shocked to see him carrying it around, and are in awe when they realize that his means he's the hero.
  • The four Champions' various weapons are all looked at with nothing but reverence by their respective races. They are honored to be able to bequeath these weapons to one of the last surviving Champions. It's partly because they really believe that he deserves these weapons as a fellow Champion, and also because the New Champions wish to forge their own paths as Champions.
• Lethal Lava Land: Naturally, as it's a Zelda fanfic that features Death Mountain. Non-Gorons can't traverse the area without proper protection from the heat, and the presence of a rampaging Rudania makes it even more dangerous, as the Divine Beast can literally trigger an eruption at will.
• Light/Darkness Juxtaposition:
  • Calamity Ganon is the manifestation of Demise's curse, and it almost entirely black with hints of dark magenta color. Zelda's power over the Triforce is golden in color, and always shines whenever Ganon's power surges, signaling her active effort to keep the Calamity at bay. Link and Impa eventually gain power equivalent to Zelda, giving them bright blue and white magic that also contrasts Calamity Ganon's dark chaotic power.
  • The Sheikah Orb that Astor wields is corrupted by dark power and is said to have Malice enshrouding it. When it's purged of this corruption, it becomes bright blue just like a Divine Beast freed from Ganon's influence.
• Lightning Can Do Anything: According Lochlia, the Silver Lynel on Ploymus Mountain turned into a Gold Lynel after being struck by lightning. In the game, this was only confirmed in the compendium.
• Long Game: According to Tutsuwa Nima, the Great Calamity was part of a grandiose scheme by the Golden Goddesses and Hylia and even the ancient Sheikah, a scheme that he claims will finally end the cycle of destruction that has plagued Hyrule for so long.
• Long-Lived: The Koroks, Sheikah, and Zora can all live for over 100 years. As a result, the eldest Sheikah, and pretty much all the Koroks and adult Zora personally remember Link from 100 years ago. Many of the Zora, none of whom knew that Link was in medical stasis, express surprise that he still looks like a 34-year-old man.
• Lost Technology: Sheikah technology is 10,000 years old. The various models of Guardians and the Divine Beasts are some of the greatest achievements of the Sheikah tribe, and of all Hyrule. But in the time of the Great Calamity, this technology had been lost for pretty much all of those 10,000 years, and as a result, the technology is a complete mystery to the contemporary people. No one knows how to recreate something of that scale. 100 years later, the Sheikah scholars have uncovered enough to repurpose a Guardian Skywatcher into a pilotable drone, but they are nowhere near close to creating another Divine Beast. And they didn't even uncover all the Divine Beasts. There was still a fifth one hidden away from all the rest of Hyrule.
• Lovecraft Lite: Calamity Ganon, or more accurately the curse that corrupted Ganondorf's soul, has mutated into a spectral monstrous Eldritch Abomination that's as powerful as a force of nature and barely recognizable as anything close to human, but Link's mission is to destroy it. According to Tutsuwa Nima, the final endgame of the Sheikah Monks, the Golden Goddesses, and Hylia is to completely destroy Demise's curse.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Hylians and Bokoblins use shields as a means of defense.
  • Link uses a shield by default in his preferred style of fighting. He uses weaker shields at first, until he finally regains a Hylian Shield. He also uses the Daybreaker Bracelets, which can summon a Deflector Shield that covers a greater surface area than his usual shields.
  • Urbosa used the Daybreaker shield as part of her standard weapon set. It's granted to Link, along with the Scimitar of the Seven, after Naboris is calmed.
• Ludd Was Right: Zig-Zagged like in the game. The King of Hyrule who chose to forbid Sheikah technology, the Guardians, and the Divine Beasts from ever being used did so because of his fear that they could one day be used against Hyrule. At a first glance, it seems like this was justified because of Calamity Ganon doing exactly that. However, the fact that this technology stagnated for 10,000 years meant that there was no progress made, and that people had long forgotten how to use this technology which is what allowed Calamity Ganon to catch them by surprise by hijacking the technology. The Sheikah technology not under Ganon's control, like the Sheikah Slate, the diminutive Guardians, and the battle-tested Guardian trio, are all quite effective. But this gets a whole lot more complicated when Tutsuwa Nima reveals to Impa that this was meant to happen as part of a Long Game by the goddesses meant to finally destroy Demise's curse.
• Made of Evil: Calamity Ganon is constructed of the raw power of Demise's curse. More accurately, Demise's corruption of Ganondorf's soul has now carried over to corrupt the powerful Boar Spirit. It swirls around Hyrule Castle like an imprisoned hurricane waiting to be released.
• Magic Flame: Sheikah furnaces are powered by blue flames that can burn for years before they burn out. And the Sheikah furnaces that carry these flames never seem to run out.
• Magic Knight: The only one of the six Champions of Hyrule who isn't is Zelda, who's more of a Glass Cannon of the Squishy Wizard type.
  • Mipha is a master of spear usage, and has the power of Healing Hands.
  • Urbosa is the second-greatest swordswoman in the kingdom, with only Link surpassing her, and she has the power of lightning.
  • Daruk is the strongest of all the Gorons, and is a Barrier Warrior.
  • Revali is the greatest archer in the land, surpassing even Link's arching ability, and can create winds.
  • Link is the greatest warrior in the entire land, chosen by the Master Sword, and he has the power to move at incredible speeds if he dodges an attack with perfect precision. He gets access to all the other Champion's powers as he frees their Divine Beasts from Ganon's influence.
  • Outside of the Champions, there's also Impa, who's age hasn't diminished her fighting skill at all. She can summon clones and use blades as effectively as the younger Sheikah warriors. After being deaged by Purah, she learns that she's The Chosen One to carry the Frog Spirit, which grants her even more powerful magical abilities on par with Zelda and Link.
  • Monk Maz Koshia is quite skilled in both Sheikah techniques, and is more than capable of using swords and spears made from Sheikah technology.
• Magitek: The Guardians, Divine Beasts, the Sheikah Towers, and the Sheikah Slate are all described as and look like different forms of technology. However, this technology, and the three diminutive Guardians Terrako, Cerako, and Argiko, are all shown having some capabilities that are very much magical in nature.
  • The various Guardians are all shown with mechanical parts, and the Divine Beasts outright look like they have engines, but none of them have a discernible power source, and the Divine Beasts have some unique magical abilities such as conjuring ice and massive blasts of lightning.
  • The Sheikah Slate is described as a tablet with a touchscreen, but it can literally conjure Hard Light bombs, manipulate magnetism even though it has no metal, and even literally freezing objects and enemies in place.
• Male Gaze: While Zelda is enjoying her view of the shirtless muscular Link, Link himself is stealing himself some glances at Zelda's curvaceous body.
• Many Spirits Inside of One:
  • Link carries with him the various incarnations of every legendary hero that preceded him, giving him access to all of their combat prowess and skills.
  • Sheikah often train in a spiritual dimension where it's a Year Inside, Hour Outside and they learn combat directly from their ancestors, and among the trainees is Paya. The one who trains them is Sheik. As explained, Sheik is just the form that the Sheikah warrior souls adopt so that they can educate their trainees efficiently.
• Marathon Level: The Trial of the Wolf consists of several different consecutive challenges that Link must face. The challenges are in combat, fighting different powerful monsters with nothing but he scavenges and his own ingenuity. The reward for this is full access to the power of the Wolf Spirit, making him as powerful as Zelda.
• Matter Replicator: Sheikah technology is capable of this. Divine Beast Vah Ruta can summon numerous magical icicles to use as missiles, the Sheikah Slate can produce an infinite number of Remote Bombs, literally summon the Master Cycle Zero, and has a seemingly limitless capacity to store anything in Link's inventory as raw data.
• Meat Moss: As an adaptation of Breath of the Wild, it comes with the territory. Malice is seen everywhere, and it's even described to be like a noxious gas when visible in the air during a Blood Moon.
• Mechanical Horse: The Master Cycle Zero, just like in the original game, resembles a unicorn. Divine Beast Vah Eponia also resembles a horse, as its the Divine Beast counterpart to the Master Cycle Zero.
• Medieval Stasis: in 10,000 years, humans in real world went from scavenging the natural world and living by natural rules, to creating entire artificial environments and reshaping the planet with technology. In this adaptation of Breath of the Wild, Hyrule had incredible technology...10,000 years ago. That's because the Sheikah technology became forbidden and eventually forgotten, leaving Hyrule to linger in a medieval-like state for 10,000 years. However, the ending with Purah and Paya and Impa working together to help restore Hyrule indicate that the stasis is coming to an end.
• Mecha-Mooks: The small Guardian Scouts aren't a problem for Link at all, except for the ones present in the Trial of the One-Hit Obliterator. Even then, they're so fragile that Link has no trouble defeating them. However, while the Guardians qualify as mooks, they are far stronger and are more than capable of killing entire swathes of people with just one Guardian.
• Memorial Statue: The Zoras constructed one for Mipha, and the Gorons carved Daruk's likeness into a nearby mountain. Seeing the latter immediately triggers Link's memories of him while seeing Mipha's statue and his daughter Lochlia at the same time triggers his memories of Mipha.
• Missing Mom:
  • The story with Dorian and his wife is kept in this adaptation. Just like in the game, Koko and Cottla lost their mother. She was murdered by the Yiga Clan. Koko has figured it out, but Cottla still hasn't realized that her mother will never return. Koko tries to remain strong for her sister.
  • Zelda's own mother died when she was but a child. The loss of her mother left a huge hole in both their hearts, and led to strain in their relationship because King Rhoam had no idea how to raise his daughter in a way that she would learn and grow into her powers.
• Mono no Aware: Link reminisces about the loss of the beautiful kingdom of Hyrule. However, numerous characters who are aware of how much was lost still find beauty in the world, and life kept on going after the Calamity.
• Mook Maker: Some pools of Malice produce floating skulls, like in the game. Calamity Ganon is also this through the Blood Moon resurrecting monsters. It was actually Ganon's natural power through the Boar Spirit to do so, using dark monsters for good purposes. The curse of Demise corrupted this power for its own purposes, empowering ravenous monsters to ravage Hyrule.
• Mounted Combat: It is a Legend of Zelda fanfic, so fighting on horses comes with the territory. Link can do it, as can Bokoblins, and Link joins up with his old steed Epona to take down Dark Beast Ganon.
• Mugging the Monster: Unlike the Yiga who know who Link is, the various monsters of Hyrule just attack any and everyone indiscriminately. They make no exception for Link, not realizing just how dangerous and powerful Link is. Once freed from the influence of Demise's curse, they recognize Link as an ally and refuse to attack him or anyone else any further.
• Multishot: Many bows, such as Lynel bows, are imbued with a magic that splits the arrow into multiple arrows that fan outwards. Some magic divide arrows into three, the strongest split into five. The only one shown doing this with their own hands naturally is Revali. Even Link can't do this himself without a magic assist.
• Mundane Utility: As the players can do in the game, Link uses ice and fire weapons primarily to shield himself from the intense cold of Hebra and Tabantha, and the intense heat of the Gerudo desert.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Link has a subdued reaction like this after annihilating the Yiga Clan hideout and killing every Yiga inside violently. Buliara helps him out of it by reminding him that the Yiga Clan are violent cowardly terrorists who murder innocents, sometimes just for fun, and that killing them is beyond necessary.
• Neglectful Precursors: The King of Hyrule 10,000 years ago. The Sheikah had built an entire army of autonomous magitek warriors, and four actually five mechanical animal wonders that were the most powerful achievements in history. The King of Hyrule then decided that this technology was too dangerous and had it all buried and forgotten. Had he not done this, Hyrule could have blossomed and progressed to even greater heights and the Great Calamity may never have happened. Except that according to the ancient Sheikah Monks who were around during that time, the Great Calamity was destined to happen as part of a long-term plan to eradicate Demise's curse forever.
• Never Say "Die": Link doesn't outright tell King Dorephan that Mipha is dead. As in the game, he euphemistically tells King Dorephan that Mipha is dead by saying "I met her spirit."
• No Body Left Behind:
  • Yiga Clan members avert this, as they leave behind dead bodies in their wake.
  • Monsters like Bokoblins, Moblins, and Lizalfos play it straight. They always disappear into puffs of purple smoke after being killed, but usually not before they've suffered some really disfiguring injuries or straight up disembowelment that spills their blood and organs all over the place.
  • The Blight Ganons don't leave any sign that they existed after being vanquished.
• No-Gear Level: The Trial of the Wolf is this fanfic's answer to the Trial of the Sword. He's stripped of his armor and his weapons and forced to combat increasingly dangerous monsters in order to prove his worth as a hero and access the true complete power of the Wolf.
• No Hero Discount: No one gives Link a discount for being Link, not in Kakariko Village or Hateno Village. The only time this occurs is when the owner of the clothing store in Kakariko Village does Link's very long hair. Link doesn't request one from anyone. It doesn't make a difference anyway, since circumstances align to give Link enough rupees that he no longer has to worry about finances.
• No Endor Holocaust: In Chapter 38, the Yiga War of the past two chapters is revealed to have had no deaths on the side of the heroes, even the Gerudo who had suffered some serious injuries.
• Non-Mammalian Hair: Like in the game, Saki is a Rito who Link notes seems to have hair like a Hylian. Princess Lochlia of the Zora has hair instead of a head fin because her father is Link. Thus, she carries mostly a Zora appearance while having a few hints of her Hylian ancestry.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: The Guardians are actually mass-produced drone technology made by the Sheikah. At one point, they, and all the other Sheikah technology, were all commonplace, at least until the king forbade their continued creation and usage. As a result, the knowledge of the technology is lost, and with it, the knowledge and capability to combat it. This means the Guardians are the deadliest force in the land, as there's little that can fight back against them.
• No-Sell: The Thunder Helm renders its wearer, and the area right around them completely immune to any and all electricity, including that from Naboris.
• Nothing but Skin and Bones: In this fanfic, the Sheikah Monks all retain their mummified appearances from the game. They're described as withered and skeletal, making it all the more shocking to Link when Monk Maz Koshia suddenly starts moving around instead of disappearing into light.
• Not Quite Flight: In this adaptation of the game, the closest that Link comes to flying is gaining Revali's Gale, which allows him to ascend into the air at will. However, when he unlocks the Wolf Spirit, he's able to transform into a spectral Wolf akin to Calamity Ganon's spectral boar form, minus the Malice, that can fly.
• Older Is Better: Sheikah technology is ancient, over ten thousand years old, and includes some highly advanced machinery. The Guardians and the Divine Beasts are called mechanical wonders. They use swords, shields, and even sawblades made of light, and the most accurate type of bow is produced using Sheikah technology. Compare this to the common metal weapons and shields that easily break when facing down Guardians. Three of the four animal spirits, the Wolf, the Owl, and the Boar, have existed since the time the Master Sword was forged. The fourth spirit animal, the Frog, is a new creation, but is created from the power of the entire Sheikah tribe, from the 10,000 year old Sheikah Monks to the Sheikah that have existed since Skyloft's creation. All four of these spirits are the most powerful entities in the land. Nothing rivals their power aside from Demise's curse and the Goddesses.
• One-Hit Kill:
  • Ancient arrows retain this power from the game. The arrows instantly disintegrate anything that isn't made from Sheikah technology, though Link prefers not to waste them for this purpose. Instead, he does this to the Guardians by shooting them straight in the eye, which instantly obliterates them. Link does choose to instantly kill a Yiga Blademaster with an ancient arrow.
  • Link uses fire and ice attacks to instantly kill foes of the opposite element. Specifically, in one scene, he ambushes a bunch of Fire Lizalfos with a rod of ice magic, instantly killing them all.
• One-Hit-Point Wonder: Link turns into this during the Trial of the One-Hit Obliterator. Unlike the game which registers no change in Link, it also reduces Link to a perpetually exhausted mess who barely has enough energy to keep moving.
• One Size Fits All: Averted, unlike the game. Weapons used by large enemies, such as Lynels, are specifically resized by the Sheikah Slate so that Link can use them efficiently. The only one that it doesn't do this was the Boulder Breaker, which remains enormous relative to Link.
• Only Mostly Dead: Averted. Link was in fact dead in Zelda's arms. The Shrine of Resurrection did exactly as it's name says. It brought Link back to life.
• Only the Chosen May Wield: The Master Sword can only be wielded by Link, and even more, he has to endure tremendous amounts of pain in order to survive drawing the blade. The only other person who can touch it is Zelda. Impa's Devoted Kodachi is forged into a Goddess Kodachi that only she can wield.
• Ontological Mystery: It's a Breath of the Wild based story, so it goes without saying that the story begins with Link waking up in a strange cave and has absolutely no memory aside from his own name. He spends the first fifteen chapters of the story piecing together the main pieces of his until he remembers almost everything.
• Original Character: Lochlia is an original character created for this story. She's Mipha and Link's daughter. In addition, Terrako is given two companions who resemble Skywatcher and Turret versions of itself. The flyer is named Cerako, and the turret is named Argiko. The Battle-Tested Guardian is given the same, with a Warfare-Tested Skywatcher and Combat-Tested Turret. All three are named Cottako, Amiko, and Gilako.
• Orwellian Retcon: Even after the fic was published, the author's made numerous edits to different parts of the PDF, and the fic itself, including changing up the Comic-Book Fantasy Casting of the various characters.
• Outliving One's Offspring:
  • Link learns that he had a daughter...100 years ago. He immediately cries upon this, realizing that his daughter must have aged to death long before he woke up. Except that he had said daughter, Lochlia, with Princess Mipha, and the Zora are very long lived. He woke up while she's still a young adult woman.
  • King Dorephan lost his daughter Mipha to the Calamity. He has a brief Hope Spot where he believes that she may not be dead after seeing Link alive, but Link has to break the news to the king that Mipha really is dead.
• Parting-Words Regret: Zelda expresses profound sorrow to Link about the last interaction she had with her father, which consisted of an emotional confrontation between them that ended on an extremely sour note. And it's the last time they speak before the Calamity strikes and kills him. His spirit visits her and they're able to reconcile, and he apologizes to her for what he did for all those years.
• Passing the Torch: Chapter 50 features scenes where the spirits of the Champions address the New Champions. Each one is relatively unique, but all four of them express pride for their successor, and say that they're proud the New Champions have taken up after them.
• Pastoral Science Fantasy:
  • Pastoral: Hyrule is in a post-apocalyptic state, with most of civilization having been decimated during the Great Calamity. As a result, much of the landscape is green fields and trees, with any signs of civilization having been reduced to pieces of rubble and overgrown by vegetation. The world is a survivalist's world.
  • Science: Sheikah technology is explicitly referred to as mechanical in nature, and the interiors of Divine Beasts resemble engines. When Guardians are destroyed, at least ones that are not corrupted by Ganon's power, they short out like electrical machines. The ones who study Sheikah technology are never called "scientists", but they behave and are treated as such, and they treat the study of Sheikah technology as a science. The various shrines that hold Sheikah Monks appear to made of high-level Sheikah technology, and the Sheikah Slate has a touchscreen like a tablet, and the weapons made of Sheikah technology are largely portable projectors for Hard Light.
  • Fantasy: The Sheikah technology which was made in ancient times is magitek. While seeming like machines, they're all capable of some amazing magical feats, especially the Divine Beasts. Ruta can conjure water, Naboris can produce purple lightning, Medoh is capable of endless flight, and Rudania can trigger and even aim volcanic eruptions. There is no discernible fuel source for Guardians or the Divine Beasts, aside from the blue flames present in some furnaces, and Guardian parts never suffer wear-and-tear. And Calamity Ganon uses his power to corrupt and control this technology, using it as his personal army to obliterate a large chunk of Hyrule's people.
• Pig Man: As usual, most of the enemies associated with Ganon are described as pig-like. Moblins and Bokoblins alike have swine features, reflecting their connection Ganon. specifically Ganondorf, because they were always meant to serve as Ganondorf's minions, originally meant for heroic purposes, but they were corrupted by Demise's curse.
• Points of Light Setting: Inherited from the source game. 100 years ago, Hyrule was completely decimated by Calamity Ganon. While there were survivors of the disaster, most of Hyrule's citizens died, as Central Hyrule was the main hub of activity for the kingdom, and Calamity Ganon manifested from beneath Hyrule Castle itself. The only region who suffered no losses was the Faron Region in the south, as the corrupted Guardian army never made it that far south. Other than that, there are only a handful of villages remaining, none of them serving as major hubs of interracial commerce or activity. This is because of the hostility of the world around them. Outside of these settlements, there are the monster hordes that can never be permanently killed because of the Blood Moon, especially the various Guardians that are almost impossible for anyone to destroy. Link is forced to traverse this wilderness to accomplish the final goal of destroying Ganon.
• Powers as Programs: Just as literally as in the original game, the Sheikah Slate is like a magical tablet, and its various powers obtained from the Trial Shrines and Purah are displayed like apps.
• Power Crystal: Nayru's Love manifests as a crystal that Zelda can use for primarily defensive purposes. But she can also shatter
• The Power of Hate: Calamity Ganon, and Dark Beast Ganon, are the physical embodiments of Demise's curse, which itself manifested from Demise's raw hatred.
• The Power of Love: Mipha, Link, their daughter Lochlia, and granddaughter Mipha, all channel Mipha's Grace by focusing on their love for each other. Zelda's three natural powers become stable and strong after she bonds closely with Link, which became a romantic and sexual relationship. Zelda's love for Link is what allows her to unlock her sealing power.
• Power Tattoo:
  • Link gains one each time he frees a Divine Beast when he's granted their powers. They always appear as the Divine Beast as they appear on Impa's ancient tapestry. They also glow in their respective colors each time Link uses their powers. He also has a new one that resembles a Wolf after he gains access to his divine gift of the Wolf Spirit.
  • Zelda also receives one of her own. It resembles an owl, reflecting that she's the wielder of the Owl Spirit.
  • Impa gets one in the shape of a frog after gaining mastery over the Frog Spirit.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: There are a few changes to the story to accommodate its format as a written story instead of an open world game. For instance, Hylia immediately activates the Sheikah Towers and gives Link the full map of Hyrule right off the bat, allowing Link to progress through Hyrule with much more speed. By a similar token, Hestu uses his Magic Music to mark each of the different locations where the various memory photos were taken, allowing Link to head directly to each area without needing to search around for long periods of time.
• Precision F-Strike: Link doesn't drop F-words often. The only time he does is when he's dealing with Yiga Clan members, signaling just how much he genuinely hates them. Especially after seeing an innocent girl getting killed right under his nose, and seeing how they tortured their victims so brutally in their hideout. Similarly, the well-spoke Zelda degrades to dropping F-bombs after she fails to unlock her sealing power before Calamity Ganon devastated Hyrule.
• Precursors:
  • The ancient Sheikah who constructed the shrines, Divine Beasts, and the Guardians. Had they not been forced to give up the technology, they would have likely served as seeds for creating a grandiose empire flourishing with incredibly technology beyond anyone's imagination.
  • Impa goes to the Spring of Courage, hidden within the Zonai Ruins. Unlike in the game, this is the only time they are ever mentioned, and it's in the context of the Spring of Courage's relationship to the lost dragon Farosh. It's mentioned in the narration that the Zonai Ruins were built to honor Farosh, but nothing more is mentioned beyond that.
• Punched Across the Room: Link gains this ability after being granted Super-Strength by Hylia. He falls victim to it when fighting Waterblight Ganon and Lynels, as does his daughter Lochlia.
• Purple Is Powerful: Monsters vanquished turn into purple clouds. Naboris's powerful lightning is purple as well, and the Sheikah are heavily associated with purple, as their Spirit Orbs are that very color.
• Quieter Than Silence: Link describes Karusa Valley, where the Yiga is hiding out, as having "deafening silence".
• Quirky Bard: Link finds Kass to be a little off, but nonetheless is fine with him.
• Quest for Identity: Link spends the first fifteen chapters wandering around almost entirely without memory. He spends these chapters trying to piece them together, and he mostly does by the end of these fifteen chapters, but the quest stretches out to the entire story, with the last of Link's memories only coming back to him after he awakens Divine Beast Vah Eponia.
• Race Lift: Zelda is a black girl in this story, and Ganondorf is lighter-skinned than he's usually imagined as being. This is in part thanks to the Hypothetical Casting, where the characters are imagined as looking like Yara Shahidi and Joe Manganiello respectively.
• Rasputinian Death: Gold enemies are so durable that they can survive wounds that would normally kill anything else, necessitating this. Calamity Ganon suffers this as well, with Link and Impa having to increasingly damage it as it grows increasingly desperate in its fight against them.
• Razor Wind: This power is the default power of the Sheikah Tribe and the Yiga Clan, both of whom wield katana-like blades that can create sharp winds capable of shredding flesh. The Sheikah primarily use kodachi blades while the Yiga Blademasters use enormous Windcleavers.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: All of the chiefs from across Hyrule are personable and willing to help Link, against the prejudices of their people even as seen with King Dorephan of the Zora and Chief Riju of the Gerudo. In fact, Riju is inspired to downplay the law that forbids men from entering so that Gerudo can bring their husbands back to the village, and giving Link a free pass to enter the town without needing to disguise himself.
• Reclaimed by Nature: It's a fanfic of Breath of the Wild, so as a result, most of the setting takes place in a world overgrown by vegetation. It's actually this one two levels. The first one is that Sheikah technology had long been forgotten, and many of their wonders had been buried in the ground, and overgrown by vegetation after so many years of neglect. The other level is that the society that was present 100 years ago was reduced to practically nothing, and what was left has been completely overtaken by the natural world, with most signs of civilization having decayed away. Paya, through the power of the Sheikah Orb, is able to fix all the damage done by using the orb's power over time to reverse it, and in turn completely reverses the damage, a power she displays when she fixes the Temple of Time.
  • Defunct Guardians are rusted and immobile as a result of exposure, along with The Battle-Tested Guardian Cottako, Warfare-Tested Skywatcher Amiko, and Combat-Tested Turret Gilako, which are not immobile or defunct. Paya's able to fix all the damage done to both kinds of Guardians. She repairs all the neglect damage done to Cottako, Amiko, and Gilako, and even polishes them to be grey like the diminutive Guardians. When she fixes the Temple of Time, she also fixes the rotted Guardians, which are awakened free of Ganon's corruption.
• Redemption Promotion: Astor carries with him the Malice Orb, which allows him to create constructs of Malice and see the future through its powers. Once its freed from the corruption of Malice, it returns to its natural state as the Sheikah Orb. It chooses Paya as its master, and grants her a plethora of powers that Astor didn't have, including summoning monsters from across time, elemental manipulation, creating portals, and even fixing damage by reversing the flow of time on object.
• Reforged Blade: The Master Sword was heavily damaged during the Calamity, but it repaired itself while Link remained in the Shrine of Resurrection.
• Reset Button: Paya, through the Sheikah Orb, can repair all damage done to a location or object by reversing time, and thus reversing the effects that time has taken. She can do this to Guardians and buildings even.
• Respawning Enemies: The Blood Moon resurrects all monsters that have been vanquished, and even brings them back stronger and stronger with each successive resurrection.
• Sacrificial Lamb: The death of Red Shirt Leena displays just how dangerous and vicious the Yiga Clan are, and how they have no compunction murdering innocents just because they feel like it. It also leaves a massive impact on Link because he wasn't able to save her.
• Safely Secluded Science Center: Robbie and Purah chose two locations far from Hyrule Castle to make their labs. They had a lab closer to the castle, but wisely chose to abandon it in favor of more secluded locations that also happened to have ancient furnaces for them to power their experiments.
• Scenery Gorn: Much of the Description Porn centers on the damage to structures that was caused during the Calamity, and how it looks 100 years later.
• Scenery Porn: There are also extensive paragraphs of Description Porn about the natural world and the beautiful terrain, especially the first time Link gets out of the Shrine of Resurrection and looks out over the Great Plateau.
• Schizo Tech: The setting of the story is a post-apocalyptic world that has mostly medieval aesthetic, and resultingly, most of Link's arsenal consists of basic weapons, except for a touchscreen tablet. The monsters of the world include enormous multi-legged robots, four actually five animal-shaped Humongous Mecha. However, this is all Lost Technology that came before the present day until it was banished from the kingdom.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Calamity Ganon, or rather the curse that has corrupted Ganondorf's soul, was sealed away for 10000 years. It then broke free, but was quickly locked away in Hyrule Castle by Zelda for a further 100 years, deactivating the Guardians and Divine Beasts he had corrupted. During this time, Ganon grew stronger, strong enough to eventually reactivate the corrupted Guardians and Divine Beasts and spread its influence further into Hyrule.
• Sealed Evil in a Duel: For 100 years, Zelda locked Ganon in Hyrule Castle by using her power to suppress his, and this battle has been continuing for that entire time nonstop. It's the only thing that kept Calamity Ganon from destroying Hyrule. And now she's starting to lose the fight, so she awakens Link as her backup.
• Sealed Good in a Can: Link was killed in the Great Calamity, and was sealed away in the Shrine of Resurrection to heal back up. Zelda awakens him as she begins to lose her fight with Calamity Ganon so that he can come in to help her. The Frog and Wolf Spirits are also this, as they were created to enhance the powers of Impa and Link, but they needed to be earned.
• Sea of Sand: The Gerudo Desert, unsurprisingly. Because of the nature of the desert, swinging between extreme heat in the day and cold during the night, Link has to be sure that he has the proper equipment to make it across the sand. He also has to contend with the Lizalfos in the way. And the Gerudo who call this town their home have to contend with the enormous Moldugas that swim through the sand as well. The desert itself is largely empty, with only two oases where people live.
• Selective Magnetism: Magnesis allows Link to move metallic objects, no matter how big they are, with ease. Other characters get plates that allow them to use runes as well, including Magnesis.
• Sequel Hook: Calamity Ganon has been defeated, and Ganondorf's soul is finally free from Demise's curse. However, the curse is still out there, and the Yiga Clan is still around, ready to regain strength and strike back. Also, the New Champions are poised to fight for their right to pilot the Divine Beasts.
• Shield Surf: Link uses his shield as a base when he's using a sand seal. So does Riju.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: After destroying the Yiga Clan hideout and massacring the Yiga Clan, a surviving female Footsoldier attempts to kill Link in his home. It doesn't go in her favor, but she tries to get the last laugh on Link by pulling a "Not So Different" Remark on him, saying that with how violent he was against the Yiga, he's no different than they are. Link gives her one hell of a "Reason You Suck" Speech, reminding her that he's never hurt an innocent person, doesn't go around killing and torturing people, and is not worshipping a dark god of destruction.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The Hebra region is icy cold, meaning that even with a fire sword on his back, Link still needs to wear something to combat the frigid cold air.
• Spell Blade: Urbosa was able to channel her electrical power through her Scimitar of the Seven. Link can channel his powers as the Wolf and Urbosa's Fury through the Master Sword.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: A problem some players had with the source game is that Zelda took up too much of the spotlight of the game, with other characters constantly shilling about how great she is. While most of that is retained in this fanfic, the fact that Link is no longer a Heroic Mime means that he gets his own character arc separate from Zelda, particularly one where he reconciles his bloodlust against the Yiga with the hero that people see him as. Also, the New Champions, and even a few other supporting characters, get a good chance to shine in their own right outside of the Divine Beast arcs, specifically the War Arc where the Yiga Clan attempts to strike back against Hyrule and wipe out the remaining settlements. Link and Zelda steal most of the spotlight, but supporting characters all get a chance to steal the spotlight for several pages in memorable moments.
• Starfish Robots: The Guardian Stalkers are enormous mobile tanks that walk on six legs. Some of them fly and others are stationary snipers. Link notes at the beginning that they look like strange pieces of pottery. They pose the greatest threat in the land, as unlike monsters, there's little left in the world that can kill them.
• The Stinger: In a chapter exclusive to the Archive of Our Own version of the story literally titled Stinger, a strange comet comes by. It's the Comet Observatory, and Rosalina is stopping by, apparently impressed by the characters defeating Calamity Ganon.
• Storming the Castle: Chapter 49 consists of Link and Impa charging towards Hyrule Castle as Calamity Ganon begins to break free. Paya arrives with the New Champions and all the races of Hyrule to engage the growing army of monsters in a vicious battle, allowing Link and Impa to directly infiltrate Hyrule Castle and put at an end to Calamity Ganon.
• Strength Equals Worthiness:
  • The Trial of the Wolf puts Link into combat against monsters with no resources or armor. By completing these increasingly difficult battles of ingenuity and strength, Link proves his worth to possess the true power of the Wolf Spirit bound to his soul.
  • Like in Champions' Ballad, Monk Maz Koshia delivers one final test of combat to Link. Except the final reward is not just the Master Cycle Zero, but a full-on horse shaped Divine Beast, Divine Beast Vah Eponia.
• Story Arcs: There are eight individual arcs. Nine if you count the overarching arc of defeating Ganon. These arcs are marked in the PDF with different symbols at the start of each chapter depending on which arc the chapter focuses on.
  • The first fifteen chapters are the Lost Memories. These chapters consist of Link traveling around and discovering his past identity, and it ends with Link regaining the Master Sword. The very last chapter is a Breather Episode with some epilogue-like qualities to the Lost Memories. The PDF marks these chapters with a Sheikah Eye.
  • The next twenty chapters consist of an overarching arc of freeing the Divine Beasts, with each Divine Beast taking five chapters. Four chapters are spent with actually freeing the Divine Beast, and the last one is a chapter where Link is awarded the Champion's weaponry.
    • Chapters 16-20 are Divine Beast Vah Ruta's arc, and are marked with the blue symbol of Nayru. It centers on Link and the Zoras working together to free Ruta, and also centers on Link reconnecting with his daughter Lochlia, his son-in-law Bazz, and his grandchildren.
    • Chapter 21-25 are Divine Beast Vah Naboris's arc, and are marked with the yellow cobra symbol of the Gerudo. This one centers on Link infiltrating Gerudo Town and acquiring the Gerudo's assistance in calming Naboris. He also almost single-handedly, and very violently, wipes out the Yiga Clan in their hideout. Link also inspires Riju to take the first step in changing the Gerudo laws against men, allowing the husbands of Gerudo women to come into town alongside their wives.
    • Chapters 26-30 are Divine Beast Vah Medoh's arc, and are marked with the green symbol of Farore. This one is about Link finding and impressing Teba enough to convince him that Link can help. They also bond over their shared struggles in fatherhood, with Teba vaguely referencing the pain that Rito wives suffer when their husbands are in active combat. It ends with Teba declaring that he will master Revali's Gale, and a violent fight with a Yiga Clan member that traumatizes Paya.
    • Chapters 31-35 are Divine Beast Vah Rudania's arc, and are marked with the red symbol of Din. This one is about Link finding a way up to Death Mountain and getting the help he needs to calm Rudania. As he does so, the Yiga Clan's ultimate plan to lay siege to all of Hyrule is discovered, resulting in a desperate scramble to try and fight back to end the chapter.
  • Chapters 36-41 are the Yiga Clan's War Arc, and are marked with the symbol of the Yiga Clan. It centers on Hyrule's war against the Yiga Clan, fighting back against a massive attack. With the help of Link unlocking full access to the Wolf Spirit's power, Hyrulean forces decimate the Yiga Clan and emerge victorious with far fewer casualties.
  • Chapters 42-45 are Impa's arc, and are marked with the purple bird symbol of Hylia. It centers on her quest to unlock the Frog Spirit's power, making her the fourth chosen warrior, alongside Ganondorf (corrupted by Demise), Zelda, and Link.
  • Chapters 46-48 are marked with the symbol of the Hyrulean Royal Family. They center on Link completing the challenges of the Champions' Ballad. He first completes the Trial of the One-Hit Obliterator, and then travels around Hyrule with Kass to face down a new challenge at each Divine Beast. It ends with Link fighting Monk Maz Koshia, and unlocking the Master Cycle Zero, and the fifth Divine Beast, Divine Beast Vah Eponia.
• Sufficiently Advanced Bamboo Technology: All of Sheikah technology has the aesthetic of rocks and stones. The Shrine of Resurrection's medical chamber consists of a bed of water beneath a huge stalactite. The Guidance Stones are described the same way, with how they "download" information into the Sheikah Slate being like dripping water.
• Summon Magic: The power of the Boar Spirit is to summon monsters, as it was meant to use this power for the good of all. Paya gains the power to summon monsters from all across time and history, from simple Moblins and Bokoblins of the present, to monsters from the ancient past.
• Supernaturally Young Parent: And grandparent. Because the slumber of restoration lasted 100 years, Link's daughter Lochlia has had time to grow up into a mature Zora woman, and has had four children of her own. Naturally, Link would have been dead long before Lochlia reached maturity, but thanks to the Shrine of Resurrection, Link is a grandfather of four who still looks like a 34-year-old man.
• Swamps Are Evil: Collections of Malice are compared to swamps a few times in the story.
• Sword of Plot Advancement: Unlike in the source game, the Master Sword plays this straight. The sword's spirit, Fi, repeatedly sings and calls out to Link, and his decision to retrieve the blade symbolizes Link's full and complete return to being the Hero of Hyrule yet again. The Wolf Spirit is this too, as Link needs its full power in order to destroy the force field protecting the remnants of the Yiga Clan after the massive assault left their forces decimated.
• Team Shot: After Link unlocks Divine Beast Vah Eponia, Kass gives him the picture of all the Champions.
• Tennis Boss: The Guardians, Blights, and Calamity Ganon retain the "reflect the beam" aspect from the game. They all shoot beams, and at multiple points, Link uses his shield to reflect the beam right back at them. This is the only way Link can kill Guardians until he gets his hands on better weapons.
• Theme Naming:
  • The Sheikah retain their fruit-based names, aside from Impa. Even the original characters introduced in this fanfic continue the tradition, including a Yiga girl whose voice Paya recognizes as that of an old friend named Melonie.
  • The Divine Beasts retain their names associated with sages from other time periods. Ruta's name is one letter off from Ruto, Naboris is explicitly stated to be named for Nabooru, Medoh is two letters off from Medli, and Rudania is an anagram of Darunia. Eponia is stated by Monk Maz Koshia to be named for Link's loyal steed Epona.
• Thriving Ghost Town: Realistically averted. From the small horse stables to the larger villages, each town is shown engaging in extensive commerce and have numerous residents, more than enough for each of these settlements to continue to thrive. The end result of places that didn't have enough people to sustain it join Hyrule's Scenery Gorn.
• Thunderbolt Iron: At one point, a Star Fragment falls from the sky. Link keeps it with him for the rest of the story, but gives a piece of it to Paya. She brings it with her to the Hateno Ancient Tech Lab. It's the key to Purah perfecting her technology, including her antiaging rune.
• Time Abyss:
  • According to Paya, the events of Ocarina of Time were 100,000 years ago. And Hylia says that the events of Skyward Sword were 120,000 years ago. The kingdom of Hyrule is around 120,000 years old.
  • The Sheikah Monks that await Link to find them and complete their purposes began their mission right after the very first encounter with Calamity Ganon, meaning these individuals have existed for 10,000 years.
  • Link, Zelda, Ganondorf, and Impa's souls are this. All four of them existed to combat Demise (Ganondorf in the form of Groose), and all four had reincarnated time and time again throughout history. Unfortunately, Ganondorf was corrupted by Demise's curse, leaving only Link, Zelda, and Impa to return throughout history. Impa is the only who didn't consistently reincarnate.
• Time Stands Still: The Stasis rune does this as part of its natural power. It expands to include monsters after Purah strengthens it. The Sheikah Orb's powers to manipulate time imply that it may be able to do this too.
• Title Drop: Two of them.
  • The first one is by Kass during the Trial of the One-Hit Obliterator. It's when he sings of the supposed fifth Divine Beast just as he did in the game.
  • The narrative drops a title right before the last line of the main story. In reference Link realizing how similar Zelda is to the Silent Princess flower, the narrative says they both could only "thrive under the breath of the wild".
    • A lesser case in that the final chapter is titled "The Silent Princess", and the last words in the fanfic are "The Silent Princess".
• Too Awesome to Use: Just like in the game, ancient arrows can instantly obliterate anything less than a Guardian. However, they also destroy the resources their victims carry, but that doesn't concern Link as much in the fanfic as it would the player in the game. Instead, Link sees it as a waste of a powerful weapon that he can use against the Calamity and the Blights. He does use it to kill the single Yiga Blademaster that was blackmailing Dorian as a sign of how much Link hates them.
• Too Dumb to Live: Many Yiga members try to attack Link on their own. Attacking Link at all is a really horrible idea, as he's the greatest swordsman known. Pretty much all fights with Yiga go in his favor, and very swiftly at that. Nonetheless, several Yiga members are idiotic enough to try it. Only Sooga, Kolana, and Astor avert this, as they attack Link together, and have enough skill that they collectively can make him work for victory.
• Town Girls: Urbosa, Mipha, and Zelda, just like in the game.
  • Urbosa is the butch. She's the oldest female member of the Champions, has the deepest voice, and is the most muscular of the three women which comes from her ancestry as a Gerudo. Her long red hair is kept back in a ponytail, and she's the most sensible and no nonsense of the Champions. She's the most motherly to the others in the Champions, acting as a parental figure to Zelda, and gives both Zelda and Link reassuring advice multiple times. Her powers are also the most offensive, focusing on lightning and damage.
  • Mipha is the femme. She's physically older than either Urbosa or Zelda, but her mental age is between the two. She's the epitome of a Proper Lady, being graceful, very well-spoken and soft-spoken and quite demure and contained to herself. She's renowned for her gentleness in interaction, and her kindness with everyone she meets. Mipha is the most nurturing of the Champions, and her power is the most supportive, focusing on healing injuries.
  • Zelda is the neither. She's more outwardly feminine than Urbosa, but nowhere near as ladylike as Mipha. She's more assertive and less gentle than Mipha, but less strong-willed and headstrong than Urbosa. She's more inclined towards scholarly activities, making her the "nerdy" one of them. She's a capable Action Girl after gaining control of her three powers, but isn't as inclined to fight as Urbosa, nor as graceful as Mipha, and her powers balance out offense and support, focusing separately on defense, offense, and evasion.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Like in the game, Mighty Bananas are an obsession of the Yiga Clan, with them implied to be the primary source of sustenance for the Yiga Clan. Their presence in The Trial of the Wolf hint that the Sheikah like them too.
• Tragic Mistake: King Rhoam makes the same mistake that he did in the game. His attempt to recreate the ancient people's tactic of fighting back against Ganon leads to them extracting the Guardians and the Divine Beasts out of the ground to be used again. This only allows Calamity Ganon to overtake the Guardians and the Divine Beast, causing the Great Calamity, and decimating Hyrule. But it's nature as a "mistake" is called into question when it's revealed the Great Calamity was meant to happen.
• The Trees Have Faces: Link is horrified when he realizes that the enormous tree in front of which the Master Sword rests has a humongous face on it. The narration never mentions if the trees in the Lost Woods themselves have faces like they do in the game, though.
• Tron Lines: Inherited from the game, Sheikah technology has lines of color, and they're color-coded to boot. Shrines and technology that is inactive is described as orange, activated technology is described as blue, while corrupted technology is magenta.
• Truce Zone: The story implies that the Sheikah Shrines deliver a kind of mystical protection over the settlements built near them. King Rhoam, in his old man disguise, tells Link that it was thought that the shrines bring good luck. Kass says this belief is accurate, but that the building settlements around shrines was a form of protest against the government's decision to ban Sheikah technology. Link notices White-Maned Lynel in the Hebra snowfield seems entirely uninterested in the nearby Snowfield Stable, even though it's within eyesight. Misa even mentions that it seems to actively leave them alone, despite their infamous bloody reputation. These imply that the shrines protect their settlements from danger. It's really Ganondorf is using what little control he does have over his subordinate monsters to keep them from actively massacring these settlements, because he and the monsters were always destined allies to Hyrule. It's just that Demise's curse corrupted them to become enemies.
• The Unchosen One:
  • As revealed by Fi when Link draws the Master Sword, Groose was this in ancient times, having impressed the Golden Goddesses with his tenacity even though he wasn't a chosen one like Link or Zelda. Groose impressed Din enough for her to choose his soul as the third hero to fight Demise's curse, but unfortunately...
  • Impa is revealed to be this. After the destruction 100 years prior, Hylia decided to consolidate the power of her loyal Sheikah warriors to create a fourth spirit animal for a concept not represented by the Triforce. She created the Frog Spirit of Kindness specifically for Impa to use.
• Use Their Own Weapon Against Them: Link is pragmatic enough to use whatever he has on hand to defeat his foes. He uses Magnesis to hit Kohga with his own metallic balls. During the Yiga War, one character picks up a Windcleaver and uses it to kill several Yiga Clan members. And the Malice Orb once used by Astor is freed from the Malice's influence and becomes Paya's weapon to use against them.
• Vacuum Mouth: Rock Octoroks retain this ability from the game. They suck in air and pebbles around them to create a large rock to spit back out as an attack.
• Vestigial Empire:
  • Like in the game, Hyrule averts this. While there are still remains that stand, and there are towns that remained intact through the disaster, there's absolutely nothing left of Hyrule's government or the military. All that remains of Hyrule from 100 years ago are a few people that were alive during that time, and the Guardians that remain corrupted. Hyrule's not vestigial, it's gone. Paya's Reset Button power with the Sheikah Orb means that Link and Zelda and the rest of Hyrule are well on their way to bringing back Hyrule to its glory, and even beyond as Zelda suggests is possible.
  • The other settlements of Hyrule are this. The Zoras, Gerudo, Rito, and Gorons all still retain their own central settlements in their respective locations throughout Hyrule, but 100 years ago, they were part of the parent kingdom of Hyrule. Thus, all the races once had influence that could spread across Hyrule. Now, the only influence they really have is over their own regions.
• Villains Act, Heroes React: A rare instance of this and Heroes Act, Villains Hinder occurring at the same time. The heroes were the ones who took the initiative, but Calamity Ganon was so good at the "hinder" part that the heroes completely lost their initiative. The entire present day story is the "reaction" to Calamity Ganon's victory 100 years before. The Yiga are also the ones who take the initiative in the War Arc, and the heroes only receive a last-minute warning. Unfortunately, the heroes reaction is powerful and decisive, and results in the almost complete destruction of the Yiga Clan.
• Violence Is Disturbing: While Link does get a catharsis out of killing Yiga Clan members, and no one gives him any slack for it, a few people do take aversion to how violently he does it, and the narrative presents his execution of a Yiga in Hateno Village as just and disturbing at the same time.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: In the Gerudo Desert, Link becomes this. The two armor sets that allow Link to traverse the desert, whether it be the male or female outfits, expose a large amount of his skin. As a result, he spends most of the time he's trying to free Naboris with the majority of his chest exposed to the air. It even gets Riju's attention, because she's never actually seen a man (voe) before.
• Wall Around the World: The narration in Chapter 43 references the barriers that prevented Link from leaving the game's map. It mentions that Hyrule is surrounded by oceans, a desert, and a vast cliffside to the north.
• Wall Crawl: Link can climb up walls pretty easily. Especially he's granted Super-Strength after gathering numerous Spirit Orbs and gifting them to Hylia, because he now has the strength to literally break the rocks with his fingers to grip.
• Warp Whistle: The Sheikah Slate allows Link to teleport to any active waypoint. They're found at the Divine Beasts, the ancient shrines, the Sheikah Towers, and the ancient tech labs in Akkala and Hateno. This feature also allows one to instantly leave Hyrule Castle, and the function brings them to the castle's front entrance. Purah's Sheikah Plate's have this function, too. It allows characters other than Link to warp around Hyrule with ease.
• Water Is Womanly: Played straighter than it was in the game, but still downplayed. The original Zora Champion Mipha is this trope incarnate, being a graceful, ladylike, soft-spoken healer who was girlier than Zelda and Urbosa. However, her brother in the future is equally associated with water, but is much more outgoing and charismatic. However, Mipha and Link's daughter Lochlia is just as graceful in a fight as her mother, and retains the healing power. And in something unique to this fic, both are the embodiment of Good Parents, with their motherhood to their children being a huge part of their characters.
• Weak, but Skilled: Anyone who isn't a Champion but still good in combat is this usually. Most Zoras can't control water, most Rito can't ascend vertically, most Gorons tend to move slowly, most Gerudo can't control lightning, most Hylians have no powers at all, and most Shiekah don't have the Sheikah Orb or the power of the Frog Spirit. But many members of these races are still very well-verse in combat, and are more than capable of holding their own against monsters and Yiga if the time calls for it as shown in the Yiga War Arc.
• Where It All Began: Link's journey begins with him awakening from the Shrine of Resurrection, and wandering out into the world in a very weakened state. He spends time looking over the cliffside to see Hyrule in all its glorious beauty, conquers four Trial Shrines, and then travels to the combat the Blights infecting the Divine Beasts. Link's final actions before taking on Calamity Ganon are returning to the Shrine of Resurrection, once more coming out of it in a weakened state, conquering four Trial Shrines before once more combatting the Blights that infected the Divine Beasts. He then ends his journey where it began when he returns to the Final Trial which has the functionality of a Divine Beasts. He solves the puzzles of the Final Trial, and has one final Divine Beast battle with Maz Koshia, and unlocks his own Divine Beast in the form of Eponia. The very last thing that Link does before the final battle is stand out over the cliffside where he first viewed Hyrule, this time with Kass at his side as he sings the Champions' Ballad.
• White Stallion: Zelda's horse is white, and she's the only one shown riding a white horse.
• Wrecked Weapon: The Master Sword was badly damaged during the Great Calamity after getting it and Link were overwhelmed by the Guardian onslaught.
• Wutai: Like in the game, the Sheikah take on a heavy Japanese influence, especially a ninja influence inspired by Sheik. Kakariko Village is constructed with feudal Japanese designs, and their outfits literally reduce the noise they make when moving. Link's Sheikah outfit is described as having a turban and a facemask, and his hair is kept in a braid with a white cloth like Sheik's appearance in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. The Hypothetical Casting of Impa and Paya are also Japanese actresses.
• Xenafication:
  • Zelda wasn't an Action Girl in the original game, and only became one after unlocking her sealing power. In this fanfic, she has Nayru's Love, Farore's Wind, and Din's Fire, allowing her to take on more combat-centric roles in the flashbacks, and she makes good use of them even before her sealing power is activated.
  • Paya is a relatively meek fragile girl in the original game, the epitome The Ingenue and the Shrinking Violet. In this fanfic, she starts out the same way, and still retains her soft-spoken and shy nature, but she starts learning how to fight for herself courtesy of her grandmother.
  • Impa was a Retired Badass old woman in the original game. This fanfic shows that she's an Old Master, and her age has done little to reduce her combat prowess. The Yiga find this out the hard way. She is then deaged by her sister's rune, allowing her to retain her wisdom of age while having the body she had in Age of Calamity. Finally, she ends up gaining her own powerful spirit animal, the Frog, making her just as powerful as Link, Zelda, and Ganon. She was always badass, but never to this level even counting Age of Calamity.
• Year Inside, Hour Outside: The spiritual dimension in which Sheikah warriors train and learn allows them to experience hours of training time, and even dying during this time, while barely a few minutes pass in the real world.
• You Can't Fight Fate: The King mentions to Link the prophecy of Ganon's return. Knowing that there was nothing he could do to stop the actual awakening, the King took every step to try and prevent the kingdom's fall. He had the Guardians and Divine Beasts excavated, brought the Champions together, and tried to get Zelda to unlock her sealing power, all so that they can at least fight off Ganon just like their ancestors did. However, he didn't have everything he could. The Sheikah Towers weren't even out of the ground, the ancient shrines that would allow Link to gain incredible power and strength were inaccessible, and they didn't even have all the Divine Beasts. Thus, the kingdom failed to stave off Ganon, not helped when Ganon overtook the Divine Beasts and the Guardians and used them to wipe out much of Hyrule. As it turns out, this was all inevitable to begin with. According to Tutsuwa Nima, everything that's happened over the last 10,000 years has been part of a long-running game by the Goddesses, a game meant to end with the annihilation of Demise's ancient curse over Hyrule.
• You Wake Up in a Room: The game provides a classic example of this, and this fanfic retains it with Link waking up in the Shrine of Resurrection with no memory aside from his own name, not even of how he got into this chamber.
• You Killed My Mother: Riju has a personal hatred for Kolana, because Kolana is the one who killed her mother.
• Zerg Rush:
  • 100 years ago, the five pillars that contained Guardians emerged from around Hyrule Castle. He took over the Guardians in the overworld, and in the columns, leading them to flood outwards from Hyrule, decimating everything in their path. There was nothing anyone in the kingdom could do to stop it. Only Zelda's power to seal could stop them en masse, and her locking Calamity Ganon in Hyrule Castle stopped the Guardian army entirely.
  • The finale has two of these clashing. Calamity Ganon's power rises to its apogee as it begins breaking free, indicated by the previously normal moon turning into a Blood Moon. Calamity Ganon starts summoning monsters right out of the ground to try and overwhelm Link and Impa. In turn, Paya uses her newfound powers with the Sheikah Orb to bring together all of the races and peoples of Hyrule to fight the rapidly growing army of monsters.

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Rosalina: This world is safe. It needs not our help or protection. She has done well, as she did 100 years ago.