In another time, another place, another circumstance, a voice carried on golden winds would have directed the adventurer, but no such voice rang out to her, save in dreams. Her connection to the place was different, her understanding her own, and recalling how the slate had been set in the other room she held it up to this pedestal.
A The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild fanfic by TheLoudGuy.
A hundred years ago, Calamity Ganon rose. A hundred years ago, the princess fell, and the hero drove the Calamity back to Hyrule Castle. For a hundred years, he has held it there, fighting, waiting for the princess to return.
Zelda awakens from the Shrine of Resurrection on the Great Plateau with no memories, no weapons, and no voice to guide her. She learns to use the Sheikah slate, travels to Kakariko Village, and Paya is elected to travel with her as ally and bodyguard. Zelda needs to gather her memories and her power until she is ready to face Ganon.
Unfortunately, the hero does not have the sealing power of the goddess, so Ganon is not as tightly bound as he could be. Malice pools in many places, monsters are stronger than they should be, and Ganon can reach out with his fury in rare instances. Zelda must balance discovering her own power with remaining undetected.
And through it all, Link is still fighting.
Can be found on Archive of Our Own and FanFiction.Net.
This fanfic provides examples of:
- Adaptational Badass:
- The Yiga are much more competent and less silly this time around. Kohga managed to receive a blessing from the Calamity, which made him much more dangerous in multiple ways. In addition to the huge increase in power, his mind is altered until he is little more than a copy of Ganon.
- Also applies to the Blights and Ganon himself. Without Zelda restraining it for a hundred years, the Calamity's manifestations are far more dangerous then their canon counterparts. When Zelda reaches the Sanctum where Ganon and Link are battling, Ganon reveals a fully revived humanoid body that might as well be Ganondorf in the flesh, who then reaches out and instantly destroys the Master Sword.
- Back from the Dead:
- Shortly after Zelda obtains Mipha's Grace, the Yiga kill her. This is before Zelda finds out that the spell will activate automatically upon her death. Mipha is more than a little disapproving that she managed to get herself killed so quickly.
- At the end, Zelda and Paya discover that Link has been dead the entire time. However, the final wish on the Triforce includes a wish for him to come back to life.
- Berserk Button: Being a mass of hate, Ganon is angry by default, but he seems genuinely offended that the Gerudo refuse to acknowledge him as one of them.Ganon: Wherefore art thou faithless, thou hateful, to draw steel against thy brother? Thy uncle? Thy king? Thy god?
- Curb-Stomp Battle:
- One of Zelda's memories is of Link fighting three of the Champions at once (Revali abstained) in a training match. Link takes them to pieces. Revali explains that it was closer than it looked, because if they had fought any harder they would have been risking lethal force.
- Urbosa versus the Thunderblight. It only has lightning attacks and is not immune to lightning, while she has lightning attacks and is immune to lightning. It dies painfully.
- Drama-Preserving Handicap: Zelda regains a fraction of her divine power early on, which is enough to annihilate any monster short of the Blights. Unfortunately, any time she uses more than a bare sliver, Ganon immediately finds her and chucks a giant ball of Malice at her.
- Determinator: Link has been fighting—literally fighting, as in swinging his sword—for a hundred years. He has no magic, no immortality, no divine powers, just a sword that is good against evil things. He doesn't even have food. And somehow he is still fighting. In fact, he died three days in. He just didn't let that stop him.Mipha: Hylia is wrong, and your father is wrong, and Ganon is wrong. He will never break. For a hundred years or ten thousand, he will fight for us. For you. He will never fall. He'll just... suffer.
- Eternal English: Played with. Ganon's Gerudo is nearly incomprehensible and incredibly formal to modern ears. Zelda notes that the fact it is understandable at all after thousands of years shows that the Gerudo language is practically static.
- Everyone Can See It: Paya is hopelessly smitten with Zelda. Almost everyone they ally with in their journey to free the Divine Beasts tries to give her some encouragement to act on her feelings.
- No Hero Discount: Subverted; the Sheikah labs give Zelda everything for free not because she is the hero (Link had to pay for stuff in the game) but because she is who they are sworn to serve.
- One-Man Army: Each of the Champions was a terror in combat. It is said repeatedly that the only reason they lost to the Blights a hundred years ago is that they were all caught unarmed, and they apparently still made a good show of it. Every time a Champion fights, everyone just stops and stares, because they make everyone and everything else look like children with sticks.
- Parental Substitute: After Zelda's mother died, she was basically raised by Urbosa, her mother's oldest friend. She certainly did a better job of it than the king. Urbosa was known as the only person who could get away with yelling at the king, and those usually ended with Urbosa accompanying Zelda on long journeys far away from the king. Even before Zelda regains her memories of Urbosa, she is perfectly fluent in Gerudo and feels an instinctive connection with the Gerudo Desert. A scene from Urbosa's point of view has her think of Zelda as "our daughter," implying a more intimate relationship with the Queen than Zelda ever knew about.
- Past-Life Memories: Zelda reconnects with her past lives at various points, such as in the Great Deku Tree's glade. She even identifies most of the previous incarnations of the hero.
- Role Swap AU: Breath of the Wild if Zelda was the one injured and placed in the Shrine of Resurrection while Link fought in the castle.
- Squishy Wizard: Zelda was a royal and a researcher, so her initial physical abilities can be summarized as "nope." It takes her significantly longer to even get off the Great Plateau because she has to sneak around every enemy and doesn't have the endurance to climb sheer cliffs like Link. When she gets enough Spirit Orbs, she immediately starts trading them for Stamina Vessels rather than Heart Containers just to give herself any stamina whatsoever.
- The Unchosen One: While the people of Hyrule never knew the exact qualifications required to draw the Master Sword, they always assumed destiny played a major role. Link, on the other hand, took the phrase "anyone can be the hero" (which was supposed to mean "we don't know who it is, so you should all practice") to mean that anyone could take up the Master Sword. He took it up because if he didn't, someone else would have to.
- What If?: There are a number of major differences due to the switch.
- Zelda receives a Sheikah bodyguard, since she is of course the person they are sworn to protect.
- Link can't seal the Calamity like Zelda can, only keep it occupied. Malice pools in far more locations, and the Yiga are infected with it.
- Ganon senses Zelda the second she steps onto a Divine Beast, sending the Blights against her instantly instead of letting her work through the puzzles.
- Willing Channeler: Zelda can channel the spirits of the Champions to fight the Blights. Conveniently, their old weapons happen to be nearby...
- Will They or Won't They?: Paya has obvious romantic feelings for Zelda (a fact which Zelda becomes fully aware of very early in their quest together) and regularly writes at length about them in her diary as they travel, though never goes to act on any of them. When Riju gets a chance to read the diary herself, these musings completely drive her (and even Buliara) to distraction.
- Wrecked Weapon:
- Subverted; Zelda's weapons seem significantly more durable than Link's. A few offhand lines imply that the reason Link had this problem in the game was that he was so powerful no weapon could survive him using it for long.
- Ganon shatters the Master Sword right as Zelda arrives for the final battle. But the sword has always been powered by the spirit of the hero, so it doesn't take long for the ghost of the hero to go back on the offensive with the ghost of the sword.
