"Ah! After ten thousand years I'm free! It's time to conquer Earth!"
- V.R. Troopers
"I am Gundam."
- Setsuna F. Seiei
Zelda sat in her ruined study with her face in her hands. The sounds of shuffling Stalfos and ReDeads echoed outside her bolted door every few minutes, constantly reminding her of the world she lived in.
One hundred years. One hundred years and not an inch closer to protecting Hyrule from utter despair. The kingdom was a wasteland. Everyone important to her was dead. And Link? He had been in the Chamber of Resurrection for far too long and still not shown up to stanch the flood of tears. Something must have gone wrong with the procedure in all of those intervening decades. She only prayed his soul was able to find some minuscule peace when he was reunited with Mipha and the others.
Her protective aura around the castle was about to fail. She had held back the forces of Ganon by herself for far too long. She didn't know if it was going to happen within the next month, the next week, or the next hour, but she could feel the end coming. And once the barrier was down, Calamity Ganon would be free to spread across the entire realm of Hyrule.
The princess was at her wit's end.
She weakly hobbled out of her chair and stopped in front of the full-length mirror by her bookshelf to take a long look at herself. She hadn't aged a day since the Calamity began, but the 100 years had taken its toll in other ways. The way she carried herself was shriveled and desperate. Her eyes were bloodshot from a lifetime of endless crying. She was still wearing the same muddied and bloodied dress she had worn when Link tried to help her escape the castle.
The glass began to change. Zelda's reflection was smiling, but she was not.
"I sense you're ready to discuss some terms of surrender, princess."
The voice the reflection spoke in was not the gentle chime of a Hylian princess, but the deep rumble of a warlord. No. The deep rumble of an ancient demon.
Zelda knew she was conversing directly with Calamity Ganon.
"End your pathetic fight now and I just may spare you some mercy. Annihilation isn't necessary if we come to a compromise and I still reap most of the rewards. I'll let the people of this realm live in a fair amount of peace as long as it's in my monumental name."
"Why are you saying this to me? You've practically won already!" Zelda shrieked. "Don't torture me by filling me with false hope! Why aren't you just taunting me with destruction?"
The reflection crossed her arms with great authority.
"My dear sweet princess, if there's anything I've learned in these endless eons, it's that a good king should always grant his subjects a chance at mercy. Especially when he's an inch away from winning the throne."
Now this was when Zelda's reflection sprung the real trap. The mirror image looked into the princess's darkened eyes and gently licked her lips.
"I can even give you back your Champion allies I so unfairly took away."
Blinded by grief, having nothing left to hold onto, the princess let out a tiny hopeful gasp.
"Of course, certain compromises will have to be laid in place. The Champions will indeed live again, but as beings of my nature."
Zelda got to her senses and shook her head.
"And let you turn them into your toys? I'd never curse them with that!"
The reflection's expression became sly and knowing.
"Your hand has already brought them to ruin, princess. The Beasts have been left dormant for one hundred years since you cast your net around me. The Blights I laid on your Champions only needed a few days to shred their souls from their husks and turn them to pure Malice, but your actions have given them decades. The Blights have not completely snuffed them out, however. I wanted to hear your answer first. You can still save them… under my terms."
Zelda collapsed to her knees in shock. She buried her face her hands as her emotions came springing forth again. She felt the same as when she had broken into sobs in Link's arms blaming herself for everything that had happened, only now the pain was a thousand times worse, and her knight was no longer here to support her.
"You can either watch the flames of your friends' spirits dwindle to nothing and become erased completely, or help me grant them a beauteous rebirth."
The Zelda in the mirror chuckled. She stood triumphant while the real Zelda groveled in despair.
"You and I are not so different, princess. You seek to cleanse your friends of their diseases. I seek to cleanse them of their weakness."
The reflection waited as Zelda wept. Finally the princess gulped away her next wave of tears. Her face was hidden behind her disheveled hair. She couldn't even bring herself to raise her eyes.
"And if I keep fighting you until my power wears down… you'll strangle their spirits into nothingness and obliterate everything here indiscriminately?"
"Am I not making a merciful offer, princess?" the reflection taunted. "It's more than you would offer me if the tables were turned. It's better than simply sealing you away and forcing you to watch as I lay waste to every living being in your realm, is it not?"
Zelda stared blankly at the study floor. Frightened and desperate, she finally forced herself to look up at the mirror.
"What must I do to appease your cruelty?"
The dark Zelda grinned softly.
"Come, princess. We must get you suited for the occasion."
The surface of the mirror rippled like water. A hideous shape that looked like a boar's hoof crossed with a man's hand reached out from beyond the glass with strange tenderness. Zelda startled back in horror when she first saw it.
Hanging her head in submission, praying that what she was about to do would bring some form of bittersweet ending to the world's suffering, Zelda held back her grief. She placed her frail, shivering fingers in the palm of the massive hand and rose to her feet. Regretfully, the princess walked through the mirror.
A lithe dark figure walked out of the castle gates by her lonesome. Her long golden hair was twisted behind her pointed ears and brushed down her shoulders. She was wearing a strapless black gown cinched under her breast line that gave her a look of mysterious elegance while providing ample freedom for her figure. Flickering black candle flames silently wafted behind her trailing skirt. One hip gently swayed in front of the other as she stepped through the ruined and forlorn street.
The foreboding maiden stopped in the archway of the old town entrance. She placed her palm over her heart and sighed with small deliciousness.
The entire city rumbled. Everything—the castle, the city, the fortifications—collapsed into rubble in only seconds. In its place rose up a single enormous building that resembled a great boar hunched on all fours. The structure was made of metal cast from solid black Malice and covered in blood red rust. He was a castle, a temple, and a colossal weapon platform all rolled into one. Divine Beast Vah Ganodol, with the vanquished Princess Zelda standing on his snout as his eternal Champion.
In those 10,000 years of forced exile, Calamity Ganon hadn't only figured out how to wrangle control over the Divine Beasts of this land. He realized their form was where true power lied.
Zelda moved her hand away from her heart and reached into the foul air. An oozing cloud of Malice hovered over her fingers and broke into four fragments. They flew through the sky like shooting stars toward the four corners of Hyrule.
It was time for the children to wake up from their long nap.
In the tainted inner sanctum of Vah Medoh, a blob of pus and Malice shaped like an egg cracked open. Windblight Revali shook the slime off of his black feathers with a chilling gust of air. With devious and relentless arrogance, he walked toward the Beast's control pedestal.
Inside Vah Naboris, a pillar of tar-covered sand dissolved into fine black specks and revealed the lines of the gorgeous obsidian sculpture that had been buried underneath. Thunderblight Urbosa was naked in her first appearance since losing her original mortal husk and, unlike the tribes of the other three Champions, she had no natural hide to protect her from the elements or indecency. With an electric snap of her fingers, she made the streams of Malice that have been patiently swirling around her for a hundred years weave over her like fine dark silk and form a brief but serviceable harem dress.
Inside Vah Rudania, a large bubbling black rock reached critical mass and exploded into pebbles. The lava washed off to reveal the glory of the hulking and smoldering Fireblight Daruk. His veins bulged like cracks of magma through his black skin while his eyes glowed in beady red. He was a rugged volcano god with the power to flatten mountains if the forces of Calamity willed it.
Inside Vah Ruta, a heap of Malice shaped like a giant clam opened up and spewed a lake of oil. Waterblight Mipha stretched her black shark fins and gracefully stepped over the skeleton of her ages-old former self still lying in the filthy shallows of the sanctum. After being trapped as a spirit for ten decades, it felt so nice to be back in a body of warm, moist Malice-flesh with a beating black heart. She had Ganon to thank for curing her of her foolish beliefs the Calamity could ever be opposed, and Zelda to thank for breathing precious life back into her.
Each Champion took to their long-abandoned post and rescued their Divine Beast from its dormant state. Circuits crackled and ancient stones creaked as the machines fully came online. The Beasts made their way across the lands toward Central Hyrule, flying through polluted air and stomping over the shells of decrepit half-functioning Guardians. Within minutes they formed a protective square around Vah Ganodol and the Princess Zelda. The Champions went straight back to the tragic day they had sortied together in their Beasts on the eve of Calamity, only now they were allied with more cunning force that wouldn't let them be so easily defeated.
The five Champions set their systems to obsessively scan every inch of the realm of Hyrule. Together they lied in wait, ready for the first sign of resistance.
Author's note: I wonder what Sakimichan would think about this.