A while ago, I came across a Legend of Zelda idea where a Link in the past was put into some kind of stasis after fighting Ganondorf and millennia later "thawing" out because a many distant descendant of that Zelda comes across him. It's been a long time since I read that idea and it sat around for some time dinging around. Then, recently, a shower thought entered my mind: what if I did the reverse? What if Zelda, like the one in Breath of the Wild, sealed away Ganondorf but to do so had to put herself into a deep stasis under the watchful eye of the Great Deku Tree and the Sheika and life went on for everyone else until a pseudo-present day? That was the idea that I wanted to jump off of and create a pilot from that.

Summary: The land of Hyrule won against the forces of Ganondorf at a high cost: Princess Zelda was lost to hold him at bay. Millennia have passed, life has gone on, and technology has advanced to a point where magic and technology are borderline synonymous with each other. And the life of Link, a young man named after the Hero of Time, changes after a dare to enter the ancient Lost Woods leads him to discover that the final battle between the Hero of Time, Ganondorf, and Zelda didn't quite end up like the history books said.

Rating: T

Disclaimer: I own nothing except my copy of MS Word and my desktop. The Legend of Zelda belongs to Nintendo. I only own this iteration of this idea. See the foreword for the full disclaimer.

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The story of Hyrule is the story of her people. Every child of the Hylian Union was taught when entering primary schooling the origin of their great country, assuming that you consider legend as history. Allegedly, the three Golden Goddesses came down and created the world and its inhabitants millennia ago. From the points at which they left, three fragments of their power made physical were left in three golden triangles which came together and became to be known as the Triforce. The land lived in peace until the Great Demon Demise arose from the depths of the earth and started to slaughter all in his way to get the Triforce. But Hylia rose the people of the surface to live in a protected sky island called Skyloft. Later they would return to the surface where the Kingdom of Hyrule would be established with the newly minted Queen Zelda and her Consort-King Link. The first of many of those two names.

Many millennia passed and the Kingdom of Hyrule ruled the surface with the royal family passed on to their daughter who always retained the name 'Zelda' regardless of the current Queen's name was also Zelda. For many, it was quite confusing and while two lived at the same time they were always referred to as either the 'Queen' or the 'Crown Princess'. Over time evils would rise and fall, but one event was a dark day in Hyrule's history for millennia to come. The sources are muddled, but the legend is that the Princess Zelda of the time attempted to stop the entity called Ganondorf with the help of a chosen hero. However, when her chosen hero fell in battle, she stepped in to save his life. She sealed the mutated demon who called itself Ganon in the Sacred Realm using her own body and powers, and with this, she vanished never to be seen again.

Historians debated whether it was actually as the legends spoke of, or if she had died during a great catastrophe that plagued the land at the time and the story was created as an allegory for the actual events. But life would go on and community leaders would come together to rebuild the kingdom into a union of kingdoms between the Zora, Goron, and Garudo. For the next several hundred years, the newly formed union would be rebuilt and technology would advance from the newfound peace. This lasting peace would lead to a few wars between other countries, but Hyrule would remain strong. It had been almost a thousand years since then and the world had continued to change, leading to the modern era. Large cities dotted the country of Hyrule. Some examples being Kakariko, Dominion, Oasis, and the capital city Hylia.

[The Secret Revealed, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 OST]

Lincoln Ordonson, commonly called 'Link' by his friends, wandered in the oldest forest in all of Hyrule: the Faron Woods. These woods have gone by many different names such as the 'cursed woods', the 'Kokiri forest', and the 'lost woods' to name a few. This forest had been around since time immemorial. The reason why Link was in this forest? His senior year class was camping as part of a senior year trip near some of the safer areas of the forest. However, there were some in his class that didn't like him.

"Goddess damned Groose," Link muttered as he pushed through the brush. "Sure, 'come into the forest with us' they said, 'there's something cool' they said. Bull." He was clearly annoyed. He pushed a bush out of the way and fell through. "Today just keeps getting better and better." He stood up to see a large clearing where a very large tree stood tall above all other trees. Off to the side was a cave. "Weird," he commented. "I don't remember a large tree being in this forest." Looking at it he gave a slight chuckle. "Would you look at that, it looks like it has a face." No matter how much he looked away, his gaze drifted towards the cave in the corner of his eye.

He walked to the cave's entrance and pulled his phone out of his jacket pocket, turning on the light. He looked once more at the cave and swallowed before stepping forward. As he did, he couldn't shake the feeling that something was watching him. He walked down the cave carefully, noting that the cave floor was wet and when smooth stone was, well… He slipped and fell and started to slide down the cave. He went down an unknown distance until he tumbled over. "That was unpleasant," he commented as he started to get up and check himself over. He felt sore in some places, "That's probably going to bruise," he observed aloud. He picked up his phone, despite being in a case the screen had clearly cracked. "Mom's not going to be too happy about that," he grimaced.

He shined the light around once more as he tried to get his bearings. Behind him there was a steep slope that he came careening down on, that would clearly be his way out. However, he felt something wanted him down here. He turned around and was face to face with a woman's sleeping face. Shocked, he fell backward, his phone falling to the ground in front of her. Calming himself down from what horror aficionados would consider a 'jump-scare', he got a better look at the woman; something was clearly off about her. This was highlighted by the way she was in this cave, floating above the floor in what looked like her being encased in some kind of ruby-like gemstone.

"Oh goddess, I better not have stumbled on some sort of burial ground," he prayed, clearly creeped out by anything supernatural. And dead. And ghostly. However, this young woman clearly looked different. She looked almost alive, frozen in time. Sure, there had been people preserved before in a vacuum, but even then, they had to be prepared ahead of time; she didn't look like one of those corpses. There was something about her that was… familiar to him like he had seen her somewhere before. "What is it about you that…" he trailed as he put his right hand on the gem-like surface. As he did, there was a flash on both his hand and the gloved right hand of the young woman. It was brief, but enough to mess with his vision. He started to rub at his eyes and looked at his hand. There was what looked like a thin outline of the old, ancient Royal Seal of the Kingdom of Hyrule. It was there for a moment, but then it was gone; like a hallucination. He looked at the young woman's gem tomb and heard as it started to crack and then shattered like glass. However, there weren't any shards of glass or gem or anything. They just phased away like they were there at all.

She slowly floated to the ground until her slipper-like footwear touched the smooth stone. She stood there for a moment but then started to collapse. Link lurched forward and grabbed her before her head could hit the ground. "Well, this is awkward," he commented. He started to mull over his options, obviously being down in this cave would be suboptimal. He wrapped his arm around her waist and lifted her as he stood up, then started to slowly drag her out of the cave.

As he dragged her out of the cave, a booming voice came from the large tree. "So… it is finally time," it said.

"What?" Link asked, clearly confused.

"I am the Great Deku Tree," it announced. Link saw the bark of the tree moving. "Come and set the Last Royal down here, we have much to discuss."

"I'm not tripping on some kind of fungus from that cave, am I?"

"You are not."

To be continued…?

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That's all I have for this pilot chapter. As you can see, there's quite a bit of potential in this one. The bit of music that I shared is from the Battlefield: Bad Company 2 soundtrack and it works well for the first opening minute or so. Mysterious sounding and it feels like it fits with an Indiana Jones soundtrack. But that being said, I do feel like I sort of ripped through this idea quite quickly, so I don't know if I'll return to it or not. I do have a few other ideas in the works, hopefully, I'll have them up sooner rather than later.

In other news, I finally took my FN to the range and all the reviews were right. Best experience right out of the box. Did great for the first 50 rounds out of it, most of them were all center-mass; I plan on going back this next weekend with a buddy who has never shot pistols before, so that should be fun. Well, anyway. Still working on my manga backlog as well as my anime backlog which may serve more interesting inspiration sources for pilots. Let me know what you think in the usual places. Until next time in whatever I decide to do next.