What If… Zelda Characters Convinced Me To Accidentally Erase The Adult Timeline?

My “What If…?” comes from a mix of places and has already been (or will be) explored in part this week. What if the Adult Timeline was drastically altered? I thought about it and wanted to make it unique in a way only I could provide. As I thought about it though, I realized I already had a perfect template for this. My Zelda novel and ongoing fan fiction piece, The Era Without A Hero!

I was sitting at my desk, working on The Era Without A Hero and decided to take a break before jumping on this idea. I reread the last sentence I had written before getting up though —

“I’m getting to leave the castle?” Zelda asked with confusion.

No, no, she’s not confused, she’s excited! I pushed back and huffed. Maybe some tea would be good. I stood up and began for the stairs that would lead me up into the kitchen. As I did though, a strange sensation like floating in water, and then being slowly pulled out came over me Then everything went dark and I collapsed.

“What happened?” I asked a moment later, feeling a stone surface that could not have been in my basement.

“Zelda, we can’t just leave him here.”

“I know, I know. Hey you, writer guy.”

A soft had slapped my face twice and I stirred.

“Wha-who-whe?”

“There, see? He’s alive. Now send him back!”

I opened my eyes and looked up at a man and a woman. The man wore a forest green tunic and tan trousers. His yellow hair was parted and swept back to one side and a pair of pointed ears stuck out on the side. The woman wore a flowing pink dress, with golden hair that hung down over her shoulders and to her waist.

“I can’t just send him back. It doesn’t work like that,” the woman walked over to a table and picked up a thick green book. “It says here, after he’s summoned, we have to get him to spill the ending about the Era Without A Hero before sending him back. It’s all here.”

I blinked slowly and was about to open my mouth when the man began talking back.

“I don’t care what the book says, I’m not going to be responsible for ruining the ending of his story for the dozens of readers who actually keep up with it.”

“Osmond,” she sighed and slumped her shoulders.

“Wait, your name’s Osmond?” I finally was able to mutter.

He rolled his eyes and looked down at me, “you should know. You wrote me.”

“I… wrote you…”

He nodded.

“Okay, I must have fallen and hit my head and now I’m dreaming,” I closed my eyes and pinched my cheeks. “Yup. I was working on TEWAH and now I’m asleep.”

I waited a moment, then opened my eyes again. I was still there.

“You’re David, right?” the woman asked.

“Uh-huh,” I moaned weakly.

“Okay. I’ll put it simply, we need you to tell us how to stop Adok. He’s-“

The hand of the man flew to her mouth and his eyes scanned the room in a panicked state.

“Zel, you can’t say it. He knows what’s going on, but we don’t know who could be listening. Be more vague.”

She rolled her eyes, “okay okay, fine. You’ve written the story from start to finish once before, right? And you’re revising it off that, just keeping the general story beats the same, yes?”

I nodded, sitting down on a nearby chair.

“Well how do we stop him?”

I let out a long sigh before opening my mouth. “You don’t.”

They looked at each other with confusion.

“Look, if I told you what was going to happen, it could change the timeline… again. What I have you do, have you say, have you endure, has no effect on the future of your timeline besides some key items ending up with certain people. If I were to tell you more, it could screw things up and suddenly we have 4 timelines instead of three.”

“What are you talking about?” Osmond asked.

I pinched the bridge of my nose and swept the hair out of my face, “I can’t tell you anything more.”

“But we can stop him?” asked Zelda.

“What year is it?” I replied.

“It’s 100 P.E.H.O.T., why?”

P.E.H.O.T… Slang for Post Era of the Hero of Time? I don’t remember making that up…

“Yeah, you haven’t uncovered the whole truth yet… You’ve still got a few months. Umm… Okay, have you noticed anybody doing some strange things? Going out late at night?”

They both shook their head.

“Good, then I’ve nothing more I can tell you.”

The woman scowled at me, “Os, get the poker from the fire. We’ll get answers.”

“Right.”

“Wow!” I jumped to my feet and stepped behind the chair. “Look, it’s like Back to the Future! If I do this, it’ll change stuff and I could never end up creating you two!”

Osmond approached quickly and stabbed the hot poker towards me. I was quicker though, and leapt to one side, shoving the chair into him. As he stumbled backwards, Zelda rolled her eyes.

“Just tell us how to stop Adok,” she sighed.

I couldn’t tell them. One, I wasn’t convinced I wasn’t dreaming. However, it dawned on me then that if I were dreaming, they would already know the answers to the question. They would know that…

“What is it?” Zelda shifted and narrowed her eyes at me.

“I’m not dreaming… Am I?”

They both shook their heads.

“Okay,” I let out a sigh, “so, you’re really Osmond, right?”

He nodded.

“Which means you’re really Zelda… Where’s Fado?”

They glanced at each other before Osmond answered, “at the Temple of Time. We just got back from Kokiri Forest.”

I pressed my fingers to my chin, “interesting… Your reality has already changed from what I wrote.”

“How so?” Zelda asked me.

“What did you find in the forest? And, I’ll be more specific, what did you bring back?”

“A key. A key with an emerald embedded in the base of it,” said Osmond.

“Give it to the sages, make sure they keep hold if it. Do you understand? In what I originally wrote, that’s what you did and that must stay the same.”

“Is that it?”

I shook my head, “your next mission. You’ll be headed to Death Mountain. You’ll find another key there. When you’ve found three keys, something is going to drastically change everything.”

“How so? We need answers!” Osmond stepped forward, raising the hot poker again.

“If I were to tell you what needed to happen, it wouldn’t… Okay?”

He lowered the weapon.

They’re going for it…

“Look, I’ve written this whole story. You two are integral parts of it, as are all the Sages and soldiers you’ve met and will meet. All you need to do to put yourselves in a position to win, is give the keys to the Sages.”

“He’s lying,” Zelda’s eyes narrowed.

“I’m not! I wrote it! In my head, I literally have seen fourteen million six hundred and five possible outcomes and there’s only one solution in which you all come out on the winning side.”

“That’s… That’s… That’s not good odds,” Osmond sighed and slumped his shoulders. “Why would you make it so difficult for us?”

“Dramatic for the readers?”

They both nodded in understanding. Zelda then turned to the heavy green book and skimmed the page. Her eyes glanced back up to me.

“That’s it… right? We give the keys to the Sages and everything works out?”

I nodded.

She read off some spell and I felt myself getting faint. Then everything went dark. I woke up, minutes later, on the stairs in my own basement.

Without hesitation, I jumped to my feet and opened The Era Without A Hero file on my computer. With a few edits, any mention of Zelda having a thick green book in her study in Hyrule Castle were deleted.

I wiped my brow and sat back.

Thank God they never saw Infinity War… Then, I snapped my fingers, feeling confident that I’d done all I needed. It was strange that I could even have been sucked into something as non-canon as my own story, then again it was all in my head.

I leaned back and turned to the shelves where all my iconic Zelda memorabilia sat and smiled. I looked at the image of Link and his bow from Breath of the Wild. I looked at my collection of Zelda Manga.

That’s when I saw it.

On the spot where each of the games were sitting, I noticed a gap. For the record, I never owned copies of Phantom Hourglass or Spirit Tracks, so my section of games in the Adult Timeline would have been missing to begin with. However, The Wind Waker was the one missing…

I hopped up and checked around my GameCube for the box, thinking I may have left it over near my projector from when I played last… It wasn’t there. I checked the shelf next to Hyrule Historia, it wasn’t there…

What’s going on?

I reached up and pulled the thick green book off the shelf, thinking about my inspiration for The Era Without A Hero…

It… couldn’t have happened… It was just a dream… right?

The book hit the ground as I opened it and read…

“Following the event’s of Ocarina of Time, the games timeline became split. The story of the Hero of Time continued in Majora’s Mask, but the world without him had an interesting future as well. A mysterious mage appeared in Hyrule and warned Princess Zelda and her Chosen Knight about a plot that would ultimately lead to the release of Ganondorf and flood Hyrule. The Princess and her Chosen Knight were able to thwart the plan though in a game called, The Legend of Zelda: The Chosen Knight.”

I pulled my phone from my pocket and searched, ‘The Wind Waker’ to only get rumor pages. Articles taking about a Zelda game that never came to fruition. Talks about an open ocean for the player to explore, but that the creators deemed it too daunting for the systems of the time.

I rushed upstairs to my bedroom, pushing past my confused wife in the process. Opening a drawer in my dresser, I expected to see my Hero of the Winds cosplay hoodie, but instead found only a lime green sweatshirt.

“What’s wrong?”

“The Wind Waker… The Adult Timeline… Do you know what I’m talking about?”

My wife raised an eyebrow, “are you talking about that Zelda story you’ve been writing?”

My eyes widened.

“The one where Hyrule flooded because nobody could stop Ganondorf?”

I nodded.

“What about it?”

She, Princess Zelda, had seen through my deception… It had been no dream, and I told them exactly what I had written, believing it wouldn’t change anything… But what I told them, was exactly what I had written… And she knew what that would lead to…

So here we are in a world without the Adult Timeline as I know it… If you’re reading this and the names in this tale sound familiar, I’m sorry. It seems I’ve brought you into this bizarre reality where the cartoon is considered a classic, the CD-i games are canon, and the Four Swords game looks like Skyrim…

 

David Wayne Nystrom is a Staff Writer for Zelda Dungeon. He has an ongoing fan fiction story that this was based off of that you can start reading it here. If you want more information on the Era Without A Hero, head to erawithoutahero.wordpress.com to read all about it. His top three Zelda games are Ocarina of Time, the Wind Waker, and Link’s Awakening. You can follow him on Twitter. Every Era Has Heroes…