Welcome to the Den! Here you will find a complete masterlist of all my AUs, fics, and select tags. I may add more in time, so keep an eye open for updates!

This was put together to celebrate the 10k followers milestone. It is rather long, so check for the info under the cut.

ATLA | ZK

As if the falling sky is nothing but an ancient dream, and

THIRD TO LAST CHAPTER!! GO READ NOW NOW NOW

Essentially, in this AU, all the batfamily members are marked from birth as they each have a birthmark in the shape of a bat between their shoulder blades.

This is due to a curse on Gotham which states that a select few people are chosen to protect Gotham with a bat birthmark.

If they try to shirk their duty by leaving Gotham or otherwise not being a vigilante, they will face immense bad luck and circumstances will force them to become a vigilante.

It would help explain why so many batkids were already vigilantes when Bruce found them.

It's a story of how the batfamily formed thanks to being cursed.

They do have some benefits from being cursed, namely higher endurance, intelligence, and pain tolerance, along with an inability to stay dead.

SHUT UUUUPPPPPPPP

The Marked AU:

Botw 2 takes place seven years after botw ends

Link is 118+ by the time botw ends (atleast 118 and 6 months)

Link pulled the sword soon after he turned 13 and died at 18

Zelda was terrible to him (throwing things at him, constant verbal abuse, dehumanization, belittling loss of a family member (his dad who died when he and link were trying to protect the princess from a monster hoard), lied to the gerudo so they would immobilize him (break his legs) so that he couldn’t even try to get into gerudo town.

Things only got better with Zelda within 6 months of the calamity

The memories in botw take place over a 1 year period

Link never saw his sister or mother again after he pulled the sword

Links hair was white (think fierce diety) after the shrine of resurrection for a decent period of time

While he would occasionally have aid from the spirits of the hero of twilight and time (dusk and shade) it was inconsistent at best and for the most part he wandered alone

When he wasn’t near death their aid wasn’t something he could rely upon

They both taught him techniques (shade taught him magic (dins fire farores wind nayrus love) and dusk taught him / refined his swordsmanship

Due to this more in depth understanding of magic during the champions ballad he is able to make the champion abilities his own (he is able to conjure weakened versions without calling on the champions)

So even after their spirits leave he can still conjure their magic, even doing so in different ways to what they allowed in game

Miphas grace for a general healing factor, Revalis gale to keep an arrow flying straight longer or maintain altitude long er with the paraglider, Daruks protection closer to his body and using the shards as weapons, and Urbosas fury can be used to power things requiring electricity, for electric resistance, and for electrifying his metal weapons

He also does the same (expanding the capabilities of) the magic taught by the hero of time

This makes farores wind a more general speed boost and it kinda flows with the flurry rush

This makes dins fire more capable of just shooting out general fire balls and applying a layer of heat around his body to protect from the cold

This makes nayrus love function closer to the magic armor from wind waker and twilight princess where it adds a defensive boost but he isn’t invincible and he usually only uses it in tandem with a modified daruks protection for very brief periods to tank hits, if he tried using this defensive combo for a whole battle he would exhaust himself

Mind you he doesn’t just immediately make all of these Magic’s work for him, it takes years to develop some of these skills and he had many teachers, he is no prodigy

The gap between botw and its sequel allow for link to get roped into some of the multi link journeys (linked universe and bonus links)

The way the time flows in the gap between games can be read through his hair color, pre calamity is the same hair color as the game shows, at the end of botw it’s still almost pure white but the roots start having some blond strands

The reason his hair was white is because of the shrine of resurrection and it’s side effects (sharper teeth, glowing eyes, blue glowing blood, better vision and hearing, general increased potency for having magic applied to the user (links ability to use the champions abilities more than in game)

His hair was staying mostly white as a result of the malice in the atmosphere

when he joins the chain (linked universe) his hair is blond on the top but his sideburns and the ends of his hair are still white for a couple inches and his hair color is more of a pale blond that is still very light less vibrant than his hair in LU. When LU raps up its pretty much just the ends of his hair that are still white but his hair color is still considerably lighter than it was in game and a bit lighter than his hair in the LU comics

LU is also where he starts building on his magic with the help of mainly hyrule and time, but he’s still pretty inexperienced with magic and really only got the champion abilities back to how they perform in game and learned hyrules trick for heating yourself up in the cold

During LU he doesn’t really act like the typical ‘wild’ and is instead mostly silent and distrustful for a while as a result of time and twilight not being shade and dusk (both shade and dusk lacked the facial marks they have in LU and dusk was a twili)

He gets along with time after a while and gets along with wind and hyrule from the start but while accommodating he is emotionally distant from the others

Bonus links takes place a couple months later and links hair is pretty much the color it was in the LU comics with the white gone (Zelda keeps giving him haircuts) but with some strands of white still interspersed throughout

Bonus links he’s pretty much constantly confused in the first weeks but learns to accept it the same way he accepted that whole time and twilight were the hero’s they claimed to be they weren’t his realities version of them

He learns a lot from mage after some prodding but generally is even more emotionally distant with this group than the chain with exemption of the hero’s that don’t act like the ones in the chain (mask, mage, wake) and the ones who weren’t really in the chain (mini, tracks, mirror) he’s pretty indifferent on wolf and loft basing both of them on their LU counterparts and not really interested in looking deeper to see them as their own people so he just ends up seeing depressed/midlife crisis twilight and sky if he was more of a realist. He’s pretty distant but not rude to the both of them. The only one he really clashed with is the captain because despite the fact he wears the hat now he acts almost identically in links eyes to warriors and it doesn’t help that the captain won’t leave link be.

After this group he’s mostly gotten his magic to the proficiency listed earlier but with pretty bad magic stamina as while he naturally regains magic as a side effect from the shrine of resurrection he doesn’t know to make or have a way to obtain magic potions so he resorts to using stamina potions which while they do the job he has to use magic just to focus their effects in the right place making them generally a more of a hassle than it’s worth.

For both LU and bonus links I’m going to leave it open ended on whether or not he stayed to the end of their journeys or if he got fed up and forced his way out of the adventure I’m leaning towards him going to the end with one and leaving the other because of Zelda being pregnant.

By the time botw 2 happens link and Zelda have 2 darling daughters with a 2 year age gap the older being Astra and the younger being Sunny (“she has a smile like the sun” reference)

Jumping back to some details I want to elaborate on about links time during botw he would introduce himself as link but was only really indifferent to the name and preferred how dusk and shade called him thistle (because he’s mighty) the one time zelda tried calling him this however he lashed out at her. He had a formal goodbye with the two of them where dusk left him the twilight crystal but so he could turn into a wolf in a pinch and shade left him the fierce diety mask.

The fierce diety in this au is like 2 (but really 3) separate characters where the one(s) that marked time and mask aren’t the same as the one shade was acquainted with (this also feeds into some tension with time and mask) the key difference is that shade didn’t see the fierce diety as a get out of jail free card or a something he would reluctantly pull out only when necessary like mask and time. Shade was still traumatized by termina but in a way where he was willing to find a friend in everyone even the soul trapped inside of a mask for millennia and along with this when shade died he incidentally broke the fierce diety’s mask effectively freeing him. So the fierce diety botw link carries is a lot more chill and link knows that he needs to respect the diety to use the mask properly. The issue with time and mask is they are effectively the fierce diety’s warden and have dehumanized him, he has been trapped for millennia and instead of being sympathetic you antagonize him and his only temporary release is when you put the mask on of course he’s fucking marked you, you tried to relegate him to just being a fucking item instead of a living thing.

Back to links character development between the games, he’s gotten a lot better at understanding sheikah tech due to spending most of his time outside of adventuring with Zelda and by extension, Purah, so he can definitely read ancient sheikah, he’s a doting parent and loving husband.

If your wondering how he and Zelda could’ve ended up together after I talked about how terrible she was to him pre-calamity, he doesn’t remember and nobodies fucking telling him, the zora had rumors of him being mistreated but there was never any actual proof, his memories are pretty much just the ones from the game and some from his childhood but he has a massive empty period in between when he pulled the sword and was named hylian champion that he’s subconsciously blocking because of trauma

General worldbuilding facts:

- [ ] All monsters have black blood by the time he wakes up as an evolutionary thing that was sped up because of malice

- [ ] Of the champions only Mipha and Daruk supported him with Mipha even transferring letters between link and his mother and sister

- [ ] Links sister’s name is Aria, his fathers name is Edward (read that in old English it means guardian of prosperity / mists, seems fitting because as soon as he dies link’s life spirals and for the mists part it makes sense that links father delayed him finding the sword by protecting him), and his mother’s name is Devon (old English for defender)

- [ ] Revali was older than Zelda but younger than Link

- [ ] Riju is urbosas great grandniece

- [ ] Link isn’t decended from the hero of twilight or time

- [ ] While Impa did give the champions tunic to Link she also warned him that he should hide his identity and the slate to protect him from the yiga’s eyes

- [ ] Link and Mipha were together before the calamity (but after the champions ceremony) because realistically you don’t propose to someone who you aren’t already in a relationship with

- [ ] After skyward sword hylia only ever exists through her descendents and lacks the power to truly influence fate only to step in when she can

- [ ] The reason Zelda unlocked her power so late is because of hylia trying to build up her power so that she could eradicate demise. The reason this differs in the age of calamity timeline is because of terrako opening the rift for hylia to see that there wasn’t a point in trying to build up past the necessary amount

- [ ] The death of the hero of time is heavily based off of his final battle with ganondorf in the fic on Ao3 ‘the legend of Zelda: a shade of time with ganondorf taking his eye and shattering the fierce diety mask but unlike the fic link didn’t last much longer and as he came back to consciousnessafter the gerudo had pushed the battle north he dragged himself into the lost woods hoping the Kokiri would help him, but alas they were long gone without the Deku trees protection. And so he became a Stalfos only keeping his mind due to the weakening magic of the woods and skull kid safeguarding his soul until a time where he could pass on

And now I’m getting into stuff that is very likely going to be AU from botw 2 but I may retrofit the botw 2 plot onto this au after the game comes out. Link and Zelda go under the castle to try and find a solution to the sheikah tech no longer working or losing power (in the first trailer the shrines and towers are absent) but they stumble upon ganondorf the trailer thing happens and they get separated. Link with his new magic and Zelda with the master sword (note: at this point the magic is primarily locked onto his arm but hasn’t replace it or anything his old arm is still there) general Zelda stuff happens (dungeons, monster, fighting, sidequests) until the halfway point where link and Zelda meet back up but surprise surprise ganondorf is also there to ruin everyone’s day. He attacks Zelda but link gets in the way. Link and Zelda fight ganondorf but he’s just toying with them until Zelda gives link an opening to get a hit with the master sword. At this point ganondorf isn’t playing games anymore and quickly takes both of them out resulting in Zelda being badly injured and link getting what would be mortal wounds getting his magic arm sliced off.

To prevent his death he binds his soul to the fierce diety’s so that he can survive. This results in link being down an arm for a short section where the atmosphere is very bleak and while link will live with the diety’s intervention the two are still reluctant to really become one as they niether really knows what that entails as it’s more than when it was just the hero of time wearing his mask as the mask is no longer a full buffer with it being broken when the hero of time died. For the atmosphere of this period where link tries to get Zelda to kakariko while avoiding being spotted by ganon the atmosphere is very reminiscent of the escape from the last city in destiny 2.

After link gets Zelda to kakariko she is effectively decommissioned for the rest of the story up until the final confrontation with ganon. For the rest of his life links hair is white. After this link goes to Hateno/ Akkala where purah and Robbie build him a robot arm replace the one he lost. He only uses the robot arm for about a third of the story though as in a fight with a phantom ganon link is pushed to his limits and the lingering magic he got in the beginning of the story reactivates and forms a magic construct arm based on his real arm and the scraps left of his robot arm after the phantom crushes it.

The story continues until Zelda recovers enough that she deems herself ready to go with link to face ganon head on.

Despite her assurance that they are ready they still can barely keep up with a ganondorf who isn’t holding back and the battle effectively becomes a war of attrition with them on the losing side. As the battle goes on ganon attacks Zelda again but in her more damaged state and with the distance between her and link from link trying to draw ganondorf’s attention away from her Zelda takes the full force of ganondorf’s attack. what was once her chest is only a gaping hole, ganondorf mirthfully allows link to get to her relishing in the hero’s desolated frame. Link and the fierce diety know that there is no turning back from this and begin to meld only for the combined warrior to pause as Zelda grasps his left hand using the last of her strength to bless him and give him the triforce. She wished for his protection and gave him a man already becoming diety her power the last of hylias power to give. With her final act she bestowed upon link immortality, not on purpose, she couldn’t have known what she was doing in her last fading seconds, but this didn’t matter to the combined warrior of man and diety the warrior took on her power to finish the fight, forming a sword with his right hands magic and wielding the master sword in his left he annihilated the final incarnation of demise and in killing something that had given up on reincarnation had ended the cycle. With the cycle broken the breaths of the long dying goddess hylia came to an end

I am weak, my love, and I am wanting

a couple piece for my and @elpiething story where, whenever you break someones heart a dark band inks itself on your arms. The thickness of the band depends from how strong were the feelings. They dont have to be romantic. The legend says it was a curse of a powerful sorceress centuries ago.

Jaskier had a couple of thin bands, always making sure they never reached anything serious and carefully keeping his heart away so no one could get his band. He never anticipated he would be the one who broke his own heart by falling in love with bandless witcher.

People said Witchers couldn’t get bands because they had no souls to mark. Geralt never thought about it until the dragon.

Until two bands circled his wrists in a burning hold of betrayed yearts, one wider and more hurtful than the other.

Visit me on my twitter: @ truecryptid