Aurora was dying.

Death was near. She could feel it. She could see her vision darkening. Dawn's muffled sobs into the blanket grew fainter as she gripped the hand of her older sister. Hyrule's whispered comforts faded as she slipped away.

She was at peace. Many people don't make it to ninety after all. Aurora had lived a full, long, and happy life. Hyrule and Dawn's children and grandchildren visited her often, despite their busy schedules. It never failed to warm her heart. Though she never had children, she loved her nieces and nephews like her own.

The kingdom was flourishing, finally recovering from the Decline. Hyrule was a great king.

...

Aurora was dying, and here - surrounded by loved ones - she was content.

She wondered who would greet her on the other side.

Her father?

Impa?

Lueberry?

Maybe even Minister Lefte or General Wright?

Link?

...

Ba-dump

Her heartbeat slowed.

Ba-dump

Every breath was a struggle.

Ba-dump

She closed her eyes.

Ba-

Silence.

The Sleeping Princess had entered her eternal rest.

...

She didn't open her eyes right away. Wisdom's bearer kept her bright green eyes shut, taking a moment to just be, and savour being free of the aches and pains that had marked her at that point in life.

Eventually, Echo's eyes blinked open.

They were suddenly filled with tears.

What greeted her was a sight she never thought she would see again.

It was Suthorn Forest, lush, beautiful, and green as it had once been oh so many centuries ago. She could see Suthorn Village just ahead, as bright and vibrant and warm as she remembered. A breeze ruffled her strawberry blonde hair, carrying with it the flowery scent of spring.

When the princess looked to the right, she saw a large tree brimming with reddish pink flowers and heart-shaped leaves. A redbud. Their tree.

A wave of nostalgia crashed into her. In her mind's eye, she could see the carved heart surrounding their initials etched into the redbud's rough bark. She could feel the sunlight warming her face, and his calloused hand in hers.

Echo had just been about to turn away when she noticed a figure sitting at the tree's base. They were too far away for her to see them properly, but she couldn't help the sudden pang of familiarity.

The figure got up and started walking towards her. The Priestess stayed rooted to the spot. As they drew nearer, Echo could finally see their face.

Her heart skipped a beat.

He was a young man of about eighteen with sandy blond hair that covered one eye, framing his handsome face. He wore a blue tunic lined in pale yellow, stitched with blocky swirls. A shortsword with a hilt the same shade as his tunic clanked at his right side. His ocean eyes were filled with affection, and Echo felt like she was drowning in the blue.

Link stopped right in front of her, their faces mere inches away.

They stared at each other for a long moment, emerald gazing into sapphire.

Then Link smiled that little smile that always made her stomach fill with butterflies, leaned forward, and caught Zelda in a bone-crushing hug. Zelda held back him just as fiercely, basking in the feeling of his arms around her once again. He smelled of petrichor, of the parched land after a rainstorm. She melted into him, sobbing in relief and happiness. Link just kept holding her. He managed to drag them both under the tree at one point, and he leaned against the trunk, Zelda's head on his chest.

Zelda broke the silence, throat raw from crying. "I never thought I'd see you again. It feels so surreal to be with you right now. This honestly feels like a dream."

Link tilted her chin up so that they were eye to eye.

"Zelda," he started, voice rough. Zelda's eyes widened in surprise. He almost never spoke. "I promise, I'm real."

"Sounds like something a dream would say."

Link's visible eye sparkled with mischief.

"Oh, really?" He leaned in closer. "Well then, could a dream do this?"

He closed the gap between them. She didn't doubt him again.

The more mers I design, the more complicated they get. The first designs (legend, hyrule and wind) were just some throwaway mer ideas with the idea that huh, underwater creatures probably don't have a lot of metallurgy so let's design them with stuff they can just scavenge. Also clothing would be probably inconvenient for them so let's just... not. But look at me now.

I would make mer designs for Phantom and Spirit too, but just like how I cannot image Tetra as anything but an awesome land dwelling pirate, I cannot imagine Spirit as anything but a train conductor that takes his job very very seriously.

Echo

The moment I wanted to draw echo and silent as mers, it was decided that Echo needed to have three tail fins. At first I wanted to give her a red tail, like how Legend has a pink tail, but then I stumbled upon it. The perfect fish (false, there is no such thing but still): the Yellowstriped Fairy Basselet (thank you pinterest).

Echo just strikes me as a girl that really really likes to accessorize (why else have that as a core mechanic of the game?). So she gets the heart ribbon and the wind sash because I always thought those were cure. If she weren't wearing gloves, I would have given her the froggy ring too.

I gave her pearl bracelets though, because I thought hey Legend is using a pearl necklace as utility belt and what if I gave all Zelda's pearls as way to indicate their royal status? Of course, pearls are probably easier to find for mers than landfolk and thus making pearls less rare for them then it is for humans but shhhh. I think it would be nice if I gave all royal mers something to match.

Echo gets called Priestess in eow, so that's what she is in the mermay au. She is still technically a princess in name, her royal duties are basically non-existent as she primarily serves as a Very Important Religious FigureTM that does Very Important Religious Figure Stuff like diving into unknown territories without warning with Silent and exorcising evil by stabbing it in the face with her trident.

Also thank you @mobgabriel for the trident idea it is perfect!

Three is an holy number for the merfolk. So most things come in threes. The tiara Echo is wearing has Nayru's symbol in the center, while her trident has Din's color in the middle. Depending on the function of the item, the appropriate goddess is referenced to symbolically call the blessing of said goddess. It's why weapons underwater often are decorated in red (think the red flag on Warriors' lance, I totally planned that in advance and this is totally not a coincidence at all).

The cloak. Ah the cloak. For a moment I thought about modifying it (like I did with Warriors' scarf), but nah the cloak is perfect the way it is. The silhouette you have is very important to either scare off or attract predators, I image what a godsend this cloak was for Echo when she was on the run. From a distance, she would appear like a big predator. Perhaps she even wore tail extensions during her time of hiding.

Okay so, Null. In canon Null is a primordial creature of some kind that was sealed away by the golden goddesses. I'm keeping that. The golden goddesses wanted a beautiful garden of life, but they couldn't do that with if their neighbor just kept eating their flowers so they created Tri and their friends to make World's Biggest Net to capture Null and bury them under the sea floor.

In my mind, Null is some of evasive species that has a hive-mind, characterized by their hunger. So throughout the thousands of years in which the world above slowly formed, Null was eating away at their prison. These little gaps and mistakes in the world created various opportunities for other villains to grasp for power. Like Hylia's seal weakening enough for Ghirahim to resurrect Demise or how Ganondorf got power hungry enough to try to grasp at the throne.

(I have no idea for Ganondorf's role in the mer au actually. Half of me wants him to be a mer, the other half of me wants him to be like a poacher or one of those assholes destroys the environment by fishing excessively and destructively.)

Null's main body was below Echo's colony, so when the cracks broke out everyone scratched their head at them before they got distracted by their own villains running around and causing havoc, leaving Echo and Silent alone to deal with Null. Turns out that destroying the main body was enough.

I did not draw it, but Tri is a jelly fish. Or a jelly fish like creature, but magical. I need to think more about the specifics.

Incidentally, Dawn is also based on a jellyfish. This further strengthens the cuteness aggression Echo feels towards Dawn.

Honorary member of the seagull mafia, but more involved than Hyrule is. She plays with the gulls and is friends with Marin as well. They get up to all kinds of mischief and drag poor Legend along.

Silent:

Okay, it ended up looking pretty different, but I based Silent off the short-nosed Chimaera fish (also called a rabbitfish which-- missed opportunity for Legend but alas I wanted him to have frilly fins), but blue. Oh so blue. If I think of Silent, I think of blue.

Bioluminescence can be used in various way by deep sea creatures two of which is camouflage and communication. When used for the first, it appears on the underside of the fish, when used for the second it is used on the side of the fish. So! I gave Silent pretty blue spots that can light up to communicate! Imagine Wild and Silent just flashing their bio luminescence tails at each other. As the two links who gotten an in-game reason for not being able to speak, I thought it would be fun to give them an alternative means of communicating specifically tailored to their biology. (Yes the ends of his side fins also glow!)

Also to the anon that suggested fish that use echolocation as inspiration for Silent and Echo: i did not forget you! I unfortunately did not find any that were satisfactory for me, but Silent does indeed have echolocation. He is also uncannily good at finding Echo herself. So he has both echolocation and Echo-location abilities :3

Silent may have survived Null, but Null leaves their mark on their victims anyways. Silent got his voice taken so I gave him a bright purple scar on his throat. He got it back after Null died of course, but he ended up permanently sacrificing it (just the complete ability to make sound at all) to wake Echo from her sleeping curse with Hyrule's help. Hyrule has faerie blood, so he needs sacrifices to perform feats beyond his natural scope of magic (perhaps all sea witches do, maybe that's why they've got such a controversial rep).

(Hyrule still got smooched by Echo on accident, but it's more of a funny thing now than a sad one. (Yes Echo, after the initial embarrassment just immediately moved onto Silent while Hyrule was still in the room. Talk about awkwarddd.))

I know I said that Purah is a mer and that wild got his slate from her but I'm retconning that now because @hylianscribe (thank youuu) gave me a better idea: Purah is a scientist at a lighthouse (shiekah tower) that dropped the slate on accident.

How is that relevant here? Well, I started thinking of it more and since Purah is of landfolk, the Sheikah can't be merfolk themselves. So I thought of this: Sheikah are a clan of people sworn to Hylia's service. During Hylia's days, she was resentful of the landfolk and true in a true Siren-fashion, she ended up luring lots of landfolk to their death (it's where the siren myth came from in the first place), but she ended up sparing the Shiekah who were also abandoned by the landfolk.

The Shiekah are in mostly found in small remote islands and on lighthouses. They do serve the landdwellers, but they do it more in interest for the mers who Hylia loved very very much. Shiekah are not strictly landfolk, anyone can join their ranks. And perhaps some of them had ancestors that got turned into mers themselves during Hylia's days to keep close to her. Silent is one of the mers that aligned himself with Sheikah, he basically got adopted into the clan and can be often found playing messenger between various Sheikah clans.

Cadence:

I played Cadence of Hyrule a few months ago and I adored it (rhythm games my beloved <3) and I recently bought Crypt of the Necrodancer (the game Cadence is originally from) because it was on sale and I really wanted to get to know her more. I already knew that coh was made a lot easier in comparison to cotnd, but man nothing could prepare me to how hard cotnd is. The music is amazing tho, so I don't mind dying so much.

Cadence is a landdweller, scuba diver that was sent down after the nearby merfolk colony suddenly went radio silent in their communications with her island. There she found everyone asleep and ensnared with the same curse that she is, unfortunately, very very familiar with.

In case you're not familiar with cotnd lore (which I am also not since I am not very far in the game and only skimmed the TVtropes page): Cadence went to search for her Dad who one day disappeared in search for a golden lute in order to resurrect her mother who died of plague. While doing so, Cadence ended up in the Necrodancer's dungeon and got cursed to move to the music. The Necrodancer was a bard that stumbled upon the golden lute, but was driven crazy because of it. It turns out the lute was a sentient monster and gets destroyed (I think) at the very very end of the game.

In the mer au, it instead got swept away to sea and landed in the lands of Octavo, who was already a drama queen, but he got even WorseTM once he got in possession of the lute. Cue the events of CoH.

Octavo is cousins with Vaati, and as mentioned in this post, they cannot stand each other.

I really really like Cadence man. The way she got introduced in her game, by telling the people who told that that she couldn't save her dad to shove it? I love her, she gives me older sister that takes no shit vibes. She definitely goes "I've known Echo and Silent for a day, but if anything were to happen to them I will kill everyone in this room and then myself." Those are her emotional support mers, your honor.

She still occasionally visits and every time she does, Echo and Silent take her to see some beautiful fish and point her to secret locations no other scuba diver can reach or is allowed to go. Her peers are extremely jealous of her.

I think that's it? (Writing this took two hours alasdfkjalsdf) I hope you guys like it and also, this au is very incompletely and prone to morphing so any ideas and suggestions are always welcome. Now that I have some more worldbuilding I can maybe start looking at incorporating more elements from the games.

Row 1:

Sky (SS) from @tethered-in-myth

Picori (the Hero of Men) from @flm-linkedfissures

Minish (TMC) from @minas-linkverse

Four (Four Swords trilogy) from @linkeduniverse

Four Swords Link from @cokoakeostuff's Hero's Paradox

Row 2

Leaf (pre-OoT) from @marenwithanm's Little Links

Time (OoT/MM) from @linkeduniverse

Reaper (TP) from @chained-spirits

Wind (WW) from @heroesspirit

Tracks (ST) from @the-phantom-peach's Rift in Time

Row 3

Mage (ALttP) from @bonus-links (my followers might have seen this one already)

Totem (ALBW/TFH) from @linkbetweenlinksau

Ravio (ALBW) from @minas-linkverse

Silent and Echo (EoW) from @linderosse's Wisdomverse (my followers might have seen them, too)

Row 4

Hope (The NES games and the cartoon) from @linkedspirit-fanartfunart

War (HW) from @bonus-links

Aspect (the Ancient Hero) from @chained-spirits

Tears of the Kingdom Link and Zelda from @proxycrit's Familiar Familiar (Not a Links Meet like the others, but it was a big request from my sis, and I'm a huge fan of the always messy hair. Great series.)

--

I told myself I wouldn't do this but here are some design notes:

Pixel art this small can only handle so many details, but I tried to fit whatever I could.

If you look closely, you'll see a tiny reference to Sky's feathers on his hip.

I went back and forth on whether to include the red ties Picori has. In the end, they looked too much like hoodie strings, and the strap wanted to blend in with his face, so I had to chop the strings off and swap out the leather strap for his undershirt.

With Minish: I tried really hard to nail that stare of his. I'm a big fan. There was a ton of trial and error - and I almost gave up several times - but I'm satisfied with the result. His pockets are represented by a single light-green dot. :)

JoJo doesn't color eyes, so I had to decide if I would go with the blue of his games or the grey that fans tend to use. I went with grey. It was a fun challenge to incorporate that eye color into his deadpan expression. I drew his before Minish, which helped me figure out some tricks that made Minish's eyes more achievable. I also had to figure out how to give the bottom of Four's tunic the right shape. Every other tunic I had drawn up to that point was straight across in the center. The GBA sprite doesn't even include legs (those are my own additions wherever you see them), so it took some messing around to find something that worked. I think the result added to his accidental tall appearance. That, and his hair kept getting taller so it wouldn't look like a frying pan hit him. Hm... I wonder if I...? But then his arms would be too long...

I had a really hard time placing Hero's Paradox Four's earring. It kept wanting to blend in. Unacceptable! I ended up saturating the color quite a bit compared to the original to make sure the colors stood out. With a few exceptions like this, try to stick with the artist's art style as far as palette choices go. It also killed me to leave out the design on his tabard. It looked like a checkerboard.

I just realized I didn't put any greenery in Leaf's braids! For shame! Maybe I'll do a separate post with the fix. The tiny braids were fun to figure out how to draw with the little pixels. I wonder if it would have been easier or harder to figure out if I remembered the plants. I guess I'll find out when I fix it.

Time is the most obvious example of how GBA sprites don't have a center. They use an even number of pixels on both sides, so any center parts or markings had to choose a side (like in this case) or become two pixels wide (like in Reaper's case). I wanted to challenge myself with a heavily armored character. I didn't think about how many details his armor had before I made that decision. ( ; >_<) I'm sure someone with more experience could have done better, but I'm satisfied.

If you look closely, you'll see that Reaper has his nose scar.

I thought about including Wind's sword and Wind Waker, but I didn't want to complicate such a cute sprite.

I tried to give Tracks all four of his buttons. I don't think I succeeded, but I tried. It was fun to figure out his poncho-style coat.

Mage: Glasses are hard. I don't want to do it again. I had fun fitting as many details in as I could. He has a lot of details in his design, so almost all of them are dropped for clarity, but I enjoyed playing around with it.

Totem: I adore his hair. It's my favorite thing about him. But boy was it an experience to make sure the green section of his hair didn't look like it was meant to be the bottom of his cap. I ended up having to make it a lot lighter than the original.

I was excited for Hope because I have zero experience with tight curls. It wasn't as hard as I imagined in pixel form, though that might have been due to the great highlights and lowlights I could pull from the original art. Trying to make sure all the browns didn't blend together was another story.

Aspect's main difficulty was finding a good curl on his tail that didn't interfere with his long hair. And his arm jewelry. And his shirt. For some reason I really struggled with his shirt. It's such a simple shirt, too. I also struggled with the placement of his teardrop makeup. I'm still not satisfied with that.

Familiar Familiar Link also has his nose scar. It looks like stylistic shading if you don't know the original design, but I think it's cute with either interpretation. ^_^

Some of these AUs are probably going to see some more sprites from me. It was hard to choose which Links to prioritize for this set. Everyone had such fun designs! If there's a character or au you were hoping to see, please shoot me a request. I love making these little guys. OCs are welcome, too!

Artists, feel free to request a separate version of your character. Tumblr wouldn't have liked so many individual pictures in one post, so I grouped them together, but I can definitely send you singles if you feel like causing mayhem with a little transparent pixel guy.